Happy Thursday The 20th

my robot pussy needs rebooting!!!

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.

(genuinely offended) "I trust all of my viziers"

Rain World Art Month, Day 3: Pole Plants

Another speculative biology diagram! This time for the beloathed pole plant...

Today I wrote a bit of a thing about my thoughts making this:

I've always sorta wondered what was beneath the surface and what the rest of the pole plant looked like. First of all, I firmly hold the belief (or rather, headcanon) that it is not actually a "plant" at all (to the extent that irl taxonomy can be applied to RW creatures in the first place). Aggrevated pole plants move too deliberately for it's grasping behaviour to be a venus fly trap-like reflex, especially since they can get "annoyed" at you for throwing rocks at them.

With the idea of it being some sort of weird stationary pseudo-animal, like a sea anemone or sponge, I started drawing and ended up with this beetroot looking guy! I also rlly wanted it to have an asymmetrical body plan...

Most of its body is dedicated to digesting prey, with its most prominent features (aside from its "tongue") being a sphincter-mouth that can open to swallow larger animals (like lizards), a large acid-filled digestive basin, an enlarged enzymic gland and an anus. During rainless periods, it extends its pole-like "tongue" in hopes that passing creatures will attempt to climb or otherwise grab onto it. Once this happens, it grasps and constricts its prey and pulls it into its mouth, where it chokes the creature to death. The rest of the cycle is then spent slowly digesting the creature, and once this is done and the rain has begun to fall, it opens its mouth and anus and lets the rain water flush any leftover bones and carapace that it could not digest out of its body and down through the pipe that the pole plant is situated within. Such is the wonderous life of a pole plant (I imagine). Ty for reading my silly lil thoughts if u did...

Rain World Art Month, Day 4: Dropwigs

I made this on 3 hours of sleep so its not very good nor polished but its something!

Edit: I forgot the fucking antennae. Crying rolling around on the ground wailing

Hey remember when US and Russia was all like “We’re the best!!! We’ve won the space race!!!!” But India sent a kick-ass space probe to Mars and the whole mission was fuel efficient, costed less and a roaring success in the first try and then they were like “…..wait no that can’t be true” and still have the audacity to call us “underdeveloped” or only view us as a ‘third world country’? :)

For anyone who needs more info, the probe was called Mangalyaan (which literally means space probe vehicle) or Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) and you can also get more information here and here

by Laerte Coutinho