IntroComp is a recurring competition featuring game ideas that the creators are considering fleshing out into full games. This year’s crop includes a wide variety of styles.
IntroComp is an annual IF competition that invites authors to contribute partial and unfinished works for feedback. IntroComp 2019 is currently in progress, and if you’d like to check out the work here, you too can judge the entries.
Below the fold, some words on a few of the entries that I had time to play — but you may want to try them out yourself without spoilers.
Voting closes August 31.
IntroComp is a long-running IF tradition in which authors contribute just the openings of games. Judges then vote based purely on whether they would like to play the complete version of the game. Voting is currently in progress, and doesn’t close until September 10, so if you’d like to play some IF and give feedback to prospective authors, this is a good time to do it.
A few thoughts on some of the specific games follow the jump. (I have not been able to play all of them yet, and in a few cases I did not have a great deal of use to say, so this is not a full roster of the competition contents. But You Too can play and judge!)
IntroComp is a long-running interactive fiction competition in which authors submit the beginnings of games and invite feedback and information about whether players would like to see more.
If you would also like to vote, you have through August 15 to try the entries and rate them.
IntroComp is a long-running interactive fiction competition in which authors submit the beginnings of games and invite feedback and information about whether players would like to see more.
If you would also like to vote, you have through August 15 to try the entries and rate them.
In a post explaining the purpose of IntroComp, Stephen Granade wrote
I think IntroComp has benefit beyond people turning specific intros into games. Neil deMause started the competition because so many games’ openings were terrible, and he wanted people to think more about how they hook players.
In practice, it feels as though IntroComp is used this way less than I’d like. Many of the entries turn out to be alpha-tests of one kind or another: the author is showing us an unfinished system that doesn’t have its narrative in any kind of shape, because he wants to know whether the mechanics work or whether the setting strikes people as interesting.
It would be useful if IntroComp were more of a referendum on Writing a Good Hook, because we need some more of that. IF hooks have to accomplish two separate things:
I tried the IntroComp 08 games and was turned off by most of them on the first playing (and wrote up notes about why). Later I felt guilty about that and gave several a second try. So the comments for some of these are divided into first impressions and second impressions. Sometimes the second impressions are warmer.
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 