Ask HN: Best language/framework to develop web-based text games today?

• kni

  1 79 0.0 JavaScript

  An interactive story language in JavaScript inspired by Inkle’s Ink

  

You might want to check out Kni, a JavaScript-based interactive story language for text adventures and interactive fiction: https://github.com/borkshop/kni

• ink

  163 3,885 0.0 C#

  inkle's open source scripting language for writing interactive narrative. (by inkle)

  

I like Inkle's Ink https://www.inklestudios.com/ink/, which can compile to Javascript (though Inkle uses it with Unity and do quite graphics-heavy games, albeit text-driven).

• WorkOS

  workos.com sponsored

  The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

  

• twinejs

  407 1,787 8.5 TypeScript

  Twine, a tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories

• inform7-ide

  35 97 7.7 C

  A design system for interactive fiction based on natural language.

• memalign

  1 - -

• Elm

  198 7,446 5.4 Haskell

  Compiler for Elm, a functional language for reliable webapps.

  

I really like Elm [0] and write all my side projects in it. There are many reasons I like it, but the one that probably plays best around here is that it feels like a very learn-it-for-life type language. It has a release cadence measured in years (the latest version, 0.19.10, was released in October 2019!), and a community that has adapted to match. Elm doesn't release shiny new features often, or even necessarily ever again, but it has everything I need to make every web game I could possibly think of already so that's a good thing.

[0] https://elm-lang.org/

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