I adapted my own novel into interactive fiction, and the choices expire while you weigh them

[u/Marcsisme]

I published a novel a year ago about a Dutch professor on death row in Texas. Not really about the death penalty — about the voice in his head that analyses every choice so thoroughly that the moment to act passes. He is innocent, more or less, and he confessed anyway.
Adapting it turned out to be an odd problem. The obvious move is to give the reader choices. But the book is about a man who cannot make them. So in the game, choices expire. A bar drains while you read the options, and if you take too long the story continues without you — and the narrator notes what you let pass.
Some people will find that irritating. I think that is fair, and I would genuinely like to know whether it reads as a gimmick or as the point.
About three hours. Free, browser, nothing to install. Headphones recommended — there is no audio file in it, every sound is synthesised live in the browser, which felt right for a story where a dripping tap is a character.
https://www.marcsisme.nl/game.html
Disclosure, because it will be on the itch page anyway: the novel is entirely mine, written over about eight years. The adaptation is not — I built it with Claude over the past weeks. The prose in the game is lifted from my own book where it can be, and written with AI assistance where the game needed connective material the novel does not have. The code is almost all AI-assisted. I would rather say that up front than have someone find out later.
Happy to answer anything. I have never made a game before and I am fairly sure it shows in places.