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Ben and Trev dive back into the Dark Steam, the dark web's answer to Steam, to talk about what they've been playing in the lead-up to Dark PAX. This week: Robotic Pogo Paintball, a 16v16 shooter where the only way to get around is bouncing; Pixelated Insect Baseball, where the flies get distracted by hot dogs and a huntsman might drop in mid-innings; Kamikaze Piano on the Road, in which you're a piano trying to die as spectacularly as possible; Glowing Monster Conflict, a Monster Hunter riff where you track your prey by its glowing poo; and more!

Ben and Trev go off-prompt this week, ditching the usual random word generators to dive into some unprompted game designs and deep-dive nostalgia. This week: a narrative-driven "weekend away" visual novel where a group of friends uncovers secrets and vulnerabilities while navigating the fallout of a night of heavy drinking; a high-concept FMV experience that blends 3D environments with motion-captured performances, potentially shifting genres from a romantic drama to a high-stakes action thriller; a deep dive into the "Golden Age" of Sierra adventure games, exploring the evolution of storytelling from text parsers to the point-and-click era; and a look back at the "core memories" of retro gaming, from the frustration of *Codename Iceman* to the sheer joy of *Space Quest*. Join Ben and Trev as they explore the intersection of narrative, game design, and the enduring legacy of the Sierra era.

Ben and Trev are back on Random Movies, hurling DVDs at each other and turning the pairs into game designs. This week: a narrative bowling game set on league night in a too-perfect 1950s town, where you pick which conversations to eavesdrop on between frames; a whistleblower conspiracy about a government cover-up of ancient sentient trees whose magical wood has quietly shaped history; a Christmas ghost who skips the redemption and simply steals his target's face and life, Face/Off style.

Ben and Trevor tackle the "Trust No One" theme for an upcoming game jam, using a random word generator to spark several high-concept designs: a puzzle game involving blocks of ice and a suspicious AI assistant, where the player must determine if the instructions provided to navigate the room are trustworthy; a high-stakes golf game set in Florida where you must manage a manual scorecard and determine if your opponent is cheating on their shots; a conspiracy-theory-driven investigation where the player navigates a world of "deep state" paranoia, trying to distinguish between reality and fabrication; and a unique "adventure phone" experience, where the game is played entirely through a mobile interface, featuring text messages, a GPS, and a T9 keypad mode to navigate a narrative of conflicting information. Join Ben and Trevor as they explore the intersection of narrative, game design, and the art of not trusting anyone.

Ben and Trev break out Random Movies, where they each pull a couple of random DVDs off the pile and mash the pairs into game designs. This week: a first person body swap where a dad and his son trade places in the middle of a life or death mission, and dying only makes you younger; a plane passenger who wishes her kid out of existence and has to work out which of her fellow travellers was secretly a genie; a co-op beat 'em up about two musclebound blokes who punch the demons clean out of the possessed; a time travel murder mystery where the culprit is one gloriously reckless traveller who keeps materialising on top of people; and more!

Ben and Trev reflect on their success in the GMTK game jam, where their narrative-driven game about counting sheep and falling asleep placed in the top 10% for enjoyment and the top 1% for audio. This week, they dive into some wild new concepts: a heavy, atmospheric journey where a character must transport a single "strongbox" to a new home, navigating the physical and emotional weight of their possessions; a high-stakes, narrative-driven busking simulator where a struggling artist in a rainy city must analyze the crowd and choose the right songs to survive; a surreal, high-concept sports game featuring a centaur gymnast competing in a fantasy Olympics, complete with specialized events for various mythical creatures; and more! Join Ben and Trev as they explore the intersection of narrative, game design, and the occasional centaur in a leotard.

Ben and Trev dig out F****d Up Click Pitch for the first time in a good while, where a cursed word generator hands them one baffling word each to build a game around. This week: a goat who is thrilled to be sacrificed with a bread knife at a mountain summit; a periodic table of vegetables, assembled via particle accelerator; a hospital waiting room conspiracy that hinges entirely on a single nail hole; the story of how a washed up Duck Hunt dog gets his groove back; and more!

Ben and Trev are back in the lounge for another round of Ramped Up Click Pitch, where they use a random word generator to spark high-concept game designs. This week's creations include: a narrative-driven experience set in the afterlife, where you play as a "failed" cupid who must navigate a ghostly wedding and uncover the tragic, intertwined histories of a couple who only found each other after death; a surreal, multi-perspective adventure centered on a mystical Frisbee that transports players through various vignettes, from a dog's perspective to an elderly woman’s, while uncovering its origins as the Devil's lost property; an eerie exploration of a "flesh mall"—a sprawling, ever-expanding shopping center where the architecture feels organic and unsettling, and the staff are perpetual fixtures in a world that refuses to change; and a high-stakes getaway game featuring a "whimsical engine" that compresses space as it moves, forcing you to hide your car in superliminal gaps while navigating a landscape of endless light poles. Join Ben and Trev as they turn random words into bizarre, imaginative worlds.

Ben and Trev dust off Ramped Up Click Pitch, where they throw random adjective-and-noun pairs at each other and forge game designs from the results. This week's games include: a strategy game where you build defensive ramparts and place your cannons while seeing a few seconds into the future, the present and the about-to-happen overlaid on the same muddy battlefield; a narrative document-shuffler set in a far-future world where sentient food rules and humans are long gone, casting you as an avocado researcher trying to translate and preserve the culture of the "talky meat", while one faction wants every trace of humanity erased and another wants to learn from it; a quietly oppressive character study set in a society that has rigorously mistranslated an old farmer's weather almanac into emotional scripture, where you must be "cloudless" in the sunny months and dutifully gloomy in the cloudy ones, on a planet whose seasons no longer match the book; and a battle royale where you play the overlord inventing the rules and watching your AI combatants find broken synergies, until you realise one of the "AI" is a real person trapped in the loop — and the story converges from both sides; and more!

Ben and Trevor put their creative gears into overdrive by using a random movie generator to spark new game design concepts. The duo explores a variety of high-concept premises, including: Swiss Army Man: A survival adventure where your only "tool" is a decaying corpse that provides various physical properties — like bloating in the sun or being used as a bridge — while you navigate a desert island under the watchful eye of the son of Satan. The Big Wedding: A tense, high-stakes narrative set during a zombie-themed wedding where the line between "costume" and "infection" blurs as the party descends into chaos. Children of Man: A psychological, dialogue-driven experience exploring memory palaces and shifting mechanics to portray a protagonist grappling with trauma in a world without a future. Air Buddies: A jarring, high-contrast juxtaposition between a gritty kidnapping thriller and a vibrant, basketball-themed platformer, where the "whimsical" elements are slowly revealed to be a coping mechanism for a child's ordeal. Join Ben and Trevor as they navigate these bizarre mashups of cinema and gameplay.

Ben and Trev are back in the lounge for another round of Click Pitch and attempt to forge them into game designs. This week's creations include: an extraction shooter where you must navigate a family through a series of distractions like timeshare presentations; a high-stakes investigation into the theft of a gold-finned goldfish that leads to a very specific, "enhanced" point-and-click shootout; a survival game set on a vessel where players must select the correct items from a large pool to survive 17 different environmental hazards; and a triage simulator where you manage a hospital for magical snowmen and decide which ones can be saved.

Ben and Trevor play some game jam sized Click Pitch, coming up with designs such as: having to go to a lot of trouble to play the game you actually want to playa game of social cues that might have a surprise at the endhaving to fire a powerful Homelander-esque superheroand more!

Ben and Trevor take a significant detour from their usual routine this week, embarking on an unusually large and lengthy exploration of culinary possibilities. They spend a considerable amount of time debating the merits of "fusion" foods like meatloaf Swiss rolls with relish, various international-style burritos (including spaghetti, pizza and HSP varieties), and the precise technical requirements for the perfect piece of toast involving Vegemite and cheese. Despite the heavy detour into food science, they still manage to play a few rounds of Click Pitch to develop some game designs: A tactile investigation into document forgery and provenanceA competitive county fair game involving the production and judging of prize-winning sausagesA high-stakes logistics simulation for packing grocery bags under specific environmental conditionsAn investigative game where you must find out why solar systems are being wiped out in a section of the milky way, and we are headed to that spot.

Ben and Trev are back in the lounge, where they play Click Pitch to generate some fresh game designs. The games discussed this week include: An underwater exploration game featuring a society of "Snorks" living beneath the surface;A political campaign simulator involving complex social interactions and automated systems;A narrative-driven legal drama where you play as a juror trying to navigate a conspiracy.

Once more Ben and Trev discuss games that don't exist in Ben's lounge room. The games discussed this week were: Apple based games with weird warioware/QWOP styled controlsA match 3 game with a cozy story about restoring your Grandpa's old toolsA puzzle game where you need to work out passwords.