Skeleton Songs – Details, episodes & analysis

Skeleton Songs is BACK with a game-dev-centric season all about the inside story of making an indie RPG. In this episode, find out why CRPGs are such hard work, why UI eats time, why we're scared of Disco Elysium, and what's up with Travelling At Night. Also we have a fight about jazz.

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"The final victory of sci-fi is its final defeat," says AK, gnomically, before we sing the Beverly Hills Cop theme tune and talk about trombones. Join us for a discussion of 'the best fiction novel of the 20th century', A Wizard of Earthsea, and its masterful magic system: from Native American folklore to shamanism, demonic to natural theurgy, and eastern wyrms to western protodragons.

Is it written for children or not? What is 'Equilibrium'? Why is 'clot of shadow' so upsetting, and what does it have to do with Cultist Simulator?

In memory of Ursula Le Guin, and little Hoag.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula Le Guin
- City of Illusions, by Ursula Le Guin
- Cultist Simulator, by us

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Real talk: APOPHENIA. Alexis and Lottie discuss subliminal pattern-seeking from its coinage by a Nazi psychologist to its use by modern indie game developers to cover up the fact we don't have any budget. Wait! We meant to make clever, co-operative immersive experiences. All via werewives, apophanies and Zhou Enlai.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- Foucault's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco
- Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon
- Ulysses, by James Joyce
- A Dark Room, by Doublespeak Games
- The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, by Steven Donaldson
- Return of the Obra Dinn, by Lucas Pope
- Against Worldbuilding, by Alexis Kennedy

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This episode is about sex and games and the libertine novels of eighteenth-century France. From Talleyrand, the Napoleonic clergyman and diplomat, through to Cindy Crawford, Peter Bradshaw and Amouranth, the Twitch streamer scandal du jour, we talk erotica, porn and those anime sex games you see all the time on Steam. Listen for the power of 'not for me', the uselessness of banning things, and Alexis's really bizarre description of one of Lottie's favourite games.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- 'The Law of Boob', by Lottie
- Fallout 4, by Bethesda
- Far Cry 5, by Ubisoft
- PUBG, by KRAFTON
- Horizon Zeo Dawn, by Guerilla
- DEEP SPACE WAIFU: NEKOMIMI, by Neko Climax Studios
- LOVE³ -Love Cube-, by Neko Work H
- The Ditzy Demons Are in Love With Me, by SMILE
- Being a DIK, by Dr PinkCake
- VA-11 Hall-A, by Sukeban Games
- Subverse, by Studio FOW
- Thérèse Philosophe, by Jean-Baptiste de Boyer

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Join Alexis and Lottie for a discussion of antagonists and villains! Via witches, Belgium, Simon Baron-Cohen, a charming Irish vagabond and, of course, Nazism. Alexis talks about how rubbish games are and destroys Lottie's argument; Lottie talks about five-hour Polish art films and producers stopping developers from kicking each other in the nads.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army, by Rebellion
- Zero Degrees of Empathy, by Simon Baron-Cohen
- Disco Elysium, by ZA/UM
- Gaudy Night, by Dorothy L Sayers
- Batman: Arkham Asylum, by Rocksteady Studios
- Bioshock, by 2K Games
- "First they came...", by Martin Niemöller
- "Who goes Nazi?", by Dorothy Thompson

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What's the connection between the Labyrinths of Night and the Bright Ditches? This question and many more we don't really answer in this episode on mazes, labyrinths and game design.

Meet labrys, the lesbianic double-headed axe. Leave kittens in mazes and form human chains in swampy MUDs. Learn Alexis Kennedy's First Law of Narrative. Cake. Also, Lottie gets cross about a pretend man 'buggering off with a sex witch and having a baby'. So there's that.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, by The Astronauts
- From Dusk Till Dawn, by Robert Rodriguez
- The Garden of Forking Paths, by Jorge Luis Borges
- Firewatch, by Campo Santo
- Dragon Age: Origins, by BioWare
- Fallen London, by Failbetter Games

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Skeleton Songs season two, baby! This season's all about GAMES, but not as you know 'em. Join Alexis and Lottie as we discuss genre via Aristotle and Wittgenstein, cyberpunk and film noir, the Berlin Interpretation and, er, fish genitalia. Also there is an odd bit about tortoises in the rain but perhaps Alexis's medicine was wearing off then.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- Cyberpunk 2077, by CDPR
- Skyrim, by Bethesda
- Neuromancer, by William Gibson
- "Lycidas", by John Milton

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Ragnarok! Gotterdammerung! Armageddon outta here! In the final episode of season one, we talk eschatology, chocolate, fake news and the bloody gothness of Old Germanic literature. Sexy zombie apocalypses and millennial doomsday cults make an appearance too, because of course they do. And even though we say 'everyone's gonna die' a lot in this episode, we realise it's small acts of everyday niceness that really save us. Nawwww.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- The Road, by Cormack McCarthy
- The Fallout series, by Bethesda
- The Apocalypse of Paul
- The Cthulhu Mythos, by H. P. Lovecraft
- The Prose Edda, by Snorri Sturluson
- The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, by the Venerable Bede

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Maenads! Who are they, what do they want, and how do they wear their fox-skins? Kittens! How can they be so cute and so murderous at the same time? Join Alexis and Lottie as they discuss why frenzied Bassarids and Cutie McFloofcat are both the same Gothic trope of violent comeuppance. Via boring werewolves, Nosferatu and beautiful, naughty Clodius, of course. Also, there is a surprise storm half-way through.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- BOOK OF HOURS, by us
- True Blood, by HBO
- 'A Case of Murder', by Vernon Scannell
- 'The Squaw', by Bram Stoker
- Dracula, by Bram Stoker
- 'The Black Cat', by Edgar Allan Poe
- Nosferatu, by F. W. Murnau
- Cat People, by
- The Secret History, by Donna Tartt

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Join Alexis and Lottie on a deep-dive into WORLDBUILDING. Why it's menacing to be told to start with a timeline, how Twin Peaks' BOB came to be, why you must never call pulled pok 'flesh-spicing', and why the architect of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao probably didn't start with the toilets. Alexis, unsportingly, refuses to get cross.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Cultist Simulator, by us
- Fallen London and Sunless Sea, by Alexis Kennedy & Failbetter Games
- The Silmarillion, by J. R. R. Tolkien
- Beowulf, by ???
- Gormenghast, by Mervyn Peake
- Hard Times, by Charles Dickens

Follow us on Twitter and sign up to the mailing list to make sure you don't miss the next episode! ♥

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