It’s finally starting to warm up here in the metro Detroit area and even as someone who actually loves winter and snow, it’s been a nice break from the cold. Whenever we get the first one of these during the season, my attitude usually shifts into “ok, let’s get this winter thing done with and move into spring weather.” Unfortunately that’s not how that works and we’ll probably get a surprise snow storm or two over the next month. Ah well. This week I’m highlighting this page to help folks in Minnesota with housing, and any donations would be nice. Consider sharing these posts with friends and adding the site to your RSS feed reader because they take a while to write lol. If you like today’s post, feel free to leave a comment about something nice in your life lately or let me know about your game, as long as it doesn’t use AI in any way. You can always send me an email (see About page) if you prefer to say hi or tell me about your game that way.
First I would like to mention Aerial_Knight’s DropShot, which I’ve already picked up and played through. It’s amazing. Like if someone made Aaaaaaaaa – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity a FPS. You fall through the sky and shoot other people and dragons. Love it, love it, love it. Also on Playstation and Xbox.
I think I’ve mentioned Sylvie‘s games on here a few times, I’m a big fan, and now you can download all of them up through 2024 in a collection for free here. It’s a lot of games but the download is fairly small and the page itself gives recommendations for where to start.
MOONROT (Steam/Itch.io) is a short horror game about piloting a rover across a moon. I really like the developer’s game Frogsong, which is kinda the polar opposite of this, but I get excited when I see people do very different things.
Horripilant (Steam) is a horror dungeon crawler/idle game? I was literally griping on Discord about how Vermis I is a very good book but also makes me sad that it’s not a real game, and then this pops up in my feed and the dev says it’s an influence. Did I manifest the game and rewrite reality? Probably
I know nothing about Horsey Game but people seem very excited for it so I will link to it here and let you have at it.
The Killing Stone is a nice looking one that has entered Early Access. It’s a card battler with 17th century occult stuff. I just think it looks cool and it’s by the folks that made The Magic Circle.
LUGE 2026 is a browser game where you have 3 attempts at a daily run that gets ranked against other players.
Walfie’s Nonograms is a free Picross-like for the Game Boy. I am a Picross sicko and will happily take more. This one happens to have very charming art and music too. I guess this type of game is actually called a nonogram.
Speaking of which, we also got CiniCross this week, which combines nonograms with dungeon crawling and roguelites. There’s a demo if you want to try it out.
Palpus X Annihilation is an Alien Shooter-like that just came out. That’s probably only going to mean something to a handful of people but they will probably be excited. This one also has a demo.
An Abyss of Dreams is a first-person cosmic horror point-and-click adventure set in Quebec and the entire game is voiced in French. I don’t think I see games set there very often. I think I heard about this one through Adventure Game Hotspot. Has a demo.
Cold Calling is an alternate history Cold War comedy where you operate a switchboard and features some adventure game elements as well.
Rex is a pay-what-you-want platformer that is apparently a remake of a ZX Spectrum game. From looking at their Itch profile, it looks like they have done a lot of remakes of ZX Spectrum games. I really appreciate folks that do free remakes of older games and help keep the memory of them alive. I played stuff like this endlessly in my high school years on sites like Retro Remakes.
Wow, a roundup on Friday the 13th, the unluckiest blog post ever! Hope folks are doing alright. I’m listening to the Phil Collins album Face Value right now because my Plex said it’s the 45th anniversary of it coming out and I would just like to say that aside from one or two tracks, I remain firmly on the side of Peter Gabriel. If you enjoy these roundups, even all the rambling that comes at the beginning of these, consider giving a few bucks to game designer Rob Fearon, who immediately needs some aid for him and his kids. It would mean a lot to me since I’ve been playing his games for 20+ years. Alright, here’s some games.
New Video Games
No ICE in Minnesota is a bundle on Itch raising money for the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. Even though ICE is supposedly winding down operations in Minneapolis (I’ll believe it when I see it), folks there will still going to need money and support for a long time to recover from the damage ICE as done. It features a ton of games you can buy for just $10 or more, including my 90s edutainment inspired ttrpg MindExplorer.
Relooted is an Africanfuturist heist game where you reclaim real African artifacts from Western museums. It’s fucking great. I’ve only played a little bit so far but everything about it just feels great to me. Incredibly smooth movement too. I can’t recommend it enough. There’s a demo if you want to try it out.
Gradient.horse is a browser game where you draw a horse and watch it run with other horses people have drawn. 10/10.
Jennifer Reitz has created a new version of her classic shareware game Boppin’, originally released in 1992. You can download it for free on her site.
It’s been a pretty busy week for point-and-click adventures. Shadows of the Afterland (Steam/Itch.io) is a a supernatural murder mystery featuring fully voiced characters. It just looks really nice! People in the adventure games community are sometimes a little bitter about the adventure games are dead trope that gets repeated in games articles once in a while, but sometimes it’s hard not to be when you have multiple adventure games coming out every week.
We also got Gobliins 6 this week on Steam/Itch.io. It’s another point-and-click adventure where you usually have a goal in a room/level that you need to achieve and switch between your goblins to solve the puzzles. I’ve been a fan of this series since I was a child so it’s wild to me that we got 5 and 6 in just a few years. One of the fun things about following along with this series is seeing the numbers of i’s that appear in the title of the game, which corresponds to the number of goblins you play as. Some some entries have 3 i’s, meaning you switch between three, others have two like this entry, and Goblins 3 just has the one goblin, but you play as other characters too. This one is a sequel to Gobliins 2, but you really don’t need to play previous entries to get caught up on lore. It’s just little guys doing goofy stuff. Muriel Tramis came back to help with this one too, which is always great to see. I’m a huge fan of hers and it would be great to see her working on more games.
I already mentioned in a previous week that point-and-click adventure Perfect Tides: Station to Station came out on Steam. Well now it’s on Itch.io. You should pick it up on either platform because it’s an incredible adventure game filled with new adventure games.
i miss the bugs is a collage game for browsers where you are a little bug walking around in nature. Even if I’m not a bug enthusiast, I thought this was a lovely game that I found very relaxing, and it made me look forward to Spring.
Doom Spiral is a new fast-paced FPS with really trippy visuals where you have jacked into a mainframe and need to escape while the level crumbles. I don’t think I can play this one just based on the gifs on the Itch page, but it seems like something a lot of other folks would be into.
I just got an email that ENCHAIN has entered Early Access on Steam. ENCHAIN is a first person shooter where you are a skeleton running around shooting other skeletons and using a grappling hook. I don’t even remember adding it to my wishlist but yes, it seems like something I would be into. It has a demo too that I’ll have to play.
And Hellscreen is a FPS that has just exited Early Access. You do the Doom-like thing of running around shooting demons, with the twist being that you have a rear view mirror to see enemies behind you, including some that can only be seen in the mirror. The wild thing about this release is that if I’m reading it correctly, it’s cheaper to buy the bundle that comes with Vaporwave Pinball? I liked that one a lot, so maybe consider getting the bundle even if you’re just a pinball person. Weirdly enough, I think I’ve hit a bug in Steam where I cannot buy that bundle apparently because I own Vaporwave Pinball, but if I put just Hellscreen in my cart, it tells me that it’s available at a cheaper price, which is the bundle that I cannot buy.
Demiurges also left Early Access. It’s a turn-based strategy game like Heroes of Might and Magic but the combat mechanics are heavily influenced by Slay the Spire.
Null Space is a ttrpg where you are a crew of freelancers in space in the 24th century, doing jobs and trying to get by. It’s currently Itchfunding, which in this case means that the game is available but the more money it makes, the more they can put into it to improve the book.
And yes, Mewgenics was also this week I guess
Demos
The creators of adventure games like Machinarium and Chuchel have an upcoming game called Phonopolis that just released a demo. It looks nice in screenshots but you really need to watch a video to appreciate the art. Holy cannoli.
There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension is a beloved adventure game and it’s getting a spinoff, Crushed In Time, where you play as the Sherlock Holmes and Watson duo from that game.
Wishlist
Michael Brough has a new roguelike being made, 868-BACK! I’m assuming it will be one of the best roguelikes based on everything he’s made.
I’m also a big fan of resnijars and their games, so I think their roguelike platformer Crescent Break is worth a look.
Crowdfunding
It’s zine month in the ttrpg world, which means there’s tons of crowdfunding campaigns happening right now. Here’s just a few:
I Have Lived A Thousand Lives is a solo ttrpg where you play as someone capable of entering the worlds of their favorite books, movies, TV shows, albums, or other works of narrative art, slightly changing those works while wrestling with their emotions. Because I’m incapable of avoiding the Boss Baby vibes meme, I get a lot of Myst vibes from it because that’s the only thing I ever think about.
The Endtimes Trilogy is a collection of 3 ttrpgs about the end of the world, for 2-5 players. Adam Bell and Sashah Li are great. It looks like there’s also a special zine you get if you back enough ttrpg zines on BackerKit this month?
Coyote & Crow: Legends & Icons is a supplement for the game Coyote & Crow, a game that I have not played yet but I’ve heard is very good.
Blades ’68 is a supplement for the classic ttrpg Blades in the Dark, that bumps the timeline up to the 60s. If you scroll down the list of who is involved, you can see so, so many great people involved with this one.
Shores Of Night – Redux is a surreal cosmic horror ttrpg without all the weird ableist stuff like sanity systems that you sometimes see in other cosmic horror games. It’s got a quickstart document if you want to see what they’re going for.
I am so excited that a Spirit Swap solo ttrpg zine is being crowdfunded. In fact, I was so excited that I was apparently the first person to back it. I loved the original game and I am a massive fan of the designer for this ttrpg, so it was a no brainer.
That’s all I’ve got for this week. Consider adding this site to your RSS feed reader if it isn’t already in there. Feel free to email me about your game (see About page) if it doesn’t use GenAI. I just like to hear about what folks are working on. Also consider doing your own blog posts about things you are enjoying. There’s so many great pieces of art that kinda get drowned out because it’s a lot easier to dunk on crap instead, I’m guilty of this too.
The Phil Collins album Face Value finished playing while I wrote this so I put on some Peter Gabriel music to listen to. Apparently it’s his birthday too. Happy birthday Peter Gabriel. Consider playing his weird but good multimedia cd-roms (he also did Xplora and a voice in Myst 4).
The Gaming Like It’s 1930 jam wrapped up, featuring dozens of games, both tabletop and video games, made from materials that just entered the public domain.
The latest issue of the indie game compilation magazine, Indiepocalypse, is out today with issue 73. This features a combination of ttrpgs and video games. This month’s commissioned game looks very interesting and I’m happy to see a game by ttrpg designer Maria Mison in here too.
Anonymous game collective LITHOBREAKERS released a batch of new games with a focus on outer space. The really wild one that I haven’t had time to play yet but need to is a MUD? I think it’s fantastic to see a new one of those being made.
Dungeon crawling roguelike Roguecraft DX is available for the Amiga/Mega65/Game Boy Color. I’ve only played the original version of Roguecraft on the Amiga but I highly recommend it if you’re looking for a nice and approachable turn-based roguelike with multiple difficulty levels to choose from if you’re a fan of the genre but bad at them like I am. I don’t really know what the Mega65 (EDIT: I guess it’s a modern day version of this) is but if you can figure out the headaches of emulating Amiga games, I think it’s a very worthwhile platform to dig into. I think more people should make games for the Amiga because I like how the beeps and bloops sound.
JUNJI ITO PINBALL is a roleplaying experience in the forums for a product page on Itch where folks are roleplaying and posting about their experiences with a Junji Ito pinball table. It’s the best. Just read the PDF before participating and start reading some of the threads.
Welcome 2 The Machine is a brand new platformer game for the ZX Spectrum. Longtime readers will know that even though I’m an American born after this era, I have a weird fascination with this platform anyway and I think this one looks really neat. Those colors!
I keep forgetting to highlight new releases on the Playdate Catalog despite being an owner of the handheld and fan of it. I even made a little game with my kids for it. But I think the recent thread from Playdate on Mastodon does a better job highlighting how active the platform is.
DEMON DUST is a new survival horror dungeon crawler. I don’t know much about it really but I think there were some positive early impressions floating around. I just really like how grimy it looks and the UI is interesting.
Between the Scanlines is a fanzine launched in October 2023 and inspired by 90s anime and video game fanzines. This issue has features on Jerry Lawson, 2000AD games on microcomputer, and the early days of ID software.
Syl is a much better writer than I am and she just published a free zine recommending five indie games.
Satan, the Alien Vampire is a first-person game where you have five minutes to escape Satan, who happens to be an alien vampire, as it says in the title. Loved the art in this. I personally didn’t have an issue with the browser version but the Itch page says the downloadable version works better.
The Dark Rites of Arkham is a new lovecraftian point-and-click adventure by Postmodern Games on Steam and Itch.io. I think I’ve seen nothing but critical acclaim for all the adventures by Postmodern Games and I get excited for new adventure games made in Adventure Game Studio since it’s what I use.
I don’t know anything about Hermit & Pig, sorry. I just like the art. The rpg seems to have a lot of very positive reviews judging from the Steam page, like one from the AV Club.
It’s also zine month for the indie ttrpg community so you’ll start seeing crowdfunding campaigns pop up in these roundups such as Aqua Tofana, a solo ttrpg about poisoning your husband.
That’s it for this week! If you found this useful, add it to your RSS feed reader and/or do your own roundup of things you like on your website or blog.
We made it through January. What a year. If you enjoy these roundups, please consider donating to people in Minnesota, who are struggling in the fight against fascists. A donation to help folks with rent would help them a lot
To all the rocks that bear me is a game where you explore Coruña both during the day and night. As a sicko for FMV, it was great playing a game that documents a place through an interactive medium and would love to see more of this.
Fuck Ice is an arcade game for browsers where you tell ice to fuck off. Something a lot of us need right now.
Second Hand Computer is a toy that lets you make and play text games. I’ve only played Swords of Freeport in this collection but I feel that even that alone is worth the price. People that grew up with these sorts of games (old people, me) will probably really enjoy this collection.
Screenshot of it’s easy and it gets easier
I’m not actually sure what vextro is, but it looks like they had a game jam and now there’s 4 experimental games and writing by folks I like.
The Ocean Welcomes You is a murder mystery/horror interactive fiction game for browsers with inspirations like the visual novel Umineko When They Cry, the movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and the TV show Poker Face. I’m a big fan of the VIDEOTOME game engine and love seeing works like this being made for it.
The 48-word RPG Jam also wrapped up and now there are hundreds of minimalist ttrpgs for you to check out.
MeowGun: Hell Denizen is a new fast paced FPS that has just entered Early Access on Steam. You play as a catgirl and run around shooting demons, zombies, and other monsters in an aesthetic heavily inspired by the Quake 2 era of FPS. There’s a demo available if you want to give it a try.
Adam Saltsman continues doing great work by making little games in PICO-8. KOLYDR is an arcade game for browsers where you fly a little ship around into blue circles to make explosions and get points. It’s a really lovely arcade game that I should play on something better than a macbook keyboard.
Lost Cave is a pay-what-you-want fan sequel to the classic arcade game Bubble Bobble on the Commodore 64, featuring 100 new levels.
Earth Must Die is a new comedy point-and-click adventure on Steam by the creators of Ben There, Dan That. The clever gimmick behind this one is that your character doesn’t want to touch anything himself and must make minions and other folks do everything for you.
Chromatic Conundrum is a first person adventure game where you solve puzzles by manipulating light and mixing colors. It has a colorblind mode as well. Recommended if you liked doing puzzles in games like Antichamber and Portal and want a shorter experience based on light-based puzzles.
Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator is, and it sounds weird to say this, what it says on the tin. You are a space warlord, and you trade babies on a stock market like interface. It’s by the folks at Strange Scaffold, who have made a variety of wonderful games including the previous game in this series, Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator. I also just really like the art in these games.
ABIDE is the new stop-motion game in development by the folks that made Judero. This one is a horror game and actually reminds me of the 90s experimental game The Dark Eye. It’s currently in crowdfunding and think you should give it a look.
That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading! If you haven’t already, consider adding this site to your RSS feed and sharing with a friend.
Once again I am starting one of these posts with “what a week.” Solidarity with Minnesota. I try to do one GoFundMe or whatever in each one of these because I just do the roundup posts for fun but ICE is just kidnapping multiple children a day so here are two GoFundMes to help with legal fees and food for families in Minneapolis here and here. It would mean a lot if you could send a few dollars to whatever one has less money at the time you’re reading this. Anyway, Minneapolis is winning and will defeat ICE and one day ICE will be crushed everywhere else. Help people around you if you can.
There isn’t really a good way to transition to talking about video games after that, sorry, but maybe you’ll find something to distract you from things or be compelled to post about things you’ve been excited about on your own blog.
Video Games
I guess I’ll start with some self promotion. The British Game Generator is a silly thing in development that spits out ideas for video games inspired by 80’s British computer games. Even though I didn’t grow up with that era of games and live in the US, I’m a big fan of a lot of them, especially Llamasoft. They have a very unique feel to me that I have a hard time describing but I feel is quirky and charming in a way that is unique to that scene.
Speaking of British games, Go-Go BunnyGun is a new game for the ZX Spectrum available for Pay-What-You-Want. Itch.io is home to so many good ZX Spectrum games and this looks like a lovely arcade shooter. It was highly recommended by Davey Sloan on Bluesky, who has also made quite a few ZX Spectrum games you should check out.
Perfect Tides: Station to Station is now on Steam. It’s a point-and-click adventure where you are a woman named Mara and must deal with all of the issues of being a young adult and features non-linear exploration and branching narratives. I was a big fan of the original game because of its art and how accurately it depicted being a teen in the early 00s, even the awkward and painful parts, so I’m looking forward to how this will recreate the experience of being a young adult in the same awkward and embarrassing ways I did. While it is a sequel, the game is designed so you don’t have to play the original game first. That said, I highly recommend that one too.
Folks should check out the indie game collective Cutie Collective and see all the games they’re making.
SEBI 16 is a collection of sixteen games of various genres made in PICO-8. I’m a fan of PicoMix and CorgiSpace, so it’s fun seeing more PICO-8 compilations coming out.
Karous is a rerelease of a shoot ’em up originally released back in 2007 for the Dreamcast. Don’t know anything about it, it just seems neat and I think it’s interesting that it is a port of a Dreamcast game that is almost 20 years old but also well after the console “died.”
TR-49 (Steam/iOS) is a narrative deduction game by the fine folks at Inkle. I’ve been a fan of all of their interactive fiction games so it’s fun seeing them do a game in the deduction subgenre that’s been picking up in popularity in the adventure game genre. People like mysteries! According to their founder on Bluesky, it’s been their biggest launch in the company’s history. As an adventure game fan, it’s always nice that I can post about multiple games in the genre coming out in the same week and they’re being critically well received and selling well. People are still going to do the lazy “adventure games are dead” narrative but it feels like a golden age for the genre.
Tabletop Games
I’ve posted about the mech tragedy ttrpg Dragon Reactor before but now you can pre-order the print version on the Dinoberry Games website. Even if that one doesn’t seem to be for you, take a look around their site, read some blog posts, and see what else they’ve made. I’m personally a big fan of their games Sprouts and Dinocar.
Breathing Techniques Against Monsters is a lyric game about dealing with negative thoughts via breathing exercises and intended to help you with your anxiety and stress. Available for Pay-What-You-Want.
Demos
Uncle Lee’s Cookbook is an upcoming point-and-click adventure where you play as the teen Ines as she tries to save the world caused by the fallout of her Uncle Lee’s experiements. There’s a demo playable in the browser on Itch.io.
Wishlist
Oh!Ware looks like a very neat Mancala roguelike to me. I don’t think I’ve seen Mancala in any video game form before outside of pure recreations of the game itself.
That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading. If you’ve got a game you’re working on and it doesn’t use AI, feel free to send me an email about it. See the About page here for contact info. I just like to hear about what folks are working on. Or feel free to send an email or post in the comments to say hi. That’s fine too.
It really does feel like I start half of these with a variation of “man, what a week” but jeeeezus. This one is two days later than I’d like because I wasn’t feeling great but I clearly wasn’t feeling that bad because I went and made a Gubble website yesterday. Anyway, if you enjoy these posts, donations (if possible) to any of these Minnesota based groups would be nice.
Adventure
Pathologic 3 is now out on Steam. You play as a medical doctor who has 12 days to save a town from a mysterious plague. I still haven’t played any of these games because I’ve had difficulty finding the time to play a very stressful video game when I’m also in a good headspace, but I’ve heard all 3 are very good and you do not need to play previous entries to do later ones.
Abyssal is a browser game created in PICO-8 inspired by the Sega Genesis/MegaDrive Ecco the Dolphin. You explore the water and use sonar to locate gems.
WHODUNNIT is a pay-what-you-want/free visual novel on Itch.io and Steam where you must investigate who you hooked up with last night. The first episode is available now.
Laugh Track is a dark comedy horror visual novel where you are the lead writer for a sitcom. Available for free on Steam and Itch.io.
Arcade
Froggo is a new-ish (a few months old) arcade game for the Apple II that is influenced by both Frogger and Crossy Road. It’s available for free on the dev site, along with the source code and a link to play it in the browser.
Books
Game Poems is a new online literary magazine dedicated to exploring the artistic and poetic potential of short-form video games by publishing new games directly in a playable format. Visibility with short poetic games made in Twine and Bitsy is so difficult so I think it’s fantastic this exists. It’s free and I’m really looking forward to seeing more issues. Books probably isn’t the correct category for this but at the same time it reminds me a lot of literary anthologies so maybe it is?
Technically not a game itself but reading is good! Mages & Modems is a memoir involving tales of growing up with emerging technologies in the 80’s and 90’s. You can get a digital copy on Itch.io but the page has a link to where you can get physical copies if you prefer that.
Bundles
There’s a bundle running on Itch.io for the next 14 days to raise funds for disaster relief in Jamaica. For $6 or more you can get 100+ games. I’m personally a big fan of co-open.
Game Jams
Wonderville did their monthly 2 hour game jam and I want to give a shoutout to drip for doing their first solo game. It’s a VN about being a tattoo artist. You can check out the rest of the games here.
News
IGF announced their nominees. The IGF is probably the only award thing I care about because it’s not just nominating the big indie games that get mainstream press coverage and I discover new things from it every year. I’ve been following it since 2002, where games like Bad Milk and Pencil Whipped were very excited to a very young me who didn’t know experimental games existed.
Platformer
Big Hops (Steam/Switch/PS5) looks like a very cute 3D platformer where you explore a large 3D world as a frog and do frog things like jumping around and using your tongue to catch stuff.
Puzzle
Space Corgi 2 is a puzzle game created by Adam Saltsman in PICO-8 where you control two dogs that must get to their dog bed and overcome obstacles. I was a big fan of Adam’s CorgiSpace and I’m happy to see him continuing to make tiny PICO-8 games.
I’ve been very into enclose.horse, a browser puzzle game where you need to enclose a horse in the largest possible space with a limited amount of walls. You only get one attempt at each puzzle.
RPG
Sunless Isle: Keep of the Mad Magus is a first person dungeon crawler where you explore three levels and fight monsters all while maintaining your health, sanity, and lantern oil. A prototype was created for a game jam a few years ago but it just got reworked and completed. It’s available for Pay-What-You-Want on Itch.io.
TTRPGs
Swords Without Master is currently running a Kickstarter. It’s blown past its goal and still has quite a few days left but I think it’s worth a look. It was a game that was previously in Worlds Without Master Issue 3 for years but is finally getting an expanded standalone version. It’s a fantasy game where a DM and 2-4 players, who are rogues, tell a story in a few hours using two Tone Dice. I’m happy to see it doing well and Epidiah Ravachol is just a fantastic game desiger.
New in Town is a solo ttrpg inspired by Animal Crossing about arriving in town and reminding yourself of all the possibilities that can bring. I got to playtest the game and thought it was lovely. In fact, I will steal the blurb of myself on Itch. “Playtested the upcoming solo ttrpg New In Town by @cutestpatoot.itch.io and I’m looking forward to the final version. I think it’s great at recreating the feel of starting a new town in Animal Crossing and it’s just a nice, chill game. Will probably play it again with my kids, who are big AC fans.” You can find a digital copy on Itch.io and a print zine on Plus One Exp.
CLINCH is a 1v1 dueling dice game inspired by films like The Princess Bride and A Knight’s Tale. You are two dueling sword fighters who must do whatever it takes to win. Available on Itch.io
Wishlist
Sparrow Warfare is an upcoming mahjong-inspired deckbuilder where you lead a bird army to freedom. If you are interested in trying it out now, there is a playtest you can join.
That does it for this week. If you’ve got a game you want to post about and you don’t use AI, feel free to send me an email about it (see the About page for contact info). Don’t need to send me a key for it either. I just like to hear about stuff folks are working on.
First roundup of the new year! If you enjoy these, share with a friend and consider giving to the GoFundMe for Renee Good’s wife and son after she was murdered by ICE earlier this week. Also if you’re still on X/Twitter, get some help. Why are you on the child porn generator site? Jesus Christ. Ok, here’s some games.
Booze Elroy (Itch.io) is a Pac-Man clone with a billion customizable options to choose from. Even if it was just Pac-Man it would be a good clone of that, but it adds so many options you can enable that change the game quite a bit and I think it’s fantastic. I really can’t recommend grabbing this one enough, it’s pay-what-you-want, before a big site like Kotaku or PC Gamer covers it and gets the game pulled like they always do.
We just got Indiepocalypse #72on Itch. Each issue features a collection of tabletop and experimental video games, as well as a game commissioned for the issue. You can buy physical copies of the compilations here.
Gardenloom (Itch.io) is a pay-what-you-want collaborative tool for building a tarotesque oracle deck for 1+ players. It’s still being worked on so give a try and give some feedback. TTRPG designers always appreciate playtesters.
Celestial Coffee Quest (Itch.io) is a short point-and-click adventure available as Pay-What-You-Want. It’s by Wavey Games, who made the great adventure Melon Head, so it’s nice to see a new free adventure game from them. I really love the retro EGA aesthetic that all of their games have too and just how odd and goofy the games can get.
Bimbo (Itch.io) is a static site generator by Izzy! I’m a big believer that people should make their own websites, even on something like Neocities, so I full support this. No it’s not a video game but social media sucks, people should have their own homebase where crappy moderators can’t limit what you say, and it’s my blog so I can put whatever I want in here.
Solo But Not Alone 6 (Itch.io) just went live. It’s a charity bundle featuring 90 single player tabletop rpgs for just $10. All proceeds go to mental health charity Take This.
The Procession of Horses in Motion (Itch.io) is an experimental short software film that runs about 6 minutes long and I think is worth watching. The term software film is being used because it really is a program that you run and watch, with no interactivity, and is explicit in that it’s not a game in any sense. I’m still including it though. Does this make it a cousin of demoscene stuff and the non-interactive demos that you would see released for video games in the early 90s? Anyway, I really like it and think you should check out the other works of INFINITE TEARS too.
Screenshot from A Nothingness
Another jam for Decker just wrapped up on Itch. Decker is a Hypercard-inspired tool for making little apps and games for browsers and now there’s 37 new things made with Decker for you to check out.
And finally, every December Tom Hall, of Commander Keen/Wolfenstein 3D/Anachronox fame, runs a game jam where he makes lots of assets for folks to use and an optional ARG to participate in. It’s a lot of fun and great games are made for it each year. That jam just wrapped up and now there are 94 games for you to play. He’s a massive PICO-8 fan so the assets are built for that but the jam welcomes games made with other engines too.
That does it for this week. If you’ve got a game you want to post about and you don’t use AI, feel free to send me an email about it (see the About page for contact info). Don’t need to send me a key for it either. I just like to hear about stuff folks are working on.
I meant to do a few of these each week during my break and uhhhhhh oops, I guess that didn’t happen. So now I’m going to put all of them from my notes into one giant post and hopefully you find one or two neat things to play. I’ll try to sort this a bit more by genre so it’s a little less overwhelming. I hope these posts were useful to folks. Even during Steam and Itch sales, people are still releasing games! I even made a free Playdate game with my kids. If you enjoy these roundups, consider adding your own game or other small indies to MobyGames so they’re covered elsewhere too. There’s already been a few games covered in these that are delisted and that’s always weird to see. And consider blogging about small games you like in the new year too! There’s not much coverage of a lot of these games and there should be better writers talking about them. There’s plenty of games that never come out on Steam that are worth your time.
Adventure
After being in development for a very long time and then Early Access for a while after that, SpaceVenture (Steam/Itch) is finally out. This is a point-and-click adventure by the creators of the Sierra classic Space Quest. I’m just happy to see it come out. They had to deal with health issues and the worst Kickstarter backers I’ve ever seen, so it’s a miracle at all that it’s out. It’s nice to see that Steam reviews are positive too. I played a very early version and it was buggy but I think the people I know that are massive Space Quest fans have been fairly happy with it.
The Itch page for SOUP ROOMS (Itch) describes it better than me so I’ll just copy that. “SOUP ROOMS is a SOUP-like room tourism experience directly inspired by SOUP, an obscure Japanese minimalist art-game from 2007 where you walk around a series of small abstract rooms and generally soak in the atmosphere. Think of it as a sort of digital art gallery.” There’s 100 rooms from a variety of indie game devs AND a tool for making your own rooms. Plus it’s all for free!
jfrisby has a new horror adventure called MALLICIOUS (Itch) that is available for Pay-What-You-Want. It was made for the monthly game jam on the Adventure Game Studio website. I always like how jfrisby’s adventure games look and love that this has the aesthetics of a C64 game.
The Simogo Legacy Collection (Steam) is a collection of games released by the developer Simogo for mobile devices from 2010 to 2015. The most famous one is probably Device 6 but there’s some other big ones here too and it’s just really nice to see these games preserved on a platform that’s a bit more stable than the iOS App Store.
Arcade
Death in Abyss (Steam) just looks like a really solid arcade shooter with a low poly aesthetic, and I feel like I don’t see many arcade games taking place in a horror setting. A demo is available to try.
Unbeatable (Steam) doesn’t really need a mention on this site because it’s done so well already and everyone knows about it by now, but it’s going on here anyway. I joked elsewhere about how a game about a fascist government making music illegal is basically the Aerosmith video game Revolution X, but it looks nice anyway.
FPS
One Rotten Oath (Steam) is an interesting looking one to me. It’s an adventure game/FPS hybrid that uses tank controls and has FMV for all of the enemies. I realize that is probably not for most people but there’s a handful of us that go wild over FMV so I’m including it here. It’s got a demo too. The developer of this previously made a FMV game/interactive movie called A Trip to Yugoslavia.
I can’t believe ROUTINE (Steam) is actually out after being announced like 13 years ago. It looks great! FPS probably really isn’t the right category for this since it’s more of a survival horror thing that happens to have a gun. But it’s here, reviews have been positive, and it seems to be selling well so good for them. It’s weird that this roundup has two games (see: SpaceVenture) that started development over a decade ago.
Game Jams
Do you like Yuri? Well a whole game jam for it just wrapped up on Itch with 94 entries!
I don’t think I mentioned the 7 day fps jam in the last post either but that was also wonderful and had lots of entries on Itch. There’s also some very good ones that went past the deadline and were released outside of the jam instead like Dronelord Hyperviber. The look of that one actually reminds me of the DOS game Magic Carpet although it plays a bit differently.
Simulations
Tom City (Itch) is a very cute city builder for browsers by Dave Lloyd of Powerhoof and his son. Obviously I’m a fan of people making games with their kids so this gets a 10/10 from me.
Sports
I feel like I’m trolling a bit by putting Skate Story (Steam) in the sports section but it’s gotta go somewhere. Anyway, I’m the last person who hasn’t played it yet but I keep seeing everyone say the vibes are very good. It has a demo too!
Old School Rally (Steam) is exactly what it says it is. It’s a rally game that looks like it’s between the PSX and PS2 in terms of aesthetics (so Dreamcast era then?) and I think it looks nice.
TTRPGs
We Shall Be Monsters (publisher page) is a solo ttrpg inspired by Frankenstein about creating a living being, and now you can buy it in the form of a 20 page zine. I’m a big fan of Good Luck Press and their designers!
Dragon Reactor (Itch) is a mech tragedy game about conflict on a grand scale using d6 and for 2+ players.
lil’ Henry and Penny’s Big Adventure Pack is a collection of three short point-and-click adventure games where you play as two children named Henry and Penny. I saw someone sharing a post about this one and it looked really cute since the games were developed with, or at least voiced by, the designer’s kids. The games themselves are traditional adventure games, they use a modified version of the Scumm verb bar that only has four verbs, and you doing your typical adventure game stuff where you pick up items and use them elsewhere. The game has a nice option to make them more playable for young kids by having the player character read the verb when you click on it.
Where the games really stood out for me was in how charming the voice acting and art was. The kids were a lot of fun to listen to and my kids (6 and 8 years old) loved playing too since they thought Henry and Penny were funny. The games outside of the voice acting are good of course, but it was their voice acting that made my kids excited about the games and willing to try out the verbs on everything to see what they would say. The cartoon art is cute too and reminded me a bit of early AGS games, which I mean as a compliment.
Each game increases in difficulty and length but overall the entire collection will take about an hour to play through. The first one is the shortest and just has you playing as the boy Henry, but the two after that have you switching between the two kids to solve puzzles, which I guess means it’s a Gobliins-like? I can’t speak for how much this collection may appeal to people without kids but I found them to be a great collection to play with mine. I’m currently working on a Playdate game with my kids and it’s fun seeing other parents including their kids in game dev and making silly stuff together.
lil’ Henry and Penny’s Big Adventure Pack is available on Steam.
For some reason I got a little crabby yesterday that people were only recommending indie games on Steam yesterday, which is kinda silly, but it did lead to me doing a recommendation thread on Bluesky of games on sale on Itch that I enjoy. It’s a flawed thread because I didn’t recommend any ttrpgs but I’m going to list the recommendations here as well because they’re good and worth a look. Some aren’t even on Steam and others give you a Steam key. It’s not that I hate Steam, even if I do have issues with it, I just get frustrated by people not being curious about what else it outside of it.
First I want to recommend Indiepocalypse, a monthly anthology zine featuring many experimental indie games every month! I’ve mentioned it on a blog a billion times but I’m going to keep doing it because I think they’re doing amazing work curating indie games that I would never find otherwise.
Liberation is a space sim inspired by early classic like Elite and shows like Blake’s 7, and has a great sense of humor. It’s very easy to pick up and play too, which is often the issue I bump into with a lot of modern open world space sims.
Minerva’s Labyrinth is a first-person turn based dungeon crawler with nice pixel art and great combat system. Again, I’ve mentioned this one a few times before (probably a pattern you’ll see in this post quite a bit) but I’ll keep doing it until it somehow becomes a smash hit that pulls in millions of dollars for the dev.
Inspector Waffles is a point-and-click adventure where you play as a cat detective investigating a murder. I really like the way this game uses clues to question folks at crime scenes. The Game Boy Color prequel is also on Itch. I don’t know if you get the rom if you buy that one on Steam but you do on Itch. I also recently learned that one got ported to the Playdate.
Manglepaw is a first person adventure game with art inspired by early 90’s 3D art. I love the game looks. It’s also available in Indiepocalypse #26
Cyclopean: The Great Abyss is a rpg inspired by early crpg classics like Ultima, with an overworld map when you explore the world and first-person dungeon crawling when you enter a dungeon. The dev has made a few rpgs at this point and they’re all on sale right now. Islands of the Caliph is another one I enjoyed.
Snoik! is just a very good Snake-like game for the Playdate, with a neat mechanic where you can weave in and out of the snake by switching layers. Itch has a lot of great games for the Playdate for sale.
If you like VVVVVV or Super Hexagon, consider checking out Terry’s Other Games, a compilation of various smaller games Terry Cavanagh has made. Comes with a Steam key
CorgiSpace is a very nice collection of 13 PICO-8 games by Adam Saltsman and published by Finji, each offering a unique mechanic. The Itch version also gives you the .p8 files to run in whatever you use for PICO-8 files.
Melon Head is an incredibly weird point-and-click adventure game featuring stellar EGA-inspired artwork. I love it
Hylics is another weird one. It’s a rpg and it’s doing kind of a stop motion aesthetic thing for the art that I really like. It got a sequel and that’s on sale as well.
VIDEOVERSE is a visual novel inspired by early internet forums and the Miiverse stuff on the Wii U. Comes with a Steam key. I’ve found that it’s been a very good introductory VN for a few folks.
The Crimson Diamond is a point-and-click adventure inspired by the Sierra classic The Colonel’s Bequest. I love that it uses a text parser and the artwork is fantastic.
Cosmic Void has made many great adventure games but I will recommend Devil’s Hideout, a very creepy first person adventure.
Spirit Swap combines visual novels with match 3 puzzle games. I think it brings some great innovations to the match 3 genre and I love the art and soundtrack in this game as well
I can’t recommend the Midnight Scenes series enough. It’s an anthology series of horror point and click adventures and each one can be played in a single sitting.
Super Video Golf is a solid golf game with tons of features and an early 90s 3D aesthetic I really enjoy. I hate real life golf for many reasons but like a good video game about golf. Comes with a Steam key.
There is not a game in recent memory that does the Super Mario Bros 3 style platformer better than Kitsune Tails.
Rainbow Laser Disco Dungeon is a kinda sorta Berzerk like, at least in how you move from room to room, twin stick shooter combined with a rhythm game. Comes with a Steam key too!
co-open is a very nice first person adventure game about a child’s first time going grocery shopping alone.
Again, some of these are repeats from the recent Itch recommendation thread but they’re worth another shoutout.
