Yarn Spinner for Unity 3.1 contains a number of improvements and useful changes.
The dialogue runner's StartDialogue and Stop methods are now async, and return a task. When you call StartDialogue, you'll receive a task (either a System.Threading.Tasks task, a UnityEngine.Awaitable, or a UniTask) that will complete after every dialogue presenter has finished running its OnDialogueStartedAsync method. Likewise, the Stop method will finish after every dialogue presenter has finished running its OnDialogueCompleteAsync method. This is really useful for making sure that you don't accidentally make a change to your scene in the middle of your dialogue presenters getting ready.
In Yarn Spinner, you can add a condition to the end of an option. If the condition evaluates to false, Yarn Spinner will mark the option as "unavailable". It's up to your game to decide what that means - you might want to make the option visible but unselectable, or you might want to hide the option from the player entirely. However, if every option is unavailable, the player has no option they could select. Previously, this could cause your game to have to soft-lock the player, since they weren't able to proceed.
In Yarn Spinner 3.1, dialogue presenters are now allowed to tell the Dialogue Runner that no option was selected at all. When this happens, Yarn Spinner will skip the options and move on to the next part of the script:
When Yarn Spinner sends a line to your game, it wraps up the line in an object called a . Previously, if your game has multiple Dialogue Runners that are running at the same time, it wasn't possible to know which runner the line came from. In Yarn Spinner 3.1, the LocalizedLine now has a property that tells you where it came from.
Just like how lines have a separate 'hurry up' and 'next' cancellation tokens that act as a signal to move things along, options now have the same 'hurry up' and 'next' tokens. (Previously, they only had a single cancellation token that signalled that option selection was no longer necessary.) This allows your game to signal that you want to hurry up the presentation of your dialogue's options.
We've updated the way that typewriters are used in the built-in Line Presenter system, to make it easier to customise. This is useful for when you want to take full control over how the line appears over time, and for when you want to have in-game events occur (like sound effects) as the line appears.
To create a custom typewriter, create a class that implements . You can find an example of how to write a custom typewriter in the source code for the class.
DialogueView ClassesYarn Spinner 3.0 introduced a new programming model for presenting dialogue, called . As part of the rollout of this new API, we made the old DialogueView class act as a compatibility layer, and marked it as deprecated. Yarn Spinner 3.1 removes this deprecated code. If you have code that started life as a Yarn Spinner 2.0 project, you will need to .
Yarn Spinner 3 came out on 16 May 2025! Celebrate!
Yarn Spinner 3 is out! It's the culmination of 10 years of Yarn Spinner development, taking inspiration from how people use Yarn Spinner in wildly successful and amazing games like DREDGE, Lil' Guardsman, A Short Hike, and Demonschool.
For the development of Yarn Spinner 3, stewardship of Yarn Spinner moved from our original game development studio, Secret Lab, to a whole new entity focused solely on Yarn Spinner development. It's now our primary job!
Yarn Spinner is developed in the open on GitHub, and can be purchased from the Yarn Spinner Itch.io Store or the Unity Asset Store.
Yarn Spinner 3 introduces so many improvements and new things, and makes writing complex interactive narratives easier than ever.
Get started with Yarn Spinner 3 via the !
... use it to power your game too!
Guard: Who goes there?
// If the player is a thief, a royal visitor, or a merchant, then
// go run the appropriate conversation for that. The player might be
// some combination of the three, so let them choose.
-> A thief! <<if $player_is_thief>>
<<jump Guard_Thief_Conversation>>
-> A royal visitor! <<if $player_is_royal_visitor>>
<<jump Guard_RoyalVisitor_Conversation>>
-> A merchant! <<if $player_is_merchant>>
<<jump Guard_Merchant_Conversation>>
// But if the player is NONE of those, then none of the options would have
// been available. We'll fall through to here.
Player: I'm nobody!
<<jump Guard_Nobody_Conversation>>If you're new to Yarn Spinner, or want a refresher on getting started or navigating the documentation, then this is the place to be.
Yarn Spinner is a set of friendly tools for writing interactive narratives and games.
Yarn Spinner is easy for writers to use, but also has powerful features for programmers, game designers, narrative directors, producers, and more!
Yarn Spinner is used in thousands of amazing games, including Rift of the Necrodancer, Demonschool, Night in the Woods, A Short Hike, Lost in Random, Dredge, Frog Detective, Button City, Escape Academy, Baladins, and Unbeatable.
before you start working with Yarn Spinner. It's the best place to keep up to date, get support and advice, and share what you're working on
Yarn Spinner includes a narrative scripting language, Yarn, that allows you to write your game narratives, quests, and logic in a friendly format. The Beginner's Guide will start you off on your path to learning Yarn Spinner.
... use it to power your game too!
Use Yarn Spinner in Unity, Godot, or Unreal
Once you're comfortable writing Yarn Scripts, you can integrate Yarn Scripts with a game engine, such as Unity, Godot, or Unreal. Buy one of our useful add-ons, too, if you need it!
Build a Game
Simply draw the rest of the owl.
Tell us about your game and Credit Yarn Spinner
We'd love to hear about your game, and show it off when we talk about awesome Yarn Spinner-powered games. And please, don't forget to include a credit for Yarn Spinner!
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