Watch Out For Fireballs!

Adaptation Decay is a show that we love doing, but not a lot of people have dug into it. So we want to give you a slice for free. And it's a primo slice, a real New York Slice. That's right, we're talking the Super Mario Bros. movie. Reviled at the time, but actually fun and weird, it's a great intro to this show. If you like this, you can go grab more by becoming a member at patreon.com/duckfeedtv.

Owlboy is a visually beautiful indie platformer with a killer soundtrack. It's a labor of love, and you can see that in every masterfully drawn piece of spritework. It's unfortunate that the aesthetics are attached to flat gameplay and story. It's a shame that it never fully explores its own mechanics, because the inventive boss fights show some high highs. Listen in to learn more, and hear some of that sweet music. Big thanks to Mike Suskie for backing us and requesting this episode!

Gary and Kole dig into this NES classic, and our first time covering a Kunio-Kun game. Alex's girlfriend has been kidnapped by Slick, so we have to punch, kick, and pipe our way across River City and its gangs. This is a fun game that's stymied a bit by antiquated progression mechanics, but it feels too damn good in your hands to hold that against it too much.

Hello, listeners and patrons alike. We come to you with some exciting news: We are changing the Patreon around! (http://patreon.com/duckfeedtv) It feels like we just did this, but the last major change was back toward the beginning of 2017. We’re trying to constantly observe what’s happening with the network and learn what to do better. That means making changes like this from time to time. We’re also aiming to never shake things up in a way that is too disruptive to you, the listener. We want to give more (or at least focus up and give better). So we put a lot of thought and consideration into making sure these changes either solve problems or help us achieve goals. Here’s the summary of what we’re planning, and you can find the details below. In order to grow the network, give patrons more, and cover rising costs, we plan to: Bring back Bonfireside Chat as a Patreon show. Give Patrons a whole episode of Watch Out for Fireballs! Move from theme months to covering big-name games more frequently. Change WOFF!

This episode concludes our coverage of the main game of Baldur's Gate II. Our party emerges from the Underdark and gathers some help for its final assault, which takes them far afield of the prime material plane. Then we conclude with your listener responses about this beloved CRPG.

This third episode of our Baldur's Gate II coverage takes us away from the free-wheeling open-ended climes of Chapter 2 and puts us on the story's rails, as we get on Irenicus' trail and follow him to a Wizard Asylum and finally into the iconic Underdark. There's some fantastic content to be covered here, and they even made the Sahuagin interesting!

Do you know how many candy bars I'd have to sell to raise 20,000 GP!?!? We left Part 1 of our Baldur's Gate II coverage with an outrageous mandate... to raise a ton of money to get information about where our soul (and sister) were taken. But Athkatla is a dirty and greedy city, so there's plenty of work to do. This episode covers most of Chapter 2, except for the content at Trademeet. We kind of ran out of steam. Next episode should take us through the Underdark.

Lots of folks have waited very patiently for us to get around to covering Baldur's Gate II. It's a very well-regarded classic game, and it fits in well with our love for all things Dungeons and Dragons. So this month, we are doing a four part series. This first episode is all about systems an generalities, which are meaty enough (it's 2nd Edition, after all). Here's our plan for the rest of the coverage: * Part 2: Chapter 2 (Side Quests around Amn) * Part 3: Chapter 3, 4, and 5 * Part 4: Chapter 6 and 7, and listener responses

We hear what you think of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, and The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine.

Our Witcher 3 saga draws to a close as we talk about Geralt's extracurricular activities in Toussaint.

The world of the Witcher 3 is almost completely dark and grim, where moral ambiguity reigns supreme. So it's strange for Geralt's tale to end in Toussaint, which is picturesque and relatively calm... except for the murders. It's also a land of chivalric values that seem nice at first but are actually pretty backwards. This massive expansion sees Geralt working with an old friend to hunt down the Beast of Beauclaire, a vampire who is murdering nobles. However, things get wildly out of hand as palace intrigue takes hold. Blood and Wine is not uniformly good, nor is it as singularly brilliant as Hearts of Stone. But it's a good farewell. This episode covers the main quest, while next week's episode will feature all of the side content.

We originally intended for our live episode at Portland Retro Gaming Expo 2018 to be about Super Smash Bros. Melee. However, we figured something out... we don't like playing Smash Bros. competitively. This led us down a rabbit hole that ultimately made us change our plans... What does it mean to play games wrong. Is it even possible? Is that a real or fake idea? So we turned the episode into an editorial, talking about different ways to play games wrong, and giving a few examples of our favorite games to break.

This very special WOFF is brought to you by the Atomic! Kickstarter backers.

Watch out! Behind you! You'll hear that a lot in Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, a game from Ninja Theory that goes all in on the gimmick of using 3D sound to approximate audio hallucinations. We talk through this remarkable "AAA indie game", which has a young woman venturing into the Norse underworld to rescue the soul of the one she loves. Unfortunately, not everthing is fantastic here, since there's a bunch of nonsense filler in the game.

Let's hear your responses to Night in the Woods, and the other indie horror games we did in October!

Mumblecore playdates with a tinge of existential, cosmic dread. That's a succinct summation of Night in the Woods, the capstone for our indie horror month. This is a beautiful, charming game that goes to great lengths to endear you to its cast. It sensitively and deftly portrays issues of mental illness, poverty, and faith. We just wish it didn't have structural problems, because they result in the game hiding its light under a bushel. Let me hang with Germ Warfare, please!

As we continue Indie Horror Month, we're excited to do something a little different. There are so many great little experimental horror games that wouldn't bear a full episode, but are worth talking about. So we gathered up a bunch of micro-horror games and created a special episode about them. They are: IMSCARED Haunted Cities, vol. 1 and vol. 2 Lost Constellation My Father's Long Long Legs And that's all. Don't stick around to the end of the episode because there's nothing more. Nosiree.

You can run and you can hide... and not much else. That's something Frictional learned in making Penumbra: Overture, a strange predecessor to their more widely acclaimed Amnesia: The Dark Descent. You play as Phillip, a professor who follows in the footsteps of his presumed-dead father and ends up in a heap of trouble in an Arctic mine. Come hear what makes this strange indie horror game so foundational to modern horror games.

Let's hear your responses to Quest for Glory II, Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, and not Gabriel Knight 3!

We love the Gabriel Knight series, but Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned is the kind of game only a parent could love. It follows Knight's adventures in France as he tries to solve a kidnapping case that involves the Holy Grail and a set of vampires called "The Night Visitors". What makes Gabriel Knight 3 such a dicey proposition to play is its questionable presentation. Sierra forced Jane Jensen and her team to make the game fully 3D, which they were neither equipped to accomplish, nor comfortable doing. So it's a technical nightmare that plays very awkwardly, and it gets in its own way. The highs remain quite high, since this series uniquely captures the feeling of being a detective investigating a case. It's just... very difficult to recommend.