Tales
vs
Episode
Tales is built from the ground up for mobile gaming and a wide demographic. You’ll find plenty of romance on our platform but you’ll also see all the other genres you love. Our audiences are similar to Netflix (everyone) so there’s a home for your story on Tales. Join thousands of writers who choose Tales for flexibility on monetization, ownership, and formats.
Tales
Visual. Audible. Interactive.
Episode
Tween romance.
| Features |  | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| Rights | Non-Exclusive | Non-Exclusive |
| Monetization | Premium + Subscription | Limited by Tween Demo |
| Analytics | Paragraph | Reads |
| Visuals | Illustrated, Diverse/Inclusive | Cartoony, White, Young |
| Audio | Yes | Yes |
| Linear | Yes | No |
| Branching | Yes | Yes |
| Genres | All | Tween Romance |
Focus On
Writing
Our presentation is a book brought to life, not a dress-up game masquerading as interactive fiction. You don’t have to spend 80% of your time managing stage directions for 2d paper doll characters.
Best In Class
Art Assets
Our character creator can generate people of all skin colors and body types in 25 emotions that look hand-painted by the best illustrators. You’ll have access to over 3x the backgrounds of Episode with a massive improvement in visual quality.
Inclusive Audience
Our demographic is concentrated in 18-45 year old females currently with a higher disposable income than the tween audience of Episode. We’ve found that our per user monetization can be 50-80% higher as a result.
Visual Upgrades
Style Your Text
With Tales, you can change the visuals of your text to emphasize specific lines, or adjust the tone of the full story.- Read the Text Style guide to discover best practices.
- Check out our text style library!
- Style fonts at will!
Episode
Tales
Characters
Because Episode tries to fit everything onto the same body rig, they run into issues telling any stories outside of romance. Nothing more terrifying than having Benjamin Button as a child or a troll in capri pants.
Episode
On Tales, you’ll find our creator engine is able to handle people of all ages, sizes, and colors. Humans and otherwise. Note this video is from an early beta, we’ve been improving the quality of the output. This tool will be available for writers in May 2021.
Tales
Backgrounds
Choose from a massive library of art to show your readers where your story takes place! Want to see more? Check out the full list of genres to see a variety of sets!
Effects
More than just transitions! You can add fire to a scene, show a magic spell with sparkles, or reinforce a romantic moment with floating hearts. Sound complicated? Fear not: it only takes one line! Check the VFX Guide to see examples.
Episode
Tales
Player Affirmation
There are many ways to affirm the player’s choices to keep them hooked in to the story.- Use Doobers to directly confirm a player’s choice.
- Use Results and Summaries to display bigger messages.
- Use fanfare text styles when it’s time to really celebrate!
Episode
Tales
Functionality
Tales is built from the ground up for mobile gaming and a wide demographic. You’ll find plenty of romance on our platform but you’ll also see all the other genres you love. Our audiences are similar to Netflix (everyone) so there’s a home for your story on Tales. Join thousands of writers who choose Tales for flexibility on monetization, ownership, and formats.
Player Progression
Show your player a summary of their actions!
- Give them a fun playstyle ending!
- Score their gameplay to incentivize re-plays.
- Mark key decisions that will come back into the story later.
History
Never worry about readers missing a line. Your readers can always scroll back in history to remember clues!Gender pronouns
No need to create totally separate branches if your love interest is a male or a female! You can write one branch and just swap out assets and gender pronouns. The dialogue line from the video? It’s as simple as this: Oh, I love {LOVE.him}. Isn’t {LOVE.he} lovely? Read more in the substitution section!Gameplay
You now have access to a very robust set of tools! You can:
- Show variables to the player with a variety of visibility options.
- Take away variables whenever you like.
- Set up random calculations, and use math.
- Gate choices based on variable requirements.
Have a game design idea and want help coding? Just ask your content manager for help!
AI Tools
Run our AI tools that will run simulations of your gameplay and generate data about your branchiness, number of choices, gameplay length and other useful data. Our tools will also point out if your script has any issues like dead ends or conditions that are impossible for the player to fulfill.
Syntax Comparison
A large amount of writer time is spent on character animations and stage directions. If you’d like to see a comparison of this story syntax before and after, head over here. You’ll see that 10,000 lines of code on Episode becomes only 2,000 on Tales. NARRATOR
Begin the interrogation!
EMMA (think)
(I should be delicate here ... she's probably really upset.)
label interviewgame
if (EMMA = 1) {
MRS COLLINS (cry_sob)
Please! This is all so painful to talk about!
EMMA (talk_startled)
I'm so sorry!
EMMA (think)
(I really need to be careful here. This is her daughter we're talking about.)
@EMMA =0
}
EMMA (think)
(Let's see)
choice
"SARAH'S CONDITION" {
if (TRIED_COMA1_TWICE) {
EMMA (talk)
So--
@MRS COLLINS is cry_sob
redo interviewgame
}
if (TRIED_COMA1) {
gain TRIED_COMA1_TWICE
EMMA +1
(Time to push a little harder.)
EMMA (talk)
Do you think she's going to wake up any time soon?
MRS COLLINS (cry_sob)
I ... I ... I don't know!
redo interviewgame
} else {
EMMA (talk_nervous)
How is Sarah?
MRS COLLINS (talk_cover_mouth_awkward)
She ... still hasn't woken up from her coma.
gain TRIED_COMA1
redo interviewgame
}
Our tools at Tales focus on creating the narrative. There are 2 major methods of creator based tools: script-based (Inkle, Episode, ChoiceScript) and node-based (Twine). Tales supports both node-based and script-based tools.
Find out how to import a word docx file, preview the text, and publish your story.
Find out how to style your opening chapter title, entire paragraphs, or do in-line changes to specific words.
Add locations and music to set the mood on your scenes. Spice it up with visual fx to complete the immersion.
Learn how to choose characters from our library, make your own, and enter them into your scene. Choose one of 25 emotions to pair with each line.
- Add simple choice using
[join] - Give variables
- Conditional checks against variables
- Add branching choices
- Change settings and layout.
- Issues tab: Tells you about errors and warnings in your script. Hover to see detail, click to teleport.
- Outline tab: Click to teleport down to a label.
- Assets tab: See the full list of assets in your story.
Tales vs Episode