Entries are in and deadlines have passed and you’re probably experiencing…a multitude of emotions—hopefully mostly good ones!
Welcome, new IFComp authors! Whether you’ve been in the IF scene for a while or this is your first interactive fiction at all, we’re happy to have you here.
While we wait for people to actually get their hands on your work (and even once September 1 passes, if you’d rather wait until then), let’s get to know the newcomers! Introduce yourself and share a bit about you, your entry, and something during the creation process that was interesting, unexpected, or that taught you something.
Hi, I’m not a “new author” in the IF space since I’ve been making stuff in the Neo-Interactive jams and recently Spring Thing 2025. But this is my first time submitting something to IFComp.
While I know it’s rather irrational, the attention-seeking part of me wants to surprise people with an impressive debut title. This, however, means I’m letting my perfectionism take over my process. I haven’t made any games for IFComp since joining the community.
But it all changed when I was reading/writing about what was happening to Itch and the recent UK laws mandating age verification standards. I needed a way to channel my anger into something creative, and IFComp was just right around the corner. I decided not to make the best first impression ever and instead sought out to make something more politically and culturally relevant to my interests.
I’m still unsure how people will receive 3XXX: NAKED HUMAN BOMBS, an Ink game that imagines a society where people will literally explode if they see a piece of human skin. It’s silly, but I think it has everything I want to say about sexuality and gender. I don’t expect the game to be rated highly since, as I once voted in the genre poll, the game is an “erotic comedic science fiction nonfiction” piece. But I hope it makes an impression on people.
When the IF2025 forum appears, I’ll try to write reviews on new authors like Amanda is doing here. I enjoy being surprised by new voices, so rather than letting me steal valor, I hope other new writers pop up soon!
While I am new to entering IF Comp, I’ve been around the forum since last August. I think people have generally had the opportunity to get to know me a little through my comp responses, my Spring Thing 2025 entry (Radiance Inviolate), and my Review-a-Thon 2025 entry (Lazarrien: A Love Story).
What I try to write: queer dark fantasy that is empathetic toward monsters (vampires, devils, and so forth). “Angsty-yet-tender gay demon guy” is kind of my entire creative focus, to the exclusion of almost everything else . I’m not generally trying to write things that feel like “games” so much as stories with some interactive/choice/hyperfiction elements to them. (Not that I’m against things that are like games at all, just that that’s not what I’m making!)
I think the skill I most improved while making my entry for IF Comp 2025 is in developing CSS gradients for the backgrounds. I am not someone who is experienced in coding/programming at all whatsoever, but I am very particular about colors, so figuring out how to layer gradients in code to produce something that I resonated with aesthetically was a way for me to bridge that gap a little more.
If you’re climbing the walls waiting for the start of the comp, consider drafting your game’s “post mortem”. It’s a ghastly term but just means talking about the development of your game. This can be good to get done early, so the project is still fresh in your mind (and you can write it without reference to any reviews or feedback).
You can talk about your experience making the game, especially if it’s your first time making one, or using a new system. You can explain a tricky puzzle or effect to get right. You can talk about your influences or process. What worked, what didn’t. What was left on the cutting room floor. Keep it positive and people can learn from it.
I believe the standard etiquette is to post them after the voting period so everyone can see it and not have it influence their reviewing/voting.
I don’t qualify as a new author. I published my first text adventure over thirty years ago; however, life got in the way of IF-ing and its been more than a couple of decades since I put my last game out. So… not new; but newly returned.
Also, I have never had an IF-Comp entry, so that’s a new thing.
Stuff you might find interesting: Much of MACK, including its setting and a large portion of its puzzles, have been sitting in my “idea” journal for at least 22 years. There’s even a beginning source file some place. But it’s not the same game I originally planned back then; I discarded much of the original premise in favor of this shorter, simpler version which seems more suited to the spirit of the IF-Comp.
I’m excited to release it and hope the players who like parser-based puzzlers find it “enjoyable,” “clever,” and all the other positive adjectives I’ve imagined. We’ll see when the reviews come out.
Hello! I’m a fairly new writer of IF having just joined the scene about a year ago, and this will be my first IFComp entry
My background is mostly in fiction writing, so my work tends towards more prose-like/branching narrative type stuff. I’m a fan of surrealist, dark comedy, and political drama genres, and hopefully that will come through in the game I’ve submitted…
My game is actually also in part inspired by the UK Online Safety Act, transposed onto one of my current fixations, ancient chinese history & poetry, but more so on the extremes of how ridiculous the situation could turn out to be. Whether or not those two things actually go well together… well, we’ll have to see. I don’t really have many expectations on how it will be received, but I hope it will be amusing and entertaining to some.
A big thing I learned over the course of making the game is… everything that goes /behind/ making the game - CSS, grappling with Twine variables, and most of all how kind and helpful the community can be when it comes to solving a problem! I feel really lucky to have had so much support throughout the process so the biggest lesson has really been not being too scared to try something or to ask for help
Edited to add: if anyone is looking for a soundtrack to my game, I have a spotify playlist here Spotify
Hi! I’m Eva, or laughingpineapple in most internet spaces.
This is my first IFComp, first IF competition in general (busy RL made me miss Spring Thing this year), and I’m really happy to be here! I’ve followed the excitement via Neo-Interactives and now here I am too. I’ve been writing prose for a long time, but when it comes to IF I’ve only been making Twine games with my partner since 2022, thanks to the Briefs microgames initiative which gave us the right push at the right time.
Our entry is Eight Last Signs In The Desert, which iterates on a few technical ideas I started noodling around with in our previous project Death to Venice. The idea for this game was born out of a very specific deep feeling of exhaustion, but as I workshopped how to convey that exhaustion through interaction, I found that it was more heartfelt if it came with a strong love for creation too. Both conceptualizing it and making it work was a lot of fun! I hope its dual nature comes through
I’ve kept learning things about Twine and maybe gleaned some JS too, I feel a lot more comfortable with a lot more code in my writing, but nothing worth writing a forum post about. There was one funny thing, though: there’s a tiny gender randomizer going on in the background, telling various objects that when a gendered string comes up for them, it should be consistently $gender throughout $section of the game. Simple enough in theory, but I kept messing it up in practice for the longest time, so testing turned out to be a lot of “Road cone pls keep your gender together” / “goddamnit it’s the cucumber gender again isn’t it” / “t-shirt dearest, how many times do I have to tell you: it’s he/they” etc…
Thanks for this invitation! I have three entries in this year’s competition, which are my first entries to IFComp and also my first-ever completed works of IF.
I have a multidisciplinary background in the arts (music composition, visual art, and writing lyrics & opera libretti) and some experience in interactive media and user experience design. But I’m entirely new to game design, as well as writing long-form works of fiction. It has been an energizing and frankly exhilarating creative challenge, and authoring games has quickly become a major passion of mine! I’m honored to have the opportunity to share the fruits of my labor through IFComp.
Each of my IFComp entries are choice-based, character-driven roleplaying games that take place in historically-inspired cozy fantasy settings. The Secrets of Sylvan Gardens is an atmospheric, puzzly mystery inspired by Renaissance gardens and Greek mythology. The Path of Totality is a romantic adventure inspired by the landscapes of the Dartmoor (UK) and Medieval pilgrimages. Fantasy Opera: Mischief at the Masquerade is a humorous detective story inspired by Baroque opera and 17th century Venetian Carnival.
I can hardly summarize what was educational or unexpected about the creative process… everything, really! But to choose just one example: it has been incredibly interesting learning to code in ink. The authoring tool itself really unlocked my creativity and has allowed me to create IF in a way that feels organic to the writing process and how my mind works.
I have finally submitted an entry for this year’s competition after trying to do so for the last 4 or 5 years. I think I was driven to do so because when I saw the cutoff time (one month away), I thought “It’s NOW or Never, baby!” I knuckled down and learned the basics for Inform 7 and completed my one room game all within a month. I’m not expecting to win it, obviously, but glad I finally succeeded in this goal.
yep, this sounds great to me. I sowed a secret political message or two into my most recent game and it was cathartic. I look forward to playing/reading your game.
Howdy folks! I am new to the IFComp (and to finishing a piece of IF) but I have been loosely following the competition for the last few years ever since the idea for my current submission started rattling around in my head. I have wanted to actually finish and submit A Rock’s Tale a couple of times but I was lacking the confidence and gumption to finally get it done. If I learned anything in process it was that sometimes you just gotta make something, confidence and gumption be damned.
I can’t exactly remember at this point, but I think A Rock’s Tale was loosely conceived in an exercise to figure out what the “worst” protagonist for a game/story could be. So I made my submission about a rock. It’s part mysterious, humorous, fantastical and I hope just a little bit charming.
I am also really excited to read everyone else’s games. I have perused comp submissions in the past but I imagine it’ll be a little more exciting when I’m also in the running.
Hello! I have been a long time enjoyer of old school/contemporary IF. I’ve created 1 other complete game and 2 other incomplete games, so happy to get a 2nd one off the ground!
The IFComp felt a bit too prestigious of a competition to enter based on the quality and innovation of the games submitted, but the timing worked with my scheduling to stay on task, and it aided in my motivation so I went for it!
When I share with others in my circles the work I’ve been doing (IF), I get a lot of deer in the headlights looks, so it’s an unexpected payoff to arrive here and share the excitement of other authors finally sharing their games being released! My game is called Under the Sea Winds.
I always find it fun to see them, but not everybody does it and you certainly shouldn’t feel like you have to. It’s far more common for IFComp or Spring Thing games, but every once in a while people releasing big games outside of an event will do it too.
Before the comp? But that’s when you haven’t even mortem’d yet! “Get your post-mortem in early” sounds like a Monty Python sketch. I’d say wait ‘til you’re at least peri-mortem to start doing any post-mortem. I mean, is it a Making Of or a post-mortem? If the latter, it will be taking into account ‘how things went’.
Also, a choice is not to do one. I mean if you want to do one, do one. But also consider letting your art or game or whichever other term you prefer do all the talking.
Hi! I’m Nathan. Half of cirqueSaw. This is my first time participating in IFComp (or any kind of game comp since doing demoscene compos in the 90s). I was super into interactive fiction in my youth, and then spent a while as a working musician and theatre artist, and have come back to it over the past year. I’ve incorporated a lot of IF concepts and shorter IF works into some of my theatre and online interactive stuff, but this is my first stab at a full length IF piece! I can’t wait to see what everyone else has made.
Definitely my learning process has been about not realizing how every new element adds exponential complexity and thus exponential time to the thing. (Which I imagine is a pretty common realization that everyone has to have for a first time.) But I’m glad this forced me to finally finish something for others to play and hopefully folks enjoy it! My entry is a retro-sci fi choice based game called The Tempest of Baraqiel.
. I’m not generally trying to write things that feel like “games” so much as stories with some interactive/choice/hyperfiction elements to them. (Not that I’m against things that are like games at all, just that that’s not what I’m making!)
