I would be beyond shocked if Computerfriend won any superlative but “Slimiest Worms” (and Good Grub may have me beat there) but it’s very nice seeing that people enjoyed it!
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The authors get to see the ribbons their game was nominated for. These can range from serious (“Most Memorable NPC”) to silly (I nominated So I was Short of Cash and Took on a Quest for “Best Smelling Chicken” last year).
The authors then get to choose any ribbons they like (max 3) to display alongside their game. (The author of SIWSOCATOAQ chose to flaunt “Best Smelling Chicken”)
This way, some ribbons are going to represent a shared appreciation of a number of players (a lot of variations on “Best NPC”) while some may just be one person’s impression (“Awesomest Tentacles”) .
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The Bright Blue Ball, by Clary C
The game leaves mixed feelings. On the one hand we got kind, short, easy to play game. But on the other — bombs, shelters, all these things in the background… It’s not I personally expected after reading author’s game comment: "I wanted to give people a cute and easy game to focus on instead of the many stressful recent events that have happened (covid, the war, etc.) so enjoy playing it!”
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I made two nominations beyond “Best in Show”
One is idiosyncratic, and one is a recognizable category. I think I am more curious about these other ribbons.
So far as best in show goes, I was wrong–wildly, incredibly wrong–about potential winners for IFcomp, but I think I have a pretty good guess this time.
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In procrastinating responding to reviews to thank reviewers for their time and thoughtful attention (really, running on the fumes of my morning coffee and waiting for the Tylenol to kick in,) I figured I might also toss in my guess on who’s going to be Best in Show.
Not original either, I’m afraid- but I definitely think ‘Fairest’ is going to be a really strong contender. It’s well implemented, beginner friendly without feeling obnoxious or intrusive in providing tips, and its subject matter is fairly friendly to a broad audience. I think the tipping point for me was that: despite being someone really new to parsers and frankly, a bit intimidated, especially with the learning curve in how to play them- the game was a wonderful experience and introduction to that style of play, and I could very happily recommend it to people who are also similarly new or confused by parsers.
It’s like, baby’s first training wheels, while not making a new player feel condescended to or sheepish about being guided through. Also, it’s fun to play! It made me want to play more of it after initially sitting down, and something being fun to play even for someone who’s not typically in its audience (I usually dislike fairytale re-tellings and fantasy in general) says a lot about the quality of the work. It’s not my usual cup of tea, but it was a lovely treat all the same.
Now, asides from that- I do think there are a couple of names I’ve been seeing float around already in this thread due to innovation or name recognition, and those probably have a solid shot at it too for that. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them took home that particularly shiny ribbon!
EDITED TO ADD: I also want to say that while I’ve usually just shrugged off looking at parsers because I assumed ‘nah, I’m not smart enough to figure out how this works, and anyways, it’ll be a nightmare trying to progress and I always get confused when I try,’ after trying out Fairest and some helpful tips in that thread, it gave me enough confidence to try out other parsers people chatter about on here like Sting.
I didn’t write a review about Sting not because I couldn’t find something nice to say, (I avoid doing reviews where I can’t find at least one thing I loved about the game), but because I find it difficult to write about semi-autobiographical works wherein I can’t rely on some sort of shared personal experience to connect to, since those games feel much more personal than say, critiquing some generic shoot 'em up or something like that.
That being said: it was a very evocative experience that I sat down with for a bit afterwards, the same way I sit down and have to have a little moment to let the end of a really good novel wash over me and linger in the aftermath. I am very grateful that I ran into Fairest, 'cause otherwise I would’ve missed out on experiencing Sting outside of secondhand reviews. So that also definitely contributes to my feelings towards Fairest.
The damn sailing portion still tripped me up massively, but I don’t think I was alone in that, haha! And also, it did fit the piece, especially after reading through comments from the author about how he wasn’t the best sailor back then, which did make me giggle a little.
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but check out that consolation prize: you would then get to spectacularly destroy us all!
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I just bawled after playing Sting. If memory serves, I bawled publicly on this forum. Heartbreaking. I actually appreciated the annoyance of the sailing sequence because unless I had something to be mad at, I would have just been too sad. I actually think Sting is an excellent first-time-parser game, because it lacks puzzles, but it still has some traditional parser frustration with the race.
Don’t be ridiculous, Zed! If I burnt you to a crisp, who would calmly come to my assistance when I’m wailing about coding problems?
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Thanks for the kind words about Sting - I’m glad you enjoyed it, and found it relatively easy to get into as someone newer to parser games, since that was definitely one of my goals (of course, as you say, making the sailing bit intentionally frustrating and failure-prone was also one of my goals, so there is maybe some internal tension in the design!)
Yeah, I believe you deeply confused some other forum-goer who hadn’t played it yet and didn’t understand why you’d have an emotional response to me, not just to the game 
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You may be surprised - some people make a point of nominating every game they enjoyed/appreciated for a ribbon of some sort, others like an angle of the game the author may never have previously considered deserved a prize
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C’mon, now. It’s not that black and white. If you kept Zed alive under threat of death, that calmly coming to assistance would suddenly become a lot quicker and in no way less accurate due to any additional stress felt! Zed’s alive, you still get help. Win-win, amirite?
/s
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I tried to nominate every game for some ribbon but there are so many games this year that the text box was too full. Hopefully everyone gets one!
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For what it’s worth, that actually happened to me last year too, and I just sent the overflow nominations to Aaron at the contact email he’s got on the Spring Thing site (he wrote back to confirm that that was a totally fine thing to do).
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I just found this stream of Bigfoot Bluff … on twitch: Twitch
One thing the players did in the stream—I am not sure if anyone else did—was type xyzzy to get the hint list early.
I meant to put that in somewhere in the documentation, somewhere not too obvious, but couldn’t find a place for it and eventually forgot.
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I ran into the same problem.
Bigger text box for Custom Ribbons next year, or all out boycot!
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I’ve now done my nominations and some ribbons. Didn’t play as many of the games as some people did, but managed a wide range of them and enjoyed them a lot.
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It might be a bit of old news at this point- (I’ve just about got some breathing room when it comes to packing and promptly unpacking my stuff after coming back home after the university term’s wrapped up, and have been lounging around in the luxury of having the option to just flop down and take a nap in my own room, trying on pretty sundresses, doing my nails up (round, sparkly pink), calling my friends, doing arts and crafts, taking pictures of birds, and drinking ridiculous amounts of iced coffee and milk green tea- if you’ve been reading through off topic threads, I think you’ll agree that I’ve really needed the break! Checking e-mails hasn’t really been high on my priority list…) but I just got around to filling out the little Google Form and picking out the Audience Award ribbons to display on the site alongside Sweetpea!
So much fun. I kind of forgot that that bit would happen- and am unsure about the etiquette around the awards secrecy(?) (will spoiler just in case?) but was pleased as punch to ooh and ahh over the options before me. It was hard just picking a few, and there was a definite theme in some of them- (whoever nominated Sweetpea for Scariest Parent made me giggle. I was also stoked to see Weirdest NPCs, since Michael is near and dear to my heart.) I was pleasantly surprised by how many there were! I tried to pick out the ones that I felt sort of caught the vibes/overall feel of all of them, but I did read and share all of them with my friends- so if you offered one up, thank you, and know it was read and appreciated!
I can’t wait to see all the ones people picked out for their games when that goes live on the site!
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That’s one of mine - but I wouldn’t be surprised if others also nominated it for that. Plenty of things about the game stayed with me, but that summed it up really.
I was also delighted to receive a parcel of ribbons! I can’t for the life of me imagine who nominated my game for Evilest Cat.
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I’m sure there’s no way you could ever know that. Who could that possibly have been?
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Surely not someone who scratched something as awful as this somewhere else on the forum walls:
“I still want REVENGE on that evil cat.”
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