Vote in the matchups above, and put in a good word for your selections on this thread. Voting will close and Round 2 for Divisions 3 and 4 will begin in two weeks.
I have less to say for this round, as everyone is pretty well acquainted with the contenders now.
One interesting feature is the large number of IFComp winners and almost-winners, none of which are paired against each other at this time.
Winners include:
The Edifice
Taco Fiction
A Change in the Weather,
while almost-winners include:
Six, and
Nightfall
We also have three well-received big puzzle-focused parser games that weren’t part of IFComp (Augmented Fourth, Illuminismo Iniziato, and Inevitable) two retro-heavy puzzle games (Submarine Sabotage and Come Over Here), two speed-IF with gimmicks (Lime Ergot, Buggy) and three games that are more or less unique in the competition (Castle Balderstone, which started a dynasty; Heretic’s Hope, the sole Twine game in this division; and Horse-Girl, which is a mix of traditional and non-traditiona parser gameplay and is heavily comedy-focused).
If I had to label the matchups:
The longest matchup: Six vs Illuminismo Iniziato
The shortest matchup: Castle Balderstone vs Buggy
The ocean-based drama matchup: Heretic’s Hope vs Submarine Sabotage
The comedy matchup: Horse-Girl vs Augmented Fourth
The moody matchup: Lime Ergot vs Nightfall
The hard puzzles matchup: A Change in the Weather vs Come Over Here
The well-polished, not too long and not-incredibly hard parser matchup: Taco Fiction vs Inevitable
I don’t really have a matchup name for the last one. They do share the interesting feature of both involving three mystical visions or quests.
This segment’s contestants were nominated by the following people (in alphabetical order):
AmandaB
BadParser
CMG
Denk (x2)
dfranke (x3)
Hidnook
Joey
mathbrush (x2)
… along with others who submitted their candidates anonymously (but can claim them publicly if they like). Every one of these contestants has won their first match, so if you missed the chance to play them in Round 1, don’t miss the chance here in Round 2!
Jade, they’re not private, and you’re welcome to join the fun at any time! All you have to do is go to the PCT group page and click “Join” – after that you should be able to cast your votes.
See the FAQ on the main thread for more information.
There’s an old The Onion article about how 95% of people are in favor of public transportation… for others. I know from past polling that many people enjoy reading discussion of competing games in the tournament, but it certainly seems to be the case that everyone wants someone else to do the discussing!
Right now, two matches are at tie status: Six vs. Illuminismo Iniziato and Lime Ergot vs. Nightfall. Can I convince any proponents of one or more of these games to make their cases?
I would particularly like to see @AmandaB’s thoughts on Illuminismo Iniziato, perhaps including more detail on why, as an author and/or player, you prefer Illuminismo to Risorgimento Represso. Both @mathbrush and @Joey nominated Six – can I convince either or both of you to extoll the virtues of your champion?
I’d also really like to hear more from backers of Lime Ergot – given @CMG’s authorship of Toby’s Nose, it’s easy to understand the reason for his nomination, but for those voting for it, what’s the reason for choosing it over Nightfall? And Nightfall itself was another double nominee, put forward by both mathbrush and @BadParser. To those two: With over 14,000 other possible choices passed over, what is it about this work that sets it apart?
Thank you, I’ve been making my case for Six in my mind.
There are three normal things about parser games that make Six great and three unusual things:
Normal
Six is polished in the sense of having a lot of custom responses and no bugs that I know of
Six has an amusing and well-differentiated cast of characters
Six has many, varied, and unusual puzzles Unusual
Six has great multimedia integration, with lots of music, sound effects, and some images. I helped port these features online using Bisquixe, so you might think I’m promoting the game here to advertise that, but it’s the opposite, I like this game enough that I went out of my way to ask if I could help get it running online, and I nominated it for the same reason
The game has a secret such that you can repeat the whole game with a different skill set, puzzles and personality
It has a lighthearted setting and is child-like without being childish.
Its contender is great. If Illuminismo Iniziato wins, I think it has a chance of going on to win the entire competition. But for this specific contest, I like Six more.
As for Nightfall, Eric Eve is kind of a lost treasure who made incredibly smooth and polished games (with no bugs, interesting background messages, complex and responsive NPCs, use of all the sense, multiple paths, etc.). Nightfall is my favorite of these games, mostly because many of the other games prominently feature attractive women and the ones where the woman are present dwell on their breasts a lot while in Nightfall, the leading lady is gone most of the time and the plot can take the center stage more.
I voted for Nightfall. I enjoy the exploration of the large map and the prose is well written. The atmosphere is engaging… a very different game from Lime Ergo… a little bit like comparing apples and limes…
Nightfall and Lime Ergot are very different, both excellent at what they’re trying to do, have no major flaws. It was really difficult trying to make an objective judgement, bc my internal arguments kept being more about which genre / type of game I think is better, rather than the games themselves.
Then I gave up on trying to be objective, and voted Lime Ergot because I enjoyed it more. I like the surreal dreamy vibes.
Same for Submarine Sabotage vs Heretic’s Hope, Submarine Sabotage is a great game I had fun with when I played it last week, but Heretic’s Hope is just the type of game I personally like more.
With traditional fiction, you’ve got novels and novellas and short stories. To write a classic short story, an author must be razor-sharp with words.
Lime Ergot is what I’d consider to be a classic IF short story. Not only is it razor-sharp with words, but it’s razor-sharp with mechanics. Each moment, each action, each character and location and description – crafted for maximum impact. It fully leverages the parser medium, doing something as a game that a traditional story couldn’t achieve.
And it still haunts me, although I last played it years ago. The imaginary sense-memories that it conjured in my brain are potent. There’s so much to chew on, too, with its themes of consciousness and colonialism and loyalty and decay. Big stuff. Really big. Packaged with incredible economy into a perfect bite-sized game. I love it!
I was going to vote “gameplay quality must be better than poor for IF to be good” , but then I remembered baby tree, which has awful gameplay (and story, kind of) but has been stuck in my brain for a long time and is something I often share with people who’ve never tried IF.
The game Polish the Glass is kinetic fiction that thus doesn’t really have gameplay, but the way that it spaces out the links into paragraphs and pages and its use of blurred text and hover-over animations really made me like it more.
Your own definitions apply to all terms in the question. The idea is that the story registers as “poor” or “better than poor” in your evaluation, however you evaluate stories, so: If the IF has a story that overall you think is poor, can the IF still be “good” in your evaluation if the gameplay is good enough in your evaluation?
There are definitely other dimensions that apply to enjoying a work of IF – as you point out, writing quality can be considered a distinct element from both plot and gameplay. I’m just curious about how these two interact.
