My friend, can your heart stand the shocking facts about Tales from Castle Balderstone?

See, EctoComp is an interactive fiction competition held every Hallowen. Since 2018 I have entered this event each year with an anthology text adventure featuring several tales from Castle Balderstone.

Every year, the most perversely talented authors of horror fiction meet at Castle Balderstone to terrify each other with their latest nerve-curdling stories. Every year, I am there too, because I wrote the scariest book in the English language back in 2012. And every year, since 2018 at least, I have brought you along with me to Castle Balderstone, to hear these stories—indeed, to interact with them in a text adventure parser game format.

I think the original game in 2018 won first place, the second game in 2019 took third place, and the third game in 2020 took second place. The status of the fourth entry is unknown as of this writing.