English version

by Oreolek on 29 августа, 2018

This is KRIL (rus. Competition for Interactive Fiction in the Russian language). It is a competition/festival for the Interactive Fiction games written in Russian. It’s the biggest interactive fiction contest in the Russian community; something like both IFComp and Spring Thing.

There are three nominations: the contest for original works, the translation contest and unrated festival for the free-form experiments. This page describes mostly the translation nomination.

There, the public votes for Russian translations of games in other languages. The prizes depend on how much money is donated. The donations are split between two nominations.

In short, these are the rules for the translation works:

It should be Interactive Fiction

For the purposes of this contest, that means any work that tells an interactive story using text. It can contain media but only as user interface elements or illustrations.

For example, that means roguelikes like Kerkerkruip are ok (where the player can draw the map themselves), and Nethack are not (because the player has to use the game map).

It should be free to distribute and play

No free-to-play, no ads, no demo versions, no payment options to continue playing. Also, you grant KRIL organizers a non-exclusive right to freely distribute the contest version of the game. As online games are allowed, they will be disqualified if they (or their platforms) become monetized during the competition.

It should be translated with permission from the author

That means no abandonware or pirate translations. This is why this page describes a Russian contest in English.

The translator specifies the best way to run the game

A loose translation can use a different game engine, UI or even change the input type. The translator knows how the players should run it.

The translation should be new

Means it should be the first translation to the Russian language. No old remakes, no translation projects that were released as a demo before.

No invites or suggestions to rank your game higher

It’s okay (in fact, it’s encouraged) to tell people about the contest. It’s not okay to ask for better scores.

No more than three games per year

No spamming the contest with works, any nomination.


That’s it. Now hopefully if someone asks to translate your game for a contest, you’ll have a better understanding about it and you’ll say yes :-)