A Guide to Gamified Reading Experiences

Part 1 - What is interactive fiction?

A cross between a book and a game

In the simplest terms, interactive fiction is a story that you can interact with as a reader. Think of it like a cross between a book and a game, where you get to decide what to do next in the story. If you have read a Choose Your Own Adventure book before, then you already have some experience with reading interactive fiction.

Here’s another way to understand what interactive fiction is.

If reading a book is like riding a train, then reading interactive fiction is like driving a car.

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A train follows a set of previously laid down tracks to get to its destination. As a passenger, you sit back and relax as you enjoy the ride. Whereas, a car can take any road it wants to get to its destination. As the driver, you decide when and where to turn, creating your own path.

With interactive fiction, you are no longer just a passenger along for the ride, but rather the driver of the story. In other words, you aren’t a reader anymore, but a co-producer because the choices you make end up changing the story.

Two ways to interact with a story

When it comes to interactive fiction, there are two ways a reader can interact with a story: through parser-based interaction or choice-based interaction.

Parser-based interactive fiction, more commonly known as text adventures, is interactive fiction where the reader types text commands into a textbox. For example, text commands such as LISTEN (a verb), OPEN DOOR (a verb-noun combination), or N (an abbreviation for GO NORTH) are interpreted by a text parser in order to determine what the reader would like to do next.

Choice-based interactive fiction, on the other hand, lets the reader choose what they would like to do next from a list of available choices. The earliest form of choice-based interactive fiction is called hypertext fiction, where each choice is essentially a link to a page of text. The reader would jump from page to page as they progressed through a story. Hypertext fiction is also one of the easiest ways to get started writing interactive fiction, especially when using Twine.