Spring Thing 2026 is now open! (Nominations open)

Competitions Spring Thing
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I’m very pleased to announce that the 2026 Spring Thing Festival of Interactive Fiction is now open!

This year, there are twenty-two 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).

Main Festival

Title Platform length
23 Minutes, by George Larkwright HTML/Javascript short
Before the Snow Melts, by Zach Crowe Ren’py short
The Coffee Cake Caper, by Darius Foo Fable full
Crier, by Antemaion Ren’py short
Cryptid Hunter, by Adam Wade, Alex Kutza, Skye Murrell Twine short
Cyclic Fruition Number One, by D E Haynes Spiki short
Enigmart, by Sarah Willson Twine full
Fantasy Opera: The Theater of Memory, by Lamp Post Projects Ink full
The House, by Miles Poehler Twine short
Latinorum, by Roberto Ceccarelli Commodore 64 short
Maybe you’ll respect this dead person instead, by Ellric Smith Twine short
meminerimus, by diluculum Inform/Glulx micro
The Missing City Council, by Solarius Inform/Z short
Our Lady of Thorns, by Joel Burton Inform/Z full
The Perilous Plot, by Carrie Berg Twine
A Quiet Scurry, by Moss & Quill Studios Twine short
Social Democracy: Popular Front, by Autumn Chen Dendry full
Strings: a (bug)folk song, by Tabitha & baezil Inform/Glulx short
The Universal Robot (Assembled By Hex), by Agnieszka Trzaska Twine short

Back Garden

Title Platform length
Exchange, by Peter Johnston Ink micro
Join the Swarm, by Senica Thing Twine full
Unseelie, by Alun Clewe TADS 3 short

You can play the games and find out everything you need to know about the festival at the official site.

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 Central time, May 9, 2026.

To all the players, and all the entrants, have fun!

– Brian

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Congratulations to all the authors!

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3

Thank you for the bundle release!

I want to thank to all the participants and organizers. Let’s enjoy!

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4

The games look good! I can’t wait to get started on reviewing them…

(I was considering doing a review of cover art and blurbs like I did (better than my normal game reviews) in IFComp 2024. But I think I’ll do the games themselves…)

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Yeah, I think having 22 games is actually great, people can play less than 1 game a day and still try the whole comp. I hope it encourages people to try reviewing!

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Agree with Brian, for obvious reasons I can’t play at least until tomorrow night. and the possibility of having free time is assessed as “really slim, if any”…

at least the 182M bundle is here, if I got the needed free time…

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

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Ribbon nominations are now open, a few days earlier than I had originally posted they would be.

You can nominate games here!

Please do consider the suggestion that you play more than 1 game before nominating; last year we had 2 games that received a lot of single votes all from the same university or company, with people saying they were friends and colleagues of the author. That kind of support is totally okay, but it’s better if such votes come from people who have tried at least two games.

Thanks for all the great reviews and comments! It’s been really fun seeing how much interaction games have been getting already. I believe there are only two games left without reviews (both fairly large games). I really appreciate everyone’s involvement!

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