Player controls and story state

When a Story uses authored scene layers, the player keeps the complete outgoing picture while the next scene loads, then changes the picture before starting its speech. This also applies when resuming a saved run.

Last verified: 2026-09-26

On the web, Stop story stays in the playback controls, including compact screens and loading. It stops speech, music, effects, visual playback, and automatic continuation. Play resumes playback, including when Stop was pressed between beats. Stop preserves the session and its transcript. If a turn was already requested, the server may still finish it; use the offered recovery action to retrieve that same turn before requesting another.

Playback and reading controls

The player offers the controls that apply to the current scene and device. These can include play or pause, previous and next cue, reading speed, automatic or tap-to-advance playback, transcript, fullscreen, narration, cinematic media, and the current story choices. A control may be absent or disabled when the current scene cannot use it.

On the web, playback controls remain centered in one bottom row alongside Recap, choices, and the text input. Previous and next cue move into Menu on compact screens. Fullscreen remains a direct action in the player header.

Typing a draft does not stop automatic playback. A response submitted during a beat waits for that beat to finish; the draft remains available until submission begins. Required choices still need a decision before the story can continue. Optional choices retain Continue, and an autoplay countdown keeps its Cancel action reachable.

An authored hotspot appears only when its matching visual cue is actually available. Examining a pure-attention hotspot acknowledges it locally and does not spend or generate a Story turn; other hotspots can submit their authored action. Missing optional hotspots do not block reading or passive continuation.

On the web, first-use Story playback starts at `1×`. If you choose another speed, that saved preference remains your starting speed on later visits.

Pausing playback stops the local presentation clock; it does not pause the story session or alter an authored scene. Typography, playback speed, narration, and media preferences change how the story is presented, not the committed story state.

When a beat owns an authored full-frame video, that finite clip becomes its presentation clock. It starts at the beginning, pauses progress while buffering, never loops, and completes the beat once at its end. Play or pause, fullscreen, and Menu remain reachable; previous and next cue are disabled while that finite clip owns the beat. The following beat restores its own Stage or replaces the clip with its own authored video.

An instructional course uses a scrollable lesson document instead of scene playback controls. Its available controls are assessment choices and Submit or Retry; there is no ordinary free-form composer, cinematic cue navigation, character panel, or Party action. Course progress resumes from recorded deterministic assessment attempts.

When a browser blocks automatic narration during automatic playback, the web player pauses instead of advancing text without its retained media. Pressing the same visible Play control retries narration, music, ambience, and sound effects in that user gesture. In tap-to-advance mode, if the current cue owns blocked narration, the first Play press keeps that cue selected and retries the retained media; otherwise Play keeps its ordinary advance meaning. Tapping the story text in tap-to-advance mode takes that same Play action, so a blocked line retries in place and an unblocked line advances. Per-channel preferences and the master mute still apply, and a Story may author only some of those channels.

The sound mix shows an em dash and keeps the voice, music, and ambience sliders disabled until the player has loaded your stored levels. This is an unknown/loading state, not a zero-volume or muted selection.

The required text player can begin before optional cinematic media finishes initialization. When the media arrives, it joins the block already on screen and shows the image for that block's current position instead of waiting for the next cue; the voice and its image stay on the same clock. If a speech track includes exact synthesized-word timing, the player uses it to select the caption line at that media position. The caption remains steady while each word is spoken. Recorded performances without word timing continue on the line clock. If a one-block opening stays silent or fixed on the wrong image for its full duration, report that exact startup symptom.

A dialogue or narration block with no new approved image keeps the most recent approved image. For layered Stage scenes, the opening image uses the current beat's performance. A failed replacement removes obsolete layers so earlier characters cannot overlap the new scene; text and available audio remain usable. At a new scene, the player selects one approved same-plane visual: a timed documentary cue or an approved integrated shot. A genuinely artless scene can display governed Story key art from the saved program snapshot; this does not invent an image for the missing scene. If a payload instead contains retired or malformed visual data, the player drops that invalid optional lane. Committed text and valid narration, music, ambience, and effects continue rather than failing with the image.

Optional audio channels are isolated in the same direction: unavailable narration, music, or ambience removes only that failed member, while committed text, pacing, visuals, and other valid audio remain available. A malformed exact cinematic contract still fails closed instead of being silently repaired. Damaged browser settings are discarded and the account's saved Cinematic settings are loaded before the controls become ready. An unavailable object sound offers Retry for that same sound. On web, Mute all audio also mutes the audio in documentary footage while retaining its picture. Turning Cinematic off immediately hides optional documentary media and shows its authored alternative, including when playback is paused. Turning it back on restores that paused presentation. A finite authored beat video remains the beat transport, with its program sound governed by the Story sound control. Turning Cinematic off also immediately silences optional music, ambience and effects, including music that is fading out during a scene change.

On web, ambience and effect failures show a warning with Try again, which starts a new attempt for that sound. An autoplay block instead waits for the reader's next Play gesture.

The narration controls expose the current voice state and enable Replay voice once a failed, current, or most recently completed turn track exists. Replay restarts that same continuous track at the currently selected playback speed. A speed change also takes effect immediately on audio already playing; it does not itself restart the track.

Starting a story over

Start over takes a story back to its opening scene. It is available in the player menu, on the story page beside Resume, and from a session's menu on My Sessions. You do not have to end a session first.

Starting over is confirmed before anything happens, because the run you are in stops here: you can still read its transcript and recap, but you cannot continue it. The new run begins on the same story version you were reading, so starting over never moves you onto a different release. If the story cannot be started at that moment, the request is refused and your current run is left exactly as it was, still resumable.

A finished story offers the same control, which is how you play it again.

Choosing an episode in the player

When a fiction or hybrid Story is published as seasons and episodes, the player menu includes Episodes. It lists the published episodes by season, marks the episode you are in, and offers Play, Resume, or Start over for each available episode according to that episode's own saved progress. An episode without a prepared fresh entry can still offer Resume for your existing save. Watching earlier episodes is never a condition for opening a later one.

Choosing a different episode saves your current position before the player opens the target. If that save fails, the player stays in this episode, tells you that your place was not saved, and leaves the episode picker available to retry. A run without a committed cue has no position to save and can switch immediately. If the target cannot be opened, the player reports the reason and leaves the current episode usable. The panel also links to the full episode list on the story page.

An episode's final cue plays before its named next-episode action appears. A fresh Next opens the newest served published revision of the immediate next episode; Resume keeps the existing saved revision and position. If the immediate next episode cannot start, automatic playback stops rather than skipping it.

A confirmed automatic batch carries its remaining turn limit across that boundary. The opening does not consume a turn. Required choices, pause or Stop and failures stop the batch. Reaching the limit leaves Continue available so you can choose when to advance again. The same batch continues from a season finale into the next season's first episode without a new click or confirmation, while keeping the two episodes' saves separate.

Hints, recaps, and transcripts

Hints are assistance for the current session, not additional story choices. A hint can be unavailable when the session is blocked, ended, locked, out of interaction access, or its Story is no longer available. A recap summarizes recent committed transcript history and can be absent when there is not enough usable history.

Recap opens from the bottom bar when requested. Returning to a session does not put a recap pill over the story. Opening or closing Recap or the transcript preserves playback; use Pause when you want to stop narration.

The transcript is the ordered record of confirmed reader actions and scenes. Text shown while a turn is streaming is provisional until the server confirms the scene; a failed or cancelled turn cannot turn that provisional text into committed history. The web player's transcript drawer shows the most recent 50 messages. Use View Transcript in the drawer to open the full, paged session transcript when you need earlier scenes.

Some confirmed scenes include optional narrative feedback chips. They do not change the Story or award anything. Selecting another chip replaces the response; selecting the active chip withdraws it. The same controlled categories are used on Web, Android, and iOS, and are omitted when product analytics is disabled.

When product analytics is enabled, Mystrix may also record content-free categories describing whether an authored choice or hotspot became visible, was used, skipped, unavailable, expired, or abandoned. This record contains no Story prose, choice or hotspot label, or reader-written text; turning product analytics off removes retained participation evidence.

World state and consequences

The session can store committed consequences such as relationship changes, inventory or resources, clues, world time, and character status. The player reveals only the state included in the reader's current session snapshot. Reloading the player or returning from the background reconciles with that server snapshot; presentation settings and playback position cannot reroll an already committed choice.

Recovering playback position

The web, Android, and iOS players save a bounded cue position for the newest committed scene. They never save provisional streaming cues. A newer account checkpoint can resume the same scene near the saved cue; a checkpoint for an older scene, an unknown cue, or a stale revision is not allowed to replace the current server state.

Playback can continue locally if a checkpoint write fails while the device is offline or moving to the background. That failed save is not treated as durable. Turn submission still requires a network connection, and the client reconciles the current server snapshot when it reconnects or returns to the foreground.

On web, a save conflict with another tab preserves the local position and play/pause state. Restoring a newer saved position seeks narration to that same place before it resumes. Already elapsed one-shot effects stay skipped, while later effects keep their authored timing.

Authored visual actions can continue after a spoken line ends. The player keeps the scene on screen until those actions finish. Pause and resume control both the spoken line and its remaining visual actions. When recorded speech ends, its measured position carries into the following quiet action so the picture does not jump back to an earlier pose. Quiet action moments also remain valid when you reopen the session; they do not add empty paragraphs to its transcript.