#nyehilism

[northern-passage]

bow and arrow?? mwah<3

bow & arrow: which of your settings would you most like to visit?

well. i would not survive most of them 💀 but probably hell's holler. i want to hang out with my fellow mean lesbians and i would absolutely not be opposed to being turned into a vampire (this is an open invitation for any vampires. my window is open........)

[manonamora-if-reviews]

Neo Twiny Jam - bite-sized review

The Neo Twiny Jam (@neo-twiny-jam) is an interactive fiction game unranked jam where participants could not write more than 500 words per entry.

You can find every submitted piece on the jam's Itch Page.

=============

SOL by nyehilism

Entry - More by nyehilism - @nyehilismwriting CW: body horror, drug use

To all the things unsaid... On the surface, SOL is a prose poem of a benign conversation between friends about the sun, as they partake in sharing a joint on a summer evening, with the writing moving from concrete description to what could be interpreted as hallucinations. But, below, hiding under a mouseover macro, is hidden a secret message, unsaid words, repressed feelings. The descriptions of movements and bodies balance between a loving gaze to an almost obsessive and carnal survey through the narrator's eyes. The writing is intoxicating...

[blood-choke]

Blood Choke Chapter 3 is now available!

Spend your day with Hana, Valentina, or Clear, and deal with the potential fallout from your night at the club. And, of course, meet with the council...

You will have to replay from the beginning. The code has been updated as well as additions made to the character creator; certain scenes will not trigger correctly if you try to play from a save.

This added around 100,000 words to the demo. Some various changes have been made, including:

Fixed an error at the end of chapter 2 where Hana and the mc magically teleported into the backroom with Valentina and Clear.

Added some flavor text acknowledging Hana's scratched face in the parking lot.

Added the option for the player to select mc's race.

Enlarged the default text size.

Corrected a handful of typos.

Content Warning: Explicit sexual content - there is no option to skip or fade to black. Discussion of racism (all routes), discussion of sexual assault (all routes), discussion of gender & gender dysphoria (all routes), transphobia (Hana's route), blood & blood consumption, violence.

Feel free to send me any feedback or bug reports here, as always.

Play it here!

[evenmorecrows]

love interactive fiction games where the main character suffers more than jesus

[sofia-d-asb]

Twine/SugarCube ressources

Some/most of you must know that Arcadie: Second-Born was coded in ChoiceScript before I converted it to Twine for self-publishing (for various reasons).

I have switched to Ren'Py for Cold Lands, but I thought I would share the resources that helped me when I was working with Twine. This is basically an organized dump of nearly all the bookmarks I collected. Hope this is helpful!

Guides

Creating Interactive Fiction: A Guide to Using Twine by Aidan Doyle

A Total Beginner’s Guide to Twine

Introduction to Twine By Conor Walsh (covers Harlowe and not SugarCube)

Twine Grimoire I

Twine Grimoire II

Twine and CSS

Documentation

SugarCube v2 Documentation

Custom Macros

Chapel's Custom Macro Collection, particularly Fairmath function to emulate CS operations if converting your CS game to Twine

Cycy's custom macros

Clickable Images with HTML Maps

Character pages

Character Profile Card Tutorial

Twine 2 / SugarCube 2 Sample Code by HiEv

Templates

Some may be outdated following Twine/SugarCube updates

Twine/Sugarcube 2 Template

Twine SugarCube template

Twine Template II

Twine Template by Vahnya

Sample Code and more resources

A post from 2 years ago where I share sample code

TwineLab

nyehilism Twine masterpost

How to have greyed out choices

idrellegames's tutorials

Interactive Fiction Design, Coding in Twine & Other IF Resources by idrellegames (idrellegames has shared many tutorials and tips for Twine, browse their #twine tag)

How to print variables inside links

How do I create a passage link via clicking on a picture

App Builder

Convert your Twine game into a Windows and macOS executable (free)

Convert your Twine game into a mobile app for Android and iPhone (90$ one-time fee if memory serves me right) // Warning: the Android app it creates is outdated for Google Play, you'll need to update the source code yourself

[the-night-that-feeds-if]

You feel a chill down your spine, the hairs at the back of your neck prickle. You don't dare look behind you... The shadow smiles.

The Night That Feeds is a dark fantasy, interactive story.  It will have heavy themes of familial abuse, sexually suggestive themes (perhaps more explicit stuff too, eventually), and other dark themes. A comprehensive content warning will be made available as the story develops.

"This is a story of love, loss, and of trying to find a home".

*** Please keep your mental health in mind when playing games with dark themes. This game won't be as dark as some others, but I want everyone to be safe and healthy when consuming dark content.

Demo currently sitting at 23.3 k words.

✧ Content ✧

A customizable protagonist, name, gender, appearance, etc.

Multiple romance options (barely implemented at this time).

Substance use.

Explicit sexual content.

Mental health issues.

Abusive family dynamics.

An interesting fantasy land that you get to explore.

MAGIC!!

Etc.

!!BARELY IMPLEMENTED--MOST CHARACTERS NOT MET!!

・❥・ Romance Options ・❥・

✧.*

Captain E. Ward: Fame, fortune, infamy... All these and more follow Captain Ward. Their job is a demanding one, an important one, a dangerous one. They seem to be a commanding, playful person, but how deep do their scars run?

Age: 30

["Isn't it beautiful?" They say as they stare out into the void. Nebulous clouds drift behind, trailing the ship. "So Void-damned beautiful, and so fucked up." They look you in the eyes, and lick the edge of their bottom lip. "You sure you want this, with me?"]

They are a lonely person, they crave, and despise attention. They're afraid of intimacy, of love. What kind of life is a life in the Void? Who would willingly share that with them?

TW: Attempted murder (on them), clinginess.

✧.*

Maddock: A surly mercenary, he watches out for you, all due to a 'favor' of a nature you can't discern. The way he looks at you is reminiscent of a deep longing.

Age: Late 30's, early 40's 

["I never thought that I'd be one ta' have somethin' like this at my age. I let my dreams go in my youth." He pats the cushion next to him. "You don' expect things ta' turn out, I've been a merc for so long, felt like all I knew how ta' do."]

He's a gruff man, doesn't got a heart of gold, but if you end up falling for each other, there isn't anything that would come between you.

TW: Possessive, sexual.

✧.*

The Hunger: It's been watching you for a long time... 

Age: ???

["Oh, if it isn't my little bird, what is it? Is your wing broken? You don't seem eager to fly away this time..." It slinks closer, grinning wide. ]

An entity, not... malevolent, at least not to you.  However, it holds a sick fascination for you. 

TW: Yandereish. Stalker. Obsession. 

✧.*

Fellis: A woman who seems to be around your age, she's an eager adventurer, she took a liking to you immediately, and seems keen to stoke the flames hotter. 

Age: 22, 23

["Oh, lovey. There you are." She takes your hand in hers, placing a gentle kiss along your knuckle. "I've brought something for you."]

She thinks you're the most beautiful person she's seen. She may even take up poetry to describe her budding love for you.

NO TW. MEGA FLUFF ALERT.

✧.*

Xep: A strange person, wearing bright crimson robes, with gorgeous star decaling in gold. They wear copious amounts of jewelry, and enjoy the finer things. They were immediately drawn to you, they were forced to this back water of a town, they never expected anyone like you to cross their path.

Age: 27

["I want to hold you, please stay?" Their mouth creeps upwards, the wine has given them a positively radiant complexion, the heat blatant on their cheeks.]

They're a sad soul, after experiencing a heart break that left them devastated, they never expected to find love again.

SLIGHT TW: Mentions of suicide, heart break, mentions of being cheated on.

Credit to:  nyehilism for the sugarcube template, you've made things easier on me as an aspiring IF writer, thank you.

[nyehilismwriting]

hopping on board with an entry to the neo twiny jam<3 SOL is a 499-word interactive prose poem, written and coded in twine sugarcube.

content warnings for mild body horror and drug use.

[uroboros-if]

Please please share some coding/designing wisdom. Your game is so damn pretty 😭😭😭 Could you tell us what template you used and how hard it was to make it look like it is today? I imagine so much work must have gone into it

😭😭 I am no expert, but these are just my rationale/methods behind the visual choices I made!

For the template I used—I used Vahnya's Template! However, this post by @/manonamora-if has a whole section for templates that I wish I saw or checked out before making my IF! In another lifetime, I might've just used nyehilism's template to achieve the bottom sidebar instead of torturing myself learning how to do it... ;;

Below, I go into detail the timeline of designing Uroboros, as well as advice through the process I went!

Design Timeline

I started designing the UI late October 2022, and kept fixing, changing, editing it well into February and maybe a little bit of March 2023.

October 2022 - Early iterations of the design. Looked for stock images and began implementing it to add a background to the sidebar and the actual passages. Swatched some color palettes and began implementing them into the IF. Later decided to make the sidebar on the bottom instead of on the side. Also, added a title screen.

November - Testing different backgrounds for the IF's sidebar. Added a textbox to the passages, also worked on the black fade transitions.

December - Finished working on the sidebar background for both light and dark theme, began work on the background of the IF instead.

January 2023 - Finished working on the dark and light theme backgrounds! Started work on drawing the skill icons for light and dark theme, and finished!

February - Changed the title screen to look better on mobile, created a circle logo, added a border to the textbox. Also, made further edits for light theme.

March - Just remade the "Uroboros" logo.

If you're wondering why it took approximately 5 months to get to the final version—don't worry! I wasn't working only on the design for 5 months. My partner helped make the edits for the design, while I worked on coding them in and writing.

I spent a lot of time trying to get a grasp on Javascript, SugarCube, and HTML all throughout this time as well, to know how to fluidly add these things. Meaning, while I was working on these visual elements, I was also figuring out how to do the "looking" mechanic, black and white transitions, figuring out how Tweego worked, radio buttons, and so on.

Do note I've been busy the entire time throughout, so perhaps you can do this much quicker than I can!

The "Secrets"

1. Please—look at IFs you love! What are some visual aspects of other IFs that you love and want to include in your story? I started by analyzing parts of other IFs that I love. I liked Wayfarer's textbox; I liked how the choices looked in When Twilight Strikes. I liked the textboxes in the beginning of Zorlok. Find the things that amaze you about other IFs, and implement it your own way!

This seems like super basic advice—but trust me, once you think, "How can I put this in my game?" you will not only be able to have it, but most likely, you'll also learn a LOT.

While seeing how I could make the radio buttons, for example, I started researching. I googled "How to live change text?" and then I found out about jQuery, how to use the replace macro, etc. etc. JUST from researching how to do exactly one (1) feature.

2. What is missing in other IFs? Think about your own reading experience. I didn't like the clunkiness of some, how the sidebar is on the side when space on a mobile-screen is severely limited length-wise. So, I put the sidebar on the bottom.

I didn't like how other choices look in IFs, so I wanted a way to do mine that's nice and elegant(though it's still a little hard to read, admittedly).

Again, researching how to do the things you want opens many doors for you. I learned how to style <li> and change how bullets look, learned how to style links in Twine in general, etc. etc. again with just this ONE thing I wanted to change/add.

3. Don't do the work all by yourself. I struggled so hard because I hate asking for help. I was happy to Google other people's problems, but I never thought to open up my own thread or ask anybody in the community for help. Please, not only ask, but also—your work doesn't have to be completely original.

Use templates. Look at manon's amazing masterlist of things you can implement. I also have a few macro's that you can use, like multipronouns for MC, that does the work for you, for free.

Rip people's codes—respectfully. I'm not saying from other IFs, but online in other places. If they appear on help forums or are publicly available through places like CodePen, chances are that they're open-source or licensed in such a way that anyone can use it (e.g. MIT license).

Again, here is Manon's masterlist, which includes custom macros you can use in your game (Chapel, HiEv and Cycy are my high recommendations)! Additionally, here's my code for multipronouns here and my code for setting RO genders here.

4. MAKE IT READABLE!! Even if you want your game to look pretty... please, I'm begging you, make it easy to read. This is the most important thing ever.

I have a short attention span, and so does my partner. We reviewed the game to make sure we are NOT compromising the reading experience with our design. As much as we want fantastical backgrounds, we wanted to make sure it was at least not distracting. As much as we want gaudy styles, we want the actual passage to be suited for the long haul.

The most, most important part is to enhance the reading experience--not by adding things on, but by making it simple and intuitive. As someone in the computer science field, the user experience is CRITICAL. Put yourself in their shoes, think about them first and foremost.

Twine is amazingly customizable, and its powers can be wielded for good and evil. Plenty of amazing writers but inexperienced UI designers, especially from CoG, get into Twine. CoG almost completely takes away the design element, so Twine is a whole new ballpark.

Uroboros has a lot of pomp, but the actual textbox is uncharacteristically simple in comparison. The simplicity against an otherwise fantastical, but non-distracting background helps give it elegance. The sidebar, in contrast, is very eye-catching—but, it's also out of view most of the time, and isn't built for long reading.

To add on, make sure it's readable on mobile. I guarantee 80% of your readers are going to be reading your IF on their phone, and probably at 3 AM, so you will want the mobile to look as good as PC, or even better.

Closing Thoughts

Anyway, as basic as this advice is, this is really what guided my entire thought process behind my visual choices! -- Picking and choosing what you like from IFs, figuring out how to do them through research, and making sure your IF is built to be read for a while.

Thanks so much for asking, thinking that I have wisdom to impart!! 😭🫶💕

[twinegardening]

Stigmata, by vileidol

"try & watch a horror film from the point of view of the monster." - Three Poems, Sam Sax you are a vampire in the house of a vampire hunter. you are a corpse in the bed of someone painfully alive. you are a dirty, filthy thing in a room with the sun rising behind you and your lover's father in front of you, crossbow pointed at your chest. girlies (gender neutral) we are full on playing ship of theseus with nyehilism’s originally breathtaking Sugarcube Twine template.  made for  queer vampire game jam and smoochie jam

[devilscreekballad]

Working on the new look, using nyehilism's sugarcube template:

This is the light mode. Thoughts or suggestions? I need input especially from people that usually play in dark modes. Thanks

[northern-passage]

clem is such an interesting character and so different from what i usually see in IFs like I've yet to see an RO who is scared of everything? in a world of girlbosses and mansplainers we need the clems

thank you!

i'm glad that they feel different :-) when i started tnp, a lot of romance stories, especially fantasy or supernatural, tended to put the mc in Clementine's role. there are exceptions now, of course, i'm not trying to make a broad statement, especially since within IF that's actually something that's changed a lot over the years, but i definitely wanted the mc in tnp to be the competent, protective, "mysterious stranger" type, which is an archetype that used to (typically) go exclusively to love interests.

which means that we get to have poor little meow meows like Clementine as our love interests, instead :-) i also really like having Clem as a bit of balance, because they're life has been so different from everyone else's - Merry is a career criminal, and we've seen that she has no hesitation getting nasty and violent, while Noel, Lea, and the hunter have all been entrenched in the Order for their entire lives, with all of them also being very familiar with violence and comfortable with it or at the very least indifferent towards it.

even though Clementine is running from something, and is just as much as a fugitive as Noel, compared to the others, they really are the "normal" one, who just had their life upturned by running into a group of hardened fighters and criminals. or at least, upturned in a different way than it already was.... we'll get to see their reaction in the second half of chapter 2, but Clementine deals with what happened in Blackwater very differently than everyone else, because it's not like something they've ever really experienced before.

[beetlebethwrites]

Top 10 IF's and or movies

I will do 5 of each because I make the rules. These are not in any order tbh;

IFs. (I'm not gonna tag everyone for ease of my life);

Lost Birds by brigid. Absolutely the most well-written surreal western sci-fi I've read ever. Absolutely incredible, 12/10, redefines IF for me, I'm insane about it.

2. Larkin by kc. I just adore the vibes, they're immaculate. The first IF which made me think I might like Westerns as a genre, I love it all.

3. Project Hadea by nyehilism. The best sci-fi romance-y space-y IF. Every RO is immaculate, I could play it all day but sadly I have to have a life :/

4. When Twilight Strikes by kristi. Just good supernatural fun, innit. The ROs are cracking, and the world feels right. I just love it.

5. Northern Passage by kit. Feel like no explanation is necessary, the best fantasy stuff on the platform, I hope kit just continued Northern Passage forever even though I know it will eventually have to end.

Movies;

Nope - I haven't seen a lot of movies recently and this was by far my favourite of last year!

2. What We Do in the Shadows - it makes me laugh every time I watch it and for that alone it's this high up.

3. Hot Fuzz - same as above. F*ck the p*lice though.

4. Knives Out - very fun movie, the details and costuming is amazing.

5. Moonlight - gotta throw in a more profound movie because it's pretty stunning and I would recommend it to many people without a second thought.

Honourable mention - Jurassic Park. I just really love dinosaurs.

[whalesfall]

tag game!

9 people you want to get to know better

tagged by @euelios thank you! <3

last song: actual song? iron & wine's version of time after time, which I've had on repeat out of agony. song I used to scratch the itch in my brain? instrumental version of just dance, which, you know. fucks.

currently watching: black mirror's latest season! demon 79 what a moment. cheeky demons, apocalyptic consequences, oh yeah.

currently reading: loosely all at once, the traitor baru cormorant by seth dickinson, project hadea by nyehilism (scifi delight), play it as it lays by joan didion, and the world's wife by carrie ann duffy.

current obsession: sort of always the torments, right? waiting for something to really sink my teeth into, but I meander in the meantime.

going to throw tags at @antigonick @helenekuragina @ejunkiet @stoneware @the-rebel-archivist @kittlesandbugs @gingerbreton @agentnatesewell @queerbrujas <3

[amyreads]

Nikke is one love ❤️ Vethna is also one love. Luckily there's a poly planned. About difficult romances: have you read Project Hadea by nyehilism? I think you might like it.

I have read project hadea and every time i read a scene with nash i want to chew glass

[northern-passage]

when i transferred over, it took me a long time to port everything, like i want to say like 2 months; i started moving after i finished my prologue and chapter 1 in choicescript, and it was not a fun time 💀 but i had a lot of content, like 400k words, and cs was also my first experience with coding Ever, so it was definitely a hard learning curve for me personally.

i had coded my variables in a way that worked really well in cs, but not so well in twine, and i still sometimes find random bugs in ch1 because of it, versus ch2, which was all written for and coded in twine from the start. most of the issues i've had in ch2 have just been me making silly mistakes or typoes.

i definitely think it depends how much you end up having to port over, and how complex your code is. it can be a lot of work, and very tedious when it comes to copy-pasting and changing the variables.

i also second Fiddles when it comes to the UI elements; while the transferring was boring and tedious, setting up a UI was the actual hard part, especially because again, i was someone with 0 coding knowledge. luckily there are a lot of templates that walk you through it now (like the one i use which is by nyehilism) and there's also a lot of coding advice floating around on tumblr, too, so don't feel too intimidated. and of course sugarcube does come with its own basic theme, like Fiddles said, so even if you aren't sure how you want your game to look yet, you can still get started and worry about it later. though i know it's hard when you want your game to look sexy right away.....

my honest advice is that if you know you want to move to twine, then you should start the move before you get too far in cs. obviously i don't know what your wordcount looks like or what kind of branching you have planned, but with tnp being so big it was really time-consuming and frustrating once i started porting. but ultimately it's up to you, and what you think will work best for you, i just wanted to share a slightly different perspective.

i'll repeat what Fiddles said which is that the most important thing is having a strong base to work with. you can't do anything if you don't have anything written down. try not to get too caught up in the UI and aesthetics right away, and focus more on the writing and coding for the story.

good luck! :-)

Perhaps you've answered this so far, but how easy is it to transfer a game from the COG system to twine? I'm working on my WIP in the COG system right now (it is the coding system I'm familiar with, and I honestly find COG's simple UI much easier to read than the more intricate twine ones), but do not want to release it on that platform. I intend to put it on twine at some point. But the more I write, the more I get worried that I'm just creating more work for myself.

Personally, I think it depends on how much design work you want to do! Transferring all your variables and text from CS to Twine is kid stuff. I found that actually making the game look good was the hard part, because I had to blitz-learn CSS (and am still learning. I have a whole clone of Greenwarden in my Twine files that's just for testing cleaner code) to make it look nice, which is entirely optional. There are also plenty of Twine templates you can use!

Twine has several different versions built in that are good for different things. I use Sugarcube2, which comes with its own customizable UI, and so does @northern-passage. @heart-forge uses Harlowe. There's also Ren'Py, but that's a completely different beast and is mostly for visual novels. There's also Inform, which is a modern version of the coding language classic IF games like Zork and Planetfall were written in!

For that cleaner, classic CoG Ui, I might recommend Twine's Chapbook language! I haven't personally used it, but you might find it familiar and easy to read.

TL;DR: Not that hard, especially if you've already got a strong base to work with.

[parkerlyn]

🌱🍰🐥 mwah<3

🌱 book that inspired your wip

Ohhh hmm I think that some of the Brandon Sanderson books have helped me with thinking about magic and descriptions, and more recently some of TJ Klune’s books have hit on some themes I want to explore. Howl’s Moving Castle in both book and movie form has also really shaped my writing.

I’d say my obsession with deals and exchanges can probably be traced back to Fullmetal Alchemist and xxxHolic haha, and those sorts of themes also tend to get woven in my own style!

🍰 where you like to write

I like to write on the couch or in bed with blankets and cat cuddles. I should write somewhere I can actually focus given my cat gets very offended when she’s not directly in my lap where I want my laptop to go alskdjsks. So usually when I’m inbetween work or out and killing time, I also like writing in restaurants/cafes cause I focus more when someone can look over my shoulder.

🐥 here's some writing motivation!

Mwah mwah mwah ❤️ sending you lots of immaculate writing vibes too!! 🥰