Varicella , the interactive fiction one may state reads like a game . The reader is given a task to complete and is able to manipulate the text to complete that task. The task in Varicella is to claim the throne after the death of the king at the Palazzo del Piemonte, the active character Primo Varicella has to achieve this by way of defeating his opponents who are more than willing to get to Varicella first.

Interactive fiction is an adventurous form of narrative, which is a key element in the evolution of narratives. The merging of elements of game and discourse allow for greater interactivity and immersion in the storyworld. Like a book or other styles of narrative fiction, interactive fictions with Varicella as an example afford the reader greater freedom to picture what elements, such as characters and settings look like; for one reader the character or Primo Varicella may look completely different in their mind to how he looks in the mind of another reader. This use of imagination may lead to greater enjoyment in, for example a visual video game where the graphics displayed to the player leave little to the imagination.

Like a game the reader/gamer is in control of a character and must fulfil the given objectives. The reader is more in control of this style of narrative than they are of traditional printed narratives, for example, where they have no control over the story and hypertext and internet fiction, for example, where they have limited control.

One other major difference between interactive fiction and other narrative styles is that interactive fiction stories are potential narratives while others have a set body of text that the reader is to read. The discourse of interactive fiction narratives fully depends on reader interaction, if the reader were not there to read or play the narrative then the narrative would be nonexistent. It is true, however that the reader of Varicella has a set task to complete so there is a pre-existing structure to the narrative, but the reader is given partial freedom to go about the task through exploration of the world. Although, to actually become King of the Palazzo del Piemonte there is only a set few ways of going about this; in this case one could argue that the narrative is pre-set and that the story has been designed in such a way that if you were to actually accomplish the given task you would have to follow the same pattern as anyone who played this ‘perfect’ game and got the prize of the throne in the end.