PODCAST · leisure
Kritiqal Care
by KRITIQAL
Conversations about games, community, and the reasons we play.Kritiqal Care is a monthly interview show highlighting the breadth of the games community. Nathalie is joined by tabletop writers, video game designers, pixel artists, streamers, YouTube critics, and others from all corners of the medium to explore games as personal, creative, and political. These are rough times, but games can help us feel less alone through it all.
Episodes
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Episode 90: Will Uhl
Will Uhl (they/them) is a tabletop game designer whose work explores inter-player relationships, unconventional mechanics, and high drama. We discuss balancing narrative conflict and player safety, providing structure to micro-RPGs, and why card-based systems might be better than dice? You can…
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Episode 89: q1
q1 (he/him) is a musician, writer, and game developer who makes playful and sometimes haunted tiny games. In this short and sweet episode we discuss the curious social experience of riding the subway, the beautiful limitations of small game engines, and viewing the game creation process like...
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Episode 88: Sandy Weisz
Sandy Weisz (he/him) is a puzzle designer out of Chicago whose games focus on team-building, environmental clues, and wordplay. This year he began creating the daily puzzle game, RADDLE, and took some time to chat with me about its EnigMarch origins, how to write a good clue, and balancing puzzle...
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Episode 87: Claire Morwood
Claire Morwood (she/her) is an indie game developer whose work explores multimedia interactivity, handmade assets, and introspective narratives. She joined me to discuss her most recent project, Asterism, an interactive concept album about exploring the galaxy. We touch on writing music for play,...
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Episode 86: Terry Cavanagh
Terry Cavanagh (he/him) is an Irish indie developer know for games like Super Hexagon and Dicey Dungeons. He joined me on the show to discuss developing ideas out of game jams, being drawn to new tools and platforms, and games as social spaces. Later we dive into his new collection, Terry’s Other...
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Episode 85: Mortally Moonstruck Games
Autumn Greenley (she/they) and Zaozoruzhna (he/him) are two members of the indie game studio, Mortally Moonstruck Games, who for the last few years they have been working on the mushroom girl cultivating game/RPG/visual novel,Mushroom Musume.They joined me for this episode to discuss the game’s...
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The End of 2024
Content warning: brief mention of suicide around the 48-51 minute mark. 2024 has come and gone which means it’s time for our annual retrospective episode, where I ask former guests of the show to share their favorite gaming memories of the year. As always the responses were incredibly thoughtful,...
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Episode 84: Nevyn Holmes (Dinoberry Press)
Nevyn Holms (any/all) is one half of indie tabletop studio Dinoberry Press, whose games explore collaborative crafts, asymmetric mechanics, and genre adaptation. They joined me to break down what draws them to physical objects as mechanics, creating shared buy in at a table, and the importance of...
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Episode 83: Ayu Koyama
Ayu Koyama (she/her), aka sweetfish, is an interactive fiction writer and designer whose work explores religion, history, and digital play. In this episode we chat about what drew her to interactive fiction as a form, how that intersects with her experimental web design projects, and the ways a...
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Episode 82: Kyou System
Content warning: this episode briefly discusses suicidal ideation Kyou System (they/them) is an artist and game developer whose work explores the profound and incoherent world of dreams. We discuss the nocturnal origins of their first game, Remembrance, revisiting and remaking it half a decade...
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Episode 81: rileylessthan9
Content warning: this episode briefly discusses blood imagery rileylessthannine (it/its) is a multimedia artist and game developer whose work explores the tension between abrasion and hope. In this episode we chat about its collage visual style, getting emotional over code, and the absurdity of...
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Episode 80: Kasey Ozymy
Kasey Ozymy (he/him) is an indie RPG developer whose work draws from 16-bit classics and deep cuts. In this episode we chat about what interests him about RPGs, the design and writing philosophy behind modern classic Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass, and how the upcoming Hymn to the Earless God will…
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Episode 79: Xiri
Xiri (he/him) is the creator of the sublime BL visual novel series, HITME, among other games exploring queer relationships and the end of the world. He took some time away from the upcoming HITM3 to chat with me about transitioning from music videos to games, how film influences his work, and a...
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Episode 78: Austin Ramsay
Austin Ramsay (he/him) is a tabletop RPG designer best known for Beam Saber, a Forged in the Dark game about mech pilots fighting an endless war. He joined me on this episode to talk about going from writing “imagination games” as a kid to 400+ page RPGs, creating rules that encourage player/GM...
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Episode 77: Sylvie
Sylvie (she/her) is a prolific creator of challenging platformers, action RPGs, and games about cats. She sat down with me to discuss her design philosophy based in constraints, games as conversations, and her esoteric entry into the year of bump combat. Later, she 1CCs an arcade cult classic.…
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Episode 76: Meredith Gran
Meredith Gran (she/her) is a comics artist and game designer, best known for her webcomic, Octopus Pie and the adventure game Perfect Tides. She sat down with me to talk about her experience coming to games from a comics background, how Perfect Tides’ mechanics where influenced by teenage…
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Bonus: Death of a Wish
For the first Kritiqal Care bonus episode, returning guests Colin (he/they) of melessthanthree and Kevin Wong (they/them) join me to discuss their recently released action RPG, Death of a Wish. A more aggressive sequel to Lucah: Born of a Dream, Death of a Wish follows ex-antagonist Christian as…
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Episode 75: Cecile Richard
Cecile Richard (they/them) is a graphic designer, writer, and game developer known for their playful Bitsy projects and hypertext fiction. They joined me to discuss cyclical stories, the risk/reward of collaborating with close friends, and how cool underground tunnels are. We also take a moment…
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Episode 74: David Su
David Su (he/him) is a musician, audio programmer, and game designer who explores interactive music and performance art. He took some time off from his ballooning schedule to discuss how he got interested in making games from an audio background, the challenges and rewards of centering your game...
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The End of 2023
It’s New Year’s Eve, which means 2023 has come and gone, bringing in closing our annual end of the year show. As is tradition, I reached out to past guests of the show to ask what their most impactful gaming memory was from the last 12 months. As this year has been particularly brutal to folks in...
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Episode 73: Domino Club
Domino Club is a pseudo-anonymous internet collective that makes weird, horny, and genre perverting videogames. In this episode I’m joined by Domino Club card carrying members Emma (she/her), Nat (she/they), and Rose (she/her) to chat about the group’s origins, its unconventional approach to...
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Episode 72: Sam Machell (Sand Gardeners)
Sam Machell (he/him) is half of indie game studio Sand Gardeners, known for provocative and unconventional games like Dark Kitchen, Memphis, Bubbleland, and Brownie Cove Cancelled. We chat about the studio’s origins as a webcomic collaboration, designing hostile environments, and the tragedy and...
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Episode 71: Lili Zone
Lili Zone (she/they) is the experimental game designer behind works like Crypt World (2013) and Crypt Underworld (2023). She took some time to chat with me about Crypt World’s origins, the nearly decade long development of Underworld, and what she has planned for the future now the crypts are...
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Episode 70: Canvas (bighandinsky)
Canvas (he/she), aka bighandinsky, is the creator of crunchy, narrative driven scifi games A Forgetful Loop (2020) and A Day of Maintenance (2022). He’s collaborated with fellow writers and indie devs Freya Campbell and Elliot Herriman, and joined me on this episode to chat about integrating…
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Episode 69: Leah Case
Leah Case (she/her) is a writer and game developer who specializes in absurd Twine hacking. In our chat, she digs into why she loves Twine so much, how she approaches writing branching interactive fiction, and how collaborating as part of snotwurm lets her focus in on system building (in Twine…
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Episode 68: Autumn Rain
Autumn Rain (she/they/it) is a prolific game developer whose work explores religious trauma, non-linear exploration, and getting lost in a maze of rats. We discuss games as miserable piles of secrets, the importance of indie dev communities, and why it’s actually fine and good to troll gamers.…
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Episode 67: Lily Valeen
Lily Valeen (she/they) is a game designer, writer, and artist who recently released BOSSGAME: The Final Boss is My Heart, a mobile action game about lesbian devil hunters. She joined me on the show to dive into BOSSGAME's development, the frustrating preconceptions around mobile games, and…
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Episode 66: Kate Barrett
Kate Barrett (she/her) is a game developer and comic artist best known for her playful, irreverent, and frequently copyright infringing design philosophy, best showcased by games such as Ready Player Fuck (2017) and Pottergame (2020). She joined me this episode to retrace her...
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Episode 65: Kenzie Shores (Hardcoded)
Content warning: this episode is primarily about porn Kenzie Shores (she/her) is a game developer and artist best known for the pornographic visual novel, Hardcoded. Nearing the game’s full release, Kenzie joined me to chat about Hardcoded’s origins, the challenge of monetizing porn, and why it...
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2022 Wrapped
The year has come and gone in a Sonic hued blur, and as is now tradition, I reached out to prior Kritiqal Care guests to ask what their favorite gaming and/or gaming-adjacent memory was in 2022. The responses were truly incredible, spanning great games, communities, moments of personal growth…
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Episode 64: Dave Hoffman
Dave Hoffman (they/them) is the creator of Mixolumia (davemakes, 2020), an arcade puzzle game combining contextual soundtracks with diamond-based combos. They came on the show to dig into the spontaneous origins of the game, how it continued to evolve and incorporate player creations, and the...
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Episode 63: Cosmo D
Cosmo D (he/him) is a game developer and musician whose work explores urban life, the creator economy, and giant pizza demanding buildings. Hot off the release of Betrayal At Club Low (2022), Cosmo D sat down with me to detail his dramatic pivot out of music into games, finding a medium that...
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Episode 62: Max Miller (Commonplace)
Max Miller (they/them) is a composer, writer, and game designer. As part of new studio Pitter-Patter, they released Commonplace (2022), an ordinary adventure game about working in an office. For this episode, Max spent some time talking about the game’s experimental development, how they…
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Episode 61: Goldie Bartlett & Jason Bakker (Wayward Strand)
Wayward Strand (Ghost Pattern, 2022) is an upcoming adventure game which follows Casey - a teenager and aspiring journalist - as she explores a hospital airship floating above the Australian country-side. Two of its developers, Goldie Bartlett (she/her) and Jason Bakker (he/him), joined me on…
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Episode 60: Adam Le Doux (Bitsy)
Adam Le Doux (he/him) is a game and software developer best known for creating the tiny game engine, Bitsy. Just shy of Bitsy’s six-year birthday, Adam came on the show to talk about Bitsy’s unassuming origins and surprising evolution as part of the tiny games scene. Later, we discuss how Bitsy’s...
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Episode 59: spiders
Spiders (they/them) are an alt game dev specializing in queer, grimy, anti-tech industry experiments. In this episode, we chat about their upcoming anthology game, The Museum of Radically Obsolete Futures, the tension between wanting to make shit that’s cool vs shit that sells, and how vital...
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Episode 58: Son La Pham & Francis Tseng (Half-Earth Socialism)
In collaboration with utopian collective Trust, designer Son La Pham (he/him) and developer Francis Tseng (he/they) created Half Earth Socialism (2022), a browser game companion to Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass’s book of the same name. As part of the game’s launch, Son La and Francis joined…
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Episode 57: Fantasia Malware
Fantasia Malware - comprised of Jira Trello (she/her), Chloê Langford (she/her), and Gabriel Helfenstein (he/him) - are an experimental game label specializing in mega-maximalist un-game performance art. They crowded into KRITIQAL’s digital podcast booth to discuss grotesque beauty, games as...
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Episode 56: Dhruv Jani (Studio Oleomingus)
Studio Oleomingus is an art practice and game studio based Chala, India, whose work explores magical realism, post-colonial landscapes, and redacted authorship. Studio founder Dhruv Jani (he/him) joined me to talk through his unique history with modern videogames, his skepticism at the necessity…
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Episode 55: Joel Jordon
Joel Jordon (they/them) is the solo game developer of Time Bandit (2022), a real-time anti-capitalist work sim about how our subjective experience of time is shaped by our relationship to labor and historical forces. With Time Bandit’s first part releasing soon, Joel took some time to join me in...
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Episode 54: Karin Malady
Karin Malady (any/all pronouns) is a writer, poet, and occultist interested in the relationship between art and audience. Recently, they’ve contributed writing to apocalyptic photography game, Dear Future (Dear Future Production Committee, 2021), and videogame flesh realm DEEP HEEL DOT COM. In…
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2021 Wrapped
Somehow, we’re at the end of 2021. It has been a strange, unpleasant, unpredictable year, but you know as much already. I won’t belabor the point as if we haven’t all been living with the same uncertainty, but I do want to say thank you for listening/reading/being part of KRITIQAL. The community...
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Episode 53: Breogán Hackett
Breogán Hackett (she/they) is an indie dev, community organizer, and creator of low-res horror anthology, The Haunted PS1. She set aside some time from Halloween spooks to talk about how The Haunted PS1 got started, moving beyond the Playstation, and forcing players to get lost. A likely…
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Episode 52: Xalavier Nelson Jr.
Xalavier Nelson Jr. (he/him) is a prolific videogame writer, producer, and internet poster, working on everything from An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs (Strange Scaffold, 2021) to Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator (Strange Scaffold, upcoming). He took some time away from creating...
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Episode 51: Heather Flowers
Heather Flowers (they/she) is the non-existent creator of EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER, a post-apocalyptic visual-novel beat-em-up about gay disasters meat mechs fighting facists. They didn’t join me on this episode to recap MEATPUNK’s origins as a spontaneous collection of sounds, adapting the…
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Episode 50: Naphtali Faulkner (Veselekov)
Naphtali Faulkner (he/him), AKA Veselekov, is the creator of IGF Grand Prize winning photography game, Umurangi Generation (ORIGAME DIGITAL, 2020). In this extra long episode, Naphtali elaborates on origins of Umurangi, confronting liberal apathy, and the hunger people have for explicitly leftist...
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Episode 49: Jeremy Couillard
Jeremy Couillard (he/him) is an artist and professor, whose games JEF (2020) and Fuzz Dungeon (2021) explore the weird, uncomfortable, and inexplicable aspects of life through humor and alien surrealism. In this episode, Jeremy details how he started creating games out of a frustration with...
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Episode 48: lowpolis (rayzones & yaffle)
Rayzones (they/them) and Yaffle (she/they) make up indie studio lowpolis, creators of cute games with surreal insides. In this episode we explore the inspiration for lowpolis’ latest game, co-open (2021), discus the complex politics surrounding “wholesome games,” and appreciate the most…
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Episode 47: Ryan Rose Aceae
Ryan Rose Aceae (he/they) is a visual novelist whose games explore the messy, sometimes monstrous dynamics of queer identity through surreal characters and earnest writing. In this episode he recounts his nontraditional route into making queer games, collaborating with Heather Flowers on...
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Episode 46: Jeff Chiao
Jeff Chiao (they/them) is an indie game producer, designer, and rhythm game enthusiast currently working on upcoming rhythm action title, UNBEATABLE (D-Cell Games). They took some time away from production to discuss UNBEATABLE’s long pre-production, the importance of embedding composers within…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Conversations about games, community, and the reasons we play.Kritiqal Care is a monthly interview show highlighting the breadth of the games community. Nathalie is joined by tabletop writers, video game designers, pixel artists, streamers, YouTube critics, and others from all corners of the medium to explore games as personal, creative, and political. These are rough times, but games can help us feel less alone through it all.
HOSTED BY
KRITIQAL
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Kritiqal Care have?
Kritiqal Care currently has 98 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Kritiqal Care about?
Conversations about games, community, and the reasons we play.Kritiqal Care is a monthly interview show highlighting the breadth of the games community. Nathalie is joined by tabletop writers, video game designers, pixel artists, streamers, YouTube critics, and others from all corners of the medium...
How often does Kritiqal Care release new episodes?
Kritiqal Care has 98 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Kritiqal Care?
You can listen to Kritiqal Care on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Kritiqal Care?
Kritiqal Care is created and hosted by KRITIQAL.
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