Moving Pixels Podcast

As we are wont to do on occasion on the podcast, we decided to play through a few little indie titles that are available for free online, which you can find through the following links: Serena, Glitchhikers, and A Dark Room.

Not everything free is good, of course, but at least one of these titles may be a game of the year contender.

Supergiant Games created an indie sensation with its 2011 game, Bastion. As a result, this year's follow up, Transistor, had to contend with some big expectations from fans of the first game.

This week we discuss Transistor and how it measures up to its older sibling.

In truth, there is very little that is happy in the neon noir fairy tale world of The Wolf Among Us. However, the penultimate chapter of Telltale's adaptation of the Fables comic book series to video game form is a quieter and more subdued one.

This week we discuss the possible success or failure of that quiet as the drama of the game moves towards its final act.

While Telltale Games released the fourth episode of the second season of The Walking Dead a couple of weeks ago, we want to spare you spoilers for the most recent episode. Instead, we're talking about the middle episode "In Harm's Way" this week.

So, take a look back with us at Clementine's confrontation with the villainous Carver and his totalitarian approach to the zombie apocalypse.

The surreal world of Kentucky Route Zero continues to fascinate and confound with the release of its third act.

This episode we discuss this act along with the interlude between it and the previous one, The Entertainment.

Not since Sid Meier's Pirates! has there been a pirate game as engrossing as Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.

This week we discuss the most recent Assassin's Creed, its place in the history of the Assassin's Creed series, and why sailing the Caribbean with Edward Kenway has reinvigorated our interest in this annual series.

Having reached its midway point, The Wolf Among Us forces its protagonist to confront his relationship to the economic forces that are causing Fabletown society to unravel.

This episode we discuss Bigby's and our own complicity with those forces.

We hate them. We love them. We complete them, except when we don't complete them. What makes the side quest so agonizing, yet so alluring?

Following up on our previous discussion of Simogo's quirky iOS title, Device 6, this week we take a look at Simogo's other little game about exploration, Year Walk.

While the two games share an interest in how players are presented with and interact with virtual spaces, a commitment to to a unique aesthetic, and a quirky and unusual world marked by puzzles and riddles, the two games definitely do not so obviously resemble one another in other ways. Gone is the maze of textuality that defines Device 6. Instead, the player explores a barren Northern European landscape in an effort to perform a ritual ages old.

This week we discuss the similarities and differences between the two games as well as what makes Year Walk a particularly compelling game world to explore in its own right.

This week we take a look at the twisty textual passages of Device 6. Device 6 treats text as a location and loses its players in the puzzling act of interpretation.