Much like Friday’s indie game post, this is going to be a pretty massive post of blog posts that I enjoyed looking at this week. I’ll also sort this one into different categories and maybe you’ll find new things to add to your RSS feed reader. I’ve been using Inoreader, which has worked very well for me since I can also access my unread list from my phone. One day soon I’ll do a complete dump of all the RSS feeds I’m currently subscribed to so people can maybe find new things, or yell at me if I need to add their site. Always feel free to recommend blogs you enjoy following, or your own, in the comments.
Books/Writing
Bez is an interactive fiction writer I’m a fan of so it’s exciting to me that he’s going to start reviewing self-published books he finds on Itch.io. This week he reviews Memory Leak by M. Kirin.
Zandraposting talks about the Trans Fiction Bundle 2024 that has just gone live on Itch.io. Six stories for $10.
Dev Logs
I love hearing about what people have been working so there’s quite a few that follow. Here are the updates I read this week:
Eniko announces her Bismuth VM and also how it will handle memory management and safety.
Brianna gives an update on her RPG and asks for playtesters.
Meredith Gran talks about writing systems in her sequel to the point-and-click adventure Perfect Tides.
David Lindsey Pittman plans the next steps for Eldritch 2.
Photography
Nat posts photos of almost every cat she met this year on someplace elsewhere.
Adam Le Doux posts photos taken with the Game Boy Camera.
Nicky Flowers has green photos.
Tabletop RPGs
Tot’s Character Compendium is a new blog that is focused entirely on the character creation process in various tabletop rpgs. This is always one of the most interesting parts of a ttrpg to me so I’m excited for this one. The first post covers character creation in the F.E.A.R. inspired game FIST – Ultra Edition.
Clayton has launched a monthly post series on his Ghost newsletter about various posts and stuff he’s into in tabletop rpgs. It’s not just blog posts but it highlights a few of those too.
Hark at Them! is a new blog focused on reviewing indie ttrpgs. This week they’ve reviewed Burnborough and Stealing Your Heart.
Aggregate Cognizance talks about how to have lying NPCs in your tabletop rpg.
Prismatic Wasteland recommends some gift ideas for ttrpg fans that aren’t just dice.
The Fail Forward blog talks about death in ttrpgs and lethal-lite rules.
Goblin Punch is building a Monster Tome.
I’ve enjoyed following along with blogs doing Lore24.
Technology
Mike writes about his first computer on The Works of Egan.
Not sure if this should go under technology but Katherine Morayati talks about the dead internet company Kozmo in her postcardposting series.
The creator of classic Macintosh games like Glypha and Glider talks about the need for having media offline and local on Engineers Need Art.
Anil Dash goes into the many reasons why you shouldn’t use Substack and provides alternatives and platforms to move to. I fully agree btw. They show their ass every month in various awful ways and no one should use them.
badger trebuchet diagram no. 17 talks about ancient Prodigy banner ads.
Reno Project announces that the Club Caribe server source code has been found and how it happened.
fasterthanlime talks about highlighted code in slides.
Social Media
Enough people had thoughts on social media that I had to make my own subcategory for it.
Platinum Tulip talks about the experience of using Bluesky and I think it’s how I feel about the place too.
Christine goes into great detail about if Bluesky is decentralized or not, but isn’t weird about it like a lot of people would be.
damien has thoughts on Mastodon and the search for a “new Twitter”
Video Games
Andrew Plotkin remembers game designer Kory Heath and links to other pages where people are posting their memories of him.
Broken Words, a huge Dragon Age fan, recommends the new game in the series.
Stuffed Wombat talks about the concept of Density Decay in video games.
Indie Games
Indie Tsushin is a site focused on indie games and developers from Japan. This week I’m highlighting their review of the visual novel/adventure game Monstrous Park.
Freya talks about continuing to work on the Videotome series of game engines.
It’s not really a blog but Gamers with Glasses talks about some of the games from Steam Next Fest.
I Am a Rat is a blog that recommends a game on Itch or IFDB nearly every day. I am linking to their latest review, Wirewalk, but they’re all good.
Michael Brough has a blog post on why he’s crowdfunding his latest game 868-BACK.
The Museum of Screens recommends the browser game Thicket.
Weird Fucking Games also regularly recommends indie games. This time it’s Sliding Messages
Thinky Third Thursday does a monthly recommendation of indie puzzle games.
Retro Games
The Swedish Games is a blog focused on Swedish games history. This week they’re talking about unused graphics in the game Kosmopolska.
The original code for the Macintosh game ChipWits has become open source and the designer talks about the history of the game too.
Ephemeral Enigmas reviews Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters.
Renga in Blue is attempting to play every single adventure game in order of release. This week it’s the 1982 text adventure Castle Adventure.
A lot of people talked about why they won’t cover the new Game Boy clone (good!). Wavelengths is one of them.
startmenu praises the Doom WAD Going Down Turbo.
The Digital Antiquarian talks about the 90s post-Infocom era of Interactive Fiction.
The Kinsie talks about the horrible PC Accelerator and digs deep into a feature in the first issue about Quake 2 killers.
The Good Old Days reviews the 1988 ZX Spectrum action adventure game Where Time Stood Still.
Other Topics
Videodante talks about Francis Bacon and creating art in horrible times.
Joe Siegler, most famous for his work at 3D Realms, reviews various albums and tv shows on his personal blog and I liked his review of Pink Floyd’s album The Division Bell. I’m not even a fan of the album but I love hearing people talk about why they love music. Personal blogs are just cool!
Nuxx.net talks about signage they made about 10 years ago for not riding muddy dirt trails in SE Michigan, how it has taken off elsewhere, and the files for it for people to make their own since it’s Creative Commons.
Alex posts fond memories of his dog Lacy as well as some photos of a good dog.
Yaffle talks about 90s Panini sticker albums.
Not Blogs
Here’s some things on the World Wide Web that aren’t blogs but are still good.
Firehose3D presents Bluesky posts in a way that looks like some kind of Johnny Mnemonic intro crawl.
IMG_0001: “Between 2009 and 2012, iPhones had a built-in “Send to YouTube” button in the Photos app. Many of these uploads kept their default IMG_XXXX filenames, creating a time capsule of raw, unedited moments from random lives. Inspired by Ben Wallace, I made a bot that crawled YouTube and found 5 million of these videos! Watch them below, ordered randomly.”
Lately I’ve had some nostalgia for early YouTube where people didn’t have the algorithm figured out and video were a lot less polished, so this has been a lot of fun to play with.
I really liked this review of adventure game Phoenix Springs
A new issue of beestung is out! beestung is a quarterly micro-magazine of non-binary writers.
Aerial_Knight has posted the publishing agreement template he uses.
Adventure Game Hotspot has published an interview with Mikael Nyqvist, the creator of the Carol Reed series. I’ve been fascinated with this series for a long time because it’s now at 20 games but the games are only published through his site. He just has no interest in using Steam and Itch and I kinda love it.
Reactor talks about how it’s a really good time to be loud about the books you love.
Oh god, you actually read to the end of this? I promise that next week will be smaller. This got a bit out of control.