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Engines & export

Where your story ends up

A narrative tool is only useful if the writing reaches the game. TaleShard syncs into Unity and Unreal as typed data — not as a text file you have to parse yourself — and hands you the whole project in an open format for everywhere else.

Engines

Plugins, and an escape hatch

Unity

Available

A dedicated plugin that brings your story into your project — synced from inside the editor, with types generated from your world.

  • C# types generated from your own definitions
  • Synced from inside the editor, no export step
  • Tables and entities materialized for runtime

Unreal

Available

The same plugin for Unreal, wired through the runtime, the editor, and Blueprints.

  • C++ types generated from your own definitions
  • Runtime, editor, and Blueprint integration
  • Tables and entities materialized for runtime

Everything else

Open format

No plugin for your engine? Take the whole project as a portable archive and read it with anything that parses structured data.

  • Full project export and import
  • Media travels with the project
  • Readable, inspectable output

Our own games

Three games we built, two engines

Built to show the plugins at work, and free: each will be published as a GitHub repository.

Starshined running in Unity: the cloning bay asking "Who goes up today?", with two characters to choose from — the Breacher, a salvage-crew veteran with a shield, and the Engineer, who talks to alien machines.

Built in Unity

Starshined

A roguelike deckbuilder aboard a derelict ship.

Extraction running in Unity: the shuttle bay at the end of the story, a dialogue log of the crew arguing on the right, and the player's three options at the bottom of it.

Built in Unity

Extraction

An isometric sci-fi RPG with turn-based fights.

Breakthrough running in Unreal: a comic-panel event over the ice — a radio, a patrol ship among the floes, and the pilot saying "Company checkpoint ahead. Two patrol ships and a toll beacon."

Built in Unreal

Breakthrough

A roguelike shoot-'em-up with a hub, events and a crew.

As written, as played

The same thing, on both sides

Starshined· An event

The Sealed Lab as a board in TaleShard: the opening scene with its picture of the lab door, a Choice node with four options — search the benches, pry out the humming core, log it for the Guild, leave it sealed — and where each leads, the first through a Gamble weighted three to one.

In TaleShard

The opening scene and a Choice with four ways out, one of them through a Gamble — node types the project defined for itself.

The same event running in Unity: the Sealed Lab with its four choices — search the benches, pry out the humming core, log it for the Guild, leave it sealed — and the artefact the second one gave, Hungry Core: gain 1 energy each turn, but no more credits.

In Unity

The same picture, the same four choices. The art is the game’s; the event is the board.

Extraction· A conversation

A dialogue board in TaleShard: Lena says the terminal has everything, Ryn answers "Proof we could use. Or destroy. Or walk away from.", and three connections leave her line, labelled Option A — Download, Option B — Destroy and Option C — Ignore.

In TaleShard

Ryn’s line and the three ways out of it. Each speaker’s colour is a field on their character.

The same conversation running in Unity: the dialogue log ends on Ryn’s "Proof we could use. Or destroy. Or walk away from." above the options Download, Destroy and Ignore, each speaker’s name in their own colour.

In Unity

The same lines, the same three options, the same colours in the log.

Breakthrough· A decision

A Decision node in TaleShard, spoken by Silas with a 7-second timer: "There’s a drifter lane through the wrecks, tight and quiet. Take it, or fight them in the open?" Its two options — run the drifter lane, or fight in the open — lead to two Script nodes, trustDrift = trustDrift + 1 and salvage = salvage + 40, and on to a Wave of Lancers, Spitters and Swarmers.

In TaleShard

Silas asks, on a timer. Each answer runs a one-line script: drifter trust +1, or +40 salvage.

The same decision running in Unreal, mid-flight over the debris field: Silas’s card asks whether to run the drifter lane (shorter route, drifter trust +1) or fight in the open (longer route, +40 salvage), with the timer counting down.

In Unreal

The same question, the same two answers with their costs, the same timer.

Proof, not a promise

The same records, running as a game

On the home page all three games have their trailers, and each names the records you can check. In Starshined, Overcharge Shot is a card record whose text the game builds from its effects, and the Keeper's first line is voiced in English and Italian from the same board. In Extraction, the ability Plasma Arc and each speaker's colour in the dialogue log are records you can find in TaleShard. In Breakthrough, Mara's "Welcome to the Wharf" is a line on a board you can see voiced, and the upgrades on Vesna's stall are the project's own entities. Not a mock-up, and not a re-creation. Check the through-line yourself.

Watch the trailers

Import and export

Getting work in and out

Your narrative should never be trapped in one vendor's database — ours included.

Localization

Out and back · Excel (.xlsx), XLIFF

Every translatable string across boards, entities, and documents. Split by board or by definition, with per-language progress, and imported back when the translations return.

Project archive

Out and back · Portable archive

Boards, entities, documents, and media in one file. Import it into another workspace, or keep it as your own backup.

Screenplay import

In · Final Draft (.fdx), Fountain

Bring a screenplay in as a graph: each scene becomes its own board, its lines become the nodes, and characters are matched to your entities.

Need an engine we do not cover?

Which engines get a dedicated plugin next is decided by what people actually ask for. Tell us what you build in and it goes on the list that shapes the roadmap.

Request an integrationJoin the waitlist