Shownotes

We’re spending the next two episodes talking about Inscryption, the wild new deckbuilding roguelike meets escape-room horror game from Pony Island developer Daniel Mullins. We’re taking the unusual step of breaking this into two episodes (similar to what we did with Undertale several years ago) because while the game has a lot of incredible cards (literal and figurative) hidden up its sleeves, the cards it plays face up, right away are also extremely interesting and worth talking about at length. So we do! This episode mainly covers the card and roguelike mechanics. Shane brings up Magic the Gathering many, many times.

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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

The second game from Witchbeam, the developers of Short Game favorite Assault Android Cactus, is completely different but equally great. Unpacking is an intricate pixel art game about… unpacking! This chill, open ended puzzle-ish game tells the story of a life through the mundane, familiar experience of taking objects out of boxes and trying to find some place to put them. Each new house comes with an opportunity to see how a person changes over time and how their possessions tell the story of that change.

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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

IFComp 2021 voting closes TODAY!

Our third and final episode on IFComp 2021 just before the close of the comp covers four absolute bangers. We will return in a few weeks to discuss the results, and play any high placing games we missed!

• [00:03:17]: What Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed by Amanda Walker 
• [00:17:19]: Fine Felines by Felicity Banks 
• [00:30:11]: A Paradox Between Worlds by Autumn Chen 
• [00:42:41]: You are SpamZapper 3.1 by Leon Arnott 

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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

Despite some high profile and popular examples, the deck-building roguelike genre is a hyper-specific niche comprised of such a small number of games that every major new entry still seems like quite an event. 2020’s biggest deck-building roguelike release was Monster Train, which made its way to Nintendo Switch this year. It’s a must for fans of the genre, and might be a great entry point for new players. 

We’re fully on our bullshit for this one, as Nate gets to talk about Slay the Spire, Shane gets to talk about Magic: The Gathering, and Raygan gets to complain about both of them.

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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

Continuing our coverage of the 2021 Interactive Fiction Competition, we’re back with impressions of six more games, including some really incredible ones!

• 00:03:23: Closure by Sarah Wilson 
• 00:12:26: Funicular Simulator 2021 by Mary Goodden and Tom Leather 
• 00:19:30: we, the remainder by Charm Cochran 
• 00:29:19: Taste of Fingers by V Dobranov 
• 00:35:14: Dr Horror’s House of Terror by Ade 
• 00:41:23: And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One by B.J. Best 

More IFComp coverage coming soon, so keep the recommendations coming!

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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:

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

Our spooky game for spooky season this year is Devotion, an atmospheric first person horror game from Taiwanese developer Red Candle Games. Devotion was well received at its 2019 release but was very quickly pulled from stores due to a very strange situation involving the Chinese Communist Party and Winnie the Pooh. The game remained as hauntingly unavailable as PT for years, until Red Candle began selling it direct to consumers via their website this March.

Devotion tells the tragic story of a family in 1980s Taiwan torn apart by mental illness and religious fanaticism. It combines storytelling devices from the ”walking simulator” genre with horrifying visuals and cinematic editing to create a uniquely haunting domestic tragedy.

You can buy Devotion direct from Red Candle Games via their website for $16.99. It is available DRM free for PC and Mac. Expect it to take 3-4 hours to complete.

We’ll be back next week with more IFComp 2021!

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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 is the start of our IFComp 2021 coverage, and it’s looking like a good year! We discussed 9 games, and will be covering many more over the coming weeks.

• 00:13:09: Grandma Bethlinda’s Remarkable Egg by Arthur DiBianca
• 00:25:48: The Golden Heist by George Lockett and Rob Thorman
• 00:33:31: The daughter by Giovanni Rubino
• 00:41:40: A Papal Summons, or The Church Cat by Bitter Karella
• 00:48:57: Cyborg Arena by John Ayliff
• 00:55:42: Enveloping Darkness by John Muhlhauser, Helen Pluta, Co-written by Othniel Aryee
• 01:00:25: Smart Theory by AKheon
• 01:05:39: Sting by Mike Russo
• 01:14:02: My Gender Is a Fish by Carter Gwertzman

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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

A complete, mainline Mario game you can complete in 3-6 hours? Yes, Bowser’s Fury is more than a “new mode” for the Switch re-release of Super Mario 3D World. It also has more cats per minute than any game in recent memory.

Hope you’re feeling better, Nate!

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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

This week we are getting romantic with a few interactive fiction romance novels from Choice of Games and their new imprint Heart’s Choice. 

• Crème de la Crème from Choice of Games
• Dawnfall and A Player’s Heart from Heart’s Choice
• Creatures Such as We from Choice of Games
• Laura’s recent guest appearance: 471. Romance Games and Interactive Fiction with Laura Nash of The Short Game Podcast | Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

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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

This week The Short Game played an online escape room experience called Project Avatar, in which we commanded an “avatar”, a real live human person in a warehouse in Ukraine, through a series of puzzle challenges. It was a supremely weird and wildly entertaining experience. We also discuss escape rooms generally, including online and at-home escape room experiences.

Here are Laura’s links and resources for this episode:

Main review — Project Avatar: Stalker

https://projectavatar.fun/

Games Mentioned

Trapped Takeout: https://www.trappedpuzzlerooms.com/trapped-takeout/

The Emerald Flame (PostCurious): https://postcurious.myshopify.com/

Colby’s Curious Cookoff https://curiouscookoff.com/

SCRAP’s Escape From the Science Lab of Scifting Rules (the Baba Is You-y one) https://roomescapeartist.com/2021/04/02/scrap-escape-science-lab-shifting-rules-hivemind-review/

Bluefish Games: https://www.teambluefish.com/

Box One: https://store.theory11.com/products/boxone

Guides to finding good at home games

My favorite reviewers, cause they do hiveminds where multiple people review the same room (and they ran the conference I liked)

https://roomescapeartist.com/

2020 Online Escape Room Awards https://terpeca.com/2020/#onlinerooms

An index for at home game reviews:

https://escapethereview.co.uk/location/play-at-home/

A flowchart

https://www.escapethereview.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/PlayAtHomeFlowchart.pdf

Which Room in a Box should I buy?

https://escapethereview.co.uk/which-room-in-a-box-should-i-buy/

Meta list of lists of at-home games https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1anO0NQhwwOFZLmydCuoY4cd4R6x52KnxOAfAxZCGt1c/edit

Puzzle Hunt Calendar http://puzzlehuntcalendar.com/

Want to know more about Escape Rooms?

RECON Videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvtiar8OygeaCKLog9ff_TBmJKuW-b8ZZ

Escape Room Design Links: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lwSTxIews8azOqzHEy0vyoSrX7orx55pRImXWuBVkjU/edit

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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