Monthly Archives: May 2016

XYZZY Awards 2015 Results

The main event of the 2015 XYZZYs is complete for this year. And the winners are…

Best Game: Birdland (Brendan Patrick Hennessy)
Finalist: Brain Guzzlers from Beyond! (Steph Cherrywell)
Finalist: Hollywood Visionary (Aaron A. Reed)
Finalist: Midnight. Swordfight. (Chandler Groover)
Finalist: SPY INTRIGUE (furkle)

Best Writing: Birdland (Brendan Patrick Hennessy)
Finalist: Laid Off from the Synesthesia Factory (Katherine Morayati)
Finalist: Midnight. Swordfight. (Chandler Groover)
Finalist: SPY INTRIGUE (furkle)

Best Story: Birdland (Brendan Patrick Hennessy)
Finalist: Arcane Intern (Unpaid) (Astrid Dalmady)
Finalist: Cape (Bruno Dias)
Finalist: Map (Ade McT)

Best Setting: Sunless Sea (Failbetter Games)
Finalist: Beautiful Dreamer (S. Woodson)
Finalist: Chlorophyll (Steph Cherrywell)
Finalist: Neon Haze (Porpentine, Brenda Neotenomie)
Finalist: Sub Rosa (Joey Jones, Melvin Rangasamy)
Finalist: Summit (Phantom Williams)

Best Puzzles: Sub Rosa (Joey Jones, Melvin Rangasamy)
Finalist: Brain Guzzlers from Beyond! (Steph Cherrywell)
Finalist: Chlorophyll (Steph Cherrywell)
Finalist: Oppositely Opal (Buster Hudson)
Finalist: Scroll Thief (Daniel M. Stelzer)
Finalist: Toby’s Nose (Chandler Groover)

Best NPCs: Birdland (Brendan Patrick Hennessy)
Finalist: Brain Guzzlers from Beyond! (Steph Cherrywell)
Finalist: Hollywood Visionary (Aaron A. Reed)
Finalist: Midnight. Swordfight. (Chandler Groover)
Finalist: Nowhere Near Single (kaleidofish)

Best Individual Puzzle: Understanding how the RPS cannon works in Brain Guzzlers from Beyond! (Steph Cherrywell)
Finalist: Catching the fairy in Oppositely Opal (Buster Hudson)
Finalist: The Hard Puzzle in Hard Puzzle (Ade McT)
Finalist: Identifying the murderer in Toby’s Nose (Chandler Groover)
Finalist: The skull in Sub Rosa (Joey Jones, Melvin Rangasamy)

Best Individual NPC: Bell Park in Birdland (Brendan Patrick Hennessy)
Finalist: Dmitri in Midnight. Swordfight. (Chandler Groover)
Finalist: Hana in Hana Feels (Gavin Inglis)
Finalist: Winter Storm Draco in Winter Storm Draco (Ryan Veeder)

Best Individual PC: Bridget in Birdland (Brendan Patrick Hennessy)
Finalist: Martin Voigt in Darkiss! Wrath of the Vampire – Chapter 1: the Awakening (Marco Vallarino)
Finalist: Opal in Oppositely Opal (Buster Hudson)
Finalist: Toby in Toby’s Nose (Chandler Groover)

Best Implementation: Midnight. Swordfight. (Chandler Groover)
Finalist: Laid Off from the Synesthesia Factory (Katherine Morayati)

Best Use of Innovation: Laid Off from the Synesthesia Factory (Katherine Morayati)
Finalist: Aspel (Emily Short)
Finalist: Midnight. Swordfight. (Chandler Groover)
Finalist: SPY INTRIGUE (furkle)
Finalist: Sunless Sea (Failbetter Games)

Best Technological Development: Raconteur (Bruno Dias)

Best Use of Multimedia: Secret Agent Cinder (Emily Ryan)
Finalist: Sorcery! 3 (Steve Jackson, inkle)
Finalist: Summit (Phantom Williams)
Finalist: Sunless Sea (Failbetter Games)
Finalist: We Know the Devil (Aevee Bee)

XYZZY Awards ifMUD Walkthrough

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While we’re still using ifMUD as a ceremony venue for now, we know that it can be a less-than-transparent tool for new users. Joey Jones has kindly written up a condensed version of the FAQ that only deals with the stuff you’ll need for the actual ceremony. Continue reading →

Xyzzymposium 2014: Aaron A. Reed on Best Use of Innovation

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Aaron A. Reed has been attempting to be innovative with his interactive fiction for more than a decade, with occasional successes: his IF game Blue Lacuna has been widely admired by the community, and his IF-like-things 18 Cadence and Prom Week have been nominated for awards at IndieCade and IGF. He is the current organizer of the annual Spring Thing Festival of Interactive Fiction. His latest game The Ice-Bound Concordance merges explorable text, a complex NPC, and a printed art book driven by augmented reality.

The Best Use of Innovation nominees for 2014 were AlethiCorp, An Earth Turning Slowly, Hadean Lands and With Those We Love Alive. Continue reading →

Xyzzymposium 2014: Caleb Wilson on Best Setting

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Caleb Wilson has written interactive fiction such as Lime Ergot, Starry Seeksorrow, and Six Gray Rats Crawl Up The Pillow, and has published non-interactive fiction in Weird Tales, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and other journals. He is currently working on a project for Choice of Games about an 18th century musical virtuoso.

The nominees for Best Setting were 80 Days, Hadean Lands, Invisible Parties, and With Those We Love Alive.

Setting is one of my favorite things about IF. It has two meanings to me.

First, it’s the world where the fiction takes place. The four nominees for Best Setting all take place in interesting worlds, so I’ll write a bit about that.

But secondly, and this is what distinguishes a lot of IF from static fiction, setting is the world model: the nature of this created place you can roam around, comb over, backtrack through, and explore. Even without much of a narrative at all, you can still enjoy poking around a well-made world, whether it’s built of a grid of connected rooms, or links, or routes on a spinnable globe.

A simple definition of IF is fiction that includes mechanics: rules that determine how you experience the story. Taken this way, the world model of an IF is a big part of its mechanics: how the setting is laid out and what you can do there, what it feels like to navigate the world, and how this affects the narrative or gameplay. In general games are at their strongest when their mechanic matches their theme: I find that these four games all match mechanics to theme in interesting ways.

Continue reading →

Awards Ceremony 2015

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The XYZZY Awards ceremony for 2015 will be held on the ifMUD on Saturday, May 28, at 8 AM Honolulu time – or, should you inhabit a slightly more populous slice of the planet, 11 AM US-Pacific, 2 PM US-Eastern, 7 PM UK. We hope you can join us as we announce the winners.

As promised, I’ve been looking into possible alternatives to ifMUD; in that process, it has become clear that running the ceremony smoothly takes a pretty specialised setup, one which is very difficult to replicate in any kind of plug-and-play chatroom. At this point, I’m not confident about running a ceremony successfully from any of the alternative platforms I’ve looked at, and I’d rather not delay the Awards any more. I’m still very conscious that ifMUD is a difficult environment for anybody who doesn’t frequent it regularly, and I’m hoping to have a viable alternative in place by next year – even if that means recruiting a volunteer willing to build a custom platform. In the meantime, we’ll be producing a ceremony-specific guide to navigating the MUD – we don’t pretend that this is a complete solution, but we hope that it’ll help for the time being.

Voting is closed and will remain so through this week.

2015 XYZZY Awards: final round

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The finalist games of 2015 are out. Congratulations, all!

Voting in the second round is open now, and will remain so through May 14. (Edit: extended to the 20th.) Go, vote!

Best Game
Birdland (Brendan Patrick Hennessy)
Brain Guzzlers from Beyond! (Steph Cherrywell)
Hollywood Visionary (Aaron A. Reed)
Midnight. Swordfight. (Chandler Groover)
SPY INTRIGUE (furkle)

Best Writing
Birdland (Brendan Patrick Hennessy)
Laid Off from the Synesthesia Factory (Katherine Morayati)
Midnight. Swordfight. (Chandler Groover)
SPY INTRIGUE (furkle)

Best Story
Arcane Intern (Unpaid) (Astrid Dalmady)
Birdland (Brendan Patrick Hennessy)
Cape (Bruno Dias)
Map (Ade McT)

Best Setting
Beautiful Dreamer (S. Woodson)
Chlorophyll (Steph Cherrywell)
Neon Haze (Porpentine, Brenda Neotenomie)
Sub Rosa (Joey Jones, Melvin Rangasamy)
Summit (Phantom Williams)
Sunless Sea (Failbetter Games)

Best Puzzles
Brain Guzzlers from Beyond! (Steph Cherrywell)
Chlorophyll (Steph Cherrywell)
Oppositely Opal (Buster Hudson)
Scroll Thief (Daniel M. Stelzer)
Sub Rosa (Joey Jones, Melvin Rangasamy)
Toby’s Nose (Chandler Groover)

Best NPCs
Birdland (Brendan Patrick Hennessy)
Brain Guzzlers from Beyond! (Steph Cherrywell)
Hollywood Visionary (Aaron A. Reed)
Midnight. Swordfight. (Chandler Groover)
Nowhere Near Single (kaleidofish)

Best Individual Puzzle
Catching the fairy in Oppositely Opal (Buster Hudson)
The Hard Puzzle in Hard Puzzle (Ade McT)
Identifying the murderer in Toby’s Nose (Chandler Groover)
The skull in Sub Rosa (Joey Jones, Melvin Rangasamy)
Understanding how the RPS cannon works in Brain Guzzlers from Beyond! (Steph Cherrywell)

Best Individual NPC
Bell Park in Birdland (Brendan Patrick Hennessy)
Dmitri in Midnight. Swordfight. (Chandler Groover)
Hana in Hana Feels (Gavin Inglis)
Winter Storm Draco in Winter Storm Draco (Ryan Veeder)

Best Individual PC
Bridget in Birdland (Brendan Patrick Hennessy)
Martin Voigt in Darkiss! Wrath of the Vampire – Chapter 1: the Awakening (Marco Vallarino)
Opal in Oppositely Opal (Buster Hudson)
Toby in Toby’s Nose (Chandler Groover)

Best Implementation
Laid Off from the Synesthesia Factory (Katherine Morayati)
Midnight. Swordfight. (Chandler Groover)

Best Use of Innovation
Aspel (Emily Short)
Laid Off from the Synesthesia Factory (Katherine Morayati)
Midnight. Swordfight. (Chandler Groover)
SPY INTRIGUE (furkle)
Sunless Sea (Failbetter Games)

Best Technological Development
Raconteur

Best Use of Multimedia
Secret Agent Cinder (Emily Ryan)
Sorcery! 3 (Steve Jackson, inkle)
Summit (Phantom Williams)
Sunless Sea (Failbetter Games)
We Know the Devil (Aevee Bee)