In my experience Twine is one of those programs where it’s very easy to get started. I wouldn’t seek to master it before giving it a go though - there are some very complex twine games out there that demonstrate deep knowledge of the way it works and interacts with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Object Oriented Programming and the browser’s page model. Thing is, you don’t need to know those things to write a working game.
Twine’s editor sort of encourages you to just start typing, and trying things out - which is good, in a way. And you probably should do that to get the feel of how it works. However, without any planning, you can easily end up with a massively dendritic set of passages and it’s difficult to finish each path. Step back and look at how you might use variables to keep the passage count down. Have a go at that. Realise you are knee-deep in variables and have a think about how to structure them - grouping related ones together - this is where a smattering of JavaScript is going to help.
At some point you’ll get frustrated with the editor, and that’s when it’s time to switch to Tweego to compile the story. If you want take a look at my source of The Recipe Book which uses Tweego to see how structuring things might help - but bear in mind what looks like extra effort only makes sense after you’ve struggled the other ways.
Don’t be adverse to looking at more general information on writing IF/CYOA games.
- Writing IF (Emily Short)
- CYOA structure
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By the numbers …
These aren’t about Twine specifically, but understanding some general concepts will help out.