A small experiment in context aware storytelling on the web
1 comments
Nice concept; lightweight, context-driven fiction can feel uncanny without heavy infra. A practical approach is to seed narrative state from stable signals (timezone, locale, local time) and drive branches with a deterministic PRNG, cached per user. Be mindful of privacy, cross-device drift, and accessibility; let readers opt out or reset context.
What caught my attention wasn’t the story itself but the design idea behind it. Instead of building a full ARG or complex interactive game, the approach seems to rely on small contextual cues that readers already trust: things like system time, common app interfaces, and familiar UI behaviors. When those are blended into the narrative structure, it creates a strange effect where the reader briefly questions whether something is part of the story or just happening around them.
From a product/design perspective it feels like a lightweight way to experiment with interactive fiction without heavy infrastructure. You don’t need complex branching paths or game engines just clever writing paired with subtle contextual triggers.
The project I ran into was called pokostories, which seems to be exploring this idea with serialized short fiction.
Curious if anyone here has worked on similar approaches to narrative experiences on the web especially using simple browser or UI context to enhance immersion.