Hi everyone,
I’m a data scientist, a developer, a reader, but I’m also a writer, and I wanted to create a platform that I would actually like to use myself to write interactive fiction games.
So, for the past two years, I’ve been working on this project, adding feature after feature whenever a new idea came to mind. It kept growing and growing, and now I think it’s almost ready — at least for a first public version.
I should mention that I haven’t been programming continuously for the entire two years. I also took some longer breaks to focus on writing a short story and a novel alongside my day job. The plan is to publish interactive versions of them on the platform as well.
So, why another IF creation platform?
I figured that if this platform is interesting and useful to me, it might be interesting to someone else as well.
So, what makes it interesting to me?
It includes several features that I think might be difficult to recreate on other platforms:
- Besides simple choices, players can interact with various minigames.
- There is an image-marking minigame where you can define specific spots in an uploaded image that the player has to find.
- There is an item-placement minigame where the player has to place the correct items in the correct locations on an image.
- There is a connection minigame where the player has to connect terms on the left side with the corresponding terms on the right.
- There is a terminal minigame: a simulated computer terminal where players can find and read text documents or execute programs.
- You can create complex branching dialogues using a dialogue tree with different outcomes.
- You can download your stories as fully playable offline versions.
- You can upload voice audio files for your story text, making it more convenient for players to listen to stories while they’re on the go.
- You can upload background audio to make the experience more immersive.
- You can change the game’s background image.
- Items can unlock new choices.
- You can define quests for players at certain points in the story and set rewards for completing them.
- Players can log in as guests and play stories for free, provided that the stories themselves are free.
- The site has a mobile-friendly version, so it feels almost like a native mobile app.
- …and more.
Features in the backlog:
- An interactive Tutorial
- AI-Decisions: The player can enter free text and the ai decides if the answer is correct or not regarding a given ground truth answer. (Maybe usful for educational interactive games)
- More usage interactions for items (healing, demage, buy and sell them)
- A skills and habit system
Here are some screenshots I’d like to share:
This is the browse page for finding stories:
This is the create page with a selected story:
This is how the story node details look like (the place where you can write sections of your story):
And here is how the interaction node details look like (with a terminal minigame setup as an example):
Here is how the actual game of a story could look:
And here is the play site with a custom background image:
The next steps are to deploy the platform and invite people to test it.
If this sounds interesting to you, or if you have any questions, I’d be happy to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to leave a comment!