Blog Roundup (2024-10-27)

~ mpklamerus ~ 2 Comments

People posted on their blogs a lot this week! Apologies in advance for this being a long one. If you enjoyed any of these blogs, subscribe to their RSS feed and consider doing your own blog roundups since Google sucks now.

Talkin’ About Old Games

So many folks talked about old games this week that I thought it deserved its own section.

Jefklak’s Codex reviews Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance.

The Genesis Temple goes into the history of the very weird NES game Monster Party.

Badger Trebuchet Diagram No. 17 talks about the old Windows rpg Castle of the Winds.

Final Fantasy VIII Is the Best has been incredible active this last week. I can’t even link to one post because there’s been a ton in the last week. Just go check it out.

Games from the Black Hole praises the Game Boy game Final Fantasy Adventure.

Renga in Blue plays through a text adventure I never heard of, Ship Adventure, from 1982.

The Good Old Days reviews 1996’s Lords of the Realm II.

Dev Logs

Dev logs are the best. I love seeing how people are doing on their games, it allows folks to go into much more details than they could on micro blogging spots, and writing my own has been good motivation for me on my game. Highly recommend doing your own if you’re thinking about it.

David Lindsey Pittman goes into the work he’s doing on Eldritch 2‘s hub spaces and trying to make the game more of an immersive sim.

Meredith Gran is working on the Perfect Tides and talks about writing.

Harris Powell-Smith talks about writing characters for their upcoming interactive fiction game Honor Bound.

Tom talks about making a homebrew game engine for the Dreamcast.

Sarah talks about making a new rpg for the Commodore 64.

Other Stuff

Brianna talks about C++ game engine libs

Prismatic Wasteland has two great posts about playing tabletop rpgs. One is on how to play as a ghost after dying and the other goes into how they let players have vampire characters. Great stuff! Go check out their games.

I keep discovering great music through the Morning Music blog.

The Museum of Screens has an article about how people are porting their old Flash games to Steam.

ghoulnoise has a very lovely post about guitar mods and a few other things.

Indie Tsushin has an interview with ishinoura about the one-dimensional roguelike game Yumeiri.

The Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation is looking for a new treasurer and tech officer.

Rob talks about the 1994 horror film Pumpkinhead 2. Did you know this also had a really bad FMV FPS? I don’t recommend it!

Not Blogs

Here’s other things I liked this week that aren’t blogs

Thinky Games published a new games database for puzzle and adventure games. I think super specific databases are nice and often catch things the larger and more general ones don’t.

I have gotten really into Answer Phone lately, my friend’s project where he uploads old cassette and answering machine tapes he finds at thrift stores.

Not new, but POINTCLICKING has a lot of nice adventure game fan art.

Indie Game Roundup (Oct. 25, 2024)

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Well I said last week that things were calming down and lol, oops. No. Haven’t really been posting much here or on social media because of everything going on. Well, anyway, games.

I don’t think I posted about IF Comp at all? A pretty huge mistake on my part if I haven’t. The results and just been announced and you can check out all the games and winners here.

A boy telling a girl and little kid at night "We're on a top-secret mission, you know?"

The Campsite (Itch.io) is an hour long point-and-click adventure game available for Pay-What-You-Want. It’s about an hour long and I feel like it’s appropriate for people less experience with the genre.

first person view of you holding two mace-like weapons and behind two armored creatures by an old building

Mohrta (Itch.io) is a demo for an upcoming game made in GZDoom and I’m really impressed with what it does in the engine. I know it’s not the same engine that ID Software used to make Doom but you know what? Still really cool. Comparing games to Dark Souls is overdone but I’m going to do it anyway. The game has a slower pace than what you would find in a Doom engine game, with combat encounters usually just involving a couple enemies at a time at the most. I really enjoyed the world design too.

a small window inside of a larger blurry screen showing a person swimming

Water Level/b.l.u.e. EXPLORATION (Itch.io) felt like playing a PSX game in a dream.

little people and spider-ish like things sitting on fallen trees?

second fall 24 (Itch.io) is a fun musical toy playable in the browser. It kind of reminds me of little mini-games you would find on multimedia cd-roms. Maybe I’ve been playing too many Peter Gabriel cd-roms lately.

The Solar Server has its first game! This is a server that is powered entirely by solar power, meaning you can only play the games on the server during a limited window. The site has more info on how the server was setup too.

Vladimere’s Lore (Steam) is an anthology of 14 games created by the developer over 10 years. I’ve played some of these games through HauntedPS1 releases and had a good time. Worth checking out if you’re into horror games with a retro 3D aesthetic.

PRIM (Steam) looks like a lovely point-and-click adventure if you’re looking for a creepy but also sorta cute game to play at this time of year.

Wilmot Works It Out (Steam) is the newest game in the Wilmot puzzle series. I loved Wilmot’s Warehouse when that came out, so I’ll probably really like this too when I get around to it.

a woman in a store saying "Holy radish! What now?" after a man has knocked down her front door.

I’ll have a longer review of it soon, but The Protagonish (Steam/Itch.io) is a short interactive story where you basically control everyone in a story outside of the protagonist himself. The story only takes a few minutes to play through and you make different decisions through all the side characters for different outcomes. I think it’s pretty neat. I really liked the art and was amused by how the protagonist is very much like your traditional adventure game protagonist, but not in a good way, and takes everything around him and doesn’t really care about the people around him, with all the characters you control around being kind of tired of him.

That’s it for this week. If you enjoy these, subscribe to the blog through the RSS feed, tell a friend, and check out these games. I also have an irc channel for indie and alt games/gamedev talk at AfterNET at #AltGames. Consider giving it a try! No registration required!

Blog Roundup (2024-10-20)

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

It’s another roundup of blog posts I enjoyed reading this last week. If you like these posts, consider subscribing to some of these blog through your RSS feed reader (I use Inoreader and think it’s nice) and consider doing your own roundup since Google Search is busted for discovering new things.

Games

Wraithkal continues doing great work compiling #ScreenshotSaturday posts made on Mastodon.

mojilove talks about the process of translating Operation STEEL on Indie Tsushin.

GB Studio Central published another article in their series on building a Game Boy rpg in GB Studio.

Dante talks about citybuilder design goals. I just really like reading thoughts on citybuilders.

Binary Star Games talks about Phipps23 and worldbuilding in tabletop rpgs.

Gamers with Glasses interviews Adam Vian, creative director of Crow Country.

RSS Feed Readers

I don’t actually like Cory Doctorow, sorry, but I do think people should listen to him when he says you should be using a RSS feed reader. It’s certainly made using the internet a lot more fun for me over the last year.

Crystal talks about RSS feed readers for Linux.

Jared makes a post on rediscovering RSS.

Other Posts

Aura has a very good response to an Ask about enjoying your work.

Katherine Morayati talks about the history of the late 90s network of websites called ChickClick.

Eniko talks about how there is life after Twitter.

I’m still thinking about Cabel Sasser’s talk at XOXO Fest about a giant McDonald’s mural and appreciating things everywhere.

Indie Game Roundup (Oct. 18, 2024)

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

This blog was pretty quiet this week because it’s been a hell week but things have calmed down now. Oh well, these things happen I guess. How was your week? What have you been playing lately? Let me know in the comments.

The Videotome Jam (Itch.io) has started! Videotome is a series of small IF/VN engines and you can find all four on the jam page.

The Steam Next Fest is also happening right now. I haven’t really dug into the demos yet but there’s a lot of them. Maybe you’ll find something neat.

black and white photo of a woman and a text box over her eyes saying "I don't know who's in charge"
Collage Advertisement

Collage Advertisement : Propaganda (Itch.io) is a short, political VN made in the hypercard-inspired tool Decker. Please read the content warning/disclaimer first!

Mourningstar (Itch.io) is a “satanic” “biblepunk” dark science fantasy tabletop rpg about resistance, rebellion, othering, theology, individuality, misfits, colonialism, divine politics, infernal magic, & exploring the stars as swashbuckling devils. The game is inspired by the Forged in the Dark framework. The game was created by super talented game designer and musician Devin Nelson.

a penguin standing in a field of penguins
Snow Flow

Indie Games+ has a nice review of a new game called Snow Flow. The game is playable for free on Itch.io and the art reminds me a lot of 80s Macintosh games.

Lorenzo Pilia created a manifesto On Small Games (Itch.io).

Johnson. A Plane Man is a game created in Downpour (Link) by Hyphinett. Downpour is a really fun tool for making very small games.

a person sitting in the grass with their arms crossed over their legs and they have a plant or vegetable for a head. A bee is also playing.

Not new but still cool, Karambola (Steam/Itch.io) is a free point-and-click adventure that reminds me of games like Samorost. There’s an art book for sale (Steam/Itch.io) if you would like to support the dev.

The Ghost and the Golem (Steam) is an interactive historical fantasy story published by Choice of Games about if your magic amulet save your Jewish village from destruction.

It’s not indie but I think it’s really interesting that Backyard Baseball ’97 (Steam) was just rereleased on Steam with compatibility on modern OS and achievements.

a group of people walking outside of a village called Hunza.

NovaMundi (Steam) is an open world tactical game where you must unite the people of nearby towns to fight off Spanish invaders.

The Urge (Itch.io) is a short erotic story created in Twine by Oma Keeling about operating a machine.

That’s it for this week. If you enjoy these, subscribe to the blog through the RSS feed, tell a friend, and check out these games. I’ve also started an irc channel for indie and alt games/gamedev talk at AfterNET at #AltGames. Consider giving it a try! No registration required!

Blog Roundup (2024-10-13)

~ mpklamerus ~ 2 Comments

Another collection of blog posts I liked reading this week. If you like these, consider subscribing to the blogs on your RSS feed reader and doing your own roundup posts if you’ve got a site. Google Search is becoming useless now and this is a way people will find new stuff.

Ben Robbins, the creator of tabletop rpgs like Microscope and Kingdom, tells designers to make the games you want to play.

Dante talks about Memoriapolis, a city builder I never heard of but sounds really cool and possibly addresses some of the issues I have with the genre?

Speaking of city builders, badger trebuchet diagram no. 17 posted about Sim City 3000 vaporwave.

I just like when people talk about what they’ve been into lately and Meredith Gran, creator of Perfect Tides, wrote one of those.

The Fungus Zone explains how it’s the year of the games anthology. I’m possibly biased because mine is listed there and I’m working on another right now, but I agree.

Chuck Jordan (Curse of Monkey Island, Telltale’s Sam and Max) has a nice post reflecting on being out for 20 years on National Coming Out Day.

Damien covers the Bay Area Cohost Wake

Ghoulnoise talks about cooking Çılbır, recipe link included. I never had it before but I think it looks great.

The Museum of Screens discusses the various Flappy Bird controversies.

Amiga Boing Blog is a nice blog covering Amiga games. Although personally, I think if your game is called Moose Drive then it should be more interesting than a generic racing game.

Not Blog Posts but here’s some other things

I liked this piece on RogerEbert.com about Megalopolish, the Joker sequel, and how more directors should be allowed to make potential misfires.

Aftermath wrote about how forums are alive and well, and lists a ton of active ones. Personally I’m kind of “hmmmm” about their hesitance on listing forums related to sexuality but gun forums are ok I guess? But I appreciate the enthusiasm and do think forums are nice. If you like talking about DOS games, then I recommend DOS Game Club and IntFiction.org isn’t bad for Interactive Fiction discussion. Data preservation issues aside, I personally find forums to be a lot less overwhelming than something like Discord and wish we could see more people using them.

Gobliins 6 Kickstarter Launched

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

I have fun posting any and all Gobliins 6 related news on here so here’s another update. Gobliins 6 has just launched a Kickstarter to fund development and finish the game. I enjoyed Gobliiins 5, which I had backed on Kickstarter, and this lists quite a few improvements on that. The rewards are pretty interesting too if you’re really into the artist’s work. I don’t recall any roadbumps or big delays with the campaign for 5 so it seems like a pretty safe one to back if you were thinking about it.

Son of the Halloween Adventure Games

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Every year I do a handful of indie adventure game recommendations for Halloween, like here, here, and here, and thought it would be time to do a couple more.

outside a house holding a radio device and a phone that has two people on the video call

I’ve mentioned it a few times but Incubus – A Ghost Hunter’s Tale (Steam) is a fun adventure game if you enjoy ghost hunting and FMV. I’ve always enjoyed the developer’s other games like the Dark Fall series and this is another ghost hunting adventure by them. While I’m not into ghost hunting in real life personally, this feels authentic to what folks in that area do….I think.

homestar runner dressed as the character from quest for glory 1 and another character dressed as the jester from the kyrandia games

Homestar Runner has a long tradition of referencing point-and-click adventure games and one of their recent commercial games (well, 2023), Homestar Runner: Halloween Hide n’ Seek (Steam), continues that tradition. The game features characters dressed as references to a variety of classic adventure games, both recognizable and obscure, and can be played in one sitting. I think this is maybe a rerelease of something they made before but with added voice acting and extra material but I’m not sure. It’s fun!

I am a big fan of Cosmic Void’s adventure games and Devil’s Hideout (Steam) is another solid game by the studio. Like all of their previous games, Devil’s Hideout features great pixel art and music to tell the story of a woman looking for her missing sister.

screenshot from Excuse Me Sir showing a surprised woman and her saying "Hey, who are you?" with the response options being "Can I use your phone?" and "Have you seen my brother? (Show flyer)"

Excuse Me Sir (Itch.io) is a weird one because it’s just a demo for a game that has since been canceled, but I love how weird it is and I think the demo is self-contained enough that I would still recommend checking it out.

Indie Game Roundup (Oct. 11, 2024)

~ mpklamerus ~ 2 Comments

It’s another one of these. Games, they’re pretty neat. I’ve decided I’ll do a separate extra post where I can put all my backlog stuff in there because that list was getting out of control and I can just focus on games from the last week or two here. Plus it’s ok for games that are a couple months old to still be talked about.

Tabletop RPGs

Corpslayers (Itch.io) is a cyberpunkish heist/runner/gig economy simulator game tabletop rpg by Binary Star Games based on the ttrpg Slayers. It is available as PWYW.

Blood Borg (Itch.io) is a gutter punk vampire game by World Champ Game Co. based on the Mork Borg ttrpg. A hardcover version is also available.

Video Games

top down view of a ship in space shooting other ships

Lunar Lancer (Itch.io) is a free shmup for the Game Boy to celebrate its 35th anniversary. I assume from the art that it’s inspired by the classic Solar Striker.

a block with eyes in the middle of 4 pink blocks in a maze

Pusherfish (Itch.io) is a nice little browser game where you push blocks to cross gaps but can also change your character size to cross larger gaps or fit in small areas

We have a new batch of Domino Club games! Domino Club is a collective that anonymously develops games together in game jams and released in large batches, each containing an assortment of experimental games. This time it’s the Tongues Jam (Itch.io).

illustration of a woman looking down.

Phoenix Springs (Steam) is a point-and-click adventure that was in development for a while and I’m happy to see it out there! It’s a neo-noir game where you investigate where your missing brother is. I haven’t played it yet but reviews seem to be positive and the art is beautiful.

Pompeii, Bubbleland (Itch.io) is a short surreal poem created for Ludum Dare and inspired by museum tours. I loved it but just a heads up but it has some (intentional) flickering and weird effects that might be hard on the eyes for some folks. Go check out the other games by Sand Gardeners too!

top down view of someone walking through the woods in a retro-looking game

Traveller’s Hymm (Steam) is a free rpg that was just released on Steam. I haven’t played it yet but it sounded pretty cool from Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s post about it.

black and white art of a tower and little person standing at the bottom

MonoScale (Itch.io) is a browser game featuring great 1-bit art that reminds me of the Macintosh, and a grappling hook. I’m awful at it but I think it’s a fun game. Everyone likes grappling hooks.

What I’m Up To (2024-10-09)

~ mpklamerus ~ 1 Comment

I should have just called these devlogs because that’s what they are. Ah well. It’s been a fairly productive week for me. I’m feeling a little under the weather, although not nearly as bad as I thought this morning when I just drank some coffee and realized my migraine was coming from cutting down on caffeine too quickly. Oops.

If you’ve sent me info about the Cohost spreadsheet or buttons to add to my page, apologies for the delay. Between that and just being really busy, I haven’t had time getting around to it. But that’s something I’m hoping to fix later this week

Work on the adventure game continues. I don’t think I can’t really show anything yet since it’s a contract project, apologies, but I’m happy with how quickly I’m making progress. I think all the backgrounds are 90% done, with some tweaking in the art still to be done, so once I plug them all into Adventure Game Studio and having everything mapped out, I should be able to navigate through the entire game. I know “I just need to build the whole game and it’s done” sounds ridiculous but importing art into AGS isn’t too bad so I’m excited. I was getting kind of tired of doing art, and the room art is the biggest chunk of art required for the game, so I’m excited to get this stuff implemented so it will feel more like a real game.

I believe I have most of the character art done too, so I just need to do the one or two people left, inventory, and GUI and I should be all set there? That’s kinda nice. Obviously there’s still a lot of iterative work to be done, but I have the basic game design and puzzles done too, so I can kinda just have fun writing jokes for the next two months.

Another good thing about this project is that it will help me get a lot better at Adventure Game Studio so I will be able to do more complex things in the future. WilcoWeb has been working on a framework for AGS that will help in creation of doing games inspired by Sierra’s Manhunter franchise, which is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, so maybe that will be my next project. Then again, I was working on clay games and should work on those more too. Or combine the two. I’m so bad at focusing on one thing at a time.

Ypsi Freak Fest 2024 and The Great Album Project (2024-10-08)

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment
a big circle with colorful half circules protruding from it. It's the cover to the Hohokum soundtrack

Listened to a lot of records this week AND went to the Ypsi Freak Fest. I was only able to attend the first day but it was great. Most of the bands I wanted to see were outdoors and it was free. Got to see a few musicians and bands I’ve wanted to see for a while like Dr. Pete Larson and Tyvek, and discovered new bands like Pet Me, Golden Feelings, and Tanager. If you want to discover a ton of bands mostly local to Ann Arbor, you can check out the list here. Apparently there was some discourse on Saturday when a band pulled out at the last second, citing that the word Freak is problematic, protesting an art grant from the city to pay bands and how it’s not DIY, and privately messaging other bands to pull out, and IMO they should touch grass.

That aside, great festival! It was an incredible experience seeing a band like Tyvek play on a mostly empty street at night to like 20-30 people at most. I don’t go to concerts very often these days because I have 3 kids and don’t want covid, so when I feel safe enough to go it’s an absolute delight and I treasure every minute of live music.

My journey to listen to every record in my collection continues:

The Chameleons: What Does Anything Mean? Basically (1985, YouTube)
Great album. I guess they were doing the punctuation in the middle of album titles thing before 00s era bands. Recommended if you like 80s alternative bands like early New Order. Not that they sound exactly like them but I think that’s the closest comparison point I can think of. I feel like Strange Times or Script of the Bridge are considered to be better but this is my favorite one by them. I think I originally picked it up about 10-12 years ago online, probably from Discogs.

Everything but the Girl: Fuse (2023, YouTube)
After a 20+ hiatus, EBTG finally released a new album. I always thought it was funny that the band was considered broken up since it’s a married couple that has been living together this whole time. I think this may be their best album? EBTG is weird in that I think they generally get better with every album, which feels pretty rare and it’s incredibly rare for a band that has been around for this long. Tracey Thorn sounds amazing, I love the effects they do in some parts to make her voice sound messed up, the writing is up to the standards of previous albums, and the bloops and beats are better than ever.

The Mountain Goats: The Jordan Lake Sessions: Vol. 1 and 2 (2020, Bandcamp)
4 LPs! Not essential listening I suppose but as a long time fan it’s been very fun hearing live-ish (no audience) versions of the songs with a different lineup of the band than when most of them were first recorded. A lot of the new versions have a jazzier sound, which is a fun take on them.

The Faint: Dance Macabre (2001, YouTube)
It’s fine I guess. I loved the album when I first listened to it around 2007 but it actually feels pretty dated to me now and hasn’t aged in a way that I find charming. It doesn’t help that the album feels very front loaded to me with the hits.

The Innocence Mission: See You Tomorrow (2020, Bandcamp)
The Innocence Mission is a long running band from the 90s but I believe the core of the group are married couple Don and Karen Peris. They’re kind of indie/alternative folk music I guess? This album feels more stripped down compared to previous albums but I don’t think that’s a problem. Karen’s singing is still lovely and I think the writing is just as good as ever. I’ve bought two physical albums from the band on Bandcamp and both times I got a really nice note from Karen thanking me for buying the album.

Benoît Pioulard: Caverning (2018, Bandcamp)
This was a nice little 7″ I got for free because he was giving them away at his show at the Ypsi Freak Fest. I assume he just wanted to be rid of them since he performs under a different name now but it’s really a nice duo of songs. Both are ambient but the b-side is quite a bit noiser. I recommend his current project Golden Feelings if you want more ambient from him.

Pet Me: Abomination (2022, Bandcamp)
This was another single that I bought during the Ypsilanti Freak Fest. An interesting thing about this one was that it’s a square? Like the grooves are still a circle but it’s like they didn’t cut off the extra material. I wonder if it’s cheaper that way. The record must be cheaper to produce because getting my record player to play on the grooves was also pretty finnicky. That said, I think this is some very good punk rock. This is a band from Lansing that I wasn’t aware of until the festival but I’ll have to pick up some of their other stuff.

Various Artists: Hohokum soundtrack (2014, Bandcamp)
This is the soundtrack to the video game Hohokum. It’s been a while since I played the game. I remember enjoying it quite a bit and think it’s probably something I could revisit with my kids. But even if you have no interest in ever playing the game, it’s a very good collection of songs if you enjoy more uplifting and generally relaxing electronic music. The album compiles various artists on the Ghostly label and serves as a very good snapshot of who was on the label at the time.

Mint Mile: Heartroller (2018, Bandcamp)
I’ve reviewed Mint Mile albums a couple times here before. It’s the current project of Silkworm/Bottomless Pit’s Tim Midyett. Before they started releasing full length albums, they did a series of four EPs and this is my favorite one. It’s just a really solid set of 4 whistful rock songs and I think the steel pedal guitar in these songs sounds great.