Twine: Make your own story based game without codding!
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Well let’s start easy shall we? There is an open source project called Twine, that I have used in the past. Although I have used heavy amounts of codding, to create a normal non-linear story, you don’t have to! Twine is a graphical game engine that can create all sorts of games. Although the complexity of the games varies, you can check the games that created in twine by scrolling down in their website's main page. Twine comes with a few story formats but I suggest you to use the default format “Harlowe 3” because that is the only format that comes with visual tools built in. Not to mention the best looking one out of the box in my opinion. Of course Harlowe comes with a setback, that being after a heavy amount of complexity it will chug a little. But it’s no issue since it will be your first game.
How can I learn to use it?
It’s quite self-explanatory, but if you are a good reader there is the Twinery Reference Manual and the Harlowe Reference Manual. Plus, if you need help there is always the Interactive Fiction Community Forums.
That’s a lot of things to read…
Don’t worry, like I said, Twine with Harlowe is self-explanatory. You can just skip the reading part and get to making your own game! But in any case, I will create a comprehensive tutorial on this site for starters, so look forward to that!