I'm using embeddable widgets for my game pages, for instance on the official homepage of Casual Desktop Game.

However, itch.io refuses to load these widgets across all tested browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Edge), both on Desktop and mobile (Android, Firefox and Chrome). 

This happens since quite a few weeks now, when before it worked flawlessly. I noticed that now when you browse itch.io, your connection is delayed for Cloudflare in order to check for suspicious activity. Maybe this is just a coincidence, however there might be a connection.

In more detail, the connection via the embedded widget using an iframe, is denied with a 403 response code.

I hope this can be resolved, as it prevents users from navigating to the game's itch.io page directly from the homepage if they desire so.

Casual Desktop Game December Patch 2025

The latest patch will introduce awesome gameplay updates that will further expand your gameplay experience. 🕹️

With this update you'll now be able to save / load scenes using the blueprint feature. This will allow you to create cool battle scenes that you can just quickly load and save, and alter whenever you want. A blueprint state will include all combat entities as well as the current selected background (if any). Another cool thing - that was also requested by the community - is the pause key toggle. This is especially useful if you want to take a longer look at a frozen state of your current destruction - and make better screenshots. Furthermore two more fireworks tools have been added, given that we're heading closer to new years eve: The cake and the mortar. Check out for yourself! See a full changelog below.

Note: Since there have been changes applied to the API, all workshop items must now comply with the recent changes! Please update your workshop tools accordingly.

Full changelog:

⭐ Blueprints: Save/load gameplay scenes

⭐ Cake tool: A fireworks cake with beautiful colors and explosions

⭐ Mortar tool: A fireworks tool with beautiful colors and explosions

⭐ Pause toggle: Pause/resume game to make better screenshots

⭐ Better looking general decal sprite

⭐ API endpoint to use the popup message feature

⭐ Misc improvements and bugfixes

I'm very thankful for all the players supporting the game throughout the last years. It's really awesome that this fan remake game of the ancient Desktop Destroyer is so well recieved by the community. I hope the new features will spark even more joy. To many more years playing Casual Desktop Game! 💪

>> PLAY THE GAME <<

Homepage | Bluesky | Discord

AquaShell v1.0.2 released! 🧩🚀💯 

The latest version 1.0.2 along with the previous version 1.0.1 cover some cool additions, improvements and bugfixes that will further empower your shell scripting experience - a tremendous update in december, 2025. 💚

➡️ Detailed release information:

https://www.danielbrendel.com/blog/51-aquashell-v102-released-empower-your-shell...

➡️ Games:

https://danielbrendel.itch.io/aquaspace-game

https://danielbrendel.itch.io/aquaboard-csrb

➡️ View release:

https://github.com/danielbrendel/dnyAquaShell/releases/tag/v1.0.2

Hey jammers  

The Virtual Pet Jam 2025 has ended and the results are now available for everyone to see! 

The jam winner is: 

Game: Virtual Pet Prototype 

Author: Shiro 

Link: https://itch.io/jam/virtual-pet-jam-2025/rate/3963800 

Congratulations!!  

All results: https://itch.io/jam/virtual-pet-jam-2025/results 

If you want a continuation of the Virtual Pet Jam, please take the survey in my discord's polls channel (or reply here) Thanks to everyone who participated and I hope you had a wonderful experience.

The Virtual Pet Jam 2025 has ended! 🕹️ 

The jam winner is: 

> Game: Virtual Pet Prototype 

> Author: Shiro 

> Link: https://itch.io/jam/virtual-pet-jam-2025/rate/3963800

➡️ All results: https://itch.io/jam/virtual-pet-jam-2025/results

Congratulations! You won the jam! <3 I've announced this also in discord, but I didn't find your name, so I couldn't assign a jam winning badge. If I just missed your name in the list, feel free to let me know. If not, that's fine too. Once again, congrats and have a nice day. =)

Checked it again and it works now! I really like the idea of buying treats with earned funds. Animation is adorable, too. Overall this is a cool game and the idea to makie it a gameboy ROM is pretty nostalgic, too. Good job, really, and I hope you keep on with development.<3 It would be cool to have some background music, too. Overall this is a pretty nostalgic virtual pet. Good job to all involved! :3

I tried it, but the screen dimensions don't match. ^^" Meh, but if you update it, I gonna try it again.^^

Geep! :3 Really cool game! Pretty easy to understand and get into. It feels like Geep is alive, you help it with occassional treatmen, but overall Geep is pretty independent. Would really recommend to keep up with development of Geep. <3

Cool perspective and overall the UI and graphics a very good, really nostalgic^_^ I also like the idea of the radio! Good job and hope you'll keep on developing the game!

Awww, that's sooo adorable! <3 I want to play it, I'm a bit lost with the controls lol xD Gonna try it later, but nonetheless this looks promising! Really like the 90s atmosphere here!

Ha, that's really cool! I like the visual style, music, animation and simply UI. It's also quite fun to take care without any UI in terms of bars and meters. Sometimes the cat suddenly moves to a different location, so I lost some money. xD But it's fun! Also I've got a question: Do I need to endure a round without any destruction, so more kittens join? Given the description, I'd assume as such, in order to prove you're a good kitty parent. So, I guess I have to put more energy to take care of that furry devil. :3 ^_^

Adorable creature. :3 <3 UI looks very good! Unfortunately, clicking buttons didn't do anything for me, and I'm not sure if that's just because all bars were already full. A user feedback would be helpful here. Other than that, it's really cute.^^

This is the most fast-paced virtual pet I've ever seen, but I like it! :D Feels like taking care for a turtle on steroids in the measures of speed of light. :D Good job.^^ 

Awww, that's really adorable. :3 Finally we can have an Axolotl as pet. UwU <3 

Cool game, altough I'm not sure how to properly use the controls.^^" But the idea of finding a long abandoned tamagotchi somewhere in the streets, and taking care for it, is really nice! Graphics really remind me of the 90s, so this is awesome!

This is really cool! I like the 90s retro atmosphere. Feels like sitting in my friends home somewhere around 1995 and exploring games and tamagotchi of that time. The music fits the theme as well. Really appreciate this virtual pet and I'd definitely suggest to keep on developing it. :3

Very fun virtual pet. :D I bet the candy is bloody tasty for the hand xD

Thanks for your review! Glad you like it. I figured I wanted to make it both engaging, but also not too time consuming for the player. So, something suited for commuting, restroom visits or just a few moments of boredom. :D

The jam has started! You can still join the fun. 🥳

The jam has started! Have fun and happy jamming. 🥳

The NPD Awareness Game Jam has finished. Big thanks to everyone who contributed in raising awareness for #NarcissisticPersonalityDisorder 💚

Hey there, thank you all for participating. Altough this jam wasn't really active, the main thing was still very well: A game jam to raise awareness for Narcissistic Personality Disorder! I really hope that there will be more events of any kind to raise awareness, and I'll be happy to contribute. So, thank you all and see you during the next NPD awareness event!

Only two days until the jam starts! You can still join this wholesome and cozy game jam. 💚

Submissions are due in a few hours! 💚 You can already view a few submissions, but you can also still join and submit your game! 

The Counter-Strike Retroboard reminds me of my teenager times when I played CS 1.5/1.6 very often. It's mostly the GoldSrc engine (and other game engines at that time) and the possibilities that arose from: Various game mods, community maps, skins, models, scripts, etc. There were countless of content to choose from. It reminds me of a better Internet where it wasn't that heavily commercialized as it is today. Especially for a pwNPD social media can be detrimental. Constant comparision of ones achievements, looks and possessions. Especially for pwNPD with a vulnerable presentation, this is bad for ones mental health. I feel back in the days there were still both the online and offline world, that was just not connected as it is today. You could have both online and offline friends. Nowadays people are more separated, most likely in antagonistic bubbles. All for the benefits of big corporations making money. Back in the days it was more about creativity, exploration and "seeing what you can do". Having the old Internet with modern progress would be great, but I guess this is only a fantasy. 

Solitude can be a fortress of peace says the welcome screen of this game. Sometimes, even when you are performing so much in your daily life, I also need some time when I'm alone. That's what Casual Pixel Warrior represents. A solitude warrior in their base, traveling to distant worlds via the portal, fighting enemies, collecting goods, then return to purchase upgrades. Also there are pets. The best friends there are. 

It seems to be a very common thing with pwNPD that we have way more empathy towards animals. Animals don't judge. Animals tread you according to their instricts, not because of arbitrary societal norms that do more harm than good. I'm hardly an emotionally empathetic person, but animals always make me smile. They give happiness by simply being. Unconditionally. So, of course at some point I had to make a tamagotchi / virtual pet game. And yeah, the connection to the late 90s era is also there. :D

I had some crush on space and certain sci-fi TV shows, especially Stargate SG-1. To me the SG-1 team pictured a friendship of strong bonds, while still remained professional enough to not be too close. Technically they were colleagues. They were heroes, the top people in their field and well known by various people and cultures throughout their galaxy. Even tho they were so good at what they did, some episodes clearly shown that they couldn't really get along with anyone else besides their close circle. Social awkards, huh? :D At some point I wanted to create a space game, because outer space always provided me with comfort and calmness. It seems peaceful and maybe gives the impression of connecting to something inside that one yearns for. So, I think it's approbriate in this jam context to post.

Casual Desktop Game is a fan remake of the ancient Desktop Destroyer game from the Win95 - WinXP era.

I personally find comfort in childhood games, and we know that the inner child is also a very important aspect when it comes to NPD. That's why I submitted this game. I could write way more about how it's personal to me, but I suppress the urge for now. I think every self-aware pwNPD can relate to that to some extend. 

Hey guys, just wanted to post an update.

AquaShell Update incoming: An update of the scripting shell, AquaShell, will soon be released. It will provide more stability and also integrates with winget way better. This way installing the scripting system on your Windows machine is more streamlined. Of course you will still be able to manually download and install it via the official homepage as well as via the itch.io project entries of my AquaShell specific game pages.

New multimedia plugin planned: I'm planning on implementing a new multimedia plugin using either SDL2 or SFML. I'll dig more into the two to see what fits best. Anyways, this ensures a modern multimedia plugin as the current one uses DirectX 9 which is kinda dated. It will still be supported tho, but you can decide for yourself which one you'll eventually be using. Along with the new plugin, I'll create more simple sample games (Snake, Tetris, Asteroids, etc) to showcase the usage.

Standalone bundler: I'm also planning a tool to create standalone EXE files from scripts / scripted apps. This provides more accessibility to people who don't have AquaShell installed. Imagine how cool it would be shipping your multimedia apps / games or any other kind of scripts to users.

It would be really helpful if you'd consider starring the repository on GitHub. AquaShell is free and open-sourced software under the MIT license. 💚

Stay tuned!

Depending on the project I went with the following approaches:

• Built the game from scratch in C++, using DirectX for multimedia handling [1], [2]
• Built the game using my own 2D game engine, called Casual Game Engine (written in C++, uses DirectX, features AngelScript for game implementation) [3], [4]
• Built the game using Phaser when I wanted the game to be played as a web build [5], [6]

Games:

1. Casual Desktop Game, a fan remake of the ancient Desktop Destroyer featuring community content
2. Hyper Frenzy, an arena-styled space shooter / shmup game
3. Casual Pixel Warrior, a 2D top-down wave-shooter with RPG elements, seasonal events and pets
4. Solitarius, a story-driven space shooter, originally designed as a tech demo for the CGE game engine
5. Krepagotchi, a virtual pet game where you take care of a Krepa (depicting a Minecraft Creeper)
6. Bouncy Garden Fox, a jump&run game, originally designed as a present to the HortusFox plant parenting community

I also posted some articles about the progress of developing my games / game engine:

• The story of building my own game engine 🛠️🧱
• Krepagotchi - the story of building my own virtual pet
• Diving into outer space via gamedev 👾

I'd like to have an API to fetch general jam info of a specific game jam, the same info you see when viewing the jam page. Currently, there is no such API available. I only found a thread for jam entries from 2021 where you can entries via https://itch.io/jam/JAMID/entries.json. That's fine tho, but I'd like to fetch the general jam data. For context, I want to make a discord bot for my community that announces jams, like when a jam is about to start, when it's currently in progress, etc. I also want the users to be able to get jam infos via a user command. I'd cache this info of course.

Is any such API planned or are there any workarounds for now, so I could proceed with the bot?

Kind regards

Happy game jam time, everyone. We're all valid. 

Happy World Mental Health Day  You can still join the NPD Awareness Jam! ⭐

Hi. The care-taking feature is meant to be the central aspect of the game. Like in the spirit of old Tamagotchi games. A pokemon game would have a focus more on combat and exploration, so it would not really be suitable in this jam. 

Hi!

Well, if it works to create a TTRPG that revolves around virtual pets, then feel free to go ahead. 

Support appreciation

As you know I'm a very passionate software developer and have been active on itch since over 7 years now. That's why I've decided to change some project's pricings from "No payments" to "Free or donate". This will help me staying motivated to work on a vast amount of great projects as well as run various beneficial game jams.

Here are the projects you can support via a donation:

Casual Desktop Game

The beloved fan remake of the ancient Desktop Destroyer with vast modding possibilities and an integrated workshop.

https://danielbrendel.itch.io/casual-desktop-game

Casual Pixel Warrior

The 2D top-down wave shooter with RGP elements and pets.

https://danielbrendel.itch.io/casual-pixel-warrior

Hyper Frenzy

A casual 2D arena-styled space shooter game with a vast amount of weapons, maps and the possibility for custom content such as maps, gametypes and scripts.

https://danielbrendel.itch.io/hyper-frenzy

Krepagotchi

A virtual pet game where you take care of a Krepa (depicting a minecraft creeper). Very adorable, cozy and cute.

https://danielbrendel.itch.io/krepagotchi-virtual-pet

AquaShell related games and apps

https://danielbrendel.itch.io/aquaboard-csrb

https://danielbrendel.itch.io/aquaspace-game

-

Your support will also benefit the following upcoming jams:

NPD Awareness jam A game jam to promote inclusivity and fight discrimination against people who suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder: https://itch.io/jam/npd-awareness-jam

Virtual Pet jam A game jam to create or update a virtual pet of your choice: https://itch.io/jam/virtual-pet-jam-2025

Winter Wonderland A game jam during winter time for cozy and comfy gamedev sessions: https://itch.io/jam/winter-wonderland-jam

Thank you for reading and have a great and productive day! 💚💙💛🧡❤️