#164: Itch Roundup for August and September

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). Like every edition of these, this one is also jam-packed with the creativity, joy, and weirdness of the itch design scene.

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!

1. Hark! Says the Frog Magus: An ENNie-nominated, system-agnostic dungeon delve born out of love & fascination with all things amphibian, gets a new version which looks wonderful. (Diwata ng Manila, Dinoberry Press)

2. Bracknell Horror, Roseville Beach Zine 3: I recently checked out Moonlight on Roseville Beach and it’s a really interesting Psi-Run hack for running very pulpy, very queer mysteries with a cosmic horror angle. I think if you like Brindlewood Bay, you’ll also really like this game. (R Rook Sutdios)

3. This Mortal Coil: This is setting/hack for Liminal Horror with a weird sci-fi bent. You’re “a space traveler-turned-necromancer on a quest to achieve eternal life by constructing a magical device known and… mastering the forces of the Negaverse”. Seems like a really lush production. (David Garrett)

4. Dolly, We bought A Dream House: Barbie-inspired game of building a dream house. Think a map-drawing game but way more pink! This can be played be solo or with friends. (Plotbunny Games, also available in German)

5. Bxllet Clip, The Pinxp Issue: Celebrating the third anniversary of the very punchy, very metal gunslinger game BXLLET, a big zine with expanded content for the game, including a whole new hack by Adira Slattery about girls with demon guns. Most indie games don’t ever get long-term support so this is really cool to see. (Wheels within Wheels Publishing)

6. Eleventh Beast: A solo monster-hunting trifold game with a very slick design and heaps of grungy Victorian vibes. Exeunt Press, publisher of the Ennie-nominated Exclusion Zone Botanist, do very good work.

7. Esper Kids: A free one page Lasers & Feelings hack of middle schoolers with psychic powers, inspired by Mob Psycho. Also, someone’s first game, yay! (Robyn, Bitbirdy)

8. Hiss, A Village Doomed: A creepy town, a pressure cooked scenario, dungeons, NPCs. This is a horror-themed, 30 page module with some great design, meant for an OSR style game. (Idle Cartulary).

9. Coffee & Chaos: This is a coffee shop game where you bring your characters from your main game (D&D?) to play a one session of low stakes alternate universe shenanigans. (CobblePath Games)

10. Adventures in Purva City: This is an alternate setting for teenage superhero game Masks. It’s a far-future Mumbai/Bombay and comes out of a huge West Marches style Masks game that I never got to play but have heard lots about. Very cool! (Illicit Peanuts)

Alright, have fun, folks!

Yours a perfect ten,

Thomas

Oh wait, there’s more I had to say. This week, after much struggle, I released an experiment on the Yes Indie’d Podcast feed. It’s an episode where Rae Nedjadi teaches you how to play his Hellboy-esque PbtA game, Apocalypse Keys.

A long time ago, I talked about how teaching people how to play games was a bit of missing step in the journey from “buying game” to “playing game”. And while Actual Play is great for this, they often have to cut off the essential learning stuff for entertaintment reasons. It’s my attempt at helping all the GMs out there who have to teach their players the rules on top of everything else they do.

I’m planning to doing at least four of these before assessing whether people find it valuable or not. Does this help? Let me know!

II. Media of the Week

Storybrewers give a short talk about (storygame) design called “Who Says What When”.

• 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

• On Cannibal Halfling Games, Aaron Marks compares Mothership and Death in Space from Free League.

• On Age of Ravens, Lowell Francis discusses his new PbtA game, mashing up Changeling the Lost and Hearts of Wulin.

• A fun post about why seminal anime Madoka Magica would be a great OSR game.

• Black Armada Games discusses all the new changes in the upcoming second edition of Lovecraftesque (which I’m writing a scenario for!).

• On Rolling Boxcars, a look at the old Ringworld RPG.

• Lancer, the tactical mecha game with all that great art, is getting a reprint from Dark Horse Comics.

• Geeknative write about a WordPress plugin that can bring rollable tables directly into your website.

• Evil Genius, a game publishing company, is suing Netflix over the cancellation of their Rebel Moon RPG.

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.

• Tiny Library: Modern Fantasy is a deck of 51 single-card RPG fragments from 51 different creators. That’s a huge amount of diversity and pure creativity on the tabletop.

• Vynestra: a 5e high fantasy world and city setting with 1,000 pages of lore inspired by ancient civilizations such as Rome. Live on Kickstarter now!

• Step into a bizarre, post-apocalyptic America and explore four regional settings inspired by American Gothic fiction and with contributions from local artists and authors. Follow the prelaunch page for Backwards: Regional American Gothic Horror on Kickstarter!

• Don’t Play This Game, a solo RPG of handcrafted horror. Inspired by found footage films and cursed messages. Sign up and try to survive the demo here.

This newsletter is currently sponsored by the Bundle of Holding.

• A bundle of solo journaling games like Apothecaria from Blackwell Games, Jack Harrison’s The Slow Knife, and Cezar Capacle’s Not a Demon!

• Flying Circus, the cult classic airplane industrial fantasy game, is all bundled up with supplements.

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!