Category: Competitions

IF Comp 2015: Kane County (Michael Sterling, Tia Orisney)

The 21st annual Interactive Fiction Competition is currently on, through mid-November. Voting is open to the general public; the only prerequisite is that you not be an author, not vote on games that you tested, and submit votes on at least five games. (You emphatically do not have to have played them all! In a year with 55 entrants, it is very unlikely that most judges will get through anywhere near all of them.)

If you are looking for other reviews, this ifwiki page contains a list of places currently carrying them.

cover1Kane County is a choice-based game about surviving in the desert, light on plot but with lots of branching and simulation elements. I played three times, and on the final playthrough finally managed not to die in the wilderness. It could be more polished — I ran into some punctuation issues and typos, and the user interface includes some strange typographical choices. Nonetheless, the scenario keeps up a good pace and the setting is described in detail. I stayed interested throughout.

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IF Comp 2015: Two Dungeon Crawls

The 21st annual Interactive Fiction Competition is currently on, through mid-November. Voting is open to the general public; the only prerequisite is that you not be an author, not vote on games that you tested, and submit votes on at least five games. (You emphatically do not have to have played them all! In a year with 55 entrants, it is very unlikely that most judges will get through anywhere near all of them.)

If you are looking for other reviews, this ifwiki page contains a list of places currently carrying them.

Here I’m going to talk about two entries, Pit of the Condemned and TOMBs of Reschette, that riff on old-school dungeon-and-monster-fighting games.

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IF Comp 2015: Scarlet Sails (Felicity Banks)

The 21st annual Interactive Fiction Competition is currently on, through mid-November. Voting is open to the general public; the only prerequisite is that you not be an author, not vote on games that you tested, and submit votes on at least five games. (You emphatically do not have to have played them all! In a year with 55 entrants, it is very unlikely that most judges will get through anywhere near all of them.)

If you are looking for other reviews, this ifwiki page contains a list of places currently carrying them.

Scarlet Sails is a ChoiceScript game set in a fantasy pirate universe featuring several styles of magic that can aid you on your quest to become captain and collect treasure. The author also has a game currently in contention for the Windhammer Prize, After the Flag Fell.

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IF Comp 2015: Midnight. Swordfight. (Chandler Groover)

The 21st annual Interactive Fiction Competition is currently on, through mid-November. Voting is open to the general public; the only prerequisite is that you not be an author, not vote on games that you tested, and submit votes on at least five games. (You emphatically do not have to have played them all! In a year with 55 entrants, it is very unlikely that most judges will get through anywhere near all of them.)

If you are looking for other reviews, this ifwiki page contains a list of places currently carrying them.

Midnight Swordfight cover Midnight. Swordfight. is a parser game with an experimental world model, many possible outcomes, some puzzly aspects that nonetheless don’t make the game too horribly hard, and really delicious writing. It is the work of Chandler Groover, who has been prolific this year, with Toby’s Nose and Down, the Serpent and Sun and another game in this very competition, not to mention Tailypo in the October lineup of Sub-Q magazine. It took me only about 15-20 minutes to reach one possible outcome for the game, but I didn’t want to stop at that point, and played to others, for a total of about an hour and a half of play time. It is aggressively non-linear.

Note that despite its playfulness, low-difficulty design, and use of animal costumes, this game is not what is generally meant by “suitable for children”. Indeed, it is graphic in ways that some adults may find not their thing. I didn’t feel that these were gratuitous in context, and I wasn’t offended by them; but since I’m about to praise this game and encourage willing folks to play it, I feel like I should hang a bit of a warning up first. Regard the references to sex and violence in the blurb as R/NC-17 level content warnings, not PG-13.

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IF Comp 2015: Ether (Mathbrush)

The 21st annual Interactive Fiction Competition is currently on, through mid-November. Voting is open to the general public; the only prerequisite is that you not be an author, not vote on games that you tested, and submit votes on at least five games. (You emphatically do not have to have played them all! In a year with 55 entrants, it is very unlikely that most judges will get through anywhere near all of them.)

If you are looking for other reviews, this ifwiki page contains a list of places currently carrying them.

CoverEther is a short piece of surreal, lightly puzzly IF about being a magic-wielding nautilus creature. I played it to completion, which took me just a little over half an hour; I did not require any notes to play.

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IF Comp 2015: Birdland (Brendan Patrick Hennessy)

The 21st annual Interactive Fiction Competition is currently on, through mid-November. Voting is open to the general public; the only prerequisite is that you not be an author, not vote on games that you tested, and submit votes on at least five games. (You emphatically do not have to have played them all! In a year with 55 entrants, it is very unlikely that most judges will get through anywhere near all of them.)

coverBirdland is a sizable Twine story about 14-year-olds at a summer camp, social skills, first crushes, and a sort of science-fictional strand. It took me somewhere between 45 and 60 minutes to read. (I keep meaning to time myself properly on these things and then I wind up getting interrupted somehow and not doing so. Maybe rough estimates are still useful?)

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