That’s a really hard question! Stepping back, I’m more of a fantasy person than a sci-fi person, but I also tend to like drama more than comedy, and I like characters interacting more than lone exploration, but I dig translation puzzles more than object manipulation… Those abstract preferences are pretty weak, though, and since they’re more or less in equipoise I don’t think either of our chefs’ concepts are ahead of the other. And as for the previews we’ve been getting of how their ideas are developing, they point to very different risks and pleasures: Pacian’s game, as we’ve seen, might be more vulnerable to bugs, but also contain more scope for players to mess around with a variety of different thingamajigs and people, while Draconis’s seems like it will be more focused and deliberately paced, though with puzzles that might wind up inscrutable.
There are particular things I’m looking forward to trying once I have my hands on the offerings, though – trying to achieve the fairy’s sidekick-and-or-romance dreams (or maybe even getting Trala and Lind to fall for each other?), seeing how far we can go awry if we get one of Endymion’s translations wrong, and of course, seeing what happens when we X ME (hmm, what’s the Dialog equivalent of “as good looking as ever”?)
As for making stuff under time pressure: I’ve actually mostly managed to avoid this, because in the era when I was making games I had tons of time. During the height of COVID and with no kid yet, I had hours and hours to refine my ideas! Since then, of course, I haven’t written much, except for a one-week gag game that by necessity had a pretty limited scope. So I’m pretty much in awe of y’all who are able to churn out impressively robust games with only a limited number of hours at your disposal – I’m a fast writer but a weak programmer, and I really like including lots of custom responses and inessential interactions, so unlike our competitors I’d be cracking under the pressure!
I am deathly afraid of it, actually – now that I’ve done well in the Comp and won some XYZZY’s, my only remaining aspiration for my IF career is that for every game I put out, folks think “wow, I would never have expected this would be your next game!”
(I’m pretty sure I’ve got two or three ideas that should keep me safe on this front, but after that things might get dicey).