I tried Scrivener. It’s fine for screenplays and complex novels, but I’m not sure it works well for IF, unless you’re making a game divided into chapters.
Scrivener has features for that “hoarding” style if that’s what suits you. ain’t nothing wrong with the hoarding approach, it’s how “dreamboards” etc. work. But a folder on the hard drive works just as well if you don’t want an extra bit of software to organize it alongside your text.
when it comes to initial planning, I prefer paper and a pen. Random access, no keyboard or mice in my way, no battery or internet issues, easy on the eyeballs, never crashes (unless I spill tea on it). Also my brain just seems to work more creatively when it’s not at a computer, perhaps because it’s not looking to the medium for input.
If I was designing a very long game or one with a branching plot, I might use Scapple or Twine to create a flowchart. Recently I started doodling up a click-choice game in Twine for the first time, and you know what? I still need my paper and pen, because making little boxes is much too fiddly for the first draft. I need to write an outline first, snowflake it, and THEN start making the little boxes.
I7 now conveniently generates maps on its own, so once I sketch the map on paper, programming it is simple enough. But I am of the school that every room should have at least one thing to look at or interact with, preferably several things, so it doesn’t do to code up the map until you know what you’re putting in it. I have previously made the mistake of creating the game world before creating the game content, and then I’m left with a sprawling map that’s 90% empty. Fail.
I’ve also tried coding the map as I go along, without making a blueprint on paper first, and invariably I have to start moving rooms around and fiddling with it, which screws up the code, and fixing it is a major pain, and testing all the exits is a much bigger pain … so yeah. Map on paper first, where I can see it all at once and get the ideological bugs worked out before they turn into software bugs. No useless rooms, no overcrowded rooms.
When I was making “Nine Lives,” I added rooms as I thought of them, so the first draft of the map had the rooms arranged in a completely illogical fashion that no sane home designer would do. Granted, that particular home isn’t owned by sane people, and I doubt anyone playing the game would really notice if, for example, the kitchen was off a corridor while the bathroom was the central room … but given the chance I’d rather arrange the map properly.