Dgtziea's Spring Thing 2025 Thoughts

Hello!

I started a bit late on this year’s crop, partly because I was playing this Twine murder mystery game called Type Help which as a side-note is great, you’ll need to break out a notebook for it, recommended!

First few Spring Thing entries here I played a week or two ago and am getting around to writing up now.

Wayfarers
This is certainly an interesting one to start with. Not a bad one, definitely ambitious!

Near future, and war, war never changes. War also never ends.

You’re a soldier, in a world where medical technology has advanced to the point where the military can keep people alive through injuries they’ve suffered that would’ve been fatal in today’s world. People like you. There’s a long path through rehab, and so your mind needs to go through virtual therapy in the form of video games in order to re-acclimate to your new body. It’s while playing through a 2-player 90s style RPG (Chrono Trigger, Zelda, stuff like that) that you partner up with the virtual avatar of a fellow casualty of war called Ada. And so you keep playing, through the pain and through the memories, in order to get through rehab so that you can rejoin the fight, in a war that has already taken so much from you.

Written in Twine, with a first person POV. Your character, an enlistee, lives in the virtual space throughout, so they’re narrating the experience of playing the game, sometimes reflecting on the war or their past, chatting with Ada, chatting with doctors, sometimes needing to stop a session because of the pain. This also isn’t, to be clear, a very happy game; it deals with a lot of trauma and injury and death. But there is hope.

The RPG your character is playing through is also called Wayfarers. One of the tags the author chose for their Spring Thing entry was “90s rpg nostalgia” and boy, does this ever nail that. It’s described in fragments of gameplay, NPCs and enemies and locations and quests, which gives glimpses of this marvellous little world and sends a bunch of bursts of warm recognition in my brain. Like wow, does this make me kind of wish to play it myself! There’s a little JRPG type background song, even. You really get a sense of a sprawling, charming adventure.

The writing is generally pretty good while navigating through a bunch of different, tricky tones, between painting a JRPG world, providing backstory and world exposition, and delving into some heavier emotional territory. Some sentences I found got over-the-top at times, but then the descriptions are also willing to stretch out beyond common cliches and really reach for more imaginative imagery and phrasing. The text rarely ever got bogged down or dragged.

I think the only real thing is that the commentary is pretty heavy-handed at points. When your character, right near the start, is explaining the world, and they’re telling me about the endless cycle of violence that is the war they’re stuck in, as if that’s not even just their point of view, but just… a fact of this world, then, well, where do you go from there? What am I, the player, wanting for the character during the rehab, what realizations can they come to, what can the rest of the work say about war when that’s the starting point for them? I’m not saying the rest of the story or experience doesn’t go anywhere, just that the war always seemed a bit hazy… like slightly disconnected, and somewhat nonspecific. You do learn more backstory about your family. You think about your experiences during the war. You grow closer to Ada. You reflect. And finally, you make a choice.

That’s the overview. I think people might enjoy it, its really just deeper structural quibbles I have (which I get into more below). I liked the writing and the description of the journey through a vivid JRPG world. The personal story is fine, the commentary on war is uneven.

More discussion

And when I say uneven, I’m thinking about which parts of the story are providing the commentary, and also which parts aren’t. There are other games-within-the-game besides Wayfarers which you briefly get introduced to. One of them is called “Forever War,” a mindlessly violent shooter where you can trample over human rights and dehumanize others with glee. The way this game is described, it doesn’t seem like it’s trying to acclimate the player towards war or becoming a better soldier, or anything like that; it sounds like blatant anti-war satire. Which is odd, considering these games are presumably hand-picked or commissioned by the military to help the patients re-join the war after rehabbing. Maybe that’s just because of the character’s anti-war views skewing things? It almost seems like it should be going the other way, and be overt military propaganda instead. All the negative sentiments when the character is describing the war or the rehab program persist–the military having endless money, your recruiter keeping tabs on you–but in actual interactions you have with something military related here, with the rehab program and the doctors running it, you seem to be treated fine, and they’re never pushy about getting you back into the front lines. The whole program sounds extremely dystopian, but it doesn’t feel that dystopian in actuality. And the final choice: that the military would be willing to put that much money and time into rehabbing you, and then would let you just leave afterwards? That seems off.

The question I never really understood in the end was, why did the protagonist enlist in the first place? They seem certain the war is bad, at least at points. They’re not fighting against the war, this isn’t a loss of faith, or a realization they seem to have come to later. The only thing they repeatedly say is that they had no choice, but I never quite understood why. I think the “no choice” thing is feeding into a story choice you do have later on. But it doesn’t necessarily seem like you joined because of lack of other economic options, since your sister didn’t join and she urged you not to. Your mom joined, and that’s a story point, but not in a way that I could understand as a more specific motivation (like feeling the need to follow in her footsteps?). So I could never fully understand where the character was coming from in that regard.

For me, I think if the explicitly anti-war exposition was toned down or maybe more back-loaded, and the focus was on the personal, the journey, the rehabilitation–which is good, all that stuff is fine to excellent–then there’s enough inherent in the story anyways that the anti-war sentiment would still emerge, but it would feel more personally involved and follow along the beats of the story more.

One other note: there’s a major choice near the end that was presented in a couple of in-line links (those are links which are words within a passage, as opposed to for example links that are at the very bottom of a page). And there were a whole bunch of warnings on the page telling me it was an irrevocable decision, and I still clicked on the first inline link before I read the rest of the page. Oops, my bad! But as a general design choice, should major choices be in-line links? If they’re that important, maybe they should be at the very bottom, after all the text? What do people think? I also feel that use of in-line links as story continuation hadn’t been as well established in the rest of the game, which mostly used single links on a page, or just links at the end.

End choice (spoiler)

I chose to keep on fighting. I would’ve chosen that anyways. I think the story was probably pushing me towards a different realization. But also, if the story keeps telling me I have no choice…

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Thank you so much for playing! Your comments are very insightful and I look forward to incorporating them in my revisions. I had a bunch of ideas for resolutions as I read your review. And I do appreciate that you got the nostalgia too, haha!

3 Likes

Hell Ride (in progress)

The author’s note on the Spring Thing site says this was a game written in the 80s on a custom engine that’s been ported over to Inform, which is neat! It doesn’t feel particularly dated overall, but it does make some design decisions that are less common nowadays in some parts, and it does feel like a bit of a throwback.

You’re a reporter investigating a theme park which has suffered a suspicious string of accidents lately, including to its–I was going to say signature attraction, but there’s no line when you get to the ride, and all the employees are warning people away from it–formerly signature attraction, the Hell Ride, which is actually more of a haunted house ride. You’re trying to collect evidence for some sort of wrongdoing, so you talk to people, look through offices, ride some rides, play some games, get your fortune told, and of course, solve some puzzles.

One indicator of what this is hearkening back to is the 300 point max score, which generally goes up by 5 when you do something score-worthy. conversation is via ASK/SHOW. There’s a solid hint system within the game. Good amount of work put into this: NPCs that move around, some moderately complicated object interactions, an evidence score, money. A fortune teller that actually seems to give different tarot readings. A string you can tie things to. Different carnival games.

The world is sketched in as well, doesn’t feel sparse. Feels like a theme park. Lots of interesting little sequences and interactions which was cool.

The other more old school approach is that the protagonist is more in the mode of faceless adventurer; I didn’t feel like I was doing much in the way of reporterly things, other than talking to employees. I can easily imagine a scenario where a reporter would sneak into the back offices, but the game just allows you do stuff without doing any sort of commentary or insight or characterization into what you’re doing, whereas modern parser games tend to have protagonists that assert their character a bit more.

That’s fine, but you go back into the offices where you probably shouldn’t be without permission, and the shady theme park boss might wander in, and it’s like you’re two ships passing in the night. Do either of you comment on each other’s presence? Nah. You can talk to him there, and he’ll answer all your questions, same as if you’d done in front of the ticket kiosk. I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to say that eventually, you find out the ride is dangerous and your goal becomes to shut it down. Can you do anything that I think a reporter might do, call someone, tell the ride attendant, try to save lives? No, or at least not yet; the way forward is to solve a puzzle. And the puzzle is so… so much a solution that you’d only ever see in an adventure game that I found it kind of funny, operating on adventure game logic over real world logic. At some point, I was just solving something because there was an obvious puzzle item being dangled there in front of me, not because I knew why I’d want it. I’m basically referring to all the shutdown fuses; why would they be prizes!? So this isn’t really a game where the fiction of the world seems to fully hold together; the attractions lie elsewhere, in the puzzles and interactions.

Tips: I did get stuck a while, it’s been a couple months since I’ve played a parser IF so I might be rusty, but I SEARCHed an item without EXAMINEing it so I missed something I should’ve found a lot earlier. The room makes sense for where the object I missed was, and I think the flow of the story would’ve made more sense if I’d found the item back then. it’s in the office. And if I’d gotten into the guillotine room earlier, THEN the fuses make slightly more sense. Since I’d already got one and asked the janitor about them. Also the janitor seems to be the most helpful NPC to talk to.

Other things? This is one of those maps which I never really got the hang of. Primarily just because, in my mind, north is up, and north is forward, so when I go deeper into a map from a starting point I tend to always think “go north.” But this map starts you on the northmost tip and moves south. So I was never able to naturally intuit navigating rooms across the map. This isn’t a real criticism, mind you, so much as an observation of how my brain is wired.

There’s a mass of electrical rooms. Too many, I think, too busy as well. lots of workbenches, and in my mind workbenches can always contain useful objects so I worry about missing stuff if I don’t look through them. But also a lot of panels and gauges and diagrams lying around which seem potentially important but also don’t seem to be when I examined them, but then there’s 4 rooms of them in a row that are filled with this type of stuff. And I feel like there were too many things called “panel” in a room; felt like I was running into a lot of disambiguation problems there.

There’s also a lot of coins and money you have to juggle, and I hope the author got something out of the coding exercise for this, because it seems like it must’ve been a headache. One thing I get concerned about is whether the game can be put into an un-WINNABLE state with those, because the carnival games cost dimes, and you only have so many. I couldn’t seem to make change with my other money, and I didn’t find many more normal dimes. I tested just to see if the dime toss would eat up all my dimes if I threw them all and it seemed to, so I re-loaded. No WINNABLE command, or any warning if it’s actually a dead end, but then that’s more a 90s paradigm shift. Anyone: can you really get all the different popstar posters and still proceed with the game? Taylor I got, not sure how I’d be able to get the others without using up my dimes.

The dimes caused another issue, I think another unWINNABLE one, which is why this is in progress and I haven’t finished the game yet. I think I have to reload an earlier save again, but I didn’t feel like going through that as of yet. I tried tying the string to a dime (was trying to trick the dime toss game to hopefully keep the dime even if I didn’t win) and I couldn’t seem to untie the dime, but according to hints I need the string for something else. When I try to untie the string from the dime the disambiguation goes bonkers and asks about the dime toss attendant and the dime toss game and the dime, so that didn’t work. So be careful with the string (or maybe it’s been fixed since).

There’s been work put into this; it includes some more complicated to code things, and it’s fairly large. Though there’s some rougher edges as a result, it does hit one of the most important things for parser IF, which is the world is interesting to explore. It’s not dull, it’s not static, it’s not empty, and that does go quite a long way. I’ll try to return to this. Some disambiguation issues, and some possible unwinnable states though.

6 Likes

As the Fire Dies

Written in Twine. Light puzzles, generally whimsical, short (although not that short).

A dreamlike adventure through your, well, dreams. You’re in the woods, there’s a campfire beside you. Tend to the fire, but know that the dancing fire has strange effects on your dreams… You need to wake up to add wood to the fire intermittently. If it dies in real life, then you die in the dream! Oh, and also in real life.

Y’know, I didn’t really think too much about it while playing, but there were some pretty serious stakes to this.

You go through several different dream worlds. Within each area, there’s a couple things you can examine. Maybe there’s a mechanical solar model, or a log cabin, or an artist’s easel, or a giant guarding a gate. At each of these spots there might be one interaction through which you might gain an item which you can then use at another spot. So you’re basically poking around and finding the items to use elsewhere to get more items, until you find the path to the next dream.

It’s very dreamlike logic; I don’t think the idea is that you really try to sit and think out your actions. What it made me think of was a point-and-click graphic adventure series called Samorost, which also shifts the focus from stringent puzzle solving like you might find in a Sierra or Lucasarts game like Monkey Island to more of a focus on just poking around in the world, on exploration and discovery and being surprised by the whimsy and magical things you find.

For IF examples, I’d be reminded of something like After-Words by fireisnormal or Trail Stash by Andrew Schultz which both had the general idea of gaining and using items in certain locations within a surreal landscape, though those needed more deliberate solving, while As the Fire Dies feels more toylike. Actually, speaking of toylike and surreal, another IF shoutout would be The Land of Breakfast and Lunch by Daniel Talsky.

The writing helps a lot with this type of play, contributing some excellent description writing and some imaginative, surprising settings. The writing leans on describing things as “beautiful” as a shorthand perhaps a bit too much (but that’s a bit nit-picky). This was generally a very pleasant experience.

The concept of the fire affecting your dreams was definitely interesting, but the actual mechanic of feeding it is pretty simplistic. I died to not feeding the fire in the first area quite early; it seems like there’s some things in the dream that tell you the state of the fire in the real world, but I only saw more of those in later dream worlds, and didn’t really notice any indicators in the first area (but I might just have missed them). Quick easy restart, and it doesn’t make you go back to the very start, which was nice, but just begins you at the beginning of the dream world you died in. It seemed like I died after doing two major things so after that I would try to wake up after doing about two things, and so I kept that waking rhythm for the rest of my playthrough. As far as I could tell, there’s no real penalty to just waking up as much as possible to stoke the fire, and the description of the actual fire never really seemed to change; the indicators of the fire strength are only in the dream itself.

The state of the fire seemed to matter a bit more in the last area which did sound like a neat twist, but if an action was blocked I just woke up and added to the fire and then went back and tried again. I think one of the interactions, it seemed like it might’ve been important for the fire to actually be a bit weaker to proceed, but I couldn’t really tell since I only needed to get through it once, so it wasn’t like it needed a lot of precise experimentation, so I didn’t really end up solving any of it with too much real intention with how I was dealing with the fire.

I found a feather in the woods. I don’t remember ever using it, though. Anyone find a use for it?

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Thank you, thank you, thank you for playing Hell Ride. As they say in talk radio parlance: long time player, first time author.

Thank you for your thoughtful and constructive review. I truly appreciate you.

d.

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Isn’t the feather the solution to that area?

Feather

As you approach the tower, the feather in your pocket rustles and jiggles, trying to free itself. It’s uncomfortable for you, so of course, you help get it out. A delicate sparkle of golden glitter starts to form around the feather and gradually, the feather turns into a gorgeous pair of wings, flapping gently. The wings angle themselves so that you see there are straps like a backpack. You try on the wings and the straps become like a vest so that you’re safe and secure. The wings feel cool to the touch.

And yeah, the fire indications are easily skimmed past - on my first playthrough I really only noticed them in the last area where it was more important for the puzzles… but they are there in all the areas once you know about them…

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Stowaway

Short work, Ink. It implements a world model, but narratively ends up feeling a bit like a CYOA book, with different multiple endings.

You’re a stowaway on a ship. It’s night, and you’ve awoken. You can move between rooms. Within the rooms, you might get a few different options of things to do: eavesdrop on the sailors, search the storeroom, steal a book from a crew member?

It remembers which things you’ve picked up, and that might unlock an action elsewhere. Although it doesn’t remove actions you’ve already performed, so you can repeatedly pick something up that you already have, for example, and you’ll get the exact same response text.

Sequences of certain actions will lead to various endings. Everything starts off fairly normal than as you explore it sometimes veers off into slightly weirder territory. It plays things off completely straight as well, not playing up or acknowledging any shifts, which does create its own sense of tone. Each little micro-story is its own little thing, a few minutes long at most. Neat, slight little diversion, but none of them are substantial. It does come off a bit like an author just playing around with Ink for the first time, and making a small project out of it.

I got three endings and stopped: Got adopted in a meadow, attacked captain sneaking into his room, sailed the cosmic seas. It didn’t particularly seem to me like there was going to be some bigger ultimate ending if I’d kept on re-playing, but hey, there might’ve been something more.

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