Wizard's Wagon

Scoundrel, Solatro, and Open-Source Gaming

posted by WizWag on October 12th, 2025

I'm not necessarily the biggest hardcore tabletop gamer, but I can still appreciate the value of a well-designed card, board, or paper game. Also, I have a soft spot in my heart for anything free, so naturally, I'm attracted to the concept of games that require as few proprietary components as possible; which brings me to the subject of this post:

Scoundrel is a single-player rouge-like dungeon-crawler by Zach Gage and Kurt Bieg, played with any standard deck of playing cards. The traditional rules can be read here. What made me initially fall in love with this game was its balance and simplicity; the game is painlessly straightforward, with very few values to keep track of, but classically difficult. In true rogue-like fashion, your skills are always at odds with the luck of the draw, everything neatly bound in a wonderful, replayable, package. It's such a pure, well-designed, game, and unsurprisingly, has become quite popular in the last 14 years. Personally, I consider this a standard must-play in the world of solo card games (especially because solitaire makes me ).

It beats fighting bare-handed, but your weapon's stats will only take you so far.

What's better is that the community of this game has kept its heart beating with a whole bunch of interesting gimmicks, twists, and house rules: keep the jokers in rotation and have them act as merchants, keep the red face cards and have them act as party members, add classes with different perks, etc.. The amount of nifty spins and "expansions" for Scoundrel keep the game interesting even after the main game starts feeling dry, but that doesn't mean that it can't stand on its own just fine.

Once I had heard of Scoundrel, I was on the lookout for any other games in the same vein, mainly just nifty 52-card deck solo games (of which there are plenty worth mentioning, like Loot the Loop and Regicide), but one that recently caught my attention is Solatro: a solitaire-style conversion of the popular card game Balatro by Youtuber TechDweeb. You can watch his video on it here (and there's a readable in the description if you don't like the voice he puts on). While crazy metas, excess, and impossible to numerate values are all sources of Balatro's appeal, Solatro trims it down to its basics: you pretty much just play standard poker hands, with a few gimmicks to keep the game interesting.

While Solatro is newer and has much less of a community backing it, its existence represents an aspect of gaming culture that I appreciate: a sort of "show-and-tell" effect, wherein someone has an idea for a game, they make that game, and then they share it with the world, no strings attached; the supposition being that players, having the ability to tinker with your game, will tinker with your game, modifying the rules to suit their own vision. It might result in something unintended by the intial developers (a lot of the additions to Scoundrel, for example, can bloat the game a bit), but the "constructive collective" aspect of gaming is an exciting and romantic one nonetheless. It's just cool to see what people are willing to build atop a solid foundation.

The contributory effect of open-ended games like these reminded me of other open-ended gaming platforms, like Basic Fantasy, although I wouldn't necessarily consider Scoundrel or Solatro to be open-source games in the same vein: they weren't published under an open-source license, and weren't necessarily intended to be modular. In the case of Scoundrel, however, once word of the game had sufficiently spread, sharing house rules became a component of the game's larger culture, which is unsurprising, as I believe that its core is so solid that it was inevitable that players would find ways to build upon it; watch any YouTube video on the game and you'll find countless comments suggesting various additions and tweaks, with conversations workshopping and refining the different ideas into suitable contributions. And even Solatro, as new as it is, has fans offering more advanced concepts to the larger player-base.

But putting aside all of the cool, optional, fan-made, add-ons, I just think these games are fun, which is the most important thing; they might just be casual little time-killers, but they're super solid, and I can't help but love them.

Scoundrel, Solatro, and Open-Source Gaming

posted by WizWag on October 12th, 2025

I'm not necessarily the biggest hardcore tabletop gamer, but I can still appreciate the value of a well-designed card, board, or paper game. Also, I have a soft spot in my heart for anything free, so naturally, I'm attracted to the concept of games that require as few proprietary components as possible; which brings me to the subject of this post:

Scoundrel is a single-player rouge-like dungeon-crawler by Zach Gage and Kurt Bieg, played with any standard deck of playing cards. The traditional rules can be read here. What made me initially fall in love with this game was its balance and simplicity; the game is painlessly straightforward, with very few values to keep track of, but classically difficult. In true rogue-like fashion, your skills are always at odds with the luck of the draw, everything neatly bound in a wonderful, replayable, package. It's such a pure, well-designed, game, and unsurprisingly, has become quite popular in the last 14 years. Personally, I consider this a standard must-play in the world of solo card games (especially because solitaire makes me ).

It beats fighting bare-handed, but your weapon's stats will only take you so far.

What's better is that the community of this game has kept its heart beating with a whole bunch of interesting gimmicks, twists, and house rules: keep the jokers in rotation and have them act as merchants, keep the red face cards and have them act as party members, add classes with different perks, etc.. The amount of nifty spins and "expansions" for Scoundrel keep the game interesting even after the main game starts feeling dry, but that doesn't mean that it can't stand on its own just fine.

Once I had heard of Scoundrel, I was on the lookout for any other games in the same vein, mainly just nifty 52-card deck solo games (of which there are plenty worth mentioning, like Loot the Loop and Regicide), but one that recently caught my attention is Solatro: a solitaire-style conversion of the popular card game Balatro by Youtuber TechDweeb. You can watch his video on it here (and there's a readable in the description if you don't like the voice he puts on). While crazy metas, excess, and impossible to numerate values are all sources of Balatro's appeal, Solatro trims it down to its basics: you pretty much just play standard poker hands, with a few gimmicks to keep the game interesting.

While Solatro is newer and has much less of a community backing it, its existence represents an aspect of gaming culture that I appreciate: a sort of "show-and-tell" effect, wherein someone has an idea for a game, they make that game, and then they share it with the world, no strings attached; the supposition being that players, having the ability to tinker with your game, will tinker with your game, modifying the rules to suit their own vision. It might result in something unintended by the intial developers (a lot of the additions to Scoundrel, for example, can bloat the game a bit), but the "constructive collective" aspect of gaming is an exciting and romantic one nonetheless. It's just cool to see what people are willing to build atop a solid foundation.

The contributory effect of open-ended games like these reminded me of other open-ended gaming platforms, like Basic Fantasy, although I wouldn't necessarily consider Scoundrel or Solatro to be open-source games in the same vein: they weren't published under an open-source license, and weren't necessarily intended to be modular. In the case of Scoundrel, however, once word of the game had sufficiently spread, sharing house rules became a component of the game's larger culture, which is unsurprising, as I believe that its core is so solid that it was inevitable that players would find ways to build upon it; watch any YouTube video on the game and you'll find countless comments suggesting various additions and tweaks, with conversations workshopping and refining the different ideas into suitable contributions. And even Solatro, as new as it is, has fans offering more advanced concepts to the larger player-base.

But putting aside all of the cool, optional, fan-made, add-ons, I just think these games are fun, which is the most important thing; they might just be casual little time-killers, but they're super solid, and I can't help but love them.

Renovations

posted by WizWag on October 5th, 2025

It's October now, and with it comes the unofficial start of the "holiday season" (at least here in America) wherein every month contains a culturally significant holiday near its end, the significance of which increasing in chronological order, finally ending with the year's send off. The length of the American "holiday season" is a point of contention, but I personally determine it to begin on October 1st and end on January 1st of the new year. I don't think defining this time frame so strictly is really important, though; I just do this for fun.

The changing of the seasons always inspires a change within me, as well; typically this means a new wardrobe to cycle through, or seasonal drinks to bring into rotation, but more recently, I felt compelled to remodel the site. There still might be some jank afoot (as always, the site is a work in progress), so I'm on the lookout for any ugly quirks or anything that might make the site uncomfortable to browse.

Reorganizing the site makes everything feel much fresher, though! I tried to retain the original "feel" of the site as much as possible, while trimming down a little on the horizontality of everything; I still love the static "three pillar" formatting, but I was starting to feel like it was a bit cramped. I just think the site was long overdue for some renovations.

I did retire the "stamps" page, but only because I felt like it wasn't going to update very often. I'll bring it back if it makes sense to, but I kinda only rushed it out to commemorate the new domain. In hindsight, it was kind of a lame addition.

Also, I gave the site a seasonal coat of paint. I'm planning on regularly cycling through different color schemes/themes as the seasons progress; I just think it will help the place feel more alive. For now, we've got a nice, cozy, autumnal, palette that hopefully feels appropriate. I'm already thinking about holiday themes, too; I'd love to do a super festive one for December. I just don't want to update the theme too often, I think that might get annoying (otherwise I might have prepared a Halloween one, as well). I'm not necessarily committed to anything yet, but we'll see.

And finally, I updated the cursor: firstly, I added a fall-themed one, but I also updated the original "magic wand" one (with some super minor adjustments), which I'll bring back once the autumn theme has run its course. I think having some extra cursors in rotation makes everything feel a little more complete. Seeing the little Cherubbit fly around with a maple leaf reminds me of Momodora, or Maple Story, or something. There really is something evocative about maple leaves, isn't there?

And that's the update! Over time, of course, I'll probably end up doing a bit more fine-tuning, but for now I'm happy with how the site is coming along. I hope you have a great October.

The Impending Autumn

posted by WizWag on September 19th, 2025

In a few days, summer will be officially over. This year has practically flown by, the seasons are just blurring together. On contemplative days like these, I'm reminded that I need to update my website more frequently.

And on that note, I need to totally rework this site! While overall functional, I've been experiencing some minor quirks on different resolutions, which has encouraged me to consider adding an HTML overhaul to my to-do list. Over the past few months I've eked out a couple of templates just for fun and may just plug my site into one of them. It's pretty low on my to-do list, but I just want this place to feel legible for as many people as possible (except mobile users) without losing its character; if this site just ended up becoming another flat portfolio, I'd feel pretty depressed about it.

This post is short, but I had to post something; it just feels good to keep the place up-to-date. I hope you had a good summer.

Welcoming June (Again)

posted by WizWag on June 14th, 2025

With June here, summer has once again arrived to The Northern Hemisphere; the temporal shock of which a somber reminder that every day we creep closer yet to our finality. At least the temperature is nice (it's actually way too hot).

This site's anniversary (the WizWagiversary, if you will) is May 26th, a day in which I intended to usher with something nice and artistic, but missed the deadline. Unfortunately, nearly three weeks later, I still don't have much to share: I've been working on another animation (the first in three months) and it's taken way longer than I expected. As I struggle with the practical reality of embracing the sunk cost fallacy, I figured it would be nice to update my website again.

Since my last site update: I made a guest comic for my friend Chipy's site (which was a nice thing to be able to do), made some adjustments to the site formatting (mainly just on the art page), and have been making strides in lining up my ducks for the remainder of the year. Despite how fast this year has gone (and how little I feel like I've done), I'm still optimistic regarding this year's creative output.

Of course, output isn't necessarily the most important aspect of creating art, but lately I've been feeling an urge to actually have something to show for myself; sharing art is nice, and I'd like to do more of it. Obviously, making art takes (precious, finite) time, so I'm trying to be smarter with how I manage my own stock of it. I've been feeling a little stressed about time lately, I don't know. I guess getting back into animation has not-so-gently reminded me just how long it takes to actually animate.

Thoughts on Cringe Culture

posted by WizWag on May 19th, 2025

I've been thinking a lot about "cringe culture" lately, which I define as a subset of groupthink dependent on social behaviors in which participants openly deride and share things, people, or behaviors that produce secondhand embarassment in the particpants. In this conversation, I'm not going to argue for or against the existence of cringe culture, but rather why I believe that the dependence on the social pressures that produce cringe culture in the first place is unnecessary for artists. To emphasize this point, I've developed this tenet:

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: your art will be better the less you think about your audience. To share art, of course, is to expect an audience, and you may even intend to elicit a specific type of reaction with your art. That being said, the reaction of your audience is an unforseen variable; you cannot, with absolute consistency, predict what responses you will receive. The more you dwell on that uncertainty in regards to your creative process, the more you will attempt to wrest control of it, altering your expression to meet your desired social ends. This makes your art less genuine, and therefore (in my opinion) worse. The only sensible alternative, then, is to not dwell on that uncertainty, but rather to accept it. To paraphrase: make your art.

To follow that thought: altering your expression to meet desired social ends does not always necessarily make art worse in all senses, but rather reduces your influence on your own expression. This is, in my opinion, a net negative for all expression, even if at times it can produce something valuable.

At the heart of artistic expression lies ideas, abstractions, feelings, sensations, and things that are otherwise unscientific and not observable to the naked eye (this is, ironically, the root of artistic vision). When we communicate artistically, we utilize the strengths of art to the detriment of explicitness, and at times this leaves things open to interpretation. That being said, all forms of communication, barring only the most direct, explicit, and scientific, are beholden to the rules of the telephone game: no matter what you intend to say, you truly cannot anticipate how it will become interpreted, or by whom. Accepting this will alleviate the stress of negative reception, whether it be anticipated or realized.

Furthermore, the purpose of art is not necessarily to become well-liked, approved-of, or popular (although those are all nice things in their own right), and I would even go so far as to argue that there is no true purpose to expression in any way, beyond simply satisfying the innate human urge to express. This obviously isn't to say that there cannot be purpose to expression, but rather that there is no singular goal-oriented purpose to expression, and this includes artistic expression. Of course, we want to be well-liked, approved-of, and popular, but to sacrifice the genuineness of our expression to meet that end does a great disservice to ourselves.

Focusing back on art: due to the intrinsically abstract way in which art expresses (often very personal) thought, it's safe to assume that nobody in your audience will ever fully understand the entirety of your art (even if your primary thought is expressed sufficiently). Your vision, while realized through observable means, remains firmly your own, and ought not depend on the reception of your audience. This is not to say that all forms of critique and constructive criticism are by default invalid, but rather that your vision for your own art must, for the sake of authenticity, ignore the explicit preferences of an audience who will never fully comprehend it. Just: make your art. I hope this all makes sense.

Beyond the Subdomain...

posted by WizWag on May 14th, 2025

I finally have my own domain nearly one year after starting this site! The ability to just have a site on Neocities (or Nekoweb, or anywhere) is invaluable (even if you're relegated to a subdomain), but it just feels more real now. I kinda put this off for a little too long, thankfully the domain I wanted was available.

To celebrate this occasion, I made some minor adjustments to site formatting and added a new page to the site (being the sparsely populated stamp album). I wasn't sure where else to collect my stamps for the site, so I figured a new page would be appropriate. Little by little, the site comes together into something more complete. I normally don't make blog posts announcing site updates, but this one feels special.

Additionally, I'm on the Wizring now! The navigation controls are slapped right on my homepage, just on the bottom left. You can check out the other sites on the ring; they're all cool, and all quite magical in their own ways. While small, the selection is still pleasantly varied.

I'm aware that having your own domain is sort of the "baby's first step" of having a website, but I can't help but just feel excited about it; just having a site of your own can really feel liberating in the current age of Internet insipidity. I'm technically still in the Neocities neighborhood, but this place truly feels mine. I'm getting emotional just thinking about it.

Digital Jank

posted by WizWag on May 7th, 2025

I have an old Wacom tablet that I very rarely ever use, until recently. I bought it around 7 years ago, messed around with Clip Studio for a few hours, and then allowed it to rest in its original packaging. Making art is a very tactile process, and because using the tablet didn't innately feel very good, I just stopped using it.

While on socials, I saw an ad for a set of True Grit Texture Supply digital brushes, and because I'm such a sucker for old print pastiche, curiosity overcame me. They offered some freebies, so I downloaded what I could and dusted off my old tablet. After finnicking around with the selection, I found a few brushes I really liked and experimented with them.

Tablet drawing still requires a bit of a rewire to my muscle memory though; I often tilt the tablet to get a better angle for my wrist, or scratch away as I would on paper, only for the tablet to awkwardly misinterpret my inputs. It's a tablet, so of course there'll be some unnatural quirks (I've never used a really nice expensive drawing tablet, I imagine they have some fancy programming/hardware that make them a little more intuitive to use), but it's still just not as fun to draw with as it is to draw physically (even if it can kinda emulate the end result).

The freebie pack also came with a few paper textures.

But it just turns out so cute! I absolutely love how this looks, even if I still have a lot to learn about digital art and these new tools. This whole thing has gotten me much more interested in using a tablet for digital art again, which I hadn't considered as a possibility. I'm actually eager to experiment with it even further.

Thoughts on Content and Social Media

posted by WizWag on April 17th, 2025

On the Internet, two terms have come to seemingly dominate the most popular creative spaces, being content and social media. Neither of these terms are new: content being used in such a way predates the Internet, and the term social media was first coined in the 90's (although by whom is debated), but I believe the discussion surrounding them remains relevant.

Instinctively, the term "content" feels disrespectful; it comes off as so abstractly diminutive, as though any given work of art, text, or video is just another Thing™ in the ThingBox™. Of course it's meant to be broad, but what does content mean in the context of art today? Likewise, "social media" just feels reductive. I mean, both of these terms are reductive and broad in scope (which in and of itself aren't bad things), but what effect is this having on the array of things that they've come to describe? Is it really fair or sensible to categorize and compare all art with advertisements, products, or works of otherwise commercial ends? You may not even do that, but a lot of people, especially people of great influence do.

The term "social media" is less egregious, and while its usage has had a similarly reductive effect on how we perceive various Internet communities, my largest complaints of social media are mostly practical; concerned instead with how specific social media platforms have influenced human expression on-platform to particular ends, mostly for profit or influence, and how the consequences of that have even managed to spread beyond the confines of their original platforms. A cute example would be the tendency for youngsters to say things like "unalive" or "grape" or whatever, as a result of word filters on TikTok and YouTube. Death, sexual assault, and suicide are not pleasant topics of discussion, but are we really going to treat these concepts with such disrespect, so as to not even dignify them with an explicit term outside of the thought gulags? Are we ever outside of the thought gulags? Are the TikTok word filters in the room with us right now? I feel like I'm losing my mind sometimes, not in Minecraft.

While admittedly cute, linguistic quirks like "self-delete" and the fourth-person pronoun "chat" are pernicious reinforcements of groupthink-dependent systems of influence. Even more outwardly degradatory is the way in which all social behaviors, not exclusively language, have become dominated by the cultural manipulation flowing downstream from these platforms. Bizarre manners such as making social media accounts for infants, excessive morality policing, and a commonplace appreciation for character assassination have bled out from the fringes of popular social media into the realm of "real world" normalcy.

Language (at least English, although I'm certain that all languages share this quirk in some way) tends to develop in such a way that the commonly understood definition of any commonly-used term will default to the lowest common denominator over time (if they retain usage at all). Think to how certain terms, that at one point described a particular subcategory of any given larger category, have over time come to mean anything within that category, at least colloquially. The absolute best example of this that I can think of would be the modern usage of the word boomer, which is classically defined by a relatively narrow window of time in which someone was born (the mid 1940's to the mid 1960's), later (as the boomers aged) coming to describe anyone perceivably old relative to the observer, and even later developing into a term of derision against anyone older.

Other good examples of language defaulting to the lowest common denominator over time are: -gate as a suffix pertaining to any sort of scandal or controversy (derived from the Watergate scandal), cancel being used as a politically-correct term for character assassination (derived from the #CancelColbert campaign), and gooner being used to describe any sort of sexual or suggestive behavior, content, or person (orginally referring to a participant of an extreme, pornography-dependent, fetish lifestyle).

In the context of art: the new, common, understanding of art as a product is an unfortunate consequence of the mass commodification of all expression, that I believe naturally developed as a result of content coming to define all forms of human expression on the Internet. Obviously, an orated speech wouldn't be considered content, but a subsection of an encylopedia would (because it's contained within a specific vehicle for expression), and naturally all expression on the Internet is content. And, with popular social media encouraging competetiveness in expression, all content becomes a vehicle for an end, whether that be attention, or profit, or whatever. All communication, found in all forms of expression in the popular social media ecosystem, is left to fend for itself in these gauntlets, the judges therein determining its worth as one would any other product in any other market. I believe this has extended beyond even the Internet, with common sentiment regarding artistic value largely hinging on the view that art is a commodity, or some other such thing that has purpose. This isn't to say that I believe that social media is the origin of the commodification of expression, but rather a central pillar in shaping public influence that expression is, above all, a commodity.

I don't believe that there is an inherent flaw with competetiveness, even in expression or art, but I believe the rules of engagement on popular social media platforms encourage an un-artistic approach to the artistic process, which in my opinion renders the art less valuable. This is not necessarily a condemnation of capitalism, or trade, or the concept of commodity.

This also isn't to say that competetiveness, popularity, or even celebrity status are byproducts, or dependent on the existence, of popular social media (because obviously these things existed before the Internet), but rather that popular social media reinforces these concepts as tenets or goals within its users in regards to common, everyday, communication. I believe this is bad for all human expression, but especially so for art.

And also, this isn't to say that popular social media cannot be used in a way that isn't competetive, or goal-oriented, but rather that it tends to be as a result of popular social media's reward systems. People naturally like attention, being popular and respected, and having a wide circle of influence; this fact is exploited by social media.

And finally, this isn't to say that using popular social media is bad, necessarily. Using social media for fun or profit isn't, in my opinion, inherently immoral or self-destructive. Market yourself, sell goods and services, I don't care; social media is, after all, the most efficient way to get yourself out there.

All that being said, I should clarify: art (or any expression) is, inherently, not a commodity (we can communicate to connect with others for psychological benefit, and oftentimes express ourselves simply for the sake of it, not necessarily for transactional reciprocity), and the value of any given work of art is not, in my opinion, found exclusively in goal-oriented philosophies. Of course, the discussion of artistic value is deep, and for the sake of brevity I'll leave it at this: social media produces a fast, stressful, environment for artists and encourages un-artistic ways of thinking. Your art will be better the less you care about the whims of your audience, and social media/content obsession makes it harder for artists to be genuine; just make whatever you want to make. I hope this all makes sense.

SASOL (Semi-Autobiographical Slice-of-Life)

posted by WizWag on June 15th, 2024

A couple of years ago (okay, probably closer to like, ten) I felt frustrated. This was the sort of petty, autistic frustration that only a perpetually-online weirdo (like myself) can feel. I had noticed that many popular webcomics had developed with a very specific format: they were semi-autobiographical, slice-of-life, comics with the main character being an explicit authorial self-insert. They were also, of course, cartoony, i.e., unrealistic or hyperbolic for comedic or expressive effect.

Now, it wasn't the comics themselves that frustrated me; I have no issue with them, I have no issue with the format, and I think they can even be good. What frustrated me was the fact that this exceedingly popular format didn't really have a convenient, named, genre. Sure, I just used the terms "semi-autobiographical" and "slice-of-life" to describe this subset of comics, but "semi-autobiographical slice-of-life" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

But why not just use "slice-of-life"? It's basically what you're describing.

My response to this is that while slice-of-life is a suitable descriptor in most senses, it fails to accurately capture the way in which the main character is a self-insert for the author, and the way in which it is both autobiographical and fictional at the same time. To put it another way: all of these comics can be categorized as slice-of-life, but slice-of-life is far too broad of a term to completely describe this specific subgenre. These types of comics are, at their core, an amalgam of the semi-autobiographical and the slice-of-life.

Initially, I had internally named this subset of comics "visual journals". It made sense to me at the time, because these works were essentially some form of journalling with an obviously prominent visual element. However, I very recently discovered that "visual journal" is commonly understood to mean an actual journal (as in a daily journal or diary) that is drawn in or otherwise contributed to in an artistic way, such as painting, collages, etc.

So now I refer to it as SASOL (Semi-Autobiographical Slice-of-Life). I pronounce it "say-soul". Maybe "visual journal" was a better term, I don't know.

Welcoming June

posted by WizWag on June 5th, 2024

Can you believe that I haven't forgotten about this site yet? In the last week or so I've been exploring various little sites on Neocities, and (surprisingly, but upon further thought, not really) so many are abandoned. One aspect of the older Internet (older as in pre-2010) that I had forgotten about was just how often sites sat dead.

Still, it's exciting to see newer sites and pages emerge. Browsing the Internet actually feels exciting when there's thought, care, and imagination involved. Isn't the point of the Internet to connect to actual people? I can't imagine an Internet without the element of free human expression that only a hand-built site can provide.

Moving forward, I'd like to update this site at least once a week; this place is still barren. Eventually, I'll be gone and this site will become inactive just like the countless sites, pages, and projects that came before it. Hopefully I can properly populate this place before then.

posted by WizWag on May 29th, 2024

Hello, this is my blog. I've been working on this site for the past day or so now, and it's coming along okay. It's looking a little boring, but I don't mind that. Some of the sites I've seen (on Neocities specifically) are very creative! But for now, I just want something that works.

In the meantime, I plan on developing this site further. Hopefully one day into something that could even be considered good. Stay tuned.