The 2021 XYZZY Awards are complete! Here are the winners; congratulations to all, and thanks to everyone who participated.

Best Game: What Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed (Amanda Walker)

Best Writing: Sting (Mike Russo)

Best Story: What Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed (Amanda Walker)

Best Setting: The Weight of a Soul (Chin Kee Yong)

Best Puzzles: Grooverland (Mathbrush)

Best NPCs: Lady Thalia and the Seraskier Sapphires (E. Joyce, N. Cormier)

Best Individual Puzzle: The hair swap, in The Libonotus Cup (Nils Fagerburg)

Best Individual NPC: Liz, in Sting (Mike Russo)

Best Individual PC: Marid, in The Weight of a Soul (Chin Kee Yong)

Best Implementation (tie): The Libonotus Cup (Nils Fagerburg); The Weight of a Soul (Chin Kee Yong)

Best Use of Innovation (tie): 4×4 Archipelago (Agnieszka Trzaska); Excalibur (J.J. Guest, G.C. Baccaris, Duncan Bowsman); The Last Night of Alexisgrad (Milo van Mesdag)

Best Technological Development: Gruescript (Robin Johnson)

Best Use of Multimedia: Fish & Dagger (grave snail games)

Congratulations again to the winners and nominees. See you next year!

Voting is complete in the first round of the 2021 XYZZY Awards. Congratulations to our finalists!

Voting is open for the final round, and will remain open through December 17th. The XYZZYs use your IF Comp login; if you need to register an account with the Comp, or you’ve forgotten your account details, go here. You can log in here (you’ll get kicked back to the front page, but you are in fact logged in) and then vote here. 

(Anyone may vote, but you are asked not to vote for your own work, or to organise voters to support a particular game or slate thereof.)

Best Game

• And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One (B.J. Best)
• The Best Man (Stephen Bond)
• Even Some More Tales from Castle Balderstone (Ryan Veeder)
• The Faeries Of Haelstowne (Christopher Merriner)
• The Libonotus Cup (Nils Fagerburg)
• The Weight of a Soul (Chin Kee Yong)
• What Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed (Amanda Walker)

Best Writing

• The Best Man (Stephen Bond)
• Dr Horror’s House of Terror (Ade McT)
• Sting (Mike Russo)
• What Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed (Amanda Walker)

Best Story

• And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One (B.J. Best)
• The Best Man (Stephen Bond)
• Excalibur (J. J. Guest, G. C. Baccaris, Duncan Bowsman)
• Off-Season at the Dream Factory (B.J. Best (as “Carroll Lewis”))
• What Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed (Amanda Walker)

Best Setting

• Even Some More Tales from Castle Balderstone (Ryan Veeder)
• The Faeries Of Haelstowne (Christopher Merriner)
• The Golden Heist (George Lockett, Rob Thorman)
• The Weight of a Soul (Chin Kee Yong)

Best Puzzles

• Dr Horror’s House of Terror (Ade McT)
• Grooverland (Mathbrush)
• Gruesome (Robin Johnson)
• The Song of the Mockingbird (Mike Carletta)
• What Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed (Amanda Walker)

Best NPCs

• And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One (B.J. Best)
• Lady Thalia and the Seraskier Sapphires (E. Joyce, N. Cormier)
• Mean Mother Trucker (Bitter Karella)

Best Individual Puzzle

• Dead Armadillo in Mean Mother Trucker (Bitter Karella)
• Hair Swap in The Libonotus Cup (Nils Fagerburg)
• The movable stage with the laserfight in Grooverland (Mathbrush)
• The statuette puzzle in The Golden Heist (George Lockett, Rob Thorman)

Best Individual NPC

• Cécile in The Libonotus Cup (Nils Fagerburg)
• The Green Knight in At King Arthur’s Christmas Feast (Travis Moy)
• Liz in Sting (Mike Russo)
• Melpomene in Lady Thalia and the Seraskier Sapphires (E. Joyce, N. Cormier)
• Ottoline in The Faeries Of Haelstowne (Christopher Merriner)
• Riley in And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One (B.J. Best)
• Skeleton in Gruesome (Robin Johnson)
• The Witch in And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One (B.J. Best)

Best Individual PC

• Aiden Tunney in The Best Man (Stephen Bond)
• Big Ester in Mean Mother Trucker (Bitter Karella)
• Emerson in And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One (B.J. Best)
• Marid in The Weight of a Soul (Chin Kee Yong)

Best Implementation

• And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One (B.J. Best)
• Dr Horror’s House of Terror (Ade McT)
• Even Some More Tales from Castle Balderstone (Ryan Veeder)
• The Libonotus Cup (Nils Fagerburg)
• Open Sorcery: Sea++ (Abigail Corfman)
• The Weight of a Soul (Chin Kee Yong)

Best Use of Innovation

• 4×4 Archipelago (Agnieszka Trzaska)
• Even Some More Tales from Castle Balderstone (Ryan Veeder)
• Excalibur (J. J. Guest, G. C. Baccaris, Duncan Bowsman)
• Fish & Dagger (grave snail games)
• The Last Night of Alexisgrad (Milo van Mesdag)
• What Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed (Amanda Walker)

Best Technological Development

• FrankenDrift release
• Gruescript release

Best Use of Multimedia

• Cygnet Committee (P.B. Parjeter)
• Fish & Dagger (grave snail games)
• Off-Season at the Dream Factory (B.J. Best (as “Carroll Lewis”))
• [PYG]MALION* (C.J.)

The XYZZY Awards, celebrating the interactive fiction of 2020, are open for first-round voting.

The XYZZYs are open-voting, and use your IF Comp login; if you need to register an account with the Comp, or you’ve forgotten your account details, go here. You can log in here (you’ll get kicked back to the front page, but do not adjust your set: you are in fact logged in) and then vote here. 

In the first round, anyone can nominate up to two eligible games in each category. (You are asked not to vote for your own work, or to organise voters to support a particular game or slate.)

First-round voting will remain open through the 21st of September (US-Pacific time).

It’s the New Year, so we’re ramping up to Awards season.

If there’s a 2020 game you would like to see eligible for the Awards, make sure it’s listed on IFDB by January 15.

Looking forwards to 2021, we’re planning on a fairly radical experiment in how nomination for the XYZZYs work. An ongoing issue with the Awards is that the list of games listed on IFDB for any one year is pretty large. This is a bottleneck in getting the XYZZYs running, since we have to check them all for basic eligibility requirements (such as ‘this is a real game that exists’), and it makes first-round voting more difficult.

Roughly speaking: the goal is that for 2021 games, anyone will be able to nominate any game for consideration, with submissions open throughout the year. You’ll be able to self-nominate in round 0, but will also be able to nominate other works. (The details aren’t fully ironed out on this yet; I’d like to avoid the case, for instance, where someone writes a script to automatically nominate every single game in IFDB, or some other extensive listing; but it’s also not ideal if people feel like they have to save their nominations). We’ll probably want to periodically update a list of existing nominees. )

(The last time we considered this change, we had fairly mixed reports about the ‘zeroth round’. We welcome your feedback. Either way, the plan is to have the system set up to go by the end of the 2020 Awards.)

The XYZZY Awards are over for the year, and the winners have been decided.

Congratulations to all of our winners – and thank you to everyone who took part.

Best Game – Crème de la Crème, by Hannah Powell-Smith; and Zozzled, by Steph Cherrywell (tie)
Best Writing – Crème de la Crème, by Hannah Powell-Smith
Best Story – Crème de la Crème, by Hannah Powell-Smith, and Turandot, by Victor Gijsbers (tie)
Best Setting – Heretic’s Hope, by G.C. Baccaris
Best Puzzles – Zozzled, by Steph Cherrywell
Best NPCs – Zozzled, by Steph Cherrywell
Best Individual Puzzle – Inspiring the artist in Zozzled, by Steph Cherrywell
Best Individual NPC – Turandot from Turandot, by Victor Gijsbers
Best Individual PC – Hazel Greene from Zozzled, by Steph Cherrywell
Best Implementation – Ryan Veeder’s Authentic Fly Fishing, by Ryan Veeder
Best Use of Innovation – AI Dungeon, by Nick Walton
Best Technological Development – AI Dungeon, by Nick Walton
Best Use of Multimedia – Dull Grey, by Provodnik Games, and Heretic’s Hope, by G.C. Baccaris (tie)

The XYZZY Awards, celebrating the interactive fiction of 2019, are open for first-round voting. (Unprecedentedly belated, I know. How’s everyone else doing?)

The XYZZYs use your IF Comp login; if you need to register an account with the Comp, or you’ve forgotten your account details, go here. You can log in here (you’ll get kicked back to the front page, but you are in fact logged in) and then vote here. 

Anyone can nominate up to two eligible games in each category. (You are asked not to vote for your own work, or to organise voters to support a particular game or slate thereof.)

First-round voting will remain open through the 13th of September (on US-Pacific time, if you feel like cutting it close).