Not much of an intro this week because I’m tired. I go on vacation tomorrow for a bit and have posts scheduled for then so I can keep up with Blaugust.

Video Games

Em wrote about some highlights at the Glasgow Indie Game Fest

Cybercultural has an article about Multimedia Gulch and the cd-roms they created in 1994.

Lunar Looney writes about how demo discs were pretty rad

Technology

This post lists alternatives for hosting erotic and queer work

erysdren wrote a guide to preserving basically everything on the internet and encouraging you to download things you like if you’ve got the room for it.

Someone put together a list of blog rolls they’re a part of, but it then turns into a really nice list of other curated blogrolls, webrings, and small website directories. Found this one on theTangentSpace

Mike Piontek wrote criticisms of safari 26 and the new liquid glass

I like roundups of blog posts so I’m including this one on dhippo.net. It includes a mention of my post on RetroAchievements, which linked to his post mentioning RetroAchivements. So now there is a chain of posts linking to the same two blogs repeatedly.

Thanks to this post, I am now familiar with iNaturalist and all the local things people are finding in nature.

Dev Logs

Development has resumed on Eldritch 2!

Writing

A new issue of Alocasia! It’s a journal of queer plant-based writing and free, but donations are appreciated.

Photography

Have some nice photos from various blogs of Juanita Bay, a garden, and someone’s vacation in Llandudno in North Wales. You can just post photos on your blog! Maybe I’ll do that after I go on my vacation this week.

Food

Megan put together a very nice list of vegetarian recipe recommendations and a recipe for a cocktail.

Other BIts

The Works of Egan writes about their favorite public media (which includes some of mine too). Consider supporting the ones local to you!

It’s still Blaugust which means my RSS feed reader is still packed with stuff to read all the time. I think that’s pretty nice. To continue my trend of Library Posting, I picked up more prizes from the Ann Arbor Summer Game yesterday, so now I finally have an AADL shirt with another one or two on the way. If you like any of these blogs, add them to your RSS feed reader. I use Inoreader but there’s plenty of other good ones too.

Video Games

I think the brief description of RetroAchivements in here made me want to give it a try.

Folks, you need to boycott Microsoft. Stop buying their games, stop covering them on your games outlets, etc. It’s 2025 Year of the Linux Desktop (unironically).

I share Rob’s feelings on why the Ludocene app is kinda goofy.

I love to see blogs highlighting cool stuff made in Decker.

Syl highlights some nice small games.

I think this was a nice tribute to Roberta Vaughan, a beloved member of the adventure game community.

I really enjoyed this review of Ultimate’s game Underwurlde. Unfortunately, every time I hear about the company Ultimate I just think about how their full name is Ultimate Play the Game and wonder how it’s supposed to be said. Is it “Ultimate (pause) Play the Game” or do you say it all without the pause?

I should also probably play Starcross sometime, Infocom’s 1982 sci-fi text adventure.

The Video Game History Foundation acquired Computer Entertainer magazine, which ran from 1982-1990, and put it into the Creative Commons.

Technology

I’ve gotten into more self hosting and media server stuff over the last couple years and I’m always excited to see more recommendations for Homelab software

Music

Garrett Schumann wrote about local Ann Arbor music legend Fred Thomas

Vinzenz did a song-by-song breakdown of their great new album A Clearing. Also consider checking out their games.

Dev Logs

I’m just happy to see progress being made on Death Ray Manta 2.

TTRPG writers can do dev logs too and I just like hearing about what Dinoberry Press is working on.

Other Stuff

Another link to local stuff, I enjoyed this history of the oldest active train station in the United States, located in Jackson, Michigan.

Well, this was a rough week where game developers were under attack from censorship and queer game devs are again feeling like they’re being attacked, but on the other hand I got an A in my first grad school class so who can say if things are bad or not. Even with everything going on, this ended up being a week with a lot of blog posts that I read so this is kind of a massive post. If you like this posts, add their blogs to your RSS feed reader. I use Inoreader but I’m sure there’s plenty of good options.

Video Games

Where’s the best writing in games? Idk, this blog I guess?

The adventure game community lost Roberta Vaughan very recently and folks have been trying to process that sudden loss. Adventure Game Hotspot had a nice tribute to her from various folks in the community.

The Historical Games Network has a post on the representation of women in historical games and how poor it is.

I’m still processing my thoughts on everything happening with Itch and adult games right now. I wrote a little bit yesterday on some actions folks can take. I think I agree with a lot on what this blog post is saying about it too.

Liana wrote a nice template for creating your own storefront for selling games. Calm down, I’m not saying you should all do this or that we need to do this instead of Itch. Somehow this became discourse on Bluesky. I just think it’s neat and if people want an extra option in the toolbox, go for it.

Retro Games

There were a lot of posts about old games this week so they get their own category this time!

Jolt Country has been logging games they’re playing and this week it’s the BASIC DOS game Meteor! I just like using a blog as a games diary or log and would recommend it as a possible alternate for something like Backloggd (I am a grump about Backloggd).

Super Chart Island writes about the computer game American Football. As a hater of our version of football, I’ve always been jealous that it’s not a thing in other countries. But it is fascinating to hear about the attempts to make it popular elsewhere and computer games marketed to those groups.

Once again I’d like to give a shoutout to Renga in Blue and their mission to play every adventure game in order of release. This week it’s the text adventure Journey of a Space Traveller.

Castle of the Winds was one of the first rpgs I remember ever seeing, so it was fun watching CRPG Addict cover this one. I should go back and play it.

Ephemeral Enigmas covers Curse of Enchantia, a point-and-click adventure that has been sitting in my Amiga games backlog for a long time. It’s also on DOS but I’m an Amiga nerd so that’s where I’ll end up playing it someday.

Tabletop RPGs

Daring Demon Eclipse calls on everyone to write loud queer games.

Dev logs

I was very happy to hear that the third Captain Disaster game is making good progress. I’m a fan of the previous adventure games in the series.

Megan gives an update on the musical tarot game Divinuet and what it’s like to sometimes work on a game as a side thing and sometimes as a full time project.

Meredith Gran posts about her brother releasing a video game.

Writing

I got to attend a very good talk at the Ann Arbor District Library this last Wednesday from Sarah Gailey about the history and legacy of the Hays Code and the Comics Code, contemporary censorship efforts, and the necessity of identifying with criminality. They unfortunately got covid for the first time and found out a few hours before the talk, so they had to give it from their hotel room just around the corner from the library, but it was still very good and I recommend checking it out. It was very weird attending this talk and then going home to find out about all the Itch adult games stuff.

Tech

I’m not feeling so great about Canvas being used for my classes

I’ve thought about moving to Eleventy. It sounds really nice. Here’s a list of plugin recommendations

Other Bits

I liked this post titled No, posting alone won’t save Palestine but you should do it anyway

I just went 24 hours with electricity and don’t recommend it. Our local power company is AWFUL and every time we lose power, which seems to happen a lot more than it should, it makes me consider looking into solar power. I’m not quite sure how that works in Michigan but it would sure be nice for situations like this.

Before that all happened, I read some blog posts this week. It’s a more retro gaming focused post than usual. As usual, if you enjoy these posts then consider adding the blogs to your RSS feed reader!

Katherine Morayati went into a fascinating deep dive into The Oregon Trail 2’s code.

Civilization: Call to Power was always a weird spinoff in the series so it’s fascinating to see a post about how it has predicted the future.

WilcoWeb reposted a Cohost post he once had about the time he emailed the creator of Number Munchers to learn about its lore.

The community for Myst Online is still very active and has a month packed full of events. I previously wrote about the weekly ayoheek nights in Myst Online, which is apparently doing a Tron watchalong tonight.

Renga In Blue has covered a text adventure from 1980 that was previously unplayable until today! This was very exciting for me to read since it’s about a game that was developed close to me (although before I was born) and I’m always up for learning about local game dev history.

And now for a blog post about a recently released game, Digital Diversity interviewed NikkiJay, developed of the game Quantum Witch.

Dev Logs

Ron Gilbert has hinted that he’ll start posting more updates about his rpg Death By Scrolling.

erysdren updated its site and has lots of Quake related dev news.

Have an update on all the interactive fiction cécile has been working on.

reidrac is working on a new MSX game

cyningstan has released the source code for the DOS word game Pym’s Daily Word Square Puzzle

How is your week? Hope you’re doing well despite everything going on. I saw Weird Al this last Wednesday with my kids and it was a fantastic time. It was my first time seeing him even though I’ve been a fan of his for 30 years and I don’t know why I waited so long. I still mostly only really feel comfortable seeing live music outdoors but when I get the chance to, it’s the best.

If you’ve seen me post on social media, you’re probably aware that I’ve been participating in the Ann Arbor District Library’s Summer Game. I’ve posted about it here before too. My wife was working and my kids were with my mother in law all weekend so I went to two of the library’s branches to get codes for points and had a great time. I even saw a couple get engaged at one of the branches. I think I just really like visiting libraries even when I can’t check out books because I do this in other cities when I travel and always like it. If you live near me and your library sells shirts, let me know. I’ve been collecting more library shirts and merch lately. I suppose this also applies to folks that have a library that sells merch online.

Anyway, this is what I’ve enjoyed reading lately:

The Blog Links

I learned a bit of history about that classic microscope puzzle from The 7th Guest on The Good Old Days.

Andrew Plotkin writes about a Discord bot that lets you play Interactive Fiction in a channel. I need to get this setup.

Michael Coorlim has been writing Godot tutorials on his blog.

The Explorateur is a fantastic roundup of tabletop rpg writing.

Yaffle writes about the soundtrack for the various versions of the video game Uncharted Waters

CD-ROM Journal wrote about enhanced music cds that come with extra multimedia, which is obviously something I would lose my mind over.

Nat Clayton is working on a Marathon-like!

I saw Devo last night in Detroit and it was great! I had seen them 15 years ago in Ann Arbor but that was basically an eternity ago and they haven’t been in Michigan since then. They’re also coming back in September with the B-52s, who I had seen before about 8 years ago and were also very good. I’m surprised they’re here twice in one year after almost never coming here, that Ann Arbor concert was also their first time here in 15 years, but I think both bands are very close to wrapping things up so maybe they’re trying to hit all the places before stopping.

One day I’ll write about that Devo adventure game from the mid 90s. It’s an incredibly frustrating experience because I love Devo and the studio that made the game, it’s by the same folks that made The Dark Eye and The Residents: Bad Day on the Midway, but has a couple bits that kind of ruin the whole thing. Even removing the timer from it would do a lot to improve the game.

Oh well, people are probably more interested in blog posts I liked reading and not ramblings about Devo Presents: Adventures of the Smart Patrol, a 1996 adventure game that got poor reviews at release.

The Blog Posts

Emily Price did an indie game roundup for Unwinnable! She’s a great writer and it’s better than the ones I do on here.

Unwinnable also had this very good article on the allure of the summer reading program. I am currently in TWO reading programs for different libraries. You’ve probably already seem my post on Ann Arbor’s Summer Game. Libraries are the best and so are reading programs. It’s not too late to join your local library’s summer reading program and get cool prizes.

It just made me happy to see Terry Cavanagh praise a mod someone made for his game VVVVVV. When game devs get excited about fan art, mods, etc that other folks have made for their game it’s the best.

Martijn Frazer has a very good post on Dutch snacks. I never even heard of most of these and want to try making some. I’m not a big mayo person (sorry) so that limits things a bit, but there’s still quite a bit for me to try.

There’s also been a post mortem on Cohost from one of the developers. RIP Cohost. I still think Eggbug should be a Dopefish-like character that just pops up in various games.

There were a few dev logs I enjoyed reading this week too! Blendo Games released the source code for Skin Deep, and Meredith Gran and Essay Games wrote about their experiences at Narrascope.

That’s it for this week! There’s actually a bunch of blog posts I haven’t read yet just sitting in my RSS feed reader so next week may be longer. I just think blogs are neat!

Probably goes without saying but fuck war. No war with Iran or anywhere else. End the genocide in Palestine. Leave people the fuck alone. What the fuck. I don’t know how to seamlessly transition from all that to what I’ve been reading lately and just like using the beginnings of these and the indie game posts as my check in/diary, but there you go.

I’ve been reading Alex Rinehart’s blog, which has recently had interviews with ttrpg game designers like Aaron King and Jess Levine. I didn’t even think about how you can just have interviews on your blog but yeah, no shit? Anyway, now that I’ve interviewed two librarians for my grad school class, can I talk to you? (points finger towards the screen)

Rascal had an article today about how DriveThruRPG delisted a game because of its anti-fascist politics. I stopped buying anything from DriveThruRPG a long time ago because it’s a visual nightmare but the site sucks. I’m not going to tell people to not sell their stuff there because it’s the biggest site for ttrpgs, but please make your games available elsewhere. They have a history of crappy decisions like this and that 30-50% cut for selling your pdf is ridiculous.

Unwinnable had a good article about the recent RoboCop game. Ultimately I still ended up enjoying it, but agree with everything this article says in addition to the game being too safe and basing a lot of its beats off Robocop 2, a movie I don’t like that much (it has its fans) because it’s too similar to the first movie. It has its moments but still has the stink of Frank Miller on it (I’m sorry, I am a Frank Miller hater).

And finally, I’m just happy to see erysdren doing a dev log.

I just realized that when I did my indie game roundup two days ago, I didn’t even realize it was Friday the 13th. Would that have changed anything? Probably not! Maybe I could have said it’s the scariest round up of all. Anyway, today is Father’s Day in the US. Yesterday I went with my kids to a yearly comics event I love at the local library, although I left earlier than I wanted to since I had a migraine that was building up all day from me not getting enough sleep. I also learned I could sign up for the library’s Summer Games and win prizes, and that’s already becoming my whole personality. I’ll probably end up doing a post or two about that at some point. I’m glad the turnout for the protests yesterday was great. Again, there was a huge one where I was at but the whole migraine thing so I wasn’t able to join.

Anyway, people came here to look at some blog links. Consider adding them to your RSS feed reader of choice. I use Inoreader, which I gripe about because it’s starting to poke at AI summaries, but there’s probably something better at that. RSS beats refreshing social media all the time for updates anyway.

And if you don’t have a blog? Start one! It doesn’t have to be anything big, it can just be a free blog on Bear Blog, and then post a link to it so I can add it to my feed reader.

Video Games

I’m a huge fan of Rob‘s blogs (and games). He has the b-movie blog but there’s also the video game one. This time he writes about the slog that is the Summer Games Fest.

If you’re a game dev using Unity, this guide on porting your games to consoles may be handy.

I haven’t followed the Steam Next Fest at all so maybe it’s over. I’m still going to link to round ups though because they may help you find stuff to add to your wishlist. Buried Treasure did a very nice one and so did Adventure Game Hotspot if you’re looking for games in that genre specifically. Alex Rinehart posted a few demo reviews on his blog too.

Unearthed Treasure Room is the only thing I watched during this summer fest and it was very good. Startmenu has a writeup about it and links if you want to learn more about the showcase focused on obscure games that have been already released. Maybe all of us can just do our own showcases.

Bros Get Stoked writes about Interface Dramas, games set entirely on a computer desktop. I had called them Desktop Simulators as a joke but Interface Dramas is probably a better term.

The Good Old Days has a nice review of Air Pico, a flight sim made in pico-8. I just like that there’s multiple sites I follow that are just personal games databases. Jefklak’s Codex is another one I follow. I’ve thought about doing that someday if my list of reviews gets to be pretty big.

Tech

It’s an older post I keep forgetting to mention, but usebox writes about being back on xmpp, which is something I really need to give another shot. I get so excited about talking to people outside of the big social media sites and apps owned by corporations because it makes the web feel bigger and somehow more personal to me when I’m talking to people outside of bluesky or Discord.

I don’t think I’ve ever actually posted about Computer Chronicles Revisited on here before? Which is really weird because I’m a huge fan of it. Anyway, it’s been back for a while after a hiatus and covering Macworld Expo/San Francisco 1989

Food

Brain Baking found his Granddad’s Cooking Notebook and I just thought it was a really nice read. It reminds me that I need to digitize all the old recipes my grandparents have.

Dev Logs

erysdren makes great games like Bitch Hell and I’m happy to see the site posting .plan updates again.

Fuck ICE. I have so much love to everyone pushing back on them in LA right now and hopefully one day ICE will be abolished.

Well, here’s what I’ve been reading lately:

Technology

A few days ago I posted a list of everything I follow in my RSS feed reader and it looks like some other folks were doing that too. Maybe you’ll find some new sites to follow through LunarLoony and reidrac. They’re better organized than my post too.

Andrew Plotkin has posted some data points connected to how AI data scrapers have been hitting his site. I don’t believe I’ve been getting hit like other folks but it’s been more than zero and I’m not happy about it.

Here’s a guide and thoughts about making your own personal archive of the web.

Video Games

The story of how the classic puzzle game Boulder Dash was created, with an interview with the creator.

The Lords of Midnight was a little before my time and I haven’t made the time to play it yet, but here’s an article about the history of the game and why it’s great.

I loved reading about this baseball series I never heard of, Diamond Mind Baseball.

The Imaginary Engine Review has an interview with SEQUENCEBREAK// curator Nilson Carroll. SEQUENCEBREAK// is an in-person exhibit of “artist’s games.”

Adam Le Doux wrote about making games in bookmarklets and how you can do it yourself.

Not Blog Posts

These aren’t blog posts but here’s some other things I liked:

I really vibed with this video titled there’s no such thing as a bad game.

Enjoy this list of Games By Trans People Before 2010. Trans game devs have always been here!

I just learned about this site about forklifts in video games.

That’s it for this week. Hope you had/are having a good weekend!