An adorable lil lady I've drawn for an art trade with @greylocksys

She was super fun to draw, I loooove her fluffy hair and I couldn't resist giving her a Big Smile :)

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.

btw if youve never touched itch.io I really recommend opening it up and browsing it for a little bit if your bored. there are so many interesting lil games and a good chunk of them are free

this goes especially if you want to see more weird/queer created art

i would cannibalize god's rotting corpse. if the opportunity arose

Here, take these

ALT

ALT

ALT

portfiend's oc directory template

three weeks ago i began work on a little Eleventy-based website template for storing character information akin to Toyhou.se. it's been in a releasable state for about a week, but i've also been pushing updates to it near daily!

i also wrote up a quick tutorial for setting up the project on its download page, but i plan to improve it in the future.

click here to preview this template: NeoCities
click here to get the code: GitHub

features:

Keep reading

how i do my visual novel filtered photo backgrouds

ive had some questions about this so i figured i'd put together a quick post on my process and what goes into it.

this isnt really a tutorial and instead is just a ramble of how i do stuff with a ton of examples and pictures lol

read more below. this is a long post and you probably want to be looking at these images on your computer instead of your phone

Keep reading

neocities guide - why you should build your own html website

do you miss the charm of the 90s/00s web where sites had actual personality instead of the same minimalistic theme? are you feeling drained by social media and the constant corporate monopoly of your data and time? do you want to be excited about the internet again?

try neocities!!

what is neocities?

neocities is a free hosting website that lets you build your own html website from scratch, with total creative control. in their own words:

"we are tired of living in an online world where people are isolated from each other on boring, generic social networks that don't let us truly express ourselves. it's time we took back our personalities from these sterilized, lifeless, monetized, data mined, monitored addiction machines and let our creativity flourish again."

why should I make my own website?

web3 has been overtaken by capitalism & conformity. websites that once were meant to be fun online social spaces now exist solely to steal your data and sell you things. it sucks!!

building a personal site is a great way to express yourself and take control of your online experience.

what would I even put on a website?

the best part about making your own site is that you can do literally whatever the hell you want! focus on a specific subject or make it a wild collection of all your interests. share your art! make a shrine for one of your interests! post a picture of every bird you see when you step outside! make a collection of your favorite blinkies! the world is your oyster !!

here are some cool example sites to inspire you:

recently updated neocities sites | it can be fun to just look through these and browse people's content!
space bar | local interstellar dive bar
creature feature | halloween & monsters
big gulp supreme
peanutbuttaz | personal site
dragodiluna
linwood | personal site
patho grove | personal site

getting started: neocities/html guide

sound interesting? here are some guides to help you get started, especially if you aren't familiar with html/css

sadgrl.online webmastery | a fantastic resource for getting started with html & web revival. also has a layout builder that you can use to start with in case starting from scratch is too intimidating
web design in 4 minutes | good for learning coding basics
w3schools | html tutorials
templaterr | demo & html for basic web elements
eggramen test pages | css page templates to get started with
sadgrl background tiles | bg tiles
rivendell background tiles | more free bg tiles

fun stuff to add to your site

want your site to be cool? here's some fun stuff that i've found

blinkies-cafe | fantastic blinkie maker! (run by @transbro & @graphics-cafe)
gificities | internet archive of 90s/00s web gifs
internet bumper stickers | web bumper stickers
momg | gif gallery
99 gif shop | 3d gifs
123 guestbook | add a guestbook for people to leave messages
cbox | add a live chat box
moon phases | track the phases of the moon
gifypet | a little clickable page pet
adopt a shroom | mushroom page pet
tamaNOTchi | virtual pet
crossword puzzle | daily crossword
imood | track your mood
neko | cute cat that chases your mouse
pollcode | custom poll maker
website hit counter | track how many visitors you have

web revival manifestos & communities

also, there's actually a pretty cool community of people out there who want to bring joy back to the web!

melonland project | web project/community celebrating individual & joyful online experiences. Also has an online forum
melonland intro to web revival | what is web revival?
melonking manifesto |
status cafe | share your current status
nightfall city | online community
onio.cafe | leave a message and enjoy the ambiance
sadgrl internet manifesto |
yesterweb internet manifesto | sadly defunct, still a great resource
reclaiming online social spaces | great manifesto on cultivating your online experience

in conclusion

i want everyone to make a neocities site because it's fun af and i love seeing everyone's weird personal sites that they made outside of the control of capitalism :)

say hi to me on neocities

EDIT: part 2!!

Didn’t expect to randomly see one of my projects being mentioned but I agree! Y'all should make websites. They’re a cool way to share the things you like, let your creativity run wild, or just to scream into the void.

*cough cough* Maybe even adopt a shroom *cough*

How does the spooder sleep?

A study on drider sleep positions.

1. The belly sleeper
   - not as comfy as it looks
   - looks like you face planted
   - standing up is fast

Keep reading

Umm I only suggested impaling your companion on an ancient torture machine as a joke? Grow up

Healing, part three.