Lifeline

Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling
Lifeline is an iOS and Android mobile game in which you are fielding a distress call from someone named Taylor (gender never actually specified -- I've seen some reviews refer to Taylor as male, but I pictured a woman). Taylor was the youngest, most naive crew member aboard a space ship that has crashed on a distant moon. They have no previous space experience and only the most rudimentary safety training. For some reason you are the only person in communication range, so they need you to prompt them through a series of survival decisions.

The story plays out in roughly SMS-sized messages from Taylor, which sometimes come in rapid succession and sometimes only after a substantial real-time delay. These exchanges are backed by atmospheric music, and though the actual content is quite bare-bones and without visuals, the presentation is glossy and solid.
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50 Years of Text Games, by Aaron A. Reed
The game’s success was a combination of great timing and great execution: a clever idea, some snappy writing, and a launch on a new platform where few other apps were yet available. “It’s the first game I’ve loaded on my Watch that is not only fun to play,” said TIME Magazine, “but fun to play specifically on a wearable.” Though distant from the innovations in technology or design happening in other commercial text games, Lifeline demonstrated the genre’s appeal even with the most straightforward of foundations.
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Average Rating: Number of Reviews: 1 Write a review

The basic idea of the game is that your PC is an astronaut in a dire situation, the only person he is able to contact is you, and the only medium available is text messages. So you control him by sending him messages and you see the world through messages he sends in response. If your PC is sleeping, or is doing something time consuming, the game pauses. This simple concept really works wonders in drawing you into the game and building up suspense.

The execution of the idea, however, is not flawless. Often it seems the authors could not really decide if the medium is text or voice messages, which breaks immersion. The story is interesting, but not really innovative. Some passages feel very linear.

Still, all in all a great idea for IF on phones.

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