
hi, i’m ellis - indie gamedev, writer & designer - hopeful ghost and curiosity machine.
games
websites
do any of you remember that gumball episode where darwin becomes mega paranoid after watching a health and safety video so to quell his anxiety he goes out of his way to make everything kid friendly and inoffensive by propositioning it as being for the children and then he becomes a fascist at the end
Yesterday, my mother fractured her arm while trying to get aid. I couldn’t go with her because I’m severely malnourished. She smiled through the pain so we wouldn’t worry, but I could see it all in her eyes — and it broke me.
Before the war, my mother was a kindergarten teacher. Today, she’s forced to push through crowds just to bring us something to eat. I’m not writing this to beg for sympathy — I’m writing because we simply can’t endure this alone anymore.
If you’re able to help, even with a small amount, it could make a real difference. Thank you to everyone who shares or supports us in any way.
sometimes i say “i think” but actually i know. on account of being the knower.
joining the war on kids reading any book they want on the side of kids reading any book they want. simply you will be fine. it’s even good to be confronted with things you don’t understand and even find upsetting, uncomfortable and difficult. it’s a surprise tool that will help you later.
What I love about 12 Angry Men:
💬 Vast possibility of acting due to limited setting.
🖋 Writing is incredible !What I don’t like about 12 Angry Men:
🙄 Do we really need another legal drama story?
👨 I’m watching a movie about generic white men again, urgh.I want a movie that uses 12 Angry Men’s same insanely well crafted limited setting and wonderful writing…
…but it’s about 12 nice witches trying to decide who should feed the neighbour’s cat in a small village in the Alps.
oh boy i sure do love having tons of trinkets
the nefarious dust particle:
funniest oopsie in fallout 4 is whoever made this signed baseball just googled random signatures and slapped them onto the ball asset and called it a day.
this club penguin character is canon to the fallout universe.
The moon will sing a song for me, I loved you like the sun
Bore the shadows that you made with no light of my own
I shine only with the light you gave me
The most evil person you know is posting about being a people pleaser
The most evil person you know is posting about kindness and compassion and patience
Essays and Meta on Interactive Fiction Design
2025.5.20: Updated original list with more resources. I’ve also fixed the links.
Structure
- Standard Patterns in Choice-Based Games
- Design Patterns in Choose Your Own Adventures
- Small-Scale Structures in CYOA
- By the Numbers: How to Write a Long Interactive Novel That Doesn’t Suck
- Adventures in Text: Innovating in Interactive Fiction)
- Structuring IF Side Plots)
- Narrative Graph Models
- Beyond Branching: Quality-Based, Salience-Based, and Waypoint Narrative Structures
- Puzzle Dependency Charts
- What does your narrative system need to do?
- Narrative Logics
Design Decisions: Stats
- Loose, Tight, Flat, and Bumpy Stats in ChoiceScript Games
- 7 Rules for Designing Great Stats
- Think Before You Stat
- Set, Check, or Gate? A problem in personality stats
Design Decisions: Choice
- Mailbag: Moments of Non-Choice
- Should Games Have Meaningful Choices?
- Creating Choices in Interactive Writing
- A Bestiary of Player Agency
- Making Interactive Fiction: Branching Choices
- Successful Reflective Choices in Interactive Narrative
Design Decisions: Other
- Writing in Collaboration with the System
- Story vs. Game: The Battle of Interactive Fiction
- Narrative States
- How to write a branching narrative and won’t lose your mind
- Storygame Genre
- Narrative Mechanics, Narrative Dynamics
- That Darn Conundrum
Writing Advice and Opinions
- The Seven Deadly Sins of Writing Interactive Fiction
- Three Solutions to Three Problems in Interactive Fiction
- Writing Interactive Fiction in Six Steps
- Writing IF
Game Analysis
- CYOA Structures: Tween Romance
- These Maps Reveal the Hidden Structures of ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Books
- Playing With Words: The remarkable Firewatch is part of a new generation of games taking cues from the text adventures of the 1980s
- 7 works of interactive fiction that every developer should study
- The Illusion of Free Will: On “Bandersnatch” and Interactive Fiction
- Scarlet Sails (and a discussion about game size)
Musings on IF
- Interactive Fiction as Literature
- Riddle Machines: The History and Nature of Interactive Fiction
- Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction
- Interactive Fiction for the Modern Game Designer
- The Joy of Text: the fall and rise of interactive Fiction
- Going Interactive or: How I Learned to Relax and Let the Reader Take Control
- In the Beginning Was The Word
- An Alternative Taxonomy for Interactive Stories
Misc