OK. This weekend it’s #textjam2014, managed by @mguniverse (official tumblr here)

The concept is very simple: you have 48 hours to create a text game. Images are accepted as long as they are not part of the gameplay. ASCII text is also welcome.

I’ve tried to work on several games the past years and I’ve used a handful of softwares. If you want to try this year #textjam or if you want to play by yourself, it’s the same, you’ll need tools!

Number 1:
Twine is of course the most known software right now to write interactive fiction. The old version of Twine is buggy, ugly and quite hard to handle. But it’s very powerful and you’ll be able to produce wonders in a few days of hard work. You should definitely try it.
Twine has also a very cool new version coming up, this time it’s browser-based and promised to be nice and easy to use. Right now it’s in alpha meaning it’s even buggier than usual. Maybe not a good idea for your first game or for 48h game jam.
Twine website.

Number 2:
Inklewriter is my favourite tool, mostly because this browser-based software is nice and easy to use. The downside? It’s browser-based and sharing it might be a bit of a kerfuffle (but I’ve never tried, so maybe I’m totally wrong).
Contrary to Twine, Inklewriter is also much more user-oriented when it comes to if and then…
Inklewriter website (you need to sign in).

Number 3:
HTML. If you have some knowledge in HTML, you can create a very simple adventure game. End a page with a choice and link it to new pages. Easy as that. It’s very limited but you can then just take care of the text. With a pinch of CSS, you can even create a beautiful adventure game.

Number 4:
Axure or any other wireframe software. Wireframing is a very powerful tool to create mockups and very simple yet usable prototypes. On my project at Ubisoft, I’ve recreated the whole game in Axure: pages, links, conditions, variables, and so on.
Yet, Axure is quite hard to handle and can be really ugly. My first text adventure was made with Axure and I think I’ll be using it for this #textjam2014.