Itch.io's Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality

aniki posted this in the Bargains Thread

Itch.io has a Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality that includes over 740 titles (including videogames, tabletop RPGs and game assets) from over 500 creators – all for five bucks.

It looks like their server's getting hammered at the moment, though.

I've bought it even though I think I've heard of maybe two of the games on the list so far (I've not made it very far through), but I thought it would be worth branching it out into its own thread as we work through whats there and figure out what stands out.

The first game to catch my eye is Wheels of Aurelia https://santaragione.itch.io/wheelsofaurelia

Now, I've only played it for about half an hour and have unlocked one of its 18 (I think) endings. It's essentially a visual novel following two women in a road trip across Italy at the tail-end of the 70s, it controls a bit like the early 90's isometric racers, though its very simple and is mostly about navigating through traffic whilst reading the dialogue and choosing from dialogue options. In that short playthrough there's been conversations around women's freedoms, abortion, terrorism, fascism and ones approach to supporting a football team, though despite all of those topics its not been particularly heavy. I'm definitely inclined to playing through it a few more times to see how far things go.

It has a nice visual style too, very reminiscent of European comics like XIII, The Colony and Malatere.

Good shout for a thread, will happily contribute. Going to make an effort to play things from this pile.

What we should do is, between us, play every game in the bundle and write a couple of line review for each one.

Ok. You start.

I’m another who bought it sight-unseen, but having started looking down the list there’s a few things on the list I have on other platforms that are really good, or have really good reputations.

Celeste is excellent, Nuclear Throne is great (I’m guessing mart has already played it, but if he hasn’t I think he’ll like it), and I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve played of Super Hexagon and Beglitched on iOS.

Minit, Oxenfree, Astrologaster and Night in the Woods are supposed to be good too, and that’s just what I’ve remembered/seen from the first five or so pages (of 51!).

Celeste is in there? Awesome!

Anodyne has been added, it's a surreal Links Awakening homage which I recommend giving a shot.

Minit is great, I loved that. Didn't really click with Oxenfree, but I can appreciate it.

Nuclear Throne has always been on my To Buy list but I never got it. Guess I have now.

Let me start with Signs of the Sojourner then, where you play part of a caravan of artists and hippies travelling across America. It's a deck-building card game where you're trying not to beat your opponents but to match their symbols in order to successfully complete conversations with them. After each conversation you can swap out one card for one you've seen, meaning that the more people you speak to, the more chance you'll have with other folk. It's an interesting concept, and the soundtrack is superb.

What we should do is, between us, play every game in the bundle and write a couple of line review for each one.

'k

The highlight from this batch is Shrine to Anubis! Give it a play!

No Rest for the Wicked is a one page roleplaying game about being a supervillain trying to have a day off. It's a narrative game where there's three stats that cover pretty much everything. D4, D6 and D8 are the only dice in the game and anything that's a 4 and above fails. This is likely a game about calamitous, upwards failure. Nice layout, seems interesting, looks simple. Would recommend for younger kids or drunker adults.

Plana Gravatatis is a Unity web browser game developed for Ludum Dare. It's a game where you move a figure left and right around spheres and jump from one sphere to another to get to a goal, the gravity the player is subject to changing based on proximity to different spheres. It's like those levels in Mario Galaxy. It's hampered by a bad art style - it pretty quickly becomes unreadable - extremely limited audio and sluggish feedback. It's a Ludum Dare game, though, so for what it is, it's pretty good fun.

The Morrison Survival Game was a 1.2 gig download that used stock unreal assets throughout. It didn't boot. I have a feeling that I didn't miss out on much.

Desastre Colectivo is a game where you are maybe a teacher on a bus who has to deal with students that are shouting, talking, on their phone, making farting noises for as long as you can handle it before you throw yourself out the back of it to die. At least I think that's what it was about. All the text was in Spanish and none of the buttons worked. When I installed it, it installed as 'Made in Game Maker Studio 2' so this guy didn't bother to go into Game Options. C'mon, man, it's right there…

Nuvoloso is a game where you look at clouds as they float by. Couldn't really work out what was going on in it, but it's one of the first games in this list that has an android version. I really like the idea of a cloud-looking game on an android phone. There's probably something you could do with the accelerometers that might give this a little more impact than a static screen. Maybe give this one a miss.

Godeater is a multipage pen and paper RPG where the players live inside plains and have a parasitic relationship with the plain, which was at one point a god. It's got an interesting idea for a setting but the mechanics are kind of a mess. The creator of it has played DnD5e and Numenera and tried to bodge both of them together. 2D10 with dis/advantage systems for double rolls, ability points that you can spend to just 'do' things, short rests, long rests, gadgets with a specific number of fire-and-forget charges, tags on characters giving them powers. It's an interesting setting that needs a stronger voice in its mechanics.

Shrine to Anubis is a really nice 2D platformer. It's got a cute art style and takes about 20 minutes to get to the end to. The jumping isn't as tight as I think it should be and there are a few very unfortunate jumping puzzles (if you get to the bit with the pits, it's the one second from the right) that lead to random deaths. It's got a neat boss fight, doesn't outstay it's welcome. Would recommend.

Guide of the Butterfly is a 3D hold-forwards-'em-up where the viewer holds the forward button while a butterfly flies down a corridor in a straight line. This corridor starts out black and turns into a bright white light as a heart monitor in the background beeps slower and slower until it finally stops. It then brings up some text that says 'death is not the end.' I'm probably going to get annoyed at indie games trying to indie as hard as they possibly can by the end of this. Probably avoid, to be honest.

Terri-Fried is a 2D scrolling platformer where the player is an egg that has to jump upwards to different pads that are slowly descending from the top of the screen to the bottom. The input system makes no sense and isn't explained. You have to left click to charge a jump but you always jump into the floor and have to bounce off it? Or something? Probably avoid.

And that's the end of page 51.

The highlight here is Propagate Love - very simple, very straightforward, very nice.

Acid Trip is a 2D shmup where you can't move. You can rotate, but you can't move. There's two enemies that are always on screen and you can push them back while shooting them when you're the same colour as them, but defeat is inevitable. It's got a good art style but there's no music to go with it. It needs music pretty desperately. Worth a quick look but don't expect it to stick around long.

Propagate Love is a short, singleplayer tabletop experience where the viewer draws shapes that speak to the things that they love. This is a lovely, meditative experience that took about twenty minutes to get through all told. It's very light, very airy and presented in a cute pastel pink. You list things and people that you love, list things that they have done to you/you have done to them to express this love, draw times that they have helped you. These images take the shape of plants and flowers. This is a nice thing for there to be in the world, and I appreciate it.

CLOSER TIES is an experimental virtual reality game where the player uses Mozilla Hubs to experience a location from the real world. They're then asked what place they're reminded of in this place. You and several other players are asked to curate a gallery with the other players, and you're asked to modify the space in ways that you think could improve it. This seems like a neat idea, but I don't think that I'll be able to engage with it in a meaningful way for the moment. It has one of the best header images of the bundle so far- a park bench with a brass plaque reading 'in loving memory of our social lives.'

QUACK ATTACK 1985: TURBO DX EDITION is a 2 player raptor 'em up where you are a duck that has to steal eggs from a goose. It's got a really nice UI style - extremely old school DOS game - and the music's fun and funky. It's great, apart from the core game which I just didn't click with. In keeping with the 'it's an old DOS game!' aesthetic, they've kept the 'only one keyboard input at a time can be recognised!' Great style, let down by the game.

4-LEGGED-HEROINE is a three lane runner game where the player takes on the role of a dog who is charged with delivering medicine in the time of Covid-19. It's got nice music, an interesting premise and a very cute, low-fi art style. The game, alas, shits itself about 1/3rd of the way through when the perspective shifts from behind the dog to an isometric front facing Crash Bandicoot style runner. The controls don't change, so when you press left the dog moves to the left lane which is now on the right. This could just be my brain short circuiting but it very almost ruined the entire game. Still, it's 20 minutes and depending on your tolerance for memory game stuff, it's worth a poke.

Blood Bullets & Ballet is a top down spinner-shooter where the player is a ballerina who spins constantly and has two guns. One of the guns is black, one of the guns is white. Enemies appear who wear black and white and gray and you have to shoot them with either gun or both of them. It's a fantastic idea that I genuinely laughed out loud at when I first saw it, especially with the totally-straight-faced presentation. Again, it's in Spanish but 'Bienvenido a la simulación, agente bailarina' told me everything I needed to know. The reach of this game far outstrips its grasp and it fails to deliver on the premise but it's a wonderful idea.

Hooks And Shotguns is a 2D platformer where the player is in a fantastical realm only they have a shotgun and a grappling hook, hence the name. The grappling hook lets the player grapple onto certain ledges but it is immediately rendered useless by the, frankly, incredible jumping ability of the player character. As you kill things and run to the right of the screen, you gain XP which increases your health and jumping ability. There are boss fights, there's a few kind of enemies and there's a few different level types. This is a pretty neat platformer, but it outstays its welcome with its length and simplicity.

He's going to review them all. :o

The highlight in this batch is absolutely Eizoku. Low-fi horror. Check it out.

TTRPG Design Lenses is a collection of cards that the user looks through when creating a tabletop roleplaying game. They're really helpful if you're planning on writing a tabletop roleplaying game. Very niche, but would recommend.

BackFire is a game that didn't boot. It looks like another game by that guy that came up with Blood Bullets & Ballet, though, so I'm a little bit sad about it not working.

Woter-a tale of two water cans is a platformer, like Ice Climbers where the player and a co-op partner take on the role of watering cans to protect a flower from robots. It's very simple, there's not much to it, and failure is inevitable. It reminded me of myself.

Detective Bot is like Octodad but less charming. You're a robot detective that has to solve crimes, but you have to move all your body parts a piece at a time. You use the mouse buttons to select a side of your body, double click to select a limb, press Q and E to raise or lower those body parts and basically flail your way towards a goal. This isn't really a game to be played so much as a game to be streamed on Twitch. I think it would be really, really good for that.

Eizoku is a very effective walking simulator horror game. A low-fi, almost minecraft-like art style mixes with simple sound effects to create an experience that you need to play with your headphones on. You'll spend a lot of time walking in straight lines on bridges that are over endless chasms and through pathways surrounded by trees a mile tall. It's effective and spooky and so far the standout from this bunch.

Devtheism is a battle-less 16-bit style JRPG where the player explores a couple of maps and struggles to find meaning. Not only is the character searching to find meaning - they believe that the Developers are real - but I struggled to find it too. The writing is clunky and in broken English, the directions are never especially clear, there's a lot of nudge-nudge-wink-wink jokes about breaking the 4th wall that get extremely old extremely fast. It also has an extremely heavy handed religious message. Honestly, the thing that this game made me feel the most was sad. Someone out there has taken the time to create something where they admit that they don't know how to talk to people or relate to them. Reminds me of The Stanley Parable, but in a bad way.

I See You is a less good Eizoku. It's made by the same person, has much the same style but it lacks the consistency. It brings up tutorial popups repeatedly which is very frustrating when you're trying to get into the horror flow . The real unfortunate thing about it is that you're hunting 2D keys that have been placed on top of tables so you can't see them from any real distance. More frustrating than challenging. Eizoku's better.

Analog Zine Issue 1-9 is a Zine about making videogames. The first issue's really good and has a wide array of content. Issue 3's a pretty solid stand out; talks about sexism and the way that stress and anxiety in the games industry can come at you from out of nowhere and fuck up your life (hi!). Issue 4 proposes the idea of a 50 over 50 list because ageism in the Games Industry is a real problem and fucking sucks. Issue 5-8 gets a bit 'how to deal with suicidal ideation' and issue 9 drops right into Covid WFH territory.

The first absolute 'This is really fucking good' of the bundle gets a post all to itself.

Costume Fairy Adventure! is a pen and paper roleplaying game where the players take on the role of fairies in costumes. You pick a 'kind' which is the kind of fairy you are, facets, quirks, and that's it. It's a D6 based game but there's a twist; when you succeed on a roll, you get to narrate what happens next. When you fail, the GM - or a player you're competing with - gets to narrate it instead. You can spend effort points to add dice to your rolls, assist people, use magic or powers or tricks or items and it's a whole 328 page roleplaying game.

The interior of the book is lovely; the art is universally fantastic, the layout's good and there are extremely useful sidebars throughout that are charming, funny and informative. A great many other indie RPG books could take a number of lessons from this. The game just looks fun on the page, and characters are encouraged to be genre savvy in character. 'Oh, I know how this story goes. The big bad wolf is gonna get to the brick house eventually but we can head him off at the house made of straw!'

It also takes time to go 'here's how you can run this game online.' It calls out forum play by post specifically with 'at a tabletop, this system really works but doesn't work so well online.' The people that worked on this have looked at where the system stands up and where it falls down and they've come up with a modal design structure that works with this rather than working against it.

The thing about this that makes me really smile, though, is the costume idea. Your fairies put on costumes and there are about a hundred costume cards that, when printed, can be put on your character sheet to give you a little bonus to certain things. The Green Tunic gives 'Inventory Screen', which lets you take longer to look through your gear. The Caped Hero gives you gadgets. The Witch gives you flight and magic. It wears its love of Final Fantasy X-2 on its sleeve.

I could go on. This is a wonderful game that's got great art and lovely interior art. Seriously.

Look at how much fun this game looks. So many indie RPG games could learn from this, if only from the layout. If you're into tabletop games, either in terms of playing or in terms of designing, this is a highly recommended read. Perhaps the best part of this for me is that I would never have encountered this were it not for this bundle and this stupid project I appear to have started. This is great.

Thank you for this. I could never parse the volume of stuff included here, and it's already doubled in size since I bought it.

Pick of the pack is Knightmare Tower!

Ominous is a 16bit style JRPG. It's got nice music and voice acting which isn't actually that bad! It's a flashback story told from the perspective of someone at some arcane, satanic ritual who's like "well, this got out of hand." Then it crashes straight into a gypsy stereotype (this isn't me overreading, their whole character name is gypsy and they demand payment in chickens teeth) and kind of goes from there. Then it has you engage in a battle against a dog that's been painted blue. I uninstalled it soon after that. One to avoid.

Figment is a browser game that wants to bilk you with microtransactions. You get some stuff for buying the BRJE but Figment is essentially neopets. Something about using the BRJE to plug your platform to get people spending more money directly to you feels real gross.

Mass Warfare is a 2D RTS game where you control a group of 4 space ships that fly over planets, claim them, and then fly onto other planets. The other team have 4 ships and they also want to claim planets. Eventually you bump into each other. There's no sound effect treatment, no tutorial and no real engagement. A disappointment because an RTS game about flinging planets at people sounds much more interesting than this was.

Knightmare Tower is a classic launcher game. You're on a rocket, you have to press Space to launch at the right time, you go up and dodge things and bounce off things and eventually you rescue a princess. You slowly lose momentum and it's exactly the kind of game you think it is. Addictive, full of good progression mechanics and with actual production values.

itch added another 100 things to this list fuck me

Luscan you are a god damned hero for doing this.

What have I done?

The recommendation from this block is a split decision between Autumn and Not the Robots. Autumn for meditation, NtR for hoovering up offices full of furniture.

Abomination Tower is a Super Meatboy style 2D platformer. It wears its inspirations on its sleeve and that's great, but it's pretty clearly missed the mark on this one for the reason that Super Meatboy was so good. The precision in its jumping, the quick restart and - most importantly - the learning curve. One touch on any trap, enemy or projectile in this and it's back to the start. If you want a challenging platformer then go for it, otherwise maybe give it a miss. The menu has talk of Unlockables but I didn't get that far.

Don't Move is a 2D platformer where the player can only move an inch in either direction. Sometimes. Frequently. It's meant to show that the user can be trained to perform repetitive tasks for numbers going up. The thing is, the repetitive task isn't something that's ever obvious to the player. It's called 'don't move' but one of the first things you have to do is move. It's very student project only it's for a student that's just discovered the phrase Ludonarrative Dissonance and can't wait to tell you about it.

Autumn is a meditative experience about growing trees and learning. Not so much about trees, but about Indian proverbs and culture. It's interesting if a little bit slow - you're forced to wait a full 90 seconds between releases of Prana (the energy you use to expand your territory, learn proverbs and get stories). While I feel that my desire to the meditative learnings to come a little faster might be at odds with the feeling that it's trying to evoke. It evokes it rather well, truth be told. A nice, simple, meditative experience. Would recommend if you need something to relax to.

Snake Blocks is a 3D isometric puzzlegame where you have to stretch out blocky snakes (snake blocks) to get their heads into holes. It's got a great art style, a really nice jazz soundtrack (the level complete sound is way too sharp and loud and should be a cool jazz drum hit or something) but the actual interface to control the snakes with is really bad. You can't be 100% certain where the snakes head is going to go when you click and drag it. If it had a free camera rather than isometrically locked it'd probably be better, but the devs probably tried this and found it wasn't better, hence why they went with this. They hit a problem with the core mechanics of their game and could't ever fix it, and that's a tragedy because this could have been really, really cool.

Not the Robots is a 3D stealth Roguelike where the player controls a robot that rolls around an office and consumes furniture. The stealth isn't especially well developed but the roguelike aspect of it is. It has a fun, addictive mix of Katamari Damacy, Binding of Issac and Metal Gear on the MSX. It's very straight lines and no vision cones. You have a crouch button and gadgets. The really interesting thing about this from a stealth game perspective is that you have to hide behind furniture while consuming it. It strikes a nice balancing act between hoovering up points and staying safe.

The Deer God is a 2D platformer with 3D art that looks and sounds good. It has lofty ambitions according to the bundle page of being a 'breathtaking 3D pixel art adventure that will challenge your religion and your platforming skills.' Within the first five minutes you get the ability to double jump, and you get a health and stamina gauge. The game's fine. It's got a lot of things going on that it doesn't bother to explain but there's something about 'challenging my religion and platforming skills' which seems incredibly weird as a selling point. Press Y to quote a psalm, I guess.

The 'winner' of this batch is The Spark of One. Just the weirdest, most tone deaf ending I've seen in years and a full ten minutes later I'm still giggling. It'll take you a full 5 minutes to play and I'm still struggling to get over it.

Asteroid Quest is Asteroids with an upgrade system bolted onto it. You have to manage your fuel usage and your cargo space as you blow up asteroids, take minerals, go back to home base, sell minerals, buy upgrades. There's not really a sense of progression, and nothing about your ship changes visually so you don't get any feedback about what your Black Market Reactor Core or Microwave Fluxed Laser Blaster actually does for you. It feels a bit like a 'learn to code' project that got out of hand, but if you want Asteroids But With Progression, you can't go wrong. As an asteroids clone it is rather good, even if it is much less lethal than the original.

Super Snake 3D had more time spent on it than downloading it. It's Snake but someone spilled a dodgy flight simulator on it. Fruit will hang randomly in the air and your flying snake can be steered towards it. You don't have a clear view of where your mouth is and you can't tell how long your body is because your view is taken from the first segment of the snake and never moves backwards. In terms of arcade classic remakes, this throws Asteroid Quest into very bright and glittering lights. Avoid.

PHN HOME is a monochromatic first person horror experience where the player explores an apartment and answers ringing phones. There's never anyone on the other end of the line and the tension increasing ambient sound track ratchets up as you begin to hunt for each phone, one after another. Phones will appear in new places. Requires a good set of headphones or 3D audio because the draw distance is less than 10 feet, meaning you'll be searching by time. If you give this a try - which you probably should - be sure to turn off the 'extreme visual effects' as it makes the game significantly more painful. That strobe light warning is not fucking about.

We Used To Be Friends (Ashcan) is a Veronica Mars style RPG where the players take on the role of teenaged sluths in a small midwestern town. It's the first PBTA game that I've found in this bundle and, honestly, it doesn't seem to bring a huge amount of new ideas to the PBTA format. It does some clever stuff with it's 'how to build a mystery' thing but - spoiler alert - Blades in the Dark is in this bundle. It might be good to play, but then again, so might a lot of these TTRPGs.

The Spark of One might be the most unintentionally hilarious game I've played so far. It's a 2D Martin Luther King Jr-em-up where you are shown a quote from MLK at the start before steering a red square through an environment and holding down the space button to attract smaller shapes that follow you. Then you move along a bridge with red and blue flashing squares down it. You get stopped, the screen shakes and your followers disappear. A screen saying 'don't give up' shows and you do it again, this time with randomly colored shapes following after you. You go over the same bridge and get stopped again and then all of a sudden you're slammed back to the credits screen, a list of thank yous is given, a 'come back again for more quotes' and a jaunty videogame jingle plays. I burst out laughing at just how big a gulf between its intended tone, the bundle it's part of, and what's actually been delivered.

Global Games Industry Guide is a pdf that contains a bunch of links and references to getting hooked in with videogame publishers, funding sources, community and networks.

SuperShot - Screenshot Tool is a tool to take screenshots on your desktop computer. It looks good, but I use lightscreen which is really good. I probably won't change that anytime soon.

I've just seen that Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! is in there, and that's a fantastic game. Get on it if you haven't played it already.

It's the first PBTA game that I've found in this bundle

There's another one (also with Ashcan on the name, so maybe the same folks?) called Never Knows Best, which is similarly inspired by FLCL.

Impulse Drive is in there too. PBTA SF in the style of Firefly or Star Wars. I've heard good things.

TROIKA! is a British retro indie RPG often described as Hipster Planescape. The mechanics are based on Advanced Fighting Fantasy and it would be easy to decide that the game simply a vague mess. It is a vague mess, but in a very good way. This is a game where you can play a stack of cats in a trench coat, a poorly made Dwarf or a Thinking Engine and it all works. It's a multiverse fantasy game it should be weird. There is an awful lot of really inventive community content available too and much of it is in this bundle.

Pick of the pack and ending page 51 is Antigas Constelações (sobre a Vila Itororó)

2d flight simulator required an email address when I started it up so I gave it a fake one. That fake one then got a shitload of spam. Avoid.

INDECT is a good looking cyberpunk 2D platformer with a good soundtrack and 1 very short level. The gameplay's a little bit rough - I got stuck on a few of the platforms - but the page says that it's a proof of concept. You can run, jump, crouch and shoot while doing all of the above so it ticks basically all the boxes. You have to collect credits before you can leave the level. I'd say one to watch out for, but I've already forgotten about it.

The Political Compass: Devil's Labyrinth is a playable political compass made by someone that's not objective or accredited by any group. You take on the role of the angel of death and have to decide if you should damn people or save people. It is full of 'incisive' satire about how the Jewish guy at the deli can stay, but the lawyer can go. If you damn one of the nazis that shows up Jesus intervenes at the last minute. 'huh i thought it was the occultists that were on their side lol'. Avoid.

Dual Pong is pong. It has a few screenfulls of text every time you start it, so it's pong but worse. Avoid.

Lacrymo Tennis 2016 (+ 2018) is a 2D action game where you character slides around the ground and uses a tennis racquet to hit tear gas canisters back at cops while a protest passes behind you. This is based on a famous photograph from 2016. At the end of the game, you're told how many people could protest because of you, how much money went on teargas and told a little bit about the real events that inspired this. It's simple but effective. Not worth playing more than once though.

Antigas Constelações (sobre a Vila Itororó) is a VR experience. Cav, you'll want to try this.

It would be remiss of me to send you guys on this stupid quest without joining you and eating more than my fair share of lembas bread.

Super Bernie World is a Mario clone starring Bernie Sanders. It was released when Bernie was still in the running for the Democratic nomination, so there's an air of sadness to it. Not the same air of sadness that you get in Rudi Giuliani's website where, up until relatively recently, you could still contribute to Rudi's campaign for the 2008 Republican nomination. This is more of a "what might have been" sadness. The loading screens feature Republicans saying horrific things and Bernie pointing out the benefits of universal medicare, that sort of thing.

As a Mario clone, it's pretty good, but it definitely gets too hard, which might be some kind of statement. The goombas are guys in red caps. I defeated Ted Cruz and Jim Jordan, but I couldn't get past Ilinois. I've checked a youtube playthrough, and my suspicians as to who the end boss was were correct. I won't spoil it.

Thou Shalt Be Brave - A minimal computer RPG which has been cut back so far that there is no point in playing. It's all menus and the only options are Heal in the Inn or Fight in the Forest. Keep clicking, and you will slowly get upgrades and fight bigger monsters but everything looks and feels identical so why bother? Also it presented in 64x64 resolution with no charm so it's pretty ugly.

Asteroid Farmer - I played this too. It's a fun concept but the mechanic of flying your ship aren't right. Or I'm shit. the Jury's out.

Astral Defence - Fun tiny 2D shooter. Like a pocket Xevius.

Heavy Bullets - FPS Roguelike. I like the style and the fact that you get your bullets back after shooting them, but I can't figure out how to not die as soon as I see a gun turret so fun is limited.

Runner 3 - I love Bit.trip so I'm sure this is awesome, but it barely runs on my laptop.

Cityglitch - Another pixely tiny game. Small movement puzzles on a 5x5 grid. Dull boring don't bother.

PADager is a gamepad masturbation aid. You can use the left and right sticks to set repeatable patterns of vibrational intensity with the different motors in the gamepad. I will admit that I was unable to find the, um, 'ideal' use case for this.

There's over 1400 games and things on the list now.

Edit - also, what? Gamepad masturbation aid? What?

My Friends And I Were Granted Three Wishes By A Cat Goddess And I Swear I Got Distracted When My Turn Came Around has a great title. It turns out it's someone's novel. The first line is also pretty good - "Tora was part graduate student, part teaching assistant, and part tiger." So it's either going to be something quite sharp and funny, or some kind of furry thing. Reads on another couple of paragraphs… It's some kind of furry thing. I'm not about to start shaming furrys - as long as you're not hurting anyone and you wash your own costume rather than making your Mum wash it, knock yourself out. However, life is too short to spend any of it reading a 60-page self-published furry novel, so I didn't.

There's over 1400 games and things on the list now.

Edit - also, what? Gamepad masturbation aid? What?

It's exactly what you think it is.

If, after lockdown, for whatever reason, I end up visiting you in order to play a few games, I'm not using that controller.

The TTRPG "Jarred Sinclair's 6e" is worth a look. It's a fantasy RPG based on World of Dungeons, so lightweight PBTA and D&D flavour.

It's a nice solid game in its own right and would be good for experienced gamers looking for a D&D alternative which is light but not boring. It's also a good option for new gamers.

Jarred's whole thing is that GMs are also game designers. The game's designer can't know what's right for your table, so GMs should rewrite the rules to fit, and while we are at it, the players should help. This game repeatedly gives permission for the reader to rewrite everything he sets down. I wish every new GM started with 6e rather than 5e.