Anyone have plans for Spring Thing 2026?

Competitions Spring Thing
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Seems like a forum tradition to have a Spring Thing-related thread (or multiple) a bit before the submission date, so people can talk about their plans for the event, post teasers, and the like. We have this thread and this thread from 2025 and this thread from 2023. I was bored, so why not spin up a 2026 thread?

Since the 2025 thread did it, I’ll include the description and deadlines for the event:

Held annually since 2002, Spring Thing is a smaller, more informal counterweight to the busier fall Interactive Fiction Competition. Over the years, games have often debuted here that went on to become influential in the IF world or larger indie games scene.

Rather than a competition with rankings, the Thing focuses on bringing together new text games of all kinds: choice-based stories, gamebooks, hypertext fictions, visual novels, text adventures, narrative roguelikes, and wild new experiments.

Deadlines: The “intent to enter” deadline has already passed, so you can’t submit this year unless you put in an intent by March 1st.

  • April 4, 2026: Deadline for entries to be submitted.
  • April 6, 2026: Festival opens and entries available to play.
  • April 13, 2026: Ribbon nominations open.
  • May 9, 2026: Ribbon nominations close; ribbon winners announced.

Anyone hoping to enter something? Or review? I did put in an intent, for an exploration game of sorts, though I’m unsure if I’ll finish by April 4. In fact, I made this thread instead of working on it, which could be a bad sign.

I don’t have any excerpts that would work as a teaser without revealing more than I want to reveal, so I’ll link again to this walkthrough of A House In California, which did inspire my own project. It’s also a great short game on its own.

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:rofl:

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I feel kind of bad about not being able to play or review many games in the last few comps, so I definitely want to try for this one. It’ll be after my thesis defense, so hopefully I’ll have more time on my hands!

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Haha, if you see me on this forum in the near future, you can presume it’s because I’m procrastinating on my Spring Thing game. I do think there’s a good chance it will be finished in time, because it’s a small project and somewhat open-ended in what needs to be included before it’s done. But I do wonder sometimes if my lack of motivation is connected to fundamental issues with the project; that is, if I have trouble getting myself to work on the project, is it just a fundamentally flawed idea that shouldn’t exist in the first place? The best way to tell will be to see if I can finish it by the deadline.

I’d say a thesis defense is definitely more important than reviewing IF games! Good luck, I hope everything goes well. If you do end up doing more IF reviews afterwards, I’d be interested in reading them.

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I was thinking recently “maybe I should make an intent to enter” but the time for that has passed, and I have no close-to-finished projects.

So instead, I’m making an effort to play and review as many games from Spring Thing as possible. I haven’t been very good this past year at being active in the IF forums, with exams and all that jazz. But it’s only fair I do something, so while I mull over my IFComp games, I’ll be practising writing reviews via Spring Thing. Beware of the tiny reviews!

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I’m submitting a game; I’ve been working on it since the start of the year, and it’s currently undergoing second-round play testing. It’ll be my first serious attempt at interactive fiction.

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My writing output is very patchy and I struggle to maintain a vibe with everything else going on in life. So my entry is a modest bit of work. About the smallest I could get away with, so I would have enough time to polish it properly. Even so, it still needs some editing and there’s only a few days to go :sweat_smile:

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We’re talking about text-based interactive fiction, but this image is worth a thousand words…

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You can play it on that amazing computer, in an emulator, or online.

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My game is pretty much on schedule! = Enigmart = is like if you tore some pages out of a puzzle magazine and put them into a short story. It’s been a lot of fun to write, and I’m excited to enter Spring Thing for the first time!

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I know a lot of people, myself included, might feel some kind of guilt for not participating more on the forums… but being active online does take time away from offline stuff, and sometimes you need to prioritize the offline stuff. Hope your exams go well. Bite-sized reviews are fun to read.

Is that your actual keyboard or is it a render demonstrating what the game would look like on a computer? I’n asking because it looks really retro, like something out of the 90s. If it’s a render, it makes me think of The Stanley Parable’s meta game-within-a-game schtick. If it really is a photo, well, you wouldn’t be the first person I’ve known with a bunch of retro computing stuff. Sorry if the answer is supposed to be obvious.

Looks interesting, and I like the cover art. Does it have anything to do with EnigMarch, by any chance? The names certainly seem similar…

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I’ll be participating in Spring Thing for the first time this year! I’m submitting Fantasy Opera: The Theater of Memory. It’s a fantasy mystery RPG with puzzles, and a standalone sequel to the first ‘Fantasy Opera’ game (which appeared in IFComp).

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Indeed it does! I wanted to compile my daily puzzles into some kind of package this year, so most of them will show up in the game.

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The story runs on a real Commodore 64.

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Don’t worry: the online version will embed an emulator, so you can play it in a browser.

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I’m planning on doing a response thread this year (since I’m not submitting a story for the event but still want to support it). Here’s hoping that there are some entries that are right up my alley. :heart:

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I’m hoping to play, judge and review lots of games. Depends on me being well enough, but fingers crossed. Excited!

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I will discuss visual elements in games. :orange_heart:

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Nice to see everyone chiming in!

I like the art - it has the look of those watercolor illustrations you’d find in old fantasy books.

Didn’t recognize that at all haha, it’s before my time. I know pretty much nothing about retro computers, which was why I wondered if it was a real computer at all. But that’s on me.

I’ve read some of your long blog reviews and really liked them, the one about Hidden Nazi Mode in particular. I think it was the thing that got me interested in the game in the first place.

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Oh, bother. Well, I never finish things any more. And it’s bad form to just paste your ideas and not do anything with them. But what else do I post lately?

My spring thing if I were in any good authorial form would have been this idea that’s been in my head just recently the past five weeks:

“Melanie, thanks for the tea.” says the mother in law.

She pulls up in a grey car to the schoolhouse. “Bodega Bay school.”

The children are singing inside.

She walks into the front doors.

She opens the schoolroom and looks at the teacher, “One minute” she mouths back to her, so she takes her handbag and goes outside.

Carefully down the steps. It’s a large handbag. She clutches her arms. She’s in a green suit.

She walks past the playground across the grass and follows the weathered white fence to a bench.

Behind her is a jungle gym. One lone black bird alights upon it.

She pulls out a long lady cigarette from her purse. There are 4 crows now.

She takes a drag on her cigarette. The children keep singing. A fifth bird arrives and alights.

She doesn’t see them.

Six. Seven.

Another drag.

Her hair is perfect. Her lipstick is fine.

The children sing again. “Knickety-knackety.” She sees one bird flying.

She turns around to follow it and there are 300 birds now all over the place.

More are arriving, shaking their feathers.

She sneaks back up the steps to the schoolhouse.

She opens the door, and opens the schoolroom, and barges in.

“Close that door, quickly!”

“What?”

“Please!”

“What is it?”

“>LOOK!”

ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S
The Birds

An Interactive Run by
J. Robinson Wheeler

They call a fire drill. We’re going out of school now. Those of you who live nearby, go directly home. Is that clear?

I want you to go as quietly as possible, until I tell you to run. Is that clear?

>

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Last minute tester/juror needed to pick 8 best playable student games from 14 entries for this year’s Senica Thing. I will provide you with easy-to-follow jury guidelines. /this year the games are a bit better, most of them first-timers/ Deadline is suicidal: 1 April.

If nobody volunteers, our non-native speaker jury will do their best to pick the most worthy for Spring Thing ‘s Back Garden :slight_smile:

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Oh yes I have plans for Spring Thing! Big plans!

I want to make many many ribbons.

(And play games, and review them, but mostly ribbons!)

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