I love digital choose your own adventure books and gamebooks because instead of futzing around flipping back and forth between physical pages and trying to remember which paths you’ve taken and which you haven’t, the digital version can just do all that work for you. I’m lazy! But it turns out that digital interactive fiction can be capable of a whole lot more than just being bookmarks, and that’s the theme of what Penrose ($0.99) is all about.
Penrose is from Doublespeak Games, creators of A Dark Room, so you know they’re capable of doing some truly unexpected things with narrative. And Penrose is unexpected for sure. It’s a well-written story that will occasionally feature a highlighted word. When you click on that highlighted word you’re given an option to change the word and, thus, change almost everything about the particular passage that you’re reading. An early example. You’re setting out to explore and search an abandoned building and, upon finding entrance to the building, you notice a generator. In one version of the story the generator is running and thus the lights and everything inside are working. Your experience inside the building is then reflected based on the power being on. However, this also means the alarm system has power and that leads to you being arrested for trespassing. End of story.

However, if you back up to the part about the generator, you can change the word “running&quo...