I find I don't play as regularly as I used to. It's interesting to see after a few months of inactivity what has changed -- the game makers and the participants.
Myself -- after playing a few games live, I decided I prefer to NOT do so. Everyone is rushing so quickly and even if you feel you're doing well, you can quickly start to feel stupid. (Even worse, nowadays, sometimes no one else posts and you wonder if you're all alone or if the game is so simple that no one feels it's worth posting anything.)
The game makers: some of the great puzzlers I used to play with seem to have disappeared,
* Sakura -- (it turns out this was the name of the web server, not the game maker) -- no recent posts
* Minoto -- few updates, and the later ones were a series of simple, short games; also missed the
bad translations that we sometimes had fun with, and the nicknames some of the characters had ("Uncle Comb-over") and most of all the wonderful song-throughs from zoz!
* Gamershood (formerly Rotuc) -- disappeared completely
However, we still get occasional treats from
* Tesshi-e -- still one of the best game-makers ever, publishes less often
* Tomatea -- Not on my earlier list, but another "one of the best"
Overall, I still prefer to try Japanese game makers. Overall, the quality of puzzles and implementation is much higher than the norm. There's the occasional insurmountable language barrier. But where else would you find a game where the furniture in the room is made from the name of the furniture rather than a drawing?
Newer puzzle series:
The "Open Attempt" series at first seemed strange, then quite challenging, and now seems to be in the doldrums.
Angelika's "Butterfly Escape" series (why did the first one never make it to EG24?), where you don't escape but help the colorful butterflies get out.
Then there are the escape games I occasionally run into that cannot be posted on EG24 because they're too platform-specific. But which I could never enjoy without the experience gained there.
*The Madogiwa game series published as Windows 8 apps: Every bit as beautiful and perfect as Tomatea and Tesshi-e. For help, I had to find a Japanese site and use Google translate to get barely understandable English. Latest is number 18, and we can only hope the series continues.
* The Emptiness - a somewhat creepy game published by Big Fish games with a whole series of escapes -- each door in the (haunted?) house is a new set of puzzles! Multiple endings depending on choices you make at the end.
Well, I've rambled long enough and left out things I meant to say but it's getting late ...
