Cyclic Fruition Number One

Originally written on the intfiction forums. Minor edits were made.

This is a hyperlink story that is also a demonstration of the author’s own Spiki framework. Dialogue is shown in script form with descriptions written in literary style. To progress the story, you can click underlined text within the current page or click on the passage names at the bottom bar. You can actually go to any passage in the game, regardless of where you are, by accessing the sandwich menu at the top left.

Cyclic Fruition centers around a trio (there is a narrator, who sometimes speaks as if they are part of the group, but they’re not acknowledged by the others so I was confused if they were an actual entity) who decide to explore a nearby town since their train hasn’t arrived. While going through the story you will quickly, or eventually, learn (Spoiler - click to show)that the game continuously loops. You will go back to the same starting passages (text does not change with repetitions, so you are reading the exact same words) once you explore a thread enough.

The word choice, description quality and overall structure made this story interesting to think about, if a little hard to digest. One particular thread takes a turn into a philosophical and linguistic discussion after a short verse section. Another passage contains (Spoiler - click to show)a hyperlink that doesn’t shunt you towards the next passage, but rather a blog post about a real-life textbook, with its origin story quite similar to what just happened in the game. Within the blog post is a diagram that explicitly inspired Cyclic Fruition’s structure, including the direct names of some passages. After reading the post, I understood what the author was going for and appreciate what their goal was writing this game, though I still find my comprehension of the final product uncertain and incomplete.

Still, I was immersed in this little world, and it was a great way to get me to start thinking more about (Spoiler - click to show)behavior structure.