Join the Swarm

I always look forward to the Senica thing each year, a collection of short Twine games written by students and associated adults.

This year features a wide range of stories. What I knew Senica thing for in the past was its collection of simple CYOA-style 'do you go into the cave or follow the trail into the forest' gameplay, with simple sentences and refreshing youthful writing, often with minor typos. I enjoyed it because it feels fresh and real and represents someone stretching and growing as an author.

This year sees some of that return, but also sees some games with slick UIs and overly perfect text that was very precise but never seemed to say much of anything. Whether this is an effect of AI (either in translation, writing or in planning) or something else, it did feel less exciting than the raw, heartfelt stories.

I liked the game with poisoning the king, and the one where I could become Spiderman. The adult's game about truth and justice made me think more about civil liberties and freedoms than I usually do. Overall, it's fun to see people embrace these tools and share their stories!

Adapted from a SpringThing26 Review

Played: 4/24/26
Playtime: Just under an hour, all in

On the heels of confessing my besmirched admiration for the insect world, Senica Thing comes along and gives us an anthology of works with a (loose) bee common theme! Bees may be second only to spiders atop my Pyramid of Cool Bugs. Kind of the same way Senica Thing is atop my Pyramid of Most Anticipated Works of Spring Thing. I am an unabashed fan of this annual tradition, so to couple it to BEES, then have one work be called A SWARM OF SPIDERS??? If you are just shamelessly pandering to me YOU ARE DOING A GREAT JOB, PLEASE KEEP IT UP!

There also emerges an insect-adjacent common take to some of these works that I found intriguing, though maybe it is best to let it emerge through individual feedback. Let us delay no longer!

Yellow Swarm by HOT (10m 4 endings)
This was a great piece to start with, one that leaned into an action hero inspired tale of base infiltration against a little-a alien threat. It was very economical in its implementation: its protagonist and world were so thoroughly painted in a few ‘previous case’ details and periodic Schwarzenesque™ one-liners, quickly getting out of the way of its breakneck action pacing.

Beyond the really fun setting and frenetic pacing, there were two things that really elevated the piece. The most obvious is its graphical design. Given the Senica Thing authors - many students new to IF - it is quite notable when graphical flairs are added to the narratives. And so well done here, the font and layout choices really enhance and echo the setting of the work. The second aspect that delighted me was its ‘collect the ending’ architecture. Despite its deliberately tropey setting where it seems two-fisted Justice will be almost perfunctorily dispensed by an impervious hero, YS instead lets the player steer into a broad variety of endings, running the gamut from Action to Tragedy to Horror. All of them were interesting and fun to find!

Also this work leaned into an aspect of SWARM that many of the other works would ALSO lean into (and surprisingly so): a not-necessarily-unsympathetic depiction of hivemind.

WHAT A MESS by THK (5min, all endings)
Ok, I know I started by belligerently flouting my creepy entomophilia in your face, but one of the strengths of this format is the wild flights of inspiration of its various authors. Here, the swarm is a swarm of RABBITS. Dafug?? Also ROFL. This seems to be a collaborative work, where different branches might have been engineered by different primary authors. This is a very effective way to synthesize dissonant creative visions into absurdist fun. This is a work where your fictional partner may perish, marry you, or mistake your fart for an earthquake! What possible response to that is there but delighted giggling? This piece also leans into the multiple-ending paradigm which might well be a natural way for new authors to engage IF. For me, the success of that model is ALWAYS about how bonkers you can make those. Boy did MESS deliver.

Despite the seeming simplicity of branching narratives (at least conceptually), I am impressed by how many of these works go beyond pure combinatorial explosion, and implement reconverging branches. That is a crucial construct in the IF author’s toolbox, and seeing it explored in a maiden work (like here) is terrific.

The Underground Dungeon by ASM (5m all endings)
Another multi-author work, this one impressed me by how narratively tight it was. It was a collect-the-ending work, but rather than try to disarm with absurdity, it was more tightly linked to a story about palace intrigue. The possible endings were… ok not COMPLETELY shades of each other, but perfectly viable narrative paths. It did not read at all like the product of different authors, it easily could have been the product of a single mind. That is some next level collaboration! (and also somehow a reflection of the emerging hivemind theme?)

It also felt subversively cynical? The motives of the protagonist are unceremoniously selfish. Their king is shaded as problematic, but nowhere near the extent of say Game of Thrones, making our protag’s actions kind of hilariously worse-than-the-problem. Which narrative branches might reward, but more often deliver some over-the-top comeuppance. This work (like the first) showcased that collect-the-endings can succeed even if NOT an exercise in comedic breadth. Which is not to say I didn’t laugh.

Swarm of Thieves by SKIT (10min, endings 1,2,3,4,5,6)
This was a deceptive work of social-justice metaphor… Metaphor? That word kind of implies a level of indirection NOT present in the text: presenting a protagonist named TRUTH, along with companions JUSTICE and FREEDOM, struggling against an autocracy named KLEPTOCRACY. There are multiple paths this struggle might take, curiously many more optimistic results than cynical ones. It also subtly raises some questions, particularly about JUSTICE. While TRUTH and FREEDOM are philosophical constructs, JUSTICE expands to encompasses Social Systemics. Notionally we are playing as TRUTH (lending a bit of weight to our actions!), but functionally we are asked to perform JUSTICE. (I mean, we want those two to be close, right?) This is further complicated by aligning the protagonist with a SWARM - a word that typically does not imply nobility or fairness (let alone FREEDOM), but predatory massmind might-makes-right. All of these choices made the work much more complex than its surface choice-select construction. Just giving TRUTH choices AT ALL undermines the expected singularity of it. If we can choose multiple, incompatible paths, how can they all be products of TRUTH? It begs us to interrogate whether TRUTH is living up to its name, or are our decisions arbitrary and as their author we simply choose to CALL that TRUTH? And is JUSTICE really a universal concept at all, or just expedient control masquerading as something nobler?

Was any of this intended by the author? I have no way of knowing that, but SOT really spun my mental wheels in intriguing ways.

(One quick note to author, it appeared that TRUTH’s gender wavered throughout the work? If this was intended, I didn’t tumble to its desired effect.)

Join The Swarm by SAT (5min, 3 endings many times)
This presents as a horror work - the player is beset by sinister voices egging them on to some unsettlingly unspecific transgressions. This formless swarm seems to have verbal capabilities! The setting is an empty (except for protagonist) house, where the darkness outside is fraught with unseen threats. This all builds a terrific atmosphere of horror lurking below the everyday, emerging to torment us once the sun goes down - a wonderfully primal fear from our collective unconscious. The choice select work presents as a series of choices how to engage/avoid/combat these voices and the tension they are building. I appreciated the divergence from standard Twine formatting here, the red link choices really popped. The work funnels your choices into three possible endings, all hinging on a last minute twist worthy of The Twilight Zone. I found it interesting to replay. After experiencing the twist the first time, the story shifts to melancholy on replay, when you know what is coming.

The only glitch in my gameplay came from the audio track. At startup you are advised to crank up the volume, which I dutifully did. If there was a soundtrack associated with the work it did not seem to play for me. Which is too bad, because a just-shy-of-audible-muttering would have been an amazing mood-setter here!

Jouin Le Swarm by Neural (5min, endings 1, 2, 3, 4)
This is another story that elevates its default Twine formatting with playful font work. The fact that first time authors engage this arguably optional nuance gives me hope for the future of art. Or at least artists. This work explicitly grapples with the two sides of “SWARM” as a hive mind. On the one hand, a perceived loss of freedom. On the other, an end to loneliness and promise of community. I was pleasantly surprised at the nuanced treatment of this dynamic. Western Democracy has decided individualist FREEDOM is our highest aspiration (which to be fair, when presented with authoritarian alternatives does seem better). This simplistic prescription seemingly ignores our evolutionary grounding as a deeply SOCIAL species. I would not have guessed this doctrine to be questioned so explicitly in the entries of this year’s Senica! Does that speak to hivemind or a series of resonant free-thought exercises? Or to the possibility that the whole construct could be somehow a false dichotomy? Many of the works gestured at this tension, but this one foregrounded it. In particular, it had the maturity to acknowledge that while assimilation CAN BE violent to the individual, it does not HAVE to be! I liked the nuance there.

John The Swan by Vitali Blinov (5 min, 4 ends)
I am not a poetry guy, I trust that has become clear. If I am going to engage poetry though, it is best when it is playful. Join the Swarm → John the Swan is a subversively funny baseline for a sly wordplay poem. First runthrough, I thought the timed text worked pretty well, particularly, the ‘late link’ final step. It played out just slowly enough to force me to engage it, but not so slowly as to frustrate progress. It ended up pacing well enough to let its wordplay land with all the absurdist fury of Suess poem. From a default position of 'poetry - no thanks, ’ JtS was tight and fun enough to get past my barriers. If I had a quibble, it was on repeat plays. What at first was playful delay, compensating drag with surprise, once the surprise was eliminated the drag became uncompensated. I would recommend accelerating the pace of timed text during subsequent iterations, particularly for screens the player has already seen.

It’s Here by Chaos (5min)
Ok, if Jouin Le Swarm opened the door to reevaluating Western Orthodoxy’s fetishization of Freedom, It’s Here charges through that door and starts flipping tables. This Swarm is conceived of not as a threat to, but a negotiation between the collective and the individual. It posits that the individual need not be lost to the Swarm, just the opposite, that the swarm is enriched by the presence of each of its individual constituents. I don’ t mean for it to sound condescending when I say I was not expecting this from Senica Thing! I mean that as a compliment, but I understand SAYING it may not make it so. The amount of insightful and challenging thought packed into these small games is really a revelation and a credit to the authors. I really like the subtle reinforcement of that in the game’s construction, which I’m going to spoiler because I like it so much. (Spoiler - click to show)Every path of acceptance or rejection you might try to take ends with the same text! The architecture of the game is reinforcing its central message that there is no RIGHT or WRONG way to engage the collective. The Swarm is enriched by all of it! That meta-linkage is even more impressive to me than the always welcome formatting experimentation!

Dystopia by Creator (10m, multiple endings)
So Dystopia distinguishes itself in the field by having the most extended (and grounded) narrative in the collection. It is an amateur game maker’s baptism into the world of work. Sure, it’s a deeply CYNICAL narrative but that is a virtue, not a sin. It conceptualizes the Swarm as relinquishing individuality and creativity in the name of a collective. But not a nuanced collective of symbiotic benefits, a fully exploitative collective that its members just agree to because… social and financial inertia. When these ‘Rage Against the Machine’ narratives appear they are not served by nuance or ‘ok, but..’ In fact their complete LACK of measured fairness is the whole point. It is a polemic driven by anger, and since when does anger care to take time to hear the other side? It’s seen all it needs to, now is time for RAAAGE. Here, in cold black and white, it is possible my words might be misinterpreted as condemning this impulse. Far from it. This is the youthful Punk Rock ethos that refuses to excuse Exploitation with tepid ‘Trickle Down’ dissembling. It is a throat punch to a social order whose creative vampirism benefits only a very few. ALL my favorite music plays this song, and I LOVE IT. It doesn’t need to be an accurate portrait of all work, whatever that even is, it only need decry a model that EXISTS, and give it ABSOLUTELY NO QUARTER.

I might suggest three refinements here: first the illustration that appears 2/3 of the way in is HUUGE. Even on a full-screen window it bleeds over. I would resize (shrink) this to fit within the text. Also, while I as always appreciate the experimentation with presentation, some links are rendered in a maroon color that practically disappears on the black background. Lastly, there are early choices to reject the story before it starts. Sometimes it leads to an abrupt and unsatisfying end, long before its anger manifests. Another time it results in the game basically telling you ‘No, take the other option.’ Both of these are kind of counter to the narrative, and if taken before the game has been played through once, have no real power. Given the narrative really takes off only if the initial overture is accepted, it is perfectly ok to force the player to accept, and provide story reasons for it. “My family would have a fit if they found out I didn’t even consider the job. Maybe I’ll go ahead and check it out.” Particularly since meaningful accept/reject choices (arguably the point of the work!) occur later, early railroading would not be a terrible gameplay choice.

A Swarm Of Spiders by DiBa (5min, 5 endings)
And here, in our final entry, we get the eagerly anticipated SWARM OF SPIDERS!! The work presents a half-dream late night exploration of unusual spider activity. It can end with going back to bed, DYING, or… no not gonna spoil it, … or another ending that I laughed right out loud at. Vindication for Arachnophiles! This was a very short, very amusing way to close out this year’s theme and collection. The perfect amuse bouche to clear the palate of some of the heavier works ahead of it, and end on a playful, fun note. I do appreciate that one choice (perhaps the most meaningful in the game) was telegraphed as important. If I had a suggestion it would be to make the options of that choice more naturally suggestive of their outcomes, even if only in retrospect. Something like (Spoiler - click to show)Your adrenaline must have played with the spider venom in a catastrophic way… Otherwise, a great finale to this year’s premier IF anthology!

Spaceship: Discovery
Vibe: Buggy (I mean, not COMPUTER buggy… you get it) Anthology
Polish: Various
Gimme the Wheel! : We have established that nothing in my makeup lends itself to this incredibly vital service to this hobby. This is a wheel I am content to leave in Ondrej’s firm, sure hands.

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

As is now Spring Thing tradition, Senica Thing has contributed an anthology of IF by students (and a few friends), this time all written in Twine and riffing on the eponymous theme. Those three words set up an impressively broad range of experiences, so I’ll write capsule reviews of each in turn:

A Swarm of Spiders, by DiBa

The opening game in my Senica Thing playthrough jumps admirably into the action: you’re awakened in the middle of the night by a strange skittering, and find yourself compelled to investigate. Structurally, it’s a sequence of binary continue the story/back out yes-or-no questions, which I often find a bit underwhelming – why are you asking me if I want to leave the ride early when I’ve already paid for my ticket? But in this case I think it works really well, as it helps align the player’s behavior with the protagonist’s: obviously the counsel of reason would be to just go back to bed and ignore the spiders, but there’s something irrationally pushing you to go outside and follow them… The writing also includes some nicely creepy details, while playing up the combination of fascination and repulsion that gives the story its energy:

"You are pretty scared, but even more curious. You slowly walk up to the window and see plenty of spiders crawling out. They are all moving in one direction, leading to a tree."

It all leads up to a fun twist that nicely illustrates the theme, making A Swarm of Spiders a perfect introduction to the anthology.

Dystopia, by Creator

This time out the theme is take in a more metaphorical direction: the swarm isn’t literal hive-minded insects, but money-chasing video game developers who’ve given up their artistic ambitions to follow the crowd. You play a young indie dev who’s tempted to join a big studio despite some understandable misgivings, and as it turns out there’s more going on than just overly-mercenary suits trying to monetize the latest trends.

While other games in the anthology play up the ambivalent nature of swarm living, Dystopia interprets the premise as straightforward horror. Unsettling text effects, eye-straining color choices, and menacing prose underscore the soul-threatening power that you’re up against:

“You have our gratitude for applying, we shall see you tomorrow at the following address: ▊▊▊▊▊▊▊▊▊ st. Nr ▊▊▊▊▊▊. Sleep tight our little gem.”

Compared to the strong use of aesthetics, the interactive elements feel a bit underdeveloped – there’s almost always one right answer and one wrong one, and if you pick the latter you get automatically put back on track after reading about the bad end. And since the video game company is portrayed as unremittingly malicious, I sometimes had a hard time justifying why I was sticking my head in the lion’s mouth. But the game opens up as it reaches its action-filled climax, and doesn’t just rely on style, adding some philosophical notes to the ending: “WHAT, YOU THINK IDEAS SPREAD BECAUSE THEY’RE GOOD? NO ,THEY SPREAD BECAUSE PEOPLE LIKE THEM”, the prime evil says, and in this our current dystopia, it’s hard to say he’s wrong.

It’s Here, by Chaos

I feel like one of the principles of good writing that I lean on a lot in my reviews is that specificity trumps generality – a well-chosen, evocative detail can make even the most familiar story come alive, while plodding prose can suck the energy out of every novelty. It’s Here tests the limits of that commonplace, though, because while its language is entirely abstract throughout – so abstract that I think different readers could come away with very different interpretations of what, exactly, has occurred – I nonetheless found it compelling. The action, much as it is for the rest of the games in the anthology, turns on whether to meld oneself into a larger collective, and if so, on what terms. But rather than fleshing it out with the typical accoutrements of narrative (protagonists, antagonists, themes), the game focuses on the dynamics of that action, dramatizing motion and play over substance.

"Instead of chaos, there is a flow of deliberate patterns, folding and unfolding like a single, capable organism that he can breathe. There is no roar or violent rush of wings, only a muted tremor in the air, a living current that bends the light and draws every eye upward. As you watch, a subtle rhythm begins to echo behind your thoughts, steady, layered, impossibly complex, yet harmonious."

In keeping with this ultra-refined approach, the simple choices combine in complex interactions; while most of the early choices reflect the familiar join/withdraw dichotomy we’ve seen in other entries in Join the Swarm, this is more of a dance or an exploration than a final commitment, as you can move in or out as the spirit moves you, and eventually the choices turn not on whether you’ll merge with the collective, but whether you feel ambivalent about your decision, and how to respond to unexpected disturbances.

I’m not sure this approach would work in a longer piece – the human mind, or at least mine, will eventually crave some more human-apprehensible elements in its stories. But it very much worked for me in It’s Here – this is an engaging, self-assured piece.

John the Swan, by Vitalii Blinov

There are a few examples of IF in poetic form, and I’m always impressed when authors make the attempt given that it requires imposing two entirely separate sets of constraints on how you use language: the responsiveness and nonlinearity of IF, and the precision and control of poetry. John the Swan is a good illustration of both the challenges and the opportunities of this kind of thing, I think – the author cannily keeps things short so that the poetry doesn’t drag (there are two choices with two options each), and there are additional text effects further livening up the presentation. And the text employs joking half-rhymes to good effect, undermining the player’s expectations:

Was he a swan?

Was he the John?

Memories gone.

He stays alone.

As that except indicates, the substance of the game is whimsical and doesn’t overly explain itself. While poetry doesn’t of course need to be narrative to be effective, I found myself wanting at least some greater sense of progression, some clearer indication of what conflict the choices were resolving. While the game gestures at some consistent themes – identity, threat – I had often had a hard time decoding the intended impact, or relating this piece to the Join the Swarm theme. Still, it’s a worthy experiment, with some engagingly ambiguous endings.

Jouin Le Swarm, by Neural

This game combines elements of others we’ve seen in the anthology, with an ambiguously-portrayed hive-mind, a variety of endings that feel responsive to your choices, and even an opening that’s eerily reminiscent of that of Swarm of Spiders; there, you were wakened by the swarm’s activity at 2:16 am, whereas here you’re roused by the swarm’s activity at 2:17 am.

While the focus is on how you respond to the part-enticing, part-threatening invitation you receive from the swarm, I appreciated that there were several paths to get to the different endings – in particular, you can choose to bring a friend along with you as you investigate, which can set up a solid late-game twist, though that choice doesn’t actually change the endings.

I also liked the spare way the game communicates the appeal of subsuming your individuality into the swarm, which doesn’t resort to force to bring you along; while I think it’s clear in presenting the paths where you retain your independence as positive ones, it includes some discordant notes that indicate that there’s no way to encounter such a profoundly different way of existence and remain unchanged:

"After a few days, it disappears completely.

"You remain alone.

"But sometimes, in the silence, you almost miss it."

Join the Swarm, by SAT

This most generically-titled entry in the anthology cleverly inverts the theme – and brings in a hoary yet unexpected set of tropes – in a way that I genuinely didn’t see coming (and won’t spoil, given how short it is). It also boasts an impressively open structure in its short runtime: as you’re thrown into a dangerous situation and have to choose how to respond, you navigate challenges both external and internal, with some of your choices looping back around to prior events and others opening up a whole new perspective on how exactly the swarm functions here. While I think all roads lead to the same endgame, you can have substantially different experiences – and substantially different information – as you make the critical decisions.

I’ll repeat that the twist in question is a relatively tropey one, and not an unproblematic trope at that, but I don’t think Join the Swarm is presenting itself as an especially grounded depiction of reality; it certainly counts as a novel way of executing on the theme, and the thriller-style writing keeps things moving towards that revelatory climax.

Swarm of Thieves, by SKIT

“I know writers who use subtext, and they’re all cowards,” goes the meme, and Swarm of Thieves got the message. This is a Robin Hood allegory where the thief is named TRUTH and the kingdom is called KLEPTOCRACY; any relation to persons living or dead sure seems more than coincidental when reading speeches like this:

"TRUTH replies: 'You must give us the right to decent work for decent pay. Together we can create a more equal society. In KLEPTOCRACY’s budget, prison spending is double that of education and healthcare. You must give us hope of escaping our poverty!'"

The plot is thin but exciting – the king’s guards are close to catching TRUTH, and you get to decide whether they succeed, and if so how the subsequent confrontation goes. Everything’s quite Manichean, which is forgivable for an allegory, but I felt that there was a mismatch between the narrative stakes and the gameplay ones – a notorious thief being nabbed and facing the justice of a corrupt king is a nail-biting situation, but the player’s ability to dictate outcomes via high-level narrative-guiding choices sucks away some of the drama. Heck, even if you pick the option that tells the king to condemn TRUTH, the subjects launch a revolution due to his crimes and usher in a happy ending. It’s a comforting resolution, but one risks turning the game into mere escapism.

The Underground Dungeon, by A.S.M.

One of the highlights of previous Senica Thing entries was coming across stories, usually by young authors, that delighted in messing with player expectations, introducing out-of-nowhere plot shifts that keep things fresh and display a wild imagination. It’s absolutely a technique that works best in short doses, but when it works it’s a lot of fun, and I confess I was a bit disappointed that the previous anthology entries were generally more focused, not to say staid, affairs.

So I was very ready for The Underground Dungeon, a madcap romp of bad behavior through a fantasy kingdom. The first line is “far away from your home is a castle,” which made me think we were maybe going on a quest to rescue the king from the eponymous oubliette, but no, actually the king is our boss, we’re the chef, we just have an absurdly long commute. Before work one day you discover a locked door to the undercroft, and since you don’t have the keys, you come up with a couple of plans and are presented with these two choices:

-Steal the keys

-Poison the king

What?! Why would we poison the king?! Well as it turns out he’s not very nice – depending on how exactly you choose to poison him, he might fall into a frenzy, leading to this vignette:

"The maid enters the room. The king bites her, but she doesn’t find it weird since the king throws a lot of tantrums."

I don’t want to spoil any more of the game, but suffice to say there’s a lot of this sort of thing, and it always made me smile. Navigating to the best ending isn’t too hard, but there’s just as much fun to be had exploring the various dead ends and blind alleys the authors have cooked up. I’m not sure what any of this has to do with joining a swarm, or what the cook thinks they’re going to find down in the dungeon, but when I’m having such a good time, it’s hard to care about any of those details.

WHAT A MESS, by T.H.K.

WHAT A MESS takes a similar approach to Underground Dungeon, which as I’ve just said, really works for me – this is a story that zigs and zags, though with more of a time cave structure that allows for significantly different plots to play out depending on your seemingly-innocuous choices. Here there are two protagonists, the plucky duo of James and Emma, though depending on your choices they might not both make it to the end. Many of their adventures also involve a kingdom of alternately threatening and welcoming bunny rabbits, which, yeah, that seems about right for bunnies, they’re cute but there’s certainly something untrustworthy about them.

The game’s jokes largely rely on misdirection, and I thought they generally landed:

"When they got up, there was a rainbow cake with a unicorn on the top. Emma and James were surprised. They cut the cake into many pieces and each of them ate one piece of the cake and then they died."

Though seemingly-ominous choices sometimes lead to better outcomes:

"The bats were flying arund them for a long time. At first they were scared, but then they figured out that it was actually very romantic. James and Emma fell in love and got married."

(I love that it’s unclear whether the “they” who were scared and then felt romantic are James and Emma, or actually the bats).

Too much of this sort of thing can of course wear one out, but WHAT A MESS isn’t something to take too seriously; it’s short and light-hearted, and perfectly enjoyable on those terms.

The Yellow Swarm, by HOT

I’ve gotten used to Senica Thing games being way more about content than styling – sure, Swarm of Thieves had a background image and Dystopia a couple of illustrations and text effects, but for the most part they stick to basic Twine aesthetics, which is fine in my book. Still, I gotta admit that the slick visuals of Yellow Swarm made for an arresting, and very pleasant, surprise. There are bright yellow/orange colors making a bold contrast with the black background, scan-lines and terminal fonts that recall Aliens, and an intense, military sci-fi vibe that demands attention.

Fortunately, this isn’t at all a case of style over substance. The prose is dead on, alternating between po-faced special-ops speak:

"The facility went dark six days ago. Meridian Biotech, sublevel research station, built into a hillside in rural Romania. Forty-two personnel. They were developing something called Apis-7: a neural synchronization compound derived from insect pheromone chains."

…and effectively creepy body-horror when you get into the facility and see what’s become of the people:

"It used to be a person. It walks in a straight line toward the far wall, stops, turns, walks back. Three more behind it do the same. Their skin has gone yellow-grey and the surface of it shifts slightly, like something pressing from inside. Their eyes are white, opaque."

The story is straight-ahead, but it’s well-paced and hits all the beats it aims for. The choices similarly avoid over-complication – your mission is clear, so you’re typically just offered binary options about how best to infiltrate and destroy the incipient hive. It’s more of a roller-coaster ride than a tactical challenge, with the player needing to really try to get a suboptimal ending, but it’s hard to complain when the ride is this thrilling and good-looking.

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.