Tired of the World? Try a Fantasy Life

So I met some Lego dorks over the weekend and Lego dorks are legit. Oh for sure.
Lego dorks do not kid around.

No, they don't. I went to the New York Botanical Garden, which is a lovely place in New York City, and they were doing an activation with Lego.

And you have like kids come by and they build plants out of Lego and you get to keep the plants. It's really cute and cool.
And the line was about three hours long. We did not wait in the line.

We knew to get there early because we knew about the Lego dorks, but holy shit, the Lego Dorks brought it hard. They wanted to- Isn't that kind of good for everybody who's not a Lego dork?

Because all the Lego dorks, a ton of people write online, meaning the rest of the area, wide open for you. Yeah, it was like it was much more empty.

I mean, to be fair, I also wait in the line, but I was smart enough to get ahead of the Lego Dorks. And I resent what you just said, Chris.

I did not think of the Lego, and I also don't like throwing the D-word around that. Like

Lego enthusiasts, Lego

Lego enthusiasts. Sure, sure.

They're a tactile people. They're out there in the real world.
I don't like this suggestion that they're all cyber.

Yeah, it must be surreal to live in a place with an activation. Can you imagine? If there was an activation in Huntington, they would call the police.
Like, no one would even...

What do you mean it's activated? What are you talking about? It was. I don't think anyone lives in the Botanical Garden.
I also want to say, to reiterate, I was also in line.

Sorry, Russ, I would have to drive three hours for the nearest activation. Guaranteed.
Yeah. Guaranteed.

Unless you're counting the time that they use Columbus as a test market for a new Snapple flavor. Yeah.
I definitely, definitely am going to have to drive.

And the time that they put tie-dye coloring in the Ritter Park Fountain. That was sort of an activation.
Or that was something of an activation.

Yes. Yes.

Yeah.

Anyway, I'm too dumb for Lego is the upshot of this conversation. You're too impatient for Lego.
No, no.

This is a second story in a month where you are not going to wait in lines for anything.

I did, and I'm too, I tried to build it. It's like a 10-step process.
I couldn't. It was a free

flash.

It's like one of the free ones for children.

It was for children, and I couldn't.

There were instructions. They had tables set up with little plaques, and they have all the steps.
And I got to step 10. And I was like,

was it a colorblind? Before we make fun of you, legally, you have to tell us that this is a colorblind thing. It was not a colorblind thing.
Okay, It was good to show you guys. Good to rip, guys.

Good to rip. Was it like you were nervous because there were other people watching? Well, yes, because I was also building my sons at the same time.

And they see that you have glasses and there's a certain expectation. Well, they all thought I was also a Lego dork, but clearly I'm not because I was

clearly you're not. Clearly not.
Clearly you're not. That is tough because they don't want to humiliate you in front of your kid.

They're looking at Russ and they're like, if this guy's this bad at Lego, he must love Pez. That's the only other thing that makes sense.
That's the rival to Lego in your mind is Pez? For dorks?

All right.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, everyone tried to have a better pull, but none came. I guess I win.
Connex? I'm a Connex man myself. All right, that's not bad.
Mousetrap. Yeah, you dated yourself.

Lego's okay. I only fuck with Bionicle, though.

You need some circles in the mix. It can't all be squares.
Everybody still really thinks Pez was better. Like, they were like...
I think Pez is pretty good. Everyone is saying, like, Pez is good.

It's a Lego without any of the fuss.

If you know know Pez obsessives like I do,

it makes a lot of sense. Pez obsessives.
Perfect.

They prefer Pezverts. That's what they say.
That's their word.

My name is Justin McLoy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McRoy.
I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of the week.

My name is Russ Frushlick. I know the best game of the week.
And this is the Besties, a video game club. And just by listening, my friend, you are now officially a member.
Welcome to our...

Thrall feels like too strong a word, but it's not wrong. This week we got two, count them, two games

on tap. There's a sequel to Fantasy Life,

and the creator of Katamari Domicy is back with a brand new adventure called Two a Tea.

What's that? Chris Planck. I kind of spoiled it.
I got my claws in there.

You pretty much nailed it. I don't think people need to know anything else other than what's going to happen in the show.
All right, let's take a break and we'll try to get our shit together.

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Okay, first up, we have 2 a T, which comes from the creator of Katamari Damasi. It has that musical, fun-loving, bright-colored air to it.

Justin, you want to give the premise of this one? Yeah, so you're a...

A child named who is by default named Teen. You can name them whatever you want.
I couldn't figure out how to do that on the Steam Decks. They were remained named Team Teen on my game.

And it is about a young person named Teen, beginning on their 13th birthday, who for their entire life has had their arms sort of locked in a T-pose.

probably due to some sort of unknown parentage,

it's hinted at. It is sort of alluded to, yes.
Yeah.

And

you are basically like navigating the world as this child child with

you know seeing sort of the

basically a lot of like the accessibility challenges and and solutions that that the the child has like throughout the day and there is this like

sort of whimsical element to where the child is able to like occasionally spin with their arms out to fly like a helicopter yes yes yeah and you may feel like that's what the game when you see the child child fly like a helicopter, you may feel that that is what the game is about.

But to this point, it does not seem to be about that predominantly. It is not a new jumping flash.

It is not about that mainly. Mainly, it is more slice of life

challenges with like some kind of mini games-esque, different ways of like getting through the world. Yeah, yeah.

It's like, how are you going to brush your teeth when your arms are extended in a T-pose? How are you going to eat?

You have the support of a dog that helps you with a lot of things, like getting your clothes on. But it's basically just taking a very, very simple premise of you are a teenager who is in a T-pose.

How are you going to get through all of life?

I spoke with Keida Takahashi at GDC this year, who is the creator who did Katamari. And what was interesting is it didn't

originate as a game about disability or accessibility, which is surprising because once you start playing it, it feels like that's the only thing it could have been.

But he really does start games from a very, very simple place, which is a problem and then extrapolating it as far as possible.

There is a creature who rolls a ball and then gradually it accumulates everything in the world. There is a person who is in the shape of a T.
How do they get through their life?

Yeah, I mean, it very clearly has like analogs to not only accessibility issues, but also just like the anxiety of like he goes to school and he like is bullied at school and made fun of.

And so there's just like a direct anxiety, like body dysmorphia aspect to it where he feels embarrassed about who he is. And you're trying to like overcome that,

which I think in a lot of games, when you're trying to like deal with really heavy topics like that, it can come off as pretty intense and heavy.

But in this one, because of the presentation and because of the general tone,

it's very welcoming. And again, like Slice of Life anime is like a very good analogue to it.
How would you guys like define the Kedatakahashi sort of style to somebody who has not played

a Katamari Damasi or what was the other one that he made where you were like throwing a party for these little creatures?

Nobby Nobby Boy? Yeah, Nobby Nobi Boy. Yeah, I think.
Well, that was a different one, right?

That was the one where you were stretching out trying to, I think, encircle the moon or some shit like that. Yeah.
What would you, what do you call that style of

presentation? I mean, I think it's 1970s children's entertainment.

You know, and you can see it, especially in this game, whether that is the style of clothes they wear, the like colorfulness of everything, but also the kind of hallucinatory nature of the worlds that you're in.

And even the games have that 70s, 80s era video game feel where

the creator of the game is not really sure if their idea even works yet they're just going in a direction and trying something new not just doing like an established genre it just all feels like these the 70s never died for kata takahashi who i don't even know if he was alive during that era yeah now this game is there's a little bubble that comes up as you start that says it was made in in collaboration with able gamers um which i feel like is the only thing for me that like, I think that that allowed me to sort of like,

you know, I'm not the one who should be judging how these things are like discussed and like what the sort of like most helpful dialogue is surrounding those things.

So I think it's it's helpful that they had Able Gamers like in that conversation because I think that it definitely feels,

I don't know.

I can't even say that feels right to me because it's not my place to judge, but I'm glad that they are involved in it to make sure it's being handled in like a tasteful way. Right.

I think that's right, obviously. But I also think the metaphor here

is abstract enough that I found a lot of myself in it and challenges that I had as a kid.

And some of that is quite literal of

having disfigurement as a kid and the way that you are seen and the way the world reacts to you and the way that you change yourself. But also, just being a kid is awkward.

Being in your body is awkward. And I think this game's really interested in that.
I mean, there's also the underlying puberty metaphor here

that I think largely works. Yeah.

What did you all think of the music?

Oh, the music's amazing. It slaps.
Yeah. It's so fucking good.

So there's like a theme song. I think it's You're the Perfect Shape or something like that.
It's like the theme song. And it plays at the beginning of the episodes.

The game is broken up into different episodes. And then there's like a mid-episode theme song about a giraffe who loves cooking, which is also fantastic.
It's like very upbeat jazz.

If you like the Katamari soundtrack, like this is all incredibly consistent with that.

Rebecca Sugar from Steven Universe did one of the songs. Oh, great.
Give you an idea of the vibe. Yeah.

It's just done with such confidence.

And like the theme song is basically telling you the premise of the game and like all the challenges that the boy goes through. Actually, I wouldn't even say it's a boy.
It's a teen, non-gendered.

So you can be whoever you want, really.

And I just thought that was like a, it was a fun way to present it,

just the structure of it being episodic and also just starting each episode with the theme song. It felt very anime.
One complaint that I had about this was it doesn't have like a profile system.

And I really wanted my kids to check it out.

And I got like Charlie played for like an hour, but then to see the sort of like beginning stuff again and get the setup for the premise, you have to like restart your entire game.

There's no there is a chapter select, there is a way to specifically

not making your own character. Oh, sure.

When you're splitting between two kids, they want their character, their progress.

So like that was, that was kind of tough because I couldn't, I showed them, but I couldn't make as much progress because I had to start restarting the games.

It's time to make a family share on Steam, buddy. What? You can make a family account on Steam and have them have their own account and you share.

You Steam account.

Come home and my son has bought fucking $25,000 in CSGO skins.

I can't do that. I'm shut that shit down, guys.
Come on, be a parent. I think,

I do wish,

I wish it was more fun.

Katamari Domasi is really fun to play, and I really so much appreciate what this game is doing. And I think that that's really cool.

There's a lot of running around with like confus, for me at least, confusing geometry and a confusing map, trying to figure out where you're going. Yeah.

And I wish that there was more game here

because a lot of the stuff is like repeated and things that you do repeatedly. And I get that part of that's like the slice of life episodic nature, but part of it was just like a little kind of dull.

They do seem to wish it was a little bit more fun. I think they do acknowledge that like you don't necessarily want to be doing the same mini game over and over again.

So like on day two, which I thought was pretty funny, the mom was like, you know what? If you're hungry or you're not hungry, whatever. Who cares? You do what you want.

If you want to brush your teeth, I don't, it's up to you. You could have disgusting teeth.
So it does let you skip some of the aspects, but I agree with you.

Like running through the world isn't necessarily the most compelling thing, especially when you compare it to like being able to roll up fucking

earth.

How did your kids

connect with it?

They really dug. I mean, they both really enjoyed it.
It's, it's very tactile, which is good for kids.

It's obviously like they got the idea. I mean, they got the concept really quickly.

And I think that

that was cool.

There is like, they struggled some with the

like getting from A to B at the point where they like give you an open world and want you to run around. It's like it starts to get kind of

confusing about where to go. There's a lot of invisible walls, both like, and that got a little annoying for them.

and that the younger Cooper was a little bit that you have to be kind of good with like the button prompts because it's not very intuitive.

It's a lot of like looking to see, and I had to kind of be with her to remind her what buttons are left bumper or whatever, which is a dumb thing, which is like seemingly intentional because they wanted it to feel awkward.

But I also realized that, like, for a kid, that's a lot to ask. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I think this is the forever problem with Takahashi's games basically since Katamari Damasi. and I think

this isn't apologizing for it I think we just should never expect the problem to go away because he doesn't play video games doesn't really have interest in video games and doesn't really have interest in traditional design of video games and I think that results in these games like this honestly like Again, everything he's made once he's been away from a traditional developer system.

For context, when he did Katamari Damasi, he was at a traditional, he was Ben Dai Nemco, I believe.

And then has been away from that environment. And I think that's why we get these games that feel

just strange. And again, that's not like,

it's not a defense of it. It's just a

feel to me, even outside of the premise, it doesn't feel that experimental.

It feels like a more narrative game, which feels experimental to some extent for his work because it tends to be more like, you know, fluid and like open-ended.

This feels way more narrative, way more structured in terms of telling a story.

But the game itself does not feel like that different from like a traditional game in that way.

So, I mean, there might, obviously, there are people that are working in that organization that are like...

We got to turn this, you know, I'm glad he had the idea about the T, but like, we got to turn this into a game. It's, but it's not, but like, it's not, and I don't mean this as a criticism.

It's, it's not fun in the sense that you would think of a game being, like, a lot of the other games have a fun, central mechanic that is pleasant to interact with.

And the micro, I get it, but like, on the macro, I just don't think.

Yeah, we've talked about it and certainly dragged games of the idea that like just moving around the world should be fun.

And I'm not even talking about like the challenges that the teen faces when like opening doors. I just mean like in an open field, it should feel good to run around.
And it feels fine.

It's not, it doesn't feel great.

And I think it was just not a priority for them to focus on the like, quote, game feel of it rather than, again, the narrative and the like music and the art design, like all felt like that was the closest

of it. And like,

I'm going to put the soundtrack when it gets added to whatever. I'm going to put it on my playmix, the playlist of like fun music because it totally goes in line with the Katamari stuff.

It's really fun to listen to.

I really liked it.

I am continuing to play through it. I want to know the mystery of the boy and why he is shaped like a T.

They're certainly emphasizing that as an important plot point.

I know it can't be because his dad is secretly the king of all cosmos, but in my head, Canon. Sure.

It'd be nice.

Yeah, no, I mean,

the tracks have been laid for that particular reveal. I'm hoping it just doesn't turn out to be a lot of fun.
I don't think it can't, but it's a different company.

He doesn't own, he doesn't even get money for it. He doesn't get diggies.
Well,

maybe it's a Christ allegory. Oh, yeah.

Hey, let's take a break and then talk about fantasy life. I, the girl who...
La la la la, you are the Christ child.

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from one fantasy life to another

yes this is what this one's more explicitly a a fantasy life because it's the new fantasy life game the new int screen the fantasy life series which i really loved the idea of and then never they didn't really make a good one until you tell us a little bit about the original one before we dig into this I'll tell you about the original fantasy life came out in 3DS it was developed by level five one of my all-time favorite video game developers they made dark cloud dark cloud 2 they made uh I believe Dragon Quest 11

11 10 they've done some work on the dragon quests uh they have their work has an aesthetic that is so incredible oh yeah professor layton right that's what i was professor leo cooney of course nino kuni

The way that they present their games is so like

illustrative and painterly and

carefully thought out and just like maximum aesthetic all the time. Fantasy Life was their take on the kind of

pseudo-life simulator cozy genre. Came out on 3DS in, God, I don't know, forever ago.
And it let you live these different lives, which are basically classes.

And some of them were like combat lives where you'd you'd run around this, you know, these levels and fight monsters.

But then most of them were like gathering lives, so you could chop wood or go mining. And then there were crafting lives, so you could make shit out of all the stuff.

And all those systems were interconnected, and each class, each life had like a different story that you could live, and there was like a lot of content there, but it was also the very definition of the like

mile-wide, inch-deep kind of criticism that is so often leveraged at bigger games um because fantasy life was not that fun to play the combat was pretty uh pretty crazy simple and uh there just wasn't a lot of richness to those systems uh i think they made another was there fantasy life 2 that came out before this i feel like i missed one it's possible i was so i'm not i don't think so i thought this was it Okay, possibly, yeah.

That was a game that I was super excited about because it it was one of my favorite game developers, taking on one of my favorite genres, and it just fell flat.

This one, Fantasy Life I, The Girl Who Steals Time, is very much the same sort of premise.

You are an explorer who crash lands on this island and you travel through time and you end up in this weird world and you got to take on these jobs so you can earn some money, so you can fly back home.

But then you don't go home, you go to a huge open world, and there's all kinds of shit to explore.

and the whole time you are switching between these 14 different classes I think which again are split up between like combat classes so you can be a mercenary with a big two-handed weapon or you can be a ranger with a bow and arrow but then there are the gathering classes you can be a farmer in this one you can be uh you can be an artist in this one as well but you're only classes can i confirm so you're only playing as your character but you are taking on different jobs is that you are only playing as your character you're taking on different jobs in this game they've made it like a single button press to swap jobs.

It is not like a,

you know, MMORPG where you're having to like lock into a class, and then it's like a pain in the ass to change it. The idea is like you have your combat class equipped.

You run up to a tree and you press A, and then you instantly switch to your woodcutter class, and then you can start, you know, doing that side of things. But each class, you can...

customize the equipment of each class. You have different skill trees for each class.
You have different storylines for each class.

There's like, it's pretty, it's pretty meaty, and I will say more substantial this time around than in the, well, in a 3DS game, right? Like you would expect it. This game's out on everything.

And I, I, I think that they have stuck the landing on that premise a lot better than they did the first time around. That's, that's my setup.

I'm, I'm curious to hear Chris talk about it because we have not actually had much of a chance to talk about our

series.

It is stuff to do the video game. It is absurdly big.
Everything Griffin just said, multiply that by 10 and you're about like half the way there. There's just so much shit.

The easiest way that I find to think about the whole life class system is remember the

last

3DS Zelda game that we loved where you would buy weapons. Link between worlds.
Link between worlds.

And you would like acquire a weapon and then like get good with it and then you could unlock it permanently and then you'd go buy another one. That's kind of how this works.

Where if you think of these classes or lives as weapons, it's closer to a more traditional game structure because you are just one person and like really what you're getting is the ability to use a hoe, the ability to use a fishing rod, the ability to use a sword.

The fun of the game, like that Zelda game, is deciding what order of those things you want to prioritize.

So you know right at the beginning, hey, I'm going to need something for combat, and I'm going to need something to harvest while I'm going from points A to point B.

the

challenge of the game for a completionist and Griffin this is where I'm curious where your brain is at on this game is every time you walk anywhere you are seeing all the other things you could be doing if you had it unlocked every other job so let's say you're a tree chopper and

and you're really good with a bow and arrow while you're going from point a to point b you'll chop down some trees and then you'll see like all of this great stuff that you want to mine You're like, wow, shit, I better go back and learn how to do that.

And suddenly you can get into a kind of vicious loop of just learning how to play or like unlock weapons for the game. Yeah,

it is a tough game that kind of asks you to set the pace for it, which is, I think, a bit foolhardy.

Because like, there's a point in the game where you're thrown into this like ancient city and you're like, go talk to this guy. You can pick up any job you want.

You'll do like a quick little introductory mission and then you can switch jobs if you want unlock a different one no big deal after you do your first like unlock a job mission you can skip the missions for each following job so you can just say like yeah i want to be a uh an alchemist but uh i'm not going to do the fucking fetch quest for it they just let you skip it and now you have the class so like it'll take you a couple hours but you can unlock every class and then all of a sudden what chris is saying is not like that huge of an issue.

You do have to keep those classes leveled up if you go to like a hard dungeon because the resources there are higher level and you have to be like able to mine those higher level resources with like a higher level class in order to take it on.

Um, so like there's so much stuff to do, there's so much stuff to unlock, so much stuff to explore, so many different progression hooks to get stuck in.

And so, when you get thrown in, like, I don't know, I went bananas and was like, Well, I got to unlock every class, I'm gonna start doing these missions, start getting some upgrades.

And then I went a little bit further in the story and unlocked like fucking Animal Crossing, like it unlocked a whole

chunk of the game that I was not aware existed because I had spent so much time kind of spinning my wheels, leveling up all these different lives.

But when you're saying that Animal Crossing, it's just really quick to dig into that. It's Animal Crossing, Animal Crossing.
It's like

set up an entire town, refurbish an entire area,

decorate your house. It's, I mean,

it honestly reminded me of a mix between sort of Animal Crossing and the

city building kind of aspect of Dark cloud and dark cloud too,

if that rings a bell with anyone, because you're like putting together these houses for your villagers, and your villagers are teammates that you can actually take out onto the field with you and you can equip them with their own shit and they'll help you out when you're mining resources or fighting bad guys.

There's multiplayer that will sort of fill that same role too, but there's this sort of offline.

you know, AI companion sort of thing that you got going on and they'll give you requests and you have to fulfill them.

And so you do that and you're like, okay, cool. This is like dark cloud too.
It's fucking rules. I'm going to do this for a while.

You do that for a while and then you turn the corner and it's like, oh, by the way, here's a whole other fucking, like, here's a whole nother part of the game.

I feel like every few hours, the game would just throw some new mechanic at you. There's a point where Griffin's talking about where like you've done the Animal Crossing stuff for a little while.

And they're like, oh, hey, did you ever get around to going and doing that thing? And you go and do it. And they're like, oh, good.
You should take that item you found to the other island on the map.

And you're like, oh, the one in the past, to the present or the in-between.

And they're like, well, it's in the present, or sorry, the past, but actually, and then the map pulls out and you see a map view and a cloud raises.

And you realize, oh, there's multiple massive open worlds that they're just going to parse out through the course of the game. It feels like

when people are in like junior high or high school and they're like, I'm going to make video games for a living. And like, what are you going to do? Well, it's going to be Animal Crossing.

And it's also going to be an open world combat game. It's also going to be Zelda.
And there's going to be a Metroid area. And there's going to be this.
this and what is

i find

shocking and impressive is it mostly works i don't yeah i don't think it's any of it's bad it's just a lot you sound like a you sound completely out of touch when you are talking about this game because you're just listing off most of video games in this one little thing i well i guess to echo the question that came up in the first section like does it feel good is it very

it feels better it feels feels better than Fantasy Life One. Okay, it's not someone that didn't, like, does it feel better than like Animal Crossing? Just to move around the world.

I'm not even thinking about, like, yeah, that's fine. Like, I'm not talking about that.
I'm thinking about like the combat, right?

That's a big element of the game is you're going through these dungeons. You can't get through the story of this thing without fighting some bad guys here and there, right?

And the combat in Fantasy Life 1 was just like, we press A a whole button. Like, there was not a whole lot to it.
In this one, there is some more depth to it.

I think it is an improvement, if this means anything to you at all,

over like a rune factory, which is very much doing the same thing of like fantasy mixed with farming stuff. Like, I think it works a little bit better than that.

And I could see it being like kind of engaging.

There's ways of like as you explore the areas and you do shit and you fulfill quests and you hunt these rare monsters and rare resources, the areas themselves level up so they become more difficult and more difficult and more difficult.

And the rewards that you get become better and better and better. I can see that being like a pretty great little grindy experience with friends,

you know, playing multiplayer. I don't, it's not like the combat is not, it's not like hyper light drifter.
Like there's no shooting down. It's a game about overlapping systems.

Like it's a game about how does going out and solving these quests improve your town and how does improving your town help you save these mysterious people who are turning into household objects and how does doing that affect the future when you go to it and all of those things.

So I think because it is doing so many top-level overlapping systems, any one system itself is pretty simple. Which is, I think, fine.
I mean, we,

you know, I look at Stardew, for example. Like, the combat in Stardew is not very good.
Like, it's very basic.

But then we've seen games that have like evolved on the Stardew model and like made things feel a little bit better.

But you're not, again, you're not going to feel like you have a full-on like Zelda in your game. But to continue, but to continue that that analogy, I have only just unlocked farming.

You don't start the game with farming. You have to unlock farming eventually.
Sure. And it doesn't seem as rich and complex and fully featured and customizable as a stardu, right?

So it's like this game does a lot of stuff. It does a lot of stuff way better than the first game.
Way, way better.

So like I know people who have an affinity for the first game, I bet they're bada ba ba ba loving it.

And I think it does all the stuff that it does,

I mean, mean, fairly well, like better than serviceable.

Like some of the stuff is, I genuinely have been enjoying just running around and hunting monsters and checking off all my quests for all my different little classes and getting resources, going home, crafting a bunch of shit, selling it for money, buying new formulas to craft.

Like I'm pretty caught up in that stuff. It doesn't do any of that stuff 10 out of 10 amazing, I don't think.
But it does so much stuff so well.

And so many of those systems that work so well are interconnected that I don't know.

I think it's just a, I think it's a really fucking impressive thing that also like looks and sounds absolutely incredible. I'm, I'm obsessed with the whole like level five style.

Of level five games, I think it's the most playable.

The gameplay part is not always the best thing about a level five game for me. I, it's usually the art and the sound.
I mean, I like doing matchstick puzzles. Let me just say.
Yeah.

For making fucking good ass matchstick puzzles. It's true.

That's that's true this i i i will admit i like when you first pitched it and i saw the title it sounded like rune factory and i've played rune factory and i found it pretty intolerable personally yeah um and this sounds more enjoyable because it allows you to like a little bit pick your own course

my big recommendation is if you don't have a switch but you want a switch like game

this is a great option i mean the original one was published by nintendo and they have retained a lot of that energy.

If this had been published by Nintendo, it wouldn't surprise me.

But obviously, that's a different world.

Yeah, it feels like Nintendo has their own slice of this pie at this point. Yeah, they don't need this right now.
Yeah.

We did get one letter I wanted to call out. This comes from Cody.

Cody writes, hey, y'all, loved your recent discussion of shotgun cop man.

One thing that stuck with me was the note by Russ, who sort of alluded to minimalism, stripping back components mechanics to make it more fun.

For those that aren't aware, this was on a Rusties episode, but we talked about this game, Shotgun Cop Man, which is like kind of like a super meat boy with like 360 shooting mechanics to it.

You do everything with a shotgun. Yeah.
Basically, you can jump, you can fly, you can kill. Cool.
Anyway, yeah, it's pretty sick. Back to the letter.

Cody writes, it reminded me of this quote from Antoine de Saint.

Oh my God, I'm not going to pronounce that. Antoine de Saint esoubré is how I'm going to call it.

Does anyone speak French? Nah, man. Lots of people do, dude.
Okay, someone,

I'm going to say it phonetically, and then someone can figure it out. Ex-uberry,

who wrote

if they know him in real life, then they probably recognize it.

Why did I start doing the accent? Perfection is achieved.

Give it three more tries. Give it three or four more tries.
Perfection. This is the quote.
Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Oh, we love that. I like that.
Oh, isn't that nice?

Back to Cody. I work as a back-end engineer at Gearbox, building and maintaining the shift platform.

We see a lot of that principle in a lot of code, clean, elegant solutions that are always better than overly complex ones. For Justin, you see this principle in jigs.

For example, a cross-cut sled doesn't really need a bottom to do its job well. I assume that's a woodworking thing.

Every unnecessary addition just gets in the way. So here's a challenge question.
What is your favorite game that excels in doing less? Something that embraces simplicity in design, mechanics, and

presentation?

Okay. Gosh.
I don't think that.

Are we talking about removing all the presentational aspects or like winnowing the gameplay down to, because I would argue that's two different things, right?

You can have a very minimalistic presentation with a more of a second, I think is what we're talking about. I kind of interpreted it as both.
Really? Okay.

I think I'll give you an example.

When I was reading this, the game that jumped into my head was N or N Plus, which is the 2D ninja platforming game that

has actually a surprising amount of depth to it, but like the present presentationally, it's all like vector art.

It's very, very simple, very minimalist, very focused on just presenting this very clean platforming game, which I think services the the amount of depth to it because there is a lot of like physics depth to like moving around that world and it allows you to just focus on that.

So I don't know if that helps you guys think. I mean, I think the incremental genre is pretty incredible at this kind of by definition.
Like you can't have too much cruft there.

Remind me of an example of that.

Universal paperclips, Yucky Clicker, like all of those things. Darkroom.
Darkroom is. I think it's a good example of this.
Yeah. I mean, Dark Room is

Darkroom, or maybe maybe i'm thinking of the insen which is the one that comes after darkroom one of those adds like a whole second like exploration side of of things but like incremental games in general like are just a simple ui for the most part and numbers that go up and mathematical kind of algorithms and that's just about it uh and they what are so sticky for me okay to focus this a little bit i would like to know your guys favorite like

elemental video game where like they're so the the mechanics are so threadbare that it starts to almost feel like a classic like chess because you have like one mechanic and it worked the one that for me was like for a long time it was like ios was the best for this because like absolutely flappy bird and not flappy bird tiny wings and uh tilt to live

uh there was a lot of like really focused small cannibal cannibal oh cannibal is a clap man you can still give someone a controller, give your kids Cannibal. It hits.
It still hits.

And that's just that one thing. It's great.

Super Hexagon. Super Hexagon is a great example.
Was there an era of these? Does that mean that? Yeah, sure. Fucking what? It sounds like it.

I mean, it sounds like when we were making, when companies were making, and by companies, I usually mean like two or three people at a time were making iOS games, you couldn't make, you couldn't get too complex because they weren't especially powerful in the early days.

And also, like, people weren't quite sure how to make make big stuff on them yet.

A lot of people were also like willfully trying to jam more controls into games than a touch screen can really like support.

And I feel like it was around like Infinity Blade came out and Apple pushed so hard like look what this fucking phone can do guys you're gonna shit your pants where then it all of a sudden like I don't know I feel like the the tone shifted a little bit and Now it was more about recreating AAA experiences as much as you could.

I mean, I still think there's like a content, a pretty large contingent of

card games and like more traditional like board game style games on there, but you're right. There's also the like, we're just going to do Resident Evil 4

on a phone. I think Portal is a good example of this in terms of having a idea and extrapolating that as far as you can and cutting anything else.

Like there's a bad version of Portal where suddenly you have guns and you're just running around shooting stuff.

It's also good, that's a good example of both both because it starts from a very minimalist visual standpoint and then they start like creeping in with like more interesting environments and things like that.

So you kind of see the range of it, but the gameplay never gets technically more complex than the first portal. It's really just the same idea.

Yeah, I also think Return of the Obridin, I think there are a few games where it...

takes an idea and sticks purely to that idea. As a one-bit art form, you don't get much more minimalist.
If you were more minimalist in that, there would be nothing. There would be no bits.

No bits left. That's true.
Griffin, did you ever get into the four kilobyte scene? Do you know about this?

Is that like

Game Boy palette sort of shit?

No, it's the like European demo scene where these artists would use just four kilobytes of information and create these like 3D hallucinatory visuals and have big parties for them.

No, I mean, I don't know what part of that you think sounds like my like it sounds easier. It sounds cool, but I don't

ever

know how to find those functions.

Something about that tinkering, but yeah, I'm super interested in people who do those sorts of things where you have as little information as possible and try to accomplish something.

Justin's more of the tinkerer these days. Yes, that's true.

I'm more of the tailor, I think. Yeah, and Russ is the spy.
Listen, speaking of tinkering,

Steam OS is actually out. Did any of you guys fuck with it? Did you guys? I'm so scared to fuck with Bazite because I just got it to work.

I knew this was going to happen, that I was going to spend a day putting Bazite on my ROG Ally and dual booting. Contextualized for people that aren't monitoring the space very closely.

For devices like ROG, the ROG Ally, Ally X, et cetera,

that are default Windows handhelds.

There has been a way to dual boot those into other operating systems, most notably Bazite, which creates a Steam-like experience, Steam Deck-like experience on the ROG Ally X.

But now Steam, Valve has released Steam OS that is natively, you can install it on the ROG Ally, the Legion Go, other handhelds like that, which is really interesting.

One, because there's a lot of frustrating things about using Windows for your device, not the least of which, like if you don't want to mess with Microsoft, I completely understand that.

And there's a lot of, most notably, the Linux kernel will let you suspend your system like mid-game, which is not, it doesn't sound massive until you start, don't have it.

You've got really used to it. Yeah.
A lot of other portable places, but like the, the, the, uh, so that is very cool. I have not done it because I have Bazite running and I don't want to mess with it.

And I do not know the use case for installing Steam OS on a device that already has another

OS dual booting into it. Like, I don't, no one's going to be there to help me.
I'm going to be way too down the well. Way too down the well.

You'd wipe all that basite yeah i'll go back to the start we'd start fresh yeah i don't know i i i don't have a rogue ally so i wasn't really motivated to do it but it does seem like if you were to get one today yeah rather than getting basite you would just do the traditional steam wash i think very exciting the more notable thing is this space

For this space to work, it has to be designed for and designed towards. And it's a much more noble, I think, useful

thing of working towards than like VR, for example, which was sort of like the

push.

And I think the push for the next few years, rather than a graphical push, like the graphical arms race that has defined so much of gaming for so many years, I think it's going to be more about this, like how small can you make it?

How small can you make it run? And I think a wider distribution of a

universal operating system, I think is a great way to get more of a standard there because it really hasn't been one.

The Steam OS and like having a Steam Deck has like Linux pilled me no, more than like no other thing. This has been like the turning point where Linux was scary before.

And because there's all these new people using it and making it palpable, I can go into Steam Desktop mode and feel comfortable like messing around in there.

And you don't have all the fucking cruft that are, that's floating around with like, you should upgrade to 365. Like there's, there's all sorts of upsides to it.

So I'm like incredibly jazzed to the prospects.

I have a lot of people I knew in college I need to apologize to. Yeah.
For silently and sometimes verbally judging. Yeah, you pushed them down.
You did all sorts of stuff.

I would also highly recommend if you're thinking about doing anything like this at all, if you get one of these devices, get yourself a mini keyboard. R-I-I-R or R-R-I-I.

I don't know if you pronounce, I guess you say Regina CO. Yeah, I know, right? R-I-I, they make a lot of mini keyboards that have like the dongle stored inside the keyboard.
There you go, go, Griffin.

And like if you're going to be doing anything that requires you getting into the desktop,

you can get them for 25 bucks on Amazon, 22 bucks. They're really well worth it.
I keep one in my backpack now in case I need to get in there and mess around.

I made Platinum 3 in my Dota League using this bad boy.

Yeah.

I don't know if that's a thing.

I don't know. Sounded right.
Sounded good to me. Are we doing honorable mentions? I thought we were already started.
It kind of sounded like. Oh, okay, cool.

It felt like we had organically kind of just merged into it.

I finished this season of the rehearsal. I'd strongly recommend, once again, everyone watch it.

I can't tell you anything about it. You shouldn't read anything about it.
But that last episode was quite unexpected. It goes.

I watched one episode, and I'm going to give it the Justin McElroy thumbs down. Did not enjoy, would not recommend.

Hey, we warned you about the first 15 minutes of the first episode.

I skipped to the second episode with the singing competition and still a big

no that's yeah that's a tough one for j-man i get that no it's not for me it's not from a watch it's from like a holistic like

existence perspective but yeah yeah got it

everybody should make their art that's right

uh

I finished Expedition 33. Oh, yeah, how was that?

Extremely good. I clocked clocked in around 42 hours.
I did quite a bit of the side content. It's pretty breezy, I think, by JRPG standards.
I know that's a long time to play a game, but

I think that it's an ending of a video game that people are going to be talking about for a while. I think they make some pretty bold fucking choices that I was really genuinely,

I don't know, stuck with me in a way that I was.

To what extent is it setting this up for like a... Because like everything about

the structure feels like setting it up for like a big franchise universe type deal does it seem like that it's it is self it is definitely self-contained but i also i could see there being more stuff to come out of it but there's i mean the ending is an ending the ending is quite uh

i don't know it completes the the arc of the thing uh and it does so in a way that the game definitely earns throughout its time. There is a

the three act sort of structure of the game is is as such that like when you start the third act, you could go right and finish it.

You can go right and finish it, but it's got that sort of like, you know,

do you want to go out and really explore, you know, more shit and fill out more of the empty spaces in the story and the characters and et cetera, et cetera?

And I really encourage you to do so. I don't know.
I don't want to spoil it, obviously, but the ending is, it's fucking wild that they. ended it the way that they they ended it.

And it's very, very cool to see a game come out and just like, I don't know, man, just beat ass in so many different ways and leave you with like a really

thought-provoking ending. It's like, I don't know, it's the whole package.
There are parts of me that think that maybe I need to not go to sleep at 10:30 at night anymore. And just stay up.

That's my secret. I just stay up.
I do not know how to make the math work otherwise to like finish that.

I've been staying up late a lot lately, mostly working on projects and shit. But yeah, I'll crash a few hours of Expo 33 in there where I can.

You got to put in the effort. You got to put in the labor to be a real gamer.
Sometimes.

You're not going to catch Griffin standing in line. No fucking way, man.
No way. Unless he's got a Steam Deck in his hands.
Yeah. I don't fuck with Steam Decks.

I need the Rog Alley because I need the fast load time so I can get in as much gaming as I possibly can. The most dense pixels as possible.
Can I tell you guys what I have got

been messing around with this week? Yeah. It's called Survival Kids.
You ever play Survival Kids?

It's on Game Boy Color. It's also known as Stranded Kids.

It's a really interesting,

it's fascinating, man. If you go back and play this little guy,

you're a little kid and you watch it up on a beach and you have nothing and you have no information.

And for a game from this era, that feels so strange, but you're literally like walking around a deserted island, finding like sticks and rocks to start like little fires.

You're finding shells to dig meat out of to try to stay alive. You need fresh water.
You need shelter. You're like trying to set up a whole like living situation.

I missed this completely, but I did play later. This was continued as lost in blue on the

U.S. I don't know, right? So this, this is where the series started.

They were called survival kids, whatever, whatever in Japan, but here they were just lost in blue because the survival kids name didn't really have the

survival kids comes out in next week. Yeah, it's crazy timing.
Like it's

wild. They're doing a Nintendo.

Is that what you're talking about? Yeah.

Yes, an official,

official re-release on the Nintendo Classics service. That's great.
So you'll be able to play that now.

No, but there's also a sequel. There's a new reboot of it coming out.
It's a 3D version of Survival Kids. You can't Switch 2's launch.
Yeah. Fantastic.
Fuck it, man.

Fantastic. Now's the time.

Listen, this was even more timely than I knew. But go check out Survival Kids.

You can play the re-release now. You can go play the re-release of it.

It looks like the Lynx Awakening Engine is what it looks like. It's really interesting.
Like the things that they're doing, it's weird.

It definitely feels a little bit like proof of concept because it's the first one in a very long-running series.

But there are ideas that I didn't know were in the ether at this point, like in terms of what a survival game looks like. So from that historical perspective,

it's cool. the game boy color box art is also just real good it can't be it

real real good um uh my thing jaws saw jaws the other night pretty good oh yeah with the shark it's summertime baby that means you've got to watch jaws you've got to watch the sand lot you got to watch dirty dancing did you did you ever see that play that tell you guys about that play oh about the making of jaws about the making of jaws yeah did you like it it was great it was fascinating i don't know if it would work as well if the guy who played Quinn's son is not playing his role.

That was the context in which I saw it. So that was

ideal.

Yeah,

definitely.

He is so good at playing Robert Shaw. It's crazy, guys.
You can imagine that. He's like so much like him.
It's wild.

Dull's eyes.

Cool. That's all I've got.
Anything else?

I mean, I've also been watching Devil's Plant, but I think you guys

are ready to hear more discussion. Hey, I found the stupidest reality show that's called Gotta Get Out.
Do you know what that show is about? There's a room, a house full of people.

Half are celebrities, half are not. All the doors are locked.
There is a gate.

There is a million dollars on offer and a money clock that is ticking up a dollar a minute or whatever, a dollar every few seconds. It's ticking up.
And if you escape the house.

Then you get to take all the money that's currently accrued in the pot. But people are watching everyone else to try to escape.

There are buttons to like crash the gates, to close the gates throughout the house. There's a watchtower where people are watching, but you can get escape attempts.

Randomly, you can collect escape attempts like there's going to be a recycling truck coming through. If you hide in this recycling bin at 3 p.m.,

there's an exfiltration strategy, or like we've hidden keys to a Maserati out front. If you can find it, or you'll get people working as a team,

like one lady found found a hidden Santa costume, and she could use the Santa costume.

And if they have a partner, they could decide to go back and split the money with their partner or not.

And that's the whole show called You Gotta Get Out. That's great.
It's scrape, dude. It's one of the dumbest things I've ever seen.

Spencer from the Hills is on it, and he exclusively wears Heidi Montag t-shirts. And I do think that that is very good.
I do have to give him credit for that.

Different ones, too. The guy's like a dozen Heidi Montech teachers.
Are they together still?

Yes. Yes, they are.
They made it. They were much in love.

I love that. That's great.
And they have several kids. Good for them.
I'm one of them.

It's my dad and mom.

I want my mom and dad, too, I guess. I love you, mom and dad.

Who's this fucking old guy we played Dungeons and Dragons with? He's not Spitzer.

He took us from our real parents, Spitzer. Yeah.

Yeah, dude. Like a thief of the night.

What are we doing next week?

Good question. Next week, we are doing

two games

due to some travel concerns. We want to make sure that portable games are an option, but we're doing Elden Ring Night Rain

and Monster Train 2.

So we'll be covering both of those games, and I'm very excited for them because they're both pretty major, I guess, sequel-ish is for big games. Is that what we're calling Eleanor Night Rain?

Is that what we're calling Eleanor? That's why I added the ish. Sequel-ish.

I also want to thank our patrons over at patreon.com/slash the besties. We have Kieran, we have Ariana,

we have Camille, and we have Sawyer. Thank you for being patrons.
Thank you for everyone else for being so supportive and being patrons of the besties.

We're doing our best.

We hope you appreciate us in the way that we greatly, greatly appreciate you.

We have a new episode of The Resties that it's up and in your feed.

And we're going to have a new bracket coming at you real soon. So keep an eye out for that next week.
I think that's it.

Cool.

That's going to do it for us this week on the besties. Be sure to join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?

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