Chip chap chipchipchap! For our listener-requested episode this week, we are dungeon diving through Barony: the voxelized roguelike with split-screen co-op! Listen to our encounters with horrible gnomes, armies of human villagers, and Pac-Man ghost scouts. There’s a lot to unpack from a game with just one axis of movement, be it spellcrafting, hunger management, commanding your army of the Zap Brigade against the minotaur, and navigating halls of rolling boulders. Lucky for you there’s a...

Helios has been abandoned! This week we’re playing the multiple BAFTA Award-winning Triple-A roguelite shooter Returnal. We continue bullet hell/heck month with swarms of huge colorful orbs, energy swords, and as many tentacled Matrix-inspired laser squids as you can shake your noodly appendages at! Join us in our foray into the first actual big-budget rogue-game of the pod with a game that had been locked behind Playstation 5 exclusivity like a gigantic interlocking metal door. We were able...

Ghostly squeal! This week we’re descending the floors of an ancient facility filled with ghosts, mages, machines, talking cats, and bullets! So, so many bullets. What else would you expect from the bullet hell game that is Star of Providence? A charming, NES-inspired modern throwback, Star of Providence puts us to the test with harrowing boss fights, secret endings, and more guns than you can shake a sword that shoots bullets at! Team D-13 were kind enough to give a quick Q&A on how Star...

We did it listeners, we saved the city! This week we revisit Subset Games with their hit mecha-tactics bug-squisher puzzle-roguelike: Into the Breach. Time travel shenanigans are at a maximum this time, as we push our recording date back a couple days to get everyone in here. Woody joins us once more to talk about balancing the destruction of apartment buildings with making sure the train gets to its destination on time. Jump mechs, swap mechs, science vesseles, weapons to surpass Metal Gear,...

This week we’re drawing a straight with the recent smash hit poker-puzzle deckbuilder Balatro! Join our four-of-a-kind hosts to talk about who will have the last laugh between random card draws and overtly complicated computer simulations. But no adventure is complete without joker hats and joker feet! Many jokes and many quips have passed behind our funny lips. By poking fun and making merry, our podcasts won’t be half as scary. So don’t be timid, don’t be nervous - Joker’s here, at your...

Lousy Smarch weather! Come in from the cold and warm up with an episode on the recent hit citybuilder roguelite Against the Storm. We’ve got biscuits and pie, jerky, and a nice dry roof to keep your resolve high. There’s lots to talk about between lizard happiness, a Queen that no one has confirmed exists or not, and everyone’s favorite topic: supply chain logistics! Man it’s wet out there. Check me through will you? Custom RSS Apple Podcasts Google...

Happy TOMEntines day! This week we choo-choo choose to revisit the traditional roguelike-sphere with an oldie but a biggie. Tales of Maj’Eyal holds a special place in the hearts of old guards of tradrogues, continuing a legacy from an Angband spinoff in 1998. There’s a lot of love stemming from a vibrant community around TOME, if you can look past the ugly duckling presentation. It’s time to use our Chronomancy to turn back the clock, fight back the Spellblaze Scar, and try to charm the...

Reap and tear! This week we’re DOOMing it up with the BOOMer shooter rogue Nightmare Reaper. We all go a little mad sometimes, but what better way to relieve that stress with some out-of-left-field minigames? Keep an eye out for the trumpet skeleton, platforming puzzles, and bolwing ball-launching shotguns. Oh and did I mention there was a chainsaw grappling hook? One more time for the folks in the back: chainsaw. grappling. hook! Custom RSS Apple Podcasts ...

Gather round children, it’s story time! This week we’re talking about the pop-up storybook RPG Wildermyth! We’re fighting gorgons with poison blood, turning into wolf people, and replacing arms with pirate hooks. You know, the normal things you always read about in kids books. It’s time to customize your coworkers, pick your pet, and save the lands from mechanical clockwork monsters! Custom RSS Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Spotify ...

Happy New Pod! Or new game! Or new game+! For our second season kickoff we bring an army of orcs and goblins marching on your doom in Rogue Tower. What other podcast can you find deep dives on tower defense strategy in the form of thrilling spreadsheet functions and macros? The Excel fincancial modelling world cup may have just ended, but this game sure EXCELs at metal tunes, one-more-turn-itis, and laser-blasting pyramids. Does Will hold a world record for this game? Send in your armies of...

It’s the holiday season (backup singers: the holiday season) and the GROGPOD is coming ‘round for a special winter break episode! We’ve been asked by listeners for a while to do a developer interview so who better to bring on the program than amazing solo dev Huw Milward of previous episode Warsim: The Realm of Aslona! We kick off the first hour of the program with Huw, Will, and I chatting by the fireplace with our ‘nog (grog?) in hand about topics like inspiration, marketing strategy, and...

The end of season 1 of the podcast is here and to celebrate we are pitting our top games in a playoff tournament fight to the death! If you’re new to the podcast or the genre this is a great place to start. With a wide range of categories from platformer rogues, to solo dev efforts, to squad management simulators, there’s something for everyone today. Thanks to all the listeners that voted as well! Our finalists include: The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth Cogmind Dead Cells Enter the...

That gooey flopping sound isn’t your GROGsgiving dinner quite yet, it’s the sound of you being reanimated for another run of the 2018 hit action platformer Dead Cells! Join the crew and returning guest Woody as we slice, dice, parry, and pray for mercy against monstrous bosses and darkening sephulcurs. Feel the guitar-strumming beat of a French co-op gamedev’s masterpiece and strap in for some fast kickin’, low biome times, and meta-progression? You bet! We round out this season of the...

Who’s a good baby amphibian? Is it you? Is it you? It is AK-Xolotl: the AK-47 wielding, you guessed it, axolotl baby raising simulator! Are reptiles different than amphibians? Is it worth sacrificing your children for permenant meta-progression unlocks? These are the kinds of questions all new parents need to answer at some point in their quest to take down Cthulhu-like monstrosities and heavy metal kittens. What other podcast will go into depth on axolotl biology while also talking about the...

Have you ever thought to yourself ‘Is it possible to import my friends into this game and harvest their skin for the leather of my chairs?’ Then you’ve tuned to the right episode! In an accidentally relevant-to-spooky-season selection, we turn to Rimworld! But wait, that’s not a roguelike, you’ll inevitably shout at your podcast feed. We decided to pull some editorial leeway this time with the defense of ‘well if Dwarf Fortress did it…’ Join our starving colonists as they try to figure out...

Happy GROGSversary! As we celebrate one whole year of doing this program, we combine our forces to attempt our own answer at the unsolvable question of “what is a roguelike?” In possibly our longest episode to date, we dive into the pre-history of rogue-games, the infamous Berlin Interpretation, and just how “rogue-lite” games fit into all this. We talk about jazz subgenres, whether or not Minecraft is a roguelike game, Solitaire (yes that one), hierarchies of game design needs, and who could...

It’s finally here, our episode on one of the major traditional roguelike cornerstones: Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. Humanity’s greatest desire is to drive crudely built, ascii-tiled cars in open source videogame projects. That and escape from zombies, of course. Tune in as we spend half an hour trying to open up menu systems and try to see just how big this fantastical world of “New England” really is. There’s only so much time to listen to this episode before XE037 finds you and adds you to...

One way or another, we were going to play this hit indie JRPG roguelike! Its One Way Heroics week for this dimension, as we take a keen eye at some anime pixel mobs and try not to wall ourselves in with a creeping black wall of doom. We must move forwards, not backwards! Upwards not forwards! And always twirling, twirling, twirling towards the 2000 KM goal to save the kingdom from the dark dragon of doom. Custom RSS Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts ...

Ymg’ ah ain’ghft eldritch n’ghftdrn ai! This week the podcast dials back the clock to one of the earliest roguelike games released on Steam: Eldritch! You remember Minecraft, right? Ever thought to yourself: “What if it had a bunch of tentacle monsters and guns?” Well have we got the game for you! Tune in as we confusingly bumble our way around a library looking for a good book to escape into, literally. All the while trying to frantically run away from gloopy, wet fish-men looking to mess...

Hold onto your Brotatoes! You demanded, we listened: listener request week is over and from the ashes of our submissions arose the bullet heaven Brotato and the tower defense zombie horde killhouse The Last Spell. We are also joined by a new full-time member of the podcast: previous guest Andrew Harshman! With so much content to cover, will we be able to channel our summoner energies together before the hour is up? 1:42 - The GROGPOD Grows! 4:09 - Brotato game stats 5:46 - One sentence...

Snake eyes! Because we forgot to do our homework this week, we are gambling away our fortunes to pay our rent with Luck Be A Landlord! Come spin some slots in a cutesy veneer of a capitalist hellscape. We needed some more time to review CDDA so stay tuned in an upcoming episode, but we did conduct an interesting set of dev interviews that you can check out here. In the meantime, get your crabs in a row, your gem golems lined up, and anchors in the corners for our spiciest take on apartment...

Welcome to the family follower. Everyone here is happy and healthy. CHOP WOOD! MINE STONE! Obey our glorious leaders commands! This week we meditate on the nature of organized labor and religious indoctrination with Cult of the Lamb. What lies beneath the adorable art and crown that sits atop our infallible and fluffly leader’s head? Tune in for how to build your very own machine learning model to cheat at Knucklebones. That’s not a commandment, right? The Lamb is good, the Lamb is great, we...

Ooooooh guns gun guns! The GROGPOD is playin to-night! I never miss a game. This week we visit an all-time bullet-hell classic of Enter The Gungeon. How many gun puns can we cram into 60 minutes? Is it as easy as shooting fish in a barrel, or using a barrel to shoot fish instead? Lock ‘n’ load your Uzi 9MM, your .45 longslide with laser sighting, and join us in finding a bullet that can kill our past. Next episode: Cult of the Lamb Contact us at...

You have 1 new message: a podcast episode about the hit roguelike mobile game Shattered Pixel Dungeon! We explore the android/ios sphere for the first time with an influential open source and community-driven spin on the dungeon crawling genre. Join us old boomers as we puzzle out why all the kids are looking at their phones all the time. Next episode: Enter the Gungeon Contact us at [email protected]! https://grogpod.zone Intro music: Sonny Rollins - Dial S For Sonny Outro music:...