Bad Beer IFComp 2024 postmortem

Competitions IFComp
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I was expecting to post this in a few days. But I’ve quickly brainstormed, and might as well post it now!

I’d last entered IFComp in 2018, and SpringThing in 2020. But with a worsening progressive neurological disease I was very doubtful that I could complete a game for an IF competition again. But I had the idea for another game, originally developed in a RPG scenario writing workshop. And, though small, I thought I could aim it at IFComp.

I started developing circa Christmas 2023 / New Year 2024. Early, but I was extremely ill, with little good time each week or even month, and long patches where I couldn’t work on it at all. I had the game ready for playtesting in May 2024, with a second round of playtesting in July 2024. I am so phenomenally grateful to my wonderful set of playtesters. Most of whom I found through a forum post here asking for volunteers. I owe them all so very much, and am endlessly grateful to them for the care and kindness with which they helped to improve my game.

I was invited to take part in the inter game mystery/puzzle, but declined. My game was already finished at that point, and extremely ill me didn’t want to work on it any more.

I submitted the game at the end of July. Then agonised rather over the cover art! In the end I produced a self designed chalk board style piece of art, which suited the setting. I was very happy when @SomeOne2 described it as “uncanny” and seemingly smudged by finger!

The competition launched on 1st September. I was very nervous early on. I have generalised anxiety disorder, which really doesn’t help. But feedback from reviewers was constructive and fair. And I found the authors’ private section of the forum a real support throughout. The IFComp community all around has been an absolute blessing for me this year, and I’ve found nothing but kindness in people’s responses to my game. Which I really appreciated.

Re some specific points of the game, the relative simpleness of the game and its shortness was a common critique, and I fully accept that as fair comment. It was a result of the original design, and working to a scope that I could implement in the time available. I had some suggestions mid comp re adding a few extra hurdles in places, which I think would be a good thing to have done, especially adding a few more small puzzles. But ultimately it was designed as a small and simple game.

I was pleased to see some relative newcomers to parsers trying the game and getting on ok. Though I know that as a parser game it might still be tricky for some to play.

Some people praised the writing style, with one reviewer even describing it as “literary”. I find writing prose really hard work! So I’m glad that a number of people liked the writing. It’s also tricky in a parser to judge the length to write to. You don’t want to write too sparse text, and equally you don’t want to hit people with too much.

Several people questioned the issue of a time paradox happening as a result of changes from you playing in the past. This honestly hadn’t occurred to me as I was writing, and it really should have! Equally though I’m quite happy at this distance to wave my hand and say things worked out as they did cos of, erm, reasons! But yes, very fair point.

I loved it when people praised the pub atmosphere, and those beer names (thanks to my husband for Stinky Ferret!). Though I’m British (Scottish), I haven’t spent as much time as I’d like to in pubs, so this was quite an effort to get authentic. But it was really nice when people felt it was authentic.

My biggest mistake was giving an inaccurate playtime estimate on the competition listing. I had playtesters reporting playing for 30-60 minutes, so I went for an hour estimate. But 30 minutes would have been a more accurate guide. It’s not so much a case of giving an up to time, but more an average time. I suspect that this may have lowered my final vote a teeny little bit, as people were given expectations by the blurb and advertised playtime, then found it ended much more quickly, and some were understandably disappointed.

The thing I’m most pleased about coding wise was a late minute addition (my idea) to allow players to replay part of the game, using a post-game PAST command to jump back into the game. Several reviewers mentioned how much they appreciated having this facility available, as well as other players who have contacted me since.

The above coding addition was the only thing I was worried about bug wise during the competition. But I was relieved not to have had to submit a revised version mid comp. I certainly didn’t want to otherwise polish or improve the game.

Overall I’m really pleased that I managed to finish and enter this game. And happy with my final placing when the competition results were announced last night. I improved my average score substantially from last time I entered IFComp. And improved my ranking, both absolute and relative, in a year with a very high standard of games entered.

What’s next? Firstly there will be no post competition release of Bad Beer. Though I am carefully reading and learning from all the kind feedback from reviewers and judges. I am currently focusing energies on a new game, which I hope to enter in IFComp 2025. Much longer, more ambitious. Parser again. Watch this space …

Thanks everyone :slight_smile:

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I’m glad you were able to complete and enter Bad Beer—I really enjoyed it. I’m looking forward to seeing what your next game will be!

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This was one I really wanted to get to but I didn’t.

It’s always nervy to add something last-minute! But yeah, that seems like a really good choice. My rule of thumb is to allow myself one big “why didn’t I think of that” feature in the last week that I can test and program easily.

I’m glad you have something ready for next year!

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Great work! Can’t wait to see what you do next year!

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I gave Bad Beer a 5/10, because I have a personal policy of capping tiny games at a 5. Tiny games which get that rating from me are terrific and I’d love to play more of them; I just think that games that do any better than that in the competition should have to put more effort in. It’s surprising to me, though, that you say your playtesters took even as much as half an hour on it, because I blew straight through it to the good ending in like ten minutes. If it had taken half an hour I would consider that comfortably over the tininess threshold. Anyway, the inaccurate time estimate didn’t affect my rating; I would have given it 5/10 just the same if it had been listed as a sub-15-minute game.

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I didn’t get to review Bad Beer but it was one of the first games I played in the comp and I found it very nice to play! Of course I don’t know what your full expectations and intentions were when making it, but I’ll risk a bet that the final game is quite similar to what you may have had in mind, and that’s always a success!

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Just wanted to say that I really enjoyed your game!

I hate to say it but this may be true. The world you created and the interesting people you described, along with the advertised playtime, made me expect a much bigger game, and I was eager to find and solve some more puzzles - so I was slightly disappointed when the game was over rather quickly.

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This was a small game, yes, but one of my favorites in the comp! I don’t view the smallness as a detriment. Quite the opposite! It’s almost perfectly structured. Very evocative with only the lightest touch. Bad Beer feels destined to join Lime Ergot in my mental library as a reference point for good short-form parser IF.

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I agree smallness has a virtue, especially in IFComp. It allows judges time and energy to vote on more games. I admit I enjoy wondering what happens next in the space between playing entries – or even if another entry drags a bit!

I think it was CS Lewis who said about a book series “you either stop too late or too soon” but I can’t find the exact quote & I think it applies to individual books or works too.

Also I think back to the number of times people have had good advice or a fun story but then just rattled on too long after. Of course sometimes it’s fun to have that, but other times, I’d rather have just had the good stuff. Or I’d like to use the time to research the interesting bits right away before I forget/am tired from too much chatter. Others’ mileage may vary.

Then again I’m the sort of person who prefers shorter books in general.

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And I suppose I should say, to balance out the “short is better” and “long is better” viewpoints, I tend to download a bunch of comp entries to play offline, which means I lose all the information about estimated playtime and so on and don’t really take it into account at all!

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Just to add another opinion concerning the playtime:

I played this game as one of the first this year, so I don’t remember how long it took me. I just remember that I had to try the central puzzle multiple times until I figured out how to make things right. Probably I needed 45-60 minutes. - This year, I also did not look at the blurbs or the estimated playtimes before I started a game, in order to approach it as unprejudiced as possible. So my vote for this game was not influenced in the way you fear.

In general, however, I mostly like it if a game is shorter than expected. There are so many games in the IFComp that want to be played, and only so much time a single judge can spend on the games, that every short entry makes things easier.

But for me, very often the opposite is the case: A game has an estimated playtime of one hour, but I spend three hours with it. Probably that is because I’m a slow reader, and English being not my first language makes me even slower (including looking up words on dict.leo etc.). I also try to look at everything and exhaust dialog options etc. For example, both “Miss Gosling’s Last Case” and “The Den”, which both have an estimated playtime of two hours, took me way longer, probably about double that time (I just name these specific games because I got immersed into them so much, but apart from that they are arbitrary examples).

What I want to say is just that in my opionion authors should rather choose a pessimistic approach for the playtime because they tend to underestimate what problems a player might have.

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I hate to derail Viv’s thread any further, but I have thoughts on game length and they are coming out. First of all, game length varies wildly from player to player based on how fast they read and solve puzzles and how experienced they are. You can’t assume your play time is ever standard.

Also, I adore long parser games. They are the delight of my life. But I hate playing them in IFComp because that 2-hour time limit does a number on me psychologically. I know I CAN play longer as long as I only rate on the first 2 hours, but that’s not a reasonable rule for me. So long games make me really anxious in-comp and I generally don’t play them during it to avoid the anxiety.

And finally, game ideas are as long as they are, and as long as we have time and energy for. Sometimes game ideas turn out small. Sometimes they balloon. It’s hard to know when you start how that will pan out. None of that should matter in whether or not you submit a game to the comp.

None of this is meant to dissuade @dfranke from using their own metric, because we all get to judge how we like. But I’ve put a HELL of a lot of effort into games that turned out fairly short, and I’ve played a lot of longer games that were poorly implemented. So I’m pushing back against the suggestion that a shorter game means that not enough effort was put into it.

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I just want to say how much I enjoyed this game. I wouldn’t worry about the length. Every game should be as long or as short as it needs to be to tell its story. Good luck with your next game.

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