Consumerist Hand-Wringing – Everybody's Talking at Once

Lilith Walther aetherboosts her way on over to talk about Nightmare Kart, its previously life as Bloodborne KART, its demake predecessor Bloodborne PSX, and the relationship between retro aesthetics, open development practices, and a general attitude of… YOLO? Nightmare Kart will be out for free on May 31.You can see more of Lilith’s work, including […]

Dragon’s Dogma II is full of inventive, quirky flourishes, meaningful frictions, and… shameless micro-transactions that capitalize on those exact quirks and frictions. We can, of course, get meaning and joy out of art that comes to us compromised. Which is good news, since most art, if not all art, comes to us compromised. But the […]

Helldivers II is a wildly popular co-op shooter. It’s also extremely funny. It’s also very much about fascism, both in the sense that its satirical lens is aimed at fascist tendencies in moribund democracies, and in the sense that its core pleasures are… sort of fascist? The music makes you feel like a hero as […]

While the show was taking a break, Drew started putting together some essays on the growing list of recent recent surprise hits—games that, for whatever reason, have been doing vastly better than their developers or publishers had expected. 2024 does, so far, seem to have a sort of serial monogamy to it, with the Sauron’s […]

Lucio and Drew talk about some of the games they’ve enjoyed gaming at this year, from KarmaZoo, Pizza Tower, Wobbly Life, and The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, to Remnant II, Spider-Man 2, Street Fighter 6, Jedi: Survivor, Wo Long, and Tears of the Kingdom. Speaking of, spoilers for Remnant II from 40:53 to 44:21.——— […]

Glen Henry and Chase Bethea drop achor awhile and talk about Sunken Stones, why pirates mean freedom, and why the Golden Age of Piracy was a lot more Caribbean than Pirates of the Caribbean would have you believe. Also, inevitably, One Piece. You can play the Sunken Stones demo on Itch.io, and wishlist the full […]

Ezra Szanton painstakingly platforms his way over to talk about To The Flame, the first in his new studio’s forthcoming kinda-trilogy of horror games. He also talks about how to effective horror, what makes a game interesting to watch as well as play, and some of the potentially-actually-pretty-intereting applications for so-called AI. You can find […]

Eric Peterson hops on over to talk about the joys of hobbyist game development, the things that need to change in professional game development (even when compared to other parts of tech), and the cultural importance of drawing little guys. You can play JOUNCER PX (as it’s called now) on itch.io. You can find a bunch […]

Ryan Canuel of Petricore stops by for a mostly-not-especially-spooky conversation about augmented reality, what bootstrapping actually means, and?alright, some stuff about horror movies right at the end there. You can get the Mythic Realms demo in Quest App Lab. You can wishlist AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! Remastered and play its demo on Steam, where you can also play Operation […]

Jerry Belich talks about his wild work in the Alt.ctrl milieu, his boundary-redefining escape rooms (for lack of a better term), and his digital game work, from Recommendation Dog and Reel Steal on the Playdate, to High on Life and High on Knife. High on Knife is out now on Steam, Epic, Xbox, and Playstation. You […]

Des Gayle ascends to the sky island of podcastery to discuss his storied career as a producer, the difficulty of enjoying art when you know how it’s made?experiencing it with kids can help?and the joys of self-contained stories in the age of the mega-franchise. You can learn more about Altered Gene and Radical Forge on […]

Matt Brelsford opens his hundred eyes and talks about the “loose collective” that is Tiny Mass Games, the spiritual dimension of game development, and (of course) Ophanim. You can find Tiny Mass Games on itch.io. You can also find Betty & Earl and Retro Wing Prime on Steam.———• Here are our interviews with Tijmen Tio from Sokpop, […]

Drew and L talk about their time so far with Baldur’s Gate 3, which works beautifully as a sprawling computer RPG, and as a unique intersection of free play and complex game rules—but how does it work as an introduction to Larian’s RPGs? How about to Dungeons & Dragons? This ends up being a conversation […]

Bryant Cannon tunes into our frequency to talk a bit about OXENFREE II: Lost Signals (which it’s too early to spoil), and a whole lot about The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (which it’s high time to start spoiling). We do in fact start spoiling the latest Zelda at 00:36:13. OXENFREE II: Lost […]

Jaku is a security expert, a speedrunner, and a longtime builder of tools that expand how we interact with games online—from Crowd Control, which empowers streamers’ audiences to alter the state of the games being streamed, to Turnip Exchange, which vastly expanded the scope and functionality of the stalk market at the height of the […]

Jessica Antenorcruz has a unique, and also uniquely appropriate role on the upcoming drag queen fighting game Drag Her! She’s in charge of the game’s writing, from spoken lines to character concepts to plot?and she’s also in charge on posing and motion, using her own physical performances to drive the game’s hand-animated, rotoscoped realness. Here […]

Harris Foster is the former Community Manager at Finji and the current Director of Communications at Good Trouble. Here he talks about where those roles overlap, how they differ, and what a purpose-built, welcoming community looks like in practice, online and off. You can follow Good Trouble on Discord, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Bluesky. And you […]

Ichiro Lambe has been making games since the days of MUDs and Palm Pilots, and here he talks to Drew about what’s new—from the possibilities of so-called AI (as exciting as they are fraught) to his strategic deck-builder of ramshackle autobattles, Million Monster Militia. You can wishlist Million Monster Militia, along with Monster Loves You […]

Andrew anthologizes on by to talk about Indiepocalypse, as well as the alleged indiepocolypse. We talk about genre, curation, how to bring people together without Community-Building (capital C, capital B), and how to publish games without acting like a publisher. You can buy or subscribe to Indiepocalypse on Itch.io and Patreon. You can also follow Andrew […]

Sarah and Colin Northway land on our own little art-loving exoplanet to wax philosophical about The Museum of Other Realities, I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, and Fantastic Contraption (as well as the spiritual successor to the latter, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom). PRETTY BIG SPOILERS for I Was A Teenage Exocolonist from […]

Tanya X. Short descends to our dunj to talk about her ten years as the Captain of Kitfox Games. We talk about about long-term studio survival, what so-called AI really is, and making systems-driven games with heart—as well as the necessity of a tea-witch in all functional partnerships. You can find the whole Kitfox Games […]

Chris Hanney is probably best known for his work on Space Pirate Trainer—and particularly on its multiplayer modes, from the Tetris-Galaga–Max Payne melange of VERSUS to the ambitious, tennis-court-scale hide-and-seek-’em-up of ARENA. Here’s a project that walks right up to the edges of what has so far been possible in VR, and then finds ways […]

Paul Chamberlain originally wanted to be a hacker—which led him to work as a “technologist” (ooh) at the Signals Intelligence Agency and the Australian Federal Police, which led him to work in computer security and “information warfare” (ooh again) at Google, which led him to work on anti-cheat software for League of Legends and Valorant […]

Anya Combs joins our crowd (of guests) to talk about her work at Backerkit (and previously at Kickstarter and Nickelodeon), her saxophoning for the Funkrust Brass Band (among a fair many other bands), her love of tabletop, and her blood-feud with meeting culture. Backerkit’s new crowdfunding section is live, as so often is the music […]

Before we dive into this year’s interviews, we thought we’d take stock of last year’s, as has become tradition here on the ‘cast?connect a few dots, and provide a sort of a digest for anyone who’s missed some (or all!) of our 2022 episodes, and for first-time listeners. So join us once again as Drew […]