In which I list and reflect on all the IF works I released in 2024!
My first release of the year (January) was written for Shufflecomp 2023. (You Can’t) Escape the Unholy City is honestly one of my least favorite IF works I’ve made, to the point that I hid it from my Itch page because I don’t want more people to play it! I had been wary about signing up for Shufflecomp because the conceit—receive a random playlist of songs submitted by other participants, then write a game based on one or more of those songs—didn’t seem like it would work for me. But I have FOMO, so I signed up anyway, deciding it couldn’t hurt to try. Turns out… it did not, in fact, work for me. I didn’t get any good ideas, but I didn’t want to drop out, so in the end I wrote this game based on a literal, surface-level combination of my two favorites of the songs I’d received. I put in branching, customized the appearance, and polished it up as much as possible, but I was not happy with it, and in the comp it got a deserved 10th place out of 15 games. It was a good learning experience, though: when Shufflecomp 2024 came around, I did not sign up!
In January I also released Blood and Company for the Queer Vampire Jam, which in contrast to the previous game is one of my favorite things I wrote last year. Like Structural Integrity from 2023, this was another short fiction adaptation, based on the first scene of my short story “Blood Play” from Unthinkable: A Queer Gothic Anthology. The story is from Lyle’s POV, but in the game Zach (the vampire) is the player character, and I very much enjoyed revisiting their meeting from his perspective and exploring all the different ways it could have gone. This one has become my most popular game on Itch, and it’s been gratifying to see other people enjoy it!
My next release was I’ll Drive (February), which adapted a previously unpublished work, a short screenplay draft I’d written a while before and then didn’t know what to do with. The Smoochie Jam gave me the inspiration to rework it as IF; I kept the script format and the overall narrative and tone, but did a lot of new writing and added some choices for what the main character does at certain moments, making it basically a customizable rom-com (plus I transed the MC’s gender!). I was happy to see this story finally gain an audience in its new format; it’s now tied with last year’s POV: You’re… as my second most popular Itch game.
I learned about the eighth annual Strawberry Jam (a comp for horny games made during February) shortly before it commenced, and for some reason… decided to enter?? I was hecking nervous about it, on multiple levels, the main one being that my entry, Blood and Intimacy, was a piece focused on two asexual characters who do not have sex. BUT it was actually a really good experience. I got some nice comments from other jam participants, and the game came in 11th place out of 75 in the Narrative category—which isn’t super impressive or anything, but still made me happy. Mainly, though, I’m really glad to have written something about physical intimacy between ace characters, one of whom is AFAB nonbinary (like me!). So much media—mainstream and indie, queer and straight—portrays penetrative sex as peak physical intimacy. I wanted to write something about characters who don’t want that, but who explore physical intimacy in their own way, a way that’s just as sexy and meaningful to them. I’m really glad I wrote B&I, and writing it made me want to write more in that vein, so… expect an entry from me by the end of the month in Strawberry Jam #9!
My third game released in February (damn, I was busy the first two months of 2023) was A Collegial Conversation, which was written for SeedComp. I immediately loved the “change POV every link” seed, and got an idea for it using pre-existing characters: Yaan and Kel from Structural Integrity and several of their antagonists. When I published the game I was quite happy with it; I’d put in a lot of work—doing many rounds of editing on the writing, spending a lot of time on the UI (I don’t want to think about how much I had to fight Twine Harlowe to set up those big names at the bottom of each page…), and getting feedback from several playtesters—and I was proud of the result. But… the game bombed in SeedComp. For one thing, the comp didn’t get a lot of attention, so not that many people actually played the game or voted in the award polls. But most who did play it didn’t particularly like it. And that was discouraging; unlike with (You Can’t), I’d been confident in the strength of this piece and expected a much better reception. But! Two people who played and reviewed it did quite like it, which has saved it from feeling like a total failure. I haven’t revisited it myself since publishing it, but eventually I would like to in order to see if I think it’s a fundamentally flawed work, or just not for everyone. But I don’t feel ready for that quiiiiite yet.
In March I published two very small works, tiny ratopia and Kel (2024, words on screen), both written for the Revival Jam. I don’t have much to say about these besides that I enjoyed making them and received some nice comments, and that it was cool to feel like I was retroactively participating in some long-gone IF community events.
Next was Him (and Us) for the Dialogue Jam in April. I had started this one in Twine a while before, but quickly got overwhelmed by all the branching and gave up. When Dialogue Jam came around, I shifted it into Ink at someone’s suggestion, and writing it there went way smoother. This is another one that features pre-existing characters, this time Heron and Theomer from my novella Dirt-Stained Hands, Thorn-Pierced Skin. I really liked this jam’s constraint, as dialogue is one of my favorite things to write, and I enjoyed conveying the two characters’ emotions solely through their words (or lack thereof). I really wasn’t sure if other people would enjoy experiencing it, or if the lack of context would make it too confusing for people to connect with, but I’ve gotten positive feedback on it, and having replayed it recently, I remain happy with how it turned out.
These next ones don’t really count, but for the sake of completeness: in May I entered three works in the Really Bad IF Jam. I used this jam as an excuse to try out three programs/tools I hadn’t used before, Bitsy, Ren’Py, and Josh Grams’s Ink VN template. All three games were very silly, and… people had fun with them. There was something freeing about just being absolutely absurd and not trying to make something good, which apparently resulted in work that people found amusing/entertaining.
Later in May I released Blossom, NY for the Locus Jam. Here I got to pull one of my other interests into my IF-making, local history! I had to wrestle a bit with Twine to get the images working (man am I glad that I typically write text-only IF), but overall putting it together was fun and satisfying, and the people who played it said nice things!
In June I published three games for the Neo-Twiny Jam. The first two were a pair, Yaan Versus the Party and Kel Versus the Kitchen. I’d started what became Yaan Vs. sometime the year before, but stalled out and never finished. I decided to revive it for NTJ with the added challenge of keeping it under 500 words… and once it was done, well, I had to write a companion piece starring Kel. For both of these I had the goal of making tiny choice-based puzzlers, with win and fail states, and I was happy to succeed and see people have fun playing them. After replaying them recently, I do think they’d both be better if they were expanded a bit; the word count limit made for a good challenge, but not necessarily for the best games. But that’s okay, since my focus was on working within the constraint rather than making something amazing.
Bluebeard’s Not-Wives, my third Neo-Twiny entry, was inspired by the Bluebeard Jam and Trans Representation Jam happening concurrently. I chatted with some friends about the confluence on Discord, and ended up with an actual game idea! Although, this one is really not a game, being a completely linear story with just “click to continue” links. I felt a bit like I was breaking a rule by writing it that way, and wondered if people would dislike the lack of interactivity—only to have it end up as my fifth most popular game on Itch. The reason it has no choices is that they just didn’t fit with the idea; I love exploring different ways things could happen, different choices a character could make that take them on different journeys, but this one was always only a single story: a trans subversion of the Bluebeard tale with a happy ending. Reading the original story as I pondered an idea for the jam had gotten me wondering, “Why does everyone hate this guy just for having a blue beard??” And then I remembered the human tendency to fear those who are different, and knew that Bluebeard was not going to be the bad guy in this version.
How Dare You, my fourth June release, started out as a parser adaptation of my 2023 Twine game Cycle. I’d begun working on it sometime in 2023, vaguely thinking I might enter it in Spring Thing ‘24, but after a bit I lost steam and put it aside. When the Love/Violence Jam came around, I wanted to write something for it but wasn’t quite hitting on an idea… until I realized this game was the perfect fit. The original version I’d started had the same time loop conceit that Cycle does, but when I picked it back up I realized that was just getting in the way and scrapped it. Reviews of this one were somewhat mixed, but it’s by far my most popular parser game on Itch, and currently my eighth most popular on Itch overall. I’m not sure how I feel about it; I’m glad it lands for some people, but I can see why it wouldn’t for others.
The Approach (July) was next, this one written for the Anti-Romance and Single-Choice jams. Yet again it was a draft I’d started the year before—for the 2023 Single-Choice jam—and given up on. When the 2024 iteration came around I opened it back up, and somehow it came together this time. It’s another one featuring Tiel and Heron, so having them on the brain after How Dare You probably helped. It’s short and does what I wanted it to, and is my seventh most popular Itch game.
In September I wrote another non-fiction game for the Anti-Productivity Jam. The Swormville Sweep is a historical puzzle made in Google MyMaps, and man this one was fun to create. Not a lot of people have played it, as far as I know, but those who have have said they enjoyed it.
Next was No More, released in October for EctoComp. I’d gotten the idea for it over the summer and thought about trying to make it in under four hours for the comp’s La Petite Mort division, but I wanted to jump in and start playing around without worrying about a time limit. And I’m glad I did it that way, because this took WAY more than four hours to make. Lots of writing and editing, revising content and structure, multiple rounds of playtesting, lots of getting Inform guidance from those wiser in its ways than I. I definitely grew my Inform skills working on this project, and the result was a work that I felt was quite solid, both as parser IF and as a piece of horror writing (people can experience it solely as the latter thanks to Drew Cook’s story mode extension). I had hoped it had a chance of doing well in the comp, so I was a bit disappointed with the result—tied for 9th place out of 18 entries in its division. But comments and reviews have been positive, and it’s gotten several nominations in the 2024 IFDB awards (including Outstanding Game of the Year!). So I definitely consider it a success.
Finally, I published my third historical nonfiction work, The Uncle Sam Atrium, in November for the Educational Jam. I finally broke out Ren’Py again after making a purposely bad game in it; I’d been thinking that it would be perfect for a nonfiction work like this, and it was! I struggled a bit to figure some things out, but got there in the end, and making this was a good excuse to hyperfocus on a research project for a bit during a month full of depression and fear.
I may write a followup post to this one doing some overall reflecting on audience/reception and my evolution as an IF writer, but for now, I’ll sum up by saying that 2024 was a year of challenging myself, taking risks, and writing pieces that were unapologetically me. And that feels pretty good.