It’s a little known fact that I’m highly psychic.
Not really.
In past years, somebody would post IFComp predictions to the newsgroups. Luc French, I think. Here are my own silly predictions, for this year’s IFComp, just for fun. I’m beta-testing one IFComp game at the moment, but none of these predictions are based on that knowledge. Well, maybe one. We’ll see.
At least 60% of all entries will be Zcode. At least 60% of these will be written in Inform 7.
This latter number will include the next incarnation in the PTBAD series.
Paul Panks will enter a record 3 games in the competition, but one will be anonymous.
Two of the games this year will easily be classified as CYOA.
Exactly 7 Adrift games will be entered this year.
Despite renewed excitement, there will be fewer than 36 entries this year.
Only one author from a prior top-10 will appear this year.
However, several will surface as psuedonyms, at the end.
Three games will feature an animal as the protagonist.
One of these will be very, very good.
Two games will be sequels to prior games.
One game will be disqualified due to possible copyright issues.
Each of the top five games this year will score higher than each of last year’s top five.
Each of the bottom five games will score lower than each of last year’s bottom five.
Two games will feature real mazes, of at least 10x10 in size.
Puzzle-less games are on the rise. Four will have no “puzzles” whatsoever.
One of these will require the player to just press enter until the end, more or less.
This year’s “Golden Banana” winner will rank higher than any prior winner of that award.
(I believe this would have to be higher than 9, which was Gamlet – anybody know?)
One entry will prominently feature ASCII art.
Only one entry this year will have graphic illustrations, beyond mere titles or icons.
A different entry will have music and/or sound effects, but no graphics.
One game will involve a hubcap, a magician’s cap, and a talking duck.
Each of these elements will also appear in other individual games.
A whopping seventeen games will have colors or numbers in the title.
One game will involve rescuing a celebrity from the evil clutches of another celebrity.
Two games will be very community in-jokey, and I won’t “get” any of it. [emote]Sad[/emote]
One game will involve fingerprint scanning technology and retinal scanning.
This year’s 10th-place entry will have a title like “[verb]-ing the [adjective] [noun]”.
This year’s 20th-place entry will have a title like “[noun] and [noun]”
This year’s 30th-place entry will be a one-word title. The word is a verb.
Two games by different authors will feature very similar plots.
So similar, that it almost seems one person wrote the same game twice.
Surprisingly, the titles will be nothing alike.
The protagonist in one game will be a postal worker.
The protagonist in another will be a magician.
Yet another protagonist will be a clown, fighting against a magician.
In another game, a postal worker will meet a clown and a magician.
Three games will feature NPCs who are computer programmers.
The plot of one game will be finding a set of lost car keys.
One game will be told in the past tense, in third person.
One game will feature a particularly tricky puzzle involving wire, a thimble, a window, and a clock.
Two serious games will be unintentionally funny.
Two funny games will be unintentionally serious.
The winning game will share several key plot points with the 15th placer.