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Domino Club Delivers Boffo Games With Latest Blockbuster Jam

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment
photo of a bridge and text on it saying "You alright?" and "Drew asked, noticing I'd stopped walking next to him"
hotwife chronicle screenshot

The anonymous collective DOMINO CLUB has just published 10 browser games for home computing devices as part of their Drive-In Jam on Itch.io. The video games cover a variety of genres, from interactive fiction to character creation games. At the time of this writing I have only played a few of the games but I loved the writing in the interactive fiction games hey chat, are we cooked? and hotwife chronicle. Unfinished Minecraft Clone is one that I was super into the vibes of and found one of the endings, but I feel the need to poke at more because it says it has multiple endings and I’m unable to find the other one. I really enjoy platformers where I kinda have no clue what’s going on and I’m trying to find secrets in them. I guess it’s only kinda sorta a platformer but close enough. There was also a late arrival, Creature Feature or A change has occurred and now nothing will ever be the same again, a character creator for fans of films like The Fly and you can make little guys like this

person in a lab coat and skirt with a worm head and the head has a bow
Creature Feature screenshot

Excuse the weird headline, I just like the word “boffo.” I will probably spend the evening playing the rest of them and I hope you check them out too! If you haven’t played the games in previous jams, consider checking those out too!

a little guy frowning and is next to trees and a ladder
Screenshot of Unfinished Minecraft Clone

I Have Entered My Pinball Era

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I haven’t really posted about it on here but I’ve been playing a lot of pinball lately. I’ve always liked it but for whatever reason, I really got the pinball bug about two months ago. I think it’s mostly because I made an account on Stern Pinball’s achievement tracking thing, that automatically tracks achievements and scores across their tables as long as you scan a QR code on your phone using the machine’s QR reader. I’m generally not an achievement fan but it makes sense for pinball to me, where the goal is to reach higher scores. I think tracking my scores, even in the non-Stern tables, has made me more excited about pinball. It also just feels great to play and once you get good enough, it generally feels fair and you can play for longer.

The arcade I’ve mostly been going to has been Pinball Pete’s in Ann Arbor since it’s by the Downtown branch of the library. They recently moved from another location, which I think I liked slightly more because of all the old arcade games they used to have, but now they have more pinball tables which I guess fits in more with the name anyway. Just yesterday, after the Comics and Small Press event they had at the library, I walked over and played Elvira’s House of Horrors, Pulp Fiction, the new Transformers table, Foo Fighters, and Uncanny X-Men. My favorite table at Pinball Pete’s at the moment has been Stern’s Godzilla table, which I think is a great tribute to the Showa era of Godzilla films.

I’ve also been playing DEMON’S TILT and XENOTILT (both great, I should do separate posts for those) and Pinball FX, where I really like the recreations of real tables and can’t stand the ones made for the game. Anyway, pinball is great. You should look at this map and see what tables are near you. There will probably be more posts about specific tables in upcoming weeks as I play more tables and revisit others.

Wonderful games collection Cartomancy Anthology is now free

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This will be a very short post but the games collection Cartomancy Anthology is now free on Steam and Itch.io. It’s a games anthology where you pick the game you want to play by drawing from a tarot deck. I originally got it from backing a Kickstarter a while ago but I’m really happy it’s free so more folks will play it. So many game developers I’m a fan of worked on it and I highly recommend checking it out!

It’s World Postcard Day!

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Today, October 1, is World Postcard Day! I am going to copy Renkon’s post and say that if we interact with each other a bit on The Internet, most likely mutuals on some social media platform, and you would like a postcard, let me know! You should know where to contact me through email, social media, or Discord, and I will send you a postcard from my collection. I can’t guarantee it will be a great one, it might be some silly touristy thing, but you will receive one.

Stop Sending Me AI Slop

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I think it should be clear to actual readers of this site that I do not want any games sent to me that use generative AI, including code, but since it keeps happening: Please stop sending this crap to me. I think it’s morally wrong to use these products, it’s an obscene waste of energy, they’re built by stealing the work of others, and all of these companies have rancid ethics. I don’t care if you just used it for code. It fucking sucks and I hope your next game will be better.

Thank you.

Game Devs of Color Expo Starts This Week!

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GDoC is a yearly virtual conference I love to watch and I highly recommend buying a ticket to watch the talks happening and support the conference. I’ll let the website describe GDoC since it does a better job than I could

“Game Devs of Color (GDoC) is a non-profit organization dedicated to amplifying and empowering developers of color in the gaming industry. Since our founding, we’ve focused on elevating talented creators and their innovative work, providing platforms and opportunities that help developers of color bring their unique games to life and connect with the broader gaming community.”

Even if you aren’t a game developer, I think there’s a lot to enjoy with the various interviews and panels, and you’ll be supporting a really cool group!

lol, never mind on that Zium Railway recommendation a few days ago

~ mpklamerus ~ 2 Comments

Turns out the main programmer heavily used AI in the hub world area and didn’t tell artists and collaborators until it was too late. But they did make a pathetic post saying that Valve and Hideo Kojima should hire them and says positive things about company towns?? Explains the bugs in the main hub though. I’ll rewrite the original blog post to explain this further.

It’s incredibly frustrating that the artists involved have to put up with this. Those external exhibits are great! Anyone not letting collaborators know up front that they will be using AI on a project are just assholes.

Anyway, I read this post about creative coding and felt better about not using AI to code, even at my day job

Here, Have a Moose Emerging from the Water

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the cover of Ranger Rick magazine, showing a moose emerging from water

My mom gifted a magazine subscription to my kids a little bit ago so I was happy to see this arrive in the mail. People can say print is dead all they want but how else are you supposed to have a moose picture delivered to your home.

Anyway, here is a moose emerging from the water. When evil doers are causing trouble, beware, a moose may come from anywhere to save the day.

Season 3 of Playdate Has Been Announced!

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Playdate just announced the 3rd season of their Playdate games and I’m very excited for it. The two previous seasons were great and there’s already a few games announced in this season that I’m looking forward to. I know my kids will love Sound Mind, a two-player hide and seek game by Chuck Jordan (Curse of Monkey Island, Sasquatchers). They also loved Root Bear so they will be happy to see another game by that team called Soggy Froggy. I was a huge fan of Chance’s Lucky Escape by Goloso Games (Inspector Waffles) & Julia Minamata (The Crimson Diamond) so I’m happy to see that’s getting a sequel. We’re also getting a new MacVenture-style (Shadowgate/Deja Vu/Univited) adventure game called houm. It’s not all adventure games in season 3 but that’s my favorite genre so it’s nice to see so many announced already.

Even better, the page says “All games in Season Three were created without the use of generative AI.” Season 2 had run into an issue where it turned out a developer did use gen ai to help code on a game without disclosing it to anyone so I’m glad Panic is making sure they don’t run into that again. I’ve complained recently about how much gen ai usage is on the Catalog store and so have other folks so at least the Playdate community is free from it here.