From Flying to Fleas, this week we’re just about some of our favorite mechanics from the many games we’ve covered over the years.

• (02:29) - Charms from Hollow Knight

South Scrimshaw is uses the visual novel form to do something very unusual: a science fiction nature documentary. Using hundreds of beautiful bespoke watercolor and ink illustrations, South Scrimshaw tells the story of a whale calf on an alien world as it is born and travels with its in injured mother across dangerous seas. It’s one of the most artistically beautiful games we’ve played, and it’s available on Steam and itch.io completely free. Expect it to take about one to two hours to completely experience.

• (00:00) - South Scrimshaw Part One

Hope you’re hungry… for narrative fiction! This week we’re dealing with dosas and building biriyanis in Venba. It’s a story-driven cooking game centered on a South Indian family living in Canada. Expect it to take an hour to an hour and a half, depending on your culinary skill and reading speed.

• (00:00) - Venba

We’re finally playing this long anticipated first person puzzler. (No Shane you can’t call the genre a “Portalortal”.) It’s a breezy but inventive and incredibly well executed exploration of perspective. We wrap up with one of the best Making Me Happy segments in ages!

• (00:00) - Viewfinder

Laura and Raygan are back to talk about a very Night in the Woods inspired narrative adventure game that focuses on the medical industry. Fall of Porcupine follows new intern Finley (a big-eyed pigeon, did I mention they’re all animals in this?) as he navigates professional and moral difficulties working at the only hospital in rural Porcupine. Great conversation about this unusual game. Finally, in What’s Making Us Happy This Week, Laura and Raygan both unpack from their travels.

• (00:00) - Fall of Porcupine

Shane and Nate take on a bizarre mission full of pizza, dice, and pizza dice in Cosmo D’s Betrayal at Club Low. It’s a unique RPG set in the same surreal world as Cosmo D’s other games Off-Peak, The Norwood Suite, and Tales From Off-Peak City Vol. 1. but requires no knowledge of those games. It feels like a perfect homage to the short, punchy zine tabletop RPGs that inspired it.

Club Low is available on PC, Mac, and Linux, via both Steam and Itch.io. Expect it to take around 3 hours to complete, with multiple endings possible.

• (00:00) - Intro

If you saw the title of this episode and thought “What? Tears of the Kingdom? On The Short Game podcast?!” then dear listener so did I. No, we’re not making some tortured argument for how this is actually a short game (though it can be completed in under an hour.) No, Laura and Raygan were traveling this week and Shane and Nate just had a lot to say about everyone’s favorite unofficial Kerbal Space Program sequel. It was a great conversation, and we’ll be back to our usual deal soon!

• (00:00) - Tears of the Kingdom

This week we check in on the last year or so of releases on Apple Arcade, and mostly what we find are a bunch of ports of good Short Game games and an excellent coloring book app for toddlers, plus a car with legs! We also take the opportunity to talk about the latest news in the weird world of Apple and gaming. Is the Apple Vision Pro going to be any good for games? Does the Game Porting Toolkit hold out any hope for running real game-ass games on Macs?

• (00:00) - Introduction

This week, for the first time, we’re covering a rom hack. A Plumber For All Seasons is a Super Mario World rom hack that is an almost total conversion of the game. 37 original levels, custom hand made graphics, an original soundtrack, and more make this feel like a true sequel to SMW rather than just a level pack. It’s a project that took rom hacker Eric Kaiser nearly a decade to complete, and it’s an incredible labor of love.

Links for this episode:

A Plumber for All Seasons 

Thread on SMWCentral.net 

SMWCentral beginners guide 

Online Rom Patcher 

Psychonauts 2 Documentary 

The Bobiverse Books 

The Lyttle Lytton Contest 

• (00:00) - A Plumber for All Seasons

Editor’s note: If your episode has gaps/silence around the 16 minute mark, please delete and re-download the episode. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Laura has been telling us all about Fallen London, the cult interactive fiction browser game from Failbetter Games, for nearly a decade. It’s a vast and varied game centered around the Fallen London setting: a cosmic-horror tinged world where Victorian London fell into the earth and its denizens have been forced to adapt to a new and disturbing world. 

After producing two other games set in the world of Fallen London, Sunless Seas and Sunless Skies, Failbetter has turned its attention to romance. Mask of the Rose is nominally a “dating sim” set immediately after the fall, and working as a sort of prequel to all other Fallen London properties. 

Does this game work as an introduction to this decade-long cross-media property? Does it work for long time devotees?

• (00:00) - Mask of the Rose