[Noclip Crewcast Episode 221: Indie Games, Life Transitions, and Systemic Simulations]-[inZOI, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, Picross]
Noclip Crewcast · C1 · 2025-04-04
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📋 Summary
Life Transitions and the Pursuit of Unconventional Living
The episode opens with a candid discussion about life changes within the Noclip crew, specifically Jeremy’s transcontinental move from California to Massachusetts. Jeremy describes his current setup—filming from a "liminal office space" where his microphone stand is a "package full of books with an upturned sauce pot." Beyond the humor of his temporary setup, Jeremy explains his decision to prioritize "important docs and important work" over the unsustainable cadence of his previous workload. He reflects on his desire to "live a little scrappier" and "make space for game dev," aiming to embody a "Henry David Thoreau" approach to creating video games. By reducing his financial pressure, he hopes to achieve the "creative freedom" necessary to build games that don't need to be "smash hits" to justify their existence.
Inzoi and the Allure of Systemic Simulation
A significant portion of the conversation revolves around Inzoi, a life-simulation game by Krafton. The hosts are simultaneously fascinated and "bamboozled" by the game’s framing device, which suggests the player is an employee of a simulation run by "magical cats." Jeremy notes that Inzoi feels like a "sandbox" where players can engage in "dorky things" without the game necessarily "pushing back" in the way Dwarf Fortress does—where "fun" often arises from systemic failures like a "toilet flooding" or an "aquifer flooding the mine." Despite its early access status, the game’s deep character creator and its ability to generate textures via AI prompts spark a debate about the ethics of generative technology versus the value of systemic, player-driven narratives. The hosts contrast this with The Sims, noting that Inzoi feels more like a "dollhouse" or a "world sim" that prioritizes player expression over rigid gameplay loops.
The Joy of Puzzle Games and "Palette Cleansers"
Jesse shifts the focus to his recent obsession with puzzle games, which he describes as the "wasabi of gaming"—a necessary "palette cleanser" during stressful times. He details his immersion in the Picross genre, citing Loggie Arts Grimoire on Steam as a standout experience. The conversation highlights the tactile satisfaction of Picross, with Jesse noting that playing on a 3DS feels "faster" and "more fluid" due to the stylus. The crew also discusses Axyz, a "vaporwave Kula World" style game that is "grid-based" and "disorienting," emphasizing that the best puzzle games are those that introduce complex mechanics through simple, intuitive designs.
Racing, Nostalgia, and the "Hotness" of Need for Speed
Frank shares his enthusiasm for Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, a title he previously overlooked. He praises the game for its "arcadey" and "simple" structure, noting that unlike many modern racing games that force players to "manually drive to the next mission," Hot Pursuit keeps the focus on the career tree. The discussion touches on the "high-tech Mario Kart" elements, such as calling in "spike strips" and "helicopters" to crash out opponents. This leads to a broader discussion on the "normalization of hyper-commercialization" in gaming, referencing the "beep beep" car horn recorded by A$AP Rocky in Need for Speed Unbound, illustrating how the industry has shifted from counterculture roots to high-budget brand partnerships.
The Value of Non-Gaming Interests
The episode concludes with a listener question about what hobbies outside of gaming help the crew most in their professional lives. Jeremy points to his background in "critical theory," specifically the works of "Hegel, Marx, and Engels," as tools for understanding the financial pressures of the industry. Frank emphasizes the importance of "boundless optimism" and curiosity, noting that he can find an "interesting story" in any subject, whether it’s "hot cheetos" or "WCW wrestling history." Ultimately, the crew agrees that the most valuable skill for a creator is maintaining a genuine curiosity about how things work, whether it’s the "civics of a city in Skyrim" or the "inner workings" of a complex simulation.
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🎯Key Sentences
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The news is bad. It just makes you sad.
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Honestly, this is the best use for it.
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Yeah, good point. Yeah, it does tend to give quite a lot of electrostatic bleed into the lines
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It's remarkable how, how dodgy that thing can be sometimes.
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No, I got nothing. It's on my desk.
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dammit, I'm making a cultural reference you wouldn't get.
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that might be the worst segue imaginable thank you
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I don't know how people do that, they flip their letters, freaks me out.
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i threw away a ton of shit
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the cut had to be made somewhere all right that was that was the line
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moving fucking sucks man
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everyone knows handsome glasses man right frank strong greek nose that's right baby
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📝Key Phrases
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fill your ears with delicious happy gubbins
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it does tend to give quite a lot of electrostatic bleed
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it's remarkable how dodgy that thing can be sometimes
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it's like a game of telephone where people didn't hear it right
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if dell the funk and homo sapiens is not in my tony hawk proskater three and four i'm out
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that's the worst segue imaginable
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it's all-encompassing and it's hard to have two of those
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it creates a bit of a log jam
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threading the needle between infinite openness and very sort of like linear pathways
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I'm in my puzzle game bag, dude
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it's ticking all the same boxes
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it's a pain in the ass book
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📖 Transcript
Hello fans and welcome to episode 221 of the Noclip Crewcast. We got a full crew.
We're all here again to talk about the video games.
Some of these games are new, like Enzoi and Spilled.
Some of these games are not new, like Need for Speed on Pursuit and Picross.
But that's why you're here, you sickos.
You're here to not.
Who cares about video game news?
The news is bad. It just makes you sad.
so come to us and we'll fill your ears with delicious happy gubbins speaking of happy gubbins uh jeremy jane how you doing sir your background for the youtube people is slightly different what's going on there are you are you in the severance office what's happening i'm filming from a liminal office space um my i moved across the country my mic stand has not arrived so i'm also using um i can't move my my camera because there are addresses and sensitive documents in in this family office that I'm in, but I am currently for a mic stand using a package full of books with an upturned sauce pot.
And then on top of the upturned sauce pot, because I just needed a little more, is a Scarlett 2i2 audio interface.
Oh, wow, you're using it.
Is that the one you're plugged into?
I'm not. It is totally unused and unpowered.
It is pure. It's a shitty, you know, audio interface.
Honestly, this is the best use for it.
Yeah, good point. Yeah, it does tend to give quite a lot of electrostatic bleed into the lines, which is, it's one job.
It's remarkable how, how dodgy that thing can be sometimes.
Jesse Gratia, how are you?
What is your microphone stand currently balanced on?
Is it, can you beat sauce pot?
No, I got nothing. It's on my desk.
I spent too much money on a branded piece of metal that holds it up.
Although previously I did have it on a bunch of university textbooks.
So the thousand dollars I spent was kind of worth it.
Oh, nice. That was your university education.
Do you have to pay for education in Canada or is it free or?
Yeah, it costs a lot of money.
You can get a grant if you feel like it, but also you can pay for it with the Roll Up the Rim bits.
Ah, dammit, I'm making a cultural reference you wouldn't get.
Roll Up the Rim. Excuse me, sir.
That's not a weed. Who dare you?
It's a family podcast. I roll up the rim sometimes.
Yeah, that's the cool version.
We do have legal weed up here.
You could do this. Okay, Roll Up the Rim.
It's Tim Hortons, the coffee chain, the Dunkin Donuts of Canada, the coffee cups, the paper ones.
I think twice every year they have an event called Roll Up the Rim.
They've had it since I was a kid.
you roll up the rim of the coffee cup and in that rim there's like you can win something usually you don't but you want like a donut or a coffee or a car or seventy five thousand dollars so that's like a fun canadian thing everyone knows wow roll up the rim i like it it's like the inside of the the the chocolate bar or something like that i think that's what we used to have inside of an ice cream did you live in really wonka in the chocolate factory what i was i was gonna say does anyone roll up the rim and they get the entire tim horton's factory you have to meet Mr. Tim Horton, he almost murders
your family in the glass elevator.
Is that why that lady did that poop in that Tim Horton's that one time?
Remember that viral video of the lady taking a dump?
See, that's not, see, for you guys, that's viral.
For me, that's a Tuesday.
I mean, I live near San Francisco, so yeah.
So I guess, yeah, yours isn't Tim Hortons, yours is every business.
Frank, where's the best place you've seen someone take a dump?
Oh man, I was trying to think, I've probably seen someone do it on stage somewhere.
somewhere uh wow i saw a lot of like fluid being exchanged at a bloodhound gang show like 20 years ago yeah was that when the drummer was still like a 12 year old boy no yeah what the hell spanky g or something yeah they had a kid in the band brother wasn't it was the singer's brother i think something like that oh god and then the whole reason the band ended is because uh jared hasselhoff put the russian flag in his pants while performing in russia and so putin's people had them branded as terrorists and they had to be ejected from the country and um and then they broke up because of that so that well
right because all their money was all the russian fans that was the one market the bloodhound gang was still yeah we'll still kid them and alien ant farm remember that rumor of alien art farms i think it was true but it was also a rumor things could be true rumors it was alien offers boss crashed in spain or something was on tour bus thing do you remember that nobody nobody i thought you said their butt crashed in spain they're blood crash that was the rumor and it was like a game of telephone where people didn't hear it right i like alien afram they had two good songs and one of them was a michael
jackson cover but hell they were good time oh also i hear that they're taking wish the the very good alien afram song that is in tony hawk's post creator 3 i believe frank uh i believe it's not making the cut did you read that that they've uh they've they've changed the soundtrack a little bit and some of the songs aren't going to be there if dell the funk and homo sapiens is not in my tony hawk proskater three and four i'm out i agree can we clarify the name alien ant farm uh is is it an ant farm like a small ant farm that a human would have full of aliens or is he are we the ants and the aliens
are observing us that must be it we're the alien we're just all we are is an alien ant farm yeah that's true sorry i directed that question to frank but he is so he's googling no he's so down he's such a journalist that he's immediately just dell the funky obama wasabi is not into it there's only about i know there's only about 12 songs returning and then a bunch of new songs yeah that one's not in there but like yeah amoeba by adolescence is in there uh you know they i i they would have not released the game if they didn't get the cky song in there so that's in there well they weren't putting
bam in it so well then now and then now they are so and yeah and then ace of spades is the other like i feel like uh core tony arc three song that is going in there but you're telling me it's a wish by alien aphoram is that one no can you do a little can you give us a few bars of wish really the intro is like i don't know what he says but he's it's like now that though yeah yeah and it's make a wish make a second dash wish you that's a good time man that's a banger that's a good time and dell the phone can home safe and i sung down the podcast weeks ago remember you gotta wash your eyes if you
must that's good he has a he has a song that's all about dreamcast games it's called the phone cameras avian proto culture it's it's he's talking about like dark stalkers and like like buying strategy guides to play jrpgs it's like the most niche song and it was recorded in the 90s and it's like this is insane i love like a gorillas track as well yeah uh yeah he's on uh clint eastwood isn't he yeah right yeah right yeah yeah shit what a guy he had a hot year there like a hot 24 months and then he disappeared off the face of the earth probably not he's probably around somewhere i mean that that makes
sense considering his most famous concept album is about the year 30 30 and like aliens and spaceships and shit traveling the galaxy so i assume that's what he's been up to maybe him and alien alpha were both kicked off because of their like alien conspiracy shit maybe like tony hawk has like a he's like a real fucking creationist or you know really believes in the sanctity of science and he's like you got to keep that shit out of here or he's like an alien truther and he's like i don't like when you make light of this shit because it's a serious issue it makes a a lot more sense actually that's
definitely what it is um next time i interview tony hawk i'll have to ask him about that and i'll ask him about all of the incredible battle pass holders we have here that might be the worst segue imaginable thank you uh including a couple of new names uh shout out to duane the rock lobster anthony thomas nico passadari it's semi farario penelope hayes Senator Armstrong, Harry Flanagan, Joosh, Arno, Jose R, or maybe Jose R, let me know if you're Brazilian or Portuguese, Matt Pearson, James Brown, Marco Rojas, Tucker Morgan, David McGarry, Sven Huster, Pez, John Akers, UN's Nate, Tim Robinson,
whose name in the Patreon is upside down, it catches me every time.
I don't know how people do that, they flip their letters, freaks me out.
Hackers, Forrest Pruitt, also a hacker, Jonathan Kramen, Eric Hamilton Schneider, Christophe Thank you to them and all of the people over at Patreon .com that help us tell stories like the story of Dwarf Fortress and our upcoming Disco Elysium documentary and so much more.
We are an independent group of internet freaks.
please help us pay for our rent and our internet freak tools over at patreon .com slash noclip and also for this beautiful podcast hurrah you get bonus podcasts and loads more uh okay let's talk about well we got some video games to talk about but first of all jeremy i'm guessing you haven't played many video games uh what with your transcontinental move uh what's going on what's going on over on the east coast uh not a lot yeah i am i over the last few weeks have been uh painstakingly and laboriously moving all of my possessions well i shouldn't say all of my possessions i threw away a ton of shit
uh and i gave my bicycle to the junk removal guy so nice and i gave him a copy of the last of us i was like this is either going in the trash or you're taking it wow he was like i can't statement i i like the first last of us but it's like you know the cut had to be made somewhere all right that was that was the line that was the fucking the the highest quality item in the trash.
Um, but anyway, yeah, I, uh, there was a, a bit of a change in like before the last several years of, you know, post COVID living, my role in noclip was sort of like smaller and more part -time and I sort of like rotated around other clients and stuff.
And then over the last several years it became sort of like my only employment thing.
And, um, basically like moving forward, we're sort of trying to like hone in and focus and do the important docs and the important work and stuff but uh and prioritize that over creating you know like making up work so that everyone has enough like work to do or whatever yeah we're kind of doing yeah fewer at the moment fewer there was a lot of shit going on in the past few years we were throwing a lot of things out there yeah and some of it stuck and some of it some of it didn't and also danny to your credit danny has been working like insanely fucking hard like i i an inhuman amount of work
has been done and an inhuman amount of travel and uh it's just like it's not really like a sustainable cadence like i don't want to see you implode from work so anyway it was sort of like do i continue to live in california and pay a shit ton of money for you know like basically just to to be there and be where i had been for a while or do i uh kind of like shake it up and try something new so um yeah and the other thing was that like like game dev has become an increasingly more important important part of my life over the last four years or so and so it was like do i want to basically uh cut
my cost of living or chase down a bunch of new video clients and kind of like fill the gap to make california rent and stuff that way and so i was like i think i would rather like be a little less conventional and like move somewhere a little cheaper and uh and kind of make space for game dev and live a little a little scrappier and kind of like you know it's like do i want to fucking call it microsoft and be like hey can i film the commercial where the guy's like this tablet can do so many things we'll pay you in nine months once you've finished the job yeah they also google was the one that took
fucking forever to pay me but um but anyway so i uh moved back to massachusetts back to boston area where i grew up and um i'm working on a little uh lL secret project that uh i'm not going to reveal yet but it basically is sort of like um i i'll tease it this way i'm working on a very unconventional unconventional mode of living that will sort of uh take my my like primitivist like i i have i've been i could sleep on the fucking floor in a garage and be happy like i've been paying california rent for a level of comfort that is so unnecessary for me um and so i'm working on figuring out how to
uh be the Henry David Thoreau of of making video games yeah focus on that game dev stuff that isn't to say that you're not doing any no clip work in the future of course people are yeah but and hey it also opens up opportunities for filling one on the east coast um all over again which is which I could have used you in Boston when I was there filming the cyberpunk stuff I know I was gonna say they've got a what are they called molasses flood because the Boston yes yeah up yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah um so yeah so currently uh it's gonna take me a couple a few months to spin up the uh weird secret
project which I'll talk about more in the near future but for now I am staying with family uh hence the weird liminal office space uh that I'm in right now but um but it's been good yeah moving fucking sucks man but uh it's it's good to be here and like you know my family are out here like a bunch of my friends are out here it's like it feels good good to be back even though california has been my home for 12 years um so yeah it's cool it's i'm i'm looking forward to uh settling in here and trying something new and you know if i if i make a hit indie game if i make an indie game that makes 35
billion dollars maybe i'll move back to california someday that's what i'm looking forward to is in a couple years time when we're doing the bittersweet driving you to the airport last week i was driving back thinking in a few years time it'll be like people will talk about that jeremy jane guy who used to be on noclip who now lives beside notch on a on a beautiful and he's turned right wing weirdly you see he's like he's kind of making all these broad claims now jesse's saying cut okay got it no yeah no once that once they give you all the money that's what the the policy no anyway um yeah no so i uh
yeah it'll be cool i I think the other thing I think that is important about it is like I the point of living cheaply and unconventionally to save money is not just to make room for game dev because, you know, money is time and time towards work to pay rent, all these things.
It's like this cycle.
The other thing is that, like, I don't want to think about making games as this thing where I'm checking market market analytics and I'm like, OK, this is the median earnings for this genre.
and so like if i you know in two years maybe this genre will be hot like i don't want to fucking game the system i want to make the the reason i make like got into making games is because there were types of games that do not exist that i want to make that i want to see exist and i want to make them so like i want to do it for that reason and so i think lessening the financial pressure allows me a level of sort of uh creative freedom and valuability that like i can try something and it doesn't need to be a smash hit i don't need to release a hit indie game every year to pay my rent or whatever
so uh yeah we'll see how it goes and uh I'll keep you guys posted on the fucking the weird the weird plan yeah it's uh it's been amazing watching you for the last couple of years like really you know mature into this like the stuff that you're doing that you haven't showed people I know on Jane Dev we showed a bunch of um the projects you're working on but I know you've got like some some pretty some pretty big ideas and and you're pouring pouring so much of your like free time and energy and passion into us that I can see how, I can see how becoming like, like the amount of like edit and you,
and also like just the amount of editing, like energy editing takes, like it takes so much of your day to day to day to day.
Like all I've been thinking about for the past four weeks is the Dwarf Fortress edit.
Like I'll be, you know, on a drive or in bed or whatever, just like going, Oh no, I should do do that or write it down on my phone it's it's like all encompassing and and it's hard to have two of those like it's hard to have two things that you like have to dedicate and you've done amazing job over the past few years of of doing so many of the the edits for for noclip like we we changed from a you film everything i edit everything into a we edit everything together or you do stuff solo like the dust stuff or you know or or we do side by side like you've been been working on a secret project while
i've been doing the dwarf fortress one solo so it's been it's been amazing but yeah we just have um it's a mixture of funding and time like time is the big thing you can't editing videos takes so much time and and when um when i'm the one who sort of is responsible for finishing a lot of our things and for um sort of like getting them prepped to go live and all that stuff it creates creates a bit of a log jam which we've been dealing with for the past couple of, uh, the past year or so, at least for sure.
So, um, yeah, I'm excited, I'm excited to see what, what comes of you being able to sort of dedicate so much more of your time to, to this.
And yeah, I think it's a fun project that once you're ready to share with people, people will want to follow along with, I think it's going to be pretty cool.
I'm excited about it.
And the last thing I'll say about it, and this ties into moving is that, um, uh this this doing this like non -game dev pursuit to like figure out how to live like a fucking weirdo has been i think a very good thing in a weird way for inspiration for game dev because there's this one of the most inspiring figures for me in game dev history is will right specifically in the late 90s early 2000s um because a lot of will rights inspiration at the time like for for for the Sims, for example, his house in the Oakland Hills that you pay, I think the Oakland Hills burned down.
And so he had to get software to design to interior design and design the new house.
And when he was doing it, he looked into the analytics on like how many people were buying house design software.
And basically like the number of people who were buying home design software was like an order of magnitude larger than the number of people who were designing new homes.
So he was like, oh, there's like this gap of people who just like find it aesthetically and it intuitively fun to like design homes or whatever um and so the sim started as a game called dollhouse where you just like design a house like there weren't even the simulation of the people was sort of secondary at first um and i think that there's something very like novel and interesting about game ideas that grow out of non -game things um or like like the origin of zelda is like miyamoto wandering around fucking caves in rural japan pan in the countryside and you know like uh and so doing this process
and like moving and just like doing all of these things in my life that are not oriented around video games i think has has given me a lot of inspiration for video games in a bizarre way uh to the extent that like i had my truck shipped out here and the driver for the truck that carried my truck was like i think he was like azerbaijani he didn't speak any english basically at all um but like except for like a few scattered words and while i was trying to communicate with him in these two meetings we had it was like these are high high stress meetings because you're giving you're giving your car
to this person yeah and also trying to find the payment method changed at the last minute i had to find like 1200 in the middle of the night on saturday where it's like how where do you get 1200 at fucking 10 at night um so the but trying to communicate with this guy and having such a of limited vocabulary and trying to figure out like oh okay like here's a word he knows how can i build off of that and find like another word he knows and bridge like like he's like you how you get and i'm like i i me bicycle and you car like and like building these little linguistic bridges um it it planted seeds
of an idea for like how to gamify sort of the feeling of of trying to communicate without having a common lexicon and i think that like i there jesse said said it really well we were chatting about this the other day that like there are so many experiences in ordinary life that are that are like gamey and tactile and interesting and engaging and interactive that we don't think of as games um and so yeah part of this whole endeavor is trying to engage with a lot of non -gamey things with the express purpose of of drawing inspiration from them love to see it keep your eyes and ears tuned folks to
the wonderful world of jeremy jane there i'll take that segue if you don't mind i'll pick up that will write thing so we can talk about inzoi inzoi who knows anything about inzoi i know a little bit yeah yeah it's like it's a sims sims sims like um which is now a genre i think was there any other has there ever been like what's another sims like that's a question the sims i don't know if this is the only other one the herbs the herbs wow boy that's my boy that was made by yeah that was just a spinoff that was the urban spinoff jesus christ it had all the people of color on the on the box what's
that about there well we don't put them in the sims so we gotta put them in this one instead we'll make our own little it's like a video game ghetto we'll just put them all in there yeah that's what it was sell that on playstation it had black eyed peas doing sim songs which is really that was worth it i think wait they were singing in simlish i'm pretty sure like they have a bunch of songs in the herbs that are yeah simlish sounds racist i don't know why yeah i don't know because it's like linguistically otherizing yes it's like oh you know what i mean they had a lot of musicians singing songs
in the series in simlish like they have uh fun the band that did like we are young 14 years ago and ruin music forever they sing a song in simlish it does say it's just that the sims don't have they're a fake um species a race of people so they don't have rights but otherwise i'd be like yeah that's a bit that's a bit rich isn't it it's like putting on an accent when you're singing it's like suppose yeah it's like it isn't i guess that's what uh what's his face that's what taylor swift did for the first two albums i thought you were gonna say billy joe armstrong from green day wait is he put on a fake
accent well he does that like sort of pseudo welcome to the new coordination yeah i know you're talking he's like my name is my name is billy and i talk like this so that he's like all bought a soul he doesn't do like a paul mccartney that was really good amazing um well that's not what this is although they do speak a version they do speak some weird uh that i'm pretty sure i think it's i think it's called simlish it sounds very simlish adjacent Jason I don't know what this game is I don't like I do and I don't this is so it came out in early access in Zoe it's made by uh Krafton so it's uh it's
got a lot of money behind it um they're doing some AI stuff in here as well this is part of the PUBG universe also I don't know if it's part of the PUBG universe that's a good point this and uh and PUBG and uh Dinkum I guess are the the the the crafting specials um yeah so it's okay so this is a sims this is a sims style game you are create you are you create a zoe zoe is the name of like the the the person you can create a family of zoe you i don't know what the plural of zoe is i'm guessing zoe and not zoes we're gonna go with that uh we can create a family of them they can be children they
can be old people it has a very detailed character creator thing and then so the framing device of this game is fucking bamboozling because it appears it and i might be wrong and i'm not willing to look this up and i know i'm supposed to be like a games journalist who like understand who like researches their things but i'm having so much fun not not knowing that I think it's better if you all go on this sort of nightmare of mystery with me.
It appears that the Inzoy game world is a simulation that is run by a company run by magical cats.
OK, so the start of the game, your magical cat brings you like your magical cat boss allows you access to the Inzoy office space in this like cut scene you sit down at a computer and they kind of hang out there right and then you make a zoe and you go into this world why you're doing it i don't know but there appears to be a sort of a level of currency that is in the game that is akin to like cat wishes or something like that i really don't know so most of the time you're just kind of playing a sims game but like an early access sims game that has a lot of functionality but maybe not that much
game in it like there's lots of stuff like it's the stuff that's in there is like super detailed like the character creator is really detailed um the house making part of it is very very detailed you can like create different types of houses and rooms and current furniture and all that sort of stuff it's it's really well done this is where some of the ai stuff comes in here and i'm interested in what you guys think it is because i don't necessarily this to me falls in line with like Like, I don't care.
This isn't I don't think this is stealing anyone's direct wealth, but it is still part of the original.
I say that we have trained a bunch of this shit on people's work that didn't get paid for.
But like you can type in like poop wallpaper into the game and it will make poop wallpaper.
So it's basically the one thing the one use case I'm kind of OK with is making bad shit like literally.
but like me like you can have somebody just wear like a dress and then you can say make this dress have the texture of or to look like right meat like it'll just do that like so presumably you can use it to make really beautiful nice things but also you can you control the game and make terrible things as well if you want so anyway that's we'll leave that to one side for the moment um the game is very much reminds me of what the week we spend in seoul frank where it is sort of you are you are doing all the things that you're meant to do in life you have when you start you have to get a job so you
go get a job and you talk to people you build friendship groups you have your phone with you all the time you have a schedule that lets you know when you've got hangouts of people when you date people when you date people it create fuck i don't know how the conversation thing works in this this could all be ai as well i have no idea i don't i don't necessarily think so but like it creates bubbles that you can so when you're talking to people like Like all these little bubbles that you can sort of like click on.
And like some of them are recommend street food, which would mean you go get food.
So you're having a conversation with somebody.
Ask about marital status.
Talk about your inflexible stubbornness.
Talk about how you control anger.
Share a pizza recipe.
They all seem just completely random.
I think there's like a menu you can go to and be more specific, but they just give these to you.
Say you feel alone in the universe.
words discuss the stock prospects of the k -pop and entertainment industries um speak positively of the samsung brand exactly there's something going on here in this game there's a theme give a heartfelt hug or say life's best teacher is death holy shit that's that's your opener as you meet a stranger on the street and they're like hey how's it going you're like you know i feel that life's best teacher is death i i've taken i just just kept taking screenshots because every time it would just make me laugh discuss hairstyles discuss the future future of cryptocurrency suspect that your life is under surveillance
like it's just uh it's very very strange and then so you know I'm playing this game I'm I've had some fun moments in it I I got a job at a surf shop it was very easy to get the job I just applied on my phone and I got the job so somebody just been fired um I was so panicked that I would mess or mess up my first day of work that i went to bed like super early like way too early and then i woke up and had like a snack and it was like 4 a .m and i had like four hours until so i kind of like just fast forward a time i had him watch like yeah little pop -ups come up like oh he wants to watch like a fitness
video so you you know like the sims and you go on the television and go to the fitness channel and then he's happy and he gets points and he levels up and everyone's life goes on and then i was like oh i better go to work early just in case so i took the bus to work you can open up the mini map and just say go here or you can here's the thing about this game is you literally control the character like it's like it's a it's a sims game where you can click on the ground and say go here or click on the microwave and say make food or you can just straight up wassad mouse and keyboard this person around
the world um which is quite uh different so i went to work and it's like an hour before work and then i realized like oh i ate i ate lasted like four in the morning like i'm super hungry and he's like curling over with hunger and i'm like oh shit i messed this up so i went i ran around like all the cafes that were on the map and they were all closed until 8 a .m which is when my shift started so i panicked and i had to take the bus back home to get like a fucking bibimbap or something you could this game is constantly reminding you it's made in korea which is great and i ate this food and then
at the time I'm a microwave. Then the fucking idiot sat. I was like, just get it, grab and go.
He like sat down at his fucking kitchen table and starts eating this thing with a knife and fork.
And then he runs out the door.
I'm like 20 minutes late for work and I'm like panicking.
And I go into work and I do the first five hours of my shift in my regular clothes.
I never told them to get dressed into their work clothes.
I didn't know that was an option.
And then there's all these things like clean the tables, restock the shelves and you do all this and you get points and stuff like that.
So you have to click through the work.
Like it's not just a simulated.
your character's going around like you know yeah like you're you're still you're still controlling this person you can just run out the door if you want i don't know if you get fired or you can just talk to customers and flirt with them you can flirt with your boss you can not do any of the work i tried to start a fight with a cop one time i just kept abusing him and he you know this wasn't america so he didn't immediately beat me up um all right as you know you're clean the desks you get all these things you got to wash the toilet and do all these things and work and then you leave and you you
get paid and you go home so it's like it's like it's just it's somebody said this is like sims somebody my reply said this is sims for people who love being on linkedin like it's wow brutal it's it's it's like this sort of um do you remember frank when we went we were in seoul there was like the uh there was this um our hotel was in like a uh like a mall mall right and you remember they kept having like like um talent competitions do you remember yeah like there's like singing and I I feel like people also playing instruments like just like this open like the the mall had like was like five stories
but at every level you could look down to the center and there was always something happening there was like yeah yeah they had they had like a talent competition I think it was I think what maybe it was a dating one maybe maybe we're like the the but like women were like recording videos for like a dating app or so i don't know i don't know what it was but it was like the idea of like public entertainments was like oh yeah of course like this is you know this is sort of like medieval in some ways but it's kind of cool that they have this place that they do this stuff and so there's that thing
in this as well but like everything is regimented in this world and it feels very like i don't know it it reminds me a lot of when we were in korea where like everything is very organized and you know you gotta make sure you have friends because you to be a good citizen you should have friends and you should eat well and go to the gym and i mean it's just responsibility the game so for me as a sicko i just i'm i'm instantly sort of repelled by it but um yeah like it was very easy to find a girlfriend i just clicked all the buttons that said the nice things and stopped telling her about how i think
the biggest teacher in life is death and and didn't talk to her about cryptocurrency currency or maybe i should have talked more i'm not sure actually which uh which way it goes in this game um and then i stumbled upon this menu and this this just instantly brought back the fear in my head where i was like i don't know what this game is there was a pop -up that said check your soul management report and i was like now this is s -o -u -l not soul as in okay okay because because we've been talking about korea so much that's where my brain oh you're right yeah sorry sorry no this is s -o -u -l okay your
soul management report and so i went and it brought me to my soul dashboard yeah which had a bunch of graphs on it which already is sort of like like a they live style moment where you're like i shouldn't be seeing graphs with the word soul on it like that just you know spirituality and sort of microsoft excel should not exist in the same you know know quantifying soul seems weird and then i then there's a little little drop down and one of them has karma status so i click on karma status every person i've talked to in this game including the cop i was abusive to their karmic status is like listed
in this thing i don't know why but there it is and then there's another icon that has like the it says souls and the icon is like a little little ghost man like going oh and i click on that and it has even more details about all these peoples and their souls so so i i just like is i don't know what this like is this game just like a sims game or is there some like am i i don't know what's going on you're 50 hours in it's gonna turn into something else like why is it a simulation run by cats why am i checking in on people's karma and their souls is this just how koreans think about citizenship
i don't know i'm i'm just like completely bamboozled by it um okay now i have a question about the karmic system so okay if if it is evaluating the people you're interacting with and they're a piece of shit and then you are a piece of shit to them is that are you you know what i mean like are you the avatar of of karmic retribution in this world because that'd be pretty cool that would be great if it was like a sort of a black and white situation but i'm the god walking among them yeah like among some sort of alien ant farm you might say exactly yes god god it all comes back you're totally right
you're totally right is it ethical ai if we're using it within if there is a uh a narrative justification for us because this is a simulation run by cats that's the answer is probably no um yeah that's i mean i you may be giving the game too much credit i don't know i don't know if this is something that i've just i i don't know the reason why this would be there it didn't seem to be like oh and you can just like check in on like your buddies how good they're feeling it didn't have that vibe it had a very sort of different uh vibe to it um but i don't know i really i really don't the game seems
to be like a good sandbox at the moment i I would say for just like doing dorky things, I don't really take it seriously.
I'm not sure if like outside of just having a job, earning money and buying more stuff, I don't know what the, you know, progression is.
I guess if you have a family of people, you can bounce around between them and it's maybe a bit more dynamic because your zoys will, will go do their own thing.
If you're not with them, you know, they'll, they'll, you know, oh, I need to go to the bathroom.
They'll go to the bathroom.
That's kind of, you know, you don't have to necessarily pilot and 24 7 um so yeah but it is early access as well so so who knows it has 11 000 12 000 reviews on steam already um very positive so clearly a lot of people are playing this weird cat soul game yeah this game is blown up i think that like sort of the appeal uh because it's interesting how this game is sort of like the sims but the sims is so sort of like micro grow like it's like these little sort of like orthographic isometric little toy boxes that you're going between dioramas where this is this big open world like it's somewhere between the sims
and gta online role play yeah yeah um and it is interesting how sort of the the gameplay or like the thing that attracts people to games like this can just be sort of existing in the world and just poking and prodding at the systems and seeing like it's funny when you're you know your what there's always sorry yeah it's funny when your zoe is like out you know on a date and then he has to like he like shits his pants like that's i wouldn't say that's gameplay but it is very funny to just observe in the way that yeah you observe like a like an ant farm i'm not that's not even i'm not doing a callback
joke that's just like what it is and and so that's the thing that i'm not sure if this game is going is good at so far which is that like the sims at a certain level was sort of would kind of like fun in dwarf fortress the way they talk about fun which is like things going wrong like that's the point of dwarf fortress is like a dwarf hits an aquifer and floods the mine or a necromancer comes in and starts like raising all the dead dwarves back to life and attacking you like that's where the when when when the systemic nature of the game pushes back right and the sims did that too we're like oh
oh whoops you've got a flood like your you're you're your toilet's flooding now and you have to figure that out or you know a fire started because you left the pot too long on or you know somebody died in a family now a ghost is haunting your your your sims like all that stuff was sort of the the juice of the game and this game is a lot more serious so i don't i don't know if it's pushing back in that way at all even when i turned up to work to work late like nothing happened you know what i mean like it wasn't like or the fact fact that i was wearing my uniform or my my civvies instead of my
uniform like there was no the video game didn't push back or slap me on the wrist in any way and again it's early access so it's hard to tell but yeah i think you're right like the the joy of this game is the fact that there are sort of three cities that you can pick to go i think one of them is loosely based on america like santa monica beach kind of thing another one is based in on seoul i think and then i forget what the third one is i think it might be a bit more like a tropical island perhaps perhaps maybe i don't know shanghai i don't know i don't know um so yeah you do you do have that but um
yeah the game's not pushed back at me much like i found it very easy maybe it's because i i i created a very handsome character that like he's just got game because i keep like getting uh um getting getting dates uh this is a picture of him not sure if you can see his name is garmoosh eggle peggle damn he's a handsome man he's got some glasses kind of looks like a yeah he's like like a handsome glasses man look at him everyone knows handsome glasses man right frank strong greek nose that's right baby frank could you tell me about your inflexible stubbornness please um let's see oh man i mean i
get obsessed and hyper fixated on stuff and you know yeah don't they some inzoi um i it's a 40 price sack i looked like a free to play game it looked like a gta 5 mod when i first saw it i actually thought like oh they finally did it they made a sims and gta 5 what everyone's been asking for it's the opposite of a free to play game it's a 40 unfinished game frank it would you know what i would probably play it if it actually worked as a real instead of like a dating app like hinge or tinder or whatever if people made inzoys and you had to like like an mmo i don't know i feel like people do meet
people on final fantasy and stuff but if it was like i don't know because you talk about you make your avatars and you try to date each other and it's like wait a minute there's something here you can gamify this that's a billion dollar idea right is that your second life without the selling drugs i guess if it was like expressly for meeting people because second life if you went up to a random person you were like so do you want to like meet in real life you don't want to engage with anyone who plays second life in 2025 that's true it's a self -selecting crowd of people road ass video game you
gotta be careful with that i i wonder if they'd open this thing up a bit because it does have this weird this is i mean the one piece of tech that i do not understand sort of what's going on here necessarily but it does have this have you heard about this 3d print thing it has so you can do all the the like texture by like giving it ai prompts or whatever and i've not touched any of that stuff but there's this other thing where you can like either take a photograph or like upload a photograph of an object to the game and it will like ingest it into the world and like whatever ml thing they have working
on the back will like give it a 3d model so you can i don't know take a picture of like a vending machine or something or like you know something i don't know i can think of a million things that are exactly they better be moderating this listen all i'm gonna say is that scorn better watch out because there's a there's a competitor in town and it's weird and veiny yeah i totally forgot about this oh my god you're right um i totally forgot about this there is a an option because you can because because you're basically i guess in some way you are the god of the world i mean you're playing a video
game but the there are like town options that you can like fix different things uh you can change different things and one of them is cleanliness and you can turn the cleanliness dial which is at 100 when you start which in fairness is kind of what it was like being in korea um you can turn it into zero and the entire world is covered in like a layer of scum oh my god yeah it's really weird it's like brown everywhere that's that's so strange like from a game design perspective that's very odd because it's almost like um the thing about the sims is that as soon as you start fucking rose budding
and cheating in the sims it breaks the game because you could just do whatever the fuck you want the the limitations are sort of what make the sims a game right it's like pushing like you said pushing up against those limitations and having the game push back against you it seems like inzoi is very interested in being um almost like more of dollhouse uh or something where it's like a world sim that you were allowed to run around and interact in which is yeah i don't know it i i i feel like it also expresses in the um the weird multitude of conversation options that you were uh that you showed
us the picture of i feel like it's like it's almost assaulting you with such a multitude of options and it feels like that's more what they're going for rather than giving you sort of this limited pool of options and letting you navigate the world and push up against these limitations it's just like it's more about like expression and interaction rather than like gaminess i agree it feels almost like something like beam ng is to forza you know what i mean like this is way more of a sandbox than than those games are and i think that's what i was sort of trying to express with the whole like the game
pushes back in the sims like it gives you those moments you know what i mean like oh the goths are coming over we better throw a dinner party right you know what i mean like that type of thing um whereas this seems so much more about like you can even just like i i believe you can just put like a you can pick up you can build anywhere in the world as well if you want so you could just like put a bed on the street corner and just live out of that bed or or you know um create multiple houses or have multiple at the moment i think you could just have multiple jobs as well and just kind of i'm not sure
how long it takes for them to fire you there's literally a thing on the phone and it's like oh this is how many like days you can call in sick before your boss starts to wonder what's going on so yeah i i don't know it seems like a very strange like they're giving the players everything they asked for situation whether or not that means that at the end it'll be a good game i don't know but it's it's definitely like a for people who want to do the dollhouse thing and like simulate a life like it's it's already doing a lot of that stuff um um and yeah i and i i guess i am interested somewhat in ml
applications that this might be doing outside of the generative stuff i think the like presumably creating the making the entire world dirty is something that ml is doing because they wouldn't have done alternative textures for absolutely every single thing with like a gradient of it you know it could be a shader yeah i don't know i'd have to see what it looks like like if it was snow or what there's a bunch of ways you could do stuff like that i mean assassins creed shadow goes through through different seasons and the environment changes it's covered snow cut like you know was that one person placing
snow all over no that's like a shader yeah was that ml who yeah it's yeah but i guess i'm saying it because it also has this like sort of weird i mean it's doing a lot of um we're all used to you know uh texture stuff being done like upscaling and things like that like it does a lot of the fuzzy sort of low res to high res sort of uh as you're moving the camera around you know like um what do they call it in in open world games or when you look at something far away there's like a low yeah like a level l .o .d stuff but it's like that but i don't have the word for it is it dls or whatever it's called
like the the the thing that where they were the textures are being generated i'm showing we need someone from digital foundry here to talk i bet they have a really good video on this but it's doing a lot of that like it struggles every once in a while it's doing a lot of that so um yeah it's definitely doing some interesting stuff and it's got some very realistic babies so uh that's what you're into i that is weird this is a weird segue this is not inspired by the baby comment um the fact that you can build anywhere and generate textures and objects from photos i'm just again i'm picturing like
you could just build like a like a hr giger flesh prison to imprison all the zoys in and yes yeah put them in like their souls yeah put them in like a meat room and and trap them in there as it pulsates in their prison how does that affect their karma yeah well you could imprison only that you could you could have insight into the karmic nature of each zoey and you could choose and select which ones deserve to be imprisoned based on their actions see we who needs the game to be a game you make your own game it's like that's right fortress that's what inzalee is it sounds like that's the goal is they're
making the ai version of a video game like it doesn't just look like it's ai generated it sounds from the way you're describing it it's like whenever i see an ai demo for something it's like we made the skyrim npcs they'll answer to anything you say it sounds like they made that it called it inzoid yeah it does have that like because that is sort of a hallmark of of most things that are associated with ai and like creativity and tech is that they in in in pursuit of this sort of utopian vision of infinite openness, there's sort of like losing touch with the fact that games are very much about limitation and by like,
yeah, creating the illusion of infinite options, but giving the player like facade is a great example where it feels like you could say anything, but the, the characters will only respond to a limited number of things.
It's a, it's a large number.
It's an impressive, like diversity of responses, but ultimately it's like by railroading the player onto these, uh, sort of invisible pathways, pathways, you're, you're threading the needle between infinite openness and, and very sort of like linear pathways without having those like limitations, without having that framework, you end up in a situation where like, if you were talking to that, uh, Azerbaijani guy who delivered your truck and he could be like, yes, here's your car back.
Like that's not half as fun as playing charades, trying to figure out how to describe what truck is, you know, that's the video game.
And the fake version is the one where you pull out Google translate and just solve the problem that way that's not half as fun oh we google translated it was just it was limited effectiveness exactly yeah there you go even better yeah no it is bizarre how um yeah this this it's it's sort of like the non -game designers idea of what the perfect game is where they're like what if skyrim npcs could respond to anything and then in practice you see it and it's like hey what's up and they're like i am from a village where we grow corn corn is a crop that can be rendered into many other objects what's
rendering do you mean rendering like a 3d graphics card or do you mean frustum culling is a technology it's like all right let me pull up this digital foundry video yeah it's like do you want to play a video game or do you want to read wikipedia about corn so maybe it's because i'm like deep in the in the the depths of a dwarf fortress documentary but i do find this very i find it very interesting and this isn't me just playing devil's advocate because I'm with you on facade like facade it was almost like a a an exploration in what is the most limited version of this thing we can do because that's
basically just like two people talking in one room that's all it is right and and they try and give you all of this um uh you know it's only speech right because you can pick up all their weird little objects and throw it around the room and they don't say boo about it but it it was compelling in some way because there was at least there was a box there was some sort of box and the box was this conversation and these people and this argument that they're having or whatever ever and then i look at stuff like dwarf fortress and that is like coming from we we had this in the first episode of the series
it was coming from this more systemic more simulation based type of game design where instead of creating a a dungeons and dragons game that was very much about here's your character here's the quest you're going on here's the story they sort of opened up left that all off and just created a systemic world and then from you interacting with it you created your own story I might be giving this game too much credit and perhaps comparing it to Dwarf Fortress is maybe something unearned but there is definitely like there is definitely some shared heritage or not heritage some shared DNA here in that at least
at the moment this game feels to be like so sandboxy that it that it is more so I imagine if people are into this game and enjoying this game and sharing stories about this game it's going to be in the same way that Dwarf Fortress bursts outside of its sort of core gameplay the people who play it group out into the wider zeitgeist because people have done interesting things with it right and that's by its design but it's a hands -off design and this is not dissimilar it is a hands -off design it's like here is the sandbox here's all the stuff um and as as it you said it does feel like it has that that AI
jank feel in lots of areas of it.
And I do wonder if this was Krafton and whoever are getting a bunch of investment into AI stuff, trying to push it pretty far and ending up here, like ending up back at, okay, we can make 3D print objects, we can do all these generative prompt shit and we can, and maybe also the tech stuff, maybe the conversational stuff is in there as well.
Because ultimately the conversational stuff does not like, you don't hear them say it.
So, you know, i'm just taking it for granted that i'm asking this lady about uh crypto um but uh yeah so i it's it's interesting i i i'd love to learn more about it and i'm interested to see where it goes because i'm not sure how i feel about it i guess it's kind of you're saying like ml as a systemic like using the systemic information to tell a story no no no i'm just saying that like the the the the game is a sandbox in the same way that like minecraft is and people make up their own fun you know i mean they make their own fun from this like legos or like a like a dollhouse and i and i do think
there is an important distinction between like machine learning writ large especially if we're able to produce like ml training that doesn't use a shitload of energy it depends on what you're training it on and yada yada as opposed to the generative stuff which is clearly like stealing from you know like the field of robotics is something that i'm talking a lot about at the moment for a project and that is definitely one in which there is ethical use of machine learning because you're basically just using scientific data to produce um to try and like teach robots how to do things um and i and i
similarly wonder if like in rendering for instance we don't we don't boo when it comes to this sort of stuff but we do with the generative stuff because it's stealing work either from artists or produced work or possible future art art from artists or voice actors or whatever and i i totally understand that um and i do think the overdone window is moving on that as well in a little bit which is perhaps something we're going to have to worry about in the next few years or maybe people already are but i'm interested if this thing is doing anything i don't necessarily think it is doing anything heavy
ml on on that aspect but i wonder if they tried to do a bunch then this is kind of where they ended up i don't i don't know and it's early access so maybe they're gonna do more stuff it's just a weird little thing and there's a lot of people playing it so i think it's gonna it's gonna be an interesting sort of use case i guess for whatever this thing is i still don't know what it is i still don't understand why the souls are being talked about um the i the other thing i wanted to say was that the i think that when perhaps this is overly credulous but i think that this is accurate i think when people
people see a utopian future in which you can talk to Skyrim NPCs I think that it comes from a similar place of wanting open -ended sandboxy games like Dwarf Fortress because like it is the promise uh like social interaction is a particularly hard thing to have be systemic that's why the sims go like because if you just heard them say like I like soccer I like soccer like over and over you'd fucking shoot yourself in the head you know what i mean like i just it would be maddening to just hear them talk about aliens in the same three phrases over and over for 10 hours but um but yeah so it's like
there is there is something of value in having sandbox games where the the emergence of unique situations lets the player sort of be this like semi like half god and half like witness to the emergence of situations and stuff that have a narrative quality to them so i do think that like you know ethical implications is one conversation but i i do think that like under underlying all of this from a consumer perspective most people just want like cool worlds that simulate things that are interesting to to poke and prod and toy with and play with them yeah it'll be interesting to see um where this thing
goes unless has anyone reviewed it or anything probably early access i don't know it's early access who knows i don't even know hey review this thing yeah it's very it feels like i said more closer to flight sim or beam ng than than anything else in zoe available now for the not so low price of 40 dollars um i guess it's it's a i know there's a lot of game here i guess so maybe i shouldn't early access 40 bucks um on steam steam okay let's move on from that wonderful world to uh let's go with jesse what have you been playing uh hard to follow up the conversation regarding systemic games where i
just talk about fucking puzzles um we need it we need it man we need sure yeah let's let's bring the mood down or up i guess i like puzzle games palette cleanser yeah this is the wasabi of gaming so uh Uh, Picross, I have been playing.
Ginger's the pot of cleanser.
Let's get that straight.
Ginger? Sorry. Thank you.
Wasabi's the one that messes you up.
I appreciate you clarifying that and correcting it.
Uh, Picross, I've been playing a lot of puzzle games lately.
I have not been playing a lot of real video games because I can't concentrate and I'm having a hard time.
It's been a weird couple of weeks.
It's been very busy and like stressed out.
Um, but you know, to find time to myself and enjoy my, my, uh, gaming moments, I have finally purchased 4 million Picross games.
I mean no I downloaded them from my archive um to play by 3ds it has been a lot of fun I've really been enjoying Picross uh Picross games if you don't know what they are look it up it's just like a color by numbers I would call it like a numbers crossword or like crosswords cross with sudoku uh it's part of a genre of puzzle games called nonograms or nonograms I don't know how you say that um but it's based on like a Japanese thing there's a uh graphic designer who made this like painting using the lights in windows or like picture using the lights in windows to make a smiley face and then that was the basis for these
puzzle games that spawned this whole new genre of things nintendo made a ton of picross games uh it's it's just become this big thing it's huge in japan it's called like paint logic i think is what it's called or logic paint when you say paint on windows do you mean like windows not paint on windows or window like glass windows like glass windows like an office building they didn't paint on the windows but like turn the lights on and then at night we're able to make a face using the lights in the windows we used to do something like that remember the guys used to do post -it arsh on the on the game
spot office windows jeremy yeah yeah of course yeah big big huge ones but i didn't realize that's where i came from that's cool yeah so uh just playing a lot of those it's been a lot of fun i didn't i had never really played them before i've seen pictures of pick rob's puzzles and i was always like how are you in what universe are you supposed to solve that how could you it's just numbers around a grid how could you uh but i played a demo for a game called squeak cross uh which is like a mouse animal crossing game where you can design your little apartment building a room and to unlock new pieces you
solve the pit cross puzzles it was a really good tutorial and i like how it feels um and thank you to someone sent or wrote a comment on youtube uh lord liquid bacon the The second shout out, uh, that recommended checking out a game called Loggie Arts or Loggie Arts.
I don't know how to say words.
Grimoire on, uh, it's on steam.
I think it's also on switch made by the same studio, Jupiter, who has been making like exclusively Picross games for the last 20 years.
I was about to ask, there must be a bunch of these on steam.
Is there, what was it called?
Uh, Loggie Arts or Loggie Arts Grimoire.
It's, uh, yeah, it's a Picross game, but then half of it is also solving these very simple simple word puzzles like you you solve the pick cross puzzle and then whenever you finish one of them you usually get a little picture and this isn't just in Lodgy Yards that's the whole point of it's why it's called pick cross um the picture that you get the pixel art picture is like sometimes it's fire or water and then you'll get this little wizard guy will be like hey why don't you uh this puzzle you have to find something liquid that gets shocked and you're like uh water and lightning I guess and then
that's you get a new puzzle I don't know whatever whatever.
It's silly, but I like it.
It's fun. And I'm enjoying playing these little puzzle games.
And now I'm like learning how to play Sudoku and stuff.
I'm in my puzzle game bag, dude.
I'm having a lot of fun.
It turns out I always enjoyed these and I never should have stopped playing weird little puzzle games.
I do want to mention the one other Picross game that blew my mind that I didn't realize was a thing.
It's called apologies to all Japanese people as I i butcher this ira roji vow i want to say developed by from software on the nintendo ds is it the hardest picross game ever it kind of is i don't i haven't played a ton of super super hard ones um i think the biggest i've gone is 15 by 15 but that's what this game opens with so like if you were playing this for the first time you were not figuring out how to do a picross puzzle at all so it's been it's been fun you guys know anything about picross have you done any any Picross puzzles at all or is this just me ever played one of these no Frank
have you yeah I got I played them on Nintendo DS I think it was like Picross DS and Picross 3DS and then yeah looking at the Wikipedia there's like 10 alone on just the Nintendo Switch so it's like I don't know I I guess they just kept making them but yeah they're very very fun and satisfying um yeah holy crap I like the one that Jesse mentioned the one that's on Steam because like I I don't know what it is I just I will maybe I'll play Switch 2 when it comes out but like Like to me, Switch is such an old piece of hardware.
I never want to touch it.
But just you're playing these on like the 3DS.
There's something cool about playing it on the 3DS.
I love the 3DS. I think I tried playing.
I've been playing Lodgy Arts on the Steam Deck, so it's a little bit easier as a touch screen, which you can use, but you don't really have to.
You can play them with just the controller because it's only like you're not typing anything in.
You're just either it's on or off or you can like make an X to show that there's not supposed to be anything in that spot.
So there's a little bit of strategy there, but playing it with a controller is perfectly fine.
but every time i'm playing it on the ds it just feels so much better that little stylus tapping it in it just feels faster it feels more fluid it's i don't know there's some tactile aspect to it it's almost like you're playing it on on paper which is i think where they spawned originally so i was gonna say i i can picture jesse sitting someday at the breakfast table and it's like kids are coming down and like you know like the dad and the old cartoon like straightens up the newspaper it'll be that with you with a 3ds it'll be like take your 3ds and and snap it get really completed your pick cross
for the day yeah don't fly somewhere and i just start hitting it with the ds like a little bastard smoking your big big wooden pipe oh i would be doing that that's true what do you think i'd have in there uh i don't know come on what are the options uh sour patch kids uh how smokes is that is that the name of a strain of cannabis no straight up sour patch kids i'm smoking hard on that damn yeah that's my experience with picross just a quick little i'm loving it oh uh one other thing i wanted to mention that's It's not Picross.
Just so I can get it out there because I didn't play a ton this week.
AXYZ is this puzzle game.
The developer has been really nice and sent it over.
Kula World? Does that ring any bells for anyone?
Oh my gosh, yeah. I love Kula World.
All right. This is Kula World, baby.
It's Vaporwave Kula World.
It's really, really fun.
It's very disorienting.
It's like a grid -based puzzle game where you are a ball on a bunch of grids of 3D squares and you can like rotate around them.
and you're trying to collect all these tapes and and other things that are on there and it's a good little puzzle game the music's really good i think it's very like it's straightforward but it becomes more complex over time and they introduce new uh puzzle mechanics i think it's made by one person also which is based on how it's looking based on how it looks and how fun the puzzles are it's really impressive so yeah i shout that one out it's a really good game i hope this works on steam deck i'm gonna it does that's all i've been playing it on oh yes is this like marble marble blast ultra because you
look like you're a marble not quite when i saw it for the first time i thought it was gonna be like super monkey ball but vaporwave uh unfortunately not that but i am happy to say that the puzzles here are really good and i like playing it it's very fun frank you got a little hole in your playstation uh playstation history catalog there cooler world cooler world is like a you're a beach ball man remember a little beach ball rolling around but it's like it was before they had physics right so the ball doesn't roll it just you know you just go to the next square basically but yeah it was like a platformer
you were but it was like you know your your your camera's orientation is locked to the ball so when you're going around like shit you know there's no gravity is just whatever you're stuck to so you know it's it's yeah like a it's kind of like a navigational puzzle i guess i'd call it jesse's accurate that's pretty bang on yeah it's all about just like you see something across from you and you can't quite jump to it you do have a jump but it's only two squares forward so sometimes it's best to jump two squares back so you only go one over the edge and stuff like that little strategies that you
learn as you're playing it and yeah it's like you see something in the distance how do i get there is the challenge and wrapping your head around the way the world spins and like the way the camera's oriented there were times where i bet if you're someone who doesn't handle vertigo very well you would puke playing this game it's like it's very disorienting but it's super like it's very well made is i think there's something like 100 puzzles it feels like and then some bonus ones as well and again there's challenges like you can just get the key open it up and leave but i think like cooler world
there's stuff to collect on each of the levels and here it's just tapes uh again the music's really good looks really good i love the visuals it's very silly it's uh yeah it's very well made it's just very fun that's cool it's it's it's it's it says it's ticking all the same boxes as cooler world it sounded like as cool cooler world was just like vibes like it was just like doing the puzzles and then sick music and then the the uh the game design was or the um yeah the the look of it was a big part of it as well um cooler world i believe came out of the swedish like amiga demo scene or something
like so it's right down my alleyway so yes this looks really cool all right a was it a xyz is there if you google a xyz oh wait oh maybe i typed it i got a bunch of cnc machines like cnc cutters for like for like woodwork so if you're seeing that you're in the wrong place you're in that's not the game that's perfect you got it nailed it um one more game quickly i played uh was a spilled which is a uh game on steam it's like five bucks let me double check what the price you gotta say it's five you gotta say 539 sp i l e d the exclamation point exactly it is a like beautiful little uh relaxing game
uh isometric looking uh pixel arty where you control a boat that cleans up uh kind of oil spills uh you got a little area you got to clean up the trash and the oil you got to scoop the trash up you got to do all these little save the animals and the whole thing's about an hour long it's not particularly long i completed it um in a couple of sittings uh i bet it looks good on steam deck i did not not play it on steam deck but uh yeah it's uh not the most mechanically complex thing um i enjoyed it the vibes were fun and uh the art was was pretty sick so yeah this game is gorgeous i love this art
style so much and uh cool story about the dev i've been following them for a while uh she i believe lived on a boat while making the game oh shit yeah that rules there you go jeremy there's your competition spoiler alert i'm building a boat i might as well announce it now no I wish just do the opposite build a dungeon build a fucking cave I would what I've I wonder what the zoning requirement on dungeons are yeah I have been looking into building wizard towers and that's uh that's a zoning nightmare so I think going down might be easier at this point you should build one of those like old monk
towers that has the door like 20 feet up so the vikings can't get in yeah you just have a big ladder in there and that's I'm trying to do like a voltaire self -exile thing you know just like be in a tower right and shit do a big wheelbarrow don quixote that shit wheelbarrow wheel that's not what i meant windmills wheelbarrow yeah he fought wheelbarrows exactly um frank you've been playing the hotness recent hotness as well i see yeah i uh i started playing need for speed hot pursuit which uh there's about 300 need for speed games and i never liked any of them i remember like as a kid renting like
the playstation ones and like i don't know just didn't do anything for me because i don't know they seemed pretty straightforward and then uh every now and then there'll be a new one i was interested i remember like around i don't know 2014 2016 there was a need for speed that came out that had fmv with like live action actors and it's like yo man we gotta hit the street i don't know i although need for speed underground one and two are phenomenal but i didn't only i played those like a year ago they're incredible but I missed out on those in their heyday um but um all the need for speed games
are on EA Game Pass Xbox whatever their partnership is so they're all available and I was like asking friends like I wanted to play another racing game I already like finished like Gran Turismo 7 last year just like a few months ago I kind of went through Forza Horizon 5 and I kind of exhausted that and it's like I want to play another racing game but I don't know what I like stuff that's very arcadey and kind of simple and I had several friends recommend need for speed hot pursuit so the original came out in 2010 a remaster came out in 2020 it's by it's by criteria I think it's the same team
that did burnout paradise um and yeah I started playing it and oh my god this is just a new burnout game well new to me uh but oh my god this game is so good so need for speed hot pursuit it's a the reason I like it you you hit the you main menu hit career here's the map here's the races go there's no hola welcome to the festival design your avatar do you want to buy some uh nice jackets for 200 microsoft no let me just let me just race um the thing that's crazy about need for speed hot pursuit is there's two kind of career trees there is the racer or there's the police if you play the police
it's like you're you're like the term you're the bad terminator in terminator 2 because a mission will start and there's like five racers and then you're the cop car shows up and now it's just burnout where you have to crash out the five racers and it's before they get to the finish line and it's tiered by like bronze silver or gold and oh my god it's so fun you have nitro uh there's drifting mechanics it's like all the races it's like basically they've recreated like western uh america so So it's like California area, Oregon, Washington.
So you're driving along coast, you're driving along forest, and it's like very pretty.
It's got like a mix of like, I don't know, like rock and roll, like electronic music.
The soundtrack's okay.
But just the game feel is incredible.
It just feels like a burnout game.
And as you keep going, you unlock more cars, faster cars.
You can, you know, change the colors, whatever.
Kind of reminds me of like Cruisin' USA.
It's great. and yeah like there's just so many need for speed games that it's like i kind of always ignore any anytime people talk about it but uh this one is uh yeah again like for what i was looking for like an arcade game like this is perfect i'm i'm very surprised by it am i remembering correctly is this the one where you can like prompt for like spike strips to be thrown out and like like another like helicopter to come or some shit it kind of makes it feel like you're playing like a james games bond game or something where if you're the cop you can call for like a roadblock so you're like
our roadblocks being set up and then you know like a mile ahead they'll be like four cop cars laid out and then like a very narrow part and then all the cars will crash into them and then like you could just crash and smack them off the road uh you can call for a helicopter which i don't know what that i don't know if it like shoots the car in front of you or what you call for a helicopter you call for an emp where uh it just like it like short circuits their engine and they'll just crash or you can put down spike strips if you're a racer you can also put sounds so it's almost like mario kart
it's like high -tech mario kart i don't know it's like so silly and incredible and it's like oh i i don't know it's kind of fun like missing the boat on games and then when they're free on game pass it's like oh my god this is amazing so yeah need for speed hot pursuit like and i'm also like we kind of talked about this like a week or two ago but it's like I'm on the road to 100 ,000 achievement points, but I don't want to just play some crap.
I'm just like, let me just play games that are generally fun and engaging, so I was kind of openly looking for stuff that was on Xbox that I could play and yeah, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit.
I mean, day one, I got like nine different achievements.
I was like, oh, perfect.
You finish two missions and boop, here's an achievement.
It's like, oh, yes, yes, yes.
Are you playing on Game Pass or are you playing it as part of the EA Play stuff?
I think it's called Game game pass deluxe or something which is just the highest tier game pass that includes it but i think i think need for speed hot pursuit is also on playstation premium or it was a playstation plus game because i had it on both and then the thing has like um cross play so if you have friend like i had my friend had to add only man add manually add me uh from his playstation account so it does the like xbox live leaderboards thing where it shows your friends time nice and i've turns out i have several friends who have played this and uh so it's always kind of fun and just
to just to see that because you get extra xp if you beat someone's time and then you can like every i don't know why it was just in the era of when this game came out but it has like like a social wall so when you beat a mission you press start and then it posts on the main menu like oh i just beat i just beat this person's time think you can outrun me i love i love the idea of like people who played this game 12 13 years ago and you're like hey fucker i fucking blasted you and they're like dude i don't i even own that game anymore eight years ago you're sending him a message like is he alive
still i hope so because he's got to beat my ass and need for speed hopper suit yeah amazing it's really great and and apparently like the the one they made after this need for speed god this is also confusing there's need for speed most wanted which was an xbox 360 uh like launch game that apparently was good that was mine there's a new one that came out in 2012 called need for speed most wanted but apparently that one is also similar um but yeah Yeah, like, if you're looking...
Again, I keep saying it's new, but it's new to me.
But also, that 2020 remaster, it's not too old.
But yeah, if you're looking for a new Burnout game, because I really wanted to play, like, Burnout 3, but it's like, I don't want to load up the emulator or whatever.
Like, it's cool, and I like retro achievements, but I need gamer score.
So this is it. It's straight up a new Burnout game.
And for whatever reason, I never really liked Burnout Paradise.
I do not like in racing games where you have to manually drive to the next mission.
Because that in itself feels like a...
Like, forza, you have to do that crap.
And I get it, but it's like...
like I'm wasting five minutes I could just do the race so I like but it worked for Burnout Paradise because as you were driving around you saw vote for Barack Obama ads so it was kind of in the end it was worth it yeah get some gamer points exactly yeah man the Need for Speed series is so strange because it's yeah it's been handed over to what two different developers now I think oh my god probably um probably more than that yeah but the latest ones Need for Speed the latest one was unbound i think and the one before that was like heat yeah yeah he had miami's thing which is all right yeah they
kind of dug back into the um cop chase part of it more with these latest games like especially unbound that's the one i played more of my buddies played a bunch of heat and he was saying it's very similar um but the cops like follow you as you're driving between locations it has that burnout paradise sort of drive from uh one race to the next and again the the cops can attack you as you're driving there uh which is really i think it's actually fun like you go really fast in that game it's really cool but the visual aesthetic of it is so weird the need for speed series has gone from this like unbound
yeah specifically yeah it has a very weird look to it where all the characters are like this cell shaded sort of pseudo anime style to them it's gone through like the graffiti look it's gone like hardcore mid to that like most wanted is very gray and brown it's like yeah that's so strange but this latest one and i talked talked about it on the meeting on Monday when Frank said what game he's playing.
I have to mention this every time Need for Speed comes up.
In Need for Speed Unbound, that game was partially partnered with, I don't know, he's a part of the game, A $AP Rocky, who of course sold you all his cool cars and had his great music in the game, but also recorded a car horn.
So if you spend however much in -game points, you can get a car horn that is A $AP Rocky going, going beep beep beep beep it's man and that's what gaming is to me man we need more silly collabs like that put shrek in the new one i think that would be all oh my god you know what's odd is i feel like like hip -hop as a as a subculture has had this very weird polar like reversal where i feel like 20 maybe i might be wrong this might be like my subjective where i'm sitting but i feel like 20 years ago people would be like oh a popular rapper did like said beep beep as the horn of the a car in a video
game that's fucking corny as shit and now it's like get that bag rocky like oh man he got like a hundred bands for being the horn it's definitely when hip -hop was more of a counterculture thing i guess was back then right it was but then also need for speed vendetta or not need for speed sorry def jam vendetta and def jam fight for new york were very popular at the time and that was sort of cheesy in its own regard it's like snoop dogg's gonna beat up the game what was their game though right yeah i feel like that game was like counterculture and also yeah i don't know there's something about like
being being the the voice of the horn is it feels like there's some sort of ontological difference between like that and you know like fighting the entire wu -tang clan right or snoop dogg i mean everything snoop dogg does is just paycheck paycheck he cares about hanging out with martha stewart they're real friends you show some respect motherfuckers snoop dogg is the radioactive die in the culture that through which you can track back the normalization of hyper commercialization that is like you go back far enough and he's like i've one time i killed a cop and you're like that's crazy snoop dogg
and now he's like you know what if i perform the inauguration of donald trump yeah i see exactly yeah yeah fuck the police uh except for when they're paying me in which case i will make their propaganda for them hey it's called selling out yeah it's okay it makes it exactly it's okay because he gets to to make the funny things where he says the drug name is like it's called the mario shroom makes you feel like you're bigger than you actually were kids are taking it like banana sunday just like making up fucking names for drugs it's a percocet that turns you purple it's a yellow percocet that you
make in your bathtub these kids are on that picross yeah they'd be playing they'd be doing some picross man they they follow the numbers and that leads them to hell exactly he went off yeah this kid's so high he's in cooler world you know all the good stuff dude the whole time you were talking about cool the world i thought for like a good full two minutes i thought you were talking about the brad pitt ralph bakshi movie cool world oh i don't think i've seen that i've not seen it either i just oh right yes yes it's like a uh roger rabbit yeah yeah a mix of animation like like all ralph bakshi
movies except for lord of the rings it's extremely horny wow that's great i think there is a there is a super nintendo port of that there is it's all cool world yeah is that is that has anyone seen the ralph box tree lord of the rings because i have not and i need to know if it's horny i mean probably i don't think it is i don't think there's room for that i don't know i mean who would be like slang and elves yeah yeah if bombadil's in it he'd be the one who's like packing that's true he has that pipe you know what i'm saying yeah or gandalf maybe there's like a gandalf is like to open the door i
have to take my robe down to my waist and he's like fucking jacks or something that'd be sick actually he makes the room all steamy he is a wizard he can do whatever he wants yeah yeah oh wow there were uh canada i can't enough demand on need for speed games there's 25 of them oh and people give the assassins creature shit yeah 30 years old too so there you go there's all the games talking about this big big Picross inzoi spilled need for speed.
All that good stuff.
But I believe we've got some emails, Mr. Howley.
Yeah. If people want to write to us, send us an email to podcast that no clip dot video are in our Patreon discord from our discord. We had end of media, right?
What is an interest hobby job outside of gaming and video production that has helped you most at no clip game?
Developers often talk about how their non -gaming interests are their most valuable when making games.
so i'm curious what best helps you when talking about games hmm um mine's the most boring probably what is it i i did various types of programming for most of my teenage years young college life so i have dabbled in c sharp and java and php and stuff like that so that's probably the thing that's helped me the most is at least having some foundational understanding of how software works um yeah you know that sort of goes back to the start of it i think that that and maybe working at gamestop honestly like i'm working at i worked at a couple of video game stores stores or stores that sell games
that probably helped a lot as well i'm just kind of getting probably to probably helped with that game spot might have also helped a little bit um but yeah i think that that that stuff definitely yeah i was also a crew of programming i've been programming since i was like 12 years old everything from html website stuff to yeah hardcore c++ i love getting into the weeds did assembly in high school i really like computers and working on them and i just i cared about video games on this level that was past how fun are they i cared like how they worked how the inner pieces made any sense so it just
gave me this appreciation for how they're made made past again the aesthetic qualities and thinking like how does any of this make any sense how does this work you know growing up your your ideal video game is like grand theft auto but you could go at all the houses and i was like you can enjoy enjoy you're right they did it they made it finally but i was like it doesn't make any sense and i would go to these computer science classes in university when i was in high school just like as a tour thing and they were talking talking about computer vision and how they were rotating.
Um, it's that painting that like, it's the lady smile, Mona Lisa, they were rotating the Mona.
I couldn't remember one of the most important paintings of all time.
Um, they were rotating her face and showing how the computer had figured that out on its own.
And I remember thinking back then that's the future.
And now I'm in the future and it fucking sucks, but like, but it's okay.
Cause I, at least I kind of understand a little bit of how it works.
So that stuff, yeah, it really made me like the The idea that I could work for no clip or talk to people who make video games or be involved in the inner workings in some way, whether that's showing it to other people or getting to be involved on my own, making my own stuff with other people is just. Yeah, it's always been a dream of mine.
So I'm glad I get to do this and I'm glad that I have that same sort of experience that you do, Danny, with understanding how it works.
I think for me, it's probably two things.
One is doing a lot of film theory back in the day, especially in film school.
I think having media literacy about like whether you're super into literature or film or whatever it is, I think like general media literacy is sort of like a universally applicable thing for just like being able to not.
And it's not the specifics of a medium, but it's being able to like think critically about the pieces and seeing how they fit together and how they affect you as the person experiencing them and just like understand and know how to discuss and tear things apart and create conversations out of them.
uh and the other one i think for more of like i'm less interested in like the business side of games but i have sort of like a morbid fascination with it because it's like watching a big expensive train wreck in slow motion um i would i've having an interest in like hegel and marx and angles in the frankfurt school of like yeah like critical theory and like political theory that is critical of the ways in which capitalism lead to exploitation i actually think is like one of even if you're not it doesn't matter what like where on the political spectrum you are i just think that reading a bunch
of people who have thought about the way that um that private capital impacts the arts and society and all these things i think is legitimately useful for understanding uh the pressures that exist and how they impact you know like why people get fucking laid off and why games are made a certain way and why like big expensive games are the focus and you know i just like thinking about the industry as outside of video games as sort of just like a a financial instrument what about you frank uh it's everything i've done is always about like video production so it's hard to think of anything outside
that uh but i think like the only like non like tech or video gamey thing i do is like right my riding my bicycle but it's when i'm riding my bike is what i'm thinking like all right what games do i want to play what manga do i want to read or like it's that it's like i'm right i'm thinking about like what i'm interested in and then when i come back home i rush to the computer to download it or play it or whatever whatever but um yeah i don't know i think like kind of in line with what jeremy was saying was like with with critical theory and all that like i taught documentary filmmaking but a lot
of that was like finding what was the thing that the student was interested so it was like oh you're super into like i don't know whatever like honestly i had a student made a film about hot cheetos and i was like great let's make a film about hot cheetos what what's the flavor how is it compared to tackies why don't you like tackies it's the kind of thing of like you can ground any subject and find something cool about it so it's like oh i can talk about any game because there's always an interesting story there or talk to people about anything interesting.
Anyone you talk to knows something way more about one subject than you do.
So it's like, that's why there's no hesitancy of like, yeah, let me talk to you.
I can pull something out of anything because we were just getting students to make films about anything that sparked their imagination or interest. So it's like having that like infinite, that boundless like optimism or excitement.
It's like, it's so easy to tap into.
I feel like, I don't know.
I think that's why like I don't engage with like any, And he's like most of on YouTube, because so much of it is just like, this is why this thing sucks.
It's like, I don't care.
Not at all. I don't care.
Oh, cool. Here's someone made a video about like, I don't know, like mods and World of Warcraft. Cool.
Great. You're you're interested about something.
That's that is the thing that I'm stoked on.
So that's why my favorite YouTuber right now is any Austin, because he just like has this.
He's the guy who did the video about the Skyrim rivers and how they connect.
Oh, yeah. Like power lines.
those are so good because it's it's this curiosity about how video games work and what is real about them taking them seriously not looking at them as these like silly how can i make this system smash together like that's fun there's joy in that but it's this taking it so seriously so honestly thinking about the civics of a city in skyrim and counting up all the civilians and what they do for work is like that's that's what i want i want people to care about video games i don't care that you're mad that there's like you know not enough fucking cool guns in it or like there's not oh where's where's
i want more white guys on the cover uh like just fucking have fun man play your video games play pick cross r slash i want more white guys on the cover i'm gonna crucify you for that one man oh you know what it's fine it's only like 8 000 people uh great question we got one more as well yeah we had uh mustafa wrote in uh hey no clip crew this question might be toward jeremy and jesse where do you guys find interesting indie games to play shots fired you just sit through the endless sea of games on steam is that even possible i usually play the ones mostly you guys or other game podcasts recommend
if it sounds interesting i'll take this german uh yeah i feel like you're better equipped for this but i'll go first because i feel like you can you have the weirder picks typically i yeah i guess so i feel like i i don't know it's tough because i feel like one of the best places is just to um be on like twitter or blue sky and follow a bunch of devs and yeah like it's a good place to draw inspiration if you want to make stuff but it's also just a good place to follow the work of other people um it just takes a a monumental effort to curate and block and silence most of the other chatter that goes
on in those places because it is very very difficult to to to curate a timeline that is like you know not just uh uh fear -mongering and stuff not that it's not important to be informed but that's not not where i get my fucking news is like on blue sky or whatever um so yeah i just uh or increasingly like places like itch i think um you can follow creators and see what they're releasing and stuff but the the drip feed is a little less than on social media sites where people are just posting like today i made a little mushroom guy and this is what he looks like so um yeah just like find this is this is the nugget of the this is the end
cap i would find people who you think make interesting things and I would find them on social media and I would follow them.
And then those people will usually signal boost other people who make interesting things.
And so be curious about the actual people who make the things that you find interesting.
That's basically it.
That's exactly what I do is I just if I play a game that feels so singular or so strange that I know whoever's into this has tastes that I would never express or get into, like the smartest people, people you know, just like stuff that you would never ever know exists typically.
Like they have this level of knowledge that makes them feel so special and different.
But it's just because their interests are like this pile that you would have never seen in a different room, in a different building, in a culture you would have never known, right?
So I try to follow those people and go like, what are you interested in?
What are you down with?
You know, I want to learn more about the world and I want to learn about those interests too and find my own part of the world that I want to fall into.
So by following those developers, like Renee Rother, I think is Is their name or how you say it?
I think that's the person who made Children of the Sun, that like weird sniper bullet game.
Like follow them and they share a ton of really cool stuff.
Or, you know, even following LocalFunk, the developer of Boletro, like they share tons of great stuff.
Arco was one they were really signal boosting, which Jeremy and I already knew about.
So we're actually cooler than LocalFunk.
We don't have to make the card game that everyone bought.
So, yeah, following people you like.
But then also, if you want to find like specific resources, I think Dominic Terrison is a really really good, uh, uh, curator Casey explosion is another great one following a blue sky.
I'll drop their links in the description.
So you know where to find them.
Um, do two really great ones that I'm aware of.
Uh, is it space twink?
Is that the name of one of them as well?
I'm saying this, I'm not just naming someone who might not exist. Uh, but that's another, I think good curator.
Do you follow no caps?
No caps. Yep. That's one of my favorite YouTube channels right now as well.
Also like for video game recommendations, their channel's great stuff.
Yeah. Lots of good indie stuff and like they find a good way to um categorize everything so it's not just like here's the greatest game ever made it's like five games like bloodborne like five games like lego island you know it's not just always big hits it's always like weird stuff too um so people like that and then if you want to get really down and dirty on it man i'll be honest i scroll through the entirety of steam next fest every single time i don't like stop after 300 i go until it stops giving me new games i have a sickness and it's called scrolling like i just just, I need to see all
of the games and I like, I like keeping up with what's new, but also like it takes a certain, and I'm not trying to big up myself, a certain amount of mental fortitude to scroll through that and not get exhausted by how many games look like someone had a hundred dollars at one point and no longer has a hundred dollars.
Uh, it's a frustrating amount of bad games.
If you do that, you actually just reminded me to, I think it was, is it IGF?
There are some of the like independent games, festivals and award shows and all these stuff.
Uh, occasionally they They will post a list of like all of the submissions.
I think it was IGF in 2024.
I went through all fucking 1400 of them and just like I just I'm just curious about like what people are making.
Sometimes you see things that are so like bizarre and surreal that, you know, they'll never percolate to a larger audience.
And I think it's cool to search through those and find things that are uniquely interesting to you because then like, you know, it doesn't matter if you're on a fucking podcast or you just have a Twitter account with 200 people following it or whatever.
like it's a it's a cool thing to seek out very niche things and be a champion for them if they speak to you yeah absolutely great question mustafa thanks for sending it in um and that's a podcast this week folks episode one and two of our dwarf fortress series are live episode three uh should probably be live by the time this goes up it might be on the weekend we'll have to wait and see in episode four will be available for patrons uh over on patreon .com slash no clip if you want to watch that, once episode three is live.
March's Patreon show went up as well on Monday the 31st, so pretty late in the March month.
We usually get them up in the first week or so.
I'm going to be away next week.
I should still be on the podcast. We're recording I think I've only told patrons and I'll keep it to that.
We're recording some stuff in Sweden and we'll be doing hopefully a patron meetup.
I think the idea is to do it on Sunday the 6th in the afternoon in Uppsala, Sweden so if you are around check out the, there should be a patron post about it, again by the time this goes up it'll be patron only just because the last time we did a public one in Tokyo 80 people turned up and it was the most stressful night of me and Jeremy's life.
It was a great night but this is the week before we're filming so we can't do a big crazy one unfortunately Loads more stuff in the pipeline, check out the patron show to to learn more about those um I'm looking forward to Sweden I'm looking forward to chatting to you guys uh next week anyone up to much and crazy for the rest of the week I'm heading off to Sweden I'm going to uh um uh I was a bit oh my god why have I Connor O'Malley I'm going to Connor O'Malley on Thursday he's doing this so jealous he's doing a set in San Francisco so I'm looking forward to that that's gonna be uh that's gonna be
by the time this is out I will have seen Connor O'Malley so I'll have all the great business ideas for for noclip going into the future um um you presumably Jeremy you're doing a lot of unpacking yeah um unpacking and uh yeah just uh I've been I feel like I've spent the last month straight doing packing and unpacking and lifting and learning Azerbaijani phrases um so yeah just probably do some game dev like for the next few days in a row and just kind of build some momentum back up nice I'm gonna finish reading the house of leaves this week hopefully finally uh you know not just referencing that I
am in the middle of reading it's really good it's super hard to read though it's a pain in the ass book it's like reading a textbook where the author hates you and the other author hates you and the other author hates you uh but it's a really really fun experience and i'm getting back into housework the weather is finally getting better so i can start uh fixing up holes and digging roots out from the backyard there's like a four i think tree stumps back there that i have to get one of those tree stump yeah it's hard yeah yeah yeah i gotta break it up and uh it's gonna be a lot of fucking fucking
chainsaw just doing are you gonna get a machine where you can drive and pull them out or i was gonna get a chainsaw but i've heard a lot of stories especially with the ground that we have it's there's a lot of rocks i don't want to have the chain snap on the rocks i have to replace it uh there's a tree stump i don't know what the word is but it's like this little machine that you move with a tiny little axe on it that kind of just like pulverizes it and then you uh eventually can just shovel it out so i'm gonna do that nice one i did a bunch of those a few weeks ago yeah tough work just gotta figure
out how much how much do you give a shit about the roots being there Yeah.
Oh, it was your problem.
Whatever. If it happens, it happens, you know, it's fine.
Excellent. Frank, what about you?
Are you in for the rest of the week?
Um, the Knott's Berry farm has their annual boys in Berry festival where it's just a bunch of like food and drinks and stuff like that.
So meeting up with a bunch of friends tomorrow.
And then, uh, in my WCW watch along, I am leading, I am weeks away from Starkade 97 Hogan versus staying the showdown.
This is their highest pay -per -view buy rate after this.
It's just decline, decline, decline.
So I'm like, I'm at the peak.
I'm like at the, about to be the peak of WCW.
And then I'm going to see all the wheels fall off.
It's so exciting. Um, so yeah.
Where can people watch that?
Um, I've, I've been streaming five days a week, WCW.
We've been watching it all Twitch TV, like Frank Howley.
So it'll probably take us throughout the rest of the year to finish WCW.
And then we might get into TNA or WWF new generation.
But, um, yeah, it's, uh, it's been like, I just started doing this on a whim and now it's like my life's project is to study WCW in 2025.
It became a WCW historian.
Um, but yeah, it's, it's, I don't know.
It's so fascinating.
It's incredible. That's why I have slim gyms is they were marketing slim gyms, Halloween Havoc.
There are October 97 pay -per -view and every like, they're every like minute.
And don't forget folks, slim gyms, Halloween Havoc.
Uh, yeah, you can't forget Halloween Havoc.
And And then Tony Schiavone would be like, actually, it's Slim Jim's Halloween Havoc.
Oh, my God. And then Macho Man comes out, and it's like, oh, yeah, DDP, I'm going to snap into you.
And it's the best thing I've ever seen in my life.
So good. I'm not kidding.
WCW is the best thing I've ever seen.
It's awesome. I love how Slim Jim's advertising box is still cashing in 28 years later.
Yeah, and it's great because then DDP was like, hey, Macho Man, snap into this.
Bang! And it's like, oh, they're just using the Slim Jim marketing to cut promos.
and it's like oh and at one point they did a show in philadelphia which is like the harshest wrestling crowd because it's where ecw is and they were giving away free slim jims during a match everyone started throwing slim jims in the ring and wrestlers are stepping on it so the wrestling ring is just covered in flat and slim jims and like no one in the world is watching this except like my group of friends and i and we're like how is no one talking but so thank you for letting me share the no clip uh platform to talk about if people really want to watch it legally Uh, Peacock has it, but someone
has also uploaded everything on the internet archive.
So you don't have to sit through, uh, mid -roll ads.
So yeah. Anyways, just, just, just the diegetic ads.
That's history though.
Yeah. It's a good point.
Now we've gotten to, we're in November 97.
So like, and don't forget folks on December 2nd, WCW verse NWO world tour coming out on the Nintendo 64.
And I'm like, Oh, it's all connected.
This is, this was the first wrestling game.
And then they even screw up an ad read.
Because they're like, don't forget, WCW Nitro on PlayStation at N64.
Oh, my apologies. Nitro is for PlayStation.
WCW versus NWO is on N64.
And they gave kids in the crowd N64 posters.
So they're showing the N64.
It's like, I wish I was there.
I wish I was there.
That's amazing. They're like, wow, that princess Diana is a lovely lady.
She's got a great life ahead of her.
I hope nothing happens to her.
Keep her out of the cars.
Oh, my God. Wonderful times.
Thanks for sharing, Frank.
All right. right we'll be back next week enjoy your week take care folks we'll see you on the next one bye
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