Spore shouldn't have been 1 game with 5 different gameplay segments it should've been 5 separate games that each let you load your save from the previous one.
the entire internet at our disposal and there's nothing fun to do with it anymore. when was the last time you typed in a url just to see if it existed
orteil42 reblogged
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.
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.
Anonymous asked:
Have there ever been any frustrating points in programming Cookie Clicker that made you question your choice to become a game dev rather than, say, an elevator inspector?
rarely the game itself but on occasion having to deal with mobile port compilation errors and ever-shifting app store policies had me wishing to retire to the mountains and raise sheep and renounce the use of electricity yes
Anonymous asked:
is new merch planned at any point?
yeah it's been on the todo list but capitalism scares me
What inspired you to make the grandmas progressively more scary?
standard french humor
Anonymous asked:
when writing cc code do you develop it in the browser or the binary steam version
i call my server host and whistle the bytecode directly into the phone
hmm. bad
fiddling with Cookie Clicker and making the logic somewhat less framerate-dependent so i can up the fps from 30 to 60, which i might have you guys test out at some point because there's no way i caught every little thing this could break. i tried my best but still
also considering making the game scale up on larger monitors. Cookie Clicker looks great on my friend's giant triple-wide setup but it makes the big cookie look so lonely
Cookie Clicker is so full of...odd design choices to put it kindly. yet i must resist the urge to fix what's questionable but not broken
My girlfriend absolutely loves your game, thank you!
tell her i'm single
today's Dutch vocabulary lesson
- dustsucker
- crumbthief
i appreciate the intricate meanderings of the usual Simpsons plot. an oil spill happens and therefore as a logical consequence Bart starts work at a brothel
orteil42 reblogged
Anonymous asked:
hi toeman, i know that This Website's Hate Mail Game Is Insane and it's a meme for ppl to antagonize you, but i wanted to share some Love Mail!! i remember that you said you were worried about your American fans,
I want to share that I'm an American fan in a red state - but!!!!
i just got a gender affirming surgery a few days ago and having cookie clicker open has been really helping with the surgery recovery and it makes me really happy to know that you care about us too, even if things are kinda really fucked up rn
(also my grandma loves your game and she says "this french gentleman knows too much about our kind")
hell yeah lmao tell me more about your grandma
outstanding. please tell your grandma i said hi and also if you've got any pictures of said cookies to share by all means
Anonymous asked:
do you think god approves of what you have done? of what you have brought upon the world?
Anonymous asked:
hi toeman, i know that This Website's Hate Mail Game Is Insane and it's a meme for ppl to antagonize you, but i wanted to share some Love Mail!! i remember that you said you were worried about your American fans,
I want to share that I'm an American fan in a red state - but!!!!
i just got a gender affirming surgery a few days ago and having cookie clicker open has been really helping with the surgery recovery and it makes me really happy to know that you care about us too, even if things are kinda really fucked up rn
(also my grandma loves your game and she says "this french gentleman knows too much about our kind")
hell yeah lmao tell me more about your grandma