*.Aurora.*

Know as Boreal or Zoruark too Most are reblogs, funny, things, writings and etc.but post original things too, asks are open now. For pretty things follow @beutiful-boreal

[technofeudalism]

i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.

there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.

anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.

A Better World - create an alternate history timeline

Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game

Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet

Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games

Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones

Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy

ZenGM - simulate sports

Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi

IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)

Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface

The Cafe & Diner - mystery game

The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game

Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions

Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game

Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game

Miniconomy - player driven economy game

Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes

BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators

Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil

Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.

if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.

[technofeudalism]

since this post blew up, i've been wanting to do an addition with all of the recommendations from the comments and tags. but there's a lot of them. some people might be crazy enough to sit down and seriously put them all in one post with descriptions. those people are honestly sick in the head.

anyway, here's all of the recommendations from the reblogs. not all of them are text-based, but it's a great mixture of styles. also don't forget the links in the second paragraph of the OP which will take you to FMHY where there are a bunch more games listed.

Games

A Dark Room - text-based science fiction role-playing game.

corru.observer - science fiction adventure web game.

Improbable Island - old-school text adventure game.

Candy Box 2 - incremental clicker game that evolves into RPG.

Arcanum - open source wizard clicker game.

sandspiel, Powder Game, Powder Game 2, The Powder Toy - more sand physics games.

Orb.Farm - fishtank simulator.

Façade - experimental game with a real-time interactive narrative where you try to fix a failing marriage.

The Catacombs of Solaris - trippy art game.

Yume Nikki Online - online version of the surreal classic plus fangames.

The Barncle Goose Experiment - combine element/alchemy game based on antique theories of abiogenesis.

Fallen London - free-to-play text-based open world RPG.

Nested - very unique text-based universe expanding game. described as possibly @orteil42's favorite thing he's ever made.

The Process of Elimination - interactive web novel (by @hypertextdog)

Discworld MUD - multiplayer, text-based, online game (a MUD, or text MMORPG) based on the Discworld books.

Horse Master - surreal text game about training a horse.

EYEZMAZE - flash (RIP) or HTML5-based puzzle games.

You Are Jeff Bezos - text game. spend Jeff Bezos' fortune.

The Password Game - challenging puzzle game where you have to meet password requirements (by neal)

Universal Paperclips - incremental paperclip making game.

Half-Earth - planetary disaster planning game where you try to save the world using socialism.

ChooseYourStory - community-driven website centered on CYOA style story games.

PhD Simulator - random event based text game. make your choice each month and see if you can graduate on time.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup - open source roguelike.

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - turn-based survival roguelike set in the modern day.

Nethack - open source roguelike originally released in 1987.

FarmRPG - simple, mobile-friendly, text-based farming RPG.

Kingdom of Loathing - browser-based community MMORPG.

PokeRogue - browser-based Pokemon roguelike

Tools

Text Game Builder - works in your browser, with just a little bit of Python (by @grumpygandalf)

Twine - great (free!) tool for making text-based games quickly.

Ink - scripting language for interactive fiction (also free)

Flashpoint Archive - a community effort to preserve games and animations from the web.

PICO-8 - fantasy console for making, sharing and playing tiny games and other computer programs.

Non-Games

Library of Babel - interactive illustration which attempts to simulate what it might be like to browse The Library of Babel.

Superbad - technically not a game, sprawling website full of secrets.

17776 - serialized speculative fiction multimedia narrative about football in the far-future. beautiful, creative, legendary. created by Jon Bois, a legend and one of my favorite writers of all time.

Choice of Games - text-based, choose-your-own-adventure games (interactive fiction). some free-to-play, others can be bought like an ebook.

The Deep Sea - scroll to the bottom of the ocean. encounter the humble squid and his friends (by neal)

Space Elevator - like The Deep Sea, but up instead of down. you can equip your avatar with a scarf (by neal)

Internet Artifacts - an interactive history of the early internet (by neal)

If The Moon Were Only One Pixel - scroll through an accurately scaled model of the universe.

r/incremental_games - reddit community for incremental games.

r/WebGames - reddit community for web games in general.

thank you to everyone who contributed and the creators. please be sure to show them some love where possible.

[monchursouls]

Reblogging the update too

[blonsh]

I'm a strong believer that Eva Stratt is lesbian. I'm an even stronger believer that Eva Stratt should kiss Ava from Iron Lung.

[linecoveredinjellyfish]

who wants to see the dumbest thing i've ever made

[spotforme]

Au where Ava spawns in Stratt's world and the military on the ship want to send her off to some prison or asylum as they assume she's just someone mentally ill who tried to drown herself and Stratt just stops it all like no no. i want to keep her. so Ava starts to feel more comeradery towards Stratt as a result.

Ava realizes that everyone on the ship listenes to Stratt, so with she on her side she figures out they have much more sophisticated lab equipment than the COI had ever so she marches to the lab to analyze some of the dried blood still in her hair. the new information isn't very usefull. so now she needs to know where she is and how she get here and how to go back and get everyone else left on the station, Stratt takes her to the cockpit of the ship (and queue the current csptain mysteriously falling ill) Ava is now in charge of their navigation (this isn't the first time she's been the captain on an ocean askshsnsk)

and they get closer with each other and the more the more they want to break down and let off all the weight and sin that's weighing on their shoulders becsuse they feel like the other might be the only one who'd understand but they don't because neighter knows how, they've been steeled so long thry patch up any cracks in their conviction instantly lest the small stream grow big enough to break the whole dam

it might last years, one or two on the icy seas waiting for Eva's Hail Mary to arrive from amongst the dying stars but when they do, when the beetles arrive, they bring with a way to get back to Ava's universe. so she takes all she can from this world, Stratt gives her all she can spear in her hurry to farm the tauomeba, and in the chaos Ava has to go back to her people.

the goodbyes are short, so short it doesn't really even register that they are goodbyes, but they are. they met the one person who'd understsnd them, complement them, lift them to higher highs.. and now it's time to say goodbye, but what is there to say? "i love you" because you brought so much hope for my world, hope i fought for, suffered for, hope, you understood how much i needed it. "i loved you" because you might be dead once you go back, because there's no point mourning the things you can't have, but i'll mourn, because for once i selfishly dared hope for the outcome that i alone wanted.

[cremsie]

Please be critical of what videos you see now. Even cute animal ones. Does the animal move kind of weirdly? Is the fur a little too smooth looking? Do all of the non dog animals make actions eerily similar to how a dog would do a trick, because that's what AI has the most visual training on replicating? Its movements a bit too quick and perfectly timed? Watch out. They're infecting collections of animal videos everywhere.

It is legitimately sickening.

[cremsie]

An example of what kind of a thing you need to look out for. This is not how a possum plays dead. This is how a DOG plays dead to make you laugh and get a treat. Because when you tell an AI to have it play dead its got thousands of dog trick videos to reference and very few possum ones in contrast. So its going to look like a dog. When a possum plays dead it actually looks.. yknow. Dead. It goes utterly limp and most of the time in my experience their mouth is open somewhat. They go utterly still, don't move at all. Even if you pick em up and nudge em around a bit they’ll usually be stiff as a board. There's videos you can find of people interacting with real possums when they’re playing dead and its incredibly different from the dog drop and roll we see here. It also almost immediately stops playing dead to wander away. Something a real possum most certainly wouldn't do. AI slop thrives off using these lower quality cam video styles to trick you. I've seen countless 'Security camera' footage of AI bullshit now and its got its tells but if you're not looking you can easily be deceived. Watch out. Do your part. Call it out. Make them ashamed. Pollution on the internet like this shouldnt be tolerated. Especially when its actively trying to lie to you. None of these have ever been labelled as AI because they're actively trying to sneak into your life.

[holy-leapin-splits-batman]

[tacticaltaxonomist]

This is such a fantastic example what anticipation, overshooting, and settling actually *does* in animation, especially when you're new to learning it, be that 2d or 3d.

[lukeishope]

No because like they let them pack a karaoke machine on the Hail Mary. Do you understand me. Stratt saw the Hail Mary crew having fun and singing karaoke and then she made sure there was a karaoke feature on the frickin Hail Mary for them. So they could have fun together. On their suicide mission. SHE GAVE THEM A KARAOKE MACHINE Y’ALL DO YOU UNDERSTAND, QUESTION???

[industrialdyke]

the fuck do you mean. which part of the phrase hetero jessica is against community guidelines

[industrialdyke]

this is the post i was looking for btw

[mangotealeaf]

What do you Mean Stratt and Ava(Iron Lung)s ship name is Trolley Operators that’s So Funny

[onlyplatonicirl]

Oh man I haven’t had a new interest in a while. It’s always been the same three things on repeat. I wonder when I’ll st-

Ok.

[honeyxmonkey]

Do you think Ryland ever visited one of Colt's sets once or twice, and each time every five minutes he'd get mistaken for his brother to an almost comical degree?

It became less comical for Colt the one time the stunt crew were rushing and grabbed (a very flustered) Ryland and tried to hook him onto a rig, thinking it was Colt.

The way he ran up screaming, "DAN THAT'S NOT ME, THAT’S RYLAND! DO NOT DROP MY BROTHER OFF A 40-FOOT BUILDING PLEASE!"

Jody and Ryland still laugh about it. Colt still gets anxiety thinking about it

Jody got Ryland a nametag that read "Not Colt Seavers" after that

[starrose17]

Race ya to the exit!

[starrose17]

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

They need to invent more fake celebrities like Hatsune Miku and Gorillaz and the Muppets because it's genuinely the most sustainable way to maintain a parasocial relationship with the entertainer class.

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

Kermit the Frog can never get canceled because Kermit the Frog has no agency or personhood beyond what he is imbued with by the collective labor of puppeteers, voice actors, singers, and writers. He is, along with these other examples, effectively a celebrity by gestalt. He has transcended the inherit instability of the celebrity class through diffusion of responsibility for his personhood. He is a god.

[lavalampadvocate]

[sapphic-starz]

recently i’ve been obsessed w the idea of stratt giving ava foods to try, stuff she hasn’t seen since before the quiet rapture.

mainly fruits and vegetables and stuff. shes shocked by the amount of fruit and vegetables people have, she doesn’t remember them being this readily available, but she goes to the farmers markets and there’s stores full of them. she likes oranges.

food personal to stratt, traditional german food. stratt’s worried she might not like it, but it turns to concern that ava might throw up from how fast she’s eating, but she doesnt care if she makes herself sick

actual meat, not vaguely meat flavoured rations. she actually likes some meat, she just cannot deal with anything that has too much blood/juice/fat in it

she’d eventually introduce her to the actually good alcohol they have on earth. mandatory mention that she likes bloodymarys. get it. bc it’s the ship name. i’m so creative and unique

also caffeine. stratt lets her have some of her coffee to try. she has not had caffeine in like 20-30 years. she stays up all night. eventually she gets used to it and tries some energy drinks.

[dogpuppy]

[squirrelly-13]

they got married btw

[visit-me-here-in-wonderland]

oh you’re not kidding

[blanketcoffin]

shoutout to adrian for the great view