Your story starts
with a choice.
Twist is where branching stories live — written, played, and sold entirely in the browser. Don't take our word for it: the story below is running on the same engine your readers will.
The vault door is ajar, which is wrong, because you locked it. A thread of lamplight leaks through the gap, and beneath it — footprints in the dust that are not yours.
Plain text in, playable book out.
A book is scenes; scenes are doors.
Write scenes like prose
A Twist book is a plain-text manuscript. Paragraphs are paragraphs; a # heading starts a scene; a > [choice] is a door to another one. No engine, no nodes to drag, nothing to install — if you can type, you're already writing.
Give it state and stakes
Declare stats and items in one line, then let scenes change them, roll dice on them, and gate choices behind them. Readers see every roll — the book keeps score in the open. The Studio previews the book live and lints every dead end before your readers find one.
Put it on the shelf
One click publishes to the Twist shelf with your byline and cover — readable by anyone with the link, no app to install. Price it, and readers buy through Stripe while payouts land in your bank account. You keep ownership of every word.
The Lantern Road
Read →Stories that keep score.
The page remembers, so the stakes are real.
Gated paths
Choices can hide until the reader earns them. A gate is one clause on the choice line — the reader who fails it never knows the door was there.
The vault door will not move for the timid.
> [Shoulder it open] -> vault IF GRIT >= 4Dice in the open
Roll a d6 mid-scene and let fate swing the numbers. Readers are always shown the roll — hidden dice feel like cheating.
You carry 0 gold.
`Gold +<roll d6>`Endings that count
Books can end many ways, and Twist remembers which endings each reader has found — across devices, with their bookmark, for every book on their shelf.
The end.
THE END. · reader's finishes recordedSteal a shape.
Every story has a skeleton; these three are proven.
The Locked Room
STATS: ~Clues=0, *Key=0Six scenes, one room, three ways out. Hidden stats count the clues, and the exits stay gated until they add up. The whole trick is one IF clause.
Start writing → RPG · loopThe Long Road
STATS: HP=10, Gold=0, *Rope=0A travel loop with a random-table heart: camp, road, trouble, repeat — a hidden d6 decides what the road serves up, and the shop only helps if you lived to reach it.
Start writing → Horror · descentThe House That Listens
STATS: Nerve=5, ~Heard=0Nerve drains scene by scene while the ambience loops — rain, then heartbeat. When Nerve hits zero the house decides how your night ends. Sound does the haunting.
Start writing →Writers first. Not only writers.
Writers
Keep your prose and your voice — branching is a few extra characters, not a new career. Publish with your byline, price your book, and get paid directly for the stories readers finish.
Teachers
Choose-your-path history, branching comprehension checks, escape-room revision — built in an afternoon, shared as a link. Students need nothing but a browser, and nothing to install.
Game developers
Prototype narrative before you touch an engine. Stats, dice, gates, and redirects behave like real systems, the lint catches dead ends, and .twst exports as plain text your pipeline can parse.
Reading is free. Writing pays.
Two plans, no tiers-within-tiers, and the split in plain sight.
- Read every free book on the shelf
- Buy paid books once, keep them
- Bookmarks and progress sync across devices
- Endings you've found, tracked per book
- Write privately in the Studio and export .twst
- Everything in Reader
- Publish books to the public shelf, byline and cover included
- Sell on the Market at your price
- Upload images for covers and illustrations
- Payouts straight to your bank via Stripe — no invoicing, no thresholds
The split, in full: when your book sells, Twist keeps 15% + 30¢ and the rest is yours. Stripe's processing costs come out of Twist's side, not yours. Minimum book price $1.99. Cancel the subscription any time from your account — published books stay published.
Asked before you asked.
Do I need to know how to code?
No. A Twist book is plain text: prose is prose, # heading starts a scene, > [choice] -> scene makes a button. The entire mechanics language is four backtick shapes — add a stat, set a stat, roll a die, redirect — and the Studio previews your book live and flags mistakes as you type.
Who owns my story?
You do, before and after publishing. Publishing grants Twist a non-exclusive license to host and display your book while it stays published — that's what puts it on the shelf — and nothing more. Unpublish whenever you like; export your .twst file any time.
How do payouts actually work?
Through Stripe, directly. You connect your own Stripe account once (it's Stripe's own onboarding — Twist never holds your banking details), and every sale pays out to your bank from there. Twist keeps 15% + 30¢ per sale; Stripe's processing costs come out of Twist's share, not yours.
What's free, exactly?
Reading free books, buying paid ones, syncing progress, and writing privately in the Studio — including exporting your work — all free. The $4.99/month Writer plan is only about the public side: publishing to the shelf and selling on the Market.
Can readers get refunds?
Yes — email [email protected] within 14 days of a purchase and we'll review it. Approved refunds go back to the original payment method via Stripe. The full policy is at ourng.net/refunds.
What can a story actually do?
Track stats and items (visible or hidden), roll dice the reader watches, gate choices behind conditions, redirect scenes on the fly, interpolate live values into prose, loop ambient sound per scene, and end as many ways as you can write — with each reader's endings remembered.
The door is still ajar.
Open the Studio