Quick start
Build a tiny branching story, play it, and publish a link you can send to someone, in about fifteen minutes.
By the end of this you will have a one-scene story with a choice in it, a share link, and a working mental picture of the loop: write, wire, play, publish. You need an account and a browser. Nothing else.
Create a blank project
Go to Projects. Click New project. The dialog asks for a name and shows five template cards.
Type a name (this guide uses The Lighthouse), then click the Blank card.
The card is the button: clicking it creates the project. Cards other than Blank
copy a whole story into your project, which is great later and noise right now.
The page comes back with a banner saying your project is ready. Click Open the editor.
On the Free plan you can own two projects at once. If New project refuses, delete one you are done with, or upgrade.
Add a scene
A blank project is genuinely blank: one chapter, no scenes. The scene column is on the left.
Click + Add scene at the bottom of that column. A small dialog asks for a
name. Type Opening and press Enter.
The script column in the center opens, empty and waiting.
Write a line
Click into the script and type a sentence:
The lamp has been dark for three nights.That is a line beat. With no speaker chosen it reads as narration; pick a speaker on the line and it becomes dialogue instead.
There is no save button. Every keystroke syncs as you type, and anyone else in the project sees it appear.
Add a choice
Press Enter to get a fresh empty line, then press /.
The beat menu opens. Type ch, press Enter, and a Choice beat lands with one
empty option.
Fill in the first option's text: Climb the tower. Click + option to add a
second, and give it Walk the shore.
Each option's route is set to inline body by default, meaning the option plays a few beats and then rejoins this scene. Leave it there for now. On the first option click add line and type:
The stairs smell of salt and old smoke.Do the same on the second option with a line of your own.
The other route type, graph edge, sends the player to a different scene. That is the real fork, and it needs an edge drawn in the flow view first. Once you have two scenes, see the flow view.
Mark the ending
Your story has one scene, and play has to stop somewhere. A scene where play can
stop, with no ending named, is a compile error (MISSING_ENDING), and publish
will refuse it.
In the right dock, open the Stage tab. Under the Ending heading, tick
this scene is an ending, then fill in a title, for example
The Lamp Relit. The flavour line under it is optional.
Play it
Click Play from here in the top bar. It compiles the open chapter in memory and starts playing from the scene you have open, in the dock's Preview tab.
Click to advance. Your line appears, then the two options, then whichever inline body you picked.
Drafts are allowed loose ends here, so preview is a forgiving audience. If something is genuinely unreadable a dialog lists the problems and you can jump straight to the beat that caused each one.
Publish it
Click Publish in the top bar, then Publish now in the dialog.
Publishing compiles the story properly, this time with every rule enforced, and mints version 1 plus a share link. The dialog shows the link under Share link, with Copy link beside it.
If the compile finds a problem the dialog lists it instead of publishing, and each entry is clickable: it takes you to the offending scene or beat. Fix, then publish again.
Open the link in a private window to see exactly what a reader sees. Send it to someone. Their progress pins to the version they started on, so publishing version 2 tomorrow will not break their save.
What to do next
The story you just built has one scene, which is the one thing a branching game cannot really be. Add a second scene, switch an option's route to graph edge, and draw the edge in the flow view: that is the shape everything else builds on.