Indie Game Roundup (Jan. 9, 2025)

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After a little bit of a break I’m writing about games again! If you enjoy these, post about a new indie game that was exciting to you on a blog or website.

Video Games

The Forgotten Holiday (Itch.io) was made for a secret santa, where you move a camera around a snowy landscape and watch tanks sponsored by various brands fight each other.

Bluejeweled (Itch.io) is a version of the classic puzzle game Bejeweled that you cannot lose.

screenshot for abi-dos showing a large grid of boxes connecting together to show a process

ABI-DOS (Steam) is one of those programming puzzle games that I struggle with because I have 5 brain cells. However, this one seems to be very good from looking at the Steam reviews. It was apparently released commercially a few months ago but after sales weren’t as big as expected, the developer went ahead and just made the game available for free, which is very nice.

picture of a snake wearing a bow, a floating star, and text saying "Video.....games"

SNAKE Lucky Laugh (Itch.io) is a little tool with a Macintosh aesthetic where you dress up a snake.

A new Indiepocalypse (Itch.io) is out! My recommended game for this one is the retro fps BITCH HELL.

If you have an interest in interactive fiction, consider checking out the Interactive Fiction Showcase 2024 on Itch.io, where folks submitted the IF games they made last year.

Keep Warm and Go (Itch.io) is a cute tiny browser game about getting dressed to go outside in celebration of the new year. I never heard of Flickgame but it seems like a neat tool for making really small games.

Quiet Journaling (Itch.io) is a relaxing walking simulator for browsers where the game generates a new landscape to walk around each day.

a smaller box in front of a grainy image with text saying "I forgot my name. Who was I? What did I mean?"

A Butterfly (Itch.io) is a pay-what-you-want experimental and interactive poem. Like with their previous game Blue Suburbia, I was really impressed by how it tells a story with multiple games-inside-a-game.

Stimulation Clicker (standalone site) is a browser game that probably represents the modern web better than anything else today. I personally had a hard time playing it because it became too overwhelming for my senses at a certain point but that’s kinda the point and it’s brilliantly made.

a gyrocopter flying through the air and there are floating platforms

Helihopter64 (Itch.io) is a demo where you fly around dropping packages on targets in a N64 inspired world. It took me a minute to get the hang of the controls but once I did I was really into it. I hope this gets expanded into a larger game at some point.

a tiny blue cell swimming by big green cells

Unicellular 3 (Itch.io) is a pay-what-you-want arcade game where you eat little things to grow bigger. Those are always fun and this one has you getting upgrades when you complete levels and the music is catchy too.

Cryptid Detective Club (Itch.io) is a cute storybook for browsers where you use a lantern to uncover secrets on each page.

Tabletop RPGS

.DUNGEON has launched a Kickstarter for the newest edition of their game about being in a dying MMO. The original version won plenty of awards and acclaim so check it out if it sounds interesting to you.

Esther and the Queens (Itch.io) is a Purim-themed Jewish ttrpg featuring Queen Esther, carnival games, and lots of drama. The gameplay is inspired by the Firebrands frameworks and uses a collection of mini games to advance the story.

Sauna of the Stone Moles & Puritanical Dwarven Temple (Itch.io) are two 12-page dungeons by Aaron King about:

  • weird underground creatures who decided to make a sauna out of a storage space for hazardous dwarven materials
  • an angry hobbit messing with ancient dwarven cleaning techniques

The dungeons are available as Pay-What-You-Want.

Everspark (Itch.io) is a new fantasy tabletop rpg by Cezar Capacle that is meant to be easy for folks new to ttrpgs to pick up, but let them go on fun fantasy adventures that you would see in the artwork for these books. I haven’t played it yet but I am a big fan of the author and I’m looking forward to seeing how this is all implemented.

Books

Light Leaks (Itch.io) is a browser zine of photos accidentally exposed to light.

Learning from the Best of Text (Itch.io) is a 300 page book on the history of interactive fiction available for free.

Looking Back on 2024 and What’s Next

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Everyone is doing their recap posts and so I guess I should do one of my own. It’s a little late but I refuse to do any kind of 2024 summary until the year is over dangit.

Overall it was a very weird year. The first half of the year was incredible, with the birth of my son and being able to take 12 weeks off work to spend all my time with him and the rest of my family. The second half of the year was less great, with the election, day job vibes changing for the worse, a small flood in the basement, and my furnace going out and now having to replace it, which is incredibly expensive. It has been a very stressful few months here but things will be ok.

It was a pretty good year for game dev stuff I suppose. I made a tiny game in Downpour (Itch.io) and while I haven’t been too inspired to make more with it, it’s a great little tool. We also shipped the first Locally Sourced Anthology (Steam/Itch.io), which I’m very proud of. I wish I could have made a game for it (and thus made some money too) but it’s still something I’m very proud of and we’re already starting work on the second one, which I have a game planned for. The biggest thing for me this year was organizing three games and creating one of those, a point-and-click adventure, for the Ann Arbor 200 project. I will do a larger post on that soon, summarizing my feelings on it (very positive!) and my process, but it was a great honor to make something for the Ann Arbor District Library and I finally got to learn Adventure Game Studio, make a point-and-click adventure, and got paid for it! I also got to make my oldest a beta tester on that and that made her incredibly happy, so it was worth it for that alone.

I also had a lot of doing my weekly indie game roundups on the blog. Not to pat myself on the back too much, but I think I did a good job. At the very least I mention games that aren’t on Steam, unlike a lot of other websites and Video Game Influencers who talk about how much they love indies. Good job me.

So what’s next for 2025?

I’m going to just stick with the reasonable goals and not stuff like the end of all billionaires and changing the US into a socialist utopia. But in 2025 I’m hoping to:

  • Do more point-and-click adventures. I’ve got a half finished one made in clay that I should get back to, but I’ve got a few design quirks to hammer out there. It turns out that making everything in clay is tough. Not as expensive as I thought it would be, but still time consuming and hard work. It should be out sometime this year though. I’ve also started work on another Maniac Mansion/Zak McKracken inspired one and that’s the only I’m more excited about at the moment since I think I have a good flow down for making these and can build on what I learned with my last game. I’m also pairing up with someone to make a point-and-click adventure for the next Locally Sourced anthology, which means there could be 2-3 little adventure games from me this year.
  • My kids also now want to make an adventure game with me and use clay. I suspect this may be a really tiny thing that I put on Glorious Trainwrecks, or on itch and turn off the comments and ratings, but it should be fun.
  • Keep doing the indie game roundups. They’re fun and it enables me to discover more great art.
  • Continuing to be annoying about how people should start their own site and blogs.
  • Go to grad school. We’ll see about this one. I’ve wanted to work towards a MLIS for a while and keep putting it off, and I think I’ll really regret it if I don’t at least try. I don’t think it will be a fast process, just one class a semester, but I have to do it.
  • Volunteer more with local environmental restoration groups. I did a little bit last year with Friends of the Rouge and aside from it just being a good thing to help make the planet cleaner by building rain gardens and doing other work, it’s also just a good workout and I learn a lot from it too.

I’m not exactly expecting this year to be stress free, with fascism continuing to expand across the world, but I’m still hoping to find joy where I can.

Playing Asheron’s Call 1 in 2025

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I’ve decided it now, 2025 is the year of Asheron’s Call. It’s a game I’ve always wanted to play since Asheron’s Call 2 was the first MMO I ever played and I’m taking the time now to revisit it. That might seem a little odd since it was a MMO that started in 1999 and shut down for good in 2017, but fans have managed to keep it alive!

If you would like to play it, the instruction on this website are actually very straightforward and were easy for me to follow. The page has a warning for it at the bottom, but a few folks including myself have run into an issue where the game crashes when you sign in and it’s easily fixed by just playing in Windowed Mode.

Once you have this all setup, you just need to pick a server to play on. A couple of us in the Discord for Twitch streamer BogusMeatFactory (Twitch link) are going to be playing a retail release Asheron’s Call fan server called Levistras that also enforces a strict, no-bot policy. This means we will experiencing the retail game experience around the era of 2004-ish. If you are interested in playing with us, you can download the launcher through the link here.

This is an easy executable that is your hub portal to all of the different servers available now and is incredibly easy to use! The server we will be playing on is the Levistras server, whose information can be found at the link here.

I also highly recommend checking out the manual. The game actually has a solid in-game tutorial but the manual provides all the lore and additional info for playing the game. It’s readable in the browser on the Internet Archive.

You’re more than welcome to join me! I will be on Fridays around 9pm EST, but playing other times as well, with a character named TofuPirate. I’ve only played a tiny bit of the game so far but I’m having a good time and very excited to play more of it.

Indie Game Roundup (Dec. 31, 2024)

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It’s the last one of these of the year! If you enjoyed reading these and have a blog, consider occasionally posting about games or other things you’ve enjoyed in the new year! Search engines and social media are falling apart and the only way people will know about the weird things you like is if you tell them.

dr chase in his room saying "Ah, another new morning"
3 stacks of colored books
side view of bearded guy in front of a house

The big one for me, and to get some self-promo out of the way, is that a small games anthology I organized for the local Ann Arbor District Library, featuring a point-and-click adventure by me is now out on their website. This was the game I mentioned working on in my dev logs and I’m so proud of this. I’m already seeing things I would maybe fix if I were to do it again, but I’m still happy with how it turned out and I think it’s a fun little adventure game. The anthology also features a cool puzzle game by Flyover Games and a new Game Boy game by Lilycore Games. Anthologies are neat because you get to work with people who are far more talented than you. I’m also just so proud that I got to be part of a series that so many great artists have participated in. Please check out the rest of the Ann Arbor 200 series if you can. I’ll do a larger post on this later with entries I was into and more thoughts on the anthology.

Ok, self-promo time is over. Let’s move onto great games released by other folks:

Dex Vex (Itch.io) is a free browser puzzle game made in Decker. If you’re not familiar with Decker, it is a free tool for making Hypercard-like applications for the browser. So not only is it a fun game, it’s also just impressive seeing people using a tool like this for a puzzle game.

gif of a sketch of a person and text saying "The Lord! Count Kagura! Have mercy!" and "Why should it be that I have mercy, when no one had mercy for me?"

Speaking of Decker, Count Kagura (Itch.io) is a free visual novel made in browsers by swanchime.

view of a bar with a person that has a cat's head

And here’s yet another Decker game. Wasteland Mall (Itch.io) is a surreal point-and-click adventure set in a mall. Just seeing all these games with a Macintosh aesthetic makes me want to do an adventure game that feels like it was made with Hypercard. Decker is great.

side view of a guy shooting lasers at green blobs

Alien Intruder (Developer’s site) is a new game for DOS where you save people from aliens and get to the exit. It’s free, really easy to pick up, and it’s always fun for me to fire up DOSBox to play a new game.

overhead view of platforms in space and fireballs coming out of pipes on the platforms

Broken Links (Itch.io) is a free puzzle game inspired by the Zelda and Adventures of Lolo series. I thought the pixel art was cute and liked the variety in puzzles too.

Cuppa Quest (Itch.io) is an interactive fiction browser game made in Twine where you’re just trying to get a cup of tea.

person riding a hoverbike through the desert

pastel sandfish (Itch.io) is a free game where you explore dunes on your hoverbike. I loved the psx-style graphics in this and being rewarded with interesting encounters through exploration.

view of notes on a music sheet with cute imagery surrounding it

Lovely Composer (Steam/Itch.io) is a music game inspired by the tool in Mario Paint. I don’t know if it has weird, fucked up baby noises like Mario Paint but it still looks very nice. The Itch page has a trial version if you want to try it out first.

How Am I Still Waiting for the Bus (Itch.io) is a browser game where you are a ghost waiting for the bus and can listen to other people’s thoughts and must also keep your ghost from floating up too high.

gif of a skeleton riding a horse

in Death we Love (Itch.io) is a 2D cinematic sidescrolling adventure by colorfiction available as Pay-What-You-Want. An earlier version of this appeared in the Cartomancy Anthology, which I also strongly recommend.

If you’re a Ren’Py developer, you might like this script for doing shiny cards on Itch.io.

Girls’ Day (Itch.io) is a short interactive fiction browser game by Nice Gear Games about a memory.

Funeral for an AI God (Itch.io) is a free LARP for four people about attending a funeral for an AI deity.

top down view of people in a room but it looks like it was sketched in a notebook

Assassinvisible (Steam) is a puzzle stealth game set in a student’s notebook. I really like how everything in the game looks like it was sketched on paper.

first person view of a gun pointing at someone. Everything is very green

Escape From PETSCII Castle (Itch.io) is a new free FPS for the Commodore PET inspired by Wolfenstein 3D.

top down view of a ship shooting at another ship that looks like a big skull with tentacles

Warhawk (Steam) is a remake of a Commodore 64 game and looks like a pretty snazzy shmup.

In the free browser game Car Artist (Itch.io) you drive around inside a box and try to survive as long as you can by avoiding cars. By the time you’re done, you’ll have a nice little picture made by skidmarks.

John Calhoun, creator of Macintosh classics like Glider and Glypha, made a fun little first-person browser moon lander game called Mooncraft 2000 (website).

view of a grid with two sides facing off against each other. The art style is very bright and colorful and reminds me of the 90s

Garden of Fools (Itch.io) is a free game made for the Devzone Secret Santa Jam 2024. It’s a 2D roguelike but the combat is like the Mega Man Battle Network series.

dialog screen saying "Without pay they'd leave you to do" and a dialog response selected saying "Would you like to work for me?"

Burntime Remastered (Steam) is a free remake of the strategy game of the same name from 1993. I’m not familiar with it but I think it’s really cool that the designers of the original gave the ok for a fan to remake it and put it online for free.

While Christmas may be over, maybe you’re still in the mood for a seasonal game or something to play next year. Verhex the Halls: Merry Crisis! (Itch.io) is a GM-lite tabletop rpg where everyone works together to make this year’s Christmas a successful one.

Ink Inside (Steam) is a co-op beat em up rpg. Those are usually pretty fun!

screen resembling a windows xp era desktop and an IM client looking like MSN Messenger

Divorce Chatroom (Itch.io) is a free visual novel where you must divorce your husband.

Sequence (Itch.io) is a new puzzle game available for the Game Boy for only $1. It’s published by Thalamus, who I feel has a very good record of publish retro and retro-feeling games.

person walking in an old house

We also got a walking simulator (the dev’s words, not mine) for the Game Boy. Curse of the Mantle (itch.io) is a retelling of the radio play of the same name and available in the browser or as pay-what-you-want.

Well that’s it for this week. If you enjoyed this, subscribe with your RSS feed reader of choice and do a roundup on your blog.

Review: Jazz Jackrabbit Holiday Hare

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Developer: Epic MegaGames
Publisher: Epic MegaGames
Year: 1994, 1995, 1998
Genre: Platformer

For whatever reason, it has become a tradition over the last 10 years to replay the three Holiday Hare episodes released for Jazz Jackrabbit. They were three Christmas themed episodes released for free in 1994 and 1995 for Jazz Jackrabbit 1, and 1998 for Jazz Jackrabbit 2. Jazz Jackrabbit isn’t a game that I think is especially great. The game is built around your character being able to move fast, inspired by Sonic the Hedgehog, but punishes you for doing so because the game is too zoomed in on your character for you to be able to react in time when an enemy appears onscreen. This is fixed in the sequel but that’s not the one that most people seem to have a fondness for.

Last week was my time to revisit this tradition, first time on Twitch, and it reinforced my belief that I think the Holiday Hare levels are some of the better designed ones for Jazz Jackrabbit, especially Holiday Hare 1994. It moves quick, features a lot of variety in enemies and level environments, and features great music, like you would expect from the series, but with a holiday theme.

I think Holiday Hare 1995 maybe dips in a quality a little bit due to its difficulty spike and some enemies that I consider annoying, but is also worth checking out if you’re a fan of the series. One thing that I think is interesting about it is the background artwork of a rabbit that would later become the…hmmm…unfortunately named second playable character in Jazz Jackrabbit 2. Holiday Hare 95 came out three years before Jazz Jackrabbit 2, so either they were working on that sequel for a very long time or just liked that character design.

a green bunny with a gun in a lego land, with a large stuffed red bunny
Screenshot of Holiday Hare 95 taken from MobyGames

Like I said earlier, Jazz Jackrabbit 2 fixes the design quirks and is a much better designed game in my opinion, even if I don’t enjoy the art as much. The version of Holiday Hare 98 on GOG is actually Jazz Jackrabbit 2: The Christmas Chronicles, which is apparently a third release of Jazz Jackrabbit 2 that has a slightly updated engine and has the third playable character, Lori, who was added in the Jazz Jackrabbit 2 expansion that was only released in Europe. These levels are perfectly fine but there’s not a whole lot to say about them. They’re fine! I wish it leaned more on the holiday theme and the final boss fight isn’t well designed, but it’s fun to revisit them.

So would I recommend these even though I just said Jazz Jackrabbit isn’t really a well-designed game? Yeah sure. It’s quick, I think the design of the first Holiday Hare pushes back a lot on the design flaws it’s stuck with, the music in all three is fun, and I think Jazz 2 holds up aside from the one character’s name. They’re all free too and the first game runs fine in DosBox, so give it a shot if you like platformers.

Jazz Jackrabbit is available on GOG

Mini Indie Game Roundup – XMas Edition

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I know I just put one out a few days ago but I’m doing another because a few people have released Christmas games since then and I don’t think people are going to be too interested in Christmas games a few days after the holiday, so I’m doing a tiny one now. If I’ve missed any or you have any favorites from previous years, please post them in the comments!

gingerbread person with antlers saying "this is it! THis year I will cook the best roast Christmas dinner the Zodiacs have ever seen"

The game developer Moonana is going bankrupt after 7 years of making games and are putting out one final game. Ginger’s Letter to Santa (Steam) is a RPG about trying to deliver letters to Santa’s workshop. You can read more about the developer’s goodbye in the thread here.

view of a horse in a living room and stats about the horse's health

The latest game in the Christmas Horse saga is now available. Christmas Horse 5 (Itch.io) is a game where you take care of your own Christmas horse. The Itch page also features Christmas Horse 1-4, each a different game genre, and all of them are available for Pay-What-You-Want.

​THE ICON64 CHRISTMAS DEMO 2 (Itch.io) is a Christmas themed demo to run on your Commodore 64 or emulator and available for free.

top down view of santa shooting at toys

I posted it a few days ago but I think it’s worth a repost anyway. Santatron 2024 (Itch.io) is a new game for the Amiga inspired by the classic Robotron. Clear rooms of enemies and saves elves to go to the next level. It’s a really solid arcade game and fun excuse to fire up my Amiga emulator (WinUAE). Available as Pay-What-You-Want.

mickey mouse holding a horse shoe

Also posted this one a few weeks ago but I’m doing it again. Plane Lazy (Itch.io) is a Pay-What-You-Want arcade game for the ZX Spectrum where you fly through levels as public domain Mickey Mouse and features a few festive screens.

isometric view of someone next to a christmas tree and a poster that says trans rights

The Blade of Cutiepants: A Very Cutie Christmas (Itch.io) is a holiday game for people who dread the holidays. I haven’t played it yet but this pay-what-you-want rpg looks very cute.

Blog Roundup (2024-12-22)

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Enjoy this collection of blog posts I liked reading this week! This one actually probably has more things that aren’t technically blogs but I liked reading them and want others to see.

Video Games

Rob at Punching Robots is one of my favorite game devs/writers/Dizzy fan art creators so I enjoyed reading his post about another game dev and their weird, rambling post about how Wholesome Games = Fascism I guess?? It also kicked off discourse on Bluesky because that’s what that site is built for. But Rob’s post is great, go read that one.

Misty wrote a tool to convert BIN/CUE disc images to CloneCD. It’s all a little bit over my head but it seems very useful for the people who need it and I still liked reading the post and nodding along like I got it all.

This history about the creation of Kid Pix by the program’s creator is fantastic. I used Kid Pix all the time on my school’s Mac and then Kid Pix Studio on my home computer, so it was very important to me.

FFVIII is the Best is still going and has a nice holiday themed appreciation post for the incredible fan art by Skribleskrable.

Inverse has an article ranking 10 of this year’s hidden indie gems. Always nice to see a list where you don’t know a bunch of the games. Got this from Yaffle’s blog.

Folks are playing Ultima Underworld for the next 3 months in DOS Game Club and this playthrough report is reminding me I need to start playing it too. Come join us!

Everyone is talking about Ireland’s game dev community! Shacknews has an article on industry’s growth and startmenu does as well, although it’s maybe more focused on highlighting individual developers.

Michael Coorlim does a narrative analysis of Questprobe: The Hulk.

startmenu revisits Indiana Jones And the Infernal Machine.

The Imaginary Engine Review is one of the best new sources of games crit writing. This month it’s their article Genre-Queer about Heisei Pistol Show.

TTRPGs

Tot’s Character Compendium goes through the character creation process in Upriver, Downriver, a game I’m not familiar with but sounds lovely.

The Oracle Engine writes about the modern classic Together We Write Private Cathedrals

200-Proof Games posts The 1E Manifesto. I won’t say that more game devs should write manifestos, because that seems like a monkey’s paw situation, but this one is good.

Music

Yaffle wrote a list ranking 69 versions of Wonderful Christmastime. I am a hater of the song, sorry Yaffle, but it’s a good list.

The Morning Music blog continues to post bangers on a near daily basis. It’s very rare when it’s something I’ve actually listened to before like Jean-Michel Jarre’s Oxygène 7-13.

Tech

Adam wrote an incredible bookmarklet for randomly choosing between buttons on those 88×31 button walls like the one on my links page. Just use the bookmark on one of these pages and it will randomly select one. It truly replicates the experience of “surfing the web”

Leaded Soldier talks about FujiNet, which adds internet support for old computers through wi-fi.

Brain Baking examines link rot on their own site.

Poetry

A new issue of ALOCASIA is out! Every issue features queer plant-based writing and available for free, although it does take donations.

A Half-Assed Itch.io Winter Sale Recommendation Post

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This post is just a compilation of the games I mentioned in my recommendation thread on Bluesky. A lot of folks were doing Steam recommendation threads and thought Itch deserved a mention too. Like the title says, it’s rushed and half-assed since the posts were written right before my baby was waking up. But there’s good stuff in here and I think it’s worth checking out. If you read the indie game roundups then you’ve already seen a few of these but dang it, you should buy these anyway.

first person view of a space ship shooting at another ship

I bounce off a lot of space sims because I’m incredibly fussy and like open world stuff but a lot of them are too difficult for me to pick up. Liberation is inspired by 70s British sci-fi and has lots of personality and is easy for me to play

Every month a new issue of the Indiepocalypse games anthology arrives, collecting 10 games, often experimental. It’s an incredible source of games curation and I’ve discovered so many of my favorite game designers through it

isometric view of a person in a dungeon with bones on the ground and also a chicken
Roguecraft screenshot

One of my favorite publishers that’s putting out new games for old platforms is Thalamus. Just earlier this year they published a new roguelike for the Amiga. But there’s plenty of great arcade games for modern platforms like Death Ray Manta and Rainbow Laser Disco Dungeon.

Did you know you can buy the classic adventure game Day of the Tentacle on Itch? Plenty of smarter people have explained why it’s one of the best adventure games. I just think it’s neat that it’s on here.

cybeRRRevolution has a better pitch than I can do so I’ll just copy it. It’s described as “an action-adventure game about talking with monsters, piloting godly mechas, and taking down bandits to secure a prosperous future for a nation in a post-war reality.” Also consider checking out the dev’s interactive fiction game Don’t Wake the Night.

It’s the year of the anthology! Anthology of the Killer is another one that’s worth your time! It’s not on sale but you should still buy it.

No indie dev is doing stealth action inspired by Metal Gear Solid better than Merlino Games. Can’t go wrong with any of these.

Videoverse is a visual novel where you explore friendship and love through a WiiU like interface. Itch purchase comes with a Steam key too.

black and white pixel art of a woman next to a downed power line
Screenshot from Midnight Scenes 1

Midnight Scenes is one of my favorite modern adventure game series. Short horror games that can be played in one sitting and feature incredible pixel art. They can be played in any order so just get the one that you vibe with the most.

Looking for a game like Thief but in a cyberpunk setting? Check out NEON STRUCT. But I’m a big fan of everything by Minor Key Games.

If you’ve never played a solo tabletop rpg before, give it a shot! There’s plenty of free and pay-what-you-want ones, but Cezar Capacle has made a lot of great ones too like Against the Wind.

You should also consider playing a GM-less ttrpg. An Altogether Different River is a nice one! In a single session 2-4 players build a town and create the characters who live in it and explore their relationships with it.

There’s so many great point-and-click adventures and I’ll plug away at recommending them in this thread when I can, but one I’m a fan of is Cosmic Void. There’s a game for everything. Classic graphic parser adventures, horror, sci-fi, comedy, cyberpunk.

Kitsune Games made the excellent Super Mario Bros 3 spiritual sequel Kitsune Tails. The difficulty levels make it approachable for everyone too.

That’s it for the recommendations! I hope you find something cool to pick up from Itch.io!

Review: Heretic

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

Raven Software is a game developer located in Middleton, Wisconsin that was founded in 1990. Their first game, Black Crypt (1992), was a dungeon crawler for the Amiga. While it wasn’t a massive commercial hit, the game was critically well received and got the attention of ID Software. John Romero approached Raven and proposed using ID Software’s technology to make games for the PC. Raven licensed a heavily modified version of the Wolfenstein 3D engine to make ShadowCaster, a fantasy action game that ditches some of the RPG elements of their previous game to focus more on action. The game was a success and Raven Software completed their transition to action games by licensing ID Software’s new Doom engine and creating the FPS Heretic, released in 1994.

first person view of a staff pointing at a mummy trying to punch you
Screenshot taken from Steam page

Heretic is set in a world conquered by three brothers known as the Serpent Riders. While most of the beings in the land fall under their control, the Sidhe elves resist and become known as heretics. You play as one of these elves, who is revealed to be named Corvus in Heretic 2, and fight the Serpent Rider known as D’Sparil. The format of the game is very much like Doom’s. You have three episodes (five in the retail version) and make your way through levels, grabbing keys to unlock doors, and shooting all enemies you come across.

While it may have a lot in common with Doom, to the extent that some people will say that it’s basically a medieval reskin, it’s not without its innovations and improvements. Doom has a few enemies that rely on hitscan detection, where they fire a gun and then the game does a check to see if you are hit or not. I’m not going to go into if this is bad game design in this style of FPS or not. Generally, I’m not a fan but that’s just my personal preference and there’s plenty of people who have no issue with it. I find it interesting that this doesn’t exist at all in Heretic and the player is able to dodge all projectile shots. I suppose it makes sense, there’s no reason why someone would have a gun in this world, but the player still has two hitscan weapons that carried over from the conversion from Doom, the pistol-like Elven Wand and chaingun-like Dragon Claw. I think it’s fun that some of the weapons are wonderfully illustrated and some clearly are a developer’s hands holding something and have been digitized.

The addition of items adds some depth to the gameplay and a small rpg element to the game. Throughout the levels are pickups like potions that restore health and other bits that will give you powers like temporary flight and invisibility. The most interesting of these is the Tome of Power. This item will temporarily change all your weapons to a different effect, essentially creating a second set of weapons for you to use. Some are more useful than others, but it’s fascinating how much work Raven put into one powerup.

The game also features some innovation in its level design. The variety of environmental hazards and elements like wind and current in the water are a very nice touch and it feels like the developers are building upon what they saw in the level design for Doom and trying to do more complex designs. I would maybe argue that I prefer the simpler level design of Doom, but I think at the time it was probably impressive how much the level designers were trying to build levels that look like real places that people could live in.

The original three episodes in the shareware release of the game are all solid. I feel like in shareware games the first free episode is often the best one. The theory is that they front load the game with some of the best material so you’ll go out and buy it. I don’t think that’s the case here. Both episodes 2 and 3 have better level design and boss fights. There were one or two levels with poor switch placement in Episode 1 that absolutely ruined the pacing for me. 

My only major complaint about Episode 2 is that they fill levels with an enemy called the Sabreclaw. It’s incredibly dull and brown and it doesn’t help that it is frequently used in levels with brown walls. All it does is slowly walk up to you and try to do a melee attack and only serves to be a bullet sponge. It is funny that I came across a mod that makes it a more golden color, looks much better, and helps it not blend in with all the brown walls. By the end of the episode they pull back a bit on this enemy as others are introduced, and 3 overall feels more balanced.

The bonus episodes that came with the rerelease of the game, episodes 4 and 5, are competent enough but aren’t interesting. They don’t add anything new and episode 4 has a slow start. Episodes 4 and even 3 to some extent, have you heavily managing your ammo in their first two levels while avoiding batches of enemies since you will not have enough ammo to kill them all. It is a fun novelty for one level but becomes a slog after that when you are repeatedly reloading your game to minimize the amount of ammo you use and damage you take so you can get through the encounters after that. It eventually lets up though and after getting enough weapons over two levels, the game goes back to being fun. 

Episode 5 on the other hand feels like it has convoluted level design just for the sake of padding the runtime. It felt like every level had you hitting a switch, searching the rest of the level to see what it opened, and repeating the process. It is incredibly tedious to play and the entire episode does it. It doesn’t help that the game also decides that sometimes you’ll now need to shoot doors to open them. It doesn’t happen very often, just enough that you’ll forget that’s now a mechanic in the game and waste a lot of time trying to figure out if there’s a switch that will open them. Neither of these episodes adds anything new, so you’re just seeing repeats of enemies you already fought many times in Episodes 1-3.

Weirdly enough, there’s also a partially complete Episode 6 hidden in the game. It’s just a few levels, with the last one being unfinished, so it’s not terribly interesting. I just find it fascinating that it was left in. It’s not something I can complain about, you must enter codes to access the levels, but it’s interesting that it exists.

If there’s a hot take in this review, I think that it’s that Raven Software was just not that good at level design compared to some of their peers. A lot of people give Hexen 1 and 2 grief for clunky design (the case for why both of these games are good is coming at a later date) but I wasn’t impressed by a lot of the design in the later episodes of Heretic and Jedi Knight 2 is also a game that’s infamous for having a dull single player campaign up until you get the lightsaber before that game improves.

It’s hard to be too critical of these episodes because I see them as bonus levels anyway and the game’s story has already concluded by the time you get to these. If you want more Heretic, here you go, but if not then it’s fine to just stop after the first 3 episodes. If you would like to read more about the game’s level design process, I found this interview with the level designer to be interesting.

Overall, I’d highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys faster paced FPS. I have my gripes about the pacing in some parts of the game, but I think it holds up very well. As a long time Raven Software fan, it’s fun seeing their evolution from being a roleplaying game developer with Black Crypt on the Amiga, to transitioning to the FPS/RPG hybrid Shadowcaster, and then to FPS that contain some RPG elements like Heretic and Hexen. It’s a little less fun seeing them being absorbed into the Call of Duty machine and only working on entries in that series now. 

Heretic is available through Steam and GOG.

Indie Game Roundup (Dec. 20, 2024)

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

I keep banging on about this, but it’s ridiculous to have a GOTY awards show of any kind (they really shouldn’t, they’re all bad) when people are still squeaking in bangers right before the year ends, incredible! If you like these, share them with a friend and then go pick up a weird game during the Itch.io and Steam sales. If I forgot something, please let a comment or send me a message through social media or email. I love hearing about everything.

Video Games

The 2024 Showreel for Godot is highlighting a lot of interesting things made in that engine on YouTube.

top down view of someone in a maze shooting lasers at robots

Die for the Economy (Steam) is a new game inspired by the classic arcade game Berzerk, featuring psychedelic pixel art and all the robot voices you would hope for from one of these types of games. I played it a bit this morning and it’s probably the best Berzerk-inspired game I’ve ever played. I love the humor about how much capitalism sucks and the difficulty levels make this approachable for any arcade game fan.

a knight made of clay guarding a bridge going to a mountain, all in a studio

Escape from Castle Claymount (Steam) is a free escape room-style adventure game where everything is made from clay and other physical materials and photographed. This was previously released elsewhere but it’s new to Steam and me, plus I lose my mind over claymation in video games, so I think it’s still worth a mention. The art is really cute and there’s a generous hint system if you need help when playing adventure games, like I usually do.

top down view of a monster chasing kids

PUNKCAKE Délicieux somehow released TWO games this week! Tummy Bonbons: The Sweet Monster (Steam/Itch.io) is an excellent free arcade game where you are a monster chasing children for candy while dodging crows. Features many color palettes but default is the ALWAYS GOOD cga colors.

gif of candle blocks falling and then being lit so they set off chain reactions

The other is Hot Wax (Steam/Itch.io), a Tetris clone that introduces the mechanic of you placing candle blocks and then lighting them so they will melt and set off chain reactions. Currently it’s only on Itch.io but will be released on Steam eventually.

Dracula Flow Simulator (Itch.io) is a browser game made in GB Studio where Dracula drops bars.

view from inside a mouth. You can see fangs and people and tall robots with long legs

WOLFCLAW (Itch.io) is a free game created by Heather Flowers and Noé Charron for the 7Day FPS 2024 jam. You are a werewolf ghost and must claw and eat enemies and possess enemies when the health in your current body is too low. Keep playing until you die and try to get a high score

top down view of santa in sunglasses shooting at toys

Santatron 2024 (Itch.io) is a new game for the Amiga inspired by the classic Robotron. Clear rooms of enemies and saves elves to go to the next level. It’s a really solid arcade game and fun excuse to fire up my Amiga emulator (WinUAE). Available as Pay-What-You-Want.

a bear is excited about a snowglobe

BROK the InvestiGator – Natal Tail, A New Christmas (Steam/Itch.io) is a visual novel set in the BROK the Investigator universe. I didn’t play this yet because I thought I had to play the original adventure game first, but the page description says this is a prequel and it’s not required to play that one at all. The game is free but the devs are accepting donations since it took quite a bit of work to make.

isometric view of a mini golf course with a loop and tall grass. It's in a vaporwave setting

Mini Mini Golf Golf (Steam) is described as “an indie storytelling experience that goes beyond the lanes of the here and now into distant memories of a future planetary collapse. Destabilize the present and plunge into a neon psychohistory of a bizarre entity in distress. This is not a game about minigolf.” I haven’t played it yet but that sounds very cool, I love how it looks, and it has positive reviews so I thought I would share it here.

Creeper World IXE (Steam) is the newest entry in the Creeper World series. It’s sorta like a RTS where you push back against a growing blob using turrets and guns. The last one I played was 3 but I am a fan of the series and didn’t realize it has changed so much over multiple entries.

HURTING ZONE (Itch.io) is a new commercial ZX Spectrum game where you are a nurse delivering to the mutated and it looks like it has a neat horror theme.

Interactive fiction game Ord. is now free on Steam for its 5th anniversary.

The Cabin Factory (Steam) is a first-person horror game where you inspect cabins and decide if they are haunted or not. Available for $2.99 but on sale for its launch.

TTRPG

There truly is a tabletop for everything and the two I’m highlighting this week both come from the Shitpost TTRPG Jam, but that doesn’t mean they’re bad or low effort games. Jersey Devils Don’t Pump Gas (Itch.io) is about the Jersey Devil and how folks in New Jersey don’t pump their own gas.

SO YOU HAVE A BAROMETRIC PRESSURE MIGRAINE (Itch.io) accurately depicts what it’s like to have a migraine.