Hey it’s another one of these things! It’s probably shorter than these usually are since I haven’t really been too aware of what’s going on other than looking at blogs, Discord, and what folks are up to on Itch. It’s still more than enough to keep me busy but I’d love to hear about what you’re excited about lately in the comments. Self-promo is more than welcome!
We’ve got a new Indiepocalypse! This one looks to have quite a few interactive fiction-related games too, which is always a treat for me.
Matt Stark has made a lot of really nice building toys and islandoodle 2 is another relaxing one. This one has you building castles on islands.
Image taken from the Itch page comments of the game running on a cd-i
Haven’t you always wanted to play a port of the DOS classic SkyRoads on the Philips CD-i? Yes, of course you have and now there is one in development.
The tabletop rpg Monster Truckers is now seeking crowdfunding. It’s described as “an easy to learn and low prep tabletop role playing game featuring semi truck driving monsters in a post-apocalyptic world.”
Dust Bunny is a cute puzzle game playable in the browser and made in PICO-8 about clearing all the dust in various screens.
It feels like we’re being spoiled with all the point-and-click adventures that have been coming out lately. Midnight Special is a new horror game that has just entered Early Access with a presentation that reminds me of the first Clock Tower game.
Speaking of adventure games, thank you Lucas Moura for telling me about Sub-Verge. It’s a game where you control a group of deep-sea divers and looks incredibly stressful, haha. I think it looks really good though.
Man, we didn’t even get Pope Pizzaballa after everything?
Last time I lamented that Giant Bomb looked like it was going to do. I’m happy to say I was wrong! Anyway, here’s some things I’ve been reading lately.
That’s it for now. It’s been a little quieter here than I was hoping since I’ve been busy with school, but I think that will calm down after a few more weeks. I’ve been focused more on getting ahead of schoolwork so I can relax a bit more later.
Yesterday was the last day of Bookstock, a local week-long used book sale that’s held at a nearby mall to raise additional money for Detroit schools. It was rainy and crummy outside so I went that and ended up picking up a lot of cds from the 90s and 00s from artists like Enya, Tori Amos, Zero 7, Midnight Oil, Mazzy Star, and Sarah McLachlan. On top of the cds already being cheap, everything was also half off so they could get rid of as much as possible. Of course I ripped all the cds to my plex server while reading the booklets, something I really enjoy from the cd era. What no one told me though, and I guess why would they, is that Sarah McLachlan’s album Surfacing is a fucking multimedia cd-rom??
It will probably surprise no one that I absolutely lost my shit when I realized this and it made me so happy with absolutely no irony. You can choose between two applications. There’s the catalogue where you can look up various items to order, like cds, prints, vhs tapes, and jewelry. There’s also an electronic press kit about all of her albums.
I realize that I’m the only person getting excited about this in 2025 but man, those colors and fonts! I wish most cds had done this. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned that I’ve leaned much more into cd collecting this last year but making a Plex server really pushed me into it. I still get to have a nice little physical piece of art to accompany the music but it’s so much cheaper than having a vinyl record, which is the opposite of how things were when I had started collecting records. I don’t know if I buy that Gen Z is going to bring back the cd format but I have been having fun picking up cds at an incredibly low cost and have even bought a few through Bandcamp as well. Anyway, if you’re a musician reading this, have you considered paying a developer to put together a little program listing all of your works, biography, maybe song clips, video, and all that with your album? Because I will be the first in line to buy your album if you do.
By contrast, this is what I get when I put in the Zero 7 album. Boooooooo
As promised, I will be doing more checking in posts and this site will be more of a personal blog as a result of me deleting social media off my phone. Yesterday was Free Comic Book Day so I take my kids to one of our local comic store to pick up some free comics and some books. I no longer buy single issues of comics like I used to, so maybe I’m part of the problem, but I do like reading collected works. I had actually read a thread last week on Bluesky that free comic book day doesn’t actually do much to bring in new reader, where indie book store day was a massive success for his store, and had suggestions. But I’m not on social media for the moment so I guess just take my word for it? I still think it’s a fun excuse to go to the local comic store though.
The one I got for myself was the first Adventuregame Comic- Leviathan by Jason Shiga. I had actually know about this series for a while because I saw that Andrew Plotkin had made games based on them.
On Bandcamp Friday I also took my Myst love to the next logical level and bought an album by the son of the actor that played Gehn in Riven. Well actually it’s more because I have friends in the Minneapolis electronic music scene and a friend just played a live streaming show with him, but I’m going to pretend it’s because of the Myst connection.
Speaking of Myst, it looks like the game Zed, by a former Cyan person and previously published by Cyan, is getting delisted soon. So maybe consider getting that for $1.
We did it folks. We kinda sorta survived another week. Bandcamp Friday is today. Consider picking up an album or two when the site isn’t taking a cut from sales.
Six One Indie put together a nice collection of sites for folks to consider supporting now that Polygon and Giant Bomb are gone and the world of games journalism continues to shrink. This Neocities page lists some of the ways you can follow Polygon folks. It’s a less impressive list but I also listed a few places in a post here and there’s always the Cool Site Zone at the top of the page. It’s just unbelievably rough for everyone in games right now and I guess just do what you can to help each other out.
Well alright, here are some of the games I was excited about this week. Since I am not using social media, I am counting on you (points out at the screen at you) to spread the word about these roundups, if you feel like it.
EDIT: I have confirmed that this successfully autoposts to bluesky and mastodon, lol, hooray! This was never an issue with masto but the plugin I was previously using was fussy.
There’s two charity bundles that I think are worth a look. This TTRPGs for Trans Rights in Ohio charity bundle wraps up very soon. For $5 or more you can get hundreds of great ttrpgs. I have a ttrpg in this Crips for eSims for Gaza Bundle. For $16 or more you can gets tons of video games and ttrpgs and help Palestinians.
Skin Deep (Steam) is here! It’s an immersive sim by Blendo Games that I’ve been waiting for quite a while and I’ve seen nothing but praise for it. It looks like Die Hard on a space ship but with the goofy situations that pop up in games like the Hitman series.
One Million Chessboards (dev site) is a site with a million chessboards. Moving a piece moves it for everyone, instantly. There’s no turns and you can move between boards.
Dragonfeed (Itch.io) is a free browser game meant for mobile devices and a fascinating thing for me to play as I try to pull back a bit from social media.
I don’t know a whole lot about Many Nights a Whisper (Steam) but it looks like a beautiful adventure game, has quite a few positive reviews, and it’s described as “A short interactive essay on dreams, pressure, and expectations. Take part in an ancient ritual where one shot determines the fate of a generation.” and that sounds interesting to me.
Waiting for the Death Wind (Itch.io) is a free, short interactive story created for the Dialogue Jam about conversation between a dying warrior and his goddess. I loved it. I was really impressed with the art, music, and voice acting all created for this jam game.
The Velox Formido 2 game jam (Itch.io) is a visual novel jam featuring games by some of my favorite IF writers like SWANCHIME and Norbez Jones.
Navicula Meatus (Steam) is a dark first person dungeon crawler set in a decaying town. It may be too much meat for me but there’s a demo for you to check out to decide for yourself how much meat is enough.
World of Goo 2 (dev site, basically every platform) is here and looks like what you would expect from a sequel to the original game. More goo puzzles!
The DiscMaster Jam (Itch.io) was a week-long game jam using vintage computer files from The Internet Archive. I highly recommend Anglesoft’s C2 Prototype but I’m sure I will be looking at the games from this jam for a long time and doing the sickos meme.
You Are Generative AI (Itch.io) is a browser game where you are a generative ai, answering prompts in growing in power usage. I also recommend the author’s game You Are Jeff Bezos if you haven’t played that one either.
10S FOREVER (Itch.io) looks like a really cute tennis-like arcade game. It’s also coming to Steam in a little bit but it’s on a launch sale now and the designer seems to prefer sales from here anyway.
Taxi Quest 67 (Itch.io) is a browser game about two friends heading down a river in a boat. It was created for the road trip jam and yes, it being a boat game is addressed in the game. The character animation reminds me of the squigglevision in Home Movies and Dr. Katz. It’s very good. I am pro squigglevision.
TWENTY-SOMETHING YEAR OLD FAGGOT (Itch.io) is a solo ttrpg by Sandy Pug Games about being a young queer person, fresh out of the closet and eager to join a dark, mysterious, dangerous queer underground in their city. I believe it’s a hack of Thousand Year Old Vampire.
Mythical Concept STARNAUT (Steam) is a Survivors-like by the El Shaddai devs.
Wizordum (Steam) has left Early Access! This is Catacomb 3D-inspired FPS where you are a wizard doing wizard stuff and shooting everything. The developer worked on some very good remasters for the new version of Apogee. I believe you are only on one height level and never go up and down steps, which makes it a Catacomb 3D-like for me. Anyway, it has a demo for you to try out.
despelote (Steam) is a game that I’ve heard a ton of praise for in the lead up to its release. I think it looks fantastic.
That’s it for this week. I hope you have a swell weekend!
My break from social media for the month of May has begun, which means you’ll probably get a lot longer intros to posts as a way to vent/talk about anything that I would normally post about on blue sky/mastodon. I’ve even influenced one other person! Will I have absolutely no clue what is happening in the world as part of my break? Idk, possibly! I’m still using Discord though so I am probably still going to hear about the big stuff. If you saw this autoposted to social media, I won’t see any replies on bsky/masto but welcome comments here or emails and discord messages.
I did see the news about Polygon basically being shut down, which is infuriating. Giant Bomb seems like it’s near the end of its life too and I’m sad to see the folks working in games media going through so much right now. I don’t think there’s even many big outlets left. RPS, Eurogamer, IGN, Gamespot, and PC Gamer are still there. Most of those are doing fine although I don’t know about Gamespot’s future if Fandom owns them and some very good folks were let go from RPS last year. Ugh.
Well, here’s some blogs I guess. I guess some shitty corporation can’t shut those down….yet.
I’m a big fan of The Collection Chamber, an abandonware site that repackages old games to work on modern versions of Windows. They upload a new batch on the first of every month and this month it’s fmv adventure The Crystal Skull by Maxis, stop motion game Free D.C., Next Life, Private Eye, and Rumpelstiltskin’s Labyrinth of the Lost.
Roundups are great and probably how I’ll hear about a lot of stuff if I’m not on social media. Have some from Emily, The Works of Egan, Dante, and Yaffle.
If you live in Michigan, maybe you’ll be interested in this online group for the Linux and open source community.
That’s it for now. I don’t know if I’ll try to do these on a weekly basis or what. Maybe just when I feel like I have a nice group of links to share and need to dump thoughts at the top of a post.
It’s Good Stuff Saturday! The day when you post “good stuff” on someone’s Itch (or other art) page!
I did not invent the day. I think I posted one time about how you should post “good stuff” on someone’s Itch page instead of just giving 5 stars and it morphed into that elsewhere. Giving 5 stars/a positive review is also very good and nice but it always makes me happy when I get a nice comment on a game I make too.
You do not literally need to post “good stuff.” It’s probably actually better to post a more thoughtful comment than that, but consider taking the time to say something nice about someone’s game (Itch.io/Steam), music (Bandcamp), or other art. I don’t think comments on Itch and Bandcamp have any algorithm boost, it’s just to make someone feel good about their art.
Even though it’s been less than a week since I’ve done one of these, there’s already a bunch of indie games to talk about and none of them are part of a boycott (as far as I know). If you like these, considering adding the site to your RSS feed reader. I will be away from social media for the month of May while I get used to going back to school again. These will continue automatically posting to social media though. Ok, here’s some games.
Hypersheep Eats All the Biscuits
Last week I mentioned Llamasoft’s wonderful I, Robot remake and there’s also been a game jam celebrating Jeff Minter and his games. For whatever reason the jam page doesn’t seem to list all the games and there isn’t a jam on Itch I can just look at, so to the best of my ability, here are all the games I could find and my thoughts. I’m confident that I’ve missed at least a few so please let me know in the comments what other games are out there so I can play them. I’m griping about the jam a bit but it’s nice see a lot of people celebrate someone and the games they’ve made and maybe the industry should do this kind of thing more often.
Hypersheep Eats All the Biscuits (Itch.io) is a really cute one by PsychicParrot, developer of other fantastic games like Die for the Economy!, and it also has cover art by Rob Fearon. You play as a sheep that must remind Jeff to feed them biscuits and occasionally daydreaming about being a superhero. The developer says the VR version is superior but I played the non-VR version and still had a fun time.
PROTOBEAST (Itch.io) is just a really slick and straightforward twin-stick shooter with all the bleeps and bloops you would want from an 80s inspired game, with some fun references to Minter’s games. Definitely recommended if you like your Geometry Wars-likes and what not.
Perfect Cycle (Itch.io) is a browser game where you cruise down a road shooting at neon things and big words appears like you would expect in a Minter game. I guess you could call it a Polybius-like?
Crackle Attack (Itch.io) has you dodging attacks from a giant thing with gears for hands and gradually ramps up in difficulty. Surprisingly both relaxing and hectic at the same time.
The Beastly Siege of Irata 7 (Itch.io) kinda reminds me of Asteroids in that you fly around a space and shoot at UFOs, but has the very clever mechanic of you retrieving debris from those ships and feeding them to the beast in the center of the screen and trying to keep it alive for as long as possible.
MAMA CABRA (Itch.io) is a browser game made in PICO-8 where you’re a goat flying through space shooting stuff and saving sheep. How can you beat that? To be honest, I didn’t actually know PICO-8 games supported the mouse until I played this.
StarGiraf (Itch.io) is an Atari 2600 space shooter playable in the browser where you are a giraffe with a very long neck and shoot things. Incredibly charming.
I highly recommend checking all of these games out if you are a fan of Llamasoft, or even if you never played a Llamasoft game before and just like arcade games and sheep.
Adam Saltsman continues to put out great PICO-8 games. In the puzzle game Mole Mole (Itch.io) you are are a mole (of course) and must reach the exit of each level by blowing things up.
Old Skies (Steam) is the newest game by Wadjet Eye Games. I’m so happy this is out. I got to play a beta and think it’s one of their best, if not best, point-and-click adventures. It’s a time travel story featuring incredible art by Ben Chandler and great voice acting by a lot of the folks that have acted in previous Wadjet Eye Games adventures. Between games like this, Rosewater, Blue Prince, and many of the other games I’ve highlighted in recent roundups, we’re in a great period for adventure games.
New games for old platforms are always fun to see. Frontier Force (Itch.io) looks like a fun shoot-em-up for the Sega Master System and SkillTeam (Itch.io) is a clever Sokobon-like for the Amstrad CPC (but playable in the browser).
Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 (Steam/Itch.io) is the newest game by Strange Scaffold. I remember hearing about this being worked on a while ago and looking forward to it, so it makes me happy to see so many folks praising the game. It’s a Puzzle Quest-inspired game where you Match 3 objects in a row to fight opponents, but apparently has Metroid-inspired exploration elements too.
Bryce Tiles (Steam) is another one I’ve been looking forward to for a while! I was a fan of the free Klik And Play-inspired (I assume this means nothing to people under 35) platformer Bryce’s Movement Engine¹ (Steam/Itch.io) and this looks like it keeps that aesthetic but moving to the genre of Isometric Puzzle Game.
Does the Amerzone remake fit into this roundup? Probably not right? I don’t think it counts as indie? Whatever, maybe some folks with find it interesting since I’m guessing most of the folks reading this are also adventure game nerds.
Finally, a Kickstarter has launched for the second edition of the city building tabletop rpg Ex Novo. I really like the first edition.
Well that’s it for this week. I hope you found something to play that you’ll end up loving!
Developer: Mixtape Games Publisher: Mixtape Games Year: 2025 Genre: Arcade
Vaporwave Pinball is a new game from Mixtape Games. It really is what it says On The Tin. It’s a collection of pinball tables wrapped in a vaporwave aesthetic. I don’t know if there’s a whole lot more to say about it than that. It’s only $5 and that gets you 5 tables that are both fairly straightforward but also have layers to them. It’s good!
Ok, fine. Maybe I do have some more interesting thoughts on the game other than that. This is probably my ideal version of what a pinball video game should be like if it’s not attempting to be as accurate of a recreation of a real pinball table as possible. I enjoy the recreations of real pinball tables in Pinball FX but really bounce off their original tables, partially because they’re mostly grounded but then have a few fantastical elements. If you’re going to make up a table for a video game, go wild! This game has elements like the ball being teleported and the table morphing as you play.
The most recent episode of Quest Quest actually has a lot more interesting thoughts on this (cohost Ben approves of the game!) that I can’t really build on because I’ve never played Pinball Construction Set, but it apparently has a lot of similarities to that. Ben also pointed the line on the Steam page that says “Less for pinball simulation fans and more for chill, flow state pinball fans.” Which I think is a very accurate and fair description of the game. I wouldn’t recommend it for hardcore pinball fans but if you just want to chill out while playing pinball, I think it’s a solid recommendation.
Vaporwave Pinball is available on Steamand Itch.io. The post is based on a key sent from the developer.
Developer: Because Because Games Publisher: Because Because Games Year: 2020 Genre: Adventure Game
Detective Boiled-Hard is a traditional point-and-click adventure that came out in 2020 that I was also curious about but didn’t get around to playing until now.
You played as Detective Boiled-Hard and must investigate the death of someone to see what happened. It’s a very breezy adventure game. The puzzles are easy and it took me just under an hour to complete, but I had fun playing it. I had been motivated to play it after playing a lot of Reality-On-the-Norm games lately and this always reminded me of the early 00’s AGS freeware era. That could maybe sound like an insult to some people but I really mean it in the nicest way. I love that everything, including the voices for all the characters, was done by one person.
Since the game itself isn’t difficult, most of the fun comes from all the jokes packed into the game. There’s plenty of dialog choices that are just there for additional jokes and plenty to interact with in the game. It’s just a very light and silly adventure game that I think is worth a look if you want an easier and more relaxing adventure to playing in an evening or have a fondness for that AGS era I mentioned. I also just found out there’s a free mini-case of all new material if you want a demo or played the original game and want more, so I’ll need to check that out next.
Detective Boiled-Hard / Case File – Death of the Space Dino Hunter is available on Steam and Itch.io
