#ifcomp

[ifcomp]

IFComp Seeking an Artist for the 2025 Logo

We are looking for art for this year’s IFComp logo! We will pay a $250 commission.

Artists should express interest by sending us a link to their past work/portfolio via email: ifcomp@ifcomp.org by June 30 (incl.); the artist will be selected by the end of July.

More info:

We will request one rough draft for review / edit before the final logo is produced.

We must have the final art in hand by August 25th.

We will need three versions of the logo: one with no text, one that says ‘IFComp’, and one that says ‘IFComp 2025’.

The final image file will be created or scanned at 3600 x 3600 px, and the design should still be clearly legible when reduced for display at 250 x 250 px for the web.

If you incorporate a person (optional) we ask that you make the person’s gender ambiguous.

We ask that you integrate the IFTF logo into the art in some way.

The IFComp logo should imply / be inspired by the many genres of games people make.

We will also request an invoice from the artist that the includes the following terms:

The Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation has the right to use the image in whole or in part, in world-wide publishing, print, or on any merchandise for an unlimited time. The artists reserves the right to use or edit the work to be used in their portfolio. The artist will be paid $250 US dollars, sent by PayPal or Venmo, upon receipt of final image file. IFComp will cover currency conversion fees charged by PayPal.

If you are an artist thinking about making something for this year's competition (e.g. cover art or a game), the logo may not be or have an obvious reference to an entry submitted this year. We are still open to artists participating in any way, whether it be submitting a game or doing art for an author, in this year's competition.

Here are the last few years’ logos, just to give you an idea of what we’re looking for…

Please feel free to share this info far and wide - and with any great artists you know! The artist does not have to be part of the interactive fiction community.

[norbezjones]

My new game, Yancy At The End Of The World! is available to play as part of this year's Interactive Fiction Competition!

Yancy is an aroace person who thinks they don't have a creative bone in their body.  But then the zombie apocalypse begins, and they realize they never pursued their dream of becoming a photographer.  So they pick up a camera as the world starts crumbling around them.

Go around Yancy's neighborhood, chat with friends at night, and try to hold it together as everything changes.  Who knows?  It might not turn out the way you think.

Featuring:

Daily photo ops & bonding experiences in the community

A high school reunion with plenty of ups & downs

A queerplatonic tsundere

Too many neurodivergent & queer people to count

Aroace & agender rep by an aroace & agender person

Hidden creative secrets to be found (a true ending, a song, and a tarot reading, to name a few of them)

A depiction of how the zombie apocalypse would really go in our current society

A skip function for easy replayability

Play the game in the competition (and check out the other games while you're there!): https://ifcomp.org/ballot/#entry-2964

Or download it on itch.io: https://norbez.itch.io/yancy-at-the-end-of-the-world

Everyone involved in this game worked so hard on it, and I couldn't be more proud with the result.  Thank you to every person who was a part of this project!  Y'all are awesome.

P.S. After the competition, I plan to launch a Kickstarter to help fund more voice acting for the game and give people the opportunity to get a physical copy with feelies (special edition items)--if you're interested, please feel free to reach out to me!

[xavidotron]

@templeofshame and my game The Gift of What You Notice More is in this year's IFComp!

If you’re gonna get your heart broke, you’d better do it just right… It’s the middle of the night and you’re trying to pack your things. But can you really bring yourself to walk through the door? And how did it come to this? If only you had three mysterious poets to help you figure things out… The Gift of What You Notice More is a surreal escape-room-esque puzzle-based Twine game about memories and choices.

Play it and a bunch of other great interactive fiction at IFComp now!

Cover art by @elanorpam.

[oneknightstand-if]

The MC's Ever Brilliant Investigation

One Knight Stand - Currently part of IF Comp 2023.

Direct link to online version here.

[ode-to-odes]

IFComp 2024 Reviews: Traffic by D. S. Yu

It's that time of year again! I'll be crossposting these reviews on intfiction.net, where you can find reviews by many other interactive fiction freaks such as myself, links to the comp website, and other such information. Onto the review.

I'll put this all under the cut because it's... very long, but please be aware that there are spoilers in the technical section!

Time played: About an hour Completion: 2 out of maybe 3 endings? I got to the normal ending, a bit of a silly ending, and I know there’s a third ending that has a bit more substance, but I was satisfied with the run I had. Could be more “try it and find out” endings than the one I found, but I have no clue.

TLDR; Conceptually, I like this game a lot, but there were a few things that prevented me from enjoying the gameplay experience as much as I could have. Solid entry.

The writing: No noticeable typos or grammar errors, and the writing style is consistent, with some great touches of deadpan humor which I found entertaining. The characters were distinct enough to not be flat, even with the limited descriptions and interactions there are.

The gameplay: I love a time loop when done well, and I think the ability to change the timeline by switching perspectives is a really great way to keep the game engaging and interesting. I also enjoyed the variety of different puzzles – some based on interaction with others, some with the environment. It’s a small game, so there’s not very many, but none of them felt like reskinned versions of each other, which I appreciated.

The technical: I struggled a lot with interactions with other people. Different authors and engines do dialogue in many different ways, without an ABOUT or a HELP menu to explain how to talk to people or ask people things, I found myself blindly trying dialogue options, mostly to no avail. You can talk to people directly with the “person, verb” structure, or you can ask someone for something, but only rarely about anything, which I found unusual – an explanation of this early on would have gone a long way to alleviating some of the frustration I had. The biggest problem I had was similar to the verb-guessing issue, but which probably would have made the game impossible for me to finish without the walkthrough; there are some objects which aren’t mentioned in the text (that I could find) but are required. This was most evident to me with the taxi, which I hadn’t seen in the text at all, but which was necessary to examine in order to continue. Examining the street it was on yielded no description beyond the direction the traffic was going, and I never would have known to look at it. This is also applicable to the traffic puzzle, which was particularly aggravating to me for being much simpler than I thought it was. I’d go so far as to say it’s a bit misleading. I’ll spoiler this one for anyone who doesn’t want to see the solution: If you ask John about the panel, he explains how it works, and says you need to input the correct number to fix the traffic lights. The solution to this is to unscrew the panel (which has no mention of being screwed in) with a screwdriver you get from John (who doesn’t appear to have anything on him except a clipboard). The solution is NOT to do the math required to algebraically find the correct number needed (which is very possible, and requires only addition and subtraction). I chose the algebra on my first time around. Frustratingly, when you correctly solve this puzzle via screwdriver method and press a button to set the number, it gives a number which is different from the one you get when you do the math. I understand that this might be a serious case of me paying way too much attention to one thing, but I think given that the actual solution to the puzzle is much less obvious than the one which requires the player to do algebra with a pen and paper, it might as well have been a puzzle with two different ways to get to the same solution. If the number provided in the game matched the one you get with the correct math, this wouldn’t have been nearly as annoying to me, but the in-game math being wrong in conjunction with the puzzle having completely unmentioned components drove me kind of bonkers.

Misc notes: Don’t sell yourself short! Saying things like “this game is unlikely to change your life in any meaningful way” in the description of the game won’t do you any favors in convincing people to play it. It’s a well-written game, and only a few edits short of being something really polished. You should be proud of it. Plus, when combined with the depressing attitude of the main character, the game starts to feel a little too dreary, in my opinion. Despite my algebra rant, I did like this game a lot, and I’m really glad it was the first entry I tried this year! It’s setting a good bar for the rest of the parser games.

[manonamora-if-reviews]

The Archivist and the Revolution by Autumn Chen

============= Links

Play the game See other reviews of the game See other games by Autumn

============= Synopsis

A woman alone in a dying city, on a dying world. What will be left when it all falls apart? The Archivist and the Revolution is a slice-of-life/romance/history simulator set in a far-future sealed city that has undergone cycles of destruction and revival. You play as Em, a middle-aged woman who is no longer an archivist, as she struggles with rent payments, chronic illness, and the remnants of past relationships.

============= Other Info

The Archivist and the Revolution is a Dendry* game, submitted to the 2022 Edition of the IFComp. It ranked 4th overall. *Autumn is also an unofficial maintainer of the Dendry format.

Status: Completed Genre: Science Fiction, Slice-of-Life, Romance

CW: optional sexual content, illness, death, transphobia, homophobia.

============= Playthrough

First Played: 6-Oct-2022 Last Played: 05-Aug-2023 Playtime: around 2h (multiple endings) Rating: 5 /5 Thoughts: Some glimmer of hope in a post-apocalyptic dystopian future...

============= Review

This is a Post-Comp Version review. Also maybe biased because I really like Autumn's work.

In a far future, after centuries of conflict, the Earth's population has been reduced to small communities stuck inside arcologies (city domes). In one of them, lives Em, an Archivist (sorta), trying to survive the best she can (sorta), and maybe (re)form relationships to better her situation. Throughout the game, you must ensure Em is on top of her duties and health.

Spoilers ahead. It is recommended to play the game first. The review is based on my understanding/reading of the story.

As with her other Dendy games, A&R works in layers. On the surface, it is a resource management game, where your savings, energy level (hidden), mental and physical health (hidden) must be minded when organising one's day or spending. While you have agency in this, how far you can go with the different actions will depend on whether you've unlocked certain storylets, or Em's current health at the time. Since she has chronic issues, you won't be allowed to churn through hundreds of files for your job, or even do anything at times.

Underneath, two other mechanics come to play: the relationship/storylet aspect with Em's old acquaintances, and the archiving loop, Em's job. Both will affect Em's survival (savings/health) and the ending of the game. The first is relatively similar to Autumn's previous Dendry games, in which a side-story will be parsed throughout the game, requiring the player to meet specific characters multiple times to uncover the story at large. In this game, clearing more than one path in a playthrough is quite doable. The latter is a mechanic I had not really seen before in an IF game, but one I enjoyed greatly. Your job entails decrypting and archiving files, each with a specific code (hint hint), requiring to be either placed in a specific slot or discarded (or you can keep it for yourself). Combing through the documents were quite fun.

The first time I played the game, I thought I could survive all on my own, leaving past relationships where they were, focusing only on my job and keeping myself afloat. I remember it being incredibly stressful (I almost cried when Em was on the brink of eviction). Everything felt hopeless, and the almost-clinical-at-times prose, as well as the UI, accentuated that feeling.

This time around, I followed Autumn's advice and shamelessly begged my acquaintances for money. I didn't want to recreate that very anxious feeling I had the last time - and wanted to see what else I had missed. Indeed, it was much less stressful to go through. I didn't really have to worry about money (thanks A-), I didn't have to exhaust myself with work, and I could explore more different facets of Em's life (her past relationships, herself, how she had to navigate the world). The world is still wretched, but there is more hope. You almost believe that surviving through it is... doable.

The storylets manages to offer a bit of levity in this wretched world, in which Em can find a community helping others, rekindle her relationship with a (re)closeted trans person, rekindle her relationship with her ex who you had a child with. In (re)making connections, you can learn more about your past and how you (don't) fit in this world. You can go on a date, cook with someone, spend time with your child... have a "normal" life. I quite enjoyed how grounded and raw these storylets felt. They, at times, seemed like a commentary on our present, with the tribalism of social media, the lack of trust in the news, the grueling life under capitalism, and the treatment of transfolks. Strip away the sci-fi/post-apocalyptic future, and they could could be right at home with our current time. I still hated the news part... its description changing the 'a form of self harm' was on point considering the comments...

Even if you don't interact with anyone, you can still learn about the world and your place in it through the notes (essentially a Codex page) or DNA files you decode. From old recovered chats between yourself and other characters, science articles, old journal entries, and documents regarding the Arcology's founder - Liana -, you can build together a bleak image about the world, the state of the environment and human condition, filled with disenchantment and conflict. Depending on what you do with your day, you may find some Easter Eggs, like the TV Series you can watch or the Games you can play, little winks to Autumn's other games. Some characters of the game, made obvious by their names, share a resemblance to ones from the Pageantverse.

With the implementation of the Autosave, I was able to reach a lot more endings than the first time around, especially less bleak ones, without having to replay the game. Those endings are highly dependent on the actions you took during the game, some being sweet (especially with K-), some being maybe critical (imo A-'s, Alone), and one specifically blew my mind (Ending 1 - didn't find before). Ending 1 is by far the most interesting one in my book. While it might seem a bit like a Deux Ex Machina or coming from out of nowhere (depending on your playthrough it may feel like a whiplash), it is the one that has not left my brain since I've replayed the game - maybe because of how strikingly different it is from the others. I think this ending might work best if connections with other characters were not made. It also made me wonder whether Em's life would have been that different if her arcology was still in contact with the others, or whether contact was severed between all arcologies. Honestly, it brought a lot of questions about the world after reading through (sequel of Ending 1, when?).

I don't know if there is a point or a moral to the game. If I were to give one to it, it would be that communities are important for people to thrive, maybe even necessary, and that the world can be a very difficult place when you keep to yourself, worse when your situation is dire in the first place. Even if it seems bleak, there is a glimmer of hope and goodness there...

============= Old Review

Can we code DNA to make data storage?

I enjoy Autumn’s games and (re-)played all her other publications this year (after being introduced through A Paradox Between Worlds). So I was excited for her entry this year too!

Although it is supposed to be placed in a bleak almost apocalyptic future, there seems to be references to some sort of post-Covid period, the current inflation (especially housing) and the treatment of transpeople. Or at least this was the vibe I got from it. A strong feeling of almost hopelessness oozes from the prose (though you can end with a more hopeful/positive ending if you play it right). I almost cried when I didn’t make the rent and saw the amount just jump…

Like Autumn other games, there is a focus on the relationship between the different characters and on MC’s conditions (mental and physical). It is a bit hard to go through (the trigger warnings are warranted) but it does offer an interesting exploration on how to survive when your situation looks this dire. The news items are heart-breaking… but I hated the comments even more.

The Archiving mechanic is really interesting. Reading each file (some being contemporary pieces) as if they were bits and pieces from an ancient time is disturbing (but in a good way). The filing section is simple when you get the hang of it, but it does its job as it’s supposed to. I don’t know if this has been mentioned in the other reviews but: the code for the DNA strings are related to which category you are supposed to file it in and or the origin of the document, W being wikipedia. If you ever wanted to make the filing more difficult, you could add subsections to each categories

But, when you take into account the small resource management (you being the resource to take care of), the simplicity of the archiving makes things a bit easier to go through. I think I would have liked some sort of “action points” or “energy level” bar to see how much more I could do that day (but that is almost the only issue I have with the game, and it’s not even an issue really).

The inclusion of a walkthrough is very welcomed, as each ending requires widely different paths to take. I also liked the background changing depending on where the character was physically (outside, in the room, working…) and the way the pictures were edited enhances the feeling of things not being quite right.

I also like the small link between this entry and the previous games (which was made obvious to me by following the progress of this game on the author’s personal blog)

Overall, this was a great entry, and I hope our future is not as bleak as this one.

[cejpacian]

Forsaken Denizen is a traditional text adventure also drawing inspiration from classic survival horror.

An office worker on a forlorn moon finds her city has been overtaken by cyborg parasites. Scrounge for ammunition, avoid monsters, save the dispossessed.

(Placed 3rd out of 67 entries in IFComp 2024.)

🌑Play it online here🌑

(Cover art by nsjndd1.)

[patrickbrianmooney]

IFComp 2024: Phil Riley's "Bureau of Strange Happenings"

This is a review of a game entered into IFComp 2024, the thirtieth annual interactive fiction competition. This year, there are 67 games in the Comp, all free to play. There’s some good stuff in there this year! Anyone is welcome to play and vote on the entries during the Comp period, and you need vote on only five games by the middle of October for your votes to count toward the games’ overall scores!

As is my wont when writing IFComp reviews, I shamelessly steal Jacqueline Ashwell’s rubric for scoring, because, well, it’s thoughtful and fair.

This review, like all of my reviews, is potentially spoilery. You may want to avoid reading it until after you’ve played the game. That’s up to you.

This was an oddball entry and, having finished it, I'm still not sure how I feel about it overall. There's an awful lot to like about it: a huge world (not a lot of Comp games top 100 rooms, and I didn't explore all of the maps extensively), laugh-out-loud funny writing, a weirdly absurd setup that's mostly pulled off well. But there were some teeth-gnashing frustrations, too: how little signposting there is for the path that leads the plot forward, especially in the beginning; how long it takes the plot to really hit its stride; the way that the early actions that need to be taken before getting to the fun part feel like level-grinding on an 80s JRPG. All in all, I liked it; but I would have liked for it to be balanced differently, all in all.

So it's a story about a secret agent at a minor government spy agency that's just become a lot more minor; the game begins on the day when the agency is moving its office out to a strip mall in the outer suburbs of DC. You play Agent Faraji, an employee of the Bureau of Strange Happenings, an X-Files-like organization, but one a lot closer to the writing of Douglas Adams than Chris Carter. Agent Faraji starts the game needing to accomplish some mundane unpacking-related tasks on their first day in the agency's new office, but the basic tasks that the game immediately presents are immediately frustrated by a lack of tools, which motivates the player to explore the immediate area on the map.

So far, so good; it's not an unusual opening for a piece of parser IF. But the necessary tools are not readily available, and the basic tasks that need to happen are continually deferred until Agent Faraji is sent on an assignment to rescue a colleague who has disappeared. The basic tasks remain on the player's radar throughout the game, and a running gag is that you can ask pretty much any NPC in the game for the screwdriver you started off the game needing; it's not available until the very very end of the game, when you can finally answer the ringing phone that you couldn't answer before because you needed a screwdriver to disassemble the desk in which the phone had accidentally been locked. So far, so good; in a lot of ways, this resembles the basic plot structure of Infocom's Bureaucracy (if I'm remembering that game at all accurately a few decades down the line).

The real problem with the opening isn't that it's not reasonable, nor that player frustration isn't a fair thing to motivate early, but just that it sticks you wandering around what winds up being the least interesting part of the game map. The NPCs are plausibly written and sometimes rather funny, and the initially available locations are described with humor and verve, but starting off a game with time travel and conspiracy theories and lizard people and secret agents and hyperspatial travel and technology indistinguishable from magic by having the player unsuccessfully seek a screwdriver, meet their coworkers, and get a cup of coffee feels like a missed opportunity. It's frustrated by a lack of indications about how to move forward; there's a lot of having to examine everything. Once you find a necessary item or two, the possibilities for exploration really open up, and the use of the items is relatively obvious once you find them, but finding them takes a lot of carefully examining everything. It would have been nice for the boss assigning Agent Faraji the rescue mission to have simply handed them the astral glasses and given a brief overview of their use, to my mind. (Too, there's a rather cavalier attitude on the boss's part to "how am I expected to accomplish this mission once you send em back in time"; the absurdist tone doesn't quite work for me.)Similarly, the exploration of the hyperplane seems like overkill; I went ahead and used the walkthrough instead of trying to decode the symbols on the compass, and doing so takes the player through 37 spaces with virtually no variation on, say, 33 of them; this feels like overkill to me. (Maybe there is a faster route if you figure out how the compass coordinates work; I didn't stray from the walkthrough, though, going through a three-dimensional cross-section of five-dimensional space).

Once it really gets going, though, the game is an awful lot of fun; much of the late game takes place in a fictitious small town in 1954, with a whole lot of implementation over the 45 or so locations that the town is implemented on. This is where the game feels to me like it finally hits its stride; there's a nice set of fair-but-occasionally-tough puzzles all oriented around the central goal of foiling the plans of a cabal of sinister lizard people. This part of the game is well-written, reward exploration, has a good bit of momentum, and kept my interest up to the point where I found myself pondering it when I was away from my computer. In some ways, it had a lot in common with Anchorhead, where the overall goal is to avert a catastrophic series of events by manipulating devices involving beams of light. (Though it was, thankfully, a smaller task than in Anchorhead.) This was a blast, and I really enjoyed it.

One of the few genuine problems, for me, in the later parts of the game was the dependence on random gaming elements: the movements of the lizard people around the town of Enigma Lake, of instance, and what amounts to randomized combat at the game's plot climax. Random combat is hard to do well in IF, I think; there are games that do an acceptable job of it (Leadlight springs to mind; and this year's Comp entry Forsaken Denizen); but I can't think of a game where I was so enthusiastic about the randomized combat that I genuinely felt it made the game better or was an unequivocally wonderful choice on the author's part. The problem with randomness is that it's the ludic elements of the game overpowering the narrative elements: in a traditional narrative, there's a reason, at some discursive level, for the sequence of plot events; nothing is truly random because narrative is a technique for structuring our understanding of why things happen. Inserting truly random events whose only motivation is "because that's what the computer's dice roll determined would happen" breaks this basic narrative contract, I think.

In a lot of ways, I think the main problem that BOSH wound up having is simply that it had so many good ideas that they never wound up being fully integrated into a cohesive, organic whole: here's a chance to explore a mathematically abstract space. Here's a conspiracy theory. Here's another one. Here's a set of fetch quests. Here's a set of enjoyably wacky NPCs. Here's a fun group of machines to manipulate. Here's two new dimensions to explore, plus time-travel. But they never quite settle down into a game that becomes a system that you can work with to tell a collaborative story; it's the kind of game that I cannot imagine finishing without a walkthrough.

Deviations from standard IF conventions made for a bit of friction, too; frankly, I'd rather see the location name flush against the left margin, above a room description, than worked into the text of a paragraph. Bolding the name helps too, and so does the way that the title bar is used, but neither is really as good a visual signal of IF "paragraphs" as just putting the name of the room first. Too, using third-person instead of second-person for the narration felt strange to me, and I never quite got used to it.

But, with a walkthrough, it was a good time, and I think that putting the work into pruning and shaping it into a more polished edifice would really pay off, which is why I'm glad that the end of the game announces that Agent Faraji will return in a sequel. I'll play it.

(I also drew a map of the game’s geography as I played; I'm less happy with it than with many of the maps I draw while playing parser IF, in part because translating a 3D imaginary space into 2D is hard enough; but this game had five spatial dimension and time travel, so I did what I could.)

(This review is based on the updated release of 2 September 2024.)

[jaclynhyde]

Hey, I should post my IFComp 2024 recs! I'm pretty slow this year, but there's some fantastic games in there already. Also I want to draw attention to Apothecary's Assistant, which requires playing a few minutes per day for several days before 10/12. Recs will be updated as I play more!

[manonamora-if]

ive been looking at the ifcomp and i think im gonna do it. any advice for a firsttimer? what should i expect? what was your experience?

Hi Anon!

First of all, congrats on taking the leap! I know it can be quite daunting to participate in one of the biggest and oldest IF Competition there is currently. Takes quite a bit of guts to do it! Yay, you!

Suuuper long ask answer because you asked questions requiring long answers, where I probably repeated myself multiple times.

IFComp Advice

What to expect?

What was my experience?

TLDR: it's hard but also fun. Def recommend at one point (unless ranking makes you go blerg... then do the SpringThing or an unranked game jam).

IFComp Advice

I do have some advice for you, especially if you are planning on submitting a game to the IFComp this year, which is less than a month away:

Be Ready for your work to be judged and reviewed by people. Some will be harsh, some will be kind, most will be fair. If you are not fully open to criticism, especially negative one, the voting period will sting like hell. It is also fine not to read any review or comment about your entry, but a head's up is important.

Be prepared to rank low. If you follow the advice below, you probably won't end up last place. But the competition is stiff. Authors often spend a year or two on their entries before they submit. If you know you can't handle rankings, go for the SpringThing instead. More chill.

Submit your intent to participate NOW! The deadline is Sept 1st, but it's easy to put it off and forget. And intent to participate doesn't mean you have to submit something. You can back out at any moment (even during the voting period).

Check the rules and timeline of the comp (@ifcomp). You don't want to disqualify yourself by mistake...

Keep it short: 15 to 30 min of gameplay. There is less than one month left, and you want plenty of time to make sure your entry is as polish as possible! I took 3 months last time and it was a buggy mess on Day 1 of the voting period.

Use a program you know, or a simple one with good documentation or guides. You might have time in a month to learn how to use a complex program, but I wouldn't recommend it. List at the end.

Create something simple but airtight. You are racing against time. Shooting for the moon with something complex could work, or it could land you in the bottom. Usually, it is best to create a game which is doing little, but doing it very well, than submitting a behemoth that can't even do its core gameplay loop right every time (dissing myself, yes). Sam Ashwell has some good article for choice-based, Emily Short for parser puzzles.

Your prose should have as little grammar mistakes as possible. Pass your text through as many grammar checkers, and maybe some human testers (beta). The more eyes you have on it, the better. Hate to say it but, avoid word crimes there...

Have some impactful interactivity, that makes sense with the story. Puzzle, branching of variation, etc... Even if all of it is fake, and you are pushing the player through a linear story, the player shouldn't feel like they are just flipping pages of a book. I am not talking about the quantity, but the quality of the interactivity. Emily Short has some great article about that stuff.

Don't have bugs. Should be obvious, but you know... I didn't follow that one and got (rightly) roasted for it in the reviews. Test your game (and have people test your game) A LOT.

Style your project a little bit (if possible). It doesn't have to be fancy, but as simple as changing the colour of the background and the text, maybe the font of the text as well (!!! it should still be readable) can go a long way. Also appreciated but never mandatory: different formatting for different bits of text, some animation in the text, having images, having audio, having accessibility settings (theme, font, visual, audio)... Again, those are pointers. Leave this for last.

Credit where credit is due. Code, assets, beta-tester, etc... anything you did not make from scratch, or anyone helping you along the way, should be added in a credit page. Also credit yourself for what you did :P you deserve to show off your efforts!

Test your game relentlessly. Yes it bares repeating, I've done that mistake. Don't be me. Test your stuff again. Have people break your game.

Edit your submission page with care. Have a grabbing hook for your synopsis, an eye catching image, and any relevant documents the players would need (i.e. walkthrough). DON'T FORGET TO ADD A WAY FOR PLAYER REACH YOU FOR BUGS!

MOST IMPORTANTLY: Have fun! If you have fun making your entry, it will show in the writing and how the game is constructed.

Hypertext/Choice-based: Twine (Harlowe, SugarCube), Ink/Inklewriter, Moiki, ChoiceScript Parser: Adventuron

Oh... and good luck. You'll need it :P

If you are thinking of next year instead, most of these advice applies. You can just rule out the intent submission for now, the length of the game (1h gameplay is usually the sweet spot), and the program to use (though take one you understand). The rest could work for any comp honestly.

What to Expect?

The IFComp period in an exciting time where many people gather to play games and talk about them. Many people submit stuff yearly, sometimes with good results, sometimes it's atrocious. Sometimes, authors who haven't been seen in a while reappear to show off their labour of love or review other people's games. It can be very intense and overwhelming if you are participating (author or player).

As an author, you should expect (not exhaustive):

deadline (intent/game/voting),

potentially getting comments for bugs (and having to update, which you are allowed to),

seeing reviews and discussions about your entry (mainly on the IntFiction Forum, but sometimes on blogs too): good stuff, negative stuff, and people missing the point entirely or having bad take, or takes you didn't think about.

seeing people rating your entry on the IFDB (rating =/= vote, but can be a flawed indicator)

feelings galore (good, bad, ugly, anxious), especially stressing about the results

having to remind yourself that no one can judge everything completely objectively (expect when it comes to bugs, it is or it isn't), and that people vote for what they like.

following the rules on the IFComp website

a special private group on the IntFiction forum to discuss with other authors when the voting period starts, as well as posting reviews,

maybe get a prize at the end? (depends on your placement)

Honestly, it can be pretty rough. This is not an easy competition. Most people have been working on those projects for months or years. Some have for just a few weeks, but their pieces can be out of this world. Only the organisers have an idea of who is competing ahead of time, and how competitive it could be from year to year (i.e. did big names come out or not).

While reviews and ratings can give you an indication of how your game is faring with players, you will not be able to know until the votes are actually out (case and point: me, thought I did much better than reality). Either way, it will be a surprise, good, bad, disappointing...

Speaking of reviewers, most will try to be as partial as possible and going into every entry with an open mind. But, there are harsh reviewers out there, as well as kind ones. It is not unusual to see blunt reviews, especially if something ticked the player (bugs usually).

But also, it's loads of fun! You have a bunch of very serious people debating on minor things, newcomers trying out the comp and sometimes even reaching the stars, oldcomers popping by for a cup promising they will review ever game and then disappearing after three, a lot of very very very good games to play, so many different perspectives on what if IF, and feeling like you have a voice in what should be crowned the best of the competition!

It's weird, it's serious, it's goofy...

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best... but most importantly, have some fun. And do what's best for your mental health!

What was my experience?

I think I've talked about it quite extensively in my Post-Mortem for The Thick Table Tavern. Read that before the end of this, for context.

And almost a year after this experience (on this day, I was frantically writing), I think my feelings have changed quite a bit. I went into the competition guns-blazing without understanding the importance of things (bugs/grammar especially) and thinking I had done the absolute most and breaking the genre, believed I did sooooo much better than any other entry, got very dramatic when the first non-positive reviews came in, and was about to throw my shit when I saw the 1s in the voting curve. I am only a bit over-exaggerating here.

I definitely deserved the placement I got. Don't misunderstand, I am incredibly proud of what I achieved there! But... there were major issues for sure. And I've come around to recognise those.

Those 1s-2s were warranted, those negative comments were warranted: the first version was buggy as hell (which I think was the version in the mass downloadable packet? and I updated the game like 20 times), there are still a bunch of issues with the prose (I learned my em dash lesson!), the pacing is aaaalll the way off (I thought I was being cheeky, but didn't always land)... This was something way different for the comp, maybe more experimental than people expected (I mean, who does a click-only bar for a text-based comp...)? But most importantly, while it looked polished, you just needed to play a few minutes to see the varnish crack...

To say the least, I got slapped back to reality. HARD. This was a mediocre good-looking game. Real pretty, big flaws. And that's ok (not putting myself down). Not every game can be winners (unless it's La Petite Mort or DOL-OS :P), not every game will work as intended. You can rack all the trophies all the times. Sometimes you're just at the bottom.

All this might sound hella negative, but I am incredibly grateful for this experience. I have learned so much about game creation, coding, writing, what to do and avoid... There are things I probably wouldn't have learned had I not participated (or not as early). I have created friendships (and rivalries /jk) and found a community where I feel comfortable being this experimental with my work (hey, it worked for DOL-OS!) and continuing breaking the codes. It's renewed my drive to create and do more: games, experiments, trying new program, but also for the community, helping out, creating guides and templates, giving advice...

And I've found a bit of love for reviewing stuff it turns out.

I've made my peace.

And I have plans for a new pretty weird game for a future IFComp ;) I will make people cringe again :P Hopefully not because of bugs!

Final sidenote: I am still not taking my advice. No one tested DOL-OS before it was submitted, and it won. But also, other games placed poorly... I am still speed-running through competitions (not the IFComp this time), and tripping all over all the time. I still submit thing thinking I'm the hottest stuff and that no one else will be better than me. Completely delusional here. Be better than me, for your sake.

[ifcomp]

IFComp 2025 Now Accepting Intents & Entries

Hello, everyone, and happy (slightly belated) start of July! With a new July comes a new season of the Interactive Fiction Competition!

From now through August 1st 2025, 11:59pm Eastern (23:59 ET), the IF Comp website will be open for authors to declare their intent to enter this year’s competition!

Final entries are due on August 28th 2025, 11:59pm Eastern, but you must register by August 1st!

If you miss it, there’s always 2026… If you register and then can’t complete your game in time, you may always back out of the competition and enter the game elsewhere or next year.

As with the previous iterations of the IFComp, authors will be allowed to participate as judges, vote, and review entries other than their own.

If you have any questions about the competition or its rules, you can contact us at ifcomp@ifcomp.org

In addition to entries, we are also accepting prizes to award contestants! If you would like to donate a prize for this year’s competition, you can email us at prizes@ifcomp.org — no prize is too humble or too grand.

If you would prefer to donate money, our Colossal Fundraiser will launch by August. Another announcement will be made then.

Thank you, everyone. We’re looking forward to another fun year.

[kastelpls]

for those who don't know what ifcomp is, it's basically a competition where authors submit their interactive fiction to be judged for $$$. read the about page, i guess lol. i'm writing reviews on games, which have provoked me into the thinking emoji.

there are currently two reviews and i sure effortposted them lol.

[norbezjones]

Yancy At The End Of The World: Who Is Nekoni?

Hey y’all!  In our last post about Yancy At The End Of The World! , we talked about Yancy’s mom.  Today, we’re discussing Yancy’s high school BFF, Nekoni!

Nekoni was Yancy’s best friend for years, from the time they were little kids up until they graduated high school.  Yancy drifted away from her in college, intentionally not contacting her because his mother didn’t approve of his friendship with her.  But when the zombie apocalypse starts, chance gives him the opportunity to reconnect with her again, and he takes it.

Nekoni was designed by critterboxd and is voiced by Aurora Ave-Lallemant, who has worked with me on several games before: xe’s Zenobos in Romance The Backrooms, and was the main character Juniper in Cthulhu’s Son Is A Scene Kid?!  I asked xem to play Nekoni very early in the game’s life, because I wanted to keep working with xem and xe is very talented.  Xe said yes, and I couldn’t be happier!

Aurora is also doing the music for this project, and everything xe’s produced so far has been amazing.  I’m hyped for y’all to hear the soundtrack!

That’s all for today.  Look forward to playing Yancy At The End Of The World! in this year’s Interactive Fiction Competition, which opens on September 1st!

[lacewing-if]

Hey guys! 👋✨

So, okay, I know it’s been a long time since I last post. Like, a really long time. And you’re probably wondering who the hell is this chick popping on your dashboard. But in case you do remember my IF, Strange Case at Harbord, I do want to make a few announcements.

SCAH is going on an infinite hiatus.

Yeah it’s very much not a surprise for anyone here. I have told you guys that I’m rebooting the game, but I also have a severe perfectionism. It’s supposed to be fun, I know, but I have spent way too much time on this project to feel comfortable screwing it up. Good news is, however, I’m ready to screw up my other projects.

✨I’m joining this year’s IFComp.✨

It’s going to be a short and light-hearted game, titled Help! I Can’t Find My Glasses! The bare bone is basically done, but I’ll be updating more of it in the future.

The game is going to be available to the public on October 1st, so stay tuned!

[smwhr]

Last time I registered to a major Interactive Fiction Competition, instead of working on my game, I (my brain) decided to port the entire ink compiler to javascript. Of course I submitted nothing to the comp.

I've registered to IFComp. The deadline to upload my game is september 28. What will I accomplish _instead_ ?

[paradoxcase]

Just adding to this that if you like the games on IFDB, there is also a competition for these games that runs every year: IFComp. Not only can you go there to play brand new games that just came out this year, you can also create an account there and vote on the entries. Or take a crack at submitting a game yourself!

i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.

there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.

anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.

A Better World - create an alternate history timeline

Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game

Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet

Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games

Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones

Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy

ZenGM - simulate sports

Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi

IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)

Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface

The Cafe & Diner - mystery game

The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game

Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions

Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game

Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game

Miniconomy - player driven economy game

Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes

BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators

Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil

Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.

if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.