Big Walk, Banquet for Fools, Pokemon Pokopia | Noclip Crewcast

Thank you.

Hello friends and welcome to episode 271 of the No Clip Podcast.

We're here with a full crew, a different crew though.

Frank is still on Joji Pro Wrestling duty in Japan, having the best of time, living his best life.

The J crew's here.

Jeremy Jane, Jesse Grosha, how you doing lads?

Excellent.

I'm doing well.

Who up poking the opia?

You know what I'm saying?

Excuse me?

What?

You know what I said.

You heard me.

Dear Lord.

Fair enough.

And we're also delighted to be joined by Noclip2's secret weapon, Nocaps.

Thank you for joining us this week.

Yeah, I'm happy to be here.

Happy to have you.

We needed to have you here because you're part of the four-way crew that played some Big Walk late last week.

So we're going to chat about.

We're going to chat about some big walking.

Is that the best game about walking you've ever played?

It's up there.

Okay, walking and talking definitely yeah, that's true, there's not much talking about that surrounding.

Yeah uh, we have a lot of games to talk about this week.

Folks, we are going to talk about big walk.

Uh, from house house, the folks behind untitled goose game.

Push me, pull you.

Um, It's not out yet, so that's a preview.

But there are a bunch of games that are out as well.

We get to talk about Banquet of Fools, Pokopia.

Is that called Pokemon Pokopia?

Pokemon Pokopia.

Pokopia.

I was doing the European pronunciation.

Yeah.

Very Italian of you.

Pokopia.

Pokemon Pokopia.

They are really messing with people on that one.

Yeah.

We're going to talk about OOF.

As in egg in French, not the Roblox sound.

Tommy Tallarico is very happy about this.

His mom is very proud.

He's going to sue us right now.

Oh, no.

Slay the Spire 2 as well.

And also Poker Night at the Inventory has been re-released.

So loads and loads of stuff to talk about.

But first of all, we need to lay claim, lay praise at the feet of our incredible fans, patrons over at patreoncom, slash noclip and our Battle Pass holders, all of whom we would love to go on a big walk with, including Brian Baru, Little Toast, Yosh Dwayne, the Rock Lobster, Anthony Thomas, Nico Passateri, It's-a-me Ferrario.

They know how to pronounce.

Oh, wait, no.

There's no Italian games on this one.

For some reason, I thought Pokemon was Italian for a second.

Oh, no.

Just because it sounds Italian when you say Pokemon, Pocopia, with like a...

Yeah, but if you push the accent too far, it sounds Jamaican.

You got to be careful.

Oh, come on.

Everything goes back to Ireland eventually, is it?

It's a bacon beer can thing, if you say.

Yeah, beer can.

Beer can, yeah.

Beer can, yeah, I love it.

Apparently, Jamaican for jumper is Gansey.

Okay.

That's what they call like a jumper, like a hoodie or whatever.

Gansey is literally Irish for a sweater.

Oh, wow.

So, there you go.

Gansey, put on your Gansey there.

It's fierce cold outside.

That's Jamaican impression.

I'm just kidding.

Really good.

Sorry.

Who else we got here?

Sorry.

Where are the Italians?

Senator Armstrong.

Reed Dredge.

Harry Flanagan.

Joosh.

Arno.

Matt Pearson.

Mark Ross.

Quote.

Tucker Morgan.

David McGarry.

Goddison.

Sven Hooster.

Pez.

Bone Malt.

John Akers.

Ewan Nate.

Tim Robinson.

Forrest Pruitt.

Dark Insanities.

Jonathan Kremen.

Eric Hamilton Schneider.

Christophe Fatui.

Grizzly Mug.

Cameron Ladd.

Zachary Snader.

Alex Goucher.

George Sakotis.

Jacob.

God serve.

Entheogen.

We love you.

James Medge.

And Rison.

Thank you all for joining us on this big walk of this podcast.

Could be a long one, folks.

We've got a lot of stuff to talk about.

Okay, Big Walk.

So, we played some Big Walk.

We jumped in with some very fun PR people, and we played over an hour of this game.

Jeremy, let's go to you first.

You had a good summation of this during the video we recorded, which hopefully is up by now.

We kind of went over the embargo stipulations, so we're chatting to them about whether or not we can publish it as is, because it's real good um, but uh jeremy, you mentioned something you were like it's like a whimsical mist.

Is that how you'd still uh uh, describe it?

Yeah yeah, it's um, i mean it plays almost nothing like mist, but it has similar sort of like atmosphere, atmospheric characteristics.

Um, you're at a mysterious island like place, kind of outside, with very little explanation or exposition or setup and uh, you're just walking around kind of solving puzzles with friends um, but it's like i don't know, there's something really unique about the tone of it.

Uh, it's very i, i i saw jesse post something yesterday, but how people need to stop saying friend slop.

And i feel like big walk is like the uh, it's like the curse of the bambino ending it's, it's ending friend slop.

You know what i mean?

It's like an elevated, it's a virtual friend space.

It's a it's.

It's something different.

Uh, i feel like it's like it has the characteristics of hangout games.

It feels very fun and just sort of like free form and you can kind of just fuck around.

You can pick each other up and throw each other.

It's very physics.

You can like raise one arm and the other arm and point one arm and do like weird little gestures, do the macarena, you can do the macarena, you can do the hokey pokey, all of which has sort of like um, gameplay implications, because if you're very far away from someone and they can't hear you yelling, you can like, do you know?

Like a guy on the air on the runway signals to them um, but.

But it's also just like It feels like a lot of the things that are gameplay-oriented double as sort of weird expressive little things you can do.

There was a puzzle that involved us all picking each other up, but also there were plenty of times where we just picked each other up just to throw each other for fun.

So it feels like it rides the line really well between I find that a lot of Hangout games even when I play them and have fun with my friends that it feels like the actual gameplay, like the core activities you're doing, feel either very simple or kind of like secondary, to just like oh, i'm just like hanging out with my friends.

I'm like in a place this is just a place you hang out and there is some light gameplay.

Um, this feels very like you're solving puzzles and stuff, but it doesn't skimp on the atmospheric stuff that makes those games fun too.

Yeah, i think having all that space to sort of allow players to to hang out, not just in the sense of like we're gonna hop in lethal company, we're gonna do a, get some resources and then start all over again when we come back.

This is like the way they described it was.

There was a story or not a story, but like a sort of campaign, a series of things that you do that remain consistent over time.

And like, whoever started the room has to be the person who creates it next time.

I think is what they described.

Yeah, the save game like is with the host, I guess.

Yeah, that's the words.

And the tutorial had like progression.

It wasn't like a, you know, a lot of these games are, round based maybe is the way to say it i'm not quite sure how big walk works but it seems like it is a point-to-point game maybe yeah like there's some sort of persistence between the things that you're doing so it's like you're coming back with your friends to hang out in a space that you understand with controls and systems that you get but then you're always it seems like doing something new with those systems whether it's communicating along a far distance or You know, just hanging out in a little space where there's like speakers and you can all do your worst TED talk impressions.

There's lots of opportunities to do silly little things in a way that I think other games like that don't work for me.

Because it's like the game interrupts that action of just hanging out.

Like it gets in the way of you just chilling with your buds and talking about whatever.

Where this is so much slower paced.

It's designed to force you to split off.

Like there are times where you need to sort of be in separate spaces and you got to pick who you're going to go do those tasks with.

It's a lot more involved and like there's so much more meaning to the actions.

It's.

There was a bit where we were like solving a puzzle between two rooms that I I was like oh, this is so smart.

The way that the sound muffles when you're in the room and the doors closed and like oh, we have to communicate across this space.

And one person's got to shout like, hey, this is the shape you're looking for.

And then you got to interpret what that means.

And it kind of just felt like playing a big outdoor escape room.

Which I think the Whimsical Mist comparison is sort of in the same vein of like it's just fun to escape.

Rooms are fun because you can hang out with your friends and doing something where you all get to have like an epiphany moment once every 15, 20 minutes.

It's like, that's a really fun time.

I think it's, it was a lot of fun.

I had a lot of fun playing that Big Wild demo with you guys.

Of course, because it was with you guys.

Let's be honest.

Because you know we have fun together and we know how to you know, hang out.

One, one part that really made me laugh when i was watching back the footage because like we had footage from all four of us was um, me and jeremy went off on a on a little adventure and um, the you're laughing because you think it's the part where i said i'm just laughing about that being funny.

Yeah well yeah, at one point i was like i wonder if they're shit talking us.

And then i i found like jesse saying like danny stinks shouting it into the valley or something at like the exact same moment.

But what my favorite part was there was one stage where you were just hanging out with the prs and nocaps was like slightly off to the side, just making sure the button was pressed the whole time.

Yeah, like i was like you were actually doing the game.

Jesse was just like hanging out, i forgot i'm so you would have got over there but like it's one of those assholes holding the button or what.

Yeah, someone had to be a responsible one.

Yeah, someone had to play the game.

Sorry you, you were on the point and i was too busy asking what they had for lunch.

I'm sorry, exactly.

Yeah, we're talking about like i think one of the prs copy of resident evil turned up late or something like that.

Yeah, requiem got delayed or something like i can't use any of this.

And then i was just like somebody press the button.

Uh yeah, what did you make of a no caps?

You were, you were, you played a bunch.

You, obviously you, we all played a chunk of it.

Have you played many of these sort of like social co-op things?

No, i have not.

That was um, i remember when they announced this like two or three years ago.

I saw the trailer.

I was like i don't know what this is, but it looks amazing.

And then i kind of realized oh, it's a co-op game, so i'm probably not gonna really be able to play it like unless i like actively, like sought out like a group of people to play it with.

I don't think that sounds like a lot of work but um, so i'm very happy that i was able to play it with a No, no.

Yeah.

I'm at a similar spot where like games like lethal company and stuff.

I played it with, with some of the crew here, but it's, I don't for whatever, I just don't have a group.

Like Jeremy always talks about this, like little cadre of friends back home.

He has who he jumps in those games with.

And I have mates I play like Valheim with or PUBG and stuff, but we've never done these ones before.

Um, and obviously you can't play this solo, but yeah.

What, what, what did you make of it?

Like sort of coming in fresh to this, this weird little sub genre that's gotten really popular on steam.

Yeah, I think like the big thing that like appealed to me, like when I was first watching the trailers, is I'm like oh, this isn't like procedurally generated.

Like a lot of the other ones are like run based, like you said.

So there's actually like a overarching, like story, or like you make progress and like unlock new places and new tools and stuff.

So that is something that like, I'm really interested in.

But it kind of just felt like going on a hike with you guys like, but with like enrichment activities like scattered, like like what you're saying about the um, like me pressing the button and jesse was just like talking with the other people.

Like i feel like i had these moments when i was like wanting to like try to take charge and be like okay guys, like we got to do this, like get back on track.

But then there's other moments when i was just kind of like following whoever was in the lead and just like not, and just like looking around and like having a good time.

So there's, i really like that aspect of it that you could just kind of go with the flow or you could just have like okay, like let's, let's get this done, and everything in between.

Yeah, because there's kind of like like in a lot of these other games, there's like an external motivator like oh the, a baddie turns up, we need to shoot that thing.

Yes yeah, whereas this is so, like you said it's, it almost felt like um, like we went on a like a work weekend, like a bonding weekend, like one of those retreats yeah exactly yeah, big drinks, team built yeah, especially when jesse started doing his tedx talk.

Well yeah, you know how to do agile.

You want to, you want to have a scrum right now yeah, yeah.

But yeah, there's all these, like Jeremy said as well, there's all these like quiet moments where you're just in between the bits, kind of just like chatting.

You know it's not like you're you're talking strategy all the time, or you know how do we solve this situation.

And, and because, uh, as you were saying, no caps, it's like this, these are, it's like these authors experiences, you know, where it's like a very distinct puzzle that's been set up that, um, it's it's not like you're also doing the same thing every time like you're not like oh we need to get down to the basement and we need to kill these things like once you've done that once or twice it's sort of like assumed that everyone knows what to do or it's because everything's each little puzzle was a new thing so you know there was lots of chat about what we're going to do and who's going to do it yeah like how you'd go into a situation and like not fully understand like how complex it was going to be or whatever like we found those like four boxes with that opened with the buttons and then it's like okay we need something for this but then there's like this key thing and like we didn't quite know and we kind of got like sidetracked but like eventually it kind of all came together yeah it was cool like collaborating in that way and uh yeah it's it's good it's a good balance of like giving you stuff to do without kind of being over it wasn't we're in the tutorial area as well we should say there's probably stuff in there that's gets a little bit trickier but yeah i guess the last thing i'd mention about it is kind of what jeremy touched on which is like the vibe of it just feels really good like house house games kind of do have a great style to them great feeling to them um i love the mixture of the ridiculously cartoonish player characters with this like quite vibrant you natural world yeah it's it's actually gorgeous um i i find that contrast really nice i feel like it's it kind of is emblematic of the tone of the game where like you guys were saying it's um you're trying to solve these puzzles but everyone is kind of like joking around and stuff so you're every once in a while you're like all right can we all like can everyone pull it's like being on mushrooms with all your friends where it's like someone's like walking around their they've been holding like a giant buoy for six minutes and you're like bro can you like you put that down because like i know we're all having a fun day but like the the treasure chest is not going to open unless we all fucking climb on each other yeah the um uh the the x is for the eyes when one of the prs disconnected as well and their character dies oh yeah we dragged him out to sea um and then we dragged him out to sea because he died to give him a viking funeral and then we walked away and when we reconnected he was back and he's like yeah i respawned in the middle of the sea i don't know what the fuck happened that's not where i died it was so fucking funny it's good stuff the music is great the like soundtrack was really cool oh yeah yeah the sound effects were silly like even the fact that we don't still don't know what they are are they pears are they dog treat things oh yeah The things we're collecting.

The keys or whatever.

The fact that the vice they get unlocked via a lot of them do are like stuck in vice grips and a machine sort of opens up the vice.

But the first one we found that was in a vice.

The vice started to close and like, squeeze and deform it first.

And then it like reversed.

Just like funny little bits like that.

Like, you know, it's hard to do humor in games when there's no like characters or dialogue, but the game just like creates humor. fun in like little subtle kind of interesting ways which i thought was cool yeah i feel like that's kind of an underexplored thing in games is um like emergent humor because i find that humor scripted humor is famously like in movie in any media ages very poorly there will occasionally be like a a piece of timeless comedy that people remember but for every you know like it like airplane or whatever in the 80s you gotta be careful with what you name as an example of a timeless piece of comedy i watched for the very first time idiocracy about two weeks ago oh really now that you've seen it isn't it every time somebody says wow real life is like idiocracy you're like shut up like did you watch the movie yeah yeah people weren't as like openly homophobic i don't think yeah now as they were in idiocracy it was like the amount of certain words we don't say anymore that were being used non-stop um uh yeah lots of it's a it's a very also like not great representation of both uh women or people of color in that uh you really could say anyone is that who that sounds right yeah he was in it yeah yeah just like Yeah.

It's also like barely a movie.

It's like an hour and 15 minutes or something.

And the last 40 minutes is like nothing.

Like there's just, we're doing the same bit over and over again.

Just Terry Crews being hilarious.

Yeah.

He's pretty good.

I liked, Terry Crews is great.

What's the drink that they're, it's got what plants crave.

Yeah.

It's got electrolytes.

Yeah.

It's got everything you need.

I forget what it's called.

Yeah.

Idiocracy juice.

Yeah, exactly.

But yeah, it's a very Grand Theft Auto. and gta online i think is a game that has that emergent humor like you know yeah it's sandboxy enough right that you can yeah you get like a little bit of that for free when it's co-op be just like any virtual space where people are around people just tend to like you know if you're in a relax if you're just hanging out with people at a bar like someone's gonna crack a joke eventually or whatever um but it did feel like this game was particularly conducive to it with the uh the physics stuff and the weird gestural stuff and um yeah i don't know i feel like that's sort of an underexplored thing i would like to see more games that are trying to be funny in a way that isn't just writing a script with jokes in it yeah one of the parts at the start was when i i we we all climbed on top of each other's shoulders and i was able to get up on this gantry and then no caps is like let's let's hit him off of it and you like you like through you kicked her through a ball and like in another game the ball would bounce off me but you actually it did actually knock me off and then i fell on my ass the whole way down i fell off and then my i think my character's eyes started to go yeah i didn't like i didn't see that in my play of course but yeah that was pretty cool it was uh it's a it's a neat little game does anyone have any other thoughts on big walk before we walk on out of here I just think it's nice to have games that are leaning more on that third space aspect.

I was talking to my cousin about this, because he's like eight years younger than me and he's been talking about playing Roblox forever, since he was a kid.

Like even younger.

And the thing that he enjoyed about playing Roblox was like, oh, it's cool.

I can play whatever with whoever.

And we're like, there's no goal in most of these games.

Just walking around an environment, maybe doing something.

But like for the most part, it's just a place where we can hang out.

We all understand how to do the things and what the controls are.

And we try and avoid the beatify.

Yeah exactly yes yeah, that's the gameplay of roblox.

How many times can i log in before they ban me for lying about my age?

Um, like everything like that.

It's like what if there were games that were just premium versions of roblox, games that didn't look like that?

Like there are great looking games on roblox, don't get me wrong.

Um, but there's also an opportunity for making stuff like that outside of that space that embraces.

What about that is appealing to people?

Uh, and i think big walk and peak and like all these sort of hangout games are are in that same vein.

And to me Big Walk is like the perfect version of that at least so far is the best version of that that I've seen.

I'm excited to see what the rest of the game looks like, especially because there was stuff that we saw in the press demo that was like what's that?

Why is there a hole in this mountain?

What's that cave over there?

Yeah, I can't wait to see what else there is.

And we didn't get any walkie talkies.

I would have liked to see how that worked, but it was cool to hear the echo and yell at each other.

Yeah, I feel like that will be when hopefully, Roblox is crumbled and dead and gone, that the legacy it leaves behind will be that it introduced the Roblox generation.

I'm so sorry for referring to you guys as that.

I apologize.

You're better than that.

You're more after Gen Z or... I think that's after the Pepsi generation.

It's between Z and Alpha is Gen Roblox.

I hope that the legacy it leaves behind is that it will have introduced a frame of reference like a cognitive framing for games, as sometimes games can be virtual spaces in the way that like um like, for me i think a lot of that was like i was thinking about aim last night randomly, i was just like i took too much tinctured, was thinking about aim as a child and i was.

I had a weird like memory flood back to me of calling it i am like, of like being in elementary school and being like oh, do you have like i am, and i was like that's so weird.

Why did i fucking remember that we should call it aim?

Yeah, we called it.

AIM was like Yeah, you calling it AIM threw me off.

I thought you were describing some sort of language learning model.

No, no, no.

We called it AIM.

You were thinking about Claude last night?

What were you talking about?

But before AIM, people were calling it IAM, at least in my circle.

Anyway, it doesn't matter.

What I was going to say is that AIM and early MMOs were sort of that for me.

I was playing a lot of video games at the time, but I grew up playing fucking Mario and Donkey Kong Country and stuff and then having technology be this like non gamified place to just like experience other people and play early mmos and like i don't know how much of world of warcraft did you play where you were just jumping around stormwind or ironforge?

Yeah, just chatting to people on vent or whatever.

Yeah yeah, i think it's cool that, like i hope the legacy of roblox is that it introduced that sort of style of gameplay to uh, to a younger generation, because i feel like, outside of maybe gta 5, like you said, gta online rather um, i don't know, i can't think of like a any other examples as prominent as like maybe roblox that are just sort of more about being in a space.

Yeah yeah, good stuff.

That's big walk out sometime this year.

They don't have a date or anything.

I'm sure they'll be teasing all that stuff uh in the uh weeks and months ahead.

Uh, but yeah definitely uh, four thumbs up, Four wavy hands thumbs up.

Eight hands maybe from us.

Yeah?

Okay.

We're all feeling good.

We're all feeling good about Big Walk.

Good load of fun.

Let's move on.

Jesse, you've got a pair here.

Why don't you start with Slay the Spire 2?

I mean, this is a sequel to, you know, a very beloved game.

Was this in early access for a long time?

It's in early access right now.

Oh, okay.

So it's launched in early access.

Okay, okay, okay.

Already got 16,000 overwhelmingly positive is the rating on the reviews.

What do you make of it?

I am stunned by this game.

I think Slay the Spire 2 is phenomenal.

The feeling of playing Slay the Spire 1, a game that I have played probably like 2,000-ish hours of.

Dude, I love this game.

And I don't feel ashamed to say that I played 2,000 hours of Slay the Spire.

In the same way that I feel ashamed to say I played like 250 hours of Ballatro.

Yeah, that I feel a little ashamed about.

But like Slay the Spire 1, I've played mods for it.

Downfall is a great mod for the game.

I love that.

I think it's a great addition.

So I've really kept up with the space.

I love playing Slay the Spire.

It's like it's still the best roguelite deck builder, without a question.

The thing is, how do you follow that up?

I think a lot of people were thinking like oh, slay the spire 2.

There have been other games that have tried to do what slay the spire does and they haven't really figured it out.

It's like, was that sort of lightning in a bottle?

Or can you build on that and really do something different?

And i mean, the team at megacrit have just knocked it out of the park.

I know this is the early access version of the game, if it i mean it did launch it, i guess, close to full price.

It's like what, 28 bucks, 25 bucks, something like that.

Yeah 25, it's 25.

The conversion rate's weird.

Um Oh, don't worry.

In a week it'll be twice as much as that, probably because we got all of our Slate Aspire from the Strait of Hormuz.

From the Strait of Hormuz.

Yeah, they're pushing it through there.

It depends on what the gas prices are for them to deliver all the hard drives to Seattle.

I picked a great time to upgrade the NAS, let me tell you that. yeah i do i needed to buy a graphics card two years ago i made a huge mistake um yeah so so it's it just it feels like a complete game like the early access version apart from the placeholder art that's there the game feels done like it feels it feels better than a lot of games in this in a similar genre obviously i mean it's you know it's the people who have all the money and resources and skills at this point uh to make a better sequel but it takes everything that worked about slay the spire one, the same structure.

It has the same roguelike, like pick a path, select what you're doing.

You know, you know what boss you're going to fight.

Prepare for that boss.

Uh, build out your deck, as you would expect from the sequel, to slay the spire.

Nothing has really changed format wise.

In fact, they start the game up and like the opening message.

If you don't own, slay the spire on the platform or you haven't played in the past.

I'm not sure how they checked out.

I'm not sure if it's always the case.

Um, But it says, like, it looks like you haven't played Slay the Spire before.

Do you want to do the tutorial?

Oh, that's cool.

So they're not even like, do you want to do the tutorial for this game?

They're like, we're pretty sure you've probably played Slay the Spire 1.

And if you have, you know how to play this.

It's all the same stuff.

Energy.

You get a couple cards in your hand.

You play them.

You can see what the enemies are going to do.

It's all you have as much information as you can need to react.

The things that they build on top of this are really smart.

They took a lot of the systems from the original game and they looked at it and sort of said what can we do about this and make it more interesting?

How can we build on this and do fun things with it with the original classes?

Like the iron clad in the silent are still there.

The sort of like shield and sword guy and the, um, like dagger and poison character.

Those are still there, but they have new abilities.

They have new, like, strategies that you can build off of.

The relics, there's a lot of similar ones, but also they've changed certain things.

So, like, stat boosts are different.

Potions are stronger now, some of them.

Some of them are weaker, which I think is, like, a good change.

And then there's these new classes that are so cool.

So, like there's one called the Regent that lets you spawn a sword that like floats around your character and you can.

It gives you a, it gives you a retain card which stays in your hand until you play it and you can just keep building up the damage of the card every turn with the yeah, with these different abilities.

It's so smart, it's such an interesting way of doing that.

But like, obviously you just go one punch man right at the end of something, exactly build up all defense and just get the card really strong and then play it and just do like a million damage and you can build around that or you can build around other stuff.

Like you could see so many build directions so quickly, which i think is a really good indication of if a roguelike game is going to have staying power is if you can see early on what's going on.

But even then, like the way that you unlock, upgrade and slay the spire 2 is different from the first game because now there's this epoch timeline they have where when you unlock stuff it like reveals the narrative of the world of slay the spire, like it starts with the creation of the universe at the beginning of the timeline and then you see all these characters appear and different chapters in their stories, sort of explaining what happened to them, why they are here, why they're, why they look the way they do or don't look the way you remember them perhaps.

Stuff like that.

But that element of it really solidifies the narrative of this world that I didn't really think I cared about until now.

Now there's all these new characters when you get to a different act.

There's characters who greet you and they have a little bit of story to them.

All that sort of presentation stuff really makes it feel like just over the moon.

I'm over the moon with the way that it looks.

It sounds like It's just so good.

Even compared to the first game, that is probably still one of the best video games I've ever played in my life.

The only other thing I mentioned is, I think, like the smartest thing they did design wise was change the way that the deck, sort of the way that you think about the deck because, like in a roguelike deck builder, all your focus is like making combos, usually in slay the spire.

It's about thinning your deck and like making sure that you get access to what you're looking for as often as possible, which is, you know, good and important and hard to do.

Um, But what they did here is they added a bunch of cards that act as like turn your deck basically into an inventory.

So there's stuff that you can pick up that are like quest cards.

It'll be.

You know, you fight a boss and now you get the the option to take a card that stays in your deck.

But once you get to the second act or the third act, it'll give you a location on the map that gives you bonus gold if you go there and then, i think, the card disappears when you reach it uh, or like you can get an egg in your deck and when you arrive at a certain you've done like a certain number of things, like onto a certain number of question mark points on the map or whatever, that will make the egg hatch and you get stuff from doing that.

Like little things like that are so like just such good novel ideas as well.

It's not.

It's not just they've added stuff.

They've added stuff that feels fresh and interesting and it's super fresh from some other game, or yeah yeah Yeah, totally.

It's great.

It looks great.

I mean, the original State of Spire, I remember looking good, too.

Yeah.

Was it 2019?

It might have been earlier than that.

Was it 2019?

It was a while.

January 2019.

Was that the 1.0?

Was it in early access?

That was 1.0.

It was definitely early access.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's the Steam release date, so that's 10.

Yeah, so it was probably 2016 or something.

Yeah yeah, I mean, the game looks, looks good.

It's like a Spelunky 1, Spelunky 2 kind of thing.

That's a really good comparison.

Yeah, for sure it looks.

It looks great.

Animation, looks smoother.

You know the type of thing that once you've made a successful game you can spend the time and the money on.

You know, but you don't have that.

You know sort of ability.

Um, perhaps on the first one, and no caps jeremy, have you?

Have you played slate aspire much?

I'm not much to talk about it because i've i i did not play very much of the first one.

You have a g.

I played a shit ton of Slay the Spire.

Yeah, I really liked it.

I got super fixated on it for a while, as I tend to do with roguelikes, which is why I'm hesitant to start playing this one until I have a chunk of time free.

Jeremy's game has got six months added to development time.

Sorry, guys, we're delaying it.

It's going to kick down the road for Slay the Spire through a wrench in the cogs.

Yeah, I love Slay the Spire.

A wrench in the cogs.

I like that one. what's what's the wait what's the oh no you're right it is a wrench in the spanner or something like that i was gonna say a cog in the works but that doesn't make any sense that would be good depending on what the works that's what i heard but a spanner is a wrench right yeah sorry it's a whole other kettle of ballparks don't worry about right yeah we're mixing metaphors um Yeah, no, I'm eager to play this.

Jesse, I'm curious if you have played this co-op, because that is the strangest thing to me is imagining Slay the Spire co-op.

Yeah, I saw them reveal that in the last trailer before the game dropped and I was like you can't do that.

There are mods that have co-op features in them for Slay the Spire, but they don't function, I think, in exactly the same way as it does in this main game.

Basically, it's like two or three, I think you could do up to four characters on the same team.

I've just played with my wife a little bit.

Your characters all do the same damage.

You have your hands, you take turns.

Then there's like these overlapping co-op cards that give you like different yeah, different abilities between both the characters.

Um, it's really smart.

And like there's strategies that you have to consider with the increase in damage that the enemies deal and like um, like weakness is really strong because it's a, it's a full team damage reduction.

So it's like if one person plays status debuffs while the other person's playing sort of glass cannon And has, you know, maybe a couple shields as they might need.

You can build around that and like, play together like you're an RPG party, as opposed to.

I was going to say it sounds like an MMO.

That's like a raid meta.

Exactly.

It feels like that.

Yeah, or like a Divinity Original Sin or Baldur's Gate kind of thing.

Yeah, it's pretty cool so far.

I'm excited to see how they build on that.

And, like, the... the array of characters allow for a lot of interesting stuff.

Like even if you're not playing in co-op, um, there's that Regent that also has a unit you can summon, but then there's also a necromancer class. that has like or whatever necromancer character that can also spawn like a hand that does damage and like there's other little combos that it has so even on top of just the player character uh in single player there's other units that you don't have to play the turn from them or anything but you do have to consider their uh use in combat which wasn't a thing in slay the spire one um so yeah that's cool that's pretty cool yeah no caps you like me are you a slay the spire uh newbie i played it for like 20 or 30 hours which is a lot that's a lot for me i don't play games for like 100 hours like i can get 20 and that means that i i liked it but it was definitely like what like i think the first like card based game i ever played and i was like oh okay well card games could could be fun like i'm still not the most interested in them but like everything that you described jesse sounds cool like especially like with the story and new characters and stuff like i really like that kind of thing in a game like like not just having all combat gameplay like yeah every every second but like having moments that like are not that but yeah do you think it'll be interesting to see if it pulls people in you know what i mean like if you'd be more interested in this one yeah and then the former yeah yeah do you think it's you're gonna be able to play this one for another 2000 hours um that's the real question that is a good question i i part of me feels like i'm a little burnt out on playing roguelike deck builders uh yeah i got a win on this in like the third try not bragging i just like i understand the system well enough yeah sorry you know i keep doing this it's just i'm so good at video games the god gamer himself yeah you know i don't want to say anything too much uh don't look at my achievements on gog but uh yeah i play a lot of these kinds of games so like i don't know whether or not there's enough there to really, really hook into me.

But I do find myself coming back to Slay the Spire, or I did find myself coming back to Slay the Spire 1 a lot and still sinking like 10, 15 hours whenever I sort of felt the itch.

And there are basically zero games that I'm like, let me go back to that and play it for 10 hours.

Yeah.

So it has its staying power.

Slay the Spire 2, it just feels like better Slay the Spire 1.

I kind of don't see any reason to go back to Slay the Spire 1 yet.

It's just bigger.

There's more stuff and it's doing a lot of the same things.

I don't see any reason to return to it.

Well, if you want to go back to Slate Aspire 1, it is 75% off at the moment until March 18th.

So you can pick it up for $6.24, according to Steam at the moment.

At least that's in Ameros.

Yeah, you can go check that out.

Or as Jesse said, Slate Aspire 2, $24.99 on Steam currently, just out of Early Access.

Just into Early Access sorry, just into our access and from uh, roguelike deck builders to um showcases that have games like rogue light deck builder, thank you, uh.

From gil lawson uh, just a reminder to tell you that computer worlds has been uh, the showcase has been, presented over on noclip2.

You can go check out the full uh just shy of 30 minutes presentation, which has a bunch of awesome game trailers in there, some uh trailers for announced games, new games and lots of games you can wish list, some games you can go buy, and there's also the uh, the steam festival page for computer worlds.

Jesse will graciously put all these links in the show notes.

And so yeah, just go check out the showcase, wish list some games, maybe buy some games if something appeals to you.

Support these games like this is a, it's a.

It's a weird sort of collaboration cadre of games collection um, other words, beginning with c.

That denotes some sort of unity and the uh, the whole idea of them is that they don't really fit into a nice little bucket genre together.

They're not published by the same publisher, nothing like that.

They're all a bunch of indie game dev weirdos who make some cool, exciting shit, the type of stuff that we like to cover on no clip to the type of stuff that no caps has been covering over on our channel for years.

Um, I think like it's, uh, it, the, the collaboration with them just felt supernatural because half the games that were on there, we had literally done indirects for, and the other half we had had looking forward to in 2026 or 2025 in the past.

Um so yeah it's uh, it's.

It's been fun putting this whole thing together, and we also have a bunch of videos uh, coming up on noclip2 over the next week from uh, the crew here.

Uh, based on games that are in computer roles.

So keep your eyes peeled for those.

They'll be coming out every every day or two for the next week and we're all individually working on one uh that covers one of the games, or two of the games, some of developer interviews, some of them are indie recs, some of them are video essays.

We sort of run the gamut on those.

So yes, support these awesome games.

Computer worlds.

Check out the showcase and head over to the steam festival page and see if anything there tickles your particular fancy.

Let's go to jeremy next.

Uh, banquet of fools.

You were excited for this one for for a while.

It's just out.

Is it today?

Uh, i think it was a few days, like five days ago, maybe.

Okay um yeah, banquet for fools.

This is a god.

Where do i even begin on this?

It is, it's a crpg, like an indie crpg um, But the particular like flavor and style and aesthetic of it are so singular and bizarre and interesting.

It immediately caught my attention.

So it looks and plays a lot like a CRPG.

Like it's pretty familiar in a lot of ways, but it has very meaningful things to specify about each of those elements.

So the look of it is, it looks like claymation.

Like it's not really claymation but it has this weird like goopy, low poly.

Look to it, that's kind of like weird and like undulating and breathing.

Um, it looks very stop motion-y claymation-y uh, and it's, it's utterly striking.

The look of it is like it looks great in trailers but actually playing it and having your whole screen be this, this sort of like semi like pre-rendered, looking diablo 2-esque, like isometric crpg, it looks so fucking good.

I was constantly just stopping and like admiring how this game looks.

Um, i think uh, this to me felt like an alternate universe where, instead of the diablo franchise getting worse, it started getting like more artsy.

Um yeah, there's no proxy to it.

I can't.

I can't like say, because claymation to some you're right like that's definitely the window it's in, but like to some people that that could be like judero right, which looks like That looks like, or deodorant which looks claymation-y but like very clay-y.

You know what I mean?

Whereas like this is like super refined or detailed.

Because my touch point would be something like Jason and the Argonauts, it kind of looks like.

But also Jason and the Argonauts isn't claymation. but it does look like claymate yeah so it's there's nothing there's no clean bucket to put it in is there it's it really looks very singular yeah it has a very and it's not like um it's not like the neverhood or anything like that like it it has its own weird look to it where it's like a beautifully painted sort of low poly that imitates the feel of claymation maybe yeah um but it's like The aesthetic and the world, it just like, I constantly was just stopping and being, I felt like I was playing like Diablo 2 again for the first time.

It had this, like it had this aesthetic to it that it just was so striking to me that I feel like Diablo 3 and onward lost as it as it moved away from the weird sort of like pre-rendered computer game, ass looking game and into these more.

Like you know, I mean I played Diablo 3 on like a PlayStation or something in a living room.

It just didn't have the same gravity.

That's a good point.

Like games like Command and Conquer and Diablo are, were sort of punching above their weight graphically because they were able to do all this pre-rendered stuff right like it was like super detailed pixel art or you know in a way that other games of that time kind of yeah like we forget that about cnc like of course they had like cut scenes you know but like back then that game looked amazing for the time you know for sure i i mean i think the diablo 2 remake remaster whatever they call it looks fine uh i genuinely prefer the look of the original so much um like when they do those back-to-backs and they're like this is what it used to look like like dog shit and this is what it looks like now uh to me it's like it's like one of those it's like a post on reddit where they're like transformation post it's like a b i'm like i can't i don't know which one's before or after because like i've there's it's too ambiguous for me because i like what uh anyway Diablo 2, to me, is one of the pinnacles of game aesthetic to me.

It has this roughness to it, this ambiguity that lets your brain fill in the gaps like good pixel art, but it has this refined pre-rendered semi-realistic, stylized look to it that looks just like.

I don't know, it's, like, crunchy and weird and haunting and gothic.

And this is sort of like that.

It's much more visual clarity, obviously.

It's very, very, like, detailed and fully sort of, like, realized.

But it's like reminds me a lot of morrowind.

Actually i was just about to say, because i was watching the trailer and there was a weird like flying creature moving along and i was like man, that looks like some morrowind, that shit yeah, it's very.

It's swampy and like mystical and there's like the magic is based on fungi, the like oh, all the magic is like right down here and roots.

Yeah, it's fucking awesome.

Um, It's really interesting and it's got great world building.

There's a sort of intro that onboards you with a little bit of the history and then it lets you make a party of four, which is very overwhelming.

You've played like 30 minutes of the game and they're like all, right now make four characters from scratch.

That is one thing that's just a preference of mine is I do kind of prefer it RPGs when you meet people.

And it's fine if you can sort of define their class, but I... i like a sort of like subtle on-ramp whereas this you play the intro that it's like all right now you go from like one person with a couple helpers to like a party of four that you've designed from the ground up now just like control everyone do everything um and i think that speaks to the thing that i am the least convinced by by this game not because of it not because it's lacking in quality but because i've played a couple hours of it and it feels incredibly deep and complex which is the combat system um when you this is not like diablo 2 where you like click on a thing and your guy starts auto swinging you do casts this is uh more like it's like vagrant story almost um you you have a like a final fantasy like atb bar like an action bar that fills up when it's full you can hold the right button on the mouse and it freezes time and there's an orb around your character in frozen time that shows your range of your current ability so if you're like an archer it'll be a huge orb if you're like a swordsman it'll be smaller um and within that orb you can cast abilities while time is frozen but then the abilities like play out in real time and it's also not like a uh real time with pause crpg like um like tyranny or something it's different than that uh it's more like when you do the ability it's an instant cast uh and so it plays out in real time it's not like you queue it up and it happens like an rts or whatever um so but it's it's weird and like physics-y like if you hit someone they'll like with a big great sword they'll go flying and they'll like hit other people and they'll stumble um and it feels very chaotic and it's i can't tell if i love it or if i'm overwhelmed by it or both yet uh i think having four characters and you know someone's like casting fucking magic and there's like spores there's like arrows shooting across the screen and i'm just like the sword guy it's like i think i need to i think i need to give up on the idea that i need to manage the whole thing and i just need to kind of like embrace the chaos and throw potions at people when they get hurt and stuff um Because in my mind, I'm like, I need to manage the party.

I need to queue up the caster.

I need to get the spells ready.

I need to be the sword guy.

I think you just got to fucking realize that it's just going to unfold the way it unfolds and you just have fun in the chaos.

So I need a little more time to get my hands on with the combat to understand it more.

But I'm having fun with it.

It's really cool, and the world is great, and the story is really interesting, and it's gorgeous.

Man.

Yeah, it looks.

I've added it to my cart here on Steam, just from you talking about it and watching some gameplay.

And I'm not somebody, like I'm not a big CRPG person, you know what I mean?

There are a couple of exceptions that I've played and enjoyed, but it's not necessarily my lane.

But yeah, it looks like it's doing a bunch of really interesting stuff.

You guys got any questions for Jeremy at all before we move on, it just sounds really fascinating.

I'm looking at the screenshots and like yeah the, the look, it's so captivating it really.

It does look like how i remember balder's gate looking in my head, but obviously not how it really looks.

Um yeah, just great look, i mean so.

So when you're doing this like rune drawing thing i'm seeing this in the inventory here of like making spells, how is that?

Like, how involved is that?

Is that really just like you pick an effect and then draw whatever?

Or is there like some arcs vitalis, shit in here?

So i, so i went to the tree where you design spells um, which is there's sort of a spell archetype that you purchase with minerals and then you can sort of like custom define certain like uh, like the duration and certain parameters of it, and then you draw a rune to represent it.

Um, I did not have enough currency to buy a custom spell, so I have not used them yet.

Uh, but I, I assume like the next time I go back to town might be my first spell unlock or whatever.

Um, but yeah, there's like a weird custom there.

They have like a, the rune in the screenshot on steam is like frog detective.

Yeah.

They did a frog trap and they drew frog detective looking ass frog as the rune.

Um, yeah, I just, I feel like it's, um, CRPGs to me are a genre that I really enjoy, but I sort of more enjoy them thinking about playing them and then i actually play one and it's it's very like sterile like fantasy where you go in and they're like ah be lord the the kingdom has sent word and it's just i'm like already fucking bored uh this to me was immediately like um like swampy and weird and dark and occult and mysterious and so uh i think that that goes a long way just having a tone in a world that that stands out among a genre that is otherwise kind of um you know like stuffy old uh old old dudes who talk like like like shitty versions of Deckard Cain basically who were just kind of talking about politics yeah we all hate the English here on this podcast hell yeah but we love Deckard Cain sorry to all our English listeners there's actually quite a lot of you yeah there you go good save good save we're good we're good we're good all is forgiven um uh you know what just came to mind I've been staring at this graphic art style trying to figure out like what it is you know what it feels like because the argonauts thing it doesn't really look like that at all but what it what it's evoking to me is like the the delta between like cg effects and practical effects this game looks practical you know yeah yeah that it is it kind of reminds me of um is it laika the studio that does the stop motion stuff yes it kind of reminds me of like nightmare before christmas stop motion um yeah it's it's also like that it has this maximalism to it that is everything is so like textured and detailed even though it's stylized and painterly and this extends to the ui i think this has maybe the best ui i've seen in a game in like 10 years wow yeah it looks awesome it's take that marathon it's again i fucking go look i defy you to go look at diablo 2 and the diablo 2 remake and you look at the ui you tell me that it's not a fucking downgrade i'm sorry or well i'm not let me fucking hop over my soapbox my friends are trying to get me to play wow retail right now and they were like look at this here's a screenshot of wow retail why did they they fucking ruined the elite banner the elite banner used to be this cool like dragon that was wrapped around the portrait to show you that this was like a badass guy and they turned it into like a child's drawing of a dragon that's yellow oh no i thought child's gonna be very upset jeremy i'm sure they're compensated very well with the i'm sure they've got a 401k matching package they probably don't have a job anymore sorry sorry it's just in the child is an ai child oh well no uh i had a comparison but i i'll pull it up by the end of the podcast i sent it to my friend and was like what the fuck are they doing over there man love it yeah don't get don't get our youtube audience started about demon souls um you don't have to worry about that now oh wait i got it i got it okay hold on i have i have to send this i'm putting this you're gonna share it in the discord or something i'll put it in snapchat yeah okay jeremy or jesse if you can do the honors and stick this in the uh Oh, God, yeah, that's terrible.

I'm sorry, but the left is the new one and the right is the old one.

Look at all that.

The screenshot is about four pixels, but you can, you know, you can interpolate.

Get over it, Grandpa.

It looks fine.

Listen, it does not look fine.

Your young eyes are into tubes.

You called me Grandpa on the big walk thing as well.

No cops is younger than you.

You're not the first.

No, no, no.

No, you listen here.

You guys are all, you're all unk to me.

Thank you.

Hold on a second.

There's only one Unk here.

Everyone else is just Uncle.

That hurts even more because Unk is closer to the truth than Grandpa is.

Thank you for taking Jesse down a peg.

Yeah, that's true.

Listen here.

You can't take me down.

I'm always riding high.

I get the frustration.

Um, banquet of fools available now.

Uh, there's a demo too you can pick up if you want.

Um, full game is 20 bucks.

Full price currently 1699.

Uh, until uh, march 19th, so you're at just under a week to pick it up.

Uh, there's a deal with the soundtrack as well.

How's the music?

Uh, it's good.

I'm trying to think it's.

It might be one of those things where it was so fitting i didn't really clock it, you know what i mean.

Okay yeah um whereas, like when we played big walk, the soundtrack is like a weird, like like weird vocal shit happening in the background.

So it, it grabs your attention so much.

I think this just was like uh, like fitting.

Cool, hannah and joseph games.

Shout out to hannah, shout out to joseph and or the games family, i'm not sure if that's their surname.

That'd be great.

If they're, that'd be amazing.

I knew a guy last name House growing up my friend's dad who designed houses.

And I always wondered if it was nominative determinism.

Yeah, exactly.

That's like Mike Holmes.

Like, brother, come on.

Of course you're, yeah, you know?

The guy who you know, that guy who owns like he's got like investments in two separate Disco Elysium projects.

Like two separate Disco Elysium spiritual successor projects.

His surname is Moolah.

No shit.

Really?

Is that real?

Yeah, for real.

It's in episode six of the thing.

I had a dream one time and there was a.

There was a guy in the dream who was like a, like a real estate guy.

And his name is usually dream details.

You forget immediately.

This one I'll never forget.

His name is Phil Buildings i.

I woke up and i was like i need to like write that down.

Phil buildings is like, he's not like a.

He's not a dream character, he's like a, the real, like celestial being that i channeled in my dreams.

Phil, i was about to say your subconscious is a terrible writer, but actually phil buildings is a great i.

That's the thing is.

Usually when you have a dream, it's like me, my friend rick rode like a boat.

That's the whole story, this.

But phil buildings is realized incredible, incredible.

Uh, that game was also in um early access, it seems like for a while right, it's just out of early access i'd been holding off on playing it till 10 because uh i, it's hard for me to go back to a game once i fall off.

Very, very cool.

Yes, that was a banquet for fools.

Sorry, i think i called it banquet of fools numerous times.

That's right.

And just to clarify, this is not the dinner for schmucks sequel.

Um, the art house version of dinner for schmucks.

We love it.

Um, from banquets to eggs which you can have at a banquet.

Um, my daughter brought me an egg this morning.

No caps, that i can only describe as like feeling like a water balloon.

Have you ever seen one of those?

Uh no, i have not.

It was uh, both entrancing and disgusting.

It was like the.

The outer shell was like a quarter as thick as it should be, So you could like squeeze it.

What?

Did you like leave it in vinegar overnight or something?

How did that happen?

No, just the chicken just put it out wrong.

Wait, you know what?

Is the chicken full of vinegar?

Is that what it was?

Maybe.

Sorry, go ahead.

I did that as a, I did the vinegar thing as like a science, something for school, like science fair.

And it like didn't work.

Like, I don't know what was supposed to happen.

I was supposed to like record it, but like every day, I don't know, but I put a vinegar.

You picked like the easiest science project.

I don't even remember it though.

Do it right.

I don't know.

Come on.

So maybe I have seen an egg like that, but not in, oof.

Oof.

French for egg.

O-E-U-F.

Oof.

Uh, yeah.

Tell us, I played a little bit of this as well.

Um, You also did you do a video on your channel about this, or you mentioned it in a video or something.

Because you put this on my radar already last year, I think.

I don't I don't think I made a video on it.

OK, maybe we talked about it on Discord.

I think you did a video about eggs like egg games in the video.

I did, but that was before this.

That was before.

But there's definitely another updated egg video to be made because there's like a lot.

It's like the frog games.

That was a thing for like a long time.

Now there's like egg games yeah, frog fractions, frog detective, you know frogger.

Yeah, how far did you get, danny?

Not too far.

So i only played like maybe 30 minutes or so um, and i'm it's one of these ones where i'm like i'm gonna get back to this and i'm probably gonna play it on steam deck um, because i was playing it on my controller.

I think i was playing on my controller um, i was playing at the pc anyway.

Yeah, this game gets hard quick.

That was my experience.

Describe it.

It's like a puzzle platformer where you're controlling an egg.

Is that the easiest way of saying it?

Yeah, it's like a 3D kind of rage platformer, but there are checkpoints, which is necessary for me.

I don't think I would have quit a long time ago if there were no checkpoints.

But they're just far enough away that you have to kind of work for it.

But then when you get there and like save, then it feels so good.

You can like breathe for like one second before getting into whatever the next crazy thing is.

But yeah, it's really simple.

It's just you roll and then you jump and the egg like feels really like realistic.

Like it's heavier at the bottom, like where it's wider.

So like when you're rolling on your side, you're not going in a straight line.

You're kind of like curving off to the side.

So you have to like balance that.

And then like, depending on how you're positioned when you jump, you can get like different heights and stuff.

And yeah, you can sort of like use the tip of the egg kind of to like lever yourself.

It's yeah, it's.

I found that to be um, novel and interesting and also like, whenever i was stuck on a tiny platform and my egg was like at the wrong 90 degree angle, i was like, oh fuck, how am i supposed to?

You know, you're sort of like embarrassingly shimmying it around trying to get like if you try to jump and like move, but it doesn't like work the way you want it to.

But i love how it's like.

It's like really chill for a like kind of rage game, like it's just raining the whole time.

It's like this dark, like castle area that you could just like hang out in.

Then you're also like stressed the whole, like trying to make it like across this like tiny bridge and you have to like jump over to the tree.

But it's definitely like something that I feel like I would like just work on in little chunks.

Like we like practice this one part and then get to a save, and then like have to quit it and then come back and then like get a little bit further.

Yeah.

That was.

That was my feeling too was like you said.

The checkpoints are like 40, too far for you know, for you to play it easily, I guess.

It's like, yeah, it's not like a comfortable distance.

It's like you have to like kind of keep on your toes.

It was like bonfires in Dark Souls.

It kind of has a Demon Souls-y, Dark Souls-y color to it.

I was going to say the same thing.

There's the color palette and the little titles that pop up when you enter areas and the sort of rainy castles.

It feels like a weird Dark Souls adjacent.

It's like a Dark Souls.

It's in the same canonical universe as Dark Souls.

It's like an abandoned FromSoft game on PS2 that they never bothered to finish but someone found a level file for and they were like what if I just put an egg in here?

Would that work?

But then it's also Minecraft that was one of my points.

Like some of the textures, like there's this like one gravel, like it looks exactly like the minecraft gravel texture and like the, the wooden planks it's like wooden planks a hundred percent, oh yeah.

So i've seen videos of this in co-op as well.

You can play multiple.

Yeah, i saw that too.

Have we?

There's like oh, there's also like community.

Now there's like community maps and stuff like obstacle courses that people have made.

If you beat the game and you want more egg game, then if you're a psychopath,

Yeah.

But it, it doesn't have that.

Like, it's not, this isn't like cat Mario.

Like it's not, it's not freaking you out with its intimidation.

You know, it is weirdly.

Yeah.

Like you know relaxing, I guess, or I'm not sure if that's the right word, but it's like a plastic sort of difficulty.

Yeah.

It's a cool little game.

Oh, you guys got any questions about off?

I think it's cool that there's so many egg games about maneuvering the egg and like thinking about the physics of it.

Like egging on is very similar to this.

Uh, that was one that I talked about.

Yeah.

Okay.

That might've been it.

Yeah.

There you go.

They definitely feel different.

Like, yeah.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

Egging on is like you, it feels like you're lighter.

Like the, you can't feel like you can jump higher and you're a little bit more like acrobatic.

Yeah.

It's a lot more physics based.

Where this one feels less physics based and more like like it's more, there's more I don't know what the word deterministic, I guess.

Like it's, you know what's going to happen if you're on the tip.

In egging on, you have to like consider the momentum of it and everything.

I didn't feel like oof was really that particular about everything you were doing, but there was still some particularity there, which was nice.

Yeah.

I think tone wise actually it's funny to think about this versus egging on, because egging on is like it's liked it well enough, but it does the narrator thing where like every time you fall, it's like don't worry egg, you can get up, you can do anything, and oaf is just like good luck, like just drops you in and is like it's somber and kind of sad and like the rain makes you feel like you're in an effin, an evanescence video, but like it's chill and you're just jumping around as an egg and it's like not annoying at all.

It's weird.

It's like stanley parable versus dark souls egg jumping.

It's very strange.

Yeah, egging on looks really good as well.

It's like very well polished, but there's to me that's more of a like.

Egging on is is the sort of like uh, what's?

It's like one of those climbing games right, it's.

It's like the threat goes up because the yeah, you're going, you're getting higher right yeah, the risk increase like only up or getting.

Yeah exactly yeah, it's more one of those.

This this, this almost feels like just like a bunch of puzzles, but it they've just made them linear.

You know what i mean.

Yeah, like these could be distinct levels to a certain extent, because there is there is looping back and and stuff like that and sort of shortcuts.

Yeah.

Well, it kind of makes sense since they also made Steven sausage roll.

Like, Oh, I guess.

Yeah.

We didn't mention that.

I was going to mention that, but yeah.

All right.

Yep.

There you go.

Visually.

Like you can see a lot of like similarities, I guess.

And like the blocky style and just like the weird, like kind of liminal, like, yeah. what's going on like what's going on in this world why is it like the apocalypse maybe but chill yeah whereas the other one what's it called again um egging on is very like sort of literal you know you're an egg in a cartoon world yeah there's yeah there's like some weird subtext going on here the steam related recommendations between the two are sort of like a funny contrast or comparison where egging on was portal and baby steps are related games whereas oof is a white knuckle and cairn oh that's wow hey that's perfect yeah i feel like that's that explains it well actually there are two types of gamer you know yeah yeah yeah which way western man yeah um that's neat uh there was one other thing i wanted to say oh yeah what are they going to do next then they got they got sausage rolls and eggs what what else do you need on the plate you got to do like a english muffin right toast yeah Yeah, I was going to say pancakes, but no, you're right.

English muffin kind of is interesting, more interesting.

Because it's not a sausage, it's a sausage roll.

That's true.

Yeah, it's a good shape.

And a balance.

And bread got done, right?

Iron bread was one of the early ones.

I think one of the first things you have to do in that is turn yourself into toast.

You have to burn yourself?

That's awesome.

Yeah, I think so.

Do you have to get a toaster?

I forget.

Who knows?

Oof.

Available now on Steam.

Oof.

Just put in the Roblox in the sand there.

You got it.

Available now.

Yeah, exactly.

Tallarico will be at my door in a second.

$8.99 at the moment.

It's 10% off.

It's $10 usually.

You can pick it up for that.

10% off before March 17th, which is this coming Tuesday.

It's also St.

Patrick's Day.

Thank you, St.

Patrick's saint patrick's saint patrick, for checking, chasing all the eggs out of ireland.

Um, i'm gonna quickly talk about poker night at the inventory.

So this is uh, has anyone here played poker night at the inventory?

No, sir.

No, is this the same one from a long time ago?

It is okay.

Yeah, a little bit.

It was a telltale game right back in the day.

I think it was telltale.

And with the original one, who's the developer of the new one?

What'd you say?

Who's the developer of this one?

Do you want me to say the name of the studio?

It's Skunk Ape Games.

Skunk Ape is just a very funny name.

Skunk Ape.

That makes more sense.

I was saying Skunk Ape.

Skunk Ape.

Oh, they did the Salmon Max remasters too.

Skunk Ape is a bunch of people who used to work at Telltale.

Right, but isn't Skunk Ape like a cryptid?

I'm trying to remember why I've heard that before.

Like the Mothman?

It's like a Florida Bigfoot, isn't it?

Oh yes, pretty good okay yeah, so they got the rights to a couple of things over the past few years.

Um, i won't name names.

I know some of these people personally, but they're uh, it's a collection of people who used to work at um telltale and they've been sort of getting some of the games that weren't available anymore online again.

Um so, sam and max they started with um save the world back in 2020.

They got Beyond Time and Space up, a bunch of them.

I think the last one they did was The Devil's Playhouse in 2024.

So this is Poker Night at the Infantry.

It is basically a re-release, I would say like an update of the original game that came out.

God, when did Poker Night come out?

Like 2009 something?

It was like a long, long time ago.

2010, it looks like, according to Steam.

It's basically what Poker Night is.

It's a game where you sit down and play poker.

You play Texas Hold'em.

But the characters you're playing against are characters from other types of media.

So in Poker Night at the Inventory, it was The Heavy from Team Fortress 2.

Strong Bad from, what was the name of that?

Homestar Runner.

Homestar Runner, thank you.

Sam, the bunny from Sam and Max.

Sorry, no.

Yeah, Sam.

No, is that Max?

It's Max.

That's Max.

Yeah, that's Max.

And Tycho from Penny Arcade, also in there as well.

What an odd fucking collection of characters.

No, you know what?

It makes perfect sense.

They're all little rascals, including the Heavy.

They're definitely all, I feel like, a certain generation of internet man.

Yes.

Precisely.

What consumed these particular properties, I feel like.

Yeah, it's very like 2008 pilled game.

You know guy gamer, kind of shit.

Um, because the second one had, like sam from sam and max was in it.

Uh brock from venture bros, ash from army of darkness, clap trap.

Uh was in that one and i think the sort of writing on clap job and that one is actually really good.

Okay, good in the poker night.

Um, and uh and gladys from okay from portal.

Sure too Specifically, I think, the Portal 2 model, I think.

But yeah, so the game I mean, it's Texas Hold'em.

You know you're playing Texas Hold'em, you're playing, you know you're getting, you're calling, you're betting, you're raising, you're doing blinds.

People run out of money and they leave the table and they start hanging out in the back bar.

The whole thing takes place in a bar called the inventory, which is where a bunch of like gamer and cartoon people go hang out um, and this is like just like a little poker game that they're doing.

Um, and the the fun thing about it is it's basically texas hold'em, but like the characters all are well animated and chat to each other and like come out with jokes and quips and things like that.

Some of them are really good at bluffing, some of them are terrible at bluffing.

You sort of, as you play the game, learn their tells and um, you know what they're good and bad at and stuff.

Um, there's some funny like moments like i remember there was one i haven't seen it since, i've been replaying it but like where the heavy when the heavy loses, he like turns over the table and starts shooting his minigun and everything.

And, you know, they've back and forth.

You can turn up and down the banter because they'll like tell these stories and things.

You'll start to hear the stories again and stuff.

But like, I love this game because it was how I learned Texas Hold'em.

I did not know poker or anything prior to playing these games in 09, I guess.

And it was a really like safe way to, like a safe space to learn poker.

Cause, you know I, I didn't.

We've talked about, like you know, me and no cops not playing, a lot of games that involve like getting a group together.

It was the same with poker, where it was like the the nerves of being bad at poker.

In front of poker, people just seemed like the threshold to learning poker.

That was too high for me.

You don't want to let your uncle with a gambling addiction down.

Yeah.

I don't, I don't need that, you know?

And there is a lot of like sort of, you know, i don't know over masculinity shit when it comes to poker and like bravado because you're all like you know all that stuff so i i've i was like ah it's for not for me whereas like this was actually like a really cool uh you know way to experience texas hold'em and like no especially knowing when to bluff because like you know bluffing is hard in real life but bluffing in a game is like oh i got fuck all here but like yeah whatever let's see you know like max is terrible at bluffing so i'm gonna i'm gonna just like go all in with him and he'll be like all right you know um so it's uh yeah i i enjoyed it and yeah the read the remake it looks better you know the sound the loading time at the start was a was a bit much maybe they're patching some stuff but apart from that like once you're in the game probably because there's like no loading games in the actual game itself um no loading times but yeah you can like skip if you if you fold you can skip to the next round and it'll sort of cleverly show you what happened and there are a bit of like uh tool tips at the start if you don't know how poker works but um they'd also like talk to you and tell you things and there's a narrator that sort of suggests stuff and reminds you of things um yeah it's a really well produced game and i'm delighted to have an excuse to play it again and it's great that it's here and i think uh yeah it'll be good on a steam deck as well um it's funny you said it looks better and i totally i do agree uh but there's a comparison screenshot on the steam page between the 2010 original and the 2026 it looks exactly the same except for like the lighting and colors and but like the models look roughly the same and the heavy looks exactly the same it's yeah i'd say the resolution like when you're playing it on a full screen yeah it looks sharper than i because i went back and watched some videos because i was trying to tell How much got done?

Like they didn't.

I don't know like how much retexturing or anything, but I think it runs at higher resolution.

The lighting is definitely better.

Um, but yeah, you're right.

This is not like a, a remaster or anything right, this is them getting it working again, adding in some quality of life stuff and modern affordances.

Um, what are the uh?

Are there any like cultural references that they maintain that feel a little dated, not like you know?

Oh wow, i can't believe.

They said that i'm tugging on my collar, but like i see they they're doing shutter shades in the original version.

Oh yeah yeah yeah, that's a strong bad reference, i think.

Or is it a Kanye West reference?

No, it's a Strong Bad thing.

Is it Strong Bad before Kanye?

Did Kanye rip off Homestar Runner?

Is that what that is?

Kanye rips off fucking everyone.

I guess so, but that just seems so strange to me that that's where he got that from.

Yeah, and Apex Twins piano music.

There you go.

Yep.

Among other things.

Yeah, under the Shutter Shades it also says Danger-esque 2, which is a Strong Bad reference as well.

Oh, wow.

All right.

There you go.

Yeah, i don't remember the humor in it being like very of the i'm sure it was of the era just by virtue of the style of humor, like the jokes they're telling, but like the actual content of them was you know, it's all.

It's all quippy, fun stuff.

And most of the people who put this together i you know, are like narrative team people, so the i always remember the first, the both games being funny, like they have funny lines, like it's the people who wrote sam and max, so they know how to do quips, um.

So uh yeah, there's.

And then there's like there's like things you can do, like i forget it.

There's like items you can collect.

Like every once in a while somebody will run out of money but they'll put up their like i think the heavy puts up his gun at one stage as collateral um when he goes all in or something, and then you can collect those and they give you stuff.

I think this is originally how i got like my no, the airpods on my team, on my team fortress.

Again, i got from playing on mac, but i think there was some items you could get um for Team Fortress by playing this game.

Okay.

I can't remember.

Maybe the watch.

Something like that.

Wait, AirPods?

I have AirPods, like wired AirPods.

Yeah.

Oh, those aren't AirPods then.

As a hat.

Oh, what are they called?

Earpods?

Just like earbuds.

Earbuds.

Wireless.

Okay, cool.

No, I was seeing if there was like Apple brand integration here that I was... No, no, no, no.

In Team Fortress.

I have a pair of Apple wired earphones.

Uh, because i played it on mac.

The first week it came out and they became super rare and i would have people in my fucking inbox all the time asking to buy them because of the steam, the steam marketplace stuff.

So you know, it's weird.

I don't know if they're worth it now.

But now that you're mentioning team fortress, when we were talking about slay the spire, i went to look up how many hours i had played and in my mind i have like 400 000 hours on team fortress 2 for some reason.

Uh, but i only have like 100 hours, which is weird.

I feel like.

That felt like way, i mean, that's a lot for me.

I usually don't play games that much um unless like, i have like 80 on sekiro and that's like a shit ton.

But i was, i don't.

I don't know when they started counting the hours, because they definitely different from uh.

That's a really good point because, like my half-life 2 numbers were like really low and i was like what the fuck?

That's a really good point.

I've played this game like eight times the whole way through.

Okay.

That makes way more sense, because I was like was it just like a being young thing where summer feels like forever?

Right.

I couldn't tell.

Also, as an aside, you said you learned poker late.

I had the opposite experience, where I was obsessed with cards as a child and I ran a poker ring in my third grade classroom during recess.

What, um?

And i got in trouble and my teacher, mrs shoot, pulled me her name was mrs shoot, uh pulled me aside and was like you can't be like gambling your children.

And i was like well, what if it's not gambling, what if it's chancing?

And she's like, what the fuck are you talking about?

Wow, it's like well, it's not really.

We're like we're practicing like math skills and probability.

And she was like okay, if you don't gamble for anything real, and i'll fucking turn a blind eye.

So i ran a People would gamble for snacks and bits of their lunch and stuff.

That's real.

Snacks are real, yeah.

No, I know.

No, it's just funny that she's like, not money, just things that cost money.

Well, yeah.

I didn't say I heeded her warning.

I just said that she said it.

That's amazing.

Fair play yeah, but i played a shit boy.

He's gonna grow up to be a criminal, probably.

That is probably what you thought.

Yeah no, i played so much fuck.

We used to do like tournaments in high school for you know, like at the time, you know, like a couple hundred bucks on the line for everyone playing like a tournament um, was a shit ton of money.

It got heated.

I i i, as an adult, i feel like i got gambling out of my system.

I feel like i smoked 100 cigarettes or like like, like bobby hill uh, and now i can't smoke cigarettes anymore.

Oh my lord.

Uh, march 2009 is when they started tracking hours played um, apparently on steam.

So there you go.

So yeah, team fortress would have been 2006.

Tf2, i think.

Orange box was 08, so tf2 on pc, i think it was 2006, maybe 2007.

So a few years your good years were uh, were there.

You don't have your cs.

16 hours are probably pitifully low.

Just all the capture you did for that documentary on dust, too Cool beans.

That's Poker Night at DMTree.

You can pick it up for $10 over on Steam.

Would you believe it?

And we have one more game this week.

Pokemon Pocopia?

Is that what we're saying?

Yeah, Pocopia.

Cornucopia Pocopia tomato, tomato.

Everyone's talking about this thing.

What is it?

It's a pokemon game.

Aren't you a digimon guy?

What happened?

I am, i committed the cardinal digi sin and i, i crossed the aisle and i'm over here in pokemon land.

Um, so here's the thing i don't give a shit about pokemon, and not like from a oh my, my camp is digimon related.

I've always tried to get into pokemon and i just like can't.

I just couldn't do.

I don't know what it is maybe, i just like needed to get into it.

When i was younger, i watched the movie a lot like pokemon 2000.

I watched a couple times.

Um, Entei is cool.

I like the unknown.

That's a cool idea for a Pokemon.

Um, but this one I was interested in for two reasons.

One.

They showed the original trailer and it it is a ditto appearing in a magical Minecraft world that then they can copy other pokemon's powers, and the ditto looks like a human and i was like what the fuck is going on?

Is it animal crossing?

Pick a lane?

Um.

And then nintendo was like yeah, putting their weight behind it, really marketing the game, really putting it out there and like, if you're, if nintendo was doing something weird and really marketing it, that probably means it's good, usually like, or at least worth checking out, because if it's, they don't.

They don't tend to go strange, they tend to go pretty, pretty conservative and safe on most of their stuff.

Yeah, um.

So this one was exciting for me for that reason alone.

I was like, maybe this will be the thing that gets me interested in Pokemon.

And you know what?

I absolutely adore Pokemon Pocopia.

I think this is like the most fun i've had with one of these kinds of games in a long time.

So this is a developed, i think, in part, by the team that worked on dragon quest builders um, the sort of minecraft style dragon quest game where you can build towns and houses and buildings and furniture and like, design things as you wish, and then there's also missions and quests and stuff to do and like npcs you can talk to and build relationships with, and pokemon pokopia has a similar structure in that You are collecting resources, building stuff.

It's not unlike Minecraft.

It's not unlike Animal Crossing.

You have interiors that you can decorate with different furniture that you build with resources that you find around the world.

There are like trees you can cut down and stones you can pick up.

Things like that.

You can break blocks.

But like the way that you do those things isn't like you just punch them with your?

Well, I guess you do punch them with your fists.

But you don't just start out punching them with your fists or like build a you know a wooden axe right away.

You get Pokemon powers that your player character, who is a Ditto, can copy from the other Pokemon.

Is that something Dittos can do already?

Yeah, Ditto's whole thing is that they Ditto, they do the thing that the other Pokemon do.

And like copy their look and abilities.

But they get like a derpy little face.

They get a derpy little Ditto face.

So it's cute.

So they're like the cultural appropriatism Pokemon.

I guess so, yeah.

I mean, there was a point where they probably copied Mr Mime, like the early designs of it, and they looked like they were doing a minstrel face.

Yeah, or Jinx.

Sorry, Jinx, not Mr. Mime.

You got it right.

See, fake fan.

I don't know anything about Pokemon.

Um, so yeah, Digimon, that was called the racist Mon.

Yeah, basically minstrel Mon minstrel Mon.

I love that.

No, that would be a Digimon.

Um, so, um, yeah, the, uh, the way that you get those abilities is from meeting the other Pokemon.

And like, you can only get some of them over time.

So you start with like you can make grass come out of the ground, or like you can cut stuff, you can spew water and it's all.

It's all functionally.

It makes sense.

Like it's, it's a good pacing to make sure that you get these abilities over time.

But the way that you get the Pokemon to appear is the thing that makes the game really interesting.

So it's not just like you're walking around this big world and there's a ton of Pokemon.

The story set up is that you appear in a cave with um, i don't remember what the professor pokemon is called, but like this big, hairy sheep dog looking ass pokemon um, and you just like interact with them.

There's a pokedex, you pick it up and it's like, i don't know, there's no more pokemon in the world or humans, it's just you and me, i don't know.

And then you go yeah dude, it's weird.

You go outside and you like build, or you you start spewing water because you meet a squirtle and that's like the one thing you meet at the start.

Um you, you get its ability, you start spewing water and then you learn that the way that you make other Pokemon appear is you have to build specific setups of resources in the world.

So like four plots of grass can count as a, as a home for Pokemon.

Oh my God, they made Viva Pinata.

Yes, yes.

This is Viva Pinata.

It is Viva Pinata pill, dude.

It's Viva Pinata.

Wow.

It's fucking Dragon Quest Builders.

Fudge Hog is back, baby.

Let's go.

That's right.

Dude, I look, man it's.

I'm so glad that this game connected for you in that same way.

Someone described it like that and i was like i was already in.

Now i'm all the way in viva piata forever, um.

So like you do that, or like sometimes it's it's actual furniture that you have, like one of them.

Early on there's a fighting type pokemon.

You unlock hitmonchamp i think is his name, or hitmonchamp or something like that Um, you put a punching bag next to a bench and then he just like shows up at some point.

It's great.

That puzzle aspect of like figuring out how to make them appear.

Sometimes you get a hint that will tell you roughly the shape you need to make or like someone will be like oh, I'm really I'm tired.

I wish there was a shade behind this patch of grass and like, oh, what if I put a tree here?

Oh, that makes something spawn.

Great.

It's a fun way of doing them all.

But instead of like sort of a cockfighting style, capturing them and putting them in servitude, you you're just like you're you're I guess you're a landlord.

Are they paying rent?

Uh no, I mean, I do.

I do put them into a denture servitude and they and they are forced to.

Uh, you know, build things for me at my request, but you know it's okay.

It's all friendly.

They love me for doing it and they praise me and they give me gifts.

Um, don't look into it too hard.

The land that they're working on, Jesse.

Well, I mean, yeah, if I want to kick them out, that's what they get.

Uh, it's not my fault.

That's how the game set up.

Actually, it's funny.

The building stuff is like you assign Pokemon to build buildings and, like the Pokemon, have different traits.

So like you have one that's good at building or one that's good at demolition or whatever.

And you can assign a location to be like this is where I'm going to build the Pokemon center, or whatever.

And you have to have a certain kind of Pokemon that can get it set up and build all that.

But when you're doing it, it takes actual real life time to build the structure.

It's not just like, you know, you wait 30 seconds.

It'll be like in 16 minutes, this will be done.

Oh my God.

Okay.

It's an idle game.

No cops is on board.

See, stuff like that, though, usually bugs me.

But here it works because it's like, okay, well, these two Pokemon are off doing their thing.

I'm going to go into a cave and look for something or go get some resources or whatever.

Because in idle games where they do that stuff, it's usually like, oh, well, I've done everything.

Everything's queued up.

Now I'm just waiting.

But this is like there's so many things to do and in dragon quest builder style, a game that i haven't really played that much of, but i played probably like 15 hours of dragon quest builders 2 um, they're always introducing new stuff, like there's tons of new.

I don't want to get too into it because people should play it on their own.

I think it's a great game, but there's so many mechanics that just open up over time ways that you interact with the pokemon that i weren't expecting.

Like there's parties and like funny stuff, character interactions where they like come up to me and they're like hey, I named my character Jesse because I'm boring.

But they're like, hi, Jesse.

Hmm.

I like that, Jesse.

I'm going to stop calling you Ditto.

It makes me feel like we're more friends.

And I was like, what are you doing?

Don't do this to me.

I'm going to fall in love with you and we're going to hang out every day.

I'm going to bring you on adventures.

Yeah, I man just designing, building, exploring.

Everything feels awesome.

Sounds awesome.

Looks awesome.

It is.

It turns out.

The Pokemon games are good and maybe I should play more of them.

But I'm digging this one.

I can't wait for them to make Digicopia.

I'll play the hell out of that.

Yeah, that's going to happen.

That's definitely going to happen.

Yeah, Bandai Namco's got money.

They could do it.

I'm getting my wires crossed because earlier NoCops was mentioning Minecraft.

But did you mention Minecraft while explaining this with this?

Yes yeah yeah yeah yeah, and it does have that aspect to it like even the head of water comes down.

Yeah, it looks very similar, very minecrafty.

Yeah yeah, the sort of block dropping.

Look to it um, and you can like destroy the environment in the same way, like you can break blocks and stuff, you get the.

Actually, it's funny, you get it from the punching pokemon and you punch the blocks to break them.

Perfect, I didn't need to get a pickaxe tool with the Pokemon.

I just want to punch them.

Does every Pokemon you get have, like, an ability that you can mimic?

So far, I haven't got them from everybody.

Like, I want Charizard so I could burn things, but I haven't gotten that yet.

But like, if you pick up Clefki you know the key Pokemon, like I guess that could open a door or something.

But, like, Vanillite, the fucking ice cream Pokemon.

You know what I mean?

Like, what's that going to do?

It turns you into ice cream.

You're delicious.

Yeah, but then what are you going to do with that?

It'll be like that scene in Marty Supreme.

Everyone just comes over and licks you.

Not seen that.

Now I don't know if I want to.

Oh, you should.

It's a great scene.

It's the best scene in the whole movie.

Yeah, Pokemon Pocopia.

It's a great game.

Pokemon will come lick you if you get the right abilities.

No, no.

I think it's very fun.

It's the kind of game that I didn't think I was going to like as much as I did, because I don't really get into Animal Crossing and stuff.

It's like just having missions, having a structure to it that encourages you to go, do things outside of your own desire for you know, exploration and your imagination, your ability to decorate.

If you aren't the kind of person inclined to do that stuff on your own, it gives you enough things to encourage you to go do stuff if you get bored of placing furniture in the right direction, which I really appreciate it.

I dig it a lot. i think it's cool to see a pokemon game that isn't just you know like collecting monsters to do turn-based battle against each other um i think even as like i'm not a huge pokemon fan i loved pokemon red when i played it as a kid and you know up to like pokemon stadium or whatever um but i have not kept up with pokemon at all but i've always thought it was a very rich world of like interesting colorful bizarre little characters uh but yeah i don't know something about just like collecting them and making them fight it feels like it's been done so many fucking times yeah and like pokemon snap i think is in that same vein of like what if we found interesting ways for these creatures to interact with each other or exist in the world on their own and even the narrative of pokemon pokopia it's very subtle so far at the beginning um but there are there's this like underlying feeling of like the pokemon needing a trainer in some weird way i don't know what they're getting at i need to see more if it needs to taught how to live but it's like the ditto copies the trainer and they're all like oh great there's a train i'm gonna hang and like we oh we actually like having a trainer it's nice and i'm like i don't know what we're getting at here i don't know what the point is i need to see what we're doing with this human narrative that's like lingering in the background um but it's it's it's i bet it'll inspire a lot of annoying video essays that are either really smart or far too far too long and have a bunch of intellectual speaking of pokemon snap this has nothing to do with noclip like us noclip but have you guys ever seen noclip.website dude i love that it's great all the time have you ever looked at the pokemon snap one of it because it has i don't think so i'll put it in this is a website that basically allows you to sort of like explore levels in lots and lots and lots of games like just kind of as you will noclip through them but on your web browser it's um it's super cool So if you go to that one, it has you're like throwing apples and pokeballs.

So it actually has the interactivity of Pokemon Snap built into the viewer.

So it is sort of like you're no clipping around, but also you can all the interactions you missed every time when you're actually playing Pokemon Snap, or you have to like hit slow poke with the apple or whatever.

You can just no clip around and do it's very cute.

This is great.

Somebody else should make a Pokemon Snap style game, but like good.

It would be hard unless you had like cause Pokemon.

Snap the appeals like the gameplay is is fun, but it being like cute little characters is so much of the appeal.

You'd have to have a really strong visual identity for it.

I feel like that happens a lot when somebody else tries to make a Nintendo game like a game, like something that Nintendo would make or has made in the past.

And it's always like our version of it, but our characters aren't as good.

It's like, Oh, okay.

Yeah.

It turns out that is actually a really important part of it.

Isn't that what a Panko park is like, is this the one where you like take pictures?

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah, Penko Park.

It's like a little creepy, cute monster thing.

Oh, I didn't realize that's what this was.

I've never played this.

This looks cute.

I also feel like kind of like, I don't know, Bugsnax gives me a little bit of that vibe.

Yeah, it's in the same sort of vein.

Pokemon kind of thing.

Is Penko Park, this is out, is it?

Oh, yeah, this is years old.

Oh, a long time ago.

Okay, okay, okay.

Yeah, yeah. um yeah yeah or like the look of this game or umarangi generation i guess tactically related hunting games i could play where i just take pictures of actual animals and just that's that's close enough real deer are cute too man this studio ghost butter makes some cool shit i'm gonna check some of this out yeah pokemon go was the game that i played the most pokemon of um oh really that was a that's a great i mean it's still collecting stuff but like from a gameplay perspective it's such a different you know experience like walking around the real world and and you know all the social stuff i remember being back home in ireland and like the lads all going like oh my god like a like a snorlax spawned over by the school you know what i mean and we all jumped in a car and drove over there so they could get we could get the snorlax or think we were i was away in europe and there was like a special pokemon that was only available in europe for a while or something like yeah they i think they did a great job with that but it is interesting how at least they're doing it like they're making their sort of tried and true pokemons here and there but at least they are um you know housing this this is namco banda is it or who's no this is koei tecmo sorry koei the other one koei tecmo the other ones are names yeah so that you know it's cool i think that they're they're not as precious with it as nintendo are with a lot of other you know properties yeah so there you go specific by the way the developer omega force under koei tecmo okay omega force very good even even cooler that it's probably a if not a subsidiary a partner maybe of them so that's uh that's pretty cool uh justify your switch to today with pokemon pokopia pokopia 69.99 jesse how we feeling it Nice, nice.

Yeah.

I mean, I was just saying from a cost perspective.

Oh, I thought you were doing a 69 joke.

Um, finally, that's the funny one.

Not six, seven.

Um, yeah.

You know what price it's fine.

It's okay.

I didn't do the hands.

Um, price wise.

Yeah.

I mean, it sucks.

It's I'm not happy to, especially cause up here, I think I came to one 13 with tax.

Um, yeah, brother.

I'm like, there's a reason I don't buy brand new triple a video games anymore.

Uh, especially when part of our job is sort of talking about games.

Um, I'm not doing that.

Unless, I really think it's going to be cool and this one really appealed to me.

It's nice to have another game to play on my Switch too.

There's a lot of stuff, but this is the second thing to appeal to me after Donkey Kong Bonanza.

So I was willing to put the money down.

And hey, you know what?

It's a great paternity game.

I don't have to worry about timing or anything.

You just walk around, you explore the world, and when the baby cries, it's okay to stand up and leave it there.

That's true.

That's all babies want.

It's just for you to put the bench in the right spot.

I'll do it.

Get them to work.

Pokemon, Pokopia from Omega Force and Game Freak.

Game Freak.

Omega Force made fucking Winback.

Do you guys remember Winback?

Operation Winback?

Oh, wow.

Wasn't that the first game with cover?

I think it was the first cover shooter.

I loved that game as a kid.

I don't even think it's a good game, but I don't know.

I just played so much of it.

Operation Winback.

Winback. it's like it feels now this makes sense because it does feel a little bit like somebody saying something who isn't a native english speaker yeah i wonder what the title is in japanese like operation get get victory you know get prize win back yeah pretty cool uh that's a classic i think everyone should go play operation win back all right great name that's there's a i'm man we were making some weird ass sounding games back then like siphon filter yeah yeah win back oh originally spelled win back we know this is the the win baku okay so it's just win back yeah it does sound cooler i feel like it has the room baku mean win baku it probably just means win back yeah yeah it's in as i feel like it's like it's it's you know how when something when you watch a movie in japanese you can't tell if the acting is good yes you're like oh everyone's acting the fuck out of this role because i can't understand like they're yelling so much i feel like this is the opposite where they were like oh like japanese people heard that they're like oh that's like an american sounding phrase like win back that sounds so cool and we're like what the fuck are you talking about win back what does that mean but it's weird because if they just kept it in the japanese way it does sound cool i'm all in on win baku that's yeah mean it's a bit like the capital of azerbaijan but otherwise it's uh it's pretty pretty sick um that was a lot of games folks uh we're going to draw this podcast to a close we got some emails well i'll keep them for next week because we have uh we've uh we talked about a lot today and we're actually recording a lot this week because of computer worlds uh like i said head over to noclip2 and check out videos from nocaps jeremy jesse and myself all about Some of the awesome games that were in the showcase.

Go check out the showcase.

Go check out the Steam page.

Links in the description of this podcast.

Otherwise, Disco 5 is up at the moment.

Disco 6 is online.

Noclip patrons in early access.

We're going to get another episode of Metal Garasha up, so it should be up on the NoteClip 2 Patreon by the time you're listening to this.

And then, yeah, we'll have news on new NoteClip stuff.

We have a bunch of smaller projects I want to get out in the next month.

Jeremy's awesome Star Wars Galaxy video we made last year.

Some videos from our friends at Torby working on Everbloom.

And, yeah, probably all in on Cyberpunk then after that.

Finally get that one.

Get that one out there.

So loads going on.

Folks, please support us.

Patreoncom slash noclip and patreoncom slash noclip2 and go check out computer worlds and uh yeah, we'll see you again, no caps.

Thanks for joining us this week, really appreciate it.

It's nice to talk to somebody who's not constantly bringing up wrestling all the time.

Oh wow, he's not even here to defend himself.

I know yeah, he's seeing wrestling.

He's happier than he would be on the pod, to be fair.

What's your hobby you would like to talk about that has nothing to do with video games?

Do you have any, or are you a sicko like me who doesn't really?

I don't really have one.

I used to be into rock climbing, but I haven't done that in a while.

Why'd you stop?

Too hard?

Too boring?

I loved it, but I hated the drive there.

I want to be able to walk to it.

Yes.

Yeah, hell yeah.

That's fair. what you need to get is a mountain, you know?

Oh, those are cheap.

Yeah.

For your backyard.

Just get, get a, I had a friend actually who did a, who put up like one of those climbing walls.

Okay.

What do you call the things?

Like a little bouldering grabs.

I don't know what they're called.

Handle hold.

I'm asking, I'm asking her.

She holds.

There you go.

Yeah.

I feel like yeah, he did that in his garage and I was like that's really cool.

I'd be fucking terrified.

I did it wrong, like all the time, like i would not trust that i had not fucked this up and i'm gonna like fall off this thing.

I'd also there's a mat.

Oh yeah, there's a mat.

Yeah, unless the whole wall comes down, then that's a different problem.

At that point i'm glad it fell on me.

Just take me out, you know.

That way i don't have to fix it.

Yeah, It'd be amazing if like, Alex Honnold was still alive but Was.

What happened?

No, he is still alive.

Sorry, I'm creating a hypothetical future in which somebody dies in their like garage climbing and he's still doing L-Cap with no ropes and he's like he's totally fine.

I do have to inject and just say that I found another source that says the title in Japanese for Winback was Impossible Mission, which I had to share because it's just Mission Impossible backwards.

Yeah, that's worse.

That's probably why they couldn't call it that.

Probably in america that's what videogamesmuseumcom says it's called, so it must be true.

I have heard of impossible mission before so yeah, i didn't know that's what that was.

Is that the one starring cruise tom?

Yeah, thank you.

Do you know?

Do you know the zootopia movies?

Um yeah, they're called zootopolis in europe.

Oh, that's cool, which is very.

Is that that coppola movie bears?

Yeah exactly yeah yeah like yeah, they also cost like hundreds of millions more, yet the guy, pixar or whatever, had to sell his vineyard to to keep it.

Apparently there is a?

Um, i think it's a, like a german water park or animal park that's called zootopia.

So they couldn't call it that in europe.

Okay, they had to come up with something else.

Is that what they call pokemon pocopia in europe?

They call it pokemon pocopolis.

I like that actually.

I just love to watch Megalopolis.

No, you don't.

No, I don't think you do.

I want to watch the documentary about Megalopolis.

Yes.

Sorry.

What is that?

It's Adam Driver.

I thought you were imitating whatever car was driving past.

I thought you were just doing a vocal imitation of a car noise.

Love it.

Hopefully our video on Big Walk is up because this is basically the vibe of the whole thing.

Keep your eyes peeled for that as well, folks.

All right.

Thanks again, No Caps.

Hopefully we'll have you back on again.

Frank Howley, if you're listening, apologies.

We love your wrestling.

Please don't be mad at me.

JCrew pleasure.

As always, thanks to all of our incredible uh patrons and listeners.

Thank you all so much.

We hope you enjoy computer worlds.

It's been a dream putting it together or supporting the folks putting it together.

Go play some awesome games games we talked about today on the pod, the games on computer worlds and we'll talk again to you next week bye.

[Exploring New Frontiers: Big Walk, Slay the Spire 2, and the Rise of 'Hangout' Games]-[Big Walk, Banquet for Fools, Pokemon Pokopia]

📋 Summary

A New Era of Social Gaming: The 'Big Walk' Experience

Refining Roguelike Perfection: Slay the Spire 2

Aesthetic and Mechanical Depth in Indie CRPGs

The 'Viva Piñata' Effect: Pokémon: Concierge-like Mechanics

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Exploring New Frontiers: Big Walk, Slay the Spire 2, and the Rise of 'Hangout' Games]-[Big Walk, Banquet for Fools, Pokemon Pokopia]

📋 Summary

A New Era of Social Gaming: The 'Big Walk' Experience

Refining Roguelike Perfection: Slay the Spire 2

Aesthetic and Mechanical Depth in Indie CRPGs

The 'Viva Piñata' Effect: Pokémon: Concierge-like Mechanics

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

ListenLeap Brings You Into Real Context Learning