Ratings and Reviews by HereticMole

Originally posted on intfiction. Minor edits were made.

I greatly enjoyed Lamp Post Projects’ The Secrets of Sylvan Gardens and Fantasy Opera: Mischief at the Masquerade when they were submitted last IFComp, and was very hyped when I saw the return of the fantastical Italian opera setting for the 2026 Spring Thing.

Like the first game, you play as a private investigator investigating trouble, this time strange dreams affecting the musicians, before an important performance. Compared to the first game’s crime, here I personally found the conflict much more relatable and insular. (Spoiler - click to show)I certainly feel the fear of a wasted life and being envious towards a superior, so I could relate to Vitale.

Gameplay was smooth, with helpful tutorial popups and score information (the latter can be turned off). There is a handy notepad and history log section for reviewing evidence and the theater layout. You can even download the history as an HTML file to read as a full narrative, if you wish. You can select pronouns (including rotating sets and inputting your own), your race (mainly the well-known D&D/Pathfinder races), picking two out of three of musical prowess, magical aptitude, or architectural knowledge, and whether you’re a charmer or really good at detecting people’s tells. Nothing substantial is tied to race bar some comments and selectable choices for roleplaying purposes, but skills are tested through d4 die roll skill checks, where a random number is rolled and you add your skill bonus to the check. You automatically fail if you roll a 1 or automatically succeed if you roll a 4 regardless of how good or bad you are at a skill. Success mainly determines if you can get clues out of the people you interview, or can find out some hidden facet of the theater’s construction or possible magical influence.

It was easy to guess the culprit, as I passed most of the Observe skill checks which gave me the text equivalent of a red flag waving “this one is really sus” before I even talked to the other two suspects. However, the final setpiece is not reliant on skill checks, but is pure deduction, a rather involved puzzle where you (Spoiler - click to show)direct five of the victims to a specific row and section of the theater corresponding to the contents of their dreams in order to break the curse. I had a good time solving the puzzle, it wasn’t too hard especially when the game gives you a handy automatically updated notepad, dream log, and full text history (nice try being sneaky with that (Spoiler - click to show)“I normally play harpsichord but this time I’ll sing” move, I almost fell for it). I’m glad that The Theater of Memory’s climax is much less dependent on being lucky compared to Mischief at the Masquerade (though I did like Mischief’s more fast-paced, action-y third act)

The epilogue where you go back to the theater with a work friend/date could be expanded. I recognized some of the names from the initial preset character options but I couldn’t remember who exactly they were, and the narration didn’t go into any detail. It felt perfunctory compared to the first game, whose romance/date options were at least people you spent some time with in the story and could get to know further.

If you’re in the mood for a light and friendly mystery, I would push this game forward. Try putting on a performance of, say, La flora (or another period-appropriate opera) in the background to go with it!

Originally posted on intfiction. Minor edits were made.

I was intimidated from looking at the long (relative to other entries in the Thing) length and that you could mess up due to improperly managing the many moving parts like monks moving around and a strict time limit. But the setting intrigued me, so I bravely ventured forth.

It turns out that managing these parts is intuitive once you get down to it. The monks spend the entire game staying at their assigned locations until it’s time for them to go and sing choir. I personally found the schedule to be generous, starting in the wee hours of the morning until seven in the evening. You can freely look at the current time and when events take place through shortcut commands, and can wait until the hour choir offices start to minimize entering “Z” repeatedly. I meandered around a lot and was stuck in a couple of spots but finished with 30 minutes left before the deadline. Most people will probably get to one of the endings at a faster pace than I did.

To progress, you solve puzzles around the priory to get evidence, so you do have to look under several nooks and crannies, but thankfully you don’t have to find absolutely everything in order to accuse someone. I was stuck for a while on two parts, both related to (Spoiler - click to show)getting into guarded places by giving gifts, and had to use hints. Although, to be fair, one of these instances was because I completely forgot the flashback hint when examining basil, so I didn’t know what to say and the hint seemed to come out of left field until I did a replay. And as for the other, I just didn’t know you could give a cat to somebody (I did “SHOW CAT TO WILFRED,” assumed that was simply a moment of characterization fluff and moved on until I saw the gift hint). I also had to read hints about searching the barrels. Additionally, the first time I went to the crypt I didn’t catch a vital piece of evidence, thought “that was cool but pointless” after I escaped, then looked at the hints and saw I missed a thing, after which I reloaded a save right before going down there in the first place.

In my first playthrough, I spent a large amount of time having information about one person in particular, but didn’t find any connection to the game’s inciting incident. (Spoiler - click to show)Ultimately I pretty much stumbled into a solution by being somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. The person who found me, who was also the culprit, attempted murder after seeing the evidence I was holding but divine intervention saved me. So my process of discovery went from “how does all this stuff lead to poisoning a kind old man” → Hugh tries to kill me after seeing I had the evidence to report him → “well if he reacted like THAT I guess that’s how there’s a corpse.” After getting the mercy ending, I started a new game to do things more efficiently and to see if I could get him to confess, incriminate himself, or open up to me, but after a while concluded that there’s no such thing implemented (and that it’s not that kind of game).

OLoT is a hefty parser IF that should be appreciated slowly. It would be best to play it not as a deduction game or a cross-examination of peoples’ alibis, but as a free-roam exploration with object manipulation as the primary element. Joel Burton is definitely an author to watch!

Originally posted on intfiction. Minor edits were made.

The game initially shipped without a blurb at all, until it was added a day after the Thing opened for public consumption. The lack of a description, a wordy title, and what looked like a chocolate dessert on the cover art served to pique my interest.

As the description says, your character is a mute summoner who calls up a spirit to speak, or fight, or do whatever the situation demands. In the tradition of all aspiring fantasy adventurers everywhere, you go to the guild of violent monster hunters for work and to prove yourself. One of the things I found interesting is that the narrator is one of the summoner’s spirits. The narrative voice is non-intrusive (unless you consistently summon Cathareen, which I understand the appeal of), with the occasional cutting comment or inclusion of the pronoun “I” to signify that it’s not a usual second-person point-of-view.

Your choices are basically deciding which of your four spirits to summon. They have a few things they excel at and a few things they don’t, and you have to remember what they were like in their introductory scenes, and what the situation calls for, to get a good outcome. At the beginning and middle of the game, most of the choices seem to be for flavor text, with the exception of a (Spoiler - click to show)climactic fight, which acts as a final exam where you summon the appropriate spirit in response to an enemy’s attack. I managed to come out unscathed in my first try, though after using the back button to click as many “wrong” choices as I could, the outcome isn’t too different, just changes your score a bit.

I liked the pacing and could clearly visualize the action scenes from the writing. A valiant first effort, and if the author gets the urge to write the continuing adventures of the summoner, origin stories for the spirits, or other stories set in this world, it would be interesting.

Originally written on the intfiction forums, slightly expanded after getting the intended end state in a second playthrough.

The in-game ABOUT section says this was made as a school project, and they plan on adding more content and custom implementation.

Due to a series of mysterious and sudden events, you fall into a portal to another world, filled with strange fungi and some otherworldly creatures. You must explore this world to find out what’s going on, and how to get back home.

I found it a bit hard to progress, as the game doesn’t give a lot of hints, but the puzzles that had their solutions hinted at (Spoiler - click to show)(luring the creature to the platform, or moving a ladder to climb somewhere else) were satisfying to figure out and solve. The game will end when you (Spoiler - click to show)give a yellow fungi to a prisoner in a cell, but as there is no ending text (the game just says “You have won” and gives you the Restore, Restart, or Quit spiel), I don’t have any idea of what will happen next, or how he’ll use it to unlock the cell door.

…Then I read a hint thread saying there’s an intended solution. I went back to the game, spent a lot more time figuring out what to do, but got stuck with trying to open up a box (Spoiler - click to show)at the top of the slope. I could’ve tried more, but at the time I felt like I had spent enough time with the game to write an informed observation and I had other games to review during the Spring Thing voting period. After the results came out, I revisted the game and made it to the proper ending thanks to further hints. That ending didn't tell me anything new but I was just glad I went back to finish the game in the intended way.

I found an interpretation error with a pressure plate/platform that opens up a door when something is standing on it. You can actually pick up the entire platform and everything on it (thankfully dropping it immediately afterwards makes things work). The aforementioned box’s description was confusing, as the default examine text implies that it’s open when it’s really closed. There are also a few placeholder examination text and descriptions that say something like “this object isn’t implemented and you don’t need to do anything with it to progress at this point.”

So far I liked the atmosphere and there’s some clear objectives (Who are those two ladies at the beginning? (Spoiler - click to show)What’s the prisoner’s story? How do we dispel that glowing energy field? How do we get back home?). If a future version with expanded functionality and story released, I’ll definitely be down to revisit Unseelie.

Originally written on the intfiction forums.

A 23 minute walk and you think on being a father, a mental grocery list, career woes, angst, breathe in and out, traffic, loss of control, your child, (Spoiler - click to show)snapping at your wife, distraction, politics, change your path, (Spoiler - click to show)your dad spiraling into xenophobic conspiracy theories, traffic, your students, the baby, don’t forget those groceries, will you really change?

I liked the background being a video advancing frame-by-frame as each line is revealed, it added immersion. I appreciated the pacing and variation between lines, moreso in the early parts of the poem compared to the end. I did brace myself when (Spoiler - click to show)the narrator’s thoughts turned to his father, because I wasn’t in the mood for “talking to my parent(s) is difficult because they turned into conspiracy-believing bigot(s).” That is relatable (though more applicable to my grandparents) but something broke, a connection fractured, we can no longer pretend the broccoli, your wife and baby, and your job have no relation to your father. Yes, nurture can determine behavior and all that, but is it that simple to attribute everything to him? How he treated you and how he turned out recently? That’s like saying eye and hair color only comes down to a 4x4 Punnett square when there are about a hundred or so genes that determine those traits. Genes can be weird.

Still, a good twenty-ish minute walk being stuck in well-expressed and communicated thoughts. That's the perfect length for me.

Originally written on the intfiction forums.

I first attempted to play this game weeks earlier - on a commute, using my phone, and on spotty public WiFi. Definitely not the ideal conditions. I spent an embarrassing long amount of time stuck on the very first puzzle. Then, when I finally figured it out, I clicked into a few of the other puzzles to find out that some were dependent on pictures that didn’t load, or were laid out in a way where I would need pen and paper to solve. I ran away screaming closed the browser tab and made a note to myself to save this for last, so I could devote brain space to it without putting the game down and moving on to another Spring Thing entry.

I started off with the fill-in-the-blanks and the association puzzles (sandwich cookies and oatmeal variety pack), the ones I found the simplest to get started on. For most of the others I had to use the provided hints for just to get my mind on the right track. Figuring out (Spoiler - click to show)the hair dye and icing puzzles gave me the feeling of accomplishment as equal as completing a short comp game. I made it through about twenty puzzles before the remaining ones frustrated me enough to look up the answer.

In between solving puzzles there is also a story going on. Initially, it seems to be a shopping trip turned app testing stint. Then (Spoiler - click to show)it takes a turn for some themes that are very relevant to what’s going on with corporations and needless changes to processes that everyone has been satisfied with for years. This is going to sound strange from this puzzle-averse mole, but I don’t know if I necessarily needed the frame story. Enigmart’s plot made a lot of good points (Spoiler - click to show)about how corporations consume everything we love like a leech, but it could’ve worked fine as a pure collection of themed puzzles.

I was definitely not the target audience for Enigmart, but after giving it a chance I liked it! The problems felt fair, were well-implemented, and I had fun solving them once I got past the first one. If you really hate puzzles, this game won’t change your mind, and if you’re a puzzle fiend, you’ve probably already jumped on this game already. But if you’re open to being convinced and are ok with being stuck for forty minutes on assigning True/False to cryptic statements, get your thinking caps and writing materials ready - you’ll need them.

Originally posted on intfiction. Minor edits were made.

Love that opening passage, the stark truth of the first sentence, the proceeding sentences written like zooming in birds-eye-view style on this random little mouse. The writing continues to be simple and short, emphasizing the animal senses and traits without making them overbearing, and I could visualize what it could feel like to be in this viewpoint.

The mouse is hungry. So is are its predators. Its life can end in many ways, the moments thankfully brief and not drawn-out. There is no back button and every death means starting from the beginning. Each playthrough is very short, so I personally didn’t find this to be an issue.

A excellent vignette of nature observation rather than a character study, one worth your time. It reminded me of the short chapter book pamphlets I read when I was a child that talked about the basic facts of the animal with diagrams and photos included.

Originally posted on intfiction.

This is a demo for a longer game in development. It takes place in the future but close-enough to our world with immortality through mind uploading and some shuffling of geopolitical borders going on.

The very first choice is the biggest, as it decides the person you play the rest of the demo as, either a doctor about to administer a mind operation, or a billionaire who is the intended patient of said operation. Both characters have distinct arcs and it’s well worth doing a repeat playthrough from the other perspective (easily doable, the currently released content is not very long). There are some mismatches between first-person and second-person pronouns in the billionaire’s segment that I’m not certain were intentional or not.

I’m looking forward to how these two perspectives will collide in future installments!

Originally posted on intfiction. Some edits were made.

I played a previous Senica Thing anthology, Deep Dark Wood, when looking at past Spring Thing games. I found it a delightful, cozy yet gruesome experience. So I was excited to experience stories by (mostly) young new authors, and each of them brought a smile to my face.

A Swarm of Spiders, by DiBa

With no time to waste, author DiBa understands that showing off what your title is about from the beginning is a tried-and-true technique to catch interest. Many of the endings are some variation of “You decide not to investigate, so you go to bed and the rest of the night was uneventful,” but the ending that rewards a true explorer’s spirit was unexpectedly funny in a good way. This best captured being a sleepless kid at night, wondering what creepy-crawlies are out there, and entertaining the “what if I snuck out” fantasy.

WHAT A MESS, by T.H.K.

We start with a classic “Once upon a time,” but only a few possibilities resemble a fairy tale. Most of the choices are a word or two describing an event or an object, but how the object figures into the next passage is a mystery until you pick it. Instead of roleplaying as the couple Emma and James, this game is like having random refrigerator magnets, trying to put them in a readable order, and imagining what happens. Because of this, the story can go in wildly different directions (though paths and endings can converge), some funny, some deadly. This approach made me eagerly hit the restart button to see the different possibilities of our main couple.

Join Le Swarm, by Neural

It starts with a mysterious text message received in the dead of night. It could end in communication. This game utilizes text effects and colors, including shaky/vibrating text. The text effects combined with the sentence structure and rhythm made for quite the creepy mood. The choices will take you to varying paths culminating in four endings, all satisfying in different ways. This best captured atmosphere, making risky life-threatening decisions when you don’t know the consequences, and (Spoiler - click to show)becoming part of a hive mind.

Dystopia, by Creator

Author Creator goes for something probably familiar to many game developers in triple-A companies in this IF where you’re a game developer signing a metaphorical deal with the devil. Corporate horror, with the author’s own earnestness about development unbound from commercial demand ensues. The villains are over the top and very punchable which could have been exhausting, but I didn't feel so because the game is honest about its message from the beginning.

As with Join Le Swarm there is copious use of colored and animated text, though unlike that game, Dystopia uses text effects as a sort of character tag so you know which character is talking to you, and has a couple of illustrations to go with the descriptions. However, there are a few instances of text being colored so dark it was impossible to read without highlighting, all related to when you’re talking to the receptionist. She only has about three lines in the story so it’s not too big an issue but it was a little stumbling block.

I think this story has the longest individual playthrough length, if you play from the start to a definitive happy ending. (Spoiler - click to show)Compared to the other games in this collection, there are hidden passages and a hidden ending, though I found the endings you get "normally" more satisfying. There's nothing very groundbreaking but I appreciate their presence.

Swarm of Thieves, by SKIT

One of two stories in this collection that were written by someone with prior IF experience. Author SKIT previously released A Bottle from the Future for last year’s Spring Thing.

You play as TRUTH (most proper nouns in this story are written in all caps), a rebel leading a swarm of thieves to combat a King and his swarm of Kleptocracy. The writing makes it abundantly clear that this is an allegory for advancing equality for the 99% as an alternative for the stifling self-interest of the oligarchs, the 1%. This is more stylized than the previous games with a background image and text in colored boxes rather than default dark mode Harlowe. There are six short endings that determine the success of the rebellion and the King’s fate, three you can get from having TRUTH escape the authorities and three from being captured.

There were a few pronoun mismatches for TRUTH, though all in the first few passages (the rest of the game refers to TRUTH with female pronouns, so I assume all instances of he/his/himself are typos), and some other typos within the text, though they do not diminish the quality of the message.

John the Swan, by Vitalii Blinov

This is also a story written by someone with prior IF experience. The author previously released One Way Ticket in IFComp 2022, and other works that are written in Russian.

The story is unique compared to the others as its events are esoteric, it’s written in poetry form, and uses timed text to progress line by line. Additionally, when you click on a piece of text that confirms an ending, it begins to shake and the lines of the poem all disappear gradually one-by-one. This could be annoying if the game length or the timer was longer, but text appeared right when I finished reading an individual line, and as playthroughs are short you can still collect all endings in a few minutes. I found the timed text format to work with short-form poetry, it forces you to digest each line and the different possibilities for John (or Swan).

The Underground Dungeon, by A.S.M.

A tasty appetizer with a dark, moody undertone, like blackcurrant flavor. This is the game with the shortest individual playthrough length (though John the Swan without timers would match it), where the protagonist, a royal chef, really wants to break into the castle’s underground dungeon. Interestingly, in the “perfect” playthrough (Spoiler - click to show)you never even encounter a hint of anything swarm-related (unless the dinner guests count). I love how the game, when presenting a locked door, immediately throws the player into (Spoiler - click to show)deciding between attempting to steal the key or flat-out assassinating the king. That escalated quickly, and made me think: Is the king a bad ruler and the assassination also an attempt at trying to end his tyrannical reign? Are we a rogue chef who only cares about the castle’s secrets, even if that means slaying a good or passable king? Somewhere in between? A motivation for taking such a drastic action would be the perfect sauce to go with this dish.

Join the Swarm, by SAT

A mysterious nighttime occurrence awakens a swarm of voices in your head, with a little bit of (Spoiler - click to show)Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde going on. Though the description says to turn the volume up, I didn’t hear anything when I played the entire game with headphones plugged in, and I was worried that I’d suddenly be flashbanged with a really loud noise. After looking at the source, the audio link unfortunately goes to a 404 page. Individual paths are lengthy but almost all lead to a single passage where you make the final choice that determines your ending. My favorite route was where you (Spoiler - click to show)follow a persuasive voice all the way and feel the tension of power, of doing what you want, the consequences be damned.

It’s Here, by Chaos

‘Let’s explore nature! Let’s look at a mass of animal movement!’

That’s basically the entire plot of It’s Here, but the depth of detail in describing the swarm’s behavior (this game is pretty much 90% descriptive text) makes the story stand out. I wanted to study and visualize what was going on, and the way sentences are laid out made it easy to do so. Unlike every other game in this collection, death is not a possibility at all, and there is only a single ending though you can meander through passages endlessly if you wish. There is the occasional text font or color change, mostly done tastefully, though some of the sentences had a gradient background, or were in very dark blue that made it hard to read without highlighting the text. This felt like being on a wildlife tour (well, one where you can touch the animals, which I don’t think exists) and recording your observations on paper.

Yellow Swarm, by HOT

Surprisingly, the only game in this collection with an actual bee swarm. You are a badass agent sent to stop a biotech experiment gone wrong. You explore an infested building, shoot ‘zombies’ and drop a quippy one-liner every so often. This entry stands out for having a full custom stylesheet, and its aesthetic resembling a CRT screen was a good match for and enhanced the game’s setting while being readable. There are three endings with various levels of success, although it’s not hard getting the perfect ending if that is your goal. To me, this was the most nostalgic entry, reminiscent of an action-horror flick but fast-forwarded to all the good parts.

Originally written on the intfiction forums. Minor edits were made.

You’re a dastardly villain in a suitably moody mansion, whose antics are limited to threatening the heroes by making quips, attempted blackmail, or, perhaps the most effective, glaring menacingly at them until they faint. You are given a choice between two random rooms to go into (which eventually repeat after eight or so turns), and in each room, decide whether to confront the heroes using your gaze or hopefully cutting words, use or scavenge for items or silently observe your opponents. Your chances of success are up to random chance, though the effectiveness of your gaze, the location, and the weather can help or hinder you.

There are two ways to win, either by making the heroes faint enough or getting enough plot points. I thought it was pretty easy racking up the required number of faints, but I never found a consistent way of getting enough plot points. The first few times I chose to look for items, I didn’t get any so I stopped picking that option altogether. If you attempt to use an item you already have, the game will automatically pick one appropriate for the current situation or tell you it’s no use and waste a turn. Getting a considerable amount of failed gaze checks lowers their effectiveness, but some smart use of picking locations with appropriate weather should override that - if the RNG favors you. Eventually, I ended up finding the game structure and descriptions to be repetitive when I had two more faints left to go, and continuously spammed Gaze while only skimming the results text.

Frustrations aside, having a stare so powerful that people faint from it is the energy I wish I could have. With some more text variety and clarity on the stat checks, I would feel more comfortable recommending The Perilous Plot to a wider audience, beyond those who are intimately familiar with authors like Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Gregory Lewis.