A few other ones that haven’t been mentioned yet and scratched an itch in my brain for the nicely surreal/evocative:
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Shouting out some games that could use more ratings!
This one is a fun, unusual parser game that I quite enjoyed. Has a cool mechanic and multiple possible endings.
This one is very silly and had me laughing. Super quick to play through!
This is a cute and sweet queer VN about a big life change.
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Two of the games with least ratings are Temporal Thief part 1 and 2.
I avoided playing them at first because they looked substantive and with two parts I thought it’d take forever, but part 2 is literally just 1 choice and part 1 is like 3, so they were very easy to finish, and Jacic has good writing as always.
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The graphics in this one are so lovely, and the story is beautifully haunting and melancholy:
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I’ve now played all the SGS games! Either when they were released last year, or this month during the showcase. If anyone wants recs for specific genres/types/moods/whatever, let me know!
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I want to preface that what I’m saying isn’t meant as a complaint to the organizers or as a suggestion for authors to change, but more as an explanation in case anyone wonders ‘why isn’t mathbrush (or others) reviewing more games’.
A significant chunk of the short games showcase games are just linear stories, a lot of them pretty long. I like stories but I read other stories all day, the stories I like, the stories I specifically sought out (like podcasts, Shakespeare, Moby Dick, Middlemarch, professional manga, etc.). When I play interactive fiction it’s specifically because of the delight that comes from interaction with the text. With that interaction, even mediocre text can be engaging and fun. Without that, it just becomes a random short story online, and usually not one of the type that I’d pick to read on my own.
I think linear games can be fun; I love Polish the Glass, and several others. One feature they have in common is that they tend to incorporate other forms of interaction (like blurred or hover text) and they let you regulate your reading speed more (like going back or by allowing text to grow on a single page instead of new page every click). Those are things that can make a linear story still feel like you’re having an effect on it.
So, I probably won’t finish all the short games showcase games. There are a ton left though that have some form of interaction, so I’ll be checking them out, and I’ve already found a lot of wonderful and great games that I’m so glad people made and entered. Just wanted to throw my thoughts out there
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Honestly, anyone who can finish all bazillion games (let alone review them) is practically superhuman. We’ve set the suggested voting minimum at five for a reason and it sounds like you’re well beyond that already, so – thank you!
That said, if you’d like to spotlight any of your favorite games or write a thinkpiece on what, in your opinion, makes a short game fun we’d love to see it! Even after voting closes, since we’ve thought about putting together a small guide on “what kind of submissions typically do well / the community likes to see” for next year.
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You’re right, sharing some highlights would be good. I’d especially like to do that since I was complaining so much.
I should also say that I haven’t hated any games at all!
Here are some games I think are fantastic (there are other really good ones, too, I just picked some I loved but took a couple out randomly to make room, tried to do only one per author, and I also haven’t played every game):
You
This is a delightful Twine game that makes use of color and size effects to show the strangeness of a faery world. It has locations and puzzles, but it’s not a merciless puzzlefest. It has a sweet storyline…
Nonverbal Communication
This is a really interesting concept game. You become incapable of using verbs, but you can use nouns, and fortunately you have a bunch of robots that can perform the verbs. Neat idea and designed to be finished in a half hour or so (depending on reading speed).
Sundown
Charm has several good games in this competition; this one is a ‘gut punch’ kind of game. You wander around your house trying to feed your dog, but something’s wrong. Really polished, and beautiful use of color.
Provizora Parko
This game really stuck in my head not because I loved it but because of its unique setting and writing. It’s a game where you confront awful things in a purgatory setting, and there are a lot of birds.
You promise
This one is really short but fun. It’s basically a version of the monkey’s paw stories, where you can gain power but the power-granter twists every wish.
Resurrection Gate
Grim Baccaris makes really cool UI’s (and wrote the Twine Grimoire) and this game is really lush and beautiful. For people participating in the playoff voting thread, this author also wrote Heretic’s Hope.
sojourn
This is an example of building engaging structure without complicated mechanics. It’s a bit of poetic writing linked in a kind of network with no real ending, and has some nice images (and things like text size choice).
Anyway, sorry for venting earlier (it probably says more about my current state of mind than any real statement about the community!) and I look forward to trying more games before this ends, like the Eggplant Lasagna game.
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I don’t think you said anything out of line! You’ve hit upon a truth here in that making a satisfying short text game is hard for a particular set of reasons that don’t always apply to longer games, and while everyone’s preferences are different the issues you’ve pointed out can be hard to avoid. But there’s also a myriad of ways to do it right and that’s what the SGS is here to celebrate! (Perhaps there’s a Rosebush article to be made on the subject once this year’s Showcase is over…)
I will keep my opinions on the Eggplant Lasagna game to myself due to flagrant conflict of interest. 
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Is it really the case that short games in particular are more prone to being linear stories, or just the fact that, in general, a lot of the IF games on itch (esp. choice-based games) are like that? There’s definitely a genre of, basically, “visual novels without visuals” that has some currency within the itch ecosystem.
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I think the definitionally linear and interactivity-light category you are thinking of is kinetic novels, not the much broader parent category of visual novels (which can have all sorts of gameplay mechanics), but yeah, I’m not sure it’s necessarily length-related.
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Ah, thanks to @mathbrush’s review I’ve discovered there is another (a third) ending! I went through the game multiple times before, but apparently never hit on quite the right path at the end until trying again just now.
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I’d played this one when it was first released, but just replayed and damn. It hits hard. Real-life horror combined with some very relatable (to me) feelings.
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Just under 2 days left! Make sure you submit the form once you have played enough games!
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As an organizer, I didn’t want to post in this thread while the comp was going to avoid the appearance of bias or trying to influence voting, but now that results are in, I’d like to highlight some games I enjoyed that didn’t place top 20 or win awards (in alphabetical order):
All of us Flames is a VN featuring a tense interaction between two troubled teen girls who have a complicated relationship. This falls into the IF subgenre of “a vignette about characters whom the author has clearly been rotating in their mind for a long time but about whom very little published material is available”, and that’s something that very rarely works for me at all. It’s easy to forget as an author that your audience has no preexisting emotional investment in the characters, and it’s particularly hard to convey the complexities of character and backstory that will generate that investment in a short piece. But in this case I thought the thorny tangle of feelings involved came across very clearly and I did feel the emotional punch of the situation, so I was impressed that the author pulled that off.
Arkuwar is an educational choice game about Hittite religious rituals, which take the form of making a legal case to the gods (this delights me just as a concept). I thought it was fascinating and had a good time exploring it.
Flight is a game about leaving an abusive relationship that would very nearly qualify for the Single Choice Jam; I thought it used its one significant choice well. It’s a very small slice of this character’s life and the toxic relationship they’re trying to escape, but it had a lot of specificity in its details, which I always appreciate. It very efficiently conveyed an overwhelming sense of exhaustion on the part of the PC that makes it so much easier to keep doing what you’re doing than to make a change, underscored by the knowledge that if you don’t make the change you’re never going to feel any better.
Get There on Time! is a short choice-based vignette about struggling with timeliness that I found very relatable; it may not hit the same way for people who haven’t had this kind of problem, but I thought it really encapsulated the frustration of knowing that this should not be so hard and yet being unable to do it.
Making dumplings is a sweet storylet-based game about cooking with your partner and connecting with your family’s culture (with which you as a queer person have a complicated relationship) with food, both things that are near and dear to my heart. I don’t know how well it reads if you haven’t played any of the other Pageantverse games, but I’m very proud of Karen and Em for overcoming their hangups enough to move in together, even if Karen still isn’t sure if they’re actually in a relationship for real. (I have to say that I did not put in the frozen shrimp, not because of Em’s possible concerns about the environmental impact of aquaculture, but because the thought of putting in expired shrimp horrified me even if they’re frozen.) Also, this game made me hungry.
No More is a very tightly executed story-focused parser game about abuse, and “person who has constantly been told by those around them that something is innately wrong with them finds power by embracing their inner monstrousness” is a literary theme I love to roll around in at any opportunity, so, good stuff.
Open Flame is a horror choice game about escaping from the clutches of a cult with the help of fire and some mysterious voices in your head. It’s very atmospheric. I’d never seen a non-comedy piece from Damon Wakes before and was impressed by the range on display in the pieces that he entered in the SGS.
Reunited in the Mist is a cute minimalist VN about running into your high school crush as an adult and reconnecting, and I thought it was very charming. (The author did get some recognition for another one of her entries, Seascape Paradiso, but I wanted to give this one some love too. Also, for a wildly tonally different lesbian romance(?), I also loved So You Have a Knife at Your Throat, which the author submitted last year.)
Sonnet is a choice game that’s a modern AU of Shakespeare’s life(/poetry?) featuring messy friend drama at a house party and was one of my favorite games in Seedcomp last year. Not Just Once, by the same author, is wildly different, a surreal creepy vignette about a young person in the city running into a stranger who seems to know them. I hadn’t played it before the SGS but also enjoyed it a lot.
your life, and nothing else is a surreal apartment building horror choice game that I really enjoyed in Ectocomp and was happy to have an excuse to revisit. It’s a symbolism-heavy exploration of identity that gives the player a lot to chew on in terms of interpretation and doesn’t spell anything out for you, which is not everyone’s jam, but I love that kind of thing.
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Sorry, have been crazy busy and not checking into the forum here of late. Thank you for the shout out and nice words about it! It was originally a neo-twiny entry hence needing to be split in two for the word count. Given the event is over, when I get time I really should combine it into a single entry. I was undecided whether I was meant to leave it as is for the short-game showcase or combine it before hand given it was previously published, but probably would be better combined in retrospect.
I’d love a category for most difference between playthroughs/choices make the most difference etc. It is very easy to fall into writing a personalised story with mainly flavour choices in short games and rewarding ones with a good dose of particularly meaningful interactivity in a small package would be great.
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The event is fine with updated versions of previously-released games, so entering a combined version would have been OK by us, for future reference!
Is that not the “most replay value” category? That’s more or less how we intended it, anyway; a voter could probably interpret it as “a linear story that I particularly enjoy rereading” if they really really wanted to, but based on the results this year and last year, I think people are mostly taking it as a category for games with a lot of variation between playthroughs.
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Yes that’s probably right 
I was thinking more branchiness rather than just replaying for extra tidbits but in reality the game with the most replayability likely is going to be the most branchy one.
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I was actually a little surprised (and also very pleased!) to see Quest for the Teacup of Minor Sentimental Value get joint second place for Most Replay Value. There are a lot of endings, but primarily in a “gauntlet” structure that lets you see the vast majority simply by choosing options that the game is clearly steering you away from, then reloading the last save to continue the main quest. There are a couple of substantial branches and a few little flavour choices that might reward a full replay, but it wasn’t exactly something I wrote expecting people to come back again and again.
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I think it’s replayable in the same way something like Good Bones is, where seeing all the different bad endings is the goal, even if it doesn’t incentivize that as explicitly.
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