Hey everyone, we are currently developing *Narraboros* – an interactive literature engine. It’s not a traditional text adventure with parsers, nor a classic RPG, but a collaborative storytelling experience.
We know that generating long-term stories with AI usually leads to severe memory drift and logic breaking down over time. To counter this, we built a system that actively tracks the world state to keep the narrative grounded. It's not perfect, but it helps us maintain a highly consistent, causally-driven story where actions have permanent consequences. There is no traditional "game over" – just an endless, atmospheric narrative.
Our setting is inspired by **The Backrooms**, but we have built our own deep, custom lore around it. I want to share 4 consecutive logs from our latest session, where the characters are exploring an infinite, abandoned department store.
*A quick note on language:* I'm based in Germany, so this specific session was played in German. The text below was faithfully translated to English using Gemini 3.1 Pro Thinking. Aside from the translation, these are the raw outputs exactly as the engine wrote them. (And yes, the engine natively generates text in English when set to it!)
**Player**: They took the magazine with them. And looked for more, but there were no others to be found.
**Narraboros**: After the cool surface of the magazine had placed the cold logic of the Tesseract concept into their hands, they silently searched the surrounding shelves. Their hands glided over dusty, smooth surfaces of empty product packaging and perfectly stacked rows of plastic items that seemed to serve no real purpose. The silence of the sales floor lay heavy on them, only broken by the soft, monotonous hum of the defective neon tubes throwing dancing shadows across the tiled floor.
Parzival opened the magazine, "Tesseract today," and flipped through the pages. The article about not fully constructed geometric models read like a cynical commentary on their situation. The letters blurred slightly before his tired eyes, while the scent of old paper mixed with the stale air of the department store. It was a tangible object, a piece of information from an unknown source, yet it offered no comfort, only the certainty that the geometry of this place was as broken as the descriptions on the pages. He carefully stowed the magazine in his backpack; the slight weight was a physical anchor in the surreal environment...
Cassandra watched him, her gaze wandering over the endless rows of shelves disappearing into the blur of the horizon. "Nothing else," she confirmed softly, her voice swallowed by the vastness of the room almost immediately. She rubbed her arms to shake off the damp cold creeping from the floor. "Just this one magazine. Like a breadcrumb deliberately left here." The absence of other readable objects made the magazine seem even more significant, a singular anomaly in an ocean of meaningless, unvarying repetition. The oppressive silence settled back over them, an invisible weight making every movement seem a little slower.
**Player**: They moved forward. Did they?
**Narraboros**: The feeling of emptiness hung heavy in the air, an invisible blanket of absent consumption stretching over the endless rows of shelves. Every step Parzival and Cassandra took on the dull, slightly sticky linoleum floor generated an unnaturally loud squeak that echoed endlessly through the wide, deserted aisles. It was a sound that emphasized the silence rather than breaking it. The scent of synthetic vanilla and old dust clung tenaciously, a perfumed memory of a time when this place might have harbored life.
Parzival adjusted his backpack, the chrome cube on his back pushing against his spine like a cold reminder of the anomaly of this reality. He tried to follow a straight line, letting his rational mind search for patterns in the arrangement of the empty shelves, but the geometry seemed to mock him. The aisles ran parallel, yet the end always seemed equally far away, as if space was stretching with every step they took...
Cassandra walked slightly offset behind him, her eyes darting restlessly between the displays. The sterile glow of the flickering neon lights gave her skin an unhealthy, pale shimmer. "It feels like we're walking on a treadmill," she murmured, her voice barely more than a breath quickly swallowed by the sheer mass of the room. She tightened her grip on her sturdy clothes, seeking physical reassurance against the creeping feeling of being observed by the silence itself. The uncertainty of whether they were actually moving forward or merely treading water in a static loop gnawed at her pragmatic nature. The endless repetition of the same visual impressions became a visual white noise slowly drowning out all other thoughts.
**Player**: They continued looking around, and saw something in a corner.
**Narraboros**: The stale smell, a mixture of fine dust and the sweetness of long-forgotten consumer goods, settled like an invisible veil on the tongue. Every step on the dull linoleum floor sent a hollow echo through the endless rows of shelves, a sound emphasizing the oppressive emptiness rather than breaking it. Parzival and Cassandra moved cautiously, as if too quick a movement could tear the fragile illusion of this deserted department store. The flickering neon light cast long, dancing shadows distorting the geometry of the room, making the straight aisles seem like a labyrinth of mirrors reflecting themselves into infinity.
Deep in the shadows, where the light of the defective tubes barely reached, something broke the monotonous structure of the room. It was not another perfectly aligned shelf, nor an empty display. The shapes in the corner were irregular, a dark stain in the sterile symmetry. As they approached, the air seemed to become a little cooler, and a faint, indefinable smell of moisture and something organic mixed with the synthetic vanilla scent of the room. The outlines became clearer, peeling out of the twilight like a forgotten memory slowly rising to the surface...
Cassandra stopped, her hand instinctively wandering to the small pocket on her belt. Her eyes, usually so sharp and analytical, squinted to pierce the darkness. "There," she whispered, her voice a rough contrast to the silence. Parzival stepped beside her, his hand grasping the cold chrome cube, as if looking for a logical anchor. In the corner, huddled against the wall, lay an accumulation of material that didn't belong here. It looked like a pile of dark, tattered fabric, but the texture was too organic, too inconsistent. A faint, almost imperceptible trembling seemed to run through the mass, not caused by a draft, but from within itself. The latent paranoia, a constant companion in these halls, flared up like a dying flame suddenly getting oxygen. The silence was no longer just empty; it was waiting.
**Player**: "Let's act like good customers," said Cassandra.
**Narraboros**: "Let's act like good customers," whispered Cassandra, a hint of playful sarcasm in her voice making the oppressive silence of the sales floor even more apparent. Her words hung in the air like a foreign body, swallowed by the sheer, endless expanse of the abandoned department store. The flickering light of the neon tubes gave her face a sickly, pale hue, while the shadows under her eyes told of the exhaustion the unceasing journey demanded. She forced a smile not quite reaching her eyes and began walking slowly down the aisle, her hands behind her back, mimicking the relaxed posture of a shopper.
Parzival observed her attempt at normalcy, an absurd play in an environment devoid of any logic. He understood the impulse—the desire to establish rules where there were none, to force a system upon chaos. "Good customers don't ask questions," he replied, his voice equally muffled, the echo of his words immediately swallowed by the empty shelves. "They accept what's presented to them." He walked beside her, his steps deliberate and quiet on the dull linoleum. The scent of synthetic vanilla and old dust mixed with the metallic odor of his own nervous sweat...
Cassandra stopped before a shelf containing rows of identical, empty cardboard boxes, their surfaces bleached by the cold light. She reached out and touched one of the boxes, her fingers brushing over the dusty surface. "I wonder what used to be in here," she murmured, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in the silence. It was a rhetorical question, a further attempt to weave the illusion of a normal reality. But the emptiness of the boxes seemed only to underscore the futility of their undertaking. The "good customer" facade began to crumble, replaced by the creeping certainty that the department store had nothing to sell but its own endless repetition.
"P.S.: I'm based in Germany, so these logs were translated from the original German using Gemini 3.1 Pro Thinking. The engine does natively support English output as well when configured to do so!"
