A visual alternative to ink and Inky.
ink is a wonderful, free, open-source narrative language, and the writing power behind games like 80 Days. If you would rather build your branching story visually, see the whole map at a glance, and export something playable without a game engine, ChoiceStory Studio is built for you.
ink set the bar for writing.
A narrative scripting language for games
We are genuinely fans. ink gave writers a clean, expressive way to author deep branching narrative, opened it to everyone for free, and proved itself in some of the most admired story games ever shipped. A few of the things it gets right:
- Free and open source under the MIT license, including for commercial games
- A proven narrative language behind acclaimed games like 80 Days and Sorcery!
- Markup first: you write the story, with logic woven in where you need it
- Slots into engines like Unity and Unreal as a narrative layer
- Its editor, Inky, plays your story as you write, with instant preview
If you are comfortable writing in a markup language and you are building inside a game engine, ink is a brilliant choice and we will happily point you to it. ChoiceStory is here for a different maker: the one who would rather not write in a language at all.
One thing kept coming up: people want to see the branches.
Listening to creators, we noticed a pattern. People admired ink's power, but many wanted to see their branching story as a map instead of reading it as script, and they wanted something playable without standing up a Unity project first. Not everyone who has a story wants to learn a language and an engine to tell it.
That shaped our roadmap. In ChoiceStory, the branches are a visual graph, media lives in the editor, and one click gives you a standalone file that just plays. We built toward the maker who wants to point and click, not write and integrate.
Point, click, ship.
Build it visually.
No language to learn. You lay scenes on a canvas and draw the choices between them. Every scene is a node, every choice is an edge you can see.
See the whole map.
Your branches are a graph you can look at, not lines of script. The shape of the story is right in front of you.
Media is built in.
Drop video, stills and sound onto a scene in the editor. They are part of the story from the start, not handed off to a separate engine.
Playable on its own.
One click builds a standalone Windows file. No game engine to wire up, no integration step. Your audience opens it and plays.
Two tools, two kinds of maker.
An honest look. On several of these, ink is the stronger pick, and we say so plainly.
| Feature | ink / Inky | ChoiceStory Studio |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free and open source (MIT) | Free tier; a lifetime Pro arrives with beta |
| How you build | Write in a markup language, with logic woven into the text | Drag and drop on a visual canvas, no language to learn |
| Seeing your branches | A text editor, Inky, with live preview | A visual node graph of scenes and choices |
| Media | Text-first; images, sound and video are handled by the host engine | Video, images and sound managed in the editor |
| To get a playable game | Integrate it into an engine like Unity or Unreal | One-click standalone .exe, no engine |
| Best for | Developers building narrative inside an engine they already use | Creators who want a finished, playable story without code or an engine |
Honest trade-off: ink is free and open source, its narrative logic is deeper and more expressive than a visual canvas, and slotting into a full engine means it can reach any platform that engine supports. ChoiceStory today exports a single Windows file. Building for the web, for phones on the App Store and Google Play, and for macOS and Linux, each chosen at export time, are directions on our roadmap. They are intentions, not promises yet, and the studio itself will keep running on Windows.
Choose ink if
You are comfortable writing in a markup language, you want the deepest narrative logic, and you are building inside a game engine you already use.
Choose ChoiceStory if
You would rather build visually with no language to learn, see your whole branching map at a glance, and export a playable file without an engine.
Build it without the code.
Get on the early access list for the first testing wave, or follow the build as it happens.
ink, Inky, Unity, Unreal and all other product names mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. ChoiceStory Studio is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by inkle or any of these companies. All comparisons are based on publicly available information as of June 2026.