My earliest PC gaming memories are haunted by a shipwrecked sailor, stuck on a desert island. For the longest time I couldn't remember who this specter of my gaming past was. His bedraggled appearance and amusing anticsbuilding sand castles and feuding with a seagull that wanted to sit on his hat-didn't belong to the first level of the original Duke Nukem (which I never got past), or any other childhood favorites.
Not Chopper Commando, not Lighthouse: The Dark Being, and not Quest for Glory. This mystery sailor remained shipwrecked in my brain, and after years of ignoring him, I finally dedicated myself to unraveling the mystery on a slow afternoon: his name was Johnny Castaway, and he wasn't actually from a game at all, but instead a screensaver released in 1992 by Sierra On-Line.
A GAME IN SCREENSAVER CLOTHING
Screensavers are nearly forgotten today. Older gamers may fondly remember flying toasters and tangled masses of colorful pipes, but modern displays have no need to prevent burn-in like now-obsolete plasma and CRT monitors. But Johnny Castaway didn't share much in common with the typical '90s screensaver. When it was released in 1992, Johnny Castaway marketed itself as "the world's first storytelling screensaver" and the description was apt. Stuck on a desert island with a single coconut tree, Johnny was a bearded man in shorts and a sea captain's hat. Every time the screensaver would start, you would get a glimpse into Johnny's ongoing predicament, watching as he climbed his tree for coconuts, tried to start a fire and failed at fighting off a seagull.
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Special Report- Stacked Deck - Monster Train, a deckbuilding roguelike that firmly entrenched itself as the crown prince to the kingly Slay the Spire back in 2020, was the kind of smash success you might call Champagne Big.
Monster Train, a deckbuilding roguelike that firmly entrenched itself as the crown prince to the kingly Slay the Spire back in 2020, was the kind of smash success you might call Champagne Big. Four years later, its successor Inkbound’s launch from Early Access was looking more like Sandwich Big.I’m not just saying that because of the mountain of lamb and eggplants I ate while meeting with developer Shiny Shoe over lunch, to feel out what the aftermath of releasing a game looks like in 2024. I mean, have I thought about that sandwich every day since? Yes. But also, the indie team talked frankly about the struggle of luring Monster Train’s audience on board for its next game.
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