I think Harlowe is primarily meant to be an accessible approach for non-programmers, and it’s great for that. It’s the default and since I was just messing around at first I never bothered to change. But it’s not really designed for large complex stories so as the story grew I ended up hacking a lot of things with custom Javascript - something Harlowe discourages, and the interactions between the two can be kind of arcane.
Welcome @elyne !
I agree, my impressions of the major Twine flavors are:
- Harlowe: Meant for small or moderate length stories when you want to really play with the text design - shaky text, blurry text, timed text, multiple text colors, transitions, text replacements.
- Sugarcube: The power tool that does it all and has the handy sidebar and a save/load system built in.
- Chapbook: A happy medium for narrative-focused stories with a more elegant default UI which is easy to write in and do basic customization. It does offer some of the text manipulation you want such as timed text, click-reveal, cycling text, and radio buttons and drop downs, and also simple but solid sound and audio support.
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I’m sure it would have been - if I actually knew Javascript!
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