The Crate and Crowbar The Crate and Crowbar

Chris and Marsh discuss disappointing children’s entertainment, disappointing sales figures, anti-mnemonic naming choices, the rulebreaking delight of card game Balatro, the dishonourable cheeses of Honor Mode in Baldur’s Gate 3, and return once more to Night Country.



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AI wrote cheques that Willy Wonker simply could not cash.

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Immortals of Aveum may not have sold well, but it really opens up your pores.

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Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is fine, probably, but it isn’t Balatro.

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Balatro is Balatro, and Balatro is all.

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Apart from the large part of all which is made up of repeated, ever stranger playthroughs of Baldur’s Gate 3.

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20 Small Mazes and Sheepy: A Short Adventure are free and good.

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True Detective: Night Country is on HBO Max or whatever it’s calling itself now for tax reasons.

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“The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K. LeGuin.

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“Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole” by Isabel J. Kim.



You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at questions@crateandcrowbar.com or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Jamie and Marsh discuss the latest seasons of Fargo and True Detective, two anthology shows about troubling crimes and the yet more troubled cops who investigate them.



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Fargo was originally a film by the Coen Brothers, and was adapted to TV by Noah Hawley, who is also known for the show Legion.

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Also mentioned: Happy Valley, a superb crime show of a similar form, set in Yorkshire.

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The first season of True Detective was written by Nic Pizzolatto and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga. The latest is written and directed by Issa López.

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Fargo Season 5 cast:

Juno Temple – Dot

Richa Moorjani – Indira Olmstead

Jennifer Jason leigh – Lorraine Lyon

Jon Hamm – Roy Tillman

Lamorne Morris – Witt Farr

Joe Keery – Gator

Sam Spruell – Ole Munch

Sienna King – Scotty

David Foley – Danish Graves

David Rysdahl – Wayne Lyons

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True Detective Season 4 cast:

Jodie Foster – Liz Danvers

Kali Reis – Evangeline Navarro

Fiona Shaw – Rose Aguineau

Finn Bennett – Peter Prior

John Hawkes – Hank Prior

Isabella LaBlanc – Leah Danvers

Chris Eccleston – Ted Connelly



You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at questions@crateandcrowbar.com or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Join Jamie and Chris as they join Past Jamie for a solo pod about train-sets and low-key terror in the demo deluge of Steam Next Fest. Then they return to the present, which is also now the past, to discuss smushing bugs in the name of Super Earth in Helldivers 2.



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All aboard the Jamie solo-pod! Choo choo!

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Brio Train Sets

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Rolling Line

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Tracks – The Train Set Game

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Steam Next Fest is a periodic event that brings a deluge of time-limited demos.

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Mouthwashing is a weird horror game. The Steam synopsis asserts that “God is not watching.” Promising stuff!

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How Fish Is Made is another disturbing game from the same developer as Mouthwashing. Unnerving and hilarious, says Jamie.

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The horrible tongue fish thing is Cymothoa exigua, and is just one of several horrible tripophobia triggers in the game.

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The Last One And Then Another is playable within How Fish Is Made

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Dreamcore is an unsettling game set in an impossible swimming centre, viewed as if from a body-cam and keying into the “liminal spaces” aesthetic.

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Kitty Horrorshow makes amazing indie horror.

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Stalker-esque Pacific Northwest survival car game Pacific Drive is namechecked – we’ll surely talk about it more when it releases!

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Star Trucker takes the haulage sim genre to space.

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Cryptmaster is a bit like Legend Of Grimrock meets Scrabble.

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Atmosfear is the VHS game Jamie was the master of.

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Knightmare is the legendary kids tv show that only two people ever won. SPELLCAST D I S M I S S etc etc.

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Bing bong. We will shortly be arriving at Thurstown.

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Jean-Michel Jarre makes a bop.

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It is a bit busy, isn’t it?

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Helldivers 2 is a coop thirdperson shooter about summoning airstrikes on Icleand own-brand Tyranids and frequently your friends.

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This service terminates here. All change, please. All change.



You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at questions@crateandcrowbar.com or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by a href="http://themandibles.bandcamp.

Tom F joins Marsh to make the biggest sticks in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, become the stick in Pacific island adventure Tchia, stick to walls in Jusant and stick it to space pirates in timeloop deckbuilder Cobalt Core.



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Just forbidden enough: Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is Tom’s game of 2023.

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Tactical Breach Wizards is Tom’s forthcoming game about wizards who breach tactically. It’s very good!

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Tchia is a joyous open world adventure in which you can possess any object.

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Jusant is a very beautiful game about climbing a massive abandoned tower.

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Cobalt Core is a very funny roguelike deckbuilder about pixelart animals murdering each other in the cold void of space, again and again and again.

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Stealth makes no sense in shooty-heist game Payday 3.

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Stealth makes no sense in purported stealth game Monaco. Maybe they’ll fix this in Monaco 2, if it’s actually still in development.



You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at questions@crateandcrowbar.com or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Marsh and Chris celebrate the new year by poking the wound in our psychic gestalt. Also: are AI tools ethical? Yeah, we solve that one. 100%. Bosh. Done. Also also: space whale visual novel South Scrimshaw, team shooter The Finals, Robocop: Rogue City, mystery game This Bed We Made, Pentiment and Cocoon.



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Alex’s COVID-recovery blogpost. He wouldn’t need to oxygenate his blood if he was a real man.

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South Scrimshaw Part One: a sci-fi visual novel written in the style of a nature documentary about alien whales. It’s excellent!

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The Finals is a very sweaty place for dinguses and a thrillingly dynamic shooter.

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Robocop: Rogue City is a 6.5/10 shooter which is a huge credit to its producers.

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This Bed We Made is a mystery game in which you play a cleaner in a hotel.

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Pentiment is a superb medieval murder mystery.

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Cocoon is a puzzle game in which you are a bug with magic balls.



You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at questions@crateandcrowbar.com or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Chris, Jamie and Marsh reminisce on the year that was, the teeth they lost, oceans they regret leaving, algorithms that have failed them and, very eventually, the games they played. Bold takes on Baldur’s Gate, Dave the Diver, Cult of the Lamb [sexy], Witchfire and Chants of Sennaar.



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Games of the year we give barely more than a namecheck to: Cocoon, Destiny 2, Jedi Survivor, Vampire Survivors, Hunt: Showdown

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Baldur’s Gate 3: game of the year or… game of the decade?!

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Cult of the Lamb, a cartoon action roguelike soon to feature sex, by popular demand.

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Dave the Diver, a multi-genre sushi experience.

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Witchfire, an early access spooky shooter set in the witch era, but with more ACOG sights.

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Tallboys making a game about a tall boy: Militsioner

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The historical triumphs and ellisions of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey VS a short holiday to off-season Athens.

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Chants of Sennaar, a terrific linguistic puzzle game.



You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at questions@crateandcrowbar.com or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.