Month: November 2025

Roller Rinks Are the Best

~ mpklamerus ~ 9 Comments

Just got back from the roller rink with one of my kids and wanted to say how nice they are. I used to go to them once or twice a year when I was in elementary school, but didn’t go to them anymore until my oldest started going because her school started having the occasional night at the roller rink. It’s just a blast skating around on a nice surface while music and lights are blasting away. I’m not the most amazing skater and always have to use roller blades because I’m far more comfortable in those, but it’s still fun. The wild thing is that the one I go to with my kids is the one that I went to as a child and still looks how I remembered it, but still being maintained and all that.

My understanding is that they’ve slowly been closing over the last few decades and aren’t really a thing outside of North America but if you do have one near you, consider visiting. Somehow I live somewhere that has three of them within a 15 minute drive of me, which is nice. I’d love to visit more in the Detroit area sometime. I got to do an outdoor one a couple years ago but that’s it.

If I did have a complaint about my local one, it’s that it’s just top 40 music. Although the DJ was different this time and better so hmmmm, maybe that is getting better. I’m assuming that the music is also better on adult-only nights.

If you would like to know more about roller rinks and African-American roller skating culture, I highly recommend the documentary United Skates.

Blog Roundup (November 2, 2025)

~ mpklamerus ~ 1 Comment

I haven’t done one of these in a while! I really need to do non-roundup posts but I like pointing people to other websites that I like since it maybe makes the internet feel a tiny bit less small? Anyway, if you see something you like, consider adding the site to your RSS feed reader.

Technology

Speaking of RSS, this explanation of RSS and recommendations of feed readers is really good if you’re up for reading a longer explanation of them.

If you’re interested in starting your own blog, consider My Cool Blog by The Works of Egan. My Cool Blog is a starter template for setting up simple personal websites and blogs with 11ty.

You could also follow this guide to Create your own free & portable website (for non-techies).

If you are a fan of The Computer Chronicles Revisited, the blog covering the classic tech show The Computer Chronicles, you may have missed that it moved to a new address. You can (and should) follow it here.

Leaded Solder walks us through the process of repairing an Apple III that a mouse peed in.

Games

The Space Quest fansite The Virtual Broomcloset (one of the first video game fansites) just got a massive update to celebrate its 30 anniversary and I’m just digging through the entire site and having a great time

No Escape is planning on focusing more on indie games and not covering AAA games at all in 2026, so give them a follow and/or supporting their patreon.

I liked hearing Brain Baking talking about how Warez was really important to them for games discovery. I had a kinda sorta similar experience so I can’t really get mad when I hear about games piracy, although I imagine no one is pirating my games anyway. But if they did, I would just be kinda amused.

Atari Archive continues doing great work going into the history of all Atari 2600 games so I was excited to see Boxing get covered since I played that one quite a bit.

The 1980s Mac game Continuum is now playable in a browser. There’s also a lot of nice fan levels you can play.

The Golfshrine continues to get updates and new games added to the site. If you have any interest in the history of golf video games, there isn’t a better website. You don’t have to be a fan of real golf either, the creator of Golfshrine certainly isn’t, video game golf is just really interesting to me even as a hater of real golf. They were also on the most recent episode of DOS Game Club to talk about DOS golf games.

Juan just deleted his Mastodon so add his blog to your rss feed reader if you want updates on the DOS games they’re working on.

Music

They Might Be Giants brought back the HyperCard stack they created for their album John Henry, in website form.

Gaming Alexandria goes into the history of a C64 type-in program featuring music by Johnny Ramone.

TTRPGs

Party of One, one of my favorite ttrpg podcasts, just celebrate 10 years. Both an interview show and excellent showcase of indie ttrpgs, the most recent episode is a discussion of the history of the show.

Tot’s Character Compendium is a great blog that reviews the character creation process of various ttrpgs. This week Tatiana covers the game Gravemire.

That’s it for this post! I’ll make more of an attempt to do these more frequently because a lot got left out but hopefully you found something new to follow!

Indie Game Roundup (November 1, 2025)

~ mpklamerus ~ 2 Comments

If you’ve noticed that I’ve been doing these a lot lately, you’re right! It’s less daunting to do a post on a smaller list of games than a big one so I’ve found I’m enjoying these more when I don’t wait so long. I’m also hoping that each game gets more attention too if it’s not part of a giant post.

If you enjoy this post, consider tossing a few dollars to the (very good fmv) Morph Girl creator’s (Itch.io/Steam) GoFundMe for Facial Feminisation Surgery.

Here are The Games

ECTOCOMP (Itch.io) just closed its submission window and now there are plenty of interactive fiction games available for voting on. ECTOCOMP is an interactive fiction competition focused on the month of Halloween and includes Twine games, parser adventures, and more!

a DS showing a stylus and a left window showing a room with minimal lighting and symbols on the right side

Dead Sight (Itch.io) is a short, free horror game that is modeled after DS adventure games. It was created by Siactro, who I am a big fan of because of their Toree platformer games.

top down view of two adventurers walking through a dungeon and blowing up skeletons

Blood & Money (Steam) is a Gauntlet-like that came across my feed from one of those bots that posts every release on Steam. I haven’t heard anything about it but 1. I like Gauntlet and 2. the graphics remind me A LOT of early 90s VGA DOS games so I would really like to know more if anyone has tried it. It sounds like there’s a demo but I haven’t been able to get to it.

person hanging out in a throne room

Streamer and organizer of DOSember emmfoolery has released Emmy, Fool of Fen (Itch.io), a new CGA game for DOS that is available as Pay-What-You-Want. It was created for the DOSember game jam, which still has a month left.

HitoPetto! (Itch.io) is a free ttrpg for two people (but supports more) by Bez where someone must take care of the soul of someone that is trapped in a virtual pet game.

Lil Kobold’s Big Stew (Itch.io) is a new PICO-8 game by Adam Saltsman where you are a little kobold gathering ingredients for a Big Stew.

a silhouette of a man running in front of a hedge maze and it looks like an atari 2600 box

Speaking of PICO-8 games, The Door In The Wall (Itch.io) is an Atari-esque adaptation of the HG Wells short story by the same name. It was created for the Book Club Game Jam and you can check out the other entries here.

Faster, Ace, Kill, Kill! (Itch.io) is a board game where you are a teenage monster on a volleyball team trying to win this year’s tournament for your school. It was made for Folklore Jam 2025, an analogue game jam.

Finally, because I am a big Myst nerd, I need to mention there is a big Humble Bundle of the entire Myst series.

Thank you for reading today’s roundup. Always feel free to reply with what you’re working on or enjoying, or send me an email. Nothing AI generated please! Consider adding this blog to your RSS feed reader too.