Every week I slowly lose my mind as I see more takes about how no one makes interesting games anymore instead of just reading my posts and supporting the people that do. Did you know people are also already making GOTY lists even though there’s still a month left and great games being released every week? Weird shit! Here’s some of those great games! As usual, feel free to tell me about things you or friends recently made. Comments on here or through any of the ways listed on the About page are fine. I’m only one person and can only find so much. If you enjoy these, subscribe to the RSS feed and tell a friend.
Video Games
The AdventureX Jam has ended and now there’s tons of free point-and-click adventures for you to play on Itch.io.
Vaultron (Itch.io) is a free toy that lets you build underground cities and then you watch it come to life as elevators and trains on monorails start moving around in your city. I thought it was really impressive and hope it gets more updates.
Pym’s Daily Word Square Puzzle (Developer Site/Itch) is a brand new puzzle game for DOS. Each day reveals a new partially filled word square which you must complete. The game is available for free but the developer also accepts donations.
Botos do Diabo (Itch.io) is a short dolphin horror point-and-click adventure.
Michigan Tech University has a game making club and since I live in the state I’m obligated to report that they’ve just published a new set of games on their Itch.io page!
I wasn’t able to go to No Quarter because I don’t live anywhere near NYC but it sounds like there were neat things there, including an exhibit that involved lots of smaller games? Or something? I don’t know, I’m a dummy, but anyway it means we have new Bitsys from Rose and Adam.
PERSON – adventures in WORLD (Itch.io) is short and somewhat autobiographical walking sim but it’s made in the Doom engine. Or GZDoom I think? Don’t yell at me, I don’t know all the different Dooms. I just think it’s neat.
Frosty’s Snowed Under! (Itch.io) is a platformer made in PICO-8 for the PICO-8 Advent Calendar. I haven’t played any of the entries in the calendar yet but I’m happy that such a thing exists. I’m not familiar with it, but I guess this is a remake of the Commodore 64 game Frosty the Snowman/Frosty’s Busy Night.
A Body Is Subsumed In The Work (Itch.io) is a browser collage game created by Hyphinett using the Flatgame Maker plugin for Unity.
LocZine (Itch.io) is a browser-based zine made in the Hypercard-like tool called Decker that’s all about video game localization.
Escape From Castle Matsumoto (Itch.io/Steam) is a free game where two shinobis race against each other to recover stolen items and escape a castle. It reminds me of that old Spy Vs. Spy game from decades ago. The same developer used (I think) this engine to remake the adventure game Enclosure and experimented with remaking scenes in old Sierra adventure games. It’s a neat look!
Caves of Qud (Steam) 1.0 is out after being in Early Access for so long! I don’t have anything interesting to say about the game. It’s great. Lots of smarter people have already talked about it.
The Twine Cookbook (Store) is now available in print. All proceeds from sales go toward the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation.
Honor Bound (Steam) is an interactive novel by Harris Powell-Smith where you protect an exclusive boarding school and rebuild your life after scandal as a military bodyguard. Harris is a great writer and I really liked their previous interactive fiction writing.
IKEELYA (Itch.io) is a game where you play as a disillusioned hitman who has grown tired of his day job, and dreams of becoming an interior decorator. During the day you must do hits on people so you can buy furniture at night and eventually get side gigs doing interior design. The game is available for Pay-What-You-Want.
Cave Hikers (Steam) is described as a relaxing and humorous 2D interactive cartoon mockumentary that follows three characters through a cavernous world, on a quest to find the mystical “cave with an infinite ceiling”. I haven’t played this one yet but I really like the art and it has a demo if you’re interested in trying it out.
Ollie-Oop (Steam) is a game about a skateboarding dog. It looks cute!
TTRPGs
Shoot the Moon (or, Die in the Labyrinth) (Itch.io) is a ttrpg created for the Minimalist Jam by Adam Bell that uses the game of Hearts as its central mechanic. Players are stuck in a labyrinth built by the Queen of Spades and held together by the power of the renegade moon and must either escape the labyrinth or shoot the moon with a huge gun.
The Devil They Buried (Itch.io) is a new solo journaling TTRPG by Kienna Shaw following an outlaw revenant’s quest for revenge.
Tiny Tome 2 (Itch.io) is a book of 50 RPG treasures from 50 different creators. It includes complete games, variant rules, one-shot adventures, and many other things. The Itch page has a link to where you can buy a physical copy too.
AllTinker has just released a patch (Itch.io) for the first Gabriel Knight game that fixes the pops and crackles in the audio. They made a video showing the before and after and it’s really quite impressive. The page for the patch also goes into detail how one can fix the mixed resolution effect in the cd version where objects you can interact with are displayed at a higher resolution. I’ve always wondered if you could make a patch for the remake that moves the audio from this version into the remake and replace the new recordings but someone pointed out to me that the remake also has new lines that the original cast did not record. Anyway, thought this was really cool and just wanted to share.
I’m posting this one a little early because today (Friday) is the Itch.io Creator’s Day, where the site isn’t taking a cut from sales. Luckily this week’s post is much smaller than last week’s. People are doing sales as well since it’s the Autumn Sale. Go pick up a game or two! If you like these roundups, consider supporting me on Ko-Fi or buy my games!
Solitomb (Itch.io) is a dungeon crawler based on the solitaire card game made in PICO-8. It’s playable for free in the browser but also has a downloadable version for sale to support the developer.
KidBlocks (Itch.io) is a very chill and minimalist train track building toy. I think it nails the look of wooden toy trains that a lot of us played with as kids and it was fun watching the scenes I built come to life with little people and trains moving around as I created loops of tracks and built houses. It’s just $1 too.
Meditation On Your Body (Itch.io) is a solo journaling game by the fanastic interactive fiction writer Norbez Jones. You draw tarot cards and reflect on parts of your body. Available as Pay-What-You-Want.
AdventWindows (Itch.io) is a new text adventure created by Andrew Plotkin for the Confounding Calendar 2024. The game has the clever design and great writing you would expect from one of his games. It’s free and playable in the browser. If you’ve never played a text adventure before, I think this one you could start with.
screenshot from thunk
Entries for the Videotome Jam (Itch.io) continue to come in. I really liked playing thunk and slime feet this week.
Fill in the [ ] CITY (Itch.io) is a Pay-What-You-Want city building ttrpg by Viditya Voleti. Sometimes you read a game at 10:30pm and go “ARGH I want to play this right now!” but you can’t because it’s 10:30pm and you simply cannot get the people together for that and even if you could you have to get up early for work tomorrow morning, come on, you don’t want to be tired all day at work. Just wait until you have a good time scheduled to play this. Chill out.
Anyway, that’s how I felt about Fill in the [] CITY.
Torasu (Itch.io) is a Pay-What-You-Want love letter to the NES version of Gyruss. That version of Gyruss rules and so does this.
SunkCost (Itch.io) is a ttrpg for 3-5 Freebooters and one Grotto Master set in Cardinal Basin, a fantasy world that suffered an apocalyptic flood. It’s currently early in development and available to download for free.
Sluggish Morss: The Table Top RPG (Itch.io) is a storytelling ttrpg based on the video game of the same name. This is perfect timing for me since I just started playing the dev’s game Judero and loving that. It’s currently having a launch sale where it’s available for £11.20 GBP and has a free quickstart version if you want to get a feel for what the game is like.
Games to Wishlist
Here’s a couple of games that seem neat and might be worth adding to your wishlist:
Rock Digger (Steam) is an upcoming resource management platformer game where you explore an alien planet, dig for resources, and try to find secrets. It has a demo if you want to try it out.
Mesektet (Steam) is an upcoming sci-fi point-and-click adventure by Point & Pixel Adventures where you explore an archaeological site and discover a greater mystery.
Midnight Scenes: The Highway is the first entry in a horror anthology series by Octavi Navarro, who also worked as an artist on Thimbleweed Park. There are currently five games in the series, with each one being completely standalone, but I would still recommend this one as a great place to start. The games feature gorgeous pixel art and all can be completed in one sitting, with some like this game only being 15 minutes long and later games in the series taking about 90 minutes to play through.
In Midnight Scenes: The Highway you play as a woman who is stranded on a road after her path is blocked by a downed power line and must explore the area to find a way around, but something creepy is lurking out there. This entry in the series is strongly inspired by The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits and revisiting it reminds me that later games pull back on this and do their own thing a bit more by transitioning to color, dropping opening narration, and feel more violent and arguable more monster focused too. This certainly isn’t a complaint about any of the games in the series. I think they’re all great. It’s just interesting to see how the series has evolvesd. I think adventure game fans who enjoy horror but don’t want to be frustrated will be into this game. It’s not a difficult game, with puzzles that are very straightforward but don’t feel like busy work, no death sequences, and it only being 15 minutes long. That might be a turnoff to some hardcore fans of the genre but I feel very comfortable recommending it to people that just want some creepy vibes for a bit.
Octavi also developed some other short horror games outside of this series that I would recommend, The Supper and The Librarian, that play very similarly to the Midnight Scenes series and can be completed in one sitting.
Midnight Scenes: The Highway is available on Itch.io and Steam.
Well, this is a big one this week. I don’t know what happened. Due to the volume of releases this week, I tried to split things up into genre so it doesn’t get overwhelming. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t. As usual, please let me know what you’ve been playing and enjoying lately, or something you or a friend has been working on! Replies here are fine but DMs and emails are welcome too! If you enjoyed this week’s post, share it with friends, buy one of these games, and tell folks about a weird obscure thing you love.
Before we jump into the games, LudoNarraCon is taking submissions right now if you are working on an interactive fiction or adventure game. Alright, here’s some recent indie games that I think are neat.
Video Games
Action
Bug Castle (Itch.io) is a slick twin stick shooter made for the TIC-80 virtual machine for the 20 Second Game Jam. Free and playable in the browser.
Cowgummi (Itch.io) is a short browser game where you are a purple cow that rolls around, knocking other cows off your meadow. The best game with purple cows that I’ve played all year. It even has merch!
Loser Lane (Site) is a game protesting Ontario removing Toronto’s bike lanes.
Adventure/Interactive Fiction
Chiaroscuro (Itch.io) is a short experimental text adventure game inspired by Colossal Cave Adventure available as Pay-What-You-Want. I like when text adventures insert small amounts of graphics or sound for immersion and thought the use of sound in this one was really good. I’d also recommend this one to people who haven’t played a text adventure before.
Great God Grove (Steam) is an adventure game about stopping the end of the world since the gods are too busy squabbling to do it.
CODENAME: ICEMAN is an adventure game designed by Jim Walls and published by Sierra in 1989. Often considered their worst adventure game, the game starts off ok enough with you spending time on a beach and eventually getting your mission details, but then you board a submarine. You spend half the game on this submarine, fighting with awful controls, little plot development, and doing incredibly tedious tasks. Eventually you leave the sub and do some puzzles that don’t make a whole lot of sense and the game ends with a frustrating mini game. There’s fan games for many games in the Sierra catalog but not this one.
Not until today.
KIDNAME:ICEBOY (Itch.io) is an incredible tribute and parody of CODENAME:ICEMAN where you play as the child version of the protagonist from the original game as he goes to the US Navy’s Submarine Camp. I won’t spoil the game because I strongly recommend it to everyone who’s vaguely familiar with the original game, but I think it does an excellent job emulating Jim Walls’ unique adventure game style and is one of the funniest adventure games I’ve seen in a while if you’re familiar with his games too.
Loco Motive (Steam/GOG/Nintendo Switch) is a new comedy point-and-click adventure where you must solve a murder on a train. I haven’t played this version yet but I loved the game jam version and this has been receiving great reviews so far.
inkjam just wrapped up! ink is a scripting language used for narrative games and this is a jam hosted every year on itch for the language. You can check out all 19 entries on Itch.io
Maybe that’s all we need (Itch.io) is a short (15 minutes) about a masochistic gay woman created for the Videotome jam. Read the CWs first since it’s a NSFW game.
Miniatures (Steam/Itch.io) is a collection of short stories, about 30-40 minutes total, each with their own unique art style. Gamers With Glasses liked it.
Monkey Island Manual Game (Itch.io) is just a nice tribute to The Secret of Monkey Island made in Bitsy where you explore the island and read snippets of the game’s manual.
I think I covered this game last week but THRESHOLD (Steam) is now out. I’ll play this game someday when I’m not being a baby about horror but it seems like reviews have been very positive and I love how it looks.
Playdate
Hausbau (Itch.io) is a free game for the Playdate where you build modernist cityscapes by placing tiles. I haven’t played it yet but I really like how it looks and the game promises jazzy tunes.
One-Armed Space Bandit (Itch.io) is a remake of the slot machine game from Space Quest 1. Unlike that version, this has multiple difficulty levels if you want to die less or more times than you would playing the game. It kinda reminds me of the Macintosh version of Space Quest because of the art. Anyway, it’s a great port and the crank is used well in this game. If you like this, check out their King’s Quest 1 Redux project.
Puzzle
Domino Grove (Itch.io) is a wonderful and free browser game where you domino blocks with trees on them and get points by placing similar dominos next to it until you fill up the screen. I thought this was a fun mechanic for the puzzle game, and thought the art direction and sounds made this a very relaxing puzzle game.
InfluxRedux (Steam) is a remake of a 2013 game where you roll a ball through a variety of different environments and puzzles.
Meal Plan (Itch.io) is a free puzzle game where you find the common element in two 7-item sets. It was created for the Win32 jam so it has some glorious windows in it.
Robot Detour (Steam/Itch.io) is a very cute puzzle game where you play as a little robot delivering batteries to robot friends. I’ve only played the demo so far but the puzzles felt fair but gradually increased in challenge with unique mechanics being introduced to keep it from feeling stale, and the art and music made the game a relaxing experience.
Racing
Thalamus has become a favorite publisher of mine by publishing a variety of games for retro consoles and computers, and games inspired by classic 80s games. Their latest release, Nitro (Itch.io), is a racing game for Game Boy Color. You can play it in the browser or buy it for $1.
RPG
Cybil (Site) is a free 20ish hour long rpg inspired by Might & Magic 3. It was made with megazeux, a game engine from the 90s that I believe is a sequel to ZZT?
Dungeon Clawler (Steam) is a roguelike deckbuilder that uses a claw machine to get items. I haven’t played it because claw machines make me angry but Indie Games+ liked it.
Strategy
Rogue Command (Steam) is a RTS with roguelike elements that has just entered early access. I haven’t played it yet but I thought it would be worth mentioning since it feels like RTS are fairly rare these days and so far it has positive reviews on Steam.
Visual Novel
INTERSTATE 35 (Steam) is a visual novel that follows a young woman returning to her hometown in Texas after a nuclear disaster.
Pinup (NSFW! Itch.io) is an adult M/M fairy bondage visual novel. I liked their previous game Off the Cuff and this one is Pay-What-You-Want and playable in the browser.
Stellifier (Steam) is an idol drama game about an older group making a comeback from retirement, featuring a GxB/BxB/non-binary romance. I haven’t played this one yet but I really liked their game Sifting Thyme. It’s also exciting to me that this studio continues to make VNs since they’re local to me.
Tabletop Games
Bloodsuckers (Itch.io) is a new-ish tabletop rpg available as Pay-What-You-Want where you play as a vampire. It just got a one-shot that starts in a bodega (Itch.io). Since we all know these do not exist outside of Brooklyn, we can finally roleplay the fantasy of being in a bodega.
Crux (Itch.io) is a solo tabletop rpg about overcoming challenges and climbing a mountain. The Itch.io page also links to where you can get a print version of the game.
The Deep Water Jam (Itch.io) is a currently running game jam about making tabletop rpgs about water.
Folklore Jam 2024 (Itch.io) was a game jam where people would write an analogue game that incorporates elements from a folklore or a place where they belong. The jam has ended and you can check out all 39 entries on Itch.io.
MeatCastle GameWare Annual #2 (Itch.io) is a zine collecting TTRPGs, articles, Mothership 1e add-ons, and more published in the second year of Missives from the MeatCastle. The digital version is available as Pay-What-You-Want but there is also a print version available for pre-order.
Polymath (Itch.io) is a new font for dice. It looks nice, it’s free, and has a really nice license.
Solovember (Itch.io) is a currently running game jam where people create solo tabletop rpgs. There’s 8 days left but it already has a lot of entries.
Wicked Tales (Itch.io) is a solo tabletop rpg available as pay-what-you-want where you play as a villain and hopefully not be stopped by the heroes.
Writing
None of these are games, but they’re all on Itch and I thought they were beautiful so I’m including them anyway.
Andromeda Zine (NSFW? Itch.io) is about Andromeda from Greek mythology and how they’re sometimes portrayed with a penis in medieval art. It’s available for Pay-What-You-Want.
Cartomancy Anthology was an incredibly influential games anthology for me from two years ago so it makes me happy to see that they just released an art book (Itch.io) for it that I can nerd over.
Sonia Sulaiman has two zines about Palestinian folklore and folk religion in the Paranormal Palestine series. Both are available on her Itch.io page and available as Pay-What-You-Want.
WORLD IS A FUCK (Itch.io) is a zine by Oma Keeling featuring adult sci-fi short fiction and illustrations.
Crowdfunding
There’s also a lot of games currently crowdfunding that I think are worth a look.
Michael Brough is crowdfunding a new game! 868-BACK is currently crowdfunding on Backerkit and it will probably be pretty great, as all his games are.
Legends of Castile (Kickstarter) is a point-and-click adventure set in 19th century Spain, about a village girl who investigates folk legends in order to become a nun.
The Time We Have (Backerkit) is a two-player storytelling card game about brothers in the zombie apocalypse and the final days before one of them turns.
I mentioned Nochi earlier in this post and they’re also crowdfunding their next game. This one is a port of their game Somnium Eleven (Kickstarter) from mobile to PC.
Demos and Upcoming Games
Car Pack Capital (Steam) looks like a fascinating sim game to me. You try to wipe out a city and make it as unwalkable as possible to sell more cars and parking spaces. So basically the most evil sim game since Dungeon Keeper. It’s a really interesting concept but may be too depressing for me to play.
Cart Life is back? Maybe? It has an Itch page where you can download a demo anyway.
According to the dev on Bluesky, horror visual novel Grizzly Man (Steam) should be arriving sometime by the end of the year.
The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker 2 (Steam) is an upcoming FMV game by D’Avekki. There isn’t much to see yet but I liked the first game. I can’t tell if this one drops the text parser, but the first game used one in really interesting ways.
Kathy Rain (Steam) returns in a new point-and-click adventure. I liked the first game and the art in this looks great. The Steam page also has a demo for folks to check out.
I am a big fan of Cosmic Void’s point-and-click adventure games and I’m happy to see them making a cyberpunk game with Neon Hearts City (Steam/Itch.io). The page also has a demo.
It’s only been a week since I’ve done one of these and I already have a ton of games to talk about. I’m not going to act like the Spiderweb Software guy and tell ya’ll to stop making games and become doctors instead, or whatever the hell he was talking about, but I do wish I have more time in the day to play stuff. Just an endless supply of great art being made every week. Nice work. If you enjoy these posts, I would really appreciate if you could give a couple of dollars to SWANCHIME’s Ko-Fi. Their games have been featured in here a few times and they could really use the support. Also consider making your own indie game roundup! The more people doing these sorts of things and spreading the joy of independent art the better.
If I missed something you or a friend made, please tell me! Social media, email, or here as a comment, all are good. I just love knowing what people are making.
Video Games
The Zium Exposition (Itch.io) is described as a “Museum Exploration Game filled with artwork and installations from artists around the world, working in various mediums and styles”. It’s just an incredible space to explore and look at the beautiful art. The vibes are very good and it’s free. I loved it very much.
L.E.V.E. (Itch.io) is an arcade puzzle game by shrunken studios, which I think is a small collective of game developers, where you control little organisms eating stuff and the complexity increases with each level. Lots of fun, it’s free, and available on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Death of the Reprobate (Steam) is the third in a trilogy of silly point-and-click adventures by Joe Richardson that use Renaissance paintings as the source for all the artwork in the game. I haven’t played this one yet but I’m a fan of his previous adventures.
Upcoming horror game THRESHOLD has a demo on Steam. I’m a baby so I don’t know if I’ll play it but it looks very cool.
PROXIMATE (Steam/Itch.io) is a short interactive fiction game about trying a new AI visor. I really love how you navigate the world in this game using its map, and the writing and voice acting are great too. The game strongly recommends using a controller to play but the mouse and keyboard controls felt good to me.
Star Dodger (Itch.io) is an arcade game created during the 0 hr game jam 2024 between 1:00 AM November 3, 2024 – 1:00 AM November 3, 2024, during the daylight savings switch.
The remake of Little Big Adventure (Steam) is now available. I’ve always been a fan of the series and I’m looking forward to a version of the game with better controls. I enjoyed the playtest they did for the game a while ago, but you don’t have to take my word for it, a demo is also available.
Inspector Waffles Early Days (Steam/Itch/GOG) is a top-down adventure game prequel to the point-and-click adventure game Inspector Waffles. You can even buy the game for the Game Boy.
Sorry We’re Closed (Steam) is a horror game inspired by 90s classics like Resident Evil, with an aesthetic inspired by them too. Again, I’m a big baby so I don’t know if I’ll play it but Rock, Paper, Shotgun liked it and there’s a demo for it as well.
I WILL STRIKE YOU DOWN (Itch.io) is a short horror interactive fiction by SWANCHIME about being a girl in love with a girl who is dead, and then not being a girl any longer.
SCAVENGER (Itch.io) is a short erotic visual novel by Oma Keeling about the birth of a machine god.
Oktrollberfest is a game jam about creating trollgames. You can check them out on Itch.io. Many (all?) of them were made with ZZT.
Grid Ranger (Steam/Itch.io) is a shmup with 80’s inspired vector graphics. I played the demo a while back and thought it was a very challenging but fun arcade game.
The Playdate community at Uncrank’d have a bundle of games and an upcoming showcase. You can find the links on Mastodon.
Mister Jack (Itch.io) is a retro-looking point-and-click adventure about Jack the Ripper that was made for Scream Jam 2024. Free and playable in the browser.
Dust Settlers (Itch.io) is a browser game made in PICO-8 where you arrange Tetris blocks to restore a planet.
Remember desktop pets? Doguru (Itch.io) is a modern one of those featuring really cute artwork and it’s free!
Dungeons of Blood and Dream (Steam) is a roguelike dungeon crawler. I haven’t played it yet but I love dungeon crawlers and aesthetically it looks like it’s just for me! Gamers with Glasses seemed to like it.
Bullet Runner (Steam) is an arcade bullet hell game about fighting a clone army that a friend helped with and in my opinion I think it looks pretty neat!
Tricky Madness (Steam) is a snowboarding game inspired by the beloved SSX Tricky and that sounds like a really lovely thing I could use right now. It has just entered early access.
At a couple points this year I took a break from doing the indie game roundups because I had more important things to focus on like my baby, but I still maintained a list of things I played and other games that just looked cool to me. Here’s some of those games:
Frontiers of the Mind (Itch.io) is a free horror game resembling a multimedia cd-rom that is about a fictional tv show from the 90s called Maze Masters. There is nothing more laser targeted towards my interests than this so of course I loved it. I highly recommend just looking up hints once you get through everything you find, so you can find all the hidden material too.
Pantsmo’s Pantaloon Adventure (Itch.io) is a mod of the classic shareware game Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure but adds pants to Cosmo. That’s it! It’s great. A classic game has finally been fixed.
Seeking Stardust (Itch.io) is a free browser puzzle game where you try to last out in space as long as you can, with the game generating a new level every day.
tramstertram (Itch.io) is a free minimalist Amsterdam-inspired town builder with trams playable in the browser. It’s an incredibly chill game and the low poly graphics are very nice too.
Tabletop RPGs
Fast Food (Itch.io) is a free LARP for 4-10 players about ordering food before your board game night.
dan qui dam published a history of solo tabletop rpgs on Itch. Holy shit yes, this rules.
Speaking of solo ttrpgs, Jude’s World (Itch.io) is a solo journaling game about reconnecting with your estranged parents, inspired by 90s tv shows like The Fresh Prince and Clarissa Explains It All.
Poetry and Other Art
The last few weeks have kinda been nightmare fuel and some folks have made art as a response to it all.
I Love Being Trans (Itch.io) is a beautiful stack made in the Hypercard-like tool Decker by erysden, creator of the previously covered fps BITCH HELL.
Eat Shit and Die, Fascists (Itch.io) is a collection of poetry in response to the recent election.
We Will Get Through This (Itch.io) is a vent by ToulouTouMou that was also created right after the election.
Street Lamp Lover (Itch.io) is an interactive poem playable in the browser with a unique presentation and nice music.
Developer: ICOM Simulations, Inc. Publisher: Mindscape Year: 1985 Genre: Adventure
This month’s game in the Adventure Game Club discord is Deja Vu: A Nightmare Comes True so I have finally played through that for the first time after it sitting in my backlog for forever. It’s the first MacVenture by ICOM and man, weird game. I’ll mention the stuff I was frustrated with but it’s difficult to get too mad at the game when it’s one of the first point-and-click adventures ever, it’s short, and the Macintosh art really holds up!
The premise of the game is that you wake up in a toilet stall and must find out who you are, what happened to you, and why. In addition to that, you have also been injected with something and have a limited amount of time to find a cure. That’s really all there is to it! You walk around a city and various buildings, occasionally taking a taxi to different regions to do some more exploration, but luckily it’s a pretty small world, since you will need to restart a few times from softlocks and optimizing your path because of the time limit. The time limit is also the source of most of my frustration with the game. It’s not that aggressive of a time limit but every single action takes time off, making it feel like you’re being punished for basic actions in any adventure game like examining objects. That’s right, even looking at an object means time is removed and I have to reload to get that time back. I’m generally a hater of time limits in adventure games anyway because to me, part of the appeal is an adventure game is that I usually have a world to explore and now the game wants me to focus instead on creating an optimal path instead of focusing on the world building. Oh well.
Eventually you do find a cure and can explore more freely. Even without the time limit though, the game still feels a bit tedious because of the verb system. I honestly don’t mind it that much, but there’s parts where it feels like a slog, such as having to pay the cab driver in quarters. But this is where you can tell it’s an early graphic adventure and they’re trying to figure out how to adapt that.
Another part of the game I really disliked is the occasional racist joke and frequent fatphobic jokes. The game cannot get enough of making fat jokes and it really sucks!
What did I actually like about the game? Well, the art is great. Black and white art on the Macintosh is incredibly charming to me and what you see here is great. The versions on the Apple IIGS and NES with color art aren’t bad either. I guess it just comes down to what you like more. The puzzles aren’t usually that difficult either, it’s just a time limit you fight with and busy work with the verbs. It’s also short! That sounds like I’m making fun of the game but I do like short games.
Eventually I want to play the rest of the Macventures. I’ve poked at Uninvited and Shadowgate before and knew of the time limit in the latter, but I guess every Macventure has a time limit? Come on man, just let me vibe and look at the great art.
So who would I recommend this to? I guess adventure game history nerds? It’s not actually painful, especially if you are ok with peeking at a walkthrough, the art is great, and parts of the writing are charming too.
Deja Vu: A Nightmares Comes True is available on Steam and includes the Macintosh and Apple IIGS versions.
It feels dumb writing about video games on my blog after this week but I have to take my mind off things so here we are. This is a bigger one than usual too since it’s been a couple weeks since I’ve done one of these because of….y’know, everything. Maybe something in here will bring you some joy too. If you recently released a game, tell me! I like hearing about this stuff. If you enjoyed this post, pass it on and tell your friends about what indie games you’re excited about, whether it’s through your own blog or social media.
Video Games
There’s a few hours left for the Click-Or-Treat bundle (Itch.io), where you can get a bunch of Halloween games for $9.
AdventureX (Steam) is doing a free online convention and sale. Go check out talks about adventure games and maybe pick up a game.
Clarissa the Dogcow lost her job and is looking for additional backing on Patreon to help her finish some of her really cool games. Go check out her post on Mastodon for more details. The world needs more Zelda 2-inspired games.
Indie Tsushin (Site) has announced their Study Buddy jam, where folks learn a new engine or genre or whatever for making a game.
Adam Saltsman released two PICO-8 games for the browser, the rpg Rat Dreams (Itch.io) and the puzzle game Kuiper Cargo (Itch.io).
We got a new issue of the Interactive Fiction and Visual Novel zine ChoiceBeat (Site/Itch.io). Every issue is free and has reviews, previews, and interviews.
Barry Bonds enters the World of MYST (2004) is an interactive story made by Jon Bois, originally published on the comedy website progressiveboink.com. Cecile Richard has remade the game and put it on Itch.io for a new generation of Myst fans to enjoy.
It’s the beginning of the month so we have a new Indiepocalypse (Itch.io).
Airdorf made the very cute browser game Skeleton Game (Itch.io) with their 4 year old daughter. More people should make games with their kids.
ECTOCOMP (Itch.io) has ended and people are voting on the submissions now. Go check out a bunch of interactive fiction games celebrating Halloween.
PROCJAM (Itch.io) also just ended. This one is a jam focused on procedural generation. So like, the kind of AI that isn’t focused on stealing art.
Tallywinkle released her first parser interactive fiction. It’s called Thanksgiving Dinner (Itch.io), a free browser game about Thanksgiving Day.
We got a really snazzy looking Monkey Island game called The Booze of Monkey Island (Itch.io).
Johnson. A Plane Man (Downpour) is a found imagery game made from the Ryanair Boeing 737-8200 safety instructions. The game was created by Hyphinett using the neat game making tool Downpour. Free and playable in the browser and the Downpour app.
BITCH HELL (Itch.io) is a FPS that feels a lot like something made in the Quake era. I don’t really know the engine used (FTEWQ) well enough to tell if it was connected to the Quake engine but it rules. Available for $6.66.
Andrew Plotkin has released two games. Advent Door (Itch.io) is a free browser text parser Advent Calendar game game and TheBeyond (Steam/Itch.io) is an interactive comic.
3D Workers Island (Itch.io) is a short horror story in the browser about a screensaver.
Slayaway Camp 2 (Steam) is a puzzle game where you’re a Jason Vorhees-like monster trying to wipe out all the people at a camp. Haven’t played this one yet but I liked the first game.
Apples Busy Day (Steam/Itch.io) is a short and cozy game about exploring and helping your neighbors. It looks like a really cute and comforting game if that’s what you need right now.
VERY NOT SAFE FOR WORK PAGE but HARDCODED (Itch.io/Steam) is out. It’s a very queer open world dating sim set in a cyberpunk world. I think it’s great and features some incredible pixel art but AGAIN, THE GAME PAGE IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK.
Robert’s Spooktacular Ghost Train (Itch.io) is a Pay-What-You-Want game where you build a little ghost themed ride at a fairground.
TETRACHROMA (Steam) is a Tetris-like that also block color changing mechanic.
Hesitation (Itch.io) is a short visual novel playable in the browser where you piece together a story by interacting with the items in a small room. Make sure you read the content warnings first. Also check out the developer’s tabletop rpgs on Itch.io.
ROGUE FLIGHT (Steam/Switch/Xbox/PS5) looks like a fun arcade space sim. It has a demo too!
Moida Mansion (Itch.io) is a new Lucas Pope (Obra Dinn designer) adventure game that’s playable in the browser and resembles one of those LCD handheld game things.
Stardust Demon (Steam/Itch.io) is a Metroidvania featuring some really impressive pixel art and 3D CGI FMV cutscenes. I’m a big fan of resnijars’ other games so this probably rules too. There’s a demo as well if you want to try it first.
Danielle Riendeau made a graveyard building strategy game called Tower of the Dead (Itch.io) for Cosmic Horrors Jam III
Tabletop Games
Escape from Wonderland (Kickstarter) is a tabletop rpg being designed by Turtlebun about trying to escape an amusement park. They’re great. Go check out the Kickstarter or some of their other games on Itch.io.
In The World We Left Behind (Itch.io), play as astronauts trekking across an alien planet. It’s a GMless game for 1-5 players. I think it’s fascinating that it was originally commissioned by a ballet collective?
Unspeakable Gate (Itch.io) is a solo TTRPG in which you take on the role of an artist building a mysterious Gate and becoming more and more absorbed in the reality that lies on its other side. Peach Garden Games has made so many good solo ttrpgs, check them out!
I think this one came out a while ago because I got the Kickstarter reward months ago, so I think this is just new to Itch.io, but The Coven of P.S. 13 (Itch.io) is a GM-less game for 2-6 people inspired by The Craft where you and your coven are planning for a big event occurring on the night of the full moon.
Well I said last week that things were calming down and lol, oops. No. Haven’t really been posting much here or on social media because of everything going on. Well, anyway, games.
I don’t think I posted about IF Comp at all? A pretty huge mistake on my part if I haven’t. The results and just been announced and you can check out all the games and winners here.
The Campsite (Itch.io) is an hour long point-and-click adventure game available for Pay-What-You-Want. It’s about an hour long and I feel like it’s appropriate for people less experience with the genre.
Mohrta (Itch.io) is a demo for an upcoming game made in GZDoom and I’m really impressed with what it does in the engine. I know it’s not the same engine that ID Software used to make Doom but you know what? Still really cool. Comparing games to Dark Souls is overdone but I’m going to do it anyway. The game has a slower pace than what you would find in a Doom engine game, with combat encounters usually just involving a couple enemies at a time at the most. I really enjoyed the world design too.
Water Level/b.l.u.e. EXPLORATION (Itch.io) felt like playing a PSX game in a dream.
second fall 24 (Itch.io) is a fun musical toy playable in the browser. It kind of reminds me of little mini-games you would find on multimedia cd-roms. Maybe I’ve been playing too many Peter Gabriel cd-roms lately.
The Solar Server has its first game! This is a server that is powered entirely by solar power, meaning you can only play the games on the server during a limited window. The site has more info on how the server was setup too.
Vladimere’s Lore (Steam) is an anthology of 14 games created by the developer over 10 years. I’ve played some of these games through HauntedPS1 releases and had a good time. Worth checking out if you’re into horror games with a retro 3D aesthetic.
PRIM (Steam) looks like a lovely point-and-click adventure if you’re looking for a creepy but also sorta cute game to play at this time of year.
Wilmot Works It Out (Steam) is the newest game in the Wilmot puzzle series. I loved Wilmot’s Warehouse when that came out, so I’ll probably really like this too when I get around to it.
I’ll have a longer review of it soon, but The Protagonish (Steam/Itch.io) is a short interactive story where you basically control everyone in a story outside of the protagonist himself. The story only takes a few minutes to play through and you make different decisions through all the side characters for different outcomes. I think it’s pretty neat. I really liked the art and was amused by how the protagonist is very much like your traditional adventure game protagonist, but not in a good way, and takes everything around him and doesn’t really care about the people around him, with all the characters you control around being kind of tired of him.
That’s it for this week. If you enjoy these, subscribe to the blog through the RSS feed, tell a friend, and check out these games. I also have an irc channel for indie and alt games/gamedev talk at AfterNET at #AltGames. Consider giving it a try! No registration required!
This blog was pretty quiet this week because it’s been a hell week but things have calmed down now. Oh well, these things happen I guess. How was your week? What have you been playing lately? Let me know in the comments.
The Videotome Jam (Itch.io) has started! Videotome is a series of small IF/VN engines and you can find all four on the jam page.
The Steam Next Fest is also happening right now. I haven’t really dug into the demos yet but there’s a lot of them. Maybe you’ll find something neat.
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Collage Advertisement : Propaganda (Itch.io) is a short, political VN made in the hypercard-inspired tool Decker. Please read the content warning/disclaimer first!
Mourningstar (Itch.io) is a “satanic” “biblepunk” dark science fantasy tabletop rpg about resistance, rebellion, othering, theology, individuality, misfits, colonialism, divine politics, infernal magic, & exploring the stars as swashbuckling devils. The game is inspired by the Forged in the Dark framework. The game was created by super talented game designer and musician Devin Nelson.
Snow Flow
Indie Games+ has a nice review of a new game called Snow Flow. The game is playable for free on Itch.io and the art reminds me a lot of 80s Macintosh games.
Lorenzo Pilia created a manifesto On Small Games (Itch.io).
Johnson. A Plane Man is a game created in Downpour (Link) by Hyphinett. Downpour is a really fun tool for making very small games.
Not new but still cool, Karambola (Steam/Itch.io) is a free point-and-click adventure that reminds me of games like Samorost. There’s an art book for sale (Steam/Itch.io) if you would like to support the dev.
The Ghost and the Golem (Steam) is an interactive historical fantasy story published by Choice of Games about if your magic amulet save your Jewish village from destruction.
It’s not indie but I think it’s really interesting that Backyard Baseball ’97 (Steam) was just rereleased on Steam with compatibility on modern OS and achievements.
NovaMundi (Steam) is an open world tactical game where you must unite the people of nearby towns to fight off Spanish invaders.
The Urge (Itch.io) is a short erotic story created in Twine by Oma Keeling about operating a machine.
That’s it for this week. If you enjoy these, subscribe to the blog through the RSS feed, tell a friend, and check out these games. I’ve also started an irc channel for indie and alt games/gamedev talk at AfterNET at #AltGames. Consider giving it a try! No registration required!
