There's a full moon rising
Let's go dancing in the light
We know where the music's playing
Let’s go out and feel the night
But now it's getting late
And the moon is climbing high
Let's all celebrate
Tell our stories around the fire

Somewhat of a Neil Young's Harvest Moon mashup.

Cover image: Ida Pulis Lathrop, Still Life with Pumpkins and Onions.

ECTOCOMP is an annual competition for interactive fiction celebrating the SPOOKY MONTH OF HALLOWEENTOBER. Whether you celebrate Halloween, Day of the Dead, All Saints' Eve, or just love ghost stories and creeping people out, this is your time to shine!

This competition is open to games written in English, Spanish, French, Italian, and German, or any other language. 

You can read the rules in other languages here:

Leer las reglas en Español

Visiter les règles en Français

Lesen Sie die Regeln auf Deutsch

Leggi il regolamento in italiano

As per tradition, Ectocomp has two categories:

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

SUBTHEMES AND INSPIRATION

Additionally, here we have some optional subthemes or inspiration prompts to improve the diversity of topics and ambiances. But feel free to ignore those and send whatever you want.

• Spooky adventure! That is, the common and loved usual ECTOCOMP games. Create a game destined to creep the hell out of players.
• Sweet supernatural. Yeah, your game can be supernatural, but maybe there is no need to be creepy. Maybe your ghosts and monsters are homies and sweet.
• Halloween fest. Base your game on the Halloween festivities, overall the activity of wearing costumes and going out with friends to "trick or treat".
• Día de los Muertos. Pay your tribute to the Mexican festivity. As Wikipedia says: "Day of the Dead involves family and friends gathering to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died." To celebrate Mexican folklore and mythology.
• All Saints', which commemorates the faithful departed. That is, an occasion to talk about how we miss the people who have left us.
• All Souls' Eve, a special moment for some European countries to gather the family around the fire, eat sweet wheat porridge, and tell scary tales.
• Or any other festivities around the world, folk horror or not.

THE RULES

(The organizers reserve the right to remove games from the competition that violate any of these 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 ends up in-game totally does count. (Except for reusing a game engine or library, or code that you wrote in the past).
   3. Time spent coding the game's styling (e.g., CSS) DOES NOT count.
2. Games submitted for Le Grand Guignol could have an indefinite number of hours in their development. Either more than 4 hours or more than 1 week, or even more than 1 month.
3. ECTOCOMP games cannot be updated during the competition. Exception: if you find you have a game-breaking bug, you are allowed to fix the bug to guarantee players can complete your game. But... remember, NO UPDATES! NO POLISHING!
4. 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? Bitsies, mind you, are welcome.)
5. Games should be, y'know, spooky somehow. (Serious, psychological, campy, satire, etc., all included). Also, we have proposed some sub-themes; go and take a look at them. They are just up there!
6. Generative AI, for game text, art, or coding, is strictly forbidden for ECTOCOMP. You know, this competition is designed to be a meeting place for the community. Machines have nothing to do with it!
   
7. The tradition is to work on the games during October, but you can start working on your game any time. The games should be available on 31 October so that we can enjoy them during the proper festivities.
8. The games should be original and previously unpublished, except for previously released games that are translated to a new language for ECTOCOMP.
   
9. Presenting demos or incomplete games: We think a demo is okay as long as it is "self-contained".  That is, remove all objects that do not make sense in the context of the demo. Like the first episode of a TV show, it still has to feel like a single piece of art. Also, ECTOCOMP is a competition, not a jam, so perhaps this is not the best environment for a game that feels unfinished. Also, remember that presenting your incomplete work publicly in this or any other event could disqualify your work from future events when it's ready and finished.
10. To participate properly, please choose the correct category for your game.
11. ECTOCOMP is generally a light-hearted competition meant to have fun. If the objective of your game is to be directly offensive to any type of group or person, then you don't understand ECTOCOMP, and you shouldn't be here anyway.

If you have any questions about the rules or the event in general, you can use the community tab to post a question, or email me at rubereaglenest at proton dot me.

May the harvest be plentiful!

VOTES, FEEDBACK, AND COMMUNITY

To vote and participate as a judge, you should rate each entry you play on a scale of 1 to 5 stars on the entry's jam page. The voting period ends on November 30.

Itch.io doesn't allow to leave categories unvoted, so vote and judge the games just as normal. Later, we'll make separate ranked lists for each category.

In addition to each entry page, each game has its own itch.io 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 an interactive fiction competition. Take the time to leave a kind comment for the authors to thank them for their participation and the good times with scary stuff. 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 itch.io.
• 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 category includes the ECTOCOMP threads.
• Neo-Interactives Discord Server, an international community about Interactive Fiction: https://discord.gg/VAjGbEby68.
• The Discord server for the community in Spanish is called Textualiza. Invite link:  https://discord.gg/6cG4YAJ.
• In the CAAD forum of the Spanish-speaking community. This way.
  
• The German-speaking community meets at https://if-forum.org/.
• The Discord server for the community in Italian: https://discord.gg/GrFhtjVAGp.

ARCHIVING OF THE ENTRIES

To foster the development of a strong and perennial community of interactive fiction players and writers, the organizers of ECTOCOMP have decided to upload all submitted games to the IF Archive. This will ensure that the games will be available for future players and authors and that they will be preserved for posterity. If you do not want your game to be uploaded to the IF Archive, please let us know by checking the opt-out box in the submission form.

FAQs

Q: Can I submit my project to other jams at the same time it's submitted to ECTOCOMP?

A: Yes! As long as your project isn't published before October 1, you can submit it to as many other jams as you like.

Q: Is there a limit on how many entries I can submit?

A: No, you can submit as many as you like!

Q: Does the "no generative AI" rule include machine translation?

A: No. Because translation services that use AI tools aren’t wholesale generating new content, their use is allowed.

Q: Is NSFW content allowed?

A: Yes!

Welcome to the harvest!