Aisle

You are about to read a story. Or rather, part of a story. You will be asked to define the story by controlling one instant in the life of the man whose story it is. Your intervention will begin and end the story. But be warned; there are many stories and not all of the stories are about the same man.

—Opening screen narration

Aisle is an Interactive Fiction game by Sam Barlow. The setting and conceit are simple: you control a character standing in an aisle of the supermarket. In each play-through, you may type one and only one command; the game responds with a short snippet of story about the main character. But as the opening narration implies, many of the stories are mutually contradictory, which gives the sense of hopping between Alternate Universes on each reload. Can be downloaded or played in-browser. Not to be confused with Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle, which parodies this game's one-move mechanic.

Tropes used in Aisle include:

• Cluster F-Bomb: Swear.
• Dead Little Sister: Clare is the Love Interest variant
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot
• Multiple Choice Past: And how!
• Posthumous Character: Clare, though not in every ending.
• Slice of Life
• That Came Out Wrong: Dance with Woman.

"Come on--a dance? Shake your bones--"
Whoops. That doesn't mean to dance, does it?

• You Can't Get Ye Flask: Semi-averted, in that the game has a wider range of parsable commands than most, but tends to come up after a few games.