Month: July 2025

Devil’s Hideout

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Developer: Cosmic Void
Publisher: Cosmic Void
Year: 2024
Genre: Adventure

a man and a woman talking at night outside of a hospital and the man saying "this hospital is strangely silent for a medical facility"

Devil’s Hideout is a short horror point-and-click adventure by Cosmic Void about a woman searching for her missing sister, after discovering that cultists faked her death. While it’s in the horror genre, I feel like it’s going for more of a schlocky 80’s horror film that you would find on VHS at your local video store. That probably sounds like a criticism of the game but I absolutely loved that it had that feel. It never scared me but the vibes are very good and fun. I think the excellent pixel art and the colors used in the art help contribute to this mood and if you’ve played Cosmic Void’s games before, you won’t be surprised that the art in this is good.

If anything, I wish it had pulled away even more from trying to be scary. There’s a few points where it tries to do jump scares but these didn’t work for me and the atmosphere in the game was already very good.

The plot in this is pretty straightforward but I didn’t have an issue with that at all. I wouldn’t have minded if it was longer and had more time to develop characters, but it’s a smaller budget game and I was perfectly fine with the length, which took me about three hours to complete. It has multiple endings too, which I don’t know if I’ve seen in a Cosmic Void game before, so it took some time to go through both of those as well.

The gameplay is what you would expect from a first-person point-and-click adventure. You go from room to room, grabbing items and using them elsewhere, etc. There’s some pixel hunting that I found frustrating until I realized the game has a hotspot finder, which I always appreciate seeing in adventure games. I don’t think finding the right pixel to hunt is challenging in an interesting way at all and I’d rather not have to go through that. The mouse cursor will also change to a different color when there’s nothing else to say or do with an object is very nice and helps eliminate some of the busy work too. There’s some little mini games in here too like a Blackjack game and variation on the Lights Out puzzle game and while it can be a little silly that have that stuff pop up in an adventure game, they’re easy and add some variety too. I think they were fun.

If I did have any real criticisms of the game, it would be that there’s a few moments where the game is really fussy about how you must interact with things in a certain order before some objects will give you the info you need. Like looking at a painting before clicking on a tv to get essential information from a report. It’s not a puzzle or anything you would really know to do and the only way around it is to just click on everything repeatedly. It’s one of my biggest pet peeves in adventure games so it was a little frustrating to see here.

That gripe aside, I liked the game quite a bit and would recommend it if you’re looking for something with an 80s horror vibe. Cosmic Void’s games have always been very enjoyable to me and this one is no exception.

Devil’s Hideout is available on Itch.io and Steam.

Tex Murphy: Mouselook Edition

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Someone has patched in mouselook controls to Under a Killing Moon! If you’ve ever played the original game, you know that it has kind of a goofy control scheme. I love the game but it takes some time to get used to and can sometimes make it tricky to recommend to people. The post below includes a video of what the patch does and it looks great, but also incredibly weird if you’ve played the original game. But again, probably also a big improvement on what it had before. Nice job!

I got sick of the bonkers control scheme in Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon and patched in mouselook + WASD.(This footage looks shocking if you've suffered through the normal velocity-based mouse controls, honest!)github.com/moralrecordi…

— moralrecordings (@moralrecordings.bsky.social) 2025-07-20T14:50:19.474Z

Blog Roundup (July 20, 2025)

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Outdoor Concert Summer continued last night with me seeing Yo La Tengo on the front lawn of the Detroit Institute of Arts last night. It was great! I only kinda sorta know their stuff but they played all my favorite stuff by them and I loved it, aside from the rain during the last few songs. Even aside from the whole pandemic thing, I don’t know if I can really do indoor concerts anymore. They’re just kind of a pain and I just prefer being able to move around more freely and I can hear better too. I think I’m just getting old. Here’s some things I liked reading. Use a RSS feed reader and tell your friends.

Video Games

Last week Steam started banning porn games due to pressure from Mastercard and Visa and this was stupid. No Escape has a post about it. It turns out there was also a post about it on Waypoint as well by Ana Valens. I have gigantic issues with the new Waypoint and haven’t been reading it, but it turns out it didn’t matter because Ana has said on bluesky that Vice just deleted the writing about it anyway. If you want to read the archive about it, you can do so here.

I’m glad Uppercut is back and posting articles again. Here’s one about Slay the Princess

Wraithkal keeps doing nice #ScreenshotSaturday roundups of posts on Mastodon.

Indie Hell Zone has good things to say on Puzzmo. I don’t do the NYT crossword puzzle but I keep hearing this proposed as a nice alternative to that.

Harris Powell-Smith has an advice column for writing interactive fiction.

Tech

I don’t even use Notion but I think Dante has sold me on using Obsidian. I just kinda have a jumble of Google Docs, which seems like a bad idea. I’ve already been pulling away from using Gmail and have a Fastmail account, which I really like.

Dev Logs

Andrew Plotkin wrote about Hadean Lands (great IF game) being in a Boston indies bundle on Steam and I think more people should just get involved with their local dev community and do stuff like this.

I really like Julia’s Crimson Gazette, her newsletter about the games she’s been working on and I think it’s worth subscribing to. It mentions Chance’s Lucky Escape, which I blogged about here and think it’s worth picking up if you have a Playdate.

Cyningstan has posted an update about releasing a new roguelike for DOS. I got to playtest it and while I’m bad at these types of games, I think it’s really good. It’s not a fault of the game, which I found very easy to pickup and start playing, plus it’s free.

Indie Game Roundup (July 18, 2025)

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This week it would mean a lot to me if you could support the GoFundMe for Roberta Vaughan. She is going through a horrific medical crisis right now and any support, no matter the size, would help her family. She’s done so much for many other folks in the adventure game community and it’s time for all of us to do what we can to help.

Well, there’s no way to really make a transition from that to games talk, but here we go. Here’s some recent games I was excited about I guess!

Video Games

This year continues to be packed with so many adventure games. Ghost Town (Steam) is a VR game (by the developers of The Room?) where you are a ghost hunter with supernatural abilities looking for her brother in London during the 80’s.

screenshot from the drifter of a man talking to another man outside of a tunnel

The Drifter (Steam) is a point-and-click adventure game that I’ve been waiting for quite a while. You play as a drifter (of course) that’s been murdered and then brought back to life. I really enjoyed Powerhoof’s games, including their games on Itch.io that use the PowerQuest plugin for Unity, a plugin for making point-and-click adventure games that is meant to work in a similar way to Adventure Game Studio.

Signs of Life (Steam) looks like a creepy and surreal mystery game available for free.

The newest and final season of Neurocracy has started! It’s a free (although they take donations) interactive fiction game where you explore a wiki set in the future and uncover mysteries, all while interacting with the rest of the community on a forum and roleplaying in character.

screenshot from super 10 pin of a floating bowling lane next to a floating stone head that has a sign saying "bowl"

Super 10 Pin (Itch.io) is a new bowling game from Modus Interactive. I played the demo and was incredibly impressed with how it captures the feel of a Nintendo 64 game. It’s not on Steam yet but buying it on Itch.io will give you a key.

Speaking of which, Steam has started removing adult games from their store because of bullying from Mastercard and Visa. Other people are already doing better writing elsewhere on why Steam should stand up to this but you know who isn’t removing them? Itch.io. EnbyKaiju put together an Itch list of some of their favorite queer adult games. Some of my favorite games, adult or not, are on there and I think it’s worth a look.

screenshot from cyclopean of a first person view looking at a monster with sharp teeth and four arms

Cyclopean: The Great Abyss (Steam/Itch.io) is a CRPG inspired by games like Ultima and Questron where you switch between two views, a top-down view for navigating an overworld and a first-person view anytime you enter a dungeon. I think the retro aesthetic looks very nice too.

Kaizen: A Factory Story (Steam) is a new puzzle automation game by the original Zachtronics team. I’m not smart enough for these games but I sure do respect them.

The Necromancer’s Tale (Steam) is an isometric rpg with tactical combat where you play as a Necromancer (of course) seeking revenge. I also appreciate that when they bring up how much they wrote for the game, they point out that they did not use generative AI at all. I suppose we’ll be seeing that a lot from now on.

screenshot from sunfluffs of someone laying on a capybara by the sea

Sunfluffs (Steam/Itch.io) is a relaxing game in Early Access focused on exploration and platforming, with no fail states and has Gamecube controller support.

Occlude (Steam) is a solitaire-like in the form of a cosmic horror narrative puzzle game.

Tabletop RPGs

This free Skyrim TTRPG on Itch.io is meant to emulate the gameplay of the video game while trying to eliminate as much of the grind as possible.

MAC Attack: Mobile Armour Colossus is a mecha miniature tabletop wargame from Bastionland Press that is currently seeking crowdfunding. It’s already complete so this would just be to fund a print run of the rules.

Glitter and Grit (Itch.io) is a Laser & Feelings and Honey Heist hack in which you are trainees in a Kpop survival show, trying to debut in a Kpop group. It is available as Pay-What-You-Want.

Alone on a Journey thoughts

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cover of Alone on a Journey, showing windows to a city, a view of space, and a forest

Developer: Takuma Okada
Year: 2021
Genre: Solo TTRPG

Alone on a Journey is a collection of three solo tabletop rpgs with a focus on exploration. The collection is divided into three games. Alone Among the Stars is a solo game where you explore outer space and check out various planets. Alone in the Ancient City has you exploring the districts of an old city. Both of these were previously released games along with a new game, Alone Among the Shifting Trees, which has you exploring a mysterious forest and documenting the strange objects you find there. Each game is played with a journal, a standard deck of 52 cards, and a six-sided die. The three games have slight mechanical differences but the core part of each game is having you draw cards from the deck for prompts to describe the object you just found.

The collection also contains tips for making your own hack, or mod, of these games. The tabletop rpg community is very friendly towards people making their own versions of games and being allowed to distribute them, and the author of this game even put together a list on Itch of games based on Alone Among the Stars, featuring a couple of mine.

The book itself has a very clean and easily readable layout, with cute illustrations between each game to help provide some separation and know where they start and end.

I’m assuming that much better writing about the games exist elsewhere but I just played Along Among the Shifting Trees and wanted to use this post as an excuse to praise all three games. The three games are similar but even outside of the different themes I think there are enough differences mechanically to make it worth playing all three. They’re very relaxing games that I think are excellent examples of tabletop rpgs being more than just dungeon crawlers where you kill monsters, as well as examples of ttrpgs that aren’t using the traditional game master and 3-5 players structure.

Alone Among the Stars may also be one of the most important games I’ve ever played. While I had made games before playing it, it did lead me down the rabbit hole of making solo ttrpgs and then other games because making hacks of it is so approachable and encouraged. You can check out the released of Alone Among the Stars along with a 2-player version and Game Boy and Twine ports on Itch.io. I think all three games are lovely though and would encourage you to check them out if you want to have a relaxing experience creating your own worlds.

Alone on a Journey is available on Itch.io.

Game Showcases at Libraries

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I’ve already brought it up a few times before on social media but I’m going to do it again because it’s always been a good time for me. I think game devs should do more with their local libraries. They’re always up for having people use their spaces. Specifically I mean organizing a games showcase/expo of local games. It’s a great way to get eyes on it from people who will never see it on social media and don’t pay to go to games conventions, which is most people. They’re also free!

The Ann Arbor District Library has done a couple conventions and they’ve always been a great time for both video game devs and tabletop rpg designers. I don’t know if it’s an environment where adventure games or interactive fiction would do better but maybe? It can’t be worse than trying to demo your game at a loud convention. I also just think that people should collaborate with libraries more because they rock and always deserve more love.

Neon Hearts City

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Developer: Cosmic Void
Publisher: Dionous Games
Year: 2025
Genre: Adventure

a guy sitting on a rooftop at night with buildings in the skyline all lit up

Neon Hearts City is a short point-and-click adventure game set in a cyberpunk future where you are a private investigator searching for a missing girl, and unfolds into a greater mystery involving androids. I’ve mentioned Cosmic Void’s games on this blog a few times before and how I’m a fan of their games, and I think this is another solid entry in their catalog. It’s just a solid and straightforward point-and-click adventure where you walk around different screens, pick up items, and use them elsewhere to make progress in your story. If you want another one of those in a cyberpunk setting, great, I think this is one worth checking out.

It has great art and music like I’ve come to expect from a Cosmic Void game. It’s what you would hope for in a cyberpunk game, with pixel art of a gritty city at night and the appropriate synth music to set the mood. The voice acting is very nice too and it was fun to see some names I recognize from other adventure games.

Without spoiling too much, I think the mystery itself was good too and even though it does unfold into something bigger, it’s still ultimately pretty low stakes and I always appreciate when games aren’t about you saving the world. The city is being watched by a fascist government that wipes the memories of people they deem criminals, sometimes picking off random people just to fill a quota. I think it’s good that it’s not really about overthrowing them and remains focused on people just trying to survive in that world, and the ending was very satisfying to me.

The game got some criticism in Steam reviews and elsewhere for being too short but I didn’t mind the length at all. It took me two hours to complete and I am perfectly fine with that. I will always support games being shorter if the developers think that is the appropriate length to tell their story. It would have been fun to see more of the world though, since I think the world building was the best part of the game, and maybe more interactivity with the world would have been nice so we could learn more about the setting as we click around and explore. It’s an interesting setting and I wanted to play around in the world a bit more, even if meant more interactions that don’t advance the plot. The game is at its best when it starts to engage more with the world and not just your standard adventure game puzzles. The world building starts to include some weirder stuff towards the end that you don’t see as often in cyberpunk stories, and I hope we’ll get more of this if there’s a sequel or another game set in this world.

If anything, if I did have any criticisms it would be about some of the puzzles. I think the inventory item focused puzzles were fine but you come across a couple riddles and other self contained puzzles that felt like they were there just for the sake of an adventure game needing more puzzles and didn’t really get excited about them.

That said, I enjoyed the game quite a bit and would recommend it to folks looking for a cyberpunk point-and-click adventure, especially if they want one on the shorter side. I don’t know if I need a direct sequel to this game but I’d love to see another game set in this world.

Neon Hearts City is available on Steam and Itch.io

Blog Roundup (July 13, 2025)

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I just went 24 hours with electricity and don’t recommend it. Our local power company is AWFUL and every time we lose power, which seems to happen a lot more than it should, it makes me consider looking into solar power. I’m not quite sure how that works in Michigan but it would sure be nice for situations like this.

Before that all happened, I read some blog posts this week. It’s a more retro gaming focused post than usual. As usual, if you enjoy these posts then consider adding the blogs to your RSS feed reader!

Katherine Morayati went into a fascinating deep dive into The Oregon Trail 2’s code.

Civilization: Call to Power was always a weird spinoff in the series so it’s fascinating to see a post about how it has predicted the future.

WilcoWeb reposted a Cohost post he once had about the time he emailed the creator of Number Munchers to learn about its lore.

The community for Myst Online is still very active and has a month packed full of events. I previously wrote about the weekly ayoheek nights in Myst Online, which is apparently doing a Tron watchalong tonight.

Renga In Blue has covered a text adventure from 1980 that was previously unplayable until today! This was very exciting for me to read since it’s about a game that was developed close to me (although before I was born) and I’m always up for learning about local game dev history.

And now for a blog post about a recently released game, Digital Diversity interviewed NikkiJay, developed of the game Quantum Witch.

Dev Logs

Ron Gilbert has hinted that he’ll start posting more updates about his rpg Death By Scrolling.

erysdren updated its site and has lots of Quake related dev news.

Have an update on all the interactive fiction cécile has been working on.

reidrac is working on a new MSX game

cyningstan has released the source code for the DOS word game Pym’s Daily Word Square Puzzle

Personal Databases

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Two sites I follow in my RSS feed reader are Jefklak’s Codex and The Good Old Days. Both are websites where one person or a couple people just review games as they play them. It’s usually older stuff but with the occasional new game or tabletop game sprinkled in there. I just really like the idea of having your own personal database of game reviews, instead of using something like Backloggd, and something I’ve been thinking about a lot as I’ve been leaning on posting my reviews and thoughts here more instead of a social media site where it gets compiled with reviews by other folks I don’t know. Maybe it’s something I’ll build out someday as I keep doing more posts. Just for myself, because I think it’s fun looking at stuff I previously played and seeing what I was thinking at the time.

Indie Game Roundup (July 11, 2025)

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top down view similar to pac man of a shark eating pellets

Lemon Shark (Itch.io) is a fun PICO-8 game that turns Pac-Man into a turn based puzzle game. There’s a little more to that but it’s a really nice twist on the formula.

The pink decker jam is still going on Itch.io and there’s already quite a few games submitted. Decker is a Hypercard-like tool and this jam is about making apps and games using a pink palette created for the jam.

As required by law, I am here to inform you that a new Indiepocalypse is out on Itch.io. This one features a brand new ttrpg by Viditya Voleti so of course it’s a great one.

decks of cards with symbols and planets above them

A Solitaire Mystery (Steam) is a collection of solitaire games by the designer of Baba is You, with some of them being more standard solitaire games and others being more experimental.

I somehow missed that INFINITE TEARS released the new walking sim The Light of Our Yearning as pay-what-you-want on Itch.io. I highly recommend this and every other game they’ve made.

GrimVaders (Itch.io) is a neat autobattler for browsers with nice pixel art.

guy with a mustache shooting at a blob

BioMenace Remastered (Steam) released a demo with a full released planned for this fall. Bio Menace was originally a 1993 shareware game that was published by Apogee, but I believe the original developer owns the rights. The developer who worked on the remasters of Duke Nukem 1 and 2 for the Evercade is leading development of the remaster.

ChipWits (Steam) is a remake of the 1984 puzzle game for the Macintosh.

a person with a star for a head playing guitar

A Chamber of Stars (Steam/Itch.io) is a surreal adventure game about the rise and fall of a rock star.