The Flipside of Gaming
It’s been up for five days now but is at over 300,000 views, the owner of the Youtube account Newbie Indie Game Dev performed a six-day scrape of the Steam catalog back in October, and not only made a video of interesting observations, but even opened a Github project where you can download CSV files of their data. I predict that certain people will find this information very useful, or interesting, or valuable. Maybe you’re one of them?
The video (11 minutes):
Caves of Qud, after over a decade of development, finally reached a 1.0 release and has, for now at least, become the toast of the more-enlightened gaming internet. Of course there will people who will look at its time-based graphics and look down on it, and go back to their games of Call of World of Fortnight Among Us Craft Duty League. But if you’re here, then there’s a good chance that you get what’s special about roguelikes. And not just roguelikes, but classic roguelikes: heavily randomized, turn- and tile-based, and challenging. Hence, Caves of Qud.
Honestly, the roguelike scene is so large now that no one person could reasonably be expected to keep track of all of it. But there is no need to; others hold aloft that particular torch. Here’s a couple of videos, then, on getting started in Caves of Qud.
Publisher Kitfox Games (who also publish the Steam release of Dwarf Fortress) sponsored a video with “Getting Started” right in its title. Here it is (18 minutes):
It contains information on the different modes, the best starting location for beginners (Joppa), basic controls, navigating around the starting town, how to get around the world map (reminiscent of Alphaman!), how to spend kill points, how to read things, how to examine Artifacts, how to experiment with things (even if it gets you killed sometimes), how to steal things, performing the water ritual, and some combat tips.
Another, slightly longer at 24 minutes, intro video is by Rogue Rat:
It covers ranged weapons, the town of Joppa, Truekin, what to do when you get lost, some different skills to learn, gaining levels from giving books to a specific NPC, using its Crawl-type Autoexplore feature and other topics. Rogue Rat did a longer, more basic, intro video (34m) last year that went over many of the same topics as the first video here.
Interesting videos that provide a high-level look at the architectures of the two systems, both from Retro48K:
The Sony Playstation (16m):
The Nintendo 64 (18m):
I am SO ENVIOUS. Kit & Krysta, formerly of the official Switch video podcast Nintendo Minute, currently of their own projects and Youtube channel, got cell phone video of an amazing place, a location in Tokyo somewhere that gamedevs sometimes meet at, and is crammed tightly with game memorabilia. It’s almost a museum all to itself, and unlike the Nintendo Museum, seems like they don’t mind video footage escaping their confines, although on the other hand this doesn’t seem to be open to the public. It doesn’t look like a lot of people could fit in there at once, anyway!
I usually steer well clear of the hard sell, or “prompt for engagement,” when it comes to asking you to follow links and view videos from here. I figure if you’re interested you’ll click through, and if you’re not, then maybe tomorrow. But I’m breaking through that reserve just this once, as this place is amazing. You really have to see this if you have any interest in Nintendo, APE, Pokemon, Dragon Quest or their histories (12 minutes):
Our Private Tour of the Top Secret Nintendo Game Developer Hangout in Tokyo (Youtube, 12m)
This is the first part of our mega showcase from Next Fest October 2024 edition.
0:00 Intro
00:28 Mohrta
2:51 Aokaki
4:31 Second Essence
6:28 Tearscape
8:20 Cyclopean
9:29 Splintered
11:43 Kilaflow
13:47 Tenebris Somnia
15:54 The Book of Buja
17:07 Widget Inc
18:42 Journey to Incrementalia
Liam at Gaming On Linux has some further news about Funko taking down itch.io with a spurious request. Here’s a summary.
Two weird things. First, Leaf’s mother got social media messages about the problem, for unknown reasons. And Funko posted an artfully-worded statement that claimed it was a mistake without actually apologizing.
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EDIT: It appears that itch.io is back up now! It should never have been taken down, but that was still fairly quick response, I suppose.
Disappointing internet news. According to their Bluesky feed, itch.io, beloved indie gaming sales and distribution site, host to countless games both free and paid, and constantly linked to from this site and many others, is down, and the reason is Funko Pops.
The text of the thing I refuse to call a “skeet”:
@itch.io has been taken down by Funko of “Funko Pop” because they use some trash “AI Powered” Brand Protection Software called Brand Shield that created some bogus Phishing report to our registrar, iwantmyname, who ignored our response and just disabled the domain
So not only do we have Funko to blame for their DNS record not resolving, but also the relentless scourge of AI! Sure, the world sucks right now. But how does it feel, knowing that if you bought one of these creepy pseudo-cute bits of pop cultural detritus, that you indirectly supported this action?
This is late-breaking news as of this writing, so the situation might change rapidly. Or, it may not. It’s a good reason not to buy Funko items in any case!
Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.
WiggleWood is a Youtube channel that produces humorous short videos with an old-school computer vibe. They could be cutscenes from an old Sierra adventure. None are very long (the longest us under two minutes), but are entertaining enough to have a look at. Here are all five to date:
The Wizard’s Gummy (43s), what is the nature of his system of divination?
Magician’s Brick (31s), who is “Wormdal?” Later videos imply that he’s a wizard too.
The Dark Summoning (45s), here’s Wormdal. He doesn’t seem to be exceptionally evil though, just lonely.
The Magic Lamp (1m43s): The barbarian and the wizard again. It’s best to watch your tongue in matters concerning genies.
And the last one currently, The Cursed Throne (1m47s). Wormdal and the demon lady seem to have reached an accord of sorts. It’s nice to see old enchanters making new friends.
We love it when we find weird and unique indie games to tell you all about! Our alien friends to the left herald these occasions.
I found it through Metafilter (here), but it’s simple and fun enough that I felt I could extend its reach by a few more players. Alphabet Soup For Picky Eaters is a logic game, by Daniel Linssen, where you have to find some bit of text that satisfies six different hungry blobs.
It’s a very simple game. There’s no randomness; each blob is looking for a specific criteria, and most of the game is figuring out what those are. There is no penalty for wrong guesses, and you’ll have to make some to figure out what the rules are. While there are multiple possible solutions, there is one that is very apt. It’ll probably take you just a few minutes to deduce the requirements then fulfill them.
Alphabet Soup for Picky Eaters (Daniel Linssen, for browsers, $0)
GB Studio, by Chris Maltby, is fairly well-known now, isn’t it? It’s a free and open source solution to fairly easily making Gameboy roms on your own, that are properly termed not romhacks but homebrew. It has its own website and it’s available on itch.io. It was what Grimace’s Birthday, which we linked to last year, was made with.
Now there’s a heavily-modified version of GB Studio, called BB Studio, that produces NES roms in a similar manner! It’s made by Michel Iwaniec, and can be gotten from Github here. It’s recommended that you be familiar with GB Studio first, and to read the list of caveats on the page. Particularly, the NES supports fewer sprites per scanline than the Gameboy hardware does, and runs at a slower clock speed. BB Studio is also “early alpha software,” meaning, it might or might not work well for you at the moment.
While we’re on the topic I should also mention NES Maker, which isn’t free, but it also isn’t “early alpha software,” and at $36 isn’t expensive either, and is custom-built for generating runnable NES games.
On Romhack Thursdays, we bring you interesting finds from the world of game modifications.
There are lots of Streets of Rage romhacks. Just a partial list: Billy, Nick Fury, The Punisher, Nightcrawler, Ditto, Colossus, Zitz and Pimple, Wolverine, Garfield and many more than that.
Many of them seem to exist only for the questionable thrill of playing character from Property X in Video Game Y, fun for a few minutes maybe, then time to move on. They’re so disposable, and there are so many of them, that I’ve resisted linking to any of them here.
And I’m not going to claim that playing through as Max, from underground comic, cult adventure games and short-lived cartoon show Sam & Max, is much different. But if there’s any irreverent comic character that feels like they were made for this kind of beat-em-up nonsense, it’s the hyperkinetic rabbity thing themself, so please take this hack as representative of the whole. Video, two minutes long:
Max in Streets of Rage 2:
Hack (by Metal64, Ultimecia and Dazz)
Video (by RetroGaming)
This is a double review of Harold Halibut and Caravan Sandwitch both played with press keys provided by the developers.
0:00 Intro
00:15 Harold Halibut
3:03 Caravan Sandwitch
