PRAGMATA, Samson, Dosa Divas Interview | Noclip Crewcast

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Hello friends, welcome to episode 276 of the Noclip Podcast.

We're all here.

The new crew, as it were.

The Soul J-Dog.

How you doing, Jeremy?

I'm doing excellent.

It's finally, it's spring here, but it feels like summer for the first time in like five months.

Good stuff.

It's getting warm out there.

That's what we like to hear.

No cap.

Similar thing happening in your neck of the woods, I hear.

Yeah, it's nice and sunny.

I got my shorts on.

Oh, shorts.

Love it.

It's about time.

Do you have any three quarter length shorts?

Is that a thing anymore?

Capri's.

Is that a Capri sun?

What's a Capri?

I don't work.

Like it goes to your, like between your ankles and your knees.

Oh yeah.

Okay.

I don't have any of those.

You don't have it.

Are those, are Capris baggy or are they like tighter?

Can you kind of go whatever flavor you want?

It's tough because there's cropped pants, which are, I would say, slightly longer than a capri.

Capris are not really in, but they were in when I was a kid.

Okay.

I'm Googling capris here.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, I like that.

Look yeah, what's the length differential between a capri and like um, like a, like a white guy in a trailer park, three-quarter length, short.

You know what i'm saying.

Like if you got a big pair of capris, could he pull them off?

Yeah, could you just like, could you just get a real good belt?

You know what i mean?

Just go xxl, hell yeah, just belt that shit up.

That's eventually going to come into vogue.

Is that you're going to just like?

You know size maxing or something we'll call it.

It'll be a very expensive trend, but we'll get through it somehow.

Frank Howley, how many pairs of Chico's Chico's, Chino's?

No, what are they called?

What are those?

What were the pants?

What did you say jinkos?

Is that what they're called?

Like the y2k, they're on like a grand theft auto print advertisement where it's like they're massive.

Uh, you know, on the bottom yeah, that's it.

How many pairs of those you have?

Zero, i don't.

I don't have any.

You don't have any.

Okay, all right well, that's been.

You can tell that no.

Caps is clearly the expert when it comes to trousers and maybe all fashion on this crew.

Um, if you're watching the video version of this this uh, I'm wearing a hoodie but it's from wisdom Montana, but it looks like if it says Montana at the bottom, but I just noticed on the camera.

It looks like I'm wearing like I've been playing a lot of I am Jesus Christ.

So it kind of looks like I'm just like a fan of wisdom.

You know what I mean?

But that's that's not really got the merch for wisdom.

That's a wisdom.

Yeah, I'm real hot on the wisdom train.

I used to be a knowledge guy.

And then I was like, you know what?

I'm a compassion guy.

You know, I just get all that compassion merch.

That's pretty good.

Sorry, what are you wearing?

I got Wingnut Dishwasher's Union.

Shout out to anyone who knows that reference.

It's an old band.

Frank Kelly's got some Gojira action going on there, it looks like.

Very cool.

We love it.

We're all doing our best here to look the part on YouTube, and you're doing our best to...

But before we get to Battle Pass holders, a quick drop in here to say we have a bunch of games to talk about.

Pragmata, Dose of Divas, Subversive Memories, Samson, which I can't wait to hear about, Replaced.

And yeah, we've got some other bits and bobs to talk about. as well.

Uh, but first of all, we should, we should, uh, we are missing half the J crew here.

Um, and it's uh, it's for a very good and positive reasons, because our boy, Jesse Garasha, went and had himself a boy, or at least uh, His partner did.

So welcome to the world.

Teddy Garasha.

What a name.

I'm assuming he's going with Garasha as a surname, but baby Teddy.

Welcome to the world.

Let's do a quick name rating on this one, OK?

Because we're all.

I feel like that's what happens when you have a kid is you name it and then everyone says oh, that's a nice name.

But, like you know, there's a there's a subversive elements going on there, where people are, like you know, quietly inside of themselves critiquing the name.

How do you feel about Teddy?

Jeremy, you go first.

I like Teddy.

I wonder if it's short for Theodore.

I wonder if maybe there will be like a serious phase where they're like I go by Theo now, but I like Teddy.

It's cute.

That's nice.

Yeah.

Theo's not in, maybe right now, but I feel like that guy's podcast will probably burn out in the next couple of years.

Oh, yeah.

I forgot about that guy.

But it's got it's got it's got a sort of you're right.

There's a couple of different ways you can cut it up.

No caps.

What do you think, Teddy?

You know, any teddies out your way?

I don't just Teddy, Teddy bear, but I think it's a cute name.

It's a cute name.

Yeah.

I'm into it.

Frank, what do you think?

I think it's awesome.

I know how much Jesse loves family guy and everyone knows Seth MacFarlane did Ted.

So I'm assuming it's a direct reference to Ted.

So I, I'm very proud of Jesse.

Yeah, that's incredible.

That's awesome.

It's very good.

Maybe Jeremy can help him with his Boston accent then.

Yeah, I can't do it on the spot.

It's like I don't actually have a Boston accent.

I was talking to my mother on the phone the other day and she said the word narcolepsy and she hit it so hard with the Boston accent.

Narcolepsy.

She was like, yeah, I think he's got narcolepsy.

I was like, fuck, that's the that's the best Bostonization of a word I've ever heard in my life.

The most is it the word that sounds most Boston when you say it in a Boston accent?

Nacalepsy.

Yeah.

No, Teddy's Teddy's.

That's that's an S tier name for sure.

Very cool.

Like you said, very adaptable.

And more than anything else, we're just so happy for Jesse and his partner.

So, yeah, a little bit confused why they didn't go for a J name.

I'll be honest.

You know, we've got a lot of J names.

What's a favorite J name, Jeremy?

I like Jesus.

Yeah, Jesus would have been a great name for his kid.

Yeah.

No, I think you know people say like oh, that's a name.

You'll get bullied with if you give your kid a name like Poindexter or whatever.

But but Jesus, I don't think anyone's going to bully Jesus.

No one's going to.

That's a bad look now because the chances are you're not the son of God, but like.

You want to risk?

You want to roll that dice?

It's like the stories in Greek mythology where there's a wanderer on the road and he's like, will you give me a scrap of bread?

And they're like, I don't I'm not going to give you a scrap of bread.

He's like, fuck you.

I'm Zeus, actually.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, you don't want to take that.

If his name was Zeus, you'd be like, holy shit, let's just like let him play kickball with us.

Is that charity, though?

You know if, like an old crone, knocks on your door on a stormy night and asks you for you know, a piece of bread, are you giving her that piece of bread because you feel bad for her, or are you just terrified she's going to like turn you into a beast and make it so that you are stuck as a beast.

If you don't fall in love before the rose petal falls off.

I mean, that's the thing about, like mythological morality is like it's a.

You know, you won't get your Christmas presents if you bully your brother.

Right.

You know what I'm saying?

I was only kidding.

You don't have to kill your son.

It was just a prank, bro.

It was a prank.

There's a goat right behind you.

Old Testament God was sort of like the Paul brothers, if you think about it, you know, because it was just a prank bro.

OK, I have played more.

I am Jesus Christ.

So I need to get that edit away first of all.

And yes the, the there's a lot of, there's a weird amount of old testament god in this considering, i think, like the binding of isaac is literally in one of the like there's.

There's like zones where they shoot you up into space and you have to do up into the clouds and everything's covered in gold and looks very vatican and you have to uh like um, you know, looks like that truth social post.

Trump put out where he was a doctor.

Um, and it looks like, uh, uh, yeah, you have to do a bunch of puzzles.

And one of them was like, it just had the 12 commandments and 12 big pictures up there.

And you had to like in sequence, uh, Hit them.

And then another one was like – it was like an object game, where there was a bunch of objects in front of you.

It was like an apple and a scroll and a – what is it David uses against Goliath?

What do you call that?

A sling.

Yeah, a sling.

A sling.

And then it like transports you like down this path and you have to like pick up the object and throw it at the like painting kind of thing of it.

And one of them was the binding of Isaac and you had to throw the dagger off.

You know it's like it's so weird, but yeah, you're reading their stories and going huh.

All right.

You know it's yeah, maybe a fun like museum, you know, like children's uh, science museums with like interactable, where you like play with the magnetic balls and they turn into dna or whatever.

Yeah, i want to throw the.

I want to sling the rock at goliath.

Yeah yeah, and then you could keep.

I think actually another podcast popular podcast was talking about this um this week and not as popular as us, of course about you know, David's life after that, where he, you know eventually, you know, tries to impregnate his best friend's wife by sending his best friend off into a war to get killed.

And then God is like, well, joke's on you. you're going to have a stillborn child.

And then he prays every day for the child to not be stillborn.

And then it is.

And then he's like, God's like, lol.

And and that's just that.

And there's a story in there somewhere.

I don't know.

The Bible is fucking crazy, man.

Wash your hands is probably the story that they're going for.

You know, I got to read this Bible.

When I was a kid, neither of my parents were religious when I was growing up.

And out of the blue, one day I just like heard about the Bible.

You know there was like a fucking, there was like a Rugrats episode about, like you know, Passover or whatever.

Like, the Old and New Testament were in cultural osmosis.

And they seeped into my brain.

And when I asked my parents for a Bible and they were both like terrified that like someone had like converted me, that like you know, some adult, like a teacher, had been like you should really read the Bible or something.

But I just was I thought it was just like fucking weird stories and stuff.

I didn't really know what it was.

You saw a commercial and they were like the greatest story ever told.

And you were like, well, I have to read that.

The marketing worked on me.

Yeah.

I thought of Mice and Men was good, but you're telling me this one's better.

Like, that's awesome.

I've never read Revelations and I feel like I would get a kick out of that.

I feel like there's I feel like that's kind of.

You know, Old Testament God is like just a super weird trickster kind of guy.

And obviously New Testament God is like sort of doing a lot of like PR.

He's trying to fix some of that, I feel like.

But all the Revelation stuff sounds complete batshit.

Is that the Ezekiel stuff?

Is that like the wheels within wheels and stuff?

I think it's the, I could be wrong, but I think it's the end of days stuff, right?

It's like the rapture and the lamb comes back and you know, there's like the final days and all that shit.

We should just get like a Christian eschatology scholar on this podcast and just talk for two hours and we'll be listen.

And occasionally we interrupt and we'll go like, oh, that's just like oblivion.

And he's like, yeah, for sure.

And then he resumes.

Yeah, oblivion gates.

Exactly.

Yeah.

All right.

To be continued.

We'll have to get on that at some stage.

I'm Jesus Christ.

I have nothing else to say about it.

It's funny to. have a whiskey and play that game.

I'll say that.

It's a real trip.

I've unlocked, I think, seven of the apostles right now.

So it's pretty good.

Collect them all.

Hopefully there's some achievements in this game for getting all the apostles.

They're like, oh my God, you caught fish.

Yeah, I can catch fish.

I got a miracle of fish.

You want that water turned into wine?

No problem.

I got it.

Abundance.

Here we are.

Is it like a long game?

Is it a long game?

It sounds like you've been playing it for a while.

It's a big question.

I think the question, is it a long game?

Does it feel like a long game?

I don't think it's a long game.

I think I would guess it's like, I don't know, maybe four to six hours, something like that.

It's like a decent sized game, but yeah, it can, it's not very well designed.

Like, like.

At that one point you're in the this movie.

Sorry, I'm talking about this fucking game more.

We're going to have a World of Warcraft section later to, you know, bounce this out.

At one point you go to the temple in Jerusalem and you know you have to smash up the temple right.

Classic.

Absolutely, yeah.

Actually it made me kind of feel.

It was the first time I felt bad for the traders because like okay, we're going to smash up the money lenders.

Don't feel too bad about that.

There's a bunch of people selling birds and animals and you have to smash up those things and their sheep are just running around.

And I was like, the temple in this game is insanely big.

Like I don't think the temple in Jerusalem was this big.

It's like bigger.

It's like twice as big as the parthenon.

It's huge and i'm like in the ancient world and i'm like this is fucking so.

It looks incredible and then you go in and there's a bunch of poor people trying to sell stuff on its steps and then you come in and smash it all up and i was like i don't know if the this feels more victimizing of poor people than i had originally imagined in my head when i read about this as a kid.

Anyway, so the building's fucking huge and you have to meet one of the apostles.

And I just could not find him because like, the level design was so bad that I would like I walked out into the streets of Jerusalem and couldn't find a way back in.

And I was like he's like a waypoint, like an Assassin's Creed waypoint on my, my hood, not even on the map, like on my thing.

And I'm like where the fuck are you Matthew, or whoever it is?

Um so?

So in that way it feels long it's.

It's maybe not as long but, like you know, you're doing a lot of like, trying to figure out what the game wants you to do, like when you're doing the miracle of the fishes, you're trying to get the fishes to go to the boat, which isn't how fishing works.

Fishes don't jump into a fucking boat and they have all these little like wind currents in the way.

And forever I was like and this might've been the whiskey, but forever I was trying to figure out like am I supposed to go in those currents?

Like, are those the nets?

They kind of look like nets.

No, you have to get the fish to come to the boat.

So anyway, you could probably do that in 20 seconds, but it took me like two minutes.

So anyway, more updates coming.

I'll fill you in.

No caps on the continuing adventures of our Lord and Savior Jesus.

I just don't know how it ends, you know?

Yeah.

I'm just on edge.

What happens to this guy?

Me too.

Do they stop at the crucifixion?

Do they journey into hell with him to forgive original sin?

Does he come back on Easter Sunday?

No, does he come back at the end of days?

What a fucking twist it would be if he didn't come back.

Is that the expansion pack?

You know what i mean?

They got dlc already for this.

Yeah, we're just waiting for him to come back and then we're gonna.

We actually have a maid, but it's not gonna make any sense until jesus drops in real life.

So we're gonna, we're gonna make that happen.

Anyway, it's a great game.

It's a great game.

It's just weird playing the game where you jesus, You know makes sense.

It's very strange.

Imagine a game where you play as Buddha.

You know what I mean?

That'd be sick.

Although you do a lot of just like sitting under a tree.

Yeah.

You'd be under the Bodhi tree just like Geralt in The Witcher except you're just meditating.

The whole time.

You're just preparing for a fight that never happens.

Yeah, you're just making potions.

Yeah, that's pretty good.

That's nice.

Well, You know who our saviors are?

Kind of, I guess our incredible patrons and our Battle Pass holders Charles Atkinson, Brian Baru.

Welcome, Charles Atkinson, by the way.

Brian Beru, Little Toast, 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 Rojas Quote, Tucker Morgan, David McGarry Goddison, Sven Hooster, Pez Bone Mold.

John Akers, Ewan Nate, Tim Robinson, Forrest Brewett, Dark Insanities, Jonathan Kremen, Eric Hamilton Schneider, Christophe Fatui, Grizzly Mug, Cameron Ladd, Zachary Snader, Alex Goucher, George Sakotis, Jacob Godserve Entheogen, James Med and Rison.

Thank you to all of our credible patrons over patreoncom slash noclip and patreoncom slash noclip2 that allow us to focus on not just making big old disco elysium documentaries but also covering loads of games.

Over on noclip2 we're gonna give you a heads up on some of the stuff that's hit noclip2 and is coming to noclip2, as well as no clip later on the show.

But first of all, we need to talk about some of these video games.

Where to start?

I just need to know what Samson is, Frank.

Can you just like explain Samson?

This is like a It's not GTA.

It's more like Driver, but there's no guns.

You're just punching people?

Yes.

What is this thing?

But the cops have guns, which is super unfair because they'll shoot at you.

So Samson, I think, is legitimately one of the coolest games of the year.

It's made up of a lot of former Avalanche Studio people.

I get annoyed when people are shitting on this game.

I fucking love Samson.

We should mention ahead of time that like, for instance, it has 2000 reviews or so on Steam and it is mixed currently.

So there is a lot of the reviews have been down on this.

But in typical Frank Howley form, he is not bucking to trend.

And just like Samson, he's going to fucking fight back.

He doesn't care.

Samson's so fucking cool and inspirational.

So this game is a miracle.

It feels like a PS2 Rockstar game.

Like it is straight up like the Warriors.

It is very much like Liberty City GTA 3.

The Bouncer?

Yeah, I mean, you're beating up.

You don't have friends.

You're by yourself.

The bouncer, you have your crew.

So yeah, the Samson it's like.

It says like early 90s, but it's very much like it feels so much like GTA 3, Liberty City.

This game is $25.

It's from a lot of the team that worked on Mad Max.

I like this game already a lot more than Mad Max.

The issue with Mad Max is that it was way too big and you're driving through a desert and it's kind of boring.

But Samson is a tiny little Island.

It's like the equivalent of like the one Island of GTA three.

You know, like Liberty city is three Islands.

This is like, you were just on one Island.

So it's like not that big, but it's jam packed with missions.

And so the premise of Samson is You did a heist, it went wrong, and now you're back in the streets and the gang has kidnapped your sister.

You owe the gang like $80,000, and you owe them money every day.

So there's like a day-night system.

It's kind of like Persona.

You have six action points and you open up your map and there's all these crimes you can commit on the map.

You can go beat up people.

You can go be a getaway driver.

You can take down other criminals and steal their money.

You can beat up people on the street and take their cash.

Again, this is a cool game.

Wait, so you're a bad guy in this?

Samson, look, he's in between.

He lives by his own rules and ethics.

So there's story missions that prop up, but what I found is you kind of want to be, there are skill points, so you do enough crimes and then you level up.

There's like four stats.

There's like health, agility, you know, endurance, all that stuff.

You can level up again, kind of like Mad Max.

You can level up like the amount of damage your car tackle does.

You can level up the nitrous in your car, your car tackle.

Yes.

So just like Mad Max in Mad Max, there's a lot of like vehicular combat.

Half the missions in this game are you're.

You're like taking down other cars again kind of like burnout.

And you can like press X to slam your car to the side.

But the driving AI is like bad.

So like it's like it's it's the driving is like the most for actually the driving isn't so bad.

It's kind of has like the weight of like GTA 4.

But the driving AI, the driving part is a little frustrating.

Also, when you're wanted by the police, it does the GTA three thing where cop cars will just kind of spawn randomly all the time because the map is so small, it's so hard to evade the police.

But like a criminal, I'm learning it's easier if you dump your car and hide in an alley and then they can't see you.

So I'm like, okay, so I'm evolving.

But the gameplay loop of it is you have six activity points you can spend per day.

Some missions are only available at night, etc.

You have you need, you have you.

Usually most missions are like two action points.

Some storm missions are like three action points.

So you have to budget your action points.

You need to make three thousand dollars every day.

If you don't, the game gives you a strike.

If you get three strikes, it's game over.

I don't know if you can like new game plus it like Dead Rising.

So that's like that's like the American judicial system.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

They lock you up away forever and it's game over which like I that if I, if that happens to me, I'm just, I'm just retiring from Samson, but I don't, I don't know if there's gonna be a mod to remove it.

I have modded the game.

So Nexus mods, people are modding it to put Samson in like a cop out uniform.

Someone's done a daredevil costume.

I've just put on a Punisher t-shirt.

I have a Punisher mod.

The character looks like your man and Nick Nikolai Kosterwald now, whatever the guy from Game of Thrones, you know, with the with the one arm. spoilers for season three of game of thrones okay yeah yeah you know no one's done like a shining like him no one's done like a knight of armor mod yet but um does anyone try and cut his hair the source of his power not to get immediately biblical once again i've been holding back this whole time for mentioning the bible thank you for breaking the seal is delilah the last judge of the israelites or something There are like hair physics.

The Philistines?

Are the other gang the Philistines?

Isn't that what Delilah was, I think?

There are like advanced hair physics you can tweak and turn on or off.

DLSS?

How much of your VRAM do you want to contribute?

Literally, that is a thing in Pragmata, by the way.

Did you see that?

There's like a there's like a like, oh, because you're playing on PS5.

I'm playing on PC.

There's a whole hair physics thing for the girl because her hair is like incredible.

But anyway, sorry, we're talking about Samson.

Yeah, but it's the same thing here.

So like with in Samson, so.

I don't know how the graphics stuff works, because it's like it's that.

That is like a one genuine complaint.

It's like it's not very well optimized, but I've been playing it capped at like 60 frames per second and like it looks all right.

They are dropping patches every Wednesday.

So recording this on Tuesday, they're going to patch it again tomorrow and they keep saying or keep patching it.

The melee combat kind of feels like Batman Arkham Knight dudes.

Bad guys will just surround you and you're just kind of snapping to whoever's closest to you.

You can pick up weapons like bricks, pipes, wrenches.

You can also throw stuff at enemies.

You can click r3 to do like a takedown.

You get health back on takedowns.

Um, it doesn't have the thing like there is a parry system, but i don't know the timing of it.

Batman and spider-man will have things where things will flash above.

There's no ui element to help you with parries.

That would be a good like update to make it easier.

But again, if you just keep playing, your street smarts will get better.

Um, but yeah i, i really like the game and uh Yeah again, I don't like how hard it is to escape the police.

They should make – well, I don't know if that's – I was like make the police dumber or make the police radius smaller.

I don't know.

But I don't like the three-strike system, but that is like real life.

But yeah, I'm a big fan of Samson, and it's only $25.

Yes.

I think this is – this to me is like –

Where it becomes cool again.

Yes.

Like where I'm like, OK, is this this is like a B game.

This is like a like a it's not a AAA game.

It's not a triple B game.

It's just a B game.

We're just going to you know, we're going to make a game that's like open world aspirations.

But it's it's just one island.

It's it's it's got, you know. some weird mechanics in it and here are 25 bucks.

Go play it.

Um, yeah.

Does that sort of change your, your math on this whole thing?

Yeah, I feel like if it was 60 it'd be like a mind's eye thing where people are like this is great.

But for $25, it really feels like I'm playing Saints Row 1 on Xbox 360, where I had no expectation.

Like I said, the game kind of sucks, but it's also so awesome.

I think as this game gets patched, people go nuts with modding.

They do want to port it to consoles.

I bet by the time it's on consoles, it'll be smooth.

But yeah, I'm like, I like this.

And again, it's like, I like, yeah, we don't get that many games that scratch this era.

Like it's not filled with like Ubisoft, like story dumps or lore pickups or cut seat.

Like the cut, everything is brisk.

It just moves.

And yeah, again, it's like, I like this.

I want 10,000 games.

Like give me more games.

They're like, again, this is what rockstar was making.

These like movie ports of the warriors and all these small uh, these small quirky games and it's like oh, this is so cool, so i i like it a lot.

And like yeah, you're beating up, you're beating up criminals, and then they'll drop like oh, here's the latest stash of they call the drug in the game whisper.

So then you find a drug stashing up yet more people.

But uh, Can you pronounce the name of this city?

Because it's written all over the stuff, and I'm like... It does sound like Game of Thrones.

It's Tindleston.

Tindleston.

I think the full title of the game is Samson, a Tindleston story.

So I don't know if we're going to get more games in the world of Tindleston.

Tindleston is not like a hard sounding city, like if someone was like fucking tindleston bro, like don't even come into my city.

It'd be like you're from fucking tinsel town bro, like relax, it sounds like a gated community.

Yeah, it's like an orange county.

For me it just feels like it's like the same universe as Crime City.

So I've just been calling it Crime City.

Crime City.

Yeah, Crime City or Samson City.

Where is it meant to be?

Is it like Philly or Boston?

I think it's Chicago.

The heist you did wrong was St.

Louis.

So here, yeah, I don't know if this is like Chicago or New York.

To me, it feels like Death Wish 3.

Like the tone of this game feels exactly like Charles Bronson's like, chaos block in death wish 3 so that was like new york city so yeah it's just nondescript city but i'm just pretending i'm in death wish 3 all right um me and frank gonna play some samson for a video um might be public might be patron exclusive we'll see we're gonna we're gonna have some fun with it i want to do a quick shout out for the developer's name liquid swords That's a that's a do I like that name?

I don't know.

Liquid Swords.

That's a isn't that a Wu-Tang album?

Is this?

It's a it's a jizz album from 1995.

OK, well, then I just stole it.

So, well, now I don't like it.

I mean, it's been 31 years, I feel like.

I mean, I was going to say the patent expired, but that's not at all true in any way.

Yeah, I was going to start a new studio called Around the Fur.

I hope the Deftones don't care.

That's Samson.

Very cool.

Very cool stuff.

No caps.

I want to talk to you about a game that just came out as well, which also has seemingly again got your cut.

This is sort of the inverse where like this game got some pretty positive reviews.

I've seen some other ones, sort of echoing what we were talking about in our meeting yesterday with you, which is well, I'll let you get to it.

The game is replaced from Sad Cat Studios.

This is a sort of a, you know, very beautiful looking 25 D kind of um uh, beat them up style thing.

Uh, yeah.

What is replaced and what, what's your, what's your feeling on it after playing a bit of it?

Yeah.

So I played like four hours over the weekend.

I would say probably like a third third of the way through the game.

Um, It's a cinematic platformer, probably the most cinematic cinematic platformer I've ever seen.

And it's like this kind of cyber punk alternate 1980s is what it's calling itself.

Um, there was like a nuclear event.

So like the city's like walled off and everyone's like struggling and whatever.

Um, and the story is that you're like you're playing as a guy that has just had, like this AI like implanted into his head or something like something went wrong.

So your, your body, is the guy, but then like, whenever you talk to someone it's it's, it's as the AI.

So that's like one thing that just kind of throws me off because it's like okay, so this guy just has like no personality.

Like it's just not even a character.

Like he has no memories or anything, but whatever.

It's also very much the story of the start of Cyberpunk 2077.

It's like very similar where like Johnny Silverhand gets placed in your brain, you know, at a.

But it's gorgeous.

It looks amazing.

It's like this mix of pixel art for the characters and then the backgrounds are like.

It's like a 25D thing, so sometimes you can move forward and back towards or away from the camera, but mostly you're just going left and right.

Yeah.

I think that like the intro is really strong, like like there's like chase sequences and like you're kind of making your way like to the edge of the city.

But it kind of like for me falls apart.

Once you start to get into the first mission and I was having an issue with reading the environment what boxes I could push.

And it also just kind of is sluggish for a game that has a decent amount of platforming.

Um yes, is it mostly like puzzle platforming stuff?

How much?

How much of it is like combat, i guess, because in my head i thought this was more shootery than it's like a.

I would say it's like a third puzzle like you have to jump from.

It's not, there's not really puzzles, but it's like i push a box over here like a little sequence of like jumping and then like putting your hook thing into the wall.

A third ish combat, which is kind of like also like samson, like a batman style, like little beat-em-up sort of thing, and then like a third, just like story kind of stuff.

Okay, i think my cinematic stuff.

Yeah, my main reason I don't like it is because I just feel like each part of that is not like.

I feel like there's no strong part.

Like it kind of does each thing like, okay.

Like except for the visuals and the music and everything, but everyone else seems to be enjoying it.

Um, so I don't know if it's like, I was, I had high expectations.

So maybe, like that's a problem.

Yeah, I'd love to had you played the demo.

I haven't played the demo either and it's still available.

I, I didn't, I was going to and I was like you know what, I'll just wait so I don't have to like replay it, but I don't know.

I would say like, if you're interested, to still give it a try, and maybe, like my brain is just like not why, like I think also I play so many platformers right, that like i have high expectations.

I don't know.

Yeah, i i wonder because i it's funny because, like there have been some reviewers.

I was on the reddit review page earlier um, and was sort of the inverse of the samson stuff too, where you had some people who were like um, you know uh, with Samson like oh, this is interesting.

Like it's, it's kind of broken and whatever, but it's like, it's got its own vibe and it's, you know, if you come in with this expectation, that's not what you're going to get from this. and I do wonder like, and I haven't played this at all, but like, I do wonder if somebody is, spends the majority of their time playing like very creative, like underground indie style stuff, which is very, you know, sort of, uh, graphics come second gameplay comes first you know a lot of the time if if something that is kind of an inversion of that in in replaced it seems like and a lot of reviews i was reading it was similar where you know if you went back like if you played limbo today would it be as interesting as it was 15 years ago you know it's so i don't so i don't know so yeah maybe mileage varies on this depending on how much you play these types of games That was kind of one of my notes about it, maybe like appealing more to a broad audience because it was like I think they just hit a million wish lists just on Steam.

So like every time they dropped a trailer, it was like a huge deal.

And like it's just also like this.

The like Steam community, like the reviews and stuff like.

There's just a lot of that toxic gamer guy energy going on.

Oh, really?

Whereas, like, the games, like, just because it's, like, too popular almost, like, I don't know.

It's just not for me.

It's our broke indie containment, maybe.

Yeah.

Yeah yeah yeah, interesting.

I kind of like it's.

It's for the same reason I'm interested in playing Samson.

I'm interested in playing this because I'm interested in how I will feel about this and like understanding it within the sort of broader cultural context.

Um yeah, it's a game of trailers.

Really well, like I'm, I'm interested in giving it a go, if nothing else just to see how it looks on on a on a screen and 4k in front of me.

Cause the animation stuff is, it's really incredible.

It reminds me of when you saw spider verse for the first time and you're like wow, you're allowed to do that.

Like some of the stuff, the camera movements and the, uh you know, motion blur and depth of field stuff they're doing is very, very cool.

Um, but yeah, not not to say it's all all flashing, no substance but um yeah, what you're telling me about the gameplay, you know there's a.

This happens, i feel, like a lot in games.

There's games that end up or not a lot, but like when you see it, it's particularly annoying when you make a game that like looks really good but is actually kind of basic on the gameplay side.

Um, but yeah, i shall uh, i shall endeavor to check it out.

It came out today.

It's got like 207 reviews on steam, very positive.

Um, like i said, reddit seems to mostly or the reviews rather seem to be mostly positive.

The other thing that was weird about i was reading a couple of reviews because pragmatic came out as well and there are so many people giving nines and tens things and like games are good sure, but like it seems so crazy weighted up that high, like in a way that even 10 years ago it wasn't.

Like people are fucking terrified of giving sevens.

Like it's so, I, yeah.

Yeah.

But like most games are probably are a seven, like, or a six, like it's, there's so many games.

They're not all.

Yeah, that's good enough.

Yeah exactly yeah exactly, totally.

Yeah, the idea that we're like throwing out tens, like it's uh, like it's candy on on halloween, you know um, but anyway, that's a conversation for a different day.

Replaced uh, it's also 20 bucks.

So again, the opposite end of the samson, you know conversation, this is a 2d platformer.

It's 20 dollars in a.

Again, games are worth what they're worth they're.

You know, we're worth paying for good craft.

But um yeah, i think about some of the indie games i've played over the years.

Um uh, you know that maybe it didn't cost that much.

I'm not sure.

Maybe i may be on the wrong, i'm on the wrong side of that conversation there but um yeah, 19 bucks for replaced on steam, do you know?

If it's on anything else?

It kind of i've it's, i think, thunderful published it, so i wouldn't be surprised if it's on other stuff.

Is it on xbox?

Yeah pc yes, you're right, pc and xbox.

So oh yeah, let us know what you thought of replaced in the comments below.

Folks, i'm gonna give it a go This week, or at least check out the demo and see if it sticks with me.

And you can do that as well over on steampowercom.

Okay, i have to pick something.

I've talked, i've played.

Now um, the okay let's uh, let's go for pragmata first of all.

How about that?

Frank, the two of us have played this.

Pragmata is the latest game from your friends and mine at capsule computers.

Uh, capcom have brought out a uh first, A story based sci-fi, linear I don't know action game that takes place in a lunar facility that is sort of taken over by a rogue artificial intelligence and you in your big space suit have to survive and help send signals back to earth and and eventually win the day.

All while you have a sort of maybe seven year old, eight year old girl in in like a I don't know what you call it.

Like a, like a blue romper.

Um, like a, I need help with the, with the fashion here.

What would you call it?

A parka?

Is that?

I'm just looking at screenshots.

It looks like a winter jacket.

Yeah.

Some, something you'd wear in Ireland most days in the winter.

Um, and with our beautiful blonde hair flowing around um it's it's, it's something else.

I want to get frank's read on this first, because i i have loved playing pragmata.

I find it super interesting.

It feels very fresh.

The combat is interesting for reasons we'll get into in a second um, but also just the like.

I guess the loop of it, or the, the way levels are organized, is also like, really interesting.

I think it was Capcom and I was expecting something.

I don't know why, cause they made dead rising.

Um but uh, I was expecting something a bit more linear, like a, like a resident evil, you know type, experience.

Uh, And that is not what this is, really.

Frank, you played on console, I played on PC.

What was your take of Bragmata?

Yeah, I'm playing on PS5.

I played about four and a half hours of it.

I'm in like the third area of the thing now.

And on that, I think we need to be careful with some spoilers with regard to what the levels are. are maybe you know let's let's because i think i would recommend people not watch any reviews for this game because the trailers did a great job of not spoiling some very cool environmental and enemy style type things that um It was one of those NDAs where I was like, I immediately understand why you were doing this, and I will sort of, you know, I think from an artistic point of view, would not want to spoil some of the cool stuff that's in this game.

But anyway, sorry, go ahead, Frank.

Yeah, it's incredible.

My immediate thought after a few hours is it was it feels like, instead of making a new Devil May Cry, like Capcom just took all their guts all, all of their, their swag, everything and just made a brand new against a brand new IP from Capcom.

And it's incredible.

And yeah, in terms of like the linearity of it, I'm doing the thing where it's like, as you play, you get more powers, more weapons, and then you can go back to older levels and unlock more stuff.

So it's like so I've been I've been kind of scraping like I got a thing.

Wait, I can go back to this level and go to this area.

Oh, and it's like, oh, my God, it's so satisfying.

And there's constant progression.

We're getting like points when you're killing things.

You can level up all your different weapons and hacking and all this stuff.

And yeah, the combat of me, it feels like.

Almost, yeah, almost like, I don't know, Dead Rising or Devil May Cry.

You're shooting robots, but the joy of it is you're doing this luminous hacking minigame and then the different panels you're going through has different effects.

There's a multi-hack where, if there's multiple robots, you can zap three things at once.

A thing that extends enemies' weak points to be out longer.

A thing that freezes them critical.

There's so many things to unlock.

Yeah.

And just as I sort of explained to people how this thing works.

So basically it's, it's like a normal third person shooter, where you were like left trigger um, you know uh, zooming in maybe, or I forget exactly how the shooting works but um you, maybe is it left trigger you hit to basically get the girl who's on your back.

This like little child um.

She's able to hack the robots.

So when you hold the button down, basically within the game world, a like to me it looks like kind of like pipe dream.

You know the like what game used?

Pipe dream is a hacking thing.

It's like Bioshock did.

You're right.

Yeah.

It's like almost like a pipe dream thing where you have to go like up, down, left, right.

From your starting point to an end point, but sometimes some of the grid.

It's like on a grid sometimes the grids are big, sometimes they're smaller, sometimes they have blocks in them and then sometimes they have these special abilities, like Frank was saying, to hack multiple enemies at the same time, have their windows be open.

There's a whole bunch of them.

But the game doesn't pause.

So you are playing the game and there's a robot coming towards you and you were shooting it while also using the like face buttons, like ABXY or whatever, to fucking hack it with the girl.

So you're like it's like rubbing your fucking belly and tapping your head style combat.

And it is so satisfying because you're like constantly looking at their attack windows.

There's multiple enemies.

Some of them are flying.

Some of them are.

You know the sort of the regular bipedal ones which are, you know, not that scary until they get close to you and then they really hurt you.

And then some of the bigger bosses you fight.

Did you did you get to the first boss fight?

Yes.

That boss fight was fucking amazing.

It was it was so.

Oh, God, it was so good.

And you know really interesting things.

It reminded me you know what it reminded me of I've talked before about when I played Typing of the Dead and then, at a certain point, the game makes you go like Mary had a little lamb as fleece, as white as snow.

That's what this game feels like where, like they're like okay, we're giving you all of these systems, all of these little combat things, and here, here we go.

Motherfucker, Did you pay attention for the like the first boss fight is such a?

Did you pay attention for the first couple of hours of this game?

Because we are going to lob all of them on you in one go, like the weapons that you have.

You have a sort of a simple blaster.

You have sort of two other like slots that are used for, like one is sort of like a crowd suppression slot and the other one is like an attacking one, and then within those there are different weapons, and it kind of reminds me of something like um, like dead space where like, The weapons have a very particular use.

Like you really need.

It's not like, oh, there's an Uzi and a shotgun and a rifle.

And it's not just like about DPS.

It's more.

No, no, no.

It's strategy.

Each of these games, each of these weapons, sorry, is used for a very particular reason.

And you have to figure out what it is.

Like there's one that, you know, creates a bubble that slows enemies down.

There's another one that is is like a crowd control grenade launcher thing that like knocks them away from each other.

And so in these little combat arenas, you know, there are flying things, bipedal things, lots of these weird esoteric um enemies.

And you are basically it's it's like combat chess, like like uh, you know, we had in our doom documentary where it's it's a thinking person's combat.

You have to like think about all these things.

Which hacks you should use, which guns you should use?

And then while you're fighting like it's the simple joy of firing guns, while this little girl is like hacking fucking robots.

And you're like you know she'll even like hack.

Like a missile that's fired at you she can like send it back to the other uh enemy and you have to like look at it and do a little hack on it and then it'll, It'll go.

It's so slick the whole thing.

Yeah, how have you, you've enjoyed that, the hacking part of it as well?

Yeah, it's like, yeah, again, it's very, very fun.

And like yeah like, even like Resident Evil 4 or even Requiem.

It's like they've upgraded the thing where old Resident Evil games.

You can only stand and shoot here.

You can slowly move back, but then you're in a corner.

There's a lot of like, you can jump up around, you have thrusters, you can also level them up.

So there's a lot of times you'll like shoot an enemy, get them down, thrust over.

I'll pull out like a long range gun charge it, zap it, still spamming it.

You can keep an eye on all your reloads, cause your guns will reload.

So like if you're out, you'll just spam hacks.

And then the whole point of the hacking thing too is, if you shoot an enemy when it's not hacked, you do like very little damage, very little damage.

You can still like shoot off some like rounds as you're hacking to do like tiny chip damage, but once it hacks, the enemy will like stutter a bit and then some enemies will have weak points and then you're focusing in your guns once the weak points to go down, recharge your hack and then yeah, you can level up each thing so you can have more hacking.

All this stuff, yeah.

And then there's like um, I feel like every game has this, but like, like the God of war, L three and R three, here's your super, your ultra.

You can use like every like, like every.

It feels like it pops like every five minutes or so.

So yeah, you have so much utility.

Like there's so many different ways of approaching something.

Um, Yeah.

And then you can upgrade everything.

There's every and every if there's like so many different currencies you can upgrade.

And there's a lot of Skinner box stuff I will say because, like you're even like getting tokens that you can buy, because you have this like hub area, like that you go back to.

It's sort of like the the Dead Rising staff room.

Right.

And in the first game, where you you it's where you and the kids kind of just hang around and it's where you can upgrade your weapons you can like get things for her, like what are they called?

They're like memories or something.

There's like yeah, it's everything's like 3d printed, but here's like a you know stuff you get for her and she plays yeah, like childhood things you can play with her.

So it's like and you're not quite sure because, like she's clearly like genetically engineered or something, and you're not trying, you're trying to figure out like, is she a robot?

Is she in on this?

Like what?

There's that sort of you know element going on as well.

But the really cool thing is so when I lost that boss fight, it doesn't like load you on the way back into that room again.

It sends you back to your little room with the girl.

Like sort of narratively, I think she pulls you out of there is kind of the conceit here.

And so then you realize, oh, this game is like run based.

Like, so when you go back to the elevator, first of all, you've lost your weapons.

So you have to reprint all the credits that you got.

Almost like all of the like souls you got on that run you keep, but you lose all your equipment.

So you then have to like buy new guns, right, to go back in.

To me, what this is, is the game forcing you to think about what guns you should be bringing in.

Like like it's it's it's sort of like mechanizing.

Oh, I'll just run back in with all my same stuff.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

You're going to have to spend the money.

So you're going to have to think about what you should actually be bringing to this.

Like, what are you doing on this run?

Are you going back, like Frank said, to an earlier level and just trying to get a?

You know, collect some of these.

It almost feels like...

What was the game of the crackdown, where you're trying to get all the orbs like it's that feeling, going back to the levels and finding all of these different currencies and upgrade tokens and all this stuff?

But yeah, it forces you to do that.

And then you, when you go to like the, basically the tram system that you have to go around this, this lunar base, you can go to different levels, but also certain points you find ladders back to the tram system.

So very sort of from soft again, you can sort of use skips to get to different parts of the level faster and the game will even tell you oh, in this area you've actually got like three things that you've not found yet.

They also have these like.

They look like the metal gear solid for uh, the little drone that follows you around, the little wheelie drone.

There are these weird, like cartoon guys.

What the fuck are they?

I don't know, but it's the equivalent of like in Resident Evil.

There's like the little raccoons now.

These little hidden robots all just chirp and say, hi, hi, or something.

You shoot them, and then they go back to your room or whatever.

So the game's fun, and it's like...

The story.

It's a very like remember that year where, like every game that came out was like about dads and their kids.

You know what I mean.

Like God of War and, you know, fucking probably Death Stranding and The Last of Us, right?

It's, you know, I think this is a funny subversion of it because the guy you play doesn't like kids. so it's it's tropey in one way but it's also you're like is she a kid like like what's we don't really know what she is she's a pragmata that's what they call her um she has a name i forget her name already diana diana yeah he calls her die is that her diana i'm like the japanese version so it's oh cool yeah yeah oh nice okay um yeah it's uh it's um it's really it's it's very cool yeah and so that run-based nature like makes it makes those boss encounters very interesting and makes like what you do in the world interesting because like you find a shortcut sometimes you're like you know what i'm gonna go back and i kind of have the wrong weapon here like i'm gonna go back and you know sort some stuff out back at the, back at the office and then come back in for another run.

Um, yeah.

And it just makes it interesting.

Like.

I thought this game was going to be a point to point, linear action game, and it's it's not.

It's far more interesting.

It's like from a design perspective, there's so many just curious choices that they decided to make instead of just walking the the path uh, most taken, and that makes it fun to play.

I think, especially for somebody who's played a lot of games like this, is it's fun to play a game that is a new ip, uh you know, but is also doing a lot of super novel things.

You're not quite sure what's gonna happen next um, Yeah.

And the location and enemy design, you know, we'll keep that behind the behind the veil.

But there have been some enemies in this game where I'm just like excuse me, like that's what's fighting me.

That is grotesque, like sort of ghost in a shelly type body horror shit.

You know what i mean.

Like you know you're fighting like a.

Like some of the enemies they've shown are like the bipedal robots, but they're like very tall and like elegant and nice looking, until they, you know, pull out their laser blade from their hand and then, like you hack them and their face explodes a bit.

You know their, their face sort of deconstructs, like the plastic shells pop off.

It's like it's all that good stuff.

You know, it's sort of it's almost like a Android body horror or something.

It's doing a lot of like, lots of naked androids, you know, which are sort of grotesque in their own way, like mannequin style.

And you're like, Oh, I don't, you know, it's very, very cool.

It's, it's, it's a, it's a great game.

It's definitely, I think, in the in the conversation for when, whenever the like AAA game of the year conversations happen, I this is totally in there.

I think it's, it's punching above its weight.

It's very cool.

And then one little extra point also kind of reminds me of prey.

Cause you're, you're just going through this kind of space station sometimes behind.

And so you're just seeing everything and exploring.

And so it's like, Oh my God, it's taking a lot of boxes of games.

I really, really like.

Yeah, it does.

It plays with gravity and perspective and, like all of this uh all of this stuff yeah it's a it's gorgeous too i don't know i'm playing on my pc is a good look on good look good on ps5 yeah i get the what is it the reach for the sky engine or reach for the moon engine like everything in that system looks awesome yeah even the holographic cats they're all they're all doing well you guys have any questions about pragmata no it sounds awesome i oh yeah go for it i just want to know like if i play the demo like i'm downloading it right now will i know if i like it or is it like there's so much that like it barely gets into it that like you kind of have to play the full game does it like give you a good i'm i don't know when the demo takes place um i'm i wonder if frank if it's the build we played so we played a bird of build at the game awards last year or the year before maybe it was the year last year so 2025 and it wasn't it's it's it is a it was a special demo like it was not in the game but it had parts from the game it had like the first sort of area you run into where you have to unlock some doors, but the, the intro and outro to it were different than, than the actual game.

So I wonder Frank, if that's what they show.

It looks like it's the same thing, but, but you have a, you do fight a boss.

So I think that was like kind of a full loop.

I'm looking at a long play.

It's like 20 minutes, but yeah, it'll give you, exploring kind of the verticality doing switches the combat and then here's a boss fight and it's yeah which is pretty identical like the first stage of the game so yeah let us know where i would love to hear your thoughts on it yeah i'm probably gonna play it after this podcast because it sounds really nice yeah it's it's it's i'm into it and yeah hopefully that demo will give you an idea of the because yeah i wouldn't the opening hour of the game It's pretty – I feel like the storytelling is pretty economical.

Like it doesn't overdo it.

You sort of know what's going to happen and then it happens.

It's kind of like – yeah, yeah.

I always let people enjoy it.

But yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You've seen it before in a movie or a TV.

You're like, oh, fuck.

I hope they –

You know, what was it, the red suit guy in Star Trek or whatever, you know?

But yeah, it's got a lot of cool personality in it.

Is this like horror at all, or is it more just straight action?

I don't know.

That's a good question.

It's like horror in the Capcom way, where it's like like like daniel is right and like some of the robot designers like jesus christ, but this is it's like devil may cry, like i can't wait to fuck those robots.

Like it's like maybe evil dead tone you know what i mean.

Where it's like it's it's way more yeah, it feels way more action and inviting like devil may cry than like how oppressive early resident evil can feel.

It feels gleeful and like Yeah.

So, so, um, even playing, it reminds me also like stellar blade and DMC.

It's like that, that tone of like, oh, this is cool.

Yeah, I would agree.

But the one way in which I would I would say it's different is that, like I find this game very foreboding because the time to die is very quick,

Like you don't have that much health and really like they can hurt you pretty hard.

And like Frank said, if you don't hack them, you cannot hurt them.

And like I've died probably more playing this game than I have most games I played over the past few years like this. not as much as like a souls game but like definitely more than most action games that i feel like i breeze through unless i'm just being sloppy like there were areas in this game like the main boss fight at the start i had to do i think i got on my third attempt there was another area that i i had struggled in that i had to do on three runs as well um so to me it's like tense because of that so it's not it's it's it's not horror necessarily but like when i find when i go into the next level i'm it's not like a game where i'm like oh here we go and i run in and start killing things i'm like kind of scared about what's around the corner you know what i mean so that's the sort of the horror aspect i would say it's like yeah it's tense kind of like the way resi is you know like in resi the fear of what might come next is scarier than the actual fear usually of when you see the thing that's coming after you you know um so yeah i think i think it hits that mark really good uh pragmata it's uh it's out Is it out?

It's out.

Came out yesterday at time of recording.

We obviously had a press code, so we played a good bit for the past couple of weeks.

And I'm excited to play some more.

Two thumbs up from me for sure.

Okay, let's talk about Subversive Memories, Jeremy Jane.

This sounds like an album title.

What is Subversive Memories?

So Subversive Memories is a very Signalis-like survival horror game.

In many ways, it kind of looks like Signalis.

It has its own sort of visual style, but very sort of reminiscent in the perspective and level of fidelity.

The themes it deals with are sort of like totalitarian fascism and alienation.

Memory, the fallibility of memory.

This feels so Signalis-like to me.

And honestly, it doesn't...

It doesn't bother me at all.

It doesn't feel derivative of Signalis.

It feels like someone played that game and was like, oh, fuck, you can just make a game like that?

Let me make another cool-ass game that's kind of like that.

So this is a...

Uh, it's a survival horror game that takes place.

I'll read the exact quote because I think it kind of plays with the, the historicity of events.

Um, okay.

Uh, survival story driven survival horror set in Brazil during the last military dictatorship.

Um, It sort of plays with the, Because I did a little bit of research about the actual historical background of this, because I don't know Brazil's history super well.

And there are historical events that align with what's happening in this game.

But there are fantastical elements to the story.

And also...

Like it's sort of you don't walk up to a portrait and it's like oh, here's like a real historical figure.

Right there.

Like there's a portrait of this sort of military dictator at the time.

And the face is just like a white blanked out face.

Uh, so in the way that it's playing with like, memory and the fallibility of memory, I think it's also doing that on a personal level and also a historical level where, by omitting some of the more historical details, it allows them to ground the.

It's a very grounded horror game, but it allows it to sort of like transcend that historicity where it doesn't just have to like tell historical events and confine its story to real historical events.

Do you think by the it says the last military dictatorship, is that them saying the previous one, or like the last one that will ever happen, like a sort of hypothetical last dictatorship?

That's a good question.

Um, i googled last brazilian uh, military dictatorship and there was a specific historical period that came up.

Okay for that search.

Um, so i i assume it's in reference to that.

The game references uh, Things that feel like sort of like like late 60s to early 80s.

Some of the historical stuff like the car.

There's like the they talk about the main characters like granddad's car and a flashback and stuff.

And it's a very sort of like old, you know, like 50s looking thing. kind of like a granddad car.

Um, so, but yeah, I thought, I thought it was interesting that I, it wasn't like I was, I was kind of expecting this to be, uh, like signal us meets despilote a little bit where I was expecting to walk in and it was like, uh, 1964, the, the elect, like the coup happened, you know, like I was expecting more sort of, real world lower drops.

And instead, it's kind of using those historical elements as backdrop.

It's sort of like obscuring them and creating tone with them more so.

So the game sort of bounces between a you, as the main character, are in this sort of like military base where everyone is like dead and it's all fucked up.

But you're bouncing between that and sort of like traversing through personal memories of growing up with your grandparents and sort of weird, like vaguely supernatural events that happened to this main character as a child um, and and it's it's really fascinating like uh, it is very, very story driven um, in the first hour or so of the game um, I think I fought like two enemies and it was mostly just kind of like walking around reading stuff, solving puzzles, going through weird memories, doing dialogue.

Um, but, uh, but all in a very compelling way.

Like it never felt like I was like all right, let's get to the.

You know like give me a gun and let me get in there, or whatever.

Um, I kind of was just content to follow the story because it's sufficiently interesting.

And it has this very grounded like old horror movie feel to it where when the scares happen early in the game,

It's not like it's like you open a door and there's like a zombie there who bites your face.

It's like I was walking through this abandoned military base and there's a huge like thing of records and I can't get the drawers open.

And I walked to the other end of the room to look for stuff.

And then a few of the drawers like shoot open.

And it scared the shit out of me because it's just like

It's like The Exorcist or something.

Not all the scares are the girl's head spinning around.

Sometimes it's just like...

You know, you close a door, then the door opens on its own.

And it's that's almost creepier because you can imagine it happening in real life or something.

Like if you were alone at night and the door opened by itself.

That'd be almost like that's.

That's more horrifying, because your imagination starts to fill in all the catastrophic shit that's about to happen.

So, yeah, I won't talk too much about the story because I gather that this game is quite short.

Like I saw online, someone said four hours.

Which means I'm probably about halfway through it.

Cool.

So about 10 bucks as well.

So, yeah, yeah, no, it's I think if you like survival horror games and specifically sort of the way that survival horror games and RPGs have this kind of Venn diagram crossover where we're just like immersing yourself in the world and interacting with the story is is the appeal for you, like the atmosphere and the narrative and the mystery of it all. um this very much hits the spot for me so it yeah it's like it's like signalis adjacent brazilian gothic horror is how i would describe this a lot of puzzles like uh pretty light puzzles yeah i mean i i've definitely encountered a handful of puzzles but they're you know like when you do a puzzle in silent hill or whatever it's not crazy it's just like play play the three notes on the piano type puzzle or whatever you know um moonlight sonata you got in there um i will say i did see in the screenshots there is a statue of a lady holding the scales of justice.

Yes.

Yep.

That is, that is one of the early game puzzles.

She blindfolded, you know what I mean?

Like, are we, let's, let's take all the boxes here.

It's a metaphor, bro.

Um, yeah, I, I really enjoy this a lot.

I think um survival horror to me is an interesting genre where it sort of got so far away from its narrative atmospheric roots into this like action stuff, and then indie survival horror brought back sort of the initial, just like I don't know.

I want to feel like I'm in like House on Haunted Hill, more than I want to feel like I'm, you know, slaughtering hordes of zombies sometimes.

Sometimes I just want to be, like, a disempowered person.

Like, the weapon is like a flashlight, and you get batteries to replenish it.

A flashlight?

Yeah, the weapon is a flashlight.

I won't go into detail about how it's used.

It's still on Steam, you're telling me.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

Yeah, it's crazy.

It gets nuts.

But yeah, and the themes again are just so similar to Signalis that I think it's hilarious how original it feels, given how close it is, because it is about memory and The game is called Subversive Memories but it sort of is dealing with repressed memories.

And how you know this sort of interesting parallel between how, like memories can challenge our, our sort of like story we tell ourself, our self mythologization of like what's going on, who we are and like what's going on in reality, and the sort of structural, systemic parallel to that of like challenging systems by telling different stories about them.

And how, like a totalitarian, fascistic dictatorship needs to control narratives about what it is and control the way that people frame it and tell stories about it.

I think it's a really, really interesting, quite profound parallel between those two things that this game is walking the line between.

Very cool.

Subversive memories.

Thank you for explaining.

It's tricky.

I always.

I'm so glad that you're the person to talk about games like this, because it is so hard to uh communicate.

You know when a game is attempting to reach you on that sort of um, that level of of history and philosophy and and, and you know the the sense that it's communicating, not necessarily like oh, the platforming's great, you know what i mean like it's it's it's so tricky to communicate that stuff um, and it's also interesting to hear you know from somebody who really adores uh Signalis, that um that this does a good job of of being its own thing.

You know, you can obviously Signalis has a, you know, the, the, the genre, the aesthetic genre shift perhaps helps a little bit too, or Signalis is pretty, uh, I guess it's sci-fi but it's not really it is about going through a bunch of old buildings so yeah yeah it's definitely like sci-fi but it's not about you know there's there's sort of like one spaceship at the beginning you know what I mean yeah like fucking invading the Death Star no that's signal us to once they've got the budget you can fuck it up I can't wait for that one dude Speaking of sequels, have you seen, well, not sequels, speaking of cool studios making new things, have you seen the trailer for the new Game Bud A Thousand Times Resist People? oh yes i didn't watch the whole trailer because i i'm trailer verse and because i love thousand times resist so much that i just fucking i'm in but i watched like the first 10 seconds of it um yeah it's uh you are like going to interrogate an ai or something to convince it that it's not human is what it is yeah yeah sunset visitors new game i think did i have a link to it yeah prove you're human Um, which is, uh, yeah, very, yeah, I don't know.

I, I, I, the trailer looks really interesting to me.

It sort of ended on a almost like a windows 98 startup noise in the trailer which is it's doing a lot of.

I dunno that, that I feel like you know we'll.

We'll follow that crowd into the sun.

You know what I mean?

Like they've.

They've earned enough trust with a thousand times resist that.

When I came with the year it won.

It was one of our games of the year, at least.

Yeah, it was definitely up there.

I think we were doing superlatives rather than like a, a ranking.

It's definitely got like best narrative or best artistic vision or something like that.

Um Yeah no, I the like.

Interrogating an AI and its humanness, I think is a really interesting theme as well, because I think AI has become a term that's so conflated now with like, with LLMs and generative art that it's like.

It's like yeah, if an AI was sent to you, I would fucking beat the shit out of a dude.

And it's like, well, but what if it was like.

But what if it was actually sentient?

What if it wasn't just AGI claims by fucking techno-fascists?

You know what I mean?

Yeah, totally.

So I think it's quite a subversive area to explore, because I feel like that was a lot of science fiction.

Before we got close enough to the shitty sci-fi future that we're in now, it was people like Philip K Dick were like what if your girlfriend was a robot?

And it's like well, what if my girlfriend was a robot?

That'd be crazy.

And now it's like well, now we're.

Now we're too close to a shitty version of that reality for it to be interesting.

Uh, so to sort of like go back to that well and do like philosophical thought experiments about it is cool to me.

Uh, the uh.

They've also, i feel like have have waded in those waters as well with thousand times resist, like.

There's a lot of like.

What is self if you're a part of a computer or living in a, without getting too much into the themes of that game?

There's lots of identity is kind of the main thrust of that game's narrative.

Like, who am I or am I part of me or whatever?

You know, when when time moves forward, am I am the same version of myself?

All that sort of stuff.

Yeah.

Which is some of the stuff that I think science fiction is best at, is like science fiction is so interesting to me.

Not for I like like Asimov and stuff like that.

But the stuff that's really interesting to me is like Philip K Dick where, instead of technology being like what if we got to space and the aliens were there and they gave us the cure for cancer?

It's like yeah, that's fun to imagine.

But the sci-fi that interests me is how does the like unchangeable human element of us deal with like these new realities?

Uh and as yeah, like you said, like once you can ship a theseus all your body parts in like a transhumanist way and you're like a fucking android with the same brain.

It's like, when do you?

When are you still you?

Or like how does there's like a part of our brains that is still just like a fucking primate?

And it's like, when you put that in the, in the robot shell, how does the monkey part of us deal with the robot part of us?

Right, exactly the part that's like really interesting to me is that it's like it seems like there's kind of like a severance thing of like your body, like you can see your body, but then like you're in this program or whatever.

So there's like like the one bullet point on here says, at the end of the program, decide if you like to re-merge your two selves or discard your work self.

So i'm like oh, that's interesting, because severance was like i feel like maybe the more i watched it and like i uncovered the mystery.

It like wasn't as cool or whatever, but like just that idea and like what happens on the outside and like what do the two, like halves, know about each other?

And like yeah, does the real, does the digital, or like the work one?

Is that like a real person or is like the other person, the real, like that whole like thing.

It's like the time traveling or or cloning thing you get as well like in like movies like Looper or you know where you have to, you know, go back and kill your old self, or you know which version of you are, like the prestige or something you know.

There's so many movies that have like messed around with the idea of like you know What is?

Is there, is there one of you, you know, in a world in which you can copy yourself or meet yourself or change?

You know, go back in time or whatever you know like is there?

Is there a single year?

Is there a single spiritual you or are you just. meat and electricity.

Yeah no, that's what I like about it is like I think that there are.

I'm not like a religious person and never have been, but I sort of developed a sense of spirituality sometime between 18 and 20.

And I feel like part of that is it's more like a philosophical relationship to thinking about the nature of self um, and like how self, like ego, is sort of this constructed mechanism that there's no like essential, like you can't like take like the sense of self and extract it and put it in like a jar or something um, And that's like this terrifying thing that we spend our whole lives trying not to think about.

And I think that the interesting thing about science fiction is that it is a dimension through which people who are averse to spiritual or philosophical dimensions of thinking can be introduced into those ideas in a way that's accessible.

Because it's it's like it's not like what if like an angel came to your bedroom and like and it's like, oh, well, that's fucking bullshit.

It's like, but what if like a robot came to your bedroom and said the same shit?

It's like, oh, fuck.

Now you got me, dude.

I'm like.

I don't know.

There are interesting ways in which we can sort of be like a Trojan horse into thinking about deep philosophical issues by having, like a what if that seems grounded in technology.

And I think one of the issues that I have certainly was some of the reasons that I left the church when I did, was that to me in science fiction.

It's like we are playing around with these questions.

Whereas, like in a lot of organized religion that I grew up around with, it's like this is the answer.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Like, it's not, it's not, it's not think about it.

Cause if you thought about it, you'd probably come up with a different answer, but like, they're like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

This is, this is why, this is why.

And I think, I think to me it's like there's this I think I've mentioned it before in this podcast probably there's this great play called I think it's called Mr Burns the musical or something.

And the first, okay, if you're going to watch this play, close your ears now.

Is anyone here going to watch this play?

You've told me about it before.

Yeah.

The first half of the play is basically about.

It's like a bunch of people are, if I remember correctly, around a campsite basically referencing episodes of the Simpsons.

Like just talking about all these references.

And then after the matinee it's basically like 2000 years in the future or something like an apocalypse happens right at the end of the first half.

And then they skip forward, same cast, but they're all playing different people.

And basically what's happened is sort of book of Eli style or whatever.

There is like a like people have the stories of the Simpsons have prevailed and people have built religions based on these.

You know jokes that they only half remember from the TV show.

And to me that's like it's a perfect.

You know it's not perfect, but it's a very good allegory for the way in which people read ancient text, where you know the reason why Jesus turned the wine into the water into wine.

Like why would you turn water into wine?

And it's like the real well, at the time there was probably like there was lots of rules around if you had a uh uh feast.

You had to supply the wine.

It was very embarrassing.

If you ran out of wine, there was actually fees for people who did.

If you ran out of wine and all these people came and brought things, then you would have to pay them down the road in wine if there wasn't enough of it.

It's all about celebration.

It's all about sanctifying something like there's all of these clues at that period that this is referring to, but like thousands of years removed for it you're just like you have to come up with some other fucking reason why that's relevant.

And that's like so much of religion is like misinterpreting things that were clearly allegories.

You know, like these things didn't fucking happen.

The people back then some of them they thought happened, some of them it was just part of.

Like you know, this is the the way in which we want to tell our story.

It's not literal, like they didn't have the scientific method, they didn't have History as we have it.

They don't think about the world in these binary ways.

They think about the world like nature and the sky, as these sort of you know amalgamous, you know philosophy and science and all these things.

They all spread into each other.

You know what I mean?

It's not to be taken like this actually happened.

It's a concept about thinking of the world that we don't do anymore.

We don't have anymore because we've evolved and had all these new ways of thinking, categorizing things and all that.

And it's like yeah, so I feel like that is a that's like a big aspect of looking into that type of historical meaning.

Um, i forget why we were talking about this, what game it was, was it, was it.

I think it started with subversive memories.

Subversive memories oh, we started talking about sunset visitor and the ai.

Yeah, bullying the ai game.

It's cool.

Games are cool.

They can get you to think about cool shit and ask questions, like you said.

That's a good shit.

Maybe that's why i'm playing i'm jesus christ, because it's like allowing me to re-engage with the very literal interpretation of these texts and and to kind of remind myself how much of it is just like.

At the time, this probably made a lot of sense to tell the stories this way but, oh my God, like you know, global North white people have really fucked up this text.

You know what I mean?

They've really misinterpreted it in the most self-aggrandizing, chauvinistic way.

You know what I mean?

That's the vibe I get anyway.

Well said.

All right, we've got to stop talking about I Am Jesus Christ, the video game.

It's yielded good discussion, honestly.

I feel like it's going to pop up in every single episode just like somehow.

What's going to be great is if one of you, it pops up for one of you.

I'll play it.

It'd be like if one of us who isn't Jeremy played World of Warcraft.

So I played about three hours of Mists of Pandaria last week.

Really?

Really.

Oh, my God.

I wanted to know.

I wanted to know what, you know, Frank had talked about it.

You've obviously been talking about WoW for the past couple of weeks.

And I was like, let's keep the WoW train going.

I need to know what the fuck Mr. Pandaria Classic is about.

And I fucking did not like it.

Yeah, yeah.

I felt terrible.

I played like up to I don't know not that high because the leveling is slower maybe level six or something.

I played like maybe three hours or four hours or something like that.

I actually recorded the first couple of hours.

I might, and I did commentary, so I might publish that for patrons at some stage.

Yeah, I just I found it very.

I've been thinking a lot about The Legend of California and Native American stuff.

And the more I play that game, the more I'm like ooh, I don't know if I'd put them in this, in this.

Like, nobody even speaks any language in that game.

They just go.

They don't say like there's, i'm gonna get you or you know, there's like, it is so like and all of the humans are so.

Caricatures of things like oh, those guys are spanish, you know what i mean?

That's a cowboy.

You know there's no like, there's no depth to it.

And i'm like um, I don't know if you know, I'd like to see something in here that's given a sort of deft touch when it comes to Native Americans in California, but the actual like.

Nothing else in this game when it comes to people or societies, is given any consideration.

I'm like I don't know if that's going to be like.

They're clearly there for mechanical reasons and it works on a mechanical level in the same way like the forest.

I don't really give a shit about the lore of the forest, it's just interesting and whatever.

And I felt the same way about Mists of Pandaria.

I was like This is kind of I don't know.

It's it's.

It reminded me of the like, you know, the like aliens that are clearly like Chinese people, at the start of the Phantom Menace.

You know, you know, that's right.

I felt like that. it felt a bit like that.

Like I'm like, the world looks like a misappend area.

Cause I never played it.

It felt like cause I was interested.

If it was like you know, I talked last week with Frank about it.

If it was like cinephobic, right?

Like sort of this anti Chinese sort of thing that comes across in a lot of, um, Western countries.

Um, And it didn't make me feel like you know, when you play Ghost of Tsushima, you're like yeah, they cared about the, about the lore.

Like when I was playing this, I was like oh, some of these voices, the characters, the like, the look of the place.

I was like, I don't know, man, I don't.

I don't think this is it.

And I just also didn't vibe with it at all.

Like it wasn't like fun or like a cool place to be.

I don't know.

The whole time I was like, I can't wait to get off this fucking island.

But like it's a big the Pandarian Island's pretty big i think you probably stay there for i don't know, until like level 15 or 20, maybe i don't know.

I also couldn't figure out where the fuck it was on the map.

Where is it?

Oh really, hang on, let's look.

I kept right clicking and then it would never.

It would always went back to the world map and i was like okay well, where is it?

Do you know where it is?

Frank No, I've only been doing human.

I'm in Dustwood right now, so I haven't touched the panda stuff.

Well, I'm touching this panda stuff right now, so to speak.

Yeah, if anyone knows where the Pandaren Island is, does it exist in the ether?

Maybe that may make sense because then nobody ever found them, but no, I couldn't.

I couldn't fuck with the pandas.

I don't know.

Yeah, it just feels like... I tried.

It feels like a weird like china themed theme park with pandas and yeah, it feels.

It feels like like prager you would make a video about it where they ask white people if it's offensive and they're like yeah, it's kind of offensive.

And then they ask chinese people.

They're like i think it's neat.

And then they're like, see white people yeah, i could relax, it's very like.

Like if like, if everyone thought that irish people were what happens on paddy's day yeah yeah, if there was like a leprechaun expansion yeah, and everyone was running around doing like shitty, fucking top of the morning to you and you know yeah, it's like old and all that, potatoes drinking lots of fucking guinness, exactly.

Well hey, look some.

Some stereotypes are based for a reason.

Let's not go crazy here.

Yeah, so i don't know, i wasn't, i wasn't, i wasn't into it.

That doesn't surprise me.

That's when i fucking i fell off before that.

But i remember seeing pandaria come out and be like i got it.

I got out when the gen was good.

Yeah, i think it's cool.

I i wasn't quite sure how they rolled out all those, but you can go back to like wow, classic burning crusade, classic mr pandaria, classic like They don't get rid of the old ones, which I actually wasn't aware of.

So that was pretty cool to see.

So I might go back to Wild Classic.

Hang out with Hogger and the crew.

We have one more game to talk about, I believe.

And it's also going to come up in an interview after...

I sat down with Chandana Ekanayake, also known as Eka, the let's call him creative director, I'm not quite sure.

One of the co-founders of Outerloop Games, who made Falcon Age back in the day.

We did an interview with Eka on the Noclip channel a number of years ago now for falcon age.

Uh, thirsty suitors was a game that came out a couple of years ago.

Um and uh, it's sort of games that are sort of uh interest, like sort of southeast asian culture experience, you know, the sort of miasma of cultures, the mixing pot, as it were, the melting pot of cultures down there.

Based on eka's heritage himself and a bunch of the folks who work on these games.

And thirsty suitors was, it was a very sort of a game planted in sort of contemporary life with regards to being a person from that part of the world.

Dosa divas similarly, is sort of uh based on uh, based on on family and cooking and uh, a bunch of um aspects of uh uh, I guess uh lay capitalism, which we'll get into in a second, but I did talk to Eka.

That interview will happen after this podcast.

Just keep listening and there's a roll on into it.

Uh, but before we talk to him uh, myself and no caps have played dosa divas.

Um, what have, what did you make about what?

How much have you played so far?

No cops, and what is your?

What is your take on dosa divas?

And have you played any of their previous games?

I've not played any of their previous games, but i was just looking up falcon age and that looks really cool.

Um yeah, i'm gonna have to watch the no clip video about it, i guess.

Yeah, it's a short one.

We did a GDC back in, what was it, 2018 maybe, Jeremy?

Something like that, yeah.

I had a broken foot, I believe.

Oh, you did?

That's when I had no shoes on and everyone would come in and stare at my weird bloody sock.

This is Jeremy.

He films everything.

He's got his own thing going on.

I remember.

Can I interject for one second?

I remember when we interviewed Eka, he mentioned that a relative of his was a meditation teacher.

And it happened to be the.

It was Hanepala Ganaratana who wrote a book that was sort of like the most influential meditation text of my life.

Wow.

And I it was like a very weird coincidental moment.

And I was like, that's crazy.

And I just remember standing on one foot with a sock on and be like dude.

I like know you're fucking.

I like I forget their relationship.

It might be like his grandfather.

But I just remember thinking that he must think I'm like the fucking nuttiest dude like escaped from the asylum to film this, uh, interview.

That's wild.

He's like, I think the Han is also my, uh, you know, my landlord.

Anyway.

That's very cool.

Yeah.

Eka's, he's good people.

He's an interesting dude.

And yeah, their games are, you know, they're very unique in that respect.

But yeah, sorry, NoCaps.

What have you made of your time on it?

I've played for two hours, and it's just fun.

It's colorful.

There's a bunch of weird ideas mixed into one.

There's, like, these mech kind of robot things that, like, bond to people or whatever.

And then, like, you're, like, fighting this, like, giant, like, crab robot thing.

And then you're also There's like these mini games for like cooking all this different food because everyone.

So the story is that like you're two sister playing as two sisters and one of the robots, and then the third sister is like this evil runs, this like corporation that makes these like fast food, like like microwave meals or whatever.

So everyone's just eating these like pre-made meals and like the art of cooking has been lost or whatever.

And so you're trying to like find your sister, to like reason with her and then also like feed the people of the world like good food.

So that's part of it, and the other part is like turn-based combat, which i never really like.

Gel with turn-based combat, like expedition 33, like i kind of like bounced off that, even though i really liked how weird the world was and everything.

But here it's kind of like a little bit simplified and it's just like fun.

That that's like my word to describe it as fun.

Yeah, it's very um, the game is punchy.

It's like okay, next thing, next thing, next thing, next thing.

It kind of gets to the point For me.

I feel like I have enjoyed out of loops games in the past.

Um, uh.

They have always felt like games made by small teams with big ideas and sometimes kind of got there, or got there with some aspects, or like didn't get there without other aspects.

To me, this is it reminds me of the games that we've covered over the years, where it's the team has stuck together through a couple of projects and then they get.

They just get better and better and better.

I, I am really impressed by this game.

I think it's their best game they've put out.

Uh, I think mechanically it feels richer.

It feels like some of their old games felt a little bit thin on sort of um the the the the, the game plays.

Things sometimes felt mini game ish perhaps, or like once a one off or something like that.

There is gameplay depth here that I find really interesting.

So the food aspect of this game is sort of like throughout.

Right.

So when you are trying to you're trying to make these doses, which I guess is a South Indian.

I've never had one.

Has anyone had a dosa before?

Yes.

Dosa are delicious.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

OK.

What type of dosa have you had?

What's in a dosa?

It's made of lentils and stuff, is it?

Or something like that?

Yeah, is it lentil flour?

I'm not sure.

It's like a giant, incredibly thin pancake and it's usually served like uh, with like curry kind of things rolled up in it like a.

It's kind of like a giant burrito.

Um okay, it's how i've had it.

I don't know, there may be different ways of having.

There was a place in cambridge i used to go in college all the time that served dosa.

I will say i get hungry playing this game.

Yeah, the food like looks so good And the cooking stuff is interesting.

So like you're you're and I think this game won me over.

I think the first couple of hours I was like, OK, just doing some interesting stuff.

And then, once it eventually taught me all of the mechanisms in that first town, I was like OK, now I, now I sort of I get the flow of this.

So what you're doing is, like Nocap said, it's the two sisters and then you have this sort of like almost like Titanfall 2-esque mech who's like got a personality and stuff.

You are walking around this town collecting ingredients and then, for you know, you're trying to feed the army, basically.

You're feeding the uprising.

And each person has a different type of dosa that they like.

There's like a vendor guy who you can like spend things on, to give you certain things like curry powder or you know.

Um uh, you know coconut milk or whatever.

And then you go into a mini game.

You have to like put together the dosa out of these like four um flavor, multiple flavor profiles and these four sort of like templates that they go into, i guess, and then, if you have all the items, it's basically set in mini games, which are usually, like you know, timing based things or you know stick control based things, but it's pretty fast.

There's usually like only like two things you have to do to make one of the doses and then It makes multiple doses for you.

You can give one to them.

You can use one yourself in combat and it will give you a certain perk.

And then in the turn based aspect, each of your characters has like, like Nocap, said it's it's, it's less complex than something like Expedition 33.

But there's still a decent amount of like planning that you need to have in here.

The enemies have uh things that they are uh, you know, resistant to, or or um, what's the opposite of a resistant weakness weakness.

There we go.

Thank you, it's been a long day.

They're weak to certain things, but they're all flavor profiles, so it's like salt or sweet, or you know savory or chill, you know chili, like heat, you know spiciness.

And so you and each of your moves has a certain aspect of those things.

All the moves are also like food based, like you're throwing plates or you're hitting people with spatulas.

And then they also they have the block window and the attack window stuff going on.

So you're always doing something.

You're always like in a menu, picking a thing, or like trying to block or trying to like time of things.

You hit them more.

Um, and the fights are like not overly long.

Even the boss fight at the end of the first area was.

You know it had multiple phases in it but it had.

It felt great.

It was like, Oh, this is like, you know, it's sort of, uh, the music's good and all that stuff.

I love the animation.

I think the animation in this game is terrific.

Like, There's so much personality coming out of the robot.

Whenever he runs, if you hit the run button, he Naruto runs.

And if you do like a double jump, he like tries to fly like a chicken kind of thing.

Yeah.

Also like he has a horn, like you can honk the horns.

He could just run around like spamming it.

It's like a, it's like a clown horn.

Like it's, it's so funny.

Yeah.

It's got great personality.

The, the, It's voice acted.

Like the story is interesting.

You know you're meeting the local sort of auntie who's who's, you know who's pissed off and is doing like, like trying to do a terrorist attack.

Try and get this lady away from the town.

And they're like, Oh, don't be so extreme.

And she's like, I don't fucking care.

You know what I mean?

Like I'm, I'm old.

Um, uh.

One of my favorite things is like the enemies you fight are all like versions of just like capitalist bureaucracy.

Like all of the enemies you fight in the first town are lawyers and so like one of them is like you know almost like a snake like like sitting on like a snake throne another one is like an intern and they they're like tricky they're tricky like lawyers so they're like they'll come at you to try and hit you but then they'll they'll hit you at a weird timing like they won't hit you on the beat where it looks like they're going to hit you and so there's all this like it's just like clever storytelling like oh these lawyers are like not to be trusted i get it um and then later levels they have other sort of like you know tech bro-y style enemies in it which are which are cool and then the way they even attack, I, you know, the fact that it's thematically sort of accurate, um, I think is pretty cool.

So yeah, I, I, I was surprised how much, um, how more I found the whole thing.

I have the menu music stuck in my head all the fucking time.

That's the other thing.

The music is like very uh sort of of the uh of the region and and and uh, made in-house as well, i believe and uh, and pretty cool.

Um yeah, do you have any final thoughts on it?

No caps.

Um, i mean, i just thought it was fun.

Like there's always like yeah, like you said, like there's always something to do, like even in combat and stuff.

You're like parrying or you're like doing like a special attack and you have to like bounce the walk back and forth like to the beat.

But yeah, it's kept my attention.

I'm gonna go play some more later.

Yeah, it's very economic.

I think it's a game that doesn't sort of let.

It's trying really hard not to let you get bored.

It's like you know the fights are snappy, then do this, then do this, then do this, and then it opens a bit more in the later, later levels.

But um Yeah, I think it's real neat.

Yeah, I think it was over my expectations.

I didn't play that much of Thirsty Suitors, but it wasn't one that connected with me.

Falcon Age back in the day was a game that I really liked, but it feels like a small game.

This feels...

This feels confident in a way that was really cool, I think.

And yeah, I could watch the animations in this game and the art design.

And there's just a lot of really fun ideas in here.

And yeah, and the girls are great.

Like the two sisters are.

They're very it's funny how like the central sort of you know conflict in this game, similar to stuff they've worked on in the past.

It's just like family shit.

It's just like we're coming home to meet mom and dad.

One of the sisters hasn't been back in a long time.

Since then town has changed the other sisters.

Who runs this?

Like doordash fucking.

And that's not even doordash, it's more like um, like Marley spoon or something you know, like one of the.

Well, I guess that's a meal kit.

Yeah.

Whatever.

It's like, you know, they're selling you, you know, microwave meals or whatever.

Everyone's forgotten how to cook, but she's like bitter as well.

Cause like she wants her success to be.

You know she's kind of got like, you know, youngest child syndrome or whatever.

It's, it's, it's very cool.

There's.

There's a lot of like it's.

Ultimately, the whole thing is just about family and community and um and and sort of political action.

And I think that's really cool in a game that's also just about like food and shit.

Uh, you can download the demo is available.

Uh, the game is out now as of today.

Actually, as we're recording, it is out um and uh, it's uh 20 bucks.

Usually it's down to about 18, 10 off.

Uh, until april 28th.

But yeah, you can also check out the uh demo if you want as well, over on steam.

And is it coming out on anything else?

I think it's coming out on everything.

Yeah, it is.

We talk about it.

I'm pretty sure it's coming out on a whole bunch of shit.

Yeah, it's out on Switch 1, Switch 2.

It's out on Xbox, PlayStation, the whole shebang, I think.

So there you go.

Dose of Divas.

Check it out now.

All right.

I want to take a couple of emails here, Frank.

Yeah, that'd be awesome.

If people want to send us an email, please write to us.

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

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

Our first question comes from FrenziedManBeast who asks about Triple Eye Gaming.

I just turned 41 and find myself noping out of the constant labeling and marketing churn about what is and isn't indie, and the incessant need to label everything instead of just enjoying games as a personal experience.

If it's good, it's good.

Unless it utilizes de novo slash kernel level DRM, then it's evil.

The latest big marketing push seems to be for triple I gaming, including steam ads and even a full website at triple I dash initiativecom.

On one hand, anything to help consumers connect with studios for game discovery and cut out the draconian publisher modes is a positive.

But my boomer gamer spidey senses can't help but worry that this is just a big marketing firm trying to rebrand as something hip, cool outside those older conventions.

What do you all think?

Didn't you guys watch the Triple I showcase this year?

A little bit.

I like half watched it.

Yeah.

I know Jesse had some thoughts on this.

He was chatting about it a little bit on Blue Sky.

We talked privately as well about it over the weekend.

Yeah.

What did you make of it?

It was like a.

45 minutes of back-to-back trailers, they said.

World premieres, gameplay reveals, launch dates.

I thought it was longer than that.

Maybe it was 45 minutes.

It was 45.

Okay, okay.

Yeah, what did you make of it?

Personally the only games.

I knew about a couple games that were going to be in it, and then those were the ones that interested me.

I didn't find any of the other stuff, like the reveals and stuff that interesting.

There was a lot of multiplayer games which are just aren't it for me.

So obviously i'm just gonna like tune out for that, but i mean, unless you're playing big walk with us oh yeah yeah, that's the exception.

Yeah, we gotta have to do a series on that.

Yeah yeah, we do.

When that game comes out, we gotta, we gotta play some more uh, but yeah, so it didn't.

That's interesting.

The games that you were there to see were ended up being the ones you were like.

There's like a cairn dlc is coming this summer.

That's like free and over the hill, which is like a, like a lo-fi uh, like snow runner type thing.

I knew it was gonna be in it and oh, that's cool, i gotta check that out.

I'm not seeing that.

Um, Did you play?

Just because I wonder if you're into that one.

Did you play?

What's that game about?

The caravan or what is it?

Oh, fuck.

Sandwich Caravan?

Caravan Sandwich?

Yeah, yeah, that's it.

Yeah, Caravan Sandwich.

Have you played that?

Mm-hmm.

Were you into it?

Yeah, I liked it a lot.

It was not perfect, but like just the fact, like the whole theme of it, like it's like this beautiful mediterranean thing, but there's also like this sci-fi stuff and like you're just going around like helping the, the locals, and like it was just fun.

Yeah yeah, good vibes.

Yeah, i'm with you.

It wasn't, it wasn't perfect, but it was doing.

It's not like, not actually like an off-roading game like but yeah, you still drive around.

Yeah, and thanks for reminding me about over the hill, because i i've definitely seen that steam page but forgot to wish list it.

So um yeah, that's an interesting one for sure.

Hey jeremy, what about you?

What did you make of it?

Yeah, the kind of things that interested me from it were things that I was already aware of, like Sunset Visitor's new game and stuff which again, it's like

I'm a weird use case, because if I'm already convinced that I want to play a game, I want to hear nothing about it.

So when they're like, let's go to the studio and hear all about it.

It's like, no, no, no.

Maybe I'll watch that when I finish the game, but I'm already sold on it.

And then, yeah, kind of nothing else really clicked for me.

It was mostly stuff that I was aware of or... like, uh, additional content for stuff I was aware of.

Um, there was a few games I hadn't heard of prior, but uh, nothing crazy for me.

But in terms of like using um indie or triple I or whatever all these different labels as like a marketing thing.

Um yeah I, I think the the water has just been so muddy that it's kind of um.

Indie just means like not triple a now uh, and so it.

Yeah, it's become a marketing term.

I, i feel like I don't know.

I don't, I don't feel like I see a lot of sort of like publishers being like oh, we're going to like launder this AAA game as indie and like fake it or whatever.

I feel like indie is just such a like AAA is a little tiny slice of the top of the spectrum and then everything else is is indie.

So it's a yeah i, i we've talked about this before, but we we need better labels um, like underground versus indie or something.

Yeah, exactly because we've we've had trouble with the other end of this, which is the, you know the, the mega indie, or the underground game, as i often call them, or computer worlds.

Some of us have come up with names for yeah, which feel different and not not necessarily in terms of like, budget or teams.

I think some of the game's that are made with bigger budgets and biggest team sizes either.

It's like a chicken and egg thing.

Either the team size necessitates the type necessitates the type of game you have to make to try and make your money back.

Or if you want to make that type of game, you need a bigger team.

But like I feel like, more than like computer walls, underground stuff that we tend to cover on no clip to uh, is more about like artistic vision, like making games outside of the boundaries from a creative perspective, not from a you know cause everyone's just trying to get money from anywhere.

Like what is indie mean anymore is totally like some of these games don't have a publisher.

Sure.

But they got a chunk of money from Nexon.

You know like how indie you know are what the fuck does that matter anymore.

It was a.

It was a, you know.

And on the funding aspect was never one-to-one with what reason people were calling stuff indie.

You know what i mean.

Like supergiant games is an indie studio.

That is 100.

True, they published their own games.

They're also like have been massively successful now for a decade.

So, like you know, they're not.

Like you know the people making i don't know fucking.

You know you know Bryce Boo or whatever.

You know what I mean?

Like, like they're on different they're.

They're as different to each other as super giant is like Activision.

You know what I mean?

Like they're, they're on totally different things.

I think I don't like the triple I name.

Cause to me it's like And I know I'm talking about you know, saying these underground games and stuff but Triple I to me is like kind of exclusionary, in like a looking down its nose kind of way.

You know what I mean?

Like we're Triple I. We're not just indie.

You know what I mean?

And, weirdly enough, I do find games that get in this to be kind of less interesting and more status quo as a as a result, like there's some stuff in here that i really like.

Like you mentioned, karn and uh dead is disco actually played a little bit of that.

The the demo stuff um uh, that was a interesting.

Maybe i'll talk about it a bit more next week.

Um, You know, Long Gone is a game that I've been following for a long time now and, you know, wanted to see more of that.

But like games like Windrose, for instance, or Valor Mortis, they're like big studios making those games.

You know, not massive studios, but like Valor Mortis is like a, you know, pretty big.

It's kind of a game that's attempting to, I guess that's why it's AAA.

I guess that's what it is.

It is a AAA game that's made by an indie studio Windrose, which I talked about on the, I think on one of our indie rec videos a while ago, the sort of pirate crafting game.

Again feels like it's a bigger thing.

So so i don't know.

But yeah, i'm not, i'm not massive about the name, but then I feel for them because we have the same fucking problem with computer worlds.

No, it's weird too, because it's like a triple I You're like OK, I kind of see where they're coming from.

And then you think about it for a second and you're like oh, but it's like, if you're, you're like oh, we're like indie, but like big indie.

But it's like the appeal of indie is that it is indie.

So it's kind of like.

If you were touring the world and selling out stadiums.

But you're like, we're the world's biggest garage band.

What the fuck does it even mean at that point?

We're so punk.

We're a punk band selling out stadiums.

Yeah, we're playing at Gillette Stadium next weekend, our little DIY punk band.

Yeah, it has.

It's a weird it has a like a weird tension.

But yeah, like you said, it's it's just I don't have a better label for it.

And it's super giant, like you said, is weird too because um, the scale of their team and like, maybe even the budgets or whatever, I'd be curious to sort of do a comparative analysis of, like a smaller studio, like Team Silent, for Silent Hill 1 versus, like I feel like Hades 2 probably had a bigger team and budget than Silent Hill 1, but it's like Silent Hill 1 is seen as this, you know, sort of like AAA game, but it was just there was different scales of economy.

It's like 50 people who made Oblivion. yeah it's so strange you know supergiant's like 35 maybe now something like that yeah it sounds about right yeah so you know but you know different eras different tools obviously we're not you know one has the backing of a bigger company to a certain extent um yeah but yeah yeah i think triple i it invites that type of analysis anyway just by virtue of the fact that it's called Triple I so it is on purpose being a sort of a disruptive name in this space so I think that's good frenzied man beast dear emailer I think it's okay to look sort of side-eyed at that stuff and i almost think that's kind of what they're going for to a certain extent by calling a triple i like it's an it's it's an intentional fucking with the with what you think of what these games are but i will say i feel like games like windrose and you know the bigger sort of games feel a little bit more at home at that showcase or like a bro tato dlc they feel a bit more at home there than games like long gone or, uh, I'm trying to pick another one that feels small, like carn even, you know, or prove you're human.

I don't know.

Those games feel like they're closer to, to our neck of the woods.

It does feel a little strange as well.

Like uh, computer worlds felt like it had sort of I mean I, we didn't curate the list for a computer world, so this is not me just like blowing smoke up our own asses.

We would just kind of like help toast it.

Um, but there felt like there was a certain sort of uh, not like an ideological cohesion, but a sort of like creative ethos underlying the whole thing.

Yeah.

I feel like there's the, the didn't, I don't know.

There was like a graveyard keeper too with, like the AI generative fucking key art bullshit to me being in the same showcase as like, sunset visitors.

New thing felt very weird to me.

Um, it feel like i this is no shade towards the show as a whole.

I think, you know, putting together a list of games to promote is like an admirable thing and curation is a necessary thing in indie games.

But um yeah, it's a.

Curation takes on a weird sort of meaning when it's mixing together something that i think is like some of the best art in games and sort of um, You know, something that I think is kind of like.

I've not played Graveyard Keeper.

I just I immediately clocked the key art as AI and then looked into it and people were like yeah, this is the guy who like, loves generative AI.

And yeah, I think you also get that.

This happens at the Keely's too where, like when you're running a show that's making money, like I'm sure this trip.

I don't know how this triple I thing is run necessarily, but I'm guessing there is some pay to play stuff happening here and maybe some free slots for super indie stuff.

Maybe that's where that tension comes from.

Is that like, some of these games are from single people who haven't released a game yet and they're getting in on the free side, and then you've got ones that are paying because they're able to pay?

I, i honestly don't know, but but that's, that's how you end up with a list of games that doesn't feel cohesive, because you're putting one in for one reason and another for another reason.

That's kind of why these showcases sometimes feel that way and make people feel confusing confusing Confucius, confusing.

Uh, whereas obviously in Gil was putting together computer worlds.

That cohesion and that central vision was the point.

And obviously they had a bit of budget thrown in to pay for, you know, to pay the artists and to pay the uh musicians and stuff like that.

Uh, all the video work we did was uh pro bono.

Like we you know you, everyone got in the crew, got paid for doing the work, but like i didn't pay myself and we didn't take money from them to do it, you know what i mean.

Like it was, it was um, it came from that place.

So uh yeah, so it's a different type of sort of pressure on the, the person running the show.

With gill you can just pick the games that feel like they're part of the vision and i think that's why computer worlds was, was kind of cool.

But yeah, i have to check out triple i.

But yeah, it is definitely an interesting naming shit's hard man, especially when you're trying to name genres of stuff, categories.

You know it's real difficult.

Um Frank, you want to get this last email from Havatar?

Yeah, Havatar has a question.

Hey gang, this one's a two-parter.

First, what is the documentary that you wish you could make, but for whatever reason, such as key people are no longer alive or refuse interviews, which documentary is impossible to make?

And then second, is there a documentary you're itching to make but you can't yet, such as the game's not out yet or hasn't been made yet.

So you know it'll be a fascinating subject.

Game's not out yet, hasn't been made yet.

Half-Life 3.

That's what I'd like to do.

Somebody release Half-Life 3.

Make another game.

We've run out of documentaries to do with Valve.

And I mentioned to go back up.

I guess we could go back.

We could pitch them some some other stuff like team fortress although yeah, i'm trying to think of that.

We can't do a portal one because jet fat psych won't talk to me um, but yeah, i'd like to.

Yeah, i mean, that would be cool, that'd be a cool video game.

I just want like video game to fucking exist so i can play it half-life.

Alex, actually that'd be, that would be a cool one.

Actually that'd be a cool one.

Yeah Yeah, what do you got?

What do you folks got?

Earthbound, but Satoru Iwata would be kind of a necessary missing piece of the puzzle.

Although I think you could make that documentary and do like a nice tribute.

But yeah, in terms of games that aren't out yet, I mean, it's too soon to talk about doing another disco elysium successor documentary.

But like right, holy fuck, i would love to just like go in bed with uh uh, kervitz and rostov and helen and stuff and just kind of like see what they're doing, hang out, that'd be dope.

I did that for a little bit.

Didn't see anything they're working on, either means they're not, they haven't done much, or they're keeping up behind closed doors.

Yeah, you should totally do that.

No caps, what would you do?

I would like to see a um, a stray documentary like i know that the i feel like the studio is so like secretive like, but i just love that game i was.

I need to play it recently.

Yeah, you haven't played it.

No, i played.

It's like actually so good.

Think i played like that.

No, i have it in my library.

I think i played like the first hour and i stop playing maybe the first 30 minutes and i wasn't in the mood.

I've completed all of little kitty big city with my daughter, so i need to play this.

I think yeah, people like once you get to like the first like little city hub, and then you can like go on all the roofs and everything.

It's like kind of a bigger area and like find little secret notes and stuff.

It's really cute, Yeah.

I have 0.3 hours on record.

So I basically was just playing the tutorial and then I noped out for some reason.

Okay.

I got to do that.

Okay.

Stray.

And then you'll want to make a documentary on it probably.

There you go.

Exactly.

I think the, the, the, the biggest one is always rockstar.

It's just like you know it's.

It's a.

It'd be cool to talk to those folks about the games that they've made and how they made them, because they've made some of the best games ever.

And it would also be cool to, you know, dive into the crazy work culture at that studio.

I've just heard so many stories over the years about that, how competitive it is and and how much of a boys club it was for a very long period of time and and sort of like i.

There's probably a really interesting conversation to be had there about the types of games you make, the types of developers you make, the you know not the good and bad and not the like oh, it's competitive and that made us make the best games, but like the sort of perception of that.

And, you know, I bet there's a lot of like weird tension and, you know uh hypocrisy and uh but also some interesting truths that come out of that whole thing you know because whenever i talk somebody who worked a rock star it's always this like very uh complicated reaction where they're like oh yeah this part's awful and that's awful but like also i work with the smartest people like everyone on the team is is amazing at what they do and yeah we're like competitive and like it's like 25 negative competitive but 75 positive competitive you know it's like so it's it's a complicated place i think for a lot of people um and yeah obviously they've made so many great games so And somehow a second no caps has appeared in the chat for me.

George Bush meme whispering to Danny, a second no caps has hit the podcast.

I don't know what happened.

This is great.

No one else will see this.

Frank, this happened for you too?

Yeah, I see.

Now it disappeared the second time.

Oh my God.

The original No Caps has died.

This is just like the conversation we were having.

It just booted me out.

It did.

Which one of you?

Did you kill your past self?

Did you just do a looper?

We'll never know.

Oh my God.

That's terrifying.

Because then you're going to kill half of me and then I don't want that to happen.

I want to take over.

There's going to be like 10 of me all around.

I'm going to just get flooded with no caps in here.

That is terrifying.

Wow.

Okay.

I guess we just have to continue our lives like this never happened.

This is the moment.

This was the fracturing of the universe that we all saw in real time, where we're just going to keep moving on.

Any other ones?

Frank, you got any ones for this?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know where those people are.

But the team that made all the N64 wrestling games, they went from WCW and then doing the WWF games.

At the same time, they were making games for Japan's audience.

So they would make the core game and then just palette swap.

Oh, here's all the Japanese wrestlers.

Here's there's, you know, virtual pro wrestling.

Here's wcw.

Oh, wwf hired us all.

Right, we've reskinned the game a fourth time.

Here's all that like it's so.

So, like again, like i've talked about, like doing like a man on the street documentary about wrestling games, whatever.

That'd be cool, but like literally being able to talk to like the japanese team who made all these wrestling games would be insane.

Um, but that's so.

It seems so ethereal, but then contemporary.

I'm obsessed with capcom, like i even like that's why, even like pragmat, i'm like, oh my god, like that, that's now the the thing i would love to make.

But um um yeah, those are the two things that come up.

And then, like it would be so cool that like, like i like having an actual comprehensive, like metal gear documentary, but kojima split with konami, so messy.

But like even just talking to everyone who just trying to like capture that lightning in the bottle of like melge, your solid one, like just that team, and going from 3d graphics, all that stuff would be cool.

But those are kind of the three like hot hot, hot topics for me.

You just made me remember that my dream documentary has nothing to do with video games.

I want to interview Hideo Kojima, but I only want to talk about the golden age of Japanese cinema.

I don't want to ask him any, not a single question about video games, not ones he's made or that influenced him, or anything.

I just want to talk about like Kurosawa and Mizuguchi and Ozu, and just fucking pick his brain about Tokyo Twilight.

Bet we could make that happen.

I bet you could pitch that.

I feel like he would be delighted because he fucking loves movies yeah, and everyone's like oh, it's like video games, video games.

And he's like just wants to fucking like you watch his criterion closet.

That's the happiest i've ever seen him.

Yeah yeah oh, that's a good idea.

Yeah, i like that.

It's a real outsider.

Gotta shoot you over to japan.

I'd go any day.

Yeah, that'd be good times.

Okay, all right, some good answers there.

I'm trying to think of any more, because rockstar is the answer i've given a thousand and one times and it's.

It's super obvious.

And obviously people know i'd love to do any fucking valve related documentaries.

Uh weirdly, i would have said arc raiders had we not been paid to make that series because i played fucking 300 hours of that game.

Um Oh, I'd love to do the Seance of Black Manor.

I'd love to do that.

I'd love to do one in my home country.

And you know we've never done a doc in Ireland except for that John Romero interview I did years ago.

Yeah, and that's such a special game.

Yeah, I would definitely like to do one on that.

That's a good answer.

All right frank, we need to practice our japanese.

So we can can, we can be the japanese wing of noclip.

We can wait, hold on, i feel like i can.

Uh, this is what i decided to open my kojima interview by saying um uh, furui nihon no ega gasuki desu, which i think means i love old japanese movies.

I might have fucked that up.

That is very impressive.

I'm like, Jesus Christ, I can't even do that in Irish.

I might have fucked, I think I might have fucked up the, well, no, I think I got it.

Close enough.

Yeah, as long as it, you don't have to be like grammatically perfect.

If you're a little grammatically off, it's charming.

They're like this dumb American, he's trying so hard, he can't even gaspides, you know?

Love it.

Holy.

Well, Frank was nodding.

So he was at least understanding you.

And that's going through multiple, multiple translation metrics.

Amazing.

We got to make it happen, folks.

We got to make it happen.

And you can help us make that happen. becoming a patron over at patreon.com slash noclip or patreon.com slash noclip2.

We're going to have some news on some Patreon mashups mixups, new stuff coming, new tiers, sort of creating interesting combinations and stuff.

There's some new Patreon stuff coming in the pipe that I've gotten access to as well, which is going to help us to to do some cool uh, you know maybe, uh you know cross posting on some stuff and yeah, we've had some sort of um band-aids on the, you know, the the um, uh rewards and whatnot, uh on on both for the past couple of months and um yeah, i think we figured out what people want more of and uh, we want to, we want to give it to you, but we definitely need more patrons to do it as well.

So, patreoncom slash noclip, and especially over on patreoncom slash noclip too, speaking of which, and speaking of japan, frank posted his Japanese arcade racing game adventure.

Go check it out.

The algorithm has found it because people will not stop watching it.

And it's shooting for the moon now.

So go check that one out over on Noclip2.

Early access patrons can already watch the third episode in our Everbloom series about how games are made.

This one's all about how characters... are made character design.

And we dive into loads of aspects of character design, from concept art to hiring artists to do it, from doing lighting and cameras and all this sort of stuff.

And I think, in the era of generative AI When it comes to this sort of stuff, it's very cool to watch a video about just how much human craft is required to do something as simple as making a character that you're largely going to be looking at the back of its head for most of the game.

Also going to upload Metal Garage episode three.

We have two already recorded, so we're going to get those two up in the next episode.

A couple of weeks.

Jesse, as you know, is going to be out of the office, let's say for the next month or so at least, as he takes care of baby Teddy and his partner as well.

Also, as a little bonus, I just thought everyone was asking for more Alexander Rostov.

So I went fucking and I cut together an hour and 45 minute long cut of his interview with me in Estonia.

Uh, there's some stuff trimmed out of it.

Mostly just a coffee, uh, break or tea.

He was drinking tea, tea and bathroom breaks.

Um, the rest of it's in there, including him, uh, tricking his dog into doing some tricks for us.

So, um, It's good shit.

Go check that out.

It's got a corgi.

Beautiful dog.

Unbelievable.

So go check that out.

If you're a Noclip patron, you can check that out as well.

Yeah.

So loads of cool stuff coming from our.

Very small team.

All right.

That was the podcast this week.

Thank you so much.

We'll be back next week with more stuff.

We're going to have to figure that out, Frank, because we're filming in Los Angeles next week.

So we're going to have to figure out how we're going to pull that one together.

But yeah, in the meantime, thanks for listening.

And here is the interview between myself and Chandan Ekanaika from Outerloop Games, talking about Dosa Divas.

Hello, folks.

Danny here.

Delighted to be joined by Chandana Ekanaika.

Ekka, how are you doing, my friend?

It's a good morning, Danny.

How are you?

Good morning.

It is.

I did schedule this quite early, but I'm excited to chat.

We talked a We talked about Falcon Age back then.

Obviously, since then, y'all have put out Thirsty Suitors back in 2023.

And now we're here to talk about Dose of Divas, which comes out.

Uh, it should be out by the time this podcast is out.

You can go pick it up on on what platforms?

Oh man, steam switch, switch to playstation 5, xbox s and x.

Wow, how big's your team that you're putting the game out on windows pc.

Is it coming out on the Tapwave Zodiac?

Ooh, that'd be sweet.

Is that a thing?

It was back in the day.

That's my go-to obscure console.

Is N-Gage not obscure enough?

No.

I mean N-Gage is obscure, but then there's also the What was the really obscure handheld that had

Had sticky balls on it.

What was that thing called again?

All I know is the Atari Lynx was pretty rad.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, it's up there with one of the best named consoles as well.

Are they going to bring the PSP back?

Because I want a PSP.

I thought when I saw that at E3, I was like, this is the most amazing looking device I've ever seen.

Yeah.

It was the first launch day console I think I ever got.

And it was incredibly expensive.

So expensive.

And the media was so expensive.

Ridiculous.

How big is the team at the moment?

Yeah, we're at the height of it.

We're 14 and now we're seven and a half.

The half being my son, who's been doing QA for us for a while.

Is he getting some allowance money for that or?

No, he's he's getting paid better than he was at Marshall's.

And he didn't like that.

But he got really good at breaking the game.

And we had him play tests like, I don't know, a year ago.

And they're like.

The team said, hey, he's really good at breaking this.

Can we get him to do it more?

Very cool.

Excellent.

Shout out to Aiden.

Shout out.

Well done, Aiden.

Adding to the. adding to the game, adding to the project.

Let's talk about the project.

Let's talk about Dos Adivas.

I've really enjoyed playing this.

It's, I think.

You know, I think from a technical perspective you can see how Your team has sort of evolved with each game.

You know, the animation, the art direction, all that sort of stuff looks great.

But mechanically, it's such a it's such a tight experience.

Like it's one of these games that feels very Moorish, like a good meal, I guess where you're like OK.

It's giving me mechanical reasons to push forward.

It's giving me narrative skin in the game very early.

What was the original, I guess, concept for this?

Especially coming off Thirsty Suitors, which this, you know, shares some uh you know, sort of um dna with or at least you can see the progression from for your studio, from from that to this game.

Yeah, i mean, we shipped thirsty in november 23 and we started on this january 24, so two years and two months, i guess wow, till we hit cert and we've been patching, so like two years and four months till release, i guess, so which is pretty fast for us.

Uh, thirsty was like three, three and a half, i think, start to finish.

Um, but for dosa, you know, after we shipped thirsty, we took some time off and uh kind of looked at all the reviews.

I read everything, so i can't help it.

Um, Makes me stronger.

No, but I really took a lot of the feedback and criticism.

I think the stuff that worked really well was narrative and the sort of the set piece battles.

Battle system needed more player expression.

That's been a goal of ours with DOSA in every aspect.

From You know, the cooking system has a little more expressiveness in terms of how you construct a meal, because you have different orders from villagers and you pick up ingredients and you can kind of mix and match and some folks want a spicier version, some folks want a savory or sweet version.

And for the battle system.

You know we There's a lot of feedback on like oh, it feels like too much QTEs and you can only do one thing at a time.

Right.

And we wanted to expand on that.

So, this being more of a squad-based, you know you have the two sisters, Sam and Amani plus Goddess, your spirit mech against you know one or many foes.

And Thirsty was just, like, one single-person Jalloh.

So being a squad, we also wanted to have more flexibility with each of the characters.

And the combat system.

If you're fans of Mario RPG, Thousand Year Door, Bravely Default Octopath, Sea of Stars, a lot of the great ones.

We're definitely taking some inspiration from those, from Boost systems to shield breaks and uh, you know timing attacks.

On on, on attacks and on on defense.

So there's a lot, there's a lot going on.

Um, but it feels a little tighter.

Like your goal was trying to make it tighter, more player expressive and.

The big thing was trying to make sure the theme of cooking and flavors was throughout the battles, the exploration and, of course, the cooking part of it as well.

So

Yeah, it's cool.

It's fun how sort of everything comes back to making doses.

Like the items you're collecting in the world.

The quests themselves are often, like you said about, you know, feeding the village and sort of getting your reputation up with them.

And then all the way down to the battles, where you know the the enemies have weaknesses to certain.

You know flavors, or sweetness, or spiciness.

And all the way down to like the.

You know The actual hitting them.

You know throwing a plate or hitting them with a spatula, or you know it's like we called it spat chucks and then walking.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's it's yeah, I was going to ask, but yeah, it sounds like, as you said, this was this was an essential part of the identity of the game was that sort of had that stuff. you know resonate or be in the dna of all of the systems yeah i mean for us it's always trying to make sure the theme and theme narrative and mechanics uh really go by the time the players play it i hope it's like oh this is the only way it could be put together um and that just takes time it just takes some time and iteration where um that all feels like okay so the flavor system or the icons or the stuff you cook for people you can also use for for healing or buffs uh or removing the buffs um in battle that's just yeah i i could say like oh we had it all figured out from the beginning but it's just like once you get it in and just like is there more better ways to make this come together um that's that's why it takes i don't know whatever two years to make something like this yeah i've never eaten a dosa before how good are they uh dosa corner in sf oh really really good yeah okay yeah where would you know where in town it is I'll send you the thing.

And we were there with the Vemba team, I think last, no, two GDCs ago.

Okay.

So here's the problem.

I'm going to go in and I'm going to start ordering some weird ass doses that are from this game.

You know what I mean?

Get me some banana and, you know, coconut oil and, you know.

What's the sort of go-to?

Did you eat these much growing up?

The cool thing about dosa is it's originated.

There's a whole history to it, but I think it's in South India.

But there's a version in Sri Lanka, and there's a version in Malaysia.

So there's like...

It's made out of rice and fermented lentils.

And I think the fermentation came from Malaysia thousands of years ago.

So there's like... This is why we make games about food.

Because the whole like...

The first time you experience a culture usually is through eating something.

Yes.

And then the history of food is just fascinating because it's how people migrated from continent to continent, country to country.

And there's a lot of shared... flavors and history, uh, between places that you wouldn't expect.

And that's, that's what's like super interesting to me.

But um yeah, so I didn't eat a lot of uh we.

We ate like uh, Sri Lankan styles or these which are a little thicker but um, the classic sort of really thin crispy dose.

Uh um, I didn't have to like move to the States actually.

So, Okay, that's the go-to.

Yeah, I feel this is the... the new frontier in taste in America.

It's like, it's, you know, this is in five years from now, it's going to be like Boba.

You know what I mean?

Like five years from now is going to be a dose of spot on every corner.

Yeah.

Cause most of the, when you say like, I want Indian food in the U S it's mostly Northern India.

Um, right.

Um, and those, uh, you'd have to find a, like a South Indian, uh, joint.

Some places do both, but there's a lot in the Seattle area.

There's a lot of Indians that work at various places here.

And yeah, like the other day I was driving by a park because the sun is out.

When it gets 60 degrees in Seattle, it's summertime and people are playing cricket.

Like full on kits, everything, yeah.

You love to say it, very cool.

Sorry, your question about Dosa, Mysore, Dosa, Mysore Masala Dosa, that's a good one to start with.

All right.

Making note, it's on my list of things to do in 2025.

I've made enough of them in the game.

You know what I mean?

I feel like I got to have one made for me eventually.

Speaking of the game's themes, I guess you know you're sort of sticking the studs in, you know, with regard to a lot of stuff.

Uh anti-capitalism um, comes up a lot.

Uh, beating up lawyers is very funny.

I, I, the various forms of lawyers, I was a big fan of as well.

Um, but you know, but also like reconciliation family um, kind of aging and relationships with siblings and stuff like that.

Um obviously, thirsty suitors also dove into a bunch of really interesting stuff.

But yeah, tell us about i guess you know the, the thoughts that went into the story, that are here and um, and how important it is a story in a game like this to sort of drive the player forward, to motivate them.

Yeah, I mean, I think for us the narrative story aspects have been always a draw, from Falcon H to thirsty, to this, to DOSA.

And I think you know, when we did thirsty was really fun to kind of explore, like I don't know.

High stakes for us is, like you know, reconciling or argument with your, your parents, or your, your grandma uh, in this case.

So i think it's just like building a, a game about um, these sisters and their mech and fighting other mechs and people that know, and i think it's just like having a personal history there adds a layer of um, I don't know suspense or drama that we find interesting to talk about.

It's also probably just us kind of going through some of our own explorations of family dynamics.

Not that it's all like personal stories in the game, but it's like kind of exploring that through the craft.

Because it's like, You know, we have a lot of immigrants on the team, but in from different places.

But we there's a lot of sort of shared stories about family and family dynamics and that I feel like it's a more universal thing that we can explore.

And it's fun to explore.

But yeah, so in DOSA, like Thirsty, we feel like that was some of the better things that we did as a team.

And I think it's kind of becoming an identity for us not that we intentionally do it, but it's just like it's fun to explore.

Widows.

Uh uh.

Main writer on this uh, his name's Hassan Durant.

Um, who's a fantastic um, uh did a great job um getting it all together.

You know, for us it's like usually, even though we do make narrative games, we start with mechanics and figure out, like what is the Some old, well years ago, like IP movie games where you're like here is the movie, make a game around it.

It's so hard to make a game interesting when you have like a fixed script.

Right.

Because that's just not how games work.

Because you have the player is a factor, the player can decide to do things and want to do things.

And so we always kind of start with mechanics, we have a rough idea of a story.

But we don't really write till fairly late into the process.

Of course, there's temp writing and pacing and figuring that out.

But the mechanics has to work and the systems have to work and and really the narrative is the thing that will keep the player, because there's a lot of repeat button presses and actions as you play a game and like, what's the interest and what's going to keep me playing for an hour, half an hour, 15 minutes, the moment to moment things and And, by the way, the game isn't long.

It's like 12, 12, 15 hours.

I mean, that's long.

That's long.

But it's not 100 hours.

So I feel like most of the games I play this year around these days are like short of 10.

So like that feels really good.

That's yeah, that's that's that's Half-Life 2.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Like that's.

It's a long enough game.

Yeah, we don't want all your time.

We're not a forever game.

We just want a little bit of your time.

And hopefully you come up with something interesting.

Well, one of the things that I appreciated about the story stuff because I talk about this a lot on the podcast about how there are people who are very into like narrative games and want to sit down and be told the story, and I am so impatient like I just want to like, let me play the game, right.

And one of the things I really appreciate about Dose of Divas was the fact that the story was given sort of in these little bite sized chunks during, like exiting a battle encounter or like you know, talking to somebody you know great voice acting and stuff as well.

You know what I mean?

Just like, but but sort of piece by piece.

It wasn't like sit down and watch a cut scene for 30 seconds.

Yeah.

No, I'm uh, I get really bored playing any kind of story games if I'm sitting here watching a cutscene.

I say that, but then I'll play Yakuza.

Yeah, you know what.

That's maybe my one exception as well, because it's so, it's so well, it's so well yeah, i'll.

I trust the direction and the writing in those games like i'll watch.

Most games are not that.

So yes, it's correct, it doesn't keep my attention.

Um so, for us, when we make games, we're like, you know, like in this game, we get you into the game as quickly as possible, so you're running around the mech uh, doing cooking, while you get the story bits in between.

That's just like yeah, i'd also don't, i can't focus too long.

Um yeah and, and to that point, like it is a game.

We've talked about a couple of these things now.

Right, we've sort of come around to it where, You know, in the battles, for instance, you're constantly thinking about counters.

You're moving on menus.

You know, in the overworld, you're looking for things to pick up.

You're always doing something.

Like the moment to moment, the game feels very snappy.

Like you're going here, you're doing this.

It feels very Moorish in that respect.

I want to ask about the animation for a second because it's something that kept coming up for me.

It was like from everything, from like the Naruto running mech to when he jumps and does the little sort of like trying to fly chicken thing, to like the battles especially.

I spend one fight just looking at the sisters in the mech and just –

So they're constantly moving, undulating.

Each of the attacks from like the enemies and you have these like great physical sort of aspects to them.

Yeah.

Tell me a bit about your animation team and the work that was done on this, because it feels so alive.

And I think so much of what I about the pace of it and the moment to moment enjoyment.

I kept coming back to this.

You know the art style is slick but like the way this game moves is very pleasing.

Our animation team of one Azo, my co-founder and animator, who was also the only animator on Thirsty.

When we started the studio, it was myself, Azo and our other co-founder Justin, who's our lead programmer.

Um, the goal was like hey, the three of us have most of the skills to make a shitty game if we had to, so you want to work together?

And we had worked together uh prior, i think, with azo and i.

It goes back 20 years.

Uh okay, Hired him out of art school in Laguna Beach when we were working on Matrix, Path of Neo.

Oh, hell yeah.

We had this animation test.

And it usually when we gave it out at that time it was like I don't know.

You know, take the weekend.

And he just did it in 24 hours and came in.

And then he's like he is most phenomenal animator and the most quiet person I know.

If you look him up on YouTube, he also does parkour, does martial arts, does juggling, does skateboarding.

He's a great climber.

He does all this other stuff.

And we were doing the Matrix game.

He was just not showing like, oh, yeah, I wall run.

And we're like and we all laugh because I was joking.

He's like, no, no.

And you see his videos.

I'm like, OK, yeah, all the stuff he animates.

He tries to recreate in real life.

He does all hand keying.

So it's not like he videotapes himself.

Right.

And then tries to use as a reference.

He just knows the movement.

So for feels in his bones, man.

Yeah.

He like that is he does so much narrative and storytelling with his animation work.

I just expect that we're going to just integrate that whatever it's going to be wild.

We'll figure it out.

There are times where, like the first time we had the, we knew we weren't going to have the mech uh hover or anything.

It's like you know, when you define a mech game like, what does it feel like?

We're like, we knew we wanted to double jump and it was more of a platformer than anything else.

So the first time we did the, when you double jump in the game, it does like a chicken flap to let you know that it's it can't fly.

That was really the only intention, but the first time i did it, it was like a leg kick and it felt like an attack.

Um ah yes, so he took that and we kept that.

We brought it back in when we uh interact with the world.

Um, because you can kick and destroy certain propaganda posters from lena uh, the lena uh lena character, who's the main antagonist um, So yeah, he just comes up with stuff.

And um, once we figured out the battle system um, there's a lot of readability things in this game we had to do because of like, because you had to sort of block um, at certain times there's a window.

So there's a little more um, A little more nitty gritty in terms of like timing and showing the move and faking.

And as you, as you probably notice that some of the lawyers will fake you out to like hey, look up there and they hit you with something.

I love that so much because it's also like a great piece of storytelling of like lawyers are tricky like that.

You know what I mean?

Like.

Like the fact that they like kind of mess with the timing.

I thought was like yeah, it's just a great little piece of like.

It adds to the narrative as well in its own.

It gives character to.

What are otherwise like mobs you know what I mean that you're going up to to fight.

I thought that was super cool.

And then once it's like sleazy, it just kind of Slithers like a snake.

Yes And then then you end up fighting security guard slash mall cops and they have their own segues.

We referenced Paul Blart Was that, was that the name of the movie?

Paul, Paul, yeah.

Yeah.

Um, and then you have tech bros and the, so each town has their own flavor of uh uh, shitty uh villains.

Yeah.

Corpo.

Corpos.

Yeah.

Uh, and all animation.

So Azo does just, that's, it's all him.

Um, There are times where we're like trying to make sure it works with the design and stuff.

But most times I'm like, yeah, we plan out sort of the boss battles together and figure out.

And he's like, yeah, I'll fill it in.

And it's just it's always amazing.

It's always a treat for us when he when he puts a new character in.

And a lot of this also, you know, for the design of the characters Vijay, who's our concept artist, art director.

He's fantastic.

He did all the designs for Thirsty and all the designs for this game, too.

So like coming up with the look of the mechs, the characters, and then you know Emma who does our character model, brings it to life.

Then Azo will take that and, of course, make a move in really interesting ways.

Yeah.

And I also noticed the, I guess the would it be the direction, but like how the camera is sort of integrated into the storytelling, like you know, dutch tilts and the way that, like characters sort of play to the lens sometimes.

Um, that sort of stuff um yeah, who's responsible for that?

I mean, i feel like thirsty had this aspect as well, of like in in some ways.

You feel like you're sort of you're watching a TV show or you're watching, you're watching something playing out in front of you.

It doesn't feel like just like a, a camera Porsche.

You know the the game is is looking back at you sometimes.

You know what I mean.

It's, it's very engaging.

I do all our trailers and also do our camera work.

So that's like always very important to me of how we frame, uh, things.

Um, So I spent a lot of time doing that.

And then that went into AZA doing some of it for a lot of the the sort of the action moves for the characters.

And then, um our uh, we have another designer producer writer, Sonny.

Um, she also took over some of that, some of those duties.

So for the level, like the level flow and uh, camera transitions and all that stuff, I do a lot of sort of initial pass and then we go back and and then uh, you know a small team.

So we all kind of, uh, between three or four of us, we do passes on things.

Yeah.

And this is also published by Outersloth.

Is that?

Yeah.

I mean, they're not a publisher.

They're a fund.

Fund.

Yeah.

Sorry.

Yes.

So they paid the bills, which were an amazing team to work with.

We self-publish it and we help folks like Pop Agenda who helped with like a bunch of things for you know.

For

Publishing duties for when you're working on consoles to reach the folks.

Yeah.

I suspect, very handy when you're when you're simultaneously launching across a bunch of platforms as well.

How was working with Outersloth and that whole process.

So i probably we've probably talked about this i usually like, for new projects, i have like multiple ideas always and we, we go on the road and i saw you at dice, which is a show in february.

So i kind of think about is, before we finish a project, i'm going to pitch new ones and just see, mostly like i'm not sure what to work with, because we have so many ideas that were like i don't know we want to make all three, we can't, so let's let's see what other people think.

So we uh, so 23.

So february 23, went on the road to with three ideas and one of them was dosa divas.

Um, talk to a bunch of folks just to get feedback.

Um, they tell you never to pitch more than one thing, but it's always worked for me.

So I just, and I go in like, Hey, I'm not looking to like funding right now.

I'm just like, here's some ideas of things we're thinking about.

Um, what do you think?

And, uh, uh, Victoria from outer slots.

Uh, I showed her, she's just a phenomenal human being.

And, and I love her takes on games cause she's a lot of things.

And I, I talked to her about it.

Sorry, inner sloth before outer sloth.

Um, and, uh, she said, Oh, you should meet forest.

Uh, we're, we're thinking about doing this thing.

And, um, force happened to live 15 minutes from me in East side Seattle.

Uh, cause the inner sloth?

The original three they're all from.

I mean, they're not from here, but they live in um nearby in Seattle area.

So pitch them.

And we're talking to a bunch of people.

They're like, yeah, I think we like this.

Uh, we should work together.

And it was really easy process.

They published the contract, which is the that's simplest contract i've ever seen or signed.

Um, we're all in a slack together with all the other sort of outer sloth teams and we chat and, you know, share trailers and give feedback to each other and um, and then we, you know, we set a milestone kind of once in a while to show them what we're doing.

But they're pretty, they're hands off and they're like what can we help with?

And You're responsible for your game.

It's your game.

We'll pay the bills, just to figure out what to do with it.

So yeah, was there many like milestone meetings, that type of stuff?

No, we have a monthly cadence anyway.

Right, so we do.

We do all our design and progress on Miro, which is like a shared whiteboard because we're all remote.

That's been a really useful thing.

So all our design stuff, everything is on a Miro board.

And we plan internally, okay, what are we going to try to do this month?

Knowing how many months we have and roughly timeline for like okay, we want to do a demo here or, you know, first playable or next best, whatever.

And then in between that we just do a monthly boards and we just share those boards with the ourselves team.

So very cool.

Easy.

Keep it, keep it simple folks on the work.

Yeah.

Focus on the game.

Um, yeah.

What was the process of like, um, uh, with the, with the demo?

Cause you guys put that out.

Was it during next fest this spring or late winter?

We had a first version of it last summer game fest.

So we were part of the summer fest with day of the devs.

Um, so we built it for that.

For us it's been.

Building the demo usually is our internal goal anyway, mostly because for every project for us to figure out the timeline and how much time it's going to take, that demo is uh, you know we call it vertical slice, but it's vertical slice is usually a throwaway work.

This is like no, we're intending to build this as part of the game, and usually the beginning of the game we like um.

So the demo is the first hour and a half which is out on steam and if you play it uh, if you don't know if you want the game, play the demo and the save game will carry over.

Um, love it.

Yeah, so it's.

For us it was like building the demo was okay, figure out the mechanics.

How does the mech run around?

What does the cameras look like?

What does the art look like?

How do we do story?

What's the battle system?

So all that stuff was kind of put together for that initial demo.

And because...

The mech is so big, we pulled the camera back, and we're like, that changed the art style.

Now everything has to be chunkier, right, and more readable at that scale.

So that's like, okay, that informed how we designed the props and what we see the characters.

In Thirsty we got real tight shots on the character models and here we ended up using um 2d, um they're essentially uh portraits um, because we knew the models weren't going to be that detailed on purpose because of where the camera's going to be.

Right.

I mean we could have made more detailed.

If we were like a version, triple a version, then the budget would be, you know, uh also grow.

So we're also like, Here's how much time we have.

Here's how much money we have.

Here's the game we want to make.

Let's find creative solutions for that.

So that demo really told us all about how long does it take to make a village?

How long does it take to make a character?

There's a lot more level design, which is uh, not something.

Obviously we knew we were gonna have a more space to run around because the levels are way bigger than a thursday was like the small corner of a town and interiors, and this is like oh, we're traversal and it's like a platformer and the mech eventually gets different upgrades and so you can come back and open up new areas and things like that.

So That took a lot of iteration for these sort of vertical villages.

I don't know how far you're in, but there's like three main villages and different ways to get around it.

So yeah, the demo informs a lot of how long do we want to spend on a space, how many characters, how many ingredients in the world you pick up, how many you know it's a food truck mech, so The first village has doses.

The second village has like hand held kind of foods.

And the third village has bowl types.

And then people want different versions of it and all using this cooking system.

So it's yeah, it's.

That demo is very important for us in terms of figuring out scope and scale of the thing.

That's cool.

Yeah, I didn't realize it would be so instrumental in your sort of pathway for the main game.

My last question is you know it often is one of the later questions, but this entire time we've been talking I've been hearing the battle music playing in the back of my head.

Fantastic.

You know, music for a lot of games is something that you know is somewhat connected to tone or is attempting to augment or add a different sort of flavor to the feel of it.

Obviously, with a game like this, there is a you have to be like you can't, just you know to get the correct cultural.

You know sound is.

Is must be particularly tricky.

Um, yeah.

Who, where did you get your, your music from?

I guess.

Uh, Ramsey is our composer.

He uh, I originally heard his stuff on boyfriend dungeon.

Okay, he did all the thirsty um and did all the dosa.

There's 37 tracks in the soundtrack.

It's it's gonna be a while um well, it's out now by the time you hear this.

But yes um, usually at the beginning of every project, music is such an important part of my process like, I'll make a playlist of like, so we're thinking about the game early.

I'm like, Oh, I'm thinking about this music.

This music, I made it just a giant playlist that I'll share with Ramsey.

And, uh, um, but like everyone else on the team, I know he has like tendencies and things he likes.

And that's always like, just bring your, bring whatever you want to bring.

And that's what everybody on this project um uh, That's like I think you know.

We know the direction for a game, but we also keep it loose enough so people can contribute the things they love, which I think is the reason.

You work on a small team, so you can kind of contribute something of your own to the project and have a shot at those flavors.

And Ramsey, amazing, amazing composer, just a lot of variety of tracks to the game starts bubbly.

But, you know, we get into some hard stuff as we as we always do.

There's going to be laughter.

There's going to be some more drama, maybe some tears, hopefully.

But yeah, he's amazing.

Anne-Marie, who does our sound design.

And sound design is such an important part of the whole process.

Underappreciated form, yeah, for sure.

And she did that for us on Thursday as well, and she's amazing, amazing.

The two of them together are just top-notch, and I love working with them.

Very cool.

Well, the game is available right now.

Dose of Divas.

You can go pick it up.

Do you have an idea?

Can you say prices?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

$19.99 USD, 10% off, I think, for two weeks on all platforms.

So it's, you know, we wanted to make it a, you know, hopefully...

It's a great game, but also affordable because I know everyone has a lot of options these days.

Yeah, it's wild.

It must be so tricky to try and figure out how much you're going to charge for.

I feel like I am.

You know, I go and like, you know, rent movies or buy movies or do any other form of entertainment.

And I'm like man.

We are spoiled over here as consumers with all the game sales and the free, you know, demos.

And oh, yeah, so many like order, order some food.

Like, go to McDonald's today and see how much you spend at Taco Bell.

You know what I mean?

Like, stuff is not cheap anymore.

Fill up your... I filled up my gas tag yesterday.

It was $118.

I was like, oh, okay.

Yeah, value... I was kind of trying to think of it as like, if I was buying this, would I buy it?

And that's a hard one because...

We're emotional creatures and we'll pay more than something's worth because it's exciting at the time.

Yes.

If you're thinking about it for $20 or not, I think hopefully it's affordable enough.

Hopefully you heard good things.

So far the feedback's been great for us, so we're happy with it.

Yeah, i enjoyed my time with it.

Um, in this podcast earlier uh, we'll have been talking about it so uh yeah, it's um.

Oh, hope you liked it.

Yeah definitely yeah, connected with it, i think on a level uh, that you know, on a higher level that i had with some of your previous games.

Like yeah, to me this um, this felt like and that's not a shade on anything you guys made before

No, no, we agree with it.

I think you know, making the game with the same team over multiple games, we're like okay now.

We're like I feel like we're kind of figuring it out better now.

We, that's honestly.

That is one of the things that, from my lay person's perspective, I have noticed.

You know, it's this it's the reason why super giant made Hades.

It's, you know what I mean?

Like a hundred, I can see it in our own team.

You know what I mean?

And we don't have that side tight necessarily, that level of cross uh um, collaboration on shorter projects.

But like a hundred percent, like you know the sort of the ease of which you can, you can work together, the confidence that's built like to to explore different stuff.

And and yeah, to me this this felt like a uh, you know, very tight in lots of different areas, in a way that I was like, Oh no, I let the moment to moment.

And this is, this game is holding onto me.

It doesn't want me to pull, pull, pull back.

Like, I feel like I'm, I'm happy to, to, to, um, there were multiple reasons why I was like invested in it from a story perspective, um, I wanted to see new weird enemies.

The combat system was constantly engaging.

I'm not a big JRPG combat person, but it was just so like boom, boom, boom.

Yeah.

No, it's a very cool game.

I wish you all the best with Launched Week.

I hope it's going well at this time.

And we have avoided, it seems, for at least a couple of weeks, thermonuclear war.

So you.

Well, we'll see by the time this comes out.

Exactly.

You might get a good eight days of sales before the before.

We're, you know, we're all, we're all dust.

Well, i'm trying to make a.

I'm trying to make like a dosa reference.

I'm like no, it doesn't, it doesn't happen.

No, it's okay.

You know, we can both be happy about this game and also be uh, sad about and angry about the things that are in the world.

The same.

Well honestly, you know that there is that sort of like uh, you know, with with lena's company, there is that sort of like uh c-suite, like managerial psychosis, like sort of the dear leader thing you you, there's a lot of that with her uh, with her understudies, and which you know.

Maybe that can be a source of.

I mean, we're definitely inspired by a lot of things happening in the world, including games and outside of games for some of these characters.

So um, Before I go, I want to just say shout out to Sadie, who did a lot of design work on the combat system, a bunch of things.

Anna, who was a programmer on a bunch of things.

Wadey, who did effects.

She'll make sure I cover the whole team, because it does take a team to do all this.

And Alicia, who did all the environment work, was just amazing.

Yeah.

Very cool.

Yeah, you've got a great team of folks around you for sure.

You can tell.

And yeah, you should be very proud of Dosa Divas available now on, I'm going to try it.

PC Switch.

Switch 2, Xbox Series, let's just say S and X.

PlayStation 5.

Yes.

No more PS4 for us.

No more PS4.

And hey, let's just throw Steam Deck in there.

Oh, Steam Deck verified.

There you go.

Go play it on there.

It's an awesome experience.

It'd be weird if it wasn't considering it's out on Switch 1 and 2.

Well, it's is actually.

We just got it verified recently, a couple days ago.

It's mostly because the font size right, so we have to like it's a very specific font size.

It has to be above nine pixels.

Uh, for the screen, which it makes sense.

My eyes are getting old so i can't.

Yeah amen, absolutely.

Well, there you go.

Thank you for for fixing the font size so my geriatric pupils can can focus on them.

Eka, always a pleasure.

Take care and talk to you again soon.

Thank you.

[Noclip Podcast Episode 276: Exploring the Indie World with Samson, Pragmata, and Dosa Divas]-[PRAGMATA, Samson, Dosa Divas Interview]

📋 Summary

Noclip Podcast Episode 276: A Deep Dive into Indie Gems and Gaming Culture

Samson: A "B-Game" Masterpiece

Pragmata: Capcom’s Sci-Fi Wonder

Subversive Memories: Brazilian Gothic Horror

Dosa Divas and Cultural Storytelling

The "Triple I" Debate and Industry Labels

Final Thoughts: The Future of Documentaries

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Noclip Podcast Episode 276: Exploring the Indie World with Samson, Pragmata, and Dosa Divas]-[PRAGMATA, Samson, Dosa Divas Interview]

📋 Summary

Noclip Podcast Episode 276: A Deep Dive into Indie Gems and Gaming Culture

Samson: A "B-Game" Masterpiece

Pragmata: Capcom’s Sci-Fi Wonder

Subversive Memories: Brazilian Gothic Horror

Dosa Divas and Cultural Storytelling

The "Triple I" Debate and Industry Labels

Final Thoughts: The Future of Documentaries

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🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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