The cover image of Who Whacked Jimmy Piñata?, showing a Polaroid of Jimmy Piñata hanging from a noose. The Polaroid is nestled among a scattering of Jimmy's spilled candy innards.

IFComp 2025 Results

The IFComp results are in – announced through an online awards ceremony about a week ago – and Who Whacked Jimmy Piñata? has taken 12th place: my best ever result (by a modest margin).

A screenshot of the competition results for Who Whacked Jimmy Piñata?, showing that it came in joint 12th place with a score of 7.13 out of 10. This was based on 45 votes cast, with a standard deviation of exactly 1.

At 50,000 words in length, this was my second largest ever work of interactive fiction, and easily the largest parser work specifically. Given how much effort went into it, I’m incredibly pleased with the result. As nice as it would have been to crack the IFComp top ten, I kind of appreciate that I can keep that goal for next year. I’m not exactly running out of worlds to conquer here, but reaching the top ten feels like something that I can realistically shoot for with an ambitious enough game. Aiming for top five or number one essentially becomes a bit of a lottery, with the highest rated games needing to average a score somewhere north of an eight out of ten. At that point success seems less a matter of wowing judges (since the critical consensus is already “this is just about perfect”) and more a matter of hoping that a handful of low outlier votes don’t scupper your chances.

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New Game: Who Whacked Jimmy Piñata?

This one has been a long time coming! If you’ve been following me on Mastodon or happened to catch my write-up of last year’s event, you’ll already have known that my entry to Interactive Fiction Competition 2025 would be Who Whacked Jimmy Piñata?, the third entry in my series of Bubble Gumshoe mysteries. And if you didn’t know that already, you know it now!

The cover image of Who Whacked Jimmy Piñata?, showing a Polaroid of Jimmy Piñata hanging from a noose. The Polaroid is nestled among a scattering of Jimmy's spilled candy innards.

To give a little more background, IFComp is the world’s largest interactive fiction competition – it’s been called the “Super Bowl” of IF – and I’ve been entering every year since 2019. Often my entries have been rather experimental, a few have been deliberate attempts to win the coveted Golden Banana of Discord (with one success), and last year I managed to make it into the top twenty with Quest for the Teacup of Minor Sentimental Value, which was an attempt to win the Golden Banana but Springtime For Hitlered its way into the winners’ circle.

Who Whacked Jimmy Piñata? is a much more traditional entry, being a work of parser-based interactive fiction of the sort you might recognise if you were around in the ’80s playing Zork or Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game. You play by typing in commands such as “EXAMINE TYRE IRON” or “ASK OFFICER BAGEL ABOUT SUSPECTS” or “LICK CORPSE,” and the game returns an appropriate response for (hopefully) any reasonable course of action.

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Finding Beauty Again

Flash Fiction Month 2025, Day 31

Challenge #14: Write a story that inverts an element of the previous story.

The stag stood majestically on the crest of the hill, antlers aglow with the golden light that filtered filtered through the dramatically rolling clouds above.

“Ew,” said Skagnar the Vile, resisting the urge to barf all over the ground. “Cringe.”

He hurried away through a patch of thick woodland, shielding his eyes from the foliage-covered boughs that played in the gentle breeze overhead.

“Get lost!” he snapped at a fluffy little bunny that hopped across his path, punting it into the distance with his grimy boot.

Drawn by the noise, a pack of wolves emerged from the undergrowth, fixing him with their noble gaze.

“You too!” he yelled, taking the opportunity to flip them off vigorously with both middle fingers. “Go back to whatever furry convention you crawled out of!”

So busy flipping off the wolves was Skagnar the Vile that he didn’t realise he was walking directly towards a large hole in the ground.

He awoke several hours later covered in cockroaches, with rats chewing on his horribly mangled legs.

“Ye gods…” breathed Skagnar the Vile, tears welling in his eyes. “There is still beauty in the world!”

–

188 words

I saw today’s challenge right after finishing yesterday’s story, and was initially kicking myself for writing something that made it so hard to revisit the same setting and character. But then I realised that I could make those the things that I inverted, and suddenly the challenge was very, very easy. This marks the end of my 14th consecutive Flash Fiction Month, and the second in a row where I’ve managed to post every single story on the literal day it was expected (where in previous years I’ve typically finished at least a few of them well after midnight). I’ve now written 434 stories for this event alone!

If you’ve enjoyed this story, you can find my work from previous Flash Fiction Months collected in these books:

OCR is Not the Only Font Cover REDESIGN (Barbecued Iguana)Red Herring Cover (Barbecued Iguana design)Bionic Punchline eBook CoverOsiris Likes This Covercarview.php?tsp=carview.php?tsp=carview.php?tsp=carview.php?tsp=Neon Genesis Existentialism CoverForce of Habit CoverBig Shoes To Fill CoverOh God This Is My Life Now Covercarview.php?tsp=

Click any cover to find that book in your choice of format.

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Finding Beauty

Flash Fiction Month 2025, Day 30

Kathkarna observed the creature. The creature observed back. The archives recorded a majestic mammal with bony protuberances upon its skull, but though the animal before her had a superficially similar appearance, it was certainly an insect. The structures on the head were not antlers but antennae, and though it walked upon four legs there was a further pair of forelimbs that were presumably not used for locomotion but for grasping and manipulating food. The light gleamed off its chatoyant carapace as it loped gracefully across the wasteland. This was not beauty. It was merely an example of convergent evolution: some hardy organism filling a niche left wide open by one of the countless species lost to the Thirty Seconds’ War.

Nevertheless, the insect might yet prove useful. It had never had any occasion to become fearful of humans, so Kathkarna followed it easily, seeing where it would lead her. She soon found that its path led towards what initially appeared to be a low mesa, but ultimately proved to be a stand of trees growing around the periphery of a 100-kiloton crater. The trees, Kathkarna thought, might satisfy the archivists that there was still beauty on the surface. However, as she drew closer still she found that these were not trees but ferns that had grown to tremendous proportions, likely competing with one another for light in the absence of any other large vegetation. This genetic arms race, she imagined, might have been accelerated by an increased incidence of point mutations due to the heightened background radiation of the past several centuries. Whatever sequence of events had produced them, the towering ferns swaying in the breeze were not beauty. Continue reading →

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As Good as a Wink

Flash Fiction Month 2025, Day 29

Challenge #13: Write a story that features a made-up idiom.

“It’s just like they say…” Tom “Tommy” Thompson cocked his six-shooter. “Don’t eat the biscuit if you can’t outrun the baby.”

“What?” asked “Punchup” Pancho Duggan, still reaching for the skies.

“Hang on.” Tommy scratched his head with the barrel of his gun. “What I mean is: you can’t eat your turtle and play the clarinet.” Continue reading →

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Girth Loinhammer and the Annals of History

Flash Fiction Month 2025, Day 28

“Okay. Yikes.” The head goblin slave stared around the throne room, entirely unsure what to make of it. “Are we running the dungeon…differently…now? Because if so I really would have appreciated a heads-up.”

“What?” Girth Loinhammer—Dungeon Lord—paused his work to look at him. “No, we’re running the dungeon just the same as ever. The difference is that now we’ll be chronicling it as well.”

“O…kay,” said the head goblin slave. “Why?”

“Well…” Girth considered how best to explain his thinking. “You know how we run a respectable evil dungeon?”

“Yes,” said the head goblin slave, after just a moment’s hesitation.

“And you know how so many of the people who venture into its depths seem to be under the impression that we are running a different kind of dungeon?”

“Yes,” said the head goblin slave, after no hesitation whatsoever. He’d had to usher five oiled-up barbarians out the side entrance just that morning. Continue reading →

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The Fisherman and the Golden Flounder

Flash Fiction Month 2025, Day 27

There once was a fisherman who lived with his wife in a hovel on a barren coast. The sea there was not fruitful, and more often than not the couple’s daily meal would consist merely of whatever the wife could scrounge up from the sparse woods a short way inland. Even when they had a fish, it would be flavourless and bony, doing little to improve the thin stew they shared.

Thus, it was a great surprise one day when the fisherman reeled in a plump flounder with scales of gold. But this surprise was nothing compared to the sheer amazement of hearing it speak, just as he was about to strike it with the priest.

“Spare my life,” said the flounder, “and I will grant you three wishes.” Continue reading →

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Killing a Little Time

Flash Fiction Month 2025, Day 26

Challenge #12: Write a story set in one of the decades of David Bowie’s career. It must include a song (though not necessarily one of Bowie’s) from the decade chosen, and optionally may include another musical artist from that decade as a cameo. As a final, optional element, the story must either be named after or include the title of the David Bowie song provided as an example from that decade.

This story is set in the 2010s, for which the example Bowie song was Killing a Little Time.

There is a beast in the sandwich aisle of the small Tesco. Its number is 22.

A group of teenagers stand by the bags of Doritos, watching it cautiously. One of them clutches a two-litre bottle of Coke like a club.

An old lady steps past them and pushes the beast to one side, grabbing a chicken wrap. She raises a cheeky eyebrow at you as she returns, as if to ask why you’re still waiting.

“Sorry,” you mumble, as you step by the teenagers as well. You stretch your arm past the beast—careful not to touch it—and end up with a BLT, completing your lunch with items from farther down the aisle. It doesn’t go through as a meal deal when you pay. Continue reading →

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MEANWHILE, AT THE SOCIETY OF RECTITUDE

Flash Fiction Month 2025, Day 25

“I’d like to introduce a new addition to our superhero team.”

There were groans from all around the cafeteria.

“Great! Just what we need!” sighed Tsar Kazm.

“We let in Ultinor the Definitive just last week!” shouted Irony Man.

“Yippee!” cheered Captain Redundancy.

“I’m beginning to think we should have set some kind of membership cap,” said Commissioner Hindsight.

Captain Caulk put his hands out in a gesture of conciliation. “Come on, settle down. It isn’t easy being new: let’s try and be nice.”

“Okay,” said Ensign Here. “Who’s the new guy?” Continue reading →

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From Korea With Love

Flash Fiction Month 2025, Day 24

Challenge #11: Write a thriller/spy story involving an escape or escape attempt. It must also include a random setting, character, and plot twist determined through dice rolls. Optionally, it must include an additional element determined by die roll.

My random setting, character, and plot twist were “boat,” “criminal,” and “someone drops an incendiary device” respectively. My random additional element was “K-pop.”

“Ow ow ow ow ow!!!” yelped George Bont as his trouser leg suddenly caught fire.

Colonel Moon rushed over to the captured super-spy and sprayed him with an extinguisher. “What was that???” he demanded, once the immediate crisis was over.

“I wash trying to cut through my reshtraints with my laysher watch,” explained Bont, George Bont, “but it didn’t work out quite ash I’d planned.”

“This is why I’m not paying a two billion won ransom,” said Mrs. Cashcoin, via the big screen on the wall of Colonel Moon’s gigantic boat-based supervillain lair.

Colonel Moon looked from the slightly-scorched secret agent to his tight-fisted boss. “One billion won?” he suggested. Continue reading →