Big Shiny Coin

I'd go with Yu-Gi-Oh! The Falsebound Kingdom for the GameCube. Buuuut maybe that's just because I was 12 at the time. I remember it being a weird mix of real time strategy and RPG elements that came together to be really fun. AND IT CAME WITH PHYSICAL YU-GI-OH! CARDS! Looking at reviews now, it looks like I might be the only one who liked it.

I remember ridiculously long games of Sins of a Solar Empire. Even tiny maps could take 8+ hours. It just felt so epic. Past a certain tipping point in the game it felt kind of like a tedious cleanup. But it was still so satisfying to dismantle everyone you'd spent hours trying to beat.

My pick for a game that was way better than I expected is Celeste. I'm not great at platformers, but everything about Celeste kept me going until the end. The art and music are a perfect match. The level design is masterful. Each world shakes things up enough to keep it fresh, but not too much to where it becomes confusing. I don't actually finish many games nowadays, but I definitely finished Celeste.

My favorite glitches are all of the things you could do in the Halo series, namely Halo 3. From sword cancelling to launching tanks across the map, all of the bonkers things you could do were so fun. Even in free for all matches where you can kill anyone people still worked together to make these glitches happen. This week I share the best answers the internet gave me.

What is your greatest gaming accomplishment? Mine is definitely my high scores in the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games. Most notably, I've 5-starred Through The Fire And Flames on expert difficulty in Guitar Hero 3. It took me an insane number of tries, but after mastering each section I was able to surpass a 5-star score by quite a bit. What gaming accomplishment are you most proud of?

What game could you just not finish? For me it was Fallout 4. I had never played a Fallout game before, and I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. Once it came out, I planned a bunch of different character builds. But then after a few hours I set it down and just couldn't pick it back up. I think we've all had a game like that.

What games do you like watching more than playing? For me it's high-skill or high-RNG games. I used to play Starcraft 2. The more I tried to get better and climb the ladder, the more stressful it felt to play. Ladder anxiety hit me super hard. I realized that I much preferred playing casual 3v3 or 4v4, and watching 1v1 instead of playing it myself. I also find that with high-RNG games I'd rather watch highlights of crazy plays than grinding it out myself.

What Game Made You a Gamer? For me it was Pokemon Red. I had played other games before it, but something about the combination of collecting, battling, training, and working my way through Kanto made me want to be a gamer for life. It came out in the U.S. when I was 8, and I couldn't put my Game Boy down.

This week we chat with Miranda of Vertical Slice. We talk games media, how to start and run a passion project, content creation, and more.

Introducing the newly renamed Big Shiny Coin podcast! For the first episode under our new moniker we chat with Twitch partner and full time streamer Ezilii. We chat about her journey and what it takes to devote yourself to doing what you love full time.

We brought our podcast gear to the most recent St. Louis Twitch meetup and did on-the-spot episodes. This week, Chad has a chat with streamer and community builder PyroTech03. He talks about winning over trolls, building communities, and accidentally taking part in childbirth. Yeah, you read that correctly.

We brought our podcast gear to the most recent St. Louis Twitch meetup and did on-the-spot episodes. This week, Chad has a chat with streamer Oko C. Nella. He talks about how he started streaming, how you don't have to play huge titles to be successful, and running a low sodium (salt-free) stream.

We brought our podcast gear to the most recent St. Louis Twitch meetup and did on-the-spot episodes. This week, Chad has a chat with streamer Takon_TV. He talks about his work with the military gaming outreach organization Stack Up, and how he's built a community on his Twitch channel.

We had a chat with the minds behind Woodsy Studio. We talk about how they got into game development, what it's like to have a very niche market, how to get valuable feedback from live demos, and more.

We brought our podcast gear to the most recent St. Louis Twitch meetup and did on-the-spot episodes. This week, Paige has a chat with streamer FatJollyGuy. They talk about how to start streaming, how to deal with negativity, and more.

We chat with RDTechy about staying consistent, grinding out your goals, and how follow backs negatively affect YouTube and other social media.

We had a chat with the minds behind Broadcast Bundle at a recent Twitch meetup. They aim to create a subscription service curated by your favorite Twitch streamers. Check out their Kickstarter!

Microtransactions have been an extremely hot topic in the gaming world. We had a chat with Wes Ehrlichman of the St. Louis Game Developer Co-op to discuss several facets of microtransactions. Are AAA companies going to far? Are indies safe from scorn? What systems can be good, and which are just terrible?

When it comes to the tech field, education and job placement can't be a bit of a mess. Enter LaunchCode, a non-profit organization providing free quality tech education and job placement. We had a chat with LaunchCode's Executive Director Jeff Mazur to get his take on the issues with traditional tech education, and what LaunchCode is doing to help the industry.

Pokemon GO is a wildly successful mobile game, but in many ways it failed to capitalize on its massive launch. In this episode, we discuss what Pokemon GO did right, what it did wrong, and how it has changed.

We discuss our efforts in marketing and outreach, and what changes we need to make going forward. Some things have been working great and need more attention. Other things haven't been performing as well, and have drained our time and effort.

Today we discuss the new most downvoted Reddit comment of all time. EA tried to defend themselves from criticism of Star Wars Battlefront 2, and it did not go well. We talk about the original post, EA's rage-inducing response, and EA's response to the backlash.

A discussion about how Somber Dawn is transitioning after the release of Intrusion Protocol.

How does Somber Dawn Studios decide what games to make? In this episode of the DawnDev Podcast we discuss several factors that influence those decisions.

In this episode, we talk to the mind behind Game Dev Underground. He gives his thoughts on indie game marketing, motivation, and much more.

In this episode we talk about the process of making our first game. We learned by doing, and programming the game was only half of the battle.

What is Somber Dawn Studios? How did we go from not existing as a company to releasing our first game in less than a year? How can you do it?