The Crate and Crowbar

Latest Episodes:

Episode 438: The Sludge of Frome Oct 25, 2024

Show notes

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.

Episode 437: Orb, Orb Never Changes Sep 28, 2024

Show notes

Marsh, Jamie and Chris convene to navigate the bouncy balls of Peglin, the less bouncy but surprisingly solid shooty-bangs of Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2, before failing to enjoy UFO 50 as much as they probably should.

Games Discussed:

Peglin
Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2
UFO 50

Back Gold Teeth 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 at questions@crateandcrowbar.com, or look for the newly added questions forum on our discord. 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.

Bonus Episode: Gold Teeth, Strange Stories and TTRPGs Sep 22, 2024

Show notes

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.

Episode 436: The Silence Of The Winnies Sep 13, 2024

Show notes

Chris, Jamie and Marsh return to explain where the hell they’ve been, before launching into discussions of effervescent pie-em-up comedy game Thank Goodness You’re Here, following that with some entirely unbiased discussion of glorious turn based tactics game Tactical Breach Wizards. We also discuss cosmetic etiquette in the grimdark future hellwarscape of Warhammer: Space Marine 2, as well as briefly wandering betwixt the fireboys, electro-crocs and Spidermans of Shunt: Hoedown Hunt Showdown.

And read more about it and see some of Marsh’s delicious art in their newsletter:

Chris’s book for the Black Library ‘Darkoath’

Games Discussed

Thank Goodness You’re Here

Tactical Breach Wizards

Games Mentioned

Warhammer: Space Marine 2

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Hunt: Showdown

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. 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 435: The Most Liminal You Can Be Is a Flume May 17, 2024

Show notes

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.

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 434: Epilogue Blowin’ In May 10, 2024

Show notes

Jamie and Alex show their cards in deck-builders Balatro and Cobalt Core (poker- and space-flavoured respectively), before descending into the chaotic, cavernous depths of Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor and finally wrangling Dead Red Redemption 2 into completion.

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 433: In the Right Lighting, That’s Chaucer, Baby Mar 01, 2024

Show notes

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.

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.

Fargo Vs. True Detective – A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar Feb 25, 2024

Show notes

Jamie and Marsh discuss the latest seasons of Fargo and True Detective, two anthology shows about troubling crimes and the yet more troubled cops who investigate them.

Fargo was originally a film by the Coen Brothers, and was adapted to TV by Noah Hawley, who is also known for the show Legion.
Also mentioned: Happy Valley, a superb crime show of a similar form, set in Yorkshire.
The first season of True Detective was written by Nic Pizzolatto and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga. The latest is written and directed by Issa López.
Fargo Season 5 cast:
Juno Temple – Dot
Richa Moorjani – Indira Olmstead
Jennifer Jason leigh – Lorraine Lyon
Jon Hamm – Roy Tillman
Lamorne Morris – Witt Farr
Joe Keery – Gator
Sam Spruell – Ole Munch
Sienna King – Scotty
David Foley – Danish Graves
David Rysdahl – Wayne Lyons
True Detective Season 4 cast:
Jodie Foster – Liz Danvers
Kali Reis – Evangeline Navarro
Fiona Shaw – Rose Aguineau
Finn Bennett – Peter Prior
John Hawkes – Hank Prior
Isabella LaBlanc – Leah Danvers
Chris Eccleston – Ted Connelly

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 432: A Scathing Review of the Rosetta Stone Feb 16, 2024

Show notes

Join Jamie and Chris as they join Past Jamie for a solo pod about train-sets and low-key terror in the demo deluge of Steam Next Fest. Then they return to the present, which is also now the past, to discuss smushing bugs in the name of Super Earth in Helldivers 2.

All aboard the Jamie solo-pod! Choo choo!
Brio Train Sets
Rolling Line
Tracks – The Train Set Game
Steam Next Fest is a periodic event that brings a deluge of time-limited demos.
Mouthwashing is a weird horror game. The Steam synopsis asserts that “God is not watching.” Promising stuff!
How Fish Is Made is another disturbing game from the same developer as Mouthwashing. Unnerving and hilarious, says Jamie.
The horrible tongue fish thing is Cymothoa exigua, and is just one of several horrible tripophobia triggers in the game.
The Last One And Then Another is playable within How Fish Is Made
Dreamcore is an unsettling game set in an impossible swimming centre, viewed as if from a body-cam and keying into the “liminal spaces” aesthetic.
Kitty Horrorshow makes amazing indie horror.
Stalker-esque Pacific Northwest survival car game Pacific Drive is namechecked – we’ll surely talk about it more when it releases!
Star Trucker takes the haulage sim genre to space.
Cryptmaster is a bit like Legend Of Grimrock meets Scrabble.
Atmosfear is the VHS game Jamie was the master of.
Knightmare is the legendary kids tv show that only two people ever won. SPELLCAST D I S M I S S etc etc.
Bing bong. We will shortly be arriving at Thurstown.
Jean-Michel Jarre makes a bop.
It is a bit busy, isn’t it?
Helldivers 2 is a coop thirdperson shooter about summoning airstrikes on Icleand own-brand Tyranids and frequently your friends.
This service terminates here. All change, please. All change.

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 431: Between a Ballsack and a Tardigrade Jan 26, 2024

Show notes

Tom F joins Marsh to make the biggest sticks in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, become the stick in Pacific island adventure Tchia, stick to walls in Jusant and stick it to space pirates in timeloop deckbuilder Cobalt Core.

Just forbidden enough: Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is Tom’s game of 2023.
Tactical Breach Wizards is Tom’s forthcoming game about wizards who breach tactically. It’s very good!
Tchia is a joyous open world adventure in which you can possess any object.
Jusant is a very beautiful game about climbing a massive abandoned tower.
Cobalt Core is a very funny roguelike deckbuilder about pixelart animals murdering each other in the cold void of space, again and again and again.
Stealth makes no sense in shooty-heist game Payday 3.
Stealth makes no sense in purported stealth game Monaco. Maybe they’ll fix this in Monaco 2, if it’s actually still in development.

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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