Webbed from Sbug Games is a puzzle platformer starring a charming little spider on a quest to save her boyfriend. It has incredible movement and webbing mechanics, and fantastic animation (all those legs!) but suffers from some early game pacing issues. We discuss why we loved the game, and how to get past some of the early game hurdles and into the fun stuff quickly.

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

• (00:00) - Webbed

The biggest surprise of Wonder Labyrinth is that it was made at all. Team Ladybug‘s 5-10 hour Symphony of the Night clone inspired game is based on a nearly forgotten early anime property, yet released in the year 2021. If you ignore the minimal but mostly unintelligible story content, this is a really good metroidvania in the direct lineage of the Koji Igarashi Castlevanias. It’s available on Windows, Switch, PS4/5, and Xbox One/Series, and is included in Game Pass.

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane
• Nate Heininger – @natestl
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

ElecHead is a little robot with a high voltage head. Touch any surface to electrify it, or throw your head to electrify things at a distance, but pick it up in 10 seconds or explode! That’s the whole premise of this clever and breezy puzzle platformer from Japanese indie dev NamaTakahasi.

Stick around after for one of my favorite ”What’s Making Us Happy This Week” segments in a while

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane
• Nate Heininger – @natestl
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

• (00:00) - Introduction

Tux & Fanny began as a 2019 film by Albert Birney, released in parts on Instagram and as a feature-length film on Vimeo. Barney has since developed the idea into a video game that mixes the quirky oddness of the film with an almost bottomless well of lavish but incongruous inclusions. Full of delightful one-time throwaway mechanics and unnecessarily fleshed out mini-games, Tux and Fanny begins as a parody (?) of traditional point and click adventure games, but ends up something completely different and unique. Tux & Fanny is available on Nintendo Switch and for Mac/PC on itch.io, for $10. Expect it to take around 6-8 hours to complete, but if you decide to read the unabridged copy of Moby Dick included in the game it could be a bit longer.

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Nate Heininger – @natestl
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

• (00:00) - Tux & Fanny

This week we’re talking about Sable, a long-in-development open world coming-of-age story set on a beautiful but desolate alien planet. Afterward, in the What’s Making Us Happy segment, Shane has very bad opinions about the execrable M. Night Shyamalan movie Old.

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane

• (00:00) - Sable

Word games are ubiquitous, and almost universally short, but most are too slight to make for a full Short Game episode. This week we’re starting by discussing the virally popular Wordle, then moving on to talk about our favorite word games over the years.

For Patrons, check the Patreon exclusive feed for a separate recording of Nate and Laura playing Shane’s “Guessing Game!”

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane
• Nate Heininger – @natestl
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

• (00:00) - Wordle

We are pondering our orb this week, with Shane and Raygan talking about Exo One, a game that is hard to describe as anything other than “Flappy Bird meets 2001: A Space Odyssey“ in 3D.

We also launched our new questions segment, so skip to the 39 minutes or use the chapter marker for that if you want! Let us know if you have a question for the show, or if you think we should put the Questions segment before the main discussion (Raygan hasn’t quite made up his mind.)

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane

• (00:00) - Exo One

Our slightly belated GOTY 2021 episode is here, and we’re honoring our favorite games of this complicated year. (If you’re a patron, you can also tune in for our unedited horse-trading and planning session in the Patreon podcast feed!)

Thanks for sticking with us in 2021. We’re looking forward to a bright 2022!

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane
• Nate Heininger – @natestl
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

• (00:00) - Intro

It’s absolutely inconceivable that we have been doing this for 300 episodes. We’re celebrating this milestone by answering your questions and a few of our own, and generally just hanging out. Thank you!

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane
• Nate Heininger – @natestl
• Laura Nash – @laurajnash

• (00:00) - It’s Episode 300!

We’re still talking about Inscryption, a game that… well there’s a lot to talk about here.

Next week is episode 300!!

The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Your hosts this week were:

• Raygan Kelly – @raygank
• Shane Kelly – @8bitShane
• Nate Heininger – @natestl