Category: Podcast

We’re taking a romantic dip into the “dunj” this week and playing Boyfriend Dungeon from Kitfox Games!  We talk about the smooching, the slashing and talk about our favorite Baeblades. 

Boyfriend Dungeon is available on Steam, Gamepass (Windows and Xbox) and Nintendo Switch. Expect it to take between 5 and 10 hours to complete depending mostly on how many swords you want to smooch.

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Nate Heininger – @natestl
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

The Forgotten City is a mystery adventure game of exploration and deduction, and a re-imagining of an award winning Skyrim mod. Travel 2,000 years into the past and relive the final days of a cursed Roman city, where if one person sins, everyone dies. 

We absolutely loved this game. It’s a masterpiece of narrative design, and one of the most fun examples of a Groundhog Day style time loop in video games (and that’s saying something in a category that include the previously covered Outer Wilds and The Sexy Brutale!)

Shane brought a friend for this episode! We’re joined by Rahul Rao, Houston area performance artist. 

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane
• Rahul Rao

Button City is a cute (you might even say wholesome) adventure game about an adorable fox and his animal friends in a dayglow 90’s nostalgia infused world, trying to protect their local arcade from an uncaring real estate developer. Unfortunately, it’s also… not very good.  

Nate and I had a chat about what this promising game got right, and why it ultimately failed to move us. We also have a chat about the Wholesome Direct where this game was featured heavily, and wrap up with a fun What’s Making Us Happy This Week segment.

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Nate Heininger – @natestl

This week I was thinking about The Stanley Parable, which had a great recent episode on Watch Out For Fireballs and is also probably, finally getting its updated re-release this year, The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe.

This was only the second episode of the podcast, originally released in April of 2014, and we were still figuring everything out. The format is weird, the takes are stale,  the audio quality is poor… but I had fun listening back to it. Hopefully you will too, and hopefully you’ll forgive us for anything dumb we say. I added a couple of chapter markers. in case you want to skip past the 15-20 minutes of banter about such current topics as ”should I buy a Playstation 4.”

We’ll be back next week with a new episode. Thanks for listening!

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane
• Nate Heininger – @natestl

Our patrons voted for it, and we played it! It’s Metroid Fusion! A 5-7 hour Metroid game for the Game Boy Advance. This was Samus Aran’s first game in 8 years following Super Metroid, but it picks up seemingly right where the SNES game left off. We talk about the good, the bad, and the controversial in this soon-to-be-prequel to Metroid Dread.

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Nate Heininger – @natestl
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

Play as a tiny crow with a huge sword, tasked with reaping souls in a world in which no one has died for hundreds of years. Death’s Door is a top-down exploration and combat focused action adventure game in the mold of the Legend of Zelda, from developers Acid Nerve (the developers of Titan Souls) and published by Devolver Digital.

You can find Death’s Door on Steam for PC and Xbox platforms, where it’s currently a console-exclusive with a $20 price tag. Expect it to take somewhere between 6 and 15 hours to complete. (We recorded a couple of hours before I actually completed the game, but my final clock at credits was 14 hours. How Long To Beat currently lists 6.5 hours for the main story, with most playthroughs in the 6-10 hour range, so perhaps I am just bad at this game! I still had a great time though. Plus: Bird Content!)

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane

This week we are talking about the long in Early Access roguelike deck-building RPG Griftlands, and if you just heard a sound it was Nate vibrating in his seat. This isn’t that short a game, with a completed run taking up to 8 hours (and completing all three characters will likely take over 20 hours) but it sneaks in with our increasingly unjustifiable exception for roguelikes! 

Griftlands was in early access for two years, but it’s in full release as of June 2021 and it’s available on ALL the platforms, including Steam for Mac and Windows, Nintendo Switch, PS4 and Xbox One, each for about $20.

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane
• Nate Heininger – @natestl
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

This week we played Boomerang X, a new first person shooter boomeranger from developer DANG! published by Devolver Digital. Fling your boomerang (and yourself) through the air in a series of increasingly insane combat arenas as you delve into a lost civilization and test your agility against the swarms of dark creatures within.

Boomerang X is available today on Switch and Steam for Windows. Expect it to take around three to four hours to complete, with a New Game+ available after completion. This game was reviewed on PC via a pre-release download code provided by the publisher.

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane

This week we are covering Ynglet, a weird little anti-platformer for PC/Mac. Enjoy us trying mightily to describe the abstract main character creature (betasseled space squid?), and stick around for Shane’s What’s Making Me Happy when he finds a way to troll me by just enjoying sparkling water.

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

Chicory is a game about a black and white world, and an unlikely artist-dog given a magic paintbrush and tasked with coloring it in. Like developer Greg Lobanov’s previous game Wandersong, it’s also a deceptively well written and emotional story with engaging characters facing real problems. Chicory deals intelligently with themes of depression, impostor syndrome, the nature of art, and what it does to the artist and to the world, while remaining fun and warm throughout. Explore the Picnic Province, meet dozens of fun animal characters, and save the world with your art!

Chicory is available on PC/Mac and the PS4/5. Expect it to take about 8-10 hours to complete.

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Nate Heininger – @natestl
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash