In an effort to get a little more attention distributed among the games and perhaps get some discussion going, we’re going to try a new thing this year—introducing the Short Games Showcase Spotlight!
Each day, Encorm or I will randomly select 4-5 games and do a brief writeup of the interesting points about them. If you’ve played any of these games, or if you go to play any of them because these brief writeups intrigue you, we encourage you to share your thoughts! (And remember you can also comment on the jam entry pages on Itch!)
Here are today’s games:
Marbles, D, and the Sinister Spotlight
(I swear this really is the first game the randomizer gave me and I didn’t pick a game with “Spotlight” in the title to be cute.)
A charming game in which you play a cat leading her human to investigate a mysterious theatre. All-ages and designed to be easy to get to grips with for a parser newbie, while the more advanced player can indulge a completionist streak by seeking opportunities for actions that get you bonus points.
RIDE HOME
A kinetic novel about a trans woman in an abusive relationship with a manipulative cis coworker (see the game’s main page for further content warnings). It has a soundtrack that was composed specially for the game, and it’s mentioned in the comments that the author also took the photos used as backgrounds and recorded the sound effects; that level of handcrafted effort is rare and pretty cool!
my baby needs blood
A linear, atmospheric Videotome work—very wintery, so perhaps a good choice if it’s winter where you are (or if you wish it were!). Set among the Ainu people of Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, which is something I haven’t seen a lot in fiction of any kind.
Walk a Mile in My Shoes
Just a normal little parser game about a normal (if kinda awkward) guy getting dressed on Halloween, nothing to see here! A punchy lightly spooky piece with a distinctive character voice. Seems to have been updated since ECTOCOMP, though I don’t know what changes were made.
Osage Orange
A strange, surreal post-apocalyptic (or sort of mid-apocalyptic?) narrative made in PowerPoint. Entertaining and also educational about such topics as the native fruits of North America and Galen’s doctrine of signatures.
We’ve all woken up after a hard night partying with regrets and fuzzy recollections of what we got up to the night before, but that (probably) didn’t involve summoning a demon! Navigate the demonically awkward morning after in this Ren’Py choice game.
A creative entry from this year’s Neo-Twiny Jam, the author has used that competition’s 500-word limit to make a fully functioning game of parser Blackjack! Experience the highs and lows of true Las Vegas gambling, all from the comfort of your living room.
There’s lots of games out there on Itch that have made it into this year’s SGS, and many of them are kinetic novels, but few of them are pure romances and even fewer starring adults over 40. Check it out if you’d like a sweet second-chance romance.
A very normal morning in your very normal apartment, exactly what I would expect from Damon Wakes. Definitely a normal parser game! (Don’t look too closely at those error messages…)
Originally written for the Single Choice Jam, VITALEAGUE tells the story of an ordinary teen who fate has lead to a join a superhero team, proudly serving the community as their… social media manager? A fun look at both superhero team drama and the social media landscape of 2025.
(This was intended to be daily and we already blew that, whoops, so this is me committing to keeping the schedule from here on out.)
Dad’s Shiva, from this year’s ECTOCOMP, is a sharp, unsettling story about trauma and family secrets (see game page for content warnings). In a New York Jewish community, the MC pays a visit to their sister’s apartment after their father’s death. You can poke around and find some things out, but will that really help?
Espresso Moka is the follow-up to Breakfast in the Dolomites; the author’s unique brand of parser comedy leans on the awkward and fiddly aspects of the medium to generate humor through absurdity and frustration. It’s sort of like the Octodad of parser IF.
Little Boxes is a surreal horror story from the Single Choice Jam. You are a shut-in in a nice suburban neighborhood who likes to watch the local dogs when they go out on walks past your house, but as the world begins to fall apart, the dogs start acting strange… The game’s pixel art backrounds and synthy soundtrack become increasingly ominous, and the imagery is strange and vivid.
Grove of Bones is a horror game about a town whose fruit trees demand a yearly sacrifice. Last year your spouse was sacrificed, and this year your son might be selected too. Can you save him? And at what cost?
Nihilist Syndrome is a very short, elliptical Neo-Twiny Jam horror piece about two students who die mysteriously and then seem to be erased from reality entirely. Highly ambiguous and ripe for speculation about what exactly is going on.
A thought-provoking game presented as letters from a traveler far from home, about making human connections despite a language barrier.
Anyone who’s used an AirBnB is familiar with the sometimes arcane steps required to find your keys, check in, and get inside - presented here, in puzzle parser form!
A top 20 game from this year’s IFComp, Penthesileia tells the story of a devoted housewife to a very important man. How important, you ask? You’ll have to find out.
Another thought-provoking kinetic novel which I can’t describe any better than the author does themselves: “A Disputation on Puppygirls, Orientalism, and Fetishizing One’s Own Suffering”.
An absurdist slice of life game capturing life in a hypercapitalist hellscape. Depressingly relatable!
Tableaux is a series of dreamlike vignettes exploring the psyche of a lonely woman. It was made for last year’s Shufflecomp and each vignette is themed around one of three songs that inspired the game.
I’ve always said that given the myriad things that have to line up just so, it’s cosmically unlikely for any given relationship to come to be, and this time loop game illustrates that, showing a variety of ways two people can miss a connection with each other. It’s also interesting to see a time-loop game that’s low-stakes as opposed to the usual fare of saving the world or preventing someone’s death and so on (one character can be non-fatally hit by a car if they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, but most possible outcomes are just for the two of them to have a sort of disappointing evening).
A masterpiece that surely needs no introduction.
An affectionate parody of romance VNs, with character customization options that surely cover every type of person that exists and meaningful choices such as what to compare your beloved’s eyes to. Take a job at the vampire catboy bar in the hopes of finding the vampire catboy of your dreams!
Freed from the Curse is a Twine game that’s a goofy riff on fairytales, distinctly reminiscent of Shrek. (The love interest’s name is even similar, although even if it is a reference, Schnecke is also German for snail.) Features incredibly charming illustrations.
I’m always astounded at what parser authors can pull off in four hours for Ectocomp, and Super Halloween Horror Show is a stellar example of that kind of wizardry. Now polished further and freshly ported to Dialog, it’s a better time than ever to jump in and help our plucky powered protagonist save Halloween!
It’s Halloween and our protagonist Mina is in for a boring night… until a manic pixie Halloween witch named March (long-story) crash-lands in her yard and breaks her broom, kicking off a night of spooky adventure as she drags you along to help fix it! Will you play along and help her out, or be a total crabapple about it?
Originally entered into this year’s IFComp, The Breakup Game is half Twine game and half therapy session aimed at helping the player process any past breakups they may be struggling with. Warning: may contain tears, catharsis, and self-actualization.
This Twine game is unabashedly Twin Peaks fanfic (the alternate title is “Do You Guys Think David Lynch Liked Mitski’s Song Abbey?”) about being stuck in the iconic Red Room. It’s a true love letter to the show, but even people who haven’t watched it should be able to enjoy this.
A striking Decker collaboration about identity, consciousness, and online community that also completely nails the vibe of hacker forums. (Yes, this is futuristic underground biohacking we’re talking about here, but the more things change the more they stay the same.)
The Organ-Grinder’s Monkey is a lighthearted, funny classic text adventure that fans of Garry Francis’s other work or of the old-school style in general are likely to enjoy.
Another one where the authors have done a better job blurbing it than we could: alternate title: You’re The Top Vampire Hunter Of Your Chapter But This Butch Twink Vampire Is Kinda Cute Tho. T4T homoerotic vampire-on-vampire-slayer sexual tension, in Twine, with illustrations.
An experimental Twine game from Spring Thing, adapted from an in-person art installation, which is fascinating. Poetic; makes heavy use of text styling.
Corporate satire with more layers than it first appears. Pursuing multiple endings is recommended!
Another Spring Thing alum, this one describes itself as a dark fantasy novelette and follows a starving vampire trying to escape a trap before sunrise. This being a DemonApologist joint, you know that vampire is going to be sympathetic, sexy, and queer, and really, what more can you ask for (I say unironically)?
An Inform 7 game about trying to get a particularly shy Bluetooth mouse to open up enough to connect to your computer. (If this was how Bluetooth troubleshooting worked in the real world we’d all have a much better time.)
If you’ve spent any time on Internet discourse you know what this one is about - creativity, ambition, competition, and of course: the dangers of trusting the thinly veiled fantasy GenAI analogue. Slop also has the honor of being (as far as I’m aware) the only multiplayer game in the SGS. Grab a friend and try it out! (But don’t worry, there’s also a solo version.)
While this is a Ren’Py visual novel, it’s got a unique conceit - there’s standard choices to be had and companions to woo, but most of the gameplay revolves around balancing light and darkness to illuminate the game’s areas. (And maybe, if you’re lucky, balancing the light and darkness in your own soul.)
Another stylish Decker game made for Velox Fabula. (Do all Decker games look this good or do we just have a good crop of authors this year?) Ride along the subway with our unnamed characters as they discuss life, cities, and the nature of transit.
hideous, fabulous is bills itself as a murder mystery, although it’s clearly not a classical whodunnit. (The who is revealed pretty much instantly.) Instead, investigate the scene and pick up the pieces to determine the why – and find out if anything can truly be put back together.
Enter a strange underwater kitchen and make some tea in this surreal parser game. You can die in various ways, but UNDO will always fix it, and the author has helpfully provided a walkthrough in case you get stuck.
This kinetic VN follows two robot girlfriends trying to disentangle ideas of sex and romance that they’ve inherited from humans from what they actually want (and grappling with the fact that what they each individually want doesn’t always line up).
A Decker game about a human and an AI chatbot who switch places (I would say “swap bodies”, but…) while some sort of apocalyptic event is going on. Stylish and infused with an odd sort of romance. (The authors also added a photosensitivity-safe downloadable version because I asked for one, which was very nice of them!)
A Twine game in which you play as the childhood friend of the destined hero. You’ve always had a crush on him, but he only has eyes for your sister. Now he’s returned from his epic quest and seems set to marry her, but something seems different about him now… Has several endings, none of them ethically uncomplicated.
A very meta kinetic VN about a character having an existential crisis about being a fictional character while the other characters around her seem not to care.
Robot Recovery Mission is quite unlike Chance of Fire’s other game in the SGS – it’s also made in Ren’Py, but that’s about where the similarities end. RRM casts you into the conflict between the heroic Cipy robots in the aftermath of an attack by their nemesis, the evil Decabots. What follows is a resource management game (a rarity in Ren’Py!) to gather gems and recover before the Decabots attack again. (I failed miserably on my first attempt and didn’t manage to complete any of the inventions – can you do better?)
Ever wondered exactly why dogs get so excited about walkies? Let’s go for a walk tries to answer that by putting you in the shoes (collar?) of Doggy as she goes on her daily walk around the neighborhood. Vicariously enjoy mundane events like “going to the store” through her adorable perspective!
One of the most striking entries from this year’s IFComp, 3XXX takes place in a world so puritanical that the merest glimpse of exposed skin can make someone explode. (Yes, literally explode. You pick through the messy aftermath of such a detonation in the prologue.) Our protagonist is the best detective on the police force working to keep the world safe from the sinful threat of an exposed ankle, until one day he wakes up as society’s greatest fear: a hot woman. It’s very hard to do the rest of the story justice in a summary, but if you’re interested in how much social commentary a skilled author can mine out of this premise then I highly suggest checking it out.
Another entry in the vaunted SGS genre of “authors writing games about their silly little cats” – can you make it through an entire day of petting little kitty Pickles (whose beautiful face graces every scene) without getting chomped by Her Majesty?
A message from the highest of powers (a future self) about boundaries, gender, and self-acceptance.
Laroholg is a visual novel about a woman who prefers to live alone in the wilderness, but two brothers keep getting into scrapes right near her cottage; over time, her grudging rescues evolve into friendship, but turmoil is brewing in the wider world.
This is a puzzle game that’s entirely unique. It requires a type of puzzle-solving skill that doesn’t often come up in IF, so it might be a little hard to figure out at first, but it’s worth taking a crack at (just make sure you’re prepared to take notes!). I was impressed by how well everything fit together in the end!
In this visual novel, an accomplished exorcist, Serrill, confronts his former lover, a king whom he believes to be possessed by a demon. But is he really possessed? And even if he is, is Serrill’s power great enough to fix it?
A Twine game in which you play as an investigative journalist combing through records in the hopes of exposing the workings of an international crime ring. But what you publish may have consequences—not only for you, but for your sources. Is the truth worth the cost?
Dream No More is an unsettling Videotome game that takes place in a dystopian future where the government controls dreams. You are in a dream, listening to a monologue from one of the employees of the government dream agency about the workings of the dream machines, choosing whether to wake up or continue dreaming—but what exactly is going on here, and why is the narrator telling you all this? A great game for anyone who thought Inception should have been much weirder (e.g., me).
Lol, I agree, but there was enough confusing stuff happening I was satsfied in the end. Though for me it can never be too weird. I’m on DARK season 3 right now and loving it.
Yeah, I was being a bit flippant; I think Inception does a good job of what it’s trying to do, but since actual dreams can be so much weirder than that, it’s cool to see something that explores some similar territory of a person who can enter others’ dreams going down multiple layers of nested dreams and possibly losing track of reality that leans into the potential surreality of it. (DREAM NO MORE also has a lot going on that’s unique with the government-controlled dream dystopia stuff, of course.)
A poetic and metaphorical game made for the Barebones Jam about light, space, and the nature of relationships.
Prepper Van is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin – manage your resources (including but not limited to water, food, medicine, and dead armadillos) to try and ride out the apocalypse in your trusty van. Maybe you can even get a job, if you’re lucky? (I caught leprosy from an armadillo before I had the chance).
A game about unique flavors, chance encounters, and the magic of human connection, Within Rotation boasts a cast of eight characters and unique conversations between every possible pair (which, if I’m doing my math right, is 28 total – basically, a lot!).
Explore a maze-like abandoned house and try to make sense of what you’ve lost (or what you might find). Note: the button in the bottom-left corner allows you to disable the timed text.
A delightful micro-VN about a visit to your grandmother’s boneyard and the stories fossils can tell.
Sometimes you’re your own worst enemy—or maybe your own most toxic friend. Experience a nightmarish supernatural take on queer identity struggles, bad coping mechanisms, and self-sabotage in this short but twisty ECTOCOMP game.
Two young people fall in love, or so it seems, but might one of them have unsavory intentions? And will either of them get out of this unscathed?
Find a funny little hat on the beach, take it home, and make the acquaintance of its owner. Though this is an ECTOCOMP game, it’s not especially scary—unless you decide to be mean to a fae creature just to see what will happen. But you wouldn’t do that, right?
The hare of the Tortoise and the Hare fable is trapped in a time loop, reliving the events of the fable and somehow finding new ways to make mistakes each time. Though made with Godot, this looks and plays a lot like a Bitsy game, so if you enjoy that style of interaction this may be up your alley!
Meet weird hybrid creatures, get a band together, and learn about wetland ecosystems in this lighthearted MS-DOS point-and-click.
Explore an unfamiliar city at night and try to make sense of it, yourself, and the world. This game is made in Undum, a choice-based software I haven’t seen before but has some seriously stylish output!
An action-packed VN focusing on the complicated relationship between the traitor vampire Xiomara and his former ally the vampirically-immune Lucretio. Per the author: “In my opinion, that is what shounen could be if the people involved weren’t cowards.”
What to do when your werewolf princess girlfriend’s country wants her back (against her will)? Navigate a gauntlet of choices in this Ren’Py game to save her, and yourself, and your relationship.
Exactly what it says on the tin! This is a hybrid parser game with links where you explore a beach and get your doctor-mandated exercise in. (Watch out for seagulls!)
Also exactly what it says on the tin, although it’s more of a (quite heated) argument than a neutral dialogue. You’ve died and have incurred judgement – can you argue your way out of being condemned to nothingness?
An engine by Ian Millington, who went on to make Varytale and then Dendry, yeah. I suspect it never caught on because its authoring experience is “go edit this JS file” but its UI is pretty slick! Bruno Dias made Raconteur which makes it easier to write Undum games, but they’re still fairly rare.
This Twine game considers the horrors of the manosphere as the PC’s obsession with regrowing his thinning hair—and more generally reclaiming a masculinity that he feels is under threat—leads him down a dark path.
Portrait With Wolf is a poetic parser game about art and trauma and the experience of trying to use art to process trauma. Construct a gallery of cats, turnips, boots, and astronauts, but watch out for the wolf that’s always lurking. A contemplative sort of game, to be wandered through and explored.
In this parser-mimicking mini Twine game, you can explore a jungle cave and discover its secrets, meet a monkey, play a vuvuzela, and more![1] Newly translated into English just for the SGS!
A relaxing little stroll through nature to collect some corals, featuring soothing rock-clacking sound effects and just a dash of ASCII art.
And with this, all the games have had their moment in the spotlight! You still have about a day and a half to vote.
Not necessarily very much more, because it’s short, but I’m not gonna give everything away here. ↩︎