Skeleton Songs

"There are games where the player is having fun and games where the designer is having fun." - Sid Meier Maps! Music! British pre-decimal currency! We discuss planning game narratives around major player choices, Mike Rosewater's 'complexity budget' and why putting little stamps on bank notes is not a good idea. Support the show

"What we want is a sort of semi-glutide octi-frenetic image that is kinda made of lighting and also is a baby..." This week AK and Lottie discuss how art direction works, how to balance being weird with being commercially viable, how we're building Travelling At Night's entirely 2D visual world, and how to paint a tree. All while accidentally revealing what we suspect might be our next Weather Factory game and answering our first batch of mail bag entries. Support the show

'My fingers are worn to bleeding nubs. I am typing this with my tongue. my keyboard is sticky with game dev drool. Do you not understand...' Thus did 2026 begin. Welcome back to the world of game dev, this time about 'murdering darlings', the Curst curse and why Newt will always trump Aliens' M577 Armored Personnel Carrier. Support the show

Our final episode of 2025! Talking Travelling At Night's alpha, the sine wave of game dev, where Fallen London's Overgoat came from and how we're attempting to solve the 'layer of plastic' in AAA RPGs. Support the show

This week in the life of jobbing game developers, we reach ALPHA. Cue period appropriate beatnik slang, a disagreement about potato croquettes and why 2D and 3D are such frenemies in isometric CRPGs. Support the show

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. Support the show

Lord of the Rings + Narnia + Jane Austen = ? A smash-hit 800-page faux-Victorian novel of realist magic and alternate histories, of course! Welcome to the world of Susanna Clarke, whose rules-based, Mametian and very 'English' magic system is one of the best we've had the good fortune to meet. Join us for a discussion of made-up magical scholarship, urban versus natural magic, whether you should consider the Land of Faerie for your next holiday destination, and 'the beauty of grey'. Gam...

Author. Visionary. Dreamweaver. Plus bellhop. Meet Jack Vance, one of the most inventive fantasy authors we've ever heard of, and probably not a pirate king. What happens when fairies become too lumpen and earthy? Why are Lvl1 wizards in D&D so rubbish? Who is Larkin the Baby-Stealer, and why are you reaching for that kazoo? We talk Cugel the Clever, Vancean magic and why you shouldn't make bread from dogs. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure: - ...

"If magic works, why isn't the President of the United States doing it?" After a 'brief' hiatus, we're back! We pick up where we left off and talk about the magic of Doctor Faustus, whether magic is 'liberation or damnation', and the distinction between ceremonial magic and what specialists term 'Doing A Big Spell'. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure: - The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, by, mostly, Christoper Marlowe - C...

Welcome to a new season, all about magic and literature! We talk William Shakespeare's Tempest, from women-wizards from Algiers to royal demonology. Caliban's Moth, Ariel's Lantern and AK nearly dies in a spiegel tent. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure: - "The Tempest", by William Shakespeare - Against Worldbuilding, and Other Provocations, by Alexis Kennedy - Daemonologie, by King James I - The Lesser Key of Solomon, anonymous Follow us on Twitter...

What makes games 'savoury'? Why is Twitter such a bad place to get game design advice? And is it ever sensible to push a count off a cliff? This episode, Lottie and Alexis talk art, games and critique, through architect Christopher Alexander to Jack Cohen and Brian Aldiss' fight over speculative xenobiology in Helliconia. Listen to avoid the perils of categorisation, and the pitfalls of diamonds - and hear Alexis fake his own death. Literally. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for yo...

Hiraeth? Sensucht? Saudade? Listen to Alexis and Lottie cry as we talk nostalgia, sequels and games, from 17th-century Swiss cowbells to sailing away from your loved ones into danger. We talk transmission of experience from one generation to the next, the future of games as gamers get old, and the impossible loss of childhood - and why that's not such a bad thing after all. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure: - Sunless Sea, by Alexis Kennedy and Fail...

The conclusion of an epic two-parter. Who would win in a fight between TRPGs and CRPGs? What happens if a giant worm swallows a city? Is a dolphin the same as a cat? We attempt to answer these questions with appeals to Simon Baron-Cohen's empathising-systemising theory, work out why TRPGs rely so heavily on rule-sets when lots of people don't follow them anyway, and end up convincing ourselves that Game of Thrones is Love Island for nerds. PROVE US WRONG IF YOU DARE. Games / books mentioned ...

"I don't want to be Elfstar anymore! I want to be Debbie!" Join us for a romp through tabletop gaming's earliest origins and the effect its had on modern video games. Well, that was the intention. We actually stop around the 1980s with fundamental Christianity and a woman called Janine who is bad at charades. But we talk about the defining characteristic of nerdery, Star Wars vs Star Trek, Boris Johnson and the Devil's testicles in between. Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your...

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 Pync...

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 ...

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 Em...

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...

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 Bethes...

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 / readin...