Interactive Fiction competition 2016

October 26, 2016 8:30 AM

The Interactive Fiction Competition 2016 is open for judging, and invites us all to play and rate this year's entrants. Browse the games individually to play in your browser or download, or grab the 222MB zip archive containing all the entrants.

Previous years' winners can be found here.

(NB: Previous -- and to me fascinating -- thread about a convention of rating how cruel a game is.)

posted by metaBugs (10 comments total)

Looks like another record-breaking year, huh?

I kind of wish it were pseudonymous like that weird experimental little non-comp exchange that Jason Dyer ran last year (this year?), it would be cool to be easily able to play through and judge without being influenced at all by knowing who authors are (whether it's "oh I really liked that writer's other games, HYPE" or "hey isn't that the famous IF author, I bet they know what they're doing" or "ugh, [spiral of bad memories drowning everything out]").

Can't remember if any really "cruel" games (in the un-signposted, unrecoverable fail-state sense) have made it to the top in the last, say, decade. I am not very plugged in to the community but my impression (where did I pick up this impression?) was that letting a player stumble into an un-signposted, unrecoverable fail-state in a puzzly game would be considered bad puzzle-writing nowadays.
posted by inconstant at 8:41 AM on October 26, 2016

The entries this year look great at first glance. Don't break my heart, "SCREW YOU, BEAR DAD".
posted by phooky at 8:57 AM on October 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think it is pseudonymous. I entered under a pseudonym!
posted by johngoren at 9:02 AM on October 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Hey, cool, I can play the web-based ones in my Chrome browser on my iPad! Yes, I know I should have understood that, but understanding it and seeing it in action are two different things. Yay!
posted by Mogur at 9:06 AM on October 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

johngoren, you're right, some people do indeed enter under one-off pseudonyms, but it's not baked into the comp rules AFAICT.

Mogur, I believe most of them should be playable in browsers even if they don't say "format: web" -- people have done some magic code things and now parser-based stuff is also playable online.
posted by inconstant at 9:09 AM on October 26, 2016

There's just so many titles that typically I rely on (mefi's own!) emshort for at least a sense of what I might be interested in. She recently covered some over on Rock Paper Shotgun.
posted by juv3nal at 4:54 PM on October 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

I haven't had a chance to play any of this year's yet, but it reminds me, Birdland and Creatures Such as We (from previous competitions) are worth checking out if you haven't seen them.
posted by juv3nal at 5:00 PM on October 26, 2016

I spent a chunk of yesterday evening playing Final Exam (9th place last year), which I really enjoyed; it did a good job of building the world and its atmosphere.
posted by metaBugs at 4:22 AM on October 27, 2016

Here's a more comprehensive roundup from emshort btw.
posted by juv3nal at 5:34 AM on November 7, 2016

Having only taken a brief peek, Detectiveland's UI is interesting, as it kind of splits the difference between twine and traditional parser; it has inventory items and locations/rooms that you enter/exit and such but plays entirely by clicking.

Also, phooky you may be pleased to see that SCREW YOU, BEAR DAD makes her list of personal favourites.

Cactus Blue Motel is a nice slice of magic realism twine.
posted by juv3nal at 6:03 PM on November 7, 2016