Twine on phones

Authoring Twine
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Hello,

(I’m new here, I hope posted this in the right place)

I’m currently writing an interactive novel game. But I still am unsure whether to use twine or choice script. I have some programming knowledge but not with these as of yet. My big concern is if twine can be used to publish an app on the App Store that works well? Or if I have to have a browser-based game on itch for phones? I could also imagine creating something in unity if anyone knows of a great plugin for interactive fiction.

I was also curious if there is an audience on itch—if it is possible to create a fan base on there, same as on the choice of games platform?

I’m interested in your opinions on both these systems, pros/cons, and such. :slight_smile:

1 Like
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Hello, and welcome to the forum!

Some thoughts/opinions:

If you like the existing ChoiceScript games, then I think that would be a good option. They are popular, they have a consistent style, people know how to play them, they have well-established distribution channels, and it’s easy to get started in ChoiceScript.
I don’t actually know how much you can customize the style and the mechanics, but that may not be necessary for your story.

Twine would allow you to customize your game in many ways with JavaScript and CSS. It’s easy to get started, but can get more complicated for the fancy stuff. There are quite a lot of examples and helpful people available, but you’ll have to decide if it’s worth the effort (if you’re not already familiar with front-end web development).

About publishing a Twine game as an app: In principle, you can build a hybrid web-app with tools like Cordova or Capacitor. But it also depends on the store… as far as I know, Apple does not really permit such apps, while Google changed its policy sometime ago and allows them now. (Don’t know if that’s the status quo.)

For Unity, definitely check out ink: ink - inkle's narrative scripting language, Ink Unity Integration | Integration | Unity Asset Store.

Regarding itch.io, I think it’s hard to build a fanbase, simply because of the huge number of games. But of course, it can’t hurt to put the game on there, if you don’t have an exclusive licensing deal with another platform. And it would be good to observe the usual rules of marketing: have an attractive cover image and a good-looking presentation page, use the correct genre tags, and potentially build a network by leaving comments and feedback on other game pages (without spam-marketing your game, ideally).

On the Choice of Games forum (and here), there’s the advantage that you have an audience who is already interested in the type of game you’re going to make.

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Thank you for your thorough explanation! :slight_smile:

I do like choice script games, though I feel they are a bit limited in a way that the Twine games seem to be. With your comments, I am leaning towards Twine, mostly because I think I could make the best version of the game there. But Inkle for Unity also looks very nice. Though I still am a bit concerned about actually finding people to play the game, hopefully, I’ll manage somehow.

For people who have experience making Twine games for Itch that people can play reasonably well on phones, how did you do it? And are your players satisfied with the browser format (compare to perhaps choice of games apps)?