Iron ChIF: Pilot Episode (Pacian vs. Draconis, using Dialog)

Playing Forum Games, Wordplay, and Challenges
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FAQ for Iron ChIF (Nov 13 2025)

Following are the Frequently Asked Questions for Iron ChIF, the intfiction.org version of Iron Chef.

Q: What is Iron Chef?

Iron Chef was a television show originally created in Japan in the early 1990s. (See its Wikipedia article.) It gained a certain level of popularity in other countries.

On the TV show as presented, two chefs are given a previously-unannounced “challenge ingredient” and have one hour to create five dishes using it. The dishes are served to a panel of judges, who score each dish and decide which chef is the winner.

Q: What is Iron ChIF?

Iron ChIF is an adaptation of the show to the intfiction.org forum. It will be similar in structure, but not the same.

Q: Which version of the original show will Iron ChIF be modeled after?

Although there were several attempts to create “local” versions of the show, we feel that the original Japanese version is the best, and that’s the model for Iron ChIF.

Q: What will be the most important differences between the TV show and Iron ChIF?

The main differences will be:

  1. Number of dishes – Where the chefs on the TV show prepare five different dishes for tasting, the chefs here will produce only one “dish,” a short game that integrates the challenge ingredient.

  2. Nature of challenge ingredient – The TV show is based on cooking skills, so the challenge ingredient is always a food item. Iron ChIF will be rooted in writing, programming and high-level craft, so the challenge ingredient will be based on concepts. (See “What will be the format of a challenge ingredient?”)

  3. Winner selection – On the TV show, judges’ scoring of the dishes results in a point value for each chef which is used to determine the winner, with a special bonus round of additional cooking in the event of a tie. For the forum game, the audience will choose the winner, with the judges’ choice of winner being used as a tiebreaker in the event of a tie.

Q: Why are you doing this?

There are several reasons:

  • Fun: Iron Chef was a very fun show. Everyone likes fun.

  • Education: New arrivals to the forum frequently ask for advice about which development system is the best, but this is a question best answered by personal experience. It is hoped that showing various systems in use, with under-the-hood peeks of examples in each system, will expose more people to the pros and cons of each platform.

  • Advancing the Art: Although coding is obviously a major portion of the effort in creating IF, there is a level of craft that goes beyond both coding and writing. The judges will be providing expert commentary to help participants hone their craft, and the audience will be able to benefit from these lessons.

Q: Is Iron Chef (the TV show) real?

The common wisdom is that it is not “real” in the sense of the events and timeline presented being what actually occurred in real life. Some consider it to be a total fabrication on the order of professional wrestling.

The show is certainly edited to make it as high-energy as possible.

Q: Is Iron ChIF (the forum game) real?

Yes! Competing chefs have agreed to strict limits on the time that they will have to work with the challenge ingredient: 120 hours (5 days) from the start of the development period until the time that their dishes must be turned over for judging.

This “show” will be “broadcast” live, with no editing.

Q: When will this be happening?

It’s happening now! The pilot episode is being conducted from Friday November 07 to Tuesday November 18 in 2025, right on this very thread. Just scroll down to see it happening live.

If the pilot is a success, planning will begin for a “season one” series of episodes to take place in 2026.

Q: What will be the main roles in the show, and who will fulfill them?

A lot of people have volunteered to help make this effort a success! Each of them will participate in one of the following roles:

Iron Chefs

A fixed cast of Iron Chefs, each of whom is a distinctive expert for their chosen development system, has agreed to defend against challenges using that system. At present, the Iron Chefs are:

  • Iron Chef Inform 7: Ryan Veeder (Afterward)
  • Iron Chef Twine: SV Linwood (svlin)
  • Iron Chef Dialog: Daniel Stelzer (Draconis)
  • Iron Chef TADS: TBD
  • Iron Chef ZIL: Max Fog (SomeOne2)
  • Iron Chef Inform 6: Garry Francis (Warrigal)
  • Iron Chef Adventuron: Dee Cooke (dee_cooke)

Challengers

At present, sixteen confirmed challengers covering five different systems have stepped up to contend with the Iron Chefs. They are (in alphabetical order by handle):

  • Mike Tarbert (BadParser)
  • Caleb Wilson (caleb)
  • Ellric (Ellric)
  • FLACRabbit (FLACRabbit)
  • John Ziegler (johnnywz00)
  • JJ McC (jjmcc)
  • Onno Brouwer (Lancelot)
  • Lucian Smith (lpsmith)
  • Sarah Willson (malacostraca)
  • Nils Fagerberg (nilsf)
  • Norbez Jones (Norbez)
  • Pacian (Pacian)
  • Phil Riley (rileypb)
  • Roger (Roger)
  • Vyner Vanderhumeken (Vyner_Vanderhumeken)
  • Zed Lopez (Zed)

Judges

A pool of fifteen judges, selected from among prominent authors, reviewers and critics, have volunteered to scrutinize each dish and to entertain the audience while the chefs work. At present, only five have been announced:

  • Rosebush editor and #3 IFDB reviewer Mike Russo (DeusIrae)
  • Talented new author Amanda Walker (AmandaB)
  • Game enthusiast and #5 IFDB reviewer Rovarsson (rovarsson)
  • Choice author and noted critic Emery Joyce (EJoyce)
  • Creative juggernaut and noted critic Wade Clarke (severedhand)

Ten other judges have agreed in private to participate in future episodes if the pilot is a success, but their identities have not yet been disclosed.

Technical Advisors

To ensure that judges and audience get the most insight into what the competing chefs are doing, additional experts for the various platforms have volunteered to provide answers to questions about technical details of the system in use. At present, they are:

  • Adventuron: Christopher Merriner (ChristopherMerriner), author of Custard & Mustard’s Big Adventure
  • Dialog: improvmonster (improvmonster), author of Frankenfingers
  • Inform 6: Fredrik Ramsberg (fredrik), co-creator of the PunyInform library
  • Inform 7: Zed Lopez (Zed), the original Mad Scientist
  • TADS: John Ziegler (johnnywz00), author of How Prince Quisborne the Feckless Shook His Title
  • Twine: Greyelf (Greyelf)
  • ZIL: Tara McGrew (vaporware), creator of ZILF
Q: How will an episode work?

Right now we only have a firm answer for the pilot episode, which will be closely modeled on the structure of the TV show. Here are the steps as currently envisioned.

Before the pilot:

  • Presentation of challenger pitches - Potential challengers have put together a brief pitch (max 300 words) to explain why they should be chosen over the other contenders for the role of premier challenger. A new thread will be created for the challengers to post these for audience review.

  • Challenger selection vote - On the thread for challenger pitches, an anonymous vote will be held. Each voter will have to cast votes for multiple challengers. The challenger selection vote will run for 2 days (48 hours). At the end of that period, the challenger with the highest total will become the official premier Challenger for the pilot. Note that the challenger selection vote will be held significantly in advance of the pilot episode, to facilitate scheduling.

For the pilot episode:

  1. Challenger’s opponent selection - The selected challenger will be congratulated and make a formal challenge to one of the Iron Chefs. In doing so, they will also be selecting the development system that will be used for the match. At this point, for the pilot, audience members who have joined the official Tasters group will be able to send in suggestions for the premier challenge ingredient. (See the question “I’d like to suggest a challenge ingredient! May I?”)

  2. Introduction of judges - The judges for the episode will be introduced. Each episode will feature a panel of five judges drawn from forum participants. The pilot episode’s panel will consist of: Mike Russo (DeusIrae), Amanda Walker (AmandaB), Rovarsson (rovarsson), Emery Joyce (EJoyce), and Wade Clarke (severedhand).

  3. Challenger intro and opening interview - A short biography of the highlights of the challenger’s IF career will be presented, following by a short pre-match interview consisting of between 6 and 10 questions.

  4. Announcement of challenge ingredient - The challenge ingredient for the episode will be announced. For the pilot episode, in order to ensure the best possible show, the Iron Chef and Premier Challenger will have been presented with three choices for the challenge ingredient on the day before the development period, and each will have the opportunity to veto one of them. The remaining choice will be the ingredient used. Note that this will allow the competing chefs an additional partial day to think about the challenge ingredient before the development period begins, but chefs are honor-bound to not begin coding until the development period officially starts.

  5. Development period - The two competing chefs will have 120 hours (5 days) to create their “dishes.” During this period, each chef will be posting at least daily to provide “WIP bits,” i.e. peeks into their development process. (See the question “What is a WIP Bit?”) The judges will be reacting to these in a wide-ranging conversation, and may call on the technical advisor for the platform in use to provide additional context about its features or to explain the function of any code that is shared. When the development period ends, the chefs will release their finalized dishes for play by the judges and the audience.

  6. “Post-game” interviews" - Short interviews (3 to 5 questions) with both challenger and defending Iron Chef will be conducted at this point, to discuss how it went and how they feel about their dish. One chef’s interview will be posted each day. During this two-day period, a thread will be opened for audience discussion of the two dishes, and judges will be submitting their numeric scores for each dish. (See the question “How will dishes be judged?”)

  7. Announcement of Judges’ Scoring - 48 hours (2 days) after the dishes have been released, the judges’ scores will be posted. Although the judges will be posting their choice of the winner, the winner will not yet be determined.

  8. Audience voting - The audience will have another 48 hours (2 days) in which to cast votes in favor of one dish or the other. The judges will be posting their in-depth written evaluations of the two dishes over this period as they finish them, explaining the reasoning behind their scoring and offering other observations and constructive criticism. Voting for the pilot will be open, anonymous and unregistered.

  9. Declaration of winner - When the period for audience voting ends, the vote will be closed. If the audience vote is not a tie, the winner is declared immediately based on the audience choice. If the audience vote is a tie, the judges’ choices (worst case 3-2) will act as tiebreaker.

  10. Wrap-up and news – The winner will be congratulated, and brief announcements will be made about what to expect next from the show.

Q: What happens if there is an emergency affecting one of the participants?

For chefs:

  • If there has been no contact from a chef for 36 consecutive hours, an announcement will be made to prepare the audience for a possible cancellation.
  • Should there be no contact from that chef within the next 12 hours, i.e. at 48 consecutive hours of no contact, the match will be canceled.

For judges:

  • If there has been no contact from a chef for 36 consecutive hours, an alternate judge will be selected from the pool of those not participating in the episode.
  • Should there be no contact from that chef within the next 12 hours, i.e. at 48 consecutive hours of no contact, the alternate judge will be announced and will fill the role for the remainder of that episode.

For the technical advisor:

  • An announcement will be made to notify the audience, but the show will continue without technical advisor input.
Q: How are challengers being selected?

An open invitation to sign up as a challenger was included in the original post suggesting the event. Sixteen brave individuals signed up and confirmed their acceptance of the ground rules for challengers, which were:

  1. No use of AI allowed – Use of generative AI by competing chefs is strictly forbidden.

  2. Daily posting requirement – Challengers must agree to post something from their development materials at least once every day (i.e. 24-hour period) during the five-day development period. Almost anything relevant to the production process qualifies here: code snippets, screenshots, sketches, references, short dev log entries, etc. It will be up to each chef to decide which materials to share.

  3. Challenger selection vote – The premier challenger (for the pilot episode) will be decided by audience vote. Those not selected will be eligible to participate as challengers in future episodes.

To decide which challenger became the Premier Challenger, an anonymous vote was held with voters allowed to choose up to five candidates. Every candidate received votes, but Pacian was the winner.

Should the show continue into a Season One, those who previously signed up will be given preference when choosing challengers for those episodes.

Q: What will be the format of a challenge ingredient?

A challenge ingredient will generally take the form of one story element that has one defined behavior.

A “story element” will generally mean an object or NPC. A “behavior” is something that the object does within the game, which may or may not be under the player’s control.

Some examples of challenge ingredients that have already been discussed during planning and cannot be used for a match include:

  • a ninja who is trying to kill a target
  • a ninja who can be disguised as other characters and perhaps objects
  • a juvenile owner misplaces a toy
  • a secret agent shopping for groceries
  • a magical device that makes things disappear temporarily
Q: I'd like to suggest a challenge ingredient! May I?

Suggestions will be accepted in the period after selection of a defending Iron Chef and before the start of the development period, but only from members of the Iron ChIF Tasters group who are using the special group flair (a fork icon).

To join, go to the official Tasters group page. Just click the “Join” button at top right, and you’ll immediately be able to use the distinctive Taster under your account preferences (a few items below selection of your avatar image).

Q: What are the chefs supposed to do with the challenge ingredient?

As part of the format of the show, it is required that the story element defined by the challenge ingredient be incorporated into the game that is produced. The competing chefs will be given wide latitude in their interpretation of the challenge ingredient, but the central challenge is to make it an integral and substantially significant part of the produced dish, and one of the categories for judging is dedicated to this aspect.

Chefs with more inventive interpretations are likely to do better. For instance, the first example shown above (“a ninja who is trying to kill a target”) might be construed as the PC being an off-duty ninja on stage at a comedy club on open mic night, trying to get the audience to laugh. Another possible interpretation would be that the PC must help a bumbling ninja accomplish a mission without revealing the PC’s involvement. (These variants were suggested by Iron Chefs during planning.)

Q: What if a chef doesn't like the challenge ingredient?

They’re called “challenge ingredients” for a reason! Some of the most famous episodes of the TV show involve challenge ingredients that are very difficult to work with.

Note that for the pilot episode, in order to ensure the best possible results for the audience, the competing chefs will be allowed to choose the challenge ingredient to be used from a group of three options. At the time of this writing, it has not yet been decided whether this choice will continue to be offered in any future episodes.

Q: What?? Chefs get to choose the challenge ingredient? What kind of nonsense is that?

The person choosing the challenge ingredients has absolutely no relevant experience when it comes to making complete games on a tight deadline. In order to ensure that the competing chefs are not given something completely unworkable, this process is being tested to see which kinds of challenge ingredients are viable.

At present, this method of selection is planned only for the pilot episode, but it may be adopted for a future season one based on feedback received from competing chefs.

Q: Are chefs allowed to use pre-developed code?

Yes. Chefs are allowed to use code from extensions (both their own and those available to the public), segments from their own previous projects, or even suitable public source code from another author. The intent is to make it possible for the chefs to make better dishes within the tight time constraint, and to not force them to reproduce basics during the contest.

Chefs are forbidden to create any new code for their dish until the start of the development period, even if they know the challenge ingredient slightly in advance.

Q: How will dishes be judged?

Judges will be providing a numeric score for each of the two dishes produced in an episode. There will be five (5) categories for numeric scoring, with a range of 1-10 per category for a total of 5-50 points per dish.

Categories are defined via a list of questions to be considered when determining the score. Scoring is explicitly based on each judge’s interpretation of the relevant questions, and is specifically to be given in terms of relative score between the two dishes as opposed to an absolute score according to some externally-defined ideal. This means that scores between dishes that are prepared in different episodes (with different judging panels) are only loosely comparable.

The five categories and their questions are:

  1. Writing

    • How effective and engaging is the prose?
    • Does the dish have a distinctive narrative voice?
    • How well does the output prose flow in response to the player’s commands?
    • How well are mood and atmosphere conveyed?
    • Do stylistic choices cohere into an overall style?
    • Is the story compelling?
    • Does the story have satisfying dynamics?
    • Is the story thematically coherent?
    • Are any tropes used well?
    • Are any twists effective?
    • Are characters distinct and/or well-drawn?
    • Do the characters change over time (in personality or behaviour) if the dish demands it?
    • If the PC is a specific character, are default responses in-character?
    • Do any NPCs feel like people and not obstacles?
    • Does the world convince on its own terms? Examples: Does an inhabited world feel inhabited? An abandoned world feel abandoned? Can the player imagine the world beyond the map?
    • Is the PC appropriately integrated into the setting?
    • Is there any backstory or lore that is revealed naturally?
    • Does the setting change or develop over time?

  2. Playability

    • Is the central play experience interesting and satisfying?
    • Do gameplay mechanics work properly? Are they easy to understand? Are they engaging?
    • Is the implementation solid? Are any bugs or oversights negatively affecting the dish?
    • Is the player’s relationship to the PC clear to the player?
    • How novel are any puzzles? Are they appropriately clued? Are they unified with the gameworld?
    • Are the map and any navigation coherent?
    • Did the first taste of the story make me crave more?
    • When I interact with this piece, am I playing, i.e. engaging in a fun and curious manner with the work, no matter if it’s easy or difficult or scary or comedic?

  3. Design

    • Do the design choices add up to a coherent and effective overall design?
    • Is there a harmony between whole and parts or does the dish feel lopsided?
    • Do the writing and programming work together to cause the fiction’s ideas and feelings to be sustained in the player’s mind?
    • Has the chef worked with their chosen platform to best effect?
    • Is the player’s relationship to the PC presented consistently?
    • Are any tropes used well?
    • Is the whole greater than the sum of its parts?

  4. Inventiveness

    • To what extent has the chef responded to the overall challenge in a fresh, surprising or original way?
    • Were game mechanics inventive?
    • Was the use of the platform clever, inventive or novel?
    • Has the author shown originality within the scope given to them?

  5. Challenge Ingredient

    • How has the challenge ingredient been used? Well? Harmoniously? Sufficiently? Or just incidentally?
    • Is the whole dish suffused with the challenge ingredient concept?

Note that many questions are recognized to be applicable to only some dishes, i.e. several questions under “Writing” about characters would be less applicable in a dish that has no NPCs (though the PC also counts as a character). Whether or not this will result in a lower score is highly judge-dependent; in general, the judges are prepared to judge each dish on its own merits, so a well-executed dish without NPCs but with a well-constructed PC should do fine for those questions. Likewise, a “puzzleless” story-oriented game would not necessarily suffer under “Playability” due to a lack of puzzles. However, chefs are advised that, all other things being equal, a better-balanced and coherent smaller dish is likely to do better than a more ambitious but unevenly-developed dish.

Also note, and importantly: Judges will be allowed to choose a winner in contradiction to their numeric scoring. The main purpose of the numeric scoring is to provide feedback about the chefs’ relative accomplishments across the five dimensions that the working group decided were most important for this contest – they have intentionally left room for “X factor” elements not covered by the category rubric to be decisive.

Q: Will there be any other feedback provided by the judges?

In addition to the numeric scoring, judges will be providing a written evaluation that will generally (but not always) be in the range of 500-1000 words in length. The contents of written evaluations are the domain of each individual judge.

Q: How and when will I get to play the games made by the competing chefs?

The two dishes will be posted to the episode thread (as ZIP files) shortly after the end of the development period, and will be available for immediate play by the audience. Audience voting will begin 48 hours after the end of the development period, following the posting of the judges’ numeric scores.

After the match, the games will also be submitted to the IF Archive and listings created on IFDB. Authors may choose to make their games available in other places; if this is done then the associated IFDB page(s) will be updated to include appropriate links.

Q: What is a WIP Bit?

A “WIP Bit” is the nickname for an item posted by a competing chef during the development period. WIP Bits are analogous to the brief shots of the chefs at work on the TV show. They are the basis for quite a bit of the banter between the judges, who speculate about what is being made and ask questions about the ingredients and techniques in use.

Both Iron Chefs and challengers will be posting these during the development period to illustrate some aspect of their development process. A WIP Bit can be just about anything that the competing chef chooses to release: short dev log entries, design notes, code snippets, screenshots, sketches, references to inspirational materials, citations from documentation, etc.

Judges will be reacting to these and may ask clarifying questions to be answered by the technical advisor for the episode.

Q: Who was 'Fukui-san,' and will there be someone like that for Iron ChIF?

“Fukui-san” was Kenji Fukui, the primary announcer for the TV show during the matches themselves. There will be no direct equivalent for the forum game; instead the role will be partially fulfilled by the master of ceremonies (outside of matches) and technical advisors (during matches).

The person who most often said “Fukui-san?” on the TV show was Shinichiro Ohta, another announcer who would interrupt Kenji Fukui with information from the floor of the kitchen arena.

Q: Who came up with the name Iron ChIF?

That honor goes to @caleb, who proposed it on the original thread.

Q: Who came up with the concept art, flair icons, and other graphical assets?

That honor goes to @FLACRabbit, who developed them all.

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