The Short Game

Your ex-girlfriend, queen of the vampires, has holed up in an El Paso motel to perform a ritual that will bring about the end of the world. As John Savage, veteran monster hunter and bullet-time gun-diver, you’ll need to fight through all 50 floors of the surreal extrandimensional motel to stop her. Soon to be a major motion picture! (00:00) - El Paso, Elsewhere (48:14) - What's Making Us Happy Th...

Slumps. Ruts. Dulldrums. Whatever you want to call them, most of us have likely experienced times when you couldn’t play or enjoy games in the way you might want for one reason or another. In this topic episode we talk about the various reasons we’ve ended up in gaming slumps, and what we did to get out of them. (00:00) - Topic Episode: Gaming Slumps (40:30) - What's Making Us Happy This Week? (40...

It’s the ultimate video game power fantasy: the power to clean up after ourselves. Terra Nil is a unique “city builder” in the lineage of Sim City, but with tasks you with revitalizing a wilderness on a ruined Earth, and ultimately with destroying what you’ve built, erasing all evidence of your presence and leaving the Earth to heal. It’s a strange union of theme and mechanics. It’s also the first...

After an incredibly troubled development, we finally have the latest game from the team that brought you Gone Home and Tacoma… Sort of. Open Roads, from publisher Annapurna and the developers known here as The Open Roads Team, is a narrative “walking simulator” with some unusual twists, like 2D animated dialogue in a 3D world, and a story that plays out across multiple locations and the car rides...

400 episodes . Nearly 10 years. I absolutely can not believe it. To celebrate, Laura put together an incredibly well produced trivia night game for us to play! Who knows the most about the last 10 years of The Short Game? (00:00) - Introduction (05:22) - Round One: Name That Game! (14:30) - Round Two: How Long To Beat? (27:24) - Round Three: The Short Snippet! (38:45) - Tiebreaker and Looking Back...

Slice & Dice is a game that just keeps giving, and we don’t just mean incredible dice-rolling gameplay. Since we last covered Slice & Dice, it has received two major updates. As we prepare for our 400th episode, Nate & Laura put together a quick episode about what makes this game so great and why you should absolutely play the new release, even if it means begininng a new (or returning...

As we close in on Episode 400 (where did the time go?) Shane and Raygan are talking about weird-horror phone bank simulator Home Safety Hotline. Is that caller suffering from bedbugs, or Bed Teeth? Tags podcast (00:00) - Introduction (28:50) - What's Making Us Happy This Week? (28:59) - Shane - Shogun (40:53) - Raygan - Delicious in Dungeon (52:56) - Outro

This week we go rogue and chat about a whole bunch of games — Super Mario Wonder (short to mid-length), Helldivers 2 (long!), and an assortment of “daily games” (seconds to minutes!).

A card based roguelike that is arguably related to Poker has been blowing up recently, so naturally we gave it a shot. Turns out, yeah, it’s good!

Debatably a short game, but indisputably a classic. Raygan has played SotN many times but the rest of the crew is experiencing it for the first time. What will they make of this revolutionary 1997 PlayStation game?

Golf + pool + the developer behind holedown? Be still our hearts. Subpar Pool brings polish and charm to the (pool) table, with tons of variations and challenges to keep it fresh — we highly recommend you pick it up on mobile, Switch, or Steam. Plus, a tour of your hosts’ various attempts to play games in bars. 

When inkle drops a surprise release, we dive in — and this time, we dove into a maze of art from museums around the world. The Forever Labyrinth is a totally free, browser-based “replayable narrative rogue-like adventure” made in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture. In addition to reviewing the game, we took this as an excuse to talk about our favorite museum-going experiences and our fee...

Turns out all of us skipped the tutorial and (whaddayaknow!?) had a really hard time with the early hours of this retro action platformer. Don’t be like us! In the end though we all had a blast with this indie spin on Mega Man. (00:00) - Gravity Circuit (47:02) - What's Making Us Happy This Week? (47:11) - Nate - Español! (52:09) - Raygan - Void Stranger (57:47) - Shane - Mudkip and the Uniball On...

I can’t believe it’s been almost two years since we last talked about the Playdate, the cute little console with a crank. We start with an update on if/how we’re still playing out Playdates, and then talk about some of the games that have been turning our cranks lately. (00:00) - Intro (01:48) - Panic & Teenage Engineering (06:23) - How's it holding up? (14:34) - Root Bear (17:16) - ✨ Catalog...

The famous Roottree sisters and their parents, heirs to a billion dollar candy empire, have suddenly died in a plane crash. The inheritance is in question, with a massive family tree full of potential beneficiaries.  Fortunately, it’s 1998 and you know how to use the internet. We discuss this exciting free entry into the Obra-Dinn-like mystery game sub-genre.   You can play the game for free on th...

This week Nate and Laura cover Jusant, somehow our second 2023 tower game and our second 2023 climbing game — but micro-genres aside, Jusant’s got plenty of charms of its own. Don’t Nod, the creators of Life is Strange, blend a rock-solid control scheme with scenic vistas and meditative vibes. Expect it to take about 4-8 hours, depending on your route planning and completionism.

We’re a little late, but it’s time to talk about The Short Game’s Game of the Year ! As with previous years we’re also handing out many superlatives, including returning awards like Dirtbag of the Year . Patrons also get access to our unedited, recorded planning meeting where we hashed all of this out. Support us on Patreon if you want to hear that nonsense! (00:00) - Introduction (05:32) - Game o...

Laura and Raygan manage to shift one small shovel of their pile of shame before the holidays. We’re so glad to have made time for Chants of Sennaar, an incredible puzzle adventure game in which you climb a Tower of Babel, learning languages as you go. (00:00) - Chants of Sennaar (35:25) - What's Making Us Happy This Week (35:37) - Raygan - Doom Guy and a new Murderbot book (46:26) - Laura - Superh...

The latest game from Short Game favorite Inkle has proved to be a bit divisive. Laura enjoyed it, but Raygan hit some major issues that spoiled the experience. It made for an interesting conversation! (00:00) - A Highland Song (52:33) - What's Making Us Happy This Week? (52:36) - Laura - Milk Punch (55:56) - Raygan - A Bride's Story (01:01:09) - Shane - Super Mario Brothers Wonder (01:07:59) - War...

Oh dang it’s a holiday weekend and we don’t have time to prep for an episode… Let me see what everybody else on the internet is doing right now… … So here’s the Short Game Holiday Gift Guide! (01:52) - "Gamer Gifts" (08:11) - Game Plushies (12:39) - A Large Tray (14:36) - Controller Storage (17:10) - Boppy (19:23) - RGB shit? (21:42) - Setting up a retro handheld for a kid (26:52) - Goose Game Key...

You’re here to slay the princess. Don’t believe her lies. This horror adventure (visual novel?) sets you a simple if trope-reversing task right in the title, then blows the doors off with an extraordinarily wide branching structure. There’s a lot to talk about with this one! slaytheprincess.com The Magnus Archives Standard Patterns in Choice-Based Games by Sam Kabo Ashwell Chapters | Slay the Prin...

Orb! Orb orb orb orb orb. Orb Orb? Orb Orb Orb!… (00:00) - Cocoon (40:50) - What's Making Us Happy This Week? (40:59) - Shane - Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (44:34) - Raygan - Nintendo DSi (49:11) - Laura - MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios (55:48) - Outro

We continue our coverage of IFComp 2023 with a few more games AND THEN WE GET KICKED IN THE NUTS!!!! [00:02:39] LAKE Adventure Follow-up by B.J. Best [00:08:27] Assembly by Ben Kirwin [00:19:05] The Whisperers by Milo van Mesdag [00:26:38] Fix Your Mother’s Printer by Geoffrey Golden [00:35:32] CODENAME OBSCURA by Mika Kujala [00:43:01] Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head by The Hungry Reader [00...

Gordy and the Monster Moon is a bite-sized exploration-driven game about a pumpkin astronaut going on spooky adventures. It’s also a tiny part of the Frog Fractions extended universe, brought to us by Jim Stormdancer. It’s made entirely in Pico-8, and is available on Steam and itch.io for $4. It’s a great short game that made for a quick conversation, so Shane also brings us a seasonally appropria...

This week we’re talking about Gunbrella, a game that gets in its own way more than anything we’ve played in a while. (00:00) - Introduction (54:06) - What's Making Us Happy This Week? (54:32) - Laura - Material Girls Podcast (59:34) - Raygan - Powkiddy RGB30 (01:03:26) - Nate - Budapest, Running & The Fall of the House of Usher (01:09:32) - Outro