Shadow / Giant - Beyond Five Minutes Transcript

The cover of Shadow / Giant by Luka Brave (Psychhound Games)

Transcript

DANIEL COPPER: Welcome to Beyond Five Minutes, where we delve a little deeper into the games discussed in Five Minutes, Not 5e. My name is Daniel, otherwise known as The Copper Compendium, and I'll be your host! On this episode, we’re expanding on my chat with Luka, otherwise known as Psychhound Games, about Shadow / Giant!

To begin, then: what was it that inspired you to make this game, and what was the design process like?

LUKA BRAVE: I made Shadow / Giant on the Badger + Coyote engine by Pandion Games when they ran a game jam for it on itch back in 2023. It was finals during my first semester of my master’s and I think my brain just desperately needed something to focus on besides school, so even though I really didn’t have time, I ended up writing and laying out the entire game during finals because I just got struck by inspiration and absolutely had to make it. I thought this system was so perfect for a lone wolf and cub game, which is a trope that just gets me right in the heart. I’m such a sucker for found family and adoption stories, especially as a hopefully soon to be adoptive parent, and other pieces of media with this trope are always a really big hit with me. I didn’t know of any other TTRPGs [tabletop role-playing games] that really focused on it, so I wanted to see that out in the world.

DANIEL: How does playing (and designing) a specifically 2-player game differ from a game designed for more players?

LUKA: Two player games, or duet games, were actually some of the first TTRPGs I ever designed! I made a couple of those before trying to design a multiplayer game, and then it was over a year before I designed any more, so I feel like I got familiar with duet games a lot sooner. Obviously, duet games come in a huge range of genres and tones, but there’s definitely something very intimate about them that’s not necessarily true for games with larger groups of players. I got started in TTRPGs playing at tables of six or seven people, and then GM-ed [game mastered] mainly for larger tables as well, so starting to play duet games years later was really a new experience for me. I’ve played duet games both with the people I’m closest to in the world and people who before were practically strangers and there’s a lot of trust and vulnerability that goes into that, which I say with all the positivity possible. I think duet games really thrive when the game itself leans into that intimacy, which is why two of my own duet games explore parent-child relationships.

DANIEL: If you were to expand on the game, what direction would you be interested in developing?

LUKA: I’m very glad you asked this question, because I actually have plans to! Hopefully in the next few months here I’d like to do an expanded edition – and hopefully print run – of Shadow / Giant 2e. I’m planning on messing with the mechanics a little bit, adding oracles for things like NPCs [non-player characters], locations, and scene complications, as well as including pre-generated settings and characters in a number of different genres. I’m gunna get an updated layout as well as art – I’m really excited. And I’ll be partnering with my best friend to develop it and make the sets of pre-gen characters and they’ll be doing the art as well, so that’s extra exciting. And you can find them as “paladinbaby” on Tumblr and itch.

DANIEL: Are there any particular dynamics you’d like to play or see played in the game that you’ve not come across?

LUKA: I’m so about this trope in general, so I think all the dynamics folks come up with are really interesting to me, and if you’ve played or made characters for Shadow / Giant please, please come tell me about them because I will eat it up. The Party of One podcast has actually recorded an episode of Shadow / Giant with RahRah and I don’t know anything about it and I’m so excited to see the characters they came up with. But there are definitely two specific things I’d love to see. One is a queer, genderbent take on the original trope – please give me a grizzled, unsociable butch woman who’s struggling to take care of this vulnerable child, I think that would be so fun.

The second deals with a specific aspect of Shadow / Giant’s mechanics. Part of the game is that the Giant and the Shadow have some sort of communication barrier, whether that’s practical, emotional, linguistic, whatever, and I’d really love to see a pair where one of the characters is deaf. I took American Sign Language in undergrad and had some wonderful Deaf teachers who taught me a lot about the Deaf community, so that in addition to being a disability advocate for the last 11 years, I think that mechanic is such a good reason to bring in a Deaf PC [player character] and get to explore disability narratives in a really compelling and also mechanically-supported way.

DANIEL: Thank you again, Luka, for chatting with me about Shadow / Giant! Where can people find you and your games?

LUKA: You can find me as "Psychhound" on itch.io, Tumblr, and Bluesky, as well as on psychhound.com.

DANIEL: You can find those links, as well as links to the transcript of this episode and links to the game, in the video description [below, here]. If you want to find games with similar themes or gameplay to this one, there will also be links to relevant playlists.

And that brings us to the end of the expanded interview! Beyond Five Minutes is an expansion of Five Minutes, Not 5e, so if you’ve not heard my previous discussion with Luka about the game, you can find it linked in the end screen and description!

Thank you for listening, until next time!

[End of transcript.]

Links

The Game and its Designer

Get the game: https://psychhound.itch.io/shadow-giant

Find Luka on itch.io: https://psychhound.itch.io/

Check out Luka's website: https://psychhound.com/

Find Luka on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/psychhound.bsky.social

Find Luka on Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/psychhound

Relevant (YouTube) Links

Shadow / Giant - Five Minutes, Not 5e: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJSIduRLpk0

Shadow / Giant - Five minutes, Not 5e Transcript: https://thecoppercompendium.co.uk/shadow-giant-five-minutes-not-5e-transcript

Found-family: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsLJ-CI8A8CD1Q86CcJBeKBtF4-Yn9ttR

Without A Guiding Player: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsLJ-CI8A8CAd6O-NXiFRkooGlQ-cMieR

Two-Player: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsLJ-CI8A8CDkUvqiDsyIzLA8n2KbBXg4