Yeah, sounds like this is more intended for playing in the browser, where Gordian is more of a converter and IIUC WritingFantasy is somewhere in between?
In an effort to get back on topic, G.C. Baccaris often does neat things with formatting: their Neo-Twiny-jam entry Conduit of the Crypt is a good short example (and the two volumes of their Twine Grimoire are a decent introduction to formatting in Twine). If you don’t mind horror my father’s long, long legs is another one to look at: pretty short IIRC, fairly simple narratively, but very effective and creepy presentation stuff.
So, of course I’ve heard of Porpentine, and this thread has mentioned G.C. Baccaris, Litrouke, and Autumn Chen several times. Are there certain standout authors in choice IF whose work must be played?
Going off just awards:
Brandon Patrick Hennessy is the only choice author to outright win IFComp (instead of tying), and has won the Best Game XYZZY (also he is probably the only author where I get physically excited when I see a new game by him; I’ve felt my chest constrict and breathe faster, etc. which is pretty dumb I know, but it’s happened twice).
Abigail Corfman has the highest-rated Twine game on IFDB and came in second in IFComp last year, as well as having a lot of older popular games.
agat (mentioned above as Agnieszka Trzaska) has won Spring Thing twice and is the main person I think of for parser-like games
For Choicescript, Hannah Powell-Smith and Kyle Marquis have both won XYZZY awards (I should say that I love Kyle’s games but his non-Night Road games are a very different style, very huge alternate worlds like ‘Byzantium sci fi’ that may not appeal to everyone)
There are a lot of other twine authors who I personally love (I am always excited for Astrid Dalmady, and I know Pseudavid and Baccaris will always have stunning UI, and there are a lot more) but the above are some people who’ve had success in award ceremonies related to this forum.
That is so not dumb. Or if it is, there’s a lot of dumb people in your camp, and I’m proud to be one of them. I have been close to passing out from joy over a favorite author’s new project, and I like it that way.
All of the recommendations that have been listed in the thread so far are great, though I wanted to throw a particular recommendation based on this comment: Tavern Crawler by Josh Labelle. It’s kind of a send-up of dungeon crawling RPGs but also a really earnest game with interesting NPCs and well-developed side quests. The game is link/choice based but includes an inventory and stats system that impact what choices are available and the success of certain choices. This game does interesting things visually, too, with some cool text effects.
As a side note, Labelle created a followup to this game using ChoiceScript, A Crown of Sorcery and Steel, that does really interesting things with the Choice of Games format. So you could check out both of these games and learn about what’s possible with both Twine and ChoiceScript!
That was just what I was looking for as I am new to this an more of an artist. But Zork got me hooked but I’ve loved the fighting fantasy game books as well.