The Magic Circle is something really unique. In this thoughtful, darkly comic first person puzzle game, you play as the hero of an unfinished video game. The developers have failed you, and it’s your task to break the game and use the powers of the “gods” against them in freeform sandbox puzzles. It’s full of surprises at every turn and packed with commentary on the video game industry, gamers, and what it means to create art.

This game has gotten a criminally small amount of coverage in the press, but it may be our favorite game of 2015 so far. Don’t miss it! The Magic Circle is available on Steam for Mac and PC for $19.99. A free demo is also available. Expect it to take 3 to 4 hours to complete.

We have the Spoiler Break™ at about 30 minutes in. This game is full of surprises you won’t want to spoil for yourself, so if you haven’t played it do yourself a favor and stop at the spoiler break and give this game a try.

Links for this episode:

• The Magic Circle official website – very meta!
• The Magic Circle on Steam
• Failbetter Suggests: The Magic Circle
• Bob Mackey’s review at USGamer.net
• Hack ‘n’ Slash
• The Unfinished Swan – The Short Game episode 43
• Dungeon Keeper

Played on Mac OS X using review copies courtesy of the developer.

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame
See our list of upcoming games, and make suggestions..

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

It’s a warm summer day in 1971 and the kaiju are roaming the countryside. We discuss the lovely 3DS eShop game Attack of the Friday Monsters from veteran Japanese game developers Millennium Kitchen, creators of the similarly quaint and nostalgic Boku no Natsuyasumi series. This is one of the most unique and down right pleasant games on the 3DS and entirely worth its short play time. Expect your summer afternoon with Sohta and his friends to take between two and four hours.

Links for this episode:

• Attack of The Friday Monsters – Level5
• Attack of the Friday Monsters! on the 3DS eShop
• Guild (series) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Attack of the Friday Monsters OST
• Yasumi Matsuno – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• The Short Game 51: Her Story (with developer Sam Barlow)
• Boku no Natsuyasumi – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• SCROLL 10: Summer – A great full-length history of the series from Ray Barnholdt
• Boku no Natsuyasumi 3: Fan-Translation/Let’s Play
• Retronauts Episode 39: Slow life games
• You Must Build A Boat
• Pandemic
• Attack Wing
• The Executive
• Crypt of the Necrodancer
• California Extreme
• Killer Queen
• The Magic Circle

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame
See our list of upcoming games, and make suggestions..

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

This week we discuss Contrast, a flawed but interesting puzzle platformer for PC and consoles. Contrast has an appealing 1920s cabaret aesthetic and a really neat shadow-merging mechanic that had a lot of promise, but the game didn’t resonate with most critics. Is the game worth its three-to-four-hour playtime?

Contrast is available on Steam (Windows), Playstation 4, and Xbox One, as well as previous generation consoles, and costs $14.99. Expect it to take three to four hours to complete.

Links for this episode

• Contrast by Compulsion Games – official site
• The Night Circus – Amazon
• The Daddening of Video Games – Stephen Totilo at Kotaku
• Psychonauts
• We Happy Few – the next game from Compulsion Games
• Monaco – What’s Yours Is Mine
• Rocket League
• Attack of the Friday Monsters

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame
See our list of upcoming games, and make suggestions..

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

Her Story by Sam Barlow (and starring Viva Seifert) is a game about a woman talking to the police. You are tasked with re-investigating a murder that took place in 1994 by watching a series of police interview videos, trying to discover the facts of a case that seems long-since closed. Your only tools is a very retro and partially broken police database of footage and your own sense of deduction.

This is one of the most unique games we’ve played and you should not miss it.

We begin this episode with an interview with the developer himself, Sam Barlow (@mrsambarlow), and then share our impressions. After the spoiler-break, we discuss our theories about the crime.

Her Story is available for PC, Mac, iPhone, and iPad for $5 or $6 depending on platform. Expect it to take 2 to 5 hours to completely explore.

Links for this episode:

Mentioned in the interview:

• Aisle – Wikipedia
• Aisle on the Interactive Fiction Database (including link to download or play online)
• Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
• Viva Seifert
• Starship Titanic
• Synapse Software
• Synapse IF games available as abandonware
• Simogo
  • We have previously discussed Simogo’s Year Walk and Device 6
• Blackbar
• Attack of the Friday Monsters
• Cinema Paradiso (film)

From our discussion:

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

“My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead.”

• Tap Code
• Contrast – Our next episode
• We Happy Few – Kickstarter
• You Must Build a Boat
• Magic Mike XXL
• Persona 4 GOLDEN

After show:

• The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino
• Police Interview with Tupac Shakur

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame
See our list of upcoming games, and make suggestions..

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

We’re back with our 50th episode, and for our golden anniversary as a show we’re talking about the stylish comic-book-turned-game, Framed for iOS. This game comes to us from Loveshack, a studio formed by refugees of the EA acquisition and subsequent destruction of early iOS powerhouse Firemint (developers of Flight Control and Real Racing.)

In Framed, you’ll swap the panels of comic book style pages around to re-order events, often with surprising results. It’s a beautiful and stylish 2-hour experience that Hideo Kojima called the best game of 2014.

Played "FRAMED" by Liveshack. High sense of gameplay, graphic, & sound. My best game in this year without any doubt. pic.twitter.com/OFy9c9KTHU”

— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) November 22, 2014

Links for this episode

• Indiecade
• Donut County
• Comic Jumper
• Comix Zone
• Inside Out
• @NotAPoliceman

Hey Any Parties In The #Prescott #Area Tonight? Especially Ones With Underage Children (Like Me) Consuming Alcohol? Email Me The Coordinates

— Not A Cop (@NotAPoliceman) September 22, 2012

• Our Hearthstone episode
• Shadow of Mordor
• Infamous: Second Sun
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
• Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition
• The Five-Room Dungeon model

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame
See our list of upcoming games, and make suggestions..

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 what’s becoming a bit of a tradition, hosts Nate, Shane, and Laura discuss the six games that won Apple Design Awards at WWDC 2015. While this year’s awards seemed to focus on the use of Apple’s Metal API and innovative use of the “freemium” platform, each game provides a unique experience and really showcases iOS as a gaming platform. We also make sure to point out a few games we felt were snubbed (COUGH COUGH ALTO’S ADVENTURE COUGH COUGH), and couldn’t resist talking about some of the recent news from E3 (FALLOUT HYPE).

Apple Design Award Winners: 

• Shadowmatic

• Crossy Road

• Does Not Commute

• Vainglory

Student Winners:

• Elementary Minute

• jump-O

You can also hear our report on last year’s Apple Design Awards way back in The Short Game episode 11.

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame
See our list of upcoming games, and make suggestions..

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

Your hosts this week were:

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

Raygan and Shane fly solo this week as Raygan visits his bro-host in person! (Please forgive any dip in audio quality.) We discuss Helldivers for Playstation 4, Playstation 3, and Playstation Vita.

Helldivers, from the makers of Magika, is a top-down four-player co-op dual-stick shooter. (That was four, count ’em four hyphens!) It may appear a little generic at first, but it has some of the most thought out game balance of any online co-op game we’ve ever played. We discuss the many design decisions that lead to making this the rare online game that’s fun to play with literally anyone.

Links for this episode:

• Helldivers on PSN – $20
• Arrowhead Game Studios
• Magicka
• /r/Helldivers subreddit
• Dungeon Master Shane will make a D&D character of/for you!
• Here’s Shane’s character sheet for gnome barbarian Gary Butterfield!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame
See our list of upcoming games, and make suggestions..

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

Your hosts this week were:

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

In this special double-length episode, guest host Gary Butterfield of Watch Out For Fireballs! joins us to discuss The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.

As you may know, Link Between Worlds is a direct sequel to Link to the Past for the SNES, taking place in the same overworld and with many of the same mechanics. It manages to be both deeply nostalgic and incredibly innovative, updating the classic formula with many clever new game mechanics. It also respects your time, with a streamlined structure that allows you to complete the adventure in about 15 hours.

We discuss what makes this the most innovative Zelda game in years, compare and contrast it with its predecessors, and learn about Nate’s strange, sad history as a Navi sympathizer.

Links (heh) for this episode:

• Watch Out For Fireballs Episode 68 – The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
• Iwata Asks – Interview with the Link to the Past team
• Duckfeed.tv

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame
See our list of upcoming games, and make suggestions..

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

Your hosts this week were:

• Gary Butterfield – @garybuh
• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Nate Heininger – @natestl

Laura intended to join us for this episode, but was sidelined due to illness. We missed you Laura!

Special guest Nate Heagy, founder and developer of Amuses Me Games and die-hard Hearthstone player joins us to discuss the hugely successful digital-native collectible card game from Blizzard.

Hearthstone is a bit different from the games we typically cover but it’s a fascinating re-thinking of an existing genre made clearly with fitting-into-your-life in mind. It’s an open-ended experience played almost exclusively online against real people, and it’s a free-to-play game funded by microtransactions and purchases of digital collectibles. All these are things that, in most instances, we kind of hate, yet Hearthstone is a fascinating and instructive example of smart design and general polish that rises above these labels.

We discuss the smart design of the game and why it works where other digital card games have failed, and Nate offers us some advice for new players on picking a class, crafting cards, and winning matches.

Hearthstone is free-to-play for iOS, Android, PC, and Mac. Expect to spend perhaps an hour learning the rules and completing the tutorial. Each match/game to can be completed in around 10 minutes.

Thanks to Nate Heagy for joining us on this episode!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame
See our list of upcoming games, and make suggestions..

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

Your hosts this week were:

• Guest Host Nate Heagy – @amusesmegames
• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane
• Nate Heininger – @natestl

This week we talk about the entrants for this year’s Spring Thing interactive fiction festival. Spring Thing is an offshoot of IFComp that focuses on new works (they must debut as a part of the festival) that are freely available, and generally shorter and more experimental than IFComp entries. We collectively played all but one of this year’s entrants and talk about them in detail.

We recorded this on the evening that the voting closed for the Spring Thing Audience Choice ribbon. The winners have since been announced, and Toby’s Nose won both the Audience Choice and the Alumni Choice awards!

We also discuss the results of this year’s XYZZY awards, and some other interactive fiction. This is only the beginning of our coverage of the interactive fiction competition/festival scene, so stay tuned!

Links for this episode

• Spring Thing Festival of Interactive Fiction
• IFComp 2014
• The XYZZY Awards
• The Short Game – 31: Interactive Fiction
• The Short Game – 36: 80 Days
• GDC video: Leading Players Astray: 80 Days & Unexpected Stories
• Hadean Lands
• Hadean Lands walkthrough from Key & Compass
• The Uncle Who Works For Nintendo
• With Those We Love Alive – By Porpentine
• Creatures Such as We
• Crystal Warrior Ke$ha
• Toby’s Nose by Chandler Groover
  • Winner of both the Audience Choice and the Alumni Choice ribbons for 2015
• Sunrise by Lucky Sun Scribes
• A Trial by B Minus Seven
• Ruiness by Porpentine
  • Porpentine’s website
• Mere Anarchy by Bruno Dias
• The Short Game – 28: A Dark Room
• Aspel by Emily Short
  • Writing for Seltani: an Aspel Post-mortem | Emily Short’s Interactive Storytelling
• Aaron Reed
• Ryan North’s To Be or Not To Be

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame
See our list of upcoming games, and make suggestions..

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
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane