The Crate and Crowbar

Latest Episodes:

Episode 299: Sid Meier’s Colonial Supermarket Sweep Oct 18, 2019

Show notes

Chris and Marsh get the comms horn for Fortnite’s spectacular server shutdown, eat the wave of FOMO in Destiny 2 and unleash their inner twat upon Disco Elysium. Also: house rules for goblins.

Fortnite Chapter 2 is a marketing coup and some sort of game, too, I guess.
A good thread on the aforementioned.
Chris often sinks his costly phallus into Destiny 2. That’s what I heard, anyway.
Yet another white man rises from a booze soup in Disco Elysium – but it’s still brilliant anyway. So far.
Fleabag is a fourth-wall-breaking TV show that may or may not be too embarrassing to bear.
Symbaroum – a fabulous dark fantasy world wrapped in a poorly edited manual.
Pip ran a game of Bubblegumshoe while at SHUX
Collateral Damage is the roleplaying game about being a movie extra.
Neon Black is not a real colour, but it IS a cyberpunk take on the Blades in the Dark roleplaying system.
Other pen and paper games mentioned: Numenera, Cyberpunk 2020, Cyberpunk Red, Dungeons & Dragons and Fantasy Flight’s Genesys system as used in its Star Wars games.
Gosh that was a lot of Googling, I hope these show notes are over.
Oh no there’s more
Amico is a new old console.
Music exists. There’s quite a lot of it about these days. Something should be done.
Wolf in the White Van is a good book by the Mountain Goat’s fella chap man John Darnielle
Convey me to my bed, then to my grave: Love they to live that love and honour have.

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.

Episode 298: Metabrain Says Calm The Hell Up Oct 11, 2019

Show notes

Toms Francis and Senior join Marsh to discuss dismissive dad death in Indivisible and lobby for gun-lobbing in both Borderlands 3 and John Wick Hex. Also: why PCs are awful and no one should build them.

Please, don’t say “fampany”.

Blizzard’s incredible, punitive reaction to a pro-player speaking out about Hong Kong.
UsTwo Games got caught up in a union dispute when it let one of its employees go.
Motion Twin are a French dev with a flat structure. But for how long?!?!
Indivisible: inadvisable storytelling.
Borderlands 3: mindfulness and wellbeing edition. The character’s name is Amara, not Samara. We regret this error but do not wish to be corrected about this or any of our other many grievous failings. Thank you for your understanding at this time.
Fractal Design. WHY
Focus hard to squat in John Wick Hex
Razbuten’s video about his non-gamer wife struggling with assumed gaming knowledge.
Black Ops 2: whack-a-mole but with foreigners.
Matt Castle and his Divinity II videos on RPS.
Books: Dresden Files (bad start, gets better), John Milton series (enjoyable trash), Altered Carbon (dubious trash) and Hard Magic (good)
Why doesn’t Gordon just join a techbro start-up? Friend of podcast and AI researcher Mike Cook takes apart a dismayingly credulous Wired article about the exodus from physics academia to Silicon Valley.

You can hang out with us and our community, or should I say FAMmunity, 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.

Episode 297: Buried in My Own Plastic Blood Oct 04, 2019

Show notes

Tom F, Alex and Marsh discuss the voxely promise of Teardown and existential terror of Microsoft Flight Simulator, return to Destiny redux, play some holes in What the Golf? and get nailed by every pixel in Noita.

Put that in your leviathan and smoke it.

Admire the restrained scope and exquisite smashiness of Teardown by Dennis Gustafsson.
The triumphant return of Microsoft Flight Simulator: every dead dog procedural.
Asobo also made rat-a-palooza A Plague Tale: Innocence and underrated American-landscape-pootler Fuel.
Destiny 2, now on Steam: that’s how you get three weird bleeding eyes.
A good walk spoiled is then improved in What The Golf?
Throw things at dinosaurs in Cricket Through the Ages. Currently part of Apple Arcade, but it might easily come to PC too. It’s by Free Lives, who also made Broforce.
Stadia is Google’s game streaming thingamy, and it knows exactly what kind of a piece of shit you are.
The new funny games: Jazzpunk, Untitled Goose Game and the oeuvre of Bennett Foddy, GIRP, QWOP and Getting Over It.
Crumbly cave smasher, Noita. Heed not Alex’s eggy secrets.
Previous games by at least one of the Noita devs include Baba Is You and Crayon Physics.
The definitive falling sand, er, sandbox is Powder Toy.
Hobbes’ Leviathan has baller cover design.
The soundtrack to Tom’s Aegean muder spree: Fleet Foxes’ Mykonos.
Deadwood: it’s like Shakespeare basically.
You too can angst over efficiently pretty cities in Anno 1800 and Islanders, or wield the weapons of an absolute loser in Divinity II: Original Sin.

This podcast is goose resistant to a depth of 50 metres.

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.

Episode 296: It’s Like There’s A Whole Other Goose In My Car Sep 28, 2019

Show notes

Tom F and Chris break into the pod chamber to discuss the latest wave of gaming subscription programmes, the pipe edge situations of Overland, and some game about a goose you probably haven’t heard of.

You’ve always got some redundant beans.

The subs models in question are Apple Arcade, Xbox Game Pass, Humble Monthly and Google Play Pass.
The tweet that Tom quotes regarding the negative impact of the Google Play Pass’ playtime-based developer reward model is this one, by Will O’Neill.
Everybody’s gone to the Untitled Goose Game.
Here’s that video of a woman desperately attempting to brush a panda pen.
Tom’s lone inventory slot is stacked with Overland opinions.
Organ Trail is the zombie-themed Oregon Trail-like that Chris mentions.

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.

Episode 295: Maximum Tetanus Vectors Sep 20, 2019

Show notes

Chris, Tom S and Marsh discuss The Hunt: Showdown, Nocked! True Tales of Robin Hood and Astral Chain. Plus things that tinkle and jangle, things that waggle to make friars happy and things that should be renamed, remade and covered with moons.

It’s a busy weekend for game releases: honk at a farmer in Untitled Goose Game and choose PETROL or DOG in Overland (which is not like Brigador but is a bit like Into the Breach)
Disco Elysium has a new, kinda baffling trailer and a release date of October 15. You’re a detective and you… and… Well. You’re a detective.
You scream, I scream, we all scream for beast cream. Get your beast cream freshly curdled from the fly-blown teat of The Hunt: Showdown. Served in a waffle cone.
Nocked! True Tales of Robin Hood is a text adventure with a LYING SUBTITLE and some light, almost arbitrary resource management. You can’t shag the bear.
Here are two definite humans who want to talk to you about Nintendo’s motion controller and absolutely won’t lead you into a black subdimensional pond where your flesh springs off you like snapped elastic.
Astral Chain is a game about being a good cop, ice cream (NOT beast cream) and smashing the shit out of space demons. It’s not on PC, but it almost certainly will be in, ooh, ten years?
Project Hospital is a management game that friend-of-pod Kane says is better than Two Point Hospital and has top quality NPC phone usage, which is what everyone wants, really.
Control also has a phone in it. Makes you think.
Resident Evil 2’s remake is good, and Tom S will allow it.
Shadow of the Colossus also got remade and was good. Clash of Heroes got remade for PC and its new art sucked a dingo’s wanger and that is NOT a good thing but a BAD thing.
Come back Fable 2! But not to the Windows Store.
Bad Names: don’t do them. Name crimes of yore include: Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Omnikron: Nomad Soul and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. More recently: skateboarding game Session and Lovecraftian Epic Store exclusive Conarium.
Nier Automata’s lead designer has the right idea. Moons for everyone!
Normal Karl Pilkington’s The Witness, The Outer Wilds, The Return of the Obra Dinn and Ori and the Blind Forest all involve coloured shapes. Some pleasing. Some make Chris unhappy! All of them are better than Brexit.

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.

Episode 294: A Spider Called Ennui Sep 12, 2019

Show notes

Chris, Tom F, Alex and… Marsh (!) discuss Wilmot’s Warehouse, Guild Wars 2, Slay The Spire’s new class and Control.

Plus: what’s that wizard’s problem anyway, the tricky issue of endings, David Cage’s Hamlet, and so on.

One is a box in Wilmot’s Warehouse. Here’s the excellent trailer, featuring Pip!
Six birthdays all at once have ruined Guild Wars 2 for Alex.
Tom F adopts various stances on Slay The Spire‘s new class.
Chris shoots his idea-gun at Control.
We ruminate upon the tsars and oreos of the New York Times crossword.
Papa Sangre is, indeed, a game (albeit one without a website.).

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.

Episode 293: Walls Are So Good Aug 23, 2019

Show notes

Tom F and Alex are joined by special guest Mike Cook: AI researcher, indie dev, and friend of the podcast. We get into AI judging games, combining games, designing games, and failing to understand what’s so good about walls. Also discussed: long Cebs in The International, dialogue style in A Short Hike, gossip in Fire Emblem, and why Tom never knows the world’s about to end.

Mike’s game-designing AI, which may not always be called Angelina
Canabalt meets Typing of the Dead: Mike’s hacking game Rogue Process
A long Ceb
A Short Hike: sounds fake, still great
If, like Tom, you can’t get enough Fire Emblem chat, recent eps of Waypoint Radio and Kotaku Splitscreen have more

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.

Episode 292: Tat Paddington Aug 16, 2019

Show notes

Chris, Tom F and Alex discuss Dicey Dungeons, Jupiter Hell, Exanima and Fire Emblem. Plus: arguably the worst way of categorising games we’ve ever come up with, and that’s saying something.

I’m sorry, but for physics reasons I need you to cradle me and lower me to the earth.

We’ve all been playing Dicey Dungeons, including Pip, who worked on the game. There’s yer disclaimer!
Alex has been adjusting to the various speeds of Jupiter Hell, the spiritual successor to DRL.
Chris would like to tell a long story about a time when he fell over, and also in Exanima.
Tom is, miraculously perhaps, enjoying Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Except Ferdinand, who he hates.
Here’s Alex’s blog, including his most recent post about his son’s experience of Spelunky.

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.

Episode 291: Call The Kelpdesk Aug 09, 2019

Show notes

Chris, Pip and Tom F briefly return to autobattlers before discussing A Short Hike, Stones of Solace, Islanders, and the faults of a variety of algorithms.

All this, just so that an otter can say well done.

Pip’s lives in Teamfight Tactics now.
…with breaks for Stones of Solace.
Tom has taken A Short Hike and will perhaps one day attempt to Drawdog.
Further art: Passpartout: The Starving Artist and Chris Livingston’s diary thereof.
Chris has (eventually) been algorithmically led to Islanders.
…which reminds Tom of Evergarden.

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.

Episode 290: Teatime Overtime Aug 03, 2019

Show notes

Chris and both Toms wander in late to discuss assorted retro shooters, Nowhere Prophet, Fire Emblem, naughty semaphore, and additional tepid takes.

I’m a murder president on the go, and I need my fix.

Tom S’s been playing a big pile of all-caps retro shooters, including AMID EVIL, DUSK, Ion Fury.
Tom F has been relentlessly taunted by Nowhere Prophet and continues his murder cruise in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey.
Chris has decided to talk about Fire Emblem: Three Houses and it’s too late to stop him.
Here’s the talk on why Tacoma’s voice actors wore their mics on their foreheads.
Here’s Tom F’s video about Concrete Jungle.

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.

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