Anti-Productivity Jam! Entries are out!

We’re deep into IFComp shenanigans, but the Neo-Interactives never sleep, and we’re always doing silly things :stuck_out_tongue: After three longs jams in a row (Neo-Twiny Jam, Single Choice Jam and Bring Out Your Ghosts), we’re back with a mini-jam for September:

THE ANTI-PRODUCTIVITY JAM

Why work when you could make games?

The Anti-Productivity Jam is a place for you to create interactive fiction using tools that were decidedly not intended for making games. Take your favorite (or least favorite) office software and use it to make a game!


Constraints and Rules:

  • Your game should be made with a specialized software not used for making games.
    • You can find a list of acceptable software is listed here; contact the organizers if you have any other ideas.
  • Games should be interactive fiction; that is, they should be interactive in some way, and focus on the text.
  • The Jam is open to any language.
  • You can submit up to 3 entries!
  • You should aim for a maximum gameplay length of 15-30min.
  • Entries can have NSFW content, as long as it is indicated in your submission.
  • You must credit any asset used in your entry, or it will be removed (ex: code, images, sound, etc…)
  • Entries using AI or LLM will be removed (incl. Cover Image).
  • Spam or hateful content will be removed.

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19 Likes

Yes! I love this!

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I’ve collected some examples of existing games made in non-standard systems here! IFDB users, feel free to add the “non-standard system” tag to any others that you know of.

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sighs, opens Google Docs

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I almost added Let’s Explore Geography! Canadian Commodities Trader Simulation Exercise to the tag, but on reflection its platform (Desmos Activity Builder) is at least somewhat designed to make interactive experiences. What do you think?

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Oooh, you could do some cool things with a github repo, switching between branches to track state & making people check the commit history to see what happened in the past.

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ooooh…I love that

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And for a bit of hunting, detached commits that only exists in a closed pull request

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I’d say it fits, since it’s definitely not a program we usually see used to create IF!

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Taking a page out of Matt Parker’s book, I wonder how hard it would be to set up an excel spreadsheet to change background colors of cells on the fly to simulate pixels to print text to the screen… Admittedly, it’s been maybe 20 years since I last used Excel outside of a computer class, so no clue where to even start.

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IIRC, someone made doom run in Excel, soooo…

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And that’s a wrap on the Anti-Productivity Jam!

15 dope entries, none using an actual IF program! Come check out some really dope and unconventionally little games!

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