The Precinct, Deliver at All Costs, Formless Star | Noclip Crewcast

Hello folks and welcome to episode 228 of the Noclip Podcast. It's a crew cast. The whole sausage factory is here in effect.

Jesse Grosha, how do you like your sausages?

How do you like them?

Sauerkraut, mustard. Yeah, some jalapenos if they have it on a nice sesame seed bun.

Wow, amazing. The hamburger hot dog bun.

you you're like you're like the why why not both little girl exactly of taco bell fame no have you had taco bell chicken nuggets yet frank no but i'd be down to try them i i like anything taco del paso sorry old el paso beautiful yes that's that's oh the only tacos i had in ireland for the first you know 10 20 years of my life were old el paso hard shell tacos just like the the Mexicans wanted Jeremy what's your favorite Mexican food uh my favorite Mexican food is probably choice bitch probably an enchilada maybe a chimichanga although I do I am also a fan of the the El Paso marketing technique

where they just say the bright yellow box of old El Paso as if to say this is what it looks like when you go to the grocery store it's fucking you can't miss it it's like a traffic cone except yellow what's a chimichanga again I always forget what that one one is isn't it chimichanga i haven't had this since i was a child the thing with mexican food is it's all burrito it's like an enchilada that is deep fried fried a deep fried burrito common in texas and others southwestern u .s oh man i gotta cheat chimichanga got to get me one of those chimichanga because it looks like a big blunt because this is what you

would eat after you smoke enough that cheech and chonk would smoke um exactly probably when i lost my class president election in fifth grade.

I was so sad that my parents took me out for Mexican food and I got a big chimichanga.

And then the girl who beat me and became the class president came to the same restaurant to celebrate and she sat at the next table over.

Oh man, this is awful.

Oh my God. That is terrible.

Was she like the preppy popular girl or I mean, you were like the vote for Pedro dro boy yeah yeah kind of yeah that's accurate enough except you didn't win you needed to tell them that if they voted for you all of their wildest dreams would come true that's true i i think i said uh i took a picture in my my uh uncle in upstate new york was fixing up like an old cadillac so i took a picture in like an old 1967 gold cadillac deville and was like vote for me and i didn't really have a platform that was kind of i was in a nice car they were like yeah let's foot for this guy he's got that is a nice

car that's why you need I guess man I'm sorry to hear that and we had an unelected student council that was done by the school for some reason I think they had elections and it was it was just started fights and stuff so they just picked some lads to do it and I was one of the lads and then all the older boys aged out and I managed to politic my way into being the unelected student council oh my god um which was uh which i wielded my power you house of cards your way into that you were the kevin spacey before all the other stuff sorry exactly i got my buffalo wings in the morning and plotted how

to take down the whole school system with my with my southern southern accent you can do it that's what i believe you can do it exactly yeah thankfully my career has gone a little bit bit better kevin spacys uh we're here to talk about video games folks that's the job at hand that's all of our careers here at noclip for now i'm not saying that because noclip shutting down noclip's doing great i'm just saying that our second channel is currently called noclip crew in brackets for now which is making a lot of people it's very ominous titillating yeah it is a bit ominous um but yeah we're stepping

into the game but here on the crewcast it's the same as usual we're here to tell you about a bunch of goddamn video games probably a bunch you have played and many you haven't i would say this week might be one of the most you've probably not played these games um we've had a hot minute we're going to talk about deliver at all costs and the precinct the sort of uh the double header of your isometric car game i guess um kind of indie not indeed what double a i don't know what we call these games without out being derogatory you know what i mean like you know whatever those types of games and we're

going to talk about some indies a formless star the two t demo is up the new kid attack ahashi games coming out next week um i will not be able to talk to you about that jesse because i am currently playing something that is embargoed for that exact day and riff to riff uh we're going to be chatting about as well jeremy has played outer wilds echoes of the eye which i'm very excited to talked to him about yeah um we'll we'll give you a big spoiler section for that one folks so you can you can tune out we'll probably do that last here and uh a bunch of other stuff to talk about as well um how's

everyone weekends you guys get off too much my parents are in town so we kind of just you know did some petaluma stuff went to oakland enjoyed the sun it's hot here at the moment it was like the traditional like this is their first time in california right so what'd you what'd you do to be like here it is you know what i mean chimichangas man that's what we did that actually would be a pretty good move that would you're right that would we haven't had mexican food yet we my wife made some last night but we haven't gone out for it yet um what do we do we went to oakland on friday because my in -laws

are uh you know we'll try not to read into this too much but they decided to go on vacation when my parents were in town so so we'll we'll see i don't think there's bad blood there but who knows um so we went to visit them in oakland we went to uh children's fairyland in oakland um jeremy you probably weren't you've never been in there right you need a kid to go in no it's not i've begged at the gate so they said listen man it's getting weird exactly yeah here's a child you tried to like walk in with some other some other parents like your child was like screaming i was like just shut up we'll

go go on the rides i'm gonna fucking pay for it call me uncle oh yeah it's like apparently that and tivoli which is the the place in copenhagen that we did not go to jeremy but it was like a it was not to be confused with the rivoli in case you're getting your nirvana the band the show ears are picking up at tivoli is that like garden in copenhagen we didn't actually go to we passed it a bunch of times when we filmed the uh io interactive stuff uh the two of those were the inspiration for uh disneyland disneyland from uh walt disney so children's fairyland is a it's an old ass place we went there

and that was fun we went to get some food showed my parents all the places i lived in oakland all that stuff because they'd never been over here um and then yeah we just we've done a lot of drinking actually there keeps being parties in people's houses and like events and it keeps being like oh we're once again like there was a thing for the school on on Saturday night and we had like a, you know, they were just giving out free champagne and shit.

And my parents were like, Oh wow, you guys drink a lot here in wine country.

I'm like, apparently so.

Um, so yeah, a lot of, uh, a lot of chilling out, a lot of watching sports at weird times for my dad.

That's been fun. We watched the, uh, the hurling, the Irish sport.

We watched that at like stupid o 'clock in the morning.

Um, it was a stiff drink.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

You want a mimosa? That's what we invented the mimosa so we could could drink on a weekend in the morning and it not and it'd be publicly acceptable yeah you could totally do it until you throw up it's great you go to brunch and there's like a table of six women just knocking back mimosas and then throwing up the pizza that they had at 10 in the morning acceptable acceptable okay binge not an alcoholic i just love brunch okay i fucking love orange juice man so much i just can't get enough of it put some bubbly in there why not let's get going so So, yeah, it was good stuff.

We've chilled out now.

My dad's in his late 70s.

He's like, Jesus Christ, can we slow it down a bit.

So yesterday we just hung out here.

I think we're going to go out to the coast later today after the podcast. Had to kick my mom out of this room to record Shift F1 at 7 this morning.

So I felt bad about that.

Yeah. What are you going to do?

Exactly. She's sleeping in the office, all right.

You got to get out.

She's sleeping in the office.

Yeah. Yeah. She's just, you know, she just loves being around video game paraphernalia.

Yeah. That's why you're like that.

Yeah, exactly. To fall asleep.

She's just like, oh, you know, Prey had some really good concept art.

If only Gordon Freeman was here to watch over me.

There he is. There he is.

Whoa! Perfect. What did you guys get up to the weekend?

It was May – well, it's funny.

We call it May 2, 4 weekend, but that's not what it is.

It was Victoria Day for Clean Victoria.

It's like our little national holiday on Monday.

So it was a nice big weekend.

We had fun with the family.

We had a barbecue at a family friend's house.

That was fun. It was too cold for the pool, but the pool was warmed.

I love rich people.

They have so much fun.

Wow. Heated pool. I know.

It was great. And the barbecue, they had this big blacktop grill in the backyard. It was so sick.

I felt like a father watching him cook.

I was standing there like, yeah, yeah, you're going to press down on that patty.

You're going to get that nice and thin.

Those are almost done.

You got to watch those.

Yeah, yeah. You should flip that over.

Put the cheese on now so that it's melted before we put it on the buns.

what i like to do is put it on medium right now yeah you don't want to do advice i'd like the easiest shit to cook it's like those hot dogs are pre -cooked but you don't want to overcook them you don't want to do it too much uh and then we watched the leafs game which was a horrendous experience i was not expecting them to win it's the toronto maple leafs they have not gotten to round three of the stanley cup finals uh ever i think or in the last like 21 22 years something like that That might be more than that.

Correct me, Canadian hockey fans.

But we were watching it.

We thought maybe they'll pull back game seven.

And then the Panthers scored.

And then the Panthers scored again in two minutes.

And then they scored again in three minutes.

And it ended at 6 -1, Panthers.

No, really? Yes. They got smoked.

It was disgusting. Man, that sucks.

It's all right. That's a rough time.

Apologies for you. We had fun, though.

That's probably how the Israelis felt when they watched the Eurovision.

Did you guys watch the Eurovision at all this weekend?

No. What happened? did they come in like second or something i feel like they came they came in second and i'm not look i'm i've just realized i've got goat dirt on my shirt here i'm not gonna i'm not gonna want i'm not gonna wander into conspiracy theories here because that is some fucking thin ice but it was a very interesting situation where um i think they were like 15th out of 20 or something and then there's a public vote that comes in so all the countries do their like like you know null point two point give the country they go through all the countries and they score every other country

it takes fucking forever right to do this thing half the show is singing and the half of it is math you know it's just like math and geography and you're trying to figure out who's voting for who it's all like you know basically you know people you know all the eastern block countries vote for each other the fucking swedes vote for the fins and the estonians vote for that you know it's like it's all so it's fun it's fun to watch it because you're like nobody votes for the fucking english so the the um literally it was hilarious when they came around to the public votes england got zero like some

of the countries were getting like 180 uh points from the the public pool and to be fair they've signed out they don't want to be in europe so you're not winning eurovision fuckers right here i am complaining that they've left israel into the eurovision and i'm this i'm i'm not even making that a political statement i'm just saying geographically yeah it doesn't make any sense controversial on a geographical level i and i would i would lay the same uh uh sort of problem at the feet of australia which i also australia is part of eurovision so i think that it's i think this is just like if you wanted

to make an argument about europe being a white supremacist um continent yeah they're they're picking uh favorites they're just inviting the other white countries that are outside of europe it's representation for the white diaspora you know what i mean finally somebody does it you know i am a little offended that canada is not part of it you know i mean at this stage that you what you just need to do is start inviting most of south america then you know what i mean yeah like why aren't spaniards saying hey look the italians and the portuguese are just like oh fuck it let's get brazilian here you

know if they got latin america they know they get smoked that's why it's never that's true is russia in eurovision no because they're no well they're they're most of asia they're could they're doing they're conducting a war jeremy unlike every obviously like every other country that's so true dude yeah only peaceful countries allowed yeah so israel and as i was saying we're uh so yeah is the nation of israel as i was saying we're uh we're in like 15 to something um and then they got like 280 180 votes which put them in first which was so they went from like 15th to 1st so that like it kind of like

you can hear the murmurs in the room because it's like oh fuck how are we supposed to feel about this is this a sympathy vote thing for the October 7th stuff it's Ukraine didn't get that many the phone in thing this year you can phone in from any country in the world so are Americans voting on this heavily like it was just like a lot of like uncomfortable sort of trying to figure out what's going on like you know how should i feel about i don't know like song was fine it was not like the song from like there were songs that were hired in the israel song that were including the winner maybe that were not particularly

good songs so it was all just very and then literally the last one they went to was Austria and they got like they needed a hundred community point or you know international points to win it and they got like 180 or so so it ended up being a blowout but like you know and Israel came second but they all it almost kind of like yeah it made it very dramatic at the end um uh in total but yeah just another just another weird the Eurovision it's just a weird it's a weird night that's kind of in keeping with it I like that it has like uh because you know shows like whatever like uh the the voice or like

american idol they don't have like a geopolitical dimension to them it's like it's really interesting that it's like you need like a risk board out while you're watching eurovision all right we got votes coming in from who's annexing this one we gotta take their votes they only cost half we gotta trace the call that are coming in for it's coming from el salvador but it's for the yeah you have to balkanize the world in terms of like geopolitics to understand yeah totally yeah like with the year after the russian invasion of the donbass there was like um or i guess the more more recent one that there

was a yeah loads of you know every other country you know poland and everyone voting for ukraine to to do really well you know it's just i don't know how austria snuck in does anyone really give a shit about austria i don't they're kind of don't don't be saying that last time we said that shit didn't go well all right oh you're right care about we love austria don't do good points good points yeah they pip yeah there you go there's a geopolitical edge to that um so anyway fair play to everyone to watch the uh it's on i think it's on peacock you can watch it if you want to watch a bunch of oh the nbc

streaming service is that what it's called really peacock yeah that's awesome yeah it's good and p and p when you put it that way i'm in no one black no one bats an eye say poop cock and everyone goes right poop cock or pp pp or cock cock cock is that the new name for the cruise channel cock they're renaming hbo mac max back to hbo max you mean they're renaming max back to hbo max yes previously hbo max which is previously hbo go was this yeah and hbo now like pokemon go yeah god that channel's had more names than noclip crew crew boom baby we're so back we've only had one name technically that's

two well that was one and a half i guess yes yeah good point holy shit they should i was about to say they should fire that executor for changing the name back but i'm putting myself on that's there pointing the gun at myself get his ass you know who's pointing the gun at me right now our battle Pass holders, Love Priest, Dwayne the Lock Robster.

Dwayne the Lock Robster?

Wow. Dwayne the Rock Lobster and his cousin Dwayne the Rock Lobster.

Wait, I said it the same way twice.

Okay, gosh. Am I having a stroke?

It's all good. Oh, Lord. Anthony Thomas, Nico Passateri, It's A Me, Ferrario, Penelope Hayes, Senator Armstrong, Harry Flanagan, Joosh, Arno, Matt Pearson, Thank you all so much. for your incredible support over patreon .com slash nucleic we're not here to talk about eurovision anymore we're gonna talk about video games video games let's start with uh frank let's go first with you you have played the precinct which is a game that i talked about on here i think or maybe was it a next fest video just next fest yes And on you.

This is a isometric – it's a game where you get to be a cop.

You get to do police person things and stuff like that.

We're all fans of cops here.

Back to blue. Jesse's nodding if you're not on the YouTube channel.

What do you make of The Precinct?

This is one of two isometric car games we're going to talk about today.

Let's see which one wins.

The Precinct, you played the first couple of hours.

What do you make of it?

Yeah, I was like really curious about this game.

like yeah the look of it was isometric it's i'm always interested in like cop simulator games like even like battlefield hardline because i'm so curious of the tone like are they aware of like how shitty it can be and all that stuff and and and like battlefield hardline completely is like so tone deaf this game i feel like is a little cheeky this feels almost a little bit like the wire like even when you're going through like the opening missions the cops are all kind of grumbling about like desk work and budget and things like that and it's like oh okay like Like it's a little bit of the same

wiretone of like shit rolls downhill.

And like you're a rookie cop, but your dad was a famous cop who got killed in the – this is all like the opening stuff.

And they're like, we don't know who did it.

Don't worry about it, kid.

Keep your nose down.

Hand out tickets. So it's like, okay, there's corruption.

So I think the game was produced in the UK.

But this game, everyone has such a thick like New York accent.

It's like very – it's like it's not as cheeky as Rockstar stuff, but I think it's in the spirit of like the OG Rockstar stuff.

So, like, I was playing the first hours just sussing it out.

It's like, oh, no, this is funny.

Like, in, like, police pursuits, you can run over civilians, and there's no penalties.

And it's like, oh, okay, great.

Like, so, again, anytime.

That's something our two games share, apparently.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, it's like, as soon as I was playing the game, I was just testing it.

Like, what happens if, like, you're handing out parking tickets.

If you shoot a civilian on the street, it, like, fails the mission, and you restart.

But the checkpoints are generous.

It's unrealistic. Yeah, yeah, no, I was trying to see, like, how far can you go with police brutality and things like that.

when you arrest people you can't hit someone like one or two times with a nightclub before you like get get like uh you fail the mission for excessive force you can be a little rough but not too rough so the yeah the premise of the precinct is you're a cop i'm still in like the opening stuff which i think is still hand holding a lot of like here's a a high -speed chase handing out tickets shooting cops whatever or not shooting cops shooting bad guys um so i like this game uh uh the yeah it is is isometric it when you're doing like combat you can get into cover and it almost looks like like x -com

or one of those type games it's not tactics like it's not turn -based or anything no no but but it's the same viewpoint people are taking cover and like and so the combat is that the shooting is pretty good the opening mission still like a bank job where you murder a bunch of people i found that for a game that was like we're gonna give you giving parking tickets and stopping drug dealers for like a chunk of it the opening of the game has a lot of like you killing people, and then, like, being a helicopter pilot, have you done that part?

Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah So, the opening is, like, an extreme mission, and then the second mission is you giving out parking tickets, and then I think the third is, like a drug bus, and then I don't know if the game has, like, open patrol mode, that's what I'm hoping to get to Yeah, so, I do like this game Yeah, even the parts where you're giving out parking tickets, it's asking you very specific questions, like Is it because Because they're close to a fire hydrant.

Have they not refilled the meter?

Are they parked in opposite ways?

So the game is very guided in terms of it always tells you what the objective is.

L .A. Noire, I like the world of it, but I feel like this game already is so much easier and more fun to play than L .A.

Noire. I was not interested.

That's a strong statement.

You're not a big L .A.

Noire fan? No, I'm not like, I don't want to do puzzles.

I don't want to solve riddles.

I just want to like run around and shoot people.

You don't want to decipher faces where people are like, I'm not lying.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you are early, so you might still be in tutorial land.

That's the thing. Well, you'll have to report back once you've gotten out into the wider world.

And that's what I'm eager to do.

But like this. So I feel like this game, the vibe of it does feel like early GTA, like the old school ones, which is like, OK, this is kind of silly and chaotic.

And the game is like kind of self -aware.

And yeah, everyone has like the very thick New York accents like I welcome to the department, sweetie.

And it's very like, oh, OK.

So they're they're having fun with it.

Like the cut scenes are very like visual novel.

like it's just like the portrait and the dialogue and you can't skip through it but the voice acting is actually pretty good um so um so yeah but again i'm pretty early but it passed like my test of like okay it's funny it's chaotic it's not like punishing if you're being crazy so uh and i actually really like the controls i was really skeptical with like playing an isometric game on controller but it feels good the shooting stuff is actually pretty fun getting to cover and all that getting headshots is so satisfying um you know you're not supposed to to aim for that if you're caught but it's

cool i like that's what they always say aim for the hedge yeah yeah what's that what are you playing on i'm playing it on ps5 oh cool excellent yeah and so i think it's on i think it's in all the modern platforms xbox ps5 steam and all that excellent let me just talk about deliver all costs then because it's kind of weirdly in a similar kind of wheelhouse i think reviews started coming out for today um i was thinking about doing a quick look for it but i think i think talking about here probably be will be enough um the so deliver Delivered at All Costs is a game where you are delivering stuff.

I would describe it as a like physics arcade racer or not racer, driving game, I guess.

So you are, the story is pretty hands -on, and I'm not sure if I'm in love with the story.

It's maybe it goes somewhere.

There seems to be some subtext to it, but basically you're a guy who arrives in this town and he needs a job and gets a job as a delivery driver at this thing.

There's definitely something going on under, you know, similar to frank's one there's an early mystery that i'm assuming the the story is going to move towards um but you get a car and you are basically using this car to deliver stuff so it's less like crazy taxi where you are um doing quick job quick job quick job each day has like i don't know two or three different set missions that you do it is set in an open world it's sort of like six different biomes connected by tunnels that you sort of or you know you drive off screen it loads another neighborhood and you go into that area um so there

are the set missions you do but then you can do free roam stuff like um there are some uh you know side quests that exist in the world and for those you get blueprints that can uh you can update your car and there is lots of these um yellow they seem to have like self -awarely done the yellow paint thing because there is is yellow paint when you can climb up walls but there's like a bucket of yellow paint and like a paintbrush left beside them in a lot of places so i think that they're like self -awarely doing the climb here yellow paint thing and there's also a bunch of crates with yellow x's on them

and those have like 10 bucks in them which adds to your your allowance and you can use that to buy stuff for the car or buy parts for the upgrade so there's a sort of an upgrade tree that goes along and with that and that can be anything from a silly sounding horn to the the ability for you to press a button and it just opens up the doors and the hood of your car which you can use to fucking yeet people into the next uh road over it's it's pretty fun um so that's what you're doing is you're mostly doing these set missions unless unless you're exploring the world and stuff like that um everything

is fucking destructible so this is kind of what i was talking about when i was saying about how stunt derby it was cool that we put the the boxes on the road because games like wreck fest put all the interesting destructible shit off the track and you are sort of disincentivized to touch it in this everything you crash into fucking falls apart you can smash into people they might get hurt you never get in trouble with the police or anything they might chase after you though and start like chainsawing the back of your car or like try and give you kick your wheels so you get a puncture and you have to

like run outside and press a button to make the wheel go back up um everything falls apart like you can drive through brick walls you can drive through houses and the houses fall apart there's a pier you can knock out the feet there's a ferris wheel if you crash into the support structures the ferris wheel fucking roll collapse like it is it is everything is made to be destroyed and if you come back later it's back right it's just it's this game does not care about realism it is it is having fun with its um sort of ridiculous physics uh sandbox um the actual Actual missions themselves are also very

physicsy. So, you know, one of them early, I think the first one you do is like, oh, you're transporting a bunch of fireworks and then the fireworks start going off.

And when they go off, they move your car a little bit, but also some of them land in the middle of the road and you have to avoid those because they'll blow off your wheels.

and there's one where you have a massive like 30 -foot marlin that you have back in the back of your flatbed truck which who's like it's still alive and it's like back uh flipper is like flicking all the other cars and making you move as you're going and you have to do a bunch of ridiculous things like this guy wants to like present this marlin so you're like oh it looks too dirty we have to paint it so you have to bring it to a paint shop and use your like winch to put it up on the paint thing and then bring it back but the marlin gets angry because it's hungry so you have to drive through like

pots of rotting fish that are off the side of the road so like said to make the marlin happy so it doesn't jump off the back of your truck it's just like it's it's slapstick nonsense um but the actual aesthetic of the game and the world is like this 1950s kind of noir ish uh uh vibe to it um so which which i'm not sure if it feels at odds with it i'm not sure why i guess it grounds it you know it and it makes it it gives it like a sense of place and stuff that i think is is interesting maybe it's that i'm not a big you know fan of that aesthetic necessarily i don't dislike it but it's not like

it's not particularly interesting uh to to me um you know it's a lot of uh you know people dressed up in that thing yeah i i don't know if i associate it with slapstick or or physics you know what i mean like it's it's not necessarily that it definitely gives it a unique feel which i think is is important and cool um but yeah it's not um it's not necessarily tied to the games the themes i don't i guess it would be before um they had had like stronger regulations on driving and vehicles nobody wore seatbelts back then so it was was okay if people careened out of a vehicle and a 1950s I haven't

had that happen yet although there's an upgrade for airbags so I'm not sure what that does necessarily you really have to your car off for it to break like drive it off there's a volcano in the middle of the level in the middle of the island all takes place on an island there's like a volcano in the middle at one stage you have to like there's a I got a side quest it was like a haunted car and that basically was just like you know you know its doors were opening it was like flipping around it was trying to get me to crash it and and the the only way you could win is by driving it into the volcano and like

double tapping y so you jumped out as it fell into the volcano so awesome you know it's like silly stuff like that so the missions are pretty cool the story i'm not necessarily massively into i'm still finding myself sort of not skipping cut scenes but like tapping the analog stick to kind of get through them um but uh yeah i find it to be fun and it is a very good steam deck game um i i like it on the the steam deck the whole thing of it actually reminds me a little bit of that one you recommended me jesse the what was that really cartoony one where you are the the guy who gets the car he's like

he says he's going to get the car to be an uber driver but then he just drives around his town oh uh tiny terry's turbo trip yes yeah it is not massively dissimilar from that in terms of structure and that there's a bunch of biomes you can get out of the car and explore um you have a job there are missions stuff like that it's it's not not this similar the only difference with this one is that the the missions are split up into days and sometimes it fast forward a few weeks or months or whatever it has like a narrative to it and obviously tiny terry's didn't um yeah so that's that's kind of the the 101

on it i'm about i don't know it says i'm like 30 complete so i don't know if that means i'm halfway through the story and i've done a bunch of the side quests and pickups i'm not quite sure i would say i'm probably a third of the way through this um some of the reviews suggested that maybe it falls off a little bit um i'm not i'm not sure go do your own research on that and your own due diligence but uh yeah it's it's it's it's good fun i'm enjoying it uh i'm gonna keep playing it i think it's 30 bucks am i right it is it's 30 dollars there's a demo out currently and it's actually got 10 off on steam

if you're at all all interested and you can get it in a bundle with and you the precinct can't you're kidding oh my god the delivering justice bundle yes you're right yeah there's a great name five percent five percent off uh the two of them together if you just want to be if you want to what is it support back the blue yeah not neither of these games are like you doing contemporary cop stuff you can tell you know for very good reasons probably um i will say as well this this game the while the the art style the or the setting is not necessarily something that i'm like a super fan of i'm not not a fan of it

but it's not like something that like you know war you know i'm like an aesthetic that i warm to i love how this game looks like the isometric angle is super slick the modeling and the light the way they they do all that stuff is brilliant it looks gorgeous on steam deck it looks great on a full screen too um yeah the the effects are great the physics are great like it really feels like a lot of shit is breaking apart in a really satisfying ways it doesn't feel like you know you hit the ferris wheel and like rolls away like it's one you know uh physics object or whatever you know uh so yeah it's

really fun to destroy and drive and poke at it and have fun with it and like you can you know when you climb a big building to like get something i just toss my guy off the off the top and he goes ah and he like dies on the ground and then like it waits a beat and he gets back up you know what i mean it's like silly shit like that you know you can you punch people you can push you can push and kick um uh other civilians so like there's like like a big bridge in in in the world uh the way through the mainland like golden gate bridge ass looking suspension bridge and you can climb up to the top

and then when you get to the top there's like a guy haven't you know standing by the edge of a thing drinking a cup of coffee right and you're like well here we go you just push him off the edge for fun like it's it's uh yeah it it looks really if you i think the aesthetic almost on its own if you see a screenshot of this thing and you go man that game looks cool that on even on its own is a really good i think i think it plays as good as those screenshots make it looks like it plays um and and there's if you the last thing i'll say is if you hit like the right stick it's not full 360 cam but if you

hit the right stick to the side it'll basically give you a 90 degree pivot which is also kind of cool because sometimes boxes are hidden behind stuff yeah and so it's it's used as like a oh i can't see anything because i'm stuck behind this this uh wall but it'll give you an alternative look so you can kind of see it and then you can go back to the other one if you want um yeah so if you're doing setting up like big jumps and stuff it's handy for that cool that's cool they should make a crpg with this exact aesthetic and like everything about this look screams like a contemporary version of fallout

one and two to me doesn't it yeah it's very right era too yeah for sure yeah it's not it's like a you know it's it's if it was painterly it would look like disco elysium you know it's got a very similar kind of like almost there it's got that texturized look on everything thing like there's scratches and little splotches of paint very artistic but yeah not quite like like 10 of the way it needs to go a little bit further to get to that look for sure yeah it's uh yeah i i'm glad to hear you guys like it as well because i think that's a lot of the yeah it's just the graphics and the physics are enough

for me and the missions are funny and they they set up the thing really funny one of them was like a what was it it was like a seismograph that i had to bring to the guys on top of the volcano i spent a lot of time around the volcano yeah i can tell and it would uh this one was not one that would like affect the car but it was a seismograph that would beep whenever there was earthquakes about to happen so you'd be driving down this road and it would just like beep beep beep beep and then a bunch of like ridiculous physics boulders would come down the hill and like fucking hit your car off the edge

and and all that stuff and your little buddy in the car who's with you sometimes is like oh you're you're a good driver you know it's kind of silly silly little comments here and there Yeah, sounds good.

Sounds like the sort of thing you would rent from Blockbuster for like, you know, a weekend and just crush on your Xbox.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

The camera angle is also an interesting choice for a game design reason, which is that because everything is destructible, I feel like if you had fuller visibility of everything, you'd be it'd be easier to dodge a wall that you're driving straight out, but you can't see because you're staring like almost orthogonally straight down at the car.

um but it also does like you know how when you see tilt shift photographs of like a real city it looks like a toy city i always feel like um isometric and orthogonal cameras like they give that sort of toy box effect to it and i feel like because the the destructive physics of the world in this game is sort of like like one of the the main features they're giving it this very like like it's not zooming in and focusing on the car like a gta does or something it's zooming way out and being like the world is kind of the uh the the focus not just the car yeah and i'd love to talk to the designers

about that because there's that also sort of that's a great point and it reminds me of two things which is that one when you crash into stuff in this game it doesn't slow you down all that much so you really feel like you don't feel like you're constantly trying to avoid things i also think the road design is probably doing a lot of work here because you you know, when you're playing Sonic and Sonic is really fast, but you really can't tell what's coming next.

Like that game has a real problem with, oh shit, like I'm about to hit a wall or like an enemy or something.

And I saw it too late.

You're like flying in this car sometimes, and it's in the middle of the road and the camera is zoomed out a bit, but because it's orthogonal, you're not seeing down the road.

So you really don't know what's coming next.

And I think the the traffic and the like the turns are that are in this game are long and consistent.

So you can kind of tell, okay, I'm turning this way and I'm going to keep turning this way and then it'll straighten out.

The roads are on a grid.

Sometimes they're diagonal at 45.

Sometimes they're like closer to a 90, but they're also fairly consistent.

Um, the game also has this system, uh, when you're doing the missions where it has like little yellow arrows will appear on the road to kind of nudge you and go okay you're going that way you're going that way so you're not looking at your mini -map the whole time you're not trying to glance up at a mini -map or anything like that and then it does a very smart thing where sometimes the arrow will be like kind of red and white and that means i'm guessing i intuitively sort of understood probably what it means i think this is what it means that like oh this is another way to go but it's actually a little

bit dangerous like it might have a jump it might have some dodgy roads and you might have to smash through something thing so that's really good it kind of nudges you it kind of goes okay go here go here go here and up till this point i know there are some missions that have like um timers in them and stuff and stuff but up to this point most of the missions i've done have been very um like you would die in them but the game has such a light punishment for death it just kind of respawns you and the car is fully healed again and that none of them have been like like they've been tricky to do without

dying and the game does kind of rate you on how you did but not so um hard that like that it's really annoying and you're having to do them over and again and so hopefully that's the case as i continue but yeah it's uh it's it's good stuff so far yeah nice deliver at all costs like you said jesse it's not like it's not gonna i don't think it's gonna be in you know in my game of the year discussions or anything kind of like tiny Tiny Tim...

Tiny Tim, no! Who did not die.

Yeah, Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip, yeah.

Yeah, Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip was one of my favorite games that I enjoyed playing.

I think it was last year, but I wouldn't have necessarily put it in Game of the Year, you know what I mean?

For sure. Yeah, I wouldn't, like, it's not touching me in that way, you know what I mean?

Similarly, I think this is a really well put together game with a lot of interesting ideas and the core thing that it's trying to do, it does very well.

and graphically it just looks beautiful sometimes that's all you need it's just a fun video game that just executes its uh goal very well and it's not setting the world on fire but it is absolutely a good time and that's yeah sounds like what you're getting here with the deliver at all costs yeah deliver at all costs go check out a demo if you want yourself it is coming out uh the day this podcast goes live i believe or came out the day before on the 22nd um so uh yeah check it out if you're interested moving right along jeremy you're going to do a quick look for this one but please tell us a little

bit about uh formless star it is an itch game right yes um this is a game that's taking itch by storm um this is a this is a game by developer splendid land whose whose name is Simantuel Luis Gilson, who also made a fantastic game a few years ago named Franken that you should also check out.

I'm not going to be describing two games at once, but also go play Franken.

So Formal Star is a, I guess you'd call it like an RPG.

I think it's one of those games where giving it like a genre designation kind of is limiting on what it actually is.

But for all intents and purposes, it presents as like a pixel art kind of like retro looking RPG.

But this is a game where you work for a company and you land in a little interstellar pod on a distant planet and you just like catalog all the weird creatures that live there um and it is this is like this game is so fucking charming I like I was trying to think of like what it is about this game that made me love it so much and it's like it's a million different things but I think the primary everything is that it's like it's very tender it's like it's a it's a very rare sort of like emotion in games and I think people really value it but it's it's not a term I hear very often uh I I think like

the yakuza games for example I think a lot of people are like wow the the storytelling is so great the characters are so great but I think that the thing that connects with people so much is that behind the sort of like the facade of like tough yakuza guys like fighting and beating each other up there's like a real tenderness like a really sincere sort of like connection between characters they act in a way that like with vulnerability and compassion and uh and i think that's a it's a it's a difficult thing to capture and i think that um splendid lands games have like a real sincere sense of tenderness

that reminds me of uh like loveadelic the developer who did moon rpg um and then kind of like splintered and did a bunch of other stuff i believe like i think like tulip is one of the uh spinoff like studios and uh maybe like chibi robo i think um oh cool but anyway just these kind of like very sincere like love filled games but anyway so formless star you land on this planet with your crew and you go around and it is a procedurally generated landscape hence the name formless star it's like this it doesn't have a discrete definite form every time you step off the ship it procedurally generates

all the tiles and all of the biomes and this whole landscape and the landscape is filled with all of these weird little animals and so you go around cataloging them and as each as you find each one they it plays like a little unique noise it gives you a little sort of like pokedex description of that creature and like their background which are all they're all like the writing in these games are so it's franken is one of the funniest games i've ever played um this one feels like it's trying to be like a little less like you know wink and a nudge like i'm doing jokes here but it is still incredibly

funny um but all these creatures have like little weird descriptions and then they all do like a bizarre little animation like one of them likes to dance and it does like this little dance one of them is a is a giant mechanical cannon and it says that it has like the I think it's like the millennium ending cannon is like its special move or something oh my god and then you interact with it and it's like it like goes like it deploys and it's like millennium cannon activated and it starts this like 60 second long animation um and it's just like it's so so fucking funny like you're just it's just

like it's doing bits and it's like being weird and sincere there's like a i see one here it's like it's like a fridge that's like shooting at blocks of ice cream or something yeah yeah there's like and some of them are weird contrasts where like there's one that's only found in the hot biome but it's like an it's like a ice guy who's like really uncomfortable but refuses to leave um so yeah you're kind of just like going around and finding little guys and meeting dudes meeting yeah yeah and like sometimes that's enough is just like just experiencing this world um you also you're have like you've

like cohorts like companions that work with you who are also on the planet you can see out and about um and you can go back to the ship and there's like a android that cleans up the ship named fandroid and you can just like kind of do whatever you can call back to base and you have this very like neurotic boss who uh constantly forgets who you are and you call him and you're like hey I'm just like updating you he's like oh are you like my uber driver are you outside oh it's you never mind um so it's just this very sort of like funny sincere little game about exploring a planet and uh and if if you

play this game it is about two hours long to get the true ending I highly recommend you find every single animal in the world because the true ending of this game is um probably my favorite like like narrative thematic moment in a game this year so far I think it's like one of the most beautiful sincere endings to a game I've ever seen in my life formless star um you're gonna do a quick look as well it's not a long game right so yeah what is that a couple of hours yeah yeah I think we'll probably play like a quarter of it in 30 minutes but um yeah it'll be fine it is a I think it's a difficult

game to describe because it's very much just about the like the sense of place and atmosphere uh playing this game so I think the quick look will do a a better illustration of why it's great but uh highly recommend this game it is on itch by splendid land the name is formless star terrific name around price over there i'm guessing yeah but uh throw some throw some money throw what do they say in the witcher i've never played the witcher throw some coins at the witcher that's the show i think right that's not i don't think that's enough i've never seen the show either oh well that's some you don't

throw some bills at your dev how about it i think in deliver cost he says dollar bills sometimes when you pick pick up the dollars if you drive through those boxes so fun which seems not error appropriate if i'm honest but you know whatever the phrase dollar bills is not error appropriate from the 50s yeah i don't know when you have all the bills y 'all is kind of where i go with when he said the way he says it it feels a bit more content okay i don't know maybe not who am i to say i'm no i'm no you were here in the 50s technically american or somebody who's in the 50s exactly and jesse yes see

oh that was good thank you you got two games to talk about here probably briefly i'm guessing with the games here yeah fairly quickly uh the one is pretty straightforward and the one is just a demo for a game that's you said uh out next week the new next week uh so i'll talk about rift riff first which i'm going to mess up the name of because it's so close yes uh rift riff this is a uh i sound like i feel like a dog every time i say it Uh, new game from Adrian de young.

Um, very, very good, fun, silly little game about, uh, it's a, it's a, it's a tower defense style game.

Um, but it's a lot more strategic than most of those.

So, uh, this is like a top down sort of isometric angle, uh, tower defense game, but it's not like a grid tower defense, like balloons or like you're not placing your little monkeys on a grid this is more strategic and um thoughtful i think in the way that you set up your units because typically in tower defense games i don't get down with them too much because like it turns into eventually just like maximizing numbers there's not a whole lot of thought to it it's just like just put this here find the curve place them in the make your dead zone there's not much artistry in them yes exactly it's

very you know logic min maxing your stuff yeah which you know i can find some joy in once or twice but eventually you're like okay i've I've played one of these.

I played a million of them.

There's like 17 balloons tower defense game.

But this one, I actually have had a lot of fun playing.

And in the least mean way possible, I've been playing it while watching next level chef because it's the perfect second screen game.

Again, not an insult.

You could totally focus very, very distinctly on this.

Next level chef is the second screen.

That's true. Good point.

Yes. I do just look up and watch Gordon Ramsay yell at people, which is quite fun.

That show is awful.

It's so much fun, but it's terrible.

uh but anyway this game on the other hand quite good um so yeah like i was saying it is a tower defense game but not in a grid so basically you're in these individual worlds you start in this sort of overworld area that's like very green and black it looks very computery and like you get your upgrades there um and you go into these portals that warp you rifts perhaps that warp you to these areas that'll have really good like pixel art they're all designed really well the colors are very nice the whole thing is very juicy um the sound effects are great like all all the animations there's so much

little uh detail and like every single thing on the screen yeah how would you describe this because i think pixel art might sort of conjure up something close to like jeremy was talking and that's a good point you know um i mean to me to me it looks a lot like a game that i've just realized is in a bundle with this which is throne fall that i talked about the end of last year yeah um it's kind of uh throw falls more 3d though right um um maybe it's i mean it's still lay you're right thronefall is has more 3d look but yeah no you're right riff riff is more it's like scratchier it's more just art

that's like lo -fi like it's it's very yeah it is hard to describe it's scratchy between sword and sword no that's not no it's not as like structured as regular pixel art is like you couldn't put it on a grid and say like this is the straight line and you got to do 90 degree angles it's a lot more free form in its uh arco kind of a little bit um pepper grinder from last year it kind of reminded me of that sort of scratchy or pixel art uh it all looks really good and it's very distinct and it works i think for the design of it as well so like i was saying it's not a grid -based uh tower defense game

there's specific points that you place them on and all of the towers do very specific things it's not like this one shoots and then this one shoots a lot or faster but does less damage these are more like you have a turret and then you have a unit that slows down enemies as they walk through it and all the enemies have different abilities like some of them will uh come in packs or like you know it's a tower defense game it's all pretty straightforward but they go on the strategy level like on a whole different uh wavelength because again it's not there's no grid so like sometimes they'll have uh

obvious straights that you can see or like the way the the level is designed is you can see there's like a point in the middle and then a bunch of places where you can put your units because like you can only place them in very specific points they're like little black dots on the map you control a character that walks up to them and then you pick where you want the unit to go you build it it's all pretty straightforward you have like limited um resources that come back over time throughout the level they're all produced by your tower that you're trying to defend um and you can only pick like

five tower or five units to build on the map at a time or well it starts with three and then it goes up more and more as you play more of the game um and yeah you could just like you'll see that point in the middle you'll see like oh there's a ring around it where the enemies are definitely going to go because they they have to go that way so you pick the tower that covers that ring but maybe you don't want to do that you get there's like a ton of different strategies you can make of like combining different towers to perform different actions so it's a lot more strategic you don't have to use

every dot that was something i was concerned about at the start was like right really all you're going to do is maximize your your units but no here you can just be like i i have one multiple of them where i just go here i'm going to build this little pocket and this is going to be the dead zone this is where everyone's going to go to die uh because you can build units to like that are are called it's like a spot called fertile ground if you place something there enemies will attack it if they have the trait where they attack fertile ground so there's a lot of thought to it the thing is it's not overly

challenging that was something that i really appreciated by by the end of my uh my play time i'm not quite done with it yet i think i'm about a third of the way through in terms of the levels that are available um but i never really found myself struggling too much or feeling hampered by it like i never felt like i was like oh i picked the wrong units and now i I got to restart it was like you have opportunities to to restart a wave or restart the whole thing if you want to um and try different strategies which is fun but if you like find your way fighting through it and like you only have so many

resources you can go back and rebuild a building but then it only has half health and like it's on the fly it's very frantic but again not overly challenging you can do kind of whatever you want um go bing on units design your own thing second screen experience exactly yeah you can play on steam deck then watch the next level chef um or or whatever Gordon Ramsay show you want.

Yeah, I'm playing it on Steam Deck.

It runs perfectly fine.

It runs with controls.

The controller's perfectly fine.

You don't have to use the touchpads or anything.

Yeah, it's very slick, and like I was saying, juicy.

The UI, the colors, everything's so good.

When you click on one of the squares to place a unit, it does this little UI pop -up over your character to show you all the things you can place, and just switching between them, like bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, it just, ah, there's something about it.

It's so satisfying.

Yeah, go check out some screenshots of videos of this thing.

I think it probably sells oh absolutely decent amount that we can't on a podcast as well yeah it looks really slick I really enjoyed throne fall last year a lot um uh so yeah I think this is definitely one to I'll probably give this a whirl as well rift riff yeah um and like you said I don't know what position I'm in here when it comes to to a t so this is kata takahashi's new game time um independent now and a team i assume probably somewhat remote and somewhat in the east bay here in the bay area working on this of course kita takahashi known for games like watam and katamari and nubby nubby boy

um uh to a t it's out next week i'll be talking about it next week uh how much of the what is the demo like is it the start of the game do you think uh it seems like it because you make a character or well you name your character and design how how they look um brush your teeth and stuff teeth yeah okay yeah yeah cool yeah so definitely the uh start of the game but yeah yeah this is to a t new game like danny said from uh kidda takahashi's studio uvula um which i think is a different one from the one that made watam it is yes very much so yeah something happened i feel like yeah uh but regardless

like i played katamari damasi for the first time this year so uh i really got into reading uh what kidda takahashi has to say about game design and the sort of joyful uh experience that he has both making games and watching people play games and designing things that are fun and charming uh intuitive right off the bat feels exactly like what i was expecting it's like a low level experience where you're controlling one character in this town it almost feels like you're in a town from katamari damacy um and your character who again you can name whatever you want i named him tony uh is t posed and that's

how they live their life um and i was which means that just in case people don't know it's like Like, their hands are constantly stuck out to the sides.

Yes. All the 12 -year -olds know what teetposing is.

It's fine. It's all the 12 -year -olds who listen to this podcast. The kid that you're controlling lives their life like that.

And the interesting thing, I think, is that the story is about sort of like living with that as a disability.

Like, how do you navigate the world with that, you know, stuck in that position?

How do you brush your teeth?

How do you eat food, right?

And it finds this way to bring out this, again, like Keita Takahashi's games in general, find this way to bring out this childlike wonder and joy in the simple things like brushing your teeth or washing your face.

Like, how do you do that with that limitation on your body?

How do you control in that way?

And then also, like, narratively, it kind of dives a little deeper on that, I think, than I was expecting it to.

Again, the games are very, like, heartfelt and joyful.

So to play this, I was like, we're so back, baby.

We're going to do funny things.

And then, no, it's like, that's hard, isn't it?

It's very sad. to live your life like that um and yeah the way that society treats you and and that sort of thing which i thought was yeah uh presented very well i'm not super far into the demo i don't think there's much more than what i played of it but probably not yeah you start out pretty quick you get dressed you pick your outfit and you have to go to school and you meet a giraffe who makes you a sandwich like if you describe what happens in this game you're like yeah yeah okay that sounds like that sounds like a kid you had like yeah the first thing you do is take a shit and it's like this this destructive

force that just shakes the whole house and rattles the whole thing um yeah it's it's great if you've played any of uh kata's games like you're gonna feel red at home here i think um so i i i'm interested to talk about that next week because i think i've grown up playing kata takahashi's games i played every one of them new you know what i mean like this is like oh cool he's been like a singular voice in this world and i think the first one i got into was one of the katamaris and then there was obviously navi navi boy watsam i'm definitely missing something here i feel like maybe um but those games

are very sandboxy and from what i am seeing from this demo you're talking about um it sounds like this is a lot more narrative and structured and it sounds like that is uh quite interesting how have you found how have you found that because like obviously karmari games have levels i guess but they're almost like tony hawk levels you got a time limit you gotta do the fucking thing yeah um what i mean i mean nubby nubby boy especially it's just like fucking like that game basically has no mission like yeah what time to a certain extent kind does i guess it's a bit more goal orientated but still

so sandboxy um what have you found of this so far i know it's obviously the start so maybe it's a bit more structured but um were you surprised at all by how i guess you kind of mentioned how like sort sort of smaller in scope it is i guess yeah you know i i really appreciate that though because i feel like uh being able to pull everything out of those linear scripted moments uh is the part of it that's so joyful like it's not as open as katamari like you said you can't just roll around and pick up all the items or whatever or do anything or go anywhere you have like an objective you can't still

go wherever at a point they're like go to school you're gonna be late and then i was running to school and i was like no no this is one of those games you don't have to do that uh so i was like I'll go pick up these coins that are just around the world.

Why not? I'm having fun.

I'm running around with my arms out.

I'm feeling the world out.

But then even on the smaller moments, there's like a bit where you eat cereal and you you dunk the I was like, I'll do milk first. Then I was like, what am I, a sociopath?

So I put the milk down and picked up the cereal.

Did it the right way.

And then like you eat the cereal and you watch all the little physics objects bounce around in the bowl and like your characters munching on the cereal.

I'm like, this is this is what I want.

This is beautiful. This is it's charming.

It's childlike. It's so cool.

And then yeah, like the way that it presents – I was crying at a certain point because like there's the moment where the character turns on the faucet and Tony, my boy, is like – I can wash my face with this.

Isn't it cool? My mom made it for me and I was like, oh my god.

Oh, that's so sad and beautiful because like I'm – not to get too personal.

Like my biggest concern I have at this like subconscious level is living with a disability and like the way that society is not built for that.

Because I live in a city where so many people use wheelchairs and like mobility devices in general and how hard it is for them.

And like I'm always like that's one of my biggest fears is that sort of thing.

And I'm like and the reason is just that.

So seeing this and being like, no, this can be joyful.

Like you can still have fun and find joy in this life when you live with the limitations that society puts on you because of the way that you are.

like the song that plays at the beginning is like you know i can't find my place which is also very funny like i'm making it sound like it's very serious this is a very funny video game that just touched a bone but yeah yeah no you're right it's it's uh it can play both instruments yes which i think is very interesting and it has that chorus which is great who's got the cooler spoon you know regular person or teapots person right exactly very long spoon yeah it's my favorite also i wanted to mention um this game made in collaboration with able gamers which i imagine is part of what makes that story

come to life i'm not sure in what capacity maybe just like the sultan level or whatever um but you know able gamers controversy at the moment in the news recently yeah yeah i don't know allegations too too much about this it sounds like it's another other one of these this boss was a jerk situations um which you know mileage may vary um i think uh it's hard to that was an ign report that came out and then the ceo mark barlett did a big response and i think able gamers made a post on linkedin about it now okay uh barlett's thing is like super long there's tons here i'm just scrolling through it

so there's lots to that uh i think regardless of that situation the people who work at able gamers uh have done a lot of great work over the last 20 years right something like that yeah so it doesn't minimize that i think if they've had any hand in this it seems great and uh the hard work that they've done for so long uh shouldn't be minimized over that yeah this well this is the problem with charity stuff is that you get a lot of this stuff this stuff can happen in charities just by virtue of the fact that it's a company it's a structure it's just and it's not it's so the reason i why i would say

it is is that the unlike traditional companies charities are usually led by individuals who have like a very particular reason why they are running that charity and then sort of because of that it's often difficult to put a more formalized structure on on top of it and also it's it's a lot of like people who are doing it for a reason X, which might be because they're trying to, you know, they have a mission that they want to do, having to also become chair people and that type of stuff.

So you end up in situations where either people aren't capable or where people are manipulative and, and sort of, you know, the charity is just by way, the way they're structured, you know, they're, the books are a certain way and you're asking people for money a lot.

And how much should you get paid if you work at a charity?

there's all of these like very, you know, you can run into a situation where everyone's scratching their own back.

So this is always hard to parse because you're like, you can also be, there could be like genuine financial mismanagement going on, or it could be that somebody's shit at running a business.

And if you're on the floor and you're having all these ideas and you think the management's doing a bad job and they're wasting funds or misappropriating funds or doing this and this, um, maybe you're bitter.

So I always find it hard to, like I read the initial ign stuff and it was definitely some like troubling stuff and i was like yeah it sounds like this guy probably wasn't very good at doing a lot of bunch of this stuff and uh was probably a shit communicator and overly controlling and stuff like that um i haven't read his medium post uh it looks like it's pretty long i didn't know about it until you just mentioned it but it's you know it's it's it's it the the worst thing not the worst thing one of the sad things about this is what you were saying jesse which is that and i think from what i read

in the other thing the only person i really know from able gamers we did we recorded some interviews with them right before i moved back to maryland and i interviewed did i i can't remember if either i interviewed mark and i wasn't he wasn't getting to the stuff i wanted to talk about and it was either we i think that's what happened it's it's been five years so i can't remember but we needed to do more interviews with him and then i had trouble getting him for a while um and i didn't read too much into it and i don't necessarily read into it with this stuff because i haven't gone back and watched

those interviews in a while and then covet happened um so at a certain point i was like oh we've interviewed steven a bunch of times um and uh you know i i know stephen relatively well through the over the years um he's a great advocate for um uh disabled gamers as one himself himself um and you know he's a super lovely guy and uh very out there publicly as well which is uh pretty pretty awesome um i think there was one quote in here where somebody said this and i don't want to misconstrue it but it's something essentially to the to the effect of he didn't want this stuff coming out because it

will affect the charity steven said that steven yeah yeah yeah which you could interpret as him closing ranks with mark or you could interpret it as the very very pragmatic thing of, yeah, you probably don't want this coming out about your charity because charities are entirely based around reputation.

Um, so like you said, I, I do feel bad for able gamers on this one.

Um, you know, and then who I feel bad for probably goes up and down a lot based on how much of this stuff I'll read.

But yeah, I think that's a good point you made to that, like this stuff, uh, you know, they've done, I've been on the ground.

I've been in those hospitals with those kids playing those games you know what I mean and they've obviously done a lot of advocacy work within the industry they've helped with multiple controller designs yeah yeah harder manufacturers it's not like this they also like one thing I think that's really worth mentioning when it comes to able gamers is like there are other charities in the world who do this type of work and when steven was young i think his picture was used or something there was or maybe he just didn't like being weaponized as a child so one of the things that able gamers has done

over the years is in all of their work and all their promotional work they've never had from what i know i've talked to steven about this and i'm sure it's probably been the same they've never used images of children in their promotional work and that came from steven being very sort of adamant that this was not appropriate and manipulating people and the children to try and get funding and i know other large organizations in this space will do a lot of that um and i i've worked with i know people who've worked in asylum charities and stuff in the uk for instance and And they have certain policies

around this stuff as well.

So to me, there's no doubt that able gamers have done great work and have put their hearts in the right place because I've seen those volunteers in those hospitals helping those kids.

I was there. I've interviewed many of them.

And yeah, so it was sad to see all that.

I'm not massively surprised having sort of worked adjacent to charity a lot when I was in Ireland and the UK.

bk um i had clients who were charities when i worked as a web developer in the uk as well and you do this this wasn't massively surprising it's kind of happens in a lot of this type of stuff happens in schools a lot as well with with organizations are they're you know they're not entirely profit driven you just run into these weird power dynamics um so yeah um sorry to rant but yeah yeah it was you know we'll put we'll put the links into the ign article to uh the statement treatment uh from uh mark in the uh the medium post and did you say there was something else there was another yeah able gamers

whoever uh made a post on linkedin just like okay clarifying some stuff but talking about that as well all right yeah sucks sucks to see all that um hopefully the people who spoke up feel like it'll you know mean better more you know change that was required and hopefully able gamers can continue to to do the work that's out there um That matters to so many folks.

I think it's time to go into the spoiler zone, folks, if that's all right.

So if you have not played Outer Wilds, first of all, fucking go play Outer Wilds.

What are you doing?

Like, quit your job.

Stop mining your kids.

Like, stop taking those medicines you need.

just go play Outer Walls it's the best thing ever, then go play go watch the documentary we put out if you have played Outer Walls and you haven't played Echoes of the Eye the same thing applies, you need to play Echoes of the Eye, there will be because Jesse is a legend there will be time codes for this stuff on YouTube and in the descriptor on the podcast app, I'm guessing probably 10 minutes, 15 minutes maybe ahead of time on this one But I am fascinated to hear Jeremy's thoughts on this.

Before we do it, who here has played Echoes of the Eye between the rest of you guys?

Yeah, I also played it.

We did a podcast on it.

I have not completed it.

I just want to disclaim that I have played probably...

I mean, it's hard to say because it's non -linear in some sense and also because I have no indicator of when it ends.

But I would say I'm probably about halfway.

Okay. So I can, when we start the spoilers, zone i can sort of describe where i'm at and then we can you know what i mean work backwards from there in the discussion frank you've not played it no yeah i've just played the base game but not the dlc and do you not want to or are you i just never got around to do you want to do it do you want to bounce out for 20 minutes or are you i want to know now like this will convince me to play it i'm interested it probably will because i could not spoil the narrative aspect of it that's fair for you so i think all i'm going to do is like a few reveals i will hint

at why they're cool without necessarily because like i'm not gonna be like all right if you go left when you go here you gotta go left like it's not gonna be like that so i think you could still play it all right jeremy take it away buddy how have you been enjoying uh echoes of the eye it's it's so good it's really really good um i you know famously a dlc hater uh even elden ring one of of my favorite games of all time i played the dlc and i was like i kind of i kind of thought you know i don't know if i needed to play that i kind of wish i didn't play it but like i'm glad i did on some level

this is like the opposite this is just more fucking outer wilds they did it it's amazing and it's very funny because when we filmed the documentary um at mobius they had on the whiteboard the design for one specific thing danny do you remember what was on the the whiteboard i actually don't it was the you know okay so uh in the new area for the dlc there is a there's a huge like wooden dam and about halfway through the loop the dam breaks and the world floods it was it was a design for the the giant dam like breaking and flooding the world funny it was like a sketch out of the dam if i remember

is it in our b -roll no because we only only i think it was like we filmed two days there right was it one day i think it was one maybe okay it was i think it was the end of the day we filmed there we were chilling in a meeting room and it was on the whiteboard but i had not noticed it prior so i feel like it was maybe something that they'd sketched up that day oh that's funny um but i remember seeing it and being like i have no idea what that's about but anyway so um echoes of the eye is a dlc that in proper outer wilds fashion is just like hidden in the world embedded into the base games world

in a way where it has like plausible deniability that it was there the entire time which is is like mind -shreddingly brilliant um the the way you find it is sort of that uh there's like a new exhibit at the museum and they're like oh it's like the first photos of this solar system when we got here and in one of the photos from a very particular angle from this deep space satellite satellite there they're just like that's impossible and they don't really explain it beyond that um but if you count the planets that are in the photograph there's a there's a planet there that is not accounted for because you

can count all the planets and then there's one passing in front of the sun like eclipsing it and so you go to this deep space satellite you wait for the requisite angle to happen and all of a sudden this thing passes in front of the sun and is not one of the planets that you have on your map that i mean which is it's such a remarkable feeling playing a a game for you know 20 ish hours and being like i know every you know i know this solar system like the back of my hand and then it's like what if what if hiding in plain sight was this like huge body that you just never noticed it's like the magic

trick it's pulling um which which is kind of what a lot of outer wilds was first time around was was being in space and seeing like learning like which portals went where and what you know thing was hidden in this thing you you know, like like in the Bramble and all that sort of stuff like some of the.

Yeah. So it fits really well.

But like you said, it has that that plausible deniability makes it feel even more special.

It doesn't feel like, oh, like you said, the doom when you come out of the fucking cave in Oblivion.

Right. And like, oh, I got a letter from my cousin and fucking, you know, Morrowind about this thing.

And did you hear about this or your radio and fucking Fallout 3 with DLCs?

yeah that's i think that's the thing that's so special about the like puzzle slash mystery design that they do in other wilds and in the dlc as well is that um it feels like it is very organic it is you are discovering it and you're internalizing the knowledge and when you go back to your ship there is like the mind map where it lays out things for you so if you ever get lost there is a way to get yourself back on track but it doesn't feel like you find the thing and then it's like quest complete and you get like the little world of warcraft level up noise um it's it just feels like you're yeah

you don't get the ding you're just organically discovering information fueled by your own curiosity and that's like that that to me is like peak game design because i think that all of those things are like artifice to get you back on track i think that like it is very difficult to design a game that gets you from a to b in the right way and to the right place without giving you those those training wheels or those rails or those bumpers but they just do it time after time and the more remarkable thing in my mind is that they consistently pull this like sleight of hand magic trick where the secrets

are right in front of you like the card was in your back pocket the whole time and it's like you know what i mean like it's fucking it's mind -blowing and they do it time after like i feel like i'm getting flexed on by like david blaine is like oh do you always have this handkerchief in your back pocket i don't know i guess why does it have like my mother's maiden name written on it how'd you do that david blade um so what what did you think when you you entered the spaceship and then you saw it yeah so you go into a so you as you approach well first of all as you see this thing pass in front of the sun

and then you draw you beeline straight at it and by the time you get to it it's past past the sun and you can't target it so then i couldn't find it so it's like how the fuck do i get to this thing um the trick is is that you can only see it when it is between you and the sun so you have to sort like circumnavigate as you approach it to approach it with the sun behind it so you can see where it is um once you've been there you can set it on your targeting computer and fly straight to it but that first time was like i was like oh my god like so you approach it and it sort of like it sucks you into

like an instanced zone but in a way that feels very seamless um and you approach this sort of like docking bay and the whole base game you're exploring like the ruins of the nomai and stuff so it's like oh is this like a hidden nomai ship but uh as you you approach the landing bay you see a bunch of technology and ships that are not know my technology they're like a totally different aesthetic and like lineage of technology so that's like the first hint that this is like and it's it's like vaguely kind of scary too it's it's like hr giger is how i would describe the tech uh in this um not like

with the weird like veins and penises and shit just very like dark and medley and scary um but then you immersion to this world you go into an airlock that's like light activated and it opens and And you are in like a halo ring world that is also like a national park.

That's a great way of putting it.

It is this beautiful like whitewater rafting Kangan that wraps around a ring world.

And so as you look up, you see like directly above you is like the polar opposite side of the map.

And you're like circumnavigating the inside of this ring world, this massive ring world.

um it's like what i wanted halo to be yeah i mean we saw that ring world you're like wow it's gonna be amazing it's like explore that world and look up and see the other side and then and this one you're like that's literally it i remember the reveal because you're in like a dark room and you press a button and it just drops you like into the river and you're like what the fuck first of all why the fuck am i in a river i mean like a spaceship and then i think i think there's like immediately one of the thing because you're in a this little boat right it's like a thing you can nudge it left or right

with you know with your controls um but then every once in a while there are these docks um and so what the intro to i think we covered this on the podcast because we do have an echoes of the eye podcast as jesse was saying with the developers where we interviewed them about it right that's on the feed it's from about four years ago i think um uh you get to one those docks and it picks up your boat and then it forces you to like look up and then you're like oh and you see like it's that whole 20 seconds is so well designed because it's like yo motherfucker you're in the water and you're like what the fuck

i'm in a boat in the water this isn't in this game and then you're like oh i'm also in halo and also like you said it's like this like weird beautiful californian redwood like aesthetic to the whole thing you know yeah yeah it's again it's just the the way that they direct your attention uh so like seamlessly it's not like the yellow paint approach where it's like hey i know we're being kind of on the nose about it but like look over here because it's important it's very organically because like i i saw the ring world and i like looked up of you know 45 degrees and was like that's crazy but then

there was a moment later on where uh i just looked straight up and i saw an area that i hadn't been able to get to yet and that's how i discovered like that's how i solved one of the puzzles was just looking straight up and was like wait a minute there's like another area over in that area um and so it's just like yeah just constant like things are pulling your attention upward as if to say like it may be important for you to not just like gaze in in awe at this place but also to like explore it sort of uh like laterally to be like on the opposite side looking on the opposite side um but yeah

so there there's like this river canyon and there's these sort of like like four discrete like little village areas that are scattered throughout it.

And you're just kind of like going and exploring.

And there's like a new alien race.

You cannot read their language, which I think is a really nice touch for, you know, like the Nomai were like aliens 200 ,000 years ago, but you can translate their language.

So it feels like a little more.

It's still like spooky, you know, and like feels cool and alien.

But like coming into this place and seeing new ships that you've never seen and like Like feeling like you're in the thick of the mystery again, and then you pull out your translator and it's like unknown language.

Like it feels distinctly more alien than the Nomai.

There's definitely more of a horror vibe to this one because there's, there's, there's a lot of like, you have like a tool that's like a lantern that like helps you.

It also like there isn't there like, like you can zoom to a different spot as well using it, but you're walking a lot of, you're walking around a lot of dark places.

places that's the part i just got to basically okay um yeah so this will be sort of the the deepest like spoiler in terms of like the story is that um you're finding these lanterns and like you kind of don't know what to do with them they call it an artifact but it's like a focusing lantern it has like an opening mechanism and you eventually like unravel enough of the secret to realize that there are these like sort of church buildings throughout the land and they have these this like like a i don't know what do you call a triptych but there's five of them like a five piece uh you know like the eisenheim

altar fucking art piece and then you find uh all these sort of little hints and eventually you realize that the beings in this world had a ritual where they would pull out the lanterns from one of them and it would recess back into the wall and reveal a hidden compartment so you're like all right well let me go try that and you go and in the picture they're all marching down there with the lanterns too so you're like okay i'm finally gonna learn to light the lantern and you go down there and there's a bunch of like dead fucking aliens down there holding lanterns and so that's like the first sort

of like horror moment is you're like holy shit um but still you know i hold up the lantern to them i hold up they're all their lanterns are lit however many years later i've like doing everything i can cannot get the lantern lit so uh they're eventually you find this like laboratory that has the icon of the lantern but you cannot get into it no matter what you do there's just a window you look in door sealed cannot get in uh eventually you find a hint that is like it shows something exploding on a big wheel and i'm like all right this is clearly crucial information where have i seen a big wheel

and this is like one of those moments where it's hidden in plain sight it is the intro area where you first enter this new dlc zone there's like a big spinning wheel that the docking bay is in but it's super super dark and the docking bay is the only thing lit up so it's again it's it is slight of handing you it's saying like this is just decoration ignore like the man behind the fucking curtain and just go land there uh and you realize that the the entry point that they're this like exploding thing is on the wheel in the intro area it's just like a secret entrance you've been passing by this whole

time um and it's like it simultaneously makes you feel like a genius for solving it and a fool for missing it and that's like that's like the outer wilds experience in a nutshell um so you emerge into it and finally you're in the the lantern laboratory you've been been trying to find this whole time and it teaches you the ritual to light the lantern which then you light it for the first time and it just teleports you to like a fucking different realm um a dark world that is a direct like mirror version of the ring world as if to suggest that this ring world was created as a sort of like simulacra like

a facsimile of their like home world or whatever and uh and then sort of this is the point where i've gotten to and i haven't played no further is i got into the dark world did a bunch of exploring and then i saw you know after like six hours in this game seeing nobody i see someone carrying a lantern in the distance and i was shitting bricks yes jesse do you remember the first time you saw one of the i think it would have been in a darker area see i'm so weary to say anything because i don't want to accidentally uh reveal anything but yeah there was there was a lot of moments i think that's probably

my favorite part of the outer wilds and the fact that the dlc works so well is like you go into it and there's so many ways to discover different sets of information like sometimes it'll be explicit but also you could sort of infer things and then have it confirmed by that information or you can like stumble upon something and sort of draw your own conclusion and yeah it's it's just a big part of what i think makes that game so great in general and uh and and yeah seeing seeing the characters for the first time in that dlc was such a it was It was a scary moment because it is a horror DLC to some

extent. But also it was like that's the first time I think you walk through an area in that game in general and see it's alive still.

Yeah. Like it's, you know, everything up to that point.

The Nomai is sort of you're going through their their remnants.

But here it's literally their bones and discovering everything that's left. But here you're showing up at a place and it's like, oh, shit, I'm I'm here right now.

And so are they. and i'm like piecing together their world in the midst of it so yeah that was that was really cool to see it's like if you're in a haunted house at the start it's scary but after about four or five hours you're like oh it's fine i'm just walking around this empty house and then you see someone you know what i mean it's like it's so yeah i'm really excited for you jeremy because honestly you've seen some of the really interesting reveals i kind of think what the thing i love about that DLC the most is that like the rest of it is just as like crazy like hell yeah like the the the solutions

that you have to pull off and this one are so smart like I would say crazier to be yeah maybe there's some parts it's like it's so well put together yeah it's yeah yeah real like holy shit voila kind of moments sort of the last thing I did was uh and this was like this was one of of the most mind -blowing it happened by accident and the again it's sort of like fucking a fool and a genius um there was in this area there's again the four discrete areas and between them there are these tunnels that you go through and it's sort of like it goes dark and then you emerge it's like a fucking pirates of the caribbean disney

world ride um and i had fucked up something in that loop so i was like oh i'm just gonna like jump off because when the lantern goes out you wake up in the normal world so in the dark just coincidentally I was I was like going between the world yeah yeah and I was like I'll just fucking like jump off and kill myself and then I jumped off and it took damage and emerged into a new area and I was losing my fucking mind because I was like the reason I lost my mind is because like I I never in a million fucking years would have done that intentionally unless maybe somewhere I'll find a thing that like

shows one of the aliens doing that and i'd be like oh that's how you do it but i just did it by fucking accident and i was like losing my fucking mind because like yeah that's great yeah jesse's eyes lit up the minute you started we were both like there's eight different things you could have just said and they all would have been equally as cool so whatever if you think you just did something that that was that fucked up that was like there's no way a video game would do that yeah you're gonna do that a couple more times you should listen to the part after this because we we We definitely talked to him

about that one in particular, because it is something that like a small percentage of people find that the way you did.

Yeah. I think one of us was, too.

I wasn't. I think you might.

Did you? I think I don't think it was that.

I think it was something else that I don't want to say.

Yeah. I found I found that the one Jeremy talked about.

I found I stumbled upon that area through the diving bell.

or through the true yeah yeah because there is there the way i like i found a point of reference that i had seen from the outside through that area but i never i it was like oh i gotta go do that at some point i'll do that later i gotta replay this thing it's so good it's so good man it's like i got really emotional with the paintings and of all the like stuff that happens to this crowd very cool fucking whatever they are yeah i'm not sure i've incorporated into the story also like the main outer wilds plot it's still like this isn't just some offshoot thing like jeremy said like this is included

in the story of the game and i think there is a different and back to yeah in the ending so yeah you can complete the game after you've completed this part yeah oh cool in a run and then it gives you a different ending fascinating yeah it's uh it's It's the whole like story can see of the base game and this that like it's, you know, theoretically completable and like 22 minutes or whatever.

But it's like this whole, you know, it's like this knowledge gated world puzzle.

It's just like the feeling of freedom that gives you is is so ambitious from a design perspective.

And I think that it's like it's not just this dry, like academic like, oh, wow, that's they really pulled it off.

That's so cool. And I admire that the feeling it gives you as a player is really like something special.

it is like I just yeah I don't know it's like being let off the leash that much in a video game it feels like you have this sort of like authorial role in the world where hypothetically you could just go do anything you could solve it instantly you could beat the game instantly but it's like you you know I mean this is what everyone says with other worlds but you as the player are you as a human being are like progressing you're not like earning points you're not like completing quests you're just like learning the rules of the world that have always been there in front of you yeah it's a real

it's the like growing up if i knew then what i know now kind of thing yeah but in this little how do you punch that down into four hours exactly yeah have we haven't touched upon this yet i'm guessing you've seen this because it's so central but there is a timed event in that rim ring world the flood thing yeah yeah what did you think the first time you saw that the first time i saw that i was like because i saw the wave come one time but the first time i saw the instant the thing you saw on the whiteboard happened in real life i was like no fucking way yeah it's crazy um i the first time it happened

i heard a really loud noise and i was like oh fucking what the fuck is that because like that's the thing everyone said about this dlc is they're like oh man it's like a horror dlc so i kept kind of like expecting the other foot to fall uh and all of a sudden i hear this like loud fucking fucking crack noise and i was like this is it like the monster's coming um and then i was just like all right i guess nothing happened i guess i don't know what that was maybe i'll figure it out later and then all of a sudden i hear like rushing water and the building i've been just like instantly floods it's

like what the fuck is happening so i kind of didn't even know what happened until i went outside for the first time and saw the world was flooded and there was debris everywhere and i was like i guess like something fucking happened um and then eventually you know know circumnavigate the whole world and found the first time i saw the the dam it was already broken because i got there late so i kind of didn't even like i because you start right next to it but i didn't really like look back at it and register that it was a dam i just thought it was like a wall um but yeah i mean again like outer

wilds does this another another one of its magic tricks is having um time gated world transforming events like that happen so it's it It is endlessly impressive to me how many, like, the Ash Twin doing, like, the fucking sand thing.

The, like, I forgot all the original planets names, but the one that falls apart is that Dark Bramble.

No, the one that falls apart, I forget the name of it.

Whatever they are, yeah.

But just having these, like, world transforming events that happen over time is, like, coming up with that many of them that are that interesting is so cool.

Man. man if you eric lastin's timberheart brittle brittle hollow was the little hollow giant steep the outer lock man yeah it's a good game yeah make another one yeah what the fuck are they working on they must be working on something right maybe they have to be regardless how do you pull this off again yeah how do you do this shit just make more of these they're fucking so good like no one else can make this shit it's too there's tons of games not like the outer or wilds exactly but this is definitely a trend for for puzzle games now of making this sort of structured memory focused thing you

know the metroid brainia name whether or not that sticks or as good as up to you um but it it is this design ethos of like creating something where the player is learning the experience rather than waiting for the upgrade or finding the key it's like no this is a world worth with rules and structures and you are a stranger here you need need to learn how to be here before you can advance like uh if you like that structure leap year on steam platformer version of that sort of thing it is like if you wanted to show someone what it was like to play outer wilds without forcing them to play a game

that may or may not make them throw up just give them that and it will like completely explain what makes it so cool it is such such a good game of like learning the rules of its world i love that that stuff so much hell yeah a bunch of great games this week frank did you want an opportunity to talk about one of these ones and i played a bunch of stuff uh if you could pick one of these maybe what which one would it be robot alchemic drive aka rad that was why you were gonna say you played some some rad on ps2 oh my god has anyone heard of this game i'm looking i've seen the box i remember the box

never played it okay i feel like this is now gonna this is like the next next like i don't know like deadly premonition i don't know this is like the next big cult game so like um another friend on twitch link to the paps uh they've been streaming this game they're a great streamer they're incredible my friend my friend my friend dr ryan was watching his stream and then came and was like frank you have to play this game check this out i looked it up so robot alchemic drive is a 2002 game um it was published in america and And the reason it's so novel is it has like the worst slash best anime voice

acting ever. The premise of this game is it's very much inspired by like Evangelion or any mech anime.

It's a world where like kaiju exists and there's like a secret society that have robots ready to defend the earth at any given time.

But what makes this game unique is you're not piloting the mech. You're controlling like the kid controlling the mech. so this like scientist who has a very thick suspicious german accent he gives you a controller and he's like use the l3 button to to move the left arm and use the r3 button to move the right arm you try it and so it's like you're you are a kid and you are is he russian or german it's like german it's a every accent in this game is weird um and so you're a kid and you're looking up at this giant robot and you have to pilot it like one leg at a time and it's almost like like co

-op but with robots or it's like ea's fight night like those boxing games where the left analog stick is your left arm the right is it's your your boxing kaiju in mechs from the perspective of a kid but like if the robot falls back and like hits the building you're on it explodes and you fall down and you have to like switch back you have to like constantly switch between like the kid so you can get away from the fight so you can see the fight going on and then and control the robot it is like the most confused it is the most like deranged way of playing a game where it's like it's it's not the robot

you're the kid but you have to be able to see the robot so sometimes buildings are obstructing you but you're equipped with like an anti you can like hover around and jump on a building you can even jump on the robot but what makes the game is so funny is like so is it tight controls like yeah it's kind of yeah it's it's so and it's it's very goofy but also what makes the game great is like it has like a very like anime plot like it's like like episode one episode two episode three and so like you know there's three different characters i picked uh i picked a girl and you and your friend are going

out and like you're gonna go shopping so you go to the train station and then a giant kaiju shows up and like the voice act and there's even like breaking news reports like it's like bnn i think broadcast news network whatever but the voice acting is so like flat and bad it's like oh no a giant robot has appeared in rome why would this happen like that's how everything is delivered and so it's like it's really great bad voice acting and then like a really i don't know just confusing way of piloting the game and like it's just very sweet and it's the same way i love like deadly premonition or even

like disaster report all these weird like almost yeah very lynchian like it's like like everything is so off about this game that's what makes it so enchanting and magical and so i want to keep playing it yeah robot alchemic drive it is so bizarre it's a game that should get a remaster it's a game that deserves its flowers it is so weird and beautiful and i'm and i'm very obsessed with uh playing more of it it's i don't know it's really good and really weird but yeah i like that it's a it's a mech game where you're not the mech you're the kid controlling the mech and you have to like navigate

and jump around the city so you can see your mech to fight and it's like off -brand godzillas off -brand guy game like it's it's so cool 2002 and yeah it's like i feel like it's just getting discovered 2002 um published by enix and developed by the folks at sandlot who are predominantly known for do you know frank let me see no what what oh do they know what defense same tone same tone yeah yeah yeah same scale maybe to a certain extent humans big enemies that type of stuff um that's crazy i've i have only seen the box of this just because it's called rad it came you know popped up every once in a while

and known as gigantic drive in japan apparently i did not know that um cool thanks for telling us about the wonderful world of rad we'll have to figure out some sort of um uh format to have a look at old games on the new channel and i think we did a few in the past but you know frank's hall of fame or some nonsense like that um thanks for telling us about that one that was all the games we had this week we had uh the precinct deliver at all costs robot alchemic drive formless star the outer wilds echoes of the idlc rift riff and the demo of to a t and the kid attack ashi game which i'll be talking

about a bit next week once it's out proper okay that's all the games we have an email it looks like here a couple yeah we have several emails and messages there's two ways to send us questions for the show one is podcast at noclip .video or in our patreon exclusive discord in the podcast chat channel you can throw in a a question our first question comes from mark l in our discord they wrote what is your completely unearned self -defined arrogant skill in a game mine is i have no doubt i could beat you at uncle launcher or uncle bean on bishi bashi special on the ps1 no question i'd win there you

go any bishi bashi players here never heard of that one i've played it like a few i feel like i think i played it in the arcade but it's it's one of those games kind of like i don't know like point blank or wario where it's it's a it's an arcade machine with like three buttons and there's room for two players and it's just like mini games like 30 second mini games and i think one of them is like i think there's a lot of like extreme tapping and things like that but i can't i don't know the specific mini games within those i want to play as uncle bean i'll tell you that much yeah extreme tapping

the bean you know what i mean oh whoa now wrong game bishi bashi the bean oh man let's get it done and mine is probably uh sensible soccer i'm i'm i trained as a a young karate child you know i was i was taught in the arts of sensible soccer from a young age um i went to the sensible soccer the launch of the book about it and john hair was there the creator of sensible soccer and i fucking trounced him i felt kind of bad about it i had to hold off after a while um so yeah i don't know there's definitely some better swass players out there but i'm i'm pretty good at sensei yeah does this have to

be because this unearned self -defined arrogance skill makes me think it's like i'm pretty good at neon white i had pretty high scores on the leaderboard i could call for that but that sounds like not what we're looking for here yeah this is like what you think you're good at more i think so you're good at like i'm the best villager player and super smash bros don't at me yeah i'm i think i'm better at quake 3 than i actually am right like i think i'm fucking awesome at quake 3 and then we go to quake con and we play quake 3 and i'm like just getting gibbed yeah i'm not as good as these sickos

these shirtless sickos uh i think mine would be um in my mind i am the best person who has ever lived at light gun games of the arcade nice i don't think i actually am but in my mind i could like player one player two hold both guns and just clear house of the dead without dying once you're doing like no scope on silent scope yeah i'm like fucking ordering a pizza just smoking terminator just like yeah double pepperoni yeah i'm just fucking being a boss without looking yeah exactly is frank's tony hawk that's the one mine's like legit is like oh yeah i know i know i'm very good at like tony hawk

that's like the only like competitive game i'm like oh no i'm i'm good at that like the the the like other lane of it is like the unearned self to fight i'm trying to think like the thing i don't know how to quantify this but like in the days of like xbox live and like call of duty lobbies like the things that we would do is like is like I don't know I guess it's like improv but it's like I would be so good at just like hey guys has anyone seen breaking bad on amc it's a brand new show and hey yo shut up hey no you tell me to shove you got to make sure you don't say it to walter white because secretly like

this was like when season one was just starting so like we would my friends and I would just go in a lobby people are doing whatever and like we'll still like every time call duty comes out we'll We'll still do – like, you're just talking bullshit.

So your arrogant gamer skill is improv?

Yeah, I guess so. I think so.

Like, it's the opposite of, like – Lobby improv.

It's not, like, trash talking.

It's, like, since – it's, like – I don't know.

It's, like – Like, by the end, they'd like you?

Yeah, yeah. Is that kind of the goal?

Yeah, and then they'll send friend requests, but it's, like – but I'm just doing it to, like, be annoying.

I think that's what – because, like, my teenage years was, like – I was, like, the best at griefing in World of Warcraft. That's, like – that's not a Valorant thing.

That's horrible. but like that was the thing we had fun to win but being cheeky in call of duty lobbies is i'll take that that's pretty good that's great uh and then another email um different tone uh lathe wrote in i'm a recent patron and wondered if you had any specific games that you associate with or help you with grief back in 2013 my grandfather passed away and after taking a break from video games i found myself wanting to play through an entire game in one sitting i heard good things about journey and that was relatively short and which was perfect for me playing through journey at that specific

time my life was one of the most cathartic and meaningful experiences I ever had the art direction music multiplayer simplicity and story all meshed together to encourage me to meaningly reflect on my loss something I really needed to do at the time but couldn't for me journey is a game that I very personally associate with the grieving process it's a game that I've revisited several times since 2013 whenever I've needed to and have recommended to friends and family in similar situations are there any games or entertainment media that helped you with grief well i i probably can't chip in on this one

too much because like i i have not had any significant familial deaths i would say i've had uncles and stuff and i had a lot of friends of mine died when i was a teenager but i don't think games helped me with much of that stuff i did want to say though the journey to me is a game about like life and death like that's that's that's i remember yeah right i remember especially yeah that ending is very sort of on the nose so i'm when when when they said uh late the emailer said that that was the game i was like oof yeah that is a real one to play right after it is i bet it was hard to play for me

and i had nothing like that going on in my life so fair play yeah i bet that was i bet that was a lot i'm trying to think sorry go ahead frank no yeah i guess i for my like very recent experience was like like uh yeah yeah like i tried a bunch of stuff like on my dad pat it was so stressful and like the biggest thing that really helped was like twitch streaming i would just be on friends with chum and we'd watch like ninja movies godzilla movies like stuff that's so outside like nonsense i needed nonsense but then the thing that actually like i sunk into randomly was fallout 4 just in the sense

of like that was a game i never played it's a game i know was a time sink i was so numb that like oh let's just start playing this and then like every night i would play i was so sad but it was like okay i only collect loot shoot robots what like was fun but then the extra like nugget and maybe the subconscious thing was like that game took place in Boston where my dad was from and like you would see like um I mean we just mentioned Nathaniel Hall but what's it like the Liberty Steps what's it called Jeremy like the trail of like the freedom oh the freedom trail freedom trail like there would be

like a mission where I follow the freedom trail it's like oh my god I remember my dad taking me at like six years old on these exact steps or whatever and it was like oh so it was this weird way of like I don't know it was like okay and my my dad like it was like the thing that started to crack of like oh yeah boston oh yeah you know happy memories and then uh and then like i'm back to it again but like persona 3 another one of these like long games but it's like oh no i can let me just sit here in the music the grinding like just long games that i could grind but were also pleasurable to play

but yeah not not not not from like a thematic thing but it was just like it was the game that like caught the games that caught me and kind of like cradled me as i kind of got the pieces back together but those are the two that help me um i played final fantasy 7 when i was very very young and it was one of my favorite games of all time and then uh one of my best friends passed away when i was young but like a few years later that i played final fantasy 7 when i was probably like eight years old and this happened when i was like i think i was 12 and he was 13 um and i revisited final fantasy 7

a game that famously you know is about like losing someone and then like unexpectedly and then continuing to uh sort of like fight the good fight in in the wake of a unexpected loss that like leaves a real and lasting impression on these characters um and i think it sort of like defined what i it helped me like project unexplored because when you're young it's like very tough to talk about that stuff you don't really have the language to articulate it so even like i have such a strong supporting family like support network of friends and family and stuff but it It was like even if you have people

to talk about those things with, it's hard to like be like I'm feeling these big feelings.

I don't even like know how to explain them or describe them at that age.

And so having video games as sort of like a non -linguistic, like non -verbal outlet for that to see it reflected back at me of other people dealing with the loss of a friend and companion was very powerful for me, especially because that game was so formative for me as a kid like you know at such a young age that it was like it felt like uh like losing a really good friend and having like in the form of a video game another sort of like friend to reflect that experience back to me right yeah damn oh i'm sorry i think i talked about it before uh what remains of edith finch game for me that really

yeah was like a good reflection of a lot of struggle to have my life because i lost my father when i was really young i didn't know him so learning about that part of his life was yeah something hard and that game sort of is an an exploration of that of like learning about these people who were important in your life that you may not have known anything about uh and sort of parsing who they were from small windows into their lives whether it's their room or their stuff or a story about them whether or not it's true you you learn something about them and the family that surrounds them um yeah yeah

good question very good question yeah yeah yeah thank you and then our next our next question rin but online wrote in the youtube comments favorite video game dog oh hard swing perfect to fuck it yeah well done frank good placement on that one uh you know what my favorite video game dog is in the call of duty ghosts behind the scene trailer there's a moment where the dog its mouth quickly opens it's like one second that's the best video game dog is when that moment happens of all of why does it bite this no it's just so out of place and funny it's like i think whenever i think of video game dog

i think of that particular moment that game sucks and i'm sure the dogs in it aren't very good i can't remember but man that one moment that's gaming to me and that's gaming dogs to me i'm playing with a knife this whole podcast sorry okay all right so it's it's merch for skater xl they sent oh cool knife yeah they sent me a knife yeah um so like years ago i've had this for years so i don't know shout out skater xl there you go it works see it works they got a shout out in the thing um what's it good i like the i like the dogs from dogs with a z oh hell yeah remember that shit dogs with a zed

uh show your rage motherfucker you have a pet how about a pet that lives next to your recycling bin and shits all over my computer oh this was like a mobile game and it was a fucking desktop it was there's also a ds and game boy version oh yeah well it was so it was selling so well dogs with a z was cats with a z was pets guess what the last letter in that was was it a z it sure was yes z or z whatever you sorry i live in a fake country uh yeah they made a sequel called pets dogs too yeah why who cares naming conventions are out the window when you're using zeds instead of s's true there's also a game

called babies with a z oh great desktop it's on the it's on the pets 3 game engine that's too far they've got too far how do they spell it is it b -a -b -y -z it's b -a -b -y -z oh my god that's actually pronounced babas is there an apostrophe at the end of the s no no you think they're fucking around with apostrophes bro settle down there's a z in here they pluralize it i'll do they make brats super babies also brats has a z so yes it does that that makes perfect sense oh you're right uh my favorite video game dog is in harvest moon 64 you have a dog and when i was a child i carried it to one of the neighbor's

house to show them how cute my dog was and as i put the dog down it clipped into the corner of a barn and got stuck there forever so every day i would have to go visit my dog outside when it was raining it would be sad out in the rain and i just couldn't get it out and then like a month later i uh somehow managed to get it out i un glitched the dog and it was the most relief i've ever felt in my life it's amazing you ever think about how many nintendogs are just waiting for their owners to come back oh god yeah i try not to at least the tamagotchis died you know they were they deserve it those

little freaks jets sweet release those fucking nintendogs are going to be those those ds batteries do eventually die so i wonder if that's when they they it's okay the data's on the cartridge oh it is the last forever fucked whatever video games dogs we got there's kk slider from animal Animal Crossing.

That is a good dog.

He also plays guitar, and he talks funny.

Is Parappa a dog? Yeah, Parappa.

Okay. Ooh, the dog from Silent Hill 2, the funny ending you can get.

Oh, that's a good one.

That's a good one. Yeah.

Oh, Shiba Inu. How about Tokyo Jungle, the Pomeranian?

Yeah, that's Pomeranian gaming.

Yes. Dog meat? Dog meat.

That was four. four right i preferred rex do you remember rex in fallout 3 or new vegas yeah it was the one with the brain it had like a glass brain it was like a road was it a robot with a brain maybe sounds right yeah that's the one that you get from uh no isn't that new vegas i think it is new vegas yeah because you get that from elvis not elvis whatever his name is yeah the what are they called the what oh god the bro the fred astaire company company they're already called the fucking oh somebody look up the Elvis yeah Vegas Elvis clan the King actually the best dog in gaming is three dog

oh that's a good one that's good that's good dog enough uh I the dog in um in Toby Fox's game that's like his avatar in Deltarune there's a long hallway you can go down that promises something cool and if you go down it uh that little dog comes down in a toy car and hits you a thousand times and does like a billion damage and then you wake up in a dumpster did they ever make a dog the bounty hunter video game oh i hope so i get it i bet if they didn't we could probably buy the rights yeah jeremy i think i think you have some more prison now isn't he prison isn't that the fucking the arc he got

like bountied and like somebody caught him in mexico for some shit amazing that's so ironic that i mean that's the fucking video game right there is you go on that you hunt people and then you go on the run and get hunted yeah you get hunted the hunter becomes the hunted i don't know what he did so if he did anything particularly heinous and i'm making light of it i assume it was like an excessive force thing but maybe he like troll f assault uh yep all right and i'm gonna get out of here okay well that's great yep maybe um all right i think that's all all the dogs we got frank all right cool

and then last uh last that's a good look please in the comments let us know your favorite video game dogs uh do we forget chop from gta5 true oh that one's one of the best missions in the whole game yeah it was pretty good then he's gone basically for the rest of the game he's like yeah uh matt wrote in and said hey guys my four -year -old has started to show an interest in video games uh they play on the steam deck and they've had a lot of fun playing games their kid they both share the controls and uh and they started with its hidden object games which using the steam deck touchscreen were great but there's

not a huge amount of games like that they can find on steam but if anyone's interested under leaves was the best okay under leaves i was racking my brain trying to find the next game to play it's best if it has no fail state no complicated menus no violence and something that's a good game that's when in episode 222 jesse reminded me of katamari damasi it's perfect cool music you can't funny characters and with the simple controls turn on my uh turn on my kid you can push one stick while I pushed the other we're having a blast my question is what can we play next considering the constraints um

my suggestion for this is the only game that my daughter has completed um is very similar to Katamari Damacy it's Donut County yeah that's a good one because all you're doing is moving the whole there's no fail states um and it's it's fairly linear like it's it's logic so it's there's no there's no way she could accidentally find an alternative strategy that will mess her up it's very like you kind of get these ones in a row and if it's not big enough you get some of the small ones so it's it there's no like she's not going to learn the wrong lesson as well as not learning the lesson so it's and yeah

and i just skipped through the story stuff with her although now she might read it because she can her reading is getting pretty good it but she's six i i don't she doesn't play many video games she sits with me and watches games every now and again but um i'm worried about raising a child who's a sicko like me um although hey look be good for the family business or whatever um yeah i don't expose her to too many games um but yeah donna kenny she it was it was a great get her on no clip crew okay right yeah for now katamari though i'm gonna try that with her that that's a good shout i hadn't even

thought thought about that yeah um hidden folks if your kid likes uh hidden object games that's a really good one also made i had no idea i looked it up uh made by adrian de young who made rift riff what are the chances it's we've gone in a circle that's crazy um yeah but no that's a really good one hidden object i think you could play it probably with the touch screen as well because it's mostly just mouse controls so so that's really cool on the steam deck yeah it's fun it's a nice little it's like where's waldo but you know obviously you can't get the brand um that's you guys call it waldo

in canada as well oh what do you call it in uh in ireland the uk it's wally oh where's wally how informal you guys know him on like a personal level yeah you guys are friends we do it's been a lot of books found him a lot of times europe at your universalist four is also really good yeah i was i was just supposed to say hearts of iron yeah ebe online yeah yeah postal too i think yeah yeah kid probably loved the cat gun whatever is like really violent and maybe like uses a vr headset probably yeah that's a good move that's a good pick yeah yes send in some if anyone has any in their list and they've

had like toddlers or young kids like that playing some games uh give us a heads up or stick them in the youtube comments um maybe something we could get back around to I was gonna say like down the line there's a lot of platforming so it might be a little complicated but like little kitty big city is also kind of in that realm of like katamari but that could also be game if you're playing and then they're are watching but like that's what i did with my kid yeah yeah thematically it's really good but unfortunately it has the cardinal sin of the dual analog stick thing where you if you have to control

the camera and the character it's like yeah yeah although i look there are definitely six -year -olds and seven -year -olds out there that can do that shit but um i think you probably need to expose your kids to a level of video games that i am personally uncomfortable with maybe to get them at that point um but it just shows you the same problem we have right with games is that like she got you know kids gotta learn how to do this shit they play some tappy games my kid plays some games she has like a pbs like educational game and a crayola educational game um on on a tablet and she plays those and that's

obviously super intuitive because it's just touch screen you have to teach some shit you know what i mean my fucking cats can play a game on the touch screen mean they make games with like bugs running across the cats play on um but obviously do analog stick is the the rub your belly and pat your head of fucking game game controlling yeah great uh great question and that's all that's it that's the podcast thanks for being here check out our quick look of wwe 2k try what did i name it that was i named it something stupid 2k 25 the game fighting wrestling game of 2025 no that's it the wrestling game

25 the wrestling game 2025 edition check it out now on noclip crew myself and frank howley use all the latest superstars uh including frank howley himself the technician uh wildcat willy king lord brian star like kids can we download frank howley that's right yeah my my friend my friend pest tv he's He's made so many characters.

If you type in just big dogs, like one word, they come up.

He just made, we've been watching the Godzilla movies, so he made Manila, which is the son of Godzilla.

Wow. You can get that in there too.

Sick. He made the city of Manila.

Oh, yeah, yeah. We also went to the island.

Remember we talked about the island?

Oh, yeah. The PlayStation Home.

Did you get some Nikes?

I went to the Jordan store, yeah.

Yes. The loading screens in the island are outrageous.

ages it has not been optimized for for hanging out in the island uh but yeah it was uh it was a good time we had a good time fighting violent jay and uh dave blunts and whatnot it was a good time go check out that quick look we got some other quick looks coming up you guys are going to do one on formula star absolutely we might have some other ones uh jesse's getting back in the editing videos about games you've not heard about like kind of like our steam next best stuff we're going to do our first of those out next week i'm so excited i think this is going to be a really good thing for for crew

and in general i think if we have more opportunities to do sort of what we do here on the podcast or on the crew cast uh talking about cool new video games if we can like do that more often for more developers that's cool for me big time um thanks to everyone who's been reaching out we have had uh loads of emails from people within the industry from indie developers developers um there is a bunch to be done there's going to be a new discord for this thing that'll probably be public and then have areas in it for um patreon folks whenever we do that stuff uh we're talking about uh partnerships and sponsors

with with various folks in the industry but um uh so that's that's to come we are going to have i was working on last night a sort of formal um page on a new website that people can use to submit their or other people's games for coverage that's cool um just as a way to formalize that process to make it easier for people to pitch stuff and also make it easier for us to go through them because this is going to be a legitimate logistical problem that we're going to have so setting that up where there is a place where everyone can get access to it and jump in and if people have steam pages they can link

them on the form or if they have codes they want to send they can put them in the form we're going to be doing all that sort of stuff as well um and yeah and then hopefully over the next few months it'll become apparent kind of what we're doing a lot of the a lot of the what we do comes down to the launch trajectory of this like how much uh sponsorship stuff we figure out how much crowdfunding stuff uh comes in all that sort of stuff um uh there will be different you know plans based on that of course um but uh like we've been saying all of this all of this money is going to be going into production immediately

and one of the great things about our team here is that we're all video producers so we are all people who uh not only can make our own things but also make other stuff make stuff for each other that some person puts together and other person edits or whatever and also it means that we are in an amazing position to work with people in the industry who are either friends of ours or ex -colleagues or developers or whatever it is we are a team of one man bands as it were who are able to put this stuff together which means that as long as we have you know there is no bottleneck here as long as we have the the sort of the,

the, the, the funds and the, the passion behind it and people telling us kind of as well, what they're interested in.

Um, we are in a fantastic place to be able to go out and actually get that shit made and done because, uh, that's kind of, that's what all we do.

That's all we do here.

Uh, also I'm just on a, on a, on another level for the past week, I've been chipping away or for the past couple of weeks, I've been checking, chipping away at this whole thing for whatever no clip crew turns into.

And, um, over the weekend I was, uh just daydreaming and getting my noclip ducks in a row because i've been editing a couple of things finishing up some stuff jeremy was working on uh working on the disco elysium edit and stuff like that and i was looking ahead because we have like a bunch of projects the patrons know up until like basically september we're done for um for editing we have three major documentaries on big games and then a series um and then jeremy's also produced something as well that's gonna go in between us we've loads at the moment and one of the things that came to mind was like

oh this Just like also freeze Noteclip up to kind of do core Noteclip stuff.

Because we've been swimming around with Noteclip for the past couple of years.

And it's been great because we've learned lots of stuff.

And we've, you know, crew came out of that, the form of this podcast came out of that.

But also I was kind of like, oh, you know, we can sort of focus Noteclip a bit now as well.

We can like work on stuff that does feel very, you know, historical and preservationist. and um you know let's let's let's let's focus on some stuff that we've missed over the years because we've been playing around with the format or doing this and the other so i'm also i've been really excited the past three days kind of thinking like oh cool like the the stuff we have filmed right now the slate is really strong and then also just looking forward to the back half of this year and next year like oh yeah we can we can like let's let's tackle the big ones and let's tackle some weird ones and and you

know just do something fun there um so i'm excited for that as well anyway proof will be in the the pudding once we get some of this stuff out and keep your eyes and ears crossed go over to uh roll right now it's youtube .com slash at no clip crew that might change uh will change hopefully uh sooner rather than later um we just broached 50 000 subscribers over there as well which is pretty cool considering it's been our sort of random side project we've we we do on on you know weekend weekends and evenings or whatever over there so um that's been really cool uh to see so we're gonna push towards

a hundred thousand get that fucking plaque stick that plaque up baby get that big old plaque hey noclip might get the plaque soon for a million who knows we're up to 870 000 over there i think at the moment so pretty like a big necklace put it on a big like chain sure a cuban link big clock yeah put a spinner on it exactly yeah no clip crew beautiful love it thanks jesse you could get away with it i'm not going there i should watch flavor of love it's been a couple of years no no one should actually you know what i might put that on when i'm done next level chef you're that's a great call bad

girls club you know you could do a have you watched uh uh druski's one druski has a tv show no it's like a youtube show but it's basically it's uh could have been love i think it's called oh if you want if you want and it's basically him doing could have been records but for but for ladies oh my goodness wow it's like a real yeah hour -long experience reality tv thing yeah yeah is it just a bunch of commercials for steak gambling it's a lot it's a lot of that's a joke i don't have any i don't even know who this guy is i just know that he's very strong no a lot of a lot of like yeah let's wait a second

i'll tell you about fucking yeah crypto or some best friends with uh drake if that gives you any idea of how much best friends maybe a stretch they're they just don't know anything about the guy so i don't want to fucking cloud on him in a joke and have people be like he's actually like how are you gonna be he serves soup at the salvation army every weekend how dare you send me photographs of him helping the elderly oh my lord yeah anyway yeah go check that out next yeah this is us just promoting druski stuff there for some reason i don't know why that's no hey look it could have been records

gonna release hundreds of artists at this stage so surely there'll be some music coming out at some stage you better be careful we gotta get some sponsors on this thing man they might have all the money that's a good point yeah and if you're looking to bet on the next big sporting event boy have i got the service for you yeah no fan duel happening no betting stuff happening on noclip crew unfortunately we can't get that john boy media money because we're not able to go in the world of uh maybe counter -strike skins we can do some uh counter well this no no no no have any of you guys watched the niki

jeki one by the way you put it in 90 minutes i saw the first like second of it and i was like oh this is a movie i gotta fucking put this aside for later production baby yeah he still got the fucking bouncy ball but he's like shot it all nice and stuff some parts go check that out yeah just listen to our podcast we can tell you about or the YouTube channel it's good shit out there thanks for hanging out video's coming out soon over on Noclip and we'll have updates on the other channel as well ongoing for the next couple of weeks and quick looks see you next time bye

[Noclip Podcast Episode 228: Games, Geopolitics, and Game Design Philosophy]-[The Precinct, Deliver at All Costs, Formless Star]

📋 Summary

Navigating the Indie Landscape: A Dive into Recent Game Releases and Design Philosophy

Isometric Simulations: The Precinct and Deliver At All Costs

Sincerity and Tenderness in Indie Gaming: Formless Star

Strategic Depth: Riff Riff and To A T

The Spoiler Zone: Outer Wilds - Echoes of the Eye

Cult Classics: Robot Alchemic Drive

Closing Reflections

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript