Every MMO I’ve Played

~ mpklamerus ~ 1 Comment

I’ve decided that 2025 is the year of the MMO for me and have already played a few games that are new to me in addition to always being interested in Myst Online. So even though no one has asked for it, here is a list of every MMO I’ve played in my life with a quick comment or two on each. Eventually I’ll do longer writeups on some of these. I guess it’s April Fool’s Day too so I’m unintentionally doing the Ron Gilbert thing of not doing anything silly today on here.

Asheron’s Call 2 – I believe this is my first MMO. My dad and brother were already playing Everquest but for whatever reason this was the one that interested me. It was divisive at the time but since I didn’t have any experience with Asheron’s Call 1, which this is a big departure from, I thought it was great. Unfortunately it didn’t last too long but I’m glad there’s been an effort in recent years by the fan community to bring it back.

RuneScape – My other possibly first MMO, at this point I can’t really remember if this or AC2 came first. I had played this one extremely early on in its life, back when 2D sprites were used for all the characters and managed to pull a few friends into playing it since it was free. It’s so weird seeing how much nicer it looks now even though, yeah, of course they would upgrade the visuals over 20 years.

Shattered Galaxy – This was a weird one. I had discovered the free beta for this during an IGF awards listing, very early on in the life of the IGF. It’s basically a RTS but everyone controls a single unit? I guess kinda like Command & Conquer: Sole Survivor but uhhhhh better. I had fun with it though even though I never completely got it and my brother ended up getting the retail release, but I didn’t play that one.

Star Wars Galaxies – Also a weird one! I went through the arc of thinking it was a disappointment at first, and then realizing how brilliant it was by not allowing everyone to be a jedi and focus on building playing towns and other neat world interaction by the players. I’m sure other games have done this since then but I haven’t seen it. I eventually fell off around the time they released the first expansion.

World of Warcraft – Everyone has played this game. Nothing new to say about it. I had a great time with it and it’s probably my most played game ever and had the unfortunate and unintentional effect of inspiring MMOs after it to copy it in an attempt to replicate its success.

The Secret World – Underrated MMO that I wish I had put more time into. I thought the adventure game puzzles in it were a really neat idea. FUNCOM at the time were The Longest Journey devs to me so this made a lot of sense. I should see if there’s any fan servers for it.

Myst Online – I’ve written and posted about Myst Online many times, even writing about how the community is still active and the game continues to receive updates. It’s free and wonderful, go play it.

Guild Wars – The selling point for this one was of course that there were no monthly fees. Don’t really remember a lot other than I thought it was fun.

The Elder Scrolls Online – Meh. I plan to give it another shot someday but it felt like it had missed what people enjoy about those games. But what do I know, it’s still going strong.

Guild Wars 2 – Same as the first game. Had a lot of fun playing it but couldn’t tell you a single thing about it.

Eve Online – Just did the trial for this one. I respect the game but I’ll never be able to get into it.

Warhammer Online – Played my brother’s account a bit for this one and thinking it was pretty neat. IIRC the appeal of this was that it was basically a spiritual sequel to Dark Age of Camelot, with a focus on pvp. It still wasn’t the hit it needed to be and shut down after a few years.

Defiance – The gimmick for this was that there was a tv show happening at the same time and they were supposed to intersect at some points. I never watched it but I probably should since I’m a Farscape fan, even though I’m guessing it’s a pretty mid show if no one is talking about it today. The show got 3 seasons though! I remember the game itself being perfectly ok but not too memorable. I think it was on a Steam sale and I knew it had no monthly fee so I picked it up. I didn’t know it had only shut down a few years ago and probably should have revisited it.

WAKFU – Steam says I’ve played WAKFU in 2015 for a few hours. I have no memory of this.

Asheron’s Call 1 – Played this one for the first time this year and I’m having a great time. There’s plenty of fan servers too. I even wrote a guide if you want to play the game.

Book of Travels – A very underrated game. I’m sad that it hasn’t done as well as expected so it won’t be receiving too many updates in the future, but I think it’s still very much worth checking out. It’s a very relaxed MMO focused on story and light on combat, featuring what I think is great world building. Kinda controls like a point-and-click adventure too.

Sky: Children of Light – By the creators of Journey and really feels like if you took the mechanics of that game and expanded it to a MMO. It’s free to play and I enjoy playing it with my kids occasionally.

Here’s some other games that kinda don’t count as MMORPGs but also kinda sorta do?

Path of Exile – Played it during the beta and had enough fun with Diablo: The MMO but it never really stuck with me.

Age of Empires Online – Weird game! This was launched at the same time as their Microsoft Flight Simulator reboot that was retooled to be more casual too, so everyone was grumpy that Microsoft was bringing everything back as a casual game. I remember it not really coming together mechanically? I guess the fan community has kept this one alive on fan server.

Marvel Heroes – Basically just Diablo with Marvel characters. I thought it was a big hit but I think there was some drama behind it being shut down too?

Kind Words – Was incredibly skeptical of this one when it came out but it was pleasant enough. Shockingly didn’t come across any trolling in it despite it being a huge hit.

Kind Words 2 – What you would expect a sequel to be. More and bigger. I like it more since there’s plenty of side activities you can do and I basically just avoid the letter writing at this point since I’m not really in the mood to try to help people with their problems online. I’m not qualified for it! But the side stuff where people recommend video games, music, and what not are fun. It seems like it’s done alright but definitely not as well as the first game. I’m assuming it’s from the game just costing more, from it having a lot more stuff.

Sea of Thieves – Really enjoyed this one until a friend and I hit a bug that completely made it impossible for us to do more quests and Microsoft put it no effort to fix it. I might reinstall it to see if it’s magically fixed but that sure killed the motivation to play it.

Some that I have in my Steam backlog are:

WEBFISHING – Everyone has played this by now. Seems great. I’ll play it sometime with friends when I need to chill.

Meadow – By the devs of Book of Travels. Seems like it’s part of their Shelter series.

Fallout 76 – Don’t know how I’ll feel about it given my feelings about ESO and how Bethesda writes Fallout but sure, I’ll give it a shot.

Some modern ones I really want to check out are:

ATLYSS – This one is kinda known as the furry mmorpg. I heard great things about it!

Animyst – Don’t know a whole lot about it other than it looks weird and it’s free. It has been around since 2018.

Project: Gorgon – Looks like it’s doing the modern day version of Everquest thing. Seems nice enough

Blog Roundup (2025-3-31)

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Ah jeez, I think I’m coming down with a cold. Or I feel like crap because I haven’t slept well over the past few days (my own dumbass fault). So I guess we’ll see tomorrow how I’m doing. It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these and it’s going to probably be missing a lot of stuff from the last week or two because things were a mess for a moment. But I like doing these because I get very excited about the internet existing outside a handful of social media websites and Discord.

Video Games

I never even heard of this Virtua Fighter game for the Game Gear.

Misty talks about an extremely Canadian trucking game.

There’s a new video game newsletter by Christian Donlan, Florence Smith Nicholls and Keith Stuart.

Have a primer for developing for the Playdate.

I’m sad about Myst developers Cyan being hit with layoffs. Andrew Plotkin talks about the developer’s history and how it’s definitely not the worst shape they’ve been in.

Music

I’m a huge fan of good radio stations so I appreciate this post from Yaffle recommending some to listen to.

Technology

Adam writes about bookmarklets

Here’s a guide to getting started in open source

Michigan

I love this history of the name of a hill in southeast Michigan.

The director of the Ann Arbor District Library writes about what the IMLS does.

Doom 2 Thoughts

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Developer: Id Software
Publisher: Id Software
Year: 1994
Genre: First Person Shooter

Finished my replay of Doom 2 last night and yeah, it certainly is more Doom so I enjoyed it. This time it was done with the recentish Doom 1 +2 rerelease that Bethesda did, which I got for free since I already owned it on Steam. Like my Doom 1 review, every single opinion on Doom 2 has already been posted before but this is my blog so I’m doing a random collection of thoughts anyway dang it.

Before my replay I thought Doom was the better game but as I played through the game again I went through the arc of thinking Doom 2 was actually better, and then back to thinking Doom 1 is superior. Doom 2 isn’t without its improvements though. It’s been said a billion times before but the double barrel shotgun is great. I like the new enemies too. While the archvile can be frustrating, I think it’s mechanically interesting.

I think what makes Doom 1 the better game is the level design. Doom 2 starts off very strong with the level design but becomes a little bit of a slog in the second half when the levels attempt to be more realistic city designs. It was much more impressive at the time and makes sense in the context of the game, but don’t hold up as well as the more surreal levels found in other parts of the game. I also noticed that just like in Quake, I think Sandy’s maps are a very mixed bag. I just don’t enjoy his style of map design. They’re usually filled with poorly made puzzles where you stumble around until you figure out the right wall to push on, and occasionally decide that you must open a door by shooting it instead of pressing the open door. It just ruins the pacing of the level and the game has a heavy amount of these in the second half, which is probably why it feels like a slog to me.

I think the bosses in Doom 1 are also better. They come up in here as well but I think that while the Icon of Sin is a fun gimmick, I ended up finding it mostly just an annoying fight.

My (possibly hot) take is that ID Software actually started to decline after Tom Hall had left the company, not Romero. I still love Doom 2 and Quake, I may even like Quake more after my recent playthroughs of both, but the company starts to play it a bit safer and less playful. I think this theory still holds up! While I don’t care for Rise of the Triad as much as Quake and Doom 2, it’s goofy as hell and throwing in lots of new things and seeing what sticks. Doom 2 really only does this with the secret Wolfenstein 3D levels and those end on a sour, mean spirited note by having you shoot at Commander Keen. As a side note, there’s some weird censorship in the Doom 2 rereleases during the Wolfenstein 3D secret levels and I don’t know why.

Anyway, yeah, Doom 2. It’s still good but I like the first game more.

Doom 2 is available on Steam, GOG, and basically everywhere else.

Indie Game Roundup (Mar. 29, 2025)

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Whoops, it’s been a minute since I’ve posted on here. I’m sure it wasn’t from the combined stress of the day job threatening layoffs (bad) and getting into grad school (good). Ah well, things should be calming down a bit after the last two weeks and there will be time for games. This one is a bit shorter than usual but I should be doing these on a regular basis again soon. Let me know what you’ve been playing or working on in the comments!

The last time I did one of these I goofed and forgot to include Wanderstop (Steam), a cozy game about running a tea shop with a narrative about burnout. I hope to play it soon even if it’s maybe hitting a little too close to home at the moment, but I guess that’s probably the point.

people fighting in a saloon

One of the biggest releases for me is the point-and-click adventure Rosewater (Steam), a western adventure by the creator of Lamplight City. It’s appeared on the “Games I’m Looking Forward To” lists on here a few years in a row and it’s here! Hooray!

Prince of Prussia (Itch.io) is the latest entry in Adam Saltsman’s free PICO-8 games. This one is a puzzle game that looks like a Prince of Persia game but has you sneaking around and taking out Nazis from behind. It really feels more like a turn-based puzzle game and doesn’t rely on reflexes, which is nice for folks like me.

Fire & Brimstone (Itch.io) is the newest by PUNKCAKE Délicieux. It’s a roguelike where you play as a little imp and you go into a volcano to look for an artifact. It’s just a really easy to pick up roguelike and a nice one to check out if you’re like me and enjoy playing them but maybe sometimes struggle with the ones that are a bit more dense.

I think I’ve posted about the Itch version before but Slime Feet (Steam/Itch.io) is an adult visual novel that just received a release on Steam. The game is free on both platforms and I recommend it if you want a short, erotic, body horror story. Again, the pages are NSFW so don’t click on them at work.

a marble on a platform floating in the sky

Axyz (Steam) is a puzzle game where you navigate a ball through a floating maze in a vaporwave setting. I really enjoyed the demo for this one and would recommend it if its whole deal is appealing to you.

chloe’s house (Itch.io) is a fun musical toy for browsers. You can use a cat as an instrument.

Bundle of Joy (Steam/Itch.io) is a Warioware-like about taking care of a baby and has a demo as well.

hard to describe but it's a first person view of a conversation with a house and it is giving a thumbs up and saying "they can't kidnap our free will to go to the bathroom"

ENA: Dream BBQ (Steam) is a free first-person adventure game where you explore surreal environments.

I don’t really know what Ginger (Steam) is but I keep seeing people recommend it and saying how weird it is, so I guess take a look if you like weird adventure games?

How Right is the Price? (Itch.io) is a collection of thoughts about what you should price your digital tabletop rpg.

The Hearth (Itch.io) is a new regular zine about indie ttrpgs.

#tittyrpg jam (Itch.io) is a ttrpg game jam about loud queer sexuality.

a little pixel art person standing on rocky terrain

Ascent DX (Steam) is a free metroidvania with 64 x 64 pixel art.

That’s it for this week. Like I said at the top, I’m probably missing a lot because there had been so much going on in my life the last few weeks. But things are calming down a bit now (I hope) and I really missed writing these so expect them on a more regular basis in the future with more effort put in.

Discolored

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Developer: Jason Godbey
Publisher: Jason Godbey
Year: 2019
Genre: Adventure Game

black and white shot of a diner in the desert at night

Discolored is a 2019 first person adventure game created by Jason Godbey that I recently picked up because I saw the recently released sequel pop up on a few sites and was in the mood for a Myst-like game. There isn’t much of a plot, you are told that a diner in the middle of the desert has lost all color and you are sent to investigate. This is essentially all the plot you come across in the game and just exists to get you to the puzzles as soon as possible. Fortunately the puzzling in this is very good. The game starts off with having no colors in the world, but through various poking and prodding, you add some to the world and they allow you to interact with more objects in the game. It’s a nice way to keep you from feeling overwhelmed when you are first introduced to the world but it also keeps the small environment interesting to look at as you keep seeing it in new ways as additional colors are added. The game also features some clever puzzles using perspective.

The game has two modes for controls, free-roam and point-and-click. Usually the point-and-click mode in first-person adventure games feels like an afterthought but I thought it felt very good to control and actually used it quite a bit since I have been having some wrist pain lately and needed this control scheme to play it.

shot of a bedroom that's mostly black and white except for green walls

It’s a short game. I completed it in two nights but each session was very short and the puzzles made me think but I was never stuck for very long or frustrated. The game even has a built-in hint system if you want help with a puzzle. I said at the beginning of the review that I was in the mood for a Myst-like but it really wasn’t a Myst-like game at all. This isn’t the developer’s fault as they never claimed it’s like Myst, but I will explain what makes a game a Myst-like anyway since this is my website. A Myst-inspired game to me actually has quite a lot of storytelling being done through the environment and this storytelling is tightly integrated with the puzzles in the world, where this game just felt like an excuse to have a bunch of good puzzles related to color and perspective. Nothing wrong with that at all and it’s just not what I expected going in due to my assumptions with first person adventure games.

I really enjoyed my time with this game and I’m looking forward to playing Jason’s other games. I already own The Search from a charity bundle on Itch.io and Discolored 2 looks to be much more ambitious and seems to have more of a story and adds more characters.

Discolored is available on Steam.

Blog Roundup (2025-3-16)

~ mpklamerus ~ 3 Comments

Not a whole lot to say this week. Blogs are good and this week is very retro games and tech focused. Maybe you’ll find something new to add to your RSS feed reader.

Video Games

I don’t think I’ve mentioned Wes Fenlon’s Read Only Memo newsletter but it’s good stuff. Primarily focused on emulation, this week is about Nintendo once again going after emulators.

RetroStreamers.com reviews the new Amiga roguelike Roguecraft. I also just like the streams these folks do.

Leaded Solder makes a new game for the Famicom using Nintendo Family Basic.

Ephemeral Enigmas reviews the wild PS2 game TVDJ.

I didn’t know there was a blog about the Hugo IF standard library but here we are. This post is about Hugo file limits.

As everyone knows, I will take any excuse to post about Myst Online. The community recently had a contest to build to fan Ages in the game and here are the results.

I will also take any excuse to post about Golfshrine Online, a site dedicated to golf video games. I hate the real sport of golf but enjoy the video games. The most recent post is about getting Links: Flying to Phoenix – the Japanese PC release of Links LS 1999.

Nadia Nova, creator of adult games like Slime Feet, made a tutorial for getting started making VNs.

RoJo Aventuras is a great adventure games blog in Spanish and I appreciate this review of the newest chapter in the Stellar Mess series.

Not a blog but for whatever reason I get excited whenever a game dev posts a recipe (cmon, consider it) and liked this bluesky post of John Romero’s enchilada sauce recipe.

Technology

I never thought about how you could have a bot follow RSS feeds in Discord and post in a channel when a new post came up.

Computer Chronicles Revisited is back! The blog is a review of the classic technology show from the 80’s and 90’s.

Will Smith praises Fastmail and I have to agree. There’s probably a longer post in me about why moving from Gmail to Fastmail is great even though you have to pay for it, but I don’t think it costs that much, Fastmail has a lot of nice features Gmail doesn’t, the client is indeed fast, and also just not seeing ads in your email client is nice too.

I follow multiple personal blogs where people like to talk about their bikes and I just think that’s a lot of fun. So here’s one where someone talks about converting their bike to a cargo EBike.

Comics

I didn’t know David Petersen, creator of Mouse Guard, had a blog but now I do. So have some Mouse Guard cover art.

Photography

Have some nice photography from The Works of Egan and Renkon.

That’s it for this week. Have a nice Sunday!

Samorost 1

~ mpklamerus ~ 2 Comments

Developer: Amanita Design
Publisher: Amanita Design
Year: 2003
Genre: Adventure Game

a guy with a hookah on a hill and a little gnome in white clothing in the background going skiing in the background

Recently played through this one with the kids and it still holds up! My kids are fans of Chuchel so I thought it would go back to their earlier stuff since this one is so short and simple. The game originally came out in 2003 but we played the remastered release from 2021, which updates the visuals and music but didn’t go too far with the updates. There’s not a whole lot to say about it. You help a little space gnome save his home by pointing and clicking on stuff and it only takes 15 minutes to play. I suppose there are technically puzzles, but most of the fun comes from clicking on things and seeing what happens. I suppose it’s sorta like the Gobliiins series in that way, but much, much easier. Anyway, my kids liked it and we’ll be playing 2 and 3 soonish.

This game was such a big deal when it came out! This was during the adventure game drought when Sierra and Lucasarts had recently stopped making adventure games so people were starved for high quality adventure games. One of my biggest memories of hanging out on the Adventure Gamers forums was people making a thread about this game every week saying “have you all seen this game Samorost? It’s great!” and not realizing that there had already been many threads on the game. It happened to the point of it becoming a meme on the forums. But I think it shows that even when the genre was “dead” there were still folks making memorable point-and-click adventure games.

The game was such a success that it led to the studio becoming a full time gig for the folks there. First by making tiny free browser games like this for companies (man, remember flash games being a profitable gig for devs?) and then making their own games. In fact, I think it took a while for me to get to playing Samorost 2 because it came out in 2005 and was a digital purchase, before indie games were being sold on Steam. I don’t think I even had any way of buying the game and I don’t think I even considered asking my parents because I knew they wouldn’t buy a game online. I think it had even received some criticism for being too short for a paid game.

The studio stuck with this format for a long time. It wasn’t until the last few years that they started to explore horror and branching out from their linear style of adventure game design more. The format works for me though and I can play a lot of their games with my kids, which is always a plus, since that’s when I usually have time to play video games. They’ve been taking their biggest swing with their current game in development, which is supposed to arrive next year. It will have been a five year gap between games, which is wild to think about. But as long as they keep making solid adventure games, I’ll keep picking them up.

Samorost is available for free on Steam, Itch.io, and many other places.

Indie Game Roundup (Mar. 14, 2025)

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

It turns out that when you don’t wait a couple weeks to write these, the posts are actually quite a bit smaller. Who would have guessed? As usual, if you enjoy these then tell a friend, or do a post on your own blog of recent games and other art you’ve been enjoying.

first person view of a decrepit building inside at night

After being in development for over a decade, horror point-and-click adventure ASYLUM (Steam) is now available. I’m always a little bit nervous when a game is set in a mental institute but I was a fan of the developer’s previous game Scratches, which is no longer on Steam due to a fallout with the co-designer, although they have said it’s fine if people find that game….online. They also have a free adventure game they released 10 years ago called Serena.

a woman saying to a crying girl "Verity Amersham, as of this moment...you are expelled!"

Expelled! (Steam/Switch/iOS) is the newest game by interactive fiction developers Inkle. You are a student at a school that has been framed for attempted murder and must prove your innocence or find someone to take the fall in a limited period of time. It follows a similar framework as one of Inkle’s previous games, Overboard, which I was a massive fan of. Hooray for interactive fiction.

side view of an astronaut flying over a planet and alien space ships

Jetpac Defenders (Itch.io) is just a nice and free Defender clone made in Picotron.

old computer screen saying "have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?" Yes/No"

qualia (Steam) is a free interactive fiction horror game about what it means to be human. Be sure to read the content warnings and be aware that the game does have a jumpscare if that kind of thing isn’t for you.

top down view of a blob bunny on tiles

Blobun (Steam/Itch.io) is a cute, top-down puzzle game where you are a blob bunny and must touch every tile of a surface. If you bought that massive California Wildfire Relief charity bundle on Itch then you already own this game.

an aquarium filled with jellyfish and a photo frame featuring a photo of a foggy street

The 5th LSD Jam has concluded and you can check out the entries on Itch.io. LSDJAM 2024 is a game jam where people are prompted to “Create an interactive experience based on dreams to celebrate the release of LSD: Dream Emulator.” The only one I played out of these is Ephemeral Frame, a great puzzle adventure game where the main gameplay mechanic is using picture frames to enter new areas and features some fantastic visuals as well, but I’m sure the other games also have trippy visuals and are worth a look too.

card with game designer Jim Walls on it, where he has sunglasses and a mustache. The card says 'Trying it more or less doing it by the book' The current story now needs (3) procedural elements to be completed"

The Imaginary Cards Jam is a jam on Itch.io where folks are making cards to games that do not exist yet. It’s just a fun excuse to make up little cards without thinking too much about mechanics since the games aren’t real. There’s still 10 days left in the jam so consider joining!

Not a new game but I just played the browser puzzle game DungeonScape (Itch.io) and recommend it.

grainy image of a woman dancing

PSYCHOSEXUAL DREAM CRISIS (Itch.io) is a short erotic sci-fi story that is playable in the browser, and the download on the page features 16 short animations.

Every paid game by thecatamites is on sale right now in this bundle on Itch. Worth it for Anthology of the Killer alone, one of last year’s best games.

There’s also a big spring sale happening on Steam right now too.

Crowdfunding

There’s two tabletop game crowdfunding campaigns right now that I think are worth checking out. This Kickstarter is for two games, a solo journaling game about cooking for your loved ones, and a storygame of doomed travelers on a perilous journey home.

A Land Once Magic is a worldbuilding TTRPG by Viditya Voleti, one of my favorite ttrpg designers.

Jay Tholen just launched a Patreon to fund development of Dreamsettler, the sequel to Hypnospace Outlaw.

Wishlists

Aerial_Knight’s DropShot (Steam) looks like an incredibly stylish FPS. I love the finger gun mechanic and I was a fan of the dev’s previous games, the Never Yield series.

The Repossessor

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Developer: Dave Gilbert
Publisher: Dave Gilbert
Year: 2001
Genre: Adventure Game

the grim reaper standing in a bar with a bartender and chicken holding a gun.

Yeah that’s right, I’m still playing games in the Reality-on-the-Norm series, a collaborative universe created by the Adventure Game Studio community in 2001. The ninth game in the series is The Repossessor. You play the role of Death, who has come to Reality to reclaim the soul of Michael Gower, the zombie that your character reanimated in the first game and is now running for mayor of the town. The version I played was downloaded from the RON site and I didn’t realize until I had completed it that it was actually a remastered or remade version of the game, explaining why there was a huge graphical leap from the previous game and could now run in ScummVM, making it the easiest game to get running so far.

The most interesting thing about this entry is that it’s by Dave Gilbert, founder of Wadjet Eye Games. I had made a post about the game and he confirmed that it was his first game and built in a weekend. I have to say, it’s an incredibly impressive first game. I know some of that is coming from the game being a remastered version that looks nicer, but even from a design perspective I think it’s the best game so far. The remade version even some nice little touches like an instrumental version of Don’t Fear the Reaper playing in a room or two. Like previous RON games, it’s a little tricky to recommend specific games because they all build on previous ones, but I think you could manage to jump into this one since all you need to know is that there’s a zombie running for mayor in a town. Playing through this series has been a delight and continues to improve with each game as the community figures out how to make adventure games and use AGS.

The Repossessor is available for free on the Reality-On-the-Norm website.

Blog Roundup (2025-3-11)

~ mpklamerus ~ 6 Comments

I’m annoyed! Inoreader has introduced an AI Summary tool to their RSS feed reader! Why would anyone want that? People who follow blogs are reading nerds. Anyway, you should still add this blog and others to your RSS feed reader of choice, but now I’m looking for one that can synch what I’ve read but isn’t Feedly and Inoreader. If you have any recommendations, drop them in the comments

Chuck Jordan is spending a month only using his blog to post and taking a short break from Bluesky/Mastodon/etc. This sounds really nice and I’m strongly considering doing it for April. I encourage you all to join me. Not for any sort of moral reason, I just don’t want to miss out on good posts on social media.

This blog post on affirmations is how I learned about the IndieWeb Carnival, which seems to be a group that gives prompts on a blog post each month.

Video Games

Renga In Blue writes about a computer shop that had a game publishing business as a spin-off and their game The Colonel’s House.

Wraithkal continues doing very nice #ScreenshotSaturday posts for folks on Mastodon

Macintosh shareware developer John Calhoun writes about the shareware dev that inspired him, Duane Blehm. The developer passed away before John could even send him money for his shareware in the 80s so this post has John trying to learn what he can about Duane’s life from the materials that still exist.

Adrian Hon wrote a eulogy for Urban Dead, a MMO that ran for 20 years but is shutting down now because of new laws in the UK. While I haven’t played the game in many years, I’m always sad to see a MMO shutdown, especially when it was running just fine before the new laws came into effect.

WildWeasel of The Golf Shrine now has a blog. I liked this post about Daikatana and how it’s not too bad once you install the patches and get past the first few levels.

Rob writes a very short post about how if smaller, more focused games are the solution to the games industry’s problems.

Did you know The CRPG Addict is still plugging away at playing every crpg in order? They just played the German rpg Die Prüfung (1993).

Not a blog post but Damiano Gerli has a great thread on semi-obscure Spanish games.

Writing

Thom Cote has a short story on Neocities about worm tunnels.

The Lunar Flaneur has a post about dreaming about an anthology in their sleep and then putting it together.

Did you know that some of the folks from 90s pc game developer Dreamforge Intertainment started a sci-fi magazine a few years ago called Dreamforge? They just redid their site and you can read all the stories and poetry here.

TTRPGs

Seed of Worlds is doing better ttrpg blog roundups than I could ever do.

Music

My friend Erik just played music at monthly Enter the Void show in Minnesota. Check out the post for more info and neat noisy music.

Photography

Have some nice pictures of the Frederik Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I’ve been to Grand Rapids many times but still haven’t been here yet.

Dev Logs

Lunar Division talks about developing Amberspire.

localthunk posts Balatro’s dev timeline.

Megan Carnes writes about creating music for every tarot card.

An explanation of how Eldritch 2’s save files work compared to the first game.

Farfama talks about TO:RI Development. The game looks beautiful!

Technology

The Works of Egan explains why you should start a blog. Obviously I will endorse that.

Chuck Jordan endorses the Reeder app for RSS feeds on Apple devices.