Events
Tomorrow, October 1, IF Comp games will be available to play and judge. Anyone can participate in judging — so if you want to be part of that, check out the website for instructions. The judging period runs through November 15.
October 2 is the next meetup of the San Francisco Bay Area IF Group.
October 5 is the deadline to submit talk proposals to the GDC AI Summit in 2022. Building a talk proposal takes a little time, so if you’d like to present something there, do give yourself enough time to read through what’s required and then pull together documentation.
Roguelike Celebration runs online October 16-17, and is often a great place to pick up some talks on procedural generation of various kinds.
Also October 17, the Seattle IF Meetup will gather to play through some IF Comp games.
October 22 is usually the deadline for submitting spooky interactive fiction to the yearly Saugus.net Halloween contest. This contest accepts both interactive and non-interactive short fiction, and has been running continuously since 1998. It doesn’t always get IF entries, but can be a fun place to send something if you’ve got a scary story in mind.
October 24, the Oxford/London IF Meetup will be playing IF Comp games together online.
Competitions, Jams, and Prizes
The New Media Writing Prize is currently open for submissions through November 26, looking for interactive storytelling distinguished by
Ease of accessibility for the reader/viewer.
Effective use of interactive elements.
A great example of how new media can do things traditional media can’t.
The potential to reach out to a wide audience (i.e. not just specialist interest groups).
There’s a £1000 reward for the main category, as well as additional prizes for student and journalist pieces. Entrants may come from anywhere in the world.
Launches and Releases
Borogove is a free web-hosting service that allows authors to upload their games in many formats, including Twine and ink games and also several standard types of parser game, making them playable online in a free and uniform way. Games listed on Borogove can be featured on the front page or assigned a private link; if the link is private, players other than yourself will still be able to reach the game, but only if they have the link to start with.
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Hadrian Lin’s Game Boy game The Year After (mentioned here previously) is getting a physical production run. The author has also written about how the game leverages a non-obvious moment of choice.
And speaking of Game Boy games, there is also an illustrated Game Boy adaptation of Ryan Veeder’s IF game Mud Warriors. The new version is a collaboration between Ryan Veeder, Ben Jones (@Polyducks), and Lance Campbell.
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Low Kill Shelter is a new novella from Porpentine, available from itch.io.
Articles et al
A couple weeks ago the Oxford/London IF meetup ran a Seltani Jam, encouraging people to write games for Andrew Plotkin’s multiplayer IF platform.
In practice, there was one entry – a piece by Andrew Plotkin himself – but a number of people came around for the meeting, checked out the platform, and also played through Aspel. It was a good time, and I think a bunch of people came away with a clearer view of why Seltani might be an interesting system.
Andrew’s contribution is a nifty piece including a timed alchemy puzzle. It’s plenty of fun to play with in its own right, but I also recommend his related write-up about alchemy puzzles in general.
Meanwhile, 50 Years of Text has now gotten as far as covering Dwarf Fortress. This one was a particularly fun read, I thought, whether or not you are already familiar with the game.
Opportunities
Failbetter is hiring a part-time editor. This is an entry-level role for a UK-based person who already has some familiarity with Fallen London.
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 