It’s nearly time again for the small games club (even though I haven’t finished and posted about Beeswing yet), so first we have to vote for next month’s game!
17 hours, but doesn’t require “completion” to discuss
I have included a couple paywall suggestions this month, but there are still freely accessible options (and one of the paywall choices was freely available for a time). You can vote for multiple options, and all voting is anonymous. So feel free to abstain from the paid options when voting if you’d rather, as a freely accessible game may still win the vote.
Duloga
Darkula
Lockheart Indigo
OneShot
Where the Water Tastes Like Wine
0voters
And don’t forget to check out the thread for Beeswing if you haven’t yet, the game is short enough that you can still finish it for March!
Hey, for future reference, how do we feel about games that are considered abandonware? I recognize it might go against our intent with the club (contemporary independent games), but there are a few that piqued my interest.
Open Sorcery is an interactive fiction game I’d thought about pitching for this, and it’s also being given away now!
It’s a game about an elemental firewall (“a fire elemental bound with C++ code to protect a network of people and places”) that gains sentience. Lots of blurring between magic and tech.
Been, y’know, busy and tired with stuff, but I want to give Beeswing at least one more play session; the last time I tried it didn’t seem to want to load.
Star Fetchers is a gem that does dark comedy exceptionally well. It’s a free prologue to an upcoming game and took me 2.5 hours to finish. Content warning for blood and dismemberment, though.
And so April’s winner is Where the Water Tastes Like Wine!
I hope anyone who needs it got the free copy from before, though it is no longer available. It is on PC game pass, so if you have Windows 10 that only costs €1 for your first month, and €4 after that. But if anyone needs the full version to access this, I’m also happy to pay for a copy for someone, just DM me to request. If anyone else wants to offer this, feel free to post as such or DM me about it if you’d rather be somewhat anonymous.
But for next month, we’ll be back to all freely accessible games anyway. Please suggest more free games in the mean time. Thanks to the above folks for those great suggestions. I won’t be putting the two paid access ones in the poll for May, but they can come up in a future paid month.
Not sure when we’ll have another poll (I didn’t participate this month, unfortunately), but I’d also like to recommend Off-Peak by Cosmo D. for this club.
Apologies about the delay on the poll, been a wobbly time lately. There will be a poll, I’ll put it out in the morning and run it a few days into May. Before then, feel free to suggest any freely accessible games to add to the poll. There won’t be any options that require payment for this month. (but feel free to suggest ones that do for a future month).
And don’t forget to dip into Where the Water Tastes Like Wine for the April thread. There’s still time to get a taste of it before the month ends.
It’s almost time for our June game! That means we need to vote it in again, but don’t forget to play and then talk about Off-Peak in our May thread.
For this poll, I’m adding Curtain by dreamfeel. A free game from the same developer of the recent If Found…, which I strongly recommend too! (I didn’t pick it as it’s not free). I’m not actually sure of length but I believe it’s suitably short, and has a CW for abuse references.
So that means Star Fetchers wins! I’ll make a new thread with details later today.
In other news, itch has an incredible bundle going right now. Pay $5 (or more) to get 740+ games. This is obviously very helpful for making paid games much more accessible to the club. Check it out here
If anyone is not in a place where they can spend $5, please DM me and I can gift you a copy of this bundle.
For July’s game, we’re opening up the possibility of games that require payment to access. I’d specifically like us to pull from games in the above massive bundle in aid of Racial Justice and Equality. Please post suggestions for anything from that bundle you’d recommend we play.
Bought the bundle, and scanning through the list, there are a couple I’ve heard of that’d make sense for the club (Dominique Pamplemousse, A Short Hike, and also Oneshot was mentioned in this thread before).
But if people know of games in the bundle that are made specifically by black devs, I think those would be nice to really consider.
My main PC broke, so I didn’t finish/play the last two club games. Hopefully I can get Star Fetchers running. Super aside: how did this seemingly obscure game get so many Steam reviews?! It’s interesting how there are so many hidden away niches out there nowadays.
