Let’s meet the contestants! Here are the first 8:
Alabaster
This game is kind of a proto-Cragne Manor. Just like Cragne Manor was a tribute by a large group of authors to the famous game Anchorhead, this is a collaboration by a big group of authors in the same kind of vein as Galatea.
Basically, Emily Short released a short Halloween vampire/fairy tale game about being the Huntsman confronting Snow White on a cold, snowy day. The game had a lot of ‘dead ends’ but it also had an interface where players could type what happened next, have it saved to a file, then e-mailed to Emily Short to add to the game. In theory, large groups of people could send in small chunks.
In practice, a few people ended up adding a lot of chunks, and worked outside of the collaboration system.
The game ended up being pretty long and complex, and includes some responsive images. It is kind of the poster child for the Threaded Conversations extension as well, which creates a complex web of conversation topics.
The game itself is grim, with curses, blood magic, broken relationships, and multiple layers of lies.
Two ways to play it are just running through until you feel satisfied and using a walkthrough to see the ‘true’ content (although it was originally intended to have contradictory endings).
This one is really quick to experience but a little longer if you want to plumb its depths.
Captain Cutter’s Treasure
The kinds of games people write are often influenced heavily by the games that drew them into the medium of interactive fiction. Robin Johnson, for instance, was attracted by Scott Adams’ games, and writes works with similar characteristics (like a minimal writing style and separating background text from object/character text). I was attracted by Curses and Anchorhead, and a lot of my games attempt to emulate their style.
Garry Francis got started by playing Atari games (including Scott Adams’ Adventureland) and BASIC type-in adventures, which form a different thread of history than the Infocom games that got rec.arts.int-fiction and IFComp started. He wrote an adventure column for Page Six (a UK publication) and became an expert in these kinds of early adventures. Many of them were targeted to a younger age group, with adventure as a theme and a kind of traditional gameplay that built up over time.
This type of adventure-writing is the style of several current retro groups, like the Adventuron writing group. Garry Francis is part of that group and also writes in Inform, and his games have the characteristics of those old type-ins. They are often targeted towards beginners or youth, have adventurous characteristics, and have that classic gameplay style of solving puzzles, cracking codes, and exploring a big map.
Captain Cutter is a pirate game where you wake up in a closet in the bar of a pub with a note fixed to the wall with a knife. This was the winner of a jam (PunyJam) that required you to have those exact elements in a game, and to write the game in PunyInform, a modification of Inform that lets you compile to smaller file sizes and fit on retro machines.
The game has several complex puzzles, including some classic logic-style puzzles, and a lot of NPCs and object puzzles. It’s intentionally not super long, but has enough content to be a satisfying game.
Six
This game was written by Wade Clarke, who is an author talented at both writing music and at complex NPCs (like in the game Leadlight). This game, Six, was his best-placing game of all time, taking second in IFComp 2011. It’s a game of tip (known as tag where I grew up) laid out on a grid-like map. You have numerous kids you need to tag, and each one has their own decision-making process, so some will run, some will hide, some will try to trick you, etc.
The game comes with several art pieces, colored text, and some great music. I actually helped get the music to run online at one point, because it used to be download only. The game also has a nice twist at the end that gives it a lot more gameplay.
To Hell in a Hamper
This game is a comedy game by author JJ Guest, of Alias: The Magpie fame. It was originally written in Adrift for the 2003 Spring Adrift Competition, and later ported to TADS (and even later ported to Inform). This interesting history has led the game to be one of the most popular games in three languages (including the #1 ADRIFT game and top 5 TADS game).
In it, you play as the owner of a hot air balloon who is approaching a volcano. Your score is your altitude. You have to get high enough to clear the volcano! Unfortunately, your balloon-mate is an incorrigible hoarder. Most of the game revolves around discovering just what ridiculous things he has packed on the balloon and trying to get rid of them.
This game got a sequel two decades later on in To Sea in a Sieve, an entertaining pirate game with similar mechanics. There is a third in the works as well.
Inevitable (2003)
This game is by Kathleen Fischer. When I think of “past IF authors with a substantial portfolio of works that aren’t mentioned much anymore,” she’s the first one I think of. She did conversation games, historical games, and, here, a complex sci fi puzzle game.
This game was one of the first Spring Thing games (the previous year had had only one entry). It took 2nd place after a game co-authored by Emily Short.
In it, you explore an ancient technological temple complex filled with abstract Myst-like puzzles. There are two difficulty settings and a memory system that lets you recall events in your life. The overall presentation is smooth and polished.
Winter Wonderland (1999)
Laura Keith had what I think is the perfect learning curve in making games. She started with Travels in the Land of Erden, a sprawling fantasy game that was huge but under implemented. It didn’t do well in IFComp. The next time, she entered Trapped in a One-Room Dilly, a small but very polished game using some nice colors. It placed in the top 10.
Finally, she entered Winter Wonderland, which combined the scope of her first game and polish of her second one. This game won IFComp in 1999.
In this ASCII-art decorated game, you are trying to help your sibling have a great Christmas when you are swept off a cliff and into a magical snowy forest. You meet a variety of enchanted creatures and festive locations. It’s based more on pagan Yule traditions than Christian Christmas.
It’s a substantially large classical puzzle game with cute feel.
Bogeyman
Bogeyman is one of the best-received Twine games, having won an XYZZY award and placing well in IFComp. It’s a darkly atmospheric game with custom fonts and styling. It centers the text and divides some choices into a kind of grid.
The story is very dark. You are one of several children kidnapped by the literal Bogeyman, a tall and scarred magical man who forces the kids into a mentally and physically abusive lifestyle where their lives are on the line. The game revolves around your interactions with the other children and your choices with regards to the Bogeyman himself.
The game is fairly long among twine games but can be finished in one setting.
Once and Future
This was the big “hype game” of the 90s. In 1993, when big games were in vogue, G Kevin Wilson (the first IFcomp organizer) announced that he was working on an Arthurian epic called Avalon which would be one of the great adventure games.
For the next five years, he kept updating the community on Avalon. It became a meme; someone made a joke Waiting for Avalon game, and the author himself called it the vaporware that puts all others to shame.
Closer to its release, the author teamed with others to make a commercial publishing company, and changed the name from Avalon to Once and Future (due to another published game being called Avalon).
It wasn’t as popular as expected on release. It was praised for its polish and plot and characters, but penalized for what some saw as a disconnect between the puzzles and the plot. There was an entire issue of SPAG magazine devoted to just reviews of this game.
It will be interesting to see what modern players think of this game divorced from the long build up and initial commercial release.