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Tuuli was reviewed by the arcane cache, an utmost underground blog for underground video games.

The writing is the strongest point of the game. The places are evoking, the scenes atmospheric, the characters well fleshed out, and even the short dialogues feel vibrant; you don’t feel the absence of graphic- and sound effects for a single second. The writing style feels natural and fitting for the story – coherent, just direct enough, without falling for any of the common traps for fantasy settings.

...

The finale, the ritual, and especially its whole follow up, is the highlight within this great game. Highly tribal, without employing cliches; dark, tragic, and brutal without being cynical; emphatic and loaded, but still ambivalent. Tuuli is not only a stunning video game, but also a magnificent piece of fantasy literature that you might find on par with many of the genre classics.

https://thunderperfectwitchcraft.org/arcane_cache/2024/06/24/tuuli/

Your game got reviewed on the arcane cache, our utmost underground blog for underground games!

Kryftolike is a game as pure and clear as water, but makes a lot out of its simple concept: Even though violence and fighting are nearly non-present, the game is highly thrilling. While the landscape mainly consists of auto-generated dungeons from a rather limited set of possible elements, it evokes some real sense of exploration and adventure. And even though you just play for a highscore the game is so well made that you might end up playing it again and again.

Well done, congratulations!

I agree that it somewhat feels like a struggle against windmills, but what alternative is there to trying anyway?

The Lemmy community never got much activity either. Not sure if we should retry it there or try something entirely else.

Go and try it! ;)

What a great response! Thanks a lot, I'm glad that I could evoke such feelings with my text :).

I go gladly with game!

The engine, Incoanhyto, is an attempt to allow true intertextuality - beside "Fluid Worlds", there are some other stories already available that I tried to link in my text :). New stories and additions are most welcome, just try it! (its free, libre, and strictly noncommercial) =)

Thank you :).

It is indeed a bit ambitious, and I somewhat struggled with it at times and did various changes and revisions. Eventually I came to the point where I thought it was as good as I could make it, and I'm somewhat satisfied with the result. Glad that you liked it!

Hi, and thanks for your nice feedback!

Glad that you liked it - one note about esoteric ideas: While most esoteric schools assume the existence of a spiritual world that is more meaningful than the reality, I'm the opposite: As a materialist (in the Marxist sense) I do believe that our ideas and ideals (which you could consider an ideal/abstract room, or some lair of spirituality if you prefer) are a result - and as such an existing part - of our reality. Why it might seem a bit like the same as a result, I'd feel safe to say that it isn't.

Greetings

Works now ;).

Neither me. Is it possible that just this title card was included?

I sometimes considered to go and try to produce a zero budget movie; cool that you people did it - it was surely fun!

This is pretty crazy. I like it!

Buggy like hell, though ;).

Hi Mr. Frugal ;).

I also enjoyed reading through these. Liked especially the gardening one - our whole flat is green :).

Greetings

Thunder

Read the zines, and liked especially the gardening one. Had Mort Garsons Plantasia running while going through it :).

When I was young and went to school, I prefered .txt files over Word/PDF; I even got points reduced for doing it. I still use them for many things, including my own programming at many points (if you want modability, there is nothing better than an ini-like plaintext file for storage - easy for machines and humans alike to read, process, and edit); for other things file that allow formatting are clearly preferable, though - I usually use odt files for this (and convert them to pdf if they are intended to go "out".

When I was young, there was a german anarchist flash game called "Labourday" around - iirc you also had to beat up cops and burn down cars, Its still online (but requires some sort of flash player) at:

http://tagderarbeit.extrajetzt.com/htm/game.htm

Your game goes a bit more into the direction of Hotline Miami. Still needs serious polishing in regards of gameplay to be fun.

Cute indeed!

Won on the first try :).

To help to get the message over, I'd suggest to make it a bit harder.

Hi Nicole!

You are welcome, and thanks a lot for the nice feedback - I'm glad you like it! :).

Also: If you want to use the tool and have any questions or ideas for features, just contact me - I'm also a big fan of hypertext fiction ;).

Greetings!

Thunder

The arcane cache, an underground blog for underground games, reviewed this game!

The sound design and graphical arrangement is minimal, the (often randomly chosen) texts are written greatly – they are highly poetic, beautiful, fey ...In „A row of chairs abandoned on the beach“, humans do consequently become coast, night, and sky – but the world is turned into a living, equitable, and vivid instance in return.

https://thunderperfectwitchcraft.org/arcane_cache/2024/05/20/a-row-of-chairs-aba...

Where do you people gather? Lemmy? Mastodon? Matrix?

Share your tags and groups.

Using #undergroundgame as tag and hash on Itch and Mastodon. Would be glad for company, but I'm also interesting to connect to existing communities :).

Hi.

Thanks a lot for playing, and the nice feedback - glad you like it :). Also, glad that you find the tool interesting!

I did quite some lengthy experimenting with the concept, and this is the result - maybe I'll go on, I've a few ideas about more traditional narratives as well :).

Greetings

Thunder

This game was reviewed on the arcane cache, an underground blog for underground games.

Shell Song is less a game than an exceedingly smart and well crafted interactive piece (and indeed calls itself an „essay“) that touches an whole cluster of topics, including platform capitalism, sovereignty over biometric data, self-perception and the borders of the own self, and the state of the concept of identity in a world where humans are catalogued was again and again used to subject them. Both the writing and the research and reasoning behind it are outstanding, and one can hardly believe that this piece is already over three years old again – it feels so contemporary, so close to the current pulse of the time, and might even be able to flabbergast hard boiled science fiction fans with its description of our current reality.

Congratulations, this was great!

https://thunderperfectwitchcraft.org/arcane_cache/2024/05/06/shell-song/

PRAXIS FIGHTER X got reviewed on the arcane cache, a underground blog for underground games:

If you don’t mind the formulaic gameplay the likeable story, the very well polished gameplay, and the overall high quality make it a great pick for underground gaming enthusiasts and shoot ‚em up veterans alike.

Congratz :)

"The Archivist and the Revolution" got reviewed by the arcane cache, a underground blog for underground games:

„The game and its world are well created – not only in the sense that it contains many creative ideas that go beyond the (also present) science-fiction cliches, but also since it does a really good job to depict the struggles and predicaments of the protagonist – the descriptions and structures feel inherent logical and very natural, and even though many of today’s many pressing matters are thematised, it never feels tokenistic doing so ... The Archivist and the Revolution“ is a well realized, highly political piece of hyperlink fiction that doesn’t need to hide behind most of the contemporary commercial science fiction stories I’ve read in the past few years; its direct language, its naturalist approach, the – rather pronounced – gameplay elements, and its clear political agenda make it enjoyable to underground gaming enthusiasts and a larger audience alike."

Well done!

https://thunderperfectwitchcraft.org/arcane_cache/2024/04/10/the-archivist-and-t...

Congratulations, this is a great game.

It just got reviewed one on the arcane cache:

Solitary Stars feels much more like a window to its own little cosmos, and evades simple interpretations not only through the amount of different ideas and topics that are touched, but also through a skillful utilization of the hypertext technique...

Well done!

Your work got reviewed by the arcane cache, a small underground blog for great underground art :)

...Rather than getting „compressed“ and belittled by the tools and machines (that usually turn human creativity into „models“ for later utilization nowadays), they are using algorithms and code snippets to compress, recite, and extract something that they seem to regard as a inner beauty in a (only?) seemingly inherent senseless world.

https://thunderperfectwitchcraft.org/arcane_cache/2024/02/24/inflorescence-city-...

Well done!

Another Lets Play by a small channel, I love these =)

Your game got reviewed on the arcane cache, an underground blog for underground games

"There is a lot of cozyness to be found between old ruins in the middle of deep woods, between small hamlets in which simple people live off the land, all framed by large mountainsides with deep dark castles and towers that hide powerful magic."

Well done!

https://thunderperfectwitchcraft.org/arcane_cache/2024/02/03/of-olden-tymes-a-re...

Blobworld and Henry is Hungry got reviewed on the arcane cache, and underground blog for underground games!

The level design is pretty good, difficulty and progression are well measured, and did I already say that the sprites are damn well made? Nothing experimental, ground breaking or even surprising here, but in the end „Blobworld“ is a rock solid, well made little platformer that comes a long way with its rather limited resources.

https://thunderperfectwitchcraft.org/arcane_cache/2024/01/31/blobworld-henry-is-...

Well done!

I acknowledge that you don't see your creation as a game; for me, the definitions of different forms of art is a highly fluent one; if you hadn't told me (and partly even though) I'd see it as a game, since the technical basis would practically allow you to allow me to interfere; but you decided against it. This is - for me - a element of gamedesign, although a rather radical one ;).

But this isn't what matters. What matters is that this is a wonderful game.

Greetings!

Thunder

Absent minded got reviewed by the arcane cache, a underground blog for underground games.

Absent minded is a ultra short hypertext fiction story accompanied by color distorted pixelized photos. The throughout fine and coherent production, the the trenchant quality of writing and the consequence in utilizing the means of video gaming subsume to a great and unique gaming experience. Highly recommend to play this; a run will take you roughly 15 minutes.

https://thunderperfectwitchcraft.org/arcane_cache/2024/01/20/absent-minded/

Super.

Also, thanks for re-hosting the Jam! ;) I was hoping for it!

Hi.

I've a larger-scale project on ice. There has been some (rather obscure) public beta versions, but no release on Itch or anywhere else.

Would it be okay to continue the work on such a project and release it on Itch during the jam-time? ;)

Greetings, and destroy the leviathan!

Thunder

The liberation got reviewed on the Arcane Cache, a underground blog for underground games.

..in the end, the supposed restrictions are broken – this game offers us its own answer to the question how free the individual really is.

https://thunderperfectwitchcraft.org/arcane_cache/2024/01/04/the-liberation/

Well done!

Carcosa was reviewed by the arcane cache, a highly underground blog for very underground games:

This game holds an elegant, hypnotic beauty and goes down the path of minimalism in a bolt and consequent way that makes it rather unique – the playtime is probably around one minute. It is an adaption of a poem that doesn’t really attempt to refresh anything, and isn’t interested in re-contextualization; this is an approach that bears the risk of gliding into a uncritical relation to the source material, and of getting a bit dusty – the game plays very much like a game that was released when the poem came out could have looked like, like a forged relict from an era that predates the medium; and looking at the developer and their affiliation with goth this might have been exactly what they wanted to do.

Well done!

https://thunderperfectwitchcraft.org/arcane_cache/2023/12/18/carcosa/

Indeed a lovely little game. Would be great to see it in a more refined state :)

Glad you like it; was honestly unsure if I wasn't going on dangerously thin ice with this one.

Have a nice evening :).

Your game got reviewed by the Arcane Cache, a underground blog for underground games:

The fact that the developer couldn’t bring themself to complete it, but left the full horror as a non-realized, yet threatening indication prevented by bugs and other small faults they never could iron out makes it somewhat more complete – not necessarily as a game but surely as an piece of art, that escapes finalization just as its topics it deals with escape the imagination of probably nearly any empathic person.

https://thunderperfectwitchcraft.org/arcane_cache/2023/12/04/crystal-slaves/

Played it and liked it - a nice, difficult little jump'n run puzzle game! :)