I’ve mentioned it before but The Bloggies is a very, very low stakes and silly competition that some folks in the indie ttrpg community do where they take some of the best blog posts that have been nominated by that community and pit them against each other in a vote. No one takes it seriously and it’s just a fun excuse to revist blog posts. I’ve been having fun following along and now you can too. Check out all the links, read the ones that sound interesting to you, and vote if you feel like it.
I just realized I had a lot of sources I cycle between for abandonware games and thought it should be something to share, since this is just a blog and not a real games website, and I can post whatever I want. Abandonware, software that is no longer easily available because it is not sold anywhere by the publisher, is frequently a thing in games unfortunately and it doesn’t help that a lot of people just define it as “well this thing is old, so I can put it up for download even if it’s still for sale” which isn’t how preservation works! Anyway, here’s some sites I like that put care into what they upload, update them to work on modern versions of Windows, and take down the downloads if they get rereleased.
The Collection Chamber is the one I look at the most. It’s updated on a monthly basis and has a wide variety of stuff, with a focus on 90s games for Windows that you cannot easily run in DOSBox. It has so many games from the multimedia era that I find fascinating.
Zomb’s Lair has not been updated in a long time but hosts a lot of 90s computer games packaged for modern Windows as well. One of the most interesting ones to me is VNC: Virtual Nightclub, which was apparently an adventure game by the folks that made Burn: Cycle and was sold only through the Sci-Fi Channel phone line, so it was incredibly hard to find anything about it for a long time. I need to do a longer writeup on it sometime. It’s not “good” but it’s a fascinating time capsule of how we viewed the internet and virtual reality at the time.
Mr. Abandonware has organized a collection on the Internet Archive of DOS games packaged to run on modern windows, and it includes a lot of major games. lt’s kind of wild how many games that were commercial and critical hits just aren’t available for sale anywhere.
SentienceSnakes164 has a collection on the Internet Archive as well of games packaged to run on modern versions of Windows. This is more focused on 00s era games, mostly licensed ones that have been pulled from sale, but there’s some oddballs like early Monolith stuff and lesser known FPS like KISS: Psycho Circus.
There’s probably another post in me where I highlight freeware remakes of retro games, but I do want to give a shoutout to this one of Lode Runner: The Mad Monks’ Revenge. This was a game by Sierra that I really liked at the time and this remake adds likes of nice quality of life features.
Finally, MyAbandonware is a fascinating site to watch. It’s just constantly uploading stuff I never heard of. While it’s not focused on updating games to work on modern versions of Windows, they occasionally provide an update. This isn’t a criticism, no one could reasonably update all the games this site uploads.
That’s all I’ve got for this post. Feel free to add others in the comments as long as they aren’t uploading games that are still being sold.
Generally not a fan of linking to MLive but they have a post up about how multiple parents of Ypsilanti students were taken by immigration enforcement on Tuesday. So if you live in the area, be aware and get involved if you can. Despite what mainstream outlets are reporting, they have not pulled out of Minneapolis either and the fight continues. Abolish ICE is the bare minimum of what needs to happen.
Started making a silly little thing last night and put it on Itch. It’s just a goofy little generator for making ideas for games inspired by 80’s British computer games. Like it says on the page description, I’m poking fun at them but I do have a sincere love for that era of games (well maybe not Dizzy) and I like making my little generators so I thought to try making one in Twine. It’s obviously very early in development and I’m planning on making it look nicer as well as continuing to build on it so it can generate more ideas, but wanted to get it out there before I get distracted by something else. I’ll eventually put it here too because I like the idea of all my games also being hosted here in case something were to happen to Itch.
I should probably be working on my weekly indie game roundup post, maybe tomorrow, but instead I started a fansite for the 90s puzzle game Gubble. I thought of doing some kind of very specific fansite for a relatively obscure game for a long time now, at one point I wanted to do one for Pyst, but the Critical Distance fansite jam finally nudged me into starting one. It’s obviously a work in progress. Lots of pages aren’t done yet and I’ll continue adding more to the ones that I’ve already made. It turns out there’s lots I have to say about Gubble. But I’m going to keep it incredibly minimalist. It’s been fun toying with something only using extremely basic HTML and a tiny bit of CSS, and I’m going to keep it that way. Maybe you’ll consider making a fansite too?
I won’t post about it every time I do it but occasionally I volunteer at my local library and I did it again today. I started doing it because I thought it would be good to get some experience at a library while in grad school but while I remain on the fence about continuing that, I think I’ll keep volunteering at the library as long as I don’t have a job at one. It’s just been a good way to interact with people since I normally spend the day in my basement programming for work, and it turns out that people are usually nice to you when you are helping them do something for free. Today there was a thing for local groups to have tables and that’s where I learned (getting real local to Metro Detroit here) there was a local amateur radio club as well as a YIMBY group. While I don’t have any radio experience, it’s very cool to see and maybe I’ll try to listen? Quite a few gardening and pollinator groups too. I sometimes help out with my local environmental restoration group too because of course that’s something I’d like to see, but it’s also just good exercise and a way to learn about plants.
Anyway, if you’re able to, consider volunteering for a local thing. You get to meet neighbors and at least for me it’s generally been a good time. I suspect there’s quite a bit more frustration when it’s helping a political group, those are important too, but if you don’t have the energy for that, even just doing….something…can be nice. When I got home I looked at Blue Sky and immediately took psychic damage so if you want another reason, it keeps you from looking at your phone for a bit too.
Looks like I did a post on stuff I liked reading in the Summer, so here’s another one. Books? They’re good! I’m not listing everything I read because I decided to log even the chapter books I read to my kids on Storygraph, and it would be incredibly tedious for people to look at that. I don’t have amazing taste in books by any means but maybe you’ll find a new book or two to check out from your local library. This list is not ranked by any means, just the order I read them last year and the links generally go to Bookshop.org or another place where you can buy it.
Hardcore Gaming 101 Digest Vol. 8: The Bride of Retro Horror – Hardcore Gaming 101 has put out a lot of good books on retro games. This one was a follow up to a previous digest on horror games, which I would also recommend if that’s your thing. The link goes to Itch.io but I think there’s print versions of all their books on Amazon.
Peter & Ernesto: The Lost Sloths – Graham Annable, who I know from the Puzzle Agent games but has done lots of animation and won an Oscar, has put out a few Peter & Ernesto books. They’re comics about two sloths, very cute and I like reading them with my kids. The link goes to his site where you can buy a signed copy.
The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds – A book about the band KLF. Can’t recommend it enough if you’re a fan and maybe even if you don’t listen to them but are a big music history nerd. I think this was recommended to me by Ste Pickford on Bluesky, which I would suppose would make sense because I don’t know if there’s many Americans recommending me books about the KLF. That said, I actually did listen to the audiobook for this through my local library using the Hoopla app, so there’s dozens of us in the US that like KLF.
Vagabond: A Memoir – Tim Curry wrote a memoir! And it’s good! I listened to the audiobook for this one. I cannot imagine how difficult it was for him to read this after becoming disabled from a stroke, but it was nice to hear his voice. I also actually thought it was fun that he wouldn’t talk about any relationships he has been in other than Miss Piggy during Muppet Treasure Island. I was also very surprised that he briefly mentions video game work. Mostly just to say that he doesn’t understand them but thought acting in front of a green screen was fun. But still, didn’t expect to hear him say the words “Red Alert 3”
Spread Me – I read a bunch of books by Sarah Gailey and this novella was another good one. Basically The Thing but more horny.
More Bugs – Em Reed of DOMINO CLUB fame (idk man, had to work in a Domino Club reference in this post) also has a book. I think I referred to it as erotic body horror on social media along with Spread me, which is not entirely accurate, but there’s still body stuff. Very surreal but I think it also captures the weirdness of living in a small town in the midwest. This review sucks but the book is very good! It’s not actually like Gregg Araki’s Nowhere (a film I love) and I think there’s way more empathy for the characters, but it did remind me of it. I got the ebook for this one but a print version is available.
Anyway, books are good! Make a goal to read at least a couple this year.
I know that 9/10 it’s just people forgetting to update their Itch pages but if you have a link on there going to Twitter, now would be a very good time to remove it especially since it’s gone from “the nazi bar” to “the nazi bar generating CSAM content.” Dunno, if you still need X, the CSAM site where no one can view your posts without being logged in and the algorithm is constantly fucking with everything anyway, to promote your stuff then that seems like a skill issue. I also think Discords should ban links to X like they would with 4Chan and other places like that.
I know some people technically have accounts that they haven’t posted to in years but I don’t think it’s a bad idea to just outright delete those either.
Hope that you all have been having a good and relaxing holiday season. Mine has been a bit weird this year but there’s been some good parts. I got to make a very short Playdate game with my 6 and 8 year olds and that’s now available for free. They did the design and writing and I helped with the coding and art. It’s my first Playdate game so even though it’s very small in scope, I still learned a lot. We used Pulp, their version of Bitsy, and I think their ideas pushed me to learn a little more than I would have if I just made a tiny thing by myself. As you can imagine, a game by a 6 and 8 year old may not be the most focused thing but I still think it’s cool and it made me really happy to make something with them. Without getting too mushy, I’ll just say I love them and their little brother very much.
If you’re a parent with kids that like video games, consider making a game with them too. We all had fun making this Playdate game and it’s just a blast listening to them coming up with ideas for stories, whether it’s for games, seeing the comics they make, and everything else they do. My oldest already has an idea for a short point-and-click adventure starring a comic book character she made up a few years ago and I’m always excited to see what they do next.
For some reason I got a little crabby yesterday that people were only recommending indie games on Steam yesterday, which is kinda silly, but it did lead to me doing a recommendation thread on Bluesky of games on sale on Itch that I enjoy. It’s a flawed thread because I didn’t recommend any ttrpgs but I’m going to list the recommendations here as well because they’re good and worth a look. Some aren’t even on Steam and others give you a Steam key. It’s not that I hate Steam, even if I do have issues with it, I just get frustrated by people not being curious about what else it outside of it.
First I want to recommend Indiepocalypse, a monthly anthology zine featuring many experimental indie games every month! I’ve mentioned it on a blog a billion times but I’m going to keep doing it because I think they’re doing amazing work curating indie games that I would never find otherwise.
Liberation is a space sim inspired by early classic like Elite and shows like Blake’s 7, and has a great sense of humor. It’s very easy to pick up and play too, which is often the issue I bump into with a lot of modern open world space sims.
Minerva’s Labyrinth is a first-person turn based dungeon crawler with nice pixel art and great combat system. Again, I’ve mentioned this one a few times before (probably a pattern you’ll see in this post quite a bit) but I’ll keep doing it until it somehow becomes a smash hit that pulls in millions of dollars for the dev.
Inspector Waffles is a point-and-click adventure where you play as a cat detective investigating a murder. I really like the way this game uses clues to question folks at crime scenes. The Game Boy Color prequel is also on Itch. I don’t know if you get the rom if you buy that one on Steam but you do on Itch. I also recently learned that one got ported to the Playdate.
Manglepaw is a first person adventure game with art inspired by early 90’s 3D art. I love the game looks. It’s also available in Indiepocalypse #26
Cyclopean: The Great Abyss is a rpg inspired by early crpg classics like Ultima, with an overworld map when you explore the world and first-person dungeon crawling when you enter a dungeon. The dev has made a few rpgs at this point and they’re all on sale right now. Islands of the Caliph is another one I enjoyed.
Snoik! is just a very good Snake-like game for the Playdate, with a neat mechanic where you can weave in and out of the snake by switching layers. Itch has a lot of great games for the Playdate for sale.
If you like VVVVVV or Super Hexagon, consider checking out Terry’s Other Games, a compilation of various smaller games Terry Cavanagh has made. Comes with a Steam key
CorgiSpace is a very nice collection of 13 PICO-8 games by Adam Saltsman and published by Finji, each offering a unique mechanic. The Itch version also gives you the .p8 files to run in whatever you use for PICO-8 files.
Melon Head is an incredibly weird point-and-click adventure game featuring stellar EGA-inspired artwork. I love it
Hylics is another weird one. It’s a rpg and it’s doing kind of a stop motion aesthetic thing for the art that I really like. It got a sequel and that’s on sale as well.
VIDEOVERSE is a visual novel inspired by early internet forums and the Miiverse stuff on the Wii U. Comes with a Steam key. I’ve found that it’s been a very good introductory VN for a few folks.
The Crimson Diamond is a point-and-click adventure inspired by the Sierra classic The Colonel’s Bequest. I love that it uses a text parser and the artwork is fantastic.
Cosmic Void has made many great adventure games but I will recommend Devil’s Hideout, a very creepy first person adventure.
Spirit Swap combines visual novels with match 3 puzzle games. I think it brings some great innovations to the match 3 genre and I love the art and soundtrack in this game as well
I can’t recommend the Midnight Scenes series enough. It’s an anthology series of horror point and click adventures and each one can be played in a single sitting.
Super Video Golf is a solid golf game with tons of features and an early 90s 3D aesthetic I really enjoy. I hate real life golf for many reasons but like a good video game about golf. Comes with a Steam key.
There is not a game in recent memory that does the Super Mario Bros 3 style platformer better than Kitsune Tails.
Rainbow Laser Disco Dungeon is a kinda sorta Berzerk like, at least in how you move from room to room, twin stick shooter combined with a rhythm game. Comes with a Steam key too!
co-open is a very nice first person adventure game about a child’s first time going grocery shopping alone.
Again, some of these are repeats from the recent Itch recommendation thread but they’re worth another shoutout.
