Witnessing the Death of a Wish with melessthanthree and Kevin Wong

For the first Kritiqal Care bonus episode, returning guests Colin (he/they) of melessthanthree and Kevin Wong (they/them) join me to discuss their recently released action RPG, Death of a Wish. We discuss where the idea for a sequel came from, its themes emerging from contemporary anxieties and apathy, balancing thematic resonance with difficulty, and planning a coordinated marketing push for an effective team of two.

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Unearthing subterranean stories with Cecile Richard

Cecile Richard (they/them) is a graphic designer, writer, and game developer known for their playful Bitsy projects and hypertext fiction. They joined me to discuss cyclical stories, the risk/reward of collaborating with close friends, and how cool underground tunnels are. We also take a moment to proselytize about editors, and I learn about a new, extremely fake sounding sport.

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Zero Context 23: not living in a society

Through a chaotic sequence of various form of time travel, Axe and Nathalie have finally ended up at Zero Time Dilemma’s apex. They bare witness to a cabin fever love story, learn about transporter cooldown timers, and send clones of doomed babies back to the turn of the 20th century. Shifting to another timeline, they discover the facility is not what it seems, get another round of snail story facts, and finally glance at that bloody anagram before our favorite boy Carlos blows the door off its hinges…

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Zero Context 22: I drink your milkshake

After last week’s malaise, Axe and Nathalie have been orb launched into two bewilderingly dense fragments. Zero Time Dilemma begins to reveal its secrets, as first our hosts close the loop on the radical-6 outbreak, finding a far more familiar culprit than expected. Then, Akane’s murderous soul returns to her body and they bear witness to the worst time travel escape plan of all time. Just as the way out is at hand, the lights are cut and a boy without a name comes to end the episode for us…

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Toyhouses of ones and zeros

By the time the game’s belabored development seemed to be wrapping up, the initial release of Tarotica Voo Doo had been pushed to drop during Comiket during the winter of 1997. Seen next to the newly released Playstation and Sega Saturn, the MSX was a relic. Still, solo developer Ikushi Togo soldiered on, ready to show his work to the 300,000 strong audience of the convention after years of working in isolation. Fate, however, had different plans, and with little fanfare a disk drive crash sentenced the project to an early grave, erasing the source code and any chance of the game ever being played. Tarotica Voo Doo was dead

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Metamorphosing sounds and sheep with David Su

David Su (he/him) is a musician, audio programmer, and game designer who explores interactive music and performance art. He took some time off from his ballooning schedule to discuss how he got interested in making games from an audio background, the challenges and rewards of centering your game around sound, and the playful earnestness of a cloned sheep’s lament. Later, we wander into a video store.

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Zero Context 21: Gab is Zero

Happy New Year! Returning from an arguably better videogame, Axe and Nathalie are back in the Zero Time Dilemma bomb shelter with our favorite cast of disorganized sickos. They learn about game show probability puzzles, crunch the numbers on sci-fi virus mortality rates (they’re bad), and play an actual escape room game. In another timeline, Nathalie proposes that a dog could be behind the whole thing, Axe pleads for more mid-puzzle cutscene, and the duo collectively sigh at how still nothing is happening before being put out of their misery by a mysterious assassin.

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Kritiqal Care presents: The End of 2023

It’s New Year’s Eve, which means 2023 has come and gone, bringing in closing our annual end of the year show. As is tradition, I reached out to past guests of the show to ask what their most impactful gaming memory was from the last 12 months. The responses were as insightful, touching, and playful as ever, running the gamut from industry events, personal milestones, and games that captured people’s imaginations.

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Zero Context Holiday Special: Kamaitachi no Yoru

Axe and Nathalie take a break from Zero Escape for the holidays, having scored an all-expenses-paid trip to a ski lodge from a mysterious and generous listener. The time off gives them a chance to finally play the seminal sound novel, Kamaitachi no Yoru (Chunsoft, 1994) AKA Night of the Sickle Weasel, but unfortunately, the game becomes all too real as bodies start to pile up with the ceaseless snow. As frenzied accusations threaten to lock up our hosts for good, they search for a branch of the flow chart which will get them out of this nightmare…

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Zero Context 20: Zero's plushie empire

In an eerily brief set of fragments, Axe and Nathalie must contend with poison capsules, rotating rooms, and a belligerent shotgun wielding Eric as they scramble towards some a still ambiguous resolution. They scan some brains and swing some hammers before confronting a troubling child abuse backstory and its many unfortunate connotations. After the dust settles, Nathalie unveils a new set of 9 10 predictions that just might be her ticket our of this twisted game, and our hosts look forward to a holiday reprieve from Zero as they jump to a different game entirely.

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Dreaming of piss with Domino Club

Domino Club is a pseudo-anonymous internet collective that makes weird, horny, and genre perverting videogames. In this episode I’m joined by Domino Club card carrying members Emma (she/her), Nat (she/they), and Rose (she/her) to chat about the group’s origins, its unconventional approach to anthology projects, and how all these games are secretly just for them.

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Zero Context 19: sadboy570

After escaping from a eerily familiar shower game, Axe and Nathalie stand before the exit ready to emerge into the humid Nevada air. Instead, they are treated to incoherent asides about alien mouths, tournament statistics, and the existential weight of many worlds. In another reality, they trudge through the worst rec room puzzle yet, bearing witness to a particularly pathetic and angry Junpei, who is just as confused about this new pacifist Akane. Just as the numbers align and freedom appears in sight, something grabs our podcasters and pulls them back in. The show’s not over yet.

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Zero Context 18: incinerate your gays

Awakening from an explosive nightmare, Axe and Nathalie are thrust into not one, not two, but three deadly decision games. First, they must choose whether to save themselves and doom the others to an acid grave. Then, they play a round of cosmic Russian roulette, potentially killing our favorite boy Sigma to save Phi from a familiar death by fire. In the timeline where they miraculously make it through, they are then suddenly poisoned and must decide if it’s possible to trust the antidote sent by supervillain girlboss Akane. Could she be behind Zero’s mask yet again?

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Visiting Brownie Cove with Sam Machell

Sam Machell (he/him) is half of indie game studio Sand Gardeners, known for provocative and unconventional games like Dark Kitchen, Memphis, Bubbleland, and Brownie Cove Cancelled. We chat about the studio’s origins as a webcomic collaboration, designing hostile environments, and the tragedy and possibility of unarchivable games. Later, Sam gives a brief eulogy for the Wii U, sadly taken from us too soon.

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Zero Context 17: big head blood mode

After a brief 90 minute absence, Axe and Nathalie return to Zero Time Dilemma ready to dive into the game’s first set of puzzles. Once again trapped in a pantry, Nathalie gets hung up on a sliding door diagram but eventually the pair unlocks the freezer and its gruesome rewards. Elsewhere, they fumble through yet another lesser library, unlocking a small arsenal in the process. Things quickly go south, however, when the duo comes face to face with an unexpected murderer…

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Terraforming Oddworld

Over its decades of development and numerous games, Oddworld’s characters and politics have shifted on an almost game-by-game basis leading to a series that is both tonally discordant and consistent in its inconsistencies. Oddworld wants to be popular, first and foremost, and it is unafraid to throw its ideology in the meat grinder in pursuit of bombast and wider appeal.

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Zero Context 16: for want of a snail

Returning after volunteering on a Mars colonization experiment, Axe and Nathalie are back in the Nevada desert for the third and final (?) Zero Escape game, Zero Time Dilemma . Immediately thrust into another death game, Axe digs into the tumultuous development process, Nathalie gets trapped in a coin toss timeloop, and they both delight in how outrageous an experience they’re already having. Too bad they won’t remember this…

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Exploring a world of crypts with Lili Zone

Lili Zone (she/they) is the experimental game designer behind works like Crypt World (2013) and Crypt Underworld (2023). She took some time to chat with me about Crypt World’s origins, the nearly decade long development of Underworld, and what she has planned for the future now the crypts are behind her. We also dig into the evolving conception of indie games, the “small games matter” PR amnesia cycle, and gaming’s ongoing embarrassment and adoration for Great Men™.

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Canvas on making your mechanics crunchy and your robots gay

Canvas (he/she), aka bighandinsky, is the creator of crunchy, narrative driven scifi games A Forgetful Loop and A Day of Maintenance. He’s collaborated with fellow writers and indie devs Freya Campbell and Elliot Herriman, and joined me on this episode to chat about integrating dense narration into mechanics heavy games, writing casual and circuitous conversations with robots, and the struggle of managing energy and stress during longterm projects.

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