You are at PCGamer.com. The proud red, black and white masthead hangs to the NORTH. To the SOUTH lie the website credits, which are direly in need of an update (sorry). Directly in front of you is an article about two powerful and user-friendly interactive fiction tools, which have both been released within day of each other. You feel a faint wind upon your face and a strong desire to read the article.
>click on article link
You click on the article link with uncommon gusto and continue to read about Quest , a tool for building text adventures, choose-your-own-adventures and anything in between. It's not quite WYSIWYG, but the menu-driven system is relatively intuitive to use and doesn't demand any knowledge of programming. You can add images or video to them and publish them online via textadventures.co.uk - a hub designed by the tool's creator. You can also publish it as a standalone download or on iPhone and Android - though if you want to make money from it or publish under your own App Store account, you'll have to pay a fee.
Meanwhile, the team behind Fallen London has seen fit to release the very tools they used to create their web adventure. Going under the name StoryNexus , the toolset seems capable of producing games comparable to the complexity of Failbetter Games' own efforts: a hybrid of traditional text-driven IF and card-based stat-builder. At the moment, creators using the StoryNexus tools are tied to using Failbetter's own metaphors - events are dealt out like cards - but soon you will be able to theme up your world as you choose. Later this week, creators will also be able earn money from their games using the same microtransaction system that has supported Fallen London, minus Failbetter's 40% cut.
Then there's the World of the Season award, aimed to highlight particularly excellent games created by the StoryNexus community, and judged by a panel of industry luminaries. The first panel includes The Escapist's Susan Arendt, Bioware's Mike Laidlaw, and indie developer Jonas Kyratzes.
Here's a trailer, detailing some of the functionality of StoryNexus:
You finish watching the video feeling refreshed and inspired. To your SOUTH lie the comments...
