This is the two hundred thirty-first entry in the Scratching That Itch series, wherein I randomly select and write about one of the 1741 games and game-related things included in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The Bundle raised $8,149,829.66 split evenly between the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Community Bail Fund, but don’t worry if you missed it. There are plenty of ways you can help support the vital cause of racial justice; try here for a start. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

Our two hundred thirty-first random selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality has failed to appear. It’s SilverQuest Gaiden, by Wolfgame, and its tagline in the bundle reads:

A 1bit dungeon crawler.

Unfortunately, it seems it is now a zero-bit dungeon crawler, as I get the above error image when I try to download it. Its itch.io page no longer exists.

So, what was SilverQuest Gaiden? It seems likely it is based on SilverQuest Classic, which is the only thing listed under Wolfgame’s itch.io catalog, given that “gaiden” means “side story” in Japanese. But SilverQuest Classic — an “online multiplayer role-playing adventure game” — is no longer avialable either, its itch.io page citing old code and server software that cannot run on modern systems, and presents a serious security risk for any online play. Further searching turns up an old Steam page for SilverQuest Gaiden, where it is also no longer available. But there’s at least some info: it was a black-and-white (hence that “1bit” in the tagline) classic roguelike that shared the same world as SilverQuest Classic. Interestingly, it was originally released by a different developer, I-GAME-ART, back in 2009, then Wolfgame came on board in 2012 to do some additional artwork and design. It seems to be abandoned now, but left to Wolfgame’s catalog; I don’t know what happened to I-GAME-ART.

Anyway, I can’t play this one, sadly. I have, however, written a lot about classic roguelikes in the earlier days of this blog, and am happy to recommend a few. Our recent 228th random pick for Scratching That Itch, Possession, is a decent one to play around with, but my favorites are Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (with the caveat that I have not played recent builds), Brogue, and the more recent Caves of Qud. The latter has an open world and story focus that sets it apart from other games and is really rather excellent. It left early access in December 2024, but I still haven’t gotten around to playing the full release version which finally finishes the story. I should. I will.

For now, though, that’s a regretful 231 down, and only 1510 to go!