Mug. Missing. is a text based, CYOA (choose your own adventure) style game. The plot has you searching for your coffee mug across a range of locations and times, hence the name of the game! There aren't puzzles as such, the choices each player makes decides the order they experience the game in rather than affect the final outcome.

I was struck by the observation that the order of episodes doesn't really matter in stories like Don Quixote, let alone TV soap operas. I think Lee Sheldon made this observation in a book he wrote. So I was tempted to do a work of interactive fiction where the player apparently has real choices, but all those choices do is drive the order they experience the episodes in.

I don't claim this is an original idea, one of the laws I remember from my university days is if you think you've discovered something new then either someone's already discovered it or you're wrong. But I want to do some kind of game, and a story with multiple paths through it appeals on an aesthetic level to me.

Mug. Missing. is not remotely serious. Achieving a polymorphic story is easier if one can abandon realism or sense to start with.

Mug. Missing. is implemented in a custom DSL transcompiled to Tweego input files. Ruby code is used to do this transcompilation, it's in a Github repository.

I have uploaded the game as well to itch.io at Mug. Missing. by Lailoken.