ink and Inky vs Ren'Py

ink is a text-first scripting language for branching game narratives, with logic and code placed within the story text. It is designed mainly for professional game development, though it can also be used to write and share choice-based interactive fiction. The companion Inky editor lets writers create, test, and export stories in one app. Its play pane updates while a story is being written, it highlights errors as they appear, and it can jump from a divert to its target. Inky exports stories as JSON or as a web page ready for customisation. The editor runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows. For Unity, an integration plugin recompiles ink files during editing and provides a previewer inside the Unity Editor; the maker also points to Inkpot, a container for using ink within Unreal Engine. ink, Inky, and the Unity plugin are free under the MIT license. Help is available through Discord and GitHub Discussions.

Ren'Py is a free visual novel engine for making interactive stories and life simulation games with words, images, and sounds. Its script language handles visual-novel writing, while Python can be used for more complex game logic. Default games include menus, automatic saves, rollback, predictive image loading, and mouse, keyboard, or gamepad controls. Creators can customize screens and styles using the screen language and Python. The launcher builds Windows, Mac, and Linux games from any of those desktop systems. Ren'Py also supports Android export and can package games for WebAssembly browsers, though web support is beta and lacks networking and multithreading. It targets Windows 10 or later, macOS 10.10 or later, Linux x86_64 or Arm, Android 5.0 or later, and iOS 11 or later. Building for iOS requires a Mac and Xcode, and that support remains a work in progress. The engine is free for commercial and non-commercial use; most is MIT-licensed, with some LGPL components whose terms distributors must meet.