OK – the ayes have it!
Here are the ground rules:
- Everyone is invited to participate.
- All voting will be anonymous.
- Voters are honor-bound to have at least tried both games in a given matchup before voting. If you haven’t played some of these, now’s your chance!
- Voters are encouraged to make a case in favor of their chosen winner, pointing out its relative merits versus its opponent.
- Voters are not encouraged to make a case against the unchosen opponent – let’s stick to the positive and steer clear of fan brawls.
I’ve put together the ladder via sort by random number. To provide some structure, every game has been placed into one of four “divisions,” each of which contains sixteen games. They are as follows (listed alphabetically, along with seed number):
And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One (#40)
Birdland (#29)
City of Secrets (#36)
Cryptozookeeper (#43)
Dr Ludwig and the Devil (#30)
Excalibur (#54)
The Impossible Bottle (#13)
Junior Arithmancer (#15)
A Long Way to the Nearest Star (#20)
Lost Pig (#11)
Midnight. Swordfight. (#34)
Of Their Shadows Deep (#55)
Superluminal Vagrant Twin (#3)
Suveh Nux (#62)
The Wizard Sniffer (#5)
Zozzled (#38)
Absence of Law (#26)
According to Cain (#39)
Beautiful Dreamer (#61)
A Beauty Cold and Austere (#10)
Blue Lacuna (#22)
Chlorophyll (#50)
Coloratura (#17)
Counterfeit Monkey (#1)
Eat Me (#8)
Foo Foo (#46)
The Gostak (#19)
The Lurking Horror II: The Lurkening (#58)
The Shadow in the Cathedral (#63)
Turandot (#42)
Weird City Interloper (#41)
Worldsmith (#4)
The Axolotl Project (#45)
Cannery Vale (#32)
Inside the Facility (#51)
Magical Makeover (#57)
Repeat the Ending (#28)
Slouching Toward Bedlam (#52)
The Spectators (#60)
Spider and Web (#27)
Spy Intrigue (#25)
Stay? (#18)
Sub Rosa (#48)
Toby’s Nose (#9)
Violet (#24)
The Weight of a Soul (#59)
Will Not Let Me Go (#7)
With Those We Love Alive (#56)
4x4 Archipelago (#44)
Alias ‘The Magpie’ (#16)
Anchorhead (#2)
Bronze (#37)
Cragne Manor (#6)
Digital: A Love Story (#64)
Endless, Nameless (#31)
Harmonia (#47)
The Impossible Stairs (#53)
Known Unknowns (#21)
Make It Good (#33)
The Mulldoon Legacy (#35)
Photopia (#49)
Savoir-Faire (#12)
Treasures of a Slaver’s Kingdom (#23)
Worlds Apart (#14)
Since the first round is the largest, it will be broken up by division.
Note that because only free games are included in the contest, the following games with high placement have been excluded: 80 Days, Hadean Lands, Open Sorcery, Trinity, Planetfall, Sorcery! 2, Sunless Sea, A Study in Steampunk, Wayhaven Chronicles: Book One, Eric the Unready, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Choice of Robots, Tally Ho, and Enchanter. If I’ve accidentally included any non-free game, it will be replaced by another qualifying game from the Top 100 list.
Let the games begin!
NOTE: I won’t be running a pool, but if someone wants to try to organize one, that seems to be in the spirit of this sort of thing. At the very least it might be amusing to predict the various division winners that will become the Final Four.