Demo Disk
A show about video games in progress.
First impressions on first impressions.
Every week, I play through video game demos, prototypes, betas, jam games, and so on. They can be any genre, from anywhere in the world, at any point in their development. They're as new to me as they are to you. The Demo Disk Podcast is a quick wrap-up of that week's games—what's interesting, what's engaging, and what's terrible.
New episodes go up every Wednesday. You can see all of the full segments, including ones from past weeks, on YouTube. Or you can catch the stream live, Saturdays at 1pm Pacific.
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archives
We end Season 1 with just another day at the office: functional programming, illogical animals, and really needing to take a nap.
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This episode focuses on older games. As in "already out". Look, always talking about upcoming games messes with your sense of time.
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"The bends" occurs when you quickly go from extremes of elevation. And with underwater exploration and mountaintop adventure, this episode certainly qualifies.
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Words are good. I use them a lot. So here are some games that are about words and communication, and some games that very much aren't.
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Is there anything more important than water, in all its forms? Maybe air. Hard to say. Water's definitely in the top two, though.
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Is magic real? That question is not addressed at all in this episode. But we do address things that are close to magic, and that's close enough.
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For this episode, we're going underground. And then above the ground. And then on the ground, but that ground's above other ground... it's all confusing.
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Naturally, a good game requires good gameplay. But the best games also offer interesting and compelling narrative experiences.
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Ludum Dare is one of the world's largest game jams. In this episode, we look at six games from Ludum Dare 44: Your Life is Currency.
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Who needs human protagonists, anyway? We've got foxes and raccoons and... okay maybe one or two humans is fine too, whatever.
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Look, all I'm going to say is: the session where I played through these games was on April 20th. Take that as you will.
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The 2019 Global Game Jam asked teams: what does "home" mean to you? In this episode, we look at six of those answers.
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A new life can mean many things. Maybe a new body, maybe a new chapter in your life. Or, just good old-fashioned zombies.
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I spent four days in Boston this past weekend, checking out dozens of indie games at PAX East. This episode has my raw thoughts and recommendations.
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Sometimes it's worth taking a step back and trying to be one with nature. Though, maybe not as much as some of these games. They go a little far.
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The annual Independent Games Festival looks to celebrate interesting, quality independent games. For this episode, we look at six of this year's finalists.
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Look, naming things is hard. Especially when you cover a whole lot of different genres in one episode.
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What's cooler than punks or gun-toting cats? Ice, usually. Ice is fairly cold. Especially dry ice, that stuff is dangerous.
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How do we really define a vehicle, anyway? Can a swivel chair be a vehicle? Are our legs not vehicles? No. No they're not. That's silly.
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Games are great for friendships! So of course games about friendships can be great too. But games can also be terrible for your friendships too, if they want to be.
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It's hard to overstate how important it was when video games started scrolling the screen. My, how far we've come.
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An obligation, a compulsion, a competition. Sometimes you just have to be quick.
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Ludum Dare is one of the world's largest game jams. In this episode, we look at six games from Ludum Dare 43: Sacrifices Must Be Made.
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There are a lot of scary things out there. Dark forests. Mafia thugs. Late-stage capitalism. Stuff like that.
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It's a lot of tomatoes. A whole town of them. It seems to go on infinitely, looping around in the dark, unless someone steps forward and does something about it.
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Sure, some of us have to work, but for many the new year means party time! Just be careful not to go too hard, or you'll meet all sorts of unusual or undead characters.
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Okay, I'd be mad too if "safety" meant super-fast driving or pushing around a backhoe. But you need to be careful when zombies rise, aliens invade, evolution goes awry, or you walk into a heavy metal album cover.
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Sometimes, games are good for teaching you things, like history or geometry or robotics engineering. And sometimes you just doodle and dream about space adventures.
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We've all got our jobs to do. Maybe you're "filing" documents. Or curating a museum. Maybe you're delivering mail, or equipment, or cultists. But sometimes, you just need to go play in the streets.
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Duck season! Rabbit season! Penguin season! Rabbit season! Driving season! Tiny gardening alien season! Wait what?
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This week, it's educational! We learn how dogs rap, hedgehogs think, and Swedes raise children. Valuable information to have when your world is beset by robots and bugs, or under attack from varied unworldly horrors.
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After doing so much gardening and battling so many monsters and demons, we've earned a vacation! Grab your skateboard, come to Europe, and jump into a lizard's mouth!
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What's scarier: a world full of monsters, a lifetime of damaged memories, or a broken fourth wall? Perhaps we need some minimalism and some unconventional weapons to chill out.
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Copyright Zoe Landon 2018