Museum of Screens

The past and future of games on the Internet

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  • Web Game of the Day: Gravoor Infinity

    Do you want a short and very addictive game with (apparently) endless replayability? Well Gravoor Infinity is for you. You have to navigate through mazes without touching anything, and collect powerups before time runs out. It feels very much like an arcade game, without any monetization. If you have an account on Newgrounds, you can even compete for the leaderboard.

    You can play this game here.

  • Web Game of the Day: commonweal

    Hello everyone. It’s been a while, I had to deal with some personal stuffs that took me away from web games. But now I’m back to share new interesting experiences for your browser.

    commonweal is a cryptic multiplayer game with no real instruction or guidance. You explore a depressing world under a permanent rain. You can’t talk to other player, and if you stray too far away of the fire for too long you die. What should you do in a world like this? Gather ressources to throw it into the fire? Try to escape ? This is apparently only a demo but it feels like there are more to this game that meet the eye, and I am curious to discover all its secrets.

    You can play this game here.

  • Web Game of the Day: Homecoming

    For the last Web Game of the Day, I mentioned Flash Forward, the annual game jam on Newgrounds to create new Flash games. Today’s game is part of the jam, and it’s a whole different thing.

    Back in the Flash era, visual novels were not a huge genre but there still was a few VNs that got popular. This short VN is a heavy story about grief and family, how to reconnect with people that grew apart in such irreconcilable ways. The monochromatic graphics are beautiful and the animation effect complement the story very well. It is a topical story that can be very upsetting at time, but it is worth experiencing.

    You can play the visual novel here.

  • Web Game of the Day: Lampyrinth

    Every year on Newgrounds takes place Flash Forward, a three months long game jam dedicated to Flash. I said it before and I said it again, it still amazes me to see the Flash scene is still alive and thriving. This jam is not just about nostalgia for the Flash era, it is also a mean to preserve the culture of Flash making: All the tutorials, tricks and tropes of the genre. Preserving Flash games is not enough, and that’s why making new ones is so important.

    Lampyrinth is a charming little maze game seemingly straight out of the early 2000s. Open doors, collect fruits and cheese, it is as simple as it get. I guess I am so enamored with this simple game because it remind me so much of games I used to play in my childhood.

    You can play this game here.

  • Web Game of the Day: SPELLBOUND

    Content Warning: Depression, suicidal thoughts

    Using the medium of videogame to tell personal stories is a difficult exercise. You have to be willing to be vulnerable enough to let people explore parts of your life, to share emotions that were felt and to tell stories that are emotionally true.

    SPELLBOUND is a game about living with a curse, a curse that make the world and the people around you disappear. This is a heavy story that use cleverly the minimalistic aesthetic of the Game Boy. GB Studio has been gaining traction in the indie dev community and I am happy to see more and more web game made with this engine. Meaning you can actually play this game on a real Game Boy.

    I advise you to read the trigger warnings listed in-game carefully as it is a story about a real condition. It is short so I won’t add anything else but I think it is a heavy and important interactive experience, and I wish there were more games like this.

    You can play this game here.

  • The Museum of Screens Research Team: Legend of Zork

    The Museum of Screens Research Team is a serie of posts dedicated to research and document web games that are lost or at the risk of being lost.

    Hey, did you know there was a Zork browser MMO? That it was released in 2009 and was terrible and shortly closed afterward? And that it was the last official release of the legendary serie of games Zork?

    We have to go back a little bit: Zork was a text based adventure game first created on mainframe computers in 1977, and commercially released in 1980. Today it seems like a very simple retro computer game about exploring a cavern and collecting treasures, but at the time it was a groundbreaking interactive fiction, and a cultural phenomenon. More advanced than most games at the time, full of humor and computer in-jokes, it spawned many sequels and its studio, Infocom, became the leading company in interactive fictions. You can read more about it on this article.

    Legend of Zork (Source: MobyGames)

    Now, we are in 2009. Infocom closed down two decades ago after being bought by Activision. There hasn’t been any official Zork game since 1996. And Jolt Online Gaming, a gaming studio known for online web games such as Utopia, announce their new game: Legend of Zork, an online multiplayer game aiming at recreating the beloved universe of the original franchise in a “casual adventure game”. Now, you might ask, how can you recreate a text adventure game in MMO form? The answer is: you can’t. That’s why Legend of Zork ended up being an RPG. Because the game was clearly inspired by the big web based online game of the time: Kingdom of Loathing.

    Legend of Zork used the name, characters and style of humor of the Zork franchise, but none of the actual gameplay. No puzzle, the game is all about exploring and fighting ennemies in order to find loot, sell them and get better equipment. Like any web based MMO of the time the game was free-to-play, limiting the player to a few moves per day unless you spent actual money, or apparently, subscribed to a shady dating website. What a time for online game.

    Legend of Zork (Source: MobyGames)

    Now, this kind of game was very common in 2009, in fact there was hundreds of them. Using the Zork franchise was weird for this kind of game, but considering the web based MMO were heavy on text, maybe they thought a throwback to old school text adventure game would be a logical step. Maybe a game like this could have worked, but if we read the reviews at the time, it pretty much wasn’t. The game was called unfunny and repetitive, with the combat being automated, and the loot being basically indistinguishable from one another. One of the review compared the game to Progress Quest, the RPG satire where the gameplay was automatized and the only thing to look at was the numbers increasing.

    The weirdest thing is, it seems the game was reviewed way worse BECAUSE of the association with the Zork franchise. It if was a generic online RPG, it might have been better received, but most critics made the comparison with the original games. The lack of interactivity, puzzle or even any story was even more noticeable with the Zork branding. It failed at engaging Zork fan, or creating new ones.

    Legend of Zork (Source: MobyGames)

    It is no surprise the game closed down in 2011. Jolt Online Gaming closed down a year later, and today it seems no one really yearn for a comeback of this game. As for me I have no personal history with Zork, but I have a lot of memories of games like this on the Internet in the early 2000s. I played hundreds of online game like these, RPG with few interactivity, only made of HTML and PHP. Most of them were bad, but I enjoyed playing them a lot. It is a kind of game that I don’t really see anymore and wish would make a comeback. It is very unlikely, but hey I can dream.

  • Web Game of the Day: Wishlist

    Making a game when you are a solo developer is a weird experience. It is somewhat a gratifying but stressful and isolating experience. Most of all, being noticed, getting people to actually play your games means most of the time playing the algorithm’s game: Post gifs of your game regularly, boost engagement, keep people updated on your progress, and if you publish a game on Steam, hope that people will wishlist your game. And now this whole harrowing experience is a game!

    I really love meta experience and Wishlist is right up my alley. Pick what kind of game you want to make, what feature you add next, and see how people react to it. This is a great piece of satire that feel so much relatable. Special mention to the option “Use AI art” that will make you work faster but make everyone hate you. It’s just great.

    You can play this game here.

  • Wordle is no more

    Dordle (2022)

    You might have heard the news: NYTimes, copyright holder of Wordle, started sending DMCA takedown requests to Wordle clones. So far, major Github repositories were taken down, and it is probably only the beginning.

    I talked about Wordle in the past, how it was a surprise hit because it reminded everyone how the Internet could have nice things with no monetization, the way it ispired hundreds of people to make their own versions, and how it was bought then stripped down of everything that was good about it in the first place. And now that it is clear NYTimes not only want Wordle to generate money but also to be the only Wordle on the Internet, I think it is time to do a quick follow-up of the situation.

    I am not a legal expert, and I can only assume what is the plans for NYTimes, but it is clear they think Wordle clones are parasites to the brand. Not the gameplay, after all Wordle is not a novel concept, games like theses existed for ages, and even predate the Internet. They are probably concerned with the way they looks like Wordle, how they use similar names and looks.

    But, Wordle clones looks like Wordle because before it was bought, Wordle and Wordle clones were equals, they were free games about guessing a word, and accessibles the same way. The makers were not competitors, they were peers. And the sad reality is that, Wordle in 2024 is not a free game: it is a data harvesting device, like any big website. Playing it asks you to create an account, to consent to cookies, shows you ads before you can even see the main game. It is now everything Wordle was not in january 2021.

    This is why Wordle is no more. It was already a shadow of its past self, but now this is the last straw. NYTimes killed any positive feelings associated with the brand name Wordle. All the creativity and enjoyment it generated, it has been effectively crushed down, and will likely continue to be crushed, one DMCA takedown at a time, until you are only left with NYTime branded Wordle. Brought to you between an ad and a pop up asking for your personal datas.

  • Web Game of the Day: Le Chat Fonce and the Secret of the Clock Tower

    Today’s game is a platformer that is… Simply amazing looking? For real, the blend of 2D sprites and 3D environment to give depth to the levels you explore, and the city in the background you can see out of the windows, it’s so simple and yet so effective. It is a blend betweent platformer and puzzle/exploration, where you explore a strange Clock Tower full of characters, doors to unlock and items to collect. A classic, tradiditional collect-a-thon, with many secrets, and a cat as a character. 10/10 no notes.

    You can play this game right here.

  • Web Game of the Day:A Very Bold Character

    Today’s game is very small. Smaller than most web game, smaller than a demo. It is in fact a tech demo to demmonstrate the capacities of a new Javascript based game engine. So, why am I featuring it? Because it feel like it was made for me and me alone: It’s an ASCII platformer game engine.

    Okay not exactly ASCII but Unicode but you get what I mean: It’s made entirely out of special computer characters. And it looks so good. I had to double check at some point because the animation or details looked so good but nah, it’s all text. I am so excited to see what this engine will do in the future because the controls feel so good. Maybe it will be open source???? Probably not but I still can dream…

    You can play this game here.

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