The Short Game

This week we’re re-releasing our episode on Katamari Damacy, which originally aired in May of 2015. Katamari still holds a very dear place in our hearts, and fortunately it’s now available on Nintendo Switch and Windows thanks to the new Katamari Damacy REROLL re-release. The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we d...

Counterfeit Monkey is a 2012 interactive fiction adventure puzzle game by Emily Short. What’s special about this game is its brilliant central puzzle mechanic, in which you’ll be removing letters from the names of objects in the world, and consequently changing what those things actually are. Have an apple , but prefer an alcoholic beverage? Remove the Ps and you’ve got a nice glass of ale. It’s a...

Long time listeners may remember that way back in 2016 we did a theme week where we discussed only games about or featuring birds (except one, because we’re bad at themes.) We’ve been threatening to do it again ever since, and this week it’s finally Bird Week 2! We’re joined by frequent guest and bird expert Mark Bramhill , who you may not be aware is the assistant producer of BirdNote, a daily(!)...

It’s been over seven years since Jenova Chen’s thatgamecompany released Journey , but game’s influence is still being felt today. This month, thatgamecompany is back with a new experience that builds on Journey’s core concept while doubling down on its compassionate social experience. Unexpectedly for what’s essentially an art game, it’s also free-to-play on iOS. Join us as we dig into this someti...

Eric Farraro , developer and designer of the mobile roguelike deck builder Meteorfall , joins us to offer some perspective on Slay the Spire , a deep roguelike deck builder that’s recently come to Nintendo Switch. We discuss some of the ideas and mechanics that make Slay the Spire unique, and talk about how it’s influencing Eric’s own work on his next game; Meteorfall: Krumit’s Tale . The Short Ga...

We are joined by Gary Butterfield of the Duckfeed.tv network of podcasts to discuss the new collaboration between Brace Yourself Games and Nintendo, Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the NecroDancer featuring The Legend of Zelda . Yes, that’s the full title. This unlikely combination draws on the rhythm-action gameplay of Necrodancer and the art, characters, and overworld structure of the Zelda series (...

We covered Crypt of the Necrodancer in 2014, before the game left early access. Since we will be covering it’s Zelda-infused sequel Cadence of Hyrule next week, and the original episode has dropped off of the feed, we’ve refreshed and re-released this classic episode. This episode begins with an early version of what is now our “what’s making us Happy this week” segment that is now a bit out of da...

In this episode of a podcast that is  definitely  about video games, we’re talking about our favorite board games we’ve played this year. Laura is mid-way through a cross country move and her regular microphone is packed away, so apologies for the muffled audio. You can find links to the games we discussed in this episode in the chapter markers. Did you know pretty much every podcast player now su...

Eli Hodapp , formerly of TouchArcade , joins us this week to talk about his new venture GameClub. We’ve long bemoaned the state of premium games on the iOS App Store, and the team at GameClub are trying to address that by bringing classic premium games that have left the store back to our iPhones as part of a subscription service. We had a great conversation with Eli about his history with iOS gam...

Mark Bramhill  of the excellent  Welcome to Macintosh podcast  joins us again to talk about this year’s crop of Apple Design Award winning games. This feels like a strange transition year for Apple in gaming, and we have a number of things to discuss, from the games Apple chose to award to the upcoming Apple Arcade and support for game controllers in iOS 13. Thanks as always to Mark for joining us...

Gato Roboto is a retro-styled Metroid-like starring Kiki, a cute kitty in a powerful mech suit. Freshman developer Doinksoft and veteran indie publisher Devolver Digital bring us this 1-bit black and white adventure that might be the most complete Metroid experience you can have in five hours. Find the game on Steam (Windows) or the Switch eShop for just $8. You can follow our show on Twitter at @...

A Plague Tale: Innocence  is a beautiful if gruesome stealth action game from Asobo Interactive. Set in 12th century France, you’ll play as Amicia De Rune, a girl from a noble family in the French countryside, as she tries to protect her young brother Hugo from plague, unnaturally organized swarms of man eating rats, and an almost comically villainous English inquisition. This is an uncommonly bea...

Micro Mages is a NES homebrew with remarkably modern game design. Morphcat Games managed to fit an entire 4-player Towerfall-inspired co-op platfomer into just 40kb. It’s an incredible feat of 6502 assembly programming, and an incredibly fun game to boot! You can download Micro Mages on  itch.io  or  Steam  for $10.99. Either option includes the PC version of the game as well as an NES rom that ca...

Raygan is traveling this week, so in lieu of a full episode we are re-releasing a classic travel-themed Short Game that has just dropped off of the RSS feed. 80 Days was a break out hit for Heaven’s Vault developer Inkle, and it cemented their place at the forefront of narrative game design. In 80 days, Inkle brought interactive fiction and management sim elements together into a totally novel gam...

After last week’s big episode, Laura and Raygan are taking a moment to relax into a charming little game about a frog. Developer Grace Bruxnor’s The Haunted Island, A Frog Detective Game is a lovely hour long mystery adventure full of charm and humor-that-is-actually-funny. We have a short chat about the good frog boy, and in the What’s Making Us Happy This Week segment we discuss the classic boar...

The developer of Short Game favorite 80 Days returns with an ambitious new game, and we are joined by a new guest! Laura Garofalo is a Roman cultural historian and Latinist with experience on archeological digs, who joined us to discuss Heaven’s Vault , an archaeological science fiction adventure game. At around 15 hours, this is a longer game than we typically cover, and it lead to a longer and e...

Do you know what they call a Rolando in Paris? That’s right, they call it a Rolando: Royal Edition. One of the earliest smash hit iOS games has just received a beautiful remaster and re-release, years after being pulled from the store. We discuss our early iOS gaming memories, talk about this beautiful new version of a classic, and discuss the problems with iOS game preservation, as well as some p...

A Dark Room is one of the most celebrated mobile games of all time, and one of the most memorable games we’ve covered on The Short Game. It’s just been ported to Nintendo Switch in a new and enhanced version. We’re re-releasing our 2014 episode on A Dark Room, also enhanced with an all new intro! A Dark Room is a game with many surprising twists and turns, so we have a fairly early spoiler break a...

This week on The Short Game we discuss Photographs, the latest game by Luca Redwood, developer of show favorite You Must Build A Boat. Photographs is a narrative puzzle game for PC, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android, and it’s a big departure from Luca’s previous games. In Photographs you’ll explore a series of tragic tales, interspersed with puzzles that cast light on the themes of each story. We discus...

Anodyne by developers Sean Han Tani and Marina Kittaka is something we’ve been meaning to cover for a very long time. Originally released in February 2013 (early days of the indie game boom), it’s taken this surreal Zelda-like over six years to get a console release. Now that it’s available on PS4 and Nintendo Switch, and on the eve of the release of its sequel, Laura and Raygan visit Anodyne to s...

Game Is Good! This week we’re discussing the award winning puzzle game Baba Is You, from Finnish developer Hempuli Oy. In this mind- (and rule-bending) puzzle game, each Sokoban-style level is governed by a unique set of simply stated rules (Baba Is You, Block Is Push, Flag Is Win etc) each of which is represented by a set of physical rule-objects that can be pushed around and manipulated within t...

A violent instrument plays jazz of rage and sorrow on this week’s Short Game. Ape Out is an intense top-down musical beat-em-up from developer Gabe Cuzzillo. We discuss the game’s "virtual drummer" reactive music and Saul Bass inspired art style, and we hear a LOT from Nate about Star Trek: Deep Space 9’s Vic Fontaine . Ape Out is available for Windows (Steam, GOG, The Humble Store, and Itch.io) a...

Arcade games are the ultimate short games, and the Nintendo Switch is home to what might be the largest library of arcade game ports of any current generation console. In this special episode we discuss the state of retro arcade game ports on the Switch while sharing our arcade memories, and a few game suggestions. Raygan has compiled a complete list of every arcade game currently available on the...

It’s good to have Frendts. This time the Short Game is playing The Gardens Between , a time-reversing adventure puzzle game from developer The Voxel Agents. Expect The Gardens Between to take 2 – 4 hours to complete, depending on "puzzle solving confidence". It’s available on Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC/Mac/Linux, for $19.99. What’s making us happy this week? Laura: @DancerOnFilm on Twitter Nate...

In this special Valentines episode of The Short Game we’re discussing Monster Prom , the monster dating party game from Beautiful Glitch. It’s a mad dash to date the hottest monsters and get a date to prom while screwing over your friends. Monster Prom can be played solo but works best as a multiplayer party game for two to four players. Each game takes from 45 to 90 minutes depending on number of...