Create An Interactive Narrative Game 1
Twine is a fabulous tool for creating interactive narratives, or adventure games.
The Netflix show Bandersnatch was prototyped using Twine, and it a popular platform for many brilliant indie games.
Inspiration
Because lots of Twine games adopt the second person, "You are in wood, do you go left or right?" for example, people find that Twine games are good for exploring ideas of empathy, of understanding other people's positions, by playing the game as someone else. DepressionQuest is one of the most famous examples of using empathy to help explain what depression is like.
Explore these interactive games below and get a feel for them. Which do you like and why?
One of my favourites is Temple of No, just because it's so funny and plays with the form of interactive fiction, making really good use of the abilities of Twine.
Made With Twine
https://itch.io/games/made-with-twineInteractive narrative games made with Twine. Go play with these then make your own.
Citizens on the Mountaintop
http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/bf2qqjpljuqqpbf6ga8kfg/citizens-on-the-mountaintop-the-story-of-the-civil-war-amendmentsA historical satire of the corporate personhood movement in America, written in Twine.
Ela-TV
https://blog.matthias-andrasch.de/2015/ela-twine-textadventure-with-html5-video/Brilliant, video heavy interactive narrative created with Twine. The story of ELA takes place in a fictive scenario in near-future. In this future the so-called ALGOs are responsible for the administration of cities.
IFDB
https://ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=ratu&newSortBy.x=0&newSortBy.y=0&searchfor=&browse=1Database of interactive fiction (IF), lots available for free or as apps.
The Truth Hurts
https://open.spotify.com/album/2JqdhEGQWi0Fyijv9CRQ0kTHE TRUTH HURTS is a choose-your-own-adventure book in Spotify.
Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1g84m0sXpnNCv84GpN2PLZG/the-game-30th-anniversary-edition
The Temple Of No
https://crowscrowscrows.itch.io/the-temple-of-noFun and fantastic example of what can be done with the form of interactive narrative in Twine.
Actual Real Time Machine
https://zachstronaut.itch.io/actual-real-time-machineA virtual time-machine experience.
Bandersnatch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror:_BandersnatchBandersnatch was an interactive movie by Charlie Brooker available on Netflix.
From Wikipedia: In Bandersnatch, viewers make decisions for the main character, the young programmer Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead), who is adapting a fantasy choose-your-own-adventure novel into a video game in 1984.
The Warden Game
https://www.waprisonhistory.org/WardenGame/Who has power in prison and how do they exercise it? The Warden Game provides an unexpected way of thinking about these questions. Rather than a total institution of some predictability, the prison turns out to be susceptible to different forms of activity by incarcerated people, their families and loved ones, journalists, guards, judges, state legislators, and political appointees.
Made With Twine
https://itch.io/games/made-with-twineA huge collection, many free of games, comics and novels written with Twine.
Tools
Other tools do exist for creating interactive narrative games. EKO Studio is interesting because although it's a bit like Twine, instead of being primarily text, you assemble inter-connected videos.
Once you have created your game or story in Twine you may want to explore the perhaps more advanced and difficult tools UltraOutliner, Episode or Ink. Alternative tools are often used by writers working in the games industry as part of a team of games designers.
The main thing for you to learn is how interactive narrative storytelling works and get experience designing a branching network.
Twine
http://twinery.org/Write interactive narrative fiction (the online version). Create your own adventure game!
UltraOutliner
http://ultraoutliner.com/Unusual Russian tool for designing interactive narratives or story plots. You enter characters, and locations and plot points, linking them together.
At the end, you can export as a .csv file.
Study Crafter
https://studycrafter.com/An amazing tool to create interactive games with a flow-coding interface, but equally could be used to make training materials. The primary use for this tool is to collect research data about what choices people made.
Free.
Learning
I have made a downloadable Example Twine Project that has examples of how to use Twine code to do certain things, and it also has the beginnings of a story too, Marion Sparkle and the Mansion of Fire, just so you can noodle around with Twine's features, learn how it works, the go and make your own.
Learning Twine 2.9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKFZhIHD7XkCreate your own textual adventure game
The Chapbook Guide
https://klembot.github.io/chapbook/guide/All the special formatting codes you need to make Twine great