The 1980s brought a golden age of text adventures — titles like Zork, The Hobbit, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy showed what could be achieved with imagination alone. These games offered everything a novel could, and more: they let players interact with the story. Interactive fiction combines the depth of literature with the immersion of video games, creating a uniquely personal storytelling experience.

Even today, interactive fiction (or IF) has a thriving community, with new stories published regularly.

The best part? You can start creating your own interactive story right now. All you really need is a pen and paper to make your own “choose your own adventure” tale. If you’re feeling more technical, tools like Twine let you build more complex games.

For anyone who wants to dive straight in, I created Plant a Story — a simple, web-based tool that lets you start writing immediately. No registration, no manuals. Just give your story a title, and it’s ready to grow. Bookmark your secret link, and you can return to your story anytime.

From there, it’s time to let your creativity branch out. Imagine writing a sci-fi story: your crew encounters a mysterious spaceship. Do they initiate contact—or switch to stealth mode and observe from a distance? You decide what paths your readers can explore.

Interactive fiction is a genre with immense potential — there’s still so much left to explore. With just a few words and a spark of curiosity, anyone can shape their own universe and perhaps uncover new stories within themselves along the way. And with tools like Plant a Story, bringing those worlds to life has never been easier. All it takes is an idea — and the courage to let it grow.

The only problem: the contact form obviously does not work out of the box. I didn’t want to use an external service to solve this, so I wrote a small PHP script along with some JavaScript.

The best part: to prevent spam, the script even includes simple bot protection that is invisible to the user, but should be enough to keep most bots away.

The Form

The template I chose basically consists of a single index.html, which contains the following code:

<form id="contact-form">
 <div class="fields">
  <div class="field half">
   <label for="name">Name</label>
   <input type="text" name="name" id="name" required/>
  </div>
  <div class="field half">
   <label for="email">Email</label>
   <input type="email" name="email" id="email" required/>
  </div>
  <div class="field">
   <label for="message">Message</label>
   <textarea name="message" id="message" rows="4" required></textarea>
  </div>
 </div>
 <ul class="actions">
  <li><input type="submit" value="Send Message" class="primary" /></li>
  <li><input type="reset" value="Reset" /></li>
 </ul>
</form>

Note that we don’t need additional code for validating this form — basic validation is handled by the browser.

The PHP Script

To get started, I decided to use the excellent Fat-Free Framework, which provides all we need to send emails using SMTP and includes other useful tools that make the code shorter and more readable.

With a total size of less than 550 kB, the whole framework is smaller than PHPMailer and much smaller than Symfony’s mailer library — making it the perfect fit for this project.

To install it, just run:

composer require bcosca/fatfree-core

Now we’re ready to write the PHP script that will handle sending the email. I called it contact.php and saved it in my root folder.

<?php
// Load Fat-Free Framework
require_once('vendor/autoload.php');
$f3 = \Base::instance();

// Only accept AJAX calls with POST method (this will already prevent some bots)
if (!$f3->get('AJAX') || !$f3->get('VERB') === 'POST') {
  $f3->error(500);
}

// When calling this script we will POST a parameter called 'action'
switch ($f3->get('POST.action')) {
    case 'INIT':
        // Store the current time in the session
        $f3->set('SESSION.start_editing', time());
        break;

    case 'SEND_MAIL':
        // If the session key is not set, or to little time elapsed, 
        // it's likely a bot
        if (
          !$f3->exists('SESSION.start_editing')
          || time() - $f3->get('SESSION.start_editing') < 15
        ) {
            $f3->error(500);
        }

        // Otherwise we proceed with sending the E-Mail

        // Read the values of the form fields from the POST request
        $name = $f3->get('POST.name');
        $email = $f3->get('POST.email');
        $message = $f3->get('POST.message');

        // Create an instance of Fat-Free's SMTP class
        $smtp = new SMTP(
            'my.mailhost.com',   // host
            '465',               // port
            'ssl',               // scheme
            'addr@mailhost.com', // user
            'my_password'        // password
        );

        // Send Mail to me
        $smtp->set('To', 'addr@mailhost.com');
        $smtp->set('From', $email);
        $smtp->set('Subject', 'A request from ' . $name);
        $smtp->send($message);

        // Send confirmation mail to sender
        $smtp->set('To', $email);
        $smtp->set('From', 'addr@mailhost.com');
        $smtp->set('Subject', 'Thanks for your message');
        $smtp->send("Hi $name,\n\nThanks for your message. I will reply ASAP.\n\nKind regards");

        break;

    default:
        // Invalid action
        $f3->error(500);
}

Note: You’ll need to replace the SMTP credentials with your own when creating the SMTP object.

The JavaScript

Next, we’ll write a short JavaScript file that performs the necessary AJAX requests. To make things easier, I’ll use jQuery.

$(document).ready(function() {
    let $form = $('#contact-form');
    let $submitButton = $form.find('[type="submit"]');
    let originalButtonText = $submitButton.text();
    let $resetButton = $form.find('[type="reset"]');

    let resetForm = function() {
        $form[0].reset(); // Reset form fields

        // Call the INIT action of the PHP script
        $.ajax({
            type: 'POST',
            url: '/contact.php',
            data: [{name: 'action', value: 'INIT'}]
        });

        // Reset submit button
        $submitButton.prop('disabled', false);
        $submitButton.text(originalButtonText);
    }

    // Reset button functionality
    $resetButton.on('click', function(event) {
        event.preventDefault();
        resetForm();
    });

    // Handle form submit
    $form.on('submit', function(event) {
        event.preventDefault();

        // Disable the submit button to prevent multiple submissions
        $submitButton.prop('disabled', true);
        $submitButton.text('Sending...');

        // Serialize form data
        let formData = $form.serializeArray();
        formData.push({name: 'action', value: 'SEND_MAIL'});

        // Send the form data using AJAX
        $.ajax({
            type: 'POST',
            url: '/contact.php',
            data: formData
        }).done(function(data) {
            // Show success message, if desired
        }).fail(function(data) {
            // Show error message, if desired
        }).always(function() {
            resetForm(); // Reset form after submission
        });
    });
});

Save this in assets/js/contact.js with your other JavaScript files.

Wrap It Up

That’s it! All you have to do now is include the JavaScript file at the end of your index.html:

   ...
   <script src="assets/js/jquery.min.js"></script>
   <!-- More Scripts... -->
   <script src="assets/js/contact.js"></script>
 </body>
</html>

And that’s it. I hope this helps — or at least inspires you to solve the problem you’re facing. If it was useful, let me know!

We begin by defining the format of our story. We want to store it in a way, that is manageable for human to read and edit, but can also easily be interpreted in Lua. A Lua table is a perfect choice for this.

local story =
{
    [1] = {
        -- As we want to be able to write even long text, this
        -- is a perfect use for Lua's multiline strings.
        text = [[
You wake up. You don't know where you are. Dust covers the floor. There are 
walls to your left and to your right.]],
        options = {
            {
                text = 'You go straight ahead.',
                next = 2
            },
            {
                text = 'You go into the other direction.',
                next = 2
            }
        }
    },

This is our first chapter. It offers two options for the player to choose. In this case both choices lead to the same result. They both lead to Chapter 2.

    [2] = {
        text = [[
A weary looking man with a long beard appears: "Ah. You seem to be new." 
He offers a compassionate smile.]],
        options = {
            {
                text = '"Where am I?"',
                next = 3
            },
            {
                text = '"Who are you?"',
                next = 4
            }
        }
    }
    -- ...and so on
}

Now that we have defined our story (or at least the beginning of it), we need to write code that runs it, i.e. that displays the text of the chapter and the options to the player and asks for his choice.

function run(story)
    -- We start at chapter 1
    local currentChapter = 1
    
    -- The game ends when we reach a chapter that does not exist
    while story[currentChapter] ~= nil do
        local chapter = story[currentChapter]
        
        -- Clear the terminal before we display our text
        os.execute('clear')
        
        -- Show our chapter and the available options
        print(chapter.text)
        print()
        displayOptions(chapter.options)
        
        -- Ask for the players choice and set the next chapter accordingly
        local chosenOption = readOption(chapter.options)
        currentChapter = chapter.options[chosenOption].next
    end
    
    print()
    print('The End?!')
end

This is the meat of the engine. However, we left out two little details: We still have to write the code for the displayOptions and readOption functions.

Displaying our options is pretty straightforward. We loop through every option, print its index number and the corresponding text.

function displayOptions(options)
    for i = 1, #options do
        print(i .. ' - ' .. options[i].text)
    end
end

The reading of the option is slightly more complex, because we want to make sure the player doesn’t mistype or provide us with an option that doesn’t exist.

function readOption(options)
    local chosenOption

    repeat
        print()
        -- We do not want a newline after out prompt, so we have to use
        -- io.write() instead of print()
        io.write('> ')
        local l = io.read()
        -- We try to convert the input to a numer. The tonumber() function
        -- will return nil if l is not a number.
        chosenOption = tonumber(l)
    
        -- We ask the player for input until he enter a number that
        -- is integer and corresponds to an existing option
    until (
      chosenOption ~= nil
      and chosenOption == math.floor(chosenOption)
      and chosenOption >= 1 
      and chosenOption <= #options
    )
    
    return chosenOption
end

Now all we have to do is run our story.

run(story)

That’s it. I hope this will inspire some of you to write a great piece of interactive fiction. If you do please let me know!

Here is the complete code for easier copying and pasting.

local story =
{
    [1] = {
        -- As we want to be able to write even long text, this
        -- is a perfect use for Lua's multiline strings.
        text = [[
You wake up. You don't know where you are. Dust covers the floor. There are 
walls to your left and to your right.]],
        options = {
            {
                text = 'You go straight ahead.',
                next = 2
            },
            {
                text = 'You go into the other direction.',
                next = 2
            }
        }
    },    [2] = {
        text = [[
A weary looking man with a long beard appears: "Ah. You seem to be new." 
He offers a compassionate smile.]],
        options = {
            {
                text = '"Where am I?"',
                next = 3
            },
            {
                text = '"Who are you?"',
                next = 4
            }
        }
    }
    -- ...and so on
}

function run(story)
    local currentChapter = 1

    while story[currentChapter] ~= nil do
        local chapter = story[currentChapter]

        os.execute('clear')

        print(chapter.text)
        print()
        displayOptions(chapter.options)

        local chosenOption = readOption(chapter.options)
        currentChapter = chapter.options[chosenOption].next
    end

    print()
    print('The End?!')
end

function displayOptions(options)
    for i = 1, #options do
        print(i .. ' - ' .. options[i].text)
    end
end

function readOption(options)
    local chosenOption

    repeat
        print()

        io.write('> ')
        local l = io.read()

        chosenOption = tonumber(l)
    until (
            chosenOption ~= nil
            and chosenOption == math.floor(chosenOption)
            and chosenOption >= 1
            and chosenOption <= #options
        )

    return chosenOption
end

run(story)

Typora can easily be used to create good-looking presentations very quickly.

In this tutorial I will show how to setup Typora to allow exporting your Markdown as a presentation. Thanks to Pandoc and RevealJs, the presentation will be contained in a single html file and can thus be run on every device that has a Browser installed. No PowerPoint or other presentation software is needed!

How to do it

All you have to do is open Typora’s settings. There you go to the ‘Export’ section and add a new export option that we call ‘RevealJS’. Choose the ‘Pandoc’ template for the new export.

Once this is done you set the target format to ‘revealjs’ and the target file extension to ‘.html’.

In the ‘Extra arguments’ section you put the following:

-V revealjs-url=https://unpkg.com/reveal.js --slide-level 2 --embed-resources --standalone -i

If you are interested in the details of these options you can go to https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#options to read about them. However, the above should provide a sensible default.

In the end it should look like this:

Now you can write your Typora file. You should add a YAML frontmatter containing a ‘title’ key. This will be used in the presentation for a title slide and also as a name for the browser tab the presentation runs in.

Once done, just choose ‘Export > RevealJS’ and voila!