I don’t really know where to categorize all of these things but feel like they should be shared, so here’s kind of a link dump of retro gaming stuff I’ve come across in the last month that I think is neat.
The 1986 adventure game Amnesia has a very nice restoration where you can play the game as it was originally released on the C64, Apple IIe, and PC, but it also has a contemporary web mode with tons of quality of life features added.
A new ZX Spectrum fan zine launched about a month ago and it’s available for free on Itch.
denzquix has done a lot of great translations of adventure games and the latest is for Bi-Fi: Action in Hollywood, a promotional point-and-click adventure game from 1994 for Bi-Fi Rolls, a salami-based snack originating in Germany and sold across Europe. You can read more about it here on BlueSky.
The cd-rom TRIPITAKA 玄奘三蔵求法の旅, the sequel to the legendary Cosmology of Kyoto has finally been saved and put on the Internet Archive! It’s incredible that this has been preserved and you can read more about it on BlueSky. If you’ve never played Cosmology of Kyoto, it’s currently abandonware but you can treat yourself to this nice repackaging of it.
This looks like a nice update of the classic DOS game Abuse.
Rex and the Galactic Plague just looks like a fun teaser for an Amiga game and the dog reminds me of K9 from Doctor Who. Sometimes I just get excited about people still making Amiga games and this one is on Itch.
Project Magma is a restoration of the game Myth that’s new to me and maybe it’s new to you as well. If you’ve never played Myth before, it’s great!
Idk, that’s all. This isn’t a recurring bit on this blog. I just wanted to share all these things because I think they’re cool.
Developer: Id Software Publisher: Id Software Year: 1994 Genre: First Person Shooter
Finished my replay of Doom 2 last night and yeah, it certainly is more Doom so I enjoyed it. This time it was done with the recentish Doom 1 +2 rerelease that Bethesda did, which I got for free since I already owned it on Steam. Like my Doom 1 review, every single opinion on Doom 2 has already been posted before but this is my blog so I’m doing a random collection of thoughts anyway dang it.
Before my replay I thought Doom was the better game but as I played through the game again I went through the arc of thinking Doom 2 was actually better, and then back to thinking Doom 1 is superior. Doom 2 isn’t without its improvements though. It’s been said a billion times before but the double barrel shotgun is great. I like the new enemies too. While the archvile can be frustrating, I think it’s mechanically interesting.
I think what makes Doom 1 the better game is the level design. Doom 2 starts off very strong with the level design but becomes a little bit of a slog in the second half when the levels attempt to be more realistic city designs. It was much more impressive at the time and makes sense in the context of the game, but don’t hold up as well as the more surreal levels found in other parts of the game. I also noticed that just like in Quake, I think Sandy’s maps are a very mixed bag. I just don’t enjoy his style of map design. They’re usually filled with poorly made puzzles where you stumble around until you figure out the right wall to push on, and occasionally decide that you must open a door by shooting it instead of pressing the open door. It just ruins the pacing of the level and the game has a heavy amount of these in the second half, which is probably why it feels like a slog to me.
I think the bosses in Doom 1 are also better. They come up in here as well but I think that while the Icon of Sin is a fun gimmick, I ended up finding it mostly just an annoying fight.
My (possibly hot) take is that ID Software actually started to decline after Tom Hall had left the company, not Romero. I still love Doom 2 and Quake, I may even like Quake more after my recent playthroughs of both, but the company starts to play it a bit safer and less playful. I think this theory still holds up! While I don’t care for Rise of the Triad as much as Quake and Doom 2, it’s goofy as hell and throwing in lots of new things and seeing what sticks. Doom 2 really only does this with the secret Wolfenstein 3D levels and those end on a sour, mean spirited note by having you shoot at Commander Keen. As a side note, there’s some weird censorship in the Doom 2 rereleases during the Wolfenstein 3D secret levels and I don’t know why.
Anyway, yeah, Doom 2. It’s still good but I like the first game more.
Doom 2 is available on Steam, GOG, and basically everywhere else.
Developer: Id Software Publisher: Id Software Year: 1993 Genre: First Person Shooter
I’ve done another playthrough of the classic Doom as my comfort game for dealing with everything going on lately and what can I say, the game still slaps. There’s nothing really unique I can say about this game that hasn’t been said before. It’s all been said before a billion times because it’s the most heavily discussed FPS on the planet and people are still making levels and mods for it.
I played the Ultimate version through Bethesda’s rerelease so I guess my only real criticisms are as follows:
That 4th episode that was added in Ultimate Doom? Meh, it’s an episode I guess. I don’t find it particularly interesting and my preference in Doom levels has always been shorter ones, which this starts to pull away from. It doesn’t add anything new so it’s just there. More Doom levels are fine, it’s just not that interesting beyond that.
The more time I spend with the recent Bethesda rerelease, the less I like it. I keep running into bugs where it crashes and that mod browser has so many issues since anyone can upload a mod, screw up the crediting, and it may not even work! Who knows how much moderation is even happening. It just feels like a way for Bethesda/Microsoft to try to build walls around a community when Doom just should be free since it’s 30+ years old anyway and no one who worked on the game is still at ID Software.
There, those are my Doom hot takes. Still a great game though and holds up very well.
Doom is available on Steam, GOG, and basically everywhere else.
For whatever reason, it has become a tradition over the last 10 years to replay the three Holiday Hare episodes released for Jazz Jackrabbit. They were three Christmas themed episodes released for free in 1994 and 1995 for Jazz Jackrabbit 1, and 1998 for Jazz Jackrabbit 2. Jazz Jackrabbit isn’t a game that I think is especially great. The game is built around your character being able to move fast, inspired by Sonic the Hedgehog, but punishes you for doing so because the game is too zoomed in on your character for you to be able to react in time when an enemy appears onscreen. This is fixed in the sequel but that’s not the one that most people seem to have a fondness for.
Last week was my time to revisit this tradition, first time on Twitch, and it reinforced my belief that I think the Holiday Hare levels are some of the better designed ones for Jazz Jackrabbit, especially Holiday Hare 1994. It moves quick, features a lot of variety in enemies and level environments, and features great music, like you would expect from the series, but with a holiday theme.
I think Holiday Hare 1995 maybe dips in a quality a little bit due to its difficulty spike and some enemies that I consider annoying, but is also worth checking out if you’re a fan of the series. One thing that I think is interesting about it is the background artwork of a rabbit that would later become the…hmmm…unfortunately named second playable character in Jazz Jackrabbit 2. Holiday Hare 95 came out three years before Jazz Jackrabbit 2, so either they were working on that sequel for a very long time or just liked that character design.
Screenshot of Holiday Hare 95 taken from MobyGames
Like I said earlier, Jazz Jackrabbit 2 fixes the design quirks and is a much better designed game in my opinion, even if I don’t enjoy the art as much. The version of Holiday Hare 98 on GOG is actually Jazz Jackrabbit 2: The Christmas Chronicles, which is apparently a third release of Jazz Jackrabbit 2 that has a slightly updated engine and has the third playable character, Lori, who was added in the Jazz Jackrabbit 2 expansion that was only released in Europe. These levels are perfectly fine but there’s not a whole lot to say about them. They’re fine! I wish it leaned more on the holiday theme and the final boss fight isn’t well designed, but it’s fun to revisit them.
So would I recommend these even though I just said Jazz Jackrabbit isn’t really a well-designed game? Yeah sure. It’s quick, I think the design of the first Holiday Hare pushes back a lot on the design flaws it’s stuck with, the music in all three is fun, and I think Jazz 2 holds up aside from the one character’s name. They’re all free too and the first game runs fine in DosBox, so give it a shot if you like platformers.
Developer: Raven Software Publisher: Id Software Year: 1994 Genre: First Person Shooter
Raven Software is a game developer located in Middleton, Wisconsin that was founded in 1990. Their first game, Black Crypt (1992), was a dungeon crawler for the Amiga. While it wasn’t a massive commercial hit, the game was critically well received and got the attention of ID Software. John Romero approached Raven and proposed using ID Software’s technology to make games for the PC. Raven licensed a heavily modified version of the Wolfenstein 3D engine to make ShadowCaster, a fantasy action game that ditches some of the RPG elements of their previous game to focus more on action. The game was a success and Raven Software completed their transition to action games by licensing ID Software’s new Doom engine and creating the FPS Heretic, released in 1994.
Screenshot taken from Steam page
Heretic is set in a world conquered by three brothers known as the Serpent Riders. While most of the beings in the land fall under their control, the Sidhe elves resist and become known as heretics. You play as one of these elves, who is revealed to be named Corvus in Heretic 2, and fight the Serpent Rider known as D’Sparil. The format of the game is very much like Doom’s. You have three episodes (five in the retail version) and make your way through levels, grabbing keys to unlock doors, and shooting all enemies you come across.
While it may have a lot in common with Doom, to the extent that some people will say that it’s basically a medieval reskin, it’s not without its innovations and improvements. Doom has a few enemies that rely on hitscan detection, where they fire a gun and then the game does a check to see if you are hit or not. I’m not going to go into if this is bad game design in this style of FPS or not. Generally, I’m not a fan but that’s just my personal preference and there’s plenty of people who have no issue with it. I find it interesting that this doesn’t exist at all in Heretic and the player is able to dodge all projectile shots. I suppose it makes sense, there’s no reason why someone would have a gun in this world, but the player still has two hitscan weapons that carried over from the conversion from Doom, the pistol-like Elven Wand and chaingun-like Dragon Claw. I think it’s fun that some of the weapons are wonderfully illustrated and some clearly are a developer’s hands holding something and have been digitized.
The addition of items adds some depth to the gameplay and a small rpg element to the game. Throughout the levels are pickups like potions that restore health and other bits that will give you powers like temporary flight and invisibility. The most interesting of these is the Tome of Power. This item will temporarily change all your weapons to a different effect, essentially creating a second set of weapons for you to use. Some are more useful than others, but it’s fascinating how much work Raven put into one powerup.
The game also features some innovation in its level design. The variety of environmental hazards and elements like wind and current in the water are a very nice touch and it feels like the developers are building upon what they saw in the level design for Doom and trying to do more complex designs. I would maybe argue that I prefer the simpler level design of Doom, but I think at the time it was probably impressive how much the level designers were trying to build levels that look like real places that people could live in.
The original three episodes in the shareware release of the game are all solid. I feel like in shareware games the first free episode is often the best one. The theory is that they front load the game with some of the best material so you’ll go out and buy it. I don’t think that’s the case here. Both episodes 2 and 3 have better level design and boss fights. There were one or two levels with poor switch placement in Episode 1 that absolutely ruined the pacing for me.
My only major complaint about Episode 2 is that they fill levels with an enemy called the Sabreclaw. It’s incredibly dull and brown and it doesn’t help that it is frequently used in levels with brown walls. All it does is slowly walk up to you and try to do a melee attack and only serves to be a bullet sponge. It is funny that I came across a mod that makes it a more golden color, looks much better, and helps it not blend in with all the brown walls. By the end of the episode they pull back a bit on this enemy as others are introduced, and 3 overall feels more balanced.
The bonus episodes that came with the rerelease of the game, episodes 4 and 5, are competent enough but aren’t interesting. They don’t add anything new and episode 4 has a slow start. Episodes 4 and even 3 to some extent, have you heavily managing your ammo in their first two levels while avoiding batches of enemies since you will not have enough ammo to kill them all. It is a fun novelty for one level but becomes a slog after that when you are repeatedly reloading your game to minimize the amount of ammo you use and damage you take so you can get through the encounters after that. It eventually lets up though and after getting enough weapons over two levels, the game goes back to being fun.
Episode 5 on the other hand feels like it has convoluted level design just for the sake of padding the runtime. It felt like every level had you hitting a switch, searching the rest of the level to see what it opened, and repeating the process. It is incredibly tedious to play and the entire episode does it. It doesn’t help that the game also decides that sometimes you’ll now need to shoot doors to open them. It doesn’t happen very often, just enough that you’ll forget that’s now a mechanic in the game and waste a lot of time trying to figure out if there’s a switch that will open them. Neither of these episodes adds anything new, so you’re just seeing repeats of enemies you already fought many times in Episodes 1-3.
Weirdly enough, there’s also a partially complete Episode 6 hidden in the game. It’s just a few levels, with the last one being unfinished, so it’s not terribly interesting. I just find it fascinating that it was left in. It’s not something I can complain about, you must enter codes to access the levels, but it’s interesting that it exists.
If there’s a hot take in this review, I think that it’s that Raven Software was just not that good at level design compared to some of their peers. A lot of people give Hexen 1 and 2 grief for clunky design (the case for why both of these games are good is coming at a later date) but I wasn’t impressed by a lot of the design in the later episodes of Heretic and Jedi Knight 2 is also a game that’s infamous for having a dull single player campaign up until you get the lightsaber before that game improves.
It’s hard to be too critical of these episodes because I see them as bonus levels anyway and the game’s story has already concluded by the time you get to these. If you want more Heretic, here you go, but if not then it’s fine to just stop after the first 3 episodes. If you would like to read more about the game’s level design process, I found this interview with the level designer to be interesting.
Overall, I’d highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys faster paced FPS. I have my gripes about the pacing in some parts of the game, but I think it holds up very well. As a long time Raven Software fan, it’s fun seeing their evolution from being a roleplaying game developer with Black Crypt on the Amiga, to transitioning to the FPS/RPG hybrid Shadowcaster, and then to FPS that contain some RPG elements like Heretic and Hexen. It’s a little less fun seeing them being absorbed into the Call of Duty machine and only working on entries in that series now.
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 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.
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.
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.
Being on parental leave means I have a little bit of time to write these regularly, although maybe not enough time to play everything. A lot came out this week!
Queer Quest Queer Quest is a new point-and-click adventure game that is available for Pay-What-You-Want. “Play as long-haired-butch Lupe as you traverse the gayborhood fetching things for femmes and thems. There’s a naked bike ride blocking the road. Ryan’s selfies suck. Stevie Hix needs some tape for tucking. Oh, and your hot girlfriend is missing!” Haven’t played it yet but it looks pretty great and I love point-and-click adventure games.
What Waits Beyond WHAT WAITS BEYOND is a solo journaling game from Dinoberry Press. In Beyond, you find yourself in a starship at the edge of a black hole, all hope lost and the end of the road right in front of you. I haven’t played any solo rpg from Dinoberry Press before but I have played some of their other tabletop rpgs and they’re all great. It’s only $3 too!
The Electrum Archive Issue 2 The Electrum Archive is a series of zine issues describing the science-fiction/fantasy setting of Orn that uses a simple core rule system. If you enjoy weird fantasy settings in games like Morrowind and want something like that for tabletop rpgs, consider checking it out.
The Zen of Kayaking The Zen of Kayaking is a new text adventure for DOS from pixelturkey and gamedevjeff. Pixelturkey is a wonderful artist and streamer and gamedevjeff has created some really cool stuff like an English translation of the DOS game Father World. New commercial text adventures and DOS games aren’t very common so it’s fun seeing one come out. It’s available on Itch for $5.
Creating a Website Creating a Website is a short, mostly-autobiographical story about the benefits of making your own website. I might be slightly biased as I’m posting this to my own site but yes, you should make one.
Wingless Fairies Wingless Fairies is a free game by Lily Belmira about becoming someone new again. After you play this (it’s only 30 minutes), go check out all of Lily’s other games. They’re great!
The Twine Grimoire Templates Grim Baccaris has put a ton of work into making great Twine tutorials and now they’ve started making Twine templates as well! Absolutely worth your time if you’re interested in Twine.
Selaco Selaco is a new FPS in Early Access that uses the GZDoom engine. It’s exciting to me whenever I see people making cool stuff using older technology. It looks great.
Liminal Liminal is a very short visual novel playable in the browser on Itch about two young adults that run into each other a few months after a break up. The game features voice acting and beautiful art.
Day of the Hamster Day of the Hamster is a short and free point-and-click adventure inspired by Day of the Tentacle. It is playable in the browser on Itch and the dev’s previous game was how I learned that was something you could even do for games made in Adventure Game Studio
[Echostasis] Echostasis is a new first-person shooter horror game by ENIGMA STUDIO, developer of the games The Enigma Machine and Mothered, where you jump into the minds of test subjects and find out what happened to them.
Other Folks Talking About Indies
The Imaginary Engine Review is a new games outlet from Grace Benfell and Phoenix Simms focused on independent, obscure, and/or retro games. Add it to your RSS feed reader or follow them on Cohost or Bluesky.
Self-Promo Zone
I’ve started an irc channel for indie and alt games/gamedev talk at AfterNET at #AltGames. If you do not have an IRC client or don’t feel like messing around with that stuff, you can easily join through the browser here. I’ll never be able to get people to drop Discord for IRC, but I personally prefer it. I don’t feel like I have to follow along with every single conversation and I’m not getting pinged all the time by notifications or the “Everyone” tag. Consider giving it a try! No registration required!
