Hi There! I'm Samantha!
I'm a galactic bounty hunter for hire! (Please hire me; I need better food.) This is my website. I you enjoy the things it has. :-)
To explore this site, start off with the navigation bar up top! We've got an About section, which has a brief bio and some mailbags. There's a Works section with some of my art and games. Then there's my favorite section, the Maps section, which has maps of over 25 games and counting! Beyond that are all the usual accoutrements of a website, such as Articles, Links, and a Forum.
Sometimes I do other things off this website, such as star in some silly ZZT games or even stream as a low-budget virtual-tuber. There's such a huge universe out there, and I'm always glad I can be a part of it in whatever way I can!
Anyhow, with all of that said, I hope you enjoy all the beautiful sights this site has to offer! I worked very hard on it, and I hope it brightens up your day. :)
Updates
Stay tuned for the latest and greatest website updates in the galaxy!
2025 March 28
It is Friday.
2025 March 25
Added two more "comics" from the backlog. One was only funny the minute I posted it, and not a second later. The other one is a timeless classic of the genre.
2025 March 23
I was looking through my image folders, and I realized that there were a few Samantha-verse comics that I have drawn, but not posted here. I felt like I should post them all on this site.
After perusing all my folders thoroughly, I decided that I should post all of the still-relevant "funnies" that I've made over the past couple years, whether they be memes or comics, Samantha-verse or not. This, of course, would necessitate adding a whole new subsection to this site, which I have dutifully done.
You can browse the comics here.
I'll be uploading the comics in batches, so please don't mind if the Next link on the last one takes you nowhere right now. :)
2025 March 18
Just some minor updates to some external links on this site:
- Our mapmaker friend "Let'sPlayNintendoITA" finally made a dedicated webpage for his maps (as opposed to an ad hoc forum post).
- I moved all my Twitch VoDs to a dedicated VoD storage channel on YouTube, owing to Twitch's recent decision to cap the amount of VoDs that can be saved on their platform.
This is a minor enough update that I'm not inclined to make a comment thread. Thanks for your understanding. :)
2025 March 17
I won a neat little prize from GDQ. I wrote an article about it. Read it here.
The big twist of the article is that the prize was not from AGDQ 2025, but from SGDQ 2024. Astounding.
Be warned that some of the images are Pretty Big.
2025 March 15
It's the third month of the year, which means it's finally time for the third map of the year! (That's not how it works, I know.)
The hack in question is called Metroid: Engage Ridley. The title sounds makes it sound like a pleasant little excursion that would end in holy matrimony with the universe's most eligible space-dragon-bachelor, but in reality it ends up being a cautionary tale about how Roko's Basilisk will torment simulations of innocent people with debilitating back pain (my lawyer has advised me to say that this is a joke, but I will not be explaining the punchline).
Jokes aside, it's a pleasant little hack. Its design goals are fairly by-the-numbers as far as search-action games are concerned, but in all material respects it's perfectly compotent and well-crafted (with the exception one ending image).
As always, check out the map on the map page. (Editor's Note: I stuck it with the Metroid Fusion hack maps because Zero Mission is a hack of Fusion if you think about it for too long.)
2025 February 27
We got a new game to add to the ZZT page today! The title is a bit of a mouthful though: The 101 Beans Against the Bears.
I made the game for the Winter '25 2.4 Hours of ZZT jam. It took me a few minutes longer than the time limit to finish it (and the main version presented on the itch page was made the day after), but I think it turned out pretty well. If nothing else, it is pretty silly. :3c
Note that the this jam will also have "Spring" (April) and "Summer" (May/June) events, so even if you missed this one you can still participate in the the future. (Also the jamrunner is really chill, so you can probably submit something now regardless of the alleged deadline.)
2025 February 20
This isn't an update to the site itself, but I felt compelled to post about a few threads on the forum.
First off:
kaleidoscope by neen <- SM Hack
My friend neen has been working on this "oil-on-super metroid project" of a hack for the past year, and it's finally ready for release. In fact, neen has been kind enough to let readers of our fair forum play it a week early!
Like neen's previous hack, gossamer, kaleidoscope has a very distinctive visual style, with odd color choices, bizarre transparency effects, and even a couple fully new custom effects. I also think that it's a good step up in terms of design, with a more elegant world layout, better enemy balance, and even some custom items. Give it a shot! You might even see a familiar name if you make it all the way to the credits. :)
Homebrew projects
I'm working on some homebrew for the Sega Master System, as I'm liveblogging in this thread. My current focus is on learning how various aspects of the hardware work, so I've been adding more and more features to this "Hello World" tutorial program over the past couple of weeks. I think I might submit it to the 2025 SMSPower Coding Competition once I finish it. The goal after I figure this stuff out, though, is to make a small game inspired by Barbuta for this year's upcoming Oktrollberfest. We'll see how far I get with that. :)
My friend neen is also liveblogging his efforts to make homebrew for the SNES. His goal is to make a port of the classic Mac game Glider. The SNES is a substantially more sophisticated piece of hardware than the SMS, but even so I think neen is doing a fine job. Here's hoping for the best. :)
2025 January 26
It's been a hot minute since I made a map of a Metroid 1 hack (last March with the Confrontation NES port, I think), so it's about time that I made another one!
The hack in question is simply titled "Metroid Adventure." It's a hack that appears to have been made as a self-imposed challenge by the author --- essentially, he decided to create a brand new (ish) world layout, but only using screens from the original game. Unfortunately, MetEdit back in the day did not support moving items around on the map, severely limiting the choices the author could make. Moreover, the choices that the author did choose to make were actively antagonistic. In the hack's readme, the author brags about all of the "long passages," "backtracking," and "confusing map design." For a fun exercise, see if you can figure out the intended path to get bombs from the start. :) (Bonus points if you can figure out a shortcut.)
Anyhow, the map is slightly plainer than my other Metroid 1 maps, and I did that to make it more readable given how convoluted the world layout is. Sorry to everybody who likes how I usually retain the colors of the structures. :(
The author's next hack, Project Ridien, was considerably more ambitious, but we'll get to the particulars of that one's design later. ;)
As always, the map is on the map page.
2025 January 15
Last month I got the chance to appear on a podcast. It was fun, but I was quite nervous and felt kinda out of it during the recording. Anyhow, I guess a couple days ago the episode finally got edited and published finally. I gave it a listen myself, and I think the editor did a little magic or something, because somehow I didn't sound like a complete blithering idiot the whole time (small miracles).
Anyhow, you can listen to the episode here. The podcast is called "Topic Lords", which claims to be the only place on the internet you can go to hear topics be discussed. The showrunner is some guy named "Jim," and each week he rounds up a couple friends to commit some ADHD ramblings to audio files. (I still don't understand how I ended up on his list of friends.) In addition to me, some other fella named "esper" was there cohosting with me. We got to talk about ZZT, Dracula, memes, and a bunch of other stuff.
Give it a listen!
2025 January 6
Another year, another map, as they all say.
This new map (on ye map page) is of a hack called "METROID: Galactic Marine." It's a novel sort of half-total conversion that makes you play as a much wimpier protagonist than Samus, like Master Chief. Compared to Samus, your pitiful marine can't jump as high, has a weaker gun, can't spin jump, can't roll into a ball, and can't even collect energy drops. Survival is a carefully earned commodity, and not in the least bit guaranteed. Your endgame power level is maaaybe within reach of Samus in the midgame. While I personally wouldn't call it survival horror by any means, it's still an interesting case study in vulnerability and disempowerment.
Anyhow, if you want to play this hack you can get it here.
...oh wait the hack's update is still in the dreaded approval queue. Uhhhhh, check out it's forum thread instead.
2025 January 1
Happy New Year!
I don't have much to add here, other than I changed the "Future Maps" sidebar on the maps page to include the name of whatever map(s) I happen to be working on.
I will likely edit that little bit on whim, without posting anything about it on the frontpage here. Please understand.