Describing The Skybox

Their shouts are like spells, and will make you sick. Welcome to the final episode of Fanbruary this year! We’re going to be talking about Roadwarden, a largely text-based RPG that seemingly takes some inspiration from modern rules-light TTRPG design with a lot of richness to its text and a simple, obfuscated approach to combat and other randomness-based encounters. Set in a type of post-apocalyptic fantasy setting, Roadwarden tasks you with exploring a region and making numerous decisions in the interest of learning about the people there and surviving the wilderness. The game is full of dialogue and set ev...

I may leave this world, but we’ll always be a podcast. Welcome back to the podcast, and to the third episode of Fanbruary, in which we play games suggested by you the listener. For this installment, we’re going to be talking about Klonoa 2, a 2-or-2.5D platformer on the Playstation 2. This is a game that thrives on novelty, with the interesting ways it uses its enemies as items and creative foreground and background elements for both traversal and puzzle solving. And of course, being from the early 2000s it has to also feature hoverboard levels which play very diff...

Every problem cannot be solved with a podcast. Welcome back to the podcast and, of course, to our second episode of Fanbruary this year! Today, we’re talking about Far Cry 5, which is, obviously, an installment in the Far Cry franchise and, obviously, not the fifth one because of all the weird spinoffs. Still the thing that most stands out, or at least the thing that was advertised the most, that separates this from its predecessors is the fact that it is set in the United States. Ultimately, this game doesn’t do much in terms of commentary, which is unfo...

What would motivate someone to turn into a podcast? Welcome to the first episode for Fanbruary this year! We’re starting off with a classic adventure game in Nancy Drew: Curse of Blackmoor Manor, part of an extremely prolific series which we haven’t played before. Given that the character of Nancy Drew is a detective, the object of the game centers around solving a mystery, in this case the mysterious illness of Linda Penvellyn. The game starts off very strong, allowing you to freely roam the mansion and pick up clues and information where you can, giving it a real...

A podcast for the senses we can’t take from them. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, on what is an appropriately wintery day, we’re going to be talking about That Which Gave Chase, a game where you sled through the arctic. Largely a narrative game, That Which Gave Chase takes you through several different points in time in a shaky, disconnected way as you learn about the reason you are where you are. It does also have a sledding mechanic, which requires a surprising amount of concentration during certain times in a way that I’d argue works with t...

With time, any game could be the coolest ancient artefact. Welcome to the first ever Scribies, an award show and definitely not an itchy reaction to a species of mite: that would be Scabies. In the Scribies, we choose winners for myriad categories from the pool of games that we have played and talked about for the podcast this year. We’ve brought back some fan favorite categories like Least Likely to be Compared to Dark Souls and The Newlywed Game, as well as introduced some new classics such as “The Dad Award,” so there’s a lot to look forward...

There are no podcast truths. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re talking about Everhood, an indie bullet hell/adventure/rhythm game. Everhood has several notable factors that could be considered a main point of conversation about it. It is surprisingly difficult on its standard difficulty setting and requires some mastery to actually get through it, giving it a similar feel to more arcade style rhythm games. This is notable because one of those other big factors is that this is also an adventure game with a narrative that not-so-subtly calls back to Undertale as an inspiration, with a fo...

My podcast’s come alive. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re going to be talking about Hades II, the sequel to one of the most popular roguelikes of all time and the first sequel that Supergiant Games has ever made. And I for one am happy about that because I needed an excuse to play hundreds more hours of Hades. Hades II is very much a game that can be described as “the first game, but more” which could be a good or a bad thing depending on what you’re looking for, but what’s surprising is just how muc...

To listen to this podcast is to walk in a world of impurities. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re going to be talking about Silent Hill f, an action survival horror game and the latest entry in the Silent Hill series. This game takes a more combat-focused approach with stamina management and dodges, making it feel different from the majority of games in its genre. Beyond that, it separates itself from Silent Hill as a physical location as it is usually depicted in other Silent Hill titles, and is instead set in 1960s Japan. This change in context al...

Listen to this podcast. I’ll show you what this mouth can do. Happy Halloween oooooooooooooooh! and welcome back to the podcast. Today, we’re going to be talking about Slitterhead, an action horror title, and the first game from developer Bokeh Game Studio, founded by one of the creators of Silent Hill. In Slitterhead, you play as a kind of spirit entity with the ability to possess regular people. Some of these people are more special than others, “rarities,” and they mostly act as your main playable characters throughout the game. While possessed, characters can attack and use skills and you...

Even if you don’t understand, your mitochondria will. Welcome back to the podcast! For our second game for the Halloween season, we’re talking about Parasite Eve, a survival horror action RPG from PlayStation era. And for being from that era, Parasite Eve honestly looks incredible and is, for me, the biggest draw. Mechanically, the game is a little clunky, with some extremely crunchy systems and a real time battle mechanic that can be frustrating to interact with at times. But they you will get rewarded with a perfectly disgusting cutscene where a rat’s eyeball melts out and its ar...

I can podcast it. I’ll take responsibility. Welcome to the very first episode of Describing the Skybox and the first horror game episode for October! Today, we’re talking about Mouthwashing, a narrative adventure game set on a freighter in space. There isn’t too much in the way of interaction in this game, a few light puzzles and traversal challenges, so the story takes the spotlight for the majority of the experience. Which is entirely fine because of how well written this game is. Mouthwashing is a pretty tragic story that despite its low-fi and sometimes surreal visuals, really...

Did you know you can hold a podcast in your off hand? Welcome to the 200th and (kind of) final episode of NOCLIP! With it being both the 200th episode and our tenth anniversary, we figured now would be as good a time as any to finally play Minecraft, one of the most popular and the best selling game of all time, which neither of us had actually played before. Minecraft popularized the previously niche genre of survival games, captivated a huge number of people, and to some degree altered the landscape of online content creation, all while being a...

It won’t end nicely. Not this time. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, on a special epilogue episode, we’re going to be taking another look at Bloodborne. This is a FromSoftware action RPG, tragically confined to the Sony ecosystem, but still containing a lot of the genre trappings of the games related to Dark Souls. However, the combat has ben retooled to be faster and more aggressive and the setting has been moved from medieval dark fantasy to gothic and Lovecraftian horror. Similarly to Sekrio, From, even when experimenting with genres and themes outside of their typical wheelhouse, mana...

Caked up podcast, goated with the sauce. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re going to be looking at the most recent Life is Strange title, Double Exposure. This picks up roughly ten years after the first game in the series and returns to the point of view of Max Caulfield who has not been using her powers. The game largely follows the same trajectory of the more recent games in the series, lacking time reversing powers, it is a narrative adventure game where you make choices in dialogue and occasionally solve puzzles. The character dialogue is as awkward as...

Live in your world, podcast in ours. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re going to be talking about Astro Bot, a 3D platformer and a PS5 exclusive. When it comes to console exclusivity, I would usually argue against it, as it restricts people’s access to games and tend to only benefit established developers and publishers who already have a lot of clout in the industry. This game, however, really wouldn’t exist without it. Set in a very Sony-themed world where your lead character travels through space inside a PS5 and flies between levels on a DualSense 5 contro...

I’m literally a podcast, what’s your excuse? Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re going to be talking about Balatro, the hit poker roguelike from last year. Balatro is, in my opinion, the best kind of roguelike, with very synergy focused modifiers in the form of Jokers and card enhancements, as well as very permissive deck building options. You can, with proper management, cut large swathes of cards from your deck and really enable playing specific hands that synergize with the jokers you’re offered, meaning you can really set concrete goals for each run depending on what you...

NOCLIP finishes the URA Finale and stands above all other podcasts. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re going to be talking about… a currently popular gacha game about horse racing anime girls. Uma Musume (or Umamusume depending on who you ask) is a sort of sports management roguelike game where you build stats on characters and then, in combination with a small six-card deck of support cards, use them to run races in hopes they can better build another character in the future. Add to that one of the most duplicate intensive gacha systems I’ve ever seen attach...

There is only you, and the spark of the podcast that is your mind. Welcome back to NOCLIP! Today, we’re going to be looking at The Talos Principle 2, a first person puzzle game developed by Croteam. The game builds on, and stays pretty close to, the mechanics of the first game, using connecting lasers with various tools as the primary method of puzzle solving. Despite this, it does a good job of feeling familiar while also adding novelty with each new area. There are many new puzzle solving tools and they make you approach the puzzle rooms in different wa...

Do you know why we’re here? It’s because I have a small podcast. Welcome back to NOCLIP! Today, we’re going to be talking about Spiritfarer, an incremental, management sim, narrative game. Which is a lot of ways to describe what is really a pretty simple game. The core of Spiritfarer is in its characters, spirits who you pick up from various islands and tend to while they come to grips with their own demise and prepare to go to the “Everdoor.” The storylines presented by each are genuinely heartfelt, the characters are expressive and the art used to depict...

Don’t tell anyone, but I always thought they were podcasts. Welcome back to NOCLIP! Today, we’re going to be talking about To the Moon, a narrative game focused around learning about characters through one’s memory. I imagine this description will be quite short, because there isn’t a lot I can cover without spoiling the plot. While technically a sci-fi story, the game revolves around one character’s past, so those elements fall more into the background during the meat of the gameplay. The result is that despite the fantastical premise, the majority of the game feels very munda...

Forget about Freeman, we’re abandoning the podcast. Welcome back to the podcast! We may be into June, but we’re in the ides of Mystery May right now, and the fates have deigned we play Half-Life, and I am not one to argue with the fates. Half-Life is one of the most influential FPS games of all time, and part of that comes down to the way the game builds a really impressive world for you to play through. Black Mesa feels as vast in some places and stifling in others as it needs to in order to create a to...

No, I’m Pod. He’s Cast. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, for the second episode of Mystery May, we’re going to be talking about The Wolf Among Us, a narrative adventure game from Telltale. Telltale’s style of design really exploded with the Walking Dead, and has since led to a number of choice-based adventure games that would cite it as inspiration, but The Wolf Among Us sits in a unique position in their catalogue as the last indie property they would make a game out of following the studio’s previous success. Because Fables, the series that the g...

The guild authorizes you to hunt this podcast. Welcome back to NOCLIP! Today, we’re going to be talking about Monster Hunter Wilds, the latest mainline entry in the series and the game that turned many peoples’ computers into puddles of acid. Wilds is a follow up to Monster Hunter World both in that it was made by the same team and that it mechanically doesn’t stray too far from the systems that World established. This is a good and a bad thing, because it means that the combat in Wilds is much more straightforward than it was in Rise...

Artists create, podcast, and destroy. Welcome back to the podcast where today we’re going to be talking about Immortality. Immortality is a game from Sam Barlow, creator of Her Story and Telling Lies and it follows in the same tradition as those games. Largely player-directed, the game involves watching clips of three films and footage associated with them in order to gain an understanding of what happened to the people involved. There is a set point at which the game shows you its credits, but whether you feel done at that point is largely up to you. Differing from th...

You like the podcast that much? Let me invite you to hell. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re doing another community requested episode (calling it Fanbruary at this point seems a bit silly) on Shenmue. An absolute classic action/adventure game that happened to be a blind spot for both of us. Shenmue centers on Ryo Hazuki, whose father is killed in the opening cutscene in a pretty rad martial arts fight. This sets up the events for you to uncover the reason behind the murder, which you do by talking to characters, learning schedules, driving forklifts and do...

This is not the anger of a vampire killer. This is the podcast of all humanity! Welcome back to Fanbruary! Today, we’re going to be talking about Castlevania 64, an oft maligned entry in the Castlevania series and the first to be in 3D. In classic Castlevania fashion, your goal is to infiltrate a castle and kill Dracula to restore peace to the world, so it doesn’t have a ton of innovation in that respect, but porting that formula to 3D means reworking the design of the platforming and combat, which it does surprisingly well…at times. Being on the N6...

In time, you will know the tragic extent of my podcast, Welcome to Fanbruary! For our first listener suggested title this year, we’re talking about Darkest Dungeon, an RPG with Lovecraftian themes and light roguelike elements. Darkest Dungeon is known to be a difficult game, and it sticks to this design ethos with a commendable level of commitment. Depending on who you are, maybe too much commitment. With a large number of random factors affecting everything from what characters you get offered, the results of looting and in-combat effects, playing through the game’s dungeons feels like a Rube Gold...

So this is the podcast energy. I’m overflowing with power! Welcome back to the podcast and to the first full episode this year! We’re back from our now-traditional January break and talking about The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. This is the first full game in the series where you play as Zelda herself since the CD-i, which really did need to happen so we could finally stop pointing to The Wand of Gamelon as a standout of anything. This means that while the game hits a lot of the usual Zelda game beats, you interact with the...

The Smashiest balls were the friends we made along the way. The NOCLIP Awards are back again this year with all their usual prestige. I know you are all waiting with baited breath to see what games are getting the nod, while knowing full well that the games that released this year are of no object when you compare them to the games that we chose to play this year, which are the true contenders. When it is finally realized that we should be the true arbiters of taste, these awards will defeat all others in the public consciousness and...

I need to see how handsome I am. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re talking about Slay the Princess, a narrative focused “collect the endings” game that has a truly impressive amount of writing to account for all of a player’s possible choices. The numerous endings, scenes and dialogue choices within those scenes, all voice acted by two people no less, are the player’s primary motivation to try new things and follow new paths. Fortunately for the game, though, the quality of that writing is also surprisingly good. The tone runs the gamut between horror, comedy and romanc...

Do goola podcast sa bantha poodoo. Welcome back to the podcast! As we near the end of the year, we like to look back on a game or two that are more nostalgic for us, and Racer somehow got overlooked until now. Racer is maybe the first of our nostalgia picks that really holds up, at least in our opinion. This is a very straightforward video game, all the things considered, but the focus makes for a surprisingly solid racing experience. True to the movie, podracing in the game is extremely fast and almost 100% guaranteed to end with a lethal...

I won’t reach the truth with podcasts. They can’t give it shape. Welcome back to the podcast, and as we finally finish the theme (and catch up on episodes in general after a hectic October) of Games Titled After Women’s Names That Begin With “L.” Loretta is an adventure game in the technical sense; it leans heavily on narrative and player choice, with your actions dictating the events of your playthrough. Most of these choices revolve around how many people you do or do not murder. The story revolves around Loretta, the player character, having killed her husband an...

I’m on the podcast tonight? C’est la vie. Welcome back to the podcast! We’re finally finishing our Halloween games this week with Amnesia: The Bunker. This is the fourth game in the Amnesia series and introduce some light combat elements as well as reframes the series’ physics system to create an immersive sim type experience with several options to overcome obstacles. And of course, it’s still an Amnesia game, so you’ll be evading an ever present monster who wants to maul you. Set in World War I, the game makes good use of its setting with the int...

What did you say? Podcast? We’re not going to drop everything and do that. Welcome back to the podcast. We’re still playing a bit of catchup this month, and to continue with our Halloween picks, we’re talking about Cryptmaster! This is a dungeon crawler in the typing game subgenre, where you solve puzzles and fight enemies using abilities you type out. To gain the abilities, you need to find letters, which you can come across in a variety of ways, which fill out a series of blanks for each of your four characters, and then guess what the fu...

Welcome to cast space. Welcome back (finally!) to the podcast. Today, we’re going to be talking about Omori, a turn-based RPG with a unique art style and dark themes. Though, as we discuss in the episode, don’t think too much of Omori based on its genre, because it’s really putting its worst foot forward. Omori has rich characters, relatable themes and effective comedy. It’s a silly game in the same vein as Earthbound where you fight cartoon sharks and your happy characters will deal more damage against angry foes, but it’s real strength is in making you...

We’re old enough. Welcome back to NOCLIP, and beware, for it is Halloween! To kick off October, we’re talking about Crow Country, a throwback survival horror game that does a lot to stand out in its field. The game is set in an amusement park and has a unique polygonal graphic style that gives an oddly whimsical aesthetic. It makes good use of this with its environments: haunted houses, underwater exhibits and fantasy fairy forests. Each new area feels a little quirky, but always with that chunky, blocky texture that sells the disheveled feel of the park itself. All...

Happy NOCLIP day, everyone, and welcome to our celebration of nine years of doing the podcast! Nine years is such a long time to do anything, but I feel like it gets overshadowed sometimes with ten years looming around the corner. Which makes sense, so rather than argue you should be celebrating an odd numbered year like this, I’m going to reframe this as the beginning of year ten. It’s our decade celebration, which will last for one year until the tenth anniversary, so make sure you tune into every episode because it’s a special time for us at...

I would recommend podcasters to rob banks instead because gambling is immoral. Welcome back to the podcast and to our very important series on games titled after women’s names that begin with the letter L. Today, we’re talking about Lorelei and the Laser Eyes a puzzle game from Simogo, developer of games like Year Walk and Sayonara Wild Hearts. Taking the form of an enormous escape room, where solving number puzzles and unlocking doors is the name of the game, you progress through an ever growing list of goals to uncover the “truth” as it is quantified in the menu...