Hello!
For a while now I've been going crazy trying to remember this old game I played for a short while many years ago. It was an online game, browser-based.
The setting was very strange and surreal, with limited visuals and lots of text. During story sections of the game, you could choose to make various decisions in order to move the story forward, each of which would increase some very obscure and seemingly pointless stat/quality (or something of that nature). They were also optionally time-gated - you could choose to make your decision and have it go into effect (thus moving to the next bit of story) in 5 minutes, an hour, several hours, a day (maybe even multiple days?) with the benefit being that the longer time would increase the quality associated with the decision even more, so only waiting 5 minutes to make a choice would only slightly increase a quality compared to waiting for hours or days. Or at least I think that was the system in place...
The story begins with your character in a strange house far away from any others, out near some cliffs (if I remember correctly). After some initial story bits, you could travel (using a rudimentary world-map of sorts) to a nearby town, where many strange things happen in a story sequence. If I remember correctly, there's a strange parade, and you meet a girl, and for a moment you become trapped in a strange dark room with her surrounded by candles. Then the story bit ends, like a dream, and you're back in the town.
Part of the game also involved collecting strange shadow monsters/creatures with which to fight against others. I seem to remember that you could fight against other players, maybe, but the game was a bit more PvE. There were also various surreal areas you could gaze at, like a lake with an island at the center and what seemed to be an egg on the island, and a gate outside the town guarded by powerful shadow creatures.
That was about as far as I got in the game. Sorry I don't have more details, but if you're interested in helping but need to know more than I'd be happy to rack my brains for a while longer.
Thank you so much for reading this, even if you don't know the name of the game!