Cannon Fodder of the Internet @tannimfodder - Tumblr Blog

So, I love looking through your game recs, and all of them look so interesting!

The only problem is that I have zero money at the moment, or at least zero that can be spent of games.

I don’t suppose you know any good/enjoyable games that are free or have a demo?

(There is only so much time you can spend doing housework or looking for work and I’ve replayed and replayed the games I’ve already got so many times)

It’s funny you should ask. Folks often ask me how the hell I have thousands of games in my Steam library, and the answer is, well, a substantial chunk of them are free to play. Many of them are very, very bad, but there are exceptions – I’ve placed links to the 120 or so that I’d actually recommend to other people under the cut.

A lot of these games are quite short (i.e., average playing time in the five to fifteen minute range), but they're free, so really that's good value for your money! Note: owing to the length of this list, I will not be including descriptions or content warnings – be sure to check the writeups and reviews.

I’ve marked my personal top dozen with asterisks (*). These aren’t necessarily the most approachable or well-constructed titles on this list, mind – just the ones I had the most fun with.

prokopetz

A few more that I've picked up in the months since I made the initial post, plus a number I overlooked the first time around. Again, I make no promises that any of these games are good – only that a. they're genuinely free to play at the time of posting, with no pay-to-win or DLC bullshit, and b. I enjoyed playing them.

A Game with a Kitty 1 & Darkside Adventures

Bass Monkey

Cave Crawler

Dagon: by H. P. Lovecraft

Daikaiju Daikessen: Versus (early access)

Fayburrow

Greed

Hero's Descent

Hex Rally Racers

Ibatic

Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo (demo)

Lawyer Guy: Defender of Justice (early access)

Pacifish

Penimorta

Quasimorphosis: Exordium

Shadow Burglar

Sword of Atlas

Syzygy

Time Thief

Wetware

(Note: a few of the preceding titles are demo or early access versions, so there's no guarantee that the eventual full versions will be free – I've marked which they are. If you're reading this post years after the fact and those ones are asking for money, it's not my fault!)

prokopetz

I've mostly been playing commercial titles these past few months, but I managed to squeak in about a dozen free-to-play ones as well. As always, see below!

The Dark Egg

Han'yo

Just a Humble Swordsmith

Mosaic Hearts (prototype demo)

Nohra

No More Future (early access)

Outcore: Desktop Adventure

Outnumbered

RavenWeald

Resonance of the Ocean

White Mirror

prokopetz

A small batch to kick off the year. I've included several pay-what-you-want titles published via itch.io in this set, which technically isn't free-as-in-free, but eh... close enough! Some of these are also game jam entries coded in just a few days, so set your expectations accordingly.

Agnolita

Bad Monday Simulator (play online)

Bloody Hell

Butterfly Soup (pay-what-you-want)

Decline (pay-what-you-want)

Delivery Quest (pay-what-you-want)

Dormiveglia (demo)

Face Love! (play online)

In The Rural Village of Nagoro

Legends of Astravia (demo, pay-what-you-want)

Mega Serval

Rescape (pay-what-you-want)

Super Beast Hunt

Super Drill Driver!

Utomah

Vermillion Descent (demo)

WooLoop

YuraYura!

prokopetz

A few more that I've enjoyed over the past couple of months for Easter weekend. It's a slow time of year for major releases, so this batch is mostly demos, game jam entries, and student projects, with a couple of significant exceptions. You'll know 'em when you see 'em!

The Coffin of Andy and Leyley (pay-what-you-want)

Don't Watch the Moon (play online)

Floe (pay-what-you-want)

Haunted Lands: Burial Grounds (pay-what-you-want)

HellFurnace (note: English not supported)

Junk Trash Hop (demo)

Lady Comet (play online)

Life After Magic (demo)

Light of Atlantis (demo)

Lovebirb

Melissa (play online)

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

Ogre Chambers DX

SkyIsland

Soul Void (demo)

Starburster (demo)

To Free and Love Myself

Weird and Unfortunate Things Are Happening

prokopetz

An even dozen this time around. The topic of janky indie horror RPGMaker games recently came up in another post, and there happen to be a couple of those in this batch – I've marked them with asterisks*.

Classmates*

Fragments of Euclid (pay-what-you-want)

Hellfire Pizza (play online)

How We Know We're Alive

Idol Showdown

Landfall Archives

lycoris;lastwords

Regenesis

Super Stoner Serenade

Sylvie wasn't feeling well today so she went on an adventure to meet different kittens. (play online)

There is Something in the Anderghast Mine*

Xenosis

prokopetz

This month's batch has a fair number of browser games and SAGE 2023 demos in it, but also a few downloadable full games. Owing to the number of game jams and fan expos clustered around this time of year, it's a bigger list than usual – fair warning!

Antigone Will Take The Stairs Today (play online)

Apoclueless

Beecarbonize

birdsong (play online)

Bonnie's Bakery (play online)

Bubblegum Bandit

B.U.D.D. (demo)

Custodian: Beginning of the End

Éclipse The Cat (demo)

game inside a game inside a game inside a game inside a game inside a game (play online)

Growmi (play online)

It gets so lonely here

Jimi can not read (play online)

Last Chance in Xollywood

MechaMagika (play online)

Moose Lost in the Woods

Project Sphinx

Revenge of the shadow ninja

The Secret of NecroNancy

SHIFT (pay-what-you-want)

South Scrimshaw, Part One

Space Expedition

Susan Taxpayer (demo)

Test Test Test (pay-what-you-want)

TRY AGAIN

Unsorted Horror

Weeping Rosemary (demo, pay-what-you-want)

prokopetz

Probably the last one of these I'm going to put together before the new year. If you're looking for something to occupy your time over the holidays, hopefully something on this list has six weeks worth of play in it for you.

36 apples

All Our Asias

Disfigure

Elephant Rave 2

Folder Dungeon (play online)

Franzen

Freja and the False Prophecy (pay-what-you-want, demo)

Head Over Heels

Keep the Lights On

Little Runmo - The Game

Moonring

The Nexatli Expedition (demo)

No Follow (play online)

Nymphiad

Pachinko Man (play online)

Pokini Kagura (pay-what-you-want, demo)

Potionforge (play online)

protoViolence

Southern Cross (play online)

Stares Back (pay-what-you-want)

StormEdge: Winds of Change (demo)

Tendril: Echo Received (demo)*

Tynk! and the Final Phonorecord (pay-what-you-want, demo)

Underlevel

Unnamed.

We're Tethered Together

* this one is a forum thread, and access to the files is... interestingly organised; at the time of this posting, the link to the latest demo is in post 233 (halfway down page 12 if you're using the default posts-per-page settings)

prokopetz

Happy belated New Year. My budget is still recovering from Christmas, so I've been playing a lot of bite-size free browser games these past couple of months, with some notable exceptions. Two of those exceptions are homebrew ROM images for classic consoles, one for the Super Nintendo and one for the Sega Genesis, so you'll need to supply your own emulator; I've marked which ones they are so you're not left wondering how to play a .BIN file.

Astra Hunter Zosma

Baby Time! (play online)

Carbon Steel (pay-what-you-want)

Closing at 2 (play online)

Dottie Flowers (demo, ROM)*

Galactic Foodtruck Simulator 2999 (play online)

Hamayumishi -Chochin Challenge- (play online)

Hunter Girls (demo, ROM)

Marta Explorer (play online)

Mimic Logic (demo)

Rising Up (play online)

Sealed Fortress (demo)

Snake on a Train (play online)

Swordbird Song: The Iron Owl Tower (play online)

* This one's an odd duck. It's a downloadable Super Nintendo ROM containing a demo version of the game, but the full version can't be purchased anywhere; if you want to get your hands on it, you have to follow secret instructions obtained by completing the demo, and the creator will mail you a physical Super Nintendo cartridge containing the full game. Figuring out how to play it is apparently a you problem!

prokopetz

I've been playing a bunch of homebrew titles for the Game Boy lately – yes, the original Game Boy – so that's a fair chunk of what you're getting this time. Most are playable in-browser as well; as in the previous batch, I'll specifically mark any for which you'll need to download a ROM image and provide your own Game Boy emulator.

Anguna: Warriors of Virtue (ROM)

Annihilator (play online)

Black Castle (play online)

Deadeus (pay-what-you-want, ROM)

Eldritchvania

Ex Vitro

Feud

Fractal Sailor (tech demo)

High Danger (play online)

The Melting Apartment (play online)

Nip for Speed (pay-what-you-want)

Nyghtmare: The Ninth King (play online)

The Penjikent Creature

Please, Touch The Artwork 2

Psycutlery

Sheepy: a Short Adventure

Skelethrone: The Prey

Traumatarium (play online)

prokopetz

I deliberately avoided updating this during Steam Next Fest because I didn't want to clog up the list with a bunch of games that were only free and/or had free demos for that one week. I'm also going to back-fill this update with a handful of old favourites which I just realised I'd never included in any previous instalment; a couple are old Flash games, so you may need a Flash emulator to play them – I've marked which ones those are.

16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds (play online)

20 Small Mazes

Akatori: Chapter One (demo)

Cookard

Gnarled Hag

Indigo Park: Chapter 1 (demo)

Loved (play online)

Mad Science Interactive: Evil Embryology (play online)

Mighty Jill Off

Mystic Matrix (play online)

No-One Has to Die (Flash)

Prey at the Altar (pay-what-you-want)

Rabbit Hole

Rental

Rooms

Small Worlds (Flash)

prokopetz

I finally got around to trying (most of) the SAGE 2024 demos, so here are my top dozen picks, along with many other odds and ends I've come across in the last four months. Fair warning: this is a big one!

Adventure Kitty Drill Busters: Light's Out (demo, SAGE 2024)

Aurascope (demo, SAGE 2024)

The Big Catch: Tacklebox (demo)

Blobun (demo, SAGE 2024)

Brutalist Golf

Dinner With an Owl

Dungeon Gals (demo, SAGE 2024)

Eternal Daughter*

The Final Cat (play online)

Firedog: Swooce & Rescue (demo, SAGE 2024)

First Snow (demo)

Floodcore

Foxblade Fable (demo, SAGE 2024)

Funeralopolis

Garbage Girl Louise (demo, SAGE 2024)

Home World Run (demo, SAGE 2024)

I Cannot Drown (pay-what-you-want)

Illusion Carnival

LXD :: Red Honey

Lyrestruck (demo, SAGE 2024)

A Machine That Kills You (pay-what-you-want)

> meow

NEON STRUCT: Desperation Column

Nimble Ember

Paraedolon

Plasma

The Pocket Master

Porkbound (pay-what-you-want)

Prototype N (demo, SAGE 2024)

Psychopomp

Quiet is the Eyes

RoboGAL (demo, SAGE 2024)

Secrets Under Eco

Spatial Dip (tech demo, pay-what-you-want)

Storm of the Swan (pay-what-you-want)

Trigaea

Vessels (pay-what-you-want)

vivid/stasis (early access)

Voices of the Void (pre-alpha, pay-what-you-want)

Voir Dire

Witchfall: Secrets of Emotica (demo, SAGE 2024)

Wonder Wickets

Yes, And So Our Hollow Hearts Called For Love

* This one's a freeware title from way back in 2002, so no promises that it will work in your computer without significant tinkering, or at all.

sprintingowl

Deadball

Deadball Second Edition is a platinum bestseller on DrivethruRPG. This means it's in the top 2% of all products on the site. Its back cover has an endorsement from Sports Illustrated Kids.

It's also not an rpg I'd heard about until I discovered all of these facts one after another.

I was raised in a profoundly anti-sports household. My father would say stuff like "sports is for people who can't think" and "there's no point in exercising, everything in your body goes away eventually." So I didn't learn really any of the rules of the more popular American sports until I was in my mid twenties, and I've been to two ballgames in my life. I appreciate the enthusiasm that people have for sports, but it's in the same way that I appreciate anyone talking about their specific fandom.

One of the things that struck me reading Deadball was its sense of reverence for the sport. Its language isn't flowery. It's plain and technical and smart. But its love for baseball radiates off of the pages. Not like a blind adoration. But like when a dog sits with you on the porch.

For folks familiar with indie rpgs, there's a tone throughout the book that feels OSR. Deadball doesn't claim to be a precise simulation or a baseball wargame or anything like that---instead it lays out a bunch of rules and then encourages you to treat them like a recipe, adjusting to your taste. And it does this *while* being a detailed simulation that skirts the line of wargaming, which is an extremely OSR thing to do.

For folks not familiar with baseball, Deadball starts off assuming you know nothing and it explains the core rules of the sport before trying to pin dice and mechanics onto anything. It also explains baseball notation (which I was not able to decipher) and it uses this notation to track a play-by-play report of each game. Following this is an example of play and---in a move I think more rpgs should steal from---it has you play out a few rounds of this example of play. Again, this is all before it's really had a section explaining its rules.

In terms of characters and stats, Deadball is a detailed game. You can play modern or early 1900s baseball, and players can be of any gender on the same team, so there's a sort of alt history flavor to the whole experience, but there's also an intricate dice roll for every at bat and a full list of complex baseball feats that any character can have alongside their normal baseball stats. Plus there's a full table for oddities (things not normally covered by the rules of baseball, such as a raccoon straying onto the field and attacking a pitcher,) and a whole fatigue system for pitchers that contributes a strong sense of momentum to the game.

Deadball is also as much about franchises as it is about individual games, and you can also scout players, trade players, track injuries, track aging, appoint managers of different temperaments, rest pitchers in between games, etc.

For fans of specific athletes, Deadball includes rules for creating players, for playing in different eras, for adapting historical greats into one massively achronological superteam, and for playing through two different campaigns---one in a 2020s that wasn't and one in the 1910s.

There's also thankfully a simplified single roll you can use to abstract an entire game, allowing you to speed through seasons and potentially take a franchise far into the future. Finances and concession sales and things like that aren't tracked, but Deadball has already had a few expansions and a second edition, so this might be its next frontier.

Overall, my takeaway from Deadball is that it's a heck of a game. It's a remarkably detailed single or multiplayer simulation that I think might work really well for play-by-post (you could get a few friends to form a league and have a whole discord about it,) and it could certainly be used to generate some Blaseball if you start tweaking the rules as you play and never stop.

It's also an interesting read from a purely rpg design perspective. Deadball recognizes that its rules have the potential to be a little overbearing and so it puts in lots of little checks against that. It also keeps its more complex systems from sprawling out of control by trying to pack as much information as possible into a single dice roll.

For someone like me who has zero background in baseball, I don't think I'd properly play Deadball unless I had a bunch of friends who were into it and I could ride along with that enthusiasm. However as a designer I like the book a lot, and I'm putting it on my shelf of rpgs that have been formative for me, alongside Into The Odd, Monsterhearts, Mausritter, and Transit.

moonlight-fox

Certainly sounds intriguing. Sports simulation is a genre I'm constantly intrigued by, though the only play example I've had is playing the boxing simulation Title Bout with my now husband.

For folks not familiar with baseball, Deadball starts off assuming you know nothing and it explains the core rules of the sport before trying to pin dice and mechanics onto anything.

Meaning it should neatly bypass the main reason I've always struggled to get into sport - Most sports, at least most mainstream sports, are presented with an assumption that you're somehow able to magically osmosed the rules without ever having been taught them. Including by people who's job is - theoretically - to teach people the sport such as PE teachers.

sprintingowl

I did learn some baseball terminology from reading it! I had previously not known there was a difference between a double and a double play, and I'd had only a peripheral awareness of what the dead ball era was.

That said, I don't think I'd recommend this as a text for teaching the rules of baseball. Once you get past the brief overview section, it still takes a second to teach important concepts, but it's doing this alongside a *lot* of system mechanics.

Something like PBS' Baseball For Beginners might be better for getting a ground level understanding of the rules.

Baseball is a game played between 2 teams of 9 players each. The team with more runs at the end of nine innings is the winner of the game.

prokopetz

Reblogging this promo for the benefit of folks in a recent thread speculating about what tabletop RPGs might have looked like if they'd grown out of early 20th Century tabletop baseball simulators rather than mid 20th Century historical miniatures wargames. Deadball isn't exactly that – it still has a great deal of the miniatures wargame in its DNA – but its author is clearly well versed in old-school tabletop baseball simulators like APBA Baseball and its immediate predecessors, and a lot of Deadball''s mechanics show this influence.

sprintingowl

I'd *love* to see more ttrpgs evolved from baseball simulators, and I hadn't realized at all that they went back to the early 1900s.

I guess you could go d&d's route and make a super detailed simulation of a single player's career and then start slowly bloating the narrative elements and simplifying the simulationism, and I think you might get something that has in a crablike manner become kinda similar to a modern journaling game.

But I think baseball-derived ttrpgs could get way weirder than that.

What happens when you try to storytell Conan The Barbarian through the mechanics of baseball?

How much of the 70s boom ends up looking like Ars Magica?

Hell, what does a 1980s baseball-derived horror rpg look like?

prokopetz

Topic: the work of pre-20th Century popular fiction which would most benefit from being adapted as an anime with a tournament arc.

tannimfodder

C'mon, we all know Grimms' Fairy Tales is literally built for a monster mash anime adaptation with a tournament throwdown arc.

#anime #grimms' fairy tales #prokopetz #tournament

nakamorijuan

SONIA - 天地無用! SONIA - Tenchi Muyo! Tenchi Muyo! (TV Series) - Opening Theme

shencomix

ok but what are your actual thoughts on Mesmerizer by 32ki featuring hatsune miku and kasane teto

It's good! The music video is absolutely choice and the song by itself is tight but just not my fave personally -- I can see it being somebody's fave for sure, and can see why people love it. 👍

My favorite is another Kasane Teto joint, Fukkireta. (WARNING: LOUD LMAO)

I also really love this one.

But overall I don't know a whole lot of Vocaloid stuff, especially recently, so if y'all have any recommendations that have the energy of one of those above, I'd love to hear them.

BE MY PANDORA.

moss-sprout

I'm starting a collection

ahtqueenuwu

RABBIT HOLE ll TADC Meme Animation ll WARNING FLASHING LIGHTS ll

I’m so proud on this Animation, but I wish I could have posted this sooner, I was busy had to move she dupes to finish this but itmwas worth it ❤️

dragon-creates

QUEEN IS BACK WITH THE TALENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

prokopetz

Recently I've been wanting to play a metroidvania, and I realized I don't have that many in my backglog. I was looking through some of your game recs like the free games post which made me think to ask you (since you're a Metroidvania Person). So: I was wondering if you had any recommendations for metroidvanias? Ideally on the cheaper side (like, under $10).

Cheap metroidvanias which I'd actually recommend, eh? In the interest of keeping this list relatively short, I'm going to construe the term "metroidvania" narrowly and exclude anything which isn't a 2D side-scrolling platfomer. (i.e., so 3D exploration platformers, top down Zelda-likes, etc. are off the table.) I'll also warn you that I have a fairly high tolerance for jank, so maybe check the reviews first!

Anyway:

A Game with a Kitty 1 & Darkside Adventures*†

Alwa's Awakening^

Aquaria†

Axiom Verge 2^

Blue Rabbit

Dreaming Sarah

Eldritchvania*

Environmental Station Alpha

Ex Vitro*

Flynn: Son of Crimson^

forma.8

Frauki's Adventure!

Gato Roboto^

Grizzland

Guardian

Hunter's Legacy

IN THE DARK

Kalinur

Lorera*

Maya Star

Mech Chip

The Messenger^

Mini Ghost

Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight

Moonlaw*

Mystik Belle^

Nyaruru Fishy Fight

Omega Strike

OUTBUDDIES DX^

Pankapu^

PSYCRON

qomp

Saira*†

Simona's Requiem

SJ-19 Learns To Love

Souldiers^

Spooky Ghosts Dot Com

Sun Wukong VS Robot

Super Skelemania

Tiny Dangerous Dungeons

Trash Quest

Treasure Hunter Man 2^†

Treasures of the Aegean^

The Vagrant^

Visual Out

Wenjia

Wild West Crops

William and Sly: Classic Collection*

Xenosis*

Zapling Bygone^

* free ^ on sale at the time of this posting; may not still be under $10 if you're viewing this post after the sale ends † older title that's not 100% compatible with modern OSes, so you may need to do a lot of fiddling to get your gamepad working

lueduar01-deactivated20250112

THE AMAZING DIGITAL CIRCUS - OVA 1995

FULL SET!

prokopetz

So, I love looking through your game recs, and all of them look so interesting!

The only problem is that I have zero money at the moment, or at least zero that can be spent of games.

I don’t suppose you know any good/enjoyable games that are free or have a demo?

(There is only so much time you can spend doing housework or looking for work and I’ve replayed and replayed the games I’ve already got so many times)

It’s funny you should ask. Folks often ask me how the hell I have thousands of games in my Steam library, and the answer is, well, a substantial chunk of them are free to play. Many of them are very, very bad, but there are exceptions – I’ve placed links to the 120 or so that I’d actually recommend to other people under the cut.

A lot of these games are quite short (i.e., average playing time in the five to fifteen minute range), but they're free, so really that's good value for your money! Note: owing to the length of this list, I will not be including descriptions or content warnings – be sure to check the writeups and reviews.

I’ve marked my personal top dozen with asterisks (*). These aren’t necessarily the most approachable or well-constructed titles on this list, mind – just the ones I had the most fun with.

prokopetz

A few more that I've picked up in the months since I made the initial post, plus a number I overlooked the first time around. Again, I make no promises that any of these games are good – only that a. they're genuinely free to play at the time of posting, with no pay-to-win or DLC bullshit, and b. I enjoyed playing them.

A Game with a Kitty 1 & Darkside Adventures

Bass Monkey

Cave Crawler

Dagon: by H. P. Lovecraft

Daikaiju Daikessen: Versus (early access)

Fayburrow

Greed

Hero's Descent

Hex Rally Racers

Ibatic

Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo (demo)

Lawyer Guy: Defender of Justice (early access)

Pacifish

Penimorta

Quasimorphosis: Exordium

Shadow Burglar

Sword of Atlas

Syzygy

Time Thief

Wetware

(Note: a few of the preceding titles are demo or early access versions, so there's no guarantee that the eventual full versions will be free – I've marked which they are. If you're reading this post years after the fact and those ones are asking for money, it's not my fault!)

prokopetz

I've mostly been playing commercial titles these past few months, but I managed to squeak in about a dozen free-to-play ones as well. As always, see below!

The Dark Egg

Han'yo

Just a Humble Swordsmith

Mosaic Hearts (prototype demo)

Nohra

No More Future (early access)

Outcore: Desktop Adventure

Outnumbered

RavenWeald

Resonance of the Ocean

White Mirror

prokopetz

A small batch to kick off the year. I've included several pay-what-you-want titles published via itch.io in this set, which technically isn't free-as-in-free, but eh... close enough! Some of these are also game jam entries coded in just a few days, so set your expectations accordingly.

Agnolita

Bad Monday Simulator (play online)

Bloody Hell

Butterfly Soup (pay-what-you-want)

Decline (pay-what-you-want)

Delivery Quest (pay-what-you-want)

Dormiveglia (demo)

Face Love! (play online)

In The Rural Village of Nagoro

Legends of Astravia (demo, pay-what-you-want)

Mega Serval

Rescape (pay-what-you-want)

Super Beast Hunt

Super Drill Driver!

Utomah

Vermillion Descent (demo)

WooLoop

YuraYura!

prokopetz

A few more that I've enjoyed over the past couple of months for Easter weekend. It's a slow time of year for major releases, so this batch is mostly demos, game jam entries, and student projects, with a couple of significant exceptions. You'll know 'em when you see 'em!

The Coffin of Andy and Leyley (pay-what-you-want)

Don't Watch the Moon (play online)

Floe (pay-what-you-want)

Haunted Lands: Burial Grounds (pay-what-you-want)

HellFurnace (note: English not supported)

Junk Trash Hop (demo)

Lady Comet (play online)

Life After Magic (demo)

Light of Atlantis (demo)

Lovebirb

Melissa (play online)

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

Ogre Chambers DX

SkyIsland

Soul Void (demo)

Starburster (demo)

To Free and Love Myself

Weird and Unfortunate Things Are Happening

prokopetz

An even dozen this time around. The topic of janky indie horror RPGMaker games recently came up in another post, and there happen to be a couple of those in this batch – I've marked them with asterisks*.

Classmates*

Fragments of Euclid (pay-what-you-want)

Hellfire Pizza (play online)

How We Know We're Alive

Idol Showdown

Landfall Archives

lycoris;lastwords

Regenesis

Super Stoner Serenade

Sylvie wasn't feeling well today so she went on an adventure to meet different kittens. (play online)

There is Something in the Anderghast Mine*

Xenosis

prokopetz

This month's batch has a fair number of browser games and SAGE 2023 demos in it, but also a few downloadable full games. Owing to the number of game jams and fan expos clustered around this time of year, it's a bigger list than usual – fair warning!

Antigone Will Take The Stairs Today (play online)

Apoclueless

Beecarbonize

birdsong (play online)

Bonnie's Bakery (play online)

Bubblegum Bandit

B.U.D.D. (demo)

Custodian: Beginning of the End

Éclipse The Cat (demo)

game inside a game inside a game inside a game inside a game inside a game (play online)

Growmi (play online)

It gets so lonely here

Jimi can not read (play online)

Last Chance in Xollywood

MechaMagika (play online)

Moose Lost in the Woods

Project Sphinx

Revenge of the shadow ninja

The Secret of NecroNancy

SHIFT (pay-what-you-want)

South Scrimshaw, Part One

Space Expedition

Susan Taxpayer (demo)

Test Test Test (pay-what-you-want)

TRY AGAIN

Unsorted Horror

Weeping Rosemary (demo, pay-what-you-want)

prokopetz

Probably the last one of these I'm going to put together before the new year. If you're looking for something to occupy your time over the holidays, hopefully something on this list has six weeks worth of play in it for you.

36 apples

All Our Asias

Disfigure

Elephant Rave 2

Folder Dungeon (play online)

Franzen

Freja and the False Prophecy (pay-what-you-want, demo)

Head Over Heels

Keep the Lights On

Little Runmo - The Game

Moonring

The Nexatli Expedition (demo)

No Follow (play online)

Nymphiad

Pachinko Man (play online)

Pokini Kagura (pay-what-you-want, demo)

Potionforge (play online)

protoViolence

Southern Cross (play online)

Stares Back (pay-what-you-want)

StormEdge: Winds of Change (demo)

Tendril: Echo Received (demo)*

Tynk! and the Final Phonorecord (pay-what-you-want, demo)

Underlevel

Unnamed.

We're Tethered Together

* this one is a forum thread, and access to the files is... interestingly organised; at the time of this posting, the link to the latest demo is in post 233 (halfway down page 12 if you're using the default posts-per-page settings)

prokopetz

Happy belated New Year. My budget is still recovering from Christmas, so I've been playing a lot of bite-size free browser games these past couple of months, with some notable exceptions. Two of those exceptions are homebrew ROM images for classic consoles, one for the Super Nintendo and one for the Sega Genesis, so you'll need to supply your own emulator; I've marked which ones they are so you're not left wondering how to play a .BIN file.

Astra Hunter Zosma

Baby Time! (play online)

Carbon Steel (pay-what-you-want)

Closing at 2 (play online)

Dottie Flowers (demo, ROM)*

Galactic Foodtruck Simulator 2999 (play online)

Hamayumishi -Chochin Challenge- (play online)

Hunter Girls (demo, ROM)

Marta Explorer (play online)

Mimic Logic (demo)

Rising Up (play online)

Sealed Fortress (demo)

Snake on a Train (play online)

Swordbird Song: The Iron Owl Tower (play online)

* This one's an odd duck. It's a downloadable Super Nintendo ROM containing a demo version of the game, but the full version can't be purchased anywhere; if you want to get your hands on it, you have to follow secret instructions obtained by completing the demo, and the creator will mail you a physical Super Nintendo cartridge containing the full game. Figuring out how to play it is apparently a you problem!

prokopetz

I've been playing a bunch of homebrew titles for the Game Boy lately – yes, the original Game Boy – so that's a fair chunk of what you're getting this time. Most are playable in-browser as well; as in the previous batch, I'll specifically mark any for which you'll need to download a ROM image and provide your own Game Boy emulator.

Anguna: Warriors of Virtue (ROM)

Annihilator (play online)

Black Castle (play online)

Deadeus (pay-what-you-want, ROM)

Eldritchvania

Ex Vitro

Feud

Fractal Sailor (tech demo)

High Danger (play online)

The Melting Apartment (play online)

Nip for Speed (pay-what-you-want)

Nyghtmare: The Ninth King (play online)

The Penjikent Creature

Please, Touch The Artwork 2

Psycutlery

Sheepy: a Short Adventure

Skelethrone: The Prey

Traumatarium (play online)

prokopetz

One of my favourite recurring tropes in children's and fantasy media is small, whimsical creatures randomly being depicted as extremely litigious. They're three apples tall and live in little mushroom houses and spend their time singing and dancing and making wine out of sunlight and morning dew, and then there's an Incident and suddenly they have judges and bailiffs and a thousand years of abstruse jurisprudence which they cite from a big book of statutes and precedents which is just regular size in human terms but is comically large to them. Like, where did all this come from? To all textual evidence there's like twelve of you – how do you have bureaucracy?

tannimfodder

Like everything else in their small world, they stole it from the big folk.

illinicoise

“But if you forget to reblog Madame Zeroni, you and your family will be cursed for always and eternity.”

spn-fandom-breathing-heavily

not even risking that shit

codyslipring-deactivated2015060

scrolled past this, re-evaluated my life, then SCROOOLLLED back up and hit the damn reblog button.

tumblgang

She ain’t no games in real life so I take her serious all the time

Anyone with a name that starts with a “Z”, ends with an “i”, and isn’t some kind of Italian pasta, IS SERIOUS

I’m not climbing no mountain with a pig on my back, 🙅🏽🙅🏾🙅🏿 Negative.

skuubasally

Nope. I know better, have your reblog Madame Zeroni.

luckytaters

who the fuck is Madame Zeroni

saudadesinfinitas-deactivated20

Look at these stupid children who don’t know who Madame Zeroni is

drayaintshit-deactivated2019030

☝🏾😂

callmedeku24

Man lissen if you don’t know you better ask somebody AFTER you hit the reblog button

emeraldmercury

Idk who she is but I have an exam today so I’ll reblog her

haiku-robot

idk who she is but i have an exam today so i’ll reblog her

^Haiku^bot^0.4. Sometimes I do stupid things (but I have improved with syllables!). Beep-boop!

jacobmick

Because wise, I am.

seymonecristina

Oh fucks no she’s back lmao must reblog. I’m sorry guys

fandomnerd9602

Oh I’m not risking it! I’ve seen Holes and know the risks!

Keep those yellow spotted lizards away from me!!!

firegal19

Don’t know who this girl is. Don’t care. I’ma reblog this before something bad happens

rejoiceesstuff

I love myself and my family way too much for me to just scroll past this

mayhem-moth-deactivated20250415

OOHHHHH THAT LADY ALR

mersinia

I’m not sure who this is but I’m also kinda scared so reblogging to not fail my 2 exams

nando161mando

oops! it seems i tripped and dropped several million free books, papers, and other resources

https://annas-archive.org

https://sci-hub.se

https://z-lib.is

https://libgen.is

https://libgen.rs

https://www.pdfdrive.com

https://library.memoryoftheworld.org

https://monoskop.org/Monoskop

https://libcom.org

https://libretexts.org

http://classics.mit.edu

https://librivox.org

https://standardebooks.org

https://www.gutenberg.org

https://core.ac.uk

prokopetz

Tumblr 200-Word RPGs 2023

Last November, we did an informal game jam for folks who wanted to write something for Writing Month, but would prefer to write fewer than fifty thousand words of it. You can find the complete list of participants for that event in this post here. There's also an off-Tumblr archive of entries whose authors gave permission for them to be preserved here, if any of those links turn out to be broken.

Last year's collaboration went over well enough that I thought we might dust it off again this year. To be clear, this is just for fun – it's not a curated jam, and nobody's judging winners or handing out prizes..

If you'd like to throw your hat in, just follow these steps:

Step 1: If you're unfamiliar with 200-word RPGs, read a bunch of last year's entries (linked above) or browse the 200 Word RPG Challege archives at https://200wordrpg.github.io/ to get your brain-meats properly configured.

Step 2: Write your own 200-word RPG. If you're not sure whether you have 200 words or not (and with RPGs it can genuinely be difficult to tell!), you can use the word counter at https://200wordrpg.github.io/wordcount to check.

Step 3: Reblog this post and append your 200-word RPG.

Step 4 (optional): Please indicate in your post whether you're okay with having your 200-word RPG archived off-site for posterity – if you don't say anything one way or the other, I'll assume the answer is "no".

(As before, as a courtesy to anyone who's creeping the notes, please restrict non-200-word-RPG commentary to replies and tags until November 2023 is over – let's make the actual games easy to find!)

strixcattus

(I may not be an RPG writer, but why not make a world generator hastily disguised as a rotating-spotlight isekai RPG? Okay to archive offsite.)

You Wake Up in a WORLD.

Roll 1d4 to determine:

How ALIVE the WORLD is.

1: Dead 2: Desolate 3: Inhabited 4: Thriving

How CARING the WORLD is.

1: Hostile 2: Cautious 3: Uncaring 4: Friendly

Everyone rolls 1d20 to determine the WORLD’s AESTHETICS.

1: Ocean 2: Desert 3: Rivers 4: Jungle 5: Mountains 6: Clouds 7: Ice 8: Fire 9: Wind 10: Crystals 11: Spikes 12: Spheres 13: Sunlight 14: Shadows 15: Whispers 16: Music 17: Fog 18: Eyes 19: Birds 20: Gears

Everyone chooses an AESTHETIC that was not rolled. This AESTHETIC is ABSENT.

The WORLD needs SAVING. Describe it.

One player is the PROTAGONIST. The others are OBSTACLES.

Each OBSTACLE, in clockwise order from the PROTAGONIST, describes what they are and why they must be overcome. Once all OBSTACLES have had their turn, they each roll 1d6.

The PROTAGONIST rolls 3d6. If any combination of their d6 matches the first OBSTACLE’s die, they WIN. Describe how. Otherwise, the OBSTACLE describes how they lose, and the PROTAGONIST describes how they try again before rerolling.

Repeat for every OBSTACLE. Once the PROTAGONIST defeats the final OBSTACLE, they have SAVED THE WORLD. Create a new world. The PROTAGONIST's role rotates counterclockwise.

soft-butch-cassidy

I was getting pretty fed up with links and generators with very general and overused weapons and superpowers and what have you for characters so:

Here is a page for premodern weapons, broken down into a ton of subcategories, with the weapon’s region of origin.

Here is a page of medieval weapons.

Here is a page of just about every conceived superpower.

Here is a page for legendary creatures and their regions of origin.

Here are some gemstones.

Here is a bunch of Greek legends, including monsters, gods, nymphs, heroes, and so on.

Here is a website with a ton of (legally attained, don’t worry) information about the black market.

Here is a website with information about forensic science and cases of death. Discretion advised.

Here is every religion in the world.

Here is every language in the world.

Here are methods of torture. Discretion advised.

Here are descriptions of the various methods used for the death penalty. Discretion advised.

Here are poisonous plants.

Here are plants in general.

Feel free to add more to this!

incorrect-dnd-classes

Free Links to DND Sourcebooks

Player's Handbook

Dungeon Master's Guide

Monster Manual

Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica

Mordekainen's Tome of Foes

Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide

Volo's Guide to Monsters

Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron

Xanathar's Guide to Everything

Eberron - Rising from the Last War

loghainmactir

if you definitely 100% own all of the dnd 5E content after spending hundreds of dollars on it whether physically or digitally (or both!) u should use this site here as a quick n easy reference point for the content you definitely already legally own because you’re a law abiding citizen who has paid hundreds of dollars for a shittonne of books.

lemon-embalmer

may I also add that if you accidentally misplaced your D&D books that you absolutely, definitely bought, you can find pdfs of them all here

and not just 5e, and not just D&D

and not just books, a few days ago I found an issue of a magazine that was published when I was two years old

but you know, very few people actually need this site probably because we all paid a hundreds of dollars for a shittonne of books.

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