Analysis of the book “Unity 6 Editor Tools Essentials – Vol. 1” by Harrison Ferrone

The publisher Jettelly is very young, but it is releasing some very interesting titles. They started with books about shading in Unity and Godot, and little by little they have been expanding the range of topics. The wait until they finally released this book felt long. Although they offer the option to buy it in advance at a discount while the chapters are being completed, I don’t have enough patience to read books in fragments. That’s why, even if I lose the discount, I prefer to wait until they are finished. In this case, I was really looking forward to it because in my projects I have found myself countless times needing to develop custom inspectors to make editing my components easier. Over time, I’ve learned how to do this, but Unity’s documentation is not the clearest in the world on the subject, and the technological shift to UI Toolkit has not helped to clarify things. Even so, I still had many doubts about whether I was doing things the right way and, in any case, about the reasons why they had to be done that way.

Fortunately, this book has cleared up many of those doubts. It follows an incremental structure, starting with the simplest editor customizations—Property Drawers and Decorator Drawers—and then gradually increasing in complexity while building on the previous concepts. The process is so gradual and clear that it’s easy to understand the new concepts being introduced. It’s true that I already had some prior knowledge from my earlier tinkering with UI Toolkit, but that actually helped me see that the author hasn’t taken shortcuts; instead, he explains everything from the beginning without skipping anything.

In the end, the book covers the following topics:

• Property Drawers and Decorator Drawers
• Attribute Drawers
• Custom inspectors
• Custom editors
• Interface design with UI Builder
• Creating interfaces to edit ScriptableObjects

The examples presented are very simple, with very limited functionality, but they are more than sufficient to focus on learning how to use Unity’s UI Toolkit without getting distracted by other matters. The code used is also clear and well structured.

It’s also worth appreciating that the book’s layout is pleasant to look at and makes the text easy to read. I don’t know what the printed version is like, because I read it digitally, but at least in this version the illustrations are in color, which is very helpful for distinguishing the details of the interfaces being explained.

In the end, this book has been so enlightening that I want to use it to revisit the custom editors I had already created. I’m sure I’ll be able to simplify them with what I’ve learned here. On the other hand, it has helped me overcome my fear of creating custom interfaces—a task I used to undertake only when necessity left me no alternative, but one that I will undoubtedly approach with much greater peace of mind in the future.

The publisher promises that a second volume of the book will be released. I hope that’s the case, and soon.

My Impressions of Zenva Courses

As many of you know, on my X profile I usually share packs of assets, courses, and books that I find online at good prices. Some time ago, a pack of Zenva courses appeared on Humble Bundle. Based on what I had read in Reddit forums, I warned in the post that the quality of the courses might not be what people expected. To my surprise, Pablo Farias (@pablofariasnew), founder of Zenva, asked me to give his courses a chance because he didn’t believe they deserved that criticism. So I decided to buy the Humble Bundle pack and take several of the courses to see firsthand whether the impression I had formed from Reddit was accurate or not.

The pack I bought contained a lot of Godot courses. It also had some Unity courses I had purchased a long time ago but hadn’t been able to take. In the end, out of all of them, I completed four courses:

• Tower Defender Game in Godot – Unit 1 – Base Game
• Tower Defender Game in Godot – Unit 2 – Enhanced Towers
• Intro to Visual Shaders in Godot 4
• The Complete Procedural Terrain Generation Unity Course

The first two are just over an hour and a half long, the shader one is barely an hour, while the procedural terrain generation course in Unity spans more than three and a half hours. It’s a sample very similar to what Zenva courses usually are—or at least the ones I’ve obtained in my bundles—generally ranging from one to four or five hours.

To my surprise, I have to say I liked them a lot. All the courses are well structured and cover the scope they promise. They don’t go deep, but what they explain is enough for you to understand what’s going on and practice it confidently in the editor yourself. Even the theoretical concepts, although explained quickly, are conveyed clearly, leaving you with the right idea—perfectly valid for going deeper on your own afterwards.

Of course, they are all in English, but they include subtitles in multiple languages, including Spanish. From what I’ve seen, the Spanish subtitle translation is very good. Even so, I preferred to watch them with English subtitles. The instructors have very clean pronunciation and are easy to understand, so I only used subtitles to check specific words when I got distracted. With subtitles, you’ll have no trouble following the course, no matter your native language. Although it would be great if this platform—and the others that publish courses—started doing what YouTube does and also translated the audio using AI. I don’t know what the production cost is for that, but when you come across one of those, with translated audio, they’re delightful, because the voice even sounds natural.

I tried checking the price of individual courses, but apparently you only have the option to subscribe annually, which gives you access to the entire course catalog. That subscription seems to cost about $59.70 per year. As for whether the price is worth it, I couldn’t really say, because it depends on the value they bring you based on where you are in your learning journey. In my specific case, I’ve already moved past the phase of general introductory courses. I typically go for intermediate courses that cover specific topics. That makes me more selective, so I tend to avoid subscriptions like Zenva’s. But if you’re getting started, it may be a good option to pay that price and have all the courses concentrated and readily available, instead of bouncing around the internet looking for tutorials. You can also do what I did and keep an eye out for the bundles Zenva releases fairly often. That would let you access their content without paying for a subscription you might not get your money’s worth from if you don’t have time to watch courses regularly. If you follow me on X, I’ll let you know when I hear about a new bundle ;-)

To sum up: I liked the Zenva courses. They are good quality. The comments I had read on Reddit are not justified, at least in my opinion. Personally, I’m sure I’ll buy more bundles as they come out. I’m glad I was able to correct my mistake—there aren’t that many quality options to be discarding one incorrectly.

Analysis of the book Game AI Pro 360 – Guide to Architecture

There are many books about artificial intelligence (AI), but not so many focused on its use in video game development. Among those, there are two types: introductory books and in‑depth ones. The one we are dealing with belongs to the second category. That’s why I don’t recommend it to anyone who hasn’t already sharpened their teeth on a good number of introductory books and tried implementing AI algorithms. Believe me, this book is not for starting to learn AI. In fact, none of the books in this collection are. With that warning out of the way, I’ll try to justify it by explaining what the book is about.

The book does not follow an overarching narrative. It will not guide you through a learning path. Instead, it is a compendium of expert articles, each with a format and level of detail very similar to academic papers. If you’ve ever had to process the RFC of a standard, the articles in this book will strongly remind you of that. The different articles focus on different implementations of decision‑making systems (finite state machines, behavior trees, task planners, etc.), although each approaches them differently.

It’s clear that the authors of each article are true experts. No one can dispute that. Each of them refers to implementations they have made in well‑known games. The problem is that, for whatever reason, most of the articles leave me with the feeling that the authors are holding back their best cards—that they’re not telling you everything. Sure, I imagine that a full explanation of the complete AI implementation for those AAA games wouldn’t fit in a book, let alone in a single article, but I finished the book with the impression that unless you are as much of an expert as the authors, you won’t be able to fill in the gaps they leave in their explanations. It’s a constant feeling of “Okay, I think I understand at a high level what you want to do, but how exactly is that implemented?”—and that’s where the article ends. It’s true that sometimes you get code snippets, but they tend to be fragments of interfaces or high‑level pseudocode.

I suppose we should at least be grateful that this book is a topic‑based compilation of the articles previously published in the earlier Game AI Pro series. At least the compilation has some thematic coherence. I didn’t read the older books, but if everything was mixed together, they must have been very confusing.

For all these reasons, I must warn you against this book if you are just entering the world of AI for video games. If that’s your case, I don’t think you’ll get anything useful from it. There are better options in which to invest your money and from which you will learn much more. I would only recommend this book to someone who has already been working professionally in this field for many years; and even then, I’m not sure whether the book’s content hasn’t already been surpassed by time.

Review of the book "Game Design Workshop" by Tracy Fullerton

There are many ways to get into video game development. We all start from our love of playing, but some of us have a technical background and dive straight into programming with an engine, others get involved after dabbling in modding or level creation for a specific game, and some even come from the world of physical board games.

This book is for all of them because it begins with the most abstract concept of what we call a game and, although it eventually focuses on video games, it emphasizes the creative process of generating ideas, finding the most promising ones, testing them with a prototype that doesn’t have to resemble its final form, and starting an iterative refinement process until you arrive at something genuinely fun for its concept itself (and not for its implementation). Only then does development begin. In fact, the book doesn’t start addressing what we know as development until its last third, and even then it doesn’t deal with the technical side of development—there isn’t a single line of code in this book—but rather the planning and management of a group’s work.

The book adopts the perspective of the video game designer. While this is a very specific role within a development team, it is the one with the most transversal responsibilities, as the book explains, and therefore has the greatest visibility of the entire process—hence its importance.

The first two-thirds of the book explain the role of the video game designer; what we understand by a game; what its fundamental elements are; what elements enrich it to give it the desired character; what the most common gameplay dynamics are according to that character; how we can maintain player interest over time; and how we can keep the game balanced to avoid player frustration or, worse, boredom. It then moves on to how to filter and refine game ideas, giving enormous importance (and entire chapters) to the process of prototyping and testing those prototypes with real players (outside of the designer). Proof of the book’s decidedly “meta” approach is its insistence that tested prototypes start out as physical ones, even on paper and cardboard, long before creating the first digital prototype. This approach of avoiding digital prototypes until very late in the process may seem surprising to those of us who enjoy writing lines of code, but the author convincingly and refreshingly explains the reasoning behind it.

The last third deals with development itself, but with a “hands-off-the-keyboard” approach. Here, the book puts you in the shoes of a team manager who must coordinate multiple specialists to shape a game that can be sold. The entire book has a very realistic tone, but this is where it stands out the most. The author makes a notable effort to convey the day-to-day life of a video game development studio, both in its internal tasks of creating the game and in its interactions with key external actors for testing, funding, and distribution, such as testers and publishers. To do this, it explains how to structure development teams, what roles are common, and how they can interact efficiently and healthily. It then explains how agile methodologies can help humanize development and improve the product. I particularly liked how it explains the workings of the video game market and prepares you for how to approach a publisher so they choose to finance your game. It even goes as far as to discuss typical contracts between publishers and development teams, so you understand how milestone-based payment systems work during development, and later, royalties after the game’s release. It’s a fascinating reality check that demystifies the world of video game development while also showing the enormous effort behind a game that successfully sells.

All of the above is already immensely valuable, but the book is also enriched with testimonials from many game designers. You’ll find that more than one has created games you’ve enjoyed. In these testimonials, each designer shares how they entered the world of game design and development, what attracts them to it, and what creative process they follow when shaping a game. Reading them humanizes the role of the designer, puts faces to the people behind the games you’ve loved, and lets you learn about the life paths they followed to reach the point of creating the games that made them famous. Many of those paths were not easy. More than one even advises against entering the industry unless you have a clear vocation or passion, as it’s neither an easy profession nor one that will make you rich. But all of them confirm that if you truly want to make games and are willing to put in the effort and sacrifices, it’s a profession that can be deeply fulfilling.

Therefore, if you not only love games but also how they’re made, this is your book. It’s a refreshing reality check that demystifies, humanizes, and highlights the creative effort behind what you enjoy on your PC or console. A truly recommended book.

Tools for creating visual novels

In a previous article, we reviewed some of the tools available to create your game's storyline. In this one, we’ll look at some of the tools you can use to turn that storyline into one of the simplest and most addictive types of games: visual novels.

Visual novels are a genre of video games that focus on interactive storytelling, where the player makes decisions that affect the narrative. They typically feature static visual art (such as 2D or 3D character illustrations) and are presented as a combination of text, images, and sometimes music or voice acting. Gameplay mainly involves reading dialogue and descriptions, making choices at key moments, and occasionally solving small puzzles.

It’s a technically simple genre, but it requires a strong, complex storyline that hooks the player despite the simplicity of the gameplay mechanics. That’s why these games must offer deep narratives with complex stories that often have multiple endings, depending on the player’s choices.

Conceptually, this type of game should feel familiar to anyone who grew up reading “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. Visual novels are the video game counterpart of that book category. As video games, they first gained popularity in Japan but have since spread worldwide thanks to gaming platforms like Steam and itch.io.

You can find examples of this genre in games like Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, The House in Fata Morgana, or Fate/stay night.

This makes visual novels a very interesting genre if you have the ability to create a captivating story and can support it with good illustrations and fitting sound, but lack the resources required for other types of games (such as programmers, animators, modelers, or visual effects specialists).

In this article, we’ll explore some of the tools you can use to create a visual novel using only those three ingredients—story, illustrations, and sound—while minimizing (or completely eliminating) the need for other skills, such as programming.

Ren'Py

Ren'Py is a free and open-source development engine specifically designed for creating visual novels and interactive narrative games. It’s one of the most popular tools for this genre, especially among indie developers, due to its ease of use, flexibility, and active community.

Ren'Py logo

Once installed, it works by creating text files with the .rpy extension. These files use a combination of Ren'Py’s own scripting language (similar to Python) and standard Python. Ren'Py scripting is intuitive, with simple commands for dialogue, choices, and transitions, while Python allows for more advanced customization. The result is highly self-descriptive text files that often read almost like natural language.

To work with these text files, you can use any editor or the one integrated into the Ren'Py environment, which also offers real-time preview, speeding up development. It’s a tool that allows you to create visually appealing visual novels without needing deep technical knowledge.

To enrich the storytelling, it supports images (PNG, JPG), animations, transitions, music, and sound effects. It also allows for character sprites with variable expressions. It includes an automatic system for saving games and checkpoints.

The integration of Python within the engine allows developers to create custom menus, point systems, mini-games, or unique mechanics using Python.

To reach the widest possible audience, Ren'Py lets you create multiple translations of your games and export them to various platforms, including Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and web browsers.

Ren'Py’s website features detailed official documentation, and there are also plenty of forums, templates, tutorials, and community-shared assets to enhance and simplify game development with this engine.

Thanks to all these advantages, Ren'Py has been used to develop hits like Doki Doki Literature Club, Katawa Shoujo, and Long Live the Queen.

Of all the options we’ll cover in this article, this is the one I recommend by default. It’s hard to go wrong with it. And since it’s free, the experiment won’t cost you anything. Only if this engine falls short for some reason would I consider the other options I’ll now describe.

Tyrano Builder

TyranoBuilder is a visual novel development software based on a drag-and-drop interface, ideal for those who prefer to avoid programming or who want an intuitive interface. It allows you to create interactive games with dialogue, images, music, and choices without writing code, although it offers advanced options for those who want more customization.

Tyranno Builder logo

Its typical workflow involves using its visual editor to build your visual novel by adding “components” (like dialogue, images, sounds) from a menu. If you want to add advanced features, custom game mechanics, or complex effects, you can use TyranoScript, a scripting language heavily based on JavaScript. Its main advantage over Ren'Py is this visual component that lets you create simple stories without writing anything resembling code. However, once you cross a certain threshold and want to do more sophisticated things, you’ll have to use TyranoScript, which I find a worse option than the Python offered by Ren'Py.

It supports multiple image and audio formats, as well as video (for cutscenes or transitions). To enhance the game visually, the tool allows basic effects like fades, character movements, zooms, or transitions. It also supports “speech bubbles” to bring the dialogue style closer to comics.

As with any visual novel, the gameplay mechanics you can implement with this tool are based on displaying dialogue with text and character names. These dialogues are adjustable in speed and style. The tool allows you to create choices that branch the story based on the player’s decisions. These branches can be enriched with simple variables (without code) to track choices or unlock content.

The tool’s editor lets you test the game as it takes shape, making it extremely fast to reach a functional prototype and then a final version.

The resulting game can be exported to Windows, Mac, HTML5, and mobile devices, both iOS and Android.

TyranoBuilder is not free, although its cost is very low (around €15) and is a one-time purchase. It has plugins to extend its functionality, although most of them seem to come from Japan, where this tool appears to be especially popular.

It has a community, but it’s much smaller than Ren'Py’s, making it harder to find tutorials for it, especially in Spanish. The official website tyranobuilder.com and discussions on Steam offer support, but they’re not as extensive. YouTube tutorials (in English) are helpful but less abundant.

Unlike Ren'Py, TyranoBuilder doesn’t have any major hit games to its name. It’s more common in lesser-known indie projects published on platforms like Itch.io.

In general, TyranoBuilder is used by creators who want quick results without programming. Which is perfectly fine if that’s your case. Just keep in mind that if you want to make your game more sophisticated, Ren'Py is probably the better choice.

Visual Novel Maker

Visual Novel Maker (VNM) is a commercial software developed by Degica (the creators of RPG Maker) specifically designed to create visual novels.

Visual Novel Maker logo

Like TyranoBuilder, it combines a drag-and-drop visual interface with scripting options (JavaScript), making it accessible to beginners but also allowing customization for more advanced users. In this sense, it’s very similar to TyranoBuilder, but it has several distinctive capabilities.

To start with, it integrates support for Live2D animations, which allow characters to have fluid movements and dynamic expressions (like blinking, head movements, or gestures) without external setups. This is ideal for projects with a more professional or visually dynamic focus.

It also offers a real-time preview feature that lets you quickly test changes, even in large projects. This speeds up the design and correction process, reducing frustration during creation. TyranoBuilder also has a preview feature, but complaints about its slowness and other issues (like delays or bugs when previewing complex scenes) are common.

The visual editor is more sophisticated than TyranoBuilder’s and lets you implement more complex mechanics (like variable systems, conditions, or advanced transitions) without programming. For example, you can set up point systems or conditional choices directly in the interface. It’s true that TyranoBuilder allows the same functionalities, but to do so you have to use TyranoScript.

Another advantage is that Visual Novel Maker comes with several pre-installed assets (images, music, etc.) that can be useful for building your prototypes.

Additionally, the general consensus is that Visual Novel Maker’s user interface is polished and modern, with a design inspired by RPG Maker. If you’re already an RPG Maker user, you’ll feel right at home. Another connection to RPG Maker is that it offers compatibility with certain plugins and resources from that tool, which can be useful if you plan to incorporate RPG elements or use assets designed for that platform.

The visual effects it can offer from the visual editor are much more advanced than TyranoBuilder’s, which needs scripting to achieve similar results.

It exports to Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, and browsers (HTML5). Exporting to mobile requires additional setup (like Android SDK or Cordova), which can be complicated for beginners.

As for the community, it’s small, although perhaps slightly larger than TyranoBuilder’s thanks to RPG Maker’s popularity.

The conclusion is that with Visual Novel Maker, it’s easier to achieve a professional look for your visual novel compared to TyranoBuilder. Of course, everything comes at a price, and Visual Novel Maker’s is higher (around €60) than TyranoBuilder’s (€15), although it’s still a one-time purchase.

In the end, if budget isn’t an issue and you have good artists who can take advantage of the Live2D functionality, Visual Novel Maker is the safest option.

Is it worth it compared to Ren'Py? Well, Ren'Py is free. It doesn’t come with preloaded assets, but its community is so huge that it’s easy to find all kinds of assets and plugins. It’s true that Ren'Py is based on text files, but that can be an advantage if you plan to work in a team using a code repository. On the other hand, I’m a convinced hater of JavaScript (sorry, it’s just a language I can’t stand, and I’ve given it plenty of chances), while Ren'Py’s use of Python seems ideal to me. It’s true that Ren'Py doesn’t offer Live2D animations out of the box, but its community comes to the rescue, and thanks to it, there’s a plugin that allows it, with even greater control over effects and transitions thanks to Python. Perhaps the biggest advantage of Visual Novel Maker is its preview feature that lets you test changes quickly without exporting the game, while Ren'Py has to run the full game, although you can jump to specific sections using tags, which is less convenient.

Tools for Developing a Video Game's Storyline

The importance of the storyline depends on the type of game and its target audience. There are games like Tetris or Among Us, where the narrative is minimal and the fun lies in the mechanics. These types of games do not require a complex storyline.

However, the storyline is a fundamental pillar of the experience in narrative, RPG, or adventure games. In these games, the storyline is important for multiple reasons. A good storyline creates a believable world and characters with whom players can empathize, increasing immersion. Well-developed stories generate emotions, motivating players to continue to discover what happens next. The storyline provides a narrative framework that gives meaning to the player's actions. Without a story, the mechanics can feel empty or repetitive. For example, in games like The Last of Us, the storyline drives decisions and gives emotional weight to the mechanics. A solid narrative offers clear objectives and reasons to move forward, whether it's saving a world, avenging a character, or unraveling a mystery. This keeps interest high, especially in long games. In a saturated market, an original or well-executed storyline can make a video game stand out from others with similar mechanics. Titles like Hollow Knight or Disco Elysium are examples where the narrative elevates the experience. A storyline with branches, moral choices, or multiple endings (as in Mass Effect or The Witcher 3) encourages replayability, as players want to explore different outcomes.

Therefore, the process of developing the game's storyline is as important as programming or asset modeling. In this article, we will look at some specialized tools that can be useful for creating the storyline of our game, as well as designing its dialogues.

Obsidian

Obsidian is a note-taking and knowledge management application designed to create and organize content through interconnected notes, using a Markdown-based system and a "knowledge graph" approach that visualizes relationships between ideas. Although it is not specifically designed for video game development, its flexibility, customization, and ability to handle large amounts of information make it a valuable tool for writers, narrative designers, and developers working on story planning, lore, scripts, and project documentation.

Obsidian Logo

Obsidian stands out as a lightweight and versatile solution for pre-production and organization, especially for indie projects or small teams. Each note can be linked to others via bidirectional links (similar to a personal wiki). Its graph view shows visual connections between notes, making it easier to explore complex ideas. Therefore, it is an ideal tool for mapping relationships between characters, events, and quests.

When editing, you have two main modes: a plain text editor using Markdown formatting, and a Canvas mode that offers a visual canvas to connect notes with arrows, similar to an idea board. When creating a new note, links to other notes are made using Markdown links. In Canvas, you can create two types of nodes: cards, which are small nodes with just a title, and notes that contain full Markdown text (you can even import a separately created note). Ultimately, Canvas is a visual space to organize notes as connected nodes, ideal for mapping branching stories or narrative flows.

Editing notes in Obsidian

Obsidian canvas mode

A possible workflow could be brainstorming and collecting loose ideas in notes, then structuring them in a Canvas. Additionally, outside of Canvas, if you need a high-level view of all your notes, you can open the graph view that shows a note’s tree and its links to other notes.

Another powerful feature is the ability to tag elements, which facilitates advanced searches using Boolean operators.

By default, Obsidian saves everything locally in plain text files, ensuring portability and low resource consumption. These files can be exported to Markdown, HTML, PDF, or Word. It syncs with Dropbox, iCloud.

Obsidian is free, but if you want synchronization across all your devices, you’ll need to pay a small subscription. If you want to publish notes on the Obsidian Publish website, another subscription is required.

All of the above already makes it a very interesting option for what we’re looking for in this article, but additionally, Obsidian has a hyperactive community on forums, Discord, and Reddit, where they offer templates, examples of specific workflows (e.g., for video game narrative). This activity has already produced more than 2,600 community plugins, such as:

• Dataview: Creates dynamic tables to manage characters, quests, or items (e.g., “show all NPCs with status ‘ally’”).
• Obsidian Tasks: Task tracking for development planning.
• Kanban: Boards to manage sprints or milestones.
• Excalidraw: Drawings for storyboards or maps.

In the end, no two Obsidian installations are alike. Each user customizes it with multiple plugins to suit their particular tastes, making it a tremendously powerful tool.

Ink

Inkle Studios is an independent video game development studio. They specialize in interactive narrative games, i.e., titles focused on branching stories, player decisions, and non-linear narratives, where text and user choices are key elements to advance the plot.

Their work is not limited to video games; they have also created tools for development. Among them is Ink, an open-source narrative scripting language (under MIT license), specifically designed to write highly branching stories in games. Ink is not a traditional programming language but a simple and elegant markup that allows writers and developers to create dialogues, choices, and complex plots efficiently. Ink integrates easily with engines like Unity (via a free plugin), Unreal Engine, and Godot, and has been adopted by both large and independent studios.

Ink logo

To put it simply, Ink is what the authors of the popular “Choose Your Own Adventure” book series would use today to write their stories. With it, you can offer choices to the reader and let the story branch out as those choices unfold.

Ink offers an easy-to-learn syntax for non-programmers but is powerful for advanced structures (like loops, lists, and conditional logic). It is also very lightweight, so the workflow is fast, allowing you to see changes almost as you write.

Ink syntax

All these advantages have led to its widespread use in many games (Haven, NeoCab, Sable, Sea of Thieves, The Banner Saga 3, for example) and there are plenty of online resources to learn how to use it.

To make its use even easier, Inkle also offers a free editor called Inky, available on the same page as Ink. It’s a minimalist editor that offers a preview window where you can test the options and branches you write. It also alerts you to Ink syntax errors you make while writing. It has versions for Windows, Linux, and Mac. And finally, most importantly, it allows you to export to JSON so you can load all the story information into the game you’re developing.

Inky logo

Twine

Twine is a free and open-source tool designed to create interactive fiction and text-based narrative games, especially non-linear stories where player choices determine the course of the narrative. Created in 2009 by Chris Klimas, it is widely used by both beginner developers and professionals in video game development, creative writing, education, and artistic projects. What it offers is similar to Ink, in the sense that it allows you to create interactive stories in hypertext format, where the player navigates through text nodes (called “passages”) connected by links. Each passage contains text, options, and optionally, code to handle logic, variables, or multimedia.

The downside is that there is no clear and easy path to import the story into a game engine (as there is with Ink), so Twine is more suitable for shaping the game’s script or creating a very simple prototype to show possible branches of the script.

Twine logo

Twine is known for its simplicity, accessibility, and flexibility. Its visual editor allows you to drag and connect nodes, creating a map of the narrative. It also has a code mode to customize game logic.

Interactive stories created in Twine are published as HTML files, playable in web browsers, making them highly portable. They can also be exported to other platforms with additional tools. The output files can be dumped into various supported formats for further processing and customization of the story.

Using a visual editor makes text editing much easier than in Ink. Ultimately, writing is limited to typing text and adding simple links (e.g., [[Go to the cave]]) to connect passages. Although you can also use JavaScript and macros for more advanced features.

Twine editor

With all this, you can create highly branching stories, from “choose your own adventure” tales to complex narratives with variables (e.g., health points, inventories) and conditional logic.

The tool and its code are available under the open GPL-3 license. It can be used online (twinery.org) or downloaded for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It also has an active community, tutorials (like those on twinery.org), forums, and templates on platforms like itch.io. There are also extensions and add-ons created by the community.

Yarn Spinner

Yarn Spinner is a tool originally developed by the Australian studio Secret Lab (creators of Night in the Woods), although part of the team later split from the video game studio to focus on developing the tool, becoming known by the same name.

Halfway between Ink’s scripting language and Twine’s visual tool, it uses a simple scripting language called Yarn, inspired by formats like film or theater scripts, which allows you to write dialogues in plain text with flow control elements, variables, and commands. Then, a plugin integrated with the engine acts as an interpreter that executes these scripts during gameplay, sending dialogue lines, options, and commands to the engine.

Yarn Spinner webpage cover

Some games made with Yarn Spinner include Night in the Woods, A Short Hike, DREDGE, Lost in Random, Frog Detective, Button City, and Escape Academy.

For script editing, they have a Visual Studio Code extension that offers a text editor with highlighting to create Yarn scripts, as well as a graph window to view story branches.

Yarn Spinner extension for Visual Studio Code

They also have a website where you can edit and test simple scripts.

The main advantages of Yarn Spinner are:

• Narrative Flexibility: Supports highly branching stories, with memory of previous choices (by default), storylets (dynamic content based on salience), and groups of nodes/lines for organization.
• Customization: Integrates multimedia (images, audio, video) via commands. Includes pre-made UIs (e.g., dialogue bubbles, option wheels) and samples for customization.
• Localization: Robust support for translations, extracting strings to separate files (e.g., JSON or CSV) for tools like Unity Localization or I2 Localization, facilitating multilingual workflows.
• Debugging and Tools: Errors with line numbers, browser preview, and voice-over support (line synchronization). Active community on Discord and GitHub.

If you use Unity, you’re in luck, because it’s the only engine with an official integration plugin. The plugin code for Unity is available on GitHub under the MIT license, so you can download and install it in Unity for free. Another option is to use the Unity Asset Store to purchase the Unity plugin; the cost is not very high and helps fund the tool’s development. They also offer other Unity add-ons, such as one that displays conversation text in comic-style bubbles, and another that allows decisions to be made using a selection wheel.

There are also plugins for Unreal and Godot, but they are still in Beta and not recommended for production.

Articy Draft

Articy:draft (now primarily known as articy:draft X in its latest version) is a professional tool for narrative design and interactive content organization, developed by Articy Software GmbH, a German company founded in 2009.

It is a visual software that acts as a centralized database for creating, managing, and planning branching stories, dialogues, quests, characters, and other narrative elements in interactive projects, with a special focus on video game development. Unlike pure scripting tools like Ink or Yarn Spinner, Articy:draft is more of an integrated visual environment (similar to a "narrative CMS" or content management system for games), combining story flow editing, object databases, and team collaboration.

Articy Draft logo

It is widely used in the industry by indie and AAA studios to handle complex narratives and has been key in titles such as Disco Elysium, Suzerain, HipWitch, Saint Kotar, Garden Scapes, and Spell Force III.

It features a non-linear visual editor for designing interactive content, unifying specialized editors (for dialogues, quests, objects, locations) into a single interface. It allows graphical representation of game entities (such as NPCs, items, or quests) with automation, variables, and conditional logic, acting as a "visual frontend" for game data. It does not generate executable code directly but exports structured data for integration into game engines.

Articy Draft visual editor

It uses nested views (Flow View) to map high-level stories (chapters) to fine details (dialogue lines). It includes a flexible template editor for game objects, a simulator to test logic (with voice and localization support), and tools such as a vector location editor to plan 2D maps.

Views nested in Articy Draft

It offers a simulation mode that plays the story with voice, languages, and logic, ideal for iterating before exporting. The simulation mode allows checking the evolution of variables linked to dialogues and choices, as well as the effect these variables have on the story path.

Articy Draft simulation mode

Other additional tools include a storyboarding panel; a location editor (useful for planning levels or quests); voice-over support (TTS generation for prototypes and synchronization); integrated localization (exports strings for translation and reimports); and AI extensions to generate dialogues, images, or automatic translations (e.g., with DeepL).

Storyboarding in Articy Draft

Location editor

It also serves as a database to store the configuration of all NPCs and game objects. The idea is that game designers can manipulate the data from the Articy Draft interface, then export all the data at once and load it from the game engine.

Assets and character database in Articy Draft

Regarding integrations with game engines, Articy Draft has official assets to integrate with both Unity and Unreal. For other engines, Articy Draft also allows export to XML and JSON. If that’s not enough, they also offer a NuGet package to build your own integration package.

Articy Draft follows a subscription licensing model but has a free version, with all functionalities, which can even be used for commercial projects, with the only limitation of a maximum of 700 objects per project. Still, that object count is very generous and probably more than enough for most medium and small projects. In any case, it’s more than sufficient to try the tool and decide if it’s worth it. If you need more than 700 objects in your game, you can opt for any of the paid licenses (individual ones are quite affordable).

Dialogic

The previous tool only had direct integration with Unity and Unreal, so to balance things out, now we’ll talk about one that exists only for Godot: Dialogic.

Dialogic is a plugin for Godot aimed at creating interactive dialogue systems, visual novels, RPGs, and character management. Initially developed by Emilio Coppola in 2021 as a solution to easily add branching conversations, it has evolved into a mature and popular tool in the Godot community, especially for indie developers looking to integrate complex narratives without writing extensive code from scratch. It is available under the MIT license, allowing free commercial use and modifications.

Dialogic logo

It provides an integrated editor in Godot to design "timelines" (dialogue timelines), which are sequences of events such as text, player choices, animations, logical conditions, and signals. These timelines run during gameplay to display dynamic conversations with branches, events, and choices. Conditions (if/else with variables), signals (for in-game triggers), animations, and backgrounds can be added to these conversations.

Dialogic timeline editor

It includes a character management system with portraits, expressions, and custom colors, and supports extensions for custom events.

Dialogic character editor

Visually, it is fully customizable, with editable themes (colors, fonts, text bubble styles), audio support (voice-over, SFX), animations (e.g., screen shake), and custom events with minimal GDScript code. It includes pre-made styles like "text bubble" for visual novels.

It also supports localization, allowing integrated translations with translatable glossaries.

It has a very active community that has created extensions to interact with other plugins like SmartShape2D for terrain or Godot Steamworks for achievements.

If you’re developing with Godot, Dialogic is the simplest and most cost-effective option since it’s packed with features, well-tested in many Godot games, and free.

Scrivener

All the previous tools, except perhaps Twine, consider some level of integration or compatibility with game engines. Scrivener is something very different. It is a tool 100% designed for writers and screenwriters.

Developed by the company Literature & Latte, although not specifically created for video game development, it is a versatile tool that can be extremely useful for writing and structuring video game scripts, especially for narrative projects like RPGs, graphic adventures, visual novels, or any game with branching stories.

Scrivener logo

It takes the form of an advanced word processor and project management tool that combines writing with note organization, research, and non-linear structuring. It allows dividing a project into manageable sections (chapters, scenes, etc.), managing reference materials (images, PDFs, notes), and exporting in multiple formats. Additionally, each piece of content created with Scrivener can be enriched with metadata, notes, tags, and references.

To plan narrative arcs, it offers a corkboard-like visualization mode where each section is displayed as a card.

Scrivener corkboard

The entire interface is very flexible, and by using it properly with tags, you can configure timelines to develop parallel storylines.

Scrivener timelines

Don’t expect formatting tools. In that sense, Scrivener is very simple, almost primitive. It’s actually designed to focus on generating content and then exporting it for formatting in other tools. For example, many people configure Scrivener to export the generated content to LaTeX and then, from a LaTeX editor, export to PDF with the formatting of the chosen LaTeX template.

Therefore, Scrivener is an excellent tool for writing and organizing a video game script in the pre-production phase, especially for structuring complex narratives and keeping lore organized. However, it is not designed to simulate interactivity or integrate directly with game engines, so you’ll need to combine it with tools like Twine (for quick prototypes), Dialogic (for Godot), Yarn Spinner (for Unity), or Articy:draft (for AAA projects). If your focus is writing a detailed script before technical implementation, Scrivener is a great choice; if you need immediate interactivity, opt for a tool specific to video games.

Live-videogames and the risk of power creep

The internet has radically changed the world of video game development, moving away from the days when promotion relied on articles in specialized magazines that offered demo discs. Thanks to the hyperconnectivity we now have at home, access to games has become immediate, and we are constantly bombarded with announcements of new releases. For players, the challenge is no longer finding out what games are coming out, but choosing the ones they might enjoy most from an almost infinite universe of possibilities. For developers, the challenge remains reaching the player—not due to a lack of means to do so, but because of how difficult it is to stand out in a saturated market.

In such an ecosystem, many development studios prefer not to release new games continuously, but instead focus on a single title and evolve it over time, gradually gaining new players and retaining them for years. The idea is that by concentrating efforts on one game over an extended period, there’s a better chance of standing out among the competition and gaining notoriety. This evolution is usually driven by exhaustive telemetry analysis of players, allowing developers to understand how users interact with the game, which parts they enjoy most, which ones less, and what they feel is missing. With this data, developers can pivot the game toward the changing tastes of their audience, attracting new players and retaining existing ones. Often, this process of evolution leads to the game becoming unrecognizable compared to its original version.

This type of game is known as a live-game, a term mainly used in the context of video games to refer to a title that receives continuous updates, new content, and active support from developers after its release. Also known as Game as a Service (GaaS), it is characterized by maintaining a dynamic and evolving experience for players, fostering an active community over time.

Fortnite is one of the clearest examples of current live-games.

The Business Model

This continuity of service requires maintaining servers from which the game operates and user telemetry is collected, having a team of developers who continue updating the game with new content and mechanics, as well as running constant marketing campaigns to attract new players. Therefore, these games require ongoing investment that is not sustainable with the classic model of monetizing the game through an initial sale to the player. With these games, developers must turn to continuous monetization models.

The most classic of these is the subscription model, in which Blizzard’s World of Warcraft was a pioneering title that still endures. The problem with subscriptions is that the recurring expense they entail can be a financial or psychological barrier to entry for new players—either because they cannot afford the cost or because they are unsure whether they will play the game enough to make it worthwhile.

World of Warcraft was the pioneer

Other development studios prefer to remove that barrier to entry by making the game completely free, with no acquisition costs or subscriptions. In these cases, monetization may come from the sale of large optional content packs, in the form of DLCs, or from much smaller content offerings, also at a reduced cost… and this brings us to microtransactions.

Microtransactions are small purchases within a video game (or app) that allow players to acquire additional digital content using real money. They are usually optional and are intended to enhance the gaming experience. Their cost is low, generally ranging from a few cents to a few euros per transaction. The most common examples of content offered through microtransactions include:

• Cosmetic changes to the base game: skins, outfits, or visual customizations for weapons (e.g., skins in Fortnite).
• Gameplay advantages: items that facilitate progress, such as boosters or resources (e.g., gems in Clash of Clans).
• Additional content: extra levels, characters, or storylines.

For developers, microtransactions pose much less risk than DLCs. With a DLC, a lot of content must be developed, and if it fails, the losses can be significant. Microtransactions are much more granular; being so small, their cost is low and so is the risk. Combined with good telemetry that tracks their reception among players, several failed microtransactions can be used to fine-tune what users like, and from there, generate many others that hit the mark of what they want to buy. It’s much easier to reach a positive cash flow if you have a competent analytics team and creative developers and artists.

Criticism

For players, microtransactions have the appeal of being low-cost indulgences. They are “treats” that are easy to purchase because at first glance their cost seems negligible, although over time the accumulated expense can be significant. This ease of spending has led many to accuse microtransactions of fostering addiction. These accusations were especially intense with loot boxes—microtransactions where players pay (with real money or in-game currency) to obtain a virtual box containing random rewards. These rewards may include cosmetic items, characters, weapons, boosters, or other elements, but the exact content is unknown until the box is opened, introducing an element of chance similar to gambling. That similarity has led some countries (such as Belgium and the Netherlands) to restrict or ban loot boxes by classifying them as gambling. Others require that the odds of obtaining certain items be published. Ultimately, due to criticism, many developers have reduced the use of loot boxes or opted for more transparent systems, such as battle passes or direct stores where players buy exactly what they want. Some games, like Rocket League, removed loot boxes after initially including them. Another notable case is Star Wars Battlefront II (2017), where loot boxes sparked major controversy due to their impact on gameplay. This led EA to modify them after massive backlash, even though the entire monetization model revolved around them, and their removal marked the end of the game’s economic appeal for its publisher.

Addiction is not the only criticism microtransactions receive. Another frequent one is that, by giving unfair advantages to those who spend more, they reduce the game to a pay-to-win model that frustrates players unwilling to spend at the same level. Pay-to-win can even deter those who could afford microtransactions, as they may lose interest in a gaming experience where money outweighs skill.

The Risk of Power Creep

Another danger of microtransactions is what is known as power creep. When a game uses microtransactions as its monetization model, it must continuously release new content—and make it more appealing than the previous one—so that players keep buying the new items instead of settling for what they already have. So far, this is standard practice, but there’s a risk that this dynamic can turn into a vicious cycle that may end up harming the game, both from the developers’ and the players’ perspectives.

Power creep refers to the phenomenon in which developers introduce new content (characters, weapons, abilities, etc.) that is significantly more powerful than previous content, rendering older elements obsolete or less competitive. Therefore, it mainly affects microtransactions that offer gameplay advantages.

When power creep continues over time, it can introduce serious issues into the game. The most notable are:

• Impact on the game’s reputation: In competitive multiplayer games, where players who don’t spend money face clear disadvantages, the game may end up being labeled as pay-to-win.
• Impact on gameplay mechanics: New characters, weapons, or items often have superior stats, abilities, or effects compared to existing ones, disrupting the game’s balance. Over time, this “arms race” can evolve the gameplay mechanics to the point where they no longer resemble the original design—and likely not for the better.
• Impact on development: It’s very difficult to sustain a development cycle where each new iteration must introduce more powerful advantages without ruining the fun of the core gameplay.
• Impact on players: The obsolescence of older content means that players who used previous items or characters may feel at a disadvantage, as these become less effective over time. Those who invested time or money in older content may feel their effort was wasted. This can lead to player dissatisfaction and eventual abandonment of the game.

Power Creep in Pokémon Cards

Power creep outside of video games

In reality, power creep isn’t exclusive to live-games. If we think back, we can find similar examples in the world of television series. If you reflect on the ones you’ve watched, you’ll notice that many follow a “defeat-the-villain-of-the-season” structure. To maintain interest, these villains become increasingly powerful, making the situations more dramatic and extreme. However, this approach isn’t sustainable. As the seasons go on, the villains from earlier ones start to seem irrelevant compared to those in the later ones. On the other hand, the escalating drama needed to defeat such powerful enemies can eventually tip into the ridiculous and unbelievable.

There are many examples of series that have suffered from this phenomenon, but perhaps one of the most obvious is Dragon Ball. Fans of Akira Toriyama will remember how the series began as a cheerful and mischievous tale, with a child protagonist and fights limited to martial arts. Over time, the "Kamehameha" technique (or "Kame Hame Ha," depending on the translation of the series you watched) appears as a legendary and ultimate energy blast.

Dragon Ball in the beginning

But since the series didn’t stop there, neither did the combat techniques or the enemies. As the series progressed, the enemies became stronger, and it was no longer enough to just punch them to win. The “Kamehameha” (or “Kame Hame Ha,” depending on the translation you watched) became insufficient, so the protagonists grew up, learned to fly, and launched new types of energy blasts (Wikipedia identifies up to 18 different versions of the Kamehameha, each increasingly powerful). With such a display of power, the fights became so over-the-top that a single misplaced blow could split a planet in two. By this point, the series had lost its original joy and vitality, and had been reduced to a long succession of increasingly powerful villains. That’s when I lost interest and disconnected from the series, although I know it continued for a long time with numerous spin-offs.

Dragon Ball, already a victim of power creep

Possible Solutions to Power Creep

This issue, which has long affected TV series, can also impact live-games, potentially undermining them to the point of collapse. Avoiding or mitigating power creep requires developers to design strategies that balance gameplay mechanics and maintain a fair, enjoyable, and sustainable experience over time. Common approaches include:

• Focusing microtransactions on cosmetic content: Since these are purely visual changes (like skins or visual effects), they don’t affect gameplay mechanics, preserving balance. A good example is Fortnite, which centers most of its microtransactions on skins and emotes, ensuring that player power doesn’t depend on purchases. This reduces pressure to spend and keeps functional power creep minimal.
• Designing lateral content (sidegrading) instead of direct upgrades: Rather than introducing new elements (characters, weapons, abilities) that are strictly more powerful, developers create content with different but balanced characteristics, offering new ways to play without surpassing existing content. For instance, in Overwatch, new heroes are designed with unique abilities that aren’t necessarily stronger, but provide different playstyles. This minimizes the obsolescence of older content, as choices are based on preference or strategy, not raw power.
• Regular balance adjustments (buffs and nerfs): Developers monitor the game’s meta and adjust stats or abilities of both new and old elements to maintain competitive balance. For example, in League of Legends, regular patches tweak champions to prevent new ones from dominating, strengthening underused ones (buffs) or weakening overpowered ones (nerfs). This keeps older content relevant and prevents new content from becoming overwhelmingly superior.
• Limiting the impact of progression: This involves designing the game so that power upgrades have limited impact or are restricted to certain modes (like PvE instead of PvP). In Destiny 2, new gear may be stronger, but competitive modes often have power caps to level the playing field. This reduces the perception of pay-to-win and maintains fairness in competitive environments.
• Implementing rotation systems or shifting metas: This strategy introduces changes to game rules, modes, or events that alter which elements are most effective, without necessarily making them more powerful. For example, in Hearthstone, card rotation between standard and wild formats ensures that older cards don’t directly compete with new ones, helping control power creep.
• Reusing and improving old content: This involves updating older characters, weapons, or items to keep them relevant, rather than replacing them with stronger new content. World of Warcraft follows this approach by modifying older classes to ensure they remain viable in new expansions. This helps players feel that their investment in older content retains its value.

Conclusion

In my opinion, the simplest approach is the one followed by Fortnite: limiting itself to selling cosmetic content. Since it doesn’t affect gameplay, it doesn’t require ongoing analysis and content review over time. However, it’s also true that Fortnite’s gameplay mechanics are so simple, and its scenographic framework so flat, that it can afford the wild heterogeneity of characters featured in its battles (which often feel like a scene from Ready Player One).

However, other games based on worlds with a much more defined setting—such as World of Warcraft or Star Wars—probably don’t have as much leeway to offer visual heterogeneity without descending into an aesthetic delirium that breaks the immersion of the world they aim to create.

It’s therefore a matter of studying our game and determining how far we can go with each of the strategies mentioned above. The solution doesn’t have to rely on just one strategy; we can opt for mixed approaches. The weight we assign to each strategy in our final blend will depend on the narrative framework of our game, our availability of creatives to produce visual content, and of analysts and programmers to review and adjust content that could affect gameplay mechanics.