Wheel World, Dance Dance Revolution, Lovely Lady RPG | Noclip Crewcast

Hello, friends, and welcome to episode 237 of the No Club Podcast. It's a crew cast. How are we all doing today, folks?

How are we feeling?

How are we feeling in our loins?

How are your loins, Jesse?

You know, girded. Girded loins.

Frank, what about your loins?

Wet, dry? Sore from Dance Dance Revolution.

I went again last night, so I'm good.

i'm good frank has a sickness jeremy what's your sickness my sickness um i'm cripplingly addicted to caffeine and i feel like it spikes my anxiety a little bit but also i need that energy boost so it's a real real bind i'm in i get i caffeine lifts me up and then it's like now i have to smoke some weed and calm down yes yeah there you go that's the problem you're finding about hey what is life if not the the eternal struggle to find balance within oneself amen using using chemicals yeah exactly they were talking about speedballs back then too yeah exactly that's true they do call that the uh the hippie

speedball is um coffee in a joint oh really yeah that's pretty good that's pretty good i was thinking about this recently where i was uh i was i was having a chat my wife about like when when we have to explain like have the drugs conversation with my daughter and like you know she's seven so it's another couple of years um before she starts getting into five years at least two or that you know two or three oh okay and starting and uh i was trying to remember who it was i think maybe it was you jeremy i don't know somebody said that their their parents said like yo i know just ask me ask me first

if there's anything you need to know about any you know chemical i might have done it ask me first and And I was thinking about this myself.

I was like, oh, like if I'll say that to her, like, hey, you know what?

If you have any questions about this stuff, come to me.

But then I was just thinking that like throughout history, they've drugs have just gotten worse and more dangerous that like, I don't know, is fentanyl just in everything now?

Like maybe like it's not like the 70s where you could just like, you know, take a bunch of lews and like and like cocaine was like pure, you know, like just who?

Who knew? You know, but now it's like, I don't know.

I don't know if my street knowledge is up to par anymore with the new kids because they just love, everyone just loves that.

I can't get enough of it.

Some drugs have gotten significantly worse and some have gotten significantly better.

Like you would be able to find pure MDMA back in the day or like you would find ecstasy presses that were actually ecstasy.

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

in college i took an ecstasy press that was something called foxy methoxy and then another different one that was um a long -lasting psychedelic phenethylamine and i was tripping for literally 24 hours oh my god and it was a nightmarish experience uh wow so yeah the other one was called foxy patoxy foxy methoxy um sounds like something with meth in the name and you were like yeah that's a good idea you were in college i guess it's uh 5meo dipt is the real name it It sounds like somebody was cornered and says, what is that?

And they had to name something in half a second.

It does sound like that.

Yeah, it's not a it's a pretty folksy name for I it always is weird to me when drugs that are like, oh, man, it's going to be like your best friend's going to become like a snake person.

And you're going to think that like King of the Hill is a documentary.

And it's like, what's it called?

It's called. Oh, it's called like Zippy Zaps.

We ran out of names.

There's too many weird versions of this.

Have any of you guys, when is that new King of the Hill series?

How do you guys feel about that?

Oh, God. Have you seen the trailer?

I have not watched the trailer.

Did you watch it, and is it good?

I watched the trailer.

I like the humor in it.

I think the animation feels weird. I don't know what's going on.

Like, are they skipping frames or something?

I don't know. I wish I had, like, an animator brain or somebody I could ask.

desk um but yeah bobby is like has like a bougie bar and is selling like fancy ipas and like you know hank is like what is this bobber this is too fancy for me or whatever you know that makes me concerned because i feel like that's a very sort of you know that's like a very 2011 version of what a hipster is it's like oh yeah they drink ipas and it's like that's that's like whatever that's that's beer now is like you know what i mean you're a hipster if you don't drink IPAs they they take an Uber to the house as well so I think that in the trailer it looks like they moved away and then they've

moved back so I don't know what happened yeah um who's also I'm trying to remember who which of the voice actors died I know John Redcorn's character yeah he the voice actor he died in like he was was he murdered or it was a shooting like it was yeah he was was defending his boyfriend or husband um from an attack yeah and he got shot in the in the interim but that was only recently it was like last month or something wasn't it yeah so i don't know if he's maybe in it tim and boomhauer's voice actor i think is dead as well yes which i i mean how are you replacing that no yeah exactly like that's

that's impossible there's only so many porky pigs you can hire right as soon as that guy goes what are you doing exactly yeah although they do they do dub boomhauer in other languages and it's it's equally hilarious no yeah yeah i've I've looked up King of the Hill dubbed in other languages.

Like Spanish King of the Hill, the Boomhauer is fantastic.

Fantastic. What's Spanish for dang old?

I have no idea, but I highly recommend it.

I mean, Frank, here's your opportunity.

Have you ever watched King of the Hill in Japanese?

It's awesome. What a foolish question.

Why did you even waste time asking?

Didn't miss a beat.

Yeah, there's a Google Drive that has episodes in it.

I mean, people joke that it's an anime, but if you watch it in Japanese, the full effect comes in well it's like hyper because it's like hyper american culture like especially texas like america like so it's yeah so that they love that oh my god that's amazing um i think uh i think bill is like um like morbidly obese now i think i saw a clip where he's like stuck in bed or something um i don't i don't know but that's he's i mean that was steven root i feel like is one of the more famous voice actors on that i mean maybe it's just from office space and stuff like that but um yeah i'm look i'm everyone

else at it uh uh what's her peggy looks great peggy like hasn't aged a day properly yeah yeah exactly as you'd imagine so yeah i'm i don't know i'm looking forward to it but i'm like i'm also like it's very somebody reminded me yesterday that the first Mission Impossible movie is 29 years old and that just I turned to dust it was very upsetting yeah passage of time's a bastard I king of the hill is an important show to me and I'm afraid of the reboot in fact let me tell you a king of the hill memory from the night that I took that weird psychedelic drug as I was freaking my shit so when you said

king of the hills the documentary that wasn't just you pulling something out of thin air it was semi -fabricated riffing uh i uh the person i was with took not a different drug and was like you know after six hours like i'm going to bed so i was like i guess i'll just freak my shit alone all night uh and i was like i need to calm down i'm gonna watch king of the hill because that's my comfort show and in this episode in every single scene dale gribble was standing in the background like just standing there um and this this is very unusual for anyone who's taken psychedelics is very unusual to just

like it's not like oh there's like i see spiders everywhere that's like a person who's never taken drugs idea of of taking drugs so like i do not say this out of naivete uh this was very unusual dale gribble was standing in a bunch of scenes like a a father son moment between hank and bobby it's really weird that he's just like there uh and i rewatch watch this episode the next day and dale grible is in none of these scenes um and i mean usually usually psychedelic hallucinations are like you know things are breathing or undulating it's like patterning it's usually not like this right for whatever

reason i just dale grible was just in the background of like every scene just standing there ominously your your brain just uh like um um ai generated him into into into the background of that is bizarre what was he doing just standing there like ominously he was just standing there and i remember thinking that um he was like like vaguely sort of like purple or maroonish and i was like it's very weird that the color is off as well uh like a california raisin yeah he just was i don't know it was very it's the strain it was it ironically the strangest thing i've ever seen on any drug ever was not like

colors or entities or undulating or breathing it was just dale gribble being superimposed into episodes where he doesn't belong what if he went back and like they just had like a problem at the tv station that day and they like superimposed like a frame they played two episodes at the same time yeah like he was ghosting and you couldn't see it on lots of the shots but in certain shots with certain color if you could see if your pupils were like this dilated you could yeah exactly you could see you could see the you could see the colors that only dogs can see you know you unlocked it's like the limitless

pill is what is what we're saying yeah you unlock the secret episodes of king of the hill we talk about drugs a lot on this show do can we get banned i know like twitch it's weird about that stuff does youtube yep oh this is all fictional by the way yeah this is all we're just yeah if you've never listened to this podcast it should be educational they shouldn't take it down i don't know i agree that's absolute nonsense yeah there's a harm this is like we're not even we're not shooting up on screen either so i feel like it's okay yeah well speak for yourself frank yeah okay all right we also did

the veins look i have no veins above my belly button anymore i have to be real all right you know what do you do when you go to the doctor you can't see between my toes at the moment oh boy we also did none of this was like and drugs are cool you should do them it was like fentanyl is in everything and if you take ecstasy it'll be something else and you'll freak out and watch king of the hill all night it'll ruin your king of the hill experience you'll throw up an orange and then you'll think that the orange slices are internal organs that you're throwing up because you forgot that you ate the orange

you're getting real specific that's a real story from the same night that was a long night man damn it was the longest night my worst drug experience was at a world of tanks event in russia i think i've told this story i've told that story on here probably yeah if you see me at packs or anything and you want to know the story of i think i have told about it on the air here I think so yeah that was a bad time hey look first and last time in Russia hey I did it I did it the the right way uh Frank when was the last time you were in Russia uh like 2002 2003 like only when I was a kid and so I haven't

come back since you how come you don't watch any like Russian anime is there any like it's all Russian it's no like like because the TV is controlled by the state if you speak against Putin you're killed so it's like like there's nothing good I mean I could be wrong i don't know but my mom has the russian television on all the time but she actually spends most of her time watching like streams and internet media outside of like the actual stuff she used to watch one late night tacos and then he outspoke against putin and then his show was canceled so it was oh really yeah yeah so so she watches

like internet streams or hey they do that here now yeah yeah yeah yeah apparently it's great good stuff folks we're living into dystopia but hey at least there's video games and of course our Battle Pass holders no not doing it nothing in this intro is going to get applied to them this week I think last week was bad enough shout out to all of our amazing Battle Pass holders who through the wonderful world of crowdfunding maybe you've heard of it supports all of the work that we do currently also all the work we do on our second channel I wonder if we should just open the conversation up about the name

we should just like we should just just throw it out there and start getting because we're let's let's let's come to that speaking of names here are incredible battle pass holders love preet ute dwayne the rock lobster anthony thomas nico passati it's a me farario senator armstrong redredge harry flanagan joosh arno richard sorry not richard matt pearson thank you match james brown mark rojas cabernicus quote tucker morgan david mcgary goddison spen hooster pes john acres you went nate tim robinson forrest pruitt raquel jonathan cremon eric hamilton schneider christopher tooey cameron ladd zachary

snader alex goucher george excuse me that was good there's a fentanyl kicking in george sacotis jacob god serve entheogen james med to here tell you ev and ricin thank you all so much for your incredible support i was on a podcast uh i was on a few podcasts this week i'll talk about them in the housekeeping but one of them attach your resume they made me say cameron ladd on it oh fun yeah really yeah and a couple of the other ones came up i think tohir came up as well um such is the power of the battle pass that there are thousands of of poor innocent victims of video games walking around our

beautiful marble ball right now who are just plagued by names of people that they've never met they're just walking down the street scratching their butt thinking i wonder what david mcgary is doing right now that's like beauty that's like a form of low -level psychosis this is just having names in your mind of people you don't know yeah yeah exactly yeah it's like a number station beaming it into your brain or something you know you're just like full of all you're like the mancurian candidate or whatever yeah but for crowdfunding activation phrases when you read out the entire battle pass list

exactly yeah that's it makes you all sleeper agents for buying indie games i don't know what would be the preserving game history i like that i don't know know let's talk about the name stuff maybe later on we'll we'll have a we'll have a have a podcast and then see how we're feeling about it and we've got some video games to talk about this week we have a bunch of indie stuff uh split lovely lady rpg wheel world and uh frank has been doing some ddr sleuthing we need to check in on let's uh let's start with lovely lady rpg jeremy um how so this tell us a little bit about this you played a couple

of games you said yesterday and you were kind of gonna maybe one or two of them might grab you you chat about them lovely lady rpg is the one that has reached the water watermark i guess and this is uh 16 bucks on steam it came out just end of last week uh tell us a little bit about it so there is a uh an artist named mia kane who's art that i really enjoy um who was the artist on this game so that's how i came across this uh this is a game that came out last year on itch and i was aware of it but uh because steam has infiltrated my my consciousness so deeply there's something where it's like

oh i should play that and then when the same game is on steam it's like i will play that and i'll play it now um so the game came out on steam recently and i was like finally this is finally it's within reach of me um and yeah this is i feel like this is i hope this game blows the fuck up uh this is one of my favorite games of this year um in fact can can we can this be a goatee contender if it came out last year on itch if it If it became Steam this year, then this is in talks for Game of the Year for me.

This is sort of like, it's a narrative RPG, very clearly wearing its Disco Elysium influence on its sleeve.

It uses an engine called Nerat, which I went on their website, and it seems like they sort of have the Disco Elysium layout baked into this narrative engine.

Or at least that might be the default or something with the side panel with text.

little sort of like what looks like a little photograph of the person speaking sort of embedded in the side of the thing uh but not only that this this game also starts um it's an amnesiac story so you know planes came torment and disco elysium is right there uh it starts in a in your room as an amnesiac story the room is like destroyed or in tatters um so just a very very similar setup to disco elysium to the extent that like i i almost think it's kind of doing a thing where it's like oh yeah i know people will compare this to disco elysium so we might as well embrace it um it's hard to tell

but i that's kind of the read i got it is that they're like oh you you think this is like disco elysium let's make it more like disco elysium to start but um but i it's it is very very different than disco elysium in a lot of ways that's just sort of like i feel like its similarity is just sort of a little bit tonal a little bit aesthetic but um this is a narrative rpg about um a trans woman in sort of like a alternative historical and like very simple they mentioned the soviet union so it's like you know there are like touchstones that are the real world but then they'll be like oh and there's

like a giant 90 mile wide volcano in the middle of the soviet union okay so then you're like oh okay and then the years don't line up so it's like you'll get little touches of the real world but then it does this sort of of like fantastical historical dramatization thing that i really enjoy um but this is sort of like it it's very hard to describe because the game sort of introduces you to a set of characters and then lets you free but essentially the setup is that um you are this woman who uh in a mysterious orb falls from the sky and impales you it just like lands in your chest and uh should have killed

you but instead just wipes your memory clean and on the way into your your body it cuts through a uh a self -help book that i think is called uh lovely lady nasty girl and so the the archetype these two archetypes of femininity are are uh dragged via the orb into your consciousness and so much like disco elysium where you have you know all of the different little skills and whatever speaking to you in your mind in this game you have the orb which is this this cosmic entity that knows all of history.

You have Nasty Girl, who is is the archetype of the nasty girl.

She's she's roughshod.

She loves a good time getting drunk, blasting cigs.

And then you have the lovely lady who's sort of the prim and proper antithesis of the nasty girl.

And this and this. These are all the the the sort of internal monologues.

Is this like a disco Elysium?

him okay and similarly there will be skill checks where it'll be like something will happen and then it'll say like nasty girl difficult failed and you'll know that a skill check is happening um i do feel like some of the some of those skill checks to me feel necessary to tell the narrative so i wonder if some of them are like they're faking it a little bit but honestly i i can't tell and i i think that that is it's a nice touch um either either way even if it's like they're rigging the dice on some of them i think it's fun that you're like oh i got away with it even if everyone gets away with it

uh the the artwork is gorgeous i'm assuming for the low low price of 16 bucks this stuff is not voiced no it is not voiced um yeah no which which i don't mind um i feel like voice acting is one of those things where it's like even the original voice acting in disco elysium was pretty rough um yeah you know and sparse as well yeah yeah there was much less of it as well i don't think maybe like any of the skill checks were voiced in the original i can't remember um but yeah it had like uh who was it it was like a bunch of the guys from chapo like dasha for redskins just like random fucking people

and uh and some of them were great but some of them were not so great um so it was more like funny if you were in the world of like online politics and you're like oh that's like felix biederman talking uh but anyway yeah i i appreciate the fact that they didn't go for voice acting rather than i think the the sort of compromise would have been let's get like friends to do it or something and then it's like an awkward situation where it's like friends aren't that great then it's like we like cut them out because they're bad but anyway i yeah it reads more like the experience of a book where it's

like i've developed voices for these characters in my head now and that's kind of how i prefer it but um but anyway so this this uh this sort of open -ended adventure starts and you're basically just sort of cast into the world to do whatever um there are sort of like quests arise like the the fixing Fixing the hole in your ceiling that the orb came through is sort of a floating quest there.

You can go ask a shepherd with an eyepatch for planks to fix it and stuff.

But then there are sort of like what feel to me like story, like mandatory sort of maybe not mandatory, but like things in order to get like the real story experience that feel necessary to me.

Like going to the clinic to get hormones is like this sort of horrifying, like existential horror moment that I think works so fucking well.

and i think that's what's kind of brilliant about this game is it's it's so funny and irreverent and like cheeky and weird and jokey but then it will immediately pivot to like a legitimately horrifying moment with like the sound design will switch up the like dialogue tone will switch up the portraits will get more sort of like surreal and psychedelic and odd and horrifying and uh and it just like yeah i don't know the the writer of the writer in main dev i believe her name is poppy um yeah the developer name on steam is das poppy and mia it's actually so long it's like ranchos it's art collective

in german yeah um yeah so uh the i checked out poppy's other work um they've written a bunch of other sort of like interactive fiction stuff so this is clearly not new territory for them but i i was really really impressed with the writing here um the the funny stuff is funny and then when it switches into a more serious mode it's not like it's not not like it's trying super hard to be like and now is like this is the important stuff this is like the part where we do like serious like politics and whatever it there is like humor injected into these moments but all of it just sort of feels like

cohesively very human and vulnerable um when it's being funny it's it's sort of like poking fun at characters in a way that is exploring their vulnerabilities but not in like a we're bullying them for laughs way uh and when it's serious it's very like it feels drawn from you know real sort of like traumatic horrifying experiences that people go through uh so yeah it feels like there's a lot of a lot of heart and soul in this game and uh and it just made me laugh a lot made me think a lot and it is I think it's fucking brilliant it is one of the best narrative rpgs I've played since Disco Elysium

and I'm not just saying that because it reminds me of Disco Elysium terrific have you completed it yet or no i'd like the first like two and a half hours um similar to disco it's like when it's when it's so text heavy i like to break it up because it's at some point my brain just starts to like slow down and it's like i i want to actually savor this and enjoy it but um yeah the game takes place across four days and you have six actions per day uh and the actions are spent on you know like you'll you'll choose to do something it'll be like do you want to do this minus two two actions or whatever

um so you're sort of allocating limited time to these different actions and getting to choose so it seems like a game that uh that is worth replaying uh for the skill checks and to choose different paths and see how different things turn out but um but yeah it's a i mean it's just it's gorgeous too like the fact that two people made this game uh i think it's like i don't know it has that sort of like scrappy diy energy which i think makes it feel very agile and original and creative and different from things but it's i don't know there's there's an amount of polish here um and expertise in the in the writing

and in the art and confidence in the tone and what they're talking about that uh yeah i just i think it's a very very special game hell yeah uh we mentioned before um who was it it was art director on the return to monkey island was talking about how art is the thing you unlock in adventure games that's the the the you know know reward you get is more arsh um uh in this is it more arsh is it more art or is it more more writing what are you looking forward to mostly when you're playing it that's a good question um yeah i mean i think it's i think it's kind of both um the art does not change super

frequently within a scene so like the i i'm not going to talk too much about the doctor scene because i think it's sort of like a big pivotal moment in the plot point or in the plot rather but like i I think it just sort of settles on this one shot of like a dark silhouette outline of a figure and their portrait is very unnerving and it just settles on that.

So it's not that you're like you're not being sort of like inundated with like a conversation changes, new piece of our conversation, conversation changes, new piece of art.

It's sort of like one like nice piece of art pops up and then you're just like enjoying the atmosphere in that scene in that moment.

Yeah. But yeah, I don't know.

It's kind of I feel like to me, it's sort of a cohesive hole.

It's it all kind of like blends together into this this tonal experience.

So I think the thing that I am anticipating going into a new scene is like just like a cohesive emotional hole of what this scene feels like.

I think that it speaks to the like, I don't know, the level of craft that goes into the sound design, into the art, into the writing is that they all feel like they're sort of culminating into this big emotional hole rather than being like, I can't wait to see the next picture or whatever.

um yeah i'm just pulling up my notes to see if there's anything i missed because i uh i played this game very late last night and uh on the steam page just to to tell you some of the features that it says it says variable ending a ton of gorgeous artwork gamer achievements to hunt for weird and off -putting women so there you go something for everyone that is true yeah actually look can i i need to read one piece of dialogue from this game because i think go for it this is is it i i'm not gonna read any of the serious stuff so like i don't want anyone to think like oh this is what the entire game

is like because there there are moments in this that are get so fucking real and so heavy um but there's a line from nasty girl where she says uh one time me and all the one time me and the lads all got together and pissed so hard into the same urinal that the ceramic fucking cracked and it fell off of the wall shit fucking bopped and your two options to reply are in parentheses salute the concept of the lads or hmm um good stuff it's just like it's very very like i don't know it's it's it doesn't take itself too seriously but it delves into some really serious shit very um skillfully good writing

man good writing good writing ain't easy uh lovely lady rpg available on steam and itch it's uh 15 .99 on steam and you You can also buy the art book for $2 .99 or get it in a bundle if you so wish.

Our book looks a couple of screenshots for it here and looks like it has some, you know, concept stuff in there as well.

So very cool looking looking stuff.

You were playing Steam Deck or anything, right?

You were playing just on your home PC?

I was just playing on my PC, but I do believe that the Steam page says it works on Steam Deck.

I was curious, actually, because it sounds great.

Like I really want to play it.

I think you've sold me on it.

Absolutely. Absolutely I was just curious about the storytelling the pacing of it because I like playing these games like I play Disco Elysium and sort of chunks I would get to the end of a story and go and that's that I'll let my brain stew and think about what happened with this one is it sort of like you go to a scenario it plays through how long are the scenarios and then you move on or do is it the sort of thing where like a quest is a whole story what's the structure there it feels that's a really good question it feels like the it feels like the scenes are typically a a conversation there

will be threads that sort of run through the entire game where it's like you know talk to this person and then that gives you the idea to go do something else or you know brings up a necessary objective to do later or whatever but um it feels like the conversations are sufficiently lengthy that they they feel like the break points are between each conversation uh it's not like you go talk to a person for two minutes and then it's like okay now i have to go talk to another person for two minutes it's more like you run into a person and and talk to them for a good i don't know 10 to 25 maybe um

the conversations to me felt like i was surprised how long they were but i never grew tired of them i i thought it was enjoyable how long i got to spend with each individual character um it it made me feel like each of the considered the characters were very sort of like heavily considered and fleshed out um like i for example the shepherd i mentioned earlier who you're looking to get planks from to fix your roof i thought this was just going to be like throwaway character and then it resulted in this huge conversation about like the the political history of this world and this dude's sort of track

record as like a war veteran and you know how like the there's like no victors in war and he got like super philosophical um and then as soon as it moved on from politics the dudes sort of like became withdrawn again and it's like wow that's that's a lot of characterization to just get for this character who i thought was like random np like it's like the first quest npc is how it feels you know it's like if the first person you saw in storm wind was like oh did i tell you about how my wife died and you're like jesus christ i just thought you were gonna tell me to kill seven kobolds man awesome

stuff um the last thing i wanted to say about it was that um i think that this is the the exploration of gender dysphoria as horror in this i think is is really interesting because i think it's not just it's not just like and this is bad and this is how it feels and it's bad it's also there's a one of the other characters that you add to your sort of like internal skill cabinet is uh the nightmare into the nightmare is a character who is sort of like strikes this tone of sort of dismissive like they're an antagonist they're clearly an antagonist and they're like calling out insecurities about gender

dysphoria but they're doing it in a way that like a toxic person in your life who is ostensibly a friend might do where they're like oh you look like shit but like i'm a good friend because i'm telling you like oh you have stubble you look like a fucking man like you must feel like shit and you look like shit but i'm only telling you this because like i'm such a good friend and like i'm right i'm making you back yeah exactly um and i thought that that was such an interesting sort of like way to explore this experience is like like someone who keeps reassuring you that they're not an antagonist

but is so clearly playing this antagonist role um it was very it's it struck a very uncomfortable balance of uh yeah i don't know because i feel like that's how that's how like there are no like villains in the lives of most people there i mean unless you unless you like work for you know you have like a boss who's abusive or like an abusive spouse or something typically the antagonists in real life scenarios are like people who are yeah just like people who suck who are like you're like it's not that those things are forgivable it's that you're like you have a connection to a person and they

don't always treat you well and i think that that's yeah it's insidious in a way that feels so real and it it i it really got to me because it wasn't like a mustache twirling villain who's like you'll never be what you think you are you're like no it's more just like i oh Oh, but like I care about you, though, and I'm only doing this because I care about you.

It was it got under my skin.

I thought it was really, really well done.

Awesome. Sounds like it's well written.

Lovely ladies. RPG.

Thanks so much, Jeremy.

I'm interested to hear a little bit more about it as well.

And yeah, I jump on there, folks.

If you bought it as well, you know the rules.

Make sure you leave a review, especially for indie games.

Get it done. And I'm going to jump in quickly and talk about Wheel World.

uh this is from mess hoff uh the developer of nidhogg which you may remember um awesome and nidhogg 2 is all presumably and the fly wrench which i did not play um which came out around the time of nidhogg as well and so wheel world is there should there will be a quick look up on the channel by the time this podcast is out but essentially the way i i sort of explained to Jesse a bit was that it's, it's a indie game.

It is, uh, you know, I completed it in somewhere around four hours time.

Um, I, I'm not sure if I was faster than they were anticipating.

I think on the review guide, they said between four and six or something like that, but I've since gone back and played another hour of it.

Um, uh, so I've done five hours of fucking around in there and I'm not quite done yet cause I want to keep unlocking stuff.

Um, it's essentially a game.

uh it's like a open world indie zelda inspired kind of breath of the wild inspired cycling game so you have a big map you have a quest to recover uh to to basically race these five these four um for want of a better term like mayors of the districts of this uh this this world uh to race them you need to have a certain amount of reputation points you get rep by winning races You get repped by beating some challenges in the races.

It's generally the four, the same four challenges each time.

It's complete the race, I think, in first, second, or third, win the race, beat a certain time, and collect a couple of letters, K -A -T, which are like skates, basically, in the Tony Hawk game.

there are kat cat is the name of the main character and sort of off the beaten path of the racing line you have to like get off to get some of these um uh letters and when you do that you also have to come in first you can't just get the letters you have to win the race as well so uh differing sort of adds a bit of difficulty to races that uh usually aren't too hard i didn't find them too hard i was explaining to jesse that like i play a lot of like racing sims and the formula one games and a lot of them are about like driving line and when you accelerate when you like this felt way more like

i was doing one of those not in terms of difficulty just in terms of driving style and how braking works and stuff and like retaining a certain amount of acceleration like entering a turn at the start of a straight is really important in formula one because if you don't get the requisite speed out of that turn you're going to be slower than everyone else on the straight and it's all about relative speed and how much faster you are to everyone else so So the mechanics of this racing game felt very familiar to me.

So maybe I was better at it than maybe it slipped into my gaming habits a bit more than, than other games.

But it's cool. It looks really good.

The gorgeous sort of cell shaded look to it.

The different biomes are interesting.

The loop of unlocking bike parts and buying bike parts and the game rewards wards you for doing a bunch of stuff off the beaten path like finding jumps and discovering things i won't say what within the world there's a sort of a surveillance state drone that gives you tickets for doing these things because it's always watching you um and the world itself is like has an element of fantastical realism to it you have this disembodied floating skull which which follows you everywhere um uh which is the the sort of your buddy and the the whole reason you're on this quest is to try and find bike parts

that this skull needs to deliver spirits to the under like to the moon there's like this whole other not particularly not heavy -handed but interesting fantastical story going alongside um the uh the action itself and yeah it's I really really enjoyed it it's i completed it i've gone back and done a bunch more races in it um and yeah i found it yeah charming and and interesting and really cool nice yeah i played a little bit more of it and it's like i think you described it all really well we talked about it in the uh indie recommendation sorry which is not quick look you're right uh uh in in brief

and i think we got our points across but something that uh that has really stuck with me and since i've played a little bit more um i really like the forza setup that they have here because it is a a bit more like like it's that open world racing game it's not like you pick a location and start the race there you have to bike over to the race location talk to the person start the race and then the race takes place in part of the map so it's not unlike forts are burnout paradise or mario kart world or whatever now um but i think the way that they do it here is like it's not different from those

but the scale of it i think really makes me appreciate it more because when you're driving a car you're going so fast that like they have to make the obvious extra things you do the side things that jumps really obvious because you're going so quickly here you're on a bike so you can slow down you get off the bike and walk around uh and i noticed a lot more shortcuts because like danny said the races aren't very hard but they do require especially the time trials you to use some of the shortcuts and you can see those when you're just biking around an area sometimes you'll go past something two

or three times or you'll do a lone wolf race which is like there's bikers around the world who are just independent aren't part of a biking group and they'll be like ring your bell and you can race them and it's a super short little thing It starts the race in the open world.

It doesn't go to a loading screen.

They just go, all right, let's go, and then the checkpoints appear.

It's cool. Yeah, exactly.

It's fun. So it's like you see there's a lot of opportunities to just learn more of the world and see the little bits and pieces that are there, again, because of the scale and because of the speed and everything.

I really think it's a very well -designed, tight version of a racing game.

Yeah, it's a blast. Yeah, it sounds cool.

I'm curious, like, outside of races, is there are there like other like side quests or like i'm curious about the format or is it mostly just sort of an open world with races in it yeah yeah it's fairly lean i'll say the the game loop is is pretty like a lot of the sort of um extra stuff you can do is relatively disconnected from the main like the golden path so you the the other things you can do are basically basically uh cash in some of those sort of things i told you about like go to the bot and it'll give you tickets basically for finding five jumps and doing this and winning 10 races and then

using that at a couple of vendors there are some vendors that'll sell you different bike parts uh the bike parts are split into like i think seven different categories i want to say it's like you know handlebars seat uh front wheel rear wheel the the chain you're using the frame forks all that stuff yeah so then it's um and each of those has an aesthetic sort of vibe to it like they're funny like there's a couple of really ridiculous ones there's one in the in the video we posted where i got the full set which is based on like a human body because i saw that one in the trailer and i paused on it

because it's so fucking disturbing it's it's got like feet for the wheels and the reason for that is like the world is full of all of these different bike gangs basically and bike clubs and that one is a bunch of like when you beat them you cut off their feet and then you turn it in the wheels it's it's a bunch of like naturalist dudes who live in the city so they're all about like you know being naked or whatever so that's their bike and you but yeah you you can you unlock them as well throughout the world and they have different stats and the stats split into four categories it's basically like

top speed acceleration um grip and handling and uh the thing i was telling jesse in the video was that like like maybe I would have preferred if it had done this, but like, I never felt like I was really that handicapped by using a bike that wasn't sort of, uh, distilled to that type of cycling.

Like the four areas sort of have their own feel.

One of them has a lot more hill climbing in it, uh, is a bit more off roadie.

Another one is like a lot of straights, you know what I mean?

Like they have their own sort of feel.

And obviously in those scenarios, you would want to have have like a road bike with like top level speed that can you know take corners fast or maybe for the uphill one you'd want to have better acceleration than top speed you know your your your power you'd want to have higher than than your aerodynamics right but I never like there was maybe one or two of the hard races that I was like you know what I'll tune the bike a bit just to I'll swap my frame out because you can do it anytime you're just cycling around you hit balls you can just change your bike and then keep going um so maybe in a different

world there was a a more uh i don't know costly aspect there if you if you didn't um tweak it enough uh but no it didn't really feel like it was that useful and so as a result side quest wise it's mostly just collecting stuff um uh which i have enjoyed you know that's that's that's fun in its own right but getting the four the four different rep category victories within each race has been the thing that's kept me in it like yeah i'm excited to do that it's good it's like ollie ollie world or um roller where it's like you got to replay the race but again because you like you said it's not hard

so like it's pretty easy to get everything in the first or second race i don't know if that's good or bad i think it's fine for the size of the game it's like four or five hours long like danny said i spent a lot of time just biking around i wanted to see what the world had to offer i think jeremy's point like i was expecting there to be a little bit more to it just like one extra feature one extra thing that wasn't just doing races and i know there are the coupon things like you mentioned you can go and if you get five jumps you get extra coupons but like that stuff felt like i was gonna do it

anyway or it just kind of happened and it was a reward for that i was thinking because there are a lot of npcs in the world that you can talk to and they have sort of incidental dialogue which is cute and funny but like i thought they would be like hey yeah could you go over here and collect five coins in under 30 seconds or something just just like a little random side minigame thing i was expecting there to be uh it does there are some features that are like missing or or that scene not missing necessarily but just like that feel like they would make sense like having multiple bike slots uh

glam stuff yeah you can't do that like all of that stuff feels like they wanted to put out the mvp the minimal minimum viable product for this make sure it's good make sure it's high quality and then they're like if people like it then we'll add that stuff in later like that's sort of what it feels like yeah i i I think I can you know I'd love to talk to the developer because I if it is like those games that it might be like a very small amount of people or like one or two people or one person you know doing a lot of this stuff I think the thing is that like the reason I think I feel that way

is that the core gameplay of cycling the bike is very good so I would happily have spent more time in this game like if this game was twice as long I would have completed twice as much obviously that requires it's a different pacing there's different you know maybe I would get bored of just races at that stage um but yeah i i agree i think um the game is a bit more it's hard i don't want to spoil anything but like i was satisfied with all the stuff that was in it in the end you know i think there's the ending and and sort of what happens after you've done the sort of main quest stuff does get

interesting after that in a way that i wasn't expecting so that was cool so it might be a little bit longer than you're thinking i don't know where you are exactly jesse but i'll say the first couple of hours i was playing um that i i i wasn't so into the the cycling i think like maybe the first hour or so i was feeling like oh the bike is like hard to cycle but i think it's just because you start off with like not great kit but by halfway you know another hour into the game i was like oh no i really like the feeling of this and then it adds adds in a couple of more mechanics and like gearing

into it that you can add if you want to to try and get an edge on people um which is kind of an option which i quite liked and that also i thought was pretty cool for um for just mixing up the races and giving you something new to do um with uh with having a you know a two or three speed bike which is pretty cool as well um yeah so i don't know i feel i feel similar to jesse i really liked playing this it's 20 bucks it felt like a great time and it's probably in my top 10 of the year just in terms of I really enjoyed it a lot and I'd play more and I'm kind of excited that they should do a sequel

like they should do a sequel that has more stuff in it maybe um I'd buy DLC for sure yeah totally I would too you're right yeah like make a new zone or whatever and and and do some stuff there or even add stuff to this zone I don't know um but yeah that's it wheel world it's an Annapurna published joint from mess hoff available on steam and consoles i've not played the consoles version quick note on steam deck and the review guide actually suggested not to review it on steam deck and i booted it up of course just to see how it ran and it definitely was not optimized i suspect console optimization and thus

steam deck optimization is what was going on for the past end of development so the released version of the game might be well optimized for steam deck i'm not quite i can't possibly tell you but um but it is a good steam deck game you know like did you play much on steam deck jesse no i didn't touch it at all because they said don't bother and i was like okay i don't need to play the less performant version of this to talk about it but i'm glad that you did so we know what the deal is yeah it was it was like it was a bit laggy which you don't want on a bike game and then also the frame rate wasn't

great i had to drop everything down but like i said i don't think they'd even optimize at all for it at that stage so you know mileage may vary on that go check out your favorite steam deck review youtube channel if you need to find out about that um and the other thing i'll say is i really it looks really good i was really happy to play it on a big pc yeah it looks gorgeous if you can play it on like a big oled tv i bet the colors look great like it's just so nice the lines are super sharp yeah beautiful looking game good stuff wheel world available now okay let's uh slide on over to uh to howley

world for a hot second and check in with the game everyone's talking about actually you did play dk bonanza as well i see it here on the end of your list have you played much of it uh i think i've played about like four or five hours of it and uh it's awesome because i have no idea what the game is about but it's the most fun i've ever had playing a nintendo game in like 20 years oh wow yeah so it's like the equivalent of like like when i played minecraft i just like let me just dig to the bottom of the ground awesome let me just dig to the end of the map awesome let me just dig to the top of the map

awesome so like donkey kong i haven't even gotten to paulina yet but i put five hours into the game and i am just like i think i'm only in the first like gone to the first two or three areas but it's just like i'm just going to destroy everything and the entire time you're just unlocking like coins gold stars bananas bananas skill points and i'm like i don't care there's like quests and stuff but it's generally like just the game feel of it is phenomenal it's like we talked about like a week or two ago again like the the term like mowing games but it's that it's like i'm just it's so satisfying

just scraping the the terrain um so yeah can you just back up a little bit just explain to folks exactly what you can do in this because they might not realize that like so this game has like like full destructible environments yeah so it's so it's dk bonanza i don't know like what timeline this is with Donkey Kong stuff Donkey Kong literally is like a miner so like everyone's mining on a plan I have no idea what the lore is again I just I've just been just for the mind yeah so he's in the mind I think he wants to be digging for bananas and he likes bananas every time you get bananas you get skill

points and so uh yeah there's like it's like I remember in geology they had like the stone scale so there's like soft rock stone and like concrete and like metal and so like some elements are harder you need you need to pick up a bigger rocks to crash harder rocks whatever whatever, things like that.

So, yeah, you can destroy.

It's like Minecraft. You can just destroy everything.

There's some elements where you can't destroy.

But even if an NPC is standing, like an NPC who's fishing on a boat, you can destroy the boat.

And the NPC is like, hey, what am I supposed to do now?

Whatever. Oh, that's brilliant.

Yeah, so it's – but I think it's great because it's like – I'm not knocking Donkey Kong's intelligence.

But I feel like it puts you in the mind of the character where you really don't care.

You're just destroying stuff, getting bananas and coins.

I don't even know what the coins do.

I don't know what the – you're collecting gold all the time.

there's constant like again it feels like a slot machine because you're constantly just getting the like all the the the sound effects and coins but um yeah it's uh it's all so it's awesome so like i i a i thought this was gonna be a launch title for the switch so i was shocked i was like oh what this is out a month later okay whatever played a little bit of mario kart world or whatever that is that what it's called yeah mario kart world um then this came out and immediately the reviews unanimously like oh this is like one of the best platformers ever and i was like all right let me me try this out

and yeah the opening like tutorial ever it was just like oh this is so good uh and so um i think like the layout of the game is like there's different worlds or like like levels um you can keep going like i spent a long time in the first level and then you went down like essentially almost like a warp pipe and then you went just further down into like the the the layers and it's a whole new map with new collectibles new quests and things like that so i don't know if you're on one planet there's other levels or whatever but there's clearly like like different stages or environments again kind of like

super mario odyssey it's the same team but uh yeah you're just on a giant map you can destroy everything and get uh bananas coins and things like that and there's cute little quests and discoveries there's also like like tiny missions go down like open a door and you're in a little like little platforming stage you have to fight enemies or search for bananas on this little like like the way like mario uh galaxy and stuff would have these like pockets of interesting unique weird levels um so yeah it's it i i also similar similar to like Breath of the Wild or the other Zelda new Zelda game.

It's like I am not looking stuff up online.

I'm enjoying being naive and discovering things on their own.

I'm also like I also specifically bought this game so that when I was on my like plane ride for to Japan soon I can play it and just enjoy and get lost in it.

But yeah I'm having so much fun and I do not mind that I don't know everything about the game.

I have no idea what the objective is.

I'm just generally having fun digging and smashing things and yeah it looks great like I haven't I think I only noticed one moment when the frame rates stuttered but like it's shocking how fun it is there's even like a co -op thing so uh there's local and even online nintendo has this thing called like game chat which is their version of like an xbox live party but my friend jared was like you know there's co -op right so he jumped in and it's basically like super mario galaxy's like wiimote mode so it's just an extra cursor and he can also dig with me so now we were i was just destroying a level

now it's just going like three like three three like three times as fast as destroying everything and like that's more bananas more coins and uh yeah it's uh it's it's god it just feels good to play so i'm i'm happy it's it's really really good and surprising it's it's very fun i i've played not as much as you i only had a little bit i was babysitting and the fucking little turd finally fell asleep so i could play some game um it was a lot of fun it's a great you're you're great em and i love you when you watch this in 14 years uh it's you know i think donkey kong as a concept to me has not been

been appealing i just had because he likes bananas uh i just did not care like the donkey kong country great game two great game those are all great don't get me wrong but i just like if i want to play a platformer i'm a mario baby i love me some mario um knowing that this isn't trying to be a 3d platformer and is a 3d punching game where you punch the shit out of rocks is so much fun like on a technical level there's stuff here where i'm like oh this is like weirdly impressive uh Because the way that he punches is like he deforms part of the landscape.

Jeremy, you would love this game.

And I don't know about love you, but maybe you'd be mad playing it, honestly.

But like he punches and he create these tunnels through the walls.

And then when you go into the tunnel, the camera like occludes the area behind him.

So you can see the tunnel that you've made and maneuver through the the player made tunnel.

It was so cool. The first time that happened, I was like, I can't believe how are they?

what this could never happen on the switch one thanks switch 2 they finally figured it out now uh it's it's really yeah just where i am right now it's yeah frank has nailed it apart from the destroying everything it's like surprisingly the game is like actually really fun it's very joyous like everything about it the sound effects when donkey kong picks up one of the the bananas which is like this game's versions of the stars he goes like yeah yeah well i think like Like the difference we're seeing here probably is that like this is the the the A team.

Right. This is the Mario Odyssey team taking Donkey Kong.

And, you know, they've even like the character design is so good in it.

And it's a it's because I'm the same way.

I'm not a I'm not a big DK person.

I didn't I don't really care about any of the games at all.

And I've tried a few over the years.

They've never you know, this this seems like a big jungle beat kid.

You didn't like that very much. Donkey Kong, the the bongos game.

That was good fun. i had that one that was good yeah the kong kong is donkey kong i was that was that was awesome but yeah it it almost felt like it didn't it was trying not to step on mario's toes a bit and it's interesting that they've kind of a are allowing it to just be like a big open platform or you know game and and also the destructibility has given them a new lease of life so that's pretty cool it's kind of like a systemic platform of the destruction too like i've noticed in the the first couple areas um there are moments where there's a clear obvious path that they point out to you and you

can like sing and a little note will lead you in that direction and it's you could totally just go do that if you want but the destruction is way more free form and allows you to skip stuff that i did not think they were going to do like there are some very clear obvious like you have to unlock this ability before you can progress sort of stuff going on but there's a lot of free form oh i can see a better path up here than walking all the way around this thing i'm I'm just going to punch my way through and it's, it's very satisfying and you feel like a genius when you figure it out.

It's yeah, it's great so far.

Awesome. Donkey Kong.

What's called Bonanza?

Bonanza. BK Bonanza.

Awesome. Uh, mostly do I want to talk, sorry, what'd you say?

Red faction gorilla.

Cause I'm sorry. A thousand people have made that joke, but I, I promised that in my head I was like, ah, that's very clever.

I'm very clever. And then I saw a thousand people made it and I was like, that sucks.

I trust you. Yeah. But it's still funny.

Um, mostly do I want to talk to you about DDR?

Frank, Frank, what's going on?

Yeah, so Boss Fight Books recently published their Dance Dance Revolution book by Jessica Doyle and Jordan Ferguson.

And I think this came out actually last month, June.

I subscribed to their mail newsletter.

If anyone doesn't know Boss Fight Books, it's an incredible indie publisher.

They just produce documentary -like books on video games and critical essays.

They have about 40 of them.

Actually, on the back it has all of them.

There's like Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, Jagged Alliance 2, Metal Gear Solid, Spelunky by Derek Yu.

the world of warcraft katamari parappa the rap is an incredible one there's one on mine minesweeper so anytime these books come out i'm like i just stock up on them um and so i bought this and uh i was like just decluttering my room and i was like ah this is on the top of my pile so i just picked it up and like i've read it within like three days um the book itself goes into the like the history of ddr to present day so like broadly speaking like i remember like as as a kid my dad took me to arcades all the time and so I was like I don't know like eight nine like a kid when DDR debuted and so like

I was never good at it and I was very shy to play it but I just remember all the Bumani games evolving and just just the kind of culture of it and then as consoles got so good at home just forgot about DDR didn't care but then most recently like when I was in Japan I spent a whole day no like like a few days go into investigating Japanese arcades And like the trope of like seeing salary men just like at 2 a .m. going nuts on all these rhythm games, even like school kids like playing D .R.

and stuff. And it's like, oh, this is like this is so alive and present.

And I've completely ignored D .D .R.

forever. And so after reading the entire D .D .R.

book, which is like filled with so many incredible facts and things like I was like, I need to play D .D .R.

And so I bugged a bunch of my friends.

And on right now, we're recording on like Tuesday.

But on Saturday, we went to the Lakewood round one like early in the morning.

and it was like i want to play ddr i want to play ddr and uh i got my wish fulfilled and spent like two hours on the machine oh wow um and uh the next day i woke up like the most sore i'd ever been from exercise in like probably years and i was like shocked like oh that was the best work i've ever had i needed to keep doing this um and uh like the way ddr has changed like the book talks about this too when the games came out in the 90s konami had a licensing deal with the people who put out like the best of eurobeat cds every every month so like the music like was like like like kind of crappy

but that's why it was funny but like the music of the original ddr games the 90s was so gonzo and ridiculous but like it was cheap to produce or whatever so people just played it nowadays all the music is like hyper dempa anime like the stuff i actually like and seek out so now it's like oh and the visuals are so much better and and even the sensitivity of these these newer machines play so much better um the other thing I learned too from the book and even talking to friends in the scene is like back in the 90s like it was so taboo for people to like abuse the bar like like oh yeah hold on to

the bar yeah yeah and so like even as a kid it was like oh so I was like too shy to even learn how to play but then what happened is that's became the standard way of play and the only way to clear like the max difficulty on all these ddr songs was to use the bar konami realized that and started programming songs so difficult that the only way way to pass them was to use the bar and then there's still players who subvert it like there's youtube videos of like i saw a video there was like a youtuber named like like barless mike or something where it's like who doesn't use the bar whatever but like

it's such a thing but like so i was using the bar and all of a sudden like like i've never been good at the physical rhythm games like i can do expert guitar here all that stuff and so the other benefit is i've been doing like i mean on and off but it's like i feel like i'm pretty consistent doing like cardio with like riding my bike and riding the elliptical so when i went to the arcade saturday and played like ddr in like difficult settings it was like the first time i'd ever played ddr where my chest didn't hurt where i was like oh i can withstand this now it's like i have to work my arm strength

because i'm lifting my entire body on my arms and then my feet i just have to be like less clumsy um but it was like exhilarating and i even signed up for like it was only six bucks we can get what's called like the amusement pass so now with round one the book talks about this too they have an official partnership with konami so konami uh like ships the latest machines to all the round one arcades there's around one across the country but here in california i am spoiled there's so many round ones in california so like it dawned on me where it's like oh my god we're kind of now in the golden age like

it's better than ever like a golden age of rhythm games because they're being shipped to all these round one arcades but like i don't know if newer generations care but it's like i feel like no one cares or not that many people are talking about this so i'm just like Like, yes.

Were many folks using them?

So, it's, like, gym equipment.

I'm not kidding. It is, like, people come with their towels and, like, water bottles, set their stuff.

It's, like, like in a gym.

So, like, I'll kind of scope around and, like, take a machine, and after your play, you step back, let other people try, whatever.

But, yeah, it's, like, the machines are always occupied.

Like, people are, like, I didn't go when it was too crowded, but, like, I feel like I kind of got the sense.

It's, like, people will play a section, back off, wipe down, or whatever, and, like, and if no one does it, then do a second time.

so I went back last night I went to a different arcade the round one in Santa Ana I found this is the sweet spot at midnight round one kicks out everyone under 21 so I pulled up to the parking light around midnight and there was a giant crowd of people outside I was like oh shit is it is it closed did they get the time wrong I walk in and I see the signs like no one under 21 after midnight and I'm like the arcade's empty oh and it's it's the summer but it's like it's Monday night Tuesday morning so I walked up and there was only like one other guy and the rest was just like free ddr machines i

mean you have to pay but like you know i mean like no one was using them so it was like yeah so i got like a two -hour gym session that round but like but it was like oh my god it was like euphoric because the other thing that drives me crazy especially here south orange county ranchos montenegro this is such like a senior community there's 24 -hour fitnesses but they close at 10 p .m so like what yes i fucking hate i'm sorry i rename your gym man i hate i hate yeah so like 12 -hour fitness you know like it's so it sucks honestly a lot of times i'll stream all day and then at the end i need to move

my body but the gyms are closed i can go for a bike ride or walk but it's cool like it just kind of sucks sometimes late at night but now it's like okay if i can just go to round one and dance for two hours it's like it's a new way to work out because also i need to prep my body for japan and walking all that stuff and like still trying to shed the post -covid weight but um yeah so it's it's exhilarating and i think the biggest key thing is like with ddr in the present days is like the music is relevant to me it's like like hyper anime Dempa stuff.

It's not like – no offense, Danny.

It's not Eurobeat stuff.

I know you're not a Eurobeat guy, but it's like the Gonzo Euro trash stuff.

Also what happened, the book talks about it too, is like they were licensing all the cheap Eurodance songs, and then eventually the licensing fees got so expensive that Konami just started making music in -house.

But it was like the same four musicians making all the songs, so they would just have different artist names.

Oh, you're kidding.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah so like and I thought I thought that was extremely funny and then nowadays like that konami has contests like submit your song so now there's just and now with Vocaloid anyone can produce songs that had surimiku and all this stuff like so now all the music is awesome it's insane anime visuals I also realized like the more like chibi or kawaii the visuals the more insane the song is like like like and so I don't know so it was just generally fun to just just like be stoked in it and it's like destructing to use the term there's like a port gate to connect like different worlds

and it's like it feels like ddr it's now my port gate to tokyo like this is the like the songs are also connected to the internet like so konami's updating the thing also i don't know if this is true but but i i think the book talks about if you set your region to tokyo you get more songs so when i set it for amusement i was like oh no i live in tokyo okay more global license More songs unlocked that I don't have to worry about North America licensing, whatever.

But so so now it's like I can get achievements where you have your amusement card. So it's logging your best scores for songs.

So now there's like a thousand songs on Dance Dance Revolution world.

So it's like, well, I got to play every song.

Yeah. How much is this costing you?

That's the one thing I'm like, I put 50 bucks on around one card on Saturday.

I use maybe 10 percent of that.

like the trick with round one is they want you to spend on the crane games you burn through playing grand games if you're playing ddr that's gonna last a long time i'm like shocked i'm shocked so so yeah i think like i forget if it's like i forget what the the ratio is it's it's the thing where it's like it's eight credits a song is that a dollar i don't i don't know but it seems very cheap compared to how it was felt in the 90s also the big thing if you get in the amusement card it's only six bucks uh you are guaranteed your entire play some the way like a lot of these machines work if you fail

a song middle game over you just wasted a dollar that was a that was a cost -predictive thing where i never wanted to play ddr in the first place i was a little kid i sucked i wasted my quarters screw this i could play i can one credit clear marvel vs capcom for an hour so here with the amusement you're guaranteed your three songs they also want you to log your scores they want you to come back like there's progression you're leveling up your avatar like all this this nonsense stuff that's now modernized in video games it's now in DDR so it's like oh my it's so it's so exhilarating and um yeah

I'm kind of hooked and again like the idea too is like okay now I'm going back to Japan soon now I'm now I know the machines better like I just want to observe and witness all this stuff and uh like and now I'm like bugging all my friends like okay guys want to go on Saturday like I kind of want to get a giant DDR gang together and um even my first time saturday um i didn't know how to do the machines i was so confused and it was just like asking you for help at the gym like hey how do you how do you change the weights on here how do you change the difficulty how do you get a card and people were friendly i

even saw one guy bring a portable fan with them like he had the backpack like he had his like a giant fan he pulled out of his backpack just plug it in yeah i think i think wireless battery or something or okay battery and And then round one also has fans that they set up for you.

And so, I don't know.

It's just kind of fascinating.

And I know conventions always have like, like I think even QuakeCon has a DDR machine set up.

And there's a company that rents out DDR machines at conventions.

But yeah, it's just this global game that's kind of better and easier to play than ever before, which my concept of DDR was stuck in the 90s.

Like, okay, Eurobeat, like the same 10 songs.

youngs like this is impossible but now like and it's also very exhilarating trying a new hobby at like 34 and just being like okay i can yeah i'm gonna do it having no physical one yes it's so it's healthy i have no fear of like looking like a goof in public because it's like i stream all day i do i'm so beyond that whereas like it's a kid or a teenager you're so self -conscious but it's also it's a third place to hang out i literally just spend so much time in my room if i'm not going to convention or traveling i'm just in my room i am the most like anti -social social version of myself that's

ever been like even more so than covid like it's not healthy so now that there's like all these round ones with ddr cabinets and i have a handful of friends local in orange county like okay can we get let's go please let's go out here and and uh so it's it's it's kind of it's like it feels like a cure to something that i've been suffering from for a while um and so um yeah i'm like hopeful excited but also now i'm like okay where else all start their cheap ddr machines i bet bowling alleys movie theaters like what's the cheapest ddr machine what's the most obscure location who are the nuts that are logging

on this there's there's websites that map out all the ddr cabinets um but yeah there's like a thousand songs in ddr world they're updating the machines constantly it's uh yeah i don't know it's it feels like a very untapped phenomenon and i know it's it's it's ddr everyone knows but it's like oh do people realize how good it is in 2025 like if you have a round one i guess dave and busters and other stuff sounds like a frank video or the channel i didn't know that was still going the dance dance revolution games i had no idea they were still releasing songs because i mean i i was a big guitar hero

kid so when i go to dave and busters or whatever i see the awful heavy guitars for guitar hero and this is what happened to it it fell from grace um i know you like the social aspect of dance dance revolution but uh do you have any interest in buying a dance pad for your room or are you you just gonna keep this to like outside of the house so i have a friend who has like a metal pad at home and i found out what people do is they use like step ladders or like ball like actual ballet bars you can order off amazon to get the bar um that's awesome it's potential i don't like i feel like i don't need

more reasons to stay in my room so it's like oh no it's good to get out like but but if anything i'll drive down to san diego hang out with my friend jordan who has metal pads or investigate but like yeah i my friend who he lives in hawaii and he's part of his ddr scene locally over there he sent me videos that people have made like insane home setups like there's even a channel of this of the of this lady who lives in africa and she's made a youtube video of like all the ddr machines in africa and like she has a setup at home and she has uh just chairs stacked up in like a laundry basket on top

and that's her that's her uh her bar so it's just it's it's kind of like punk and endearing and very diy to see people make it work anywhere my friend tells me he's part of a tournament where it's like once a week you have have like you're assigned a song and you have to post the best score of that you have a week oh that's a publisher score so it's like oh this is so i don't know it's it's uh it's i again i say this all the time i'm always fascinated with like the extremes of fandoms the extremes of game cultures and it's like oh this is such an exhilarating thing and then obviously it's like

the book also get back to its credit the boss fight books ddr book the first like 20 pages is about like the the origins of like tokyo nightlife clubbing dancing in the streets harajuku culture like the the the biker gangs that do the rockabilly dances and harajuku so it's like talking about how dancing in public was a japanese like a phenomenon and then they made a game for it and and so like and then that coming to usa the boom and then the other thing also touching on is like round one is also having this explosion because during covid like kids read tons of manga kids binged anime on netflix

so now compared to the 90s which also had an anime boom with like toonami and dbz and stuff um all this like hyper chibi anime stuff is so big for like everyone but like especially kids and they're like or people in their 20s and teens and stuff so it's like i feel like oh the the the timing is so sweet for this ddr stuff in round one to to have like a healthy arcade or whatever you want to call it like bowling entertainment place that is uh funding to having these the latest ddr cabinets because like you know arcades fell off super hard but But now I think our people are craving that third space.

And when I went on Saturday, it was fun because my friends bought a pitcher of beer.

So we were drinking and then going back to the machines and back and forth.

So it's a very good time.

And I've told my friends, like, oh, if you buy me a drink, I'll get I'll get your DDR credits, whatever.

I don't care. So, yeah, but but I'm also interested to, like, kind of observe a what the scene here in California and then also, like, keep looking in Tokyo.

But now if we go to conventions like there's always the DDR stuff.

stuff so i want to like kind of plant myself but also track my my progress so like even last night i got my first full clear on a on a difficulty level song level eight the peak is 20 that's like the thing my personal peak i cleared a song at level 12 so it's kind of nice to know my range so and back in the old days the 90s 10 was the max difficulty so it's like now i want to find an old machine be like can i play old ddr songs and extra i don't know so it's it's uh yeah i'm i'm happy this this brain has a new bin to store all this crap into because it's love it yeah absolutely love it i want

to see a frank video where you find like the the strangest ddr like i want to see you find a ddr machine in like the santa ana house of pizza and become the guy who shows up in like your gym gear and people are just buying pizza and they're like yeah that's the guy who fucking just wrecks it every night yeah brings his fan or his pizza exactly but something about it being in the context of like a place where there's parmesan cheese within six speed of you i think just makes it very funny to me the most obscure ddr machine in so yeah you're like super you've got like super like muscly legs and then

like a big pizza gut you know just like super jack down there i gotta stop holding the bar is the bar so i can sort of like i i've only done ddr like one or two times on like a friend set up in the room is the is the bar just so you don't have to fully commit your body weight to each thing so you can do it faster yeah and so So you can like tap your legs easier.

Cause like the step charts get so great.

And I also like, they have holds.

So you have to like hold with one leg and then move around.

If you're doing all the weight, that's it's, I don't know.

It's, it's essential.

But again, barless Mike, barless Steve or whatever could do it.

But, but also the first day I did it, I, you know, two hours just lifting my entire body, my arms. I was so sore.

And then I read online, like, okay, don't use the bar all the time.

If there's a sequence or like the finding rest, but like last night I was focusing on that.

and then i got into a better thing of like okay when to lean when to not do it but uh yeah it's it's just you can be kind of weightless and move your feet and then like i also saw i was observing ddr players were like they'll keep their their like legs in kind of a tight radius because if you're if you're doing too big of a movement it's harder to to get back in place and so and so like again the new machines are so sensitive that you just have to like barely touch it and it registers and i think that yeah it it's it's uh again even like that level of play is just fascinating and fascinating and so um

and then also the nice thing is i would do a few sessions of ddr get so exhausted and then take a break and then do beat mania which is like the crazy you know the the dj one with like eight keys but same thing i learned i looked at the tech and it's like you're supposed to like spin the the dj pad with your pinky and and not so it's like okay and that's why they call the game pinky crush because you're you're screwing your oh my god so again there's all this stuff that's fascinating but it's all anime music chibi stuff not eurobeat so now i'm like oh i know this song i know this song i know the song

so it's only so much amount of this uh eurobeat uh duncan uh thanks for giving us the update on the revolution frank keep us uh keep us updated on what's going on over there um as you dive deeper and deeper into that world um we have one more game this week um the this is the latest game from mike uh kublenka who made buckshot roulette right jesse that is correct yes split uh This is a Dance Dance Revolution based video game where, you know, this is, yeah, Mike Klubnicka known for Buckshot Roulette, obviously, as Danny mentioned, everyone knows that game at this point.

It's a very good game.

But before that, he was making really cool, like short story horror games on itch .io and this is another one of those.

It's like the highest quality polished version of that that he's made so far, whether or not you think the story is the best one is up to you when you play it because it's coming it should be out right now actually it is out on the 24th so it'll be out yesterday when this episode goes live and it's gonna be like three dollars uh so this is a really short little tiny experience i think it took me like 40 or 50 minutes you play as a hacker i'm trying to think of like specifically what's going on here and describing that but you're playing as a hacker uh using a pc that's very very like sort of like

straightforward but also purely controlled by the the keyboard, there's no mouse interface.

So you just type and use, uh, eventually part of the game is like a hacking mini game.

It opens on this IRC chat where you're talking to two other characters and there's this sort of vague conspiracy going on that you're involved in and you're helping them to hack into some systems. I won't say anything specific because it's a story game.

It's super short. And then eventually you get access to this hacking mini game where you have to, it's not even hacking is maybe even the wrong word. You're basically just doing command line prompt uh commands to like access different files in your own hard drive and hack into this um separate machine that you get that's part of this conspiracy and then eventually things get a little bit bigger you learn like oh how involved you are but only ever so slightly i think what makes split work i don't want to say anything more because again it's so short it's three dollars like i i recommend playing

this with the caveat that and i'll jeremy might be be able to describe it a little bit more but like this game does this thing that some pc -based keyboard typing irc chat games do where you type and the text progresses for your character um and usually when they do that it goes the speed that you're typing here it's really really slow and like laboriously slow like what does that mean so if i press the the letter p it takes a while to appear or something so like the speed that you type is not the speed that the characters come up it's like the more you type it's almost like a progress bar that you're

filling up while typing but not even that because it's not like it's not like the faster you type the faster the keys come out you're right it's it's maybe like as you type you sort of have to like chicken peck your keyboard to get the keys to come up in that pace it's it's like if you in the time you could like it because you know like there's the old there's like an old joke website where it's like you're a hacker and as fast as you can type characters appear on the screen this is like Like you press a key and then there's, you know, maybe like a whatever half second cool down until you can press

a key again and make the next letter appear.

Yeah. So if I hit if I was typing the word pool and I went P .O .O .L., it might just appear P and L.

No. So no, no, no. It's not either that.

You're not typing the actual words that show up on the screen.

There's a preset line of text and you are making it appear as you press keys on the keyboard. board so you're simulating the act of typing the message that shows up on the screen it's like a weird disconnect that I mean works now because I have some experience with it there was another game called Emily is away that does a similar thing that was really good but here it's really really slow like it just the characters will come up in sequence in the message but the speed at which you type has no impact on how quickly those characters come up like you can't type really quick to make it happen okay

it's it's a hard thing to describe it's sort of like when you're playing it it's i was a little frustrated at the start i kind of got over it because i wanted to see where it was going and i know it was short so it wasn't a big deal um but it definitely feels arbitrary like the fact yeah because when you get to the hacking minigame section everything comes up as quickly as you type and then there's a there's a third sort of thing that happens where you're you have to type quickly to make it progress like it's it's yeah it's just very strange um it's not a it's not the worst thing ever but like

i think what i like about split without getting into it super seriously is like any good short story it does that thing where it tells you just enough of a world and gives you just enough context to care about what's going on and it's presented in this way where if you just want to see where the story goes from start to end you can totally just do that but if you want to dig a little bit deeper there are files that you can sort of look at file names you can check out that are kind of interesting and like learn a little bit more get a tiny bit more context about what's going on there's two endings

for the game as well but you can get them both really quickly you don't have to replay from the start there's a save point right before the moment where you get to make the decision so it's really it's i think it's just a nice good short little experience from somebody who uh makes grimy looking video games this is one of the grimiest uh that i think you've made so far uh and it it does a lot of there was a moment in it that had me mouth agape for like five minutes it was uh i like the art style because he does a good job of like it feels like like buckshot as well it feels throwback and retro

but it doesn't look old yeah like it looks intentional and interesting cool jeremy you you enjoyed this as well or did you uh i will play it at some point i tried twice and the the the speed of the typing thing that we were talking about i i tried it once and i was like i can't fucking do this and i all tap forward within two minutes and then i was like i think i was being impatient let me come back to it later and then i came back to it later and i was like like no i fucking can't do this it's so slow i've like this is here's the thing is that i think the impulse when you encounter a game mechanic

and you're like this is frictional and i hate it that i feel like it's the easy way is to say like bad dev dev doesn't know what they're doing like i don't think that at all there must be some intention behind this but it is like i i don't know what it is and it was driving me fucking nuts be very funny if this was just like a a pre -release bug that you guys i mean maybe that it feels like that it could be if i if this was my friend who was a developer and they said this to me i would i would submit a piece of gentle criticism and say like this game is fucking awesome here's one thing that would you

know make the quality a little bit higher it's it's very it's just like i was struggling to understand it because like i said you want to feel like a hacker you're like a hacker doesn't hacker man yeah they don't type fast just when they're hacking like it's not like you're like oh i i can type fast when i'm hacking but now i'm typing an email i'm like but be careful yeah um so i was just like holy shit like that's fun yeah because here i'll say one last thing about it it's like um if you're typing super fast and it's only registering a key every like five key presses it feels bad and if you're

typing very slow like every half second you're pressing like a key a key a key it also then it makes you feel like you're like you've never used a computer before like you're like grandma checking her email and so i was like i don't am i i'm supposed to like feel like a hacker but i like type this fucking slow i don't understand well at the end of the game where they tell you you're actually a grandma checking her email and maybe then it makes sense you know if that was the end and i i would i would admit complete defeat they got you uh the one other thing i wanted to mention this is like a fourth

wall breaking thing i needed to say it because it's it's so sure you want to say yes because it's not it's not to say yes to recommend the game it's not a part of the story of the game it is a joke in the game that is not funny to anyone except for me and jeremy i feel like it's it's not a joke it's so there's a list of games in the game that are referenced that are real video games as far as i'm aware two of them in there are dungeons of blood and dreams oh and elation for the wonder box 6000 oh shit and i was like wait did jeremy make are you the developer of buckshot roulette there's other

games in there if you want to check out the list it's an optional thing that does not matter and again it's referencing things that are real so i'm sure it's outside of the context of the game anyway that's cool that's nice little nod to other like indie devs with sort of like interesting crunchy styles that are adjacent to this yeah splish uh there are dots in between the letters folks sp s dot p dot l dot i dot t um do you have any you said it was off three four bucks three bucks on launch and there is a 15 discount if you pick it up uh 15 15 15 god please god yeah i was like he's not gonna get

any money out of this steam are already taking a dollar out of that three um so uh yeah there you go uh splish from mike kublinka let's uh let's roll into emails um what we got this week frank yeah uh if you want to send us emails write to us at podcast at noclip .video or on our patreon discord uh in the podcast chat channel once again it's no uh podcast at noclip .video video um one email from justin brant on game documentaries hey guys i'm someone who loves documentaries grew up on history channel and discovery i still get hyped for how it's made or anything on ancient egypt also any docudramas

about business such as the big short or business wars podcast but my absolute favorites are video game documentaries i grew up with g4 as my primary way to get information on gaming as well as that they had long running documentaries um called icons from bushnell to half -life to even the og ralph bayer as the channel died the show icons cons died as well uh as well as what the subject matter covered cue to you guys putting together your patreon and channels and here we are again with some much better documentaries than anything else that was out there the half -life stuff should have earned you

guys at least an emmy or globe nods if you were on tv or in theaters why do you think it took so long for folks to devote the time the subject matter deserves uh it's nice to see others are also in the space because there's a lot of stuff to cover uh you guys are gonna be busy for decades yeah fingers crossed thanks so much justin um i think it's because like this stuff is just in the world of um like the economy of making online video i don't think this stuff makes any like sense like it's it costs a lot of money to make and ultimately the audience for it is fairly niche like games are really

big and popular people who care about how games are made is a very small subset of that people who are are willing to watch long videos about how games are made is a small version of that as well um so i think it's just like when g4 was doing icons i'm sure it was probably like part of their it was like a prestige production on their on their show right like some stuff costs more than others there are like loss leaders there are you know things that you do to sort of um inflate the brand a bit uh that maybe don't make that much sense for the amount of time and production that goes into it um and i

think that's ultimately probably the reason i think the other reason is that like youtube is really good like the the the video like game fandoms are kind of really concentrated and like a lot of fandoms take care of themselves like there are people out there making making, you know, Eve fans making videos about Eve and books about Eve and like, you know, fans of Final Fantasy, you know, saving all that sort of stuff.

And where we sort of exist in some ways is sort of appealing to the ones that maybe aren't doing it or games that aren't so, have such deep fandoms that they do that themselves.

Like we've never covered Eve for that reason, right?

We just can't catch up with that stuff.

But like Dwarf Fortress, there's not that many people talking or telling the story of how that thing came together um so i think yeah it's that's my sort of and it's the same reason i think like people dabble with this stuff right there are other channels that pop up or our friends over at gamespot or ign or ever have dabbled in doing this sort of stuff but ultimately it never lasts gets caught because it's just too expensive or takes too much time or there's a budget thing happening or nobody wants video producer doesn't want to be working on the thing that got took four months to make and got

you know 80 ,000 views or whatever you know it's like there's all these there's all these different reasons but because we're crowdfunded we get to we get to do this stuff and then uh matt wrote in a question about games and music hey noclip crew i was watching the ghost of yotei state of play and it got me thinking about the way music functions in games and how it's changing not only were the songs from the soundtrack we heard in the state of play immediately available on all music streaming services but the game will also have an alternate lo -fi soundtrack mode to listen to while you play.

I remember back when Halo 2 sold the soundtrack on CD.

It felt so novel but now it feels like studios advertise and release their soundtracks in pregame launch windows in order to keep their games in players' minds.

I'm still listening to the soundtrack to Ukrainian devs vibing noir pixel art game replaced four years after they showed the trailer and the game isn't even out yet.

So it still has mindshare for me.

What are your thoughts on this changing relationship between games and music?

Hmm. changing real like changing how i guess is the thing that i'm well the fact that like in the question the question i was wondering if jeremy had any thoughts on this because he like produces music and stuff but but like in the way that like they are front and centering these soundtracks like it's this real world soundtrack came out today the game's not out until tomorrow it's like there's a different sort of you know um and the way that that it's almost part of the marketing I guess is that is kind of the the thing maybe here yeah I think it's probably a recognition of not like of the power

like obviously you know composers have always demanded or like earned respect among teams like everyone has always realized that music is a huge part of setting tone and stuff but I think it's maybe more of like a recognition of the extent to which that can stand alone as its own sort of experience or its own thing like I listen to so much I would would never get any work done if i didn't listen to fucking nine hour jrpg soundtrack mixes it's all i listen to when i do game dev um and i think that yeah i don't know maybe it's just like more of a recognition that there's a hunger for that or that it's

like a a valid form of of media to consume because like i said it's like yoko shimomura has always been people were like oh my god she's amazing and she makes amazing music um but maybe yeah i don't know i guess what they're sort of alluding to is that there is more of on like the side of these companies that there's more of a recognition of that as a saleable commodity or that it's a marketable thing i think that the prestige has always been there but the the shift has been more on like the commerce side i guess that was a me thing because i like growing up i never really like i i didn't play

a whole lot of video games for being totally honest like before age 10 i played like donkey kong or diddy kong racing like i we didn't have a ton of money so playing video games was like yeah we're coming back to the car racing, baby.

It always goes back.

We didn't have a ton of money or time for video games.

Like it was it was a rare thing for me.

So by the time I reached that point where I cared about them more significantly, you could already buy soundtracks and like there were already so I didn't even make that connection.

But no, I think I think it's not so much that there are soundtracks.

I think it's that they are they are producing.

Yeah, they're releasing these soundtracks beforehand.

And I think the the reason like I think Jeremy's sort of right on the artistic side and I think the boring commerce side answer that I would give is I think in game production the music stuff is often quite ahead of other aspects of the not necessarily but like certainly in a lot of games we focus on over the years the music has been done ahead of time or at least parts of it have or at least it's like sometimes studios use it almost as like a tone setter almost like concept art or mood boards and stuff so I think this is sort of a smart way of creating a really repeatable marketing asset that people

get to enjoy now years before or months before the game comes out because like a trailer somebody's going to watch it once perhaps twice you know and then they're thirsty for news on the game but if you're able to just like give them a chunk of the soundtrack that's that's doing a lot for like like like they said about the the mind share for the for the game replaced like that's kind of smart it's like you know how many people are listening to the Hades 2 soundtrack and still haven't played it you know they're waiting for that 1 .0 yeah I think there's also I guess there has been sort of a cultural

shift as well because I think that uh if I think back about the relationship to between video game music and like promotion of games it often felt like the promotion of a game would use music that wasn't from the game itself like you would get the fucking gears of war mad world trailer they wouldn't play like this you know gary jules making bank off this game man yeah i don't know maybe it's more of a recognition of like i i don't think game music is like i don't think it's like it used to be so like bad or boring or simple or whatever and now it's so good i think it's more just a recognition of game

music isn't just like this background tone setting thing that's that's like wallpaper that it is its own sort of like premiere thing um because i mean go listen to the super mario rpg soundtrack to highlight yoko shimamura again it's like fucking it's mind -blowing like there's crazy compositions on there um and i it's one of the most memorable things about that game for me but uh yeah i'm trying to i should look up a trailer for super mario rpg and see if they used that fucking bizarre overworld theme because i feel like they might have i wonder if it also like in a way justifies the cost of of getting

getting you know a good producer on to to make the soundtrack if you can add it as part of the marketing budget like that really yeah helps i think to to like it's smart it's a smart way of yeah of spinning out you know you know the way they just love adding new releases like you know oh we got our we got our you know our pc launch and then our switch launch and then our da da da and our early access and then our da da da like this is another beast that marketing gets to have and that you know people will talk about and share the links of it like even if you don't play the thing you know it's

also a very it's it is a shortcut to like emotional connection yes music is so fucking powerful and evoking a sense of place and emotion and memory that like if if the music comes out a month before the game when it's in a weird sort of like reverse action you'll play the game hear the music and be like i remember this and it's like no you're playing this for the first time you're like you're feeling nostalgia for a game that you're experiencing for the first time um so it's sort of like psychological priming to have an emotional connection to something and so much of games assets is like they

are terrified to share before games come out because stuff changes you know god those spider -man puddles you know like so if if there's stuff that's still getting tweaked you know it's probably not going to get tweaked or if it does get tweaked a lot of people aren't going to notice is the soundtrack i bet it's one one of the most like in a lot of productions and probably if they keep doing this increasingly so it'll be one of the the first complete aspects of a game during production and then it's just like yeah why not why not stick it out there you know you're not going to sell it unfortunately

music is worthless now because of streaming you know not artistically worthless but just in terms of cost but then also like yeah maybe that's how you probably sell some more is you give it out for free and have the vinyl or the cd or the or whatever it is weird it is a good question because it's sort of like a more recent thing as well i feel like this one is and then uh we have one more this is uh reese wrote in an indie game recommendation hey guys just a quick shout out for an indie game that i think you guys might dig it's called eric shome the stolen dream and it's a narrative focused isometric

stealth game i think danny in particular might like it as it's kind of like a mimimi uh game oh cool but with way more emphasis this on storytelling it's by what looks like a new swedish developer named river end games and i haven't seen anyone talking about it at the time of writing it has less than 200 reviews on steam 94 positive which feels way too low for how great it's been so far there's a demo on steam that'll give you a good feel for it it's also worth mentioning that looks absolutely stunning which is a nice bonus i hope you check it out and like it enough to get the word out this looks

fucking great yeah i played the demo for this during next fest uh the most recent one it was uh yeah it was was really good I think it's uh the mini comparison is apt in the perspective and the way that you play it the characters have or like patrolling guards have vision cones that I think you can see I can't quite remember played a lot of demos uh and they're they walk back and forth they have patrols you solve puzzles by sort of distracting them out of the way to to stealth and there are moments where um you could do a little bit of exploration but it's not to the same level as a a meme game

where you have like some degree of stealth puzzle solving at least not in that demo uh maybe in the full game it gets a little bit deeper but they started showing off some of the mechanics and it was sort of like distract the guard and they go over here and i'm like okay and then later it was like distract the guard and they can go over here and i'm like yeah we did that already uh so it's it's not a bad thing it's just that comparison is sort of limited uh it's still really good don't get me wrong like they're right it looks fantastic and the voice acting was good um and the puzzles are nice

but it's very linear uh and and straightforward in a good way i think they do a lot with that linearity so it's it's yeah very well made i think it is very impressive looking at the very least it's um yeah it looks gorgeous i was gonna say it reminds me of victor antidov's work and then i went down to the first steam review and they said this reminds me of victor antidov yeah rest in power yeah it looks it looks gorgeous it has a sort of a a bit like a commandosy feel maybe kind of look especially with the era maybe you know the world sort of looks a bit that way i'm going to check this out it

says they if you played a demo that the they do the the beautiful work of making sure that if you play the demo and you buy the game that it continues the um the save game so i'm i'm i'm going to check this out today thank you so much for the the recommendation um hey while we're uh r .i .p .ing people ozzy osbourne wash no yep ozzy died you're kidding uh they just posted about it in the discord oh my god he just did his his last gig like a month ago yeah man i'll be honest that is the most and least shocking yeah thing that guy's been a guy that guy seems like he was he was having a rough time of her

for a long long time for most of my adult life 76 there you go god that's crazy he did his last gig like a couple weeks ago yeah yeah like sitting down did you see it he was like he had his chair and everything and singing a crazy train damn there you go rest in power he's eating bats in in hell or in heaven he's like the he's shocking everyone in heaven by doing things you would expect in hell can you believe it they let me in can you i was gonna say i thought jesse was gonna throw when he said rest in peace uh i specifically got it because jeremy mentioned it but ask iwata the book opens with this insane

tribute about how iwata passed away did we do we have a time quick second so jeremy can plug i wanted to let's talk we have a lot this week so i was like we can push it to next week because it's not it's not pertinent at the moment but uh um yeah yeah that's uh that's that's wild yeah any big black sabbath fans here or it kind of was a bit outside of my wheelhouse i like sabbath i like i used to listen to a lot on sabbath like in high school and stuff there you go there you go ozzy osbourne anyone else uh i love how current we are anyone else dead is that who else is yeah who else is dead let

me google that real quick doug stanhope used to have a uh he used to have a running like hollywood death lists like like betting game oh yeah you could buy uh get get options on on who was gonna to kick the bucket next there you go that is crazy they did like his last concert and i was like i'm done that's it yeah nothing else to live for i'll just bounce out um cool beans all right thanks for the emails there frank uh podcast at noclip .video um all right what else we got sorry i threw off the flow i killed i killed the whole thing you know yeah exactly we're all just bummed now that that ozzy's

uh ozzy's gone um a couple of videos hit crew this week uh jesse's summer games um recommendations five fantastic indie games ideal for summer go check it out and his massive fingers on that steam deck and we also got a kaizena factory story an indie recommendation video for that there should also be one up at time of recording for wheel world real world speaking of uh the front men who are no longer with us i guess damn um we also have the battlefield 3 video uh great job on that as well uh jeremy um our battlefield 3 video is up for uh up on the the main noclip channel we also have a early access

for the second video in our our series how games are made it's all about trees you want to know about trees in video games yeah trees jeremy exactly trees back to that sorry i don't want to get us taken off youtube now i'm now i'm very conscious of the drug thing you've just done yeah the bot is going to scan you doing that um smoking weed gesture and it's going to that'll be the thing not the mention of specific illicit great no it's uh it's it's what you just done did there um so thanks for that uh dead website patreon .com slash noclip if you'd like to support us we have been blacklisted from youtube

and we'd really appreciate it the bonus pod all about minecraft the minecraft movie is also up on a on a patreon and like i mentioned earlier i was on the latest episode of attach your resume the podcast which is all about sort of it's all about people who run businesses and media stuff stuff and um if you want to go check that out i'm on there and also i was on an episode of michelle franklin's legends and lectures which is a podcast i love listening to but is predominantly about his history and stuff and which had me on to talk about video game history which was uh good fun as well so doing

the circuit i'm gonna play some eric eric schulman the stolen dream though uh see how that one goes uh what are you guys up to for the rest of the week frank what What are you doing except for DDR on it?

Getting deeper and deeper into Death Stranding 2, which I love, but I'll talk about it next week.

But yeah, Death Stranding 2 is incredible, and I'm dying to play more.

And honestly, I might try to go to another round one today.

Now I've got to check out the Mission Viejo round one.

Actually, Comic -Con is in town Thursday.

They announced former stardom wrestler Julia is going to be doing a meet -and -greet and at a panel for WWE action figures.

So I'm going to see if I can sneak into Comic -Con and meet Julia.

and onomatoguchi is also doing two shows in town so one in san diego and one in fullerton so i'll be uh seeing onomatoguchi again for like the 20th time i don't know uh but i'm yeah so a lot of stuff happening chip chin and all the way home jesse what do you have to uh it's my wife's birthday celebration this weekend we're gonna go to uh yeah she's 30 big 30 uh we're gonna go to uh korean barbecue she wanted to go to an authentic one in the area so that'll be fun I've been there before without her.

Sorry. So now I'm taking her and I have to pay.

You're doing Recon.

Recon. Yeah. I was making sure it was good, babe.

I want to make sure it wasn't poisoned.

And I have Memories of Murder at the library.

Oh, they have the Criterion Collection version.

I've seen it before, but they have the director's commentary on there that I haven't heard before and an older a redoing of an older.

I don't know how the hell they described it.

but it's like an old version of one of his movies um that like he did a different intro for or something it sounded really interesting so i want to check that out yeah dude i was recently thinking i need to like get a dvd i need to get like my because all my dvds are pal and they're in ireland but like i should start getting ones that have good commentaries on them yeah i miss doing commentaries man i feel like uh i i listened to the one for vanilla sky like 100 times because i had a that was all i had that was the one dvd i had for being on who's on it is it tom the director and his wife who i

believe is the uh musician or one of the composers or is just a musician um and she's like playing guitar half the time and he's like man penelope cruz is so hot in this scene i'm so glad we hired her to be in this movie wow uh it's good though it was interesting i learned a lot about uh that movie which is okay it's pretty good i watched it again recently it's fine it's a weird movie yeah it's got that face mask thing right isn't that i think takes his face off exactly cameron crowe directed go check it out folks the hottest movie go check it out go get your sit in your d -box and i prefer the original

abuelos ojos oh wow look at this look at this guy jeremy what are you gonna do are you having a little bit of waves are you watching waves rancheros today in honor of top crews uh the desert of vanilla sky uh no i um i've been been working on a game and i made the entire thing with photon as the net code but uh in case more than 10 people play it when it comes out i don't want to pay photons fees so i'm porting the entire thing over to a mirror and steamworks api so oh nice going to be deep in the net code this week are photons fees unreasonable they're not unreasonable it's just that i am cheap

um hey hey let papa gabe pay for it that's true if you're yeah i mean if you're paying 30 percent of what you make on steve you might as well use that fucking steve works api am i right get that fucking nap punch through um yeah no it's like it is a i am working on a larger more conventional game but this is a weird little art game so i don't expect it will have a uh a huge audience or anything but uh yeah so you know if you're making a game that's like two bucks on steam it's like i don't want to pay server fees for it or anything it's a good point yeah make sure you get 15 off on launch when you

do yeah that's true it'll be like a dollar 65 it is it is a game that is inherently two player though you can only play with another person so i'm thinking it'll be like two bucks but maybe sell like uh two copies for three so you can give it to a friend yeah yeah i'll update you guys later uh on it this summer i'm hoping to get it uh get it going and what's what are you doing two players is a glory hole what's the it's called glory hole it's called buckshot glory hole and you sit across from somebody you sure it's buckshot it's a god damn it it's called cumshot roulette oh my god you can bleep

that thanks for listening we'll see you next week sorry michael we should do a feature on on all of the um nsfw games on on steam oh i've got everything you activated them check out rants check out you know i feel like you would have to play like a big fan incest games to do that feature i don't know i a few uh last year or two years ago i bought a couple of them just to see what was up and i have just a sure likely story they're all the same they're all just like weak narrative and then like you end up yeah you just go on dates with people yeah yeah that's they're all the same they're all at least

maybe i need to play some more i have them all here i think they have them i have them in my hidden uh jeremy has a has um um what's it called again um balatro in his hidden games he was talking about last week i've got it's all the porn games in balatra worst list exactly yeah i feel like the only like porn adjacent game i've ever played was just like new grounds games back in the day that were like dating simulators and you're like oh this is interesting and then an anime girl would take her shirt off and you'd be like oh Oh, all right.

In my Pachinko research last week, I did a full playthrough of Pachinko Sexy Reaction, which is a 1998 Pachinko game.

Wow. Yeah, you keep playing, and every round they change into different costumes.

You said it's called Pachinko Sexy Reaction.

Yes, Pachinko Sexy Reaction.

And there is an arcade in Tokyo that I've been to where there is a section where it's all the horny gambling games.

And so there's Strip Majong and Pachinko Reaction.

there's these arcade cabinets where people are playing it and seeing pixelated uh arcade games so it's a delation yeah yeah so that's that's such a dopamine two for one is like that's like mcdonald's french fries with morphine in them you know what i mean like it's like gambling and sex um i have uh the game that i played how many hours off by four hours of helping the hotties it was called um and also in this hidden uh collection of games i have the battlefields 2042 open beta so that shows you sort of how ashamed i am to have played that as well i guess um there you go upcoming feature on whatever

we call this channel if we ever launch this channel we're just oh yeah you wanted to have a conversation about that but uh yeah we've uh we've done enough this week i'm worried about those weeks where we don't have anything like we had last the week before last i was like oh no we've done the chat about so we'll uh we'll get some of that stuff in there yeah soon enough thanks for hanging out folks patreon .com noclip go check out all the stuff on our two channels and we'll see you again next week bye Thank you for watching!

[Game Analysis, DDR Revival, and Indie Spotlight: No Club Podcast Episode 237]-[Wheel World, Dance Dance Revolution, Lovely Lady RPG]

📋 Summary

Navigating Modern Gaming and Personal Well-being

The Resurgence of Dance Dance Revolution

Indie Spotlight: Lovely Lady RPG and Wheel World

The Satisfaction of Destruction: DK Bonanza

Technical Friction in 'Split'

Closing Thoughts

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript