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Okay I'm sure this will be a shock to everyone on who won.

It was Mystic of course and here's how much she beat the chicken soup out of everyone.

Constellaris Court by Mystic: 25
Terror of the Sea by Will: 21
Siege of Pemdas by Orange: 14
Shades of Fear by Cat: 13
No Way Out by Liminal: 10
Shifter by Avo: 8.5
What to Boil First by Wildblue: 7

If you're wondering how she got 25, one of the judges dispensed with the whole traditional 1-8 rating and went with a 1-10 rating instead (Including decimal point ratings as well) but of course here at CYS we approve of such maverick tendencies.

Not to mention it wasn't going to change the results of who won if an "8" had been used instead anyway.

Bet rewards/penalties have already been settled, shiftless scum already pulled a level out of the pit and SHAME applied to those who failed this contest.

And that does it for another contest. I'm sure all the ones that were rescued a level from the pit will use their new semi-freedom to actually produce a story for the Prompt contest next year!

Probably not.

Thanks to Gower, Sherb and Clayfinger for judging this time around so I didn't have to do it.

Congratulations Mystic, actually closer than I thought! Your story is fantastic and really well-written! :D Well done Orange, Cat, Liminal and Avo and also Wildblue for whatever that was you submitted :) And thanks to End and the judges for running this.

Congratulations Mystic! Constellaris court was an amazing read. I intend to leave a detailed review later on. This week's just been really busy. Kudos to everyone who managed to turn in a valid entry. :]

@Mystic_Warrior big fucking ups. You're a continued credit to the site and your output is of superlative quality. 

Congratulations to the graduating class of the 2025 Edutainment Contest! We made it. We graduated. Some passed with flying colours, getting a relaxing night of sleep as everyone else scrambled to meet the deadline (looking at you, Will), while others scraped by with a barely passing grade (good job avoiding shame, Wildblue). Ultimately, we have all submitted our assignment on time and outrun the snares of Shame.

As we know, CYS has the opposite of an aging population. Many young children have landed upon our shores, asking questions like "what does that word mean?" or "how to story?". Literacy levels dropped to an all time low, with a child citing 'I think the pepole and the lore where really great' as the epitome of its reviewing capabilities. Therefore, EndMaster sent out a decree: let us educate the new generation! Thus, CYStia became a beacon of hope in a world where knowledge is a dying currency. 

Some acknowledgements are in order. Thank you to End for hosting yet another wonderful contest! A round of applause for Gower, Sherb and Clayfinger for taking out time to grade all our assignments, and so quickly too. I'm sure it must have been difficult, especially with some students disregarding the word count and/or the marking criteria. We appreciate all you do for the site.

Congratulations to Will for securing second place, the scores were really close! One could say you were my academic rival here. Well done to our other straight A students, Orange and Cat, who have been performing very well in contests lately. Kudos to Liminal for securing fifth place despite the equivalent of scrapping your entire essay and rewriting it in the last couple of days. And great job to Avo for being the most educated of the new group of children (and youngest graduate of our cohort!). Lastly, good job to Wildblue for not giving up in the hours it mattered the most. 

May your futures be bright and [insert other valedictorian speech platitudes here]!

Also, @TheChef, there's a real chance I won't be able to join the next prompt contest because of irl academic commitments, so I'm passing on the torch to you. (But please don't make me have to drag you out of shame again). 

Congrats on pulling ahead of me on commendations there too Mystic, however know that I fully intend to surpass you again in 2026. (Mostly by cheesing the system.)

The game really is fantastic though, I haven't finished it yet but so far it's my favorite of all of yours.

Thank you, Mizal!

100 comms is such a pretty number, I should write 89k storygames more often. Don't worry, you would have lots of opportunity to surpass me next year, regardless of whether you choose to give the comms to the sages or the wardens.

No bitch you don't get to gracefully step aside, we're going to slug this out and pull each other's hair and stuff all next year.

(And I believe 30k-60k is how the real minmaxers roll.)

Alright, if you want to, we could compete to earn the most commendations before the end of next year! 

I hope I don't end up regretting this. The combined comms of Jack the Bean Counter (7k, 47 comms) and KOBOLD KEBABS (13k, 54 comms) are worth one more than Constellaris Court (89k, 100 comms), so I have to master the art of short stories. 

Either that, or master the art of writing long stories incredibly fast. Or both, and write stories of middle length!

As fun as it was to write 80k+ words in a month, I don't know how sustainable that would be in the long term. Middle length stories would be a good compromise though.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

LOL I got called an old man for using that emoticon once. Glad to see the youth adopting the elder ways and lore.

That is definitely some bullshit that's high on the priority to adjust next time we have somebody plugged into the Matrix though.

Whoa, I can't believe Mystic won another contest, how unexpected!

Congrats to Will too, TotS is a great addition to what used to be his personal genre section, and even if this was one of our smaller contests almost everyone else did really well too in filling out one of the more neglected areas on the site. (Those of you who managed to turn something in anyway.)

Big thanks to the judges too, although funnily the way these shooj out the placements were so obvious grim day one we barely needed judges. The only ones I wasn't sure about were Orange vs Cat, and yep, that was very nearly a tie

@Wildblue
Educational fact: Tying a dead chicken around a dog's neck is supposed to prevent them from future bad behavior, so while you did escape SHAME, you can't unpublish that for at least a week. And I think I'm going to enforce that for all similar half assed memey last minute games in the future. (Now that I no longer do such things myself.)

I really hope to see the games Petros and RK were working on soon as well, since they were both really close to being done and I was pretty interested in what I knew of both of their WIPs

Wow, I didn't get last place! :D

I mean you gave Orange's game a 1/8 so it seemed like you felt it was the worst of the lot by a large amount.

I did? I don't think I did and if I did I didn't mean to.

EDIT: oh wait I looked at it and remember now, if you read my review you'll see towards the end I was removing one point from my score every error I found, and these were sort of big mistakes, and I found enough that it dropped to one.

I just thought it was a big deal it had these mistakes because what if a 4th-6th grader was actually trying to learn from this?

In their defense, it had a lot of errors I need to fix lol 

Congrats to Mystic and Will! 

There's a what, now?

Huzzah! I didn't get last place despite writing my storygame in a day and a half! To eternally be unpublished it goes, then. Thanks to End for hosting, thanks to Gower, Sherbet, and Clayfinger for judging, and Congrats to Will but mostly Mystic for your incredible entries! Good job to everyone else who submitted as well for not being SHAMED.

Time to write an actually decent story.

Congrats to everyone who finished an entry. I haven't read them all, but the couple I have I liked. I will get around to the rest eventually.

Congrats to everyone and especially Mystic! 

Well done to all those who submitted, and kudos of course to Mystic! I'll be honored to read and review the stories you all made for this contest!

Congratulations, everyone! And good job, Mystic!

Congrats everyone!

This was a really cool contest, and I'm so pleased that we got 7 cool new Edutainment stories!

Special props to Mystic! Congrats on winning, Constellaris Court is a jewel of the edutainment category, and such a cool story. I love the amount of effort you put into each and every story you write, and it's just wonderful.

Congrats to Will, Orange, Cat, and Lim. Forming the top 5 of the Edutainment contest, each of your stories is so different and interesting. And special shout out to Liminal, as he published his first story! Will, Orange, and Cat, you guys are all seasoned veterans who have more than proved your mettle many times over, so major props.

Congrats to Avo and Wildblue as well. Avo, you put in a ton of effort, and really showed up in an extraordinary way. I love your discipline and focus, and I think the fact that you never procrastinate or turn anything in late means that you have what it takes to become a great writer. Next contest, you're going to do wonderful.

Wildblue, can't wait to see your religion game. For a last minute shitpost, What to Boil First was funny. I like that you refused to give up, and showed a level of grit and perseverance by turning something in even on the last day. I really do want to see your real game though.

This was a really great contest, and I'm really glad I was able to be a part of it.

I think we have successfully brought the edutainment category back to life, and I can't wait to see Cavus's and Petros's games. Along with mine, which should be coming out whenever I sit down and hammer out the rest of it.

     Thanks! :D Not sure I never procrastinate though...