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.

Video Games

Aura talks about a ton of video games in this year’s IGF

If you’re looking for people to follow on Bluesky, SideQuesting put together a list of starter packs they like.

Renga in Blue continues playing through every single adventure game in order of release. This time it’s the 1982 text adventure Firienwood.

No Escape explains how Pacific Drive is like storm chasing.

Gamers with Glasses talks about antifascist game criticism.

Tabletop RPGs

I really love the playthroughs of solo ttrpgs Kaden has been doing for Solovember.

A. A. Voigt. wrote a short story for the Spectres of Brocken RPG setting, by Aaron Lim

Music

Megan explains their process for film scoring.

I love hearing about local music scenes and in this post Yaffle writes about emo bands in Russia.

The Morning Music blog is going on break for two weeks but at least it leaves us with this great live jazz album recorded in Detroit.

Photography

Interactive fiction writer Andrew Plotkin now has a photography blog!

Nicky Flowers posts photos of BART.

Dev Logs

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.

Meredith Gran gives an update on the upcoming Perfect Tides sequel.

David Lindsey Pittman posts screenshots of Eldritch 2 and the inventory system.

Other Stuff

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!

eladnarra discovers blackwork embroidery.

Critical Distance has put together a great list of organizations to support if you can afford to.

Cohost Union News was a great account on Cohost that posted about union news and they’re back at it on their own site.

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.

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.

Photography

Game developer Yaffle now has a blog filled with lots of nice photographs.

I also enjoy the photography posts by Nicky Flowers.

Video Games

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.

Speaking of Rob, I also liked his review of the upcoming 3D Don’t Die Mr. Robot.

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.

Aura talks about games they’re interested in but don’t have time for because of IGF.

Harris Powell-Smith put together a list of Choice of Games releases made in October.

Tabletop RPGs

Clayton talks about his process for designing tabletop rpgs.

Binary Star Games writes about process optimization in tabletop rpgs.

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.

Books

Tally recommends some books with creepy houses.

Transfer Orbit lists 22 new SFF books to distract you from a terrible November.

I really like the book reviews by the Lunar Flaneur. This time they recommend the sci-fi novel A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys.

Politics

ghoulnoise talks about how there was always going to be work to do.

Molly White tries to answer the question “what do I do now?”

Other Stuff

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.

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.

Jefklak’s Codex reviews Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance.

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.

Games from the Black Hole praises the Game Boy game Final Fantasy Adventure.

Renga in Blue plays through a text adventure I never heard of, Ship Adventure, from 1982.

The Good Old Days reviews 1996’s Lords of the Realm II.

Dev Logs

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.

Meredith Gran is working on the Perfect Tides and talks about writing.

Harris Powell-Smith talks about writing characters for their upcoming interactive fiction game Honor Bound.

Tom talks about making a homebrew game engine for the Dreamcast.

Sarah talks about making a new rpg for the Commodore 64.

Other Stuff

Brianna talks about C++ game engine libs

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.

The Museum of Screens has an article about how people are porting their old Flash games to Steam.

ghoulnoise has a very lovely post about guitar mods and a few other things.

Indie Tsushin has an interview with ishinoura about the one-dimensional roguelike game Yumeiri.

The Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation is looking for a new treasurer and tech officer.

Rob talks about the 1994 horror film Pumpkinhead 2. Did you know this also had a really bad FMV FPS? I don’t recommend it!

Not Blogs

Here’s other things I liked this week that aren’t blogs

Thinky Games published a new games database for puzzle and adventure games. I think super specific databases are nice and often catch things the larger and more general ones don’t.

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.

It’s another roundup of blog posts I enjoyed reading this last week. If you like these posts, consider subscribing to some of these blog through your RSS feed reader (I use Inoreader and think it’s nice) and consider doing your own roundup since Google Search is busted for discovering new things.

Games

Wraithkal continues doing great work compiling #ScreenshotSaturday posts made on Mastodon.

mojilove talks about the process of translating Operation STEEL on Indie Tsushin.

GB Studio Central published another article in their series on building a Game Boy rpg in GB Studio.

Dante talks about citybuilder design goals. I just really like reading thoughts on citybuilders.

Binary Star Games talks about Phipps23 and worldbuilding in tabletop rpgs.

Gamers with Glasses interviews Adam Vian, creative director of Crow Country.

RSS Feed Readers

I don’t actually like Cory Doctorow, sorry, but I do think people should listen to him when he says you should be using a RSS feed reader. It’s certainly made using the internet a lot more fun for me over the last year.

Crystal talks about RSS feed readers for Linux.

Jared makes a post on rediscovering RSS.

Other Posts

Aura has a very good response to an Ask about enjoying your work.

Katherine Morayati talks about the history of the late 90s network of websites called ChickClick.

Eniko talks about how there is life after Twitter.

I’m still thinking about Cabel Sasser’s talk at XOXO Fest about a giant McDonald’s mural and appreciating things everywhere.

Another collection of blog posts I liked reading this week. If you like these, consider subscribing to the blogs on your RSS feed reader and doing your own roundup posts if you’ve got a site. Google Search is becoming useless now and this is a way people will find new stuff.

Ben Robbins, the creator of tabletop rpgs like Microscope and Kingdom, tells designers to make the games you want to play.

Dante talks about Memoriapolis, a city builder I never heard of but sounds really cool and possibly addresses some of the issues I have with the genre?

Speaking of city builders, badger trebuchet diagram no. 17 posted about Sim City 3000 vaporwave.

I just like when people talk about what they’ve been into lately and Meredith Gran, creator of Perfect Tides, wrote one of those.

The Fungus Zone explains how it’s the year of the games anthology. I’m possibly biased because mine is listed there and I’m working on another right now, but I agree.

Chuck Jordan (Curse of Monkey Island, Telltale’s Sam and Max) has a nice post reflecting on being out for 20 years on National Coming Out Day.

Damien covers the Bay Area Cohost Wake

Ghoulnoise talks about cooking Çılbır, recipe link included. I never had it before but I think it looks great.

The Museum of Screens discusses the various Flappy Bird controversies.

Amiga Boing Blog is a nice blog covering Amiga games. Although personally, I think if your game is called Moose Drive then it should be more interesting than a generic racing game.

Not Blog Posts but here’s some other things

I liked this piece on RogerEbert.com about Megalopolish, the Joker sequel, and how more directors should be allowed to make potential misfires.

Aftermath wrote about how forums are alive and well, and lists a ton of active ones. Personally I’m kind of “hmmmm” about their hesitance on listing forums related to sexuality but gun forums are ok I guess? But I appreciate the enthusiasm and do think forums are nice. If you like talking about DOS games, then I recommend DOS Game Club and IntFiction.org isn’t bad for Interactive Fiction discussion. Data preservation issues aside, I personally find forums to be a lot less overwhelming than something like Discord and wish we could see more people using them.

I think I like doing these more on Sunday instead of Monday, so that will be the schedule for now. If you enjoyed these posts, please subscribe to the blogs you like on your RSS feed reader (or start using one if you don’t, I use Inoreader) and consider doing occasional link roundups on your site. Google search is abysmal now and this is kinda the only way people can discover new places.

We got a few Cohost memorial posts this week from Nicky Flowers, Alex Zandra, Aura, Broken Words, and a post here doing a much better collecting other memorial posts.

Renga in Blue goes into the history of GE to talk about the almost lost 1981 text adventure Raspion Adventure.

Mr. Creosote has a list of “The Best C64 Games.” It’s not my list, don’t argue with me.

Zandra put together a list of recommended Mega Man rom hacks.

The Good Old Days reviews a brand new text adventure called Traffic

Austin talks about life as a musician.

Katherine Morayati talks about a bug in Oregon Trail 2.

Debutniverse talks about a Saturday morning cartoon from 1983 that I never heard of called Saturday Supercade.

Sometimes you want to hear someone talking about what makes a killer car movie good. Here’s a review of 1977’s The Car.

The postcard celebrated its birthday and here’s a post talking about an interesting service called postcrossing.

Not blog posts but:

KRITIQAL talks to game dev Kyou System

startmenu has a great review of Halls of Torment and indie game recommendations.

Indie Games+ interviews the designer of Judero.