It’s a Nate Game this week, as we’re talking about Cobalt Core, a card-based roguelike deckbuilder about a space ship full of furries stuck in a time loop.The Short Game

I’ve finally pushed my co-hosts down the Animal Well. This uneasy, mysterious, combat free take on the Metroidvania genre asks you to live in a hole and be terrified of kangaroos. It is both shorter, and longer than you think.The Short Game

Sure, this game about a duck detective solving an office lunch theft is cute, but did you know it’s also an introduction to Cold-war era Berlin for children? Duck Detective is a deducktion/adventure game that plays like an introduction to the Obra Dinn/Golden Idol style of mystery solving game. It’s only about 2 hours long, and would be great to pl…

A single bullet to kill a whole bunch of cultists. Children of the Sun is a puzzle sniping game, where THE GIRL is out to kill THE LEADER of THE CULT. Telekinetically redirect your single bullet in flight to head-shot all the cultists in each level. It’s a game that turns out to be much more puzzle game than shooter. Expect it to take around 3-4 ho…

Indika is a young nun in 19th century Russia, suffering from a crisis of faith, delusions, and puzzles. It’s one of the most cinematically interesting games we’ve played in a long time, and ended up spurring nearly two hours of discussion about a four-ish hour game.The Short Game

Your ex-girlfriend, queen of the vampires, has holed up in an El Paso motel to perform a ritual that will bring about the end of the world. As John Savage, veteran monster hunter and bullet-time gun-diver, you’ll need to fight through all 50 floors of the surreal extrandimensional motel to stop her. Soon to be a major motion picture!…

Slumps. Ruts. Dulldrums. Whatever you want to call them, most of us have likely experienced times when you couldn’t play or enjoy games in the way you might want for one reason or another. In this topic episode we talk about the various reasons we’ve ended up in gaming slumps, and what we did to get out of them.…

It’s the ultimate video game power fantasy: the power to clean up after ourselves. Terra Nil is a unique “city builder” in the lineage of Sim City, but with tasks you with revitalizing a wilderness on a ruined Earth, and ultimately with destroying what you’ve built, erasing all evidence of your presence and leaving the Earth to heal. It’s a strange…

After an incredibly troubled development, we finally have the latest game from the team that brought you Gone Home and Tacoma… Sort of. Open Roads, from publisher Annapurna and the developers known here as The Open Roads Team, is a narrative “walking simulator” with some unusual twists, like 2D animated dialogue in a 3D world, and a story that play…

400 episodes. Nearly 10 years. I absolutely can not believe it. To celebrate, Laura put together an incredibly well produced trivia night game for us to play! Who knows the most about the last 10 years of The Short Game?The Short Game

Slice & Dice is a game that just keeps giving, and we don’t just mean incredible dice-rolling gameplay. Since we last covered Slice & Dice, it has received two major updates. As we prepare for...The Short Game

As we close in on Episode 400 (where did the time go?) Shane and Raygan are talking about weird-horror phone bank simulator Home Safety Hotline. Is that caller suffering from bedbugs, or Bed Teeth? Tags...The Short Game

This week we go rogue and chat about a whole bunch of games — Super Mario Wonder (short to mid-length), Helldivers 2 (long!), and an assortment of “daily games” (seconds to minutes!).The Short Game

A card based roguelike that is arguably related to Poker has been blowing up recently, so naturally we gave it a shot. Turns out, yeah, it’s good!The Short Game

Debatably a short game, but indisputably a classic. Raygan has played SotN many times but the rest of the crew is experiencing it for the first time. What will they make of this revolutionary 1997...The Short Game

Golf + pool + the developer behind holedown? Be still our hearts. Subpar Pool brings polish and charm to the (pool) table, with tons of variations and challenges to keep it fresh — we highly...The Short Game

When inkle drops a surprise release, we dive in — and this time, we dove into a maze of art from museums around the world. The Forever Labyrinth is a totally free, browser-based “replayable narrative...The Short Game

Turns out all of us skipped the tutorial and (whaddayaknow!?) had a really hard time with the early hours of this retro action platformer. Don’t be like us! In the end though we all had...The Short Game

I can’t believe it’s been almost two years since we last talked about the Playdate, the cute little console with a crank. We start with an update on if/how we’re still playing out Playdates, and...The Short Game

The famous Roottree sisters and their parents, heirs to a billion dollar candy empire, have suddenly died in a plane crash. The inheritance is in question, with a massive family tree full of potential beneficiaries. ...The Short Game

This week Nate and Laura cover Jusant, somehow our second 2023 tower game and our second 2023 climbing game — but micro-genres aside, Jusant’s got plenty of charms of its own. Don’t Nod, the creators...The Short Game

We’re a little late, but it’s time to talk about The Short Game’s Game of the Year! As with previous years we’re also handing out many superlatives, including returning awards like Dirtbag of the Year....The Short Game

Laura and Raygan manage to shift one small shovel of their pile of shame before the holidays. We’re so glad to have made time for Chants of Sennaar, an incredible puzzle adventure game in which...The Short Game

The latest game from Short Game favorite Inkle has proved to be a bit divisive. Laura enjoyed it, but Raygan hit some major issues that spoiled the experience. It made for an interesting conversation!The Short Game

Oh dang it’s a holiday weekend and we don’t have time to prep for an episode… Let me see what everybody else on the internet is doing right now… … So here’s the Short Game...The Short Game