The Room series is one of the best selling short game franchises on iOS, known for its beautiful animation and tactile mechanics. Each of the three entries expands on the physical puzzle theme, moving from single boxes in Room One to the multi-room Myst-like mansion of The Room Three.

Nate, Shane, and Laura talk about what it means to solve a physical puzzle on a touchscreen, and what we love and hate about the genre in general. We also talk a little bit about our experience with in-person “escape the room” games: one of us ran a bar and another destroyed Chicago.

The Room and its two sequels are available for iOS and Android. The Room and The Room Two are also available on Windows via Steam. Each title is usually priced at $4.99 and take about two to five hours to complete.

• The Room •
• The Room Two •
• The Room Three •

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:

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

Pony Island is two-and-a-half hours of puzzles and surprises. Don’t be put off by its retro-glitch aesthetic or its apparent self-satisfied transgressiveness. Once you break through its shell you’ll find a rapid-fire series of clever ideas.

Pony Island is available on Steam for Windows and Mac for $4.99. Expect it to take about 2.5 hours to complete. A hidden ending is available for completionists. Expect that path to take about five hours.

Links for this episode:

• Pony Island
• Pony Island on Steam
• Polybius (video game) – Wikipedia
• Humble Overwhelmingly Positive Bundle – Humble Bundle

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
• Nate Heininger – @natestl

Couch co-op comes to the kitchen this week as we talk about Overcooked, a culinary party game from Ghost Town Games. Overcooked was one of the most talked about local multiplayer experiences of 2016 so we’re happy to make it our first game of 2017.

Each game of Overcooked takes only a few minutes, and a pair of dedicated chefs can tackle its co-op campaign mode in around six hours. Overcooked is available on Steam for Windows as well as on PS4 and Xbox One. It’s also available on physical disc for both consoles.

Links for this episode:

• Gamasutra – Game Design Deep Dive: Building truly cooperative play in Overcooked
• The Short Game 23: Brothers – A Tale of Two Sons
• Cook, Serve, Delicious! | The most intense cooking game ever made.

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:

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

Recorded and edited just before we drop the guillotine on 2016, it’s our Short Game game of the year round up! Stick around for some gaming memories of 2017, and a drunken message of hope for 2017 from Shane. See you next year!

Fifth Place:

• Thumper
• Hyper Light Drifter
• Severed

Fourth Place:

• Abzû

Third Place:

• SUPERHOT

Second Place:

• Firewatch

Game of the Year 2016:

• Inside

Past GOTY episodes:

• 70: Game of the Year 2015 – The Short Game
• 29: Game of the Year – The Short Game

Some runner-ups:

• Pocket Card Jockey
• Reign
• Virginia

Virginia is a “first person interactive drama” that tells a mysterious story of an FBI agent on her first. It’s most notable for its unusual editing style, inspired by film and the game Thirty Flights of Loving. It’s also one of the most critically controversial games of the year. Some reviewers showered it in praise (Time Magazine included it on its Game of the Year list 2016) while others dismissed it or gave it poor reviews. (Its Steam user reviews have trended from Mixed to Negative.)

Raygan loved this game, Laura hated it, and Nate and Shane fell somewhere in between. One of our most interesting discussions in a while! Stick around after the spoiler break at 37:33 for a discussion of the mysteries and symbols of the game.

Virginia is available on Steam as well as PS4 and Xbox One for $9.99. Expect it to take an hour and a half to two 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
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane
• Nate Heininger – @natestl
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

Severed is a dungeon crawling touch-based action RPG by Guacamelee! developer Drinkbox Studios. First released as a Playstation Vita exclusive, it has since been released on iOS, Android, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U. (We suggest the iOS or Vita versions.) It’s a worthy follow-up to Guacamelee (though very different!) and an all around great game that will take you 7 to 9 hours to complete.

• Severed – Drinkbox Studios
• Severed Announce Trailer – YouTube
• 37: Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition – 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
• Nate Heininger – @natestl
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

IFComp, the annual interactive fiction competition, has come to a close and we’re discussing the results. How did your favorites do?

We covered many of the games in this year’s competition in our two earlier episodes:

• 102: IFComp 2016 – The Short Game
• 104: More IFComp 2016 – The Short Game

IFComp 2016 Results

Main Voting

5th Place: 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds by Abigail Corfman
4th Place: Stone Harbor by Liza Daly
3rd Place: Cactus Blue Motel by Astrid Dalmady
2nd Place: Color the Truth by mathbrush
1st Place: Detectiveland by Robin Johnson

Miss Congeniality

3rd Place: Detectiveland by Robin Johnson
2nd Place: Fair by Hanon Ondricek
1st Place: Inside the Facility by Arthur DiBianca

Golden Banana of Discord

A Time of Tungsten by Devin Raposo

Links of note:
Spider and Web by Andrew Plotkin
Golden Banana of Discord trophy

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

This week your intrepid hosts fly through the galaxy rescuing space-bunnies in Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. Does this couch co-op set our hearts aflutter? Or are we hardened to the charms of neon and techno?

Oh, we’re definitely aflutter. 💛💜💚💙💖❤️

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime was developed by Asteroid Base, and is available on consoles (PS4, Xbox One) and Steam/DRM-free (PC, Mac, and Linux). It typically retails for around $15 (though you may already have a copy from Humble Bundle 17.)

Links for this Episode:

• Spaceteam — A Game of Cooperative Shouting for Phones and Tablets
• Regular Human Basketball | Powerhoof
• Gamasutra – Game Design Deep Dive: Power-ups in Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
• The Interactive Fiction Competition

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:

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

Shane bought a PSVR and The Short Game leaves boring old reality behind. We give our impressions of the hardware, and discuss which of the launch games might be interesting to Short Game listeners.

Links for this episode:

• Remaster #20: The PlayStation VR Review
• PlayStation VR Tracking Guide | Owlchemy Labs
• 67: Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes – The Short Game

VR Games discussed:

• Thumper
• Job Simulator
• Batman: Arkham VR
• PlayStation VR Worlds
• Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
• Wayward Sky
• Harmonix Music VR
• Battlezone

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:

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

We continue our coverage of 2016’s IFComp, the Interactive Fiction Competition. This continues on from The Short Game episode 102, so if you’re just joining you may prefer starting there. This week we’ve picked and played 9 more games, and some of them are really neat!

Games played this week:

• A Time of Tungsten by Devin Raposo
• The Mouse by Norbez
• The Shoe Dept. by Aquanet
• All I Do is Dream by Megan Stevens
• Sigil Reader (Field) by verityvirtue
• How to Win at Rock Paper Scissors by Brian Kwak
• Take by Amelia Pinnolla
• The Skull Embroidery by Jeron Paraiso
• Stone Harbor by Liza Daly

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