Mike Russo's Spring Thing 2024 Reviews

Competitions Spring Thing
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Excessive detail for tabletop fans

The story of the Sabbat across the editions is actually really fascinating—starting out as the most monstrous and evil antagonists possible, then turning into a group of extremists who make some valid points because people saw Vicissitude and Obtenebration and said “we want to play this now”. Fifth edition wanted to send them back to their roots, so some metaplot events have decapitated their old hierarchy and the organization splintered under the strain; the ones who call themselves “Sabbat” now are mostly the unrepentant monsters again. (The short version is, turns out “we don’t care if the humans know, we’re better than them” is a terrible idea in the modern surveillance state…especially when you refuse to consider allying with any of the other factions.)

Maria’s “Church of Caine” is one of those splinter factions; she saw the Sabbat who were more interested in monstrosity than subtlety get hunted down and eradicated by human hunters and vampire factions alike. So when she suddenly had the freedom to define things her own way, she tried to find a way to make her religious views palatable to the other factions and avoid getting run out of town with torches and pitchforks. (She specifically avoids calling herself “Sabbat” for this reason.)

They (the Church) were introduced in one of the more recent tabletop books and I like them as an additional faction that can coexist with the Camarilla and Anarchs. But, well…Maria’s still on the Path of Power and the Inner Voice, and is more than happy to eat someone’s soul if she thinks he betrayed her ideals. So there’s a reason getting her on your side will always without exception turn another faction completely against you.

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Cool, thanks for the info – I had a vague sense about some of that, but had the details scrambled! I agree that this take on them does make for more interesting gameplay, and Maria being dangerous but someone you could work with, for a price, definitely came through. Just getting jumped by the Black Hand or a bunch of shovelheads before I walked through the door would have been way less fun!

Though maybe you can work the True Black Hand into the sequel :slight_smile:

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Hey, thanks for playing (again!) and for the review. And thanks for noticing some of the upgrades (there’s a bunch more behind the scenes changes too!).

That’s in ‘original’ mode - ‘story’ mode does away with this entirely making for an easier way to play. It does take away some of the challenge though.

I hear ya. Working on a version now that will let players entirely turn off all location images - thus removing all instances of AI generated art (and making it more like a traditional text-based IF game). User choice FTW.

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The Time Machine 2.0, by Bill Maya

(I beta tested this game).

Unlike the other New Game Plus entries, this updated version of The Time Machine sticks to the same system as its original ParserComp 2021 release, and retains the same plot – you’re a friend of H.G. Wells who’s attempting to prove him sane by showing that he really did travel through time and isn’t suffering from a delusion. But where that was mostly a standard Inform affair, version 2.0 has gotten quite the coat of paint: the status bar tells you where (and when) you are while providing a small map of exits; subwindows offer character portraits, an inventory list, and a character interaction area telling you which NPCs are present and suggesting some topics of conversation (there are also graphics for each location; while I’m not sure of their provenance, they’ve unfortunately got a bit of an AI vibe to them, and regardless it would be nice to note where they came from in the ABOUT text). It’s about as slick a presentation as a parser game can offer, down to the scroll-bars that make it easy to navigate long menus or go back to earlier sections of your playthrough.

Looking back at my review of the original game, I spent a lot of time harping on niggles of implementation – missing synonyms, unwinnable states, endemic typos, objects that you couldn’t pick up again after you’d dropped them – but I found the updated version smoothed out all of these issues and more besides. It also addresses my other major complaint, which was a faint whiff of anticlimax: the author’s added a final act involving an escape from the Morlock’s tunnels, which creates some excitement before the end and ensures all the iconic elements of Wells’ novel are brought on-screen.

This is still a comparatively small game, though – there are only three or so puzzles, and neither the characters, the plot, nor the themes are especially deep. Ordinarily I’d say there’s nothing wrong with that – better to get in and out while you have something to say – and The Time Machine, in its current form, feels neither over-short nor padded. Still, I do find the 2.0 release’s robust package of interface features and implementation improvements risks coming across as overengineered compared to what, in context, may seem a relatively slight story; three years is a long time to add polish, after all. But that’s not really a critique, and if anything, the issue may just be that my standards for parser game presentation are too low. There are always lots of forum conversations about how to make these kinds of games more appealing to new players, and while that task certainly has gameplay and narrative elements too, in addition to its own solid merits it’s worth checking out the Time Machine if only to see just how modern an Inform game can feel.

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And that, I believe, is the lot! I had a lot of fun digging into the wide variety of games this year – even after so many years playing IF, there were many that did things I’ve never seen before, and many others that put fresh spins on familiar approaches. I’m looking forward to getting my ribbon nominations in order, and catching up on all the other reviews I’ve missed on out reading in my headlong rush to complete my own.

As always, thanks and kudos to all the authors, the organizer, and everyone else who helped make Spring Thing happen, from testers to reviewers to folks just taking part in the conversation!

And I’m still looking to get back to my incomplete 2023 Spring Thing reviews soon, but fair warning that that might be more of a late May thing, as I’ve got an idea for the Bad IF jam…

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Thank you Mike for the reviews! As usual, yours was really good- in-depth, to the point and very enjoyable to read.

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@DeusIrae - Thanks so much for the review and apologies for my delayed reply.

I can’t tell you how great your comments “It’s about as slick a presentation as a parser game can offer…” and “it’s worth checking out…if only to see just how modern an Inform game can feel.” made me feel. After working on this game part-time for 3+ years all I can see are it’s flaws and where I fell short. Your words made me realize that it’s not all bad.

I did generate the graphics using Midjourney and I found it an interesting tool for amateur game developers like myself without the resources to hire human graphic designers directly. It took about 10-15 hours to create all the images and I would probably use it in the future if the need arose but I do have concerns about the tool’s fidelity, i.e. getting it to draw exactly what I need without extraneous elements, and consistency between similar prompts.

Besides adding things to the game and fixing bugs and world-gaps between version 1.0 and version 2.0, I spent a significant amount of time removing code and simplifying things that I had over-engineered in the ParserComp 2021 version (of 127,049 words written for the project, only 45,459 remain in the game). This experience made me realize that good game mise-en-scene does not require 100% fidelity to reality.

Thanks again for your help with beta testing. Your efforts and the efforts of all the other beta testers made The Time Machine a much better game.

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