We Play, You Play: Blue Prince

This is a head gun podcast.

Guys, this mansion is pretty crazy.

I mean, Mount Holly, have you noticed that when you open a door, you can choose what rooms are on the other side?

Yeah, and I, you know, it's interesting because there's just like so many different kinds of rooms.

I haven't even seen them all yet, but I'm looking forward to spending some time in some of these rooms.

Yeah, okay, okay.

So like I've just opened a door here and I have, okay, I can, I can open the drafting studio or a laboratory or, oh, you know what?

I think I'm going to go with a den.

Yeah, a den.

A den is always a good call because there's always something in there that's helpful.

Usually a

gem of some kind.

I like to start my runs.

Can I tell you?

I like to, when I'm entering the house, I like to sort of build out to the the sides first.

So I think I'm going to try to, I'm going to draft a hallway here first just to get me further to the corner.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Wow.

I guess I'll just open up this door and see what I can draft.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

I think I got one.

I'm going to take the manga library.

The what?

Oh, the manga library.

Yeah.

It's got a bunch of my favorite manga in here.

Oh, that sounds cool.

Oh, they got prison school.

Okay.

Well, okay.

High school DXT.

I'm going to read this for a bit.

All right.

All right.

So my next ones up here are we've got a billiard room, a gallery, and a hallway closet.

You know, I need some items, so I'm going to build the hallway closet.

Okay, yeah.

You know what?

I'm going to

sort of

cul-de-sac myself in this corner.

I'm going to do a guest bedroom and get a couple more steps so I can build further upward into

the mansion.

Yeah, I'm realizing I need a couple of different exits here, so I'm going to pick this one.

I'm going to pick the manifesto cabin.

Oh, this is great.

Got a nice little typewriter here.

The manifesto cabin.

Yeah, manifesto cabin.

It's, you know, got a bunch of.

So is that that?

That's inside?

Yeah, it's inside.

Yeah, no, it's a room inside.

We're all inside, right?

We're in different parts of the world.

We're inside.

I guess I just haven't seen it.

I'm sorry.

I haven't seen this room

in any of my plays here.

Are you talking about a room that has like the Unibomber cabin in the middle of it, like where they keep it for the FBI?

I guess it's probably

analogous to that.

Yeah, but it's a, you know, maybe I can write it my own thing here.

All right.

I'm just going to go with.

Not write a manifesto in the manifesto cabin what are we doing okay i'm gonna i'm gonna do i'm gonna draft a pantry here so that i can uh i can get some fruit and some coins okay yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna draft a storeroom here and and just get because i'm i'm trying to get some keys for for uh for later into the house because i know that some of those doors those doors are gonna be locked for sure yep

i could really use this boiler room but i think i'm gonna have to go with the jack shack

All right, let's get to work.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

What is what room did you build?

Jack Shack.

What run?

Like, I haven't seen.

Okay, I guess I don't.

I was going to ask for you to clarify what it was, but I don't want to hear your description.

Fuck, I think I used some steps to backtrack to the manga library, then come back here.

No, no, okay, I don't understand.

Like, I haven't seen this room.

I've got my, my options are the pool, a utility closet, or the security room.

I'm going to go with security,

which will let me see what's going on in the rest of the rooms.

I accidentally just dragged to the freezer, and now I my keys are frozen until tomorrow and I can't use any keys.

I got all those keys for for fucking nothing.

I actually, this is kind of, this is kind of crazy.

I just drafted the Hall of Mirrors, which lets me reuse an existing room.

So I'm going to give myself a second jack-shack.

Unbelievable.

You know what?

I wish I wasn't in the security room because I can see what Nick is doing on all of these monitors.

And I really wi I

got to draft another room.

I unfortunately have a bad angle on one of the mirrors in the hall of mirrors.

Fuck, I can't leave the security room.

There's red rooms on every side of this exit.

I can't leave this fucking room.

I want to turn off these fucking monitors.

Nick, I think for whatever your next options are, you should try to draft a chapel.

You sick bitch.

Actually,

it seems I've drafted the most twisted room of all.

The Oval Office at the White House.

Woo!

We hear prophecies from the great Alzara and solve dartboard algebra puzzles again and again and again as we play you play critically acclaimed indie puzzle adventure Blue Prince this week on Get Played.

Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between.

It's time to get played.

I'm your host, Heatheran Campbell, along with my fellow host, Tiger Weiger.

That's me, Tiger Weiger, along with our third host, Matt Apodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast, where this week we're doing a We Play You Play.

That's when we play a game, and you play a game, but we talk about it and you listen.

Ever heard of it?

What?

Well, I mean,

there are some listeners who this is their first episode, so then they've not heard about it, and so this is some useful context that there's providing.

Well, just so you know, if you're a new listener, day one, you're hazed and bullied.

And then when you continue to listen, we're nice.

Look for the biggest

fellow listener you can find and kick their ass so that they'll respect you.

Yeah, if you don't want to get bullied next week, you got to find the biggest listener and kick their ass.

Otherwise, we hold you down in a bucket full of water and make you eat wet bread.

It's actually not that bad.

It's not that bad.

It could be a lot worse as far as hazing goes.

The water's ice cold.

Oh, oh.

But the bread is good, good bread.

It's like a nice bakery.

It holds up even if it's a little wet.

And here's the thing: this bread, you kind of want it a little wet.

You kind of want it.

It's really good.

Jesus.

We're going to talk about Blueprints.

We all have a lot to say about this game that already has had a lot said about it.

And we'll get into that.

in the meat of the episode, but we should touch on the recording of this media aftermath of Switch 2 pre-orders going live.

I forgot about this.

I was watching basketball, but y'all made some attempts to get yourselves a follow-up to the Switch.

Yeah, I'll go first.

Yeah.

Because my attempt was unsuccessful.

Don't want to spoil whether or not Matt's was also unsuccessful.

I

had

my material ready to go.

I had my

splash page open on Best Buy.

I had done the hack where you save it as a favorite so you can just keep clicking the favorite in order to get the page refreshed.

Had my account updated.

I had a card open at.

a store that has been boycotted recently.

And I don't want a name on the show, but you know, these are switched two times and I was a little desperate.

Yeah.

I had a bunch of different carts ready to go, right?

Lined up.

And none of the retailers could I get past the, it's in my cart.

I'm just trying to pay.

Which as a, as a thing that's frustrating, when you get it into your cart, you're like, holy shit.

Yes.

Let's fucking go.

I'm ready.

All I have to do is press pay.

And every time I had pressed pay, an error would come up.

Yeah, put that check when I add it to my cart.

Don't wait until I actually check out.

Yeah.

And then after a while, it's like, we're sorry, this is sold out.

And it comes out of my cart.

So I'm like, so the whole time it's in my cart, I know you have them.

Yes.

Just let me fucking pay.

Right.

So I, uh, I, I, I flip, I flopped on on getting my Switch to.

Now I'm going to rely on that Nintendo pre-order if it comes through.

Matt, what was your situation like?

My story starts a couple of weeks back oh my god i feel like we just got to get into this yeah let's go

so i have i have nintendo switch online i have accrued uh you know platinum points it's one of their dumb currencies you can use gold points when you buy a game you get gold points uh digitally and then you can use that to sort of like get a little discount on uh you know a future digital purchase or what have you uh i and i believe i believe gold points are being discontinued also well i mean they got to figure something else out because like this is i I mean, it's a, it's a,

if you can tell by the tone of my voice, I'm fucking furious.

Jesus.

So

I have some platinum points, which are like sort of like, I don't know how you, I don't, I don't know how you get them, but I have them.

I have some, and then occasionally there'll be like a physical good that you can redeem the platinum points for.

I have done this in the past.

I got some

Pokemon Scarlet Violet pens.

I got

a

Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom keychain, for example.

A couple other little, just dumb little things like that that I don't need, but

it's nice to have it.

Yeah.

They've released a

Nintendo Switch 2, like sort of short lanyard keychain that I was kind of like, that's kind of funny.

I should have that.

Why not?

I'll get it's 600 platinum points.

I'll get this.

And you know what?

I've been eyeing the

Nintendo 64 Nintendo Switch

controller

and which is confirmed to also be compatible with the Switch 2 minus the C button.

I'm good to hear that.

So I was like, I'll toss that in there and I'll also order that.

I get to check out.

I'm not allowed to check out.

I get this error code that's like, it's not even an error code.

It's just an error message that says call your bank and

like try again, basically.

And so I do that.

And look,

I got the $6.99 for shipping.

Okay.

I got the, I got the money for the controller.

I can pay for this.

So there was really no need for me to call the fucking bank.

The bank was mad that I called.

Do you need $7?

I don't need $7.

Look, I don't, look, I got $7.

Okay.

So it's a whole thing.

I end up getting on the phone with Nintendo and they can't solve this for me.

So they're like, they submit a ticket.

What is a problem?

Well, this is the thing.

I couldn't stop laughing at the way this guy guy talks.

Anyway, so.

Malcolmi help you.

I submitted.

I'm the manager.

Okay, so I had a really hard time with this guy.

And so, basically.

And that I had to pay extra for.

And so, basically, all this to say, I submitted like a chat.

I got in the chat and I submitted a ticket.

And then

I called and submitted a ticket, and then I got an email from Nintendo that was like, Call us back as soon as you can.

Whoa!

So I was like, Okay, they're gonna try to help me figure this out.

Basically, they told me the exact same information that I've already had, which is we don't know what's going on or why.

And I've searched on Reddit, this has been a persistent issue with the My Nintendo store specifically for at least five years that people have just been like, Yeah, sometimes it just doesn't work and I don't know how to fix it.

And sometimes it'll just go back on.

They told me basically I'll at some point be able to use my credit cards in the future,

but not now.

And so I did get a little frustrated on the phone.

And I said, so what you're basically saying is I could use it between at some point in the future, which could be

tomorrow or the end of time.

Like we don't know exactly when.

And then the guy was like, yeah, I know.

I'm just really sorry.

And I was like, I'm not mad at you.

I'm just like, you can see why this is like a frustrating circumstance or whatever.

As someone who's worked customer support, as someone who's answered phones specifically for a video game company,

yes, that guy is helpless to do anything for you.

His job is to be helpless and he absolutely understands that it sucks.

Yes.

And so I was like, I was trying to be as polite as I can because I don't like to yell.

No.

I'm putting on a little show right now for the show to keep it entertaining, but you're a sweetie.

I was like, hey, Mr.

Nintendo.

It was somewhere between that and how I'm actually speaking right now.

And so basically, when they announced that the pre-orders were going to be at

the four retailers that they uh that they were at i was like this is my shot to get a nintendo switch i won't have another opportunity i won't be able to get one from the my nintendo store uh or i would just have to try my luck you know in the wild

so last night i get online i'm in a group chat with my boys and we're all trying to get one uh and

uh

i had the i had like three tabs open and I had a sort of arbitrary preference for

which ones that I wanted to do because I don't think any of these stores are particularly good.

They're all bad.

They're all bad.

But I sort of, it was like, this one is better than this one, and this one is worse than that one.

So I had this order.

Same.

That I was like, okay, well, whatever.

I just won't look further into this.

But I was like, this is what I have to buy one of these.

And

it was a debacle.

It was a fucking disaster.

It was an hour.

My sweet wife, my poor sweet wife,

over my shoulder, did you get it?

Did you get it every couple minutes?

And I was like, I'll tell you when I got it.

I had, I had a similar setup with my wife.

She's out of town.

We were texting.

And

I was like, hey, just FYI in 20 minutes, I'm going to be gone from communicating for probably 10 minutes to an hour.

I don't know how long it might take me to get a switch to, but I wanted to give you a heads up.

And she was like, thank you for telling me in case you just suddenly dropped offline.

And then two minutes before the pre-orders went live, she's like, can I call you?

And I was like, I'm really sorry.

Not right now.

I'm just trying to get this video game.

It was also just so funny because we also had survivor on and I like locked in like when they were doing

like I just like my head like turned 180 degrees just pulling behind the other way.

I was like, well, he shouldn't have done that.

He fucked with the wrong one.

And things went back to the computer.

My website, what's going on with you right now?

It was like, I just feel insane.

Basically, long story short, an hour and a half of trying to order, having it taken from carts, things just not working at all, having to retype credit card information that

I had checked earlier that day to make sure it was set.

I did secure a pre-order for the Switch 2.

Yes.

How exciting.

And I got a couple of accessories and stuff.

Wow, that's risky.

I was told, do not worry about accessories.

Get the Switch 2 in your cart and just click.

Let me tell you something.

They're coming in two separate orders.

Oh, okay.

The accessories, of course, are coming first.

Yeah, of course.

And then the system is coming.

That's like a couple days after.

That's like when you get your phone case for a new iPhone, like two weeks before the phone comes out.

Yes.

Which also kind of always ruins

the shine of the new phone because you're like, oh, it's...

It's going to be exactly like the one I already have.

I can tell from holding the case.

Yeah.

Though I've heard rumor that this year

the iPhone Air is like credit card thin.

Like weaponized.

Really?

Yeah.

There was like a two-month lead time in between the Japanese release of the GameCube, another Nintendo console, and the North American release.

And I really wanted to get one.

And I was weighing importing it.

And a friend talked me into like, you know what?

Just get a controller because it'll feel like you got something.

And then you only have to wait two more months.

You know, nowadays,

I was much younger.

Yes.

Two months seemed seemed like an eternity.

Nowadays, I do two months like standing on my fucking head.

I don't care, like, whatever.

Time dilation has made it so that years feel like what days used to be.

It's fucking horrible.

You okay, man?

No, just start.

As you get older, stars wheel overhead and each day feels like the life age of the universe.

It's just like you can't, you lose a sense of

where you are and you forget how old you are.

I have a theory about this, a sci-fi theory, which is that time is speeding up.

And your starting position when you're born is

what you think speed one is.

Wow.

And then as it, as you live, it's like, God, things are going so fast.

And then somebody else who is younger than you, when they're born, they're set at your speed, right?

30, right?

Or 40 or whatever.

So I think that time is speeding up in like a, we are whipping around a black hole somewhere in the universe sort of way.

I love this that's really cool.

It's really scary, but that's awesome and that also like explains it in like a relativity sense of just like relative to our own experience, you know, where oh wow, I love that.

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I did not get a switch at launch.

I was very envious of people that got switches at launch.

And I was just excited and, you know, obviously very lucky to be in a position to acquire

a switch to at launch.

I can't believe that of the three of us, I got one.

Well, my wife was out of town.

Otherwise, I would have gotten 50.

She'd have just clicked, don't I just like press this and add it to cart?

And then I press send and there.

Oh, do you want another one?

That was, that would have been what it was like.

My wife did offer to try to get in there and help me.

She's like, I can do it on my phone.

And I was like, I don't need them logging two IP addresses.

I ordered a gift or something.

I heard from a friend in Europe that it is extremely easy to pre-order one there.

Really?

That you just can, that even now you can go online and click and pre-order the Switch 2 like a day later.

Let's all move to the EU.

Okay.

I don't.

You don't got to tell me.

I did see, though, that people were having a pretty successful time getting an in-person pre-order at GameStop.

Yeah, so this morning is when the in-person pre-order started.

And I followed somebody on Blue Sky who was like, it was 6.45 in the morning.

I was about to go to the gym and they were like, hey, if anybody wants to come to the GameStop at Burbank, there's only 30 of us in line and they have 75 units allocated.

So you could just drive here and

fuck.

I didn't even think about that.

Yeah.

And

I'm in my car and I'm like,

you got to go to the gym.

Just being, you got to get fit.

Just keep going.

But I did think about like bailing on my morning and standing in line until 10 a.m.

Yeah.

I almost got, I thought about going myself because I was like, I know somebody I know is going to need one.

Or, you know, need is obviously not the correct word.

You got two co-hosts who might want one.

Yeah, but.

But you didn't.

Well, you know what?

I had to make breakfast for my wife.

There you go.

That's what being a wife guy is all about.

That's what it's all about, folks.

Well, hey, that was what are you ordering?

What are you pre-ordering, I guess I should say.

But the question we like to ask near the top of every episode is about other video games we've been playing other than the topic at hand.

The question for the room is, what are you playing?

What are you playing?

Hi, it's me, the Resident Evil Merchant, and I'm here to ask my friends.

I don't understand the topic of this week's episode.

You mean we play, you play Blue Prince?

you mean the overall topic you don't you don't get it yeah why don't you understand it we do this i know we haven't done one in a while yeah but we do that we've done this format in the past you've been on this episode i like the onboarding i understand the onboarding browsers

but which of you blueprints

oh i see what you're i see where you're going with this uh you know blue as in the color b-l-u-e

and then you gotta stop when it gets like that well no also i don't think you understand what it is,

what it is or how it works.

Yeah.

No, Blue Prince, like, like, we're not talking about

an act of flavor.

Isn't he dead?

Yes, Prince is dead.

Arrest in power.

Now, he was a famously horny man, so perhaps he might have been into some sort of act of carnality.

Is it possible he was the horniest man to ever live?

He certainly wrote, like, certainly a lot of his catalog was about being horny.

Yeah.

But, you know.

Purple Reign is about diarrhea.

I don't think that's true.

And I would also say that's not horny.

YMMV.

Not going to kink shame anybody.

No, of course, but I don't think.

I don't associate that with sexuality.

No, I don't think somebody being like, oh man, I'm about to have diarrhea.

I'm so horny.

I don't want to know that guy.

That guy,

I want him to thrive on his own, but I don't want to interact with him.

How are you going to calm down?

I'm about to have diarrhea.

This is fucking disgusting.

No,

Blue Prince is the name of a game, B-L-U-E, Prince.

They're two separate words, and

it's not any sort of, it's not a verb, it's a descriptor, and it's the name of the game we're going to be talking about at length

on this episode.

Okay, good.

That's all that's going on.

I've seen Prince in concert.

That's amazing.

Wow.

He had a residency at.

No, not now.

It would be very amazing if it was now.

Yes.

This is now, gosh.

The slow march of time.

This was like 10, more than 10 years ago.

He He had a residency in Los Angeles at the forum.

Wow.

I need to get that.

And all the tickets were $25 for any seat in the house.

You just got lucky on where the seat was.

And so I was like, I'm going to get two tickets.

My mom is a big fan of that.

That's $50.

$50.

So I got two tickets and I went with my mom and we had a fucking blast.

Wow.

That was great.

It was amazing.

I love this.

I loved this for you.

Yeah, it was great.

He was incredible.

All right.

So do we still do the segment when you guys are all playing a game?

Yeah, we still do the are you playing because we still there.

There's other stuff we got going on.

We can check in on about that.

All right, so then I'll cue you it up.

Great.

Nick Weiger, what are you burning?

Thank you so much, Resident Evil Merchant.

I'll go quick here and just touch on an idol game that I was.

I was directed to by our buddy Matt Mazzani, who listens to the pod.

So I mentioned a few weeks ago, we were talking, I don't remember what the context was, but someone had a question, and I think we were talking about like either time wasters, guilty pleasures, things that

games that make us reliable.

Cookie clicker.

Exactly.

Cookie Clicker I brought up.

I talked about, you know,

a Crush Crush and

the and Blush Blush, you know, the dating sim clicker games.

Mazzani mentioned a game to me that runs in a browser called Goo Boo.

And Gooboo is a browser-based open source game that is basically like you're mining, you're descending depths, you're going to different levels, you're buying upgrades, which act as multipliers to improve your rate of resource collection.

It is a game that is completely free, and there are no microtransactions.

And I will read two bullet points from its description.

Number one, active play is not required to keep up your progression.

Just check in from time to time.

No pressure to play daily and no FOMO, which is a thing, again, makes this a less stressful experience.

I don't have to worry about doing my dailies or anything like that.

I just play whenever the fuck I want.

And also, long-term progression, the game is intended to be played for years, which is, again,

who gives it?

What do I care?

Well, who gives a shit?

Yeah, I'll check in on this thing in a year or two.

But it is true, sicko, rat in a cage shit, because

there is nothing to it other than numbers going up.

Yeah.

And, but, it, but it, like, you're playing this and you're like, I am enjoying this.

Why am I enjoying this experience?

And it does make you kind of look inward in terms of like, what are we as animals?

You know, like, like, what are our brains?

What is consciousness?

Maybe, maybe what we've discovered is that the sort of like the foundational consciousness experience is the existence of math.

And the reason we liked it was the numbers were literally going up.

Could be, yeah.

Like, like somebody was like, guys,

what if there's more than 10?

Because also, isn't it true that there are different linguistic traditions that don't have, like it's like one, two, and many?

Yes, there are some languages that don't have descriptions for each individual number or different numeric systems, but a lot of them are 10-based because it's theorized because we just have 10 fingers.

And that just just makes sense how people would count naturally.

I think we needed to stop at 10.

10 was good.

I like 10.

10 is enough.

This is like that Mr.

Show sketch.

24 is the highest number.

And it's just a bunch of like guys sitting around.

Oh, I'm telling you, 24 is the highest number.

What about 25?

Oh, hold on.

You know,

doing a bad job describing it.

It's just a bunch of like, you know,

it's a bunch of mafia guys for some reason arguing that 24 is the highest number there is.

It's very funny.

It's very good.

Good bitch.

Yeah.

Good bitch.

And it's in a so is this browser

goo boo, you said?

Gooboo.

Yeah, check out goo.

It's on, it's on itch.io.

I want to say that the reason I laughed when you said what you were doing was I was delighted at the idea of you playing an idol game.

Yeah.

Which I thought was going to be like an idol management game, like the one where it's like, oh, I've got like 15 girls and I got to decide which ones to put in a band.

Oh my God, because like you said idol game and I got what you were saying with the, you know, the homonym or homophone, whatever, whatever it is and I was like oh you're like return of the golden idol or case the golden idol games that I really like that I've talked about before that's where I thought but you didn't mean like an like an Indiana Jones style idol you meant like an idol like a like a k-pop idol yeah I would love that game well they exist I got to play one of these yeah because I like you know again I've talked about it before I love the you know the um

the the cafe management sim that's that's a that's a part of uh the Yakuza games.

I love that when you're you're managing that hostess cafe.

It's so fun.

It's so satisfying.

It's like I wish this was a standalone game.

So yeah, if there's an idol management game that people can sure there is, I'll definitely be in doing that.

There was definitely one on like Xbox 360, and that's years ago.

So they only must have gotten better.

There was a Princess Maker game that people directed me to before, and it wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but I appreciate it.

Was it Princess Maker 2?

I can't remember.

But it wasn't exactly the same thing

that,

you know,

it wasn't the exact same thing as the kind of like spinning plate sort of feeling you have from managing that cafe.

Matt, why were we making eye contact while he was talking about this?

I think we were both just ingesting the same information.

And I think we both actively decided not to make a joke.

Okay, great.

What would you joke about?

What were we going to do?

We were just listening to our friend

speak eloquently and passionately about something he enjoyed.

Okay, that's what I thought.

That's what I thought.

Yeah, whatever.

I was like, huh, we've done this twice.

What's happening right now?

I think we're both like, is this the time?

No, no, no.

That does sound,

that sounds good.

Yeah.

The thing that you said about the cafe

from Yakuza Zero, every time I think about how much time we've all put into that game and how I finished it, and I remember I finished it at the fucking beach.

I played it on my backbone on my phone and rolled credits on it at the beach.

I was so into it.

I love it.

Will I ever play another one of those games?

I think you will.

I think at some point you'll come around to a like a dragon.

Yeah, for sure.

Bought all of them on like deep, deep discount like last year.

Yeah, they'll do fire sales on the Yakuza franchise that'll be like you'll get them for like $199 a piece.

Yeah, and I'm like, well, I'll just have these.

And then I, you know, when

in my whatever happens and I'm in my time alone at last

era,

I'll be playing those games probably.

But anyway, that's what I've been playing.

Heather, what are you playing?

Well, because I was focused so intensely on our We Play, You Play, the only other game I've had time to play this week is Pokemon.

We are at, or Pokemon the card game Pocket.

We are in the final steps of this month's ranked.

matches.

I've hit a wall in the Ultra Balls.

I cannot get to master.

Let me rephrase.

I can.

I have the cards to do it.

I refuse to play the decks that will allow me because I don't want to play asshole decks.

Yeah, sure.

I only want to play enjoyable decks because if I'm not having fun, then what does the rank mean?

Right.

You know, like a little icon on my

splash page, on my, on my character profile.

Like, I don't need that.

What I want is to play the game and rank up naturally through my fun decks.

So yeah, I've hit a wall at Ultra Ball 3.

I can't progress because again, I refuse to play

the fucking Girtana Dark Ride deck that everybody plays from this point forward.

Yeah, so it seems like the meta is sort of trying to

have you just pick one of from one of a few options.

What are the decks that you're playing that you're enjoying?

I like playing my Wugtrio deck.

Wug Trio,

there's nothing else I have in the deck.

I have Wiglet and Wugtrio twice, and the rest of my deck is trainers and support items, because it is fun to play

as Wugtrio.

Right.

If I'm bored playing as Wugtrio, I have like a fighting deck that's fine.

It's a little less enjoyable with,

what is the

Kranados, that guy?

He's like the second stage and then the third stage, I forget forget the names of, but I don't have any affinity for these Pokemon, so I don't feel as excited when I'm playing with them.

Whereas Wugtrio is funny to look at.

They are fun to look at.

These three worms and rocks.

Yeah.

That's a good-looking guy.

I just can't, like, it's also, I think, one of the few, Wugtrio is one of the few decks that can undo.

If you have a good run, it can undo the asshole decks because the damage that you do is randomized.

So you can look out and beat the decks that everybody is using to advance to Master Ball.

Yeah.

And when that happens, I feel joy and pride.

Wow.

So yeah,

I guess I'm just stationary for now.

And maybe I will be stationary for the rest of the month.

And then I don't think I'm going to play ranked again.

Except, no, because

there's a new expansion coming out.

There's a new expansion coming out.

That'll probably shift at some point.

And it's got 200 cards in the expansion, so it's a substantial one.

It'll definitely be completely different.

I'm still going to play.

I got to get into a card game again.

I haven't played one regularly since I was

all in on Marvel Snap, but man, that's more than a year ago at this point.

I don't know if Snap is still thriving.

I don't know if there's something else to play.

I kind of don't want something on my fucking phone, but I feel like that's where they all live now.

So, you know, whatever.

And I think for listeners, if you're interested in the actual makeup of my deck, I've posted it both on Blue Sky and on our Discord, discord.gg/slash get played.

So you can see the actual

cards that I've used to get to Ultra 3, but

I just don't want to do it.

I don't want to, I have the, not only do I have the cards, I have the hologram or art versions of those cards because my wife's luck is

horrifying.

Like, like truly like Agent Smith level, she can change reality.

Nightmarish, terrifying, scary.

Wow.

Agent Smith is terrifying.

He's terrifying.

I like him.

It's also a really old reference.

This is a 26-year-old reference.

Kids don't know The Matrix.

They don't know The Matrix.

Kids today, they don't know the Matrix.

They still know Darth Vader, so think about that shit.

Yeah, and he's pretty scary.

How iconic it is.

Okay, we're not going to do Star Wars now.

All right.

So, so that's what I've been playing.

Matt, what about you?

Okay.

Rise of Skywalker sucked.

Go on.

The reason they know Darth Vader, though, and not Agent Smith, is because

Disney's

fucking cowards, and they won't just let, they won't let the past die.

They won't kill it.

God, they won't.

They won't.

And he wanted us.

He wanted us to do it.

Yes.

He wanted us to do it.

Anyway.

Ray is a palpatine.

Fucking kidding me with this shit.

I haven't seen the new Andor yet.

Neither have I, neither have I.

We're not going to talk about it.

Andor.

I heard a fucking thing.

Andor is supposed to be fucking incredible.

I got to wait till my wife gets back into town.

I will say, I will say, I was reading an article recently that they didn't know on set if she was going to be a Palpatine or not.

And so they filmed different versions of it.

I think, here's the thing, my take, and I know it's really hard to make a movie.

If you're making a movie, you should know what the fuck's going on.

Maybe make that decision before you get to set.

Yeah.

Maybe just figure that out.

Just figure it out because it seems like it's probably pretty big.

Pretty big.

It's pretty consequential to decide.

People may or may not be.

Like the hero of the new trilogy is the descendant of the emperor from the previous one.

Do we think that Zeus should have crab powers?

Should he have crab power?

I don't know.

Let's tell the story of Zeus in like two different ways.

Like, let's like make the answer is yes, he should have crab power.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Zeus should have crab power.

But does he still have lightning?

Is like a lightning crab?

Oh, I don't know.

I don't know.

That's pretty good.

Lightning crab Zeus?

Yeah.

See, but you would never make an arbitrary decision about myth like that.

Right.

You'd be like, no.

No.

Zeus has lightning powers.

Yeah.

Ray is not a palpatine.

Like, he turns into a goose and he fucks.

He eats his children.

God, can you imagine being on ground zero of those myths and being like,

dudes, did you hear what happened?

Like, how excited you would be to, like, go tell the story of Hercules to a friend who hadn't heard it yet.

The fucking, they tricked Zeus by putting rocks in his fucking mouth.

He ate a bunch of rocks instead of his kids.

This motherfucker got his liver eaten.

Do you believe that shit?

Oh, man, have you heard about the boulder guy?

The boulder guy is insane.

He's just pushing a boulder up over and over again.

Well, you know what?

I imagine him happy.

Because really, aren't we all like kind of doing pushing our own boulders up?

No, I just think like each day we're just pushing our own boulders up the hill and they fall back down.

So you think he's happy, so thus you think we're happy.

I'm min-maxing that shit.

You think this is good?

I'd rather be Sisyphus than the guy who's got an unquenchable thirst, and every time he goes down to take a drink, the water shrinks away.

That's a much worse guy.

It is way worse.

Yeah.

Give me the, give me the be the, I'll be the boulder guy anytime.

Greek.

Be friends with Bouldy.

Greek myths are really good.

Yeah, they're really good.

They're fucking awesome.

They're really, they're fucking, they're awesome.

But you would never be like, you'd never be like, hey, you know, you know, Medusa?

She's a Zeus.

Right, that would kind of upend everything that's been established.

What the fuck?

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I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

So, this is what I've been playing.

I sent a text, I sent a sad text to the group this week.

Yeah, I was kind of bummed when I sent it.

I said, guys, no game's really grabbing me right now.

Because I kept bouncing, I was starting up stuff, returning to stuff that I had been playing, and nothing was really.

I mean, I think I honestly hold this game that we're covering responsible for this a little bit.

Oh, we'll get into it.

I was bouncing between stuff.

I will say, I'm sort of slowly going through Celeste still.

Hell yeah.

I just got to this level.

I think that I liked the most so far.

And it's,

I don't remember the exact name of the area, but there's this like sort of like floating ball, this like ball creature that can like get you.

And I just like the area.

Like it's a great, it's a fucking great time.

But beyond that, I was like, I kind of need a sort of meteor game to,

you know, to sink my teeth into.

Unfortunately, I think I've fallen off of Assassin's Creed Shadows.

The Oblivion remaster came out, and I downloaded it and played it for like five minutes and sort of like,

I can't do this right now.

This is too much.

Yeah, that was kind of just surprise dropped.

And I thought about playing it, and I was like, what am I going to do?

What am I going to play with?

Today, Oblivion, come on.

I did start up

Claire the Obscure

Expedition 33.

This game has been really well reviewed.

This is a new

RPG.

We'll get into it.

But

I started that a little bit and was like,

this seems cool.

Yeah.

It seems like it's a lot.

And I sent to the text, the text strap, guys, no games are grabbing me.

And then my friend Nick, that's me.

He says,

Kingdom Hearts is calling.

And I was like, oh my God, yeah.

I need to play Kingdom Hearts 3.

I love this.

So then I booted Kingdom Hearts 3 up.

I got, I, you know, I had recently, or not recently, I had purchased the DLC and never finished, never finished Kingdom Hearts 3.

Yeah.

Never played the DLC before.

And you're a man with a Keyblade tattoo.

Yes.

You are a Kingdom Heart.

This is one of the...

And you've become one from the

2.5.

Can you remember all 16 words in the subtitle?

Optional boss 5.

This is a...

But like Kingdom Hearts is a franchise that's near and dear to your heart.

I've read top three, top five for you all time, along with Pokemon, Tony Hawk.

Top two is my favorite video game of all time.

Yeah, so this is this is like, this is like a key franchise for you.

And again, to reference the Bugs Money meme we talked about recently, sometimes it's time to go back to the old meme.

Time to go back to the old me.

Yeah.

And I'll say that my experience of Kingdom Hearts, while not as passionate as Matt's, I would call myself

a pretty thorough Kingdom Hearts player.

I played the card-based action game on the Game Boy Advance.

I played the PSP exclusive game.

Birth by Sleep.

I played one and two, and I bought three on launch day.

And like Matt, I also bounced off of it.

I think that was, wasn't that a lot of the fandom reaction, though?

A lot of people were kind of lukewarm on three.

People were lukewarm on three, but here's what I got to say so far.

Yeah.

My return back to it.

I don't know what the problem was.

Wow.

I've been really, really enjoying it.

I have not gotten very far.

but so let me just preface this too, because I was confused about where I had left off.

I looked, I just kind of was like, okay, I see that my last save is in this particular world, the Pirates of the Caribbean world.

It's like, gosh,

probably like halfway through or something.

There is like one other world after that.

I was almost done with it.

Wow.

I could have finished it.

But I started a new game

and

didn't remember any of it.

And it doesn't kind of it kind of doesn't matter what you do and don't remember in a Kingdom Hearts game because it's

there.

There was a point where Mickey was doing a lore dump and I was just like grinning ear to ear.

I was like, this is fucking nonsense.

This is so crazy.

And just like, just like, yeah, just basically like hysterically laughing.

And then.

Oh, well, well, we've got to be careful for Organization 13.

His heart is not in his body anymore.

I'm like, okay, what the fuck are you talking about here?

It's all stupid shit like that.

And I love it.

It's great.

And

I said out loud, what the fuck is going on?

Because

I'll describe the scene to you.

I am entering a world.

This cutscene starts that looks like some of the other stuff that we've seen already.

There are characters that look like the Kingdom Hearts characters.

There are weapons that sort of look like the Kingdom of Hearts weapons.

And there are, there's like a creature that you sort of recognize from a

nobody

like boss encounter in the gummy ship right before.

So I was kind of like, nobody boss encounter.

I was like, what the fuck is this?

Who are these people?

What is going on?

And then there's a title card.

I can't remember what it says, but it says something like...

as ridiculous as a subtitle in a Kingdom Hearts game.

It's like

invectus nevernem or something.

It's something like that.

I can't remember what it is.

And it's

Rex and Ham from Toy Story watching a commercial on TV.

They fucking tricked me.

It's really funny and really good, but the combat is really great.

Uh, it looks really, really good.

I forgot how because I keep my memories of Kingdom Hearts are kind of only what Kingdom Hearts 2 looks like.

Sure, chain of memories,

my chain of memories, which it doesn't look bad, but you know, it looks like a PlayStation 2 game that's maybe been up-rezzed over the years in the HD, you know, remasters of it or whatever.

But it looks gorgeous gorgeous on the PS5 and I'm really enjoying it and I'm hoping to see it to the end this time.

I have faith that you will.

I think this is the time you see it.

I'm really excited.

There's a nice little pocket for this.

Because,

guys, do you know that Death Strand 82 comes out in like two months?

Yes.

Isn't that fucking crazy?

It is kind of wild.

And I'm kind of like, what do I want to portion my, how do I want to allocate my gaming time and run up to that?

Because I want to make sure I'm going to be able to do that.

I think you guys should play Mother 3.

Well, look.

We'll get into it.

We got to schedule that at some point.

I did.

I mean, I've started.

Don't fuck with me.

We don't have this on the calendar yet.

For our listeners who are wondering what's going on,

Heather had a bet.

We all had a bet as to when

the Switch 2 was going to launch.

Heather came closest with her guests.

The reward was you get to pick a game that we are going to do a We Play, You Play episode about.

Heather's pick was Mother 3, a game that Matt and I have never played.

We are going to play Mother 3 and do an episode about it at some point this year.

We haven't scheduled it yet.

We should get it in the calendar.

I have holy

we've got to pick a time when we're all going to be in town and we all have time to play.

This is off.

This is for, we'll leave this in.

Yeah.

I have a place for it tentatively on the calendar.

That'd be great.

We'll figure it out.

We can figure it out.

I did start it.

Wow.

Because I want to be able to say I can finish it.

Incredible.

I've started it.

I'm not very far.

I've done a couple things.

Yep.

Okay.

Great.

Great.

Ranch, your partner, Mark, a huge Kingdom Hearts fan.

Do you know, has Mark played Kingdom Hearts 3?

Does Mark have a take on it?

He has played Kingdom Hearts 3.

I think 2 is also his favorite.

Wow.

But he does like 3 because how open the world is.

I got a message from Mark last night.

He was very excited when I told him.

Sometimes Mark and I exchange messages.

And Mark said.

that he's excited for me to play Kingdom Hearts 3 because one of his singular favorite moments in any Kingdom Hearts game is in three.

I love this.

I love this.

I can't wait to find out what that is.

Kevin Rex watching a commercial.

So I've already experienced it.

It's all downhill from that.

If it's the theme I'm thinking about, Mark Ball, his eyes out.

Sounds like a true Kingdom Hearts fan.

He's crying while Donald Duck is bottomless.

My wife was making fun of me when I was playing last night because I kept failing something, and you just kept hearing Sora go, oh no.

And she was like, what is that?

I was like, I'm failing the Ratatouille cooking mini-game.

um I'm really hoping because

you know there's there's rumor that uh Tetsunomoro who was taken off of Final Fantasy 15 because he had been developing it for more than a decade as Final Fantasy 13 versus

that

Some of the meta game content in Kingdom Hearts 3 is about his antagonistic relationship with his employer, Square Enix.

I'm hoping, having seen that Kingdom Hearts 4 is a takes place in the real world game, which was the initial pitch of Final Fantasy 13 versus like it's the real world Final Fantasy, that this guy, who knows that he can't be taken off of a Kingdom Hearts game, is now just making the original Final Fantasy XV game via the Kingdom Hearts IP.

And that, God, I would really love it.

I would really love it.

Because also, isn't there footage of like Sora running up a building just like Noctis?

Yes.

Let's fucking go.

Let's go.

I'm down for any sort of insane creative choice.

That is, again, what is going to make me compel me to play Death Stranding 2 at launch is just like, oh, we're putting Kingdom Hearts in the real world?

Yeah, sure.

Why the fuck not?

I hope Sora looks to screen at the beginning of the game and goes,

all the other Kingdom Hearts games were just games.

This is real.

The, yeah, I was so skeptical, and I, what a fool I was about New Donk City

before that play.

Would you just looking at the footage and looking at the screenshots, but when that was announced as a play space for Super Mario Odyssey?

And I was like, oh man, I don't know about this.

And then it's just like, it's one of my favorite levels in any platformer ever.

Oh, yeah.

So fucking good.

So absolutely, if someone has a vision, I hope they have

the faith from their employer to be allowed to execute it.

One of the best songs in any Mario.

Oh, my God.

Jump up superstar.

Are you kidding me?

The best.

Mayor Pauline?

Oh man.

The best.

Pretty good.

All right.

Calm down, Prince.

That's Michael Jackson.

Speaking of princes, let's get into our we play, you play for Blue Prince.

That's good.

Blue Prince is a first-person roguelite puzzle adventure game where you explore a family mansion, which you rebuild from scratch each day, room by room, in an attempt to reach room 46 of 45.

You solve puzzles big and small along the way, and the larger goal is to uncover the mysteries of this property and your own family's history.

It was released on

April 10th, rather, 2025 to universal critical acclaim, though a bit of a split in audience reaction, which we will talk about.

And it was written, directed, and designed by Tonda Ross over an eight-year development cycle.

The art direction is by David Polino, and the music is by jazz duo Trigg and Gusset.

I want to say real quick, we did want to play a little bit of music here, but Spotify recently took down one of our episodes because we played a a clip of an overworld theme from Metaphor Refantasio.

So unfortunately, we just can't play

anything for the soundtrack, but just look that up.

It's like this: boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,

boom, boom.

Boom, boom.

Some nice bass clarinet in there.

I played bass clarinet in middle school.

But before we get into it,

before we get into the game proper, where is everybody?

Like, like, like, because I'll say

I'm about 30 hours in.

I don't have my exact hour count, and I've quote-unquote finished the game.

Yes, I did about, I think, 35, 40 hours, and I rolled credits.

Oh, I need to, hold on.

I need to look at my

PlayStation app, and I can tell you what,

because I captured my final

room.

I

got to day 34.

Wow.

And

also rolled credits.

Okay.

So you got credits a little bit earlier than me.

Ranch, where are you?

I think I'm a little, I'm almost at 30 hours.

Okay.

And like almost day 30.

Got it.

So

I'm going to monologue a little bit and then open it up.

Okay.

Because this game is the most for me of anyone.

And

I love this kind of game in general.

Like I think this is exactly in my wheelhouse, an inscrutable puzzle adventure.

I also love the two genres this is merging, which is like, you know, puzzle adventure games and roguelites.

It's like whatever.

I really, really got into roguelites in the 2010s, and which is kind of obviously their heyday.

And graphic adventure games, puzzle games, I've been playing since PC games in the 90s.

That's like a staple genre for me.

I do think this particular design by Tonda Ross is brilliant.

I think the developer is a genius.

And it both reminds me of games I love and is like nothing I've ever played before.

And so from that standpoint, it is singular.

The aesthetics are pristine.

The art direction is perfect for this particular game.

Outside of the character models is the only thing that is maybe a little bit janky, but the environment, which is what you're spending the bulk of your time in, is so gorgeous.

The music is so beautiful and so distinct and so mood perfect.

I'm glad Blueprints exist for the soundtrack alone, or maybe just more generally for the aesthetics alone.

As this incredibly precise level of details, there are all these unexpected reactions that can happen that I've witnessed on my own or seen posted online that just show how like thoughtfully crafted the total package is.

I love the challenge.

Some people have talked about the challenge.

I love how challenging it is.

I love that it rewards note-taking.

I love that it rewards paying close attention.

And the puzzles are that much more gratifying to solve because of the layers of complexity.

And I do think it's fair to call this game a masterpiece.

And I completely 100% understand the fawning response from critics and from enthusiasts of this genre.

But all that said,

I found actually playing this game to be profoundly annoying.

A thing I say often on this podcast about video games is treat me like an adult.

I think this is a thing we all kind of like believe and maybe articulate in different ways.

But I don't want things spoon-fed to me.

I don't need a mini-map covered with a bunch of punctuation marks, partly why I'm not as into the Assassin's Creed and bounced off the most recent one.

I don't need an NPC barking in my ear about which lever to pull.

Don't give me instructions to follow.

Give me a game to play, something to interact with.

Let me make my own choices.

Let me make my own discoveries.

From that standpoint, this game is an absolute triumph.

The tutorials are integrated in the game world.

All the clues are buried in art and documents that you have to parse.

Problems are presented instead of like spelled out.

Like, here is your task that you have to do.

That's exactly what I want from a game.

But the other part of the treat me like an adult thing is

respect my time.

And I don't feel like this game respects the user's time.

I mean, like, I like, again, I like the challenge.

That's not my issue.

My complaint is not that the game is hard.

it's that it is tedious, it's that it is dull.

Yeah, and there's so many rote tasks that you must repeat every single run, and they add up to make it all feel like a slog.

And even if you're playing this game carefully and quote-unquote correctly, there's just no way to avoid it feeling repetitive in a way that feels bad to someone who even likes roguelites.

I mean, the main resource this game is taxing is your own real-world time.

It's highly RNG reliant in terms of how each run plays out.

We'll get into that, but even by roguelite standards, the tools for RNG mitigation are paltry.

And,

you know, it also has an element where each run,

I'll say this a different way.

Roguelites often have a thing that makes it feel like you are still making progress even for a failed run.

And I don't feel like this game really has that element.

I completely agree.

I feel like Hades is like the best at this, but like a game like FTL is also excellent at this.

There's no equivalent in blueprints.

You don't get any sort of resource or larger currency when your run ends.

You see the map, which is fun.

It's fun to have a name for your mansion, but you don't have anything to boost subsequent runs.

Sometimes you'll just hit a dead end, sometimes through no fault of the user.

I'm waiting for people to say like skill issue, but if you've played this game for an appreciable amount of time, you know, there's some times where you're cul-de-saced and there was just nothing you could do.

You, you, uh, you know, uh, you brought all your gems with you.

You, you hoarded keys.

You have, you know,

your dice rolls, your re-rolls, and just like none of this worked out and you ended up in a space where you're at a dead end and you can't progress.

And so, even if you've been extremely careful about managing your layout and preserving your re-rolls, you know, if you didn't get the coat room so you can stash an item or the draw the like the freezer to retain your coins and gems, you have nothing to show for it for a failed run.

And I know the defense is like, hey, you're still learning something about the larger mystery, but at a certain point, there's that's not necessarily the case.

At a certain point, like, I know what's going on here.

I just don't have any sort of meaningful way to progress.

And so, from a user experience, it just feels like a waste of time, as maybe this monologue feels like to some people who are listening.

Not at all.

But Blueprints does have some permanent upgrades, and I have all of them at this point, but they are rare and they're fairly unimpactful.

And the drop rate of things like upgrade discs, which upgrade your rooms, is very, very low.

And so,

you know, it just gets to a point where it doesn't feel like you have anything to help you retain progress that you've made.

Even after you roll credits.

I was expecting like, oh, I'm going to get some sort of tool.

I'm going to get golden dice or something.

It's going to give me like

three free re-rolls on every run or something like that.

Or I'm going to get whatever.

My allowance is going to be massively boosted.

You don't really get anything like that.

And it feels like the game just doesn't really care about the player's quality of life.

Maybe these elements could be patched, but as currently constructed,

my main issue with this game after the first five to ten hours where I was dazzled is that I found it boring.

And

I do kind of just like,

I do feel like some people are going to have this this reaction and feel like they are, you know,

I don't know, feel like they're maybe looking for other people who have the same sort of

response to this game because, again, you're dealing with such a rapturous response from the gaming press.

But I honestly feel like, as an as a user experience, this is not a particularly pleasant game to experience.

But anyway, that's that's my thoughts.

Anyone, someone else talk.

Nick, I'm

surprised that you found it boring.

Yeah.

Because

as we know, I don't like puzzle games.

I would go so far as to say I fucking hate puzzle games.

Yeah, I think this is the game, like a contra me who this game is made for.

This is a game that is not made for you.

Yeah.

That being said, I never found it boring because of the randomized element.

There was something about the fact that I never knew if I would be able to solve the puzzle on that run that made it a sort of dopamine cycle for me because I was like, okay, I know that I have to get this room.

Yeah.

And I'm going to maximize my playthrough of this particular mansion.

Again, a consequence of it not respecting your time is that I would throw away mansions in order to solve puzzles.

Right.

And be like, okay, I know I need this room, this room, this room, and this room, I think, in order to achieve this effect.

And I would, I would backtrack in order to maximize the likelihood of those rooms arriving.

And that to me wouldn't be in service of the story and it wouldn't be in service of

the greater puzzle like solving.

But in order to achieve a task that I was hyper-fixated on, the randomized element of the game made it so that I was not hideously bored by the puzzles themselves.

Sure.

That being said, as Matt knows, because I was on the edge of beating the game for like the last week,

and all I needed was one thing to happen, and it never happened over and over and over again to have, I think, 10 in-game days, 10 hours where the game was solved for me, and all I needed was two rooms to arrive.

That was not boring, but it was extremely frustrating.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's another, you know,

another feeling that I think people might have playing this game.

But Matt, go ahead.

I mean, look,

I

liked playing this game until I didn't.

Yeah.

Because I was enjoying myself and was like, I was getting into the, Nick

sort of mentioned when we had started it that there was like a, you know,

the discoveries and stuff like that sort of had like a lost vibe to it.

And like, yeah, like 100% one-to-one.

But like, there was that, it sort of scratched that edge, you know, like when Lost was on the air, for example, they would do all these like ARGs online that I would like get super into and like

just try to, you know, solve little mysteries and things like that.

This,

it got to a point where I was like, I don't even care about the fucking story.

Oh, yeah, no.

I was like,

and some of it's interesting, but like, I'm not.

I'm just trying to do the thing that the game is telling me to do, which is go to room 46.

And then, like you said, once you know, what I was talking about last week when I was like, I know what I have to do.

I just don't know if I can do it.

The reason I thought I couldn't do it was because I wasn't sure the game would fucking let me.

Yeah.

Because I knew that I had to.

And I guess

at what point should we spoiler this?

Because this also I want to say as an aside.

Yeah.

What a successful puzzle game that all three of us have rolled credits on

in 15 days.

I think extra successful that you did it.

Like, because you don't like that at all.

No, I, I,

but, but I, but I had to.

But you had to.

I had to.

I think we're generally kind of in spoiler country now just by yeehaw, put on your hold on your hats and glasses.

But I think like, as far as the story goes, I watched the ending cinematic and I'm like, all right, dude.

Like, I like, it is meaningless to me.

I did, I did not, I was reading a bunch of documents, and I do think it is a very high quality of writing that's in these journals and, you know, know, short stories and what have you that you stumble upon.

But there was nothing that I gleaned from this that I was like that hooked me enough to really pursue all the narrative connections.

I think that's because the game trains you as a player to harvest narrative for clues.

Right, right.

You begin thinking of text not as story, but as sequences that can be mined for results.

And as a result, the story as a story fades into the background of what is, as a player experience.

Where are the numbers?

Where are the colors?

Where are the relationships that I have to write down

on a thing or for me?

And I think Matt screenshot in my PlayStation so that I can cycle back through those notes.

Like, I think that it is, it punishes the player to think of it and to get absorbed by the story.

Because when you look at a postcard and it's Christmas, you're like, what does Christmas mean?

Right.

Not who are the people in here and what's happening to them and where is the pain in this story?

Like when you read the Red Prince book, you're not experiencing it as a piece of myth.

You're experiencing it as what are the details in every picture of this children's book.

Where's the safe code in this?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And just to go back to something we were talking about a second ago, which is just like, you know,

you reach points in this game where you're trying to accomplish a task.

The game's not letting you because of the RNG.

I've read some defenses of this that are saying, like, well, you're not supposed to have tunnel vision.

The game is encouraging you to do something else, which I get to a point, but there is a point

where you've progressed through this game where you're like, well,

I have like a couple of things I could do right now.

I guess I could explore more to try to come up with some new task for myself, but it feels ponderous to do so.

And I honestly feel like this sort of you're playing the game wrong advice, which I've, which I've absorbed, is well-meaning, but it is condescending.

And what it actually speaks to is,

to me, I'm again, it's a great design.

I think this guy's a genius.

I think it's,

I'm glad that people are loving this game.

But to me, like,

I don't know if logic and lateral thinking puzzles are compatible with RNG because all the RNG elements do is present you from regressing through no fault of your own.

Yes.

And it's like a it's a friction that exists within the core design that you can either choose to overlook because you like the game so much or it becomes a blockade for your experience, which seems like it was the case for the three of us.

I do want to just point out for the listener who's maybe listening to the show quite a bit and is familiar with RNG on this show.

We are not speaking ill of the ranch number generator.

No, the ranch number generator is actually really good and useful.

This is, we're talking about the random generator.

We're talking about the random number generator in the traditional sense.

The ranch number generator, our producer Ranch's ability to generate numbers, is unimpeachable.

It's unimpeachable.

I think it's, I would, the metaphor that I came up with to how to describe this game to a non-video game player player is it's as if you got at a

garage sale a box of mixed puzzles, like tabletop mixed puzzles, right?

And you know, there's probably six, maybe ten puzzles in this mixed up box.

And you're excited because it's like, oh, look, this is a, this is a little bit of a red building.

This must be part of the red building puzzle that I'm starting to articulate as a puzzle.

But instead of allowing you to sort through the box and build these puzzles organically, you're also given a hand of dice and you roll the dice and that's the number of pieces you're allowed to pick out of the box.

So you're never able, like, even if you're like, I know that there is a puzzle and the puzzle is about making a firehouse.

That is one of the puzzles that I'm going to build.

It is dependent on this roll of dice to solve that puzzle.

And that is.

That is an emotional and cathartic barricade to solving this box of puzzles you got at a garage sale uh let me talk about rng real quick because i do feel like generally we're complaining about rng and for the most part complaining about rng is loser shit uh but it a lot of times in the condo loser

let me let me let me continue if you're playing slay the spire and you built your entire deck around some wombo combo that requires you know having four specific cards in your hand and then you lose a run because you didn't draw those four hands that's on you like build a deck that gives you more outs if you're playing a hades and you're like ah fucking rng i didn't get the Athena dash spoon, which lets you deflect because that's like the only way I know how to win the game.

Again, that's on you.

Like, learn to win a run that doesn't require a specific loadout.

But the RNG in Blue Prince is different because what it's really referring to is what you're allowed to do in the game.

Like,

not what you have

an easier ability to do, not what you are, what is facilitated, but like what is even possible.

And,

you know, some specific rooms spawn very rarely, and with rare exception, there's no real way to increase their frequency.

There also aren't other RNG mitigation tools like an ability to thin your deck, for instance.

Like there's no way to like, hey, I just want to purge this useless room from my

draw pool.

And

so, you know, if you're trying to like, I want to get a, I need something to do to get a pump room.

And that means I have to draft a pool first.

And then if I draft the pool, hopefully I will also draft, I'm sorry, hopefully I will draw a pool, even draw a pool to have the opportunity to draft it.

So, these two different terms, draw means you're presented with three different rooms.

You draft the one that you're going to place onto your grid.

So, I have to draw the pool, which is its own thing.

You could go like a few different, you know, a number of runs in a row without even drawing a pool, and which you need to draft in order to have the possibility to draw a pump room, which you then need to place.

And you can just kind of be driven mad.

And if you were like,

again,

again, if you're like sort of being, well, okay, well, if I happen to get the pump room, I'll deal with that.

But in the meantime, I'll just sort of see what happens, you know, like that's fine, but I like, I just feel like I'm wasting my time here.

Yeah, this is not for me a game where I'm just kind of like, no, we'll see what we get done today.

Yeah, exactly.

Because it's not like, because I will just say that element to me is not fun.

It's not like I'm like, oh, you know what?

I can't be this elder ring boss.

I'm going to go like explore the world.

That's like, hey, I'm going to get to run around a little bit.

I'm going to get to ride torrent.

I'm going to have a good time.

I want to show you guys, just for the sake of our conversation, the difference between an unsuccessful run I had on day 32 and the winning run that I had on day 34.

Now, on day 32, I have maximized all of my tools.

Like my toolbox is completely full.

I have built an incredible variety of rooms.

I filled up my grid going all the way up to the top of

the screen and could not draw the room that allowed me to get into 46, even though I had solved all the problems that would allow me into 46, including having the doors open.

Okay, so, but the difference between that and the room or the build where I finally won is almost depressing because the reason that I won on day 30, day 34 is that I drew a tunnel.

And so I destroyed the mansion and only built tunnels all the way up to where I needed to go, which allowed me to solve the entire run.

What are you looking at?

I'm just like looking at yours because

so your foundation is all the way up there.

Yeah.

Mine was all the way down there.

My foundation was in the third

row, smack dab in the middle, which for me was a bad place for me.

That sucks, man.

Let me see where the foundation is.

Her foundation is all the way up here close to the antechamber, which is a great spot.

Yeah, mine was basically two down and two to the right from the or one to the right from the ancient.

And when I drew the foundation, I didn't know that that was going to be important.

Exactly.

You draw this thing and you're not

clued into its significance and it's placed and then it doesn't move.

I'm like, okay, that's cool.

That's interesting.

That happened to me fairly early in my experience.

And then it's just fixed there.

And then if you look into it, like I was looking at the subreddit, I was just seeing like, you know, I was fine with my placement, but I was just curious about it.

It was like, yeah,

you can move the foundation, but you have to like donate 13 coins to the shrine and then you like it's like there's so many things that you have to figure out which is all i didn't lore that's exists within the book yeah but it's just like man i don't know maybe make let me move the thing yeah i so i had a disastrous run yeah where basically so i mean i feel like this maybe should be said um you get to a point where you get like a switch that can act that activates a door in the antechamber and the antechamber you have to go to once before to even get to this point.

Because you have to get a key to go to the basement or whatever.

And then there's then a puzzle that you can't fucking solve the first time you go down there.

Holy fuck.

There's a minecart that you have to have moved already.

Yes.

Yeah.

That is.

So don't worry.

You can move the minecart as long as you get the pump room or whatever.

Is that the way you have to go in the fountain first?

Is that the one you have to go to?

You would also get it from the tomb.

Yeah, you get the tomb.

That's the tomb.

Yeah, yeah.

So, what was what murdered me?

The tomb's got a puzzle that you're like, what the fuck is this?

What murdered me about the uh, the only reason I was able to solve the tomb puzzle is because when I was in the chapel, I was like, oh, these things look like they're probably going to be important.

But that rules, like, that that's the element of this.

Like, I love that.

I love that you're in the chapel and you're examining the, the, you know, the, the elements that are there.

You're like, you're like, oh, okay, this maybe has some sort of significance.

This is the thing I can track.

And then you can lose that.

You can use that rather to solve a later puzzle game.

I think that is cool.

I think that's what I like about this game.

The only time that I consulted the internet for a a solution was when I was in the gearbox room after finally having gotten both into the antechamber and into the basement and solved all the way, all the way up to that gearbox.

And I was like.

There's something I don't understand and I can't believe I've hit this wall.

I have been so proud of myself at every turn for each of these fucking puzzles that I solved.

But also in the same way that I fucking hate puzzles, I'm like, this sucks and is stupid.

It's so fucking boring and stupid to ever solve a puzzle in a game because it's like, if it's designed to be solved, it's not important to me.

Like I, I only want to be doing stuff in games that shouldn't technically be possible.

And to that end, there is a thing in Blueprints that I would like to cite from social media.

But before I go, go there.

So I get all the way to this gear, there's this gear room.

spoiler country and I can't solve the puzzle and I'm like, son of a bitch, I can't do it.

I'm stupid.

I'm locked and I can't do it.

And I spend like an hour and a half in the gearbox room being like, what is, what is happening?

What am I missing?

Yeah.

Because the gears can also go up and down.

So I'm like, there's something I'm not getting.

And I, I'm humiliated by what I'm about to do, which is look up the solution.

And I look up the solution and it's literally, you can't solve that puzzle.

And I'm like,

fuck you.

Yeah.

Like, that was when I, that was where I, I was like, I have engaged with this game on good faith because often when I see a, when I see a puzzle and I'm like, okay, I can't solve that yet because there's clearly some bullshit that I need to know from something else that I haven't found yet.

Yes.

And like every time I get a magnifying glass, I am exhausting myself looking at every piece of paper in every corner.

But to end, like to get all the way to a place in the game where you're literally told, well, you can't solve this puzzle.

Yeah, you had to have done something

in another run or earlier.

Two things on this.

Because I'll circle back to my disastrous run.

The one thing I do want to say is that, so you can flip this switch, and we were complaining about this, because there are some things that you can do to affect play, like drain the fountain or drain the pool or the reservoir or whatever.

Some of them reset, and it seems kind of arbitrary.

Yeah, and that's inconsistent and unfair to me.

Yeah.

Because you have to then account every run to go back to this fucking switch.

Yeah.

Which the gears stay put.

So once you've moved the minecart and you got the gears where you got to be, it's just a straight shot, basically.

But you have to account for that within your steps.

And at a certain point, steps don't really become a problem

if you're trying to get to what you're trying to do.

You reach an upgrade where you can get steps.

And I do actually like, look, this is the thing I think the game does very well.

The tension between the different resources, between keys, gems, and steps.

Having to manage those, I like how you get a rewarded for like drafting like, you know, different sorts of bedrooms that have compounding effects on each other.

I think all that shit is great.

And I think that's really well done and well balanced.

So this disastrous run that I had was, I had all

three doors to the antechamber opened.

I was like, it's fucking happening today.

Evil dies tonight.

I'm going to fucking do this.

That's something I say from that most recent Halloween movie.

There's a scene where they're just chanting evil dies tonight.

And it's so crazy and let's go.

A whole town of people are trying to kill Michael Myers.

They're like, evil dies tonight.

And to me, it is so funny.

And I just kind of will say it when I'm trying to do something.

Evil dies tonight.

My wife hates it.

So I have all three doors open.

I'm like, it's going to happen.

We're going to fucking do this.

I just need to draft

a room at any of these doors and it can happen.

Yep.

I get to one of them, don't draft the right shape, get blocked on that side.

Doesn't matter.

I got two more doors open.

Yep.

Get to the other one, draft a room.

None of them are the right fucking shape.

I got to do it again.

I get to the last one.

I was like, this better be it, or this might be the last day I live.

I get to it.

Didn't draft the right fucking thing.

I have to, I get cul-de-sacked out of it.

I got to start all over.

But I've effectively done it.

I've done it, and

it's not fair.

Uh, because I do think that, like, you know, it's Matt, maybe you should have used that run to go explore the dormitory or read some of the books.

Yeah, or, or, you know what?

I probably did end up finding one of those runs, I was like, fuck it, I guess I'll just go look around for some other shit and found the little gas veins or whatever, and turned on the

blue flames or whatever, and got to go down underground and be like, I don't even know what the fuck to do.

There's a, there's a chess puzzle that I'm like, this is fucked, I can't do this.

You see, Matt, this is simply the the Blue Prince experience.

I'm sounding like one of those guys.

Yeah.

And so I was just like, god damn it.

And then when I finally did do it,

the run was unremarkable.

It was like, not unlike your tunnel run, which I think is actually cooler.

Mine was just kind of like more of a straight shot into, I just got lucky with one of the

ante chamber doors that I opened.

And when I got there, I was kind of just like, okay.

And then

the next run that I did after that,

I did it again like I was able to just do it again immediately after that, which I was like this game

I was gonna say something I can't take back.

I was gonna say this game sucks.

It doesn't suck.

I just think that it's not fair.

It's incredible.

It's it is I think it's astounding.

To Nick's point, it's an astounding work of genius.

Yeah.

It is unfair, I think.

I do think that like this maybe would make the game

real quick, just interject real quick.

Unfair can be fun.

Yes.

Like there are boss fights in soulsborn games that are unfair yes but that's part of the fun and it's rewarding to overcome that yeah what's unfair about this is that there aren't elements that you can control you know i mean it it's it's it's not something that what you just talked about in terms of almost stumbling into your successful run which is kind of you know how i felt for from some of my deep runs is just like like okay i didn't really do anything differently i just was kind of like given you know like like this one just happened to work out for me yeah is that that also isn't in the same way that the obs, the ones that, that, that, uh, you know, blockade you are frustrating, the ones where you succeed aren't particularly gratifying because it doesn't feel like it's a factor that's updated.

And I was going to say, too, like, the thing you mentioned earlier about Hades, obviously a very different game.

Um,

but

I do feel like, like, what you're saying, like, you are rewarded more because, like, yeah, you might get, like, um, you know, you might get an ambrosia or something that you can use as for something later on, or you can get, like, those, like, I can't even remember what all the currencies are, but like, you, or you can get just a little bit more story information like that.

I feel like you really got to work to get some story information in this game sometimes.

Because I was just like, I couldn't tell you anything about really what was happening in the background of this game.

But I also am just like,

when I was playing it, I was like, I wish there was one more element.

Because you can do this

on one of the rooms.

You can change the direction of the room.

And I do think that if they,

rotation.

Yeah, if that's too, it makes it too easy.

Yeah, what is that room called?

It's called like the

rotunda.

Ranch is also playing in.

I do want to hear Ranch's thoughts.

Yeah, so the rotunda, I mean, like, that obviously completely changes the game if you can rotate every single room.

But, you know, again, just in terms of mitigating the randomness of this, if you had some resource that allowed you to

rotate some rooms, because there are instances where you're like, well, fuck, if this,

you know, if this parlor was just facing, you know, 90 degrees differently, then that would stop me, that would allow me to progress.

And maybe this is the one time I use that resource to be able to do that.

Yeah, like maybe it costs gems or something to be able to do it or whatever.

Like you have like a device that changes where the door, you know, that's like a con, it's a different game I'm designing, but it is.

No, no, but I don't think you're, I don't think you are.

What you're talking, what you're, what you're describing is just a more fair, like a version of this game that gives you a little bit more margin of error and that overall improves the quality of life for the user.

I mean, like, I don't think this game is any less challenging if there's just things like, you know, because again, yes, you reach a point where you're just like, well, fuck, I did everything right and I can't finish this run or I can't progress to this next step or I can't solve this individual puzzle.

But I don't know.

I mean, like you were saying earlier, some elements retain from run to run.

So you could have some key items that are sticky in your inventory.

So you do something like you get the room eight key, which I got, which was a thing that you get from the gallery, which is like a pretty complicated puzzle to solve.

And I found the actual puzzle very satisfying to figure out.

You get the roommate key, and then I was like, well, shit, I don't have enough to get back to the coat room and I have nothing I can open.

So I guess I just hope to, on a future run, I will repeat this same puzzle.

You know what I mean?

Like,

I was like, if that was just sticky in my inventory and I just had it after I solved it once, I don't feel like the game is any less challenging.

I, I, I, you know, maybe raise the cap on the number of items you can store in a coat room or make that a thing you can upgrade where you have more hooks in your coat room, or just maybe make the coat room a fixture of the house where it's just a closet next to the entrance instead of a room that you have to hope that you can draw, so that at least you can retain things from run to run.

I don't know, and there's just a handful of ideas.

I'm just like spitballing, but like, there's a bunch of shit you could do, you know, just to just to make this a little bit more player-friendly.

Is is the game, though, in terms of like what the story seems to be about, which is about like usurpers to the throne, and your family is like actually the heir to a thing that somebody else had claimed.

Is the powerlessness of the RNG speaking to the broader metaphor of you, the character in the game?

And by that, I mean, is this a hoity-toity monologue that you'll hear on some other game podcast about how the randomized element and the powerlessness that you feel as a player is actually part of the metatextual experience of the player character inside the game who cannot achieve the goal he wants to achieve?

I don't care.

I think there's a possibility that this game is doing something like that, but yes, I am making the jack off motion in my head while I'm playing it.

It is just, again, just such an annoying experience.

And this is how you know we're not the hoity-toity show because Nick made the jack-off motion in his head.

And earlier, we were talking about we made up a guy who became horny from having diarrhea.

We fall somewhere in between

Bro

podcast and hoity-toity podcast, which is why

nobody knows where to slot us.

How about this?

Like, again, just quality of life stuff, just simple stuff to save me some time in multiple runs.

Like,

you know,

the codes to safes never change, right?

Like, you figure it out and you can open it up.

Insane.

But, but, also, but, like, fine.

Like, I figured it out, but I have to re-input it every single run.

Why don't I just have it open automatically when I walk into the room?

Which, by the way, almost ruined, well, no, definitely ruined a run of mine because the safes are something you have to always input, right?

Yeah.

So I assumed that in the secret garden, when you solve that puzzle, it resets the next time.

So I think I'm going to need a fucking handle in order to solve that puzzle.

So when...

Find a secret garden key or whatever.

Because there's the one, the handle in the greenhouse, the secret garden key.

There's different things.

But

you are hoping now for a specific item to try to get back to you.

I'm hoping for a handle so that I can go solve the secret garden puzzle again.

So when I get the secret garden key, I don't go to one of the fucking walls of the mansion because I first have to find a handle, right?

So I start drafting all these rooms.

When I finally give up and I open the fucking secret garden and be like, well, maybe like last time, there will be a handle inside the room.

And I realized that the puzzle is already saved and solved inside that room, I was furious because none of the other fucking puzzles hold over, including the fucking antechamber, which is what you need to hold, what you need to pull those levers in order to do.

Like it is inconsistent philosophical answers to things.

Like if I crack a safe in one and it's permanently open and I can go get that gem, great.

Yeah.

Awesome.

And that should be the case if the pool stays drained or the fountain stays drained or the minecart crack minecart is moved or the handle is already on the solved secret garden puzzle.

Yeah.

Can I, can I, I just want to talk about something real quick, which is about challenge specifically, because I, again, I just feel like the bad faith thing you have to anticipate from anyone who's defending anything is get good skill issue.

I, for myself, am not complaining about challenge.

I like the challenge of the puzzles.

I like that this game is difficult.

I have played and finished puzzle games I consider as difficult or more difficult.

Return of the Oprah Din is like a similar tier of game in terms of like lateral thinking, which I bounced off of because I thought it was so boring.

So, to that,

to that end, the randomness of this game did service my personal engagement with the puzzle yeah make it maybe that makes it that this game have a wider reach than something like opra den we're we're certainly gonna see but like like you know baba is you is a game that i just like way fucking harder this than this game in terms of puzzles uh but yeah you know or old school games like the seventh guest which is a very similar game honestly we covered seventh guest on the podcast it is another in a house with a bunch of inscrutable puzzles game like i feel like the puzzles in that game are harder the gabriel night games have all these like you know hunt the pixel shit which just, again, makes them more like really difficult to progress through.

And so even among puzzle games, like I like a hard puzzle game, and that's not my issue with this one.

I've mentioned before Elden Ring, Sekaro, Cuphead, Celeste, punishingly difficult games that are some of my all-time favorites.

We are not complaining about Radon being too hard, and that means that Elden Ring sucks.

If we were, that's like, hey, skill issue, get good.

But that's not what we're saying.

What we're complaining about is that Radon has, yeah, go on.

It's whether or not Radon's there.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, sometimes you get there, oh, wait, you know what?

Radon's not there.

I guess I can't fight Radon, did I?

I can't progress because Radon didn't fucking show up to me.

Okay, I'll do this whole dungeon again, hoping that Radon spawns when I get there.

Oh, no, it didn't happen.

But you know what?

I guess I did learn some more lore about this dungeon.

So did I actually lose anything?

It's so funny if you played one time and Radon was like late.

Oh, shit.

Sorry.

But you understand, like,

it's like a different kind of frustration losing to the same cuphead boss 27 times in a row and then finally beating them on the 28th time versus I'm having to do the same run over and over again because I need one specific thing to happen that I can't control.

And the puzzles that are introductory puzzles that are in service, like rooms that you want to draw, like the parlor room or the building room.

Oh, we got to talk about that.

Which are early, early game rooms that you want to have in order to build up resources in order to solve the mansion.

those puzzles are boring.

The dartboard puzzle, I was not challenged by a single time.

It gets more complicated as you go.

Me neither, actually.

But it's just more arithmetic, more algebra, but all that does is make it more time consuming.

And again, my issue with this game is that it's tedious, not that it's hard.

The most ardent defender of this game can't enjoy the dartboard puzzle.

No one likes the dartboard puzzle, right?

And even if you do, do you need to solve it a hundred times?

No, like at a certain point, like again, just quality of life, respecting my time as a gamer.

Like,

couldn't you be like, hey, you've solved this dartboard puzzle 10 times?

So, you know what?

Now it's just automatically solved.

Now, when you get in there, then a little thing pops up, and it's like, you know how to play darts.

And then from that point forward, you never have to solve that puzzle again.

So I know if I draft this room, I just get the keys and I don't have to do my bullshit fucking

it's a good thing.

I mind the parlor puzzle a lot less because at least that changes in a way where I'm like, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, oh, yep, it's this one, okay, I got it, and apparently you can also get two parlor keys.

And I was like, well, that sucks.

Yeah, it became very, that became easier.

Definitely, there weren't times where I still got it wrong.

No, me too.

I did.

I did.

I got, I got, I got it wrong.

And then I'd be like, but that doesn't make any sense.

And then I would look on Reddit and there'd be arguments about whether or not it's, it makes sense.

Yes.

Particularly about the fact that one of the parlor boxes is blank.

And it's like, well, how can that be a false or true statement?

It's nothing.

Yes.

Yeah.

So for people who haven't played this game, and I can't believe you're still listening to this if you haven't played this game, but whatever, podcast consumers or people listen for different reasons.

Just to describe what we're talking about, there are three different boxes.

Each box has a different statement on it.

And then a different document in the room says that one of these statements must be true.

One of those statements must be false.

So if you are in a situation where you're like, well, all three of these would have to be true if this one is true.

That means that you are eliminating one possibility because the same thing with all three of them are false.

One of them has to be false, one of them has to be true, two could be false, two could be true.

But you know, you're kind of working backwards from that logic, and then within one of those boxes will be some gems which you could use to progress, right?

And so, you're taught this puzzle, and you learn the logic of it.

You're like, oh, okay, yay, every time I come into this room, I have this little moment with the fucking parlor boxes.

Then you enter the room, and one of the boxes is blank.

And for me, as a sort of literalist, I'm like, but that it can't, it can't be true or false.

Yeah.

It can't be anything.

But also, it has to be one of the things in order for the puzzle to be solved, which is insane to me.

Like, that is an insane person's puzzle, not, not a puzzle where you're taught the rules and then you solve them every time.

I also, just to go back to the dartboard for a second.

Okay.

I think it's annoying, not just having to do it every time.

I think it's annoying that it doesn't adhere to a standard order of operations when you're doing.

Oh, yeah, PEMDAS is out the window.

It's like it made up its own thing,

which is easy enough at first, but then when you got a fucking

yellow diamond in the center and you're like, okay, so I have to do the subtraction after squaring it or whatever.

And you're just kind of like, what the fuck?

It's just that, that's not fair.

I agree.

I never got to diamond.

And actually, Matt Matt sucks.

I never got to the yellow diamond.

I got, I mean, I was like, I think I finished my run at like day like 60 or something.

You get squares, and then you eventually get diamonds, and they're all added layers of complication.

But

I think, again, if anyone is like actually,

I don't think that it's a huge stumbling block.

I think it is just

time-consuming.

The laboratory puzzle was a puzzle that I loved, a thing that's hidden in the periodic table.

It was really satisfying to solve.

Obviously, it's contingent on drafting both a laboratory and a boiler room and being able to connect those via steam dents, steam vents rather.

I did have one day where I was able to do that.

I had like the boiler room and then it was just like next to, I think, I'm trying to remember the rooms that were, but there's like a few rooms that have them, like the archives and the dark room.

I think all the red rooms have vents and those connected to the laboratory.

I was like, holy shit, I can fucking do this.

And I had figured out the solution previously.

Again, I like that I'm writing in a physical journal, making these notes out.

I like the design of this puzzle.

I like that it's hidden in the

periodic table.

Really satisfying to decode.

And when it worked, I was like, this is great.

The ability that it gives you is it's a permanent reward.

It's an upgrade that lets you dial into other computers from a computer.

So it's kind of useful, mostly because you can access the security terminal if you draft like an office or a laboratory or something.

And the security terminal is the most useful one because that lets you open up other parts of the

facility, of the mansion.

But the thing is,

even this is annoying because when you do this, you have to endure a dial-up modem sound.

And that takes

a chunk of time for that to dial up and then for it to load for you to remote connect.

And it's cute the first time.

And then the second time, it's like, all right, dude, and interminable each subsequent time.

And I think if it's intended for this sort of like, you know, everything's diegetic, there's a suspension of disbelief, it backfires on me because by number by time number three, I'm just checking my phone during this modem sound.

Now, this is the thing that makes it feel like a fuck you.

There's an upgrade you can get, which I was reading about, which gets rid of the dial-up delay for 30 days.

For 30 days.

For 30 days.

But just the fact that that exists means like this was a thing you could have included, again, for the quality of life for the user, but that you gated it behind some other

thing that you have to unlock makes me feel like kind of like a Dennis Nedry sort of like, uh-uh-uh, you didn't say the magic word.

You know, it's like, what are you doing to me?

You're trying to play your fucking game, dude.

As long as we're complaining about quality of life issues, I don't think you move fast enough.

Yeah, you can sprint, but I also don't feel like the sprinting feels good.

Sprinting is not fast enough.

I like for me, I, my

most friction in a game is uh sluggishness or lethargy in movement.

And I cannot stand what I should be able to control, especially in a game like this, where there is no reason I can't go as fast as I want from,

if I'm like, okay, I got to go all the way back to this room, I don't want to spend real-time minutes getting there because I have, as the player, made the choice that I'm going to ignore anything on the way in order to solve whatever problem there is.

And for me,

even at sprinting speed, the dude moves too slow and it's exhausting every time I start a day that you have to do that like little musical introduction as you push forward past the fountain into the front door.

And then I'm like, okay, I immediately have to turn around and run all the way over to the room that you can draft outside the mansion in order to set up some

solution that I might want later on in the mansion.

And that run is so fucking slow.

And I'm like, I don't like, just let, let me,

let me,

by pushing the analog stick either a little bit or all the way, determine how fast I'm going.

I didn't necessarily have a problem with the walk speed, but I do agree with one thing,

or I, this does make me think, say, one more general thing, which is that I think if a game has a hold the sprint or something like that, that should just be the default speed.

Like, like, like, like make it hold the walk and make the fastest speed the default speed.

And let that speed be much, much faster.

Oh, you might the one horror villain, horror, like, movie villain antagonist speed.

No, I want, I want doom speed.

Oh.

Like, Doom is

a game where you are not like, I'm not moving fast enough.

There is a, there's a, a traversal speed in a three-dimensional space that I think Doom sets as the default speed for moving through rooms.

And this room speed sucks.

It is too slow.

You can turn the speed down in the most recent, in like Doom Eternal.

You can turn it down.

Never.

I think that maybe like the sort of like languorous sort of pace you move move through rooms would be okay if you didn't have to repeat the same rote tasks over and over and over again.

And that's what makes it feel.

I would enjoy the dartboard puzzle more if I could get across the room faster.

Look, can I just talk about one thing you mentioned?

Which, again, this is a quality of life thing.

So yes, you unlock the outside room.

The outside room is down a path and through a gate.

You don't necessarily want to go to the outside room first thing each day, although most days that seems like the most prudent course of action.

But sometimes you like, I will just draft a few rooms in the mansion just to see what I have in case there's some sort of game-changing room that I'm like, okay, that affects whether I'm going to choose to have the shrine or the shelter or whatever the fuck in the outside room.

But I don't like having to walk all the way outside to, you know, like, again, it's like 90 seconds of real time.

Yeah, and you lose all the way over there.

You lose two steps going over there.

I don't mind losing the steps.

I do mind that it's 90 seconds.

But if you just had, again, if it's just like, hey, you unlock the outside room, this is now, you now have like a portal directly to it that's right next to your starting position.

Or, you know what?

You can choose to spawn in front of the outside room.

So you at least don't have to make the return.

Yeah, where do you want to start your run?

Yeah, exactly.

You know, just, and maybe, maybe these things will be coming in

a big quality of life update, and a lot of these things will be mitigated.

But as the game stands, it just has all these little things.

I want whatever the quality of life update is to impact the quality of my life after playing this fucking game.

Because there are two things that I want to point out.

I mean,

I believe they're working on this.

There is not an accessibility feature for people who are colorblind to play this game.

Colors play a huge factor in this game.

Yeah.

So you need to be able to

toggle that to whatever the setting would be so you can enjoy that if you are somebody who is colorblind.

I had that thought while playing.

I was like, wow, I'm glad I'm not colorblind.

I did have that thought, and then I did learn that before, like, like earlier, Matt, that, yeah, there is no colorblindness mode.

But

yeah, definitely stuff is just like represented purely in color.

Yes.

And I don't know.

There's obviously another approach that could make this more accessible, of course.

My other thing is that I think that the, what do you call that?

It's not like a cursor.

Oh, yeah.

The reticle.

I think the reticule is too small.

It was too small for me.

So sometimes I'd be like, wait, where?

I always knew where it was.

But like sometimes if I was trying to get, like, try to find like if I had a metal detector.

Yeah.

And I saw that there was, you know, there's beeping.

Also, I think everything in the game that I could pick up, too small.

The coins too small.

Sometimes I couldn't see the coin.

Yeah,

where the fuck is this?

I mentioned this earlier.

And like, of course, well, there's the metal detector item, which you might draw.

You know, you might pick that up at a certain point, which makes it a little bit easier to find these things.

But

that again brings me back to something I mentioned in passing when I was talking about Gabriel Knight.

The old Sierra adventure games had a thing called Hunt the Pixel, where you're just like, where the fuck is that thing?

And sometimes we're literally looking for one pixel of art that represented a key item on your screen.

And

that's the sort of thing where we're just like, I don't know, maybe I get an item at a certain point that's a permanent upgrade where I just walk into a room and I just magnetize all the stuff that's in there.

Because I've played this game for, you know, whatever, 20 hours now.

Yeah.

Like, I don't need to be like looking on the floor for a coin next to a basketball.

I do want to hear from Ranch if we could.

You've been playing this game.

What are your thoughts?

i agree with basically everything you guys are saying i feel like i was so enraptured by the game for the first 10 hours yeah and now every time i end a run i'm furious

and i am in such a bad mood

um but like another thing that really annoyed me was that like solving i like the puzzles themselves but like the fact that like how tedious they are like the the painting puzzle yeah um and like finding those letters letters.

I was like, this is going to be like a huge unlock of something.

Really going to get some big payload out of this.

And it was just like

a clue of how to crack something.

Like, it was like, it was so underwhelming.

Or, like, the, I don't know if you guys did the chess puzzle and the downstairs, but I'm just like, oh, I just got to choose this kind of one chess piece that will help me a little bit.

Yeah.

I, I, I thought that the chess puzzle solution was insanely powerful.

Like, I, for me, as somebody, like, very early on in the game, I was like, okay, I like green rooms.

And I like the green rooms too.

I do like the green rooms.

And I know that I'm going to need, and also, all of my solutions for getting into the antechamber were green room-based.

Like, I don't even know if I ever discovered another way to open the antechamber doors other than two green rooms.

So I was like, oh, shit.

If my

gameplay is dependent on drafting green rooms and one of these chess pieces allows me to choose whether or not I am going to see a lot of green rooms on any given day, then this is like the best possible, it's the only feature that I actually was like, oh, finally a fucking reward in this game.

Yeah.

So I had the opposite experience in the chess puzzle.

I think I must have chose wrong.

Or like, cause you can choose which chess piece.

Like I chose upon.

And so it's like, that's like a different unlock of what I'm doing.

Oh, yeah, this is another thing.

This is another issue.

Go on, Heather.

Okay, great.

Now I know

then I was lucky.

Yeah, you chose, you chose.

Because I chose the king because I was like, I want to be a king.

But this is another issue with the game: is that, for instance, when you get an upgrade disc, which I think I previously mentioned, I've gotten, I think, four of, and, you know, the time that I've played.

And you get an upgrade disc, you either have to store it in the coat room or you have to hope you can find a computer to input it.

It is very satisfying because it's like, holy shit, I get to upgrade my room.

But you don't necessarily know, especially early on, I was like, I guess I'll upgrade this closet.

I don't know

what these things do, but that one looks okay.

And then you're just locked into that thing with no real way to undo it.

Whereas, again, just a more...

You know, a thing that could maybe be nicer to the player is to like give you the option to each run, you can choose whichever chess piece you want to use for that particular run.

You know what I mean?

Or like the upgrades could be like, hey, you know what?

Each upgrade is going to be something that is going to tangibly improve this room for anyone, as opposed to being a thing that you could choose that could maybe fuck you and then you're just locked in.

I will say, multiple, after I solved the chess piece thing and nothing happened, I was like, what the fuck was this?

And it was multiple days later before I noticed on my blueprint screen that it said something like the power of the king.

And I was like, what does it do?

And then, like, later was like clicked it.

And I was like, you sons of bitches.

Like, I can't believe I have to click this fucking thing after.

Like, first I have to notice that it's there.

And then also have to, like, what does it do?

It lets you choose what color of room is going to be most likely on that day.

That's pretty good.

So, like, I would always click green because I always want more and more gardens.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know what I was thinking when I was playing this game?

I did have this exact thought.

I was like, you know what game rules?

Sonic Frontiers.

Shows fucking Sonic running around in a field.

Are you kidding?

I'm not kidding.

Because I had the same feeling, but it was about movement speed.

Like, no joke.

I was like, I was like, I wish that I had the movement speed of Sonic Frontiers in this game.

I was just like, that's a fucking video game.

Sonic Frontiers.

This game has sort of brought out different levels of insanity in all of us.

Wait, what does the pawn do?

The pawn, once you get to level, to rank eight, you can choose what the other pieces do for that to.

So like there's um I don't remember which like bishop is you add the armory to your draft, the king, I could choose that to draw.

So after you hit eight, you can choose any of the other powers?

Yeah.

So kind of like how a pawn can like

turn into a another piece of interest.

That's pretty good.

But you have to get to eight.

So it's like kind of useless at that point because I'm already pretty far on the run.

Speaking of rank eight, one thing I do really like is getting dinner.

You get the dining room and the dinner bell rings.

Yeah.

I do like to eat it.

Let's see what these fucking pigs are going to slop up today.

And then if I'm also like, oh, I got the furnace.

So this pizza is going to give me some extra steps.

All right.

Can I ask if you, if there were solutions to puzzles that I didn't figure out and was kind of like, I don't give a shit.

And if you guys solve them?

I mean, I guess you could, but I was just like, also, like, you know, there's a lot of people.

There's a million things.

I'm sure I just do.

I'm sure there's.

So when you draft the, I think it's the ballroom.

Yes.

Uh,

after I left the ballroom, two or three rooms later, I heard music coming from the ballroom.

And then I ran back to be like, What's happening in the ballroom?

And I listened to a very beautiful, very sad song.

And I was like, What am I supposed to do?

What am I supposed to do?

And I read the music notes, and it was like spinning in place or dancing or something.

So, I ran to the middle of the room and like spun around a bunch.

And I was like, Okay, that's not doing anything.

Does the music in the ballroom do anything?

I mean,

it was the one that I kept thinking about where I was like, that's fascinating.

It has to do something.

There's like because it didn't play when I was in there.

I know there's things that I've read about that I'm like, I never would have even conceived of this.

Like there was an account that you sent to the chat, I think maybe yesterday or today or something.

Oh, the guy from the aftermath who put in 162 hours into the video.

Yeah, and like took a magnet to the key room.

Yeah, that's the sort of shit I love.

Magnet in the key room, great.

I never would have thought to do that.

And that it works is great.

And the fact that he also no-clipped accidentally through the floor of the game.

Yeah.

And the game accounted for it and gave him like a, like a visual reward or something the next day.

Yeah, that's right.

But it was like, it was like, hey, we know that sometimes you'll no clip through the walls and fall to your death.

And so we'll do like a, oh, it was, it was fall it a day.

Yes.

Instead of call it a day.

That's really good.

I don't know if there's like a ballroom music puzzle, but there is a music, like a puzzle with like sheet music, and then it's got keywords hitting it in the lyrics.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But that's like a different thing.

I was just like, it was weird to me.

When the music started playing, I was like, this is so significant.

It has to be significant.

And then I was like, fuck, if I was Nick, I could probably write down the letters in this song.

This is a thing that the game encourages.

Yeah.

It encourages you to go insane.

Yeah.

Because the fact that I was like, shit, I wish that I could transcribe this.

I wonder if the notes in the song that are playing are a code for something that I'm going to encounter later.

This song has never played before in the game.

It only plays if I draft a fucking dancing room, the ballroom.

It must be important.

And the fact that I don't know if it's important or not makes me a little mad.

Yeah, I don't know.

Maybe at some point someone will figure that out.

Maybe they're there.

You know, you can look up a ballroom, I mean, a ballroom puzzle guide and there's some info on that right now i have no idea but like i i think there's also just

i do think the music is very effective because it just plays in certain spots yeah and it it is kind of like you know it it

it does really set the mood really you know it in a in a great way um

I'll also say that there were puzzles that you clearly solved that I was like, I'm not bothering with this shit.

Sure.

Which was the periodic table puzzle.

Oh, yeah.

I looked at that.

I took two screenshots.

I stared at it for maybe 10 minutes, and I was like, I don't care.

I don't fucking care.

I don't want to know.

And so I just like abandoned that puzzle.

And same with the machine in that room.

I was like, okay, clearly I got to run fucking power here.

Can I talk about the moment that I almost threw my Steam Deck across the room and said, fuck off?

Yeah.

Which thank you for buying me a Steam Deck.

I will never destroy it.

If you ever, you're, you only get one.

So,

um, but the room with the lasers with the the crown what i've not seen this room i have not seen this what are you talking about there's like a

a room that's only keycard doors and then there's like lasers and you have to wow get the i have not encountered that oh my god wait oh wait wait is it the the museum room yeah it's for for training for the heist because they stole all the gems I didn't know it had lasers because I turned off all the keycards before I went in that room.

Yeah, like on the back side of that wall,

you turn off the lasers.

Oh.

Maybe I'm thinking of a different room.

Maybe it's a different room.

There's a room that has a bunch of security doors, but before I went in there, I had disabled all the security doors in the whole place.

And then was there like a banister blocking off a crown?

I think so, but I didn't see anything.

And there's like two cardboard cutouts of like

security guys.

Yeah, yeah.

But I also, I didn't see any lasers.

So, oh, so were you able to get the thing in the middle?

I didn't even look.

I didn't even try.

Oh, I just walked in and I was like, oh, thank God these doors are open.

I'm trying to get to 46.

How do we explain this?

On the back side of the room, on the outside of it.

Okay.

So if you draft a door that allows you to see the outs, the inside, outside of the room.

Yeah, so there's three doors that you can go in and then like a wall.

Yeah.

So you have to go around to a different room.

Uh-huh.

Like the mirror, the way you interact with the mirror room.

Or like the foundation.

There's like a there's a crank behind the wall.

Yeah, somewhere.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can lower the banister, turn on the lasers, and then disarm the lasers.

And then you have to get back into the room in 10 seconds.

Oh my gosh.

Like 10 real-time seconds.

Which you're not getting there fast.

Yeah, because it was so fucking slow.

Because that room was blocked off in the middle.

I had to go all the way up to the entrance and then go all the way back.

Oh my god.

I timed it.

There was just no way it was happening in 10 seconds.

And I tried several times.

Oh my God.

It just wasn't possible.

I feel like this is like the first game that you've been playing along with us.

And the text we've received from you

have been very funny and extremely alarming.

And we got a photo that

Mark took of you.

We're on the floor of the airport and

hunched over like a goblin.

Over your Steam Deck in baggage plane.

But because this is a game you can't,

another annoyance of this thing, another quality of life thing is that you can't save an exit mid-run.

Which is so important.

You gotta eat dinner, bro.

But it's also this guy wants to eat dinner.

It's also

an adult punishment.

It is, yeah.

Because like we,

one of the things that

my squad and I remark on in the, in, in Fortnite is that four people is often like that's your maximum squad, right?

But it is not realistic for four adults to be free at the same time.

So trios is the adult's squad.

And that's sort of like conceptually, like,

there are things that you just can't schedule as adults with different lives.

So the fact that, like, there are times in this game where it's like, I literally can't keep playing right now.

But if I pause, like, I can pause the game and leave my fucking television on.

Yeah.

But that's it.

On that note, I mean, I have a friend who's a parent and they were telling me Myst is, you know, people just ask you about games because they know it's your bread and butter.

They're asking like, cause I was like, Myst is one of my all-time favorite games.

Should I play Blue Prince?

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

Like, how much time do you have?

Like, I sometimes have like an hour before bed.

I was like, man, I think this is, if I played this game, like, some of the hour-long chunks I had with this game where I felt like I did nothing.

would just like, you know, if that was my entire gaming time for the week, I would be pretty annoyed and I would be pretty disappointed.

And I have a hard time recommending this as constructed because I think it's just too

demanding too much of you for too little reward.

Which, you know what?

Is maybe in macro, what Rancho is pointing to in micro with the gift for the reward for the

chess puzzle of just like this game is asking a lot for you.

And when you accomplish a lot, you get very little back.

Maybe this is trying to, maybe it's making some point by doing that, but I don't know.

I just found it to be a

pretty disengaging if you find all 900 korok seeds in breath of the wild yeah you get a trophy that looks like a shit

which is nothing it doesn't really impact the game right and is on its face kind of funny kind of a funny reward that's a funny fuck you though yes that's a funny fuck you this is like if you had to do that

a hundred times every time you played the fucking game.

Yeah, but you just did it every time.

You're just constantly doing that and you're getting just fuck you's left and right.

I feel like I keep getting kicked in the balls, and then I'm, but I can't stop going back to because hopefully, I won't get kicked in the balls this next time, and then I get kicked in the balls again.

And then, meanwhile, I'm reading some article about how getting kicked in the balls is a masterpiece.

You know what I mean?

It's like you know what it is.

It's we're sideshow Bob, yeah, we're sideshow Bob, and there's nothing but rakes in front of us.

We just kicked them fucking smack.

I, okay, so after all of the complaining is done, yeah, I do want to say

it is maybe

my favorite puzzle game.

Wow.

Wow.

I mean, like, look, I could see this still, like, despite all my frustrations, despite all my grossing, especially if there's some updates, especially just some quality of life improvements.

I could still see this ending up on my top games of the year list.

I also could see myself coming back and for next week's, what are you playing, talking about how I put another 20 hours into this game.

You know what I mean?

Like, it is, it does have a compelling hook to it.

And, and, be, and, and for me, it's because

when I'm playing a puzzle game and it's just puzzles, I'm like, I don't give a shit.

I don't care.

I don't care.

But the fact that there is also a traversal

element that is randomized, that is,

that every time I go to a next room, like every time I go to a door, there is a chance of something happening that I haven't seen before or an opportunity for me to get closer to the goal.

That to me was

a reward that allowed me to tolerate the puzzles.

It allowed me to tolerate the fact that the first time I draft the fucking room with the, where you get to permanently add a room to your, it's probably called the drafting safe.

Yeah.

Yeah, the drafting room.

That I see the little safe and I'm like, son of a bitch, I know what I need.

It's a fucking magnifying glass.

And then the next time I play, I get the magnifying glass and I don't draft that room.

And the next time I draft that room, I don't have the magnifying glass.

And when I finally fucking get both of them, I'm like, that's right, motherfucker.

Now, now, now you're done.

You're done.

I think, like, I mean, gosh, I don't want to belabor like the RNG of it all too, too much more, but like, if you draft the pool, because you need to draft, you need to be, if you need to draft the pump room, but you need to, you know,

draw the pool first.

Yeah.

The draft room should be, or the, the fuck, the pump room should be a guarantee after you place the rest.

Yes.

And then if you can't place it where you open the door, then maybe you're fucked in that way, but it should be in the thing no matter what.

Also, also, because it was the only thing that I looked up and was like, how the fuck am I supposed to beat this fucking gear room?

And it was like, you have to do something in the tomb.

The next like four times I played, I just went to the shed or whatever it is, looked at what I was going to draft.

If I didn't draft the tomb, called it a death.

Absolutely.

Like I was like,

I'm not dealing with the fact that I already got all the way to this thing and I can't go forward because I've never drafted the tomb.

Like, like I had never had the opportunity to solve that puzzle in advance is insane.

Yeah.

And that, so then you're just abandoning runs en masse until you get one specific thing that you need, which is just like, again, that's not what you, how people should be playing roguelites, but this game incentivizes it.

Also, it's funny when you do that.

Blueprints, like abandoned mansion.

Yeah.

That's so stupid.

Like, in my life, I'd be like, no, that's, that's fun.

The little joke you get at the end of describing what your thing is, it's really fun.

But at a certain point, I was kind of like, I don't really care about the different styles of house anymore.

No, I want something for the time I spent here, and I'm not getting it.

I'm going to, yeah.

Duranch, you have any closing thoughts?

I do want to roll credit on it, but I feel like if I put the same amount of effort and time in learning Chinese or something, I would have learned it by now.

I'm just going to say in closing, like, I, I, I, I know, be careful how I say this, but I'm not trying to insult anyone I respect, and there are a lot of people I really respect and friends I have who are fans, huge fans of this game.

I am so happy that, that, I don't want to yuck anyone's yum.

If you found your new favorite game, I'm so happy for you.

Yeah, me too.

If when this, if this sweeps all the indie Game of the Year awards, I'm, I'll totally understand it because this is a pristine design.

I agreed, agreed, agreed.

With incredible aesthetics.

I do love game critics, and I love critics in general.

I read them, I listen to them, I enjoy agreeing with their perspectives.

I enjoy disagreeing with their perspectives, as I am largely with my take on blueprints.

The three of us and Ranch are not critics.

Like, we don't receive pre-release builds.

We buy games retail.

We play them when they release commercially.

And I do feel like the context in which someone consumes something affects our perception of it so much.

Like, it's just, it's as, it's as like the the, the obvious thing is watching a movie in a theater versus watching it on your phone on a plane.

I think, I'm just talking about myself.

I'm just being introspective here.

I think I would like this game more.

And maybe I would even love this game if I'd had a pre-release build of this game that I was playing for a month in a vacuum.

And I was just like, holy shit, this fucking game is crazy.

I can't believe all the stuff that's in here.

I can't wait to talk to somebody about this because it's such a singular experience.

And it has this, I can't believe this fucking game that came out of nowhere sort of feeling.

But my context for playing this was seeing that it was the best reviewed game on Metacritic and me thinking, not coming into the cynically, but being excited to play my new favorite game and having that expectation.

And as such, my own frustrations with this game were potentially amplified because of all the pre-release stuff.

And I think also what you've just spoken to is context for how game criticism works, which is that if a game is serviced by having secret access to the game and getting to groundbreak in a world that you had no idea, it's it's honestly,

here's something I can liken it to: is the fact that I saw Blair Witch Project as a documentary.

And that experience is a completely different experience than seeing it in theaters after trailers were released and a poster was released.

I'm sorry,

you're a very intelligent person.

That same thing happened to my dumbest friend, like the dumbest guy I knew in college.

He's like, I can't believe this thing.

No, but I saw it like three months before it had come out.

Exactly.

No, he saw it in a pre-release and he thought it was a documentary.

Well, that's what I was told it was.

And so when I left the theater, I was like, what the fuck just happened?

What just happened?

As I think I've shared on this podcast before, when that movie came out, I was seven years old and I had heard about it.

Maybe seeing a commercial for it and being like, that looks scary.

That can't be real.

My aunt looked me in my eyes and told me it was real and I cried.

Hold on, I want to defend my experience of the Blair Witch Project, which is that, like, being told I was buying tickets to a documentary, going to see a documentary in Los Angeles and seeing the Blair Witch Project, exiting the theater, my friend and I standing in silence, other people just milling about like aimlessly and confused.

And my friend turns to me and just goes,

Are ghosts real?

And I went, I don't know.

What the fuck was that?

And he's like, but like,

did somebody, is this the moment where cameras have existed long enough that somebody got something on tape that we shouldn't have had on tape?

And I was like, I honestly don't know, dude.

And he's like,

what the fuck just happened?

And that means that if we had gone and reviewed Blair Witch Project, we would have reviewed it as a documentary that we saw in literally zero release and been like, I've just seen the most confusing piece of media I've ever watched.

And that is a totally different review than the reviews that came out later when Siskel and Ebert were like,

what a compelling piece of indie cinema.

Yeah.

Like it.

context for how you receive these games and and the pat and the community the secret community that you're in as game critics and the way that you all get to text one another about this new thing that you can't wait for the rest of the the world to see colors the Metacritic score.

Yeah, sure.

I'm thinking about the reviews of the Train movie coming toward the screen.

Just people being like, I cheated death.

I survived.

I feel like such a dumb idiot that for one minute,

outside of the Blair Witch Project, after being sold tickets to a documentary, I was like, what the fuck is happening?

Like, what about our movies, though?

You should think the thing you're watching is real because

you

it's real.

No, that's how it was marketed kind of underground before it went wide.

It's just like, yeah, they were sending it, they were showing it to people.

And yeah, again, my friend saw it at,

I mentioned that he was dumbest just because it made his reaction funnier.

But he was told that this movie was real going in, and that's what the audience believed.

It was so, like, also, we left the...

What was crazy about being told it was a documentary is I've never heard a more silent audience leaving a theater because everybody left the theater and just stood around

looking at the world.

The world's different now.

What the fuck is going on?

It was great.

It's interesting.

I wouldn't trade that for the world.

I would rather be wrong about my emotional experience of the Blair Witch Project than ever have received it post-trailers.

It's interesting that it happened to you because these days the documentary is idiocracy.

We'll be right back.

We can't do it again.

And we won't.

All right, let's find out if we just crapped all over someone's favorite game.

It's time for the U-play of our We Play U-Play.

It's your review crew, the Ryu crew.

Hello, girl!

Matt, take it away.

All right, these are all from our Discord.

Discord.gg slash get played.

Get on in there.

Hop on in.

It's a lovely community.

It is a lovely community.

Join the conversation.

What?

You guys remember that?

Was that the slogan?

No.

Gosh, who was that country artist?

There was a country artist who did a Facebook post.

It was like Tim McGraw, not Tim McGraw.

Who's Chris Gaines?

Garth Brooks.

Garth Brooks.

Jesus Christ.

Who's Chris Gaines?

And that got you to Garth Brooks.

Remember, of course, we all know the pop singer Chris Gaines, but what is his country alter ego?

In my defense, who's Miley's dad?

You know, Chris Gaines.

In my defense, the reason I remember Chris Gaines is that that's really funny that he did that.

Chris Gaines is very funny.

Did you say Miley's dad?

Isn't that his name?

No, Billy Ray Cyrus.

That's a different guy.

Oh, those are two different dudes?

No, yeah, that's the Achy Breaky Heart guy and the Old Town Road guy.

Oh, I thought she just didn't choose his last name because

she didn't want to ride his coattails or whatever.

She, in fact, embraced being a Nepo baby and a talented artist in her own right and included the Cyrus at the end of her name.

Wow.

Billy Ray Cyrus daughter.

I thought she was Karl Brooks' daughter.

That's really funny.

Wouldn't it be funny if she was, but then also took on the name of another country artist?

That's really funny.

I don't want to distance myself from my father.

I'll be Miley Urban.

What the hell?

So Garth Brooks did this video when he joined Facebook late, where he's like, it's official.

We're on Facebook.

And he does this like...

monologue to his like camera laying down in bed and it's it's really funny i'll send it to you guys later it's really really good Anyway, he says, think of it as a conversation.

I'm breaking down the walls between you and me.

I'm not doing it justice.

When I show you guys this video later, you're going to love it.

I'm sure I'm going to love it.

I'm surprised I've never seen it.

It's really funny and weird.

Anyway, discord.gg slash get played.

This one's from

join the conversation.

We're breaking the walls down between you and me.

Let us know how you feel about the fact that I thought Miley Cyrus' dad was Karth Brooks.

I'm going to spare you.

I'm just going to bury you some time.

Nobody feels good about this.

It's like, it is a little bit like a white racism.

It is sort of like that.

It's also just sort of like...

It's the biggest problem in society.

Yeah, yeah, we're finally getting to it.

It's like, I don't know.

We find out this week's numbers go up a lot.

Finally.

Okay, this one's from Simply Quid.

And Simply Quid writes, it's so refreshing.

and cerebral.

It's a game that isn't about combat, isn't about reflexes.

It's about thinking and exploring and twisting your brain and being curious.

I do think that is well articulated.

And I agree.

It's very much about that.

I agree with those sentiments.

Specifically, that it's not about combat.

It is not about combat, but how fucking awesome would it be if it was?

I was kind of thinking earlier, wouldn't it be a kind of...

It'd be kind of funny if, you know, how you like, you can find like the study and it's like the old man's office or whatever.

What if you like open the drawer and there's like a loose gun in there?

I think it would be so hype.

Look, I'm not going to pitch DLC for blueprints, but if I was,

how cool would it be if each room had a zombie in it?

And you had to like either have something you could use to kill it or find something in another room to be able to kill that zombie or DNA sequence some fucking code or whatever to kill the zombie.

So this game, the game is very escape roomy, right?

Each room kind of feels like an escape room, or a lot of them do.

It's kind of a reverse escape room because you're going into the room.

Yeah, you're right.

Anyway,

it's a reverse escape room.

But in the real world escape rooms, I did not experience this, but I have a friend who went to an escape room.

Shit, this wasn't you, Heather, was it?

Who went to an escape room and there was an actor who was chained up as a zombie.

And part of the escape room was like there was like a clue you got from that zombie, but he could also like eliminate people if he like got into contact with them.

No, no, that wasn't me.

I have two escape room stories real quick.

One, I was in a group and there was an escape room.

There was a clue inside, like a dirty toilet that had, like, it looked like it had shit in it and stuff.

That's fucking nasty.

And I, like, they want to.

This is the Duke Nukem escape room.

Oh, yeah.

I just

look at my shit.

Look at my shit.

It's as huge as my hog.

It came out my dick.

I don't want to think about that.

Fucking nasty motherfucker.

Hey,

it's me, Duke.

The Duke is short for Dookie.

Darryl.

Damn, I'm looking good.

You're a lady of the evening.

Just stealing lines from other movies.

Watch me.

So he's up to the brutalist.

Yeah, he's got up to the modern dance.

I'll drink your milkshake.

Kind of dated, but still.

So anyway.

He didn't even like get that one.

So in this wine escape room I was in, there's like they want you to get a clue in there.

And there's like a woman that's like chained up like in like a, she's like captive in this thing.

And she has the ability to give you other clues if you get her out of this room or whatever and I used like a toilet scrubber to like reach in and grab this like key or whatever and she called me a pussy

And then in this other one I did delusion which is not really an escape room it's more of a immersive theater experience type thing and I got taken away from my group and put in a coffin and that was very very scary oh my god and then I started to like laugh a lot though because then this guy is like i that guy that took me was like in a room with me and he's like if you make a sound i'll kill you and i was like all right like they're gonna fucking kill me

is delusion the haunted house experience yeah yeah that's downtown yeah yes yeah

okay

did you do this too i don't so i went to some

Or did you just go to a scary house?

I went to some haunted house experience downtown Los Angeles where like you had to sign a waiver ahead of time because there was sexy touching involved.

Yeah, this guy like crawled all over me, too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was like, this is so fucking weird.

It was very weird.

That was the weirdest part about it for me: I was like, I have to sign a waiver to allow myself to be touched without suing the place.

Y'all should have seen me.

I'd walk out of there.

You should have seen me in one of these rooms, though, because there was like a puzzle that nobody in my group was fucking getting.

Wow.

And it was about aligning constellations.

And I just like happened to know enough of them to like do the puzzle well.

And I felt like a genius.

And everyone's like in other rooms.

Hey, good job on that puzzle back there.

That's great.

That's great.

So anyway,

well said, simply quid.

This next one is from.

Just to talk about the comment for one more second.

I agree with that fully.

I think that is, that is the part, that is the stuff that is working.

It's just the element of, you know,

of

how arbitrary arbitrary it is in terms of what you're allowed to do yeah that is that is again such an obstacle for me i think for all of us certainly all of us yeah uh this next one's from silver bullets hi silver what's up silver bullets and stay away from a the freaking wolf man

i'd say get closer to that wolf man we got we need we need fewer wolf men in this world you know what but you want this place to be swarming with wolfman the fuck out of here taking over fucking basketball no way i don't think so

uh

Silver Bullets writes.

It's hard to get my 14-year-old daughter to play games with me, but as soon as I showed her this game, she wanted to play.

Now she is roasting me because she has found way more stuff than I have.

That's nice.

That's awesome.

That's nice too.

I love that.

Yeah.

Love these comments.

Yeah, I'd say,

if I get roasted by my kid in the future, go to your room, no more games for life.

I wonder if they make fun of me.

I wonder if the, I haven't even thought about that.

I was like, I guess I'd have to, like, at a certain point, my kid will beat me, if I have have a kid, would beat me in a video game.

Yeah.

And then they'd probably lose all respect for me as a man.

Yeah.

So I just have to postpone that as long as possible.

I can't be like nine years old and just getting fucking waxed in Smash Brothers.

My kid's going to think I'm a fucking loser.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're going to think I'm not funny.

I'm a whack.

Well, what if it's not true?

Like, what if, what if you have a skill set that they will never, like, what if they aren't good at video games and then you're mythic?

Because like, I'm not good at construction, so like I'm never going to be better than my dad at construction.

That's true.

Sometimes these skills skip a generation, or they just have different interests.

Yeah, yeah.

But if my kid's not good at video games, dropping them off the orphanage,

get good, and then you can maybe come home after.

Oh, it's just crying, get better at that, actually.

Can I just say, like, I don't know if our, I don't think our individual show group chat is particularly toxic, but I will say, like, I know there are a lot of people who

part of what they love about this game is that they have friends that they're like discovering things with and solving puzzles with.

Whereas I feel like our group chat was not what this

person is describing with their, with, with their daughter, but is more like,

you know, was more us complaining about what

bothered us about the game.

So yeah, I think,

is it possible that if we had maybe more of an open dialogue about what's going on in the game and sharing things with each other, we would have had more fun.

Hey, maybe.

Check out the Prism key.

What this might be a useful thing, you know,

but we weren't doing that in the chat.

We were saying, like, fuck this.

This sucks.

We're trying to save the conversation for the podcast.

That's a great point.

So, like, I can't be like, oh, did you see this thing?

Because if it comes up, then we want that dialogue to be natural on the show.

Yeah.

I mean, I can just read, fuck this game.

This game needs shit.

And when I beat it, I just texted Matt, the prince can suck my dick.

I will say, yeah, when Heather was,

when I was the only one that had expressed who had beaten the game, Heather wanting to spare the group chat from potentially spoilery elements, was getting a lot of texts.

I gotta say, I was loving it.

I was like, oh, Heather texted me.

This next one is from Hagizu.

And Hagizu writes,

I've been playing every day after work since the game came out.

I haven't pulled out a notebook and a pen to write down anything I think is a clue since playing Mist and Riven with my friends in high school.

Figuring out some of the puzzles is so satisfying because almost each one makes you feel like a genius.

Smiley face emoji.

This one.

Matt just did it here and it was unnerving.

It was the top teeth and the bottom teeth emoji.

Oh God.

Nope.

I kind of did it.

I think that I think you did a good job.

Is that a smile or is that a grimace?

No, it's not a grimace.

A grimace is more like this.

No, that.

Yeah.

It wasn't that one.

No, this is a smile.

These are upturned cheeks.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

You and I learning what facial expressions mean.

Oh, so you do that when you're happy.

You do that when you laugh.

You have to remember to mirror this when I mask it.

Shoot, I can't screenshot this.

This next one is Elastigator 617.

Parentheses Fran H.

Just the reference to Riven.

I'd never played Riven.

Riven was a sequel to Mist.

I remember that coming out, but I know that, you know, like a lot of Mist,

a lot of people, it did not have the cultural penetration that Mist did.

Um, but a lot of people who loved Myst ended up loving Riven as well.

I worked, so my first job was at a video game store, and it was sometime after Myst came out, but it was still it had a long tail.

Like, people were still like, they'd come in and they'd be like, I've heard about this game, Myst.

It was the killer app for CD-ROM drives for PCs.

I would literally tell them, It's no good.

And they'd be like, Really?

And I'd be like, Absolutely not.

If you want good games, and then I I would point them to a whole bunch of fucking games.

You know what?

I might like my dad.

Kikaruga?

Fucking Ruga.

My dad is such a sporadic.

My dad is such a sporadic gamer, but Myst is one of the games that he got into.

I think there were a lot of people who got like that who were just like, again, had a CD-ROM drive on their computer and like, oh, this is a cool looking

interface or whatever.

These graphics look very impressive.

And, you know, like, I, I, I wonder if he would respond to Blueprints.

I wonder if it would.

I think it could be.

Maybe I'll tell him about it.

Maybe he'll like it or maybe it'll ruin his life.

Is it on Switch?

No, it's only on rats.

I mean, it's on X, it's only on.

It's on everything but Switch.

I'm sure it'll come to Switch.

I'm sure Switch 2, maybe.

Yeah, sure.

Because my mom is a Switch and she loves this kind of game.

So I just had the thought, oh man, I bet my mom would really enjoy this.

Or she'd call me in a week and be like, why did you do this?

Elastigator 617 Fran H writes.

I've never played a game with a notepad beside me before.

I thought that would get tedious and annoying, but I came to enjoy that aspect pretty quickly.

Excellent game.

So glad it was included in PlayStation Plus.

And yeah, actually, you know what?

That's a point

to its benefit or to its credit.

It's on PlayStation Plus Premium.

If you have, if you're subscribed to that, and it's on Game Pass.

Yes, I played on PC Game Pass.

The only reason I started playing it is because, as I said in previous episode, and I think that's part of what arced us into this being our We Play, You Play, is that I had my portal and I was like, what can I play?

Oh, Blueprints, that game that Nick said I would hate.

I will show him.

I will hate it.

What we're talking about doing this episode, I think, Heather, you said something which is that you would have bounced off of this game if we weren't doing an episode about it.

You feel that way?

I do feel that way.

I think that I wouldn't have given it, I would have given it 20% of the time I gave it, but I also didn't want to come into this conversation with the least amount of knowledge out of all of us.

So I was like, I have to fucking beat it, especially once I knew how I could beat it.

Yes.

I was like, I have to fucking beat it before I come in.

I feel like I would have bounced off of this as well, if not for, because I think this episode ended up becoming the driving thing for me to continue to play this past week.

But by this past weekend, I was pretty burned out on this experience.

I want to get to something that I meant to say earlier.

Yeah.

You know how like games like this, and there are other games like this too, where like you finish it and you're like, actually, the game's not done.

Now that you're just kind of getting started, miss me with that shit, dog.

Let me finish the fucking game one time.

Matt, there you, Matt, I 100% endorse this.

Wow.

Fuck.

I have gotten like

this to me, hopefully is the end of when the credits roll, you're just getting started, trend.

Because I'm just like, how about roll the credits at the end of the the fucking game?

Yeah, how about roll the fucking credits and I'm out of here, dude.

I have a counter.

The second movie doesn't fucking start when I finish the movie.

I have a counter-argument, which is Death Stranding.

Where the credits rolled for a long time and then the game comes.

But he's a freak and he's doing that on purpose to us.

No, that's the Kojima corollary.

He can do whatever he wants.

Yeah.

I think it's okay in Death Stranding.

I'm sure it'll be okay whatever weird way he does in Death Stranding.

That's the only thing I was going to say.

NW Vangelian, roll credits in the middle of the movie.

Perfect.

No notes on that.

But yeah, I think there's this twee indie game trend you're seeing now of just like rolling the credits a little bit prematurely and there's a lot more game as opposed to the traditional small amount of post-game content.

And I don't know.

We could probably

in the middle.

This next one is from Philomorph.

Hi, Philomorph.

What's up, Philomorphor?

Philomorph writes.

I'm kind of enjoying blueprints, but also kind of wishing it wasn't quite so random.

Some runs feel a bit wasted, like you you discovered something minor, but spent 30 plus minutes to get

to get like nothing really happened because of garbage drafts.

Not sure if I'll finish it, but I'm not ruling it out.

And that's kind of where we all land.

Yeah, that's where we landed.

I think that is, yeah, that's how I felt about this game.

Maybe, you know, 10 to 15 hours ago, oh, maybe longer than that.

I started to have that feeling, and then that feeling persisted.

So, yeah, maybe this might be one to bounce off of if that's the feeling you're having right now.

But

yeah, I think

the number that was cited there, the duration, 30 minutes, is useful in terms of why it feels like wasted time.

Again, if you have a limited amount of time to play games, and I think I have the most time of anyone because I got nothing going on.

But, you know, if you have like a family and a job, which I don't, then you've got like, you know, response, you like, this is again, your own time is a limited resource, and this game feels like it uses up a lot.

I'm sure your wife wants to spend some time with you, though, right?

No, she's good.

This next one is from Mel.

What's up, Mel?

And Mel writes, this game keeps reminding me how much I fucking love puzzles.

I always draft the parlor room even when it's not the best choice.

I can't describe

how much joy I get from doing a mundane task and having it trigger a mysterious cutscene.

The sound design is really killer too.

I don't think I'm that far into the game yet, but if it keeps going like this, I'll end up being an all, an all-time favorite.

Hashtag justice for swim bird.

Swimbird is in one of the children's books.

Actually, I was like, oh, I like this book.

This is good.

This is a nice piece of writing.

I like all the children's books.

The children's books are pretty good.

Yeah.

We didn't talk about, just talking about things being triggered.

We did not spend one second talking about the Great Alzara, which is such a, I feel like people are, you know, really trying to dig in on this

in the fan community uh i do like the great alzara but i never know what the fuck he's talking about it was never helpful to me at all at all but when i did find it for the first time i was like this is incredible this is what what a what what what mysteries are there for me to behold and i would just never know what the fuck he was talking about i could barely pay attention to him he talks so slow and it took so long to get into it i would call him the okay alzara He wasn't that great.

It's like the vending machine from Big, but he talks with the voice from Nosferatu.

And yeah, and then just is giving a bunch of exposition about something that has no connection to anything, or maybe does.

I don't know.

I wasn't paying attention.

On the scene deck, the cutscenes don't work.

It just is like this, the static, like colorful lines.

Oh, gosh.

And then I thought when I triggered the Great Alzara the first time,

I was watching that for like five minutes, waiting for something to happen because I thought it was part of the game.

This game ruined our brain.

Yeah,

it breaks, and you think it's like part of the experience.

This is a clue.

There was a post on Reddit of somebody who realized that the cracks in one wall lined up with the pantry if you place them next to each other.

Yeah.

And was like, I think this could be something.

And somebody else was like, brother, go outside.

and finally this one's from uh wrestle ranger and wrestle ranger writes people who who complain about the rng are weak of mind and soul the rng is the game you're trying to draft the pump room next to the boiler room but instead you draft a clock tower what is this another puzzle yippie wrestle ranger how dare you

i get the spirit of your comment but i disagree strongly yes um Thanks for writing in, everybody.

It seemed like for the most part, people were very positive of the experience, and I'm happy for them.

I think for the most part, we were positive of the experience.

I really do.

I think that if we had had this podcast, our We Play, You Play, a week and a half ago, we all would have been, even me, would have been like, this game's kind of hype.

Yes.

I was definitely way higher on it in the early going.

And then as it progressed, it lost me yeah um because it just started to feel like a like a like a slog just just to get it out for one second the things that i really really loved about this game i loved all the music i loved just the art direction in general and i gotta say i liked the way some of these rooms looked quite a bit i like when every time i'd get i had i had some favorite rooms cool looking rooms uh i i liked that and um

i you know i liked

kind of just i i i i liked the experience of the game just until i was like frustrated enough with it.

I love the conceit of building the house that you're exploring.

Yes.

That's fucking awesome.

I love just the

general like

sciencey

like bent to some of the puzzle, the constellation.

Like I like that it's not ghosts, you know?

I like that it's it's experiments and it's security rooms.

I like that aesthetic in general.

I will say that the name of the

the game itself and what it is about feels a little bit smug.

Like it feels a little bit like, oh, yeah, check out how clever I am with my little guy.

There's a lot of that in this game.

And then reading that the developer's inspiration was a book of the world's hardest mazes makes me just

makes me feel like there's like a general sort of smugness about it.

I don't know anything about it.

They're not a developer.

I'm sure maybe they're a lovely person.

I assume they are.

If somebody said, certainly very talented.

If somebody in an improv scene said, hey, do you want to see my blueprints?

And I said, Sure.

And then they opened a door and there was a guy standing behind it.

He'd be like, This is my blueprints.

In the scene, I would be like, Eat shit.

Yeah.

Like, I wouldn't be like, oh, look at that.

So fucking.

Sounds like something I would do.

Oh, wait, is that the podcast I'm on?

I pictured me.

Behind the door?

Yeah.

The little blueprints.

I think that this is a,

I expect this to be an influential game.

I expect there to be games that are inspired by this game that I like more than this one.

And I also think the core mechanic, like I think that there,

there can be, you know, or there maybe will be a roguelite, blue prince-like that is,

you know, centered on the room building aspect, which I think works really well.

And mechanically, I think a game built purely around that could

have legs in and of itself.

But yeah, I don't know.

It's a very impressive game.

And agreed.

Absolutely.

And I know we're trying to end on a positive note here, but I do also feel like this game ruined my life.

That's this week's Get Player.

Producers Rochelle Chen.

Ranch, yard underscore, underscore sard.

Ranch, what are you streaming these days?

Still on RE7, but my PC is broken.

Right.

You had to like, like, did you have any issue with that?

Any resolution of that thermal paste you applied?

It did not work.

Okay.

So it's now at a place called the PC Doctor.

Oh, wow.

Hope it all works out.

Do you have any sort of diagnosis for what's going on with it?

People think that it might be the cooler.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, hopefully it's an easy fix.

Our music is by Ben Prunty.

Yeah.

PC Doctor?

Woke police?

What the hell is going on here?

I take that back.

You cannot say exactly.

Our music is by Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our art is by DuckBrigade Design, DuckBrigade.com.

Get Played Merch is available at kinshipgoods.com.

There's a link in the show description.

And also, check out Get Animate or sister Show on Patreon.

Matt, what's up this week?

We're piercing the heavens, baby.

Wow.

We're watching Gurren Lagan

and we're seeing where this baby goes.

Because this play, this, let me tell you something about this show real quick.

Because if you're not on the Get Animated feed and you don't know the experience of the show, this show is about some underground dwellers who live underground and they think that's the world.

And then from there,

it just becomes so crazy week in and week out.

It's a show.

It's a show where I think the most things that can happen do happen.

The pace is unbelievable.

It is now one of my favorite things I've ever seen.

I love it.

I love that, man.

I love it.

It's incredible.

So check it out.

Watch it along with us.

We're having a great time over there.

We're having a blast over at patreon.com/slash get played.

Hey, you know what got played this week?

Us.

That was a hit gum podcast.