I’m super excited to announce the public beta period for Evergreen.ink, our interactive fiction authoring tool. If you already are familiar with interactive fiction and/or Evergreen.ink, feel free to just head on over and start creating! If you want to know more, read on!
Interactive fiction is content that falls somewhere between a game and a story. It reads like a novel, but the reader gets to help determine the flow and content. One of the most common forms of interactive fiction is “choice-based interactive fiction.” If you’ve ever read any of the classic Choose Your Own Adventure books, then you’ve read interactive fiction. This is the foundation of what we have built with Evergreen.ink.
We have already launched a series of titles that are built using the platform. While working on the content for these titles, we realized that the authoring system we were building is something special, and that it has utility outside of our internal needs. We decided to open up the platform more broadly. The user experience of Evergreen.ink is incredibly intuitive, but it belies the powerful Sapling scripting engine that hides just under the surface. Authors can write either narrative content, or they can dip into the more advanced features and add truly intelligent behavior to their stories.
The platform is targeted toward choice-based interactive fiction intended for reading on mobile devices. This is a recognition that the mobile reading experience is one that will reach the broadest audience, and as a result, the default playback and reading experience is tailored specifically for small-screen devices.
We have begun work on a native viewer as well that we plan to launch it in Q1 2024 in the Apple App Store and Google Play. Our end goal is to help authors easily write interactive fiction stories and to eventually provide a platform for monetization. Already, content authored in Evergreen.ink can be played back in a web browser or via uploading to Itch.io where authors can monetize their stories.
Interactive fiction can sometimes seem like a novelty, but as a media platform, it has a huge amount of untapped potential. We hope that Evergreen.ink allows authors the freedom to stretch their imaginations, and we look forward to seeing what people create. This is just the beginning of the journey for the platform; we have a lengthy product roadmap and are excited about where we are headed.
Ok, that’s a lot of words, but since we’re talking about an interactive platform, how about an example? One of the first titles we created was a short take on The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. It’s a quick, simple example of what Evergreen.ink can do. You can check it out here: Mystery at Gray Manor.
We hope that Evergreen.ink is useful to creatives that are interested in discovering a new platform. We hope that the tool fades into the background as authors simply do what they do best: create.
(If you’re interested in finding out more, please don’t hesitate to contact me or to join the Evergreen.ink Discord.)
Jonathan Hays 