So for the past year now I've been hosting a little project by the name of Swift! It's been work of passion of mine since that time, and it's definitely one of my greatest accomplishments!! I wanted to start writing about my progress here because for starters I'm autistic and it's one of my hyper-fixations, but secondly it's something that I feel is starting to grow beyond me and influence others, which I've dreamed of doing since I was little! For this entry, the info might be a little confusing, but I'll do my best to explain it in a way that everyone can understand. If you understand the television show Survivor or Total Drama Island, then it's basically that. However, I encourage you to still read as there are some key differences you might find interesting!

Swift is an online reality game where users can sign-up with a character/sona to compete alongside each other in a competition environment! Users who are competing will always play as their character they chose to signup as! Swift in specific accepts object characters, which are animate, living objects. Basically think of an object with legs, arms, and a face. These contestants tend to get very, very creative!! Here's some art of the Season 3: Amber elimination order to show you.



And then there's the case of the hosts! Naturally, as the host and only artist, I come up with my own characters to set myself apart from the rest and host under those aliases. The hosts of Season 3: Amber went by the name of Foster and Kris. Hosts in Swift are always a different species: Shapes! There's a lot of lore revolving around Shapes, Objects, and other creatures in Swift, but we won't get into any of that today. Here are the hosts of Season 3!



Swift tends to get anywhere from 100-150 signups per season, and the cast can be anywhere from 18-25 contestants per season. A season exactly what it sounds like, a series of events pertaining the cast members for a certain amount of time! Seasons typically last a few months, and are broken down into phases. At the beginning of the season, the cast is split up into teams, and are expected to do their best in order to aid their team in achieving immunity! We'll get to that later, but as teams remain this phase is known as "Pre-merge". Eventually, the cast dwindles enough to split the teams up so everyone's on their own, fighting for individual immunity rather than for their team. This phase is known as "Merge". The Merge phase sticks until Final 6, which is where it shifts to Alumni. The difference between those will be mentioned later. Alumni members are now taking these rounds more seriously, as they're the closest competitors to the Finale. The winner of the Finale wins the season, and receives a prize for it too! Got all that? Hopefully...

Competitors will move through phases by utilizing "rounds". Rounds consist of 3 different parts: Challenge, Results, and Elimination. The challenge is a prompt that tests the players ability of creativity, imagination, uniqueness, writing, and storytelling. Some challenges require different criteria to give everybody a fair shot. The contestants will submit their entries in a 2-3 day period. This entry is commonly written in their character's perspective, and their character solves the prompt in their own way. Often times this means utilizing attributes of their objects, but not always! Moving onto results, the entries will all be read and ranked by me, the host. I rank them according to how accurately they demonstrated the criteria for the challenge, and post those results. During Merge, whoever first place is will receive individual immunity from elimination. However during Pre-merge, I'll average the placements of each team, and whichever team has the lowest-placing average the whole team will be up for elimination while the other team is safe! Which gives us a perfect transition to, well, elimination! Eliminations are how the cast dwindles. Once a team, or everybody in the Merge phase, goes up for elimination they'll vote amongst each other to choose who to eliminate from the competition. This is where social planning and strategy come to play, as the contestants are given 24 hours to talk to each other and cast their votes. Everybody will be fighting to survive elimination, so it's no easy task to just "pick a target and stick with it"! Teams will argue for whoever's dragging their team down in averages, but those contestants can and will fight back! Once the votes are in, whoever has the most votes will be eliminated, and a new round will begin.

You may have seen these kinds of games before, or even competed, but what makes Swift different is it's storyline! Most competitions that I've indulged in had hardly any focus on story, characters, or worldbuilding, many of which literally taking place in a white void. I changed the formula by introducing season arcs, permanent characters, and depth to contestants as well as the world they're competing in. As a competitor, I had always wanted to share my stories, and hosting my own competition was the perfect way to do so. Tons of people have expressed genuine love for my work, and there's more people every day who want to be given the chance to compete just to experience it.

The server currently has nearly 700 members, and I only hope to see it grow! I don't know if anybody on here is gonna give a flying fuck, but I do and that's what matters. If people seem interested I'll likely post about my characters and story and whatnot, I even have a (work in progress) wiki for the game! So yeah, I might like it a little bit, not like I spent an hour writing this on a whim or anything.

Thanks for reading, here's some links in case you're interested!