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.

The 2019 IFComp marks its 25th anniversary with a record number of entries ranging in scale, format, and theme. After playing about a dozen that intrigued me, mainly choice-based games with play times under one hour, I’ve put together a list of my top 5 from the competition.

*Warning: The below reviews may contain spoilers!

1. The Good People

Rating: 9/10

The Good People is a beautifully written and designed, emotional, and very personal story about a man and his girlfriend exploring the ruins of a town where his ancestors once lived, in a region that he escaped from years ago, with memories and supernatural occurrences arising the further in they get.

Varying font sizes and the use of spatial areas on the page, representing the jumbled thoughts of the protagonist as he navigates the ruins, are very effective at marking the different regions of his mind that are in conflict with each other. Does he want to find out more about his past, or repress his memories? Does he want to connect with his girlfriend, or ignore their communication problems? The images used for the village are also evocative, representing the sketched quality of its ruins and memories that feel half-formed and ethereal, existing in a liminal space that is occasionally embodied with compellingly menacing mythological figures.

The choice structure also feels closely tied to the difficulties of communication. Occasionally, we want to nudge the protagonist toward feeling comfortable enough to open up to his girlfriend, but the choices end up leading to self-sabotage no matter what we select. At other points, opportunities do open up for meaningful connection if the protagonist is willing to listen and be honest about the difficulties he’s facing in confronting his past. It feels like we’re observing a real relationship, with it’s small moments of sarcasm and anger, or comfort and kindness. This allows the culmination of the story, which involves some supernatural twists, to feel fully earned.

There are occasional moments when language or word choice indicate that the writer isn’t a native English speaker, but a fitting explanation of this is given as the protagonist is an expat who occasionally struggles to speak his girlfriend’s language. I loved how this also tied to broader themes of straddling two worlds, having shame around your origins, and the struggle of not always being able to put these things clearly into words.

The deftness of the writing, mythology, story structure, and themes, in concert with the beautiful use of interactivity and visual design, make this my favorite piece of the competition.

2. Night Guard / Morning Star

Rating: 9/10

Night Guard / Morning Star explores haunting themes around the sacrifices that are sometimes made in the service of art as well as the difficulties of living in the shadow of a self-centered parent. These themes are beautifully rendered through scenes where paintings come to life in ways that illuminate the protagonist’s past, revealing and developing the characters through off-kilter, scattered memories.

It’s a wonderful example of interactive structure serving the story, as the physical layout of the gallery, the description cards for all the paintings, and the ability to enter paintings in order to explore a scene from the past, all fit tightly and satisfyingly with the dark and vivid story being told.

The characters also pop amazingly well. The aunt and the Morning Star are vividly rendered and memorable as their images become embodied in different ways while they beckon and cajole the protagonist into action. And the relationship between the protagonist and her mother is deliciously fraught: the protagonist is able to see conflicting perspectives she and her mother had on different moments in the past, and this, along with their occasional clashes during the course of the story (over the phone and eventually in person), lead to real character development and multiple endings that each feel like a unique yet earned resolution of the protagonist’s journey toward empowerment, as well as a (literal) exorcism of the ties and memories that have haunted her for a long time.

I also appreciate the fact that this piece seems to have been edited down to the essentials, fleshing out the characters and capturing every necessary story beat in exactly as much space as needed. The story clocks in at half an hour of play time, quickly picking up speed and maintaining momentum in the storytelling while still providing a rich, complex, and satisfying literary meal.

3. robotsexpartymurder

Rating: 8.5/10

robotsexpartymurder is a game I didn’t get to complete, since it takes longer than two hours, but even with where I ended up (I’m guessing around the midpoint) it feels like a successful pastiche of a surprising variety of genres: a visual novel-esque dating sim, a dystopian prison/workplace simulator, and a dialogue-based murder mystery. It ties these experiences together into a hilarious package with tightly written prose, a fast pace, and nary a dull moment.

The game pushes the envelope in terms of design, graphics, and music, with a very strong point of view: a theme of blue on black and retro looking fonts that feel like throwbacks to a 90’s vision of a cybernetic future, as well as a UI that’s framed within what looks like an old computer terminal linking together different options accessible to the player throughout the game.

The choice structure mixes the IF dating sim and murder mystery genres in a way that I hadn’t seen done to this degree, and they fit together very nicely. The same conversations where the main character is trying to get information out of the androids present opportunities to advance relationships with them, although I’m not yet sure how those relationships will factor into the endgame. Also, the use of choice structure to convey sex scenes as lists of clickable items with resulting sound effects is hilarious; more generally, the freewheeling approach to mature themes has just the right tone and avoids either prudishness or sleaziness, which I applaud.

While I mostly gravitated toward shorter interactive fiction experiences in this competition, this game was gripping enough to hold my attention, and then some. I’m looking forward to continuing on and seeing how the killer sex robot mystery plays out.

4. Dull Grey

Rating:  7.5/10

Dull Grey is an intriguingly dark and fatalistic piece, with a main character who seems unable to control his own destiny. It’s a beautifully designed experience in terms of presentation, with a gray-scale palette illustrating a bleak landscape in what appears to be a post-apocalyptic world, remnants of robots scattered around and a cult-like, fire-based religion hinted at throughout.

In terms of interactivity, it uses an interesting mechanic wherein the same binary choice is presented at each decision point. The repetitiveness fits well with the theme and setting, and the progression also builds in a powerful way as we follow a map and travel from scene to scene toward a momentous decision in the protagonist’s life, in a way that feels inevitably hopeless. The writing also leans into this with short, terse sentences and deadpan evocations of death, disaster, and a world seemingly on its last legs.

My first play-through (choosing lamplighter at each step) felt like the most fitting, as it created a strong characterization of the mother as obstinate yet resilient, sticking with tradition in a world that has become increasingly difficult to navigate. I was somewhat disappointed that this led to an “unhappy” ending, but was intrigued to find out which combinations of answers would lead to “happy” ones.

Different paths through the story presumably depend on the characters present at each decision point being more amenable to one option or another (lamplighter vs. tallyman). While I like this idea in theory, in the couple of replays I tried it felt like the sequence of scenes remained very linear regardless of choice, and I didn’t feel a connection to the decisions or any real sense of where they were leading me. Perhaps the game requires many replays to understand the subtleties, but the repetitiveness and linearity of the scenes made it difficult to remain motivated to continue replaying further.

This is a piece that resonates in terms of mood, setting, writing, and art design, with just the interaction/replay aspect as the element that wasn’t quite as satisfying for me as I would have hoped. However, it stands out as a unique and memorable entry in the competition.

5. Faerethia

Rating: 7/10

Faerethia has a novelistic and cinematic quality that I enjoyed. There’s a lovely mix of philosophy, human experience, and speculative scenarios, all sketched out in a short amount of space and written in a sure hand. As a multimedia short story, it’s also nicely rendered through silent movie inter-titles and the framing of vignettes interspersed throughout the piece, along with variations in font and background.

The themes of the story came through poignantly for me, especially in the dialogues between two unnamed characters that appear in a few sections. While the notion of this sort of technologically achieved utopia has been covered many times before, the writing was fresh and the emotional stakes high, leading to a satisfying ending.

In terms of the interactive elements of the game, I enjoyed the sections that explored Faerethia as well as the interview with the computer, both of which used light amounts of interactivity in effective ways. Some of the other satirical asides—the mini-game and the eye-winking descriptions in the paradise creation software—were amusing, but sometimes felt distracting and tonally at odds with the rest of the story.

Still, I found this to be a compelling piece of writing, and I’m left with the desire to delve into further philosophically tinged stories by this author.