I teach classes about video games, and in many of those classes, students create their own games and interactive works using Twine. Twine is an open-source tool for creating interactive fiction and text-based video games. There are a lot of great resources out there about how to use Twine, including the Twine Cookbook, Dan Cox’s YouTube channel, Salter and Moulthrop’s Twining, and Adam Hammond’s beginner’s guide. I often end up building small games to show students how to do particular things in Twine, so I’m gathering them here in case those models are helpful for others. Most if not all of them use Twine’s Harlowe story format. The nested bullet under each game lists the macros and other Harlowe elements that the game uses.
- Sandwich Distribution Simulator: Collect and give away sandwiches in a game that demonstrates (1) how to set numerical variables in Twine and (2) how to use if/else macros that trigger when those variables hit certain thresholds.
- What’s Your Name?: A game that lets the player can a character, essentially setting a variable to a string.
- Traveler: Go in four cardinal directions, with the game tracking where you’ve been. Demonstrates a few ways of keeping track of what passages a player has visited.
- Bus Stop: Experience a haunting encounter at a bus stop. Uses random number generation with an array of verbs to change a piece of the text players see.
- Sound and Color: A game that alternates between a picture of a cat and a picture of a bird with corresponding audio. Demonstrates how to incorporate images and audio into Twine using HTML, and incorporates some light CSS for the text in the title passage using the built-in stylesheet feature in Twine.
- Epic Journey: A slightly more involved game that uses true/false and numerical variables to take players through a small fantasy quest. Variables are used to determine what text and options players see on the screen, manage a simple combat encounter, and track whether the player has certain objects in their possession.