Introduction

BENNE (Bennethon Engine for Nifty Narrative Experiences) is a modern, web-based engine for building point-and-click adventure games. It gives developers a complete, opinionated-but-extensible framework for rooms, characters, inventory, dialogs, and custom interfaces so you can focus on story, puzzles, and atmosphere instead of reinventing input systems, rendering pipelines, or save/load logic.

Built on Phaser 4 with a TypeScript core and Vite-powered workflow, BENNE runs in any modern browser and feels familiar to anyone who has worked with classic adventure tools. It draws direct inspiration from Adventure Game Studio (AGS) and the timeless interaction patterns of LucasArts’ SCUMM engine, while bringing those ideas into a contemporary web stack with live previews, polygon editing, and strong editor integration.

BENNE is Opinionated

BENNE makes deliberate choices that keep the experience focused and the visual output consistently crisp:

• Aseprite-only art pipeline — All characters, props, cursors, and GUI elements are authored as Aseprite sprite sheets with tagged animations. The engine expects and optimizes for this workflow.
  • Additional sprite import workflows are on the roadmap!
• Bitmap fonts only — Text is rendered exclusively with bitmap fonts for perfect pixel alignment and authentic retro feel. No TrueType or system fonts appear in gameplay.
• Low internal resolution focus — Games are designed around classic resolutions (typically 320×240 up to 640×480) with crisp integer or near-integer scaling. Pixel-perfect rendering is a core priority.
• Polygon-based world geometry — Walkable areas, hotspots, regions, and prop colliders are defined with polygons rather than tile maps or grids.
• BenneScript, in order — Game logic is TypeScript whose lines run one after another: walks, speech, waits and animations finish before the next line starts, so narrative sequences read top to bottom and “just work.”
• Editor-first authoring — Deep VS Code extension support (live room previews, polygon editing, GUI/character/inventory inspectors, scaffolding commands) is a first-class part of the intended workflow.

These constraints exist so the engine can deliver reliable retro aesthetics and predictable behavior with minimal configuration.

BENNE is Flexible

Within those boundaries, BENNE is deliberately open and adaptable:

• Any verb set you want — Define verbs in game-config.json. Classic 9-verb SCUMM bars, two-button minimalist schemes, context-sensitive verbs, or anything in between are all supported.
• Multiple point-and-click styles — The same engine comfortably supports LucasArts-style direct control, Sierra-like verb-first interaction, and hybrid approaches through configurable input profiles and GUI layouts.
• Powerful, fully scriptable GUI system — Build complex interfaces using a JSON-driven layout system with 9-slice images, grids, buttons, sliders, checkboxes, list boxes, text inputs, and custom controls. Every GUI element can be shown, hidden, animated, and driven from BenneScript.
• TypeScript at the core — The entire engine is written in TypeScript. You can extend or replace subsystems, add new control types, custom shaders, or post-processing effects without fighting an opaque black box.
• Scripts that read like a screenplay — BenneScript is TypeScript in which lines run in the order you write them (no await), dialogue is written as Hank: "Hello!", and every room, prop, item and sound is a typed, autocompleted name generated from your content. The event bus (events), per-frame onUpdate hooks and plain TypeScript are there when you need more.
• Rich narrative and gameplay features — Built-in support for dialog trees with state tracking, character following, region-based perspective scaling and tinting, dynamic visibility/animation overrides, inventory use-on-target, cutscenes, screen fades, and persistent speech/audio settings.
• Rapid iteration tooling — Live room, character, GUI, and inventory previews inside VS Code, polygon editing with real-time feedback, “Play from this room” workflows, and a full-runtime BENNE Play mode let you test ideas without leaving the editor.

BENNE is designed for developers who love the feel of classic point-and-click adventures but want modern tooling, clear architecture, and the freedom to shape the experience to match their vision. Whether you are building a short episodic mystery, a longer narrative-driven game, or experimenting with new interaction styles, the engine stays out of your way while giving you solid ground to stand on.