I think you really have something here. I can see the concept being ironed out and be a full game of its own. Great UI, great music, as many others have already mentioned. My thoughts and suggestions, which, I want to emphasize, does not undermine the creativity of your work, in no particular order:
- The main story expanding from a single sentence is also what I’ve thought of before but this is a very clean execution of it. The only issue remaining is, if the player goes off tangent, they may not remember where they were before. All words are of the same color, same font; so helping player preserving their progress OR limiting their progress to just a couple branches at a time, then have them converge every now and then, is likely necessary.
- I think as a tutorial, you could’ve made the very first sentence very short. Just for the player to quickly learn the mechanics. I think operating your UI is intuitive enough; just give the player a chance to settle that in, then throw them into the full story. (I had the same issue with my own game)
- the fading words in/out is a bit delayed from my own point of view. But this is not a universal suggestion - everyone will have a different reaction speed, and your UI need to accommodate everyone, or at least your target audience. I don’t have a good idea off the top of my head here unfortunately.
Good job! I think you’re onto something really unique.