The closest I have come to having any interest in sport is when I got really into reading about football hooligans, or like, Blood Bowl, but I do absolutely recognise the romance of it all. SUDDEN DEATH is a delicious free slice of playable art-pie that celebrates that romance. It is - says dev Cécile, who co-made the project with Nat Pussy and MOTHER GOOSE for collective Domino Club - “a game about love and sports. it's gay, it's very australian, and it's great.” You can tell it’s Australian quickly, because people call chips ‘chippies’, which makes me chuffed.
]]>The Palestinian Relief Bundle on Itch.io contains 373 items for a minimum cost of $8. 213 of the items are are games, including greats such as Wandersong, A Short Hike and Coffee Talk. All proceeds go towards the Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF), a non-profit working to provide food, water and medical treatment in Gaza.
]]>I can feel all my Cool Culture Critic points dribbling out of my ears as I type this, but I've never actually watched Twin Peaks, David Lynch's acclaimed paranormal smalltown TV show. The nearest I've come to doing so is that one episode of the Simpsons. The major things I am given to understand about it are that it is very confusing, sexy in a ghoulish way, and 100% comprised of memes in the same way that Hamlet has retrospectively become a book's worth of quotations.
I have, however, played a surprising number of very decent games that are influenced by Twin Peaks - Zelda: Link's Awakening, Silent Hill and the amazing Lone Survivor, to pick a few that I know about for sure. So who knows, perhaps I won't be utterly bamfoodled and confluzzled by Twin Peaks: Into The Night, an unofficial PS1-style adaptation of the game that has just surfaced on Itch.
]]>This beautiful summer is in full swing, so what better time to go inside, draw the curtains, and unwind with a weird anthology of spooky indies? Last month, the Haunted PS1 community reunited to release C.H.A.I.N.G.E.D. - a collection of over 30 bizarre shorts, where your choices at the end of one game leads to a different game made by different developers. Each one loosely follows on from the games preceding them, even though they bury past art styles, perspectives, music, and ideas.
]]>Somehow we’re already in June, which makes me both cosmically confused about the passage of time and quite happy because it’s now Pride Month. That also means that queer indie developers have once again banded together and organised the third annual Queer Games Bundle on Itch.io, offering over 450 video games, board games, zines, books, soundtracks, and other creative stuff for the price of one AAA game: $60. All proceeds are split between the participating developers, and there’s some very cool stuff included.
“Purchasing the Queer Games Bundle is a direct action that you can take right now to support queer people in a life-changing way,” reads the bundle's description, “and in exchange, you get over 450 amazing, heartfelt, fun, and radical games and artworks.”
]]>Baba Is You dev Hempuli has taken that game’s puzzle transforming mechanics and translated them into a form of Solitaire. Dubbed Babataire EX – nice – the game bases its suits on four of the endearing little creatures from Baba Is You. There’s good ol’ Baba, of course, joined by Keke, Fofo and Jiji. Hempuli only seems to have begun the project earlier this month, but you can already have a go for free on itch.io. If you do, then I hope you have better luck than I did understanding what exactly is going on.
]]>Earlier today we posted about a bundle on Itch.io raising money for reproductive rights. Well, it's not the only one. The Indie Bundle For Abortion Funds is offering over 750 items, most of them games, for a minimum donation of $10. All the money raised will go directly to National Network for Abortion Fund's Collective Power Fund.
]]>A new bundle of discounted indie games on Itch.io is aiming to raise $150,000 towards reproductive rights and women’s charities following the US Supreme Court’s overturn of federal abortion rights last month. The Worthy Of Better, Stronger Together bundle is organised by streamer and musician Abbey ‘Scruncho’ Smith of horror game publisher Dread XP, and features 169 games. Picking up the bundle aids the National Organization For Women and the Center For Reproductive Rights in equal measure.
]]>The creator of indie game storefront Itch.io has called out a website that appears to have taken the site’s code for itself and begun selling creators’ games without permission. Dubbed 'W3itch.io', the copycat site's creator replied to a tweet from Itch.io founder Leaf Corcoran, who promptly asked them not to "rip off" Itch.io anymore. W3itch.io even described itself as a “free-as-freedom open marketplace for independent game creators inspired by Itch and Gitcoin”. Not the most sensible of ideas to engage with the person whose work you’re replicating, W3itch.io.
]]>Earlier this week, indie developers launched an amazing bundle with over 600 video games to raise money for charities helping relief efforts in Ukraine following Russia's invasion. The Bundle For Ukraine smashed its $1 million goal in under a day, hit the second goal of $2 million hours later, and has now passed the third goal of $4 million. It is still a ridiculous bargain, offering so much if you pay at least $10.
]]>A phenomenal new bundle of indie games is raising money for two charities supporting relief efforts in Ukraine. The Bundle For Ukraine on Itch.io includes almost 600 games, and you can have the lot if you pay at least $10. Games include Celeste, A Short Hike, Superhot, Hidden Folks, and oh so many more worth mentioning. Barely 11 hours after launching, the bundle has already raised over $593,000 towards its $1 million goal. Probably because it's a great deal for a good cause.
]]>Whether you dislike NFTs, don't understand them, or think you can make money from them, you can't escape the NFT discourse. Game stores are no different. Valve have banned games with NFTs or cryptocurrencies from Steam, the Epic Games Stores welcomes NFTs, and now Itch.io has weighed in. In response to people asking, the folks behind the excellent indie games store have stated their beliefs plainly: "NFTs are a scam."
]]>February has finally arrived and that means it's FromSoftware month, baby. Elden Ring is almost here, so you best limber up, do your stretches, have a bath. Do what you need to do to prepare yourself for a colossal undertaking. One thing that might help get you in a Soulsborne headspace is Bloodborne PSX, a free PlayStation 1-esque demake of FromSoft's gothic action-RPG.
]]>'Tis the season of charity bundles, in which developers urge you to perform the generous act of giving their videogames a new home in exchange for a fraction of their true value. Next up: a bundle of 66 games on Itch.io. Are you big hard-drived enough to let A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build, Old Man's Journey, Lieve Oma, A Normal Lost Phone, Secrets Of Raetikon, Cosmic Express, Fugl, Botanicula, Hacknet, The Stillness Of The Wind, The Hex - *deep breath* - Art Sqool, Hidden Folks, Cloud Gardens, Signs Of The Sojourner, Wide Ocean Big Jacket, Coffee Talk, Ynglet and many more onto your computer?
Go on, have a heart. It'll cost $5 and 100% of the money goes to the World Land Trust.
]]>Back in 2016 I spoke to game dev and critic Mattie Brice about making DIY video games for the young audience at Rookie Mag. Brice said, “I just wanna demystify to a lot of people that you don’t need this intense process to make video games.” While tools like Unity and Game Maker 2 have become more user-friendly over the years, the game making tool with the lowest barrier to entry might just remain Twine - the HTML-based text-centric dev tool that is often likened to a way to make electronic choose-your-own-adventure stories. The freedom presented with Twine has afforded many creators, especially queer game devs, the opportunity to make stunning, often shocking work - with Benji Bright among them.
]]>Pride month is over now, but you still have a couple more days to grab a massive bundle of games and things from queer developers over on Itch.io. The Queer Games Bundle contains 236 items, from video game RPGs to tabletop RPGs, as well as dating sims, software, zines and more. All money raised from the bundle is split evenly between all the creators involved in it, and at the time of writing they've made over $102,000 (around £74,500).
]]>On June 8th, just four days after it launched, the Itch.io indie bundle for Palestinian Aid smashed its fundraising target of $500,000 (around £354,000). The huge charity collection features over 1000 games, tabletop RPGs, soundtracks, books and more, and all money raised from sales goes to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), who provide aid to Palestine refugees. You have two days left to grab the bundle now, and help push the fundraising total a little closer to $1 million.
]]>The share of game sales that digital distributors keep has been somewhat of a hot topic lately thanks to the big legal fisticuffs between Epic Games and Apple. A sweeter take on the splitsies situation is indie storefront Itch.io having developers keep 100% of their sales revenue on games bought today. Itch are calling the event their first Creator Day and say they hope to make it a regular event in the future.
]]>A couple of weeks before the Epic vs Apple trial kicked off, Epic added the Itch.io app to the Epic Games Store. It seemed like a move to show how inclusive and happy Epic were to host another storefront on their store, but now Apple have used this as ammunition against them. Last Friday, during the fifth day of the trial, Apple made it sound like the excellent indie-focused store is an evil demon app that sells games "so offensive" they couldn't possibly speak about them in court.
]]>Epic Games are continuing to do strange things that I do not understand. I'm not talking about that whole #FreeFortnite debacle with Apple (though I suppose this could be somewhat related). No, this time it's about the odd choices of PC apps they're bringing to their store. Today, they added the Itch.io app, which is another, better, game store that's technically a competitor? They've added a handful of other apps too, and made a new section in the storefront where you can find them all - an app store, if you will.
]]>Last time I did one of these (which was a few weeks ago because I've been away, whaddaya want from me?) I said I was going to go and poke around on Itch.io, because they have as much - indeed, probably more - porn than Steam, but they don't try and surprise me with it by pretending it's something else. And I did go poke around on Itch!
None of these game are porn, though. They're a collection of fun Pico-8 games you can play in browser, and my other abitrary way of linking them this time is that I really liked the what-it-says-on-the-tin approach to naming that the developers have employed for all of them. Makes me think they're fun, devil-may-care jaunty types of people.
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