Video Game Fan Fiction Novels & Stories

It’s a surprisingly broad spectrum. I’ve read fics that literally treat game mechanics like a physics law—stories where the protagonist is painfully aware of status screens, level-ups, and respawn points, and the narrative tension comes from navigating that rigid system. There’s a famous 'Dark Souls' fic that used the hollowing mechanic as a metaphor for depression, which hit harder than any boss fight.

But I often find the more subtle approaches more interesting. A 'Stardew Valley' story might not mention energy bars, but capture that rhythm of incremental progress and community building that feels like the game. Or a 'Legend of Zelda' fic focusing on Link’s muscle memory from repeated timelines, a quiet nod to player save-scumming. The best ones weave the mechanic into the character’s internal logic, so it stops feeling like a game quirk and starts feeling like a genuine part of their reality.

Back in the day I practically lived on FanFiction.net, but its interface feels ancient now. The tagging system is practically nonexistent, which makes finding good 'Persona 5' or 'Mass Effect' stories a real chore. You can still find some classics there, but the culture's shifted.

For newer fandoms, especially around live-service games like 'Genshin Impact' or 'Honkai: Star Rail', Archive of Our Own is unbeatable. The tag wrangling system is a lifesaver—you can filter for exactly the pairing and tropes you want, or exclude the ones you hate. The downside is that the sheer volume can be overwhelming, and some of the more experimental prose gets buried. I still check FF.net out of habit, but AO3 is where my tabs live now.

Sometimes I wish there was something as sleek as Royal Road but just for fanworks.

Fan fiction or fanfic for short, has its own particular position in the family tree of story telling, and its sites and societies are many and varied. It's a universe of prose created by fans—stories from books, games, movies, and practically anything else.

Most typically, these pieces—full of alternative directions, fans' own interpretations or ‘ships’ (romantic relationships not suggested by canon)—are written out of love for the work itself. Thus, whenever you read fan fiction, you are crossing into a territory where people hold the multiverses of their favorite fictional universes in common and add a new twist.