Pixelated Playgrounds

In this episode Josh and Bryan have a relatively timely (for them) discussion of 2025’s surprise indie hit Blue Prince ! Blue Prince puts you in the shoes of Simon P. Jones, a boy who recently willed the Mt. Holly Estate, a mansion owned by his deceased great uncle Herbert S. Sinclair. There’s one catch: Simon must locate a hidden 46th room within the mansion in order to secure his inheritance. In...

In this podcast Josh and Bryan hit the road! … And the road hits back! While crisscrossing the fictional countryside in YCJY Games’ Keep Driving both of our hosts recorded their fair share of stories and this podcast was the perfect opportunity to share them with each other, and with all of you! Borrowing inspiration from Oregon Trail and injecting a healthy dose of 2000’s era coming-of-age nostal...

Bryan and Josh recently took off the gloves and picked up a katana to play Shogun Showdown , a kinetic turn-based tactics game that has you dispatching waves of enemy warriors through careful positioning and timely deployment of combat skills. Sporting roguelike and deckbuilding elements along with a strong Japanese-inspired pixel art aesthetic, Shogun Showdown is surprisingly deep for operating o...

You're on a path in the woods, and at the end of that path is a cabin. And in the basement of that cabin is a Podcast… I mean Princess. In this episode Bryan, Josh, and Clint steel their nerves and descend the staircase to discuss Slay the Princess . Developed by Black Tabby Games and released for PC in 2024, Slay the Princess was developed as a side project to support the ongoing development of t...

Have you ever wanted to play a turn-based city builder that’s inspired by Luck be a Landlord and Islanders ? That’s drenched in a stylish cyberpunk aesthetic and boasts intricate tactical depth? One with a dark sense of humor and killer hip-hop inspired soundtrack? Well you’re in luck! Josh’s latest game, Neongarten , is releasing on April 22nd, 2025 on Steam! As is tradition, Bryan and Josh sat d...

In this episode Bryan and Josh welcome host of Tales from the Backlog , Dave Jackson, to discuss Persona 4 Golden! Bryan’s played Persona 5, Josh has played Persona 3, so now they’re meeting in the middle and asked Dave to join for a wide ranging discussion that starts with an analysis of the studio’s evolving approach to game design then pivots to a deep dive of Persona 4 Golden’s characters, com...

In this atypical episode of Pixelated Playgrounds Josh and Bryan talk through a couple of “Game Poems”. A “Game Poem” (as defined by Josh) is “An experimental/artsy/short game or some combination therein. A game that the player can play once, for five or thirty minutes, and experience a distinct sort of message." Two such games are Every Day the Same Dream , released in 2009 by Molleindustria and...

Horizon Zero Dawn and its sequel Horizon Forbidden West have had an uphill battle to become some of the most successful AAA open world games. The first entry released alongside The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild , and the follow-up came out just ahead of Elden Ring , two games that are not just direct competitors for the Horizon series, but also genre re-defining titles. Yet, much like the se...

The indie game space is full of creative and inspiring projects. Projects that spark joy. Projects that make you feel a sense of awe, or joy, or wonder…. and then there are some that are just plain unhinged. In this episode Bryan and Josh discuss two games that are very different, but equally unhinged: Arctic Eggs and CLICKOLDING. Arctic Eggs by the Water Museum puts you in the shoes of a nameless...

There was probably no greater end of the year gaming surprise in 2024 than the release of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Clint’s skepticism about swapping out Harrison Ford for Troy Baker was only matched by Bryan’s confusion about what this game was supposed to be drawing comparisons to Dishonored and Hitman, while being developed by the studio behind Wolfenstein, Machine Games, and the prod...

Happy New Year! This year Bryan, Josh, and Clint tried something a bit different… which every other video game podcast on earth is already doing: We recorded our Games of the Year for 2024! So listen in as the guys discuss the top 5 games they enjoyed in 2024 among others and take a look forward to 2025 and just generally chill out and reminisce on a year of gaming! Here’s what we talked about: Lo...

Black Myth Wukong is perhaps the least ‘under the radar’ game to have ever caught Clint and Bryan by surprise. As the breakout single player offering from GameScience, a team of former Tencent employees hailing from China, Wukong is certainly a game that is entering the 3rd person action genre during a moment of particularly stringent demands for both novelty and quality. Luckily for us, Black Myt...

In this episode, Josh and Bryan don their pixelated sombreros and head into the Mesoamerican wilderness to check out the latest in indie tactical greatness with Arco! Boasting some snappy writing, inventive tactical gameplay, and truly gorgeous pixel artistry, Arco has a lot on offer. Arco is the product of Polish pixel artist Franek Nowotniak (one of Josh’s pixel artist idols), Australian game de...

This episode Clint, Josh, and Bryan pledged their eternal service to the Emperor and suited up in some fancy new blue power armor to defend humanity in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2! While only one of us has played the series’ first entry, the Warhammer atmosphere and Saber Interactive’s tight and polished co-op gameplay pulled all three of the guys through to victory. Its rare in today’s video...

Have you ever asked yourself what quirky humor forward take on a breach and clear tactics game featuring wizards might look like? Well about 8 years ago Tom Francis of Suspicious Developments did just that, and what started as a throw away in-joke amongst colleagues is now one of the most impressive and enjoyable indie games of 2024. Bringing his signature wit in the writing and character developm...

Join Josh and Bryan as they flex their design skills, mostly unsuccessfully, and still manage to create incredibly charming scenes with Townscaper and Tiny Glade. Both of these games offer a different take on the ‘city painting’ or ‘diorama design’ genre of creative game. With little to no direction, and a not insignificant helping hand extended to the player, both of these games interpret the pla...

Its been a while since Bryan and Josh sat down and recorded a podcast about a good old fashioned Narrative Game… enter 1000xResist, the narrative game that Bryan brought to Josh after being completely blown away by the game’s incredible economy of storytelling and deep, varied themes. Needless to say, both were enthralled with Sunset Visitor’s foray into game development and the lengthy conversati...

In this podcast Bryan and Josh dive into two minimalistic, manic roguelikes: Tiny Rogues and SNKRX! Tiny Rogues by RubyDev a fantasy rogue-lite dungeon crawler that plays in the bullet hell genre, complete with twin-stick controls. It also boasts some lite RPG elements and a cornucopia of classes to choose from. The ability to end up with a completely wild and enjoyably broken build in Tiny Rogues...

Things are heating up over at Pixelated Playgrounds HQ, but that just because Bryan and Josh have been playing firefighting / cat saving platformer, Nuclear Blaze! Created by Sébastien Bénard, one of the developers behind the excellent Dead Cells, Nuclear Blaze was originally designed for Bénard’s child as he noticed a striking lack of firefighter focused video games. Bénard and his studio Deepnig...

After a development cycle spanning almost a decade, Unicorn Overlord released in March of 2024 to the joy of Ogre Battle fans everywhere! Two of those fans, namely Bryan and Josh, picked up the game and dug right in. With Vanillaware’s signature art and polish on full display Unicorn Overlord makes a stunning first impression and backs it up with an incredibly deep and complex battle system which...

In this episode Josh and Bryan go down a rabbit hole with 2024 indie hit, Animal Well. What starts off as a non-violent, platforming based metroidvania game, quickly gives way to a truly mysterious and intricately puzzle-driven experience. As the first solo endeavor from developer, Billy Basso, as well as the first title for game game’s publisher, Big Mode, Animal Well is a triumph critically, com...

Before 2020, Square Enix had been dancing around the question of how to do justice to a Final Fantasy 7 remaster for over a decade, and with the release of Final Fantasy Remake they finally answered that question. Using a state of the art combat system, a faithful re-interpretation of the source material (with some twists!), and a stunning meta-commentary on what it means to re-make a game, Final...

Bryan and Josh recently spent some time managing a series of settlements in rogue-like city builder and prophecy-defier, DotAGE. Long time project of solo game developer, Michele Pirovano, DotAGE is wonderful little management sim with bright cheerful pixel art, sharp entertaining writing, and a level of ease and polish that you do not often see in the worker placement genre of games. What really...

Bryan and Josh continue their race down memory lane for the Sonic series with a look at Sonic the Hedgehog 1 and 2! Both of the guys have a long history with these titles and were excited to take a look back at the character’s origins. While the original Sonic the Hedgehog was certainly an impressive debut for the Sega mascot, it did not have quite as much of the series’ signature speed as one mig...

Its time for another Casino Cast with Josh and Bryan! Last time we tackled dice ( Dicey Dungeons ) and slots ( Luck be a Landlord ), so this time around we are tackling cards with recent world-beating indie success, Balatro , and more dice with the extremely compelling roguelike, Slice & Dice. Balatro is a game that at this point needs no introduction: The run based score-beating roguelike usi...