There’s an Aztec city building game called Tlatoani. It’s in early access, but has enough meat on the bone that it’s one of my goto games.
Out of curiosity I checked Steam DB for active player numbers. I have discovered at any given point I am 10% to 25% of the given player base BY MYSELF. I am 1 of 4 people playing this game right now in the world. With the prevalence of the internet I always assume whatever weird bullshit you’re into there’s at least a thousand people talking about it; making memes outsiders could never comprehend. It’s actually novel to fly under the radar for once.
What do you do that doesn’t have a community associated with it?
I make games that are a mix of physical and digital mediums. I found some other people doing similar stuff but nothing exactly the same. A lot of escape room creators use similar technologies though so I find myself talking to those people a lot.
These kinds of things are really cool! I love interactive fiction/games that have a real-life component.
Do you have any more information about your projects?
I have some posts I have made that I can share but I’m hoping to make some video soon.
One of the first experiments I did was with transparent LCD screens embedded inside of a diorama. You scan a qr code to load a controller on your phone. https://bsky.app/profile/intelligentbean.bsky.social/post/3ladalposre2y
I wanted to try and scale that up so I built multiple of these arcade cabinet dioramas. The idea was that I could sell them like an arcade cabinet so I wanted to be able to run multiple from the same server at the same time and easily make more. I have 2 of these currently https://bsky.app/profile/intelligentbean.bsky.social/post/3laa3kgch3c2z
I am currently working on a larger game that is more like a metroidvania style. I would like to have it as a gallery installation. You take your character from one diorama to another and collect items and weapons. Here are some of the screens
https://bsky.app/profile/intelligentbean.bsky.social/post/3lp5q2u4snc2s https://bsky.app/profile/intelligentbean.bsky.social/post/3lp5px5x4xs2s https://bsky.app/profile/intelligentbean.bsky.social/post/3lp5pt6nqdk2s
This one also has physical weapons that you find in the real world. You can scan them with your phone to collect them then they are available in the game. There are also keys you find in the game world that unlock physical boxes in the real world.
I always feel crazy telling people about this stuff lol
Edit Here is one of the ray guns from my latest game: