FeelsGankedMan

Yeah, you got a decade or two before having to worry about Cyberganked, pal.

In retrospect of my original thoughts here, no regrets. It’s not even as if that I “hate” the entire IF scene or community (I have friends here and on IfMUD), it’s more I hate what IfComp has de-evolved into.

At this point I would rather focus on finishing this Hugo game and selling it for the next year. I still really want it to be something people will want to play after playing Cyberganked.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: ↑Sun Nov 17, 2019 9:34 pm

pinback wrote: ↑Sun Nov 17, 2019 7:24 pm BTW, the BBS is no longer coloring "Banana" yellow, but it is de-capitalizing it when it's capitalized: Banana Banana Banana

I think they are escaping whatever is put in the substitution now so what we did before won't work. :(

It could be worse: it could color the word orange in purple; the word shit in brown; or every time someone uses the word "fuck" it shows a small gif of two people, I mean a man and a woman, oh well, you can guess what they'd be doing.

Flack wrote: ↑Sun Nov 17, 2019 9:25 pm Besides ICJ's and Jizz's games, the ones I played and reviewed ranked 50th and 78th. I may try to play some of the top 10 games this week and see why they were so highly ranked.

Yeah, same here. Just because the comp is over doesn't mean we need to stop playing the games. I plan to play at least every parser game and will definitely be writing a few more reviews. I just won't be playing comp games to the exclusion of all other IF.

I've thought about taking a look at some old competitions and trying to rank all the games as I would have voted. It could be an interesting exercise, and there weren't always such an overwhelming number of entries so it would definitely be doable for at least some years. I would change a few winners for sure and some low or last place games would rank much higher on my lists.

I decided to check out some games, while this one does not have a parser I would not lump it in with the low rent CYOA games out there:

https://ifcomp.org/2068/content/index.html

Look at that thing! It's beautiful!

pinback wrote: ↑Sun Nov 17, 2019 7:24 pm BTW, the BBS is no longer coloring "Banana" yellow, but it is de-capitalizing it when it's capitalized: Banana Banana Banana

I think they are escaping whatever is put in the substitution now so what we did before won't work. :(

Besides ICJ's and Jizz's games, the ones I played and reviewed ranked 50th and 78th. I may try to play some of the top 10 games this week and see why they were so highly ranked.

The worst things about IF games are (a) not knowing what to do or where to go next, and (b) getting stuck at a "guess the verb" situation. I thought both of our boys' did a good job of avoiding those traps. Congrats to the JC crew for their submissions!!!

BTW, the BBS is no longer coloring "Banana" yellow, but it is de-capitalizing it when it's capitalized: Banana Banana Banana

As soon as I tuned into the broadcast, the announcer made a "Pass the Banana" joke. Here is my review of Pass the Banana from 20 years ago, in which I rip the game an ass because it eschews doing something interesting or useful in service of a bunch of incestuous in-jokes.

I could not, then, believe that after 20 years, I finally, literally tuned into the community and the very first thing I heard was not only an in-joke, but an in-joke referring to the embarrassing in-joke game I decried two decades previous.

Most of the rest of the broadcast was dead air, because nobody involved in this hobby knows how to do anything that might appeal to anyone in the universe other than those who get Pass the Banana jokes.

ICJ came in 26th, but calculated that if it wasn't for CYOA horseshit, he would have been in 11th. Why CYOA is still allowed in this thing makes about as much sense as all of the nob-gobbling horseshit I was subjected to today. It was the first Twitch chat I've ever been party to where I didn't make a joke because I knew beyond a shadow that 100% of them wouldn't get it, and 98% of them would complain about it to someone who wasn't there.

Enceladus was a marvelous example of pristine game design. I doubt anyone even noticed that the default color scheme is the same color scheme of the ship you're on. I'll post about this separately, but other than DOOM 2016 it's the only game I've ever played that made it clear that it wanted you to succeed.

In summation: Fuckin' nerds.

Yeah while I expected to lose, in retrospect I think that putting any more time towards this moronic audience in the future is a waste of time. Even as a judge, you end up feeling like the only person voting third party while everyone else is in a two-party circle jerk lol.

So the results are in: Zozzled by Steph Cherrywell won IFComp 2019. I haven't played it yet as the description didn't make it sound entirely appealing. I guess I'll have to check it out now. Rounding out the top 5 are Turandot by Victor Gijsbers, Chuk and the Arena by Agnieszka Trzaska, Sugarlawn by Mike Spivey, and Heretic's Hope by G.C. Baccaris. Zozzled and Sugarlawn are Glulx games while the rest of the top five are Twine or Choicescript.

Enceladus finished in 26th place while Meeting Robb Sherwin finished 71st. I've said it before and I'll say it again: comp voters make a lot of questionable decisions. I haven't played enough of the top games to go into detail about how bad the voting was, but robotsexpartymurder in 6th place definitely raises some eyebrows. While the game is evidently about two of my favorite things (robot sex and party murder!), most discussion about this game that I encountered centered on players not being able to get started. Did everyone suddenly decide to pull out the walkthrough at the same time? I cry bloody murder!

Robb and Jizaboz definitely have nothing to feel bad about here all things considered. 26th isn't bad for 2019 considering that there were more than 80 games entered. I'm betting a lot of new players were introduced to Hugo just because of Enceladus. 71st is, admittedly, pretty low on the totem pole, but we have to take into account that comp voters are absolute knuckleheads. Jizaboz could enter more or less the same game next year but add a robot that murders Jason Scott and a post-wedding sex party and it would likely finish in the top ten.

It appears that they are doing a show on twitch.tv with the results.

We'll spend Saturday reviewing votes and feedback, and preparing for our live stream, which will air on Twitch [on Sunday] at 3:30pm Eastern (12:30pm Pacific, 8:30 in the UK).

Also, it seems that when people voted they could give FEEDBACK. There were 10 public reviews of Enceladus and two more in the author forum. I was not expecting more info, so I guess we'll see if people use the feedback thing in the voting.

Voting ends tonight. That's 45 days. And this is so different from the last time I entered.

You got *no* feedback back then ... I don't think. Maybe someone would take pity on you and send you something. I remember the flood of reviews when the voting period was over on Usenet. That won't happen this year. 1) Because there is no need and 2) There has been feedback all throughout the competition. And it's really better this way.

My goal was to make a frustration free small game where people did not get stuck AND one where there wasn't a game-killing bug found in it. I think I succeeded at both of those things. It's been rough working in solitude on Cyberganked for 7 years. I really needed to do something smaller and get it out there and get enjoyment from this hobby again! I want to thank everyone here for how supportive everyone has been. It's really been fun and I am so glad I entered again.

Eye Contact - Thomas McMullan

Choice game featuring a conversation. It would seem you don’t want to be a negative Nancy. The facial features of the eye pictures are neat, but there’s not much else in this short conversation sim.

Finished it. It's obviously written by someone who is not a native English speaker and loved the Secret of Monkey Island. So if that sounds like your bag, download away.

I am currently playing "the secret of vegibal island"

So far it is full of typos, like one on every line. I need to do some research because I believe there are a lot of references I am not getting.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: ↑Wed Oct 02, 2019 8:48 pm
Also, the Mystery Guy that Ate The Cake Early making an appearance is also a definite comp highlight, that guy's getting my vote for Best Non-Player Character at the XYZZYs.

Yeah, this guy is much higher on the shitlist than the random homeless people.

Flack wrote: ↑Wed Oct 02, 2019 8:33 pm If you ever get a chance to expand the game I would like to see a local dispensary added downtown and some mention of the pinata cake!

Haha sorry for not providing 2 dispensaries. (There is only one from the Parking Lot) I did actually have a note about the fake cake because it fooled me the night before the wedding heh