The Crate and Crowbar

Episode 457: There’s No Stick in This Lolly

Marsh Davies — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 12:11:39 +0000

Chris, Jamie and Marsh get tux’d up and shimmy into the pseudo-sandbox soirees of 007 First Light. Our predictions for the future of this game and its developers are then immediately chomped to mince by the pit of alligators that is the wider game industry.

Marsh has released Gold Teeth!
The trailer for Clutch, which Jamie worked on, has been revealed.
007 First Light
Within hours of recording this podcast, publisher Amazon announced that future 007 games would be developed internally, and IO fired all their fixed contract developers.

You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us via the Questions sub-channel on our Discord or email it to questions@crateandcrowbar.com. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Episode 456: I Can’t Hold All These Shivs

Chris Thursten — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 14:33:51 +0000

Chris and Jamie are joined by Mike Cook to talk about his uneventful recent life as an academic specialising in AI. Then, Slay the Spire 2 summer begins at last and we pay tribute to Marathon’s weird little robo-goblin, the Rook.

It’s Mike Cook! And it’s Next Level, Mike Cook’s new book!
The book Chris mentions is More Everything Forever by Adam Becker.
Slay the Spire 2! You, a Crate and Crowbar listener, probably did not need this link.
Mike’s been known to enjoy a Jorbs from time to time.
Bungie’s Marathon, again.

You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us via the Questions sub-channel on our Discord or email it to questions@crateandcrowbar.com. You can also listen to this episode on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Episode 455: Only Beefman

Jamie Brittain — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 13:56:08 +0000

Jamie and Chris convene from the palatial purple of Quincy Jones’ recording studio to tell tales of indentational trauma, BP garage psychogeography and also some games!

Chris has been cutting people’s legs off in Halfsword and thinking fondly of Marsh Davies.
Jamie has been rejoicing in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s crystal meth extravaganza Mewgenics.
Chris has been playing Marathon and Likes It, Actually.
Jamie has been playing Resident Evil Requiem and also likes it, so there.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Episode 454: Meaty and Juicy

Marsh Davies — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 14:27:00 +0000

Marsh is joined by Graham to chat about Jank, a hot new website for cool people, the best games of the decade so far, deduction game TR-49, frenzied shmup Sektori and joyous platformer Big Hops.

Jank!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jank.cool!!!!
Visit Jank! Wow!
Read Jank’s list of the best games of the Decade so far!
TR-49
Sektori
Big Hops

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Episode 453: A Formula One Car with Fists

Marsh Davies — Sat, 15 Nov 2025 20:26:46 +0000

Jamie and Marsh throw themselves into the depths of Ball X Pit, launch themselves into toilets in Bloodlines 2, and dive cinematically from exploding balconies in Battlefield 6.

Show notes:

Join Jamie in person on Saturday 29th November at Birmingham Comicon for a chat about getting into games.
Ball X Pit
Into the Breach
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2
Battlefield 6

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Episode 452: Bog-Muppet Territory

Marsh Davies — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 18:16:52 +0000

Chris, Jamie and Marsh discuss what the f Silent Hill f is about, get systemic in Sword Hero, jump ship in Jump Space, try to pronounce “photogrammetry” correctly while discussing Mind Diver AND take a cathartically large dump on Alien: Earth.

Silent Hill f
Big-time ambiguity intertext: Henry James’ Turn of the Screw
I’ve always wanted to make something with a rainy montage sequence in it, inspired by Ghost in the Shell’s. And Silent Hill f goes and does it out of the gate!
The Whale God: film in which a Japanese fishing village eats itself
Sword Hero: pocket-sized Skyrim-sim with loppable limbs and good meat
Skin Deep: pocket-sized imsim that we may come back to!
Jump Space, formerly Jump Ship
Iron Pineapple plays games on the internet telly
Chained Beasts
Sunderfolk: tactical turnbased Dungeons & Dragons stuff
Mind Diver
Alien Earth
Noah Hawley is Alien Earth’s showrunner
Fargo and Legion are other shows he’s worked on
Our Fargo/True Detective Lock-in
John Carpenter’s The Thing
Gale Ann Hurd: co-writer of Terminator and producer on Aliens, The Abyss and many other films
Possessor, directed by Brandon Cronenberg
Babou Ceesay, Adrian Edmondson and Sydney Chandler are all doing acting good
Severance is a TV show also guilty of sweeping problems into future seasons

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Episode 451: Weston-super-Nightmare

Marsh Davies — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 13:48:17 +0000

Marsh and Jamie dishonour their families in the oddly quaint Mafia: The Old Country, soak sands in Sword of the Sea, and synergise to the max in Merge Maestro, Kill the Brickman and Raccoin.

Show notes:

Mafia: The Old Country
Sword of the Sea
Merge Maestro
Raccoin
Kill the Brickman

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Episode 450: A Certain Number Of Flaps

Jamie Brittain — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 12:23:48 +0000

Jamie and Marsh join together to talk sad boys, roguelike birds and frenzied bananas.

Birdigo
Donkey Kong: Bananza
Marsh is making Gold Teeth.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandi

Episode 449: The Helicopter in Your Trousers

Marsh Davies — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 13:12:01 +0000

Chris and Marsh are joined by Paul Canavan to talk about draining men (halleluja), the not-so-shy huluds and space-nun zoomies of Dune: Awakening. We do not talk about Donkey Kong Bananza.

Dune: Awakening
Paul is making Pale Tides.
Marsh is making Gold Teeth.
Chris is one of the most extraordinarily talented and versatile people I’ve worked with, and he’s currently available to hire for creative direction, narrative design, birthdays and bar mitvahs. You can also read his novels.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Episode 448: Découpage That Worm!

Marsh Davies — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 12:45:31 +0000

Jamie and Marsh get pumped, pepped and revved up for the summer games marketing onslaught, and then enjoy the more tangible pleasures of demos in the Steam Next Fest, including: Ball X Pit, Morsels, Bits & Bops, Consume Me, Dispatch and Baby Steps.

In this episode, I, Marsh, misremember Peggle’s mascot as Bookworm Adventures’ mascot, which is a bookworm, despite the fact that only one of these titles has “bookworm” in the name. This is an error for which I do not deserve, and will never earn, your forgiveness—but I acknowledge it now to prepare you for the boiling rage my failure will induce.
Lies of P and The Last Berserker – the best off-brand Soulslikes?
Shout out to Ollie
The games of Summer Game Fest:
Mortal Shell 2
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
Chronicles: Medieval
End of Abyss
Mouse: P.I. for Hire
Game of Thrones: War for Westeros
Atomic Heart 2 & The Cube
Felt That: Boxing
Out of Words
Mafia: The Old Country
Resident Evil Requiem
LEGO Voyagers (LEGO Builders, from the same team, and LEGO 2K Drive, by not the same team, suggest that the LEGO brand has a stable of solid talent at their disposal.)
Deadpool VR. So much great work going on in VR. This isn’t it. (Ghost Town, a VR puzzle game by Fireproof Games, developers of The Room series, might be brilliant, though.)
Dying Light: The Beast
Mixtape (the studio’s previous game was The Artful Escape)
Acts of Blood
MindsEye
ILL
Splitgate 2
Games not from Summer Game Fest:
Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement
Lumines Arise (by the developers of people-herding puzzle game Humanity)
Silent Hill F
Militsioner
Sleep Awake
Mewgenics (the Other One Who Isn’t Edmund McMillen is in fact called Tommy Refenes, and is making Super Meatboy 3D)
Games from Steam Next Fest:
Ball X Pit
Morsels
Dispatch
Bits & Bops
Consume Me
Baby Steps
Mina The Hollower
All Living Things
Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound
Absolum (the Streets Of Rage 4 people doing fantasy)
Jupiter Hell Classic

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.