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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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!
DeadSight (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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes I know I just did one of these a few days ago but I’m sad about real life stuff so I’m doing another. There’s a few Halloween appropriate things too since I thought it would be good to mention those before tomorrow and the list of things to post about has already grown a ton in the last couple days so here we are. If you enjoyed this post, please donate money to support Jamaica in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa.
Sugar Ghouls (Itch.io) is a cute browser collect-a-thon where you run around collecting candy while avoiding monsters. It has some really nice PS1 inspired art too. I also recommend checking out soda raptor’s Itch page if you want more games with a PS1 aesthetic and game recommendations from them.
Slop (Itch.io) is a short horror Twine game and the exciting thing about this one is that it’s meant for three players over voice chat. I always get excited about multiplayer interactive fiction.
Barbarians (Itch.io) is a Pay-What-You-Want strategy game for DOS where you need to defend your empire from barbarians. It’s also available for the ZX Spectrum.
Gorgon’s Garden (Itch.io) is a short, free horror game about exploring a dead MMO and forum devoted to it. I will always get excited about games focused on dying/dead MMOs.
Ron Gilbert’s newest game Death By Scrolling (Steam) is now available. It’s an arcade game with roguelite elements where you explore purgatory and collect gold by killing monsters. The screen is constantly scrolling upwards and you occasionally have to avoid the grim reaper, who is chasing you. I’ve been really enjoying this game. I love the pixel art and as someone that bounced off Vampire Survivors, I don’t think it actually has much to do with that game other than the auto attacking. I’ll probably write more about it later but I really like it.
I don’t know a whole lot about the action rpg Stray Children (Steam), which just came out today, but it’s by the Moon and Rule of Rose devs and people love those so I think it’s worth a mention.
Microvania (Steam) looks like a lovely small retro-inspired Metroid-like and it has a demo if you want to give it a shot too!
Greek Tragedy (Steam/Switch/Playstation/Xbox) has also just come out today after being in development for a few years. It’s a survival horror game where you must survive a college campus that has been overrun with cultists.
I haven’t had the chance to try it yet but I’ve seen a lot of praise online for シンゴウブレイカ SINGOU BREAKA (Steam). It’s a puzzle game where you destroy blocks modeled after pedestrian lights. It has a demo too if you want to give it a try.
Simon the Sorcerer Origins (Steam) is now out after being in development for a while. It’s a prequel to the Simon the Sorcerer adventure game series. I’m not the biggest fan of the games but a lot of people are and the art in this looks nice too.
lil’ Henry and Penny’s Big Adventure Pack (Steam) looks really cute. It’s a set of short point-and-click adventure games that the developer made with his kids, with voice acting and options to make adventure games more accessible to kids too. More people should make games with their kids. I think it’s a lot of fun.
A few folks have said it’s the year of the ninja in games but 2025 is actually the Year of the Egg between the twin stick shooter Evil Egg (Steam), Terry Cavanagh’s free browser game Egg (Itch.io), and Dizzy’s corpse making a cameo in Lumo 2.
And last but not least, the free zine ChoiceBeat #15 is here, featuring news and reviews of interactive fiction and visual novels.
Oops, I guess it’s been a while since I’ve posted on here. Because of so much real life stuff I just haven’t really had the time but I thought I would do one today since I will be too busy to do one on Halloween and there’s some stuff in here that you may want to play before the Halloween season is over. If you enjoy these posts and can afford to, please consider donating money to your local food bank. Food donations are good too but they can get so much more with money than you’ll be able to. You can probably find one close to you here.
Anyway, here are The Games
I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it before, but The Annual Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival is up again! It’s a free (but consider donating money) MMO where you are a ghost that carves pumpkins, can do an escape room, hedge maze, watch public domain movies, go on a hay ride, and more. It came out a few years ago but gets new stuff added on every month. I’ve been playing it with my kids and cannot recommend it enough.
Trimjob (Steam) is a game that combines mini golf and lawn mowing. I’m against lawn mowing in real life for environmental reasons but this is a video game so it’s fine. It’s less harmful than shooting people or doing a capitalism I guess.
I just really like that CaptainD keeps using Adventure Game Studio to make things that aren’t adventure games. This time it’s The Last Bite (Itch.io), which is Snake but with power ups.
Darkenstein 3D (Steam) is a free FPS where you shoot Nazis. It’s clearly inspired by Wolfenstein 3D but plays a bit more like late 90s/early 00s FPS and lists Return to Castle Wolfenstein as an influence.
Leaftaker (Itch.io) is a free short mystery game about investigating a body in a grave and inspired by games by The Roottrees Are Dead. I think we’re using terms like Deduce-em-ups for that style of game now? I don’t know what’s going on anymore. Anyway, good game. Go check out Kaden’s tabletop rpgs too.
The Séance of Blake Manor (Steam) is another game with those influences and looks wonderful. It’s been getting some great reviews so far and I was a big fan of their Darkside Detective games.
Issue #4 of Funland (Itch.io) is here! It’s a video game zine that always has some great layout design and covers and this issue is focused on Halloween stuff.
Call of the Golden Valley (Itch.io) is a first-person adventure game where you search for your missing friend in the Australian outback. I don’t know a whole lot about it but it looks like it’s influenced by the Nancy Drew adventure games, Steam reviews have been positive so far, and there’s a demo so I think some people may find it interesting.
Lumo 2 (dev site) is an isometric Metroid-like inspired by 80s British computer games where you wander from room to room and solve puzzles. I was a huge fan of the first one and this one looks like it has lots of fun little surprises buried in it too from looking at the screenshots.
HYPERBEAT (Steam) just looks like a great Rez-inspired rhythm game with lots of accessibility options.
Dispatch (Steam) is a superhero management comedy game where you are a former superhero working as a dispatch at a superhero dispatch center. The game was developed by folks from Telltale and seems like a good time from watching the stream on DecafJedi‘s channel.
We got a new Sylvie game! This one is Discover the World (Itch.io), a free turn-based rpg platformer. Go check it out and the play everything else by Sylvie.
There’s also a few games being crowdfunded right now. Midnight Saturn is a new sci-fi point-and-click adventure by Cosmic Void, Shores of Night is a cosmic horror ttrpg with no Lovecraft or Sanity rules, and Stomp and the Sword of Miracles is a cute platformer by the developer of the wonderful Frogsong.
Apologies in advance for this being a big one. Even with how massive this list is, I am missing a ton of stuff. Everyone released a game these last two weeks so this one is probably focused mostly around who I follow on Itch.
Video Games
New Eyes Cycle from the DOMINO Club Boneyard Collection
A new collection of DOMINO CLUB games is out! No one is doing experimental games better than this anonymous collective. You can check out all the games from the Boneyard Collection for free on Itch.io
Landlord Quest (Itch.io/Steam) is a new point-and-click adventure where you play as a landlord. This is not a pro-landlord game. If you buy it on Itch.io, then you can run the game on any platform you want using ScummVM.
I think most people reading this know about Unfair Flips (Steam) but in case you don’t, it’s a short incremental clicker game about flipping a coin and getting 10 heads in a row.
Indiepocalypse #69 is now available (Itch.io)! This nice issue features another collection of games including a new game commissioned for this issue.
Detective Daydream (Itch.io) is a free stealth puzzle game for browsers where you sneak through rooms without being seen
Messenger (website) is a relaxing browser game where you explore a city, doing tasks for folks living there, and you can see other folks running around the city as they play.
Radar Rally (Itch.io) is a fun take on the Rally-X style of arcade game for browsers. This dev has made quite a few remakes of old arcade games.
House of Necrosis (Steam) is a turn-based horror rpg where you explore a haunted mansion with art inspired by the original Resident Evil. I have never played Mystery Dungeon but that’s an inspiration, so if you’ve played it then maybe that’s very exciting to you.
HoopDungeon (Itch.io) is a basketball turn-based strategy game currently undergoing testing. Give it a shot and fill out the feedback form.
I’m a fan of Akril15’s adventure games and they made another one! Like the others, this one is free. I recommend checking out the rest here.
I Made a Game for You from the BRIEFS 2025 collection
BRIEFS 2025 (Itch.io) is a collection of three games that were created for the Australian art collective gold extra, with this year’s theme being cheese.
SloanySoft makes plenty of cool games for the ZX Spectrum and they’re back with another one. BubbleBack: The Story of Forward to the Past 2 (Itch.io) is a pay-what-you-want sequel to a platformer. If you’ve never played a ZX Spectrum game before, consider downloading an emulator and trying a few out on Itch.
Blippo+ is out on Itch.io/Steam/Switch! I was a big fan of this one on the Playdate and it’s fun seeing it come to more platforms and in color. You basically uncover a storyline by flipping through channels on tv.
Videonauts (Steam/Itch.io) is a new game by resnijars where you must escape from a haunted mansion with your friends while solving puzzles. I’m a big fan of their previous games so I’m looking forward to this. The developer lists Illbleed as an influence, which is super interesting to me too.
Tabletop
Melisma (Itch.io) is a pay-what-you-want ttrpg created by Adam Bell that is part character generator and part music trivia game. It was created for the minimalist jam, and you can check out the rest of the entries for that here.
Monster Truckers (dev site) is a ttrpg by Table Cat Games where you play as truckers that just happen to be monsters. It’s also on Itch and DriveThruRpg.
VOID_SHIFT (Itch.io) is a deckbuilder where you are the captain of a corporate-owned salvage and repair ship and need to put together a deck to complete jobs.
Jazzmanji (Itch.io) is a pay-what-you-want card game for 1-4 players where you explore a jazz dungeon and fight The Jazzman.
Not Games
There were also a few things released on Itch that weren’t video games but I think are still worth a mention.
Star Sword Nemesis (Itch.io) is a new book by Christine Love, developer of games such as Digital: A Love Story and Get in the Car, Loser. Girls in mechs!
Cats in a Frame (Itch.io) lets you have pictures of cats sitting on your desktop.
Moosadee released a tutorial for learning how to program for the TIC-80 virtual machine with either Lua or Python (Itch.io). Since I’m learning Python right at this moment, this is very interesting to me.
Rose made a Lovely Lodgings character generator for browsers (Itch.io) based on the recent batch of Domino Club games.
The Works of Egan put together this nice template and tutorial for creating your own blog (Itch.io). I’ve said it a million times before but I can’t recommend having your own site enough, where you have more control over the platform and this tutorial will help you setup a RSS feed too so anyone following you can see your posts through their feed.
Wurm Fud made a nice pay-what-you-want asset pack of folk magic pixel art icons (Itch.io)
CGALIB 2 (Itch.io) is a free library for making CGA DOS games and includes a sample game.
That’s it for this week! Thank you for reading this and making it to the end. Always feel free to comment or email me if there’s stuff you’ve worked on.
It’s been a minute since I’ve done one of these but with Bluesky currently imploding because of its dipshit staff, maybe people will want some other websites to look at and add to their RSS feed reader. I’ve been using Inoreader since it has a solid free tier (although I pay for it now) and syncs everything I’ve already read through all the platforms I use it on, and adding sites to it is easy.
Creating Care is a new favorite newsletter I’ve subscribed to. If you’re like me and always feel compelled to be online looking at the news, maybe you’ll also find the latest post on staying informed without staying inflamed to be helpful.
My friend Steven, developer of games like WaveCrash!!, just started a newsletter where he will be posting his writing.
Video Games
Jordan Mechner, creator of Prince of Persia, recently had a post where he talks about all the ports of the first game and which ones are his favorites, which include some he wasn’t involved with.
Interactive fiction designer Andrew Plotkin covers the release of the remaster of the Making of Myst video that Cyan just released
Also older but I need to include this post about the video intro at the beginning of some cd-roms that came with General Mills cereal.
Brain Baking has had a million good posts recently about card games but this one was how I found out about a fan remake of the card game in Might & Magic 7.
Developer: Witch Beam Publisher: Humble Games Year: 2021 Genre: Adventure System: Windows
I think at this point everyone has heard of this one. It’s a game released in 2021 where a story is told through a series of relaxing puzzles where you unpack boxes in a new home and need to fit all your stuff in each room. This is one of those games that had been sitting in my backlog for a while despite it being relatively short. I think everything about this game has been covered by folks smarter than me but I did enjoy it. It’s one of those things where there had been so much universal praise for it for years that when I finally got around to it, my first thought was “well yeah it’s good but that’s it?” It’s not fair to the game but it’s so simple and straightforward that I had expected there to be more to it when I finally played it. In fact, if I did have an actual criticism of it, it’s that I had felt like I had “got it” after I played just a few levels. I remember people complaining it was too short at the time but I think it would have become a slog if it was longer.
Anyway, glad I played it. Sometimes you like a thing and think it’s very good, just not as much as everyone else. Like everyone says, it’s a good time and the pixel art is fantastic. Something I didn’t expect would be that my 5 year old would see me playing it, ask to try it out, and fall completely in love with it. She now says it’s one of her favorite games.
It was fun looking up the studio and seeing that they had made Assault Android Cactus+, which I think is brilliant and deserves to be just as popular as Unpacking. It looks like they have one game I haven’t played yet, Tempopo, which was released earlier this year. I’ll have to check that one out too given that I’m a fan of their other work.
About a month and a half ago I made a post about how I just learned about RetroAchievements and how it was a fun thing to use when revisiting old games. Well, hmmmm, I’m now deleting my account. It has just been discovered by folks that the site has a bit of a Nazi problem, which kills any interest I had in using the site so I put in my account deletion request, which apparently takes them two weeks to process. The quote retweets list other examples of the site’s moderation team not really caring about what users do. They can say as many times as they want that they’re neutral and just care about preservation but folks, they’re adding achievements to video games and that’s it. They can do whatever they want. You don’t need to add achievements to a far right rom hack.
Oh well, one less account for me to think about I guess and I can go back to not using RetroArch.
EDIT: They’ve since put out an apology and stated the right right rom hack won’t be added to the site which is good. I’m still probably going to let my account delete itself because I don’t really need to keep doing achievements for old games anyway, but I’ve got two weeks to think about it and see if they do anything else I guess.
It’s Friday! How are you? How was your week? There’s been a billion indie games that have come out in the last week so there’s going to be a lot that this post leaves out. Also if you’ve written me an email and I haven’t responded yet, sorry, I have just been super busy. I even saw Devo and the B-52s last night and had a good time. But please feel free to let me know about your indie game through my contact info on the About page. Or even just to say hi! That’s always nice too.
Spirit Drop, an entry in the Falling Blocks jam
A few game jams wrapped up this week with many wonderful games created for each. If you like games like Tetris then I highly recommend the Falling Blocks Jam on Itch.io. There’s a lot to dig through there but it has lots of interesting takes on the falling blocks genre. If you like adventure games, you may enjoy the $109 Adventure Game Challenge. I’m a bit less enthusiastic about this one since it allows AI art, especially since it has a cash prize, but there’s some good games in there like Eulogy for Nonno or Intern’s First Day.
I think one of the biggest releases this week is Consume Me (Steam), an semi-autobiographical game about being in high school. It won the Seamus McNally Grand Prize at the Independent Games Festival!
3D Don’t Die Mr. Robot (Steam) was one of my favorite indie arcade games from last year so it’s fun seeing it get a demake for the Neo Geo Pocket Color. Well I guess technically it’s a demake of the first game but I only played the 3D one. Also on Itch.io if you prefer that
Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 got a standalone expansion? Prequel? Anyway, the Puzzle Quest-like Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 1 Re-Raptored is now available on Steam.
Arctic Awakening (Steam/PS5/XBox) is a first-person sci-fi thriller about surviving in the arctic after a plane crash.
Waste Your Wedding (Itch.io) is a free platformer about trying to eat a giant cake.
Mala Petaka (Steam) is one of those retro shooters but look at those colors! It’s made in the GZ Doom engine too. If you want to try it out, there’s a demo on Steam.
That’s it for this week! Like I said, feel free to let me know about your game in whatever way works best for you. Nothing with AI art please!
