transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:20] Hello, everybody, and welcome to a new episode of The MinnMax Show, Plays About Games, Friends Getting Better. I'm Ben Hanson, joined by Jeff Marchiafava. That's me. Choo-choo. We're joined by Kyle Hilliard. Heyo. Joined by Jacob Geller.

Speaker 2:
[00:34] Is this the companion podcast to the Leo Winn Show?

Speaker 1:
[00:37] That's right. Check out New Show Plus if you're confused. We got a hell of an episode for y'all. We are talking about Saros, the new PlayStation game from Housemarque. We're gonna be unpacking that in a big way. We're talking Vampire Crawlers, a true follow-up successor to Vampire Survivors. Talking a little bit about a game that Jacob and I got to go see in Spain. We're like, oh, we should really talk about the game itself instead of just the MinnMax Spotlight that's gonna be coming out next week or early May. But Virtue and a Sledgehammer, we're gonna be talking a little bit about that. And then Deven McClure is gonna be joining us and we're talking Tomodachi Life, Live in the Dream, the first of, I hope, several discussions about that weirdo Nintendo game. We're talking Titanium Court from the co-director of Consume Me. And then back after the show, some wonderful community questions, people submitted over there in Patreon World. This is, this is fun. I love tackling new IP on the podcast. I think it's even more fun because we're like, you know, obviously pre-recording this. And so I don't think anybody knows what anybody else thinks about Saros at this point. Is that correct?

Speaker 2:
[01:43] I've been messaging a bunch of people who I know are working on reviews, just being like, what did you think?

Speaker 1:
[01:48] Tell me the review story.

Speaker 3:
[01:49] Jacob and I have been messaging, but I think you've, which I appreciate, Jacob, you never asked me like what I thought. And I didn't want to get your thoughts either while I was working on the review.

Speaker 2:
[01:58] No, we've just kind of been like, I'm this far. Are you this far?

Speaker 1:
[02:01] Awesome.

Speaker 3:
[02:02] Here's a picture that's relevant to one of the bosses.

Speaker 1:
[02:05] Interesting. All right, Saros, codes provided by PlayStation here, we should point out. Jeff and I have been playing a bit of it. And then Jacob and Kyle, have you both finished it? Or where are you at with Saros?

Speaker 2:
[02:14] Yeah. True ending finished it.

Speaker 3:
[02:17] I think we're just we're discussing before we started that we got the epilogue ending. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[02:21] All right, Jacob, how are you feeling about it? Crack that seal, baby.

Speaker 2:
[02:25] It's like it's a too big thumbs up from me with the caveat that if Returnal is one of my favorite games ever, this is a. Interesting sophomore effort that doesn't quite like blow it out of the water.

Speaker 1:
[02:44] Interesting, you know, like you're that high in Returnal. Good Lord.

Speaker 2:
[02:48] Oh, yeah, I mean, it's like Returnal. I loved when I played it. And then every year that goes by, I'm like, damn, I think I like Returnal even more than I did originally. Like, it just kind of continues to grow in the mind. And I want to say it's very possible that that will happen with Soros as well, because this is like a really complicated game, narratively, and it's like hard to finish it a day ago and be like, and here's what I think. And so like, I'm really looking forward to the post-release discussion where I get to start finding out what everyone thinks of the story.

Speaker 1:
[03:23] Because it's kind of mystery box puzzles, slowly uncover layer after layer type of thing.

Speaker 2:
[03:28] It's very mystery box, but...

Speaker 3:
[03:30] Yeah, it's existential, right? It's not very straightforward about anything, frankly.

Speaker 1:
[03:36] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[03:37] Except the straightforward fact that the running and shooting in this game feels about as good as it has in any video game.

Speaker 1:
[03:44] Hell yeah. You move so fast in this game. It's the same thing with Returnal. Like the first time I got my hands on the sticks and just move the characters, like, whoa, especially like for the more like cinematic, you know, narrative sequences in the beginning. Like, oh, that's right. My default speed is just Sonic the Hedgehog here.

Speaker 2:
[03:59] And actually, I think a really nerdy Returnal thing that I'll point out right off the bat is in Returnal, there's actually a setting that you could turn on called called auto sprint, which would just set you sprinting all the time. And it was like I told everyone playing the game, you need to turn that on. That's the speed the game is supposed to be played at. And in Saros, there is no setting, you are just at auto sprint all the time.

Speaker 3:
[04:23] You can hold down L1 to go even faster when there aren't enemies around. Which is like, I didn't get the in-game tutorial for that until very late, but I did, I read through all the tutorials like early on, and that was like kind of like a tip. It's like you can hold L1 and go even faster sometimes.

Speaker 2:
[04:38] So if 60 miles an hour isn't fast enough for you to run, you can also run at like 90 miles an hour.

Speaker 1:
[04:43] His legs are just so beefy. Kyle, where are you at overall with Saros?

Speaker 3:
[04:47] I love it. It's really good. It's like an early game of the year contender for me. Narratively, yeah, I'm with Jacob in the sense that I'm not as taken with it as I was Returnal.

Speaker 1:
[04:58] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[05:00] I was not as emotionally invested in Saros narratively as I was Returnal, but like separating it from Returnal, which it's not a sequel, but it is mechanically a sequel. Like yeah, I mean, the gameplay is just stellar. And it's one of those things that will make it hard to go back to Returnal. Sort of the big change of like the projectiles kind of to a certain degree, you're still mostly just trying to get away from them and dodge them. But there is a new level of like absorb the blue ones, counter the red ones, and then mostly dodge the yellow ones. Like even the counter, I kind of didn't really embrace until I was pretty deep into the game. But yeah, it's just, it feels, I don't even know if I would say it feels better than Returnal, but it feels great. And those sort of options of like the way you deal with projectiles, to me makes it a more, it's like easier, sounds negative, but it is more manageable. And man, I love permanent upgrades. Like I just love that system. I love that even a bad run, you can get a fair bit of upgrades. And when you have a stellar run, you can get like dozens of upgrades at once. And it is super satisfying to just like build out that list. And like, yeah, so like even if the story and the narrative structure doesn't quite hit as hard as Returnal did for me, I'm loving Saros. Like for my Game Informer review, I gave it a 9.25. Like I really like it a lot.

Speaker 1:
[06:30] Yeah, it's so interesting because like right when the game boots up, to have a publisher like Sony and PlayStation here releasing their take on a big budget rogue, I think it's a fascinating experiment, especially since they purchased Housemarque since Returnal release now. You'd be like, OK, this is what it looks like when one of the biggest publishers in the world takes a big stab at a rogue light. And specifically, I think it's so fascinating like their messaging. You know, the fact that like when this game was first revealed, the tagline was like, come back stronger. You know, it's like it's a rogue light, but like there's progression here. And then even like in that messaging thing right out of the gate, right when you boot up the game, it's like, hey, just so you know, you can save mid-run here. You can shut down your system. Because it's like the two big things, it feels like for Returnal, they're trying to head off at the pass, which is interesting messaging wise.

Speaker 2:
[07:18] Yeah, it is. I mean, and it's like technically, I guess it is a rogue light, but like it honestly does not feel like that to me. It really feels and even less so than Returnal, because Returnal, you did basically, you would eventually unlock shortcuts, but you had to start at the beginning each time, and you would, you know, if you wanted to beat the third level, you had to get through the first two in some way, even if that was kind of like jumping ahead. This feels basically like a level based game to me, where it's like the game is very generous with like, when you unlock an area, you can then start there, you'll get enough upgrades that you'll be able to beat them. It feels almost that you're just kind of like playing through a sequence of levels that do randomize each time, but like it's not really a run based game in the same way that Returnal was. You know, you're kind of like, you're not putting as much investment in each one, which is also kind of a question mark for me. Like I liked the investment in the run that you got in Returnal, but I think in virtually every way, this is a more approachable game. You know, like the stakes are lower in that you lose less when you die. You upgrade yourself massively. Like, like truly the amount of statistics you're able to bump is enormous. It's a game that like it wants you to be able to get through, which lends it a very different energy than playing Returnal in ways that I kind of, you know, I like, I like hard games. So I think I liked getting my ass kicked a little more. But like, if you bounced off Returnal, I think you should give this one a shot as well, because it just you are intimidated by Returnal. Yes. It like it wants you to finish.

Speaker 1:
[09:19] OK, you say that. But like, Jeff, are you also kind of getting your ass kicked a fair bit? It's not like this.

Speaker 4:
[09:23] It's hard as balls.

Speaker 2:
[09:24] OK, thank you.

Speaker 1:
[09:25] Like, what are you guys talking about?

Speaker 4:
[09:26] I've I've only played like two two hours. I'm still on the first boss. I haven't been able to do, you know, I've done like three runs or something like that. So I so I haven't been able to kind of get that investment going that much. But it like it is. And I very much enjoy it. But that the the idea of it's basically a bullet hell. You have to dodge all these bullets, but now you want to absorb some. But you have to pop your shield in order to do it. Your shield is only going to last a limited amount of time while you're absorbing them. So you want to get in and kind of and then pop yourself out like that is all just take it like there's a learning curve to that that I'm still figuring out. And I like it. I like that makes it infinitely more interesting than so many shooters that, you know, I've played over my lifetime that like this is a I really like shoot them up and bullet hells as well. And so this is a this is a really interesting kind of take on it as was Returnal in the in the first place. But like that is a new, very interesting kind of mechanism that I haven't really seen much in in other.

Speaker 3:
[10:39] Yeah, Jacob, I think you have to be the second boss before you can start messing with the.

Speaker 4:
[10:44] Yeah, I haven't gotten the difficulty slider.

Speaker 2:
[10:47] Yeah. And I will say also just to set expectations. I think the this was and this was also kind of true in Returnal. I think the first boss is harder than like the next three bosses after that. It is a pretty it's a pretty high difficulty spike early on. And then it actually simmers down a little.

Speaker 1:
[11:07] Yeah, I thought it was interesting how it's like in the skill tree. It's like gated by the bosses. It's like, hey, you can make a lot of progress in skill tree. But like, if you're not going to beat that first boss, this is the ultimate roadblock. You need to beat the profit before you can go on into the skill tree and choose different routes and stuff like that, which is cool.

Speaker 3:
[11:21] Yeah, and I'm like I'm not good at Returnal. I actually went back and listened to a little bit of our spoiler, our max spoilers recently just to refresh myself a little. And Jacob, I think you said you had like 30 deaths or something. I had like a hundred. And this one, I looked at my final stats and I was in a much more I felt like a reasonable position because once you do break through that skill check of the first boss and the second boss a little bit, you're getting a lot of permanent upgrades and you're finding the weapons you like to. If you're struggling at all, I would really recommend trying to get the smart rifle, if you can. That thing saved my life often. It's just like a good, you don't have to worry about aiming quite as much. It's a really helpful weapon.

Speaker 1:
[12:06] I'm curious about those beginner tips and stuff too. Like Jeff, I'm still like, oh, that's right, the shield. I think so much of this game is going to be shield absorption of blue bullet management. I don't know how hungry I should be. Should it be like Pac-Man pellets every time I see those blue orbs? I'm like, I got to have those right now.

Speaker 2:
[12:25] It's not that much. I think you might actually be like primarily, and this is actually a thing that I was talking to a friend about with Returnal recently, like your primary goal in when you're playing this should be don't get hit, which sounds like sounds obvious, like, hey, just don't take damage. But it's like, that's actually more, this is not really a game about like trading blows. This is like, you should be not getting hit and that is more important than doing damage to enemies is just like avoiding is your main thing. And I think you should kind of learn how to avoid the attacks first. And then you will start understanding what your opportunities are to put your shield up and absorb things. But like, I think starting out, I would just be like, my goal is to just avoid everything. And then you can start working the shield because it's like the shield, the shield is not a gift. The shield does not make the game easier. The shield actually makes the game harder because it's another thing to think about. And so if you kind of like, if you start playing with the shield after you're confident in avoiding damage, I think you'll be able to use it more effectively.

Speaker 3:
[13:39] When you start seeing red projectiles, which I think maybe begins with the second boss or maybe you see him before then, but just know, which I had to learn, I was putting it off the counter window for like hitting those red ones back is bigger than what you think, like it's also you don't get you don't have the counter.

Speaker 2:
[13:58] It's confusing because in the tutorials, it will tell you that you have a counter, but you actually don't until you get it in the story. I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 3:
[14:06] But yeah, but I'm just saying later, don't be like me. Don't be scared to counter. I just like I ran away from red all the time. And then like at the 60 percent mark, I was like, let me try knocking some of these back. And I was like, oh, my God, there's a game changer.

Speaker 2:
[14:16] Before before we get too lost in the nitty gritty difficulty of the game, I feel like another thing that we should just talk about right away is the the visual design of this game and specifically the environmental art is staggering, like truly in a way where I'm like, how is it possible that this game came out this quickly? It looks like it would have taken 16 years to make these environments like the the complexity and the detail of each environment is is unbelievable. And there are so many more biomes than there were in Returnal that have different styles. It's just like there are a number of times that I was playing this where I was like, is this the most next gen feeling game I've played, which is hilarious because it's like six years into the PS5's lifetime. But like there were things where I was like, oh, my God, look at this thing on screen that they're doing in a way that I have not felt about a game in a while.

Speaker 1:
[15:18] Artistically, just like this size and scope or we're talking like particle effects on the screen. What are you talking about?

Speaker 2:
[15:24] All of the above. You know, definitely just like the level of detail that they're able to push in the environments is crazy. But then like there are a couple late bosses that kind of rewrite your idea of what the game is capable of doing in a way that is very cool.

Speaker 1:
[15:41] That's super cool to hear. Yeah, I mean, because it is certainly going for a mood out of the gate. It's too easy to be like, oh, it's the movie Sunshine, if you've ever seen that. But certainly there's a lot of inspiration and vibes of Sunshine, right? But even in the beginning, like the first time you die and then it cuts to that title screen, and it's just like obnoxiously quick flashes of like the bizarre eclipse and sex scenes and the music is like setting the tone so distinctly. Where it's like, okay, this is, I need to seep into this world here and get used to everything it's doing. But even you're saying this first area, that whole eclipse vibe, you're saying it shakes it up a lot even from that tone?

Speaker 2:
[16:18] Maybe not from the tone, but certainly the style. One of my criticisms of the game, and specifically the game's narrative, is it's kind of like people are going crazy.

Speaker 1:
[16:31] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[16:32] The whole time. Like, you know, it's... Returnal had one character. Like, in Returnal, there was a single character, and she existed at many points in time, and so you would kind of be interacting with her at different things. This game has a lot of characters, but I think one of its weaknesses is that most of what I learned about the characters are, they're going crazy, and that's, you know, I think I'll play it again, and I'm looking forward to seeing if I can, like, find more nuance now that I know the whole story.

Speaker 1:
[17:05] I am right there with you, Kyle, you're in the same boat.

Speaker 3:
[17:07] It's a lot of monologues, you know, about just ramblings about stuff, you know, like the yellow shore. They're really gonna talk about that a lot, and it's just gonna sound a little bit like nonsense, and even with the context, it's still kind of a little bit like, okay, yeah, you've not become a character so much as you've become an indicator of where my mind can go if I'm here for too long, you know?

Speaker 1:
[17:30] I think that's, yeah, that's the thing, is like, I even restarted this game. I was playing for like maybe an hour and a half, and I'm like, the world and the characters and the mystery here is not grabbing me. I think I just need to restart it and pay more attention to the breadcrumbs that they're laying down. And even upon restarting it, it's still a story of space madness, at least the way it starts out, right? And it's that feeling of, don't you understand the mystery of why this twisted place made everybody go mad? I'm like, no, yeah, probably. It's like, I don't think there's, I'm not surprised by anything out of the gate. I'm like, this wacky place made people wacky. It's like, uh-huh. And I'm curious to see where it goes from there, but out of the gate, it's not grabbing me as strongly as Returnal did.

Speaker 3:
[18:12] It's fun to play it back to back with Pragmata because Pragmata is also a story of an astronaut going to a place to collect a very profitable material that you can only get on another planet. And Pragmata is kind of this like joyful, like, you know, I sure do love my robot daughter. Yeah, let's blow up some robots and we'll get some lunar filament where this is like, it's like, no, if we look to the left any longer, like I might shoot myself, you know? It's like that's like the that's that's the two versions of the space. And it's funny because my wife was like, she was she was kind of like, I was like talking about these games. I was talking about Saros and she's like, wait, is that the one with the robot girl? And I was like, no, no, no, that's Pragmata. That's the other astronaut game that I was on the moon for that one. This one I'm on Carcosa. I don't know why you're confused.

Speaker 2:
[18:58] You can air dash in both, but they're very different.

Speaker 1:
[19:01] One has lunar filament, the other has lucinite. I don't know why you're confused. They're completely different properties.

Speaker 2:
[19:07] Yeah, I like I will say that the the story evolves beyond spaces making everyone crazy or it it gains more depth. But it it takes a while to get there like it it you know Ben Ben, you restarting before beating the first boss. I was like, you're not going to find anything new.

Speaker 1:
[19:29] I just wanted to double check.

Speaker 2:
[19:30] It's going to be the same the same thing, you know, and it yeah, it it ends in a very interesting place. But like it it's not necessarily presenting you with thrilling ideas the whole time and the the excitement of progression for me was more look at this new environment. Look at this new boss kind of feeling right.

Speaker 3:
[19:55] I do I do like the ending, though.

Speaker 2:
[19:56] OK.

Speaker 3:
[19:57] Yeah, I don't know how you feel, Jacob. Like I think it's a good conclusion. And I do overall like the sort of opaque mystery of like, you know, an HR Giger planet, you know what I mean? Without a lot of answers. I do like it, but it's just it's hard to not compare it to Returnal, which is like a game that like uses the medium of video games to tell a super compelling and compact story, you know? Where this one's a little broader with more characters. And it's like, I don't know if it really benefits from those editions, you know?

Speaker 1:
[20:28] Yeah, I do like the setup of having just your upgrades in the world be in your base. And it's on a big computer stalactite called Primary that's kind of representing the company. It's like, that's cool to have that be something you're interacting with after every run of like, fricking Primary, here we go, got to talk to this weird stalactite.

Speaker 2:
[20:48] There's a very fun part, pretty much at the beginning, where it's like you find like a teleport pad and you can use that. And then you go back to your base and you talk to Primary and Primary is like, oh, you figured out how to teleport, okay? That is now patented by the company where it's just kind of like it's a very, you know, like like Alien, the Ridley Scott film of like it's space capitalism, a lot at the beginning, you know, like like pretty on the nose. But they get some kind of fun out of just like, yes, it doesn't matter how many people die because this thing is worth one trillion dollars an ounce. So all your lives are worth less than that.

Speaker 3:
[21:31] I was trying to I was trying to remember if in Pragmata, if they define how much something is, how if the Luna film and has a price tag on it. And I was wondering if because the Lucid Knight kind of does, right? There's a little bit of dialogue where they talk about if we can, if we're the first on this, we will be trillionaires or whatever. And I was like, huh, I wonder if some maybe some YouTuber will do the math and figure out what's more valuable, you know?

Speaker 1:
[21:51] You got to do the economy breakdown for sure.

Speaker 2:
[21:53] I do think, honestly. And I say this, being the person in this position, Soros feels like a YouTube analysis kind of game. And I and I say that as both a positive and a negative, like it does feel like a lot of people are going to beat this and be like, I need to watch someone explain that.

Speaker 4:
[22:13] Is that yes, please make that video, Jake.

Speaker 1:
[22:15] Yeah, you're rolling up your sleeves. Are you feeling fired up about it?

Speaker 2:
[22:18] I guess I'm excited to play it again and see if I can tie the threads together more than I could the first playthrough.

Speaker 3:
[22:28] To shout out editor in chief of Game Informer, Matt Miller. He immediately sent me like a wiki link to probably you probably know what I'm talking about, Jacob. The King in Yellow, which is like a pre Lovecraft, Cosmic Horror collection of short stories that like is like a huge like there's tons of references to that.

Speaker 2:
[22:56] If it was Lovecraft, it would be like all the characters were saying, it's just like in that Lovecraft book, like the explicitness with which the King in Yellow was name dropped is pretty crazy.

Speaker 1:
[23:06] And that's like True Detective as well, Carcosa and the Yellow King and all that stuff.

Speaker 4:
[23:09] Yeah. The first thing I thought was like, oh, we're doing Carcosa again. Like is this not just like a layman term that everyone now knows and it feels a little on the head, but that's all right.

Speaker 1:
[23:22] You know, time's a flat circle, Jeff. And what can you say? But again, we shouldn't get past the point again of like, you know, the action is great. Housemarque, they are so freaking talented. I've been such a fan of them for so long. And so just to have, you know, bullet hell done at this level is so cool to see. And even just like, you know, guns having the active reload, hell of a year for active reload, Kyle, with Screamer and Saros, of course, one of the two biggest games of the year and all that stuff.

Speaker 2:
[23:49] But there are not a lot of games that feel like Returnal. And it's cool to see how far it can be pushed.

Speaker 1:
[23:57] Yeah, yeah. And too, it's fun to see a first-party studio like lean this much into the dual sense again. I don't think it's been probably since like Returnal or Ratchet and Clank that I was like, oh my God, this controller. I forgot like the vibrations with every footstep. I guess Astrobot did it too.

Speaker 2:
[24:11] You played Astrobot two years ago.

Speaker 1:
[24:12] Yeah, I guess that's right. I guess Astrobot is the big example. Yeah, yeah. I was just like, oh, that's right. They are really trying to remind you of, look at this rumble feature.

Speaker 2:
[24:19] It's so cool because it's like, yes, you have kind of the, absorbing the bullets charges up your power weapon. And so you fire that by holding the left trigger all the way down and then pressing the right trigger. But each weapon also has a secondary fire and you trigger that by holding the left trigger halfway down and then pressing. And it is like, you know, you feel the click and then you can continue to push it down. And it's like, it's so cool that they basically have turned one button into two buttons. Yeah, you know, it's such a, because it's like, there's a game where you don't want to be like taking your fingers off the sticks to do things. And so it's like, what's just the most compact way that we can fit this all in here.

Speaker 1:
[24:57] Yeah. So thumbs up. Cool. Returnal fans check it out, even if it's maybe not quite at returnal levels for folks. And Kyle Pragmata is still on top for your personal picks this year.

Speaker 3:
[25:08] You know what? I may put Pragmata on top just because of the novelty. Sure. It's a little bit of a like Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild situation, where it's like this is a really good iteration on something I really loved.

Speaker 1:
[25:21] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[25:22] And I love it for that. But Pragmata, despite all the comparisons to the Xbox 360 era, which I think are apt, I was like, this feels new. Like this is like a new thing that I didn't expect to like as much as I did, where Saros meets expectations which were admittedly very high.

Speaker 1:
[25:40] Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[25:41] That's sweet.

Speaker 1:
[25:42] Yeah. It's 70 bucks out there. Not coming to PC. As far as we know, ever. It's just going to be on PS5 here.

Speaker 2:
[25:50] Which is a shame.

Speaker 1:
[25:51] It'd be cool to see a PC.

Speaker 2:
[25:52] This game would feel really good to play on a mouse and keyboard.

Speaker 1:
[25:54] Interesting point. Yeah. But there we go. Saros, I hope to talk about it more. Maybe we can do... Is it a good Max Spoilers thing for a big old spoiler cast for it, or is it too murky for that?

Speaker 2:
[26:02] I think it would be good. Yeah, if we could get some other Returnal, Saros, Syco to come on.

Speaker 1:
[26:09] Yeah, that sounds great. Sweet. Hey, Jeffem, you know what I'm a Syco for, dude? Making you happy, Jeffem.

Speaker 4:
[26:19] Nothing I can say publicly on a podcast.

Speaker 1:
[26:20] Please, sir.

Speaker 3:
[26:22] Oh, jeez.

Speaker 1:
[26:23] Food. Jeffem eating food every day. Food like Hello Fresh. You know, Jeffem, how you're craving a home-cooked meal, but you don't want any of this stress?

Speaker 4:
[26:32] Yes, desperately.

Speaker 1:
[26:34] Well, that's where Hello Fresh can come in and save you. I use it. I love it. Every time we get a box of Hello Fresh at the door, I run around like I'm going to Disneyland and I say, Yippee, we have easy, stress-free cooking on our horizon.

Speaker 3:
[26:48] I run around at 60 miles an hour, leaping between platforms and air-dashing through the air.

Speaker 1:
[26:53] Putting my shield up and rubbing it in the fridge just to absorb as many nutrients as possible. But hey, it's springtime, everybody. Let's choose some new flavors into your gosh darn diet. With Hello Fresh, of course, no two meals will ever be the same. You can choose from 80 plus global recipes every month, including Vietnamese, Moroccan, Caribbean food, and so much more. They say craving shouldn't wait for takeout. Get international ingredients and straight to you. So dinner is always the destination. So Jacob Geller, you specifically, and everybody else listening and watching, you can go to hellofresh.com/minmax10fm. Now to get 10 free meals plus free NutriBullet Ultra Plus 2-in-1 Compact Kitchen System. They say, you might be confused with that. You should know it's $190 value, $189.99. You get that on your third box. So free meals implies discount on the first box. New subscribers only, varies by plan. Disclaimer, you must order the third box by May 31st, 2026. But again, link in the description for hellofresh.com/minmax10fm. Get those 10 free meals and support a great supporter of ours. We appreciate it. All right, Kyle, I know you got to go do some beautiful, sorrowless duties, but thanks for being here, buddy. I'll talk to you later.

Speaker 3:
[28:02] Yeah. Am I clapping? I'll clap.

Speaker 1:
[28:04] Clap, dude.

Speaker 3:
[28:06] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[28:06] Vampire Survivors. The follow up from Ponkle, the developer.

Speaker 2:
[28:11] Do you want to call it by what it's called?

Speaker 1:
[28:13] I would love to. And of course, I'm not going to stutter as I do it. The actual name of this new game is Vampire Crawlers, The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors.

Speaker 2:
[28:23] Get that colon in there.

Speaker 1:
[28:25] Because I feel like there have been so many knockoffs of the game, Vampire Survivors, right? So I feel like they need to make it clear this isn't like something inspired by Vampire Survivors. This is actually like a whole new thing from that team. So let's try and have the words to Vampire Survivors in there, but we need to call it something new. And Jeff, would you say Turbo Wildcard describes your experience with Vampire Crawlers so far?

Speaker 4:
[28:50] Yeah, a little bit. And I've been constantly calling it Dungeon Crawlers, which is the worst version. It's just not a great name. But luckily, that's the worst thing about it.

Speaker 2:
[29:02] I thought it was Vampire Survivors, to be clear.

Speaker 4:
[29:04] No, it wasn't.

Speaker 3:
[29:04] It's also a bad name.

Speaker 4:
[29:05] That became its own thing, yeah. But the game's pretty much a masterpiece. I literally can't stop playing it. It is a terrible game to be playing at the same time as Saros, because Saros is so hard comparatively, at least in the early hours. And this, this is like, this is like Slay the Spire, but you're just going to blast your ways through dozens and dozens of enemies, and it like, you get so overpowered so quickly, and there's so much progression and stuff that they just throw in your face. It feels like a match of Vampire Survivors, but they turned it into a card based game.

Speaker 1:
[29:45] That's funny.

Speaker 2:
[29:46] Yeah, I feel like it's, it's like Vampire Survivors was, I don't want to discount it. A very good game that I played for a hundred hours, but also kind of feels like it was made by accident. You know, just like, what would happen if we just kept putting these numbers higher? Like, oh, it turns out that's a really fun game. Whereas this is like, it's interesting because it's a really deliberate, designed game that is emulating the same feeling as Vampire Survivors, which is a completely kind of chaotic, random game. And so it's like, it's fun to see them recreate that vibe in like, in a genre that just requires way more thought than, than Survivors.

Speaker 1:
[30:30] Yeah, it's funny to think, like I saw, you know, Brendan Bigley, friend of the show, his Wavelength video, where his takes seem to be like, hey, this game is more complex than you think it is. Vampire Survivors, you're just gonna turn your brain off. Like, this actually demands more of you. Like, there's certain things, like, you get a boost from playing cards in certain order and stuff. So it's interesting to hear you, Jeff, from just sitting back in your couch and being like, easy mode, baby.

Speaker 4:
[30:50] I'm thinking of it in terms of a deck builder. Like, compared to Slay the Spire 2, like, yeah, you're gonna do great in this. Part of that is that there is a ton of meta progression built into it that will just, like, you will steamroll things. Just keep doing matches, you will get a ton of coins, you will buy very powerful, like, meaningful upgrades. All of the upgrades that, you know, you'll get ones that, like, you do more damage, you get more coins or whatever, but they're all, like, 20% minimum each time that you buy into them, and you can buy, like, multiple levels of them. I have, like, my base damage is 125% now, just starting out. Like, you're doing more than twice the amount of damage that the game is balanced for, you know, at least, like, in terms of, like, the opening levels that you're going through. So, like, that level of stuff will make it easier than a deck builder that doesn't have that kind of meta progression in it. And then just, like, fighting in this game is inherently, it's, you know, a bit of a facade, but, like, you're going around a first-person view of that kind of, like, retro dungeon first-person crawling perspective. But then every encounter that you get into, you're going to be, you fight waves of enemies, and it's, like, six enemies at a time. You will wipe through them in with, like, maybe one or two cards, and then another six will come in. And so it is that idea of, like, you're taking on tons and tons of enemies. So even if it, you know, it's not, like, a mindless activity, but you're going to be blasting through so many enemies that it just feels like you are, you know, wiping the floor every time you do a run. And it, like, it carves out a very different feeling than most deck builders that are trying to do the slay the spire thing.

Speaker 2:
[32:54] Yeah. Yeah. What's fun is that, like, there are, the strategy in Vampire Survivors, which did exist, was entirely based around which items are you picking up. Because certain items had combinations and it's like, oh, if I get the magic wand and the spell tome, then those will be able to combine into, like, a better magic wand. And those are all still present here, and actually exactly the same combinations as far as I've played, meaning that if you have knowledge of Vampire Survivors, you know, you get that, but you also get, like, the meaningful second layer is what order do you play your cards in? And Vampire Survivors was a game where you didn't hit any buttons, except for, you know, moving. And so, even though it is much simplified from something like Slay the Spire, you know, you have these kind of, like, the game is built around playing lower cost cards first will make the higher cost cards more powerful. And, you know, but around that, you can be like, okay, I'm going to play my zero cost card. It's a whip that does, you know, five damage to everyone. Then my one cost card is actually, you know, a card that's going to draw two more cards. And I've slotted a gem in it that it will also give me more energy. And you could have a bunch of different cards that you could play after your whip. But that one makes sense because it's going to give you more opportunities within the same hand. And so it's kind of it's kind of teaching you how deck builders work in a way that I think something as complicated as Slay the Spire struggles with more. Because it's like Slay the Spire, you have so many options right off the bat that the learning curve is really steep. And this will kind of show you natural pathways of like, oh, you can do this and then this and then this. And once you get into that, then you can start making more decisions about like, oh, I guess it makes sense to try and draw and get this card in my hand, because that would be a good combination with that. So it's like, there's secretly a lot of decision making going on, but it's all so fast and the the feedback is just as good as Vampire Survivors, where the you know, you're constantly getting XP crystals and whatever that like, you're always getting positive reinforcement, but you are given the opportunity to like, to make it more complicated, to think about it more in a way that I'm only, you know, like two, three hours in. But I'm like, this is already providing a more meaningful gameplay experience than Survivors did.

Speaker 4:
[35:34] Yeah, like Vampire Survivors, you just constantly feel like you're winning until you don't. If you lose, if you lose a match in, you know, Vampire Crawlers, which will happen sometimes, it's like everything up to that point, you feel amazing that you're doing it. Okay, you get to maybe a boss or something, you crash out, whatever, you get a thousand gold or whatever, so you go buy more upgrades and then you're ready for the next one. Kind of in the same way that like Vampire Survivors, you can feel like you're doing great until you hit like minute 15 and then like a big wave of enemies that you weren't really ready for can just kind of wreck you. And it's like, okay, well, that's all right. I'm learning from it. I'm going to go buy some more upgrades and then I'm going to come back into it. I think you're right, Jacob. It doesn't it doesn't feel like there's a huge amount of cards. There's not like that upfront cost to like learning an entire deck for building out a deck. Like you're going to be using whips and swords and stuff pretty much all the time. But but they do have like the the combo system is interesting and unique that like every, if you play if you play a card that's one mana up from the last one that you played, it gets buffed and then you have a gem system where you can customize each card basically with other special things and then you you're like the the number of things that you're unlocking. You unlock new characters, the characters from the original game all have kind of a special ability that you have and you have like these tarot cards that also give you like huge huge single item buffs. You can pick one card that you go back into it. And it's like I have one that every any healing, any healing item that I use heals double the amount that it normally does. And it's like when like everything feels like a big swing in terms of an upgrade that you're getting or something. And yeah, that just feels very good. And you can tell there's depth there to customizing thing. It's not it's not that you're going to have a deck of 50, you know, like unique cards that you have to read a description for each one. But it's like you're going to customize each of your cards differently with the gems that you're slotting into and you're going to find these different combinations and then and then you do evolve cards like Jacob was saying of like I take my you know my whip and heart card and now I have a super whip that does way more damage and like each of those also feels like a massive upgrade once you figure out what that combo is and unlock it. And it's just I can't stop playing. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous that they've done it again in a different genre this time.

Speaker 1:
[38:13] That's what that's wild. It's like I'm trying to think of similar kind of spin off things. You look at like a Minecraft legend, something like that, you know, you take any popular game and make a spin off. People like that's a nice experiment. I'm glad the devs got to get that out of their system. Let's move on to the main thing. But it's awesome to have Vampire Survivors be this surprise hit and then for them to try dungeon crawling. And it's like overwhelmingly positive reviews. Seems like everyone's like, yes, you nailed it. Great. You took some design lessons and just actually made some depth here.

Speaker 2:
[38:40] Yeah. And I feel like almost never is the spinoff like, hey, we're going to give you a significantly more designed gameplay experience. You know, usually it's like, hey, you like to Gwent in The Witcher 3? Well, here's a whole game of Gwent. And this is like, hey, you like to Gwent? We made The Witcher 3 around it. Now you get to like think about the game you're playing.

Speaker 1:
[39:04] Right. Yeah, it's so weird. And like, you know, I had to have to them too. You know, there was an interview on Game Business. It's a good podcast that just dropped. And talking about like, that they're technically working on like 15 total projects right now. That's like, you know, games, other things, collaborations, DLC, like that studio over at Ponkl is just branching out across the globe and funding a lot of interesting experiments based on the success. I'm like, yeah, they are getting greedy. This game costs $10. And so tear them down, I guess, compared to the couple of dollars of Vampire Survivors was, but jeez, still crazy. I mean, this is, I mean, we're not talking like Slay the Spire 2 level competitor here, Jacob, right? This is, this is like, Slay the Spire for babies, jump on in, have fun.

Speaker 2:
[39:47] I think I genuinely, I think it just depends what kind of player you are. Like for me, no, but, but I totally acknowledge that like Slay the Spire 2 is just a huge wall to climb to understand the kind of rewards and depth of that. And it's like, you know, it's like, if they released a version of this as an RTS, I'm sure I would play it and be like, this is way better than StarCraft. You know, just because it's like, I'm not willing to like spend the time to get to know, like it's like, there is a lot of skill and talent in making a genre as potentially complicated as a deck builder. This appealing and approachable and playable by everyone.

Speaker 1:
[40:32] Yeah, yeah. It's out everywhere, 10 bucks. Of course, Vampire Crawlers, The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors. All right, I'm gonna jump in. I'm gonna check this thing out too. If you all are giving it such a big thumbs up. Jacob, yeah, we went to Spain. We talked about it a fair bit. We're gonna be dropping the MinnMax spotlight in early May here, most likely for a more thorough look at it. Virtue and a Sledgehammer technically seemed like you were probably the first member of the press to play it just sitting in their apartment.

Speaker 2:
[41:00] You said that and I was like, oh, whoa, I guess that's true.

Speaker 1:
[41:04] Well, it's funny because you were playing it and then Paula came in, a designer and a composer and sound designer and stuff. She came in and she's like, wait, you're playing the game? She feels like, oh my God, it's like a momentous thing. I wish I was here from the beginning. This is a big deal. So the premise, big picture wise from the first trailer and stuff is, you are going back to your hometown and destroying it with a Sledgehammer and uncovering a relationship with your sister and how she has distorted your hometown with robots. And that's the premise?

Speaker 2:
[41:34] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[41:35] Perfect. What did you think about actually playing a little bit with them?

Speaker 2:
[41:39] I, so we should say like pre-alpha, no music, we had the sound effects turn completely off because you were interviewing the team at the same time that I was playing. Very early impression.

Speaker 1:
[41:51] Totally.

Speaker 2:
[41:51] That being said, my impressions were good because it is like, they have previously made basically like pixel art narrative games and then Every Night A Whisper, which was 3D but very limited in scope.

Speaker 1:
[42:09] Many Nights A Whisper.

Speaker 2:
[42:11] Many Nights A Whisper, not every night, just many nights.

Speaker 4:
[42:15] And a majority of the nights.

Speaker 2:
[42:18] You know, this is a fully 3D game and it could be, you know, like if you took the smashing stuff out, it would be essentially a walking simulator. You know, like you could imagine this as not that different from, like, everybody's gone to the rapture or something, or you're just going back to your hometown and kind of seeing how it's changed. Except this has, you know, you have a Sledgehammer and every building you can knock the walls out of and there are these robots that you're kind of running and spacking as well. And it's not complicated. You know, it's not like, what is the game where you're kind of doing heists and it's incredibly destructible?

Speaker 1:
[43:02] Not Tear Away.

Speaker 2:
[43:03] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[43:03] No, no, no. It sounds like Tear Away. Tear Tear Down Tear Down. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[43:08] You know, it's like you're not really thinking strategically of like, oh, I'm going to knock this wall down. So this other one falls down. But they are using the destruction as a narrative device in a way where it's like at some point, you know, kind of like two thirds of the way through what I played. I think Jordi was like, so how are you, you know, how are you feeling? And I was like deeply uncomfortable, you know, because it's like it's very fun to like knock everything down. But at the same time, the game is doing a good job of being like.

Speaker 1:
[43:43] Well, what's going on here, you know, especially because like with the, you know, there's robots around the town and it's like the people who live in that town have been their minds have been put in these robots, kind of uploaded to the grand cloud, right? And so like when the robots are cowering in fear and running away from you, it's like, well, they're not really people.

Speaker 2:
[44:01] And I do like destroying stuff, so I guess I'm going to keep smashing the hell out of the robots have like a cowering position where they're like crouched hand overhead. And then you're like, here comes me and my sledgehammer. And yeah, it's really it's really interesting. It has it has that great. I feel like it's kind of a hallmark of a lot of deconstruct teams games. But like. The world that you're playing in feels pretty different from our world, but often the dialogue will kind of be. Like anachronistically modern, where they will just kind of like talk in a way or reference things that you wouldn't expect. There was one like the my biggest laugh while playing it is I kind of had, you know, you have your hammer and you can do several kind of swings, you know, where it's like you have a medium power one. But if you hold it down, you'll like hold it above your head. It's like, OK, here comes the big power swing. And I was getting ready to knock over a wall of the house. And then I just saw the robot inside say, what is quotes Guillermo del Toro? And then I brought the hammer down and just destroyed the entire last message.

Speaker 1:
[45:15] This robot communicated this theory person. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[45:19] And so it is it's like it's a very they're really good at having this like strange atmosphere, which is like kind of comedic and kind of serious. And there's like, eventually you get to kind of the town's graveyard. And I don't even want to say what happens there, even though they said it's going to be in the demo. But just like I think this is going to be a game of kind of rugpoles of just kind of like, oh, I'm reconsidering the things that have been happening. And, yeah, I think, you know, it's like sometimes there are games that are like, I know the narrative is good, but am I going to be patient enough to just kind of like sit through reading a bunch of stuff? Right. And this is really cleverly subverting that because while you're experiencing a very narrative heavy story, you're also like knocking every building down in the town in a immediate brain satisfying way.

Speaker 1:
[46:13] Yeah, so Jeff, remember how much you enjoyed Many Nights at Whisper? Imagine like that level of writing, but with your favorite gameplay of Red Faction Gorilla, that's kind of like the Red Faction Gorilla. Yeah, peanut butter and chocolate that they have. Have sold. Yeah. And it's, you know, they pride themselves on having moral dilemmas in their games. And like, it is bold, it is weird as hell, you know. You will have surprises going through this. Even Jacob was surprised for the chunk he was playing through.

Speaker 2:
[46:39] Yeah, there is a section where it's you're like you're doing kind of a dialogue sequence and your character is being asked things. And one of the questions is like, and how many times a day do you masturbate? And it has like a bunch of them. And then at the end, you're like, why did you need to know that? And the person's like, I just needed to raise your brain activity. The questions didn't mean anything, but they're asking you all these, like, very uncomfortable questions.

Speaker 1:
[47:06] Spike your brain. So look forward to more about that game coming in the near future, but Virtue and a Sledgehammer is the name of the game from Selkie Harbor and Deconstruct Team. And then look forward to that. MinnMax Spotlight coming soon. I've been editing that, and it's like, the Backstage Pass version is gonna be about 11 hours long. So we filmed a lot, and so boil it down. I'm down to eight and a half hours. So still got a lot of going through for that thing.

Speaker 2:
[47:30] But I really think that, like, if you are interested in making games at a whole, that 11 hour one is going to be so, like, they were so open with us.

Speaker 1:
[47:42] Yeah, yeah, I think it's gonna be fascinating for folks. If you're at the Backstage Pass, you're gonna like that extended version of that travelogue, or sorry, the MinnMax Spotlight that's coming out soon. But yeah, I feel so good about that trip. I don't want to hype it up too much, but it is like, yeah, it's the most insightful looking development MinnMax has ever produced, you know, by far. And I kind of feel like, if you don't like this MinnMax Spotlight, I don't know which one you will like. It feels like this is like the pristine version of the format that we had in mind when we launched it years ago. So I hope you all enjoy that soon. Just like we enjoy hearing from some special guests coming through. Do you hear that magic?

Speaker 5:
[48:16] Oh, we hit the light.

Speaker 1:
[48:17] You nailed it. Don't be self-conscious. Haley MacLean is joining us.

Speaker 5:
[48:22] Hello.

Speaker 1:
[48:23] Hello, Haley. It feels like I forgot to tease you jumping into the show at the start of the episode. So people are going to be pleasantly surprised by you jumping in right now.

Speaker 5:
[48:29] Hello, I'm here.

Speaker 1:
[48:30] She's here and she's joined by one, Deven McClure. Welcome.

Speaker 6:
[48:34] Hi, thank you.

Speaker 1:
[48:35] Gameswriter, you may know her stuff from Polygon, Screen Rant, Give Us the Other Hits. Where else are your bylines spreading across the world?

Speaker 6:
[48:42] I will have more bylines on GameSpot tomorrow and also What Culture Gaming.

Speaker 1:
[48:48] Sweet, awesome. Well, welcome. I'm trying to remember what preview event. At some point, we met.

Speaker 6:
[48:53] Oh, yeah. It was... Hmm. Solid Snake was there. It was like a...

Speaker 1:
[49:02] My dreams?

Speaker 5:
[49:03] This sounds awesome.

Speaker 6:
[49:04] It was like a threefer. I remember it had like the Metal Gear Solid collection and then there were a couple other things there as well.

Speaker 2:
[49:11] Bomberman, SR2, whatever the hell that was.

Speaker 1:
[49:14] And you regaled the table. I made you tell the story again and again. I'm going to make you tell it again here. Jacob, guess who Deven has interviewed on the red carpet?

Speaker 2:
[49:25] Solid Snake himself?

Speaker 1:
[49:27] Very close.

Speaker 6:
[49:27] I wish.

Speaker 1:
[49:28] Your Lord and Savior, of course, Tom Cruise on the red carpet for Mission Impossible.

Speaker 6:
[49:34] He would play a great Solid Snake, by the way.

Speaker 2:
[49:36] I would love nothing more.

Speaker 6:
[49:39] I think he could nail that.

Speaker 2:
[49:41] What did you ask him?

Speaker 6:
[49:43] It was at the Dead Reckoning Part 1 premiere. I only got 90 seconds with him. For the record, by the way, he showed up an hour earlier to the red carpet than everyone else so he could meet all of the fans who had showed up to see him, which was really sick. But I asked him a question because I don't know if you guys have seen Dead Reckoning Part 1, but a lot of it's about this weird evil AI type thing. And he had also just, as he always is, was saying stuff about the importance of the movies and filmmaking and all of that. So I was sort of asking him about AI and filmmaking and that sort of thing. But he could barely answer my question because he was like, I don't want it to be spoilers for the movie. So I was like, that's not fair enough.

Speaker 2:
[50:30] Ben, can I?

Speaker 6:
[50:30] He was really, really nice.

Speaker 2:
[50:32] Can I completely divert the show to tell you about a dream that I had?

Speaker 1:
[50:35] Yeah, but then I'm going to divert it back. But please, lob at me.

Speaker 2:
[50:38] I had a dream two nights ago where we were both, I was hanging out with your family and a nuclear bomb exploded somewhere. And then the conversation we had in the dream, I was like, Ben, do you think the next Mission Impossible will acknowledge that a nuclear bomb exploded in real life?

Speaker 1:
[50:56] As the blast is coming through the windows?

Speaker 5:
[50:59] This is the last thing that you have.

Speaker 1:
[51:03] And I hope that we talked about it plenty. That sounds lovely.

Speaker 2:
[51:06] Yeah, we figured it out.

Speaker 1:
[51:08] Speaking of figuring it out, Deven, I am so perplexed. And I think I lose sleep and I'm not able to dream. Thinking about red carpets and what would you ask? If you had one question for Tom Cruise about dead reckoning. It is such a scary thing. Because I don't know how many mandates you have for, you have to hit this number of views, yada, yada, yada. But it's like, in what world could you have a question that is a good headline, the actor has fun with it, that they haven't been asked before? It is an impossible situation to be put in. And you're like, I've been to your site, you're on red carpets all the time, just you and George Clooney smooching it up, like you're just best buds with all these people. I don't know how you do it.

Speaker 6:
[51:50] It really depends because there is that delicate balance. Like I remember I once worked the Poor Things red carpet and someone I was working with at the time, again, with the A-list celeb on any billing, you have like 90 seconds with the max. So you get like one question, you really have to make it count. And he wanted me to ask Emma Stone about Gwen Stacy coming back to the MCU. And I was like, I'm not going to do that in the brief. I'm sorry, but in the brief time I have with Emma Stone, where it's her wonderful Yorga's Lanthimos film, I am not souring her evening by going like, but what about Gwen Stacy? What do we think about that? Like, I'm not doing that. But other times it is easier. Like I interviewed Matt Damon once at a red carpet. And I just know him as the man from 30 Rock. That's my favorite role, it's him playing Carol in 30 Rock. So I just asked him if he'd ever want to work with Tina Fey again, because I was like, that's a grab. Because he immediately was like, yes, I'd love to. So I was like, Matt Damon says he'd do anything with Tina Fey. So it varies. Sometimes your niche knowledge of 30 Rock characters people have played pays off. Other times they try to make it about the MCU. It's a real mixed bag.

Speaker 1:
[53:17] But it's just like, is it mission accomplished? Mission impossible accomplished? If it gets picked up and it's circulated and is spread, is that the goal? Or it's a failure if my one question is not news?

Speaker 6:
[53:28] It's if we can't get a pull quote news story from it, that we can run separately to the red carpet coverage, then it's not ideal. It depends, though, because sometimes just the fact that whoever it is is talking to us at all is kind of enough. But other times it's like they're not talking about the MCU and people don't really care about this cool new artsy Yorgos Lanthimos film, so he is not involved. By the way, on that red carpet, what I did ask her, it was like our social media roundup question, which was just if you could, because poor things about like her being reanimated, whatever, if you could reanimate anyone from the past, who would it be?

Speaker 1:
[54:08] That's good, yeah.

Speaker 6:
[54:10] So I think like the male lead in that movie, Matt, he's, what is his name? Who's in the MCU? No, the guy who's in the MCU, he's the Hulk.

Speaker 1:
[54:23] Oh, Mark Ruffalo.

Speaker 6:
[54:25] Yes, Mark Ruffalo, why do I think his name was Matt? Anyway, he said he couldn't think of anyone, he just went, ah, Albert Einstein. But then Emma Stone just very sweetly paused for a second and said, my grandfather. I went, oh no.

Speaker 4:
[54:39] Oh dear God no.

Speaker 2:
[54:42] There's a headline, Emma Stone would reanimate her grandfather. Yeah. Albert Einstein.

Speaker 4:
[54:47] I was much better for her grandfather.

Speaker 6:
[54:51] I didn't know it was gonna take that direction.

Speaker 1:
[54:54] Do you like that, if you had to choose between covering games the rest of your life or covering movies, which would you go with?

Speaker 6:
[55:00] Probably games, honestly, because a lot of, like you've said, like I've met Tom Cruise and stuff that I've been, it's so cool to meet them, but I have no, like, emotional connection to Tom Cruise that much. Like I, it didn't, at the end of the night, my soul was not lighter for having met Tom Cruise. But like when I got to, it's probably the feet are hanging you down. But like getting to interview concerned ape of Stardew Valley was like, I'm speaking to a celebrity right now.

Speaker 1:
[55:35] Yeah.

Speaker 6:
[55:36] It's like how they've impacted my life personally. So I think I would have to go with games, but it is really, I do love, especially like the weirder bits of red carpets I've gotten to cover and junkets and stuff like that.

Speaker 1:
[55:52] Yeah. You're truly living the dream. Blap. Just like the Tomodachis are on these wonderful islands. Okay. Haley, you've also been playing the new Wild Nintendo game, Tomodachi Life, Living the Dream.

Speaker 5:
[56:04] It's my first Tomodachi game, which feels weird for me. I feel like I would have loved the series when I was younger. I just didn't get my hands on it.

Speaker 1:
[56:10] It's so Sims adjacent, right? It's just lighter, breezier, more absurd Sims. That's the pitch.

Speaker 5:
[56:15] It's Mad Libs Sims. At the end of the day, this is a Mad Libs game that you're just hoping something really funny happens.

Speaker 6:
[56:22] With no filter at all, which is awesome. Yeah, no filter is great.

Speaker 1:
[56:26] What does that mean, no filter? Just like you can just prompt them to say whatever the hell you want?

Speaker 6:
[56:30] I've been meaning to say some bad stuff.

Speaker 1:
[56:32] Haley, please.

Speaker 6:
[56:34] I have to. There's no language filter because they'll always come up to you and be like, I want to be friends with this other me. What should I talk to them about to become friends? I never say something good.

Speaker 1:
[56:46] Right.

Speaker 5:
[56:47] What are you going to say, history? Like TV shows? No, you're going to say, can I say it? This isn't pew pew bang. I was going to say something I actually made them say, but not worried.

Speaker 1:
[56:57] Do it. I'll bleep it. Go.

Speaker 5:
[56:58] Big fat natties. I want them to talk about those kind of things.

Speaker 6:
[57:04] I think I said a big set of knockers or something. You both said the same thing. Then everyone on my island gonged it over a big set of knockers. I was like, good for everyone. Everyone's happy. Good island. This is a society.

Speaker 1:
[57:17] Unfortunately, Nintendo saw what you entered and they've wanted to delete the game from their servers. It will no longer be for sale because people are working on it.

Speaker 5:
[57:24] Well, that's what they said there a little bit. They're like, we'll give you no profanity, but the sharing capabilities are zero. You can't even send a screenshot to your phone with this game. I've tried numerous times.

Speaker 6:
[57:35] You have to use an SD card. That was the compromise, essentially. You can't share your Miis or any of your creations or any screenshots even from the game unless you have the micro SD in and then you can still load them onto that. But that's like a whole separate process. That's why a lot of the videos you see of the game are people recording on their phone of the game instead because they were just like, people are going to do some messed up stuff. So we're just going to try to tamp down on that a little bit and disable all easy sharing for the game.

Speaker 1:
[58:08] I mean, I guess I'll take that over like extreme censorship if Nintendo is giving me those places.

Speaker 5:
[58:14] Because you can still stream it on Twitch. So you're just putting a weird step in. If I want to do a screenshot, yeah, I have to use my phone. And I just feel stupid when I have my switch out like this and I'm trying to be sincere or something and I'm taking a picture of my screen.

Speaker 2:
[58:30] Also, wasn't it the first day of Tears of the Kingdom when people made the giant flaming penis man and the twin towers? It's like, come on, we've seen it before. We know art.

Speaker 1:
[58:41] Deven, you reviewed this game overall. You've been playing a ton of it.

Speaker 6:
[58:45] I did, yeah. I've been playing it since like around the middle of March. It's not a game that's very bingeable, I will say. It's much more meant to be played in kind of smaller doses. I know some people experience that with games like Animal Crossing. That one I was still able to play for longer stretches, I think, because I was always doing these big projects. Whereas in this, there's not really projects to be done. It's a lot more like a voyeurism sim almost, where you just kind of watch stuff happen on and off.

Speaker 5:
[59:18] It's like a god game in a weird way.

Speaker 6:
[59:20] Yeah, but even like it's a sort of different god game than like the sims and stuff like you were saying, where in the sims you still have to care for their individual needs and kind of have more agency. This you can pluck them up and drag them over to something, you can't go, hey, you're going to date this person. You can hope that they do, but you can't force anything.

Speaker 1:
[59:43] Yeah, like a friend of mine a while ago, she's really into Zelda and stuff on her Switch, but she's like, what other games should I play on my Switch? And I was like, well, what kind of thing are you looking for? And she said, I want the video game equivalent of watching a rerun of Friends. I was like, that is so tough. And I was like, I guess Animal Crossing. And now I realize like Tomodachi Life, I think is the closest you will get.

Speaker 5:
[60:05] To make friends in Tomodachi Life and stuff like that.

Speaker 6:
[60:08] Yeah, I was going to say.

Speaker 1:
[60:09] I mean, that is exactly my strategy where I booted up. I'm like, well, you got to have fun with who you create. You can create your real friends and family. That's an angle. But I was like, I don't know, should I make Pragmata characters? And then I realized that I've been watching a lot of just clips on YouTube of News Radio, which is my favorite old sitcoms from the 90s, like back in 1995. Remember News Radio, JeffM?

Speaker 4:
[60:31] I do.

Speaker 1:
[60:32] Yeah. And it has been super fun where now I'm just creating the entire like staff of News Radio.

Speaker 4:
[60:40] So Ben Hanson put Joe Rogan in.

Speaker 3:
[60:42] Joe Rogan's last.

Speaker 1:
[60:43] That being said, I am looking forward to eventually putting Joe Rogan in because like you want like a big dumb beefcake guy. And it's so good, I think, with sitcom characters in particular, because you're looking for archetypes. You want to be able to take sliders and put them all one way. So if I can just have the Andy Dick character, Matthew from News Radio would just slide it to like full on wacky. And then it gets really darky too, because I'm like making Steven Root in the game. They're like, I got to look up his birthday, when's more Tierra's actual birthday? How old was she when they started filming?

Speaker 5:
[61:13] I'm also looking up birthdays as if it matters.

Speaker 6:
[61:14] Yeah, same.

Speaker 5:
[61:16] Why am I doing that? I even was looking up Sarah's birthday, because Sarah cyber bullied me into putting her into my game. So I put her in and I was like, what's Sarah's birthday? And then because I didn't know it. And I guessed based off an Instagram post, we posted like years ago where she's like, good birthday. And it was October 1st. I was like, I think it's October 1st, that's your birthday. But why did I care that much? I spent like 12 minutes doing that.

Speaker 1:
[61:38] I think it's going to matter. Like when that rolls around, you're still playing the game.

Speaker 5:
[61:40] It's going to matter.

Speaker 6:
[61:41] Yeah. Like I'm putting in fictional characters, but I'm like, it matters when Blair Waldorf's birthday is from Gossip Girl.

Speaker 1:
[61:49] Of course.

Speaker 6:
[61:49] When I put her in the game, because if her birthday is not accurate, you know, it's all bruined somehow, even though it doesn't affect their personality or anything. Like, yeah, doesn't matter.

Speaker 1:
[62:00] Haley, are you enjoying it? What's your level of satisfaction so far with this weird thing?

Speaker 5:
[62:05] It's very fun. I will say probably not as deep of as I was expecting it to be. It's a little more shallow than I thought, but I'm still having a ton of fun of it. Like that, take that comment with a grain of salt. But like, you know, I'm probably a little under 10 something hours in 10, 15, and I'm getting repeat conversations and stuff like that. That's kind of a bummer. But then every so often you get the most insane cutscene when they love like oatmeal cookie and like they part the seas like Moses and they're looking at the oatmeal cookie of the sky. I'm like, this is insane. Like it's worth it for those insane moments every so often. But I also thought it was a little bit weird that it's a game I'd want to stream. But then when I'm playing it by myself, there sometimes is a lot of downtime unless I'm making me's like consistently. And sometimes I don't want to make a me. I just kind of want to watch like a terrarium and just see what they're doing. So I have fatigue on that a little bit. I think I have about 20 me's now. You can have up to 70, but it's like, they have a lot of customization options and I go way too hard and then I get tired because I spend eight hours drawing my dog's face on like a me's face. And I'm like, it's Sable. I put her in and I don't want to make another me for till the next day. But then I only have, you know, it's an interesting balance, but it's not as deep as I thought it was going to be. But the best moments are like, just for an example, I made myself and my partner in there. And I said that we were partners, but the game doesn't seem to have anything that like escalates the relationship. It's just that I have a huge crush on Michael and Michael's good friends with me. And I just keep shoving them together like two Barbie dolls. And I'm like, yes, they will date. It's been hours and they won't date. But then my character said, oh, I think I want to live with Michael. And I said, yes, do it. And so she said, what should I talk to Michael about? And I said, exploring each other's bodies.

Speaker 2:
[63:53] Jesus, Martha.

Speaker 5:
[63:54] So I said, say that to them. And so they do this little thing where they walk up to each other like, let's say the same thing at the same time. And if it matches, they get to live together. And my character went, explore each other's bodies. And Michael said, dictatorship. And then my character goes, I don't think we're compatible. And walked away. And I was like, no. He only knew that word because I taught it to Lemon Grab, who I put on my island, because I wanted an angry Lemon. So he said, what's the thing that you want to talk about with this character? And I said, dictatorship. And I guess Michael absorbed that via osmosis when he talked to Lemon Grab.

Speaker 1:
[64:27] And now it's running amok on your island. He's taking control of the entire island's government.

Speaker 5:
[64:31] Yeah, exactly. He's really he's good friends with the clown. Sorry, that's a swear, but that's his name.

Speaker 1:
[64:36] That's nice.

Speaker 5:
[64:37] And they're having fun. But yeah, like that was so funny that I woke up Michael to be like, look, we might live together watch and we watch like a little TV show. And then when it didn't happen, we burst out laughing. So those moments are so good. And again, it's just like mad libs, right?

Speaker 1:
[64:48] Yes.

Speaker 5:
[64:49] What are they going to say?

Speaker 1:
[64:50] And it's so nice to see, you know, we talked about this, I'd argue on an episode of the podcast a couple months ago of like just weird ass Nintendo, them leaning into like, okay, there's like live action hands coming in every once in a while, like pictures of food and lions and stuff popping up. And even just they know it's a weird thing where it's like it's the right level of weird. It's not too obnoxious with like weird for weird sake.

Speaker 5:
[65:12] Like lol random.

Speaker 1:
[65:13] Yeah. I don't know how Nintendo does that balance, right? But it doesn't feel like that. But even just the opening where the first person you put on the island, they just look at the camera and they go, living the dream. And then like the camera pulls back and then it goes like the title screen as it rotates around like Yoshi's Islands. Like, yes, hit the note out of the gate of like, this is going to be a surreal experience for everybody.

Speaker 5:
[65:35] It's kind of interesting how Nintendo's leaning. Like, this is their version of live service games. They've been doing it more and more like Animal Crossing, Pokopia. This is like they want you to check in once a day. Yeah, they don't want you to sit and play this for eight hours. You need to come once a day. And they're encouraged to like, if you come back tomorrow, you'll have a different mystery bag to buy in a different house thing to buy or whatever. It's just it's funny that that's their version of live service. And they're so hard on it, especially this last year.

Speaker 2:
[66:02] Yeah, wait, isn't Pokopia the ultimate? You're sitting in playing this for eight hours game.

Speaker 5:
[66:07] Yeah, but it still encourages me like even still today, even though I'm not playing it as much, I still log on to buy my two recipes a day.

Speaker 2:
[66:14] Like play eight hours every day.

Speaker 5:
[66:18] At least log in or something. It's just yeah, they're trying to get me onto the Switch platform, I suppose, so that once I do my dailies on Pokopia and Tomodachi Life, maybe then I'll play Leaf Green. I don't know what their logic is. But you can tell it's like a strategy that they're really pushing on now.

Speaker 6:
[66:34] It does that same sort of Nintendo login initiative as well, where you also get punished for not showing up. Not hugely, but like in Animal Crossing, you would get more weeds and stuff. And in this, it's just you become severely out of the loop. Like I had to step away for about a week because I was traveling and I was just like not on my Switch at all. And when I had left, Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec and I Spice had just gotten married. It was a beautiful ceremony. But when I came back, one of their sentiments towards one another was like not getting along, and the other was trying to make it work. And I was like, what happened to Ron Swanson and I Spice? Because it doesn't tell you. Like there's a news station in the game that will give you random updates about the island, but it's always just like made up Nintendo absurdist nonsense. It's never like, they're on the rocks because of this. So you miss out on the drama of your own island also by not logging into it.

Speaker 1:
[67:39] Right. I think that's interesting for strategy, just like keeping people coming back again and again. It's a little bit like, it seems like, you know, what even Netflix and companies that were dumping all the episodes at once to let you binge it. It's like it's actually better if these things are in the conversation for weeks or months and if we can space this out a little bit. And to have that approach, clearly it worked for Animal Crossing, you know, the last one that came out. And so with this, if it's just like, we just get people to check in, share a silly story like once a week for the next couple of months, like that's way better marketing than just binging this game and being done with it.

Speaker 5:
[68:13] It feels like being on an inside joke, but you're only joking with yourself. Right. Right.

Speaker 1:
[68:19] Yeah. Backstage Pass Chat asked a pivotal question of just, is this a game or a show?

Speaker 5:
[68:25] It's a game. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[68:27] Right?

Speaker 5:
[68:28] Yes. I agree with Evan. Yes.

Speaker 1:
[68:29] Okay. Yeah. You know what it is. There's weird surprises. I don't think I even played the 3DS one. And so the series started back in 2009 on the DS, and then they made a sequel for the 3DS in 2013. The weird thing is, they released a Q&A, a dev Q&A on Nintendo site about it. And it's like, you know, the team's been around for a long time. And then Sakamoto, who's like the Super Metroid director and produced a ton, I guess he was really pushing for this. He's a big fan of the series, has been a producer on it for a long time. But it's weird to be like, oh, the director of Super Metroid willed this game into existence again, just to make sure Nintendo is staying strange, apparently. But there are so many surprises in this thing that jumping into the series, I didn't expect pretty early, and they give you just a spray, and it's called kid-o-matic. It's like, oh, if you spray this on your mee, it'll turn them into a kid, but then they can only fall in love with other kids, just so we're really clear on what's going on with this kid's spray in the game. Does it keep that pace up of just introducing a consistent spray of weird stuff?

Speaker 6:
[69:35] Kind of. So you have a wishing well in town where when you make your mee's happy, whether it's giving them food or hooking up with another person or whatever, you get what are called warm fuzzies, which are distilled into this golden liquid that you then pour into the wishing fountain. It'll level up your island each time and you get a wish that is incremental unlocks that are in a bunch of different sections. So there's decor for your island, there are quirks that you can give to your mee's, there's level up gifts that you can give them that are like little activities they can do. So in that way it is sort of like incremental and like drip feeding you sort of unlocks and that sort of thing. And you get some new buildings around town and that kind of thing as well. But yeah, not quite as majorly probably. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[70:33] So Haley as a fresh newcomer, this is available on Switch too by the way, would you recommend people checking out if they're a fan of The Sims? Like are you feeling like it's worth the money going into this thing?

Speaker 6:
[70:44] Yeah, that's the other thing.

Speaker 5:
[70:45] It was like a hundred and something Canadian when I bought it, which feels insane for what it is. It gives it gives $40 energy to me. Yeah, a very solid $40 and it's a lot of fun. So the fact that it was over a hundred when I taxes and everything, I was like, Jesus, that's insane.

Speaker 1:
[71:02] Yeah, it's 60 in the States here.

Speaker 5:
[71:04] Yeah. So I take that with a grain of salt. Must be nice. So it's essentially...

Speaker 2:
[71:09] Enjoy your health care.

Speaker 5:
[71:11] Yeah, I know. Every time I chirp about it, I'm like, here come the health care comments and they're so warranted.

Speaker 6:
[71:15] I'll shut up. My bad.

Speaker 5:
[71:19] I would say, yeah, I really like it. It's just that tough thing where I'd be like, get it on sale, but it'll never be on sale because it's Nintendo. Maybe try the original DS one first. And if you really vibe with that one, maybe try this out afterwards. Because now this has me wanting to play, like, because 2009 gives the era where this type of humor was at its peak. We were talking about Tumblr off the episode of, it gives Tumblr vibes of, it's a little random, but not cringe, I think, based off the scenes I've seen of the original. So it kind of makes me want to boot up my Thor and play it on that a little bit almost, like revert back.

Speaker 1:
[71:52] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[71:53] Yeah, but it's really fun. It is really fun. It's just expensive.

Speaker 1:
[71:56] Right. Deven, you're enjoying it to the point that you say jump on in?

Speaker 6:
[72:00] I agree that it's giving like $40, especially because it's not bingeable. And I have had a lot of the instances where like when a me says they want to make friends with another me, the conversation, it'll be with whatever variable you plugged into it of what they should talk about. But it's kind of the same structure. A lot of the time, you're seeing a lot of that same cycle. Right, right. Not constantly, but by the fifth time in a day, when a me says they want to be friends with someone else, I'm like, here we go again. Like, it's going to be the same conversation that I'm going to see again, which is fine, but in smaller doses. And for the price it is, I kind of want a game that I can play a lot. Maybe it's a game you can play for a long time, which is fair.

Speaker 1:
[72:52] Yeah.

Speaker 6:
[72:52] But in those incremental over a very long period. So maybe if you parsed out like the dollars per day, it would be even out after a certain point.

Speaker 1:
[73:00] If you want to be that gross of a consumer, yeah, no. Well, there we go. Tomodachi Life, Live in the Dream. I know Kelsey's playing it, so I'd love to check back in and see how she's feeling about it.

Speaker 5:
[73:09] She feels like the person who knows if it would be a good entry point or not, because she's played so many other ones, right?

Speaker 1:
[73:14] Yeah. Yeah, it's her jam, for sure. You know what my jam is, Jacob Geller?

Speaker 2:
[73:21] Affordably priced meals?

Speaker 1:
[73:24] No, you fool. Run in a business, man. But it's not all kisses and rainbows. It's no Tomodachi Life.

Speaker 5:
[73:34] I hope not in a business. Our business runs on kisses.

Speaker 1:
[73:40] But it's complicated, Jacob. It's fun to start and then as Square points out, it's complicated because you're juggling payments, inventory, staff, scheduling, online orders, reports. Somehow you're still supposed to serve customers, they say. Square brings all that into one place. Whether you're selling lattes, cutting hair, detailing cars, running a design studio, Square helps you run your business without running yourself into the ground like Wile E. Coyote, JeffM, Haley MacLean, Vampire Survivors. It's just so nice to have all your payment, everything, payroll, inventory, online orders, just communicating with each other in one service. Like, you know, when you're traveling or maybe you're at like an art fair or something, and then somebody just swipes out a simple Square payment system, it's like, oh, thank God. This is gonna be nice and easy and professional. That is what Square is offering. And they say, right now, listeners can get up to $200 off Square hardware when you go sign up at square.com/go/minmax. That's square.com/go/minmax. And you can visit Square to get started because the right tools make all the difference. So check out the description below for all those links. They want you to know that businesses using Square Online earn 36% more revenue on average. 77% of invoices get paid within a day of being sent. 53% average increase in spend from customers enrolled in a Square loyalty program as well. So if you're starting a business or running one that deserves better tools, Square helps you sell, manage and grow without slowing down. You can go get $200 off Square hardware square.com/go/minmax. That's square.com/go/minmax. Run your business smarter with Square. Get started today. JeffM Court is in session, baby. This is an odd one that came out of the blue. Titanium Court is the name of this game. And so this is from the co-director of Consume Me, AP Thompson. And so it's kind of been a cryptic rollout for Titanium Court. We did an interview with him not too long ago, kind of a group discussion, and it was nearing the release. And this thing, it won the IGF Grand Prize at GDC last year. This year, confusingly enough, before it came out. And now this thing is actually out. People are raving about it. Jeff Marchiafava, what do you think about Titanium Court?

Speaker 4:
[75:53] Um, I still, I still like it. We talked about the demo a while ago. And I don't know that my thoughts have evolved on it much since then, but it is, like, I'm not a huge fan of match three games. And I think what makes this one interesting is all the other kind of things that they put on it. Not least of which is, is just the kind of aesthetic and creativity that's going around, you know, involved in the narrative and such a unique look and style to a game. Yeah, it's least of all a match three that you've never played a match three like that. But the game does a good job of layering on a bunch of other things. And there's an entire, like, light, real time strategy element to it, where you're kind of... All the match three stuff is collecting a bunch of resources, and then you're using those resources to get a bunch of units to fight during these very strange, like, automated real time strategy parts, and I feel like that's the part where the game lost you, Hanson.

Speaker 1:
[77:09] I appreciate this game's style a lot. I think, Jeff, or Jacob, I don't know if you had the same situation, too, of just, like, jumping and playing this game, it's like, all right, I love match three. Now, what is all this? What is... This is clearly more than, like, a match three game, and it was still... It took a while before I'm like, what is the rhythm? What is the cycle that it wants me to be in? What is even, like, the genres we're working with? Like, did you have a tough time easing into, like, what is the groove here?

Speaker 2:
[77:31] Yeah, I... I haven't played as much as I'd want to play, like, two hours, and right now I'm like, oh, the groove is there is no groove. You know, like, it does feel like it's kind of a game that just continuously is going to be like, and here's a new thing, and this is happening now, you know, and it's like that's... It's fun, but it makes it... It's like, where it starts is unusual, and then they're kind of... It seems like the way the game has fun is just layering more and more new things on top of it, in a way that I think makes it very cool, and I can totally see why it won, like, the IGF, because I think as a game designer, you'd be like, oh man, I love the things that this is doing. But it is, you know, like, comparing this to Vampire Crawlers is like, hey, do you want to have, like, like, you know, many courses at a fancy restaurant where they're bringing out, like, a single leaf puree? Or do you want to eat, like, a big bucket of popcorn? You know, it's like, it's definitely like, oh, this is like a thinky game that I have to play. Because it's also, it's like, the narrative is doing a bunch of, like, I think it's kind of doing a Midsummer Night's Dream thing. But also, like, there are so many things going on in the story that it's just kind of like, I have not felt comfortable playing it yet.

Speaker 1:
[79:01] I think I think it is starting to settle into the groove for me now. Like, I think, Jeff, the thing that was throwing me off is like the match three. Got it. OK, you kind of have your home castle and then there are other castles and catapults and such that like you are going to have to battle by sending out your units at the end of every round. But in the match three, you can get rid of them. Like if you delete three or four castles in a row, then you're not going to have to worry about them. Or if you locate the water in the match three grid to make like a moat around your castle, you'll be more protected. Like those sorts of interesting dynamics.

Speaker 4:
[79:33] But I think or you can just move your castle away from the things that are dangerous to it. It is a weird thing to wrap your head around to be doing inside. Like usually you just look at a match three and it's like, OK, what's the biggest group that I can make out of this? And you're not thinking of like, OK, this is a battlefield now. I need the rocks to come down in between me and that castle because the bad guys are going to come out of there. But then there are going to be ships coming in from the water. So I got to kind of try and carve that part of the map off. But then every time you make a match, a bunch of other tiles just come down and it's completely random. It's like, oh my God, what am I going to do with those now?

Speaker 1:
[80:13] So I'm getting into it more and more. But I think the thing that was throwing me off was just the confusion of like, okay, I can make units at the end of every kind of match three round here, as the timer goes down or as you make actions, it depletes the meter. But then it's like the units were like, okay, military units or resource gathering units. I'm like, wait, I thought I resource gathered by doing the match three, because if you match the resources on the field, then that builds up the stuff to get the units. I'm like, why would I make resource gathering units at the end of the round, just to get even more so I can really spam even more units? Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[80:44] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[80:45] Just to buff it. But then the other way.

Speaker 4:
[80:46] And then you're unlocking other, there are like shops that you can go to that unlock other units and things. And yeah, it just, it has just kept building on itself in interesting ways. But yeah, it's a, it's a tough one to, to wrap your head around.

Speaker 1:
[81:02] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[81:02] I've only played the demo, but one thing I did like about it with the progression was originally, the units kind of feel like they just go wherever. And I want them to like, no, go attack that castle that's clearly closer than this other one that just happens to be not near a mountain or something. But as you progress, you can get units that you actually can direct, not so much direct, but they know, they have better AI to essentially target the right types of people, and then they cost more resources. So at first, I felt a lot of friction with that, of you stupid little idiots, stop running up 12 mountains, just fight the guy that's right beside you kind of thing. And then as you progress and, you know, use those types of resources to collect wood, even though you could technically buy 10 soldiers, you buy 7 and 3 wood guys, and then you can buy the smarter soldiers for the next round kind of thing. Or like Jeff was saying, use a helicopter and just fly over 10 mountains and you're fine. Like it's weird how there's a lot of backdoors in it as well.

Speaker 1:
[81:53] Yeah. And then I think it's like the other layer that was throwing me off, Jeff, is then like zooming out even further, then it's kind of like the smaller match three grid, which eventually was like, okay, this is just kind of like overall progression. Eventually, you battle the dragon and that whole thing. You're just kind of choosing like which territory to go into next. But like when I kept popping to that, I was like, what are these pumpkins now? What is this other layer of a match?

Speaker 4:
[82:13] They introduced that much earlier than when they finally actually tell you, oh, hey, this is a map.

Speaker 1:
[82:18] Right.

Speaker 4:
[82:19] You're basically just choosing what your next level is going to be like. And the composition of it's going to be a little different depending on which of those that you choose.

Speaker 1:
[82:26] Yeah. So where are you at overall on this thing, Jeff? Are you digging it more or kind of like a cool novelty?

Speaker 4:
[82:34] I like it. I'm interested in it. Every time I sit down, am I going to play that or am I going to play Vampire Crawlers?

Speaker 1:
[82:41] Don't say it, dude.

Speaker 4:
[82:44] It's a tough time right now for any other game to capture my attention.

Speaker 1:
[82:50] We should praise the presentation a little bit. The style of this thing is awesome. First of all, the color scheme stands out in a big way. There's a new episode of Postgames with Chris Plant, where he talks to AP. Thompson. He says that the color scheme was just inspired by his favorite color palette in Downwell. That you can choose a color palette in Downwell. He's like, I just like this one. That was the basis for the starting point for this entire project here for the color scheme at least.

Speaker 2:
[83:16] It's like AP. Thompson, I think, is intentionally not selling it this way, but it's pretty close to what we would call a solo dev thing, where it's like, he did the art, he did the music. He was like, I hired an editor, because there are a lot of words or whatever, but the music is great and really weird and funky. And then my favorite part is like, so it's like, yeah, it's medieval and you're knocking down the castles. But then when a castle gets knocked down, you'll just get a little pop-up of a dude hitting a home run, or these kind of like weird modern-day victorious signs that... There's so much anachronism in the setting of just kind of like, for some reason, when you accomplish this, it's going to show like a plunger unclogging a toilet. Right. And that's like, that's what you did.

Speaker 5:
[84:12] Congratulations.

Speaker 1:
[84:13] Yeah, but it makes it so fun because you never know what to expect. Like, what is actually going to pop up and kind of fly across the screen, these little picture-in-picture windows and stuff.

Speaker 5:
[84:19] Tomodachi Life.

Speaker 1:
[84:20] Oh my god, what a random episode, you guys. But yeah, like the music in particular was just kind of like, okay, it's a medieval looking match three. It's going to be like Catan style music. It's like, oh no, it's like surf rock. It's just like the weirdest tone possible for this thing. So I am fascinated by it. I want to keep playing it. Like some people, there's an unfair pressure on this game, I feel like. Winning the grand prize and having Chris Plant out there screaming that it's the game of the decade. I was like, what? Okay, this is not fair. I need to accept this game on the terms that it sets out as, as like a funky layering match three.

Speaker 2:
[84:58] I think most people don't know or care what the IGF grand prize is. So that pressure probably only applies to this very specific group.

Speaker 1:
[85:08] I did love, by the way, shout out to Postgame, subscribe, you'll be smarter for listening to it every week. But I love that AB. Thompson in that he says, he's like, yeah, you know, having won the grand prize for Consume Me last year, and then going back to back now and getting it for Titanium Court this year, he's like, I know the average number of wish lists you get from winning the IGF grand prize before your game is out. He's like, it's about 2,000. Just in terms of like how many people are paying attention. It's like, okay, that's good to know. That's good to know.

Speaker 5:
[85:34] Interesting.

Speaker 1:
[85:35] But Titanium Court, it's out on, it's out right now for everybody. So check it out. It's just on Steam at the moment, but obviously it's a great Steam deck game, all that fun stuff. Jeff Marchiafava, do you know what Milo and Sarah D and Paul K all have in common?

Speaker 5:
[85:52] Oh.

Speaker 1:
[85:53] They went out of their way to support MinnMax on Patreon. patreon.com/minnmax with two N's. And not only that, but as with every new supporter, I sent them a custom message saying, hey, how'd you find us? What do you want from MinnMax in the future? All that fun stuff. So if Milo, Sarah D or Paul K haven't checked their messages yet, check it. If you supported MinnMax on Patreon, haven't checked your messages yet, check them. I still get messages.

Speaker 4:
[86:12] You have to answer Hanson.

Speaker 1:
[86:13] You don't have to, but it's fun.

Speaker 4:
[86:15] He demands to know how you got here.

Speaker 5:
[86:16] It's sad, you guys. Answer him. He's sad.

Speaker 2:
[86:18] He does not have an automated system. It's not Hanson AI.

Speaker 1:
[86:22] I promise it's not. Wouldn't you want to read messages if someone's like, hey.

Speaker 5:
[86:25] That would be the controversy of the century.

Speaker 1:
[86:28] If it was like AI sending all those tens of thousands of messages.

Speaker 5:
[86:31] Who does all the, hi, welcome. My name's Ben.

Speaker 1:
[86:35] I want to get to know you. But it is so satisfying. I still have people jumping in. They're like, oh my god. I have never checked these messages. I'm three years too late. But are you still doing this code offer that you sent the message about? So it's fun to see people coming super late to the fact.

Speaker 5:
[86:49] Has anyone ever been mean to you when you're reaching out to say hello? Why do you support MinnMax? They've been like, can't you just shut up or something mean like that?

Speaker 1:
[86:55] Sometimes, yeah. Very rarely. They're like, we'll be doing a code giveaway. Be like, hey, do you want to code for this? Like, yes. You know, like that type of just like, all right, you can say at least how you found us or something more flowery. But I'm not going to judge you. I just want to talk to you. So patreon.com/minnaxatwoans, jump in, help support this entire thing. And shout out, of course, to some big supporters like IM8Bit. IM8Bit wants everybody to know about the Mario Galaxy movie. Run to your theater. Don't walk. Well, specifically, open your ears because they have the vinyl soundtrack on their wonderful online store available for pre-order right now. You can get the soundtrack to the Super Mario Galaxy movie on vinyl, on CD, on cassette, whatever you prefer. The soundtrack obviously rules, and IM8Bit, they... I mean, just this... I know we kiss their butt every week on the podcast, but you know they're a great accomplished company when they're pulling in clients like the Super Mario Galaxy movie to create the vinyl. That is a level of quality that's unbelievable. So check out their wonderful online store. Find something that's right for you, and you can use the promo code Fire Flowers. Fire Flowers is the promo code 10% off everything under $100, not including pre-orders, but check them out. Support iM8Bit. And you should support iM8Bit because each and every week they ship out a prize to the MinnMax community. Deven said whoever has the best community question wins a prize from iM8Bit. So we really need to pay attention to this. And the winner this week is the One Piece Vinyl. They win the One Piece Vinyl soundtrack, the Netflix One Piece. But still not too shabby there, Jacob Geller. Okay, should we get to these questions? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, FrostForest writes in, they say, Math Blasters, Reader Rabbit, Jumpstart. Were these games good? Not particularly, but they were educational. What was your experience with these edutainment games? Is anyone still making these? What educational games do you want your kids to play?

Speaker 5:
[88:53] Do you guys ever play Puddle Books?

Speaker 1:
[88:55] Puddle Books?

Speaker 5:
[89:01] And then something else. They were like reading a little book and you just click through. But one of them was called Yolanda Yells a Lot. And it was just a little girl who didn't have voice control. And my parents would use that. And like if we were being loud in public, they'd be like, You're being Yolanda Yells a Lot. We'd be like, Oh, quiet down.

Speaker 6:
[89:21] I was a big fan of Zoombini's. If anyone remembers that one.

Speaker 2:
[89:26] No, what is that name? I'm going to I'm going to have like a.

Speaker 5:
[89:30] It was a bunch of little guys when I see this.

Speaker 6:
[89:33] Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I used to play that. My I honestly don't know their deal. I mostly remember one where they were just making pizza. So maybe they're pizzeria establishment owners. It's unclear. I don't really remember their deal, but I love to zoom in.

Speaker 1:
[89:51] I'm looking at the trend affair because it says it's educational, but it just looks like lemons. Like, yeah, they're just teaching you how to make pizza and do different tasks with a big group of weirdos.

Speaker 5:
[90:01] It looks like counting a lot of counting stuff. OK, count the zoomines.

Speaker 6:
[90:05] It was mostly math or fractions and that kind of thing.

Speaker 1:
[90:10] Yeah, that's a good one. I love that this is such a weird generational thing of like, however old you were, you were just locked into this very specific slice.

Speaker 2:
[90:18] All my first games were CD-ROMs that I would check out from the library and play on the family computer. It was long before I had a console. And so there were a lot, there was like a, like the PBS show Arthur, there was like an Arthur's Diving Adventure game that I have really lovely memories of. But my real, like my kind of white whale of, I want to play this again and I've looked it up and it would require me running like a virtual machine that would be running Windows 95 and I don't know how to do that. But the eyewitness games, specifically Eyewitness Dinosaur, Ben, you remember this?

Speaker 1:
[90:58] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[90:59] OK, did you? Because I it's like our age difference is enough that I feel like you would have been kind of playing a kid's game if you were playing this, you know, when it came out. But it's it's kind of my memory of it is it's basically like missed in that you're like walking around a big pre-rendered museum. But then you're it's like exhibits about dinosaurs. And then they do a thing where it's like the dinosaurs like came to life. Or something. And I just have these like foggy childhood memories of it. And I want to play it again so bad.

Speaker 1:
[91:32] Remember, you talk about the intro before.

Speaker 5:
[91:38] We can't hear it.

Speaker 1:
[91:40] Oh, good. Everybody else can. Uh, really? You can hear that? No, no, that's alarming.

Speaker 5:
[91:47] Hang on. Like cut out your audio weirdly.

Speaker 1:
[91:50] Really? That's funky. OK, we had a million audio issues before we started. So that explains that. Uh, Jeff, does the abacus count?

Speaker 4:
[91:59] Ah, it was Oregon Trail, obviously. And then there was a there was a game called Spellivator, where you were you were like a little dust. You were a dust ball. And it was it was like a 2D building that you had to run away from vacuums and you would jump over and you would catch letters and you would have to spell certain words with them. Oh, another one that they had at the computer labs.

Speaker 1:
[92:26] I've never. It's another mech joint I've never played that. I got on my 20th high school reunion thing. We like toured our old elementary school and it was a very satisfying moment of like, I got to like see the room. They converted it to this is the room where the old computer lab was. Like this is where I would play so much Apple II stuff. Yeah, for me, Jeff was like that same camp of obviously Oregon Trail and stuff. But like Number Munchers, I think was probably like the biggest, most educational thing. Did you play Number Munchers back in the day?

Speaker 4:
[92:55] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[92:56] And they had like little Miss Pac-Man style cutscenes and stuff in there. That was like that. This first cutscenes I ever saw in games was weird. Number Munchers was like, oh, this is such a big deal. If I do a little more math, I can see another stupid little video on the Apple II. Do you ever play Rocket Factory on the Apple II, JeffM? We like built different rockets and stuff. It was extremely educational because if you put a bigger engine in the rocket, it went higher. These are the types of lessons that only you could learn.

Speaker 6:
[93:20] No way.

Speaker 1:
[93:20] No Zoombini is going to teach you that, Deven. But I don't know why.

Speaker 6:
[93:25] Maybe it was Mavis Beacon.

Speaker 1:
[93:27] She doesn't know anything.

Speaker 2:
[93:29] Did you know that she doesn't exist?

Speaker 1:
[93:31] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[93:32] Like there's no one named Mavis Beacon. They were just like, here's a picture of a woman. We're going to put it on and Mavis Beacon sounds like a good name.

Speaker 6:
[93:41] Damn. That's upsetting.

Speaker 1:
[93:43] Do you know that she probably does exist now? Do you think anybody's named their kid? First name Mavis, middle name Beacon. Surely now somebody named Mavis Beacon exists, right?

Speaker 6:
[93:52] It's such a cool, sexy name.

Speaker 1:
[93:55] Nothing sexier than Mavis.

Speaker 6:
[93:58] 2026, Mavis.

Speaker 1:
[94:01] I see. List of most popular.

Speaker 5:
[94:02] Mavis Beacon obituary. See if anything comes up. Mavis Inez Bacon.

Speaker 1:
[94:11] Sorry. Rest in peace, Mavis. I actually wanted to produce educational games. That was my original plan. Even when I was in college, I think that's the path I'm going to go for, I want to be a producer for educational software. That's what I'm going to get a gun for.

Speaker 5:
[94:28] That's a cute path.

Speaker 1:
[94:29] That would be fun.

Speaker 5:
[94:30] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[94:30] If the whole video production thing didn't work out, that was going to be the route. I still feel like-

Speaker 5:
[94:34] What was your pitch? You're in an elevator with the head of Jumpstart Games.

Speaker 1:
[94:38] Go. I have nothing. Do you remember number munchers? Imagine Mavis Beacon, but she exists? I don't think I had any specific pitches, but I was just frustrated. It feels like this whole world, there could be so much potential, I think, with educational games. I feel like it was maybe some were being phoned in for kids. I still feel like that now. I feel like if there's a decent budget and production effort put to some of these kids, you can really change trajectories. You can change kids' future careers with giving them an interest and stuff. It's like the most powerful thing on earth.

Speaker 5:
[95:14] Information stays in your brain longer when you learn it in a video game. I swear to God, too, because I've said this often, but I've learned Roman numerals from the Nancy Drew games.

Speaker 1:
[95:21] Right.

Speaker 5:
[95:22] And I almost got put in an advanced class because they assumed I was smarter than I was because I knew Roman numerals so easy, but I only knew Roman numerals. They're like, oh, never mind.

Speaker 2:
[95:31] You're like, I don't know numbers. I totally know Roman numerals.

Speaker 5:
[95:34] I was so bad at math and they were like, they put like V's, I was like five. And they're like, how does she know that? And then she was just like, oh, she just learned that from Nancy Drew and the whatever, whatever.

Speaker 1:
[95:45] Lullworthy writes in, they say, what gaming hardware or accessory do you regret buying?

Speaker 5:
[95:51] My PSVR headset.

Speaker 1:
[95:53] How dare you?

Speaker 5:
[95:54] It's back there. It's behind everything.

Speaker 1:
[95:56] The first one or the second one?

Speaker 5:
[95:58] The first one. There's so many wires and they'll have numbers on them. Even when I was really into it, plugging that thing in. I think about Kyle Bosman talked once about like, people don't even turn their phones sideways to watch content. That's how lazy humans are. And it's so true. Like when I think about having to plug that in, even if my favorite, Twilight Princess 2 comes out PSVR exclusive, I don't think I'd plug it in. It's just the worst. I had some fun with it, but only when, yeah, I moved and then it, you know, never got touched again because it required me to relearn the wires.

Speaker 1:
[96:30] Yeah. And this other thing is like even cleaning up the PSVR 2, it's still sitting in my basement and everyone's telling me, maybe I should just, I mean, I guess Lumen has a rise that wasn't that long ago. So I busted it out then, but it's like, I'd be surprised if I ever booted it up again, which is kind of sad to say.

Speaker 5:
[96:44] It's suppressing.

Speaker 1:
[96:45] I know.

Speaker 2:
[96:45] I played a VR game yesterday, just to be a little counter-voicier.

Speaker 5:
[96:50] Was it an Oculus game?

Speaker 2:
[96:52] It was a MetaQuest, which is much easier to...

Speaker 5:
[96:55] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[96:55] Yeah. No wires.

Speaker 5:
[96:57] Put it on.

Speaker 1:
[96:58] What was it?

Speaker 2:
[96:59] It's a game called The Time Machine. It's made by the same person who made a game I like called The Utility Room. Interesting game, but it was the first VR game that I had played in like two years.

Speaker 1:
[97:11] Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[97:12] It's not that expensive, but the Steam Link was something that I bought and it just didn't. I just couldn't get a game to run good where it was basically like, here's something where you can run a game on your computer and then plug it into a TV somewhere else in the house and it will run from there. But it was just like, I just didn't have the hardwired internet required or something and it, I couldn't get it to work and it's been in a closet ever since.

Speaker 1:
[97:41] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[97:42] Sorry.

Speaker 6:
[97:43] I am one of the five people that had a Wii U. Oh, good. The only reason I got one was because I assumed there would be a new Animal Crossing that was released for the Wii U. Because they had been doing them every console for a while. So I was like, I got to get ahead of this. I'm going to get a Wii U and it didn't happen. I just played Scribblenuts and I think a Pikmin game. That's it.

Speaker 2:
[98:11] Well, hang on.

Speaker 1:
[98:12] You're forgetting the good name that we should never forget about a certain festival filled with amiibos. Perhaps you're interested in the Animal Crossing.

Speaker 6:
[98:20] Don't you dare bring that game up to me.

Speaker 1:
[98:26] Because it was getting expectations high. There's some sort of Animal Crossing in Wii U and then it was just worse Mario Party.

Speaker 6:
[98:32] No.

Speaker 5:
[98:34] Did it require amiibos to even play?

Speaker 6:
[98:37] Largely.

Speaker 5:
[98:38] Oh, that sucks.

Speaker 1:
[98:39] I'm trying to even remember. Yeah, what a mess. Tom Blackburn writes in, they say, What is your best memory associated with using a third party controller? It's always got good dumping grounds, like here's some crap for player two or three or four to play. I remember going over to Ronnie's household, best friend Ronnie, and on the GameCube, I think it was, he had a third party controller that was always like, I thought the coolest one. Do you guys remember those Nyko Airflow controllers that had like fans built into the handles?

Speaker 2:
[99:08] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[99:10] They were cool just to fix all sweaty gamer hands. And so it was, because it would be loud, but it would just, you would have like a fan blowing your hands from the inside. Yeah, it was cool.

Speaker 6:
[99:19] That sounds awesome. I need that currently.

Speaker 1:
[99:21] Bring them back. That's the next generation controller we've all been dreaming of.

Speaker 5:
[99:25] Get Dyson in there, get them to make them.

Speaker 1:
[99:27] Oh, they nail it.

Speaker 5:
[99:29] That would be insane.

Speaker 1:
[99:31] Lauren writes in over there on Patreon. She says, not a question. Just wanted to say how wonderful it was watching Kelsey and Mama Dana cook together for new show plus, for new show overflow. It was a wholesome family dynamic that brought back fun, goofy memories of cooking with my mom. Thanks for chasing away the dark clouds on a bad day.

Speaker 5:
[99:48] As someone who knows Kelsey's mannerism so well now, because I do so many podcasts with her, it's so fun to hear her mom talk at length and just like how she's, it's the same way Kelsey talks, which obviously, but you know what I mean, it's just always fun to hear that.

Speaker 1:
[100:00] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[100:01] Very optional depending on everyone's relationship with their parents. But should we do a MinnMax series where if people want, they do some sort of activity, then you make like a cribbage board with your dad or whatever?

Speaker 1:
[100:15] Yeah. There is some parental stuff we should do, but I feel like I feel like everyone in my family would hate being on camera. Do you think, would your parents be excited about that idea? I feel like it'd be, that's why Kelsey is a hero for doing this and her mom's a hero baseline for streaming at twitch.tv/dana'skitchen. The fact that she can get used to that, I feel like everyone else, I don't know how much personality flavor you would get from parents, because I think they'd all just be so nervous, you know?

Speaker 2:
[100:44] I don't think so. Your parents would be a little nervous. My parents have been in a Nebula video.

Speaker 1:
[100:49] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[100:50] They're chill enough.

Speaker 1:
[100:51] Oh, I'll be damned. Never mind. Jeff, it feels like your parents are on camera. How much of a nightmare would it be for you and for them?

Speaker 4:
[101:02] Pretty, pretty nightmare level.

Speaker 1:
[101:04] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[101:05] A kid jumping out at you from the dark level.

Speaker 1:
[101:08] Oh, okay. Good, good.

Speaker 4:
[101:09] Behind the scenes.

Speaker 1:
[101:10] Back to the passenger listeners. Know what that's about? Mike R writes in, they say, Hey, crew, would you be able to name your parents' favorite video game? And if so.

Speaker 2:
[101:21] Is this like how they get our password? Yeah, you know what? I'm logging in to my bank. It's like, what's your parents' favorite video game?

Speaker 1:
[101:28] They say, if so, can you all consider a show dedicated to the crew playing your favorite, your parents' favorite games, including ones that aren't technically video games? I don't know if you're bringing that up.

Speaker 5:
[101:38] I texted my parents and asked, because I thought that's what this was. The favorite games you want to hear. My dad's was cute. He goes, My first game was Pong. We played it for hours. Eventually had Raiders of the Lost Ark and Golf on the Mac platform. Used to play NHL hockey and loved that. Mario Brothers all night long university would rent a console. And then mom said Pac-Man is the only game she's ever played by herself for one second in an arcade once.

Speaker 1:
[102:06] Your dad had the audacity not to bring up Twinsons Odyssey even once?

Speaker 5:
[102:10] I know. He probably doesn't even remember Twinsons Odyssey, to be honest. I bet if I showed him that he'd be like, what's that?

Speaker 1:
[102:15] Get out of my face.

Speaker 5:
[102:16] Messed up. Messed up.

Speaker 1:
[102:17] Yeah, this stuff, like my parents, video games, absolutely not, but like standard game, like it might be like Sequence or Rumicube. Like, did you guys know the board game Sequence? It's invented in Minnesota, Jeff. I'm from a Minnesota creator. Fun fact, I tried to line up an interview with him years and years ago, but it's a fine game.

Speaker 5:
[102:36] But like, I think- And he denied you?

Speaker 1:
[102:37] I don't think they could have responded. Yeah, I sent so many emails, Haley, that no one ever responds. It's kind of like these Patreon messages I send every day.

Speaker 4:
[102:43] That's why he needs the Patreons to reply to him.

Speaker 5:
[102:46] Please, Patreons, reply.

Speaker 2:
[102:49] I think my dad liked Asteroid, and he talked about- it was a very poetic way. He's like, I liked because when I got really far into the game, it felt like I was entering the Matrix and everything was slowing down. And later I realized that it was just the computer was running out of memory. He said it was going slower. Oh, perfect.

Speaker 4:
[103:12] The only game my mom ever played was Tetris on Super Nintendo, and that was one where she would go out of her way and she would ask us to turn it on for her so that she could play it. And that was completely out of character for her to play.

Speaker 5:
[103:27] Turn on the Nintendo?

Speaker 4:
[103:31] I think she used the word Tetris. I think she knew it was called Tetris, and that was about it. And I think my dad would play Mario Kart with us, but I think he played Duck Hunt once. Because we didn't have an original Nintendo, but we played it at one of like a family friend's house and shooting ducks with a gun, even though it was a pistol, and it makes no sense. But you know, that was enough to sell him on it.

Speaker 1:
[103:57] Perfect. Neil McMahon writes in, they say, I've been wondering about the phrase to death. Like we say, my dog is licking me to death. But you could also imagine saying, my dog is licking me till death. Which one do you think it's actually supposed to be?

Speaker 5:
[104:14] To death, implying that it's a crazy activity that's killing them, but they're obviously being jovial about it.

Speaker 2:
[104:21] Yeah, till death is just like until death eventually happens for an unrelated reason.

Speaker 6:
[104:27] It's more passive. To is like, this is the cause of the death. Till is like, well, I shall pass away at some point. And when I do, this dog will still be licking me.

Speaker 1:
[104:38] And the cat will be eating you. So technically, it should be like, my dog is licking me till I die.

Speaker 5:
[104:45] No, to death is still right, I think.

Speaker 1:
[104:46] So I'd murdered?

Speaker 5:
[104:48] Yeah, I'm getting murdered by kisses as a joke. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[104:52] Right, right, right. Okay.

Speaker 5:
[104:53] I'm being, I'm being kissed to death. Ha ha ha.

Speaker 1:
[104:56] Neal, is this helping you in your life? Do you like writing it? I hope you've used that phrase now more in your life because of these types of tips.

Speaker 5:
[105:04] I have a question for a phrase. What is to the skin of your teeth? Where does that come from? The skin of your teeth.

Speaker 1:
[105:09] Yeah, that's a good one.

Speaker 5:
[105:10] I missed that from the skin of my teeth. What? I've hit your teeth grazing on skin and peeling it up. And I'm like, ugh, what does that mean?

Speaker 6:
[105:16] Well, I think it's by the skin of my teeth.

Speaker 2:
[105:19] Yeah, it's like a skin on your teeth.

Speaker 1:
[105:22] What?

Speaker 6:
[105:22] Yeah, and because there isn't any, it's meaning it's a very, like, hairy situation because your teeth don't have skin on them. So it's like, oh, at least that was always my understanding.

Speaker 1:
[105:36] I never thought of it that way.

Speaker 2:
[105:36] You guys want to know where it's from?

Speaker 6:
[105:38] Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[105:40] Literally the Bible.

Speaker 6:
[105:42] Really? Oh, class.

Speaker 2:
[105:45] My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.

Speaker 1:
[105:51] Wow. Way to go, Bible. Good drop, God. McRaevey writes in, they say, Hey, cohorts and special guest Deven, the One Piece vinyl inspired this one. What is the best and worst adaptation from a video game, presumably?

Speaker 5:
[106:09] Oh, I was going to say Aragon, the movie. I remember being so mad as a kid when I watched that movie. I made my brother drive in the Blockbuster. And I said, please, please. He said, only if you do this chore or something. And I did the chore. And then I watched Aragon. I was like, this sucks. And I was a kid, so I didn't really know the differences between good and bad that much yet either.

Speaker 1:
[106:25] But the Game Boy Advance game based on the movie, that completely nailed it. It nailed the tone.

Speaker 5:
[106:30] The way I probably played that, but I don't remember.

Speaker 2:
[106:35] I just saw what I think is the best video game adaptation thus far, which is the Exit 8 movie, which was based on the anomaly-finding horror game that released three or four years ago, where you're just walking through a Japanese subway station over and over. They made a movie of that in Japan. They came out in Japan last year, and it's just kind of hitting states now. And it's great. Like, I was, it's totally, and it's weird how similar to Iron Lung it is, because it's another movie that's like basically just like one location and primarily one actor. And it is, no offense to anyone who worked on Iron Lung, so much better than Iron Lung.

Speaker 1:
[107:20] Really? You know what's weird to think of, like, Konami could make a PT movie, couldn't they? You know, if they're looking for like a budget horror movie to make, like that seems like that same idea of like kind of, sort of, just one location, concept variance of it.

Speaker 5:
[107:34] They should make a first person movie. That should be the very first first person movie.

Speaker 1:
[107:38] Well, have you ever heard of Far-Core Henry?

Speaker 4:
[107:40] Far-Core Henry.

Speaker 1:
[107:41] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[107:42] Do you not remember our...

Speaker 2:
[107:43] The Exit 8 actually starts with an extended first person sequence.

Speaker 1:
[107:47] There you go, it's got everything you need. Yeah, Jacob, did you have hot thoughts on that Bloodborne animated movie produced by your boy, Jack Septica?

Speaker 2:
[107:55] My boy. I think animated is the right way to go. Like, you know, it's just crazy that they would make that and not give a 60 frames per second patch for the game, but like, go off, Kings.

Speaker 1:
[108:10] And it's weird to like... I don't think From Software has released a statement about it at all, right? It's always that push and pull of like, Sony not wanting to piss off From Software, but what can they do? And it's like, I know it seems to be an iList about this, but like, maybe if anything, we're to kind of kickstart that patch. I know that there's reporting that From Software, you know, with Bluepoint, they denied the full remake, but like, if anything is going to kind of nudge them for maybe giving a PS5 update to Bloodborne, you think it'd be this, right?

Speaker 2:
[108:39] What if it just is video game adaptations that finally get a patch for an old game? Because The Last Guardian could run at 60 frames per second on PS5. So if we make a Last Guardian movie, then they'll finally update it.

Speaker 1:
[108:52] Yeah, that's it, baby. Is Jacksepticeye good, Jacob? Mr. Lord of Internet?

Speaker 2:
[109:01] I don't watch any streamers, but I do think he's generally, I mean, he's very good in Dispatch. We can say that, and he seems like a nice guy. I don't think he's been embroiled in scandals.

Speaker 3:
[109:13] Okay, Deven, which is more than you can say for most video game streamers.

Speaker 1:
[109:18] Are you plugged into the scene, Deven? Do you watch Jacksepticeye?

Speaker 6:
[109:22] No, I watch one streamer, which is Northern Lion, and that's it.

Speaker 1:
[109:26] Okay, that might be all you need. There we go.

Speaker 2:
[109:28] Official sponsor is all you need.

Speaker 1:
[109:30] What a voice that makes.

Speaker 6:
[109:31] I would have been on the NL Super Cruise, I'll tell you that much.

Speaker 5:
[109:34] What if it was Sarah there?

Speaker 1:
[109:36] What was he? Why did he cancel that? He felt weird about it? What was going on there?

Speaker 6:
[109:40] It's because people kept threatening to kill him on the cruise, essentially. Well, like jokingly in chat, but also he was like, probably maybe shouldn't go.

Speaker 5:
[109:50] That's so valid then.

Speaker 6:
[109:51] Where all of my chatterers are.

Speaker 2:
[109:55] Sarah brought it up for Get A Load Of This, right? But it's like he's famous for being the normal guy streamer. And I do think that like that would just be hard to hang on to if he had a cruise.

Speaker 6:
[110:09] You know, the one thing to me is I also know him though, as a guy who goes on cruises like three times a year. So it was extremely on brand for the branching out thing he does. When I think it's like Dan Geisling's like mom. Do you guys know Dan Geisling? He was in Big Brother and The Traders, but also now he's just a Twitch streamer.

Speaker 2:
[110:31] He's just in the Northern Lion Orbit.

Speaker 6:
[110:33] He's in the Northern Lion Orbit. I think his mom was with the Cruise Line Company or something like that. And I think Dan just pitched it to Northern Lion like, you want to go on a cruise? That's also a streamer cruise. And he was like, I like cruises. And that was kind of, I don't know. I don't know if he thought too hard about it. And then all of chat was like, oh my God, I'm going to get pregnant on the Northern Lion Super Cruise. And he was like, all right, this is actually really weird.

Speaker 1:
[110:59] Yeah, it turns out humanity is not good.

Speaker 5:
[111:02] You're stuck out at sea. You can't escape.

Speaker 2:
[111:06] It's not like another holiday. Everyone got a neurovirus on the Northern Lion Cruise.

Speaker 1:
[111:12] Not a good headline.

Speaker 6:
[111:13] What's a simultaneous salmonella campylobacter infection? Like he got.

Speaker 5:
[111:18] What's that? Is it it's always sunny? The implication joke when they're on the boat? Yeah, it's giving that.

Speaker 1:
[111:26] Victor Hensley writes in, they say, Hi, to me, Max, I'd like for you to settle something for me. Back in high school, I would debate with my friends and die on the hill that a story isn't good, or at the very least emotionally impactful unless a character dies. That goes for games, movies, books, whatever medium. Well, I don't necessarily believe it now. Did high school me have a point? Victor, high school you was a genius and they were infallible in every way. There's no doubt about it. It's a bold statement. That seems like a perfect high schooler argument.

Speaker 5:
[111:58] I like statements like that.

Speaker 1:
[112:00] There's something to it.

Speaker 5:
[112:03] Death is interesting.

Speaker 6:
[112:06] It's more interesting than not.

Speaker 5:
[112:08] Yeah, it changes things materially. It changes other characters that are still alive. It changes the dead character, can't do anything anymore. Things change immediately when someone dies. So it's interesting at least.

Speaker 4:
[112:19] Except for all the action movies where it means absolutely nothing.

Speaker 1:
[112:22] Right.

Speaker 6:
[112:23] I was just thinking that.

Speaker 2:
[112:25] And it's like, I don't know, what if you want to tell a story about like a restaurant? You know, does someone have to die in like every someone have to die in like Julie and Julia? Yeah, but then you look at it a long time. Maybe someone does die.

Speaker 6:
[112:38] The older Julia.

Speaker 2:
[112:41] OK, well, it's not like a twist.

Speaker 5:
[112:45] Julie and Childs is quite old.

Speaker 1:
[112:48] Quick, talk about Sweeney Todd, some other restaurant related thing without murder. There's got to be some story without murder.

Speaker 5:
[112:53] Ratatouille.

Speaker 1:
[112:54] Yeah. Oh, of course. Is there any death in Ratatouille? I guess I guess not.

Speaker 5:
[112:58] Although there's the dead rats in the window.

Speaker 1:
[113:01] Yes. And there's that scene, too. Speaking of life or death stakes. Remember when he's running through Paris and he runs by and looks down and the couple and the wife has the gun on the guy and he goes, you don't have the guts. And then they keep running and look back at them. They're like passionately making out. I still love that bit.

Speaker 5:
[113:15] Chef Gusteau is dead in that movie and it has a little twist. Oh, yes. There's a lot of death in Ratatouille.

Speaker 1:
[113:20] Yeah. Victor, it turns out you were right. And you got to have death.

Speaker 6:
[113:24] You were cooking.

Speaker 1:
[113:25] It reminded me a little bit. And I promise we're not too obsessed with this. But like, you know, Jacob on the MinnMax Spotlight for Deconstruct team, how Geordi is like, yeah, I realized when I played Metal Gear Solid 1 that I wanted to develop games because I wanted to make people cry. And so it seems like a similar idea. I'm just going to have this ambitious thing of like, I want to make games to just ring tears out of people. That's the goal here. And I guess that's how you tell a story. You have an impactful moment is death left and right.

Speaker 2:
[113:54] Well, but OK, I just watched Speed Racer in IMAX, and I started crying at the end. And it's just because of how much is happening on screen and like the beauty of like the coordination of the colors. And it's like, I don't know, I think I think Jordi would agree. There are many ways like you're not crying at the end of Metal Gear because someone dies. You're crying because of like what what Snake is realizing about himself while that song plays.

Speaker 1:
[114:25] You're crying because Snake gets to live. Live, Snake, live. That's the whole thing. Sly Cut writes in and they ask, What is the best backyard activity at a family gathering?

Speaker 6:
[114:38] Eating hot dogs.

Speaker 1:
[114:40] Okay, so going down a slip and slide while chugging hot dogs. So just like shoving food into your mouth is like the best you're going to get in a backyard.

Speaker 5:
[114:48] What was that show that was weird ways people died though? And it was so scary.

Speaker 6:
[114:53] Oh, A Thousand Ways to Die.

Speaker 5:
[114:56] There was a kid who did a slip and slide and there was a shut up, stop talking.

Speaker 3:
[115:02] I'm not going to have that on this podcast.

Speaker 5:
[115:05] Slip and slides when I saw that.

Speaker 6:
[115:07] I would have been too.

Speaker 1:
[115:09] Oh, my God.

Speaker 5:
[115:10] And they do a little like infographic things like if they make a movie about it, it's inherently good is the thing. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Call it slip and slide.

Speaker 2:
[115:20] Now, will you non-northerners?

Speaker 5:
[115:24] Cornhole.

Speaker 6:
[115:25] Yeah, I do. I have cornhole was nice to number to pick after eating hot dogs.

Speaker 1:
[115:31] That's good. I think it's we just call it bean bags. You know, I cornhole, I guess, is the official terminology. But do you think that was like a more southern thing, Jeff?

Speaker 2:
[115:38] Or I just I've always just felt whenever I throw out the term cornhole, I feel like it's a real like I hope you know what I'm referring to because everyone during COVID was obsessed with the trampoline hitting game.

Speaker 5:
[115:55] No, is that just?

Speaker 2:
[115:56] Oh, the spike ball. I know what you're talking about.

Speaker 5:
[115:58] Spike ball.

Speaker 1:
[116:02] I think there's a reason a lot of those are kind of like, you know, for a couple of years, people are really the spike ball. But like, cornhole, it lasts, it goes a distance. It's like, I always had such a good time.

Speaker 5:
[116:11] I can picture people on the Oregon Trail playing cornhole and also people in the Futurama future playing cornhole. I can see both.

Speaker 6:
[116:19] How old is cornhole? When was cornhole invented?

Speaker 4:
[116:23] Great question.

Speaker 1:
[116:23] Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[116:24] It feels like it was like 800 B. The Bible.

Speaker 3:
[116:27] When's the first time people threw a ball into a hole?

Speaker 4:
[116:30] And I winneth by the skin of my teeth.

Speaker 1:
[116:34] But it'd be fun to try and like track, because it does feel like, what, 12 years ago something happened. It's like what happened to Texas Hold'em in 2004. I feel like just somehow, at least in my mind, it just like exploded in this era. And now it's a staple.

Speaker 4:
[116:48] Breaking news, it was invented in 14th century Germany, apparently.

Speaker 1:
[116:55] By Jesus?

Speaker 4:
[116:55] And patented in 1883.

Speaker 5:
[116:58] Patented?

Speaker 4:
[116:59] But there was also apparently a Native American tradition as well.

Speaker 5:
[117:03] This is the first game mechanic patent.

Speaker 2:
[117:05] No!

Speaker 1:
[117:08] Get them. Jeff, do you think that's a good new show plus, is us competing in Cornhole?

Speaker 4:
[117:12] Yeah, of course.

Speaker 1:
[117:13] I think it might have been in the portal at some point, at a loss. Maybe it was like that Wii Sports.

Speaker 5:
[117:16] Although it's not very fun to watch people play Cornhole. It's great to play, but when it's not your turn, it's very boring.

Speaker 1:
[117:23] Oh, I mentioned Sequence was my parents' favorite game, but realistically, yeah, it's like, this is my dad's favorite game. He's obsessed. He's in tournaments in Arizona and stuff when he goes to.

Speaker 2:
[117:31] Wow.

Speaker 1:
[117:32] Yeah, he goes down there for the winter and mops up.

Speaker 2:
[117:35] If you play against him, do you just get crushed? Yeah, but it's not like he's tournament level.

Speaker 1:
[117:41] Yeah, but it is that level. That's what's fun about that game is like trying to pair off with like, who is kind of equal and they'll be on one side. Maybe they can cancel each other out. So it's always a terrible feeling when like, crap, I'm the second best person here. I need to be going up against my dad. Like it's just like trying to hold him at bay if I can just keep it neutral for the score. It's like a miracle. And then he does the rule where if, what is it? If during the game you get all four bags into the hole, then you get to sign the board with a Sharpie. This is what he does with like his buddies and they get together every weekend and stuff.

Speaker 6:
[118:12] That's baller. I like that.

Speaker 1:
[118:13] I agree. It's fun. But then you look at the board and it's just like, my dad's name, it's just like an in-memorium wall. This feels gross at a certain point, but all right, sure. Let's see. Land Sea Lion writes in and they say, how do you feel about maxing making its way into popular culture? I assume this is because of the name of the outlet here. Is it only in terms of looks maxing? Is that the only way that it's correct?

Speaker 5:
[118:40] Is it maxing adjacent? Oh no.

Speaker 6:
[118:42] You can be maxing anything.

Speaker 1:
[118:43] What does that mean outside of looks though?

Speaker 5:
[118:46] It's because they don't want to say makeover. I swear to God, those types of dudes don't want to say makeover time, so they just say maxing. They made up a new word to avoid makeover.

Speaker 6:
[118:54] You can be anything maxing. You can be hydration maxing, health maxing. I'm sloth maxing right now. That's when I'm just around on the couch. You can max anything if you believe in yourself.

Speaker 2:
[119:07] I do think it is part of that video game terminology making it into the real world. The same as like aura farming, you know, is another thing where I'm like, really? This is like an expression that normal people know. It's like, I guess it's fine, but it is certainly it feels like it's used used by men to describe something that they would otherwise be embarrassed to talk about, like caring about their parents.

Speaker 6:
[119:39] It's a Manosphere. Like part of it does, I know, I just watched the Louis Thoreau, like Manosphere documentary recently, and they were talking a little bit about like maxing and how they use that in the toxic Manosphere bubble and stuff as well. So it's a weird hybrid where like it was probably originally co-opted from video games into the Manosphere.

Speaker 5:
[119:58] And then it just became a general masculine trend and then a general internet trend after that.

Speaker 1:
[120:06] Yeah, I guess it's a nice sign that I don't connect. I don't associate it with them. You know, I don't think I'm MinnMax when I hear the maxing thing. I don't think I'd really connected that. But maybe I should. Maybe other people do. But like I think more of there's, because people tag us every once in a while for it, but there's some. There's a Chinese AI company that has blown up, and they're called MinnMax. And so every once in a while, like on Reddit, people refer to us as them or them as us. That's a more alarming one, I think, for me. Sky Fellowship, they're right in. They say, when did you first learn that bugs happen in video games? First, personally, I remember renting Super Metroid as a kid and getting so stuck, refinding that game as an adult, the room was burned into my mind, and the door opened the first time I shot it. Apparently, I didn't realize as a kid, that was just a bug stopping my progress. I never rented it again, so to finally realize it was a bug after all those years later was quite surreal.

Speaker 3:
[120:56] The negative world in Super Mario Bros., which went around as a rumor that we eventually realized was real, because the internet didn't exist back then, but that was a very surreal, like there's a secret portal and it takes you to a world that never ends, and the timer, you just have to wait for the timer to go down and you have to do this very weird jump. And I think at the time it felt like, oh, well, like this must have been deliberate though. Like this was a secret level that you were getting to and not necessarily, and it's just broken. And they didn't know it was going to happen.

Speaker 1:
[121:40] Yeah, I mean, I guess I didn't think about it until right now, but yeah, it must be a missing number for me. Haley, I assume you're in that same camp. I'm just like, what do you mean, missing number in Pokemon? What is this glitch? What do you mean it's breaking the entire game if you have it in your party? It was such a cool idea.

Speaker 2:
[121:52] I miss when bugs were like little whispers in the classrooms of mysteries instead of just material issues with the game's development. Yeah, it's less fun. I remember encountering a lot of bugs when I played Blinks the Cat. Shouts of Blinks the Cat. What was the other one? There was another one ahead of mine as well. Obviously, The Sims has a ton of bugs, but those are part of its charm.

Speaker 5:
[122:17] I remember getting bugs when I was playing. I think it was called Barbie's Spy Adventure or something. It was a Barbie computer game where she was a spy for whatever reason. I didn't know what the term clipping meant, but I discovered clipping and just that general phasing through objects and stuff in that game. Because it was a cheap $10 Barbie game. It was not well made.

Speaker 1:
[122:43] That's what you should have asked Tom Cruise about.

Speaker 5:
[122:46] I should have asked him. I was like, did you take inspiration from Barbie's Spy Adventure?

Speaker 1:
[122:51] I will not take no as an answer. Yeah, Felix Diaz, they write in, and they say, the vast majority of the time I listen to the last part of the show, I'm grocery shopping. What item do you recommend me getting at the supermarket right now? Felix Diaz, every time I go to the supermarket, I'm always tempted to get my favorite snack, and that's the Harvest Snaps, little crispy peapod things.

Speaker 4:
[123:16] Oh, those are good.

Speaker 1:
[123:18] Hang on, now I brought it up as a test, because Jacob Geller... When you were over here after the charity stream and were hanging out playing board games, I had a big bowl of those. And my memory is you took a bite of it and you're like, mm, you swing and you miss some times with snacks. And you were horrified and disgusted by them.

Speaker 2:
[123:37] The little things are things?

Speaker 4:
[123:40] I like those.

Speaker 1:
[123:41] You've basically spat them out in my face.

Speaker 4:
[123:44] I think it was, I don't think I ate them and was like, those are bad. I think it was like, hey, do you have any snacks for the charity stream? And you were like, yeah. And you just had that. And I was like, that seems a little lacking.

Speaker 1:
[123:57] No, that's not true because I bought hundreds of dollars of the snacks that Dan took home for the wrestling thing the next day.

Speaker 4:
[124:04] We were over-

Speaker 3:
[124:04] So you chose to include this question and then set it up just as a trap.

Speaker 1:
[124:10] Yes.

Speaker 4:
[124:11] We're not going to give him any helpful information on what he should buy. I was going to say nutritional yeast, throw it in everything.

Speaker 1:
[124:19] Good, good, good, good, good. Yeast it up, buddy.

Speaker 5:
[124:21] Oh, I was just going to say Humboldt Fog cheese. It's really good. It's like a soft cheese. It's one of my favorite cheeses. Humboldt Fog, like the city in California. Humboldt Fog cheese. Very good if you like soft cheeses. Highly recommend. Go get it.

Speaker 2:
[124:35] Oh, it's kind of like a blue cheese adjacent, it looks like.

Speaker 5:
[124:39] Yeah, it's almost like Brie and blue cheese had a baby. It's like it's not too stinky or anything. I love it. It's so good.

Speaker 1:
[124:46] I highly recommend.

Speaker 4:
[124:48] Do you guys ever get that the the like drinking yogurt, like kefir?

Speaker 5:
[124:52] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[124:53] Yeah, I love it's like I love just having the ability to have like one swig of yogurt or it's like I don't want to make myself like a whole bowl. I just want to be able to kind of wait.

Speaker 1:
[125:05] Is this Yo-J? What do you remember? Yo-J from back in the day? Is that what this is?

Speaker 4:
[125:10] Um, is it a Danimal?

Speaker 1:
[125:12] Yes, Danimals.

Speaker 4:
[125:15] Honestly, it is similar, but it's like real yogurt. It's not.

Speaker 5:
[125:18] It's more fermented and like I think it has more probiotics than regular like than a Danimals.

Speaker 4:
[125:25] It's not a yogurt, but it will give you the same feel.

Speaker 2:
[125:28] Yeah. Okay. I really like mini cokes, like cokes when they're the smaller size. Yeah, but it's like my partner and I get to fight every time with their grocery store because I want the mini cokes, but it costs like half as much to get regular cokes, so you get twice as much coke. But I like the mini cokes because by the time you're done, it's over and you don't have to pour any out. And I hate when I am drinking a normal coke and there's still like a third left and I don't want it anymore because it's not like spicy and fresh. It's not like bubbly anymore. I just want to pour it out. I feel wasteful.

Speaker 1:
[125:59] I'm with you. And you know, like I have a terrible sweet tooth and I just feel bad where it's like, you know what I want right now is I want just like one Mike and Ike. And I don't want to buy an entire pack because if I eat the entire pack walking back from the grocery store, I'm going to feel like death. I'm going to eat them to death. You know, it's like unless you have like a little put a quarter in and spin it and get some candy, there's no good opportunity for just like, give me one marshmallow. Just give me like a little something at the store. If it's not a sample situation, you're screwed.

Speaker 2:
[126:30] I mean, you could just have self-control and only eat one.

Speaker 3:
[126:32] What?

Speaker 1:
[126:34] Kayham writes in.

Speaker 5:
[126:34] Or you just bring like a marshmallow in your pocket or something. It's your store marshmallow.

Speaker 2:
[126:39] Good thinking.

Speaker 1:
[126:40] That's good thinking. Kayham writes in, they say, do you all prefer to share dishes family style at restaurants or do you prefer to have your own plate? Feel like I'm taking crazy pills, but I am not a fan of the family style. I prefer to have my own plate of food, but it seems like every restaurant these days is designed to share.

Speaker 2:
[126:57] It depends on who I'm with. It depends on who I'm with.

Speaker 5:
[127:00] Yeah, very case by case, because if it's a table where it's more acquaintances and stuff, I don't want to be having a group brainstorming session about the ideal amount of entrees and vegesides and whatever to get. But if it's someone I'm close to, then, oh yeah, I want to eat as many different little bits as possible.

Speaker 1:
[127:20] Yeah, I'm tired of part.

Speaker 2:
[127:21] I hate when something comes out that's itemized, like there's seven of them, and maybe there's four people, and I'm already thinking about who doesn't get to before it even arrives. I hate that thought process.

Speaker 1:
[127:33] Or you're trying to gauge like, okay, there's been some sitting in that middle pile for long enough, I don't think anybody wants it.

Speaker 2:
[127:40] How long's the time to wait?

Speaker 1:
[127:42] And I just had that on the Spain trip, Jacob.

Speaker 2:
[127:44] Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[127:45] It was like that super delicious dessert. I was like, I think I've waited long enough. I'm going to down this rest of this dessert, because it's like the best dessert I've ever had in my life. And then Thomas, the PR guy, he then reached over to like the other plate of dessert that was on the other side of the table. It's like, oh, no, that means I went too fast.

Speaker 4:
[128:01] And it was fine. You guys both got to eat dessert.

Speaker 1:
[128:04] Yeah, but I didn't gauge it. I didn't gauge the speed well enough.

Speaker 3:
[128:09] It seems like you spend 90 percent of the time at dinners thinking about that, because you did that the last time we went out for pizza or something, and you were like... And then you called attention, like, I'm going to take this last piece. Anybody else going to take it?

Speaker 1:
[128:24] Are you mad at me for taking this last piece? Because I'm a fast eater, and I will eat until I have food coming out of my eyeballs. And so I feel like... I guess so, but I'm trying to. I have a governor on me at all times to try and keep myself from scoring. Ah, like Homer Simpson, eat everything on the table.

Speaker 3:
[128:39] Yeah, but you also paid for all the pizza, so you can take the last piece if you want.

Speaker 4:
[128:46] Just to offer the opposite viewpoint. One, my goal at a restaurant is to try the most things. Like if I can, it's like food at a restaurant costs money and they make it well. So if I can try three things, that's better than trying one thing. And I think if you're with people who you don't know that well, talking about the food is a really easy thing to talk about. Like that's way easier for me than like, so you guys have kids? You know, it's like, like just being like, here's an activity. We're gonna figure out what on the menu looks good and what we wanna eat. Like I will dive into that.

Speaker 1:
[129:24] Yeah, yeah. So family style for the conversations. There you go, okay, ham. Unless it's ham, then we'll want our own private plate. All right, Deven, pressure's on. Like it's never been before. What do you prefer for question of the week? I can run down a reminder for if you want. We have educational games, we have parents' favorite games, backyard activities, first bugs in games, eating preferences.

Speaker 5:
[129:49] I actually, I quite like the first bugs question.

Speaker 1:
[129:53] Yeah, I did too, that's so neat.

Speaker 5:
[129:55] I thought that was interesting. I forgot that Barbie game existed until I was thinking about some of my first formative buggy experiences. And I was like, oh my God. Like that is a, it's a big learning experience that you don't realize is at the time because you've never seen a bug before because you're like seven. So yeah, I liked that one, I think. There you go.

Speaker 1:
[130:21] Congratulations, Sky Fellowship. You won the One Piece final. Thanks to Get A Lot Of This or thanks to I Am 8 Bit. What am I doing? I'm reading the next topic. Now it's time for something that we call Get A Lot Of This. Hey, Get A Lot Of This. Disney has done their best to take it down off YouTube. There were a bunch of links and they nuked every single one, but it's still up on the Internet Archive. But Pixar canceled an animated movie that they've been working on for years and years called B-Fry. It was the idea of a best friend locket that was torn apart, but it was about two girls that were best friends going on a wild adventure type of thing. So they canceled it and there's an article about the internal drama and how they didn't believe in the power of, is anyone going to go to a movie that's just about girls being friends?

Speaker 2:
[131:10] And then people are like, hey, Pumped Demon Hunters just sold a trillion dollars.

Speaker 1:
[131:13] That's the people are bringing up. Yeah, for sure. Although DreamWorks has a movie that looks really similar coming out. And so I feel like this is a real test. Like if that movie bombs, it's like, maybe Disney was right.

Speaker 4:
[131:25] Women don't exist. Girls shouldn't be friends.

Speaker 2:
[131:30] They get one more chance.

Speaker 1:
[131:34] But anyways, there were some leaked storyboards. And so it's up on the Internet Archive. There's a link in the description if you want to check it out. Cause it's cool to see a whole storyboarded sequence from this Pixar movie that will never say the light of day. So check it out. The link's below if you want to get a little bit of insight. Yeah. Bummer story.

Speaker 2:
[131:52] Get a lot of this. Have you guys seen the Scientology speed run videos?

Speaker 1:
[131:57] No.

Speaker 2:
[131:59] So people are going into the Scientology centers, the ones where they keep their doors open. They're like, come in. They try to lure people in to get their money. And they just essentially run in and they try to go as far as possible every time. And a map has developed now where they like are scoping out. It's like this room on the left hasn't been seen yet. That's our next target. And they run in, they open the door and they look and they film the room and then they add it to the map. And they're getting really low. They're going like three levels down and there's all these spooky rooms with just like desks sitting in front of one whiteboard.

Speaker 4:
[132:30] Running through the back rooms. It's like, why isn't there any identifying information in any of these rooms?

Speaker 2:
[132:36] Everything is so spooky and they get further and further every time. And they don't really have good security. For some reason, it'll be like two people dressed as bellhops being like, please stop, stop! And trying to stop them.

Speaker 1:
[132:46] So they're not trying to do like a sneaky, like, I'm walking quickly, but I'm trying to look professional. They like Naruto run into the building.

Speaker 2:
[132:55] They've got masks on, and they are all young men who are fast, and they just go, hoo hoo hoo, and they sprint, and they run past everybody.

Speaker 4:
[133:03] If it was anything other than the Church of Scientology, this would be low key domestic terrorism. But because it's Scientology, they're like, I don't know, I think they are pretty evil.

Speaker 1:
[133:14] How funny. Oh good. Links below, check it out.

Speaker 4:
[133:17] Get a load of this. This is an article on the Atlantic, and it's called, I Found It, The Best Free Restaurant Bread in America, by Katie Weaver. And it's a long story. And Katie Weaver is, you may not know that you've read her before, but she had a story that was like, you know, trying to get to the bottom of the Endless Free Appetizers at TGI Fridays or whatever. She does this kind of extreme food reporting. And she's such a funny writer, and it's such a good story of like trying to determine what the best free bread in America is. And in the opening paragraph, she says, I will not attempt to slither to the moral high ground, arguing that best is a meaningless measure, insisting that all bread is dear in its own way. Even if you attempt to betray me, for instance, by merely scanning the text that follows for the phrase, here it is the best free restaurant bread in America, I will uphold my end of the bargain. So she's like, you're going to get an answer. I am going to tell you what it is.

Speaker 1:
[134:26] Cool. Love it. Links below. Deven, you got one?

Speaker 5:
[134:30] Yeah, I get a little of this. This is a book I've been reading recently. It's called Medieval Bodies, Life, Death and Art in the Middle Ages. And it is essentially about medieval era medicine. So as someone who is really obsessed with like how they used to put leeches on people and believe in the humors and like two of them were types of bile. Yeah, like it it's so interesting. And this book goes through it kind of goes in order of the body. So I'm still I'm only in the head section right now. So they've been talking about like hair and psychology and how they thought the brain worked. But all of it is so interesting to see how it was all intermeshed like societally and with philosophy and religion. And also if you are a fan of the medieval paintings that like have weird little guys in them, it is also illustrated. I highly recommend it if you're into weird stuff like that. It's Medieval Bodies by Jack Hartnell, and it's very interesting. And I've been learning a lot about weird medieval stuff.

Speaker 1:
[135:38] Perfect. Great plug.

Speaker 2:
[135:40] I wrote my thesis on that, Deven, so I could talk.

Speaker 5:
[135:42] Really?

Speaker 2:
[135:43] Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. I was a super nerd for that kind of stuff when I was in school. I have not used it at all since. It's literally been nothing.

Speaker 1:
[135:53] Unfortunately, the thesis was all about how the humors are real. And it kind of gets into some twisted medicine from hand to hand. And they're going to get you. That's right. Jeff McGowan.

Speaker 3:
[136:05] Yeah, get a load of this. Dan Olson from Folding Ideas has a new video out called Why Was I Invited to Mr. Beast's Studio? And it's all about Mr. Beast's production company basically invited him to come take a tour of the studio and to watch the first couple episodes of Beast Games Season 2, I think. And so the main video is an hour and 18 minutes of him breaking down like, why in God's name would they ask me of all people to come do this? Like, do they not know me at all? And kind of tying that into their larger business problems. But he also released a second video that's not publicly listed on YouTube, but he links to it. And it's an hour and a half of him just breaking down every single problem in every episode of season two of this reality competitive show. And Hanson, you should watch that one, because I know you're such a survivor freak. Yeah. Like, the problems baked into the production of that, it's clear that they just don't know how to design games. That would be fun for people. And they just all break down spectacularly. And he is so amazing at analyzing when things go wrong and stuff that he just goes episode by episode and breaks them all down. And I've been thinking about it nonstop since I've watched it, even though I don't like reality TV.

Speaker 4:
[137:34] Both of those videos are designed for Ben Hanson.

Speaker 1:
[137:36] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[137:37] Because the first one is basically about the idea of, like, inviting media to look at a thing, which is something that you think about a lot. And then the second one is just about game design. But both of them are like, oh my God, this is so in the weeds, but in the most interesting possible way.

Speaker 1:
[137:55] I can't wait, I want to check that out. It's because it's like Survivor 50, it's a big season this year, and it's been really fun as a season overall. But in the trailer for the season, they're like, and what's Mr. Beast doing on the island? All the contestants are like, what? And so now it's just like this weird piece of doom on the horizon, we're like, I've been enjoying this season, but I know at some point they're gonna turn a corner and Mr. Beast is gonna be standing there. You can't have that tease.

Speaker 2:
[138:22] It's literally Tomodachi Life again.

Speaker 1:
[138:24] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[138:25] It's Mr. Beast's island.

Speaker 1:
[138:26] Yeah, exactly. But hey, get a little of this from the Discord. Tamago Musubi shared a link. It's a YouTube video that's called cities turn streetlights red to protect nocturnal ecosystems. And it's a news story out of Denmark, where apparently they are experimenting with turning certain cities' streetlights just red at night. And it looks freaky as hell, but it keeps things more peaceful in terms of the ecosystem there. So you can check out the link below if you want to learn more about that. But that is it for this episode of The MinnMax Show. Thanks, everybody, for watching, listening, sharing, all that fun stuff. Deven, thank you for being here.

Speaker 5:
[139:02] Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1:
[139:04] Yeah. If people would like to read more of your writing, maybe offer freelance opportunities, all that fun stuff, where should they go?

Speaker 5:
[139:12] They can go to my website, which is just devenmcclure.com. You can also just find me doing freelance stuff all around on GameSpot. I've started doing some stuff with IGN. Sweet. Yeah. If you would like to get in contact with me, I'm lilkombucha, lil underscore kombucha on socials, because that is once what a friend said my rapper name would be.

Speaker 1:
[139:34] Oh, good.

Speaker 5:
[139:35] But you can also just go to my website, and I have a contact form on there.

Speaker 1:
[139:40] Also, I recommend going to your website just for you have a great slideshow of images, and it's just like a who's who. It makes me jealous.

Speaker 5:
[139:46] You can see me with Tom Cruise.

Speaker 1:
[139:49] If you want to see it, it's on that site, so check out the link in the description there. But let's see, MinnMax stuff this week, News Show Plus ended up winning. We give a bunch of in-person options, and what ended up winning was a podcast with just Leo Vader and Kelsey Lewin, because they were the two MinnMax cohorts that were not on the podcast last week. And so out of spite and vengeance, they launched their own podcast, News Show Plus, this week. And it's part morning show, but also just really fun creative stuff from them. So check it out on YouTube or the bonus podcast feed. Also people have been asking Doc Lightning, which is our short documentary film festival. If you're a MinnMax supporter at any tier, we encourage you to create a short documentary, even using your phone. You don't need to be a professional at all. Under three minutes. That is coming back this year for the month of May. So next week we'll have a post up on Patreon running down the details with that. If you're interested in contributing a short, sloppy, amateur documentary on whatever you want it to be, you can submit it and we'll watch it in the film festival. It's always...

Speaker 2:
[140:48] I cried last year. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[140:51] It is just heartfelt after heartfelt wallop to your heart. And so I'm looking forward to watching it this year. It's gonna be a good time. So we'll have more details again on Patreon. I'm going to jump in if you want to create a short documentary and have it screened and we'll stream it on MinnMax's channels here. Pee Pee Bang coming up next week. Haley, anything you want to tease or plug with that?

Speaker 2:
[141:09] We're recording it tonight. What's the tease? We watched a show that Jacob recommended to us in preparation for it.

Speaker 1:
[141:19] He said, I think at some point it would have been his greatest work of art choice, the year that it dropped because he was so into that show. And I've also, I'm halfway through it and it is very good.

Speaker 2:
[141:27] It's so funny.

Speaker 1:
[141:29] Stay tuned, everybody. Check out, subscribe to Pew Pew Bang and your favorite podcast app and get ready for the next episode. All right, that's it. Thanks so much, everybody. We'll be back next week. I don't think there's gonna be an early episode next week for Patreon supporters during an embargo, but look forward to us on Thursday dropping for everybody. But until next time, be good, have fun, let's go.