A note to everyone participating this year who will be using Inform 7: I put together an extension that automatically adds a >VERBS command covering all legal verbs in your game, which might be useful for a game geared toward beginnners. It’s being distributed by PM as a beta now, but it seems to be working well. Details at Automated >VERBS command (plus explanation of allowed usages of verbs).
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I have always placed list of verbs in games for Literacy Jam in the HELP command. 
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Submissions for Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2026 are now open. 87 people have joined. It was a little higher, but one or two pulled out after the automated itch email reminder that the comp had started. This is a record, as far as I can tell, and we still have two months until submissions close.
The vast majority of those that have joined are not in this community and have never written a text adventure before, so probably won’t submit anything. Even so, if we get a 10% submission rate, that’s 8 or so games, which is a healthy number for such a specialised competition. Let’s see if we can break the record of 15 entries set in the second competition in 2022.
Submissions close on 30 April 2026. Don’t forget!
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And it’s done! I’ll polish my writeup at some point and post it once the TALJ games launch. “How to write a text adventure in a week”!
It’s pretty small, as one might expect for a game written in one week, but has a full tutorial, anti-softlock features, various bits of user-friendliness, and (most importantly) five complete non-tutorial puzzles.
(And I’ll also test it before submission, of course. It’s how to write a text adventure in a week, not how to polish one, after all! But it was a fun little challenge.)
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Plus, I got to use the word “Antediluvian” in a game title!
(It means before (ante) the Great Flood from the Bible (diluvium).)
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Great! I look forward to giving this a try when it launches. And thanks for clearing up my misapprehension over what antediluvian means (it’s been coming up a lot in a book I’m reading and I was thinking it meant “from under the ocean” or something). Sometimes I just kinda assume I know what a word means when I don’t 
.
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Submissions for Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2026 close at the end of this month (April 2026). And I have lots of BIG news…
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99 people have joined so far. That’s a record, but let’s see if we can crack 100.
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A very generous anonymous donor has offered US$200 for first prize. That brings the total value of cash prizes alone to almost US$600. Wow!
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In order to encourage people to finish their entries and get them submitted on time, the same anonymous donor is offering a text adventure related ebook for every entrant! This ensures that everyone will win a prize.
See the updated prize info on the competition home page for further details. Get working on those entries and get them submitted before the end of the month so that you don’t miss out on this very generous offer, because it’s unlikely to happen again next year.
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Gonna poke here to offer to trade testing. I already sent a message out on the Discord server.
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I have made my submission to TALP 2026. My game is live on itch and playable in the browser. An offline version exists for Windows that can be downloaded, unzipped, and run. It may want to install a Microsoft .NET Runtime if it is not detected on the PC. Feedback is appreciated if you think there is something I can do to improve it before the contest ends. Enjoy! MOD REDACTED
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I might have misread the rules, but to me it looks like you must not make your game publicly available until the final 24 hours of the submission window.
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For the moment I’ve redacted the link. Don’t want anyone to get disqualified by accident!
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I made it restricted and gave it a password. I’ll make it live then or earlier if I can figure out the fine print.
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I’ve checked and it’s currently restricted with a password, so that’s okay. It was premature to provide a link. If you want testers, please ask in the Beta testing category, then provide the url and password to your testers in a private message.
You can change your project from restricted to public within 24 hours of the submission deadline.
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Poor old TALJ gets drowned out by Spring Thing posts at this time of the year. Tsk, tsk.
Anyway…
There’s just two weeks left until submissions close, so don’t dilly dally. Get those games finished and submitted by 30 April 2026 UTC. And don’t forget that every entrant wins a prize!
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Sadly, I think my grand archaeological mystery will have to be pushed off to another comp—it’s fully implemented and partially tested, but dissertation work is rearing its head again, and I don’t think I’ll have time for all the polishing it deserves.
But! My shorter game is very close to ready, so that one will definitely appear! The other one will end up in…either Parsercomp or IFComp, probably.
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That’s a shame. At least you’ve got a back-up plan.
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Hi Garry,
I created a nearly finished game in TAB for PC windows. Maybe for the TALP jam? Please look. I haven’t uploaded the game yet, but if you think or deem is acceptable I will upload and restrict to password holder for anyone who cares to test it. I need some quick testing, feedback in this last week if possible!
PS. I implemented a tutorial, sort of.. but there are help and in-game hints too
Regards,
catventure/Phil Richmond
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Just to make it clear, @catventure has not uploaded his game to itch, so it is not a public release. He’s only provided the game page with the background story to the game and stuff like that. It sounds fine to me as an entry to the comp.
If you can help with testing, send him a PM, as I’m sure he’d appreciate the help.
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Hi Garry,
Yes - the page is now restricted and need a password for testing. Hope to upload the game very soon then I will request for testers.
Philip.
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At the time of writing, there’s just 3 days and 19 hours until submissions close for Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2026. We currently have 5 submissions, not counting the spam submissions that have been disqualified and deleted. I believe we have a few more games that have yet to be submitted, so I estimate that there will be about 10 entries in total.
I will send a final reminder about 24 hours before submissions close and then games can be made public. (This is to allow for time zone differences.)
Good luck to everyone that is entering this year. I’m really looking forward to playing all the games.
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