It snowed a lot here last night, which seems to be exciting for me and literally no other adult. From looking at the week ahead, it seems like it won’t melt soon and we may get some more on top of that. Again, only a thing I enjoy but I will enjoy it quite a bit. As I write this I am listening to the last episode of the Reggae Schoolroom radio show on WFMU. Public radio is great. This week is going to be extremely heavy on video games posts but maybe you’ll find something new to add to your RSS feed reader or feel compelled to share things you’ve enjoyed lately in a post. The internet might feel small because of it revolving around a handful of social media sites but there’s still lots of folks with their own websites.
Video Games
Chuck Jordan, one of the writers of Curse of Monkey Island as well as many other games, praises the new point-and-click adventure Foolish Mortals despite not actually being a big adventure gamer. He also just got around to, and enjoyed, Her Story and Return of the Obra Dinn.
Speaking of adventure games, the adventure games convention AdventureX just happened and a few folks have posts about it. Jana from Rat King wrote about showing Mops & Mobs and The Point n’ Clicker has a few posts covering the event. Both have lots of photos.
Remember Valve’s Ricochet? Well, erysdren digs into the release date listed for it.
Interactive fiction writer Andrew Plotkin has thoughts on Microsoft making the source code for Zork 1-3 open source.
No Small Games has their monthly indie game roundup, in podcast form.
Retro XP reviews Bonk’s Adventure for the Game Boy. As a child I was weirdly really jealous about the Turbografx folks having Bonk, despite owning a Nintendo console? I don’t really get it now that I think about it. Yes, clearly Bonk games did come to Nintendo consoles but I didn’t consider them to be “real” Bonk games.
Misty talks about a bunch of games from IGF 2026.
The History of How We Play figures out the release dates for some very early crpgs.
Eric, designer of the very good Virtue’s Heaven, has thoughts on Evil Game Design.
Gaming Alexandria uploaded scans of the Scatcher manga and other fun bits connected to the game.
Rob has a really nice writeup and fan art for the indie game Snake-A-Roid.
Indiepocalypse has started hosting writing features. This one is about Hana’s Light and Blink and how they relate to the ways we view the world through technology.
Oma writes about the weird death mechanic in the 2004 ps2 game Malice.
Dev Logs
I mentioned Mops & Mobs earlier in this post. Well here’s a dev log for it. You can check out the current version on Itch.
Laura Michet has a post about writing for the upcoming Young Suns, which I think looks fantastic.
Michael Coorlim makes a small game for the Retromancer collection.
Michigan
Ryan has updated his community giving guide if you’re looking to donate to charities in southeast Michigan.
Michigan!/usr/group has their next virtual meeting on December 9. The topic for this month is IPv6.
TTRPGs
I goofed and forgot to collect good TTRPG posts but here’s one I liked, Pocket-Sized Powder Kegs. It’s about micro-scenarios.
Writing
The Golf Shrine, a website dedicated to golf video games, makes up a bunch of golf films.
Sarah Gailey’s Stone Soup hosts writing from Amal El-Mohtar on birdwatching and the loss of a friendship.
Food
It’s not a blog post but I liked this article at Eater about writers talking about growing up with parents who owned a Chinese restaurant at Christmas time. One of the writers is Curtis Chin, who wrote the very good memoir Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant, which was about growing up in Detroit during the 80s, being gay, and working at his parents’ restaurant.
Technology
Someone just published a simulator of a 1961 relay computer that runs in your browser.