Since that time, exciting stuff has happened. Some of you backed and promoted me, and I can’t thank you enough for that. I’m now up to a bit over $100 per work, which may not be a living but it’s nontrivial. Anyway, I’ve also produced a bunch of games! Here they are:
Fall of the Candy King, a satirical, graphical RPG starring whimsical candies where you are quizzed on intellectual property law
Hero Contest and Mortal Queue, a pair of mobile-browser-friendly microgames exploring Twine’s abilities and limitations.
In addition, I’ve started a fantasy IF serial novel called “Connected Kit Yanked into the Faerie Court” that’s available to backers only. In it, you play a modern day private eye recruited by a Commedia Dell’Arte style Faerie Court to solve a heinous crime. As my pledges play chapters, they submit their ending ‘scores’ to me, which helps me decide what the direction of the story is going forward.
My upcoming release is Xenobabysitter, a short strategy game inspired by my pledges’ prompts. You play a Sectoid Xenobotanist who has been tasked with watching four werewolf pups for a half hour. Can you keep them entertained enough that they won’t wreck the ship? (I’m not sure yet, since the game’s not balanced yet.)
I’ll keep posting Patreon releases here as they come out. I hope to do a Glulx game soon, since I’ve covered a lot of ground with Twine, but I have to work off all the rust first
Xenobabysitter has moved from alpha to beta and I could really use more eyes on it. If anybody would be interested in playing a short, plate-spinning-puzzle strategy game made in twine, please let me know and I’ll link you or send it.
It’s one of my least narrative games – there’s a bunch of flavor text but the main focus is on the puzzle. Takes 5 minutes to play, very score-based. Hope y’all enjoy.
Well it had to happen sooner or later. I just posted my first absolutely linear twine non-game. Lotsa weird text nonsense but no meaningful choices whatsoever.
There’s a reason for that, though: I was using Twine to tell a story about my transition and the cis gaze.
I’m surprised, this is the first time I think I’ve really appreciated Twine as a medium. The red text appearing in the middle of the earlier paragraphs is a really cool effect and I can’t think of another format that could get across the same feeling of doubt.
So, yeah. You think you can lure me into your crazy Twine world? Have me expecting elephants on surfboards and talking tea cozies over an 80s dayglow color scheme? I mean, it’s certainly possible.
But then you had to go and write thoughtful prose! A compelling, powerful, emotional narrative! And that implementation. Best Twine effect ever. It works so well, a perfect abstraction for what happens when we linger on a what a particularly nasty individual has said or done long after they’re gone. We’ve all been there, I think, in one form or another. So, nicely done.
Thank you, also, for being willing to share such a personal story.
Wowwwww. Thank you for sharing that! It was incredible and intensely personal and really evocative and I love seeing people who are able to take things like this and express how much they struggle with them. Very well done.
