Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2025 open for playing and judging

Competitions
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The games submitted to Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2025 are now available for playing and judging. All games are free to play for the duration of the judging period, which starts today and finishes on 31 May 2025.

Just to refresh your memory, the rules required that the games must be text adventures (i.e. parser-based interactive fiction) suitable for beginners and have a tutorial at the beginning.

7 games were submitted. In alphabetical order, these were:

As everyone is always bemoaning the lack of beginner-friendly games, now is your chance to play, promote and rate these games. The games will be rated on:

  • Story (plot, goal, prologue, atmosphere, gradual revealing of story, conclusion)
  • Writing (clarity, spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalisation)
  • Puzzles (originality, fairness, consistency with the game setting)
  • Implementation (technical aspects, lack of bugs, responses to unanticipated commands)
  • Beginner-friendliness (easy to play, no ā€˜guess-the-verbā€™, appropriate in-game clues, usefulness of HINT command, quality of tutorial)
  • Documentation (quality of the itch.io game page, including attractiveness, instructions and any downloadable extras or ā€˜feeliesā€™)

This is an objective rating system that determines quality, not just a subjective gut feel on the overall game. It has worked well over the last four years and allows you to rate the strengths and weaknesses of each game and see how they compare when the results are published.

As the competition is hosted on itch.io, you need an itch.io account to rate the games, but do not need an itch.io account to play the games. Most people here will already have an itch.io account, so thatā€™s not a big deal.

There are some very, very good games this year, so join in the fun and maybe write some reviews to share your thoughts on them.

13 Likes
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Hello, I would like just to note, that AdvSys games are playable not only on Amiga and Windows, but also on other platforms supported by interpreters.

I prefer playing in text-console though with fixed-width font. I supplied my compilation of AdvSys, which works with Windows (compiled in recent Visual C). In fact, anyone can compile it, as source code in K&R C was published by the Author. If someone (like me) likes to read the code and learn from it, the source code is useful as well.

Note that AdvSys allows to create a transcription using -l<log-file> command-line switch (useful for testers, reviewers etc.).

The system is object oriented, which makes fair amount of possibilities. Thatā€™s why I used it to create this game. I still prefer (and recommend) ADL. Itā€™s routine-oriented, but provides many, ready to use functions and large standard library file with common properties (like open, locked, light) and verbs. As of Inform 6, it looks pretty much like C (but also provides extendable objects, from what i know), thus is interesting to me.

My game from the Jam is quite small yet. Itā€™s my fault, not the adventure-system I use. I still learn and practice to create longer and interesting games. I think my imagination is quite extensive. :slight_smile: I love those fancy text-descriptions from the various adventures, yet my own games are still short.

But thereā€™s one small advantage of my recent adventure over Priceless Vase (my previous game) - all the nouns recognizable by the parser, are printed in the location description (short and long). So if you donā€™t meet with ā€œI donā€™t know (the word)ā€ message from AdvSys, this means that the word you entered is known to the system (itā€™s in the vocabulary).

I played Tempus Fugit from the entries so far and I see that the game is big, complex and gives much fun. I completed half of this game.

6 Likes
3

I am unapologetically bumping this thread. There a couple of games in there I really liked. Everyone should try them out!

4 Likes
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Only ten days left to get your ratings in for Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2025. Thereā€™s only 7 entries, so thereā€™s nowhere near as many games to play as (say) IF Comp or Spring Thing. All the games are free to play and some of them are very, very good indeed.

If youā€™ve played or reviewed any of the games, spend a few minutes to rate them prior to 31 May 2025.

4 Likes
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I finished my reviews of the other 6 entries, and Iā€™m about to embargo them at ifdb where Iā€™ll post them in reverse-placement order.

Well, first drafts, anyway. Overall they feel quite replayable in a good way ā€“ I sense I was probably foggy on a couple of games where I struggled a bit and will enjoy revisiting the puzzles that I got stuck on the first time.

Iā€™d like to encourage others to vote, or to look at the games.

Iā€™m still upset I didnā€™t get through the 2024 entries. Maybe I can do that while I wait for end of comp.

5 Likes
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I plan to do maps and walkthroughs for CASA when the competition is over. Iā€™ve already written a couple, but, like you, I want to replay some of them to make sure that I havenā€™t missed anything.

2 Likes
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Iā€™ve noted the total # of votes seems to be going up by 7 per day. Thanks for everyone whoā€™s finalized their votes! I think 10 votes per entry is the usual total. But maybe with fewer games we can get above that. I voted on all entries except my own and Tempus Fugit, which I tested.

Iā€™m a bit surprised Tempus Fugit has the fewest votes. As a tester I didnā€™t find it too thorny to get through. The map mayā€™ve helped, I think. But I also like that thereā€™s not a huge swing between most voted (Home Party) and least.

3 Likes
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You can vote on games youā€™ve tested. Just make sure that your vote is based on the released version, not the version you tested.

3 Likes
9

Awesome! That puts us at an even average of 8.

The reviews (well, except for my own of course) are all judged and quarantined for review, in alphabetical order, starting 24 hours after the jam ends.

6/1 11:59PM GMT: Fat Bear
6/2 11:59PM GMT: Fixing Time
6/3 11:59PM GMT: Home Party
6/4 11:59PM GMT: Tempus Fugit
6/5 11:59PM GMT: Time Crystals of Cythii
6/6 11:59PM GMT: Witch Hedwig an the Magic Brew

Also, just to keep potential TALP playing/voting on peopleā€™s radars, Iā€™ll try to review 1 a day from 2024, after pulling over the 4 I got through in 2024. I forget how or why I lost the thread, but Iā€™d like to pick it up again.

3 Likes
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Thereā€™s just two days left until judging finishes for this yearā€™s comp. Donā€™t leave it until the last minute or youā€™re likely to forget.

2 Likes
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Had another look (yeah, I have a script that opens some pages daily.) Up to 64 now for 7 entries, with 25 hours to go.

Be nice to hit an average of 10. The minimum ratings for an entry is 8.

1 Like
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Do I understand that my gameā€™s review from you will appear today on IF Database? Iā€™m waiting for it. :slight_smile:

Iā€™d like also to note, that I received the prize today, which is a book from Shaun McClure ā€œA guide to ZX Spectrum adventure games 1982-1985ā€, which contains interviews and descriptions of quality and classic adventure games. Thank you.

3 Likes
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It should, just under 7 hours from now.

That book seems really enjoyable. Iā€™m considering buying the ebook version.

(Also, thanks for mentioning your prize. I forgot to check for mine. It was a great motivation to clean up those last few post-comp issues and, of course, to make time next year to help test and review entries.)

1 Like
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Thanks for honest and detailed review. :slight_smile: As you can see, I use AdvSys because it has object-oriented approach, and all the text-adventure / interactive-fiction objects must be created first. This means that the Room and Item are not specified in the language. From my point of view it creates a vast area for creativity, because you can design brand own world, and types of objects. But it requires more work, which means that there are advantages and disadvantages.

I mentioned before multiple times, that my games lack of some things - the scenario, the proper order of development. I admit that the planned scenario for WItch Hedwigā€™s Magic Berries Brew was larger with 15 locations and more puzzles. But Iā€™m thankful that I received so much feedback and next game will for sure be better quality and better playability. This is very important to me.

2 Likes
15

I think you should do a post-comp version before starting a new game. You will learn more that way. Start out by correcting each and every one of the errors that youā€™ve already been told about, then read the reviews and transcripts youā€™ve been sent. Take note of all the issues raised and fix them.

I think youā€™re the only one in the world that still uses AdvSys. It was a good authoring system in its day and you can write very good adventures using it, but its day has come and gone. Most of the current authoring systems are object oriented, both from the programming point of view and the conceptual point of view.

1 Like
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I consider this. Probably you are right that post-comp release is a better option, because I have the transcriptions and lots of helpful comments in reviews. I just think that the game needs redesigning in some way.

1 Like
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I just like to use various authoring systems. As an interesting fact, I wrote a game ā€œSpace Stationā€ in Engine Nine Adventure Creator, which is choice-based system for Amiga OS and sent it to the author of this tool, Matthew Briggs (greetings) as a contribution, which was surprised in what way I have used his system! He couldnā€™t believe that his system is so flexible, that I made locations and connections between them..

He registered my copy of EAC thanks to my contribution, and I received the key to unlock the full version, which allowed also compression of the game data. I have this key to this day.

Thus I like to use systems in a manner that even authors couldnā€™t believe their system is cabaple of. :slight_smile:

OK, I understand that nowadays thereā€™s an Inform, Adventuron, which extends the audience of our game and allow to create games more efficiently - and I agree with it. I just want to switch to them once I learn more about the productivity, which is independent from the tools used to create an adventure game.

2 Likes