I’m very pleased to announce that the 2023 Spring Thing Festival of Interactive Fiction is now open!
This year, there are twenty-six games, spread across two categories. Authors chose whether to submit games to the Main Festival, where they are eligible for ribbon nominations and the prize pool, or the Back Garden, which opts out of ribbons and prizes but has looser entry requirements (including allowing excerpts from unfinished or commercial games).
In the Main Festival:
Title | System | Length |
---|---|---|
Aesthetics Over Plot, by ro-han | Twine | short |
Beat Me Up Scotty, by Jkj Yuio | Strand | micro |
Elftor and the Quest of the Screaming King, by Damon L. Wakes | Twine | short |
Etiolated Light, by Lassiter W. | Twine | short |
The Familiar, by groggydog | Adventuron | full |
Galaxy Jones, by Phil Riley | Inform/Glulx | full |
I Am Prey, by Joey Cramsey | TADS 3 | short |
Insomnia: Twenty-Six Adventures After Dark, by Leon Lin | Twine | short |
The Kuolema, by Ben Jackson | Google Forms | full |
Lady Thalia and the Masterpiece of Moldavia, by E. Joyce & N. Cormier | Twine | full |
Marie Waits, by Dee Cooke | Inform/Z | short |
Nothing Could be Further From the Truth, by Adam Wasserman | Inform/Glulx | full |
Protocol, by 30x30 | Twine | full |
Red Door Yellow Door, by Charm Cochran | Inform/Glulx | short |
Repeat the Ending, by Drew Cook | Inform/Glulx | full |
The Roads not Taken, by manonamora | Twine | short |
The Sacred Shovel of Athenia, by AndyG | Inform/Glulx | short |
A Single Ouroboros Scale: My Postmortem, by Naomi Norbez | Twine | |
Structural Integrity, by Tabitha O’Connell | Twine | short |
The Withering Gaze of the Earth, by Emily worm | Twine | short |
Your Post-Apocalyptic To-Do List, by Geoffrey Golden | Ink | short |
In the Back Garden:
Title | System | Length |
---|---|---|
The Mamertine, by K Vella | Twine | short |
Mirror, by Ondrej Odokienko | Twine | micro |
Secret of the Black Walrus, by spaceflounder | HTML/Javascript | short |
Stygian Dreams, by Giorgos Menelaou | Inform/Glulx | full |
Write or Reflect?, by Andrew Schultz | Python | short |
You can play the games and find out everything you need to know about the festival at the official site, or follow us on Twitter at @SpringThingFest.
Instructions for making ribbon nominations will go up in a couple of days. There are two kinds of ribbons this year:
- A Best in Show blue ribbon, for Main Festival entries. The top two nominees each year win a Best in Show ribbon to display by their game.
- Audience Award ribbons, for all participants, which are suggested by nominators and can be anything they like: “Best Story,” “Best Parser Game,” “Personal Favorite,” “Alumni’s Choice,” “Cutest Vampires”… you get the idea.
The festival will be open for ribbon nominations until 11:59 PM EDT, May 13, 2023.
To all the players, and all the entrants, have fun!
– Brian