He Said Is This The Return To Oz? The Grass Is Dead, The Gold Is Brown And The Sky Has Claws There's

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.

“in order to create loving males we need to love males” means teach boys that they can be themselves without being less of a man. it means being encouraging and nurturing of their emotions so they don’t become cold and hateful. it means showing boys, early in their lives, that they have value outside of what our society deems proper masculinity. what it doesn’t mean is that it’s our job to handhold men who see women as walking sex toys through the concept of empathy, and maybe if we’re really really nice to them and don’t say things that hurt their feelings they’ll stop killing us for saying no

One of the stranger things about training brand new nurses is explaining how to min max small talk. It feels very weird to coach people on how to chat.

For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, excerpt from “The Poet’s Tale” (via larmoyante)

the big three questions of media analysis: what the author wanted to say, what they actually said, and what they didn’t know they were saying

I HATE feeling like an outcast. I HATE feeling like an alien. I HATE having to try hard to appear as normal. I HATE how my way of thinking makes me so strange. I HATE feeling and being different. I HATE feeling and being alone. I HATE being autistic.

via Neil Slorance

The Art and Making of Hannibal: The Television Series.

THE GLOVES 🙌 I made these back in spring this year for a friend and I think they're so gorgeous. It was my first ever full project on dpn and my 2nd stranded color work. They were such a joy to make

Pattern by EricaHeusserDesigns on Etsy!!