One Life Left's Podcast

Alternative title: Babylon Zune This episode was brought to you by the freshers’ flu. In fact, even the caretaker is writing this with a very snuffly left nostril. As a fun side quest why not see if you can count how many times we cough away from the microphone? Our SSG (no additional S required) was James Parker from Ground Shatter. He risked our germ-filled studio to talk about his latest game Rico. It’s a co-op FPS where you kick doors and shoot men. Kind of Rainbow Six but with the boring bits removed (which depends on if you consider the non-shooty bits boring). Ste of last year would have hated this game but it’s now right up his violent street. James has even made the game incredibly timely by adding in a certain animal (that will probably be out of date in two weeks’ time). As Ann is in HR she asked a very pertinent ethical question about the baddies, but James had an apposite response. Sorry about the different vocabulary in this episode intro. The cold must be affecting the caretaker in ways we d

There’s a fable about how you go on One Life Left twice: once on the way up and once on the way down. So what does it mean if you are on the show for a third time? In Tony Gowland’s case it means that you are releasing Binaries on Switch. Tony was on as a SDSSSG (Slightly Delayed Super-Special Guest) to tell us about the (lack of) difficulty in porting to the Switch, how helpful Nintendo are and if you should make a game controller smashingly frustrating. Tony is also making a game that’s a twin stick shooter influenced by Ghostbusters, which has to be great doesn’t it? The team had an alright week. Ste had a week of teaching and Simon got a little confused about who Ste had actually been teaching, Ann walked in front of the Patron Saint of Resonance FM and Simon’s man crush is getting worse. We also found out that we need to find a Nick Faldo to help Tony out, that Simon can tell brilliant jokes from a content perspective and that Sega Badawi is just about managing to find some local news. And Marioke is o

This week saw the whole of Team OLL back in the studio and there’s been some major developments. Simon is getting into virtual currency, but only the type of virtual currency that costs him actual currency. Ann is potentially back in VR and Ste is keeping track on how many waters he has drunk. Well, for us they were pretty major. For the second time in as many weeks we welcomed a Skype Super-Special Guest onto the show. This week’s one was Brandon Edler from Finish Line Games (dammit, we should’ve chosen The Edler Scrolls as the episode title). He was on mostly to talk about NBA, how nice people in Toronto are and how nice people in the Games Industry in Toronto are. Oh, and we let him talk about Finish Line’s excellent adventure game MAIZE, which has just been released onto PlayStation 4 and XBox One. Maize is a videogame about sentient corn and was inspired by the classic Lucasarts games, as well as the new style of adventure games. We also found out how the move from PC to consoles has gone, how bored Br

As our tradition with the second episode in a new season of One Life Left we do not have the full team in the studio. Unfortunately Ann drew the short straw and was absent due to illness, but she managed to send us in her news for Ste to read it out. Will he be a good Ann replacement? We had a Skype Super-Special Guest this week and it was Jaakko Maaniemi from 10 Tons games. They are one of the elder statesmen of indie developers so it was interesting to get an experienced viewpoint of how indie games have changed over the years, which platform is currently the best and why, and what are the challenges for indies at the moment. He also spoke about 10 Tons latest game Time Recoil, which is a twin stick shooter that nods respectfully in the direction of Max Payne and Hotline Miami. In addition to that we hear about Mario going tops off (he obviously listens to the show), try to work out if we are actually on air and we repurpose information from the internet for our own benefit. Cheerio! Team OLL x Links: h

After going off on our summer holidays we’re back! But does this count as a new season or not? The official OLL Style Guide isn’t clear on the matter but we’ve taken a chance and decided that the fifteenth season starts here. This is what we did on our holidays: - Simon blanked both Ste and (FOTS) Rami in Germany - Ann and Ste went to an esport - Simon got annoyed by Sonic Mania - We all found out that you can do other stuff on a Monday other than make a radio show So in other words, it was business as usual. At least with Simon being back we managed to book a Super-Special Guest. Book being the special word as the SSG was Nate Crowley, author of 100 Best Video Games (That Never Existed). The book started life as a series of tweets to avoid writing a book, which seems a strange way of not writing a book. We found out what was the first game that Nate made up and how many people have been tricked by the book. We’re offering up our copy in an auction so put your bids in. Cheerio! Team OLL x Links: https://t

It’s our last show of the current season, and we were already one person down with Simon going to Canadia. But would Dan Marshall have listened to our pleas last week and be our Super-Special Guest, or will we remember to not mention him on the show? In related news Ann does a review of Dan Marshall’s Behold The Kickmen and we had Sega Badawi as our Super-Special Guest. It was Sega’s first time in the studio and we took full advantage to ask him about reporting from the Mushroom Kingdom. We even got him to do a live local news, which he nearly did perfectly. Although he did slightly spoil Weaselspoon’s letter about Edinburgh by rabbiting on about footballers so the links below detail the shows that he mentioned. The other link relates to the news story that Sega found out on his rounds. How will Ste and Ann react to his investigation? Presumably the same way that our CD player took the first attempt at playing the news jingle. See you in about six weeks! Cheerio! Team OLL x Links: https://tickets.edfring

There’s no Super-Special Guest this week, despite our best efforts as you will find out during this episode. Instead the team get together to chat about videogames and prepare for our AGM. Have we all met our objectives for the year? But mostly we spoke about Splatoon 2. Have you played Splatoon 2? It’s rather good. We also referenced an old show presented by Craig Charles, cured and caused the common cold, busted the myth of Crash Bandicoot and Simon realised he could’ve stopped a disaster. Cheerio and don’t get cooked… stay off the hook! Team OLL x Links: Definitely not http://store.steampowered.com/app/529440/Behold_the_Kickmen/ Tracklist: 1. Club Cult - Bull Shift http://chipmusic.org/clubcult/music/bullshift 2. Klamm - Solar_Sailer http://chipmusic.org/Klamm/music/solar_sailer 3. We Danced - Untilted 6 http://chipmusic.org/wedanced/music/untilted-6 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After ten years of hosting One Life Left it seems that Ste thinks it’s time for an image change and he’s now going to become the bad boy of videogames. Not content with skinny dipping last week in Finland, we learnt about how he broke the rules in his youth. It’s a shocking revelation that we need to warn you about here so that it doesn’t offend you too much. We were happy to finally be able to put a monetary value on how much an appearance on One Life Left will bring you, thanks to Gary Penn being our SSSG last week. Dan Marshall will be kick(ball)ing himself about how much he’s missing out due to his dodgy internet connection. We also planned a trip to Bury, found out that Radiohead are trolling us and Ann found out what the lads do behind her back when the news is on. Come to Married-oke this Friday - the Bad Boy won’t be there but it will still be fun! Cheerio! Team OLL x Links: https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football https://www.facebook.com/events/183684258833963/ Tracklist: 1. Johan Andersson -

(Who, who, who, who?) There’s no Ste this week. After literally getting out of his sick bed to dj at Ann’s wedding celebration he then literally went back to his sick bed. This meant that Simon was in charge of the studio so there could be problem with the wrong jingles being played. Luckily our Super-Special Guest that we’d booked ages ago wouldn’t let us down right? We activated the ESSSG (Emergency Skype Super-Special Guest) beacon and Denki’s Gary Penn answered the call. He had a haircut especially for the show but it would also get an outing for his big interview with Jonathan Smith this week’s Develop Conference. Denki had been working on Crackdown 3, but have recently been taking the opportunity to test a few new game ideas out. One of which has come to fruition as Autonauts, which you can download for free on itch.io. We also spoke to Gary about working on magazines (which involved the Mario coin sound needing to be used), how making games helps you learn about ropes and which pubs he went to in Ba

There was no Ann this week as she’s busy preparing for her wedding (this is also why we’re not doing a show next week). We also didn’t have a Super-Special Guest, but this was just as well as they would have been totally overshadowed by our live preordering special! Yes, in the same way that Sky Sports News only does well when it is transfer deadline day, this week’s episode saw live coverage of whether the space under Simon’s stairs would see an increase in items being stored in it. But would Ste also fall under the item’s spell? And would anyone regret their purchase by the end of the episode? Without an SSG our listeners helped fill the void by sending us loads of excellent letters. Sega Badawi also helped for a minute with some Local News. The rest was covered by Simon’s grey joycon, Ste going back to trousers and a rather crap Glaswegian accent. Oh, and as this episode gets uploaded we’ll be at Unite Europe doing a Marioke with Simon Parkinson. What will we get him to do in Amsterdam? As with preorderin

Blimey it’s been hot this week. So hot that the CD kept accidentally playing the wrong jingles. Yes that’s exactly why it did it this week. Nothing to do with us doing it wrong. FUN FACT: The alternative title for this week’s episode was going to be Jingle’s Rosy Rupeeland. But instead we went for a title named after the last game that our SSG - Gwen Frey - helped make, which was The Flame and The Flood. She had just flown in from America and boy were her arms tired! We spoke to her about how her studio Molasses Flood came into being; which came first: The studio or the game; and what are the pros and cons of being a Kickstarter success. Ann also managed to get an EXCLUSIVE but it wasn’t as EXCLUSIVE as we hoped. So, more of an exclusive then. We also got our legs out for radio, thought of another great monetisation idea and got maths wrong. Sega Badawi brought some local news and Ann got an injury at third base. Ouch. Cheerio! Team OLL x Links: https://twitter.com/direGoldfish https://twitter.com/molasse

After a frantic week in the UK, we got the team together to talk a bit about E3. But where was Ann? We tried to check with HR, but we couldn’t contact her either. How strange. Luckily we had a SSSG (Selfie Super-Special Guest) that made up for our missing newsreader: Anisa Sanusi. She had been on the show before during an Ann Life Left and also during GDC, but this was the first time she got to be interrogated by the heavyweights of videogame radio shows. And she did a great job at coping with us. We found out how you can become a UX/UI designer; why her current employer, Hutch Games, are great at making driving games; and how UX differs between mobile and consoles. As well as all that we heard about how Simon used time travel last week, had a competition for a JBL Flip 4 Bluetooth speaker and confirmed that we’re off to Amsterdam with Parkinson. And Sega Badawi could finally use the election in a story. Cheerio! Team OLL x Links: https://twitter.com/studioanisa http://www.hutchgames.com/ https://twitter.

After the events in London over the weekend Team OLL decided to take a different approach. Without an SSG (Simon was off) or Simon (he was in Barcelona), Ann and Ste went through their favourite nice games. Whilst we normally try to be as positive as possible, us being positive about so many games may disconcert you. Luckily our CD player went on the blink during the reviews section and hearing our shoddy professionalism will reassure you that we’re still the same Team OLL. We also did a bit of wedding admin, Ann ran on the beach in Scotland and Ste found out he was a super taster. Busy week. Cheerio! Team OLL x Track list: 1. m0n0deaf - k0ng0 http://chipmusic.org/m0n0deaf/music/k0ng0 2. saulc12 - the crunch http://chipmusic.org/saulc12/music/the-crunch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s another Bank Holiday Monday so that means it’s time to check back into the Nordic Game Jam and see how things progressed since our last episode. The main issue is that 24 hours had passed since our last Game Jam episode so (in theory) people should have slept. We tried our best to find out the best and worst places to sleep at a Game Jam and also tried to see if snoring had affected any games created. Luckily we managed to find lots of people who were on our previous episode so we got to see how their ideas (and teams) had changed and also got to speak to someone from the most exotic country attending. We also came up with an idea for a Game Jam that we thought of two weeks ago, but was two weeks after this episode was recorded. On both times we appear to think it’s a new idea that we’ve had. This is what Game Jams can do to you. Look in our links section below to see all the games that were created from the Jam. They’re all excellent. Cheerio! Team OLL x Links: https://twitter.com/nordicgamejam htt

We start the episode a little confused. So confused that Ste mentions how it’s our first show together for a few weeks, er, except we were all together last week. Ste did have an excuse in that Team OLL got together over the week to once again give the gift of Marioke to Nordic Game. Apart from Simon who decided Belgium was much better, which it would have been but he failed to go to Ghent or Bobbejaanland. Anyway, after last week’s lack of an SSG we went overboard by getting a guest who had just flown in from America - and boy were his arms tired! It was Glenn Gregory from ID@Xbox, which is the main route to getting your indie game onto to Xbox platform. We bombarded him with questions that he actually gave a straight answer to like: Is there still a place for traditional indie games? What does Ann need to do to promote her indie game that she hasn’t made yet? And: How many games have been released on the ID service? This last one wasn’t a question we asked, but we did find out the answer in the show. One

Apologies for the delay in releasing this episode - our Caretaker was at a team build in Doncaster. Unfortunately Derek Williams wasn’t providing the after-dinner entertainment but there’s always next time. Simon was finally back in the country and on the show after a world tour that took in Toronto, Great Yarmouth and Greece and also a flight that was delayed 27 hours. Luckily this meant that Simon had plenty of opportunities to play the Switch in various locations and with different people, including ex-contributors Taliah and Dexter. So without an SSG we decided to discuss the Switch in more detail. Do we think it will change the videogame world? Or how it will change the tea break at cricket matches? And can we persuade Ann to buy her own Switch? We also found out if Ann passed her driving test, the first line of Ste’s Nordic Game talk and Simon’s cunning plan for his Playstation. Sega Badawi managed to find a non-election story and we had a good idea for a Game Jam. Cheerio! Team OLL x Links: http://

Another week without Simon, but we’ve been promised that he will definitely be here next week. However, going by his Twitter as at Wednesday, this promise might not be kept. At least Ste will be here, even though Simon thinks Ste won’t be. As one of Simon’s roles is to book the SSGs, we had to resort to sending a signal out. Luckily Lukas Roper answered and became an SSSG (Skype Super-Special Guest). When Ann found out what Lukas had previously worked on you could hear her gasp in admiration and you can too. Lukas is currently working on the excellently named Corrupt Cup Contest, which is a tongue in cheek online multiplayer game based on the ongoing FIFA scandal. It sounds like it’ll be great fun, although if Team OLL decide to play each other it’ll be a little boring as we all play by the rules and won’t stab each other in the back. Maybe. Ann tells us a very interesting fact about the oceans and gives us some useful lessons in hacking while Ste made a quite good joke about Whitstable and is worrying abou

Team OLL managed to get approval from our HR director to go and record a show from the floor of this year’s Nordic Game Jam, which was held in Copenhagen between 20 April and 23 April. So, as Resonance locked us out of the studio this week because of the bank holiday, we decided to release an episode from the first day of the Jam. Enjoy! Team OLL x Links: https://twitter.com/NordicGameJam https://nordicgamejam.org/ Tracklist: 1. Amateur LSDJ - Journey http://chipmusic.org/amateurlsdj/music/journey 2. Israel Junior - Spring Song http://chipmusic.org/Israel+Junior/music/spring-song 3. Vincentizghra - Mergefusion http://chipmusic.org/vincentizghra/music/mergefusion 4. YERZMYEY - Agartha http://chipmusic.org/YERZMYEY/music/agartha 5. VCMG - Swashbuckler Saga http://chipmusic.org/VCMG/music/swashbuckler-saga Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After a break for the Easter holidays and to go to Denmark, we’re back! And, as usual for when we have a break for a holiday, we’ve left a member of Team OLL in another country. And our Super-Special Guest had a very apt name for this week’s presenting team with Stephane (Ste + Ann) Ferrandiz from Gamevil making his first appearance on the show. He was here to talk about War of Crown, which has all the best bits of Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics, but none of the bad bits. It’s also has real time PVP so we tried to find out how easy that is to do (presumably we’re thinking of doing it in Marioke). We also spoke about Snooker, came up with a cheap way to make a mini NES and Ann told us about her massive bruise that happened at the Nordic Game Jam. It’s been a difficult two weeks. Cheerio! Team OLL x Links: https://twitter.com/GAMEVIL http://gamevil.com/ Track list: 1. Amateur LSDJ - Equestrian http://chipmusic.org/amateurlsdj/music/equestrian 2. DEgITx - Remember Your Name http://chipmusic.org/DEgIT

It’s the fourteenth season of One Life Left! Miracles can happen if you believe in them! For instance, Ste has a tan and could potentially be djing at Ann’s wedding for up to 22.5 minutes! Oh, and the caretaker could forget to press play and record, thereby missing important chat from the beginning of the episode so had to make a seamless edit (sort of)! Miracles! Some people could argue that one such miracle would be Failbetter Games getting all of their Kickstarter money for Sunless Skies within one day, but we’re not too surprised by that as their games are rather excellent. And it was EXCLUSIVELY announced on One Life Left so it’s successful monetisation was assured. This week’s Super-Special Guest was Cash Decuir from - no! But yes! - Failbetter Games so we got to talk to him about how you write for a game like Sunless Skies, what lessons were learnt from their previous Kickstarters and which flying insects are a force for good. We had a debrief about our Marioke Live event, with the conclusion that i