Current events

Game Releases

From April 2005:

• The Grand Prix 2005 games were released on April 1st! Note that this is a German comp; see the textfire.de Grand Prix website:
  • Bananenrepublik, by Christof Menear
  • Das Kopialbuch, by Maximilian Klaus
  • Die Queste I, by Jonas Engels

From March 2005:

• The Spring Thing 2005 games were released on March 31st! Visit the Spring Thing website to download 'em! The games are:
  • Authority, by Eva Vikström
  • Bolivia By Night, by Aidan Doyle
  • Flat Feet, by Joel Ray Holveck
  • Second Chance, by David Whyld
  • Threnody, by John "Doppler" Schiff
  • Whom The Telling Changed, by Aaron A. Reed
• Mystery House Taken Over. The first graphical IF game, Mystery House by Ken and Roberta Williams for On-Line Systems (later Sierra) has been reverse engineered and altered! Games include:
  • Where There's a Will by Dan Shiovitz
  • Mystery House Kracked by the Flippy Disk by Nick Montfort
  • Mystery House Makeover by Adam Cadre
  • Casa Tomada by Daniel Garrido
  • [You wake up itching.] by Michael Gentry
  • Glass Boxes by Yune Kyung Lee and Yoon Ha Lee
  • Mystery House Remixedup by Scott Rettberg
  • Mystery House Possessed by Emily Short
  • Mystery House Nightmared by Art Destroyer

From February 2005:

• Choices by David Whyld. Released: 14-Feb-2005.
• A Walk at Dusk by Eric Mayer. Download from the Adrift site.
• Veteran Knowledge by Robert Rafgon. Download from the Adrift site.
• Wizards Playground by evil_flagpole. Download from the Adrift site.
• PTBAD5 by Xorax. Download from Honest Audio. It's short.
• Wumpus 2000 by Muffy St. Bernard. Download from the author page for the game. A randomized game every time you play.

(See also Games Released in 2004, Games Released in 2005.)

Review & Article News

• Actually, there weren't any pictures at all - 1970s text games are preserved by dedicated fans, by Adam McDowell, National Post, March 16, 2005.
• Hugo's Heroes - Paul O'Brian reviews Kent Tessman's Future Boy! for IF-Review.
• Review Exchange - Issue 3 (March 2005) is now available from David Whyld's Shadow Vault. Contains reviews of The Adventures Of Thumper: Wonder Wombat, Darkness, Hoedown In Ho-Town, Sun Empire: Quest For The Founders, The Timmy Reid Adventure, Varicella, Veteran Knowledge, and A Walk At Dusk.
• Peter Nepstad's 1893: A World's Fair Mystery is reviewed in the New York Times!
• InsideADRIFT Issue 22 is out! InsideADRIFT 22 Articles by David Whyld and Eric Mayer.
• The latest issue of SPAG is out! SPAG 39 looks at the IF Comp games from 2004.

(See also: Reviews and Category:Publications.)

Competitions & Contest News

What's Hot:

• The Spring Thing 2005 games have been released. The voting deadline is midnight EDT, May 1st, 2005. Organizer: Greg Boettcher.

What's Recently Hot:

• The voting deadline for the 2004 Erins was March 20th. The Erins Awards ceremony was at Yahoo! chat on March 26th. Ballots, rules, and other information is available from the Erins website.
• XYZZY Awards 2004 -- The awards ceremony took place in the ifMUD's Auditorium on Sunday, March 20th, 4pm EST (9pm GMT). Blue Chairs by Chris Klimas won the coveted Best Game trophy. Congratulations to all the winners!
• StupidTitleComp wanted you to vote for stupid titles of fictitious IF games. The voting (and confirming your vote) deadline was Sunday, March 13th, 11:59pm. But now the results are in. The winning stupid title, by Jacqueline H. is: You Get Transported To Another Dimension and Find This Weird Machine In A Maze And Then Some Other Stuff Happens, It's Really Cool.

Rumours:

• Rumours are buzzing about a possible Hugo Mini-Comp? Suggested submission date: July 4th.
• Will there be an IntroComp and an IF Art Show this year? Probably, but no announcement has been made yet. Details here when we have 'em.

Authors should be working on their entries for:

• Segment Mini-Comp, where authors write up sections of a larger story. See Segment Mini-Comp (Announcement). Organizer: David Cornelson.
• One Room Game Competition 2005 which started on January 20th. Submission deadline: March 6th postponed to April 3rd. Organizer: Francesco Cordella.
• InsideADRIFT Spring Comp 2005, for new Adrift games. See the rules. Submission deadline: April 17th. Organizer: Ken Franklin.
• 2005 CCAB Comp a.k.a. Christopher Cole and A. Bomire's AIF Comp. Submission deadline: June 1st. Organizers: Christopher Cole and A. Bomire.
• LOTECH Comp 2005, game submission deadline is midnight June 30th, 2005 GMT. Organizer: Roberto Grassi.
• InsideADRIFT Summer Comp 2005, for new Adrift games. Submission deadline: August 21st. Organizer: Ken Franklin.
• IntroComp 2004 winners have until July 18th, 2005 to submit completed versions of their games in order to claim their prizes.
• MedievoComp is a comp for Spanish IF with a medieval theme. Submission deadline: September 11th. Organizers: Baltasar and Urbatain.
• The 11th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition is expected to occur as usual in October 2005. Exact deadlines have yet to be announced. Organizer: Stephen Granade.
• InsideADRIFT End of Year Comp 2005, for both new Adrift games and any Adrift game released during the 2005 calendar year. Submission deadline: December 18th. Organizer: Ken Franklin.

(See also: Category:Competitions, Category:Minicomp, and the Competition Calendar.)

Website News

• Renga in Blue is Jason Dyer's new IF blog. Check it out!
• IFWiki officially open to the public on Feb. 10, 2005.
• Plover.net gets hacked twice, hampering efforts to move accounts to a new machine. Seebs is working hard on the problem.
• IF Primogenesis- Mind's Eye Adventures IF Gold a brand-new IF community site dedicated to preservation of IF public heritage works as a new WIP Database. Similar efforts have preserved games on other platforms, eg. the Classic Amiga Preservation Society is one model community. This one is being developed, so stay posted for go-live updated website soon.

Tech News

• Windows Frotz 2002 1.06 released on Feb. 8, 2005 by David Kinder.

See also:

• Informary by Roger Firth. Latest news and developments concerning all aspects of Inform.