Dear students - authors,
With the kind permission of ECTOCOMP organizers, our Senica Interactive Fiction (SIF)* creative studio is pleased to announce the 4th edition of „Four-Hour Student Authoring Marathon“ in text-based interactive games, with a dirrect follow-up for the best entries at ECTOCOMP 2026.
Our topic for this year is "KINGS&QUEENS – ESCAPE FROM VIRTUAL REALITY“
Conditions of Participation
- Only finished gamebooks are accepted (bug-free and carefully proofread).
- The preferred languages are English or Slovak, but our volunteer team is open to the challenges of Slovene, Czech, Romanian, Hungarian, German or Italian.
- We give priority to works created using TWINE (www.twinery.org) or other directly playable formats.
- The speed-written games must be created within 4 hours or less (planning, brainstorming, and styling/CSS do not count toward the limit; writing words and code that make it into the game do count).
- Any use of external resources (internet, AI, Machine-powered translation, etc.) except the author´s own brain are not allowed. We suggest that the labs used for authoring marathons offer offline computers with an installed desktop TWINE app.
- the work must not have been published before the submission deadline
- The work must not promote violence or xenophobia and must be suitable for underaged audiences.
- Any visual or audio content can be used only with the author´s consent
Age Categories: : BASE (under 11 years) / ROOT (12 to 15 years) / CORE (under 18 years)
Deadline for student entries: Friday, October 23, 2026, by 23.59 (CEST, Bratislava)
Games available: 31 October (Ectocomp, SIF webpage)
Results announced: December 2026 (Senica)
Best-in-show game live enactment: 10 April, 2027 (Mobile Escape-Room Box, Slavcon, Bratislava) valid for our Marathon participants only.
NOTE: registratioon form for schools will be shared shortly
Ondrej Odokienko
SIF TEAM (Senica Interactive Fiction)
www.sif-gamebook.webnode.sk