We covered Crypt of the Necrodancer in 2014, before the game left early access. Since we will be covering it’s Zelda-infused sequel Cadence of Hyrule next week, and the original episode has dropped off of the feed, we’ve refreshed and re-released this classic episode.

This episode begins with an early version of what is now our “what’s making us Happy this week” segment that is now a bit out of date, since we were discussing the upcoming release of D&D 5th edition among other things. We think it’s still fun, but if you want to skip straight to the game discussion you can use the (new!) chapter markers, or jump to 20 minutes in.

Friend of the show Justin put together a playlist of the best music from the Crypt of the Necrodancer soundtrack. You can find it here.

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:

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

In this episode of a podcast that is definitely about video games, we’re talking about our favorite board games we’ve played this year.

Laura is mid-way through a cross country move and her regular microphone is packed away, so apologies for the muffled audio.

You can find links to the games we discussed in this episode in the chapter markers. Did you know pretty much every podcast player now supports chapters, and we use them on nearly every episode? Now you do!

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:

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

Eli Hodapp, formerly of TouchArcade, joins us this week to talk about his new venture GameClub. We’ve long bemoaned the state of premium games on the iOS App Store, and the team at GameClub are trying to address that by bringing classic premium games that have left the store back to our iPhones as part of a subscription service. We had a great conversation with Eli about his history with iOS games and the future of premium games on the platform.

GameClub is currently in early access, and they’re looking for beta testers to try several of the games they’re bringing back to the store. You can join their early access program and download those games for free at their website, gameclub.io.

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
• Shane Kelly – @8bitshane
• Nate Heininger – @natestl
• With guest Eli Hodapp – @hodapp

Mark Bramhill of the excellent Welcome to Macintosh podcast joins us again to talk about this year’s crop of Apple Design Award winning games. This feels like a strange transition year for Apple in gaming, and we have a number of things to discuss, from the games Apple chose to award to the upcoming Apple Arcade and support for game controllers in iOS 13. Thanks as always to Mark for joining us for what has become a Short Game tradition!

Links for this episode:

• The Gardens Between – By The Voxel Agents 
• Ordia – Loju 
• Spitkiss – Spitkiss is a story of boundless love, told through precision platforming 
• Asphalt 9: Legends – Arcade Racing game by Gameloft 
• ELOH – Let the rhythm fill your soul. 
• Thumper Pocket Edition — Thumper | A Rhythm Violence Game 
• My Cat from Hell – Wikipedia 
• Outer Wilds 
• Fall; or, Dodge in Hell: A Novel:Amazon:Books 

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
• Shane Kelly – @8bitshane
• Mark Bramhill – @mcbramhill

Gato Roboto is a retro-styled Metroid-like starring Kiki, a cute kitty in a powerful mech suit. Freshman developer Doinksoft and veteran indie publisher Devolver Digital bring us this 1-bit black and white adventure that might be the most complete Metroid experience you can have in five hours. Find the game on Steam (Windows) or the Switch eShop for just $8.

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
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

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