Join the Swarm by Senica Thing
Played: 4/24/26
Playtime: Just under an hour, all in
On the heels of confessing my besmirched admiration for the insect world, Senica Thing comes along and gives us an anthology of works with a (loose) bee common theme! Bees may be second only to spiders atop my Pyramid of Cool Bugs. Kind of the same way Senica Thing is atop my Pyramid of Most Anticipated Works of Spring Thing. I am an unabashed fan of this annual tradition, so to couple it to BEES, then have one work be called A SWARM OF SPIDERS??? If you are just shamelessly pandering to me YOU ARE DOING A GREAT JOB, PLEASE KEEP IT UP!
There also emerges an insect-adjacent common take to some of these works that I found intriguing, though maybe it is best to let it emerge through individual feedback. Let us delay no longer!
Yellow Swarm by HOT (10m 4 endings)
This was a great piece to start with, one that leaned into an action hero inspired tale of base infiltration against a little-a alien threat. It was very economical in its implementation: its protagonist and world were so thoroughly painted in a few ‘previous case’ details and periodic Schwarzenesque™ one-liners, quickly getting out of the way of its breakneck action pacing.
Beyond the really fun setting and frenetic pacing, there were two things that really elevated the piece. The most obvious is its graphical design. Given the Senica Thing authors - many students new to IF - it is quite notable when graphical flairs are added to the narratives. And so well done here, the font and layout choices really enhance and echo the setting of the work. The second aspect that delighted me was its ‘collect the ending’ architecture. Despite its deliberately tropey setting where it seems two-fisted Justice will be almost perfunctorily dispensed by an impervious hero, YS instead lets the player steer into a broad variety of endings, running the gamut from Action to Tragedy to Horror. All of them were interesting and fun to find!
Also this work leaned into an aspect of SWARM that many of the other works would ALSO lean into (and surprisingly so): a not-necessarily-unsympathetic depiction of hivemind.
WHAT A MESS by THK (5min, all endings)
Ok, I know I started by belligerently flouting my creepy entomophilia in your face, but one of the strengths of this format is the wild flights of inspiration of its various authors. Here, the swarm is a swarm of RABBITS. Dafug?? Also ROFL. This seems to be a collaborative work, where different branches might have been engineered by different primary authors. This is a very effective way to synthesize dissonant creative visions into absurdist fun. This is a work where your fictional partner may perish, marry you, or mistake your fart for an earthquake! What possible response to that is there but delighted giggling? This piece also leans into the multiple-ending paradigm which might well be a natural way for new authors to engage IF. For me, the success of that model is ALWAYS about how bonkers you can make those. Boy did MESS deliver.
Despite the seeming simplicity of branching narratives (at least conceptually), I am impressed by how many of these works go beyond pure combinatorial explosion, and implement reconverging branches. That is a crucial construct in the IF author’s toolbox, and seeing it explored in a maiden work (like here) is terrific.
The Underground Dungeon by ASM (5m all endings)
Another multi-author work, this one impressed me by how narratively tight it was. It was a collect-the-ending work, but rather than try to disarm with absurdity, it was more tightly linked to a story about palace intrigue. The possible endings were… ok not COMPLETELY shades of each other, but perfectly viable narrative paths. It did not read at all like the product of different authors, it easily could have been the product of a single mind. That is some next level collaboration! (and also somehow a reflection of the emerging hivemind theme?)
It also felt subversively cynical? The motives of the protagonist are unceremoniously selfish. Their king is shaded as problematic, but nowhere near the extent of say Game of Thrones, making our protag’s actions kind of hilariously worse-than-the-problem. Which narrative branches might reward, but more often deliver some over-the-top comeuppance. This work (like the first) showcased that collect-the-endings can succeed even if NOT an exercise in comedic breadth. Which is not to say I didn’t laugh.
Swarm of Thieves by SKIT (10min, endings 1,2,3,4,5,6)
This was a deceptive work of social-justice metaphor… Metaphor? That word kind of implies a level of indirection NOT present in the text: presenting a protagonist named TRUTH, along with companions JUSTICE and FREEDOM, struggling against an autocracy named KLEPTOCRACY. There are multiple paths this struggle might take, curiously many more optimistic results than cynical ones. It also subtly raises some questions, particularly about JUSTICE. While TRUTH and FREEDOM are philosophical constructs, JUSTICE expands to encompasses Social Systemics. Notionally we are playing as TRUTH (lending a bit of weight to our actions!), but functionally we are asked to perform JUSTICE. (I mean, we want those two to be close, right?) This is further complicated by aligning the protagonist with a SWARM - a word that typically does not imply nobility or fairness (let alone FREEDOM), but predatory massmind might-makes-right. All of these choices made the work much more complex than its surface choice-select construction. Just giving TRUTH choices AT ALL undermines the expected singularity of it. If we can choose multiple, incompatible paths, how can they all be products of TRUTH? It begs us to interrogate whether TRUTH is living up to its name, or are our decisions arbitrary and as their author we simply choose to CALL that TRUTH? And is JUSTICE really a universal concept at all, or just expedient control masquerading as something nobler?
Was any of this intended by the author? I have no way of knowing that, but SOT really spun my mental wheels in intriguing ways.
(One quick note to author, it appeared that TRUTH’s gender wavered throughout the work? If this was intended, I didn’t tumble to its desired effect.)
Join The Swarm by SAT (5min, 3 endings many times)
This presents as a horror work - the player is beset by sinister voices egging them on to some unsettlingly unspecific transgressions. This formless swarm seems to have verbal capabilities! The setting is an empty (except for protagonist) house, where the darkness outside is fraught with unseen threats. This all builds a terrific atmosphere of horror lurking below the everyday, emerging to torment us once the sun goes down - a wonderfully primal fear from our collective unconscious. The choice select work presents as a series of choices how to engage/avoid/combat these voices and the tension they are building. I appreciated the divergence from standard Twine formatting here, the red link choices really popped. The work funnels your choices into three possible endings, all hinging on a last minute twist worthy of The Twilight Zone. I found it interesting to replay. After experiencing the twist the first time, the story shifts to melancholy on replay, when you know what is coming.
The only glitch in my gameplay came from the audio track. At startup you are advised to crank up the volume, which I dutifully did. If there was a soundtrack associated with the work it did not seem to play for me. Which is too bad, because a just-shy-of-audible-muttering would have been an amazing mood-setter here!
Jouin Le Swarm by Neural (5min, endings 1, 2, 3, 4)
This is another story that elevates its default Twine formatting with playful font work. The fact that first time authors engage this arguably optional nuance gives me hope for the future of art. Or at least artists. This work explicitly grapples with the two sides of “SWARM” as a hive mind. On the one hand, a perceived loss of freedom. On the other, an end to loneliness and promise of community. I was pleasantly surprised at the nuanced treatment of this dynamic. Western Democracy has decided individualist FREEDOM is our highest aspiration (which to be fair, when presented with authoritarian alternatives does seem better). This simplistic prescription seemingly ignores our evolutionary grounding as a deeply SOCIAL species. I would not have guessed this doctrine to be questioned so explicitly in the entries of this year’s Senica! Does that speak to hivemind or a series of resonant free-thought exercises? Or to the possibility that the whole construct could be somehow a false dichotomy? Many of the works gestured at this tension, but this one foregrounded it. In particular, it had the maturity to acknowledge that while assimilation CAN BE violent to the individual, it does not HAVE to be! I liked the nuance there.
John The Swan by Vitali Blinov (5 min, 4 ends)
I am not a poetry guy, I trust that has become clear. If I am going to engage poetry though, it is best when it is playful. Join the Swarm → John the Swan is a subversively funny baseline for a sly wordplay poem. First runthrough, I thought the timed text worked pretty well, particularly, the ‘late link’ final step. It played out just slowly enough to force me to engage it, but not so slowly as to frustrate progress. It ended up pacing well enough to let its wordplay land with all the absurdist fury of Suess poem. From a default position of 'poetry - no thanks, ’ JtS was tight and fun enough to get past my barriers. If I had a quibble, it was on repeat plays. What at first was playful delay, compensating drag with surprise, once the surprise was eliminated the drag became uncompensated. I would recommend accelerating the pace of timed text during subsequent iterations, particularly for screens the player has already seen.
It’s Here by Chaos (5min)
Ok, if Jouin Le Swarm opened the door to reevaluating Western Orthodoxy’s fetishization of Freedom, It’s Here charges through that door and starts flipping tables. This Swarm is conceived of not as a threat to, but a negotiation between the collective and the individual. It posits that the individual need not be lost to the Swarm, just the opposite, that the swarm is enriched by the presence of each of its individual constituents. I don’ t mean for it to sound condescending when I say I was not expecting this from Senica Thing! I mean that as a compliment, but I understand SAYING it may not make it so. The amount of insightful and challenging thought packed into these small games is really a revelation and a credit to the authors. I really like the subtle reinforcement of that in the game’s construction, which I’m going to spoiler because I like it so much. Every path of acceptance or rejection you might try to take ends with the same text! The architecture of the game is reinforcing its central message that there is no RIGHT or WRONG way to engage the collective. The Swarm is enriched by all of it! That meta-linkage is even more impressive to me than the always welcome formatting experimentation!
Dystopia by Creator (10m, multiple endings)
So Dystopia distinguishes itself in the field by having the most extended (and grounded) narrative in the collection. It is an amateur game maker’s baptism into the world of work. Sure, it’s a deeply CYNICAL narrative but that is a virtue, not a sin. It conceptualizes the Swarm as relinquishing individuality and creativity in the name of a collective. But not a nuanced collective of symbiotic benefits, a fully exploitative collective that its members just agree to because… social and financial inertia. When these ‘Rage Against the Machine’ narratives appear they are not served by nuance or ‘ok, but..’ In fact their complete LACK of measured fairness is the whole point. It is a polemic driven by anger, and since when does anger care to take time to hear the other side? It’s seen all it needs to, now is time for RAAAGE. Here, in cold black and white, it is possible my words might be misinterpreted as condemning this impulse. Far from it. This is the youthful Punk Rock ethos that refuses to excuse Exploitation with tepid ‘Trickle Down’ dissembling. It is a throat punch to a social order whose creative vampirism benefits only a very few. ALL my favorite music plays this song, and I LOVE IT. It doesn’t need to be an accurate portrait of all work, whatever that even is, it only need decry a model that EXISTS, and give it ABSOLUTELY NO QUARTER.
I might suggest three refinements here: first the illustration that appears 2/3 of the way in is HUUGE. Even on a full-screen window it bleeds over. I would resize (shrink) this to fit within the text. Also, while I as always appreciate the experimentation with presentation, some links are rendered in a maroon color that practically disappears on the black background. Lastly, there are early choices to reject the story before it starts. Sometimes it leads to an abrupt and unsatisfying end, long before its anger manifests. Another time it results in the game basically telling you ‘No, take the other option.’ Both of these are kind of counter to the narrative, and if taken before the game has been played through once, have no real power. Given the narrative really takes off only if the initial overture is accepted, it is perfectly ok to force the player to accept, and provide story reasons for it. “My family would have a fit if they found out I didn’t even consider the job. Maybe I’ll go ahead and check it out.” Particularly since meaningful accept/reject choices (arguably the point of the work!) occur later, early railroading would not be a terrible gameplay choice.
A Swarm Of Spiders by DiBa (5min, 5 endings)
And here, in our final entry, we get the eagerly anticipated SWARM OF SPIDERS!! The work presents a half-dream late night exploration of unusual spider activity. It can end with going back to bed, DIEING, or… no not gonna spoil it, … or another ending that I laughed right out loud at. Vindication for Arachnophiles! This was a very short, very amusing way to close out this year’s theme and collection. The perfect amuse bouche to clear the palate of some of the heavier works ahead of it, and end on a playful, fun note. I do appreciate that one choice (perhaps the most meaningful in the game) was telegraphed as important. If I had a suggestion it would be to make the options of that choice more naturally suggestive of their outcomes, even if only in retrospect. Something like Your adrenaline must have played with the spider venom in a catastrophic way… Otherwise, a great finale to this year’s premier IF anthology!
Spaceship: Discovery
Vibe: Buggy (I mean, not COMPUTER buggy… you get it) Anthology
Polish: Various
Gimme the Wheel! : We have established that nothing in my makeup lends itself to this incredibly vital service to this hobby. This is a wheel I am content to leave in Ondrej’s firm, sure hands.