2024-09-17: Obscure Stuff I Played Recently (2024) III: The Search for Games (feat. free stuff from itch)
Oops! It's been a while, huh? By way of apology, here's more games.
2024-05-08: Obscure Stuff I Played Recently (2024): The Squeakuel
Hello! Would you like more games?
2024-02-27: Obscure Stuff I Played Recently (2024)
Been a while, huh? No point wasting any time, here's five more cool obscure games I played recently.
2024-01-02: Introducing the HALL OF GAME
Happy new year! No new post today, but rather the first proper change to the site in a long time. As you probably haven't noticed, the sidebar signpost now points to the HALL OF GAME instead of the OPINION ZONE. Why? Turns out I don't have that many opinions I want to write about, but quite a lot of games. So that page is going to serve as a catalogue for the games I mention going forward. Nothing fancy, just one big static table.
And a fuckload of embedded images. I set the images to lazy load, but who knows what good that'll do. I'm not a web dev and I'm trying to keep this site Javascript free, so this seems like a decent enough implementation for the time being. Maybe I'll change it later. No promises.
2023-12-08: Stuff I Played Recently Part X(-mas), featuring THE OFFICIAL RICK ZONE GAME OF THE YEAR AWARD
After some consideration, I decided that a top 10 games of the year list would be just too much effort for what amounts to re-shilling games I've shilled already. So, here's your regular Stuff I Played Recently, with one super special OFFICIAL RICK ZONE GAME OF THE YEAR AWARD given to the one indie game that triggered the most potent response in my brain's obsession glands. No trophy, unfortunately. Maybe the RICK ZONE can get one made after the Embracer acquisition goes through.
2023-10-21: Stuff I Played Recently 3⅓
I wonder if I've played enough 2023 releases to make an Official RICK ZONE Top 10 Niche Indie Games of the 2023 post. Maybe. While I think on that, here's a handful more niche indie games I played recently.
2023-09-27: Stuff I Played Recently, or: Some Cool Indie Games You Probably Haven't Heard Of, But Like, For Real, Not Like Those Youtube Videos Where It's Spiritfarer And Stardew Valley And Other Games Literally Everyone On The Planet Has In Fact Heard Of
When the title's longer than the blurb, you know it's real.
2023-08-25: Stuff I Played Recently: Lost Coast
Another month, another video games. Come check a look, okay??
2023-07-29: More Stuff I Played Recently: Episode 2
Video games. Video games! Video games!! VIDEO GAMES
2023-06-10: 4×(More) Stuff I Played Recently
This post may well be the golden standard for what I'm trying to do here. A handful of GENUINELY good GENUINELY niche indie games, and I'm talking, like, single digit review counts here, man. The gloves are off.
2023-05-18: More More More Stuff I Played Recently
Okay, this time it actually has been a while since the last update, cuz I was a bit busy trying to learn how to use Blender and otherwise wasting my precious time not playing indie games without many reviews. I also brainstormed an update to the website interface using some ORIGINAL retrofied 3D art, but I couldn't come up with anything particularly interesting. Maybe it'll look like this forever, I dunno. Anyway, here's some more indie games I played recently.
2023-03-18: More More Stuff I Played Recently
I played more obscure games. You know the drill. If you don't, it's very simple, and I won't insult your intelligence by elaborating.
2023-02-16: The Final Post Concerning The Steam Next Fest of Before, Where Before is Still February 2023, Through an Earlier Point Therein
Here's the final post for this Next Fest. Last but certainly not least, based on the quality of the demos!
2023-02-12: The Next Post Concerning The Steam Next Fest of Now, Where Now is February 2023
I took the previous post's advice and hurried so hard I played another batch of cool demos before Steam Next Fest ended. It's been a really solid lineup of demos in general this year (tri-year? trimester? quartmonth? (there are three next fests in a year)), so here's hoping the final releases are just as good.
2023-02-10: The Steam Next Fest of Now, Where Now is February 2023
Fuck! Steam Next Fest is almost over! Quick, read this post before they take half the demos down! HURRY!!!!1
2023-01-04: More Stuff I Played Recently
Starting off 2023 wrong by blogging about a bunch of games you've probably actually heard about already. But then again, maybe you haven't, who am I to say? I'm off to play more Pentiment, maybe next time I'll post about something more interesting.
2022-11-05: Steam Next Fest 2022 highlights The Second
Steam Next Fest ended even further back than two weeks ago, but 27th of October me can rest easy knowing I did in fact play through everything before the next Next Fest began.
2022-10-27: Steam Next Fest 2022 highlights, feat. Vacant Kingdom
Steam Next Fest ended around two weeks ago, and I just got around to posting about some of the demos I downloaded and enjoyed. I wonder if I'll actually play all the demos I downloaded before the next Next Fest begins...
2022-09-20: i added a sign post
wobble
2022-09-18: Stuff I Played Recently
At some point last week-ish I realised that restricting myself to posting about games I found in itch bundles is kinda stupid and pointless, especially since I'm playing other games too. Here's another listicle of games I enjoyed, not from any particular bundle, but still skewed towards the obscure. Not like you need me to tell you Spelunky exists, right?
2022-09-03: Itch.io Bundle for Racial Equality highlights (2)
Looks like it's a series after all. Now go play some games, would ya?
2022-08-21: Choice Paralysis - Itch.io Bundle for Racial Equality highlights (1?)
You know those itch.io charity bundles? They've got a fucktonne of games, right? I picked out a couple (five couples (ten)) that I thought were cool, which you will hopefully check out and find cool too. The first in a series? Who knows. Not I.
2022-08-07: I Hate web3
It's been almost exactly half a year since I last "updated" this site, and since then I've graduated, moved house, found a job, and made peace with the fact that the 9-5 is the next fifty years of my life. I also found some time to write my first OPINION, and it's about how I think web3 sucks. No points for originality, but hey.
2022-03-21: To script or to NoScript
I was hoping to have populated the opinion zone with some SCALDING HOT TAKES by now. Unfortunately reality got in the way of my Buzzfeed-usurping dreams, because it turns out that actually designing a website is a bit of a THING in and of itself. And no I don't mean it's too difficult for me, prospective employer, I mean the sheer amount of ways to do stuff is pretty OVERWHELMING.
Consider the humble sidebar. It's on the left there, not particularly impressive as of right now, just some white links and a SICKNASTY FLAME GIF. One of my several web design problems is, how the hell do I manage it? Like right now I just put the sidebar code in the website code. Trivial, but if I ever want to change it I have to visit every HTML file and change it myself which sucks and makes the programmer part of my brain ACHE a little. But what are the alternatives? frames are obsolete, using Javascript to load from a file seems like overkill + discriminates against my Lynx/NoScript homies, and sneaking in some cheeky PHP just doesn't feel right. (and also isn't allowed on Neocities I think)
I dunno, I guess I'll come up with something eventually. I should probably get around to adding some actual CONTENT to this site, for the sake of my own self esteem if nothing else. Have stuff to build around, rather than endless placeholders for stuff-related IOUs. Maybe I could do a ranked list of USS Enterprises. Yeah, that'd do numbers.
2022-03-16: Well, what now?
I did it. I made a website. Several decades late to the punch, little old Ricky finally has a webpage to call his very own. Question is, what the hell do I do with it now?
Do I blog? (Does anyone even read blogs?) Do I just fiddle with the website itself until I end up with some bombass flashy design like what you got in those 2000s websites that were just one big Flash program? Do I post stuff I make, assuming I can bring myself to actually make stuff?
Guess that's the cool thing about a personal website like this. No rules (some rules), no expectations, and, let's be real, no real pressure to perform. So, who knows? Maybe in a few years this site will be a veritable BOUNTY of cool shit, an example for all the world to follow. Maybe I'll lose interest and drop the whole thing tomorrow, leaving behind nothing but a half-assed monument to my own terminal LAZINESS. Only time will tell.
And speaking of time, if you're reading this and you're not me, welcome! How's the future? Hopefully it's a bit better than [current day] what with [current event] and all. I'd ask you to let me know if anything interesting happened with this site, but at that point I'll probably know myself.
