Edge Guard

SimCity meets Stephen’s Sausage Roll in “Tiny Towns,” a Ludum Dare puzzle game by designer “Bearish” about balancing the happiness of residents in a town to their material needs. We chat a bit about how the the puzzle genre and the management sim genre interact (and maybe conflict), and Blake talks about his, uh, intense Stardew Valley strats.

 

Play the game here: https://bearish.itch.io/tiny-towns

And follow the creator on Twitter: @Beariish

It’s the first annual EDGY awards! In this very special anniversary episode, we look back at every game we’ve played so far and pick the winners for six different award categories that celebrate various aspects of game design and creativity. The awards span from the silly to the serious—you’ll just have to listen to the episode to find out what they are and what games took the cake.

This week we solve our way through Magic Sabotage, a physics puzzle game by Burgundy Unit, a team of student designers at the School 4 Games in Berlin. We talk about the fun “Rube-Goldberg-iness” of the puzzles in this game, as well as dive a bit into the technical nitty-gritty of how good puzzle design works in general. And, yes, Blake beat Jordan once again.

 

Download the game here: http://magicsabotage.school4games.net/

We play a “game” by Natalie Lawhead (Alien Melon) called Cyberpet Graveyard, a delightfully bizarre piece that is part Twine game, part surrealist critique of corporate culture, and part ARG-style “found file” narrative. Between laughing at cartoon vampires that we keep opening and closing during the recording, we chat about the weird things this game manages to get .exe files to do, as well as the contemporary state of developer culture.

 

Download the game here: https://alienmelon.itch.io/graveyard

And follow the creator on Twitter: @alienmelon

This week, a love letter to Micro-Machines games of yore: Grooly's Micro Aces! Blake is better than Jordan again! Controls are Squrrielly (but in a meaningful way)! Being tiny in a normal-sized world is intrinsically fun! Video Games are in effect!

Also: sorry about Blake's poor audio quality, this will be rememdied next episode!

Check out the game on itch: https://grooly.itch.io/microaces

Blake and Jordan make the stars align—or, at least, some letters and shapes—in The Synchronist, a puzzle game about moving sliders made for Minimalist Jam 3 by Gregory Beal. Our hosts talk about why removing the instructions from any machine interface instantly creates a puzzle, “futzing” with sliders, and Blake is proud to finally defeat Jordan at a game. Jordan uses motion sickness as an excuse.

 

Play the game here: https://elgregos.itch.io/synchronist

And follow the creator on Twitter: @GregosEl

We get a little funky in Rhythm Overdrive, a shoot ‘em up game with rhythmic elements. Jordan mistakes his own love of a good beat with an actual game mechanic, Blake tells the people about the concept of game “juice,” and the two of us also talk a bit about why game players tend to over-value visual polish as a metric for overall game quality.

 

Download the game here: https://diblow.itch.io/rhythm-overdrive

And follow the creators on Twitter:

@valet_louis

@Thomas_Polfliet

Blake and Jordan return to the podcast’s roots for another game by Robert Yang: “Dream Hard,” a queer action game about defending a club in NYC from oncoming fascists. Our hosts talk about how this game, like much of Robert Yang’s work, has a really fun and joyous attitude towards sexuality, and also jam out to the game’s playfully vulgar soundtrack.

 

Download the game here: https://radiatoryang.itch.io/dreamhard

And follow Robert Yang on Twitter: @radiatoryang

Our hosts play Off Peak, a surreal exploration game about the labor that makes art possible, and people whose lives have temporarily been put on hold. Blake and Jordan talk about why this game somehow feels sincere without being hokey, and also why the music is so rad.

 

Download the game on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/467360/OffPeak/

Follow the creator on Twitter: @cosmoddd

And Check out the OST on Bandcamp: https://archiepelago.bandcamp.com/album/off-peak-ost

We play “Upward,” a short puzzle-platformer in which your avatar can only move in one direction: up! We talk about design by subtraction, as well as the affordances of the development environment the game was built in, called PICO-8, which simulates a fictional 8-bit game console.

 

Play the game here: https://pocketfruit.itch.io/upward

Download PICO-8 here: https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

And follow the creator on Twitter: @mtths_flk