ParserComp 2023 - Results!

Competitions
1

Dear Friends

The time has come, the moment for which the entire world has been holding its breath (do please feel free to start breathing again now)…for fos1 and Christopher Merriner are delighted beyond measure to reveal at last the results of ParserComp 2023!

We’re so sorry for the delay in publishing these. Fos1’s supercomputer overheated and broke down at a critical moment, you see, and so Christopher had to pop down to the shops for essential technical components to get it working again (you wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to get hold of creosote and bailing twine at short notice around here). And then, after several more hours of calculations (fos1 operating the controls, Christopher dispensing dry martinis), when we’d finally got the results, Sandra on the front desk insisted on double checking them against her own calculations (worked out in five minutes on the back of a cigarette packet), before she’d allow us to release them! I suppose you can’t be too careful.

Anyway, without further ado, because it’s probably the middle of the night where you are and I realise that we’ve kept you up for this, here are the results:

Classic Category

In our time-honoured, comfortingly familiar and tweed-clad “classic” category, our gold award-winning first place is a tie between:

Garry Francis, with Search for the Lost Ark

and

Amanda Walker, with The Purple Pearl

who each receive a coveted, fabled, much envied, and (possibly) pleasantly scented solid gold-esque lamp trophy, along with a framed ParserComp2023 certificate.

Many congratulations to both Garry and Amanda, who, with this latest addition to their already enormous collections of gongs, will probably have to get together to buy some sort of joint offshore trophy storage facility halfway between Texas and Sydney to accommodate all of their awards!

our second place silver award goes to:

Arlan Wetherminster, with Jesse Stavro’s Compass

and our third place bronze to:

Dee Cooke, with The Last Mountain

who each receive a unique and priceless hard-copy ParserComp 2023 certificate, to hang upon the wall and display before the incredulous eyes of generations of grandchildren to come. Congratulations to them both.

Freestyle Category

Amongst the disconcertingly unconventional and dangerously unpredictable entries in our edgy “freestyle” category, the gold award winning first place goes to:

Robert Goodwin, with Cheree: Remembering My Murder

Robert receives another of the long-rumoured, much sought-after and quasi-mythical solid gold-ish ParserComp 2023 lamp trophies, along with a framed certificate. Many congratulations!

Our second place silver award goes to:

spaceflounder, with Steal 10 Treasures to Win This Game

and our third place bronze to:

JazzTapp, with Late-Imperial Sky Witches Star In: Meet Cute

both of whom receive a hard copy ParserComp 2023 certificate, with which to blag their way into the backstage areas of concert venues and first-class airport lounges, for years to come (try it, it might just work).

The full rankings in each category are as follows:

Classic

Game Author Rank Votes Score
Search for the Lost Ark Garry Francis 1 18 4
The Purple Pearl Amanda Walker 1 12 4
Jesse Stavro’s Compass Arlan Wetherminster 2 9 3.785
The Last Mountain Dee Cooke 3 14 3.714
Between the Lines of Fire paravaariar 4 10 3.7
Hinterlands: Delivered! Cody Gaisser 5 13 3.692
Finn’s Big Adventure Lazzah 6 9 3.136
Xenophobic Opposites, Unite! Andrew Schultz 7 9 3.028
Bug Hunt on Menelaus Lazzah 7 9 3.028
Murder Most Foul David Whyld 8 6 2.782
Xanix - Xixon Resurgence Lazzah 9 5 2.467

Freestyle

Game Author Rank Votes Score
Cheree: Remembering My Murder robertgoodwin00 1 13 3.538
Steal 10 Treasures to Win This Game spaceflounder 2 12 3.417
Late-Imperial Sky Witches Star In: Meet Cute JazzTap 3 11 2.455
The Fortuna SacrificialHam 4 7 1.962
Dream Fears in a nutshell StuckArcader 5 7 1.349

We’ll be in touch with award-winners directly to arrange getting their physical prizes to them, and all other participants receive a digital ParserComp 2023 certificate of participation as a token of our thanks for entering the competition.

Lastly, huge thanks to everyone else who supported the competition this year by playing, voting on and reviewing the entries. For you, we reserve the greatest prize of all, which is our warmest regards and the promise of a hearty greeting and slap on the back should we ever meet you in person (I’d watch out if I were you, fos1 has a very powerful handshake!).

Until the same time next year,

Our very best wishes

fos1 and Christopher

37 Likes
2

Ha, I was just in the new chat baselessly speculating on who would come out on top! Congrats to the winners, and congrats to you and @fos1 for another great year!

14 Likes
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Huh. That’s unexpected. One expects a 2-player game with a thin plot and some bugs to finish at the bottom of the heap. Go figure. Thanks, though, y’all!

We’re way ahead of you. Garry and I have a plan to build a walking bridge between the Texas gulf coast and Sydney built out of trophies and spit. It’ll just have to swing around Brazil and South Africa a tad, but no more long flights. You’ll just grab your walking stick and skip across the bridge from one sizzling, burning (when they’re not flooding) location to the other.

20 Likes
4

I admit, when I was guessing at which games would win I didn’t have yours up there, not because I didn’t enjoy it but because I figured it would be a little niche-y. So beyond the personal plaudits, I think this result means the idea of multiplayer parser-IF definitely sparks some interest – very curious to see that continue to evolve!

Having recently read a horrifying account of what it’s like to sail around Cape Horn, let me say that you might want to either make the safety railings really really high, or just make everybody sign ironclad waivers before they get on.

(Er, also it’s technically in Chile, not Brazil – sorry, I can’t not be pedantic!)

12 Likes
5

Congratulations to all winners and participants and thanks to the organizers for once again doing a good job!

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6

Congratulations to the winners and participants! I liked all the winning games, but there are a lot of runners-up that I really liked as well. Thanks for everyone putting in great work!

11 Likes
7

Congratulations everyone! I had a lot of fun playing all these entries.

10 Likes
8

My congratulations goes for organizers, authors, participante, players, reviewers, voters, and specifically to the twin winners. I really liked parsercomp since its very beggining. This year I have enjoyed a lot testing and playing the games here and there, on the go. Since I have been busy travelling I have played now and then. I really appreciate this year’s entries.

11 Likes
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Well done all! Another great ParserComp.

10 Likes
10

I have a confession to make. I’ve been really busy recently and didn’t have the time to play or rate any of the games this year. The quality of the games in ParserComp is normally very high, so I didn’t expect to do well, let alone win, so I was surprised to see the results. Thank you to everyone who played and rated ‘Search for the Lost Ark’. It was a lot of fun to write, so I’m really glad that people enjoyed it.

Now that I’ve had a chance to see the results, I can see that I was in good company and the differences in the ratings were quite close for the top six or so games in the classic category and the top two games in the freestyle category.

Thanks to everyone involved in ParserComp, organisers, players and judges, but especially my testers (Jade J Aincioa, John Ziegler, Larry Horsfield, Max Fog, Reiko Yukawa, Trenton Thompson and VanishingSky). They gave me some great feedback and my game was much better as a result of that.

I’ve already started on the bridge from the Sydney end, but I think it will take quite a few more competition wins before I can join up with Amanda from the Texas end.

19 Likes
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Congratulations to the winners! I was only able to jump onto the judging in the couple of days, but I enjoyed the games I managed to play. The Search for the Lost Ark was one of them, and I enjoyed it muchly.

12 Likes