My 10-year-old daughter is reading a choose-your-own-adventure book and was really interested when I mentioned that there is a computer program like Inform that would let her write her own story.
Is there an equivalent to Jim Aikin’s Inform 7 Handbook? She read that from cover to cover a year or so ago and it gave her some good ideas and a good understanding of Inform. I’ve just got as far as seeing that there are reference guides and a cookbook at Twinery. Are they suitable for children, in terms of complexity and content, or would you recommend something else instead or as well?
Also, are there any Twine games you would recommend? Thanks.
The book “Make Your Own Twine Games” by Anna Anthropy is available on Amazon. It claims to be for kids 9-12 and seems to have gotten very good reviews.
Disclaimer: I have not read the book myself and don’t know if it’s appropriate for your daughter.
Thank you all. I’ve ordered the Anna Anthropy book rather than the Melissa Ford book as it’s newer (2019 vs 2016), cheaper on Amazon (£10 new vs £45 second hand), and aimed at children her age range.
While I can’t think of another book to suggest, I can state that the official Twine Discord server has been deliberately setup so that it can also be use by school students, and that it has a PG-13 rule that is strongly enforced on all but two of its channels (1) by both the Moderators as well as by many of the Twine Community Members that use the server.
The Twine Discord server has channels dedicated to answering technical questions about each of the major Story Formats, as well as channels for answering questions about Writing and Game Design.
Disclosure: I am one of the Moderators of the official Twine Discord server.
(1) those two channels are setup for discussing Twine related projects that contain Adult Content, and access to them is controlled by Discord’s own Age restriction sub-system.
I bought the Anna Anthropy book. It was excellent and set her up well to write her own stories.
A couple of the online recommended games/stories weren’t suitable for her age range, so she didn’t play those. I can’t remember exactly why. I think the whole point of one was to use the F word in the final passage. Nothing a teenager couldn’t cope with though.
Also I downloaded the Twine app instead of letting her on the Twine website, as the website home page lists many games which would be disturbing even for an adult. If she were still interested in Twine as a teenager I’d definitely be wary.
Overall the book was very good and I’d recommend it.