Author: mpklamerus

The Zium Railway, the Latest Virtual Gallery from The Zium Society, contains great art tanked by bad programming

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Developer: The Zium Society
Year: 2026
Genre: Multimedia Program
System: Windows

overview of a big world with a train rail going around it

The Zium Railway is the latest in the series of virtual galleries published by The Zium Society. I had been a fan of the series for a while and it has been fascinating to watch these grow from more straightforward galleries (but still impossible to create in a physical space) where you walk around a virtual world and look at pieces of art, to this latest one where you ride a train around a world and enter virtual worlds created by artists for you to explore. I liked it, which makes it incredibly frustrating that I don’t know if I can recommend it. It turns out that the main hub world had relied on heavy AI usage, which was not disclosed but does come up on the dev’s blog where they made an obnoxious post about how Valve and Hideo Kojima should hire them and has a romantic view of company towns. It’s just completely rancid and unfortunate since the artists on the project had all done a great job. It doesn’t appear that the artists were told about it until it was too late, judging from how frustrated some of them seem to be. I hope the artists release their things separately like this Aqualung Caverns one, which I loved. I loved the external exhibits and even the main world design was nice. I had run into bugs but overlooked it since I could work around them with the in-game options to teleport around. I suppose I know why there were so many. I guess I can’t really say I regret donating money for it since the money is being split among the artists but it’s a bummer.

Sometimes on social media I’ll lament the death of multimedia cd-roms and other programs that combine art and music in interesting ways without there being a series of win conditions you’re supposed to meet, but I think there’s space for it by doing virtual exhibits. I do hope that it’s something other folks will consider doing things like the Zium series, folks who won’t crash out on the slightest bit of pushback on AI usage and again, praise company towns on their blog.

inside a cavern and looking at a waterfall. There's a sign that says Aqualung Caverns

After this had come out, I went back and loaded up The Zium Garden to play with my 6 year old since it was one of the few that runs on Mac and she had a great time. Kids sometimes just like to have interesting spaces to explore without things running around trying to kill them. Which just sad that I can’t bother with these in the future due to the wildly unethical way that AI companies are run, steal so much content from others, and poison marginalized communities with data centers. Something brilliant was started due to the efforts of so many talented collaborators and then thrown in the bin.

The Zium Railway is available for Pay-What-You-Want for Windows on Itch.io but, well, you saw the post.

Here, Have a Moose Emerging from the Water

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the cover of Ranger Rick magazine, showing a moose emerging from water

My mom gifted a magazine subscription to my kids a little bit ago so I was happy to see this arrive in the mail. People can say print is dead all they want but how else are you supposed to have a moose picture delivered to your home.

Anyway, here is a moose emerging from the water. When evil doers are causing trouble, beware, a moose may come from anywhere to save the day.

Necking is a Cute Game Where You Make Giraffes Kiss

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Developer: Not Jam
Year: 2026
Genre: Arcade
System: Browser

two giraffes separated by bushes

Sometimes you are just in the mood to play a short arcade puzzle game with very cute art where you make giraffe necks stretch so they can kiss another giraffe on the screen while avoiding obstacles and someone happens to share their game on social media that meets those needs. It’s really nice. The game itself is about 5 minutes long and while it’s an arcade game with upbeat music, I found it to be very relaxing since the levels are very short and messing up quickly restarts you to the beginning so messing up isn’t stressful. There’s also a surprising amount of variety in the levels given that the game itself is only a few minutes long too. You go from controlling just one giraffe, then levels where you avoid obstacles, to controlling multiple giraffes and levels with inverted controls. It’s great and I hope you love it too.

Necking is available to play in the Browser on Itch.io.

Metroid thoughts

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Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Year: 1986
Genre: Action-Adventure
System: NES

Look, obviously I am not going to have any unique takes on Metroid, one of the most discussed games ever, but I just completed it and I’m pretty proud of that so into the Game Log it goes. I think everyone reading this knows what Metroid is as well so I can skip that bit too. I still love the game even though it’s got some fiddly and frustrating bits from it being so early in this style of game. The only major pain point really being that if you die, it takes ages to refill your health and missiles from grinding enemies.

I’m mostly excited about completing it because it’s a game that I have owned literally my whole life. It came out in 1986, a year before I was before, and I always played it on and off over the decades and yet never completed even though I’m a big fan of the series and have completed many of the later games. What’s odd is that it didn’t even really take me that long really to complete this time. Maybe about six hours or so. I still thought it was a challenging game but it’s not really that long so I’m a little surprised I never completed it before when I had entire days free to play video games and write down passwords. It’s a very weird, and highly recommended, experience to complete a game that has existed your entire life that you’ve poked at a few times so if you got a few of those hanging around, consider knocking one out.

One of the things I really love about the original Metroid is just how weird and mysterious it is compared to later games in the series. It’s not an entirely fair comparison, of course the first game in a series is going to feel a lot more new than later games and some of the later games do have weird bits, but at the same I think it would be nice to see more unexplained stuff and weird worlds instead of revisiting some of the same characters and places so often. I don’t think this is the same as doing a “back in my day games were hard and blah blah blah” because this isn’t what made the original Metroid difficult. I’m just saying the vibes are very good and it’s less focused on telling a linear narrative, which is why I don’t care for Metroid Fusion as much as other folks even though it’s got some weird stuff in there (that I think it over explains). It’s a similar arc as the game’s inspiration Alien, lots of weird unexplained stuff and then it kinda becomes more normal and overexplained. A more modern example of what I mean is the game Axiom Verge, it’s got lots of weird stuff that you never fully get. I would love recommendations if there’s any other indie Metroid-likes that I’m missing out on with great weird vibes.

This probably sounds like I’m basically saying the Metroid gets worse over time and I’m not. I love most of those later games too. Some of the sequels have even weirder things like all the various designs of the Metroid creatures in Metroid 2 and how much it feels like horror at certain points. I just want more of it.

Anyway, no hot takes here. I still think the first Metroid is very good and I’m looking forward to the new one that was just announced. If you’ve got a game that you like but haven’t completed even though you’ve owned it for a few decades, go complete it. You’ll probably find it’s not as impossible as you remember.

Metroid is available on the NES Virtual Console for the Nintendo Switch but you can probably find ways to play it elsewhere.

Season 3 of Playdate Has Been Announced!

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Playdate just announced the 3rd season of their Playdate games and I’m very excited for it. The two previous seasons were great and there’s already a few games announced in this season that I’m looking forward to. I know my kids will love Sound Mind, a two-player hide and seek game by Chuck Jordan (Curse of Monkey Island, Sasquatchers). They also loved Root Bear so they will be happy to see another game by that team called Soggy Froggy. I was a huge fan of Chance’s Lucky Escape by Goloso Games (Inspector Waffles) & Julia Minamata (The Crimson Diamond) so I’m happy to see that’s getting a sequel. We’re also getting a new MacVenture-style (Shadowgate/Deja Vu/Univited) adventure game called houm. It’s not all adventure games in season 3 but that’s my favorite genre so it’s nice to see so many announced already.

Even better, the page says “All games in Season Three were created without the use of generative AI.” Season 2 had run into an issue where it turned out a developer did use gen ai to help code on a game without disclosing it to anyone so I’m glad Panic is making sure they don’t run into that again. I’ve complained recently about how much gen ai usage is on the Catalog store and so have other folks so at least the Playdate community is free from it here.

Transfer Point thoughts

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Developer: Mike Piontek
Year: 2026
Genre: Adventure
System: Macintosh

a bus stop at night. Text says "You're at a bus stop. It looks nice form a distance. Beyond the bus stop is complete darkness. There are paths leading off to the south and east."
Screenshot taken from Itch.io page

After posting about the game in an indie game roundup early this year, I finally made the time to play through Transfer Point. Transfer Point is a new adventure game for the classic Macintosh, but playable in the browser as well. It was created in World Builder, a program released on the Mac in 1986 that allowed people to make their own games. You play as a woman who finds herself at a bus stop, but with no memory of how she got there and only remembering parts of her past. The game itself is first person, with you using a combination of clicking on things and typing into a text parser.

I was very excited to play this one and wasn’t let down. I had occasionally watched Mike design the game on his robotspacer Twitch channel and thought it looked great. Even though I didn’t grow up with this era of the Mac, I love how games on the platform look with their black and white art. It’s just very comforting to me. Luckily the rest of the game is solid as well. I enjoyed the story in this (you play as a woman married to another woman!!, not really a spoiler!) and while it’s not really a comedy, there’s some bits in here that I thought were very funny. There was a death scene in the game near the very beginning that I absolutely loved and made me really happy to see. It’s not a game with many deaths if you are an adventure game fan concerned about running into them. A nice thing about waiting a day or two to write a post about a game is that I can think about some plot elements for a bit before really settling on how I feel about them, which includes a twist later in the game, nothing too twisty really, that I wasn’t sure about at first but I like it. I think the puzzle design is solid for the most part too. There was one puzzle that even the Invisiclues apologizes for, but other than that one I think the game has good and fair puzzle design and if you do get stuck, the designer has provided the Invisiclues to look at, which give you small hints instead of spoiling a puzzle completely. I would love to see more adventure game devs provide this with their games.

Since I have only played a few World Builder games before this, I was fascinated by the things that seem like requirements for making something in the engine. The game has a Weapons column, but you never need to attack anything. The designer manages to make use of the section by placing “use rapier sharp wit” under there and makes it work, but I think it’s fun seeing people work with engines like this that force the designer to make choices like that. There’s also a Search command, I think it’s probably a leftover bit from text adventures, that you basically use in every room to see if there’s anything hidden. It’s a little odd if you don’t play text adventures since you can see what you’re looking at in the panel on the left, but it’s necessary for completing the game.

I’m trying to avoid talking too much about specific elements in this that I loved because it’s a fairly short game (took me about 1-2 hours) and spoilers in adventure games can sometimes hurt enjoyment for some players, so apologies about being so vague about the content, but I highly recommend this if you’re a fan of adventure games and the classic Macintosh look. While you can buy the game on Itch.io to get a version of the game that runs on Macintosh and also some nice bonus materials, you can also play it in your browser window if that sounds much easier for you. There’s a version in development for the Playdate to look forward to as well, which you can follow development of on Twitch.

Transfer Point is available for Macintosh and browsers on Itch.io.

Aerial_Knight’s MrFreezy thoughts

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Developer: Aerial_Knight
Publisher: Aerial_Knight
Year: 2026
Genre: Puzzle
System: Windows

two rows of bodies, some with heads and some are missing
Screenshot taken from Steam

Having been a fan of Aerial_Knight’s games for a while, I was pleasantly surprised to see another game by him. He just released Dropshot earlier this year, which I really liked, and didn’t expect a second game this year. This one is a puzzle game where you play as a woman who is an axe-wielding serial killer. You have two rows of five heads and need to make rows of 3 or more heads by swapping their positions on the two rows, and then decapitating the row. Decapitating an entire row of five heads gives you a combo. You beat the levels by decapitating enough heads in the limited number of moves you’re given. This all sounds incredibly violent but the game is so stylized and all the bodies intentionally look like mannequins that it never felt like too much to me. There’s technically a story told through cutscenes but it’s mostly just there to set the mood and not the main draw of the game.

I think it works really well. Each level is only a few minutes and I found the setting up of rows to be very satisfying. Eventually the game increases the difficulty by introducing new types of heads that introduce new obstacles, some heads can’t be moved, some don’t always move for you, etc. This introduces a lot of variety but also adds some frustrations that I had in the second half of the game. The game gives you power-ups you can select for each level, with some that will help your score and others that overcome the obstacles that the heads provide. I think it’s a fun idea that works for most of the game but near the end I felt like I just had to choose the power-ups that let me actually take out the heads or else it would start to feel like a chore to keep fighting with the heads in that level. The game also does not let you know what head types are in a level so if you want an optimal power-up for a level, you have to go in and clear a few rows, see if your power-up is relevant to that level and if not, restart the level with a power-up that will help you. Most of the time it’s not an issue but if you end up going into a level where you have a head that cannot be decapitated unless you have the power-up that lets you do it, then you often cannot get combos and the level moves slowly, which meant that 90% of the time I just went with that power-up.

That complaint aside, I think the game works well. It’s a fun puzzle game that takes a few hours total to complete and makes for a good game to play in short bursts. A weird thing I get excited about is when devs reuse assets from their previous games (See: Llamasoft) and there’s a little bit of that as well. I just think it’s a smart way to save time and helps establish a consistent style from the designer. That all said, I’d recommend it if you want a puzzle game to play this Halloween season.

Aerial_Knight’s MrFreezy is available for Windows on Steam.

September is Library Card Sign-up Month!

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If you don’t have a library card, go get one. Libraries are pretty neat and you can often check out things other than books such as movies, music, games, tools, instruments, and more. Plus they can be a space to do work and study, and have meetups.

And if you do already have a library card, feel free to use this post as an excuse to go to your local library today.

Text Adventures Are Still Doing Alright

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Even though the general narrative online seems to be that text adventures died with Infocom (which I disagree with for many reasons of course), it’s nice to see that there’s two notable Interactive Fiction and Text Adventure events happening at the same time. The first is that the 32nd Annual IF Comp is now live! There are 71 new interactive fiction entries to play and vote on. Not all of them are pure text adventures but the entries let you know what type of Interactive Fiction it is. I love choice based games as well so this is not an issue for me. It’s also just wild to me that it’s been going on for so long. I always forget that the Post-Infocom Text Adventure era or whatever you called it really did start that early on while folks like Legend were still making text adventures.

The only heads up I’d like to give is that while they put much heavier restrictions on gen AI usage, I believe they do not have anything for code because it would be impossible for them to enforce. While I personally disagree and think it’s worth having anyway, even at least a disclosure requirement, I get it. I’m not going to fill up this post with complaints. Just know that you should dunk your head in a toilet if you use it.

The second Interactive Fiction related item I’d like to mention is that it’s the final week of voting for IntroComp. IntroComp is described as “an annual competition where participants develop excerpts of interactive fiction, gain feedback from audience reactions, and (hopefully!) use this feedback to release a fantastic final product.” Check some games in development out and help some games get made!

And if you’ve never played a text adventure, give it a shot. Many of the Interactive Fiction games on this Interactive Fiction Database list are text adventures and available for free. It’s a bit of a cliche to recommend Lost Pig but it’s a good one! You may also like Bronze, Shade, or Photopia. Just click around and start playing one that sounds interesting to you.

Text adventures: They’re neat!