A world in which dodgeball is the solution (and cause) of every problem! Dodgeball Academia is a somewhat overlooked sports RPG released in 2021 for PC and consoles (and included in Game Pass), and we had a lot of fun with it! We all stan Baloony.

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 Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Nate Heininger – @natestl
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

Webbed from Sbug Games is a puzzle platformer starring a charming little spider on a quest to save her boyfriend. It has incredible movement and webbing mechanics, and fantastic animation (all those legs!) but suffers from some early game pacing issues. We discuss why we loved the game, and how to get past some of the early game hurdles and into the fun stuff quickly.

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 Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

The biggest surprise of Wonder Labyrinth is that it was made at all. Team Ladybug‘s 5-10 hour Symphony of the Night clone inspired game is based on a nearly forgotten early anime property, yet released in the year 2021. If you ignore the minimal but mostly unintelligible story content, this is a really good metroidvania in the direct lineage of the Koji Igarashi Castlevanias. It’s available on Windows, Switch, PS4/5, and Xbox One/Series, and is included in Game Pass.

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 Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane
• Nate Heininger – @natestl
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

Tux & Fanny began as a 2019 film by Albert Birney, released in parts on Instagram and as a feature-length film on Vimeo. Barney has since developed the idea into a video game that mixes the quirky oddness of the film with an almost bottomless well of lavish but incongruous inclusions. Full of delightful one-time throwaway mechanics and unnecessarily fleshed out mini-games, Tux and Fanny begins as a parody (?) of traditional point and click adventure games, but ends up something completely different and unique. Tux & Fanny is available on Nintendo Switch and for Mac/PC on itch.io, for $10. Expect it to take around 6-8 hours to complete, but if you decide to read the unabridged copy of Moby Dick included in the game it could be a bit longer.

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 Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Nate Heininger – @natestl
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

This week we’re talking about Sable, a long-in-development open world coming-of-age story set on a beautiful but desolate alien planet. Afterward, in the What’s Making Us Happy segment, Shane has very bad opinions about the execrable M. Night Shyamalan movie Old.

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 Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane

Word games are ubiquitous, and almost universally short, but most are too slight to make for a full Short Game episode. This week we’re starting by discussing the virally popular Wordle, then moving on to talk about our favorite word games over the years.

For Patrons, check the Patreon exclusive feed for a separate recording of Nate and Laura playing Shane’s “Guessing Game!”

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 Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane
• Nate Heininger – @natestl
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

We are pondering our orb this week, with Shane and Raygan talking about Exo One, a game that is hard to describe as anything other than “Flappy Bird meets 2001: A Space Odyssey“ in 3D.

We also launched our new questions segment, so skip to the 39 minutes or use the chapter marker for that if you want! Let us know if you have a question for the show, or if you think we should put the Questions segment before the main discussion (Raygan hasn’t quite made up his mind.)

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 Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane