One Life Left's Podcast

With this episode we bring Ste's birthday celebrations to a close for the year. At least until his second birthday of the year in November which will take place at GameCity. As part of the celebrations we allowed the million dollar journalist Cara Ellison to Skype in from France to do the news in Ann's absence. She did a great job, apart from being unable to pronounce symphony correctly. We had two - count 'em, two! - Super-Special Guests this week: Hannah Flynn and Liam Welton from Fail Better Games (a small team that is part of Fail Better Studios). We found out all about their new game - Sunless Sea, what it was like destroying Eurogamer's scoring system (and Parko) and nothing at all about what it was like working with Bioware. There's also more development on our official OLL game, local news from Sega Badawi and more gritty games propaganda busting from Game Under. The only way we could make this episode better is by allowing you to hear Simon trying to get Skype to work on a Mac. Cheerio! Team OLL x

After the time-travelling exploits of our last episode this one sees us return to our usual podcasting timetable. However, it starts with Simon having just been given a tub of Vaseline so maybe in the future we should stick to a confusing schedule. It's a busy week for Team OLL with Simon preparing for #THIRDSDAY/Marioke, Ann getting ready for #networking at the Top 100 Women in Videogames event and Ste will be playing Spelunky and eating ice cream (for research). Everything else we just referred to our Super-Special Guest and Head of Everything at Different Cloth: Gordon Midwood (the caretaker had to use Linked In to find his surname). As well as being Head of Everything Gordon also talked about his new game Drive! Drive! Drive!, despite not really telling us anything about it. We also found out a bit about where his Mum currently resides. Not only that but we heard the latest from Doctor Avatar's surgery, Sega Badawi's local news and Game Under tries to smash the corrupt gaming system. What else do you n

This episode is a bit wibbly-wobbly chronology-wonology. It was recorded last week, when we thought that it was Resonance FM's Fund Raising Week but then we realised it was the week after so we didn't mention it anymore. However it is now Resonance FM's Fund Raising Week so we hope that you are now giving all you possibly can to the excellent radio station that literally makes us more than a podcast. The other reason this podcast was a bit late was that the Caretaker was in Prague on a works conference #networking which meant that Ste was meant to be uploading this episode last week. However, being the incredibly clever person that he is, the fact that the actual fundraising show has been retconned into making it look like there was a proper reason for him not doing it. Internal misunderstandings aside, it was a great show this week. Last week. Whatever. Ann stayed at Simon's for streaming fun and Ste watched the Superbowl, had jingle problems and kept his scarf on indoors. And we had Emily Gera, senior new

Team OLL is on a creative streak with season eleven. After last week's discovery of #networking, Ste decided to invent a new catchphrase. That he had been shouting to us constantly for the past ten seasons but we finally noticed that he was there. Also, those of you who write fanfic about us may be interested to know that one of Team OLL is having a sleepover at another's house. It will disappoint Stimon worshippers though. This week's Super-Special Guest was Phil Robb from Turtle Rock Studios. We were the final stop on his world wide promotional tour so naturally we offered him a good rub down. After such a good start to the interview we then confused him about how we pronounce 'exception', he spoiled Left 4 Dead 2 for you and we found out what his co-operative and competitive shooter Evolve is going to be like. But does he swear? In terms of features we had Sega Badawi, the second installment of Game Under and a returning contributor who isn't Derek Williams. Ste also realised that we could perhaps moneti

It's a whole new season for a whole new One Life Left! We start season eleven with great news - we're going to China. Apparently the far east has yet to pick up on the karaoke craze and as part of our networking at our corporate event last week we have been handed an incredible opportunity. We also picked up a new joke so it was a highly productive session. And to celebrate the new season we had a Super-Special Guest join us. And the lucky SSG was Catharina Due Bøhler from Shadow Puppeteer developers Sarepta studio. She started off fairly quiet, but soon proved to be as potty mouthed as all Norwegians are. Even worse she was highly offensive about our protege. Not Parko, the other one. The lethal one. In between her offending the nation we also managed to find some information about her excellent game Shadow Puppeteer. In addition to Catharina we celebrated Ann being confirmed as one of the top ten women in the top one hundred women in videogames, Ste chaired a mini debate on Hotline Miami 2 and Non-Intern

The constantly changing news reporter position saga is at an end as we welcome News Fox Ann 'Scoops' Scantlebury back after a two episode absence. Non-Intern Simon had also been away during the week enjoying the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of Hamburg. But the main story of the day was how Ste managed to fight off two robbers who were on a moped. He truly is a hero. And it didn't affect him at all, well except for at the very beginning of the show. Our SSG for this final episode of the season (don't worry - the new season starts next week) is SFB Games's Tom Vian. He was in to talk about their game Detective Grimoire and what their possible next game is going to be like. It makes Ste a little bit excited, if that helps in any way. We try to find out if Tom uses arrays in any of his games and find out how difficult it can be to communicate to your Kickstarter backers. There's a return to surgery with Doctor Avatar and Sega Badawi provides us with some local news. Non-Intern Simon has to google 'acrostic

It's a new year so it's time for a new look Team OLL! Well maybe not but Ann was ill on Monday so we had to come up a solution that didn't involve Sega Badawi. Luckily we found one in the Million Dollar Journalist (TM) Cara Ellison who was linking up live to the studio from Paris. She provided us with Le News Du Gaming, coped well with the slight lag in connection and told us how amazing Paris is. Stay amazing Paris. However, despite Cara being both Super and Special she was not this week's Super-Special Guest. That honour went to Ben Maltz-Jones who works for voice over specialists OM UK. He told us how difficult it is doing voices for videogames, spoke a little about the Game of Thrones Telltale game and we tried to get him to tell us examples of bad voice overs in videogames in an attempt to get him blackballed from the industry. We also found out what it's like having Christmas in Ramsay Street, workshopped some Cockney rhyming slang and discovered the official French nickname for Batman. There was a fe

Ann is in Oslo (which sounds like a cryptic crossword clue) so not only were we down a presenter, but someone else needed to do the news instead. Neither Non-Intern Simon nor Ste wanted to do it (too big and fashionable shoes to fill) but luckily we had just the person in mind. Unfortunately we forgot to tell Intern Simon and had to go to the bottom of the list. Our Super-Special Guest was *INSERT EVERY SINGLE PUBLICATION HERE*'s Jordan Erica Webber who came in to learn from Ste on how to deal with Keith Stuart. We also found out why she uses three names, who she doesn't write for and where she fits into the Guardian family. You might also pick up on the very subtle information that Non-Intern Simon has released his second ever game. It is called Bang Man and is almost on the first page of searches within Google Play for Bang Man. This then led us in to talking about Metacritic, if Metacritic has ever been wrong, if Tom Bramwell has ever been wrong and how to confuse Stuart Campbell. Useful information for

Do you remember when Non-Intern Simon had a Wii? And can you remember the ultimate fate of that Wii? Non-Intern Simon doesn't which is why he has now bought a Wii U. Betting is now open for how long that Wii U will be actively used for. The winner will get the chance to throw a sack containing bricks, a Wii U controller (that Ann says is rather nice to touch) and some other 'items' into the canal. This week's Super-Special Guest was the Bionic Man Luke Williams from Bossa Studios (he has had laser eye surgery). He was on the show to talk about his new game I Am Bread and how it is similar to Kim Kardashian's butt. This then caused Ste to get rather existential about raw toast and how it fits in with the world. We found out that I Am Bread was first made during a game jam at Bossa Studios so it could be called a jam sandwich (if you're prepared to give us the benefit of the doubt like Nicholas Parsons on Just A Minute). It's on Steam Early Access now and should be finished early next year. We heard from Sega

It's been a busy week. We were mentioned in Shortlist magazine in order to try and give a boost to a little known podcast called Serial. Hopefully this will help it attract the listeners it deserves. Ann's Mum's birthday was on Friday, so we were preparing all kinds of amazing treats and surprises for her. And Non-Intern Simon's drinking buddy Stewart Lee was on Lewis Schaffer's Nunhead Radio Show before us. So could this week's show match up to this? PRESS REVEAL TO FIND OUT (Assuming 'reveal' is the play button on your mp3 player) Well this week's Super-Special Guest was Mr Biffo from Digitiser (aka Paul Rose) so that meant there was no way we could fail. Unless we tried to get in our house using an Oyster card. Luckily two of us didn't try this so we got to ask Paul lots of questions about the excellent Digitiser, why he left Teletext, why he's brought Digitiser back and what it was like to write for Dirty Den. Simon also started to write a song for Paul to perform at our Christmas Party which will undou

It's been a week of ups and downs for Team OLL this week. Non-Intern Simon did his back in, but did meet his best mate Terry Alderton. Ann burst her eardrum, but she did find the smoke machine at our last Marioke session. Ste got caught googling Evangeline Lilly, but he did get to google Evangeline Lilly. This week's Super-Special Guest was Phillip Asha from Trendy Entertainment. He had flown in from Florida to come on the show and boy were his arms tired! As well as giving us a chance to use that extremely poor joke Phillip was here to tell us all about Dungeon Defenders 2, how it is hard to make a sequel to a well-loved game and to not give us an exclusive. We also used Ann to calculate how much Trendy Entertainment had grown by and we think the answer she gave was correct. Not only that but Doctor Avatar and Sega Badawi gave their usual excellent contributions, but it is the final appearance of Derek Williams for a while. Hopefully he'll return again soon. Perhaps he'll even be at our Christmas Party, wh

The full team is finally back and we're not going anywhere. Except for Ann, who is going to Oslo in the near future. And Ste will probably have to do another talk somewhere far away. Oh, and Simon's train will most likely get delayed at some point. But Simon The Intern In The Corner will still be here for you. And this week you also have Kirsten and Jon from Sidekick Books! They explain to us what it's like doing Videogame poetry (Craig will never tell us), how to do two player poetry and how Kieron Gillen was ahead of us (again). You'll enjoy their poetry even if Ste got slightly competitive in proving it wasn't as good as Marioke. Sega Badawi has some local news and Derek Williams takes us by the hand and leads us through the streets of Doncaster. Where he'll show us something that'll make us change our minds. Oh! And we officially announce the date of our Christmas party. But not the location. Or the price of the tickets. Or the Super-Special Guests! So keep Friday 19th December free and be somewhere in

Hurrah! Ste is back from celebrating noted theme tune composer Iain Cook's birthday. Boo! Ann has a cold from GameCity. Boo! Simon is away for some unspecified reason. Hurrah! We have Dan Stubbs on the show as our Super-Special Guest.And it was good that Dan came all the way from Plymouth to be on the show as his game - The Hit - sounded excellent. Dan taught Ste how to kill people properly and clarified that Ste does work for The Agency. Ann just wanted to use the game engine to make a Taylor Swift concert, but that's her standard response for anything these days.In terms of features Derek Williams came back for another shop related song, Doctor Avatar treated another injury and Sega Badawi reported on some local news. We also explained about #THWEDNESDAY and how it differs from #THIRDSDAY (it's pretty difficult to follow).Cheerio!Team OLL xLinks:https://twitter.com/dan_stubbshttp://www.thehitgame.co.uk/https://twitter.com/CongaPyroTrack list:1. Alex Ochoa and Laffe The Fox - No Puedo Decirte Adioshttp://chi

It's time for the post-GameCity episode and this one is no exception. Because - as usual - GameCity was fantastic and everyone who attended our amazing Marioke session are automatically FOTS and will be removed from the list. Except for Pip. She knows what she did. And once again Ste was absent from this show. Apparently he was at a friend's birthday party which we think was being held at the Wacky Warehouse and, because he was waiting for a responsible adult to pick him up, he couldn't make it back in time. However in order to compensate for this we had two (count 'em - two!) Super-Special Guests on the show. There was Size Five Games' Dan Marshall and Mike Cook from Ann's old alma mater Goldsmiths, University of London. We found out all about Dan's new game the Swindle, found out what he thinks about looking at pasties online and what he thinks is the 51st best game of all time. Mike told us about how you can create games by doing nothing (apart from doing a lot of programming at the beginning), upset Dan

We start this episode having to say goodbye to an unsung member of Team OLL. One who has played an integral part in numerous episodes and we're not sure if we'll ever be the same again. Farewell Ann's nose stud (unless she's found you again). However, we decided against making this episode a memorial to the memory of the stud and instead chose to ask this week's Super-Special Guest Read Only Memory's Darren Wallabout his own piercings. Oh, and we asked him about ROM's new book about the Sega Megadrive which was written by the fifth-placed loser of the Journalist's Journalist award at this year's GMAs. Or Keith Stuart as he is commonly known. We tried to find out who is the subject of the next book that Darren is working on, but instead got annoyed at the acknowledgment section in Keith's book. Ann found out about a different type of STI, Simon got annoyed with public transport and Ste got confused about where ducklings live. We also debated the sexiness of Bitmap Brother Eric Matthews and had features from

WARNING: Simon once again forgets about sound levels and decides to shout "Get out" at a very loud volume fairly early on in this episode. This will be very annoying, so be prepared. Guy Cocker never has to put up with stuff like this. Sorry.But the rest of the show is at a good level for listening to. The quality? Well that's for you to decide. Ste is back for the first show in four weeks and as if to add the pressure we had Simon the intern doing some independent verification on how well we produce a radio show. Luckily we had an excellent Super-Special Guest in Laughing Jackal's Alasdair Evans who spoke about his latest release, the py-rogue-a-like Flame Over, if it has any ghosts in it and what Sony Mobile are like to work for.Ste temporarily changed into being a thesaurus, Ann went overboard with the selfie stick and Simon had a weird emphasis on the word 'spreads'. We also had features from Super Roger World, Sega Badawi and possibly a Super-Special-Secret Contributor!All from the GMA's second-favourite

We're sorry that we weren't on air last week, but Ann Life Left was so great that we felt you would need an extra week to recover. Whilst we allowed Simon to come back on air after he promised that he had learnt his lesson, Ste was being belligerent so we left him on a mountain in Norway. This resulted in a different show to the ones that you're used to. A show where mic levels and timetables were not appreciated.However our Super-Special Guest Christos Reid was someone that we greatly appreciated. He came in at extremely short notice and proved to be an excellent guest. So much so that Simon had to merge the reviews and letters sections, but it was done so smoothly that you'll never notice. We found about Christos' time in media, why he created a game jam and what his Dad thought of his games.Dr. Avatar made an appearance along with Sega Badawi. Sega has been moaning for ages about needing a weather presenter to help his local news feature so Simon and Ann decided to give a break to Cara Ellison who was in t

Sometimes - if we've been really good and very lucky - Ste and Simon are both unable to get to the studio. This means that Ann is given free reign and can curate her own videogame radio show. So we welcome into the studio Rock Paper Shotgun's Philippa Warr as a Super-Special Co-Presenter and Leigh Alexander, Mitu Khandaker-Kokoris, Kerry Turner and Monica Ion as the Super-Special Guests.In addition to the four SSGs we had messages from all around the world from Arielle Grimes, Tina Kalinger, Nathalie De Los Santos and Merritt Kopas telling us about how they work with games. Thanks again to everyone who contributed to this episode.Next week all will be back to normal, for which we can only apologise. Cheerio!Team OLL xLinks:http://twitter.com/reallyfancyhttp://twitter.com/MituKhttp://twitter.com/leighalexanderhttp://twitter.com/Monica_ionhttp://twitter.com/scantershttp://twitter.com/philippawarrhttp://www.therabbitclub.com/http://thetiniestshark.com/http://leighalexander.net/http://www.monicaion.com/Track list

It's the second week back from our summer holiday's so obviously Team OLL are back to working perfectly in alignment. Except for the slightly dodgy start at the beginning, but that happens to every podcast and radio show right?   As usual after a #THIRDSDAY we analyse in rigorous details what were the successes (everything) and what were the failures (nothing). Except this time Simon wasn't there as he wanted to awkwardly interact with the repeating funny man who repeats things repeatedly Stewart Lee. Luckily this week's Super-Special Guest Ed Fear didn't meet Stewart Lee so he should have been at #THIRDSDAY, but he wasn't. So where was he then?   We never found out the answer to this so instead we decided to ask Ed about his new game which is Pigeon Dating sim Hatoful Boyfriend. Unfortunately we got confused about whether doves were pigeons, so we had to rely on Simon's wife on asking most of the questions. By the end of the show Simon and Ed were new BFFs which must have meant we were doing something right

Oh my God we're back again. Our summer break was so hectic that our parents refused to let us hang out with each other and it's only since school has started that we've been able to get together and talk about games and stuff.Luckily Ollie Clarke is seen as a good influence so we were allowed to talk to him at great length about the amazing new game that he is working on - LA Cops. Unfortunately he wasn't allowed to tell us the exclusive news that he wanted to tell us, but if any synesthetes could translate what we did manage to find out it would help us greatly. We also found out if there was a red line between Simon and Ollie. What we found out may shock you (sorry we've got to get this habit out of our system).Ann brought back an old joke but with a new twist, Ste tried to find out when it was best to ignore people, Simon had headphone and bag problems and we all got confused about what makes a niche. (Cheese, eggs, milk, cream and pastry - Hard of hearing Ed) We also had a really good discussion about Gam