Dendry is a choice-based storylet-native narrative engine. It was initially developed by Ian Millington between 2014 and 2015 and subsequently revived by Autumn Chen in 2020, creating critically acclaimed games in the process. It is heavily inspired by the now defunct Varytale engine.
This tutorial will walk you through the creation of a simple game. To get an idea of where we’re going, the full tutorial game is playable at https://smwhr.github.io/dendry-tutorial/
<aside> 🇫🇷 Ce tutoriel existe aussi en français !
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A dendry starter-pack project exists on github : Use the Dendry Starter Pack
For more advanced installs, you can read Full project setup
The game we will create takes place on Treasure Island, so make sure your info.dry (found in the source folder) looks something like this :
title: Treasure Island
author: Dendry tutorial
ifid: 12345ABC-67DE-F8A9-B01C-234567890CDE
<aside> 💡 What is an ifid ?
An interactive fiction identifier (IFID) is a specific type of UUID used for uniquely identifying both new and legacy works of interactive fiction. It is not mandatory but if you intend to publish your game, it is good practice to have one. You can use this generator.
When using the dendry new command, an ifid is automatically generated.
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Navigate or open your game file : Et voilà !
<aside> ⚙ Depending of your method of install, whenever I will instruct you to build the game it will mean :
npm run dendry make-html command and open out/html/index.html</aside>