36,878 Words | 285 Passages | Last Updated: Sept. 14th, 2025
Trapped and alone inside a room, your only solace is the thousands of terminals you can connect to from the main operating center. Use the cameras to view strange, otherworldly places outside of your haven. Use the consoles to connect with the outside denizens-- be they human, demonic, or something else entirely.
Remember: Never open the door.
What secrets can your prying eyes uncover? How will you cope with the horrors of the things you cannot unsee? How much can be taken from you before you lose yourself? Can you save yourself-- much less the lives of others? Will you do your dishes today?
PLAY THE DEMO HERE
ABOUT PANOPTICON
PANOPTICON began as a proof of concept for a larger project, of which PANOPTICON was supposed to be the prequel. It quickly bloomed into something much, much bigger.
Currently, this game is in the process of being written. I am soliciting feedback on the game while it is in the early draft phases and I welcome any and all thoughts.
If you enjoy PANOPTICON, please consider leaving it a review on Itch.io, reblogging this post, following my devblog, or just dropping in to my ask box to let me know. Otherwise, thank you for visiting my tiny project in this lonesome corner of the internet.
This is an announcement that should not be a surprise but I unfortunately still find myself making. The TLDR; is that PANOPTICON is going on hiatus, and public updates will be delayed indefinitely.
I thought a long time about whether or not I wanted to make this official, but for the few people who have read this story, I wanted to be transparent. The recode of PANOPTICON's UI has been much, much more difficult than I initially anticipated, and it's been incredibly discouraging.
On top of that, I've had disruption after disruption in my personal life in addition to the depression and mental health issues I've been struggling with.
When I started PANOPTICON, I was champing at the bit to try a more challenging creative project, one in a different format than anything I've ever tried before. Interactive fiction is still a format I love and look forward to working in moving forward. But it's just too exhausting for me to tackle right now. With where I am personally, and creatively, I want to return to formats I'm more comfortable with.
This is why PANOPTICON is going on hiatus. Between the UI recode and the difficulty of writing interactive fiction as a whole, I feel the need to refocus on ideas that are easier for me to execute.
At this point in time, I don't intend to abandon PANOPTICON, but work on it behind the scenes will slow immensely. At some point, I intend to adapt a CSS template for PANOPTICON (something I was initially reluctant to do, because I want the game to look and feel unique, but I now feel is my only real option). I also intend to keep picking away at the narrative when I have the chance.
I've created one catch-all blog for my future writing and art, @melonclawy . It combines all of the creative interests that inspire my art/writing, so it's very aesthetically different than PANOPTICON! But if you're interested in what else I am working on, it'll be shared there.
When PANOPTICON has updates, they will be posted here. I hope that day is sooner rather than later. But I need to ease my foot off the gas a bit to get there.
i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.
there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.
anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.
A Better World - create an alternate history timeline
Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game
Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet
Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games
Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones
Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy
Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface
The Cafe & Diner - mystery game
The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game
Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions
Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game
Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game
Miniconomy - player driven economy game
Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes
BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators
Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil
Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.
if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.
since this post blew up, i've been wanting to do an addition with all of the recommendations from the comments and tags. but there's a lot of them. some people might be crazy enough to sit down and seriously put them all in one post with descriptions. those people are honestly sick in the head.
anyway, here's all of the recommendations from the reblogs. not all of them are text-based, but it's a great mixture of styles. also don't forget the links in the second paragraph of the OP which will take you to FMHY where there are a bunch more games listed.
Games
A Dark Room - text-based science fiction role-playing game.
corru.observer - science fiction adventure web game.
Improbable Island - old-school text adventure game.
Candy Box 2 - incremental clicker game that evolves into RPG.
Arcanum - open source wizard clicker game.
sandspiel, Powder Game, Powder Game 2, The Powder Toy - more sand physics games.
Orb.Farm - fishtank simulator.
Façade - experimental game with a real-time interactive narrative where you try to fix a failing marriage.
The Catacombs of Solaris - trippy art game.
Yume Nikki Online - online version of the surreal classic plus fangames.
The Barncle Goose Experiment - combine element/alchemy game based on antique theories of abiogenesis.
Fallen London - free-to-play text-based open world RPG.
Nested - very unique text-based universe expanding game. described as possibly @orteil42's favorite thing he's ever made.
The Process of Elimination - interactive web novel (by @hypertextdog)
Discworld MUD - multiplayer, text-based, online game (a MUD, or text MMORPG) based on the Discworld books.
Horse Master - surreal text game about training a horse.
EYEZMAZE - flash (RIP) or HTML5-based puzzle games.
You Are Jeff Bezos - text game. spend Jeff Bezos' fortune.
The Password Game - challenging puzzle game where you have to meet password requirements (by neal)
Universal Paperclips - incremental paperclip making game.
Half-Earth - planetary disaster planning game where you try to save the world using socialism.
ChooseYourStory - community-driven website centered on CYOA style story games.
PhD Simulator - random event based text game. make your choice each month and see if you can graduate on time.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup - open source roguelike.
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - turn-based survival roguelike set in the modern day.
Nethack - open source roguelike originally released in 1987.
Kingdom of Loathing - browser-based community MMORPG.
PokeRogue - browser-based Pokemon roguelike
Tools
Text Game Builder - works in your browser, with just a little bit of Python (by @grumpygandalf)
Twine - great (free!) tool for making text-based games quickly.
Ink - scripting language for interactive fiction (also free)
Flashpoint Archive - a community effort to preserve games and animations from the web.
PICO-8 - fantasy console for making, sharing and playing tiny games and other computer programs.
Non-Games
Library of Babel - interactive illustration which attempts to simulate what it might be like to browse The Library of Babel.
Superbad - technically not a game, sprawling website full of secrets.
17776 - serialized speculative fiction multimedia narrative about football in the far-future. beautiful, creative, legendary. created by Jon Bois, a legend and one of my favorite writers of all time.
Choice of Games - text-based, choose-your-own-adventure games (interactive fiction). some free-to-play, others can be bought like an ebook.
The Deep Sea - scroll to the bottom of the ocean. encounter the humble squid and his friends (by neal)
Space Elevator - like The Deep Sea, but up instead of down. you can equip your avatar with a scarf (by neal)
Internet Artifacts - an interactive history of the early internet (by neal)
If The Moon Were Only One Pixel - scroll through an accurately scaled model of the universe.
r/incremental_games - reddit community for incremental games.
r/WebGames - reddit community for web games in general.
thank you to everyone who contributed and the creators. please be sure to show them some love where possible.
normally I’d be posting about hanukkah since, with its overlap with christmas, always set the mood for that festive end of the year which is a good transition toward the new year. Like last year, though, it feels like it is not appropriate to celebrate, with the symbol of the holiday being used to deface landmarks in occupied Palestine or used to legitimize violence toward Palestinians who are still facing a genocide (I am referring to the hannukkiah made out of missiles here!).
it feels tone deaf to celebrate this holiday as an atheist Jew while seeing symbols for this holiday being used to murder others. It doesn’t line up with my morals or my politics, and having used this platform for raising fund for Palestine causes, it feels hypocritical.
therefore I want to underline the efforts of the Sameer Project, and how I’ve been able to donate to them due to the kindness of those willing to tip us.
We are a donations based aid initiative for Gaza led by Palestinians,
Palestine is currently facing cold weather with little shelter to protect them from the flooding.if you are able to give a look, I think they’d appreciate the support. I’ve been personally focusing on this campaign:
The Sameer Project, a mutual aid organization led by three Palestinians in the diaspora, are the proud directors and funders of a tent encam
Thank you everyone for supporting us, and in return, supporting those in need in Palestine
The chaos of IfNoWriMo has paid off! I’ll make a post separately about how that went for us but for now, here’s Chapter Three!
In this chapter you can:
🌊Spend some time in the hospital and see the reactions to your attempted murder
🌊 Meet the mayor of Pataima and hear about some domestic rifts
🌊 Figure out more about who tried to kill you
🌊 Have a heart to heart with Nura
🌊 Pet Thiago’s dog
🌊 Have Michi sing you a lullaby
🌊 Have your first full cabinet meeting
🌊 Kiss Faustino in a flashback
🌊 Kiss Faustino in the present
🌊 Order your first assassination
🌊 Or stay true to the ideals of democracy
Also, some changes overall!
🌺 A new and improved profile page! Including an updating biography of Rezanii written by 100% unbiased sources within the party
🌺 A new and improved relationships page! Now with subpages for ambassadors, parliament, and other officials.
🌺 A back button that doesn’t send you into a never ending loop of going to other sidebar pages.
🌺 More achievements! Right now they’re all named after songs because why not? For chapters going forward, I’ll post the song names as a hint for those achievement hunting. They’ll be in a separate post for those who don’t want spoilers. They're still being implemented!
We also now have a Patreon! Members will get early access in the future, RO POVs, and other things. It's also a way for us to post free short stories and other things for people not on tumblr. Here it is! We'll still be posting free interactive short stories, worldbuilding posts, and other things there and on tumblr.
Got this comment on itch today, and saw they'd posted the same thing on a ton of other games. Just in case I needed to say it, DO NOT click this link. That's virus :^)
I’ve also been getting quite a few of these either they look like this or have a Patreon url which looks official but it’s not so watch out I would never put an update in the comment section of itch
If I could afford it I would pay someone else to do this screen optimization stuff. This is a nightmare. I genuinely don’t know if I am capable of doing this in a timely or functional manner. What a wretched and horrible piece of code this all is.
The Luxfield Institute builds bodies that obey, and hearts that can be sold.
You are the latest Pleasure Prototype developed by The Luxfield Institute. The perfect Alpha companion, you were created to satisfy the desires of Luxfield's exclusive clientele. Your training begins under Dr. Lynx Oleana, the lead researcher in intimacy engineering. They’re meant to teach you how to please, how to be wanted. How to make someone fall in love.
But desire has rules.
What happens when Dr. Oleana begins to fall for you - and realizes the true cost of what you were made for?
──────── ⌬ ────────
Features
✧Character customization: choose your name and pronouns
✧Gender selectable RO: man, woman, or nonbinary
✧Shape your personality through dynamic choices
✧Navigate your relationship with your handler, Dr. Lynx Oleana
✧Uncover the truth about Luxfield’s experiments and yourself.
✧ A Body Made for You is already fully written, and will span approximately 20 chapters. The remaining parts just need to be coded.
──────── ⌬ ────────
You were made for one purpose:
To be the perfect pleasure companion
Trigger warnings for explicit sexual content, sexual situations, language, morally gray situations, and violence. A Body Made for you also features sexual situations and touching where consent is gray since MC has been genetically engineered and trained/programmed to respond in certain ways.
The more I learn about CSS and Twine the more apparent it becomes that PANOPTICON is actually some sort of twisted, Frankenstein-esque creation that should not be alive and every attempt to drag it further from death requires more dark science and black magic to prop its shambling corpse up.
Interactive Fiction Design, Coding in Twine & Other IF Resources
This is a masterlist of everything under my coding in twine tag and links to useful Twine resources. It also includes general interactive fiction writing and development tips that can be applied to any IF engine (ChoiceScript, Ren'py, Inkle, etc).
Whether you're beginning to plan your game, experimenting in the Twine engine, or switching to SugarCube, these links should (hopefully!) be a good place to help you get started.
If you're struggling with IF development or don't know where to start, you're welcome to send me an ask! 💕
Interactive Fiction Design & Writing
Tips for Getting Started
6 things to consider before you start making your game (x)
General advice for beginners (x)
More general advice for beginners (story progression, choice-based non-linearity, etc) (x)
How to stay on task/handle motivation on longform projects (x)
Writing & Design
Creating relationship and approval systems (demonstrates in Twine/SugarCube, but can be applied to any language or engine) (x)
How to plot/structure a choice-based, non-linear story (x)
Writing romance and relationship progression in choice-based games (x)
Designing and managing a hub + quest/mission system (x)
Designing combat systems (x)
General outlining advice (for any writing project, not just IF) (x)
Coding in Twine
I only work in SugarCube, so my own tutorials won't work with Twine's other story formats (Harlowe, Chapbook, etc). I cannot answer questions for non-SugarCube formats.
IMPORTANT: If you are copy/pasting code directly from my posts on the desktop version of my blog, you may need to edit quotes into straight quotes. My desktop theme automatically turns some quotes into curly quotes, which will break the code.
Opening the post in the tumblr dashboard view and copying from there does not have this problem. See here.
Twine Editor
How to colour-code your passages (x)
Using the Twine editor + Tweego to create a large game (x)
Introduction to Tweego & how to use it to compile separate HTML files into one game (x)
How to add images to Twine (x)
How to use custom fonts (DaFonts, Open Dyslexic, anything not in Google Fonts) in Twine (x)
Mechanics
Defining and Managing Stats
How SugarCube's StoryInit passage works (x)
More info on the StoryInit passage / why you can update values and it doesn't reset to the value in the StoryInit passage when you load a save (x)
Different variable types in SugarCube and where to use them (x)
Overview of setting stats in SugarCube and making a stat bar (x)
Setting pronouns for the player character & gender-selectable NPCs (x)
Basic gender-selection for gender-selectable characters (x)
Coding the player character's name selection with name suggestions (x)
Using .toUpperFirst to capitalize personal pronoun variables (x)
How to track variables for a Character Creator (x)
How to link and forward to different passages based on variable value (x)
[NEW] Coding reactions based on stats (x)
[NEW] Defining and using personality stats (x)
Functionality
Adding Autosave (x)
Adding a Fullscreen toggle (x)
Using conditional statements to block off areas of the menu until the player finishes a specific section of the game (x)
5 ways to notify the player of skill check failure (x)
Adding achievements and tracking them across multiple saves (x)
Merging multiple linear passages (i.e. passages with a continue/next link but no choices) into a single passage node (x)
Hiding text/images until a certain passage is reached or condition is met (i.e. hiding the Journal until the Prologue is complete) (x)
Three-part answer post on managing story branches, combining story passages for small-scale choices, and writing and editing software (x)
Pros and cons of the <> macro and how to use cycling links (x)
Setting variable values via <> (part 1, part 2)
Using SugarCube's Macros, Custom Macros & Other Mechanics
How passage links work in SugarCube (x)
Using radio buttons to select variables (x)
Using buttons to close a dialog box and proceed to the next passage (x)
Using Chapel's notify macro to make an autosave notification (x)
Adding dialog boxes/popups (x)
Using the textbox macro (x)
Making a clickable HTML map (also includes information on fantasy map creation tools) (x)
How to use widgets (x)
Using and managing inventories (x)
UI & Design
How to style buttons (x)
How to use ImportStyles to add icons to your game (x)
Making a Main Menu/Start Game page (x)
Adding a stats/relationship menu to the default side bar (x)
Editing the passage element to add a border radius (x)
Adding multiple themes to your game via the Settings API (x)
Styling player choices at the bottom of the passage (x)
Styling the Settings API and dialog boxes (x)
Stowing and unstowing SugarCube's UI bar (x)
How to resize background images for different viewport sizes (x)
Adding icons to player choices (x)
[NEW] How to style dropdown menus (x)
Other
How to force itch.io to launch your game in portrait mode on mobile (x)
Searching for assets in Canva (x)
Narrative design resources (x)
Thoughts on IF & translation (x)
[NEW] Uploading Twine games to itch.io (x)
Other Resources
These are resources that may be helpful if you're just starting out. Chapel's custom macros are highly recommended for inserting common RPG mechanics into your game (things like notifications, inventory systems, etc) and general quality-of-life elements.
