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Making with Twine#

At its heart, Twine is a tool for creating hypertext.

The difference between hypertext and a linear story, the kind found in books and magazines, is that it allows the reader to have some measure of control. In other words, the reader has some ability over what they interact with next. In a story about a haunted house, for example, the reader might be able to tell the protagonist to "Turn around and run" or "Venture deeper into the mausoleum". In a nonfiction, personal piece, the reader might ask to learn more about my close relationship to my aunt.

Readers navigate hypertexts through clicking on links. In this sense, most users are seasoned hypertext readers by navigating to this very page!

Because hypertext branches so much, it's easy to get lost in the work. Much of Twine is dedicated to helping keep track of a work's structure visually with a Passages View, so authors see what their readers' experience will be like.

Making Games with Twine#

Can I make games with Twine?

Of course!

However, things a little more complicated than they initial appear. Twine itself can be thought of as more or less an editor that helps package up Stories. What provides the underlining conditional logic, variables, and other trappings of game programming are Story Formats.