To drink from the bottle, turn to pa-- I mean, click red or purple
July 25, 2015 10:16 PM Subscribe
Stephen "Increpare" Lavelle - creator of many strange free games, one-going-on-two strange paid ones, the sound effect generator Bfxr and the excellent tile-based puzzle game engine PuzzleScript - released three much simpler game makers a couple of months ago: Flickgame, Tinychoice and Plingpling. Flickgame and Plingpling have help pages, each with an example game; Tinychoice needs no help page and starts with an example game in the text box. More detailed info after the break.
Flickgame is an exercise in constraint: a graphical choose-your-own-adventure maker with a maximum of sixteen 'pages' and sixteen colors - and each color on a page can be turned into a clickable link to another page. A tip: your cursor should turn into a pointing hand when over a clickable color. If all else fails, click 'edit' to see all pages and links. There's a very new Increpare-run Twitter gallery of flickgames, and, apart from the example game, here's three by Increpare himself: 1 2 3
Tinychoice is a simple text-based choose-your-own-adventure maker; compare and contrast with Twine. From Increpare via Twitter about its size constraints: "none, except what github/javascript impose (/please don't abuse it!)" A tip from me: it's possible to implement variables in the kludgiest possible way: making multiple versions of all rooms corresponding to all the possible gamestates you can be in while in them.
Plingpling is a simple goal-based pinball maker. The goal is to get the ball to the target by using the plungers, flippers, bumpers, gate switches and table-bump and respawn functions. A game can consist of up to six levels; designs are hand-painted.
All three game makers have a 'share' function that generates a link to a playable version of your game; Plingpling's help page has a guide to making a pinball game changeable after it's been shared. Flickgame and Plingpling also have export/import functions for saving to and loading from disk; Tinychoice's 'save to disk' function saves a playable HTML file. All three makers are open source (the Tinychoice share button bug mentioned in the comments appears to have been fixed).
Flickgame is an exercise in constraint: a graphical choose-your-own-adventure maker with a maximum of sixteen 'pages' and sixteen colors - and each color on a page can be turned into a clickable link to another page. A tip: your cursor should turn into a pointing hand when over a clickable color. If all else fails, click 'edit' to see all pages and links. There's a very new Increpare-run Twitter gallery of flickgames, and, apart from the example game, here's three by Increpare himself: 1 2 3
Tinychoice is a simple text-based choose-your-own-adventure maker; compare and contrast with Twine. From Increpare via Twitter about its size constraints: "none, except what github/javascript impose (/please don't abuse it!)" A tip from me: it's possible to implement variables in the kludgiest possible way: making multiple versions of all rooms corresponding to all the possible gamestates you can be in while in them.
Plingpling is a simple goal-based pinball maker. The goal is to get the ball to the target by using the plungers, flippers, bumpers, gate switches and table-bump and respawn functions. A game can consist of up to six levels; designs are hand-painted.
All three game makers have a 'share' function that generates a link to a playable version of your game; Plingpling's help page has a guide to making a pinball game changeable after it's been shared. Flickgame and Plingpling also have export/import functions for saving to and loading from disk; Tinychoice's 'save to disk' function saves a playable HTML file. All three makers are open source (the Tinychoice share button bug mentioned in the comments appears to have been fixed).
smcameron: I know, but I didn't think to mention it; anyway, Lavelle lists the full history on the Bfxr page.
posted by BiggerJ at 10:42 PM on July 25, 2015
posted by BiggerJ at 10:42 PM on July 25, 2015
Cara Ellison wrote about Increpare a while back.
posted by kmz at 10:55 PM on July 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by kmz at 10:55 PM on July 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
Just discovered something about Tinychoice - you don't have to follow the format of 'description, two carriage returns, text, two carriage returns, link, etc.' You can have non-link text in between link-lines. You can also use single carriage returns. A link must, however, take up an entire line or paragraph; everything up to the next carriage return.
posted by BiggerJ at 11:15 PM on July 25, 2015
posted by BiggerJ at 11:15 PM on July 25, 2015
I made a game as a result of this post! It's a silly little thing about visiting an unusual yarnshop (is it ok to link something I've made as a result of this post? anyway, there it is)
My first game! Thank you for silliness :)
posted by kariebookish at 5:41 AM on July 26, 2015 [5 favorites]
My first game! Thank you for silliness :)
posted by kariebookish at 5:41 AM on July 26, 2015 [5 favorites]
Neat! Tinychoice reminds me a little of Diorama Club (Previously) but the syntax is a little clearer, reminds me of wiki or markdown.
Here's my effort - ifTree - probably a nonstarter as it requires the game structure to be written up in JSON and it's a bit fiddly - unless you go full on Twine and have an editor simplicity is probably a must.
posted by Artw at 7:09 AM on July 26, 2015
Here's my effort - ifTree - probably a nonstarter as it requires the game structure to be written up in JSON and it's a bit fiddly - unless you go full on Twine and have an editor simplicity is probably a must.
posted by Artw at 7:09 AM on July 26, 2015
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posted by smcameron at 10:21 PM on July 25, 2015 [1 favorite]