Earlier today, my friend and collaborator Jonathon Wallace published the second episode of our podcast, Mechanical Fail! I completely forgot to post about us starting the series, so I’ll expand on it some more here.

Mechanical Fail is a way for us to discuss elements of games that we like or dislike, hoping to distinguish how and why certain games appeal to us more than others. There’s no set schedule just yet, but I’ll be posting about new episodes here and on my Twitter.

In today’s podcast, we talk about procedural generation, with a focus on how it’s used in games. Roguelikes come up a lot, and we discuss The Binding of Isaac, Barony, Rogue, Spelunky, Eldritch, Dwarf Fortress, among others. We kick things off by giving a definition of procedural generation in a more general sense. Finally, shout out to r/proceduralgeneration for being full of lots of useful and interesting posts on the topic!

Man, I totally forgot to mention No Man’s Sky during the podcast. Another time, then!