Category: Podcast

Gordy and the Monster Moon is a bite-sized exploration-driven game about a pumpkin astronaut going on spooky adventures. It’s also a tiny part of the Frog Fractions extended universe, brought to us by Jim Stormdancer. It’s made entirely in Pico-8, and is available on Steam and itch.io for $4.

It’s a great short game that made for a quick conversation, so Shane also brings us a seasonally appropriate game from IFComp 2023: Dr Ludwig and the Devil by SV Linwood. It’s a mad scientist puzzle parser game that’s full of character and humor, and also Satan.

This week we’re talking about Gunbrella, a game that gets in its own way more than anything we’ve played in a while.

This week Shane and Raygan betray the premise of the podcast and have a nice long chat about Baldur’s Gate 3, an immense game we’re both enjoying immensely, with some digressions into D&D and (ding) Magic the Gathering.

This week we’re celebrating PICO-8 games! PICO-8 is a fantasy console for making, sharing and playing tiny games that runs on PC/Mac/Linux. Raygan, Nate, and Shane talk a little about the “console” itself, then review a ton of games, including:

• Celeste
• Mimic
• What is a Cart?
• Pico Driller
• The Shadow King
• Combo Pool
• To A Starling
• Super Crane Bug
• Dusk Child
• Shelled Shinobi
• Mai-Chan’s Sweet Buns

Set sail with your Short Game hosts on a spooky adventure about… fishing? This week we’re covering Dredge by Black Salt games, who describes it as “a single-player fishing adventure with a sinister undercurrent.” What will you dig up from the depths?

South Scrimshaw is uses the visual novel form to do something very unusual: a science fiction nature documentary. Using hundreds of beautiful bespoke watercolor and ink illustrations, South Scrimshaw tells the story of a whale calf on an alien world as it is born and travels with its in injured mother across dangerous seas. It’s one of the most artistically beautiful games we’ve played, and it’s available on Steam and itch.io completely free. Expect it to take about one to two hours to completely experience.

Hope you’re hungry… for narrative fiction! This week we’re dealing with dosas and building biriyanis in Venba. It’s a story-driven cooking game centered on a South Indian family living in Canada. Expect it to take an hour to an hour and a half, depending on your culinary skill and reading speed.