Storylet Studio

Getting Started

A short walk-through of opening Storylet Studio, trying a sample storyworld, and creating your own. Takes about ten minutes end to end.

Storylet Studio comes in two forms - the Web app and the Desktop app. Most of this guide is identical for both; we'll call out the differences where they exist. See Web app and Desktop app on the overview page for the bigger picture.

1. Install or sign in

Use whichever you have access to:

Web app: sign in with the Google account you've been allowlisted on. Nothing to install. Your storyworlds live in your account's workspace.

Desktop app: download the installer from download.storylet.studio:

  • macOS: the DMG. Drag Storylet Studio into Applications, then launch it.
  • Windows: the installer EXE. Run it, then launch Storylet Studio from the Start menu.

Each storyworld is a single .storyletstudio file on disk. On first launch you'll see the Welcome screen.

2. Try The Village (a sample storyworld)

Before building your own, it's worth seeing a finished storyworld in action. From download.storylet.studio, grab The Village under the "Samples" section. You'll get the The-Village.storyletstudio file.

  • Desktop app: double-click the file in Finder / Explorer, or use File > Open Project… from the app and pick it. The project opens directly.

The Village has a small map of zones and sites, a handful of decks, and storylets that respond to the player's state. To play through it, open the Storymap and switch to Simulate mode (or jump directly to the Explore tab); you'll see storylets being drawn, choices you can make, and the world state updating in response. Then look at the storylets in the editor to see how their conditions and outcomes are wired up.

A .storyworld (compiled bundle) version of The Village is also on the downloads page if you want to drop it into a player shell or a StoryletEngine plugin in a game engine - see the Engine Plugins section.

3. Create your own project

When you're ready to start authoring:

  • Desktop app: from the Welcome screen, click New Project…, pick where to save the .storyletstudio file, and give it a name.
  • Web app: from the storyworld list, click New storyworld and give it a name. The storyworld lives in your workspace from then on.

Either way, you land in the editor on a fresh storyworld.

4. Add an act and a storylet

Every storyworld is built out of storylets (the basic narrative beats) organised into decks, which sit inside acts (the high-level chapters of your story). Storylet Studio creates a starter act for you.

To add a storylet:

  1. Open the act.
  2. Click New storylet.
  3. Give it a title and write some body text.
  4. Save.

That's the minimum. From here you can add conditions (so the storylet only appears when the world state matches), outcomes (so playing it changes the world state), and game data (custom fields like Ink fragments or dialogue references for your player shell to consume).

5. See what you've built

The Storymap > Simulate view (or the Explore tab) plays through a session against your current draft so you can see your storylets being drawn in context, with the world state visible alongside. This is the same view you used to play The Village in step 2.

6. Where to next

When you're ready to share, Publish produces a .storyworld bundle that a player shell or game engine can consume.