Twine is many things
First and foremost, though, Twine is a writing tool, specifically for making interactive stories. It can be used to pen digital text adventures that function much like the old Choose Your Own Adventure or Fighting Fantasy books, from short stories to playable poems. It’s also free and remarkably easy to use. If you can handle a word processor, Twine should be no problem. In fact, you won’t need to hammer out a single line of code.
Sharing stories
Twine is also a publishing platform. Once you’ve developed your Twine story – or written your game, depending on how you look at it – you can release it very simply. Finished stories exist as web pages, meaning they can be easily released and shared across the internet.
Gaming’s diversity playground
Thanks to its ease of use, Twine’s stories have collectively carved out one of the gaming medium’s most diverse landscapes. Twine-spun tales of love, sexuality, gender, comedy and surrealism abound. The tool itself is as close as game development has come to the humble pen and paper, meaning it attracts a delightfully broad pool of creators, giving voice to underrepresented, atypical and also more conventional voices.
A booming platform
The volume of Twine stories available today – and usually for free – is spiralling. Try works by authors such as Anna Anthropy, Michael Lutz, Porpentine, Christine Love, Kim Moss and Jonas Kyratzes to get a taste of some of the best.
Where to start
The best starting point is Twine’s own website, twinery.org. Elsewhere, Anna Anthropy’s brilliantly simple guide to the tool can also be very easily found by bothering Google. Meanwhile, the recently published anthology book, Videogames for Humans contains fascinating conversations with Twine creators curated by Merritt Kopas. And if it sells enough copies, a Twine version is, of course, to be constructed.
