The IF Competition was held in October of 1995 on the Usenet groups rec.arts.int-fiction and rec.games.int-fiction. The challenge was to create a short text adventure -- ideally, one which a player could finish in two hours. Authors could enter games created with either TADS or Inform, the two most popular and most portable text adventure creation systems.
This is a collection of the Inform entries, together with the interpreters needed to run them on the Macintosh. (Actually, some new versions have been released since the competition, so not all of these games are actually the versions that were voted on. But the changes are mostly bug fixes and improved description, except for "All Quiet on the Library Front", which has had a few new rooms and objects added.)
There are eight games in this folder:
All Quiet on the Library Front, by Michael S. Phillips
A Change in the Weather, by Andrew Plotkin
The Magic Toyshop, by Gareth Rees
The Mind Electric, by Jason Dyer
MST3K1: Detective, by Christopher E. Forman "and Matt Barringer"
Tube Trouble, by Richard Tucker
FreeFall, by Andrew Plotkin (*)
Robots, by Torbjoern Andersson (*)
(* FreeFall and Robots are not competition entries; they're just small demos of how silly you can get with Inform.)
Double-click on one of the games to run it. One of the games also has an introduction file (which you should read first), and a walkthrough solution file (which you should only read if you want to cheat.)
"MaxZip" is the program which actually executes the game files. If you run it, you can use the "Import Z-Code File" menu option to select a game file to run.
"ZIP" is an alternative, less fancy interpreter. If you are using System 6, or if you just don't like MaxZip, you can run these game files in ZIP by double-clicking the ZIP icon and choosing a game file when you are prompted. Note that FreeFall will run very very slowly in ZIP. (This is a bug in ZIP. MaxZip will handle FreeFall correctly.)
The Official FTP Site of the IF Competition is "ftp.gmd.de" (look in the directory "if-archive".) This site has everything a text-adventure fanatic needs: adventure creation tools (including TADS and Inform), interpreters to run various games on many different systems, articles on adventure design, and a multitude of games in many formats, both short and full-length. It also has the Inform source code for "The Magic Toyshop", "MST3K1: Detective", "FreeFall", and "Robots", should you be interested in such things.
The competition was organized by Gerry Kevin Wilson, for which we all give thanks.
Distribution notes: All of these games are freeware. However, they are not public domain. If you want to ask permission to include these games on commercial software CDs, you will have to contact the authors of the games individually. See the help information included with or inside each game.
