In which Anton chats with indie darlings, studio heads, and everyone in between about video games, board games, and other interactive experiences.
Happy new year a month late! In which Hung Mai, the one-man developer of “Trianga’s Project: Battle Splash” returns with updates on the game (now v2.0), how he’s been dealing with the plague, gaming life in Hanoi, and, of course, when-ish we can play his anime-inspired, squirt-gun shooter.
In which Jellybean Games’ Peter Hayward single-handedly destroys my dreams of designing board games. I mean, he crushed them. Under his boot. They were walking along, minding their own business, he tapped them on the shoulder with a polite, “Hello,” then, when they turned around, he smacked them in the face, knocked them to the […]
In which I Halloween it up with my pals Jaye, Ken, Lee, and Terry for this supersized episode! We chat spooky games we’ve played, including “Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice” and “Alien: Isolation,” and spooky games in general, like “Fatal Frame,” “Resident Evil 4,” and many others. We also chat our plague-restricted Halloween plans like handing candy […]
The official, super-sized season six finale! In which I chat with good friend, writer, filmmaker, avid gamer, and mastermind behind The Black Box gaming blog, Ken Foley, about that project, his many, many E3 experiences (he’s attended all but two!), and his take on the Black experience in gaming from representation in the games themselves […]
In which I first briefly share my thoughts on recent #BLM-related events, then chat with Wormhole Labs‘ COO Phil Ranta, in his epic return to #VS, about everything from his days at Studio71, his days at Facebook, his infinite wisdom on everything from the Quibi launch to the PS5 launch, and finally to his role […]
In which I SPOILERS! chat with SPOILERS! Jeff Heimbuch and Kori Celeste of SPOILERS! Bamfer Productions about everything from Heimbuch’s other venture HorrorBuzz to his and Celeste’s views on the evolving LA haunt landscape, including Knott’s Scary Farm, Bamfer Productions’ previous forays into the immersive space, and, of course, my favorite haunted house story in […]
In which I chat music and games with DDRKirby(ISQ), creator of my absolute favorite OCRemix song “Welcome to My Kastle.” About half the episode, we discussed music, DDRKirby’s thoughts on its creation, chiptune, 9-bit, his process, and so much more! The second half we chatted his many, many indie games, including one of my faves […]
In which #VerticalSlice comes out of retirement with previous Slicers Jaye and Terry! Oh, sure, Terry and I waste plenty of time rehashing old atheist “community” wounds (atheism beat Disney to the “add + to everything” game), but eventually, we got into some current game-playing (spoiler: I’m still rockin’ “Breath of the Wild”), but then […]
In which I sign off, possibly for the last time, in this, the season 5 finale. Why possibly? Because things are in flux. Major flux. There could be an entire season 6. There could be a spotty, specials-only season 6. There could be nothing at all and this was a quiet death. I have no […]
In which I chatted with speedrunner extraordinaire Venmissa! Among other games, Venmissa famously runs one of my faves “Metroid Prime.” When I happened upon her running work, she was whipping past sections it took me weeks (or even longer) to figure out. In addition to her “Prime” runs, we chatted her entrance into speedrunning, as […]
In which I chat with the cool cats from Expletive Studios about their cardy, fighty, capture-the-flag-y game “Eidetus.” And in case you’re wondering, “Gee, Anton, deck building and combat sound like the two things you’re by far the worst at in all of video gaming,” well, you’d be right. And despite Expletive’s graciousness in providing […]
In which I chat with Household Games’ Jason Canam, creator of “Way of the Passive Fist.” As I told Canam, “Way” is probably the only fighting game I can play because, unlike the fighters of the ’90s, there aren’t 16 buttons with hundreds of combos. I can just stand there and parry! But we didn’t […]
In which I chat with Kevin Casper, a contributor, and, as he put it, “ally” (we chatted about that) to AbleGamers, specifically writer of the piece “Sekiro and the ‘Git Gud’ Debate.” And I’ll be honest. We tore into each other in our own debate. I was like, “You’re full of crap, sir!” And he […]
In which I chat with StudioFOW‘s Executive Project Manager, Mr. Kristoff about their upcoming game “Subverse.” I see an epic fuck-ton of indie game announcements and/or trailers and when I first heard of “Subverse,” I admit (and admitted in the episode) that I was skeptical. A lot of times what I find is that indie […]
In which I preview/review “Grimshade,” a new turn-based RPG from TALEROCK, Asterion Games, and PR Hound. I’ll give no game or review spoilers here, but will say that this episode is not only a review of the game, but also a bit of a chat on accessibility basics, and the evil, dark forces that indie […]
In which I say my official good bye to Nintendo of America’s soon-to-be former CEO, the never boring Reggie Fils-Aime. And in which I give a few pertinent updates about the show. And finally, in which I share some feelings on the current tensions expressed as “politics in games.” Rest assured, however, I don’t delve […]
In which I review Casual Bit Games‘ and Hound Picked Games‘ Battle Princess Madelyn! For those who don’t know much about the game, here’s some info from the Kickstarter page. I don’t wanna spoil any of my review, so I’ll tell you interesting factoids about monkeys! Kidding. Seriously, I don’t wanna spoil, so I’ll point […]
In which I chat with AbleGamers‘ founder Mark Barlet (whose name is NOT pronounced with a hard-T, by the way; rather a no-T-at-all). I have to say this was quite a refreshing experience as both Barlet and I are gimps, so we swapped dealing-with-normies stories. In fact, Barlet shared my all-time favorite Twitter story! More […]
In which I, in my very, VERY nasal voice, dive head first into a stupidly long, pre-holidays rant about how we should offer good will (to those with whom we disagree). As I say in the intro to the episode, this is only my opinion, so feel free to completely disagree with it. Also, I […]
In which I chat with the one and only Two Bit Circus CEO Brent Bushnell. And I have to say, it’s a true tragedy that in our entire conversation, not only did it never occur to me to talk to him about his family’s gaming legacy, but wouldn’t ya know it, I didn’t even realize […]
In which I chat with Loot Crate’s VP of Product Marketing and Communications, Erik Reynolds! If you’re anything like me, which you undoubtedly are, then you’ve most likely heard of Loot Crate and even their more selective crates like the “Star Trek” and horror ones. But, if you’re still like me, then Loot Crate’s recent […]
In this spooktacular Halloween Special, I haunt the interwebs with the great Ian Strandberg of Verbal Processing and the possibly even greater Grant Goodine of the Digital Roadmap Podcast. After my tragic attempt at Karloffing up the joint, we dive into spooky games we’ve played recently (for me, the fantastic “Kathy Rain“), as well as […]
In which MrLlamaSC and I dig into all kinds of Diablo II goodness! I discovered MLSC in a GDQ video. As I revealed to him, my discovery of speedruns in general is pretty recent. I’d been watching the Marios and Zeldas speedran, but just so happened to catch the title of his, and was blown […]
In which I chat with Critical Depth Games’ Richard Cook, who is braving the rotoscope (is that the name of the technique?) waters to bring us the greatest fighting game since the original “Mortal Kombat,” the Kickstarting “Super Combat Fighter.” Not only did we chat Cook’s love of fighting games, and rotoscoped (what’s the damn […]
TECHNICAL WARNING: This episode suffered many audio drop-outs maybe due to Discord, maybe due to not Discord. Your patience is appreciated. In which I chat with Retrotainment‘s Tim Hartman! Hartman and Retrotainment are doing something I didn’t even know previous to finding them existed–producing cartridge games for the NES! Oh, sure, 8-bit- and 16-bit-style games […]
In which I chat with Trans Seven Studio’s transmedia producer Karen Snyder. Snyder’s doing among the more interesting innovations I’ve ever heard of in gaming. One, she created the first interactive romance novel, that’s also an FMV game. Two, and this particularly grabbed me, she’s putting together a game jam whose results will be healthcare-related […]
In which I chat with MobCrush’s Head of Creator Network Phil Ranta! Ranta’s world is somewhat alien to me as it involves talent and company (or “brand” as the kids say) relations. So we talked about how Ranta got into that, what an average day of chatting with studio heads and talent is like, what […]
In which I chat with Nintendo World Report‘s director John Rairdin, or as I call him, Johnny Rare (as in RareWare), in this crazy-long extendo episode that completely sucked JR’s evening away. In it, we chat NWR’s history, how Rairdin got involved, what daily NWR life is like, their many E3 adventures, and of course, […]
In which I chat with Paul Nurminen, VP of Product Development at Intellivision Entertainment. Turns out Nurminen and I had a ton in common what with both of our entries into video games being the Intellivision, both having wives who are less into gaming than we are, both have gaming podcasts, and both have dreams […]
In which I perform a rambling monologue on a comparison between level design in “Doom ’16,” “Metroid Prime,” and even a little on theme park Halloween attraction mazes (even though they’re not really, usually maze-like). Get ready because there’s lots of me-style rambling. Lots and lots of it. With plenty of “ums,” “ahs,” and “uhs,” […]
In which I bash Catholic gamer Max Dean Esmay and Catholic gamer and indie dev Paolo “Game Diviner” Munoz. Over their heads! Really hard! With a mallet! Okay, no, not really. In fact, Esmay and Munoz and I had a delightful time discussing everything from “Assassin’s Creed II’s” depiction of Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) […]
In which I chat with (gaming) journalist, sometimes podcaster, and general jolly, juicy guy Brad Glasgow of Game Objective. As I admitted to Glasgow, I knew of him (and possibly interacted with him?) for years, but wasn’t really familiar with his work till recently. What I love most about his work, which I repeatedly told […]
In which I chat with “VR Puppet Murder Mystery’s” Erin Finnegan about her soon-ending Kickstarter project, working for Adobe, how much she’s not a fan of video games (but yes to mobile games), our political frustrations, and all kinds of other stuff. WARNING #1: with apologies to Finnegan, due to audio issues on my side […]
In which I chat with Grant of the “Digital Roadmap Podcast.” I completely, utterly, embarrassingly forget how I bumped into Grant’s show, but I’m so glad I did as, unlike this show, he focuses entirely on “classic” games. What’s a “classic” game? Well, we go into it a bit, but he also covers it on […]
In which I chat with Mario Castaneda and Ty Taylor, creators of, among many other games and arts, the B&W puzzler “The Bridge.” As I say in the episode, I don’t quite recall how I bumped into “The Bridge,” but I do remember well how jazzed I was about a puzzle game that didn’t rely […]
In which I barely scratch the surface with Ryan Miller Games‘ Ryan Miller, creator of, among other games, “Overkill: Halloween Slasher.” And when I say “barely scratch the surface,” boy, do I mean it. Miller and I talked about his games (briefly), his military service, the economics of the board game industry, the economics of […]
In which I chat with Cellar Door Games‘ Teddy Lee mainly about their game “Rogue Legacy,” but also about plenty other stuff. Like the fact that, at the time of recording, I was in the midst of an awful cold/flu (including fever dreams! Though not during the episode). Successfully financing an indie title with only […]
In which I chat with YouTuber extraordinaire Rags about massively controversial topics like Discord and cats playing with balls of string, and even some less so, like actress Ashley Judd‘s opinions on gaming. And just to let y’all know, despite Judd’s ignorant bigotry against gaming (and how on-line discourse realistically functions), she’ll always be Wesley’s […]
In which I chat with my pal, gamer, and former atheist activist extraordinaire (don’t hold that against him) Lee Moore. Much to my surprise and great irritation (no, I’m kidding), Moore and I actually have little in gaming common. He’s all like, “Super Mario Odyssey sucks balls!” and I’m all like, “No, it doesn’t!” Because […]
In which I hang out with my man Nate Evans (Popzara‘s managing editor) and fiercely debated the great, and not-so great, games of ’17–! Just kidding! We chatted and debated the relative strengths and weaknesses of the “Super Mario Galaxy” games versus the recent “Super Mario Odyssey.” Please note that spoilers abound so if you […]
In which I chat with Data Realms‘ Dan Tabar about their upcoming game “Planetoid Pioneers.” The game has all kinds of craziness: great animation, physics (through Data Realms’ proprietary engine), and the big concept, the ability for users to create their very own planets to be added to the main game. The thing that struck […]
In which I chat and giggle with Stride PR‘s CEO Robert Brown. Representing clients like PAX and IGDA, not to mention bunches of studios and games like Hyperkinetic Studios and their “Epic Tavern,” Brown is in the thick of gaming PR all over the world. I was particularly struck by his model of not necessarily […]
In which I chat with D’Avekki Studios‘ Tim and Lynda Cowles. Known for their Murder Mystery Flexi-Party Dinner Party games, the Cowles spent far, far longer in post-production of video footage than I’d ever be willing to so that we could all enjoy “The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker.” An FMV game in the style […]
Behold, the triumphant return of one-man studio, epic designer extraordinaire, and hopefully crusher of Nintendo Switch competition, Triple Eh’s Gareth Noyce! When last we spoke, he’d recently released his great, arcade-y/isometric-y platforming adventure/throwback title “Lumo” on the PS4 (after a delightful debut on PC) and I bitched and moaned and griped about how hard the […]
TECHNICAL WARNING: The intro audio is messed up, I don’t know why, but everything else is fine! In which I had the pleasure of talking to 6 Eyes Studio‘s Pierre LeClerc all about 6 Eyes’ game “Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark.” LeClerc also had a lot of interesting insight into the wild world of AAA programming, […]
Featuring an extended, spooky intro and channeling Bela Lugosi meets Hannibal Lecter meets some random, creepy guy, we summon All Hallow’s Even with Hyperkinetic Studios‘ co-founder and CTO Rich Bisso and Verbal Processing’s Ian Strandberg. Bisso of course joined last time to chat about Hyperkinetic’s “Epic Tavern.” In this chilling episode, we chat scary games like […]
In which I chat with Hyperkinetic Studios‘ co-founder and CTO Rich Bisso, and co-founder and CCO Tomo Moriwaki. We of course chatted their game “Epic Tavern,” but also went into both their backgrounds and design philosophies. For the as-uninitiated-as-I-was, Bisso had worked on one of my favorite GameCube titles, “Ultimate Spider-Man” and Moriwaki had contributed […]
In which I have a lengthy chat with Piotr Michael about all his voice activities, of course including games. An interesting bit of trivia from this episode as it relates to one of Michael’s credits in “Doom (2016)” is that a voice he did I haven’t even heard yet. Which means one of two things. […]
In which I chat with Andrew, founder and chief creative monkey, of Nukazooka. I was late to the Nukazooka party in that it was only in the last few weeks that I’d 1. seen any of his videos or 2. knew about the channel. What can I say? I’m not a hip millennial. Anyway, I […]
In which I chat with YouTuber 8-Bit Music Theory, or as I call him, “8-Bit.” One of my more serendipitous YouTube encounters, I happened upon 8-Bit moons ago and was immediately drawn in by his thorough, yet accessible, video-game-music breakdowns. He’s covered everything from why “Luigi’s Mansion’s” themes sound spooky to why “Breath of the […]
In which I chat with Resonator’s Steve Copeland and Jeff Spoonhower about their new game “Anew: The Distant Light.” With Copeland handling programming (among other tasks) and Spoonhower handling art, sound, and story, they’re crafting what looks to be a very textured Metroidvania game. We also talked about their backgrounds, design philosophies, and other fun […]
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