Inky by Inkle is a text editor designed for creating interactive stories and narrative games. The program uses the Ink scripting language, allowing writers to develop complex branching, dynamic dialogue, and non-linear structures. Inky offers a clear syntax and visualization tools for organizing the flow of the story.
- Ink language support. Inky interprets and compiles the Ink language, a markup format specialized in interactive narrative. Writers can define choices, conditions, and jumps between sections of the text.
- Real-time preview. While you write, the editor displays the story as it will play, showing how branches unfold. This helps you understand how the player's decisions affect the development of the story.
- Export to multiple formats. Stories created in Inky can be exported to JSON or integrated directly with game engines such as Unity.
- Integrated debugging. Inky includes tools for testing and debugging interactive stories. It lets you simulate player choices and track internal variables.
- Tag system. Writers can add tags to specific sections of the text to organize content and make navigation easier in large projects.
- Variables and conditional logic. Ink supports global and temporary variables, logical operators, and conditional structures. This makes it possible to create complex mechanics within the narrative.
- Unity integration. Inkle provides an official plugin for Unity, allowing stories to be imported directly into the game engine.
- Multilingual support. The Ink language and the Inky editor support Unicode characters, making it easy to create stories in different languages.
- Linear story mode. In addition to branching narrative, Inky lets you write linear stories with no choice structure.
- Style customization. Developers can modify the appearance of the rendered text through tags that the game code interprets.
- External include system. Stories can be split into several Ink files and then combined using include directives.
- Auto-save and project files. Inky works with project files, letting you manage a story across several linked documents.
Inky was developed by Inkle Studios, a British studio specialized in narrative games. Ink was first released publicly in 2016, together with the Inky editor. The project grew out of the development of "80 Days" and later "Heaven's Vault," where Inkle needed a tool to handle complex narrative. The Ink language is open source under the MIT license, and its runtime is implemented in C#, with ports available for other languages. Inky has been used in numerous commercial and indie projects, establishing itself as a robust solution for interactive narrative.
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