Nell's Spring Thing 2026 Spotlights (Spoiler-Free)

Competitions Spring Thing
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With a couple weeks left until ribbon nominations close for Spring Thing, this feels like a good time to shine a spotlight on some festival entries that have been standouts for me so far.

This thread is for everyone, but I’m writing these spotlights especially for folks who haven’t played these titles yet and are looking for recommendations of what to try next. I usually prefer to read the more in-depth reviews after I have played and formed my own impressions of an IF, and I figured that might be true for some others, too.

Since I’m participating in the festival with my own game, Fantasy Opera: The Theater of Memory, in this thread I’ll only offer positive or neutral commentary on a selection of entries that I would especially recommend. The focus here is on uplifting fellow authors, not really getting into critiques.

I might continue to add to this list as I play through the rest. (At the moment, I’ve played about half of the entries so far. If you don’t see a certain title listed here, I wouldn’t necessarily not recommend it!)

At the end of each spotlight, I’m including a "Tips" section. These are things that, in retrospect, I think it might improve one’s experience to know going into playing this IF. These aren’t really hints, just general guidance. But I might venture ever so slightly into revealing game mechanics or content, so if you’re very highly spoiler-averse you can skip these parts.

In order of length from shortest to longest (based on my play time), with links added to this list as I post each spotlight:

A Quiet Scurry, by Moss & Quill Studios
Strings: a (bug)folk song, by Tabitha & baezil
The Universal Robot (Assembled By Hex), by Agnieszka Trzaska
Enigmart, by Sarah Willson
Our Lady of Thorns, by Joel Burton

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A Quiet Scurry, by Moss & Quill Studios

A short CYOA in which you step into the paws of a very vulnerable, yet intrepid, harvest mouse. I thought the naturalistic narrative was effective at evoking the challenges of survival on a small scale.

Length: A few minutes.

Play this if you like:

  • Wildlife documentaries.

  • Thinking about ecology.

  • Empathizing with other species.

Tips: There are quite a few branches in this short story, and plenty of ways to die. If you get an early game over (or if you just want to see all the content), it’s easy and worthwhile to replay and try different choices.

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Strings: a (bug)folk song, by Tabitha & baezil

Play a “bugfolk” musician on a quest to recruit legendary musicians to join you in a concert to summon the moon. This charming “fable” involves interacting with wildlife and learning how to use natural environments to your advantage. There’s evocative writing worth lingering on here, and it takes place in a unique setting with fun world-building.

This is a well-implemented Inform game with plenty of unique parser responses and commands, in-game hints, and QoL features that make for a smooth experience. I think it achieves a Goldilocks balance of an experience that’s not terribly long or challenging but still feels substantial.

Length: About 30 mins (though I could see it taking longer, depending on your reading speed).

Play this if you like:

  • Original stories that feel like folklore.

  • Fantasy settings with anthropomorphic animals.

  • The idea of playing a parser, but find many games in the genre intimidating. (Although seasoned parser players will enjoy this, too.)

Tips: There are a couple puzzles in the game that involve NPC movements that are timed to the player’s turns. There were places where I found that I needed to leave a room or take an action in order to trigger a character to move. Also, don’t overlook the scenery descriptions: they include some fairly subtle clues that may take a couple of readings.

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The Universal Robot (Assembled By Hex), by Agnieszka Trzaska

A satirical sci-fi scenario: you play a technician tasked with assembling a robot with which your boss threatens to replace you (entirely). This is a Twine game with parser spirit; it’s polished and thoroughly implemented. The puzzles were (for me) a nice level of challenge. They required thought, but never became overwhelming.

There’s plenty of dark humor in this story, although a feeling of hopelessness is somewhat tempered by the surprising degree of agency that the player is given in determining the ending. There’s a long list of endings with very divergent outcomes. I was satisfied to stop at uncovering 5/12 endings, but I didn’t exhaust all the apparent possibilities; this is a game that rewards experimentation.

Length: About an hour.

Play this if you like:

  • Sci-fi anti-capitalist satire.

  • Story-driven puzzles.

  • Uncovering narrative branches through surprising interactions between inventory and environment.

  • Games that blend parser-like game design with choice-based interface.

Tips: The inventory system is central to progressing to the game, but it took me a moment to realize how it worked. If you don’t wish to figure this out for yourself: clicking “Use” next to an item in your inventory will give you the option to apply it to objects or NPCs in the environment. “Combine” will enable you to use two items in your inventory on each other.

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Enigmart, by Sarah Willson

A cornucopia of puzzles of the varieties you’d traditionally see in print publications, encompassed in a fairly lean but well-written frame narrative that satirizes customer rewards programs.

Having little-to-no familiarity with most of the styles of puzzles presented here, I wasn’t exactly the target audience for this; so I probably found it more challenging and time-consuming than others might. But for every puzzle that I was stumped by, there were many more that I found approachable and fun.

Puzzles aside, the whole experience of this game had a distinct atmosphere of Americana — nostalgic in feel, yet entirely contemporary in its anti-capitalist satire — that I thought was memorable.

Length: About two hours.

Play this if you like:

  • Lots of puzzles. Word puzzles, logic puzzles, and visual puzzles.

Tips: If (like me) you want to see how the story ends but you’re stumped on any puzzle solutions, there is a walkthrough file with solutions included in the downloaded version of the game. (You won’t see this if you play online.) Also, this game really lends itself to being played over several short sittings. In retrospect, I should have played it that way!

8 Likes
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Our Lady of Thorns, by Joel Burton

A monastic murder mystery with authentic-feeling historical atmospheric. It’s a deeply-implemented parser with detailed world modeling that rewards the player’s thorough attention. Although this is mystery, it’s not primarily a game of deduction: as the player, your role in solving the murder involves uncovering a number of clues hidden in nooks and crannies all over the priory.

There are several, well-considered timed elements, both on the macro scale (the rhythm of the priory worship schedule) and micro scale (tightly-timed scenes where you could be caught snooping by one of the Brothers). That being said, the experience is more atmospheric and exploratory — and your timeline for solving the mystery is more generous — than you might think at first glance.

Length: About three hours.

Play this if you like:

  • Immersive historical settings.

  • Highly detailed parser-based world modeling.

  • Puzzles that unlock mysterious secret rooms. (I mean, who wouldn’t like that?)

  • Medieval monks!

Tips: Have patience, take notes, and save frequently. I used a number of hints (and consulted the walkthrough for a couple of steps), but I think I would’ve needed to do less of that if I’d realized a couple things sooner:

  1. The verb SEARCH is very important. Not all clues will be yielded by EXAMINE alone, and some areas of the priory require further investigation.

  2. If you feel like you might be on the right track with a puzzle but your efforts haven’t yielded progress, don’t be too quick to give up. It may be a matter of trying out an alternative verb or action. There were a few puzzles I stopped myself just short of solving without hints because I figured I’d missed something and didn’t stop to consider other tactics.

7 Likes