Those good folks at Adventure Gamers have spotted an important event in the interactive fiction world that we missed - the XYZZY Award winners for 2005!

As AG points out: "Leading the pack with four of the ten awards was Jason Devlin's Vespers - a monastery-set game with multiple endings - which was also the winner of this year's Annual Interactive Fiction Competition, while group effort Beyond triumphed in the "best story" and "best individual puzzle" categories."

Personally, we kinda enjoy the idea of Tough Beans, by Sara Dee, for which, as a recent review explains: "Tough Beans does a better job of describing a day where everything just goes wrong than does Son of a...(another entry in this year’s competition). The story hints at something deeper." We like it when things go wrong! Also, apparently, points in the game [MINOR SPOILER ALERT!] "...are awarded in situations where Wendy shows some backbone, spunkiness, cleverness, etc." Which is conceptually neat.