Moving Pixels Podcast

As is our habit on the podcast, we occasionally like to sample what is going on in the free-to-play gaming.   This week we discuss three games available on Steam, A Date in the Park, Mandagon, and The Lion's Songs as examples of lowbrow, middle brow, and high brow offerings within the free-to-play market.

Fans of Kentucky Route Zero have waited two years for the penultimate chapter in the episodic game series.   This week we discuss the slow winding journey of The Mucky Mammoth down the Echo River, the slow dissolve of the game's former protagonist, and speculate on where this journey to 5 Dogwood Drive will end.

While the mania has begun to ebb in the remaining days of summer, Pokemon Go was the biggest gaming event of the last two months, both a cultural and cross cultural phenomenon.   While our own experiences of the game are localized, this week we discuss our own experiences with Pokemon Go and how they may reflect on the larger phenomenon surrounding its release.

Inside is Playdead's follow up to the now cult classic Limbo.   The game is haunting, both in its beauty and in its presentation of body horror, exploring collectivism and control through its weird world and silent protagonist. This week we attempt to get under the hood and toy around with what lurks beneath its often inscrutable surface.

Jotun arrived quietly last year, but the game is all about going big, reveling as it does in grandiosity and big, big boss fights.   This week we discuss Jotun's presentation of Norse mythology through scale and grandeur.

This week the Moving Pixels podcast returns to search for treasure with the rogue with a heart of gold, Nathan Drake.

This week we discuss the minimalistic combat of One Finger Death Punch. We discuss the game, but our conversation also strays into a discussion of the design philosophy of Silver Dollar Games, punk game design, and video games that troll their players.

SUPERHOT isn't the first reconsideration of the first person shooter, but its slow motion violence and methodical approach to murder certainly has made an impression.

Too often video game critics find themselves responding to cinematic versions of video game properties, from Super Mario Bros. to Tomb Raider. Hardcore Henry, however, gives us a chance to consider not how well a video game translates to film, but how well a video game experience and a video game point of view translates to film.

This week we delve into the smartly written, character-driven story of Oxenfree, an early 2016 adventure game release. From high school drama to ghostly hauntings, we peel back the layers of this simple, but elegantly designed indie release.

Firewatch was developed by game development veterans associated with Telltale's The Walking Dead and with the popular indie Mark of the Ninja. Set in Shoshone National Park in 1989, it tells the story of a newly recruited fire lookout named Henry, a man looking to escape from his recent past.   This week we discuss Henry and his experiences in this lonely role alongside the growing intimacy he develops with another lookout, a woman named Delilah. We consider the beautiful world that Campo Santo has built for Henry to explore and the way that the game explores human relationships through Henry's experiences within that world.

Pony Island sounds like a happy place, but David Mullins' game is about what lurks beneath the surface of virtual worlds.   This week we discuss the game as meta-game that makes up the experience of Pony Island.

Following a year of availability in early access, Darkest Dungeon was released on Steam in January 2016. Set in a Lovecraftian universe, the game is about twisted family lineages, unspeakable and otherworldly horrors, and the cruel psychological and physical consequences of attempting a campaign against unwinnable opposition.   This week we discuss our own sadistic and masochistic experiences in the Darkest Dungeon and how penalties and pain became a source of twisted pleasure in games like this one.

This week we consider the multicultural mash up in this indie from last year, a game that includes concerns about robots and body augmentation alongside passages from The Tibetan Book of the Dead.   Cradle asks questions about the soul, the body, and the relationship between those two things and advanced technology. In the podcast, we discuss its concern with incarnation and reincarnation in a culture in which science and reason are ascendant.

Metal Gear Solid V marks the end of nearly 30 years of the Metal Gear saga, one of the longest running series in video gaming history-at least with its creator Hideo Kojima at the helm. It seems important to consider the game given Kojima's effort to wrap up the series by connecting its latter day iterations with its origins, but also how even now how inventive Kojima is in reconsidering the game's mechanics and gameplay.   So, this week we consider this fresh, but final take by Kojima on the world of Solid Snake and Big Boss, a stealth game executed astonishingly well within an open world setting.

Cibele is Nina Freeman's autobiographical look at a first experience of love in an online space.   So, it seems somewhat fitting on the day after Valentine's Day for the Moving Pixels podcast to consider what we can learn about romance and courtship through a video game.

We're a tad late to the station when it comes to the hype train that is Undertale.   But this week we discuss the game that every indie fan was talking about last year. It's one part whimsy, mixed with one part social commentary, mixed with even more whimsy, and to top it off a zany sense of humor and a bucket full of self awareness.

This episode we discuss, well, our picks for the best games of 2015.   There was a whole lot to love in 2015 from both the big publishers and from the indie scene. From iOS sims to big budget action games to narrative driven adventure games, we have a little something for everyone on our list.

In two weeks, we'll be talking about our picks for the best video games of 2015, but this week, we remain focused on one of the better reviewed iOS games of 2015, 80 Days.   Inspired by the Jules Verne novel, at once 80 Days takes the player on a tour of a prior century, but with its more overtly steampunk trappings and frequently more modern social attitudes, the game presents a branching narrative that allows the player to explore an ever changing world.

For our final podcast of the year, we end at a beginning of sorts, a discussion of Davey Wreden's The Beginner's Guide.   This is the developer's first game since the critically lauded Stanley Parable, Wreden changes focus from interrogating how we play games to how we interpret them.