Scriptr!

Authoring Other Development Systems
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Do you like making interactive stories?

You do? Same here. And if you’re like me, that also means you probably hate dealing with engines that are confusing, bloated with menus, or focused more on visuals than actual storytelling. It can be overwhelming juggling 50 different things when you just want to write.

That’s why I made Scriptr — a lightweight, offline Windows engine for creating interactive text stories. It saves locally in its own .spt file format, or you can export to .html and style it however you want using HTML and CSS. Then just upload and share it with the world!

Why did I make this?
Honestly, I wanted a tool I wish I had when I started. When I first got into interactive fiction, I was working on a project called Project Zero. It was supposed to be an interactive story in Google Docs. That didn’t work out, and I shelved it. Eventually, I found Ren’Py, and I used it for about a year. But over time, I found it too much—managing all the images, labels, scripts… it just got exhausting.

With Scriptr, you don’t need to worry about all that. You can just write your story in simple scenes and export when you’re ready. No clutter. No stress. No labels. Just storytelling.

And yeah—I use AI to help debug sometimes. Not because I think it’s perfect (trust me, it’s not), but because I don’t have many other options. I’m 15, unemployed, and no one around me knows Python. If that’s a dealbreaker for you, I get it—but I’m doing my best.

So if you’re looking for a simple, free, text-only interactive fiction engine—one that lets you write your heart out without needing a game dev degree—give Scriptr a shot. Go to itch.io and Search for ‘Scriptr’ and it should be there! (links cant be included sadly)

Any and all feedback is welcome. Seriously—feature requests, bugs, anything you think could help make it better.

Thanks for reading,
— Sloan

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Saved the itch.io link and will investigate soon. I take it your tool is written in python and targets web browsers.

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It is written in python, but is actually an application you can download! it uses tkinter so it looks old, but I kinda like that bc its simple and easy to understand!

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Are you familiar with Twine, Ink or ChoiceScript? How would you say your tool compares to each of those? I’m not meaning to downplay the fact that you’ve built something - which is great! - but if you want to get people interested in it, explaining how it’s the same as or different to existing tools that fulfil a similar purpose might help people to work out whether it’s for them.

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TWINE: From what I remember when I tried using it, my UI is much cleaner, as I use TKinter for a kind of outdated design, and so far im fairly certain all the tabs there CURRENTLY (5; File, View, Story Settings, Language, and Help) are likely all Ill need, but that may change

I also provide a scene notes, but I still have to find out how to make those actually SAVE with your scenes so those are temp right now. In general – at least in my opinion – Scriptr is a little bit more beginner friendly, with how easy it is to make a story!

INKY: Id say I drew inspiration from inky a little, i wouldnt say its better, and from what I know theres nothing much that really separates it RIGHT NOW but over time I hope to add more unique features

Choicescript: no license fee to publish stories! Just export them as HTML, style it however you want (if you know HTML and CSS), and then release it on itch or wherever!

In general, i still have a long way to go before its truly unique, if anything im sort of just building an engine I def could have used in the past, and adding features I might have wanted.

also, the App is strictly community driven too! If someone requests a feature, ill do what I can with my current resources to add it or a variant of it! In the future I hope to make it Open source as well for theme support, but I wanna wait till I find a dev who could help me - my only fear for that is that id have to either charge for the app, charge for a feature. Which is why that wont be for a while (im 15 and I have to wait a little longer before I can apply to a job, and idk how long itll be before I can GET the job

IN SHORT: There is not much of a reason you should choose scriptr over the three you mentioned, over time I hope to make it TRULY unique, and make it stand out!

if you have any feedback, advice, or even a feature request id be glad to hear it!

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Hmm, unfortunately, I cannot get Norton Antivirus to relax enough for me to complete the download.

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DL’ it. See later (I have my hands full since saturday…) if behave well under wine.

Only a pair of note: please rename that eula file in something more neutral, like license.txt and that art.3 should be worded better (the rationale is obvious, allowing setting a story in nazi germany or confederate states, but not glorifying said regimes) because there’s a serious loophole
(DISCLAIMER: I know (Roman) law and jurisprudence from a political science perspective (read: more on legislative than judiciary PoV) so I’m not a laywer, &c. &c.)
which IMVHO allows gloryfing questionable regimes. Think on your very words: “if relevant… to plot or character”, this allow a serious loophole, if the plot and character is, say, a confederate slaveholder or nazi officier…

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

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It appears to persist as a zombie process. When you kill it, it comes back.

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I had a look, but there is no real explanation of what you can do, or how to do it. I watched the vid, which was interesting but didn’t really help.

I think a brief overview of the scripting language together with a few examples would really help people get started.

congrats on starting your own system and best of luck with it.

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The problem I’ve had with selecting a choice-based IF system is that none of them seem to be a perfect fit for me.

I’ve made two, very large games in Twine. I was initially attracted by the node-based visual interface, but that now seems dated and unnecessary. Twine also runs very slowly when you have close to a thousand nodes, and can be confusing to navigate. I should add that I’m a professional filmmaker and my machine is very fast! All the different story formats confuse me too, and I gather that it’s important to pick the right one for your project right at the outset, or you’ll run into problems down the line. The experience of making Excalibur put me off Twine and I started to look at other choice-based systems.

ChoiceScript, with its fan-made IDE CSIDE, is an absolute joy to work with. I’m using to make a new version my forty-years-in-the-making game Escape from the Crazy Place. The markup language is simple and intuitive and you can be up and running in minutes. But it’s proprietary, and there are very few options for customising the interface. You can’t even centre text, which is ludicrous. On the plus side, Choice of Games offer the opportunity to monetise your games and handle all of the marketing themselves, but for me the house style, with its stats and highly customisable player character, isn’t a good fit for the sort of games I like to write.

Then there’s Ink, and Inky. At first glance, Ink seems perfect - its IDE Inky is not a million miles away from CSIDE, if a little less easy on the eye. The language itself is similar, but more powerful, with all sorts of affordances such as lists to track information the PC has gathered. It’s much more closely aligned with the style of games I enjoy writing, with their inventory puzzles and state tracking. But Ink has its drawbacks too. Despite being “designed for writers”, it’s a lot less intuitive than ChoiceScript, and the learning curve is much steeper. And it’s designed as middleware, rather than as a complete tool for writing IF. It’s mainly used to create branching dialogue for games with a graphical interface, and meshes well with Unity and Godot Engine. Inky can create a bare-bones HTML game right out of the box, but customising it requires knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, of which mine is minimal. I have thought about learning Unity, but since I want to create browser-playable games it seems like a long way around to get there. All I really want is the ability to include illustrations and a pop-up thing for the inventory and info the player has gathered.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, since you’re designing a new engine, I thought it might be helpful to hear one author’s experience. Most people seem to get on well with Twine, but I come from a parser game (primarily I7) background which might mean I have different needs and expectations. I shall probably stick with Ink, but if your engine can fill the niche better I’d be interested to give it a go!

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tbh its just normal text atp lmao

the tutorial is outdated, sadly, I still need to update it

I removed the Character def (!Add.Char = “Name”) bc it wasnt needed since it wouldnt matter for the export, and it made the preview look weird if you didnt use it before its removal

now you can just do

text: "Hello!"

for text

~Choice(scene) is the choices, it shows as buttons in both preview and export:

~hello!(hi) - would jump to a scene called ‘hi’, as long as it exists!

thats the main syntax i think.

I will update the tutorial soon though!

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If you weren’t aware, Atrament UI is an alternative front end for Ink that supports illustrations and the ability to show an overlay for inventory, etc.

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Oh wow, Atrament looks fantastic. I wish I’d had this when starting Loose Ends!

Back on the main topic, though: I’d second the suggestion to show off some selling points of your new language. Historically, the main thing that makes a new system catch on is a splashy, exciting game written in it, which shows off the sorts of things it can do.

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I was not aware! Thank you very much! :slightly_smiling_face:

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