I made a post on bluesky yesterday about having your own website or blog and it really blew up so now I’m fired up about websites and will probably be more annoying about them than usual. If you’re reading this then you probably have one but if you don’t? Go fix that. It’s a lot of fun and then I can read it and tell everyone about how cool it is!
Also did you know you could like posts on Bear Blogs? I didn’t realize that until just a few minutes ago. Haha, WHOOPS! So if you have one, just pretend I was liking every post until now, because that’s probably what I would be doing.
Anyway, here are some of the posts I enjoyed reading this week! If you enjoy these, subscribe to some RSS feeds and do your own link roundup. Google sucks now and this is how people will discover new sites.
Dev logs are great. You all need to post updates on your games on your own site instead of on a social media network that might not even be around in a few years.
I love reading blog posts that are just life updates from people I know, and they talk about what art they’ve been enjoying or what they’re up to. For example, these posts from Renkon and coffeentacos were really nice to read. If you’ve ever wanted to blog about that stuff and didn’t think people wouldn’t care, you’re wrong!
If you had a cohost account, you should repost your stuff! Here’s a nice pencil animation.
It’s not a blog but Unwinnable talks about the dying art of finding porn in the woods. I always heard about this but even in the 90s it never happened to me.
I also enjoyed some older posts that I saw folks sharing. This blog post talks about how it’s good to be frivolous on your blog, talking about whatever you like. I found it from someone I follow just reblogging it.
Molly White talks about an approach to social media that I think I’m currently doing, POSSE.
Developer: College Fun Games Publisher: College Fun Games Year: 2024 Genre: Adventure
The Protagonish is a recently released adventure game by College Fun Games where the twist is that you control everyone in the story but the protagonist. You follow him around on his quest but whenever he interacts with another character, you control their actions and influence his journey.
Each playthrough of the game features the protagonist interacting with NPCs in four scenes, with each scene lasting about a minute or two. The playthroughs are about five minutes long and you’ll want to replay the game a few times to see how your actions can affect the story and see all the endings. The animation and voice acting in each scene were top notch and made the scenes pleasant to watch, even on repeat playthroughs.
If I did have any criticisms of the game, I wish it were longer. I think the concept works very well and it would have been interesting to see what a game like this would be like if a playthrough was at least twice as long. It took about 20 minutes for me to get through everything in the game and it felt like a satisfying experience, but I think it could have also been longer without wearing out its welcome. I don’t feel like that is a bad deal for a game that’s $4, but that’s very subjective and I personally don’t feel very comfortable about telling you how much entertainment per dollar you should be ok with since we all value this stuff differently.
That all said, I had a good time playing The Protagonish and would recommend it to others if you want to see a game experiment with the tropes of the adventure genre. I would love to see a sequel that expands on the ideas in this game.
The Protagonish is available for $3.99 on Itch.io and Steam.The review is based on a key sent from the developer.
It’s only been a week since I’ve done one of these and I already have a ton of games to talk about. I’m not going to act like the Spiderweb Software guy and tell ya’ll to stop making games and become doctors instead, or whatever the hell he was talking about, but I do wish I have more time in the day to play stuff. Just an endless supply of great art being made every week. Nice work. If you enjoy these posts, I would really appreciate if you could give a couple of dollars to SWANCHIME’s Ko-Fi. Their games have been featured in here a few times and they could really use the support. Also consider making your own indie game roundup! The more people doing these sorts of things and spreading the joy of independent art the better.
If I missed something you or a friend made, please tell me! Social media, email, or here as a comment, all are good. I just love knowing what people are making.
Video Games
The Zium Exposition (Itch.io) is described as a “Museum Exploration Game filled with artwork and installations from artists around the world, working in various mediums and styles”. It’s just an incredible space to explore and look at the beautiful art. The vibes are very good and it’s free. I loved it very much.
L.E.V.E. (Itch.io) is an arcade puzzle game by shrunken studios, which I think is a small collective of game developers, where you control little organisms eating stuff and the complexity increases with each level. Lots of fun, it’s free, and available on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Death of the Reprobate (Steam) is the third in a trilogy of silly point-and-click adventures by Joe Richardson that use Renaissance paintings as the source for all the artwork in the game. I haven’t played this one yet but I’m a fan of his previous adventures.
Upcoming horror game THRESHOLD has a demo on Steam. I’m a baby so I don’t know if I’ll play it but it looks very cool.
PROXIMATE (Steam/Itch.io) is a short interactive fiction game about trying a new AI visor. I really love how you navigate the world in this game using its map, and the writing and voice acting are great too. The game strongly recommends using a controller to play but the mouse and keyboard controls felt good to me.
Star Dodger (Itch.io) is an arcade game created during the 0 hr game jam 2024 between 1:00 AM November 3, 2024 – 1:00 AM November 3, 2024, during the daylight savings switch.
The remake of Little Big Adventure (Steam) is now available. I’ve always been a fan of the series and I’m looking forward to a version of the game with better controls. I enjoyed the playtest they did for the game a while ago, but you don’t have to take my word for it, a demo is also available.
Inspector Waffles Early Days (Steam/Itch/GOG) is a top-down adventure game prequel to the point-and-click adventure game Inspector Waffles. You can even buy the game for the Game Boy.
Sorry We’re Closed (Steam) is a horror game inspired by 90s classics like Resident Evil, with an aesthetic inspired by them too. Again, I’m a big baby so I don’t know if I’ll play it but Rock, Paper, Shotgun liked it and there’s a demo for it as well.
I WILL STRIKE YOU DOWN (Itch.io) is a short horror interactive fiction by SWANCHIME about being a girl in love with a girl who is dead, and then not being a girl any longer.
SCAVENGER (Itch.io) is a short erotic visual novel by Oma Keeling about the birth of a machine god.
Oktrollberfest is a game jam about creating trollgames. You can check them out on Itch.io. Many (all?) of them were made with ZZT.
Grid Ranger (Steam/Itch.io) is a shmup with 80’s inspired vector graphics. I played the demo a while back and thought it was a very challenging but fun arcade game.
The Playdate community at Uncrank’d have a bundle of games and an upcoming showcase. You can find the links on Mastodon.
Mister Jack (Itch.io) is a retro-looking point-and-click adventure about Jack the Ripper that was made for Scream Jam 2024. Free and playable in the browser.
Dust Settlers (Itch.io) is a browser game made in PICO-8 where you arrange Tetris blocks to restore a planet.
Remember desktop pets? Doguru (Itch.io) is a modern one of those featuring really cute artwork and it’s free!
Dungeons of Blood and Dream (Steam) is a roguelike dungeon crawler. I haven’t played it yet but I love dungeon crawlers and aesthetically it looks like it’s just for me! Gamers with Glasses seemed to like it.
Bullet Runner (Steam) is an arcade bullet hell game about fighting a clone army that a friend helped with and in my opinion I think it looks pretty neat!
Tricky Madness (Steam) is a snowboarding game inspired by the beloved SSX Tricky and that sounds like a really lovely thing I could use right now. It has just entered early access.
At a couple points this year I took a break from doing the indie game roundups because I had more important things to focus on like my baby, but I still maintained a list of things I played and other games that just looked cool to me. Here’s some of those games:
Frontiers of the Mind (Itch.io) is a free horror game resembling a multimedia cd-rom that is about a fictional tv show from the 90s called Maze Masters. There is nothing more laser targeted towards my interests than this so of course I loved it. I highly recommend just looking up hints once you get through everything you find, so you can find all the hidden material too.
Pantsmo’s Pantaloon Adventure (Itch.io) is a mod of the classic shareware game Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure but adds pants to Cosmo. That’s it! It’s great. A classic game has finally been fixed.
Seeking Stardust (Itch.io) is a free browser puzzle game where you try to last out in space as long as you can, with the game generating a new level every day.
tramstertram (Itch.io) is a free minimalist Amsterdam-inspired town builder with trams playable in the browser. It’s an incredibly chill game and the low poly graphics are very nice too.
Tabletop RPGs
Fast Food (Itch.io) is a free LARP for 4-10 players about ordering food before your board game night.
dan qui dam published a history of solo tabletop rpgs on Itch. Holy shit yes, this rules.
Speaking of solo ttrpgs, Jude’s World (Itch.io) is a solo journaling game about reconnecting with your estranged parents, inspired by 90s tv shows like The Fresh Prince and Clarissa Explains It All.
Poetry and Other Art
The last few weeks have kinda been nightmare fuel and some folks have made art as a response to it all.
I Love Being Trans (Itch.io) is a beautiful stack made in the Hypercard-like tool Decker by erysden, creator of the previously covered fps BITCH HELL.
Eat Shit and Die, Fascists (Itch.io) is a collection of poetry in response to the recent election.
We Will Get Through This (Itch.io) is a vent by ToulouTouMou that was also created right after the election.
Street Lamp Lover (Itch.io) is an interactive poem playable in the browser with a unique presentation and nice music.
I’m running out of time before Cohost completely shuts down, so here’s another big batch of pictures from the CompStoreVisuals. I guess I do have the archive of the account so they aren’t gone gone even after the site shuts down, but it’s still a good excuse to repost them to somewhere more permanent.
These aren’t really sorted in any order and I’d like to resume posting photos of computer stores at some point, I just have to make time to find more. Some of it is nostalgia but I’m also just fascinated by forms of retail that don’t exist anymore. I walked through a mall last weekend and while it was very busy (there’s another nearby that’s struggling), it was still weird to walk through Macy’s and think about how department stores like that and Sears were just things people went to all the time for everything instead of online. The unfortunate thing about being into a thing that barely exists is that it just gets harder to find stuff, especially with search engines getting worse. The big reason why I’m doing these reposts is because a lot of it just doesn’t seem to exist on the web anymore outside of the account, or it does and I just can’t find it.
Cashier training at CompUSA
Photo of a Compaq Works store in Houston from the book Retail and Restaurant Spaces: An International Portfolio of 41 Designers (1999). I believe I got this one from checking out a book on the Internet Archive. Even if you aren’t into this extremely specific subject, it’s fascinating to look at old books covering retail and restaurants in general and seeing the trends in design.
Windows Vista launch party at a CompUSA store on January 29, 2007 in Houston, Texas
CompUSA Honolulu, Hawaii 2006
Forgot where I found this but I believe it was from a Black Friday sale
The front of a Gateway Country store, created by the Gateway computer company, and were around from the mid 90s to the mid 00s.
Well, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these. I’ve mentioned previously on here that things were quiet because of stress from everything in the world so I won’t go into that here. I just learned that I can actually talk about the point-and-click adventure I’ve been working on though, so lets focus on that instead.
I am making a free point-and-click adventure called Dr. Chase’s Adventure for the Ann Arbor District Library. It is for the city’s bicentennial and is part of a mini anthology along with two other games. I am so happy I got to help organize this project and I’m very proud of this game. Dr. Chase is a local Ann Arbor figure who is kinda sorta the Dr. Oz of his time, meaning a “doctor” who is also a scam artist. He was an incredibly weird guy who found success selling his book of recipes until he had the feeling he was going to die soon and sold everything, including his printing press. It turns out he was completely fine and tried to make a comeback and failed. My game is more focused on the beginning of his journey and is about how he’s trying to help a patient with her in-grown toenail, and the game will use his real recipes as puzzle solutions. You can read more about the man here and his recipe book here. Here’s a very short video of the game:
I believe the game should be coming out in December. I’ve learned so much from doing this project and it should mean you’ll see more adventure games from me in the future. I may or may not have mentioned that I’ve been working on an adventure game using clay on here, I definitely did on social media, but that should move pretty quickly once this game is shipped since I now know how to use Adventure Game Studio. The game itself is already designed and the art for a few rooms has been completed as well, so I’m hoping it won’t take too long for that one to ship either.
In addition to these two games, I’m hoping to compile all my indie game roundups for 2003 in a format that’s much more readable. This will be a free PDF. I just think it would be a fun thing to have on Itch and maybe bring more attention on games I enjoyed playing that year.
I also liked writing a review of Deja Vu yesterday so expect more games reviews to pop up on here. I have a ton of reviews of FMV games from a book I thought about writing, but I may as well just put them on here and I can always compile them later like the Digital Antiquarian or whatever. I also want to move reviews from Backloggd to here because I don’t enjoy using that site and want it someone more permanent anyway. It’s also just nice to compile my thoughts on a thing after playing it.
Finally, the last thing I want to post here are the remaining pictures from the CompStoreVisuals account on Cohost before that permanently shuts down. It’s all on Mastodon too but again, I want it all on something more permanent.
Developer: ICOM Simulations, Inc. Publisher: Mindscape Year: 1985 Genre: Adventure
This month’s game in the Adventure Game Club discord is Deja Vu: A Nightmare Comes True so I have finally played through that for the first time after it sitting in my backlog for forever. It’s the first MacVenture by ICOM and man, weird game. I’ll mention the stuff I was frustrated with but it’s difficult to get too mad at the game when it’s one of the first point-and-click adventures ever, it’s short, and the Macintosh art really holds up!
The premise of the game is that you wake up in a toilet stall and must find out who you are, what happened to you, and why. In addition to that, you have also been injected with something and have a limited amount of time to find a cure. That’s really all there is to it! You walk around a city and various buildings, occasionally taking a taxi to different regions to do some more exploration, but luckily it’s a pretty small world, since you will need to restart a few times from softlocks and optimizing your path because of the time limit. The time limit is also the source of most of my frustration with the game. It’s not that aggressive of a time limit but every single action takes time off, making it feel like you’re being punished for basic actions in any adventure game like examining objects. That’s right, even looking at an object means time is removed and I have to reload to get that time back. I’m generally a hater of time limits in adventure games anyway because to me, part of the appeal is an adventure game is that I usually have a world to explore and now the game wants me to focus instead on creating an optimal path instead of focusing on the world building. Oh well.
Eventually you do find a cure and can explore more freely. Even without the time limit though, the game still feels a bit tedious because of the verb system. I honestly don’t mind it that much, but there’s parts where it feels like a slog, such as having to pay the cab driver in quarters. But this is where you can tell it’s an early graphic adventure and they’re trying to figure out how to adapt that.
Another part of the game I really disliked is the occasional racist joke and frequent fatphobic jokes. The game cannot get enough of making fat jokes and it really sucks!
What did I actually like about the game? Well, the art is great. Black and white art on the Macintosh is incredibly charming to me and what you see here is great. The versions on the Apple IIGS and NES with color art aren’t bad either. I guess it just comes down to what you like more. The puzzles aren’t usually that difficult either, it’s just a time limit you fight with and busy work with the verbs. It’s also short! That sounds like I’m making fun of the game but I do like short games.
Eventually I want to play the rest of the Macventures. I’ve poked at Uninvited and Shadowgate before and knew of the time limit in the latter, but I guess every Macventure has a time limit? Come on man, just let me vibe and look at the great art.
So who would I recommend this to? I guess adventure game history nerds? It’s not actually painful, especially if you are ok with peeking at a walkthrough, the art is great, and parts of the writing are charming too.
Deja Vu: A Nightmares Comes True is available on Steam and includes the Macintosh and Apple IIGS versions.
As I mentioned in my indie game roundup, I took a break from posting because of…y’know, and I guess I’m back at it because it takes my mind off things and brings me joy. If you enjoy these, subscribe to some blogs with a RSS feed reader (I use Inoreader) and start your own blog! Doesn’t have to be anything big, could just be with Zonelets or Bear Blog. We can at least make the web feel less small in 2025.
Collection Chamber is a great abandonware blog. Every month they upload five games that have been updated to work on modern operating systems.
Rob talks about two side blogs he’s started. Tatwatch is one focused on b-movies and Videogames is focused on video games. All three blogs are great and in my RSS feed reader.
Ephemeral Enigmas wrote about the 1983 Intellivision game Dracula. I’ve really enjoyed this blog for retro games writing, often focusing on console games I’ve never heard of.
Good Old Days also writes about old games I’ve never heard of. This time they have a review of the Atari ST game Simulcra.
Final Fantasy VIII Is the Best is active again. Please follow this one if you’re remotely interested in lots of blog posts defending a game that gets a lot of criticism even from fans of the series.
Prismatic Wasteland did a thread of posts on Bluesky about people writing on vampires in tabletop rpgs if you’re looking for more ttrpg writing in your RSS feed reader.
It’s not a blog post, I just like when cool people interview other cool people. Emily Price talks to Joe Richardson, creator of adventure games like The Procession to Calvary.
It’s not new but this seems like a nice guide to getting into making pixel art.
It feels dumb writing about video games on my blog after this week but I have to take my mind off things so here we are. This is a bigger one than usual too since it’s been a couple weeks since I’ve done one of these because of….y’know, everything. Maybe something in here will bring you some joy too. If you recently released a game, tell me! I like hearing about this stuff. If you enjoyed this post, pass it on and tell your friends about what indie games you’re excited about, whether it’s through your own blog or social media.
Video Games
There’s a few hours left for the Click-Or-Treat bundle (Itch.io), where you can get a bunch of Halloween games for $9.
AdventureX (Steam) is doing a free online convention and sale. Go check out talks about adventure games and maybe pick up a game.
Clarissa the Dogcow lost her job and is looking for additional backing on Patreon to help her finish some of her really cool games. Go check out her post on Mastodon for more details. The world needs more Zelda 2-inspired games.
Indie Tsushin (Site) has announced their Study Buddy jam, where folks learn a new engine or genre or whatever for making a game.
Adam Saltsman released two PICO-8 games for the browser, the rpg Rat Dreams (Itch.io) and the puzzle game Kuiper Cargo (Itch.io).
We got a new issue of the Interactive Fiction and Visual Novel zine ChoiceBeat (Site/Itch.io). Every issue is free and has reviews, previews, and interviews.
Barry Bonds enters the World of MYST (2004) is an interactive story made by Jon Bois, originally published on the comedy website progressiveboink.com. Cecile Richard has remade the game and put it on Itch.io for a new generation of Myst fans to enjoy.
It’s the beginning of the month so we have a new Indiepocalypse (Itch.io).
Airdorf made the very cute browser game Skeleton Game (Itch.io) with their 4 year old daughter. More people should make games with their kids.
ECTOCOMP (Itch.io) has ended and people are voting on the submissions now. Go check out a bunch of interactive fiction games celebrating Halloween.
PROCJAM (Itch.io) also just ended. This one is a jam focused on procedural generation. So like, the kind of AI that isn’t focused on stealing art.
Tallywinkle released her first parser interactive fiction. It’s called Thanksgiving Dinner (Itch.io), a free browser game about Thanksgiving Day.
We got a really snazzy looking Monkey Island game called The Booze of Monkey Island (Itch.io).
Johnson. A Plane Man (Downpour) is a found imagery game made from the Ryanair Boeing 737-8200 safety instructions. The game was created by Hyphinett using the neat game making tool Downpour. Free and playable in the browser and the Downpour app.
BITCH HELL (Itch.io) is a FPS that feels a lot like something made in the Quake era. I don’t really know the engine used (FTEWQ) well enough to tell if it was connected to the Quake engine but it rules. Available for $6.66.
Andrew Plotkin has released two games. Advent Door (Itch.io) is a free browser text parser Advent Calendar game game and TheBeyond (Steam/Itch.io) is an interactive comic.
3D Workers Island (Itch.io) is a short horror story in the browser about a screensaver.
Slayaway Camp 2 (Steam) is a puzzle game where you’re a Jason Vorhees-like monster trying to wipe out all the people at a camp. Haven’t played this one yet but I liked the first game.
Apples Busy Day (Steam/Itch.io) is a short and cozy game about exploring and helping your neighbors. It looks like a really cute and comforting game if that’s what you need right now.
VERY NOT SAFE FOR WORK PAGE but HARDCODED (Itch.io/Steam) is out. It’s a very queer open world dating sim set in a cyberpunk world. I think it’s great and features some incredible pixel art but AGAIN, THE GAME PAGE IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK.
Robert’s Spooktacular Ghost Train (Itch.io) is a Pay-What-You-Want game where you build a little ghost themed ride at a fairground.
TETRACHROMA (Steam) is a Tetris-like that also block color changing mechanic.
Hesitation (Itch.io) is a short visual novel playable in the browser where you piece together a story by interacting with the items in a small room. Make sure you read the content warnings first. Also check out the developer’s tabletop rpgs on Itch.io.
ROGUE FLIGHT (Steam/Switch/Xbox/PS5) looks like a fun arcade space sim. It has a demo too!
Moida Mansion (Itch.io) is a new Lucas Pope (Obra Dinn designer) adventure game that’s playable in the browser and resembles one of those LCD handheld game things.
Stardust Demon (Steam/Itch.io) is a Metroidvania featuring some really impressive pixel art and 3D CGI FMV cutscenes. I’m a big fan of resnijars’ other games so this probably rules too. There’s a demo as well if you want to try it first.
Danielle Riendeau made a graveyard building strategy game called Tower of the Dead (Itch.io) for Cosmic Horrors Jam III
Tabletop Games
Escape from Wonderland (Kickstarter) is a tabletop rpg being designed by Turtlebun about trying to escape an amusement park. They’re great. Go check out the Kickstarter or some of their other games on Itch.io.
In The World We Left Behind (Itch.io), play as astronauts trekking across an alien planet. It’s a GMless game for 1-5 players. I think it’s fascinating that it was originally commissioned by a ballet collective?
Unspeakable Gate (Itch.io) is a solo TTRPG in which you take on the role of an artist building a mysterious Gate and becoming more and more absorbed in the reality that lies on its other side. Peach Garden Games has made so many good solo ttrpgs, check them out!
I think this one came out a while ago because I got the Kickstarter reward months ago, so I think this is just new to Itch.io, but The Coven of P.S. 13 (Itch.io) is a GM-less game for 2-6 people inspired by The Craft where you and your coven are planning for a big event occurring on the night of the full moon.
Sign for a closed store called Computer Nation Milwaukee, Wisconsin Photo credit: Hypnocoin on Twitter (which got deleted and a crypto thing took over)
People posted on their blogs a lot this week! Apologies in advance for this being a long one. If you enjoyed any of these blogs, subscribe to their RSS feed and consider doing your own blog roundups since Google sucks now.
Talkin’ About Old Games
So many folks talked about old games this week that I thought it deserved its own section.
The Genesis Temple goes into the history of the very weird NES game Monster Party.
Badger Trebuchet Diagram No. 17 talks about the old Windows rpg Castle of the Winds.
Final Fantasy VIII Is the Best has been incredible active this last week. I can’t even link to one post because there’s been a ton in the last week. Just go check it out.
Dev logs are the best. I love seeing how people are doing on their games, it allows folks to go into much more details than they could on micro blogging spots, and writing my own has been good motivation for me on my game. Highly recommend doing your own if you’re thinking about it.
David Lindsey Pittman goes into the work he’s doing on Eldritch 2‘s hub spaces and trying to make the game more of an immersive sim.
Prismatic Wasteland has two great posts about playing tabletop rpgs. One is on how to play as a ghost after dying and the other goes into how they let players have vampire characters. Great stuff! Go check out their games.
I keep discovering great music through the Morning Music blog.
I have gotten really into Answer Phone lately, my friend’s project where he uploads old cassette and answering machine tapes he finds at thrift stores.
Not new, but POINTCLICKING has a lot of nice adventure game fan art.
