Narrative game templates
Narrative templates are a choice you can point at afterwards. They differ in whether that choice is a line, a clue, a typed command, or a person.
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Two endings, or one person
A choice-based narrative is one scene and two choices that do not rejoin immediately. The Walking Dead (Telltale Games, 2012) made the later rejoining the complaint. Life Is Strange (Dontnod Entertainment, 2015) lets you rewind, which only works if the second try is also ugly. If both choices share the next line, you wrote a pause.
A visual novel is that structure with a route. Doki Doki Literature Club (Team Salvato, 2017) spends the first route teaching the interface. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (Capcom, 2001) turns the choice into evidence. Three scenes and two endings is a finished test. An otome aims the route at one relationship. Hakuoki (Idea Factory, 2008) is a route chart. Finish one route before you write five. A dating sim keeps a number. Monster Prom (Beautiful Glitch, 2018) lets you see it. If the number never changes a later line, delete the number.
A clue, a sentence, a verb
A detective mystery fails when you cannot be wrong in an interesting way. Return of the Obra Dinn (Lucas Pope, 2018) lets you accuse early. The Case of the Golden Idol (Color Gray Games, 2022) asks you to fill a sentence from a scene. Her Story (Sam Barlow, 2015) hides the question in a search box. Three clues. A cutscene that explains the clue is the template giving up.
Dialogue-driven adventure is three replies that change the next room, not the adjective. Disco Elysium (ZA/UM, 2019) makes the reply a check you can fail on purpose. Interactive fiction strips that down to passages. 80 Days (inkle, 2014) is a journey of them. A text adventure asks you to type the verb. Zork (Infocom, 1980) is the parser that has to admit what it does not understand. The first puzzle should use a verb the player has already seen work.
Routes and endings are the AI visual novel maker. A choice that has to become a scene is story to game. A route aimed at one person is the AI dating sim maker, otome included.
Every template in this genre
Every build and style in this genre
- Choice-based narrative template: build it step by step
- Dating sim narrative template: build it step by step
- Detective mystery template: build it step by step
- Moonlit detective RPG template
- Dialogue-driven adventure template: build it step by step
- Interactive fiction template: build it step by step
- Otome template: build it step by step
- Text adventure template: build it step by step
- Visual novel template: build it step by step
Start from this template in the Flockbay app
Describe your version in one sentence. The AI writes a brief from the template, and nothing is built until you approve it. Free for Windows and Mac.