#ectocomp

[artwithoutblood]

GOD IS IN THE RADIO is a short interactive fiction piece about performing a ritual for your god by finding his song by flipping between radio stations. submitted for ectocomp 2022. loosely based within art without blood’s universe.

[kastelpls]

wrote and coded a twine game in four hours.

[manonamora-if]

Ectocomp 2023

The Ectocomp is back!

You can submit in English, French or Spanish (or all of them) in two categories:

La Petite Mort for works created in 4h or less

Le Grand Guignol for longer works!

This is a ranked jam.

[manonamora-if-reviews]

Forever and Ever by Petricake Games

IFDB - Game - @petricakegames CW: Themes of loss, grief and death of a child. Note: this was a La Petite Mort entry, and submitted to the Bare-Bones Jam

Summary: Halloween night comes to a close and you’re just settling in to get a good night’s sleep when your son Lucas lets you know there are monsters in his room. Again. A father’s work is never done.

This game might be short and concise, but it is quite well-written, impactful and heartbreaking. From the start, there is something not quite right with your son's interruption of your sleep, even if it is a yearly occurrence. Things just don't quite fit all to well, especially when your daughter appears or when the mother is mentioned (in hindsight... 🥴). But is is not clear until the end what is truly going on here. What seems at first like a slice-of-life with some spooky halloween aspect, turns downright terrifying. The reveal is not only depressing to internalise, but the implications are frankly hitting much harder than what you'd expect from the blurb and warnings. The final choice is, again, heartbreaking, whichever way you choose...

[golmac]

Book 1 - meowing

meowing is an action applying to one thing. understand "meow [something]" as meowing. understand "meow at [something]" as meowing. understand "mraow [something]" as meowing. understand "mraow at [something]" as meowing. understand "miaow [something]" as meowing. understand "miaow at [something]" as meowing. understand "maullar [something]" as meowing. understand "maullar at [something]" as meowing. understand "miaou [something]" as meowing. understand "miaou at [something]" as meowing. understand "miau [something]" as meowing. understand "miau at [something]" as meowing. understand "nya [something]" as meowing. understand "nya at [something]" as meowing. understand "miao [something]" as meowing. understand "miao at [something]" as meowing. understand "m [something]" as meowing. understand "m at [something]" as meowing.

[tabitha-writes]

New game: Dark Communion

In this spooky game, explore an abandoned church with your sister, crush, or acquaintance--and try to make it back out again...

[xuelder]

This is my entry into Ectocomp 2022, You're in Deep, a text adventure made in Twine about being trapped in the attic on Halloween during a hurricane.

[twinegardening]

The Revenant's Lament, by 30x30

or, the Ballad of John Cassidy King Way out west, in the most lonesome of reaches, strange things are afoot. Cowboys around campfires tell ghost stories and tall tales, speak of impossible, supernatural things. They say the devil walks amongst men. They say he'll grant you impossible wishes at the cost of your eternal soul. They say he can bring dead men back to life. They say that somewhere out where the wind whispers secrets, there roams a cowboy who can't die. Abandoned by God and the devil alike, left to wander the range, forever searching for something. For someone - that accursed devil or a merciful angel or a lost love or death itself. And when the cowboy finds who he's looking for - there'll be hell to pay. The Revenant's Lament, they call this tale of woe, the unfortunate ballad of John Cassidy King.

[kithj]

It's not halloween anymore, but I'm bringing treats. :P

sorry this took me so long to get to 😭

i liked this game it was short and fun. i really liked the tone of it, sad but hopeful in a way. trying the different combinations was interesting to see how the text would change at the end.... i enjoyed making the perfect Creature. thanks :-)

[petricakegames]

Forever and Ever

Forever and Ever is a short, interactive horror story written in Ink. Halloween night comes to a close and you're just settling in to get a good night's sleep when your son Lucas lets you know there are monsters in his room. Again. A father's work is never done.

Play the Game | Ko-fi

Happy Friday the 13th and hold on to your butts, folks! My second-ever interactive fiction game is here!!

Forever and Ever is an entrant into the La Petite Mort English division of ECTOCOMP 2023--meaning the game was written and coded in under 4 hours; as well as the Bare-Bones Game Jam--meaning it's published without any alteration or customization of the default UI.

This short, horror story clocks in at about 3,800 words with three possible endings. Hopefully, it's a seasonally appropriate, unsettling tale that leaves you feeling awful and uncomfortable.

Forever and Ever is written for an adult audience and contains themes that may upset some readers. Discretion advised.

[aurelim]

Among the Haunted Release!!

Happy Halloween everyone! For the past few weeks, I have been working on a collaboration with @albywritesfiction (who is one of the best people I have ever worked with; they have helped me so much with proofreading, coding, and looking for images 🥺 thank you so much!!) to make a game for Halloween.

The game has been submitted to ECTOCOMP English version (Le Grand Guignol) and Cozy Halloween Jam, so go check it out!

And so, Aurie and Alby bring you...

Being a single parent is never easy, especially when you have two kids to raise. You also live in a haunted house, where the supernatural inhabit the same space as the place you are meant to call home. Both of these factors equal chaos, which leads you to the present.

It is Halloween. Live through the spooky day on 13 Hallows Lane and decide what you will do when the sun begins to set and trick-or-treat goers fill the sidewalks.

What will you do? Decorate your house? Play some pranks on poor trick-o-treaters with help from the ghosts within your walls? Attend to your children to make sure they do not tell anyone that your house is haunted? The choice is yours!

​​Warning: this game has mentions of blood, ghosts, spiders and clowns, as well as disturbing themes. Please proceed with caution.

🎃 FEATURES

Mainly a linear game with some route differences based on your choices. Are they good? Are they bad? Who knows.

Choose your first name, your children's names (a boy and girl), and what they call you! However, you are locked in a preset personality, so you cannot change how you react to situations.

Live through your first Halloween at your haunted house, which is full of kind monsters and creatures you never thought existed until you met them.

Encounter strange things in your neighborhood.

🍭 CREDITS

Thanks to @writing-prompt-s for the following prompt: "You live in a very haunted house, but it’s not that bad. The voices in the basement remind you of your laundry and tell you to check the boiler, the rat size talking spider keeps the pests away and is a pretty good therapist, and the victorian ghost children are great friends with your kids."

Special thanks as well to Ash, author of Inner Demons, for some UI inspiration from her Twine/Sugarcube 2 Template (especially for the button CSS!)

And of course, thank you so much to Alby for helping with editing, coding, and helping me with advice! AtH couldn't have asked for a better guardian spirit ;)

All images came from Unsplash and were found by Alby. Banner and game cover made on Canva.

Check out the game here: GAME!

[manonamora-if]

Huuh... Might make the EctoComp deadline after alll...Would prob need an extra update for some passages/fix gameplay/UI but I might actually be able to time this right...

[manonamora-if-reviews]

ConfigurationUploader by Autumn Chen

IFDB - Game - @cyberpunklesbian Note: this was a La Petite Mort entry, and submitted to the Bare-Bones Jam

Summary: ConfigurationUploader is a program for uploading configurations.

When I saw the game pop up on my feed, I honestly thought Autumn had built a new program and had just uploaded a legit but bare documentation for it. But now, this is an actual IF, pure science fiction (I hope...) bundled up in an unusual format.

The whole gameplay feels like going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole (you know the ones, where you open links on the current page into a new tab to read later, because who knows if you'll find them again, and now your browser is lagging and it is 5h later) mixed with an incomplete and obtuse documentation for a program that doesn't exist (at least here) and doesn't seem to have a clear use (by going from the starting page/game blurb).

As you go deeper into the pages, finding that this program was lead by a university professor and eir students (some of which have left the projects in suspicious ways), it is possible to piece the mystery together (or the big picture at least). The implications of what is afoot is quite frightening, and bleak.

An impressive amount of content for just 4h!

[golmac]

ectocomp, hopefully

a cat is a kind of animal. Marbles is a female cat. Marbles is in Center Stage. the player is Marbles.

[artwithoutblood]

in MY GOD IS THE SUN, you are death, and you were once one of the 22 members of the arcana, a cult dedicated to some far-off god. you are the last survivor, the rest gulfed in inferno. you just didn't expect the first person you met once you reached the outside world again to be the "deity" you once worshipped. the fanfare and love is gone, though, and he's glad it is.

after a few days in the hospital (all expenses paid), genesis, demon of dissonance, helps you choose a new name. my god is the sun is a short story about rebirthing yourself in more than one way, with a dad that adopted you like his own.

my god is the sun is a game about nothing. a game in melancholy unreality of a dream and a demon. 

it is a sequel to GOD IS IN THE RADIO, my 2022 ectocomp entry.

[ifcomp]

2023 IFComp Results & Survey

The results of the 2023 Interactive Fiction Competition are now live at https://ifcomp.org/comp/2023

If you missed the livestream, it will be available over the coming days at https://www.twitch.tv/interactivefictioncomp and is permanently archived over on YouTube at https://youtu.be/N8AxhLAoEMg

Of course, we are already planning for the ‘24 Comp. Please provide your feedback on what went well, what could have gone better, what we should do more of, and what we should consider changing or leaving behind: https://forms.gle/1gFEwhmFAaszB4Tx7

We are so grateful to everyone who helped make this year’s comp happen.  Thank you! PS - We made an IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT during the awards stream: next year's IFComp is bumped up one month so that IFComp no longer overlaps with ECTOCOMP. If you are thinking of entering the comp as an author in 2024, your game is due at the end of August instead of the end of September! Plan ahead!