Spring Gothic

Adapted from a SpringThing25 Review

Played: 4/9/25
Playtime: 1.5hr

This work announces itself as a fictionalized-but-biographically-based relationship drama. Why, creative community, WHY?? Are we trying to see how MUCH damage my oblivious intentions can do in the minimal amount of time? Do I have a shot at the record??

No one wants to see me grapple with self-doubt and aspirational angst for ANOTHER review, so I am going to lean hard into the ‘fictionalized’ claims of the this visual novel and strive to inflict as little collateral damage as possible. This is a work that grapples with the emotional unreality of interpersonal relations, ESPECIALLY in an age where physical presence (and attendant physical cues) can be bypassed completely.

A pre-narrative extended online flirtation leads to a 3-day meatspace meet up where two characters try to plot a path forward. Even if this were not explicitly acknowledged as biographically rooted, it is so stuffed with specificity and detail I would have accused it of being such. The details are constant, offhand, and build a crisp and complete picture of the narrator(s) in our heads. There is no question of the ‘reality’ of these two, they are established fully in every moment of narration. This is like the holy grail of character work.

And we get two of them! The narrative gives us a god-view of BOTH characters’ inner lives, expectations and disappointments throughout the quick visit. The nature of the work is that it is unclear where the narrative might end. Unlike books, where we feel the heft of unread pages, there is no signpost here how much more narrative remains. We start with a full arc with one character… hey this COULD be a single character study! Then we get the OPPOSING character’s journey through the same events. Ok, it COULD be a contrasting narrative of two character studies! Those were effective, but to my eye slightly unsatisfying. Unsatisfying in the sense that both characters were a bit oooh, I almost typed ‘selfish’ there. Substitute another, less charged word please. Inward focused? One was reflecting their own expectations and disconnects on the events, the other treating it like a dating sim where the optimal choice of date events will lead to… SMOOCHY CUTSCENE!!! Neither were truly engaging the other outside online paradigms.

This seems a deliberate narrative choice, possibly at the heart of the work’s artistic aims. Their relationship blossomed online, initiated through avatars. Of COURSE it was more internal than external. Absent physical cues they were simultaneously able to bypass inhibition to expose their intimate inner lives quasi-anonymously while also free to project their own wants and desires on an unresisting avatar. It was both MORE and LESS intimate at once. That dynamic encourages the most idealized, optimistic and distorted view of relationships that can’t HELP but buckle a bit in real life. Sidebar - I found the graphical presentation to reinforce this in a stunningly effective way. The graphics are actual photos of London and environs - as real as it gets - superimposed with cartoony anime-styled characters. Further, those characters are EXPLICITLY from the POV of their partner! Is there a clearer way to emphasize the artificiality, the superficiality of how each sees the other?

So at this point we are left with a mirrored mini emotional tragedy. The work then does something I think elevates it but maybe also falls short? Hoo boy, please don’t think I’m saying ‘The real lives behind this didn’t work for me.’ I am REALLY leaning into the fictionality here, like HAAARD.

Crucially, once we have a ‘filtered’ view of events from each of the two characters, where their motivations and stresses have so thoroughly colored those events, each unreliable to at least a little degree… the narrative goes to third person omniscient. We no longer have access to either’s inner life, but get a script-format instead, practically a court transcript of dialogue. It is up to us to infer the inner lives based on what we have seen so far. The vivid detail we have digested makes this super effective. We kind of shed distortions each character works from to see it more dispassionately. Honestly, prior to this I respected the writing and scene-setting but was still a bit removed. This section really hit a new gear for me.

I really, really hope though, that WHAT I responded to was consistent with the authors’ aims. See, unfiltered by inner lives, that dialogue is kind of… bad? I don’t mean badly written, not at all. Drawing together the previous scenes into a coherent whole, with surprising emotional beats is REALLY cool. I mean the dialogue reflects badly on the two having the conversation. On the one hand, they FINALLY breach their anxiety barriers to have something approaching real communication. On the other, Nica’s response is self-serving outrage without an ounce of empathy for Chun. And only a hand-wavy acknowledgement of their own culpability. This is totally believable, we are watching artificial expectations crumble in real time, of course it can result in lashing out. It’s not exactly admirable, though. We, the readers, understand both Nica’s frustrations and Chun’s motivations, and how devastating these attacks will be. Nica is both oblivious and uncaring. (I do feel there was a disconnect between the heat of Nica’s attacks and Chun’s even, almost accepting responses. Given the emotional brittleness we had seen before, I half expected a concurrent dissembling on Chun’s side.) It had the effect of magnifying and exposing their self-preoccupations, their mutual unreadiness for something less idealized and more real.

At this point I should highlight I barely have a toe in modern online culture. While I understand the concept of parasocial relationships (hell, I’m having one with all of you right now!), it is really a vanishingly small element of my life. That said, Nica’s accusation of (Spoiler - click to show)stalking was completely unconvincing to me, in terms of these characters and this setup. It read like hurt passion overtaking reality in a disheartening way. This was not some rando in the comments getting weirdly familiar. This was a person YOU ENCOURAGED A RELATIONSHIP WITH, desperately trying to UNDERSTAND YOU MORE FULLY THAN THE ARTIFICIALITY OF THE MEDIUM ALLOWED. Were they supposed to NOT Google you? What kind of expectations did you think sexting would build? TO NICA, WAS THIS FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT THAN JUST WATCHING PORN???

The effect of that scene was to strip away the sentimentality we developed by living in each of their heads, and expose the flawed, flawed characters with fresh, less sympathetic eyes. Dramatically, this really worked. I was deeply afraid this was NOT the intent of the piece.

But wait, it’s not over yet! There is a final scene, of Nica returning home, digesting the entire visit, and plotting a path forward. As conflicted as I was about that previous scene, I am not conflicted at all here. I found this to be a really strong, delightfully ambiguous ending. (Spoiler - click to show)We see Nica doubling down on the online relationship, somehow unpurturbed by the previous scene, unmoved by the heat of it. This is either a breakthrough, getting past the hurt and betrayal into something approaching a fuller relationship, or regressing to the idealized comfort of the icon-distorted parasocial status quo. I have a pretty strong feeling which.

I will just close with my favorite line from the work: “melodrama is only melodrama to those that don’t share the same concerns and stakes of the characters.” Thankfully, the authors threw me a bone to confirm I was not hopelessly in the weeds with these takes. With as much time as I spend in those weeds, you'd think I would recognize them by now.

Horror Icon: Babadook
Vibe: She said/she said
Polish: Gleaming
Gimme the Wheel! : Nope nope nope

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.

This is a visual novel written by a large crew. It has no decision points at all, which means that its merit rests entirely on the strength of its writing and on the visuals and sound. That's always tricky for me when reviewing choiceless games because they feel like they belong to the wider comparative group of static fiction which is much more competitive.

Fortunately, this is written well and the pictures and sound are well-done. The background images have enough contrast to read the text and the focus on having only one character portrait for each conversation instead of going back and forth fits well with the writing style.

The story is about two women (seemingly in mid-20s, since one has spent time in medical school) who meet in London for the first time after having a relationship online. Things go well at first, but their differences pile up. We end up seeing first one side of the relationship, then the other, with a final perspective reserved for the ending.

The rest of the review discusses events in game.

(Spoiler - click to show)One of the characters is reeling from a breakup with a very physical relationship and tries to initiate that twice with the other. The other partner is deeply disturbed by this and tensions rise between them.

Also, the person who assaulted is very controlling. She sets up every thing on the date according to her ideas and is constantly annoyed or disappointed when the other girl doesn't fit with what she wants.

Overall, it reminded me of several episodes in my own life and the life of my friends. I saw one couple break up and learned a year or two later that one partner had assaulted the other sexually. I cut off contact with that person and supported the victim. They dated someone else and later broke up. I then found at that that person who had been assaulted went on to assault their next partner. It was all so sad. And it kind of feels like that's what's happening here; one person was in an uncomfortable hyper-sexualized relationship and was dumped, then went on to assault someone else.

The whole trip thing reminded me of something in my own life. When I was in college, there was a woman I knew who lived one dorm over, the same age of me, and she was a close friend. Our roommates were a big friend group and we'd all watch movies as a group and do activities. I'd taken her on a date before, and I knew her family well even though they lived far away (her mother liked me and showed me some neat poetry forms and became my unofficial poetry tutor). She had a really tempestuous personality and went from hot to cold a lot and had a lot of backstory from an abusive father. I ended up writing a letter saying I loved her but she didn't reciprocate at that time. We stayed friends. The summer after we moved out, I got an invitation to attend her younger brother's baptism (an event that happens in our church at 8 years old). I knew it was just a courtesy invite but I asked the mom if I could attend and she was thrilled. She even asked me to perform the baptism myself. I got plane tickets and paid for a hotel room. Wisconsin was beautiful, and I flew in a plan so small that there were only 3 seats per row (with 2 on one side and one on the other of the aisle) and, as I was the only passenger, the flight attendant had me sit in one specific spot to balance the plane. When I got there, I was welcomed and feasted. We had bear meat that the mom had shot herself. I went canoeing with the adult brother of the girl in question, and had tons of fun seeing rare native birds. I performed the baptism.

But the woman didn't talk to me the whole trip. She was completely silent. I realized I had made a huge mistake (as those reading along probably realized earlier!). I cried in the hotel room each night. She didn't say goodbye when I left, either. When I returned to Utah, flying over the Great Salt Lake, I thought it was the ugliest place in the world. (Not now, though! every time I fly over it now I think how much I love it and look back on that old memory and am glad I changed.)

Obviously I never contacted her again. Months later, though, her stepdad wrote me urgently and with great conviction. He said that she was marrying a deadbeat loser that she had recently met (his description) and said: "If you love her at all you need to fight for her!" I wrote back and said, "I no longer believe that we would be happy together." She married him and also inherited from her grandmother a ranch in Arizona, where I presume she still lives.

Years later, after I was married, some of her family members tried to add me on Facebook. My wife at the time was extremely upset, more than almost anything in our marriage, and said that that girl was trying to reconnect with me to flirt with me and steal me away. So I never added them.

After my divorce, though, I did add the little brother I baptized on Instagram. He went on a mission, got married, and seems like a great guy.

Anyway, so I resonated with this game a lot, both from my own experiences with uncomfortable 3-day visits and from seeing how assault can destroy relationships of others. So I was completely dumbfounded when they stay together at the end, it really defied my expectations. I don't really feel good for them; the hesitant one even resolves to be more physically affectionate in the future, presumably to please the other and against their earlier choices. I did the same thing at the end of my marriage and trying to save a relationship through physical intimacy alone is the sign of a sinking ship.

So, the story definitely made me think a lot, which is, in my mind, a sign of a good story.

This is fundamentally a strong concept, which I find to be unfortunately marred by issues in its execution.

I greatly appreciate what the work is attempting to do here; a realist depiction of long-distance relationship, focusing on the nature of the faces we present to one another and the soft tissue that lies underneath.

However, it suffers from a lack of the technical skill to follow through with its ideas. For a work presented through the internal monologue of the characters, I found the writing to be brief yet lacking the depth of any underlying iceberg. This leaves us with a great lack of subtlety; we are presented with the characters' unstylized surface level thoughts, and what is on the screen is exactly what is meant and nothing more. Often times, the writing is so unrefined that I get the impression the author wrote the unprocessed 'gist' of what they wanted a certain section to contain, leaving it to be stylized and dressed-up later (considering this was submitted under a deadline for Spring Thing, I'm willing to give the author some slack there). While I think this would be a general issue in any work of writing, I find it to be especially a shame in a game focused on personas, concealment and small deceits.

This is especially apparent in the third act, where, devoid of their internal monologues, the characters directly confront one another in that same overly direct, clunky manner. This section is where the game really comes through conceptually and there is still a part of me that really appreciates what it is trying to do. However, the climax is marred by lines such as "If I have to put it bluntly, this poor girl doesn't have a life. She clearly doesn't know how to talk to people after a messy relationship, and that's why she feels that she needs to manipulate them into loving them. And without realizing what she did!" where the author makes the inexplicable choice to have a Nika speak in the third person about Chun even as she is directly confronting her. It gives me the impression of a writer who lacks not just writing experience, but life experience in general.

Only furthering the artificiality of the writing in this act are the strange metaphors
couching it within what is at first a movie and then, once the resolution is achieved, a play. Considering the interest in personas, masks and the characters we play in public, there is clearly something to be read here, but the reason the movie is maligned while the play is liberatory escapes me. Is the camera overly artificial and processed as compared to the natural theater? But Nika is liberated by the artificial process of V-Tubing... Do people act more fake on screen? The theater is where people really play characters, whereas modern movies privilege a more naturalistic style of acting... Regardless of underlying intent, the execution of this metaphor can be extraordinarily heavy-handed: "The audience doesn't have access to her interior thoughts, so they can only watch her gaze into the horizon for traces of Nica. Nica is, of course, not on the stage. Chun heaves a heavy sigh. It is time for her to leave the stage and leave the actor's mask behind. She exists stage left."


On the subject of the play, the story seems to fail to recognize itself: in spite of the aforementioned theater analogy, it does not seem to understand that it actually is structurally a three act play and in consequence does not follow through with the medium it has found itself in. Here I diverge sharply from most of my fellow reviewers who praise the story's digressions into its main characters' interests and the realism of visiting several actual locations. I find that the way these elements are handled mostly only distract from the interpersonal drama that forms the core of the story. The characters simply visit too many places over too many days and during these incursions, the actual plot is dropped in favour of character-forming digressions that don't connect to what is supposed to be the simmering background-tension between our protagonists. I am not advocating here a strict adherence to the classical unities, but I think this part of the IF could have been significantly more focused and tied down to the main plot without losing the charm of its characterization.

In regards to the characterization, there is also the egregious oversight that we are meant to understand that the very politically engaged Chun, the dedicated feminist and adherent to the radical theory of Sophia Lewis, has also read several pick-up artistry books and completely failed to notice the intense misogyny oozing out of the pages. Especially considering the short run-time of the game, I find this mistake to critically harm the character's consistency and the plot as a whole.

In conclusion, it's a charming and likeable game with a good idea at its core, but it is fundamentally rough and confused in its execution. While I really like what it's going for, I can only watch it disintegrate as it tries to stick the landing.

I loved the slow-paced, realistically grounded exploration around London in this one, as the characters visit real places (illustrated by real photographs) and discuss real films, books, and politics. The premise—Nica is meeting her long-distance girlfriend, Chun, for the first time—was compelling and also very of-the-moment. The clear divide between them was captured so well, with Nica’s thoughts contrasting with what she chooses to actually say/reveal to Chun. And then halfway through, at an emotional cliffhanger of a moment, we switch and get the same few days recounted from Chun’s point of view, seeing the divide from the other side.

As an outside observer, and especially after getting both perspectives, I wanted them both to just be more open with each other; each character’s internal monologue reveals so many things they could be talking about and connecting over, but they both choose to play it so safe, keeping conversation surface-level. I love seeing this kind of thing explored in fiction, how terrifying and difficult connecting with other humans can be, and this was an excellent portrayal.

At the end, when the two finally discuss their relationship, their interactions explode a bit into melodrama, and this part didn’t feel as believable to me, both as to the characters’ emotions and their dialogue. (Spoiler - click to show)I also had a hard time believing either of them would want to continue the relationship after that. Overall I quite enjoyed and appreciated it; the ending just didn’t quite land.

(Sidenote: I loved the quality-of-life feature of the little progress bar that lets you know how many pages are left.)

This game is an exploration of long distance relationships in the modern age. The art is excellent, the writing thought-provoking, and the music moving. Everyone involved with the making of Spring Gothic was really pulling their weight.
 
I very much appreciated the game's depiction of neurodivergence (it's heavily implied (Spoiler - click to show)at least one of the main characters is autistic, although likely doesn't realize it herself yet). The way the story didn't shy away from showing some of the uglier sides of its characters—even as this related to neurodivergence—was refreshing. Nica and Chun are not idealized and sanitized romance protagonists. These are real people, flawed and compelling.
 
Their pasts, ideas, and desires are handled thoughtfully, their travels though London grounded in real locations depicted through photographs, their inner monologues filtered through past experiences and formative books, authors, and artists that influenced them as they grew into understanding themselves as queer women. (Frankly, the frequent name-dropping of books, queer theorists, and movies was one of my favorite parts—I've added several to my to read/watch lists.)

My one complaint was (Spoiler - click to show)the speed at which the relationship seemed to reach repair after the argument felt awfully rushed. Maybe that abruptness was the point, and the sudden jump to more or less "back to normal" when Nica returned home was part of continuing relationship dysfunction, but I couldn't quite parse if this was the intended reading. Whatever the case, it wasn't enough to detract from my overall enjoyment of what is a truly remarkable and layered game. I know I'll be thinking about it and its characters for a long time. 

This game will appeal to people who want a specific kind of linear visual novel. It has no puzzles and no choices that affect the narrative. Actually, no choices at all, as far as I can tell.

So it's closer to a linear short story than you might expect from interactive fiction, but it makes good use of the "interactive" part: there's graphics, music and sound, and each line of text is carefully paced to maintain interest. Screen transitions and sound are managed effectively to enhance the mood, e.g. the background goes dark when a character retreats into her own inner thoughts, so you get a black screen with nothing but one hard-hitting line of text that makes you sit back and say, "Dang." Happened a few times.

The overall effect is cinematic, and the third act switches up the format entirely, in a way that works very well in context.

Also, the graphics are cool. The two main characters, Chun and Nica, have fun sprite art with dynamic expressions that change based on what's happening in the story. Plus, and this is key, the photo backgrounds seem to feature the real places the main characters are traveling to.

Someone on the Itch.io page said they were "blown away by how enamoured the game is with reality". The photo backgrounds are one great example. This story is firmly rooted in the real world. It isn't shy to discuss politics or our current reality; in the opening, Nica, who's trans, says "The new US president hates people like me". Meanwhile, Chun (Spoiler - click to show)is originally from Hong Kong, but her family moved to the UK because she participated in the 2019 protests against the Chinese government and they were afraid for her safety.

The characters bring up books that actually exist (e.g. Abolish the Family by Sophie Lewis, Dhalgren by Samuel Delaney), movies that actually exist (e.g. Nica and Chun watch Letters from the Big Man (2011) together, a scene that taught me about a film I'd never heard of), and people who actually exist (e.g. lesbian writer Radclyffe Hall). It was immersive. I felt I was there with the characters, walking through London with them, watching them navigate their relationship together.

London is of interest to me, being the "capital of a decaying empire" and all, as the game says. Regretfully, I think Britain has pizzazz and can't make myself get over it. But the relationship is what really takes center stage here. This is less a story about London and more a story about the main characters as a couple.

The relationship was very well done. I find a lot of fictional relationships too perfect for my tastes. I'm more familiar with the part of a relationship where you're constantly second-guessing yourself, wondering if you actually like the other person or not, wondering if you're doing the right thing, than the idealized final stage where you're supposed to love and trust each other. Even with someone you've known for a long time, there's always a degree of uncertainty over how much fun you're having together, and it's something you have to constantly be aware of and ready to respond to if the answer is "not much". At least, that's how I feel.

This story got at that experience. The things Chun and Nica do are things I've done, and they felt intimately familiar. Not just the part where they're watching movies or traveling together, but the constant anxiety layered on top of that, worrying about how much intimacy the other person wants and whether that move was one step too far, did you ruin things, are you really having fun, do you really want this relationship, what kind of relationship do you want in general, and what will your life look like if you can't handle one? Will you be alone forever?

The effect is simultaneously cozy and ridiculously stressful. I had a small box of mints nearby and ended up eating about half of them.

If I had to offer any criticism, it would be that the ending sequence (Spoiler - click to show)felt almost too harsh compared to the two's behavior when they make up afterwards. This is Your Mileage May Vary territory, but I was wondering how the relationship could ever recover at that point, and was surprised when Nica was willing to forgive Chun after what Nica had said to her earlier. This can be chalked up to personal idiosyncrasy, though, since everyone has their own personal standards for relationship issues.

In general, really liked this one. One part I especially enjoyed was towards the end, when (Spoiler - click to show)Chun and Nica can't make themselves talk face-to-face, so they go into a virtual VRChat world together and communicate through VRChat, while sitting silently in the same room. It reminded me of the way my friends and I would talk during breaks in high school, typing rapidly to each other on Skype chat while we were all sitting in the same room and completely silent in real life. Or how we'd sometimes burn time by just pulling up the laptop and scrolling through Reddit together. A lot of people disdain the online and privilege real-world interaction, but to me it seems they're just different ways to interact with people. Chun and Nica wouldn't have met if it wasn't for the Internet connecting them across thousands of miles. The real world isn't always inherently superior.

That said, everyone needs to live in the real world to some extent. I guess navigating the boundaries between online and offline is what every person needs to manage on their own, deciding what they want and how much is enough.



Story excerpt:

Melodrama is only melodrama to those who don't share the same concerns and stakes of the characters.

We have been taught to withhold our emotions, to calculate, to belittle those who make a mountain out of a molehill.

In short, we are taught to be monsters to each other.

---

Because we are monsters, I see relationships as fragile, ephemeral, always in need of repair. They are susceptible to decline when we stop being proactive about maintaining them. We fool ourselves into thinking they are small matters until it is too late.