First Person Viewpoint

The idea

The app’s own manifesto asks the questions that started it: have you ever read a book and wondered what it would feel like to actually live inside that story? Played a game and wished you were the main character — not controlling one, but being one? …So did we.

Interactive fiction has always promised “you are the hero” and always delivered menus, stat screens, and chat bubbles. FPV strips all of that away. You type what you do; the story answers in prose. Second person, present tense, 2–4 paragraphs per turn — no chat UI, no labels, no game mechanics. No objectives, no levels, no points. Just you, inside a story that reacts.

How it works

• Pick a world — five handcrafted universes (Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Horror, Manga, Romance) or over a thousand ready scenarios across genres: dark fantasy, cyberpunk, detective, historical.
• Or invent one — the “What I Imagine” mode takes a few sentences (“any era, any genre, any rules”) and builds the setting around them.
• Become the character — name, appearance, three defining traits. The narration weaves them in instead of reading them back at you.
• Act freely — type actions or dialogue; the engine keeps continuity, tone, and consequences across the whole story.

The design rules

Immersion is a subtraction game. Every rule in FPV removes something that would remind you it’s an app:

• No chat bubbles, no name labels — dialogue lives inside the prose, like a novel.
• Second person, present tense — “you push the door” reads as experience; “the character pushed the door” reads as a report.
• 2–4 paragraphs per turn — long enough for atmosphere, short enough that it’s always your move again in under a minute.
• No win conditions — a story can end, fail, or wander; it can’t be “lost”. Fiction doesn’t have a game-over screen.

Under the hood

A React Native app on both stores — one codebase, two platforms, no separate native teams. Narration is powered by Gemma 4, tuned for exactly one job: consistent second-person prose that respects the world’s rules and remembers what you did three scenes ago. The same thesis as everything else I build: an LLM put to work inside a strict system — rules, memory, structure — instead of a raw chatbot with a skin.

The business model

Free to download, no card required — you can start reading in under a minute. Revenue comes from in-app options that scale with appetite, “from free stories to unlimited narrative”. A freemium model fits fiction: nobody subscribes to a book they haven’t opened.

Traction

• Live on both stores since May 2026 — through Apple and Google review
• 1,000+ users on each platform within the first two months
• Growing scenario library — 1,000+ and counting

FPV is the portfolio’s answer to “can he ship consumer mobile?” — store review, mobile UX, payments, and an AI feature that has to feel like magic without a tutorial.