Spring Thing 2022 General Discussion

https://borogove.io/ is designed for simple IF uploading. I’ve been using it a lot recently, it’s like itch without any of the clutter.

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As an author, I’ve stayed away from doing proper reviewing, but I’d like to say that I’ve been enjoying The Hole Man, Let’s Talk Alex, Orbital Decay, and You, Me and Coffee in particular, and I’m now partway through New Year’s Eve 2019. I’ve been spending more time on link-based narratives as puzzle-based games take longer, but I’m currently enjoying trying to crack Wry and Tours Roust Torus!

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Manifest No is magnificent. It will take me forever to read it all, because I’m reading it like I read Cormac McCarthy (with a dictionary at hand) and like I read Marlon James (veerryy slowly to extract every poetic word).
And since I’m reading James’s Moon Witch, Spider King at the same time, I’m just steeped in poetic language and feverish imagery. It’s glorious.

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I played Sweetpea yesterday. There’s some great writing in there, and vivid imagery. I played just before bed and it kept me awake for a while, processing it all (I haven’t read the postmortem, yet). Very good. The main problem I encountered was with the colour of the inline clickable text, which is pale pink (I think) amongst white, and almost indiscernible to my eyes. But that’s a minor quibble and, I expect, easily fixed.

Definitely work a look.

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Thank you for playing and sharing your thoughts! I’m happy to hear that the writing and imagery landed well- I’m a poet and a writer far before considering myself a coder (Sweetpea was my first attempt at making a finished Twine in a self contained work!) Haha, sorry to have kept you up- I hope you got some good sleep in the end! The feedback on the pale pink (you got it!) text is also very helpful. I’ll have to keep in mind stronger contrast for future experiments. Cheers. :blush:

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Color blindness is surprisingly more common than many of us realize - even the people who experience it. My elderly mom was coloring pictures in weird psychedelic combinations that I thought was just a unique choice until I realized she also was using everyone else’s towels and toothbrushes by accident. She has trouble distinguishing shades of red such as dark purple vs gray and brown.

This thread has some useful resources and it’s handy to screenshot your text and run it through these simulations to see how distinguishable your links are when seen through different variations of color-blindness:

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Another way to design for colorblindness is to minimize how much use of colors is necessary at all to distinguish important information (eg make all your links underlined)

I say that, although other than knowing my submission works for my type of colorblindness I don’t think I actually did much checking for other varieties and do use extremely low contrast text in a couple places (although I wrote it with the assumption that that text was missed entirely)

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I am really loving The Hole Man by @TeeAitchAre, and am trying to find all the endings so I can get to the final bit!

One quick point: I think I may have found a possible bug? The passage that begins “This is a service elevator, not for public use” doesn’t have any links in it, at least not by the way that I approached it. Is there supposed to be something here?

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I should add that I have since returned to this page and found a link (‘You should probably keep looking’) so I guess there must be a variable which only shows the link text under certain circumstances?

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Unfortunately, yes, this is a known issue with the version that’s up on Spring Thing at the moment. When you visit the basement level parking, if you haven’t yet met any Men (and said ‘no’ to their offer), there isn’t an exit and you’ll just have to use the back arrow to return. The exit exists but it’s on the wrong side of an “if” statement!

I’ve submitted a corrected version but I don’t know if saved games will carry over between versions when it gets updated.

Another bug to look out for is in the department store; if you’ve already visited two specific Men (the Kind Man and Hood Man) and turned them down, there’s no way to leave! An exit was added in the updated version.

I hope this helps, I’m so glad you’re enjoying my game! If you’re having trouble getting to all the goals, be sure to talk to the tax auditor regularly; he’s the built-in help system.

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Thank you very much! I’m seven Men down so far! (and I’ve just discovered the loris :smile: )

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After playing Graveyard Shift at the Riverview Motel a few times (I really enjoyed the game!), I looked through the code to see how the progression worked and if I missed any endings, and discovered that the game’s time progression is based on real time! Every minute of real time that passes since the game’s start advances the in-game time by one step (32 minutes on the game’s sidebar clock). Only then is the text for the various locations updated.

I’m not sure how I feel about this; I don’t recall ever seeing a twine game use this kind of gating mechanism before. This also means that saves don’t really work, as the playtime function is based on the clock time elapsed.

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Oh, thanks for figuring that out! I kept being confused by why sometimes events were repeating over and over - this makes total sense but I never would have figured it out.

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The Bones of Rosalinda <-> The Box

Looks like it’s going to be a tight neck-and-neck race for the “Best Mouse”-ribbon.

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What’re y’alls’ favorite Spring Thing games so far? Just in case there’s some good stuff I missed - there’s way too many to play all of them, unless you’re, like, Mathbrush.

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You’re not into parser, I don’t think, so I won’t recommend any. I loved Computerfriend, Filthy Aunt Mildred, The Box (which is both choice AND parser… you can pick), The Bones of Rosalinda (which has a parser feel but is choice). Those are my faves so far.

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So far, it’s New Year’s Eve, 2019 and Computerfriend for me.

I’m enjoying Bones of Rosalinda, but I haven’t finished it. yet

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I mean, I’m not into into parser, but I do play some parser games! Including yours, which is great!

I tried The Box, it’s interesting, but I feel like maybe it is an awkward hybrid - I think many times the point of parser is you have to think of the thing first and then do it, but the way that the options pop in the engine mean the interface can essentially skip the puzzle part. Still, I think it’s a nifty engine!

People seem to really like Filthy Aunt Mildred, so maybe I’ll give that a try.

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There’s a lot of great games this time out! Adding in games I’ve beta tested, I’m about halfway in, and the ones I’ve liked best so far (not necessarily the same as the best ones, of course) include, in alphabetical order:

  • Bigfoot Bluff – it’s funny in an off-the wall way, and it’s got a more systems-driven approach to parser puzzling than I’m used to seeing, which makes for an interesting design.

  • Custard & Mustard’s Big Adventure – I love the eccentric British setting, and the duo of canine protagonists are lovely company. I tested this like a month ago, and there are still jokes that I 1) remember, and 2) make me laugh whenever I do (Ernel Custard!)

  • Digit – a kind of minimalist parser implementation that’s also interesting to me from a design point of view, with a well-written romance at its heart (fair warning, there’s also pretty graphic sex, but there’s lots more to it than that).

  • Fairest – a clever remix of fairy tale stories; I beta tested this one and am super curious about how a couple of pieces might have changed since I saw them.

  • Filthy Aunt Mildred – as others have said, it’s unique and hilarious.

  • Good Grub! – also made me laugh, and it’s a really quick play.

  • Lady Thalia and the Rose of Rocroi – come for the awesome heist gameplay, stay to try to get the dashing gentlewoman thief and the dedicated flatfoot to make out.

  • New Year’s Eve, 2019 – a richly-realized take on a single night, that can either see nothing much happening, or the spark of a new relationship (they’re both really good but I liked the nothing much happening one best)

  • Thin Walls – architecture-based social comment, with a strong metaphor playing out through a series of well-realized vignettes.

And as mentioned, I haven’t let myself play it yet but I’m pretty sure Manifest No is going to be an unmissable highlight.

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It’s okay to be parser-curious. No shame here! :smiley:

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