Pixel Therapy Pod

In 2025, so many video games helped us laugh, helped us escape, and helped us connect. Join us for our annual discussion and celebration of the games that made our year.00:00:46 - Some bittersweet news00:09:56 - 2025 year of gaming overviews00:26:47 - Spencer and Jamie's Top 5 Games of the Year01:31:30 - Honorable Mentions01:43:52 - Favorite characters of the year01:47:36 - Favorite games journalists/content creators of the year01:52:15 - Most hype for in 2026Watch the live stream recording of this episode on YouTube here: https://youtube.com/live/SE2sNC_uE3QSide Questhttps://transasylumsupport.github.io/The Trans Asylum Seekers Support Network is an interdependent, solidarity-based network of queer and trans asylum seekers, loved ones, collective members, and volunteers dedicated to the abolition of all cages and borders, revolutionary compassion and trans liberation. Our goal is to free transgender asylum seekers languishing in detention centers and help them relocate to and create thriving lives in Western Massachusetts. Learn more by visiting their website or @transasylumsupport on Instagram!About Pixel TherapyWe're a podcast queering and transcending video games for all kinds of gamers and those who love them--get cozy with us! If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate us, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts (or your listening app of choice) and subscribe! Want more? Join for free at patreon.com/pixeltherapypod

As the temperatures drop, the coziness factor turns up, and the impending arrival of a new year looms ominously on the horizon inviting us to dissociate from reality for just a little bit (just us?), it's just the perfect time to escape the stress and excitement of the holidays with a lengthy RPG you can sink your teeth into. At least, that's our tradition. Enter Demonschool (Necrosoft Games, published by Ysbryd Games), a campy, queer, isometric tactics RPG set at the cusp of Y2K with a delightful cast of college students banding together to save the world from monsters and gangsters while finding time for karaoke dates, fishing, petting dogs, and maybe kissing. WHAT ELSE COULD YOU WANT?00:07:34 - Plate Up!00:16:00 - s.p.l.i.t00:20:28 - DemonschoolWatch the live stream recording of this episode on YouTube here: https://youtube.com/live/vdzIo5MlaYUSide Questhttps://transasylumsupport.github.io/The Trans Asylum Seekers Support Network is an interdependent, solidarity-based network of queer and trans asylum seekers, loved ones, collective members, and volunteers dedicated to the abolition of all cages and borders, revolutionary compassion and trans liberation. Our goal is to free transgender asylum seekers languishing in detention centers and help them relocate to and create thriving lives in Western Massachusetts. Learn more by visiting their website or @transasylumsupport on Instagram!About Pixel TherapyWe're a podcast queering and transcending video games for all kinds of gamers and those who love them--get cozy with us! If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate us, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts (or your listening app of choice) and subscribe! Want more? Join for free at patreon.com/pixeltherapypod

This week we're chatting about Hades II, the long-in-early-access follow up to 2020's Hades from Supergiant Games. Like its predecessor, Hades II is an action RPG roguelike chock full of eye-popping art, callous-forming combat, and a steady supply of sexual tension set in the deep lore of Greek myth while telling the all-too-relatable story of confronting toxic family dynamics and breaking intergenerational cycles of trauma. So grab a bottle of ambrosia and activate God Mode with us as we unpack all our thoughts and feelings about this game of the year contender.1:57 - Dispatch final thoughts11:29 - Hades II53:30 - **SPOILERS for Hades II**1:32:32 - OutroWatch the live stream recording of this episode on YouTube here: https://youtube.com/live/XZ-HrL-XNNQSide Questhttps://transasylumsupport.github.io/The Trans Asylum Seekers Support Network is an interdependent, solidarity-based network of queer and trans asylum seekers, loved ones, collective members, and volunteers dedicated to the abolition of all cages and borders, revolutionary compassion and trans liberation. Our goal is to free transgender asylum seekers languishing in detention centers and help them relocate to and create thriving lives in Western Massachusetts. Learn more by visiting their website or @transasylumsupport on Instagram!About Pixel TherapyWe're a podcast queering and transcending video games for all kinds of gamers and those who love them--get cozy with us! If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate us, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts (or your listening app of choice) and subscribe! Want more? Join for free at patreon.com/pixeltherapypod

Idk, but let us know in the comments! We continue our scattershot indie game revue reviews this week with Dispatch (AdHoc Studio, Critical Role), a superhero workplace comedy where choices matter, Consume Me (Jenny Jiao Hsia, AP Thomson), a WarioWare-esque slice-of-life RPG about that time when your parents, your friends, and society at large all conspired to make you feel ugly, lazy, stupid, and unloved despite the brilliant human spirit contained within you (aka high school), and BALLxPIT (Kenny Sun and Friends), a brick-breaking, ball-fusing, base-building survival roguelite!!!!11102:10 - Halloweens Past & Present12:16 - Adventures in Multiplayer with Phasmophobia and Power Wash Simulator 223:33 - Dispatch58:42 - BALLxPIT01:16:07 - Consume MeReferenced article: "Coming-of-age horrors cut deep in Consume Me", by Giovanni Colantonio, https://www.polygon.com/consume-me-review/Watch the live stream recording of this episode on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/live/VfDPY5IK1Hk?si=l6Ji_QAHVBftQo8USide Questtinyurl.com/opolivebranchOperation Olive Branch is a grassroots collective effort to amplify Palestinian voices and their GoFundMes – visit the link to learn more or visit their Instagram page at @operationolivebranch.About Pixel TherapyWe're a podcast queering and transcending video games for all kinds of gamers and those who love them--get cozy with us! If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate us, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts (or your listening app of choice) and subscribe! Want more? Join for free at patreon.com/pixeltherapypod

Bricks and sticks, pixels and lines. This week we cover a crop of endearing and surprisingly emotional indie games that have carried us through some tumultuous past few weeks. Also, Spencer draws an unhinged connection between Zach Cregger's summer thriller Weapons and Okomotive's atmospheric alpine expedition game Herdling. I feel like you guys will get it. Games discussed this episode: 01:36 - Phasmophobia - Kinetic Games10:19 - Herdling - Okomotive 29:29 - Is This Seat Taken? - Poti Poti Studio36:05 - Time Flies - Playables, Raphaël Munoz46:56 - LEGO Voyagers - Light Brick StudiosWatch the live stream recording of this episode on YouTube here: https://youtube.com/live/m8Ijpui2RCYSide Questtinyurl.com/opolivebranchOperation Olive Branch is a grassroots collective effort to amplify Palestinian voices and their GoFundMes – visit the link to learn more or visit their Instagram page at @operationolivebranch.About Pixel TherapyWe're a podcast queering and transcending video games for all kinds of gamers and those who love them--get cozy with us! If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate us, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts (or your listening app of choice) and subscribe! Want more? Join for free at patreon.com/pixeltherapypod