indie games

Indie Game Roundup (April 20, 2024)

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A lot of neat stuff has come out in the last two weeks and it’s the funny number day, so here’s another one of these indie game roundup things of things that I enjoyed. If you released a thing and I missed it, feel free to reply in the comments.

Craig Maloney
Craig Maloney passed away on April 2nd after battling cancer for three years. I never met him in person but enjoyed talking with him online and reading his posts on his blog. If you would like to see his writing or the games he made, there’s links to everything on his page.

https://decafbad.net

black and white photo of an arena with text describing what they're seeing

New Domino Club games!
A new batch of Domino Club games has been released. Domino Club is a collective that releases games anonymously. Each batch of Domino Club games features incredibly interesting experimental stuff. They’re the best!

Palestinian Relief Bundle
A charity bundle just came out today with all proceeds going to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. For $8 or more you can get hundreds of games. I’m happy to have my game MindExplorer in there.

New Husky Game Development Games
Husky Game Development is a game dev group at Michigan Tech University since 2004. They’ve uploaded some new games to Itch so go check them out!

Tiny Circumstance
Tiny Circumstance is a really cute and technically impressive Bitsy game.

Broken Roads
If you’re in the mood for some more Fallout after watching the new tv show (I enjoyed it!), consider checking out Broken Roads, a post apocalyptic rpg in the Australian Outback. Reviews for it are currently mixed but maybe you’ll be into it?

Crowdfunding

Here are some crowdfunding campaigns that I found interesting:

  • Devil’s Hideout is a new point-and-click adventure from the developer of games like Twilight Oracle and Blood Nova.
  • Free Stars is a new Star Control game by the original designers in everything but name. The game even includes all the aliens from those original games.

Other People Talking About Indie Games

Indie Tsushin continues doing fantastic work with their developer spotlights.

I liked this post from Lotus that’s critical of the Triple-I Initiative.

Self Promo Zone

Not much from me this time. I continue to play lesser known games on my YouTube and Twitch channels and a previous post discusses a game I’m working on. I also have a list on Itch that I update every day with games I really like

Indie Game Roundup (April 5, 2024)

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After taking a few weeks off because I now have a baby to take care off, I am doing another post about indie games stuff that was exciting to me over the last month. These probably won’t be weekly again for a while but I’m excited to post on here more often.

New Releases

The Gender Constellation Bundle
The Gender Constellation Bundle is the second bundle run by GAME DEV GALAXY, a Discord server for game developers who are gender-/sex-marginalized. There’s a ton of fantastic work in here and it’s available for only $10 or more.

Indiepocalypse #50 and 51
There is a new issue of the indie game compilation zine Indiepocalypse so of course I will include that on here. And of course, as I was typing this, Indiepocalypse #51 was just released.

Barney Bear Joins a Harold Team

bear pointing at a chalkboard that says "yes and"

This is a game created in Adventure Game Studio that is a parody of the Barney Bear educational game series but this time you learn about improv. Possibly the most important game to come out this year?

Make a Zine!
I really enjoyed this free zine about how to make a zine. You should make one!

Sylvie RPG
Sylvie RPG is a fantastic short rpg with a bump combat mechanic like in Hydlide and YS. It’s available for free but if you pay $7 or more, you get a lot of really cool bonus stuff.

miniBOSSGAME

a monster and two smiling faces in the corners

miniBOSSGAME is a fan port of BOSSGAME: The Final Boss Is My Heart’s mechanics to the Pico-8 fantasy console. BOSSGAME was one of my favorite games from last year and it’s fun to see a demake of it with the original designer’s blessing.

BIG HEAD

zx spectrum screenshot of two people and a platform

BIG HEAD is a neat little platformer created for the ZX Spectrum by a 10 year old.

The Legend of Skye

woman in a cloak in a village

The Legend of Skye is a new fantasy point-and-click adventure with a verb system like Lucasarts adventure games.

Brain Hotel: Remodeled

guy saying to another guy "Aren't you that guy? From that movie?"

Brain Hotel: Remodeled is a remake of a Flash game from 2004 by Telltale Games alumni Mark Darin. I haven’t played this one yet but I’m a fan of his Nick Bounty games.

Picotron

desktop for the picotron showing a terminal window open

Picotron is a new Fantasy Workstation by the creator of PICO-8 for making pixelart games, animations, music, demos and other curiosities.

Downpour
Downpour is a new app for making little games on your phone. I think it’s pretty fantastic and even made my own little game.

Passage: A Job Interview Simulator

person saying "Should I go over weird questions next? Or should I review basic questions again?"

Passage is a new visual novel from Emcat Games about navigating the corporate world. It’s from a local dev too so that’s always exciting for me. The publisher is Mangotronics, who also published the great Mangotronic Employment Collection.

Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story

screen showing that 21st March 1982 was the origin of the name Llamasoft

I am a massive fan of the rerelease work by Digital Eclipse so of course I would be thrilled when they announced a collection of games by Jeff Minter. It’s everything I hoped it would be and will probably be my Game of the Year.

Midnight Scenes: A Safe Place

guy in his room saying "what the hell is this?"

Midnight Scenes is an anthology of short horror point and click adventures and the newest entry, A Safe Place, was just released. Each game ranges from 15-90 minutes long and only costs a few dollars. Haven’t played this one yet but I really enjoyed everything else by the designer. A Safe Place is available on Itch.io and Steam.

The New York Times Simulator
The New York Times Simulator is a short browser game about how much the NYT shows their ass. Great game about an awful place.

Other Folks Talking About Indie Games

After a hiatus, Bobbins’ Olde Tomb of Videogames is back! It’s like these posts but better, and with more of a focus on arcade games.

I really liked this post from Autumn Rain on cohost about games she liked in 2023

I just found out about a nice fan zine for the Playdate called Uncrank’d.

Kickstarters/Crowdfunding

After ignoring Kickstarter for a long time, 3 crowdfunding campaigns popped up in two days that I had to back.

  • Devil’s Hideout is a point-and-click adventure by Cosmic Void, who I’ve always been a fan of. There’s a demo available that I enjoyed too.
  • That Rug is a supernatural ttrpg zine that uses children’s playmats that every parent has.
  • Street Wolves is a synthwave ttrpg using the Savage Worlds rule system.

Self Promo Zone

If you enjoy these posts, here’s some ways you can support me:

Screenshot Saturday Roundup (March 3, 2024)

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Squeezing in one more roundup of things I saw on non-twitter places since I’m now self hosting and can actually embed Mastodon links now. I just got excited and wanted to try it for myself. It should make doing these a lot easier too.

Every week there’s a new gif from this game on Masto and Cohost and it still looks great

This looks like a nice little puzzle game that just came out

Waterpark tycoon game! Hell yes, sign me up

Part 1 of a retro looking EGA adventure game was just released for free

Here’s a clip from another EGA looking adventure game.

Good 1-bit racoon from this screenshot on Blue Sky

top down view of a puzzle game board and an image of a racoon

Indie Game Roundup (March 1, 2024)

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Hello! This is going to be the last one of these for the next month or two as I will be busy taking care of a newborn starting next week. Thank you so much for reading these and feel free to check out the posts I’ve made from previous weeks for more indie games. I’ve also tried highlighting other folks that talk about indie games a lot, so please follow them.

ChoiceBeat 10
One of those folks is ChoiceBeat (Itch link), zine focused on visual novels, interactive fiction, and adventure games. Every issue is free.

Indie Tsushin
If you would like to learn about indie games from Japan, consider checking these folks out. The newest issue just came out (Itch link) and is available as Pay-What-You-Want.

Indiepocalypse 50
The newest Indiepocalypse just came out today. I will keep posting about these whenever they come out because I have discovered so many games from here.

text over a photo of a bonfire saying "She lunged forward, making him rest against his back. Their mouths separated for a second while Unatxi grabbed a few logs and fed them to the campire. The way things were going, clothes might be coming off shortly.
Screenshot from The Curse of Unatxi Kamala

The Curse of Unatxi Kamala
The Curse of Unatxi Kamala is an IF game created for the Queer Vampire Jam and also the Smoochie Jam. The game was created in binksi, which is a fork of bipsi that allows people to use Ink.

Angelblood
I would also like to recommend Angelblood (Itch link), a visual novel also created for the Queer Vampire Jam that features some fantastic artwork.

screenshot from The Hypnic Chain, showing bright green grass and plants under a cloudy sky.
Screenshot from The Hypnic Chain

LSDJAM 2023
LSDJAM is a game jam where people make games inspired by LSD: Dream Emulator. The jam ran for a few months and it looks like a lot of very interesting games were created for it.

screenshot from Dead Names showing a blurry image of someone sitting in bed
Screenshot from Dead Names

Dead Names
Dead Names is a free short sci-fi visual novel for the Game Boy, but you can also play it in the browser. Please read the content warning before playing it.

Alakajam
Alakajam is a game jam similar to Ludum Dare and the 19th one just wrapped up. Check out the games here and consider participating in a future jam if you want to do something like Ludum Dare but in a much smaller community.

PowerJam #1
The first game jam for the PowerQuest plugin for Unity has just ended. PowerQuest allows folks to make point-and-click adventure games in a way similar to Adventure Game Studio but with all the pros and cons of Unity. Some really neat stuff was made for this jam.

3 different colored kobolds standing in front of someone in a prison cell
Screenshot from Yip Quest

Yip Quest
Not a new game but I finally played the point-and-click adventure Yip Quest, where you control 3 kobolds trying to steal treasure. It’s a short game made for a game jam and you can play it in the browser.

Self Promotion Time
Before I take off for quite a while (I’ll probably keep posting on here but not doing these roundups, add this to your RSS feed reader!), here’s some of the stuff that I worked on this last week:

If you enjoyed reading these roundups, consider buying one of my games or checking out my Ko-fi, and please be very vocal about the indie games you love. People don’t hear about this stuff unless there’s folks screaming about them from the rooftops. Doesn’t have to be a blog. It can be on your Twitch stream or on social media.

New FMV Game Zine Now Available

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Next month will be ridiculously busy for me so I made a quick little zine about modern games using FMV for the Zine Month alternative jam using Electric Zine Maker. FMV Will Never Die is a free zine on Itch.io covering recent games with FMV. I created it for the Zine Month alternative jam, which I think was ending tomorrow but I guess not, oops. But that’s fine, I doubt I would have finished it if I sat on it for any longer.

I basically have a 40 page version of this sitting on my computer but I keep slacking off on doing a nice cover and formatting so this goofy version is what people will have for now. I had fun finally making something with the Electric Zine Maker though and doing all those bad doodles and I suppose an expanded version of this is something I can look forward to getting out there in another month or two. That will also feature reviews of older games as well as reviews for more modern games and expanded reviews for some of the games in this.

Electric Zine Maker is just a blast to use though. Sometimes it’s nice just to make a thing very quickly and get it on Itch before you get tired of the idea. Highly recommend checking that out.

Screenshot Saturday (Feb. 26, 2024)

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There was a lot of stuff on Cohost/Mastodon/Blue Sky that looked very nice to me with the Screenshot Saturday tag. Let’s take a look!

I’m interested in this solarpunk city builder that I just found out about last Saturday on Mastodon

top down view of a futuristic city

Even the menus for Kitsune Tails are looking very charming on Blue Sky, Cohost, and Mastodon

menu showing how to design a magic postcard

I also just learned about Settlemoon on Cohost. I really like the colors it’s using and apparently the game is already out!

a menu sitting in front of a pixel art village

I like this game’s aesthetic. You can follow it on Cohost and Mastodon

gif of a low poly walk up stairs

Axyz looks like a puzzle game I’ll enjoy with its vaporwave aesthetic. I saw this on Blue Sky.

marble sitting on a platform in the sky

Indie Game Roundup (Feb. 23, 2024)

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Hello! This is going to be a shortish one since I’m preparing for the arrival of a baby in two weeks and haven’t had that much time to play games. Maybe I’ll do one of these next week but then I’m taking a break from these for at least a month, probably two. Still some stuff I really enjoyed though!

Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story
If this is the last one, I need everyone to know that Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story comes out very soon and I need everyone to buy it. It’s absolutely wonderful that Digital Eclipse is doing these interactive history things/game compilations and I don’t know if there’s one I could get more excited about than this.

pixel art image of a building and person saying "Sometimes I try to lose myself"

Provenance
Provenance is a ridiculously beautiful Bitsy. I did not know that Bitsy games could look or sound like this.

Smashtronaut
It’s a month old so maybe not brand new but it’s a very fun little browser game on Itch.io where you smash into stuff with your ship and get points.

Zine in a Cassette
Not exactly a game but if you wanted to know how to distribute a game or zine in a cassette case, this guide on Itch.io is incredibly useful.

Word Sprint
Word Sprint is a free browser game on Itch.io where you make as many words as possible in 2 minutes. I’m awful at these types of things but it’s very well made and I had fun playing it.

top down view of a maze in green, with other mazes behind it

20 Small Mazes
20 Small Mazes is a free game on Steam where you do a bunch of clever mazes. Great stuff and I like how the game looks too.

space ship shooting at very psychedelic looking things in space

NIDUS
Haven’t played NIDUS (Steam link) yet but look at that! It looks fantastic and early Steam reviews are positive too.

top down view of pieces moving around on a white board

Sokobond Express
Haven’t played this one yet either (Steam link) but I’ve really enjoyed other puzzle games these folks have made so I’m sure I’ll like this too.

Other People Talking About Indie Games
Fortunately there’s lots of other people that are better at talking about indie games than I am that you can follow while I’m on break.

Wraithkal does regular Screenshot Saturday blog posts about people participating in it on Mastodon.

The Pixel Prophet has a very nice newsletter from Buttondown about indie games and other things

Rascal just launched. It’s always nice seeing more people talk about tabletop rpgs that aren’t Dungeons & Dragons.

Other Things

I guess I should have been putting new album recommendations in here this whole time as well. Tim Midyett, most famous for the bands Silkworm and Bottomless Pit, just released a new album (Bandcamp) from his band Mint Mile and I think it’s pretty good stuff.

Mary Timony (Helium, Ex Hex) also released a new solo album today (Bandcamp). I haven’t heard it yet but she’s just a fantastic guitarist.

I liked this article about 80s Lucasfilm Games MMO Habitat and 30 years since the closing of Club Caribe

Other videos I’ve put up this week on YouTube include Let’s Plays of The Last Exterminator, Meatverse, and Sea Peebles. I also put up gameplay videos with no commentary of 80s Lucasfilm Games MMO Habitat, the 1998 Collier’s Encyclopedia that Sierra developed, and shorts for indie games Toro, Handvaska, and Kobold Generator.

Well, that’s it for this week. I’ll probably do one next week before the 1-2 month break but if not, thanks for reading!

Screenshot Saturday (Feb. 19, 2023)

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I got grumpy about it feeling like outlets covering #ScreenshotSaturday are only doing it for X, which is just a dying social media platform for the far right at this point, so here’s some of things that I thought looked pretty neat elsewhere. Some of the posts have multiple images, so click on the links to see more. I only got Blue Sky, Mastodon, and Cohost this week but can check out other places like Tumblr, Instagram, and Threads in future weeks.

Shadow jumping game SCHiM is looking pretty nice over on Cohost

On and off
I’m excited to see Eldritch 2 development going smoothly on Mastodon and Bluesky since I loved the original.
view of a building with lit windows at night

This fan project is looking pretty lovely on Mastodon, with a lengthy post on Cohost explaining development of the game as well.

https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/111/949/042/844/859/101/original/60c9c0e6e47bb191.png

Oidanoid is looking like a lovely twin stick shooter (Mastodon)

https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/111/949/054/396/697/055/original/8e71ece681abe575.png

I continue looking forward to The Crimson Diamond, a point-and-click adventure inspired by games like The Colonel’s Bequest. (Mastodon, Blue Sky, Steam)

gif of a man packing clothes

Frenzy is pitched as a demake of Far Cry from an ecofeminist lens (Mastodon)

a woman shooting at some bad guys in a jungle

I’m a huge fan of Cosmic Void’s games and will be the first in line to buy Devil’s Hideout as well. (Mastodon, Blue Sky, Steam)

https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/111/945/955/492/764/040/original/e2e547faa0e285b7.png

Inspector Waffles Early Days is turning out to be a lovely Game Boy inspired adventure game. (more images on Mastodon, Blue Sky, Steam)

https://files.mastodon.online/media_attachments/files/111/946/258/704/852/865/original/e74e547ff9779a1d.png

I enjoy Taconite’s game jam work so I’m excited to see that they’re making another FPS (Blue Sky)

Tearcell Games has a nice looking Godot tech demo for a rpg (looks much better on Mastodon)

gif of movement through a forest and then fighting a blob

Mushroom Musume is already fantastic and it’s continuing to get updates (look better on Mastodon, Itch.io)

visual novel gif showing photos of a forest in a low amount of colors

Retrowave ’84 has some nice colors in their FPS (Blue Sky, Steam)

a neon highway with police cars on the road in a futuristic city

Indie Game Roundup (Feb. 16, 2024)

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Hope you’re all doing well! I’m still getting over a cold that has actually been pretty mild but I’m a big baby so I’m acting like it’s the worst thing ever. For some of you it’s probably a 3 day weekend as well, so that’s a nice thing to look forward to. Despite my mild cold completely ruining my life, I still found a way to play some video games. If there’s something I missed, especially if it’s something you worked on, please reply with it in the comments or contact me (see About page) with a link to your thing.

Vaporwave Pinball

top down view of a pinball table with a statue and roman columns to its right

Vaporwave Pinball is an upcoming pinball game being developed by Mixtape Games UK. I played the demo as part of Steam’s Next Fest. I thought it was really neat. It’s got some quirks that should be fixed as development continues and I didn’t get to the more abstract tables that pop up in the screenshots. I feel like if a pinball table in a video game is not a 1:1 recreation of a real table, then it needs to get really weird, which is what this seems to do in later tables and something that I feel like Pinball FX needs to do more of with their fictional tables. I’m also learning how to do Let’s Plays and did one here.

Lost in Space

a boy, a man, and a robot around a space ship console

Lost in Space is an upcoming point-and-click adventure game based on the classic science fiction tv show. I played the demo and idk, it’s fine! They picked a weird spot for the demo. From watching the trailer at the end, it sounds like they use audio from the show for some of the other characters but not the player, which is the thing I was actually most interested in and how that’s pulled off. It’s a completely average adventure game, meaning I’m kinda just fine with it but would lose my shit if they made game at this quality level of a different IP, like a Farscape adventure game. So if you like Lost in Space then I would recommend it! (YouTube Let’s Play)

Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge 2

game boy screenshot of a golfer in bed saying "Mornin Morty! I bet you're as excited for the Springfield Cup as I am!"

Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge 2 is a point-and-click adventure for the Game Boy based on a joke at the end of an episode of The Simpsons back in season 7. It’s not too long or challenging, took me about 30 minutes to beat, but the jokes really worked for me and there’s a lot of hidden jokes I didn’t see but know I missed because of the achievement system. The game is also playable in the browser. (YouTube Let’s Play)

8BUTTERF.EXE

Gameplay footage of 8BUTTERF.EXE

8BUTTERF.EXE is a bullet hell game made for the TIC-80 fantasy computer where time only passes when you move. I really enjoyed this game and highly recommend checking it out. Elements of it almost make it feel like a puzzle game in that you have to manage your resources and plan your movements ahead. It’s playable in the browser here.

Kobold Quest
Just a very pleasant and short Bitsy where you’re a Kobold. (Itch.io)

Gelatinous
A solo tabletop rpg where you play as a gelatinous cube and eat things. Don’t know how I can sell it better than that. (Itch.io)

Advanced Fantasy Dungeons
A tabletop rpg available as pay-what-you-want that is strongly inspired by Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition and compatible with supplements as well. Despite that era being kind of clunky, it’s what I grew up with so I have a ton of nostalgia for it. I’m interested in seeing how that type of game is redesigned to be a bit more approachable. (Itch.io)

Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore

Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore is a spiritual sequel to the infamous Zelda platforming games on the Philips CD-i. Weirdly enough, I do sorta have some nostalgia for those games, despite being pretty awful, since I actually played them at a CompUSA when they came out and was confused why there were non-traditional Zelda games out there and on a non-Nintendo console. I always get excited when people do a spiritual sequel to something that wasn’t good and my hope with this is that the approach was “what if we did one of these but it was good?” Because why not? We have plenty of remakes and sequels to good games. Let’s revisit things that maybe had some good idea but the execution wasn’t 100% perfect.

Ultros

I know nothing about this game other than it’s a metroidvania but look at this art! I think it’s lovely. (Steam)

News Tower

news tower screenshot of a side view of a tower

I haven’t played this one but the concept is really interesting to me and I heard good things about the demo. It’s a game where you run your own newspaper and looks pretty great. The game is available in Early Access on Steam.

Other People Talking About Games
There’s also lots of other people talking about indie games that you should follow:

And then finally on my YouTube channel I’ve uploaded footage of games I’ve played like Super Space Club, Glypha: Vintage, and Dead Petals Bliss.

Starting a YouTube Account

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So a few days ago I’ve started uploading videos to my YouTube account, partially to share my experiences playing games, partially to spread awareness of indie games I enjoy, and also to document games that don’t have videos, either because they’re lost games or because they’re indie games that are just too obscure.

Since my interest is mostly in adventure games and interactive fiction, I guess my question now is: What is the ideal Let’s Play for an indie game developer’s game? The last thing I want to do is cost a sale of a game I liked because someone just watched my playthrough instead. Commentary or no? Just the first 30 minutes of a game and then I just play the rest offline? Does this differ if the game is free vs being paid? I’m guessing it’s fine to play through an entire thing if it’s a demo or free game. So what I may do is if it’s a new commercial game, I’ll play for 30-60 minutes and then do the rest offline? But I would love to know from game developers what they think in the comments or replies.