I haven’t done one of these in a long time because I didn’t have time but I could still do these on a monthly basis or something. There’s just so many new websites that keep popping up even though a lot of people think the internet is just five websites these days. Maybe you’ll enjoy some of them and add them to your RSS feed reader of choice, or feel like giving a shoutout to a website you like.
Music
Yaffle reposted a Cohost post about the “Brit-Rock” Period of the DIY Indie Rock Scene in Russia (2007-2009). Maybe you’ll discover a new old band to listen to.
Tabletop RPGs
Prismatic Wasteland has announced a new Blog Bandwagon, where ttrpg folks are encouraged to write about maps.
Wannabe Games just started a newsletter that you can add to your feed reader or subscribe to. The latest is about their newest Zine Month game and playtesting.
Technology
Bandcamp Friday just happened again two days ago, meaning I bought too much music again and posted about self hosting music. Someone has a much nicer and more elaborate blog post about their process. Mine is different and not in the cloud but I think it just shows how many ways it can be done.
Video Games
First I’d like to give a shoutout to Jank and Mothership, two new video game websites that launched in the same week that I think are worth a follow.
Wilco Web has been working on a fan site for the Space Quest series, which involves including fan games and adventure games influenced by it. It turns out that there’s a lot of games inspired by Space Quest, including a ton I never heard of.
Lotus has a new website for indie games called Dialed Indie. Poke around and add it to your RSS feed reader.
Nicole Carpenter wrote an article for Aftermath about a report Dr. Jess Morrissette and Dr. Megan Condis wrote that gathered almost “3,000 print ads from the console wars era to analyze whether the popular narrative that “Sega was for rad teens and Nintendo was for babies” actually holds up.” You can read that for free here.
One day I should play Ys, but this article on localization for Ys 1 is still worth reading even though I haven’t.
Sandy Duncan, founder of YoYo Games and why we have GameMaker Studio, recently passed away. Mike Daily wrote about his friend and posted lots of photos of him working on games stuff.
The Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation recently placed a lot more rules restricting the usage of LLMs in writing games for IFComp (yay) and a judge wrote a lot more about that in a post titled LLM Slop Will Make Us Antisocial.
Save State has A Lore Dump on Two Obscure Magazines, a post about two PC gaming periodicals from the UK that no one seems to know about.
Writing/Books
My local library did a post on how they showcase teen titles.
I Might as Well Explain the Joke is a very nice blog that goes into the history of cliched jokes and tropes. This time it’s about Underwater Basket Weaving.