Dayum! I want your artist to do me.
Or is that only a teensy exaggeration of your physical form? In which case, are you single?
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āBali B&Bā is not nautical as such but the setting is beachside, which is surely close enough?
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Iām amused by the emerging nautical theme. By sheer coincidence my game has a naval captain in it. Iād hate to be disqualified because I put them in the air force.
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One for the ancients like myself. Hawkstone (entry ID: 2865)
This is my first entry. I tried to come up with a cross between familiar 70s-80s nostalgia and left field surprises. But I started from scratch building my own engine and it took precious time away from the content side of things. Hopefully itās enough to entertain at least one person. Looking for any encouragement I can get.
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Hey! Does a spaceship captain count? (Or two, actually!)
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100%
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Spaceships are just dry submarines.
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Not knowing much about military command structures or anything, I feel like spaceships in fiction are usually closer to nautical ships than airplanes or such in that regard, since they go out on long-term missions with a large crew and limited contact with the outside world.
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Honestly spaceships being treated like nautical ships is one of my favorite sci-fi tropes (mini tropes?). Space military being referred to as a navy, referring to ships as boats and talking about them using she/her like ocean captains is just. Such a fun little way to add flavor and it gets me every time
Edit: and youāve also got tales like treasure planet with literal space-faring sailboats. Whatās not to love?
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Hello, Iām VĆctor and Iām new/old here, as in I participated in IFComp 2015 to 2017, then life happened, and Iāve been meaning to get back in the IFComp groove ever since. Iām a narrative designer and writer for games (Temtem, Wildermyth), I lived in the UK for the last nine years or so, until Brexit drove the three of us away. Today is our daughterās second birthday. Perhaps some here will chuckle to learn sheās called Ariadne.
My entry is Barcarolle in Yellow, meant to be one of those pulpy giallo movies from the 70s, sort of like the link between Hitchcock-style thrillers and 90s slashers. Dario Argento, Mario Bava, etc. Itās set in Veniceā¦ or a very pared down version of Venice, because my initial idea was waaay too ambitious and I hate to trade pace for size. Thatās one thing I (re-)learned making BiY: the biggest the world, the freest the player, the slowest the beats.
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Hi Victor. I played your Dancing with Fear in the beginning of 2023 (and wrote a review on IFDB). I liked it a lot.
Looking forward to see what you have for us this IFComp.
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Youāre so right bestie and you should keep saying it 
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perhaps having a resident Naval historian has contribued ? 
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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Oh my gosh, I thought nobody remebered poor old SalomƩ, thank you 
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Hi Felicity,
Sorry to disappoint but she only wanted to use my āposeā. Iām 61, so the black hair is quite gray by now.
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Hi folks, Hungry Reader hereā real name Ethan, my friends call me G. Itās my first time in IFComp but my second game; the first was The Hole Man, which was quite well-received for Spring Thing 2022. Iām one of those people who finds making IF a lot more fun than actually playing it, so itās always a gamble whether a game I make is already similar to one everyone else already knows!
My game this year is called Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head. This game got its start when a friend challenged me to come up with an original take on the āmascot horrorā genre. This is a game where youāre chased through darkened hallways by nebulous monstersā¦ while the puppets on your hands chatter and crack wise! The initial conceit was for this to be a virtual reality game, but I think the choice-based version Iāve come up with is a strong proof of concept.
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Oh man, this may just be the most āyou got chocoloate in my peanut butterā conceits possible for me. Iām super excited for this, and maybe just a little sad I didnāt trip over it cold in comp!
As one of maybe ten people worldwide who saw and enjoyed the Banana Splits horror movieā¦ you guys can have your naval niche. These guys are speaking MY language!
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I guess Iāll make this short and sweet. Hello, my name is Michelle but you can call me Road. This is my first time in the competition as well in the programming, gaming sort of community. I honestly did not know about IFComp until three days before the deadline was due so I made my game in just one monthās time and I think it kinda shows lol
My game is Please Sign Here and its a neat take on all the First 48 or the breakdown of murder subjects that you can find all across youtube/podcasts. (My partner is a big fan of these)
I just thought it would be neat to show off a story where you donāt exactly have to make innocent choices because thereās never a guarantee youāll get justice if you donāt pick. It kind of reflects real life where unfortunately a majority of those accused are likely POC who were at the wrong place at the wrong time.
If I have time/the skills needed, I would love to update the game to be just a bit better since I did run into some major bugs I wasnāt exactly able to figure out how to fix. Iām proud of what Iāve done thus far but I would love for some helpful advice/feedback to make it really good! Thank you for reading and good luck to everyone!
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Hello all!
My name is Mika, joining this IFComp for the first time. Iāve been a fan of interactive fiction and computer games in general since the 80s when I got my first home computer ZX Spectrum 48K.
If someone still remembers this machine, there were certain games that were at the time considered
quite advanced in their game mechanism, world building, and command parsing like: Sherlock, The Hobbit and Eureka!
Back in 1987, I started a game project in Basic that was at the time called The Eye of the Devil (in Finnish: Paholaisen SilmƤ) which had more than 50 locations and several NPC characters. Eventually, the game grew much too large for the tiny ZX memory, and I never really got it finished.
Anyway, as for my career, I ended up studying software engineering, and have been working with software architectures ever since, currently working as a solution architect for a Finnish insurance company.
About three years ago, I happened to find the old cassette tape with this Eye of the Devil game still on it, and started to investigate ways to get it finished. But after struggling a while with tools like Boriel ZX Basic Compiler, I decided to skip it, it just seemed to be too much work to clean up the old Basic code and try to optimize it to be able to run it on the ZX Spectrum 48K.
But then, as it happened, somewhere around the year 2022 or so, I found the excellent Adventuron tool that seemed like a breeze for writing and completing this kind of adventure game.
So, Iām very happy now to have the ability to publish this decades old game concept, with some new features and added ideas. Also, to stay true to my retro-tribute idea for this game, I have completed it with the 8-bit compatibility mode in Adventuron, so it could be published to be also run in ZX Spectrum environment later after this competition.
The 8-bit mode makes the programming harder, it does not even support dynamic strings, so for example, implementing a security code that changes for each game session, has required some amount of thinking.
So, in many ways this game really cannot as such compete with more modern game mechanisms, and perhaps in a way this is not even a right competition for it, but it stays faithful to itās 8-bit origins, and Iām hoping someone could still find some amusement when playing it.
The game is now called Codename Obscura (entry number 2817) and takes place in Italy.
The game uses intentionally retro-style, small resolution images and very limited colour palette.
As a sample of this style this is the loading screen:
Happy gaming and good luck to everyone!
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Happy to see you here Anja!! <3
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