These buttons let the user move the order of the choices in the left-right order.

By default, your buttons will show the Name of the Island they’re linking to.

But if there’s text in this “Button text” field, it will override this.

E.g. if the island it’s linking to has the name “Dining Room”, but you want the button text to say “Eat lunch”, you enter Eat Lunch here.

This lets you hide the button.

This is particularly useful with a default path (see below) – if the user doesn’t click any buttons, they will be taken to the default choice.

If you hide a button and make it the default choice, the user will be taken to this hidden choice. This can be used for invisible edits, looping videos and more.

This is usually the island being linked to – 

But you can also set it to External URL – which will send the viewer to a URL. You can set that to open in a new tab or the same tab or in the embedded frame. 

For full details on External URLs – Watch our tutorial video & visit this help section: How do I make a button that links to a web page or product?

If the user doesn’t make a choice before the video ends, the player will move on to play the default choice as the next video.

There can only be one default choice per island, and it must be set – the project won’t validate for publishing if there’s no default set.

If you want to ensure that the viewer does pick the next island – ensure Pause at end is selected – full details below – this will stop the island at the end to wait for the user to make a decision, overriding the default choice behaviour described above.

This is ticked by default for all choices in new projects.

It means that when the viewer clicks a button, it will immediately switch to play the chosen island.

The opposite of this is ‘progress mode‘. This means that when the viewer clicks a button, it will wait for the end of the video before switching to play the chosen island. This is useful for seamless playback and good for drama. To use ‘progress mode‘ instead of ‘cut on click‘ UNTICK this option.

The alternative to Progress is Pause At End – below. 

This is a way of checking back on what the user has chosen before, enabling the video to route the viewer accordingly.

You can set link options as a result of what someone has done/seen earlier.

For example, you can set Button 1 so that if the viewer clicks it, they will be taken to a reward if they made a good decision earlier, or to a punishment if they had made a bad decision earlier.

WATCH THE TUTORIAL VIDEO NOW

Read this help article for full details: How does the Either/Or game logic work for alternative paths?

If you choose Quadrant Split Screen as your button style, you need to set which Quadrant you want each choice to appear in – bottom-left, bottom-right, top-right, top-left.

For full details on this – watch our invisible hotspots & split screen tutorial video or visit our help section: How do I create invisible clickable hotspots?

This sets how many seconds the buttons should appear before the end of the video. The default for this is 10 seconds, however you can amend to whatever works for your project.

If you need longer than the video length for the viewer to make a decision, use the Pause at end – below – option too. 

There are 6 button styles. With all styles, however many buttons there are, they are divided equally across the full width of the screen.

The different options are:

• Bottom Buttons
• Bottom Banner
• Right Hand Text
• Split Screen (Left – Right)
• Split Screen (top – Bottom)
• Quadrant Split Screen

Bottom Buttons

Our default button style is bottom buttons. These are rectangles with rounded corners.

Bottom Banner

This is the style that was used by Netflix in Bandersnatch.

Right Hand Text

Useful if you want to sit the decision making to the side of the main video action.

Left-Right Split Screen

This is mostly used in conjunction with the “Hide text buttons to create hotspot” option, for creating invisible clickable hotspot areas on the screen. We often see this over the top of split screen graphics in the video.

When visible as text buttons, there are 2 possible substyles –

Top-bottom split screen

The screen is split as above, but from top-to-bottom.

Again, this is mostly used in conjunction with the “Hide text buttons to create hotspot” option, for creating invisible clickable hotspot areas on the screen. We often see this over the top of split screen graphics in the video.

Quadrant split screen

With this option, the screen split into 4 quadrants.

This is mostly used in conjunction with the “Hide text buttons to create hotspot” option, for creating invisible clickable hotspot areas on the screen. We often see this over the top of split screen graphics in the video.

There are 4 text substyle options – Central text & area overlay which overlays the whole area with the text in the middle (this is the default area used for hotspots), or a central text button, or bottom banner or bottom button.

By default, the text is set to show on buttons. If you click “Hide text buttons to create hotspot”, the buttons (and text on them) will be invisible, but the area they would normally cover is clickable.

This is most often used is with Split Screens and Quadrants, to make clickable areas over the top of graphics in videos.

For full details on this – watch our invisible hotspots & split screen tutorial video or visit our help section: How do I create invisible clickable hotspots?

If checked, this will stop the island at the end to wait for the user to make a decision – using a freeze frame on the last frame of the video file you upload.

This overrides the default choice behaviour described above.

If you’re using this to create a menu screen – and perhaps you want to include some moving video in this – another way to do this is to create a separate ‘menu screen‘  island, where the default choice is to loop back to the beginning of this menu screen island.  Full full details on this, visit our help section: How do I make the Stornaway.io player wait until a user makes a choice instead of automatically moving on?

The alternative to Pause At End is Progress Mode – see notes on “Cut on Click” above. 

Background Colour and Text Colour are initially set in the Project Default Settings Panel. These are the default settings for the entire project and get applied to every island including retrospectively to pre-existing islands. 

If you want to override these default colours, you can override them in the each island’s settings panel.

These are the settings for the timer bar for this island. 

You can choose to show/hide the timer bar.

The bar uses the background & text colour – there are settings for these to be inverted and to make the background transparent.

Often used by people when they are drafting projects. Also used for learning – asking questions on the screen for viewers to answer.

A rounded box which inherits the button colours.

Stornaway.io creators can now add 360º videos to their stories and link them up using on screen links to create interactive experiences that are even more immersive.

Your story can be entirely 360, or a mix of different media. Each Story Island is its own unique section. You can link from 360º to regular 16:9 video and stills in different story islands, and it will all flow on seamlessly. They all show with the Stornaway links you know and love.