This week we’re talking about Human Resource Machine from The Tomorrow Corporation. The makers of Short Game favorites Little Inferno and World of Goo have returned last year with a game that is completely different from either of those. It’s a puzzle game in which you use basic programming to solve simple math problems, but we swear it’s more fun that that might make it sound! If you missed Human Resource Machine, now is a great time to give it a second look since it just received a terrific iOS port.

Human Resource Machine is available for Mac, PC, and Linux for $9.99 and on iOS for $4.99. It’s also available on the Wii U, and it has been a part of a couple of Humble Bundles, so check your Steam library! Expect the game to take between 5 and 8 hours.

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This week we are exploring the insanely varied world of indie game marketplace itch.io. Each of our hosts spent $5 on itch and played two or three games from a variety of vibrant micro-indie creators.

If you’re not familiar with Itch.io, it’s most easily summed up as “bandcamp for video games.” Anyone can post their work on Itch and create a custom store page to tell their story. Creators set prices, from zero to whatever they like, and everything works as a “suggested donation” so you can pay whatever you like above the creator-set minimum. It’s a great place for developers to share and sell their work, especially for games that might be too niche to get through a system like Steam Greenlight. Itch also does a wonderful job of fostering a community by featuring a parade of interesting stuff on their homepage and twitter account.

We discuss a bunch of games this week. We have gathered them together into a collection that you can view on itch.

Mentioned on The Short Game: An Itch.io Collection

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This week we played the infamously short game The Order: 1886. Can time (and bargain bin pricing) redeem this beautiful flop? The claws come out as out panel debates the good, the bad, and the artfully blurry of this Playstation exclusive third person shooter.

The Order is available physically or on PSN for $20 regular price, exclusively for PS4. Expect it to take between 7 and 10 hours to complete.

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This week we’re talking about Warbits, the long awaited iPhone game that captures the feeling (and many of the specific mechanics) of the popular portable turn based strategy Advance Wars. We discuss what makes Warbits so addictive, how it draws inspiration from its predecessors, and how it stakes out its own territory. We also talk about some of our other favorite asynchronous multiplayer games.

Warbits is available on the iOS App Store for $3.99.

Long time Advance Wars fans Raygan and Shane have been getting crushed by Advance Wars newcomer Nate all week. If you want to do the same, start a game with hashtag #shortgame.

Correction: Small World is only available for iPad, not both iPad and iPhone.

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This week we discuss Telltale’s mystery/noire adventure set in the Fables comic book universe, The Wolf Among Us. Released episodically starting in October 2013, this was Telltale’s follow-up to The Walking Dead. Now that the game has been out for more than two years (and ported to no less than nine platforms including PC/Mac, consoles, and iOS) we revisit this great story that many people (including us) sadly skipped.

The Wolf Among Us consists of five episodes, each about 90 minutes in length. No spoiler break in this episode as we only discuss events occurring in the first episode.

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