As October rolls in, it's that time of year again, time for the other parts of the IF community that none of you really care about to host all their award thingies and contests!
The XYZZY awards are a fairly big deal as they are the end result of a lengthy nominee process putting the spotlight on the best games (or at least the ones with the least apathetic fans) from the previous year, in various categories.
The voting on this one only runs through
October 3rd so I realize this is kind of last second, but I will continue to update this thread on anything else of note going on in the outer spheres of IF during this contest season which stretches through mid November or so...there's the actual IFComp which is now in the voting phase also, always an overwhelming time where authors who aren't from here desperately throw any shit they have at the wall in the one desperate bid to get A Feedback they have for like the entire year. Plus the Halloween contest which I think may be of more interest to us.
But the XYZZY contest is what this is about right now. Not a lot of time left, but there's only a handful to vote on, and there's no actual requirement to
finish any of them, or vote in any categories you're unsure of.
I know it's asking a lot of you guys to bother with doing anything, ever, but remember that there are
certain people in other parts of the IF community (I am loathe to name names, but it's Dan Fabulich, Hanon, and Mathbrush. Just btw.) who have taken it upon themselves to silence CYStian voices, and try as hard as they can to keep us from being a part of things. So you really should make a point to spite them by participating in the places it's still possible to without the use of a different username or a VPN.
So, the process:
First, you'll need an IFComp account. (
https://ifcomp.org/)
Obviously you will be able to repurpose this Herculean amount of effort should you desire to vote in the IFComp.
Next, log in and vote here:
http://xyzzyawards.org/awards/vote.php
Because this is such a big and high profile contest for aLL IF in the entire world, they're too cool to fix anything about their site so prepare to see a massive list of errors once you do vote, that's normal however and everyone is getting it. Votes are still being recorded.
It also doesn't look like they bothered to provide links to the actual games, so I will be too fashionable for this too. You have to make your own decisions on these using whichever methods you desire, but I'll just provide some of my own thoughts on a few notable ones.
Vampire: The Masquerade -- Night Road was up for Best Game. I haven't played it, but I voted for it. A choice based, commercial CoG game by a professional author, based on a wildly popular franchise, just showing up to squat right on top of all the traditional indie games created as a labor of love for their quaint little contest? The year they handed their entire community over into Dan's care? Obviously it should win, it is foreordained and dammit it just feels
right.
That's actually the only category I saw that one in, but there's a few others that pop up over and over in other categories.
The Impossible Bottle - An actually really fun parser based puzzlefest. I know you guys don't care for these, but in this case you can conveniently click the things if you don't want to type them. You're playing a little kid that can change things in the real world by moving them around in a dollhouse replica. It's pretty wholesome so
probably you can't murder your family this way, sorry to disappoint. Maybe at least Gryphon would still like it? idk
Tavern Crawler - "Pretty good (for a Twine game)" according to Malk. He said it's about being drunk and trying to get pussy, both activities he spends 80% of his life on so I trust he would know what was up. The game description page says you get hired in a tavern to slay a dragon, but then after the deed is done were too drunk at the time to remember
which tavern to return to for pay. I have clicked around a bit and indeed is seems astoundingly high effort and even fun for a Twine game.
However for some reason I have a terrible, terrible feeling about this adventure. (I do hope Malk managed to get Ford's pussy though.)
A Rope of Chalk - It's by Ryan Veeder, something about a distastrous sidewalk chalk tournament where you jump around to different viewpoints. Haven't looked at it yet but I like Ryan Veeder's games, and supposedly there aren't any puzzles to annoy you lot.
Here's a very zen and relaxing one he made about fly fishing and being chill in nature. There's another game by Ryan Veeder you might consider voting for too if the titles and author names of the others don't appeal to you.
Stuff of Legend - "The only thing worse than being a village idiot is being an unemployed village idiot." Good tagline, I liked it? And it's supposed to be funny and good for beginners. If you don't know what a parser game is this might be a good place to start? I have no idea, but the game appears a lot so on some level, it may be worth voting for.
Jolly Good: Cakes and Ale - Well this is Gower's game, the sequel to Tally Ho. It probably is at a disadvantage due to being ten bucks on Steam and so not getting as many players (of the intensely nerdy type who vote in IF competitions), but it's like a million words and I have declared it to be good. Malk has played it and also bought it for his ex who loved it, and it's wildly popular on CoG. Truly Gower's range is amazing as his writing has managed to appeal to treacherous backstabbing thots, CoGites, normal people, and based chads alike. Also of course you guys have already seen examples of Gower's writing in this style in the Tally Ho LP he did:
https://chooseyourstory.com/forums/creative-corner/message/25692
(There are like eight more of these threads in the Creative Corner if you want to dig for them, I am certainly not going to do it for you.)
Mathbrush, an IFDB mod, also did some kind of game and then nominated it for everything. It is a fanfic. Parser based. Be sure to check out his Mormon proganda on the IFDB if you want previous examples of his works, I know there are a couple of you here who might be into that.
Oh yeah, and
in my personal and subjective opinion, Congee is not at all an example of "best use of multimedia", wtf. Best Way to Torture a Player Forcing Them to Wait for Single Lines of Text to Slooowly Pop Up, and Then the First Choice That FINALLY Appears is a Fake One, perhaps. It could definitely win that one. But it made me extremely angry a year ago and by Allah, I'm
still not over it.
Anyway, you guys go on now and spend a few moments familiarizing yourselves with the games and make your choices. Like I said, it's never an expectation any voters actually beat everything or even play everything in these contests. (that's actually not even allowed in the IFComp for some reason since they deliberately penalize longer and more effortful games by putting in a two hour time limit so everyone is rushed and can't finish them...) So no one is ever well informed when it comes to these votes and they usually go almost entirely on name recognition anyway so don't worry too much, as native born CYStians, even your half assed half formed opinions are more based and superior than that of people from these other communities anyway. Open the tab and click the things go go go. Remember the voting ends very soon,
October 3rd.
When I feel like updating this again we'll talk about Ectocomp.
Oh and fine, I will go ahead and put in a link to Tavern Crawler:
https://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2020/Games/Tavern%20Crawler/TavernCrawlerIFCompFinalV3.html
I wish more Twine games were like that, instead of the classic 300 word linear dribblings about being depressed and microaggressed.
(
https://ifcomp.org/)
(
http://xyzzyawards.org/awards/vote.php)
