If you liked Hooked, what you liked was chat fiction: stories told as text messages between characters, read a tap at a time in about five minutes. The closest alternatives split into three groups. Episode and Choices are the big visual story apps with choices and routes. Wattpad is the enormous free library of reader-written fiction. And a set of smaller apps tell a single genre well rather than covering everything.
Which one to pick depends on whether you want horror, romance, or the ability to write your own.
What Hooked actually was #
Hooked launched in September 2015, made by Telepathic Inc., founded by Prerna Gupta and Parag Chordia. It popularized chat fiction: short stories told in the format of text messages between fictional characters, which the company’s CEO described as books for the Snapchat generation (Wikipedia).
The stories ran roughly 1,000 to 1,300 words, about five minutes each, and horror and suspense dominated the catalog. It grew quickly: 1.8 million downloads by 2016, 20 million by 2017, and more than 40 million active users by March 2019, with most readers between 13 and 24. The format charged by making you wait. You read free messages, then hit a delay of about 15 minutes unless you paid for premium.
Those figures are from 2019 and earlier. Check the current store listing before assuming anything about the app today.
The alternatives compared #
| App | Best for | Stories from | How it charges |
|---|---|---|---|
| Episode | Choice-driven drama and romance | Users and the studio | Free to start, in-app purchases |
| Choices | Polished, genre-spanning visual stories | An in-house studio | Keys and diamonds, plus video ads |
| Wattpad | Free reading at enormous scale | Users | Free core, some paid stories |
| Webtoon and Tapas | Visual serials and comics | Creators | Free with waiting, coins to skip |
| Omerta | A mafia romance in texts | One studio | Free daily episodes, optional gems |
| Found phone games | Self-contained mystery | Indie studios | One-time purchase |
Episode #
Episode is made by Episode Interactive, owned by Pocket Gems, and it is the biggest user-generated story platform in this category. Its own site describes more than 150,000 stories and over 25 million registered creator accounts, with more than 10 billion episodes viewed, on iOS and Android.
The important difference from Hooked is that Episode is not purely chat format. Stories are animated scenes with characters, backgrounds and outfits, and you make choices that shape the plot. It also carries licensed properties alongside original work.
Pick it if you want variety and choices, or you want to write stories yourself. The writing tool is the reason the catalog is that large.
Skip it if you want consistency. With a catalog written mostly by users, quality varies as much as it does on any open platform. Check the current store listing for how in-app purchases work before you start a long story.
Choices: Stories You Play #
Choices is made by Pixelberry Studios, a Mountain View company founded in 2012 by Olivier Miao with former Electronic Arts developers, and it launched in 2016 (Wikipedia). It started with romance, fantasy and mystery and by 2018 had added science fiction, horror and historical fiction.
It is the commercial heavyweight of the category. By 2024 it had generated $544 million in revenue on more than 100 million downloads, and it has stayed in the App Store’s top 30 grossing games since 2016.
The economics are worth understanding before you start. Two currencies: keys unlock chapters and refill every two hours, capped at two at a time, and diamonds are bought with real money to unlock premium choices and scenes. There are also 30-second video ads at chapter starts.
Pick it if you want professionally produced stories with strong art and a wide genre range.
Skip it if the premium-choice model bothers you. Diamonds gate some of the more satisfying romantic scenes, which means the best version of a story is the paid one.
Wattpad #
Wattpad is a different kind of thing: a website and app for reading and publishing original fiction, running since 2006 and now owned by Webtoon Entertainment. As of September 2023 it reported more than 90 million users and over 665 million story uploads (Wikipedia). Romance is its largest category, and around 70% of users are women, mostly millennials and Gen Z.
It is prose rather than chat format, so it is the alternative for people who liked Hooked’s stories more than its interface. The core platform is free, with a Paid Stories program added in 2019, so some completed serials move behind a paywall.
Pick it if you want an effectively unlimited amount of free fiction in a specific niche, including a great deal of mafia romance.
Skip it if you want edited work. There is no filter, so the range runs from genuinely good to unreadable, and sorting by reads is the practical way through it.
Webtoon and Tapas #
Both serialize visual fiction, mostly comics, on a free-with-waiting model: episodes unlock over time and coins skip the wait. They are worth knowing about because a lot of the same romance tropes live there in visual form, and the reading rhythm of one episode at a time is the same one Hooked used.
Where Omerta fits #
Omerta is the narrow version: one story, one genre, done at length. It is a mafia romance told entirely in text messages, so it keeps the actual Hooked format rather than moving to animated scenes. You read a fictional New York family’s group chats and late-night messages and choose every reply.
The differences from the apps above are specific. There are three romance routes, and what you conceal and whom you protect carries into later episodes rather than resetting. Season one is twelve episodes of about five minutes each. Every episode and route is reachable free, with one episode unlocking daily and optional gems to skip the wait or open bonus scenes, and the plot itself is not paywalled. It needs no account and saves progress on the device. It is written as a slow burn without explicit content.
Pick it if you specifically want mafia romance and you liked the text-message format.
Skip it if you want a large catalog. One story is one story, and Episode or Choices will keep you busy far longer.
Found phone games, if you liked the mystery side #
Hooked’s catalog leaned heavily on horror and suspense, and if that was the appeal, the better comparison is not a chat app at all. Found phone games put you inside a stranger’s phone with a mystery to solve: A Normal Lost Phone and the Simulacra series are the best known. They are self-contained, usually a single purchase, and they end. We cover them in found phone games.
How to choose #
- Decide on horror or romance first. It eliminates half the list immediately.
- Decide whether you want to write. If yes, Episode and Wattpad are the two real options.
- Look at the waiting mechanic. Nearly every free app in this category charges you in time or money. Knowing which before you get invested prevents annoyance at chapter nine.
- Check what a completed story costs. In diamond-based apps, the premium choices across a full story add up, and that total is the honest price.
The structures behind all of these are worth knowing too, since they explain why some apps make your choices matter more than others. That is in how branching stories work.
Frequently asked questions #
Is Hooked still available? #
Its store listing is the only reliable answer, since apps in this category change ownership and availability regularly. The figures in this article are from 2019 and earlier and describe the app at its peak rather than today.
What is chat fiction? #
Short fiction told as a text message conversation between characters, which you advance by tapping. Hooked popularized the format in 2015. Stories are usually around five minutes, and the format suits cliffhangers because each tap reveals one message.
What is the best free chat story app? #
Wattpad offers the most free reading by a wide margin, though it is prose rather than chat format. Among choice-based apps, all the large ones are free to download and charge through waiting or in-app currency, so compare how each one gates chapters rather than the download price.
Do these apps have explicit content? #
It varies by app and by story, and user-generated platforms are the least predictable, since a story’s content depends on whoever wrote it. Apps with in-house studios are more consistent. Check each app’s store age rating and its own content descriptions rather than assuming.
Which app is best for romance stories? #
Choices has the most polished romance from an in-house studio, Episode has the largest volume through user-written stories, and Wattpad has the deepest free catalog in specific niches. For mafia romance in particular, the niche apps and Wattpad carry more than the general platforms do.