Sonic Hacking Contest 2023 officially starts off its contest week
The Sonic franchise has one of the most thriving and active fan communities out there, both in terms of avid casual fans and also modders and hackers alike, so much so that the fandom has yearly events regarding fan games, mods and hacks made by the community and inspired by or created Sonic games in general, with one of these events being the Sonic Hacking Contest (SHC).
The Sonic Hacking Contest has been going strong for more than two decades now (with The Vault having archived contests since 2012), with the contest usually taking place at the beginning of October, but this year was an exception due to the release of Sonic Superstars, so in order to accommodate for the new release, the contest was pushed back a couple of weeks, and it officially starts off with its contest week today, October 23rd, with several popular Sonic-centric YouTube channels focusing on it, like Tails' Channel or SomeCallMeJohnny, which will stream all of the contest entries submitted.
The Contest Week will go from Monday, October 23rd up to Sunday, October 29th, and each submitted contest entry will be judged and given a specific based on a variety of metrics, ranging from things like Best Visuals, Best Audio, Best Level Design, Best Character Implementation, etc., to even absurd things like Most "WTF?!". The Contest is also open for the general community as well, with some entries being applicable to Community Trophies as well. There's also The Expo", which is more for exposition projects, which won't be participating in the main contest, but can still be downloaded and tried out at the same time.
Each entry can be downloaded and tested, and the community can give feedback during the week so that the authors can create patches during the week for an overall better experience with the submitted entries.
Sonic Hacking Contest website
SHC 2023 Contest Entries
SHC 2023 Expo Entries