If a hint on that wizard bit would be helpful: cutting the spells directly won’t work, but there are some things in the environment around you that will.
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I am not clicking on that spoiler, Mike! No God of no Anger will make me do it! You mean you found it out all by yourself?!
(Iknow. I heard about a brain trick the medic students used before hard exams - they inhaled pure oxygen to make their brain work better. So the only thing I need now to pass that wizz is to go and fetch some oxygen from our school lab.)
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I MADE IT! Thanks, Linewood, for a nice game! Am still not at the end yet, but another obstacle beaten. It is fun how these puzzles make one proud of their mental skills. (Last year I experienced simillar fresh explorer’s fun while playing my first parser - the Nonverbal Communication designed by Allyson Grey) Nice! Let’s play on.
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Great! I’m glad you’re having fun so far, and it’s always nice to see people try their hand at parser. Good luck with the rest!
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Thanks SVLin. It seems I have just learnt a new command. Now I feel like the lord of the game. Thanks again. 
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I am playing Sticks and Stones now and am going to write more. As for now, it feels a bit like sir Robin’s quest from Monty Pyton’s Holy Grail. Will be back soon.
Edited:
I had a laugh about the [spoiler] sword name choices, I hesitated between “oh this is sharp” and then I decided to stick with “Heavy Metal”[/spolier]. What attracts me to the game is not the action - the dungeon is really believable - but the humour of the side comments. I understood too late that the health potion has to be used only when asked so I made it just to the levers and I am waiting there to get more courage to proceed 
since the battles are time limited and I realised that if I don´t search the body instantly after I finish with them, there won´t be any reward.
Eudokimos (co-author of Wonder of the Woods, in As I Sat on a Sunny Bank , Back Garden, by Leontine)
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Echoes: An Anthology by Ben Jackson was great! Each game has its own distinctive voice and its own puzzle sets. My favorite is Stick and Stones since I enjoy this kind of silly high fantasy work and the puzzling was fantastic. I do wonder about whether the game can be completed if you are hard of hearing or/and seeing. The lock-picking puzzle is an audio puzzle for example, and I did solve it, but I can’t imagine it will be easy for screen readers to pick up. I understand there’s a way to solve it visually, but I wonder if alt text would even help. The visuals in The Labyrinth are just hard to parse for me too, and it kinda makes me wish it was all text. Hopefully, there will be more alternative solutions in these games because I think the games were pretty cool.
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I’ll say I did the lock-picking on a train with no headphones in, and found it fairly straightforward to figure out!
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Hey, really glad to hear you enjoyed the game! And I can see you made it to the ‘Hall of Fame’ too
Very good points re accessibility; however, I tried hard to make sure that shouldn’t be an issue. In ‘Labyrinth’, every image has relevant ‘alt’ text - tailored less to description and more to giving the player what they need to solve the puzzles (although, ironically it may still be a little easier without the images!).
For the safe puzzle in Sticks & Stones, there are actually four ways to solve it. It starts out as audio only, but a first visit to Grelbus not only makes the volume slightly louder but also unlocks a visual method (there’s also a slightly different audio approach if you’re playing on iPhone or iPad). If audio or visual methods don’t work, then the player can find an entirely text-based way to solve it (and the audio difference gets much louder too). And then there’s a final ‘catch-all’ method if none of the above work for the player!
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Portrait with Wolf by Drew Cook feels like what Spring Thing is made for. It is a highly experimental game, echoing snippets of Sylvia Plath’s poetry, autobiographic-feeling sentiments, and a unique self-aware gimmick. The way it ties to the historical IF Art Show to different portraits of life and power is deeply fascinating. I’m still digesting the game, and I’m picking at it once in a while to see new portraits. I’m sure there will be hours to uncover more. What a peculiarly charming game: it almost feels like a combination of Galatea, Mirror and Queen, and SPY INTRIGUE. I’m recommending this game to people who are more insightful than me to see what they think. It’s gonna be a game that’s gonna be stuck in my mind for a bit.
On the other hand, Marbles, D, and the Sinister Spotlight by the same author is an enjoyable adventure game. It is clearly in love with the Zork and Enchanter games, but it’s also not afraid to include its original character voice into this rich world. Playing as a cat who has to direct their owner feels very novel: I enjoy meowing at different objects, purring, and experimenting with other feline actions to increase my score rank (a surprisingly complicated system that I want to see explored for a longer game). The voice is very fun, and every interaction and error are as far as I know accounted for. While the game is definitely on the easy side, I didn’t mind it at all: I just liked exploring what the parser system had to offer. Definitely a recommend from me.
@radiosity: Great to hear. I was worried for a second because I would like to recommend this game to others!
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The Goldilocks Principle
/by iris/
It made mi salivate. How?! Why?! Strange feeling of not being able to do anything about it - it was in concord with the impossibility to escape the feared action. the speed with which the world went by.
I don´t feel entitled to esthetisize suffering - so I just carefully add that the game made me reflect on my own skeletons and, yeah, the result of my reflection is: we suffer, we fight, we lose…
Thanks, iris, for showing me the hopelessness of certain state of mind/body which I didn´t even suspect to be so similar to ghosts which I fight with. I´ve mistakenly “cherrished” them as unique. The running screen, the transe, was awfully real.
Just that. Thanks.
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Retool Looter by Charm Cochran was a neat take on Counterfeit Monkey and Spider and Web since you’re reversing objects. It’s got a wicked sense of humor, and the puzzles were pretty clever. While the game would benefit from lesser typos and the usual Inform 7 disambiguation problems (I was stuck on one of the final puzzles because it couldn’t distinguish ragus and jars, making it difficult to realize I was supposed to put oats into jars), I really enjoyed hunting the many error messages for objects. A very charming game, highly recommended.
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Thanks for checking out my games! I always look forward to seeing your take on things.
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For Lila
/by MUSE/
The warmest moment: the pitter-patter of sock covered footsteps .
A motif worth exploring: to [ run away from danger and play coward if the outcome looks at least a bit promising. Actually, such logics is in contrast to the adventurous DNA of me as a gamebooker. Indeed, not many choose throwing away bottles with messages, not opening chests, not entering the caves, not starting discourses - lest there is something more important worth protecting - teaching us to stay back, keep one"s privacy - the fragile bubble of safety. On the other hand, isn’t running away from action or chosing non-action just another form of creativity? Choosing the unexpected. Perhaps I have gone too far in my thoughts, but after playing the game I have questions - blank pages from the character’s foggy past and hazy future, I feel like having seen a teaser and wanting to read more.
Book which I remembered while playing the game: Steven King’s Grey Zone.
So, thanks MUSE for this short treat and I will hope to see a sequel.
Eudokimos (co-author of Wonder of the Woods, in As I Sat on a Sunny Bank, Back Garden, by Leontine)
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Thank you for this! I’m adding that disambiguation problem to the list of things to address in the next release. If you remember any of the typos you saw, feel free to message them to me too!
Wayfarers by Gina Isabel Rodriguez is, to put it lightly, a masterpiece. I thought the game would be a homage to old games (and it is!), but the direction it took into was more interesting: the game is actually about soldiers in a “forever war” trying to recuperate through a virtual reality game library as a form of experimental narrative therapy. The writing is gorgeous and impressively polished, and the characterization is top-notch. I was entranced by the pacing, the prose, and the visuals they’re evoking in my mind. I was so impressed by how the game tied all what I thought were disparate elements into one incredible package about war trauma, recovery, and family. And I ended up also reading some Spanish poetry too thanks to this work.
While I do think the game should allow players to revisit the story more easily for repeat plays to get other endings, I do want more people to play this game. Like a lot. This is a genuinely magical experience that plays with so many tensions that are relevant to many people’s lives: the fantasy of violence and helping other people in a war economy is something a lot of us struggle with. I am so going to think about this game and what I can take away from it. What a spectacular title.
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Thanks for the play! I didn’t see this post until now, sorry! I’ll see what I can do about the external back button (just recently learned about how twine saves data and my architecture does have some issues with that). I might steal the autosave concept I saw @radiosity use.
I’m glad the tidy up concept inspired it real life! The overall goal is to provide a somewhat therapeutic experience
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And it did. The therapy worked perfectly
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Cut the Sky by SV Linwood is awesome. I’m always fond of limited parser games like Gun Mute, but this took the concept to another level. The writing evokes a tantalizing atmosphere, and the puzzles are nifty since there are alternative pacifist solutions, which I appreciate. It makes me feel like I’m so cool figuring things out in this way.
Gosh, it’s reminding me I should play more SV Linwood’s games. And other modern parser games. I keep procrastinating on this. This was sick.
I’ve also written up a BlueSky thread on Spring Thing 2025 and the games I really liked as a way to get the attention of readers of my writings onto the festival:
Sharing is caring after all. I hope more people submit to this festival. I’m enjoying being part of it myself.
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I like your reviews Kastel. And the things you say about Cut the Sky are exactly what I felt - proud of myself after a solved puzzle. I played it with students in a class yesterday, their first parser ever, and they loved experimenting with cutting and kissing whatever they saw.
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