Winners of the 2021 IFComp

Year: 1986

Genre: Adventure

Summary: Wander through an apparently infinite number of spooky mansions, solving a basic puzzle in each one.

ForgottenGames.com rating: ★ ★ ★

Feel the chill of the crypt in your veins as you experience the petrifying mysteries and demonic puzzles of Dr Horror!

Dare you enter his House of Terror?

A kidnapped dancer.

A singing cowboy.

A long dance of death in the Texas sun.

You're unhorsed and disarmed, but you still have your wits and your guitar. You can only hope they'll be enough.

Over Goldengrove unleaving…

Come home to Goldengrove, a beautiful old house haunted by a lost soul. Uncover the secrets of your tormented past in a tale of unrequited love, jealousy, violence, betrayal, and vengeance.

"What Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed" is a puzzle-driven, parser-based gothic horror story with a unique command set.

“Aye,” you say, “me ship may have taken a beating in that last raid, but I'll bet ye 500 doubloons I can still beat you to the finish line!”

You'd better get to it, the race starts at dawn and your ship isn't exactly seaworthy at the moment.

Nero built his crowning marvel, the greatest folly of his reign, on the strength of your father's genius. And then he cast him aside.

It's time to get your own back. And, hopefully, a vast amount of gold.

Break into the Golden House during Emperor Nero's birthday festivities in this comedic historical heist caper.

// If you would rather read faster than the text animation speed, you can click in the window to jump the text ahead to the next choice point. //

Cover art and in-game map art by Sarah McMenomy.

A Paradox Between Worlds is a game about fandoms, internet melodrama, and the stories we create for ourselves.

a giant man all green, great axe in hand,

and called out a challenge in the court of King Arthur:

"Bequeath me one blow, behead me clean,

and then,

in one day and a year,

pay your price in blood red!

Come to my chapel queer,

to kneel and lose your head!"

Sting is a puzzleless parser memoir about ordinary days and unexpected interruptions.

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There is a spoiler-filled Cheat Sheet option at the very beginning of the game for those who want to know how to achieve certain goals (or how to explore the paths not taken). It is impossible to get stuck anywhere in the game and there are no bad endings.

Although this game is intended for an adult audience, it is also designed to be kid-safe. There is no violence or sex of any kind (the cats become pregnant 'off-screen'). No cats or humans are hurt or killed, although the Bengal cats may catch a mouse (which you either "dispose of" or "deal with in a humane manner"). There is optional G-rated romance for any gender or sexuality (the player character can be non-binary although the romantic options are all either male or female).

Having said all that, the story is bittersweet in some ways as the protagonist deals with their mother's long illness and recent death, as well as being given a diagnosis of a disabling chronic illness.

I am disabled and have also received feedback from other disabled people.

this game is best played full-screen in Chrome or Safari on a desktop.

This is in the style of a classic parser-based game. That means there ARE puzzles! But if you do get stuck, type HINT to go to a list of InvisiClues that get increasingly more useful.

A note about genre... I struggled here. The scenario is escaping the mysterious house that is warped in time and space, which is classic horror, but there are no walls running with blood, no nightmare monsters chasing you, etc. So "Horror... without the horror."

A note about compatibility... This game runs on JavaScript ES2015, and should work fine on any reasonably up-to-date browser. It has been tested on Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari; and on Windows, Mac, Ubuntu and Android.

A note about downloading... The game is designed to be played on-line, but you can download it as a .zip file if you prefer. It will need to be decompressed to play. Once unzipped, double click on the file "index.html".

It's a perilous journey though: one that a human may not survive... but perhaps a fox might.

Luckily, you are both.

With no big score and the city’s security apparatus tracking her every move, Jaya's next step is to find out who's responsible and how she can get revenge. On her way to crack the police state, Jaya collects astounding transhumanist abilities, explores virtual worlds, and uncovers a conspiracy of manipulative oligarchs. Ultimately, this journey leads Jaya to discover the truth of what it means to be human—or something more.

Silicon and Cells is text adventure meets Metroidvania in a retro-futuristic cyberpunk setting with a large dose of parody. Choose bionic or psionic abilities to navigate Jartekan City and investigate its mysterious past!

In this asymmetric, two-player piece of interactive fiction, you and your partner each take on the role of a leader of a great nation on the last night of a war. A war one side did not even know it was fighting. Will you play as the general of the King’s army, riding north to retake the lands that rebelled against the royal line hundreds of years ago? Or will you play the Dictator of the Republic, who finds herself abandoned in a city wholly unprepared for war, now apparently only able to decide what her last few hours will look like in the city that she loves?

Both have little doubt that the city of Alexisgrad will fall tonight. The question that both must ask is how it will fall.

Both you and your gaming partner will need a copy of ‘The Last Night of Alexisgrad’ in order to play.

Oh, and everyone is a goat.

One year after you land a research assistant position at Yobel Laboratories, a prominent biotech company in Aegis-Liora, the city must bear witness to a scandal that unfolds at your workplace.

In a computer-generated universe, the citizens of a far-future Martian colony begin projecting their consciousnesses out of their bodies using astral projection techniques in the hopes that doing so will provide meaning, or at least entertainment, to their simulated lives.

It's not long before you realize something's amiss. The people in this decaying town are just... weird. And the school residences are over-booked, so why is your boarding house almost empty? And what's with that gardner outside? It's like he wants to tell you something, but can't.

It's a shame you don't get to see the college. In fact, most things don't turn out as you -- or any sane person -- would expect.

Beneath Fenwick is primarily choice-based but plays like a parser game.

(Updated: Safari bug fixed! Will now play on OSX and Apple devices)

What else can you say? She's your best friend.

Three different paths unravel before you, and the choice is yours. But you wonder: Did I end up here by accident? Did someone else do this to me? Or are there unimaginable otherworldly powers at play?

This is a grotesque camp horror story inspired by the works of Franz Kafka and Kobo Abe. It contains content that is not appropriate for minor or sensitive players.

Another sunny day in the Wasteland. With a sigh, I scramble out from under the hovercraft and go to fight through the crowd at the charging station.

Carpenter jeans.

Mixtapes.

Alt Rock.

A mind-controlling vaguely-citrus soda.

A beat-up 1989 Toyota Celica.

A gas station that sells snacks.

And the band whose name would echo through history, the world saviors/rockers: AardVarK

You and Lorraine live in Shelter 5. It's an airtight building in a radioactive desert. It's airtight to prevent exposure to werespores left over from the war and which would transform you into a mindless proto-human. When Lorraine goes into labor with your child, she needs a C-section, or they will die. The only doctor qualified to help is your ex-wife, Wendy, miles away in Shelter 4 -- and Wendy hates your guts.

Getting help before Lorraine dies of exhaustion will require escaping Shelter 5's confines, a perilous journey across a desert and bombed-out city filled with hostile weremen, and confronting your greatest nemesis: your ex. Your family is worth it, though. So put on your environmental suit and start running.

A game where you explore a surreal floating city, in which all room descriptions, lines of dialogue, item descriptions and action text are a maximum of two words each. Custom interface.

…so long as you remembered to bring your inhaler with you. Wait, did you not? Shit.

Oh Gods, is your eczema flaring up again? This is going to be one bumpy ride.

Note: The competition version below is for Windows PCs. There will be Mac and Linux versions available at https://pbparjeter.itch.io/cygnet-committee after the competition begins.

Everything was going so well until last night, when the Bishop of New Elmee disappeared.

*For best results, consider downloading Quest to play the game file directly on your computer. You may encounter game-breaking hanging when textadventures.co.uk tries to load text in the online version. This is an ongoing issue with the site.

Rally your bandmates! Jam with your friends! Vanquish the vile Faramir Spidermoon and his glamrock thralls once and for all!

If only you could remember what it looked like...

Your fast horse has died, and you're older, but you're more cunning. You'll need that cunning to coordinate allied bishops and knights and even their traitorous counterparts. Coups are stressful, sure, but four people banging around is so much less stressful for everyone (yes, even the kings you'll be deposing) than outright wars with thirty-two pieces on a chessboard!

Fourbyfouria features normal and hard modes and an in-game tutorial location.

You are not a cowering toy. You do not shrink from darkness. Your bravery comforts and inspires. You are a Brave Bear.

Made in 8ish days for the Interactive Fiction Competition. Also play the companion game, "Weird Grief", which is also in this year's comp.

Author's Note: Yes, I am a furry. No, I am not taking any other questions at this time. Thanks!

Still, here I am: left alone in a foreign country, in the middle of a sprawling city, with no knowledge of its strange culture and the language, at a time when the world has suddenly decided to meet its unpleasant end.

This game should be runnable on any computer with Python installed. You need only extract files to a directory and run wii.py.

A story of real people in an abstract fantasy, with very light gameplay elements.

As you decide who Jackson meets and where he travels, the differences between times begin to merge into one, and “Bluebird” may finally prove herself to be real.

It seems like any other day. You, your beer and your faithful companion Blanco. But things start to go awry when your clan mate disappears.

Content Warning: Discussion & Depiction of Abuse

Anime sprite in cover art is Creative Commons work by shida

Some games will not display correctly unless using Google Chrome as browser.

It integrates a simple but effective "verb-noun" parser and a manual. The download for this game is a zip file containing executables for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

PLEASE NOTE: Due to the nature of the contents, this game is NOT suitable for children.

Cover art by Katherine Uhlenkamp

Can you help, and in turn help yourself to get set on this journey, which in gamified terms is a literal journey.

An easy puzzle for you to get on a train takes you around this world, interacting and helping people, you might like some people, you might be confused by what they are doing, you could be from anywhere in the world, but here you feel like home.

A peculiar focus of the project has been it's interactions if you try to use everything on everyone. The game expands further in it's attempt to tackle the line between screwball humour and surrealism, but much of it has been kept out of this ifcomp submission to avoid unforeseen bugs and the worse enemy of an IF writer - spelling mistakes.

Parser based with a retro GUI written in Lua, press Alt + Enter for Fullscreen. Open Source and available on Github.

Made in 3 days for The Interactive Fiction Competition. A companion game to "The Dead Account", which is also in this year's IF Comp.

Author's Note: Yes, I am a furry. No, I am not taking any other questions at this time. Thanks!

You're going to need a little magic to take great care of your body *and* pull together something great to wear...

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Kidney Kwest was designed for a Kidney researcher who wanted to find a way to reinforce to her patients (8-18 years old) a couple of key messages about a medicine they take and the foods they need to avoid. It is designed to be played while they are on weekly dialysis (roughly 3 hours).

Since many of these kids are unlikely to have played interactive fiction games before, it uses a new engine that understands full english sentences and doesn’t include most standard shortcuts from the interactive fiction world. “inventory” won’t work here, but “what am I holding?” will.

*Requires an interpreter that can display special characters

Cover by Phoebe Herring adapted from an image generated in VQGAN+CLIP using the prompt: "unreal trans queer rainbow craig mullins" Phoebe's IG: https://www.instagram.com/herringphoebe/ And ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/phoebe_herring

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Notes: The letter ɘ is increasingly being used for gender neutral language in Italian (ref: https://www.outcast.it/home/translating-the-cyberpunk-future), and as such, I've made the choice of using it for gender neutral names with latin roots in this future. Dynamic neopronouns implementation is not perfect. Mostly when it comes to subject-verb agreement (he/she are the most broken, don't @ me). I have tried to amount for as many as the 170 pronouns/form of address combinations, but I'd say there likely are some that I have missed (and I'd be happy to know about them, if you spot any and have time to let me know). Much of the piece was play tested, reviewed and completed after the competition started, and the submission updated. Which works for me as I mostly wanted to put out there and test a system that I detail below, but keep this in mind, in case you are interested at playing the most complete version (last update) or be fair in the competition (first typo-filled and incomplete entry, which I'm told can be downloaded on top of the games list page).

Spoilery notes: This is intended as a short form piece mainly examining the functioning of such a society and how they would relate to death on the close aftermath of it. Think of it as Twin Peaks episode 1. As such you will likely not find out who the killer is by the end of it, or exactly what happened. But you will get a different exposition-heavy ending depending on most of your choices throughout the piece. Based on your choices, the game makes assumptions on how much information on the mistery you'd be interested in, and delivers appropriately. So a player wanting to speed through the story, ignoring details of the mistery or hints on supernatural, and maybe focusing more on the characters and the world, might get a completely open and undefined ending, while a player investigating every detail of the investigation, might get more detailed explanations and get closer to a possible suspect. Thanks for playing!! If you're interested in providing some feedback beyond a competition vote, I'd be interested in knowing which ending you got, to help me figure out if the whole system works.

Just how far will YOU go in order to protect the world?