This is a show about videogames, the people who play them and the people who make them. Each episode, a guest on the show talks about the games that have shaped their life in one way or another. Games that have inspired them, games that forged connections with others & games that have soothed wounds. Checkpoints!

My guest today is Alexis Kennedy, the founder of Failbetter Games, creator of Fallen London, creative director of Sunless Sea, and as of just a few days ago, the first ever guest writer for BioWare.

We talk about how his love of narrative games was awakened playing Colossal Cave on the mainframe at the Oxford University Atmospheric Physics department, the wonder of table top gaming and how Dungeons & Dragons can become a full time job, whether or not the lore in Dark Souls was made up on the fly, the bold decision to leave his job in financial tech and found Failbetter games, and the perhaps even bolder decision to leave that in order to explore his creative process.

There's also a bonus segment at the end we recorded just a few days ago about his relationship with BioWare, and how he landed the job as their first ever guest writer.

'Press X to write sonnets, press Y to write odes.'

PATREON! - patreon.com/checkpoints

iTunes HERE -  SUBSCRIBE / RATE / REVIEW

Games discussed: Colossal Cave, Adventure, Space Invaders, Sunless Sea, Baldurs Gate, Spelunky, Darkest Dungeon, The Thick of It game, Quake, Civilisation, Crackdown, Starcraft, Elite, Dark Souls

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Cover design: Craig Stevenson - http://onedinosaurandhisballoon.blogspot.co.uk

Music: Samuel Baker - http://soundcloud.com/furoshiki