Indie Game Roundup (Jan. 19, 2024)

January 19, 2024 ~ mpklamerus ~ 1 Comment

Despite losing my power one day this week and my internet going in and out over the weekend, I still had time to play video games. If you recently released something that you want included, always feel free to send me an email, message me on social media (see About page), or just reply to this post with a link to your thing to let me know it’s out. Or even if you didn’t make it and you just think it’s neat, let me know!

Sylvie Miniature
Sylvie Miniature is a short challenging platformer that is playable in the browser. The source code is available too if you wanted to see how it was made.

The New Secret of Pinocchio
For the 30th anniversary of the Russian ZX Spectrum game “The Adventures of Buratino” its creator released a Windows remake of it and extended it with new material. It’s available for free on Itch.

Music Maker 95
Music Maker 95 is a little synth playable in the browser on Itch where you play with some retro sounds in an interface resembling a program from the 90s.

robocop flying and shooting at the Predator

Robocop Vs Predator
Robocop Vs Predator is a free game inspired by Game Boy games that were weird crossovers like Robocop Vs Terminator or Iron Man And X-O Manowar. It’s a very silly and challenging action platformer.

view outside of clouds and a giant tower

Slave Zero X: Episode Enyo
Slave Zero X: Episode Enyo is a free prequel to Slave Zero X, which was a recent 2D action game which itself was a prequel to Slave Zero, a 3rd person action game from 1999. I have played neither of those games but I’m excited about people making free Quake episodes to promote their game, which is what this is. It’s a lot of effort too. The 6 level episode features new guns, enemies, and soundtrack.

Boyfriend Dungeon: Life On the Edge
Boyfriend Dungeon: Life On the Edge is an official tabletop rpg based off Boyfriend Dungeon. I was a fan of the original game and also have a fascination with official tabletop rpg adaptations so I hope to play this soon. I’m also relieved that it’s not another 5E reskin and it’s a unique system based on Rhapsody of Blood and Powered By the Apocalypse.

Day of the Sandwich
Day of the Sandwich is a cute little adventure game about making a sandwich, inspired by Day of the Tentacle and made in Adventure Game Studio and playable in the browser. I didn’t even know AGS games could be playable in the browser so that alone was exciting to me. It was made for a 14 day game jam and you can watch them develop it on their Twitch stream. If you would like to make a point-and-click adventure in the free and open source engine Adventure Game Studio, I highly recommend this tutorial by Julia Minamata, who is currently developing The Crimson Diamond.

Rise to the Commander of the Wolf Triad
Rise to the Commander of the Wolf Triad is a browser game made in PICO-8 where you climb a tower and throw bombs at Commander Keen? It’s a late entry to the Toy Box Jam, which is hosted by Tom Hall (Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom) every year on Itch where developers must make a game using the collection of assets that are provided to them.

Gex Jam 2024
Do you miss 90’s platformer mascot Gex? Well there’s a jam coming up in a month where you can make anything featuring the guy.

Posts About Puzzle Games
There were two recent posts about indie puzzle games that I really liked. Thinky Third Thursday is a monthly roundup of puzzle games by the designer of puzzle games like A Monster’s Expedition, Cosmic Express, and A Good Snowman is Hard to Build. There was also this post on Cohost highlighting A TON of puzzle games.

top down view of a knight fighting monsters in a dungeon

Rogue Declan
After posting about Amiga games last week, someone mentioned this very nice looking Amiga game that was released last year. It looks like its got a boxed copy available for pre-order too.

Lost Game: The Games of T.H.E.S.I.S.

January 15, 2024 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

While digging around for local software companies in Michigan a while ago, I stumbled across this ad in the first issue of the Atari magazine Analog for an educational software company called T.H.E.S.I.S. in Garden City.

ad for a software company called THESIS, which lists a variety products.

From looking at the ad, it seems like it’s mostly educational software but there’s a couple of games as well lie CON*PUTATION and TONAL ENCOUNTER. For a longer time than I’d like to admit, I thought there was basically nothing about this company and struggled to find anything. I don’t know what changed in those last two years, but it seems like I was just researching it poorly and it turns out that actually, most of their catalog is available for download.

First of all, this clipping from InfoWorld explains what T.H.E.S.I.S. is actually short for.

screenshot showing that THESIS is short for Timely Home Educational System and Informational Software

And then it looks like they were also referenced in this catalog of Atari educational software makers, which you can download here (link opens a pdf).

This was all I knew of for a while and assumed there was just nothing else, until a couple of years later when I decided to take another swing at looking up this company and it turned out I was just doing a poor job the first time. Searching for Tonal Encounter gave me a page on Atari Mania showing that the game is missing but the additional info that it was developed by Linda Schreiber.

It turns out, she has worked on a ton of games. This was a delight for me to find as someone who has an interesting in local game developers. It looks like most of the games that T.H.E.S.I.S. made have also been preserved as well. It’s really nice finding out that a company you figured was lost forever, was actually mostly preserved and you just didn’t do a good job researching them. IN MY DEFENSE I think it was made harder by the company’s name. It does look like a couple of the games by them are still missing but it is significantly less than I had assumed a few days ago. There’s still a few missing like Tonal Encounter, Math Facts, and Hidden Words, but most of them seem to be on that Atari Mania page.

screenshot from Spellbound showing a bunch of little blue guys and the word Necessary. — Screenshot of Spellbound, taken from Atari Mania

Not only did Linda make a ton of games, she also wrote a few books, with most of them focused on programming for Atari computers. She was an instructor for a long time but is mostly retired now, other than still writing and having a course on Udemy for making wine. While it’s not active now, she also had a blog where she wrote about her experiences as the co-founder of T.H.E.S.I.S. and in 2017 ANTIC: The Atari 8-Bit Podcast interviewed her.

Not really sure what the lesson learned from this whole experience was. I need to look harder when researching lost games? But I’m glad it has a happy ending.

Credit goes to Karen and BogusMeatFactory in the Michigan Games History Colletive discord for finding the InfoWorld clipping and educational catalog. It’s a little discord I started where I’ve been dumping Michigan game developer history research before writing about it somewhere more public facing. It’s not the busiest discord but you’re more than welcome to join here if you have an interest in Michigan game dev history.

Indie Game Roundup (Jan. 12, 2024)

January 12, 2024 ~ mpklamerus ~ 2 Comments

It is the 90s and there is time for games. If you recently released something that you want included, always feel free to send me an email, message me on social media (see About page), or just reply to this post with a link to your thing to let me know it’s out. Or even if you didn’t make it and you just think it’s neat, let me know!

screenshot from Itch of various game covers

Solo But Not Alone 4
This is the fourth in a series of charity bundles on Itch that are made up of solo tabletop rpgs. The proceeds from these bundles go to mental health related charities and you can click on the bundle link for a description of who it’s going to this time. It’s an incredible bargain for a collection of great games and I’m proud to have my KLF-inspired game Chill Out in here.

XYZZY Awards
The winners of the 2022 XYZZY awards have been announced. If you want to see what people in the modern IF scene are up to, this is a great way to see some of the games coming from there. Since the page doesn’t link to where the winning games are available, hopefully no one minds too much if I basically copy the post but link to the games.

Best Game: According to Cain (Jim Nelson)
Best Writing: The Absence of Miriam Lane (Abigail Corfman)
Best Story: Fairest (Amanda Walker)
Best Setting: Prism (Eliot M.B. Howard)
Best Puzzles: The Bones of Rosalinda (Agnieszka Trzaska)
Best NPCs: Lady Thalia and the Rose of Rocroi (E. Joyce, N. Cormier)
Best Individual Puzzle: the escape room in The Little Match Girl 2: Annus Evertens (Ryan Veeder)
Best Individual NPC: Computerfriend in Computerfriend (Kit Riemer)
Best Individual PC: Bell Park in The Grown-Up Detective Agency (Brendan Patrick Hennessy)
Best Implementation: According to Cain (Jim Nelson)
Best Use of Innovation: The Bones of Rosalinda (Agnieszka Trzaska)
Best Technological Development: Inform 7 build 10.1.0
Best Use of Multimedia: Gent Stickman vs Evil Meat Hand (AZ / ParserCommander)

Independent Games Festival
The finalists for the 2024 IGF have also been announced. This is another great way of discovering games you may have previously missed.

New Games Everywhere
I enjoyed this video covering upcoming games that Dani Lavandula is looking forward to this year. It’s only 10 minutes long and has a lot of stuff I didn’t know about

TRAMCITY HAKODATE
This is a new game on Steam in Early Access where you are a driver for Hakodate, Hokkaido’s tram service. This cohost post does a better job explaining what the game is and the future plans for it, plus it has a link to the Steam page.

Psycutlery
Psycutlery is a platformer game that has been in development for a few years but has finally been released, and for free! It’s a beautiful looking game and I think it’s worth downloading off of Itch.

conversation between a player character and a jester

HalOPE
HalOPE is described on the Itch page as a surreal exploration/”puzzle-ish” RPGMaker game about breaking cycles and becoming whole. I haven’t played it yet but it looks lovely and is available for free.

person flipping through a horror game magazine

PC CURSED
PC CURSED is an anthology of horror games as well as a magazine, all for free. The Itch page lists all 20+ games that are included in the anthology.

Thinky Games
If you’re looking for more puzzle games to play, ThinkyGames.com has a good post covering games from two recent game jams.

DUSK
DUSK is a new sci-fi rules-lite tabletop rpg from Gila RPGs. DUSK uses the LUMEN 2.0 system, and is a diceless RPG focused on resource management rather. The core rules for the game are available for free!

Amiga Games
It also felt like a lot of new games for the Amiga were released this week, at least from looking at Indie Retro News. There was Ami-H.E.R.O, an update of Activision’s H.E.R.O., a port of the arcade version of Tetris, a news update about a top-down arcade game called Hyperborea Resurrected, and news about a dungeon crawler called Dungeonette.

If you enjoyed this post, you can find ones from previous weeks here

Voyage of the Mayflower

January 10, 2024 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

In an effort to cover more Michigan and game dev history on here, I thought I would mention the game Voyage of the Mayflower. This was a game designed by Ken Ludwig and published by Cadmean Corp. in Ann Arbor in 1984 for the Commodore 64. The game is actually playable in the browser on the Internet Archive.

screenshot showing a boat sailing across the ocean — Screenshot taken from MobyGames

The designer of the game also uploaded the design and marketing notes to the University of Michigan’s library, which anyone can read here. Ken is currently a lecturer at the University of Michigan and in 2021, Austin Yarger interviewed Ken for a WolverineSoft virtual meetup about the game and its history. They even play the game for a little bit.

Doctor Who Rewatch (Jan. 9, 2024)

January 9, 2024 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Only watched and listened to a little bit of Doctor Who this week

The Sensorites
The only serial I watched this week was this 6 parter that suffers from some huge pacing issues. It probably should have been 4 episodes. It still has some fun bits like like Gallifrey being described for the first time, Susan being psychic, and it has a strong start. I also enjoyed that there’s a little more complexity to it in who is considered good and bad in this story. Also lol, so much line flubbing. I don’t blame the actors since they were only allowed one take for the first few years but it comes up quite a bit here.

Here There Be Monsters
I also listened to a couple Big Finish audio stories. It turns out one of the apps my local library uses for digital lending, Hoopla, has a ton of Big Finish stuff on there so consider checking that out if you live in the US. Here There Be Monsters is a perfectly ok but maybe kinda forgettable companion chronicles and the middle is kinda dull. It has some really interesting ideas like the plant ship that tears holes in reality to travel. This part is very good and well produced but then it’s mostly dropped to introduce a man from another dimension who kinda doesn’t do anything? Carole Ann Ford is good in it. It probably should have been either shorter and cut some things out, or longer so it could have more time for the concepts in introduced. Still, it was fun enough and I can’t complain about it being free at the library. It’s not too expensive either on the Big Finish site if you’re looking for more 1st Doctor adventures.

The Transit of Venus
The other Big Finish story I listened to was The Transit of Venus, a story set right after The Sensorites and before The Reign of Terror. I didn’t plan this at all so that was a nice surprise. This was another story I checked out from my library. Apparently this was the first audio story William Russell did as Ian, back in 2009. It’s fun and I enjoy the pure historical stories since they don’t happen in Doctor Who anymore. Without spoiling anything, it does have a fun plot element that carries over from The Sensorites which does mean that serial is required watching before listening to this, but I thought it worked very well. Both of these stories are only an hour too.

Lost Game: When Oranges Attack

January 8, 2024February 28, 2024 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Being involved with the Michigan game dev scene means that I’m aware of plenty of smaller games that may not be at the top of every games preservation list. One of these is When Oranges Attack. When Oranges Attack was a game developed by PixoFactor (now known as Pixo VR) and playable on Facebook to promote Minute Maid orange juice. Players created Rube Goldberg-style contraptions, similar to The Incredible Machine series, to help oranges tip over Minute Maid orange juice so actor Ty Burrell cannot drink it. FMV of the actor would play while you were trying to solve puzzles and whenever you completed one successfully. There were five levels, each with a different theme. Between levels there was an orange juice themed clone of the game Pipe Dream. Players could also enter a UPC code from Minute Maid orange juice to unlock a bonus 6th level.

The game was only online for a short period of time before being taken down and no one has dumped the game so it can be preserved. My understanding is that the code for the game was hosted on Minute Maid servers so I couldn’t just ask someone from Pixo to anonymously dump the game to the Internet Archive. That said, if you do happen to have access to the game, could you uhhhhhhh dump the game to the Internet Archive?

There’s not much proof the game even exists online except for a couple of websites that mention it along with a handful of screenshots. This first website is a blog that had a paid post to advertise the game and features a few screenshots and a description of the game.

instructions for how to scan a UPC code on an orange juice bottle

There is also this website from someone who has worked in various advertising campaigns that also has a handful of screenshots.

screen showing instructions on how to play

Once again, if you have any additional knowledge about this game or if the game mysteriously ends up online, let me know!

New Year’s Resolution Mechanic

January 7, 2024 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Prismatic Wasteland has issued a challenge to blogs to create a new resolution mechanic for tabletop rpgs.

My challenge is thus: In January 2024, come up with a new resolution mechanic for a TTRPG and give it a name. It doesn’t need to be good (in fact, most the good ones have probably already been taken). It just needs to be new! You don’t need to plan to use it in your games; it can be absolute detritus for you. But one blogger’s trash is another designer’s treasure. You never know how great an impact one throwaway idea on a blog might have.

There’s already a nice list of mechanics on the page and I thought it would fun to come up with my own. This one requires a children’s basketball hoop for kids ages 18 months and up.

a photo of a little tykes basketball hoop for kids

You could probably use a basketball hoop for adults I GUESS but this is more likely to be inside a house next to your table where you’re playing a ttrpg. Anytime you have to take an action that is risky, take a shot on the basket. Making a basket means the shot was a success, hitting the rim but not having it go in means it was a success but there was a complication, and missing completely means it was a failure. You could have them make the shot from 8 feet away but feel free to adjust the distance based on the player’s basketball ability. If the character has a skill modifier bonus, the player can take additional steps towards the hoop, or steps away if they have a penalty.

#Lore24

January 6, 2024 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

This year I will be participating in #Lore24, a daily activity for folks in the tabletop rpg community to build a setting by writing a tiny bit about it each day. It doesn’t matter what part of the world you’re going to focus on that day or how much you write. It can be just a tiny bit each day. It looks like it’s something that originally started on Mastodon. This blog post has a really good description of how it works.

I’m still not sure how often I’ll share updates about it. I know eventually I’ll put it out there but I also don’t want to share daily updates. Maybe weekly or monthly? I bounced off Dungeon23, the last daily activity in the ttrpg community, mostly because I don’t really like building dungeons that much and was generating a lot of filler rooms, but this has already been more fun for me. I’m starting off with a fantasy setting inspired by the Zork games but I’m also hoping that over time it will grow into something more unique. Consider joining in!

Indie Game Roundup (Jan. 05, 2024)

January 5, 2024 ~ mpklamerus ~ 1 Comment

Happy new year! Even with the holidays and everything lately, a lot of great stuff came out this week. If you recently released something that you want included, always feel free to send me an email or message me on social media (see About page) to let me know it’s out.

gif of vanish 5 of blocks being moved around to clear the screen

DOS Games Jam
The most recent DOS Games Jam just concluded and a lot of great games have been made for it. I enjoy doing these since they’re so casual and there’s no ranking involved. I was especially excited to see that a holiday version of Stair Quest was made.

retro looking top down view of a house by the water

Hexany’s Roguelike Tiles
Hexany’s Roguelike Tiles is a really nice looking batch of tiles released under a Creative Commons license for anyone to use. I just thought they looked nice and thought it should be included.

Spheroid
Spheroid is a puzzle game for the Commodore Amiga where you move a metal sphere around a maze and get to the exit. The Amiga was my first computer so it makes me happy that Itch has an active Amiga game dev scene on there.

a glowing yellow pepper outside in a park?

Dead Drop
Dead Drop is the 19th game in the Carol Reed series, a series of first person point-and-click mystery games. I haven’t played any of these (I will fix that this year!) but I heard they’re solid games. I just enjoy that the games are exclusively available for sale from the developer’s site and nowhere else. It reminds me of the 90s/early 00s era of buying indie games.

Word Thirds
Word Thirds is a new game by John Passfield, of Halloween Harry and Flight of the Amazon Queen fame. It’s a puzzle game on the iOS app store and Itch where you make as many six letter words with letter tiles as you can within sixty seconds. I’m awful at word games but it’s a fun game.

No Escape Essay Pack
This is a bundle of writing about games that includes three issues of the No Escape magazine as well as some essays. It’s a great way to support one of the best sites out there, No Escape.

glowing white butterflies over the water

BlueSuburbia
BlueSuburbia is now on Steam. I’ve mentioned the game before but previously it was only on Itch. This demo is a first person interactive fiction where you explore poems through immersive environments. I believe it was built in the Unreal Engine but it does some really cool stuff like having playable Bitsy games inside the game.

Remembering the Borders bookstore in Novi, Michigan

January 4, 2024May 26, 2024 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Much like how I wrote about the CompUSA I frequently went to in the 90’s, I figured I should also write about the bookstore I went to for over 15 years, the Borders Books & Music in Novi, Michigan. From 1993 to it closing in 2011, it was the bookstore of choice for me. There was (and still is) a Barnes and Noble that was closer to me but I preferred shopping here due to the larger size and more variety.

Early memories of it involve me spending time in the children’s section of the store while my dad would look at computer books. I was absolutely into Star Wars as a kid and since this was the 90s and there were only three movies, the Star Wars books were how I could see more of the universe. I also occasionally checked out the strategy guides for video games while here, looking up any parts of games I was stuck on so I could go home and make progress. Another random memory were of the in-store music performances that would occasionally happen. One being of a woman doing scat singing in the center of the store with no backing music and my younger brother and I just being baffled by it.

Much like the CompUSA I mentioned earlier, it was located in the Novi Town Center shopping area, only a couple stores down from that. It outlasted that store by a couple years but it felt pretty obvious during that time that it wouldn’t be around forever. Much has been written about all the mistakes Borders made so I won’t go into those, but one of the signs for me was applying for a programming job at their corporate headquarters in Ann Arbor and then that posting eventually being canceled before I got to do an interview.

While it’s very unfortunate that there’s basically no photos of the store available online (I could have sworn there used to be some), there’s a few videos still up that show what the store looked like. This video of a car driving through the parking lot on the last day it was open shows the exterior, and there is a book signing with Dave Mustaine of Megadeth showing what a big chunk of the store looked like inside. There is also a video on the C-SPAN website of an author doing a reading inside the store in 1997, which doesn’t show that much of the store but is still a nice little 90’s time capsule.

On May 26, 2024, I came across this t-shirt that a vintage store in Michigan was selling in a Facebook post. It was already sold by the time I saw the post but still, I think it’s neat that it exists.

a red t-shirt that shows little logos for books, music, film, and a coffee cup and says Borders in Novi Town Center

There is actually a much better tribute to this specific store than this post, and that is on this blog here. It’s about how they essentially recreated that Borders in a room of their home. If I had known the store was selling off shelves and signs from the store when they were closing, maybe I would have picked a few things up. It’s an incredibly impressive job they’ve done with the room.

If you have any of the Novi, Michigan Borders, or the CompUSA and Egghead Software that were in the same shopping area, I would love to see them.

Virtual Moose

Author: mpklamerus