Twine
More info
- Creator
- Chris Klimas
- Released
- Type
- Interactive fiction tool
- Website
- twinery.org
A tool for branching text stories in which every passage is a box on a map and the links between them are the game.
Chris Klimas released Twine in 2009. You write passages, link them with [[double square brackets]] and watch the graph grow on screen. The output is a single HTML file you can host anywhere. Logic — variables, conditions, inventories — comes from a swappable story format; Harlowe is the default in Twine 2, while SugarCube is the pick for anyone who wants more JavaScript.
The barrier to entry is so low that Twine became the voice of a whole wave of personal, experimental games around 2012–2014, made by people who had never thought of themselves as programmers. The same tool is used today to sketch dialogue and quest flow before it moves into a proper engine.