Spring Thing is an annual festival celebrating new text-based computer games of all kinds. Originally founded as an off-season counterweight to IF Comp in the fall, the current incarnation of the Thing is a less competitive space with looser restrictions. Without the two-hour judging limit of IF Comp, for instance, longer games are welcomed (though shorter games are fine, too!) There’s no fee to enter, but you do have to submit an “intent to enter” in advance. And there are prizes!
Games must be debuts and in a well-polished state (bug tested, etc.)
You must submit an intent to enter by March 1st, 2026, and your game itself by April 4th.
Your game must be free to play, and will be archived on the Spring Thing site after the festival closes, although:
You can submit to the “Back Garden” to showcase a demo of a game you’re planning to sell, or a polished excerpt of something unfinished, or a game that cannot be archived.
You can submit revisions of previously released games to the “New Game Plus” section. Revisions need to be substantial, such as porting a game to a dramatically different system or adding substantial new graphics or new content.
Your game should not use AI-generated text or multimedia. Translations using AI may possibly be accepted on a case-by-case basis. Games whose text is similar to AI-generated text may be rejected on a case-by-case basis.
Entrants to the Main Festival can be nominated for one of two “Best In Show” ribbons, and all entries are eligible for custom “Audience Awards.” Prize donors also gift fun, unique prizes , which Main Festival entrants have a chance to receive.
The festival is always looking for prize donors . If you have a cool idea for a prize that fellow IF authors might enjoy, let me know!
Check out the site for more info, and I’m happy to answer any questions here or sent to brian at springthing.net . Thanks, and happy writing,
The festival additionally asks that authors in the main competition or the new game plus competition submit only one game per festival year, that Back Garden entrants submit no more than three games per festival
This is slightly ambiguous. Does this mean that an author in the main competition is limited to one game total, or can they submit up to three more games in the Back Garden in addition to their one main game?
That case has never come up, but I’d like the grand total over all divisions to be 3 or less with no more than 1 in the main festival. The rule used to be only 1 no matter what, but a few people wanted to do enter multiple small games into the back garden so we allowed that in.
That clause is there specifically because some people have said that their game only used AI for translation but it is clear that they actually used it to write the game as well; so basically using AI for translation is always okay, but only if that’s the only place it was used, not for writing the game itself. Some people have tried to use translation as a ‘free pass’ to put as much Ai as they want into a game, so that’s where the case-by-case basis comes in.
(I know people are probably thinking, ‘but what if you can’t tell they used AI to write it?’ If someone is good enough at hiding AI use that no one can notice and the game is good, then that’s not the kind of stuff I’m worried about banning from Spring Thing. The no-AI rule is there because of the super-low-effort stuff that is long and rambling and incoherent and under-implemented).
It might be helpful if the rules clearly stated that there are no restrictions on genuine, pure translations, but that restrictions apply when AI is used as a backdoor to generate text.
