The Awesome Games of the Future

Can I tell you guys an idea ahead?

Sure.

I think I'd like to be create a Chris Gaines style alternate identity for myself that just talks about the adults only video game market.

Because every time I glance off of it in Steam while looking for other things, like today, is it a glance?

Is it a glance?

It's a glance.

And sometimes it's a lingering glance, but it is a glance.

Sure.

But I do think that there, because I don't know about Steam histories, right?

Like, I don't know how that all works, right?

I don't know what they get through if I, but I do would love to have another

dirty dog identity who just like

it's his whole thing because I think it's fascinating.

It's an underserved

super underserved.

And people are working very hard.

They're hard on these naughty games.

Yeah, for sure.

They weren't so hard.

They were hard on both ends, on the playing and the bing-bong.

Another Chris.

Another Chris Zing Zing.

The reviewers, the user reviewers of these games are working really hard to

some incredible justification like you've never seen in these reviews.

And I just wish someone was covering the space in an engaged, positive, sex-positive, non-sexual way that just allows you to talk and have that's a tough needle to thread, my man.

It's tough.

It is.

Sex positive and non-sexual are tough.

That's a tough needle.

How are you going to monetize this,

you know, the public service?

I'm going to sell an only fans of me writing it in the buff.

So that will be cool.

Yeah, but it's not me.

It's whoever.

You know what I mean?

Like, my brand can't sustain this.

It won't be Justin.

Will you wear a mask like the mask, like a masked Samsung?

I like that.

Yeah.

I don't like contributing to this.

My name is Boladaire, the master of your

finding the latest and greatest in adult entertainment.

Boladaire, how do you feel about Sex Desert Mad Lust?

Well, if you've played Sex Desert the franchise at all, you know you're in for top-tier storytelling and some of the most mudnacious curves in the bis

scorpions, sex scorpions in the sex desert, you know they've got them in spades, especially if you're willing to pay for all the DLC.

That's downloadable.

Downloadable combo delay.

Oh.

The future is now.

But there's so many.

Yeah, I know.

My name is Justin McCrah and I know the best game of the week.

My name is Griffin McCray.

I know the best games games coming up.

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

My name is Ross Fresh.

I know the best game of the week.

Welcome to the besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment.

It's a video game club.

Just by listening, you have become a member.

This week, we're digging into the Steam Next Fest.

What if games were free now?

What if games were free and shorter?

And not complete.

Not unfinished.

Yeah.

I mean, I guess we kind of spoiled it.

I was going to let Plant explain it, but it's it.

It's a bunch of demos.

You kind of did it.

It's a bunch of demos.

It's a bunch.

We played a bunch.

We'll talk about good ones and the bad ones.

Look at that over the horizon.

It's a cloud of games.

Oh, shit.

We're dead.

They're swarming.

We're toast, man.

I have not, is this a new thing?

Because I've been gaming for a while and I don't.

I remember hearing about Steam Next Fest.

I don't think I have ever.

I can't tell if you're joking because I'm pretty sure we've done an episode.

We have, yeah.

Oh, did we?

Oh, shit.

You might have to raps it, but maybe I sink.

We've been doing this for a long time.

You know, like it all kind of blurs together.

Yeah, Steam Next Fest, it has been growing exponentially.

That part probably feels very new because it used to be, you know, you could get a few demos here and there.

Now it's like every game that's coming out, you're going to get a demo, including all those horny games.

It's anything you want, you can try, you know, a good 15 minutes to an hour of it.

Yeah, this is cool.

I mean, I

before we jump in, I want to say, and I'm curious if anyone else felt this way, did anyone else feel a little bit depressed playing all of these games?

Because it's a lot of high-quality games that I know for sure will not necessarily sell a ton of copies because there are so many?

Oh, depends for who?

Like the creators?

Yeah, for the creators.

Yeah, I mean, yes, for sure.

I guess I always kind of hope that the cream,

like,

rises within reasonable expectations.

I mean, I know there's a lot of people.

So much cream, though.

That's a lot of fun.

I know.

It's a lot of, it's a lot of cream.

It's a lot of DLC.

Downloadable cream.

I definitely felt that knowing it's just not possible.

for every great game here to like find its audience.

Right.

And that, I mean, even just scrolling through the like the list of demos, there were more games that I wanted to play than I knew i could play of demos yeah right i hate how it turns you into simon cow or or you're like

looking for reasons to dismiss games no roguelite elements i'm not in the mood travel controller support forget it forget it

but it's great for tg for the gamers for my thing because it's no matter what you freaking want man there's gonna be something coming out that you can try it during is next fest over with right now or is it still i think it will

coming to the end if not but a lot of the time the demos stay yeah

I think it's one of the great one of the great benefits for steam for me is

when you hear about something that is of interest to you on steam you are usually typically just within a couple button presses of being able to like keep track of that thing which I think is to the great detriment of like PlayStation or Xbox when you hear about a console game you don't have that instant like way to get into the ecosystem and stay there.

So I think impressions on Steam are a lot more valuable in that sense, right?

Because if you can get someone onto your Steam page, you can have them click that one wish list button and you've got them.

Like you're, you know, you'll be able to keep, keep tabs on this stuff.

Yeah.

Um, which I, I really appreciate being able to like look at a game and think, oh, that's interesting.

I will come back to that.

And I, it's, it's a lot harder to, I mean, I know it's possible, but when you're on the consoles, you're like, when are you at a console and also like hear about, you know, you're just not always right in front of it.

Yeah, sure.

Um, Why don't we get started?

Because there's a lot of games and we can go sort of round-robin.

Let's do it.

Who wants to start?

I'll start it off with a game called Mandragora.

Mandragora.

I also checked this one out.

This was one of the three I dipped into.

It's that like plant that looks, it's like a ginger plant.

It looks like a person.

That's what the name, I guess, referenced.

If it screams, it kills you.

Yeah, precisely.

This game is a side-scrolling,

Dark Souls-y kind of game.

I've played a number of these.

We've all played a number of these.

I think where this one stood out to me was visually speaking, it looks like very,

I guess, painterly and vibey in the sense that it's like a fantasy setting, which is pretty typical, but it has like an artistic element to it.

It reminds me,

I think, aesthetic, in a lot of ways, actually, of that

No Rest for the Wicked game that we played earlier.

I was trying to remember that game.

Exactly right.

It reminds me of that, but in side-scrolling.

Not just artistically, like the heft of it.

Like

every hit is very slow and deliberate and methodical,

and it sort of requires you to, you know, dodge and parry as you would in a from soft game.

Yeah, and I think a lot of the 2D Souls-likes tend to miss that.

They tend to be a lot, I guess, snappier.

Even games that I really love, like Blasphemous 2, for example, doesn't have this feel.

It doesn't have that weighty feel.

So I thought that was really a great, yeah, overall, I was like pretty impressed by it.

It didn't feel like so hard that I was like, like throwing my Steam Deck across the room.

Sure.

But I liked what they were doing.

Pretty, pretty hard, though.

Here's the thing, Griffin.

Great.

I'm great.

You're great at games.

That's true.

It does lock you into a single class and it kind of drops you into the middle of things.

So this is such a tough genre to demo.

Yeah.

Cause you really have to get stuck in and work your way up to figure out how everything works.

The demo, yeah.

All this stuff can get adjusted, right?

Difficulty and all this stuff gets tweaked before.

Yeah.

Or more importantly, like you play a tutorial and you ramp up to where you are in the demo and it's not as not quite as tough.

Yeah, you only had one class to pick from, right, when you played it?

Yes.

I think it's like the warrior class, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

No, it looks really promising.

Plant.

I played a game called Gladio Mori.

Did any of you see this game?

Yeah, it looked like

fencing or fighting or some sort of sword fighting thing?

What was happening?

Yeah, so a number of the games are incomplete.

Like, not incomplete in a demo sense, but like, oh, wow, it could be years before we play this, or it could be days.

I have no idea.

And Gladio Mori is one where I really can't tell if it is days or years.

But how much of this is intended?

Yes, but it is a blast either way.

And it is a

realistic

sword fighting

or just combat game where you are a gladiator and you look like

you know the figurines that artists use to like learn to draw?

Yeah, like they're like just kind of rounded edges.

You look like a that basically, and you have full control over the positioning of your weapon.

So, I don't know for anybody who's ever had to do uh sword fighting training for like theater, the positions are like one, two, three, four, five, six, like basically two different above-the-head positions, four different kind of block or parry positions, and then different types of swings.

And those are assigned to your button prompts.

So when you kind of like move into battle, you are trying to block and parry and attack the same way you in theory would as like a amateur swordsman.

The cool thing about it is sword fighting moves very quickly.

So it lets you and encourages you from the beginning to change the speed of the game whether you're in single player or multiplayer and you can change it down to like a quarter of real time so effectively slow motion um so you're getting in there the other cool thing about it is it is really scratching my bushido blade itch

of what happens if you play a sword or sharp weapons combat game with like

real

damage.

So the humor of it, I guess, is like almost like human fall flat where you are, most people are not good at this.

You are kind of blocking, but then somebody swings and kind of falls into your sword.

And like, then your sword gets stuck in them.

And then as they're wiggling to get unstuck, their battle axe like, nudges into your side and cuts you open.

And

it's game over.

yeah um it's wait they're still swinging at you after your battle your sword you have to kill them so like in and as they bleed out there's still like time and if you like take out their leg they like hobble but if you like get into their gut it kind of like it literally looks like they're like slowing down I can't tell how much of this is me like phantom you know where your brain's trying to make sense of it you're like oh wow the character is actually slowing down because they're bleeding out

it really helps that it all looks like toy figurines, like faceless figurines.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, it has like a good sense of humor in that way.

And that's where I mentioned the what is this coming out soon or in a long time?

Because if they're planning on adding realistic graphics, I think it would be a waste, honestly.

I think it could find its audience as it is.

But it does have like some polish that still needs to be done.

The menus feel like very rudimentary.

The multiplayer

looks really messy.

You can have like large-scale kind of like

eight-person battles.

But it's fun as how already.

And that to me is like the big sign.

If your game can like look like this and be a bit of a mess, and I never had trouble finding a multiplayer match, that is a like really positive sign.

And I think people will take it.

Sick.

I played, even though I kind of didn't want to, I played the demo for the rise of the golden idol

sequel to the case of golden idol,

which is, I mean, one of my favorite sort of mystery games in the,

you know, Obradin kind of

lineage.

If you did not play it, the first one, you fucking should, because it's if you have a Netflix subscription, you can play it for free on your phone, basically.

It is a mystery-solving game where you are presented with a sort of usually still screen kind of

diorama,

usually during or just following a murder or a death that has taken place.

You look around the screen, you look around the area for clues which you collect in the form of words in your journal,

and then you solve the mysteries by sort of filling in the blanks

of each case using the words that you have collected.

It's a really simple premise.

The mysteries themselves are not simple.

Case of the Golden Idol had a DLC that came out after release that featured some really, really

at times pretty obtuse mysteries.

But yeah, I played, I don't know how much is here because I played the whole first like act of the game, which includes like a tutorial and then three sort of cases following that.

And I was like, I don't want to get to, I don't want to actually spoil this for myself.

A question for you, Griffin.

Just in terms of gameplay, did you notice anything different?

So they're more or less doing the same thing.

Gameplay-wise, they're doing more or less the same thing.

It looks a lot better.

Still, that kind of like disturbing art style.

It kind of reminded me of

late 80s, early 90s PC games was the funny thing.

Yeah, sure.

Is that still the same thing?

Yeah, I would say more like early 90s

PC games.

But the, I mean, the art style is so like grotesque at times.

What I do think is cool is that the game is separated into acts, sort of like the last game, and each act has like a few mysteries in it.

And then at the end of the first game, you basically get this huge book that's like, now fill out the whole fucking mystery, fill out everything that happened in the game.

What Rise of the Golden Idol appears to be doing is each act has its own meta-mystery that you use pieces from each of the cases within to solve kind of like what you just saw, the story of what you just saw in

this handful of cases, which I think is a cool way to handle that.

And it helps you really kind of understand

what is happening in this chapter of the game before you move on to the next one.

I mean, it's fucking great.

I'm excited about the final.

Yeah, and it's out in a few weeks, November 12th

is when this one is dropping, and I'm going to definitely dive into it headfirst then.

But yeah.

Juice.

I got a little one for you you guys would like called billionaire.

Okay, I'm very curious to see what they think about this one.

Okay, I think it's early.

Yeah.

I'll be interested to see if they can.

Okay, so here's the thing.

It's a pachinko game.

Yeah.

But it's a deck building pachinko game.

So you're basically building a deck of pins

where you drop your shot and then it bounces off the pins and the pins have different effects um so you bounce off one that has like a plus 200 but it shoots you back up and then there's another one that you could put above that that's like a mine cart and it takes your ball over this way and if the ball hits these things you'll so you're basically trying to like set up beneficial paths by filling in the pegs with different things after each shot you add new pegs and I think you're kind of like building a collection of it's like a more engaged peggle.

You're kind of removing some of the randomness of pachinko.

Like you're trying to, to the best of your ability, wrestle control from a thing that if you were to do that in Japan, you would get your legs broken.

But here, yeah, Peggle, it's not unlike what was the one, do you guys remember

Peglin?

Yes, sort of similar to that, except you are placing the pegs, and the way that the pegs all interact and stuff and work together, it is kind of reminding me of Luck Be a Landlord.

It's like that level of fidelity with the different

way the different icons work together.

My

uh, it looks cool too.

It looks like um grindstone, it's a simple, sort of lovely style.

My uh, my one, my concern would be I really like conceptually, and I enjoyed playing it.

I think that um

I don't know if

when you come up with decks in Bellatro,

you know that you're going to have pretty full control over how those decks play out, right?

There's a fidelity of I will be able to control exactly how this expounds.

This feels like

too far to the other end of that where I'm not sure I would have enough control over

the placement of the pegs and the angles of the shots and stuff.

I'm not sure I'd have enough control over that to make it feel like a satisfying thing I was setting up because it does kind of feel pretty random once you do it.

You almost would need like a preview line that actually shows you like three shots in what would happen.

Right.

And it starts to get computationally pretty difficult.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I will say the

enjoyment I had was mainly seeing like

the screen gets very chaotic when it's all happening.

And right now it's sort of set up to where you're getting a lot of points

pretty quickly.

um and so it feels very satisfying in like a uh a vagas sort of way but uh it's really interesting i'll be interested to see if they can pull it together it's called bill ball

ball ballillion ballillion i'm very glad that you brought this one because i was probably most excited for this honestly only played it for like 10 minutes

Basically, everything but the game feel was amazing.

Like the sound, the art, everything.

And I couldn't tell if it was like off by some tinkering or what.

The physics themselves felt a little strange for a thing that I felt really relied on physics.

But

I'm really hopeful that they'll figure this one out because it's such a great premise.

It's a good, really good premise.

I hope they, yeah.

Fresh, you got one?

Yeah, I'm going to do a very quick one.

This is, the game is called Atomic Owl.

It's kind of

Celeste-y platforming game with like really, really gorgeous pixel art.

It's like a narrative for your, I don't know, you've got like a magic sword and it's talking to you and it's got a lot of sass to it.

But the actual gameplay is really just like mostly Celeste with like very, very light combat elements to it.

I only mentioned it just because I was kind of blown away by the pixel art.

It's rare that I like, yeah, this looks stunning.

This really is stunning.

The writing wasn't necessarily necessarily for me.

It was a little in your face face in weird ways, but I thought the gameplay was really fun, good platforming, and good feel to it.

And again, the art was

a search action experience?

What I played in the demo, and I played through the whole demo, was not, it was like linear levels.

I don't know if it opens up or changes in the full game, but

yeah, what I played was pretty linear.

They call it a roguelite.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed that based on what I played.

I thought, yeah, but that's interesting.

Yeah, this looks really good.

Griffin, what you got?

I got one more, and it's like my

one of my most anticipated games is Heroes of Hammer Watch 2.

Quick History.

Hammer Watch was like a Diablo style game.

Came out, didn't really set the world on fire.

Then Heroes Hatch.

I love, for what it's worth, I love the original Hammer Watch.

Yeah, I mean, it was like Gauntlet.

Gauntlet is.

It was like Gauntlet, but it was like on Xbox Live Arcade, and it was like sort of a, you know, a big deal when it came out.

Heroes of Hammerwatch, inspired by that first game, was

a roguelite with a really, really great sort of feel and structure to it, a bunch of different classes, kind of Diablo, kind of Gauntlet.

Really good progression as you level up.

Tons of progression systems.

I got really, really, really into that game, rusted to it.

We played it together.

Great multiplayer.

Oh, my God.

Like, so, so fun, so great.

Then Hammerwatch 2 came out, was it earlier earlier this year or

last year?

Uh, and I didn't like it very much, and uh, it got sort of passed over, I would say, uh, in general.

They took a lot of swings.

They took a lot of swings.

Night cycles and quest givers and open giant open world.

It was like a lot going on in the game, and it just didn't really land.

So then I guess when they announced their participation in Steam Next Fest is when they also announced Heroes of Hammer Watch 2, because this announcement is like a month old.

Yeah.

And the demo is out now.

And I mean, it's fucking great, man.

It's fucking great.

It's really good.

It feels as good as...

I think it's running in the Hammer Watch 2 engine.

Yeah, visually speaking, it's using Hammer Watches 2, Hammerwatch 2's engine, and brings some of the features over.

Like, there's like loot, which you didn't really have, if I remember.

Yeah, so the way that it worked in Heroes of Hammer Watch is that your loot was run based.

So when you restarted, you lost basically everything.

And then as you went, it was sort of, you know, you would find a wand in the dungeon and it would boost your stats a little bit.

And then you'd maybe find a robe that matched it and you could boost your stats a little bit.

But if you died, like you lost all that stuff.

It was just a run-based thing.

Now there is like a proper, you know, hack and slash looter game like element of you are getting gear, you're upgrading it, you're hanging on to it.

But then there's also trinkets that you pick up while as you go through the dungeon that do provide those like run-based upgrades.

There's like almost a vampire survivor style like skill upgrades that you find as you go, which are also run-based.

But then again, like there, you are finding resources to upgrade the town.

You're leveling up your skill points.

You are leveling up vendors so that you can upgrade your potion.

There's so, so, so, so many carrots in the game.

And I mean, it took me all of...

like

two runs to like say like okay i'm gonna fucking get really really into this as much as i did the the first heroes of hammer watch russ you referenced something crazy about the character when you change characters yeah did you try that i mean yeah i tried different characters okay so when you're playing the game i was playing i think i started as a wizard and i wanted to make an archer so i was playing the game and i was like i'm gonna make a new character i'll just try an archer i'm sure i'll start from the beginning whatever it is you instantly get dropped in exactly where you were standing as the new character but you can use all the features that your town has like had like all the upgrades that you've already unlocked and i don't know there's something about about like not having to like rerun the tutorial as a new character felt like very fluid and kind of impressive um yeah yeah i i really like that it's it was like a minor thing but it just felt like no it is neat uh

yeah i i i think uh i'm super psyched for this if you like arpg hack and slash looter games like this is this is going to be a fucking good one yeah and it it does feel like they've kind of beta tested a lot of the aspects of the engine specifically with hammer watch 2 which has gone through a lot of patches and I think they know pretty clearly at this point what the fans are looking for.

So, this really feels like a

good fit.

Hey, real quick, Tenebrisomnia.

Yeah,

is looks it's uh, it's a

okay, let's call it a point-and-click adventure with a 2D

retro aesthetic.

Kind of reminds me of like um

creepy, uh, some of the scary, like Fantasagoria, not quite that advanced graphically.

You are a woman who is investigating her ex-boyfriend's house because he has gone missing.

And when you find out him, it's a very scary scene.

And then you have to do different puzzle-type elements.

Nothing too super complex in the demo.

It's only about 20 minutes long.

And you're also at a certain point trying to get chased by scary monsters

that are trying to encumber your progress, which

feels interesting for a point-and-click adventure where you're not exactly sure where you're going, and now you're also being chased by monsters, but you do get a gun, which also you don't expect from games like this.

Really, you don't normally get a gun.

Justin is really bearing the guns.

I'm bearing the

demon, it's not in the demo, it's not in the demo, scratchy.

Oh, it's not in the demo.

So, there's an FMV component that is not in the demo.

Yeah.

So,

the other big thing about this is that there are full-motion video sequences in the game that have a completely different style to this sort of retro aesthetic.

Those were not included in the demo, so I can sadly not speak to those.

And if I'm being honest, it tempered my enjoyment of the demo because I did spend the entire time waiting for that and I did not get what I craved.

Yeah, sorry, Josh.

But that's okay.

It looks, I'm going to play it.

It looks great.

But I need to see the FMV parts.

But if you like scary stuff, it's uh it's neat.

I I don't think I don't think is it demos great, I will say in 20 minutes.

I don't think you really get

what's interesting about this.

Like, for example, you get a gun and bullets, but no real reason to use the gun and bullets, which you would in the game, right?

It just feels like it doesn't feel like a whole experience, it just kind of feels like a sliver.

Yeah, this is the problem with the Steam Next Fest demo model in general, I feel like, is a lot of developers are just trying to be a part of it and not necessarily asking themselves, am I ready for it?

Is the game at that point?

And

maybe, I don't know if it's like a good or a bad idea to do that because any hype is good hype, I guess.

But at the same time, you kind of only get one chance often to get in front of somebody and you got to be mindful of the foot.

that you put forward.

I would be interested to see playing if that is accurate with Steam.

I would wonder if it is how much of it is a game of like number of impressions.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

If you're not ready, just the like getting any oxygen.

Yeah, isn't that like the marketing rule that you have to be seen like three times before anybody would ever buy your product?

Yeah.

But it does seem like if someone were to have a bad experience with a demo, you just wouldn't.

Oh, I would never play that game again.

Yeah, no, you're right.

You're absolutely right.

Cool, absolutely.

So, the game, one of the other games I brought is a game called Heartworm, which did any of you look at the art for this game?

No.

No, I'm Googling, I'm searching these as we talk about them.

Ten Ever Insomnia looks fucking rad.

It does.

It's really good.

I left links in my games, have links in the doc if you want to use it.

Oh, yeah, I'll make sure that they get into the newsletter.

Heartworm looks like a throwback to

the original Resident Evil, kind of, but for me, like Parasite Eve

sort of stuff.

It is a

retro horror over-the-shoulder shooter game, and

it is kind of the definition of what we've been talking about.

The game itself, I really don't know if they should have put the demo out.

There's a lot of work that needs to be done on the game.

That said, I have a feeling that when it is ready, they will nail it because

everything else is killer.

The art design is amazing.

The audio is exceptional.

There's an intro video to this that is a pre-rendered CG that looks like remember that Saturday morning cartoon reboot?

Oh, yeah.

It's like that type of really rough CG in the best way possible.

And they seem to know the different types of audiences.

So when you start the game, there are two choices you can make.

One is

do you want tank controls or do you want modern 3D controls?

And the other is, do you want the shooting where you like kind of lock in and stay positioned like the original Resident Evil or the kind of over-the-shoulder thing?

So they're already working towards making it feel like a very comfortable game.

The big problem for it, and I'm not sure how you get past this, is

it is pre-rendered or it's meant to look like pre-rendered background.

So the camera is locked in position.

And I forgot that when you are running around a like city or a neighborhood and you have those locked cameras, you never know when the camera angle is going to change, and with it, the direction that your controller is going to move your character.

Which is pro which is why they did tag controls in the first place.

Because you would just keep holding that direction and you would keep moving forward.

But with modern controls, that does not work.

Yes.

Kind of interesting.

So that

has been a challenge, and it feels like the thing that they're working through, it's not a deal-breaker for me because everything else is so enjoyable, but it certainly is jarring where you basically, when you get a cut of the camera, you kind of stop moving and you have to rethink how you're going to move around.

I'm so into this like PS1 era kind of

Crow Country and I think Lunacid was another game I played last year.

I feel like it's coming back in a big way.

I don't know why

this one works on me so much.

better than than 8-bit maybe because it's not quite as you know well-trod territory.

Yeah, it really hits.

Maybe that's the last time I was happy when games look like this.

I have not the one, I have one more that I didn't get to play, but I'm just curious if you guys know anything about it because it looks fucking sick: is Midnight Murder Club.

Yeah, oh, yeah.

It's like a, I mean, I literally couldn't get into it to like, I sat in the lobby and tried to get a game going, and I couldn't, but it is a, seems like a first-person shooter that is in a pitch-black environment and I'm in like a pitch black mansion.

So it has a little bit of that like murder mystery sort of vibe to it, but it is also about like sneaking around in the dark and not

getting killed.

But again, with like it,

to be fair, they recommended that you get on at night and there'll be more people playing in the evening, et cetera, et cetera.

Easier to find a cue then, but like it looks really neat.

The idea of like being really careful about, you know, noise and light.

And you can see like flashes in adjacent rooms are very clear.

You can see like a lot of god beams coming through, like people using flashlights through rooms that you can use as clues and looks really cool.

I think we'll play this when it comes out.

The developers have reached out a few different times over the months because they're like very like convinced that we will dig it.

And usually people when they reach out tend to know what we like.

So I was already very curious about this one.

So so I'd be into that.

I have one more I also was not able to play because it was not running on Steam Deck, but I watched enough footage to know it's the sort of game that I would probably really enjoy.

It is called Secret Wizard Boy and the International Crime Syndicate.

The Ross Frushtick story.

The Ross Frushtick story.

It's very obviously a parody of the PS1-era Harry Potter games,

but told in like fucking outrageous buckwild physics jokes and pun.

like it's it is unfortunate.

Now, this is my shit.

This looks good.

It looks really very, very, very good.

I'm bummed I wasn't able to play it, but definitely one to keep an eye on.

Jesus Christ, this looks good.

Yeah.

There's like a lot of murder and

it looks like goat simulator set inside of Hogwarts.

Precisely.

It's ridiculous.

It's really fucking funny.

Oh, man.

Y'all, there's a new Lonely Mountains downhill game called Lonely Mountain Snow Riders.

Did any of you get into Lonely Mountain?

The original one?

I love the first one.

Yeah, I played it.

It was very hard, but I liked it a lot.

Yeah, I loved it.

And

this one has snow physics, so you take the joy of the first game.

These are like, you look almost like little toys going down a giant.

Like tilt shift.

Yeah.

And

this one has snow snow effects which is very cool because you can see the lines that you took previously when you failed zipping down the mountain oh interesting and yeah this is it's it's a really impressive balance of difficult and try try again and zen kind of like hangout game and i i don't fully understand how it even pulls that off how i don't get annoyed playing this game as i like try and learn how to get down a mountain i think it helps that and this is even even more so it seems in Snow Riders, that there are just a lot of paths.

So if you want to gradually just make your way down the mountain, you can probably do it with minimal crashes.

But if you really want to like carve out time and find shortcuts and everything,

you're going to be eating shit over and over and over again in the best way.

Yeah, very pretty, very chill, very great Steam Deck game that I hope also comes to switch.

I think the original one did.

So hopefully we see that there.

Nice.

Yeah, let's take a break and we have a couple more recommendations for people from readers who came stuff that they played.

This week's episode of the besties is brought to you in part by Rocket Money.

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Okay, what are our readers into?

What are our readers into?

Some people in the newsletter at besties.fan left in the comments some recommendations for other things that they highly recommend.

This one comes from Beetle Bat.

Rivals 2 demo on Steam NextFest, best Smash Like There Is.

I believe this is Rivals of Aether 2.

Yes.

I think the cool people call it Rivals 2, but Rivals of Aether 2.

I didn't play the original.

Nor did I.

I almost got into this one.

I was watching the trailer for it, but I thought that I was only going to basically be able to play these on Steam Deck because we were traveling all weekend.

Yeah.

And I didn't know if it would be the best fit.

Was Rivals of Aether the one that had like a huge mod community where people were like adding every character imaginable?

I mean...

It seems like the type of game that would be true.

It was like Sans and Curl and all sorts of shit was in the first one.

I'm sure the second one will support that as well, which is really cool.

We have another recommendation.

This one comes from Dayton.

Highly recommend keep driving.

It's a road trip deck builder with a full radio of vibey indie rock.

That's amazing.

Yeah, this one looks for some reason.

I saw this and thought hoops might bring this.

It seems like you're speed hoops.

I'm very curious.

Yeah, you know what?

Honestly, I probably would have

the NextFest list isn't exactly the easiest to parse.

There's a lot of good stuff on there.

Yeah.

This looks really good, though.

Yeah, we got this one from Alex.

Besties, if I said 2D Gothic-like, isometric PixelArt Indie, would any of you be as enticed as I am?

Don't sleep.

Isn't that in every video game?

Don't Sleep on Drova Forsaken Kin by Just2D Developer, which came out last week for PC and Switch.

Gameplay is fun, story seems engaging, PixelArt is nostalgic and captivating.

It really seems to capture the early gaming feeling where NPC and Quest don't hold your hand and you actually have to pay attention to things with a really well-done power curve for combat.

Check it out.

I did.

It kind of looks like Children of Morta Juice.

Oh,

it's like an ARPG top-down.

It kind of reminds me of Crawl.

You guys remember Crawl?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Crawl.

Yeah.

Crawl was cool, man.

I wish that's the same developer because it really looks.

No, I don't.

What's the name again?

It's called Drova Forsaken Kin.

Yeah.

One last one.

and this is just a question for us.

Cool style, too.

From Etherzy.

Sorry if I got your name wrong.

After hearing about y'all doing cardio and games at the same time, however many episodes ago, I boldly took my Steam Deck and Pro Controller to the gym to play Yakuza like a dragon on the treadmill.

The next episode, I listened to you all describe that you do this in the shame-free comfort of your own homes.

It actually got me to do cardio, though, so I'll be back to it.

Any tips for sweaty controller hands?

I mean,

I don't let that bother me.

I grip hard enough to counteract the sweatiness.

Yeah, I have special, I have prescription gloves.

Maybe get those Wii wrist straps just in case.

I mean, goose aside, the Pro Controller, the Elite, whatever it's called, the Xbox One, has like a textured grip to it that that maybe helps the thing for that price.

You could get a bike.

That's a really good point.

Just get a nicer bike with that.

Fantastic.

Do we have any audible mentions people want to call out?

I want to give a shout out since it is.

Is this our last episode before Halloween?

I think so.

Yeah.

There is a YouTube channel that is very horror movie focused called Dead Meat that

I've been watching for years now and and pretty single-handedly has gotten me into

horror as a genre of films.

The host of the channel, James H.

Neese,

who I've played Sea of Thieves with a bunch of times,

just does a really, really great job sort of breaking down what makes horror movies cool and shares sort of like cool stories from

the creation of those movies.

And if you are, I don't know, if you're the type of person that likes horror movies but doesn't have the time to watch them or is too scared to watch them, this is like

a great way to kind of like educate yourself about what

horror movies are doing.

So check out the Dead Meat YouTube channel.

Has checked this out.

This guy's shredded.

You left out the part where he's...

And he's shredded.

Shredded.

Hey, I went to Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights for the first time.

And let me tell you, what a delight what a wonderful thing that is that the like more graphic because it's like oogie boogie nights and that's like for kids yeah oogie boogie nights is what if you just go to california adventure and now they give you like skittles and you can have shorter lines on the rides and that one's at disney so it's like a good experience yeah for

everybody Halloween Horror Nights is what a scary.

We take over Universal Studios and we fill the back lot, at least in LA, with tons of haunted houses, like eight or nine or ten haunted houses.

Wow.

And

they put a lot of money into them because more than half of them are promoting their movies.

So they're like, oh, we can justify doing animatronics for the quiet place, haunted house, because like, hey, it's been one big promo for the quiet place.

A virtuous circle as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah.

I'm eating good with all these animatronics over here.

You keep on going for it.

The thing that blew my mind is this thing.

We were there from like seven till about 2:30 in the morning.

I think it actually closed at 2.

I know.

And

that

it is so chaotic.

I mean, you have people the second you walk in, people in purge costumes charging you with fake

but real sounding and smelling chainsaws.

And yet, everything

good vibes.

Everybody is like not starting shit.

Like I feel like I see more drama at Disneyland these days of families who like wish they didn't have to spend this much time with each other than I saw at 2 a.m.

at Universal Studios.

Do you think it's like a metal show thing where you look go to a metal show and you're like, it's like terrifying people and then all of them are like sweethearts?

Yeah, and everybody really wants to be there and they want to preserve it.

Like I think everybody there really loves it and they like really are protective of it um but yeah i had put off doing this for a while and i wish i hadn't because now that i've gone i had such a great time and in terms of like scares i

did not like haunted houses as a kid i don't know if i've changed or maybe it's just the fact that it's universal studios but nothing was that scary it was

Like most people were laughing the whole night, you know, like it just has like a fun energy to it.

So, yeah, if you're in the LA or Ice, I think they have it in Orlando.

If you're in either of those areas, definitely check it out.

Cool.

Cool.

I've always wanted to go.

I don't know how I'm going to make that happen.

I wanted to shout out the New York Mets who are no longer in the baseball playoffs.

My run of caring about sports is over.

Oh, man.

Thank you all for staying with me through this tough time.

I love the Mets, and they've once again lost.

Hockey season just started, baby.

Hit up, hit up, submit.

Get on that Rangers tip.

Yeah, I guess I'm probably closer to the Islanders just from a regional standpoint.

Yeah.

Yeah, I guess so.

But do the, you should do the, you should do the Rangers.

It's quite honestly a relief because the time sink, and I've talked about this before, of following baseball is so long.

You have to watch it every day.

There's a game every day.

I love baseball, but it's just a lot of time and energy.

And so farewell, New York Mets.

I don't care what happens in the World Series.

All right.

Fantastic.

And you got one more thing.

Yeah,

super quick, I just want to say that if you like this show, I could say with almost 100% certainty, you will enjoy an interview I did for Polygon with one Sam Barlow.

where we talk about FMV games.

That's the end of the sentence.

That's an hour.

It's an hour of us going as deep and esoteric as we can.

If you like FMV games, then you can find that on YouTube and listen to us talk about FMV games for an hour.

It was really fun to do.

I think it may be unlistenable.

I have absolutely no idea.

It's crazy.

I really enjoyed conducting the interview.

It's a really, really enjoyable interview, and I'm so appreciate you doing it.

And I was no problem at all, Plan.

I will say, if you guys do want to have a picture of me on your website, I would love to get you one from the past five years.

It's no problem at all.

I know that Polygon has some that they already own, but if you guys just want to, I know how to get in touch with me.

I have a beard now.

It's a whole other look.

His brand is one.

So if you would like to reach out, I've been happy to get you some new JPEGs.

If you're going to go through the trouble of animating a digital puppet of me.

And that is part of a,

it was released alongside a

fantastic documentary that Polygon has been working on for years, I mean, literal years about Spycraft, the FMV game Spycraft, and its place in the geopolitical sphere.

It's an incredible, incredible piece of work, incredible story.

I'm in it just a very tiny bit to talk about Spycraft as an FMV game, but

freaking great.

Go watch it.

Thank you.

We are also putting up new monster factories every Wednesday, basically through the end of the year on the McElroy family YouTube channel.

I think the first one went up on Wednesday the 23rd.

So go check it out.

Eight episodes.

What games you doing?

The first game that we're doing is Dragon's Dogma 2.

Oh boy.

And the other ones.

We'll leave a secret until they come out.

Hey, I read a scary book real quick.

It's called Feverhouse.

It's part of a duology about a

hand.

that when it is in people's possession,

gives them these murderous, violent impulses and the government is trying to track down this hand and it is basically like laying waste to a city because these mobsters also want to possess the hand so the the mafia and the cops are all trying to get a hold of the hand but it's a two-parter and there's a government cover-up about the hand it's really if you like uh

Stephen King or some of the like John Dies at the end, the

early, early books from him, I think you will dig this a lot.

It's called Fever House.

There's a second book in it I've not read yet.

That would be a tough job.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

So true.

Chase it down the hand.

Should I wrap up all the stuff we discussed?

For sure.

We talked about...

Are you sure?

Because I think Russ is just warming up.

And he's ready to go.

His temperature is rising.

It's rising.

We talked about Mandragora.

Is that how it's pronounced?

Mandragora.

It's a demo.

Sure.

Atomic Owl, Secret Wizard Boy in the International Crime Syndicate, Heartworm, Lonely Mountain Snow Rider, Gladio Mori,

Bollionaire,

Tenebris Somnia.

It thinks like it's going to be fine.

In your head, you think, this is going to be fine when I say it.

And then by the time it gets to your mouth, it's like,

that's not what I was thinking.

It's ballionaire.

Ballionaire.

Tenebris Somnia, The Rise of the Golden Idol, Heroes of Hammerwatch 2, Rivals of Aether 2, Keep Driving, Drove of Forsaken Kin, and that is it.

I think you missed Midnight Murder Club, which is Midnight Murder Club.

Thank you, which we're going to talk about more another time.

I look forward to it.

I wanted to thank the following people for being patrons of the besties.

You can go to patreon.com slash the besties.

Remember all that stuff about Patreon and iOS and stuff like that.

Long story short, if you're already subscribed, don't worry about it.

If you haven't subscribed yet, just subscribe through a browser.

That's the only, that's the recommended way.

Otherwise, if you do it on your phone, through the app, it'll charge you an extra thing that goes straight to Apple and not to us.

Anyway, thank you to these patrons.

Kenda, Nathan, Josh, Nathaniel.

Thank you for being patrons of the besties.

Thank you to everyone else for being patrons of the besties.

What are we doing next week?

Oh, man, it's a big one.

Jesus.

Yeah, it's Dragon Age

Veil Guard.

This episode is going to go up before people have a chance to play it,

which is interesting.

I guess we'll obviously be very mindful of spoilers, but

yeah,

this is going to be a wild one.

I don't know how this is going to go.

All right.

Well, I'm looking forward to it.

And I hope you are too, listener.

That's going to do it for us for this week on the besties.

Be sure to join us again next time for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friend hit the world's best games?

Besties