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.
Uncategorized
Son of the Halloween Adventure Games
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.
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 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.
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
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
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)
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
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
Books Read in August 2024
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
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!
Books Read in July 2024
I guess I should post on here more. I’ve been pretty busy pretty busy this summer but here’s what I read this last month. You can always follow me on Storygraph
Ariol – A Beautiful Cow: This was a collection of comics that one of my kids picked from the library. It was fine! I never heard of it before
Dragonflight: My first Anne McCaffrey book! I thought it was ok but suffered from some very boring stretches but it has some neat concepts and I liked the ending. I will read more by her at some point in the future.
Exhibit by R.O. Kwon: Big fan of this writer. Didn’t enjoy it as much as The Incendiaries but still thought it was very good. The marketing for the book was very odd to me because it felt like it was hyping it up as an erotic and fun novel and that’s really not what the focus was. Not a criticism of the book at all, just weird that the marketing chose to go with that.
Kindred: My first Octavia E. Butler book! Nothing really insightful to say about this one. Yep, it’s a great book and I’ll need to read more by her. By knowing what the book was about in advance, I sorta expected it to be kind of a slog but nope. It felt like a quick read to me.
The Long Game: My first Ann Leckie story. This is another one of the short sci-fi stories that is available as part of Amazon Prime so I read it. I don’t really remember anything about it and my storygraph says I gave it 3 stars so I guess I thought it was just fine. I’ll read more by Ann because I know this isn’t really representative of her writing and to be honest, I’ve kinda felt “it’s fine” has been the case with all of the stories in this Kindle series.
The Stars Too Fondly: Really fun sci-fi, gay romance novel by Emily Hamilton. I don’t really know if I had seen people discussing it on Bluesky (where I now follow a ton of writers) before grabbing it from my library, but I’m glad I did.
Servant Mage: Meh. Fantasy novella that still felt kinda boring in the middle and I didn’t really find the characters to be too interesting.
Yours Cruelly, Elvira: My Wild Life as the Mistress of the Dark: This is the autobiography by Cassandra Peterson, the actress who plays Elvira. I would have a hard time recommending it to people who don’t know who she is, but I really liked it. Went with the audiobook for this one, which I think was the right choice. I think it’s neat my library had it.
In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns: My first Elizabeth Bear book. To be honest, I have already sorta forgotten what it was about and had given it 3/5 on Storygraph, which usually means I thought it was fine but not memorable. I had checked it out just because it was something I could listen to for free as part of my Audible trial. I’ll read more by her though. I thought it was neat that the main character wasn’t white, it was a perfectly fine detective story, and I was kind of in a weird mood when I listened to it anyway.
The Y in Life: This was a self-published novel by a local author that I checked out from the library because I enjoyed the author’s blog posts about local bookstores and soccer team. It’s a weird one that’s kind of a mess and way too long but I still enjoyed it? Maybe I like when an author knows they are probably just writing one book and just put everything in there. Maybe I should read more self-published books even if they’re messy?
When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain: I really liked the previous book in this world, The Empress of Salt and Fortune, but didn’t click as much with this. But it’s short, everyone else seemed to like it more than me, and I still didn’t even think it was bad, just not great like the first book. Still might read more in the series though since they’re standalone novellas set in the same world.
Streaming
I started streaming on Twitch recently after years of considering it and was surprised to find out that I really enjoy it. It looks like I made a post about it a few months ago announcing that I had one but didn’t really get into it until this last month. It started when I decided to stream the mid 90s puzzle game Gubble, partially as a bit but I genuinely wanted to revisit a game I had played when it was released. I had a blast and other people seemed to enjoy finding out about the game too.
I think it’s been good for me to do since it makes me commit to actually playing a game for two hours instead of fighting with my awful attention span and playing the game for 20 minutes, checking my phone, playing the game for another 10 minutes, looking at various websites, and then stopping to do something else. Plus I actually stick with games more instead of starting games and never finishing them.
Since it seemed to help a lot with completing games, I decided to do a game dev stream last night and got a ton done. Again, it helped having people to talk to while I work on my game for a few hours. This was just an art stream where I was making clay art for a short point-and-click adventure. I felt motivated to work on it again after someone at a recent game dev meetup told me that I shouldn’t make an adventure game with clay since it “has been done a million times before” (1. rude and 2. what the hell are you talking about?). I would never do any coding streams because it’s my day job and I don’t wanted to be judged for any bad code, but I’m ok with people seeing me learn how to do clay art and stop motion animation. So I’ll keep doing more of these since it seems to make me more productive and it’s fun.
I highly doubt it will never get too elaborate or have a dedicated schedule. I have no interest in this being a side gig or a thing that makes money but it’s been nice as a thing to keep me focused and make solitary activities a little more social.