A book that reads back.

The Story

When I finished FeeDings!, my RSS reader, I realised something I had not clocked before: now I could make whatever I wanted. The skills were there. The tools were there. The only constraint left was the one I brought with me.

That thought sent me back to Choose Your Own Adventure books. I remembered the weight of them. Every page turn was a gamble, every decision mattered, and no two reads were ever quite the same. But they were also finite. A book had a fixed number of endings. You could, with enough patience, read all of them.

AI could lift that ceiling. Not a fixed tree of 40 outcomes, but a story that is actually written as you read it, reacting to your choices in real time. A book that reads back.

How It Grew

Influence started as the core loop: pick a world, make choices, reach an ending. That was enough to prove the idea worked. But the choices felt too clean. The AI gave you the options, you picked one, and the story continued. Good, but not chaotic enough to be memorable.

So I added Influencers. Items you pack into a bag before the story starts. A time-freeze potion in a horror scenario. A talking parrot in a medieval war. A cursed coin in a detective mystery that might crack the case, or curse you instead. They are not inventory. They are narrative wildcards - things that change not just what you can do, but what the story is willing to do to you. That is when it started feeling like a Choose Your Own Adventure book that had been let off the leash.

From there it grew. Campaign mode to carry a character across stories. Text, Visual, and Cinematic modes, so the same adventure can be pure reading, illustrated scenes, or video clips. A community leaderboard. A shared-story pattern where friends can read your ending or replay the scenario and reach a completely different one.

What's Next

Multiplayer. Same stories, shared choices, competing agendas. The Influencer system gets considerably more interesting when someone else is packing the bag. If you want to be part of the beta when it opens, register your interest at support@influenceapp.co.uk.

Who Built It

Influence is made by Feedings Ltd, a small UK software company I founded. We also make FeeDings!, an RSS reader, and BenchCalc, a lab calculator for scientists. Three very different apps, same workshop.

Join the discussion and suggest features on GitHub, or follow along on X.

Company Details

Feedings LTD
Director: Dr Jason Woodgate | jason@feedings.co.uk
Company No: 16795680
Registered in England and Wales
Support: support@influenceapp.co.uk