DAWN CHORUS is an upcoming interactive fiction game that recently had a demo put online after being shown at ALT: GAMES 2026. The 30 minute demo tells a story about two friends and a band named Dawn Chorus while the world is falling apart. I loved how it uses links that pop up new windows to expand on the world the game is set in, and the art and music do a fantastic job of contributing to the melancholy feeling of trying to live your life while the world is ending. I think the influences section is worth reading too. The sad feeling the game has reminded me a lot of Kentucky Route Zero so it was fun to see that listed after I had played through the demo. It also lists a few DOMINO CLUB games if you want to see the Jupiter Engine and make a game yourself that uses the popup window functionality this game has.
Something that caught me by surprise was the brief mention of the Windsor Hum. I always get excited about things local to me appearing in video games so that was a fun reference. It was a humming noise that people in Windsor, Ontario could hear from 2011 to 2020 and probably came from a factory on an inland between Canada and the USA but was never completely confirmed. You can read more about it on Wikipedia. There’s also a song by Detroit post-punk band Protomartyr that references it.
There’s not much else I can say about the demo without spoiling it but I think it was very well written and I’m looking forward to the full game.
DAWN CHORUS [DEMO] can be played in the browser on Itch.io.
As a longtime (3 years) fan of Wavey Games, I was very excited to see that they just released a new game. The Dissident is a short pay-what-you-want first-person point-and-click adventure game where you must assist someone escaping the authorities by helping her get into her own dreams by fixing and using an altered tape recorder. It’s a very surreal plot and the whole game follows this vibe but not at the expense of the puzzles, which all felt very fair. They were the right level of challenge for this type of game, where I did have to pause and think for a minute but nothing too tough, which I think is good in a game like this where the draw for me is exploring the world. The game’s puzzles also provide a few points where it makes the most sense to map something or write some notes, which I enjoy doing in adventure games.
One thing I really enjoy in the works of Wavey Games is the use of retro aesthetics that people generally don’t think about. Their previous games Melon Head and Celestial Coffee Quest (highly recommend both) both used an EGA-palette and this one has a CGA-palette. Even though I considered the CGA colors to be incredibly ugly at the time when DOS shareware games were coming out, it’s fun seeing it intentionally selected for the look of a game and I think it’s used very well here. Most of the game has a nice jazzy soundtrack too, which all fits in very well with the weird but relaxed mystery vibe the game is going for. It’s just a nice little adventure game that you can play in a sitting so go check it out and then play some of the other adventures by Wavey Games if you like this one.
The Dissident is available on Itch.io for Windows and Mac.
Lady at the Costco Gave Me Her Extra Hot Dog Soda Combo is a short browser game about exactly what it says in the title. You fill up your soda and put toppings on your hotdog and enjoy a wonderful song at the end. I don’t believe I’ve played any games by hubol before but I loved this one. The animation is a delight and vaguely reminds me of the squigglevision we used to see in Dr. Katz. Even if you’ve never been to a Costco, I recommend it. Maybe one day we’ll get a sequel about the Costco Chicken Bake.
Lady at the Costco Gave Me Her Extra Hot Dog Soda Combo can be played for free on Itch.io
Anonymous game collective DOMINO CLUB has published a new set of games for their Questions and Answers jam (or if you’re in the UK, go here). At the moment there are 8 submissions for the theme Questions and Answers in a variety of forms such as visual novels, adventure games, interactive fiction, writing in PDFs, and more. If you follow the blog or me on social media then you’ll know I get excited about the jams because there’s always a few things I fall in love with and I love the experimentation that happens in these jams since they are semi-anonymous. When the games are published, the developer names are not listed however they can reveal themselves at a later date (two weeks later? I forgot).
My guy made with the character creation tool The Killer
These jams happen a few times a year so if you haven’t played any of their games before, consider poking around their Itch.io page, clicking on a jam theme that sounds interesting, and playing a few of the entries. Some of the games are more approachable than others so I recommend trying a few if you haven’t looked before, but I think DOMINO CLUB is doing some of the most interesting work in indie games at the moment and at the very least I think folks interested in experimental games and interactive fiction should give them a look.
Anyway, if you haven’t noticed already, I had stopped posting roundups a while ago and I think I’m deciding to wind those down. I just suddenly lost interest in doing them since they were getting so time consuming and kept putting off doing another one because I didn’t have the enthusiasm to do another big post, which probably means it’s time to slow down on them. What I’m probably going to do instead is just doing individual posts on whatever indie games I’ve been enjoying. It means less games will get mentioned but the ones that do will not get buried in a giant post and will have more to say about them other than “well, this looks neat” so I don’t really think it’s a loss. Anyway, just wanted to give a heads up in case you’re read them and wondered why there’s suddenly more posts about individual games. I think it will work better anyway and it will be more fun for me, which is the whole reason I have a website in the first place.
Go check out your local library! Yes they have lots of great books, but they may offer some of the following: music, movies, video games, board games, graphic novels, digital services for streaming, tools, spaces for your local hobbyist group, a place to chill, and more!
Happy Easter, here’s some screenshots taken from the Egghead Software 1993 Annual Report which you can read right here. Apologies for the lack of activity lately. Burnout, school, and getting sick for a bit (nothing serious) means that I just haven’t had the time to post anything here or have any time for indie game roundups. Anyway, enjoy some old pictures
Doing a quick one of these because every other month there’s a post on Bluesky that goes viral about how the old internet was better and doesn’t exist anymore. This isn’t true! You can still post on forums, use RSS, and start blogs. In fact, I would argue that all of these stuff is easier to do than ever. Anyway, here’s some websites.
Did you know the Ann Arbor District Library has a blog that regularly covers local music and has a RSS feed? I didn’t know about the feed until recently. Here’s their latest roundup of local music.
Still a big fan of the Morning Music blog, which regularly posts about songs I never heard before.
Technology
Computer Chronicles Revisited writes about a very, very early episode, thought to be lost, where they talk about the Logo language, which I was unaware of until now.
After being down for a few months, The Video Game Soda Machine Project is back up. Come look at thousands of pictures of soda machines in video games going all the way back to the early 80’s.
The Video Game History Foundation freed Cookie’s Bustle! If you ever want to hear about how no one could ever stream or upload videos of the game Cookie’s Bustle and what the VGHF did to fix that, I recommend reading that.
WilcoWeb has been doing an outstanding job documenting every Space Quest fan game, including some incredibly obscure ones like Roger Wilco vs Buzz Buzzer Bizz.
I always love to see a new blog or website starting. The Bo-Zone will be reviewing games that streamer BogusMeatFactory plays and recapping his thoughts, starting with Inca.
Syl has another indie game roundup. Read these! They’re a billion times better than mine.
Renkon recaps their own post better than I ever could so I’ll just copy that. “Why does everyone in Hawaiʻi speak Japanese? For the same reason everyone only ever talks about the latest AAA video games, which is to say: to experience reality, you need to leave your bubble and talk to other people.“
I also highly recommend following or subscribing to The Bathysphere. It’s a weekly blog of roundups and essay writing. It’s usually focused more on games but they talk about plenty of things. Their latest is Expedition 49.
That’s it for today. I hope you found a new website to add to your RSS feed reader and are having a nice weekend.
Developer: Grace Bruxner, Thomas Bowker Publisher: worm club, SUPERHOT PRESENTS Year: 2018 Genre: Adventure System: Mac
Frog Detective 1: The Haunted Island is a short first-person adventure game where you are a detective who is also a frog and need to investigate reports of a ghost haunting the island. My oldest has been playing the series on her own and her younger sister wanted to see them so we just played through the first one together. I’m glad I got to revisit it because I liked it more than I remembered and my daughter loved it. I had always liked the game but I had some small gripes about the game that were much more minor than I remembered.
The gameplay is very simple. You walk around and talk to various characters on the island, asking them about the ghost, other folks, and if they need help with anything. You continue doing this and helping them with their needs and it eventually leads you to the end of the mystery and game. The puzzles are very simple and there’s no fail states, which may frustrate some experienced adventure gamers, but the focus of the game is on the humor and art and I think that makes it a great intro to adventure games for folks. It’s also fun exploring the space that Grace created, which is filled with a lot of fun little details to look at if you aren’t trying to rush through the game.
The gripes that I had with the game before still remain but are much more minor than I remember. The puzzle solving is a bit repetitive since it’s mostly dialog puzzles you solve by going from person to person but again, I think it’s mostly fine since it’s not meant to be a challenging game anyway. The other issue I have is that the humor does start to feel repetitive towards the end as well, but the game is very short (45-60 minutes) that once I had started to feel that way, the game was getting to wrap up anyway. It was also much easier to overlook since I played it with my 6 year old and she was having a great time walking around and talking to everyone. I think playing the game with someone who doesn’t have Gamer Brain really helped me appreciate that it’s a game filled with lovely artwork and that I should just take my time exploring this space instead of viewing it as a series of conversation puzzles to solve.
I have to imagine that anyone who is reading this already knows about the series and has either played it or never will, but maybe this recommendation will slightly nudge you towards checking it out or replaying the game.
I was looking through the notes app on my mac and just saw this big list of games in one doc. I’m not sure why. Given the amount of student games on here, these may have been notes I took of the indie games conference thing that Lawrence Tech University in Southfield was doing at the time. It was by no means a big event but it’s been 7 years (the notes are from April 21, 2019), so I thought I would dump this all here with any commentary I have, and a games historian can stumble across this in 10 years and pick out the interesting bits. I don’t think this will be of interest to many folks but I think it’s good to have it available anyway. The titles of the games are in bold and my commentary is in unbolded text.
Some of these folks are still making games, some not, and it looks like a few of the students here ended up going into the games industry so that’s lovely to see too. Not going to name them because that feels like doxing to me even if they’re success stories, but I still love to see people doing well.
MageQuit is a multiplayer game where you duel each other as little wizards. A very fun game. I believe at the time this was in Early Access since the release date on Steam is October. I think it did well judging from the number of Steam reviews and it getting releases on consoles. It’s two brothers who make up the studio, I’m not sure if they’re still in Michigan, and at the time of this writing they’re working on a new game, MageQuit Dungeons.
Another cool one. They created a visual novel about dragons called Golden Treasure (Steam/Itch.io) that I would recommend. I think there were attempts to make a follow up to this but judging from the last news posting being in 2023, I don’t think this will happen. Hopefully I’m wrong.
Pretty sure this one was a student game. I know I played it but don’t really remember my feelings on it. But since my memory is a bit crap in general, I don’t think that should reflect on the game. Given that it’s a twin stick shooter and looks nice, I should play it again.
Another student game. The way I remember the game dev program at Lawrence Tech working is that all the students would split off into groups and make games. From looking at the credits for this one, maybe they could do solo projects as well?
Oh hey, this one is still in development! RAD, which changed its name to RAD-venture after Double Fine’s RAD was announced, is a collect-a-thon. I backed the Kickstarter for this….last year? Maybe the year before? It’s one of those games where it will come out eventually but I haven’t followed it closely enough to know when. But the early builds I’ve played, including the ones from this time seven years ago, have all been great. It doesn’t seem like there’s a demo currently available but you can play the student game version here. The student game version was not through Lawrence Tech.
I remember playing this one! This one was a student game that I remember liking. I haven’t heard from Spencer in a while but I know they made a lot of other lovely games and interactive fiction that you should check out on Itch.
BroBots! Another one that wasn’t by student, I remember liking this one quite a bit. It’s kind of a twin-stick shooter co-op game. I think the studio planned on doing more but I don’t believe that happened. I do remember it originally being $2, it’s the only game I’ve bought on GameJolt, but at some point they made it pay-what-you-want for everyone to enjoy.
Oh hey, one I actually remember playing. It’s an arcade space sim that was made by a large-ish team. I still have a little pin from this one. The teams were encouraged to make little things to give away at their table, I assume to give them experience tabling for cons, so I have various stickers and pins from some of these games. Maybe I can update this post later with photos of some of them.
[MEMORY_LEAK]
Had to double check with the dev who was working on this. It’s still alive and in development. It’s a turn based rpg inspired by Paper Mario. All I had in my notes were a twitter link but the dev has moved to Bluesky years ago at this point. No Bluesky account for this game but they do have one for their other game in development, Admit One.
Oh hey, one I really know. Steven co-founded local indie game collective Locally Sourced with me so yes, I know he’s still around making stuff. WaveCrash!! eventually got a release on Steam if you only want to play games on that platform. He’s currently working on a puzzle game.
I don’t know if this one is still being actively developed but if you poke around the page you can see the developer has done a bit and I know he’s very active with local Warhammer and other tabletop communities.
Stardust Hyperdrive
This was a top down arcade game for the Android. It doesn’t seem like it’s available anymore which is too bad because I remember liking it. I never had an Android device so I was always hoping it would get ported to other stuff but I don’t think it did. You can already read more about the game on the dev’s site, where it also lists the soundtrack. I also made a MobyGames page for it.
Hey, I remember this one. It’s a top-down runner-like arcade game where you dodge asteroids and lasers being shot at your ship from the ships chasing you. Josh is still involved with the local game dev scene, I think through IGDA Detroit.
Great game (also on Itch) and it eventually led to other projects like Cellular Harvest. Nate now works at New Blood, where he works on games like Gloomwood. This one wasn’t a student project. The showcase/convention also had commercial games and projects by non-students there.
I’m not actually sure if this one is still in development, doing game dev as a hobby while also being a parent is tricky, but I really liked what is there. He’s also made other games on his solo Itch page.
There was also a System Shock mod at this thing from a non-student. I’m not sure how that happened but I love it. I tracked down the mod and it’s called Lazarus Decλy. My notes had a link to a Facebook page but that’s no longer active.
Student game Misadventure
There’s some others that weren’t in my notes but I found through some digging on Itch. Some more student games at the showcase include:
Misadventure is a short platformer where you are on a pirate ship. I remember it doing some fun physics stuff and the team just being very happy that folks were checking out their game they made.
Isa’s Edda is a 3D platformer I know I did not play, but some of the same folks went on to make a first person adventure game Farewell Call that I remember liking.
Saviour is a cool one where you are navigating a space in pitch black and relying entirely on sound.
Prison of the Damned is a first-person puzzle student game that I remember being at the showcase but did not have time to play.
I do remember really liking Crime and Nunishment, a top-down game where you are a nun shooting at nuns. It had a really cool art style that slightly reminds me of the 90s fps ZPC. I have a sticker from their booth.
Crime and NunishmentAesthetisphereVaporstride
Another pair of projects that I didn’t have in my notes but suddenly remembered were the pair of first-person vaporwave. My memory is that it started as one but then had creative differences and split off into their own projects. So here are A E S T H E T I S P H E R E and Vaporstride for you to play and enjoy.
Anyway, those are my notes. Like I said, this is probably going to be boring to most folks but I wanted to document it anyway. Feel free to correct me if I’m misremembering this stuff or left any games out. These are my memories of a games event from a long time ago. I just thought it might be good to preserve this stuff somewhere. A long time ago I made this Itch collection of local student games and some of them may have been in this showcase as well.
