Ink Story Template

Ink Story Template

A free, open-source web player for Ink interactive fiction. Write your story in Ink, export to JSON, drop it in, publish anywhere. No coding required.

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Get Started · FAQ · Quick Reference

What This Is

Ink is a scripting language for interactive fiction. It handles story logic—branching, variables, conditions—but it doesn’t handle presentation. When you export an Ink story, you get a JSON file. To play that in a browser, you need something to interpret the JSON and display it.

This template does that. It provides:

  • A reader interface (text display, choices, menus)
  • A save system (5 slots, autosave, file export/import)
  • Reader settings (themes, fonts, text size)
  • Accessibility features (screen reader support, keyboard navigation)
  • Author tools (images, audio, stat bars, special pages, notifications)

You control everything through Ink tags in your story file:

# TITLE: The Mysterious Manor
# AUTHOR: Your Name

# IMAGE: manor-entrance.jpg
# AUDIO: thunder.mp3

The manor looms before you, lightning illuminating its crumbling spires.

* [Knock on the door]
  # ACHIEVEMENT: No turning back now
  Your knuckles rap against ancient wood...

No HTML, CSS, or JavaScript required—although you can customize with custom.css and custom.js if you want.

How It Works

  1. Write your story in Ink (using Inky or any text editor)
  2. Export to JSON (In Inky: File > Export to JSON)
  3. Replace story.json in the template folder with yours
  4. Upload the folder to any static host

No build tools, no command line, no dependencies.

Workflow: main.ink to story.json to template to published sites main.ink compile (export) story.json drop in template upload itch.io neocities other

Features

For Readers For Authors
Save/load with 5 slots, autosave, file export Text formatting: bold, italic, headers, lists, links
Light and dark themes Images and background images
Adjustable text size, line height, and fonts Sound effects and looping music
Dyslexia-friendly font option (OpenDyslexic) Stat bars for RPG-style stories
Keyboard navigation Special pages: character sheets, maps, credits
Screen reader support Notifications and achievements
Works on desktop, tablet, and mobile Utility functions: string manipulation, math, time/date

See the Quick Reference for the complete list, or browse the Template Reference for detailed documentation.

Get Started

New to Ink? Start with the Beginner’s Guide. It covers installing Inky, writing your first story, and publishing to itch.io, with screenshots throughout.

Already know Ink? The Quick Start gets you from JSON to published in a few minutes.

Just need a reference? The Quick Reference lists every tag, function, and feature.

Have questions? Check the FAQ or Troubleshooting.

License

MIT licensed. Use it for free, modify it, sell games made with it. No attribution required.

Open source. View on GitHub

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