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Where are the Indie Games Sites Run By Perverts?

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Around this time every year every outlet starts talking about their games of the year, despite the year not even being over. People often get annoyed by The Game Awards since it’s the biggest and most obnoxious one, but I can ignore this one pretty easily since it’s big and dumb and never offered anything of value. The ones that get to me are from the outlets that talk about how much they love indie games but all the games seem to have a large-ish budget and are available on Steam. Places that offer really experimental, solo games like Itch.io and the interactive fiction competitions like IF Comp get ignored.

It just makes me wonder, where are all the indie game outlets run by perverts?

There’s probably a better way to word that, but why isn’t there more recognition of all the fucked up games people are making? Why aren’t they covering adult games and games with upsetting body horror? There’s smaller places like Weird Fucking Games and Adult Analysis Anthology that are doing good work, but nothing bigger seems like they can be bothered to look at that stuff. Why? Is it just a lack of curiosity? Surely an anonymous game collective like Domino Club dropping a free anthology of experimental games twice a year would be interesting to people who like indie games? Adult game Hardcoded (VERY NSFW Itchio link) just came out after years in development and was a big release in that community. It’s not just the fucked up games being ignored. There’s so many games coming out in every niche, even ones that have been declared dead like point-and-click adventures and text adventures that use parsers.

I don’t think this is the same thing as the tired discourse of “places are covering indie games” because they do. There’s a lot of great outlets that cover them and deserve the support. I just wish a lot of these places dug deeper and were more willing to cover experimental games that didn’t have the time or budget to be really polished. I love UFO 50 as much as the next person, but it’s not the only games anthology to come out this year, and they certainly didn’t invent the games anthology. I just feel like these game of the year awards from people who talk about how much they love indies turn someone even as dull as me into John Waters, and have me asking where are all the people talking about the indie games about people fucking and eating dog shit.

Ahyoheek Night in Myst Online

~ mpklamerus ~ 3 Comments

At this point I think everyone knows about the Myst series. It was a gigantic success at release, becoming one of the best selling computer games of all time, and the sequels have done very well too, including the recent (and very good) remakes of Myst and Riven. What a lot of people don’t seem to know about is the MMO spinoff Myst Online. Back in 2003 there was a game called Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, set in the modern day where players create an avatar and explore various ages in 3D. While I was a big fan of the game, it sold below expectations. It was going to have an online component where people got to explore ages together, but it got shut down by the publisher Ubisoft very quickly after release. In 2007 it came back online as part of the games subscription service GameTap, even receiving new content, before shutting down again.

However, it went back online around 12 years ago and has run on a Cyan hosted server, remaining free to download (Myst Online website) and play, and relying on donations for server fees. In recent years it has even received new content that was created by the community. I wrote about one of these updates a year ago and the game has had some big bug fixes lately and a new content addition planned for the beginning of next month.

What I want to talk about in this post is how the community is still very active despite it being a MMO that has died multiple times. Last Saturday night I had the pleasure of playing the Myst universe’s version of Rock, Paper, Scissors called Ahyoheek. It uses a Beetle, Pen, and a Book instead. The Beetle beats Pen, Pen beats Book, and Book beats Beetle. The additional twist is that up to five people can play the game at once. For the last year, people have been meeting up at 11PM EST every Saturday night and meeting in the Competitive Myst Neighborhood to play Ahyoheek. The meetups were started by streamer BogusMeatFactory, although he doesn’t stream the meetups since they’re just folks casually hanging out, playing the game, and talking about their week.

Folks at a Ayoheek table playing the game, with holograms projecting above the table, while others watch the game.
People playing a round of Ahyoheek

I’ve known about the meetups for a while but never made the time to attend one until now. I can easily say it was a delight and I will be going to many more. It was so much fun to play a part of the game I’ve never really experienced, despite occasionally hopping on a few times most years since its revival because it’s a frequently empty game. A few of the folks who played in Ahyoheekwere actually pretty new to the MMO and only decided to check it out in the last year because they were Myst fans but never actually played this spinoff. I played a few rounds and then decided to just sit and hang out to talk to folks while playing, since the table only supports five players and the total turnout was 12 people. Conversations included Myst Online of course, but people also talked about other things like cooking or whatever else they were up to. It was just a pleasant time and it was nice seeing people hanging out in the world like you would expect from a MMO that was doing well and hasn’t been shut down multiple times.

It turns out that the Myst Online community actually does quite a few meetups and events. Every other week someone hosts a radio show inside of Myst Online called Radio Free D’Ni, a big meetup on the first Saturday of every month, tour groups of the game’s ages, and story times. These are all listed on The Guild of Messengers calendar page. I could probably be clever and make a reference to Myst about how the ending has not yet been written but it really is the case for a lot of MMOs. Asheron’s Call 2 was my first MMO and there are people making good progress bringing it back, with the first Asheron’s Call already having community servers. Even Sierra Online’s online community from the 90s is still going thanks to fans. Just because a game has shut down doesn’t mean it’s gone forever.

a group of folks from the recent Myst Onlne meetup standing behind an Ahyoheek table
Photo from the end of the end at the most recent Ahyoheek meetup

Gobliins 6 Kickstarter Launched

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I have fun posting any and all Gobliins 6 related news on here so here’s another update. Gobliins 6 has just launched a Kickstarter to fund development and finish the game. I enjoyed Gobliiins 5, which I had backed on Kickstarter, and this lists quite a few improvements on that. The rewards are pretty interesting too if you’re really into the artist’s work. I don’t recall any roadbumps or big delays with the campaign for 5 so it seems like a pretty safe one to back if you were thinking about it.

Son of the Halloween Adventure Games

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Every year I do a handful of indie adventure game recommendations for Halloween, like here, here, and here, and thought it would be time to do a couple more.

outside a house holding a radio device and a phone that has two people on the video call

I’ve mentioned it a few times but Incubus – A Ghost Hunter’s Tale (Steam) is a fun adventure game if you enjoy ghost hunting and FMV. I’ve always enjoyed the developer’s other games like the Dark Fall series and this is another ghost hunting adventure by them. While I’m not into ghost hunting in real life personally, this feels authentic to what folks in that area do….I think.

homestar runner dressed as the character from quest for glory 1 and another character dressed as the jester from the kyrandia games

Homestar Runner has a long tradition of referencing point-and-click adventure games and one of their recent commercial games (well, 2023), Homestar Runner: Halloween Hide n’ Seek (Steam), continues that tradition. The game features characters dressed as references to a variety of classic adventure games, both recognizable and obscure, and can be played in one sitting. I think this is maybe a rerelease of something they made before but with added voice acting and extra material but I’m not sure. It’s fun!

I am a big fan of Cosmic Void’s adventure games and Devil’s Hideout (Steam) is another solid game by the studio. Like all of their previous games, Devil’s Hideout features great pixel art and music to tell the story of a woman looking for her missing sister.

screenshot from Excuse Me Sir showing a surprised woman and her saying "Hey, who are you?" with the response options being "Can I use your phone?" and "Have you seen my brother? (Show flyer)"

Excuse Me Sir (Itch.io) is a weird one because it’s just a demo for a game that has since been canceled, but I love how weird it is and I think the demo is self-contained enough that I would still recommend checking it out.

Gobliins 6 Trailer Released

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Because Gobliins 6 search results have somehow become the thing leading most people from Google to here, I feel like I’m required to post the new trailer for the upcoming Gobliins 6.

I think it looks pretty good! I was pleasantly surprised by Gobliiins 5 and this is a return to the characters in Gobliins 2. Since this game only has two goblins, there are now only two I’s in the title. Since I do not speak French, I cannot tell if the appearance of the Prince Buffoon means this is chronologically set in the middle of the franchise. It’s weird to even think about the concept of Gobliiins lore. Anyway, glad he’s still making these. I really should give Gobliiins 4 another shot. I was so put off by the 3D graphics but I heard the puzzles get pretty good in the second half.

The Cohost Blog Roll

~ mpklamerus ~ 3 Comments

I still haven’t made my RIP Cohost post and I’m still not sure what to say about that, but ever since they announced the site was shutting down, I’ve been putting together a giant Google Sheet of folks that have websites and blogs that people can follow. If you were a Cohost user and come across this, please feel free to leave a comment on this post with the relevant info and I’ll add it. Even if you didn’t use Cohost, I think there’s a lot of cool sites here that you can look at and subscribe to on your RSS feed reader of choice.

Blog Roundup (2024-09-29)

~ mpklamerus ~ 2 Comments

I’m not sure when Cohost shuts down posting, other than it being sometime tomorrow, so I’m doing one of these right now before it’s too late. If you enjoy these, please consider doing your own on your blog and subscribing to the blogs you like on your RSS feed reader. Also feel free to leave comments with what you’ve been reading lately.

RobF, of various indie games fame like Death Ray Manta, has started a blog where he reviews the B-movie schlock he’s been watching every night. It’s great. Even as a bad movie enjoyer, I haven’t even heard of most of these.

Meredith Gran, of Octopus Pie and Perfect Tides fame, is doing more posts on her site that give updates on her Perfect Tides sequel and other cool things.

Dante’s post on Star Wars and Star Trek accurately captures my feelings and current relation to both franchises.

erysden has a nice post on the coolness of software rendering

Katherine Morayati talks about a really interesting sounding DOS application from 1991 called lovedos

Priscilla talks about the Conlang they created for the Superbrothers game JETT: The Far Shore

Ben Chandler is working on a new adventure game!

If you’re like me and having second thoughts about using WordPress after all the recent stuff that’s going on with them, this post gives you an option to move to.

Misty has a blog talking about music albums every day and I’ve been discovering cool new stuff to listen to.

Edenwaith talks about how you can implement Steam Achivements in the Mac ports of games made in Adventure Game Student, which may be very relevant to me in the next year.

Wouter has a post on about experiencing old games in new eras.

And here’s some things that I don’t know count as blogs, but are still really cool IMO!

The Imaginary Engine Review has an article about the poetics of endurance and the game OVERWHELM

Paste Magazine has a great article on the underrated Illusion of Gaia

I loved Start Menu’s review of Dread Delusion

Blogging on the Phone

~ mpklamerus ~ 1 Comment

People on the blogosphere right now are talking about how you should post on your blog through the phone. They’re even reblogging posts saying you should post from your phone. Well I’m here to draw the line in the sand and say I will NEVER post from my phone. In fact, maybe I’ll post exclusively from my desktop computer. I don’t care if this starts discourse, I will never use my cellular phone to make a blog post.

Here is a picture of my cat

a photo of a cat looking up at you with big eyes and expecting a snack

Books Read in August 2024

~ mpklamerus ~ 1 Comment

Oops, a few days behind on this. I went a bit overboard reading in August and September is definitely slower. Almost all of these books were from my library since I wanted to keep participating in my summer reading program there, which is partially why my reading in September is slower. Also because my kids are back in school and all the Internet Archive discourse on Bluesky (not getting into it) was very annoying to me as well. Even the conversations around “real” libraries have been annoying and heavily focused on how libraries are good because they give authors money which, sure, that’s nice, but there’s lots of other reasons why they’re good.

This is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone, Amal El-Mohtar – After hearing this books described as a modern classic in the last few years I finally read it. It’s really good! Not a whole lot to say past that but I recommend it if you like gay time travel stories.

1984 by George Orwell – It’s weird having an opinion on this book after reading it for the first time. I’ve seen it referenced billions of times and the influence that it had on pop culture that I mostly knew it all anyway. But I think it’s good?

Orbital by Samantha Harvey – I really liked this one. It’s just about the lives of people in the last days of the International Space Station before it’s decommissioned. I absolutely love sci-fi stories that feel like they are heavy on vibes and there aren’t explosions and punching and this one delivers since there’s not really a “plot.” The novella did well with critics but it explains why opinions on places like Storygraph are more divided.

Welcome to Wine: An Illustrated Guide to All You Really Need to Know by Madelyne Meyer – Yep lol, I just wanted to know more about wine. This was a good intro to that and not too long.

Red Rising by Pierce Brown – Apparently this is a massively popular series but I didn’t really care for it. Not “bad” but nothing exciting to me either.

Some Are Always Hungry by Jihyun Yun – Just a really good collection of poetry by a local author in Ann Arbor. I picked this one up about a year ago at Booksweet, which has now changed ownership but still seems very good.

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells – The second Murderbot novella. I’ve read this one before but just really like Murderbot and wanted to read it again. I think I’ve only read the first 3 books so I’m looking forward to getting to the new stories soon.

Captain Disaster: The Dark Side of the Moon by Dave Seaman – This is a short story novelization of his free point-and-click adventure, both are available on Itch. Fun, quick read. Most people should do novelizations of their games.

The Fireborne Blade by Charlotte Bond – Very enjoyable fantasy novella. The middle drags a bit and it spends time setting up more interesting things in the sequel book instead of doing it here, but I had fun reading it.

Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch – Public domain read on my Kindle. I don’t know, shrug. I get why it’s important but don’t think I would recommend it to others.

Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany – My first Delany book! Liked it but probably wouldn’t recommend the audiobook to others since I feel like you need to take your time with it and parts and possibly even reread things?

The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo – Another novella in the Singing Hills cycle. I’m glad I kept reading these. Wonderful series.

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros – Good book. Don’t have a lot to say about this one. It’s not really the kind of book I would normally read but checked it out since it’s popular and was part of a recommendation post from my library. Won’t read the sequels but that doesn’t mean it’s bad.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw – It’s fine. I like Cass Khaw but this didn’t work as well for me like their other books. Even my review seemed to be more positive than most on Storygraph, but I didn’t think it was bad. I think a lot of people felt pulled in by the fantastic cover art. Like everyone says, the characters are just kinda annoying, but not in a way that’s interesting. Oh well. Go read their other stuff though!

Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne – I listened to the audiobook by Tim Curry and man, absolutely incredible. The story itself is good but Tim Curry really elevates everything.

Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny – My first Zelazny book and it won’t be the last. I actually started reading this because we were playing Chronomaster in Adventure Game Club, which he worked on, and I wanted to actually read one of his books. Good stuff.

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne – I guess I am a big Jules Verne fan and I’m fully onboard with Captain Nemo’s bullshit.

Tom Baker at 80 – Ok lol, this is an audio release I bought from Big Finish about 10 years ago and I have the signed cd. I finally listened to it. It’s fine! It’s just a 2 hour long interview with Tom Baker and his career. He’s still working with Big Finish and doing more 4th Doctor stories to this day!

Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo – There’s one more of these that I also read in September. Highly recommend the whole thing.

The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket – Listened to this because Tim Curry does the narration. He’s great, I thought the actual book was whatever and then I read the Wikipedia page for the author and he seems very annoying so I don’t think I’ll do the sequels.

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie – Another story I listened to because of Tim Curry! He’s good in this and so is the story. It’s worth reading even if you’ve seen the Disney movie a bunch. It’s not drastically darker like some Disney source material is, but it is a little bit and it’s just interesting.

A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony – Oof, OOF. I read this because I eventually wanted to play the adventure game by Legend and wanted some context. I’ve even been warned about this book before, the AV Club famously has a very negative review of the book. I should have listened. It’s so frustrating. There’s some really fun ideas in here but it’s so aggressively sexist. It really can’t stop itself from saying something awful every once in a while once you think the book stopped being sexist.

A Mastodon Test

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I just installed a new plug-in that should post this over to my Mastodon account here. Before this became self-hosted, the blog would post to its own account but I dropped that as soon as Automattic got into AI scraping crap. I also deleted my Tumblr soon after. Oh well, their loss. Apologies if you follow this through RSS and care about none of this!