So you’re thinking you can’t code for shit and you want to make a game. And you think you can write pretty decently, and you want words to be the game. So you eventually find Twine and say, “Hey, this is perfect. I can make games and all I have to do is write!”

Wrong.

I will admit that I couldn’t help thinking that when I played my first Twine game. It was an interesting experience. I can’t remember anymore what it was (having played a ton more after that), but I remember that playing one Twine game was enough for me to suspend my belief in Twine being “just a simple game maker”.

Twine is simple. It’s text. It’s hyperlink to hyperlink of exposition and character development. Sometimes it’s blocks of text describing things. This is Twine. But only on the surface. You can play a ton of games on Twine and never really understand what it is until you start making your first Twine game. You will never really understand what it can be until you read through the Twine wiki site and realize that behind every page and image and link is a potentially labyrinthian system of arrows that, unless you have a really good memory (or a notebook, in my case), you will never be able to decipher.

Because Twine is friendly to the gamer. Twine is kind. For the uninitiated developer though, Twine is a giant spider web of potential. Learning about every macro and expression and function expanded what I initially set out to do, from a “simple” text game into a mausoleum of choices and consequences.

Because Twine isn’t simply cause and effect, choice and action, act and reaction. Through words, Twine allows you to create whole worlds inhabited with any manner of creature. Twine lets you relate or create an incredible moment in history. Twine can make you feel the weight of every yes, and every no, and every repurcussion by saying no (or yes).

I realize now, in learning how to make games with Twine and actually working in it, that Twine allows you to create anything. The only limit is you and your grasp of words. And I think this is harder than simply drawing a sprite and having it walk around. But if you can somehow mold the words into that sprite and have them walk around, then the pay off is much larger.

I know they say that an image is worth a thousand words, but that’s only because an image can’t decide what words to use. You don’t need an entire dictionary of descriptors to say that the sky is blue.

But if you can somehow impart the way the slowly rising sun hits the clouds, causing the blue-ness of the sky to glint, as if the world were turned over, and a lake sat above you—all in less than a thousand words—then you don’t need pictures. Words are enough.

Because while a picture can be worth a thousand words, a thousand words can create more than a thousand pictures.

This is what I realize Twine is to me. A thousand words that I will never underestimate again.