Shownotes

Pocket Card Jockey is a weird footnote. A lesser known but beloved 3DS side-project by Game Freak, the creators of Pokémon. It‘s a brilliant and hilarious mash up horse racing and solitaire, first released in Japan in 2013, and in the US in 2016 when we covered it for The Short Game. 

Now the game has been remastered (or remade?) for iOS! Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On! is available now on the Apple Arcade subscription service.

We’re taking this opportunity to rerelease our original episode on the game. Laura and Shane kick things off with a brief intro before we jump into episode 99 of the show.

We haven’t covered a mobile game, or a tower defense game, in quite a while! Isle of Arrows comes from Gridpop, aka Daniel Lutz, best known as the creative director of Hitman GO and Lara Croft GO, and this game brings that aesthetic and polish to the venerable tower defense genre while freshening some things up with a touch of roguelike and board game mechanics. It’s a total bullseye.

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

We absolutely love stuff where little guys go around, the littler the better.

Tinykin upended our expectations around 3D platformers, and manages to out-Pikmen Pikmen. It’s about 6 hours, and is on Switch, Steam, PS4/5, and your various Xboxeees, and is included with GamePass.

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygan@bird.rodeo
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane

It’s been a great year, and we played some great games. It’s our Game of the Year special for 2022! 

In addition to our Game of the Year, we’re handing out lots of honors and superlatives, some returning like our coveted Dirtbag of the Year award, and some new that you’ll need to listen to discover!

Patrons also have access to our unedited planning session, if you want to hear how the sausage was made for some reason.

Happy New Year!

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygan@bird.rodeo
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane
• Nate Heininger – @natestl
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

BANG! BANG! CHOP! CHOP! In this single-sitting first-person shooter, you gotta chop some goblins before they chop you. Other times you gotta shoot, stake, shotgun, or impale them. Because once chop goblins are loosed across time and space, someone’s gotta stop ’em. And that someone is you. (Because you set them free in the first place.)

Chop Goblins was a surprise end-of-year release by the creator of Iron Lung, DUSK, and Squirrel Stapler — and it’s available now on Steam for Windows. The game takes 30 minutes to an hour and a half, depending on your skill level.

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

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

This week, we’re revisiting an episode for a game that many of you have probably played: Portal. On December 11, Nvidia released a remastered version called “Portal RTX” with upgraded, ray-traced graphics (fancy) — and if you own it on Steam, you’ve automatically got a copy. This shiny new coat of paint is a great excuse to boot up Portal and remember how very awesome it is.

Even back at episode 10, we were convinced the game was a stone-cold classic. Raygan and Shane break down the qualities that made the game so successful, and its widespread impact on gaming in general.

Once again, we command you: GO PLAY PORTAL AGAIN!

Links for this episode

• The Last Guardian
• Our Broken Age Episode
• The Banner Saga
• Casual Shenanigans Podcast on YouTube
• Star Citizen
• The Veronica Mars Movie
• Transistor
• Transistor Trailer
• Bastion for iOS
• The original Portal trailer
• Portal: The Flash Version
• ASCIIPortal
• Narbacular Drop
• Download Narbacular Drop
• The Orange Box
• Johnathan Coulton
• Still Alive – YouTube link
• Portal’s patched ending
• Teslagrad on Steam
• Our Thomas Was Alone episode
• Thinking with Time Machine

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

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

Fans of medieval manuscripts, murder mysteries and marginalia, rejoice! Pentiment is here to fill your Northern Renaissance needs. Raygan and Laura discuss this rich tale of abbeys, intrigue, and 16th century life in the Bavarian Alps. Do we describe the classic book Name of the Rose as “a vibe”? How do we feel about Big Head Mode? Will we accuse innocent people of murder? Dear listener, there is only one way to find out…

Pentiment is available on PC/XBox (Gamepass), and is a little on the long side for us at 12-15 hours.

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

Now we’re thinking with time reversals! The Entropy Centre is a first-person puzzler set in a collapsing space station on the brink of the end of the world. But it’s not all doom and gloom, for there’s a cheerful robot inside your entropy gun to help you rebuild pillars and reheat tea. Expect it to take 8-12 hours, depending on how good you are at brain-bendy puzzles.

The Entropy Centre is available on XBox, PlayStation, Steam, and GOG.

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

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

Mosey on over to this here podcast fer some of the worst accents this side of the Mississippi — it’s time to cover Card Cowboy, yeehaw! Saddle up to take revenge on the Gunman who killed your dad, wooed your mom, and kicked your dog. Card Cowboy is basically Western mad libs and we’re happy as hornets. Each playthrough takes about 30 minutes. (Yall make sure to pick up the Steam version, which is fully voice acted.)

What’s been making us happy this week:

• Nate: Marvel Snap
• Laura: The Great Pupkin Costume Contest (photos and more photos)
• Shane: Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

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