The Witch of Bramble Wood Demo is Live

It's been a long time coming (7+ years) but you can finally play The Witch of Bramble Wood, albeit in short preview form. The demo represents a small section of the full game, which I estimate to be around 75% complete. Given the lengthy development time, I'm aware that means there's still a lot to do.

When I started out making an interactive fiction game, I imagined it would be a nice, quick project that would scratch a particular creative writing itch. No graphics to worry about, so it'll be easy, right? How wrong I was. Bramble Wood is easily the most complex project I've attempted. The main worry is user interaction; given a player can type absolutely anything they like, trying to have the game respond in sensible and, more importantly, interesting ways in any given scenario is really challenging.

Added to that, I decided I wanted to write my own engine from scratch, rather than using one of the many pre-existing options out there. GoNorth is the result of that experiment. With hindsight, was it a good idea to build an engine from scratch? Of course not! But it's certainly been interesting, and it's allowed me to include some unique features, like the ability to mix pure parser-driven interaction with discreet button-based choices, and the inclusion of dynamic events that can occur outside of fixed player turns. In theory, you can use the engine for your own games, but the documentation is severely lacking, I'm afraid (it's mostly in my head) and downloads may be restricted - if you want to try it and hit a wall, let me know.

I hope you enjoy the demo, and that it whets your appetite for Genevieve's full adventure. As the game's still in development there are sure to be some bugs, and I've got a list of features as long as my arm that I hope to get around to adding. Please let me know if you find anything amiss.

-Rich