After a year in the making, we’re proud to launch StoryMate 2.0—a complete overhaul that takes us from playful prototype to powerful platform in the making.
We’ve rebuilt the entire experience to be distraction-free, writer-focused, and ready to scale. We’ve partnered with local UX experts, built a slick template engine, and laid the groundwork for future visual tools.
However, like all the best things in life (e.g. sticky date pudding), the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I’d be really grateful if you could take a look and let me know what you think.
Our next steps are either a visual novel theme + dialogue engine -OR- adding some AI proofreading tech e.g. feedback as opposed to writing for you.
Suffice to say, please let me know where you, dear reader, might find value
Oh dear, giving people headaches just keeps happening. But, anyway, I might check this out! If only to have a more reliable branching story tool. Does it run on iPad by any chance? If only so I have something to do during my commute.
This is neat! I don’t think I personally would use it over Twine, but that’s largely because I’m already very familiar with Twine specifically. I imagine the logic gates laid out graphically on the flowchart could make that kind of feature significantly more approachable to newcomers and I may well recommend this to writers in that position.
I’d be significantly more interested in any feature that actually expands the functionality of the tool than one focused on the text I put into it. I can see myself using a tool that does much the same thing as Ren’Py, but in a more graphical/accessible fashion. But if I wanted Grammarly, I’d just use Grammarly.
Have you thought about running a game jam for this (if you haven’t already)? It’s always neat to see a bunch of games that people have made with the same tool - especially if they’re picking it up for the first time.
Thank you for saying so. I work in education (the intersection of game design dev + education) and one of the driving reasons I had to make this was that a lot of teachers were getting stuck in Twine. That was due to it just be too fiddly; for some writing teachers ANY code is too much code and there were issues with images (live vs published).
I wanted to make all those reasons to not write IF go away and help teachers prepare the next gen of interactive story tellers
This is great. So, in this context, you’re pretty much saying (if I’m interpreting you right), instead doing things like an “AI proofreader”, do the dice roll or other features that, as you say enhance your text. More “ren.py gui” and less “LLM” so to speak.
Are there any features you’d particularly like to see in a Twine / Ren.py hybrid like StoryMate?
Yes, very much so. I’d probably take dice-rolling over the visual novel side of things, even, just because it opens up a ton of very basic options. In terms of Ren’Py GUI features, I’ve never actually got far enough into Ren’Py to make particularly solid suggestions. When it comes to visual novels, I probably am the sort of newcomer who’d benefit from graphical menus etc. even if it’s slower than writing code.
One biggie I almost certainly would find useful, though, is a selection of example assets that are ready to use. Partly that’s because I’d almost certainly settle for Generic-Anime-Guy-1 etc. for my first game in a new tool (since I’m not going to create/commission art until I know it’ll do what I want), but also seeing some working examples gives a kind of template to follow. RPG Maker is fantastic for this. It’s possible to assemble new characters and portraits from the faces/eyes/mouths/bodies that come bundled with the software, and while an experienced developer may well use their own assets exclusively, it’s possible for a beginner to stick with the stock assets initially and then gradually begin to incorporate more and more of their own as they become more confident (perhaps using the existing assets as a base for the new ones).
Hello - this is really nice! Kudos to you. I really enjoy the lack of jank.
Obviously feature creep is a real thing – that said I would love to know if the following features have been considered and if so if they are in or out of scope:
can inline text links be reflected in the Plan screen? That is, I see that if we add links at the bottom of a passage, those are reflected on the Plan screen, but if we highlight some text and create a text link to another passage, that link is not reflected on the Plan screen.
if the foregoing were true, then inline text links could also go to Logic points, just like links at the bottom of a passage can. Is this possible already in some way that I don’t understand?
will inline text links be able to link to Logic points in the future?
it also seems like inline text links mostly can’t be edited once made (other than removed) and that it’s difficult to see where they link to (other than through trial and error)
Edit:
Will we be able to link to Passages and Logic points (at the bottom of a Passage) from the Write screen in future?
I don’t know how to delete Logic points once created…
Are in-line comments on the road-map? Something like // comment goes here for the Write screen.
This feedback is extremely useful. Thanks for taking the time
Maybe. I hadnt thought of that. Somewhere along the way we decided that “choices” e.g. auto-generated links at the bottom were the priority and needed to be treated special.
For clarification are you wanting to see inline links at the bottom of a “write” passage while you’re writing (as an aid) AND in the story itself? Or just as an aid?
The delete key SHOULD work. Do you think it needs visual UX and the delete/backspace key? Also, please let me know if backspace doesnt delete it for you
This had not occurred to me but I LOVE it. It should be really easy for us to do this. So if you, as a writer, type // comment it would be visible in the Write mode but not the Preview when you are playing?
I think my “(at the bottom of a Passage),” meant to be clarifying, was confusing instead. What I was trying to ask was:
from the Plan screen, you can create new Passages and you can also connect them. You can also create new Passages from the Write screen, but you cannot connect them there (except when creating an inline link!). I was wondering if it will be possible in future to connect “regular” Passage links together while on the Write screen, just as you can when making an inline link.
so, I wasn’t asking about showing inline links at the bottom of a Passage (sorry about that confusion).
I didn’t realize you could delete Passages and Logic points from the Plan screen (although that makes sense now)! Maybe a little “?” icon that pops up a list of keyboard shortcuts would be useful? Or something like that. A little tiny reference guide always accessible from the sidebar or from a little icon somewhere.
Pressing Delete worked, thank you!
Yes, exactly that!
My immediate use case that I wanted to use it for was for a link that I had changed the name of.
So let’s say I changed it to “–> Bite the bear” but the name of the Passage it goes to is “Nearly Certain Death”. I wanted to be able to put the cursor at the end of “–> Bite the bear”, press Space, press “//” then Space again and then write my comment, which might be something like “goes to Nearly Certain Death passage which tests for value of variable X”…
