I’m going to write about both games in one post, comparing them head to head. In my scores, I adjusted for the lack of play testing, because @draconis in particular took a mighty big swing using a translation puzzle which they knew could not be tested, which was an incredibly ballsy thing to do and exactly the kind of thing Iron ChIFs should do. I don’t want to discourage future competitors from taking this kind of risk.
There will be spoilers here, so play before you read.
Writing
@pacian’s writing is consistently very strong, and so it was here. ATSS managed to have strong characters, backstory, world flavor, drama, and humor. The PC was absolutely enchanting, with an endearing misunderstanding of the objects around her. The pithy descriptions often caused me to have physical reactions. The fairy husks, omigod NO. Especially given how I knew they became husks. Horrors, although the fairy’s chilly reaction to them was pitch-perfect. And any game that includes a “tingly hole” will capture my heart because I never really grew up.
The writing in Endymion was solid, giving an excellent sense of place and urgency. The world was immersive and interesting, although in comparison to ATSS it had less flavor and complexity. Endymion is a puzzle game. Its primary goal was not to create a richly drawn world but to immerse you in a puzzle. Draconis a a very good writer, but the writing on display in ATSS was just phenomenal.
I’m always going to be drawn to strongly characterized PCs with complex relationships to other characters and this competition was no exception.
Playability
The minute I saw that testing was not allowed, I knew there might be problems with this category. I think the “no testing” rule is a bad one because any kind of complex puzzle simply has to have testers or players will stumble. The problem with writing puzzles is that you, the author, know the answer, and you know what order things need to be done in order to get there. It’s very, very difficult to come out of this mindset and predict what players will do or see how you’ve inadvertently misdirected them. And in my experience, players will never ever EVER do what you want them to in the order you want them to do it.
I had significant problems with the language puzzle in Endymion, but the puzzle itself was really very good, thoughtfully designed and I was invested in solving it. But it’s the kind of puzzle that needed testers. I didn’t penalize Draconis for this because they know all this and they did it anyway and considering the short period and lack of testers, it’s better than it has any right to be.
I scored Pacian the same on playability because it had problems of its own. There were items whose use was easy to tweak to-- like the toothpick to pick out little bolts. But much of the game felt like a crapshoot, and the only way I found to play it was to lawnmower it. I made a grid of all the whatchamacallums and all the objects and just tried everything on everything. You can absolutely solve the game without hints this way, but it’s not my preferred method of figuring things out, and I wish there had been better cluing for what object was the next target and what whatchamacallum to use on it. And not everything is used, which meant there were red herrings, but you couldn’t guess what they’d be in the context of the story. This too was an issue that probably could have been smoothed out by testing.
It’s worth noting here that I didn’t run into even one bug in either of these games. Not one. Not even a buggish issue in two rather long and complex games. That’s why these folks are the best of the best.
Design
I scored both chIFs the same here. They were both beautifully designed games. If you’ve ever written any kind of speed IF, this is the biggest challenge: designing something that can be done in the time period you have. Both chIFs clearly had this nailed, with game designs that absolutely committed to their structures and showcased their stories and mechanisms well. And they were both complex designs, the sort of thing that I would never think I could pull off in less than a month. The level of mastery on show here is striking.
Inventiveness
I scored both chIFs the same here, too. The invention of a foreign language puzzle and the invention of a dizzying array of interlocking stuff. To be able to invent these and implement them in less than a week is really impressive. While Pacian’s world building was better, the difficulty of inventing an alien language is pretty amazing.
Challenge Ingredient
I wasn’t crazy about this challenge ingredient because it seems to demand a certain kind of game. Clearly both games would need to be built around this device. There wasn’t a whole lot of room for interpretation of the ingredient. I scored Draconis perfectly on this-- Endymion was exactly the game that the ingredient demanded. The only reason I gave Pacian a slightly lower score was because of the comparison between the two-- the “non-human language” of boops and whirrs and trills was charming and had meaning, but to a degree less.
End thoughts
I scored these but didn’t pick a winner. In fact, I sent them to the organizer without having tallied them, so I didn’t know who had “won” my vote until I tallied them after Otis pointed out I had not done that. Looking at those scores now, I think they’re fair representations of my feelings about the games-- I enjoyed Pacian’s game about one point better. This was an incredibly close match, and these two were great competitors. They took risks, they built things very few authors could build in a week, and they did all of it with flair and good humor. It was a real honor to be a judge here and I want both contestants to know how deeply I respect their abilities. I would never be caught dead competing against either of you.
EDIT:
Oh! I forgot to say what kind of cakes they are.
ATSS: Strawberry, very sweet but with some jalapeño thrown in to cut that sweetness. Three-tiered and decorated with fairy husks, which are very beautiful but ethically troubling.
Endymion: Dark chocolate. The kind of chocolate cake that’s nearly black. There’s coffee flavor there, too, but only enough to deepen the chocolate flavor. Decorated with red, blue and green sugared spheres in very complex patterns.