Unarchived podcast

In this first special episode of Season 5 of the Unarchived podcast, Dr. Alexander Hurezeanu interviews Dr. Bryan Hikari Hartzheim, Associate Professor in the Graduate School of International Culture and Communication Studies at Waseda University, Japan (https://www.waseda.jp/fire/gsiccs/faculty-en/2022/07/06/6423/). Dr. Hartzheim’s research focuses on Japanese popular and digital culture, and he is the author of Hideo Kojima Progressive Game Design from Metal Gear to Death Stranding (2023), part of the Influential Video Game Designers series published by Bloomsbury Academic.

In this interview, Dr. Hartzheim and Dr. Hurezeanu discuss the field Japanese game studies, Hideo Kojima, and Japanese indie games.

Summertime is almost upon us, and it’s time for the Unarchived podcast team to take a break and get away--for road trips, excursions, and outdoor recreations, be they relaxing, interminable, or perilous! In this special episode of the Unarchived podcast, each panelist recommends a game of their choosing that involves a journey, a getaway, a summer(ish) pastime, or maybe just a space, physical or mental, to chill out. Members of the team are off to Hawk Peak Provincial Park to take *A Short Hike*, get behind the steering wheel for a somewhat grueling road trip in Eastern Europe in *Jalopy*, climb on a speeder-bike to take a voyage of self-discovery in the desert in *Sable*, and visit the charming seaside village of Fulworth in Sussex to attend *The Beekeeper's Picnic*.

(Photo by janis blums on Unsplash)

Cardboard Computer’s Kentucky Route Zero is an episodic tale featuring an eclectic range of characters drawn into a truck driver’s quest to make a final delivery. The game is set along a predominantly rural stretch of Interstate 65 in Kentucky, which is the main road on the game’s map. The area covered by the map has as its centre Mammoth Cave National Park. The game essentially is in the form of a road trip, a quest, an odyssey. The work takes inspiration from fiction, from theatre, from film, and from early computer games: it is an unabashedly artistic work. Some issues this episode explores is Kentucky Route Zero's quality as a game, as a story, and as a work of art: what kind of game play does it offer? Does it have a story to tell, and if so, what is it? Is it an exemplar of the claim that games can be art?

Blue Prince by Dogubomb is an enigmatic and unique puzzle game that blends elements of classic point-and-click computer adventure games like Riven and Myst with the complex drafting and resource management systems found in many tabletop strategy board and card games. At the outset of Blue Prince, this unique combination of gameplay mechanics is structured over a whimsical (sometimes darkly whimsical) narrative framework. You play as a teenager who inherits a mysterious mansion from an estranged, eccentric relative. However, your inheritance comes with a strange caveat. Before you can truly claim this 45-room house and the surrounding estate as your own, you must first find its elusive 46th room. But as the player begins to unravel this architectural mystery, they will soon find themselves pulling on other narrative threads, leading to a deeper—sometimes seemingly bottomless—well of questions, about the family who built this estate, about the world they inhabit, its geography, its politics, its religions, its entire history.

Outer Wilds by Mobius Digital is an exploration-based adventure game set in a cozy, at times confusing, and often dangerous solar system that the player soon discovers only has 22 minutes left to exist. However, the player is stuck in a time loop, which results in their restarting those same 22 minutes over and over again. Will that be enough time for the player to uncover the secrets of a lost civilization and perhaps save the solar system? In many ways, the mystique and success of Outer Wilds comes from the ways it blends seemingly contradictory gameplay elements and playstyles into something that feels surprising and new. Outer Wilds somehow builds a narrative that spans 300,000 years, out of gameplay sessions that always take place during the same 22 minute span of time. How it presents an ordered, clockwork solar system that, from afar, seems to spin and move in a predictable fashion, but underneath, is composed of chaotic physics. And the way the game is completely devoid of combat or conflict, but still the player-character is threatened by powerful, violent forces. Outer Wilds has grown beyond its own game, and its paratext now includes hundreds—probably thousands—of video essays that dig deep into the game, unpacking its complex plot, and often sharing profoundly personal stories of their own experiences playing.

Silent Hill f, a psychologically dense entry in the Silent Hill series that relocates the franchise’s signature anxieties from late-20th-century New England to mid-20th-century Japan, exploring Showa-era expectations around purity, obedience, marriageability, and reputation though the life of its main character, High school student Shimizu Hinako. The game literalizes those pressures as floral, fibrous horror growing through a town and a teenage girl’s life, using social horror—bullying, communal shame, adult euphemisms—to make the supernatural feel like an extension of everyday control. This makes the game a fascinating but challenging fit for the classroom.

Inspired by liminal space aesthetics, Pools (2024) is a first-person exploration game set in a bewildering, seemingly endless complex of swimming pools. Pools is a minimalist game—there's no heads-up display or status bar, no dialogue, no clear objectives, no monsters, no NPCs, no dialogue, no text, no soundtrack, no death, no puzzles, no resource gathering, no inventory, no tools, no quests. You can look around, walk (or run), crouch, swim, and that’s it. The game also resists traditional narrative expectations in favor of affective atmosphere, subtle unease, and uncanny nostalgia.

Disco Elysium is a unique role-playing game that blends thoughtful storytelling, detective work, and philosophical exploration. Set in a sprawling, crumbling city called Revachol, the player controls a hard-boiled detective who wakes up with amnesia and no memory of who he is. The game’s story revolves around solving a murder mystery, but its true focus is on the player character’s internal struggle and attempts to situate himself in the world of Elysium’s complex political, social, and existential movements.

In The Witness, the player wanders around a mysterious and gorgeous island solving increasingly complex line-drawing puzzles. But is that all there is to the game? What about the statues and audio logs that are to be found all over the island? Is there a story or message in The Witness?

All audio clips in the podcast quoted from The Witness. Opening and closing theme music: “Magic Escape Room” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.