Create your own “Attentat 1942” or “Freedom 1945” -apkrig

When I was preparing a review of Freedom in 1945, I was fascinated that the developers from the Charles Games studio also offered their technology to other authors who would like to follow in their footsteps. Charles Engine is a set of tools for creating FMV games in the Unity engine, which does not require any prior programming knowledge. You combine dialogs in a clear visual editor, they support the import of subtitles, localization and the possibility to publish a project not only on Windows, but also on Linux, iOS or Android.

The tools also include a sample project or detailed video tutorials, which are also available to the public. The YouTube tutorial has nine chapters in about ten minutes. The authors themselves say that creating such a game is very easy, ie from a technical point of view, and it does not require any previous experience. You will also find extensive documentation on the Charles Games website, where you will learn everything you need from installation to creation. You can also seek help at Discord Charles Games in case of difficulties.

Subtitles in .srt format will suffice for localization

With the tools, you can combine videos and interactive scenes as you know them from Charles Games. The developers emphasize that it does not matter whether you are a complete beginner or an experienced professional. If you want to create an FMV title similar to Attentat or Svoboda, you should be at the right address, but obviously its possibilities don’t end there.

You can create complicated, yet clear dialog trees. Charles Engine will also facilitate possible localization into other languages. It allows you to record classic subtitles in .srt format, as you know for sure. After all, the possibilities of own plug-in for the Unity engine were recently praised by the programmer Ondřej Paška in an interview for Vortex.

You can find out more about Charles Engin on the studio’s official website, or directly on the Unity Asset Store, where the instruments are sold for a nice less than 36 euros. The whole package is only 265 MB and the latest version comes from April this year.

And if Charles Engine seems too complicated for the first steps, or you weren’t interested in creating an FMV adventure, let me, as an enthusiast for trying out various text and tools, recommend a few alternatives for greenhorns. You can try tools like Twine, Quest, Inform, ADRIFT or TADS.