This makes me very happy. A great slate of games, and I’m proud that the silly little world I crafted resonated with folks. Thank you very much.
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Thanks for the love shown to my crazy little historical romance. And congratulations to all the other winners; both those whose games I’ve played and those whose games I clearly still have to play!
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Interestingly, not only did you win three categories, but in all three categories you were unusually dominant, with large gaps between you and second place. That means that whatever you do you do it very well!
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Thanks! (Although I wonder – and of course there’s no easy way to find out – how much of a bonus it is to have been part of IFComp rather than some other, less covered, competition.)
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Thank you Brian for organizing the 2023 IFDB Awards!
Congratulations to all winners and runners up! Looks like I have some more games to play…
And my little game got the “Outstanding Use of Interactivity” award. Limited parser, not much of a challenge puzzle wise… I must be doing something right. So now I got the “interactive” part, now I guess I need to work on my “fiction” part 
.
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Proposal for an additional category in the IFDB Awards 2024:
Outstanding game that didn’t win.
(commonly known as Russel’s Award.)
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Congratulatios. This year has been a great one!
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Congratulations, everyone! It’s always fun to look back on the year in IF, and there sure were some great games in 2023, whether at the top of the polls or farther down. I’m making it my personal mission to play all the games nominated in the Underappreciated category, just so they’ll be a little bit more appreciated. <3
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Hi everybody! Thanks to everybody who played Repeat the Ending, whether you voted for it or not. I put a lot of myself into RTE, and it’s incredibly moving to know that it connected with people.
More generally, thanks to everybody who made a game, or tested one, or reviewed one, or even just played a bit of one. IF is a great way to feel seen, or to make somebody feel seen, and there’s so much power in that. I feel very lucky to have found my way here.
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The people in the room with me are asking me why I’m crying and cheering like a maniac. 
I have been having a Very Rough Time; I cannot explain to you how much I appreciate this community welcoming me, and having the patience to teach me about the history and expectations of the medium.
Also a huge thank-you to everyone for playing…! 
I was genuinely making my peace with the idea that the game would flop, and maybe connect with one person in particular. As long as that one person enjoyed it, it would be a victory. The fact that it was so well-received (even in its beta state) across the community is a triumph for me.
I definitely have further plans for this game.
Specifics
Largely having codebase and time issues; I’m solving the former, and working with the latter. Depending on how a few experiments go, the 1.0 version might be made in a custom engine. This is not because TADS is incapable; far from it. I am simply realizing that
- I want more (neurotic) control over the nuances and accessibility of the interpreter, and
- want more clarity regarding the codebase.
The former issue is largely locked away from the author, and the latter one is just really overwhelming because of the incredible number of modifications that I Am Prey requires; this becomes difficult to work with as the underlying codebase continues to shift around.
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I think you have to do this when you’re writing something outside of the norm like IAP. Experimentation does not always go over well, so best to be at peace with that. But wow, did that experiment work out well. I still think IAP is in a class of its own.
Hugs. I wrote games about my very rough time and it did not help, but it kept me busy for a while.
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Huge thanks to the organizer, and to everyone who voted or participated in discussions!
I wasn’t around for the previous IFDB awards, but this year’s formula seems to be working beautifully and I’m looking forward to the future of this new IF tradition.
It was such a nice surprise to see Dysfluent get nominations! I’m incredibly happy that despite its flaws, it managed to connect with people. 
I intend to work on an improved version when I’m able to, and I also have plans for new IF projects; the support of this community has been such wonderful motivation to keep learning and to keep putting myself out there. As a new author, that really means a lot, and I’m very grateful!
Congratulations to the other winners and nominees, and to everyone else who created something last year as well! The games who got noticed certainly deserved it, and I’m sure that a lot of gems flew under the radar too. I’m eager to catch up with 2023’s batch of games, and to discover new ones in 2024!
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Congratulations to all the winners, and thank you to everyone who nominated one of my games x
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Well done to all the winners (and all the nominated games). Big thanks to @mathbrush for organising and to everyone who made, played, reviewed or voted during 2023! I feel very privileged to win both outstanding Mystery and Twine game! Although, that now puts a lot of pressure on my next one. 
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Congratulations to all authors! Thanks for sharing the fruits of your creativity and hard work with us humble players.
I would have loved to see @mathbrush 's Never Gives Up Her Dead and @johnnywz00 's How Prince Quisborne the Feckless Shook His Title tie for “Outstanding Game over 2 hours”. Only one vote difference.
I would like to second (3rd, 4th?) the well-earned praise and respect for @inventor200 's I Am Prey. Truly innovative gameplay in a thrillingly tense hide&seek/escape framestory.
Great to see @PatientRock 's His Majesty’s Royal Space Navy Service Handbook get a well-deserved “Outstanding Worldbuilding”-award. The snippets of backstory you get from the space-war just outside the windows while going about your tasks open up a whole universe of interplanetary relations without ever needing to resort to text-dumps. Brilliantly done!
In this category, and several others, I also tried to plug @HEGEMONOS 's Les Saisons de Pippa. It’s a richly branching tale of a girl exploring the land and the lore of a strange but weirdly familiar world resembling stories coming down from our own Stone Age sjamanistic oral history. (I cannot corroborate this claim with much actual knowledge of sjamanistic practices or Stone Age oral history, but that’s how it felt to me.)
For “Outstanding Science Fiction”, I was actually rooting for @rileypb 's Galaxy Jones, which grabbed me by the scruff of the neck with its fast-paced action and overall vim-zoom-go-get-'em attitude. Of course NGUHD is a worthy winner. Glad to see @30x30 's Protocol and @manonamora 's DOL-OS receiving good recognition too!
(splitting this reply in half because I can only tag 10 people in one post…)
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(…continued)
When I look over the “Outstanding Use of Interactivity”, it strikes me that many voters thought of and rewarded games with limited interactivity in the form of finely focused commands/choices. I did this too with my vote for @pieartsy 's In a minute there is time. My second vote went to @OverThinking 's Gestures Towards Divinity, for the depth of interaction with (actually, inside) the works of art.
@pseudavid 's Tricks of Light in the Forest was my number one choice for “Outstanding Slice of Life”. Glad to see it ranked high in that category, and that it got “Outstanding Gruescript Game”. Thank you to the slice-of-life winner, Dysfluent by @Ally , for showing us a very personal up-close account of the anxiety and communication issues that come with stuttering. Very moving.
@EJoyce & @Encorm 's Lady Thalia and the Masterpiece of Moldavia for “Most Sequel-worthy”? Come on people! You know Lady Thalia’s story isn’t finished yet. She’ll regale us with more heists and adventures (and romantic tension…) whether we root for her or not. Why not call for The Topsy-Turvy Adventures of the Knights Spittoon, a comedy-of-manners spinoff set in the world of Prince Feckless?
Kidding of course. I also voted for Lady Thalia. (EJoyce, Encorm, you did save that scrap of paper with my number on it, right? In case you want me to poke at Melpomene’s conversation options in a pre-premiére version of Margaret Williams, the Early Years: Melpomene Rising.)
High praise for @svlin 's fantastic Dr Ludwig and the Devil. It had me gasping for breath with laughter at times, which I think was an intentional move to make puzzle-solving harder. Great mood, great characters, great puzzles, great game. (And let’s not forget the great results of A Long Way to the Nearest Star in 2022’s XYZZY Awards, IFComp and IFDB Awards. Nailing it in both Twine and Inform is no mean feat. Very strong author, SV LInwood is.)
And from the results, I think it’s safe to conclude that @kamineko 's Repeat the Ending won the year 2023. All of it. Drew, your award consists of an entire year, wrapped in a big colourful bow. Have fun, congratulations. I express my deepest-felt awe for your masterful IF-piece.
Thanks to everyone for the great games, special thanks to Brian for organising the IFDB Awards. On to 2024!
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Honestly I was thinking the same thing while people were voting, but I didn’t want to say anything to impact the vote! Here’s what I said on 2/2
i just found it ironic because the thematic point is kind of the lack of interaction with your surroundings and merely being an observer to the world around you, but like. i’m super in the weeds on my own shit
I’m pleased that my one minute (and change, to read the beginning poem) game got (tied) 2nd place in that category 
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A wise observation.
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I’ve been having a rough time IRL lately, and seeing my litte wizard game place so highly in the ink category was such a pleasant and unexpected surprise—honestly I didn’t expect anything I made to be nominated, so this was really above and beyond in the best way.
Thanks to everyone who played and a big congratulations to Victor on the very well-deserved win!
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