Rewinding to 2014 Shufflecomp Four questions for commended authors

In 2014, Sam Ashwell conceived of and organized a competition for interactive fiction in which authors wrote IF that was inspired by songs sent to them by other participants. Players could vote for com­mendation with either a yes or no, and the top 30 percent of entries with the greatest proportion of yes votes to total votes made the final list of commended works.

The 2014 event was a huge hit, with 33 IF works produced from more than 50 intents. The quality of IF was, perhaps surprisingly, high given the short writing period. As they say, the crowd wanted more, and ShuffleComp: Disc 2 was started in mid-March with me taking over as organizer.

With Disc 2 under way, I decided to look back at last year's event by posing the same four questions to the authors of last year's commended entries. The questions covered game design as well as whether or not newly-discovered songs and artists had a lasting influence on the listening habits of the authors:

Q1: What was one thing that you really liked about your entry, and why?

Q2: What one thing didn't seem to work so well, and why?

Q3: What three games in the 2014 ShuffleComp did you particularly enjoy or think were interesting?

Q4: If you discovered any artists from the 2014 ShuffleComp that you continue to listen to, who were some of them?

I managed to contact all 10 of the authors and received replies from eight:

Caleb Wilson, 'Holy Robot Empire'

A1: My favorite thing about Holy Robot Empire is the two songs – it was really fun writing alternate robot- and IF-themed versions of "The Doxology" and "Ave Maria." There's one puzzle I like a lot too: one reviewer called it "insidious" and another reviewer thought it was a sign of my own ignorance of civilized be­havior. Overall, I liked that this competition got me back into writing IF after a break of about 10 years – I came across the announcement at the perfect time.

A2: I could have brought more intention to the design. I created the map and puzzles mostly intuitively, adding and adjusting pieces until it felt right.In the end everything worked OK, but I probably could have made all the parts a little more harmonious with better plan­ning or better revising. I know how to revise prose, but meaningfully revising IF is still a little beyond me.

A3: "Invisible Parties," "Cryptophasia," and "The Peccary Myth."

A4: I'll listen to the song "Robot High School" by My Robot Friend occasionally.

Carolyn VanEseltine, 'Monkey and Bear'

A1: I really liked the binary sequences in "Monkey and Bear." The people who took the time to decrypt them seemed to get a huge kick out of that element.

A2: The sheer repetitiveness of the game (if you failed to win on the first pass) didn't work very well. The game was originally supposed to have much more variation during the village sequences, and I wish I'd gotten that in.

A3: "Cryptophasia," "Light My Way Home," and "Sequitur."

A4: The Gabe Dixon Band and Wolfmother. (I'd encountered Wolfmother before Shuffle­comp, as they had six songs in "Rock Band," but "Colossal" was the song that made me really sit up and take notice.)

Hanon Ondricek, 'Groove Billygoat'

A1: The one thing I liked? I think my favorite part was writing stuff for Betsy to do. The concept of this uncompromisingly jaded little 6-year-old orphan who has no concept of subtext or subtlety or blending into the plot cracks me up to no end.

A2: The thing that didn't work ... I suppose the fight with the multicolored thugs confused a lot of people. ClubFloyd worked so hard on it without the hints. I also should have allowed a shortcut through the dance after the player completes it the first time.

A3: I was happy someone picked my suggestion of "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" (50 Shades of Jilting) because that so obviously screamed for either a one-move game or an escape the room type of thing. I also remember "Monkey and Bear" because I tested it, and I had great fun adding the Bear's unsaid dialogue into the transcript (very much likely to Carolyn VanEseltine's chagrin "DANCE WITH ME, MY LITTLE MONKEY FRIEND!") I am surprised now that I didn't play a lot of these...I think I finished "Groove Billygoat" and stepped off the Shufflecomp bus and immediately right onto the IFComp shuttle. Oh, I did admire "Invisible Parties" a lot when I read the source code for it.

A4: I actually *did not* really discover any specific music that became part of my minuscule box of stuff I like...I did have to binge watch a lot of Joanna Newsom on YouTube playing harp because I couldn't figure out if she was for real or not. My tastes are so very picky. On the rare occasion I have music playing when I work, I just want inspiring noise without lyrics. I liked "The Juliet Letters" and I like Portishead and I like Macy Gray and I like some Maroon 5 and I usually like most classic rock.

I have no idea what will grab me at any given moment. The games I did sample I usually did not know the music and therefore didn't connect it. Like I said, my experience when that comp went up was pretty much, "OK, I'M DONE NOW I HAVE TO BUILD SOMETHING ELSE BYE!"

Juhana Leinonen, 'Sparkle'

A1: I'm pretty happy that I managed to make something coherent with a nonstandard gameplay element in that short period of time. It was also a good opportunity to try out the new version of Inform 7 that had just come out.

A2: The game's setting is an abandoned hotel. One of the locations is a corridor that leads to several of the hotel's guest rooms. They are inaccessible except for one of them that can be entered using a key found elsewhere. Designing that part took several iterations and testing, and it still doesn't work quite as smooth­­ly as it should. Communicating the idea that most of the doors are just scenery isn't very easy. If I had to do that part again, I'd just make the whole area with the guest rooms inaccessible and place the plot-important things somewhere else.

A3: I liked "Little Bird" in all its absurdness, also "The darkness of mere being" with its fast-moving "War of the Worlds" style setting, and "Tea and Toast," which has a certain zen-like presence to it.

A4: As a song, the one I used as inspiration for the game isn't really the genre I'd otherwise enjoy listening, but from the big list of all songs submitted to the comp, I have listened to Peter Gabriel from time to time.

Caelyn Sandel, 'Light My Way Home'

A1: It felt like I really nailed the mood. I wanted the game to feel lonely and contemplative and a little bit magical, and I feel that I managed to create that atmosphere effectively. Having a relatively polished game helped with that. I rarely write parser IF, so I was a bit nervous about implementation and polish, but I'm happy with how clean it turned out to be.

A2: I'm not actually that good at writing puzzles, particularly for parser IF, and I think that showed here. The puzzles felt somewhat contrived, but I felt obligated to have them and to make them work with my limited coding capacity. People still seemed to like them well enough, though.

A3: "Cryptophasia," evocative, colorful, and well-designed, this weird game really gripped me even if it wasn't too much of a “game.” It reminded me of Porpentine's work, in a good way. "Monkey and Bear," a parable about free will, with the lyrics of the inspired song seamlessly intertwined with the story. The twist ending is kind of inexplicable, but otherwise a great piece. "An Earth Turning Slowly," a compelling story with a clean presentation, wasn't deeply striking, but it was implemented really well and a good read.

A4: I didn't, sorry!

Matt Weiner, 'Tea and Toast'

A1: I think the thing I liked most about "Tea and Toast" is that it gives you some ordinary things to do without making them into puzzles or getting boring or linear. I mean, the thing I really like the most is that the characters (I think) came off the screen a bit, and that my system for triggering memories succeeded, but none of that would have worked if the actual process of making tea and toast were buggy or excessively fiddly or hard to figure out or too linear.

A2: I would've liked there to be a sense that your memories change and evolve given what you do and what you remember, and I'm not sure that came across. A big part of this is that I just couldn't write as many memories as I'd have liked. But also I tried to have some systems to shuffle the memories and I'm not sure that they did anything effective in the end. Also, I tried it out on some non-IF people and they uniformly hated the parser and couldn't deal with the game at all. That made me sad.

A3: I really liked "An Earth Turning Slowly," "Monkey and Bear," and "Holy Robot Empire." HRE was a cool old puzzlefest with a nice setting and sense of humor, "Monkey and Bear" was an eerie tale that really felt like what a Joanna Newsom song would be if it were a text game, and AETS would make this on the setting alone, or story alone, or interface alone—I'd really like to see more done with that system.

A4: It's a bit hard because I usually listen fanatically to instrumental music, which was underrepresented on the playlist for some reason, but Animal Collective and The Avalanches.

Nigel Jayne, 'Sequitur'

A1: I really tried to add dimension to the characters and suggest a divide between the player and the PC. The detective isn't really smart or even interested in what he is doing. He isn't an alcoholic, though he likes gambling. He's divorced and estranged with his daughters. Jenny isn't perfect. She's intelligent, but not necessarily attractive (at least according to the detective). She is more than just a hint dispenser. She has a history and readily responds to questions, including looking things up on the Internet. She initiates many of her own actions. I like the "role reversal" at the end of the game where Jenny leaves her wheelchair, but the detective ends up in it. It suggests a promising future for her but maybe not for him. I also tried to suggest that the player was a distinct entity, independent of the detective. The game is in third person and never says that the detective actually types anything, except when he's checking sports scores. The "Sequitur" program responds directly to the player's commands. Of course, this illusion can't be pulled off completely – the player needs to ask Jenny questions through the detective – but the idea is there. I also tried to give the people in the footage some personality, and in later releases of the game players can ask Jenny to look up biographical information on them.

A2: I think players may have had problems with the interface and figuring out what exactly was going on. I don't think the interface was really a problem; there are a lot of commands, and they will allow you to do what needs to be done. I think, though, it's deceptively complicated because there are a lot of them and, sometimes, you may need to use a combination of commands to do what you want. So a real issue may have been fitting the footage together logically, which was the point of the game! I think there may have been too many tracks, and having two sequences may have been confusing. In later releases, the detective points out when a link is made, which should help players feel like they are making progress, and he comments on how the footage fits together, which may help players get a feel for how they should try to think.

A3: I really liked the way the artist and song were integrated into "Groove Billy­goat" and, accordingly, the singing and dancing aspects of the game. I liked the story and interface of "An Earth Turning Slowly." I liked the idea behind "Illumin­ate," but it did need a little something more. I didn't play "Invisible Parties" during the playing period, but I really liked the post­comp release, so I guess it technically shouldn't make this list.

A4: The Aquabats, Architecture in Hel­sinki, Jim's Big Ego and The Mountain Goats.

Yoon Ha Lee, 'Mirrorwife'

A1: I enjoyed being able to set a mood that was so different from the in-your-face balladry of the source song. (Emily Short really said it best in her review of the game!) Playing the song straight would have been too easy and not very interesting, plus I enjoy melancholy/spooky/surreal settings, so twisting it in that direction was a lot of fun.

A2: I'm still very inexperienced in using Twine as a medium. (I had previously only coded a tiny exercise and a very brief, um, slash math erotica game, also tiny, more as a joke than anything else.) I got the impression from reviewers (and I agree) that "Mirrorwife" didn't really give a sense that the player was affecting the outcome – even to me it feels very static, like a mood is being experienced rather than the player is protagging their way through the game. Partly this was due to my decision to make the game very small code-wise, but partly lack of knowledge in how to leverage CYOA-style structures to give the player a sense of agency.

A3: My favorites of the ones I had time to play were "More" by Jason Dyer, "Tea and Toast" by Matt Weiner, and "The Peccary Myth" by Pergola Cavendish. Ca­veat: I was a playtester for "The Peccary Myth," so I experienced it rather more thoroughly.

A4: No, alas. I am picky/eclectic in my music tastes. But I enjoy venturing out from under my rock once in a while!

#compshufflecomppostmortem