Winners of the 2008 IFComp

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1st place

Violet

Jeremy Freese

Calm down. All you have to do is write a thousand words and everything will be fine. And you have all day, except it's already noon.

This work also won 1st place in the 2008 Miss Congeniality Awards.

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Score	8.53
Votes Cast	118
Standard Deviation	1.90

2nd place

Nightfall

Eric Eve

The Enemy is expected to arrive at any moment. Staying behind is either the stupidest or the bravest thing you've ever done. Only one thing - or one person - could have made you stay. So now there's nothing for it but to find her before it's too late.

This work also won 3rd place in the 2008 Miss Congeniality Awards.

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Score	8.00
Votes Cast	88
Standard Deviation	1.74

3rd place

Everybody Dies

Jim Munroe

It starts with a metalhead, Graham, realizing that throwing that shopping cart over the bridge was not the great idea he thought it was. Even if it did get him out of washroom duty at Cost Cutters. Illustrated by Michael Cho. Took third place at IFComp 2008 (2nd place for Miss Congeniality.)

This work also won 2nd place in the 2008 Miss Congeniality Awards.

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Score	7.57
Votes Cast	102
Standard Deviation	1.71

4th place

Afflicted

Doug Egan

This isn't the safest neighborhood. A young woman was abducted near here only recently. But as a city sanitarian you are obligated to complete your annual inspection of the local dive.

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Score	6.95
Votes Cast	110
Standard Deviation	1.53

5th place

Piracy 2.0

Sean Huxter

Admiral Copeland entrusted you with a mission to bring a pirate to trial. En-route the pirate's band attacks, boards your ship and kills your crew, throwing you into the brig. But you're not going to let that stop you from completing your mission are you?

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Score	6.91
Votes Cast	89
Standard Deviation	1.82

6th place

Snack Time!

Hardy the Bulldog and Renee Choba

Can you help one hungry bulldog in his quest to find something good to eat? He would like that. A lot.

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Score	6.87
Votes Cast	110
Standard Deviation	1.48

7th place

Opening Night

David Batterham

You stepped off the streetcar moments ago, halting before the grand facade of the Marquis Theatre. You have come to see your idol, the Broadway star Miranda Lily, performing in all her dizzying glory.

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Score	6.77
Votes Cast	103
Standard Deviation	1.41

8th place

April in Paris

Jim Aikin

On the first day of your dream vacation, you encounter an exasperating social difficulty. (Game file contains complete hints and walkthrough. Zip file includes pdf map.)

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Score	6.63
Votes Cast	94
Standard Deviation	1.54

9th place

A Date With Death

David Whyld

It's not easy being king. Especially when you're the king of a nation constantly at war with, well, everyone. And when the Grim Reaper comes knocking on your door, you wonder if being king is really worth all this hassle...

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Score	5.89
Votes Cast	71
Standard Deviation	1.99

10th place

Berrost's Challenge

Mark Hatfield

Light-hearted (semi-)heroic fantasy. Can an aging apprentice end his apprenticeship with a flourish (and a few new spells to cast)? Just an old-school text adventure with a tip of the cap to Infocom's Enchanter series.

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Score	5.84
Votes Cast	80
Standard Deviation	2.05

11th place

Cry Wolf

Clare Parker

You are awoken, startled by a sound in the night. Still bleary from dreams, you turn on the light to chase away the shadows. But there, beyond the safety of your room, something moves in the darkness. It is long past midnight, and a wolf is at your door.

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Score	5.83
Votes Cast	78
Standard Deviation	1.78

12th place

Escape from the Underworld

Karl Beecher

Take control of Bobby T. Minion, the demon who has had a change of heart, and help him escape from the Underworld, the place to where torturing the souls of the damned has been outsourced.

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Score	5.34
Votes Cast	88
Standard Deviation	1.68

13th place

Buried In Shoes

Kazuki Mishima

Everything is about the question.

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Score	5.28
Votes Cast	106
Standard Deviation	1.97

14th place

Magic

Geoff Fortytwo

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Score	5.22
Votes Cast	81
Standard Deviation	1.56

15th place

Recess At Last

Gerald Aungst

After endless months of indoor recess, an eager student's plan to try out his brand new sneakers is thwarted by one missing assignment.

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Score	5.15
Votes Cast	85
Standard Deviation	1.28

16th place

Grief

Simon Christiansen

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Score	4.48
Votes Cast	100
Standard Deviation	1.91

17th place

Trein

Leena Ganguli

Trouble has been brewing in Trein Hill. The people stopped playing their taxes and all is silence. What's worse, there's rumors of disappearances and even rebellion! It is up to you to find out what is happening in that isolated territory.

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Score	4.47
Votes Cast	89
Standard Deviation	1.59

18th place

The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom

Anssi Räisänen

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Score	4.30
Votes Cast	67
Standard Deviation	1.63

19th place

Red Moon

Jonathan Hay

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Score	4.28
Votes Cast	99
Standard Deviation	1.60

20th place

Dracula's Underground Crypt

Alex Whitington

Professor Von Klausberger is the most renowned vampire hunter in the world; his life a never-ending adventure filled with heart-stopping action and devious puzzles. He's not who you're playing as; this is a game about Daniel.

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Score	4.26
Votes Cast	92
Standard Deviation	1.88

21st place

Channel Surfing

Mike Vollmer

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Score	4.24
Votes Cast	93
Standard Deviation	1.64

22nd place

Ananachronist

Joseph Strom

Have you ever wondered about lack of universe-destroying temporal paradoxes? The anthropic principle just not a good enough explanation for you? Here's a short game about how difficult it is to keep the universe non-existence free.

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Score	4.22
Votes Cast	76
Standard Deviation	1.55

23rd place (tie)

wHen mAchines aTtack

Mark Jones

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Score	3.79
Votes Cast	80
Standard Deviation	1.78

23rd place (tie)

The Lucubrator

Ricardo Dague

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Score	3.79
Votes Cast	92
Standard Deviation	1.76

25th place

A Martian Odyssey

Horatiu Romosan

You are D. Jarvis, chemist of the famous crew, the Ares expedition, first human beings to set foot on the mysterious neighbor of the earth, the planet Mars.

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Score	3.64
Votes Cast	86
Standard Deviation	1.59

26th place

The Hall of the Fount of Artois

Simon Ellis

Pierre Artois, the scion of the Artois, lies spellbound and immobile in a room in his family's home. You have one night in which to break an evil curse and restore the hopes and future of the ancient family!

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Score	3.50
Votes Cast	50
Standard Deviation	1.83

27th place

LAIR of the CyberCow

Harry Wilson

One of the few games in the neglected Farm Noir genre, LAIR of the CyberCow takes a stylishly chilling, ambivalently moral look at the social themes of our times -- or, does it? Play it now: don't wait for the movie. (Requires ADRIFT 3.9)

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Score	3.33
Votes Cast	52
Standard Deviation	1.41

28th place

Search for the Ultimate Weapon

Sharon Lynn Chu Yew Yee

The interactive fiction is very loosely based on the story of Wu Mei, a legendary Kung Fu nun during the Qing Dynasty in China. She is said to be the founder of various Chinese martial arts such as Wu Mei Pai and Wing Chun Kuen.

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Score	3.25
Votes Cast	48
Standard Deviation	1.34

29th place

The Missing Piece

C. Yong

Complete "the missing piece" to escape from the evil world in this GUI text-based CRPG game.

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Score	3.08
Votes Cast	37
Standard Deviation	1.88

30th place

Freedom

Anonymous

An ordinary day in the life of an ordinary person.

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Score	2.96
Votes Cast	110
Standard Deviation	1.26

31st place

Riverside

Jeremy Crockett and Victor Janmey

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Score	2.55
Votes Cast	102
Standard Deviation	1.56

32nd place

Project Delta

Comazombie

The Course is a short prequel to Project Delta, a CYOA-style text adventure inspired by Area 51 conspiracy theories, set in its own universe and scripted in "Node-X", a game system developed by the author himself.

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Score	2.13
Votes Cast	56
Standard Deviation	1.35

33rd place

Nerd Quest

Gabor de Mooij

This is a snack-sized adventure game written in my own hobby programming language MechaniQue. I will make it available as a web page so you don't have to install anything (see walkthrough for details and URL).

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Score	1.94
Votes Cast	79
Standard Deviation	1.07

34th place

The Lighthouse

Eric Hickman and Nathan Chung

The Lighthouse is a small game in where your main foucus is to turn on the light in the Havenworth lighthouse. This game is very short and also is my very first game!

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Score	1.75
Votes Cast	107
Standard Deviation	0.87

35th place

The Absolute Worst IF Game in History

Dean Menezes

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Score	1.42
Votes Cast	121
Standard Deviation	1.12

The organizer of the 2008 Annual Interactive Fiction Competition was Stephen Granade.