I want to make a game that simulates a forum to tell a story.

[VelvetSoul]

I'm not sure how I'd go about this just yet, any advice or potential software I might be able to use would be deeply appreciated!

My premise is simple, I've been world building for the better part of the last 6 years, and I've been trying to figure out how to best present that world in the format of a game. I briefly attempted to host a blog that was set in universe, but I quickly realized it would be limited to only really getting seen by the users of the specific website. Given how social media works it was almost immediately taken to be an "ARG" or Augmented/Alternate Reality Game, while I didn't mind people trying to investigate the world I was presenting to them; they sort of expected things from me that I didn't really have prepared. Because it wasn't meant to be an augmented reality game, it was meant to just be a story.

So a bit later I had a sort of moment where it just sort of clicked; I could make it into a game. Not only would this make it clear what the intended purpose was, but it would also make it more accessible to people who may not be using the social media blog site I was using for it. Only problem is... I didn't know what style of game I wanted it to be. It's not going to fit well as a sort of action or platformer game, things like "combat" never really made sense for it. After using forums a bit more this last year it sort of dawned on me that I could make the game a forum simulator, which sure; solves almost all of my problems, but also created a new one.

I literally don't know how to create a forum simulator...

My idea for the game is fairly simple, it would function similarly to something like hypnospace outlaw. You'd be navigating a fictional forum and every "day" it would get updated by it's users, who you'd slowly get to learn more about. You'd be able to make your own posts or reply to users via pre-written dialogue options which would dictate what actions people might take in their lives.

This means I'd need to figure out some kind of system for displaying a forum that the player could click through, displaying text and images within that forum, and then allowing the user to select from multiple dialogue options if they wish to respond to a post/thread on that forum.

I admit that when it comes to game creation I have very very little experience with things like RPG maker as I once used it to create a 3D first person dungeon crawler as a means of learning some of the scripting involved. However outside of that I'm kind of a fish out of water here.

If anyone has any ideas how I could achieve something like this I'm all ears!

[Zombiethederg]

While I dont know anything about CODING a forum simulator, as someone who knows about coding i'd imagine it'd be pretty easy to format the game by having forum posts progress throughout different days. Live chatting's where you make choices however, thats a different story.

If you want a good example, Hypnospace Outlaw is a great example of the old internet in order to tell a story. They also made their own Doom Clone awhile back, which was pretty neat!

[TheFrugalGamer]

Have you looked into TWINE, or other visual novel style game engines? They're easy to pick up and since they're largely text based, I'd think they'd work well for your idea. You can use plain css and images to make them look like forum posts, and they do allow for some light coding that would enable the player to click around outside of a linear story.

Either way, I think this sounds like a really neat idea! I love it when people embrace new ways and formats of story telling, and I don't think I've seen the forum format used this way before. Good luck with the project!

[xixxii]

i love an interface drama! i recommend checking out this list of works in that genre to get a sense for how they format their games. there's a lot of different ways to do it in different engines, depending on what you're most comfortable with!
if you find a structure that seems like a great fit for how you want to do it, you can check out the developers' sites and socials to see if they have devlogs, blogs, interviews, et cetera, with information on what software they used!

twine is the simplest, i think, for folks used to html + css + markdown since you can use those. it's very flexible, too!

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

One idea would be to setup a open source BB on a locally run web server. Create the users, design the profiles, and make the posts (and maybe some fillerposts to let the thing seem more realistic) for the first day. You can send the user you take for the player messages, and so on.

When the first day is satisfying, you can use https://www.httrack.com (possible to be logged in by copying the user cookie: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20362821/httrack-possible-using-cookies ) to save the whole thing.

Then, for every possible answer, you create a new "state" of the board, save it, delete (where needed) and rince and repeat. At the end, insert links for posting/waiting replacing the post buttons. Remove the buttons that aren't needed, and make things like the user profile read only.

Note that every additional "route" creates a lot of work, and this "solution" needs some advanced computer experience (both to plug the basic board together, and to realize it later on) - but on the other hand, this will create a high amount of immersion. If you want to go for it, I recommend to make a small test run so that you can weigh how much work it is (and see if it works out for you at all!). If you want a simpler route, any interactive fiction engine (Twine, as mentioned by TheFrugalGamer is a good and easy to use one) should work out.

Edit:
Hope you excuse the plug. I did a - free software - engine for interactive fiction. Since it is not designed to make immersive projects but rather focused on text-based expression, it can only suggest a real forum - but I took the liberty to create a small demo:
https://thunderperfectwitchcraft.org/cassandra/index.php?ID=77732393022
If that already fits your needs, I can gladly explain how to use it ;).

[Dreamwings]

Sounds interesting, and theoretically it could be simpler than your traditionally-navigated game. It could also be harder.
Some people are recommending TWINE. I've never heard of it so maybe it would work. If you had to ask me... You're going to need to learn to code. Be it Unity or Godot (but probably not Unreal, Unreal is mostly 3D centered and it is a bit hard to get it to do anything else efficiently. You CAN get it to do other things yes, but it's forte is high end rendering and 3D. its kinda like making RPG Maker be a platformer or a FPS. You can but it's going to be inefficient), you're going to need to whip out that IDE of choice and start typing logic. Your idea sounds simpler than most, so it probably wouldn't be too hard. But using crutches like RPG Maker and possibly TWINE are just going to make you run into roadblocks when you try to do something crazy. I'm telling you, it is a lot easier to learn to code yourself than it is to use more handholdy, user-friendly engines with few, specific purposes. For something like a forum system that is definitely far more unique than what a handholdy user-friendly engine is going to offer, it is better to do it yourself. It looks hard, it feels hard at first when you don't understand the logic, but I promise you it is going to save you a lot of hassel in the long run and you will learn a very useful skill.
Engine recommendation wise, my first would be Godot (not just because of the whole Unity thing but it is one of the more friendly engines to work with, ESPECIALLY for GUIs which this game is going to be a lot of), GameMaker is a bit obtuse but if for some reason you absolutely CANNOT grasp code then the visual style it uses for things might work better for you (for something simpler like this it would probably work fine). I wouldn't say Unity, not because of the whole licensing issue though that is also a pretty good reason not to, but because it uses C# and that would be horrible if you're just starting to learn coding.
If you've used RPG Maker before (especially as a more advanced user, as you detailed), you have an idea of how programming logic works. Good to have that right out of the jump and it means you don't have to go through the whole rigamarole. But if you're going to code things yourself, it gets a lot more complicated than putting down blocks. My personal method of learning is reading the documentation on whatever language the chosen engine uses and what commands said code has to then go from there, but I am aware that when starting out I kind of got locked into tutorial hell (aka, reading tutorials, copying the tutorials, but then not actually learning how to do anything else beyond those tutorials because I didn't know what the code provided was actually doing or what the logic was). It is very hard to break out of it. My method was to read the documentation and then try to do something myself WITH the logic taught by said tutorials which then just made everything click, but yours might be different. It also just depends on how you learn things. I wish I could provide a more helpful and straightforward answer, and I promise I am not trying to be obtuse for the sake of it. If anything, to convince you that it is worthwhile it would be more beneficial for me to give you said straightforward answer. It is just one of those things that really varies based on the person and there is no one point where you start from like most other skills because different things work for different people.
People are also talking about Hypnospace Outlaw but I also would like to point at the modern remake of No Players Online, which starts with you going through a games forum (and you can find extra little minigames in there as well as you go). It has various characters you see over and over again where you get a feel of each of their personalities (not all too dissimilar from this forum).
In saying that though, providing references of other games doing the same idea is going to be pretty unhelpful to someone who doesn't know how to code. It's kinda like telling someone who doesn't know how to draw to look at other art for reference on how to get better and to learn techniques. That really only works for a more advanced artist who already has experience under their belt enough to break down said techniques from the final product. To a layman, it is just going to look like the single picture, no matter how much they stare at the strokes of the brush. Only when they gain experience will they too be able to see it.

[BlazingCobaltX]

Sounds cool. :D Reading this made me think of Secret Little Haven, which simulates early internet chatrooms to tell the story of the main character on the road to self-discovery. I think emulating known online spaces works really well as a mode of storytelling.