Grumpy Old Gamer is a podcast for people who remember when games came in boxes, DLC wasn’t day-one extortion, and ‘early access’ wasn’t code for ‘you’re paying to beta test this broken mess.’ We talk about games, the old, the new, the good, the bad, the ugly and everything in between, with the kind of blunt honesty that PR departments hate.
Join us if you remember when games were great (and secretly know there are still some bangers being released now).
Episodes fortnightly.
https://gog.fm (https://gog.fm/)
https://gog.fm/discord (https://gog.fm/discord)
https://grumpyoldgamer.com (https://grumpyoldgamer.com/)
Subnautica, Valheim, Minecraft and the Best Survival Games Out There [S03E06]
This week Ian, Tim, and guest Lucas dig into open world survival games, kicked off by Valheim's PlayStation release. They cover Subnautica, Project Zomboid, Minecraft, Ark, Skyrim survival mods, and more before landing on a Mount Rushmore of the genre. Plenty of honourable mentions along the way, from Stalker Gamma to Grounded to Frostpunk, plus a detour into the Palworld/Nintendo lawsuit and the Nemesis system patent.
9 Sept 2026
Horror With a Heart: Will from Lost Souls Interactive on Hotel Espir [S03E05]
Al and Tim are joined by Will, creative director at Lost Souls Interactive, to talk about his debut horror game Hotel Espir. It is a stealth horror set in a 1942 hotel in the American South, built around a blind antagonist who hunts by sound, where every footstep gives you away. Will explains the studio's "horror with a heart" approach, why they set the game in the deep south and how they handle its difficult themes, the slip from an October 2026 release to October 2027, and the realities of scope creep across a nine person remote team. From there the three of us get into horror games more widely: why indie studios keep returning to the genre, the split between AAA action horror and indie psychological dread, save rooms, ratings, and why the scariest thing is often knowing exactly what is coming and doing it anyway.
Hotel Espir hits Steam in October 2027. You can wishlist it and request the play test now. For socials, Discord and everything else, head to our website. We are grumpy, we are miserable, and we would like to speak to some gamers.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4216950/Hotel_Espir/ (https://store.steampowered.com/app/4216950/Hotel_Espir/)
26 Aug 2026
From TIE Fighter to Outlaws: A Grumpy Look at Star Wars Games [S03E04]
The lads sit down to work through the Star Wars games that mattered, the ones that didn't, and a good few that only survive because the modding community refused to let them die. Al makes the case for TIE Fighter and Star Wars Supremacy, Ian flies the flag for KOTOR, Lucas reports back from two hours with the Outlaws demo, and Tim can't get through a single mention of the Force Unleashed without invoking the Rule of Two. Along the way: the LucasArts golden age, the death of Star Wars Galaxies, Battlefront 2's record-breaking loot box disaster, and whether Zero Company signals a brighter future now EA's monopoly is over. Recorded on the third attempt, sickness and third-world power cuts permitting.
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
YouTube views
33,337
Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
Podcast Authority Score: 45 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
43
Social presence
90
YouTube
72
Engagement
0
Host of Grumpy Old Gamer?
Claim your podcast to manage its listing and keep your show details accurate.
Pod Engine is an independent podcast discovery and analytics service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by this podcast. Artwork and show content belong to their owners. Full legal notice.
Explore this show Podcast research with Pod Engine
