About the Competition

The Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (IFComp) welcomes all kinds of text-driven digital stories and games, making them freely available in order to encourage the creation, play, and discussion of interactive fiction.

The Interactive Fiction Competition is an annual event begun by passionate hobbyists in 1995 to encourage both the creation and the discussion of new interactive fiction works (also known as IF). While the definition of IF has evolved in the years since then, the IFComp’s format and schedule have remained stable since the 1990s. Anyone can judge the entries on a one-to-ten scale, and the laurels go to the entries receiving the best average rating.

The people who participate in the IFComp include:

IMPORTANT UPDATE FOR IFCOMP 2024: The 'intent to enter' date, final game deadline, voting period, and awards stream will all move up one month. The updated schedule will go live on our site Jan 1, 2024, but in the meantime, authors should note that intents are due Aug 1, 2024, and games must be uploaded by Aug 28, 2024.

All competition deadlines specifically mean 11:59 PM, Eastern time, on the given dates.

Miss Congeniality Awards

Since the 1998 competition, the IFComp has every year held a secondary contest allowing the authors of that year’s games to vote on one another’s entries, using a ballot similar to the one that the public uses to vote in the main competition. The three most highly ranked entries by this vote become the winners of the Miss Congeniality Awards, an honor permanently recorded in that year’s results listing.

Rising Star Award

Since the 2021 competition, the IFComp has recognized the highest-rated game by a first-time entrant in the competition, called the Rising Star Award.

Golden Banana of Discord

This special award goes every year to the entry with the highest standard distribution among its ratings — roughly speaking, the entries with the most disagreement among those who rated it. The IFWiki keeps a record of every year's GBoD winner, as well as a bit of history about this prize.