In a dark place. You open your eyes, and you are in a cold, dim, lonely place. Dark purple fog billowing all around. The stone floor has a faint purple glow too. The strange darkness reaches as far as the eye can see. But no, no, suddenly you can make a vague shape in the fog. It’s a person sitting in a huge throne made of rock. Her face is turned away from you, but you can tell that she’s a queen, dressed in long flowing purple garments. After a moment, she turns to face you. And that’s when you should start to get really scared. She says: “Come here, come here! Join in! Join the ECTOCOMP 2019!”
Ok here’s the deal with this. Hosted over on itch.ioECTOCOMP is a friendly annual competition for interactive fiction written for the SPOOKY MONTH OF HALLOWEENTOBER. Whether you celebrate Halloween, Day of the Dead, All Saint’s Eve, or just love ghost stories and creeping people out, this is your time to shine!
There’s some prompts over on the main site and two categories- under 4 hours or over 4 hours to write. That’s right! All you need is 4 hours to make a mini game to enter. (Of course you can make a longer game for those of you who don’t already have a large pile of WIP’s gathering space in your hard drive if you wish.) You can use what ever type of coding you want, as long as it’s interactive (so choicescript is fine.) I think this would be a great chance to get some of the writers around here creating some spooky stories for everyone to enjoy.
Submissions open from October 27th 2019 at 5:59 PM to October 31st 2019 at 5:59 PM.
Edit: I almost forgot to add, there’s also a Spanish version of this comp too!
You’re allowed to sketch/research/plan before you write, so here’s some sketchy concept art (+/- title page depending on if I can find something better. Being a <4hr game I think the idea is not to spend hours on making assets for it) for the game I’ll likely write. Anyone else planning to write something for the comp?
Ectocomp is now open for entries. Remember to get your game in by the 31st if you’re going to participate! (They have a countdown on the page due to different time zones so check that out.) Hope to see some of you there
Aww I’m sure it’d be fine to enter. The 4 hour ones are not meant to be super polished or anything. It’s just a fun comp/jam I’m glad you wrote one though!
Just a friendly reminder for anyone planning to enter, submissions close in 5 hours, 22 mins, 29 seconds. (Which is still long enough to write a quick game if you haven’t started yet! )
Looks like I was the only CS entry (I think, please tell me if I’m wrong!) but anyone looking for some spooky IF goodness can check out the entries here (English) and here (Spanish). There’s quite a bit of variety there so worth taking a look
If you have an itch.io account you can rate and comment on the entries if you wish (authors love this!), but it’s not necessary if you’d just like to wander over and have a read.
Just a reminder for anyone interested, that there are 5 days left to play and rate entries for this year’s Ectocomp. They could really use some more voters, so if you’re looking for some spooky IF I recommend taking a look and helping keep competitions like this alive!
Whether you’re looking to play as a ghost, solve a murder, explore the universe at its creepiest, or perhaps stay closer to home, there’s likely something for everyone.
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