I've always been a daydreamer. I could spend hours making up characters, relationships, and entire worlds in my head. Writing gave me a way to bring some of those worlds to life, but I always wanted something more.
I didn't just want to imagine a world. I wanted to step inside it.
I wanted characters who could talk back, surprise me, and react to whatever I decided to do next.
Looking for my own story
That eventually led me to Choose Your Own Adventure games and interactive story apps. I loved the idea, but they never quite scratched the itch. You could make choices, sure, but you were still living inside someone else's story. Someone else created the characters, wrote the possible outcomes, and decided which three buttons you were allowed to press.
Then I discovered AI companions, and suddenly the promise was completely different. Create your own character. Give them a personality. Build a relationship. Create images. Roleplay any scenario you can imagine. Take the story wherever you want it to go.
I was hooked.
Down the rabbit hole
Of course, I quickly learned there's a pretty big difference between what some AI companion platforms advertise and what you actually get. So I started trying more of them. And more.
What I found was that there isn't really one "best" AI companion platform. Some are incredible for conversations but mediocre at images. Some are great for roleplay but terrible at memory. Others look amazing until you hit the paywall. With so many platforms, and so many of them promising basically the same thing, figuring out which one is actually right for you can be surprisingly difficult.
I was already spending my time exploring them, comparing them, and figuring out which ones were worth using. So I decided to make a list.
Cherry's List is where I share what I've found, the good, the bad, and the occasionally way-too-good, to help you find the platform that fits the fantasy you're looking for.
After all, it's your story.
You should get to choose the world you escape into.
xoxo,
Cherry 🍒