Everybody's Talking At Once

Esther Alter started out making games like Neocolonialism and No Pineapple Left Behind, which she now describes as "anti-fun." But her newest game PROĆEMON is unashemedly fun, in addition to being a thoughtful experiment in how far we can push procedural generation, and in what human-machine collaborations can looks like.

Here Esther talks about PROĆEMON in terms of its inspirations, its tech, and how it fits into her broader artistic practice—which spans tabletop RPGs, non-game technical experiments and tools, and short-form fiction (much of it profoundly and unmistakably Jewish).

PROĆEMON: You Must Catch Them is out now on Itch.io and Steam.

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• It's true enough that you wouldn't have read about MissingNo. in Nintendo Power at the time?though a year later, the hundredth issue did cover the Minus World in Super Mario Bros (a glitch that was then about a decade old).

• Here's Esther's talk about the life and death and slippery definiton of the indie game.

• Here's the collectable card game version of Pro?emon.

• And here are Other Covenants and "Cultureship."

"All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon.

Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Trevor Gureckis is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and an increasingly prominent voice in horror scoring?most recently, in the remake of DEAD SPACE, a project that aims to flesh out an already quite fleshy (in more ways than one) sort of narrative. Here Trevor talks about the intriguing weirdness of remakes, the joys of making plot and backstory elements visceral, and how he makes music sound otherworldly (again, in multiple senses of the word).

DEAD SPACE is out now on Steam, Epic, The EA App, Xbox Series X|S, and Playstation 5. Physical Collector's Editions are available at Limited Run Games.

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• Here's the episode of Right on Cue where Trevor talks about his time working for Philip Glass.

• The Crowded Room is due out on AppleTV+ sometime this year.

"All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon.

Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Garry Schyman isekais his way back to the show to forspeak about his work on FORSPOKEN—which is out today—as well as his other recent scores for Torn and Metamorphosis. (If you want to hear about his work on the BioShock trilogy and the Middle-earth duology, we'd direct you to Garry's previous appearance). Here we talk about the utility of tropes, the evocative power of tonality, and the unique pleasures of emotionally engaging blockbuster spectacles.

FORSPOKEN is out now for PC via Steam, Epic, and Xbox.com, and for Playstation 5.

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• Viola d'amore is a rad instrument indeed, with an awfully evocative sound to it.

• Here's a bit more from Garry and Mikolai on the Metamorphosis score.

• When Drew refers to music "theory," do always hear it in scare quotes. To say that "all theory comes from Bach" is obviously wrong on its face, but just as obviously right if you understand "music theory" as a synonym for the harmonic style of 18th century European musicians.

• Relevant videosmith Adam Neely would, by the way, probably refer to the triadic, sometimes jazz-adjacent dissonances we're discussing as "spicy" intonation.

• As per Wikipedia, "the game's writing team includes Gary Whitta, Amy Hennig, Allison Rymer, and Todd Stashwick."

• To be emphatically, pedantically clear, "nobody knows nothin" is a guiding principle for art, and even a wryly humble aphorism about reality generally?but when it comes to climate change, we actually know sort of a lot. "Nobody knows nothin" is about being suspicious of professed authority and received wisdom, but it shouldn't curdle into spitefully ignoring genuine expertise.

• Here's the story of how a cancelled DLC for Final Fantasy XV became Project Athia, which eventually got retitled as (you guessed it) FORSPOKEN.

Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Before we dive into this year's interviews, we thought we'd take stock of last year's, as has become tradition here on the 'cast?connect a few dots, and provide a sort of a digest for anyone who's missed some (or all!) of our 2022 episodes, and for first-time listeners.

So join us once again as Drew plays some clips from the shows we've done this year, some lovely bits of music from the games we've talked about, and some scratchy old 78s besides.

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Header image from The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe.

Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Another year, and another 'cast in which to review said year. For (somehow!) the first time ever, Drew, Lucio, Franny, and L are all together to talk about what they've played, what they haven't, and what they're planning on playing?that last category covering both stuff that's currently in their to-read piles, and stuff that'll be out next year and beyond. (Soon, Tears of the Kingdom).

SPOILERS for the ending of the first rebooted God of War from 25:22 to 26:28.

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• Potion Craft is not yet on Switch, nor is it on Playstation, but it's coming to both.

• Here are some details on the $520,000,000 Epic will have to pay for their various evil monetization shit (our verbiage, not the Federal Trade Commission's).

• Here's Drew's piece of about Dad of Boy, and Mark Brown's video about Dadr?k.

• L talked a bunch about Arceus in our first Quarterly of 2022.

• Here's Josh Sawyer's thread about all the folks who worked on Pentiment.

• Drew threw some money at a Digital Eclipse investment campaign earlier this year?and the day after we recorded this episode, Digital Eclipse revealed that Atari 50 was the first game they'd developed using the money from that campaign. Drew's praise for the game was sincere, but we did want to go ahead and be transparent, this being the golden age of shilling and all.

• Additional to-reads for Drew include NORCO, Citizen Sleeper, Tinykin, Chained Echoes, Steelrising, 古剑奇谭三, Heavenly Bodies, and Butterfly Soup 2. Because we're continuing to do the quarterlies, we can give these the attention they deserve when the time is right.

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Drew here, with an update. At the time I recorded this episode, I was not aware of A.M. Darke's accusations against Zack Johnson. Among the numerous reasons this sucks (though by no means the most important one) is that it's embarrassing. Research is something I'm generally pretty good at, so missing a serious matter mentioned on the first page of Google results about the person I was interviewing, and on his studio's Wikipedia page, is beyond dumb.

The thing is, I don't usually start out by Googling the guest, in this fallen age of SEO-optimized hyperspam. Rather, I start by seeking out their other podcast appearances on ListenNotes, and then their conference talks on YouTube. I read as much of what they've written as I can (which can be a lot of material, especially for someone like Zack, who's been exorbitantly online for about two decades). Most importantly, I play through the game we're going to talk about?in this case, a pretty long game, which I squeezed in while visiting family over the holidays.

None of this is an excuse for missing something that was and is both important and obvious. Nor is the fact that I'm a one-person production team, nor that I was working on the show during a busy time. All of that is, obviously, on me.

The point is just to make it clear that I simply, genuinely, fucked up. I apologize to anyone who felt uncomfortable being associated with the show as a result of my doing so, and I've taken the episode down.

It would be quite the understatement to say that things have changed in VR in the six years Anton Hand has been working on Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades. Companies have entered and exited. Platforms have risen and fallen. Things have gotten vastly stupider in various ways—but all while VR enthusiasts have carved out fascinating niches. VRChat is one. PC VR gaming is another, replete with wild little subcultures and big, ambitious experiments.

In this episode, Anton physics-flops on by to talk about how his studio RUST LTD. came to be, what they're saying with their expansive, lushly simulationist VR opus about guns and hot dogs, and why they're not working with Facebook (like, ever).

Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades is currently in Early Access on Steam.

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• It's sort of correct to say that you can get Overwatch 2 skins faster by playing World of Warcraft instead, as Polygon reported.

• The most recent Science Vs about gun violence has a good summary (with sources) of what objectively works, gun control-wise, and why the U.S. almost certainly won't do any of it.

• The John Brown Gun Club is worth knowing about.

• Here's the absolutely fucking ridiculous cover of Time Magazine featuring Oculus founder Palmer Luckey posing on a pretend beach with faux-balletic physical implausibly.

Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Robert Boyd takes our stage to talk about This Way Madness Lies, his studio's new "Shakespeare-themed magical girl JRPG" (a thing that there ought to be more of). The game isn't exactly faithful to its source material—but then, Shakespeare was never all that faithful to his, either. Frankly, we'll take enthusiasm and curiosity over reverence any old day.

Here Robert talks about his long history in the indie JRPG space, and his longer history with the JRPG genre—he once endeavored to play them all, back when that felt possible—as well as comedy in games, and the the unique all-ages appeal of what he calls "wholesome horror."

This Way Madness Lies is out now on Steam.

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• Here's Let's Mosey: A Slow Translation of Final Fantasy VII.

• There is indeed a fan translation of Bish?jo Senshi Sailor Moon: Another Story for the SNES.

• Steam Coupons? Totally still a thing, technically.

• It was indeed Erick Wolpaw who said,

So I'd really like to make a really credible comedy game. People seem to be skipping straight to the pure art, and yet nobody's made the Caddyshack in games yet, right? So I'm like, woah woah woah, let's put on the brakes — let's make Caddyshack, and then we can make Anna Karenina or whatever.

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Johnny Liu schools us on the history of Chinese RPGs in general, and the long-running, massively impactful 仙劍奇俠傳 series in particular. It's been called Sword & Fairy in the West (when it isn't being called Chinese Paladin), but that title doesn't fully capture what these games have to offer?and that simple fact serves as a great jumping-off point to talk about translation, cultural specificity, cultural exchange, and a whole games canon that has remained largely invisible outside of the Sinosphere, even after the immense success of Genshin Impact.

Path of Wuxia is currently in Early Access on Steam.

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• Uma Musume: Pretty Derby is indeed a trip.

• Here's that piece that Drew mentions, about the history of Chinese RPGs.

• Between the Internet Archive and ROMHacking.net (two of the finest sites to ever exist), you should be able to get the original Sword & Fairy running in English with minimal effort and Johnny's Let's Play videos do indeed make for great supplement, filling in the nuances that the (nonetheless commendable!) fan translation will tend to elide.

• Here are our referred-to talks with Jessica Gonzalez, Aaron Nemoyten, and Aidan Moher.

Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Drew, Lucio, and L check in on what they've been playing these past few months. Splatoon 3 naturally comes up, as does Drew's continuing project to catch up on Final Fantasy XIV. Meanwhile, L has been messing around with her new Steam Deck, so prepare to hear about Rune Factory, about Capybara Spa, and (whisper it) about exploring older games via emulation. (The Steam Deck is excellent for that, even unto Valve themselves occasionally forgetting to pretend otherwise).

Ah, but the main event just might be the Drew and Lucio losing their minds (all over again) at the ill-advisedly twist-centric narrative of A Way Out—so MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING OF A WAY OUT FROM 0:55:55 to 1:02:21, and a callback thereto from 1:13:54 to 01:14:26.

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• At time of posting, you can in fact just go ahead and order a Steam Deck. The Playdate still involves a waitlist, however.

• You can hear L eating babka at a few points in this episode. In her defense, Drew makes truly superlative babka. (Here's what she was referencing at the end, by the way).

• Here's our streaming series with Lucio and Drew playing It Takes Two.

• Dr. Holmes, the kinky, unwieldable lategame paramour-armament in Boyfriend Dungeon (designed by Ikumi "It's Spooky" Nakamura) is in fact a whip. Drew was conflating them with Rowan (who is a Scythe, and a bit spooky besides). The ETAO Podcast regrets the error.

• Also! Drew wrote a bit about camp-adjacent appreciation of games a while back.

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