4 ms·

I want to like Twine games and stories, I really do. I always find them underwhelming, though. I can see how these might be of interest to a very young audien

I want to like Twine games and stories, I really do. I always find them underwhelming, though. I can see how these might be of interest to a very young audience, in analogy to the CYOA books of yore. But the appeal to a more mature audience, like the appeal of parser games or really video games generally, escapes me. It's always struck me as odd that these games are compared with traditional IF parser games, because parser games (which have their own problems) seem to me to be in another galaxy in terms of gameplay, scope, and complexity. This is an example of how it's hard for me to even see the potential of the platform. Does this ever get beyond clicking on words, with branching storylines? Are there any examples of Twine games that get beyond simple hypertext storytelling?

7thaccount 7y ago
Agreed that these aren't as good as something like Blue Lacuna, but the intended audience is probably different. Kids like simple CYOA type books and are a natural fit, where games like Blue Lacuna are a bit much. Likewise, some adults just want a simple a fun game with no backtracking and complex puzzles. I played one of these for a few hours on my phone once and it was indeed entertaining.
- vanderZwan 7y ago
  It's also intended to be something that children can experiment with themselves, and it's pretty good at that.
RodgerTheGreat 7y ago
A stand-out Twine game that comes to mind is _Horse Master: The Game of Horse Mastery_: https://tommchenry.itch.io/horse-master https://tommchenry.itch.io/horse-master It is a slow-burn science-fiction horror story with light elements of simulation and random chance which liven up the CYOA formula.
jccalhoun 7y ago
I agree that these are pretty limited. I taught a class on interactive narrative last year and I really wanted to have my students make something like Zork but there just isn't anything user friendly enough (The class had no per-requisites so I didn't want to assume the students had any technical knowledge and many didn't) so I chose twine. I was pretty happy with what they did because there was a really wide range of topics that aren't usually seen in gaming (one was making dinner, another was going to the mall, another was a text based football game. There were a number of games about more-traditional topics too).
- fsiefken 7y ago
  Inform7 with the natural language rules is pretty user friendly, but it's not web based and requires some technical background. But with a tutorial it students can get a long way, it also has publish to html built-in http://inform7.com/ http://inform7.com/
iudqnolq 7y ago
Open Sourcery is a very good Twine game with significant player agency. > BEL/S is an Elemental Firewall: a fire elemental bound with C++ code to protect a network of people and places. She can learn things, develop relationships, and even gain sapience. Or she can burn everything with fire. It's up to you. The essential gameplay centers around a loop where you choose places to scan. You have a variety of choices to make for each threat, from annihilating them to passing off the issue to your creators to making friends with the viruses that attack the systems you were tasked with defending. (You do make choices by clicking) The choices you make affect your options in the final fight, which even triggers actions based on a real-time countdown clock and not just clicks (by default, you can toggle in settings). It gave me a hilarious and enjoyable few hours of gameplay. You can play the initial bit online, and the preview is representative of the whole game's appeal. http://abigailcorfman.com/OpenSorcery.html http://abigailcorfman.com/OpenSorcery.html $4 on steam, with an extra $4 Christmas-themed DLC recently released. https://store.steampowered.com/app/585180/Open_Sorcery/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/585180/Open_Sorcery/ Note: BEL/S does not appear in-game or out-of-game to be open source, in case that's going to piss someone off. I still found the pun cute.
mwcampbell 7y ago
Twine's creator, Chris Klimas, acknowledged one of its key limitations in a blog post several years ago [1]: > I also think that if you stick with Twine long enough, you’ll eventually bump up against its limitations. Maybe someday, you’ll want to have the player put an apple inside a knapsack and then place that in a refrigerator the player can push around. Games have been created from stranger mechanics. > Twine doesn’t have a world model. It has variables and flags, but those are tough tools to work with if you are trying to build a simulated world that can be toyed with in any real way. > So eventually, after futzing helplessly around with $appleInKnapsack, $knapsackInFridge and not $knapsackOnTopOfFridge, and $fridgeDoorClosed, you might think to look for something better to realize your dream of objects containing objects containing objects. You might try Inform or TADS (or maybe even ADRIFT or Hugo, if you are well-read). You hopefully have heard of them in your short interactive fiction career. Ideally, you regard them as neighbors three doors down; you haven’t had a chance, or a really a reason to visit, but you wave to each other on the way to work. They’ve always seemed like friendly, good-natured people. Talking with them is a natural next step. [1]: https://chrisklimas.com/129/ https://chrisklimas.com/129/
egypturnash 7y ago
I have seen a lot of Twine games, from the simple to the complex, and I have found that for every single one of them there is a point where I stop really reading the pages and just kind of start quickly skimming the pages and clicking whatever I think is most likely to get me through the story the fastest. Soon after, I usually come to the point where I close the tab and never come back. For all but the shortest Twines, this is well before I've come to an ending. I want to like them too. But they just resist me getting into them. I've pretty much given up.
vorpalhex 7y ago
I'm driving a story through a faux SMS interface using a Twine like engine (Ink). Many games that are very rich use Ink/Twine/etc to drive dialog or narrative elements.

7thaccount 7y ago

Agreed that these aren't as good as something like Blue Lacuna, but the intended audience is probably different. Kids like simple CYOA type books and are a natural fit, where games like Blue Lacuna are a bit much. Likewise, some adults just want a simple a fun game with no backtracking and complex puzzles. I played one of these for a few hours on my phone once and it was indeed entertaining.

vanderZwan 7y ago
It's also intended to be something that children can experiment with themselves, and it's pretty good at that.

RodgerTheGreat 7y ago

A stand-out Twine game that comes to mind is _Horse Master: The Game of Horse Mastery_: https://tommchenry.itch.io/horse-master https://tommchenry.itch.io/horse-master It is a slow-burn science-fiction horror story with light elements of simulation and random chance which liven up the CYOA formula.

jccalhoun 7y ago

I agree that these are pretty limited. I taught a class on interactive narrative last year and I really wanted to have my students make something like Zork but there just isn't anything user friendly enough (The class had no per-requisites so I didn't want to assume the students had any technical knowledge and many didn't) so I chose twine. I was pretty happy with what they did because there was a really wide range of topics that aren't usually seen in gaming (one was making dinner, another was going to the mall, another was a text based football game. There were a number of games about more-traditional topics too).

fsiefken 7y ago
Inform7 with the natural language rules is pretty user friendly, but it's not web based and requires some technical background. But with a tutorial it students can get a long way, it also has publish to html built-in http://inform7.com/ http://inform7.com/

iudqnolq 7y ago

Open Sourcery is a very good Twine game with significant player agency. > BEL/S is an Elemental Firewall: a fire elemental bound with C++ code to protect a network of people and places. She can learn things, develop relationships, and even gain sapience. Or she can burn everything with fire. It's up to you. The essential gameplay centers around a loop where you choose places to scan. You have a variety of choices to make for each threat, from annihilating them to passing off the issue to your creators to making friends with the viruses that attack the systems you were tasked with defending. (You do make choices by clicking) The choices you make affect your options in the final fight, which even triggers actions based on a real-time countdown clock and not just clicks (by default, you can toggle in settings). It gave me a hilarious and enjoyable few hours of gameplay. You can play the initial bit online, and the preview is representative of the whole game's appeal. http://abigailcorfman.com/OpenSorcery.html http://abigailcorfman.com/OpenSorcery.html $4 on steam, with an extra $4 Christmas-themed DLC recently released. https://store.steampowered.com/app/585180/Open_Sorcery/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/585180/Open_Sorcery/ Note: BEL/S does not appear in-game or out-of-game to be open source, in case that's going to piss someone off. I still found the pun cute.

mwcampbell 7y ago

Twine's creator, Chris Klimas, acknowledged one of its key limitations in a blog post several years ago [1]: > I also think that if you stick with Twine long enough, you’ll eventually bump up against its limitations. Maybe someday, you’ll want to have the player put an apple inside a knapsack and then place that in a refrigerator the player can push around. Games have been created from stranger mechanics. > Twine doesn’t have a world model. It has variables and flags, but those are tough tools to work with if you are trying to build a simulated world that can be toyed with in any real way. > So eventually, after futzing helplessly around with $appleInKnapsack, $knapsackInFridge and not $knapsackOnTopOfFridge, and $fridgeDoorClosed, you might think to look for something better to realize your dream of objects containing objects containing objects. You might try Inform or TADS (or maybe even ADRIFT or Hugo, if you are well-read). You hopefully have heard of them in your short interactive fiction career. Ideally, you regard them as neighbors three doors down; you haven’t had a chance, or a really a reason to visit, but you wave to each other on the way to work. They’ve always seemed like friendly, good-natured people. Talking with them is a natural next step. [1]: https://chrisklimas.com/129/ https://chrisklimas.com/129/

egypturnash 7y ago

I have seen a lot of Twine games, from the simple to the complex, and I have found that for every single one of them there is a point where I stop really reading the pages and just kind of start quickly skimming the pages and clicking whatever I think is most likely to get me through the story the fastest. Soon after, I usually come to the point where I close the tab and never come back. For all but the shortest Twines, this is well before I've come to an ending. I want to like them too. But they just resist me getting into them. I've pretty much given up.

vorpalhex 7y ago

I'm driving a story through a faux SMS interface using a Twine like engine (Ink). Many games that are very rich use Ink/Twine/etc to drive dialog or narrative elements.