Video game reviews with controlled thumb damage.
Thumb Cramps is a loose, high-speed video game review show built around Joel, Jackson, guests, and whatever bit survives the opening minute. New releases, older oddities, punishing theme months, and frustrating controls all get judged with real game literacy and very little patience for boring formality.
PRESS PLAY
Thumb Cramps is a video game review podcast that refuses to sit still. Joel and Jackson anchor the show, with Ruby identified in one episode as a third host and a rotating set of guests dropping into the mess. The format is simple enough: people talk about games they have been playing. The execution is much less tidy. A normal episode can open with squeaky chairs, fake solemnity, a shouted bit, or a theme-month premise designed to make someone suffer through a backlog. Then the review arrives anyway. Super Meat Boy 3D, Pokemon Snap, Absolum, Kane and Lynch, Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble, Kingdom Hearts 3, World of Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy, and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes all appear as launchpads for actual criticism and comic derailment. The show is strongest when it notices how games feel moment to moment. Controls get blamed. HUDs get judged. A pleasing door slam can earn real affection, while an unclear objective can derail the mood completely. It can appreciate a nasty visual aesthetic or a great soundtrack while still calling the play experience frustrating and tedious. That tension is the appeal. Thumb Cramps is not polished buyer-guide criticism; it is a fast, social, joke-heavy argument about whether the thing was fun, annoying, confusing, beautiful, punishing, or secretly worth defending. The guest bench keeps the room lively. Grace Jarvis brings comedian energy and tour chatter, Lena Moon turns a language gripe into a larger riff about comedy reviews, Chloe Appleby brings games-curation context around Alt Games, and Ruby Innes slots into the show’s louder, more chaotic mode. The recurring bits can be absurd, but the gaming opinions are rarely empty. For listeners who like reviews with friction, friendship, and frequent detours, it has a distinct snap: messy on purpose, sharper than it pretends, and allergic to sounding respectable for too long.
Made for: For players who enjoy games criticism when it comes with fast banter, guest riffs, running bits, and strong feelings about bad controls. It suits listeners who want informed opinions without clean-room professionalism.
What sets it apart: Thumb Cramps turns each review into a social collision: practical gameplay talk, theme-month grudges, comedy tangents, and guest chemistry all competing for the wheel. The chaos is the texture, but the judgments still land.
Thumb Cramps is a weekly video game review podcast hosted by Professional Gamers Joel Duscher and Jackson Baly as they are joined each week by special guests to take a look at what games they’ve been playing lately. New releases, retro games, AAA titles and even real life experiences are all equally judged and reviewed on Thumb Cramps. New episodes every Friday. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Thumb Cramps makes game criticism funny and tangible by testing big opinions against controls, mechanics, hardware, and the experience of actually playing.
Thumb Cramps turns game reviews into lively arguments about how playing actually feels. Joel Duscher and Jackson Baly trade observations with a guest, moving easily from controls and level design to atmosphere, confusion, frustration, and the peculiar logic of old hardware.
A GameCube chainsaw controller enters the conversation, and suddenly your backlog feels under-equipped.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A loose game review that finds comedy in confusion, especially when Pokemon Snap stops making itself clear.
Thumb Cramps treats a game review as a loose group conversation about why a game feels funny, satisfying, or oddly hard to read. Joel and Jackson are joined by comedian Grace Jarvis, and the strongest stretch centers on Pokemon Snap.
A grim, frustrating game gets a fair hearing for its soundtrack, ugly style, and the misery of protecting Glazer.
Thumb Cramps treats Kane and Lynch as a game whose mood keeps fighting its mechanics. The episode circles the things that still land: the nasty visual tone, the sparse HUD, the confusion around Glazer, and a soundtrack that earns more respect than the moment-to-moment play.
A tense door-slamming chase opens into a candid argument about pacing, sequels, and podcast punishments.
The episode frames a story-light game as a palate cleanser after Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts 3, finding its sharpest pleasure in a giant-robot chase where each slammed door feels tactile, tense, and oddly cinematic.
A frightening game review mutates into a loose, funny tour of Oddworld, remakes, and an Abe-themed month.
Thumb Cramps frames a frightening game as an excuse to talk through sudden firing-squad deaths, strange jumping, and the grimly funny possibility of killing E.T. with a hammer.
A chainsaw controller plan and a baffling student game make space for gaming's best kind of argument.
Thumb Cramps brings Oscar and James from S-Band Games into a relaxed single-episode conversation where game mechanics give way to the stranger problem of reading a character's face.
Nintendo 64 memories spark racing frustrations, control complaints, and playful riffs about games calling players by name.
Maytendo's final outing revisits Nintendo 64 games through a loose, funny conversation about racing, controls, and the odd details that survive in memory.
A video game review podcast wanders into tour-food rankings, microphone mythology and lively digressions.
Thumb Cramps brings James Clement, a.k.a. Mr. Sunday Movies, into its cheerful conversational disorder. His self-appointed job as "the microphone man" sets the pace.
Hosts Joel and Jackson are joined by guest James Clement (Mr.
A podcast episode featuring a hotdog-themed game challenge with guests Steph Panecasio and Ricky from Good Games Morley.
Hosts Joel Duscher and Jackson Baly are joined by guest Hayden Bleachmore for a car-bound episode recorded during a road trip.
Final Fantasy Resonance’s demo covers its first chapter in roughly six hours, and save data carries into the full game.
Thumb Cramps reviews Super Meat Boy 3D with Grace Jarvis, and Jackson says the first boss took about 45 attempts.
Thumb Cramps opens by pushing a Sydney live show at the Factory Theatre on 16 April, saying there are about 20 tickets left.
Thumb Cramps opens this April 2 episode with Lauren Bonner joining Joel and Jackson while Joel starts a Super Monkey Ball story that hinges on Banana Rumble, Banana Mania, and an EB Games mix-up.
Joel and Jackson introduce guest Lena Moon on Thumb Cramps, a video game review podcast, with banter about being called a reverend.
Joel, Jackson, and guest Steph Panecasio discuss video games with humorous voices and banter.
Hosts Joel and Jackson welcome guest Chloe Appleby to discuss Final Fantasy XIII and other games, with a focus on her upcoming Alt Games festival in Seattle.
Jackson and Joel introduce a new month-long theme focusing on Final Fantasy and other games, with a guest appearance by Joel Zammit.
The hosts of Thumb Cramps introduce a loud episode discussing Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes with guest Ruby Innes.
Darcy Smith and the Thumb Cramps hosts frame PN03 as the only Capcom 5 game that stayed GameCube-exclusive, and they keep returning to its "background video game in an episode of CSI" feel.
Thumb Cramps frames "Pikmin" on GameCube as a time-limited rescue game, with Captain Olimar facing a 30-day deadline and 30 ship parts.
A podcast episode promoting Jesse Brown's new show about anti-semitism in Canada, followed by a video game review segment with guests.