This year’s IFComp results were announced today, and Cyborg Arena scored 33rd out of 71, with an average rating of 6.21 out of 10.
I’m a little disappointed with the result. It’s still (barely) in the top half of the entries, but this is a lower result than either of my previous IFComp entries. I don’t think it’s a bad game, but it’s not as good as it could have been.
A lot of reviewers said that the ending is kind of abrupt, and I agree. I think this is the game’s main problem, and in fairness this is something several playtesters also said, but I made the decision not to spend time extending the game that I could have spent working on Chiron Gate. So this one’s on me.
Another piece of feedback was that the game overall is quite short. As a criticism of the game itself, I disagree with this–my vision was always for it to be an interactive short story rather than an interactive novel–but as a criticism of its fittingness for the IFComp, it’s valid. The games that do well in the comp tend to be the longer ones, ones that push up against the 2 hour limit. If I enter again with a game tailored to the comp I should plan for it to be longer.
I think another thing that might have put people off is the subject matter, which might have come across as adolescent and trashy (violent fighting cyborgs!). One reviewer used my game as an example of a lot of craft being applied to an idea that didn’t really deserve it. I was going for a Robocop/Judge Dredd type over-the-top violent satire, cyberpunk with the punk in, as I did with Industrial Accident, but maybe that didn’t come across. This is another deliberate stylistic choice I made that doesn’t make it a bad game in itself, but maybe made it not the sort of game that does well in the IFComp. As far as I can tell, winning IFComp games tend to either be more literary in their subject matter, or have a retro style and deliberately engage with historical interactive fiction.
One thing that surprised me is that a couple of reviewers read the game as a commentary on trans rights, with cyborgs standing in for trans people. This isn’t what I was going for, but I can see how you’d get there. In the opening part of the game, I have the announcer deliberately mis-name and mis-gender you (you select your gender but he calls you “it”, then select your name and he calls you by your stage name), which is inspired by the sort of microaggressions trans people suffer. But apart from that moment, I’d intended cyborgs to stand in for people being oppressed and dehumanised generally, not trans people specifically.
Anyway, although I’m disappointed about the score, I’m overall still happy with the game. I’m not planning to revise it after the comp, but I’ll take the lessons I’ve learned to my next game. Now that the comp is over, it’s joined my other games on itch.io.
The IFComp results page also has links to where you can play the games, if you want to check out the winners. I only managed to play a dozen or so of the games, but my personal favourite was Funicular Simulator, which came in 14th.