For the 2020 edition of the Spring Thing Festival, I played each choice-based game with the “short” play time label, and greatly enjoyed the variety of styles and voices among them. Below are thoughts on three notable games for me.
*Warning: The below reviews may contain spoilers!
So Are The Days by Dawn Sueoka
Appearing in the non-competitive Back Garden section, So Are The Days consists of a suite of very short experimental stories related to the concept of sand, with a sensibility to which Porpentine is the closest analog I can think of in the IF space.
The stories play with various qualities of sand, and they evoke a sense of the malleability of it, how it can represent the passage of time, and how the tiny pieces can wash away or form into something larger. One story allows the reader to move backwards and forwards as events transpire in a town, shifting how randomized occurrences from the past rewrite the story that plays out in the future. Another is a single page of text with a sort of slider at the bottom that gradually erases letters or brings them back.
Most importantly, though, a sure writing voice holds together these formal experiments by maintaining focus on the underlying themes and ideas, infusing meaning into the structures. The combination of high quality prose and interesting experimental forms results in a work that I could see getting recognition in the year-end XYZZY awards.
The Golden by Kerry Taylor
A classic short Twine story, The Golden depicts a moody, near-future setting at sunset in a beachside house, with hints toward a more symbolic, apocalyptic sunset over the world at large.
While the location and choice design, as well as the Twine stylings, are relatively bare-bones, the story builds slowly but stealthily as details are revealed piecemeal about the unsettling backdrop to a seemingly normal family life in a house by the sea. Given the current state of the real world, I relate to the mood of knowing that something is wrong yet trying to carry on as normal, like the father who pretends not to notice that the family’s food is running out.
The story’s coup de grâce occurs when the family plays a matching card game to pass the time. There is an almost grotesque variation of figures on the cards (a clown head, a little orange man, a bomb, paint spatters) that seems to grow as the game progresses. The characters’ startling realization at one point that the cards have stopped matching creates a brilliant metaphor for the loss of control; the reader senses that pretense has finally fallen by the wayside, and what the characters had hoped might be oil rigs out on the Pacific are revealed as maurauding pirate ships coming at last to claim their bounty.
Another Love Story by Hélène Sellier
The only game in the festival using the Ren’Py system, Another Love Story presents a tale of growing obsession with a mysterious figure in the wilderness. A series of photographs of open, remote places in nature accompany the story and are woven in with a suggestion that the protagonist may be taking these snapshots during their long walks, which is a nice touch.
It’s unclear to me how much the decisions affect the course of the story, but it seems as though the protagonist can make choices that either show more compassion and understanding for their live-in partner in a remote town, or drift further and further into a sort of outdoor dream world in pursuit of a shadow that becomes a lover.
The rapid pace of scenes (each is only roughly one sentence long) helps build suspense and keeps the reader hooked, though this ends up feeling a bit at odds with the vast, dreamy locations that the characters inhabit. I occasionally found myself wishing for more space for the prose, and story, to breathe. However, there is undeniably a strong sense of isolation, beauty, and mystery that permeates the story and holds interest to the very end.