For those that don’t know, this is an annual competition that encourages authors to write text adventures (or parser-based interactive fiction) suitable for beginners to the genre. In keeping with past years, the games must include a tutorial at the start of the game. This is one of the aspects that makes this competition unique.
Here’s a brief summary of the important points.
Schedule
Submissions open: 1 March 2025 Submissions close: 30 April 2025 Voting opens: 1 May 2025 Voting closes: 31 May 2025 Results announced: 1 June 2025
Rules
The rules are pretty much the same as last year. See the link above for all the rules and guidelines. The guidelines are very extensive as they’re trying to be helpful to new or inexperienced authors. Feedback on the rules is welcome.
Theme
The optional theme this year is ‘Time travel’.
What’s new this year?
We had some games submitted by first-time authors in 2024 that weren’t really suitable for beginners. This was reflected in the reviews and the judging. We’ve tried to minimise that problem this year by adding a new topic ‘Is this competition appropriate for you?’.
We’re also promoting a mentoring scheme, whereby inexperienced authors can seek a mentor to help them out with all their newbie questions. If you feel that you’re an experienced author who can help new authors, then please offer to help on the Discord server or the competition’s Community page. Teaching others can be a very rewarding experience.
Prizes
There’s only one prize so far, so we’re seeking more prize donors. If you can donate something, please send me a personal message on here or the Text Adventure Literacy Jam Discord server. Prizes don’t have to be cash. They may be T-shirts, books, computer games, vouchers or anything else that is likely to appeal to text adventure authors. Just keep in mind that physical prizes will entail postage costs.
Anything else?
Yeah, probably.
The main thing is that people on this forum are often looking for beginner-friendly games or bemoaning the fact that it’s hard to get people interested in text adventures. Now’s your chance to do something about that. Get your thinking caps on and start writing that game that will top the lists of beginner-friendly games in the years to come. Submissions close in four months.
This is great news, Garry! Thank you for organization. Planning to participate this year, just going to start the writing appropriately earlier. I hope, that I manage to prepare long game with many locations and interesting story. The optional theme is interesting as well.
A copy of A Guide to ZX Spectrum Adventure Games 1982 - 1985 has been donated by the author, Shaun McClure. I don’t think Shaun is on here, but thanks anyway, Shaun.
Shaun has also written two other guides for 1986 - 1987 and 1988 - 1990. Each book is between 500 and 800 pages, include hundreds of reviews and interviews with authors and other dignitaries of the period. All are available on Amazon and well worth the money.
Excellent! I’m glad you went through with the latest version of this. It’s good there are some new rules, as it seems some authors had some Works they genuinely wanted to try, but they didn’t quite fit.
If I have the time, I wouldn’t mind mentoring somebody, but I actually have an idea for an entry this year. It would be in adventuron.
Given that it would be my first Adventuron game, I’m glad of the notification well in advance. It’s kind of funny, in the last few days, ideas started to come together, and I finally figured out a title.
So thanks to you and all those who have offered a prize as well. I mean, I don’t do it for the money of course, but it’s nice to see people care that way.
That would be great. Inform 7, I presume? I’ll probably push this aspect a little more in the next week or so.
And on the subject of prizes, we have another prize donation of US$150. The donor will remain anonymous for the time being. That brings the cash prizes to a total of US$400.
I would like to get at least 10 entries so that we have a real competition on our hands. It would also be nice if all competitors received a prize, so don’t hesitate to donate something if you can, no matter how small.
Incidentally, as organiser, I set the rules and I ruled that organisers aren’t eligible for prizes, so I dip out if I enter anything that would be eligible for a prize. Also, if a prize donor wins their own prize, then it swaps with the next prize on the list.
For anyone that’s curious (as I was), this is the 5th year of the competition and the number of entries in past years was:
2021: 10 entries
2022: 15 entries
2023: 9 entries
2024: 10 entries
I would be over the moon if we could beat the record set in 2022 when @adventuron (Chris Ainsley) was running the comp.
Oops! I meant, more bumpers to tell what sort of entries are in the theme of the project, so we have the players first game instead of the programmers first game.
This Jam was actually one of the big reasons that I really wanted to try Adventuron at some point, because the entries did a good job of giving a non-trivial but clear introduction, and I think I finally have something that will work well. I think Adventure on by its nature will prevent me from getting cute with the things I usually like to do, so I can keep things simple enough for the beginning player without, you know, talking down to them. Also, I just want to try something new.
