Stay ConnectedGirl Mode is a podcast (mostly) about video games by two trans women and gaming journalists where we talk about the latest news in the industry, our takes, weekly topics, and more about the Mets than you’re probably expecting.
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Copyright: © Copyright Girl Mode Podcast
This week, we watched Nintendo’s little showcase, which was fine. Then we both played Heartworm, a game that we like a lot, despite all the things we don’t like about it. Finally, Robin talks about some old lady shit and a new podcast, and Willa reads a good book.
Timestamps:
(01:06) A little Nintendo Direct
(03:25) Too cool for Americans
(04:45) Regarding mouth sounds
(06:05) The rest of Nintendo Indie World
(14:25) Heartworm
(37:50) Titan Quest II
(40:09) What else have Willa and Robin been up to this week? (feat. Pure Colour, In Sequence, Queer Games Bundle 2025)
Mentioned this week:
Heartworm Is A Modern Take On Fatal Frame With Perfect Retro Aesthetics
Heartworm Grapples With the Trap of Nostalgia
Titan Quest II Takes All The Right Lessons From Its Classic Predecessor
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Street Food by FASSounds
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We’ve got a grab bag of things this week (that includes mini grab bags hidden within). Robin and Willa discuss the latest Nintendo Direct, including everyone’s love of Philabieldia, and then go over previews for Battlefield (boo) and Silent Hill f (boo, but in a scary way not a bad way) before checking up on what games they’ve been playing.
Timestamps:
(02:30) Nintendo Direct gives us the good slop
(16:20) Preview corner with Battlefield 6 and Silent Hill f
(21:04) The Great Villainess… Again!
(27:48) The Robin game corner (Co-op Kaiju Horror Cooking and Time Flies)
(40:09) What else have Willa and Robin been up to this week? (feat. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Brendon Bigley's Metroid Fusion video, Stop Fucking Playing The Wordle, Hana's Light)
Mentioned this week:
Giovanni Colantonio on Battlefield 6
Check out the network at TheWorstGarbage.online!
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Music
Street Food by FASSounds
Things are bad right now, but you can help make them better. Please take some time to consider how you can help trans people, immigrants, and others targeted by our fascist government with this Big List Of Links.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Everything that was bad last week is even worse this week. Itch has followed Steam in delisting a ton of games for either including offensive sexual content or just gay people. Who can even tell the difference? We follow that exasperating conversation with what we’ve been playing this week, mostly consisting of games about a whole bunch of toxic lesbians.
Timestamps:
(01:00) Everything got worse
(18:35) Toxic Yuri VN Jam
(29:10) The Great Villainess
(33:15) Metal Garden
(36:50) What else have Willa and Robin been up to this week? (feat. Young Justice, The Raven Tower)
Mentioned this week:
Two articles from Ana Valens on game censorship
Fans need to understand Link and Zelda aren’t a couple
Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny
Developers Are Protesting As Adult Game Bans Come To Indie Storefront Itch.io
Steam Banning Some Adult Games Is A Big Deal Even If You Don’t Play Them
Stop Payment Processors from censorship!
Protect Queer Creators and Sex Workers
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Music
Street Food by FASSounds
Things are bad right now, but you can help make them better. Please take some time to consider how you can help trans people, immigrants, and others targeted by our fascist government with this Big List Of Links.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 133 - The Cultural Vandalism Corner
This week Robin and Willa talk about the horrors of horse girl racing, the horrors of pulp point-and-click adventure The Drifter, the horrors of regulating games, and the beauty of the New York Mets baby, let's go Mets, it's all about the Mets!
Timestamps:
(00:13) Sponsored by TK water brand
(04:24) Umamusume: and they were roomates
(12:44) The Drifter: John Carpenter does point-and-click
(23:14) Wheels of Aurelia and Apple sucking as usual
(28:19) Valve cracks down on porn for stupid reasons. TRIGGER WARNING: sexault assault and rape mentioned
(34:04) What else have Willa and Robin been up to this week? (feat. TAMAYOMI: The Baseball Girls, Leviathan)
Mentioned this week:
Game Developer on Wheels of Aurelia
No Escape on Valve’s porn crackdown
Ana Valens on Valve's porn crackdown
And finally Robin on Valve's porn crackdown
Women are reclaiming their place in baseball
The girl who struck out Babe Ruth
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Music
Street Food by FASSounds
Things are bad right now, but you can help make them better. Please take some time to consider how you can help trans people, immigrants, and others targeted by our fascist government with this Big List Of Links.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
We took last week off from recording and, what do you know, we ended up playing a lot of games in the meantime. This time, we’re talking about girls who are horses, cats who are girls, and card games that are magic. This week also marks Press Start joining The Worst Garbage network so go check them out!!
Timestamps:
(00:25) We’ve gone to the audience
(03:10) Peak - It’s still good
(10:00) P5X - A Persona game with bad politics? Who would have thought
(19:25) Occlude - What if solitaire was fun
(26:45) Umamusume - The highs and lows of high school horse girl racing
(41:35) Everdeep Aurora - She’s a cat who’s a girl, not a cat girl
(46:30) Mass Effect - The best Mass Effect
(57:50) Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream - What if Fagin was a hot lady and not antisemitic
(1:08:00) What else have Willa and Robin been up to this week? (feat. Dan Da Dan, Wildermyth Lays Bare the False Promises of AI Storytelling, Two Days Talking to People Looking for Jobs at ICE)
Mentioned this week:
Not Every Co-Op Game is “Friendslop”
No Phone Summer: It’s The Summer of the Retro Handheld
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Music
Street Food by FASSounds
Things are bad right now, but you can help make them better. Please take some time to consider how you can help trans people, immigrants, and others targeted by our fascist government with this Big List Of Links.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
There has not been a lot of news for us to discourse about lately, so we are doing what every good content creator does for engagement: make a bad list. Come for Willa and Robin suffering through a task of their own making as they choose the best games of the 21st century, stay for updates on what Willa’s neighbor is doing with their backyard.
Timestamps:
(00:13) Judging our neighbors
(04:09) The best games of the 21st century (objectively)
(35:27) What else have Willa and Robin been up to this week? (feat. Loco Motive, Peak)
Mentioned this week:
Check out the network at TheWorstGarbage.online!
Join The Worst Garbage Discord!
Follow us and send us questions!
Music
Street Food by FASSounds
Things are bad right now, but you can help make them better. Please take some time to consider how you can help trans people, immigrants, and others targeted by our fascist government with this Big List Of Links.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
We’re coming to you live from the heat dome this week, so assume anything wrong with this episode is due to our brains poaching in our skulls. In the meantime, we’ve been playing fishing games and porn games and old games and racing games and all kinds of other games and we’re here to talk about them in no particular order.
Timestamps:
(00:20) Welcome to the heat dome
(02:50) Sinker Sound
(17:10) L8R SK8R
(22:34) Mario Kart 8
(25:30) Aeromachina
(31:00) Signum Malum
(34:35) PSP Corner
(41:20) The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky
(44:40) Ambrosia Sky
(46:25) Good Morning Drifter
(48:20) Squeakross: Home Squeak Home
(52:00) What else have Willa and Robin been up to this week? (feat. The Talented Mr. Ripley, Date Everything claims to be a dating sim, but it doesn't love or understand its own genre, good writers are perverts, leaving the party, F*ck it, Let's Make a Website!)
Mentioned this week:
Mario Kart World Review: ALMOST the Best Mario Kart
Baseball Explained by an Anime Girl
Check out the network at TheWorstGarbage.online!
Join The Worst Garbage Discord!
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Music
Street Food by FASSounds
Things are bad right now, but you can help make them better. Please take some time to consider how you can help trans people, immigrants, and others targeted by our fascist government with this Big List Of Links.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, we've played an unconscionable number of demos, so we run through a whole bunch of the ones we mostly liked at Steam Next Fest and the Tribeca Festival. Then, Willa interviews Tribeca Games vice president Casey Baltes with a tin can inside a submarine apparently and Robin tries her hardest to make it listenable.
Timestamps:
(00:20) Just a whole bunch of nothing
(04:35) Dice Gambit
(10:30) Cast and Chill
(14:00) Morse
(18:15) Prison of Husks
(28:30) MotionRec
(33:20) Coffee Talk Tokyo
(35:30) Project Arrow
(37:15) KuloNiku: Bowl Up!
(41:10) Dispatch
(47:15) MIO: Memories in Orbit
(55:45) Possessor(s)
(1:00:55) Absolum
(1:04:46) Death Howl
(1:09:00) Cairn
(1:13:10) Sleep Awake
(1:15:40) Take Us North
(1:22:35) Mixtape
(1:29:30) Casey Baltes Interview
(1:55:10) What else have Willa and Robin been up to this week? (feat. Fire Emblem: Three Houses, a very good video about Dark Souls 2)
Mentioned this week:
Prison Of Husks Feels Like Playing A Dream About Dark Souls
I'm Bad at Video Games, So I Played Dark Souls 2
Check out the network at TheWorstGarbage.online!
Join The Worst Garbage Discord!
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Music
Street Food by FASSounds
Things are bad right now, but you can help make them better. Please take some time to consider how you can help trans people, immigrants, and others targeted by our fascist government with this Big List Of Links.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The worst part of the year was even worse this year. We slogged through Summer Game Fest and a few showcases that didn’t suck and now we’re here to talk about what we saw there and why everyone’s so mad.
CW: Discussions of disordered eating in Consume Me from 52:30 to 57:05
Timestamps:
(00:20) Our mortal enemy, summer
(01:30) State of Play had a few good games
(13:15) Ciri Showcase and Unearthed Treasure Room
(17:30) SGF was even worse than it always is
(33:00) Mina the Hollower is good as hell
(38:55) Remembering that good video games exist at Day of the Devs
(52:30) CW: Eating disorders Consume Me is unbelievably good
(57:05) What else have Willa and Robin been up to this week? (feat. Mishima - A Life in Four Chapters and another cinematic masterpiece)
(1:04:30) Some announcements!
Mentioned this week:
Consume Me Turns Gaming’s Obsession With Stats Into A Trap For Players
You can now give us money if you really want to
Watch Annie and Robin on Twitch Wednesday at 7 pm ET!
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Music
Street Food by FASSounds
Things are bad right now, but you can help make them better. Please take some time to consider how you can help trans people, immigrants, and others targeted by our fascist government with this Big List Of Links.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
We have a handful of games to talk about this week, including an excellent new farming game, a so-so story from the creator of Katamari Damacy, and a turn-based RPG about death (no, not that one).
Timestamps:
(00:30) Corndog update
(04:10) Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is the second coming of Harvestella
(24:50) To a T is cute I guess
(40:55) Galactic Glitch is simple fun
(44:10) Danchi Days is delightful and weird
(50:25) The Time I Have Left now lives rent-free in Robin's brain
(57:15) What else have Willa and Robin been up to this week? (feat. Hacks, You’re Wrong About - Coyotes! and Lesbian Seagulls)
Mentioned this week:
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma Review: A Bountiful Blend of Life Sim and RPG
To a T Feels Like A Saturday Morning Cartoon’s Rough First Season
The Quest To Revive A Summer Festival Is Off To A Strong Start In Danchi Days
Join The Worst Garbage Discord!
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Music
Street Food by FASSounds
Things are bad right now, but you can help make them better. Please take some time to consider how you can help trans people, immigrants, and others targeted by our fascist government with this Big List Of Links.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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