Bellamy’s Mysterious Spring Thing Reviews 2025

Hello, everyone!

It’s nice to be back and participate in Spring Thing again after a 2-year absence! Who knew that life could get so busy?

I plan to post reviews with only the positive things I found in them since I am a participant this year and at the end of the festival, I’ll edit each post with the criticisms I came across which are hopefully constructive for the authors!

I’ve run out of ways to describe my reviews so now they are mysterious (…and perhaps important for any Severance fans out there).

(ps. I hope that someone makes a spreadsheet like we usually have for Spring Thing. That’d be awesome.)

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[SPOILERS AHEAD]
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Current Reviews
As the Fire Dies
blackberry bloodbath
Canvas Keepsakes
Chronicles of the Moorwakker
Cut the Sky
Echoes
Elaine Marley and the Ghost Ship
Espresso Moka
For Lila
The Goldilocks Principle
Hauntless

12 Likes

Number one, As the Fire Dies

Plot Deconstruction: You are a camper that has fallen asleep next to your fire. As you drift off, you begin to traverse the spaces in between reality and imagination. But remember to wake up and stoke the fire if it gets too cold, lest you be lost to the darkness forever.

Positives: This was such a relaxing and cozy game to start Spring Thing off with. As I traveled through the dreamworld and saw different descriptions of beautiful, but not-quite-right areas, it reminded me of my own half-lucid dreams at night. I really enjoyed the mechanic of the heat of the fire changing the descriptions of the passages or going back to an area that was already completed and seeing how the narrative has changed. This experience was funny, cute, and comforting which the prose only enhanced.

My Questions/Notes:
Here are some random thoughts that arose during my playthrough

  • I died ! Whatttt, I just wanted to pet the lizardog one more time. That’s what I get for being greedy with my petting😔
  • Ah the lizardog was shivering before! That should’ve been a clue to the fire. I seeee.
  • I love how beautiful the descriptions of the sunflower and women’s paintings are. It feels nice just envisioning it.
  • Walk into the woods? Uhhh not yet, I’m having fun.
  • I’m not sure if there’s more I can do in this third dream, so maybe it’s time to walk into the woods.
  • Oh can we fly? YESSSS
  • And there are penguins?? Ah this is a perfect dream.

Overall Impression: This was a great experience. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a relaxing float through an expansive dreamworld.

(Extra: I also found it funny how this entry is the stark opposite of my game where you have to try your hardest not to fall asleep. Spoiler for The Sandman → I hope this is what the kids experience when they fall asleep :relieved_face: )

7 Likes

Number two, blackberry bloodbath

Plot Deconstruction: Hello, bl4ckb3rry bl00db4th, you are a newly-turned teenage girl. As you traverse through different your ages and experience the rises and falls of growing up, you find yourself avoiding all of the little hurts along the way in an attempt to find something or someone that can make you feel truly happy again. But is that possible or does hurt only come in different forms?

Positives: This game was so incredibly stylized and I loved it for that. The switches that happen between abstract poetry and descriptive poetry was well-intertwined and never truly felt out of place. The early design of the chat rooms but with the use of some Gen Z lingo felt like a timeless mix of early 2000s to 2020s’ girlhood. A lot of the feelings stay the same after all, it just manifests in different ways. I also enjoyed how everyone kept their chat-room names.

My Questions/Notes:
Here are some random thoughts that arose during my playthrough

  • You’ve gotta tell him you want a private first kiss. Not in front of a crowd. OH, SO WE JUST PUNCHED HIM. Okay! Noted!
  • I got my first ending! blackberry got revenge, kinda? But it didn’t seem like the joke was on anyone else except for her… hm. Anyway, let’s go do a ritual.
  • Wait, not the silly bands!! That’s a school treasure. I’d crash-out afterwards too if I burned them for nothing.

Overall Impression: I enjoyed playing this! I thought it was funny at moments and incredibly sad at others, but a overall good depiction of what some people go through when they try to find out who they are in a world that keeps moving on.

~ Special Section ~

Something this game had me thinking about:

The names people choose online as a kid often reflects an interest or a specific feeling that they find relatable, but one word can only describe a piece of a person. Trying to encompass the entirety of a person into an already defined term is already a fruitless venture. The main character reflects on this near the end of the game when she’s in the bathroom with her past best friend wondering how her friend changed over the years they grew apart.

To me, growing up is trying to find all the pieces that make up the person that you want to be and creating a collage of concepts, beliefs, and ideas that eventually manifests as you. But when you leave someone in the past, everything that makes up who they are often just boils down to just what they did or how they affected your life. In your memory, they effectively become a reflection of their screen name forever. blackberry deals with the hurt that others caused her and the whirlwind of life’s continuous march as a way to run from her circumstances. The people that used to push her around in the past transform from one-off experiences into chains that she bears. They hold back her life and fester because she never truly takes the time to look her trauma in the eyes. But the thing about mental trauma is that it has a funny way of taking root in your head until you have the courage to look inside and push on the rotten parts so that it finally can heal.

You don’t only have to bring out your inner child at therapy sessions. You can walk with them at every moment and be the gentle care that they never got.

(love games that make me think, kudos to the author)

8 Likes

Number three, Canvas Keepsakes

Plot Deconstruction: The paintings that you draw bring deadly creatures to life. And that’s cool and all, but did you know that you have an Artifex cat? In this game, you try your best to avoid a terrible outcome once you’re approached by a mysterious buyer that wants to own your artwork. It seems that there might be nefarious plans afoot… Can you save yourself from what they have in store for you?

Positives: I really liked how this story was written! The prose was simple and yet so descriptive. I felt like I was walking through the story inside the protagonist’s shoes. I especially enjoyed how expressive the characters were and how fun and full of banter their lives seemed to be. I enjoyed the ride and this game’s atmosphere all the way through and gave them all voices as I explored the story. The concept was very interesting as well and I really enjoyed how it was tackled.

My Questions/Notes:
Here are some random thoughts that arose during my playthrough

  • The cat… talks. I love to see it.
  • He’s got an attitude too! Top-tier cat.
  • I’ve a cute spider as a pet now! Awesome.

Overall Impression: A very fun game with a lovable cat and protagonist. It certainly was interesting and kept my attention throughout. Definitely recommend.

7 Likes

Number four, Chronicles of the Moorwakker

Plot Deconstruction: You may just be a curse on your family. But who truly is your family? Your mother died in a mysterious fire that has premeditation written all over it. Your adoptive father hates you and plots your death. You’re awakening powers you never knew you had. Explore the world outside of your small town and find out the truth of what happened to your mother all of those years ago.

Positives: I enjoyed the atmosphere of this story; It was very dark and gloomy but had a very cool old-world flair because of its 13th century setting. To preface, I played this game on hard mode because I like to struggle (and eventually achieve haha).

The spectres I discovered and the powers they held were very unique. I liked the mechanic of being able to turn into these creatures in order to progress the plot. Throughout the game, I was able to create a nearly unbeatable strategy when going against strong enemies which nearly never let me down. But speaking on that point, despite my strategy working most of the time, I thought it was awesome how I couldn’t rely on it all of the time. The amount of enemies with a myriad of different abilities forced me to switch up my strategy in order to get past them. Pokémon games often fall prey to this issue because once your team is at a high enough level, it doesn’t matter whether your Pokémon is weak or resistant to the opponent’s element, you can almost always take them down with one hit. This RPG does it right.

I came across an enemy that reflects my damage, so hitting them with a -50 point attack would double back on me. I had to adapt my playing style in order to get past that enemy. Same with the hornets because you can only take them down one at a time, but they had so many action points that I’d be bombarded by them every time my turn ended. To combat this, I had to add a healing action to my strategy’s rotation. I love when games have you strategize and not fall into repetitive clicks.

My Questions/Notes:
Here are some random thoughts that arose during my playthrough

  • Did I just get sand-pitted by my adoptive father? Wow.
  • I love Tallamor so much, best spectre.
  • I keep losing to these hornets. How do I win against human beings but hornets are the ones that keep taking me out?


(I find it funny how half of my deaths came from the hornets :joy:)

Overall Impression: This was such a fun game and a very intriguing experience. The RPG aspects never got bored or tired and I was very captivated by the storyline throughout.

8 Likes

~~ Intermission ~~

I’ve fallen sick with the flu so reviews may become sparse in the meantime. (Or not, maybe this means there’s more time to play Spring Thing games. We’ll see, haha.)

4 Likes

Wow, thank you for playing Chronicles of the Moorwakker! It’s the first playthrough on “hard” difficulty that I’m aware of! Very impressive :+1:

I’m glad you had a great time and thank you for your kind words. :heart: From all the feedback I’ve gotten so far, the hornets are kind of the most feared enemy :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Get well soon :flexed_biceps:

2 Likes

Thanks so much for the kind words and thoughtful review Bellamy! I’m glad you liked the cat and the spider from Canvas Keepsakes!

I just played The Sandman. So atmospheric and cool! I died on day 0 though :rofl: Will have to try that again…

2 Likes

Thank you for the well-wishes! The hornets were definitely fearsome, but that just made victory all the sweeter :head_shaking_vertically:

2 Likes

Pixel was easily my favorite cat of the year so thanks for creating a great game! And the Sandman definitely takes a couple tries but I’m glad that you’re trying it out :joy:

2 Likes

Number five, Cut the Sky

Plot Deconstruction: You’re a lone wanderer walking through a vast world. You have your trusted blade at your side as you jump from partner to partner looking for your destiny or perhaps… who you truly are.

Positives: This game was incredibly beautiful. I really loved how descriptive the places and people were and enjoyed its subtle humor throughout. The story really transports you into the shoes of a lone wanderer as you search to find meaning in a broad world that holds many secrets. I am not the best at parsers, but I found that the limited verbs not only added to the story (since it reflects the main character’s singular mindset), but also helped me narrow down my choices when trying to figure my way out of challenging scenarios. Also, the mystery of the places visited never felt too confusing or pressing, only as if the character was experiencing the remains of a dead world, so it benefitted from not having a story full of twists and turns. I found the ending to be incredibly cathartic and the entire narrative was just a pleasure to experience. The overall vibe was ethereal.

My Questions/Notes:
Here are some random thoughts that arose during my playthrough

  • I was out here gearing up to solve a riddle just to have my character slice the Gates of Nom Avrak. Made me laugh out loud.
  • When I cut the robe, I thought that the wizard would lose some power… instead I’m now fighting a naked wizard.

  • I found it awesome how I named my sword, Skyweaver, and experienced how interconnected it was with the ending.

Overall Impression: Beautiful game with a fulfilling ending. I would recommend it to anyone.

7 Likes

Thank you for the review! That is a fantastic name for the sword.

2 Likes

Number six, Echoes

Plot Deconstruction: You are cleaning out your attic but as you do you happen upon a mysterious box bejeweled by four gems at the very end. Curiosity gets the best of you and as you fiddle around, you end up being transported inside of it with three lost stories waiting to be told. Can you find your way through these narratives, discover what intertwines them all, and come out the other side?

Positives: All three games in this anthology impressed me. For me, the prose and story in “The Treasure of the Deep” stuck out the most and I found myself captivated by the mysterious, mystical air that it held (kind of like we were watching an old wives’ tale unfold in real time.) The Labyrinth had great puzzles that I loved figuring out and none were too hard for my brain to finally pull out a Eureka! moment. The visuals were absolutely beautiful and the sounds were incredibly immersive. I was playing the game with my home speaker connected so it felt like the waves of the sea were actually around me, including the low murmurs and roars of the creatures. I found the themes of this story to be an entertaining experience, watching as friendships formed between the characters (or echoes) in each of the storylines. I also loved how it culminated in the end with an ending that took everything from all three stories to form a cohesive finish to the story.

My Questions/Notes:
Here are some random thoughts that arose during my playthrough

  • I’ve gotta go back and experience that transportation portal again. I feel like a kid, I loved those lights.
  • I really loved that description of the monster with black tendrils, it feels like an eldritch horror like Cthulhu.
  • My Sword will be named Sword whether Torin or Elara like it or not. :joy:

Overall Impression: Great game, very very fun, feel-good message. It was a good experience.

6 Likes

Hey there, thanks for playing - and for your review! Really glad to hear the sound worked well for you. And yes, definitely some Cthulhu influences there!

2 Likes

Thanks for making a great game! Horror is a second love of mine so I’m glad I was able to sniff a reference out :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

1 Like

Number seven, Elaine Marley and the Ghost Ship

Plot Deconstruction: Elaine Marley has been kidnapped by the fearsome Captain LeChuck! Can she figure out how to wiggle her way out of the Ghost Ship and save herself from an eternal marriage to him?

Positives: The presentation of this game was very stylistic. Every character had a color to their text that fit either what they were or who they were which gave this game an unique personal style. I really enjoyed how the creator wrote the different settings and characters with such fun adjectives, metaphors, and onomatopoeias. The creator also mixed their author notes with the gameplay in a way that felt fairly seamless/cohesively-jointed and helped me gain more understanding as the story went on. Effectively the author notes are part of the game which is rare and so cool! And at the very end, I believe that I connected with the message of the story which is always a mark of a strong narrative.

My Questions/Notes:
Here are some random thoughts that arose during my playthrough

  • Ooo I really like the format of going back and forth between the story and the author notes, it really fleshes out the context.
  • Elaine is actually very funny
  • Ah… interesting ending. I’ll have to write about it.

Overall Impression: Interesting game with a strong theme! I really liked experiencing this.

~ Special Section ~

Something this game had me thinking about:

Although I had no prior knowledge of Monkey Island, I threw myself into the story, tried to get in Elaine’s shoes, and listened closely to the author’s notes to understand the overall context of everything the creator was pondering on when creating this piece.

It seems that the author wanted to give Elaine a more fleshed-out personality than what was provided in the game especially after Monkey Island’s director-swap sent her down the path of becoming even more of a cardboard cutout next to Guybrush’s adventures. And even with the creator’s interpretation, Elaine’s personality was never set in stone.

With the amount of changing links, the reader can decide for themselves who Elaine ‘their’ is. Is she the type to sip a drink like fine wine or chug it down like gatorade? Are her remarks are snide, careful, or humorous? All of these little moments and small personal decisions create the reader’s version of who Elaine is as she finally grows into a real person before their eyes in a way she didn’t get to do in the original series.

But at the end of the story we realize that is was all… for naught. At the end of the day, she is still just a side character in Guybrush’s story.

Whenever we come across a new loop of what happened to her before the events of this game, her self-expression falls deeper and deeper into an abyss until she finally remarks that what she was doing before she got kidnapped… didn’t actually matter. All of the development of her personality that we were experiencing leads to nothing. All of her struggles, creativity, ingenuity? It takes a backseat once the protagonist is there. And though she may want to find her own way off Monkey Island because she’s solved the same trials as Guybrush and has so much that she wants to give to her people, she realizes that at the end of the day she’s only a person to be saved and provide commentary to his adventures afterwards.

She’s effectively tethered to the status quo even in a fangame meant to explore who she is and considering how tightly author notes are bound to this experience, I believe that this struggle is meant to show how even though one can go to the escapism of creativity to give one of their favorite characters some agency, the bittersweet reality still remains and seeps into the game that she never was able to achieve that herself in the main series.

I thought that was a very poignant theme to a story that felt so fun and campy in the beginning. And the climax was abrupt but also hinted at as we watched the slow descent of her mental state.

I found the ending to be very sad but cathartic and meta because at the end of the day, this is a fan-creation of a ‘person’ the author never truly got to experience.

Very fun, I liked gaining a peek and private guide into a game that I had never played.

(Feel free to correct me author if there was another theme that you wanted to highlight)

7 Likes

Tallamoor appreciation club :rightwards_pushing_hand: :leftwards_pushing_hand:

4 Likes

The TA (Tallamoor Appreciators) is a growing community :joy:

4 Likes

Number eight, Espresso Moka

Plot Deconstruction: You are craving coffee! Go through the town and obtain all the parts necessary to make a nice, aromatic, coffee with your partner.

Positives: This is a relaxing romp through a snapshot of the home life of two individuals, Francesco and Monica. I found the warm brown visuals of the interface to be peaceful and enjoyed the soft ways that the characters spoke to one another. Espresso Moka feels like the kind of game that you’d spend half an hour playing through on a warm, quiet, summer day.

My Questions/Notes:
Here are some random thoughts that arose during my playthrough

  • The game was so quick and calm that random thoughts didn’t have a chance to arise! :herb:

Overall Impression: Relaxing and tranquil, especially if you have the walkthrough next to you if you end up getting stuck.

4 Likes

Thank you very much for playing my game and leaving your comments.

1 Like