94: The Best October Next Fest Games 2025

Yeah, yeah, you know what time it is.

It's time for the geek in this podcast.

Mega Rand, Jesse and Dodger.

What up?

Let's go.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, stream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow and see what the geekiners are all about.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it be good.

Go on, stream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow.

Number one geek podcast, without a doubt.

Yo, another end of another long week.

Got a job and a kid, I know that you all beat.

So take a second, grab a drink, and vibe.

While we catch you up in just a matter of time on gaming, comics, whatever you're doing.

If you're nerdy like us, then you know you should tune in.

Thank you for sharing our world with us.

Now follow, subscribe, and turn this up.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to get out.

Let it be kid.

Go on, scream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow, number one, geek podcast without a a doubt.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Geek Enders.

Oh,

welcome.

Welcome

to Geek Enders.

Oh, my goodness.

Welcome.

It's ragamuffin time of year now.

What do you mean by that?

It's beanie on, sweater on, and then

say on.

Hold on.

I made the assumption that you were wearing a sweater that was kind of like a, you know, worn out because the neck was bigger than the shirt you have on under it.

And right, I also many a times forget that you are broadcasting live from a shed.

I keep forgetting that.

I am.

So I understand why you're dressed for the cold.

Like, I get it.

Yeah.

But I keep forgetting that's a thing.

I'm in the attic of an outhouse.

Lest we forget right you are yeah you are broadcasting live from the backwoods

you're like art bell

broadcasting live from perump nevada i'm just like art bell you're just like art bell rip art bell i was gonna say rest in peace i believe art bell

yeah but you have like a but i was gonna say oh it's like a worn-out kind of

no not true that is a 2xl i'm going to assume based on just when you lifted your arms,

do it again, please.

Look at the sleeves.

That is way too big for you.

That is.

It's my size, okay?

Liar.

It's my size.

This is a 2XL.

That was a crazy thing.

I was about to say.

That is a Sam-sized.

That is too big.

That's too big for you.

There's a certain time of year, which is now, when it starts to get really cold.

And again, we still don't have heating.

So I wake up in the morning and I go, I'm freezing.

And then Sam goes, do you want to wear my sweatshirt?

Because he's been wearing it all night.

Oh.

And then he gives it to me.

It's both romantic and dirty.

And gross.

I knew you were going to hate that.

It's so romantic and gross.

It's romantic and nasty.

Yeah.

And super gross.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's cute.

All right.

Just do a quick pit check, man.

Just do a pit check.

No.

Because I'm not.

I'm not trying to like gas out my child.

You know, I don't want her to go in for a hug and then die.

So

her head's up armpit height.

All right.

Maybe there were variables missing.

No, I understand.

I'm just like in this scenario that it's like, well, well,

there's certain levels of stink I'm willing to tolerate.

As long as I don't gas my child,

I'll take Sam's stink any day.

Yeah.

All right.

Sure.

Okay.

Yeah, if that makes you happy.

Who am I to judge Sam's unnatural stank?

Yeah.

Yeah.

The stank of a try-hard.

The try-hard stank of a man who spent 16 hours grinding some game he barely likes.

Yeah.

Ah, yes.

The Sam stank.

Yes, the Sam stank.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I don't know what he would call that perfume, but we can workshop it.

We don't have to do it now.

We don't have to do it.

But like,

it's important.

It's important.

It's important.

Like,

let's call, let's call it.

nope, nope, that's not nope.

The first thing that came to my head is entirely inappropriate.

Like way more inappropriate,

what now?

Was it a ball sack joke?

Um, no,

okay, was that where your head was?

The second that I saw your face contort into what I'm about to say is inappropriate, I was like,

Why would you go to ball sack joke?

I don't know.

Why are you thinking about ball sacks?

i don't know i guess because like

dudes will get like a like a nice smelling like powder for their nuts right

so i just assumed there's some like insecurity

about

the smell

That's my favorite description of anything I've ever heard.

You know, dudes will get some like

ball powder.

Not all dudes, just

to get ball powder before, to get ball powder, right?

It has no name, it's ball powder, a product.

Wait, does it have a name?

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we have our name for Sam's cologne.

Ball powder.

Ooh, that's good.

With a few spritzes of ball powder,

you will smell as if you are the freshest balls in the world.

These balls will be so fresh

by

thorn.

Oh my god.

Thorn ball powder.

It'll make your balls smell.

It's only for balls.

Oh no, you sprayed a restaurant.

You sprayed on your entire body.

Oh, you spray it everywhere.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ball powder.

It's great for the pits and the neck.

Yeah.

Thorn.

Ball powder by thorn.

That's it.

Ball powder.

Ball powder.

Yep.

Yep.

Fuck.

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning, guys.

Hey, this is nearly the geekend.

Aren't we excited?

Oh, look at us.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is.

Oh, my goodness.

That made me laugh.

Hey, can I say something really, oh, God, kind

to our audience?

Yeah.

Do you need a minute?

Yeah.

Being kind to them.

These wild animal children.

These

beasts

made of meat and fear.

These creatures that

watch us from their hidey holes.

Yep.

I'll be nice to them.

Oh, God.

So

there was a moment this past week where I got out of the blue.

Notorious friend of the show and mortal enemy.

Some say the Xenos to our Warriors of Light.

JP messaged me and was like, hey, do you guys know you're viral?

And I was like, oh, God.

It's like, what are you talking about, man?

What do you mean?

Apparently.

This is how little I remember anything we say.

If you were to ask me what we talked about on this episode exactly two hours from now, I will not remember, just to be clear.

But

apparently in the previous episode, we had like

a little conversation about you and your animals.

And I made one joke, one like goofy joke about the collar.

Doesn't matter what.

Very topical.

It doesn't matter what.

Rare for us.

Very topical.

Very rare.

Yeah, that ended up over on Reddit.

And JP was like, oh my God, you guys are viral on Reddit.

And I was like,

this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Why?

Every time I ever go viral, it's either Jesse said something stupid and or Jesse made the greatest post in human history, which to this day still is repeated over and over and over again.

And I just don't understand why.

It's not even that good.

But I don't even know what you're talking about.

We can't.

Here's a post I made.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

Anyway, so finally I go and I'm like, all right, I I guess I'll go see if JP's lying or what he's saying or what's going on.

So I went to Reddit to go find this thing.

And it was, all right,

viral is it, is it,

like,

I figured.

I don't know if that's the case.

JP also said this to me and I was like, ugh, went on social media, literally.

Couldn't even find what he was talking about.

Because it was very specifically Reddit and very specifically one part of Reddit and very specifically not viral at all.

But it had a lot of comments.

And I went to go look at those comments, and then I was like, shielded up,

emotionally bracing for someone to tell us that, like, we suck.

I am the biggest cuck who ever lived.

Uh, I don't know, there's nothing mean to say about Dodger, and that's it, right?

So, I was preparing myself to like get bombarded, right?

I go and I look, every comment was so fucking sweet,

like just

like, oh my God, Jesse and Dodger, I love them.

Oh, they're so good.

Oh, yeah.

Look at them.

One comment I saw was like, they're just over in their little wholesome corner of the internet.

And I was like, ah, right?

They're like, yeah, it's like, it's so nice to see they're still doing their thing.

Like, oh, I used to watch them all the time back in the day.

I got to start watching again.

Like, that.

I was like, I kept scrolling and scrolling.

And I was like, These are all really nice.

So what I'm saying is...

You're so sweet.

You're all very sweet.

and i don't know if you're in chat right now but to everyone who responded over on on reddit that was very sweet and i saw all those very nice things and was like stop it

this it was not even

i expected like drama because again very topical issue very topical but like

nothing we said was even we didn't even like weigh in on anything we made a joke we made a we made a very brief goofy yeah yeah and and so so I was like, oh boy, how are people going to overreact to this?

No one did.

No one cared.

All the comments were literally like, oh, Jesse and Dodger, that's so much fun.

Like, it was incredibly sweet and reminded me that somehow,

15 years later, we have cultivated an audience of like little sweeteny pies.

Little cutie pies and cutie patoots.

And

I thought about how we can weaponize that in our favor.

And honestly,

I don't think we can, can dukes i think they're so nice and so not built to be weapons yeah they're not built to be weapons yeah

yeah

so i guess we'll just have to accept that they're little cutie pies and doing their thing so

my kid and i recently read a book at bedtime and the major conflict of the book was that there was a witch who was determined to make an army of the undead And the first go-around, she accidentally made an army of the undead, but they were all really nice and didn't want to fight.

The first go-around, was there a second go-around?

Did she give it away?

Yeah, yeah, because the good guy, the good guy is a kid in a class, and his class goes to have a, um, like a sleepaway thing at the spooky manor that the witch owns.

And she's like, I'm going to turn all these children into my army of the undead.

Oh, I saw that movie recently.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

What movie?

Well, now I'm spoiling it if I tell you.

It's a major motion picture.

Is it?

Yes.

About children turning up.

I'm an army of children.

Yeah.

Oh.

It's called weapons.

It's.

Oh,

I see.

I forgot that.

Tron Aries.

I looked up.

Tron Aries is a really funny...

That's a really funny goof.

JP's in chat.

Hey, JP, we were just talking about you.

Ugh, we're, yeah, Tron Aries, JP.

It's as bad as you are.

Wait, did you see it?

The new Tron Aries.

No, God, no.

I would not go see Tron Aries.

Are you kidding me?

I was just thinking about it.

The trailers looked shit.

I'm not going to watch the movie.

No, I'm all right.

Weapons was good, though.

Weapons is

absolutely insane.

I'm too scared to see it in the syndicate.

I have to.

You should be.

There are a few scenes that are like.

What?

There are a few scenes that are a little much.

It is a...

Yeah.

I still, out of all of those movies, though, I still...

I still don't know that I like it.

Like, it's all right.

It's like fine.

But I still don't know that I like it.

Like, I don't know how to feel about it.

About weapons?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like.

Premise-wise, very cool.

The trailers, the posters, all of it, awesome.

The premise of like, you know, at a certain time, at night, all the kids in this town straight up left their homes, and now they're gone, except one kid.

What's that shit about?

We don't know.

This will be weird.

Like, premise-wise, that is awesome.

And the acting, there's a lot of great acting in the movie.

I just think, um,

you know, it, the, this is so weird, but I feel like this will resonate with people.

The ending of weapons is how I feel about the ending of Peacemaker season two.

Like, all right,

but also,

what?

It's like, okay.

Yeah, all right.

Like, um,

yeah, I don't know.

It's it's good.

Whole product good, but there are little moments where I was like, meh, all right.

But maybe it's also because I view kids as little demons anyway.

So, sure.

So, you were like, and

yeah, that didn't shock me.

Yeah.

I was like, if anything, this is what I'm preparing for.

Children?

Little, little, little monsters?

Yeah.

Yeah,

that's how I feel.

Yeah, I don't know.

Either way, going back to the main topic at hand, I thought it was very sweet.

Everyone on Reddit was very kind, and I loved it a lot.

Also, has anyone seen Good Boy yet?

I did.

Yo, Dodger, do you know the premise of Good Boy?

It's that it's a it's a good boy.

It's a dog, and their owner moves into a new house and they get haunted, and the dog can see the ghost, right?

It is, yeah, it's a horror movie from the dog's point of view.

Great stuff.

Absolutely super, super interesting.

Yeah.

Do you recommend it?

Entirely.

Okay.

I was scared to watch it because I would feel very nervous for the dog, the whole movie.

Right.

Okay.

I could spoiler finger about the status of the dog if you need that.

So you don't worry.

So

people can

close.

Yeah, let's do an old-timey spoiler finger.

So for those of you who have not been with us during co-optional or during other spoiler finger times,

if the finger's up, mute.

Once the finger's down, it is safe to unmute.

Okay?

And do not discuss the spoiler in chat if you are watching live.

Yeah, don't discuss it.

All right.

Ready?

ready okay i'll cover my mouth too so so if you're watching still you won't

read lips the dogs

the dog survives

okay

there it is

there it is yeah so that's i figured that's the what you wanted to know and so you can base whether you would enjoy the movie off of that

But it's, yeah, it's actually, I love

when movies do like

big swings for things.

This This is very clearly, so Goodboy's very clearly like a,

you know, when we talk about video games, how sometimes people will say, hey man, I'm gonna make a game that combines this thing and this thing to see what happens.

Yes.

This is that idea of like, let's take a movie that is done from a unique perspective and is a horror movie.

I love those kinds of things.

I think those are great.

I wouldn't say it's like

terrifying, but it's uh it's a scary movie, but it's more about tension and fear and like seeing a thing.

It's it's like when people try to make a horror video game, but it's from the baby's perspective or whatever, or like a talker.

And you play, and there are a few of those, and they're actually super fun because the horror isn't like, oh, a big monster, but maybe it's something that as a child would be weird to you.

That kind of stuff.

And so I love those kinds of experimental horror.

I would be really curious to know whether or not you think that you are more desensitized than most people.

I'm not desensitized to like body horror and God, what were those movies called back in the day that were like

murder porn, I think they were called?

Okay.

The ones where it's like we went to a

hostel.

Yes.

Yeah, where it's just purposely violent for the like that still doesn't sit well with me.

I never under, I never like like

a movie that absolutely hands up, hams up the blood.

I'm fine with, like, that's whatever.

But yeah, I'm not going to actively seek out human centipede or the weird torture porn stuff, things like that.

Like, it's not something I enjoy.

I don't want to watch it.

It's super off-putting to me.

But

normal horror stuff, I'm totally fine with.

And maybe a little desensitized to.

Like, um, the other day I was playing, and I'm sure we'll talk about it.

I was playing some of the demos that are out for Next Fest, and like, yeah, I played a lot of horror demos.

not a one got me not a one jump scared me with that said

i think a lot of the time now when it comes to horror games it's more about like i have an objective to achieve and this like i'm walking down the road and somebody comes in behind me and i'm like oh don't kill me like my and my scare is i almost died in that moment in the video game and i'd lose time rather than whoa that was a scary jump scare yeah i don't know that i'm getting like if you listen to or watch Scary Game Squad, you will notice a lot of times when the guys get scared, I will just laugh hilariously because my enjoyment is watching them lose their minds.

Yeah.

But yeah, when it comes to the violence and the blood and the guts and that kind of thing, I don't like that will get me to be like, you,

but only because it's super gross.

Not because it's like, whoa, that scared me when that guy's head exploded and like

brains hit everyone's face.

Like, no, that's just gross.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was curious because I know in the past, a few times we've talked about a game and I have been like, yeah, it's more of a horror game.

And it's really, it's, it's clear to me that for you, the definition of what counts as a horror game is different from me now.

And I think that's because you've played so many of them that, that in your mind, whether it's on purpose or not, you're like, well,

it was like, how scary is it?

Because is it really a horror game or is it just like, does it just have like scary stuff in it?

Yeah.

Like, I'm, I think the scares that get me the most are the ones where it's sort of off the well, I found a game that like actually made me be like, what?

Those are, I think that's the best I can hope for these days is like a scare that makes me go,

what the,

what was that?

Because that's, that makes me think and makes me more kind of invested in what's going on.

With that said, I just saw someone in chat say Subnautica, and that is truly a horror game for me.

That game is the scariest game I've ever played, ever.

Like in the history of video games, it is.

I don't consider Subnautica a horror game, really.

So, oh my God.

I think it really is just different for everybody, you know?

Sure.

I could not get off the ship that it crashed.

I was terrified to get in the water.

I was like,

I don't even know what's down there.

I don't, I was like, there's a ship in the distance.

Can I row?

Can I row my wrecked craft to that ship in the distance?

Because, like, no, I don't trust this water.

Yeah.

So, yeah, yeah.

But you're correct.

It's all personal.

Everyone has their own fears and things.

They, I know some people who love

the like gruesome movies because they're like, it's just, I love the practical effects.

I'm like, that's what you see.

Yeah.

But some people do.

When I was in theater.

I knew a lot of people who did props because that was my focus.

And they all loved horror movies, specifically horror movies where it was like, and then some guy's arm comes off, you know, because they'd be like, how'd they do that?

That looks so realistic.

And I was like, guys, I don't, I don't enjoy this, you know?

Yeah.

A lot of, a lot of props and costume people love those movies because, yeah, because they

like trying to figure out how stuff is done if it's not CGI, you know.

Did you ever, this is such a very hyper-specific thing for us that no one else, and I don't even know if it's specific to you.

Do you ever meet a dude called Dragon?

That's a weird statement to say.

There was okay.

I don't know.

There was a guy that

I haven't talked to him since before COVID.

I hope he's doing fine.

But there was this dude in LA who helped with all sorts of props.

He made all the props for

the

Gentleman's Gaming Club stuff that we did.

He did my backpack when I was May.

I was just going to say, I met him when

he and Angie were making your costume for May.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

Yes.

Yeah.

He's awesome.

He's amazing.

Dragon's a cool dude.

But that guy, his whole thing is figuring out how that stuff works.

So when you went to his house, he would have like,

imagine

a Furby, right?

but ripped apart so you only saw the skeleton underneath but then he was trying to stick that skeleton into something else to make it move that was his entire, and so he'd have like half faces, like half of a face.

He'd have like the disemboweled corpse like on a table and he's trying to like put pieces.

Man was Dr.

Frankensteining, but you know, for the sake of

movie art and doing that.

And so he would, his entire place was like that.

And I think about him all the time as like, that is a guy whose whole purpose is figuring out how to do those types of things.

Like how to have.

Did you see the substance?

No, I don't think so.

What's it about?

Well, all right.

Well, what it's about is women aging in Hollywood.

But what it is is a horror movie.

But it's like actually

really, really good.

Except the ending is like extremely gross.

Okay.

And...

Wait!

Wait!

You and...

Was it Sam Bayhart that talked about that movie?

Who did we have wrong?

You guys, you talked about this movie with somebody on Geekenders.

Yeah.

Substance is all.

It's like a good movie.

Honestly, I think you would like it just based on the, like, the message it's sending.

It's very, very good.

Right.

But it's also, um,

oh, it also made me, for some reason, it took that movie.

Yeah.

For me to associate the fact that Margaret Kwally is mama in

Death Stranding.

I just, for some reason, didn't put two and two together on that.

Yeah.

I just, for some reason, that didn't click with me.

And I was like, I know this girl.

Where the hell do I know her from?

Yeah.

Death Stranding.

I'm so bad at that stuff.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Especially when it comes to video games because the characters don't always look like the person.

Yeah.

Like it took me a while to realize that, you know, Neil Newbin was the guy in Detroit.

He's the like, like, I created all of these robots.

Oh, he's that guy, and I'll just do the realization.

Yeah, like that kind of, there's a lot of that, but anyway, great movie, very cool.

But the end has like some really crazy, practical, like gross out effects.

And I just know while watching it, I was like, Dragon's probably losing his mind right now, probably having the best day of his life.

He's like, How'd they do that?

What's that about?

He might have even worked on the movie for all I know.

I'm like,

All right, that's cool.

Yeah, it's that.

I don't know.

it's I don't have that mindset where I'm fascinated by how that's done

but at the same time you know I have that with other things in movies but not that the gross out stuff I'm like I don't need to see it I don't want to know it and it's not that I'm like afraid of blood or whatever it's just

it makes me feel queasy and I don't want to feel queasy yeah I totally get that I remember a couple of my friends that focused on light design.

That was their whole thing.

And they were like, you're so lucky that you never studied that because the second you know how lights work on stage and in movies, you pick that shit apart constantly.

Oh, you'll always have an opinion on whether or not the lights were done right.

I was like, thank God.

I mean, this is this stream, is a perfect example.

My lights are not done right.

I have a window open.

I have two lights here that are the lowest.

Like, I'm just too, I'm just too whited out.

I'm just too, this is not my natural skin color.

I'm just very white right now.

You have much much better lighting setup happening right now.

But with that said, I'm sure that...

All right, never mind.

I take that back.

This.

Thanks.

But like, it's noticeable.

And I think it's watching people realize that 99% of photos, movies, et cetera, et cetera, are entirely light-based is crazy.

The amount of like non-thanks the lighting teams teams on movies get is

You can notice lighting.

You can notice when it's good and when it's bad.

And the lighting teams need all the respect because sometimes it's incredible what they can do.

Yeah.

Should we start talking about demos?

I don't know how many you play.

I tried to play as many as I could because I knew you would play more than I ever will.

Yeah.

Because you have like a time limit.

You don't mess around.

Sure.

I don't mean like

the time that I stream.

No, I mean, for games, you're like, I'll play this game until I decide I don't want to play it anymore.

And me, I'll play until like, well, I beat it.

Which is not great for demos because it doesn't matter.

Sure.

Like, what's the point of demos?

I've got to get away with so long.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I'll still do it.

Yeah.

So for anybody who doesn't know about this, a few times a year, Steam now does an event called Nextfest, which is a demo festival, basically.

And every time they do it, there are more demos.

It's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of demos.

So

I love it.

I play as many games as possible.

I think I played around 40.

Girl?

Damn.

So I averaged about 10 a day.

And it was super fun.

And I found some great games.

Okay.

That is crazy.

I, yeah, I default entirely to you.

Or maybe we should do the ones that I played to see when you played them.

Tell me about your highlights.

And

maybe I didn't play them.

I will say I played a bunch that were not good.

So we're not even going to talk about them.

There were some demos that I played.

I don't plan on mentioning the ones that I didn't enjoy.

I will only mention ones where I'm like, you should play this demo.

Excellent.

Yeah.

So first off, right away, there was a brand new demo for Rusty Lake, Servant Servant of the Lake.

Yes.

I love Rusty Lake.

I love the premise of Servant of the Lake.

Very cool.

Demo way too short.

That demo was so short.

Very short, but the Rusty Lake games aren't very long.

So,

you know, I guess you don't want the demo to be too long and then be like, oh, that was like a quarter of the game.

Completely understand.

Yeah.

There was only two weird Rusty Lake moments in the entire thing.

And I was like,

okay.

I just wanted more.

It's not a bad thing.

I just thought it was a very short demo, which, you know, I wanted more out of it because I love Rusty Lake.

And yeah, I'll buy the game when it comes out.

So it doesn't matter.

But like,

I played it and it's weird.

So if you've never played a Rusty Lake game, Rusty Lake, premise-wise, is a point-and-click kind of escape room-y style game in which you are tasked with doing something in the history.

of Rusty Lake.

Each game is a different time period and you are a different character and you are trying to unlock more the story of Rusty Lake, which is a multi-generational super weird story involving a magic cube

and descendants with powers and or a cult and or a magical lake and or

weird psychic like it just it's a crazy game absolutely insane.

I love it to death.

Yeah, I think because this was so short and the last thing they released was their birthday celebration, their anniversary celebration, which again wasn't weird.

It was just like, we're celebrating our anniversary.

So it was another thing, but it wasn't Rusty Lake.

That now I'm jonesing for it.

And the fact that I didn't get a full Rusty Lake thing now, I'm like,

okay.

So I walked away, not upset, but disappointed I didn't get more, which was, it's a weird feeling to have.

I wasn't like, that sucked.

It was more like, that was, that was fast.

It must be what it's like watching this show.

And then when it's over, you're like, oh man, that went by so quickly.

Right?

Right?

Chat?

What is...

You're threatening them with a chipmunk face?

Zonier.

Hold on.

I can do better.

Hi, everyone.

I'm a gopher.

I'm a gopher.

Why would I take my glasses off to I immediately become a gopher man?

Some sort of groundhog person.

Anyway, so I love that.

Great stuff.

If you've never played Rusty Lake, you should go try some of that.

Most of them are free, to be honest.

Honestly, yeah, you might as well see if they're your vibe.

Yeah, if you're looking for a point and click that is incredibly weird, but also a puzzle, where the first time you play it, you'll be like, well, that was weird.

And then you go and look at the achievement things.

You're like, wait a minute, they're achievements.

Well, how do I get those?

What does that do?

And then when you get them, it's like...

Here's what's really going on, weirdo.

And you're like, oh, it's great.

Love it.

Yeah.

Next up is a game i think you probably played i would hope you played there no ghosts at the grand did you play that did you get to check that out no

dodger this how do you wait how do you spell how do you spell that there no ghosts at the grand is a game in which you are a american who is in a very british town I guess, and it seems to be an island, or at least maybe you are on the coast somewhere.

Anyway, premise-wise, you arrive at this hotel that has been given to you through inheritance, and it is a mess.

It's completely terrible.

It's just

run down.

And you meet a man there, and the man literally just starts like, oh, by the way, this is a musical.

Starts singing to you about the Grand Hotel.

And it's like a reggae ska vibe the entire game.

So already I'm like, let's go.

I'm super in.

Okay.

and um you are given this machine that lets you remodel the hotel but also the whole town you can suck up things you can put things back you can spray on wallpaper you can move furniture you can do all sorts of stuff with that said there's also in this demo you meet a woman who has a cat and she's like hey you got to come with me because we got to go check this thing out down by the docks and you're like okay meanwhile you have a little like handy guy,

like a little tutorial man.

He's a painter.

Okay.

Sure.

Like Mr.

Clippy.

But like, he's a,

and he's like, well, I don't know if you should go down there.

And you're like, no, I'm going down there.

And he's like, okay.

And it's very funny because in the demo, they're like, this is a demo and I'm here to help you, which is very cute.

Of course, yeah.

And then you go down to the docks and you have to use his powers to repair this boat.

And then you and this woman and the cat get on the boat and you start sailing out.

And as they're sailing out into the water to go to this island to find some more information about this weird sludge that keeps appearing on the shore she starts singing to you and then you start singing to her and now you're caught up in a musical and a whole thing's going on and then you end up on the island and now you're on the island and you're experiencing like maybe ghosts and at the very end some crazy stuff happens that i don't want to spoil and there's like an escape and then you then the demo ends and it's like see you in the game it's very cute i would recommend for you at least to go watch the trailer see if you'd be interested But it's basically video game the musical.

And I love, I love, um,

what's the best way to put this?

You know how sometimes

music in games, especially musicals in games, can be like a little up its own butt.

You know what I mean?

Does that make any sense where it's like, this is very important and serious?

We are doing a thing.

This is more like

It's fun.

It feels like the music has this sort of like laid back on the beach vibe to it.

Again, like a reggae ska sort of vibe.

There's always like a like a smooth horn section in the background as you're doing your tasks.

It's that kind of thing.

It's very relaxing, very fun.

But also at the same time, there's like, you know, maybe some scary elements to it.

But in the demo, not really, but there's hints of it.

Like, oh, what is happening here?

Very cool, very fun.

I love that in that world, the characters just break out in a song.

And then hilariously, your character character just starts doing it too.

And it's funny because at one point your boat crashes, and they're like, we were busy singing.

Like, I couldn't pilot the boat.

I was singing.

Wait, that was funny.

Which is very funny.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's really cool.

So you should definitely check that one out.

Yes.

Apparently, that one wasn't in NextFest.

So that's why I wouldn't have played it.

Ah.

Was it sent to you?

Well, it was.

Oh, my God.

Make it hook you up.

Yeah.

Very cool stuff.

Maybe I'll, maybe I'll, maybe I got you.

Maybe I'll hook you up.

Wiggle's eyebrow.

I loved it a lot.

Yeah, I saw someone say it's more like the Buffy musical episode.

Yeah, it's more like when a TV show is a musical episode than a musical musical.

Like, it's very, very cute.

I love it a lot.

Um, yeah, I can't wait for that one to come out.

Very cool.

Then,

I'm trying to figure out which ones you may have played.

Did you play the seance of Blake Mana?

That was one that I was going to talk about.

Yeah.

I, you know what?

I played it.

it.

You can talk about this.

I'll let you have this one instead of me just rambling because I actually like this game a lot.

I like this game a lot too.

So Santance of Blake Manor is,

it is a detective game.

You were playing as a detective in Ireland.

What is the like time period for it?

1800s, late 1800s.

So you are contacted about a woman who has gone missing.

Last she was seen was at a hotel.

So you journey to the hotel, to Blake Manor, and the game starts with you outside of the manor so pretty quickly the game establishes that there is so much you can do you can basically investigate everything read everything look at everything but it all costs time

so right away you have to just kind of reconcile with i can't do everything

right so which hurt my soul but i knew what i was getting into so i was like same

fine but i kind of i kind of love that because it builds in an element of like, okay, well, if that doesn't work, then

I can probably play this again and do something different.

Right.

So much like in other detective games.

you are piecing things together as you have more information you can combine things to be like okay so then i need to find out about this or i need to investigate this talk to this person

and much like what jesse was just just saying about the last game,

you are consistently running into situations where you're like, what the fuck was that?

There's weird spooky shit happening constantly, but you, you as a detective are fully focused on like, I'm going to find out what happened to this woman.

Because as far as you can tell, She checked into the manor and she never checked out, but everyone insists that she isn't there.

so you need to investigate the right things find the right information talk to the right people there are 17 other people in the manor so you have to figure out what sequence of things to learn find out and do in order to figure out what happened to her and answer the questions that you need answered yeah there's i didn't expect it to be first person it's a like walk around first person game yes that i actually really like that me too and i also like that when you look at things, it tells you exactly how much time it will use.

So you can kind of plan what you're going to do.

But

thematically,

basically, as far as I can tell, you're playing a man who looks like a vampire.

Like, I don't know what else to describe you as.

You look like a vampire, but apparently you're

the like Irish Poirot.

or like the, you know, knives out guy.

You are, you're basically like a world famous detective to the point where people recognize you and you are brought in on this case where they paid you up front and they'll pay you more at the end.

And again, very much like kind of a knives outy vibe where it's like, I don't know who paid me this.

Someone sent me this money and I'm here to help.

So there's a bunch of people here and I've never met any of them.

So I got to figure it out as much as I can quick.

Yeah.

And most of the people.

are there because there is a seance happening.

And the seance is not your average, I'm going to be a person who talks through, like, I'm a ghost talking through someone.

The whole point of this seance is they're going to channel powers to have a ghost talk to them for realsies.

Not through a person, but like a real ghost.

And you need to go around and figure out what happened to Miss Dean.

She's the missing woman.

And you can do that.

There's a lot of things you can do.

And like, you'll find a clue that's like, all right, everyone at the hotel is staying in these rooms.

There are four unoccupied rooms.

Miss Dean had to be in one of those occupied rooms.

And the unoccupied rooms, they're open.

You can like walk in them if you want.

Here's the thing, though.

While you're thinking, oh, okay, I know I need to go do that.

Then, the game will have a random French guy show up and be like,

oh, hello.

I heard you are a famous detective and I want you to investigate this woman because she is a fraud.

And you're like,

what?

He's like, and if you don't at 9 a.m when we all eat the breakfast i'll announce it to everyone that you are the famous detective and you're like

okay okay so now you're going to investigate this woman and if you do investigate the woman you find out some crazy shit like absolutely and did you do that did you like go through her stuff I didn't get that far, but I really wanted to go back and like play through the entire demo.

Oh my God.

Like you can steal a key, get into her room, rummage through her stuff, and what you find, no spoilers for, obviously people want to play it, is insane.

And you're like, what?

So then you go and you talk to the woman, and then you go and talk to the guy, and he's like, I think I completed his quest at 8.57 or 8.56, like right before time was about to be up.

Right.

But I also managed to go explore one of the rooms as well.

And I went to a room and it was like, there's nothing in here.

And I was like, okay, well, I know this room isn't one of the four rooms she was in.

So I can mark it off my list.

Of course, then the game, the demo ends at a certain point, but like there's an interesting moment that I don't know what it means, but there's this weird green contraption.

Maybe you saw it when you enter the atrium, this like green box, and it has like goo in it.

I don't know.

Okay, but when you

do the mission for the French guy, at the end, it's like,

ah, this seance is terrible.

I did not want to be part of it.

And he leaves.

I don't know if he leaves for good, but he just like doesn't want to be part of the seance.

And then something in the box changes.

Now, I don't know if that's a good change or a bad change, but something in the box changes.

And I'm like, oh, no.

So there's definitely layers to this game.

Very cool stuff.

Like you can go explore.

And like you can sneak into an office, for example.

I snuck into this dude's office because I set up this whole other shenanigans where he had to go deal with that.

So I snuck into his office.

I'm going through his stuff.

And there is maybe maybe four different plot points from that office.

Yeah.

And I was like, clearly this is one of those, you are going to have to play through this game multiple times to see everything.

So there's no way.

That's something that I'm curious about is how long it's definitely built to be like, I guess I'll do another run.

Yeah.

So I'm curious how much time you have.

Because it's very time-based.

So clearly there's a deadline, right?

To figure stuff out by.

So I'm curious how much time you have

before it's like, you fucked up, try again, you know?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, there's a game I recently played.

I don't want to say what it is because we beat it.

And I say we, that should give you some clue.

We beat it.

And

it has that thing of, oh, no, you need to play this multiple times.

Right.

But it's like a 12-hour game.

Yeah.

That's

exhausting.

At least for for me

Yeah, for for for people who are like there's other games.

I have to play other things.

This is my job.

That's tough.

That's a tough ask.

Yeah.

And for

most people, as we discussed before, if you're getting one to two games a year, that's awesome.

Play it as much as you want.

That's so cool.

But if you're like, oh, I got to move on, I got to do this other thing.

I got to play, it's just very hard.

And yeah, 12 hours to like,

let's just say when that video comes out, people people will understand how I feel about that.

Where I'm like, I don't know that I like having to do another 12 hours to get the correct thing.

Drives me crazy.

So I think you're correct that this game could be amazing if it's like four hours, you know?

Yeah.

But if it's 10, 12, 16, that's far too much to ask for another go-around.

It's just too much.

Especially because I think the devs have said it's,

it would be, you would be so lucky to figure it out on the first go

because there's just too much so

um there's built-in complexity there that needs to be a boon to the game instead of a detriment yes yeah yeah exactly

also

i played a game that i'm sure you played and you could talk more on ball x pit or ball and pit Yes, that game's out now, but the demo is still live.

Play the demo for it.

The demo is basically like you're playing the real game.

It's pretty impressive.

It's massive and extremely fun.

I get why it's doing well and people are enjoying it.

And everyone that was talking about it was talking about how it was like, Do, this is this is this is the new mega bonk.

I love this.

This is amazing.

People were absolutely losing their mind over it.

And I get it.

I understand completely.

Very fun.

Essentially, a roguelite.

I don't think rogue light.

it is rogue light

because you have upgrades that you do outside of the runs I must stress this was a conversation we had with TB 10 years ago and we still don't have an answer I still don't I still don't know to this day from my understanding it's a roguelike

if every run you're literally starting from scratch Okay, but if outside of the runs, you are able to upgrade yourself.

So start with more health.

So that's roguelite.

Roguelight.

Because it's not as punishing as rogue.

Understood.

So this is a light.

I assume L-I-T-E.

It is a

very fun game where you play as any number of characters.

There's like a knight.

There's like a

gunman.

I don't know.

I wish I could better describe who these characters were.

But basically, you are, I don't want to say pinballing, but you are like

bouncing balls off walls and into monsters.

It's a more complex and strong version of those like old Flash games where it's bunching balls and you're shooting balls to get rid of the balls.

It's that, except up here are enemies and your balls.

Slowly moving towards you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And the balls that you have, you can upgrade and change and blah, blah, blah.

Yeah.

And

the rogue nature of it is that the balls you get are going to be different every time, and you're going to have to pick which ball you want to use.

It's going to change your build.

Like, some builds were truly bad.

I thought I had the greatest build ever where one of my builds was like, oh, all the balls go through the enemies and stay in the backfield and will kill guys as they come down.

Great.

Doesn't affect the guys in the front.

So the guys in the front, who I didn't kill immediately, totally screwed.

Yeah.

But I was like, this is how I beat the final boss in this area.

Oh, it's going to be amazing.

Eventually, I discovered the awesome power that is magma plus ghost.

Beautiful.

It would go through them and said everyone was ablaze.

Everyone's on fire.

Easiest victory I ever achieved.

Just like cruised through to the end.

It was like, yes, yes.

Love that.

I enjoy the fact that when you're out of the pit, I don't know the name of the anime.

But it basically seems to have the same plot.

There's like an anime out right now where I see it on, I think I see like ads for it from time to time on youtube where it's like a pit and there's little characters trying to go down the pit and they're they're it's

i it's like a i don't know what that's called a raise abyss there you go oh made an abyss okay yeah it looks like the exact same vibe exact same premise of like there's a massive hole And we go down there to level up and become heroes.

Same vibe.

And so you go down this hole.

And every time you descend down this hole, you fight these monsters and then when you come back to the top you

see like uh this town that you can build but the only way that you can harvest things from the town or build things in the town is by slingshotting

your little man

around the town

drives me crazy

and that's how they collect stuff yeah

that's not what that anime is about it doesn't matter chat It doesn't matter.

You're saying there's a big hole.

I don't watch it.

I've never watched it anyway.

How the shit would I I know?

We don't need to talk home.

There's a bunch of characters going down it.

Yeah.

Jeez, Louise.

Chad's over here like, actually,

I don't care.

So anyway, there is

a lot of like

RNG, I guess, in this.

And it's

that, you know, expect to fail and you will have fun.

I enjoyed it a great deal.

I loved it.

It is very fun.

I don't know that I would say it's addicting, but it's definitely one of those games where I found myself going, I have a couple minutes.

I could do like a ball pit run.

You know,

it's very chicken nugget.

There's just like, it doesn't take that much time to play it.

Yeah, I just think the harvesting mechanic sucks.

I hate it.

They could take that out of the fucking game and I'd be like, great game.

Yeah, it's like an extra game mechanic added in that that I don't know is necessary, but you know, it's cute.

No, it sucks.

Then on the list of things that we played or did not play,

I think the last one I want to talk about, because it's the one that I think relates to what we did this week, is the demo for Heaven Does Not Respond.

Okay.

I love this demo.

It is the most Jesse game there ever was.

All right.

This sounds so familiar.

It is.

I promise you, not what you think.

So essentially, you are a

detective,

a guy working for whatever the version of the FBI in this world is.

And this guy, Salim, trying to remember his name, he is killed.

They find his body.

And what happens is this guy was missing for a few hours

but the information he has on him says that he was missing for a week if that makes any sense okay so like there's a time dilation thing happening which is really weird no one understands why but you uh on his camera he had a bunch of videos except when you tried to when they tried to import them it kept crashing whatever it was imported to so you have been assigned his laptop with the footage to go through it and investigate.

So you are trying to basically figure out how this guy died, what killed him, what was going on, what were the circumstances of the death, while also digging through his past and his life and uncovering stuff.

Okay.

So

great example is you'll have, you know, it'll literally be your screen is his desktop.

And it looks like, you know, Windows 98.

It's super old looking and jank.

And as you go through, you're like, okay, um, I need

import these videos.

And when you import it, it's like, can't import it.

These are the things that's wrong with the video.

Please fix.

And you're like,

okay.

So you go in and you have to figure out what's going on with this.

But if you look around his computer, so for example, I moved, there's a notepad on the side of where, you know, it'll give you notifications.

If you move it behind, that was a photo.

And I was like, what?

Okay, so I clicked the photo and it brings up this thing and I went to the metadata.

I'm like, what is this?

And I clicked the thing in the metadata metadata, and it took me to basically the dark web, some website where, like,

imagine the meanest version of 4chan.

And it's basically people's dark confession.

It's like a website where it's just your dark confessions.

And it's all these people

leaving a dark confession, and they're messed up.

And you're like, well, why would that be where this photo is from?

That doesn't make any sense.

What's that about?

So now in your web browser, you can save that as uh like okay i can go back there if i want you'll find a video game on his computer but it's broken but you'll figure out that the video game was made by some guy named nico so if you go to the internet you can find nico and then you can go to his website learn that like you know he says like if you have any issues with my games because they're free and i make games for art and like that kind of stuff sure uh hit me up on on this social media feed and so you're like okay copy that thing go over here to the social media stuff put his name in start talking talking to him and he's like fine well you know if you want this thing you gotta play my other game and you're like fine I'll play your game oh yeah his name was Nico Kojimo Kojimos and I was like Kojimos is crazy dude yeah

so

then you go in and you have to play this other game and the game's super weird because it's like you walking through an office and when you meet with people they're like This is what we do, where do we work?

And their face is all blurry.

And it's like, you must go to the server room to meet the master.

And you're like, what the?

Anyway, game crashes.

And you're like, I played your game.

That was weird as hell.

And he's like, no, that's art, dude.

And you're like,

no, that's very strange.

So then he sends you the file you need for the game to get the other game to work.

Basically, you're trying to do like all these fixes, right?

In order to watch these videos.

But you'll also stumble across,

you know, like a photo of him.

at some dude's birthday and you're like okay

it's missing some metadata but i know from this other thing that i read about this birthday from social media that, okay, we can put in the dates, we can put in the information.

What does that get me?

Nothing.

Why do games like this?

I don't know.

They're so fun.

And I'm like, why did I do any of this?

Okay.

So then you're still, it's all in the process of trying to get this video.

Then,

as you're doing this and you're messing with the computer and you're going through all these files, you can find audio.

Like one of them is from, like, you discover messages, social media messages, where the guy is

messaging his ex, I guess.

And he's like, I love you, I miss you.

Can I have you back?

She's like, no, dude, we broke up.

And he's like, come on, baby.

But then you find he saved every message from her.

And they're all like, I love you so much.

I can't wait.

Like, congratulations on your job.

But then you find his like

diary.

in there where he's like, I guess I'm doing this now.

It's so weird that a few years ago, people were using pen and paper to write diaries and now I'm on a computer.

This is crazy.

And he's like, yeah, you know,

it's very clear he's going through something because he's he he questions whether the voice messages from his girl then girlfriend were actually even sincere or if she was mocking him where she was like congratulations on your job honey like that kind of thing and he wasn't sure because like how could she love me she broke up with me like i don't understand so he's clearly going through it something's going on with this guy and so there's like layers to what's happening then

When you crack the first video,

I thought, oh, we're going to watch a video.

Nope.

Cuts to the infamous handheld camera video game third-person moving style game.

So now you are in this, except there is a time bar at the bottom.

And when you move forward, it moves down the line of time.

But if you reverse, it moves back.

So you are in the video and whatever you do in the video moves the time further and back.

So it's like you're rewinding it.

So if you're walking forward, it's playing.

But if you start walking back, it rewinds.

And I was like, what the shit?

So now there's a whole other level.

And then the demo was like, and that's the demo bye.

And I was like, what?

It's amazing.

It's amazing.

You must play this game.

I love this.

I will.

It sounds very cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's layers to it that I can't wait to dive into.

Yeah.

Loved it.

I'm not even telling you.

It's like, let's be, to be very clear.

The title of the game is Heaven Does Not Respond.

I have mentioned nothing in relation to that title.

You must understand how deep this game is.

It's freaking crazy.

I'm excited.

That sounds great.

You will enjoy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and that's

where I'll leave off with mine, and I'll turn it over to you.

Okay,

I'll talk about a couple.

So, there's a game that a lot of streamers have been posting about.

So, of course, I had to play it.

It is called Final Sentence.

It's a typing-based battle royale.

Ah, yes, I've seen this.

Yes, Yes.

Yes.

So the concept is that you and everyone else who's playing, you're sitting at a desk.

Everyone has a typewriter.

And at the start of the round, they give you something to type.

So

if you make three mistakes, they Russian roulette style shoot you.

So you might be out.

Or you might be able to keep going.

But each time you make three mistakes, another bullet's in the gun, right?

And you just type until either you die or someone finishes the thing that you're all typing.

So the second someone finishes it, it goes, so-and-so one, the rest of you are eliminated, and it just shoots you.

So

it's missing something, right?

Like it's fine, but

there is

no interaction between you and the other people

that are typing.

So

the second someone wins, the game is just done.

And there was no way for you as a player to affect anything going on other than to just type the thing directly in front of you.

Sure.

So

it's lacking something.

Originally, I was like, maybe it just feels like it goes by too fast.

You just like get in there.

And if you're against somebody who types like 120 words per minute, then you're just donezo, right?

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

But I don't think that that's the problem.

I think the problem is that you go in, you type as best you can.

And if someone types faster than you, then you're done.

And so the gameplay loop is not very satisfying or interesting.

You always know exactly what's going to happen.

So it's kind of whatever, you know?

I want it to be more interesting than that.

Yeah, I watched some people play, and it has the

vibe of a lot of games these days, which is like, this is very clearly for collaborations on stream.

Like, that's the only reason this game exists.

And I was like, all right, that's not what I'm into, but like, all right.

But I think you're absolutely correct.

It is, the way the game plays is like, are you a good typer?

Great, you're going to win.

And if not, you're going to laugh with your friends on stream.

And we hope that lasts a long time.

I definitely think you're correct in that there is a

like

I don't know the right word, but like there's something missing.

And it could very well be as simple as because you're sitting there typing, if you look up, there's a board and it lists who the top 10 people are, like the 10 furthest along.

And then, if there's some mechanic you could do to screw those 10 people up,

that's what I think you need is something

to like

add stuff, add weird stuff to like, you know, maybe someone's typing a fairly normal sentence, but if a player activates some sort of ability or, you know,

it makes it so some of the words are spelled wrong.

So

you made a mistake because you thought that the word was going to be spelled normally, but it wasn't.

And, you know, like stuff like that to trip you up.

Yeah, like

if you can imagine at the, at the beginning before you start,

if however you did in the last round, like, so, all right, first round, round you have to type.

You have to just type.

That's it.

All you're doing is typing.

Next round, after you type, maybe you earned for as many words as you typed or whatever, maybe you earned something, some sort of coin that you can then spend on buying things that in the next round you can then use to mess with people.

So for example, maybe there's like a like a blow gun

where you shoot a dart into the back of someone's neck and that causes them to see things.

You know how sometimes you'll get those memes where it's like, if you can read this and it's just words, but the letters are reversed, except the first and last word or letter.

And so you can still see what it's trying to say, but it's not spelled correctly.

If, like, suddenly the first player, like player number one, the person in the lead, their entire what they have to write is that.

They know what they have to write, but it's not spelled correctly on the screen.

So now they have to like, okay, I'm still like that kind of stuff

where you constantly can mess with them.

Or maybe they get drowsy and their screen becomes blurry.

And so things like that.

And so the person who's in first now is being targeted by everyone.

Yeah.

But the brilliance of the game then is not about how fast you can type.

It's about how fast you can type without it making seem like you're the best.

Like, I'm going to stay third until the very end.

Like that kind of stuff.

Where you have to change it up.

There's like, there you could do stuff with the premise is what I'm saying.

Someone is saying, I'm not sure which part exactly, but someone in chat is saying that at later levels of the game, it does some of what we're talking about.

My argument then would be that this isn't a proper battle royale

because

the battle royales that do really well, everybody gets dropped in at the same time, like it's, you know, whether you're a new player or not, you get to experience what the game is from the get-go.

So I got bored.

I got, I got annoyed with constantly dying, but I also,

there just wasn't, there wasn't an intriguing element to the game for me after playing a decent number of rounds.

So I would say, if that's true, if there are interesting elements and variables that get introduced later in the game, they need to do that quicker.

Sure.

Because I, I failed.

Yeah, like that right there is alone a reason why one you would have demos, but two, you would also say, yeah, if you're making a game where people don't want to play it after a certain amount of time like like a lot of multiplayer games die on the fact that they're like well later on it gets really good well yeah when your players are leaving because they're bored then the players who enjoy who are now trying to play will have no one to play with and so they'll leave right and they'll just kill your game so you gotta you gotta give everyone as much as possible in the beginning so they can absolutely enjoy as much as possible and have a reason to keep going if you don't then you'll get dodger who's like, no, I was just bored.

I didn't even see the stuff that you're talking about.

Yeah, I got bored and then I also a little bit rage quit, a little bit rage quit because I'm just not, I just can't type as fast as some of these bitches, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And

it's like,

you know, it's the same premise behind like Guitar Hero or any of the games that require like a skill to it.

Some people don't have that skill and they're like, all right, well, I'm not going to play this.

So you've already cut like you're not, it's not even like a game, it's game plus skill, and that creates a whole other barrier.

So, you know, yeah, you got to think about that.

But I can tell you about a very cute game,

very cute game

called Dog Pile.

Oh, my, it's on my desktop.

I'm literally looking at it right now.

Oh, my gosh, have you played it yet?

No, I haven't played it yet.

Okay, Dog Pile is so cute and such a good idea.

Any of you who played or watched people play Suica when Suica first came out?

Oh, is that the fruit one?

Yes.

So it is Suica, but with more

like mechanics,

with dogs and more mechanics.

So you have a big variety of dogs that get bigger and bigger and bigger.

But periodically, while you're playing, you are given ways to affect the board.

So it's number one, it's

deck based.

So you start off with a deck of dogs

and

every like round or two, and each round is only three cards.

So you're given, you know, say you're given a little pug, you're given a poodle and

another pug, right?

And

a pug, a poodle,

and then the poodles combine and whatever.

And then it

draws three more cards.

So occasionally it'll say, hey, here's three of the dogs that are in your deck.

Do you want to give them a variable?

And it'll offer you things like make them all friendly, give them all fleas, level all of them up, right?

There's a bunch of different like

tags that you can apply to the dogs that will affect the way that they behave when you drop them.

So,

and there's also a shop built into the game so that you can get basically the game's version of trinkets, like passives that generally affect the game.

So, for example, I had a run where

I made it so all of the dogs had a tag called friendly.

Friendly means that the dogs will try to get close to each other.

So imagine you're playing like a normal Suica game, right?

And you have a peach over here and a peach on the other side.

They're going to.

Yeah.

Because one of them has friendly, one of the dogs, it's going to try to get to the other dog.

So it'll make it easier that way, right?

Okay.

Most of the time that's helpful.

Sometimes it's not.

But then I was able to get a tag that was like, even when they upgrade, they keep friendly.

So normally, if, you know, I dropped a friendly pug and it combined to make a poodle, the poodle wouldn't be friendly.

But because I had this tag, it was like, okay, they're all going to be friendly now, right?

So the second I drop something, if it has a partner, they are actively going to be trying to get to each other.

You know, so you can build that way and there's tons of different traits.

So I went back after playing it on stream and played it until I got the biggest dog because I was curious to see what the biggest dog was.

But there's so many things you can do.

You can make dogs bigger or smaller, all kinds of stuff to affect the board and give yourself the best chance possible.

And it's so fun and so cute.

And the demo

is, and this is all in the demo, all of this?

This is all the demo.

Because

there are a bunch of other starting decks and we have no idea what those look like.

So it only gives you one starting deck in the demo, but there's like four other ones, I think, on the first page.

So I was like, are those different dogs?

I don't know.

So, yeah.

Demo is super cute.

Okay, cool.

I love this.

Yeah.

Definitely want to play it.

I love a good puzzle game, and this seems like

it's cute enough to keep me entertained

and and absolutely silly.

So I'm here for it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then we can talk about Reanimal.

I played Reanimal.

That's by the Little Nightmares 1 and 2 devs.

Sure, yeah.

It's on the list of scary guys.

Everyone's like you play that?

I was like, I'm going to play it with the boys.

Scary gun squad.

It's going to happen.

Chill out.

It'll happen.

Yes.

So for those of you who don't know, Supermassive did Little Nightmares 3.

So it's

different company.

The property was given to a different group.

And the guys that made one and two are now making a game called Reanimal.

The demo is very good.

We were discussing

because when you start playing Reanimal, you're like, right,

weird little kids, weird little kids in a horrifying world.

It's

little nightmares.

In theory, it's little nightmares.

Yeah.

I would say the big difference

is it's the same art style, same sort of surreal aspect, same kind of like pushing the envelope in terms of body proportions, right?

Like a lot of the things that you meet move oddly or are shaped oddly.

Little nightmares.

Little nightmares, yeah.

Yeah.

But it lacks the whimsy.

I feel like Little Nightmares 1 was interesting because it was kind of like Ghibli horror, you know?

Sure, sure, sure.

This one doesn't feel like that.

This one feels more serious, despite the things I listed.

It feels more somber, more serious, less colorful.

And I don't know if it's going to be that way for the whole game,

but the beginning of the game feels that way.

It feels much more,

much more serious in tone, less

whimsical horror.

Did you, you've played Little Nightmares?

You did some of that?

What's the vibe with with three?

Because in my I like I don't know the backstory of why

the game is now in the hands of an entirely different team.

Like, I don't know why that is.

I don't know what the vibe is there.

I don't know how different the game is or if it feels the exact same.

So this is why the conversation happened because I think

front facing, they just said we don't want to make Little Nightmares 3.

But now they're making Reanimal and it feels in a lot of ways very little nightmares and i was defending them and saying

just because they have a style that they like

and elements that they like to put in their games doesn't mean that they wanted to be constricted to more little nightmares and potentially that's true but it also on the back end

they were told like and we need you to incorporate this and this and this from the other games and they were like we don't want to do that i don't know

Yeah, I,

because I, as far as I recall, Little Nightmares 2 was like

at the end, off the wall, totally insane.

And

that game pissed me off in new ways that I didn't even realize existed.

The doorways in that last building drove, I think it made Davis go crazy.

Yeah, there's, there's like a,

I don't, I don't know what the vibe is with the, because they're both literally

Little Nightmares 3 dropped on the 10th and their demo dropped on the 10th.

Yeah.

Which is like, I'm like, is that on purpose?

Is that like a screw these guys?

Like, I don't, right.

The vibe, it's a weird vibe.

I, I'm going to end up playing both, so that doesn't affect me really in any way, but it is kind of like,

did something happen here?

What was the

summer and I are, I think, halfway through Little Nightmares 3,

and two things have stuck out to me.

And it has been a while since I've played one and two.

So potentially this is misguided or unfounded.

But the two things that are sticking out to me is number three feels like it has more

callbacks to the first game specifically.

More like, remember this guy or remember these guys, you know, more of that.

So, I mean, but like, are those callbacks fleshing out the story?

And, because one of the big things about Little Nightmares is that the first game was kind of like, here's a taste of the world.

We're not going to explain much, it's going to be weird.

And then the second game was like, here's a bigger look at the world.

It's about to get cuckoo bananas.

Right.

And then when it ends, you're like, okay, well, that opened up a whole bunch of stuff.

So is this continuing the story?

Or is this just like a different thing than calls back to the previous stuff?

This feels

the same world, but totally separate situation.

Okay.

That's that's how it feels.

All right.

All right.

But the other thing that I was going to say is the other two games, and I don't feel like this is a spoiler, really.

The other two games, they are called little nightmares, but they don't feel like they're games about actual nightmares, right?

It is a nightmarish world, and you are a small person in that world.

This game, as we play it, feels more like:

are we in a nightmare?

Is this real or is this an actual

nightmare?

You know, and I don't know yet, but that's what I keep asking myself.

And I, it's making me feel like the other two weren't like that, right?

The other two, yeah,

that wasn't the case, or was it?

Like, it makes me feel like I'm going crazy.

There's also, I just remembered, there's also,

it was in the work.

I don't know if if it's happening, but there was a little nightmare movie coming out.

Oh.

And it was supposed to be stop motion,

but I don't know.

Yeah.

Oh, oh, apparently we got a small teaser trailer earlier this summer.

Oh.

That was like 24 seconds long of whatever this was.

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely stopped motion, and it looks like a teaser, all right.

So that's interesting.

Didn't know, I didn't hear much about that, but um,

yeah, I mean, I'm excited to play both.

I want to play both, but there's also like a weird worry, and again, this is this is like, um,

you know, probably just a me thing, but the idea that one is by a team that's not the original team, and one is by the original team that's not the game, right?

And they're both available right now,

yeah.

And it's like, oh, okay, it's like a weird, it's a weird vibe.

Yeah, I will say, if, if what you're asking more specifically is

the shit that was going on in the second one, is that ever explained or explored?

From what I can tell, no.

All right.

I honestly would have to go back and watch a playthrough of the end of the second one anyway.

Because it was.

That should piss me off so bad.

I refuse.

Those are

was a statement.

Great.

Great.

Anyways.

I refuse.

Damn.

I won't.

But yeah, about halfway through Little Nightmares 3.

And it is fun.

It is fun to play.

I like the co-op element there.

I think it is a fun game.

It just, yeah.

It's clear that it's not the same team to me.

But that doesn't mean it's not fun.

sure sure sure yeah no i mean it's it's uh that's i mean that's what i was asking does it feel like the previous games because you know when a different team does a different thing it's entirely like team members make up the the output of a game and sometimes certain teams just cannot deliver on certain styles of games yeah

And, you know, we'll talk about that in the news, I'm sure.

But like,

yeah, that's all I was asking.

I was very curious if it feels like you're having the same experience or not.

But what you're telling me is it seems neither game exactly feels like the other Little Nightmares.

Yeah.

And I don't think Reanimal is

supposed to.

Sure, sure.

But if you're looking for that vibe from the team, it's a different thing you're getting.

They're giving you something different.

Okay.

Yeah.

Good to know.

A game that really surprised me.

I was telling chat that I tend to make assumptions about what RPGs are going to be like.

Okay.

So when an RPG is suggested to me, especially like a pixel graphic RPG,

to be perfectly honest, I assume that I'm not going to find much very interesting in it.

I want to know where this is going because if something won you over, I'm so excited.

Yes.

It did.

So there's a game that came out.

Well, there's a demo that you can play for a game called Alabaster Dawn.

Alabaster Dawn.

Never know.

This game is sick.

It's so fun.

It feels amazing to play.

The combat is so fluid.

The story is interesting.

The pixel graphics, the way it looks like

the way everything moves, the way the characters move around and stuff, I was like, holy shit.

I don't know that I've played a game with graphics like this and they've moved that nicely.

Like it just looks so nice.

It does look beautiful.

Wow.

It's the same devs that played cross-code.

If you played cross-code, I did not play it.

Okay.

Fascinating.

This is one of those longer demos.

I got halfway through it.

I got to a point where I was like, all right.

And that's probably the end of the demo.

And I guess I had like 30 to 40 minutes left to play.

So I haven't actually finished it.

But what I did play of it, I loved.

I thought it was so fun.

And I'm very curious

what it's like.

Is there voice acting?

I don't think so.

I think I did voices.

Did I?

All right.

This might be one Jesse plays on his own time.

Doing, I'm going to let y'all know.

Doing voices on stream for a long period of time,

by the end of the day.

I know.

I feel you, man.

Hello.

I just, like, game devs, you don't need to do voices in your games.

But if you do voices in your games, the likelihood of more people playing it is so much higher.

It's just

a cost, isn't it?

That's that's always

that's an easy cost if you're just like trying to make sure the game gets made.

It's an easy cost.

And a lot of the times we want heavier.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Especially in RPGs, a lot of the times the voices can actually hamper the game.

You know, unless you hire like actor actors.

Yeah.

Sometimes you'll get voices and they're like, you know, Jesse level where it's like, watch out.

There's a monster over there.

And you're like,

you know, you don't don't want that.

You want like real acting.

So I get it.

And that costs money.

Yeah.

But

you're going to get Jesse level up.

I'm going to make an example, but that would be very rude.

I was about to be like, yeah, there's this one demo and the voice acting and it was terrible.

I'm not going to.

Yo, I played one demo.

Oh my God.

The voice, like it was recommended to me as like, you got to play this game, dude.

The voice acting was not great.

Yeah.

And I was like,

if you didn't have this in here, this actually, I could do do the voice and be like, hello, I'm talking like that.

And it would have been just as fine.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Alabaster Dawn.

I'm very excited about that game.

Cool.

Okay.

Looks good.

I'll try to do these next ones fast.

Okay.

But Hellmaiden

is a bullet heaven, another survivor's like.

But

the art style is 90s Shoujo anime.

If you are a fan of Utena, Sailor Moon, oh my God, the character designs are amazing.

They have full, when they do their alts, they have full animations like

they're in a magical girl anime.

Holy shit, it's so good.

It's so good.

I was like, wait a minute.

This is amazing.

It's crazy too, because it like the vibe I'm getting completely is like hollow cure.

Yes.

Yeah.

It has that hollow cure vibe to it, which honestly.

Because

they're like cutie little pixel girls.

And then when they do shit, you're like,

it's very pretty.

I'm looking at that shit in which they do.

Awesome.

Yes.

Downloading that demo right now.

Yes.

Lovely.

Another one that I think is worth checking out is called the Berlin Apartment.

This is a much more serious game.

where are you finding these games amazing all right berlin apartment the berlin apartment it is um it highlights an apartment in berlin you might have uh assumed

whoa i know

but you visit it at different decades so you experience it modern times you experience it when the wall is up you experience it before the wall goes up and see who is living there and what their life was like and sort of like puzzle piece together how this apartment went from person to person to person.

And

yeah, I think it's probably going to be very sad, but also very lovely.

I liked the feel of playing it.

So

yes.

What's really funny about this is I saw in chat, someone was like, none of these were recommended to me.

Like, how did you find these?

I feel like it picks what you already own and sends you kind of like recommendations on your Steam page.

Here's the problem:

mine recommended to me a lot of horror games, which are great.

It recommends to me a lot of RPGs, which are great, and a lot of strategy games, which are great.

But it also recommended to me literal porn.

Here's the problem.

Well, I appreciate that tremendously.

Thank you, Steam.

I'm going to call y'all out.

Dear

erotica video game people,

what are y'all doing?

What the hell is going on?

The amount of AI bullshit I saw.

Oh,

supremely AI generated, all looking the same, dirty games.

I was like, this is trash.

You're trash.

Draw the boobies like God intended.

This is awful.

It was so gross.

I was like, they all look the same.

And it's all like.

Get your phone out and talk to a girl.

I'm like, this is the stupidest thing I've ever seen in my entire life.

Just, there's so much of it.

like not even a not even like one or two

i'm gonna say like 80 of the adult games that were on the next fest stuff were like ai not cool that's i do appreciate that steam has a section now where they have to disclose if they used ai to make any part of the game and specify what part because there were is there anything you can toggle that says don't ever show me this because we need that i don't know that would be great though

here's what i do here's my secret sauce you ready?

Every next fest,

like a week or two before the next fest happens, my mods make a channel in the Discord, a forum in the Discord for people to suggest demos.

And then I go through and anything that looks good and interesting, I play.

Hey, y'all, all you need to do

in order to get all the demos that are on Steam that you want to play,

have a multi-decade career

as a streamer and or influencer set up a chat have people in the chat give you all the information and then you hand select them from the work other people did.

The forum is open to everybody, baby.

Just got to go look at my forum.

Oh, that's even more shameless.

How dare you?

You just have to come join me over on my thing.

You just got to come to my Discord.

Yeah, you just got to be a member of my Discord.

Yikes.

There's plenty of amazing games that I didn't even get to, but you could.

There's so many games.

You can check them out.

All I gotta do is come over and just.

Yikes.

Shameless.

I approve.

I have one more.

Can I talk about one more game really quick?

Did you play webbed?

That game where you're a cute little spider?

No.

What?

This is what happens when we have a forum.

Is it just webbed games?

Yeah.

I played this game forever ago, and they made a spin-off game called Isopod.

This game is so cute.

You're an isopod.

You're a little pillbug and you're just doing weird activities as a pillbug.

At the start of the game, you come up to an ant and the ant puts a magnet on your back and is like, hey, can you go fix our pipes?

And you have to like magnetize yourself to the pipes.

This sounds insane, but I'm begging you to go play this demo.

It's so cute.

I love the way that your little guy moves around.

You can change yourself into different types of isopods.

If you're an isopod enjoyer, you can be a dairy cow isopod like right away.

We made ourselves.

There are a dairy cow isopod is a type of isopod that is all white with black spots.

And they're called dairy cows.

There's also rubber ducky ones.

There's rubber ducky isopods.

These are real bugs.

Yeah.

You can change your color, and the writing is very funny.

You talk to other bugs, and they're all just like goofy.

It's great, it's so fun.

Highly recommend it.

Can I tell you something amazing?

Of course not.

Not even about the game, but about the dev team.

Yeah.

I don't know who this dev team is.

I don't know how many people are on the dev team, but I'm so pleased they found their calling because

Isopod, along with Webbed, along with the game Worm,

are all by a dev team called S-Bug.

This is a dev team that said, we are a bug-focused business.

Yeah.

Our games are worm,

webbed, isopod.

Yeah.

And we are going to make bug-based games because that's who we are.

And then I just want to say better, baby.

I love everything about that.

Here's the thing.

Never in my life would I expect the bugged team to make a multiplayer.

Like, like, you know, like, we're going to make a big pvp online like

yet they have one of those they have a game it looks like it's called uh stab stab stab

a physic you play as little weird bug creatures and it's eight players stab your friends should we stab each other should we play stab stab stab I don't want to stab you oh okay that's not what I want to do Okay, more importantly, I don't want to get stabbed by you because the betrayal would break my heart.

Oh my gosh, you'd be thinking about it forever.

I know.

I'd be like, you stabbed me.

That would be like, not since Julius Caesar will there be such a betrayal of getting stabbed.

I'd be like, hey, do

Dougas.

This is like that clip where the guy is like, hey, if I was turning into a zombie, would you shoot me?

And the other person goes, no, of course not.

And the first person goes, that's fucking stupid.

I would shoot you in a heartbeat.

it's that butt with buttons

i don't want you i don't want to get stabbed i don't want to be betrayed what about what about a game called like

high five

high five high five

high fiving everyone and whoever gets the most high fives win that has to be five times high five high five high five high five high five

or high high high high high five

That's also good.

All these are great.

Stabbing, not cool.

High fiving?

The coolest.

High fiving is the coolest.

High fiving rocks.

Is there any high fiving in the news?

Well, not really.

Um, damn.

Hey,

speaking of not,

you know, high fiving.

Yeah.

Um,

the game world's changing.

I don't know if you're aware of this, and the games you knew and loved are different now, and the world of gaming is different now.

And as a reminder that we all are slowly marching towards our inevitable grave.

And time is destroying all of us.

This week alone.

Yeah.

Dan Forden, the toasty guy in Mortal Kombat, is gone.

He's retired.

Halo Art Director Glenn Israel out after 17 years, suggesting perhaps they left on bad terms.

Mark Alexis Coate, the former Assassin's Creed, or is it Cota, is the former Assassin's Creed head.

He's been, I guess, forced out by Ubisoft so that someone at Tencent can run Assassin's Creed now.

Don't know what that's about.

Basically, what I'm trying to get at is all the people who made the games that you grew up with are leaving.

So, hey, old folks, better get used to it.

Better get used to it.

I was so scared.

I thought you were about to list off like a big list of people in the gaming industry that bit it this week.

Oh, not died.

No, just left.

Jesus, this is a morbid way to start the news.

No, but the goof, of course, is that if you look at how long that, so the Dan who left Mortal Kombat, that's like 20, 30 years, like something crazy, like just ridiculous.

Halo Art Director, 17 years.

The Mark Alexis from Ubisoft, since like the OG Assassin's Creed.

Basically,

all of these people who have been in games for a long time are leaving now.

And it's just kind of, you know, yeah.

We had, we, uh,

yeah.

Been rough.

Anyway.

Yeah.

Then,

interestingly enough, in a weird kind of like, uh,

I don't understand the world anymore, we saw that Battlefield, the newest Battlefield, Battlefield 6, is the biggest launch in series history, selling 7 million in three days.

Well, at the same time, I saw a lot of people online complaining that New Battlefield sucked.

I also saw people enjoying it, which is fine, awesome.

I do not care either way, but it's one of those things where the vibe of the new battlefield, and again, I don't know any of this.

I just exist on the periphery.

Yeah.

But if you have been on the internet over the last two weeks, you've also seen Taylor Swift's new album came out.

And everyone's like, it's trash.

It's garbage album.

Garbage.

Yeah.

Yet it is the fastest-selling album she's ever released.

Yeah.

Same vibe with Battle.

I'm going to say Battlefield 6 is the Taylor Swift album of Battlefield games.

And that everyone I see online is like, oh, this is what's wrong with it.

This sucks.

This is stupid.

Yet people are buying it like crazy.

And I thought that was fascinating i have no horse in that game either way but i think it's fascinating to see the disconnect between forum

and player you know what i mean like there is there are people who like are very loud and then there's people who are just playing and i always think that's interesting because the game dev that's got to be very difficult to do.

Yeah.

Where it's like you see people saying, oh, your game sucks, your game sucks.

Yet numbers wise, you're doing amazing.

So the question is, do we only focus on this or do you look at this and be like, well, what don't they like?

What are we doing here?

I just sift through and find

actual critique that you can work with.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't envy that at all.

But

yeah, I don't, I'm not playing either, and I don't listen to Taylor Swift.

So I have no knowledge of either.

So what the hell do I care?

It also doesn't help that

you and I, and probably a lot of people that are watching right now, engage enough with the gaming community that we are going to get shown a lot of because remember the algorithm these fucking robots they love shit that makes people mad that causes arguments in the comments yes absolutely so so the likelihood also that we are getting shown the most contentious posts about things like battlefield is definitely a variable yes oh yeah and i i mean

that's what i'm saying like i have no i don't know anything.

I loved some of the other Battlefield games, like, loved them.

I remember you were super into three, four?

Uh, both, I think.

Yeah.

I even played one for a while or whatever, the one that was like, it's 1914.

Like, I don't know.

I'd love, I love that I can have a game where I can shoot a guy, but also just jump into like a missile launcher and stay in the back and be like, missile, missile, and have a good time.

Like, it's, I've always enjoyed those games, but I haven't, I didn't play five and I won't, I haven't, you know, there's nothing in me that says I got to play six.

Yeah.

But it's interesting that people are complaining online and then like the game is rocking.

So

I don't know.

I feel like that's kind of the way media is these days.

Yeah.

And a very interesting turn of events, Quantic Dream, who we talked about Detroit earlier.

Yes.

Known for its, hey, you have to figure out what path you want to go down in this game that we're making that may be a mystery and/or other thing.

Their next game is not that at all.

In fact, their next game is a 3v3 strategic action game.

Interesting.

Okay.

I don't know why.

I just want to do something new, man.

I don't understand.

I get the idea of wanting to do something new, but it seems like everyone's trying to find their like...

Ah, this will generate money for us.

Sure.

So we don't have to make something else immediately.

We'll have money to make this other project we really want to make.

So instead, we're going to make this thing.

That's a trend lately.

A lot of devs are like, let's make our own multiplayer.

We can generate income to work on the thing we really want to work on.

Right.

So the multiplayer game is kind of like a little half-assed.

And you're like, okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't know what this is going to lead to.

I don't know if it's going to be good, but

you know, I don't, it's not a game type that I like.

I don't play those games.

So

yeah, no no pvp for me please then

in a very fun kind of conversation here a trailer was released for mcdonald's japan's new street fighter themed burgers which are absolutely cute they're based on ryuken and chun lie and um

The commercial, if you can find it online, is very cute.

They have sprites and assets that were created just for it.

You know, there's one where Chun Li, she's eating the burger, like, oh, it's very cute.

To give you a description of what these burgers are like, for those of you in Japan, this is nowhere else.

Ryu's burger is the burnt garlic mayonnaise egg teriyaki burger.

And it's promoted online with an animation of Ryu throwing a burger-shaped fireball at Akuma.

Akuma throws a garlic-shaped fireball and the two combine to make the burger.

Chun Li's burger is a

urinary

fried chicken mayonnaise burger and features similar animation of Chun Li fighting Guile.

And then Ken's burger is a triple cheeseburger because he's Ken and he's from America.

And I assume that's, they think that's hilarious.

So funny.

They're like, it's a burger, guys.

Yeah, it's like, but bigger.

There's a lot of meat on it.

America.

It's a big burger because he's American.

I wonder, did they already have this is this is I need to know some like deep lore of McDonald's in Japan.

McDonald's.

Did they have a triple cheeseburger at McDonald's before in Japan?

Or was that like, no, that's too much meat.

But for the for Ken though, dude, for Ken, three patties.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I mean, I thought it was very

because otherwise, that would be very silly to be like, we have a special burger for this guy, special burger for Chun Le, and Ken just gets a burger we already had.

Yes.

Yeah.

I mean, it has to be unique.

I don't know.

I will say, hilariously, this is already causing McDonald's employees in Japan to like freak because the last time they did a campaign, which was Pokemon, it was supposed to last three days and they had to shut it down after one because people went nothing.

I remember.

I remember that.

So I am excited to see what happens.

I'll live vicariously through you.

Speaking of the world of video games and,

you know, how absolutely messed up it is sometimes, we talked about this earlier, but continuing on, we know now that Electronic Arts was basically just bought for $55 billion in cash by a bunch of conglomerates.

Cash crazy.

Yeah.

By a bunch of conglomerates.

55 billion, by the way, which is crazy.

And so two U.S.

senators have voiced some concerns about that.

And they're like, huh, that seems interesting because essentially the public investment fund of Saudi Arabia, Silverlake, and Affinity Partners all bought EA.

And it was an all-cash transaction.

EA is now, you know, it's, I don't know.

Anyway, state senator Richard Blumenthal and Elizabeth Warren have now questioned the deal, being like,

what's going on with this?

So that'll be interesting.

I assume nothing will come of that, but it's interesting that it's being questioned, mostly because

it's EA.

Yeah.

So, you know, we'll see what happens with that.

But

that is insane that that's happening.

A little more fun.

Let's end on some fun things.

Yes, please.

A manga based on the life of the Smash Bros creator, Masahiro Sakurai, is out next month.

160-page biographical comic.

Looks at the Kirby creator's career.

It is very cute looking.

And I hope

it has every anime trope.

I hope his boss is like sassy and like a little domineering and like has way too big breasts that like, you know, that kind of thing.

I hope he has like a little sister character who's really annoying.

I hope he has a best friend whose glasses never show his eyeballs.

I hope he has, you know, all the tropes.

Yeah.

All of them.

Oh, and I hope at some point he has a power that he like unleashes.

Right.

You know, where he's like, double, triple samurai whammo.

And then like probably be the same robot shows up.

So in

those of you who watched Kuroko Nobasuke,

it was about, it was about

dudes playing basketball and all of their their like special abilities were just normal basketball moves.

So amazing.

Love that.

Yes.

Yeah.

It's like

about withdrawing, you know, or like digital marketing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That'd be great.

I'd love that.

And then in news that I'm not sure is good or bad, and I don't know if this is going to get someone killed.

I'm really concerned, but I think it's hilarious.

Okay.

Sonic the Hedgehog has been added as a sidekick on the the GPS navigation app Waze.

That's right.

Sonic the Hedgehog will now guide you through the streets.

And I'm just really curious how the gotta go fast guy is going to be safe for anyone, but I love it.

Make sure you follow the speed limit.

Unlike me.

Oh, you better stop over there because that's where chili dogs are.

Yeah.

Yes, Deep Man.

Next stop, chili dogs.

Speaking of gas, they'll give you plenty for the ride home.

Yes, I want it.

I figured as much.

Yeah,

I don't understand why, but I love it.

And I hope we get more weird things like that from the gaming verse.

And really quickly at the end, just as sort of like a, hey, gamers, if you are saying to yourself, man, oh, man, oh, man, as much as I love Resident Evil, I don't like that when I try to play Resident Evil 2, for example, example, I'm forced to play the new one.

Good news, kids.

You don't have to.

G-O-G looks like they convinced Capcom to let Resident Evil 1, 2, and 3 be available in a bundle on G-O-G.

So you can play the original versions and have them because G-O-G is like, hey, we won't take that from you.

So there you go.

You can collect them forever if that's what you want to do.

And I figured I'd throw that in there right now.

But that's it for the news, baby.

That's it.

Oh, my goodness.

Jesse, what have you got going on this this week, buddy?

Well, I think right after this, since I don't have to do Scare Game Squad stuff today, I'll probably play Glitch Spanker.

Very excited for that game.

Super fun and silly.

I want to play it, and I have the time.

So I'll probably do that today.

Tomorrow,

just going for a walk with some friends.

Nothing crazy there.

Cute.

Just going for a walk.

Cute.

Yeah, just taking a walk.

Cute.

Yeah, and Sunday, my mom and dad wanted to.

So

you are aware of Knott's Berry Farm, right?

Like, you understand?

Of course.

Right.

Of course.

My mom and dad want to go to.

Are you doing not scary farm with your parents?

Here's the thing.

They don't want to go to the actual scary farm.

They just want to go because my dad has got it in it that he wants to eat the Boysenberry or whatever.

So we're going literally just for lunch.

We're going to drive down because my parents want to go experience.

That's funny.

No,

they have to walk in and see Not Scary Farm.

I don't think that's going to happen.

I don't think it's going to happen.

My dad would drop it.

You dropped all the way there.

I'm just letting you know.

So we're going to go do that.

So that'll be most of my day Sunday.

But then next week, I don't know.

More scary game squad stuff, more goofs and goofery, and that'll be fun.

Yeah.

Fantastic.

Yep.

My kids' half-term break has begun.

So I'll be doing all the normal stuff except, you know, a couple hours later so I can hang out with her in the mornings.

Nice.

It should be fun.

I'm very excited.

I'm going to, because the last couple of years, I've really

dropped the ball on Halloween decorating.

And

I really want to just make a bunch of unhinged shit.

So I'm planning this week to spend my mornings making weird shit with my child and I'm very excited.

But otherwise, I'll be, I'll be playing games.

Yee-haw.

I need to finish Silk Song.

It's taking too long.

I need to finish that game because otherwise I'm one bad day away from just having the whole shit spoil for me.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah.

I um yeah.

I like I haven't even I played like three hours of that game.

So I don't even, everything's a spoiler to me.

Yeah.

I haven't even, I haven't touched Hades 2.

Again,

look, it got you.

I knew this is going to happen to everyone.

They released Hades 2.

Everyone Everyone played it during that time period where it was like, yo, this is brand new content.

And even though it's not complete, it's great.

I played the very beginning of it

when it first dropped, and then I stopped.

I haven't played more than a couple hours of it.

That's.

They got you.

I'm telling you.

What do you mean?

They got you.

No, they specifically didn't get me.

They did.

You played a little bit.

You got to experience the game.

And then you're like, all right, I'll come back to it later.

But I'm, but in order to come back to it later, you have to restart from the beginning now.

Yeah.

Which is a

which is nothing.

I played like two hours.

Okay.

Let me know when you start it.

Okay.

Maybe.

Can I tell you something that can right before we leave?

Can I tell you something that gave me psychic damage today?

Whoa.

Yes.

I was telling chat about a Am I the Asshole Reddit story where

a woman was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, can you tell me?

Can we become that podcast really quick?

Can we do that?

I love the podcasts that are like, We have nothing to talk about, so we're just going to do Reddit stories.

Yes, oh my god, yes.

Am I the asshole?

I left my husband at the grocery store because he kept talking like a toddler.

So, the concept of this am I the asshole is that her husband was constantly talking like a baby.

And she had like like, like, not just in the grocery store, like for months had been constantly talking like a baby.

She was like, we are not intimate.

I hate being around him.

I talked with his parents about it and they were like, it's his midlife crisis.

Like, what the fuck is this?

And so he wouldn't stop talking like a baby at the grocery store.

So I fucking left him there.

So I was talking about this and someone in chat was like you talk like a baby a lot

and i immediately got defensive like no for a bit though not

i don't not consistently just for a bit for a bit though

anyway so now i'm gonna be thinking about that all the time

I must, I must stress that

if you're, if you're about to follow up and be like, no no no yeah you do no no no I you talk in what

I've actually seen this online gen z and gen alpha complain about it you talk in millennial baby talk which is not baby talk it's like they complain about they're like they say stuff

you know it's ooo

yes yes they mock you for it

yes but that's not what I want to talk about um because absolutely they nail you completely they're like yeah you know the cat moms and they're like they they make up words all the time and I was like they are destroying Dodger Online.

But no, the thing the thing I want to talk about is the fact that that story is reminiscent of another one and I was just trying to look it up because I don't know.

It's either lotion finger or soap finger.

Oh, oh, lotion man.

Yes.

Lotion, yes, yes.

That shit is hilarious the fact that she's like, did lotion man ruin my marriage is one of the funniest things I've ever read in my entire life because it's literally the whole premise is this woman walked up to her husband.

Yes.

It was like, hello, I'm Lotion Man.

And it was like her finger with a beard.

And the husband goes, well, I'm done.

And like walks out.

Robin wouldn't respond to her calls.

And she was like, what did I do?

Oh my God.

Exactly.

Exact same feeling.

Yes, yes.

Yeah.

That's all I could think about when you were like, yeah, you just talked in baby talk.

And I was like, I think I want to leave him.

Same vibe as like, hello, I'm the lotion man.

And the guy was like,

nope.

They wound up being for very different reasons.

But yeah, on the surface, they feel like the same story.

Yes, the lotion man story goes deeper than I ever thought a story would go.

The more you read, you're like, what the?

But this one very clearly.

Yeah.

Oh, that's so funny.

I love that.

Oh, my God.

Anyways.

so

I have, I have millennial disease.

Did I tell you about, God, we need to end this thing.

Did I tell you about,

did I tell you about, I tweeted one time and I ended it with raffle R-O-F-L.

And they were like, I can tell that you're a millennial because only millennials still use R-O-F-L.

And I was like,

what?

I will, sometimes when I'm purposely joking, but being snarky, I'll do the like, emoji, right?

The tongue.

And they'll be like, yeah, and they'll be like, oh, you're such a millennial.

I'm like, yeah, yes.

What am I?

I'm not going to be like, hold on.

What are you kids doing?

So I can do that too.

If anything, that makes it more cringe.

I was like, no, I'm going to be who I am.

Yeah.

And you deal with it.

That's, that's, I don't give a shit.

Isn't that fascinating though, that like our internet slang, we now have two levels of speech.

that date us.

Isn't that interesting?

Anyways, hey, have a great weekend, guys.

I thumbs up all the time in messages, and people are like, that's sarcastic and offensive.

I'm like, what do you mean?

I said, thumbs up.

That's yes.

That's yes.

And they're like, no, that means you don't want to talk to them.

I'm like,

what?

What do you mean?

Yeah, no.

My cousin, my cousin, one time, my cousin that doesn't use the internet very much.

My cousin one time, we were having a perfectly normal conversation and she responded with three clown faces.

And I was like, what does that, what does that mean?

And she was like, it means that we're being funny and silly.

I was like, okay, thank you for the clarification.

At least you don't.

This is real.

I can't, we can't in this podcast so I share this with you.

This is a real thing that just happened this week.

All right.

Okay.

This week on Wednesday, Mathis messaged, hey guys, good for the usual time today.

I responded, thumbs up, right?

Alex responded, monkey emoji.

And we were like,

the eyes,

no, just like the gorilla.

The gorilla, the sitting gorilla.

And everyone, we just know that means yes, like he's good, which is insane.

The fact that we figured that out, we're like, well, that clearly means he's fine.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

That's where I'm at when it comes to like emojis.

I'm like, I don't.

I don't know what any of it means, but I'm assuming that's good.

But again,

there's a whole field of research in terms of like,

that's all about how friendship groups will create their own codes and slang.

And they'll all, they all understand it, right?

And it doesn't make sense to anybody else.

And once again, there's two layers of that now, right?

There's the verbal version of that.

And there's, yes.

And there's clearly the textic version of that, where you know what he means when he puts a monkey in chat.

But if he put a monkey in chat to me, I'd be like,

anyway, are we good?

The thing is, we asked him the first time we did that, like, what the hell is this?

And he responded with a diamond emoji.

And we were like, I think that's a good thing.

That's that's where that's where we're at.

So, what I'm saying is,

make your own thing.

Like Dodger said, everyone has their own, have your own cool kid communications.

Yeah.

Say raffle.

Say raffle if you wanna.

Hey, gang, have a fantastic weekend and a fantastic week.

We will be back next Friday.

If you want to watch any of the previous Geekenders, you can find them on youtube.com/slash jessecox.

And we're also on all of the podcasty things.

So we appreciate you all very much.

And again, if any of you very much, and if any of you guys came over from

you came over from Reddit, thank you for being so sweet.

Yikes.

Oh, yikes at all.

Thank you for being so sweet.

Yeah.

I don't know what you expected.

I don't know what kind of show you were expecting.

It was this, I'm sure.

Take care, everybody, and bye-bye.

Yeah, yeah, you know what time it is.

It's time for the geek in this podcast.

Mega Rand, Jesse, and Dodger, what up?

Let's go.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, scream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow and see what the geekiners are all about.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, scream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow.

Number one geek podcast without a doubt.

Yo, another end of another long week.

Got a job and a kid.

I know that you all beat.

So take a second, grab a drink and vibe.

While we catch you up in just a matter of time time.

On gaming, comics, whatever you're doing.

If you're nerdy like dust, then you know you should tune in.

Thank you for sharing our world with us.

Now, follow, subscribe, and turn this up.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, scream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So, give them a follow.

Number one, Geek Podcast, without a doubt.

and off.