The design and authoring of the games is finished. The submission of entries is finished. The playing and judging of games is finished and the results of Text Adventure Literacy Jam 2025 are now available. The results were:
The Time Crystals of Cythii, by Garry Francis
Tempus Fugit: The Past is Yet Unwritten, by Gianluca Girelli
Fat Bear, by Charles Moore Jr
Quirky Test, by Andrew Schultz
Fixing Time: A Hack & Makerspace Adventure, by Richard Pettigrew
Home Party, by Zeno Pillan
Witch Hedwig and the Magic Berries Brew, by Robert Szacki
Congratulations to all the participants. The quality of the games was really high and you should all be proud of yourselves.
The first place-getter is not eligible for a prize, as this was submitted by the host. The next four place-getters have been awarded cash prizes totalling US$400. The next two place-getters get a selection of the remaining four prizes. It just goes to prove that this is one competition that is really worth entering, so start planning for next year.
If you haven’t played any or all of the games yet, do yourself a favour and play them now.
I enjoyed playing all the entries. I learned a lot programming Adventuron.
I looked at the # of ratings a couple hours before voting closed and I thought “Oh, too bad Garry is the only one with <10 ratings.” But I guess you kind of got a consolation prize
Thanks for organizing this and for helping with my own effort. The prizes are a nice touch too.
On to the post-comp release now!
I hope there are a lot of entrants next year–Iit’s fun to help out with the TALP entries and see how they include the tutorial.
It’s interesting that you noticed that. I’m not quite sure how the itch.io scores are calculated, but I noticed that for all the games with 10 or more votes, the adjusted score (middle column) was the same as the raw score (last column). For my game, which only had 9 votes, the adjusted score was less than the raw score. Despite that, I still managed to scrape into 1st place.
It looks like we need to aim for 10 or more votes for each game.
This is a really fun competition that has produced some outstanding games over the years. I just can’t understand why the IF community largely ignores it, as it is the only competition that tries to draw more people into our hobby.
Very funny that the horrible itchio game jam algorithm tried to take out The Time Crystals of Cythii from the top spot with a score penalty but failed . Not today!
Well done to everyone who took part. The comp has produced some great games. To be honest, I just couldn’t decide which of the top three I liked most! I had fun with all the games here
Thanks for this competition. Although more advanced than Yesternight, my game was overall not polished up enough and eventually was less quality than Priceless Vase.
Like I mentioned before, I will put more effort in making scenario and puzzles in next game.
I played Tempus Fugit and it’s a great game, with brilliant story and well balanced puzzles. Was going to play Time Crystals of Cythii in the next place, and I see that I “had a nose”, on which games will take high place.
As interesting fact, from what I remember, color crystals appear in one example game for ADL.
I think that post-comp release might be nice option, because it could contain fixes to responsiveness, but I prefer making new game with fresh idea, while improving all important areas.
. Not today!