In December of last year, @mabbees and I gave a talk at Nerd Nite Tokyo about a genre of games that have been called "desktop simulators" or "UI games"—essentially, a narrative fiction that takes place entirely within an interface, whether it be a smartphone, an old school Mac, or an imaginary interface in hypnospace.
We called these types of games "Interface Dramas," as in, "telling dramatic stories through the use of interfaces."
We think this should be its own defined genre and should be something games can be tagged as on Steam, just like "point-and-click adventure" games or "story-rich" games.
Check out the transcript of our talk—it goes over what interface dramas have in common with other adjacent genres such as interactive fiction, visual novels, simulation games, and alternate reality games, and what makes them different.
Another big update has been made to The Interface Drama Master List. Interface dramas are stories told through software. I don't think I expected how many of these games there were when I started this!
Thank you to everyone for your submissions! They are a gift.
Included in this update is...
Desktop Explorer by Recurring Dream
Home Safety Hotline by Night Signal Entertainment
KinitoPET by troy_en
Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You by Osmotic Studios
....and so much more
If you want to submit an interface drama that's not already on the list, please do so at our submission form! Your submissions keep the list fresh and up to date.
Interface dramas are games that use software to tell interactive stories. Last week we did a stream on these unique games, and this blog pos
I made a blog post featuring all the games we streamed a few weeks ago! Don't know what an interface drama is? This blog post is a good place to start.
Featuring games…
a phone found in tall grass
It is as if you were making love
Desktop Explorer
Pro Office Calculator
See the full Interface Drama Master List with links here.
Interface Dramas are are games that tell stories through software.
Featuring...
a phone in tall grass by Niandra!
It is as if you were making love by Pippin Barr
Desktop Explorer by Recurring Dream
Pro Office Calculator by Rob Jinman
This streaming was inspired by the interface dramas that I've been introduced through the Interface Drama Master List.
Huge thanks to everyone who sent us their own games as well as others' games—it has been such a treat to play everyone's games. I'm looking forward to showcasing some of these cool games and sharing them with you all.
Dress-ups, Minigames, and More from Tourmaline, Effie, Cherry, and Sendaria
Made your avatars in Spooky Stylin’ yet? Totally missing out if you haven’t! Check it out here — we’d love to see your creations and hear your thoughts!
Originally, Spooky Stylin’ was a game that we wanted to put in Terranova as a minigame alongside Solitaire. Both of us liked playing dress-up games while we were waiting for the next roleplay to come in. Then we’d use them as our LiveJournal or AIM or MSN Messenger avatars.
Right now, this little game is part of Tomodachi 8-in-1, an experimental arcade composed of eight retro games in the spirit of the early 2000s. It has narrative games, mixtapes, things happening on old school cell phones, that sort of thing. We developed it in response to players saying that Terranova was a very long and involved game. So, complementary to that, we’ve developed something more casual and fun that you can play in one sitting.
Tomodachi 8-in-1 takes place in the same universe as Terranova, but here the games are a lot more focused on the characters and their friendship instead of deep roleplay lore. All of the characters that are in Tomodachi 8-1, especially in the narrative games, are the same characters that are in Terranova—Tourmaline, Cherry, Ephemeral Smile, and Sendaria. You can play as each of them, and one game will be focused around a particular issue or subject that they're having difficulty with.
In one of the narrative games, Shall We Dance, Effie is worried about a Valentine's Day dance. She is talking with her friend Sendaria about how much personal responsibility she holds to her family versus to herself.
INFRARED is from Sendaria's point of view: it’s the feeling that you feel when you make a friend that you think you're going to have a really fun time with but they're also weirded out by your excitement and energy.
Each of the narrative games has somewhere between two to three endings, so you can replay them multiple times.
We also currently have two mixtape games where you can just kind of play mixtapes that your friends have given you. Even though it's not outright said in the mixtapes lore-wise, these are mixtapes passed between friends—made by Cherry for EphemeralSmile, made by Sendaria for Tourmaline. Like love letters from friends.
What do you miss most?
Tourmaline, Cherry, Effie, and Sendaria 💌
Sending mixtapes 📼
Everything about the 90s & 00s 💾
Voting ended onNov 19, 2025
Go check all these games here, and don’t forget to try out Spooky Stylin’ here.
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Thank you for reading this far! While we’re busy developing the final two games for Tomodachi 8-in-1, we’re also fundraising to localize Terranova to Russian, Japanese, and Brazilian Portuguese.
