StoryBonsai

StoryBonsai is a narrative engine and visual editor for Unity, Godot, and any .NET game, built by a tools company of the same name. It is designed to treat narrative as a production problem rather than a scripting problem, bringing authoring, reviewing, recording, testing, localizing, and shipping into one workflow. Writers build branching dialogue, scenes, locations, items, skill checks, time tracking, and localization in a licensed desktop authoring tool, while developers ship the same engine into their game as a runtime with a typed event API and zero engine dependencies. The product centers on a custom canvas editor built for narrative rather than diagramming. Every node is a choice, with no separate dialogue, condition, or branch types to learn. Level-of-detail rendering keeps thousands of nodes responsive: zoom out and nodes become colored tiles, zoom in and full cards appear. Two drag gestures cover most authoring — drag from the bottom of a node to wire where the story goes next, and drag from the top to make a choice appear only after another node has played. Scenes share the canvas with visible bounding boxes, and a companion World Graph shows locations, travel connections, and staged encounters as one map. StoryBonsai is in private beta and already in production at a studio on two titles: an FMV game and a historical CRPG set in 1930s New York. Indie studios are the initial focus. The company is led by Michael Garforth, who has been building games since 2006, including seven years at Kognito, later part of Ascend Learning, building narrative simulations for healthcare and education, and most recently four years at Meta prototyping on unreleased AR hardware. The most recent major release was localization, which shipped in 2026. Next on the roadmap are web-based review and a voice production pipeline.

StoryBonsai is a narrative engine and visual editor for Unity, Godot, and any .NET game, built by a tools company of the same name. The company was founded by Michael Garforth, who has been building games since 2006. His background includes seven years at Kognito, later part of Ascend Learning, where he built narrative simulations for healthcare and education, including conversation training for mental health and suicide prevention. He built the dialogue tool that drove those products and trained the writers who used it. Most recently he spent four years at Meta prototyping on unreleased AR hardware. He is now building StoryBonsai full-time. The product's core bet is that narrative production should be one workflow covering authoring, testing, localization, and shipping, not siloed disciplines reconciling through documents. StoryBonsai is in private beta and already in production at a studio on two titles: an FMV game and a historical CRPG set in 1930s New York. Indie studios are the initial focus. The most recent major release was localization, which shipped in 2026. Next on the roadmap are web-based review, so a publisher or stakeholder can read a story in the browser, and a voice production pipeline that sends lines out for recording and brings the finished audio back into the project. The longer-term goal is a narrative production platform that scales from one-writer indie projects to multi-studio productions without changing tools.

• 2026

  Localization feature shipped as the most recent major release.

Narrative production platform that treats narrative as a production problem, unifying authoring, testing, localization, and shipping for indie to multi-studio productions.

• StoryBonsai narrative engine and visual editor

  A narrative engine and visual editor for Unity, Godot, and any .NET game, with a licensed desktop authoring tool and a runtime with a typed event API and zero engine dependencies.

• Node graph canvas editor

  A custom canvas editor built for narrative, where every node is a choice and level-of-detail rendering keeps thousands of nodes responsive.

• World Graph

  A companion view that shows locations, travel connections, and staged encounters as one map.

• Automated path tester

  A built-in test suite and automated path tester that play the story thousands of times before QA sees a build.

1. 1StoryBonsai: Narrative Engine for Unity & Godotstorybonsai.com
2. 2About StoryBonsai: Narrative Middleware for Game Studiosstorybonsai.com
3. 3StoryBonsai for Writers: Visual Branching Dialogue Editorstorybonsai.com
4. 4StoryBonsaiwikidata.org