Shortwave is a small team of writers and a couple of stubborn engineers. We make text adventures for Telegram — stories you read a little at a time, that respect your attention and never reach for your wallet mid-sentence.
We started Shortwave because the games we loved as kids — the ones made of nothing but words and choices — had mostly been swallowed by storefronts full of timers and ads. The writing was still out there. The reading, the quiet of it, had gotten hard to find.
So we build the opposite. No ads, because nothing should flash while you read. No upsells, because a story you have to ration isn't a story, it's a slot machine wearing one. And free to finish, every time, because the point was always for you to reach the end.
Telegram turned out to be the perfect home. Everyone already has it. There's nothing to install, nothing to sign up for, and your place is saved across every device you own. You open a chapter the same way you'd open a message — and close it the same way too.
With more in the writing room right now.
Tips welcome, never required. Every ending is free.
Every game starts as prose on a page, edited like a novel. The tech serves the sentence, never the other way around.
Your time and attention are not inventory to be sold. No dark patterns, no manufactured urgency, no guilt.
A story should be able to end. Ours do — completely, satisfyingly, and for free.
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The shelf is small, but every book on it is finished.