Thursday, February 5, 2026

Twine

Twine is an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories. It allows you to create text-based games and narratives that can branch based on user choices.

Here is a little video to get you started.

Sample Story

This is the Twine story I made based on the old Python Adventure I used to share with my students. The Twine map for it is below. Click it to enlarge.

Class Assignment

For today's assignment, start work on an making an interactive story using Twine. This is an opportunity for you to try out some ideas and learn how to use the basic features of Twine. In our next class, I will teach you some more advanced features. I want you to spend the rest of class working on your story. If you think you are finished with your story, try to add more passages and branching paths.

Saving Your Work

Twine automatically saves your work in your Library. If you want to put your work on OneDrive, you have two options.

1. To save an individual story, select the story, click the Build tab, and click "Publish to File". This will make an HTML file that you can save on your Desktop and upload to OneDrive. You can also share this file with others, and they can open it in a web browser to play your story.
2. On the Library tab, you can click "Archive" to save a file that contains your entire library of stories.

You can load individual stories or entire archives using the "Import" button in the Library tab.

Resources

If you want to learn more about Twine, here are some helpful resources:

• Twine Reference - guide to using the Twine 2 program.
• Twine Cookbook - contains more explanations, tips, and examples.
• Harlowe Manual - Twine can use different story formats that affect the appearance of your story and provide advanced features. In our class, we will use the Harlowe story format, which is the default when you first start Twine.