inform VS ink

Inform 7 is the most popular IF engine. The best place to download it in 2023 is from GitHub: https://github.com/ganelson/inform/releases

Releases can currently be found via this link: https://github.com/ganelson/inform/releases

Did you know Inform is now (finally) open source?! https://github.com/ganelson/inform

Inform 6 is still being developed, and Inform 7 went open source earlier this year: https://github.com/ganelson/inform

Here's the github repo, it was just open sourced last week. You can compile it from source now, and I imagine the UI frontends will be updated in a couple of weeks. IIRC, compiling directly to other languages is now possible, although I'm not sure how much that impacts your use case.

For those who don't know it, Inform 7 is the venerable "design system" for interactive fiction. It has been freely available for some time with the promise of a release as open source for some time now. Looks like that has happened.

What does this have to do with Inkle's Ink? Well, Ink is a form of engine-agnostic game data creation. At heart, Ink is a narrative scripting language but because it was conceived as middleware, it can be used by many game development stacks. The primary integration is Unity which supports many platforms on its own but Ink scripts can also be run in the browser, Defold, Godot, Unreal and more. You can write Ink once, test it using Inky or Inklecate and deploy it using your desired framework. I can personally attest to running the same Ink script in the browser with ink.js and in the Defold, Godot and Unity game engines.

That's awesome, thanks!

I am aware of Inform 7, I think it is awesome. A few months ago I made a quick demo using Inklescript[1], which I found simpler and more suitable to my project (a Star Trek adventure). Inform 7 remains something I wish to explore in the future when I need something more complex.

Thanks! ;)

---

[1] https://www.inklestudios.com/ink/

As others have said, Twine is really a great starting point for text or choice-based games. If you'd like to get into the weeds a little more, I'd also shout out Ink, which is incredibly flexible and really fun imo, altho it def requires a bit more coding experience.

On the technology side, you might want to check out Inkle: https://www.inklestudios.com/ink/

Start writing in ink or twine.

Otherwise, Inkle is also quite good. (and people have made players for it in Unreal and Unity, so it's not hard to attach to existing game projects.) I don't think it has the nifty visual flowchart though, if that's a piece you care about.

I really like Ink. The developers made tons of games with it like the Sorcery! series, so it has a good foundation, and it's quite easy to write and organize, more than twine in my opinion.