This division has some really well-balanced matchups and some underdogs, but overall a lot of very good games!
My own game is in the first match, but as the good book says, ‘Let another man praise thee’, so if someone else wants to summarize Absence of Law, that would be great.
The Gostak is of course a famous game that turns language on its head, using a huge amount of made-up words but retaining English syntax. It’s based on a famous linguistic thought experiment about the sentence ‘The gostak distims the doshes’ from the early 1900s, an example of a sentence that follows English grammar rules but doesn’t really make sense. The game revolves around you being able to piece together enough info to complete it without actually knowing what you’re doing, making use of Inform’s default responses and help menus to figure out what’s going on.
Colaratura vs The Shadow in the Cathedral is a very interesting mashup. On the one hand, Coloratura is one of the most popular parser puzzlers of the 2010s, easily winning IFComp, smashing the XYZZY awards, and ending up in the IF Top 50 all three times, banking on its unique PC that interacts with the world through color and an alien perspective. It follows a classic alien horror movie, but from the alien’s side. The Shadow in the Cathedral, on the other hand, wasn’t entered in any big competition. Instead, it was a commercial game written by IF legends Jon Ingold (of Inkle) and Ian Finley (author of Babel, Kaged, Exhibition) meant to kick off the new Textfyre IF company. It’s a steampunk adventure set in a world with clocke-based religion, has a Young Adult vibe, and has hours of content and very solid writing.
I’m excited for Chlorophyll vs Worldsmith as both of these are great games I don’t see mentioned much. Chlorophyll is by Steph Cherrywell, two-time IFComp winner with Brain Guzzlers from Beyond and Zozzled. This game is in the same vein as those two games, a clever puzzler with lots of humor and a gutsy protagonist. Specifically, you’re a plant based humanoid on a space colony and rumors abound about a…herbivore. It also focuses a lot on a mother/daughter relationship. Worldsmith, on the other hand, is a former commercial game, and is a rare multimedia Inform game that is integrated with hyperlinked in-game books, maps, hyperlink commands, an illustrated world-building game and illustrated card game, and a video intro and ending. You are part of a civilization that rules the universe, creating worlds at whim (which is a large part of thte gameplay), but something evil lurks in the heart of the Septem Tower, your people’s ancient home.
According to Cain and A Beauty Cold and Austere is another great matchup. This one is between two intelligent and thought-provoking parser games of roughly the same length. According to Cain is an illustrated TADS game based on time travel and biblical imagery, and has been praised for its writing. A Beauty Cold and Austere is ‘math, the game’, with puzzles including constructing the number line, Achilles and the Tortoise, linear algebra, etc. Both have impressive implementation. I feel like this is the big matchup for people who are more than casual in their interest in parser games–both are meaty, lots of lore, lots to explore, tricky puzzles.
Beautiful Dreamer and Turandot facing each other is interesting and they feel well-suited as opponents, as both break the mold of ‘typical highly ranked IF game’. Rather than polished parser puzzle game or straightforward comedies, these are both colorful, dramatic, story-focused games that are carried by top-tier writing. Beautiful Dreamer is a choice-based game with surreal or magical realistic imagery, featuring a long restless night where you bounce from encounters with gods to aliens to more. Turandot is a self-aware exploration of love, drama/theater, and a lot more, sometimes cynical, sometimes earnest, and is based on the unfinished and problematic Puccini opera called Turandot. Great matchup for story lovers. This is probably the easiest match to catch up on for voting, as both games are fairly short compared to others on this list.
Weird City Interloper and Eat Me are two bookends of a several year period of limited parser games. Weird City Interloper was one of the first, a game with minimalistic text in a bizarre world (characteristic of its author) and unusual navigation that sidestepped traditional parser N/E/S/W movement. It has vivid characters like Lissa Ratdaughter and Zook Spiralhouse (a snail), and is presented almost entirely through dialogue. On the other hand, Eat Me came several years later in 2017 at the height of the limited parser trend (3 of the top 5 IFcomp games that year were limited parser!) and was also unusual in its navigation, but in the other way; Chandler Groover generally avoids traditional movement, but decided to include it anyway, making this one of his few games to have N/E/S/W movement. This is a fantasy/horror game where you play a human child that has been cursed to only be able to EAT. Together, this is another set of games that is definitely finishable, although Eat Me is the longer of the two.
Counterfeit Monkey vs anyone is going to be a rough matchup; it’s a game widely regarded as one of the best IF games of all time and frequently topping polls and lists. In it, you play as Alexandra, a fusion of two characters (Alex and Andra) who are hoping to escape an island with an oppressive government. The game is set in an alternate world where word-based technology allows people to physically transform objects by changing their orthographic structure. Its opponent, The Lurking Horror II, on the other hand, is a play-die-replay-puzzle with features similar to roguelike or Metroidvania games (specifically learning by dying and trying to minimize your path by sequence breaking through remembering things from past playthroughs). It’s a horror (funny horror?) game loosely inspired by Infocom’s The Lurking Horror. The nice thing is that everyone who votes on this will have to play the Lurkening, which I think they’ll find to be an enjoyable experience. It’s a short game, while Counterfeit Monkey will take several hours.
Foo Foo is a Ryan Veeder tribute game; it was written in the days of yore when the Ryan Veeder Quadrennial Exhibition was open to the public. It’s a comedic (but actually kind of dramatic/emotional?) mystery game involving the Good Fairy, Bunny Foo Foo, and stuffed animals. Gameplay is traditional parser but with a lot of choice-based conversation. It’s well-written, engaing, and honestly I think it would have won or come close to winning IFComp 2016 if it had been entered then. The author, Buster Hudson, did win IFComp later with The Wizard Sniffer. The opponent here, though, Blue Lacuna, is an IF juggernaut, one of the largest Inform games ever written (around 300-350K words), and designed to be completable by those unfamiliar with parser games, including navigation via hyperlink and a ‘puzzleless’ mode. This game is enormous, and revolves around exploring an island by day and having dreams that move the plot forward at night. If you haven’t played this yet, you may want to start right away; you may not finish within the week. A lot of the best parts of the story (IMO) come near the end. Two very different games.