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.

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.

We’re finally playing this long anticipated first person puzzler. (No Shane you can’t call the genre a “Portalortal”.) It’s a breezy but inventive and incredibly well executed exploration of perspective. We wrap up with one of the best Making Me Happy segments in ages!

Laura and Raygan are back to talk about a very Night in the Woods inspired narrative adventure game that focuses on the medical industry. Fall of Porcupine follows new intern Finley (a big-eyed pigeon, did I mention they’re all animals in this?) as he navigates professional and moral difficulties working at the only hospital in rural Porcupine. Great conversation about this unusual game. Finally, in What’s Making Us Happy This Week, Laura and Raygan both unpack from their travels.

Shane and Nate take on a bizarre mission full of pizza, dice, and pizza dice in Cosmo D’s Betrayal at Club Low. It’s a unique RPG set in the same surreal world as Cosmo D’s other games Off-Peak, The Norwood Suite, and Tales From Off-Peak City Vol. 1. but requires no knowledge of those games. It feels like a perfect homage to the short, punchy zine tabletop RPGs that inspired it.

Club Low is available on PC, Mac, and Linux, via both Steam and Itch.io. Expect it to take around 3 hours to complete, with multiple endings possible.

If you saw the title of this episode and thought “What? Tears of the Kingdom? On The Short Game podcast?!” then dear listener so did I. No, we’re not making some tortured argument for how this is actually a short game (though it can be completed in under an hour.) No, Laura and Raygan were traveling this week and Shane and Nate just had a lot to say about everyone’s favorite unofficial Kerbal Space Program sequel. It was a great conversation, and we’ll be back to our usual deal soon!

This week we check in on the last year or so of releases on Apple Arcade, and mostly what we find are a bunch of ports of good Short Game games and an excellent coloring book app for toddlers, plus a car with legs! We also take the opportunity to talk about the latest news in the weird world of Apple and gaming. Is the Apple Vision Pro going to be any good for games? Does the Game Porting Toolkit hold out any hope for running real game-ass games on Macs?

This week, for the first time, we’re covering a rom hack. A Plumber For All Seasons is a Super Mario World rom hack that is an almost total conversion of the game. 37 original levels, custom hand made graphics, an original soundtrack, and more make this feel like a true sequel to SMW rather than just a level pack. It’s a project that took rom hacker Eric Kaiser nearly a decade to complete, and it’s an incredible labor of love.

Links for this episode:

A Plumber for All Seasons 

Thread on SMWCentral.net 

SMWCentral beginners guide 

Online Rom Patcher 

Psychonauts 2 Documentary 

The Bobiverse Books 

The Lyttle Lytton Contest