After a somewhat unplanned summer break, the Short Game crew is returning to talk about the fourth chapter of Deltarune!

The Steam Deck is the number one console(ish) platform for playing ILLEGAL GAMES that Nintendo doesn’t want you to play! This week we’re talking about games that STEAL intellectual property from the RICH FAT CATS at Nintendo and their cronies and remix it into FREE GAMES for the PEOPLE.

Toby Fox is back, and it’s TV TIME!

Previously:

• Episode 320 – Chapter 1
• Episode 324 – Chapter 2
• Episode 65 – Undertale
• Episode 66 – Undertale Spoilers

From the depths of Steam and YouTube comes ENA, a strange polygonal girl in a surreal hypercapitalist dreamscape. Your hosts were left wondering what the hell this was all about, and why is it so incredibly beautifully animated?

Indie game royalty Blendo aka Brendan Chung, creator of Thirty Flights of Loving and Quadrilateral Cowboy among others has come out of his cicada-like 7 year dev cycle with another instant classic. Skin Deep is an immersive sim about popping the detachable heads off of space pirates and flushing them down space toilets in order to save a bunch of talking space cats. It’s an easily the funniest and probably one of the best immersive sims ever made.

A video game memoir by Ecuadorian indie developers Julián Cordero and Sebastian Valbuena, and published by Panic, Despelote takes you back to a childhood in 2001 Ecuador, and the magical grip soccer held over the entire country during the lead-up to the 2002 World Cup.

This is something we have never seen in video games before.

We’re talking about Many Nights a Whisper, a short, meditative archery (kinda!) game from Red Strings Club developer Deconstructeam and Selkie Harbour. The Dreamer has prepared their entire life for one impossible shot that will define a generation. Hear the wishes of your people, and prepare for your one chance to make them come true in this interactive essay on the flight of wishes and the pressure of expectations.

In “What’s Making Us Happy”, Nate is playing the classic Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, and Raygan recommends an app. An app!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_Mario:_The_Thousand-Year_Door
https://www.suppermariobroth.com
https://reederapp.com/

We spent this week playing a bit more of Inkle’s follow up to Overboard!, and made some shocking discoveries!

This week, Laura and Nate dive into Trash the Planet, a free, browser-based resource-management game that subverts clicker mechanics to serve its narrative. You play as a group of raccoons who start out collecting trash and, through a rapid evolution of society, end up ruling the planet—manipulating the stock market with absolutely no consequences.

Stick around for the return of What’s Making Us Happy This Week.

Shane and Nate were buzzing about FlyKnight, a $5 indie dungeon crawler that surprised us with its humor and depth. In this episode, we break down what makes this tiny first-person RPG so fun, from its retro aesthetic and first person Souls-like combat to its great co-op potential. Should you bug your buddies to play it? Let’s find out!