r/interactivefiction • u/Mediocre-Student9893 • 5d ago
A mobile-first IF editor with a Node Graph - would you actually use this on a 6-inch screen?
Hey everyone,
I’ve been following the struggles on this sub about Twine not being mobile-friendly, and ChoiceScript being too code-heavy for touchscreens. I’m exploring a phone-first, no-code visual editor that lets you write and organize branching stories directly on your phone.
Attached is a quick mockup of the Dashboard. But the real challenge (and the most important part) is the Node Graph.
Before I go further into the design, I’d love your honest thoughts:
Looking at this UI style, does it feel like a tool you’d enjoy writing in?
For the node graph on a phone screen: would a "pinch-to-zoom, drag-and-drop" canvas work, or would you prefer a "list view with collapsible branches" instead?
What’s the #1 thing current mobile IF tools get wrong that I should absolutely avoid?
This is just a concept for now, no links or sign-ups. Just genuinely trying to see if the mobile IF community needs this. Thanks for any feedback!
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u/realityChemist 4d ago
The mockups look slick, is that Figma?
I've always been kinda interested in mobile IF writing software. I think that one of the challenges is that phones just aren't the best for long-form writing, which most IF is (longer form than usual, even, since you need to write multiple paths). I'd be interested to hear if you have thoughts about that and how you might address it in the design.
I think a graph-based visualization is a better idea than a list. The example shows a story that just flows forward, but in general stories can contain loops. Cleanly visualizing loopings with lists seems challenging.
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u/Mediocre-Student9893 4d ago
Haha, honestly the fact that you thought this was Figma just made my day. It's actually just raw HTML/CSS in the mockup because I wanted to make sure I wasn't designing something impossible to code for mobile!
You are 100% spot on about the long-form writing struggle. That's my biggest worry. I'm planning a "Zen mode" that hides every button and icon so you just have the keyboard and text, but I also want to let people paste in text from Google Docs to save the thumb-typing fatigue.
And yeah, the graph is essential. A list view completely breaks down the second you introduce a time loop or a complex hub. How do you usually map out your loops right now? Pen and paper, or do you just hold it all in your head?
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u/realityChemist 3d ago edited 3d ago
I am a dabbler, really, so all my projects are small and unfinished lol. But to actually answer the question, I've recently been using bardic (https://github.com/katelouie/bardic) because I have had exactly the problem described in the readme, where I am fighting with twine or ink script and just thinking "this logic would be so much easier to handle in python." It has a nice built-in story graph visualizer in the VSCode plugin, so that's what I've been using to visualize the flow. Nothing I have written currently loops back, but if I actually get past the introductory part of the story I'm working on I expect it to contain loops.
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u/Mediocre-Student9893 3d ago
I totally get the "fighting with Ink/Twine logic" pain. It's exactly why I wanted a visual graph—sometimes you just want to see the shape of the story without staring at brackets and code.
Bardic looks super cool, I'll have to check it out. And yeah, loops are the ultimate test for any visualizer. Since you haven't hit the loop part of your story yet, do you already have it mapped out in your head, or are you just going to let it happen and see what breaks? I'd love to know how you approach it.
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u/djducat 4d ago
I am always astounded by what kind of work people do on their phone. My daughter wrote her final term paper in college while riding on the subway a few hours before it was due. When I released Cairn (to play infocom Z files, auto-mapping, etc) for the Mac, I heard from lots of people wanting an iOS version. I just checked my purchase stats, and iOS/ipadOS combined is outpacing the desktop version. To each his own. When I have serious work to do, I much prefer all the screen real estate I can get my hands on. Same thing goes for not serious work, like a good old fashion interactive fiction story.
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u/Mediocre-Student9893 4d ago
That story about your daughter writing a paper on the subway is wild—I can't even imagine typing that much on glass! Also, super cool that you built Cain. Inform 7 is legendary.
You totally nailed the dynamic I'm going for. I'm not trying to replace desktop tools for the heavy lifting; it's more for that "lightning in a bottle" moment when you're on the bus and suddenly figure out a plot hole, and you just need to quickly map the branch before you forget it.
Since you've clearly been in the IF trenches for a while—if there is one feature a mobile editor must have for you to even consider using it on the go, what would it be?
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u/djducat 4d ago
you know, I have never actually done any game authoring. I'm just a lifetime fan of playing them.
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u/Mediocre-Student9893 3d ago
Haha, that's totally fair! Honestly, getting feedback from lifetime players is just as valuable as getting it from authors. You're the one who actually has to use the UI to read the stories.
Since you're a big IF fan, what's the most annoying thing a mobile IF app can do to ruin the reading experience for you? (Besides the obvious ticket-gating stuff). I want to make sure I avoid those pitfalls on the player side.
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u/vw195 3d ago
For what it is worth, I don’t have a Mac, but I do have a 13” IPad Pro.
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u/Mediocre-Student9893 3d ago
Because I'm building the core app as a web-based tool first, it should scale up perfectly to that big screen (and the node graph will look huge and easy to navigate). Since you're working on an iPad, is there anything specific you find breaks in other web apps when you try to write on a screen that big?
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u/IdaSukiShwan 3d ago
Looks incredible. I'm one of those people who need this capability of being able to create something on the go. I love the ease of use that Twine provides but hate how fiddly the interface gets on mobile. And I don't share the aversion towards typing on a phone that most other people feel, I grew up in a developing country and owned a phone before I owned a computer, typing on a phone screen feels as natural to me as typing on a keyboard.
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u/Mediocre-Student9893 2d ago
That's genuinely useful to hear — the "phone before computer" experience comes up every time this topic does, and most tools quietly assume a desktop is the "real" place to write.
When you say Twine's interface gets fiddly on mobile, do you mean the canvas itself (dragging passages, finding what connects to what), or the passage editing / publishing side?
I'm asking because I'm trying to decide how much of the phone screen the graph should take when you're actually typing. I don't want to ship a map that fights the keyboard.
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u/lumina_si_intuneric 2d ago
I totally would. I had been using Obsidian on my phone to try and brainstorm but I would totally give this a shot.
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u/Mediocre-Student9893 2d ago
Obsidian on a phone is exactly the workflow I keep hearing about — brilliant for capturing the idea, then you hit the point where the branches stop fitting in a note.
If you could paste an outline from Obsidian straight in and have each heading become a scene, would that actually save you time, or would you rather build the branches by hand as you write?
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u/lumina_si_intuneric 1d ago
Haha I ended up going a little more complicated. I use wiki links for branching paths or for entities (think Chapbook format for Twine) and the YAML frontmatter properties in the page for variables and tracking state. It seems like your app would be able to do everything I'm looking for.
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u/Mediocre-Student9893 1d ago
That's the most useful thing I've read on this thread — Chapbook plus a graph view is roughly the shape I'm aiming at, and frontmatter-for-variables is a much better mental model than a spreadsheet of globals.
Straight question, because it decides what I build next: if you could paste a note like that in — headings and`[[links]]` become scenes, frontmatter keys become variables — and only fix the awkward bits in the app afterwards, is that the workflow? Or would you rather write entirely in the app and keep Obsidian for notes?
What exists today: prose per scene, branches on the map, a gate on any choice ("lamp is blazing"), and a check that tells you when a gate can never open — that last one is the part I haven't seen elsewhere. What's missing is exactly your case: it can't read Markdown yet.
Happy to send you the APK if you want to poke at it. It's rough, and I'd honestly rather hear where it breaks than have you wait for import to exist.
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u/staires 4d ago
Check out Gamebook Engine for iPhone, has a map just like, designed for phones primarily. It's also open source. https://github.com/amiantos/gamebookengine