Articy:Draft is a must have product for anyone interested in game design. Make no mistake; there is a learning curve to this tool as with any professional grade software. Once you've learned it, the productivity you'll gain will more than make up the initial learning time. I used the team version of Articy:Draft 2.1 in my Game World Creation class, and what it enabled the class to create is beyond anything I was expecting.

Pros:
It can handle just about any game design task you can throw at it. Complex branching dialogs? Easy. Detailed NPCs with complex relationships? No problem. Have a massive game world with many areas interconnecting? Have at it. And once you're all done, hit the export button and get a nice XML file with all your text content ready for use in your game engine of choice.

Cons:
* Price. You get what you pay for, but you will pay for it. Regardless of how awesome it is, $200 is a steep price to pay if you're doing this as a hobby. Knock that up to $300 if you want to go commercial.
* Export Formats. While I did list this in the Pro section, it's also a con as well. The docx export is difficult to read, almost to the point of being useless as a general purpose document. The xml format will take some serious digging through and studying to fully understand how Articy:Draft is linking things together. The product could really use some polish on this aspect.
* No resizing of areas. When you draw a zone in a location, there's no resizing it, other than grabbing it point by point and moving them around. This was a major source of headaches in my class as many groups discovered they had scale problems and needed to resize things. Much gnashing of teeth was done that day.

Bottom Line:
If you're serious about game design, buy this software. You will not regret it.

Articy:Draft is a must have product for anyone interested in game design. Make no mistake; there is a learning curve to this tool as with any professional grade software. Once you've learned it, the productivity you'll gain will more than make up the initial learning time. I used the team version of Articy:Draft 2.1 in my Game World Creation class, and what it enabled the class to create is beyond anything I was expecting. Pros: It can handle just about any game design task you can throw at it. Complex branching dialogs? Easy. Detailed NPCs with complex relationships? No problem. Have a massive game world with many areas interconnecting? Have at it. And once you're all done, hit the export button and get a nice XML file with all your text content ready for use in your game engine of choice. Cons: * Price. You get what you pay for, but you will pay for it. Regardless of how awesome it is, $200 is a steep price to pay if you're doing this as a hobby. Knock that up to $300 if you want to go commercial. * Export Formats. While I did list this in the Pro section, it's also a con as well. The docx export is difficult to read, almost to the point of being useless as a general purpose document. The xml format will take some serious digging through and studying to fully understand how Articy:Draft is linking things together. The product could really use some polish on this aspect. * No resizing of areas. When you draw a zone in a location, there's no resizing it, other than grabbing it point by point and moving them around. This was a major source of headaches in my class as many groups discovered they had scale problems and needed to resize things. Much gnashing of teeth was done that day. Bottom Line: If you're serious about game design, buy this software. You will not regret it.