I found this visual novel game on a whim online. And I will say that… this is by far the best interactive novel I have probably read this year. And it’s not even finished.
The CYOA game was made on Twine, which is an engine for interactive fiction. There’s a lot you can do with Twine but I think this is the most ambitious one I’ve seen.

The worldbuilding is extensive, there’s so much lore and background. It’s very Witcher-esque in the way that your character is a contractor— but not in the way one might think. Difference is that the Wayfarers are individuals who are born without magic, with their former order falling apart. Magic affects every part of this world and its being, and it’s seriously apparent in a fight against a basilisk, where you have the upper hand against it because of your immunity to its magic. There’s a lot of downsides and upsides being born a Wayfarer, but are still contracted to look for artifacts and the like because of their unique genetic. It’s something that I found super intriguing, and again the lore is just extensive. The menu had really insightful and interesting excerpts on the world, but didn’t feel as if it was info-dumping; rather that your character ripped pages out of a book and pasted them into the journal to look back on.
Character creation is pretty extensive, being able to choose a lot of options for how you want your character to look and come from. You can even make a nickname for yourself that others can call you by. In the playthrough I did, I went with an elf from the Child of the Seas background. Like I said, there’s a lot of options and the choices you get depending on your birthplace varies.

This game depends a lot on choice and luck, you might not win every time. I got my ass kicked in the first mission, and I had to get revived. It’s not easy and it has that D&D style system when doing an action. You can forge meaningful bonds with other companions, talk to them and make choices. You can take on pacts and go on quests. The amount of options you have in general is astounding, everything little thing feels like it has meaning. It really feels like you’re genuinely thriving and living in your character when you’re reading.

This is definitely not really like my other reviews, but I still highly recommend it. The game’s not fully released, only with a handful of episodes currently available. But it’s not a small read by any means, with an average of 1 million words accumulative so far. There’s already so much content available.
If you’re into high fantasy, Witcher, any of that— take a read. I highly recommend it, even if you’re not much of a reader. And if you’re really enjoying it like I have please support them, I can’t wait for its full release.

Definitely one of the most ambitious Interactive Fiction/Cyoa books I've seen, especially for a mostly solo project, while still in it's earlier parts (only 2 episodes released out of a planned 15) the amount of reactivity to your choices is staggering, just the prologue has you choosing between 5 different races, 6 backgrounds, 4 skills and 3 masters that have reactivity, both minor and major through the entire story.

The world is also pretty distinctive, usually most high fantasy worlds just mesh together in my mind, but Wayfarer's main distinction is that magic is so common, everyone has it and knows how to use it to some degree, the rarity is that some people are born, not only unable to use any kind of magic, but also immune to it, this means just as a mage's fireball would have no effect on them, so would healing magic, and their presence near a magic item could disrupt its runes. In a world where magic is such a common day to day thing, their entire existence is affected, these people banded together and created a bounty hunter guild, both to deal with magical anomalies and to have a home for other Magiani people, called Wayfarers, You play as a member of the Wayfarers, during a time where the guild has been almost decimated, as you look for clues to learn what happened to the guild.


Even if this story is still in its beginning, i definitely recommend a read, the 2 released episodes already sum up to almost a million words(with the average playthrough of 100k+ words) and one read took me around 8 hours, according to the developer, the game's first act (Eps 1-3) will always be free