IFComp features two kinds of prizes, both of which are donated by the IF community, and then shared among the authors of top-ranked entries after the competition ends.
Support IFComp and its authors through a charitable gift to The Colossal Fund, providing a cash prize pool for top IFComp entries! Learn more about it, and see who has contributed this year.
The fund drive ended with a total $7,523 raised! Thanks, everyone!
The following competition prizes have been generously donated by members of the interactive fiction community. See below to learn how the prize pool works, or how you can add to it.
Code review the source of an Inform 7 game or extension of your choice
Zed Lopez will code review the source of an Inform 7 game or extension of your choice (previously released or not), up to 75,000 words (not counting any included published extensions), so long as it's in English and can be compiled by Inform 7 9.3/6M62 or 10.1. Advance requests for particular topics you would like feedback on is encouraged, but not necessary.
Donated by Zed Lopez
Two sessions with a QA Professional
This is a full playthrough with notes about gameplay and bug finding, and then a follow-up playthrough for bug fix verification
Donated by Loressa
Steamkey - Baba Is You (3 Available)
Donated by Arvi Teikari & Allyson Gray
Onyx Boox Nova 3 7.8" monochrome eInk tablet
Runs Android 10; originally released in late 2020; lithium batter may restrict where it can be shipped
Donated by Zed Lopez
A Bloody Birthday cozy art-filled murder mystery picture book
Adapted from an 8-part interactive story mailed to the reader
Donated by Felicity Banks
A Man Named Baskerville
A retelling of the classic Sherlock Holmes novel. Prize can be paperback or Kindle edition.
Donated by Jim Nelson
A young adult magical steampunk trilogy set in Australia: Heart of Brass; Silver and Stone; and Iron Lights by Felicity Banks
Each novel includes a short story at the end.
Donated by Felicity Banks
Autographed hardcover copy of "Unnatural Ends" by Christopher Huang
Donated by Christopher Huang
Children's magical trilogy: The Monster Apprentice; The Princess and the Pirate; and Waking Dead Mountain by Felicity Banks
Suitable for age 8+ (like Narnia but with magical pirates)
Donated by Felicity Banks
Planning Your Escape: Strategy Secrets to Make You an Escape Room Superstar by L.E. Hall
Donated by Brett Witty
The Secret History of Mac Gaming: Expanded Edition, hardcover
Donated by Sarah Willson
Three novellas: Structural Integrity; Structural Strain; and Dirt-Stained Hands, Thorn-Pierced Skin by Tabitha O'Connell
The prize will be for ebooks of these three novellas.
Donated by Tabitha O'Connell
Custom playlist inspired by the author's game, 10-15 songs
Playlist can be on Spotify or YouTube. Songs will be thoughtfully chosen to fit the characters, aesthetic, setting, etc.
Donated by Naomi Norbez
Unless otherwise specified, cash prizes are expressed in U.S. dollars and delivered by PayPal.
0.2 ETH
Donated by Louis Holbrook
20,000 Palai coins
These coins can be transferred to the winner's palai.org account, and the user can use them at any store, charity donation box, or even with a friend, who also has a palai.org account.
Donated by Tyler Zahnke
20,000.00 Palai and a 1 year Copper Membership at patreon.com/iALAP for the winner to be able to see the insights of Palai.org
Donated by iALAP.org
A 1-4 page comic of a scene from your game.
Donated by Aster Fialla
A 3D print cylinder cuneiform seal which reads "nu palšaz apēz pānna natta tarrattari"
Translation from Hittite: "You can't go that way"
Donated by Daniel Stelzer (Draconis)
A 3D print cylinder cuneiform seal which reads "nu zik kuitki apiniššuwan uwanna natta tarrattari"
Translation from Hittite: "You can't see any such thing"
Donated by Daniel Stelzer (Draconis)
A cameo into the author's next game
Contact the donor for questions on what's a suitable character. The person can be fictional or nonfictional.
Donated by Max Fog
A digitally painted bust of the winner's choice of any human or humanoid.
Donated by spellmotif
A piece of IFComp or IFTF swag - magnet, poster, shirt, mug, pillow, etc (5 Available)
Donated by IFComp
A 3D print cylinder cuneiform seal which reads "nu uttar-pat apāt natta kaneššun"
Translation from Hittite: "That's not a verb I recognize". This special prize will go to the highest-scoring game that makes interesting, non-trivial use of a foreign language.
Donated by Daniel Stelzer (Draconis)
The BOAT GOAT
This prize will go to the game with the highest sum of IFComp score + Boatiness Quotient. It makes sense to the people who devised this. Honest.
Donated by Daniel Stelzer
To donate prizes to this year’s prize pool, please contact the IFComp prize coordinator with a description of what you’d like to put forward.
We’ll accept pretty much any suggestion; from simple tokens to useful things and objects of value, no prize is too humble or too grand. Feel free to browse past years’ prize lists for inspiration. You are free to donate as many prizes per year as you’d like; in all cases, these prizes stay with you until the competition ends.
One thing we can’t accept, much as we’d like to: gifts of Steam games. Due to Steam’s restrictions on purchasing games for other users, we can’t offer them as part of our prize pool. Exception: Creators or publishers of Steam games may donate redeemable codes (a.k.a. “Steam keys”) for their games as prizes.
Please note in your email whether your donation should go into the general prize pool, or whether it’s a special prize with extra conditions attached. (Most prizes go into the pool.) Note also whether you’d need to put any restrictions on who can receive it or where you can ship it. (This usually isn’t the case.)
To donate to the Colossal Fund, press that lovely blue PayPal button found above the fund's progress bar, up near the top of this page.
Donations to the Colossal Fund go to the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and are fully tax-deductible where allowed by law.
Since 1998, the Interactive Fiction Competition has every year distributed a variety of prizes to the authors of games that score well in the annual rankings. These prizes come from the IF community, and vary in shape from cash to books to food to professional services.
You can browse a list of the last few years’ prizes and donors here.
Donors hang onto their prizes until the competition ends, at which point they ship them to the authors who claim them. Most prizes each year gather into a pool, which ends up distributed among authors as described below – but donors have the option of creating special prizes with extra conditions attached.
Starting with the author of the first-place game, authors take turns choosing prizes from the pool. After the first-place winner picks a prize, then the second-place winner gets a chance to choose from the remaining list, followed by the third-place winner, and so on.
This continues until all prizes have been claimed. As authors claim prizes, donors receive notification to contact their prizes’ claimants and arrange shipment.
Most years, enough prizes float in the pool to allow more than half of all the comp’s participants to receive at least one prize.
Donors can declare that a prize should not go into the pool, but will instead automatically go to the author of a game that, once the competition is over, meets certain conditions. Examples of this in the past have included physical trophies for the top three games, cash awards for the three highest-ranking games that open-source their code, and a handmade “golden banana of discord” toy for the single game with the hightest standard deviation among its received scores.
Special prizes, when present, are the gravy on top of the normal prize pool. Authors whose work land them one or more special prizes will still get their pick from the pool according to the usual rules.
IFComp launched the Colossal Fund in 2017: a parallel, cash-only side-pool built up from charitable public donations. It's essentially a permanent "special prize" run by the competition itself.
This blog post explains the history and motivation behind the Colossal Fund, and details how it works.