twine is software that allows you to create interactive fiction quickly and easily!

it runs in both windows and mac. i have created a few stories in it and it makes the process easy and fun! here is a screenshot of the interface for twine: 

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here is documentation on using the program itself  and here is a forum where people post about it!

as for games made in twine, here are a few examples:

Play

HOWLING DOGS CONTINUES THE SWEEP

howling dogs won Best Story and Best Writing in the 2012 Xyzzy Awards

and j chastain’s rat chaos won Best NPC for New Rat City

it was held in a MUD so me and j got to explore a little text world (~CYBERDATE~)

it is not enough to say we can replace this nightmare reality with beautiful art–we must consciously ensure the violence of our art

twine succeeded precisely because of its violence–because it was suited to guerilla warfare–a weapon for underdogs

replicating, breeding, virulent–cheap pipebombs and tin can landmines

LOOTER

aliendovecote.com

just a tiny lil 10 second game i made for madam luna

it’s a perfect encapsulation of her criminal lifestyle

i’m lying in bed delirious with sickness knitting words instead of scarves, its all i can do

honesty time, children: IF?

I’m sure for many of you the answer will be yes…

But how many of you Homestuck/Intermission/Problem Sleuth fans have played/read real IF?

I’m trying to decide if it’s worthwhile to do my ‘intro to IF’/’here are some classic IFs’ post here on tumblr. Obviously if this is old hat to everyone, I won’t.

And because I do not disagree with Aaron Reed when he gets annoyed by people just like me who are still highlighting the same IFs from 10 years ago or more (and that is what I’m going to do, pretty much)…

Does anyone have any recommendations for more recent IFs?

For those of you who are just really really confused right now, IF stands for Interactive Fiction, and it is the gaming/reading format that Problem Sleuth and Homestuck are/were originally based on (also sometimes known as Text Adventures, hence “MS Paint Adventures”).

>you are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike

>what do you do?

I am assuming all these likes mean people want an IF post. Unless they just mean ‘yes we know what you’re on about’. I don’t know, maybe you just want recs, but the ones I know are the ones everyone has played so…whatever.

IF, as I mentioned last time, stands for Interactive Fiction. It’s a genre of fiction in which the reader/player is also a participant (to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the work in question). Some people draw a distinction between Interactive Fiction and Text Adventure, the former being more storylike, the latter being more gamelike. I’m going to focus on the more storylike ones.

For those of you who are Homestuck or MSPA readers, the format by which you interact with the game will be pretty familiar: the game gives you some information about your setting and identity, you type commands until something happens.

There’s a fundamental difference in that commands “typed” into an MSPA adventure (back when Problem Sleuth commands were almost entirely user-generated) are being responded to by Andrew Hussie, a thinking human being. While playing a traditional IF, your commands are being responded to by a fairly stupid computer program; it’s probably not going to understand “quickly retrieve arms from safe.” If you’re lucky, it might get “put key in jar” or something of that sort. Maybe.

Get ready to guess the verb, bitches.

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Choose Your Own Adventure REC POST

listen up, peasants! if you guys are waiting for shitletsbedogtier’s CYOA fest later this year, or if you played any of the fun visual novels that came out of HSO and ladystuck, or if you played (wow brag alert) rogue of heart or puzzlestuck, or EVEN IF you ever played one of those super fun choose your own adventure books where you always ran out of fingers to keep in the book to hold all the bits you wanted to go back and make new decisions in later (don’t look at me like that! we all cheated in those friggin books, admit it) when you were a kid (or even if you’re like ‘wtf is a choose your own adventure book’)……….

if you find yourself with an hour to kill (which is ALL OF YOU RIGHT NOW, because otherwise you would not be reading tumblr, LBR), you should check the shit out of these gr8 games:

> CYOA! there is text, and then clicky options! (the last one is ~different~ & also really really fantastic) some content warnings: violence (1st, 2nd, 5th, 6th), abusive situations (5th), gross medical things, body horror, graphic sexual violence, consent issues (6th), uhhh if I forgot something plz let me know

> Text Adventures! this is the one where you have to write sth like “go north”, and then you die by grue. these are three really excellent & different IFs, and you should totes play all of them. content warnings: suicide (3rd, also maybe 2nd? I straight up forget), sexual assault/rape (2nd one, I am pretty sure? I haven’t played bronze in a really long time, I forget some details. it doesn’t happen to the main char, tho, and isn’t graphically described). uhhh in terms of gameplay, the first is the most straightforward, the second is SUPER PUZZLEY, and the third is a conversation that can go in about a million ways, check out her website for some walkthroughs)

> Visual Novels! these are the ones with pictures up the top and text down the bottom. think phoenix wright. these are the most straightforward of all the recs! they’re super fun, & you should totally play all of them, but IMO really only the last one ~plays with the genre~ in any meaningful way. content warnings: physical/emotional abuse (1st), douche guys (all of them), super age difference romance (3rd [OPTIONAL])

ANYWAY I GUESS THE POINT OF THIS SUPER TL;DR POST IS THIS: choose your own adventure games are fucking awesome. and as well as being funny and witty and thought-provoking, they can do really cool things with the actual medium of the game. and TBH I’ve really only seen the non-fannish games take these chances!

so IDK I guess I’m just saying, it would be really cool to see some fannish interactive fiction that’s risky and innovative! (and omg, I need to keep this in mind when I work on something that isn’t the abandoned Investigation, oops)

PS if you’re new at IF, but you’ve checked these games out and had a fun time playing, you should totally try writing one! twine, inform7 and ren’py are three really great, really easy to use programs that you can use to create these kinds of games. if you ever have an afternoon free, give them a go! you will for reals have a blast.

“VIVIAN GIRLS DECIDE-AN-ADVENTURE-THAT-IS-ALL-YOUR-OWN-FUN-TIME-GAME !! By Katy Goodman Hey! Welcome to my adventure game! I coded it using Ruby, because I am trying to learn Ruby, and this is how I chose to practice my skills! As I get better and better at coding, this game will get better and better.”

—This is the most awesome thing ever. (Sorry, not apologizing for a) being excited about prominent women encouraging people to take up coding, and b) their doing so for IF even in a meta-enabling way. Pulitzer that.)

YOU CAN'T GET YE TEXT ADVENTURE

I forgot how frustrating it is to write interactive fiction.

“The Dungeon is a room. The Dungeon is dark. “The black of the room makes you believe that you’ve entered a type of purgatory reserved for sadists and mail fraud criminals.” [if unvisited]”You wonder why you’re even here.”[end if]”

And then that doesn’t work.

I should just stick with regular fiction. Just as many headaches, but headaches that I feel like I want to have.

THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL SHIBE TWINE JAM

wow ~ hypertxt ~ such intrective fictions

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THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL SHIBE TWINE JAM - #SHIBEJAM

WHEN: SATURDAY APRIL 13 2013 18:00-20:00 UTC 

WHO: YOU

WHAT: MAKE A SHIBA MEME THEMED GAME OR STORY IN TWHO HOURS OR LESS USING TWINE

NO REALLY WHAT IS SHIBE: IT’S A DUMB INTERNET MEME ABOUT SHIBA INU DOGS 

NO REALLY WHAT IS TWINE: THE WORLD’S BEST AND EASIEST AUTHORING ENVIRONMENT FOR INTERACTIVE STORIES

THANKS TO MISTY FOR THE ENCOURAGEMENT/PROVOCATION

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Twine resources:

It’s that time of year again! Voting for the 2011 Interactive Fiction competition started just a few days ago. You can download all of this years entries for free, or play (most of) them online. 

I’ve only had the time to play through a handful of this year’s entries, but so far the standout has been Taco Fiction. The Play has been getting a lot of buzz, though I haven’t tried it myself yet — the same for Kerkerkruip (which you have to download —- it’s not available in-browser). 

[In case you’re wondering: What the heck is Interactive Fiction?]

Anna's Grand List of Free Mindfucking Games

The following is a list of games available for free on the internet, either via download or just browser-based, that I enjoy for the simple reason that they completely shorted my brain out the first time I played them. Brilliant plot twists? Metanarratives? Time travel shenanigans? Philosophical choices? They’re all here and I love them for it.

And since I already had this list as a Word Document just for my own reference, I figured I’d share it with the good people of tumblr as well, since I’m sure I’m not the only one that loves getting my head messed with.

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