Storyfall

Playing Stories

How to find and play interactive stories on Storyfall.

Finding Stories

The Stories page is the main way to discover stories. You can:

  • Browse featured and recently published stories on the homepage.
  • Search by title, author, or keywords.
  • Filter by genre to narrow results to your interests.
  • Sort by popularity, rating, or newest.

Author Profiles

Every writer has a public profile page where you can see all their published stories, blog posts, and forums. If you enjoy a story, visit the author’s profile to find more of their work. You can also subscribe to a writer to get notified when they publish new stories, updates, or blog posts.

Starting a Story

Character Creation

Character selection: If the story has playable characters defined, you’ll see a selection screen with each character’s name, description, and avatar. Choose the character you want to play as. Each character may start in a different scene with different stats and relationships.

Name input: Some stories ask you to enter a name for your character. This name can appear throughout the story text.

Default start: Stories without characters or name input drop you straight into the first scene.

Guest Access

You don’t need an account to play free stories. Storyfall supports guest access so you can jump into a story immediately. If you want to save your progress across devices or access paid content, you can create an account at any time and your existing progress will carry over.

The Reading Interface

Scenes

Stories are made up of scenes. Each scene presents narrative text with rich formatting including bold, italics, images, and more. Read through the content, then make a choice to continue.

Making Choices

Choices are the heart of interactive fiction. Each story may use several types of choices:

Continue: The standard choice. Selecting it takes you to the next scene in the story. Most choices are this type.

Interact: Triggers an effect (like changing a stat or relationship) and stays on the current scene. The choice disappears after you select it, so it can only be used once.

Interact (reusable): Works like interact, but the choice remains available after you select it. Useful for repeatable actions like searching an area multiple times or practicing a skill.

Input: Presents a text field where you type a response. Authors use this to collect names, dialogue, or other freeform text from you. Your input gets stored in a story variable and can appear later in the narrative.

Dropdown: Shows a dropdown menu with predefined options. Select an option to set a story variable. Some dropdowns disappear after you make a selection, while others stay visible so you can change your mind.

Conditions

Some choices have conditions attached to them. If you don’t meet the requirements, the choice will either appear locked with a message explaining what you need (e.g. “Requires Strength > 5” or “Requires Silver Key”) or be hidden entirely. As you make choices and build up your stats, inventory, or relationships, previously locked or hidden options may become available.

Variable Stats

Some stories display stats, inventory, or relationship values to you. These are tracked behind the scenes and updated as you make choices. Visible stats appear on the Stats page so you can monitor your character’s progress, health, reputation, or any other value the author has chosen to show.

Language Selection

If the story has translations available, you can choose your preferred language before starting to play. A language selector appears on the story detail page when translations exist. You can also switch languages during play from the in-game settings. If a scene hasn’t been translated yet, you’ll see the original content with a note that the translation is not yet available.

Game Settings

The reading interface includes several settings you can adjust to customize your experience.

Typewriter Effect

Stories can display text with a typewriter effect that reveals words gradually. You can:

  • Toggle the effect on or off.
  • Adjust the speed to read faster or slower.
  • Click to skip and reveal all text and choices instantly on any scene.

Audio

If the author has added background music to their story, you can:

  • Toggle music on or off.
  • Adjust volume with the volume slider.

Audio settings are accessible from the game interface controls.

Theme Toggle

Switch between light and dark mode while reading. Your preference is saved across sessions.

Saving and Resuming

Your progress is saved automatically as you play. Every choice you make and every scene you visit is recorded. If you close your browser or navigate away, you can return to the story and pick up exactly where you left off.

To resume a story, visit the story page and click “Continue” instead of starting a new playthrough.

You can also share your playthrough publicly as a journal. This gives other people a link to read through the choices you made and how your story unfolded. See Sharing Playthroughs for more details.

Multiplayer

Storyfall has two multiplayer modes:

  • Vote-Based: Join a shared session where all players read the same story together and vote on choices. The winning choice advances the story for everyone.

  • Cooperative: Each player controls their own character in the same story world. Play through the narrative independently with shared party state and sync points where the group reconvenes.

Both modes support real-time chat and work with guest accounts.

Feedback

Reviews

After playing a story, you can leave a review with a 1-5 star rating and an optional written comment. Reviews are public and help other readers discover stories. You can edit or delete your review at any time.

Other readers can mark reviews as helpful or not helpful, which affects how reviews are sorted.

Sending Feedback to the Writer

If you want to report a bug, suggest an improvement, or just let the writer know what you think, you can send them feedback directly from within the story. The feedback form includes a rich text editor with image uploads, and automatically captures which scene you’re on so the writer knows exactly what you’re referring to.

Feedback is private between you and the writer.

Next Steps