EJ and @Encorm are announcing a new IF event, the Short Games Showcase!
The Short Games Showcase is an opportunity to show off shorter IF works made in the past year (Jan 1, 2023 to Dec 31, 2023). This will be a competition; similar to SeedComp, it will have voting in various categories (TBD) rather than having an IFComp or EctoComp style overall ranking. If some people wish to submit their games to get more eyes on them but exempt them from the voting, we’re open to that.
The big difference between this and most of the other IF comps out there is that we do accept, and indeed encourage, games that have been released previously, even if there haven’t been any major changes (or any changes at all) since the initial release. Short games tend to get less love than longer games in general-purpose, non-speed-IF comps, while if released outside of a comp or jam, they may not get eyes on them at all. We want to give shorter works their moment in the spotlight in a comp where they’ll be compared only to each other, and bring some more attention to the many excellent short games that get released every year.
The intent isn’t really for people to make new games specifically for the SGS, but given how the whole setup works, preventing people from doing so would be hard (and nigh-impossible if we run this again next year—though no promises there), so if you really feel moved to, go ahead.
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FAQs
How short is short?
A person who reads at an average speed should be able to complete a playthrough in 30 minutes or less. We know this can be hard to pinpoint exactly, so we will not be policing this unless someone submits something that is clearly way over the line.
What if the game is meant to be played through multiple times?
A player should be able to have a relatively complete experience in 30 minutes or under. A game like One Does Not Simply Fry from this year’s IFComp, which runs 30 minutes for a single playthrough but encourages multiple playthroughs, would not be a good fit for the SGS.
How many games can I submit?
You can submit up to three games.
Where will the SGS be run?
It will be run as an Itch jam, but due to the category-based voting, voting will be handled through a Google form. We don’t have a website. If we run this again we may think about creating one, but for this year it’s kind of experimental and we’re trying to keep it low-key.
When will the SGS be run?
The Itch page should be up in a few days. Game submissions will then be open through December 31.
We’re not sure yet when voting will take place. It should be easy to get the Google form up and running within a few days of closing submissions, but we’re worried about overlapping too heavily with Shufflecomp, so we may hold off until mid-January, or even maybe until February, if people would prefer overlap with the IFDB Awards (which doesn’t necessarily require playing any new games) to overlap with another standard comp? We would love to hear people’s opinions/preferences on this.
Are there prizes?
No, just bragging rights. We’ve talked about maybe making custom prize-ribbon images for winners, but this is a tough time of year for our health issues, so we’ll see if we’re up to it.
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Another thread will go up shortly soliciting suggestions for voting categories for the SGS, although it will ultimately be up to our discretion which categories we use.
