G’day! I’m Dan. A game designer from New Zealand. I’m finally ready to share our new project. I grew up on text based games like HGTHG and the Hobbit. Loved Fighting Fantasy. This is my first contribution to the world of interactive fiction.
StoryMate is an easy way to create Interactive Fiction stories. Pen your own stories or use our AI assistant to help you get that creative ball rolling.
We are targeting hobbyists, teachers, and tinkerers but equally it is usable by anybody who has a story they want to get off their chest.
It is still early days for StoryMate. Please let me know if you’d like to check it out. We’re keen for feedback and want to ensure your thinking is captured in the next release.
I gave it a try, and it’s definitely a great start!
I made a quick story about a person choosing how to spend their evening with their dog and all of the images and prompts were such a nice addition to the writing experience for someone who is VERY casual about trying to create something fun - and it worked when playing, too.
I’m still trying my hand at learning Inform 7, but this was so fun and satisfying! I had a tiny, cute, and visually-accessorized game up and working in literal minutes.
Maybe. We spent a lot of time refining the prompts and system prompts to make them suitable for interactive fiction and games - and yep that includes some behind the scenes magic to keep the story on track.
This is really cool. Like the picture generation as well.
One suggestion;
It took me a while to figure out how to set the choice text. I thought perhaps the names of the passages linked would be used as the choice name, but instead you have to go back and edit the original passage to assign the choice link names.
So;
in the absence of specific link text, could it use the passage name as the choice text?
Well for passages on the screen - kinda. There’s definitely nuance and difference. Twine is open source and if anything, its a total compliment to Twine
I feel like we’re copying some of the best bits from Twine and innovating where we feel like its fun to be innovating and where we can add value. Thanks for your comment though
Thanks for the tip. I am aware of inklewriter. A lot of my friends in the NZ games industry who work in this space professionally tend to talk about that one a lot. It’s not always positive though
Just looked at the Moiki screenshots. There are definitely some cool things going on there from a feature perspective e.g. the counter in the top right, but from a visual style perspective its not my thing.
There’s a saying in Alcoholics Anonymous, “take what you like, and leave the rest” which is essentially how I view the world of design.
For me I’m still enamoured by this space and my own experience playing text adventures as a kid. We will continue to make StoryMate more accessible and maybe even more targeted to teachers, young people & hobbyists. And if people use it that’s great. I hope they do. Either way I have enjoyed looking at IF tools through a game designer lens. The learning that comes with any product design project is always a worthwhile pursuit in my mind
visually.