Herdling, Super Metroid, Jenna Stoeber's Japan Journey | Noclip Crewcast

. Thank you. so Hello, friends, and welcome to episode 241 of the Noclip. crew podcast.

It's a crew cast. It's actually a J crew cast.

It has never been. More of a J.Crew cast.

I am flanked on all sides. By Jays. Jenna Stieber, thank you so much for filling the Frank Howley-shaped hole in all of our lives.

I could never truly fill it, but I'm happy to be here.

He's gone to Japan and you just came from Japan.

I did. Our Japanese subs bench is in top working condition.

You did a lot of blogging and Patreon posting about your trip in Japan.

What was the best thing you did in Japan?

Ooh, oh God, I went to a lot of onsens. I went to an onsen town. called Kinosaki, which is on the northern edge of Japan.

And it was absolutely blissful. I visited like three onsen in a day, which is not the way to do it.

Wow. I did it. Oh my Lord. Onsen being, I've only ever experienced them through the wonderful world of Tsushima.

Onsen being, that's just like a hot tub, right?

Is that the vibe? Specifically hot springs.

Not all onsen have like hot springs from the earth.

But Kinosaki, because it is an onsen town, they are all like... naturally heated onsen water from the ground.

And so they're all mineral. Every single one of them is supposed to have amazing healing properties, which is why I'll never get sick again. perfect uh jeremy jane where's the best place you've ever had a had a bath outside I know you've got a great question.

Wow. Oh, God. Jeremy's a mountain man. He spent a lot of time in the wilderness.

I went to a hot springs in Eastern California, but I cannot remember the name of it.

And, uh, And I met a very strange man there, so...

Was it in the Sierras? It wasn't Calistoga?

No, it was like the Eastern Sierras in the desert.

Okay. I went to one in the saline Valley that they used to, you can't get to it except off road.

And it's back in the 70s hippies used to like, or 60s I guess hippies used to, or rich hippies, so the 70s.

I used to fly like planes in there and then just get get all salty in there.

I had probably the worst conversation to have at a Hot Springs, which was a guy in the Hot Springs was telling me about how there are sometimes brain-eating amoebas that live in the hot springs.

And I was like, I really could have done without knowing that while I'm in the hot springs.

That's like, you know, in survivability, right?

It's actually really bad up here at the front of the plane.

Really, we should be at the back. Yeah, the pilot comes back and he's like, you know, we're fucked.

If you and I go down, we're all fucked. Exactly.

Just letting you know. Have a nice flight.

Jesse Grascia, where's the best place you've ever had a bath?

Um, in my own bathroom, I have no funny or interesting answers.

Unfortunately, I try to get my clothes on outside.

You had a bath. You're a, you're a, you're a, you're a, I'm an adult.

I take an old man. You're the youngest person here. um you're an adult when's the last time you had a bath that's no judgment Like a week ago.

I love taking baths. You don't bathe much?

You're a bath boy? Yeah, I'm a bath boy.

Do you bring your steam deck in the bath?

No, that's so risky. I would never do that.

But what if you had like a cool tray? I thought about getting a tray so I could have a little glass of wine while I experience some sort of visual novel, but...

I don't know. I feel like I'm going to splash one time out of excitement and that's it.

There goes 800 Canadian dollars. Wow. That's what you're worried about?

I would be worried about, like, I don't know how much voltage it takes to kill you when you drop an electric device.

I don't think a steam deck would kill you, but I don't want to plug the toaster into the wall.

I think the weight of the steam deck would kill you before the electricity.

That's a good point. If you hold it directly above your face, then you drown in the bathtub.

Is that why it's called a steam deck is you can you can use it in the bathroom when you're getting it was actually it was designed for the onset, actually.

Well, I mean, Gabe Newell's got all those yachts.

He's got to do something while he's out there.

When I went last time, Gabe Newell had a bath.

He has a shower every time we fucking interview him because both times he just come from a dive.

Yes. That's locked in the vault. So beautiful.

He makes you film it, but he's like, don't put this in the documentary, but I do want it filmed.

I thought you were saying that your interviews get so nasty he has to shower afterwards. filthy from that we ask him all those dirty questions about fucking what is he into now ai Used to be swords, knives, and shit.

Why are you holding an open knife? I'm always holding a knife.

You gotta fucking... I lived in Oakland, man.

You always got me prepared. Hypervigilance is real.

I've got this Skater XL... branded knife.

If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see it.

I don't know why they sent these, but they did.

As a threat? I was gonna say the same thing.

The only skateboarders I know had fucking pocket knives on them were up to no good there's like I guess you can use them for taking off grip tape but like like how often are we taping our boards that we need to have i don't know that's a that's a weird one My favorite place I ever had... Nobody asked, but I'm just going to tell you anyway.

I want to know. My favorite place I ever had a bath... When I was born... a long time ago yeah exactly it's been a while it's been 39 years since i enjoyed a good bath I only as in, look, my daughter's name is Seven.

So we haven't done this in a while. Because we're entering the stage of this is not an appropriate thing to do anymore.

But when she was a baby... Oh my God. Daddy-daughter bath time, the fucking best thing.

We had like a good three or four years of...

Just like you know funny games and characters and all that sort of stuff.

You know, and daddy's a big guy. So when she grew up, it was, you know, became...

You know, a little bit less water in the tub at a certain point.

But my favorite, my most memorable probably was when I was born My mom used to watch me.

It was like I was born in January. And so she used to wash me in a tub in front of our fireplace because we had like a coal fire.

It's how we heated the house. At that time, we had radiators, obviously.

And it was the 1800s, yeah. Exactly. It's like a James Joyce novel. the rest of the world in the 1950s.

But they used to call I guess the football was on the American football because it was late at night because I was like up.

And so is it the refrigerator? uh, something Perry, his name is, he's like a, I think he was a Chicago bears. linebacker, I want to say.

So they used to call me the refrigerator because I was just a big fat, you know. baby in a bathtub in front of a fireplace yeah that's really endearing You know who's also endearing, Jenna?

Who? Our Battle Pass holders. Including the lovely people, Lovepriest, Yush, who I've been saying Yush this entire time, but apparently... according to Jeremy, who is our established Discord moderator for mispronounced names. mispronounced.

Wow. And mispronounced, mispronounced. Wow.

How ironic. I know. It should be an Alanis Morissette song.

Oh, no, it wouldn't be then. It's it's it's it's it's yes.

Like, but is that what you said? That is what I'm led to believe by.

Yes, yes. All right, Love Priest. Yush. Dwayne the Rock Lobster.

Anthony Thomas. Nico Passateri. It's a me, Ferrario.

Senator Armstrong. Re-dredge. Harry Flanagan.

Joosh. Arno. Matt Pearson. James Brown. Mark Ross.

Copernicus. Quote. Tucker Morgan. David McGarry, Goddison, Sven Hooster, Pez.

John Akers, Ewan Snape, Tim Robinson, Forrest Brewers, Jonathan Gremmen, Eric Hamilton Schneider.

Christophe Fatui. Hammer and Lad, Zachary Stainer, Alex Goucher, George Sakotis, Jacob Godserve, Entheogen, james med tohir tilliev and ricin thank you all so much for supporting us at the Battle Pass tier, you absolute... heroes and thank you to all of our patrons over patreon.com slash noclip for supporting the nonsense we do on the main channel and the second channel, which you should check out, even though we haven't really announced it Yet, have we?

I don't know. Videos keep going up on it.

Let's not talk about it. Let's talk about the video games that we have played.

This week, actually, no, Jenna, sorry, you just came back from Japan. all I feel like we're all Japanophiles here Jeremy is definitely a And we just call it an otaku.

I don't know. Jesse, you've never been, right?

You always want to go to Japan sometime?

I'd love to go. Got to get out there. Beautiful country.

I love the idea of it and the culture and all the media.

I'd love to come back with a bunch of great OVAs that I can't get a hold of here.

That'd be awesome. That's a good, it's a good time.

Jenna, what are some of the highlights you had?

How long were you there? I was there for a month.

I was there for a whole month A real trip.

Yeah, it was a time. I spent two weeks bunking down in a hostel in Kyoto doing... some video work, visiting the Nintendo Museum twice, visiting the Ghibli Park, which just recently opened. and making content about that. or preparing to make content about that when I got back, which is where I'm at now.

So that was great. I also, let me grab this. that I keep on my computer.

Oh, here we go. What is it? I climbed Mount Fuji.

This is so cool. Yeah. They gave you a coin?

You have to purchase it. The top of Mount Fuji because everything has been destroyed by capitalism.

It was upside down. Has a gift shop. It also has a post office and a shrine.

But you can buy this. You can only buy this at the top, but it probably has a post office.

Yeah, it has a post office. You can send letters and stuff.

Are there people who live up there full time or?

Totally no. There were dirt tracks to suggest that vehicles can.

Certain kind of like off-road vehicles can potentially drive up that they have to do that for like construction and stuff.

So it's possible that people got shipped up.

But I have to assume at least the priests at the shrine probably bunk overnight.

So they only sell these coins at the top.

It says top of Mount Fuji on the back. There is a machine where you could have it. inscribed with a special message.

We'll see if this goes through. Come on, autofocus.

You can do it. It has the height. Oh, there we go.

And it says big challenges. No problem. I thought.

It was in Japanese because it was blurry and upside down.

I was like, it's in Japanese for sure. That would have been really funny.

No. So I did that. I can't recommend it.

It sucked. Don't do it. Climbing Mount Fuji?

Summiting Mount Fuji sucked. Climbing it partway I think would be fine, although still very stressful, but I cannot recommend summoning it.

So that was great. I went to the- Even with the coin and the view?

Even with the coin. Well, first of all, the view was nothing.

Because I don't know if you know about Mount Fuji, but it is famously a very foggy mountain.

It's so foggy that the train station exiting the town that we stayed in to do the climb, had a plaque up that said, hey, if you came to Fujinomiya, and you weren't able to see Mount Fuji, come here and we'll get you a certificate signed by the mayor saying that you were too charming and attractive and you made Mount Fuji shy.

And so it hit its face. Oh my God. I have to go get that.

It's amazing. Japan, man. Japan has it covered.

This is crazy. It's so charming. No, we climbed up partway the first day and then we stayed overnight at a mountain hut, which is a thing you can do. and mountains around the world.

We did this last year for the Alps, actually.

Um, so we climbed up partway and we stayed overnight in a mountain hut And that was a great experience, except for the fact that A very popular thing to do on Mount Fuji right now is something called Sunset Hike.

And it's mostly done, it's done by some Japanese tourists, but also just done by a lot of like tourists from other Asian countries.

And what it is, is they will go and stay at a mountain hut and try to get to sleep at like 4 p.m. because they want to climb to the top of Mount Fuji in time for the sunrise.

And so the mountain hut we were stayed at was at the eighth, eighth like gradient, basically. which means it was one of the closest to the top of the mountain.

It was about a two hour hike from there. sunrise was at 4.45 a.m., So these people were waking up at 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. to climb up in the dark. with a headlamp a volcanic rock because mount fuji is a volcano it's not a mountain on this volcano rock to get to the top.

We weren't doing that. We went to bed at a normal time to wake up at a normal time to climb Mount Fuji.

But it didn't matter because we had to wake up.

We got like. one to two hours of sleep.

And climbing a mountain on that kind of sleep is not ideal.

So you couldn't get back. You can get back to sleep after.

No, because it started at 1 a.m. And there were so many people forever.

There were so many people doing it. There was like 50 people in this little mountain hut doing the climb.

So it was like once the noise started, it did not stop.

Man, oh man. Mount Fuji. Comes with a, you get a good coin, but is it worth it?

No, it wasn't. Don't do it. It sucked. It also just the climate itself was just not very pleasant.

I have I have Ghibli Museum questions. How do they I've seen pictures of the park.

How do they like. are there like exhibits for like the sad Ghibli movies?

Like, is there like a, is there like a grave of the fireflies ride?

Yeah. or like I don't know I always or like only yesterday is there like a real like melancholy I don't know exhibit of some sort?

So there's the museum and the park. I've been to the museum in past trips, but I went to the park this time.

And that is a great question. That was one of the questions I was most interested about because only yesterday is my favorite.

Oh, really? I rewatched it last night. Really?

What'd you think? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I loved it.

I haven't seen it since... I watched it when I was like...

I don't know. I got super into Ghibli movies when I was very young, and then maybe when I was like a teenager or something, watched basically all of them.

And there were a few that I kind of like, didn't appreciate as much, but still like enjoyed and appreciated.

It was like, that's cool, but didn't like truly click with it.

Yeah, it didn't hit. And then I feel like revisiting a few of them only yesterday is one i'm trying to remember what the other one is what's the one where they sing country roads like 700 times whisper of the heart Whisper of the Heart.

That was another one that kind of didn't hit for me as a teenager, and then I feel like after watching every movie that Yasujiro Ozu has ever made and then going back to them.

I'm like, okay, I get it now. Like, I understand what this is drawing on culturally.

And also, like... I'm in my 30s and have life experience.

When you're like 16, you're like, this is why do they want to go to the countryside?

The same rules, man. I just feel like you don't have the life experience to click with this like, very meditative experience.

And Takahata's films especially are so like, emotionally logic-driven.

They're almost like the other side of the David Lynch coin or something, where it's like...

David Lynch is like the horror side of emotional logic and Isao Takahata is the like life is worth living side of it or something.

Yeah, it's that it's that meme of the person facing the wall and the person facing this. son on a shuttle.

Yeah. And it's David Lynch and Isao Takahata on the same bus.

Yes, exactly. Yeah, the question you ask is a good one because I was super curious if there was going to be any Only Yesterday stuff because it's my favorite. film.

And generally, I am more drawn to Takahata's work because I think it has a more interesting emotional core and it's more like slice of life and it's, usually set in like modern Japan rather than some sort of faux European setting. as is the case with the Miyazaki films.

And here's what I'll say is there wasn't a lot. there wasn't, as you might expect, a lot of Grave of the Firefly photo standees or anything, because...

How grim. But there was there was like this warehouse where you could go and take photos with a bunch of stuff.

And it was just like, oh, here's a scene from, I don't know.

Yeah, here's a scene from Whisper of the Heart. here's a scene from Ponyo that you can stand on.

And it's like, oh, it's like you're sitting on a train with no face.

And there was one for only yesterday. And I asked somebody to take my picture as I was standing in there.

And this young woman, her, I think, mother or grandmother was like, what is this from?

What is this thing from? And I was like, it's from only yesterday.

It's one of the less popular. And the mother was like, oh, I've never even heard of it.

Wow, you must be a real nerd. Wow. She probably meant it as a compliment.

It was spicy, but it was also like, you're here too, ladies.

Were they American? I think so. Yeah, I think so. um so there was there was some there was like some merch for some of the there was there was another standee for um Uh... the bamboo princess.

What was, what's the name of that? Princess Kaguya.

Yes. There was, there was a standing for that.

And there was like, some pieces of merch for it.

But obviously not a lot and very, very few references or acknowledges of Grave of the Fireflies.

There was mostly like art books. for it, like you would expect.

Yeah, I feel like people don't want to think about Grave of the Fireflies while they're at a theme park.

I've never seen it. Is it like a World War II thing? or something yeah you should watch it exactly one time in your life yeah okay it's how it's important to watch It is important to watch, but it will destroy you.

I've seen this picture. I know the picture on the front.

Yeah, yeah, okay. It is one of the best movies I've ever seen, but it is not like I don't think you can really recommend it to someone.

You know what I mean? It's like the zone of interest.

Like if someone said, hey, the zone of interest is really good.

I hear it's good. Should I check it out?

I'd be like, I mean... But you shouldn't do that to yourself, but you should watch it.

Yeah, it's in that same kind of camp of just do it once and never do it again, ever.

Yeah, I've got 10 days in Mariupol for that one probably.

And maybe... Um, maybe hereditary. Yeah, I don't know if I could do that a second time.

That is a little bit more fun than those.

I think maybe now I could go back and watch it again.

But it was such a... I need this movie to end.

I need to get out of here. It's probably the worst time for you to watch that, too, if you watched it around release.

Yeah, I didn't know anything about it. My daughter was young and it was just a bit like, oof.

Man, I don't know. Some movies have a timer that after you've watched it, after it's had that decay.

For like a couple of years, you can revisit it.

The decay for Grave of the Fireflies is...

It's like 80 years. It's like no human is going to be able to cycle through.

Right. Uh, you should do what they did when the movie was released.

They, uh, If I recall correctly, they did double features at showings where they would show I think the order was Grave of the Fireflies and then Totoro as like a paladin. cleanser because everyone would be like oh my god i want to kill myself they'd be like well hold on a minute though It's not all bad.

We got Totoro. What if the boss was a cat?

What if a firebombing occurred into the same universe as Totoro?

Then that universe wouldn't be all bad, would it?

Here's the wasabi. Now here's the ginger.

Little palate cleanser. Oh, my Lord. Do you guys have any games that follow this?

Because I have a few, like ones that I'm...

I was like, oh, you know what? In like five or 10 years, I'm going to chew on that one again.

And one I've just remembered, I've probably hit the... hit the timer on is Return of the Obra Dinn.

I was like, oh, I want to play that again.

But like. I know what happens. So like, and I kind of remember what happens in the end, the twist, but like The actual puzzles themselves, I'm like, no, I could do all that again.

I feel like any anything that's really exploration driven.

I'll talk about this later on the podcast. in more depth, but I've been playing Super Metroid, and I was thinking, I wonder if it's been long enough to start replaying Like, I've only played Hollow Knight once when it came out.

I wonder how... I don't think I have that map memorized, and I feel like the experience of discovering things is what it's all about, so...

You know what I mean? Like, I don't know.

If you want to play Hollow Knight again, there's a sequel coming out soon.

Any moment now. I hear it's already out in Canada.

You guys just don't have the URL. They only have it at EB Games.

You've got to go to the camera. There's a stream going up in games commons on at the moment.

None of us are there, obviously. There's a stream going live at our time in 48 hours.

It'll have been published by the time this is live.

Jason Schreier is out there saying that it won't be a release date reveal.

Um, he tweeted somewhere. So what is this?

Is it just a trailer for it then? Or I think it'll probably be like.

Yeah, the first big trailer drop. They're having the game showcased at some art museum or something in Australia?

Dude, I'm going to Australia. australia in october i think it might line up that'd be really funny yeah i gotta do that But regardless, they are gonna have people playing it, the newest version of it, so.

Oh. Eventually, Microsoft was very confident.

This is the second time they've done this now.

I think two years ago they said it was going to be in the summer.

It was going to launch because all the games we're showing right now will be day one on Xbox games. pass in the next 12 months.

That was one of them. Just kidding. And then This year they announced they have their new handheld, the ROG Ally Xbox crossover thing.

And they're like, yeah, and it'll be launching day one with the ROG Ally Xbox thing.

Silksong will be playable. And then right after, someone from the team or someone who does the VR was like, No, I don't know who the hell said that.

Where Sarah Bond got that one from. That was not us.

So who knows? Maybe this will just be another trailer.

And 10 years from now, we can play Silksong.

I hope it never comes out. I hope so, too.

Every time someone mentions it, I hope it gets delayed.

I just... Half of me wants it out, so we don't have to deal with it anymore.

Agreed, agreed. Here's the thing, though, is like...

I loved Hollow Knight 2 and I get it like I understand if that game was pivotal for you and you're like, holy shit, indie games are amazing.

I get if it was this amazing game. I just feel like There's so many other games that it's... I just don't even think about Silksong.

I just play other games, and then one day it will exist, and I'll be like...

Like, oh, delightful. I'm so glad. Sorry, I interrupted you.

No, no, that's the whole thought. Yeah, I think they have like to in a way this is sort of like Derek Hughes problem he had on Spelunky too and he found an elegant way around it. because I think what happened here is that, and I'm with you, I love Hollow Knight, I was a bit late to Hollow Knight,

But for a lot of people, it was their first like roguelite. sort of like an early one of these.

It has a great look to it. It does a lot of interesting things, the characters and the exploration and stuff.

It's got a lot going for it. But I do feel that like that genre went into turbo drive. right after that game came out.

And I would love to talk to him about it.

I wonder if it's just that they've been trying to react to this uh this sub-genre which is just constantly evolved every single like six months uh since this thing came out and it's like a moving target or something.

Cause I do worry that like a, a sequel to Hollow Knight that plays very much like Hollow Knight. might end up being... You know, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about games that there are sometimes those sequels that come out that... are just so like the first game and you think you wanted that.

But then the sequel is so like it that you're like, oh, I guess I didn't.

Want more of that? And I was actually, I forget what game we were talking about this on the podcast about a month ago.

But I was chatting to Hugo Martin about it at QuakeCon.

We had a quick chat about, you know, the three games and how he feels about them.

And I was... bringing this point up to him, and he said this was the fear that we had, was if we did Doom 2016, and then we do Doom 20...

18 or 19. And it's, It's so similar to that.

If we don't take this big push with Eternal and go in a different direction, like, sure, there might be a bunch of people who don't like the original you know the sequel because they want something more like Doom 2016 but the bigger fear is that you just bore everyone and like you know you don't do anything new you don't you don't even satisfy a different audience in a different way And then you kill the whole thing because then you're like, oh, well, nobody wants to play these games anymore.

So I wonder if that's like, I'm totally just making this up in my head, but I do wonder if. they're in a bit of a sticky situation because that game was so like sort of simple. you know, in a lot of ways.

Relatively speaking, for sure. Clean in its execution.

I think what you're describing is like, always the issue for games with long development times.

I remember when like Concord dropped, that was part of the discussion of it arriving simply years too late to to capture the audience that it thought it had at the beginning of its development.

And, like, Hollow Knight was... Like 2017, right?

Was it? Yeah. I think so. So it's been... eight years, there was a global pandemic in between.

It's just like- There was? Not in Canada.

It's just like eight years. Yeah. tastes have moved on, genres have moved on.

And it's I am curious to see when it drops.

And this is the other thing is like, how will it ever live up to the hype?

Yeah, that's the problem, right? Expectation now.

Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of it reminds me a lot of like when a musician gets really popular and they have their first album, that's like the breakthrough album, especially if it's maybe like actually their first proper album and people are like, wow, we love this person now.

And it's like the difficult second album problem where it's, you know, how do you make all these new fans happy?

And I feel like it's like, I don't know.

Hollow Knight is like, this isn't like JPEG Mafia.

This is like fucking Michael Jackson. You know what I mean?

Like, it's so popular. I see more. It's probably the indie game that I see mentioned the most, number one, bar none.

It's hard for me to think of what is even in the same every showcase. every doesn't matter how big the showcase is doesn't matter if it's being run by some youtuber that no one's ever heard of before if they're like we're doing an indie showcase they're So I'm going to be there like that.

It's funny. It's like a vicious cycle of, Silk song not being out yet leads people to watch showcases and learn about games that they maybe wouldn't have heard of if it wasn't for the fact that maybe Silksong will be there.

So it's like once that game comes out, are people still going to watch all these indie showcases?

What's there to wait? It also might just be like the Skate 3 thing of we've just meme-ified this game for the sake of the content. comments you know what i mean we're just having a bit of fun with it um i wonder if the like solution to this is Am I right in thinking that Toby Fox didn't actually like say that he was working on Deltarune?

It just kind of came out. So... I remember it being kind of a surprise.

Yeah, so maybe that's like if he's like following up Undertale, right?

Under tail two, like I could imagine that having the same. like expectation, but just dropping the game is actually, I mean, I think if you're making a somewhat low-budget game and your previous game sold...

Maybe that's something that the Hollow Knight folks didn't have the opportunity.

I don't know what Team Cherry's publishing deal was on that first one, but. maybe that's a way around this problem is maybe they just simply announced it too early and and Maybe they needed to because they were trying to get publishers on board and they were trying to get eyeballs on it.

I don't know, but. Maybe that's the solution is is just not talking about it until it's ready to come out.

I mean, a lot of studios do that with games that have that expectation that happened with Fallout.

Four happened to fall at 76. Yeah, this I can see. there being an argument for it in certain cases.

The only other thought I have about Hollow Knight is that having played a bunch of like older Metroidvanias recently.

It is interesting how Hollow Knight is very sort of It's not doing something that's like crazy, radically new for Metroidvanias.

It's doing a lot of things that are pretty familiar, but in a different... arrangement and you know very elegantly with an amazing art style and like I don't know.

I mean, it reminds me a lot of Metroid and Mega Man X and like I don't. and I'm like, wow, this is like a radically new vision for Metroidvania.

It's just very well put together and at the right time and all these things.

And then I think it must be very difficult to then go as a team what is like how do we innovate on this thing that is sort of familiar in many ways and not alienate all the people who like this. uh like familiar by design yeah exactly how do you make like an innovative familiar thing is like fucking Zenko on.

Yeah, exactly. It might be an impossible thing to meld.

Yeah, well, you know more than us, dear listener.

Sorry, Janet, go ahead. I was just, I was flashing back to when Hollow Knight came out.

And this feels like it might be part of the equation that we haven't touched on, which is that I remember sort of it being promoted I don't know if this was by the studio or publisher or by fans of it as being a souls like.

And it was like one of the early games that got promoted as being a Souls-like thing.

If Silksong came out and they were like, it's a Souls-like...

Into the trash. Into the toilet. Flush it away.

Don't want it. Oversaturated. No thank you.

So I am curious to the extent if they're like, Well, this thing that was an innovative way to promote the game eight years ago is now the most obnoxious way to promote a game in 2025.

Yeah, that's true. I wonder if, yeah, God, it's It's going to be fascinating to see.

We've seen so little is the thing. It's like there's nothing even to...

We're asking these questions because the vacuum that has been created where this where this thing is people have nothing to latch on to.

So you know, in a couple of days, they should have something to latch onto.

If they shallow drop it, that'd be incredible, but, you know, If a trailer or something, it'll answer some of these questions to your listener.

Hopefully... Hopefully some of these plantifications will be put to rest.

We'll talk about it next week. We are going to talk about some games that came out in the past couple of weeks, though.

Mostly in the past week, a lot of them. Jesse, can we start with you?

I feel like hurdling is maybe the one that I'm I've known about the most or seen-ish on shows and stuff like that you guys have to remind me what it was in our meeting this week but Then I was like, oh yeah, of course this one.

So it's not out for... It'll be out by the time the podcast is.

You got already code of it. um what is hurdling like describe it visually as well as well as gameplay i guess because it has a very unique look Sure, yeah.

Hurdling is the latest game from Okomotiv, the team that made the Far...

The Lone Sails and Far the Long Shore, Far Shore.

Changing Tides. Changing Tides. Yeah. The DLC.

There's a couple of. Yeah, overlapping names on that.

I can't remember exactly. But yeah, they made the Far series critically acclaimed.

And it's being published by Panic. Sorry, those are like the sort of very painterly, like, what would you say, like 2D...

Almost like a classic Prince of Persia style, well, just like 2D perspective, but you're like controlling a big boat.

Yeah, you're controlling the Okomotiv, I think is what it's called.

It's the vehicle in the game, which is what their studio is named after.

I think anyway, I might be wrong on that.

But yeah, you control a big vehicle trying to go along on a big adventure.

I think the second one was 3D, right? You did an interview with it. developers on that one.

So that was a little bit different, but their thing has been making vibe focused games about big, interesting worlds. with environmental storytelling being the focus.

And hurdling is another one of those. It's a quite short though it's very short actually i would say it's like three hours long i think it took me three and a half They said four to six.

Sorry, I'm an epic gamer. I'm just too good.

But the idea and setup for hurdling is you are playing as a character.

There are no words. So they don't say the name in the game, but I think V or Vi is the character's name based on what I read.

It's Veef and Cyberpunk. Cool. Right. Exactly.

Yes. Also Vi from League of Legends. Who's to say?

Maybe maybe they're both. But you play as this character.

You wake up in a tunnel. It looks like they're unhoused, sleeping in a tunnel somewhere in a small city.

And upon waking up, you find a bunch of calicorn.

These are the creatures that you are hurting and hurtling.

They're based on like a Bulgarian style, like outfits that are put on certain animals like yaks and all that sort of stuff.

So it looks like just big, weird, crazy yak fantasy creatures, they're adorable.

And your goal, which is sort of like, Not explicitly stated, again, there's no worded, there's no narrative really presented to you explicitly at all. told through inference, but you are compelled to heard up a collection of these Calicorn. and take them to somewhere.

The world is set up in this way where it's like a third person adventure game.

So you control the character and then you have the herd of creatures in front of you and you are the shepherd. for these creatures and the way that you move them.

This is like the hardest and weirdest part of the game.

It's like, probably the thing that will take people the longest to get used to is the way that you maneuver them.

So it works a bit like, I guess Pikmin maybe is the closest comparison.

All of the little units, not like you control them.

That's not like combat. They're on. They're doing their own thing.

But the Calicorn, when you control them, you are like...

It's it's so hard to explain. It's like there's a piece of string.

Starting from the character to the end of the cursor, which you control...

By moving the character relative to the collection or the herd of the Calicorn.

So is it like sort of the cursor is magnetized to both the herd and the main character?

Like it's sort of floating between the two?

And you're pushing closer and further from them.

Consistence has no impact on how fast they go.

It's sort of like there's ability you have where you can make them go faster.

But basically what you're doing is solving very light puzzles and maneuvering the crowd or herd, perhaps. of these calicorn through different environments and the environments are gorgeous.

This game is like one of the best looking games of this year.

I think the painterly look is fantastic.

The skies have this. big, bright, beautiful blue to them.

And then sometimes you get a sunset and the lighting is great.

All of the textures have this beautiful sort of like like dirt to them in certain spots, but everything just feels so alive.

The soundscape, I think, is probably the the most effective thing in the whole game.

Because when you're walking around and controlling the herd through the forest, getting from point to point.

You can hear the sounds of creatures. There's not like an overabundance of music It sort of relies on folly a lot and it does a really good job with that.

And then there are these moments, and I think that's the best part of the game, which is usually in contrast to what I think is the worst part of the game.

So I'll focus on the best part first. When you go out through these sort of like tighter areas, like sometimes you go through a forest or a bit of like. city and forest come into contact.

Maybe there's like a concrete road or something or an asphalt road they had to get across.

Once you get out of this tighter area, you get into these big wide open fields.

And you and the Calicorn herd just run through and it's, it's beautiful.

There's like a bunch of bassoon players and the way that it comes in just like fills your heart with joy. and and warmth.

It's like someone's hugging you and lifting you through the sky as you maneuver these creatures.

You can run through with them and it just feels great.

The like the views are fantastic. The colors are good.

The lighting is. Like everything comes together there.

And then again, and this is where I think that there's so little done here to make it work. there's these puzzles that you do between scenarios.

And they're just not very interesting. Like they're very straightforward, simple puzzles. in environments that are great, that look good, like the way that you interact with the herd outside of moving them, is sometimes there will be an interactable and you walk up to it and you press the button on the interactable and then the One of them comes over and does something for you.

And that's just not interesting. Like, it's just a very simple, straightforward... Like, if you've played... any Playdead game inside, then you've done these kind of puzzles before.

It's like push a gate. land a thing on the thing.

It's just not interesting. But when it's doing the other stuff where you're running through and you're enjoying the environments, I

I think that is really, really compelling.

It's oddly just fun moving them around. And then the Calicorn themselves are very, very, very cute and not just in that sort of like I want to pet them kind of way.

Jesse really wants us to know how cute the kettle corner.

I'm loving hearing about it. The kettle corner is so cute.

I think it's the best part of the game, and I wish they spent more time focusing on the relationship that the character has with those. as opposed to making me do sort of like very basic puzzles because there's enough there that they could have just built on it and I would have had. fun doing that for three hours.

So sometimes between locations, there are these fire pits that you can set up and sort of sleep at and You get a dream and it gives you the next sort of thing you have to go do.

But before you go to bed All of the calicorn hang around the fire pit with you. and they will interact with each other and the world.

And like, sometimes when you're moving through the environment, the Calicorn can get hurt and when they get hurt, They have like this blood on them, but like it's, you know, you feed them and then the blood goes away.

So like, is it blood? And then but if they have blood on them or if they've like collected sticks or whatever they're dirty They won't sit with the rest of the calico And the first time that happened, my heart broke because like everyone was sitting there and the one big one that just bumped into something because he's just big and it's bound to happen. was sitting off to the side, like licking himself.

And I was like, oh my God. Poor little cattle corn.

You probably taste delicious, though. Oh, I bet.

If you cut them up and fry them on a big pit, that would be... in the game absolutely oh you're hurting them is that what the end of the game is You just take them into a slaughterhouse.

Yeah, that's gaming. Do they make cute little sounds?

Yeah. They make adorable little sounds. Such an important question.

I can't. not believe we skipped over that until the end.

Well, you touched on the foley, but it's so important to know if the cute little things are going to make cute little sounds when and I heard them.

Yeah. And there are threats in the world as well.

So they are a little bit scared. There are things you need to be somewhat concerned about, but it has this like, this beat to it, this one moment, again, it's very short.

I'm not going to say what it is, but it just, it does stuff with the story. that I feel like a lot of games that do this sort of thing of telling a story about like, environments and creatures and like the way that they interact with each other.

Like there is a villain and the villain is the other animal trying to survive.

But here it's like the survival of that other creature as gruesome and perhaps villainous as it may seem. be perceived, they're just trying to survive.

Circle of life, Matt. Exactly. But it's not like it's not a secret of naming it like, oh, man, all the owls you need.

Like, no, it's actually, I think, handled really well. so did you enjoy it?

Like just wrapping up on it, like, like three hours.

Do you know how much, do you know what the, prices on it yeah it's gonna launch at 25 but i think there's a 20 discount so it's gonna go down to 20 let me pull up the email here how does that feel Yeah, that feels OK.

I think, yeah, it's weird because the length of it, I think, is going to come down to how much difficulty you have.

Maneuvering which for a lot of people kind of a gamer like Jesse Of course, you know, I've been practicing my herding skills.

I was in the Netherlands, so, you know, I know how to herd those goats.

But if you're having a hard time with that.

You're gonna fucking, you're gonna one-up me on goat herding?

You wanna have a goat I'll throw down with the goats.

All right. And we'll see which one of you is the herding goat.

Oh, nice. That's good. That's good. Sounds like we got a patron exclusive video.

No, it's hard. That would be really good.

No, I don't have sheep. I haven't got goats.

I'm sorry. Important distinction. Very much so.

Goats, sheep are good at eating grass. My goats, fucking useless at eating grass.

You could say they're especially bad at it.

I'd probably be better at eating grass than these fucking losers.

Sorry, I'm not here to shit talk my goats. uh herdlings he said it's 30 bucks but it's gonna have a little launch sale on it when it goes 25 it's gonna launch at 20

I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry. My bad. Twenty five.

Yeah, it's a it's a good short time. Go into it. uh, focusing, I think as much as you can on enjoying your time with the little creatures interacting with them.

And also, uh, Um, weird point. Make sure you kill one.

Jesus. All right. Trust me. Okay. You are asking so much.

You got to do it on purpose. can you save scum the killing of the the calicorn can you no cannot save scum it maybe i didn't try but you gotta when i save scum and kill something like in paper mario there was like a little guy kill me and i was like i'll save and then i'll do it then i'll see what it is and then i'll undo it Yeah, but you just created a new multiverse.

That's true. But I don't have to live in that alternate universe.

You know what I mean? Like, there's a me with blood on his hand.

I don't know. It's kind of... Have you guys seen...

What is it? Primer Primer by Shane. Oh, my God.

That's a movie. That's a movie I need to rewatch.

That movie is, I don't even think it's like that entertaining of a movie, but God, is it like maybe the best time travel movie ever.

Yeah, it's yes, it's that one of the other two movies you always got me to watch the two, the ones that are like fake sequels to each other.

Oh, Resolution... And what's the other one?

I know what you're talking about. Cause they're similar.

It's, it's similar to indie guys made a movie. yeah the movie and they're both sci-fi i forget anyway it's good stuff yeah sorry Do a little Google on that.

I'm going to do a quick little sort of side shuffle, because I feel like Sword of the Sea might be in a similar boat to thank you jenna uh to uh oh yeah boat there you go god we're just killing it today Did you find it, Jeremy?

The Endless. The Endless. There we go. Might be in a similar boat to Hurdling.

So I've only played like 40 minutes of this.

It went live this morning. The reviews seem to be very strong, so that's great.

This is. The latest game from Giant Squid, who are the folks who made Abzu and The Pathless.

So, yes, this game looks gorgeous. I played it at SGF.

I think I talked it up a bunch after we did that. podcast after summer games fest last year at the super reductive version of what this game is is that it is snowboarding I think that is very apt, though.

It's a game that really looks like Journey. like a really good-looking version of Journey, it must be somewhat inspired by it.

But the actual, I mean, one of the people who worked on this did work on journey.

So I should mention that. Um, But the actual gameplay of it is essentially you're kind of like... what was heart machine second game?

Why can't I buy my, uh, uh, Oh man, Solar Ash?

Solar Ash. It's kind of like Solar Ash. Like Solar Ash was a game about like sort of skating over the world and doing in big open environments with lots of sand.

Similarly, this is a game where your character is essentially on, it is a sword actually, which is pretty cool, but they're They're snowboarding.

They're sort of like hoverboarding on their, uh, sword, uh, over these deserts, but the sand is undulating like a sea, like it has waves.

So it's this very weird... you know, beautiful symphony of color and light as it's bouncing across and these sand dunes.

And then you're interacting with the world.

And the main thing that happens, at least at the start, is that you are essentially sort of spreading the sea back to these places.

So you're going to a place, you're hitting a little chime and it is turning a bunch of that sand into the most glorious looking deep water with fish in it and everything.

It looks incredible. The thing that I've... sort of stumbled into after getting through the sort of opening tutorial stuff is that the game does seem And I don't know if this is the case, so I really should read a review or something. but it has the vibe of like a Metroidvania, like that... that there are areas that I can see I can't get to yet.

And they, it's like somewhat open and I'm like, oh, I bet I can get over there, but I

I can't, I don't have like a jump that's big enough or a whatever it is to get there.

So I've been enjoying exploring, like it's really rewarded.

You know, the thing that I'm always chiming on event. week after week is I just love a game where I can just go explore and get lost and find weird stuff and collect all the things.

And for sure, it's already doing that. So it looks fantastic.

It's on PlayStation Plus if you have PlayStation Plus.

It's also on Steam. I booted it up on Steam.

And I'm like torn whether what I should do because I got it on Steam and I was like, oh, shit, it's on PS Plus.

I should refund it, but it has widescreen support and it looks insane on my editing monitor.

Because it's just like, it looks as good as it looks, and then there's an extra 30% of it on either side.

So I'm like not sure what to do. It's 30 bucks.

So it's, you know, we're used to spending all... playing all these incredible indie games week after week now these days for like 10 or 15 or 20 so you know, it's silly to me that it made me sort of go, Oh yeah, $30.

I have to pay $30 for a video game this week.

Um, But at least, I don't know how long it is, but at least I have...

The opening of the game, I was like, this is brilliant.

I love how this feels. I love how this looks.

I love the feeling of snowboarding. Um, I like the mini games and stuff they have in it.

They straight up have like a. there's one area near the start where they're like, yeah, if you got like 8,000 points, You will get, we'll give you some coins and it's just like, you know, this journey ass looking moments where you're just like doing flips and shit.

Trying to get like a Tony Hawk high score.

I was going to say, wait, there's a point system like Tony Hawk, actually?

Yeah. So only in this one area, there was like an area where it was like, Oh, here's a, like a beautiful old looking, um, um, what do you call those sand clocks sundial sundial no you turn them over no Oh, like hourglass hourglass.

Thank you. So accurate. Thank you. Yeah.

We didn't get sand clocks in Ireland. We don't know enough sand clocks. where you literally went up to one of these.

Did a chime on it and it was like, yeah, try and get 8,000.

And I mean, it doesn't... It plays... kind of like a Tony Hawk.

It was like a half pipe. Like I was in like a half pipe going up one side and going, holding L1 and going like square, triangle, circle to do like grabs on it.

Did like Superman by Goldfinger start playing in the game?

It did not. You have to collect the letters for sword.

Exactly. Perfect. Exactly. Sand. sort of yeah it's uh yeah so i i you know i it seems like it has a bit of variety in it um But again, it has that feeling, I think, probably like hurdling, Jesse, where it's fairly... linear, but then it did open up.

So I don't know. It's one of those frustrating previews where I've played an hour of this game and I have more questions than answers.

But it doesn't sound too dissimilar to the pathless, like the way that that game starts was pretty linear and small tutorial island.

And then you go out and you're like, I could get up there if I had enough feathers exactly yeah so I

It just looks gorgeous. It really, really, really looks amazing. the music suite and the flow, like the feeling of, of, like sort of hoverboarding over this stuff is really tremendous.

It feels just great. So yeah. Very interested to play more of Sword of the Sea.

If you've got PSN, go check it out for free.

Well, not for free, but you know what I mean.

30 bucks on Steam, and I'm assuming... Actually, I don't know if it's on Xbox because I think the PSN deal... was something I saw an article recently about how that was a sort of a must to finish development on the game so um i'm not quite sure no ps5 and uh And Windows for the moment.

And Austin Wintory did the music. There you go.

Makes all I needed to know more sense. I have one question about it because you mentioned that you're writing a sword.

Is there combat? Do you get the impression there's combat?

I have not come across any. I've never seen any in the trailers, so I don't think so.

But who knows? Just curious, because riding a sword, it kind of implies...

I guess it's the opposite of the Sword of Damocles, because it is not over your head, you are riding it, but it still kind of implies that there's... combat.

I don't know. Why would it be a sword? I'm thinking about it.

You had a skate-themed... switchblade at the beginning of this.

So maybe these just don't mean the things that I think they mean anymore.

Not just at the beginning, Jenna. Okay, I'm sorry.

All right, Jenna, we're going to force you to talk about video games now. uh tell us about uh off do you want to talk about all first of all yeah a little bit Yeah, because it's not necessarily a new game.

No, this is kind of a re-release. I think it has some updates.

I never played the original, so I don't have a good sense. of what if anything has changed.

But this is, it's often, It's a game that originally came out, I think, in 2012.

Late 20s to late 2000s is the word I'm thinking.

Like 2008 maybe? Yeah. And it's a kind of, I'm going to use a word that I don't, normally mean to be kind of a negative, but which I kind of employ is kind of negative here, and it is quirky. yes i do it it's so quirky it's so quirky And I like the quirkiness.

Let me... frame this also in the sense that I don't play a lot of turn-based RPGs It's just as a game mechanic, I find it kind of monotonous Uh, and I, I've played some games.

What was the sea of stars? Uh, That was fun because it had kind of a reflex mechanic built into the turn-based RPGs, but...

And that that is where I would say I am struggling most with off right now is that you fight the same enemies and you're like, well, I've probably pretty much got a sense of what the optimum way of getting this battle over with as fast as possible is.

So I've been mostly doing that. It's fine.

I'm about halfway through. I think I'm going to try to push through the ending, but not because I'm enjoying myself or the game.

Just buyer's remorse? No, it's... This is something I have to describe to people who do not engage with media for a living.

But it's like sometimes you play a game or watch a movie or show Not because it's good and you're enjoying yourself, but because it has some sort of relevance. or some sort of interest as like an artifact and This game is really interesting because it is the gap, it is the missing link between Mother slash Earthbound and Undertale.

It's like... Playing this is like, I see, I see.

But I also... I never beat Undertale. I bought it for the switch for my flight to Japan because I was like, I'm going to be locked in a chamber for 14 hours.

I'm going to play 14 hours of Undertale.

I played about 20 minutes and I was like, God, I hate this.

I hate this. It's so tedious. Yes. And it is similar, capital Q, quirky.

Right. But at least off is shorter. So I'm going to try to push through to the end.

It feels like it's not your your genre then in particular.

It's definitely not my genre. It's also just like, it's meta about video games in a way that I think...

Was probably very novel and fun in 2008.

Yeah. Yeah, right. But which is now just sort of like, oh, yeah, you know, you're you're video game characters and you know, you're in a video game. game it's like yeah it's a bit like you can't do the would you kindly bit from bioshock right You couldn't do that today.

Who cares? Oh, yeah. Wow. Congrats. Yeah.

Put that in the game. Wow. You're so smart. yeah Jeremy did you ever play this back in the day no I have not it's been recommended to me by people over the years but I've never got into it Jenna, do you like... You said you don't like turn-based, but do you... have you played any of earthbound and do you find it as sort of like, detestable as I like Undertale, and I understand.

I totally get it. It's like... It's like cilantro, as a metaphor I've deployed many times, where it's like...

It either tastes like soap to you or delicious Mexican food.

Yeah, I haven't played enough of Earthbound to commit one way or the other because I don't like turn-based RPGs.

I've sort of... I also feel like that style of turn-based is like...

I Earthbound is kind of the only one of those that I can get into.

It's very hard for me to play like old Dragon Quest where you don't even see your characters.

It's just the like two dimensional plane with an enemy on it.

I don't know it's particularly like unengaging to me or something yeah off has a has a crazy art style to it as well yeah I'm liking the screenshots.

Do you know what work was done into re-releasing this?

Does anyone have... I think it's just, I think it tweaked some of the balance. of the game.

I think maybe there was some updated art assets, but I think Not much, basically, has been changed.

Was it on Steam before? Is this just like a re it's because it's not an update.

This came out as a new steam app. It's actually published by Fangamer and co-developed.

So I don't know. I'm reading through it.

Yeah. They developed the remaster as well.

Okay. Yeah. If I remember correctly that.

Off was the first game Fangamer published.

I think. Don't quote me on that, but I'm pretty certain.

You mean like this new version of it or the original?

The original original. Oh, really? Yeah.

I'm pretty certain. Yeah. Don't take my word for that, but I'm pretty certain that that was the first game that they published.

So it's sort of interesting for them to loop back to it, having had success publishing other games.

I don't know what games fan gamer published.

I was looking at this going like a fan gamer published games before.

This is crazy. You know, it's a good question.

I don't know. Their Steam page seems to suggest that they only have this one, I think.

They've got a top seller's. I don't know.

Fangamer. They make That's where all the Hades, that's where you're developing hell.

Available now. Is that on? Is that fine game?

I think it's fine game. That's a fan gamer, right?

I hope it's fan gamer. You sent so many emails, Danny.

It's not fandom. It's not fandom. It's available now on Final Gamer.

Let's talk about from, I don't know how to fucking make this.

I don't know how to make this connection, man.

You could do it. Oh, Jesus Christ. Okay, so Jesse played this game.

Yeah, there you go, from Coinbase. But Coinbase makes it sound like it's crypto.

I mean, it might as well be. Could be an arcade.

That's Coinbase. Yeah, it is. There you go.

That's a Coinbase economy. So... Rock coin.

So tell me. So, OK, so. All right. This is a game.

Sure it is. This is a game that is basically like my... my wife and daughter's favorite thing to waste money in, in the well, not waste money.

I don't want to be too derogatory, you know? waste if we're saying we're wasting all the money we went go to the arcade with this is the most wastey thing you could do, probably.

Yes. or any, you know, chain arcade, any arcade period, probably.

There are those games that if you have any sense, you probably don't put coins into that are obviously any sense.

You're welcome. We're doing so many puns on this episode where it's just a machine full of coins. and a large block that pushes the coins closer to the edge.

And your goal as the player is to put the coin in the machine and make the coins fall down so you can get tickets.

What if you made that a video game? That sounds less cool.

Way less cool. Not fun. Well, you're not putting coins in it, right?

You're not. You're right. It's like playing solitaire, right?

Yes. Yes. But what if there were magical things that also helped you do it better, like jokers that were maybe alive or maybe not? talking about the lot true what are you talking about you settle down now you silly goose why are you bringing up anyways So this is a rat coin, coin pushing, uh, coin pusher, roguelike published by play stack, the publishers of Bellatro.

The evidence is piling up. There's a theme here.

It's the gambling games and then abiotic factor for some reason.

Yeah, this is it's it's those games from Dave and Buster's.

It's a it's a coin pusher. But the difference here is there are mechanics in place that allow you to rig the game in your favor, perhaps.

So the coins that are in the machine to have a set number of points and then you get tickets once they fall through and off of the thing.

Sometimes you'll get a bonus coin that gives you extra tickets and the more I describe this game, the more tired I am talking about it.

Basically, the tutorial was like nonsense.

This is the play test. So it's a very, very early version of the game.

They can make changes. I don't want to criticize the design of it.

Cause I'm sure there are things that will change over time.

So I'll just describe it. Um, You do all that, you do the coin pushing, and then at the end of each round, there are 10 rounds per level, you go to a shop and you can buy special coins and the special coins do certain things.

Some of them will like if two coins of the same type touch, they'll duplicate and there's a bunch of other coins.

It's just like how they make babies. And then it's like, some of them are like, there's a star coin.

If it hits a coin, it does this. And then, So there's all these little fun effects that augment your ability to hit the score threshold that you need to go to the next round.

There's also Jokers. I mean, I can't remember what they call them.

It's like this other little key chain thing or something.

Yes. Actually, Batman's in this one. They're not Joker's. and they give them yeah like special abilities like now your score multipliers higher or After you hit a certain number of coins into the machine, you... get to push the machine a little bit and make the coins fall out.

That's funny. The main way, by the way, that you turn off.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. We turn off the cheating.

I didn't mention it by the way, the way you put the coins into the machine in the game is not just like, there's a slot and they randomly go somewhere.

You do have some degree of control over how the coins enter the machine.

So there's two little coin inserts on the side.

Yeah, a bit like, yeah, that's a good comparison.

Um, there's two coin inserts on both sides, uh, left click or right click or cure E on your keyboard.

We'll put them into the machine. You can actually, it's all physics based, I think anyway, unless they're cheating.

And when the coins connect, if you press them at the same time, they actually stop in the middle of their flight and will land where you want them be.

So there is like a bit of skill and where you want to place it.

And then it's just waiting for it to hit the right thing with the physics system and then give you what you want.

And the funny thing about it is it's really easy.

I mean, it's just the easy difficulty version of it.

So I mean, it has to be, I assume, but I just felt like I just was crushing it every single time.

And it's not even because I have the Boletro brain disease.

I think it's just, it was just very easy and like, you know, fun in the way that dopamine is fun.

Yes, and this was the play test, yeah. Is it easy to read?

I played the game. Is it a ball in air? It was called, this was the Pachinko. roguelike one that came out last year.

And I enjoyed it, but I found it difficult to read what was going on sometimes because there was just so much...

Chaos, like there was so many pegs. Each peg had its own you could basically load up the pegboard with these various variables that would, you know, bounce in a different way or create multiple balls.

And by the end of the thing, it was just too difficult to read like what exactly was going on.

It was hard to set up shots, things like that.

And this seems like it might have a similar problem because there's just so many coins and they're all physics on top of each other.

Is that a thing? Like it's hard, is it hard to strategize because you kind of, You're not quite sure what's in there because there's just so much going on. the perfect comparison point because, unlike Balatro, which is sort of the progenitor of these,

You have very little control over what you're doing in both Bollionaire and in this one.

Um, so in rack coin, when things get off the rails and It never stops like it's it's not quite like Bollinger where it's like there's so much visual noise you can't see what's going on.

But there's a degree of like you press the button 30 seconds ago and you're kind of just waiting for stuff to finish.

Like, you know, when you're in an arcade and you or if you're at a casino, if you want to make the direct comparison.

And like the right thing happens. All of the machine decides you've put enough money into it.

It's like, here you go. Here's 25 seconds. of the most annoying noises you've ever heard.

Would you like some dopamine? And it just it does.

There's this spin wheel that happens if you hit a certain number of coins over the edge.

You build like your it looks like the guitar hero score multiplier on the side of the screen.

And once it hits a certain level, a spin wheel comes down and drop stuff.

And like there's a tower of coins that will appear if you hit a certain thing.

And then like. Once you get the coins off, maybe they'll explode.

Is that not exciting? Cause like, like, but is it good?

Like, you're like, yeah, I got more coins, unlock more things.

No, so here's the thing. Yeah, I got the score.

I beat the level. Here's the thing. Again, it's the play test for this, right?

I'm sure that we'll change stuff. as time goes on, I don't want to be too critical because they could totally hear these criticisms and be like, okay, that's a reasonable one.

I will make changes. Balotro I think was successful at least, uh, in part because there were so many options for the player to, uh, put themselves into the game.

The way that you want to play, you could win basically with whatever route that you wanted to take.

Strategy, strategy, exactly. Here, there's a similar thing, but a problem that I have with boolean error in the same way that I do with this is there's so little in your own control because of the physics system, because things are going all off off the rails.

There's no way for you to fully strategize.

Like, you know how the cards are going to come out in Balatro. there's a couple random chance things that will maybe get in the way of your ability to have things go the way you're expecting.

But for the most part, you can plan around the way that the deck is constructed.

Here it's like the coins will go a certain way, but the physics system will do what it does.

It's hard to get around that. Right. They have ways of minimizing that.

And again, I said it's really easy because there's so many things that overlap on top of each other and just create really simple strategies that allow you to get what you're looking for.

Like there was points where I needed to get like 10,000 tickets and I got like a hundred thousand in I didn't even think about it.

It's very easy to manipulate and make it not challenging.

Again, it was the easy difficulty, so it can go up over time.

Yeah, exactly. Still, to my point, I don't the biggest thing for me when I played the tutorial and I finished it.

I got to the end. I finished the 10th round.

There was no infinite mode like in Volatory.

You just keep going and see what happens. it was over and then it was like, all right, play another one.

And my thought was, Isn't the fun of going in the fun and very big quotation marks.

Playing these games in an arcade machine isn't it that I get tickets and like get to buy stuff actually Or like literal coins.

That's the thing about Ratcoin. is it's a pile of actual money that you can spend on actual candy.

It's just like, there should be something.

Yeah. I'm sure, again, after the fact. Is this playtest again?

Because there's no metagame at all. Absolutely.

Absolutely. There may be some metagame stuff going on later.

So it's all just. But I just there's this overarching feeling that I've had, and I think Jeremy and I have talked about it a couple of times on the pod. of like, there are so many indie games that are just like some form of gambling. with some roguelike elements on it.

And it's like, what is the fun part? Is it the dopamine? flashing lights, because I don't know if that's necessarily fun.

I just, I can tell I'm being manipulated.

Stop it. Stop it. It's funny that so many services have moved towards a subscription model.

Where in order to get access to the thing over and over again, you have to pay consistently, which is kind of what gambling is.

And it's so funny that video games are like, we're not doing subscription for this because that's gambling.

But if you pass $30 up front, you can gamble infinitely for no reward and no purpose.

Yes. In fairness, in a real casino, you might lose that $30 in five minutes just sitting down.

It's a great value. It's a great value. But it is it's the it's the it is the possibility space of the casino not to defend the game the design of fucking casinos here But if we're going rubber meets the road here, there are stakes. and there are rewards in a casino, and the idea that I could win...

$1,000 and take everyone out for steak after.

The steaks are literal steaks in this case. then that's the fun of it.

But I feel like a lot of these games that are aping...

Casino design and like I mean this one's not a casino.

You wouldn't play this in a casino I don't think this is an arcade game But it is really not too far removed from a progressive slot machine.

It's the same basic idea. It is very pachinko.

This is Western pachinko. It is Western pachinko.

I just feel like it's like these games feel to me like they're so juice dependent.

It is like... What is for sale here is like, the things are falling over, the coins are jingling, the fucking little star particle effects are like, keys in front of a baby it's a it's a key jangler is what this genre is becoming yeah and we should just call it that I love that.

That's good. I like it. Checking out a new key jangler.

It's extremely derogatory, but I don't know.

I mean, but it's short-term rewards with no long-term payout.

And is that not... how we consume all media now?

Is that not what TikTok is? Like it's, there's no, you're not investing anything so you get no long-term reward, but you're getting a consistent short-term reward.

So, and that's just enough for some people.

And that's totally fine. I don't feel bad or weird about how our societies are. going yeah everybody needs their something Yeah, it just sucks that everyone's got the same thing and it feels like it's not. like an organic approach.

You know, I don't think anyone was sitting there and thinking, man, if only my phone had infinite videos, most of which I don't want to watch.

It's just like. Someone sent you a link, you had to download the app, you watched one, and now you're like, huh, this feels kind of nice.

Does anyone else's brain feel fuzzy? I can see it.

If like RackCoin came out in a society where we weren't grappling with that exact problem, maybe... you know, it would receive as much sort of, And even Balotro is a game that we've talked about, you know, over the, over the months about like the, you know, it's, it's a digital version of big 10 and it's, it's,

It's essentially, you know, I wonder if the creator of Boletrofe, Local Thunk feels I imagine he probably doesn't feel awesome when he sees people having played like 600 hours of volatile.

You know what I mean? I don't know if that's the goal, right?

Yeah, I think it's hard to divorce these games.

I mean, you can never really divorce art from the society in which it's in, but I think this is a particularly bad time for a lot of these games to be coming out because it does feel like we are just more Skinner boxed than ever by all of the media.

That's inundated with gambling. How many, I can't watch sports anymore without having a PBR.

Forget about it. It's always been bad, but it's worse now.

And then gambling coming for games as well.

Absolutely, yes. I mean there's been like sort of you can bet I mean esports stuff we've talked about before but like Is there a law against, like, you know those, we talked about it a while ago, the I forget who it was.

For some reason, I think Jenna might have actually been on that.

I forget who I was talking to about it. It was those old Japanese... racing games where the horse racing, but they're not horses.

They're all just crazy like giraffes. They're like anime girls?

Like Uma Musume, is it? No, no, no, not Umumusume, but like similar to Umumusume.

But imagine an Umumusume game where you weren't like the horse. uh, you know, trainer, you were the, uh, Or horse girl trainer in that case.

You were gambling on them. You were betting on them.

Is that outside of Steam's terms of service, I wonder?

Do they not let you do sports betting games?

For now, yeah. Good point. Well, no, I don't know because they haven't changed any of their, you know, Steam are happy to you know, abide by that.

There are fucking the same with the payment processor thing, right?

Yeah. As long as they're making money. I don't know, man.

They sell everyone boxes that you have to get a key to maybe get a thing inside of, you know, it's not how far removed is that?

Valve, like Team Fortress, like the hat boxes.

Is that not... some form of that was when it was okay that was no that was before we realized that loot box Did they ever do loot boxes for Team Fortress?

Is that what I'm thinking of? Sorry, the guns.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, I would divorce one of the development teams would involve from whoever is running steam.

I mean, yeah, 20 years of steam being up.

We have, seen them be very apathetic to global policy they're very downstream from it doesn't seem like they're actively trying to do anything in that regard And I don't suspect they need to when they're pulling 30% off of every piece of software sold on it.

They're making enough money. I don't think they need to start lobbying governments about adding betting to the platform.

But I do wonder No, but that's what I'm saying is that, like, you can say that, but I don't think there's any proof of that being the case.

I don't. You know, have they ever wanted to push in after?

I don't know. No, but if... If payment drops because there are fewer indie games, because there's no publishers giving money out to everything, Like if their revenue drops in other ways, then that might be a revenue stream that they start to search for. which is what we've seen other companies in video games starting to do.

I genuinely think in the next, let's say one to three years, Gambling is going to be the main cultural force that we have to fight against in video games.

That is my prediction. Interesting. I think European law is going to basically kill that immediately.

I hope so. Yeah, so I don't. I do worry, though, about the encroachment in this way in terms of gameplay.

And I mean, that's I was screaming on. GameSpot years ago about Destiny because I just thought, oh, you're just making a Skinner box shooter.

Like loot shooters are... are that that's what loot shooters are they're just ways of getting you to play the same stupid level over and over and over and over again with like no story and who gives a shit mechanics.

I feel like the conversation about like betting adjacent things like loot boxes is, is relevant in the sense that it's like laying the groundwork for this.

But I feel like what Jenna is saying is that like, there was the article back in the end of June that, uh, Riot is opening betting company sponsorships for esports teams. and I feel like between that and the amount of you know sort of like morally dubious live streamers who just sit there and fucking pull a digital slot machine while a bunch of nine year olds watch them all day is like, it's, it is creating the cultural conditions for, to emerge where it's permissible to do because not enough people see it as reprehensible.

And if you have enough, like all of those nine year olds will be 19 year olds in a decade.

And then when they are- With their first credit card and-

Yeah, a payday loan. And they're voting in their first presidential election and become a cultural... you know a block of cultural force then it's like I don't know.

I feel like it will take real resistance for... Because the thing is, companies... operate in a way that is sort of like morally decoupled they're not like reading schopenhauer and going like oh i don't know if we should do do this they're fucking saying can we get away with this and do we need to do this is it going to increase our money Yes.

Is it going to hurt us more than it is going to help us?

Is it going to make us a bunch of money or is it going to like, is there going to be so much public backlash that people will be like, fuck you.

That's exactly what I meant, Jeremy. Thank you.

And I think that's like... i think that's a very fair read on the situation you know i would argue that a lot of these things you know, the Counter-Strike stuff, the sports betting stuff was happening 10 years ago.

So a lot of those kids. are a voting age now.

I don't know if they could like, Things are more complex than that.

I don't know if the socio-political landscape is one in which younger generations are betting more or not.

It seems to be most people who are betting are uh it's the older folks that have much more um you know it's the podcast dads it's like the joe rogan thing where people go oh my god they're they're right ring of fine children.

And it's like the average Joe Rogan listeners in their fifties, like that's not actually what's going on.

But but we're not talking about Joe Rogan listeners.

I don't know. But betting similarly is older people.

But to your point about the Joe Rogan thing, it's like, while Joe Rogan listeners are 50, The Joe Rogan listeners from 20 years ago have their own podcasts now.

And those kids are watching Aiden Ross like this.

16 year olds are watching people on like kick when they're getting excited about their anecdotally, but like, I know that's the problem.

Yeah. Is that I think a lot of do a research thing.

There is some degree of liberal satanic panic that I push back a bit.

And that's this sort of, to me, might fall into that a little bit. where we get riled up about these things, but ultimately... you know, and I'm speaking, like, I don't know.

I grew up, one of my first jobs was literally working on a tote and a at a dog racing track so like I fucking hate gambling and I hate this stuff but I don't you know, if you go to the local casino here the youngest person there is me and my wife getting Starbucks and everyone else.

Cause they're not at the casino. No, That's what we're saying.

They're not happy. Loser old people shit.

I'm not going to the casino. Half the casino is a sports betting thing. to see who's there.

Yeah, you got to find the young people betting spots.

But no, I don't disagree with you, Dani. want more than anything is for people to be on the lookout and to start now to be cautious about these sorts of behaviors.

Because if we wait for companies to complete these things before we object, Then it's going to happen and it's going to we're not going to be able to reel back from it.

I want people to be conscious of it now so that when these companies start to do it, which I think is. is almost inevitable as the American economy It hits some rocky times.

It's something we need to be preemptively thoughtful about.

So I agree with you that we don't need to be sounding the red alarm now, but we need to be aware now.

We need to be gambling aware of companies trying to take this.

Which is very fair especially when you look at sports betting and that did totally creep up on everyone. because 10 years ago there were all these laws against A lot of this stuff.

It was all, who cares about fantasy sports?

Whatever, dude. It's all for fun. And then...

Well, it was all a lot of lobbying happening in DC that we weren't. you know, privy to or reading about it or people didn't care and then.

Yeah, 10 years later, every ad is about betting and in-play betting and all this.

This all happened in the U.K., the 10 years prior to me moving here as well.

So when I was here, I was like, oh, wow, it's coming over here now as well.

That's fun. terrifying yeah the future of the legality of gambling you you need only have played Sim City one time in your life to understand that when shit is going bad.

You're like, oh, I'll just fucking zone a bunch of casinos.

The crime will skyrocket, but the economy is in shambles.

We need this. yeah you're totally right yeah it is um also it's like i just pulled i've i've feel weird about this because i don't want to like name specific streamers that i find to be morally dubious people but uh One of the largest streamers who sits and does fucking slot machines 24-7.

I looked up their... age demographics, and it's about 50% 18 to 24.

So It's 1.9% 13 to 17. So the super young demographic are like, I mean, this is not like a Nazi.

It's XQC. It's I'm not saying this person is like a fucking, you know, like whatever.

Not someone I watch or whatever, but I was curious. there?

No, I said, I said, no, he's not. I'm saying that I didn't want to name a specific streamer who I find to be morally dubious, and then I was like... well fuck it it's xqc and they're not a nazi so i feel okay it's not like i'm saying okay i'm not saying like Let me pull up, you know, like Dershter's favorite streamer or whatever.

I'm just I feel morally weird about being like. and let me put this person on blast for this and also like at the same time, expose people to their work or whatever.

But I was just curious about like, someone who does a lot of gambling adjacent stuff, what the age demo of their viewership is.

And it seems largely 18 to 24. So. You know, not the aforementioned nine-year-olds, but still, like... you know I mean that that dude's been streaming for a long time like that audience has been built out of people that are younger.

I think I feel like a lot of that demo aged into the 18 to 24.

And how many of those are liars anyway? That's 18, my ass.

You're 14 and we know it. How does the... I've never fucking gambled on my phone.

Do you have to, like... Do you, like, take a picture of your driver's license and send it to them?

How do you? Have you ever pulled weed on your phone?

I bet it's the exact same thing. Yeah. I bet it's the same.

That is how I did it. You take You take a photograph of your license and that's how you get arrested.

You texted some guy named Dave and he's like, all right, I'll be over in 20 minutes.

All right, all right, all right. To circle back to RACCoin, at the end of the day, if somebody is spending $30 once, on a game that is going to substitute a gambling addiction, I'm like, Okay, probably you should get the help you need, but that's like...

And an alternative that is not going to ruin your life and your family's life.

But the other side of that is that There is such a limited pool of money to publish games, especially indie games right now.

The idea that even a small amount of that is going to hoop toss carnival games, pop balloon, popping dart games. rather than a game that might have impact.

Let's put a deck together, Jesse. Let's reach out to PlayStack with our carnival multi-game roguelike.

But it's just like there are limited resources right now.

There's especially limited resources. So the idea that some of those resources are going to these rather than you know, the next hollow night or, you know, The next game that is doing something new or interesting or has a thoughtful story or. like is going to push games forward in some way.

It does kind of bum me out. Hmm. What would be the worst carnival game to make a game out of?

I think probably the one where there's a bunch of bottles and you've got a hoop and you have to fill them with some bottles.

I think that's one of the worst ones. That sucks.

I'm going to make a dunk tank roguelike.

I'm on board. God, you got me. Just the stupid.

Every time you guys pitch one, we're just coming up with the new billion dollar idea.

I don't know what the modifier is that you'd have to be okay.

Here's what it is. It's, it's a combination of rat coin and the dunk tank.

And the seat that normally a person sits on, it's just like a stack of coins.

And when they all fall... They fall in and go like, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop.

Oh, dude. And when enough coins fall in, it goes, oh, your dad did love you.

Oh, man, finally. They made a good video game. it comes with like a thing it has a peripheral that hugs you when you uh when you pass around Oh, my God.

What if it's kind of like it's actually like papers, please meet the dunk tank.

So they're like pleading with you to knock them out.

Please don't, please don't. Like, oh, they're witches.

They're witches. It's Papers, Please, Witches, and you're dunking them.

You're trying to figure out whether they're really a witch before you go through with it.

Before you dunk them. Oh, my God. Salem Witch Trials.

Oh, my God. the ironic thing about the game is that you know none of them are witches because witches aren't real but you have But you have to dunk at least some of them.

To get your quotas. If you pardon all of them, then you yourself may be a witch.

Goody Sarah is going to be like, I think he's a witch too.

Totally. So you're almost doing it based on like, oh, she's old.

Wow. She's, you know, that one's, that one's, that one's been, that one's kind of, kind of a pain in the ass.

Get that crone out of here. She's having a fight with her neighbor.

This dude snubbed me once at a party, dunk his ass.

I feel like that is the truest experience of the Salem witch trials though is like that guy was like rude to me.

He was rude to me. my wife so like he's probably a warlock if i had to guess okay but he don't can warlocks too They were.

It was men and women. Oh, they were? Yeah.

Okay. I don't know if they called them warlocks, but they definitely were Duncan dudes.

Although that would be sick. They were Dunkin' Dudes.

Dunkin' Dudes. That was the original name of Dunkin' Dudes.

Dunkin' Dudes and it's the Dunkin' Donuts.

It's just the most Massachusetts game ever.

Jeremy, you need to make this game. I saw a fantastic speaking of Boston area culture.

I saw a bumper sticker the other day that was the Dunkin Donuts text format and color and it said uh drunken grown-ups i That's really funny.

Was it on a car? Yeah, it was on a car. which I had the same thought that that's like how you get fucking pulled over although I feel like not in Boston is my guess Yeah, I live.

It's the same amount of syllables. It's just perfect.

Yeah. I feel like you're a mass state trooper, though.

You'd be like, it's all good. That's fine.

That's normal. I know that guy. He's not doing any hot stuff.

There's got to be some like, you know, Southie rapper that's already dropped that bar, I feel like. yeah you have to know drunken doughnuts what was that dunkin donuts with drunken grown-ups You grew up at Dunkin' Donuts.

I grew up with Drunken Grownups. That's it.

That's perfect. Although, who grows up in Dunkin' Donuts?

I did. Maybe Bostonites. Yes. Bostonians.

Do you know how much RockCoin is going to cost? when it comes out how much of your life do you have to sell exactly it's more about a time investment really How many shreds of your soul are you wishing to trade for this?

If I were to guess, 20 bucks. That's a guess.

It's funny you say that. I cannot shake the mental image. of the arcade version of Raccoons where you can see all of the coins.

I can't shake the image that that is like a real life version of when you're playing a Souls-like and you see 80 bloodstains next to a cliff, because it's like every single one of those coins represents a failure.

Oh, yeah. Every single one represents somebody who tried to do exactly what you're doing and Lost a quarter.

It's one to one. All games are the same game.

Isn't that funny? You just don't even think about that.

You've just given me such a good idea for the next generation of what souls could become. and it is boss fights that are like, it's gambling.

And it's a bunch of people standing around the ring throwing money at a millennial fight. i what it okay souls game where the bosses are like actually fucking virtually impossible and and every single person is fighting the same boss until one person in the world beats it.

It's just like six billion souls. You just created raids.

That's just raids. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I guess that's just world war.

I mean, Dark Souls MMO is that's what we're all waiting for.

Bring it. Yeah, we're one step closer. Elden Ring just finished the fight.

I'm going to quickly talk about one, and I think, Jenna, you've got a quick one too, it looks like.

My quickie is... Is This Seat Taken? It's a sweet little puzzle game that came out last week or the week before actually.

Sorry, August 7th. It's It's a fun game.

I've enjoyed playing it. It's 10 bucks. It is a puzzle.

And I'm prefacing this by saying, like, it's not going to set the world on fire, but I've enjoyed playing it.

It's basically a game where you are given the task of sitting a bunch of let's just call them characters people in various places like a restaurant or a uh, bus or, a gig or whatever.

And, uh, some of them have certain preferences.

One of them wants to sit beside the window, but doesn't want to be near anyone stinky.

One of them hasn't showered in a week. One of them doesn't like loud noises, another one wants to have a loud conversation with somebody, another one wants to listen music, another one wants to dance, another one wants to be on a table with their best friend. and you basically have to pick up these cute little characters, they're all like little shapes, gorgeous little art style to it sort of desaturated, like not duotone, like triotone sort of look to it. uh and yeah it's just like a fun little game lots of uh you know picking people up dropping them down satisfying little unlock system each one takes place in a different city so the opening one's barcelona And then you go off to another European city and you know, you're just, doing basically variations on we need to get people into these places and put them there. but it's a cute little puzzle game.

Like I said, it's not going to be on my game of the year list or anything like that, but I have enjoyed playing it it's 9.99 at the moment or 8.99 at the moment with a um with a 10% discount off for the opening to it.

And yeah, I really enjoyed it. It's really well made.

Yeah, it seems like a good weekend video game.

Oh, you've been playing it too? Yeah, July.

Watch your makeup. I love it. It's perfect.

Iconic like podcast game where I can have a little show on the be doing my little logic puzzle.

Yeah, I agree with you. There's like there should be like this separate category. for game of the year stuff where it's like, it's kind of like a little to the left or unpacking where it's like, this it's not going to be among my top 10 but that's not and it's not because it's a bad game it's a great game it's arguably a perfect game for what it's trying to be what it's doing yeah yeah but it's not like it's not necessarily innovating It's just like a really good example of the thing that it is trying to be, which is a satisfying logic game. yeah well worth it's not like moving yeah in any way right which makes me because whenever i think about my game of the year i think about games that like move me you know what i mean um but yeah cool i'm glad to hear you had a similar experience um yeah i'm gonna plugging away at it.

I wanted to say about, is the seat taken?

When I played the demo earlier in this year, I was thinking immediately of my buddy who when planning a wedding was explaining to me all of the orientations he could have of the different people in his family.

He's like, I can't sit. Georgia next to Frank because Georgia doesn't like and I was like wow they made a wedding planning video experience it without having to spend $30,000.

That's not bad. Yeah, it's very it's funny.

There's something oddly satisfying about it as well from the The bus one I especially liked, you know, having taken buses a lot in Ireland and in London, like that's...

Being sat beside somebody you don't like is like the worst.

And there is no world in which everyone. gets together and decides where they sit on the bus.

So I found it really satisfying to be like, Everyone's happy on this bus.

This is great. It's the first time it's ever happened.

Although if it was up to me. all of the people playing music on the bus with no headphones on would be outside of the bus, perhaps under it.

It is satisfying to cluster them together and be like, all right, you noisy ass people can be in your corner.

Listening to your podcast and music out loud.

Yeah, I wish there was a... I would never do that in London because...

Um, of the, the chances that one of these usually young people and They are the ones that have the knives.

But I did throw someone off a bus in London before.

So it was an older gentleman who was being He wasn't older, he was like probably early 40s, but he was drunk and being really wretched to a bunch of women on the bus.

The bus driver was screaming at him and we wouldn't leave.

And I was really pissed off after work and I went downstairs and grabbed him.

Yes. Oh my God. Like old cartoon style. And the bus driver closed the door and we went and I was like.

Wow, I should have thought about that before.

That could have gone bad, but it was pretty funny.

Nailed it. Yeah. Anything, anything goes at elephant castle bus stop.

I played a bit of the game you're talking about here too, Jenna.

Time flies. I feel like I played this at a bunch of shows over the years. published by our good friends at Panic.

Yeah, exactly. Just like hurdling. This is an interesting game because it's a game that sort of has a loop that is about, what is it, a minute?

Yeah. or something like that well that's so that's one of the I think interesting things about the game is that The first thing you do when you start a game, after you've died even, is choose a nationality.

And the amount of time you have in the game is based on the life expectancy of that nation.

So yeah, based on, I believe, UN statistics.

But not the life of a human, not the life of a fly, which is why you play this game.

Yes, human life expectancy. Okay. This is the second ever threshold.

Yes, I knew you. I was thinking the same thing.

You're right. Yeah. Holy shit. Sorry. So you get seconds equivalent to the number of years.

Uh, which is itself very fascinating because you can just click through and be like, oh, okay.

Wow. That's really high. Oh, wow. That's. a little bit low and that's in itself very interesting.

And then you hop into a level. You're a little fly.

You have as many seconds as you have years. and you just are trying to complete your bucket list.

So I think the bucket lists are really fascinating.

There's four of them. What's fascinating is that everything on a bucket list are things that would be real human things. bucket list stuff like learn an instrument, make a masterpiece, things like that.

But you are just a little fly trying to do them.

So the way that the game interprets those is, And the exploration you have to do to sort of be like, okay, did I do it? okay, I'm going to interact somehow with this weird object.

What is it going to reward me with? The whole experience, it took me about two hours and 15 minutes.

I think the game expectancy again is three to four, but for us real gamers, we're able to. get it locked in pretty quickly.

Our time is limited because we have so many games to play.

Uh, so we're just so good. What was the guy at the same problem a couple of weeks ago with something where I was like, this was going to be four hours. but it was ended up being three and I felt guilty about it.

I don't know. We're just, that's the wheel world.

It was wheel world. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think you want to over rather than underestimate.

Because I think people are more likely...

They want an overestimation sometimes. Time Flies also has a great art style.

It's basically just like monochromatic, like almost sketchbook drawings.

Yeah, very, very sparse pixel drawings. You as a fly are basically just a square with wings.

And you're just like, you're just exploring and there's so many...

This game does the thing that I love when video games do, which is it'll show you an object and be like, I know how you're going to want to play with this.

I know you're going to want to interact with it and I'm going to give you a little reward for doing it.

But it also has a lot of stuff where it's like, oh, I would not have expected that to be how this goes.

But here it is. There's one where you're in an art gallery. and they show you the statue of David, and you can interact with the fig leaf over David's genitalia.

And you have to hit it with your little fly body to get it to drop, and when it does, There's like another layer of leaves and then another layer of leaves and then surprise, some kind of genitalia.

Right. But it's one of those things where it's like, in a way, expected this.

But in another way, this was such a fun little novel experience.

So it's an absolute delight. I think it's only, it's sub $10.

15, whatever it is, it's worth it. I highly recommend it.

Yeah, time flies. It's a great, great, it's a funny week for all these like sort of. experiential, either short games or, uh, just linearish games, I guess.

Um, yeah. And then also RockCoin. It's an experience.

This game really convinced me that I love panic as a publisher.

Because they are just putting out some crazy shit.

Does Panic make the play date as well? Yes.

Yeah, they do that. They also came out with Thank Goodness You're Here.

Yep. And they have that new one, Blippo Plus, coming out.

Yes. I'm really excited. Yeah, that I am excited for.

Are they publishing the new House House game?

Because they did Untitled Goose Game. There's a new house house game?

No, no, no. Isn't this the new house house game that won that like co-op?

Oh, Big Walk? Big Walk, yeah. Isn't that Hess Hess?

I think you're right. Yeah. I think it is published by panic.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it is. Okay. They also published Despellate and Arco, two of the... Yeah, and Noor, which was my game of the year the year it came out.

Nor play with your food. Yeah, food puzzles.

It is not a traditional game. It is like a weird food simulator where you get in and you just mash buttons.

It's just... It's a toy box experience.

It is a genuine delight. I cannot recommend it enough.

Okay, I'm going to check this one as well.

But they're just like, they are publishing bangers.

Weird bangers. Yep. Also with Time Flies, I remember I was reading this.

I wanted to double check. I played the first chunk of it.

I thought it was pretty cool. I agree with everything you're saying, John.

Um, but Steven Totillo did some, uh, some real journalism over on game file.

Oh, wow. He's like the fry. The fly is a.

Well, so he was curious about the statistics for the life expectancy stuff that they pulled.

And it turns out Palestine is an option.

Yeah. Nice. Yeah. And it's the the the seconds are short.

Oh, yeah, I bet. Yeah. Jeez Louise. Yeah.

There you go. Yeah, thanks for that. Let's segue out of that to Super Metroid.

Jeremy, you've been playing Super Metroid for the first time?

I have never played any Metroid game in my life.

I've not played Prime. Except Hollow Knight.

So, well, that's cool. Yeah, I feel like I'm kind of playing... the metroidvania genre in reverse because i have played a lot of the popular contemporary ones but i've i've never played a metroid and i've never played a castlevania um I have played, I played like a little bit of Symphony of the Night at a friend's house, but that's it.

That does not count at all. Um, and after playing, Ooh, I actually started playing super Metroid before I started playing.

Ooh. And it was kind of the perfect time because, um, U has a list of influences in the credits, and Metroid is among them, obviously.

I mean, the comparison is pretty obvious, but it's like.

Ooo is sort of like a mini Metroid. It has a lot of sort of backtracking with new information.

You blow open a wall. Now you know the wall is blow open a bowl and etc etc just on that because you guys played it last week and i hadn't i similar to you guys.

It's really fantastic. Oh, you've played it?

Yeah, I haven't completed it yet, but...

Yeah. Yeah. It's, this is the one where it's, Ooh, it's what is it?

Oh, I'm loud. Oh, is that how you pronounce it?

So far, this is my game of the year. I love it.

Another short king. Ten bucks. Sold. It is fantastic.

It is. It's like I. I saw some people being like, oh, it's like kind of small or humble.

I feel like it is like It's just all killer, no filler.

Because playing Super Metroid, it's interesting because... it's it was sort of the game that broke through into like It's what we associate with Metroid.

I dabbled a little bit in the NES version of Metroid, and it is funny how...

The blueprint is there, but Super Metroid refines it into this gem that we really think of.

But it is interesting how, because Super Metroid is very... like exploration heavy.

Playing it after Ooo is so, the contrast is so stark because Ooh is like, you know, there are sort of like hidden panels you can blow open and stuff like that.

But it's it's once you learn the pattern, you know exactly where to look.

There's like a rule to where they're placed.

It's so weird. though super metroid is like yeah it's very it's but it's so like strong it's like telepathy from the developer that it's like it He's like thinking the space where it is so hard and eventually your brain receives it like a radio.

But in Super Metroid, it's like, I have found it to... I feel like Super Metroid expects a lot of the player...

And that's kind of why I'm finding it interesting.

It's way more frictional than I expected. uh i i'm i've been playing it before bed i like turn off my computer and just go play super fucking metroid no guide No nothing.

No podcast. My phone is off. I'm just like sitting in bed playing this.

And Samus. Just me and Samus. And it's like... I feel like it's the ideal conditions to play it under because...

There have been a lot of moments where I have been like, I feel like I'm soft locked.

I feel like this happened like seven times where I'm like, I think I... did this in the wrong order or, like, I don't think there's anywhere to go.

And then... the only thing to do because I have made this like no guides rule for myself for playing this is just backtrack and just like fucking just like walk in each room and like fucking put my hands on my hips and like look around and be like,

Does any of this blow any of this up? Is this the 1994? four version of because like obviously all these games are coming.

We're coming from the arcade. Games are hard.

Right. Like a lot of these games are just super difficult.

And obviously that that's a game that isn't necessarily combat difficult.

I mean, the bosses might be, but like is this their version of difficulty was just like It is kind of like a security through obscurity thing.

Um, yeah, it's, uh, it's interesting. And it's not even really like there is a logic to the puzzles, but, uh, The first time you get, you know, obviously Samus turns into a little ball and drops little bombs and Some of the little bombs blow up little tiles, but the tiles look totally indistinguishable from the rest of the tile map.

And the first time I had to do that, I swear to God, I backtracked through this section of the entire world that I had unlocked to that point.

Maybe like. four times and it was just like bombing every corner and it was like and finally one of them blew open and That sounds like a terrible fucking experience, but I swear to God, when it happened, I was mouth agape.

I guess that's why it's cool. I feel like I'm having...

I'm experiencing this game in such a timeless way, like, whatever, 30 years after it came out.

And it, like... because I have met it with patients, these moments are yielding like, genuinely sort of like revelatory experiences which is i mean that's what i liked about ooh too and it got me thinking about like there's metroidvania is like a kind of terrible label you know it's like That's why we were talking with Frank about like search action as the Japanese version of Metroidvania or like I've seen Castle Royd, man. casserole it's right there uh platformer adventure i have also seen which i think is pretty apt but um But there's a lot of debate about what are the defining characteristics of a Metroidvania.

And people say like, you know, non-linearity, openness, sort of like soft-gated... like ability gated or knowledge gated, whatever areas I feel like. the thing that I enjoy most about this like quote unquote genre is, uh, is like epiphanies, like feelings of revelation.

It's like moments where world rules click with you.

And that could be either ability based or not ability based, but it's like, that's what's for sale for me is that's why I've realized that's what I like about these is like. the moment where it clicks with me is like,

You feel like an idiot and then a genius.

And that transition is so addictive. And so...

I'm just like sludging through this game and I keep getting lost and I keep going like, there's nowhere to go, I don't know where the fuck to go.

And then I'll find something and be like, Ah, it's like the one it's always the last place you look.

And literally, in this case, the last place I look because you get the map and it shows you all the places you've not gone. and it's literally i've just like scour everything until i find the little fucking crumb of whatever.

And then it starts all over again where I'm like, now we're back on track.

And then I'm lost within two minutes. But, um, But yeah, I don't know.

You got to complete it? Yeah, I feel like I'm getting close.

I think I'm probably about two thirds through it.

But it's this Metroid. Have you heard about this Metroid?

It's pretty good. But yeah, no, the other thing I want to say is it's like it's very funny because there will be moments where I'll get so stuck and I'll be like, there's I don't know how anyone figured this out back in the day.

Am I an idiot? And then I'll finally solve it after backtracking unnecessarily six times.

And then when I solve it, I'll just say the name of the thing because it doesn't spoil how you solve it.

There's an early portion where there's a bridge and it doesn't tell you what to do.

It's just like get over the bridge, but the bridge collapses.

And I finally figured out what to do. The game does not tell you at all.

And I googled... super metroid bridge and there's a thousand forum posts about like The Metroid community calls it the Noob Bridge because it's... because it filters everyone because no one can figure out how the fuck to get over it.

Oh, wow. So and it felt like. It was very satisfying getting absolutely played by a 31 year old piece of game design.

And then going on and there's just like, there's like IG or like, you know, like fucking NeoGAF forums. like IGN forums and Game Fact forums from 20 years ago where people were like, I can't believe it's still getting them.

And it's like, oh my God, dude, I'm still getting got by like the fucking by like ancient Babylonian riddles.

That's really cool. It's very good. I need to play more of the.

I think after I work through this, I might either I don't know if I want to play the NES Metroid.

I might just get into Castlevania after this too.

Have you ever played any of the Castlevania games?

Like not just the Symphony Onward one? uh no none of them i want to play what's the is it simon's quest The two, the one that is well regarded as the worst one.

Yes, I want to play Simon's Quest. Because it was, people call it a, I think it was Igarashi himself called it like a Zeldavanium. more than a Metroidvania.

Oh, wow. That's pretty apt. Interesting.

He's obtuse as hell. I've also never played Zelda 1 and 2, so I want to play those as well.

The end. fat sessions coming up soon with jeremy the nintendo files ticked off exactly the nintendo files wow that's Sorry, Nintendo Island.

Oh no. No, no. A lot of games talked about this week.

Off. Time flies. Is this seat taken? Sword of the Sea.

Hurdling, Raccoon, Super Metroid. All talked about this week.

We got a couple of emails here, folks, if you don't mind.

Podcast.noclip.video if you want to send them in.

Smash them in the old Discord. We've got a podcast. channel in there.

We'll scoop them out. David Sandell says there's always talk about how there's a ton of indie games racing on Steam every day that have hard time finding their audience.

At the same time, I've been hunting for recent indie games to play on my Steam decks next to my sleeping baby. and they're almost impossible to find.

I've Googled, read gaming sites, asked people on Reddit and Discord servers, listened to podcasts, but it's usually the same couple of indie games that show up that I've either already played or not for me.

I was buying a game on Steam and on the checkout page a game called Day of the Shell was being recommended.

I bought it on a whim and it's pretty good mix of Hades and XCOM.

However, when I Googled it, not a lot of organic discussion about it shows up.

I've done my part and mentioned it to friends, reviewed on steam and all that, but.

How would you come across a game like that?

I feel like the only solid way to find out about smaller indie games is following indie devs on social media and see what they promote.

I get a lot of good indie FPS game recommendations that way. but I can follow devs from every sub-genre.

Where can I find indie game recommendations without having to wade through mentions of Blueprint, Sclare Obscure and The Altars again and again and again.

I'm asking you because you have been the most reliable source thus far.

I would never have found last year's absolute gem.

Arco without you. Published by Playstock, right?

No, is it? arco panic arco panic yeah panic i meant sorry panic sorry sorry There's no gambling in ARCO.

I feel like this question is... This is like the reason we're doing the second channel stuff in a big way.

There's a great tee up, honestly. Yeah, thank you.

I actually wrote that email. No, but for real, it's like... Because it's a fucking nightmare having to... Because I feel the same way.

Like, I... The quote unquote, like the organic way to find this stuff is literally just. trudge through a bunch of social media posts by devs that I follow and try to accrue a sufficient number of them.

But like, Thinking about video games is my job.

If I worked at an accounting firm, I probably wouldn't spend as much time going on social media and following indie devs.

You know what I mean? There's a sort of professional... time investment that I'm making.

So, yeah, I'm I mean, our new channel and I feel like there are more people sort of like trying to, um, surface indie games and act as, like, I don't know.

I don't know what the term is. What's cultural gatekeeper, but like a positive for cultural curator.

Sorry. Sorry about it. That That's the word.

Why you got to use the right words, Jenna?

Come up with something fun. Make a pun. Indie fluencer.

Is that better? Wow. Wow, that's worse. I take it back.

I liked your first one. That's worse than Metroid-brania, which is also a term that I kind of like.

But yeah, anyway, I don't know. Yeah, it's like you either follow a bunch of indie devs or you follow... a person who follows a bunch of indie devs feels like there's not really a good like aggregator site, uh, that does it.

Yeah. And then it might fall through the same problem because like I think about that with our second channel and like a lot of the games that we cover indie games as well. are like a certain subset of them to a certain extent you know what i mean or maybe not indie games just of games that come out like there's loads of other types of stuff that come out that I you know maybe doesn't necessarily speak to us but yeah I think this is I mean, I listen to all three of you here are people who I follow on Twitter and YouTube channels and stuff because of this exact reason, because I want, I trust your opinions and I need those connections.

And I'm in the same spot where following devs is, kind of the way I do it but the thing is you follow an indie dev like that indie dev is going to release a game every few years you know what I mean so like You have to follow a lot of people and then that becomes its own discoverability issue where suddenly you're following so many people and you're like, you can't hear the noise and then it's itself selecting, um,

The problem we've mentioned bunches of times is that when you're making a game...

Um, uh, you know, it's like the old Mitch Hedberg joke about like, you know, oh, you're a comic.

Do you want to write a screenplay? And he's like, well, that's not fair.

This is my job. Don't ask me to do a different job.

Game developers are making games and they also have to market their game.

Like that's a whole other skill set. a lot of them don't do it until right at the end or they that's half the reason lots of them get publishers is just to be able to get access to an audience or, you know, find or have people to do that for them so that's self-selecting as well you know here's my number one tip And this is a tricky thing, because when people say indie games...

They usually mean small games, not games that are independently published.

And so like Dave, the shell, I looked it up on steam, had a publisher, uh, What you wanna do is learn publishers, not developers.

Because as we've talked about in this episode, like, panic has...

The games they publish are very tonally similar, even if the gameplay itself is kind of different. different a lot of the time but it's it's tonally very consistent you know devolver digital has a specific kind of tonal game that they will publish.

And that's true generally, because the people that work at the publishers are the ones screening games.

So they... If a publisher is around for long enough and publish enough games, then you will be able to see like, what is the vibe of this publisher?

So if you find a game that you like, see who published it and check out other games from that publisher.

That is a great way of finding smaller games.

Indie games are harder. Indie games have the thing that you're talking about, which is like Sometimes if you're lucky enough to find an indie game, you can find... what else that studio has published and sometimes that's really interesting uh Mouthwashing is a really great example of that, is that I played mouthwashing and then I went back and played how fish is made. and the water museum, because it's just like, okay, I really liked this game.

What else have they done? So things like that are a great way of doing it.

And to the larger point, what you're saying is true is that there's like 10,000 games drop on steam every day and, But the answer is, A lot of them are garbage.

It's simply true. A lot of them are like, AI slop that has been put up because they're hoping to trick people into buying it.

Or, you know, they're just they're just gambling loot box generators, like flippy stuff.

Yeah. A lot of it's garbage. Sex games. Yeah.

So many sex games. Oh, the sex games. That should be our third Patreon.

I could be your third patron. Hire me. I'll do it.

I'll do it. We should do sex game reviews.

I played some sex games. I would love to do the same game.

Yeah, basically. It's like, wow, I just got to flirt with this person forever.

Yeah. Then the weird stuff starts. You're like...

If you want good sex games, you have to go to itch.

That's what I'll say. Okay. Okay, scratch that itch.

That should be the name of the Patreon. Not anymore.

Not right now. Give it a month or two. Hopefully you'll be able to get those games on itch again.

Oh yeah. Oh God, you're right. Yeah. Yeah.

But I mean, there are things like that. Like this is the thing is like, A lot of indie games get... popular because of word of mouth, but it's like in order to get word of mouth, people have to be able to find and play your game.

So how does it get to the level of word of mouth?

There are influencers who play a lot of indie games.

There were people who were paid to play video games and talk about them and write about them on a regular basis and didn't rely solely on ad revenue.

If only there was magazines and websites and...

That's lame. Who cares? There are also I've been desperately scrolling through my bookmarks trying to find it there. are certain shows, I wish I could surface the example of the exact one I'm thinking of, but certain showcases that will take submissions of like small, weird left field games and then curate them occasionally will be like here are the 1050 games that were submitted that if you want to go through them yourself not be curated like this ends up in the showcase but they'll say here's like every single person that submitted a trailer to us here's a youtube playlist of them I will try to find the one that I'm thinking of if I can, and we'll put it in the description if possible.

I can recommend two off the bat. Day of the Dev.

Not enough people are watching Day of the Dev.

True. Yeah. That's what I'll say. I think a lot of industry people watch it.

Fans need to be watching it, too, because they publish some killer games or they they they promote some killer games.

Yeah. So that's a good one. I would also recommend Seattle Indies. as again, a relatively smaller but curated list of games.

So those are two good sources. Nice one.

I ultimately think that this is something we should probably do as well.

I mean there's a lot of showcase shows out there, but I think that is something we should do.

And I also think. the way around it is to either stop... I think trailers is a big problem.

I think... editing trailers is really fucking time intensive.

It's time intensive for like, video producers.

Like if you don't make trailers, trailers are hard to make.

They're expensive to make for studios. And obviously getting on a lot of these showcases is a big problem, but also just the cost of shooting a trailer or having a publisher pay for the trailer, whatever it is.

Trailers are the problem. I think there's probably a smarter... And also they're like... boring to watch after a while.

Like if you watch Summer Games Fest, Like how many fucking trailers can you watch?

Like trailers have a very obvious rhythm to them.

They are about the same length. And if you've watched like 15 of them in a row, you just your eyes glaze over.

So like. I think trailers are a legitimate production issue with a lot of this stuff.

And I bet there is another way of doing showcases that isn't so reliant on trailers, like a quarter of them be trailers.

And then the rest of them be some other type of thing, like somebody explaining the game or screenshots or whatever it is. some type of other way of doing it.

I think that would that would possibly do it.

And then the other one is that we should totally do like a competition or something, user voted, where a bunch of like single person devs get in there and then whatever one wins, we make the trailer. straight up just do the trailer for them and then That'd be, that'd be pretty awesome.

I do. Sometimes I will do like, if there is, if there's a games Fest next Fest or something, I will just download like 40 demos and I will do live streams where I'm like, I'm gonna give each of these demos half an hour.

And we just crank through dozens. And that's a great way of... figuring out some good games and some games you're not going to want to play.

I think that's probably the most useful thing you can do is like, if you want to get into the Finding weird offshoot games that maybe aren't necessarily necessarily like the blueprints of the world where, you know, every press outlet got a copy early enough and while the remaining ones,

Got one early enough and they're all talking about it because there's only so much time left in the world for us to play and talk about video games.

If you want to find offshoot stuff, you got to do the work.

No, you don't tell us what else is going on.

Sorry, I'm not trying to get dark about it.

I'm not trying to get dark about it. Sorry, I meant like, you know, there's not a lot of people getting paid to talk about them.

That's what I meant. You know, if you wanna do that sort of thing, I think demos, weirdly are like the best way to do it like jenna's saying it's you know next fest watch out for that But also, if you have a genre that you like, there is a festival on Steam every other – with a sea of demos in it.

So just keep an eye out. You can see them in advance too, like way in advance, something like six months in advance, I think you can see. the fests that are going to take place on steam uh just like google that i'll put a link to in the description of that as well keep an eye out for that Itch is the hardest one, though, because like I do my due diligence with Steam every day.

I check Steam DB and I look through all the new releases. every single day because I am always curious what's going on.

Itch has a way bigger problem of stuff going with problems.

Maybe the wrong word. Who cares? You can upload games.

It's fine. But like it's impossible to keep track of what's going on over there.

They don't have the same sort of set up a steam and there's no there's no HDB as far as I'm aware. where it's hard to filter stuff a bit.

Exactly. Get a bird's eye view kind of. of what's like TTRPG stuff might be in the wrong category and I click on it and I'm like animations, some stuff that's, comics you know You know?

Yeah. And it's, it's a problem cause it's great that it has that facility for everything, but it does mean if you're trying to self select a little bit, it's hard to.

Yeah, get the right filters in. And then for those of you who don't have that much time, you know, to do all that, hopefully we'll be able to help with that stuff on uh on the second channel on uh yeah And the next, keep your eyes peeled for that, ears peeled, all that, all the peeled.

Jeremy, were you jumping in there? No, I was still trying to find that list.

I think it's the IGF submissions post a playlist every year.

Oh, cool. I had one from last year bookmarked and I've searched every combination of those books. key phrases.

I did find an IGF 2017 playlist. on YouTube, but that seems a little... I think probably most of those games are either... canceled her out by now your hollow knight came out yeah Oh, my God.

What does it mean? Also, when we were... I have to bring this up now.

When we were talking about games earlier... every single game not everyone but time flies and hurdling both on the steam pages were like if you liked hollow night, you might like this.

That doesn't make any fucking sense. no it doesn't make any sense sorry i just everything is hollowed out now uh pez on the discord says the rolling saves of indiana jones made me uh sorry uh bit me during gameplay and it made me realize there's been a ton of different ways to save your game.

Auto saves, going to the menu and saving manually, clever in-game save mechanisms like earth burns, where you call your dad.

Some of these methods break immersion while others are integrated with the story and lore of the game.

What are some standout games that you use clever in-game methods that allow you to create a save without relying on autosave. or exiting to a menu.

Typewriter tape, Resident Evil. Restricts the amount of...

It's so good. That and I also love Alien Isolation. where you have to like physically go and just lock in to this machine and you can't see if anything's sneaking up behind you.

That's pretty great. And they also limit to how often you can do it on those, right?

I think there's like a timer on those where.

You can't go back to one of those machines for a while.

Yeah. There's like emergency boxes. Yeah, that's pretty good.

There was one earlier in the year that you were talking about, Danny, that I think about.

Like more often for a game I've never played.

No, um... Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. The save is like you have to make a potion, right?

You do. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. That's awesome.

I love that. Really. yeah what's the deal with it i forget how god how does it work i never played it i just I think about that.

I think you can save... It's been a while.

I have to go back and play more. I think you can save...

At certain points at this, no, the story checkpoints, I think, but if you want to save out in the world. like a save scummy save or a quick save, you have to make a potion first.

That's true. which is fantastic. I forgot about that.

Shadow Gambit's a great one. That was the one where...

They basically mechanized safe scumming.

So before you go into one of these turn-based encounters, I forget how it works, it's like a portal, like you create like a save portal, that if you die, you go back to.

But that's like within the game world and you can only do them at certain times. times that was really smart.

I think my favorite might be Steel Battalion though, where if you played the original Steel Battalion with the big, you know, you know, crazy big controller.

If you didn't eject from your mech, your save game was deleted.

So you had to eject. So funny. Yeah. So you're in the fight and it's like, I've had to go. and it you know if you just had it on controller you just press the buttons or whatever but if you were playing with the big Steel Battalion controller, the eject button was like a like a big red button that was under a plastic cover.

So you had to like straight up flick it up and like for dunk on the big button then you get shot up into the and then you'd lose the mission, but you'd be able to continue with that character and save but if you didn't do that if you got killed the game was over so I should be able to buy a button like that and put it to use in any way I see fit in my life.

That should be how I turn off my phone alarm in the morning.

I should have to... There was a website.

I want one of those dot com. Do you remember that?

Oh, it was like, maybe it was big in Europe, but it was, it was basically just a website where they sold chintzy shit.

It was like stuff you don't need, but you want.

And they did have a USB big red button that you could buy. that you could just code to do whatever.

And it was just a huge, big... like keyboard looking button, but it was red.

So that was pretty cool. I deserve it. I should add that one in.

Any other ones we can think of? I think that's pretty much all the goodies.

Yeah, those are like the best ones. Ink Ribbons, man.

Can't beat him. That's a podcast for this week. housekeeping stuff like I said oh yeah Jenna as well is here on the podcast She was meant to be coming on our panel at PAX.

Pax did a whoopsie. Despite the fact that they knew it was the same Jenna Stieber.

They managed to put one of your panels on at the same time as ours.

So our panel's on Saturday at 5 o'clock.

Noclip's secret panel about video game documentaries and tapes.

Janet, what panels do you have going on at PAX?

Well, I'm hosting two. One is the PAX panel show at 5.30. when you trickle out of the noclip, it can come join.

The second half of my panel, you'll be lost, but you will if you're there from the start too.

It's called the PAX Panel Show. And it's a UK style panel show where I subject the panelists to to a series of inane games that I have crafted out of the deepest, cruelest parts of my heart.

So it's great for me and it's great for the audience and the panelists are also there.

And then Sunday at some time, I'm doing a panel called Tears. of the kingdom, where we are going to be putting into tier lists everything from Tears of the Kingdom.

That's the plan. That's... Best titled panel already for Tears of the Kingdom.

It's going to work great for this PAX. In future PAXs, when it's no longer about Tears of the Kingdom, it's going to be meaningless.

But that's true. Are there any other games with tears in the name?

I'm going to dig it up. We'll see. I'll do a quick Google a month before PAX East 2026 and see what I find.

Thank you. Fantastic. Thanks for coming on again.

If people want to check out your stuff, it's youtube.com. slash at the underscore Jenna.

Yeah, that's right. And on Patreon no underscore, right?

Yes. So patreon.com slash the Jenna. On twitch.tv at slash the underscore Jenna as well.

Perfect. Yes. If we have talked about all of her awesome videos, Over the past while, I know last year or no, earlier this year, one of my favorite ones was the video essay you did on Indica.

It was terrific. Um, but yes, there's a bunch of stuff there.

Uh, Elden Ring video, uh, was the most recent one.

I remember that Mario one about, uh, Mario swimsuit pro Nintendo swimsuit problem.

Loads of great video essays over there. Go check them out.

And of course, all of the streaming, indie game streaming too.

Um, on our end machine games is up for early access the first episode.

So if you want to watch it. I managed to cram in Jens Matthias.

I woke up at 5 a.m. on Monday to interview him in Sweden. and then spent all day yesterday cramming him into the docks because I just needed him.

He's just a funny dude and he was creative director on Wolfenstein and it felt really weird not having him.

Um, but he doesn't work at machine games anymore.

So, um, he managed to find the time for me.

So thank you. Yen's parent. He's no club fan.

I had no idea. It was. pretty cool um so the first video is now eight minutes longer it's a quarter of a quarter a whole third of it longer than it was originally.

So you can check that episode out over at patreon.com slash noclip.

33 minutes long, the first episode, which is the prehistory of Machine Games, basically all about Starbreeze, so The Darkness, Chronicles of Riddick Escape from Butcher Bay.

Enclave and that Syndicate remake as well to a certain extent. how they fell out with EA, how the machine games stuff was founded. they brought them out to age to basically test and see if they knew what the fuck they were doing before handing them Wolfenstein.

It was... There's a lot of really cool stuff in that one.

And then we're going to have So Monday, that'll be public.

So Monday, the upcoming Monday, which is the 25th, and then we will have A week after that, we'll have an hour-long documentary on Wolfenstein, and a week after that, we'll have about a 90-minute doc on Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. rounding off our machine games triumvirate as it were And I think that's it.

I think we're done for the week. You guys doing anything fun this week?

Anything going on? you know, there's a lot of showcases games comms on right now, but like Danny said, we're not there, but there's stuff happening.

Games Convention. Yeah, there you go. Check it out.

Go ahead. Cause we got to call him sometime.

Sure. Yeah. Let's go next year. That'd be fun.

Let's lock it in. Have some pork knuckle at the fucking Hackson house.

Let's go. Hey, opening night live actually is going on right now as we're talking.

Yeah, there's stuff being announced. Here, guess which one of these is fake.

Guess which one of these is fake. A new Ron Gilbert game.

Europa Universalis 5. Or the last one. Hold on.

Hold on. or Bubsy4D, which one's fake? I feel like the Bubsy is a red herring and that's got to be real because it seems the obvious answer for sure.

You did a pause before it as well. I feel like Ron Gilbert, I think he moved to Australia.

They don't make games in Australia. They don't make games there.

Yeah, he's not allowed anymore. No, they go the other way.

I'm gonna go Bubsy 4D is the bullshit. Is the bullshit?

Okay, Jenna, what do you think? I think it's the Europa, the middle one.

Yeah, well, they're all real. There's a new Ron Gilbert game also.

Bubsy4D is a very funny name. Yeah, it's pretty good.

Presumably there's some time travelling mechanic in this game, is there? that's blinks the time cat but with bubsy is that where the time sweeper the time cat It's beautiful.

Great. What's the new Ron Gilbert game? It's called Death by Scrolling.

It's a roguelike vertically scrolling RPG.

Oh. Okay, down well. I was going to say you must have known about this.

For anyone who's going to know. No, he did a post about it.

I think I talked about it on the podcast.

He did a post about it. It looks like. fucking Zelda game It's like an old school Zelda.

It's like top down, like, you know, fucking looking you know green grass and then the edges of the thing are yellow like he did a And I was like, he's making a...

A roguelike? Okay, so there you go. The core hallmark of every Zelda game.

Yeah, yeah. Green grass, and then the edge of the thing is yellow.

Ha ha ha! Fuck you guys, I'm going home.

I'm taking my ball. It was very charming.

Excellent. Good stuff. Alright, we'll be back next week. with some more video game nonsense.

But until then, have a great week and we'll see you on the other side.

Bye. Bye.

[Noclip Podcast Episode 241: Travel, Bathing Rituals, and the Indie Game 'Key Jangler' Phenomenon]-[Herdling, Super Metroid, Jenna Stoeber's Japan Journey]

📋 Summary

Adventures in Japan and the Quest for the Perfect Bath

Ghibli, Emotional Logic, and the 'Grave of the Fireflies' Problem

The Silksong Vacuum and the 'Souls-like' Fatigue

Indie Spotlights: Hurdlings and Sword of the Sea

The 'Key Jangler' Critique: Gambling and Indie Games

Closing Thoughts: Finding Hidden Gems

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript