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 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.
A commissioned digital calligraphy piece
Handwritten in blackletter/gothic style, up to a maximum of 24 letters in the standard English alphabet, for your non-commercial project or personal use. Valid before January 1, 2027, to be completed within three months of acceptance.
Donated by Jinna's Quill
A dramatic reading of your game
From the donor: "I am by no means a professional voice actor, but I have years of acting experience, and years of reading stories to my kids. If you send me a transcript of your game, I will record myself reading it aloud, and send it to you, to do with as you like! If it's long, we can work together to shorten it, perhaps by doing the equivalent of 'Brief' mode."
Donated by Lucian Smith
A handbound book, up to A5 in size, either blank or printed by the donor
With black and white printing and basic text typesetting.
Donated by iaraya
A profile in the February 2027 issue of ChoiceBeat
From the donor: "ChoiceBeat would like to offer one winner a profile in the February 2027 issue of our zine, with blurbs about their games and an article or printed interview about their journey as a game developer and their IFComp experience. This prize will also include a physical copy of the issue, anywhere that Lulu Printing is able to ship."
Donated by ChoiceBeat
A watercolor painting commission
Commission a watercolor painting for your non-commercial project or personal use. See link above for guidelines and samples. Original painting ships to U.S. addresses only, but a high-resolution photograph will be emailed to any location.
Donated by Lamp Post Projects
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 10.1. Advance requests for particular topics you would like feedback on is encouraged, but not necessary.
Donated by Zed Lopez
Feedback and copyediting services for up to 50K words
For a work that is either non-interactive or written in ChoiceScript.
Donated by Aletheia Knights
Outback Taco baseball cap
Donated by Damon Wakes
Sunless Skies
Distributed through Steam. Five copies of the prize are available.
Donated by Failbetter Games
There's Always a Madman: Bring the Thunder
Distributed through Steam. Three copies of the prize are available.
Donated by Sunny Demeanor Games
A handmade zine of the comic poem Merciless Wind
Five copies of this prize are available.
Donated by Polaris Storm (Games from the Lightside)
Further Explorations: 50 Years of Text Games by Aaron Reed
Kindle edition—must have a US Kindle account. Two copies of this prize are available.
Donated by Anonymous
How to Design Adventure Games by Shaun McClure
Kindle edition—must have a US Kindle account. Two copies of this prize are available.
Donated by Anonymous
The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game by C. Thi Nguyen
Hardcover.
Donated by Sarah Willson
Brainioid and skateboard toy action figure set
Just like the ones you found in boxes of Herioes Cereal, sponsor of the Guildhall of Virtue Comedy Hour. Ships within the United States and US territories.
Donated by Doug Egan
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.