Critical Distance Fansite Jam Roundup: March 2026

Welcome back sickos.

Our second not-quite-annual Fansite Jam has drawn to a close, and now it’s time to showcase the results!

This year we have six submissions to share (including one of my own). This is a modest number in absolute terms but they nonetheless capture a wide range of styles, formats, subject matter, and design philosophies. There’s no wrong way to build a little digital shrine to something you love.

We think the promotion of independently designed and authored online spaces is timely. As the largest platform holders refine their walled-off gardens for maximum retention and maximum misery (now with AI!), the need for alternatives grows. In organizing this and future Fansite Jams, we hope not just to create an opportunity to celebrate our weird and wonderful interests, but also to remind you that the means to make the Internet a better place aren’t beyond the capabilities of anybody with an afternoon to spare and the willingness to learn.

We’re going to do more of these jams in the future–they have been so fun each time. Come see us on our Discord server if you want to be a part of the next one, or just generally want to hang out in a space full of cool people interested in games writing.

For further contemporary websurfing, you can check out the results from our 2024 Fansite Jam here.

One last thing–this jam has overlapped with a fundraising drive that is helping us build out our long term financial sustainability. We are incredibly grateful for the wonderful support we’ve received so far. Critical Distaince remains committed to finding and sharing the most important, interesting, and just plain cool writing on games from around the web every week, every month, every year. If you’d like to support our work, check out our Patreon.

Let’s look at some fansites!

Software Renderer

All that Times New Roman is taking me back–I can almost taste the crackle of ozone against the glass of a CRT monitor. Even so, these first two vintage-themed sites bridge decades of work, bringing together a love of games both old and forgotten as well as remixed and renewed.

• The Gubble Zone | Michael Klamerus
  What’s Gubble? I had no idea before the jam, and that’s the beauty of a fansite: it’s a little window into somebody else’s obsession, and maybe–if you do a little soul-searching–a mirror for your own. Gubble, a late-90s puzzle game about a little alien using tools to dismantle the infrastructure of an evil oppressor, is largely unknown today, but it did well enough to spawn its own franchise back in the day, complete with kart racing spinoff (as was the style at the time). Michael offers a primer here on the series’ history, as well as how to get started with playing the game today. Come see what the hubub is about: visit what may indeed be the only Gubble fan site on the internet.
  • Don’t miss: Start with Gubble 1!

• Quake Brutalist Jam 3 | Clenow
  A fansite about a fangame is, at least in my opinion, the spirit of the fansite come full circle. I love it. Clenow has delivered a staggering resource on all things pertaining to the recent and massive Quake level design jam. Individual level reviews? Check. Enemy and weapon databases? Check. Enough homemade gifs stalking the margins to give Animation Factory a run for their money? Double check. There’s so much material here. I think this means this is also now, in part, a jam about a jam.
  • Don’t miss: Understanding the intersection of Quake and brutalism

<P>atch Notes

This next pair of sites take more of an essay-minded approach to their object texts.

• Ancient Eventuality’s Home | Arhys Hiraeth
  I’m an easy mark for a gently animated starry background. The centrepiece of Arhys’ work is a detailed and thoughtful analysis on how violence informs and intertwines with the narrative structure of Yakuza 0. Arhys also explicitly leaves the structure of the site open to writing about other games in the future, so why not check back in after a few months and see what they’ve been up to?
  • Don’t miss: Trapped in Violence

• Final Fantasy Vibe | Chris Lawrence
  How do I talk about my own fansite? I’ll stick to the basics. Final Fantasy V is one of my favourite games, so I’m joining the jam myself with an entry about that. During the submission window I made it to three completed articles, and they vary pretty widely in style and tone. Since I’ve made this the “essay” section, however, I’ll link the one that feels the most essayistic to me.
  • Don’t miss: Faris, gender, and localization

Art Showcase

One of my favourite things about organizing these jams is seeing all the different ways people approach design, layout, style–all of that. It gives me inspiration to try new things in my own approach to CSS (don’t make me learn JavaScript, I refuse). To that end, I’ve grouped our last two entrants together to highlight their outstanding artistic design.

• Xenogears : where the egg of dreams hatches | Ribose
  Beautiful work. In building out this tribute to agruably the PlayStation’s greatest unfinished game, Ribose has adapted the PS1 aesthetic into a browser-friendly format, right down to the dithering. They’ve also compiled a bunch of indepensible Xenogears resources on the links page. Check back for updates!
  • Don’t miss: The interactive character page!

• droplets / droplens | CandleSign
  We’ve got something special for the closer. CandleSign has put together an interactive exhibit of nearly two hundred (six hundred! There are layers!) 50 x 50 pixel “bug-sized” works of photography from Rain World, bringing text and image together in a scrolling meditation on the game’s world and themes, as well as the affordances and constraints of the photographer’s lens to capture meaning in that world. Take your time. Savour the craft. This is what these jams are all about.
  • Don’t Miss: Just start at the beginning : )