I have been interested in making a simple text based adventure for a while now. I finally have some free time to work on it but I’ve been having some issues in finding the right program. So far I have tried Twine and Ren’Py. Twine seemed to be the easiest to work with but limited in capabilities (unless I have missed a thing or two). Ren’Py on the other hand seems too advanced and more focused on the anime style graphical novels. I’m looking for something that can replicate the concept I made below:
As you can see it’s pretty basic. I would only need for the text to be centered above, have the options on the left below with a select cursor and a picture on the right side. In the background I would like to have a music track playing for ambience. A fade-in/fade-out option would be nice as well but not required. As expected multiple choice answers means the game can go in multiple directions.
I’m hoping someone can point me in the right direction because I’m finding some issues in trying out different engines. Since I installed Ren’Py, PhotoShop for example now shows me a “no dc” watermark on every picture I try to work on for some reason, I would like to avoid messing around with this computer too much.
I’m not an expert on Twine, but if you believe it’s limited in capabilities, you should check out Heretic’s Hope by G. C. Baccaris, it might change your mind! The author does a series of Twine CSS tutorials you might like to check out.
Seems I have definitely missed some things with Twine. I will check out the posted game and tutorials and get back to trying things out with Twine. Appreciate the resources!
Edit - Oh wow. I was definitely wrong on Twine. One question I have left now is, the game seems to be a browser game, does Twine allow for installable executables to be played offline on PC?
If you’re looking to use Twine to its greatest potential, I suggest looking into the sugarcube language format instead of the harlowe format that it defaults to. You can change it right in the editor. Twine itself is basically the wrapper and sugarcube and harlowe are completely different scripting languages. Harlowe has limitations that sugarcube does not.
The short answer is “no”.
The longer answer is that since the compiled game is just an HTML file, you can use electron or nwjs to make your own executable from it (at the cost of an additional 100mb in size).
nwjs is a lot easier to use than electron since it basically just requires you to zip up a directory and drop it into a folder. Electron requires creating a project JSON file, which isn’t really that difficult but is still more work than just zipping a directory.
But an html-file allows you to play offline on any platform with a decent browser, whereas an executable will only run on a specific operating system (like Windows or OSX). So in most circumstances there would be little benefit to this. (Not to mention that people will be a lot more willing to check out an html-page than to run a .exe file they know little about.)
I don’t disagree. I was just answering the question. They specifically asked about creating an executable. (Both electron and nwjs support windows, linux, and mac.)
I assumed maybe they wanted to put it on steam or something in the future which doesn’t support HTML files like itch.io does. Almost no one has ever put a twine game on Steam, but many dream of the idea, so it’s one of the first questions asked when checking out the engine.
Thanks tayruh, that’s very good to know. The game is indeed meant with a commercial goal in mind which is why I asked.
Which engine besides Twine would be suitable for this, if any at all? I’ve been looking into MonoGame since I have some XNA experience from way back when but before I go into that I would have to know for sure there’s no easier way for me to work with no coding involved.
