In this, the year of too many Metroidvanias (jk there can never be too many Metroidvanias) Drinkbox returns with a long awaited sequel to their 2013 action platformer hit Guacamelee. (We covered Guacamelee way back in episode 37, and their dungeon crawler slice-em-up Severed in episode 108.

If you played Guacamelee and (like us) you wished for more of it then you’ll find lots to love in Guacamelee 2. The formula is essentially unchanged from the first game, but with lots of tweaks and additions large and small. It’s no secret that we love Drinkbox, and the Guacamelee series deserves your attention even when the feast or famine that is the exploration action platformer genre turns to feast mode as it has in 2018.

Guacamelee 2 is available on PC/Steam and PS4, with other platoforms likely but not announced.

What’s making us happy this week

• Laura – Do Men Enter Bathtubs on Their Hands and Knees So Their Balls Hit The Water Last: An Investigation
• Raygan – Runaway (1984)
• Nate – Friendship and Baseball. Ugh.

Bomb Chicken is the first console game from mobile game royalty Nitrome. It’s a perfect example of a developer creating a entire game based on a single, super polished mechanic. Nitrome uses clever level design to spin their simple one button bomb-egg mechanic into dozens of unique challenges. Also the chicken is so fat. So so fat.

Links for this episode

• Mark Brown – Game Makers Toolkit
• Bomb Chicken’s Dual Purpose Design – Skip the Tutorial
• Bomb Chicken website
• The Swapper – The Short Game episode 35

What’s making you happy this week?

Laura:
* To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (film)
* The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (film)
* Evergarden
Nate: Holedown
Raygan: Mousetrap Monday’s – All 12 Of Mascall’s 427 Year Old Style Mouse Traps

It’s an all-singing-all-dancing episode this week as we play Peter Panic, a mobile game that mixes WarioWare style micro games with the magic of musical theater! This mobile game stands out by being a fully-sung musical sung by actual broadway talent.

Peter Panic is available for iOS and Android. It’s free to download and try, with the ability to save your progress available for $2.99.

Links

• Variety article about the game
• Operatic Villains – Vidjagame Apocalypse (Podcast Episode)
• Peter Panic soundtrack on Spotify
• Peter Panic soundtrack on YouTube
• Fun Home – I’m Changing My Major to Joan
• Broadway World – Musical Video Game PETER PANIC, Starring Emily Skeggs & Gideon Glick, Out Now
• Broadway World – New Mini-Game App PETER PANIC Throws Fans into the World of Broadway

What’s making us happy this week?

Nate – Sous Vide
Raygan – Kill Six Billion Demons
Laura – Binge Mode Harry Potter
Shane – Ty’s first birthday

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

This week we’re taking a vacation from our typical format to talk about playing games while traveling. The obvious topic is how the Nintendo Switch is chainging how we play, but we also discuss gaming travel memories from childhood, the pros and cons of portable platforms, and even some non-video-games for travel. Have fun on your trip to Ireland, Laura!

00:00:00 Gaming and Traveling
00:01:39 Things we ONLY do on Airplanes
00:05:11 Gaming while Traveling as Kids
00:11:40 Shane’s guessing game
00:16:23 Travel Games
00:32:05 The Switch
00:47:14 Games for Groups
00:48:56 Listner Responses
00:53:02 What’s making us happy

Links for this episode:

• Pokémon Go
• Suikoden II
• ‎Star Wars®: Knights of the Old Republic™ on the App Store
• ‘Hoplite’ Review – Walk Softly And Carry A Tiny Spear – TouchArcade
• Game Boy Micro – Wikipedia
• Raygan’s recommended Nintendo Switch grip
• Panasonic ColorPilot TV CT-1110D
• 128: Board Game to Video Game Ports – The Short Game
• Puzzazz | The best way to solve puzzles in the digital world
• OverDrive (Rakuten OverDrive): eBooks, audiobooks and videos for libraries
• Flinthook
• The Endless (film) – 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
• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane

Yoku’s Island Express is a pinball-metroidvania. Yeah. And as a synthesis of those two seemingly incompatible ideas it actually succeeds incredibly well. We break down what makes this bizarre fusion more than just a novelty.

Yoku is available on Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and Steam for $19.99. Expect it to take about 5-8 hours to complete, not including post-game content, secrets, etc…

00:00:00 Yoku’s Island Express
00:50:54 What’s Making You Happy This Week?

• Laura: Stardew Valley
• Raygan: Steven Universe
• Nate: Tapped

00:58:44 Outro

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

Gary Butterfield of Duckfeed.tv joins us to discuss West of Loathing, the hilarious stick-figure open-world RPG by Asymmetric. West of Loathing originally released last summer on Steam, but it recently launched as a console exclusive on Nintendo Switch. This is an extremely funny game, but it also respects your time in ways that other RPGs and open world games could learn a lot from. Thanks to Gary for a great discussion.

West of Loathing is available on Steam for Windows, MacOS, and Linux, and on the Nintendo Switch eShop, for $11. Expect it to take around 10 hours to complete. Spoiler break at [00:56:36].

What’s making us happy this week?

• Laura: Korean reality show The Genius
• Nate: The Saint Louis Pride Parade
• Raygan: Mario Tennis Aces
• Shane: Hive
• Gary: John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous at Radio City

Find Gary’s work at Duckfeed.tv. Gary’s newest podcast, Heartbeat City, is at Heartbeatcity.city.

Past Short Game episodes with Gary:

• 26a: The Walking Dead
• 26b: The Walking Dead
• 47: The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

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

For our fifth year in a row, The Short Game is discussing this year’s Apple Design Award winning games. The ADA winners are often some of the best iOS games of the year, but they also shine a light on the state of iOS as a gaming platform, and give a hint as to what Apple is planning for games on their devices.

Joining us again this year is friend of the show Mark Bramhill. Mark is a radio producer and podcaster, and host of the incredible Welcome to Macintosh podcast. His work has also appeared on shows such as 99% Invisible. You can follow Mark on Twitter at @mcbramhill.

[00:03:48] WWDC impressions 2018
[00:27:15] Award Winning Games
[00:28:52] Florence
[00:33:45] Playdead’s INSIDE
[00:39:52] Alto’s Odyssey
[00:47:05] Frost
[00:58:58] Oddmar
[01:07:58] Non-game Winners
[01:10:28] What’s making you happy this week?
[01:17:51] Outro

Past Apple Design Award episodes:

• 11: Apple Design Award Winners 2014 – The Short Game
• 49: Apple Design Award Winners 2015 – The Short Game
• 91: Apple Design Awards Winners 2016 – The Short Game
• 125: Apple Design Award Winners 2017 – The Short Game

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
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash
• Mark Bramhill – @mcbramhill

Mike Bithell’s follow-up to Subsurface Circular is another single sitting dialogue driven text adventure game, but this time it’s on a boat! Also there’s an alien.

We discuss the second “Bithell Short”, a spiritual sequel to the previously covered Subsurface Circular. If you liked Subsurface Circular or interactive fiction this is definitely worth a look.

Quarantine Circular is available on Steam for Windows and macOS for $5.99. Expect it to take around three hours to complete.

[00:00:00] Quarantine Circular
[00:46:58] What’s making you happy this week?
[00:54:20] Spoiler Break

What’s making us happy this week:

• Laura: Zero Sum for iOS
• Nate: Boats
• Raygan: Lizzo
• Shane: The Giff – Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes

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

In Far: Lone Sails you’ll pilot a massive rattletrap machine across a beautiful, desolate world. This “atmospheric vehicle adventure game” feels a bit like it was grown in a lab to appeal to The Short Game. It has a presentation that begs comparisons to past favorites like Inside, but the vehicle system feels fresh and keep the game engaging and mechanically interesting throughout.

Far: Lone Sails is available on Steam, GOG, and the Humble Store for Windows and MacOS, with PS4 and Xbox One versions in development. Expect it to take about three hours to complete.

[00:00:00] Far: Lone Sails
[00:45:02] What’s making you happy this week?

• Laura: Superstore
• Raygan: Yakuza Kiwami
• Nate: Pocket Operator: Rhythm

[00:53:16] Spoiler Break

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
• Nate Heininger – @natestl
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

In a world where absolutely everyone cares about golf…

Golf Story is an indie developed golf RPG in the Mario Golf tradition, developed by Sidebar Games. It was an early indie exclusive on the Nintendo Switch. In this episode we discuss our history with golf and golf games, the bizarre and hilarious world of Golf Story, and get into the weeds with golf game history and mechanics.

Expect Golf Story to take about 15 hours to complete. (A bit on the long side for our show, but this is still a game that respects your time.) It’s available exclusively on the Nintendo Switch eShop for $14.99.

[00:03:15] The Short Game on Golf
[00:11:40] Golf Video Games
[00:19:36] Golf Story
[01:04:07] What’s Making Us Happy This Week

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
• Nate Heininger – @natestl
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash