John Wick (2014) and Genre Emulation with Sam Roberts

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com

My new game Band-Aids & Bullet Holes is still on Kickstarter! Check it out today.

In honor of BABH, this month on Dice Exploder I'm covering mechanics from other games that inspired it. In keeping with this show's increasingly loose definition of "mechanic," today I'm joined by Sam Roberts (Escape from Dino Island) to tackle one of this game's greatest influences: the 2014 Keanu Reeves movie John Wick.

The first half of this ep is basically a movie podcast. We go deep on what makes John Wick tick (in brief: the first 30 minutes). But the back half we get into the extremely popular concept within indie rpgs of genre emulation: making games that evoke another piece of media or genre of media. What makes genre emulation work? What do we think most people get wrong when they attempt to do it? And is it even a worthy goal?

Further Reading

Back Band-Aids & Bullet Holes on Kickstarter now!

John Wick (2014)

Escape from Dino Island by Sam Roberts and Sam Tung

Socials

Sam Roberts on Bluesky

Sam Dunnewold on Bluesky and itch

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Credits

Our logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.

This episode was edited by Em Acosta