In 2015, Portentine ran a mini Twine jam, called the Twiny Jam. During the three-week the jam ran, creators were asked to submit a Twine game with no more than 300 words. There was a thread on the forum about it. Over 200 pieces were submitted. (sadly, about a 5th of those is now lost…)
So, 8 years later, to commemorate this piece of IF History, @cchennnn and I are bringing back the Twiny Jam - but with a bit of a twist…
Awww, so thrilled to see an homage to Porpentine. Really lovely to see some of the Goncharov Girlies collaborating again! Sounds like it’ll be a lot of fun.
and I forgot to put it here, I’ve just realised… but I found I had a lil bit of extra saving to share:
So I will be matching the number of submitted entries* into a donation to the Equality Florida organisation, currently working to fight wave of the anti-trans bills in Florida. A proof of donation will be published (on tumblr) after the jam is completed.
*the entries must follow the rules of the jam to be counted. Spam and hateful content will be removed.
Two other persons have reached out and will also be matching the submission into another donation for a LGBT cause. If you’d like to join us either anonymously or publically, let me know Here is also a list of other LGBT organisation accepting donation.
So come write max 500 words to participate to a good cause!
Is that only readable text, or does all code count in the 500 words? Like if I use Inform 7 and have "The giant squid is here. The description is “A massive purple cephalopod, undulating with desire,” do the 8 words preceding the description count in the word count?
It’s all visible text that is part of the story.
Code doesn’t count (it’s in the rule bc code can get wild, even with basic Choice-Based games), and neither do error messages.
I’ve played through the games entered so far, and it’s been a pretty neat showing so early on!
Was pleased to see my friend Kat over at @catskets enter a work, and happy that my silly troubleshooting for Twine difficulties helped it come together!
Pretty satisfied with my own Fallen London inspired entry too, but I’ve been thinking of toying around with the premise in a larger work…
This is my first time entering one of these jams. I was going to try for Spring Thing 2023, but the game I had for that had to take a back-burner to work. I was looking through the earlier mini Twine jam entries and thought Elevator Later was cool in how much interactivity it was able to accomplish in 300 words, so I was inspired by that for my entry The Unseemly Virus.
I’ve added a basic page on IFWiki at Neo-Twiny Jam - IFWiki. The dates show up on the IFWiki calendar now at IFWiki. I wasn’t sure whether to count it as a jam or competition. I think jams (generally) have a restricted timeframe to work on submissions and are not scored. I got the impression that at least the second of those things apply here, and also it’s called a jam, so on the wiki page it’s a jam!
I remembered having an idea, and after a bit, I remembered what that idea was. The 500 words should make it easier not to go over. Of course, I still have to learn a few things in Twine!
I also forgot I posted in that topic, and just reading the posters’ names brought back a lot of cool memories. Some people I really miss in there.
I hope other people seeing this give Neo Twiny Jam a swing, too, whether just to play, or maybe even to write reviews or an entry themselves.
Do alt and/or info text for images count towards the word count? Screenreader descriptions and mouse over text.
What about things like UI elements? Eg Health: 100% - would that be 1 word? 2 words?
How about splash screen (game name), main menu, settings menu, credits?
And how would randomized word choice through code be counted? Eg something like a color picker or random words for description variety or a random list of items which could appear?
With that said, there are banks of the 500 most commonly used English words out there instead.
I was thinking you could display all 500 words at once in a Twine presentation, with only certain ones lit up at any given time. Sort of like this word clock:
You’d have to either rearrange them, or even simply number them in the order of the words in a short sentence, perhaps with a superscript like this³, or even a color gradient for the lit words.
That way, you have all 500 words you’ll use declared and onscreen immediately, and you’ll never introduce another word to tell your narrative.
Given that you never display more text and only change the formatting of the displayed text, would this clear the bar for the Neo Twiny Jam?
bc code can get wild, even with basic Choice-Based games), and neither do error messages.
