Welcome to 2026! We chat about some experiences we've had since the holiday break - Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at Disneyland for Justin, while Andy gives the lowdown about the Sundance Film Festival in 2026 and we chat about the beauty of discovering new things we love. Gaming wise, we talk Expedition 33, Pokemon and Animal Crossing, touch upon Highguard and the newly announced Horizon Hunters Gathering. Finally, we do a deep dive on our Fantasy Critic Games league draft and teams for 2026.

Our first guest! Nic McConnell of Instruction Derby fame joins us to chat about what we've been up to lately, old school instruction manuals, what goes into Age Rating games as well as throw in some indie game recommendations and predict who will take home the Game Award for Indies!

https://bsky.app/profile/mcconnell.bsky.social

Fun episode this week as we talk: KAWS exhibit at the SF MOMA, King of the Hill, Easy Come, Easy Golf, The Plucky Squire. The Game Award nominees just came out and we go category by category picking our favorites!

This week we chat Daft Punk, Halloween, Dispatch, Pokemon Legends Z-A, and BALL X PIT. We also talk about a Circana study on the number of games different players buy per year and then delve into how we discover games recently and live react to our Steam Calendar Browsing lists.

We talk their recent gaming experiences with Deltarune and Hades 2, delve into the importance of game preservation, and Andy share insights on the wonders of attending a film festival.

First episode! We introduce ourselves and talk music festival experiences alongside what we've been playing (Hades 2 / Consume Me and more!). Justin also runs down some of the big highlights from State of Play September 2025