CHECK OUT OFFICIAL RESULTS BY CATEGORY BELOW!!!

(banner image courtesy of Jason Guest!)

Frail souls, foolish and blind, unable to see beyond what reason allows you, you deny everything that does not conform faithfully to your pitiful human logic. Here you will find chilling narratives, mournful events between everyday walls, mirrors that open to other dimensions, perhaps encounters with yourselves beyond madness. Beware, mortal fools, for you shall encounter... ECTOCOMP 2018!

ECTOCOMP is an 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 a more recent edition of this comp, try ECTOCOMP 2019!!!

Since the itch.io setup we used this year mashes both categories together on the results page, here are the official RESULTS!

LE GRAND GUIGNOL RESULTS:

1. Tales from Castle Balderstone - Ryan Veeder
2. Wretch! - CogsAndSpanners
3. ZOINKS! - Elizabeth Smyth
4. Restless - Emily Short
5. Santa Carcossa Nights - Bitter Karella
6. Night of Nights - Grim 👁️
7. Death by Powerpoint - Jack Welch
8. my own paper walls - fia glas
9. Pumpkin Night - Eleanor Hingley
10. Walk Among Us - Roberto Colnaghi
11. The Magistrate’s Chambers - Stewart C Baker
12. The Grievous Miskatonic Modus - Lynda Clark
13. Please Help Me - Phillip J Rhoades
14. Dance In Blood - Intudia

LA PETITE MORT RESULTS:

1. Moon Goon - Caleb Wilson
2. Crumbs - Katie Benson
3. Wake Up - Philip J Rhodes
4. The World the Slugs Made - Hatless
5. mESSYWITCH - bMINUS7
6. Whoah Cubs Woe - Andrew Schultz
7. The Experiment - dk5000p
8. Deliver Until Dawn - roboman

Congrats and thanks to all who participated!

As per tradition, Ectocomp has two categories:

• La Petite Mort, for those who want to speed-write their game in 4 hrs or less
• Le Grand Guignol, for games that, for whatever reason, took longer than 4 hrs to write (perhaps a more thoughtful masterpiece? perhaps spent too much time writing SCARY DETAILS?)

This competition is for games done in English and Spanish. To make hosting the comp on itch.io work, we've split Ectocomp into two separate jam pages.

You are looking at the English ECTOCOMP jam page (use the link below to change language).

Visita la versión en Español aquí: --> ECTOCOMP 2018 Español

THE RULES

1. Games submitted for La Petite Mort should be written in 4 hours or less.
   1. Any time spent planning, thinking, doodling, researching, etc does not count.
   2. Any time spent writing words or code that end up in-game totally does count. 
      1. (With the exception of if you wrote game engine or library code in the past and now you're using it.)
2. Games submitted for Le Grand Guignol could have an indefinite amount of hours into its development. Either more than 4 hours, or more than 1 week, even more than 1 month.
3. Games should be recognizably "interactive fiction". (Comp admins are not here to police edge cases, but if your game isn't primarily text-based, why are you here?)
4. Games should be, y'know, spooky somehow. (Serious, psychological, campy, satire, etc. all included)
5. You can start NOW to work on your game, but the window for submitting the games is set for the last days of October and before 31 Oct, so we can enjoy them in the proper festivities.
6. To participate properly, please choose the correct category for your game.

Go forth and write!

VOTES, FEEDBACK, AND COMMUNITY

To vote and participate as a jury, you must do so by giving between 1 to 5 stars at each entry page of the jam. The voting period ends on December 1.

Itchio doesn't allow to leave categories unvoted, so we ask you to vote with the same amount of stars to both categories. We later make separated ranked lists with each category.

In addition to each entry page, each game has its own itchio homepage. It is somewhat confusing, but it is a way of distinguishing when a game belongs to a jam.

Receiving feedback from players is an essential part of participating in a jam. Take the time leave a kind comment to the authors to thank their participation because having some good times (scary ones). There are several places where the community can meet to discuss and comment on the works presented:

• Each page of each participant has a comment section enabled, here at itchio.
• In turn, on the main page of each game, you can leave comments but only if the author has enabled this section on the page of the game.
• In the intfiction.org forum of the English-speaking international community. This thread is dedicated to ECTOCOMP.
• In the CAAD forum, of the Spanish-speaking community. This thread.
• Finally, you can talk about live games in the euphoria &if chat room.
• The euphoria chat room for the community in Spanish is called &textualiza.

Have terrifying adventures!