9th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition

For the last nine years, the readers of the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.int-fiction have held a yearly interactive fiction competition. For fans of the old Infocom games as well as for newcomers to the genre, the competition is a chance to enjoy some of the best short adventure games available anywhere. —9th Annual Interactive Fiction CompetitionIFcomp.org)

Among the prizes are two $500 cash awards!

You can download the games for free and vote. What’s that you say — what is interactive fiction? Should you feel the need, I’d be happy to provide a much drier and stuffier version of that information.

Curse my job for consuming so many of my waking hours! Curse the light fixture that fell and smashed in my daughter’s room a few hours ago, curse the toilet for plugging, curse the little knob in my wife’s car that came off, curse all the little chores and errands and stuff I have to do, like shaving, and taking out the trash, and mowing the lawn (not that I’ve done that lately, I confess). Curse my body for requiring sleep! Curse the germs that made me sick this weekend!

Uh… sorry about that. I think what got me started on that rant was the feeling that I know I won’t have time to play as many of these games as I’d like. The judging period runs until Nov 15, after which the newsgroup rec.arts.int-fiction will be bursting with reviews, commentary, bug reports, and all that good stuff. In the meanwhile, everyone is supposed to keep their opinions about individual games to themselves, to keep the playing field level.