Indie Game Roundup (Feb. 21, 2025)

February 21, 2025February 21, 2025 ~ mpklamerus ~ 1 Comment

Don’t have a whole lot to say in this intro paragraph. If you enjoy these, do a blog post with your own game and art recommendations. If you don’t have a blog, consider starting a free one on neocities or bear blog. I also have start putting more effort into my recommendation list on Itch.io if you want more recommendations. Consider starting one of those too. I’ve heard they’re way cooler and sexier than Steam Curator pages. I like these ones by Meagan and WildWeasel. And leave nice comments on things you like! Anyway, as Geoff Keighley always says, “Now more than ever, video games.”

Video Games

I have been playing adventure games my whole life. If there’s a hater of slider tile puzzles, it’s me. That said, I think landflip (Itch.io) is different enough that it’s not one of those, or at least they cracked the code and made a good one. It’s probably the best looking one too.

mausimus released version 1.0 of ShaderGlass (itch.io) last night and it does a really need CRT monitor effect on whatever game you’re playing. I tried it with Doom 2 and it was really neat. I don’t buy into the thought all old games must be played on a CRT by some folks in the retro gaming world, but it’s still fun to look at.

I haven’t played twin stick shooter roguelike Star of Providence (Steam/Switch) but I guess it just got a release on the Nintendo Switch and I’ve seen so many people praise it. It also got an update on the PC.

view of a curved bowling lane with floating stone heads. One says "Bowl" in blue letters except for a red O.

Super 10 Pin (Itch.io) just got a demo and I haven’t seen a game nail the feel of the N64 era of games like this in long time. Even it being a bowling game makes it feel like more of a N64 game to me. Fortunately it’s a good one and does more than just “roll a ball down a lane.”

Open-and-Shut (Itch.io) is a free noir sci-fi point-and-click adventure game made for the Cyberpunk Jam on Itch.

I missed this one when it came out early this month but Slender Threads (Steam) is a paranormal point-and-click adventure that I’ve seen get a lot of praise by folks in the adventure game community.

Oplero (Itch.io) is just a really solid bullet hell shmup that you can play in your browser window.

FISH FEAR ME (Steam) by Heather Flowers is possible the world’s first fishing roguelike?

Adam Saltsman has been on a roll lately with all the PICO-8 games he’s been making. His newest game Weasel (Itch.io) is a Snake-like.

SNØ: Ultimate Freeriding (Steam) looks like an incredibly chill skiing game and has a demo too!

text saying "You are inside the cave. You hear the sounds of small animals scurrying away. You look for a place to dig. You dig and find some gold coins!"

People are still making games for the Commodore 64. Pirates of the Black Seas (Itch.io) is a new text adventure available for Pay-What-You-Want created with the classic IF writing software Quest Writer by Loadstar.

Smol Gods (Itch.io) is the newest game by game dev collective PUNKCAKE Délicieux. It’s a card deck creating game where you try to have a powerful deck of monsters by drawing and swapping cards.

I love covering games by local devs and this week some students at Michigan State University have created a zero gravity horror game called BURN (Steam), which looks like if someone used the classic game Descent to make a horror walking sim (complimentary).

This bluesky post describes it better than I could, so please read that, but Fahmi Mohammad’s final game Afterlove EP (Steam) is here after being completed by his studio after his passing.

Rapture Island (Itch.io) is a low poly walking simulator where you explore an island in a relaxing environment. Available for Pay-What-You-Want.

This week’s Downpour game is Back of My Hand #HISS (Downpour site) by Florence Smith Nicholls.

guy with a small face tattoo in a large curved room looking at you and talking

Neyyah is a Myst-like game that’s been in development for quite a while and now it has a demo on Steam!

Peripeteia (Steam) is a first-and-third-person role-playing stealth game taking place in alt-history cyberpunk Poland. It has just entered Early Access and sounds wild. A lot of folks are excited for it but have recommended playing the demo first before buying it.

Star Fox-like Whisker Squadron: Survivor (Steam) has just left Early Access and is on sale as part of the full version launch.

The tabletop rpg Pale Dot is running a Kickstarter for a print run. It has already reached its funding and is just looking for additional funds to do more now. The digital version of the game has been out for a while now and I recommended it if you’re looking for an Outer Wilds inspired ttrpg.

Indie Game Roundup (Dec. 6, 2024)

December 6, 2024December 6, 2024 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Every week I slowly lose my mind as I see more takes about how no one makes interesting games anymore instead of just reading my posts and supporting the people that do. Did you know people are also already making GOTY lists even though there’s still a month left and great games being released every week? Weird shit! Here’s some of those great games! As usual, feel free to tell me about things you or friends recently made. Comments on here or through any of the ways listed on the About page are fine. I’m only one person and can only find so much. If you enjoy these, subscribe to the RSS feed and tell a friend.

Video Games

someone at a party with two other people and a birthday cake saying "Uncle Lee, I said I didn't want a party"

The AdventureX Jam has ended and now there’s tons of free point-and-click adventures for you to play on Itch.io.

Vaultron (Itch.io) is a free toy that lets you build underground cities and then you watch it come to life as elevators and trains on monorails start moving around in your city. I thought it was really impressive and hope it gets more updates.

a 5x5 grid of letters, with some spaces missing

Pym’s Daily Word Square Puzzle (Developer Site/Itch) is a brand new puzzle game for DOS. Each day reveals a new partially filled word square which you must complete. The game is available for free but the developer also accepts donations.

Botos do Diabo (Itch.io) is a short dolphin horror point-and-click adventure.

Michigan Tech University has a game making club and since I live in the state I’m obligated to report that they’ve just published a new set of games on their Itch.io page!

I wasn’t able to go to No Quarter because I don’t live anywhere near NYC but it sounds like there were neat things there, including an exhibit that involved lots of smaller games? Or something? I don’t know, I’m a dummy, but anyway it means we have new Bitsys from Rose and Adam.

low poly person walking in a foggy trail

PERSON – adventures in WORLD (Itch.io) is short and somewhat autobiographical walking sim but it’s made in the Doom engine. Or GZDoom I think? Don’t yell at me, I don’t know all the different Dooms. I just think it’s neat.

frosty the snow man jumping over a gap in the snow while something falls

Frosty’s Snowed Under! (Itch.io) is a platformer made in PICO-8 for the PICO-8 Advent Calendar. I haven’t played any of the entries in the calendar yet but I’m happy that such a thing exists. I’m not familiar with it, but I guess this is a remake of the Commodore 64 game Frosty the Snowman/Frosty’s Busy Night.

A Body Is Subsumed In The Work (Itch.io) is a browser collage game created by Hyphinett using the Flatgame Maker plugin for Unity.

LocZine (Itch.io) is a browser-based zine made in the Hypercard-like tool called Decker that’s all about video game localization.

split screen of two ninjas, each screen showing a ninja punching another. One screen says "Punch" and the other says "got punched!"

Escape From Castle Matsumoto (Itch.io/Steam) is a free game where two shinobis race against each other to recover stolen items and escape a castle. It reminds me of that old Spy Vs. Spy game from decades ago. The same developer used (I think) this engine to remake the adventure game Enclosure and experimented with remaking scenes in old Sierra adventure games. It’s a neat look!

Caves of Qud (Steam) 1.0 is out after being in Early Access for so long! I don’t have anything interesting to say about the game. It’s great. Lots of smarter people have already talked about it.

The Twine Cookbook (Store) is now available in print. All proceeds from sales go toward the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation.

Honor Bound (Steam) is an interactive novel by Harris Powell-Smith where you protect an exclusive boarding school and rebuild your life after scandal as a military bodyguard. Harris is a great writer and I really liked their previous interactive fiction writing.

GIF of furniture being bought in an IKEA like store

IKEELYA (Itch.io) is a game where you play as a disillusioned hitman who has grown tired of his day job, and dreams of becoming an interior decorator. During the day you must do hits on people so you can buy furniture at night and eventually get side gigs doing interior design. The game is available for Pay-What-You-Want.

an underground cave with various furry round creatures with wide open eyes.

Cave Hikers (Steam) is described as a relaxing and humorous 2D interactive cartoon mockumentary that follows three characters through a cavernous world, on a quest to find the mystical “cave with an infinite ceiling”. I haven’t played this one yet but I really like the art and it has a demo if you’re interested in trying it out.

Ollie-Oop (Steam) is a game about a skateboarding dog. It looks cute!

TTRPGs

Shoot the Moon (or, Die in the Labyrinth) (Itch.io) is a ttrpg created for the Minimalist Jam by Adam Bell that uses the game of Hearts as its central mechanic. Players are stuck in a labyrinth built by the Queen of Spades and held together by the power of the renegade moon and must either escape the labyrinth or shoot the moon with a huge gun.

The Devil They Buried (Itch.io) is a new solo journaling TTRPG by Kienna Shaw following an outlaw revenant’s quest for revenge.

Tiny Tome 2 (Itch.io) is a book of 50 RPG treasures from 50 different creators. It includes complete games, variant rules, one-shot adventures, and many other things. The Itch page has a link to where you can buy a physical copy too.

Indie Game Roundup (Nov. 29, 2024)

November 29, 2024November 29, 2024 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

I’m posting this one a little early because today (Friday) is the Itch.io Creator’s Day, where the site isn’t taking a cut from sales. Luckily this week’s post is much smaller than last week’s. People are doing sales as well since it’s the Autumn Sale. Go pick up a game or two! If you like these roundups, consider supporting me on Ko-Fi or buy my games!

Solitomb (Itch.io) is a dungeon crawler based on the solitaire card game made in PICO-8. It’s playable for free in the browser but also has a downloadable version for sale to support the developer.

Kid Blocks (Itch.io) is a very chill and minimalist train track building toy. I think it nails the look of wooden toy trains that a lot of us played with as kids and it was fun watching the scenes I built come to life with little people and trains moving around as I created loops of tracks and built houses. It’s just $1 too.

Meditation On Your Body (Itch.io) is a solo journaling game by the fanastic interactive fiction writer Norbez Jones. You draw tarot cards and reflect on parts of your body. Available as Pay-What-You-Want.

Advent Windows (Itch.io) is a new text adventure created by Andrew Plotkin for the Confounding Calendar 2024. The game has the clever design and great writing you would expect from one of his games. It’s free and playable in the browser. If you’ve never played a text adventure before, I think this one you could start with.

fisheye lens of a room — screenshot from thunk

Entries for the Videotome Jam (Itch.io) continue to come in. I really liked playing thunk and slime feet this week.

Fill in the [ ] CITY (Itch.io) is a Pay-What-You-Want city building ttrpg by Viditya Voleti. Sometimes you read a game at 10:30pm and go “ARGH I want to play this right now!” but you can’t because it’s 10:30pm and you simply cannot get the people together for that and even if you could you have to get up early for work tomorrow morning, come on, you don’t want to be tired all day at work. Just wait until you have a good time scheduled to play this. Chill out.

Anyway, that’s how I felt about Fill in the [] CITY.

view of a ship shooting at a lot of ships at the center of the screen

Torasu (Itch.io) is a Pay-What-You-Want love letter to the NES version of Gyruss. That version of Gyruss rules and so does this.

Sunk Cost (Itch.io) is a ttrpg for 3-5 Freebooters and one Grotto Master set in Cardinal Basin, a fantasy world that suffered an apocalyptic flood. It’s currently early in development and available to download for free.

text and images describing a sprite creature called a Fugs. It's a blue thing with a giant mouth

Sluggish Morss: The Table Top RPG (Itch.io) is a storytelling ttrpg based on the video game of the same name. This is perfect timing for me since I just started playing the dev’s game Judero and loving that. It’s currently having a launch sale where it’s available for £11.20 GBP and has a free quickstart version if you want to get a feel for what the game is like.

Games to Wishlist

Here’s a couple of games that seem neat and might be worth adding to your wishlist:

rock guy in a cave throwing a pick axe at some gems

Rock Digger (Steam) is an upcoming resource management platformer game where you explore an alien planet, dig for resources, and try to find secrets. It has a demo if you want to try it out.

Mesektet (Steam) is an upcoming sci-fi point-and-click adventure by Point & Pixel Adventures where you explore an archaeological site and discover a greater mystery.

Indie Game Roundup (Jan. 19, 2024)

January 19, 2024 ~ mpklamerus ~ 1 Comment

Despite losing my power one day this week and my internet going in and out over the weekend, I still had time to play video games. 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. Or even if you didn’t make it and you just think it’s neat, let me know!

Sylvie Miniature
Sylvie Miniature is a short challenging platformer that is playable in the browser. The source code is available too if you wanted to see how it was made.

The New Secret of Pinocchio
For the 30th anniversary of the Russian ZX Spectrum game “The Adventures of Buratino” its creator released a Windows remake of it and extended it with new material. It’s available for free on Itch.

Music Maker 95
Music Maker 95 is a little synth playable in the browser on Itch where you play with some retro sounds in an interface resembling a program from the 90s.

robocop flying and shooting at the Predator

Robocop Vs Predator
Robocop Vs Predator is a free game inspired by Game Boy games that were weird crossovers like Robocop Vs Terminator or Iron Man And X-O Manowar. It’s a very silly and challenging action platformer.

view outside of clouds and a giant tower

Slave Zero X: Episode Enyo
Slave Zero X: Episode Enyo is a free prequel to Slave Zero X, which was a recent 2D action game which itself was a prequel to Slave Zero, a 3rd person action game from 1999. I have played neither of those games but I’m excited about people making free Quake episodes to promote their game, which is what this is. It’s a lot of effort too. The 6 level episode features new guns, enemies, and soundtrack.

Boyfriend Dungeon: Life On the Edge
Boyfriend Dungeon: Life On the Edge is an official tabletop rpg based off Boyfriend Dungeon. I was a fan of the original game and also have a fascination with official tabletop rpg adaptations so I hope to play this soon. I’m also relieved that it’s not another 5E reskin and it’s a unique system based on Rhapsody of Blood and Powered By the Apocalypse.

Day of the Sandwich
Day of the Sandwich is a cute little adventure game about making a sandwich, inspired by Day of the Tentacle and made in Adventure Game Studio and playable in the browser. I didn’t even know AGS games could be playable in the browser so that alone was exciting to me. It was made for a 14 day game jam and you can watch them develop it on their Twitch stream. If you would like to make a point-and-click adventure in the free and open source engine Adventure Game Studio, I highly recommend this tutorial by Julia Minamata, who is currently developing The Crimson Diamond.

Rise to the Commander of the Wolf Triad
Rise to the Commander of the Wolf Triad is a browser game made in PICO-8 where you climb a tower and throw bombs at Commander Keen? It’s a late entry to the Toy Box Jam, which is hosted by Tom Hall (Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom) every year on Itch where developers must make a game using the collection of assets that are provided to them.

Gex Jam 2024
Do you miss 90’s platformer mascot Gex? Well there’s a jam coming up in a month where you can make anything featuring the guy.

Posts About Puzzle Games
There were two recent posts about indie puzzle games that I really liked. Thinky Third Thursday is a monthly roundup of puzzle games by the designer of puzzle games like A Monster’s Expedition, Cosmic Express, and A Good Snowman is Hard to Build. There was also this post on Cohost highlighting A TON of puzzle games.

top down view of a knight fighting monsters in a dungeon

Rogue Declan
After posting about Amiga games last week, someone mentioned this very nice looking Amiga game that was released last year. It looks like its got a boxed copy available for pre-order too.

Indie Game Roundup (Jan. 12, 2024)

January 12, 2024 ~ mpklamerus ~ 2 Comments

It is the 90s and there is time for games. 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. Or even if you didn’t make it and you just think it’s neat, let me know!

screenshot from Itch of various game covers

Solo But Not Alone 4
This is the fourth in a series of charity bundles on Itch that are made up of solo tabletop rpgs. The proceeds from these bundles go to mental health related charities and you can click on the bundle link for a description of who it’s going to this time. It’s an incredible bargain for a collection of great games and I’m proud to have my KLF-inspired game Chill Out in here.

XYZZY Awards
The winners of the 2022 XYZZY awards have been announced. If you want to see what people in the modern IF scene are up to, this is a great way to see some of the games coming from there. Since the page doesn’t link to where the winning games are available, hopefully no one minds too much if I basically copy the post but link to the games.

Best Game: According to Cain (Jim Nelson)
Best Writing: The Absence of Miriam Lane (Abigail Corfman)
Best Story: Fairest (Amanda Walker)
Best Setting: Prism (Eliot M.B. Howard)
Best Puzzles: The Bones of Rosalinda (Agnieszka Trzaska)
Best NPCs: Lady Thalia and the Rose of Rocroi (E. Joyce, N. Cormier)
Best Individual Puzzle: the escape room in The Little Match Girl 2: Annus Evertens (Ryan Veeder)
Best Individual NPC: Computerfriend in Computerfriend (Kit Riemer)
Best Individual PC: Bell Park in The Grown-Up Detective Agency (Brendan Patrick Hennessy)
Best Implementation: According to Cain (Jim Nelson)
Best Use of Innovation: The Bones of Rosalinda (Agnieszka Trzaska)
Best Technological Development: Inform 7 build 10.1.0
Best Use of Multimedia: Gent Stickman vs Evil Meat Hand (AZ / ParserCommander)

Independent Games Festival
The finalists for the 2024 IGF have also been announced. This is another great way of discovering games you may have previously missed.

New Games Everywhere
I enjoyed this video covering upcoming games that Dani Lavandula is looking forward to this year. It’s only 10 minutes long and has a lot of stuff I didn’t know about

TRAMCITY HAKODATE
This is a new game on Steam in Early Access where you are a driver for Hakodate, Hokkaido’s tram service. This cohost post does a better job explaining what the game is and the future plans for it, plus it has a link to the Steam page.

Psycutlery
Psycutlery is a platformer game that has been in development for a few years but has finally been released, and for free! It’s a beautiful looking game and I think it’s worth downloading off of Itch.

conversation between a player character and a jester

HalOPE
HalOPE is described on the Itch page as a surreal exploration/”puzzle-ish” RPGMaker game about breaking cycles and becoming whole. I haven’t played it yet but it looks lovely and is available for free.

person flipping through a horror game magazine

PC CURSED
PC CURSED is an anthology of horror games as well as a magazine, all for free. The Itch page lists all 20+ games that are included in the anthology.

Thinky Games
If you’re looking for more puzzle games to play, ThinkyGames.com has a good post covering games from two recent game jams.

DUSK
DUSK is a new sci-fi rules-lite tabletop rpg from Gila RPGs. DUSK uses the LUMEN 2.0 system, and is a diceless RPG focused on resource management rather. The core rules for the game are available for free!

Amiga Games
It also felt like a lot of new games for the Amiga were released this week, at least from looking at Indie Retro News. There was Ami-H.E.R.O, an update of Activision’s H.E.R.O., a port of the arcade version of Tetris, a news update about a top-down arcade game called Hyperborea Resurrected, and news about a dungeon crawler called Dungeonette.

If you enjoyed this post, you can find ones from previous weeks here

New Year’s Resolution Mechanic

January 7, 2024 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Prismatic Wasteland has issued a challenge to blogs to create a new resolution mechanic for tabletop rpgs.

My challenge is thus: In January 2024, come up with a new resolution mechanic for a TTRPG and give it a name. It doesn’t need to be good (in fact, most the good ones have probably already been taken). It just needs to be new! You don’t need to plan to use it in your games; it can be absolute detritus for you. But one blogger’s trash is another designer’s treasure. You never know how great an impact one throwaway idea on a blog might have.

There’s already a nice list of mechanics on the page and I thought it would fun to come up with my own. This one requires a children’s basketball hoop for kids ages 18 months and up.

a photo of a little tykes basketball hoop for kids

You could probably use a basketball hoop for adults I GUESS but this is more likely to be inside a house next to your table where you’re playing a ttrpg. Anytime you have to take an action that is risky, take a shot on the basket. Making a basket means the shot was a success, hitting the rim but not having it go in means it was a success but there was a complication, and missing completely means it was a failure. You could have them make the shot from 8 feet away but feel free to adjust the distance based on the player’s basketball ability. If the character has a skill modifier bonus, the player can take additional steps towards the hoop, or steps away if they have a penalty.

#Lore24

January 6, 2024 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

This year I will be participating in #Lore24, a daily activity for folks in the tabletop rpg community to build a setting by writing a tiny bit about it each day. It doesn’t matter what part of the world you’re going to focus on that day or how much you write. It can be just a tiny bit each day. It looks like it’s something that originally started on Mastodon. This blog post has a really good description of how it works.

I’m still not sure how often I’ll share updates about it. I know eventually I’ll put it out there but I also don’t want to share daily updates. Maybe weekly or monthly? I bounced off Dungeon23, the last daily activity in the ttrpg community, mostly because I don’t really like building dungeons that much and was generating a lot of filler rooms, but this has already been more fun for me. I’m starting off with a fantasy setting inspired by the Zork games but I’m also hoping that over time it will grow into something more unique. Consider joining in!

Some TTRPGs I Liked This Month (December 2023)

December 31, 2023 ~ mpklamerus ~ 1 Comment

After a bit of a break, I started playing tabletop rpgs again. It helped that I had some time off at the end of the year and didn’t want to spend that time working on projects. Here’s some that I enjoyed playing!

My First Fansite
My First Fansite is a short solo tabletop rpg where it is the year 2002 and you are creating a site for your favorite band. The Itch page for the game has a website generator in the browser that is optional but adds a lot to the game as you build your page. This was a wonderful tribute to this era of the web and I highly recommend it if you have any nostalgia for this time.

Record Shop
I think I mentioned this one in a previous indie game roundup but Record Shop is a solo ttrpg about digging through collections of albums at a record store and writing about what you find. Record stores are one of my favorite places to be so of course I would like this.

Ex Novo
Ex Novo is a GM-less game where 1-4 players generate a playable city. The game is easy to pickup once you get in the flow of following the prompts and is written so you can play while following along with the book. My friend and I weren’t trying to build a city for a future book or tabletop rpg session so we just had fun building a little city by the sea and seeing what comes up while we play. I am not posting my map here because I cannot draw maps with a mouse, but it was a fun time.

Together Among the Stars
I’ve been a fan of the solo ttrpg Alone Among the Stars for a very long time but didn’t make time for this two player version until now. It’s a fantastic variation of the game and adding a tiny bit more complexity is fun and allows for a greater amount of detail for the planets you discover.

Alone on a Journey
Speaking of Alone Among the Stars, I also read Alone on a Journey. It’s a zine compiling three games by the designer and notes for making your own version. I had already played Alone Among the Stars and Alone in the Ancient City (both are great) but didn’t play Alone Among the Shifting Trees, which I also had a good time with. It’s a beautiful zine.

Indie Game Roundup (Dec. 29, 2023)

December 29, 2023 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Even though we’re in that weird liminal space between Christmas and New Year’s Day, where I have lost track of time and no longer know what day it is, a lot of great games were released this last week. If you recently released something that you want included, always feel free to send me an email or message me on social media (see About page) to let me know it’s out.

Winter sales!
Winter sales are still going on Itch and Steam. Go buy some neat games if you want.

top down view of santa walking around a dungeon

Who Took the Books
Your mileage on this one may vary on how much you want to play a Christmas game at this time of year but Tom Hall, creator of classic games like Commander Keen, has released a new game for the PICO-8. It’s a really cute puzzle game where you play as Santa and must find all the books in the game. It plays a lot like an adventure game where finding items will let you explore new areas. It’s also just fun seeing how much Tom Hall is involved with the PICO-8 community and is always organizing new game jams or rating PICO-8 games 5 stars on Itch.

Sewer Rave
Not a new game but Sewer Rave is now available for free/Pay-What-You-Want on Steam and Itch.io. It’s a game where you explore a rat infested sewer during a giant rave.

platformer gif of a woman turning on a bridge

Baby Time!
Baby Time! is a new game by Goloso Games to celebrate becoming a parent. It’s a Lost Vikings-style platformer where each of the three playable characters has different abilities and you use them all to solve puzzles. Congrats to Goloso Games on the baby.

Saṃsāra
Saṃsāra is an interactive poem created for the Kissinger is Dead jam. It’s a good poem and I’m also just happy that there was a jam about how awful Kissinger was and celebrating his death.

Hamayumishi: Chochin Challenge
Hamayumishi is a new side-view twin-stick shooting game by Nice Gear Games that’s playable in the browser. It’s a fun arcade game with some nice art and neat slow motion gameplay mechanic!

Against the Wind
Against the Wind is a new solo/coop fantasy tabletop rpg by Cezar Capacle that is focused on wilderness exploration and creating unique heroes. The game is technically in beta but I feel like it’s already a beautiful book and solid game, and with it blowing past its goal, will only become better. If you’ve never played a solo tabletop rpg before, I think this is a good one to start with.

Snake on a Train
Snake on a Train is a cute endless runner made in PICO-8 where you are a snake riding in a mine cart. The game was created for the Toy Box jam which was hosted by Tom Hall and is playable in the browser.

gif of an alien offering you a business opportunity

Galactic Foodtruck Simulator 2999
Galactic Foodtruck Simulator 2999 is a game created in ZZT for the DOS Game Jam, hosted by me! I’m always impressed by what you can do in ZZT and this is no exception. In this game you have 40 weeks to establish a successful food truck business in space. Playable in the browser.

Indie Tsushin: Year 1
Indie Tsushin: Year 1 is a compilation of writing found in the first year of Indie Tsushin, a zine that covers indie games and interviews game developers from Japan. Picking it up is an excellent way to support indie games coverage and make sure projects like this can continue

screenshot from a spectrum platformer game showing Daleks and the Tardis

WOOT 2023
I only found out about this a few hours ago and I don’t really follow the modern ZX Spectrum too closely so I might be screwing up the details of this but WOOT 2023 looks to be a compilation of new ZX Spectrum and apps, with a nice variety of stuff. I got excited because a dev I do follow, Sloanysoft, seems to have a Doctor Who fan game in it called Blocktor Woot in the Sloanyverse of Madness.

image of a monster exploding into pieces

FREAKHUNTER
I haven’t played this one yet but it looks like something I’ll really enjoy. FREAKHUNTER is a dungeon crawler/rail shooter hybrid and I really enjoy the low-poly aesthetic it has.

Solo TTRPGs

December 28, 2023 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Someone in a Discord channel I’m in was asking for solo tabletop rpgs to try out and these were the first ones I came up with off the top of my head. I know I’m missing out on a ton of great ones but it really doesn’t seem like a bad batch if you’ve never tried one before? Plus a lot of them were in giant Itch charity bundles so if you picked those up, you probably already own a few of these games.

The Ironsword series is good for fantasy adventuring and maybe what I would recommend if you played a lot of fantasy ttrpgs but wanted a solo one.

The Wretched is a survival horror sci-fi game played with a Jenga tower that has inspired a lot of other stuff through the Wretched & Alone framework.

Ex Novo is a city building game for 1-4 players. The designers also made one for building a dungeon. One of the writers for this also wrote a book called Virtual Cities, about cities in video games, which I enjoyed very much.

Delve is a Dwarf Fortress inspired game where you manage a Dwarf colony. The same designer also made one called Delve, which is like Dungeon Keeper and has you building a dungeon.

I just picked up Against the Wind and it’s a very solid fantasy rpg.

Rune is a Dark Souls like rpg that I heard is good. I’m a fan of other games by the designer.

Anamnesis is a solo journaling game about reflection and self-discovery.

Alone Among the Stars is a classic solo rpg where you explore space and journal about the planets you find. Plus it’s available for free/pay-what-you-want.

Dwelling is a ghost themed solo rpg where you wander your new home and conjure spectres.

Never played it but I heard Thousand Year Old Vampire is very good