I am pleased to announce that the winner of the 2008 Windhammer Prize is Al Sander for his excellent gamebook adventure, "Raid on Chateau Fekenstein". Merit Awards have been gained by Travis S. Casey for his very humorous, "An Orc's Day", and by Keiran Coghlan for his historical adventure, "Behind the Throne". If you wish to download any of these gamebooks please click on the award certificate of your choice.

Congratulations go to all of this year's winners, and also to those who submitted entries but were unsuccessful. The success of this year's competition has relied heavily on the quality of the entries forwarded and the time and energy given by this year's contestants bodes well for 2009.


Entry Requirements given for the 2008 competition

The following rules were stipulated for the 2008 competition. Some changes to these rules are being considered for the 2009 prize. Notification of the 2009 rules will be made in June of 2009 and will include a lengthy development period for authors. All entries submitted this year met the requirements listed below.

• All entries must be in English.
• All entries must be original works and not set in the world of Arborell.
• All entrants must state clearly on their entries that they are the authors of the work submitted.
• All entries must be provided in rich text format (rtf) and sent as an email attachment to entry@arborell.com.
• As this is a competition for short gamebook fiction it is required that the total length of the entry does not exceed 100 sections, or more than 40 A4 pages if printed. Having said this the entry may either be a complete stand-alone story or a self-contained excerpt from a larger gamebook adventure of your own creation. In this inaugural year of the competition it is acceptable that the work submitted can be up to three years old at the date of entry.
• The entry can be of any genre except erotica.
• As this is a gamebook competition the entry must possess at the least a simple character generation system and inventory management process.
• There is no entry fee.
• All rights remain with the author and the author may withdraw their entry at any time during the course of the competition.
• An entrant can submit only one entry.
• For reasons given below you must have a valid Paypal account if you wish to receive the cash prize. Account information is not required by the organisers of this competition unless you are the winning entrant. Only at the time of winning the prize will you be asked for your Paypal details.

Voting

The Windhammer prize is awarded on the basis of reader popularity to the entrant who receives the greatest number of reader votes. The voting system is as follows:

• A valid vote must be forwarded by email to vote@arborell.com. A valid vote must nominate the two gamebooks most favoured by the voter from the competition entrants. A vote with less than two nominations will not be accepted.
• Only one voter email is allowed per reader. All votes will be checked for duplication of email addresses.
• Feedback to the authors may be forwarded to the competition sponsors at feedback@arborell.com. All feedback given will be provided to authors at the end of competition as a part of the email notification of results.

• $100 AUD (Australian Dollars) paid within 48 hours into a Paypal account of the winner's choosing.
• A framed certificate memorialising their success in the competition.
• Two years hosting of their story on arborell.com. This hosting remains optional and is at the discretion of the winning entrant.

Prizes - Merit Awards

Two entries were also chosen for Merit Awards. These entrants received a framed certificate and a year's hosting of their entries on arborell.com. As with the hosting of the winning entry this remains optional and is at the discretion of the Merit Awards winners.