What Are The Best Interactive Stories Online For Adults?

One of the most satisfying historical romances to read is one that defies most expectations of the genre. Courtney Milan’s The Duke Who Didn’t is a Regency romance about a Chinese-British duke who falls for a woman from a Hakka village in rural England. The woman makes sauce for a living. The book is joyful and funny and treats with depth the realities of being a person of color in 19th century England without letting that become too depressing for the romance at hand. The historical research about Hakka communities in England is great and very fresh. The novel follows the long-held crush of a man on a woman. He secretly identifies with her, and they share a common cultural heritage. It is a very warm, clever, and deeply romantic novel, which explores in a thoughtful manner the history of a people of color in a bygone era. In short, a perfect escape read that is also very perceptive.

The Poetry Foundation is an absolute dream for poetry enthusiasts, with a huge online archive of poems to read, search by poet, subject or even mood. Beautifully designed, the site encourages plenty of browsing and is likely to reveal many unexpected treasures. You can easily move from classic sonnets by established poets to brand new award-winning poems by contemporary writers, plus there’s scope for audio and critical essays as well as the poems themselves. A really deep, rich and entirely free resource, held solely for the love of poetry. I find it a calm, peaceful ‘reading space’ of a rather different sort to my normal reading habitat.

For writers, those tiny free browser VNs are an inspiration. Getting to see how other writers use their space to lay out their story, their characters, their dialogue, and their player’s choices is amazing. It’s like a course on minimalist writing. You see immediately what you can keep in and what you have to cut. I got more ideas from playing three tiny odd browser VNs than I got from a dozen writing how-to guides online. It’s just so cool to see that something as simple as a short free browser-based VN can be made, and that all a good story needs is an idea and the guts to put it out there. Often the semantic imperfections of the presentation itself actually add to the VN’s charm and power, highlighting the core emotional truth of the story in a really beautiful way. They’re raw, uncut, and I love ’em.

So. I love free YA books. 'BookBub’s free deals' – lots of samples for books like Throne of Glass. Also there’s loads of Fanfiction on Fanfiction.net (right now I’m in the middle of reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. 1500 pages and going). Inkshares have free chapters for original books – I’ve looked at The Disasters. Open Library let me digitally ‘borrow’ and download Percy Jacksons. (No waitlist, which is great). And on Reddit, there’s a daily post of free e-books on r/FreeEBOOKS. They have loads of fantasy and contemporary books.

My own experience with webcomics is not nearly broad enough to make a definitive list like that. As I said, I read a couple of long-running webcomics many years ago from the authors’ own sites. Since then, the rest of the webcomic scene has exploded and moved to a host of new platforms. Maybe I’ll check some of them out.

I’m also open to recommendations for stories with similar intensity and player drive but in a more structured, non-sandbox environment. ‘Degrees of Lewdity’ is unique in its blend of text-heavy reactivity and game systems to create a story that feels entirely emergent within a pre-determined framework, so there’s a lot of room for recommendation for players who appreciate deep, interactive stories with a focus on consequence in more standard narratives. For a non-adult oriented option, The Letter (a visual novel) is a very well-written and highly branching horror story where choices have a large impact on the main character’s relationships and the ending. Long Live the Queen is a fantasy-focused game with extensive role-playing and lots of consequence in a dark story where you try to reach the top of a magic school. It has life-or-death skill checks and a pretty personal story that is told through gameplay mechanics. Lastly, Knightly Passions is an adult oriented game that follows a classic fantasy adventure story with lots of focus on character relationships that change based on your actions, rather than a completely open-ended sandbox. If one is to step outside of the adult game genre, than games like 'Disco Elysium' or 'Planescape: Torment' would be the ultimate recommendations for story lovers. Both games are primarily based around interactive stories in which you can influence the world and its characters through mostly dialog. As a result, most of the games’ narrative is comprised of lots of written text and the player can experience the effects of each conversation in a very profound way. Therefore, I am mostly looking for titles where the story is the main part of the game and is significantly shaped by the player’s decisions.

The academia lit lover may find academic and literary novels released as open access by the publisher, including works supported by public funds. These are often released as PDFs directly off a publisher or author’s website. Unlike typical fiction released as open access, these titles are not promoted in the same way and thus are hidden from the general public. Yet, dense, award-winning literary fiction of the highest academic status is released for free. Unlike the numerous free titles on Amazon, these are released slowly and of high prestige.

This film gets me thinking about all the digital-age storytelling that’s currently revolutionizing cinema too. While The Martian may have started life as a self-published serial (later to be picked up by a mainstream publisher), its film adaptation – starring Matt Damon – has made a roaring success of blending humor with survival drama. And as for the Asian market, specifically, it’s really where a lot of the most exciting changes in storytelling are currently happening. Of course, there are also lots of horror films out there, such as the cult hit ‘Train to Busan’, a zombie movie based on online lore. There are also several films based on Wattpad stories – the self-publishing platform has started partnering with studios, including a film of the Harry Styles fanfic ‘After’, which has spawned a whole franchise of novels. ‘Detective Pikachu’ is another great example of a movie based on a video game – a family-friendly film that proves there is plenty of interesting lore to draw from. Examples of more underground treasures include ‘A Silent Voice’, a poignant and powerful movie about bullying and redemption, adapted from a web manga.

Within the romance novels field I currently specialize in translated novels originally published in other languages (Korean webnovels, Japanese light novels, Chinese danmei novels). Getting hold of a free legal copy of such a novel is not as easy as it is with English language novels. Most webnovels are serialized, and even completed ones are rarely translated and made available for free, especially when they are official translations. (Exceptions are made when there is an anime adaptation for example.) Once more, your best bet for accessing free translated romance would be your local library, as some systems have started adding titles from platforms such as OverDrive’s Global Chinese collection, or even partner with comic and app services that offer translated webnovels. Demand for translated novels is up in recent years, but as of now there is still not as much access as there is to English-language romance novels. Free samples of novels from official aggregator sites for translated novels are typically how you can look at free samples of a specific sub-genre before you buy it.

It’s really hard to find legit Tamil adult websites. The majority of adult websites online are scams or re-circulate the same content over and over. I know of a few private online forums & encrypted apps that have local adult movies but it’s difficult to get access to them. There are some Tamil podcasts & web series that explore adult themes. You can find some creators on JioSaavn or Koothu-P-Pattarai. Other than that, it’s a huge desert and maybe that’s for the best?