Joshua Grams

Finally did #EnigMarch day 2: color (just after the day 3 prompt is up, huh). Haven't fixed any of the rough spots in the puzzle player; hopefully tomorrow.

Some of the interesting deductions fell apart with the last couple clues, but oh well.

Same URL: joshgrams.itch.io/enigmarch-2026

Oh, I see, thanks! I had a P in the title so I never would have gotten that...

Can I get a hint for the second stage? I think I'm completely stuck there.

I made a half-baked logic-grid puzzle editor a while back and keep meaning to finish/polish it, so... #EnigMarch day 1: Season. joshgrams.itch.io/enigmarch-2026

I don't expect these'll be anything to write home about but eh, practice. That's the main point anyway, right?

A path in the foreground, with piles of plowed snow pushed up against trees: the latticed shadows of their branches texturing the snow. in the background, an open snowy field sprinkled with tufts of dry brown plant stalks.

Pea shoots under grow lights: shallow black plastic trays, longer than your forearm, with dirt and a nearly solid covering of yellowy-tan pea seed. They're starting to form a thick carpet, shoots maybe the length of your thumb, still yellowy-green and with their leaves mostly folded and just starting to open out. On the shelf below you can see more trays with just the seed, no shoots starting yet.

Small tomato seedlings in a tray of soil blocks: they make me think of a troupe of dancers, long thin cotyledons reaching out from purplish stems like arms out for balance, feathery true leaves nodding above.

Outside vs. inside. Also, ugh, 2 inches is such an annoyingly small amount of snow.

Heh. Between hard drive space and rural internet, anything over 1-2gb is "welp, guess that's some money I'm saving by not buying this." If your game is 4gb+ I have to really REALLY expect to love it or never mind.

Although I grew up never EVER having "gaming" hardware, so I'm extreme here.

I thought exploring was what undergrad was FOR: I think my list would only be less eclectic because I dashed through in three years and also dove WAY into math. Though I guess being homeschooled the whole way, I don't have a conventional view...

This is why I basically never review; I'm almost entirely interested in what doesn't work, or how they could be better. And when buying, I know if I'm interested; I'm asking if a game does things that hit my pet peeves: so positive reviews are almost 100% useless and I only read the negative ones.

WOLVES by NOT a WOLF
Release I / Serial number WOLVES / Inform 7 v10.x

There is definitely not a wolf here.

Wolf Room (currently empty)
A light pours from an unknown source. It’s too bright.

The easel might be a good place for a Caring Person to pin you, like a bug, and Keep You Out of Trouble.

Portrait with Wolf by Drew Cook a rendering

Congratulations to Drew Cook's *Portrait with Wolf* for winning first place in the #InteractiveFiction Short Games Showcase! A lovingly crafted piece of interactive poetry (?) that plays with a bunch of aspects of the form of parser IF.

kamin3ko.itch.io/pww

💯but also this was a thinky game jam entry and she was only planning it to run for a month or so, before everyone fell in love with it, so... very grateful for how much more we've already gotten

Unfortunately we haven't had much winter; barely any low temps below 0F/-18C (usually we have a week or two in January where the *highs* don't go above that). We've had *rain* twice in the last week. But maybe if ICE shows up we'll get some real winter to freeze them out...

Also note that if you're one of those weirdos who checks bsky on the web, these settings turn themselves back on every time you log in...

oof

Sure

Oh yeah, not you particularly, sorry. Just... things go in that direction so easily. And "It's costing us time and money we can't afford and nobody noticed that they were unplayable for 2 months" is at least understandable, if unfortunate.

IIRC from twitter Ursula Vernon was working with a programmer to put Cryptic Stitching back together at one point?

Or a converter to Autumn Chen's DendryNexus should be possible? She might be up for that if you get hold of the data (she did the Bee restoration with Emily Short) or I could.

Apparently there was (is?) an export option but I don't think authors knew about it? Zarf asked on the forum: community.failbettergames.com/t/storynexus... And their blog post makes it clear that it's a maintenance burden and nobody's playing (browsers don't like the non-secure connection) but...

I do wish we could get the JSON dumps of a bunch of these because it wouldn't be *too* hard to make a tool to play them, but I gather authors had the opportunity to export but didn't...

community.failbettergames.com/t/storynexus...

StoryNexus worlds will shut down on 27th January 2026 After 12 years in maintenance mode, it's time to say goodbye to StoryNexus.

Let's not dunk on Failbetter, though: their blog post makes it clear that it's a maintenance burden keeping the separate-from-Fallen-London-but-still-linked-codebase up and running, and that in general nobody is playing them...

www.failbettergames.com/news/storyne...

I've cobbled together some JS to make it significantly easier to save a "transcript" than straight copy/paste (though it's still pretty manual) - get in touch if you'd like that code. I might try to save some quick runthroughs of Below and The Silver Tree and Annwn Simulation before the end, but...

For a little preservation effort, EJ is doing a commented playthrough of Yoon Ha Lee's Winterstrike, and I've started one for @meghna.bsky.social's Samsara:

intfiction.org/t/lets-play-...

intfiction.org/t/lets-play-...

#InteractiveFiction

StoryNexus is going down for good Jan 27 (they've been http-only for years, but if you add a browser exception you can still play them now).

storynexus.com

#InteractiveFiction

Oh, right, I had the RSVP-but-bail conversation with some Bay area folks earlier this year. SUCH a different set of social values: "I don't want to hurt their feelings by saying no" or "What if I want to go but then don't have the spoons?" vs. "why wouldn't you just trust them with the truth?"

Ugh. We're supposed to get freezing rain and wintry mix tonight into tomorrow ...at 20F/-7C. Weird weather.

Also man, that last snow storm: sounds like southern Maine got 2 feet. By the time it got to us we got less than 7 inches. Not that I'm complaining too hard, but... c'mon, winter!

I always feel guilty about being a hermit b/c buried in farm stuff: when we moved to ME it was a full 6 weeks before we had a single day with nobody stopping by to say hi, welcome to the area, give us something, invite us to an event, gossip about the previous owners, etc. etc.

So do people on the west coast mostly just... not interact with people they don't know (except at designated social events, I assume?) That's so wild to me.

I was listening to the part of John Zhu's (Chinese Lore Podcast) retelling of Journey to the West where this old monk covets a fancy garment the pilgrims had, so the whole monastery joins in on trying to burn the building to the ground with them inside to avoid having to give it back so... yeah.

Oh yeah, I tried for 5 or 6 hours; I just suck at it.

Heck yeah! I never got good enough to get anywhere with the original 10S but I still do a playthrough of Water's Fine every so often...