The Short Game

This week I was thinking about The Stanley Parable , which had a great recent episode on Watch Out For Fireballs and is also probably, finally getting its updated re-release this year, The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe . This was only the second episode of the podcast, originally released in April of 2014, and we were still figuring everything out. The format is weird, the takes are stale,  the au...

Our patrons voted for it , and we played it! It’s Metroid Fusion! A 5-7 hour Metroid game for the Game Boy Advance. This was Samus Aran’s first game in 8 years following Super Metroid, but it picks up seemingly right where the SNES game left off. We talk about the good, the bad, and the controversial in this soon-to-be-prequel to Metroid Dread. The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners...

Play as a tiny crow with a huge sword, tasked with reaping souls in a world in which no one has died for hundreds of years.  Death’s Door is a top-down exploration and combat focused action adventure game in the mold of the Legend of Zelda, from developers Acid Nerve (the developers of Titan Souls) and published by Devolver Digital. You can find Death’s Door on Steam for PC and Xbox platforms, whe...

This week we are talking about the long in Early Access roguelike deck-building RPG Griftlands , and if you just heard a sound it was Nate vibrating in his seat. This isn’t that short a game, with a completed run taking up to 8 hours (and completing all three characters will likely take over 20 hours) but it sneaks in with our increasingly unjustifiable exception for roguelikes!  Griftlands was in...

This week we played Boomerang X, a new first person shooter boomeranger from developer DANG! published by Devolver Digital. Fling your boomerang (and yourself) through the air in a series of increasingly insane combat arenas as you delve into a lost civilization and test your agility against the swarms of dark creatures within. Boomerang X is available today on Switch and Steam for Windows. Expect...

This week we are covering Ynglet , a weird little anti-platformer for PC/Mac. Enjoy us trying mightily to describe the abstract main character creature (betasseled space squid?), and stick around for Shane’s What’s Making Me Happy when he finds a way to troll me by just enjoying sparkling water. The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to...

Chicory is a game about a black and white world, and an unlikely artist-dog given a magic paintbrush and tasked with coloring it in. Like developer Greg Lobanov’s previous game Wandersong, it’s also a deceptively well written and emotional story with engaging characters facing real problems. Chicory deals intelligently with themes of depression, impostor syndrome, the nature of art, and what it do...

When one of the creators of Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture makes a Firewatch -inspired game about running a metal detector over the British countryside, we pay attention. Unfortunately, despite some very good ideas, this game’s writing was a bit of a misfire. It’s a very interesting failure, though! The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get acce...

Overboard! is the latest game from Inkle , creators of Short Game favorites 80 Days and Heaven’s Vault. Developed in just over three months during the Covid-19 pandemic, Overboard is a deeply repayable detective game where you’re the one whodunnit . Designed to be played in under an hour, but with numerous routes and endings and an advanced narrative design allowing for enormous amounts of player...

Mundaun is a pleasant mountain hike gone dreadfully, dreadfully wrong. First person protagonist Curdin returns to his grandfather’s home in Mundaun, a secluded village in the Swiss Alps, to find his grandfather dead in mysterious circumstances and the mountain haunted by a dark presence. This folk-horror-adventure game’s unique art style was achieved by hand-penciling all of the textures for a moo...

Who would have thought we could talk for nearly an hour about Peggle, a game that according to Nate doesn’t even exist in his home timeline. 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 review on Apple P...

This overlooked open-world kitchen sink game might be Apple Arcade’s best exclusive. Sneaky Sasquatch looks on its surface like a light stealth game aimed at children, but get past its first minutes and you’ll. discover a game that is eager at every moment to show you one more fun thing. The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Dis...

In IFComp 2017 , we were excited by the possibilities Filip Hráček showed in his comp game Insignificant Little Vermin , built with his bespoke choice-based system Egamebook. Now Hráček has released the first commercial Egamebook game for iOS and Android. Knights of San Francisco is a 90 minute mobile RPG with simulated combat and a text based presentation. It’s a story about a young necromancer c...

This week we are re-releasing our episode on Severed, a game from Guacamelee developer Drinkbox Studios that originally released on Vita and has since been ported to just about everything including iOS and Switch. It’s long been one of our favorite games, and Drinkbox has a new game coming out later this year so we thought it might be worth revisiting. If you haven’t ever played this fantastic tou...

This week we are renewing our Apple Arcade subscriptions and talking about some of the games we’ve checked out since the debut of the service. 00:01:57: Wonderbox 00:07:42: Hitchhiker 00:14:40: A Monster’s Expedition 00:21:40: Sneaky Sasquatch 00:31:11: Clap Hanz Golf 00:41:05: Assorted App Store Greats, Music Games, Etc. 00:51:59: Sp!ng & lumen. 00:55:52: Listener Recommendations and Other Ga...

Before Your Eyes is a short narrative game that uses your real life blinks (monitored via your PC’s webcam) as your primary interaction. It’s also an extremely moving story, well written and performed, about what makes a life valuable. You play as Benjamin Brynn, a deceased soul reviewing the moments of his life, but each time you blink, each moment is lost. Shane and Raygan both found this 1.5 ho...

Better late than never! This week we are looping back to our promised IFComp 2020 wrap-up, and discussing the four games in the top 10 that we didn’t cover during our colossal four-part coverage last fall. This was a truly colossal comp, and all of the top games are worth your time. This year’s top 10 included two mathematically unlikely ties (!) and included games in a variety of genres and style...

This week we’re reminiscing about the ultimate short game machine, the Game Boy, with special guest Jordan Starkweather . Jordan is a host of the Pocketoid podcast , the internet’s longest-running handheld gaming podcast, and also runs @CRTPixels , a popular Twitter account documenting retro games the way they were designed to look. We had a lot of fun reminiscing about the Game Boy with Jordan, a...

Laura and Raygan dive into this character focused kingdom management simulator about a royal family having a really, really bad year. Yes, Your Grace is available on PC/Xbox (and included in Game Pass for both platforms) as well as Nintendo Switch. Expect it to take about 6 hours to complete. (04:54) - Mechanics (18:47) - Story, Act 1 (44:17) - Outro (45:24) - Spoiler Break (Acts 2 and 3)

This week Raygan and Shane have been spending time with Hardspace: Shipbreaker, an early access spaceship salvage simulator that is just on the verge of releasing its first real story content. We’ve been following this game since its initial release into early access last year and it seemed like a good time to revisit it to see how it’s coming along. This episode’s “what’s making us happy this wee...

This week we are talking abut some of the long game experiences we’ve had going in between short games lately. Nate talks about deck-building RPG SteamWorld Quest, Raygan has been playing (ugh) Cyberpunk 2077 and Red Dead Redemption II, and Laura talks about playing the Mario 3D All Stars collection. The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get acce...

A nameless hero trudges endlessly through a world of darkness, walking an endless path and fighting the confused and desperate monsters of his forgotten homeland. Is the lost world even worth remembering, or worth saving? We’re going around and around with Loop Hero , a game from developer Four Quarters and published by Devolver Digital for PC/Mac. Loop Hero combines hands off auto-battle combat w...

This week we are talking about Ghostrunner, a first person platforming cyberpunk action slice-em-up tough-as-nails wallrunning robot ninja game from Polish developer One More Level. This game grabbed us and would not let us go. Ghostrunner is available and looks and plays great on practically every platform under the sun from high end gaming PCs to the humble Nintendo Switch. How long it takes you...

A Hand With Many Fingers by Colestia is a first person conspiracy research game. Using advanced tools such as a card catalog and a cork boar d , uncover the real life spy thriller mystery of Nugen Hand Bank, an Australian merchant bank with ties to drug smuggling, organized crime, and the CIA. A Hand With Many Fingers is available on Steam and itch.io , where it is Pay What You Can. A demo is also...

This week we were disrupted by the massive winter storms in Texas, so we are rereleasing this classic episode from 2015. Her Story is one of the best games we’ve covered on the show, and this episode, which includes an interview with developer Sam Barlow, still ranks as one of my favorites. I’ve updated it with chapters so you can skip straight to the interview or spoilers if you like! See you nex...