Hi everyone! ShuffleComp is coming back for 2025-2026.
ShuffleComp is a musical interactive fiction competition, first ran in 2014, where you make games based on songs chosen by fellow entrants. It has two phases: first, entrants submit a playlist of 8 songs. Then, playlists will be randomly created from the provided songs and sent to the entrants, and you’ll make games based on these playlists.
How it works:
Sign up for the game jam and/or submit a playlist of up to 8 songs here. This is due by December 15, 2025. You can make games without submitting songs, or submit songs without making games, but it is recommended that you do both. Songs from people not making games will only be used if there are not enough songs otherwise.
By December 20, if you indicated that you’re interested in the jam, you’ll receive a list of 8 songs by email, randomly selected from other participants’ submissions. Now, you’ll write a game (or up to 3 games) based on some of these songs. You can submit songs to this jam page.
Games are due by January 31, 2026. After which, you’ll be able to vote for the following two weeks.
Games should be based on at least one of the songs you received, but can use any number of songs. You can interpret “based on a song” however you’d like.
Games should not include any generated AI content.
You can submit up to 3 games, using different songs or the same songs.
Voting will be based on the use of songs and the overall game goodness.
Are there restrictions on the kinds of songs people are allowed to submit? What are the rules on songs with NSFW content or political content?
Also, it’s mentioned that no more than 2 songs can be by the same artist, but is it still fine if all the songs revolve around a central topic, as long as they’re by different artists? For example, though I won’t do it this year, I’ve long imagined submitting a full roster of Five Nights at Freddy’s fan songs to torment people.
I’m not an organiser so don’t take my word as final but last year all the songs I submitted were on the theme of the end of the world and that was fine. I am intrigued by the idea of ShuffleComp having random enemy encounters.
Hey, there are some great FNAF fan songs! Like the Bonny Song or If You Survive the Night! Both would be pretty fun TBH.
Although when my son was little he would torment me by having me play this 14 minute mashup of FNAF songs that repeats itself with different color filters 3 times, and he would have me narrate what every character is doing but not repeat myself, and we’d watch it over and over for months. Thank heavens that now it’s a member’s only song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRgq2YCs6xQ
I wanted to do fan songs (not of FNAF) but then just went for songs from musicals. They’d probably be better known and clearer to adapt was my argument, but now I’m wondering…
Though I haven’t gotten an answer about what songs are allowed, I figure it’s fine since I just went back and looked at the original Shufflecomp rules, which the itch.io page says the 2025 rules are based on. The original rules include this:
I looked up Celph Titled, and he’s a rapper with very explicit lyrics. So, I’m assuming this above quote is the general ruleset we’re operating under, which means I have good and bad news for everyone participating. The good news is that I have no plans to submit anything explicit or NSFW, like Celph Titled, to the songlist. The bad news is that though I swore off Five Nights at Freddy’s this year, I have a laundry list of other MatPat-tier interests and nothing can stop me from submitting their songs, which I will do now instead of being reasonable and waiting for clarification because impatience is my cardinal sin when it comes to forcing awful music upon strangers. Shufflecomp’s random enemy encounters are still a go.
Sorry for the very late reply; it’s definitely okay to submit a whole playlist based on a single theme or topic! Regarding song content, as has been stated previously, there is no specifically prohibited content but you should be considerate of the authors who will receive your songs.
Also, song submissions and jam signups are due by the end of December 15th Anywhere on Earth. This is a bit more than 24 hours from now.
The song emails have been sent! If you had indicated that you wanted to make a game, you should have received an email from cchen.intfic. Check your spam folder if you don’t see an email, and let me know if you haven’t.
Probably a long shot, but anybody around right now willing to take a quick look at my game. It’s tiny and non-puzzly, but probably still has a bunch of rough edges.
Restarting after the end doesn’t work for me—it just returns to “Would you like to DUMP your transcript, UNDO, RESTART, LIST SAVES or RESTORE a saved game?”
@nilsf It seems, based on this post from last year’s comp, that you can. I also think you can set a comp on Itch to disable game updates during the voting period, and since that option hasn’t been turned on, it’s probably fine.
I could be wrong, though, and I don’t know what the original message from the organizers says.
I hope I’m not overstepping my bounds, but here’s the text of the organizer reply I got on Discord last year:
I think you can make whatever changes you want, as long as the basic game is the same. But the reviewers may rate it at any time and there’s no guarantee they’ll see the updates.
As for myself, I made CSS updates to my game’s appearance after the deadline last year (like, less than 24 hours later, just ran out of time) without any issues.
Again, though, I’m not an organizer and this is a new year, so… grain of salt.
