"It's a simple job"
There's no such thing.
"We go in, we go out, thirty minutes tops"
It never goes smoothly.
"And once we're done, dinner is on me"
She's been dead for two years.
You were a well-functioning group of small shrimps, ready to take on this city, to get your hands on the prizes that it owed you like gutterrats tearing through trashbags. Death was a risk you were willing to take, after all, people died of heartattacks and drive-by shootings all the time. You could fall through the cracks in the pavement any time. Might as well go big, right?
You tried to play it smart every time, took the small jobs, the calculated risks, stuck to the same group of people that you could rely on. It was a solid fundament for success, or at least, for staying alive and out of jail. That one job shouldn't have been any different.
Break-ins could be difficult depending on security, but stealing something was generally harder than to leave something behind. So it was an odd one, yeah, but you didn't question it much. Go in, place the item, go out. Ruin someones marriage, get paid, celebrate.
But it all went to shit.
You ran, cut all ties, and never looked back. It kept you safe, it kept you sane.
Until the past comes knocking and drags you back to that day, demands that you pay the debt that you owe to the dead, either by biting the bullet or by getting some goddamn answers.
This project is inspired by Shadowrun Dragonfall and Cyberpunk 2077. It's about revenge, grief, rekindling the friendships that you can and burying the ones you can't, while pissing off powerful people with or without dying while doing so.
Your team
Viktor - a short-fused medic with an addiction problem; charming when he wants to be, snarky when he doesn't
Marlen - a warmhearted veteran turned cyborg, a reliable shield with a tendency for sacrificing herself - she died to keep you safe
Dana - a former gang member looking for redemption - knows her way around both guns and spray cans
Levi - a paranoid ex-corpo hacker; officially deceased and holding a grudge
I ended up throwing in a character creation part that hopefully doesn't feel completely out of place. With all the cycle-options it looks much bigger in the background, leaving much less text on the actual page, but at least I can squeeze it all into one passage instead of clicking through a maze :')
Since I managed to break my glasses in Iceland (haven't decided if it's a good or bad omen) I can barely see what I'm writing. If I can't see the spelling mistakes, they don't exist.
Progress is awfully slow as I'm going back and forth to fix formatting issues and word repetitions. I've reread my writing so often now that I don't even recognize it as words anymore, so I hope I can all the bugs and mistakes before this thing ever sees the light of day.
Since I finished Viktors "we used to be friends so it's awkward now"-opening I can now throw all emotions out the window to go back and write the "I'd stab you with a spoon if I had to"-alternative. Fun times.
Day 136 of Seven Lawless still keeping the tattoo post-BreakupGate.
#seven's ex still hasn't removed it either btw #which could mean nothing
💥 hard-violence Follow
misfit alley? disaster street? where to next, sadness boulevard in misfortune neighborhood?
💎 jennaandthejuuls Follow
how dare you leak seven lawless's address like that
🌞 julietjuliet Follow
it's kind of sad that Victoria Valentine and Gina Reign's ship name is based entirely on their fake surnames tbh :/ can't we coin something more romantic based on, i don't know, their ACTUAL names?
🔥 reignssupreme Follow
#ViGina
🌞 julietjuliet Follow
i see my mistake now
🐼 savinaslovechild Follow
botb it couple of the season?
ValenReign (Victoria Valentine x G Reign)
Savina (Seven Lawless x Avina Khanna)
Rowetty (Rowan Hart x Betty Fender)
WinterReign (Blake Winter x G Reign)
DevIris (Devyn Powell x Iris De Luca)
EmplOrion (Orion Quinn x employment)
ZenEmcee (MC x a moment of peace for once)
other (no opinion/i'm bald/answer in tags)
Voting ended onAug 8, 2025
🦄 rowansfuturehusband Follow
i can't believe this is how i find out Rowan has a girlfriend i'm actually going to kms
🦎 slowlcrawl Follow
girl betty is literally a guitar ??? 😭
🎸 rowanhartsyou
would
🦎 slowlcrawl Follow
PARDON.
🗣️ seven-lawless-tattoo-watch
Day 759 of Seven Lawless still keeping the tattoo post-BreakupGate.
#they BOTH still have them!!! #they're getting back together any day now i can feel it 🙏
🧺 wasted--underground Follow
underground wastebasket are talented and deserve a spot on the show, while certain others had to collude with people behind the scenes to make the cut. uw has been saying as much since the beginning, and now we have hard picture proof to back it up too. really goes to show who you should and shouldn't trust in this production.
🎤 theechosenone
"talented and deserve their spot" LMAOOOOO like name 1 uw track that isn't just a corny one note sex song. i'll wait
🧺 wasted--underground Follow
name 1 parent who loves you. i'll wait
🎤 theechosenone
your mom
🧺 wasted--underground Follow
next time i'm kicking them out of the fucking car
🗣️ seven-lawless-tattoo-watch
Day 1189 of Seven Lawless still keeping the tattoo post-BreakupGate.
#any #any day now
🌹 victorias-valentine Follow
omg hold ooooon cheating rumors?? victoria valentine affair arc???? finally?????
🌹 victorias-valentine Follow
so apparently the cheating in question may have been "for BOTB" or whatever and not "on ****** Reign" god i fuckign hate it here
#been waiting years for her to get out of that wack ass marriage and THIS is what i get?? #im the one being cheated here. cant have shit in detroit
🌹 victorias-valentine Follow
OH WE ARE SO BACK
#LEAVE THEIR ASS MISS WENNER #I HOPE YOU GET MC IN THE DIVORCE
🥭 divadionne Follow
Wait what's this I'm hearing about ValenReign divorcing? What?
🪩 franticallyattheclub Follow
Victoria got caught having an affair with some BotB singer lol. not that anyone's surprised, that marriage was on the rocks already
#the singer even posted a meme about it #yikes
👟 oqafterhours
While an image is floating around of Victoria Valentine sitting with one of the contestants at a café, that's also all. No official statements have been made, so let's be careful of validating hearsay and unsubstantiated rumors as fact.
🍰 iris-is-a-delucacy Follow
mc is tearing our beloved #ViGina apart
👟 oqafterhours
Please don't say it like that
🌟 tripleyeehaaaw Follow
so how do you guys think the tattoo watch guy is handling the affair reveal
🗣️ seven-lawless-tattoo-watch
SYGFRUW2392WEDGUQH2QU3EJHWAUGHH????0?
🌟 tripleyeehaaaw Follow
about as well as seven then. good to know
🌨️ intheblakestmidwinter Follow
trust that i'm the biggest baskethead around but i have to say it: someone's gonna have to break blake's heart so we can finally get a song about something other than a laundry list of sex euphemisms. someone please please please take one for the team here there's only so many hot wonderlands left i can take
🌨️ intheblakestmidwinter Follow
guys you will not believe who just liked this post
So, after basically throwing away my old life and building a new one (moving apartments, jobs, and universities), I've reopened Twine for the first time in 4 months. (Un)fortunately, I left the chaos that made LOABOS so easy to write behind me; therefore I decided to put it back on the shelf until I can find better fuel for it.
But it's still my goal to finish something with Twine, so I'm currently dusting off this new weird thing since I had the summary lying around for some months now. I'll try to keep the scope smaller so it's actually manageable and hope that I can keep working on it once the new semester hits me in the face.
My relationship stats and bars are a huge mess, but I'm excited about including flavor text that basically differentiates between "He's just how you remember him - the person you trust the most." and "He's just how you remember him - that annoying little shit."
It's been like a month and progress isn't really happening.
When I first put some words on a page, I was in the middle of a crisis and though to myself that I could use this to work through it. By now I'm wondering if it's such a smart move to have those topics in front of myself constantly instead of something happier.
Over the last three months I switched universities, jobs, and soon, apartments. I gave up/lost all of the big parts of my identity, and it wouldn't hit as much if this wasn't the second time I changed my path. The burnout I got through my first job keeps coming back and when I finally have some free time, I'm too tense and tired to write, the words just don't come out. Every other night I call friends to glue parts of my sanity back together. I wouldn't wish this shit on my worst enemy.
is what I have right now and that number feels awfully small to me. Before the first upload, I'd already merged some passages by shoving everything into if-statements so there are no duplicates in that number, but I'm spending a lot of time figuring out how to add and remove empty lines around the if-statements without messing up the layout for other conditions (because as you can see during the dialogue with the professor, optional lines don't appear at the same place). Do I enjoy the changing placements? Yes. Do I like implementing them? No :')
I also changed my color scheme, praying that it's readable because I spent 2 hours looking for a combination I didn't hate:
^ That's the 3/4 passage of the "numb" option. Still figuring out how to write 4/4 without sounding too much like the alternatives. The flavor text for the "decline" option is also done, so the story can move forward.
Since one of my first summaries was "Kikis delivery service with burnout" I'm going to send MC to the same town no matter the choices and then branch the story with combinations of jobs & living spaces, so I'm currently wracking my brain for jobs that are interesting enough to experience & ....easy enough for me to write about them.
If it doesn't catch fire I'd like to structure the game with some fixed scenes that will happen regardless of former choices, some scenes depending on where you're working/living, some regarding your reputation with other characters, ...
I feel like I'm drawing a lot of inspiration from games like Stardew Valley so I hope the plot won't feel boring if there are no high stakes like other IF do. If debt doesn't motivate you, I'm doing it wrong.
You know I uploaded the prototype during an "eh, whatever" moment despite its current size but I guess I'll now wait until I have at least 10k words on that paper instead of adding peanuts. Unfortunately I'm graced with the speed of a snail.
Your entire life revolved around this one goal. Years of hard work, sleepless nights, and an entire shelf of handwritten study notes should have been the key to your success. Upon graduation, your life should become easier, with open doors and a stable job in a field that you love. And everyone who ever doubted you, who told you that you didn’t belong here, would be left behind in the dust.
It would have been a beautiful sight.
It’s just not the reality that you’ll get to experience.
You pushed yourself to the limit, you really did. Tried to break through the ceiling to reach higher. Stand up on your tiptoes and stretch as far as you can in order to grasp the stars - but right when you wanted to close your fingers around it, that fucker burned out and disappeared in the dark, empty night sky, and you lost your balance and fell down.
How does one get back up from something like that?
How are you supposed to pull yourself together and move on?
What the hell is your life supposed to be now after you had it all mapped out?
There’s no time to catch your breath, with student loans weighing you down. With parents you’re not supposed to disappoint. With your reflection in the mirror that you can’t even look into the eyes.
Main topics I want to include here:
Mental health - coming to terms with the fact that you »weren’t good enough«, to let go of the frustration, guilt and selfdoubt
Finding a new path - letting go of your old goals and start on a new path, even though it’s scary and you’re starting from scratch
People's opinions - be it your parents, your friends, people from school or strangers, everyone has an opinion on your situation and your life & you have to decide where to draw your boundaries, where to get support, where to lie and who to trust
Debt - a problem for future you suddenly appeared in full force, demanding your attention, threatening to crush you. Even as a magician, you can’t just snap your fingers to fix this.
So this project is basically the result of me coping with real life stuff by forcing my characters through similar shit, making them cry, sprinkling a bit of magic and glitter on top, baking it at 180° and adding a note that reads, in shitty handwriting: everything is going to be fine in the end as long as you hang in there.
I'm making this up as I go (because what could ever go wrong with that approach) so this blog is mostly for myself to keep track of all the changes and additions that happen along the way
Since this whole thing focuses on the impact that people can have on each other, I'm going to keep it platonic (+ my attempts at writing romance are a trainwreck crashing into a volcano, they should never see the light of day)
Strangers, Friends, Enemies and everything else:
Amadia - only appears on this blog so far
Bee - appears in the current version & on this blog
Moving into that specific apartment hasn't ever been anyone's particular goal. The cheap rent is what brought them here, in a tall building right under the rooftop, offering a nice view over the city with two bedrooms but four people. Bee moved in a year before you, all of their stuff in a single bag, looking half like a lost puppy, half determined.
When you came here for the first time, looking for a place to stay, Bee simply seemed nice. Good manners. Took your coat and offered you tea. Kept the conversation flowing with a polite distance. You expected some weirdness when it came to sharing a room with a stranger for the first time in your life and yeah, your awkwardness after moving in was probably noticeable. Very much so.
On your first day, you put your things into the wardrobe and the rest of your keepsakes on the desk - so few that the space was almost completely empty and made for a sorry sight. On the other hand, Bee had used the last year for some intense decoration, plastering the roof slope with glowing stars and stickers. Lots of plants made the room smaller than it already was, and for some reason, there was a pillow fort between the two beds, taking up even more space.
As you lay there in your bed for the first time, staring at the ceiling and unable to sleep, Bee had broken the quiet by swearing, first as a whisper, then more loudly.
"You know what, this is weird enough already, let's just speedrun this."
According to the rustling on their bed, they got up and threw their blanket somewhere, then sat down on the ground in front of your bed, their voice much closer than before.
"Hi, I'm Bee, and I'm actually really scared of them because one crawled into my ear when I was five and wouldn't come out. Do you know how scary it is to hear that weird noise inside of your head? I get nightmares from that sometimes. Oh, and I know sign language because my boss is mute and only has one eye, but he's a nice guy and he knows how to make a fancy dish out of a rat and some potatoes. Well, not that he's done that. Also I hate the smell of lavender, and my biggest fear is falling out of a window because a fortune teller told me as a kid that that's how I'm going to die - which made for a really, really terrible birthday and I think she was a fraud instead of a real magician."
They hummed as if thinking for a bit.
"I thought that if we share our deepest, darkest fears, we could skip right to being friends. Does that work for you?"
You ended up talking until the sun rose high enough that you could see each other, until you dozed off mid-sentence. One night was all it took to remove the awkwardness between you.
----------------------------------
While writing this at 2am, my brain randomly changed the lyrics "I've got guns in my head and they won't go" to "I've got rats in my bag and they won't know". There's a 50% chance that I'll end up giving Bee some pet rats now, though doing so means that I'll officially have more animals in the story than planned characters...
I'm sort of unhappy that I created Bee to give the MC a friend from the good old times, just to turn them into the "best friend who supports MC a lot while hiding their own problems" character who appears quite often in IF. Unsure how to change it.
All of my characters start off as one-dimensional bullet points and as soon as I write about them, they change into the total opposite - Bee was supposed to be the calm, mature, reliable friend but turned out as...three rats in a trench coat (not literally, that spot is taken already)
There’s a table in the dining room that hasn’t ever seen more than three people at the same time. Never more than two of the same bloodline. There was a birthday cake, a long long time ago. And an empty seat, and another one, another one, another one…
There’s a small kid waiting for a father to come home. There’s a mother explaining why he won’t, not before midnight. There’s a promise that this is all just temporary, refreshed ever so often. Just another week, just another month, adding up to years.
There’s a nice lady, another kid's mother, watching over the little girl from afternoon to evening. Aunt Lillian watches all the school plays, cheering for the kid who is hers and the one who isn’t. Mom goes back to work, but she’s still there in the mornings, dropping her off with a lunchbox and a note from Dad that gets tucked away in the nightstand drawer.
There’s an office plastered with drawings - maybe paper is a love language in this house.
There’s another kid on the way, filling a half-empty house with laughter and footsteps. There are days when Mom reads them bedtime stories and days when both kids sleep in the same bed while the house is silent. And it’s bearable, yeah, there’s only ever smoke but never a fire - Mom goes back to work, Aunt Lillian stays, Dad is there for some mornings and some evenings, half their birthday parties, throwing money at them to make up for it. Maybe paper is a love language in this house.
There’s a graduation party with the four of them after elementary school, a photograph recording eyes full of pride and joy. One hangs on the living room wall, and two more stand on office desks, preserved between glass and wood, sometimes hidden behind a towering stack of documents and folders. The last one sticks to the wardrobe door of the boarding school room, a home for eight years where letters from her parents slowly turn into annotations on her little brother's pages, sometimes getting replaced with a "They say they’re proud of you, I wish I could hug you". Eight years where every birthday is celebrated with friends and cakes and packages, and then two months later back home - the other one - with more cake and more packages and a hug that feels unfamiliar and fades from memory eventually, just to repeat it all next year.
Eight years documented on paper, almost a decade written down like a diary, leaving blank space between the lines for all the things that she doesn’t tell them. A first love and a heartbreak that gets written down and ends up in the trash can along with every "I think I want to quit school", "Maybe I should move to another country" and "Someone put a curse on me & I don’t know how to fix this. Mom, I’m scared, I need you."
Her parents aren’t good with feelings, not like Lillian was. There’s no bright warmth between them, they’re more like two cogs working fluently with one another, fitting together perfectly.
They love each other, sure. They just don’t know how to say it.
They’re a family, sure. They’re just on opposite ends of the table, too far apart to reach over.
-------------------------------
Since I'm pretty bad at fleshing out characters the normal way, I try to paint myself a picture of them like this - in the most roundabout way, putting a giant spotlight over whatever messes them up the most.
I still need to tweak it a bit to make her father likeable enough for her to follow in his footsteps while keeping him distant enough BUT the raccoon-curse-hint is in there now, without sounding too out of place (hopefully?), which is good enough.
Custom Sugarcube 2 template inspired by Choice of Games and dashingdon
With the recent news of dashingdon shutting down I decided to dust off an old twine template. Might make the move to twine easier for some, might not, either way I had fun.
Template on itch.io
Template is compatible with the most recent Twine update (2.10.0)
Features:
Mobile friendly UI
Settings to change theme (white, sepia, dark), font (including a dyslexia friendly font), font size
Autosaving and custom save names
Toggleable notifications
A passage to choose custom pronouns; both by reader input and preset, as well as pronoun widgets for grammatical differences
Special passages labelled and explained
Multiple stat bars
Stylesheet and Javascript labelled to make everything easy to find and change
I spent a few hours copying it bit by bit and tweaking it to see what it does and how to change it, made learning a lot easier (and it looks very nice too)
This was the last step on the Update everything because SugarCube broke everything with the last update tour: the templates. As of today, all the templates are now compatible with SugarCube 2.37.3 (passage code + APIs!).
The changes also include some fixes in the explanations, as well as reformatting the interface (a bit). The whole log of all the edits can be found by clicking on the link below:
Hello again person of the internet, It is me, your totally legit supplier of very good Twine SugarCube assets {100% GOOD!!! NO BUGS!!!}. Aft
The older versions of these templates (2.36 compatible) have been archived on my GitHub. And as of today, any new template created for SugarCube will only be available for 2.37 (too many changes).
If you liked a/some template/s, consider sharing the following posts:
User Interface Template:
Simple Book
One Page (à-la-Chapbook)
Space/Tech Double Whammy
VN-lite RPG
Title Page
Code Template:
Settings
Character creator (+ Guide/Tips)
Also, don't forget to change the IFID when using a template!
As of now, I’m trying to test out Sugarcube so I can move all assets onto it. It’s a little complicated, but it’s something that hopefully I’ll work through! If not, I’ll simply just go back to Chapbook?
Needless to say, it’s a very messy learning process. So far doodling little chibi stressed admins have been helping me get through these stages… haha….
First update will include: Prologue and Chapter One
Warnings: Blood and injuries, sexism, profanity, temporary character death, child neglect, parental physical and emotional abuse, optional sexual content, and more. Suitable for ages 16+. List will be updated in the future.
This game is in early development and a work in progress. There may be future changes to location names, plot etc.
You’ve never felt loved by your family before.
Born a twin but feeling more like a shadow, you’ve watched your younger brother, Nolan, receive all the love and praise you were denied. But no matter how unkind you are to him, Nolan’s loyalty and kindness towards you remains unwavering. It’s as if there’s a bond pulling you back everytime you think of leaving it all behind.
Now a mysterious illness has swept through Valorian Kingdom’s royal court, leaving many nobles, including the king at death’s door. The Oracle’s prophecy offers a single hope: the Crown Prince must gather five lost souls to join him in a dangerous journey towards Coven’s Swampy, an ominous and foreboding area hidden deep within the mystical forest.
You are chosen to be one of those five.
As you venture deep into the forest, the journey will push you to the limits of courage and loyalty, forcing you to question everything you believe about family and love. This might not just be a journey to save the day, but a journey towards self-discovery for you and everyone in your group. So when the journey ends, will there be anything left of the person who first stepped into the darkness?
Customize your MC! Change your appearance and control your personality. MC starts out as female, but there will be transition options.
Grow a relationship with your twin! Choose to either continue being unkind to your twin brother or getting to know him instead. Your MC's relationship with him may affect some major events.
Develop relationships! There are six romanceable characters - 3 male, 2 gender selectable, and 1 non-binary. Or you can avoid romance and keep it all platonic.
Learn and improve your skills! With the option to choose to either be a mage, knight, or both, you can learn and improve your skills to become better at what you do.
Find yourself! Journey through the mystical forest to not only find a cure, but to self-discovery. There are plenty of secrets to learn about that may or may not change the way you think and feel.
More to be added…
Below are the six romanceable characters in this story. You can choose to flirt with everyone, but at one point, you'll have to decide on one. Also keep in mind that there are other important characters as well that are not listed here.
Ver/Vera Forrest | Gender Selectable | 21
Playful and energetic with golden-retriever-like energy, V is always ready for adventure. They never fail to be there for you when you need someone to rant to, or a shoulder to lean on. Their cleverness and sneakiness keeps them out of most trouble due to the way they were raised. And it’s exactly how they are raised that has made them hide their burden under their positive enthusiasm.
You are best friends, so why don’t you know any of their secrets?
Oliver Astoran | he/him | 21
With a cold demeanor, Oliver holds a strong desire to protect the people he cares about, especially those whose kindness is exploited. Your unkind treatment towards your brother causes him to despise you. You are always able to press on the right buttons to rile each other up. He shows a strong sense of determination that marks his mental and physical strength. But perhaps there’s something more to the reason behind his behavior than what the eye sees.
Will you ever be able to see him in a different light, or will it just be fighting, fighting and more fighting?
Ethos Van Winston | he/him | 22
Burdened by the responsibility of being heir to the throne, Ethos is reserved, guarded, and serious. As a child, he was once carefree and one of your closest friends. But after an incident that left unspoken, lingering tension between you two, he now elicits a melancholic presence. His warm side is hidden away somewhere, and you wonder if there was more than just the incident that made him change.
You weren’t the reason he changed… right?
Theodore Eaves | he/him | 24
From a young age, Theodore’s life has been defined by duty and training. He’s mature for his age and has a tendency to act like an older brother to you and the group. He’s well disciplined and stoic, rarely having time to express vulnerability. His focus on duty has left him oblivious to romantic interest, despite his admired reputation due to his looks and status. His obliviousness goes further though, for reasons that he himself hasn’t fully discovered and understood.
Will you ever get to see a vulnerable side of him, instead of just that brotherly figure?
Mattie | they/them | 19
Curious as ever, Mattie often gets themselves into trouble. But with their charming personality and resourcefulness, they’re able to get themselves out of trouble. They are playful, enjoying the work of teasing others and instigating drama to get chaotic, and hopefully flustered, reactions. Their skills and knowledge about the forest have proven him to be a good asset, but there is more to them than what meets the eye.
For someone who is so bright and playful, they can’t surely have anything to hide, right?
Yaran/Yara | Gender Selectable | 22
Nobody is sure they know who Y is. They seem ambitious, cunning, and deceiving; doing risky things to achieve their own goals at the cost of someone else’s pain. They are unpredictable, popping in and out of your group - sometimes being a guide, but other times hindering progress. Despite their ambiguity, they are charismatic and mysterious enough to leave your group intrigued. All there is to do now is truly learn who they are and what they have hidden inside.
Who is Y and can you trust them with anything, especially your life?
Demo | ROs Profiles
music inspiration
This is my first attempt at creating an interactive fiction game and using Twine Sugarcube. Please be patient and kind <3
It's kind of ironic that the story I'm working on focuses on the impact that other people can have on your life while I got people to help me out with the project itself. It really helps a lot to have more brains in a jar.
My emotional support pigeon / accidental bug finder told me that there's no way to see the entire length of the passage because there's no scrollbar - and I had no goddamn clue why. I'm a computer user, a monkey smashing keys in front of the desktop, it does what I want it to do and suddenly a basic function is ... not there.
It's even less fun trying to figure out google why it's gone and how to fix it. Finally found something that sounded like my problem, tried the fix, didn't work. It's annoying as hell to constantly update it on itch so I can see if something changed since it works fine in the file.
I ended up asking my code wizard for help and he figured out the problem as well as taught me how to fix it (god knows if I would have gotten there without him). The sun shone down upon me the moment it worked, I could hear angels sing and everything.
I'll give it less than a day before I run into the next stupid problem, but at least there's a shiny, majestic, fully functioning scrollbar right where it belongs and that's progress!
