#155: Itch Games from June and July!

Another issue packed with lots of games, videos, links and more.

I. Dear Reader,

Welcome to the bimonthly round-up of interesting games released on itch.io. I find these games through the form linked below (where readers can submit their own games) or I just stumble across on twitter or while browsing itch (which I do, purely for this issue).

My usual disclaimer that I haven’t read or played these games. Usually, I have only seen their store page. But they look cool and sound interesting and they might be something you want to buy. Or you might give the creator a follow on itch. Go wild!

In no particular order:

1. The Fool’s Journey: One page game of imaginary cards, secrets, dramatic irony, a witch, and a wretch. Designed by anna anthropy, a game design scholar.

2. The Lost Bay: A horror game steeped in weird, 90s nostalgia. A mash-up of Cairn and Lumen, according to the description. Happy that Iko and the Lost Bay Studio have released their titular game (or the first look at least!)

3. Dolorine: A dark fantasy, solo journaling RPG about defeating death. According to the creator, it “turns pain into power and invites you to face suffering with purpose.” Designed by Sarah Goda of Open Story Games.

4. Curios: Albrecht Manor: “Part solo RPG, part mystery package experience.” This is a game where you read letters, compile documents, and uncover the fate of a creepy manor. Designed by Seb Pines/Good Luck Press.

5. Avatar of Gaia: Another addition to WH Arthur’s Superhero Cinematic Universe. This is one about playing a superhero that is trying to save the natural world.

6. Monsters and Maths: A one page game for high school kids about solving math problems to defeat the monsters. Can’t find any info about the designer except their handle, sapphictiefling (PWYW).

7. Nexalis: Cezar Capacle’s new optimistic fantasy game about exploring islands and discovering the secrets of a mysterious world. It’s got some neat, inventive mechanics that are Cezar’s trademark.

Have a good week, folks. See you next week!

Yours roundupingly,

Thomas

II. Media of the Week

• Aaron Voigt is back with an almost hour-long video that looks into the themes of empire, colonialism, violence and magic in Spire and RF Kuang’s novel, Babel.

• Analog Game Studies hosted their annual conference, Generation Analog. There were some neat talks.

  • The first two in this session were both really interesting (if you’re academically inclined). The first talk (~15 minutes) was about queer history and Ben Roswell’s game Together We Write Private Cathedrals.

  • The second one is about two stories (Hindi writer Premchand’s Shatranj ke Khiladi and Chilean novelist Roberto Bolano’s Third Reich) and how they represent games as metaphors for resistance.

• Please consider joining 50+ other patrons and support the newsletter on patreon to help keep me going.

• If you’ve released a new game on itch.io this month, let me know through this form so I can potentially include it in the end of the month round-up.

III. Links of the Week

• Reddit thread (with an excerpt) about 90s RPG-within-RPG, Dreampark by Mike Pondsmith where you play futurist larpers playing as their characters. The excerpt is really neat. I’m completely zero on the indie/experimental side of the hobby before 2000. Pondsmith was doing some cool stuff!

  • Slightly related: On the Nerves blog, Snow talks weird & experimental RPGs, their history, and then has a neat list for those to want to read more.

• On the Alone in the Labyrinth, an interview with David Blandy, designer of Lone Eons and ECOMOFOS!!

• JF Sambrano, an Indigenous writer, reveals the terrible state of Werewolf: the Apocalypse 5th Edition.

• On the nordic larp website, a manifesto for “slow larp”

• My favourite piece of RPG Theory (and maybe yours!) gets a polish and update. Here’s the latest version of Levi Kornelsen’s Manyfold Glossary.

IV. Small Ads

All links in the newsletter are completely based on my own interest. But to help support my work, this section contains sponsored links and advertisements. If you’d like your products to appear here, read the submission form.

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This newsletter is currently sponsored by the Bundle of Holding.

• A bundle of the core rules and supplement for the fast and furious Index Card RPG

Hello, dear readers. This newsletter is written by me, Thomas Manuel. If you’d like to support this newsletter, share it with a friend or buy one of my games from my itch store. If you’d like to say something to me, you can reply to this email or click below!