ETAO Podcast, Episode 69.
Joe Russ is deeply invested in narrative, and also in animation—so it makes all the sense in the world that he would co-create something like Jenny LeClue, a lovingly and distinctively animated, meta-meta-narrative detective adventure. (And yes, I do mean that it’s in large part a narrative about narratives about narratives).
In today’s episode, Joe sits down to discuss the intent behind the hame, the strangeness of videogame genre designations, and the cultural expectations for what a game (and specifically a whole-ass game as distinct from an episodic one) is, even.
Also, The Door Problem.
You can get Jenny LeClue on Steam, GOG, and Apple Arcade.
The soundtrack is available on Bandcamp.
You can also follow Joe (and the game itself) on Twitter.
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• Sadism is indeed among Kurt Vonnegut’s rules for storytelling.
• There actually only six years between Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, but there were more like thirty-four years between The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments, so that’s definitely what I was thinking of.
• Get Out was made for 4.5 million bucks, and it made about 255.5 million worldwide, says the main site that tracks that sort of thing.
• Here’s that interview with Ben Tillett.
• Here’s a piece on the personality system humming beneath your decisions in Jenny LeClue.
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“All The People Say (Season 3)” by Holly Hyperion.
“Crystal Cavern” and “Best Friends Forever (I’d Rather Be Burned To Death)” from the Jenny LeClue, Detectivu Original Soundtrack by scntfc.
We’re on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, PocketCasts, Overcast, and RadioPublic. You can also subscribe using good old-fashioned RSS.
Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.
Everybody's Talking at Once 
