XYZZY Awards 2022, final round

[maga (Sam Kabo Ashwell)]

The nominee round is complete; congratulations to the finalists!

Voting for round 2 will remain open through December 28th.

Best Game

The Absence of Miriam Lane (Abigail Corfman)
According to Cain (Jim Nelson)
The Archivist and the Revolution (Autumn Chen)
Computerfriend (Kit Riemer)
The Spectators (Amanda Walker)

Best Writing

The Absence of Miriam Lane (Abigail Corfman)
According to Cain (Jim Nelson)
Computerfriend (Kit Riemer)
Of Their Shadows Deep (Amanda Walker)

Best Story

The Absence of Miriam Lane (Abigail Corfman)
According to Cain (Jim Nelson)
Fairest (Amanda Walker)

Best Setting

The Archivist and the Revolution (Autumn Chen)
Prism (Eliot M.B. Howard)
The Spectators (Amanda Walker)

Best Puzzles

According to Cain (Jim Nelson)
The Bones of Rosalinda (Agnieszka Trzaska)
The Impossible Stairs (Mathbrush)
A Long Way to the Nearest Star (SV Linwood)
Trouble in Sector 471 (Arthur DiBianca)

Best NPCs

The Archivist and the Revolution (Autumn Chen)
The Impossible Stairs (Mathbrush)
Lady Thalia and the Rose of Rocroi (E. Joyce, N. Cormier)
The Legend of Horse Girl (Bitter Karella)
The Little Match Girl 2: Annus Evertens (Ryan Veeder)

Best Individual Puzzle

Crystal puzzle in Trouble in Sector 471 (Arthur DiBianca)
Escape room in The Little Match Girl 2: Annus Evertens (Ryan Veeder)
Getting the bezoar in The Legend of Horse Girl (Bitter Karella)
Making the goulash in The Bones of Rosalinda (Agnieszka Trzaska)

Best Individual NPC

Computerfriend in Computerfriend (Kit Riemer)
The duchess in The Spectators (Amanda Walker)
Piecrust the Mouse in The Bones of Rosalinda (Agnieszka Trzaska)
SOLIS in A Long Way to the Nearest Star (SV Linwood)

Best Individual PC

Bell Park in The Grown-Up Detective Agency (Brendan Patrick Hennessy)
Ebenezabeth (the little match girl) in The Little Match Girl 2: Annus Evertens (Ryan Veeder)
Em in The Archivist and the Revolution (Autumn Chen)
Horse Girl in The Legend of Horse Girl (Bitter Karella)
Karen Zhao in New Year’s Eve, 2019 (Autumn Chen)
Rosalinda in The Bones of Rosalinda (Agnieszka Trzaska)
Thalia in Lady Thalia and the Rose of Rocroi (E. Joyce, N. Cormier)

Best Implementation

The Absence of Miriam Lane (Abigail Corfman)
According to Cain (Jim Nelson)
The Archivist and the Revolution (Autumn Chen)
The Bones of Rosalinda (Agnieszka Trzaska)
The Impossible Stairs (Mathbrush)
Of Their Shadows Deep (Amanda Walker)
Trouble in Sector 471 (Arthur DiBianca)

Best Use of Innovation

The Absence of Miriam Lane (Abigail Corfman)
The Bones of Rosalinda (Agnieszka Trzaska)
Cannelé & Nomnom - Defective Agency (Younès R. & Yazaleea)

Best Technological Development

Frankendrift
The IF Archive Unboxing Service
Inform 7 build 10.1.0

Best Use of Multimedia

The Absence of Miriam Lane (Abigail Corfman)
Cannelé & Nomnom - Defective Agency (Younès R. & Yazaleea)
Computerfriend (Kit Riemer)
Gent Stickman vs Evil Meat Hand (AZ / ParserCommander)
The Grown-Up Detective Agency (Brendan Patrick Hennessy)

[Draconis (Daniel Stelzer)]

Congratulations to all the nominees! I haven’t played enough of them in any single category to have a strong opinion on them, but I look forward to seeing who comes out on top!

[mathbrush (Brian Rushton)]

Very exciting! These games are all very deserving.

I know some people haven’t played all the games, so I thought I might give a brief description of each of the Best Games mentioning their length, format, difficulty, and tone, with screenshots.

The Absence of Miriam Lane (Abigail Corfman)

This is a highly stylized Twine game, with images and sound. It took me roughly an hour to complete. It’s serious and contemplative. You have been hired to investigate a woman’s disappearance. It includes supernatural elements. It has some puzzles, mostly involving thorough explanation but some including reasoning.

According to Cain (Jim Nelson)

This is a TADS 3 game set just after the events in Genesis regarding Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel. It is a serious game based on alchemy. It took me a little over 2 hours to play. It has a wide variety of puzzles that are at least moderately difficult.

The Archivist and the Revolution (Autumn Chen)

This is a Dendry game (a unique format most similar to Choicescript, and more distantly to Twine). It has extensive styling. It is a serious game in a post-apocalyptic world involving an unemployed trans woman doing contract work decoding messages that have been left in bacteria DNA. It took me a little over an hour to play it. There aren’t puzzles per se, but if you have specific goals it requires some strategy.

Computerfriend (Kit Riemer)

This is a highly stylized Twine game with extensive use of color and animations. It features a darkly humorous and twisted world where you have been assigned to a computer therapist who is not always the most helpful. It took me about an hour to play, and doesn’t really have puzzles, as far as I recall.

The Spectators (Amanda Walker)

This is an Inform game set in a renaissance time period where a cruel duke has married a fragile young wife. It took me over 2 hours to play. It has light puzzles, but the majority of them are completing daily tasks as various characters in the large castle.

[DeusIrae (Mike Russo)]

Ooh, what a great list of finalists, and good idea to share little previews, Brian! I think According to Cain looks much nicer using QTADS (I find that’s actually true of pretty much all TADS games, despite using Gargoyle for pretty much everything else), so here’s a screenshot of what that looks like:

[mathbrush (Brian Rushton)]

I didn’t play with QTADS and never saw those images!

[slugzuki (kit riemer)]

whoa, i’m very proud to see my name next to those who made some of my favorite games in recent memory!

[EJoyce]

I’m deeply honored to have been nominated! I mean, my brain would like to convince me that the higher people’s expectations are of me, the more likely they are to someday realize that they have been bamboozled and I’m actually a hack, but objectively, it’s a great honor.

Anyway, I feel we’ve got a very strong lineup this year in all of the categories, and I’m excited to go put my votes in for some games that I loved and then try not to think about the XYZZYs until the results are out.

[AmandaB]

@slugzuki

whoa, i’m very proud to see my name next to those who made some of my favorite games in recent memory!

This was one of my favorite games of 2022. It really lingered in my mind. I’m glad to see it getting the attention it deserves!

@EJoyce

I mean, my brain would like to convince me that the higher people’s expectations are of me, the more likely they are to someday realize that they have been bamboozled and I’m actually a hack, but objectively, it’s a great honor.

Took the words right out of my mouth. I always feel like it’s a mistake to let me in the door, because I’ll spill my drink, burp loudly, and just be generally so weird that everyone else will decide it’s a low-rent place.

[Edo]

What a great group of finalists! Congrats to all the finalists!

[rovarsson]

Ow Beebs! So hard to pick just one in each category when some of your favourites are pitted against each other. I’ve been tweaking my votes to make sure every author I like gets a share of the small piece of pie that I have the power to pass around.

But what a field of contestants… Congratulations to all authors!

[JTN]

Reminder: voting ends today!

(I don’t see it stated which time zone, but for 2020 it was US Pacific time, which suggests there’s a little under 16 hours left: 2023-12-29T08:00:00Z. Treat that as unconfirmed.)