Hello everyone,
I am a Romanian English teacher who would like to kick off an IF writing competition in my highschool. I am looking for IF creators or reviewers who would be willing to share their experience with my students in online meetings. In addition, if anyone has the time and disposition to participate as a judge I would also be extremely thankful. I would also be very grateful for any suggestions or advice.
I am looking forward to your comments. Have a sunny day!
Hi,
I’d be glad to help out any way I can. I’ve written a couple of IF stories myself, and I’ve served as a judge for the fall IF Comp. I’ve been using IF in my teaching since 1985, and I’m a member of the Education Committee of the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation.
I’ll hope to hear from you soon.
Peace,
Brendan Desilets
Dear Brendan,
thank very much for reaching out. I am currently finishing off the Romanian version of the school contest proposal. I will have a final Romanian draft soon and then I will be able to translate everything into English. Finally, I will make the proposal public so that people may comment and make suggestions.
At this point I have the following ideas:
the game the students will create will have to begin with a set sentence.
the app they will have to use to create will be Twine (most probably)
there will be a set minimum number of words (I was initially thinking of 2000 but that may be too long, I am not sure)
I have been trying to come up with a set of assessment criteria that all the judges should use…. I am a bit stuck at this point. I know what the judges should look for in terms of English language (since this is what I teach), but beyond that I am lost….
Could you please share some of your experience with me on this issue?
Also, I would be extremely thankful if you could join us as either a guest speaker or judge or both.
I look forward to your reply.
Sincerely,
Nadina
Might be worth looking at the Senica Thing and related efforts, or talk to @Eudokimos who runs it? He runs events using Twine for school-age children (the delightful results of which often end up in the Spring Thing).
Some links:
Hi Nadina,
As JTN mentioned, we have a couple of jams for students and at this stage we have already acquired some good practices.
I read through what you are suggesting and I like the set phrase as the beginning. If well chosen, it can trigger the immagination. I am not that sure about number of words - that reminds me more of the eastern school - many russian gamebook jams sport this criterion but i find it a bit discouraging. Some of our best games have just 3 or four passages.
As to the jury criteria, here are the guidelines we use. Brian Rushton, head of Spring Thing Festival, suggested most of them. Feel free to copy, change and use 
PS: if you like cooperation, you can join our Senica Thing jam which has a follow up yo Spring Thing Festival. Our theme for the next year (deadline is 20 March 2026) is “Swarm”.
SIF 24 Criteria.pdf (208.1 KB)
Hello,
thank you all for the amazing resources.
In terms of whether to have a minimum number of words or not, there are two things I need to mention: First, the contest is not a jam. The students create the IF games in their own time, at home, and receive support from teachers at school outside normal hours. Second, I need to emphasize the “literary” side of IF in order to make the project work over here. One of the points I am making in the proposal is that it is thought that adolescents nowadays do not read much and the contest is going to encourage them to read more and prove to everyone that given the right context teenagers read quite a lot. And with purpose.
So, I would like to keep the minimum number of words. Perhaps bring it down to 500?
I would love to cooperate with you and thank you for the invitation. I will look up the jams you mentioned and get back to you.
Best wishes,
Nadina
Thank you for inviting me to collaborate. I think your Senica jam’s calendar fits well with my contest’s (for now tentative) calendar. How can I help?
Our Senica Thing jam is focused on creative writing in English as foreign language. From the last year we have a partner school from Slovenia who send us their student works. I will be glad to have more students to join our ranks. Wh3n you send us an entry, make sure it had not been altered by teachers or another person and no help of AI or machine translator had been applied. Spellcheck in Word is allowed.
Then the jury decides which games will follow up to the Spring Thing Festival and which will be published only on our project website. The great benefit of bring on the festival are the reviews. Each entry receives valuable feedback from the festival reviewers.
And ioe can you participate?
You can help either as a member of jury, or as a head-hunter for new talents.
Each year we also run a couple of side events. One for the next year is an art competition promoting beekeeping and tiyled “Bee Recruits”. You can join it as well.
“Jam” in our world simply refers to an event, typically unranked. It’s not a time-limited “game jam”; those are usually considered “speed-IF” and are only really present now in ECTOCOMP.
People who are not interested in reading will not really enjoy IF. People who do (and there are plenty of adolescents who do) will enjoy it.
OK. That sounds good. Let’s say the local school contest jury decides on 3 games to participate in the Senica Thing. They would have to be decided on by the 19th March 2026 (since the deadline for submissions is the 20th March). At the same time, the rest of the entries in the school competition will be added, that is published, on the Senica project website. Did I get that right?
Is there any paperwork that needs to be done?
Nearly. I suggest that you send all entries, even those you think should not follow up. The only criterion here is if the student agrees to have the game published. (many are afraid and withdraw their games). The system works nicely because if the kid is proud of what they did, then it is a Big Thing and we should help the game to be published.
Only between 20 and 30 March we decide what to do with the games. If they are too many, we will do this:
unfinished and too buggy games will be returned to the authors to work on it a bit more. They will have the games published when the game is fibished. To prevent this situation, keep telling the authors to use punctuation smartly: Capital letters at the beginning of sentences, break.after full stop, only one question mark or exclamation mark at a time, apostrophes, …, etc.
finished games with small number of mistakes shall all receive the opportunity to be published. If there are too many games, we will have to decide on the number which we let out for Spring Thing. First-timers should be let out even if we need to polish their games a bit.
Students with publishing history must show progress. In case they don’t learn from the reviews, they will not automatically follow up.
Students who want to participate in real competition - not in Back Garden - must be able to pass their entry on their own, without our help. I suggest that we consult together if the entry has the quality and only then suggest this to the student.
I usually do the polishing, but in case we agree on it, we can share this burden. I suggest, though, that we decide on this only after we see the year’ s output.
And no paperwork. You just inform me that the games are entered with the authors’ consent. Students have to use nicknames - only you as their teacher will know who is who.
Here is the English version of the General Presentation of IF@LUAIC. Comments or corrections welcome. I appreciate any kind of feedback.
IF@LUAIC is an interdisciplinary project aimed at highschool students which combines programming skills with writing literary texts in English. The IF@LUAIC project (Interactive Fiction at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University Highschool in Iaşi, Romania) is centered on the concept of Interactive Fiction, a type of computer game which has been around since the 1970s. Interactive Fiction usually involves a branching story. As they go through the game, players can choose which narrative branch to follow. Each choice influences the story’s direction and ending. Nowadays, there is a large number of different sub-types of IF. There is also a large international community thanks to which maintains the accessibility of many older IF games, supports IF creators who are starting out and organizes regular IF competitions (https://intfiction.org/ , https://iftechfoundation.org/ , https://ifdb.org/) . Recently, IF games have begun to be used as a teaching resource for foreign languages, especially for English. A variety of IF games have been used in order to make learning English more entertaining, to make literature more attractive to students, and to develop and hone students’ reading and writing skills.
The IF@LUAIC project aspires to initiate and grow the presence of a Romanian student community belonging to the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University Highschool in Iaşi, who will organize creative IF writing sessions. These students will also participate in an annual contest in order to popularize the best written IF games. The IF@LUAIC project and contest are meant to motivate and encourage students to work as a team, to do research, and to become familiar with Twine (https://twinery.org/), an open-source tool for telling interactive fiction. While working on their games, the students will develop their capabilities in writing English narratives. The IF@LUAIC project also involves holding conferences with native English guest speakers who will impart their expertise in IF with the students. The conferences are organized before the students’ submittal of their games in the IF@LUAIC contest. The first confirmed guest speaker is Lauren O’Donoghue (Search for Games).
The IF@LUAIC contest involves the creation of IF games by teams of 2-3 students using Twine. The finished games are judged by an international panel on various criteria. Brendan Desilets (https://www.bdesilets.com/), a member of the Education Committee of the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, will be joining the jury, as well as a small number of teachers at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University Highschool in Iaşi. The contest ends with the award ceremony where teams will find out who won the 1, 2 and 3 prizes.
It should also be noted that the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University Highschool in Iasi is going to collaborate with the organizers of the SENICA THING (Senica Thing :: SENICA INTERACTIVE FICTION) jam, who have already partnered up with a school in Slovenia. SENICA THING is also dedicated to students who learn English as a foreign language. The SENICA THING organizers have offered to include all games created by the students from the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University Highschool in Iaşi in their own contest. Some of these games which are deemed worthy will be published online.
Hi,
Can we arrange a call? If you feel like it, reach me at odokienko.ondrej@gmail.com where we can decide on suitable time.