A Webcomic that, unlike most webcomics that have a set story and swipe reader speculation periodically, takes a lot of reader input. Frequently, the author will take so much reader input that nearly the entire webcomic is made of user suggestions. As such, they always have some way to put in suggestions, whether it's a designated forum where you can post in a suggestion box, comment in a comment box, a Shout Box, or an email address you can send suggestions to. In fact, many of these comics had their origins in forum threads, where the update panels are in-line with the discussion of said panels and the suggestions.
In many cases (nearly all since the Trope Codifier MS Paint Adventures), the webcomic will be presented as if it were a log of an Interactive Fiction game (with pictures). Because commands are parsed by a human and only one (or a very select few) command paths are actually used, the story usually ends up far more complex than is possible to program into a game (mostly because the Combinatorial Explosion is much smaller and can thus be handled manually). Due to the sort of people who make these comics, these comics also frequently spoof such things as Adventure Games, Simulation Games, Puzzle Games, Roleplaying Games, or Turn-Based Strategy games.
These comics generally update with only one panel at a time and as such can be updated very quickly. Often even more than once a day.
For obvious reasons, these comics cannot use a Strip Buffer at all.
Frequently these comics straddle the boundary between Webcomic and New Media/Web Original. General precedent seems to be to put Interactive Comics in the Webcomic category. More and more however, traditional web comic creators are experimenting with the medium.
This trope has a lot of overlap with its Sister Trope, Forum Quest, since both tropes can trace their lineage back to Ruby Quest, and many works can be interpreted as belonging to both categories.
Several websites include entire sections in which Interactive Comics can be created.
Tropes common to Interactive Comics include:
- Ascended Fanon: These stories run on this and perhaps little else. Beyond direct suggestions, authors often take direction of the future updates by canonizing fan speculation.
- Cerebus Syndrome: Specifically, once the Ontological Mystery is slightly less of a mystery, the author will often reveal a backstory for the world and the character. This generally tilts the comic away from silly hijinks to plot-driven story, as the fans giving instructions become more invested.
- Foregone Conclusion: Homestuck has proven that as any interactive comic becomes popular enough, it begins to defy the medium. The creator of Homestuck has said that before ultimately closing the suggestion boxes, there were so many suggestions that he could pick any direction he wanted, losing the purpose of the interactivity.
- Homestuck is also an interesting case study in that the author eventually got incredibly fed up by endless streams of countless moronic suggestions; something usually considered a strength of this genre. Even without suggestions, fans still affected the comic in small ways as community jokes and theories often appeared in the comics or had nods to them. Also, the author himself said "90% of 'calling it' is actually influencing it in disguise."
- Ontological Mystery: Often of the You Wake Up in a Room kind. Fortunately or unfortunately, this type of beginning to a story is incredibly easy to pull off.
- Present Tense Narrative
- Second-Person Narration
- Schrödinger's Gun
- Genre Savvy or Genre Blindness: Depending on the quality of reader suggestions, the protagonist in question can be a bumbling idiot with no brains or an incredibly smart ninja who knows all the trappings of his fiction, or anything in between.
- Who Writes This Crap?!: In stories with a thinner fourth wall, the characters in the story might rebel and refuse to follow instructions, as a means for the author to express displeasure with the decision-making of the audience.
Examples:
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General examples
- Aetheria Epics
- Awful Hospital
- Strange School (fancomic)
- Strange School: Even Stranger (sequel comic)
- Baskets of Guts
- Bandit's Quest
, stated to have been inspired by MSPA, originated on tumblr.
- Be Calm runs on reader commands, but the characters are fully aware that they are being interacted with, and often break the fourth wall to address the "voices" giving them prompts.
- Black Ward: Empty Chambers: an interactive horror comic and spiritual successor to Silent Hill 2. Black Ward updates daily and uses comments as Adventure Game style prompts to move the story forward. The story follows Amnesiac Hero Callahan Westchester as he makes his way through the dark and mysterious ‘Black Ward’, searching for his brother and encountering twisted monstrosities.
- Blood is Mine
- City Of The Dead
- The Complex
- Cutie Clash
- d20 Pony is a fantasy adventure set in the universe of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, in which the readers take control of a young earth pony as she explores the land of Equestria.
- Death By Choice, a detective comic, is a Choose Your Own Adventure comic where the reader plays the role of a detective.
- Demon Thesis, a mix of interactive comic and java based tactical game by Chris Doucette, who also brought us The Last Days of FOXHOUND.
- Deep Rise
- Dorf Quest
- Drowtales, is based around this to varying degrees for all of its comics besides its primary one, Moonless Age.
- EcopportunityX: a horror comic about a small child escaping the facility they awoke in.
- Enemy Quest is a Romance/Science-Fiction interactive comic in the same vein as Ruby Quest and Nan Quest. Created by Bromeliad, It follows the story of one Zack Nguyen as he's hired by a government agency to take place in a cultural exchange program with Earth's newest residents: the Visitors, a collection of four alien races from another dimension.
- Epicsplosion: Tripp Rougestar's Space-filled Adventure, whose story depends on which of several paths you take, something that Andrew Hussie tried with Bard Quest.
- Evil Plan switched over to a MSPA style for April Fools' Day 2012, and took suggestions from the readers. The comic was updated nearly a hundred times that day, with several of the images being animated .gifs.
- Fortuna is a Homestuck-inspired, but a completely separate webcomic that has its own universe, rules, plot, characters, phylosophical themes etc. Even though it began as a MSPFA project, it's a completely independent work now.
- Gengame
- Impjak Adventure
- In Koan of the Day, the guru is visited by the Goddess, which introduces a complicated puzzle game that few people have solved.
- Land Fall
- Little Robot, Big Scary World
- Morph E, is like a visual novel, with animations and Ace Attorney styled investigation sequences.
- My Delirium Alcazar
- Mystic Empyrean Rebuild, is entirely based around user suggestions either on the forums or every other week to determine the course of the primary narrative.
- MS Paint Adventures is the Trope Codifier.
- This has changed a bit since the site was started. While completed series Problem Sleuth is still an excellent example of the genre, the current series Homestuck has long since closed its submission boxes and is for all practical purposes a "normal" webcomic styled like an interactive comic. The audience still has a significant influence on the story, though, as author Andrew Hussie enjoys reading fan theories and employing the ones he likes into the story.
- NASApone
- Old Republic Paint Adventures is an interactive comic (loosely) set in the Star Wars universe.
- Omnitopia The Playground where all the main characters are people from the Gitpg forums who have given permission to appear in the comic.
- Pants Seat Carpet Ride, which is told from the third person and contains no images, was inspired by MSPA.
- Prequel (which was also a MSPA Forum Adventure before getting its own site.)
- Ruby Quest and all the other /tg/ quests are the Trope Makers (though Ruby Quest itself is younger than the Trope Codifier).
- John Quest, Gaiden Game-esque Self-Parody of Ruby by the same author.
- Nan Quest, Ruby Quest's Spiritual Sequel.
- Dive Quest, a fantasy roleplay and possible prequel to Ruby Quest.
- RWBY Quest
- Save the Princess
- Silent Hill: Promise
- StableQuest
- StoryShift, as written about by BoingBoing.
- Terrene Spire
- Tiny Cat People
- Touhou Nekokayou's Create.swf Adventures
- Transverse
- Downplayed in Unichat, which breaks from the genre's Interactive Fiction roots, instead allowing readers to interact with the narrative through the Unichat platform itself.
- Voices (which was originally an MSPA Forum Adventure before getting its own site.)
- Way Of Wushu
- Weenie Licked
- Wicked Awesome Adventure
MS Paint Forum Adventures
The MSPA Forum Adventures forum (now a redirect to the hereinafter mentioned archive websitenote ), which as the name suggests is part of MS Paint Adventures' forum. A substantial number of these are fanfiction of Homestuck, and a lot of them are archived on MS Paint Fan Adventures, a collaborative mirror site which transposes these adventures from forum posts into the style of MSPA proper.
forum (now a redirect to the hereinafter mentioned archive websitenote ), which as the name suggests is part of MS Paint Adventures' forum. A substantial number of these are fanfiction of Homestuck, and a lot of them are archived on MS Paint Fan Adventures, a collaborative mirror site which transposes these adventures from forum posts into the style of MSPA proper.
- Alanna
- All Night Laundry
- Art of Domination
- A Beginner's Guide to the End of the Universe
- Chairman Jack: Emerge (sequel)
- Be the Sea Dweller Lowblood
- Castelocked
- Chiasmata
- Children of the Gun
- A Complete Waste of Time
- Cordless
- And its short-lived reboot, Rebuild of Cordless.
- And its short-lived reboot, Rebuild of Cordless.
- Corgi Quest
- Crystal Rave
- Cult Following
- Dark Dungeons, Light Bot
- Datastuck
- Don't Name It
- Double Reacharound Orange
- Double Reacharound Red
- Dungeons of Sunnydale
- Façade (2013)
- Fortuna
- Godquest
- Heartstuck
- Hexane
- Hoofstuck
- Housetrapped
- Iji (Captain Lhurgoyf)
- Its Midnight Somewhere
- Legend Of The Hunter
- Lucidstuck
- Mary Sue Quest
- Masquerade (2011)
- .Memoria
- The Motley Two
- Nepeta Quest 2011
- Nightfall
- Oceanfalls
- Selfstuck
- Sinister Evolution
- STuCK (Homestuck)
- Superego
- Synodic Reboot
- TheHumanGame
- Trol Seasson
- Waterworks
- Wildlife
Questden
Questden was created to run image board quests, which use a mix of pictures and accompanying text to tell stories.
- Acid Soup: A girl got something stolen from her, but she doesn't know what in a city where that could be practically anything.
- AsteroidQuest: A sprawling science fiction adventure in a high tech setting featuring many distinctive alien races.
- Unnatural Selection: An AI simulation happening in the greater Asteroidverse.
- Knight Blades: A parallel story about a knight errant seeking to eliminate a great evil and to serve his master, Muschio.
- Dungeoneer: A Dungeon Heart trying to expand her dungeon and maybe become a better person.
- Fen Quest: A kobold on a quest to make a name for himself and marry his love.
- A Little Town Called Coxwette: A fugitive, randy tomcat tries to hide out in a lovely little Town with a Dark Secret.
- Mudy Quest: A kobold named Mudy out to claim a kingdom as his own.
- Trashy Vampire Romance Novel: TVRN is the un-life of the recently-turned vampire Ricardo Castro and the messy situations he gets into.
- Viral By Committee
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