"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.

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"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.

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'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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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"The final victory of sci-fi is its final defeat," says AK, gnomically, before we sing the Beverly Hills Cop theme tune and talk about trombones. Join us for a discussion of 'the best fiction novel of the 20th century', A Wizard of Earthsea, and its masterful magic system: from Native American folklore to shamanism, demonic to natural theurgy, and eastern wyrms to western protodragons.

Is it written for children or not? What is 'Equilibrium'? Why is 'clot of shadow' so upsetting, and what does it have to do with Cultist Simulator?

In memory of Ursula Le Guin, and little Hoag.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula Le Guin
- City of Illusions, by Ursula Le Guin
- Cultist Simulator, by us

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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'.

Games / books mentioned in this episode, for your gaming / reading pleasure:

- Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
- Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke
- The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, by Susanna Clarke
- Harm's Way, by Colin Greenland
- Take Back Plenty, by Colin Greenland
- Lud-in-the-Mist, by Hope Mirrlees
- The Secret History, by Donna Tartt
- Cultist Simulator + BOOK OF HOURS, by us
- Deus Ex, by Ion Storm
- "Time Enough At Last", by John Brahm and Rod Serling

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