itch.io

It's a challenge to express my mixed feelings about this preview with enough precision to do it justice. (For context, having seen it listed in the ENnies, I wanted to familiarise myself with it enough to decide whether to give it a vote, so I was delighted to see the creator offers a proper preview that isn't paywalled. Kudos for that!)

The first story was compelling - beautifully illustrated, haunting, concisely told, and I loved the adventure hook suggestions that followed it. However, I didn't love the theming of "man's unrequited love/obsession for a magical-cold woman leads him to burn his entire kingdom and himself"... that read as very incel-coded, entitled and aphobic-coded to me.

Perhaps the point is that such approaches to life are nothing but destructive - but it is told in a way that makes him the central character we are meant to empathise with as readers, while she is given far less characterisation and serves pretty much only as motivation for his angst, so it's hard to be sure what the author was aiming for. (To be clear, I'm all for angst, especially in a collection of stories with a uniting theme of "unbearable things" - the misogynistic tropes and presentation of this particular tale just felt a bit grating to me personally.)

The second story in the preview starts off with a similar premise in its opening synopsis, which is concerning to me, but I have hope that the rest of the tales will be more varied and avoid falling into tired/misogynistic/patriarchal tropes - or at least show a more clearly critical perspective on those tropes. But the blurb's summary of the stories being about "the unloved [...] and what love did to them" does worry me further on that front.

The only way for me to find out for sure would be to get a copy... but if the content is all like that, I think I would regret financially supporting it (even leaving aside the matter of my minimal budget).

On the other hand, if the other stories demonstrate a broader range of premises and focus on diverse perspectives rather than consistently centring those of men in unrequited obsession, I feel like I would be doing the creator a disservice by not analysing the work as a whole.

I wish there were Community Copies available for folk on low incomes, or a "pay-what-you-want" option, as that would have given me the option to form opinions on the work as a whole... but also, I recognise the importance of creatives getting fairly paid for their works. Yet I don't feel confident enough that the full product would be something I would want to financially support or own, even if I could afford it, so buying it isn't really an option either in my case.

It all adds up to a dilemma for me and I'm not sure how to resolve it. I suppose I'll just have to hope that someday the full version gets included in a charity bundle / indie creators' bundle that I buy, so I can eventually find out!

A well-written and heartfelt explanation of how oppression and the struggle to meet basic survival needs under systemic exploitation make it extremely difficult (often impossible) to make art - and how this, in turn, makes it harder to survive such situations for many of us. 

Please note the content warnings at the top of the manifesto before reading!

A fantastic introductory resource for explaining these problems to more privileged people. Also, a deeply relatable expression of what many of us face but may struggle to put into words.  5/5 stars - outstanding.

I just tried to browse the Summer Sale, and found it really frustrating due to the rudimentary price filters. As someone on a low income, I would like to be able to combine various filters - for example:

on sale AND under [X price, which we should have the option to set manually]. This is because $5 USD / $15 USD is not particularly helpful for anyone using different currencies to budget with, or whose budget skews a little different. For example, if I can afford $10 USD or under, currently there is no way to filter out the $11 USD to $15 USD range.

I would also love to see some expansions to enable clearer use of the free and paid sections. While this is a useful idea in theory, I feel that (especially during a sale) it would be more helpful to have categories such as:


always free (for games such as Honey Heist)

free during this sale (for games such as Helan, currently 100% off during this sale)

community copies available (for games which both have community copies enabled AND actually have community copies still available to be claimed)

pay what you can  (for games that let you set your own price point from free upwards)

paid (for games that require at least a minimum payment)

All of the above should have AND/OR logic rather than AND, and should be filtered out automatically when not selected. (After all, most people shopping a sale won't want their listings cluttered up with always free games, right?)

minimum price (manually being able to set this from $0.00 USD upwards would be a great start, but ideally I'd love a system that let you enter amounts in a currency of your choosing - such as £ GBP - and automatically ran rough translations for games with price points set in different currencies. I realise that'd take a lot more coding work, though!)

maximum price (same points as minimum price)

I would also love to see filters for: 

sort by percentage discount (default setting: highest to lowest, but give the option to reverse just in case folk want it)

sort by current price (default setting: lowest to highest, but give the option to reverse just in case folk want it)


Also, it could be nice if the tags for posts in this channel allowed for multiple to be selected rather than just one - I couldn't easily decide whether to label this as feedback, suggestion, or idea.

Thanks for your time and consideration! ^_^

Sounds like a plan! :) Give me a shout if it ever does get delisted and I'll try deleting it.

Ah, I see! It's very frustrating that this site has to operate that way now. Do you want me to delete my previous comment to avoid any risk of further de-indexing?

Hi :) I think it would be helpful for potential buyers if you put the content warnings from the author's notes on this page's product description too. I've copied it below for ease of reference in the meantime.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This is a work of fantasy fiction. As a citizen of that genre, it bears certain traits which should be expected by readers. There is emotional and physical conflict and violence. There are battles. There are deaths of loved-ones.

Having said that, this isn’t a story about fateful quests or chosen ones or dark lords. It is a story about people.

This is also a story which looks head-on at the challenges faced by many in our very real world who are struggling to find their identities and their place in it. Depression, suicidal ideation, and self-harm are real factors in characters’ lives. There are depictions of sexual assault and trafficking. There is discrimination, abuse, and use of in-world epithets. As the author, I strove to ensure that these depictions are meaningful and necessary to the story and that none of the terrible things that happen in this work are gratuitous.

Most importantly, this is a story about trauma. About both the pain and the healing that can arise from learning to accept the reality of the traumas that have shaped our lives. And it is about finding within ourselves the strength and self-kindness that we need to reach that acceptance.

Compelling visual short story with excellent writing and voice-acting. Does a lot within the minimalist creative constraints of its jam prompts. Both charming and tense. 5/5 - outstanding.

Thanks for the detailed reply! ^_^ That all makes total sense to me.

While I'm familiar with Swan Lake, I only hazily remember 'The Swan Princess' from childhood and had forgotten that plotline - I'll have to go rewatch it sometime! :) 

I think part of what struck me so much about the curse-breaking condition in this comic is that, unlike in Swan Lake where it requires someone else (literally anyone else who has never loved before, I think?) to commit to loving Odette forever, this story requires Selene herself to enter into a relationship/marriage that we as readers see she has been actively refusing for a long time - without textual clarity that this is because of her stubborn self-denial and internalised homophobia, it can all too easily read like someone who's genuinely not interested at all being put in a horrific situation. While the title did briefly bring to mind that internalised conflict for me, I didn't find it reflected clearly in the main body of the work. Perhaps that's partly due to my neurotype and I'm missing something that others could pick up on from facial expressions! Anyhow, if you did ever want to make edits to clarify those points, the addition of a few thought bubbles from Selene could be a helpful and relatively low-labour way to add some context about how she feels about the situation (as opposed to drawing/writing entire additional panels/scenes).

I'm really glad you got a chance to explore those sapphic themes through this project, and I'm sorry you don't feel like you're in a safe situation to come out if you wanted to - solidarity. I hope you're able to find some LGBTQIA+ community to connect with if you wish to, whether that's via media representation, online spaces, or in person. Let me know if you'd like to be signposted to any relevant resources! :)

Cool, I'll check out the making-of PDF - thanks for highlighting it to me, brainfog meant I'd completely missed it when I downloaded the main comic! 

I found this an intriguing premise, and the art style is super cute. It managed to catch and keep my interest despite only having a very short duration, which really impressed me! 

I think it could potentially benefit from a longer format that gives us a little more insight into the princess's thoughts and feelings about the situation, as I found myself wondering about this. I hope you'll consider expanding this story someday! :D

As a footnote, there was one aspect of the story that gave me significant pause. (CW for discussion of real-world transphobic tropes in media and general political rhetoric below.)

In my country at present, there's a heavily circulated transphobic narrative of trans women preying on lesbian cis women by 'trapping' them in the sense of starting a relationship before coming out to them. The line of thinking goes that this will somehow force cis lesbians who would prefer not to have sex with anyone with a penis to do just that, and this is sometimes spun as if it's akin to conversion practices. (This is all, of course, transphobic garbage.)

There are a few moments in the current version of this comic that parallel the tropes I just described, which I don't think were intentional on your part. I'm going list them out for ease of reference.

Because page 4 cuts away after "really now?", it's left ambiguous whether the princess consented to be transformed into a swan or was cursed against her will. The latter reading echoes the misleading/'trapping' narrative, albeit allegorically through fantasy concepts of monkey's-paw wishes or Faustian deals. 

If you didn't want that ambiguity, you could add in a speech bubble from the princess in response to show the reader whether she's for or against becoming a swan. If she's (at least initially) for it, that negates this entire possible reading.

The curse-breaking condition being to kiss/marry/be romantically involved with the sorceress (pages 5-9) further reinforces the parallels I've mentioned, making the sorceress come across as predatory. If that's the intended effect, then you nailed it, but if not then you may want to reconsider how the magic is framed. 

For example, if the condition were "true love's kiss" in classic fairytale fashion, then the princess's conflict about pursuing it could stem from her internalised heteronormative worldview (making her not perceive the sorceress as an option, even if the princess has a crush on her) and her continuing aversion to getting into relationships with princes/men.

The sorceress further comes across as predatory in pages 10-12, which suggest that she's voluntarily maintaining a curse that the princess does not want (at least not any longer?), all for the sake of keeping her around until she either succumbs to the pressure of wanting to escape the curse or comes round to the sorceress's way of thinking - and either option means deciding to engage in a romantic relationship with her. The use of "reluctant" regarding their cuddles further creates a sense that this is not what the princess wants. Again, if you're aiming for a sinister/predatory power-imbalanced dynamic, then this is working well. 

However, if it's not the intent, you may want to make the sorceror incapable of reversing the curse independently and also change the curse-breaking condition. 

For my two cents, I think it could be a neat option to have the sorceror believe that her romantic interest in the princess is unrequited and therefore wouldn't meet the 'true love's kiss' condition because both parties have to love each other for that to work. She could even feel so guilty about the situation that she's trying to be the best friend she can to the princess in hopes of being platonically loved enough for an attempted curse-breaking kiss to work, even though it's causing the sorceress heartache to do so. 

Platonic true love's kiss has become much more mainstream as a concept in recent years due to representation in media such as Frozen and Once Upon A Time, so I don't think this would cause any confusion among readers, but you could always add some extra clear exposition if you were worried about this point.

Anyway, apologies that this turned into a small essay! I hope you'll be encouraged by the fact that your work interested me deeply enough to engage with it like this, rather than being disheartened or put off.

This is so concise and user-friendly - awesome work!

Also, thank you very much for adding in the explanatory link about the Territorial Acknowledgement, I learnt a lot from it! I've seen them around on itch.io before but never had clear context about how they get developed, why they're important (beyond general best practice), and how they should be delivered, since I don't encounter them much as someone from the UK. I'm glad I have a better understanding now.

A touching and empowering short exercise in bodily autonomy and reclaiming images. If you're trans, this work will probably resonate with you. If you're a cis aspiring ally, I think you'll find it thought-provoking. Either way, it's well worth checking out. 5/5 stars - outstanding.

Hi there :) just a friendly heads-up, there's a typo in the game's title - it should be spelled "Galactic".

A compelling and well-written short piece of fiction inspired by the Druid class often found in TTRPGs. It does a fantastic job of building atmosphere, intrigue and tension within a compact tale. Well worth checking out! 
5/5 stars - outstanding.

I found the font choices extremely difficult to read. I think this game could benefit a lot from adding a file for an alternative, more accessible version that focuses on ease of reading over style.

You're welcome, I'm really glad it was useful - and thanks for updating the files! ^_^ I'd be really interested to see how it evolves if you do make a revised version someday!

A fun TTRPG premise that captures almost exactly the vibes I would hope for as a former British highschooler. It spans a range of tones to choose between, and has a strong understanding of the nuances of varied British and UK school cultures (yes, it knows the difference!)

It doesn't seem to be a full release (file is labeled V0.9), but it's definitely in a playable state and has enough suggestions of different events to keep the hijinks coming - skip to the back for these if you want to find them efficiently. I especially loved the silly/fantastical twists on the plot hook prompts, featuring some delightful fusion options such as "demonology club actually summons something" x "hockey team desperately needs a win" = "newly summoned demon recruited to hockey team as star player!"

The main downside in my opinion is that it's a bit too hefty for a casual, no-prep one-shot game. Billing itself as "A simple tabletop roleplaying game" feels a little misleading when there are 60 pages of content.

The text does encourage you to craft your school in advance of play, but I don't think this is essential - whipping one up with the random tables would be pretty easy, as long as you already have a passing understanding of what British/UK high schools are like. (If you don't, there are helpful and detailed explanations available in the text, and these would definitely be worth reading ahead of trying to run a game.)

There's a lot to sift through here. While all of it is nicely written and has been carefully considered, I think a stronger developmental edit could've managed to pare this down to under 20 pages. The NPCs section could've used a random-tables approach to help with speed-generation, rather than only giving a few example characters, and I don't think their stats system add much. Similarly, I think the dice roll system for resolving actions and social obligations is a bit more fiddly than I would ideally like, but it may well feel smoother in play than in reading.

Another gripe of mine is that the three-aspect character generation system makes it pretty much impossible to generate a character of below-average social standing or one who rules with an iron fist rather than winning hearts and minds. In doing so, it erases a lot of real-world highschooler types from being player-character material, relegating those archetypes to supporting cast NPCs or non-existence, and that frustrates me.

I would have really liked to see a set of serious-tone plot hook options in there as well, as it's possible to do teenage hijinks comedies that work these in for contrast and deeper themes - I'm thinking of examples like The Young Offenders, The Dumping Ground, The Boy In The Dress (the TV adaptation, not the TERFy book), Teechers, the modern CBBC adaptation of Malory Towers, etc.

Overall, I think there's strong potential and a lot to be enjoyed here for anyone who's drawn in by the title. A more condensed version would go a long way to facilitate zero-prep one-shot play, but there's a real appeal to the current detailed version too. 4/5 stars - excellent.

Please can you make it possible to paste writing into the text entry box that accompanies star ratings?

It's really frustrating when I forget this issue exists and write review content in any other area (e.g. in a collection listing, in a comment on the game page) and then can't just copy it over into the ratings/review box. 

I'm sure writing things out from scratch is fine for people who only leave brief reviews, but when you get more detailed than a sentence or two, it quickly becomes grating or even impossible to type the whole thing out again for no good reason, so then people miss out on those reviews.

According to the information here, it sounds like the creators both collaborated with The Nicaraguan Sign Language Project when designing the game, and give all proceeds from the physical edition to them too - having raised over $15,000 so far. (Quote below for ease of reference.)

So it really seems like they've made a solid effort to avoid the things  raised as hypothetical issues above - and it makes sense that they wouldn't consult ASL users in Bay Area for a game related to the formation of a linguistically unrelated sign language from Nicaragua, especially when they had consultants from the NSL community.

"All publisher proceed from the physical version go to support sign language education in Nicaragua, currently The Nicaraguan Sign Language Projects (NSLP). This has raised more than $15,000 in donation to date. Thorny Games thanks the NSLP for their guidance and input on game design."

Wow, I really loved this. The writing is fantastic and really expresses a lot of the nuance in being a multiply marginalised queer person!

I'm glad I tried a replay and made it to Ending 3 - I definitely wouldn't have got a proper sense of it if I'd just given up after getting Ending 5 on my first playthrough!

When trying to sift through a large charity bundle's contents, I noticed that filtering to "Games" (as opposed to "Physical Games") did not yield only digital-native game results (video games, interactive fiction, etc.). Instead, lots of TTRPGs had been mistakenly included in this category, rather than put into "Physical Games" with most of their peers. 

I can totally empathise with how this happened - the labels are unintuitive, so it's no wonder that some devs would default to "Game", and it would be unreasonable for the bundle creators to go through over 1,000 submissions to quality-assure their categorisation.

But I think it would be pretty easy for the itch.io team to address this for the future by updating the labels to be clearer. It would definitely help the customers who buy big bundles like this and need to sort through their contents!

"Digital games" might still be a bit too ambiguous as a replacement for "Games", as PDFs are technically a digital format and most TTRPGs etc. are provided this way on itch.io. However, "video games and digital-native narratives" would be a pretty clear explanation of what this category is supposed to contain (even though I realise the length is a bit annoying, and not everyone would know the term digital-native at first). If you further split it into "video games" and "digital-native narratives", it could make it much easier for fans of these subcategories to filter to what they're interested in (and filter out what they're not). However, it might create a false and reductive binary unless you allowed for creators to select both options where applicable.

"Physical games" is also not super clear, as it implies a need for print-and-play that isn't strictly applicable to TTRPG materials, since these can be run simply by referencing the PDF without printing it. Changing this to something like "board games, card games, TTRPGs, storygames, lyric games and journaling games" would be a lot clearer - but again, perhaps a bit long.

Splitting that into separate categories might be tricky unless you allow for creators to select multiple items in that list. (For example, some deckbuilding board games are also card games in a sense, but not purely card games since they feature a board. There's substantial overlap between storygames, TTRPGs and journaling games - especially in cases where a game has options for solo or group playstyles.)

Edit: this issue is also affecting the "Book" category - pretty much everything in the bundle under that category is a TTRPG or materials to support one, rather than a more conventional book (that does not feature instructions for a TTRPG or similar game). Splitting "Book" into "Fiction", "Non-fiction" and perhaps "TTRPG" - or redirecting creators to the TTRPG section if that is a category under "Game" - may go some way to address this confusion in future.

Thank you for your consideration! :)

Thought-provoking lyric game that raises questions about the nature of fiction, tabletop roleplaying games, and our obligation to help other people. Minimum price $1, community copies sometimes available.

I liked this overall, though I couldn't really figure out the jellyfish element - perhaps unsurprisingly, as I struggle with lots of non-literal aspects of art. I still enjoyed trying, anyway. The concept of the drowning stranger is a familiar one to me, so that aspect clicked much more easily and I enjoyed the evocative scene-setting and narrator's interruptions to it, and the ending section was a neat rallying call to action (though less topical now - perhaps if a new edition ever comes out, it could feature different suggested action points).

I'm still a newcomer to lyric games in general, so I'm not putting my usual rating out of five at the end of this. Still, I found Jellyfish Are Not Real really interesting and well worth the $1 cost of checking it out.

Short and sweet lyric game that creates a simple framework for reflecting on hope and anxiety about upcoming visible changes in yourself. Community copies are available.

I'm not someone who really 'gets' lyric games in general, though I'm trying to learn more about them from the Lyrical Ludology podcast because I think experimental art is interesting. However, this one appeals to me because it has straightforward enough parallels (with coming out, transitioning, getting surgery scars, getting a new visible aid for a disability, or simply changing up your personal aesthetic) that I feel like I can get what it's going for.

This is a resource I might use to introduce a young person to any of the concepts I just mentioned. I feel like it's playful and straightforward enough to make an appealing independent activity for creative writing and emotional intelligence and drawing skills, while also providing a great springboard for deeper discussion.

I don't think I can rate lyric games out of five like I usually do for other games, because I just don't feel confident enough in my understanding of the movement (or, honestly, most individual games in it!) but I'd say this is worth checking out if the above has piqued your interest.

A short free essay on Downtime in Blades in the Dark games - it's clear, well thought out, and written from a place of genuine enthusiasm for these games. I especially appreciated the consideration of themes relating to critical perspectives on power. 5/5 stars - outstanding.

Having played in a campaign of Band of Blades (a Forged in the Dark game) where our GM and players were quite inconsistent in how we approached Downtime segments, it was oddly reassuring to read about other groups running into similar moments of excessive focus on mechanics, or just not having enough inspiration for a notable roleplay segment.

Bittersweet and delightfully unsettling system-neutral one-shot scenario for 1-2 players. It's hard to pitch without spoilers, but if you have mixed feelings about leaving your hometown, this is definitely worth checking out. 5/5 stars - outstanding.

Also, there's a designer commentary available if you're curious - that's how I found out about this game:  https://podcastaddict.com/dice-exploder/episode/199739884

That's very reasonable, thank you! :)

This is such a fascinating and cool game! :D

The only thing that threw me off while reading it is this section:

"Stories are myths, holidays, and rumors about some aspect of Crop Cultivation. These stories are sometimes used to teach a moral, establish history, or plant an idea in the heads of the populace. [...] Similarly, the holiday of Thanksgiving in the United States stems from celebrations of a successful harvest, but has its origins in Protestant penance ceremonies. These Stories can be indirect byproducts of the people who work in their cultivation, or at least from beneficiaries of the cultivation process."

I was really surprised that no mention is made here of Indigenous American perspectives on Thanksgiving, nor how the dominant version of its historic origin story is heavily altered to cast it in a more positive light. (See for example https://blog.nativehope.org/what-does-thanksgiving-mean-to-native-americans as a starting point, though I would suggest reading more widely from a range of Indigenous sources on this topic.)

I hope you'll consider looking into this and updating the Stories section with more information on these points. I think Thanksgiving could be a really brilliant example of the complexities that communities bring to food-related stories, and how the beneficiaries' perspectives can vary from the cultivators'.

Seconded.

Awesome, many thanks! :D

Thank you very much! Please don't feel rushed though, take as long as you need. :)

Hi there :) is there any chance you could add PNG versions to the pack? I'm not very tech-savvy and don't have an obvious means of converting SVGs, but itch.io only allows certain image file types in product descriptions so PNGs would be super useful!

Explanation of details here for anyone who needs them: https://thetransfemininereview.com/2025/07/24/itch-io-nsfw-ban/ In short, this negatively affects various NSFW content creators who rely on itch.io as a haven for queer creative works. 

If you want to try and fight back against this, consider contacting the payment providers - they're the ones with the power here, itch.io has very little agency in this situation. Apparently it took Collective Shout about 1000 calls to convince the payment processors this needed to be done, so there's now a counter-effort to outdo them - information, including customer service phone numbers for the payment processor, can be found here: https://bsky.app/profile/iantos.bsky.social/post/3luondx46tk2v

You're welcome - I really like the game, it's got such a compelling premise and I've never seen a mechanic like the mini-deck's set cards before, I found it fascinating! :D

Cheers! :)

You're welcome, thank you for asking! Yes, that would be super helpful! <3

Thank you very much for making these edits, this has massively helped my reading experience! :D I'm going to be able to add this to my folder of 'to be played' TTRPGs now, which is awesome!

I'm glad! ^_^

I can offer some basic guidance, but it will never be as good as getting a specialist consultant with relevant lived experience (e.g. visual impairment, Irlen Syndrome, dyslexia...) to look over the specific document in question, so please bear that in mind. With that said, brace yourself for an infodump!

The Centre for Excellence in Universal Design suggests that you avoid placing background images behind text and use a line-height of at least 1.5 times the text size – this provides enough ‘breathing space’ for users to be able read text comfortably. (Source: https://universaldesign.ie/communications-digital/web-and-mobile-accessibility/w... )

Minimum default 'clear print' font size is 12pt, but bigger is better - especially for people with visual impairments. Consider making a large-print version if possible - that's  16pt Arial or bigger. For a beginner-friendly checklist, see https://www.sensorytrust.org.uk/resources/guidance/designing-with-clear-and-larg... and for more in-depth information on clear and large print standards, see the guidance documents here: https://www.ukaaf.org/service/large-print/

For a more thorough technical breakdown of reader-friendly design choices for dyslexia, including good typefaces to use, see the British Dyslexia Association's style guide: https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/advice/employers/creating-a-dyslexia-friendly-wor... 

When selecting a background colour for digital display, aim for off-white/cream as a default - this is more accessible for people with Irlen Syndrome than white, but still allows for personalised coloured filters to be used over the top if needed. If you want to go the extra mile, you can provide a variety of versions using the different colours that are recommended by experts - see the row of pastel-coloured glasses icons at the top of this website for examples. https://irlen.com/ 

To create a printer-friendly version, remove the tinted background so you just have black text for the printer to focus on. (People may have their own coloured paper of choice, and nobody wants to waste colour ink or wind up with unwanted greyscale backgrounds.)

For guidance on margin sizing in digital media, you can try https://uxmovement.com/content/how-margins-and-line-lengths-affect-readability/ to help you get started

It's always good to make sure that your PDFs are screen-reader friendly (see this guidance for a thorough walkthrough https://www.gov.wales/how-create-accessible-pdf-documents).

However, for poetry - and especially when the creator is a performance poet, with the skills to do their work justice - an even better option is to record an audio file that delivers the work as intended, rather than trusting to the text-to-speech of a screen-reader, which can be quite 'robotic' and monotonous. There's some specific guidance for recording poetry available here: https://ypn.poetrysociety.org.uk/features/how-to-record-a-poem-like-a-pro/ 

I hope this is helpful! :)

Interesting TTRPG set in a speculative-fiction future version of the Mojave Desert, 200 years after the revolution that narrowly prevented a nuclear apocalypse. 

There's a lot to explore here, with plenty of material to hook potential players.

The setting forms a major part of the game's appeal and is established well in just two pages. To summarise, social priorities have shifted away from capitalism and most communities are smaller and more supportive of their members - save for the outsiders who form bandit gangs or delve into the ruins of the Old World to seek relics that can grant them the power to raid resources and claim territories for themselves. Fortunately, the Dunewardens - nomads with the means to help people and the urge to do so - travel between settlements to help deal with problems. 

It's rare to see a mostly-utopian world in a TTRPG, but this one seems to strike a good balance between its hopeful tone and the lingering potential for conflict. Sadly, there are no example adventures, NPCs or more specific locations detailed in this text, which feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.

The system and its mechanics are quite detailed, spanning about 16 pages - fans of crunch will likely enjoy getting to grips with this, while others may find it somewhat daunting. Fortunately, the character sheet helps to present key information about PCs and their resources in a straightforward way.

Overall, Dunewardens presents an intriguing world and a strong premise for getting players straight into exploring it. However, its success will rely heavily on a GM who's both willing to familiarise themself with the extensive mechanics and to fill in the details of the setting and its inhabitants. 3/5 stars - enjoyable.

Intense free-verse poetry chapbook focusing on queer and neurodivergent experiences.

From an accessibility perspective, the narrow margins and colourful, shifting backgrounds are not ideal for readability. There is a one-page printable version (with a separate, $0.50 cheaper itch.io listing) which removes the colour, but the monochrome backgrounds still have enough texture to be an issue for some readers and the font size can get quite small.

The writing style is more of a tsunami of consciousness than a stream, which will probably appeal to some readers and overwhelm others. Still, there is beauty to admire here even if you fall into the overwhelmed camp (as I do). Here are some personal highlights - 

On queerness and suburbia: what our friends call the straight people zoo / in the suburbs that lie just past normal / five minutes from human kindness [...] we were just a couple hours, / or lifetimes, from freedom [...] my soul is flooded with what was once here / but too defiantly alive to stay.

On chosen community: we are all too bright to see, to categorise [...] the light shines on the faces of the joyously alienated, / the queer, and this is home.

On being trans: even our autonomy is illegal. we crowdfund // for gender-affirming care, knowing every moment of transition / could be our last & our forever & we are all too gay for this

On autistic relationships: 8 letters that have absolutely been said & implied in every moment that you / infodump at me & how do allistic people even date & desire is simply the / unstoppable flow of enthralled passionate divergence

Overall, this is a collection of compelling poems with a lot of interesting ideas to express. It would be nice to have a more accessible version available so more people could explore it comfortably, but in the meantime I hope those who can do so give it a chance. 3/5 - enjoyable.

Basic meta-TTRPG where you play as a reality-hopping agent who gets transported into the persona of your player character in another TTRPG system of your choosing.

The product description did not make the fact that this is a meta-TTRPG clear at all, which seems like a major oversight. This game cannot stand alone and is not anywhere near as narratively involved as its description might imply - for a start, any 'unimaginable challenges' involved will be coming from an unrelated TTRPG. 

This leaves only 'personal struggles' (a d8 random table of fairly universal concepts such as 'health scare' or 'financial trouble'), a thin optional meta-plot (generated via three d8 random tables), and a minimal character creation and progression system (pick a basic archetype, pick one of their two possible abilities - which can be used to help your character in the unrelated TTRPG - and gain XP to buy the other abilities).

The monochrome visual presentation is effective in establishing flavour, though one segment of the trifold is white text on a black background - not the most printer-friendly choice.

Overall, while this is technically a playable product, the product description fails to set appropriate expectations and the game itself lacks enough content to deliver on the intrigue of its premise. 1/5 stars - avoid.

You're welcome - it's a really cool idea! I picked up the Ukrainian hospitals charity bundle the other day, so I'm taking a bit of time to sift through it for things that catch my attention. The hope is that reviewing some items in the giant bundles can make it a little easier for folk to navigate them!