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Indie Game Roundup (Jan. 26, 2024)

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Aren’t games great? So many exciting ones came out this week too! I sure hope a civil war doesn’t break out in the United States this weekend! 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 pixelated photo of walter becker

Look at a Picture of Walter Becker for 1 Hour
In this Game Boy and browser game you must look at a photo of Walter Becker of Steely Dan fame for one hour without doing anything else? Can you do it?

cassette tape for the game An Outcry

PIZZA PRANKS Videogame Tape Club
The creator of indie game compilation zine Indiepocalypse has started a program for distributing games on USB drives inside tape cassettes. There’s already a few games for sale and it seems like it’s pretty easy to get your game distributed through it, and he’s also been very open about helping you start your own tape club if you want.

creepy hallway with windows giving an orange glow

The Pony Factory
The Pony Factory was originally a game in the first Dread X compilation created by the same designer as the retro looking FPS Dusk. This is a standalone release that adds a tiny bit more to the game as well as some additional polish. I enjoyed the original release of the game, as well as the rest of the Dread X compilations.

Until the Last Bullet
Does this game look “good?” No, but it is a FMV rail shooter now available on Steam so I am required by law to include it on this list.

a grid of objects and pirates on the left and right sides of the grid

Sunken Stones
A game that does look “good” is Sunken Stones, which has just released a new demo on Itch. It’s a puzzle strategy game with roguelike elements where you are a pirate captain and fight foes.

Other random things
There’s also been a lot of Pokemon related discourse I have no interesting in but I did enjoy this post on Cohost recommending indie games inspired by Pokemon. This free Pokemon coloring book that was uploaded to Itch is also fun.

I don’t know if it qualifies as an indie game since it’s licensing a huge franchise, but I think the release of Stargate: Timekeepers is interesting. I never watched the show but we now have a stealth tactics game based on a show that ended over a decade ago. Reviews on Steam are mixed but most of the complaints seem to be that it’s a stealth game and not something else, which seems pretty silly. FWIW, IGN seemed to like it.

top down view of someone walking

The first Megami Tensei just received an English translation. The article on Time Extension goes into a lot more detail about the history of the games and where you can download it.

NeoHabitat Meetup

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A few weeks ago I posted about how there was a meetup in the game Habitat hosted by the streamer BogusMeatFactory. After getting pushed back a week due to illness, the meetup happened and we had a really good time. Here are a couple screenshots that I took.

room in a church and text describing how it was the first virtual church and was founded by a real Catholic priest
sheriff office and me being obnoxious and saying acab
law office and text describing what the lawyers did
Bogus and I saying hi to each other
someone welcoming users
another screenshot of users joining the game
the starting screen that features a vending machine

I’ll post about it when it’s much closer to the date, but I think we’re going to do another Habitat meetup on Feb. 9th at 7pm EST. Of course, people can play anytime they want since it’s a free game that’s playable in the browser
https://frandallfarmer.github.io/neohabitat-doc/docs//

Habitat has also come up on the YouTube channel Conversations with Curtis, in their series of interviews. Here are the links to the interviews, with it at the timestamp where the game comes up:
Aric Wilmunder
Gary Winnick
Ken Macklin

Lost Game: The Games of T.H.E.S.I.S.

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While digging around for local software companies in Michigan a while ago, I stumbled across this ad in the first issue of the Atari magazine Analog for an educational software company called T.H.E.S.I.S. in Garden City.

ad for a software company called THESIS, which lists a variety products.

From looking at the ad, it seems like it’s mostly educational software but there’s a couple of games as well lie CON*PUTATION and TONAL ENCOUNTER. For a longer time than I’d like to admit, I thought there was basically nothing about this company and struggled to find anything. I don’t know what changed in those last two years, but it seems like I was just researching it poorly and it turns out that actually, most of their catalog is available for download.

First of all, this clipping from InfoWorld explains what T.H.E.S.I.S. is actually short for.

screenshot showing that THESIS is short for Timely Home Educational System and Informational Software

And then it looks like they were also referenced in this catalog of Atari educational software makers, which you can download here (link opens a pdf).

This was all I knew of for a while and assumed there was just nothing else, until a couple of years later when I decided to take another swing at looking up this company and it turned out I was just doing a poor job the first time. Searching for Tonal Encounter gave me a page on Atari Mania showing that the game is missing but the additional info that it was developed by Linda Schreiber.

It turns out, she has worked on a ton of games. This was a delight for me to find as someone who has an interesting in local game developers. It looks like most of the games that T.H.E.S.I.S. made have also been preserved as well. It’s really nice finding out that a company you figured was lost forever, was actually mostly preserved and you just didn’t do a good job researching them. IN MY DEFENSE I think it was made harder by the company’s name. It does look like a couple of the games by them are still missing but it is significantly less than I had assumed a few days ago. There’s still a few missing like Tonal Encounter, Math Facts, and Hidden Words, but most of them seem to be on that Atari Mania page.

screenshot from Spellbound showing a bunch of little blue guys and the word Necessary.
Screenshot of Spellbound, taken from Atari Mania

Not only did Linda make a ton of games, she also wrote a few books, with most of them focused on programming for Atari computers. She was an instructor for a long time but is mostly retired now, other than still writing and having a course on Udemy for making wine. While it’s not active now, she also had a blog where she wrote about her experiences as the co-founder of T.H.E.S.I.S. and in 2017 ANTIC: The Atari 8-Bit Podcast interviewed her.

Not really sure what the lesson learned from this whole experience was. I need to look harder when researching lost games? But I’m glad it has a happy ending.

Credit goes to Karen and BogusMeatFactory in the Michigan Games History Colletive discord for finding the InfoWorld clipping and educational catalog. It’s a little discord I started where I’ve been dumping Michigan game developer history research before writing about it somewhere more public facing. It’s not the busiest discord but you’re more than welcome to join here if you have an interest in Michigan game dev history.

Voyage of the Mayflower

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In an effort to cover more Michigan and game dev history on here, I thought I would mention the game Voyage of the Mayflower. This was a game designed by Ken Ludwig and published by Cadmean Corp. in Ann Arbor in 1984 for the Commodore 64. The game is actually playable in the browser on the Internet Archive.

screenshot showing a boat sailing across the ocean
Screenshot taken from MobyGames

The designer of the game also uploaded the design and marketing notes to the University of Michigan’s library, which anyone can read here. Ken is currently a lecturer at the University of Michigan and in 2021, Austin Yarger interviewed Ken for a WolverineSoft virtual meetup about the game and its history. They even play the game for a little bit.

Doctor Who Rewatch (Jan. 9, 2024)

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Only watched and listened to a little bit of Doctor Who this week

The Sensorites
The only serial I watched this week was this 6 parter that suffers from some huge pacing issues. It probably should have been 4 episodes. It still has some fun bits like like Gallifrey being described for the first time, Susan being psychic, and it has a strong start. I also enjoyed that there’s a little more complexity to it in who is considered good and bad in this story. Also lol, so much line flubbing. I don’t blame the actors since they were only allowed one take for the first few years but it comes up quite a bit here.

Here There Be Monsters
I also listened to a couple Big Finish audio stories. It turns out one of the apps my local library uses for digital lending, Hoopla, has a ton of Big Finish stuff on there so consider checking that out if you live in the US. Here There Be Monsters is a perfectly ok but maybe kinda forgettable companion chronicles and the middle is kinda dull. It has some really interesting ideas like the plant ship that tears holes in reality to travel. This part is very good and well produced but then it’s mostly dropped to introduce a man from another dimension who kinda doesn’t do anything? Carole Ann Ford is good in it. It probably should have been either shorter and cut some things out, or longer so it could have more time for the concepts in introduced. Still, it was fun enough and I can’t complain about it being free at the library. It’s not too expensive either on the Big Finish site if you’re looking for more 1st Doctor adventures.

The Transit of Venus
The other Big Finish story I listened to was The Transit of Venus, a story set right after The Sensorites and before The Reign of Terror. I didn’t plan this at all so that was a nice surprise. This was another story I checked out from my library. Apparently this was the first audio story William Russell did as Ian, back in 2009. It’s fun and I enjoy the pure historical stories since they don’t happen in Doctor Who anymore. Without spoiling anything, it does have a fun plot element that carries over from The Sensorites which does mean that serial is required watching before listening to this, but I thought it worked very well. Both of these stories are only an hour too.

New Year’s Resolution Mechanic

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Prismatic Wasteland has issued a challenge to blogs to create a new resolution mechanic for tabletop rpgs.

My challenge is thus: In January 2024, come up with a new resolution mechanic for a TTRPG and give it a name. It doesn’t need to be good (in fact, most the good ones have probably already been taken). It just needs to be new! You don’t need to plan to use it in your games; it can be absolute detritus for you. But one blogger’s trash is another designer’s treasure. You never know how great an impact one throwaway idea on a blog might have.

There’s already a nice list of mechanics on the page and I thought it would fun to come up with my own. This one requires a children’s basketball hoop for kids ages 18 months and up.

a photo of a little tykes basketball hoop for kids

You could probably use a basketball hoop for adults I GUESS but this is more likely to be inside a house next to your table where you’re playing a ttrpg. Anytime you have to take an action that is risky, take a shot on the basket. Making a basket means the shot was a success, hitting the rim but not having it go in means it was a success but there was a complication, and missing completely means it was a failure. You could have them make the shot from 8 feet away but feel free to adjust the distance based on the player’s basketball ability. If the character has a skill modifier bonus, the player can take additional steps towards the hoop, or steps away if they have a penalty.

#Lore24

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This year I will be participating in #Lore24, a daily activity for folks in the tabletop rpg community to build a setting by writing a tiny bit about it each day. It doesn’t matter what part of the world you’re going to focus on that day or how much you write. It can be just a tiny bit each day. It looks like it’s something that originally started on Mastodon. This blog post has a really good description of how it works.

I’m still not sure how often I’ll share updates about it. I know eventually I’ll put it out there but I also don’t want to share daily updates. Maybe weekly or monthly? I bounced off Dungeon23, the last daily activity in the ttrpg community, mostly because I don’t really like building dungeons that much and was generating a lot of filler rooms, but this has already been more fun for me. I’m starting off with a fantasy setting inspired by the Zork games but I’m also hoping that over time it will grow into something more unique. Consider joining in!

Remembering the Borders bookstore in Novi, Michigan

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Photo taken from dohaeng.com

Much like how I wrote about the CompUSA I frequently went to in the 90’s, I figured I should also write about the bookstore I went to for over 15 years, the Borders Books & Music in Novi, Michigan. From 1993 to it closing in 2011, it was the bookstore of choice for me. There was (and still is) a Barnes and Noble that was closer to me but I preferred shopping here due to the larger size and more variety.

Early memories of it involve me spending time in the children’s section of the store while my dad would look at computer books. I was absolutely into Star Wars as a kid and since this was the 90s and there were only three movies, the Star Wars books were how I could see more of the universe. I also occasionally checked out the strategy guides for video games while here, looking up any parts of games I was stuck on so I could go home and make progress. Another random memory were of the in-store music performances that would occasionally happen. One being of a woman doing scat singing in the center of the store with no backing music and my younger brother and I just being baffled by it.

Much like the CompUSA I mentioned earlier, it was located in the Novi Town Center shopping area, only a couple stores down from that. It outlasted that store by a couple years but it felt pretty obvious during that time that it wouldn’t be around forever. Much has been written about all the mistakes Borders made so I won’t go into those, but one of the signs for me was applying for a programming job at their corporate headquarters in Ann Arbor and then that posting eventually being canceled before I got to do an interview.

While it’s very unfortunate that there’s basically no photos of the store available online (I could have sworn there used to be some), there’s a few videos still up that show what the store looked like. This video of a car driving through the parking lot on the last day it was open shows the exterior, and there is a book signing with Dave Mustaine of Megadeth showing what a big chunk of the store looked like inside. There is also a video on the C-SPAN website of an author doing a reading inside the store in 1997, which doesn’t show that much of the store but is still a nice little 90’s time capsule.

On May 26, 2024, I came across this t-shirt that a vintage store in Michigan was selling in a Facebook post. It was already sold by the time I saw the post but still, I think it’s neat that it exists.

a red t-shirt that shows little logos for books, music, film, and a coffee cup and says Borders in Novi Town Center

There is actually a much better tribute to this specific store than this post, and that is on this blog here. It’s about how they essentially recreated that Borders in a room of their home. If I had known the store was selling off shelves and signs from the store when they were closing, maybe I would have picked a few things up. It’s an incredibly impressive job they’ve done with the room.

If you have any of the Novi, Michigan Borders, or the CompUSA and Egghead Software that were in the same shopping area, I would love to see them.

Doctor Who Rewatch (Keys to Marinus, Aztecs)

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After taking a break last week, my rewatch of the Hartnell era continues.

Keys to Marinus
I was surprised this got such a mixed reaction from critics. It’s much better than some of the other stories that have come up so far, and not offensively gross like Marco Polo. There’s a lot of variety in the things happening and the trial part of the story, which seems to be the thing people have the most issue with, really isn’t that long. We also continue seeing the Doctor evolve into a kinder character. I think the criticisms of Susan’s writing are fair game though.

The Aztecs
There’s some great writing in here and really fun subplots like the Doctor accidentally getting engaged and I can see why people love this story. Unfortunately there’s so much brown face and stereotypes of the Aztecs so I kinda can’t recommend it to anyone. There’s definitely a thing happening where I’m respecting a lot of the 90s Doctor Who writers a whole lot less because I look up every Doctor Who story on Wikipedia and the reception for the ones that I thought were fun like Keys or The Daleks will get some criticism but the ones that have aged like milk receive nothing but praise from them. Really weird shit. From my memory of watching the show before, I think this is all the racist shit for now until I get to Talons of Weng-Chiang, so hopefully you don’t have to read me vent about this for a while?

Masters of Luxor
I also listened to one of the Lost Stories from Big Finish. Masters of Luxor was apparently a story that was meant to be the second one for Doctor Who but was replaced at the last minute with The Daleks. It’s pretty solid stuff. I think the script was replaced because it would have been hard to film, but it was probably for the best anyway since The Daleks is a better story that introduced the most iconic villain. Still enjoyable though. It’s fun hearing the actors for Susan and Ian again, Carole Ann Ford and William Russell, and they do a good job. It’s probably the closest we’ll get to a full radio drama for the first Doctor with the original cast