

The Short Game
The Short Game
A podcast about video games that respect your time
Episodes
Mentioned books

Apr 1, 2024 • 1h 14min
400: Episode 400 Trivia Spectacular!
400 episodes. Nearly 10 years. I absolutely can not believe it. To celebrate, Laura put together an incredibly well produced trivia night game for us to play! Who knows the most about the last 10 years of The Short Game?
(00:00) - Introduction
(05:22) - Round One: Name That Game!
(14:30) - Round Two: How Long To Beat?
(27:24) - Round Three: The Short Snippet!
(38:45) - Tiebreaker and Looking Back at 400 Episodes
(52:37) - What’s Making Us Happy?
(53:20) - Nate - Death Squared
(58:15) - Raygan - Sea World
(01:02:38) - Laura - Blackberry
(01:04:59) - Shane - Inside The Personal Computer
(01:11:57) - Outro

Mar 25, 2024 • 27min
A Quick Word on Slice & Dice 3.0
Slice & Dice is a game that just keeps giving, and we don’t just mean incredible dice-rolling gameplay. Since we last covered Slice & Dice, it has received two major updates. As we prepare for our 400th episode, Nate & Laura put together a quick episode about what makes this game so great and why you should absolutely play the new release, even if it means begininng a new (or returning to) a major addiction.

Mar 19, 2024 • 55min
398: Home Safety Hotline
As we close in on Episode 400 (where did the time go?) Shane and Raygan are talking about weird-horror phone bank simulator Home Safety Hotline. Is that caller suffering from bedbugs, or Bed Teeth?Tagspodcast
(00:00) - Introduction
(28:50) - What's Making Us Happy This Week?
(28:59) - Shane - Shogun
(40:53) - Raygan - Delicious in Dungeon
(52:56) - Outro

Mar 11, 2024 • 49min
398: Grab Bag! Mario and More
This week we go rogue and chat about a whole bunch of games — Super Mario Wonder (short to mid-length), Helldivers 2 (long!), and an assortment of “daily games” (seconds to minutes!).

Mar 4, 2024 • 1h 10min
397: Balatro
A card based roguelike that is arguably related to Poker has been blowing up recently, so naturally we gave it a shot. Turns out, yeah, it’s good!

Feb 26, 2024 • 1h 7min
396: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Debatably a short game, but indisputably a classic. Raygan has played SotN many times but the rest of the crew is experiencing it for the first time. What will they make of this revolutionary 1997 PlayStation game?

Feb 19, 2024 • 1h 12min
395: Subpar Pool
Golf + pool + the developer behind holedown? Be still our hearts. Subpar Pool brings polish and charm to the (pool) table, with tons of variations and challenges to keep it fresh — we highly recommend you pick it up on mobile, Switch, or Steam. Plus, a tour of your hosts’ various attempts to play games in bars.

Feb 14, 2024 • 1h 17min
394: The Forever Labyrinth
When inkle drops a surprise release, we dive in — and this time, we dove into a maze of art from museums around the world. The Forever Labyrinth is a totally free, browser-based “replayable narrative rogue-like adventure” made in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture. In addition to reviewing the game, we took this as an excuse to talk about our favorite museum-going experiences and our feelings about corporate-sponsored games. (Encarta may also come up.)
Expect each run to take about twenty minutes, with multiple trips through to uncover more secrets.
(00:00) - Introduction
(01:02:35) - What’s Making Us Happy This Week?
(01:02:44) - Laura - Starter Villain by John Scalzi
(01:05:07) - Shane - Grand Tour Legends
(01:08:33) - Nate - Cheek Face
(01:11:55) - Outro

Feb 5, 2024 • 1h 11min
393: Gravity Circuit
Turns out all of us skipped the tutorial and (whaddayaknow!?) had a really hard time with the early hours of this retro action platformer. Don’t be like us! In the end though we all had a blast with this indie spin on Mega Man.
(00:00) - Gravity Circuit
(47:02) - What's Making Us Happy This Week?
(47:11) - Nate - Español!
(52:09) - Raygan - Void Stranger
(57:47) - Shane - Mudkip and the Uniball One P

Jan 30, 2024 • 1h 11min
392: Playdate Update
I can’t believe it’s been almost two years since we last talked about the Playdate, the cute little console with a crank. We start with an update on if/how we’re still playing out Playdates, and then talk about some of the games that have been turning our cranks lately.
(00:00) - Intro
(01:48) - Panic & Teenage Engineering
(06:23) - How's it holding up?
(14:34) - Root Bear
(17:16) - ✨ Catalog ✨
(22:44) - The Playdate Niche
(26:31) - Recommendation Dog
(29:05) - Real Steal
(32:47) - Space Rat Miner
(36:34) - Under The Castle
(39:03) - Ratcheteer
(45:41) - Demon Quest 85
(48:33) - Upcoming: Mars After Midnight
(50:40) - Spellcorked
(53:02) - Snak
(55:38) - Zipper
(58:08) - Omaze
(01:00:22) - France Horn
(01:01:31) - Paku Paku
(01:04:17) - Outro


