The 2012 competition was organized by Greg Boettcher.

Voting ended on May 6, 2012. If you haven't already played the games, you can download them below.

A big thanks to all who voted in the comp, and to those who donated prizes. And congratulations to all the entrants.

Place	Game	Author	Avg.	Std. Dev.	No. Votes	Prize Chosen
1	The Rocket Man from the Sea	Janos Honkonen	7.00	1.37	19	$410
2	The White Bull	Jim Aikin	6.53	1.68	19	$190
3	The Egg and the Newbie	Robert DeFord	3.68	1.63	19	$88
4	Sleuth	Scott Greig	2.15	0.80	13	$40

All four games in one archive		SpringThing2012.zip	29.83 MB	ST.net	IF Archive	IF Archive Mirror
The Egg and the Newbie by Robert DeFord	Glulx	TheEggAndThe Newbie.zip	0.91 MB	ST.net	IF Archive	IF Archive Mirror
		TheEggAndTheNewbie Walkthrough.txt	0.05 MB	ST.net	IF Archive	IF Archive Mirror
The Rocket Man from the Sea by Janos Honkonen	Z-code	TheRocketMan FromTheSea.zip	1.66 MB	ST.net	IF Archive	IF Archive Mirror
Sleuth by Scott Greig	Quest	Sleuth_st2012.quest	0.03 MB	ST.net	IF Archive	IF Archive Mirror
The White Bull by Jim Aikin	TADS 3	TheWhiteBull.zip	27.22 MB	ST.net	IF Archive	IF Archive Mirror
		ST2012readme.txt	0.00 MB	ST.net	IF Archive	IF Archive Mirror

You'll need an interpreter to play these games. Actually, you'll need four interpreters, one for each type of game: Glulx, Quest, TADS 3, and Z-code.

The Spring Thing would like to thank the following people:

Adam Cadre, for starting the competition;
Mike Snyder, for writing the voting program and for running a mirror;
Peter Seebach, for past hosting and technical help;
Stephen Granade, for occasional advice; and
the prize donors, for their generosity. here here

Obviously, the general purpose of Spring Thing is to promote interactive fiction. More specifically, there are three aims that make the Spring Thing different from the annual IF Comp:

1. To provide a place for promoting medium-sized to long works of interactive fiction.
2. To provide some springtime relief to the dry season between the autumn deluges of the IF Comp.
3. To encourage excellence in game authorship and discourage shoddiness. (The entry fee seems to be fairly effective for this purpose, usually weeding out substandard games.) .