My run at the 2022 IFDB Awards

Platforms next – we’re getting close to the end!

Outstanding Inform 7 Game - a giant category so this is going to be hard to winnow down.

  • Of Their Shadows Deep and Fairest - these are quite different games but both excellent in their own right.

  • A Walk Around the Neighborhood - a lot of what I enjoy in parser games is fiddling around in a well-implemented space, and AWAN is a great sandbox for that kind of play.

  • Digit - I strongly associate Inform 7 (vs earlier iterations of the language) with low-puzzle, story-based parser games, and Digit is one of the best examples of that approach this year.

Outstanding Inform 6 Game - I haven’t played too many of these, but I still have a pick I feel good about:

  • Into the Sun - a fun systems-heavy meta-puzzle game, which is something I associate more strongly with Inform 6 games and the late 90s/early aughts era of IF.

Outstanding Adventuron Game - I had in my head that this was a relatively thin year for Adventuron, largely because of its absence from IFComp, but happily there were a good number in other events through the year – which is great, since I think the system and its authors are getting stronger and stronger.

Outstanding Twine Game – the other mothership category, with a gobsmacking 164 games. I’m sure I’m missing some highlights here because I can only hold so many in my head:

  • Computerfriend - hopefully I’ve sung this game’s praises sufficiently that its presence on this shortlist isn’t a surprise!

  • Manifest No - ditto here – densely intelligent prose and a constellation of links in every passage mean Manifest No leans hard into Twine’s possibilities as a platform for literary e-texts.

  • January - I have similar feelings about January, with its lush writing and lovely interface.

  • Lady Thalia and the Rose of Rocroi - Twine isn’t just gloom and trauma of course, and this sequel is as fun a breath of fresh air as I can think of.

Outstanding Choicescript Game – …you know, I only played one or two of the possible nominees here, and there are a bunch of cool-sounding games on the list that I haven’t played, so I think I’m going to sit this one out rather than pollute the ratings by just voting for the couple that happened to get an IFComp release. One day I well get more into CoG’s offerings, but 2022 was not that year.

Stopping here for now – there are still five systems to go!

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Once again, you flatter us. Thanks so much!

You’ve also managed to cut to the heart of the games as usual - the fact that the Lady Thalia games are so light-hearted is a very deliberate choice and was made to contrast with the larger body of Twine work. (This was one of the few deliberate decisions that went into anything, frankly. Everything else was just vibes and gut feel.)

In particular, queer Twine fiction tends to be darker and more serious on the whole (at least when it’s not a pure romance or dating sim). This is fine and many of my favorite games fall into this category, but @EJoyce and I feel strongly that it’s important to have queer stories of all kinds, including fun pulpy stuff that is undeniably queer but not necessarily about queerness. For a long time we wanted to make something that we affectionately called “gay trash”, and while we missed the mark on trashiness I feel we otherwise nailed it with Lady Thalia. (There’s more works in this vein out in non-IF land like the She-Ra reboot, which makes me very happy.)

All this rambling to say is that your reviews are always really insightful, and I’m glad you felt our game stood out that much in a very strong year. Thanks!

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Excuse you, I think it’s plenty trashy.

(But yes, thank you, @DeusIrae! … I wish I had a more substantial and thoughtful comment here, but it’s tech week and my brain is mush.)

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Aww, thanks for the kind words y’all – and since I similarly really enjoy dark depressing queer Twine stuff but sometimes want a change of pace, I’m glad you’ve supplied the need!

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Let’s see if we can finish the rest of the system categories in this post – that’ll just leave the overall Game of the Year for a wrap-up post:

Outstanding ADRIFT Game – ADRIFT is interesting to me because it feels to me like its games have a very distinct style, but I’m not sure whether that’s because of the vagaries of the system or because of the authorial subculture that’s built up around it.

  • October 31st - I enjoy a monster mash, and this old-school but player-friendly game delivers one in spades.

  • Lost Coastlines - I didn’t fully get on with this one, since I often balk at abstract collectathons, but in its breadth and its depth it surely deserves the “outstanding” accolade.

Outstanding Custom System Game - this is a bit of a grab-bag of a category, but I’m glad it’s here to recognize the custom-system hackers, since I think the quality of the stuff these folks are producing these days is really high! I unfortunately didn’t play either of @nilsf’s games from 2022, despite really enjoying The Libonotus Cup, so this is a good reminder to bump those up on the list, but I’m happy with my choices here nonetheless:

  • Uncle Mortimer’s Secret - I enjoy a good time-travel yarn, and this one’s wider-ranging than most, with a BASIC-implemented parser that’s surprisingly powerful.

  • Lazy Wizard’s Guide - right now off-brand Hogwarts might be the best Hogwarts, and given the smoothness of the system here I think most would be surprised to learn it’s bespoke.

Outstanding Uncommon System Game - wow, this is even more of a grab-bag. It’s a little depressing that TADS now qualifies, though what 2022’s TADS games lost in quantity they more than made up in quality. And overall there’s some great stuff here.

  • According to Cain - as I mentioned in my review, I feel like this game was made just for me since it’s crammed full of my favorite things, but the accolades it’s gotten show it’s resonated very broadly indeed.

  • New Year’s Eve, 2019 - confession time, I barely know what Dendry is, but as long as @cchennnn is putting out amazing, precisely-observed pieces like this in it I’m very glad it exists!

  • The Archivist and the Revolution - I mean see above; this is a heck of a one-two punch.

Outstanding PunyInform Game – another category where I think I’ll sit out the voting; I only played one of these (@warrigal’s Alchemist’s Gold) and while it was really good, he has two other games in the category so I’m worried I’d just muck up the rankings.

Outstanding Ink Game – wow, there were 18 Ink games in 2022? What a great showing!

  • Elvish for Goodbye - for whatever reason, I associated Ink with classy, literary games, and Elvish for Goodbye definitely fits the bill.

  • Use Your Psychic Powers at Applebee’s - this uh does not. But it’s a riotously good time that manages some nice character studies amidst all the slapstick.

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Finally, let me now contort myself in knots as I try to condense down all the awesome games I played in 2022 to a shortlist of Game of the Year candidates. Some years I find this pretty easy – in 2021, I’d without hesitation say my two favorites were Queenlash and Faeries of Haelstowne – but this time it feels like there was a broad cohort of very different games I really, really dug. So this will be hard! I’m going to force myself to get down to just four choices, challenging as that’s going to be. I’m also going to try to spread things out in terms of authors and system to hopefully come up with a slate that represents what I think was awesomest about 2022’s IF.

OK, enough throat-clearing. Presented alphabetically:

  • According to Cain - in the early aughts, when I first got into IF, the prototypical “will do well in IF Comp” game wasn’t a light parser comedy, but rather one took on somewhat darker themes and braided engaging puzzles with a resonant story (then as now, being well-written and well-implemented are a must). According to Cain is a worthy heir to this transition, while adding a host of conveniences and an attractive presentation that makes it decidedly modern.

  • January - January is a nigh-perfect aesthetic object, with elegant design and gorgeous prose immersing the player in a rare humanistic take on the zombie apocalypse (I could raise quibbles about some of the art, I suppose, but I’m not fussed about that sort of thing when I play a text game). And by showing how an extremely-constrained approach that rejects conventional thinking about what a “choice-based game” is can work, it pushes new ground in IF design too.

  • New Year’s Eve, 2019 - as I mentioned in a previous one of these blurbs, one of the things I really love about IF is the ability to experience life in someone else’s shoes, and that’s rarely been done better than in this wistful, grounded game. It also packs an impressive amount of player reactivity and simulation for an example of what’s typically a very linear genre.

  • Of Their Shadows Deep - heartfelt and masterfully constructed, this game’s obsession with words plays out in plot, in theme, in gameplay, and in interface, making it a sublime fit for its medium.

…wow that was hard – if I were doing this again, Computerfriend, Lady Thalia and the Rose of Rocroi, Manifest No, or A Chinese Room could have very easily landed one of these top spots. And of course Archivist and the Revolution and Fairest would deserve be on the shortlist too, I just think the other 2022 games by their authors were slightly stronger or more personally appealing.

I should also say by way of wrapping up that there are a lot of really fun games I played this year that I haven’t named in any of the categories since they didn’t quite fit the ones that are on offer, or just got squeaked out by others I maybe liked slightly better for personal, idiosyncratic reasons. And of course as mentioned up top there are still a fair number of 2022 games I haven’t gotten too yet. So come the XYZZYs I might have some different nominations – all of which is an indication of what a great year 2022 was, both in quantity and quality. Congrats and thanks to all the authors who make this such an awesome, vital community, and of course to @mathbrush for making the IFDB Awards a thing!

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When I try to make a 4-game “Best of '22”-list, I write down @jnelson’s According to Cain and everything else is honorable mentions. That game ticks so many of my greatness-checkboxes that nothing else comes close. I’d include in my “Best of Forever”-list.

The others on the list: @ChristopherMerriner’s Custard & Mustard gave me hours of pure fun and laughter (and the haughtiest feline NPC ever), @Encorm& @EJoyce 's Lady Thalia had the sizzling character dynamics, @AmandaB’s Fairest swept me along into her decidedly idiosyncratic fairytale-universe.

Definitely agreed. Going over the IFDB listings for the awards, I was in awe to see so many good games gathered together in a one-year list. There’s a bunch I haven’t played yet, so my XYZZY-votes next year might reflect further digging into the “Goldmine of '22”. (As we will call it ten years from now, when we will be old farts nostalgically sighing about the good old days and complaining about the newfangled ideas the younguns come up with.)

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This thread and the IFDB polls have been extremely helpful, thanks!

I’ve missed a lot of 2022 stuff, caught up on a couple comp high-placers during the winter holidays, tried a couple games that interested me when I’ve had time, then I decided to focus on Best Short Game for a while since that’s a category that’s easier to cover. I’ll see what categories I feel I have enough to vote on in the end.

Outstanding Short Game:

  • Wry: extremely entertaining sequence
  • The Good Ghost: well done, good story, puzzles

That’s probably the two I’m really considering, but other good ones were A Matter of Heist Urgency, Nose Bleed, Esther’s, CHASE THE SUN

Outstanding Adventuron Game:

  • Custard and Mustard’s Big Adventure
  • Things that Happened in Houghtonbridge

Not leaning either way currently, both were solid!

Outstanding World-building
Haven’t played enough of the seeming contenders, but Elvish for Goodbye seemed like one that’s strong enough for people to consider for this. Hmm, looked at IFDB polls, it’s been nominated for other categories but not for world-building. Maybe it’s just a competitive category!

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