This is it! Welcome to the sixth and final round of the Free IF Playoffs! (See here for details and ground rules.)
This post is for the championship match – a contest between the Perfect Pair which have only just come out ahead in their bouts with other division champions. In the left corner is the long-standing queen of the IFDB Top 100: #1 seed Counterfeit Monkey. And in the right corner is the best of the rest, #2 seed Anchorhead.
Oddsmakers have expected this matchup since the structure of the tournament ladders first became clear, and even though there have been many surprises along the way, it’s not surprising that these two have come out on top. Will Anchorhead make the cut, or will it have to settle for being only the second-greatest work of interactive fiction ever created? Fans are already lined up with their fingers poised to click or tap in their votes… Let’s get ready to rumble!
Vote in the matchup above, join the FIFP Fans group if for some reason you haven’t already, and make some noise in the thread here in support of your choice. Voting will close and the winner will be declared in three and one-half days (noon Saturday August 10 UTC).
No more impartiality here. I’m going with Anchorhead. I think Counterfeit Monkey well deserves its top spot and is better made than Anchorhead. And replaying Anchorhead recently reminded me of a lot of content I’m not too comfortable with (gore, profanity, sexual abuse, etc.). But for me personally Anchorhead is just a great story with some great game mixed in.
Counterfeit Monkey is fantastic though, but at this point it just comes down to personal preference. If the final playoffs were ‘world’s best brownie’ vs ‘world’s best lasagna’ I’d pick the brownie just because I like sweets better, and here I like horror games better.
Now might be a good time to mention that mathbrush is the winner of the tournament’s Advanced Augury Award. Congratulations, @mathbrush!
He correctly predicted the winner in 26 out of 30 matches for Rounds 2 through 5 inclusive. Even if he misses this round, the second place predictor made the same prediction for the title match, so there’s no way for him to not win the fan contest at this point.
(A challenge: Can you predict who came in second in the prediction game?)
Gotta be Counterfeit Monkey for me. It’s one of the most amazing technical achievements I’ve ever seen in IF, and its puzzles stood out to me and stuck in my mind in a way Anchorhead’s never did. Anchorhead’s writing would still be lovely and atmospheric if it were a novella instead, but CM couldn’t possibly be anything except interactive fiction.
The second place winner in the prediction game was none other than @AmandaB, who is also winner of the unofficial Good Sportsmanship Award for the tournament. I want to thank Amanda for being a model “coach” – her example as an author was very important in setting a tone to keep this whole event light and fun. (Don’t forget that this is not a typical “contest”; none of the “entrants” were voluntarily entered by the authors here!)
Amanda successfully guessed the winner in 24 out of 30 games from Rounds 2 through 5, and in about half of those matches she was the closest in terms of predicting relative score.
The third place in the prediction game goes to @FLACRabbit, who called the winner correctly in 23 out of 30 matchups.
Precisely! Counterfeit Monkey is the greatest triumph of the parser medium as a whole, in my opinion. Nothing else really comes close. I already said my spiel in another thread, but it truly is an incredible game.
I voted for Anchorhead. It’s up to now the only verbose IF that I love. I really hate long text walls in IF. But Anchorhead does it so well that I enjoy the long texts. Also I like the Anchorhead puzzles more than the CM puzzles.
Although Hadean Lands was disqualified due to its commercial status, it was the game that the most people said they wished were competing. Quick poll (join FIFP Fans to participate):
In the hypothetical matchup of Counterfeit Monkey vs. Hadean Lands, how would you vote?
Counterfeit Monkey
Hadean Lands
0voters
In the hypothetical matchup of Anchorhead vs. Hadean Lands, how would you vote?
I know this is a very stupid thing to say, but in my mind:
Counterfeit Monkey > Hadean Lands,
Hadean Lands > Anchorhead, and
Anchorhead > Counterfeit Monkey,
in 1 v 1 matchups.
I know that’s silly, but it’s because for CM vs HL, I think about how they are both very mechanics-based, and CM has really great mechanics. For HL vs AH, I think about they are both grim exploration games but HL has more fun and consistent puzzles. And for AH vs CM, I think what I thought above, how they both have a lot of good going for them but AH has a better story.
There is research done about this phenomenon in the game theory. It’s a real situation and not silly at all, despite the fact that it seems impossible.
Correct. This is called non-transitive dominance. Martin Gardner wrote a very thorough article about it in the 1970s and popularized the matter. This is a natural feature of many game theory set-ups: all the rock/paper/scissors games are based on it (the whole Pokémon franchise included). For a seemingly paradoxical example using dice, see Efron’s non-transitive dice.
I would put Counterfeit Monkey at the top of almost any list of parser greats. I probably sound hyperbolic with all of this praise, but I’m not aware of any other game that’s such a complete package. This tournament has made me reevaluate my love for Counterfeit Monkey and appreciate it even more.
Hadean Lands is also spectacular, but it doesn’t leverage the “text” element of “text game” as powerfully as Counterfeit Monkey. But then, that’s not fair, because almost no other game does!
I actually prefer other games more on a personal level. Lime Ergot, for instance, I would rank above both Hadean Lands and Counterfeit Monkey on a “speaks to my soul” list. But if we’re going to save one single parser game to launch into space, outlast humanity, and represent the medium? Counterfeit Monkey.
I agree with @CMG about CM’s perfect parserness. I’ve never played another IF game (maybe any game)-- parser or otherwise-- that so perfectly married story and mechanism. Anchorhead is a better story, I think, but its beauty rests solely on its story and timing, and it could be translated to another format, although it wouldn’t be as good. CM could not be translated. It is purely IF, and absolutely gloriously so. That’s what makes it the GOAT.
I wonder if some of those that claim that Anchorhead has a better story than Counterfeit Monkey are in fact talking about the atmosphere.
Of course Anchorhead has a story that is miles better than the average parser-based puzzle i-f. But it is just a another Lovecraft pastiche among thousands, and not one of the best.
Counterfeit Monkey, on the other hand, has insane amounts of original worldbuilding, symbolism, satire and social commentary for what is ostensibly just a silly wordplay game.
Totally true. But I keep favouring Anchorhead. Maybe a Lovecraft pastiche is exactly my taste! Also Anchorhead’s story is more reachable/accessible for me because the puzzles are more conventional. Which can be negative for many players, but it is positive for me!
Are there a bunch of better Lovecraft pastiches out there in IF? I probably like Cragne Manor better for its sheer overstuffed-ness, and Lurking Horror isn’t bad though of course it doesn’t really have any characters. But I’m having a hard time coming up with anything else close to Anchorhead’s league that I’ve played.
(This isn’t a back-handed dig at CM by any means - I’ve never played it and your broader point seems plausible to me. But if I’ve been missing out on some really good Lovecraft pastiches I’d love to know what they are, since it’s a genre I enjoy!)
Also Anchorhead’s story is more reachable/accessible for me because the puzzles are more conventional. Which can be negative for many players, but it is positive for me!