Elm Narrative Engine

A unique tool for telling interactive stories.

Features

Context-based rule-matching system for immersive and responsive stories
Extremely flexible and extensible, see the sample stories below for examples!
Total separation of logic, presentation, and content
Data-driven and declarative
Designed to work with the Entity Component System pattern
Possible to integrate with other tools including visual editors and other game frameworks

Sample Stories

Play sample stories made with the Elm Narrative Engine

Getting Started

The Elm Narrative Engine is written in the Elm language, and is intended to be embedded in an Elm client app. If you are a developer, this allows for great customization.

You can also get started by cloning https://github.com/jschomay/elm-interactive-story-starter.git as a template that you can modify to get going on your own story.

The main story design happens by designing your rule sets, which look similar to this:

    rules =
       [ { interaction = with "River"
         , conditions =
              [ currentLocationIs "Cottage"
              , itemIsInInventory "Cape"
              , itemIsInInventory "Basket of food"
              ]
         , changes =
              [ moveTo "River"
              , moveCharacterToLocation "Little Red Riding Hood" "River"
              ]
         }
      -- etc
      ]

See the full api and documentation for more details.

I am also currently working on a visual editor that would allow non-developers to simply pick a theme and build their world and rules in a custom online text editor.

Development blog

Follow the development blog for more insights, tutorials, techniques, and information on further development of the engine and tooling.

Modules

Engine