Top 15 Website Links You Didn't Click
It’s not easy being an Indie Game Publisher Marketing Website Developer these days. The gold rush has long ended. At this point it seems all we can do is gather together and converse for hours about what could have been. What if social media hadn’t taken over? What if recipes weren’t the only web pages people visited? What if these recipes weren’t long winded and boring and full of ads? What if the web fulfilled its promise of being a wonderland filled with innovation and engaging ways of interacting with content?
Devolver hasn’t given up on the dream. We’re pushing the boundaries with every game website we launch. Some people say that we only sign games that make great websites. These people are absolutely correct. Every project is a new idea; a beautiful immersive gallery that takes you on a journey through the very souls of the bloodied, battle ravaged, chili-dog infested, emotionally exhausted, and never crunching game developers.
And guess what. You ignored them all. You saw the website’s url and didn’t even consider clicking it. Instead you read user generated content and viewed all the ads. You responded to tweets without clicking the link. You read the aggregate review scores and accepted all the ad-tracking cookies. You failed your promise of a bright future for the web. It’s all your fault.
Without further ado, here are the top 15 Devolver Digital Websites!
15 - Essays on Empathy
The idea for this project was to try to replicate the in-game menu from the game. These pixel-art dioramas are wonderful and you can almost hear fingerspit’s music. In the old days of the web you couldn’t do these animated transitions to a new page url. Did you know that you can do that now? Doubt it.
14 - Broforce Forever
We knew we had to do something really special to celebrate the final update of this legendary indie game so we went all out and put together a chaotic auto-battler that shows off all your favourite Bros. That’s right, we coded an entirely new game and put it on the website. You know how hard Xebro and Broffy were to code? Xebro throws a projectile that bounces and then she has a melee attack. Broffy throws a projectile that revives her if she dies in its flames. It was sure to go viral. Only it didn’t because you already owned the game and instead of sharing the site you booted it up and played a few rounds instead. Asshole.
When we first launched this site everyone (1 person) thought it was a video in the background and scrolling through the site would scrub through the video. Nope! It’s all hand made in 3D. It took five weeks to position each character and puppeteer them through the action. And well, to be honest, this was a really fun project and it’s okay that you didn’t visit it. It was a blast to put together.
12 - Gato Roboto
Maybe you clicked this link. Maybe you even scrolled all the way down and immersed yourself in this game’s cute story. But you definitely didn’t find the easter egg. If you scroll to the bottom to watch the ship crash on the planet you’ll see that the content above has changed accordingly. The ship’s captain now sounds like a Devolver web developer presenting their weekly update.
11 - Reigns Game
Did any of you suckers buy any of the Reigns games? You could have just clicked on the website link and played them there. Sure, it’s not exactly the same but the important thing is that you had no idea. In this version, you have to balance out each of the five games’ bars and see how long you can go for. If one of the bars gets filled or depleted you have to buy that game.
Actually a decent amount of you went to this website. Probably because this game made you nostalgic for back when the web felt like an imaginative playground. Did you click through all the dialogue options with Stan? If you do that you can ask him if he knows the secret to Monkey Island. Sidenote: If any web developers are reading this: the biggest challenge of this project was coding the pattern on Stan’s jacket.
9 - KarmaZoo
The last section of this website has a multiplayer mode! Does the Skull and Bones website have multiplayer? Nope. What about Overwatch 2? Not really. Maybe Destiny 2? Another single-player website. These websites are so concerned about “sales” and “informing the user” that none of them even considered putting an elephant on a floating hoverboard and making a pulsating heart explode with confetti.
8- Katana Zero
This site had one of our first big easter eggs (but nowhere near as big as what we did for the #1 entry on this list). First, you can change the “channel” with the remote control, but more importantly, you can access the TV’s menu by clicking that red button. In this menu, you can raise the volume and V-Sync to max to access a whole other channel. If you click on the TV in this view you’ll access DJ Electrohead’s hidden Bandcamp page.
7 - Disc Room
The Disc Room website also has a playable game on it, but you get a freebie for this one. It’s not easy to find. If you hit the spacebar a timer and high score list will open up, but where’s the game? It’s up there in the tab’s icon. A very tiny 16x16 playable version of Disc Room that reinforces that this game has a lot hiding under its surface.
6 - Loop Hero
This site was a perfect opportunity to use that infinite scroll website mechanic that everyone hates. Instead of making it annoying we added loops and progression. It has battles with damage odds that get progressively more difficult. As long as the hero doesn’t die, each loop fills the path with more buildings and monsters. It is possible to reach an end state but it’s not likely. You could try speed running this site. There’s a neat idea.
5 - Inscryption
Of course with Inscryption we had to give the website some layers to unfold. There’s the first layer that looks like a representation of the game on an old computer. Most of you weren’t able to figure out how to get to this part. For those of you who did get here, did you figure out that you can exit the game and explore Luke Carder’s computer? You can even write an email and send it to a loved one. This doesn’t always seem to work. Some email providers might have seen emails sent from this site as a bit sketchy. Just like the game!
4 - Ape Out
This one is a personal favourite. Horizontal scrolling, with some fake 3D effects and a bloody mess that sets the scene for how wild Ape Out can get. There’s even a little easter egg. If you scroll to the end, and then back to the bomb you’ll see that he is now blown up. It’s all about the tiny details.
3 - Sludge Life
This website has it all: A full blown operating system, a custom store, videos, in-game assets, screenshots, juicy bloop sound effects, and even pop-ups ads! That's what you like isn't it? You tell everyone you know that you close websites whenever you see an intrusive popup but we all know you're lying.
Bonus: Hit ESC for a little easter egg, or wait around long and enough and you'll get a chance to see an exclusive illustration made by the game's artist TerriV.
Now to make you really feel bad. Did you know that the Enter the Gungeon website had a text adventure game hidden as an easter egg? Unfortunately because of some updates it has since been removed. You missed it completely. It was even written by Dodge Roll’s game designer himself. To unlock it you had to collect the shell casing currency hidden through the Exit the Gungeon and House of the Gundead pages, then come back and buy the blank from the shopkeeper. The last step was to keydown on your spacebar at the bottom of the page. This is all incredibly obvious if you’ve ever played the game. We could probably get it fixed up and put it back on there, but it would have to be by popular demand.
This one is in the top spot because it has an easter egg that took longer to make than the actual website and almost nobody found it. We even did a photoshoot in a local park where we took some lewd photos of bananas having a scandalous picnic. You know what? You don’t get any hints on how to find this one. You have to figure it out yourself.
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While those were the top 15 sites you didn’t visit, in five years we’re planning to list the top 20 sites you visited hundreds of times and shared with your friends and family and they all went viral and fun websites are back. You can start now with some of our latest sites like childrenofthesungame.com, peppergrindergame.com and thecrush.house.
tl;dr: Go visit our Steam Publisher Sale.