May 22, 2023
Tim and Joel return after a hiatus for the first episode of 2023. We talk about the future direction of the podcast - which, now that Tim’s own game development projects are picking up steam - will involve a more design-focussed approach to looking at games.
With this in mind, we go into the differences between three games: The Wolf Among Us (2013), Disco Elysium (2019) and Pentiment (2022). All these games have strong narratives and great writing, but the latter two incorporate these elements into gameplay in a way that Wolf doesn’t.
Tim goes into his adventures in solo game development, making a working orbital model in C++.
00:00 Intro to new season
01:50 Games purely as entertainment vs Games criticism bearing the weight of other media
00:04:48 What have we been playing?
00:06:00 Steam Deck for traveling and multiplayer
00:10:40 The Wolf Among Us
00:18:14 Disco Elysium on Steam Deck
00:21:09 Which games have affected you?
00:26:39 Venue
00:30:00 Pentiment / Disco Elysium
01:14:03 Godot game dev: C++ and orbital mechanics
01:24:53 GPT-4 and the benefits of AI for the lone dev
01:35:25 Kerbal Space Program and the challenge of making complex problems fun for the user
01:42:27 Narrative elements express themselves out of the mechanics that are happening
01:48:22 Socials