aaaaaAAAAA

Icon from art by @ComfyRam Discord: Wintar#0929

[wintar0]

first ever ref sheet, from @nikowari ! Fayenn, a "Death's-Head Hawkmoth"! love this so much

[solardrake]

greeble neeble gomble womp?? e mfucking worgle smeet huga dorble!!!!

[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

[wario-land]

Play Seedship, i loved it

And Choice of Games in general too

[wintar0]

using my rare tumblr usage to reblog this and say check out Constellation by Terry Cavanagh it's really weird and neat (and you can download it to mess with its brain)

[thursday]

DAY 15

GIVE IT UP FOR DAY 15

[fnaf-thechoco-deactivated201503]

You can only reblog this 12 times a year

Make the most of that

[jijarugen]

Every month I reblog this and every month I’m baffled that it’s already the 15th.

[pumpkindobby-blog]

I’m scheduling this for every month

[thursday]

DAY 15

GIVE IT UP FOR DAY 15

[fnaf-thechoco-deactivated201503]

You can only reblog this 12 times a year

Make the most of that

[jijarugen]

Every month I reblog this and every month I’m baffled that it’s already the 15th.

[pumpkindobby-blog]

I’m scheduling this for every month

[thursday]

DAY 15

GIVE IT UP FOR DAY 15

[fnaf-thechoco-deactivated201503]

You can only reblog this 12 times a year

Make the most of that

[jijarugen]

Every month I reblog this and every month I’m baffled that it’s already the 15th.

[pumpkindobby-blog]

I’m scheduling this for every month

[thursday]

DAY 15

GIVE IT UP FOR DAY 15

[fnaf-thechoco-deactivated201503]

You can only reblog this 12 times a year

Make the most of that

[jijarugen]

Every month I reblog this and every month I’m baffled that it’s already the 15th.

[pumpkindobby-blog]

I’m scheduling this for every month

[thursday]

DAY 15

GIVE IT UP FOR DAY 15

[fnaf-thechoco-deactivated201503]

You can only reblog this 12 times a year

Make the most of that

[jijarugen]

Every month I reblog this and every month I’m baffled that it’s already the 15th.

[pumpkindobby-blog]

I’m scheduling this for every month

[orteil42]

why is this site trying to become twitter. why must everything i love die

[orteil42]

(every CEO in the last 5 years for some reason) hmmm today i will catastrophically mismanage my company to the fullest most embarrassing extent imaginable

[snapscube]

keith doesn't have fire abilities, huh? well what if he found a conveniently unattended box of matches? what then?

(keith's updated design is SO cute i had to draw him and this was the only scenario i could think of)

OHHHHHH

KEITH NO PUT THAT AWAY SWEETIE

[calware]

[calware]

[mindofthemage]

[tender-and-moist]

:(

[xylocopae]

starting a collection

[koumouby]

Bug Food: Harvest

And here we go again with Hallownest's Gastronomy! and expanding much more the Greenpath's plant diversity :D

These were wild ideas that I had on paper for a while now and recently I was able to clean up and post here, I hope you all like it!

[passionpeachy-deactivated202312]

This might be harsh but I think those who equate “good character design” to “character I would fuck” and express outright disgust at designs who dared to fall outside their conventional beauty norms should be trapped in the amulet for a thousand years. minimum

[clusterduck28]

So I think the best strat here is for the users who did get the new layout to just stop using the desktop version of the site for a while, like a week or a month or however long their 'experiment' is supposed to last, while the users who didn't get the new layout should keep using the desktop version like normal or, perhaps, use it even more than usual.

My guess is that they're doing basic A/B testing on the new layout to see if it would boost engagement: the userbase is split roughly 50/50 between the 2 versions and they are going to be comparing the engagement data between the 2 groups of users to see if it's worth it switching everyone to the new layout or not.

Basically, if you got the new layout and don't like it - don't use it. If engagement metrics of group B (new layout) are lower than those of group A (no change), the experiment will be considered a failure and they will have to reverse the change.

If your tumblr suddenly looks like twitter - it's a sign to log off and go touch some grass! (or just use the mobile app since that engagement data isn't relevant to this particular experiment)

[elusivetranscendent]

this new layout wHYYY