Itch.io - An online store that mainly focuses on indie videogames, though they also have other software, books, TTRPGs, and other things. They also do big bundles not infrequently with hundreds of games and other things included in order to raise money for one charity or another.
Bundle Browser - A tool you can use to search through everything in most of the aforementioned charity bundles in more detail than Itch’s search system allows.
Epic Games Store - I'd suggest using Steam over this for actually buying games, the Epic Games Store is on the list just because they give away free games every week. Like, I probably have thousands of dollars in games on their launcher now that I haven't paid a cent for.
Clone Hero - A Guitar Hero clone, seems to be the most popular option nowadays in the plastic instruments variety of rhythm games. Closed source, but free to download, and comes with a few charts pre-included.
Custom Songs Central - Seemingly the main place to go for Clone Hero charts. There are quite a few on there, and more keep coming.
Circuit Breaker - A setlist of over 115 electronic songs. I played the whole thing a while ago, and I remember it being quite fun. (Also, all the songs in it are full difficulty, which is always nice.)
Fuse Box - The sequel to Circuit Breaker, with 255 full difficulty electronic songs. I haven't played the whole thing yet, (as of ) but it's been good so far.
Clone Hero Masterlist - A well maintained Google (sorry) spreadsheet with links to, as far as I can tell, almost every set of charts available, most of which are hosted on the site linked above this one. They've also got links to all of the charts from the official Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, except for Rock Band 4.
Yet Another Rhythm Game - Also frequently referred to as YARG, an open source Rock Band clone that supports more instruments than Clone Hero and comes with a lot of nice, exclusive(?) charts on the official launcher. Clone Hero and YARG both use the same charts also!
Vivid/Stasis - A combination rhythm game / visual novel about a girl named Saturday trying to find her missing sister with help from her friends, though the story gets a lot more bizarre (compliment) from there. Still getting updates last I checked, but the main story is finished.
Stepmania - An open source recreation of dancing rhythm games like Dance Dance Revolution, but it's also playable with a keyboard as a regular rhythm game where you only ever have to press two buttons at once, which is how I play it.
Trotmania - Several sets of MLP:FiM themed songs for Stepmania and games based on it, as well as themes and other cosmetic stuff for those same games. Project appears to have been abandoned, but the site is still up for now.
OutFox - Another fork of Stepmania, though this one is apparently closed source. OutFox supports 18 different varieties of rhythm game charts, and also offers their own charts for download. Seems as though it may be abandoned, as the there have been no updates or news in close to a year.
ITGmania - A fork of Stepmania, with added features that seem to cater more towards competitive folks, a bunch of other improvements, and a theme called Simply Love built in. It's also still being updated, unlike Outfox and the original Stepmania.
PokéCommunity - Both a pretty big forum for everything Pokémon and, from what I've seen, the place to go for Pokémon ROM hacks and fangames. There are definitely other websites that at least claim to host them, but as far as I can tell they're mostly rehosting stuff from PokéCommunity, for mysterious scam reasons. Most things are officially posted here.
Pokémon Reborn - A massive fangame, a decade in the making. Very long, very story-focused, very much so darker than the official games. I haven't finished it yet (as of ) but what I've played so far is very fun and good. This links to the official site for the game, which is also a forum for it. Reborn itself is complete, though they're still updating it.
Pyrolusitium Z2 - A UI overhaul mod for Pokémon Reborn. Did I mention Reborn has modding support? It does and it's awesome. But yeah, I use this, it looks nice.
BIGJRA's Reborn Walkthrough - A complete walkthrough for the entire game, in text, hosted on Github. Includes every detail you'd want to have, like Pokémon catch rates in each area, hidden item locations, how your actions affect your relationship with other characters, everything. I used this when trying to catch every Pokémon the first time I played Reborn, it was really helpful.
Pokémon Unbound - A ROM hack of Pokémon Fire Red, complete, with a whole new region and story. You can also catch every Pokémon up to gen 7, except for seven that you have to get with codes, due to one area not being accessible yet in the post-game. I've finished the main story and gym challenge and all that, but I haven't done all the side-quests or caught all the Pokémon or anything. Even so, fun game!
Super Mariomon - A ROM hack of Pokémon Emerald, made to look like a Mario game. All the Pokémon (Captures in this case) are instead Mario characters/enemies, there's a custom region, story, everything. Also a whole ton of quality of life features. (Shout-out to level cap candy.) I've finished the main game and most of the side and post-game things, and it was quite fun.
Pokémon Odyssey - A hack of Pokémon Fire Red, and also a crossover with Etrian Odyssey and Made in Abyss, two things I'm entirely unfamiliar with. It's got an interesting premise in that you aren't going around a region getting gym badges as is usual for Pokémon games, but instead you're exploring this massive tree dungeon thing. The whole thing is very story focused. I haven't finished it yet, (as of ) but it's been fun so far. (Outside of the gathering thing, that bit's no fun.) Also, at least one person dies on screen in this. Which is. A bit dark for a Pokémon game.
Eevee Expo - Okay I lied about PokéCommunity being the place for fangames, it seems Eevee Expo is also an option, though just for fangames it seems. They also apparently make yearly Nintendo Direct-style videos to showcase fangames, as well as news posts on the site for the same purpose. They also do game jams! all of which is very neat.
r/PokemonROMhacks - A subreddit dedicated to, well, Pokémon ROM hacking. Mostly announcements about hacks, discussion of them, that sort of thing. I've also seen at least one hack that was only really shared there. (referring to Emerald Seaglass specifically)
SMW Central - A forum dedicated to ROM hacks for Super Mario World, its sequel Yoshi's Island, and Super Mario 64. They also seem to have quite a lot of resources for people interesting in making ROM hacks themselves.
New Super Mario World 2: Around the World - A massive hack for Super Mario World, with 16 worlds, and 90+ levels! I've only just started playing this recently, (as of ) but it's quite fun so far, if significantly harder than I'm used to. I guess I'm a bit rusty when it comes to platformers.
Super Mario Bros. X2 - A Mario fangame in the classic 2D style, with a built in level editor. Could also be counted as a fangame for several other things, with playable characters and pieces for levels from other franchises. SMBX2 Seems to be a sort of unofficial continuation of the original, but I'm linking this instead of the original because it adds a lot of new things while being fully backwards compatible.
SMBX Forums - Technically this links directly to the sub-forum thing for sharing "episodes" for SMBX, which are essentially packs of levels, usually with a neat world map to connect them all.
Mushroom Kingdom Fusion - A massive, but work in progress 2D fangame, also a crossover with like a million other things, to the point that I'm not actually sure if it's accurate to just call this a Mario fangame. Or, well, it probably is, seeing as the actual gameplay is very much so Mario based.
Fun fact! If you have the Xbox Game Pass, Doom Eternal has the wads for Doom 1 and 2 freely accessible in its files. You can just copy the files out of there. (...I did this like a year or two ago - around 2023 or 2024 - so I don't actually know if this still works)
Doom World - A forum dedicated to the Doom games, with a focus on the earlier ones. It's also, as far as I can tell, the main place that people share Doom mods/wads. (Though there are quite a few shared on itch.io for some reason) They've also got a yearly awards showcase thing going into detail on the best mods of the year, a whole thing on the history of Doom modding, all sorts of neat stuff like that.
ZDoom - ZDoom is an enhanced port of the Doom engine for modern systems, with a whole bunch of new features to let modders do more fun stuff. Technically the one you're probably going to want to use is GZDoom, since ZDoom was cancelled, but that's hosted on the ZDoom website as well. There's also a forum on the site where people share Doom mods, though it seems a lot less active than Doom World.
Freedoom - Fun fact, the source code for the original Doom is actually open source! Unfortunately, the assets for it are not. Freedoom is an attempt to make a full game based on that source code, compatible with most Doom mods, but with fully open source assets. It's a work in progress, and there hasn't been a new release in a while, and I haven't actually played it at all, but I still think it's neat enough to link here.
Doom: The Golden Souls - This is technically the first in a series of Doom wads inspired by Mario games, from the collectables to the level design, not to mention that the first one has the Mario 64 castle as a hub world. Well, not really, it just looks quite similar. I haven't finished the second one, and the third is a work in progress, (both as of ) but they've been fun so far.
Sonic Robo Blast 2 - A 3D Sonic fangame made with a modified version of Doom! It's also open source and moddable! Only downside is it isn't fully complete yet, but having played the whole thing myself recently, it may as well be. The site has a forum on it where people share mods they've made.
The Mystic Realm - A mod for SRB2 that is essentially a whole new game, new levels and everything. Only downside is the final few levels have a massive spike in difficulty, but that's fine honestly.
Tangle & Whisper - Two mods that add new playable characters, that being Tangle and Whisper from the IDW comics. Tangle is essentially Spiderman but incredibly finicky and difficult to play as, whereas Whisper has a magic gun and is just ridiculously good. I list them together because the two mods are made so that if you have them both active you can play as both characters in one save file!
Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers - A Mario Kart-style racing game, but Sonic-flavored and so much more complicated. There's a bit of a learning curve, and it's difficult even after that, but once you get going it's really fun! It's originally based on Sonic Robo Blast 2, and like that game is both open source and moddable!
Limerick Heist - A short, semi-comedic story about robbing a casino, wherein the entire story is written in limerick form. Really quite fun, and the rhyming makes it even better. The author wrote a couple other things with the same premise, haven't read them yet though.
Rain - A complete webcomic about a trans girl and her friends attending a catholic school. Starts off a little rough, but I remember really enjoying it when I first read it, to the point that I read the entire thing twice over in a week.
My Impossible Soulmate - An incomplete webcomic by the same person who made Rain. It’s about a girl getting seriously injured and then waking up in a fantasy world. It sounds like a lot of the drama is going to come from the bit where the main character was in love with a girl in the world she came from, but she can’t do anything about it due to being in fantasy land.
Aurora - An incomplete comic about a newly created soul in the body of a god traveling the world to rescue the god who’s body he’s occupying, and things get more complicated from there. Aurora is made by Red from Overly Sarcastic Productions
Sunjackers - A complete (for now, there may be more later but there's a complete story here) MLP:FiM fan comic about a group of criminals stealing sunlight in a cyberpunk future where the sun has long since vanished. The characters also stop sometimes to answer questions submitted to the comic's Tumblr ask box, and there are occasional flash games/animations and animated videos. The author also has several other MLP fan comics on Tumblr, though not all are complete.
Fimfiction.net - The best place to go for MLP:FiM fanfiction, and there is a lot of it.
Fimfic2Epub - A command line tool/browser extension that downloads Fimfiction stories as very nicely formatted ePub files, also highly configurable. If you’re going to download any ePubs from Fimfiction, use this! I’ve also been working on a command line tool to automate this further, which I’m calling Fimfic2Extra.
Fimfetch - An archive of Fimfiction, (including deleted stories) as well as portions of a couple other sites. Has a more in-depth tagging system than Fimfiction does, as well as an OPDS service. There hasn’t been a news update in years, and there appears to be no way to contact the creator, so no way of knowing how long it’ll stay up.
Archive of Our Own - Also frequently referred to as AO3, this is probably the most widely used fanfiction website around at the moment, at least that I know of. Definitely use Fimfiction for MLP:FiM stuff though. Also, fair warning, AO3 does not filter out anything by default, and there’s little if any restriction on what can be published on the site.
The Shills List - A list of recommendations for fiction, with these rules: It must be good and original, it must be obscure or have a reputation that means it needs recommending, and it must be free or have owners that encourage piracy. For the main list at least, there are other lists on the site with different rules. People can also share reviews for things on the lists, and there's a thing where if you read all the things on the main list you can add your own recommendation, and if you read everything then you get a list all to yourself. Only two people have done that though. I've only read like two of the things on there as of , but it still seems neat. I just like the concept honestly. (Also the guy who runs the site has a blog with monthly reviews of a whole ton of stuff, that's also cool.)
"Pills" - Technically not the real name, the real name is far longer. A short-ish story based on one of those "choose a superpower" images, that goes way in-depth on what the consequences of those powers would actually be. I admit I read this quite a while before adding it to this page, so I don't remember the details much, but I remember it being really quite fun.
The SCP Wiki - A sort of collaborative writing project that anyone can contribute to, born from a horror story written in the style of a formal, classified document from some secret organization. While originally, and still largely horror, there’s now a wide variety of genres and subjects to be found here.
Phoenix Code - A text editor specifically designed for web design, with all sorts of useful features, and a very nice built in live preview. It’s what I was using to make this website, originally.
Emmet - A plugin available for quite a few text editors, including phoenix code. Pretty much just lets you add a lot of HTML tags really quickly without having to type as much. It looks like it can do more than that, but so far that’s all I’ve figured out how to do.
Overly Sarcastic Productions - Also referred to as OSP, this channel has kinda educational videos about several topics, including mythology, folklore, history, and tropes in fiction. One of the folks who runs this channel, called Red, is also the author of the webcomic Aurora.
Short for Table-Top Roleplaying Game, which is a sort of game that usually involves people playing the roles of characters they make up to tell stories together, most often using a large amount of math to decide where that story goes. There's a lot of variety in the genre however, it's like trying to describe card games as a genre.
MLP:FiM
Short for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, a cartoon about colorful ponies being friends and occasionally fighting evil, there's a bit more to it than that, but this is a summary. Had a massive fandom on the internet for a long time, though the fandom seems smaller years after the show ending.
