Dev Game Club
Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we continue our series on 1985's Ultima IV. We talk a lot about the mysterious sense of the game, the talking interface and mechanics, and dive a bit into combat before turning to reader mail. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary. Sections played: Another number of hours Issues covered: missing out on talking to someone, sleeping sprites, having a talk prompt and fallbacks, having generic topics per town, putting together with nouns and verbs, adding to world-building, introducing...
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Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we begin a series on 1985's Ultima IV. After talking about the recent Defeating Games for Charity, we set the game in its time, talk about our encounters in the past with the series, and then dive into the manuals and the start of the game. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary. Sections played: The first couple of hours and the manuals Issues covered: Defeating Games for Charity, the first pancake, our experiences with this series, an opaque franchise, mainlining a game,...
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Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we continue our series on Pikmin. We talk about building back from loss, a rough ending, and compact level design, amongst other things. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary. Sections played: Finished the Game (B) or Played a bit more (T) Issues covered: the charity stream, how many parts do you need, maybe less necessary ship parts, coming back from a bad day, combat and losing units, strategies to build up your armies, fighting the slog and demoralization, the tyranny of the day...
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Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we return to our series on Pikmin. We talk about returning to the game after a break, the macro structure and persistence of the levels, and other topics. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary. Sections played: Several more hours Issues covered: Defeating Games for Charity, relearning the controls, figuring out what you were trying to accomplish, naming buttons, persistent units and worlds, exploratory sandboxes, reinforcing replay, Nintendo creating something new, things that are...
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Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we recap 2025 through our interviews. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary. It's all about our takeaways -- I'm going to let the clips speak for themselves and remove the usual stuff from here. In the past year, we interviewed eight people across seven episodes: Sean Vesce and Zack Norman, Karla Zimonja, William Pugh, Erik Wolpaw, Chet Faliszek, Kim Swift, and a new type of interview with Ed Fries. Next time: Back to Pikmin! Links: Twitch: and
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We are off for one more weeke, so we are again reaching into the Discord Game Club interview archive. This time around, BioStats and Calamity Nolan interview Carlos from the Discord, an independent graphic novelist and publisher and former AAA game developer. Twitch: and
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We are off for the next few weeks, so we are again reaching into the Discord Game Club interview archive. This time around, BioStats and Calamity Nolan interview RobotSpacer, who talks about his streaming, his hobby game development, and other topics. Twitch: and
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We are off for the next few weeks, so we are again reaching into the Discord Game Club interview archive. This time around, BioStats and Calamity Nolan interview Brad Smith, who talks about his independent developer life, art, punk, and skateboarding, among other topics. Twitch: and
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Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we revisit our series on Portal with another bonus interview with Kim Swift. We get a look at the game from which it came before hearing about the development proper. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary. Podcast breakdown: 1:23 Interview 1:03:02 Break 1:03:25 Outro Issues covered: Kim's history, deciding where to go to college, learning to program, working with a team over multiple years, pitching each other, mixing interests, learning to work together, figuring out...
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Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we try something a little different. Unattached to any particular game, we chat with Ed Fries, a long-time video game developer most well-known for his work shepherding the early days of Xbox and Microsoft Game Studios. We talk about five games of his early years that particularly affected him. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary. Podcast breakdown: 1:16:35 Break 1:16:48 Outro Issues covered: a new model for interviews, productivity software wars, a child of engineers,...
info_outlineWelcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we begin a new series on 2010's Deadly Premonition. We first set the game in its time, and talk a bit about Japanese creators breaking out and establishing more auteurist inclinations, before turning to the first part of the game. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.
Sections played:
Up to/through the police station
Issues covered: announcement of our October schedule, singing reviews, 2010 in games, horror games or things in the space, the place in the console cycle, Tim's understanding of the game going in, an indie-developer feel, amortizing investment to earn out, a shift in Japanese development, a surprising game coming out of nowhere, the blogosphere, American pop culture, a difficult creator to follow, Dark Cooper, the HD transition and switch to widescreen, making UI for HD, the victim in the tree and all its symbology, the discipline of the first scene, quick cutting in cinema, York and Zach talking about Tom and Jerry, holding on uncanny valley faces with the la la song, chasing photorealistic faces, stereotypes, the long table beautifully framed, the difficulty of sustaining a Lynchian show, an open world game with driving, a schedule of events and a populace with routines, the connections between characters, a "yes" game, a town being a character, the frustration of the schedule, an open world town vs an open world forest, something being best as a game, making choices and the feelings you have making them, walking simulators and systemic richness, Brett and Tim differ, portals being aligned for you, level and systems design not talking.
Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Erik Wolpaw, Portal/Portal 2, Defeating Games for Charity, Alan Wake (series), Resident Evil 5, God of War III, BioShock 2, Halo: Reach, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Civ V, Dead Rising 2 (and series), Metal Gear: Peacewalker, Starcraft II, Amnesia: Dark Descent, Limbo, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Mass Effect 2, Red Dead Redemption, Darksiders, Heavy Rain, Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Battle Royale, Swery65, Hidetaka Suehiro, Access Games, David Lynch, Twin Peaks, Aksys Games, Stephen King, Control, Remedy Entertainment, Fatal Frame, Suda51, Grasshopper Manufacture, 2K Games, Ken Levine, The Elder Scrolls (series), Neo Geo SNK, Hideo Kojima, Konami, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Shenmue, Clover/Platinum, CapCom, Killer 7, Viewtiful Joe, Gathering of Developers, Ion Storm, Shinji Mikami, Ninja Gaiden Black, Giant Bomb, PlayStation, Interstate '76, Naomi Watts, Beyond Good and Evil, Crystal Dynamics, Tom and Jerry, Quentin Tarantino, Top Gun, Sleep with Me (obliquely), Gilmore Girls, The Last of Us, Ashley Johnson, Juno, Elliot Page, The Shining, Batman, Northern Exposure, Mark Frost, The X-Files, Ashton Herrmann, The Red Strings Club, LucasArts, The Walking Dead, Gone Home, Dear Esther, No Man's Sky, Mike, Quake, Spelunky, Calamity Nolan, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.
Next time:
More of Deadly Premonition!
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