What is Fantasia Archive?
Fantasia Archive (or FA for short) is an offline, free software that was created as a reaction to the lack of proper offline world-building and writing tools as most of such programs focus almost entirely on just writing instead of on the world-building and all intricacies it brings. This is what sets FA apart: The focus on the structure of one’s works and relationships of all parts of it to each other instead of solely focusing on the writing experience itself.
To achieve this, FA comes with the following set of features:
- A broad set of predefined document types ranging from obvious choices like Chapters and Characters to details like Languages and Currencies.
- A large set of predefined, unique informational fields for each document type, which should cover a vast majority of the world-building needs of most authors.
- A fully integrated two-way relationship support across multiple fields and post-types. This means that if you for example mark character A as a friend of character B, then character B also gets automatically updated as a friend of character A.
- Both automatic and custom ordering of documents.
- Custom coloring of documents.
- Full Tag support.
- Infinite hierarchical support in the object hierarchical tree, which translates to infinite, user-defined custom categories or any hierarchical depth.
- A proper, fully serviceable dark mode that isn’t just an afterthought.
- Sophisticated, powerful, and very detailed search system for documents.
- Offline import/export functionality for your projects, which allows for portability between different instances of the app on multiple machines or sharing with friends.
- Multiple document tabs for easy access to your current work.
- Proper keyboard support for PC/Laptop users along with support for custom, user-definable keybindings.
- Customize-able UI via program settings to suit your needs the best.
NOTE: FA is currently in the early beta version! Information about roadmap available on the website.
Comments and Reviews
It's free and it's offline, so you don't have to worry about the service ever being discontinued. It is also in active development, so even if some features might be missing, there is a good chance will be added later. Regardless the current version as it is right now is perfectly usable.
Fantasia Archive is a free and offlline worldbuilding software. If you are looking for something free that you can have on your computer it is a choice.
In terms of features it is quite poor compared to the alternatives out there, even considering that the whole thing is a ripoff of previous software. A better alternative to Fantasia A. if you wish to be offline is Obsidian.
If you really wish to excel with your world-building though, you probably should invest to your hobby and get a World Anvil account.
(On another note, it looks like distantignition is actually the developer of Fantasia Archive, and I found it hilarious that he upvoted his product and down voted the products of their competitors, just hilarious and a bit sad)
With the approach of National Novel Writing month, I spent hours googling some good software for outlines and character/world building. All of the recommendations through google are either paid (and online subscriptions that are absurdly priced), or they don't hit all the boxes that I'm looking for in writing software.
If I had to describe what it was I was looking for, Fantasia Archive would be an exact description. It's easy to use, has a lovely layout, and makes the areas of character/world building so much easier. On top of all of this, it's 100% free and they just suggest supporting through Patreon as a donation type thing as opposed to forcing any kind of subscription (and it's offline, which is also a huge plus).
Overall, Fantasia Archive needs to be getting a lot more love and recommendations as legitimately good novel or roleplay-building software, and I'll be recommending it to everyone that I know who is into writing and has wanted good software (and recommending it as a good writing tool for NaNoWriMo). Thank you so much for mentioning this awesome app!
This software is EXACTLY what I was searching for.
It is perfect, beautiful, useful and powerful. Infinitely better than any payed software I've seen and I've researched several softwares like this searching for one that fills my needs and it fills every single one of them.
Even though it's early on in the development process, this software is incredible. I've been using exclusively Scrivener. This doesn't replace that, but it's a HUGE boon for certain aspects of worldbuilding and creative writing. Basically, random ideas/thoughts/concepts go into Scrivener. Everything that's concrete about the world goes into Fantasia. Looking at one single article (character, language, nation, etc) remind me of all the other stuff it affects and is affected by. When you go to create one of those things, it prompts you for damn near everything, linking to existing articles. If it doesn't exist yet, it creates it for you.
Side note: I did submit this app to the site but I'm not affiliated with the developer at all (other than supporting on Patreon).