I Made my First Twine Game and This is What Happened (and What I learned!)

The video game that made the biggest impact on me as a kid was the Playstation 2’s (PS2) Jak and Daxter, a platformer beat-em-up. However, I was never able to get that far into the actual story. Hilarious as it is, the very first boss of the game, a giant plant monster, was my biggest obstacle. After getting incredibly frustrated about failing the plant boss fight, I decided to erase my data and start from the very beginning, hoping that a clean slate would help my chances.

But then, I restarted again.

And again.

And again.

No matter how upset I got from dying in the same spot over and over, restarting the game surprisingly never got old. The simple story of roaming around Sandover Village and helping the townspeople with tasks was enthralling enough for me to never get tired of the game’s introduction (which probably made up around 1% of the main story).

However, when I finally defeated the plant boss, the rest of the story opened up to me, and I was even more drawn into the game like I had never been before.

This game wasn’t the piece of media that made me realize I was in love with storytelling. Telling stories and hearing others tell their stories has always been something I loved to do. In particular, the video game space is the medium that I want to venture into for telling stories, whether I tell my own or help others bring their narratives to life. It’s with this goal in mind that I created my very first Twine game. Twine, for those of you who might not know, is a tool used to craft interactive fiction. For many of those who want to get into the story side of gaming, this tool is what many game writers and narrative designers suggest is the best way to start. So, that was where I began.

The Catalyst

I’m going to be frank, I had been learning about Twine for a while before I made my very first interactive fiction. Articles, videos, and playing Twine games myself were all research for when the day came that I would take the tool on myself. Everything was telling me to “Just go make your game today!”, but for some reason, I was too nervous. Maybe it was the intimidation of trying something completely new, or maybe it was my fear of getting too frustrated and giving up.

But then the opportunity arose.

A narrative designer who I had reached out to sent me a job posting for a Narrative Design Internship. Among the requirements, they (naturally) required a portfolio of three pieces being anything from short stories to excerpts of novels to game writing. I found a short story and excerpt of mine that were perfect for the portfolio, but for my third piece, I knew I wanted to switch things up to stick out a bit more from other applicants. That’s when it hit me.

This was the perfect opportunity to craft my first Twine game.

The Beginning

Thinking up what Twine game I should make was definitely the hardest part of the whole ordeal. The company I was applying to had mainly worked on action, adventure, and fantasy games (or various combinations of those three). After examining all my pieces of writing, I chose my first piece which had all three genres together, and my second that was set in the modern day with a domestic plot since they had made a couple of those kinds of games too. Seeing these samples as my two extremes, I wanted to make a game that bridged the gap between these two in one way or another. I began throwing ideas at the wall and nothing seemed to stick (although, I have gotten some future game ideas from this endeavor). That’s when I turned to ol’ reliable: my list of writing ideas stored in the Notes app on my phone. Every time an idea (good or bad) comes to mind, I immediately write it down on this ever expanding note page. Now, most of these ideas were just for stories and not necessarily for interactive fiction, but one idea I had written down stuck out to me.

The note read:

“Idea: a girl lays down for a nap in the forest, when she wakes up, she finds it not like it was before, she runs into animals who can talk and other creatures and living things that ask her for help on various tasks until she comes across a door frame that is filled with white light…will she enter it? Or not?”

Once I read it, I was sparked with inspiration, and I began to grind out an outline for the game. I think it was the vagueness of the idea’s conclusion that gave me the perfect opportunity to create many storylines. However, this story idea wasn’t without some changes. Instead of a girl main character, I wrote in the second-person perspective to immerse the player into the storyline and make choices feel more impactful. I stuck with just three animals for the player to interact with, and removed the random doorway (replacing this with a cave). There was one more thing that was in the initial note that I have removed from this article: the story’s theme and message. That’s something I won’t divulge here as I would rather you play the game yourself to figure it out (keep your eyes peeled for the link!).

After writing the four-page outline, I moved on to writing the whole game’s text. This endeavor took the largest amount of time and stress to do which resulted in a total of twenty-one pages of story with seven different endings. Rewriting and polishing ensued, and then it was ready to be inserted into the Twine software.

Trying my Hand at Coding

Now, Twine is probably the easiest software to pick up for someone who’s never coded before. I did take a coding camp many, many years ago, but I remember little to nothing (other than moving a dog around a box to collect tennis balls for some reason?). Coding the game was definitely the part of the process that I was the most intimidated by. However, with a few failed attempts under my belt, I was already a bit more knowledgeable about how Twine worked in the simplest of terms. When I talked to the people who suggested I try my hand at Twine, I asked them what was the best way to learn how to use it. All of them suggested looking up tutorials, but this is easier said than done. Many Youtube Twine tutorials are very outdated, and at times, had no way to ask questions in the comments (either they were turned off or the user was no longer active).

Eventually, I came across an amazing resource: Damon Wake’s blog. He had a whole list of articles for Twine beginners, and it helped me immensely for this project. He’s also a great guy that I’ve had the pleasure of working with on his podcast! Check out his podcast, Flash Wednesday, where he voices his own short stories and invites others to voice the characters as well. Here is the episode I voiced in called The Three Doors. It was such a fun story, and working with him and Nad Pham was a blast!

Anyways, back to talking about Twine. Damon’s blog along with many Google searches helped me code my way to victory, but this did not come without a few discoveries of my own. So, this will be everything I would tell a fellow beginner about Twine as they learn to use it for the first time.

Twine Tips and Tricks

1) Write everything you are changing in Twine in a separate notes app.

Trust me, it will bite you in the butt later if you don’t do this. If you are thinking of changing text or code, make sure you have it copied and pasted somewhere else for you to easily reinsert if testing goes wrong. There is an undo and redo button in the software, but once you leave the passage you’re working on, those buttons don’t work when you go back into it. So, when you’re making changes and testing them, put the thing you are changing in a separate place to make sure you don’t lose it forever.

2) How to rename passages so they are not labeled exactly the same as the choice option.

You would probably rename passages for more complicated pieces such as naming each passage after the chapter and part of your story (ex. Ch1 pt. 30). When you create a choice in Twine, it branches off into two or more new passages which will be named exactly what was written in the choice text. If you don’t want them to look that way, do some pre-planning. Before you code in any of your choices, create labels for each of them. Then, when you are coding in the choice, place the two starting brackets([[), put the written text choice for within that passage, then create a pipe (|), and finally write in the new label, ending it with two closing brackets (]]). It would look something like this: [[Help the Bird | Ch.1 pt. 5]]. “Help the Bird” is written within the text of that passage which is the only text the player will see, and the new passage created from that choice is now called “Ch. 1” which only the creator will see. Try it out yourself, and you’ll see what I mean.

3) Do not outline your story in Twine.

I have mentioned this once in the article already, but outlining within the tool itself just makes things messy when you want to make changes. The above tip is where I learned to not outline in Twine since I began making broken passage links when trying to rename my choices.

4) Speaking of making broken passages, try to avoid those.

Even after you polished everything and finished writing, you are still going to see things you want to change. Of course, you can do this, but if you are changing how choices are worded, you’re going to be making whole new passages that aren’t connected to the rest of your story. Remember your trusty pipe (|), and make sure to put the name of the old passage to the right of the pipe so your edits are without any hiccups.

5) If you decide to work with variables in your game, create a startup passage.

If you don’t know what a variable is, definitely check out Damon’s page to really get the gist of what it is before coming back here. When you first start creating your game, create a choice called “startup” then exit the passage to make sure it shows up. Go back into the passage and delete that “startup” choice, creating the dreaded broken passage (which you actually want this time). When you exit again, you should see a floating passage connected to nothing. Use this passage to place all your variables. This way, the player can never accidentally come across this passage, and it keeps things a bit more organized. (Update: There is a way easier method to making a startup page! Simply press the green "+passage" button in the lower right of the screen. It won't change anything of what you have worked on so far, and it's quicker too. Thanks Damon for catching this!)

6) When you start using too many commands, you are going to come across glitches galore.

If you start putting too many commands for what you want the text or background to do (such as changing the color of the text, the color of the background, and the motion of the text all at once in the passage), then the page will start glitching. This is what happened to me, and I had no idea what to do. I tried to troubleshoot myself then when that didn’t work, I looked up forums, videos, and articles to answer my question, but I couldn't find the solution anywhere. I was starting to lose hope, and this was a day before I wanted to turn in my final product. So, I did something I’ve never done before: created an account on an online forum and asked the internet for help.

Slight side tangent: Now, I advocate asking for help when you are stuck on something, so that wasn’t the reason I’d never joined an online forum for help before. When I was growing up, I was taught that the internet is full of strangers stealing your information from even the simplest of interactions. Bottom line: Only talk to people you know in real life. As I grew older, I knew this wasn’t true, but the idea was pretty ingrained in me. This conditioning has made it very difficult for me to interact with people online, which is now a critical skill in a COVID-19 world. So, for me, creating this account and asking for help on a forum was a big step for me and thankfully, it helped me out immensely. Side tangent over.

The glitch that I couldn’t fix was the screen flashing whenever I selected certain choices while the motion I had for some text also didn’t work. After asking for help on The Interactive Fiction Community Forum, I was provided the answer in less than 24 hours. Basically to fix this problem, utilize the Stylesheet for putting commands that apply to multiple passages. Here is the link of my desperate plea, and the answer explained more thoroughly by a very knowledgeable member of the IF community.

Time to See the Finished Product

After much coding and learning, I’d finally made a game that I was proud of. I playtested it myself a few times then asked a friend to test it too to gather feedback. Feedback is so important to any creative endeavor. However, my stance on feedback is that you don’t HAVE to take every piece of advice dished out to you. People will always have their opinions, and asking two different people the same question on your work will yield two different answers. You have to be conscious of why that person is giving the feedback, if the change will improve your work in your own opinion, why they are giving that piece of advice, and finally, if you will make that change. For instance, my friend is sensitive to certain colors. One of the backgrounds of my passages made it difficult for her to read the text on the screen because it was too close to the color of the text. Being accessible is very important to me so I made the background a different color and actually ended up liking it more than the color before. (Update: Damon made me aware of a website that helps you see which colors work together so it can be more easily seen! Here is the link. Thank you again Damon!) To me, this feedback and other pieces of advice I got really helped me improve my game for submission.

Once everything was as polished as can be, with testing and feedback in consideration as well, it was time to post. When I first heard of Twine, I played some Twine games myself to see what they were like. First off, there are some amazing Twine games out there that are free and are honestly on par with many paid titles. Secondly, all the ones I played were on the same website, itch.io. This website lets people publish their games for free, so I did the same with my own game, just in time for the application to be turned in. A little later, I came back to the site to give my game’s page a bit more pizazz, and I love the way it turned out.

And that is how my first game TimberLimbo was born! Overall, this was a very enlightening experience. Since this was my first time creating any game before, putting my heart and soul into it made me realize all the effort that must be put in for AAA titles, indie titles, and everything in between. I definitely have a better understanding as to why the grind culture has formed around the video game industry, and I truly look up to the video game companies that are making leaps and bounds to dispel that culture. Twine was fun to use, and I can’t wait to create even more games with the tool in the future. Actually, I will be learning to use more advanced game development software very soon. I recently found out that I was accepted into Code Coven, a video game bootcamp, for their Intro to Game Making program in August. I’m so excited to see what I’ll learn, who I’ll be working and learning from, and what games I’ll be creating in the future! Look out for more games from me, and let me know what you think of TimberLimbo.