Spinfoam Games Blog

Spinfoam Games is a one-person indie game company in Portland OR. I make weird little niche games, odd game-adjacent toys, and things like that. If you like the sorts of things I build, you can lend your support over on my Ko-fi page!

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A set of new random generators are now available on The Merry Manticore, all related to science fiction settings: Technobabble, Fictional Particles, and Fictional Elements!

As usual, here's a handful of samples:

Close the hydrogen waveguide

Tinstrium

Psi Axinoior

Orient the fermion joiner

Xennethorium

Theta Anti-nerptatron

Invert the graviton intermixer

Verbonide

Weak Charadron

Oh, and some other update news: items that you mark as favorites should now be saved to your browser so they won't be reset from one visit to the next any more!

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Inspired in no small part by Prince Gerard's book of sword forms in Dimension 20's Neverafter season the Merry Manticore now has a "martial techniques" generator!

In fact, this is the first generator that is configurable too. You can opt for "Sensible" (loosely defined) techniques like:

The Way of Benevolence

The Ferret's Waltz

The Technique of Decorum

The Way of the Bulwark

Or get a little fancier with the "Absurdist" mode:

The Dowdy Panther of Summer

The Pheasant Above a Jug

2 Bandicoots at Lunch

The Eleventh Method of the Lychee's Vileness

Table-top role-playing and world building resources, random tables, tools, and more!

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Miserable Seasons from The Merry Manticore

The Merry Manticore now has a generator for Miserable Season names -- sort of like these:

The winter of crossbows

The generation of tainted inclinations

The blighted spring

The season of stunted desires

The generation of contempt

The season of whips

The time of putridity

The year of corroded ambitions

The year of contempt

The time of forgotten goals

It wasn't by design, but I suppose this fits in with the theme of the new year (at least in a grim sort of way).

Oh, The Merry Manticore is also on Product Hunt now. You can post feedback and suggestions there if you'd like.

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Today The Merry Manticore gets a new generator for random grim-dark soldier names!

This generator is similar to the older space marines generator from WordChanter, but has a little more variety.

Here are a few sample soldiers for you:

Rear Admiral Leo "Big Zombie" Wolfrip

Lieutenant Junior Grade Hayden Slashmarrow

Marshal Luke "The Intruder" Smashwolf

Lieutenant Junior Grade Remington Steakcleave

Rear Admiral Rose "The Thunderbird" Hamburst

Colonel Vinny "Big Barge" Minceloin

Junior Lieutenant Heidi Beefcut

Corporal Silas "Big Bulldog" Squelchham

Chief Petty Officer Gabriel "Big Mongoose" Steakslice

Brigadier General Regina "Heavy Dreamer" Breakham

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Table-top role-playing and world building resources, random tables, tools, and more!

Yesterday I posted an update for The Merry Manticore that adds a new random generator -- this time it's Dystopian Canned Foods!

I initially thought these would all be foods literally in cans but I wound up adding a bunch of other containers of dubious quality along the way.

Here's a batch of samples from the Dystopian Canned Food generator:

A plastic bottle of dehydrated crocodile paste

A vacuum-sealed sack of fermented grouse chunks

A wax-sealed pot of vinegared duck flakes

A plastic tub of jellied zucchini and cucumber

A vacuum-sealed sack of smoked lettuce

A foil pouch of pickled elk bits

A can of goat wads supplemented with barley

A corked pot of grouse meat with carrot

A tied plastic bag of goose meat augmented with corn

A steel jar of pigeon meat with bell pepper and fiddleheads

By and large I think they are suitably troubling food stuffs.​

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Today I added a weird fantasy fish generator to The Merry Manticore. Couldn't really tell you why, but it seemed like the right thing to do next.

Here's a handful of sample fish!

Lake Herlingar

Lake Mahaddo

Deep Sea Saldinnyu

Burrowing Scanglet

Ghost Saurambet

Ghost Morassle

Armored Terjacod

Bull Pomprey

Sawtooth Macarbelenne

Longjaw Pirachakoi

You can generate your own weird fish at https://www.merrymanticore.com!

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The Merry Manticore

Slightly silly procedural text generation from Spinfoam Games

It's been a long time since I had a chance to do any Spinfoam Games work, but I had a bit of a break recently and built a new set of weird random text generators!

You can read a bit more in the Substack post, or just check out the text generators at The Merry Manticore:

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The Merry Manticore's Festival Folio by Spinfoam Games

Random tables for festivals and celebrations!

Do you need to invent a festival for your table top campaign? Or maybe some sort of celebration for a story you've been writing?

The Merry Manticore's Festival Folio can help kick-start your holiday brainstorming with over a dozen random tables you can roll against to generate thousands of festival concepts.

You'll get ideas for everything from the name of the festival to how visitors are treated and what sort of snacks are served!

[wordchanter]

The Merry Manticore's Tavern Tables by Spinfoam Games

Random tables for your TTRPG tavern needs!

I've been working with randomly generated taverns so much for The Finest Taverns that I figured I might as well also make a PDF with some tavern generation tables in it for folks to use in table top campaigns.

There are more than a dozen random tables to roll against in The Merry Manticore's Tavern Tables, and you can generate thousands of different tavern names.

There are tables for atmosphere, decor, lodging, food, and animal care too!

And it's just US$2! Check it out over on Itch.io: https://spinfoam-games.itch.io/mm-tavern-tables

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Just wanted to share this extended gameplay video for "from view", my next Steam release that's arriving on September 16th.

It's an especially calm and quaint little game about exploring dioramas and uncovering hidden items.

You can see a bit more about it on the official Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1721300/from_view/

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The Finest Taverns by Spinfoam Games

Eat your way across a fantasy world!

The early access version of The Finest Taverns is now live on Itch.io!

You should expect to run into some rough edges and maybe a few bugs, but you can play through the entire 80 day fantasy tavern-crawl experience now.

Come taste the bee organ omelets, buy fancy hats, and work all sorts of odd jobs as you try to see as much of the world as you can and create the most absurd travel log possible.

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"from view" coming to Steam!

My short, quaint 3D diorama exploration game, from view, will be getting a Steam release this September!

from view is a game about changing your viewpoint to discover hidden items, reveal clues, and solve puzzles in 40 lovely diorama-style rooms.

It is very much a game about being relaxed and taking your time in pleasant spaces, so there are no dangerous creatures or stressful time limits to contend with. (And the entire game is short enough to be "lunch break friendly".)

You can see a little more about "from view" and add it to your wishlist over on Steam now.

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Another tale from The Finest Taverns

The Finest Taverns by Spinfoam Games

Eat your way across a fantasy world!

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The Finest Taverns update

I finally started getting the end-of-adventure summaries implemented for my fantasy tavern eating adventure game The Finest Taverns.

The game keeps a log of all the towns and taverns you visit and what you eat and do in each one so it can generate a sort of travel journal at the end of your adventure. This is meant to be both a fun (and funny) little souvenir of each run through the game but also as a record of what sorts of foods, jobs, and items you found in each town.

Since the world stays the same between games you should be able to use these travel logs as guidance for where to go in future runs.

Here are a few samples of these very early travel logs (with some images from Heritage Type's free illustration packages for extra flavor):

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WordSalad by Spinfoam Games

Random idea generator

A small update to WordSalad that adds video game name generation!

The generated names come in two flavors of sorts; some of them are fairly reasonable amalgamations of video game sounding words, while others are built with phrases that are intentional parodies of video game titles.

A few samples:

Poorly Illuminated Fearful Alliance

Ancient War in Glory Land

Super Errand Simulator

War for the Circle

Fall of the Vengeful Prince

Super Palace Simulator

Surreal Time Button

Penultimate Nautical Lemonade

Empire: the Wargame

Blades of the Abyssal Paragon

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The Ritual by Spinfoam Games

A pretentious game of logic

Over the past couple of days I built and released... whatever this game is.

The Ritual is a strange and very niche "experimental" game. (You are welcome to read that as code for "pretentious", "boring", "self indulgent" or even just "bad" if you like -- I wouldn't necessarily disagree with you.)

In some sense the game is just a large, ultimately meaningless, branchless dialog tree ... er, dialog trunk ... that you try to navigate through. At every given step there are one or two choices that move you forward and a couple of dozen that instantly end the game.

There are concrete reasons why certain choices are correct but they are gratuitously opaque and determining what those reasons are has been intentionally obfuscated simply for the sake of obfuscation.

I'm not sure who, if anyone, would really want to play through the entire experience -- but I'm also endlessly fascinated by people's capacity for and interest in deciphering things, picking apart details, and discovering patterns; so maybe there is some narrow band of logic puzzle fanatics that will latch on to it?

It's also very (very) loosely inspired by one of the greatest Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes -- Darmok. So that's an aesthetic to get invested in, I guess...?

[spinfoamgames]

Lots of small changes to my tavern exploration game (which I'm pretty sure will wind up being called "The Finest Taverns") over the past couple of days:

The goal of the game is to eat as many different dishes as you can, but eating at the various taverns costs money... which you will eventually run out of. So you need to be able to do odd jobs as you travel and your success at those jobs is based on a set of skills you get at the start of the game.

I've just finished adding an experience point system for those skills, along with a panel that lets you keep track of how each on is progressing. Of course, you don't gain skill experience by doing jobs but rather by eating the correct foods, so you get some notifications of experience gains any time you eat a dish.

It's up to you to figure out which ingredients in the dish led to which skill increases.

I have also started tracking when you "complete" a tavern -- which is to say when you've eaten every meal they offer. This will be an important factor in scoring at the end of the game.

Menus also have signature dishes now. These are special meals with absurd names (like "Llama in small dress shoes") and usually more ingredients than regular dishes. They'll also be worth more points at the end of a game than other meals.

Finally, the travel panel got improved a bit too. There is a simple indicator of where you came from, which prevents accidental backtracking if you lose track of the name of the town you just left; and the location you are heading to is highlighted when you are mousing over the menu items.

Plenty left to do before this game is done, but I think I'm pretty close to having a sort of "early access" version to throw out into the world.