Spring Thing '17 now open!

Competitions Spring Thing
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I’m very pleased to announce that the 2017 Spring Thing Festival of Interactive Fiction is now open!

http://www.springthing.net/2017/

This year, there are twenty-two games, spread across two categories. Authors chose whether to submit games to the Main Festival, where they are eligible for ribbon nominations and the prize pool, or the Back Garden, which opts out of ribbons and prizes but has looser entry requirements (including allowing excerpts from unfinished or commercial games).

In the Main Festival:

Back Then, by Janelynn Camingue - Twine
Bobby and Bonnie, by Xavid - Inform/Glulx
The Bony King of Nowhere, by Luke A. Jones - Quest
brevity quest, by Chris Longhurst - Twine
The First Quest, by Matthew Mayr (with some help from Mike Bryant) - Twine
A Fly On The Wall, by Peregrine Wade - Ink
Get Seen Tonight, by Hannah Powell-Smith - Texture
GNOEM, by Joyce Lin & Matthew Reed - Twine
Guttersnipe: Carnival of Regrets, by Bitter Karella - Quest
Happy Pony Valley Riding School, by Lynda Clark - Twine
If You’re Here, by Serene Sherman - Twine
Ishmael, by Jordan Magnuson - Twine
Niney, by Daniel Spitz - Inform/Z
Refugee, by Mark C. Marino - Ink
Ted Strikes Back, by Anssi Raisanen - ALAN 3

In the Back Garden:

Balefires Burning, by Cassandra Wolf - Twine
Buck the Past, by Andrew Schultz - Inform/Glulx
Enlightened Master, by Ben Kidwell and Maevele Straw - Inform/Z
A Fly On The Wall, or An Appositional Eye, by Nigel Jayne - Inform/Glulx, Squiffy
left/right, by chandler groover - Inform/Glulx
Not Quite a Sunset - a hypertext opera, by Kyle Rowan - Twine
The Weight of a Soul, by Chin Kee Yong - Inform/Glulx

You can play the games and find out everything you need to know about the festival at the official site, or follow us on Twitter at @SpringThingFest.

Instructions for making ribbon nominations will go up in a couple of days. There are two ribbons this year: an Audience Choice ribbon, which anyone may nominate games for, and an Alumni’s Choice ribbon, with nominations made by any prior participant in the Thing. (If you’re an alumni and not on our notification list yet, please PM me here or contact aaron at springthing.net.)

The festival will be open for ribbon nominations until 11:59 PM PST, May 5, 2017.

To all the players, and all the entrants, have fun!

– Aaron

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Cool! Can’t wait to play these! [emote]:)[/emote]

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I’m looking forward to playing the games!

There were some extra participants this year - will the Spring Thing helpers become alumni? Is there a list of the Spring Thing alumni online?

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Helper elves (while much appreciated!) unfortunately do not become alumni, which is specifically for people who have shown games in any previous Spring Thing. There’s not a public alumni list, but you can see who’s in it by working your way backwards through prior Things via the “History” page.

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Thanks for hosting this, Aaron!

I made a feedback thread for my Back Garden game, The Weight of a Soul, which can be found here.

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I ran into a point fairly early in Guttersnipe where the command bar seemed to be gone and there weren’t any links to move on with — has anyone else run into this? I’m not sure whether it’s just profoundly bad luck/browser misbehavior, or whether there’s something amiss (and if the latter, whether I can get past it).

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I didn’t have any problems of that nature with Guttersnipe, although I didn’t play it online–I have poor luck with browser implementations in general. At any rate, it doesn’t seem like it’s a problem with the game itself. I’m fairly far along, although I’m stuck on so many things that I don’t know what to do next. Kind of frustrating when things that you think should work don’t.

Like, for example, having the shovel and not being able to dig into the garbage pile.

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I believe I had success with DIG WITH JAW. It doesn’t seem like it’s actually that important, anyway.

I think I’m 90% of the way through, but am also stuck. I can try to help with some of your sticking points.

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Hi Emily, thanks for playing Guttersnipe! The command bar isn’t supposed to disappear at any point, so if you’re playing it online I’m afraid it might be a browser issue. Where are you in the game that the command bar disappeared?

Hi! Sorry about that issue, you should be able to:

If you’re carrying the shovel jawed mastodon skull, you should be able to dig in the garbage pile by typing “dig in garbage with jaw”, “dig with shovel jawed mastodon skull”, “dig with jaw”, “use jaw to dig garbage,” or some variation

Thanks for playing! [emote]:)[/emote]

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Hi, thanks for playing! Sorry to hear you’re stuck, let me know if there’s anything I can help with.

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Nope, I got it after all. Thanks!

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Update: nominations for the Audience Choice ribbon are now open!

If you have ever shown a game in Spring Thing in the past, you should have gotten a notification earlier this week about how to make nominations for the Alumni’s Choice ribbon. If not, let me know here or to aaron at spring thing dot net.