A Plague Tale: Innocence is a beautiful if gruesome stealth action game from Asobo Interactive. Set in 12th century France, you’ll play as Amicia De Rune, a girl from a noble family in the French countryside, as she tries to protect her young brother Hugo from plague, unnaturally organized swarms of man eating rats, and an almost comically villainous English inquisition.

This is an uncommonly beautiful game for its 10 hour length, with beautiful textures and incredibly well realized rat swarming physics. It’s available on PS4 and XBox One (where it really shines on the “pro” versions of those consoles) and on Windows. Expect it to take about 10 hours to complete.

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Like the show? Support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

Your hosts this week were:

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

Micro Mages is a NES homebrew with remarkably modern game design. Morphcat Games managed to fit an entire 4-player Towerfall-inspired co-op platfomer into just 40kb. It’s an incredible feat of 6502 assembly programming, and an incredibly fun game to boot!

You can download Micro Mages on itch.io or Steam for $10.99. Either option includes the PC version of the game as well as an NES rom that can play on nearly anything, including actual NES hardware via a flash cart like the EverDrive-N8. Expect it to take about 3-5 hours to complete depending on your NES jump-and-shoot chops.

Links for this episode:

• Micro Mages 
• OpenEmu – Multiple Video Game System 
• EverDrive-N8 – Stone Age Gamer 
• Analogue Nt mini – The Ultimate Nintendo FPGA console?:: RGB307 / MY LIFE IN GAMING – YouTube 
• I Am Error: The Nintendo Family Computer / Entertainment System Platform (Platform Studies) – Amazon:Books 
• How we fit an NES game into 40 Kilobytes – YouTube 
• Playdate. A New Handheld Gaming System 
• A Teen Dirtbag Beat-Em-Up With Phenomenal Writing – Kotaku

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Like the show? Support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Nate Heininger – @natestl

Raygan is traveling this week, so in lieu of a full episode we are re-releasing a classic travel-themed Short Game that has just dropped off of the RSS feed. 80 Days was a break out hit for Heaven’s Vault developer Inkle, and it cemented their place at the forefront of narrative game design. In 80 days, Inkle brought interactive fiction and management sim elements together into a totally novel game design. Writer Meg Jayanth’s charming dialogue and world building brought a new anti-colonialist perspective to the sometimes problematic steampunk genre. This is one of The Short Game’s all time favorites, and the game (and this episode) are worth revisiting.

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Like the show? Support us by writing a review on iTunes!

Your hosts this week were:

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

After last week’s big episode, Laura and Raygan are taking a moment to relax into a charming little game about a frog. Developer Grace Bruxnor’s The Haunted Island, A Frog Detective Game is a lovely hour long mystery adventure full of charm and humor-that-is-actually-funny. We have a short chat about the good frog boy, and in the What’s Making Us Happy This Week segment we discuss the classic board game Kill Doctor Lucky.

The Haunted Island: A Frog Detective Game is available on Steam and itch.io (Mac/PC) for $4.99. (As of this writing it is on sale on Steam for $3.99.) Expect it to take under an hour to complete.

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Like the show? Support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

The developer of Short Game favorite 80 Days returns with an ambitious new game, and we are joined by a new guest! Laura Garofalo is a Roman cultural historian and Latinist with experience on archeological digs, who joined us to discuss Heaven’s Vault, an archaeological science fiction adventure game.

At around 15 hours, this is a longer game than we typically cover, and it lead to a longer and extremely interesting discussion. The game is available on PS4 and Windows for $24.99. Stick around after the spoiler break at [1:26:30] for a discussion of some of the game’s secrets and branching paths.

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Like the show? Support us by writing a review on iTunes!

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane
• With special guest Laura Garofalo

Do you know what they call a Rolando in Paris? That’s right, they call it a Rolando: Royal Edition.

One of the earliest smash hit iOS games has just received a beautiful remaster and re-release, years after being pulled from the store. We discuss our early iOS gaming memories, talk about this beautiful new version of a classic, and discuss the problems with iOS game preservation, as well as some possible solutions!

Rolando: Royal Edition is available now on the iOS App Store for $2.99. Expect it to take about 3-5 hours to complete.

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Like the show? Support us by writing a review on iTunes!

Your hosts this week were:

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

This week on The Short Game we discuss Photographs, the latest game by Luca Redwood, developer of show favorite You Must Build A Boat. Photographs is a narrative puzzle game for PC, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android, and it’s a big departure from Luca’s previous games. In Photographs you’ll explore a series of tragic tales, interspersed with puzzles that cast light on the themes of each story. We discuss the game’s themes and mechanics in depth, with a spoiler break at 55 minutes.
Photographs is $3.99 on mobile or $11.99 on Steam. Expect it to take around 3-4 hours to complete.

Links for this episode:

• Photographs | EightyEightGames
• You Must Build A Boat on the App Store
• Crazy Ex-Girlfriend – Wikipedia
• Galavant – Wikipedia
• Darkstalkers – Wikipedia
  • Jiangshi (Chinese hopping vampires) – Wikipedia
• Lodge 49 – Wikipedia

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Like the show? Support us by writing a review on iTunes!

Your hosts this week were:

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