IF Lab — experiments in interactive fiction

Eighteen small machines for telling stories. Each one bets on a form the field has left unexplored.

The premise: most interactive fiction is either hand-authored branches (every path written by a person) or an LLM improvising (nothing underneath the words). These experiments try a third way — real systems under the prose: simulated witnesses, clocks that keep running when you leave, worlds with physical rules, generators that keep their promises. No AI at runtime — with one exception, disclosed where it lives: the Fridge has a resident. Nothing here costs anything to play, and nothing is watching you except, in one case, the fiction itself.
  1. EXPERIMENT 01 · SIMULATED TESTIMONY

    The Killing at Gilded Acre

    A murder at a country estate. Ten suspects who actually move, meet, and see things — testimony is computed from what each one really witnessed. Relive the day as often as you need. Then accuse.

    The bet: a whodunit where contradictions emerge from simulation, not from an author's clue list.

    ~30–60 min · time loop · keeps your notes between loops
  2. EXPERIMENT 02 · DATABASE FICTION

    Dead Reckoning

    Nine people wintered at a subantarctic research station. Zero came home. All that's left is the station archive — and search is the only way in.

    The bet: Her Story's search mechanic, but layered (redactions unlock) and aware — the archive notices what you're looking for.

    ~30–45 min · type to search · the corpus watches back
  3. EXPERIMENT 03 · ADVERSARIAL NARRATION

    The Narrator

    A perfectly ordinary hero's tale, told by someone with opinions. Contradict any sentence you like. He will rewrite it. He will also remember that you did that.

    The bet: the text you've already read is not safe — negotiation with the teller is the core verb.

    ~15–25 min · click sentences to contradict · several endings
  4. EXPERIMENT 04 · REAL-TIME FICTION

    Night Shift

    You hold the overnight radio watch at a coastal relay station. Transmissions arrive on a real clock. The night does not pause for you — close the tab and it goes on without you.

    The bet: waiting, silence, and absence as first-class narrative mechanics.

    one night ≈ 25 real minutes · honest fast-mode · runs while you're gone
  5. EXPERIMENT 05 · SYSTEMIC WORLD

    Tinderbox

    Wrecked on an island station, one night to signal the passing ferry. Everything has properties — flammable, heavy, sharp, wet — and the verbs are general. Nobody wrote the solutions.

    The bet: a parser's expressive range with zero guess-the-word, over a world that actually simulates.

    ~20–40 min · verb + object play · many valid solutions
  6. EXPERIMENT 06 · PROCEDURAL CONSEQUENCE

    Epitaph

    Type a name. Read the whole life it seeds — birth to obituary — and take the wheel at its crossroads. What you choose threads through everything after, and the ending quotes it back.

    The bet: procedural narrative that keeps its promises — planted details pay off, choices echo at the right distance.

    ~10 min a life · endlessly reseedable · lives shareable by link
Series two: game machines. The first six bet on form. These five bet on systems — genres whose systemic gold standards (King of Dragon Pass, NetHack's bones, the con job, the werewolf table) never got a web-native, text-first heir. Real mechanics, real failure, real mastery. Still no AI, still nothing to install.
  1. EXPERIMENT 07 · STRATEGY UNDER PROSE

    The Crown

    Rule the realm of Vail season by season. Advisors argue their own agendas, decisions detonate years later, and when your reign ends, whoever came out on top writes your history.

    The bet: a real text strategy game — and the scoreboard is a partisan chronicle of what you actually did.

    ~25 min a reign · dynasties chain · every history shareable
  2. EXPERIMENT 08 · DEATH AS INHERITANCE

    The Barrow

    There is a door in the hill on the farm your family bought cheap. Whoever you send down there stays — body, gear, chalk warnings — and the next of kin goes in after them.

    The bet: NetHack's bones files, made narrative: one persistent tomb, and your failures are the map.

    ~10 min a delve · generations accumulate · the tomb never forgets
  3. EXPERIMENT 09 · SKILL IN SENTENCES

    Riposte

    Six bouts to earn your master's letter. Distance, stance, and stamina are real — and every opponent's tell is written into the prose, if you read closely enough.

    The bet: combat prose that is actually skill — then your own habits export as a ghost your friends can duel. No server.

    ~30 min campaign · learnable tells · challenge friends by link
  4. EXPERIMENT 10 · PLAN VS. SIMULATION

    The Take

    Case the joint, build the plan, run the job. The location is really simulated — so every complication is a specific gap between what you believed and what was true. The debrief names each one.

    The bet: heist complications that are never dice — only your own bad intel, audited.

    3 jobs + finale · crew you can lose for good · ~20 min a job
  5. EXPERIMENT 11 · SOCIAL DEDUCTION, SOLVED-STATE HONEST

    The Quorum

    Seven masked electors sealed in a basilica; one took the Foreign Coin. Each night someone dies. The other six track what they actually saw, lie only in their own interest, and vote their beliefs.

    The bet: Werewolf needs seven humans. This needs one — and afterward you can open the other six minds and audit every vote.

    ~25 min a conclave · reseedable · post-game "minds" replay
Series three: the oral tradition. People already tell stories — around tables, fires, coffins, and beds. These five are instruments for practices you already have: the machine deals, times, remembers, and binds, but never tells the story. Nothing here has a server; anything shared travels as a code you paste into your own group chat. One of these refuses to remember anything at all.
  1. EXPERIMENT 12 · ORAL TRANSMISSION

    Retold

    A story passes down a chain of your friends — and nobody may copy it. Read it once; the page burns; sleep on it; retell it from memory. At the end, everyone sees what survived.

    The bet: the telephone game is literature — memory is the medium, and the drift is the art.

    4–10 friends · by pasted codes · the reveal shows every version's lineage
  2. EXPERIMENT 13 · THE EULOGY

    The Wake

    The notice says she's dead. She never existed — but each of you knew her differently, and your invitation says how. Write your remembrance. The order of service will not resolve your contradictions.

    The bet: a person assembled from partial memories, the way the dead are actually made at wakes.

    3–12 people · private cards · binds into a printable order of service
  3. EXPERIMENT 14 · THE COUPLE'S ANECDOTE

    As We Remember It

    You've both told this story a hundred times. Now tell it together — alternating sentences, each sure of five details, three "actually—" tokens apiece. The last page shows what really happened.

    The bet: "actually, it was Tuesday—" is a storytelling form, and neither of you was right.

    2 players · one device · the artifact keeps every strikethrough
  4. EXPERIMENT 15 · THE CAMPFIRE

    Embers

    A phone propped in the middle of real people at night. It deals each teller a secret ingredient, burns an ember while you talk, snaps twists mid-sentence — and records nothing. Ever.

    The bet: the campfire story's defining property is that it isn't kept — an app that honors that.

    3–8 tellers, out loud · one device · one printable memento, then ash
  5. EXPERIMENT 16 · THE BEDTIME STORY

    Again, But Different

    One of you tells; one of you heckles — scarier! sillier! what about the dog? — and when they demand it AGAIN, the engine guarantees tonight's telling is different, and remembers every night before.

    The bet: "again!" is the hardest request in storytelling — an instrument that makes anyone good at it.

    teller + heckler · bedtime mode · the ledger of every telling is the artifact
And one door that's always open. The lab's first living piece — a single shared object the whole internet tends at once. It breaks the "no server" rule, once, honestly, and it is never still.
  1. EXPERIMENT 17 · ONE SHARED DOOR

    The Fridge

    One refrigerator door, everyone's magnets. You get twenty moves a day — enough to write a line, not enough to own the door. Among the hands rearranging it, at least one is not human. The building manager reads it every morning, and leaves a note.

    The bet: given three moves at a time and a fixed vocabulary, strangers won't vandalize — they'll correspond.

    live · 20 moves/day · every midnight the door joins the gallery forever
And one that writes with you. Your phone finishes your sentences all day. This one takes the suggestion bar and removes everything else.
  1. EXPERIMENT 18 · PREDICTIVE TEXT ONLY

    Suggested

    You have a hard message to send and you cannot type — you can only tap the three words the keyboard offers. It always gives you a safe one. It keeps offering the true one. Now and then it autocorrects you toward the thing you were trying not to say.

    The bet: the gap between the message you meant and the one you can actually assemble is the whole story.

    ~10 min · five messages worth not sending · the keyboard has opinions