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Est. Listeners
Based on iTunes & Spotify (publisher stats).
- Per-Episode Audience
Est. listeners per new episode within ~30 days
1,001 - 10,000 - Monthly Reach
Unique listeners across all episodes (30 days)
5,001 - 25,000 - Active Followers
Loyal subscribers who consistently listen
501 - 5,000
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On the show
Recent episodes
"Mr Chi's Magic Emporium"
Apr 27, 2026
52m 39s
"Hyperpimps"
Mar 30, 2026
1h 03m 52s
"Down With Art"
Mar 16, 2026
57m 10s
"Imaginarium"
Mar 2, 2026
59m 42s
"The Kazoo Variants"
Feb 16, 2026
1h 00m 32s
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| Date | Episode | Description | Length | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4/27/26 |  "Mr Chi's Magic Emporium" | "It's never lupus." Take a turn with us through some of the kookier parts of the Second World War (dropping unmeltable ice into Winston Churchill's bath; how French fashion defeated the Nazis; the British Army's self-mythologising stage musician; etc). We also talk about the importance of art being bold, an infamous bug in Hush House, and why we're aiming for Jason Bourne over James Bond in Travelling At Night. Support the show | 52m 39s | ||||||
| 3/30/26 |  "Hyperpimps" | What is the true 'artist's reward'? When are you pushing usefully out of your comfort zone, and when are you banging your head against a rock? Alexis and Lottie discuss developing your own creative talents alongside game design issues like the 'murderhobo' RPG outfit problem, medicine in Fallout: New Vegas and why John Constantine is a pillar of our crafting system. Support the show | 1h 03m 52s | ||||||
| 3/16/26 | "Down With Art" | Who are the 'old gods' of gamebooks? Why can we mess with rules in Travelling At Night but not in Cultist Simulator? What's 'combinatorial explosion', and why is it ruining your life? Join Alexis and Lottie for these questions alongside a potted history of text-based games, the perils of voiceovers in CRPGs and Lottie's most important rule for marketing. Support the show | 57m 10s | ||||||
| 3/2/26 | "Imaginarium" | What's the 'double or half' rule? Why is game design like Khazad-dûm? What the hell is a quaternion? No, really, we don't know. Join AK and Lottie for another jaunt through game dev, via narrative modifiers, infinite nuns and 'entering the Mansus', for the first time ever... Support the show | 59m 42s | ||||||
| 2/16/26 | "The Kazoo Variants" | "There are games where the player is having fun and games where the designer is having fun." - Sid Meier Maps! Music! British pre-decimal currency! We discuss planning game narratives around major player choices, Mike Rosewater's 'complexity budget' and why putting little stamps on bank notes is not a good idea. Support the show | 1h 00m 32s | ||||||
| 2/2/26 | "Agave Aeterna" | "What we want is a sort of semi-glutide octi-frenetic image that is kinda made of lighting and also is a baby..." This week AK and Lottie discuss how art direction works, how to balance being weird with being commercially viable, how we're building Travelling At Night's entirely 2D visual world, and how to paint a tree. All while accidentally revealing what we suspect might be our next Weather Factory game and answering our first batch of mail bag entries. Support the show | 1h 00m 05s | ||||||
| 1/19/26 | "The Sphinx" | 'My fingers are worn to bleeding nubs. I am typing this with my tongue. my keyboard is sticky with game dev drool. Do you not understand...' Thus did 2026 begin. Welcome back to the world of game dev, this time about 'murdering darlings', the Curst curse and why Newt will always trump Aliens' M577 Armored Personnel Carrier. Support the show | 1h 01m 44s | ||||||
| 12/12/25 | "Snow in the Neath" | Our final episode of 2025! Talking Travelling At Night's alpha, the sine wave of game dev, where Fallen London's Overgoat came from and how we're attempting to solve the 'layer of plastic' in AAA RPGs. Support the show | 1h 03m 16s | ||||||
| 12/1/25 | "Don't Be A Cube" | This week in the life of jobbing game developers, we reach ALPHA. Cue period appropriate beatnik slang, a disagreement about potato croquettes and why 2D and 3D are such frenemies in isometric CRPGs. Support the show | 1h 00m 32s | ||||||
| 11/17/25 | "Dreamweaver" | Skeleton Songs is BACK with a game-dev-centric season all about the inside story of making an indie RPG. In this episode, find out why CRPGs are such hard work, why UI eats time, why we're scared of Disco Elysium, and what's up with Travelling At Night. Also we have a fight about jazz. Support the show | 55m 18s | ||||||
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| 1/25/24 |  Only In Silence The Word | "The final victory of sci-fi is its final defeat," says AK, gnomically, before we sing the Beverly Hills Cop theme tune and talk about trombones. Join us for a discussion of 'the best fiction novel of the 20th century', A Wizard of Earthsea, and its masterful magic system: from Native American folklore to shamanism, demonic to natural theurgy, and eastern wyrms to western protodragons. Is it written for children or not? What is 'Equilibrium'? Why is 'clot of shadow' so upsetting, and what d... | 1h 01m 20s | ||||||
| 12/18/23 |  The Wood Between the Worlds | Lord of the Rings + Narnia + Jane Austen = ? A smash-hit 800-page faux-Victorian novel of realist magic and alternate histories, of course! Welcome to the world of Susanna Clarke, whose rules-based, Mametian and very 'English' magic system is one of the best we've had the good fortune to meet. Join us for a discussion of made-up magical scholarship, urban versus natural magic, whether you should consider the Land of Faerie for your next holiday destination, and 'the beauty of grey'. Gam... | 1h 05m 36s | ||||||
| 11/24/23 |  The Kilns of Smorgasbord | Author. Visionary. Dreamweaver. Plus bellhop. Meet Jack Vance, one of the most inventive fantasy authors we've ever heard of, and probably not a pirate king. What happens when fairies become too lumpen and earthy? Why are Lvl1 wizards in D&D so rubbish? Who is Larkin the Baby-Stealer, and why are you reaching for that kazoo? We talk Cugel the Clever, Vancean magic and why you shouldn't make bread from dogs. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure: - ... | 1h 02m 45s | ||||||
| 11/6/23 |  Magic That Hath Ravish'd Me | "If magic works, why isn't the President of the United States doing it?" After a 'brief' hiatus, we're back! We pick up where we left off and talk about the magic of Doctor Faustus, whether magic is 'liberation or damnation', and the distinction between ceremonial magic and what specialists term 'Doing A Big Spell'. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure: - The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, by, mostly, Christoper Marlowe - C... | 47m 32s | ||||||
| 4/27/22 |  This Thing of Darkness | Welcome to a new season, all about magic and literature! We talk William Shakespeare's Tempest, from women-wizards from Algiers to royal demonology. Caliban's Moth, Ariel's Lantern and AK nearly dies in a spiegel tent. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure: - "The Tempest", by William Shakespeare - Against Worldbuilding, and Other Provocations, by Alexis Kennedy - Daemonologie, by King James I - The Lesser Key of Solomon, anonymous Follow us on Twitter... | 46m 50s | ||||||
| 12/3/21 | A City Is Not A Tree | What makes games 'savoury'? Why is Twitter such a bad place to get game design advice? And is it ever sensible to push a count off a cliff? This episode, Lottie and Alexis talk art, games and critique, through architect Christopher Alexander to Jack Cohen and Brian Aldiss' fight over speculative xenobiology in Helliconia. Listen to avoid the perils of categorisation, and the pitfalls of diamonds - and hear Alexis fake his own death. Literally. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for yo... | 34m 26s | ||||||
| 11/19/21 | The Glittering Lights of Wolfstack Docks | Hiraeth? Sensucht? Saudade? Listen to Alexis and Lottie cry as we talk nostalgia, sequels and games, from 17th-century Swiss cowbells to sailing away from your loved ones into danger. We talk transmission of experience from one generation to the next, the future of games as gamers get old, and the impossible loss of childhood - and why that's not such a bad thing after all. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure: - Sunless Sea, by Alexis Kennedy and Fail... | 42m 47s | ||||||
| 8/27/21 | Now Draw the Rest of the Owl, Part 2 | The conclusion of an epic two-parter. Who would win in a fight between TRPGs and CRPGs? What happens if a giant worm swallows a city? Is a dolphin the same as a cat? We attempt to answer these questions with appeals to Simon Baron-Cohen's empathising-systemising theory, work out why TRPGs rely so heavily on rule-sets when lots of people don't follow them anyway, and end up convincing ourselves that Game of Thrones is Love Island for nerds. PROVE US WRONG IF YOU DARE. Games / books mentioned ... | 56m 58s | ||||||
| 7/8/21 | Now Draw the Rest of the Owl, Part 1 | "I don't want to be Elfstar anymore! I want to be Debbie!" Join us for a romp through tabletop gaming's earliest origins and the effect its had on modern video games. Well, that was the intention. We actually stop around the 1980s with fundamental Christianity and a woman called Janine who is bad at charades. But we talk about the defining characteristic of nerdery, Star Wars vs Star Trek, Boris Johnson and the Devil's testicles in between. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your... | 53m 24s | ||||||
| 6/25/21 | An Early Symptom of Schizophrenia | Real talk: APOPHENIA. Alexis and Lottie discuss subliminal pattern-seeking from its coinage by a Nazi psychologist to its use by modern indie game developers to cover up the fact we don't have any budget. Wait! We meant to make clever, co-operative immersive experiences. All via werewives, apophanies and Zhou Enlai. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure: - Cultist Simulator, by us - Foucault's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco - Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pync... | 40m 26s | ||||||
| 5/20/21 | This Episode Is About Sex | This episode is about sex and games and the libertine novels of eighteenth-century France. From Talleyrand, the Napoleonic clergyman and diplomat, through to Cindy Crawford, Peter Bradshaw and Amouranth, the Twitch streamer scandal du jour, we talk erotica, porn and those anime sex games you see all the time on Steam. Listen for the power of 'not for me', the uselessness of banning things, and Alexis's really bizarre description of one of Lottie's favourite games. Games / books mentioned in ... | 46m 38s | ||||||
| 3/25/21 | 500,000 Sociopaths | Join Alexis and Lottie for a discussion of antagonists and villains! Via witches, Belgium, Simon Baron-Cohen, a charming Irish vagabond and, of course, Nazism. Alexis talks about how rubbish games are and destroys Lottie's argument; Lottie talks about five-hour Polish art films and producers stopping developers from kicking each other in the nads. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure: - Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army, by Rebellion - Zero Degrees of Em... | 47m 43s | ||||||
| 3/5/21 | Twisty Little Passages All Alike | What's the connection between the Labyrinths of Night and the Bright Ditches? This question and many more we don't really answer in this episode on mazes, labyrinths and game design. Meet labrys, the lesbianic double-headed axe. Leave kittens in mazes and form human chains in swampy MUDs. Learn Alexis Kennedy's First Law of Narrative. Cake. Also, Lottie gets cross about a pretend man 'buggering off with a sex witch and having a baby'. So there's that. Games / books mentioned in this episode... | 41m 49s | ||||||
| 1/28/21 | Are Panthers Chairs? | Skeleton Songs season two, baby! This season's all about GAMES, but not as you know 'em. Join Alexis and Lottie as we discuss genre via Aristotle and Wittgenstein, cyberpunk and film noir, the Berlin Interpretation and, er, fish genitalia. Also there is an odd bit about tortoises in the rain but perhaps Alexis's medicine was wearing off then. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure: - Cultist Simulator, by us - Cyberpunk 2077, by CDPR - Skyrim, by Bethes... | 42m 03s | ||||||
| 11/11/20 | Endgame | Ragnarok! Gotterdammerung! Armageddon outta here! In the final episode of season one, we talk eschatology, chocolate, fake news and the bloody gothness of Old Germanic literature. Sexy zombie apocalypses and millennial doomsday cults make an appearance too, because of course they do. And even though we say 'everyone's gonna die' a lot in this episode, we realise it's small acts of everyday niceness that really save us. Nawwww. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / readin... | 38m 17s | ||||||
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Chart Positions
7 placements across 7 markets.
Chart Positions
7 placements across 7 markets.