I was wondering if i could run a halloween Competition?
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Sure! Anyone can run any competition they want.
The thing to be aware of, though, is that there’s already a pretty major Halloween competition called ECTOCOMP (the third biggest comp of the year), so you may not want to compete with that.
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Aye thank you very much. I agree.
I Love this community. I just would love to be a bigger part of it… but at the moment my coding is not very good.
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There was an Adventuron Halloween Jam a few years ago. That was a lot of fun.
(Whoa, just checked. It was way back in 2019. That will be six years ago. How time flies!)
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You don’t need to code to participate in the community! Here are some other good ways to participate:
- Write reviews of games (since IFcomp is currently taking place, writing reviews of the comp games is one obvious option, but you could also look at some of the games on IFDB which don’t have reviews and write about those - some people just post their reviews directly to IFDB but there’s no rule saying you can’t post them here too, especially if you want to invite people to comment)
- Offer to test people’s games
- Write Let’s Plays or similar ways to share the experience of playing a game with people who might not have played it themselves
- Start discussions about games you’ve played and what in particular about those games interested you
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Thank you.
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My coding was nonexistent (like, I had literally never coded anything before), but 5 years ago I decided to write a game in Inform anyway and got lots and lots of help here. Pick a game-writing engine like Inform or Twine, learn as you go, and post many threads here asking all your newbie questions. It worked for me, and I keep writing games and wailing about my coding problems here. If I can do it, you can. I was the least likely person ever to do it.
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tyvm
I found Twine was especially good for this because you don’t need to do anything complicated to write a simple branching-path narrative, but you’re likely to make use of HTML, CSS and JavaScript as your games gradually get more ambitious.
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Thank you. My problem is. . . well I have many 
I love how tads and inform 7 playing like a book. player types what they want to do, without being led around. * that lets me “hide“ plot clues etc. . . in plain sight, yet hidden. I will look at Twine thank you.
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If you’d rather write parser IF like with TADS and Inform 7, go ahead! Both have active communities here. Inform 7 is generally considered easier to learn for writers, while TADS makes more sense for programmers. Take a look at both and decide which you prefer.
Note that Twine has multiple story formats, all of which have their own syntax, strengths, and weaknesses.
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Thank you very much. yeah I gave up on tads, my inform game is coming along nicely. But compared to anything in this community it is garbage. Bells and whistles it lacks. I will check out twine, I do thank you for your comments.
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What bells and whistles are you looking for? Inform 7 can do quite a bit, and even more with Inform 6. It also has extensions/libraries.
Twine creates very different games than Inform, and it’s not entirely clear what you want.
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lol I have that effect people.
By bells and whistles I mean, a nice scoring system based on games outcome + how many saves/undo’s etc. I’m working on it.
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Based on what you’ve said elsewhere here, it sounds as though Inform is actually pretty well suited to the kind of game you want to write. You might still like to have a go with Twine, but when I recommended it, it was more as a way of getting some extra experience with more conventional programming without having to sit down with a series of tutorials. Becoming familiar with any of these things is likely to help you out at least a little when it comes to picking up a new one later on, though. You might as well go with whatever appeals most to you!
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Choicescript is IMO one of the easiest choice based IF programs to get started on as well. (I personally find it easier than twine, but either is a good choice.) It’s main issue is you can’t use it commercially and it is a bit limited in some ways to customise projects, but that’s not a problem for a beginner competition piece anyway 
. There’s some pretty solid wiki pages for scaling up with code use, and the forums over there are usually pretty happy to answer coding questions.
Edit: Actually it is sounding like a parser type game might suit you better . It is possible code in things like saves, undos, scoring systems etc into choicescript after a fashion, but it’d likely be easier to use something else if you need the bells and whistles when starting out.
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Thank you. all the system are good. But i think you are right that parser suit my project best. I got the basics down. I hope to release it this time next year. I could do it sooner but i want to polish it up a bit.
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You could also consider Inform 6, specifically PunyInform. This is very code-centric, rather than Inform 7’s pseudo-English approach. It has a steep learning curve, but probably not as steep as Inform 7. Most people can learn the basics very quickly and there’s a PunyInform comp coming up shortly.
No matter what you choose, try something small to start with, maybe a few rooms and a couple of easy puzzles. Once you get the hang of it, then you can start on your magnum opus.
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Thank you. Thinking to big is my problem. I have the basics, I can make a simple game. From my profile pic i think it’s obvious what genre my games will be, however i’m a D&D fanatic and have added level/stats but lack the D&D combat. An odd combo i know but thats my goal.
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And ECTOCOMP can be a good way to get started, because the four-hour time limit means you have to keep your ambitions small! The biggest issue new IF authors run into (at least in my experience a decade or so ago) is never releasing anything because there’s always something new to add. A deadline and time limit can help with that! Come up with a small D&D-esque scenario, something you think you can write in two weeks (leaving the other two weeks for testing), and submit it to the comp.
It sounds paradoxical, but quantity leads to quality—the best way to improve your IF skills is to finish and release something, and see what people say about it. Rinse and repeat. There’s a strong culture of reviews and criticism here that’s immensely helpful in polishing your skills! The feedback I’ve gotten on IF I’ve submitted to the comps has been so much deeper and more insightful than I’ve ever gotten on my non-interactive writing.
Plus, when you inevitably run over the time limit (like I did last year!), or just decide the four-hour limit isn’t for you, you can still submit to ECTOCOMP in the “over four hours” category, and do as much testing and polishing as you want.
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