The recommended language for the interactive fiction games is Inform. It's a language that's been specially developed for writing text games. There's a Inform programming app that has very comprehensive documentation and examples.

So, February is learn Inform month in preparation for March's write an interactive fiction game month.

"do xxx in a month"

Porn? You want porn?

Porn? You want porn?

Oh shoot. Never even crossed my mind. Administrators, can you hope me?

I was excited about a fiction writing contest but then when I read the instructions I backed out slowly .... (because I don't understand what you all are talking about) Signed, your visitor from the 20th century

Actually it is not as hard to write interactive fiction as you'd think. Inform is a programming language, but it is written similarly to English. For example, to describe a room you might write something like:

The Study is a room. In the study is a desk. On the desk is a box. The box is closed, locked, and transparent. In the box is a pear. The pear is edible. In the study is a bookshelf. On the bookshelf is a bible. The description of the bible is "A worn copy of the King James version, owned by your grandfather and passed down to you." Instead of reading the bible, say "You no longer have much of an interest in the Word anymore."

That being said, a bit of it is complicated. That's why this is being announced in advance so that people can download the Inform program and learn how to write a story in it. I encourage you to give it a try. It's easier than figuring out Excel, I promise.

If you're not interested in writing the interactive fiction games then maybe you can participate in reading (that is, playing) them and serving as a voter/judge? Here is an example of an award-winning interactive fiction game (just press space to start, type HELP for guidance).

Oh boy oh boy oh boy. I've been waiting for an excuse to get back into learning Inform again. Now watch as I produce absolutely nothing.

I was excited about a fiction writing contest but then when I read the instructions I backed out slowly

No, no, stay excited! Just how complicated and programmy IF is is totally at the discretion of the author. People have written really complicated interactive-world type things as IF, sure, but you can also do a pretty damned cut-and-dry Choose Your Own Adventure style thing as well, doing more of a branching story than anything game-like.

If that interests you, going from raw story text to IF "program" would not be a big step, and you could probably talk a nice person into helping you along on the formatting side as well.

I am seriously considering putting together some sort of lightweight A Day In The Life of a Mefite thing next month just for kicks.

(I was just kidding, of course. Have fun with the contest!)