What is Loreli? The interactive fiction platform built for the next generation of readers

Imagine you're three chapters into a story. A door is open that shouldn't be. Someone is watching you from across the street. And then: a choice. Not a metaphor — an actual fork in the road where what you pick changes what happens next.

That's interactive fiction. And Loreli is where we're building it.

What Loreli is

Loreli is a platform for reading and writing interactive stories — the kind where your choices shape what happens, where paths diverge, and where endings are earned, not handed to you.

Interactive fiction has been around since the 1970s. What started as text adventures on early computers has grown into one of the most exciting corners of digital storytelling — branching narratives, choice-based games, visual novels — a format that treats the reader as a participant rather than an audience. The problem is that most of it is hard to find, harder to access on a phone, and scattered across platforms that weren't built with casual readers in mind.

Loreli was built to change that. If you're new to the format and want to understand what it actually is, we've written a longer guide: [What is interactive fiction? A complete guide for curious readers →]

Where you can read

Loreli works in two ways, and you can use whichever suits you.

The first is the browser. Go to app.loreli.me, open a story, and start reading — no app, no account setup friction, just the story in front of you. This is the most direct route if you're on a desktop or just want to try things quickly.

The second is Telegram. With over a billion users, Telegram is where a lot of our readers already spend their time — for news, communities, and sharing things they care about. Loreli runs as a Telegram mini-app inside that ecosystem, which means sharing a story with a friend is a single tap. No link to explain, no app to recommend — it just opens.

For authors, the Telegram dynamic works in the other direction too. When a reader loves something and shares it, their friends don't have to go looking for it. It arrives in their feed, one tap from the opening scene.

Start wherever feels natural. Both paths lead to the same stories.

How reading works

Reading on Loreli is free to start. Every story has an opening available to all readers — enough to know whether it's for you before you commit to anything.

When you want to unlock the rest, you have two options. You can pay once for full access. Or you can earn it for free: share your referral link, and every friend who joins and starts reading gives you a credit. Earn enough credits and the story unlocks — no payment required. The more you share, the more you read.

We built it this way because we think the best discovery engine for great fiction has always been word of mouth. Loreli just makes the chain explicit and rewards you for it.

For writers

Loreli isn't only for readers. It's also a home for the people building these stories.

If you've ever wanted to write interactive fiction — branching paths, choices with real consequences, characters who respond differently based on what a reader did two scenes ago — Loreli gives you the tools to do it without needing to write a line of code. You write scenes, connect them, shape the logic. The platform handles the rest.

Authors on Loreli keep 75% of every sale. Publishing is free. And because readers share stories to earn credits, your audience has a built-in incentive to grow itself.

We'll be writing a lot more about the writing side of things soon. But the best starting point is still the same: read first. Get a feel for what the format can do before you set out to build it yourself.

What's live today

You can open app.loreli.me right now and start reading. Browse what's available and pick whatever catches you — no setup required.

We're still early. There aren't hundreds of stories yet — there are a few, with more on the way. The advantage of being here now is that your feedback actually changes things. If something doesn't work, tell us. If something surprises you, we want to know. This is the kind of early-stage moment where the people who show up shape what the platform becomes.

Start reading on Loreli →