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With a fat deadline, a very open prompt, AND bribery, I really did pull out all the stops I could think of to encourage a decent amount of stories off of the heels of summertime apathy- you lot had me sweating at the end there. Regardless, this could've gone waaay worse, I'm perfectly happy with around a 50% submit rate, and the first-tier bonus incentive has officially had its conditions met!

Now, let's go ahead and get the rankings out there;

1. Re-election Campaign, by Orange

2. Fey Light, by Fluxion

3. Rainbow-1, by Fabrikant

4. Yet Another World-Ending Scenario, by fresh_out_the_oven

5. Fleeing the Forest, by benholman44

6. GOL'BURGER, by MiltonManThing

7. Ignis and Aero, by Clayfinger

8. Falsely Accused, by RKrallonor

9. Into the Darkness, by Cat2002116

10. Scapegoat, by sitelung

11. It Happened At the Waffle House, by Petros

DQ. Witness, by Anthraxus

Orange for some time now has been one of those really good writers who will place highly in contests, but never quite at the top of the mountain; not for lack of contest-winner-worthy stories, mind you, BITKC for example would have been good enough to win most contests.

She really locked in this time around with an extremely high effort showing (it's a FAKE 100k but regardless), I would say Re-election Campaign hovers comfortably around the 7-8 mark, making it the winner of Sherbet's Summer Synergy Contest. Congratulations to the resident bear.

Fey Light trails not too far behind- Fluxion's stories tend to be really cool, even if they force me to turn the CYS chrome extension off. Fey Light feels like solid evidence that Flux is going to win a contest one of these days though, not if, but when. A really great and, well, grimdark addition to the site.

Another high effort storygame, Rainbow-1, takes our third-place spot. This one is already pretty underrated, but that might change once I actually go and rate it myself; absolutely one of the better 'first storygames' I've seen in my time on CYS- Fabrikant will go far, with a bit more proofreading.

Fresh got locked in pretty late in the contest through trickery and cruel tactics (I don't remember who did it exactly) but had an impressive and humorous showing regardless.

As for Ben's story, well, this was probably my personal favorite piece of his writing that he's contributed to the site so far. Do with that what you will.

This contest followed a recent theme, where while there wasn't an abundance of storygames, almost everything that got submitted IS solid (so don't feel too bad if you placed low). You could make a case that everything outside of the bottom two is at least a five; Ignis and Aero, GOL'BURGER, Falsely Accused, Scapegoat, and Into the Darkness make for a very respectable midcard in this contest, with most of these writers making their storygame debut here. And hey, props to Clayfinger for showing up early- and hey, props to Cat2005920357390582235235236347856 for coming after Darius's title. I will not say what that title is.

Petros is lucky he's funny. Waffle House having 14 ratings while Fey Light has 2 is criminal, though, I may have to overload his engine with molten cheese for that. I may have to kill him.

Witness was an unfinished storygame, lacking real endings, and leaving me fairly disappointed, but that didn't stop me from reading what was there. And what is there is fine, I'm sure it would be a solid short story if it had more time in the oven; but naturally, it doesn't quite meet minimum site standards, and for that reason, I am out.

I have amassed a google doc of more in-depth thoughts on most of these, which will hopefully some day be translated into a bunch of featured comments (assuming you people keep your stories up; if you don't, I may have to kill you).

Thanks for your participation in the Summer's End Synergy Contest, points will be handed out soon!

Fourth place in a contest with this level of competition is something I'll take with pride. Congrats Orange, you totally deserve this! Re-election Campaign is my favorite story game from this contest for sure.

Look at you, reading and stuff while everyone else was getting mad at democracy and bullying teenagers.

Re-election Campaign looks really good, I'm hoping to sit down with it soon.

Congrats to everyone, Orange in particular.  I do wish I had gotten tricked into the contest earlier as that would have given me more of the time I needed.

Congratulations to all who participated. Very good show.

I haven't read all the stories yet but I did read Orange's re-election campaign and had to give it an 8. It was brilliant and I'm glad she won. Well deserved.

Thanks a whole bunch to Sherbet as well. Really appreciate that you put this together. I am very much looking forward to the review as I'm trying to keep all the advice I get in mind for upcoming storygames.

This was fun. If things work out, hopefully I will be able to get better results in the next competition. Thanks for having me :]

Congrats to Orange! My CYS bingo for 2024 did not predict her being a contest winner, but it's a pleasant surprise!

Wooo! I feel like a winner. No way am I taking that garbage down

Considering my last story game contest I placed sixth, I'm definitely proud of myself for finally placing in the top five. Congratulations to everyone who submitted a story game, and definite congratulations to the others who placed above me.
 

Special shoutout to Orange! Your comeback arc in both the Crisis contest and this shows that you're definitely making a return to prominence. The story game you came up with is one of my new favorites, and was an ingenious way to use the prompt. You earned the victory, and I look forward to seeing more of your work.

To be honest, I was half-expecting to come last, so...fairly happy with my placement, even though it definitely could have been a lot better.

Got two new ideas for storygames in the same universe, but...I will see what happens.

Anyway, thank you for setting up the contest! I'm hoping to read all of the entries by the end of this week.

Let's fucking go! I was the first person to rate and review Fluxion's game Fey Light, and I was literally shocked at how I was the only one to leave a review. It was so good that I thought reviews would flood in. And apparently, my review is still the only review on his game. How is that possible? Fluxion absolutely killed it! I think the only reason that might be was it was hard to click on the game to start, but after that, it was a very fun ride.

Very happy with Orange winning, I was fairly certain it was either Orange or Fluxion, that is until I read Rainbow-1 and that threw me for a loop there with it's originality and fresh writing style(seriously, good job Fabrikant!), but ultimately Orange cinched the win with a delightful and memorable mayoral campaign story.

I'm really pleased with how I placed as well, as I was a bit nervous after rereading my story and looking at how dense the paragraphs were. Some of the links/potential stories I set up didn't pan out, and I was really worried people would check out after the first page because of the really lengthy and dense exposition. It was interesting to me, but I'm pretty sure that's because I wrote it, so of course it won't seem like it dragged but I can tell that for my next few stories I really need to work on being more concise. I also need to work on my writing skills, looking at the competition has certainly showed me that, cause y'all brought some great writing skills to this contest.

Thanks to TypewriterCat, Clayfinger, and Fluxion for reviewing my story, you guys actually made it through the end and gave me some really good advice. Shout out to Fluxion for reviewing every contest entry, that's such an amazing thing because after publishing things, some of us get worried if we don't see comments or ratings to let us know how we did.

I've gotten through about 7/11 games. I still need to do Into the darkness, scapegoat, ignis and aero and fresh's game, "Yet Another world ending scenario".


Well done everyone! This was a really fun contest to participate in.

I think it's the length too. No one wants to read the long ones. And I did it too: I waited to the very last reviews to get the longer ones done. That actually worked for and against you for your story. Had you made it longer, it would have been better, but because you made it nice and short lots of people read it. Still, you have more to explore in that world so I hope you do at some point.

I'm reading your story right now. I got to chapter 3 yesterday. It's really good so far!

Thanks. I ran out of time and rushed the ending. Maybe someday I'll fix it.

Congratulations to all who placed higher than me: Orange, Fluxion, Fabrikant, fresh_out_the_oven, and benholman44. I honestly feel like I phoned things in for this contest. You all absolutely deserve the recognition and I hope you all continue writing stories here!

As for the rest of us, let's keep working at it! There will be other contests, so there's always an opportunity to earn a trophy here. Good job to the others for getting a submission out in time!

Many, many thanks to Sherbet for putting effort in to create the contest. I think I needed it give me the push to finally publish a game. Also congrats to Orange and Fluxion, I hugely, hugely enjoyed re-election campaign, and Fey light looks super cool (though I will enjoy it properly when I have a bit more time.) I'm still fairly new here, but really starting to appreciate this community! Thank you all for this wonderful experience.

I won?! Woohoo! Thank you for hosting the contest, Sherb! And a huge thank you to everyone who read and reviewed Re-Election Campaign, especially Fluxion and Crimson who have such well thought out, detailed reviews. I'm still working on reading all the entries but the ones I've read so far are great.

What made your story most impressive, IMHO, is the subject matter itself — that you took what could have been a really boring topic and made it interesting. That took some skill, so congrats to you.

Thanks for the ranking, and thanks to any who read my storygame.

These were mostly pretty good, I think. Even the "bad" ones weren't terrible. Fun contest. I especially loved the furry and necromancy love triangles.

Also sorry for annoying anyone with my insistence on making my story look like a storybook. Next time I'll at least fill the page with start links so no matter where you click it will work (I assume that will work).

Thank you Sherb for holding this contest, and thanks to all the other participants. Congrats to the winners! I took a quick peek at some of them and I’m excited to start reading and (slowly) writing comments for each. I had a great time writing mine, and grateful for the helpful critique I’ve recieved so far.

I propose that every storygame published from now on be noted on the description as a belated entry for this contest, as long as there's an "event" and a "difficulty".

It's just occurred to me that of the five finalists, three of them (Fresh, Flux, and myself) entered at least halfway through the contest.  Guess that's a lesson in using your time wisely.

We're just that good. Also, if I set aside a full hour for writing a day I can typically get around 2000 words in, and I have insomnia. The two make a great pair when I have a deadline coming up.

Agreed. My problem is that I'm both ADHD and habitually lazy. I tend to not put any serious work into a contest entry until the deadline is staring me in the face.

In the future I'm going to use an appointment book to schedule writing time for contests.

I'm not really lazy, but at the same time I am. Once I convince myself to start on something I can be incredibly productive, and I'm even more productive when I'm doing things in a group. I don't know what it is about working with other people that motivates me to put in effort and energizes me enough to actually accomplish things.

I suck at starting things, though. I have to really work to ground myself in the present and convince myself that the approaching deadlines are real and not just going to disappear if I ignore them. Once I've gotten to physically doing the thing though, I work fast, well, efficiently, and with a generally good attitude.

My memory is also really, really bad. I can be in the process of doing something like washing the dishes and forget that I'm doing it. I forget I'm holding things and end up dropping them, forget why I stood up as soon as I do so, forget to actually try to sleep for a few nights in a row...

Writing is great though. I love the feeling of the keyboard under my fingers and the sound of the keys. I like going back and reading what I've written and making small tweaks. I like having other people read my work and pointing out things I'd hoped they would notice. There's something about extracting the thoughts from my brain and weaving them into a coherent story that others read and enjoy that just really makes me smile.

Sorry, it's late and my brain is getting cornishly philosophical

You're fine. That's honestly a fantastic way of looking at writing. Also it just occurred to me that if I used an appointment book to schedule writing time, I'd probably just end up forgetting to check my appointment book.

My writing tends to all happen in the last three or four days. So the fact that I spent that much time on it probably made a big difference. I don't know what my problem is, but I always get a vague idea of major plot points, and then I get stuck for weeks on how to go from point A to point C and so on. Then, when I figure it out, I'm terrified of fucking it up so I just sit there and think about it, then try to not focus on it for a while, and basically just waste time. Usually find a song to listen to over and over again to try to get me to set the mood. Had one for this story, and several of my previous ones. But I just freeze up when I try to type, mostly, again, from fear of fucking up what I think is a good idea.

So then, when the deadline hits I just jump in and dump stuff because I have no choice lol.