This is the 25th year of the competition (!!!) and there are a record breaking 82 entries! We’re kicking off our coverage of IFComp 2019 with discussion of the first 8 games we’ve played.

Due to travel and other conflicts it’s just Raygan and Laura for this episode, but Shane and Nate will be back next week for our special 200th episode. After that we’ll be continuing our IFComp coverage with two more episodes. Be sure to let us know what games you’ve enjoyed in the comp so far!

00:01:10: What Is IFComp?
00:07:03: About Our IFComp Coverage
00:10:20: Zozzled by Steph Cherrywell
00:25:47: Turandot by Victor Gijsbers
00:34:54: Eye Contact by Thomas McMullan
00:38:12: Flight of the CodeMonkeys by Mark C Marino
00:44:33: Sugarlawn by Mike Spivey
00:52:37: Pas De Deux by Linus Åkesson
01:01:08: Let’s Play: Ancient Greek Punishment: The Text Adventure by Pippin Barr
01:06:09: Out by Viktor Sobol
01:09:23: What’s Making Us Happy This Week?
01:15:34: Outro

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
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

Suddenly this horrible goose is all anyone is talking about.

Untitled Goose Game, developed by House House and published by Panic, is a game about being a horrible goose and causing trouble for everyone you meet for no reason other than f**k you I’m a goose. We have brought friend of the show and bird correspondent Mark Bramhill back on the show to discuss this great game and terrible, terrible bird.

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
• Mark Bramhill – @mcbramhill

Simogo is a legendary developer on iOS. We’ve covered their work in the past, especially the stunning Year Walk. Sayonara Wild Hearts is a big departure from their previous games. Get a load of this marketing copy:

Sayonara Wild Hearts is a dreamy arcade game about riding motorcycles, skateboarding, dance battling, shooting lasers, wielding swords, and breaking hearts at 200 mph.

As the heart of a young woman breaks, the balance of the universe is disturbed. A diamond butterfly appears in her dreams and leads her through a highway in the sky, where she finds her other self: the masked biker called The Fool.

Journey through a custom-written pop soundtrack, chase scores, and set out to find the harmony of the universe, hidden away in the hearts of Little Death and her star-crossed allies: Dancing Devils, Howling Moons, Stereo Lovers and Hermit 64.

Let’s Pop!

We try to sound competent as music critics on this episode, and it kinda works out!

Sayonara Wild Hearts is available on PS4 and Nintendo Switch for $12.99, and as a part of an Apple Arcade subscription. Expect it to take around 2 hours to complete.

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:

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

Marketed as a “pinbrawler” or top-down, pinball-inspired, hack-and-slash dungeon crawler, Creature in the Well seems designed to appeal to Raygan’s specific tastes. It’s tough as nails, and occasionally frustrating, but this is a truly unique game that manages to follow through on its strange promise of injecting pinball (or break-out) mechanics into the tried and true action RPG formula.

Creature in the Well is available for Nintendo Switch as well as Xbox One and Windows for $14.99. It’s also available as part of a Game Pass subscription on Xbox and PC. Expect it to take around 5 hours to complete.

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

Hot on the heels of last week’s episode on Telling Lies, we’re covering another FMV game. This week it’s Erica, a surprise release from British developer Flavourworks and published as a PS4 exclusive by Sony Entertainment. It was both announced and released in a surprise presentation at Gamescom this year. Erica uses beautifully shot full motion video and Telltale-style interactions to tell a story of a young woman haunted (and hunted) by her father’s murderer. It’s not as successful or innovative as Telling Lies but it makes for an interesting contrast, and a good discussion of what makes an FMV game work.

Erica is available only on PSN for PS4. It costs $10, and you can expect it to take about 2-3 hours for a play through. Multiple play throughs are encouraged to see the complete story.

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

Telling Lies is Sam Barlow’s long awaited follow up to Her Story. Similarly to that game you’re acting as an investigator, searching through a database of video evidence, experiencing a story through out of sequence full motion video, but Telling Lies takes the format to a new level of polish, with high production values and a large cast of talented actors. Rater than focusing on a single character, Telling Lies focuses on conversations, with most videos being intercepted recordings of video calls, with each side of the call being represented as a separate clip. It’s an approach that makes piecing together the thread of the conversation

In this episode we start with a spoiler free discussion of the game in comparison to Her Story, then have an early spoiler break around 32:00, after which we discuss specifics of the story and characters.

For our interview with Sam Barlow about Her Story, see Episode 51 of The Short Game.

Telling Lies is available on iOS, macOS, and Windows. The mobile version (which we recommend, especially on iPad) is $6.99, while the Steam version is $19.99 with a discount for owners of Her Story. Expect it to take about 5 hours to complete.

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

A few months ago we finally covered Anodyne, an indie developers Sean Han Tani and Marina Kittaka. Now it’s sequel is here, and it’s a massive step forward. Anodyne 2: Return to Dust is a sequel in the Final Fantasy tradition, where no characters, story, or world is shared between the games, and they can be played in any order. This new game pushes the themes and gameplay of the first game forward in a major way. Now the game combines cinematic 3D exploration in the PS1 or Saturn mold with easy to enjoy 2D dungeons that build on the gameplay of Anodyne 1.

Anodyne 2 is available on Mac, PC and Linux on both Steam and itch.io, and costs $19.99 with a discount for Anodyne 1 owners. Expect it to take about 10 hours to complete.

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

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 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

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 simple mechanic that opens up seemingly endless possibilities.

Emily Short not only fully explores this mechanic through her game design, but also fully explores the world that such a possibility implies. Counterfeit Monkey is absolutely crammed with great writing, with better character and plot than you’ll find in most interactive fiction.

Counterfeit Monkey is free to download and play in your favorite interactive fiction interpreter. (We suggest Lectrote and Frotz.) Expect it to take around six hours to complete.

Links for this episode:

• Participate in the 2019 Interactive Fiction Top 50!
• Results of the 2019 Interactive Fiction Top 50
• Lectrote (Interpreter for Mac/Windows/Linux)
• Frotz (Interpreter for iOS)
• Counterfeit Monkey on the IFDB
• Counterfeit Monkey announcement at Emily Short’s blog
• Making of Counterfeit Monkey: Puzzles and Toys
• Making of Counterfeit Monkey: Story

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
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

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(!) radio show/podcast about birds.

Discussed on this episode are:

• Feather
• Eagle Flight
• BirdGut
• Falcon Age
• Eagle Island
• A Short Hike

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
• Mark Bramhill – @mcbramhill