Results of the 2025 IFDB Awards!

Note that a few awards were unawarded due to low participation. This is intentional; there are so many categories in the competition that it would be exhausting for voters to vote in all of them. French awards won’t be run again next year unless it is specifically requested by at least 5 people who intend to vote for the awards. For system awards, I’ll have some discussion closer to next year on what people would like to do.

Thanks again, and have a great 2026!

Dissolved · February 16, 2026, 2:15pm

I’m surprised Kinophobia didn’t win any.

mathbrush · February 16, 2026, 2:16pm

I think it would have absolutely won several categories if it wasn’t up against Type Help in both being mystery games over 2 hours long. Kinophobia was great!

I’ve noticed in the past when studying the XYZZY awards that people who were nominated but didn’t win (equivalent to our top 2-4 or so per award) were usually just as good as the main winner, only in different ways, and Kinophobia is definitely great!

Naarel · February 16, 2026, 2:23pm

Congratulations to all of the winners!

mathbrush · February 16, 2026, 2:35pm

If anyone who won an award feels inclined to give a speech or thanks, or comment, feel free to, though there is no obligation. Any judges that have thoughts, feel free to speak as well.

SomeOne2 · February 16, 2026, 3:13pm

Congrats to all the winners! The amount of really good games this year was high, so it was a definite challenge in a lot of categories.

kamineko · February 16, 2026, 3:55pm

Wow! Thanks to everyone for playing and supporting my work! Whenever something like this happens, my partner Callie and I talk about it and tell our friends. It brings a bit of light into our lives.

Callie does all of the art for my games, and I’m lucky to have such a great collaborator.

I wrote a post-mortem that covers both Portrait with Wolf and Marbles, D, and the Sinister Spotlight. I’ll link it here.

Thanks again for playing my games!

edit: How could I forget? Thanks to Mathbrush for making this all happen. I really appreciate you.

meri_something · February 16, 2026, 8:24pm

As someone who only pops in here from time to time when I’m procrastinating on other writing projects, what are the chances I open up my browser today and see my name on an awards list? Pretty low, I’d say. But that’s fun and cool! Thanks ya’ll.

DemonApologist · February 17, 2026, 12:04am

Calling my stories “gay monster propaganda” is mostly a joke, but maybe the propaganda is actually working??

I am genuinely so happy that people liked Pharos Fidelis enough to give it 3 (!) awards, in categories with a lot of incredible games/stories. I just tried to write the coolest story I could think of, so the idea that there are other people out there that still think of and care about that thing I made is really touching. I have sometimes felt kind of out of place in the IF community in what I choose to make, but this is a good reminder that it’s okay to just try to do the best version you can of your own thing, and people might still respond to that.

Thank you mathbrush for organizing and running this event, and to everyone who voted/participated!

EJoyce · February 17, 2026, 4:19am

I feel like 2025 was a pretty strong year for IF and it’s hard to stand out amid so many great games (especially if you write in popular categories like “Twine” and “Mystery”), so we’re very honored not only to have won an award, but to have been competitive in several categories. Watching the awards voting was enough of a nailbiter to make someone want to take up Undum and write five games in the mysterious “Travel” genre in the next year, but we’re honored to be sharing Best Plot with some other excellent games!

I hope people might take the time to look at the top three or so games in each poll, because there were some excellent games that didn’t win anything but came pretty close, often in multiple polls. To shout out some runners-up and third-place games that I personally loved and voted for: you are an ancient chinese poet…; Ancient Treasure, Secret Spider; Little Boxes; OVER; a dialect for two; Swap Wand User, A Smörgåsbord of Pain… I could go on, but this comment is probably long enough (some might say too long) already.

Anyway, we also used this as an excuse to finally finish our postmortem (even later than last year’s, but look, we were sick basically all the way from October through January), which, for anyone who hasn’t seen it, is here:

Congrats to everyone and thank you to mathbrush for organizing this!

DamonWakes · February 19, 2026, 6:10pm

I’m super pleased to discover that Who Whacked Jimmy Piñata? won Outstanding NPC Design - and a little surprised, as I felt as though I was dividing the effort across quite a large cast!

Also vicariously happy to see HEN AP PRAT GETS SMACKED IN THE TWAT win multiple awards. I was always going to be a fan so it’s nice to see it recognised more widely for the very amusing writing (and use of Dendry, which I don’t know at all but must have been capably handled since the game as a whole worked so well).

filiaa · February 27, 2026, 9:02pm

I am one of the voters for the French awards, and would vote again should they be reconducted. Things have been a little slow on the French Discord for the last few months, so I am not particularly surprised, if a little disappointed, that we didn’t get enough voters this year. I honestly have no idea how things will be next year around these times, so I can only talk for myself.

For what it’s worth, seeing the selection made me realise that a bunch of (short) works and competitions didn’t have an IFDB page, it was a good reminder to add them, so there is a silver lining to all of this.

mathbrush · February 27, 2026, 9:16pm

It’s all based on participation, so if you want them back next year, that’s a sign they’ll be voted on! Just remind me again closer to the time of (to make sure that people will be active at that time).

French IF has been one of the hottest areas for a long time in terms of experimentation and quality (with Vorple especially), so I’d love to see it return as a category.

Wojtekb · March 10, 2026, 3:12pm

I’m only seeing this now and delighted to find out Thousand Lives was recognised! Congrats to all winners and thank you to everyone who played my game

HanonO · March 11, 2026, 9:36am

A post was merged into an existing topic: Linguistics Trivia and Discussion

severedhand · March 17, 2026, 5:43am

A little belated but I want to thank @mathbrush for doing all this work. It’s a real help, especially while the XYZZYs are in limbo. And I did vote this year. I may have voted before but unfortunately I forget.

-Wade