Scores and thoughts on the 2012 IF Comp

I've finished judging IF Comp now, and have played through and judged 27 out of 28 games. I've been judging games since the competition started in 1995, but in recent years have often only managed to play and judge the minimum 5 games for my votes to count, if even that. So this year's proportion judged is a big result for me. Partly it's because I kept nibbling away at the games over the judging weeks, but I also suspect it's because the games are generally shorter than in previous competitions, with fewer vastly long games that individually require a massive investment in time from the player judge. Personally I think this is a very good thing, because although as a player I like long in-depth games, I find them hard to manage in the IF Comp setting, which is better suited to shorter ones. I also tend to find that shorter games can often be better implemented than longer ones, and certainly more so than sprawling ones with vast numbers of rooms.
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