Good news: Scavenger placed 3rd in the 2003 Interactive Fiction Competition, just behind Slouching Towards Bedlam and Risorgimento Represso (both very good games). My own reviews can be found on my IF page.

This year's trend seemed to be "a youth transported from our world to a magical fantasy land". This could be found in the games Curse of Manorland, Sweet Dreams, Sophie's Adventures, Risorgimento Represso, and A Paper Moon. IF Comp trends are always interesting simply because the games are developed independently, in nearly all cases without any knowledge of the other games being created.

Some sub-trends:

• The PC is a young girl (4): Curse of Manorland, Sweet Dreams, Sophie's Adventure, Shadows On The Mirror
• Research facilities (2): Scavenger & Bio
• Pure puzzle games (2): The Recruit & The Erudition Chamber
• Takes place in an office (2): CaffeiNation & Episode in the Life of an Artist (I won't count The Adventures of the President of the United States even though it starts in the Oval Office)
• Games where you learn to cast spells (2): Sophie's Adventure & Domicile

Just finished playing all of the 2003 IF Comp games. More or less. There were several I did not play to completion because I just couldn't bring myself to try them any longer than I did. I also managed to get all 30 pics matched up on the Competition 2003 Drawings page, though with 3 of them I had to guess because I didn't get far enough into the game to see the relevant scene.

J. Robinson Wheeler put together this gallery of images inspired by all of the IF comp games of 2003 (including my entry, Scavenger). Excellent work! The best thing is how many of the picture reflect the tone of their matching game. I've played 13 so far, so I've only been able to match about half of the pics at this point.

http://www.moorelies.com/