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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:
Fourth Place:
Third Place:
Second Place:
Game of the Year 2016:
Past GOTY episodes:
Some runner-ups:
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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.
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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.
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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:
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
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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.)
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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.
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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:
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Hyper Light Drifter is a tough-as-nails indie action-RPG game that came out earlier this year. After initially bouncing off the game, we gave it a second look and found a lot to like past its punishing skill barrier and intentional obscurity. Stay tuned past the spoiler break for tips on boss order, and for Shane’s impressions of the new PlayStation VR.
Apologies for the delay getting you this episode. We’ll be back very soon with more coverage of IFComp 2016!
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Now in its 22nd year, IFComp (The Interactive Fiction Competition) is
an annual celebration of new text-based games. We covered last year’s competition in a pair of episodes last October, and this year we’re back with our first impression of this year’s entries.
This is IFComp’s biggest year yet, with 58 games competing. All of them are available to play for free on the IFComp website. This episode was recorded on only 2 days after the start of the competition. We share our thoughts on the games we have tried so far, and note some exciting looking games we’ll be trying before the competition concludes in November.
Last year’s episodes:
The Short Game 61: IFComp 2015
The Short Game 63: More IFComp 2015
Played and Discussed:
Detectiveland by Robin Johnson
The Queen’s Menagerie by Chandler Groover
Mirror and Queen by Chandler Groover
Blue Cactus Motel by Astrid Dalmady
The Game of Worlds TOURNAMENT! by Ade
Pogoman Go! by Jack Welch and Ben Collins-Sussman
16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds by Abigail Corfman
Fair by Hanon Andresek
Mentioned:
Stuff and Nonsense by Felicity Banks
Black Rock City by Jim Munroe
Evermore by Adam Whybray and Edgar Allan Poe
The Shoe Dept. by Aquanet
Color the Truth by Mathbrush
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Waking Mars is the second game from Tiger Style, developers of Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor and Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon. On the surface this 2012 follow-up to Spider appears to be a more mainstream, unsurprising game than Tiger Style’s first outing, but as it unfurls its tendrils Waking Mars reveals a complex and involving “action gardening” experience that captivated us.
Waking Mars is available on iOS and Android for $5, and on PC, Mac, and Linux for $10. Expect it to take between 5 and 8 hours to complete.
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