Orb! Orb orb orb orb orb. Orb Orb? Orb Orb Orb!…

Gordy and the Monster Moon is a bite-sized exploration-driven game about a pumpkin astronaut going on spooky adventures. It’s also a tiny part of the Frog Fractions extended universe, brought to us by Jim Stormdancer. It’s made entirely in Pico-8, and is available on Steam and itch.io for $4.

It’s a great short game that made for a quick conversation, so Shane also brings us a seasonally appropriate game from IFComp 2023: Dr Ludwig and the Devil by SV Linwood. It’s a mad scientist puzzle parser game that’s full of character and humor, and also Satan.

This week we’re talking about Gunbrella, a game that gets in its own way more than anything we’ve played in a while.

This week Shane and Raygan betray the premise of the podcast and have a nice long chat about Baldur’s Gate 3, an immense game we’re both enjoying immensely, with some digressions into D&D and (ding) Magic the Gathering.

South Scrimshaw is uses the visual novel form to do something very unusual: a science fiction nature documentary. Using hundreds of beautiful bespoke watercolor and ink illustrations, South Scrimshaw tells the story of a whale calf on an alien world as it is born and travels with its in injured mother across dangerous seas. It’s one of the most artistically beautiful games we’ve played, and it’s available on Steam and itch.io completely free. Expect it to take about one to two hours to completely experience.

We’re finally playing this long anticipated first person puzzler. (No Shane you can’t call the genre a “Portalortal”.) It’s a breezy but inventive and incredibly well executed exploration of perspective. We wrap up with one of the best Making Me Happy segments in ages!