Desert Wind

  A hunter that lurks within sandstorms!  

[sandyanmamon]

Pre-evolution: DoKunemon Main Blog: ptero-cards Location: The Great Canyon

[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.

[organical-mechanical]

Incredibly fucked up that flowering plants weren’t really a thing until the Cretaceous.

Think about it. We had all of these huge, big-brained vertebrates well before we had grass

Stegosaurus never ate fruit because fruit didn’t exist yet

I know in my heart he would have fucking loved berries

[nimadjart]

POV: you're trynna mess with the kids

[nimadjart]

As Gregor Tento awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

[tamapalace]

Tamagotchi website in 2004

[kiabugboy]

Anyone here who's into Trilobites, i got a video for you

Based on the new trilobite soft tissues discovered in a Middle cambrian Morrocan specimen that's been buried in a volcano.

Full video on my youtube channel!

Kiabugboy

Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

https://scitechdaily.com/truly-astonishing-discovery-of-500-million-year-old-pompeii-trilobite-fossils-shake-up-scientific-understanding-of-the-long-extinct-group/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381772319_Rapid_volcanic_ash_entombment_reveals_the_3D_anatomy_of_Cambrian_trilobites

Sources ^

[mossworm]

ants react

[bogleech]

“Oh that animal doesn’t LIKE you it just TOLERATES you” …..So? If that’s the most a non-social organism can feel towards you isn’t that just as special an honor as whatever it is you think affection means??

[pixeltheleopardgecko]

“This creature with no natural social instincts outside of mating allows me to freely interact with it, while causing it little stress” is fucking DOPE AS SHIT

[weaselle]

also… are you SURE? like, we’re still finding out so much about animals. Wolverines fathers, who we thought were not involved in caring for kits, turn out to travel around and collect all their kits from multiple mothers and take the whole group out on camping trips. Some spiders have tiny frog pets (!) or group up to communally raise their young. Wild sharks, crocodiles, and snakes have formed strong, documented relationships with people. 

this man Gilberto (Chito) Shedden nursed this crocodile back to health after it was shot in the eye, and they were best friends for the rest of the crocodile’s life.

this python came in out of the wild as a baby snake and curled up next to the family’s infant, Oun Sam­bat (or Oeun Sambat?) and they were inseparable for 12 years

Cristina Zenato removes hooks from sharks and they let her stick her hand down their throat to do it and they even bring other sharks who need help to see her.

It’s a relationship that goes beyond a single helpful interaction. For example one of the sharks that would show up when she first started swimming with them was a shark she called Foggy Eye who really didn’t like to be touched. One day, Foggy Eye showed up with a hook in her mouth that Cristina Zenato removed, and ever after, Foggy Eye cuddles when she visits, putting her head in Cristina’s lap and enjoying some petting

 We don’t know SO much. Some wolf spiders will adopt unrelated orphaned spiderlings and raise them. We recently discovered that the ant-mimicking jumping spider (below) produces “milk” and suckles its young until they are nearly fully grown.

SO. Don’t assume we know all about what creatures do or feel or whether or not they form social connections or bond with others.

[dancinbutterfly]

We’re told octopuses are solitary.

That’s the story.

They live alone. They die alone.

Except for Octopus City where they live in a social collective.

Except that I watched with my own fucking eyes a giant Northwest Pacific Octopus who my friend social for an aquariums interact. He hadn’t seen her in a year. He reacted to meeting us and to getting treats? But all he wanted to do was see her, touch her, show her his enrichment items. After a year he recognized her and the response was “YOUR BACK AUNTIE YOURE BACK I MISSED YOU LOOK WHAT I WAS DOING WHAT DO YOU THINK BUT YOURE BACK hi nice to meet your friends YOURE BACK.”

Fucking yeah ok 👍 solitary nonsocial. Idk. If it acts like it loves you then it does. In its way.

[mxtomituck]

The guy who literally wrote the book on wolf social hierarchies realized like pretty soon after publishing that he was completely wrong because he had only been studying animals in captivity, but the erroneous information on “alphas” captured men’s imagination so they still cling to it despite it being just flat out wrong - according to the guy who CAME UP WITH THE THEORY so you know it’s legit. Europeans who first encountered the platypus assumed it was a hoax. Knowledge is seeking the limits of our species’ understanding of the universe Wisdom is looking PAST the limits of our knowledge and staying fucking humble about everything we don’t know.

[holyhikari]

Digimon is NOT something you simply "get over." You're here forever. And that's good.

[nostrem]

what using the vital bracelet at the gym feels like

[goughie-cobler]

Like several other digimon introduced on the DMOG Etemon’s sprites have been updated since it’s introduction, however somewhat uniquely the changes to Etemon’s sprites have been to make it more bipedal as opposed to changing its orientation or changing it’s core features to make it more accurate to the colour illustrations.

[goughie-cobler]

Despite being a recognisable face from version 3 of the original Digimon vpet with a significant role in the anime Scumon’s only been a raisable Digimon on anniversary devices since, appearing on the DM20 and version 2 of the Mini.

[tanukie]

Why tf is patamon here

[nostrem]

[smallpwbbles]

I love Gulusgammamon cuz I’m so used to a dark digivolution being a mindless out of control kind of evolution where instead Gulus seems completely separate from Gammamon and has his own agenda (plus it will be so funny when he’s finally relaxed and cooperates with Hiro)

[istuilu]

did you guys notice the Digimon reference?