Welcome to Kitaku Split Screen. It's December 29th, 2016. My name is Kirk Hamilton, and we have got a great show for you today. We have a surprise, special guests in the studio, as game developer Matthew S. Burns, who fans of the show will know from past appearances, happened to be in Portland.

And I invited him on the show, and he said, yes, so he is now in my apartment to join me and Jason to talk about making video games, specifically working at Zachtronics, where he recently helped ship Shenzhen, I.O., their latest game.

We also talk about the new Near Automata demo, the double-fine documentary,

The Majesty of Controller under buttons, and at the end, have a spoilery discussion of Rogue One.

It's going to be fun.

Stick around.

Welcome back to another episode of Kotaku Split Screen, a special surprise guest episode of Kataku's split screen.

I am sitting in my apartment in Portland right now with our guests. Before that, I am also joined by the one and only Jason Schreier from New York City. Hi, Jason.

Hi, Kirk. How are you today? I'm good. I'm good. I'm excited to be joined by our surprise guest, who I heard was in Portland yesterday, and then we got lunch, and I said, hey, do you want to come

be on a podcast? And he said, yes, because he's great.

Frequent, or at least multiple time, Kotaku split screen guest, Matthew Burns. Hey, Matthew.

Hey, how's it going? It's good. Matthew is now doing narrative and music at Zachtronics, where he

most recently worked on the game, Shenzhen, I.O.,

which some of you, if you play really nerdy games on Steam, probably know about, is a...

Super nerdy games. And he made the best work, productive music.

It's true. I know that you will hear it a long time. Yeah, Jason and I both work quite a bit

to your soundtrack. It's very good. It just always feels like I'm making progress

because the music just... That's good. Yeah, that's what it's designed to do and make you feel like

you're... Just making progress. So quick programming note before we start chatting. So we were

supposed to do our Games of the Year episode this week, but because of some scheduling issues,

we have had to bump that to... I think we're going to do it next week. Don't hold us to that. Can we figure out a way to

blame it on Matthew instead? It is all Matthew Burns. He showed up and ruined everything. Hey guys, can I be

...