Inform

Official development environment for Inform, a programming language for creating interactive fiction, using natural language syntax. Using natural language and drawing on ideas from linguistics and from literate programming, Inform is widely used as a medium for literary writing, as a prototyping tool in the games industry, and in education, both at school and university level (where Inform is often assigned material for courses on digital narrative).

The Inform project was created by Graham Nelson in 1993 and first came to the Macintosh Programmer's Workshop in 1995, and is now available as an app. It combines the core Inform software with full documentation, including two books and nearly 500 fully working examples. Connecting to the Inform website, it can automatically download and update extensions from a fully curated Public Library used by the world-wide Inform community. The app offers richly detailed indexing of projects and scales from tiny fictions like "Kate is a woman in the Research Lab" right up to enormous imaginary worlds whose source text runs to over 3 million words. Features for automated testing, packaging and releasing round out a fully-featured development environment for IF.

Inform is free, with no strings attached. What you make with it is yours, to publish on your website, sell, or give to your friends. There's a vibrant community of users who welcome newcomers (and the app will help you find a high-traffic forum for discussions). Lastly, Inform is continuously maintained and developed. All bug reports are examined and acted on (and the app will show you how to post them).