The Crate and Crowbar

Click ‘Use’, then click ‘Pod’. Success! You have unlocked access to an episode of adventure game discussion from the steamy podding lairs of Jamie and Tom! First we turn our attentions to the fine timeline-twisting futuristic adventure game, Old Skies. We’re enjoying it greatly, along with Unavowed and the rest of Wadjet Eye Games collection. Also Tom brought along a rough top five adventure games list (that he wishes he’d put Last Express on, or Siberia, or a dozen others). With the addition of Jamie’s suggestions we embark on a bit of time travel ourselves, remembering why these games captured our imaginations in spite of some abslutely honking puzzles. Games discussed! * The Monkey Island series* The Dig* Day of the Tentacle* Full Throttle* Grim Fandandgo* Dune (1992)* Lost Eden* Rama* I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream* Beneath A Steel Sky* Blade Runner* Kentucky Route Zero* Monkey Island 2* Thimbleweed Park* Ben There, Dan That* Time Gentlemen, Please!* Simon The Sorcerer 2* And More Grim Fandango why not You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us via the Questions sub-channel on our Discord or email it to questions@crateandcrowbar.com. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like. The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here. Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

The distant troglodyte descendants of Jamie and Marsh relive memories of the before-times and the joyous videogames that were once played, namely: 1000xResist, Type Help and Pathologic 3: Quarantine. * Pathologic 3: Quarantine is the demo for a larger forthcoming game, and is harrowing in about every way it can be. * 1000xResist is a brilliant game about many things, including generational trauma and big pigeons. Contains mild jumping. * This is a good video deep dive into the game. * Type Help is an information game with a killer discovery mechanic and a wicked mystery. Bloody devil! * Tom Francis, who has the best sheets, and now an IGF Award for Excellence in Design, did a video review of Type Help, here. You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us via the Questions sub-channel on our Discord or email it to questions@crateandcrowbar.com. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like. The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here. Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Jamie and Marsh wallop their way through a sea of fascists in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and enjoy the peaches, pots and permadeath of Shiren the Wanderer 6. * Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is made by Machine Games, also known for the Wolfenstein reboot, its sequels and some brilliant level packs for Quake and Quake 2. * Quinns Quest is a cool Youtube channel about TTRPGs * Shiren the Wanderer 6: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island. You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us via the Questions sub-channel on our Discord or email it to questions@crateandcrowbar.com. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like. The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here. Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Chris, Senior Tom and Marsh convene to talk Metal Gear Rising Revengeance, Diablo 4, Rise Of The Golden Idol, Xenotilt, Destiny 2 and then Chris talks about Dragon Age: Veilguard non-stop for about 45 minutes and it’s kind of incredible. * Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is a game about cutting robots into many bits, or just two bits.* Diablo 4 is a game about killing many things and number go up, but at what cost.* Xenotilt is a pinball game that Jamie is now completely addicted to, thanks Chris. * Rise Of The Golden Idol might be a tad disappointing. * Dragon Age: Veilguard is a game about the Arcane Mark/Evil Greg dichotomy. Back Gold Teeth, Pale Tides, and buy Chris’ books here. You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us via the Questions sub-channel on our Discord or email it to questions@crateandcrowbar.com. You can also listen to this episode on on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like. The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here. Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Tom S, Jamie and Marsh gather, like a drift of dead leaves, to discuss some seasonally spooky games: Alan Wake 2 and Mouthwashing. Also mentioned: Arco and Grunn. * Painshill Park. The crystal grotto is closed on Mondays. * Alan Wake 2 * Remember Quantum Break? My sympathies. * Garth Marenghi is a better writer than Alan Wake, and he’s meant to be awful. * Mouthwashing * Arco * Grunn * Youtuber Lazy Game Reviews talks about The Sims You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us via the Questions sub-channel on our Discord or email it to questions@crateandcrowbar.com. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like. The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here. Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Jamie kindly permits Marsh to talk about Gold Teeth, the tabletop roleplaying game he’s Kickstarting, which is just an excuse to ramble at length about roleplaying games more broadly with excellent chums Jim Rossignol and Chris Lackey. * Gold Teeth! It’s a game of piracy and occult horror! * Strange Studies of Strange Stories – an excellent podcast that deftly unpicks literary tales of the sinister, supernatural or simply weird. Well worth a sub. Patton Oswalt thinks so! * Strange Stories is also soon to be a roleplaying game. * Free League’s Alien RPG * Mothership (and I don’t think it’s too spoilery to say that the time-loop module is Time After Time) * Call of Cthulhu * Marvel Superheroes * Gamma World * Star Frontiers * Broken Compass is the game which inspires the matching-dice mechanism of Strange Stories * Daggerheart is the system developed to replace D&D for Critical Role * Thistle & Hearth – a dice-less game * Starforged – a GM-less game with extremely elaborate world generation * The Quiet Year is a map game in which the Frost Shepherds are coming. * The Burning Wheel, Mouseguard and Miseries & Misfortunes are all games by Luke Crane. You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at questions@crateandcrowbar.com or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like. The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here. Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Jamie and Marsh reel from Microsoft’s latest layoffs, mismanage time in Hades 2, paddle in the uncanny, chlorinated waters of Pools, devour the bite-sized city-building triumphs of Against the Storm, and indulge their flaws in The Thaumaturge. * The last lay offs of 2024. Thankfully there won’t be any more of those! Phew!! * Nathan Brown’s Hit Points newsletter which I incorrectly namechecked as Bullet Points. Look, there are only so many pithy game-related analogies to go around, ok? * Hades 2, the much anticipated ARPG sequel – perhaps not ideal for the time-poor? * Destiny 2 is unintelligible at this point, but the guns still go bang. * Animal Well is a pixelart indie Metroidvania with notes of Fez and Cocoon. * Knytt and Within a Deep Forest are two excellent pixelart indie Metroidvania’s from yesteryear. You can find them in Nifflas’s archive here. * POOLS is about vibing in weird swimming pools. * Dreamcore is about vibing in weird swimming pools, and then being jump-scared. * Against the Storm is a city-builder for people who don’t have the mental capacity for city-builders. * The Thaumaturge could be the best 7/10 RPG of the year. Terrific character. * The Royal Mob – Jamie’s TV show about orgies and dying of exposure. * Judas is a roguelike shooter from Ken Levine’s studio, Ghost Story Games. You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at questions@crateandcrowbar.com or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like. The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here. Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Chris and Marsh discuss disappointing children’s entertainment, disappointing sales figures, anti-mnemonic naming choices, the rulebreaking delight of card game Balatro, the dishonourable cheeses of Honor Mode in Baldur’s Gate 3, and return once more to Night Country. * AI wrote cheques that Willy Wonker simply could not cash. * Immortals of Aveum may not have sold well, but it really opens up your pores. * Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is fine, probably, but it isn’t Balatro. * Balatro is Balatro, and Balatro is all. * Apart from the large part of all which is made up of repeated, ever stranger playthroughs of Baldur’s Gate 3. * 20 Small Mazes and Sheepy: A Short Adventure are free and good. * True Detective: Night Country is on HBO Max or whatever it’s calling itself now for tax reasons. * “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K. LeGuin. * “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole” by Isabel J. Kim. You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at questions@crateandcrowbar.com or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like. The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here. Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.