Select a destination!
All tickets are completely free of charge.

Otomeshi Blog

A blog from composer Arata Iiyoshi, who I personally recognize via Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, giving advice on self-managed music production as a career. I thought it was a cool find, but haven’t personally read much on account of it being in Japanese. Tip: use the sidebar to see of the posts!

msx

em essex is a music producer who’s operated under a number of pseudonyms over the years you may or may not have heard of (“LAPFOX”, “HALLEY”, etc.). This personal site has their entire catalogue (219 records, stretching back to 2005!) available to download completely for free, and also includes a blog, various gamedev projects, and a lot of resources for making your own music (stems, loops, sample packs, and plugins). Poke around a little, and there’s a lot to find.

enclose.horse

Daily online puzzle game where you click on squares. Sound familiar? But seriously, this is the funnest daily I’ve ever played. The goal is essentially to create as large an enclosed space as possible with only so many walls. It strikes a perfect balance of being simple enough to be fun and intuitive, while still having enough room to leave you there thinking for a while. And of course, the excellent presentation ties it all together into an incredibly charming package. So what are you waiting for? Give it a shot! Greener pastures await… all you have to do is follow the link!

Glyph

Wordle clone that I think is actually novel. You decipher a glyph composed of all the word’s letters stacked directly on top of each other. Took me a while to get the hang of — it takes some time to start to really grasp how it works and what information it does and doesn’t give you, but I’d still recommend giving it a shot. I can’t seem to do it without a piece of paper to help. Is this a bad pitch? It’s cool, I’m just not great at it!

Neocities

The beautiful place where this very website is hosted. They provide static hosting for free, but also offer a supporter plan where you can get more space, upload any filetype, host multiple sites, and link custom domains. There’s a minor social element to it as well, with features for browsing and commenting on the sites of other Neocities users. The main alternative is Nekoweb, which has been growing rapidly in its own right and has some cool features that Neocities restricts by default. Which one is better will probably come down to preference! Or at least I’m not experienced enough to have an opinion.

Olliveen

Ollie’s site feels pretty well-known around Neocities. Features a blog, art, various shrines, songs of the week, etc. There’s lots of fun little side pages you can find from just clicking around. I personally really like the fashion page (someday I will dress cool too… #manifesting). Make sure to give them a visit during October!

lambchapel

Always shifting and changing. Includes some wonderful original compositions (on a page whose layout has always joyously perplexed me), a growing collection of comics, a blog, and various other such rooms that fade in and out on the horizon. Plus even gamedev projects playable in your browser! Throughout all the iterations I’ve witnessed, I’ve always been sort of inspired. Enjoy your visit, and try not to get lost in the snow.

murumart

murumart uncovers emotions you may not have known you had. I can’t describe them, so you’ll just have to see for yourself. The home page alone is very powerful. From there, you’ll find various musical artifacts, c/omics, and “Greg” (he has an RPG! Aren’t you excited?). The c/omics in particular are quite avant-garde, and so if you don’t understand them, you’re probably not a modern enough thinker *pushes up glasses, smirks pretensiously*. #16 is my favorite. If you stop by the site, please give the fish a kiss for me. Platonic-style.

MOUSELING.net

MOUSELING.net stands out as having both an incredible amount of content and clearly a lot of passion (and not to mention a polished design). There’s various artistic content — drawings, crafts, cosplays, music covers, etc. — a media log, a photo log… really too much to all list out! I especially appreciate the webmastery articles, as I try to catch up on all the HTML best practices I unfortunately skipped over. Plus, there’s a side site to be found with its own aesthetics and even more content?! Wow! We’ve really been spoiled, huh?

Sizz Tuna

You are here!

Swifty’s HQ

I fell in love with forest’s dogthings during my brief stint on Tumblr, and was really pleased to find they had a personal site on Neocities I could keep up with. There’s a few extra goodies here and there, but really it’s mostly a blog and art gallery, both of which are quality. There’s a certain calm atmosphere, maybe from the colors, maybe the simple layout, definitely in part from the content. I’m always happy to see it update.

i-land

The i-land is throws you into a big world made mostly of colored pencil drawings, and then lets you explore by clicking around. There’s little direction to it, but I found it fun to just wander. There’s a sort of mysterious atmosphere to it. See what you can stumble upon!

Meeka Makes

Essentially an art portfolio site. It’s mostly ceramics, and is really a lot of wonderful work. It doesn’t seem to be updating anymore, but if you’re a fan of clay like I am, it’s worth perusing!

NinAcTi0N’s Lab

I’ve never seen a more visually impressive site. The amount of effort put into the presentation is insane. It unfortunately looks like a lot of it is down for construction at the moment, though… be sure to check back!

eggbert.ca

A pretty straightforward developer’s site that links to various projects. I really recommend the games tab, where there’s a bunch of little attractions available for you right in your browser. Eggletopia alone is one of the most joyous things I’ve ever stumbled upon online.

From the Superhighway

An online newsletter all about the indie web. It’s a fun source for learning about some of the big and small projects floating around out there, and each issue features an interview, too. You can subscribe via email or RSS (…or just check the website every once in a while!).

Squoosh

A web app that compresses images, at minimal quality cost. I cannot explain its wizardry. Singlehandedly made my gallery loading tolerable.

File Garden

An external file host. Really, ideally, a web developer should host all assets on the same server as the site, but if you’re like me and operating on a budget of zero dollars and hosting on Neocities, that’s just not possible depending on your goals (please, Neocities… allow mp3s at least!). I’ll eventually adapt once I feel comfortable consistently paying for something, since I know waiting for the connection to File Garden before certain pages with music (e.g. Picross) can load sucks. But I felt I should at least say what I’m using, even if I can’t fully endorse my own methods.

JS Comment Widget

The comment widget I use, made by Ayano of Virtual Observer! It’s the one part of this site that isn’t lovingly coded by my own hands. It’s simple and effective, and you can easily customize the CSS and JavaScript to suit your own needs. Unfortunately, an update to Neocities content security policy for free accounts circa 2024 means it may not be functional for use on your own personal site… If your account is older than that, if you’re paying for supporter, or if you’re hosting on Nekoweb instead though, you should be good to go!

Solaria Accessibility Guide

Accessibility is an area I’ve lately been trying to educate myself on, though the process of improving old pages is slow. The more I learn, the more I realize just how badly I’ve fumbled so many things in the past! >x<; But hey, it’s all about living and learning. Solaria has a straightforward and approachable guide geared specifically towards developers of personal sites, and contains links to a host of other readings at the end. It’s a great starting point!

VSCodium

A version of Visual Studio Code that disconnects it from Microsoft’s surveillance. Visual Studio Code itself has always satisfied every need I’ve ever had from a code editor, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it from an application standpoint. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to take the extra step to download a version that’s specifically supposed to be detached from the minor icky corporate stuff (including inevitable AI creep) in the original, though. Shoutouts to Silliest Goose Online for first bringing the program to my attention! I’d recommend the Live Server extension for web development, so you can easily preview your pages before publishing them.

Josh W. Comeau

Josh is a web developer, former professor, and now a self-described “solo indie hacker”. His website is a treasure trove of articles, including interactive HTML and CSS tutorials I’ve found really helpful (I actually first found his site via his SVG path guide, which I consulted in making the transit map on this very page!). There’s a handful of in-depth courses on particular topics (got my eye on that animations one…), and some extra trinkets for good measure. It’s all really quality stuff, and is made really approachable (a.k.a. never ever feels like reading documentation). If you run a site, you’re really doing yourself a favor by checking his stuff out!

W3Schools

A great resource for learning how to program your own website. I basically taught myself how to make this site just by searching things here (…which, in retrospect, is not entirely the approach I would recommend. Eat your vegetables first! Learn some basic principles before going all willy-nilly!). MDN Web Docs is more technical and in-depth, but I often find W3Schools to be more approachable even if less comprehensive. Both have tutorials meant to help beginners learn how to program HTML and co., and both will probably be helpful to you no matter how comfortable in any language you get.

Musicolet

An audio player I downloaded on my phone after resolving at the start of 2026 to stop using Spotify. It was the first option that came up when researching options for Android, and it’s served me pretty well. It’s free, completely offline, and has no ads.

foobar2000

A free desktop audio player originally released in 2002 but which still regularly updates. There’s a massive array of custom themes and plugins out there; its basic utility is effective and bulk-free (it can rip CDs, convert filetypes, play internet radio — literally anything I could want it to do, and all while still being size- and performance-optimized), but at the same time it is nearly infinitely customizable. Invest even just a little bit of time in the setup, and you’ll probably end up with something you’re happy with. No better time than the present to start building up a stash (horde?) of locally stored music.

Tor Browser

If you’re really passionate about internet privacy, it would seem that Tor is the way to go. Built off the back of United States naval research of all things. I first heard about Tor through Edward Snowden’s memoir, and pleasantly found that the associated browser is built off of Firefox, which was already familiar to me. I haven’t switched myself, but I mention it as something to consider looking into if it piques your interest. It’s built to essentially anonymize your browsing, making tracking difficult and allowing access to regionally blocked content via relays maintained across the globe.

Obsidian

A free writing program. There’s a million plugins out there, but honestly the base functionality has me pretty satisfied to begin with (shoutouts to Smart Typography though for angling my quotes and making em dashes easy). Organization options are good, with the ability to split things up into multiple “vaults”, and everything is stored privately on your system, which I value after having realized that Google can absorb everything I type into Google Docs. I love the graph view for conceptualizing larger projects. Look at all my little color-coded nodes that connect…

OBS Studio

A free and open source video recording and streaming software. Can both record your display as well as process input from an external device. No notes; it just works.

DaVinci Resolve

An all-purpose video editor. There’s a paid version with more effects, but the free version contains practically all the functionality you need, and has no watermarks or anything. My only real gripe with the program is that the fusion page is sort of convoluted. Otherwise, it’s a solid contemporary of Adobe Premiere Pro.

LibreSprite

A free and open source fork of Aseprite, containing all the essential features. Its main focus is for pixel art and animation, but I’ve personally found Aseprite to have application far past that narrow focus, and I’m sure LibreSprite is no different. Though if you really do want Aseprite, apparently its EULA allows you to compile it from the source yourself without paying anything at all. That’s an adventure you’ll have to embark on on your own, though!

Krita

Free digital art program. It’s pretty in-depth! I’m still figuring it out, and don’t have experience in other similar programs to really compare it to, but I’ve been happy with it so far.

Polyphone

A tool for editing or building your own soundfonts. Takes a second to figure out how it works, but once you get the hang of it, it’s super straightforward.

Audacity

Basic audio editing program I used in the pre-Reaper days. Probably best to download without MuseHub!

Musescore

The very first program I composed in. It’s entirely free and geared towards sheet music rather than audio production, though it’s incorporated more VST support in recent years. I’d personally recommend choosing to install without MuseHub in order to skip all the extra bulk (which I’m not entirely trusting of!) that they throw in nowadays. If you’re interested in getting into music composition and already have a background of playing music (i.e. can read sheet music), this is an accessible way to get your foot in the door!

Reaper

The DAW I used up until purchasing Ableton. Even though a personal license costs $60, in my experience, the 60-day free evaluation period never truly ends. You can just keep hitting “still evaluating” and use it forever with no restrictions. Reaper doesn’t really come with any instrument VSTs, so you’ll have to collect your own, but to make up for this, it has a wide array of mixing/mastering tools that are incredibly simple but effective. No fluff. They just do what they’re supposed to do. I miss them. I’ll always have a soft spot for Reaper; once you clear the initial hurdles of figuring out how it works, it’s an accessible way to get into DAWs.

BBC Symphony Orchestra

An orchestral VST with a free version (Discover). There’s not really much room to adjust timbre, so its use cases are limited in that regard, but it does what it does and has been functional for me. Looks like Spitfire’s also got a separate “Spitfire Symphony Orchestra” VST that I never knew about. Looks like it has more options — I’ll have to give it a shot and replace this entry if it’s better.

Spitfire LABS

LABS has a bunch of little collections of free instrument packs. There’s some pretty good stuff on here, actually! Banner at the top of the page screams at me that LABS is now part of “Splice INSTRUMENT” (gah, so much shouting) — I’m not sure entirely what this means for the process of getting your hands on all the packs, but my guess would be making an extra account and downloading another thing. Which can be annoying, but hey, these are the hoops we jump through.

Vital

Wavetable synthesizer. There’s some presets, but the real allure is building your own sounds from stratch. There’s a steep learning curve to any form of sound design no matter what, but the visual nature of Vital at least helps it make a little more sense while still having great depth.

Surge XT

The very first VST I downloaded. It’s a hybrid synthesizer with lots of options to toy with, and more importantly for my clueless self, a lot of presets. I still turn to it relatively frequently.

C700

VST that emulates the SNES soundchip. You can use sounds from any game so long as you have their .brr samples (which you can likely find via a quick internet search and you’ll see SMW Central pop up), but there’s also some demo patches it comes with that you can use.

VGM Sound Sources

Wanna know what exact sounds were used in some random piece of video game music? Well, guess what? There’s a handy-dandy spreadsheet for that! Now you too can learn to immediately recognize samples from the beloved Roland SC-88! Hooray!

AweDSome

Really awedsome Nintedo DS emulator. ONLY LEGAL ROMs ALLOWED, I DO NOT CONDONE THE USE OF ILLEGALLY OBTAINED PRODUCTS!!!