Saves

Spindle stores saves in the browser's IndexedDB, organized by playthroughs.

Session Persistence

Spindle automatically saves the current game state to the browser's session storage on every navigation. If the player refreshes the page (F5), the story resumes from where they left off — same passage, same variables, same history.

• Session state persists across page refreshes within the same tab.
• Closing the tab or browser clears the session — the next visit starts fresh.
• Restarting the story (via {restart} or Story.restart()) clears the session.

This is separate from the save system — no manual save/load is needed for refresh recovery.

Quick Save and Quick Load

The fastest way to save and load:

• Quick Save: Click the {quicksave} button or press F6
• Quick Load: Click the {quickload} button or press F9

There is one quick save slot per story. Quick saving overwrites the previous quick save. Quick loading prompts for confirmation.

{quicksave}
{quickload}

Save Dialog

The {saves} macro opens a full save/load dialog:

{saves}

From the dialog you can:

• Create a new named save in the current playthrough
• Load any existing save
• Rename a save
• Delete a save
• Export a save to a JSON file
• Import a save from a JSON file

Playthroughs

Each time the story starts fresh (initial load or restart), a new playthrough is created. Saves are grouped by playthrough in the save dialog, with labels like "Playthrough 1", "Playthrough 2", etc.

This lets players maintain separate save histories for different runs through the story.

Export and Import

Individual saves can be exported as JSON files and imported back. Exported files include the story's IFID, so importing into the wrong story is rejected.

Imported saves are placed into their original playthrough group (or an "Imported" group if the playthrough no longer exists).

Save Title

By default, save titles show passage name - HH:MM. Customize this with a SaveTitle passage or via the JavaScript API:

:: SaveTitle
return variables.name + " — " + passage;

Or in StoryInit:

{do}
  Story.saves.setTitleGenerator(function(payload) {
    return payload.variables.name + " — " + payload.passage;
  });
{/do}

What Gets Saved

A save captures:

• The current passage name
• All story variables (deep-cloned)
• The navigation history (up to Story.config.maxHistory moments, default 40)
• The current position in the history
• Passage visit and render counts

Temporary variables (_name) are not saved — they reset on load.

History is stored efficiently using Immer patches (only changed variables per navigation), but saves contain full snapshots for portability.

Class Instances

If you use registered classes, their instances are automatically serialized when saving and restored when loading. Each instance is stored with a class name tag so Spindle knows which prototype to reattach.

• On save, class instances are tagged as { __spindle_class__: "Name", __spindle_data__: { ... } } in the stored data.
• On load, tagged objects are restored with the correct prototype — methods and getters work immediately.
• If a class is not registered when a save is loaded (e.g. the class was removed), Spindle logs a warning and falls back to a plain object with the saved data fields.