Hyperfictionary

This page began as a blog post that I felt the need to update frequently because there’s just never been a good word for hyperfiction. Besides the definitions and sources mentioned below, there was also a software section that now has its own page. (The History of Choice Mapping is still in the blog.)

The biggest pitfall of interactive fiction is figuring out what to call it, because interactive fiction is a uselessly generic term. The many bad names for interactive fiction frequently imply that a work is a literary form when it’s really a computer game, or vice versa. What any particular term in the hyperfictionary says to you is often not what it said to the writers who slapped it on their work for want of anything better. So I made a little thesaurus with the help of the SF encyclopedia and many examples found in the wild:

• Hyperfiction is fiction with hyperlinks, traditionally at the end of a scene or page but sometimes inline instead. Usually the story is told in the second person and the reader determines the plot through your quantized choices.
  • The canonical example is the Choose Your Own Adventure series of children’s books.
  • Hyperfiction is also known as hypertext fiction, hypertext IF, hypertexts, hyperstories, branching-path books, interactive novels, wovels, CYOA, cybertext, choice-based games, etc.
  • Sometimes hypertext is distinguished from CYOA based on whether the links appear inline or at the end of a scene.
• Gamebooks combine hyperfiction with RPG-style game rules, implemented in dead-tree books by the reader rolling dice, etc., or in the background on computers.
  • The term was apparently coined by Steve Jackson for the canonical example of the genre: the Fighting Fantasy series of books.
  • Gamebooks are also known as adventure gamebooks, multiple-choice games, multiple-choice gamebooks, MCGs, storygames, etc. Gamebooks using an existing RPG system are also known as role-playing solitaire adventures. Collaborative gamebooks are also known as addventure. QBN, or quality-based narrative, is a style that links your stats to your access to parts of the narrative, usually invisibly unlike in traditional gamebooks, and also usually in an exploratory way as in parser fiction.
  • Gamebooks are sometimes considered to include CYOA books.
• Interactive fiction is fiction in which the reader directs the story using (somewhat) natural language. It traditionally involves free exploration of a map, collecting items, and puzzle solving.
  • The canonical example is the Zork series of video games.
  • Interactive fiction is abbreviated IF or int-fiction and is also known as text adventures, adventure games, parser games, or parser(-based) IF.
  • Narrative games is a more general term that may include the previous categories as well.

Further afield you find visual novels, not to mention a different sort of CYOA that’s almost entirely unrelated to interactive fiction. It’s best not to go further afield.

Finding Hyperfiction

Dead-tree gamebooks, including CYOA, are thorougly catalogued at Demian’s Gamebook Web Page. Many such books are available from Amazon, but, there being no accepted term for the genre, there is no reliable way to search for them.

The Interactive Fiction Database covers a mix of IF and hyperfiction, making it hard to search for hypertext in particular as well as for stories that are available online (as opposed to for downloading). You can try searching by engine, e.g., system:ChoiceScript, or opening up the engine list under system:name on the search page and clicking on an engine you’re interested in—no matter how obscure.

You can shop for phone app gamebooks at Gamebook Adventures, Cubus Games, or Inkle, or buy a more serious work of hyperfiction at Eastgate. For some curation before buying, try Gamebook News for the latest, Adventure Gamers for reviews, or this list of the 15 best gamebook apps.

You can read online games at several community-oriented hyperfiction writing websites noted in my software list. These usually have some sort of curated category and/or ratings system, unless otherwise noted.

When people ask for a Twine story recommendation, I point them to You Will Select a Decision (Сделайте Свой Выбор), The great classic of Kyrgyz young adult interactive socialist literature.