Gobliins 6 has been officially announced through this Facebook post, with it looking like a crowdfunding campaign planned for the beginning of next year. An extremely brief preview of it was shown in an interview a few months ago and seems to feature the two characters from Gobliins 2, explaining why there’s only two I’s in the title this time.
This is very exciting news for me since I thought Gobliiins 5 was a very nice revival and the thought of getting a new Gobliiins game every other year seems very nice.
With a major narrative game convention happening now where an organizer got angry with people asking for a mask mandate, just a reminder that any convention could do one and protect people from covid and other things if they really wanted to. Smaller conventions like Narrascope, Protospiel, and my local zine fest do them, larger conventions like PAX did them when they cared. So it’s possible for a convention of any size to have one and if you won’t do it because your team can’t enforce one, what makes you think that you can enforce any other safety rules and should have the convention in the first place?
If this blog has been quiet lately, it’s basically because I got really into building a Plex server for streaming my collection of movies/tv/music. It all basically kicked off because of the Bandcamp fiasco and realizing that I should probably have all this stuff backed up. I already had a few SSDs from my dad, who no longer wanted them, so I bought a docking station and started throwing stuff on there. Realizing I had a lot of room leftover, I then started ripping my entire cd collection. Seeing that I still had a ton of room after that, I’ve start putting my film and tv collection together, mostly from ripping my dvd and bluray collection, something I’ll probably be doing for quite a while.
While most of the media on my server had come from my physical collection, I was surprised at how many various places digitally I had accumulated music from. Sources include Bandcamp, Amazon, Itch, Humble, iTunes, Steam, and GOG since I listen to a lot of video game music as well. I also had some movies digitally from various kickstarters I had backed, that brief period when GOG tried selling films, as well as that period where comedians were selling DRM free specials for $5. This seems to have died out, which is a shame because I really enjoyed having DRM free movies. There aren’t really many places where you can pick up DRM free copies of films and tv shows but I did stumble across a few places like Rifftrax, Drafthouse Films, Internet Archive for public domain films, Found Footage Festival, and Vimeo.
I’m not really sure what comes next for the server. Probably buying larger hard drives, but I don’t think I’ll have a machine just for the media server since this is just for my home. It’s still been a fun project though and a nice way to revisit my physical media collection.
While ScummVM is the go-to emulator for LucasArts adventure games these days, there’s another one people should consider using. DREAMM is an emulator focused on LucasArts games that relies on low-level emulation instead of reverse engineering, providing a more accurate emulation of these games over ScummVM. The emulator was created by Aaron Giles, who previously worked at LucasArts and created many of the Mac ports for their games. You can hear him discuss the emulator here.
In addition to it providing more accurate emulation for LucasArts adventure games, having a focus on LucasArts games means it supports a lot of games ScummVM never will, like Yoda Stories, Rebel Assault 2, and Mortimer and the Riddles of the Medallion. You can view the complete list of games it supports here.
I was digging through my google drive and stumbled across a ttrpg I wrote for the 200 Word RPG Challenge contest back in 2018. It didn’t win nor should it have, but it seems alright and maybe I’ll come back to it someday.
It Came from Studio 9 is a GM-less RPG where 3-5 players are part of a crew making a B-Movie. The crew collaborates on the framework of a science fiction, horror, or adventure movie before producing a film in three acts. Players then choose one of the following roles in the movie’s production:
Director (Required) Lead Actor (Required) Supporting Actor Location Scout Stunt Person
Players then film the scenes in each act (usually two or three) by taking turns to say what they’re doing in each scene. If the action seems difficult, they must roll 2d6 to determine the result.
10+: Action is a success (Ex: Lead actor delivers a great performance)
7-9: Action is successful but there’s a complication (Ex: Location Scout gets the beach they wanted but there’s turtles everywhere)
6-: The movie has a disaster (Ex: Director couldn’t get prop guns and actors now must fight killer birds with coat hangers)
After all three acts are completed, the movie is released and the group discusses if it was a huge success, box office bomb, or film that is so bad it’s a cult classic.
When people are nostalgic for the 90’s internet, it seems like they’re often thinking about personal sites that are built around silly purposes. Being fascinated with this era means I get to stumble across these sites such as the Cybertub. This was a site created in the mid 90s just for measuring the temperature of a hot tub in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The Cybertub was created by Paul Haas in early 1994 and by the beginning of 1995, appears to have been getting 1000 visitors a day. The earliest coverage I can find of the site is from the Ann Arbor News in January, 1995. The article has an interview with Paul about how the Cybertub is just a fun little personal project that he made to make sure the hot tub’s water doesn’t drop to freezing temperatures, as well as other parts of his site like the temperature monitor for his fridge. The site seemed to have continued growing in popularity where even the New York Times covered the site in late 1995.
I’m not sure when the popularity of the site started to decline but the legacy of the Cybertub lives on. At BornHack 2019, a hacker camp in Denmark, a large wood-fired hot tub used an internet connected temperature sensor, and if you look at the comments you can see someone from the camp thanking Paul. “I am proud to call Paul Haas one of early mentors. Thank you Paul.”
A really neat thing I wanted to do a shout out to is all the recipe collections on Itch.io. Since it’s a site focused on games but supports other things, I think it’s cool that people are using the Books section to upload their recipe zines. I made a collection here that you can check out to find some of them. There’s a wide variety of themes, one is paired with a tabletop rpg and others are inspired by video games. You can find more by checking out some of the tags on Itch like recipes, food, and cooking.
It’s not on Itch but I also wanted to mention Alpha Chrome Yayo’s album Let’s Get Cookin’, which also features a cookbook as part of the purchase on Bandcamp. It’s a good album and I just like seeing people finding unique ways of distributing recipes.
The 1994 DOS game Pizza Connection/Pizza Tycoon also came with a recipe book of pizza recipes and it’s also part of the download if you get it on GOG. More games should come with recipes. Even the ones that have nothing to do with food.
A nice little feature I’ve discovered this year in ScummVM is the ability to replace the soundtracks of some games with other versions. The ScummVM website mentions it but I didn’t know of it until I saw that George Sanger, also known as The Fat Man, started selling soundtracks of his games on Bandcamp that also included files for ScummVM that allow you to listen to a higher quality version of the soundtrack of games like Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo while you play. It’s been really nice listening to these while revisiting the games with my kids. The soundtracks you can do this with are currently:
Cover of the Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon soundtrack
But I would also encourage you to check out the other albums on his Bandcamp page because there’s a lot of great stuff on there.
Tom McGurk has also rereleased his soundtrack for Spy Fox 2, which comes with files for ScummVM.
Another place where you can find mods for game soundtracks is through the ScummVM Music Enhancement Project by James Woodcock. The project is focused on recreating midi soundtracks of games at a higher audio quality level and isn’t trying to do an “improved” soundtrack or make any drastic changes, and the site is very open about how they are a big fan of the original soundtracks and are just doing it as a fun personal project. Also from reading this post about The Gene Machine, it sounds like he gets permission before releasing an enhanced soundtrack. I think they’re really neat and will have to use them when I replay some of these games. You can check out a video doing a comparison of the original and new Beneath a Steel Sky soundtracks here:
Currently the games supported by the ScummVM Music Enhancement Project are:
It sounds like there’s an enhanced soundtrack being made for Simon the Sorcerer 2 right now, so be sure to follow the project for future updates.
The ScummVM website also links to ways to replace the Loom soundtrack with your preferred version of Swan Lake and building a talkie version of the original Monkey Island 1 and 2 using the voice acting from the special editions. I just think it’s really nice that these things exist when we revisit some of our favorite games.
Update: A lot of people replied on social media of other sites they liked so I have added a list of them at the end.
This morning I went looking for a shareware game I remembered playing 20 years ago and discovered that not only was the game now free, the same website I downloaded the game from two decades ago was still up. This led to me thinking about other old shareware game developer sites I knew of, and discovering some others that were new to me as well.
Spheres of Chaos
This was the game that kicked off my whole dig into old shareware developer sites this morning. Spheres of Chaos is an arcade game like Asteroids, where you fly around shooting at various objects and they break into smaller bits, while dodging other space ships trying to shoot at you. The game was originally released in 1992 for the Acorn Archimedes and then re-released in 1998 for the PC, where it has received a few updates since then. The visuals remind me a lot of Llamasoft’s games, with a psychedelic aesthetic with bright colors coming from every movement and explosion. I originally discovered this game almost 20 years ago, on the Idle Thumbs website before it launched a podcast. The review does a much better job explaining why you should play it than I could. At the time, I did not have a credit card or the money to pay for the small amount the developer was charging. Fast forward to this morning when I suddenly remembered playing this game and dug around the site to find the name of the game. I was pleasantly surprised to see the website was still up, looking the exact same as it did when I first downloaded the demo, and the game was now available for free. Best of all, the game still holds up! It was a blast flying around, blowing everything up, and the screen filling up with various colors. Highly recommended if you’re a Llamasoft fan.
Redwood Games
This led me to discovering some shareware game developers that still have websites going, even if they aren’t actively developing new games. Redwood Games was created about 1990 by Karen Crowther and the studio is most famous for the games Math Rescue and Word Rescue, which were published by Apogee Software. Both games are still available on Steam today. The site also features downloads of other games they worked on like Talking ABC’s and the shareware version of Pickle Wars.
Gray Design Associates
Screenshot taken from the Gray Design Associates website
Gray Design Associates is the name of the developer owned by David Gray, most famously known for The Hugo Trilogy of adventure games, which started with the 1990 game Hugo’s House of Horrors. While GOG does sell the Windows version of the games running in ScummVM, David’s website sells both versions of the trilogy in the bundle if you want to own the DOS versions as well. It’s also the only place where you can legally buy Nitemare 3-D, the FPS spinoff of the Hugo games released in 1995. Since then, David has been focused on creating jigsaw puzzle games and still makes them to this day.
SophSoft
SophSoft is a developer that started in 1982 and is still going today! As someone that is interested in the history of Michigan game development, it’s cool seeing someone that has been making games for so long in Lansing, Michigan. Their portfolio also shows games they helped with, such as Legacy of the Ancients and The Legend of Blacksilver by another local game developer, Quest Software.
Adept Software
Adept Software is a software developer that is most famous for the shareware game Jetpack. The developer started in 1996 and is still working on things today. The Classic Games section of their site is a delight, resembling a 90’s website, and features their classic games for free.
Game Crafters
Game Crafters was a studio that developed one game, The Adventures of Maddog Williams in the Dungeons of Duridian in 1992. That hasn’t stopped the studio from having a website with updates as recently as 2012. The site has downloads of the game for various platforms and you can also read news posts about an attempt to make a sequel in the early 00’s.
MVP Software
MVP Software was a publisher in Grand Rapids, Michigan that started in 1985 and kept going all the way to 2014. While the site itself isn’t anything exciting to look at, I think it’s great that it’s still up and offering free downloads of all the games they’re legally allowed to offer such as Pickle Wars, the game I mentioned earlier by Redwood Games.
If you enjoyed reading about these studios and visiting their sites, I highly recommend the book Shareware Heroes. The book goes into detail about the shareware scene, including some of the developers mentioned here. If there’s an older site belonging to a game developer that you’re a fan of, or you’re a game developer with a site that’s been around for a long time, feel free to leave it in the comments!
Sites Recommended by Others!
I didn’t expect people on social media to have so many other shareware game dev sites that they like so I have made a list of them here!
3D Realms – The legacy version of their site. (Suggested by Richard Moss) Bluemoon Interactive – Developer of classic DOS games like Skyroads. The history section of the site has links to download full versions of their games. (Suggested by Pulsar) Cap’n Magneto – Shareware game for the Mac. (Richard Moss) Carr Software – Developer of shareware games, all available in a bundle. (Hard Drive Noises) Crazy Bytes – Recommended by LunarLoony Everett Kaser Software – Developer of Sherlock and other games. A great post by Ian Michael here about why he is a fan of the developer. Goodsol – Developer of a Solitaire application that is updated every year (Richard Moss) Hamumu Games – Developer of shareware games that has recently rereleased them on Steam. (Andy Hat) JunkGames – Recommended by LunarLoony KPixGames – Developer of PathPix and other shareware games (ROTOPE) Lena Games – Developer of Solitaire shareware and other games (LunarLoony) Louise Hope – A World Builder dev that includes games you can play in your browser. (Mike Piontek) Ray Dunakin – World Builder dev, including a modern Mac remake of one game (Mike Piontek) Sean O’Connor – Suggested by Greg. “Sean O’Connor made a rather addicting Empire clone called “Mother of All Battles” for Windows 3.0 that is still getting some updates and being sold today!” Semicolon – Modern ports of his old software, including Mac games (Richard Moss) Spiderweb Software – Actively making rpgs since the 90’s (Andy Hat) Stick Software – Developer of various applications and games for the Mac (Richard Moss) Storm Impact – Developer of MacSki and other Mac games. The downloads come in an emulator friendly format. (Mike Piontek) Wendell Hicken – Creator of Scorched Earth (kilowatt) Winograd – Developer of Mac and Windows games (Richard Moss) Zugg Software – Creator of MUD clients (Richard Moss)
With Unity doing all of their nonsense lately, I really enjoyed this post from Nathalie Lawhead about alternative game engines. Of course not everyone can switch game engines but with a lot of people considering switching to something else, or even writing their own, I thought this was a nice list. Even if you weren’t using Unity, or you are and have no plans to switch, it’s worth reading. Sometimes it’s nice to just make a tiny game in another engine, just to try it out and possibly make something outside of your comfort zone, without the pressure of it having to be something amazing.
