Episode 1 of the new podcast Life: Narrated is available for listening here:

https://soundcloud.com/lifenarrated/life-narrated-1-narrative-in

A Caution Before You Listen: there are spoilers about Braid, Broken Age, Gone Home, Bio Shock, and Spec Ops: the Line. Also, we curse sometimes. There may have been mention of dick pics.

I think it will forever be referred to as the Un-aired Pilot. Because we made some mistakes.

We made some mistakes.

But we learned a lot, too! Like: don't bring a bag of Doritos to a podcast recording. And: Maybe wait to turn the dryer on until after you're done. Also, we should probably have a docket instead of just rambling on...

In this episode we talk about Narrative in Video Games. We touch on topics like ludo-narrative dissonance, unreliable narrators, game mechanics that drive story, historical video game knowledge, and we gush about how awesome Broken Age, Braid, Dwarf Fortress, and Gone Home are.

Towards the end, we get pretty into talking about Broken Age, which is a game that's just been released by Double Fine and which we spent a large part of our Saturday playing together. I apologize that we didn't explain the plot better, but I think we were all trying to avoid spoilers for that one, as the game literally came out last week.

The story with as few spoilers as possible is as follows: it is a game with two stories going simultaneously, one of a girl named Vella, who has been chosen by her town to participate in a creepy lottery/pageant/Hunger games/sacrifice where they dress them all up in cakes and feed them to a monster called Mog Chathra. It's apparently an honor to be chosen and everyone is all about it except Vella and her grandpa. Vella decides to fight the monster instead of letting it eat her, and her adventure goes from there.

The other story is of a boy who is stuck in a spaceship built to keep him safe. It's clear he's been in there since he was a baby because everything from the control room to the 'missions' the computer, Mother, send him on are designed for someone much younger than him.

At some point there appears this wolf who starts asking the boy to go on 'real' rescue missions. But you aren't sure who he is, how he fits into the ecosystem of the ship, and why these missions are so important.

It's a great game, and you should listen to us talk all about it and then buy it and play it for yourself. Though, again: Spoilers!

Whenever I talk about video games to non-gamers, I've heard things like "well, I prefer to spend my time with other people, not computers," or "kids today don't have any patience for a good story" or some similar nonsense.

But on Saturday, instead of going off and doing whatever it was that we had planned, we all sat, together, on a couch and worked through these puzzles for FOUR HOURS. And it was fun.

There are plenty of video games that are like that - that make you think, that tell a story, that can be enjoyed even if you aren't the one holding the controller.

So, if you aren't a video game person, I encourage you to listen to our ramblings and then try out one of the video games we talked about. It will be good for you.