While we’re all waiting for IFComp results, @EJoyce and I wanted to announce that the Short Game Showcase will be back for 2024! Submissions will start on Dec 1 and be open for roughly two weeks.
What is the Short Games Showcase?
The Short Games Showcase is an opportunity to show off shorter interactive fiction works (<30 min playtime) made in calendar year 2024. We want to give shorter works their moment in the spotlight and bring some more attention to the many excellent short games that get released every year.
We don’t have this year’s competition page up yet, but you can look at last year’s for a general idea of the other rules. (And play last year’s games if you want, they’re pretty rad.)
What’s different from last year?
We’re adding a new awards category: Best Previously Unawarded Game, to highlight games that were either released outside a comp or were overlooked during one.
There will be a cap on the number of competitions a game has previously been submitted to, currently set at three. (So, if the Showcase would be a game’s fourth comp submission that’s OK.) This is entirely to deter the competition spammers who have infested Itch over the last year, so we’re happy to take feedback on where the reasonable limit is.
Rules minutia: We’re asking people to disclose if generative AI was used to create any part of the game, including any art. Text translated using AI tools such as DeepL does not need to be disclosed.
Other rules minutia: after an Incident last year, please provide a warning if your game contains flashing lights. (AKA, if you give one of us a migraine we WILL dq your game. Sorry not sorry!)
Are there going to be actual prizes this time?
Probably not! But you’ll get to feel really special if you win.
This may seem a bit early, but we wanted to get the announcement out now to make sure any and all IFComp authors with qualifying games are aware of it! There are many great <30 min games in this year’s comp and we’d love to see them entered.
Questions? Comments? Concerns? Feel free to DM us or post them here. Otherwise, we’ll see you Dec 1st!
Thanks for hosting this again; it’s such a wonderful initiative! Instantly bookmarked and looking forward to discovering some gems or replaying favourites.
first and foremost, an author can submit his/her own work ? and “made in calendar year” includes still-unreleased improved releases ?
(to be clear, I’m mulling the idea of submitting The Portrait, either as the spring '24 release or the still-to-be released post-thing version)
TIA and
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
I don’t think the three-comp limit will be a problem, because I can’t think of any works off the top of my head that have been entered in more than three comps this year. One jam, one comp, and the Review-a-Thon is the most I can think of.
Yes on both counts! I expect many Ectocomp entries will qualify as well, so as long as the work was first released in 2024 it’s good to go. You can update as much as you want before you enter as long as the game stays under 30 minutes! (FYI, the competition will be on Itch.io again, which I know you have some qualms about – we’re happy to have you, but I wanted to make sure you were aware.)
Honestly, it hadn’t even occurred to me that the Thon might count as a competition so I’m going to house rule that it doesn’t! It’s another event meant to get eyes on underappreciated games so I’d feel bad if anyone had to pick between them. Still, it’s good to know that we’re in the right ballpark! (The limit was set 1 higher than what we thought was likely.)
Yeah, tbh I don’t think we really expect that rule to disqualify many if any games submitted by people here, it’s more that there are people on Itch who will submit a given game to every single open event regardless of relevance and we’d like to discourage such submissions (or at least have quick and easy grounds on which to DQ them).
I think about 4 of the neotwiny games were separated out into parts due to the wordcount. Classed as one or multiple games? Or would it be best if any are entered just to enter part one to prevent clogging up the system (as the other parts can be found from the first part of the game.)
I think I will submit my Single Choice Jam game to this, but I do worry that it is very reading-speed dependent. It could take anywhere from 20-40 minutes to read depending on how fast one is. So I guess it might get clipped on the high end by a not insignificant percentage of readers.
The limit is three games per entrant, so you’re free to enter both of your eligible games!
Released—it’s not a problem if you wrote it earlier and it just sat on your hard drive for a few years, or you showed it to a few friends but didn’t actually publish it, or you worked on it a bit at a time over a longer period. We’re just trying to exclude games that have been widely available for more than a year.
Thanks for holding this again! I had an effort which didn’t quite fit into any of manonamora’s jams (single choice or <500 words … it’s more like <1000,) and it’s something I’d like to share, and it’s relatively simple. So I’ve got motivation to knock off something I always meant to.
A heads up to everyone - Itch.io is currently having problems and we can’t launch the showcase until they’re resolved. We’ll create a new post once Itch is back up.
I think it’s back up. I couldn’t access it last night (local time), but I was using it a little earlier. I noticed a new feature whereby you have to specify whether your project uses any AI-generated assets.
I’m so glad the Showcase is back! It was so fun last year!)
So I guess it might get clipped on the high end by a not insignificant percentage of readers.