Today’s guest post is by Heather Rose Walters, founder of Iffly.
When I was working as a game writer at a studio, one of the projects I was lucky enough to work on was an interactive fiction app with stories set in the Redwall universe. If you know Redwall—Brian Jacques’ beloved series about warrior mice and badgers and moles with thick West Country accents—you know that the world is extraordinary. Rich and detailed and warm, there are centuries of lore baked into every stone of Redwall Abbey. Plus, the feast descriptions were epic (true fans know what I mean).
Writing interactive stories in that world was one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done. The reason wasn’t just the interactivity, it was the thrill of exploring a world we already knew. It’s the joy every fanfiction author embraces: the worldbuilding had already been done! We just got to play with it.
After that studio chapter, I moved back into marketing, where I’ve spent years helping businesses figure out how to actually reach people. And the thing that still baffles me, every time, is how few of them use games to do it. The research is pretty clear on this: interactive content generates around 70% more engagement than static content, and gamified campaigns consistently outperform traditional marketing. Games are incredible at pulling people in and getting them to actually feel something. I’ve watched brands spend enormous budgets trying to manufacture the kind of engagement that a well-designed interactive experience can produce at a fraction of that cost.
And then I think about authors who already have worlds. Who already have characters. Who already have stories that people already want to live inside! And who almost never use this, likely because they think it’s too technical for them. Games are historically very tough to make, and the barrier for entry can feel insurmountable.
But believe me when I say: if you’ve written a book, you already have everything you need to build a game. A quick, well-written game experience can reach new audiences and give people a reason to talk about your work. As a game writer-turned-marketer, I want to show you what’s possible, and how you can accomplish it faster than you think (even if you’re not a ‘techie’ at all).
What is interactive fiction, exactly?
Interactive fiction (IF) is a story the reader participates in. Instead of reading passively from beginning to end, the reader makes choices, and those choices shape what happens next. You’ve probably seen this somewhere already: Choose Your Own Adventure books are a classic form of interactive fiction. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is a more modern example. So are the text-based browser games across dozens of apps that have built massive, devoted audiences over the last decade.
The format most useful for authors is the simplest version: a branching story, delivered as text, that lives in a browser and requires nothing but a click to play. A reader can finish a well-crafted, short IF game in ten or twenty minutes, from a link you post on socials, or in an email, or on your website. And you can probably write it in a day (seriously).
Why it works
Think about what traditional book promotion does. A newsletter might tell your readers about your book, or even give them an excerpt to read. The reader might become intrigued, but then they have to make a leap of faith to buy.
An interactive fiction game puts the reader inside your world before they’ve spent a single dollar. They’re making decisions as a character, navigating the streets of your fictional city themselves. By the time someone reaches the end of a short IF game tied to your book, they haven’t just heard the story, they’ve made choices. And choices create a deeper investment, faster, than almost any other experience.
IF is also inherently shareable in a way static content isn’t. “I just played this game and I made the worst possible choice at the end and I need everyone to experience this!!” is a different social impulse entirely from “here’s a book I’m thinking of buying.”
Authors who’ve already figured this out
Susan Dennard didn’t set out to build a platform strategy. In 2019, she was just sitting at an airport, and on a whim she started posting a branching story on Twitter. She called it “Sooz-Your-Own-Adventure,” and readers voted daily on what the character would do next. It ran for six months, with thousands of people voting every single day.
I was one of those people. I voted on that story almost every day, and I can tell you: it was one of the most fun online experiences I’ve ever had. I woke up every day obsessively checking my Twitter feed; I didn’t want to miss a single installment! There was something about the combination of interactivity and community that created a level of investment I’ve rarely felt for anything on the internet. People weren’t just following a story or reading a blurb; we were in the story. And we cared about it a lot (#TeamThirst, anyone?).
That community engagement directly inspired what became The Luminaries series, published by Tor Teen in 2022. Dennard didn’t need to write code or learn a game engine; she told a story and let her readers in. And you better believe I preordered that thing the second it was announced.
Jed Herne took a different approach. The fantasy author published an interactive fiction game—Siege of Treblin, released through Choice of Games—set in the same world as his novels. His readers didn’t just read about that world; they ruled a city in it. The IF game expanded and deepened his world in a way that drew in thousands of new readers.
Jed’s game was a substantial undertaking—280,000 words and a traditional publishing contract. That’s absolutely not what I’m suggesting you do (although I’ll never say don’t do that…). But the concept scales down really well: a single scene. A key decision your protagonist faces. A moment from your book’s backstory that didn’t survive the final draft. A side quest for your favorite side character. Any of these becomes a ten-minute game that gives readers a window into your world.
If you’ve already built a world, why not let your readers explore it?
This isn’t just for fiction authors
Because the world of gaming is so often saturated with fantasy and sci-fi, many people assume games are only for fiction. But the format actually works for any subject matter where choices have consequences (which, let’s be honest, is most things).
The most instructive example here isn’t a book promotion. Depression Quest, created by Zoë Quinn in 2013, is an interactive fiction game that puts players inside the daily life of someone with depression. Choices that would seem obvious to someone without the illness—call a friend, go to therapy, ask for help—are crossed out and unclickable. You can see the options, you just can’t take them. Critics called it one of the most effective portrayals of depression they’d ever encountered, because players had to feel the constraint, not just read about it.
That’s pedagogy through interactivity, and it’s something any nonfiction author can do if they’re willing to think in terms of choices and consequences.
A therapist writing about anxiety could build a short scenario: you’ve just gotten a text from your ex. What do you do? The reader makes a choice, sees the consequence, and understands viscerally what the book has been explaining in the abstract. A business author could drop readers into a negotiation. A historian could put readers in the room where a pivotal decision was made. The format doesn’t require magic or monsters, it just requires stakes.
“But I’m not a game designer”
Good news: you don’t need to be. No matter your skill level, there are tools available to help you create and publish an amazing interactive fiction game.
Twine. Twine is the most widely used IF tool in the world, free and open source, and the tutorials are plentiful. It works by connecting “passages” of text with links: you write a scene, highlight a word or phrase, and it becomes a door to the next scene. At the basic level the learning curve is gentle, but if you want to do anything extra you’ll have to dive into the documentation. There also isn’t a place to publish your game, which is great if you have a platform in mind but stressful if you don’t.
Ink/Inky. Ink is the scripting language used by Inkle Studios, the developers behind 80 Days and Pendragon. The Inky editor gives you a clean writing environment and live preview, which helps. If you ever want to integrate your IF into a larger app or game down the line, Ink is the professional-grade choice. The downside for a writer just starting out is that Ink has real syntax to learn before you can do much with it. The logic lives close to the surface of everything you write, and getting comfortable enough to just write—to stay in the story and not in the code—is a challenge, but a worthwhile one if you want to create a professional-grade game.
ChoiceScript. ChoiceScript is the scripting language created by Choice of Games, the largest publisher of interactive fiction, and anyone can use it, not just writers pursuing a publishing deal with them. The syntax is closer to plain English than most scripting languages, which makes it more approachable. It handles branching, variables, and stat-tracking in a structured way that makes complex games very manageable. The limitation is that it’s designed for a specific style of IF—stat-driven, multi-chapter, with a lot of moving parts—and that architecture starts to feel like scaffolding when all you want to write is a single immersive scene. You spend time learning the system before you spend time in the story.
Iffly. This is my tool, and in my humble opinion is the easiest tool out there. Iffly is free, browser-based, and requires no code whatsoever. No syntax, no programming, just writing. You write, and the game structures itself around what you’ve written. Plus, it’s a platform you can publish your story on immediately, and share to players the same day. The tradeoff is that, in order to keep the experience easy and simple, Iffly gives you almost no design control. No custom sound, no animation, no visual styling beyond adding basic images. It’s just writing words—similar to your book. Game designers will probably prefer Twine or Ink. But Iffly is built for writers who want to open a blank page and start telling a story, and be done without having to think about anything other than the writing.
Why short works
One of the biggest misconceptions about interactive fiction as a promotional tool is that it needs to be a whole multi-chapter adventure, with a full cast and a complex branching structure. It doesn’t; for promotional purposes, it probably shouldn’t. A short IF game can be extraordinarily effective, and the reason comes down to how choice functions as a narrative device.
A short IF game that drops a reader into one vivid moment from your book’s world—a confrontation, a discovery, a decision your protagonist can’t unmake—will do more for that reader’s investment than a dozen tweets about preorder links.
Draft a quick scene; something that takes you a day or less to write. Have fun with it. Publish it without getting too fancy or stuck on visuals; the words are your superpower, after all. That’s what your reader will experience in your book, right? So keep it focused, and make it completeable in one sitting.
Link to it from your website, your newsletter, your social profiles. Put it in your bio. Let it do the work that a cover and a blurb can’t do: put your readers inside your world before they’ve committed to anything.
The worldbuilding is already done. You’ve done the hard part.
Now open the door and let your readers in.
Heather Rose Walters is the founder of Iffly, a free, no-code platform for writing and publishing interactive text-based games. She previously led interactive fiction development at a game studio and has spent years working with businesses on content strategy and audience engagement.
