Pixel Therapy Pod

In 2025, so many video games helped us laugh, helped us escape, and helped us connect. Join us for our annual discussion and celebration of the games that made our year. 00:00:46 - Some bittersweet news 00:09:56 - 2025 year of gaming overviews 00:26:47 - Spencer and Jamie's Top 5 Games of the Year 01:31:30 - Honorable Mentions 01:43:52 - Favorite characters of the year 01:47:36 - Favorite games jo...

As the temperatures drop, the coziness factor turns up, and the impending arrival of a new year looms ominously on the horizon inviting us to dissociate from reality for just a little bit (just us?), it's just the perfect time to escape the stress and excitement of the holidays with a lengthy RPG you can sink your teeth into. At least, that's our tradition. Enter Demonschool (Necrosoft Games, publ...

This week we're chatting about Hades II, the long-in-early-access follow up to 2020's Hades from Supergiant Games. Like its predecessor, Hades II is an action RPG roguelike chock full of eye-popping art, callous-forming combat, and a steady supply of sexual tension set in the deep lore of Greek myth while telling the all-too-relatable story of confronting toxic family dynamics and breaking interge...

Idk, but let us know in the comments! We continue our scattershot indie game revue reviews this week with Dispatch (AdHoc Studio, Critical Role), a superhero workplace comedy where choices matter, Consume Me (Jenny Jiao Hsia, AP Thomson), a WarioWare-esque slice-of-life RPG about that time when your parents, your friends, and society at large all conspired to make you feel ugly, lazy, stupid,...

Bricks and sticks, pixels and lines. This week we cover a crop of endearing and surprisingly emotional indie games that have carried us through some tumultuous past few weeks. Also, Spencer draws an unhinged connection between Zach Cregger's summer thriller Weapons and Okomotive's atmospheric alpine expedition game Herdling. I feel like you guys will get it. Games discussed this episode: 01:36 - P...

It's more common than you think. Join us this week as we load up our top-heavy backpacks, strap our tiny sentient dolls to our hips, and unpack DEATH STRANDING 2: On the Beach, Kojima Productions' and Sony Interactive Entertainment's much-anticipated sequel to 2019's polarizing Death Stranding. While we likely could have spent 6+ hours unpacking this genre-defying experience of a game, what we can...

In the midst of an ongoing apocalyptic meteor shower that has forced the world's population of adorable pixelated animals underground, a kitten named Shell awakens to discover her mother missing. Join us as we dig into Nautilus Games' Everdeep Aurora, published by Ysbryd Games, which we had the pleasure of demo-ing at PAX West 2024! 01:38 - Death Stranding 2 impressions 08:24 - Quick film/TV talk...

This Pride Month, we played three iconic LGBTQ+ visual novels that are each a little spooky, a little spicy, and have a whole lot of heart: Midnight Scenes: From the Woods (White Blanket Games), Mediterranea Inferno (Lorenzo Redaelli, Santa Ragione), and We Know the Devil (pillowfight)! Plus: Is the Babdook a queer icon? Are trans people actual biblically accurate angels on earth? Does kink belong...

Could it really be a contender for Game of the Year 2025? Join us as we break down Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a turn-based RPG...or maybe... J'RPG (with MANY a twist) from French studio Sandfall Interactive and published by Kepler Interactive. This episode includes a heated debate on the game's endings if you wanna stick around for our spoiler discussion (and don't worry, we'll warn you when it'...

We didn't mean to record a 2 hour, 42 min podcast, but sometimes these things just happen. Join us as we dissect the second season of the show the internet loves to hate: HBO's The Last of Us. Episode contains full spoilers for both the games and the show. No time stamps for this one because we pretty much jump right in! Watch the live recording of this episode on YouTube here: https://youtube.com...

Spencer is freshly back from Tokyo and the jet lag is strong, but they're pushing through it for this month's double hitter of an episode that has the Pixel Therapy pals discussing a pair of recently released games about mysterious, abandoned houses: the visual novel/point-and-click puzzle adventure Your House, from quirky Spanish studio PATRONES & ESCONDITES, and the smash hit, first-person,...

Join us as we chat about Wanderstop, a "cozy" tea shop management game about "change and tea" from the new indie developer Ivy Road, co-founded by the creator of The Stanley Parable and folks who've worked on games like Gone Home and Minecraft. In Wanderstop we play as the young fighter, Alta, once the greatest in the world, who suddenly can't pick up her sword. And she's tired. Super tired. But i...

Jump Over the Age and Fellow Traveller's Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is a dice-driven RPG focused on choice, risk, and survival in a hostile interstellar world. A game that is inherently queer and earnestly hopeful, it explores themes of collective care, bodily autonomy, and capitalistic greed within a compelling tabletop-inspired framework. In this episode we explore its many layers, and w...

In light of a slew of layoffs at BioWare, the future of the Dragon Age series is unclear. But at a time when storytelling like this -- of building community across differences to fight back against impossible odds, and of finding spots of joy along the way -- feels more important than ever, we kind of surprised ourselves with how much we had to talk about. It's Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the fourt...

It's time for our fourth annual totally unserious end of year roundup! Let's revisit the games that got us through the trash fire that was 2024, and get excited for a new year of gaming ahead of us. 1:24 - Patreon shoutouts 3:56 - Holiday catch-up 9:17 - 2024 year of gaming overviews 20:22 - Spencer and Jamie's Top 5 Games of 2024 1:26:05 - Favorite characters of the year **SPOILERS** 1:30:20 - 1:...

From developer Studio Zero and publisher Atlus (creators of the beloved Persona series) comes Metaphor: ReFantazio, the developer's first foray into the fantasy genre -- with a sprawling epic RPG that imagines a utopic new world and fights to make it real. Built upon radical ideas from as far back as 1516, Metaphor brings them to life for a new generation to draw strength from as the fight fo...

From Nomada Studio, the creators of Gris, comes new puzzle-platformer Neva: the moving tale of a young swordswoman named Alba and her lifelong bond with a magnificent wolf as they embark on a thrilling adventure through a rapidly dying world. And all we have to say is...HOW DARE YOU?! But forreal though, this game packs a ton of emotional weight in a short, beautifully wrapped package, with lesson...

Welcome to Part 2 of our PAX West 2024 coverage! PAX West is one of the biggest gaming conventions in the world, existing as a celebration of gaming and gaming culture and featuring panels, a massive expo-hall, and more. While there, Spencer and Jamie got hands-on demos with more than 40 games (!!!) and recorded interviews with over a dozen game-makers. We've boiled down our experience into the be...

At the beginning of September, we spent a jam-packed whirlwind of a weekend at this year's PAX West Convention in Seattle, WA. A celebration of gaming and gaming culture featuring panels, a massive expo-hall, and more, PAX West is one of the biggest gaming conventions in the world with over 100,000 attendees present this year alone. We put our time there to good use, getting hands-on demos with mo...

You give me a genderless, silent protagonist, and you bet I will project ALL OF THE FEELINGS onto your tower defense game. A unique blend of action and strategy, Capcom's Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess puts players in the role of Soh, protector of the maiden Yoshiro, as they slice with elegant, dance-like sword moves and strategically command villagers against ominous foes in their journey to c...

We do not choose what we inherit, but we can choose what we carry. This week we're joined by sunset visitor 斜陽過客 Creative Director Remy Siu and Narrative Designer Pinki Li to chat about their journey as indie devs bringing 1000xRESIST to life -- and the resonance that has been deeply felt by players within and outside of the Asian diaspora. Hailed by PASTE Magazine as one of the best games in...

This week on the podcast we're chatting about Akupara Games' CRYPTMASTER -- a bizarre dungeon-crawling adventure where words control everything. It's like Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, but with more necromancy. And we mean that in the best way possible. 0:55 - Patreon shoutouts 3:22 - We're going to PAX West! 6:28 - Cryptmaster conversation begins Watch the live recording of this episode on YouTube...

This week we're joined by AstralShift's Kira (António Lopes / @kirariinn ) to talk everything Little Goody Two Shoes -- a lush, gorgeously detailed horror-adventure-visual novel following Elise, a rebellious young woman daring to build a better life for herself in a deceptively peaceful small town. The game expertly explores the queer subtext beneath the horrors of witch hunts and religious ostrac...

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, originally released in 2013 to critical and fan acclaim, transformed the way many people thought about what games could be and laid the groundwork for director Josef Fares' later explorations in cooperative mechanics (y'all may remember his title It Takes Two won Game of the Year in 2021!). Lovingly remade by Italian developer Avantgarden, critics have been torn on Br...

Join us as we break down DON'T NOD's spiritual Vampyr successor, the doomed love story of ghost hunters Red and Antea in Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. 0:45 - Patreon shoutouts 3:05 - Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin 9:10 - Showtime's The Curse 16:51 - discussion of Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden begins Side Quest tinyurl.com/opolivebranch Operation Olive Branch is a grassroo...