Hell Clock, Fata Deum - The God Sim, The Little Tomb: The Maholova Club and the Search for a Dead Body | Noclip Crewcast

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Hello, friends, and welcome to episode 245 of the Noclip podcast.

How are you all doing?

How are you all doing these days, folks?

Jesse, don't look at me like that.

You can just say two at any stage now.

We know what it refers to.

Two.

See?

It's impossible.

You cannot escape Noclip 2.

I didn't even put it together.

You're so smart and insightful.

Thank you.

I think that's what people say about me famously.

They say that guy, that guy over there, that drunk guy on the Spider-Man-ing his way home.

He's insightful.

Can you do that when you're drunk?

Can you make webs come out of you?

Your arms.

Spider-Man is when you're so drunk that you're holding the wall home.

Oh.

You know what I mean?

You're walking down the street like that.

I guess I've never been that drunk that I had to come up with a word for it. it's true yeah well usually it's not the person doing it that's coming up with the word spider man exactly yeah it's just procedural animation it's when in a triple a game you get too close to the wall it's true you put your hand up to touch it you turn into a crab it's like the division you know yeah remember remember when he closed the door remember when it blew everyone's minds that's how stagnated triple a games are right there look at that they're drunk fucking door closes and we're like yeah go home ubisoft you're drunk uh frank howdy what's your favorite ubisoft game oh man i can't think of any wow it was finally stumped him it's the only time frank has ever been stumped you're right i guess technically scott pilgrim versus the world since they put they published that as like an xbox live arcade game and then yeah and then wouldn't give them back the rights for like a decade in the game you know but yeah wow so even that is a backhanded compliment yeah yeah wow how many ubisoft games jeremy what's your favorite ubisoft game noclip has done a documentary on i don't we've never done one have we no never i've been to ubisoft but only because i did a uh i did a freelance gig for them a million years ago um what's the music what's the guitar game they published oh uh good uh rocksmith yeah i went to a gig where they had like the three best rocksmith players in the world and they played a concert and it was like this you could be this good if you're a gifted 12 year old prodigy who plays rocksmith I remember this gig.

Was this at E3?

No, it was in San Francisco.

They probably traipsed them around the world, though, showing off these prodigy children.

I remember you were prodigy children.

Wow.

It's like the new disco.

Disco?

It's the new dance act from the UK with all the children of Keith Flint's children and Maxim's children.

It's good stuff.

That was a terrible joke.

I'll just leave that in, Jesse.

Oh, I will.

Don't worry.

Just to humble me smart smart, that guy's smart, uh d.

I remember you working on that gig and didn't they like ask you to like film, like way too much for one person.

Like didn't they like you're they like the pitch they sent you ended up being like this thing.

That was almost like reality tv, like you to hang around with these people, or that was a different thing.

That was a different gig.

Um okay, i i don't know if i should, should i say who these gigs are for.

I guess, like a decade ago It was for another large company, one of the ones that people don't really like.

One of those media companies that you hear about.

Insert yours here.

Yeah, just choose your own adventure.

They were doing a separate documentary gig about people going to people who were like fans.

That's a hint towards the outlet of of creative people going to Comic-Con and like writing an article about their hyper fixation or something.

So like there was a, a young woman, who was a big fan of um uh, i feel like frank will know this.

What's the name of the guy who made fairly odd parents who does like comics?

Oh, my god craig, it's like butch hartman.

But yeah yeah yeah exactly, butch harvard.

So she was like writing an article about something he drew and then we like went and had lunch with butch hartman and her and i just like filmed.

So i had to film four mini documentaries across like two days at comic-con, with four different people who were in four different places outstanding.

It was a nightmare.

It's like 50 bucks an hour.

I've never even seen it.

I don't even know if it exists anywhere.

Oh, me and Frank know about that.

We worked on a documentary last year that no one will ever see as well.

White label one.

So, you know, hey, look, happens to the best of us.

You got paid, right, Jeremy?

I got paid.

That's all that matters.

A little late, but maybe one day we'll do like a secret showing of the secret tape project that never came out for reasons that we're not quite sure.

But I don't think it was the quality of the video.

I think it was pretty great.

I don't know.

We'll get to, yeah, in 10 years time, we'll talk about that one.

But hey, we got to go to France and Korea a lot.

So, you know, good fun on that end.

Hey, you know who's not from France and Korea?

Are you going to say our beautiful Battle Pass holders?

Our Battle Pass holders.

I don't think so.

There's got to be one French person in there.

There might be a French person.

What are you saying about our penetration in Asia?

We could have some Korean Americans.

I feel like, yeah, that's, yeah, maybe.

I was about to say, we don't, I was about to say something that might be interpreted as racist.

No, you saying something like that.

I was going to say we don't cover enough strategy games.

You know what i mean.

Like, we don't call it like a starcraft thing.

Yeah, that's not on the scale, if you want me to rate it for you.

Yeah yeah, that's a light, that's a light schism is that yeah?

Yeah, it's not like a sig heil, but it's definitely it's clocking on the, it's on the meter.

Okay, i'm raising the shoulder, i'm not, i'm not going full extension yet, but i'm kind of um yeah sorry, all of our, all of our battle pass holders now associated with this conversation.

But thank you also.

Also, i don't know, patreon's being very weird today and i had this problem earlier with shift f1, where i was like did a bunch of people just sign up?

Because are these people people from before?

Because i know a lot of these names and they're back in here and i'm like is patreon broken or are they?

Are they back?

So let's find out together, folks.

Shout out to all of our incredible Battle Pass holders who support us over at patreoncom.

Slash noclip, including Lovepreet.

Yush.

Tiny... Is that Tal?

It is.

Tiny Tal.

Dwayne the Rock Lobster.

Anthony Thomas.

Nico Passateri.

It's a me, Ferrario.

We have the Italians, anyway.

Senator Armstrong.

Redredge.

Harry Flanagan.

Joosh.

Arno.

Matt Pearson.

James Brown.

Mark Rojas.

Quote.

Tucker Morgan.

Goddison.

Sven Hooster.

Pez.

John Akers.

Ewan Nate.

Tim Robinson.

Forrest Pruitt.

Dark Insanities.

Jonathan Kremen.

Eric Hamilton Schneider.

Christophe Fatoui.

Could be French.

Fatoui.

Sure.

Pakatui.

Sorry, Christoph.

Enochs.

Cameron Ladd.

Enochs has jumped in in front of Cameron Ladd.

They're the pregame for Cameron Ladd now.

Well done.

Zachary Snader.

Alex Couchet.

George Sakotis.

Jacob.

God serve.

Entheogen.

James.

Out of the corner of my eye.

I always see Jesse doing the sign of the cross whenever Jacob Godservice said it.

It always makes me laugh.

James Med, Tohir Tillyev, and Rison, thank you all so much for your support.

And thank you so much to the incredible supporters of Noclip2.

We launched Noclip2 last week.

We have a bunch of people signed up.

We have about 300 or 350-odd patrons over there.

Thank you so much.

We really, really appreciate it.

All our numbers over there are public.

We also have 2.3 thousand members.

I thought you were going to say million.

I was like, wow.

Jesus.

Two point three one members.

Two point three.

Jesus, two and a half thousand.

That's two thousand three hundred members.

Pop those numbers.

Just say five thousand.

Why not?

Exactly.

So about two thousand free members there who also will be getting access to our free um uh game recommendation newsletter, basically our little no clip to zine, which will be going out the first of every month.

So there will be one in a couple of weeks time.

So sign up for that.

It's free.

You just have to have a patreon account and hit the button and you'll get that, and we won't spam you with a million and one things or anything like that.

It's not.

That's not the way it'll run.

It's basically a way for us to have another way we can get a bunch of games out and sort of re-remind people about the games that we've covered either on the podcast or on Noclip 2 and all that sort of stuff.

And we have a bunch of stuff hitting the channel this week.

A lot of it will be up by the time this podcast lands.

So we'll talk about that at the housekeeping at the at the end of the show.

But massive thanks to everyone.

We also have almost 10,000 new subscribers on the YouTube channel itself.

So it's up to, I don't know, 64K or something like that.

So that's that's super cool as well.

So thank you all for supporting.

This mission, the like full transparency, super happy with the reception that we got from people.

They seem to selling.

The idea was.

The scariest part of this was like being like.

Will people know what this is and understand what it is different to?

No clip?

And that's been really great.

And we've had so many emails and people reaching out with ideas for coverage and games and stuff like that.

And we had a meeting yesterday.

All of us, and just the ideas and the passion that are coming out, is fantastic.

And I'm really excited about all the stuff that we have already in the works in post-production and other stuff that's coming out or about to be started to get worked on.

Which is amazing.

Great to see the pop on the YouTube channel as well.

Really excited about that.

The Patreon numbers that we got are probably lower than I was hoping for the start of this.

Just full transparency.

But as we talked about yesterday in the meeting, I understand why this is a weird pitch.

This is an odd channel.

It's definitely super niche.

And also I understand that...

We kind of to a lot of people, this is a renaming of an existing channel.

I think like to us, it's not to me.

Certainly it's not.

It's like the stuff that's going to come out now is going to be very different and feel very different to what we had been producing before.

But I also 100 percent understand that people need to see the proof in the pudding.

And that's our job now is to is to take this.

Awesome group of people who have joined us on this journey and all the people who are watching the channel and subscribed, and to really carve out this new type of games coverage, which largely sort of started here on the podcast.

In many ways, Noclip 2 is an extension of this podcast rather than something coming from Noclip, the documentary channel itself.

So I feel fantastic.

I am so energized and so happy.

I think this thing getting two out and starting the channel proper has been a sort of monkey on my back for like a couple of years now.

Um uh so, more than anything, i'm just really excited to have it out there and uh, excited to get working on this thing um, which is uh, which is really cool and it's it's great to be doing that and also be so excited about the stuff that's hitting noclip.

Like the next four months on noclip are going to be like the craziest four months we've ever had.

We have.

You know i'm, i'm.

It was up till two last night.

I did like a 12-hour edit on the Indiana Jones doc because I was having so much fun with it.

I was just burning through it.

So I did loads on that.

So that's going to be coming out.

We have a Disco Elysium fucking series coming out.

We have a Cyberpunk series coming out.

We announced to our patrons and all the folks at our panel about the incredible doc that we're filming in October November which is, like maybe them like definitely in the top five most requested things we've had over our 10 year period.

Um, so that's going to be really exciting.

Um yeah, and we even have we even have awesome stuff planned for next year, including i actually had meetings just uh late last week about something cool that we're going to be doing for our 10th anniversary in about 12 months time which um, people have been asking for for a long, long time as well.

So um yeah, feels really good over here at the moment and uh, I just wanted to take a moment at the start of the pod to thank everyone for supporting what we're doing and believing in what we're doing.

And you know, if you do like this idea of what we're doing here and you get recommendations from us here and you want to support the project, of course patreoncom slash noclip2 if you're interested at all.

And if you don't have the means or interest to do so, hit that free button.

And if you don't have a Patreon account, just subscribe to the channel and watch our stuff when it pops up.

A big part of this is going to be getting eyeballs on these games.

So um, eyeballs matter a lot and uh, as you know, we won't be like doing crazy like there's.

No, we don't do the ad rev thing on all these videos.

Um so, although they tried to monitor, apparently audio network got a pop on the announcement trailer, was running ads on it for a day, while i was camping over the weekend, i was like no fucking ads on a trailer, you crazy bastards.

So i have to turn that one anyway.

That's enough.

Top of the show.

Housekeeping uh, how's everyone's weekends what you guys get up to?

Anything fun?

Uh, did i?

Aren't we a social lot?

Bunch of gamers?

I saw on monoguchi again.

I went to round one.

I will hug out my friend jordan jones house who was working on his custom ddr floor mats and he has a working step mania like arcade in his room now with like a fake bar.

What's the other game that people are playing that isn't DDR.

What's it called again?

There's Pump It Up, which is like the Korean one, which is like the diagonals.

And so I went to round one in San Diego to get footage of my friend Jordan.

And there was straight up like a Pump It Up tournament.

But I'm like, I do not like Pump It Up.

But even at PAX, even at PAX, because it's all K-pop instead of J-pop.

But at PAX, there was also people playing Pump It Up.

But basically what happened was um when like, the music game market kind of died, like even with guitar hero, rock band, all that stuff, DDR was also in the slump.

Konami for a bit stopped like working on DDR but but Korea filled the gap with pump it up.

So there was like a whole generation of players where pump it up was like the only game in the arcades.

And then DDR kind of came back and was like no, let's make our game again.

So did they just do the diagonals instead of the cardinal directions, just to like not infringe on a paper?

Yes, it was literally for patent reasons.

So there's also.

There's also step mania uh, which was originally the homebrew version, but they have an arcade version that google like produced.

But there's a middle notepad, so like there's a center button, and all these little tweaks are just for patent reasons so they don't get like sued by konami.

I got an email from somebody I forwarded on to you about the DDR community, but they were also talking about I believe it's called in the groove.

Yeah, in the groove.

So there was only two of these are like PlayStation two games came out around 0405.

But do they have their own sort of fandom?

Is it like the hardcore DDR people?

And then there's like a subset of like in the groovers or something like Yeah, I don't know.

I feel like everyone is hardcore in their own game because like I'm obsessed now.

I kind of like beat mania now more than DDR.

But yeah, I think it's just like whatever is accessible.

So like for me, like I'm in SoCal where there's all the round ones.

Round one is kind of the only place other than Dave and Buster's where you can play the new DDR that I'm sure other arcades can have in the groove.

And you can mod in the groove machines and step mania machines and pump it up machines.

But Konami like locks down their DDR stuff.

Okay.

So I think that's why.

And I believe the Indie Groove people are the people who made Pump It Up.

I think it's the same.

Okay.

I'm on the Wikipedia page here.

It says the musicians and developers of the game would later go on to create Pump It Up Pro.

Oh, Pump It Up Pro, a spinoff of the Pump It Up series featuring music and features from IGG.

Okay, so I take it back.

They are just serial – alternative.

Uh, dance game creators, i guess uh, that's wild.

Okay, there is a konami versus roxor games uh lawsuit.

Uh, over in the groove.

You should interview roxor games about getting.

I guess it was 20 years ago, but you should find someone who was involved and who got sued in the eastern district of texas over uh, dance pad technology.

Wow, i mean, we had danny interviewed the valve lawyer about yeah yeah, there you go, crack and book crack and bush.

Is that carl crack and bush believe his name was like a, like a guy who'd be like a serial mascot crack?

Yeah exactly, i mean, that is a compliment.

That's a cool name.

Oh, it's because he had like quake in his name.

I remember there was some.

There was some kind of like wordplay quake and quackenbush.

Yeah, but it was with a q.

You're right yeah yeah, so it looked like quake.

Yeah, so rockstar games transferred the ip rights for in the groove to konami over that?

Oh my god.

So konami owns in the groove as well, Jesus.

I love the idea of because this says it was in the eastern district of Texas, which I assume is where Rockstar Games is.

Immediately my brain was imagining like a 2005 Texas, southern Texas lawyer having to litigate this case and being like an older judge from Texas trying to understand dance pad technology.

The tappy tap happens in the corners here.

It doesn't happen in the in the north south, east and west.

It's a whole other type of video game your honor, exactly like an oj simpson level debate over the details of the case.

But it's just for ddr.

Get the judge to play both and see like see, it's totally different.

Now this is pretty similar.

Yeah.

I'm in the groove.

If the shoe doesn't fit, you must acquit.

If the pad stops a tapping, stop fapping that.

No, that doesn't work at all.

Jesus, put that on a shirt.

This is what happens when i podcast after fucking five hours sleep.

I shouldn't have called you smart at the start of this.

I've, i set you up, you set it up, you did.

Um, let me get my no.

I've talked too much already frank, let's go to you.

You played a couple of new gameys.

You were chatting yesterday in the meeting about wanting to jump into uh, blade kainera um, and also, i believe you were going to check out the little tomb.

Uh, which?

Which one you want to talk about?

First, The Little Tomb.

The full title is The Little Tomb, The Mahalova Club, and The Search for a Dead Body.

This is basically like a Kena Takahashi game, not made by Kena Takahashi.

I don't know how big the team is.

There's legit voice actors in this.

There's voice actors from Demon Slayer in here.

This is a small indie game.

I put three hours into it.

I looked at reviews of people who have beaten it and it seems like the time to beat is five to six hours.

The premise of this game again, it's it's very much it's like having played to a t.

It's kind of similar.

Like you're a, like a weird kid, and you're trying to fit in and make friends, but you're different and you're special.

So you are a tomb, you're a coffin the character's name is kofun and like any good coffin you, you in order to feel complete, you need to find a dead body.

So this, this kid, grows up in a playground, he wants to make friends And they, they form a club so they can find a dead body.

So it's almost like a.

It's like a.

It's like a Rugrats episode, where they're looking for a dead body and all the characters in the game are it's like.

It's so hyper specific to like Japanese culture where they're like it's all about honey.

What clay figures like an animal crossing outside your home are the little hanawa clay figures?

This is a whole game about hanawa clay figures, so much so that you go to a museum to learn about hanawa clay figures.

What's a hanawa clay figure?

Would i know what this thing looks like?

If you like, look at a picture.

If they're, they're an animal crossing.

If you, they're like the little stone temples.

They look like yokai and they're just like creepy.

They're like i don't know, japan's equivalent of garden garden gnomes.

They put them outside homes because they protect the two.

I don't know there's a it's, but uh, it's just very morbid and cute like that's the two.

It's morbid but also very, very cute.

It's very again, odd like a ketatakahashi game.

But i started playing and i was like what the hell is this?

I was blown away.

There's full voice acting and then the tone of the game is genuinely funny and uh yeah, it's the kind of thing where i'm like i'm too invested.

Now i have to like beat the game.

I have to know if the kid finds a dead body, they there's like, there's like i don't know.

You're talking to ghosts.

You're going to cemeteries looking for dead bodies.

You're going to archaeology dig sites looking for dead bodies.

You go to museums looking for bodies and it's like the tone of the adventure is like where should we look for a body today?

It's like it's just so surreal and i was like very blown away of like oh, this is like an actual gate, like I didn't know what it was.

But, and the reason I found about this is now I'm like tracking all these Japanese indie game like expos.

And this is a game featured.

And it was only it just came out.

And the reason I also got it, there was only like 12 reviews and most of them were in Japanese.

And so I was like, all right, this is this is good.

But all the reviews were very positive.

It was like this is what an indie game truly is.

Uh um, i don't know, it's so, it's so, it's very cute and charming, but very weird.

But again, if you like ketataka, ashi or intuiti, this is kind of the same spirit.

It's a coming of age adventure story, but you're looking for a dead body and you are a little coffin and um, there's achievements.

So, you know, i was able to, to kept me, kept me focused um but uh yeah, very weird and very cute.

And the other weird detail i love this with all games but um, every time like, the game takes place in a real city.

Like I was looking up.

When you go to a loading screen, it's like Oh, let's go to this very specific park.

I looked it up on Google maps.

It's, it's very North of Japan, North, North in Japan.

And then you go to like a museum and it shows like a statue and that statue.

Proximity is all.

Everything in this game takes place within like a 10 block radius of a real city.

So it's, and like the loading screens are real, like images and photos and video they shot.

So it's like, Was the studio based here?

They're based in Kyoto, but I don't know if it's just that's where the archaeology museum is.

I have no idea why it takes place in this town, but it was very, very cute to learn so much about this one specific region in Japan and learn all about Hanewa clay figures.

So is it like mission by mission?

Is it like sort of an open-worldy town you bounce around?

It's got – you have objectives in the top, which is like, okay, look around the playground for this.

Okay, you've done this.

Next mission comes up.

And you're kind of constricted to what you can do.

It's like, oh, no, you can't leave this area until you've done this objective.

And there's side things.

You can find collectibles to decorate your clubhouse and things like that.

But it keeps you – it's linear enough to where you're not getting lost or anything, but there's little side things to discover.

There's an achievement for finding all the cats in the game.

You'll find like every, every like map area has a little cat.

You can have a conversation with.

But so there's collectibles, but again kind of like to a T where there's little side weird things you can do, but it's keep.

It's pushing you along with each day, just like this game.

Each day is kind of a new objective.

So it's Again.

It's like a very short, weird again, almost even like watching an anime where everything is almost like episodic and so bizarre and weird.

And it's got a good soundtrack and all this stuff, and I have no idea the scale of this game and how or why it exists, but it's so weird and bizarre.

But I was like, I couldn't stop playing it.

I thought it was very, very cute.

Nice.

Worth an indie recommendation, or you want to finish it first and see how you feel about it.

I i i, maybe i should finish it because it's so bizarre.

Um that uh yeah i, i should beat the game and see if it sticks the landing.

But yeah i i, i.

But it's also like the story.

It's like watching a story.

So it's like like, in terms of the gameplay, it's like you're looking around, you're interacting stuff and it's just more dialogue and stuff.

So it's like okay, it's like like an adventure game.

So i don't know if, in terms of like uh, sitting back and watching and commentating over it.

I don't know, but I, I do think it's really weird and cute.

And again, it's only $10.

I think, and I think there's a demo.

Um, there is a demo.

So you can take a look at that too.

Pick it up on, on steam, man.

Oh man.

Uh, the little tomb.

You guys have any questions about it?

No, I just love that the Steam description opens with a quote and it says is there a dead body who'd like to be buried in me?

And it's like, this is a coming-of-age adventure of a young boy.

The tone is so uplifting, but it's just, is there a dead body who'd like to be in me?

It's just unbelievably surreal.

Yeah, it's awesome.

Yeah, it looks bizarre.

It does have a very Keita Takahashi sort of... In all except maybe the art style.

The art style is like weirdly...

I don't want to say grounded, maybe, or something.

Like, the characters aren't, but everything else in the world just looks like a place.

It's like an Unreal 5 kid at Takahashi.

A little bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a funny one.

Man, oh, man.

Thank you, Frank.

That's The Little Tomb, The Mahalova Club, and The Search for a Dead Body.

It's about $10.

It's $12, a bit of a discount at the moment to pick that one up.

And as Frank said, there is also a demo available.

I have played a game that feels kind of like a demo-ish, I guess.

It's in early access.

I guess maybe that's reductive saying that.

I shouldn't say that.

But it feels to me like a game that I have dabbled in and I am now going to wait for them to sort of finish making the game.

Um it's, it's one of those early accesses.

Uh, this is fata, diem the god sim uh jesse, you put this on my radar yesterday and i have not played that much, only a couple of hours of it, and it is essentially a uh, black and white, uh game like, inspired by black and white the the, the classic um lionhead games, where you are a sort of omniscient god who is able to pick up trees and people and and try and influence folks by doing uh, you know, amazing miracles in front of them and rallying them to your godly cause and then using your influence to take over other um parts of the map, got a war, got to work on black and white too, was was a bit more on the sort of uh, the strategy element the the the, the combat side of it, i feel like um, and i'm i'm not quite sure where this one lands it is.

It's similar in that like it is like it looks very black and white, like the islands look black and white, the people look black and white.

Um the uh, you know you're not a hand, you're just like a sort of a ray of light.

Instead of the, you know the the, the good guy and the bad guy on your shoulders, it's the three fates that are basically talking to you, so that that even shows you that, instead of a sort of a dichotomy, it's a, you know, sort of a triumvirate of things that you can do and when you're making moral decisions um, And yeah, it has like a tutorial.

It's early access.

It feels early access.

It has a tutorial which introduces its gameplay, which is distinct from black and white.

Like there are the sort of the, the general gist of the game being about influencing these people, and like having certain amount of power and using that power to influence to, to impact the world and the people around you and making decisions that are one way or another, that then is going to influence you as a, as a god.

All that stuff is kind of um, is kind of in there but uh the the, i guess i don't know how to explain, like the spells you do, and the um the, the.

I guess it's just like the.

The moment to moment of it does feel distinct uh, from black and white.

I've seen in the trailers that there is like proper, you know, battles you can get into war.

Like there's all that stuff is um uh, in the tutorial level as well, but like that, I've seen that it gets bigger and sort of more bombastic and whatnot.

Um, but, uh, some of that is, is stuff that I haven't gotten into yet.

It could be just the case that I've not played enough of the early access thing.

Like I said, I've only played a couple of hours um, but yeah, it's.

Uh, if you're interested in black and white games, we've covered black and white on noclip and sort of.

We did a doc on sort of why it hasn't come back.

Um, most of that is tied up in ip stuff essentially.

But uh, if you're interested in that, i definitely wanted to mention it um, because you know it is.

It is a game and a subgenre that people have been asking, uh for a new version of for for quite a while Nice.

Yeah, when I saw it on the Steam store page I was like I kind of want to check it out for that reason, just because it is a bit like black and white, a game I've never played before.

And I could probably just play that again.

Although I remember Frank saying that was kind of impossible to do when you were getting the footage.

Or was that not the case, frank?

Like it was like it took a while to get set up.

He had a patch like download, i don't know, just lots of.

It took like at least an hour of working and then it did work but then, like some graphics driver updated, it took i don't know i it was like i didn't.

I had a second pc that i didn't update for like years because it was like it only worked on that so you can't get to work.

I'm sure even since then they've done it, but it takes a minute to get set up.

Okay, so not that bad, But still, even then I was like I want to check this out, but I'd be the worst person to check it out.

It would be like if I was like, oh, man, I just watched wrestling for the first time.

And man, do you know these?

They throw them off the off the off the rope and then they land on a table like that's.

I'm surprised by the basic parts of the genre or the game it's being influenced by.

So I'm glad that you checked it out.

And yeah, hopefully they they continue to iterate on it and make it a little bit better over the early access release.

Yeah, it's hard to tell how much of this is design intent and how much of this is the early access stuff, because it is like it has like janky, you know, technical stuff going on and I imagine this is going to be the type of fandom that is going to be very vocal about what they do and do not like and the game does make like it's hard to pin down and again, I haven't played enough of it to really be broad in my critique of it so I'm going to temper this a little bit.

But the way i would explain it is that black and white and black and white two are like.

They're like oddly systemic games for strategy games.

You know like, like.

Strategy games are usually like um, you know you play an age of empires or something.

You know you, you collect this amount of wood to build this thing, you know, do this, and i guess at a certain stage you have the I guess Thread actually.

Maybe that's a bad example, because you can basically build wherever you want and kind of go in whatever direction you want in Age of Empires.

This is a bit more like...

What is the name?

Speaking of Ubi, was it From Dust?

From Dust.

I was just about to mention From Dust.

Yeah, it's a bit more like that.

So it's a bit more on the rails.

You know what I mean?

It's not like you can build your city and do your thing.

So again, I don't know if that's a decision that is out of necessity, because they're getting this out in early access and some of that stuff hasn't been built yet.

Because if you are making a game that's systemic, then you need to not put those things in at all and then put them in.

You know what i mean?

You can't like have a half measure of it in there.

It doesn't from like a coding perspective, design perspective.

It doesn't work that way.

So I it's hard to tell which way it's going to go that in terms of that, but in lots of other ways it is.

You can see the potential.

Like the the, I think the art style is is strong and interesting.

Like they have voice acting for the, for the fates, like, um, it has charm and personality.

It's doing the.

I remember Jesse, you mentioned yesterday when we were chatting that you are weren't sure if it was doing the humor maybe as much i i don't think it's going to be.

You know bullfrog lionhead, levels of of of funny that their games were just so infused with that british humor.

I think you know, even down to you know, theme hospital and you know, although they were so good at that in that era of doing that stuff i don't know if it's quite there, but it's not taking itself seriously.

I'll say you know you can really like one of the ways to to convert somebody is you can just do like a miracle in front of them, you know, kind of make a glowing orb appear.

There's another one where you can just make basically a fist appear above them.

And the longer you hold the fist, the harder it hits them.

And you get to decide which direction it hits.

You can just like, like, like uppercut them kind of a way.

The first guy I did it to, I didn't really understand how long I was supposed to hold it.

And I just fucking killed him.

Like, I just like punched him down on his head.

And I was like, is he getting up?

The tutorial was like, great job, you've converted.

And then I went to his health and it was zero.

And I had like, oh, when their health reaches zero, they're dead.

And I was like, oh, okay, well, fuck.

Okay, sorry, man.

Hopefully someone else saw that, you know?

Converted maybe as, you know, children or something.

Maybe a little more afraid than converted.

Yeah, exactly.

God game is such a weird genre.

I feel like every game that tries to pick up the mantle of this genre is judged so harshly, because I feel like The black and white games were so bizarre and idiosyncratic that they hit upon something that was like I don't know.

I think about this a lot when people try to take up the mantle from that sort of like 90s, 2000s era simulation-y, sandbox-y game.

Things like Will Wright's work and Roller Coaster Tycoon and God games, Molyneux's games in general.

I think it's a...

I think we look back at that era and it's like oh, there was just so much untapped potential in this genre.

But I think, sort of the the other side of the coin is that, like you had some of the most talented people in games history who were breaking new ground in this, and I think it's like it's.

I think it's hard to like reinvent the god game genre.

I think it's hard to make it more modern and I think it's hard to find a new angle on it that isn't just um, you know like uh, let's do a new black and white.

So uh yeah, that's why you see, from dust also has mixed reviews.

Yeah, and I also think that, like there is this – this happens, I think – you can apply this, I think, to a lot of games, when they try and make new versions of them, like Wipeout Rollcage, Theme Hospital, Theme Park, whatever it is.

A lot of these games were really interesting because they were novel, because they were new.

Like Theme Hospital was like a joke game because they had made Theme Park. which makes sense.

It's called a theme park.

That's what they're called.

And then to take that and to like, flip it on its head and do it about the most boring thing in the world, which is going to a fucking hospital.

Like that was the joke, like games, like wipe out, where it's like you know, we're going to take this super fast sort of F zero thing, where we're going to make it like this whole, you know, emblematic of the current like era of dance, music and yada yada, yada.

Like roll cage, you can drive these cars but if they flip over they keep going.

Like i've played grip and i like it.

Two point hospital is actually maybe the game that does a really good job of this, because it doesn't just try and do that, it actually like uh, sort of evolved it to a little bit.

But, like i think a lot of the reason why those games work, including black and white, is because no one's ever played a game like that before.

Yeah, like it's weird and maybe the contemporary, for those games are games like dwarf fortress are games, you know, are games like what?

Games that break different shot, even something like prison architects.

When i came out 10 years ago, like that was one of those games but it was like a whole different set of things and it was a novel idea and it was weird.

Um, i feel like there's lots of games that we play today, like even factorio you know what i mean like let's just let's hyper, make this about efficiency and and and take people out of the equation entirely.

You know, like I think those games are probably doing a lot of the interesting things of what these games do, and it's just hard to get out of the shadow of the originals when you're when you're bringing back genres that were probably like i think half the reason people played black and white and enjoyed it so much is because it was so weird.

Yeah i, i think genre expectation is a really powerful force in sort of framing your experience when you approach a new game.

And i don't think it's just that, you know, i don't think it's that like, black and white set the bar so high and that everything else is falling short.

I think it's also that when you have an expectation of what you do in a game, then your, your mentality becomes less one of sort of like open, optimistic curiosity and like oh, let's like get in here and like poke around.

And it's more sort of I don't know, maybe like optimization minded, is the is the wrong way of looking at it.

But if I played a game that was like black and white, I would feel very differently than I did playing black and white, because I already had an expectation of what a God game is.

This is an interview that I just did for no clip to that will be up relatively soon.

The person I interviewed said that when they were young and played a bunch of these early and 64 games that they ended up playing Ocarina of Time more like the way people play Yume Nikki, where they were just sort of like wandering around this bizarre interactive world like weren't thinking about like quests or anything, just had like their cousins cartridge with a save already existent, just like booted it up.

And we're just like, let me just walk around this world.

And that that's like I, that to me, that's like the ideal way to play a video game is just like you don't even know what it is.

You're just kind of like let's.

Let's like go in here with no expectations and just sort of like take everything at face value, naively.

Yeah.

I think it's almost like we don't have a word for it.

But I think like... I think it's a really big part of games.

And probably movies as well.

Maybe less so with music.

I don't know.

Because it's such a comfort food type thing.

But like playing something new and interesting and weird.

Like that's the thing.

And when you're a kid, it's all new and interesting and weird.

You know what I mean?

Like it was just like genre was exploding.

It was all this new technology, hardware, software, everything was changing every six months.

Um, and there's that element.

But yeah, I do think that you know, the games that are interesting these days are often ones that are doing new things like i don't know.

It's not like i really like playing loads of battle royale games, but jesus christ that i really love pub g.

For those early years that it was out, because i'd never played anything like it before, it was like oh, this is new and interesting and novel and weird and cool and um, so yeah, i i think you're right, it is harder to like, it's harder for a game like fate of diem to to, to sort of I don't know garner a community when there is this expectation from so many of them of what their version of black and white they played was.

But also that's what they have decided to do.

They've decided to make a black and white game.

So you know, I guess they have to sort of dance to the beat of the community's drum to a certain extent.

Yeah, I think battle royales are a great example of this, because I think we talked about this when we were talking about Battlefield 6 that battle royales have such a large amount of downtime.

But because it's sort of this novel take on first person shooters, it was.

It was perceived as like this sort of like tension between moments of action, rather than if it was a more familiar genre.

If like I feel like now there's BR fatigue.

So this is no longer true to some extent.

But it felt like initially, when I was playing Battlefield, apex and pub g and stuff, that these long moments of downtime wasn't like oh, this is a boring game where nothing happens.

It was like this is a slow tense, like novel experience or something, or like kenchi, i think, is also a great example.

There are large swaths of downtime in kenchi where you're just like mining ore so your dog doesn't starve to death.

But it's awesome because it's like when it's novel and it's new and you're not just trying to like hyper, optimize everything.

It like narrativizes the downtime.

You self-mythologize about the downtime.

It becomes part of the experience.

Yeah, I think, you know, I'm editing this Wolfenstein doc, the Indiana Jones doc at the moment.

Frank has obviously recorded all this awesome gameplay that I'm going through at the moment and like so much of what I enjoyed about that game I think it's a fantastic game anyway but so much of what I enjoyed about it was the fact that you're in this first person world for hours upon hours and you're really not firing your gun at all like you know kind of have to sometimes maybe the story necessitates it a few times or maybe you mess up there's a couple of moments where frank totally shot the bed and there's a million of these nazis running after him and he's like oh fuck it pull out the revolver um uh so that was quite funny um but uh yeah it's you know i really think we spend so much time talking about games talking about the mechanics we like and the thing we like and a lot of that stuff is downstream from just this was new and cool and weird and interesting and i enjoyed it you know have any of you guys ever played burn band by any chance no um is this a sound garden song no although maybe they did the soundtrack this was a burn man this is a 20 burn band b-e-r-n-b-a-n-d um it's it's an older one it's from 2014 um this is one of the members of sock pop made this uh over a decade ago that's the uh new york based collective right uh i think they're oh no sorry they're the one in yeah sorry um i get it no but burn band is basically you're just walking around an alien world uh and if i i mean i haven't played this in 10 years so it's been a minute um but i believe there's i don't think there's any dialogue in the entire game i think you're just like walking around in first person in this sort of lo-fi alien world uh and it was so captivating just because it had an incredibly strong sense of place and it felt like remember this yeah you just felt like a weird like stranger in an alien land um and i think that i think that game captures really well that sort of feeling of like naivete and novelty of just being excited to see, you know, you walk into an alien dance club and it's not like you're, there's no like mechanic to it.

There's no like, let me do engage in dialogue with these people.

You're just kind of walking around and looking at stuff like a museum.

But um, but it has a strong sense of place and novelty that you you when, even if nothing happens in a game, if you feel like anything could happen, I feel like that is all that matters.

Yeah.

A hundred percent.

Do you see the re-releasing burn band by the way?

I did, yeah.

I don't know, are they just, I don't know anything about the re-release or remake or whatever.

I think they're updating some stuff, but yeah.

Just bringing it to Steam and doing a couple little things.

It's a classic.

Didn't they make, sorry, you're right, they're in the Utrecht, Netherlands.

Did they, was it Grun?

Yes.

That's what it's called?

I really enjoyed that.

Was that last year or this year?

That was last year, I think.

It was last year.

And they did Stacklands as well.

They made a lot of really cool stuff.

They've made a billion games.

I think they also published Leap Year, right? they're the ones who have the patreon that do like fucking yeah you just get all their games right yeah yeah yeah they have a ton yeah sock popper great check out their games if you're if you want a million games to play go check out sock pop we should probably chat to them for two at some stage true uh fata diem was the name of uh of the game f-a-t-a-d-e-u-m what do you think it's latin for guys god fate god fate yeah that sounds right you know anyway let's let's go latin to english translation fake god yeah there you go fake god fake god let's not go there jesse garasha that's me we're going where god is fake you said it and now you have been cast down to hell oh not again But don't worry because they've given you a clock.

Yeah.

And now I can turn the clock backwards to get out of hell if I want.

Great.

Whoa.

Sounds like Hades 2.

Yeah.

Death to Kronos.

I'm always saying this.

You've been saying it for years.

I have been.

That's true.

You got to be careful.

Can't wait for that game.

Yeah, but don't be saying it now.

Don't be tweeting that out.

Don't be saying that to Kronos, all right?

Look, Kronos had some nice things to say.

He was a divisive figure, okay?

He doesn't deserve to be fucking killed.

All he was trying to do was debate.

Let's move on from this.

So, yeah, you go ahead and shove your foot in your mouth.

I'll do it with you.

If you need to know if Noclip is anti-political violence, then yes.

Check out our Wolfenstein documentary.

That's part of it.

Because you'll be triggered by the by the comment I left under it when I said last week.

I mean I was like I was live tweeting that whole thing when I was in the patron show last week because it was all happening.

My phone kept buzzing.

I was like, Jesus, this is awful.

And it kept getting worse and worse.

But yeah, somebody then retrospectively got angry at the comment that I left on top of the Wolfenstein video pinned, which was that our Killing Nazis series continues with the Indiana Jones game coming out.

The Indiana Jones doc.

And they got upset about it.

And I was really bamboozled because I was like.

Are we now getting, are we now pearl clutching over the idea of killing Nazis?

Welcome to the resistance, Daniel Dwyer.

We're going to hunt down Ken Burns.

We're just watching a Ken Burns documentary.

And you're like, I need to get out there and do something.

Band of Brothers has been cancelled.

Oh no.

Like fucking, like Schindler's List.

God, this woke shit.

You know what I mean?

Like, is that the world we're living in now?

Or like.

Kinda, a little bit.

Jesus Christ.

If watching a documentary about a world war two video game inspires you to do unrelated political violence, then I feel like it's.

I feel like at that point like um, your McDonald's order coming back and your fry is medium instead of small, might also do it.

Like, I feel like the hair trigger.

Good point.

I mean, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, anyway, sorry.

Let's let, sorry.

Apologies to the good people at rogue snail for for, uh no, bundling you all in with this, but no, no.

Here's the thing.

Oh, this game is fantastic for multiple reasons, including that uh, You get to kill a bunch of enemies called rogue Republicans.

You're kidding.

I'm not joking.

You are in a part of Brazil in this game.

That era wise takes place after the end of slavery in Brazil.

OK, there's a civil war taking place and you are in one of the aftermaths of the small civil war that takes place.

You are Bolsonaro and they lock up Bolsonaro in this game.

I wish you do lock up a guy.

Um well, i just, i just, it's brazil.

It seems like the time period is ambiguous.

They're going to hell, i don't know.

Oh no, they're very explicit in the time period of this game.

Oh okay okay, so this is the coolest thing.

Hell clock is interesting.

We talk about this on the pod a lot.

We've talked about a lot this year, especially wanting more games that are about specific eras, specific places, doing specific things and telling specific stories.

This is one of the only things forget video games that i can find on the internet.

That's talking about this specific war of canudos, which is oh, it takes place in this.

I thought no, i'm not doing.

When you said, when you referenced it, i thought it was like inspired by.

I didn't realize this was like an actual historical, like fictionalization.

It's like so okay, hell clock is a roguelike action rpg, you and it's like a weird mixture of like hades and diablo, where you are playing the sort of game where you you know what i mean when i say hades it's an isometric action game where you have a series of weapons and abilities that you can use to deal damage.

After a run ends, you go back to a base, you meet with some characters, talk to them and you can upgrade your equipment in that way.

The way that it's more like an arpg or like diablo or last epoch or grim dawn pick your flavor, um Is that there are skill trees that you can upgrade that give you different abilities that allow you to design a certain build.

There are unique items that you collect upon your playthrough that you can slot into certain like inventory slots in the game that give you special abilities and can augment your skills.

So like an ability that used to be three shots is now one shot does a bunch of damage.

Or like you see percentages that stack on top of each other.

You can play as a necro in act two.

There's like different acts of the game that split it up both ability wise and narrative wise.

And all of those things are just it's.

Like iterate on the idea.

Because the thing that I like about playing action RPGs is making a bunch of different builds, is trying different things.

But like unfortunately, to get to that point to try the really weird stuff where you can like dual wield shields and throw them and shit, like to get to that point, you got to play for like 20, 30 hours.

This one very quickly is like, here you go.

Here's some interesting uniques.

Here's a bunch of abilities.

And when you come back to base, you can switch them all out.

Again, you only unlock certain abilities after you get through the axe.

But I got through act one in like two or three hours and it wasn't too challenging.

It's a little repetitive, but it needs to be.

And that's again, a thing with the ARPG genre.

So it's not a big problem there.

Um, the runs are time limited as well.

So, like you start with like, I think, five or six minutes and then the passive skill upgrades you get that persist through each playthrough.

Uh, give you more time, give you more resource slots, stuff like that.

Uh, it's cool to me also because, like it has taken uh, It has zoomed in on the qualities of action RPGs and also revealed things that I miss about the tedium of playing them, like the friction of playing an action RPG.

Because when you're playing them, finding items on the ground white items that have no abilities, blue items that you don't care about, golds that might have something you don't care about.

That's like not exciting, but it makes when you find something good that much more exciting, because you never know what is going to happen.

Here, there's no items.

All that drops from the enemies are gold and trinkets that you automatically collect and you automatically optimize.

So like you just always get the highest stat you can get from drops.

And you, when you level up, you get to pick from one of three stat abilities.

Like every other.

Roguelike upgrades for the skills that you have.

So they're kind of keeping you out of the menus a little bit.

Exactly.

The least menuing you can do and the most optimization you can do.

It's sort of like Hades, but like instead of you know, you spawn and like oh, I'm going to pick the lightning because that's the only one there.

I guess my build is lightning now.

Oh, I don't like playing that.

I got to do that, you know, to the end of the run, which isn't a problem.

It's a different design philosophy.

And I think the way the one that they took here appeals to me more, because you get to be more specific about your build and then watch it sort of develop over time.

So I really like the gameplay of it.

It's very fast paced.

It feels like playing Endgame Path of Exile or Endgame like Diablo three or four, but it's not as ridiculous.

It's very fast paced.

It can be a little like I said before, it's my Oonga Boonga genre.

I love slapping myself on the head with a big wooden hammer.

It feels so good.

That's the kind of game this is.

Apologies to any Brazilian Portuguese.

I'm probably butchering your language as I say names of things.

But this yeah, it takes place in the aftermath of that war, which war feels like the wrong word to use.

Once you look into the history of it it's like and in the game actually, they show a lot of cut scenes.

This was like a small town in Northeast Brazil that was founded by this.

This I want to say just like religious zealot who was going around trying to help a bunch of people building a small town.

It's mostly funded by donations.

And then the government in the midst of the uh founding of the Federation, the Republic of of uh Like the fall of the monarchy and all that.

Yeah, exactly.

When the monarchy was kicked out and the abolition of slavery.

Not long before that happened, this town was formed.

And –

The government found out that the guy running it was like he wants the monarchy back.

He's.

He's one of these people who believes that, like a 15th century monarch, is going to come back to life and take over the country again.

We need to kill him.

It feels a little witch trial when you look into it.

I don't really know necessarily how true any of that is.

The interesting thing, of course, being here is like history is written by the victor.

Who knows how much of any of this is true?

I imagine the developers here have done a lot more interesting research because there's not going to be a lot of English language stuff on this.

Um, but just the way that they've told the story and the way that they've included these elements literally in the game is so, so interesting.

Once you look into it, like if you don't look into it, it's like, oh, cool.

One of those enemies is like a big cannon monster who like shoots cannons up into the sky.

And then you look into the history and it's like oh, it took them four bombardments of different military units to take down this city of people that they called savages and monsters and that they didn't trust.

And one of the weapons they used was cannons.

And like the enemy in the game is this crowd of people.

Oh, yes.

It was.

OK, right.

The cut scenes you see in the game are, I mean they're, they're drawn in this way that like, looks a bit like Curse of the Dead God.

The game looks it looks great.

Fantastic.

Just to be clear.

Yeah, it looks very nice.

There's parts of it where like it's it's clearly lo-fi just so it works on most systems.

Like there's, there's bits of it, especially in the second act where, like you can tell, the poly count on the tree is quite low.

Um, but it's still good.

It still looks great.

It's very fast paced.

The particle effects are all really nice.

Like the VFX have been done really well.

Um, but the cut scenes are these like drawn animated cinematics and the stuff that they depict is like very raw.

It's very real.

Also like again, I don't know necessarily the exact there's no, not a lot of photos from back then.

Um, but just the depictions that are, uh, are listed out in the Wikipedia page for the event.

And then also there's a couple of books.

I'm going to pick up an ebook about this cause I'm so curious.

I'd never heard about this before.

And it's so.

It sounds devastating.

But yeah, just the story, the way it's told in the game.

The cut scenes are very explicit.

There's like beheadings um, there's like very sad moments, but there's also beautiful moments, like when you come back to town uh, you can forfeit if you just want to quit your run in the middle of it.

And i've noticed i don't know if it's every single time you do it that way but when i come back from that you see shots of the people in town in canudos just hanging out, just like getting food for each other.

It's like beautiful, serene moments of like flashbacks of when things were good and like they were allowed to just be off on their own.

Okay, they weren't persecuted by their government, like it's.

I'm telling you this is, if you look into it, if you read the story stuff, the real history that this is based on.

I don't know how well they've done it again.

I can only base it on the information that's in English, but this is so compelling.

I can't wait to finish this and learn more about it.

Like the way that it's even told on Wikipedia feels wrong.

And the more I looked into it, there's like another um uh, like academic journal that was put out about it and in the most of the documentation i could find beforehand it was like oh yeah, these are just like poor destitutes or whatever.

They're just like wretches.

They're just people who lived out there.

I don't know, they built a town.

You look into it, it's like no, like the northeast slavery ended pretty early and it was likely that a lot of people who were there were freed slaves who just didn't have anywhere else to go.

And then the government was like well, we don't want an uprising, let's get like.

So Very interesting history stuff.

They've included so much here that I was not expecting an action RPG to do.

Those games narratively tend to do interesting stuff and it's usually like, isn't the monarchy bad?

But this is like explicit.

Time, place and events and like not names necessarily.

I think some of those are a little fabricated, probably for legal reasons.

But like it's still a state of 19th century Brazilian is going to come after them.

Yeah, you do not need that.

So, yeah, it's if you like action RPGs, it's a boiled down version of one of those.

But even if you like aren't huge on them, it's not super deep like it is.

There's a good amount of options there, but it's not like overly complex.

And if you just want to see this stuff like I think the way that the story is told is is like it's one of the first games in a very long time that has made me get an e-book.

So like more power to him.

This is awesome.

I think Hell Clock is very cool.

Hell Clock.

Can we do an indie rec of this?

Yeah, I would love to.

I'd love to talk to the devs about this, about like incorporating this history and the research they had to do, because this is like amazing.

There's really not that much English documentation of this event.

So cool.

Yeah.

Rogue Snail.

I'm assuming they are based in Brazil.

Yeah, they're like a remote team, fully remote.

So there's people across the world as well, but mostly in Brazil, it seems like.

I'm not surprised.

It looks fantastic, too.

A lot of studios I've been talking to over the past few years, including the Everbloom, folks have been using remote Brazilian workers for I mean a lot of stuff engineering as well.

But I know just art-wise, there's a very strong digital art community down there.

So pretty cool.

Hell Clock.

Nice one, Jesse.

I'm going to check this one out.

That looks really awesome.

Um, hell clock available for tickets.

20 bucks.

Is that 20 bucks on steam?

Yeah.

It's actually still being updated.

They have a whole roadmap of new content that's coming out in the near future.

And then they have a big update coming out next year.

That's like a paid expansion.

End game isn't even done yet.

So they're going to keep updating that.

Yeah.

This is like, My new Steam Deck, pick it up.

If I need a break from Silksong, if I need to stop bashing my head against the wall and have some fun for two or three runs 30 minutes, I'm going to hop in this.

How's everyone doing with Silksong?

Have you guys played much more?

You mean mid-song?

Go ahead, Jimmy.

Sorry, I stole it.

Whoa.

I thought I'd get it out of the way for you.

Thanks for taking that bullet for me.

Yeah, no worries.

I don't know.

It's a very well-made game. not for you.

Maybe it's just, yeah, I don't know.

I, I'm not super clicking with it.

I think it's it's, it's.

It feels very weird to me because I feel like I'm playing a very good game but not having the best time with it.

Yeah.

It does sound like people are talking about how challenging it is.

Yeah.

I'm, I'm almost at the end of act one.

I think I just got to the area that, that, that takes place in.

Um, it's, I still really like it.

I still think it's great.

I think the action is fun.

I like the combat and challenge.

I think it's funny in the way that Dark Souls is in the same sort of way.

There are bits where the game pranks you.

There are bits where you don't even...

You couldn't possibly see it coming and like it should make you mad, but weirdly it doesn't, because it doesn't take that long to get there.

I think the world design is great.

I think I have a lot of weird vocal stems from the game now.

When you find a map maker, she goes like.

Like they're just making little noises and you get excited when you hear these freaks making these singy songs.

It's yeah, you know, it's more Hollow Knight, but also I like the more Hollow Knight.

It's been a good time cool, all right.

You didn't play anymore though Danny, you gave up on it.

I have not played anymore last week, so like the reason I have the only game I've played is a little bit of like Fate of Diem is because last week was was predominantly no clip two week like get that all out, and then also I've been playing lots of Ghost of.

I'm scared to say it now.

Were you even supposed to say that?

Oh no, you can say you have it.

Yotei?

Yeah, people have told me that.

You got it.

No, you can say, yeah, yeah.

No, I've played like, yeah, yeah.

It's no spoilers that those, Ghost of Tsushima was not a short game.

You know what I mean?

It's true.

I've been playing through that.

So I believe next week we'll be past the embargo.

So on next week's pod, I'll finally be able to talk about it.

So yeah, I'll be excited to do so then.

But yeah, it is taking a bunch of my time.

And you can read into that any way you want, I guess.

Uh, so i'll be talking about that uh for game, taking a bunch of frank's time.

Recently though, is blade chimera, which came out earlier this year, january janvier, for our no french listeners.

Um, how are you finding this one, frank?

Well, how did it come across your?

Tell us about it.

How did it come across your?

Uh, your plate?

So this was a game published by playism.

This is a uh publisher that just produced, that publishes a lot of japanese indie games.

So i follow like their steam page, and every now and then i'll check in on it and add a bunch of stuff, including the little tomb.

That's right.

Yeah.

Which you just talked about.

Yeah.

So, uh, yeah.

So they've had boots that like packs before and stuff.

And so, yeah, they, they, they seem pretty good at picking, uh, games and backing projects.

Um, So this was on my Steam wish list and I got an alert that it was 30% off.

And I was like, okay, I forgot about this.

But the specific ticker was this is a you know, Metroidvania search action game that takes place in Osaka.

I just went to Osaka and I'm like, oh my God, yes, please, please.

I want to check this out.

So yeah, it blew me away immediately from playing because the pixel art is so good.

This very much feels like playing like a sci-fi ghost-in-the-shell version of Castlevania Symphony of the Night.

It even has the same identical, like with any Castlevania game.

When you level up, it does the same exact.

It'll freeze for a second, it'll have that level-up sound effect.

So it's a Metroidvania.

The thing I adore about this game is it always tells you where like, the next quest objective is on your map.

So like, even if you don't have all the rooms available, it's like you need to get all the way here because I love Castlevania to the night.

I just replayed it like a year or two ago, but I get lost so easily in these games.

So the fact that like you're never truly lost is incredible.

There's, like, three things at play here in terms of the combat.

You have guns, and you can buy new guns and upgrade your guns.

You have, like, swords.

And same thing with, like, Castlevania.

You can switch different weapons.

But like, the gimmick with this game is you have like a demon sword on your back that also kind of like I don't know, like Navi in Ocarina of Time or anything like will talk to you and provide hints and stuff.

It's not annoying, but, like, not, like, Claptrap or whatever.

But, like, it's generally very, very cool.

But there's an element of, like, cool platforming, kind of like Rogue Legacy 2.

Some of these areas are even like Mega Man.

There's like spike pits and stuff.

And so last second, you can like throw your sword down at the ground to provide a shield for you.

In boss battles, you're using your sword.

It's like it's a.

The combat is so cool, so like there doesn't be a boss battle like any bullet hell.

There's a million projectiles.

You can throw your sword on the ground to create like a bubble shield, but your sword has its own health bar, so once that that goes away, you're you're kind of screwed.

So it's like very dynamic.

I think like as games evolve, you need more systems to keep you hooked, as opposed to it just being straight hack and slash.

There's so many gameplay elements with your sword uh, project or um.

Platforming is a big part of it too like.

So in order to like climb up these buildings or whatever, you have to like constantly.

Like throw your sword in the wall, jump on it while in midair get your sword back, throw it on the wall again and kind of like almost equivalent of like doing the wall jumping in like Metroid or Mega Man.

Now you're speaking my language.

It's pretty cool.

It was like, holy shit.

But like it's the kind of thing like and that recent Ninja Gaiden that just came out like a month ago has the same level of like, once you get in this flow state, it feels good.

Yeah, like castlevania, though if you die, it's like your last save point.

It's not checkpoints um, but there's save rooms everywhere and it will like let you know like it's pretty friendly, like you'll be, you'll be in like any castlevania game um, there's like maybe four exits.

It will let you know like hey, there's a save room in this next door, so it's a little it's.

It's so i'm not getting frustrated or annoyed.

It's preventing me from like turning it off.

The pixel art is so beautiful.

I was playing it on my PC and like I think by default, it's like seven, 20 P for the pixel art on the steam deck.

It's so beautiful.

Oh my God.

It looks rough.

I can see how if you blew this up it might not look as good, but But like that's almost to its benefit, I don't know, because it looks like it would look good on a small.

I was about to ask you that because the the the, the screen, the steam like capsule images are amazing.

And then when you blow them up, it doesn't look quite as good, but it looks incredible.

For you know, it's like the way like games looked better on CRTs, you know, because they were like small and fuzzy.

So everything looked great. really cool um because i the art style is really awesome i really love the look of it like even the fire and the the explosion effects and the numbers it has such a throwback look to it yeah it's again it's like and it's like it's funny because i was just playing the megaman games it's very much like that era like megaman x and symphony of night like it's it's cool like it's legitimately incredible and then the osaka flavor is there um it's really cool a lot of the enemies you're fighting are yokai which i've been learning so much about so so it's incredible and then there's like osaka specific things like um In Yakuza and in Osaka, there's that famous drumming figure, that drummer clown.

So one of the enemies in the game is that drummer, and when he beats his drum, it shoots projectiles at you.

When you're walking by, there's the crab stall is there.

I'm trying to think of other Osaka specifics, but it's very funny just picking up all this knowledge in the last year and being like, oh my god it's all in this game there's a fucking haniwa in the there's an enemy that turns you into a haniwa in the trailer oh yeah yeah yeah so i was like oh my god like it's it's i don't know if you have to find a dead body once you're converted uh no but it's like a little status effect but the game is genuinely really cool there's skill trees like as you level up you get skill points and things that make your sword better you can't you have to unlock it as a skill point but you can like castlevania fast travel from one of any of the save rooms uh eventually you play and you can unlock side missions which gives you more currency the game is also pretty friendly in terms of like inventory if you want to stock up on a billion health potions for a boss fight it's gonna it'll let you do that you can farm money i haven't had to have done that yet i've only done like two or three bosses the boss fights again because of like there's you can shoot stuff hack and slash or use your sword there's so many options at play um that it's like it's it's uh yeah it's keeping me uh hooked on it so i definitely want to play more of this And yeah, the fact that you're fighting Yo-Kai, incredible pixel art.

It's like this game is incredible.

Yeah, the scale of it.

There's a thousand reviews right now on Steam.

Very positive.

It's on sale for 13 bucks for like the rest of the month.

It was 20 before.

It's also available on Switch.

And there's a demo.

Switch 2.

Yeah.

Oh, OK.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I think seeing it in motion, this game is incredible.

It feels good to play.

And like the story is just like, oh, my God, there's demons in Osaka.

We got to find them.

And then you find a demon sword.

It's like, wait a minute.

Are you a cool demon?

Yeah, I'm a cool demon.

I'll help you fight the other demons.

Great.

It doesn't matter.

But like, the pixel art is so cool and it it's yeah, i really really like it.

So i don't know, we're gonna have to have like, we're gonna have to have like a best hanawa game in the fucking game of the years, our best yokai game, or you know yeah i, i legitimately like this, like because there hasn't been many like 2025 games i've played or stuck with all the way like yeah, this one is actually really really cool.

Hey frank, you know a 2025 game you're probably gonna play a lot and stick with.

That just came out.

Oh yeah, Skate, Skate.

It came out at time of recording.

I think it launched as we started.

Finally, we can get access.

I've been pissed off for a year.

I've had close friends.

You guys want to get in the playtest?

I got in the playtest.

That's the thing.

Did you get in the playtest?

Yeah, yeah.

I have never wanted to parade my like.

I have an internet audience and I would like to play your video game, please.

I feel like I was almost at a disadvantage on this one.

Like they did not want people playing this game and talking about it who had all these.

I don't know.

Don't do it.

I couldn't get... I couldn't get... I don't know what it is.

Maybe that's just me, my fucking blowing up, smoke up my own arse.

But yeah, it was the only one I wanted to play.

Like, one of the only ones I wanted to play.

And Frank was the same way.

We're like asking... I was asking EA reps.

I was asking everyone.

I was like, please.

Like, even like two weeks ago, I was like, well, fucking everyone has it now.

Like, Gersman's got it.

Can I have a code?

And they're like, no.

Like, what?

What the fuck?

What did I say?

Did I say some shit?

I don't fucking...

I don't care if I said some shit.

It doesn't matter.

But like, yeah, what the fuck?

I don't know.

I'm excited to play.

Frank, how about you?

Yeah, no, I'm I'm very I'm mad because my friend almost has the platinum trophy because he's been playing it for a year.

But he said he can power level me.

So I'm excited.

Perfect.

Yeah, I'll start playing it tonight and we'll see everything I've been seeing of it.

Like there it's no longer a skate sim.

You can do so much silly stuff in it, but we'll see.

But I'm still excited to play it either way.

Yeah, 8 gigs.

That's it.

I'm going to hit download right now so I can jump in.

Almost after we record this, we're going to be doing an indie rec for Capus Mortum.

Is that what it's called?

Capus Mortum.

I don't know.

There's too many Latin games.

This is the third today.

Fata Deum is the third Latin game we've talked about in as many weeks.

Yeah.

Latin's back.

You call it a dead language?

No thanks.

It's alive.

Fata Diem, The Little Tomb, Blade Chimera, and Hell Clock.

Hell Clock.

Death Clock.

Are the games we talked about this week.

Frank, we got some emails here.

Yeah, lots of emails.

If you want to send us a letter, write to us at podcast, at noclipvideo or in our Patreon Discord in the podcast chat.

Once again, that's podcast at noclip.video.

Our first email comes from Godison, who said The mention of hard drive costs in the latest Patreon update has me intrigued.

During my master's studies, I had backups save me twice, saving me probably tens of hours of work.

Since then, I've made sure to have hourly backups of everything I do.

I access my backups about every month, and it brings me massive peace of mind.

But it's expensive, and it's complicated to get right.

What are your stances on database backups and its complexities?

Is it, is no clip screwed if Danny's house burns down?

Do any of you have any horror?

Well, yes, actually, regardless of the hard drives, it's probably screwed.

Yeah, exactly.

Especially if I'm in it.

Yeah, that would help.

That's going to be, it's going to be rough.

Um, yeah, I'll go first, I guess.

Yeah.

I mean, I, so I don't have enough clouds.

Um, uh, like backups for the stuff that I do.

I was talking to Jeff Grossman recently about um cause he does have a bunch of this stuff um uh, about some of the things that you can do to have that sort of drip feed up online.

My upload out here is not amazing.

Like my internet's fine out here, but it's not um.

There's no fiber where I live cause I'm outside Petaluma city limits.

I'm in the countryside a bit, so it's not incredible.

And yeah, especially like Jeremy knows all about this.

When we swapped to 4k, it all just went orders of magnitude, like more complex or more data.

Cause we're not all.

We're not just talking about the.

You know, we come back from Sweden and I've got I dunno six seven eight, 10 hours of footage in 4k at like high.

You know, not just like 4k, compressed like 4k, you know log high bit rate footage, because we're going to be editing this stuff to, you know, trying to make it look as good as possible.

It's also all of the gameplay frank has to capture right, which is compressed 4k in some way.

It's not, you know, i mean nothing's raw but, like you know, they're not avis, but they're still like super, super big.

So, like the the, the project size, files or sizes have just gotten crazy.

And of course you need multiple backups for all that stuff.

So I have a NAS network here.

It's not like a RAID or anything, but it is a set of NAS drives, Synology NAS drives.

There's three of them in the corner at the moment.

So everything that's on there has, if one of those drives fails, it has, you know, enough data spread across the thing to make sure that it doesn't break.

It's – they generally don't call NASAs RAIDs, because you're sort of using them on a network to use the files, whereas RAIDs are – I might be speaking out.

I thought it was just technology, like RAID – like there's certain different levels of RAID.

Like you're probably like RAID 1.

You just have one – There's lots of – yeah, yeah.

So there is a distinction with the way the Synology NASAs work.

It's not RAID, but it is effectively doing –

I think you can set them up as RAIDs if you want, but it is effectively doing very similar technology where it is spreading out the data across a bunch of disks so that if one of them fails, that there is a backup or there is redundancy, there is the word.

Aside from that, I have hard backups of. all of our docks on at least one other drive or computer.

Lots of those drives are in our lockup, not all of them.

So I do need to get on top of that.

If the house burns down, I have literally a bucket that has all the hard drives in it and I have three NASs.

So...

The thing about if a house burns down is that you usually have a bit of a heads up.

You're not running right out the door.

So those are the ones my wife even knows if there's time to grab the NASA's if it happens.

We actually had the recent – just last week we had to change insurance companies because our previous insurance companies pulled fire for where we live at the moment.

And we're not even in a fire zone.

Yeah, exactly.

We're not – it's not –

I mean yeah, we're in a fire zone, but we're not in a you know.

No fires come through here in the past 200 years.

Yeah.

That's what they said 20 years ago about multiple places.

Sorry.

Los Angeles.

Yeah.

Um, so yeah, I the biggest thing is when we're on, when we're on trips abroad.

I will have to like triple back up everything.

So if we're filming on a on a Monday um, i'll go back to the hotel that evening, i will back up the hard drive cameras, usually to my macbook laptop, because that's a fast transfer, and then i will plug in three usbc external lacy drives or whatever and i will spread those out.

But those lacy drives all have to be about four terabytes in size and i usually overdo it.

So, like oftentimes when we were on our trip to you know, we did one where we were in korea, poland and sweden right, and i had like I couldn't tell you how many hard drives worth of.

I had like 50 terabytes on me.

You know what I mean.

And then I'd spread them out.

So, like Frank, when he was flying back, when you flew back from Korea, I gave you a drive and then you mailed it to our PO box.

And similarly with Ole, when he's recording his footage, he holds onto that.

And then I have backups of his and he has a backup of mine.

So we just like make sure everyone's got it, just in case a fucking bag goes missing, i'll do the same thing.

I put one, i gave one drive to ole or frank, i put one in my check bag and i kept one in my bag that i had on the plane, because you just you never know like what's going to happen with this stuff.

I knock it on wood i've never had a hard drive fail like my entire life.

That's huge, never.

So it's gonna happen.

It hasn't happened yet.

I'm waiting for it to happen, But it's never happened to me.

It's never happened to a no-clip drive, an external, a NAS drive.

All my NAS drives are the same NAS drive.

Like maybe that's a problem because some of them are like fucking nine years old now.

But I've never had any of those fail.

I've never had, so I don't know what's going on.

I'm just lucky.

I'm an outlier.

But yeah, I've had memory cards corrupt.

That stuff happens all, you know, that happens a bunch.

Not so much on the cameras thankfully, because I think they're just like mega expensive and they don't fuck up things like that.

But like, you know, I've had them on like zooms and things like that, you know, smaller stuff.

It tends to happen if they power down the wrong time or something.

But yeah, so there's a there's a bunch of redundancy for that.

But yeah, it's like literally I'm sitting here at my desk.

There's a here's a drive.

It's a City 19.

So that was one of the valve ones because we did City 17 for.

The Half-Life stuff for Half-Life 2.

This one, I don't know what it says on it.

There's four lacy drives, like the rugged ones, the orange ones there.

And then behind me, there's like a pile of 20 of them.

So yeah, there's hard drives up to my tits.

I always have a hard drive whenever I work on a project, either an edit or something for game dev or whatever.

I usually make a backup at the end of the day for whatever I'm working on, when I'm actively working on stuff.

And then I carry that solid state drive with me Every time I leave the house.

I have a really 28 gig USB on my key ring.

Same idea.

Oh really?

Yeah.

It's.

It's not big enough to like.

It's not like I'm.

You know, if I'm working on a project that has 20 terabytes of footage, I'm not bringing that with me everywhere I go.

But like the project files or like blender models that are integral to projects i'm working on, like character models and stuff like that um, project files for you know, like unity project files and stuff like that um, make sure my code base is backed up.

Uh, i know like github obviously is available, but there's some superstitious part of me that just likes to have it all in my pocket.

Um, you never know.

Yeah, absolutely yeah, that one of the scariest hard drive moments of my life was after we filmed the doom documentary.

We didn't have time to make backups, and so i remember having the one hard drive that had all of the footage on it and there was no backup anywhere.

And i remember putting it on the conveyor belt at security and turning to you and being like it's like, it's like radio or like x-rays.

Yeah, we're just like, so superstitious, like and this is the moment where everything could go wrong but i remember being in security, like with my shoes off, going through the metal detector and just never taking my eyes off of the bag on the conveyor belt, like i don't know if you, if you were a tsa and you were watching me, you're probably like what is this guy fucking?

You're on a list for sure.

Yeah, that's a menacing look in his eyes is the note they made.

I'm just looking at some of the recent projects here.

The machine game stuff is 3.3 terabytes.

So imagine that being backed up multiple times.

A lot of that's Frank's gameplay, which I only have one copy of here currently.

But when the projects are done they go on the network drive and I keep a hard copy of them as well on an external drive, which is why they all add up.

You ever going to do magnetic tape? for like old stuff oh my god no i can see you getting crazy obsessed with that just like a big closet full of magnetic tapes you're like this is where i put the rocket league stuff just in case like a fucking sunspot takes out all of our hard drives yeah one bit gets flipped because a cosmic ray hit the earth or something that's it it's all gone Uh, the, uh, the, uh, our creators project that I'm working on, the white label thing is seven terabytes over, over seven terabytes actually. and there's not that much gameplay in that one that is predominantly multicam yeah and the reason why the the the machine games one is so big as well is because it's multicam so it's me filming it's ole filming a secondary and then yeah probably at least do you know how much gameplay was in yours frank it's probably one and a half terabytes is it it's uh 806 gigabytes and a lot of that gameplay okay so a lot of that gameplay is 2k because yeah we were doing you're right it was like it was just such a stupid amount of data that was like, all right, this is like, I forgot.

You're right.

We do.

We do the, do the gameplay in two K. Um, because yeah, once, once we have rendered it and YouTube's done, it's, uh, it's, it's stuff.

It's, it's not, it's not as, it's not easily visible, um, either way.

I, uh, I started capturing disco Elysium back in 2023 and right now it's 720 gigabytes.

Okay.

I have a few more things to like throw in there.

So it'll probably be like 800, 900 by the time it's done.

But yeah it's, I think the most I've ever is I think half-life, I think half-life one or half-life two.

One of those was such an insane amount because I had we recorded the game twice.

Yeah.

Twice.

We did a lot of stuff twice in that.

Yeah.

So thanks to all our patrons.

That's the thing.

Like I hate, you know, taking people's money is like, you know, it's it's it's big responsibility.

But one of the things that does make me feel better is that like, there are podcasts that have more patrons than we have and their expense is basically nothing.

There are defunct podcasts that don't even record anymore that get more money on Patreon.

Oh, really?

Like, doesn't the Comptown Patreon still get like $30,000?

I was about to say, is that still going?

Really?

Is it still going?

They deserve the money.

Let them have it, all right?

Come on.

I mean, I will not contest that.

Did they stop entirely?

I thought so, yeah.

They do.

Adam Friedland does a talk show on YouTube, but they don't.

Yeah, yeah.

$38,640 a month.

Wow.

Give them $100,000.

That's wild.

They deserve it.

Yeah, so fair.

Exactly.

Whereas we're all flying around the world.

A couple of losers.

Who cares?

Buying hard drives.

Yeah.

Maybe we should start talking about our com.

You already do enough of that and we don't get any money.

So I don't know if that's a good point.

It hasn't helped to the bank of noclip.

Frank, what have we got?

Our next comes from Peyton.

Hey, Danny and crew.

I just watched Danny's video from a few years ago about how to break into games journalism and I was wondering if you have any updated advice for someone to break into the industry today.

Don't.

Run away.

Sorry, was that the end of the email?

No.

Also, do you have any advice for someone who's struggling with finding the motivation to just write or create video content?

Thank you.

That you should do.

Yeah yeah, don't.

Like if you'd asked me three, four years ago about breaking into games coverage.

I mean I think in that video I pretty much also say don't do writing like like there's no money in writing, it's writing in games.

Unless you get a job writing in games, and even then it's really hard.

Saw, Emma Kidwell was just let go from.

She was doing a bunch of stuff.

She wrote on Borderlands.

Like there's great writers everywhere who are constantly getting let go places, but in terms of games coverage that's i mean that that ship had sailed years ago.

Like it's why it's not that i have like limited sympathy for people who are stuck in those positions now, but like that's been going in that direction for about 15 years.

So like that's that was never a particularly uh great line of work to sort of hit your wagon to, unless you're going to transition some way, or or it's so meaningful to you that you need to do it, or you can be like schreier and carve out your own audience and stuff like that.

Um, In terms of the video stuff, it's so saturated is the problem as well.

If you've got something new, if you have something that you feel like is new, then you should do it.

But I think we're well past the days of just trying to copy other people or ape other work.

I think for anything to work online now, you need to be doing something that's fresh and new.

Be that a perspective, or be that the way stuff is done or arguably, the way stuff is produced, or arguably both.

And what I would say is if you're if, if it's more important to work on stuff that you are enjoying working on and that doesn't necessarily need to be tied to metrics on the Internet of how many people are looking at a thing.

And in fact it's the probably the fastest way to stop enjoying doing something is is trying to chase the algorithm or chase something you know.

Success, I guess, in that way.

Like um, I'm in a very privileged position to be able to say this, because I tried and tried for years and failed and failed, and failed and failed and eventually got my shot.

And I'm, I'm very lucky to be able to look back on my career and have the position I'm in.

I count my fucking lucky stars, um, most days about that.

Um but, but uh, in terms of the question about finding the motivation to do stuff like To me, this is something everyone can answer, I'm sure.

I'll just kind of quickly get my one out of the way.

To me, there's like two sides to that.

One is like, is this something that you are just having trouble motivating doing anything?

And if that's the case, then, you know, talk to somebody about it.

Like if one of the earliest signs of having some element of depression is that you are unmotivated.

So if that's where that's coming from, don't treat it like making things is going to fix the problem.

Address the problem at its root.

Um uh, and talk to somebody professionally if you're able to.

If you're not able to, just you know, talk to people around you about it.

Maybe try and get out more that sort of stuff.

And then, if that's not the case and you're just having problems like creatively doing that stuff, find the path of least resistance.

Don't try and make Michelangelo's David like.

Don't try and make the thing that's going to be a big success.

Just make something that is, feels fun to make.

If the art of making like I just said, I spent 12 I was up till two last night and fucking editing an indiana jones documentary because i was enjoying it.

I've been doing this for 10 years almost like.

That's why i that's why noclip exists is because, for whatever reason, at a certain point in my life i realized the thing that i enjoy doing, the actual act of it is editing, like that's the fun thing, and then from that everything else spawns and i'm able to work with all these awesome people and we're able to go off and tell these cool stories but like If I was forcing it, we'd never be here.

You know what I mean?

Like, it needs to come from a place of genuine love.

Like, look at Jeremy and his game dev stuff.

Like Jeremy could be fucking doing.

You know you could be doing way more contract work for all these companies, or you could.

You know there's a million different things that you could be doing.

You could be off camping all the time.

Like you, like you know you I mean you'd still do a lot of that but, like you know, there's so many things you could be doing.

You've, you've a rich life and you have people that you like spending time with and you have all these options and yet you spend so much of your time honing this craft and it's like but i know what you mean it does it does sound like i'm inside it's not you could be spending time doing fun things jeremy loser just you know but like it that's why right it's not because you're like trying to fucking make a buck or you're trying it's because you have this there's this genuine passion that that drives it like it's them it's God, it's probably the most important thing about being an adult is finding the thing that you would love doing.

100 percent.

That's like.

That's the thing that I realized is I spent most of my 20s like camping and taking a bunch of acid and driving an RV around and like being in the desert and taking a bunch of acid.

Yeah.

And I realized that I love taking a lot of acid as much as a certain point.

You take so much acid, you don't even need to take any more.

So you take enough and then you're like, I should fucking start a YouTube channel.

I.

There was a turning point towards the end of my 20s where I realized that a lot of the like there.

There are moments that are just like bare experience, that are like all timer moments where you're just sitting out and you're staring at the stars.

And it's like, that is so essential to a well-lived life.

Like those immediate experience moments.

But I found that a lot of the time when I was out in nature I was like sitting by a beautiful lake and writing in my notebook about like story ideas or game ideas or ideas for like things I wanted to write about, or like essays or videos.

Um, and that, like At some point the polarity switched, or it was.

It was like I would think so much about making things while I was out living life that I, I wanted to like take a bunch of this bucket and pour it into this bucket.

And and I'm sure at some point, you know, I need to like polarity switch because I've been fucking this has been the year of just like. hyper fixation um the last maybe the last couple years um so i probably need to course correct a little bit but i'll but also it's like i've i got into game dev like three four years ago seriously and you know it's like if you get into something when you're fucking 30 it's like i gotta you gotta fucking burn if you want to catch up you know like this isn't something i've been doing since i was a teenager right um you know like the interview i just mentioned for noclip2 that we're That person started making games when they were like 17, 18.

And it's like they're they're making amazing games now in their mid 20s.

But it's like I I don't have that head start.

So I'm treating this like it's like the world owes me nothing.

I'm very lucky to have to like be on a YouTube channel and on a podcast where people care about video games and have that platform to talk about my game.

But if you, if you make something that is like, if I make a game no one cares about, it doesn't matter if you have people to show it to.

They'll be like, oh, that's nice, honey.

Like, good job.

You made a little right here on the fridge, but anyway yeah no, it's like the.

I found that at some point.

It was like they're having nice experiences is part of a well-lived life, but purpose is like this overarching thing that has to frame it where, like when you get back from the vacation, if the life you return to is not one that gives you fulfillment and purpose, then you're, you've only got like half of the equation.

You're just like living for the weekend or something.

Yeah, and that's a good point as well that, like anything to get good at anything, it just it takes time, it takes hours.

And if you don't enjoy the process of getting better, then don't do it.

Like find the thing that you enjoy just doing.

Like I, I'm not a professional like football player obviously, but like I, I have been recently been re-engaging with like my daughter's playing, like you know, soccer in in in town here.

And And I'm going out with the ball all the time with her and I'm training her at the back garden.

And I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm not good at this thing.

And it's only because I like.

I played it my whole childhood, because I mean lots of people do back home as well.

But like it was something that I just enjoy kicking a ball and you just kick a ball enough and then you get good at doing lots of other things with that ball.

And, you know, it's the same as anything.

Like, if you, just if you, if you enjoy the simple act of doing the basic version of the thing, find whatever that is.

And then pursue that until you get bored of it because, you know, that happens too.

Like I was really into web design and graphic design my whole teenage life and that was my vocation and that was my thing.

And at a certain point I sort of hit a roadblock and I was like nah, I think I'm done with this, you know.

Yeah, so if the process of doing the thing isn't feeling good, then don't do it.

Um, I do have one piece of advice regarding like struggling to find motivation to write and create videos.

Um, this ties directly into what you were saying but find, like it's not just find a thing that you like to do generally, like the activity of writing or the activity of making videos or making games or whatever it's also on a micro level, if you're going to write or make a game or make a video, find a topic for that thing that is like that grips you so intensely that you will like burn hot through the entire process, because at some point, inevitably the difference between, like a hobbyist and someone who takes something seriously is, I think, that eventually you hit a wall where the initial excitement about a project wanes.

And you're like, now I'm just like in the thick of it.

And it's no longer a new and exciting thing.

It's like it becomes work at some point.

No matter what like, if you take something seriously, it becomes work at some point.

Even if it's like, I love making music.

I want to make an album.

At some point you'll be like, why the fuck did I decide to do this?

It sucks.

Um, and you have to be excited enough about the project that, when that wall hits um, you'll be able to recall that initial spark.

Every time I start a new project even if it's just a prototype, a weekend prototype, the initial idea that I get excited about I sit down and I write like at the top of my design document, even if I'm not going to do the rest of the design document, just write a fucking paragraph about why you're excited about the idea.

Because when you hit a wall, go back and get in touch with that initial idea.

Because if you are excited about it, there is something there that is worth being excited about.

And you may, you know, prototype it for two weeks and find that the idea isn't as fun as it was in your head.

But like there's also sometimes you think it's not as fun as it was in your head, just because you've been like working on it for six months or something.

Yeah, great.

Great piece of advice.

Yeah.

Cool.

I have to do that.

Like.

Whenever something compels me creatively outside of work, it is always I have to like, not I want to, because I want to is great.

Like you can try to do that and maybe it'll work out.

And if you're the kind of person, but at least for me.

I know when I'm going to finish something and it's when I feel so compelled that if I don't finish it, it's like I can't move on with my life.

Like it's, it has taken over my brain.

I have to do this.

Like I was like, I have to do this neon white interview.

This game has taken over my life.

Thank goodness I got to do it.

Thank you to Danny for letting me.

But like that, when I saw that job listing, I was like, I have to sign up for this.

Like I have, like that is I got lucky and obviously you know it worked out.

But like everything like that, if you ever feel compelled to do something so strongly that you cannot do anything else like chase that, do not put that aside because you're like oh, but i wanted to do this.

Always follow the have to if you can.

You aren't lucky.

Well, you can say you're lucky.

I know what you mean by lucky, i know.

But like the phrase i always like to go back to is luck is preparation meets opportunity.

Nobody's lucky.

It's if you have put yourself in a position to be lucky and the opportunity comes up and you get it great.

But without the preparation there is no such thing as luck, except you know when you're buying a lottery ticket or whatever you know Fun story.

I actually bought a lottery ticket.

I've been preparing these numbers, these lottery numbers my whole life.

Did you ever see that video of the guy in Australia who bought like a scratchy like back in the 90s?

I think it was?

And he won like 50 grand on a scratchy.

And then they went to the shop with him to shoot B-roll of him for the piece.

Yeah, he won again, right?

And he won like more the second time.

He won like 100 grand or something.

Bastard.

What the fuck?

Like, love it.

Yeah, that's... that's why we play destiny folks that's the skinner box that's why we play hell clock baby that's exactly speaking of videos before we move on to the next email i told jesse about a throwaway idea that we'll never do for a new video we're already in the thick of it might as well pitch it right we're an hour and a half of this podcast this is i'm just gonna throw this out into the world it'll never happen so i might as well just say it because it's funny okay okay what if You know how Werner Herzog does prison interviews where he interviews people in prison?

So that, to me, establishes that you can interview someone even if they're in prison.

He did a whole documentary about people on death row, right?

What if we interviewed Luigi Mangione but only about when he worked at Firaxis?

Oh, I forgot he worked.

Was he an intern?

He's QA, right?

I feel like he was QA or something.

But we just asked him about game dev.

Fucking XCOM.

I don't know.

Civilization.

God, there's no right.

There's no right answer to this.

Marvel's Midnight Suns.

There you go.

Yeah, there we go.

Now you're calling him a superhero.

Oh, shit.

I mean, regardless, I yeah, I think you worked on Civ six.

Look, man, I don't.

Good point.

Saying this will never happen.

I don't want to be pointing. painting a target on my head no that's why it'll never happen or yours it would be seen as a glorification even i just love the idea of interviewing one of this like insanely polarizing huge historical figure of the contemporary murderer yeah well i didn't see it i don't know but just asking him apparently not a terrorist according to today's news they're not gonna get him on the terrorist murder not yet they'll get him on That's just regular murder too.

Yeah.

What'd you say, Frank?

He could do another stunt.

I wouldn't, I wouldn't come out yet.

He could do some Joker shit and escape.

Like if you see the dark night, you know, like something can happen.

If you've seen the Batman, anything can happen.

I got stoned last week and played some Mario Kart.

And when I was, uh, when I was, um, no, not that stoned.

I wasn't, I didn't, I didn't steal a banana in the 1700s.

I stole a loaf of bread.

Yeah.

Um, why did I go with banana?

That was a weird one.

Sorry.

Um, And I was going through, I was picking my character.

And for a second I thought wouldn't it be crazy if there was a Luigi Mangione version of Waluigi in this game?

Oh, my God.

Waluigi Mangione.

And he's like really into CEO.

He does like a whole right wing podcast.

Yeah, he's the opposite.

Exactly.

We need to get them more security, guys.

He's like no health care for anyone.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm closing all hospitals.

We are dancing on the edge here, folks.

All right.

All podcasts.

It's just impossible not to these days.

Well, it's not impossible.

It's actually very easy not to, but, you know.

But it's fun.

We are anarchists at heart.

Good idea, Jeremy.

Let's put it in the maybe pile.

Frank, we got another email.

That maybe always means no.

I also didn't want to talk about making stuff is what I used to tell my students is like what's in your proximity?

Like, what is the story that only you have access to?

Like, where do you live?

There's very unique, specific things that you can do.

Like for me, I'm in the epicenter of all these DDR arcades.

Uniquely in California, there's a billion round ones.

So it's like I can't not do something.

Like when on Monoguchi was touring through, it's like, oh my God, I'm this unique position.

I've known these guys for 20 years.

I have infinite access.

I have archival footage on my hard drives.

I can't not do something.

When I was in Japan, it was like I've had these images of mirroring Yakuza gameplay with the real word stuff.

I haven't seen anyone else in the world do that.

It seems like such an obvious thing, but it's like, these are things where it's like I'm going to do it no matter what.

Like, it's like, what is, yeah, it's like what Jeremy was speaking to.

It's like, what's the thing you can't like let go and just like, like what everyone's saying.

What can't you let go?

Start there.

Don't worry about making a two-hour thing.

Make a one-minute thing.

Make a TikTok, whatever.

Start small, then you'll develop your thing.

But like, yeah, what's your proximity?

What are your friends into?

What's the game that your friends are into and playing?

Make a thing on that.

Like, yeah, you don't have to look at like, OK, Borderlands came out.

Let's do a thing on that.

You don't have to worry about that.

What's the thing that unless you're so passionate about it, do that.

But like, yeah, what's the thing that you can speak to uniquely about your passion?

What do you have access to?

What do you want to learn about while doing it?

Like, again, with the DDR thing, it's like I want to get good at DDR.

OK, it's like a multi opportunity.

But and then, yeah, feel free to message us back if you make anything.

We can watch or talk about it.

But yeah, start small.

But what is the thing that like fill the gap?

What's no one else doing?

What's no one else talking about and that you're genuinely interested in?

We have a special channel in the Discord as well for people to share their work.

It's not particular about anything.

It's anything you're working on.

And then Kenny wrote a letter in saying the term love letter to cinema is sometimes used to describe films that are partly about why that art medium is so great, such as Cinema Paradiso, Hugo and The Artist.

Can you think of any good examples of love letters to gaming, specifically those that managed to resonate with you?

Danny, mentioning his daughter playing Little Gator Game reminded me how well it fits that criteria.

For me, more than just an homage or deconstruction of action adventure games like the legend of zelda, it's also a really beautiful work about how games can shape our formative years and the bonds we share with loved ones.

Curious what your thoughts are.

Yeah, but my daughter skips all the story stuff.

Sorry, it's too much reading for her, too much reading for her.

I make her not skip the first, like four or five, and then she skips the rest because she's still learning to read.

I have a good one for this, but i don't want to step on anyone's toes.

I'll go for it.

Yeah, i'm thinking about it.

So uh tunic Uh yeah, that is really good.

Yeah.

The manual.

Yeah.

A lot of other stuff, but yeah, that's a real like love letter to a specific sort of era of uh, of games, for sure.

Um, without saying too much more.

Um, but I am struggling otherwise.

It's a UFO 50.

Yeah.

That's a great one.

Yep.

Um, solid.

Also, it is funny.

It's love letter to video games is one of the most overused phrase in games journalism.

Um, writ large, but as a specific incident, of games that actually fit the bill.

I feel like it's very rare, so it's weird how overused the phrase is.

There are so many like you're totally right, i agree.

And then there are also so many games that it's like it almost feels like it's hard to make a love letter to gaming.

I think for what you were talking about earlier that, like so many games, genre wise have been consistent for so long, like there's just been zelda games, there's just been first person shooters for so long, like there's, it doesn't feel so much disconnected, like you can't look back on it, like there's nothing to be nostalgic for in the game space.

It feels like as much like there are and we see games like that pop up from time to time and danny gets really excited about them.

But like it's not because you're the oldest um, but like sure, but at least for me, like i've been thinking about this a lot lately, you know, because i just turned 30 congratulations to me my back hurts all the time now um, it's like I don't find a ton of stuff that I that is like exciting and new that I didn't already know about when I was like 14.

It's very, very rare that there's stuff I can look back on and think, oh man, what happened to that?

Cause it's, it's either still happening or. it's like no one's nostalgic for it.

Cause it was so specifically niche that no one can like, where am I fly for fun style?

MMORPGs.

No one's making flight games.

So you guys don't even know what I'm talking about.

Like it's, I'm just, we make it something up.

Like it's, yeah, it is a weird era that we're in.

We're like, and I wonder what kids today are going to be in this style.

Yeah.

I'm telling you it's real.

It's a real Korean MMORPG.

That like was if you couldn't afford to play world of Warcraft, that was the one that you played.

And you would go in all chat and you would say world of Warcraft sucks.

And people would be like, you don't have $10.

And I'd be like, You're right.

I don't fly.

It is spelled the way it sounds.

Yeah.

Fly for fun.

That's what it, yeah.

Fly for fun.

Yeah.

Wow.

That's amazing.

Um Yeah, there's lots of like games that are love letters to other specific games, but just it's hard to do one that's like gaming.

I feel like usually it just in like a review when they're like, it's a real love letter to gaming.

It usually just means that it's like a genre.

I enjoyed it.

Yeah, it means that I liked it and it was a recognizable genre.

It's like Hollow Knight.

It's like a love letter to games.

Yeah, it's like Titanfall 2 is a love letter to Half-Life 2 because it has good level design.

Because it has a 2 in it.

That's why it's got a 2 in it.

They love the number two.

Abiotic Fact is a good love letter to have.

I played that the other day.

That game is fucking phenomenal.

I need to play more of it.

I played it in early access.

I've not played it since 1.0.

I think I'm going to play it and record it for Noclip 2 patrons because I think it's going to be like a fun one to be in the backseat for.

I mean I assume they haven't changed a lot of the start of that game, but it's been a while since I've played.

It's still the same opening from the demo that they did a long time ago.

Yeah, that game's awesome.

Yeah, I can't wait to see that.

That'll be great.

Jump into that.

What else we got there, Frankie Baby?

We have one from Greg who asked, wait, let me double check, yeah.

Greg, I've started my adventure with games in 1994 playing Super Mario Brothers in some Polish little village and through local computer games, console magazines and later on, Eurogamer.

Game Informer and many others, I was drawn into this magical realm of video games.

It affected me to the extent that I've become a video game programmer.

Lately, I've been lucky enough to work on Gears of War Reloaded and Kronos the New Dawn, while I'm developing my own game as well.

Nice.

We just talked about Kronos last week, right?

It was really weird working on the remake of the game that I played 19 years ago and was amazed by.

I wonder, in games media, you probably get into contact with people you admire through their work.

What was the best experience of this kind for each one of you?

Any favorite game seen behind the scenes or getting to know a legendary developer?

Frank, you want to go first on this one?

Yeah, I mean, I guess the default really was like the Half-Life stuff was so surreal and mind-blowing.

Like I didn't even, I didn't interact with Gabe Newell, but like everyone else was like, my favorite specific story, when we were interviewing the guy who developed the headcrab, who designed the headcrab, he talked about having tarantulas on his desk or whatever.

And I told him specifically like, like I had to like replay the Raven home level, like so much over the last month that I started having nightmares about head crabs.

And I compliment him saying like that thing you made 30 years ago is still giving me nightmares.

And he was like, that makes me very happy to hear.

And like that, like, yeah, it was like, that was such a, yeah.

So like that, that's probably my number one, but like everyone we meet is so kind.

I feel like specifically like Josh Sawyer, everyone at Obsidian was so kind and cool.

Um, so that was good.

That was fun too.

They're very sweet.

Yeah.

Yeah, Romero is up there.

John Romero is a legitimately very, very kind and sweet man.

So I think that's a big part of it.

What's going on over there is very sad, obviously.

It sounds like they've had, obviously, a bunch of redundancies are going on at the moment.

So, yeah, I'm very sad about that.

Dave Oshry actually posted a picture with John earlier today.

So I don't know if he's over in Ireland or something.

What's going on?

Um uh yeah yeah, obviously the half-life stuff was super cool.

They were all, they're all lots of fun.

Uh, meeting all those folks like talking to uh, you know the voice actors, i think like talking to the voice you know hello danny, and you're like what the heck?

Yeah, harry s robbins was a really good one, because i had met him.

I told that story before about being baked in that comedy club and bumping into him, but like meeting him sober was a nice experience.

Um, yeah, kind of everyone, right?

Like, even when you meet, like you know, You play a game and then you get to meet the people who made it.

Sometimes it's more obvious than others.

The Immortality doc, that was funny because we were literally interviewing the actors.

You felt like you spent a lot of time with them, which you don't usually when it comes to interviewing developers.

You don't feel like you spent time with them a lot, particularly.

Todd Howard's another one.

He's a very nice guy.

He's very...

He has an air about him, definitely.

Like he has a sort of, you know, people look at him when he walks in a room and stuff.

And he's he has like a confidence to him, like a swagger, I'd almost call it, which is unique.

I can tell you can tell why he's like a leader of people in that regard.

But yeah, he's a nice guy.

And he's also a guy who, like I, was at Dice last year chatting to somebody at a bar and he walked up and tapped me on the shoulder and had a conversation with me for a couple of minutes.

Like, he's a very, like... Like, Keeley's like this, too.

Like people who you think like.

Actually, I had this with Greg Miller when I met him the first time.

I was thinking a lot of these people are probably like super up their own arse and you know.

But like yeah, I was really.

When I met Greg the first time, I was really waiting to see if he was a prick, because he was like the head of IGN, he was face of IGN sorry, and he could not be further from the like.

The stuff that Greg does behind the scenes that people don't know about to help other people is crazy.

I think that's why whenever I hear people like shit talking him for one reason or another, it's like if you wonder why people like support Greg when things happen, it's It's because of the stuff you don't know about.

It's because he is actually a genuinely very kind and empathetic person.

And Keely is the same way.

Remember we chatted to him on the way out of the SGF?

He pulled us aside and had a chat to us for...

Like, five, ten minutes.

Yeah, I was, like, surprised because, like, I don't know.

It seemed like it's his show.

He's so busy.

He has all this stuff going on.

Totally.

But he like took the time to like have a very low-key, Because I've been in like Hollywood circles where people are.

It's such a like oh God, I don't want this energy.

Yes.

Keeley did not have that.

No.

He was like, oh, man, that was real.

How are you guys?

I'm like, whoa.

Maybe it's because he's Canadian.

But, yeah, Keeley, he was... so very very cool and sweet uh so yeah that and it's funny because i've worked with him on the other side with like mega 64 like 20 years ago funny when he was like rising up and it's like oh like it's so the success and fame didn't get to him like he's still a cool guy so yeah yeah rocco is surprisingly chill person as well yeah i mean i was expecting him to be a lot more crazy i remember the time you do you remember when you interviewed me at e3 yes when i was at the game spot stage and i got yeah and then rocco came over with you i think was he filming and you interviewed me or something yeah yeah yeah when i was and i was like i'm i'm where's the bit i was like wait i felt like i was in a jackass or a punk situation i'm like i was waiting for the other shoe to drop because like rocco's holding the camera and i'm like am i in a mega 64 bit right now because especially when you work for game spot you're like you're sort of you are a bit of a punching bag for that stuff and it's fine i didn't give a shit i was fine it was funny you know i was used to like streamers taking clips of our shows and taking the piss at a game spot whatever but i do remember that and then i was like oh this is like a legit thing that you were doing where you were like doing like a a vlog of all the e3 stuff i was like waiting for somebody to fucking I don't know, jump out from behind me dressed up as a fucking baby from Death Stranding or whatever the game would have been 12 years ago, you know?

Just threw a piss grenade at me?

What the hell, Rocco?

A real piss grenade.

That would have been really weird like eight years before Death Stranding came out as well.

He knew some stuff.

Kojima was in his ear.

Well, I guess they did do videos with Hideo as well.

Yeah hey um, i got a couple to drop real quick.

Um, dave johnston, who made dust 2 interviewing him was a pleasure.

Insanely humble dude for someone who created like a like a sistine chapel of gaming as a child.

Um uh, tim kaine, one of the nicest, most attentive people i've ever met.

Yeah, there's often this thing when we film in person and there's a lot of people around, both like it's me and danny, and then, like you know, someone from pr and the interview subject, and then like a couple people who are hanging around to make sure we don't need anything or things are going well or whatever.

And in that case he was a duo with leonard borowski as well.

It's true, they were together a ton going on, and also there's like limited time.

So usually we're kind of like get people mic'd up, flip the lights on, we're going.

So there's very sort of like time crunch and and also you're about to be on camera.

So you're like you know, you're making sure you don't have like broccoli in your teeth and you're like thinking getting your head straight and stuff.

Uh, so there is often a sort of like it's i, it's not that people are rude, it's that people are preoccupied and they sort of like zone in on danny and he's the only person that exists and they're kind of just like establishing a connection before the cameras are rolling.

Uh, tim kaine was so attentive to like getting to know me.

I was just the camera guy, i was like micing him up.

He was like You know, talking me up and like being nice and charismatic and like play, just so charming and attentive and like I don't know I could.

I could tell he was establishing a human connection with me even though I was just like just the camera guy.

Quote, unquote or whatever.

So he's a really nice guy.

He's like.

You can understand knowing his background, too.

Like he is he is very empathetic, you know, to people like he's a he's a really nice guy.

Tim is Tim is awesome.

Todd Howard was the same way.

Very, very attentive.

Treated me like I was a human being in the room and not just like, yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, it is this weird, like unspoken assumption that I think some people are like, oh, I don't talk to the camera guy or the sound guy because they're just like a. a background fixture in the room and i think it speaks very highly of people's character when they're a incredibly famous game developer and the camera guy coming to mic them up they like say hello and introduce themselves and shake my hand and stuff um so you know it's like when someone's like really nice to the waiter when things are going bad or something you know what i mean you're like it's it's the true test of characters like the they bring out the steak and it's the wrong it's cooked wrong and they're like i know it's you're not your fault um but yeah you can really tell yeah that's what's all about is like how you treat people right like You know, there's some studios who have always been like very much like that, like CD Projekt are very kind about when people visit.

Like I feel like they appreciate people coming all the way out here to talk to them and stuff like that.

I'm trying to think of who else.

Yeah.

Chloe Barlog is a nice guy.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, Corey's nice.

I was just gonna reiterate.

You said Josh Sawyer, but also Josh Sawyer was very, very cool.

And after uh, after filming, we went out for drinks with a bunch of people in their crew and I ended up chatting with him about like weird bespoke uh RVs for like 35 minutes in the quarter sick.

Yeah, he likes his weird bikes and stuff.

Yeah, the fact that they all came out and hung out with us afterwards that was That was super cool, for sure.

Obviously, all the Hades folks you know have been a big Greg Kasavin fan, of course, but like Amir and Jen, they're all fucking darn, they're all legends and they're so sweet.

I get on a lot with Edmund McMillan.

Yeah, Ed's awesome.

Ed is a dope dude.

I feel like, I feel like if we lived in the same town, we'd hang out a lot.

Like he we, we get on, where I've filmed a bunch of stuff with him obviously for no clip two, for the me genics thing and just hung around for the next couple of hours and shot the shit and stuff.

And yeah, he's, he's a, he's a very nice dude.

I like him a lot.

Um, who else yeah everyone's everyone's most i don't think we've entered any arseholes i feel like we have to we'd have to list off more people to say the nice people it feels like most of the people we meet are like insanely cool uh yeah alex austin another person who obviously has sort of been brought into the noclip fold a little more than most people we interview but uh super nice guy and just like in i don't know like what his he's like not even a person you'd be like oh he's so humble because it's just like who he is like he's just so fucking you there's no like you don't get a sense of how insanely talented and intelligent he is because he just like downplays his own intelligence but then you see his work and you're like how this dude is like a fucking dynamo yeah yeah yeah totally just like a like a poly god or something you know he's just like he's got so much skill in so many different areas of engineering he's super good at what he does yeah people are awesome you know people are cool and it's a weird position as well as interviewing people because it is like this weirdly I really like it it's like this weirdly you get to be in a position where people are just they're there to open up like there is no Nobody says I'm not going to answer that question.

You know, you can you can ask him about just about anything.

And, you know, sometimes it gets into more personal areas.

And I think for folks it's it's quite a therapeutic process, kind of talking about the thing, because you don't have many opportunities in life to speak, you know, either to a person or just to the wind, about something that affected you.

And oftentimes people are speaking about these things and thinking about them retrospectively in a way that they've never done, you know.

So it's, it's a.

Really it's a.

I think it is a position that actually sort of creates bonds between the people who are interviewing and the people who are being interviewed.

Like I think that's part of the reason maybe people tend to.

I don't know.

I feel like they talk warmly about a visit from noclip because we just came and gave them free therapy and left.

I have one more to list off.

Everyone at Game Grumps was, like, the sweetest person I've ever met.

Oh, cool, yeah, yeah.

Aaron was incredibly obviously like a charming person, but just like very nice and attentive and like really giving with his time and wanted to make sure we got what we needed.

Dan from Game Grumps, who we didn't even have time to interview.

I apologize to him because you know, like they were sort of like involved in more of like a producer oversight role um, but i really wanted to interview, you know, dan and aaron they're like the duo at game grumps and i apologized to him and he was like, oh my god, don't worry about like, catch your flight, like i don't want you to be late, like he was, he was apologetic for me, apologizing to him um, and then like jory and layton and vernon and uh tyler, everyone was just like the sweetest person i've ever, even that random youtuber who you didn't know who he was.

I did not know who jacksepticeye was.

Oh my god that's, that's hilarious.

Who, at that stage, like knew noclip really well yeah, like he.

Even he chilled at my airbnb, him and aaron and a bunch of people the crew came and chilled on the roof of my airbnb and i didn't know who jacksepticeye did i message you and say, was jacksepticeye on the back or did?

Yeah, when i, when i sent you the footage, i think yeah, i was like, was that jeff said?

At no point he hit you with the top of the morning laddie and smacked you in the forehead.

That would have given it away.

He had his own camera guy with him, but i didn't know who he was right.

So i love it.

I love that.

Yeah, good stuff.

Yeah, everyone's awesome.

Thanks, greg for the email, thanks to everyone for the emails.

You know who i would have been excited to meet who greg greg greg oh, greg.

Yeah, Congrats on working on Kronos, the New Dawn.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Maybe we'll interview Greg in the future.

Who knows?

Also, like you said, in some Polish little village.

They unchained me to write this email.

Oh, I had one more thing I wanted to tell you, by the way.

Somebody sent me a message and wanted me to relay it to you about your recommendations for Deftones.

Okay.

So it's from M. Joshua.

He says I lost touch with the Deftones but they kind of kickstarted my video career.

Made my own music videos in high school and college.

Danny's recommendation got me reconnected, with a phenomenal new album and just in time for them to have a show in Baltimore, one hour away from him.

Hell yes.

So I finally saw them for the first time this week, despite loving them since 1997.

And the show was amazing, like legit inspiring from a video production perspective, for reasons apparent.

Excellent.

Nice.

Yeah.

Good stuff. first of all, you can't say that it's just Deftones.

Oh, sorry.

Just so we're saying.

I thought it was the Deftones.

Like the Daft Punk, right?

Exactly.

Yeah.

It's like Beatles, you know?

There's no, there's no, everyone knows this.

Yeah.

New album's great.

It's a, it's a grower in our shower.

I think now I'm absolutely love it.

It took a, took a couple of listens, a couple of stuff in there, but it's a real, yeah, it's good.

Reminds me of uh, Reminds me of It's a little bit of adrenaline in there, but it mostly is white pony-esque, I feel like.

If people are wanting to get into Deftones, this might not be a terrible album to start on, maybe.

But I'm a weird Deftones fan.

I love every album, but I like some of the really trippy stuff.

I really like Koi no Yokan and I really like I think the self-titled is probably my favorite album still.

But yeah, it's great.

I feel super privileged to... have from my favorite bands.

And I feel like I was late to the party on Deftones.

Cause I only started listening to them when I was like 17.

But like I don't know, like all my friends were like when I were 14, we're like listen to adrenaline and white pony and shit.

So I always feel like I'm a bit of a has been, even though it's been 20 something years, 22 years.

But the fact that they are being consistently releasing good music, you know, even after the death of one of the bandmates as well as a is is pretty, pretty crazy.

So, yeah.

It's good shit, man.

It's a good time to be a Deftones fan.

Let me tell you, this new album is fucking kicking it off.

Go listen to it.

Private music.

Good shit.

That was the name of the album.

Private music.

Not that they're private and musical.

Thanks for the emails.

Podcasts are not good without video, everyone.

And thanks for supporting our work on Noclip and on Noclip 2.

Us hungry little buggers.

We want your money.

We want your money on all these Patreons.

Give us all your fucking money.

Oh shit, I said the quiet part loud.

No, we're out here doing the hard work.

Like I said, our Machine Games trilogy will be over soon enough.

I am pretty confident I'm going to have early access up by the time this podcast is up.

And we'll hopefully get the full doc out next week.

Um, I think this is one that I, you know we do not do right to reply on these videos, but I have a feeling that this is one that they are going to send to the mouse.

You know what I mean?

We we.

This happened with the.

Any game we've covered that's been Lucas or Disney has has.

I've had an email three days later than usual on like feedback or not feedback, but on like you know I always some people want to see the docs ahead of time.

90% of them don't.

For these ones, we've always technically tended to do it, because we've usually been showing a bunch of shit that no one's seen before.

And so the publishers are a little bit like you know.

They want to have an idea of what's going to go out.

But obviously they don't, you know, they don't have any say over what's in the pieces or whatever.

But I do remember with the Return to Monkey Island one, that there was this extra layer of yeah, we're just going to send this over to such and such because we had a bunch of stuff in there that we wouldn't hadn't been out before.

So anyway, it'll be up in early access before it gets sent to anyone else.

So go check out the Indiana Jones and the Great Circle doc.

I think it's about an hour and 10 or hour and 15, it's something like that.

I haven't done the voiceover yet, so that's the last thing to do.

So I'll be adding that in.

Go check out the Wolfenstein doc and the.

I guess it's mostly a it's early days of machine games, but it's mostly a Starbreeze sort of retrospective.

The first one Shout out once again to the Archipel Yoko Taro book that's up on Kickstarter.

I actually haven't checked to see how they're doing.

I assume they might have been over at the top and they have.

They've reached $40,000.

They have $34,000 was sort of the goal they were going for.

So that's awesome.

So that project is backed.

So if you'd like to support Archipel, we love those folks.

They make amazing documentaries about the Japanese creative industries gaming and animation and stuff.

They have the Yoko Taro book.

Of course, Yoko Taro, the creator of creative mind behind many wonderful video games.

So, yeah, go go check that one out.

Our disco stuff will start up this month as well.

So the Disco Elysium stuff is going to start. coming out for folks who are interested in that.

And then on Noclip 2, we're going to have a couple of indie recs this week.

We're also going to have a video up on both Patreons, on Noclip and Noclip 2, sort of explaining what to expect from them.

Because, for instance, we have a bonus podcast on both feeds now.

Those are two different podcast feeds.

And we have a little bit of tidying up to do in regard to that, because the podcast definitely feels more like a Noclip 2 thing.

But I know a lot of people are patrons over there because of regular Noclip.

So we'll basically have a post up for patrons about that in the next episode a couple of days on on each patreon and then also uh, we will tell you here on the podcast publicly next week.

There's also been a big um, a bit of a shake up on the the discord uh.

We added in some noclip2 channels to our discord um, and we have uh, some noclip.

General stuff is also going to be for only noclip people, but for the most part, all the channels are for everyone um, but uh, we have we have a couple ones that are that are siphoned off just because it makes sense, and people have been doing great work submitting articles and games for our coverage in the uh the noclip2 channels.

So that's been uh really awesome to see.

We really appreciate it.

And we also have a separate staff channel now, which jesse geniusly named staff 2.

So gonna save you your work danny, i'm right here.

Yeah, absolutely exactly.

Yep, you're right there.

Um, and i think that's it.

There's lots going on, so make sure you're subbed to both channels.

Um uh, make sure you're you're on the free patreon uh for for either of them, especially noclip2, because that's where we're really pushing the the zine and uh, and yeah, thank you so much for for trusting us and uh and being part of this, this magical journey we're all on together, uh.

Final thoughts that's what you're doing for the rest of the rest of the week anything mad, A lot of housework, a lot of cleaning, a lot of patching up drywall.

I'm busy.

It's just it's almost October, so you can't paint stuff when it's cold and it gets cold in Canada.

So it's a lot of housework.

I've been very busy.

Jeremy's got that same problem.

Yeah, but he's building one.

I'm building a studio, building a workspace from scratch, on a piece of property owned by some family of mine who just have a bunch of woods that are just empty and desolate.

And I am building a workspace there.

So I taught myself wood frame house construction over the last year.

I've done some carpentry several summers as a young person.

But uh, building cabinets and designing a structurally sound house are very different things.

So i went very hard, both difficult for different reasons.

But i mean, what is a house if not a cabinet for people?

Um whoa, but i it's like something a fucking serial killer would say.

Very true.

Um, that's where I store the people.

Uh, but I had to, I had to design looking for a body.

Uh, that'd be a great metal song lyric.

Um, I had to design a building from the ground up because I bought plans initially and they were not suitable.

Um, and so I do design a building.

Learn the entire structure, how a building, wood frame, house construction is held together, and go present it before the building inspector in the town.

Um, And it got approved.

So your boy is the world's shittiest architect, I guess.

I don't know.

But not that shitty because it got approved.

Yeah.

But I was pretty psyched on that.

Awesome work.

Congrats.

Thank you.

It was a big deal.

Are you the world's first game dev house architect?

You might be.

I did design the house in Blender and build the plans in Blender.

No.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah.

The dude was like, what software did you use for this?

It doesn't look like cat at all.

Yeah, he was like.

This doesn't look like a sketch up or whatever people usually like.

You're like fucking like quake three style, like bunny hopping through your fucking like.

And this is the bathroom.

It was house plan dot wad was the file.

Like you have to rocket, jump to get up there.

Yeah exactly, he's like wow, this is weird.

I went in this fucking uh this, this door and suddenly i'm back at the outside of the house.

But things have changed.

Is this the new revision of the house or yeah, i think you're gonna need some more structural health packs in the back left corner.

Absolutely yeah, it's full of fucking imps, but it was a.

It was a big deal because it was.

You know it's like you teach yourself.

You know it's like learning reading a book on driving a car and then one day you get in a car and someone who's a f1 driver is like do you actually know how to do this?

And you're like i've read a lot about it, so awesome.

Nice work, frankie baby.

What are you doing for the week?

Game Changer Wrestling is back in L.A. this Saturday.

At the time of recording, there's only like 50 tickets left, so it's probably sold out.

But I always say, if you ever want to come see great independent wrestling Game Changer Wrestling tours all throughout the country and the world.

They do Tokyo shows also.

But yeah, they're L.A. this weekend.

Doctor Redacted, Deathmatch.

There'll be a giant cage match.

Shotzi, who just got... let go from WWE is now on the indie scene.

So yeah, it's always a good time.

We have a giant group of friends and we get tacos after.

So yeah, if you're listening, you want to come, please like all are welcome.

Um, it's, it's truly, truly like very, very fun.

So yeah, GCW in LA at the Ukrainian culture center, where there will be blood squirted on the floor.

So I'm very excited.

Good stuff.

All right.

Uh, i love that.

We uh we said we'd do a short podcast this week because we have to record an indie uh one right after this, but then we ended up doing it over to our one.

So there you go, love it, love.

It always happens when we have like, no games we've played.

You know journey emails this week though, and a lot of story happens.

It's good, exactly good, shit.

Uh, all right, let's leave it there.

Thanks folks, and we'll talk to you next week.

Stay safe and uh, we'll see you on the other side bye.

[Noclip Podcast Episode 245: On Indie Games, Industry Realities, and New Horizons]-[Hell Clock, Fata Deum - The God Sim, The Little Tomb: The Maholova Club and the Search for a Dead Body]

📋 Summary

Navigating the Evolution of Noclip

The Allure of the 'God Game' and Genre Fatigue

Deep Dives into Indie Gems: The Little Tomb and Blade Chimera

The Reality of Game Dev, Backups, and Industry Ethics

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Noclip Podcast Episode 245: On Indie Games, Industry Realities, and New Horizons]-[Hell Clock, Fata Deum - The God Sim, The Little Tomb: The Maholova Club and the Search for a Dead Body]

📋 Summary

Navigating the Evolution of Noclip

The Allure of the 'God Game' and Genre Fatigue

Deep Dives into Indie Gems: The Little Tomb and Blade Chimera

The Reality of Game Dev, Backups, and Industry Ethics

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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