Approx number of turns for some ifcomp games (from the respective walkthroughs)
80 Hunger Daemon,
120 Jesse Stavro’s Doorway,
90 The Black Lily,
67 Tea Ceremony,
83 The Contortionist,
75 Tower,
150 Fifteen Minutes.
Would you consider allowing a re-release into the Back Garden? Considering, the re-release would be more of a complete re-write, with the same basic story, same characters, and much of the same map. The source code would have been re-created – possibly even in a different development system. All prose would have been heavily edited at the very least, and most likely no room descriptions or other significant narrative chunks would be the same.
[Ending comment self-edited.]
Your entry should mostly feel like a new game. From your description, it’s hard to say definitively, but “total rewrite” does sound like something that would feel new to most people. What we want to avoid is players feeling like “Hey, haven’t I already seen that game?” In general, I like leave it to authors to decide if their game makes sense to enter given that restriction.
[Edit: like TO leave it to authors. This is why you don’t frantically try to answer posts when your laptop battery shows 0%.]