i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.
there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.
anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.
- A Better World - create an alternate history timeline
- Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game
- Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet
- Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games
- Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones
- Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy
- ZenGM - simulate sports
- Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi
- IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)
- Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface
- The Cafe & Diner - mystery game
- The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game
- Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions
- Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game
- Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game
- Miniconomy - player driven economy game
- Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes
- BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators
- Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil
- Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.
if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.
