Abject Suffering

We’ve done most of the major Christmas-themed games, so we had to dig deep and find some of the worst slop Steam could provide. Satan Santa is an asset flip game that makes generous use of AI in its text and marketing materials. A demon has replaced Santa and a kid needs to walk really slow about it.

Rock n’ Roll Racing is a game that people love. It’s pog monsters doing combat racing from an irritating isometric perspective, set to SNES chiptune renditions of classic rock songs. For what it is, it’s hard to find too much to complain about… so we talk about Gary’s ongoing crisis of whether or not he should become best friends with his dentist.

Everyone has to start somewhere. For Cliff Blezinski, starting meant making a pale imitation of Shadowgate called Palace of Deceit: The Dragon’s Plight. Playing it is a master class in what makes Shadowgate good. But you can’t be too hard on the kid for it, he was sixteen. Be hard on him for the things he said and did later.

Gamer Simulator is an unfinished piece of slopware available on Steam that doesn’t really simulate being a gamer, as much as it simulates being under a geas that makes it so you can only derive sustenance from powerups you find in video games. And when you’re done eating virtual hamburgers, you can learn about the cruelest reality television shows of all time.

At the twilight of Macauley Culkin’s first act, he released a trio of flops that included the movie The Pagemaster, a combination live action and animated film where he plays an awful little nerd who learns confidence by going into books. Because it was 1994, they made a ton of very bad and loose platformers based on this stinker of a property. We talk a little bit about those before digressing onto “Knights and Warriors”, a syndicated television show whose premise was “American Gladiators, but evil.”