Wide Flank: Happy Gaming

It’s another New Cool, the Wide Flank show where Alon and Sean bring each other a New and/or Cool gaming-adjacent topic to talk about!

In this episode, Alon gets physiological and talks about sticking his tongue out while playing games and then Sean talks about the ultimate TV series; Survivor.

Next week will be a Dev Talk with Merritt K about her upcoming game Fledgling Manor!

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Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro and Admin

02:57 - Alon’s topic: Tongue (weird)

16:39 - Sean’s topic: Survivor (TV series)

38:49 - Outro

Show notes:

Peanuts tongue comic: https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1963/02/03

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Support us, get extra content, and help us pay for games and stuff at: https://www.patreon.com/wideflank

Join the Wide Flank discord!!! https://discord.gg/ACbDjNhMpJ

All Wide Flank links: https://linktr.ee/wideflank

“A surge of salt-kissed air fills your lungs, as waves rise to meet you. The horizon blurs, a distant dream, as your ski cuts through the surf, riding tides woven from speed, light, and water.”

Please enjoy this 100% free preview of the Patreon-exclusive Wide Flank program GLHF, wherein Sean and Alon go mask-off and discuss a given month's upcoming Game Club game after playing it for like an hour.

They're also allowed to ramble, tell stories, and talk about assorted other stuff that would never in one hundred million years make it to a main feed episode.

tl;dr – it's bonus content

Join the Patreon for the full episodes of GLHF: https://www.patreon.com/wideflank

Come on down to the Discord to play along and discuss the upcoming Game Club: https://discord.gg/ACbDjNhMpJ

Here's every other link you could need under the sun: https://linktr.ee/wideflank

Good Luck... Have Fun!

Sean and Alon sit down with Francisco González of Grundislav Games to explore the world of point-and-click adventure games like Rosewater. Francisco shares stories and insights from his early days as a gamer to his journey as a game designer.

Check out the Rosewater Demo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1226670/Rosewater/

Check out Francisco’s work at: https://www.grundislav.games/

Support Wide Flank and help us pay for games and stuff at: https://www.patreon.com/wideflank

Join the Wide Flank discord!!! https://discord.gg/ACbDjNhMpJ

All Wide Flank links: https://linktr.ee/wideflank

Sean and Alon bite hard and dig deep into the seminal survival horror classic.

How does the game render reality? What’s at the core of the franchise? Why is your health never “good”?

You have once again entered the world of survival horror. Good luck!

Tune in next week for a conversation with Francisco Gonzalez of Grundislav Games about adventure games and his upcoming game Rosewater!

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Timestamps:

00:00:00 – Cold open

00:00:53 – Intro / admin

00:01:58 – Resident Evil, baby!!!

00:05:06 – Sweet Home + Alone In The Dark = Resident Evil

00:09:36 – It is a very iterative game

00:11:48 – Knowledge of Resident Evil prior to Game Club

00:16:15 – Alon taking reviews to task

00:18:27 – Going hater mode on a game we love

00:25:26 – It wants to be an action game

00:27:33 – Sean's path to violence

00:30:19 – The core of the franchise

00:32:45 – What makes it a survival (horror) game?

00:38:26 – Door sequences as part of the pace of play

00:40:36 – Alon's mom tried to warn us

00:42:27 – The container of Resident Evil is gigantic

00:46:50 – Is this a survival game?

00:49:10 – Your health is never "good”

00:49:55 – The game is generous

00:51:23 – Camera angles + sound design + sympathizing with Jill

00:54:34 – Rebecca + Barry – the presence of side characters

00:57:57 – The acting

01:02:47 – Thinking about the map the way you would irl

01:07:23 – Shinji Mikami on having the game "becoming a comedy”

01:14:01 – "This key is now useless. Would you like to discard it?”

01:15:53 – Sean goes map mode

01:21:32 – Alon goes Rambo mode

01:24:33 – The camera

01:28:47 – The spooky people you meet towards the end of the game

01:30:29 – The Camera + Tank Controls = Resident Evil

01:37:12 – The disempowerment of the player

01:45:22 – The comfort of Resident Evil

01:51:41 – Bosses(???)

01:55:21 – The not knowing

01:57:23 – The graphics

02:02:18 – Next week!

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Show notes:

Shinji Mikami

Tokuro Fujiwara

Sweet Home

Alone in the Dark

Doom

It’s another New Cool, the Wide Flank show where Alon and Sean bring each other a New and/or Cool gaming-adjacent topic to talk about!

In this episode, Sean explores how ideas spread and when a genre truly becomes a genre through the lens of "Suikalikes." Meanwhile, Alon dives into tournament formats and questions the purpose of tournaments themselves.

Next week will be a Game Club episode on the original Resident Evil game from 1996.

Show Notes:

Timestamps:

Sean and Alon are joined by Andrew Parnell from Million Dreams to talk about Once Upon A Galaxy, a new mobile card battler. Together, they zoom into space to discuss the game's design philosophies, lessons learned from earlier card games, and the path from accessible information to strategic depth.

Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Cold open

00:00:31 - Intro

00:06:37 - Talk start

00:06:53 - How would Andrew describe Once Upon A Galaxy?

00:09:18 - How much of the game's audience comes from a card background as opposed to a video game background?

00:12:24 - How does the team prioritize accessibility in the game?

00:18:45 - What's an autobattler and how did the team decide to make an autobattler?

00:21:10 - How does the team think about the player processing information during the battle phase?

00:29:32 - What is Andrew's role on the game?

00:30:45 - Game flow during the game (continued)

00:31:43 - Learning from players: "there isn't a visceral gut hit between the number 2 and the number 3”

00:33:57 - “Bad” cards

00:36:02 - The Deck / booster packs aren't lootboxes

00:40:57 - How does the team think about the importance of aesthetics in the game?

00:46:20 - Talking about asynchronous play

00:50:29 - Andrew’s path into games

00:54:18 - How does the team think about making a game watchable?

00:57:25 - "Can we be the best 'play again' game on your phone?" + talking mobile games

01:02:16 - What is the creative collaboration process at Million Dreams?

01:04:21 - “Is it fun?

01:07:14 - What's Smee? Who is Smee? (public domain characters)

01:10:53 - Wrapping up

Show notes:

Fiveish minutes from the latest Patreon epsiode.

Listen to the full episode at: https://www.patreon.com/wideflank

Sean and Alon feel safe in the hands of game designer Lucas Pope and his whodunit ghostship of corpses and bones mystery game.

You’re an insurance appraiser playing sudoku by time-traveling (sorta) and transforming (sorta) into a fly on the wall. Discover the stories of the dead crew and passengers through the intense moments of their deaths.

It may not make sense now but it’s going to make sense by the end of this journey.

Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:01:18 - Admin stuff

00:01:48 - Game overview

00:03:16 - Beginning of the game

00:06:36 - Simple inputs, complex game

00:07:28 - More of the game’s beginning

00:10:46 - Fly on the wall effect

00:12:49 - Emotional moments of death

00:14:58 - Death snapshots

00:17:58 - The book

00:20:24 - Continuing chronologically

00:21:51 - On-rails in the mid-game

00:25:16 - It’s like a book

00:27:52 - How open or linear is this game?

00:32:06 - Fates and boat knowledge

00:34:37 - SPOILERS from here on

00:34:46 - Knowable vs unknowable information

00:37:03 - Whodunit logic & eureka moments

00:46:47 - Lucas Pope’s “data addiction”

00:53:42 - I’m the insurance appraiser and detachment

00:57:46 - Cascading puzzles & relationships

01:03:35 - Eureka moments outside the game

01:11:38 - Rolling credits before solving all of the fates

01:14:06 - Safe in Lucas Pope’s hands

01:21:16 - Game as a book + the art and aesthetic

01:25:54 - Uninvited and what is the game about?

01:35:38 - Tip of the iceberg game design

01:38:34 - A deluge of information

01:41:33 - “One guy” game design question

Show notes:

Introducing New Cool, the Wide Flank show where Alon and Sean bring each other a New and/or Cool gaming-adjacent topic to talk about!

This month, we thread the history of Fantasy Sports with an exploration of "Fantasy" (not that kind) as a genre unto itself and use Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver to discuss the career of Amy Hennig and what draws us to games in the first place.

Show Notes:

Strat-O-Matic

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver instruction booklet

Amy Hennig

3D Baseball

Kurt Harland

Michael Bell

Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City

Electrocop

In our inaugural Dev Talk, David Hellman, Art Lead and Co-Director of Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure, joins Sean and Alon to chat about making art for video games, subjectivity in creativity, and David’s work on the game.

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