Playing through a few different IF titles lately and I keep noticing this thing where the games with the most choices aren't necessarily the most immersive. A game that gives me a choice every 200 words kind of keeps pulling me out of the story, even though each individual choice might be good.

Meanwhile I've played some stuff where you go 1000+ words between choices and by the time the branch hits it actually means something.

Wondering if there's a sweet spot, or if it's more about the quality of the choice rather than the frequency. Or if this is just a personal quirk.

I've also been building a serialized IF narrative engine for the last year or so and I'm trying to figure out how to space the different kinds of decisions. What I've arrived at is one consequential decision at the end of the chapter that shapes the subsequent chapter and arc directly and 4-5 "microchoices" sprinkled throughout the chapter that involve subtle reactions, body language, etc that come to define relationships and character identities across time.

What's the choice density that tends to work best for you?

If anyone know or remembers this game can you please help me find this? I don't know if it even is on or dead anymore It has been so long since I played it.

I remember that it had a story where you either were a FBI or etc agent protecting a blonde girl while I think not letting her know. But in the first book she dies.

Or there was another story supernatural where there were demons and zombies and your girlfriend or ex or friend turns into a zombie and you have choice to kill her where if you kill her the demon female praises you for the ability to make that decision.

Oh and depending on the story you were playing you would unlock character cards/pics and they would kinda be suggestive.

If anyone know it name or know anything I would appreciate it if they could help me find it. Thanks.

Hi! New here, but I've always loved the old Choose Your Own Adventure books. When I found out there were actual game mechanics in gamebooks like the Lone Wolf series (seriously what is up with book 2 and RNGeesus taking the wheel?) I was instantly hooked. While trying to write some adventures of my own I immediately became frustrated with the way all the tools out there are "almost but not quite." Being a stubborn soul, I spent the last two months building an app specifically for authoring game books.

Current Features

• Game system creation tools
  • Use logic blocks to create your own game systems.
  • Support for dice and card systems.
  • Database tool to easily manage your encounters and characters.
• Whiteboard style editor
  • Clear visual organization of your story branches.
  • Rich text editor to write out your adventures.
  • Picture support, because writing 1000 words isn't always the best answer.
• HTML export capability
  • Players can download your gamebooks and play through it on their browser.
  • Host your gamebooks for people to play on your own website.
  • Format editor allows you to customize how your gamebook will display.

Planned features

• Print format editor
  • Plan out your gamebook for print in the app.
  • Exporting to .pdf format.

Planning to release on itch.io soon^(TM)

This is not an AI text/story generation tool. It's a writing tool made for human writers to write their interactive adventures.

Hi everyone,

I’ve been working on a project that sits at the intersection of retro reverse-engineering and modern software architecture. Like many of you, I grew up obsessed with 8-bit text adventures created with the Professional Adventure Writing System (PAWS).

While I love the nostalgia of these games, we all know the classic frustration: the rigid Verb + Noun parser and the dreaded "guess-the-verb" bottlenecks. To bridge this gap, I’ve built a modern interpreter and a transformation pipeline to bring these classics into the 2020s.

The Reverse Engineering Challenge

Since original source databases for these games are rarely preserved—only Z80 emulator snapshots remain—I went down a heavy reverse-engineering rabbit hole. I’ve implemented a tool in Ruby that extends the concepts of legacy extractors like unPAWS to achieve 100% data recovery.

My pipeline now dumps the entire game logic into a clean, highly readable JSON file. This includes:

• Full vocabulary, messages, and logical instruction blocks ("condacts").
• User-defined charsets.
• Original vector-based graphic primitive commands (points, lines, fills, and patterns).

To streamline this, I built a Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool to interface directly with the ZEsarUX emulator. This allowed me to automate memory dumps, compare state changes, and handle disassembly through a high-level orchestration layer.

What the Engine Does Right Now:

• Web & Terminal UI: Play classic games natively in a browser with modern typography and full fidelity.
• Semantic Intent Layer: I’ve added a middleware layer that acts as a translator. If a player types a natural language sentence, the engine performs a semantic mapping to rewrite it into the precise syntactic command the original logic expects (e.g., translating a complex phrase into exactly SAY TO EDDIE "DANGER").
• Dynamic Visual Reinterpretation: The interpreter reads original Spectrum vector commands and uses modern neural rendering models to reinterpret them in real-time. You can switch visual styles (pixel art, digital painting, etc.) while maintaining the original composition.
• Developer Tooling: Includes a feature-rich visual debugger to trace flags, full playthrough transcription, and autoplay for integration testing.

Next Steps: A Modern Authoring Tool

Because the core engine decouples the game logic from old hardware and runs entirely on readable JSON, it has evolved into a full framework. You can already write a brand new adventure entirely in JSON from scratch.

My next big milestone is a Graphical Adventure Editor to facilitate the creation of new narrative games using this reimagined interpreter.

I’m posting technical updates and devlogs here: 👉https://shorturl.at/MsziX

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the architecture, the challenges of preserving vector-based graphics, and what features you’d like to see in a modern JSON-backed adventure editor!

Hey everyone — I’m building an interactive fiction app called Moxi and would love honest feedback from people who care about the genre.

The idea: branching stories where readers make choices that shape the plot, plus the ability to chat with characters as the story unfolds.

We’re starting with romance, romantasy, thriller, and drama, but the bigger goal is a broader interactive storytelling platform.

It’s free to start at moxistory.com, and if you genuinely like it or want to test it more deeply, I can send over a discount code for 6 months of premium for free.

I’d really appreciate any blunt feedback, criticism, or testing help.

Hi all, I just launched the first story on a small interactive fiction project I’ve been building: Low Signal Stories.

The current piece is Veilbreak: Saint Juniper Relay, a short weird-horror branching story about a strange roadside relay, missing voices, and the things that answer when the signal gets too clean.

It’s playable directly in the browser:

https://lowsignalstories.com

A few notes:

• no account or install

• anonymous save codes if you want to continue later

• multiple endings

• static/authored branching, not generated during play

• probably around 15–30 minutes depending on route and reading speed

I’m especially interested in feedback on pacing, choice clarity, dead ends, and whether the save/resume flow makes sense. If you run into anything broken, there’s a small report link in the footer.

Thanks for taking a look. This is the first issue in what I’m hoping becomes a monthly anthology of short interactive stories.

Unbelievably, this is my first time visiting the reddit gamebooks thread. To be honest, I haven't visited reddit much at all - ever!

Anyway, my name is Jonathan Green and I have written gamebooks for Fighting Fantasy, Games Workshop, Arkham Horror, Warcradle Studios, Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Sonic the Hedgehog.

My latest gamebook project - 100 Aker Wood - has just gone live on Kickstarter, if you would like to check it out. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonathangreen/100-aker-wood-an-ace-gamebook-by-jonathan-green

I have an idea I’m trying to test with interactive fiction players.

Would you be interested in a multiplayer interactive fiction game?

The basic idea is: you read scenes, choose what your character does, and the story responds. It is not a normal video game with 3D movement or real-time combat. It is closer to interactive fiction or an online choose-your-own-adventure story.

For example, your character arrives at a small town called Twinkle Town and goes to talk to a strange little goblin named Mududu. If nobody else is there, your scene might read:“You approach Mududu near the market stall. He grins, opens his coat, and offers to sell you something suspicious.” But if another player is already talking to Mududu, your scene might change:“You approach Mududu, but another traveler is already speaking with him. Mududu glances between you both, suddenly nervous, as if your arrival has changed the conversation.”So your story is still something you read and play through at your own pace, but the world is not completely private. Other players can affect NPCs, locations, rumors, events, and sometimes even the scene you walk into.

Would you personally try something like this? And if not, what would make it more interesting to you: stronger writing, more meaningful choices, puzzles, character progression, world simulation, or less multiplayer interference?

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So I've been working on a project and I keep running into this question. The structure I'm thinking about doesn't quite fit the usual IF categories and I'm wondering if this community has a term for it or knows of examples.

The idea: one main narrative thread, linear, top to bottom. But from any node you can branch sideways. The branches don't change where the main story goes, they're more like optional depth. Another character's version of that exact moment. A hidden memory. Extra context for readers who want to look. The main story always keeps moving forward, the branches are explorations off the spine.

The closest analogy I have is a crossword. The main word reads down. Intersecting words read across. Every cell has exactly one place. Its not a tree, theres no forking path where you end up somewhere different. Its one story, with optional layers.

This feels different to me from classic CYOA or Twine-style branching where choices affect outcome. Here the reader doesn't change the story, they just choose how deep to go into each moment. Feels closer to something like annotations? But written as actual scenes, not notes.

I keep thinking about a mystery novel where the main thread follows the detective, and sideways at every scene you have the killer's private thoughts. Same moment, both heads. You can read straight through and get the full story, or you can stop and go sideways whenever you want.

The other things I'm thinking about for this format: co-authorship where different writers own different branches inside the same work. Paywalled branches, so the core story is accessible but deeper layers are optional paid content. And post-publication expansions, new branches added after the main work is already out, like DLC basically.

I'm a software developer building something around this idea and honestly not sure if its a new format or just a weird implementation of something that already has a name. Does this exist somewhere in the IF world and I just missed it?

What would you call this structure? And have you seen it done anywhere?