Play Mode

Play Mode plays your story the way a reader will experience it: scene by scene, with backgrounds, characters, sound and choices. Use it to test every path, check how the text reads on screen, and collect review notes. Play Mode is available on Mac, iPad and iPhone.

Start and stop

Select the Play button in the header, or press Cmd+Shift+Enter. The button has two modes, shown in its tooltip:

Play from the beginning starts at the card marked Story starts here.
Play from selected card starts at the card you’ve selected.

Right-click the Play button, or touch and hold it, to switch between the two.

On Mac, Play Mode opens in its own window or inside the main window, depending on Settings → Appearance → Window mode. On iPad and iPhone, it opens inside the app. To stop, select Close, or press Cmd+Shift+Enter again.

What plays depends on which boards, columns and cards are included. See Which cards play.

Move through the story

To…	Keys	Or
Go forward	`→`, `Space` or `Enter`	Click the stage, or → in the control bar
Go back one step	`←`	Right-click the stage, or ←
Jump forward to the next choice or stop	`↑`	⇥
Jump back to the last choice, or to the start	`↓`	⇤

When a choice appears, move between its options with ↑ and ↓, or Tab and Shift+Tab. Then press Enter or Space, or click the option.

The control bar can be dragged by its handle to wherever it’s out of the way.

The stage

The stage shows the scene’s background and characters. Dialogue appears in a text box at the bottom, with the speaker’s name on its edge. The character who is speaking stays bright, and the others are dimmed.

The header above the stage adjusts the preview:

Control	What it does
Lines / Beat	Shows a scene one line at a time, or all at once
Aspect ratio	Free fills the window. 16:9, 16:10, 4:3, 21:9 and 9:16 show the stage in that shape, as in a game.
RenPy / Ink	Previews the story as Ren’Py plays it, or runs the exported Ink script. The two can differ in details. See Export.
Show story cues	Shows or hides story cues
Headings	Shows or hides headings inside cards
Player / JSON / RenPy / Ink	Switches between playing the story and viewing its exported forms
Language	Plays the story in its Original language or in one of its translations. See Translate a story.

Lines / Beat is available with the RenPy preview. When the window isn’t wide enough for all of them, the header gathers these controls in the More controls menu (⋯).

Watch the variables

Select Vars in the control bar to open a panel with every variable and its current value. It updates as you play. See Variables and conditions.

Fix a scene while playing

Select Edit current card to open the current scene’s text. Make your changes and select Save & Continue. The change is saved to the document, and the story continues from the edited scene. Scenes that come from another document included in this one can’t be edited here. Open that document instead.

Word wrap in the editor wraps long lines; FlowBoard remembers the choice on this device. When you play a translation, the editor opens that language, so you can correct the translation directly. See Fix a translation while playtesting.

Leave review comments

Select Comment in the control bar to write a note for the current scene. You can use Markdown in it.

With Lines, the Line tab comments on the line that’s showing. The Beat tab comments on the whole scene, and lists that scene’s line comments.
All comments lists every comment in the story. Play from here jumps to the scene or line, and Show card shows the card on the board.
× Remove deletes a comment.

Comments are stored with the card and appear in a yellow box on it in Board View. Readers never see them: they’re left out of the Ren’Py and Ink exports.

Story Health

If the story has problems, Story Health in the header shows how many. Select it to see the list. Each entry can take you to the card concerned.

Export to Ren’Py, Ink and JSON turns the story into files for a game engine.