The Short Game

We love a game that respects our time. But what if you don’t have *any* time? Do two things at once, of course! To celebrate Raygan’s return amidst new baby mode, we praise games that let us multitask — whether we’re watching tv, listening to podcasts, or even completing a chore or two. When should you multitask? When shouldn’t you? What sorts of games are good fits? What games require every singl...

The leaves are turning, the air is brisk, and we are feeling our seasonal feelings by re-releasing our episode on Night in the Woods . This game’s not only giving us autumnal vibes, it also was one of our 2017 games of the year — we even created the inaugural “Dirtbag of the Year” award to capture our love for Mae Borowski. If you’re new to Night in the Woods, it’s a story-focused adventure game a...

Happy 28th birthday to IFComp! We’re thrilled to start our seventh year of competition coverage with discussions of seven brand-new interactive fiction games. Nate and Laura open with a brief overview of IFComp for the unfamiliar/forgetful, before diving into individual reviews. The Grown-Up Detective Agency by Brendan Patrick Hennessy Esther’s by Brad and Alleson Buchanan The Thirty Nine Steps by...

It’s all there in the title — there’s both slicing and dicing in this turn-based roguelite! Nate, Laura, and Shane take on liches, witches and other classic monsters across Slice & Dice’s 20 increasingly challenging levels. But it’s not all luck — despite a game full of literal dice rolls, there’s a lot of strategy involved too. Slice & Dice is available on itch.io for Windows, Mac, and An...

In Case Of Impending Baby, Break Glass and Discuss Kirby. Raygan is preparing for the birth of his third child this week so Shane and Raygan are discussing Nintendo’s best 2022 release (sorry Splatoon fans) Kirby and the Forgotten Land. It’s a game we mostly played with our kids, so expect lots of discussion of that side of the experience. We also talk about Shane’s newly arrived Steam Deck, and R...

Laura played Tunic when it launched earlier this year, and has been encouraging us to play it for the show ever since, but it’s a bit long (up to 20 hours for completionists) and the discourse around its launch was that it was perhaps too hard for for some folks, so we put it off. As in all things, we should have trusted Laura. It turned out that this long-in-development cross between Zelda and Da...

In this special double length episode, we’re revealing all the secrets of Marissa Marcel. (Ok, most of them? Some at least, certainly!) We talk about the meta-narrative of Immortality , break down the plots and production stories of each of the three movies, and debate the ending. If you have questions about Immortality, we have answers! And also more questions! The Short Game is supported directl...

“ Marissa Marcel was a film star. She made three movies. But none of the movies was ever released. And Marissa Marcel disappeared.” Short Game royalty Sam Barlow ( Her Story, Telling Lies ) is back with a third entry in his not-a-trilogy of FMV masterpieces. This game, Immortality, ups the ante from the previous two in every conceivable way.  Explore the unedited, unordered clips from this trio of...

What better pitch than “A short horror game where you pilot a tiny submarine through an ocean of blood on an alien moon?” Iron Lung is an exercise in feeling doomed . Lost in space with all habitable planets mysteriously vanished, you are a convict piloting a blind submarine on a suicide mission, using only a map and a low resolution still camera to navigate. It’s a lo-fi dread generator. It’s als...

Haiku the Robot is a fantastic “adventure-exploration” game (ok maybe that is better than “metroidvania”) that wears its Hollow Knight inspiration on its sleeve, but the quirky post-human robot world has a charm of its own. The focus is on exploration, but Haiku also has very good combat! Really a great game, and more manageable than a lot of other games in its genre at around 6-10 hours. Stick ar...

An Apple Arcade original that is finally making its way out into gen pop, South of the Circle is a film-like narrative game set in the Cold War 60s. It alternates between a climate scientist struggling to survive after an antarctic plane crash, and his memories of the people and events that lead him to this dangerous moment. We start the episode with a pretty lengthy discussion of the state of App...

It’s the cat game everyone is talking about, but it still managed to surprise us. While we had some nits to pick, the charming kitty protagonist and incredible lived-in spaces kept us tapping our toe-beans. The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in...

Prompted by the fact that all four of our hosts recently got the Miyoo Mini emulator handheld, the hosts chat about the device itself and what retro games we’ve been playing on it. The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also s...

Ludum Dare 50 winner Shotgun King is a wild twist on chess, with dashes of roguelike deckbuilding and a scattering of buckshot. As the Black King, all your subjects have abandoned you. Face off against the White King and all his pieces armed only with your royal shotgun.  The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we d...

Somehow the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles became one of the most persistent media properties of our lifetimes, yet it’s been years since a good Turtles game came along. Shredder’s Revenge is reverent of the old Konami turtles games almost to a fault, but it’s lots of fun and fueled a lot of nostalgia even for those of us who didn’t think we were big turtles fans. The Short Game is supported directl...

This week we played Citizen Sleeper , the second game from In Other Waters developer Jump Over The Age, solo developer Gareth Damian Martin. Citizen Sleeper is a narrative game with mechanics inspired by tabletop games and visual novels. It tells the story of a Sleeper, a human consciousness in a robot body, who has escaped their corporate masters and washed up on a lawless post-revolutionary spac...

Now’s your chance to be a big shot! We‘re all caught up on Deltarune, and now we have to wait forever for the next chapter just like everyone else. Torture! The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a r...

FRANKEN is a short, free RPG parody from solo indie developer splendidland, and at least to my taste it’s one of the funniest games I’ve ever played. You owe it to yourself to Jordan Starkweather from the excellent Pocketoid podcast joins us to talk about the game and how it lovingly comments on the RPG genre.  Laura is away this week due to an apartment move (congrats!) and Shane is out due to in...

Turnip Boy is an immediate contender for our dirtbag of the year award. This game packs a lot of jokes into its 2-ish hours, some of which are even funny! Check out the game on Nintendo Switch, Windows/Mac, iOS, Xbox One, and the Xbox Series S/X platforms, where it was recently added to Game Pass. The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access...

Since the 90s, Panic has been known as a creator of playful, functional software. Then, nearly two decades into their existence they took an unexpected swerve into video game publishing. During that time they also managed to somehow grow a weird idea for a corporate gift into a brand new handheld video game platform.  The Playdate! The Playdate is a tiny handheld video game console, kind of like a...

Thank you to the listeners and patrons who kindly kept asking us when we were covering Deltarune. The answer is NOW ! Thank you for your patience these last… checks watch… nearly four years! Deltarune is the sequel follow up (?) to Undertale, a game whose seismic impact is still being felt today. Developer Toby Fox took a different approach with Deltarune, breaking it up into chapters and releasin...

More than a re-release, The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is a massive expansion of the original game, with new endings, new jokes, and a bucket. This episode features light spoilers for the original Stanley Parable before the spoiler break, then new content and ending spoilers afterward. The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Di...

NORCO describes itself as a “Southern Gothic point & click narrative adventure that immerses the player in the sinking suburbs and verdant industrial swamps of a distorted South Louisiana.” It’s full of vivid characters, beautiful prose, and uncomfortable near-future sci-fi psychedelia.  The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our...

Raygan has had his hands on a Steam Deck for about a week, and so we decided to chat about the device and what it means for our corner of the gaming landscape. Turned out to be a longer and more interesting conversation than we expected! The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and ta...

This week we played several Game Boy homebrew games, all made using the free game making tool GB Studio . All these games can be played on the web, in a Game Boy emulator, or on actual Game Boy hardware, and all are short and interesting! We also had a lengthy and sometimes disturbing digression about opossums. 00:00:00: Intro to GB Studio 00:12:40: Opossum Country by BenJelter 00:19:28: Spoilers...