One of my bigger concerns was if twine itself was a generally avoided software. As I mentioned I love to play the games available, and I really can't recall many that used twine. The fact that you clearly have managed to a degree is at least a bit reassuring. Hopefully in the future my game will be so amazing it pulls everyone to twine lol
Minimum word count?
- Thread starter LukaTheSergal
- Start date
Twine games have their audience, mainly the fans of text based games. But be aware, just like Ren'py VN's world, you'll be competing with behemoths with years of updates behind their backs. It doesn't help that most of twine games are bad, and get abandoned a few months later. Twine is super easy, and many people seem to think that writing 4 words you can roll out a patreon. It doesn't work that way.
It's hard to make a good first impression, but if you do, you're on your way. In my case, I had a whole year with a thred on the development section here, and had some users that tested and gave me feedback, so my game got better before the release thanks to them, and I gained more experience as dev.
If you make a bad first impression, is really hard to attract more players to your Patreon/SS . Just take a look at the most recent twine games, and try to not repeat their mistakes.
To be honest I was planning to not even link a Patreon on the initial release. As much as the income would be nice, even more so if it was enough to be a full time game dev (which I know is extremely unlikely) but I feel like it could come off disingenuous or even greedy. Potentially giving some people the idea that I'm only developing for the money. I figured that the majority of the people that would donate would still do so even if the Patreon wasn't established till a later version. That being said, I do already have a Patreon. It's nothing to do with game stuff though, just 3d modeling/animation.
That's a good approach. As your game gains more fans, they can even ask you for a patreon (even on this site. Go figure). I rolled out the patreon from the start, but I also had 1.5 years of development behind, so no one complained or even asked why. But there are games, with only 5 minutes of play, or even less. I've seen kinetic novels made on twine with barely 6 screens with some plastered gifs but with the Patreon link ready. Players react harshly to that.
- May 3, 2018
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This is the metric I'm using while working on my own text-based game.
I'm not counting code, and since most scenes have 2-4 options (at least) to vary the plot or scene, I also divide my word count by 4 to give me a rough idea of the amount of words a player is likely to see on any given playthrough.
For instance, my introduction / tutorial has 10,000 words so far, but still has a lot of variation. So I'm assuming most players will see about 2500 words or slightly more, so about 10 minutes is what it will take most people to get through the intro of the game.
It's not fool-proof, but it at least gives me a measurable metric.
You've already gotten a lot of good advice on this, but I'll add some more.
I think the draw of ALL text-based games is their ability to deliver a level of freedom impossible in other game mediums. With a text-based game, you can have lots of variation for (mostly) cheap. AAA games all have to hit the exact same beats, and have minimal branching due to the cost of animating, voicing, all that content.
To use my intro/tutorial as an example, a AAA would almost NEVER let the tutorial branch (closest I can think of is the original Dragon Age), but it costs me very little but writing time.
All that said, you have to be careful about EXPONENTIALLY increasing your writing time.
Some things may still have too high a cost, even in a text game, due to the increased workload. Remember that every major variable you have is a MULTIPLIER on your writing time.
So, if the MC can be a man or a woman, that's 2 variables. Two versions of each scene. Fine.
Now, let's say the MC can be gay or straight. That's 2 variables. But combined with the gender variables, that's 2x2 or 4 versions of each scene. Okay.
Now let's say you've let the player choose whether the MC is a nice-person or a jerk as a personality trait, and want to reflect that in each scene. Another 2 variables. 2x2x2 = 8 versions of each scene.
And we have to have the plot affect the scenes! We need to have a different outcome for the (let's say two) choices the player could had the MC make in the last chapter before this scene. 2x2x2x2 = 16(!!!) versions of each scene if you are trying to make them truly unique.
I could go on forever, but that's a good example of how quickly it can balloon out of control.
And it brings up another point - player's will not KNOW how much your game branches without you sign-posting it to them or if they replay. (And sadly, it seems it is a small minority of players that replay text games. Choice of Games collected statistics on it, and the number is depressingly small. Maybe it's better for porn text games.)
So let's say you've released an update and it has 60,000 words, people might get excited, because, wow, that's a novella, almost 75% the length of an actual paperback novel! But . . . that's because you have all those variations - 16 unique versions of every scene. So the amount of content a supporter will experience from your update is about 4000 words . . . or 16 minutes of new content. In this example you damn near wrote a NOVEL for your update, and people will be bitching that it took them longer to download the update than play through it.
Going back a bit, think of the same scenario, but you just had 2 unique versions of each scene. 30,000 words of content for a support who updated, or 2 HOURS of play time.
Just something to think about.
Winterfire is right.
The best way to combat scope creep and make sure you can complete your game is to have a detailed Game Design Document.
- Dec 11, 2022
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It may be slightly different for a text-based game when compared to my kinetic novel, which has a fairly high image density (1 render to 16 words) - but in my last update I asked people to time roughly how long it took them and the general consensus seemed to be about 10k words per hour, so slower than the regular reading speeds you can look up for conventional text.
- May 3, 2018
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That's interesting to know, but I do think it would be different.
Looking at the images for a while, having to click for each sentence to appear, etc. would all slow down a reader versus a pure text game.
Inkle, maker of several text games, did testing that showed readers sped up their reading when presented with large amounts of text, but slowed down when presented with single sentences or smaller amounts of text. They discuss it in one of their GDC talks. Basically, according to them, players simply browse text presented to them as multiple paragraphs, but really stop to absorb text presented as one or two sentences.
If true, that would mean VNs are read at a much slower pace than Twine-style text games.
- Sep 13, 2016
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I'm not sure how valid this is, in fact for me it is the exact opposite.
I'm often faster when I have images+text both because the text is often less descriptive but also because images speed up the process of absorbing a scene, that means I can understand what is happening a lot faster therefore progress is faster.
Now when it comes to pure text where things are more descriptive by nature, I really have to take things a lot slower if I want to fully build the scene in my mind with details, something that can be grasped instantly with an image sometimes takes a lot more time with words alone, so when I read books or text-heavy games I'm a lot slower.
- Jun 10, 2017
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Without forgetting the many "I'll make the game that will revolution the world, the game you all dreamed to play without knowing it", that, them too, never made it to even a demo.
This applying to all the development process, from the time needed to the insane code that will have to be wrote.
It's easier for OP since it would be text based, but it don't change as much as he probably believe ; "an insane level of freedom" imply an insane level of complexity for the code.
As rule of thumb, each layer of freedom multiply by 1.5 the amount of text needed, and the complexity of the code. So, at short term "an insane level" lead to one week of writing, coding and testing, for every 10 minutes of in game content.
Oh, in your head it's something easy to do: "I let the player choose what the girl will wear".
So, you create a variable that will handle the clothes set.
Then you start to write a scene, and you discover that you also have to add a function that describe the said clothes set.
Then you start to add NPC or secondary characters, and you discover that for each you have to add a function that handle their reaction to the said clothes set.
Then you discover that those reactions can radically change the outcome of the scene, and that you have to add an if structure to handle the said outcome.
Then you pass to the next scene, and you realize that the outcome of the previous scene can also radically change the way the story progress. So you go back, add a variable to handle the way the scene ended. And you add an if structure to handle the way the next scene starts and progress.
When you reach the tenth scene, you already have dozens of branches, don't remember what triggered half of them, and you decide to quit.
And this is just because you decided to let the player choose what the girl will wear...
All games, even AAA hits, limits drastically player's freedom for a very good reason. And this reason is that you need to manually handle all the possibilities and their possible outcomes.
There's way to simplify your job here, but it need to plan the whole game before you write the first line, and to have a strong background in coding. Two things that are relatively exceptional on the adult gaming scene.
Twine is a tool for HTML (and CSS/Javascript). Most HTML games on this site are Twine games.
Well, I'd say it isn't your absolute strongest desire if you knowingly are aiming for something that 99.99% fails at. Instead of believing you're that 0.01%, start with an easier project and then later you can revisit your idea of insane level of freedom.
- Jun 10, 2017
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There's many way to do it, depending on the way your brain works.I'm still trying to figure out what's that
You can do it beforehand (see Winterfire answer) but you can also do it on the fly, describing the key points for each scenes you wrote.
The main goal is to help you keep track of the state of the story/game, in order to keep it consistent. So, for each scene you need to note what happened that is important. And for all important points, you need to list the scenes where a "revelation" (in the lax meaning of the word) happened.
By example, if there's a mystery with a big baddy behind, you need to remember when the MC learn about the mystery, as well as what clue he have regarding the baddy and when he had them. Something that would looks like:
scene 12:
- MC is told that his previously successful business starts to make less profits.
scene 15:
- MC is told that his previously successful business starts to make less profits.
scene 31:
-MC discover that is business starts falling because of one of his competitor aggressive behavior.
MC business:
- make less profits - scene 12 / scene 15
- competitor with aggressive behavior - scene 31
- Discover why the competitor act that way - STILL TO COME
This way, you can track both what the MC know, and so can talk about, as well as what he still need to learn if the player followed another path.
And in the same time you can track where the MC is in a given story line.
I take a big story line as example, but the same apply to the relation with other characters.
If it's understandable that the MC can know that Mister Bear prefer electro music (it come from discussion behind the scene), knowing that he had a brother that died at 7yo is an information too important to not be shown to the player. And you have to remember when it happen, as well as if it happened if there's more than one possible way to progress in the story.
Plus, despite what it can looks like, this apply even for Kinetic Novel. As Winterfire implied the story you have in your mind isn't necessarily the one you wrote. You can have thought about something, and finally not include it in the scene. Or you can have added it later in your head, and forgot to update the scene you wrote.
This would lead to an inconstancy in the story, the MC being suddenly aware of something that the player didn't know. Or at the opposite, the MC having totally forgot about something that have already been said to him many time.