Welcome to the 23rd Annual Interactive Fiction Competition.
This year marks two firsts for IFComp.
Only two days before the games became available for public play on October 1, the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation – IFComp’s parent organization since last year – met the $6,000 goal that it had set for IFComp’s very first fundraiser, the Colossal Fund. This created a $4,800 prize pool to be shared among the top two-thirds of IFComp 2017’s finishers, with the remainder helping to fund the competition itself. We sincerely appreciate everyone's generosity.
The other new thing: for the very first time, the number of entries in a single IFComp year has reached or exceeded 60.
Also, 70.
Yes, the ever-growing IF creative community has packed no fewer than 79 entries into IFComp 2017’s roster of new interactive fiction works.
Earlier this year, IFTF established a mission statement for IFComp: The Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (IFComp) welcomes all kinds of text-driven digital stories and games, making them freely available in order to encourage the creation, play, and discussion of interactive fiction. I cannot think of a better way to prove this statement than with lots and lots of text games of every flavor you can think of (and a few more besides). Here’s to serendipity, then.
Now, let’s go play some games.
– Jason McIntosh, October 2017
A complete summary of all this year’s competition entries, including each game’s cover art, blurb, and author information, is available on the ifcomp.org website. We encourage you to visit this page to get a full overview of the directory you’ve downloaded.
You can also read an offline “cover sheet” with an alphabetized index of all this year's games, including their author-supplied cover art and blurbs.
If you’re reading this on or before November 15, 2017, then that page will contain all the links and information you need to join the IFComp as a judge – and we hope that you do! Judging the IFComp simply means playing and rating at least five entries by November 15. Anyone can rate these games, and more judges make a better comp. The page also includes a tool that shuffles up the list of entries to help you play them in a random (and therefore more impartial) order.
After that date, the above link will take you to IFComp 2017’s permanent results page. From there, you will still have the opportunity to rate and critique these games on the IFDB, which houses community-reviewed entries for all the IFComp games going all the way back to 1995 (as well as every other IF work of note ever written).
If you’re playing these games on or before November 15, 2017 with the intent to rate them as a judge – well, first of all, excellent! We’re sincerely glad to have you help.
Please take a moment to read the rules for judges before digging in. You may also wish to read the FAQ and the judging guidelines. We ask especially that you keep in mind that your ratings must reflect only your experiences of the the first two hours of play (at most).
When you’re ready to vote, head on back to the online ballot and use the controls found there to enter your ratings before 11:59 PM Eastern time on November 15. You can revisit that page as often as you need to, right up until the deadline. So long as you submit ratings for at least five games, we will count (and very much appreciate) your contribution.
Join the conversation about the competition and its entries in the IF forums. You can trade hints, share your thoughts about the games, and read other folks’ reviews.
Of course, we also encourage you to discuss the games on social media, blogs, or wherever else you’d like. If you have a website where you plan to write reviews, consider adding it to the Planet IF news aggregator so that more of your fellow interactive fiction fans can follow along!
The official Twitter hashtag for IFcomp is, as always, #IFComp.
As the competition progresses, we’ll post pertinent links and other news and updates to both the official IFComp twitter account and our own blog.
Finally, if you need to contact the organizer for any reason, feel free to email ifcomp@ifcomp.org, or send a direct message to @IFComp on Twitter.
So who helped make all of this happen for the twenty-third time?
Jason McIntosh once again served as your humble organizer, assisted by vice-organizer Jacqueline Ashwell.
Reprising their volunteer roles from last year, curator Line Hollis vetted each of the four-score-and-more entries before judging started, and vote counter Carolyn VanEseltine ran the numbers afterwards.
Amy Swartz joins the IFComp team as its first-ever prize coordinator. (Did I say we had only two firsts, earlier? I must have lost count of them all.)
The IFComp web application was maintained and extended by Jason McIntosh, with new contributions and oversight by Adam Herzog and Dan Shiovitz.
Special thanks to IFTF’s IFComp advisory committee – also new for 2017, by gosh – and, of course, to all authors, judges, prize-donors, reviewers, and other participants of the Annual Interactive Fiction Competition.