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i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.

there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.

anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.

A Better World - create an alternate history timeline

Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game

Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet

Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games

Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones

Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy

ZenGM - simulate sports

Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi

IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)

Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface

The Cafe & Diner - mystery game

The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game

Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions

Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game

Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game

Miniconomy - player driven economy game

Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes

BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators

Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil

Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.

if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.

Some isaac-styled sprites

I've been working on the Hong Lu slugcat design for the mod, but I'm having trouble deciding on a look for the rest of the sinner slugcats,, I don't know if I should make their colors based on their hair color or their textbox/logo color. I drew a comparison, and I'd like to know what you guys think works better!

(note: these sprites are only drawn for reference and won't be used in the mod)

Some Isaac enemies

heyyyyyyyyy guys whats up

Working on a madness thing, here's a part of it!

Fellow Windows 11 users: how to disable newly-installed Microsoft AI!

Folks, with the new updates that've come down recently, Microsoft has installed its "Copilot" AI app on your machine. It cannot be removed.

But it can be disabled. Here's how (courtesy of the excellent Pihko Misit, aka @smokepaw.bsky.social over at Bluesky). I've just done this to my own desktop machine, and all's well with it now.

Here's what to do:

(1) You need to have Admin rights for the machine and be logged in to the administrator account.

Now, right-click on the Start menu (Windows logo on the Taskbar.) A menu pops up; about half way down it you'll see Terminal and Terminal (Admin). Click on the Terminal (Admin) option.

(2) A DoS-like box will open. (For those of you who've never interacted with a Windows terminal window before, it looks like this:)

On the command line (i.e. the first empty line), copy and paste this:

reg add HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsCopilot /v TurnOffWindowsCopilot /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

Then hit Enter.

If successful, you'll see a line pop up saying so. Congratulations! But you're not quite finished.

Now you need to close all programs and fully shut down the machine. A restart isn't enough, it needs to be fully powered down and started back up.

"And now," Pihko says, "ou have a NSA-like AI spy dormant on your machine. Stay vigilant, odds are it'll turn back on with future updates! Big Corporate wants you to be compliant. Don't be!"

They are taking form once more

V1 slugcat

That's it

anyway,