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 takes us on a musical journey through Soyo Oka’s work, focused mostly on her contributions to SimCity, and Alon encourages everyone to spend more time hanging out IRL.

Coming soon we’ll have the Game Club for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and a Dev Talk too, stay tuned :).

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

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

This month’s Game Club is Indiana Jones and the Great Circle therefore we’re GLHFing about it!

It's bonus content, join the Patreon for the full episodes of GLHF: https://www.patreon.com/wideflank

Water churning, time turning, sun burning, wave crash, head bash, ride, glide, collide, high flying, fish frying, eye crossing, cookie tossing, snaking, quaking, booty shaking, scrolling, controlling, rock ‘n’ rolling. Wave Race 64, the first Jet ‘n’ sweatin’ in your face race for Nintendo 64. Strap on the seahorse and ride.

Support us 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

Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:32 - Game background

00:01:26 - Wave Race announcer

00:10:10 - Announcers vs. narrators

00:15:10 - Is Jet Ski racing a sport? Is racing the first sport?

00:16:39 - What’s Wave Race all about

00:25:29 - Racing games

00:26:33 - Wave Race without racing?

00:28:13 - Speedruns

00:33:03 - Not a Nintendo vibe

00:34:40 - The point system

00:36:26 - Buoys and their role

00:42:47 - Graphics, motion capture, & Shinya Takahashi

00:54:42 - Personal watercraft racing videogames

00:56:18 - The feel of the vehicle

00:58:06 - Alon vs. racing games

01:05:06 - Drake Lake

01:07:40 - Wave Race aesthetics & tone

01:13:33 - Rider’s Republic and similar games

01:21:39 - The racing is good

01:30:34 - Different size waves

01:35:44 - Why don’t more games sound like this now?

Sean and Alon are joined by writer, editor and game designer merritt k to discuss her vampire reality show visual novel Fledgling Manor.

Alon surprises Sean and merritt with a different vampire-based game, Sean celebrates merritt's game a little bit, and merritt dives deep on her writing process and the collaborative process at In Secret Places.

Why vampires? Why visual novels? How vampires? How visual novels? All this and more shall be answered within.

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Wishlist Fledgling Manor: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3238510/Fledgling_Manor/

Follow merritt on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/merrittk.com

In Secret Places: https://www.insecretplaces.com

~

Support Wide Flank: https://www.patreon.com/c/wideflank

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

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

~

Show notes:

Jake Paul / Mike Tyson fight

Jiangshi

Blade

Vampire: The Masquerade (tabletop game)

Anne Rice

Vampire: The Masquerade (video games)

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2

The Chinese Room

James Bond Jr.

Jem and The Holograms

Wishbone

Danielle Riendeau

Game Developer

Fanbyte

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Terrifier

John Carpenter

Near Dark

Kathryn Bigelow

Bill Paxton

The Lost Boys

Fright Night (1985)

Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Twilight

V Rising

Vampire Survivors

Slay The Spire

Nosferatu (1922)

Simon Pegg on "fast zombies"

28 Days Later

Vampires 2.0

"List of vampire traits in folklore and fiction"

Count Chocula

Brandon Sanderson

Phoenix Wright

LB Hunktears

Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator

I Love You, Colonel Sanders! (KFC Visual Novel)

Resident Evil (1996)

Foley

Freesound

shaydh

The War Follows Me Wherever I Go

"That's Chappie"

Citizen Sleeper

Ren'Py

Baldur's Gate 3

SCUF controller

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

New Cool – Tongues / Survivor

Survivor

The Mole

Among Us

LinkedIn

Saw

999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

Squid Game

Tabula rasa

Disco Elysium

Game Of Roses (The Bachelor podcast)

Rick Owens

What We Do In The Shadows

Big Brother

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: