For the first time in 8 years, ShuffleComp has returned.
ShuffleComp is a musical interactive fiction competition where you make games based on songs, which are submitted by other entrants. The competition previously occurred in 2014 and 2015. We as the Neo-Interactives (@LapinLunaireGames, @sophia, @manonamora, and I) are rebooting this competition for what we believe is the first time since 2015.
Sign up for the game jam and/or submit a playlist of up to 8 songs here. This is due by November 26. You can make games without submitting songs, or submit songs without making games, but it is highly recommended that you do both. Songs from people not making games will only be used if there are not enough songs otherwise.
Before December 3, you’ll receive (by email) 8 songs randomly selected from other participants’ submissions. Now, you’ll write a game (or up to 3 games) based on some of these songs. You can submit games to the itch.io jam page.
Games are due by January 5, 2024. After which, you’ll be able to vote for the following two weeks.
Games should be based on at least one of the songs you received, but can use any number of songs. You can interpret “based on a song” however you’d like.
Games should not include any generated AI content.
You can submit up to 3 games, using different songs or the same songs.
Voting will be based on the use of songs and the overall game goodness.
Finally, I get to inflict my horrible taste in music on other people! Are the 8 songs you get going to all be from the same person, or are they a mix of other people’s songs?
Yes, you get it! There definitely was a round of evil kitty laughter as I was scrummaging through character playlists and some of my favourites of all time to scrape together a mixtape of songs. Such a hard time narrowing the curation.
I promised myself I wouldn’t start writing anything new until I make some decent progress on the big project. And now this. I guess it can’t hurt to just make a list of songs…
Man, just recently I was reminded of Shufflecomp by The Gift of What You Notice More and I was like “I’m so sad it didn’t make it more than a couple years, it was such a neat concept,” and now here it is, back again! I’m happy to see it.
If I’m potentially interested in making a game, but I’m not sure if I’ll have the time or energy, should I indicate my interest in the sign-up form or not? I don’t want to hoard songs that someone else could make a perfectly good game out of, but I also hate to miss my chance to participate, so I’d love to know what the organizers would prefer.
AHHHH so fun. Coincidentally, Tom and I have been working on a playlist of extremely fucked-up songs. I think I’ll submit those, and write a game, too!
Edit: And submitted! We had to trim the list of actively offensive songs, but we had 5 left.
Currently there are 36 submissions on the form, with 32 game jam participants and 241 songs total (so, all songs have to be used and some participants will only receive 7 songs unfortunately). Almost all songs are unique, with just one song that has been submitted twice (but I haven’t checked for formatting). There are about 220 unique artists (again, haven’t checked for formatting).
If you’re not sure whether your submission went through, check to see if the md5 hash of your email address is in the attached list (to get the md5 hash, on the linked page, type your email in and hit calculate). These are all the emails we have so far.
Edit: if you have any questions or want to update your entries, feel free to DM me.
I can have Tom rustle up some more songs he thinks are suitable for game inspiration if you need them. He’d be delighted and he’ll make strange choices.
OK- submitted Tom’s songs. There are only room for 8 on the form, but if you need more, he’s got more. All weird as hell.
Edit: He could also do a couple of lists curated personally for anyone who I know fairly well on this forum. He was sad that he couldn’t curate lists for specific people like real mixtapes.
Update: 1 day remains to get your song entries in. We will probably keep the form open until Monday afternoon (PST), so there will be a bit more than 24 hours.
We currently have 49 submissions on the form, including 43 people who committed to make games. There are about 342 songs from 307 unique artists.
If you’re not sure whether your submission went through, check to see if the md5 hash of your email address is in the attached list.
