Kritiqal Care

Colin (he/they) of melessthanthree makes crunchy action games about catholic guilt and queer acceptance. He joined me to talk about early adventures goofing off in coding class, bucking publisher marketability, and Lucah: Born of a Dream’s intriguing and often confounding narrative structure. Later on we dig into the ethics of violent games and appreciate the eternal charm of Lord of the Rings.

You can find Colin on Twitter @melessthanthree and play Lucah on Steam, itch, and Switch.

Colin’s Good Thing to Share

Things Discussed

Kritiqal Care is produced by me, Nate Kiernan, with music by Desired. It's available on Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, consider sharing it with a loved one and becoming a supporter on Patreon. It means a lot.

Indie game dev and co-found of Abyssal Uncreations, Hyacinth Nil (they/them) makes games about cosmic horror, broken technology, and how the internet manufactures identity. They took some time to walk me through their early efforts of longform LARPs as a kid, looking back on Transfer (Abyssal Uncreations, 2017), and the ways systematized morality reveals the empty politics of many games.

You can follow Hyacinth on Twitter @Synodai, play their games on itch, and catch their streams on Twitch.

Hyacinth’s Good Thing to Share

Link Zone

Kritiqal Care is produced by me, Nate Kiernan, with music by Desired. It's available on Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, consider sharing it with a loved one and becoming a supporter on Patreon. It means a lot.

Content warning for this episode: brief discussions of surgery complications, suicidal thoughts, and misgendering

Taylor McCue (choosing not to disclose pronouns) is a game developer whose work explores trans identities, bodily autonomy, and the dehumanizing impact of institutions. We discussed the flawed act of asking for pronouns, what led Taylor to make games, and the using Gameboy ROMs as a form of preservation. It’s a bit heavier than most episodes, but I feel well worth digging into.

Taylor’s games are available on itch and Steam.

Taylor’s Good Thing to Share

Things Discussed

Kritiqal Care is produced by me, Nate Kiernan, with music by Desired. It's available on Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, consider sharing it with a loved one and becoming a supporter on Patreon. It means a lot.

Kritiqal Care is taking a break for the holidays but I still wanted to put up one final episode to close out such a strange and intense year. Games took a lot of different forms this year and the way we approached them was even more varied than usual, so instead of a traditional games-of-the-year list I thought it would be fun to ask the guests of Kritiqal Care to look back on their favorite game related moments from the year - whether that’s something they played, read, created, or otherwise experienced. The responses were thoughtful, warm, and compelling, and I want to once again thank everyone who has made this show such a constant highlight for me. Happy holidays, stay warm out there.

content warning: mention of suicide in a game around 15:00-17:30

Featuring

Kritiqal Care is produced by me, Nate Kiernan, with music by Desired. It's available on Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, consider sharing it with a loved one and becoming a supporter on Patreon. It means a lot.

Dave Gilbert (he/him) is the founder and head of Wadjet Eye Games, creators of numerous modern adventure game classics including Unavowed (Wadjet Eye, 2018) and the Blackwell Saga. Dave stopped in to discuss the studio’s history, moving into publishing, and the emotionally intense experience of closing out Rosa Blackwell and Joey’s story with The Blackwell Epiphany (Wadjet Eye, 2014). Come for the indie lore, stay for Adventure Game Studio haystack hacks.

You can follow Dave on Twitter @WadjetEyeGames, join the studio Discord, and find all their games at wadjeteyegames.com

Dave’s Inspiring Thing to Share

Things Discussed

Kritiqal Care is produced by me, Nate Kiernan, with music by Desired. It's available on Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, consider sharing it with a loved one. It means a lot.

Kaile Hultner (they/them) created No Escape as a response to games media pretending video games are exempt from politics. They write about games as cultural objects, journalistic ethics, and the need to engage with the economic and labor forces which bring games about. Kaile joins me on this episode to dive into their philosophy of how to write about games, the need for games journalists to adopt ethics standards, and how good it is that you can pet the eagle in The Pathless (Giant Squid, 2020). It’s a longer episode, but well worth the time.

You can follow Kaile on Twitter @noescapevg and checkout their work at noescapevg.com.

Things Discussed

Kritiqal Care is produced by me, Nate Kiernan, with music by Desired. It's available on Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, consider sharing it with a loved one. It means a lot.

DEEP HELL is a games crit portal focusing on the ways we engage with games and the troubling lessons games often teach us. I’m joined by the sites primary author, Skeleton (they/them), to discuss the site’s identity, our frustrations with the state of games writing (go away Kotaku), and the importance of building alternative media that is not embedded with advertising and a callous middle-class aesthetic. Later on Skeleton dives into what they’ve been playing, and we close on a more hopeful note about the many insightful writers who have begun appearing in recent years.

You can follow Skeleton and Deep Hell on Twitter @DEEPHELLDOTCOM and support the site on Patreon.

Skeleton’s Inspiring Thing to Share

Things Discussed

What Skeleton has been playing

Kritiqal Care is produced by me, Nate Kiernan, with music by Desired. It's available on Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, consider sharing it with a loved one. It means a lot.

Oma Keeling (they/them) is an experimental game designer and critic. Their work explores queer history, poetry, and punk art in ways that are messy, inspiring, and often hard to explain. Oma joined me to discuss their early games work at art school, the complicated relationship games have to history, and how they seem to keep making games about falling in love with vehicles.

You can follow Oma on Twitter @OKthanksgames, find their writing @GlitchOutMain, and play their games on itch.

Oma's Inspiring Thing to Share

Things Discussed

Kritiqal Care is produced by me, Nate Kiernan, with music by Desired. It's available on Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, consider sharing it with a loved one. It means a lot.

The Off-Score Project is an interactive album released track by track that transforms singer-songwriter jazz into playable vignettes. I've been intrigued by the project since playing the opening track, Copy Machine, and was so glad to have the opportunity to speak with its dev team trio: YenTing Lo (she/her) whose music forms the basis of each game, Vanja Mrgan (he/him) who produces art and contributes to design, Ferran Bertomeu Castells (he/him) who handles programming along with design. We dive into the origins of The Off-Score Project back in 2017, the trade-offs of having already recorded all the music, and how the team is hoping to encourage listeners to think more intently about music as a storytelling device.

You can play The Off-Score Project on itch and follow updates on Twitter @OffScoreProject. Ferran is on Twitter @fonserbc, Vanja @Vmrgan, and YenTing @YenTingLo. You can also checkout more of Vanja's art on Instragram @vanjamrgan, and find YenTing's music on Bandcamp or wherever you get music (she also streams music regularly on Twitch).

Hopeful Things to Share

Things Discussed

Kritiqal Care is produced by me, Nate Kiernan, with music by Desired. It's available on Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, consider sharing it with a loved one. It means a lot.

Maria Mison (she/they) is a multi-disciplinary artist and tabletop game designer based in the Philippines. They makes games exploring identity, trauma, self-expression, and doing difficult things, as well as the form games can take and our relationship to cultural symbols. They join me to talk about their prolific first year as a game designer, the way games help inform their theater and dance practice, and the importance of taking care of your players, before enthusiastically closing out on our shared love of shōnen manga boys.

You can find Maria's games on itch, follow them on Twitter @MariaMison, and support them on Patreon.

Maria's Good Thing to Share

Things Discussed

Kritiqal Care is produced by me, Nate Kiernan, with music by Desired. It's available on Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, consider sharing it with a loved one. It means a lot.