My Top Ten Of The 2021 Interactive Fiction Competition

The 2021 Interactive Fiction Competition has come to an end.  I played the majority of this year’s entries and I cast my votes for my favorites.

Here are my pick for the top ten games of this year’s competition, along with links for the reviews that I of them over at Though The Shattered lens:

1. And Then You Came To A House Not Unlike The Previous One by B.J. Best
2. Closure by Sarah Wilson
3. Hercules! by Leon Weinreb
4. The Song of the Mockingbird by Mike Carletta
5. What Heart Heard of, Ghost Guessed by Amanda Walker
6. Retrocon 2021 by Sir Slice
7. You Are SpamZapper 3.1 by Leon Arnott
8. Plane Walker by Jack Comfort
9. This Won’t Make You Happy by Mike Gillis
10. How it was then and how it is now by Pseudavid

This was a good year, without any truly bad games.  Next year, hopefully, I’ll have something of my own to enter.

 

The Best of the 2021 IF Competition So Far

For the past week, I’ve been playing some of the games that have been entered in this year’s Interactive Fiction Competition. While I still have quite a few more to play, my early favorite is And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One by B.J. Best. While the game starts out as a nostalgic throwback to the old PC adventures games of the 90s, it quickly develops into something much more and becomes a poignant look at friendship, love, and maturing. It’s probably one of the best IF games that I’ve ever played and, as far as I’m concerned, it’s going to tough to beat at this this year’s comp.

All of the games that I’ve played so far have been pretty good, though. Unlike last year, there don’t appear to be any half-way finished game or throw-away projects among the entries. This year, everyone who entered should be proud of their work.

Who knows? Next year, I may be joining them.

The 2021 Interactive Fiction Competition Is On!

For the past few days, I’ve been checking out the entries for the 2021 Interactive Fiction Competition.

I could be wrong but it seems like there’s less entries this year than there was last year. At the same time, this year’s entries seem to be a considerable improvement on last year’s crop. Last year, there were several games that felt half-finished. So far, I haven’t come across that while playing this year’s games.

Check out all of the entries in this year’s competition! My favorite so far is And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One by B.J. Best.