Honored that SeedComp was even mentioned with that company, fwiw. With that said, we know what sort of culture we’re aiming for as organizers (as you should know 
), but, as Drew often points out, the meaning of artwork is shared between the creators and the consumers, so, in a similar way, how our overall culture ultimately develops isn’t fully up to us. While not a one-to-one to SpringThing, that is the existing comp with the closest overall vibe we were aiming for. Whether we nail that or not is yet to be seen, but we’re optimistic.
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I think Spring Thing is the second biggest annual event. For perspective’s sake: the most-reviewed Spring Thing games get around the same number of reviews as the least-reviewed IF Comp games. At least, I think that’s how it was this year. So if you have a goal of getting more reviews or IFDB ratings (they’re nice, after all), IF Comp has that.
I still really like Spring Thing for the vibes, though. It’s worth considering what venue might best showcase your game and so forth
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Well, I consider it part of my job to shill for the comp. 
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Bumping this thread up because hopefully most folks planning to enter IFComp 2024 are now already coding/designing, or thinking of starting to do so relatively soon. Remember the competition is running a month earlier this year, so you need to get your games fully finished and playtested etc. before the very end of August.
I’m busy working on my game, though haven’t got off to the best start this year, with an ongoing neuro illness flare combined with catching Covid for the second time! But busily typing now. I’m hoping to have it mostly finished and near ready for playtesting by late March or April. I’m likely to be very ill again not long after then, so trying to squeeze in while still able to get things done.
If anyone out there is newly thinking of entering the competition this year it would be lovely to hear from you here too.
Best of luck everyone!
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I totally forgot about this thread! Well, as an update, I don’t think my game will be coming out this year. It’s too complicated and necessary for very high levels of implementation, and its UI looks like if Bad Machine’s UI had a child with Finding Martin’s UI (FM has a constant need to text dump things, separated by about 10 "Press Any Key"s for every textdump there). That’s exactly how awful it is.
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I am an eternal optimist so still planning to enter for IFComp 2024!
Progress report on Pack Rat (I have censored some parts of it, I do not want to attract the attention of the IFComp Police):
- Created a complete map for the game (the “setting”) in all game dimensions.
- Added room and item descriptions. Hopefully no more comments like
Our way back to the uninteresting throne is gone. Alas.Point well taken! - Completed the NPC logic for the [bleep]-grab part of the game.
- Blatantly copied parts of the [bleep] and the story mode mechanics of my previous IFComp entry, hopefully assisting the Choice crowd in the continued enjoyment of my games.
- Currently fleshing out my [bleep] hint system.
And then I still have a long way to go:
- Adding the quest system; I have already tested parts of it, but not yet the entire subsystem as a whole.
- Adding chapter headings and artwork; My artist RION gracefully agreed to create some artwork for my game, although she might need some help from her teacher for the [bleep] bits.
- Finding alternate ways of presenting the puzzly bits in the game. I tend to lean towards visual puzzles; I thought the navigation in the endgame of my IFComp entry was blatantly obvious, when one draws a compass and tracks what is going on, but alas… Feedback from IFComp reviews clearly told me otherwise. Maybe I should visualize the puzzly bits as well within the game.
- And a lot more writing for the PC, the NPCs, all chapter transitions, and of course all error messages…
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I’m currently working on the sequel to my Spring Thing entry (which is pretty much done). Depending on how the Spring Thing goes, I might enter the sequel, Dragon of Steelthorne 2, in IFcomp 2024.
This looks like something I might fight for 
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I haven’t played Finding Martin, but this description puts me in mind of Dwarf Fortress…
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For this year, the issue is in doubt, the narrow time between spring time and IFComp imposes a modern, quick-to-code language, That is, either ALAN3 or Hugo, the latter having both Gargoyle support and an excellent specialist offline 'terp.
But, I’m undecided…
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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Yes!
I plan to enter my current project. I’m pushing hard to get it done early, to have ample testing time.
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Oh, hai. I was just looking for a quick profile of the various comps, which I see in Daniel’s post from 20 Dec.
I’m not committing to anything yet, but I’ve made some progress on the game I intended for IFComp 2022. That is: I’ve changed the title twice, have gone back to re-read the about when to use “instead” vs “check” rules five or six times, and have gotten some very helpful technical advice from this forum. Every time I try to estimate how far along I am, I end up forking the main story.
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I want to! I learned about Twine games literally 20 minutes ago while trying to find books about how to write choose your own adventure stories. Sooo excited about this!
I have no idea where to start but here I am! lol What an awesome group
Just curious… What is the average range of time people take to write a game start to finish? 6 months reasonable? Shorter? Cheers!
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Welcome!
It really depends on the person and the project. Longer games will obviously take longer to be made. And so are games with complicated mechanics (like most parsers). Some shorter games were completed within a month (in 2022, there was a 3-week workshop where they ended up submitting their output in the comp), longer games tend to take a year/more. But 6 months is pretty reasonable 
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Also depends on your available time. Your personal, family, and work obligations may take up considerably more or less time than others. So, those estimates should be considered just that, estimates at best. Also, starting out, you are going to run into problems, and you will solve them, but likely using some hilariously involved baling twine and duct tape monstrosity that takes you hours or days to figure out. At some later point, you’ll stumble across an insanely more elegant solution, and you’ll see how much less time experience allows you to spend accomplishing the same thing. What took me nearly two months when I was first starting out, might take me a week or two now. The efficiency gains are immense.
So, if it seems like you’re spinning your wheels early on, remember two things. One, please feel free to post any questions here; the folks here want to help and most have been where you are now. Two, this will all become much easier with experience and time; be kind and have patience with yourself. It will come.
Welcome to community, sincerely.
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I plan on entering! LEMONS is my game, a “sour slice of life”…just need to get acts II and III done 
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I think I’m dropping out for now… my game is scarily complex, to say the least… I’m glad I made it small (if it were a normal game, it would be a tiny game, but it’s not - it’s a madly specific game - and not only that, but it’s not specific implementation that needs the work. Because then it’d take five years. It’s the coding of handling of disappearing objects and random events and really specific stuff. And I’ll stop rambling because I’m repeating myself now).
TLDR: I think I’ll wait for IFComp 2025.
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Checking in again to wish anyone else working on their IFComp game now or soon all the best of luck!
I am currently making good progress on finishing coding my short parser game “Bad Beer” that I’m aiming to enter. Hoping to have it ready to go out for playtesting by the end of May.
Remember anyone who is interested in entering IFComp 2024 that this year the competition is running a month earlier than in the past. So games have to be fully completed and submitted by late August. Eek!
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Aha! Yes, thanks for bringing this up.
I have had an idea for a “Dr. Who” story I am considering developing for IfComp24. Now, I’m not sure whether fan fiction is allowed nor whether, if it is, it has to nevertheless be limited.
I’m hoping someone can clarify. Specifically, could i enter a short game called:
Dr. Who and the Dalek Super-Brain!
Thanks for any advice.
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The Comp rule on copyright is:
- Entries may not infringe on other works’ copyrights. If an entry includes any third-party-created text, images, music, audio content, or work in or from any other medium, use of such work in the entry must either adhere to Fair Use, be licensed by the copyright-holder, or otherwise be permitted under U.S. copyright law.
We will generally follow the recommendations from the Organization for Transformative Works regarding what is and is not Fair Use. Any work in the public domain can be freely used, as such works are not owned by any third party.
You may wish to read a more extensive rendering of this rule, written by IFComp’s legal counsel. As in all other matters regarding these rules, the competition organizers are the ultimate arbiter for whether an entry that does build upon a copyrighted work meets this rule as intended. If you’re not sure whether the entry you have in mind would qualify under this rule, please contact the organizers.
Then that more detailed explanation:
If an Entry includes any text, images, music, audio content or work in or from any other medium (“Prior-Created Content”) that is owned by any third party, such use of Prior-Created Content in the Entry must be pursuant to Fair Use, licensed by the copyright-holder or otherwise permitted under US copyright law. We will generally follow the recommendations from the Organization for Transformative Works regarding what is and is not Fair Use. We note that any work in the public domain (such as all but the last four of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels) can be freely used as such works are not owned by any third party.
Pursuant to IFTF tradition, an entry may be a transformative work, such as a parody, critique, or fan-fiction. You may, for example, enter a game involving the further adventures of the characters from a novel, song or play that inspires you. You may not, however, fill your game with dozens of paragraphs of descriptive text copied word-for-word from that same Prior-Created Content, unless you have obtained a license from the Prior-Created Content’s copyright holder as such a usage would be too extensive to fall under fair use. Similarly, you may not scan a novel’s cover to use as your game cover unless you create a transformative work from that scan; we ask that unless you obtain a license to the music or use music available via a Creative Commons license, you not create background music out of the soundtrack from the film or YouTube adaptation of said a Prior-Created Content.
So per my reading of that, your game idea should be OK assuming it doesn’t incorporate specific text or images from the show – and there have been fan-fiction games in the Comp before (there was a Harry Potter one a couple years ago, but I’m sure there’ve been others). It’s probably still worth an email to Jacq (address linked in the rule above) to make sure, though.
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The one warning I’d make is that the Terry Nation estate who own the rights to Daleks are especially rigorous in guarding their rights. More so than probably anything else in the Doctor Who world. So you may want to bear that in mind. Nice idea though
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