I’ve decided it now, 2025 is the year of Asheron’s Call. It’s a game I’ve always wanted to play since Asheron’s Call 2 was the first MMO I ever played and I’m taking the time now to revisit it. That might seem a little odd since it was a MMO that started in 1999 and shut down for good in 2017, but fans have managed to keep it alive!
If you would like to play it, the instruction on this website are actually very straightforward and were easy for me to follow. The page has a warning for it at the bottom, but a few folks including myself have run into an issue where the game crashes when you sign in and it’s easily fixed by just playing in Windowed Mode.
Once you have this all setup, you just need to pick a server to play on. A couple of us in the Discord for Twitch streamer BogusMeatFactory (Twitch link) are going to be playing a retail release Asheron’s Call fan server called Levistras that also enforces a strict, no-bot policy. This means we will experiencing the retail game experience around the era of 2004-ish. If you are interested in playing with us, you can download the launcher through the link here.
This is an easy executable that is your hub portal to all of the different servers available now and is incredibly easy to use! The server we will be playing on is the Levistras server, whose information can be found at the link here.
I also highly recommend checking out the manual. The game actually has a solid in-game tutorial but the manual provides all the lore and additional info for playing the game. It’s readable in the browser on the Internet Archive.
You’re more than welcome to join me! I will be on Fridays around 9pm EST, but playing other times as well, with a character named TofuPirate. I’ve only played a tiny bit of the game so far but I’m having a good time and very excited to play more of it.
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.
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.
After developing the massive hit Dune 2, Westwood was looking to make another RTS but set in a property they owned and created Command & Conquer. C&C is about a war between two factions, the Global Defense Initiative, which is a military force setup by the United Nation, and the Brotherhood of Nod, a terrorist cult. The war is focused on their fight over a resource called Tiberium, a material that has arrived from space and is a powerful resource, but at the expense of it destroying the planet wherever it grows. Bretty Sperry, a producer for the game, had slowly been developing a fictional universe for a few years which would set the foundation for the C&C universe. The game was designed to be set in the very near future since modern military combat was on the minds of folks at the studio due to news events at the time such as the Gulf War. From watching the GDC classic game postmortem, development of the game seemed to go along very smoothly. It was described as a very collaborative environment and morale was generally high during development.
It’s clear from playing it that a great amount of love went into each part of the game. Even the installation process is very elaborate and visually impressive. The game was originally planned to have mission briefings given through text but after some testing, realized this was too boring and went with the approach to have actors in live action video describing the mission to you with graphics overlaid to show you what you needed to do on the mission’s map. Since it was still the early days of full motion video, the game’s cutscenes were very loosely put together. The set, consisting of just a green screen, was a room that Westwood rented out on the other side of the office building they were in, and Eric Gooch, who oversaw video and film and played the Brotherhood of Nod’s Seth, just bought some linoleum from a store and painted it green. Rewrites frequently happened too, including on the set on the days of filming. Joe Kucan, who worked in casting and direction at Westwood and had even voice acted in some of their previous games, portrayed the game’s main villain Kane, the head of The Brotherhood of Nod. His performance is the standout in the game’s cutscenes and even in later games when Westwood started to hire famous actors for their games, his scenes usually remained the most interesting. Many of the other actors in the game came from the Las Vegas strip, since Westwood Studios was in Las Vegas, while others were employees of Westwood or people that the developers knew. Even if they’re low budget, the cutscenes are very charming in their unique and cheesy way. It’s not quite as intentionally campy as the cutscenes would be in later games but they never feel cringeworthy either and are a nice little reward after completing levels.
Screenshot of the game from the remastered collection
Multiplayer also contributed to the game’s success. The game supports 4 players over a network. It helped that the game shipped on two CDs, one for the GDI campaign and one for the NOD campaign, so two people could play multiplayer with one copy of the game. Multiplayer would be a big component of future games as well and there was even a multiplayer focused Command & Conquer game released in 1997 called Command & Conquer: Sole Survivor. This was a multiplayer only game where players each controlled one unit and would explore a map and gain power ups, while engaging in deathmatch with other player controlled units. The game was considered a disaster at the time but could maybe be considered a proto-MOBA today.
The memorable soundtrack by Frank Klepacki, which took advantage of the switch to CD and streaming audio, features a mix of influences from basically everything and determined the sound for the rest of the franchise. Westwood must have been confident in how great their soundtrack was because the game also features a Jukebox option, which lets people select what songs they want to use while they play. Highlights of the soundtrack include the tracks Mechanical Man and C&C Thang.
The game is a bit dated due to all the advances made in the genre since it has been released but I was pleasantly surprised that most of the game still held up for me and it was very enjoyable to revisit. It featured enough quality of life items like being able to select multiple units at once to attack that kept it from feeling too dated for me to enjoy, like Warcraft 1 and Dune 2. The story and cutscenes were good, cheesy fun that kept me playing and there’s still nothing else like that game’s soundtrack outside of the C&C series. It might be a little harder for people with no nostalgia for 90’s PC games to get into it, but if you grew up playing the game or other RTS for the era, consider going back to play Command & Conquer.
Screenshot of the upscaled video
In 2020, we got the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection, a compilation of Command & Conquer, Command & Conquer: Red Alert, the expansions for both games and levels that were originally exclusive to console versions of the game. The compilation was developed by Petroglyph, a company started by ex-Westwood employees, so it was nice to see the original creators of the series still involved in some capacity. It’s a pretty nifty package and the unused and behind the scenes videos from the making of the original game are interesting. The game also features some upscaled videos and 4K graphics for the art, to mixed results. The updated art looks fine enough but I turned that off and the upscaled videos mostly look ok but occasionally you’ll get the thing in AI upscaled art where a frame will look off and you’ll see a nightmarish image for one frame. That said, it’s not a bad way to check out the game if you’re apathetic about playing the original DOS version, and the accessibility options are nice too. Electronic Arts also released the source code for the original game, which has been released as freeware, so people have made some nice source ports and mods for the game as well.
Developer: Hypnotix, Inc. Publisher: DreamCatcher Interactive Year: 1997 Genre: Arcade; Interactive Movie
By the end of the 90’s it was becoming clear that the world of FMV wasn’t going to be the next place for Hollywood to conquer, but that didn’t stop some companies from still giving it a shot. Soldier Boyz is a rail shooter based off a movie of the same name created for HBO, and brings back the cast from the film to shoot new scenes for the game two years later. A billionaire has hired a Vietnam vet and convicts who have been sentenced to life to rescue his daughter from terrorists in Vietnam. Unfortunately, the heroes of the story immediately come off as unlikable. When the Vietnam vet (played by Michael Dudikoff) proposes his plan to use prisoners from a youth detention center (who are all played by much older actors) to rescue the woman, the billionaire father expresses concern that kids are being sent to die. These concerns are immediately shrugged off by our hero, who then hosts interviews to assemble his team. It’s possible that the writing in the original movie was better, unlikely since it received universally negative reviews, but every character in this game who is not a white person is written to be a racist stereotype.
See that blurry mess to the right of the tree? That’s an enemy
I suppose some people would be able to move on from this intro if the game improved. The game doesn’t focus on the characters much after this and most of the FMV in the rest of the game is focused on shooting people in Vietnam and the player character reacting to it. However, the actual gameplay is awful as well. As critical as people were of games like Mad Dog McCree and Space Pirates, at least they were functional. The mouse went where you moved it, fired when you clicked the left mouse button, and you could see what was happening on the screen. Soldier Boyz is unable to even do this. I constantly fought with a lag on the mouse movements that made it difficult for me to shoot anyone. The game is a blurry mess too. The video quality is ridiculously poor and the scenes are disorienting. Nearly every time you shoot someone, the camera cuts to your character’s reaction and then cuts to another character. I’m not especially a fan of the wave of FMV rail shooters that we saw in the 90’s but this is the worst one.
I wouldn’t recommend the game to anyone but if you really must play it, it is playable in ScummVM. The engine used in this game was used for a few other games, although I know nothing about them other than Marvel Comics Spider-Man: The Sinister Six also being a poor game from the streams I saw of it.
There’s no reason to play this game and nothing interesting about it other than film director Darren Aronofsky helped shoot scenes for the game. It’s unfortunate that everything he shot is basically unwatchable but at least he would go on to better things (well, most of the time).
Soldier Boyz is no longer available for sale but it’s probably available on your abandonware site of choice.
Developer: ICOM Simulations, Inc. Publisher: Mindscape Year: 1985 Genre: Adventure
This month’s game in the Adventure Game Club discord is Deja Vu: A Nightmare Comes True so I have finally played through that for the first time after it sitting in my backlog for forever. It’s the first MacVenture by ICOM and man, weird game. I’ll mention the stuff I was frustrated with but it’s difficult to get too mad at the game when it’s one of the first point-and-click adventures ever, it’s short, and the Macintosh art really holds up!
The premise of the game is that you wake up in a toilet stall and must find out who you are, what happened to you, and why. In addition to that, you have also been injected with something and have a limited amount of time to find a cure. That’s really all there is to it! You walk around a city and various buildings, occasionally taking a taxi to different regions to do some more exploration, but luckily it’s a pretty small world, since you will need to restart a few times from softlocks and optimizing your path because of the time limit. The time limit is also the source of most of my frustration with the game. It’s not that aggressive of a time limit but every single action takes time off, making it feel like you’re being punished for basic actions in any adventure game like examining objects. That’s right, even looking at an object means time is removed and I have to reload to get that time back. I’m generally a hater of time limits in adventure games anyway because to me, part of the appeal is an adventure game is that I usually have a world to explore and now the game wants me to focus instead on creating an optimal path instead of focusing on the world building. Oh well.
Eventually you do find a cure and can explore more freely. Even without the time limit though, the game still feels a bit tedious because of the verb system. I honestly don’t mind it that much, but there’s parts where it feels like a slog, such as having to pay the cab driver in quarters. But this is where you can tell it’s an early graphic adventure and they’re trying to figure out how to adapt that.
Another part of the game I really disliked is the occasional racist joke and frequent fatphobic jokes. The game cannot get enough of making fat jokes and it really sucks!
What did I actually like about the game? Well, the art is great. Black and white art on the Macintosh is incredibly charming to me and what you see here is great. The versions on the Apple IIGS and NES with color art aren’t bad either. I guess it just comes down to what you like more. The puzzles aren’t usually that difficult either, it’s just a time limit you fight with and busy work with the verbs. It’s also short! That sounds like I’m making fun of the game but I do like short games.
Eventually I want to play the rest of the Macventures. I’ve poked at Uninvited and Shadowgate before and knew of the time limit in the latter, but I guess every Macventure has a time limit? Come on man, just let me vibe and look at the great art.
So who would I recommend this to? I guess adventure game history nerds? It’s not actually painful, especially if you are ok with peeking at a walkthrough, the art is great, and parts of the writing are charming too.
Deja Vu: A Nightmares Comes True is available on Steam and includes the Macintosh and Apple IIGS versions.
Moved these to Friday because it felt weird doing them on Monday. Anyway, video games. So much has come out in the last two weeks and I cannot play it all so I’m just going to breeze through it. Multiple things I’ve been waiting a long time for too. The last month has been ridiculous.
UFO 50 (Steam) is probably the big one. Everyone probably knows about this one but it’s nice seeing it finally come out and being so well received too.
TTRPGs for Accessible Gaming Charity Bundle (Itch) will let you buy a bunch of TTRPGs for $10 or more and the money goes to charity.
Judero (Steam) is another one I’ve been waiting for a long time too. Action rpg with stop-motion art is so laser targeted towards my interests.
I was a big Void Bastards fan so it’s really nice to see the devs do a spiritual sequel with a western theme with Wild Bastards (Steam).
Every version of the Videotome engine results in some cool interactive fiction games so I’m happy we now have a new version (Itch.io) that adds some dating sim inspired functionality.
The new remaster of the first Broken Sword game (Steam) looks pretty snazzy.
EyeOS (Itch.io) combines two of my favorite things, fake OS desktops and games made in Decker.
We got two King’s Quest fan games recently! One is a demake (site) of the classic King’s Quest 6 and it’s really well done and a fan project that took many years for the dev to create.
It Takes Two to Tangle (site) is a fan game sequel to the game King’s Quest 7. It does an incredible job emulating the art style from that game and feels like an evolution of the mid-90s style of Sierra point-and-click adventures, which I’ve always been a fan of. The production values for this game, which I believe was mostly by one developer but had a small time outside of it, is astonishing.
Hi, here’s a list of indie games that I think are pretty cool. Also the Itch.io sale is happening now, go buy some games from there. I’m hoping to continue doing these on a more regular basis than once a month. Also consider subscribing to the RSS feed for future blog posts! If you recently released something that you want included, always feel free to send me an email, message me on social media (see About page), or just reply to this post with a link to your thing to let me know it’s out.
A new Indiepocalypse is out! I’m excited that it has a new game by Hexcavator.
Flickship allows you to easily create cool space ships.
Sprout Yeartide is a new, short game by Princess Internet Cafe. I’m a big fan of their games and love seeing all the branches that have come from Bitsy. This was made in binksi hd, which is based on Binksi, a fork of bipsi that lets you create games using Inkle Studios‘ Ink, and bipsi is inspired by Bitsy.
A new issue of Indie Tsushin is out! I’m going to be lazy and copy the Itchio text here: “This is the 2024 May-June zine issue compiling articles from the インディー通信 Indie Tsushin blog, a handmade site celebrating and introducing indie and doujin games from Japan!” Despite my laziness, it’s a fantastic zine and website!
The Neo-Twiny Jam just wrapped up. The jam features submissions of Interactive Fiction games containing 500 words or less.
Iowa Jack and the Crystals of Chaos is a new text adventure for the Commodore 64 that is a parody of Indiana Jones and meant to have a lower difficulty level for newcomers to text adventures.
Screenshot from Paper-Girl-Chain
The menhera vn jam also just wrapped up. The jam is described as “This is a jam for games about living and coming to terms (or not) with unseen burdens, whether they be mental, emotional, physical, psychological, or otherwise.”
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!
I also helped with a games anthology that’s coming out soon. Locally Sourced Anthology I: A Space Atlas is a collection of 8 experimental games from different indie game developers. Grow tea on the Moon! Fish on Saturn! Find love on Mars! And 5 other things! Wishlist it now on Steam! It’s also coming out on Itch.io
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!
