Moved these to Friday because it felt weird doing them on Monday. Anyway, video games. So much has come out in the last two weeks and I cannot play it all so I’m just going to breeze through it. Multiple things I’ve been waiting a long time for too. The last month has been ridiculous.
UFO 50 (Steam) is probably the big one. Everyone probably knows about this one but it’s nice seeing it finally come out and being so well received too.
TTRPGs for Accessible Gaming Charity Bundle (Itch) will let you buy a bunch of TTRPGs for $10 or more and the money goes to charity.
Judero (Steam) is another one I’ve been waiting for a long time too. Action rpg with stop-motion art is so laser targeted towards my interests.
I was a big Void Bastards fan so it’s really nice to see the devs do a spiritual sequel with a western theme with Wild Bastards (Steam).
Every version of the Videotome engine results in some cool interactive fiction games so I’m happy we now have a new version (Itch.io) that adds some dating sim inspired functionality.
The new remaster of the first Broken Sword game (Steam) looks pretty snazzy.
EyeOS (Itch.io) combines two of my favorite things, fake OS desktops and games made in Decker.
We got two King’s Quest fan games recently! One is a demake (site) of the classic King’s Quest 6 and it’s really well done and a fan project that took many years for the dev to create.
It Takes Two to Tangle (site) is a fan game sequel to the game King’s Quest 7. It does an incredible job emulating the art style from that game and feels like an evolution of the mid-90s style of Sierra point-and-click adventures, which I’ve always been a fan of. The production values for this game, which I believe was mostly by one developer but had a small time outside of it, is astonishing.
I think I’ve developed a pretty good method of doing these weekly now. Still have a massive backlog of games I want to talk about because people keep making cool stuff but it’s much more fun for me to do these little batches. Once in a while someone will be confused about the formatting of these posts (very understandable!), I generally bold the title of the game and then put a link to the game in ( ), usually to Itch.io and/or Steam.
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.
Banky’s Newborn Baby (Itch.io link) is a very good interactive poem thing made in Twine.
A few years ago I made a goofy little indie ttrpg name generator (Itch.io link) just as a fun little project to poke at for a couple of days. A whole dang game jam just wrapped up (Itch.io) where people made games using it. I had nothing to do with it but it makes me so happy that people actually made cool stuff using my thing.
A new Indiepocalypse (Itch.io) is out! As usually, there’s a lot of cool games in this monthly anthology zine.
Liberation
Liberation (Steam/Itch.io) is definitely not new and came out a year ago, but it’s new to me! I just picked it up as part of the Steam space exploration fest or whatever it’s called. I often get frustrated with finding the space sim that’s right for me, since I usually don’t want a pure level based arcade sim but also don’t want anything complex like the X series either, but I love this. There’s nothing wrong with arcade games or incredibly complex space sims, but they’re usually not for me. This feels to strike a nice balance and has a lot of character. I’m not sure how I found out about this one but it’s the most British game I’ve ever played, so I assume a British person in their 40s-50s posted about it since it’s strongly inspired by Elite and shows like Blake’s 7, The Tripods, Space:1999, Star Cops, Judge Dredd and Doctor Who. I’ve never seen Blake’s before and should probably watch it.
Nikhil Murthy’s Syphilisation
Nikhil Murthy’s Syphilisation (Steam) is a postcolonial 4X game where you play a student doing a group report on Gandhi, Churchill and the Raj. I ran into some bugs when I streamed the game but I still love it. It’s doing so much that I haven’t seen in other 4X games and really think more people should check it out. This article on Unwinnable about the game is also very good.
This came out a year ago and I’ve posted about it before but Incubus – A Ghost Hunter’s Tale (Steam) is a fun adventure game I’ve been revisiting since it’s getting closer to Halloween. I’ve always enjoyed the developer’s other games like the Dark Fall series and this one is also a neat ghost hunting adventure.
Kickstarters/Crowdfunding:
Netcrawl is now crowdfunding. It already hit it’s goal but I think it looks like a neat cyberpunk ttrpg.
Self Promo Zone
Thank you for reading these! Consider supporting my work on Ko-fi so I can buy more games/maintain site costs, checking out my games on Itch.io, following me on Twitch where I will do streams of random indie games, checking out previous indie game roundups, or just by sharing these posts. An anthology I helped organize also came out this summer on Steam and Itch.io
I’ve also started an irc channel for indie and alt games/gamedev talk at AfterNET at #AltGames. If you do not have an IRC client or don’t feel like messing around with that stuff, you can easily join through the browser here. Consider giving it a try! No registration required!
Todaybor Day is Labor Day! It looks like I managed to do these two weeks in a row. I’m still getting caught up on my backlog of games to talk about but 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.
Five Years Old Memories
Five Years Old Memories (Steam): A short game collecting interactive animations and featuring interviews with the developer’s friends of their memories of when they were five years old. I saw a review discussing how the game was influenced by 90s multimedia cd-roms and yes, absolutely, it rules and I love seeing people being inspired by this era of software. It’s about 30 minutes long for a playthrough and only $3.
Wherever You Hike
Wherever You Hike (Itch.io): A short walking game made in 10 weeks by a team of two where you just walk and canoe in a relaxing area until you feel satisfied. It’s just a nice, relaxing space to spend a few minutes and is Pay-What-You-Want.
Armored Shell Nightjar
ARMORED SHELL NIGHTJAR (Itch.io): Created for MechJam V by Warkus and Modus Interactive (two folks from the HauntedPS1 community), it’s a Getting Over It-like where you navigate intentionally awkward controls inside a mech to climb up a tower. I’m awful at these types of games but it’s very good.
Chalicebound
Chalicebound (Itch.io): Another game by Warkus, this is a short demo inspired by the classic adventure game Shadowgate. I always get excited when new games are inspired by the classic MacVenture series (Shadowgate, Uninvited, Deja Vu 1 and 2) and this one is great and creepy. It’s just a demo but I hope we get a longer, commercial game someday.
Nightmare SuperHighway
Nightmare SuperHighway (Itch.io): It’s another “Walking Sim” (I’m fine with the term!) where you explore a series of creepy spaces. I just walking around well-crafted spaces and this is one of those!
Roguecraft
Roguecraft (Itch.io): Roguecraft is a brand-new roguelike for the Amiga inspired by Lovecraft. I haven’t played this one yet but hell yes, new Amiga games. I’m also a big fan of the publisher, Thalamus, and there’s a boxed copy of the game as well if you want to get a new physical copy of an Amiga game in the year 2024.
Erenshor
Erenshor (Steam): Erenshor is a single player rpg strongly inspired by late 90s/early 00s MMORPGs and emulates how those games played. It only has a demo out right now and I haven’t played it yet, but I’ve been watching BogusMeatFactory play this on Twitch and it seems like a lovely rpg that I’ll have to play someday.
Other People Talking About Indies
A new Indie Tsushin (website) came out today! It’s great, like they always are!
Self Promo Zone
Thank you for reading these! Consider supporting my work on Ko-fi so I can buy more games/maintain site costs, checking out my games on Itch.io, following me on Twitch where I will do more streams of these short indies, checking out previous indie game roundups, or just by sharing these posts. An anthology I helped organize also came out this summer on Steam and Itch.io
It has been way too long since I’ve done one of these so I’ll probably start doing a series of shorter ones on a weekly basis until I get caught up with everything that I thought was really cool. I’ve just been too busy to do bigger posts like I was doing before but still want a place to log everything I like.
The big one has been the Locally Sourced Anthology I: A Space Atlas, a collection of 8 short games by various developers in Michigan with an outer space theme. I’m very proud to have helped with this anthology and I’m hoping to do more of them in the future. Do I get to put something I worked on in my “cool indie games” blog posts? Sure, why not.
Kitsune Tails has been a really nice platformer in the spirit of Super Mario Bros. 3. It’s challenging but the game has some nice options for people like me who aren’t as good at platformers.
Star Combat: Cadre Class is a new turn-based strategy game for DOS. I got to play an earlier version of the game and it’s great.
Speaking of DOS games, the most recent DOS Games Jam wrapped up and there’s a lot of new DOS games there as well.
Also inspired by DOS games, The Crimson Diamond is a brand new adventure game that is strongly inspired by Sierra’s The Colonel’s Bequest. It’s been in development for a while and I’m so happy to see it come out and doing well.
There’s also another adventure game inspired by Sierra’s 80s adventure games. The Tachyon Dreams Anthology is a collection of 3 sci-fi adventure games that use a parser but are a bit more player friendly than those classic adventures were.
Already did self promo at the beginning but I have an irc channel for indie and alt games/gamedev talk at AfterNET at #AltGames. If you do not have an IRC client or don’t feel like messing around with that stuff, you can easily join through the browser here. I’ll never be able to get people to drop Discord for IRC, but I personally prefer it. I don’t feel like I have to follow along with every single conversation and I’m not getting pinged all the time by notifications or the “Everyone” tag. Consider giving it a try! No registration required!
Hi, here’s a list of indie games that I think are pretty cool. Also the Itch.io sale is happening now, go buy some games from there. I’m hoping to continue doing these on a more regular basis than once a month. Also consider subscribing to the RSS feed for future blog posts! 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.
A new Indiepocalypse is out! I’m excited that it has a new game by Hexcavator.
Flickship allows you to easily create cool space ships.
Sprout Yeartide is a new, short game by Princess Internet Cafe. I’m a big fan of their games and love seeing all the branches that have come from Bitsy. This was made in binksi hd, which is based on Binksi, a fork of bipsi that lets you create games using Inkle Studios‘ Ink, and bipsi is inspired by Bitsy.
A new issue of Indie Tsushin is out! I’m going to be lazy and copy the Itchio text here: “This is the 2024 May-June zine issue compiling articles from the インディー通信 Indie Tsushin blog, a handmade site celebrating and introducing indie and doujin games from Japan!” Despite my laziness, it’s a fantastic zine and website!
The Neo-Twiny Jam just wrapped up. The jam features submissions of Interactive Fiction games containing 500 words or less.
Iowa Jack and the Crystals of Chaos is a new text adventure for the Commodore 64 that is a parody of Indiana Jones and meant to have a lower difficulty level for newcomers to text adventures.
Screenshot from Paper-Girl-Chain
The menhera vn jam also just wrapped up. The jam is described as “This is a jam for games about living and coming to terms (or not) with unseen burdens, whether they be mental, emotional, physical, psychological, or otherwise.”
Self-Promo Zone
I’ve started an irc channel for indie and alt games/gamedev talk at AfterNET at #AltGames. If you do not have an IRC client or don’t feel like messing around with that stuff, you can easily join through the browser here. I’ll never be able to get people to drop Discord for IRC, but I personally prefer it. I don’t feel like I have to follow along with every single conversation and I’m not getting pinged all the time by notifications or the “Everyone” tag. Consider giving it a try! No registration required!
I also helped with a games anthology that’s coming out soon. Locally Sourced Anthology I: A Space Atlas is a collection of 8 experimental games from different indie game developers. Grow tea on the Moon! Fish on Saturn! Find love on Mars! And 5 other things! Wishlist it now on Steam! It’s also coming out on Itch.io
It’s been a while since I wrote one of these which is why I’m not waiting until Friday to publish this. 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. Also consider subscribing to the RSS feed for future blog posts! 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!
A new Indiepocalypse came out so I’m required to post about it.
Dryft City Kyngs looks like an interesting racing game with a neat aesthetic.
Mel’s Bucket is a short, free point-and-click adventure that’s playable in the browser based on the 90’s Coast to Coast calls about the mysterious Mel’s Hole that I have a fascination with, so this is a GOTY for me.
Swan Neck is a short and great Twine game that’s playable in the browser on Itch. Be sure to read the CWs before playing.
Trouble in Paradisa is a system-agnostic murder mystery for tabletop rpgs inspired by 1990’s Lego sets.
Blister City is a rules-lite ttrpg where you seek revenge against the factions that have ruined life on Mars.
Ostrichmonkey Hack is an in-progress, modular ruleset in the N/OSR tradition.
False Idols is a 1 page ttrpg for 3-5 players where you are musical idols taking down corporations.
TTRPGs for Palestine is a charity bundle where you can get a ton of ttrpgs for $10 or more, with all proceeds going to medical aid for Palestinians.
LXD::Red Honey looks like a lovely, short, and free metroidvania that came to my attention through Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
Most importantly, the Riven remake is here. This is all I’m going to talk about for months. Reviews have been good and I’m so curious what the new content being added to the game is.
Crowdfunding
Indiepocalypse and Iron Circus Comics are teaming up to create a games/comics anthology and have launched a crowdfunding campaign. It looks pretty great!
People Talking About Indie Games
Choicebeat is a fantastic, free zine about visual novels and interactive fiction.
This Steam Curator lists games that are available on Itch, where the dev gets a better cut and the games are DRM free.
Shout out to Party of One Podcast for no reason other than it continuing to highlight great indie tabletop rpgs.
I’ve started an irc channel for indie and alt games/gamedev talk at AfterNET at #AltGames. If you do not have an IRC client or don’t feel like messing around with that stuff, you can easily join through the browser here. I’ll never be able to get people to drop Discord for IRC, but I personally prefer it. I don’t feel like I have to follow along with every single conversation and I’m not getting pinged all the time by notifications or the “Everyone” tag. Consider giving it a try! No registration required!
I also helped with a games anthology that’s coming out soon. Locally Sourced Anthology I: A Space Atlas is a collection of 8 experimental games from different indie game developers. Grow tea on the Moon! Fish on Saturn! Find love on Mars! And 5 other things! Wishlist it now on Steam! It’s also coming out on Itch.io
Being on parental leave means I have a little bit of time to write these regularly, although maybe not enough time to play everything. A lot came out this week!
Queer Quest Queer Quest is a new point-and-click adventure game that is available for Pay-What-You-Want. “Play as long-haired-butch Lupe as you traverse the gayborhood fetching things for femmes and thems. There’s a naked bike ride blocking the road. Ryan’s selfies suck. Stevie Hix needs some tape for tucking. Oh, and your hot girlfriend is missing!” Haven’t played it yet but it looks pretty great and I love point-and-click adventure games.
What Waits Beyond WHAT WAITS BEYOND is a solo journaling game from Dinoberry Press. In Beyond, you find yourself in a starship at the edge of a black hole, all hope lost and the end of the road right in front of you. I haven’t played any solo rpg from Dinoberry Press before but I have played some of their other tabletop rpgs and they’re all great. It’s only $3 too!
The Electrum Archive Issue 2 The Electrum Archive is a series of zine issues describing the science-fiction/fantasy setting of Orn that uses a simple core rule system. If you enjoy weird fantasy settings in games like Morrowind and want something like that for tabletop rpgs, consider checking it out.
The Zen of Kayaking The Zen of Kayaking is a new text adventure for DOS from pixelturkey and gamedevjeff. Pixelturkey is a wonderful artist and streamer and gamedevjeff has created some really cool stuff like an English translation of the DOS game Father World. New commercial text adventures and DOS games aren’t very common so it’s fun seeing one come out. It’s available on Itch for $5.
Creating a Website Creating a Website is a short, mostly-autobiographical story about the benefits of making your own website. I might be slightly biased as I’m posting this to my own site but yes, you should make one.
Wingless Fairies Wingless Fairies is a free game by Lily Belmira about becoming someone new again. After you play this (it’s only 30 minutes), go check out all of Lily’s other games. They’re great!
The Twine Grimoire Templates Grim Baccaris has put a ton of work into making great Twine tutorials and now they’ve started making Twine templates as well! Absolutely worth your time if you’re interested in Twine.
Selaco Selaco is a new FPS in Early Access that uses the GZDoom engine. It’s exciting to me whenever I see people making cool stuff using older technology. It looks great.
Liminal Liminal is a very short visual novel playable in the browser on Itch about two young adults that run into each other a few months after a break up. The game features voice acting and beautiful art.
Day of the Hamster Day of the Hamster is a short and free point-and-click adventure inspired by Day of the Tentacle. It is playable in the browser on Itch and the dev’s previous game was how I learned that was something you could even do for games made in Adventure Game Studio
[Echostasis] Echostasis is a new first-person shooter horror game by ENIGMA STUDIO, developer of the games The Enigma Machine and Mothered, where you jump into the minds of test subjects and find out what happened to them.
Other Folks Talking About Indies
The Imaginary Engine Review is a new games outlet from Grace Benfell and Phoenix Simms focused on independent, obscure, and/or retro games. Add it to your RSS feed reader or follow them on Cohost or Bluesky.
Self-Promo Zone
I’ve started an irc channel for indie and alt games/gamedev talk at AfterNET at #AltGames. If you do not have an IRC client or don’t feel like messing around with that stuff, you can easily join through the browser here. I’ll never be able to get people to drop Discord for IRC, but I personally prefer it. I don’t feel like I have to follow along with every single conversation and I’m not getting pinged all the time by notifications or the “Everyone” tag. Consider giving it a try! No registration required!
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
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.
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.
