Interactive fiction
I have been involved in playing, creating, or supporting interactive fiction for most of my life. I created the Interactive Fiction MUD, an early online gathering place for the community, and have written or cowritten many hypertext or parser-based stories. I served on the board of the non-profit Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation which supports many popular IF programs, including Twine and the annual Interactive Fiction Competition.
I publish hypertext interactive fiction using my open source framework Windrift, which allows for rich user interfaces and experimentation. There are many example stories in the manual and in the Windrift Playground.
Harmonia (2017)
An interactive mystery, playable in a web browser, about utopian ideals and bookish delights.
Harmonia is one of those rare pieces of interactive fiction where the author has woven a unified experience out of crosshatched decisions in writing and systems design, with the weft amplifying and supporting the warp.
– Bennett Foddy, designer of QWOP
Best Use of Innovation and Best Use of Multimedia, 2017 XYZZY Awards. Finalist for Best Story and Best Implementation. Third place, 2017 Interactive Fiction Competition.
Stone Harbor (2016)
An interactive detective story, playable in a web browser. Interview about the development of the piece with Emily Short. Source code. Portuguese translation by José Carlos Dias. Spanish translation by Neido Translations.
Fourth place, 2016 Interactive Fiction Competition, and finalist for three 2016 XYZZY Awards including Best Writing.
The Ballroom (2019)
Modifying something that seems trivial can overturn the whole chain of events, adding entire stretches of paragraph to the page and radically changing the existing ones. — Interactive Licktion review
A short “mutable story” in which a complete narrative is always present but can be manipulated by the player in sometimes surprising ways.
Best in the Back Garden audience ribbon, Spring Thing 2019 festival
First Draft of the Revolution (2012)
A marvel—an exploration of the space between the mind and the page the likes of which I’ve never experienced. — Kotaku
An interactive epistolary story I commissioned from Emily Short. I worked on the design and implementation with inkle (80 Days, Heaven’s Vault)
Best Use of Innovation, 2013 XYZZY Awards.
Related
Interview with Ars Technica on my role in founding interactive fiction social communities. (June, 2024)
Press release announcing membership on the Board of Directors of the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation (Aug, 2018)
Interview for Atlas Obscura along with other Interactive Fiction Competition winners and organizers (Nov, 2017)
Interview about the relationship between interactive fiction and AI, featuring Emily Short, Lynnea Glasser, and Bruno Dias (Nov, 2016)
Author profile in the Interactive Fiction Database