With Google search taking a huge nosedive in the last few years, I’ve been thinking about how effective specific search engines and databases could be. There’s still plenty of general search engines like DuckDuckGo and Ecosia that I’ll keep using but it feels like AI grift stuff may be coming to them as well. So anyway, I’ve started building out a list of more specific databases. I might eventually turn it into a standalone page so I would love to know what databases you like. I’m avoiding Fandom wikis since they’re an awful company and I don’t have a lot of confidence in them in the long term, but please recommend other wikis that aren’t owned by big companies. I’ll keep updating this over the next few days as I think of things and more suggestions come in.
Anyway, here’s a few that might be worth looking at:
A lot of neat stuff has come out in the last two weeks and it’s the funny number day, so here’s another one of these indie game roundup things of things that I enjoyed. If you released a thing and I missed it, feel free to reply in the comments.
Craig Maloney Craig Maloney passed away on April 2nd after battling cancer for three years. I never met him in person but enjoyed talking with him online and reading his posts on his blog. If you would like to see his writing or the games he made, there’s links to everything on his page.
New Domino Club games! A new batch of Domino Club games has been released. Domino Club is a collective that releases games anonymously. Each batch of Domino Club games features incredibly interesting experimental stuff. They’re the best!
Palestinian Relief Bundle A charity bundle just came out today with all proceeds going to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. For $8 or more you can get hundreds of games. I’m happy to have my game MindExplorer in there.
New Husky Game Development Games Husky Game Development is a game dev group at Michigan Tech University since 2004. They’ve uploaded some new games to Itch so go check them out!
Tiny Circumstance Tiny Circumstance is a really cute and technically impressive Bitsy game.
Broken Roads If you’re in the mood for some more Fallout after watching the new tv show (I enjoyed it!), consider checking out Broken Roads, a post apocalyptic rpg in the Australian Outback. Reviews for it are currently mixed but maybe you’ll be into it?
Crowdfunding
Here are some crowdfunding campaigns that I found interesting:
Devil’s Hideout is a new point-and-click adventure from the developer of games like Twilight Oracle and Blood Nova.
Free Stars is a new Star Control game by the original designers in everything but name. The game even includes all the aliens from those original games.
Not much from me this time. I continue to play lesser known games on my YouTube and Twitch channels and a previous post discusses a game I’m working on. I also have a list on Itch that I update every day with games I really like
Had a crisis, started remaking King’s Quest with clay
I absolutely half assed this clay model and the photos and it still took hours to digitize. All for a 15 second shitpost gif. It was really more of a proof of concept for myself and even with the very ugly clay model (or because of it?), I think it’s an interesting look. I also just wanted to see what the process of doing something like this would even be like and now I know. Had a lot of fun learning this stuff. All it really was was photographing that King Graham model and then using Aseprite to clean it up and digitize it. I also used Retrospecs to make it look a little more like the VGA era. Even though I rushed the model and photographs, it still took forever to import into Adventure Game Studio because I didn’t photograph it against a green screen.
I do like working with clay though and kinda want to make a game using it, just maybe a tiny bit more effort put into the models. Picked up more clay yesterday so we’ll see what I come up with after more practice.
That said, huge “could a depressed person make this?!” energy* coming from this gif, haha.
*I’m doing fine
I’m still working out what to even make with this knowledge so if any friends want to make a weird clay game (I can probably do better art than this) let me know.
Went to the Detroit Zine Fest yesterday and had a great time. I haven’t been to one since the last Detroit zine fest, since I wasn’t able to go to the Grand Rapids zine fest last August and I should probably go to whatever ones are in Toronto since that really isn’t that much farther than Grand Rapids for me. It’s always a good time and it’s a chance to catch up with people I haven’t seen in a while. One nice thing is that while they don’t require masking (which they used to do), they do have a sign saying masking is encouraged and people do it anyway. I wish game conventions would do this. Narrascope does but everyone else has given up on it.
I got a lot of cool stuff too. I’ll try to link to all the artists, although there’s one or two that I wasn’t able to figure out. All the stickers and pins are for my kids. I wasn’t sure if I could bring my oldest to the zine fest or if there would even be anything for her there but it turns out there was and other kids were there as well, so I will have to bring her.
The Snoopy and Ditto stickers and Snoopy fashion zine are by Brenda.
Someone told me I should table with the Locally Sourced zine I made two years ago and still have a lot of copies of, so maybe I’ll do that, get another issue made along with some small $1 ones about FMV games or whatever, and then do one of these? That could be fun.
After taking a few weeks off because I now have a baby to take care off, I am doing another post about indie games stuff that was exciting to me over the last month. These probably won’t be weekly again for a while but I’m excited to post on here more often.
New Releases
The Gender Constellation Bundle The Gender Constellation Bundle is the second bundle run by GAME DEV GALAXY, a Discord server for game developers who are gender-/sex-marginalized. There’s a ton of fantastic work in here and it’s available for only $10 or more.
Indiepocalypse #50and 51 There is a new issue of the indie game compilation zine Indiepocalypse so of course I will include that on here. And of course, as I was typing this, Indiepocalypse #51 was just released.
Barney Bear Joins a Harold Team
This is a game created in Adventure Game Studio that is a parody of the Barney Bear educational game series but this time you learn about improv. Possibly the most important game to come out this year?
Make a Zine! I really enjoyed this free zine about how to make a zine. You should make one!
Sylvie RPG Sylvie RPG is a fantastic short rpg with a bump combat mechanic like in Hydlide and YS. It’s available for free but if you pay $7 or more, you get a lot of really cool bonus stuff.
miniBOSSGAME
miniBOSSGAME is a fan port of BOSSGAME: The Final Boss Is My Heart’s mechanics to the Pico-8 fantasy console. BOSSGAME was one of my favorite games from last year and it’s fun to see a demake of it with the original designer’s blessing.
BIG HEAD
BIG HEAD is a neat little platformer created for the ZX Spectrum by a 10 year old.
The Legend of Skye
The Legend of Skye is a new fantasy point-and-click adventure with a verb system like Lucasarts adventure games.
Brain Hotel: Remodeled
Brain Hotel: Remodeled is a remake of a Flash game from 2004 by Telltale Games alumni Mark Darin. I haven’t played this one yet but I’m a fan of his Nick Bounty games.
Picotron
Picotron is a new Fantasy Workstation by the creator of PICO-8 for making pixelart games, animations, music, demos and other curiosities.
Downpour Downpour is a new app for making little games on your phone. I think it’s pretty fantastic and even made my own little game.
Passage: A Job Interview Simulator
Passage is a new visual novel from Emcat Games about navigating the corporate world. It’s from a local dev too so that’s always exciting for me. The publisher is Mangotronics, who also published the great Mangotronic Employment Collection.
Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story
I am a massive fan of the rerelease work by Digital Eclipse so of course I would be thrilled when they announced a collection of games by Jeff Minter. It’s everything I hoped it would be and will probably be my Game of the Year.
Midnight Scenes: A Safe Place
Midnight Scenes is an anthology of short horror point and click adventures and the newest entry, A Safe Place, was just released. Each game ranges from 15-90 minutes long and only costs a few dollars. Haven’t played this one yet but I really enjoyed everything else by the designer. A Safe Place is available on Itch.io and Steam.
The New York Times Simulator The New York Times Simulator is a short browser game about how much the NYT shows their ass. Great game about an awful place.
Other Folks Talking About Indie Games
After a hiatus, Bobbins’ Olde Tomb of Videogames is back! It’s like these posts but better, and with more of a focus on arcade games.
Out of boredom and curiosity, I decided to finally try streaming on Twitch and it turns out I actually think it’s really fun? It’s a bit chaotic right now and I don’t have a schedule since I have a baby, so it’s just whenever I have the time and feel like it, but I didn’t realize that I would actually really enjoy having people to talk to while playing games that are sitting in my backlog. I highly doubt it will ever be A Thing where I stream things that are popular or have a fancy setup or anything that will make it feel like a second job, but feel free to follow me. As expected, I’ll mostly just play old stuff and indie games on there.
Downpour is a new-ish app for making little games on your phone using photos and text. I have made a literal walking simulator in Downpour where you go on a lunch time walk on a trail with me
Go check out Downpour for making games. It’s good stuff. Making little things in it has been really fun and is helping me finally break whatever game making rut I’ve been in
Not sure where I originally got these photos. I’m going to be reposting some computer store photos from my computer store visuals account since the one I have on Cohost probably isn’t going to last much longer and I should have all this stuff on somewhere more permanent anyway.
Squeezing in one more roundup of things I saw on non-twitter places since I’m now self hosting and can actually embed Mastodon links now. I just got excited and wanted to try it for myself. It should make doing these a lot easier too.
Every week there’s a new gif from this game on Masto and Cohost and it still looks great
This looks like a nice little puzzle game that just came out
Waterpark tycoon game! Hell yes, sign me up
Part 1 of a retro looking EGA adventure game was just released for free
Here’s a clip from another EGA looking adventure game.
Good 1-bit racoon from this screenshot on Blue Sky
Hello! This is going to be the last one of these for the next month or two as I will be busy taking care of a newborn starting next week. Thank you so much for reading these and feel free to check out the posts I’ve made from previous weeks for more indie games. I’ve also tried highlighting other folks that talk about indie games a lot, so please follow them.
ChoiceBeat 10 One of those folks is ChoiceBeat (Itch link), zine focused on visual novels, interactive fiction, and adventure games. Every issue is free.
Indie Tsushin If you would like to learn about indie games from Japan, consider checking these folks out. The newest issue just came out (Itch link) and is available as Pay-What-You-Want.
Indiepocalypse 50 The newest Indiepocalypse just came out today. I will keep posting about these whenever they come out because I have discovered so many games from here.
Screenshot from The Curse of Unatxi Kamala
The Curse of Unatxi Kamala The Curse of Unatxi Kamala is an IF game created for the Queer Vampire Jam and also the Smoochie Jam. The game was created in binksi, which is a fork of bipsi that allows people to use Ink.
Angelblood I would also like to recommend Angelblood (Itch link), a visual novel also created for the Queer Vampire Jam that features some fantastic artwork.
Screenshot from The Hypnic Chain
LSDJAM 2023 LSDJAM is a game jam where people make games inspired by LSD: Dream Emulator. The jam ran for a few months and it looks like a lot of very interesting games were created for it.
Screenshot from Dead Names
Dead Names Dead Names is a free short sci-fi visual novel for the Game Boy, but you can also play it in the browser. Please read the content warning before playing it.
Alakajam Alakajam is a game jam similar to Ludum Dare and the 19th one just wrapped up. Check out the games here and consider participating in a future jam if you want to do something like Ludum Dare but in a much smaller community.
PowerJam #1 The first game jam for the PowerQuest plugin for Unity has just ended. PowerQuest allows folks to make point-and-click adventure games in a way similar to Adventure Game Studio but with all the pros and cons of Unity. Some really neat stuff was made for this jam.
Screenshot from Yip Quest
Yip Quest Not a new game but I finally played the point-and-click adventure Yip Quest, where you control 3 kobolds trying to steal treasure. It’s a short game made for a game jam and you can play it in the browser.
Self Promotion Time Before I take off for quite a while (I’ll probably keep posting on here but not doing these roundups, add this to your RSS feed reader!), here’s some of the stuff that I worked on this last week:
I made a zine! FMV Will Never Die is a little free zine I made for the Zine Month Alternative jam about modern indie games that have FMV. Maybe you’ll discover some neat games from it!
If you enjoyed reading these roundups, consider buying one of my games or checking out my Ko-fi, and please be very vocal about the indie games you love. People don’t hear about this stuff unless there’s folks screaming about them from the rooftops. Doesn’t have to be a blog. It can be on your Twitch stream or on social media.
