Curate of Curiosities

This is where I write about the strange, the obscure, or just whatever interests me.

September 17, 2024

After two weeks, I've finally published the writeup for Tobias Cornwall's Taming Dreams, the long awaited and very unfinished reimagining of MARDEK, the hit browser RPG. Since the only way to play this game anymore is through a slightly laggy emulator, and the third episode is completely inaccessible, I couldn't take that many screenshots for this page. For now, please enjoy the writeup of a game that attempts to incorporate deep spiritual themes into the reimagining of a silly Flash RPG.

Man, it really has been more than a year since I started writing about his guy's games, hasn't it?

September 11, 2024

This next page I'm working on is a bit of a doozy. It might be my longest page so far in terms of word count. And all this for a game that none of you can play anymore.

September 3, 2024

It looks like the creator of I Hate You, Please Suffer had a lot more to say about society, that they mainly chose to express through RPG Maker games. If you wanted to know how today's world would adapt to suddenly turning into a JRPG, then come right this way.

August 31, 2024

Just because I've finished with Cornwall/pseudolonewolf's magnum opus doesn't mean I'm done with him. With that said, here's my writeup of Miasmon. It's like Pokemon, but with sex jokes.

August 22, 2024

In the continuing adventures of Ramona and friends, we break into the house of some dead rich guy, and finally pay off our landlord. Of course, this is far from everything that the game has to offer.

On another note, I just made an account with the Internet Archive, and will be uploading most of my videos from Odysee over there.

August 15, 2024

Boy, it sure takes a lot of effort to end up no closer to your goal than before! Just ask Ramona and pals!

July 29, 2024

At last, the final part of the MARDEK writeup! Boy, for a Final Fantasy pastiche, this game sure had a lot things going on, in both plot and gameplay.

July 21, 2024

Finally done with MARDEK! Had a few technical difficulties near the end, but at least I have the material I need. Writeup coming soon.

July 18, 2024

Boy, am I sure on a roll with this game. We get our third party member, take on a few black-market bounties, hand the souls of our enemies to a furry, go fishing, and meet a man whose name means penis.

July 16, 2024

Since I've already made some progress on I Hate You, Please Suffer, the RPG that brutalizes the player at every corner, I feel it's time for a retrospective on the one that started it all.

July 10, 2024

Like quite a few properties that originated around the turn of the millenium, The Bellybuttons has a number of browser games based on it. View the page here and behold Murphy's disgusting, acne-covered face!

July 7, 2024

Here's more of I Hate You, Please Suffer. Now that Ramona's a licensed adventurer, she can now start her new job of getting sliced up by bandits and stung by poisonous insects! Good thing we have some mute guy with a magic cellphone on our side!

On the game dev side of things, I just updated the demo for Trial of the Hierarch. This update fixes a few gameplay elements, and fixes a bug that causes powerup chests to drop more items than they're supposed to.

July 1, 2024

The page for volume 1 of The Bellybuttons is up! You've noticed that I've titled the page "Like A Lioness In Heat." You might think that the title is a bit outrageous for a page about a tween comic, but there's a good reason it's called that. It's because the album has a 15-year-old presenting to a lifeguard on panel (though you won't get to see it on the page). Looks like I was right about the suspect content.

June 16, 2024

First, I've made progress in Chapter 3 of MARDEK. The gang's all here, we're ready to start gathering the crystals, and we deal with the fantasy TSA!

Second, the tie in album for Tamara's first live-action movie...which is just stuff that was already in the comic, but that Google region blocked for whatever reason. Boy, European comics are really something else, aren't they?

June 12, 2024

On top of maintaining this site, I also develop indie games using Godot Engine. I am pleased to announce the release of a playable demo for a game that I've been working on for the past few months. Trial of the Hierarch is now available on itch.io.

June 5, 2024

I think the writeup for chapter 3 is going to be a three-parter, rather than a two-parter like I was expecting.

May 26, 2024

So, here's the page for the first part of Mardek's third chapter, covering up to the first elemental temple. I can tell you that I enjoyed it more than the second half of chapter 2.

May 21, 2024

Looks like chapter 3 is longer than chapters 1 and 2 put together, so I'll be dividing it into two pages. You can expect the first page to be up by the end of this month.

May 18, 2024

Finally got chapter 3 running! Expect the page to be up sometime next month.

May 16, 2024

Slight change of plans. I'll be using Newgrounds Player instead. Ruffle crashes when you attempt an end-of-chapter save.

May 15, 2024

I've already mentioned that it will be a long time before the page on chapter 3 of Mardek is ready, but I've run into a pretty major problem. Up to this point, I have been playing the game using Flashpoint. However, with this game in particular, the files it uses are hosted on Kongregate, and for some reason, the file for chapter 3 is inaccessible there. Fortunately, I have a possible solution; download the game files from somewhere else, then load them using Ruffle. Sadly, I can't access my previous saves with Ruffle, so it looks like I'm going through the first two chapters all over again.

May 7, 2024

So, here's the page on the first 20 minutes of I Hate You, Please Suffer. I could have covered more of it, but there's been a whole bunch of changes since this game launched, so starting out has gotten just a bit more aggravating than before.

April 29, 2024

It's been quite a while since we've covered any new content on this site, so this month we have new pages on the following:

• The Bellybuttons, another European comic aimed at tweens, but this this time, one that some English speakers know about,
• I Hate You, Please Suffer, another indie RPG maker game that...well, just look at the title, for one.

In the meantime, since it will be a while to get through chapter 3 of Mardek, here's a page on some of the other games that the creator published around the same time.

April 17, 2024

So, looks like the write up on New York Times Simulator only took a few hours to get up and running. Here it is.

April 14, 2024

Well, whoop-de-doo, the staunchly leftist game dev Molleindustria has come up with a new game while I wasn't looking! Expect a writeup very soon.

April 9, 2024

Not only have I given some old pages a tweak, but the menu's been given a bit of a facelift, too.

April 2, 2024

Just gave the front page a bit of an overhaul. From now on, the main page will only have news that's less than six months old.

March 24, 2024

Thanks to Google's shenanigans, we have run into a brick wall regarding a certain Belgian comic. Fortunately, there is, in fact, something that we can discuss without sacrificing continuity. The comic had a live-action film released in 2016, and it seems to have made some unfortunate casting choices that landed it in some hot water...

March 17, 2024

At long last, the writeup on Weird and Unfortunate Things Are Happening is complete! Here's the final battle, and here are my final words on this game. This is probably the longest thing I've covered on this site so far.