The annual IF competition is now on! I’m reviewing the games here as I go along, and a number of other people are also doing blog write-ups. Here are the ones I know of:
Peter Nepstad
Victor Gijsbers
Aric Maddux
Gemma Bristow
J. Robinson Wheeler
“Newlin”
Michael Martin
Skeet
ralphmerridew
“Another Mr Lizard”
Joshua H
Wesley Osam
Nick Bronson
Mike Rubin
Nitku
Sarah Morayati (Lucea)
Stephen Bond
Russian reviews (if your grasp of Russian is like mine, namely nonexistent, you may want this comical Google translation instead)
Merk (Mike Snyder)
http://mybloglovesme.tumblr.com/
http://minimumsafedistance.org/ (warning: reviews don’t seem to be cut-tagged)
“Imrihamun”
Carl Muckenhoupt
Cesia (no cut-tags here either; the author claims there are no spoilers, but if you’d rather avoid seeing any information about specific games before you play, you may still want to be cautious)
Octopus Overlords forum (brief, largely unspoilery reviews; no cut-tags)
Wintericecrystal’s Youtube reviews
N. B. Horvath (detailed comments are cut-tagged; overview of comp scores are not)
Lucy
Dan Shiovitz
Jacqueline Lott
Jake Wildstrom (no cut tags)
George Dorn
Christos Dimitrakakis (no cut tags)
Ben Deane (no cut tags)
“Scatmania” (I confess to a little nervousness about the title of this blog, but it does contain reviews for “Violet” and “Grief” so far, and may eventually develop others. No cut tags.)
Auntie Pixelante (no cut-tags, review of Violet only so far)
Sam Kabo Ashwell
David Fletcher
George Oliver
Rob Menke
JDC
Reiko
Jimmy Maher
SPAG 53
Various authors
Something awful forum (comments on Nightfall and Violet mixed in with thread)
Magnus Martyr
Dylan Meconis
“Gaming Dungeon”
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 
Hrm. I’m new at this, let me try to fix it.
Looks like it worked. Thanks, and I’ll remove the warning.
Two other blogs were recently posted on the newsgroup:
http://minimumsafedistance.org/
http://mybloglovesme.tumblr.com/
I posted a comment a few hours ago, but apparently it didn’t work… I’m trying again:
There are also:
Skeet
ralphmerridew
RGIF discussion about “Freedom”
These blogs and forums don’t have any reviews yet, but there’ll probably be some reviews soon:
Octopus Overlords forum
Carl Muckenhoupt
Wesley Osam
infodarkness
Dr. Froth
Warnings on the two that Victor posted: we are simple people and do not know from jump cuts or RSS padding, so the best way to avoid spoilers is to squint at the headings through your fingers until you spot a game you’ve already played. This is less than ideal and I am very sorry and I understand if we are no longer invited to any barbecues. I wouldn’t invite us to barbecues either.
Wow… there’s somebody who actually reads my blog? I had only posted one review at the time and had only mentioned it to the game’s author. Or did you subscribe in a previous year?
Eriorg did a bunch of work last year putting review information on ifwiki, I believe, so probably he remembered your site from then.
Eriorg did a bunch of work last year putting review information on ifwiki, I believe, so probably he remembered your site from then.
Yes, exactly. I looked again at all the (non-R*IF) reviews links from the IFWiki page about IF Comp 2007 (and also 2006, I think) and saw which websites or blogs had reviews or were probably going to have reviews soon.
Another Mr Lizard blog has now been fixed, at the cost of only a small amount of my critical integrity. Thanks for linking.
I’ve also somehow managed to put cut tags on Unimplemented. Thanks for the heads up. Wow. I really miss WordPress.
Thanks.
(I didn’t actually intend/expect to set about correcting everyone else’s formatting choices! The warning is just there to protect readers, and head off any grumpy comments, not to make other bloggers follow any particular protocol. But since I personally prefer to be able to exercise fine control over which spoilers I see, I do appreciate these changes myself.)
These blogs and forums don’t have any reviews yet, but there’ll probably be some reviews soon:
I’ve posted my first two reviews at this point. I’m a slow writer but the rest will probably show up over the next two or three weeks.
Added toplinks to mybloglovesme. Cost the whole rest of Ben Dixon’s critical integrity but I think it’s worth it. Also I don’t think it’s that people feel chastized by the warnings, I think the warnings just serve as a reminder that “Hey, here are my reviews, they’re not cut for spoilers” sounds a lot like “hey, give me a hug, I am covered in knives.” It is only right and natural to take the knives off.
Nick Bronson’s blog: http://frater.wordpress.com/
Mike Rubin (Rubes): http://monksbrew.blogspot.com/
(Is it just an impression, or are there much more reviews now than last year in early October?)
Last year was the first time we had open discussion during the comp period after many years of waiting until after the comp. It made talking about games weird.
I don’t know about that – there was discussion during the comp during 2006…
I, for one, was posting reviews while the comp was still active (I remember because some people of RGIF were shouting for them to come down while others wanted them left up), and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one…
Thank you for the link! And for assembling all these.
Another blog with reviews here: http://selfasfractal.blogspot.com/
I’ve also uploaded a few comments here: http://plover.net/~bonds/comp08.html
Whoa, I got linked here. That was…unexpected.
My full name’s Sarah Morayati, incidentally, and I’m better known around the IF community as Lucea.
A YouTube user called Wintericecrystal has posted some video reviews (http://uk.youtube.com/user/Wintericecrystal). My connection’s too slow to watch them, but others may not be so hampered!
Russian reviews: http://forum.ifiction.ru/viewtopic.php?id=1109
And Merk (Mike Snyder) is writing reviews on the intfiction.org forum: http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=32
Hey there, I’m a total newbie and amateur here, but I am posting reviews on my blog. There is no cut tag … but I also am not writing any spoilers (I think).
http://ceceatitagain.blogspot.com
– Cesia
I just posted some comments/reviews here: http://pigpuppet.blogspot.com
Jacqueline A. Lott’s reviews: http://isquiesque.livejournal.com/
Might be better if my reviews were linked to at http://isquiesque.livejournal.com/tag/if+comp+2008
Thanks for collating all of these!
Jake Wildstrom: http://www.crochetgeek.net/reviews/IF/comp08.html
IFDB reviews (only one until now, but this link should also work when there’ll be more reviews): http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchbar=tag%3AIF+Competition+2008+%23reviews%3A1-
Try mine now, for cut links. I don’t have them on the (non-spoilery) summary quick-review posts.
Emily, it would be great if you would add a search box to your sidebar. I know people can directly google but it’d be nice.
And nevermind, now I see it. ;)
Rob Menke’s reviews: http://www.the-wabe.com/if-comp-2008/
George Oliver’s short reviews: http://kooneiform.wordpress.com/2008/11/15/the-end-is-nigh/