PuzzleScript – an open-source HTML5 puzzle game engine

^ leafo is the creator of https://itch.io, which is about the coolest platform for indie game developers out there (deserving of respect alongside increpare's amazing puzzlescript). I personally like to think of itchio as almost an Internet Archive for video game culture, as well as serving a similar function for developers as MySpace did for bands in the 00's decade.

One of my favorite Puzzlescripts is Farbs' Dungeon Janitor: https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=6866423, along with his puzzlescript adaptation of Pac-Man: https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=6847686

I don't use their platform and I'm not much of a gamer, but one criticism I read online is that they intend to police their platform more heavily than Steam. The creator criticized Steam's game policy on Twitter [0]. Of course, it's their platform and they can do as they please, and if you share their views then you might view this in a positive light. If I were involved in that community I'd have some concerns of rules being selectively enforced, although I don't know if that has ever been an issue with them.

Personally, I've been favoring gog.com over Steam as of late; they have a decent amount of DRM-free indie games available. I think anyone can submit their game, although I'm uncertain of their content policy, and I wasn't able to find any information on it after a quick search.

It's also worth noting that the actual Internet Archive [1] has a large amount of games freely available. It's mostly retro games, but I don't think there's any restrictions against modern games. Of course you'd probably only upload your game there if you were making it freely available, since it's meant as an actual archive.

[0] https://twitter.com/moonscript/status/1004448157776793600

[1] https://archive.org/

I haven't been working on my game since my newborn has been my priority but I have an open-source tetris-attack like game built in eletron, typescript and phaser.

Its deterministic, has multiplayer, and frame to frame recreation to the tetris-attack mechanics

https://github.com/omenking/swap-n-pop

Who needs unity when there is puzzlescript and pico-8?

And before you say “it’s a different use case” that was a rethorical question.

Hey, thanks for replying. There was a lot of interpretation of my tweet that wasn't true, I posted a follow up:

https://twitter.com/moonscript/status/1004802016252551173

We don't "intend to police," our moderation policies have never changed.There's a lot of weird stuff on itch.io that will always have a place. We don't want hate speech on the platform.

It's easy to have a gut reaction of supporting free speech without understanding the implications of what that entails. Many of the people clamoring for free speech on gaming platforms still want games to be removed ('asset flips', things they deem low quality, etc.). With my tweet, people conjured up an idea of a morality police force which is secretly making decisions about things people are allowed to say. That image is easy to attack, but it's not even close to how itch.io works, or will ever work.

The reason why I criticized Steam's stance is because they're trying to avoid responsibility. I'm sure you're familiar with how discourse goes on the internet: people with strong negative opinions are going to put in significantly more energy into spreading their message than an average person who just wants to read around. Their amplified message does not represent everyone as a whole though. Sure Steam can ban 'trolling,' but that's too vague. I have a pretty strong feeling that their 'trolling' ban is going to end up policing the morality of message as well. And, their process is probably going to be even more secretive.