Note: if you have already registered to enter the competition, you may go straight to the login page.
You can write your game using any language you wish and for any operating system you wish. However, your entry must receive ten votes for it to be eligible for any prizes, so you need it to be playable by as many people as possible. For this reason, the use of a language designed specifically for IF, such as TADS, Hugo, Inform, or ADRIFT, is recommended.
There are a couple of things which you need to keep in mind when writing your game. Judges will only have two hours to play your game; if you write a long game, many people will not see parts of it. In addition, given the competition's purpose to encourage short works of interactive fiction, many judges rate overly long games poorly. You may not base your game on works currently under copyright without permission from the copyright holder. Your entry cannot have been released previously, and you must be willing to give the competition and the Interactive Fiction Archive the non-exclusive right to distribute your game for free and judges the right to play it for free.
If you are going to use multimedia resources such as music, sound effects, or graphics that you did not create yourself, you must make sure that you have permission from the copyright holder to use those multimedia resources.
If you have the stamina for it, you may submit up to three entries, so long as all of your entries meet the above requirements and you follow this list of rules, which you should read.
As your game nears completion, you should have it beta-tested by several different people if at all possible. You should also write a complete text walkthrough for your game and submit it with your game. This will allow me to insure that your game is winnable before releasing it, and will let judges skip difficult puzzles if necessary. If you wish, you can submit a walkthrough for my testing purposes but not for general release to the judges.
If you wish to enter, you need to sign up by September 1st, 2011. You must also upload your game by the end of the day on September 30th, 2011. Once you have signed up and the deadline is nearing, full instructions for how to submit your game will be sent to you.
Each judge who plays your game will give it a score from 1 to 10, with 10 being the best. The final score for your game will be the average of all scores submitted for that game.
This year's organizer is Stephen Granade.