works by lit

📚 The Twine® Grimoire 💾 

The Twine Grimoire, created by G.C. “Grim” Baccaris (Hi!), is an unofficial guide to using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) to customize projects made in Twine 2. The Grimoire demonstrates how CSS and HTML can be used in a variety of Story Formats to fine-tune a game’s appearance and behavior, allowing users to develop new skills and create visually and mechanically unique interactive fiction.

✨ Features:

Both Vol. 1 & Vol. 2:

Are 100% free to download

Discuss both Harlowe & SugarCube Story Formats

Provide screenshots and examples of code with each tutorial

Contain sets of exercises to try yourself at the end of every tutorial

📖 Volume I

The first volume of the Twine® Grimoire is geared toward common features that many first-time users are interested in working into their projects, including text styling, link styling, and passage backgrounds.

84 pages

8 sections, including 6 detailed tutorials

Free PDF download

Covers topics like using the Story Stylesheet, tag-based styling, how to organize files, and more

📖 Volume II

The second volume of the Twine Grimoire® focuses on more intermediate and advanced ways to customize a project’s stylesheet. These tutorials are suitable for intermediate users who are familiar and confident with topics and skills introduced in Volume 1.

63 pages

6 detailed tutorials

Free PDF download

Covers topics like creating custom buttons and CSS-based animations, using cycling links, customizing SugarCube’s UI bar, and more

📝 Other Helpful Resources

Twinery.org

Twine Wiki

Twine Cookbook

TwineLab

Twine 2 Guide

Twinery Forums (Read-Only)

Twine Q&A

Intfiction.org Twine Category

More resources, including links to Story Format documentation, can be found in both PDFs.

💻 About Twine®

Twine® is an “an open-source tool for telling interactive, non-linear stories” originally created by Chris Kilmas in 2009; it is now maintained by “a whole bunch of people at several different repositories,” per Twinery.org. I am not personally affiliated with its development process.

Twine is a registered trademark of the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation (IFTF), which “helps ensure the ongoing maintenance, improvement, and preservation of the tools and services crucial to the creation and distribution of interactive fiction, as well as the development of new projects to foster the continued growth of this art form.”

🔮 Supporting the Grimoire

The Twine® Grimoire project is made possible by the support of my patrons on Patreon, who enable me to take the time to write these tutorials, revise them, and compile them into free PDFs. All patrons pledging $2 or more gain early access to the first draft of each tutorial as I write it, and also have the opportunity to make tutorial requests every month.

In the interest of making this resource as accessible as possible to many users, the Grimoire will NEVER have a minimum donation required to download. However, if you would like to support my work, you can do so by either donating on itch, leaving a rating or comment on itch, or pledging on Patreon.

✏️ Enjoy!

I hope the Grimoire will come in handy for my fellow Twine wizards out there!

🪄 Grimoire Updates

Howdy! A bunch of new Twine Grimoire things have been happening!

📖 Volume III

The third volume of the Twine Grimoire® focuses on more intermediate ways to customize a project, as well as other aspects of game development, like data management and testing. Bonus: Resources for images, audio, software, and more. Free PDF, 57 pages!

📖 If And Only If

“If And Only If” is a presentation discussing the use of conditional logic in game design. This download includes a PDF of the full text transcript, a .ppt (Microsoft PowerPoint) file, and .png files of the 33 individual slides. 

This resource was originally a talk given at Narrascope 2022; it was later included in HandEyeSociety’s SuperFESTival 2022, and has since then been used as a guest lecture to teach several cohorts of Writing Interactive students. It’s now available to all in a convenient downloadable form.

📖 Twine Templates

In addition to making tutorials, I’ve been branching out into creating templates for Twine users to import, play with, and build upon! In the near future, this page will house a variety of Grimoire template builds and demos, but for now there’s a single incantation.

Only a short week left to submit a micro piece of IF for charity!

Each submitted entry will be matched into a donation to TransEquality, and you can submit up to 3 entries! If you would like to be part of the donation drive in a monetary form instead, please contact us!

Interactive Fiction Community Raffle for Palestine!

Over 50 authors and artists from the Interactive Fiction community here on tumblr have come together to offer an array of prizes for a focused donation drive! We are aiming to raise as much money as possible for five families who are currently trying to evacuate Gaza. These fundraisers have been vetted by @/el-shab-hussein and @/nabulsi (thank you for your hard work!)

RULES:

You MUST donate a minimum of €5/$5 USD to one of these five fundraisers to qualify for a ticket. These are the currencies the GFMs are in (3 in euro, 2 in USD). We chose this amount because it is the minimum GFM allows and we are hoping to encourage as many donations as possible. Please be mindful that GFM does not show the conversion rate if you're donating outside your currency.

Donating once to all five GFMs will get you five tickets. And for each extra 5 you donate, you will get an extra ticket. (ie donating 10 to one GFM gets you 2 tickets, 15 gets you 3, etc.)

There are two tiers we will be pulling prizes from: one tier for writing, and one tier for art. When you submit your proof of donation, you will be asked to specify which tier you want your ticket to go towards. If you are submitting for more than one ticket, you will specify the tiers for each ticket-- you can spread them out between both tiers or put them all towards one.

You will be required to share a receipt/proof of donation via uploading a picture through google forms. We will not be handling any money. You are donating directly to the GFMs, and then showing us proof that you have done so. Please include the GFM and the amount you've donated in the screenshot you upload. We are only taking donations starting from June 7th onward.

We plan to raffle off all possible prizes using a random generator. Once the drive concludes on the 21st, we'll take a few days to gather up & organize the tickets and draw names, and then we will be in touch with winners both on tumblr and via email.

You can find the full list of contributors and prizes here.

Please understand that these prizes are pulled blind and assigned at random. You cannot pick or choose which writer/IF or artist you get. It is completely randomized. You get what you get-- even if you aren't familiar with the writer or their game. Artists and authors also have the right to refuse your request at their discretion. Please be respectful and remember that our main goal and focus here is fundraising for these families.

Abdullah Mohammed and his family

Mohammed Bardaweel and his family

Bilal Salah's family

Suad and her family

Firas Salem and his family

We encourage you to share these families and their fundraisers here and elsewhere. We're hoping by focusing our efforts we can really make a big impact for all of them.

Ticket submission form:

MY BROTHER ; THE PARASITE

People die, and sometimes they come back. Your brother is one of those. Even as his body rots and his mind unravels, he still has control over you— just like when you were kids.

A short, interactive story about a corpse, a complicated sibling relationship, and the things we forget. Made in Twine. Written, illustrated, and coded in about three weeks for the IFComp.

Content warnings included on the itch.io page and in the story itself.

The Neo-Interactives is a hub for Interactive Fiction and IF-adjacent jams, moderated by Autumn Chen, Lapin Lunaire Games (Jinx), Manonamora, and Sophia de Augustine.

We organise small and unranked game jams throughout the years, each with different constraints and rules.

We welcome any form of IF, from parser, to choice-based, to visual novels, and even kinetic novels. We do not restrict creators to any program or format, or languages. If your entry is interactive and focuses on the text, submit it! We only ask that you include trigger warnings if relevant.

Join our Discord!

If you share your submission on Tumblr, tag @neointeractives or tag the relevant jam so we can find you!

At the end of each jam, we will create an IFDB page for every entry. The IFDB, or Interactive Fiction Database, is an IF game information catalogue, creating a historical record of the IF landscape. Contact the mods for question or if you don't want to be included.

If you have any question, shoot us an ask!

List of Jams:

Neo Twiny Jam, where creators can only write 500 words.

The Bare-Bones Jam (TBA), where creators must keep the basic UI of their chosen program.

Single Choice Jam, where creators can only give the player one choice.

And more!

Past Events:

============= Links

Play the game See other reviews of the game See other games by Sam

============= Synopsis

Survive as a monster that has taken up residence underneath a bridge, interact with strangers who pass over your bride and see if you can not only survive the encounters, but create a home for yourself.

============= Other Info

Under the Bridge is a Twine (Harlowe) visual novel*, submitted to the 2022 Edition of the IFComp. It ranked 17th overall. *according to the itch page, though I feel it fits more the "rules" of IF than VN

Status: Completed Genre: Horror

CW: Violence, death, gore, and profanity Note: the game contains SFX (with a volume slider) and animated text

============= Playthrough

First Played: 3-Oct-2022* Last Played: 22-May-2023 Playtime: about 1h (found all endings) Rating: 3 /5 Thoughts: The monster under the bridge is not always a frightening one.

*I had reviewed the game during the IFComp in the Author's section (which was hidden to the public). I forgot to keep track of the notes I gave though... You can find the OG review under the cut.

============= Review

Under the Bridge puts the player in the shoes (hooves?) of a monster having taken residence under the bridge. Your survival will depend on the interaction with passersby...

Spoilers ahead. It is recommended to play the game first. The review is based on my understanding/reading of the story.

Welcome! We’re very happy to announce the preliminary launch of The Rosebush, a new online magazine for interactive fiction theory and criticism. The purpose of this preliminary launch is to let the interactive fiction community know that we exist, and to invite submissions. We hope to begin publishing early this summer, perhaps in June.

Learn more below, or you can also read this post on our website.

What is The Rosebush?

The Rosebush will be a free online magazine dedicated to publishing longer form articles about interactive fiction. The interactive fiction community already has well-established channels for reviews of individual games, and several people have well-read blogs, but we’ve been lacking a good platform for in-depth analyses, theory articles, discussions of craft, interviews, historical pieces, and so on. The Rosebush aims to be this platform. It will publish substantial articles that increase our understanding of interactive fiction, from individual works to design patterns, community structures and historical trends. The intended audience consists of both players and authors of IF.

What is the scope of the magazine?

Interactive fiction is a term with many uses. The focus of The Rosebush lies on digital works in which a player interacts with a pre-written story where text is the main medium. In particular, The Rosebush will publish about both parser-based and choice-based interactive fiction. While tabletop role playing games, computer role playing games, visual novels, and choose-your-own-adventure books are also interactive fictions in a sense of that term, they are not our primary topic.

Most of the organisers of The Rosebush come from the communities around the Interactive Fiction Competition, the Spring Thing, the IFDB, and so on; but we explicitly also intend to publish about the works of adjacent communities, such as the ChoiceScript community and the retro text adventure community.

What is the magazine looking for?

Articles! See the submissions page for the detailed call for articles. It is possible to either submit a pitch, which we will check to see whether the topic is suitable for The Rosebush, or an article. Links to submission forms can also be found on the submissions page.

What does The Rosebush offer authors?

Most importantly, a place for disseminating your articles. The Rosebush will maintain its website and ensure that all articles are also stored on the IF Archive, the best guarantee for perpetual availability in the current world of interactive fiction. In addition, the editorial team will work with you on your article, which can range from simple spelling/grammar editing to more substantial ideas and feedback on improving your piece.

The Rosebush is an entirely volunteer effort. There are no plans to offer a monetary compensation to authors of articles.

Who are we?

The editorial team currently consists of:

Aster Fialla (se/er)

Benjamin Slade (he/they)

Daniel Stelzer (they/them)

Drew Cook (he/him)

Josh Grams (he/him)

Kiana Lee (she/her)

Lisa Fox (she/her)

Mike Preston (he/him)

Mike Russo (he/him)

Victor Gijsbers (he/him)

In 2015, Portentine ran a mini Twine jam, called the Twiny Jam. During the three-week the jam ran, creators were asked to submit a Twine game with no more than 300 words. Porpentine ran this jam on Tumblr, which has now be deactivated.

Over 200 pieces were submitted. (sadly, about a 5th of those is now lost...)

So, 8 years later, to commemorate this piece of IF History, Autumn (@cyberpunklesbian) and I are bringing back the Twiny Jam - but with a bit of a twist...

Announcing the Neo Twiny Jam

The Neo Twiny Jam is an Interactive Fiction Jam with one rule:

Don't write more than 500 words

Any piece of Interactive Fiction is welcome, from any kind of IF system/format, regardless of genre/theme. - You are not limited to Twine only. You can choose any program you want as long as the output is an Interactive Fiction piece. - It also accepts NSFW work (NSFW themes must be clearly indicated in the submission). - Sounds, graphics and code don't count in the word count.

The Neo Twiny Jam will run from June 1st 2023 (12:00 AM/00:00 EST) to June 30th 2023 (12:00 AM/00:00 EST).

Want to join? Sign up here!

Announcing the Anti-Romance Jam, an exploration of all the messy spaces and sensations that exist against and around romance! From May 14 - July 14, 2023, submissions will be open for creations centered on anti-romance: what it is, what it does to us, and how we do things to it.

For the purposes of this jam, we invite you to think of anti-romance as a spectrum and a series of questions:

Is anti-romance the opposite of romance, its absence, or something else entirely? Are these things mutually exclusive?

Can anti-romance coexist with romance? Must it? How?

If music be the food of love, what feeds (or devours) anti-love?

Who does anti-romance look like?

Is anti-romance a resistance, subversion, or reclamation? 

How does it do what it does?

What's 🎶 love 🎶 got to do — got to do with it?

Sign up on itch.io | Full list of rules under the cut; feel free to reach out with any questions!

Hello guys!! So sorry for my absence! I've made JS code free for anyone to use in their Twine game, which allows you to have multiple pronouns for your main character -- for example, she/they, she/he, she/he/they, whatever combination!

Some features include:

Completely customizable, and therefore neopronouns-friendly!

No limitations as to how many sets of pronouns you can add—you can add even just one.

Can determine singular and plural pronouns, even if you use pronouns that are different

Automatically switches between pronouns -- and you only need to write ?mcthey, ?mcthem, etc.

If you want to stick to one pronoun temporarily (e.g. so a character refers to MC as she/her and not switch to they/them mid-sentence), it is possible, too!

DEMO (playable online + downloadable) // CODE (+ documentation)

SHOUTOUT to @magiciansvoyage for inspiring me to do this for Twine!! :)

the inescapable structure of tragedy, the lines of causality

The game got up the 7th place out of 70 other games in the 2022 IF Comp.

I collaborated on the novel’s illustrations with a very different style of my usual art posts, but I’m super happy with the results.

If post-apocalyptic scenarios and heavy temes are your go to fiction stories, I invite you to give it a try!