Round 3 is complete, and the results are in. Here are the highlights of this, the last “full” segment featuring 8 concurrent matches…
-
Superluminal Vagrant Twin took the initial lead against opponent The Impossible Bottle, but the first major Dialog game pushed back hard against the tournament’s #3 seed, catching up and pulling even with the leader no less than four separate times in the tournament’s first half day, which ended at 6-6. Another quick exchange on Day 7 left the two opponents locked at 7-7, a tie that prevailed until the third quarter, when Superluminal skirted one past the challenger and gained a narrow lead at 8-7. It held this until the buzzer, providing a too-close-for-comfort win for the highest-ranked game in Division 1. The Impossible Bottle, which won the XYZZY Awards for Best Puzzles, Best Implementation, and Best Use of Innovation in 2020 was the only game in the tournament by author Linus Åkesson, who invented the Dialog language in which the game is written and a new virtual machine for running IF (though Dialog also allows compilation to
GlulxZ-machine). [EDIT: Thank you to Draconis for the correction below.] The language’s unique paradigm takes things even further in the direction of predicate logic than Inform 7, allowing elegant solutions to many problems. We salute the author’s tremendous contribution to the field and the superior performance of the game on the field this week. -
In the match of The Wizard Sniffer vs. And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One, betting markets universally predicted a win for the story of the plucky pig protagonist, and fan votes bore this out. Although the nostalgia-steeped challenger ran even with the defender in the opening hours, it soon fell behind, and by the middle of day 2 there was an insurmountable gap between it and the #5 seed leader. The match ended with a final score of 14-6. And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One, winner of the 2021 IF Comp, was the only competing entry by author B. J. Best. Fans of this work will be glad to know that several others by the author are available, including companion game Infinite Adventure and the 2023 IFDB Award winner Lake Adventure. We salute the author and the work as they retire from the field.
-
Coloratura vs. Worldsmith resulted in another exceedingly close win by a tournament top seed, ending at 8-7 in the latter’s favor. In this match, Coloratura took an early lead, then lost it, then retook it. After Worldsmith caught up at 4-4, Coloratura got out in front again, but a sudden trio of votes for Worldsmith gave the defender the lead once more. Coloratura kept up the fight and pulled even at 7-7 in the third quarter, but a final vote for the lightweight space explorer secured its win. Coloratura, winner of four XYZZY awards and the IF Comp in 2013, was the only competing entry by author Lynnea Glasser. We salute the game and its author as they leave the green.
-
In the battle of Eat Me vs. Counterfeit Monkey, the reigning champion and top seed seemed to have little trouble handling the challenge presented by the highly-acclaimed two-time XYZZY winner. The heavyweight crowd favorite kept a lead through the whole match, which ended at 11-5 in its favor. The richly-descriptive Eat Me and author Chandler Groover can take solace in the fact that it significantly beat the spread suggested by fan predictions, and the fact that only Groover and the author of his work’s opponent still had two games competing this far into the tournament.
-
Spider and Web vs. Toby’s Nose presented a third exceedingly close match in the segment. Although the 1998 classic took a large 5-0 lead in the segment’s opening hours, the 2015 Sherlock Holmes mystery pulled off a similar scoring streak of its own shortly thereafter, nosing ahead at 6-5. The score soon evened up and stayed neck-and-neck through several more exchanges of goals, but by the tail end of the first quarter, the Inform 6 challenger had come out on top with a narrow lead of 10-9. Another point for the leader gave it a thin but ultimately insurmountable lead over the exhausted defender, and the match ended at 11-9. Toby’s Nose, which won the top prize in the Main Festival of the 2015 Spring Thing, was the last remaining entry by author Chandler Groover, whose three works all made strong showings in the tournament. We salute the author and his works’ performance, and note that fans will be pleased to know that IFDB lists dozens of other entries by the same author.
-
In Slouching Toward Bedlam vs. Repeat the Ending, the latter narrowly prevailed in another very close match. Although challenger Slouching took an early and seemingly substantial lead in the opening hours, its strong start was matched by an even stronger drive by the defender, giving Repeat a lead at 9-6 by the end of the first 10 hours or so. With another strong push, Slouching was able to catch up before the end of the first quarter, and the score remained teetering at 9-9 until the third quarter, when Repeat picked up another vote and the lead that held until the buzzer with a final score of 10-9. Slouching Toward Bedlam, winner of the IF Comp and three XYZZYs, was the only competing work by Daniel Ravipinto who co-authored it in 2003 along with the late Star Foster. We salute the authors and the work’s odds-defying performance as they retire from the field.
-
The Mulldoon Legacy vs. Savoir-Faire pitted two styles of puzzler against each other in a less intense match that ended in an 8-5 win by the #12 seed simulationist work featuring a unique magic system. Savoir-Faire took an early lead in the first quarter and held it with no change in score until the end of the match. The Mulldoon Legacy, nominated for five XYZZYs in 1999, carried the torch of old school puzzle-fiends far in the tournament. It was the third and final competing work that was authored or co-authored by Jon Ingold. As he and his teams retire from the field, we salute his many innovative contributions to the form and note that several other of his historically significant works are listed on IFDB.
-
In the far court, highly-ranked defender Anchorhead also took and held an early lead against opponent Worlds Apart, in a dynamic quite similar to that on court 7 that ended in the same final score of 8-5. Worlds Apart, nominated for 8 XYZZY awards in 1999 (and winning Best Story), has appeared three times on the Interactive Fiction Top 50 of All Time, including the most recent 2023 edition. It was the only competing work by author Suzanne Britton, and the last of the tournament’s TADS entries. We salute the author and her only released work for its endurance as a classic over the decades.