“I have entered into the service of a new gentleman. It would seem he is a gambling man.”

80 Days by Inkle Studios is a video game adaptation of Jules Verne’s classic novel of world travel and adventure. It’s also one of the best games of 2014. It was named the Time Magazine Game of the Year and was also honored by numerous other publications and critics. This week we look at what makes this interactive storybook based on a familiar tale so very, very compelling, and discuss some of the exciting details of our own trips around the world.

Links for this episode

• 80 Days
  • 80 Days on the iOS App Store – $4.99
  • 80 Days on the Google Play Store – $5.00
• The Short Game Episode 31: Interactive Fiction
• Inkle Studios
• Dragon Age
• Author Meg Jayanth on Twitter (@betterthemask)

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
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

This week we’re taking another short break from regular format to talk about our favorite video game music!

Did we miss your favorite soundtrack? (We probably did!) Let us know! We’ll play followup to this episode in a future show.

Picks:

• Fez – Adventure
• Super Mario Galaxy – Star Festival
• Chrono Trigger
• Chrono’s theme
• Frog’s Theme
• Festival of Stars
• Sim City 3000 – Building
• Nights into Dreams – Take the Snow Train
• (Shane says Dreamcast when he means Saturn. We regret the error.)
• VVVVVV – Pushing Onwards
• The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker – Title Screen (10 hour loop!)
• Dragon Roost Island

Also mentioned:
– Bastion
– Superbrothers Sword & Sworcery
– Canabalt
– Machinarium
– Scott Pilgrim vs The World The Game

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
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

The Swapper is a surprisingly awesome 2D puzzle platformer from small Finnish indie developers Facepalm Games. Released for PC/Mac/Linux in May 2013, it’s now also available for current generation Playstation and Nintendo consoles. Its puzzle design and mechanics are often compared to Portal (though it is a very unique game on its own) and it has an unusual art style, accomplished by building all the in game objects out of clay and photographing them to create the in-game graphics.

Expect the game to take between 5 and 8 hours to complete, depending on what kind of crazy clone swapping puzzle solving space genius you are.

Links for this episode:

• Humble Indie Bundle 11
• Guacamelee! Super Turbo Chamionship Edition
• ClayFighter
• Tengami
• Lumino City
• Kirby’s Epic Yarn – Wii
• Kirby and the Rainbow Curse – Wii U
• Waking Mars
• A Dark Room

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

Nate’s Saint Louis Cardinals baseball podcast, Talking About Birds is returning for another season. Check it out!

Machinarium, a point and click adventure game by Czech game developers Amanita Design, is our topic this week. Released in 2009, it was their first full-length adventure game after numerous web-based titles. It has been widely praised for its gorgeous art style and a charming story told entirely without dialogue.

Machinarium is available for numerous platforms, including Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, and the PS3 and Playstation Vita. A web-based demo is available at their website. It was included in Humble Indie Bundle #2 in 2010 and the Humble Botanicula Debut bundle in 2012.

Expect the game to take about 5 to 6 hours to complete.

Links for this episode

• Triplets of Bellville
• The Stinkey Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka (Author), Lane Smith (Illustrator)
• Josef Čapek
• Machinarium Soundtrack on Bandcamp

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

To The Moon by Freebird Games is our topic this week. When it came out in 2011 this game was hailed as a triumph of video game storytelling. Using the visual language of 90s RPGs, To The Moon tells the story of a pair of scientists investigating and altering the memories of a dying man to retroactively fulfill his life’s wish: to go to the moon.

To The Moon is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux through Steam and The Humble Store for $9.99. Expect it to take about 4 hours to complete.

Links for this episode:

• RPG Maker
• Kotaku – Like Scott Pilgrim Before it, To The Moon Tells a Personal Story in the Language of Video Games
• A Bird Story

Our next game:

Machinarium
Machinarium Demo

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

Your hosts this week were:

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

Gunpoint by Tom Francis aka Suspicious Developments is our topic this week. Tom Francis began his game industry career with 9 years as a writer for PC Gamer, and this game is his response to what he learned in his years of game criticism. It was so successful that he was able to quit his boring day job as a games journalist and become an indie game developer full time!

@GunpointGame on Twitter
Developer Tom Francis (@Pentadact) on Twitter

Gunpoint is a puzzle platformer for PC, Mac, and Linux. You can buy it for $9.99 from the developer’s website or on Steam. We recommend buying it through the Humble Store for both a Steam key and a DRM free copy. Expect it to take 3-4 hours to complete

Links for this episode:

• How Reviewing Games for Nine Years Helped in Designing Gunpoint – GDC13 Video – 25 min
• Heat Signature – Tom Francis’s next game. Looks great!
• The Marvelous Miss Take

Join us again next week, as we discuss To The Moon.

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

Your hosts this week were:

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

The Short Game attempts to discuss an entire genre-defying medium of game design: text-based interactive fiction. That’s right, we’re talking about old-school text adventures, but also newer developments like Twine games and more interactive text driven games.

We discuss the history of interactive fiction, the interactive fiction scene today, and recommend a number of games that might be good for beginners or anyone interested in a good interactive read.

Please forgive our decrease in audio quality this week; we were traveling and recording under less-than-ideal conditions.

(Lots of) Links for this episode:

• Colossal Cave Adventure
• Zork
• Interview with the creators of Zork, in the form of a text adventure
• Infocom
• Feelies
• Planetfall Feelies
• Bureaucracy Feelies
• Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Infocom Adventure
• Twine – an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories
• Inform – a design system for creating parser IF
• IFComp – An annual celebration of new, text-driven digital games and stories from independent creators.
• Lost Treasures of Infocom for iOS
• IFDB – Interactive Fiction Database
• Emily Short on the IFDB
• Galatea by Emily Short
• Frotz for iOS – A great application for playing parser-based IF on iOS
• Child’s Play
• Savoir-Faire
• The Dreamhold – A free IF adventure designed for people who’ve never played IF before, by master IF designer Andrew Plotkin. Our highest recommendation for newcomers!
• Spider and Web
• Lost Pig
• Choice of the Dragon
• Counterfeit Monkey
• Creatures Such As We – IFComp winner, “A dating sim about how humanity connects through art, even out in the vastness of space.”
• King of Dragon Pass
• Fallen London aka Echo Bazaar
• Icebound
• Xyzzy Awards
• Spring Thing
• People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction – How to Play Card
• Brass Lantern – Beginners Page
• Inform (parser-based) Interactive Fiction Interpreters
• Hadean Lands by Andrew Plotkin
• 80 Days
• Blood & Laurels

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

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

The fourth game in the Call of Juarez series is its first download-only title. Gunslinger follows Silas Greaves, an over-the-top bounty hunter, whose narration carries the show and whose quest for vengeance drives the plot.

Gunslinger was overlooked by many because its predecessor in the series, Call of Juarez: The Cartel, was so poorly received. In 2013, it was also unusual for a large publisher like Ubisoft to release a game in a download-only format, and many took this as a statement on the game’s quality. The game was well received, however, with many positive reviews.

Gunslinger combines the pervasive, unreliable narrator of a game like Bastion with reliably fun arcade-style shooting style and a story straight out of an old west dime novel. It’s a ton of fun.

Expect the game to take about 5 hours to complete.

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is available for the following platforms:

• Windows PC (Steam) – $15
  • Also available in a double pack with Far Cry 4: Blood Dragon – $24.99
• Playstation 3 (PSN) – $15
• Xbox 360 (Xbox Live) – $15

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

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

In the final show for 2014, we are counting down our picks for The Short Game game of the year:

3 – Shovel Knight

Shovel Knight is an incredible throwback to the NES, but with a modern indie game energy. Arguably the best platformer of the last decade. Available for PC, Mac, Linux, Wii U, and 3DS, and coming soon to PS3, PS4, and PS Vita.

2 – A tie between Threes and A Dark Room

These two simple iOS games really captured us, but for very different reasons. Threes is the most perfect, simple puzzle game since Tetris, and A Dark Room begins as a simple text-driven adventure but iterates its way out into a deep emotional journey. Both games are definitive mobile game experiences you shouldn’t miss.

1 – Game of the Year: Transistor

Transistor by Super Giant Games blew us away with its beautiful art and deep, fun action-RPG combat. It’s a nearly perfect game that shows you a lot in your first 6-7 hour play through, but rewards dedicated players with a new-game-plus mode that expands on the combat system in really compelling ways. This game is destined to be a classic. Pick it up on PC, Mac, or Linux (Steam) or PS4.

Personal Picks

We each also wanted to mention a game that we thought deserved special attention, even though it didn’t place in our rankings.

Laura – Lords of Waterdeep for iOS

This iOS adaptation of the Wizards of the Coast board game shines as a great pass-and-play experience.

Nate – FTL: Advanced Edition

This free expansion to the incredible FTL: Faster than Light reinvigorated Nate’s unhealthy obsession with this short but infinitely re-playable rogue-like.

Shane – Nidhogg

Nominally a fencing game, Nidhogg is actually a tool designed to destroy relationships. An accessible one-on-one fighting game like no other.

Raygan – Freedom Planet

Freedom Planet came seemingly out of nowhere and destroyed my life for a weekend. It’s a pitch-perfect homage to the classic 16-bit Sonic the Hedgehog games, but expanded into new territory. It’s fiendishly difficult too. Don’t let the off-putting anime-styled cartoon animal characters put you off this incredible platformer. (You can turn off the dialogue and cutscenes if you wish.)

Also discussed – Crypt of the Necrodancer

It’s a rogue-like you can play on a DDR-style dance pad. What’s not to love?

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

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

A Dark Room is an incredibly simple and yet incredibly deep and even moving game, unexpected qualities in the “idle games” genre.

From the App Store page, you begin with this simple and evocative description:

“Awake. Head throbbing. Vision blurry. Come light the fire.”

A Dark Room was such a sensation that it has been written about at length even in publications not known for gaming coverage. For example, this great article from The New Yorker: A Dark Room: The Best-Selling Game That No One Can Explain.

Availability

A Dark Room began as a web-game that you can play in a browser tab while you work. That version is still available here.

The definitive version is the iOS port, available for iPhone and iPad. – $0.99

Expect the game to take 2-3 hours to complete depending on your play style. The iOS version includes a developers commentary and additional challenge mode following the completion of the main game.

Links

• Cookie Clicker
• Touch Arcade review of A Dark Room
• NimbleBit – makers of numerous quality idle games for iOS
• Banished
• The Ensign – Prequel to A Dark Room
• Space Happens – A Kickstarter-funded web series by Laura Nash and friends, premiering this month! “A satire developed, written & produced by women in comedy. A slash fic between feminism and science fiction. In witty webseries form.”
• Bear Hive – Nate’s awesome band, now with an album on BandCamp, Spotify, and iTunes!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

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