Rolling IF COMP

10 games in and the only good ones were Sunday Afternoon and Spiral. Didn't care for Fish Bowl although the title object was certainly interesting.

I thought Fish Bowl had promise but just didn't go anywhere with it. Didn't help that I found a bug that meant I had to restart - I put all my stuff down before going in the sea (seemed logical to me, why would I go swimming with all my items on hand?) and then couldn't pick up the fish again.

Don't think I've played Spiral yet, will give it a go.

The only other one I've tried that seemed okay was Changes, but I got stuck - is it reasonable to do hints here if others have played/are playing things, or should we leave that until after the comp?

i think they all have walkthroughs if you download them, maybe keep hints off here until voting ends?

Hooray, I wasn't sure I'd be able to, but this year I can once again follow my usual procedure for IF comps: read about the entries on http://pissylittlesausages.wordpress.com instead of playing them

No walkthrough in Changes. I got stuck early on too -- seems I have to get the lemur out of the bushes but I couldn't figure out how. I didn't care for the adjective-heavy prose: "The trees here are huge: massive columnar towers..."

There actually is a walkthrough, but in-game rather than packaged as another file. Just type 'walkthrough'. I succumbed in the end and realised I was after the wrong target. You have to go through several other animals before you can get at the lemur.

Didn't finish it within the two hour limit but will give it a good score. I like the mechanic. No problems with the writing myself - no literary genius there but so much better than a lot of IF.

self-consciously literary writing - even if done well - kills a lot of IF for me. there's a sweet spot where the language shdn't overwhelm the gameplay if it's gonna function as an immersive game

Yeah, I didn't find that with this - a couple of pleased-with-themselves phrases here and there, maybe? But otherwise mostly functional and fluid.

I have a real love for IF where language itself is the focus, but I think those are a separate category, really.

IF where language itself is the focus

In a Nord and Bert word games style or a Photopia minimal-interaction-but-look-at-my-prose style?

I would like to hear about more games that do the former. I wanted very much to like Earl Grey an ifcomp or two ago but it didn't quite gel for me; found myself thinking about it quite a bit after the fact, though, so that's a point in its favour.

I really liked Earl Grey! Think there were a few moments where I did find myself banging my head against the wall for a while, though.

Never played Nord & Bert but yes, word games and language puzzles are what I mean - my favourite one is probably Ad Verbum, and there was a good one from last year's comp called PataNoir.

In a Manor of Speaking from this year does this to a certain extent, more based around idiomatic phrases, but it didn't work for me. Not particularly well implemented and too many extraneous rooms.

I tried two more over the last week - Spiral and Shuffling Around. The former seemed great but tough, so I've filed it as something to go back to. The latter is a much, much better word game than the one I mentioned before, based on anagramming. There are a few bugs that affect hints and presentation, but nothing that fucks up gameplay, which I thought was absolutely wonderful.

Feeling slightly better about the general standard now I've played through a good few that I actually like, but there is an awful lot of dross out there.

Results: http://ifcomp.org/comp12/results.html

2013 games up, if anyone's interested.

Bump for the daytime. I've played three so far: two buggy as shit, poorly written, barely finished, just... ugh. The other one, however, is absolutely brilliant, and probably jumped straight into my favourite IFs ever list.

Looks like there might be a crapload of Twine games again this year, FFS.

I see there was a piece about this year's ifcomp in the Guardian, by Leigh Alexander:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/22/interactive-fiction-awards-games

I always mean to get round to judging or at least playing more than a couple of entries and never manage it. Maybe this year. Anyone played (or written, for that matter!) any of this year's entrants?

I have played through most of them, of course. Figured it would be a bit unseemly to be the only person posting in a thread for three years in a row. Most of the parser games can be played online now, so if you don't have an interpreter you can still play.

My recommendations:

Hunger Daemon - funny, old-school parser game set in an Old Ones worshipping cult.

Jacqueline, Jungle Queen - crashed-plane adventure romp where you acquire special abilities through the course of play. Also funny.

Creatures Such As We - built with 'choice of' game script, a very well-written love story and meditation on game creation/reception, set on the moon.

Alethicorp - corporate website/job simulator/dystopian conspiracy.

Transparent - this one kind of lacks the directional 'push' of games I'd normally recommend, but is a good haunted house explorer, and has a lot of potential.

Also recommended to varying degrees: Tea Ceremony, the Black Lily (definitely play this if you like giallos), Missive, Ugly Oafs, Jesse Stavro's Doorway, the Contortionist, Zest.

The Porpentine games seemed particularly boring to me this year, but if you must play one then go with With Those We Love Alive. I can't stand games where you have to click around a bunch of things to see if anything's changed, and for about a thousand turns, nothing does. It's so tedious. On the plus side, the idea of taking the game into the real world and actually drawing on your own skin is *excellent* and it does deserve some praise for that. Also I never play games with sound on and I'm getting the feeling that's a big part of Porpentine games, so maybe that's part of why I find them dull?

Guess what time it is

https://ifcomp.org/ballot

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/11/06/interactive-fiction-competition-2017/

Eat Me is fucking fantastic.

Funniest-guy-in-the-world and a very dear friend died this past week. Feels impossible to memorialize such an intelligent and chaotic and wonderful firework of a man, but I’d like to share a game he made with the board, not IF but a good point and click that made the rounds a few years ago.

https://partyissuchsweetsorrow.vice.com/

We were texting on Christmas, he was a terrific confidante and always saw the way through any difficult interpersonal conundrum and he gave me the best adobo recipe and hand-held me through the difficult first couple days of Baldur’s Gate this past summer. Love you Tony

Sorry for your loss :(

I'm a fan of P&C so I will be sure to check this out away from the office.

Sorry fgti. </3

I started playing the game and it's delightful (never played a P&C game on my phone before, works great).

I'm so sorry, fgti. I remember playing that game a long time ago, it's a good one!