Following the Twine

Have you ever been lost in maze?  Often it can be difficult to find your way out, as Hansel and Gretel and Pac-Man have found out before.  Luckily, with computers, it is easy to make a maze with a story that you - or even better your friends - can get lost in.

Twine is a simple and powerful tool that uses easy programming instructions to make a story with many different outcomes to it. 

To take part in this, you will need access to the Internet and instruction from an adult to help you, but by the end perhaps you can make a story where you can get your friends lost in a maze of your making, which is after all, one of the most aMAZing things that you can do! This activity is suitable for children and young people age 8+.

Activity introduction

Twine is an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories. Below is an easy step guide on how to use it. For a full visual guide, view the activity resource pack.

Here at aMAZing Stories, we want to see your Twine storyboard. Take a screenshot of your Twine storyboard and share it with us. Email your screenshot to amazingstories@bcu.ac.uk with your first name/initials, age and the city/town/village you live before 28th November. We will publish your storyboard here. Please ask your grownups for permission to send this email.   

1. Go to https://twinery.org/

2. At the home page, click ‘Use it online’ in the top right of the screen.

3. You will arrive at the ‘Stories’ page.  On the right hand side of the screen click on the green ‘+Story’ button.

4. Type in the name of your story.  We will call this one ‘Pac-Man versus the Ghosts’.  When you have typed in the name of your story Press ‘Add’

5. Place your mouse cursor over ‘Untitled Passage’ and double click. 

• Click on the top line ‘Untitled passage’.  We will name this ‘Pac-Man meets the Ghosts’.  Then double click where it says ‘Double-click on this passage to edit it’.
• In Twine, to make a story we must use basic programming so that the program knows what to do.
• To make a story, we must use double square brackets [[ and then put the instruction inside and then close the brackets ]] after we have told the program what we want it to do.
• So, if we want Pac-Man to run away we will write [[Pac-Man runs away]].
• However, if we want to give Pac-Man the chance to do something else, we must add another instruction.
• So, we will also say [[Pac-Man eats a pill]] on the line below.

7. Press on the cross ‘X’ at the top right of the screen.

• You will see that story has two branches to it.  Double click onto ‘Pac-Man runs away’
• When in that screen type [[Pac-Man disappears into the tunnel]] on the first line.
• On the second line type [[Pac-Man is eaten by a ghost]]
• Press the ‘X’ to exit this screen.

8. Double click onto ‘Pac-Man eats a pill’

• When in that screen type [[Pac-Man munches the ghost]] on the first line
• On the second line type [[The ghost escapes Pac-Man]]
• Press the ‘X’ to exit the screen and you can see that the branching story is taking shape. However, all good stories need a beginning, middle and an end.

9. Click on ‘Pac-Man is eaten by a ghost’.  On the first line type [[Pac-Man dies]]. Then press 'X' to exit the screen.

10. Now click on ‘Pac-Man munches the ghost’ and write on the first line [[Pac-Man escapes]]. Press the ‘X’ button.

11. Now click on ‘Pac-Man disappears into the tunnel’.

12. On the first line write [[Pac-Man escapes]].  Press the ‘X’ button.

We can see that there TWO arrows that lead to the same place.  So two different actions have the same outcome.  This means we have three endings now.  We need an ending for the final branch.

13. Click on ‘The ghost escapes Pac-Man’. Write [[Pac-Man meets the Ghosts]] on the first line. Press the ‘X’ button.  

14. We have finished creating our story.  Click on the ‘Play’ button at the bottom of the screen.

15. Now you're playing your story. Click on a choice in each screen.  Unlike normal stories, there are many different endings to this story. Which one did you end up with?