Virginia is a “first person interactive drama” that tells a mysterious story of an FBI agent on her first. It’s most notable for its unusual editing style, inspired by film and the game Thirty Flights of Loving. It’s also one of the most critically controversial games of the year. Some reviewers showered it in praise (Time Magazine included it on its Game of the Year list 2016) while others dismissed it or gave it poor reviews. (Its Steam user reviews have trended from Mixed to Negative.)

Raygan loved this game, Laura hated it, and Nate and Shane fell somewhere in between. One of our most interesting discussions in a while! Stick around after the spoiler break at 37:33 for a discussion of the mysteries and symbols of the game.

Virginia is available on Steam as well as PS4 and Xbox One for $9.99. Expect it to take an hour and a half to two hours to complete.

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• (00:00) - Pre-Spoiler Discussion

Severed is a dungeon crawling touch-based action RPG by Guacamelee! developer Drinkbox Studios. First released as a Playstation Vita exclusive, it has since been released on iOS, Android, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U. (We suggest the iOS or Vita versions.) It’s a worthy follow-up to Guacamelee (though very different!) and an all around great game that will take you 7 to 9 hours to complete.

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IFComp, the annual interactive fiction competition, has come to a close and we’re discussing the results. How did your favorites do?

We covered many of the games in this year’s competition in our two earlier episodes:

IFComp 2016 Results

Main Voting

5th Place: 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds by Abigail Corfman

Miss Congeniality

3rd Place: Detectiveland by Robin Johnson

Golden Banana of Discord

A Time of Tungsten by Devin Raposo

Links of note:

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• (00:00) - Intro

This week your intrepid hosts fly through the galaxy rescuing space-bunnies in Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. Does this couch co-op set our hearts aflutter? Or are we hardened to the charms of neon and techno?

Oh, we’re definitely aflutter.

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime was developed by Asteroid Base, and is available on consoles (PS4, Xbox One) and Steam/DRM-free (PC, Mac, and Linux). It typically retails for around $15 (though you may already have a copy from Humble Bundle 17.)

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Shane bought a PSVR and The Short Game leaves boring old reality behind. We give our impressions of the hardware, and discuss which of the launch games might be interesting to Short Game listeners.

Links for this episode:

VR Games discussed:

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