Every year…. 
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It’s good to have a change of pace! Keeps you from getting stuck in a rut, and all that.
I have two WIPs currently aimed for next year’s IFComp, but I’ve been staring at them for months now, and coming up with something new and complete in one month is a nice way to refresh myself for them!
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It’s so good to know I’m not the only one already beavering away.
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This is probably a dumb question, but would an IF set during halloween festivities but without supernatural elements fit the theme of ECTOCOMP?
Also, if we choose to compete in La Petite Mort, will we be expected to keep a record of how we spent the 4 hours?
The themes and inspirations section of the rules has this
- Halloween fest. Base your game on the Halloween festivities, overall the activity of wearing costumes and going out with friends to “trick or treat”.
So I suspect that it’s completely fine. Also, I think LPM works on a honor system and there’s no need to document but it’d be great to do so if you feel the need to keep things under control.
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No, we CANNOT control how people use their hours, so try to be honest with yourself, and that’s it.
I see.
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Also, if you fail in comply with the 4 hours, you enter automatically Le grand Guignol, so, really, it is not a fuss.
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I use a timer to track my time, even though it isn’t required at all. My sense of time is just not good enough otherwise!
There have been one or two years where I didn’t quite make it in four hours, but as @Ruber_Eaglenest said, I just entered them into grand guignol instead. 
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When I founded ECTOCOMP back in 2007, speed-iF was much more common than it is now. Speed-IF comps often occurred spontaneously, organised by participants of the IF Mud. Most of the entries were written in Inform 6, and the time limit was usually three hours, not four! Three hours was also the limit for ECTOCOMP until it changed to four hours in 2019.
The idea to split the competition into two categories came out of a discussion with Duncan Bowsman in 2015. Duncan suggested Le Grand Guignol for the longform category, and, keeping with the French language theme, I came up with La Petite Mort for the timed category. I knew full well what it meant, but I had my mischief hat on! 
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LPM is nice because it’s a reminder you don’t have to have a terribly huge scope to write something. Sometimes it’s helped me reduce scope on other projects.
I’ve snuck in just under 4 hours (no time for testing) with one entry. This is my first time I’ll be adding in-game graphics. (I think. I don’t think I’ve written in Twine for EctoComp.) Hooray Adventuron!
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The majority of ifMUD SpeedIFs were only two hours. And at least in the early years, that meant two hours wall-clock time from the moment the event begins to the moment your submission is due. None of this taking a walk to plan out all of the content before you start coding! You young 'uns don’t know how easy you’ve got it!
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I used to write IF uphill in the snow both ways, but my fingers kept falling off.
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Two hours is crazy! Don’t know how you did it. 4 hours is tight enough to get a completed game out
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This was me today. I saw the comp. I started idea storming and somehow a one room game ended up with nearly five hours of work today. My main large project stared at me the whole time.
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I’ve been working on my entry for over a month already, and now October is here, the pressure is on!
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I scrapped the first attempt and now I am trying the 4 hour one instead. Good luck on your project.
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ECTOCOMP 2025 is now open for entries! If you start now, you could submit a game for La Petite Mort by the end of the day!
Submissions are due on October 31 at 4am ET (there’s a countdown clock on the itch.io page for the exact local time, which I know from experience can come in handy on the due date).
And then we all meet back here and celebrate! 
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Does time to create a cover count towards the four hours for La Petite Mort? I didn’t want to assume. Thanks.
I believe it doesn’t!
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