Mewgenics Interview, Don't Stop, Girlypop!, Perfect Tides: Station to Station | Noclip Crewcast

Thank you.

Hello friends and welcome to episode 266 of the No Clip Podcast.

We've got a full crew today to talk about some video games.

We're also going to be talking to Edmund McMillan, I guess, because I've just done the intro like this after the part where we all talk about video games and Tyler Glale.

I'm interviewing Tyler Glale and Edmund about their latest game, Mugenics, which is out next week.

Uh, and also I'll be asking them about the death of Adobe flash.

Have you seen the, the latest rumblings in the games industry about Adobe animate, right?

Yes.

The new, I mean, it's basically the old flash.

They just sort of changed the wrapper on it a number of years ago.

Um uh, people use a lot of the older uh you know uh scripts that are in there and stuff.

And when we did our noclip 2 preview on meugenics um, because i guess ed's a luddite and tyler built a good workflow they've been using it for all of the animation in that game and it's getting, it's getting sunset, it's getting canned in march.

Real crazy to just do it like, be like in a month we're just gonna delete this, but you can still pay us 600 bucks a month if you want, i guess.

Yeah, fuck Adobe man.

I'm still not on Windows 11.

Please don't hack.

If you're a hacker listening to this, please don't hack my Windows 10.

And everyone's like, yeah, you just got to go to Linux.

Like, it's so fucking easy.

And they don't know that my whole life depends on Adobe Premiere.

And I don't even particularly like Adobe Premiere.

It's great.

It's fine.

It's just as good as anything else.

But, like, let me go to Linux.

Free me.

Yeah, I know.

It's like there's a reason why people were saying like hey, don't cover Xbox games because of Microsoft's you know, partnership with the IDF.

But nobody was saying don't use Windows because we're all fucking stuck.

Like a world in which we don't use Windows is like, Oh man.

I noticed some Linux, you know, users here are like, you stupid loser.

Of course, it's easy to not use windows.

What's wrong with you?

Sure.

But then you still got to use direct X and it's like, well, now we're just back at the same problem.

I watched a video where someone was like.

The premise of the video was it's so easy to switch to Linux.

And I was like, let me watch this.

Maybe it is so easy.

And they're like, all right, but like.

But if you have, like this chip set or if, like you know, if the if the humidity ever gets above 60 and your area, i'm not using an operating system called fedora, i'm not doing that, i'm sorry.

But lady yeah, i'm not.

I know there's a bunch, but that's in the list.

Lady is my rapper for fedora that i'm working on.

Finally, speaking of expensive software that may or may not work properly, it does say we're recording right, because riverside has left the start recording button up on my screen uh, while it also says it's recording.

So i'm just sort of terrified it's recording for me, okay.

Well, don't hit it again, because God only knows.

Well, it's like the Ghostbusters crossing.

Will all disappear.

Yes, exactly.

We'll make it.

We'll make a split universe in which, in which something we say during this podcast changes the course of history in a very minor way, which means that in 200 years, all humans die.

So, yeah, you better stay away from that.

The humans who will be long dead before that happens, though in 200 years unless they get access to some Mr House-like technology are our battle pass holders, some of the folks who are doing amazing work to help support the work we do here at Noclip and at Noclip2.

Those folks are...

Brian Baru, Little Toast, Lovepreet, Yosh, Dwayne the Rock Lobster, Anthony Thomas, Nico Passateri, It's-a-me, Ferrario, Senator Armstrong, Reed Dredge, Harry Flanagan, Joosh, Arno, Matt Pearson, Mark Ross, Quote, Tucker Morgan, David McGarry, Goddison, Sven Hooster, Pez, Bone Mold,

I want to say bone mold every single time I read bone mold.

John Akers.

You and Nate.

Tim Robinson.

Forrest Pruitt.

Dark Insanities.

Jonathan Kremen.

Eric Hamilton Schneider.

Christopher Toohey.

Enochs.

Grizzly Mug.

Cameron Laird.

Zachary Snader.

Alex Goucher.

George Sakotis.

Jacob.

God serve.

Entheogen.

James Medd.

And Rison, thank you and all of our patrons for supporting our work.

Go watch some Disco Elysium docs.

They do come out au top de top.

We're not here to talk about Disco Elysium.

We're here to talk about some new ass games.

And I'm going to start with, let's do Jesse.

Jesse and Frank brought a bunch this week.

Jesse, big dealer's choice.

What are you going to go for here?

You got a couple of, it looks like we're pretty indie packed today.

Yeah, it's a big indie week.

You know what?

Let me warm up with Chromatic Conundrum.

Let me start there.

I want to talk about Perfect Tides Station to Station later, once I've warmed up the engine a little bit.

Chromatic Conundrum is a first-person puzzle game.

You guys ever heard of those before?

There's blocks you move around and you press buttons and you solve problems.

Yes, I'm getting anti-chamber vibes from this one.

Yeah, that's a great poll.

I thought you were just going to say Portal because that's what I said when I started playing it.

No, I'm a real games journalist.

Okay, good.

I know the weird Alexander Bruce games of the world.

Exactly.

Well, this one's focused on, as you could probably tell from the title, colors and light and how they overlap.

I was really I was breaking out all my third grade color theory knowledge on this one.

Red and green make this and blue.

So it's.

It's one of those puzzle games where basically, you have a block with like a light camera not camera projector on it.

It's a bunch of different levels.

It's sort of structured like portal, i guess, that there's different rooms, but there's not like interconnecting areas or anything.

There's no character over the speaker telling you anything, it's just solving the puzzles.

Uh, and again, the puzzles are using these blocks that have projectors on them for colors.

Each block has one or two or three colors active at once and these colors can overlap, so it's projecting out like a cone of light from a block or sometimes from like a projector that's inside of a wall.

We just call them lights.

Yeah, i mean they might be projectors, but yeah, but just like.

The visual of them is like it looks like a projector, like a three, but you're probably it's like a projector.

There's no, i guess the thing that i would say from looking at the screenshots is that It's like there's no ambient light.

It's just direct light.

So everything else is dark, kind of, except for the cone that is being emitted from these cubes.

Exactly.

Yeah.

It's.

You're working in a black and white room where all of the lighting is created by the blocks and the different lights placed around the area.

And these colors all project onto stuff and you have to basically try to open up the door at the end of a room.

Sometimes the door is like one color or sometimes it's like white and you have to combine the different colors being projected around the room.

Sometimes it's white, sometimes it's not.

And the challenge is just figuring out how to overcome like different platforms and puzzle challenges and stuff.

But I was really impressed by just the way that technically, they were able to combine all of this light, texture and stuff.

Like I'm not entirely sure how they've done it or in what way, like my brain was like ray casting, but I was like but some of this stuff is very clearly handled in a different way.

Cause like the lights overlap, uh, dynamically.

So you can just move the little lights around and overlap them to get different colors.

And sometimes like it'll be Oh, put these two colors together to get blue or like a lighter blue or pink or whatever.

And that will create the solution to open up the next area or move a platform where you need it to be.

And all that stuff looks really good.

It works really well.

And then like there's just little, like one little or a couple little like visual things, that really surprised me.

Um, I was.

I was shocked how well it was done, in that, like when you project a bunch of lights and hit a pillar or a block that can be used to solve a puzzle, because now you're casting a shadow.

But some of the lights that are projecting will still continue past the block because they are not being blocked by the projector as it's pushing the light out.

It's just very cool.

It had like it resulted in a lot of really striking imagery as well for a puzzle game.

I feel like anti-chamber.

Yeah, like anti-chamber is a really good example, because it looks great on top of being a really cerebral puzzle game.

I think Chromatic Conundrum is a little a little bit more straightforward.

It's like clearly a smaller game.

It took me about an hour to beat.

They say one to four hours on Steam.

I don't think any of the reviews said more than about an hour, hour and a half.

So it's a fairly short, like good, light, little no pun intended puzzle game.

Hey, now you're projecting your in fairness.

It is also three and a half bucks.

Yeah.

Hey, it's a great price.

Yeah, it looks great.

I think it's funny.

It's like this is one of those games.

I feel like if you go to the Steam page and look at 10 seconds of the trailer, you kind of grok it like what it is almost immediately.

It looks really cool.

I'd never heard of this at all.

And honestly...

I'm not sure what the logo they have on their capsule.

If I would have clicked through because the logo has a sort of MS Paint vibe to it.

It's funny you say that.

I have just, in Microsoft Paint, revised the logo and title of the game and posting it in Staff Chat, because this game looks amazing but I probably wouldn't have clicked either.

Just like chroma and it's like the same logo.

You just lose like 70 of the letters.

You're right.

Yeah, i wonder if that's taken.

Chroma probably is yeah common, but you can override it.

Tons of chroma games go ahead.

Just go on steam real quick.

You know what?

There's four of them.

I'm gonna.

I should do a little market research first, but i get your point.

It's a confusing name.

Yeah, it's conundrum.

In another i feel like i've heard quantum Quantum.

I was quantum conundrum.

Okay.

Yeah.

You're right.

Yeah.

So maybe it's a reference to that also.

It's not too dissimilar.

It's moving a lot of blocks around, but that one's more like physics and um mass and density puzzles, where this is just all like light stuff.

It's a conundrum.

Like it's in the genre.

There's a whole new genre now.

Yeah.

Is this a strand?

Yeah, maybe i still.

I'm still not sure what those are.

Um yeah, this looks neat.

I'm definitely gonna give this a go.

This is 100 in my wheelhouse and um yeah, i appreciate you bringing it to us because, Like Jeremy this would have, I would have scrolled past this, this logo, in a hot minute.

I think I should have to.

I think Jesse should watch me play this game as a colorblind person and see if I can get past the first row.

I was actually I was thinking about you when I was playing this, because I fired it up and I was like OK, this is an interesting idea because it's using red, green and blue, like very stark, bright versions of those colors.

So it's you know, that's what solving the puzzles is about is overlapping the colors.

I'm like, how do you play this colorblind?

What's like the accessibility mode for a game where the entire mechanic is color?

So it does have one and I don't think it's good enough.

But I would love to know from somebody who is colorblind if they could work their way around it.

Basically what it does is over the projectors or lights or whatever.

There's a little symbol that appears above that thing.

But the symbol is the projector symbol.

Like it's three little circles in like a triangle formation.

And it's telling you in the bottom left corner, this light is active.

But on the accessibility symbol, the color is still on the symbol.

I was like, that's not...

The accessibility feature, I guess.

Well, it depends, because most colorblind stuff correct me if I'm wrong, Jeremy is about sort of like it's less the extreme and more the middle, like where they like.

If, can you, can you, by the process of deduction in that situation, understand that the third one has to be read?

Yeah, it depends on the color set, and it depends on the type of colorblindness you have.

So blue and purple are quite close and used to be very hard for me to distinguish.

There's a story there that I will not tell here.

And then red and green are... I'll tell you guys off here.

I ate the wrong berries.

It is one of those stories.

I was thinking pale, but yeah, go on.

And red and green are kind of like... not swapped, but like they're hard to distinguish.

And those are two colors that are very different.

So, um, yeah, it's weird.

I don't know.

There's not kind of a hard, fast rule.

I have a deuteronomic color blindness, but there's also it's like tritanopia and protanopia or something.

So they're all very different.

Yeah.

And this is just one setting where you sort of look at the symbol and go, that's where the position of this light is.

But I think at the higher level, like there's only about 30 levels in the game.

There are some where it's like 15 projectors overlapping each other to solve a puzzle.

I can't imagine trying to parse all those little symbols to figure out what's going on.

I'm going to play this game through DaVinci Resolve and use the scopes.

I'm looking at the scopes to figure out what color everything is.

Yeah.

Would there be different shades of blue that like, are we getting that fine?

It's not that minute.

I think it's mostly primary secondary colors.

There might be tertiary colors as well.

I don't remember.

And white.

Yeah, exactly.

Which is just your free key to solve everything.

Uh, yeah.

And then no color.

Black's not actually a color.

It's a shade.

It's actually things that are white are just reflecting every color except for white or something stupid.

That's like the first.

That's like the first redditor.

Take that kids get when they're kids is like correcting people on colors.

That's when you become a redditor as like a six-year-old.

You gotta get that shit beat out of you.

Yeah, chromatic conundrum great game.

I loved it a lot.

Holy shit soon to be dod.

Jesse, putting the fucking.

I'm setting up expectations.

No, son of mine's gonna go on reddit.

Hey, that's almost not a joke.

Tumblr, daughter or reddit son.

Sorry, come on.

Chromatic conundrum uh 349, currently five bucks.

When you want to play uh, pay full fat.

Um, over on steam.

Yeah, it looks super neat.

If you're into you know first person puzzle games, then definitely worth a shout.

What was the one you wanted to warm up to?

Perfect tides, station to station.

Yes sir, perfect tight station.

You want me to just hop into that or you want?

I want you to ask.

Answer the most important question first, which is did this game need a subtitle or has this fallen into the crack that noclip?

We here at noclip seem to dislike, which is the unnecessary first game in a series that has a subtitle.

We're looking at you, expedition 33.

Well, this is the second game in a series, so at least to some extent it makes sense.

And I do think it's a follow-up pretty directly from the first game.

So it's useful to at least know.

But they could have just been two, I guess.

But that just doesn't.

There's something about it that doesn't make that make sense.

The first game was called Perfect Tides, is that right?

Yes, sir.

Okay, and this is Perfect Tides Station to Station.

Had you played the first one?

So, yeah, I did after PAX East last year.

Um, I went there and I got an email about this game.

That was part of PAX rising, I think is their event in the center of the the, the thing that the center of the expo where they're like here's six games that are really cool that we're showing off and they have their own big spots.

Um, I got an email about that.

You want to go talk to the developer, Meredith grand.

I was like, sure, why not?

That seems cool.

Uh, and then I looked into the game and I read, uh, Meredith's blog.

She's a comic artist who worked on a series called octopus pie.

Uh, I think it's like her own web comic thing.

And, um, I was like, perfect tides.

This seems interesting.

It's like a coming of age story about a young person coming up to the end of high school in their hometown, like on an island called Perfect Tides.

And the process of growing up at the point of time, I think it's the 2000s, the early 2000s.

So the early Internet, growing up in that space, learning how to become an adult or whatever that might mean, the writing itself.

Absolutely captivated me.

I was taken for a ride by this game.

What genre are we looking at here?

So it's a coming-of-age sort of memoir-style game.

I think is how some people have described the first Perfect Tides.

Station to Station being the follow-up.

Now we're focusing on the same character, Mara Whitefish.

She's in university.

I just want to establish a grounding for people listening to this.

This looks to me like I would define it as a point and click adventure.

You said genre, and I was like, of the writing?

Yes.

Well, as you know, it's written by a person.

No yeah, it's a point and click adventure game from the same sort of perspective as like, I don't know.

I'm not big on the genre, but you know what I mean when I say point and click adventure game.

Yeah, it's not like a Monkey Island scum one.

No, no, it's basically, yeah, you click around on objects, you interact with things.

There's not like puzzle solving in the traditional sense, that you're like dragging an item onto things that often

It's mostly just like narrative stuff.

Actually, the things they started doing in Station to Station I thought was pretty cool.

But that first game in this one now, point-and-click adventure games where you're just working through these environments, you repeat in a lot of places, like you show up in the same place a lot of the time and see how things change over time and Um, the first game took place, like I said, in Mara's home, but now we are out on your own.

You're finally an adult living in some proxy of New York city or it might actually be New York city.

I didn't, I've never been.

So I don't know.

I can't tell off the first glance, but the restaurants there.

How many towers are there in the first game?

Yeah.

What year is it again?

It's after it would have happened.

I think it says 03.

So there you go.

They would have known.

No one was mourning.

So it couldn't, and you never forgot, right?

So that didn't have anything to do with it.

Um, but yeah yeah this, this game is.

I'm absolutely, I was in love with uh, Perfect Tide Station Station.

I think the writing in it is just so smart.

You're.

You're playing through this life of just this, like I think it's based on a lot of Mirror of the Zone stuff, like most good sort of memoir style games like Despilote tend to be.

Um, but it was it's.

You start off as the student going to do your job at the library like do sort of nonsense work.

But like the way that you interact with the world is just clicking on stuff and learning about how Mara feels about things and like watching the self monologue come out.

And I just, I found it to be so like, I look back on coming of age stories or my own life.

And I think, like what about this works?

How do you tell a story in this environment that doesn't feel very particular, like that is very particular but doesn't feel as though it's like impossible to understand if you weren't there at that time?

We kind of praise despalote and consume me for finding ways to bring those elements of the creator's lives out to people who may not be able to connect right away but can see parts of that in their own life.

And I think you know I wasn't a 19, 18 year old woman in 2003.

So I get in New York or some proxy of it.

So I can't quite connect to the specifics of it, but I found myself really relating on a lot of things.

I think there's moments where Mara's care or Mara's character Mara is the character reflecting on like life and thinking like oh, I'm 18 years old.

I'm at the end of everything.

This is it, you know?

So I think maybe for somebody turning 30 it's like, or who's just turned 30, it's like a.

It's almost like Like oh yeah, right.

Everything was so pointless.

Like I remember in elementary school, one of my teachers was telling me that I should watch this.

I don't remember what the movie was, but it was like some coming of age film that he was really hot on.

And he was like, you should watch this in 10 years.

I think I was like 12 when he told me that.

He was like, you will get a lot out of this.

Once you've lived a life, you'll understand why this is so meaningful.

And I feel a very similar way about Perfect Tide Station to Station.

It's one of those games that like If you haven't at least experienced some version of this, if you haven't transitioned from young adulthood to adulthood, whatever that might mean, you're not really going to get as much out of it as you would if you have been through that.

And I'd love to know, like if somebody older than me or somebody who grew up in that period of time, like if one of you guys, because I would have been eight when this yeah yeah, i'm looking at the screenshots here there's like donnie darko posters in her bedroom and stuff like that.

There's a scene where you go and watch phone booth, like for the first time while it's in theaters, that i literally did that.

There you go as well.

I was not 18, i was 13 or 12, i was 12 for most 2003.

Yeah, i was 17.

I guess um Yeah,

Yeah.

It looks like.

Just from watching the trailers here it looks like as significantly it looks better than the first game as well.

They probably had a bit more time to do some of the art stuff and lots of like house parties, smoking cigarettes, getting drunk. seems like there's some romantic stuff here um yeah i can i know it's hard to talk about these games because they're narrow to bled and you don't want to just fucking spoil everything but clearly it's connected with you and so it must be doing something right it's um uh 1999 any idea how long it is or how long was the first one did you complete the first one first one was like five hours wasn't too long it was just a good like solid experience i prefer games like this not to over stay there welcome you know tell me, tell me, and then let me go.

You know what I mean?

For sure.

I feel like, uh, perfect state.

Oh my God.

Sorry.

Yeah.

Maybe the subtitle doesn't work.

Uh, perfect station to station.

Um, I think it was closer to 12 in total.

Um yeah, but there's sort of like break points without throughout the story where you can see this is the end of act one or the end of a big chapter.

Um, like literally time advances in a pretty significant way.

So.

But I'm not You know you don't turn 80 or anything but like you could just feel that there's a clear cut of a point where you'd be like I'm done for now.

I'll come back to it later.

Yeah, I really adored it.

I think I think it has some of the best writing I've seen in a game all year.

No, in quite a while.

I really I think, again, I'd love to know what you guys think about this.

This is one of those games that just feels like it needs a book club.

Do I need to have played the first one to play the second one?

Uh, not really.

Um, they basic, it's actually really funny.

They open the game with a quote from like a Virginia Wolf, uh, either Virginia Wolf or a novel.

Um, I'm not entirely sure, but they open with a quote and then they're like, you're this person.

You grew up here.

All right, here's the game.

That's it.

Like they don't explain anything else.

If you want to learn more about it, you can.

But I also wonder if the story works as well as I think it does without having played the first game.

Yeah, I think it will quite well.

Like there's there's callbacks to the first game, but in ways where it's like, if you don't have the context, I think it still works really well.

But from a different perspective. cool it's like like a good simpsons joke you can maybe exactly you don't understand the kid angle but maybe the adult angle goes over your head for a couple years right yeah um cool perfect tied station to station and 1999 on steam you can get it and the original game uh currently in a bundle for 30 bucks which saves you a couple a couple of shekels there the earlier game is 14.99 so uh you're saving you know 15 off i guess the whole whole palaver um very cool three bees is the name of the developer and uh yeah i think i'm gonna give this uh give this a whirl the the something about the it's it looks different enough to me have i as as i i'll talk about my one in a second i might as well because we're in sort of the point and click adventure world i'm playing earth must die which feels like a very i think there's something about um the the monkey island game which to me i don't know what the word would be like planar or something like the idea that it is it is sort of almost like a like a like a side view of this world that you were sort of horizontally exploring um at least from the gameplay of perfect guides it looks like they're messing a lot with like framing and like the way in which you explore the world which i think is really interesting so um yeah and the setting for sure in the era Although maybe it's a little bit.

I just turned 40.

Maybe watching this is a bad idea.

Yeah, maybe it'll bring up some bad emotions or some good ones.

I feel like it's both heartbreaking and heartwarming and really cool way.

It flips back and forth really quickly.

The writing is so I found it really funny.

I would love to know what you think.

Like, seriously, I really want you guys to play this more than anything else.

I loved it, but I want to talk to you guys about it because I think you'll get a lot more out of it than I did.

Super cool.

Perfect Tide, station to station.

Is it only on Steam, do we think, maybe?

I think it's supposed to come out on Switch 2 at some point, but it's not yet or Switch 1 at some point.

I'm going to briefly talk about Earth Must Die, because I've not played too much of it under two hours at least.

It is the latest game from Size 5 Games, who have made a bunch of these games like Layer of the Clockwork, God The Swindle, Behold the Kickman, which is one of my favorite narrative soccer games I've played in recent memory.

Maybe the only one I've played in recent memory.

Earth Must Die.

It has a bunch of you know, it is a point and click adventure set in a you know future far, far universe far, far away, where you are this sort of esoteric?

Um not meant to be heir of a galactic universe.

And through silly foibles, you find yourself in a position of power.

Um, and, uh, yeah, I don't want to get too much into the story of it.

It is.

I would say the opening stretch of it is similar to other adventure games where they're not giving you too much to explore at any one time, so you can kind of get used to the verbiage it's.

It uses, i would say, the sort of maybe grim fandango style of uh, clicking on things where it is 2d.

When you're walking around though, there is a x, y and a z axis to it um, but you are, I guess.

Is there a ZX?

I guess visually there's not, but like there is like some depth to the world you're in.

But then you can, there's no like interface.

You are just clicking to either talk to people or you can sort of influence them, or you can look at them and your character will talk about what they see.

The entire thing is voiced.

The voice cast itself is actually probably one of the selling points of this one.

There's a bunch of famous British comedians Tamsin Griggs in it, who is a actor from she's in one of my favorite shows of all time, Black Books.

The guy from, what's the name of that fucking show?

Taskmaster, that guy, that's like the biggest show in the UK.

Have you ever heard of Taskmaster?

Yeah, heard of it but never seen it.

Yeah so, like alan coming the the host, or is it someone else?

Is that just?

I don't know if he's coming.

You gotta, i don't know what.

I don't know what he does in his spare personal question time.

I'll just look it up.

He is coming and did he make he is coming?

Is that probably?

Yeah, it's based on his life, alan coming.

Uh, he might be.

I don't think it's that guy.

No, i don't think claudia winkleman.

No, I don't think Tony Wilkman's in this either, but that's pretty good.

Whatever, the little guy.

The little guy who's in Taskmaster.

Not Greg Davies.

Alex Horne.

Is that his name?

Alex Horne.

God, we went from Cumming to Horne.

I guess that's the US version's host is Alan Cumming.

I've seen that version.

That's incredible.

Do you think they went by, okay, this guy's got to have like a beautifully erotic sex name?

Exactly.

I think they just like that.

He's Scottish, right anyway?

Um so yeah, earth must die.

I think if you are into point and click games, you should check it out.

The art super uh, it's vibrant.

It's real vibrant.

It's like color palettes are all over the place in this thing.

Um uh, puzzles are interesting.

It's funny which, i think is, you know, for me at least, almost the most important thing in it.

A game like this.

So, um, yeah, I don't know if it's like, I'm not going to sit here and say it's a classic.

I haven't played enough of it.

Um, but uh yeah, it's if you, if you are like me, somebody who likes to dabble in point and click stuff because you've grew up playing those games that, um yeah, it's uh definitely worth checking out, especially if you're into some of the uh aforementioned horn dogs.

Uh, let's go on to, let's leave the world of point and click adventures, I think.

And so I'm actually not sure now.

Uh frank um, don't stop girly pop.

This game is i don't know, i'm just gonna let you take this right from the off what is.

Don't stop girly pop.

Yeah uh, don't stop girly pop.

We almost had a conversation about trying to classify this genre of game like it's very similar to neon white, where i called it like a sprint, like a sprint shooter.

You're it's, it's um, essentially it's a first person shooter very reminiscent of like doom, eternal neon white, even.

Um, I'm trying to think of the other super sugar game that's on top of my head, but uh, it's a very like pink girly, super hyper pop, um first person shooter where you're basically bunny hopping the entire time keeping your speed up.

You're going in rooms, killing ways of enemies, finding keys, opening doors, fighting giant bosses.

The levels are literally like E1 M1 E like very, very doom.

Um, And even like cheeky in its story, very silly how like Doom 2016 is, very Halo.

But instead of like Cortana popping up, you pull out your flip phone and you have a video call with someone like you gotta go kill the enemy, commander.

And it's like an FMV call, right?

Yes, yeah.

So it's, yeah, I even looked in the game's files and there's like a hundred video clips of it.

But yeah.

Yeah, like my friend sent me a screenshot.

It was immediately like, oh, this is awesome.

I feel like so many first person shooters are Doom likes.

The screen is just covered with blood and guts and skeletons.

And like, that's cool.

But this is just a complete inverse.

Instead, you literally have a SMG that shoots bubble gum and it explodes. and like the enemies are very like almost even like smiling friends versions of like gob like everything is just like gross but kind of like silly so it's just but but the core thing is like the movement is awesome it's it's full-on strafe shooting there's so many layers like you are encouraged to keep your speed up and i think you can go up to like 60 multiplier you're supposed to like oh my god hop shift to dash control and you slam down and you do this like repetition so it's it's you're constantly keeping your speed up and i think that increases your damage and you have infinite ammo but you can switch weapons based on what you want to do you have a gravity gun there's melee you can parry there's a sniper rifle that pins enemies to walls and stuff so it's just like full-on chaos but i think speed is such an important element because a lot of the levels part times are like four or five minutes so that's why i talk about like neon white where it's like oh this kind of feels the same neon white i think is like a map like that's like one of the best games of the decade like it's it's very hard it really is hard for any game to hit that level so it's not and the levels in neon white are like they're they're like under a minute right like that's isn't that the whole thing these are longer right this is like a speed running game is this i would call it a speed running game because it emphasizes it but it's like they're five minutes they're less yeah neon white encourages you to find tricks to beat a level in 20 seconds this is more okay more emphasis on the actual death match or shooting and killing but like The aesthetic is great.

And then the other core thing is the music is really, really good.

It feels very much like Pink Panther or Charlie XCX.

Like like I was going to say modern pop and all modern pop now sounds like Y2K pop.

But that's the vibe they're going for.

But they nail it.

Like it's not they it's not like I don't know.

The most recent thing is like.

For me is like, with that newer Saints Row game came out and they're trying to hit all everything and they were so far off base.

This is like 10000 authentic, like no, they know what they're doing and i was really.

You can even like accessorize your weapons.

You open up a thing, you put butterflies and hearts and stuff on it, so it's like.

It's like tamagotchi.

In one of the screenshots, i think, something that looked like one.

Yeah, i mean there's.

There's so many elements.

I can't remember the tamagotchi stuff off the top of my head, but there's.

It might be a thing.

When you jump into a boss battle it tells you but like yeah, it's just, it's just wall-to-wall, ridiculous.

But like Yeah, even in the same way, like Jay Fole and stuff is hypnospace and like.

It's the kind of thing where it's like the game has a like aesthetic and it maximizes it and it's good.

And again, the movement's good.

The shooting's good.

And yeah, the fact that it's got the par times encourage you is good.

I feel like most times I was getting S ranks or A ranks.

Don't remember if there was leaderboard stuff, but also i don't think any friends have it so but i don't think there was leaderboard stuff on the side of it.

Um, but yeah, i was like again, my friend sent me this maybe a month ago.

I saw the screenshot, i was very surprised by it and then got it and it was like oh, this feels good to play and um yeah, like it's the kind of thing where this is very much a keyboard and mouse game.

Like i rarely play games on pc.

I like, if obviously, console steam deck works, this is something where it's like, oh no, because like neon white, it emphasizes the movement speed and all that.

But uh yeah very, very surprising, very funny, very cool, the music's very nice and yeah, this feels like definitely something that's worth shouting out to support.

Anytime something so unique and weird comes out like this, it's like oh, this is awesome, like i'm happy to to clap and cheerlead for this.

So yeah, don't stop.

Girly pop is really, really cool.

Yes looks, i def another.

You know we often get people on the comments of noclip2 or the podcast being like you fuckers are ruining my wallet.

Um, and this is definitely a week for me because this looks absolutely class.

I think you'd mentioned it a few times that I hadn't properly sort of grokked what it was.

Um, yeah, it looks like a great shooter, like kind of homagey.

Like there's a, there's a bit in the video here where like it looks like a like a boss from doom from like doom, like one of those big guys with the double rockets.

Like, yeah, it's, having just played you know brazilian drug dealer three whatever it's called i opened the portal to hell in the favela which is like like almost a rapper for quake 2 and i loved it so much um or quick one sorry um uh this looks uh pretty neat have you guys checked this out at all or interested in it at all or is this is this outside of your particular wheelhouses no it's on my wish list for sure i haven't gotten it yet though i thought this was like a lot closer to just being a first person shooter where the music is really good and that was the important part so to hear that the shooting is actually like solid and i'm looking at the screen or the uh videos now on the steam page it looks like very there's like a yeah there's a multiplier on the right you need to keep track of you're right there's a tommy gotchy it looks like it's called uh that pops up it's like a Yeah.

Frank was telling us about the cell phone stuff.

But like there's hearts coming up around the enemies,

I want to, I want to go fast.

How can you go like mock 10 in this?

Like how fast are you going?

I think it really like it's 16 X multiply.

Like, so yeah.

And then like there's D or 16, 16, 16.

Okay.

Um.

And then there's also like um yeah, I'm very much like doing material, but there's like a or even Titanfall.

There's wall running segments that you can grapple.

There's a grappling hook to get all this stuff.

So you're always meant to stay in motion.

And if you don't, I feel like the only penalty is maybe enemies swarm you.

But, like, I feel like the game wasn't challenging.

I didn't get that far.

Other boss encounters, I would fail the checkpoint system.

It immediately reloads you right before the encounter.

So, again, it's friendly with your time, which is, like, the most important quality for me.

And it's bundled with Ultra Kill in a bundle called Ultra Girly.

And that has me very excited.

That's a great bundle name.

It's also bundled with Brazilian Drug Deluxury.

I'm not even kidding.

I went to buy it and they were like oh, if you, if you, if it's actually available at a lower price in a, in a, what do you call them?

A bundle called Sisters from a Different Mister.

Perfect.

Which is the one they have for Brazilian drug dealer 3.

Are you going to check out Brazilian drug dealer before 4?

Are you going to check that out?

Is there one?

It just came out.

There's a new Brazilian drug dealer game?

They have announced that it's coming out.

It's September 16th, but they just posted the Steam page for it a couple of days ago.

Oh, it's called Brazilian drug dealer before 4.

Demons from the portal to hell I opened are still in the favela.

And now I have to save my mad as from Ronaldo.

Great, so Ronaldo, I guess, is a... Ronaldo is a famous soccer player.

It's the Brazilian Ronaldo.

Cristiano Ronaldo is Portuguese.

This is World Cup 1998 Ronaldo, probably with his weird haircut.

He had a haircut where... See where my headphones are?

He had a haircut where he had this part of his hair...

And the rest was all like a number one.

Wait, I got to look this up.

That's awesome.

So I think maybe that was around 2000.

If you type in Ronaldo hair, I'm pretty sure it's going to be the first thing.

Oh, my God.

Why did he do this to himself?

Holy shit, dude.

Yeah.

He's like... What does this remind me of?

He looks like...

It's like a Three Stooges haircut, but not quite.

There's something there.

Like a Gen Z version of Moe or something, you know?

Where he was like, give me a Moe taper fade.

Give me the Moe.

It's beautiful.

The Moe stache.

It's real good.

Great.

Great to know the Brazilian franchise is continuing to make more art.

Brazilian.

Sorry, don't stop Curly Pop.

Not Brazilian.

It's actually Australian.

Two Aussie devs put that together.

So shout out to them.

Yeah, looks like a super cool game.

Excited to check that out too.

Is this a couple of these going to be in our we're putting out?

So, instead of doing our sort of, we're going to keep doing indie recommendation videos on noclip2 when they make sense, but we're pulling back on them a little bit because we uh decided to sort of create a monthly video that sort of collects a bunch of them that's like edited and scripted.

Uh frank, don't stop as in yours, isn't it?

Yeah yeah, are any of the other ones we talked about today in it?

Or there aren't some of these february games?

No, Butcher's Creek, I believe, is also in there.

We're going to talk about that a little bit later, Frank.

And then Perfect Tide Station to Station is also in that video as well.

Oh, cool.

Excellent.

All right.

A game that did come out in February, just missed out on the cutoff but might be in February's indie recommendations.

We'll find out in a second.

Is Tearscape or Tearscape.

Which one is it, Jeremy?

I think it's Tearscape, although there is a cape in the capsule image.

So now you've totally fucked my brain up.

Is it crying?

No, but there are tears everywhere in this game.

Tearscape is OK.

This is like this is the most what it says on the package is exactly what it is game.

But what it says on the package is a great pitch.

So let me just pitch it.

Let me lay it out for you.

What if there was a Link's Awakening style like a Game Boy Zelda game, but it was Bloodborne sold that's, and that's what it is.

Let's move on to the next game.

Now i i do have a few things to say about this.

It's uh, i played a bunch of it last night.

It just came out yesterday as of time of recording and it's really, really fun.

It's like nothing in.

It was a moment where i was like wow, my mind is blown.

This is.

I didn't know this was gonna be like this.

It's exactly what i thought it was gonna be, but that's what i wanted it to be.

I just wanted like a game boy zelda game, but it's fucking bloodborne and there's like and and it's like it's everything about kind of both of them.

There's like a little sort of You know obstacles you hit in the world.

It has kind of like a Metroidvania set up, but for, you know, top down action RPG set up.

So you get little map fragments.

You go around you find like a thing you can't move and you're like oh, clearly I need some sort of you know link, ask wristband that makes me strong enough to move this.

I'll go somewhere else.

And then you just like, you fight guys, they drop tears, kind of, they're the equivalent of the souls.

You use them to level up your uh stats yeah, you get a nicer cape um, and you find new weapons.

It's just, it's literally just fucking bloodborne links awakening, like everything i'm describing i.

I think i feel like i could have just asked one of you to describe this game and it would have been the exact same thing, because it's just yeah, but that's like, that's what you want it to be like.

It doesn't.

It doesn't need to be subversive, because it's just like it's just hitting a thing.

That's like obviously, that's that would be fun and good.

You know what i mean do the thing, do the say the thing yay yeah, so i mean it looks like you said it is.

I, i am not a big lynx awakening head um, but i adore bloodborne and it is so bloodborne looking that i am definitely going to play this.

This is like it's very, very bloodborne.

It's almost Mario Kart, Bloodborne Kart, sort of.

You know, adjacent in the.

No, we're just going to make a game that is meant to be like a like an 8-bit ass Bloodborne thing.

Yeah, it does have like a, even though it's obviously like an original world, original characters, original lore and all these things.

It does have sort of like a Bloodborne Game Boy D make feel to it, which I really enjoy.

But someone took that that sort of approach and made their own original thing with it.

But yeah, you're right.

You even look at the main character and.

And he's got sort of the like tricorn hat, but ripped at the back.

It looks like little wings and stuff.

It's just fucking.

It's just like Bloodborne.

There is a gun.

Do you parry with it? there's a shield that you parry with, which is... Oh.

Okay, well, that did surprise me.

You're right.

When that happened, I was like, but this isn't Bloodborne at all.

So it's for noobs, then, you're saying?

It's for people who are bad at casuals?

It's not for noobs.

It's actually for cool Dark Souls 1 enjoyers, actually.

Okay, whatever you say.

I watched the Hbomberguy video and he gave me my opinion, so I'm just going to keep saying this over and over again.

He told me my opinion and that's why i love dark souls too exactly um yeah, but it's uh, it's just fun, i just like fucking.

I played so much karen last night and that is such a fresh new, like mind-blowing, immersive experience.

That's so unlike anything i've ever played.

And then i played a bunch of tearscape and it was like it was such an interesting palate cleanser because it was like I don't know.

I was like, I feel so grounded.

Like I've never played this game before, but I feel like this is a game that I played back in the day or something, even though it's all new.

It's like watching, you know, Jodorowsky's Dune and then an episode of Friends.

Yeah, this is so heady and like in the moment, but like i just now i just want to enjoy a thing.

I like i just needed to chill with ross and rachel after, after the sesh um exactly, but yeah, it's and it's, it's fun.

The combat feels snappy but like like, it's like the right kind of sluggish in a weird way, where those, when you play, links awakening or, like you know, even link to the past a little bit.

Uh, it has a sort of like committing to your moves, but not in the animation driven way like a Souls game in 3D where you're kind of like it's more complex and there's follow through and stuff.

It's just like you hit the button and it's like you got to watch the whole swing animation.

So there is sort of an intentionality to it, but transposed onto this simpler you know, 2d retro, uh feel, but it's just really fucking good.

And the lore is interesting.

It has this whole thing about.

You know, like people who worship monsters but like maybe they're like false gods kind of thing.

So it just, uh, it just has this whole, they're just doing like a from soft.

Uh, I was going to say cover band, but that's, that's not what it is.

It's like, I don't know from soft inspired, but in a very, very positive way.

Tearscape.

Very cool.

There's a demo for it as well, available on Steam, or you can pick it up for 15 bucks regular.

It's got 10 off at time of recording and will do, by the time the podcast is out, for the rest of the weekend as well.

Also, shout out to the developer.

Maybe my new favorite developer name.

Jeremy, do you want to explain it?

Have you seen it?

Yeah, it's nerds take over all caps as well.

All caps, yeah.

Yeah, when you click on their steam page, they don't have any other games that they've released.

So i don't know if this is, i don't know who this person is, but nerds take over.

Shout out to you.

Is that a direction or is it a?

You know?

Is it like nerds take over?

Yeah, that's why that's my like scia mk ultra sleeper cell activation phrase Love it.

OK well, we said on the podcast, now maybe the whole, maybe this was all done so they could get us get their.

You know, studio title read out on a bunch of podcasts.

Kill John Lennon.

Oh, my God.

Too late.

Oh, damn it.

If another person called John Lennon is killed in the next couple of days, you're going to be getting some knocks on the door.

Jesse grasha, it was just butters i was just doing.

It's a south park joke, i'm sorry okay okay, and if your name is john lennon, maybe don't leave the house for the next few days.

Yeah, don't come near where i live.

You don't know where that is, but don't worry about it.

Maybe change your name as well.

I don't know.

I had two friends called barry white growing up and they didn't seem to like that.

So i don't know.

That's awesome, change it.

Oh man, from sexual chocolate to Sexual Butchers.

Frank Howley, what's Butcher's Creek?

And is it sexual?

Yeah, there's like snuff films.

So like some people watch that.

There's a thing called Red Rooms.

So potentially.

Okay, potentially.

Potentially sexy.

Butcher's Creek is the new game from David Szymanski.

Oh, man.

Which like there's a whole other story with his game produced film.

His movie just made a bunch of money, yada, yada.

Oh, yeah.

Iron Lung just came out, right?

Starring and directed by?

Markiplier.

Markiplier, right?

Yeah.

Crazy.

Crazy stuff.

And here it's fine, is what I've heard.

I've heard it's like better than you'd think from a youtuber director slash actor, but not as good as what you'd maybe expect to see in a cinema, kind of like.

That's it.

That's the trailer's vibe.

I watched just the trailer and i was like wow, i can't believe this looks this good, but also it does look like something that would be on the sci-fi channel, but yeah, like a shutter original or yeah, but but that is impressive.

Those are good.

Yes, i couldn't do that.

Yeah, some of those are good.

Some of the shutter movies are actually okay, pretty good yeah, so that okay, let's get a rink of shutter.

I think it might have been.

Skinnamarink.

Yeah, is that?

Yeah, I think so.

Is that a term you know?

Skinnamarink?

Oh, Skinnamarink.

Yeah, it's a movie.

I know.

Yeah, but also.

It sounds very Irish.

Skinnamarink.

It's good.

It's a good movie.

Shellacabookie.

Skinnamarink does sound like an Irish, like, folk creature.

Skinnamarink.

It does, doesn't it?

Skidamarinky-do.

You guys didn't do that one?

What the fuck is this?

Are you doing some sort of Gnostic spell on us right now?

I love you.

Somebody stop him, cut his mic.

We'll talk about Butcher's Creek at some point, I promise.

Okay sorry, Butcher's Creek might be a snuff film Frank, keep going, yeah.

So Butcher's Creek is a new game by David Szymanski, so I fell in love with Dusk when it came.

Even before it came out, Dusk was on the convention circuit, all that.

So Dusk is the old school Quake, like Doom, that also with New Blood and Dave Oshry, like one of my favorite indie games of all time.

I love Dusk.

Um, in 2018 2019, David Szymanski started like posting cryptic screenshots on Twitter.

That was like it was like melee combat and like concrete walls and stuff.

And it was like, oh, he was hinting like, yeah, I'm kind of working on a game inspired by Condemned.

That was six years ago.

Wow.

In the game's files for Butcher's Creek, there's even Unity screenshots from like 2018.

So he's been working on this game for a while.

I mean, I feel like he launches a new game like constantly.

But like this has been a thing he's been working on for such a long time.

And yeah, again, opposite of Don't Stop, Girly Pop, also like, but even more, Dusk, this is melee.

This is like grounded, intense melee.

The default difficulty is like, For me, it's like, oh, this is tough.

This is very challenging.

Yeah, so very simply, Butcher's Creek is a first-person melee.

I would classify it as survival horror because it's so grim and tough.

You have to really manage your stamina, your health.

Health pickups are very limited and that kind of stuff.

The vibe of Butcher's Creek is you're in the Appalachian Forest tracking down a gang of serial killers murderers torturers, people producing snuff films.

So the game also has a very direct like VHS aesthetic.

It's not just a VHS filter.

You're literally finding VHS snuff films and you're using snuff films almost like keys to unlock doors.

So like there's CRTs where in order to save, you have to use a snuff filter.

You have to use deposit VHS tape.

There's like locked doors.

Sometimes those are like a secret rooms full of health items and better weapons, or sometimes it's literally gates your progress.

Um, and so you dump like four VHS tapes to open the door.

So it encourages you, like the maps are like.

It's almost kind of similar to uh, What was the?

What was the pig face like?

It's like, oh, here's a messed up murder mansion.

Go explore it and try to find your way out.

And I feel like pig face also has like, like you said, it's it's not like full Kane and Lynch to VHS look, but it has like some type of chromatic aberration or you know, like splitting of colors and stuff.

Yeah. and i feel like both pull from like just that era of horror like early 2000 i mean there's 28 days later but like even saw kind of very like like hostile and that type of yeah and so this this game pulls back to that like you like literally like the torture porn genre of stuff and so yeah this game is is awesome it's it's so again and the graphics too are like better than better than dust but again it's not as sharp as condemned but kind of in that in between like ps2 dreamcast like kind of where it's charming and looks nice and uh yeah you're just going through a um most enemy encounters one on one one on two one on three and yeah one person will take a swing one will back up you can parry deflect your weapons break so in the middle of fights you'll be swinging with a wrench valve break you have to run away find a blank hit it that guy might die you pick up his hammer and then another guy comes in so almost feels like old boy it's that very like sweaty intense desperate and you feel it it's like oh it's It's like I think for me, the best way to enjoy it would like play on easy on my Steam deck.

But this is also potentially like, oh, no, this is going to be fun to play on console.

This is also a very good mouse keyboard game because it's just so intense.

And yeah.

And then the other fun is like, yeah, you're walking around.

There's just a mattress covered in blood.

And then there's a VHS camera, a camera filming it.

And you can take pictures of the Polaroid camera.

Taking pictures of crime scenes is how you get health back.

So you can also use your polaroid camera in the middle of encounters to stun flash enemies and i don't think that was a mechanic.

They tell you that was like a seat, like it was like oh crap, that works.

So it's almost immersive.

Sim, like there's a lot of like clever stuff.

You can even pick up boxes and stack them and block doors so they don't charge you.

Oh cool hell, yeah.

Uh sometimes, like you have to, you know, kill everyone on the map because one person will have a key and stuff like that.

And so um, that's like a, that's like a, like a call of cthulhu, dark corners of the earth, kind of reference.

There the, you know, it's like the only game i remember where you could like push a table in front of a door to stop people from coming in.

It just isn't a like a verb we use in first person games.

No, i didn't even think of it.

There's, and they literally like on like a third or fourth level you're you're, you're.

I felt personally overwhelmed, like this is so impossible.

And then the tutorial tip was like you can block doors with, with boxes.

It's like oh okay, so the and the game is for, you know, like it's, it's telling you everything.

And yeah, I get, it's like nasty and gritty and every enemy is just like Hey, what the fuck is this?

Who the fuck are you?

Oh, I love that.

That's like Kingpin.

Yeah.

They're, they're really going like, this is a nasty, nasty game.

And so that's why I was like, Oh, this is so cool.

And it's, yeah, I, it just hits everything.

It's great.

Like, i don't know yeah so so butcher's creek is awesome again they've been teasing this forever and it's finally out a throwback to condemned yeah it's nasty it's it's good and the melee combat's awesome and yeah just that frantic and same thing like condemned when you see a weapon on the ground it shows the durability power speed some extra little like conditions you can also throw weapons in the middle of encounter um and so yeah it's just it's just funny and gory and messed up and the game's got good rag dolls like you'll swing someone with a pipe and they'll just get knocked over.

So yeah, Butcher's Creek.

And I think it's also pretty solid budget title.

It's a nine 99 and then the opening week discount.

But uh yeah, but yeah, it is seven, 50 at the moment, 25 off uh, which is a pretty decent um uh discount on that.

On that, did this game have a?

Was this like this game?

The release date for this game is a year ago.

Did it?

Was this early access or like?

Did it just get like a 10 release or did you just get around to playing it now?

Oh, my god no, it launched uh, last year.

I thought it was this year too.

I totally thought it was 2026.

I've been looking at it here january 23rd 2025.

My brain has been like, oh yeah, of course, two weeks ago.

But i was also thinking it's weird, i haven't heard of this.

But it's actually even weirder that i hadn't heard of it and it came out a fucking year ago and it's a samansky game.

I remember hearing about it, but I've never played these types of games.

But I was just wondering if it maybe just came on your radar, if it got a big update.

Great catch.

Yeah, I didn't even notice that either.

I don't know if it was 1.0 or if it was just on sale and I saw it.

I legitimately thought it just came out.

No worries.

Yeah, i guess it's not making the fucking indie rec list.

Yeah, never mind, i didn't even think about that brutal.

Hey, nothing wrong.

Nothing wrong about bringing it up.

Um yeah, we've never talked about it on the podcast and i never played it.

Yeah i'm, yeah and i, i like, for all the talk of pig face i did last year, i didn't even see, like how the fuck is that possible?

That, like it's just shows you like the problem with discoverability.

And I'm not like trying to externalize my own shame for not knowing about this game, but like I'm a fan of David.

I've hung out with David.

I've enjoyed like almost like all the stuff he's worked on.

Uh, like this it would have been in my, I would have bought, like I'm going to go down to the games.

This is like, and I'm assuming all of them are games I've played.

Um, and for whatever reason, this, I didn't ever see this either.

Like that's wild.

There you go.

Came out last year.

Yeah.

I think I had it on my wishlist and I think I got the ping and I I assumed it was out, but I think maybe they put it on sale to coincide with the rest of the movie.

Ah, that might be it.

It might be like an iron lung, but truly like i didn't.

I didn't see the splash when this came.

This is a game i wanted to play forever.

I was like oh, this thing is out.

Um anyways yeah, i mean i still stand by.

I mean i'm also like i put it in the indie record.

That's a genuine indie rec, but that's fine.

But um yeah, the game is really cool.

I did not know it was over a year old.

So no, i mean i've it's.

It is new to us.

None of us have played it except for you and you have not played it till now.

So yeah no, totally relevant.

I mean you're gonna.

You also wanted to talk about yakuza 6 today.

So it's not like the game.

The games have to be new to talk about.

I feel like i'm only.

I only go out of my way to play any games if it's like oh, this is this week, it's for like i wouldn't have chased it otherwise, but but whatever that shows going outside your wheelhouse to explore stuff.

I'm glad you did.

It seems fucking cool and i haven't thought.

I heard that it was coming out, and then i slept on the release too, so I have just added it to my shopping cart here on Steam as well.

That's almost all games this week.

Like I said, we have an interview coming up in a couple of minutes with Ed McMillan, Tyler Glale all about Mugenics and obviously also the new news about Adobe.

What's it called again?

Animate.

Thank you um, before we get into that though uh, you played a little bit of yakuza 6, frank is this?

Is this a blind spot on your, on your ryu gag?

Go to go studio.

So my beautiful pronunciation, thank you.

So um yeah, so i'm going to japan in like a month.

I'm very excited and um, in advance of that, i wanted to finish yakuza 5, because yakuza 5 takes you to nagoya, which i had gone to in real life but not in yakuza.

So, like last month, so last month I like, all right, my goal is to finish Yakuza 5 before Japan.

I want to like click, like finish all my bunch of projects and stuff and mental task lists and stuff before the Japan trip.

And I played Yakuza 5 and I got into a flow state with it.

I beat it.

And I was like, oh my God, I got a month.

Let me start Yakuza 6.

And Yakuza 6 is such an important gap in the series because Yakuza 3 through 5, there's remasters.

No spoiler request.

I'm sorry.

I have to insert it here because I'm still playing these games and I'm four behind you.

Just gameplay.

Thank you.

Yakuza like three through five was made on like the old engine.

Six is where it feels contemporary.

This is like the, like a dragon engine, essentially like where the current JRPG stuff is.

This is where like Yakuza stepped up and now the game feels contemporary.

So all of a sudden I was kind of like not like i was like grinding through the yakuza 4 and 5, like these are fine, but they're they're old, they're a little janky.

Now i'm playing yakuza 6.

This is 2026.

It feels like i have a brand new yakuza game um, and i loaded it up.

I started playing this game three years ago before i ever went to japan, before i played yakuza 3 4, 5 and yakuza 6 was meant to be like the series finale, so it's like the.

So it's like oh, we're gonna type a bunch of loose threads.

I started playing i was like I don't know who any of these characters are.

I shouldn't be playing these games.

Whoops.

So I went back.

I played three.

I played four.

I went to Japan like five times.

I did so much homework.

I loaded back Yakuza 6 and immediately Kiryu was standing in front of the Appa Hotel, which is the hotel I stay at.

I recognize all these different brands and it's like oh, I've never more in my life been more ready to play a video game.

I recognize all these streets, all these locations.

I've been here.

And it's so funny to load up a save where you have transformed.

I feel like... So it's so exciting to play it.

You go to Hiroshima, but... Yeah, I'm just very, very fired up to play this.

And I don't know if I'll beat it before the next Japan trip.

Kiwami 3 comes out in two weeks.

But the other... reason that i've tried to push to get to yakuza 6 is there's a bunch of new japan pro wrestlers in it so a big wrestler just retired tanahashi they sold 50 000 seats at wrestle kingdom in january one of the biggest wrestling shows of all time tanahashi is in yakuza 6 uh okada who's currently at aew he's in yakuza 6 so i started playing yesterday and i was like oh my god three years ago i didn't know who okada was and i like i'd seen tanahashi live in the time that i first started the game and played yesterday so it's like it's so funny to go back to the game and all of a sudden be like oh no now it's like jesse's telling the teacher said in 10 years from now you're gonna love this so now i'm like oh my god now yakuza 6 is phenomenal but it was really it's exciting because like the gameplay wise it feels just as sharp as like the the modern ones and it feels like this is where they really stepped it up just in terms of gameplay progression mini games everything so i'm like this it's you know what it really is is like oh there's a game i'm truly like fired up to get out of bed and play and i haven't had that in a while um so it's like and it's like not something i'm playing for work necessarily this is just my like thing so it's something i can play until japan and then when i land in japan it's like oh crap it's there's no difference i don't know it's it's it's weird to just i think the yakuza games for me have always been a boy permanently extending my japan trip i was playing it in quarantine before i went to japan in real life come back from it but i just started but i'm very fired up but yeah that's it Hell yeah.

The stars aligned.

You met the game at the right time for you.

Yeah, that's perfect.

Love it.

Love to hear it.

Yeah.

And TikTok, not too long now until Japan time for good old Frank.

I'm excited.

I'm excited just to hear all the tales when you get back.

Of what you were up to.

That's all the games I think we wanted to talk about this week.

We had Chromatic Conundrum, Perfect Tides, Station to Station.

Don't Stop, Girly Pop, Tearscape.

Earth Must Die.

Butcher's Creek and Yakuza 6.

Or Yakuza.

Yakuza, right?

Yakuza.

Ryu Go No Goko Studio.

We're going to use some Japanese lessons.

Yeah, something about that joke in particular.

Arigato gozaimasu.

I don't know.

Hey, you're getting there.

Domo arigato, Mr. Rob.

Is that?

Is Mr. I don't know.

Anybody here ever watched Mr. Robot?

I was watching... Yep.

Yes.

Is it any good?

Yeah, it's a great show.

Yeah, it's pretty good.

Jeremy fucking hates it.

That's all I hear.

No, I watched the first season and liked it, and then I fell off, but I enjoyed what I saw of it.

He doesn't like Rami Malek.

I don't like TV.

I get it.

I don't like television shows.

Oh, all right.

Any of them.

Do you watch Chernobyl?

What's the point?

You don't like the shows.

Never mind.

I just don't like the structure of television, even when it's so good.

This is random.

I'm curious if Danny had seen this.

There's a show called People Just Do Nothing.

Have you seen it or heard of it?

No.

Is this a Japanese show?

No.

It's the most British show I've ever seen.

My friend who lives in Wales and does music stuff recommended me this show.

It's called People Just Do Nothing.

It's a five-season mockumentary about UK garage DJs running a shitty radio show in their friend's house.

And they get like 10 listeners and it's they act like they're the biggest guys in the world.

It's very like Ali G humor.

But like I was like, Danny, seen this or anyone.

But like I just started it and it's like, oh, this show is so phenomenal.

The film finale, they did five seasons.

The film ends with them in Japan.

So that's like I'm going to try to watch it.

Oh, wow.

Perfect.

But like but like, yeah, people just do nothing.

Might be like the best British sitcom I've seen, like like i i, yeah it's.

It's phenomenal, like of that decade 2014.

Yeah, there are just like gaps in my uk slash ireland like what's going on that are like when sean lock the comedian died.

I didn't find out until two years later because they i was just still experiencing clips from him on television, uh from youtube, like forever.

And then i was home one time and i was like wait, he's dead.

This is a show that came out in 2014.

I was obviously living over here three years by then and i never saw it.

Um yeah, people just do nothing.

That's a fucking great name as well.

Uh, i gotta check that out.

This looks awesome.

Yeah, that's a great name.

It reminds me a bit of a goldie looking chain or something you know.

Do you know goldie looking chain glc?

It's a great welsh rap band.

I want to say are they welsh or maybe they're from the west country?

I don't know.

Sorry to everyone in wales and the west country, i probably got that wrong, But we're not here to talk about gold.

You can change.

We're here to talk about emails.

We got one here, Frank, before we close out the first part of the show.

Yeah, if people want to send us an email, please write to us.

Podcast at noclipvideo or in our Discord channel in the podcast chat.

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

We have an email from Casey.

Hi, folks.

I am a Zoomer.

I also didn't really grow up with video games during my childhood of the late 90s and entirety of 2000s.

It didn't really get into games, as it were, until 2020, after only playing a handful of well-established titles, occasionally before that.

I played a few older games in the last few years, but not many, as I don't have the familiarity or even nostalgia for anything before the Xbox 360 that a lot of folks, such as yourselves and other creators I engage with, do.

So my question is what are some old games you'd recommend to a late 20-something who hasn't played many old games?

What are Zoomers?

What age is that?

Like two years younger than me.

I think 28 is probably the cutoff, right?

Okay, so childhood of the late 90s.

I mean, you're talking you were a child child.

You were a born.

Yeah, you were just born at that stage.

It's hard to answer this without some sort of genre bumpers.

You know what I mean?

Like, I'm going to throw the bowling ball down the lane here.

I want to know which lane I got to throw it into, I guess.

True.

But are there any ones that, like, So are we talking pre-360?

Probably, yeah.

Is that what we're talking about?

At least like 360 stuff that's not outstanding, right?

Like obvious, like Gears of War, like more obscure 360 stuff, but probably before then I would think.

I've been in Casey's position before.

I'm like, you know, I'm 30.

I'm the young boy of the team.

Um, so I'm always, I always feel like I'm missing some bit of knowledge that you guys have.

Like I'll describe something and you'll be like, that's just this on the ZX spectrum.

And I'm like, listen, man.

Oh, you're playing Imperium Galactica too?

Yeah.

My bad.

I, I, I need to brush up on my history.

So I definitely would be in Casey's position here.

I really have no idea.

Like stuff that I've gone back to play is usually things that are like really niche.

Like I wouldn't recommend someone go back and play Vampire the Mask, Great Bloodlines.

Like I don't really think that a lot of people that would work for, unless you are that kind of person.

Second best game that came out on November 24th, 2004.

Right.

But they should play Half-Life 2.

If you're going to pick one from that particular day, probably pick Half-Life 2.

Yeah.

Half-Life 2 obviously is.

I think if you're into first-person games, Portal I feel like is a game that is, you know, of that era.

That was 360, wasn't it?

I thought.

It did eventually come out in 360 in the orange box, right?

Isn't that how that all went down?

Yeah, I think so.

That sounds right.

But it was like, yeah, maybe they didn't play it out.

Are we talking?

So we're talking like ps2, like resident evil, you know what i mean like resi one, metal gear solid one, silent hill one and two and three and maybe four if you really like the first three.

Uh, morrowind is around that era, but if you've not played morrowind, i had no nostalgia for it and played it and it's fucking amazing.

Uh, heroes of might and magic three is timeless and eastern europe will back me on that.

Age of empires two minor.

I'm going a bit more mainstream maybe with some of these roller coaster tycoon.

Age of empires too.

I used to.

I used to play roller coaster tycoon and listen to mm.

I have like this childhood memory of just listening to full mm albums and playing roller coaster tycoon and that was making like marshall mathers themed roller coaster parks.

You know yeah, they were really edgy.

I want to take the uh, what was the song with dido?

I want to take the stan coaster, Yeah.

You know, like at the end, it like it doesn't.

Oh, boy.

Oh, yeah.

What else?

This podcast needs a trigger warning now.

I didn't want to stress like it's very important to play a Tony Hawk game.

I would even argue.

It's true.

Just in general.

That's it is very important.

I was going to say, like try Tony Hawk Underground, because you could do three, but I don't want you to play the remakes.

So you should play two.

Play two.

Two is phenomenal.

Yeah, it would be good to sample both, like pre-Underground and post-Underground.

So yeah, two, Underground would be fun.

Again, I feel like, just in case, Resident Evil 4 and then I know it's 360, but I feel like you should play Saints Row III even just in case you haven't.

Saints Row III would be fun.

I love that Saints Row III is coming up in this, but Saints Row III is pretty great.

It is.

I like Saints Row I as well, quite a lot.

Yeah?

Because I didn't quite know what it was, wasn't sure if it was a joke, yet i don't know if it was.

It was yeah yeah, yeah.

I don't know if they were in on the joke in saints row one, maybe they were.

Um god yeah, what else?

What else we can we can we can mine this one a little bit longer.

Uh, the original starcraft and brood war is really, really fun.

If you like rts, or even if you don't, it might just be fun as a novelty world of warcraft.

There's some of that, it's so.

But you can't like even classic isn't really like.

That wasn't what it was like.

They've got to do classic classic now.

It's too far in.

They're at like Mr. Pandaria now.

I don't want that.

Are they just going to do that?

Are they going to roll back?

Probably.

Because they'll never catch up, right?

Are they going at a faster click than retail is?

Do they maybe have that as an option?

Like there's a server that's just the original.

I'm going to go look while you're coming up with ideas.

Like pre-Cataclysm?

Yeah.

Because once Cataclysm happens, you're not playing old WoW anymore.

It was such a different The experience.

I was talking to my friend literally about this yesterday who still plays Retail and has played Classic and we played in 2004 together.

It's such a different... It's like a cognitive difference, too.

It's not even just the meta of the game.

It's also the way people approach the game.

There was like there were classes and specs that were so fucking broken.

But it wasn't about like oh, we gotta patch this immediately.

It was just like, oh yeah, if you're like a what was it?

Like a fury warrior or something, you're just like if you saw one of them in fucking warsong gulch, it's like i'm just like leaving, like i'm not gonna fight this guy, and that was the fun of it.

It didn't mean everyone wanted to play that class, it just meant that you knew that they were more powerful than ever.

Yeah, if i saw an undead mage, i was out of there.

Yeah, there was asymmetry.

Or if you saw like a rogue in the open world, it's like i'm just not gonna quest here, i'm just gonna like go home getting a ganked from some invisible whoo out here, like just before i get stabbed in the back um, mass effect.

I want i that's maybe not old enough the fallout games.

I guess fallout one and two, of course, but like also fallout three in new vegas.

You know they're, they're I do have to recommend this.

All Sega, like Sega's Dreamcast era stuff, Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi and even Sonic Adventure 2.

It's like worth spinning all these up just to get a set.

Like, yeah.

The Capcom games.

Kingdom Hearts.

GameCube.

Yeah.

Yeah um, i love kingdom hearts.

What's your?

No, what's your other one?

Fucking uh, diddy not racing.

Yeah no, i meant the other one the, the what's that he's conquest?

No, you're not.

We're back to the country too.

Now back to the dick jokes again.

Alan cummings, don't diddy conquest conquest, all right No, what's the thing you like?

It's not Tamagotchi.

What is it?

What's the thing you like?

Digimon?

Digimon, there we go.

Thanks, Dad.

Jesus, took forever to get to that one.

What's that thing you guys play?

What's that thing you guys play with the game and the boys?

Oh, Earthbound.

I feel like I also think Final Fantasy VI, but Earthbound I think you could like.

Earthbound is less intimidating.

I feel like Final Fantasy is very intimidating potentially, but Earthbound's easy too. earthbound if you have some degree of tolerance for like rpgs it is it will it will test you a little bit but it's not super grindy and it's so charming and i i replayed it for the first time in two decades recently and it's so good i've picked a lot of games that are like very frictionless in terms of you just get into the game part because i wonder how the zoomer will do with like you know a lot of these games are slow to get into or they're you know they're they're there's a bit of there's a bit of special sauce there that maybe is lost when you play them in a modern context like i'm trying to help we're trying to help them reclaim that experience you know what i mean because it's not that it's not that that is lost forever it's just that you need to like Go live like a hermit for two weeks and dopamine detox and then come back and play Earthbound.

Go rent an Airbnb for two weeks and play Earthbound.

Don't do not play The Witcher 1.

No, play The Witcher 1.

Jesse's trying to kill you.

Listen, no.

I actually have a great grounds for this.

The Witcher 1 was the first...

PC adventure RPG game that I played from that era.

And after playing it it made me appreciate going back to those games even more, learning how to explore an environment with no map, no map markers, no quest explanation.

If you want to learn what's going on, you got to read a book in a tractor.

That's what happened to you.

I also literally did that.

Wait, you learned to drive in a tractor?

Maybe not a tractor, but a Nissan Titan.

Okay.

Wow.

Might as well be.

Is that a Canadian only car?

I've never heard of a Nissan Titan.

It's a giant pickup, isn't it?

It's big.

Is it manual?

No, thank God.

Okay.

Maybe one day.

I'll bother.

I learned in a Fiat Punto, which was a manual car with no power steering.

So then every car after that was like fucking...

Yeah.

See, but at least you were driving around like a cereal box.

I'm driving around like a spaceship.

Oh, sorry.

Oh, God.

This thing is huge.

So parking was a massive issue.

Yeah, it has no backup camera.

The car is like eight cars long.

So really what I'm saying is playing The Witcher 1 is like learning how to drive a Nissan Titan.

And you should do it just so you could brag and tell everyone else that your small accomplishment is worth mentioning, which it's not.

But you should play The Witcher 1 because it's a good game also.

I like the story.

It was quite good.

I can't believe they call the car a Titan.

Yeah, I don't know how they got away with it.

Bigger is better with pickups these days.

Someone needs to make a tiny pickup truck and you will make a billion dollars.

The Maverick, isn't that... It's not small enough.

It needs to be smaller.

Okay.

It's just a Ford.

It's an F-150, isn't it?

With a slightly smaller shell.

Is that what the Maverick is?

I think so.

If somebody out there has a billion dollars and you just start producing a 1999 Toyota Tacoma but like, somehow not get sued for it, is that the problem?

Is the problem?

Like crash structures yes, what their efficiency of the engine?

Like the 22r was like the best engine toyota ever made, but it's not as fuel efficient.

But it's mine.

I have 300 000 miles on my fucking car and it runs great.

It's probably fuel efficient if you live in like a beautiful little town, in like you know nippon prefecture or something.

But like you just drive down the hill to the shop and that's it 50 miles to get your miles.

You know your local gas station or whatever.

You know that's true, and also the relative size of the.

It's all like k cars on the road.

So they're like, look at this asshole in his big ass truck, but that same truck here is like you might as well be driving a go-kart on the highway.

I feel like everyone here wants to import one of those k cars, though right like yeah, they're hot right now, they're so god, they're so cool, they're just like.

They're just like.

If you, if you crash in it you they, if you crash in one of those, you come, that's it.

You come in the coffin.

Yeah, it has made the coffin in the crash and they just bury you in.

Yeah, they just bury you in the, in the, in the, the torn steel and it fits in the grave because it's so small.

Exactly exactly, it's tiny.

It just goes pancakes.

Yeah, You can put a new dresser.

Where's that?

Let me get the Chinese EV.

You're Canadian.

You're going to be working on it.

It's taking time.

My father, Mark Carney, is having so many conversations and it's not going over well enough.

Not fast enough.

I want it.

Where's my $19,000 Chinese EV?

I want them to spy on me, not the Americans.

I want to let them do it.

Elon Musk's cars can't spy on people.

They just. accidentally post pictures of naked people to your screen.

Whenever you use the GPS on a Tesla, it always tells you how to get to Epstein Island.

It's really weird.

Do you see he merged SpaceX with a stupid fucking AI company?

How is this legal?

I forgot to bring up the most.

I'm so glad you reminded me.

If this podcast ended and I didn't bring this up, I would have been so fucking sad.

In the new clutch of Epstein files there was a reference from Jeffrey Epstein to a conversation that he had with Bobby Kotick about the invention of like loot boxes, about paying real money for in-game commodities.

Jeffrey Epstein is directly linked to the downfall of AAA gaming.

You're saying he gave him the idea.

Right, it's not that he gave him the idea.

I think kodak was like hey, what do you think about this?

What do you think?

If we like, so they they'll.

I'll pull up the email if i can in a minute.

But it was like the ideas he listed was like yeah, you pay real money and you get like um, like like iphone, like minutes on your cell phone or like in-game commodities, and uh, i forget the other guy's name, but it was like a futurist that epstein was referencing this conversation too, and the futurist guy was like You know like oh, I think that's great to like indoctrinate them into capitalism as children, or whatever.

Did you also see that Slash Paul might have actually also come from Jeffrey Epstein?

So has – was he sent back from like the future to destroy humanity?

He's the only time traveler.

He's the T-2000.

He's been just – turning into liquid metal and absorbing people's lives.

It's crazy.

I hate that every conspiracy theory wasn't just, wasn't just some like tinfoil hat where a nonsense and it was all the same guy.

And not that this is the worst thing about any of what's gone on.

He was just sending the emails on Gmail.

Like we're all like, Oh, it's all cryptic.

Like they got to do their own.

No, it's just J E vacation at gmail.com.

And his spelling is so fucked up.

There are transcription errors, and that's some of the reason the emails read so fucked up.

But his spelling is just... There's just random typos.

There's equal signs in there.

Why?

The equal signs are the transcription error.

You just don't... You stop caring about the previous word as the final letter is getting tapped in.

You're just...

I told you guys this yesterday at the meeting, but I have to tell people listening to the podcast.

My favorite fucking phrase I've seen in any of the Epstein leaks is he was emailing with Noam Chomsky and Noam Chomsky sent him some little blurb about like some, just some.

Like you know, Noam Chomsky is a genius, but it was just some like surface level analysis.

And Epstein replies, you revel in complexity.

And that is the fucking the most the most pretentious bullshit response I've ever heard.

It's so fucking funny.

You said you and your friends use it as shorthand now for like.

Yes, someone will like yeah, i use it.

Last night thing, a friend of mine was like i had a really good dinner.

I made some chili and i put it over pasta and i said you revel in complexity.

If we named our podcasts, that would probably be this episode's title.

That's true, pretty good, oh my lord.

Yeah, interesting times we live in at the moment, but thankfully there are still video games we can use to try and block out the noise for a couple of seconds before we go back to take a shit in the toilet, open up our smartphones and are infected once more.

Um uh yeah, hopefully we gave casey some ideas there.

I feel like we just mentioned every great game for the past 20 years.

But you know sorry casey, sorry that was the end of that, was not really your question, but hopefully we got some good answers in there.

Uh, thanks for listening to podcast.

We'll uh be back in a second with a second half, or i will, and uh, tyler glale and edmund mcmillan talking about eugenics.

A couple of bit of housekeeping first.

The?

Uh don't forget to catch up on all our game of the year podcasts and videos and whatnot.

Um, we will have some uh interesting videos coming up this month on noclip too.

I don't think it'll be up by the weekend.

We'll see maybe jeremy's working on a Cool video essay about climbing and games, sort of inspired by Karen, but kind of mostly about other stuff that's come out in the past couple of years as well, or at least tying a bunch of that together.

I know Frank, we've got a meeting later today about the finishing up on your DDR project, which has been super cool.

Over on Noclip Uno.

The fourth episode of our Disco Elysium franchise all about Arsh the Alexander Rostov show, basically is now available to watch.

That guy is just one of the nicest people to sit and listen to.

So just, it's really galling to interview somebody in your language and for them to be their second language, maybe third, and them to be better at it than you are.

Something else.

Jeremy, you must have enjoyed editing those parts of his his interviews too, right?

Yeah no i, i one of the like maybe strong contender for the coolest person i've ever seen and heard speak in in my entire life um, just like effortlessly.

The thing i always say is that people i love who are really into art are people who talk about like, high and low culture, highbrow and lowbrow in the exact same way.

Like there's no like yeah, There's no like oh, like Ozu's up here and like Michael Bay is down here.

It's just like all movies.

And Rostov talks about, you know, like John Singer Sargent, in the same way he talks about Planescape, Torment and Fallout and all these things.

And I just think it's so beautiful the way he just has this very pure appreciation for everything and unbelievably articulate and insightful perspective into these, into his own creative process and into the art of other people.

Yeah, super cool stuff, um.

So episode four, all on art available now.

Episode five um, which is called uh collapse, is the uh.

Uh basically runs you all the way up until the launch of the game in uh in 2019 and sort of um.

The way i have explained it is that the first four episodes are largely the things that went right and the last two episodes are what went wrong with Disco Elysium.

So yeah, episode five is available for early access people right now.

And we'll be getting that out publicly at episode six in the next couple of weeks.

I was editing it until late last night, episode six, the final one.

And it's coming along pretty good.

I'm actually going to try and see if I can get it out of my edit pipeline by Friday, because I feel like I've made good progress on it.

And the sixth one's sort of what happened afterwards when Helen Rostov and Robert Kervitz were fired.

And you know, as importantly, what happened to the rest of the people who were working on those games as well.

The few who were left at Zaum and the many many, many who were either fired or left the project at various times.

Hopefully there's some lessons to be learned from this six part series.

We got bunches of stuff in the pipeline, which we'll tell our patrons about.

If you're a patron, go check out our patron show, our latest one, and you'll learn all about those.

And uh yeah, that's the.

That's the first part of the pod for the week.

Thanks, gents.

You guys up to anything mad this week?

Uh, i have a lot of work and tax stuff and i'm going to dice next week, so i need to get ahead of a bunch of editing.

Um, before i go uh, i don't know what i'm doing a workshop at dice and then probably just trying to hit up some developers.

Maybe i'll do some interviews.

We'll see you guys up to much this week, not really.

I wish i'm doing this video essay that i'm psyched about, the climbing one i've.

I've been letting it.

I was waiting for karen to come out, but i've been thinking about this for weeks.

So i have uh, i have a script for it and i've put a lot of thought into it and i'm excited about it.

So i'm making that this week wicked sick hitting round one at all this week.

Frank yeah, i was.

I was there yesterday, uh.

So uh yeah, i hit a new what is it?

Level 12.

I'm able to full, clear songs, So like.

So keep pushing myself higher and higher on Thursdays.

I've been, I wasn't working out, but literally it's that like it's, I have gym buddies, TDR buddies.

I meet with different friends.

So yeah, it's, it's cool getting, I have, it's cool.

Just keep it climbing higher and higher in DDR.

And like, now I'm thinking about, I need to get the right footwear for it.

Like that's, that's cool.

Yeah, so it's – I could – yeah.

Are there special kicks?

Do people wear certain things?

The Nike free runs are the most popular.

I noticed – so you need something that's lightweight.

You need like a running shoe.

The key thing for me, I play in vans, is you need to be able to feel when you're hitting the pad.

Okay.

Yeah, so that's –

I like Vans, though, so I wonder if there's a perfect shoe for Vans.

And then the other thing is my friend rescued a $90 metal DDR pad from Camp Pendleton.

Someone was moving and was selling it.

So my friend is going to repair that pad and then give it to me.

So within a month or less, I'm going to have a DDR, a metal, like a $500 value pad at home.

That's awesome.

You should get Vibrams, the, like, toe shoes, and show up to round one wearing those.

My friend told me he got, like, karate, like, kung fu shoes that are, like, super thin.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, like, so.

Like ninja shoes.

You can climb on walls with them and stuff.

Yeah.

Backflip off the fucking pad when you're done.

Yeah, so it's, yeah, so it's just exciting.

Just like, as you keep going higher and higher, it's like, oh my God, it's a whole new tier of tech and stuff to learn.

But it's been very, very fun.

Love it.

You have reached level 100 DDR fan.

Welcome to the prestige level.

We are looking forward to continuing following along with your continuing journey through the many layers of DDR fandom.

That's a pod for this week, except it's not.

We're back in just a second with my interview with Edmund McMillan and Tyler Glale.

All about Mugenics.

Hey, folks, just a little bit of housekeeping here before we jump into the interview.

First of all to let you know that during this chat we talked about the Adobe animate situation which I guess you know in typical podcast form, was somewhat resolved a couple of hours after we were talking.

So we're basically bitching about the fact that they were going to Adobe was was canceling access to animate in like a year and we're going to support it and all this stuff.

And Mugenics is a game that uses Flash.

You know, Edmund's been working in Flash his whole life.

Binding of Isaac was developed in Flash.

So, yeah, they obviously had lots to say about it.

Some of that is now a moot point because Adobe have somewhat reversed their position on that.

So I just wanted to get out ahead of that.

And yeah otherwise, just to give you a little bit of backstory on Mugenics, in case you don't know about Mugenics, you've never seen the trailers or gameplay, or you didn't watch our preview over on Noclip2, for shame.

Go check that out.

It's a game from Edmund McMillan who's famous for Super Meat Boy Binding of Isaac.

A bunch of games.

We've done multiple documentaries with Ed.

Over on Noclip, we did one going through all of his games.

We did a special documentary on Gish, of course, with him and Alex.

This is a game with him and Tyler Glale.

It's been in development for many, many years.

It is a turn-based isometric game, combat game, uh sort of like a into the breach or something like that, and also a cat breeding game in between.

Uh the runs, because you're basically doing sort of roguelike runs of this, um turn-based strategy stuff with the cats uh, in the sort of signature style of edmunds, um art art as well.

So uh, sorry for the banging behind me that is uh, some uh friends who are putting up barriers to stop all these skunks that have been living under my house for the past few weeks.

I'm usually fine with skunks, but they've started to fight um and just like spray each other, which then just comes through the floorboards.

So you know, all action over here.

Anyway, we're not here to talk about skunks, there's a drill.

We're here to talk about cats and eugenics and we're gonna bitch about adobe a little bit too, but you know They walked it back a little, you know for now.

We'll see what happens.

Enjoy the interview.

Hey, folks, I'm here with Tyler Glale and Edmund McMillan.

Mugenics is coming out pretty soon.

We're all sitting here sort of either having our lunch or mid lunch.

I have I have a bagel here with some fried chicken on it.

Tyler, what are you walking?

I got these bagels with smoked salmon and capers. beautiful that's a what a what a fancy man lunch it's uh yeah he's taking care of him you see i ran out of caviar sorry well you know it at this stage in development where you guys are like what a week away from launch that's um that's some self-care that i think you need ed how are you how are you doing i'm doing i'm i'm fat and i'm happy where did your hair go i i know i know i it was too itchy i took it off Oh, yeah, you did have a wig on for the stream prior to this, right?

I had a focaccia.

He insists that was his actual hair.

Yeah, it was.

Oh, okay.

It was my hair.

I had a focaccia and egg sandwich.

Oh, nice.

Okay.

Beautiful.

It was delicious.

We're fancy men.

We're all having our fancy.

Well, I'm not.

I'm having a bagel with fried chicken.

It was air fried.

So, you know.

It's an interesting combination.

That's healthier.

You got to get it.

So how has the past like four or five months been?

We obviously did a preview on Noclip 2 back in fall of last year.

Mugenics is just about to go out the door.

It seemed like there was a lot of game there already, but then you were talking game about adding a bunch more in.

Have you played it?

Have you played any latest stuff?

I've not played since early December.

You should update and see, because it'll look.

I was impressed.

The uh we had this is like we had a crunch, like right before.

We were like okay, we got to get this shit out and it was a polish, a polish crunch, which i guess is kind of continuing now, but it slowed down and uh, a few people just went crazy with the amount of polish that have been has been added and it just is very smooth.

Yeah, what's what type of polish you're talking?

Like animation graphics?

Yeah, like transitions, like little wiggly things.

I think Marty re Marty very recently reanimated the cat's default walk cycle, which I noticed it.

And I'm like, wait, is that new?

Cause it's one of those things where it's like it's you, you see it and you're like something's different, but it also just looks like a catwalk cycle.

So it's exciting like this.

There's a lot, there's lots of that.

I've been trying to compliment all the additions because we got an intro fully going in there.

And I was like well, I want it, has it's like a Simpsons intro and it has like a little couch gag at the end.

That changes all the time.

Initially I was like I want to do a hundred different endings, and then it turned into 200 different endings.

And then Tyler pointed out that's, you know, since it's at the end, no one's going to even know like.

They're going to see it once and they're going to, they're going to pass it.

And the next time they do it.

Um and uh.

So I randomized some things in the beginning and And then some things in the middle, and then some things in the ending, and then a hundred more of those.

So there's like there's hundreds and hundreds of different variations and I'm still doing those because I want to do more for the title screen, pause screen and all that sort of stuff.

Wow.

Well, since we're on the conversation of animation, you guys got an interesting email from Adobe in the past couple of days.

Oh, yeah.

Everybody did.

Yesterday, actually.

So they're discontinuing, is it, Adobe Animate?

Or are they killing it entirely?

This is obviously what Flash sort of turned into, I guess.

They're not taking it away from anybody.

They renamed Flash to Animate at some point.

But they will no longer support it ever again.

Yeah, and after a year, I don't think you can reinstall it anymore from their official things.

Oh, boy.

Have they been supporting this?

No.

Not really.

Not really, but, like, supporting it enough to keep it running on newer computers.

But, yeah, it's sad.

I don't know like Adobe has programs that fucking nobody uses, and yet Flash is the one that they're discontinuing.

Yeah, tons of people use flash.

Like it might not seem like it.

If you aren't in games or animation like you don't, you might be like oh flash, isn't that that old thing is?

Yeah well, they renamed it to adobe animate because uh, people uh associate flash with like old internet or whatever.

But a bunch of tv shows still use it.

Most adult swim shows are animated in flash.

Oh wow, a lot of games are have their art done in flash or are even made entirely in flash, like um, let's see among us had its art made in flash.

It's a unity game, but they did.

The iron flash.

Uh, let's see.

Um, the friday night pumpkin obviously is just made in flash.

The binding of isaac smiling friends is animated mostly in flash, except for the 3d and stop motion stuff.

My little pony friendship is magic yep.

A lot of network TV shows are made in Flash, or partially or fully in Flash.

Newgrounds.com.

Everything that Behemoth makes is animated in Flash.

Castle Crashers was coded in Flash.

Beautiful action script to the rest.

I'm assuming that is Nightmare Cops also Flash?

I'm assuming Nightmare Cops is also the same 2.0 set that Tom's always used.

I don't think he's gone to Flash action script 3 yet.

I think he's still on action script 2.

That's crazy.

And crucially, they have it working with the behemoth stuff, so it doesn't matter.

And, and crucially, meugenics is like animation pipeline.

Uh, all goes through adobe as well.

Right, our animation is made in flash, but uh, the game itself is like a normal, like c plus plus right, like an actual game engine that runs fine.

So which of you is more freaked out by this?

I don't think everybody's freaked out.

It's just fucking stupid.

It's more like angry.

It's dumb.

They can just go open source and say, hey, you can have this after we're done with it.

There's no reason to not do that.

Yeah.

I mean, maybe somebody probably will.

If they did that, nobody would have any issues with this whatsoever.

Right.

We would probably – everybody would just keep paying Adobe to be like oh, thank you for making this open source.

I'm going to keep paying you 600 a year for the other shit, just because it means so much to everybody who's working on it.

Yeah.

When they're just discontinuing it and in the future it looks like the only way to actually use it is going to be a fucking pirated version.

Yeah.

Cracking it.

Yeah.

Like the good old days.

Get your fireworks crack.

Dreamweaver crack.

I don't, I don't like, I like, I don't like the idea of working on with professional software that people spend time and effort and money to create that I am making money with.

I like supporting like the people that make that software.

So I've always paid for flash except for when I was a teenager and couldn't afford it.

Um, but I've always paid, like I've been paying Adobe $600 a year for like 15 years now.

It's fucking ridiculous.

Um, and they're getting rid of like the most unique piece of software they have, the only one that doesn't actually have a good replacement.

There's tons of replacements for photoshop and after effects, like there's a list of things that do basically the same thing.

As all of those, there's nothing that does exactly what flash does.

Um, there's nothing that does even like a half of what flash does, because flash does a whole bunch of different things.

So people are like, oh well, you can animate in this.

I was like yeah, but that's different.

That lets you animate, but it doesn't let you assemble, organize the like, structure your hierarchies in this way.

It doesn't let you associate uh code with certain frames or whatever.

Or it's like, oh well, you can also draw a vector art illustrator.

You know like yeah, but you can't then animate it.

Like there's just flash is like a giant, like cohesive thing that does a whole bunch of things.

Uh, that is like accidentally, really good for structuring our free games.

So if we have to switch to a pirated version in the future, which is looking like that's the only option because they don't want to support it anymore um, then there's no reason to keep paying adobe 600 a year for that.

It's crazy to think what like they're gonna do on, like you said, like adult swim tv shows, where they're obviously not going to be able to crack something.

Like i wonder, are they as their alarm bells going off like we need to produce something?

We need to?

You know, they're just gonna crack, i don't know, they're just gonna crack it and they're just not gonna say, i mean, at some point, at some point, like this is my philosophy on like on, on like piracy for software for games is that there is absolutely zero moral like downside if the thing is not available for sale anymore.

Yeah, like i don't care, like i there, i have no, No qualms about like pirating an old, like NES game that is not for sale anywhere.

I don't have any qualms of when Adobe says that Flash is done and they're not supporting it anymore.

All right.

I still want to use Flash.

What's the option?

What are my options to keep using the software that's actually useful?

Oh, well, there's only one option, you say.

It'll be interesting to see.

There's going to be no response, but it'll be interesting to see if there is, and be nice if they could.

But what do you think there are?

Do you think there are like two or three people at that company who even know how to update that piece of software?

It hasn't been updated in forever.

It's not supported.

No, it's got the same bugs that it had way back when it was Macromedia Flash, like the same weird issues with the vectors.

I've literally like pointed I've diagnosed the bugs in Flash for Adobe before and like talk to a customer support guy and like OK, we'll fix this eventually and it's still not fixed.

I literally like I have.

I found the way that Flash corrupts Flash files, like the FLA files.

If you do things in a certain way, I found exactly what it does to corrupt them.

And I figured out how to fix that with a Python script that loads the file and clears the thing that's causing it to crash.

If they open sourced it, the program would get better.

There are so many people that would love to fix all this nonsense that's in it.

Fix all these bugs and crashes.

They would have goodwill.

People would still want to associate with.

I mean, I don't know if people still want to associate with Adobe.

But this is a hypothetical.

They're never going to do that because they're Adobe.

But that's what should happen.

If there's a programmer at Adobe that has all the source code for Fletch and just wants to leak that on Pirate Bay or whatever, they would be a hero.

Yeah.

I'm guessing this is better to happen now than a year ago, though.

Would you have been in panic stations?

It wouldn't have mattered.

No, yeah.

I mean, like Tyler has mentioned, the death of it is really when next Windows comes out and doesn't support anything.

And it forces you to every new computer only has that.

And now you can't.

Yeah.

You'd have to get an old computer and an old version of Windows and never update it.

And then you'd be able to use Flash again.

Onto the happier things.

Then um, or maybe not, as it were, how are you feeling about launch next week?

I mean, it's a, a game you guys have been working on for a very long time.

Um, i was surprised how much of it was in the game, you know, when i was playing it five, six months ago, even earlier when, when you gave me code originally.

Um, how are you feeling about it now?

And and also when it's out?

Is that 10 or do you have stuff that isn't making release, that you're going to be slipping in after the fact?

There will definitely be updates.

The game's complete.

There won't be no content updates for a while because the game has everything in it, but there will be bug fixes and polish, because the game is just huge.

We've had our private beta with 50 to 100 people in it for the last year and a half and we've caught So many of the like bugs and issues and consistency things and typos from that beta test that the game is very solid.

But there's just so there's an inhuman amount of combinations of things in the game.

So there's always going to be stuff that's like oh, what are these?

Two things should interact this way, but they interact that way instead.

And it's like okay, some of these are judgment calls where it's like is this character a rock or not?

Yeah.

Like some, some people would argue that this character is a rock.

So should this character be tagged as a rock or like this ability and this ability have a have an odd combo that doesn't make a lot of sense, but it makes sense if you know the like, like the pedantic internal workings of the abilities.

So then it's like okay is the, Do we just have to tool tip it differently, or do we have to adjust the behavior slightly?

Like it's a lot of stuff like that and that's going to go on basically forever.

Yeah, it's – yeah.

It's because it's got like – I don't want to compare it to Dwarf Fortress, but the stories that come from it will be very Dwarf Fortress-y because there's so much interaction.

And a lot of it when – so right now, for the past – over three weeks, a little over three weeks um, we've had we have a review discord.

So people who are reviewing the game, if they have questions or find bugs or whatever else, they can ping us directly and, like tyler was saying, it's like somebody will point out something like doesn't this work logically?

Or they'll say, is this a bug?

And then we'll have to be like no, it's not a bug because that that unit is technically considered a poop.

It's a poop, but it's because there's a poop inside of it.

You can visibly see a little poop controlling it.

So then it has to be a poo, like that sort of stuff.

It's just like and I could only imagine at launch it's going to be like.

You know, I I got knocked across the screen and then a bird hit me.

That knocked me back and hit my guy.

And then my guy retaliated and he healed me.

What is that a bug?

And it's like, no.

Yeah.

So then, is so then the?

The issue is not like fixing the bug, but it's.

Is it like signposting that stuff, or or do you just, to kind of like, live in the chaos?

Yeah.

Right.

It's different for everyone.

Sometimes it.

Sometimes it's actually it's a consistency issue where it's like oh, this behaves one way in one situation, in a different way in a different situation right, and i just gotta make sure that figure out which one of those was the correct one and adjust appropriately and then run fuzz testing overnight to make sure that that change doesn't cause a crash in some other system down the like that is.

That is the the tough part about this, but like and it's, it's hard to um, It's a little bit overwhelming sometimes because it can seem like there's a lot of that, but people are playing hundreds of hours of this game and reporting three or four issues like this over the course of their playthrough.

So quantitatively it's not a lot.

You're you're feeling good about the sort of consistency of it.

It's not like a house of cards where one little thing happens and the rest of it falls apart.

A lot of it is stuff that only i will notice too.

Like okay, we'll be playing in the stream and we'll be like oh, that ability, uh should have done this and nobody would notice that in the actual release.

They wouldn't hit their, they wouldn't notice that that's an issue.

It's like oh, that didn't counter attack the rock or whatever.

Um, like people won't notice this stuff um, as a bug when they're playing.

But i will notice that and i'll try to do my best to fix it.

Or sometimes people will post a clip of some crazy thing they did and i'll just be like there's a thing in the corner doing something weird that you didn't notice that i have to go fix now Outside of like you know issues with the, you know bugs within the game or things like that.

Is there anything else you guys are worried about with like I don't know, like maybe the messaging or like what people's expectations are?

You've been out there like pretty consistently for the past few months.

You know doing gameplay streams.

You know there's a video, I think, that IGN or somebody published like the first 10 minutes or something like that.

I've seen a bunch of these videos go up and obviously did a preview with us as well.

Do you feel pretty good about what people should expect, or do you suspect there is a wider audience of people who maybe won't know what this thing is yet?

Yeah, it's really weird to be in this situation where The fans that we have that get the game, who are extremely excited for the game and very vocal about it, are just running rampant everywhere.

And then you'll get a post where, like you said, IGN did a whole thing on the game, right?

And they even said it was like possible game of the year this year.

And then they posted something where it was like the top top games to look for in February.

And we're not on the list.

Oh, really?

No.

And then there's a it's like more mainstream sites still like we're just we're way under the radar.

Like it's still obscure enough and weird enough.

Which is funny because half of IGN is playing the game right yeah, it's like somebody just didn't get the memo.

Yeah, like they asked for extra keys just to play it, not even just for reviews.

They're like yeah, we want to play it.

The listicle department is off.

Yeah, you'll go in and you'll see.

And you'll go to the comments.

The top comments is like where's Mugenics?

And it's just like oh, that feels nice.

But it's still very apparent that there are a lot more people who have no fucking clue what this game is and I'm excited for them to know about it.

I mean, it's just going to take yeah, somebody showing them basically, and or catching wind of the, the name or or whatever else.

But um, response has been phenomenal, like really really really, really positive.

I think people are.

I think i was talking about the other day um, when we initially did the trailer where we with um, with meat canyon, we're just showing the cat, like getting torn apart, basically throughout the thing.

I thought oh, this will just get people wondering what this game's all about.

But I don't think it did much of anything.

And we had to kind of like regroup and be like, well, what are we going to what are we going to do?

Like it's that that didn't work.

We got to like do something to sell this game.

And that's when we decided I'm just going to start doing we're going to do Let's Plays.

We're going to do Let's Plays and we're going to just show the game, because the only way to like convey what this is is for people to watch like two or three Let's Plays.

Yeah, right.

And understand.

I've sometimes seen comments of people that are like I didn't know what this was from the trailer, but your comment explaining you just sold it to me.

They should just do that as the trailer.

I'm like well, but I don't like you want us to make a two-hour, let's play the trailer or whatever.

Like i mean well, that's what we did and it works.

Basically it was working.

So that's tricky right, because it's like one of those is a captive audience and the other one is maybe a passing audience, and it's hard to grab somebody by the shoulders and say okay, let me explain this thing to you.

Yeah, so the trailers are meant to grab attention.

They're not necessarily meant to explain the game.

Um, for a game like this, where so much of the gameplay is like the stuff going on in your head as you're playing it, That's hard to portray in a 90-second trailer.

Yeah, it's very difficult.

People want to see flashy things in a trailer.

They want to see how the game plays.

But the game plays by clicking buttons and then clicking on the map and having the cats do things.

So we can show the animations.

They're cool-looking.

We've shown the Tormentor in most of our trailers because it's a very crowd-pleasing boss when people first encounter it.

But you don't have context for how that fight plays.

It would take... it would take 15 minute a video to like give you that type of context.

So it's been fun to kind of think that way though.

It's, it's interesting.

Cause I'm usually the.

The business side of things is like you you use what you can, learn what you can as you go.

But like I think I've learned a lot with with this and trying to figure out like, how to sell this game, because I didn't sell the binding of Isaac.

I just put it out and people sold it for me and uh, we're trying really hard to have an initial push and and hopefully that wave can then carry for for quite a while once people like start start playing and stuff.

But it's, it's tough because the appeal of this game isn't even realized in the first 15 hours, like the real appeal comes after that, when the game expands and you start to realize wait a minute.

Every single run I've done has been completely different.

And I have some say over what happens.

Like I can think about.

I can leave the game, think about an item.

I just got the rest of the day and plan it.

Plan an adventure that I want to use with this item and where I want to go.

That's really difficult to explain.

Even with a few, let's plays.

You don't.

The freedom that you have in the game is really hard to kind of convey and, And when you explain it, people don't believe you.

Every run's different.

Every run is unique.

The game starts like it's total.

And it lasts for hundreds of hours where every run is different.

People are like. i don't know that sounds kind of impossible i'll believe it when i see it like okay i guess it's like a weird melody yeah yeah it is though like well it's it's like weirdly like a sandboxy game but like sandbox games are usually like very open like entirely open almost like here's the tool set do what you want whereas when you're playing like you know the the contemporary roguelike or roguelite or whatever doesn't have that you know it's much more on rails this game is so yeah it's like the cone just keeps getting wider from the start and like you said you you kind of do need to play like a significant amount of this game to realize that the headspace you're supposed to be in i guess when you're playing it yeah there's like very few there i mean there are some but there are very few roguelite roguelikes that um that like do achieve that promise of, of like infinite replayability and every runs different and unique and all this crazy, unexpected, interesting stuff can happen.

I think probably like in the last 10 years, it's, it's basically, I think Noida does that very well.

Like that is.

That is one of the best ones I've ever played, where it's not so much that every run is different, but just that that game opens up in such a interesting way and and so much unexpected stuff happens and physics kind of gives you a lot of that for free in a way.

Right like, and the difference well, i mean it's insidious the way your game is too, i guess.

Yeah, noida has a lot of like interconnecting interactions that happen and like, like the game opening up as you understand it better.

Um, i love that game, it's amazing, but Yeah,

There's not a lot of other roguelikes that really do that.

Cause like stuff like uh, stuff like Hades is somewhat like you can force whatever build you want in Hades.

So by the, at the end of the game in Hades, every run is mostly the same.

I mean, maybe, maybe you'll get 50% pink damage instead of 50% like yellow damage.

But like for the most part it like the variety comes from the weapon you choose at the start in that game.

And then that's kind of it.

Um, Not a bad game or anything.

Not saying.

No, but your guys' game is sort of orders of magnitude larger in terms of just how different things can be.

Ultimately, in Hades, you are, you know, fighting the same stuff in the same manner and, and yeah, picking your, picking your poison a little bit, as as you make your way through it.

Um, how are you guys feeling about?

You know?

The other side of marketing obviously is is getting them wish lists up.

Um, i saw you were.

Are you creeping into the top 10 most wish listed?

We're 85 right, 85?

Okay, i missed the digit, i missed the decimal point.

There's um yeah, wish list.

Wish lists are weird.

Um, I appreciate that.

That's nice that you thought that.

Yeah.

We're pretty high up there for the wish list velocity ranking, which is how many wish lists you're currently getting every day.

Like we're in the top.

I think we're number 50 on that list now.

Nice.

But it's going up every day.

We're getting more and more wish lists every day.

We hit a new record yesterday.

Excellent.

For wishlists in one day.

Probably because of the Madman stream, but it's still holding up.

It's still holding pretty high today as well.

And yeah, so our wishlist numbers are good.

But ultimately, like when I think about sort of lots of games these days and especially games um, that you've worked on as well, Edmund uh, the the long tail of this is probably a lot more critical.

Like you want to get that, that good velocity at the door, but like people resonating with the game.

I worry less with the long tail.

I think, I think the long tail is there, especially because we're going to continue to support the game and work on DLCs.

And, and you know, like I said, it's been over three weeks that reviewers have reviewed it and we know of one person who's beaten the game.

Um right, so it's gonna.

There's a few that are close, like there are a few that are in act three.

Yeah um, it's gonna take some time.

What's the hour count?

Do we think?

The lowest reviewers, the lowest the reviewer?

The reviewer who beat it beat it at around 150, but he was going uh, hell for that.

Yeah yeah yeah, he was looking at nothing else, He was beelining towards it.

He was in the fan discord before the before the the review discord.

So he was definitely like reading up on it ahead of time and understood the game almost immediately.

So I don't think he had too much trouble with it.

You know, it's a strategy game.

If you understand how to do the strategy, you can do the strategy.

Right.

But there's, there's of course more there.

It's funny.

Cause he posted that I beat the game, blah, blah, blah.

I'm, I'm, I'm doing my review, blah, blah, blah.

And then he, Pete keeps popping back up saying, look, I look at what I did.

Look at this, look at this.

It's just like, it keeps going.

One of the, one of the most awesome things is that you can have a game.

That's that people will be in anywhere from 150 to 250 hours and then still want to keep playing.

Right.

Like they don't want to stop.

That is, that is, um, There's very few games where that's the case for me.

It's like Elden Ring.

I beat Elden Ring.

I'm like, I just want to play this game again.

It took me 100 hours, but this game is just too good.

Elden Ring's never as good the second time, but it is very rare for a game to be that large, have that much stuff and then still feel like you're not done yet and that you want to keep.

Can you keep playing the eugenics post like credits, i guess, or do you need to rerun?

You can yeah, i mean there's yeah there's, there's there.

We don't want to, you know, obviously.

I mean yeah um whatever, florian got 100 on his save file finally at like 500 hours in it, and that's an underestimate because he keeps reloading his save file from a backup.

Um okay, so Which he said he did.

He said he did and then he's like I'm sorry, half of my bugs are probably related to me forgetting that I did that.

What's the weirdest or dumbest achievement you've put in?

We don't put in any dumb achievements.

Oh, it's only progress achievements in the game right now.

We had a list of like 100 fun achievements to put in the game, like do these things in this specific way.

But, you know, time...

It's a lot of work to hook all that stuff up, I guess.

It's a lot of work to hook up a bunch of random shit.

You also have to localize it.

Not a lot of people care about those types of achievements.

Maybe it's more fun to discover some of the weird things you can do on your own, rather than oh, I did something cool and now an achievement pops up telling me I did something.

Yeah, that's how I found out that you could like ride around on the robots in our craters, because there was literally an achievement for like jump on a rocketeer and kill someone.

And we were going to do that sort of stuff to like nod to a few more niche things to do.

But I mean, yeah, I think a lot, a lot.

We've run into this little soft wall for the past three weeks where it's like wouldn't it be cool to do this?

And then it's does this involve text?

Oh, really?

Yes.

And that's because of what?

Localization?

Localization.

Because we're launching with, you know, what, three or four languages?

Five.

English, French, Italian, Turkish, Spanish, Brazilian, Portuguese.

Well, there's six with English.

Oh, fuck.

English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian, Portuguese.

Look at us.

Wow.

Look at that.

The Brazilian Portuguese Reddit community will be fucking delighted.

I'm going to love it.

You don't want to turn on those guys.

I think they just delivered that one today, so I got to put that in the Steam build and get it approved.

But that was a new one.

That was a new one for me, though, too, because it's like having to consider...

Um, if I write, if I rewrite this, if I cause, I'll sometimes get wild hairs and be like I'm going to go through and just slightly change this NPCs dialogue because it'd be more funny that way.

And it's just like, this isn't worth it.

Yeah, it has to be sent out to six different teams.

This is not going to happen.

But yeah, this is the first game I've ever launched.

I mean, I guess Meat Boy had to be in a few different languages at launch.

It doesn't matter for Meat Boy.

But for this one it's like this is a considerable thing that we chose to do, because we really wanted everybody to be able to play it.

And it's a very text heavy game.

Right.

Well, in this game in particular, you can't play it if you can't read it.

Yeah.

There's no way to play this game if you can't read it.

So it's necessary to localize it.

So we're doing what we can from that, from the start.

Um, but there is a lot of like, there's, there's a lot of, um, do we need to localize this?

Do we need to localize that?

How to help?

How much does, does this matter?

Like there's um When a cat's intelligence is below zero and they encounter an event it switches to, like this caveman speak.

But it's like an auto-generated caveman speak where I'm piecing together words of the same length out of like sub-pieces of words that go up to five.

So like they're like two letter words would be like guh buh buh.

Like the five letter words would be like grunga and stuff like that.

And it'll just glue random pieces of that together.

And it sounds and looks hilarious in English.

And then I'm like I mentioned it to the localizers and they're like cave speak is different in different languages.

Oh, funny.

Yeah, yeah.

Brazilian cavemen.

There's Brazilian cavemen speak.

There's German cavemen speak.

There's Italian.

The Italian cavemen speak is pretty funny.

I had a screenshot of it, and it's like, It's really funny.

It's funny.

It's worth it.

It's worth doing like.

It's worth doing as much of that as possible.

Um the like, randomly generated, like team names that glue an adjective and a noun together, like that is difficult because every because um, some languages the, the gender of the noun matters.

That's not the case in english, but in spanish the gender of the noun matters because the adjective changes.

So i had to figure out a way to make that work and let the translators be creative with that.

Are you implementing it though?

Are you putting all that text into the game then?

Or is it like an XML file that you can load in or like, how does that even work?

The spreadsheet.

Just the spreadsheet.

So they can edit the spreadsheet and then hopefully it just gets ingested sort of as is.

Yeah.

They, they're editing their spreadsheets in Dropbox.

And then I have a script that copies it all into the, Oh, very cool.

The games folder and will copy any changes that I made to English into their folder and let them know what changed.

Right.

It's a little bit of a roundabout way, but they said they didn't know how to use the version control software.

So I'm going to try to not going to try to make them use that, but it's a good thing.

You can build tools as well.

That's that's uh.

Yeah, it saves a lot of time, especially here at the end.

So what what's left to do?

Is it?

Is it polished still?

Is it bug fixing?

Is it?

I mean, because you guys are like how many you're like days away from the launch at.

This is like a week, one week, one week.

Add the brazilian portuguese in, because they just delivered that today and it's not in the game yet.

I gotta do that, I got to – I have two minor gamepad navigation thingies to do.

Oh, yeah.

How did that go?

Because that was the thing you were sort of most afraid of when I last talked to you, is all the – because it's such a mouse keyboard game.

I was also trying to figure out how you were going to do it.

The plan for that worked pretty well.

Which was the first thing I did was – do left stick, moves a virtual mouse around and then a is right.

And that, and then B is right click.

Cause there are some of like.

There's a handful of like helper things on right click.

That is enough to play the entire game.

So anything that I miss with D pad navigation, cause that's the next step.

Um, you can just move the virtual mouse around.

So there's a lot of stuff like hover over these stats in the UI to get a tool tip.

The D-pad will not navigate the cursor to that.

So you can just navigate with the virtual mouse instead and it works fine.

The D-pad navigation means every menu there has to be like a mesh, like when you click, like a graph, like when you click down on the D-pad and the mouse will the virtual mouse will jump to this menu option and then this menu option.

Right.

And some of that can be automatic, but some of our menus are a little more not aligned options in a nice way.

So I have to specify it manually.

Um.

And then there's there's like 20 or 30 different like menu pains that needed D pad navigation hooked up to um like the.

Uh, the inventory grid needed its own thing.

And then, but after all that was in, it worked fine.

Um then it was a bunch of hotkeys for for certain common actions like opening the inventory or uh, um Yeah.

So it took, it didn't take as long as it originally thought because the virtual mouse works fine.

And did you have to do any work with the virtual mouse on, like you know?

Uh, it like snapping to stuff, or like the speed that it does based on what you're pushing it, or

I adjust the speed, but I don't snap it when you're moving it.

Okay.

Um, if you're targeting a spell when you're moving the virtual mouse in the battlefield Well, the speed is because the battlefield is tilted.

I don't know what angle it is, but it is.

It's tilted such that it's half, it's twice wider than it is.

But that's like a 30 degree angle, I think.

But or a 60 degree angle is one of it's one of those two.

But it's tilted that much.

And so the mouse doesn't move.

Like if you're moving the virtual cursor around the the Y axis of that is then tilted. half speed and then if you are hovering over a target like an enemy when you're trying to cast a spell it slows the mouse down to half speed again which makes it easier so like you're moving the virtual cursor around on the battlefield it will slow down as you're hovering over something so you're not going to overshoot it when you're when you're doing that and um that just works got it in last minute last minute um inserts speaking of actually edmund i remember i just realized that i never sent you my irish voice cat recordings so i was thinking about it too and i thought maybe you did there are so many submissions it's hard for me to remember because somebody did like i think it was either might have been a scottish cat but it still reminded me of you and i was like i wonder yorkshire which i think is yorkshire nice Um, yeah.

Who else have, uh, who else have, have you gotten in there?

Is there any, any more celebrity, any celebrity, celebrity cat voices you can tell us about?

Uh, not celebrity, celebrity traditional, but we got, um.

No, but celebrity by our standards, which is the most important thing.

Um, I think the latest ones are like Moist Critical and Jerma.

I saw Jerma.

Excellent.

Um, there, I mean, there's a, there's a few.

Yeah, yeah.

And then that one guy who won our contest.

Yeah, yeah.

The recorder.

Yep.

That's going to be a funny one.

Yeah, he submitted his.

I got to put his up there too.

Yeah, we've been doing daily streams with daily contests where we have people do wacky things to get codes or merch boxes.

And one of them was to meow and be included in the game.

Oh, fantastic.

There were three that were so good that we had to like just figure out a way to get them in the game.

And that was one of them was doing recorder sounds um to make noises and we're doing that that was the winner of the yeah oh wow like did it sound like a cat or did it sound like no but that doesn't matter it's just a recorder i i i hope people understand when we pick that one we're like the contest was meow like a cat and the winner gets put into the game we want we want an oddball shit like yeah right because that is that is cool to get the like recorder cat when you're good like that's way it's way cooler to get that than it would be to get another guy going meow yeah or even like yeah like an accent or whatever like it's you need you need a few of those oddball ones for people to latch on to and that was like yeah that's That's creative and interesting.

We did a low, we picked a lo-fi one too.

It sounds like this really weird garbly type sound that sounded neat.

And then one guy who, um, we also asked was, he just did, he just sounded like an anime character.

Like, okay, we will go to fight now.

Like, and so he did a bunch of those where it's just like somebody basically just speaking.

That was one of those ideas that I pitched earlier.

I was like, we should have a cat that does like the, I don't know exactly what the term they use for it is, but like the quippy. voice like whoa did i just cast a fireball oh yeah like cringy like cringy marvel like joss whedon joss whedon whatever style joss whedon speak cat like whoa i just cast a fucking fireball did i just did you just see that yeah he's right behind me love it we didn't put that one in the game people would would um would throw the cat away yeah good point yeah you just let it die and hope for hope for a hope for a pickup on the way there are so many there are so many fun cameos though but yeah you can still toss me your your okay i'm doing it i'm doing it then i'm recording it after this i was i was uh i got my i got my my box as well so um i ordered the uh what was it called the it's actually it's actually blocking the sun from hitting me in the face at the moment up there my my little uh boxed copy of of uh the merch box yeah the merch box yeah look at it yeah there is no game in it yes but there's lots of awesome stickers and plushies and the box itself looks like some looks like some cool shit.

Um, it was pretty cool.

It's pretty cool.

I mean it was yeah, it was.

I wanted to be able to print something out because you know, way back in the day, for for meat boy I made comics that I would send to press and stuff.

And um, and I tried to do the same thing with with me genics way back then, made a comic and gave it out of packs.

And I liked doing that sort of stuff.

Um, and this was just a way to, since I had, like a jayvon, like he has contact with the manufacturers, and i thought hey, we'll just do this thing.

And since we print up, print a bunch of them, then we can also just let fans order them if they want, but then i can also just send them to people.

Yeah we, we gave out a bunch.

During our pax panel up in seattle as well.

There was the uh, we had a bunch of people come up afterwards that were like you know, there's the usual like oh, you know, nice to meet you, and i've been a fan.

We had a whole group of people that were just like yo, you got any of those comics left you?

It's like, did you just come here for the comic?

Maybe you did.

Yeah, there you go, give him, give me some, give me some sick.

There you go.

Yeah, a little pile of them right there.

Um, a couple of little questions before i let you guys go on your merry way.

Thank you for making the time, a week away from launch, to to catch up with us here.

Um, important stuff to talk about.

Uh, first of all edmund, any new uh pinball machines since uh, i was last at your place?

Yes No, significant would be Evil Dead, which is a phenomenal pinball machine.

Like an old school one?

No, this is new.

This is a new, very impossible to find, limited edition pinball machine.

It's modern.

It's a wide body.

It plays like a cross between Godzilla and Twilight Zone.

It's just a really fun game.

And if you're a fan of Evil Dead, it's got such fanfare.

It's unbelievable.

It's one of my favorites for sure.

I also got The Shadow and Dracula, I think.

Okay, nice.

Which are 90 spins.

You've kept all your old ones though, right?

Do you ever cycle any out?

I'm going to be cycling some out.

Yeah.

But yeah, right now it's pretty full.

You usually cycle one for one when you get new ones, right?

Nice.

All right.

Let me let me let me know.

Maybe there's a maybe maybe I'd like to start my own collection.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, well, you have to get one.

You got to get one and then get tired of it and then we can switch.

Okay oh yeah, is that how it works?

Yeah, that's.

We just moved.

Um uh we i, we converted a like a barn outside into my studio and uh, it took like fucking five of us to get the nba jam cabinet and like it's like an og one.

It's just the monitor is like 400.

I don't know how heavy it is, but it's like the jump.

I highly recommend you get your hands on uh, because they, they have been remaking them.

Um, medieval madness um, Is that a pinball one?

Yes.

Okay.

Medieval Madness is probably the most approachable and infinitely replayable and fun.

It's probably considered the best pinball machine of all time by a lot.

Really?

Yeah.

Good for a kid as well?

Yes.

It was originally a Monty Python IP.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

And they couldn't get the rights.

So there's a lot of like remnants of Monty Python-ish stuff in it.

OK.

So it just comes off like Monty Python.

Like a foot comes down if you – No, more like very – actually like a holy grail, Monty Python.

Oh, cool.

Excellent.

I like it.

There's even like lines from the movie in it that I was like why are they talking about like shrubbery?

And then somebody is like – the nights you go turn up or whatever it's.

It's a, it's a.

Um, just enough that it's.

They don't have to pay them for it.

Okay so, like it's fun.

No, it's a lot of no unladen swallow gags in there.

Um, there may be one kind of you know what's crazy?

Tina fade does a voice in it.

Um really, before she was anything.

Um wow, she's just like of the valley girl princess maybe, or the jewish princess, i can't remember which one.

Not wow, there's a.

They have both types of princesses in there as well.

There's five.

There are five types of princesses.

Do you remember what the other three are?

Well, i think one of them's like um, like a, what's the word?

Like a cockney type?

Okay yeah, cockney princess.

Um, are you looking at the voices there?

Israel's like oh, you got me in the knickers.

Wow, if they ever do a new version, you could do the voiceover for the sixth one.

That's great.

You could be the sixth language.

Did you find out who Tina Fey is in that one?

It just says various damsels on Wikipedia.

She probably did both of the ones that I said.

Does Tina Fey and Andrea Farrell provide the voices of various damsels?

Yeah, there's a lot of damsels.

God, I hope Tina Fey did the Cockney one as well.

Yeah great, it's very possible.

Um, and then there's a.

Yeah, then there's a bunch of um of kings from different castles and there's a there's like a drunk king, there's a french snob um, it's hitting all the hitting all the cliches.

Yeah, it's fun, it's great.

What's it called again?

Medieval madness, Medieval Madness.

I'm a big Medieval Times fan, so this sounds down my... It's right up your alley.

I mean, almost every major pinball place will have a Medieval Madness because it's so good.

So if you get a free gold watch in San Francisco next time you head down there.

Where in SF is that?

It's right next to Amoeba Music.

It's behind it. oh right like around the hay of ashbury okay all right no i've never been there there's a good pinball place in sebastopol up here yeah um i forget what it's called but they have like 25 machines or something it's pretty good it's pretty good i think i think uh gold watch might have like close to 50 wow okay yeah and then there's the alameda pinball museum which has 130 or something crazy yeah i've still never been to california extreme either i need to head down there i i did that or do i um no i don't think so okay it was it was not what it was not it wasn't that good it was pretty shit when we went there everything it was super expensive and uh the pinball machines like i want to go and see an exotic pinball machine that i cannot find anywhere else and it was just a lot of the same old shit and it's more of a seller's market thing is it i don't know what it is I don't know what it is.

It was just a bunch of old guys who want to see each other once a year.

I think so.

I think it's just a gathering of that.

That's what PAX is going to be in about 10 years, man.

Yeah.

I haven't been to PAX in like 10 years.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

COVID kind of killed it, right, for a lot of people.

It did, yeah.

Yeah.

It was a killer.

And then last question, what's everyone's cat status?

Any new cats arrived?

I think I had a cat die since I last saw you, and then we have an outdoor cat who's trying to move in.

I thought you were going to say trying to die.

I mean, all outdoor cats are trying to die.

There was two of them, and one of them's disappeared.

So I think one of them has successfully died. uh we don't have a new cat over here but we have three new chickens oh you do you got the chickens in yeah we got three what you go for do you get any buff orpingtons man i don't know if danielle was here they're they're getting bigger now they're all i mean she always gets whenever there's like a new chicken uh we always get them as babies and um so they all look pretty similar but they're all weirdly weird, exotic, random freaks.

So brilliant.

You get the weird.

Yeah.

One of the, one of them is like this fluff, really fluffy kind of looks like your hair.

Like it's a gray, it's a gray fluffy one.

Um, and its neck is really fluffy.

Just looks odd.

It looks awkwardly large.

It's got like a medieval sort of, what do you call those neck frill things?

Um, and then one of them has like this crazy hair that like flops over the front.

Um, And the other one has like a – it's not there yet, but it's like a little wobble-gobble thing will get like really big and flop to the side.

Nice.

Emo chicken.

Yeah, those are the babies that we've recently had. beautiful eggs eggs eggs will be coming in uh how old are they are they still play pullets they're they're yeah they're not going to be producing eggs for a little while but uh the other one so we got we have four that are constantly producing eggs we actually have one we lost one to a hawk like it actually they fought and you know the hawk hawk one um and uh That was the elder one, the alpha of the group, which sucked.

And then we had a situation where what we believe was a weasel that we they stopped.

There's two the two alphas that they were fighting to be the leaders.

They decided that they were not going to sleep in the same coop with all the weird freaks.

They're like, we're regular chickens and we're going to sleep over here.

So they started sleeping in the corner and it was like they were sleeping leaning up against the fence and something came.

Something came through and ripped the neck of one of them jesus christ, just a chunk, like like gone.

And we're like, and it's just running around with this gaping hole and we're like, what the fuck do we do?

It was still alive yes, and it was just like to kill it.

What do we do?

What do we do like?

Do we like how much you pay for this and if, how much it was?

Just because it's going to cost a thousand dollars to fix this thing.

Like, what do we do?

And we're like, we like looked it up online or whatever else, and it just says chickens are extremely durable when it comes to flesh wounds.

Just keep it clean.

So we just got some like antiseptic spray and sprayed it on it.

It was looking gnarly and that was like a week, a week, a week ago.

And it's just still running around, still doing it.

It's never gonna grow feathers back there.

Okay, it's got a sick, it's got a cool scar.

Yeah yeah um, but yeah no, that one's still the boss, that one's still running around and doesn't let anybody fuck with it.

Did you get ptsd to when you used to work as like a roadkill?

Uh scooper, upper.

No, i think it's the opposite when, when you do that job for an extended period of time, you become like this calloused asshole, because i'm like my wife gave me shit, because the first thing i said was this is what happens to these animals when the kids are crying.

And I'm like, well, I'm sorry.

This is, this is, these are chickens.

Every fucking person in the world, including every animal wants to eat these things.

They are the best thing to eat.

Like it's going to happen.

We got a plan for this and all we can do is eat it.

Yeah.

You got, would you eat your own pet?

No.

Would you eat your own chicken?

I would not.

Would you eat your own cat?

Yes.

No, I wouldn't.

That's a different question.

Here we go.

I don't think I would eat a cat.

Final question, Mugenics developers.

What do you think a cat tastes like?

What age group is this for?

This podcast?

Yeah.

Not children.

Okay.

I know where your mind is going.

I don't think that.

Oh, OK.

I don't think predators usually taste very good.

Right.

Like, isn't that usually how it works?

Like you want to eat the animals that eat.

I've eaten plenty of child predators in my day and they taste great.

Wow.

There you go.

Start with the penis.

Yes.

Eat their power.

It's withered and unused.

It just slides off like peanut butter.

Yes.

Like a sort of a nice sashimi.

Yeah.

All right.

That's a good place to end this as any, I guess.

Mugenics.

We didn't even talk about its gameplay.

I'll do something at the top that explains what it is for people who don't.

You did a whole video.

We did a whole video.

If you don't know, where are you?

I'd like to think everybody who's listening to this podcast knows has taste and isn't like these other places that won't put us in the top fucking games.

There you go.

Month of the month of the one of the slowest possible game of the year.

Maybe all the other possible game of the years are coming out in February.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Resident evil could go either way with how resident evil has gone in the past.

Yeah.

Um, this thing called Romeo was dead or something.

I don't know what it is.

That is a Suda 51 game, I'm pretty sure.

Competition.

Which I don't think that those games usually go game of the year because they're just so weird.

But I mean, I guess we're talking about our game, which is also just so fucking weird.

It's weird in a different way, but grasshopper manufacturer are not making games to to appeal to everyone.

I don't think no more heroes was meant to be like a game of the year contender.

I, uh, I did play the shit out of that game when it came out when I was, like, 17 or whatever.

Yeah, good time.

I like Killer7.

I can buy M-rated games now and I can play it and I can be like, hey, mom, look at this on the TV.

Look at this game I'm playing.

And just, like, chop someone in half vertically and have, like, the blood fountain.

Like, that game was awesome.

Yeah.

Did you play Killer7?

Long time ago.

Did you play it, Tyler?

No. the vibe was the vibe was very very good and the gameplay was i i don't even think it was barely a game it was like that's yeah yeah that's kind of what no more like no more heroes what i remember from it like it from like the game design lens i remember being like this is really stylish and cool and has uh a fucking insane story great weapon great weapon and like the boss fights were good and then it just made you like pull weeds for an hour in between like the fun parts of the game yeah and it's like why is it doing this like is this like fill the space but like you know i do like games that do fucking weird shit like that even if like that it wasn't that part of the game wasn't very fun and i don't know how much it added to the game um i don't know i never played no more heroes two or three though they have such a way if there's a they brought out a book a number of years ago about like you know the first 15 20 years of grasshopper and it was like games that like never made it out of japan just absolutely insane games were like you're a butterfly who's fucking collecting webs or they just they like a million different like there was no rhyme or reason it was like he just made games based on his dreams or something and it was just like oh i guess that's what we're doing next we need that kind of stuff though yeah that's like the cool creative things that you can do absolutely in games yeah i don't know what else there's yeah there's a lot of games coming out in february mainly mugenics though but there you go mainly mugenics is coming out it's uh the latest mugenics like from edmund mcmillan and tyler glale gentlemen mugenics like games The first eugenics, you can just own eugenics if you want.

I don't know.

Are there any other eugenics games out there?

Pokemon.

Good point.

Yeah, that's it.

Nailed it.

Cockfighting and eugenics.

Is Fire Emblem that now?

I don't remember.

I don't play Fire Emblem, so I don't know.

People always talk about Fire Emblem like they're like breeding characters or whatever though.

I don't know if that's a dating sim thing or a eugenics thing.

See that?

That was behind the whole stream and I forgot to show it.

Love is love.

Even between two balls.

Two balls.

Three.

Paraplegics?

Once this, yeah.

What do you call it?

It's a sad situation.

All right, gentlemen, go make your video game.

We'll talk again in the not too distant, I hope.

Appreciate you chatting to me.

[Noclip Podcast Episode 266: Indie Game Highlights and the Future of Adobe Animate]-[Mewgenics Interview, Don't Stop, Girlypop!, Perfect Tides: Station to Station]

📋 Summary

Indie Game Deep Dives and the Future of Creative Tools

Indie Game Highlights

Chromatic Conundrum

Perfect Tides: Station to Station

Don't Stop, Girly Pop

Tearscape

Butcher’s Creek

The Adobe Animate Crisis

Conclusion: The State of the Industry

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Noclip Podcast Episode 266: Indie Game Highlights and the Future of Adobe Animate]-[Mewgenics Interview, Don't Stop, Girlypop!, Perfect Tides: Station to Station]

📋 Summary

Indie Game Deep Dives and the Future of Creative Tools

Indie Game Highlights

Chromatic Conundrum

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Deep Learning with ListenLeap

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