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Ian Thomas

@wildwinter

Games, books, larp, films, rats, and shoggoths. Narrative Director @ The Chinese Room. Brit in Stockholm. He/him. Narrative Tools and Articles: https://storytools.se

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18.08.2023
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Latest posts by Ian Thomas @wildwinter

Greg Davies: Great task, well done. Didn‘t eat a thing.

Persephone: Thank you.

Alex Horne: Ah. Well. Let’s take another look at that pomegranate.

03.03.2026 17:17 👍 1089 🔁 229 💬 7 📌 43
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@jon.inkle.co It reached Sweden. :-)

06.03.2026 14:53 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Note that I totally failed to hit the brief here and so said more than one thing. Ah well!

(Good stuff in this book. Lots of good juicy crunchiness, in fact. From a lot of familiar names!)

04.03.2026 16:12 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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📖 THE GAME NARRATIVE KALEIDOSCOPE ❄️ is out NOW!

www.inklestudios.com/kaleidoscope

100+ essays on writing & narrative design, with articles from the writers of Baldur's Gate 3, Control, Call of Duty, Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider, Sam and Max...

ALSO the Kaleidoscope Podcast with 2 full eps!

04.03.2026 09:54 👍 606 🔁 304 💬 18 📌 108

Ah, shit... woke up in a mysterious and abandoned location, and I've lost my memory. I hope a series of gradually escalating challenges positioned between me and escape can instruct me how to open doors, use my powers, and double jump.

15.02.2026 20:22 👍 249 🔁 50 💬 15 📌 1
Story Tools - Narrative Design Tools & Articles Helpful tools, libraries, and articles for games narrative pipelines. Made by Ian Thomas.

I've collected some tools and articles here, as it's all getting a bit messy.

storytools.se

17.02.2026 22:14 👍 7 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
Preview
Dinky Feature: Scratch Audio TL;DR —in Dinky you can record temp audio for each line of your script.

New feature for Dinky (the dialogue Ink editor) - record scratch audio for each line while in the editor, and be notified when it goes out of date.

medium.com/@wildwinter/...

17.02.2026 18:18 👍 6 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 1
Story Tools - Narrative Design Tools & Articles Helpful tools, libraries, and articles for games narrative pipelines. Made by Ian Thomas.

I've collected some tools and articles here, as it's all getting a bit messy.

storytools.se

17.02.2026 22:14 👍 7 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
Preview
Dinky Feature: Scratch Audio TL;DR —in Dinky you can record temp audio for each line of your script.

New feature for Dinky (the dialogue Ink editor) - record scratch audio for each line while in the editor, and be notified when it goes out of date.

medium.com/@wildwinter/...

17.02.2026 18:18 👍 6 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 1

One think I have learned though (in other projects) is that the compiled Ink is useful, but combining it with the raw source file gives you way more useful data.

15.02.2026 16:21 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Sure - it's still baby steps and will undoubtedly have missed a bunch of edge cases. I think if you're trying to introspect the Ink structure itself there are maybe better versions out there.

15.02.2026 16:21 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

bsky.app/profile/wild...

15.02.2026 15:40 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Horses/courses, and I'll continue noodling away at things which make my life slightly easier. :-) Definitely not saying "This is the way!" because for many people or even different projects, it's not. But the more that's in the ecosystem, the better, IMO.

15.02.2026 15:38 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Ink as a flow tool I really like, though. And the runtime side of it is really good, way better than some solutions that try to fill a similar gap and have different authoring approaches.

I'm not a fan of node-based myself, really. But I have other people who much prefer to consume things that way.

15.02.2026 15:38 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

These definitely use Ink in different ways for different reasons, some of which restrict its inherent power. And there are other solutions and other engines out there.

15.02.2026 15:38 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

And having a bunch of tools in the toolbox are handy. It's why Ink-Tester exists, to do some brute force "did this line ever get hit?" analysis. And why Ink-Localiser exists, which only makes sense if you don't glue together lines. And why Dinky exists, to deal with spoken dialogue lines.

15.02.2026 15:38 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Interesting feedback on "but this doesn't make sense for use with Ink" and that's true, for a bunch of 'proper' uses of Ink it's not necessarily useful. Mostly this is me noodling to see what tools I can build, but a lot of ways Ink is being used now is not necessarily what Ink was designed for.

15.02.2026 15:38 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 1
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A bit more acceptable I think.

15.02.2026 15:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Updated - tested the new version with 1000 knots and 1500 stitches and it seemed to survive.

15.02.2026 15:28 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

For example, we use Ink for spoken dialogue. Which it *really* wasn't designed for.

15.02.2026 15:04 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

By which I mean - a lot of people are using Ink to solve problems it wasn't written for as we're often short of better solutions. The thing I made is to address some pain points caused by that misuse.

15.02.2026 15:04 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Ink is made for non-graph, for sure. But we definitely have use cases (and I know others do) where it's not being used like that, as it's a better solution for more basic narrative logic flow than a lot of other things. A misuse of Ink, really, but because it *is* being used, this helps.

15.02.2026 15:02 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

That looks very comprehensive!

15.02.2026 14:24 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Still work in progress really, figuring out what I need from it. If there's something missing, let me know!

15.02.2026 14:18 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

bsky.app/profile/wild...

15.02.2026 13:47 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Looking promising...

15.02.2026 13:42 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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Working on some optimisations for what I call "The @richardcobbett.bsky.social Effect"

15.02.2026 13:38 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 1
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14.02.2026 23:36 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

(I fully expect teething probs, it's all very new.)

14.02.2026 23:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I imagine your script is rather large! But drop me a test case if you have a chance and I'll see what I can do. Or at least give me some numbers - count of knots or something?

14.02.2026 23:29 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0