More damage to basic podcast enemy, Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket! This week, we’re going to be talking about Nanotale: Typing Chronicles, an RPG that uses a (surprise) typing interface and the follow-up to Fishing Cactus’s previous game Epistory, which we talked about way back in 2017. This new game sees them iterating on the concepts that were started in Epistory, with a more dynamic combat system, more expansive exploration features and less of a focus on the Typer Shark style wave based comb...
Jun 13, 2021•48 min•Ep. 43
You got anymore dead podcasts back there? Welcome back to NOCLIP, and thank you for joining us for the conclusion of Mystery May! To round this month out, we’re going to be talking about one of the most prolific adventure games ever made, Grim Fandango. Grim is one of LucasArts’ adventure games from the heyday of the genre, and the studio’s experience combines with the Tim Schaffer’s stellar writing to create one of the most celebrated adventure games of the era. There is a lot of enjoyment to b...
May 29, 2021•1 hr 36 min•Ep. 112
I can play saxophone and record a podcast at the same time. Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket! To continue our celebration of Mystery May, we're going to be discussing Hypnospace Outlaw. This game is a desktop simulator set in the late 90's and revolves around a parody of the early internet that users visit in their sleep... What? You expected us to pick a game that wasn't super weird? We're going to be taking about the games difficulty when compared to more traditional adventure games, the aestheti...
May 22, 2021•53 min•Ep. 42
If you’re looking for rain, dead bodies and podcasts, you came to the right place. Welcome to Mystery May! This time we’re starting with an arguably pretty contentious (or at the very least pretentious) title in Heavy Rain, a game developed by Quantic Dream. Heavy Rain is essentially an adventure game that is loaded to the brim with quick time events and branching narrative paths. Say what you will about the core engagement present here, but a lot of the story elements are pretty intelligently d...
May 16, 2021•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 111
Your podcast’s name is NOCLIP? We’re going to need to come up with a better name. Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket! This time, for our first episode of Mystery May, we’re going to be talking about Telling Lies. This game is a follow up to Sam Barlow’s previous game Her Story, and the two share a lot of the same DNA. Both are desktop simulations that see you searching through a database to find clips of people talking and use those clips to figure out the characters’ stories. If that sounds exactly ...
May 12, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 41
Dwarven podcasts! Fine Dwarven Podcasts! Direct from Orzammar. Welcome back to the podcast! Today we're going to be taking another dive into the world of CRPGs, which of course means that Chad won't be joining us. Instead, Andy will be joined by special guests Daniel and Janelle to discuss BioWare's 2009 classic, Dragon Age: Origins. We'll be discussing engaging world building, intricate quest design, important narrative decisions, and most importantly, which characters we want to smooch. Thank ...
May 02, 2021•1 hr 46 min•Ep. 110
This podcast has great tunes and water balloons. Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket, where we are making our way through every twee indie game that has made its way to the Switch, apparently. Seriously though, Donut County channels the gameplay energy of Katamari Damacy, or I guess Feeding Frenzy, through a much less chaotic, more relaxed style and into a world that is characterized by clever writing and likeable characters. Well, sometimes the characters are unlikeable, but in a fun way. This writin...
Apr 24, 2021•35 min•Ep. 40
I’ll say something really teary at the funeral, like “Welcome to NOCLIP!” Welcome to the podcast! This week, we’re going to be talking about Jak and Daxter, which has been on the list for quite some time. Jak was one of the first of the 3D platformers that defined the genre during the PS2 era, and like many of its contemporaries, is one of the games that’s quick to come to mind for a lot of people when talking about the console. Unlike games like Ratchet and Clank or Sly Cooper, though, Jak is l...
Apr 18, 2021•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 109
The podcast’s name is NOCLIP. Saying it’s name will anger it. Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket. We’re a ways off from Halloween, but today, we’re going to be talking about Phasmophobia, with our regular guests Dan, Janelle and Steven. Phasmophobia is a cooperative ghost hunting game where you and (hopefully) your friends use a variety of tools to determine what kind of spirit is occupying a space in the vein of popular ghost hunting TV shows. The game was released last year in early access and drew...
Apr 10, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 39
Try to focus on maintaining the proper podcast! Welcome back to NOCLIP! Today, after many months of preparation, our sweat and tears (but fortunately no blood) have culminated in this episode about Ring Fit Adventure! Ring Fit Adventure is a game about exercising set within in a pretty self-aware RPG. You travel from place to place and fight monsters, yeah, but all of your general movement and attacks are performed by doing simple exercises like squats and leg lifts. And that is ostensibly what ...
Mar 27, 2021•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 108
Aw, poor baby! Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket (monsters)! Today, due to some scheduling conflicts, we are not going to be talking about Phasmophobia, but instead the 2000 match 3 puzzle game Pokémon Puzzle League. Puzzle League is a game that both of us played a good bit in our younger years, but wasn’t quite notable enough to really maintain any level of popularity long after its release, coming out as part of the never ending deluge of Pokémon branded content that has existed since the series b...
Mar 14, 2021•41 min•Ep. 38
He ain’t eatin’ the podcast, Jack! I made that for him! Welcome back to NOCLIP! Today we’re going to be touching on a somewhat out of season horror game, but fear not (or fear yes, in fact), as there is a sequel coming in just a couple of months. Resident Evil VII, which released a few years ago, before the series began remaking its games like it was going out of style, marked what is a long awaited return to form for much of its fanbase. The series had progressed beyond its survival horror root...
Feb 28, 2021•1 hr 52 min•Ep. 107
A fish ate my podcasting license… Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket! Today, we’re going to be talking about A Short Hike, an indie adventure game and the third game in our deeply important series of bird based games on Pocket. A Short Hike is a very minimalist game, both in style and length, but there is still a good bit to do and explore, even if the game’s world isn’t so big. Part platformer, part adventure game, you spend much of your time in the game collecting items to reach new heights and com...
Feb 21, 2021•34 min•Ep. 37
Your podcast provides you with a certain mindless strength, but such power has its limits. Welcome back to the podcast! This week, we’re, along with everyone else over the last few months, talking about Hades, Supergiant’s action Roguelite game. One of Hades’ most successful design decisions was to make the game extremely hard to become frustrated with. With an extensive list of unlockable abilities and upgradeable weapons as well as in depth character relationship paths, every time you die in t...
Feb 14, 2021•1 hr 41 min•Ep. 106
This podcast was recorded in “Arm Swing” style. Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket, where this week, we’re going to be talking about Downwell, a Rougelike platformer where your goal is just to fall all the way down to the bottom. Obviously this is more difficult to do than it sounds, but even with as difficult as this game is, it’s that simplicity that makes it stand out. You only ever need to move left and right and press a single button, making the game incredible easy to learn and putting you imme...
Feb 06, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 36
I know it’s selfish, but this is my podcast! Welcome back! Twenty years after the game’s release and five years of doing this podcast, we are finally going to talk about our first Final Fantasy game. Ten specifically is a game that we have a history with and which has been specifically requested, so we carved out the time to talk about it. FFX is the first Final Fantasy game to be released on the PS2, and made use of the new hardware to create a game that was of an extremely high fidelity for th...
Jan 30, 2021•2 hr 23 min•Ep. 105
Underneath your seat, you will find your complimentary Podcast Snap-A-Lot 9000. Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket. Today, we’re going to be talking about Penko Park, a game that uses unique assets, but is solidly in the very small genre shared by Pokémon Snap. The game’s controls and objectives are largely the same, as you drive around in a self propelled cart and take pictures of the creatures that inhabit the titular park. It’s very interesting to play a game that feels like an intentional refinem...
Jan 16, 2021•40 min•Ep. 35
The annual awards show everyone isn’t talking about. Welcome to the NOCLIP Awards 2020, where we decide the best games we played this year in different categories. Our newly moderated debate format will help show the minute distinctions between which games really were the most perfect for the Switch, or what child in games this year most deserves the coveted Burger King birthday crown. And of course, we’ll be celebrating those most tentpole gaming achievements like Game of the Year, unique mecha...
Jan 10, 2021•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 2020
Coconuts are more valuable than podcast lives! Welcome back! Today on the podcast we’re going to be talking about No More Heroes, a hack’n’slash action game, and likely the game that made Suda51 a name people recognized. A definitely very quirky game with a, uh, we’ll say virile sense of humor, No More Heroes is a game that seems like it tries to make as many choices as it can to stand out and be different from most games released at the time. And I think this wild differentiation is what made i...
Jan 02, 2021•1 hr 48 min•Ep. 104
We Scythians loathe podcasts, Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re going to be talking about Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP, an adventure game originally released on mobile platforms. You’re given a sword and a shield and a quest to go do, but the game takes a very irreverent stance toward all of it, meaning the tone is a lot lighter and more jokey than you would expect from a game of this type. Mechanically, the game is mostly about puzzle solving, with the combat sitting somewhere b...
Dec 21, 2020•57 min•Ep. 34
Podcasts don’t always have a tidy beginning. Welcome back to the podcast! This week we’re joined by Janelle and are going to be talking about Heaven’s Vault, an adventure game with a focus on linguistics that was developed by Inkle. As you can imagine based on that description, this game has a very different way of engaging you mechanically than other games, even within the adventure genre. While the game is designed to deliver on its narrative, the story of an archaeologist exploring ancient ru...
Dec 14, 2020•2 hr 3 min•Ep. 103
Welcome to NOCLIP! Do you ever wonder “what is NOCLIP?” Well this episode probably won’t help that much, but hopefully it can provide some helpful examples of the kind of rhetoric you can expect from us in episodes of the show in convenient skit form. And remember, like we always say, or have always said after not saying it for one hundred episodes, NOCLIP is the podcast that’s like a book club for people who don’t think books reward them enough for being good at them. Thanks for listening!
Dec 06, 2020•3 min•Ep. 1
There might be two naked podcasters out here. Thank you for joining us again this week! We’re going to be talking about Firewatch, the first and currently only game from Campo Santo. Firewatch is a walking simulator mystery game set in a open world forest, but that really doesn’t get to the meat of why you should play this game. While the game world is beautifully designed, and it’s fun to explore the forest, the key to the game’s success is in building a relationship between yourself and the ga...
Nov 21, 2020•1 hr•Ep. 33
Oh yeah. Let’s a go. Welcome back to the podcast! This has been a pretty rough time for the world in general, and to make things worse, now we’re uploading Halloween episodes in mid-November. Today we’re talking about Luigi’s Mansion 3, the Switch’s entry to the franchise that kind of launched the Gamecube. This series is Nintendo’s take on horror, and it has a number of the traits associated with horror adventure games spanning the almost thirty years. The game is focused on exploration and puz...
Nov 14, 2020•1 hr 49 min•Ep. 102
At least Halloween should be fun. Happy Halloween! Today we’re going to be talking about Fatum Betula, a game that was inspired by Japanese games of the PS1 era, but will probably be most often compared to LSD Dream Emulator. This comparison is not unjust, but truthfully, while there is less going on in this game, it has a much clearer sense of play to it that revolves around puzzle solving and exploration. Overall, this is a wise choice, as the experience of playing this feels very genuine, as ...
Oct 31, 2020•48 min•Ep. 32
Some podcasts mustn’t be forgotten. It’s Halloween season! Every year we put out our bowl of candy for all our podcast listeners, so thank you for joining us again this year and I’m glad to see so many of you are wearing costumes! For our first Halloween episode here on the main podcast, we’re going to be talking about Amnesia: The Dark Descent, the game that effectively resurrected horror games in terms of public perception. And the expected mechanics of the genre, honestly. Amnesia came out in...
Oct 24, 2020•1 hr 37 min•Ep. 101
Those guys are out panning for Manchurian gold, or whatever they think they’re going to find on this podcast. Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket, and welcome, formally to the start of our Halloween season! We have a hopefully pretty satisfying variety of horror games to talk about this month, but first and foremost we’re going to be looking at one that takes a lot of its inspiration from horror movies, Man of Medan. Developed by Supermassive, Man of Medan is the first part of their ongoing “Dark Pict...
Oct 21, 2020•48 min•Ep. 31
Six players? I’ll try to podcast slowly because statistically at least one of you is hard of hearing. Welcome to the 100th episode of NOCLIP! We decided to pull all of our recent guests (and former hosts) together to talk about a game we all routinely play. The Jackbox Party Pack emulates classic board game night games with a slant toward drawing, wordplay and social games in a way that’s easy to set up and get into. The real triumph with this series, though, is that most games allow the players...
Oct 18, 2020•2 hr 35 min•Ep. 100
Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket! We’re cleaning up everything we needed to do before episode 100, and that means it’s time to play Minit, which was initially supposed to be a fun thematic companion piece to go along with A Hat in Time, but ended up stumbling into October a bit. Either way, this is an adventure game that you play in one minute chunks. You spawn in a fixed location, do as much as you can do in sixty seconds and then die, respawning in the same place unless you found another place to...
Oct 10, 2020•37 min•Ep. 30
It’s internationally observed and very important holiday NOCLIP Day, meaning it’s time to comb through our old episodes, find the stuff that we didn’t think you would want to listen to then, and have you listen to it now instead! Our festivities this year are twofold, as we are celebrating not only five years of doing this podcast but also hitting 100 episodes. The numbers are lining up, the planets are in alignment, and, just as predicted in the prophecy, we’re probably going to turn into a wer...
Oct 03, 2020•20 min•Ep. 1825
