Weekly Links #177

Hello, everyone. After its relative success in the recent game jam, I felt compelled to make an improved Lost in the Jungle (also on itch.io and on Game Jolt) in HTML5, that improves pretty much every aspect of the game. Many thanks to the friends who tested it and provided feedback! In related news, as of this week the book of the blog is two years old, and still half off for the month of July.

For the game developers out there, while Konstantinos Dimopoulos describes the labyrinthine realities of the medieval city, Mark Johnson muses about burnout and doing too much. Having suffered from that repeatedly, I can only agree.

It's also been another good week for retrogaming, with a story on the renewed popularity of classic games and another on how the Magnetic Scrolls games were recovered from ancient backup tapes (via Vintage is the New Old and Gamasutra, respectively). Last but not least, while on the topic of text adventures, the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation just announced taking over the Interactive Fiction Archive.

Gee, who would have thought that just as we can still appreciate 80-years-old silent movies in grainy black and white, so can we still play and enjoy games from the 8-bit era, so it's worth preserving them for the public?

Good news for the future, then. Enjoy the week.