Prototype
Stories you read and steer, on a phone, without a subscription or a slot machine in the middle of them.
Why it exists
Interactive fiction mostly went two ways: free and unfinished, or wrapped in timers and currencies that price the good ending. I wanted the third thing. You buy a story, you read it, it is yours, and the honest choice never costs money.
Where it goes
An engine and content split, so the app is a reader and each story is a pack you add to it. Write once, publish many. That also means someone else could write for it later.
What it will not do
- Charge you for the emotionally honest or narratively satisfying choice.
- Use timers, energy bars or currencies to slow you down.
- Need an account or a connection to read what you already bought.
White paper
- Platform
- Native iOS, Swift and SwiftUI
- Content
- Story packs, authored separately from the reader
- Parsing
- A deterministic local parser maps free text to authored actions
- Optional AI
- Apple Foundation Models on device, never required
- Purchases
- StoreKit 2, one purchase per story
Early prototype. The reader runs, the engine and content split works, and the authoring side is the open question.
Nothing here is finished, so nothing here is for sale yet. If it is interesting to you anyway, email support@picksley.ai.