I don’t have any plans on getting into the IF market, still on the fence about it. I downloaded Inky and I’m working on a simple story, nothing special–it was a spur of the moment in how the idea came together. So, I kinda want to share this with a few Discord groups I’m apart of, I think they’ll like it.
1 Like
If you’re using Inky and Ink (not Inklewriter, which was online only), I believe it exports to HTML and some other formats commonly used for Unity projects and other systems.
You should be able to share that file directly and privately with anyone you wish via email or your Discord group. Be aware that you don’t have control over whom they share it with after that, so you may want to make sure you trust the people with whom you distribute your file.
Another option if you want more control is you can create a project on itch.io and set it to DRAFT under Visibility and Access which means it’s private and isn’t listed in search nor available to anyone who searches for the game name. From there, you can view the itch site yourself, and click the “secret” button which will display a non-guessable URL in the address bar that you can copy and share with anyone. They can then visit your page with the secret URL and play the game on the page or download it.
If your Inky story is in html format, you can upload it as index.html (or as a zip file containing index.html and supporting media as necessary) and set the file to “this file will be played in the browser”. Then your game will only be playable on the private page page (not downloadable unless you specify it is, there’s a checkbox for that also) and only accessible to those you give the secret URL to.
The secret URL will look something like this: https://pyramidif.itch.io/GAMETITLE?secret=VfcKU0pOt5bi… <-non working example
If you do decide to publish the game on itch (taking it out of DRAFT), anyone who uses the ?secret URL will be redirected to the main game site.
3 Likes
Thank you! This is wonderful information and exactly what I was looking for! I wish this information was more on the first page of Google. I tried uploading it to textadventure.co.uk.
Didn’t work like I thought, even after saving it as an html file.
1 Like
Yeah, textadventures.co.uk is mostly a public distribution platform and may not be exactly what you’re looking for to distribute privately.
Yep. I learned that lesson.