Another project funded in 2025 as part of our micro-grants program supported Serhii in the development of additional features for his engine Atrament. Here’s an update!

The core concept of Atrament is that, while the Ink scripting language is widely used, it could be further developed into a more full-featured and user-friendly web-based engine that could offer creators a workflow comparable to Twine or ChoiceScript. While the core of the engine already existed prior to applying to a IFTF micro-grant, additional work was needed to push the tool towards greater maturity, ease of use, and functionality. The micro-grant allowed Serhii to work on the following areas: - developing documentation for authors; - developing a “wizard” style command line tool to provide technical scaffolding to users in creating a project and publishing it; - adding features to allow authors to export their games to a desktop OS; - delivering improvements to the debugger and the compiler; - expanding visual capabilities and extending the markup language; - purchase of a domain name for a dedicated website for the project.

Serhii also notably performed some exploratory work around automated game testing and VS Code integration, two very interesting features that are nonetheless not ready for primetime at this point. Still, the project is still under active development, moving from version 2.0 to 2.4.1 in 2025, and Serhii has integrated the feedback from external developers making a first wave of Atrament games, such as Sun Runners, The Loop, and The Corridor. Plus, given by the enthusiastic reaction the engine has met from established authors over at IntFiction, it seems like we can look forward to more Atrament games in the future!

Head on over to Atrament.ink (and the Github page) to learn more about the project, and give it a try! We are thrilled to have supported Serhii in further improving his engine and making it even easier for authors to develop their stories!

In 2025, as part of our micro-grants program, IFTF funded a project from Mark Davis; thanks to the funding, Mark and the team have made very good progress and were able to launch the platform, now called “Moving Literature”!

The project’s ambition was to design a no-code web-based tool for authoring interactive fiction, specifically designed to empower creators through accessible technology and a low barrier of entry, while still offering some nice multimedia options. Mark’s vision was to foster a vibrant community by blending the narrative power of Ink scripts with modern visual elements, such as the integration of images but also of Lottie animations (hence the zoetrope/Muybridge-style logos on the website!), which are triggered within the story through the use of Ink tags. While Mark explains that the technical stack is one he uses in his professional work, this project brings those high-end tools to the hobbyist and experimental IF scene.

The project was able to launch in the fall of 2025 thanks to IFTF’s support, with the launch of two websites: - MovingLiterature.com: The project’s home base, featuring general communications, development blogs, and “getting started” documentation. - MovLit.com: The library and creation space where the “action” happens, allowing for user registration and story creation.

The micro-grant was used to engage a professional graphic designer (who has since joined the team!) and cover hosting costs for the next 3 years, to ensure the project has a stable home for years to come. This supported the team as they focused on carrying the project towards launch, such as building a documentation library, implementing user registration, and building out forums.

We are very happy to have helped bring this new authoring tool into the world! Building new low/no-code options that nonetheless provide engaging capabilities to control or enhance presentation has proven numerous time to be a very effective entry point for newcomers to discover and enjoy IF, and lower the barrier of entry to more stories being created. IFTF is proud to support such projects that push the envelope for web-based interactive storytelling!

Earlier this month, IFTF was delighted to participate in the GDC Festival of Gaming in San Francisco. This was our chance to explain what interactive fiction is, does, and can do to the biggest game developer gathering in the world.

We began by rocking the crowds at the Monday night opening event at Oracle Stadium. Several nonprofits and indie collectives had tables up at the concession level. We took the opportunity to soft-launch our GDC-week project: a collaboratively-authored Twine game - the classic “exquisite corpse” reimagined for branching narrative. Everybody who walked by was invited to add a node to the Twine editing screen — without looking at what earlier attendees had added. (Or, at least, not looking much.)

Naturally, the story got pretty chaotic pretty quickly, even on that first night.

Tuesday was a breather, since the festival hall wasn’t open yet. We took in some of the GDC talks and generally sprawled on the lawn in Yerba Buena Gardens. The weather was lovely — particularly for those of us who had flown in from East Coast snowstorms.

On Wednesday, the IFTF booth opened up (along with the IGF pavilion, alt.ctrl.gdc, and the rest of the festival hall). We were located in “GDC Commons,” alongside several other nonprofits and independent organizations. Our space had three tables, so we were able to demo the first day’s worth of Twine contributions while also grabbing people to continue the growth of the Twine map.

It turns out that most passers-by were familiar with Twine — no surprise, since it’s one of the most popular open-source narrative design tools out there. Fewer people realized that a whole educational nonprofit exists to support Twine. IFTF also manages other IF community services like IFComp (the oldest continuously-run game-design competition), IFDB (the definitive database of IF), the IF Archive, the forum and more. Not to mention NarraScope, our cozy little conference dedicated to narrative games. (Coming up this June in Albany!)

IFTF’s third table was dedicated to an older brand of interactive fiction: the Visible Zorker. This is an open-source project which demonstrates Zork, the original 1979 text adventure. The game is rigged to display its own source code as you play, along with all the variables, timers, and other mechanisms that run behind the game’s magic curtain. We at IFTF love this kind of educational project: revealing and making game design accessible to everyone.

GDC’s festival hall runs three days. By Friday afternoon we were tired (but happy) (but definitely tired) and ready to wrap up. The Twine game was a huge success with over 120 contributed passages over the course of the week.

We’re looking forward to next year at GDC in San Francisco. What will we be showing off in 2027? Haven’t the foggiest! We’ve got eleven months to decide, and you have eleven months to anticipate it. We hope to see you there.

To play the IFTF Collaborative Twine Adventure, visit this page!

In 2025, as part of our micro-grants program, IFTF funded a project from Grace Benfell, co-editor in chief of The Imaginary Engine Review, which was completed last summer!

TIER defines itself as an online journal of games criticism - but Grace and Phoenix, the editors, have a very specific goal and outlook for it, described in their manifesto. TIER values the margins, the strange, the hobbyist releases, the experimental, the games that don’t get a lot of critical attention. Prior issues each focused on a specific game, such as thecatamites’ “Anthology of the Killer” or randomnine’s “OVERWHELM”; but things got a little different for their latest issue…

See, their initial proposal envisioned three small issues on three IF games; however, the scope shifted into a larger issue that would offer the opportunity to showcase a wider range of perspectives on IF. And it is a large issue with no less than 6 pieces on various aspects of IF. (We get it! There is so much to talk about in IF!) Grace explains that the grant money was very welcome as it allowed them to commission more ambitious and experimental pieces overall. The issue took overall longer than expected, but with an interview, a retrospective, and four critical perspectives on a variety of IF games, there’s a lot for everyone!

You’ll find this issue on TIER’s website, featuring: - a reflection on “Repeat the Ending” (Best in Show at Spring Thing 2023) as a personal game and the vulnerability it entails - an honest retelling of what it was to be a Twine author participating at their first IFComp in 2017 - a shorter piece on game poems, and the exploration of experimental techniques that have long been part (or precursors?) of IF - a lengthy interview with Nathalie Lawhead, touching on the power of text-based games for effective, personal, touching, and plain weird experiences, in an industry that looks more towards sleek polished spectacles, and an angry world that stifles creativity - a great study of “Horse Master” that made me go, “fine, yes, of course I will play Horse Master for the 12th time” - an exploration of retro interfaces featured as literary devices in a few IF games, and what they point to.

We are very happy to have helped bring into the world these very unique and thoughtful pieces of writing! Good games criticism pieces have always been very important to the IF scene, from long rec.arts.int-fiction pieces to SPAG articles, and even to this day articles from The Rosebush, but it can go through periods of lull - it takes thoughfulness, introspection, and the time to sit with a piece. IFTF is proud to continue to support a vibrant, healthy creative scene in this way!

One of the projects in the 2025 class of IFTF grants awardees was led by Katy Naylor from the Voidspace. In Katy’s words, the Voidspace is a cross-disciplinary space to bring together practitioners and explore and promote the overlap between the worlds of IF, indie writing, games, and interactive performance to encourage cross pollination. From our experience, notably at Narrascope, those worlds do have quite a bit of overlap that is always interesting to foster! The proposal sought grant money to support the delivery of several interactive fiction workshops and Twine minijams for newcomers as part of the London Games Festival Fringe in April.

The Voidspace successfully managed to run three IF workshops in April, two in person and one online; although they weren’t formally picked as a side event by the London Games Festival, the workshops ran at the same time period. The Void managed to bring together quite a few people from the literary and the interactive performance worlds that form part of the network that Voidspace has created - most of whom had not run into IF before, but had very relevant skills and an interest from their existing practice. The in-person workshops occurred April 5 at Theatre Deli in London, UK, a theatre community hub that frequently partners with the Voidspace. The first workshop focused on Downpour, a very intuitive and accessible tool for hyperlinks-based games created by V Buckenham, who also ran this workshop; and the second one saw Stanley Baxton (who readers of these pages might know from his 2024 IFComp entry) introduce a group to the tool Videotome. As for the online workshop, on April 15 Mark Ward gave and introduction to Twine.

Katy reports that these workshops were very successful! Not only for the attendees - Katy herself reports that the workshops planted several seeds in her minde, helped her shape her approach to advocating for IF and inspired her to use Videotome for an upcoming piece. This also spurred her to create her own introductory IF workshop aimed specifically at theatre makers, which she ran in September at an experimental theatre festival, using physical materials to replicate Twine-like structures - one attendee even said that this broke her writer’s block!

We’re always excited to help introduce more creators to the world of IF, and it sounds like the cross-pollination aspect of this project made it very successful!

PS: when we asked Katy to describe the overlap between IF and interactive theatre, her response was so insightful that we are copying it here verbatim:

The overlap between IF and theater (particularly immersive and interactive theatre, which is the Voidspace’s core interest) is massive!

Immersive theatre often involves audience interacting with environments that are all around them (i.e. inside a big touch real set - see Punchdrunk for the biggest example), choosing which strands of an atomised story to follow (e.g. following different characters or objects), etc. Interactive theatre takes this a stage further and allows audiences to take a direct part in the action - a sort of live action game but with a tight narrative arc. A balance of choice with controlled impact very similar to IF!

IF is well suited for creating environmental narratives - my workshop focuses on the spatial mechanics of “Howling Dogs” - how the degradation of the core space over time tells a story if its own - and encouraged participants to design a story from an environment first perspective. For those interested in interactive theatre you can use dialogue options and variables to create a story that feels responsive in a similar way.

There is also the element of time - even in a linear piece of IF, you can manipulate the flow of time far more than conventional text - by choosing breaks between passages, expanding links, moderated text etc. You can use these simple tools to give a piece of IF a sense of theatricality - landing the timing of ‘beats’ for flow and emphasis. Add the use of variables to build in a sense of time passing and use of environment and you have what I call ‘4d storytelling’. Which if you think about it, is what theatre is… “[Understudied][https://borntopootle.itch.io/understudied]” is a great example - a piece of IF about theatre that uses variables to introduce time pressure, and text effects and structure to choreograph the timing of ‘beats’. Form and content in unity!”

Thank you so much Katy!

At the end of 2025, David Cornelson stepped down from the IFTF board of directors. We would like to thank David for his time and service to the organization during his two years on the board. David will continue to support IFTF, along with former members of the board, on the advisory board.

IFTF is thrilled to announce the next round of our microgrant program, providing modest grants to folks working on interactive fiction technology, education, preservation, or outreach. Do you have a project in the works that will benefit an interactive fiction community and could use a bit of funds to get it to the finish line? We would love to hear from you: applications for this year’s program are now open.

The goal of the grant program is to support projects that benefit the interactive fiction community at large (rather than funding the commission of new games, for instance). We especially love projects that provide tangible benefits to a community of IF players or makers in their work to preserve, maintain, and inspire the continued growth of this medium. Proposals are evaluated by an independent committee of advisors (distinct from the grant admin committee) for merit, feasibility, and potential impact.

Our budget for the grants program is small: we have $3,000 of funds in total to split between awardees, with a maximum award per application of $1,000. (Requesting a smaller amount is okay and helps us support more projects.) To preserve our volunteer bandwidth, we will not consider funding projects needing less than $150. We will ask you to submit a simple budget to back up the amount you are asking for, as well as a few details about your project and its scope, but we try to keep the application process as simple as possible.

Some fine print: Grant awardees will be asked to submit a report nine months after receiving funds, meaning our funding is best-suited for projects that will be accomplished in under one year. Please note that those directly involved in the grant process (i.e. Grant Admin Committee members, Grant Advisors, IFTF Board Members) cannot apply. Those who have been banned from IFTF activities are not welcome to apply. If you are connected to someone involved in the process, please disclose that in your application so we can make appropriate plans to avoid conflicts of interest.

If you’re interested in applying or learning more about the process, please check out our grant guidelines. Applications will be open until November 15, 2025, and we except to announce accepted projects by January 31, 2026.

Last year, we funded an array of exciting projects focused on accessibility, education, documentation and outreach. And in our most recent funding round, we helped support four exciting projects currently in progress or concluding: Serhii is working on Atrament, an IF engine that combines Ink scripting with Javascript as an alternative to Inky, creating a more full-featured release platform for Ink stories comparable to the mature web deployments for languages like Twine and ChoiceScript. Work is in progress with a launch is expected by the end of the year. Grace Benfell commissioned articles on modern interactive fiction for a special issue of The Imaginary Engine Review, an online games criticism journal, with the goal of introducing modern IF to a broader audience. The special issue is expected to be published shortly. Mark Davis is developing Moving Literature, a web-based platform for interactive fiction builders that allows creators without coding experience to make interactive stories incorporating images and animations. A blog post introducing the platform recently went live. Katy Naylor hosted a series of IF writing workshops earlier this year in London and online, in association with the zine Voidspace, introducing artists from the wider literary and interactive performance worlds to interactive fiction.

We can’t wait to see what ideas you’ve got brewing this year. If you have any questions about the IFTF Microgrants or the application process, please reach out to grants@iftechfoundation.org. And if you don’t intend to apply but are still thrilled that IFTF is funding cool projects, you can donate to the grants program directly (choose “IFTF Grants” in the donation page dropdown), or simply to the IFTF General Fund to help us keep this and many other great programs running!

Hello to everybody in the IFTF Community (and beyond!)

The Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation’s board of directors is thrilled to announce the creation of a new way that you can help support our mission and get some fun perks in the process. This initiative has been in process for many months and we are delighted to finally launch it for the public.

You may now support IFTF on the Patreon platform, at the following URL:

https://www.patreon.com/IFTF

Backing IFTF on Patreon provides an additional, accessible route to helping us continue to serve the community of narrative game lovers and its ever-evolving needs. By becoming a member of our Patreon, you can unlock various perks, such as:

• A special role and access to an exclusive channel in the IFTF Discord ($5/month tier)
• A unique profile badge on the Intfiction forums ($5/month tier)
• A scaling discount on NarraScope admission ($10/month tier or higher, after 6 continuous months)
• Access to the Secretest Discord channel ($100/month tier, for you wild and wacky folks!)

We plan to continue to expand the perks over time as each of IFTF’s committees hooks into the system. We also are open to suggestions about additional things we can offer, so if you have ideas, please feel free to contact IFTF.

IFTF Patreon Q & A

Q: I already financially support IFTF another way. Is that changing or being eliminated?

A: No! This is simply another option for helping out.

Q: If I support IFTF via PayPal, it’s considered a tax-exempt donation. Is that still true with Patreon?

A: We advise checking with a tax advisor with expertise in your specific jurisdiction, but Patreon states that “if the creator is a legally recognized not-for-profit company and you receive nothing of value in return for your payment to them, then some jurisdictions allow the patron to take a tax deduction.”

For more information, this is a good place to start: https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/207099326-Is-my-payment-to-a-creator-tax-deductible

Q: I have an idea for a perk or feedback about the Patreon!

A: That isn’t a question, but you can still get in contact with us via the many routes outlined on our website: https://iftechfoundation.org/contact/

The Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation is registered in the United States as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization.

IFTF’s 2024 Transparency report is online, summarizing the organization’s activity over the previous calendar year, including its financial income and outflow.

We are pleased to announce the creation of our new Institutional Relations committee! You can learn more by reading our charter here.

The intent behind this committee is to help support IFTF in establishing and nurturing relationships with institutions that align with our vision. Over the years, we have realized there are so many of them! Other non-profits (related to digital arts, video games, open source, etc.), educational institutions, libraries, museums and other preservation-oriented folks, video game studios, but also government bodies and granting bodies, and everything in between!

While IFTF has established a number of great institutional relationships over the years, there wasn’t necessarily formal internal resources or structures that could help in supporting these relationships; with so many committees with different goals and activities, there was a risk of a lack of coordination or visibility, and missing identifying interesting opportunities or potential synergies. This committee’s goal is to help with this, and also support the org more generally in things like communicating IFTF’s impact to various interested stakeholders more effectively, or having a more structured and more long-term-focused approach towards fundraising. We believe this is an important step in IFTF’s maturation, and we are very excited about it!

Our committee has a few members to get started with, however we’re definitely interested in onboarding more folks! If you like building bridges, or know a few people in fields related to what we do, like to find missing puzzle pieces, enjoy the thrill of finding new partners, have some fundraising experience — or if just like interactive fiction and would love to help us and maybe gain some skills, please get in touch via email and we’d be thrilled to chat!