The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King | Middle-earth’s Hidden Gem
A game based on a movie? On a handheld??
In this special episode of Press B, we're diving into the world of unique and one-of-a-kind puzzle games. From the eerie and enchanting to the frantic fun co-op. Whether you're a puzzle enthusiast or just looking for something different to play, we've got you covered. Tune in and discover what makes these games stand out from the rest!
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00:00 --> 00:29 Weird, unique, one of a kind puzzles with Sinistar's nickname in high school. And it's also this week's topic today on. I played the right video. That's amazing.
00:29 --> 00:33 We're just. We're on all cylinders. All four of them.
00:33 --> 01:47 We're just. Yes, all four of them. Welcome to another episode of Press me to cancel your favorite podcast, at least for the next 60 minutes. After that, I have no guarantees for you. I'm. I'm just sorry. But what we do have this week for, for you is four, count them, four, maybe five. I don't know if we have honorable mentions. I hope not, because I don't have video. Four unique, interesting, one of a kind puzzle games. I'm not talking about Tetris or Doctor Marrow. You can take that crap right out of here. We're talking about originally unique puzzle games. I know we did, I think, one like this earlier this year. Last year, I think. But we got four more for you because this is a genre that honestly, I don't think gets enough love, especially whether it's retro or modern. Puzzle games can be the very unique genre with a wide variety of different games kind of mixed in. And we got a good mix of games this week. I know from what the one I picked, I'm really excited to talk about because it's new. I'm not gonna say the game of the year, but I'm pretty excited. But then look at the picks that the guys have this week. I'm also excited because I know these games and they're also really awesome games. So looking to get right into it this week. Not alone, though. I'm joined by two of my good friends here. Chart. How you doing this week?
01:47 --> 01:53 Doing all right. It's a three day weekend for me, so I'm ready for that extra long rest. So I'm excited for that.
01:54 --> 01:57 Awesome. And also joined by Wolf. How you doing this week?
01:57 --> 02:04 I'm doing all right. Apparently my child is calling for me at the moment. We're doing this, of course.
02:04 --> 02:14 Well, on brain, we're going to start with chard. So if you need to duck out for a minute, go do your thing. And if you're playing bingo at home, Wolf is roaming again.
02:15 --> 02:19 He also pointed to the back of his thing. That's a bingo, right?
02:19 --> 02:22 I know that's a superstar there, but that's.
02:22 --> 02:25 That's definitely cross hatched in the middle there. That's fantastic.
02:26 --> 02:29 That's okay. It's okay. Charlie, how about you start?
02:30 --> 02:37 It's. Sorry, he's all it's snowing. It's not snowing. It's popular fluff.
02:38 --> 02:39 You're messing me up, man.
02:40 --> 02:43 He doesn't get outside enough, as you could tell.
02:43 --> 02:49 I tell you, wolf and I are in the same. We're in the same area, so I'm. Yeah. What we.
02:49 --> 02:56 Yeah, we have so much poplar fluff, though, that it reminds me of Yoshi's, uh, Yoshi's island. The eat a fuzzy, get dizzy.
02:56 --> 03:00 There you go. Fantastic.
03:00 --> 03:00 Wild.
03:01 --> 03:02 All right, all right.
03:02 --> 03:06 Sorry for the derailing so early. That happened fast for, like, three minutes.
03:07 --> 03:08 In, but that's okay.
03:08 --> 03:08 Record.
03:09 --> 06:02 Yeah, last week, I think, was a little quicker than that one. All right, well, Jake. Jake called me out, so he wants me to talk about my unique puzzle game, and I actually have one. And no, it's not elden ring. It's a pretty interesting ring. I've only played this on VR, but I know there's other ways to play it where it's not on VR. But I find the experience with VR for this particular puzzle game is kind of cool because it takes two people to play. So you'll have somebody in the room sitting with you. Me and Lord Optic have played it, and me and Rogue have played it. It's called. Let's see. It's called keep talking. Keep talking, and nobody explodes. So, basically, the concept of the game is you are on a bomb squad. It's like an old timey bomb. It's not like, you know, timey bomb. Well, it's. Yeah, you know, it's got the dynamite sticks and the alarm clock. No, it's. It's a box. It's a box that's a bomb. And you sit in a room with your VR goggles on and you explain what you're doing to the bomb. The other person can't see what you're looking at, and you're telling them, hey, this is what I'm looking at. What do I got? And they have a booklet that you get, you download online or you find somewhere. I bought the game on Steam, so you had to go download the booklet. You have to have this, and then they explain what you're supposed to do with this particular bomb. Now, you have to describe what the bomb looks like. Are there fuses on one side? How many fuses are there? Are there panels in the back? Is there this? Or they're that? Because each bomb has a different configuration, that makes the puzzle in the bomb different from whatever. So you cut wires, you press glyphs, you move things around, you flip it upside down. There's some really, really cool aspects to this game and all. And you're timed and you can adjust. I believe you can adjust the time in the game so you can make it really fast if you, you want to challenge yourself, or you can, you know, take your time, you know, for first time running it. Um, but if you get, uh, optic and I basically share a brain sometimes. So when you get the two of us together, his. His mother has told us that we are no longer allowed to team up when we play board games together because we beat everybody when we play. Um, so he and I, you know, were ripping through this thing pretty quick, so we loaded, we lowered it to, like, two minutes to a minute just to see if we can get that kind of a speed. We couldn't. We're not that good. Um, but it's. It's a really, it's a cool aspect of, like, you're sitting there stressing out with your. Your headset on and you're trying to explain what's going on, and they're yelling back at you what. What you need to do. And it's. It's a really cool puzzle game. I I was very impressed with it. It was, it's a good party game to, like, bring some friends over, and they can watch you struggle while you're trying to diffuse this bomb with a group. So a very, very cool game.
06:03 --> 07:24 Yeah, I played this with my wife. We do not win very often. You know, the only part of this that we were decent at was the glyphs, because you have to explain what those glyphs are. And both of us are huge fans of Stargate. I know that seems off topic, but Stargate has glyphs, and we're always pointing out, oh, it's the, it's the thing. The circle with the star in it, or it's the alien holding the pyramid. Like, we, we had a system describing these symbols, and the other one got it instantly. Yep. But I'm telling you, when you have that, when one person has that booklet in front of you and we used to print it out and one person's frantically flipping through the pages just to find the right wire box section, and then you're explaining what the colors are, and it's like, there's. How many white, black wires are there? There's four. Is that odd number or even number? Odd number is different than even numbers. Like, it's all very subtle. I think. I think one of the instructions you're reading through is, like, if there's x number of wires, but there's a battery on the outside the box. Do this. Or if the button has text on it, do this. But unless it's red, then do this. It's that kind of weird. It's almost. It's complicated enough so that you can't kind of cheat the system and memorize things. It does not let you, which is good. But I love this game. When I first came out, I played it on a laptop, and my wife would be the pages. Then we would switch it around. I have not tried MVR. That would be scary to me because it's already anxiety.
07:24 --> 07:30 Trust me. Like, it just, when it blows up and it surrounds the room with fire. Damn.
07:31 --> 07:56 It's. It's neat, though, because then you use the controls to kind of move the box around and grasp it. So I'm all for it. That sounds really rad, because I just did with the mouse on my laptop. But this game is. This game is a mix of, you know, two of my favorite hobbies, right? Video games with kind of like a board game, right? You're cooperatively working through puzzles. Somebody's got a tangible booklet in front of them. I mean, you could do it on a screen or your phone, too, but I find it better with paper book in front of you. This is a rad game.
07:56 --> 08:19 I dig it. I like that you have to really pay attention to what's on the box. And like you said, nothing can go unchecked. Like, if there's letters on it, other numbers on it. Like, you have to point out everything that is attached to this box, so you're gonna. You're not gonna get it. I think it's a really, really cool, uh, concept of a puzzle game.
08:20 --> 08:32 Yeah. Sinisters in chat, pointing out that there's also no alarm clock that annoys you and have to constantly smack it. And then November mentions that sometimes the lights go out just to fuck with you. It's a trip. Sorry, wolf. Go ahead.
08:32 --> 09:21 Yeah, this is something. I've actually played this four players. It was me, my wife, my brother, and my mom. And everybody was super stressed out. It was hilarious because basically, I was playing on my laptop because this was years and years ago, well, before we had a VR in the house. And then we had printed out two copies of the book, and then another person was using a laptop so that we didn't use so many. So much paper. And, yeah, it was. It was pretty wild just how much it was like, all right, who's. Who's on this? You. You figure this out, and then somebody needs to do this, you figure that out. Somebody needs to do this, you figure that out. And then I'd just be getting questions left and right. It was. It was insanity.
09:22 --> 09:49 It's. Yeah, it's. It's fun because on the VR set, you. You can grab it with your hands and, like, yeah, I can only imagine what it looks like watching somebody with a VR set doing, you know, holding it and spinning it, like, in nothing, you know, but you're trying to look underneath it with the headset on. It's pretty entertaining to watch, like, someone duck and bob and try and flip this thing around with their actual hands. It's. It's cool.
09:50 --> 10:01 I didn't really think about it, but this seems like something that would also be good to just play online with friends as long as everybody else is cool. Just, like, trying to figure out the manual, and you do it all through, like, a discord call or something.
10:02 --> 10:07 Yeah, that's true. Yeah. A bit of a delay in the communication, but that still would. Would work pretty well, I think.
10:07 --> 10:09 Yeah, press b to explode.
10:11 --> 10:13 We would lose so hard at this game. I just.
10:13 --> 10:15 And it would be hilarious.
10:15 --> 10:17 It would probably, yeah.
10:17 --> 10:18 Team building.
10:19 --> 10:21 It's definitely team building.
10:24 --> 10:55 I can't even imagine the screaming at each other. This is. This game is. I love this game, but I've tried playing with some work folks in the past. We did do this for team building when it was years ago. Never went as well as playing Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones. Somehow the more polite and friendly competition than this cooperative explosion game. I love how there's so many modules on this. Like, you can scale the difficulty and get more modules to figure out, but there's a good variety of puzzles in this one.
10:56 --> 11:13 Yeah, I mean, you could have the entire box have some kind of puzzle on it to try and weed your way through it. And it's, I don't know if I wouldn't call it procedurally generated, but that definitely, like you said, it's different every time, so it's always some kind of new challenge. You can't. You can't just be like, oh, I'll just clip these up. We did this last time.
11:13 --> 11:13 Up.
11:13 --> 11:14 I did this.
11:14 --> 11:14 It's.
11:14 --> 11:22 It's. It's very much. Watch what you're doing. Pay attention and do it quickly. Try and do it quickly.
11:25 --> 11:29 Yeah. There's the one. The one puzzle where it's like an arrow and you have to navigate through a maze.
11:29 --> 11:30 Yeah.
11:30 --> 11:50 And then the. So the person's trying to give you the directions to go to get through the maze. That one was probably my least favorite puzzle. But then you have, like, the ones with the glyphs and explaining to your partner about what the glyphs and what they look like and what they're for. That that one's always a blast. It's. It's a good mix of, like, challenging or, you know, deceptively simple but challenging puzzles. It's a great mix.
11:51 --> 11:51 Right?
11:51 --> 12:01 This is a good pick. Yeah. And there's nothing else quite like this. I don't think I've ever seen anybody make a clone of this game. I don't think they've done a sequel. I don't think it's.
12:01 --> 12:49 Yeah, I've not seen any, any expansions on this thing. It's pretty much its own, its own kind of beast going on. The glyphs. Comet, you were saying? It's very humorous to hear what other people call what they're looking at and my, and what my wife has decided. Click on the menorah. But it's, you know, looks like a trident or whatever. You know, there's this different, like, different things that people describe what they're seeing. It's just entertaining to hear. Like, what? What the hell are you talking about? What is what? With a backwards pee. What are you talking about? So it's kind of. Kind of cool. I like it. This is, I'm not a big. I don't play a ton of puzzle type games, but this one is definitely one of the higher ones that I play, play around with.
12:50 --> 12:56 So this is the steel crate games only game still, huh?
12:56 --> 13:01 Wow. Is it. That's why I just looked at looking up now. So is it. This is their only game.
13:01 --> 13:06 It looks like. I went to their website, and it's the only game they mention on their website.
13:07 --> 13:08 Well, good job.
13:08 --> 13:09 I think it sold well.
13:10 --> 13:11 Yeah, yeah.
13:11 --> 13:14 Maybe they were just like, all right, that was good. We were tired.
13:14 --> 13:19 We're gonna make a bomb defuse game, and it's successful. Good. Okay, bye. Moving on.
13:19 --> 13:24 When the QA was so stressful, that just, they just quit. We're like, we're done. We're good.
13:24 --> 13:26 The Q q A n VR.
13:28 --> 13:45 Yeah. That's wild. This game has been around for a while. It came out quite a while ago, and like you, wolf, I played it before I had a VR headset. I really want to play this now. Again, I think it still holds up. I think if I looked. I'm going to watch the gameplay now for those watching YouTube, and I'm getting a lot of fond memories of this game. This game is a really solid one.
13:45 --> 13:53 Yeah. I would highly recommend trying it in VR. I think you would. It adds another level to it to play with somebody else to play.
13:53 --> 13:55 Yeah, I definitely want to.
13:58 --> 14:10 Would reckon. All right. All right. Do we want to do stone stars pick? He was going to be here this week, but something came up, so. And I know he was pretty excited about his game, and I think. Chard, you played it?
14:10 --> 14:18 Yes, I'm excited for it. I got to. I can't remember what the hell it was called. It's been a long week, boys.
14:19 --> 14:20 I remember what it was called.
14:20 --> 14:21 Thank you.
14:21 --> 14:22 Yeah. Okay.
14:22 --> 14:24 It's. It's called the incredible machine.
14:24 --> 14:31 Incredible machine. That's. That's. I was like, why do I keep those, like, impeccable machine or something stupid like that? No, it's the incredible machine. Yeah, I.
14:31 --> 14:32 This game is not.
14:32 --> 14:33 Game is cool.
14:33 --> 14:37 It's not. Bars, tail construction set. That's not the one he picked. No point. Yet again.
14:37 --> 14:43 No, it's not. It's not wizardry. Wizardry makes a house wizardry.
14:43 --> 14:50 But you're not. Explain this one, then. Chart. Because I've only heard of this name. I've never actually sat and played this one.
14:50 --> 17:30 I. So, this game, the incredible machine, is. Is a really cool game. So, basically, it gives you. Each level is. It's obviously a puzzle, but you're using physics and. And tools and. And other items to create a machine that will get your achievement that you're trying to do. So the video you're playing right now is you're trying to get that basketball into the supposed hoop up there. Right? So how do you do that? So you create conveyor belts that move, that get the ball to move forward. So each level is basically a layout of parts and pieces. And it says your goal is to do blank pop the balloon with the gun, and you have to connect wires and ropes to balloons and conveyor belts with mice. And you got to trigger this thing to work. Like an actual machine type thing. I think I got to say, this is probably where my career path went into manufacturing, is building these goddamn things, because this is basically what I frickin do all day, except with less hamsters and mice. But it's just. It's. It's a real cool puzzle that you have to really. It's like an engineering puzzle where you're given a certain amount of tools and a certain amount of resources to do what it's asking you to do. So, must pop all the balloons. How do you do that? You think about it. You got a scissors with the bellows, and then you've got a gear spinning up top. So it gives you a certain things to use and create those. Those balloons to pop. You drop basketball on the bellow to make it actually actuate. Like, it's just. It's a really cool thought out process. And it takes a lot of time to. To think about what you're doing that you. When you do it. Like, when you put all the pieces together and you succeed, it's really gratifying. It gets kind of like, oh, my God. Because you'll spend, like, the first couple levels, you're like, it's pretty simple. Okay, fine. But then it gets super intricate with adding more gears and adding more tools and trying to convince the monkey to ride the bike that has a banana behind blinds. You have to trigger the blinds so it'll start pedaling. Like, it's cutesy, but, yeah, it's really, like, it's really cool how you have to connect the. Connect the gears together to make them all spin at the same time to get things to pop or get things to move. It just makes you, like, really proud when you finally get the thing done. So it's. It's pretty neat. It's a cool game.
17:32 --> 17:34 Yeah, that looks pretty interesting.
17:36 --> 18:00 And you can affect wind pressure and gravity. So things will either fall harder if you turn the gravity up or fall lighter if you turn the gravity down. And, you know, if you turn up the atmosphere, it can blow things from left and right and kind of screw up. You know, things that are. That are just dropping straight down. They'll go all over the place. So you can really mess with, like, your environment that you're playing with, too, to still get the achievements.
18:02 --> 18:45 Yeah, this is pretty rad. I like how the tutorial levels, you have actual flow, bone flow blown motors. Right. And you're attaching the fan or the belts to trigger things. Kind of reminds me of, I guess, mindstorm. I'm thinking more Lego technic, right? Right. With the gears and stuff. It was legos, but you had to put the bands on to make things move. But this is a digital version of it. But then the later levels, you have, like you said, the monkey on the freaking bike, which is just. Yeah, and I like. I like how you're using the strings to pull the trigger on guns. This is a very interesting title. I. I've heard of this before, but I'd never. I'd actually never looked at it or played it. I kind of want to play this one, and I'm trying to think if there's a game I've played like this that was similar. I don't know.
18:46 --> 19:21 My, um, my brother in law is an engineer, an electro. Electrical science computer engineer, and he introduced me to this game when I was younger, so that's. That's kind of like, where, you know, it came into us playing this game together. We don't, you know, he's. He's a really smart dude, so it's. It's a lot of thought put into it. It's not just, like, connect four or, you know, just playing some kind of puzzle, or it's actually coming up with situations that get you an achievement that. That really makes the old brain juices start flowing. So a really cool aspect.
19:23 --> 19:39 So Sinistar did mention that there was a, like, a reboot, I guess, made by the same people who made the original, but more modern. So I think this is the one he was talking about, the one from 2001. I just pulled up some more video footage. Let's just skip ahead. Yeah, this is very 2001 ass 2001 game.
19:39 --> 19:42 Yeah, it does. It's just like we play. What is this?
19:42 --> 19:45 Yeah, like the render, the rendered 3d objects.
19:45 --> 19:49 Oh, he's saying 2014. There's. There's one that's in 2014.
19:49 --> 19:50 Really?
19:50 --> 20:05 Contraption maker. That's what it's called. Well, that's certainly for those of you listening. Jake is currently trying to hunt down a video of contraption. Make sure. 2014.
20:06 --> 20:13 Yeah, we're real, real organized here at Presby this week. I don't see any YouTube videos. Did it come out sister or Kickstarter?
20:13 --> 20:15 It's on steam.
20:15 --> 20:16 Is it?
20:17 --> 20:17 Yeah.
20:18 --> 20:19 Okay.
20:20 --> 20:23 It's not named incredible machine. It's just called contraption maker.
20:24 --> 20:24 Contraption maker.
20:25 --> 20:26 Oh, well, that's different then.
20:27 --> 20:30 Jake, he's screaming at you.
20:31 --> 20:33 Look, I don't pay attention to half what you guys say. I'm sorry.
20:33 --> 20:35 We know that. We're aware.
20:35 --> 20:52 Yeah, I know. I know. Oh, boy. The contraption. Walk through. There you go. Okay. There we go. Yep. Interesting. Okay. More of a cartoonist. Well, I guess the originals. Cartoony as well. Sister. There's better be it. If it's not that. I give up.
20:53 --> 20:56 This looks like it. Have you heard of tunnels, Jake? Have you tried tunnels?
20:57 --> 21:13 Is there tunnels in this game? If there might be. That's Umbran. That's funny. And throw a bling ball through it. This is. This is a rad style. Yeah, I think the closest I got to this was. It's a long time ago now. Crayon physics and then crayon.
21:14 --> 21:15 Trying to remember?
21:16 --> 21:22 Yeah. Where you draw stuff to get. To get the end goal. It kind of reminds me of that, but this is much more involved with objects and stuff.
21:22 --> 21:29 Yeah. I was thinking, like, I've played something similar to this, but I couldn't think of what. Yeah, crayon physics. That's the one.
21:29 --> 21:29 Yeah.
21:30 --> 22:04 There's a really cool aspect where you got to set up flashlights in front of magnifying glasses at certain distances. So you can light fuses for, like, dynamite or cannonballs or something, but you have to have it at the right distance from the magnifying glass, or it won't. It won't, you know, do the controlled heat thing. So it's. It's. It's really, really cool. You can't just, like, slap things up there. You have to position things in proper locations to achieve what you're trying to achieve. It's not just like, oh, I put three guns on there, and they all fired. Cool. Like, it's, you know, it's really neat.
22:04 --> 22:35 Yeah. And, like, you have limited number of parts for each level, so that's where the puzzle comes in. Right. You have limited resources and what you can use to build stuff. This is. This is really rad. You know what? This is kind of a take on. This is ultimate chicken horse. I don't. You guys have probably played that one, which is another. Another kind of a puzzle platforming game. Maybe a little bit more competitive, but you have a box of parts every round, and you can lay them onto the stage and they all interact with each other and you kind of navigate through them. I can definitely see the inspiration going back to this game. There has to be, because this is a pretty unique game. Yeah.
22:35 --> 22:38 November actually mentioned that in chat. He was talking about that.
22:38 --> 22:39 Oh, did he?
22:39 --> 22:40 Ultimate chicken horse. Yeah.
22:42 --> 22:44 Yeah. This is pretty rad. Very good pick.
22:45 --> 23:06 Yeah, great pick. This is a good pick. Senistar, you touched a nostalgic bone for me that I had not thought about in. In several years. So when you're like, I'm going to go back to the retro and pick the incredible machine, I went, no fucking way. That's. That's digging deep in my old brain cave. That's fantastic. I'm pumped. You up with it.
23:07 --> 23:26 Yeah, that's the thing for me as well. It's just like, when I think of retro, I think of games I grew up with. My brain kind of goes back to, like, SNes and Nes and Atari to a degree. But there's games I played, like, you know, in the computer lab when I was in elementary school. Right. Well, that's why I get a trip out of play when somebody branch mentions, where in time is Carmen San Diego?
23:26 --> 23:26 Yeah.
23:27 --> 23:42 I love that game. And I forget that I played it as a kid. I just love it. But it's one of those, like, you. You played it, but it's that part of your brain that you just forgot about. I guess maybe because I'm trying to forget about school. I don't know. But there's a lot of it. I like it when the core memories are unlocked for that kind of stuff. That's pretty.
23:43 --> 23:44 Core memory unlocked.
23:45 --> 23:46 Yeah, we need.
23:46 --> 23:51 That's pretty. The retro achievement pop sound now of Chivopop.
23:51 --> 23:58 I do that, actually been adding things to this thing. All right, great pick. Wolf, you want to go next?
23:59 --> 24:34 Yeah. So mine is. I'm kind of pulling from the whole franchise because there's, I want to say four of them now. There's at least three. There's a. Well, there's at least four of them. I think I've played through three of them, and a fourth one came out, and my buddy and I have been meaning to play through that one, too. It's called we were here is the franchise. So there's. We were here. We were here together. We were here forever. And then I think the newest one is we were here. Friendship or the like that we were here for.
24:34 --> 24:37 Weird name. These are all co op, right?
24:37 --> 25:17 Yes. So they. They have to be two player, and so it's. It's uneven, much. Like, keep talking and nobody explodes. You're each solving the puzzle from different perspectives, and, you know, in. In the one that you're showing right now, you're in the same area, so you're sort of getting used to the mechanics at the beginning of the game here and figuring out how the puzzles work. And as you get deeper into the game, you get split up into separate paths. And so the idea is you're using the walkie talkies to communicate with each other and convey what you're seeing, and they're conveying what they're seeing, and you're trying to solve the puzzle, given the limited information you both have.
25:20 --> 25:24 So it's like a fucked up game of telephone a little bit.
25:24 --> 25:25 Yeah.
25:26 --> 25:32 That's the best kind, though. Is it just one environment, or is there multiple stages, or each game is its own environment?
25:33 --> 26:11 I think we were here was literally like, a small castle. We were here together. Was kind of a huge cavern and dungeons and another castle there, and that one was big. And then we were here forever. Started on this island that's sort of your base, and then you sail out somewhere and solve all the puzzles on that island. And then you come back and you go to a different island and so forth. So it's got multiple islands in the third one.
26:11 --> 26:21 Okay. It's. I'm just watching the video. Like, I've never even heard of this. Although, no, that's not fair. I think you actually, because I told.
26:21 --> 26:24 You that you and Cinestar should play it because it was so crazy.
26:24 --> 26:36 Downloaded it some time ago because wolf was like, we should play this together. And I was like, all right, so I picked it up, but I've not touched it myself. I have it. The first one that we were here, but I haven't.
26:36 --> 26:38 Yeah. Because I think the first one is free.
26:39 --> 26:39 Yeah.
26:39 --> 26:40 Oh, is it okay.
26:40 --> 26:41 Yes, it is.
26:41 --> 26:41 Yeah.
26:41 --> 26:47 Yeah. This would probably be a rad game to play live on stream. I can see that being really funny.
26:47 --> 26:48 Yeah, I think.
26:48 --> 26:51 And like, the graphics are pretty solid, too. I like, I like the style of the.
26:51 --> 27:24 Yeah, yeah. I think the first one took us about 4 hours, maybe, give or take. Uh, the second one probably took us more like nine to twelve. I'm Jesus. That's using three hour increments here because we, we play multiple sessions, like 3 hours a week, give or take. And then the third one probably took us about 15 to 20 hours. Now, that could be just because we're dumb, but.
27:26 --> 27:28 I don't think that's true, but. Okay.
27:29 --> 28:20 But it's, it's definitely fun because it's, it's, it's mostly puzzles, but sometimes it's also like race the clock, platforming challenges and stuff like that because it is a first person perspective game. And so sometimes there is a little bit of, you know, get from here to there within x amount of time. And all the games sort of convey a little bit of creepiness to them. There's no major scariness to them. Like there's the odd little sort of jump scare, just off putting environment that makes you nervous, but there's nothing that's really going to just jump out and kill you. It's not that type of game if you don't. This reminds me of, you didn't manage to avoid falling in the pit of lava as the stairs are removed from underneath you or stuff like that.
28:20 --> 28:25 Okay. Is there a death penalty? Like, is there, are you penalized for dying? Or is it just you just respawn?
28:25 --> 28:34 You go back to the most recent checkpoint. Sometimes it's right there. Sometimes it's, you know, 2030 minutes back, and you've already solved a puzzle or two since then.
28:34 --> 28:41 Are you, uh, are you bungee cord together? So if somebody perishes, you both go back, or.
28:43 --> 28:48 Yeah, if one dies, you're both done. Is okay. It considers that a game over.
28:48 --> 28:49 Gotcha.
28:51 --> 29:10 Until usually there's a situation at the end where. And it's minor spoilers. There are usually ways around it, but generally speaking, if you don't try and avoid it, one of you is left to die and the other one escapes.
29:10 --> 29:13 Oh, that's nice. That sounds like a joke.
29:13 --> 29:15 That's a nice way to finish it off. Yeah. Yeah.
29:16 --> 29:23 Later, bitches. I'm. I'm recalling some helldiver. Two runs where Jake got on the plane and we did not.
29:24 --> 29:28 Look, man, you're too busy Superman diving off cliffs. I can't. I can't be responsible for you guys.
29:31 --> 29:39 I should. For the timeframes that I gave, I should throw a caveat in there. That was for us, getting every single achievement in each game.
29:39 --> 29:40 Fair.
29:40 --> 29:48 Okay, so you're trying to beat, like, three, four times. The second one we beat twice, I think, and so forth. So.
29:48 --> 29:49 Okay.
29:49 --> 29:53 Is there anything that changes from play to play through, or is it kind of just a one and done type of experience?
29:53 --> 30:13 Um, you can choose to go the other route. Oh, there's one route so that you're experiencing the other side of the puzzle. And usually by the end of the game, you go to start over. You don't remember what the puzzle solution was. And there are certain elements that do get randomized to a degree. So you can't just be like, oh, I remember this. Was this? That was that. No, it's.
30:16 --> 30:29 Well, it's interesting. This reminds me, I was saying earlier, it reminds me of, like, the escape room type of puzzles that people used to do online. But this is, like, a whole environment to explore. And I like, how large is this? It's a sizable environment you're exploring.
30:29 --> 31:11 Yeah. So, like this, what we're seeing on screen right now is you're working your way through a sort of quarry, trying to get your way up to the top into a cave, and then you work your way through that cave, and then, like, it's got. There's so many locations in the third game, it's ridiculous. And there's a ton of lore that just explores why this world is the way it is. And it's all not delivered because of inventory items. No, there's actually voice acting. It's voice acting. Listen, there's stuff happening, like, in the past real time ghosts of these things tell you what's going on.
31:11 --> 31:12 You're.
31:13 --> 31:17 You get real time lore when you come and hang out with me.
31:17 --> 31:22 All right? Yeah. When Char breaks out, a book has to read it to you.
31:22 --> 31:24 My midnight stories.
31:25 --> 31:31 I love how it's acted story. That's. That's fantastic. From Zoff. Could take a cue from this game for sure.
31:32 --> 31:33 Where's your elderly book?
31:37 --> 31:58 And like I said, my buddy and I are looking forward to playing the. The fourth one sometime soon. But after a number of weeks of Diablo, we kind of wanted something different, so we're like, ah, let's do something a little more intense, right? Instead of just wandering around and seeing what you find, you know? Because that's kind of what Diablo two is at this point.
31:59 --> 32:05 How fun is it? Diablo is not intense as a co op puzzle game. Yeah.
32:05 --> 32:09 Have you been to the second stage? Have you been to the desert? That's pretty freaking intense.
32:11 --> 32:12 That's crazy.
32:12 --> 32:15 No, we wanted something more intense, not less.
32:16 --> 32:23 How. How much are these games? Like, there's four of them. That's. They must be making these for a while, and they must be doing well enough that they keep pumping them out. That's awesome.
32:23 --> 33:00 You know what's ridiculous is I actually got them all in bundles, except for the most recent one and that one. Actually, when it dropped, it was free for, like, a month, and so I was like, dude, we got to get this. So we grabbed it. But let me see here real quick. We were here. You can buy the whole series, which says it includes five games. Oh, there's. We were here. Okay, so I missed one. There's. We were here. We were here to. To. We were here together. We were here forever, and we were here. The friendship. You can buy the whole series for $25 on Steam.
33:00 --> 33:01 Oh, that's a steal.
33:01 --> 33:12 Friendship. I don't think if press B were to play the friendship, it would be the end of friendship. I feel like we were once friends here.
33:13 --> 33:20 That's the best part of club games. Just the damaged friendships you get along the way. Just, you know, it's like you play these games and have divorced.
33:21 --> 33:23 It's the friendships we crushed along the way.
33:23 --> 33:28 Oh. It's because they're on special right now. And so the bundle is 45% off. So that's just right now.
33:28 --> 33:38 The irony of us doing this cerebral puzzle thing is that there's actually a cerebral puzzle cell sale going on Steam, like, right now.
33:38 --> 33:41 So I did not realize that it started yesterday.
33:41 --> 33:43 Apparently, it started yesterday.
33:43 --> 34:33 There is affiliate codes. Honestly, I totally sign us up for that. That's wild. Yeah, this is. This is a great one, Wolf. I. I should have listened to you and played it. I think I'm gonna try to. It's just I do like puzzle games and I do like doing the co op games. I. But I mostly pick up games with my kids, not my wife. My wife and I, we fight too much when we try to cooperate on things like this. We had a stop playing pandemic for very good reasons, for our marriage. So I'll play Cooper with my kids. But the puzzle games are kind of hard for them and honestly, they're probably hard for me because I am. I'm not going to say I'm too stupid for puzzle games, but I struggle with certain ones. Right. So I'm curious to give this one a go, though, and see what it's like. But it looks really interesting. I love the environment. It's so big. This is just the first one, so I imagine they improve the look in the later ones. This is pretty awesome.
34:33 --> 34:45 Oh, yeah. The first one's a little glitchy in terms of hitboxes and stuff like that, but it's not long enough for that to be a huge factor. I would love to watch you two play it.
34:46 --> 35:00 I can't even get him to play Elden ring online with me. I kept saying, hey, you know what? Be a great idea for your stream multiplayer Elden ring. I'm so great at Elden ring. I can carry you through the bosses no problem. And he's just like, listen, I don't want to hear you talk for an hour.
35:00 --> 35:02 How many times have you beaten Elden ring, Jake?
35:04 --> 35:09 I installed it at least 50 times. At least. Yeah. I want to.
35:10 --> 35:31 I'm going to watch your vods of you beating the Elden elder. Elder beast. Please be great. Maybe I can get some. Some tips on how to finish the. Oh, wait, pretty sure I've already done that there. But no, we can only do that. But I like. I like November's name of the press be special edition. We were here as friends once.
35:33 --> 35:43 Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. This fucking wheel of pain is already going to break us apart. This being challenged. Can I manage doing co op games? That's great.
35:44 --> 35:52 This would be fun. This is something I have wanted to play with you, with you guys. Wolf, especially Wolf, since he was suggested the first place. I think we should.
35:52 --> 36:06 I just. I worry that if I played it with one of you, it would be a bit skewed since I have beaten them up to this point. Except for the most like I said, so I would already have the inclination of. Oh, this is how you solve this puzzle.
36:06 --> 36:12 Wolf can be the mediator. When, when Jake and I start barking at one another, he'd be like, all right, this is solving the puzzle.
36:12 --> 36:12 Move on.
36:12 --> 36:14 You two, shut the hell up.
36:14 --> 36:26 Yeah, look, idiots, okay? Spend 20 minutes going in circles. Here's where you go. I know. We need that live strategy guy. That could be wolf. He can be the elden ring. Book of lore.
36:26 --> 36:28 Living strategy guide. Werewolf.
36:28 --> 36:32 Yeah. Yeah. Sponsored by Prima Games.
36:32 --> 36:32 There you go.
36:32 --> 36:45 They're still around, right? I don't know. This is, this is a solid pick. And this is like, again, the combination of adventure and co op, but it's very much a puzzle game. I really dig that. So that's pretty cool. And there's a whole franchise of these.
36:45 --> 37:19 The puzzles range. Like, sometimes they're audible, sometimes it's visual, sometimes it's literally just, you know, figure out the maze. One person has a maze to traverse, but they can't see where the maze is. The other person is way up top, but it's just got to tell them how to get through. So it's, it's really cool how they think outside the box for these puzzles. And we, when I did it, when I played it with my friend, we cheated. We were like, we're not going to sit here and try to spend all night just clicking the button to talk back and forth. So we just turned that off and did it through discord. It.
37:20 --> 37:20 Nice.
37:20 --> 37:22 Doesn't really affect the experience any.
37:22 --> 37:23 Oh, yeah. I don't think it would.
37:23 --> 37:35 At least then you don't feel. So I think part of the idea is you're supposed to feel isolated to a degree, but I mean, it's part of our hangout time. So we're like, screw that. We're also gonna just b's throughout the night while we're being goofballs.
37:35 --> 37:50 So I'm weird. Like, when we play phasmophobia and stuff, I freaking love the environmental sound and the sound of the radio, what it sounds like when someone's trying to talk to you over the radio. So I always like having that stuff running just because it adds to the ambiance of the whole thing.
37:51 --> 37:51 So.
37:51 --> 37:58 So, but some of the, some of the voice to voice to player interaction is crap and it doesn't work. You have to do it that way anyway, so.
37:58 --> 38:18 Yeah, and I mean, for, for stuff like phasmophobia or backrooms or whatever, you know, you, if you're playing by the rules and you only hear people when you hear people because they're using the approximate walkie talkie. It's not as entertaining to hear everybody screaming is the problem.
38:19 --> 38:45 When you play back rooms, you have to have it on a discord call because you. You are missing out on some golden opportunities from people that are not within the same area as you. So I, uh. Yeah, that. That's. That's the one I'll let slide. Let that one run. We've got some good yips and. Yips and yells from wolf over here, too. The last time we played it, many, many moons ago, but, God, I need to get back into the horror stuff again.
38:46 --> 38:54 Yeah, there's a few I want to play with you guys as well. Like, I bought a couple too. I think. Actually, I think I have backrooms. I never did play that one. And I'm always down for Phasmo.
38:54 --> 39:01 This is going off the rails a bit. But I think Wolf and I got another backrooms game that he. He told me about, and I went and picked it up. So I have.
39:01 --> 39:03 Yeah, I picked that up.
39:03 --> 39:09 Yeah, the newest one you mentioned. But that's a. That's another day. That's another episode for another day.
39:09 --> 39:31 But what I do appreciate is that all of these games that we talked about and the one I'm picking in a few minutes are all indie games. Like, not one of them is aaaa day game, which is wild to see that the most, like, unique and stand apart. One of a kind puzzle games are all indie titles, right? Where indie indie titles are more likely to take risks, I guess. It's interesting.
39:32 --> 39:36 I would like.
39:36 --> 39:37 Right?
39:37 --> 39:41 Like. Well, would like meat Boy be considered almost like a kind of a puzzler kind of game?
39:42 --> 39:46 Um, yeah, I guess to a degree. Since.
39:46 --> 39:46 To a degree.
39:48 --> 39:50 Yeah. Because you kind of have to be platforming.
39:50 --> 40:03 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like Celeste, right. Where it's mildly puzzling to get through the next area because I even argue in certain respects that the ninja game that we all freaking love.
40:03 --> 40:04 Oh, the messenger.
40:04 --> 40:10 Yeah. It could almost be considered kind of a puzzle game with. With the way those rooms are set out just to just.
40:10 --> 40:11 It.
40:11 --> 40:14 Like a platform muzzler in certain aspects. I'm not saying it's like, full bore.
40:15 --> 40:15 Yeah. Okay.
40:15 --> 40:32 With the way we're talking about it, there's definitely some aspects of having to do the right thing to get through the area in certain. Certain areas. So especially getting, like, if you want to 100% that game and get all the achievements, you have to figure out some really nifty ways to get through some areas.
40:33 --> 40:42 All right. Actually, on that note, I have a friend who says that the Tony Hawk games are just puzzle games presented differently.
40:43 --> 40:45 I mean, he's not wrong really.
40:45 --> 40:50 I haven't played much of those. Is it, it's, is it more than just the tricks and exploring? Is there actually.
40:50 --> 41:02 Well, it's remembering the tricks and how to do them and just figuring out how to get the longest combos. And there's location, the old ones, like one and two. On the PlayStation, it was all letters, memorizing stuff out.
41:03 --> 41:04 Yeah.
41:05 --> 41:06 Okay. That's interesting way of looking at it.
41:06 --> 41:07 He's not wrong.
41:07 --> 41:08 Yeah.
41:08 --> 41:14 Tony Hawk underground ruled my life for most of the early two thousands. I loved that game. Absolutely loved that game.
41:15 --> 41:24 Well, November mentioned something. Want to blow your minds? Hitman. The world of assassination is classified as a puzzle game on Steam. And I 100% agree.
41:24 --> 41:43 He says, I I can argue, I could definitely argue in favor of that being a puzzle game because you do have to strategize how to take people out without, I mean, if you want to just go balls to the wall and kill everybody in the marketplace, then that's your prerogative. You could do that.
41:43 --> 41:44 Super hard to do, but yeah, you could.
41:45 --> 41:58 But yeah, to like, it takes hours to like find the right disguise and navigate slowly through things and, and not stand out. I 100% would say Hitman is, is a puzzle game. Yeah, I could agree with that.
41:58 --> 42:58 Especially when they give you like a sandbox of tools and they're just like build your own solution to this puzzle. And I think the, the most recent update, the world of assassination repackaging in that game. It's like a roguelite mode to it now where it's more randomized missions if that's what you want to do. It still has a story campaign, but there's a lot more they've added onto it. I've been wanting to go back to it, actually, for a while. It's on my backlog of games I want to go back to sometimes, but I love that Hitman game. I played it when it first came out to death. I kept up all the updates. It's, it's a solid, solid trilogy of games. I still think Square is nuts for letting IO go because they agreed to let IO leave their, their conglomerate and they've just been killing it as an indie studio. Or maybe not indie studio, but on their, as an independent studio. It's just been really great. I think they got a James Bond license and they're working on a Bond game. And I hope to keep the hitman spirit with that, because James Bond is all about gadgets and, you know, figuring things out. It could be interesting.
43:01 --> 43:02 They go that way.
43:03 --> 44:15 Yeah. All right, well, to get back to, I'll guess what we'll do. My pick. You mentioned, you know, meat Boy is a platformer. Could that be considered puzzle game? That kind of segues into my title? This is this one that came out just the other week. It made by one developer and a team of QA people and a business person. It's probably known more as it's the first title published by Big Mode. So for those who don't know, there's a very popular youtuber called Dunkey. He likes to do all these game critic satire and criticizing games in a very distinct style. The other year, he decided to make himself a publisher. He wanted to make a publishing company. And his idea was, I can pick games that are good, I can pick the games that will sell well. And he got a lot of flack when he first announced big mode as a publisher. But here we got the game. The first game he, he's publishing. He found a developer who's worked on this game for, I think it was seven years in development, and it's. It's killing it on reviews, like 90 plus. Like, I mean, I'm not gonna say it's game of the year, cuz I like the game a lot, but I can see why some people are gonna consider their game of the year. But it's a pretty solid game. It's called animal. Well, it's not. I think it's on Steam for like less than $30 canadian. Well, where is that?
44:15 --> 44:17 Yeah, it's 25 Us.
44:17 --> 46:35 25 Us. And it's, um. I don't want to spoil because it's a brand new game, but you're basically think like, if you're a Kirby, but you don't have to attack enemies. I don't know, it's. It's a bit of a mix of platforming, a little bit metroidvania, in that there's various tools and items that you can find in the world to help you progress. But at its core, it's very much a puzzle game. Every screen of this game, and I literally mean that every screen on this gigantic map has at least one puzzle, if not more than one. There's secrets everywhere. And as base core as this very stylized pixel blob, the whole look of this game is. Is fantastic. I love how it's retro pixel art, but definitely a modern take on it with the number of colors that has a CRT filter over top of it. The music is very atmospheric. I love the style of this game, even though, like, you can't describe what the character actually is. The world around it is very clear. And what you're. What you're seeing in terms of the name animal. Well, each section of the maze is themed after a certain animal. There's also, you know, like, giant kangaroos and a weird ghost cat dog thing. Like, it's a very stylized, very weird, strange game. But the goal of it is to find four flames, and then with those four flames, you basically, it's in a step toward escaping this. Well, I don't want to go much deeper in that because this is a game that, not unlike tunic, I guess, it could compare to. It's more than you think it is. At first glance. At first glance, you're thinking, oh, I just find these flames, you know, and platform my way out, and I'm done. And that'll get you credits. But after that, there's a. There's a chance to 100% it by finding these eggs. And there's, like, 60 plus of them hidden around the map, but they're hidden in very clever ways, and they all build on the tools that you unlock as you go. So in the beginning of the game, the platform can be very tricky, and that's where the meat boy kind of triggered it for me. There are some platforming sections that can be actually nerve aggravating. I think there's one particular section. I think, Wolf, you and I have talked about it at discord when you were doing it, almost frustratingly difficult. Throw your controller. Difficult as you had to navigate a very planned route of the maze to bring an object from one location to the other. And I don't. And I'm very cautious not to spoil it, but it's definitely. It was difficult.
46:35 --> 46:43 Yeah, I think we can say that, you know, you're. You're in danger the entire time, is the problem. So you have to plan your route.
46:43 --> 46:45 Yeah, I'm in danger.
46:46 --> 47:42 And you have to kind of use the items. You have to kind of navigate that. That. That route. But as you. As you progress through the game, you get certain items that allow you to almost break the game. One of the earliest items you get is basically a frisbee, which I know sounds funny, but you can use it to hit switches, bounce it off on enemies. If there's dogs, you throw the frisbee. It distracts the dogs. They don't damage you because you can't fight back. Really. All you can do is distract things. But one of the cool things you find out really quickly with the Frisbee is as you bounce it off of walls, you can jump on it and ride it, and then you realize if you ride it, it will take you off screen. And you can use that as a way to not sequence break, but definitely explore outside of the means of your normal jumping. And that part was really cool. As you explained how you're playing through a wolf, you got items in different orders than I did, which was interesting to me. It's one of those kind of games where you don't have to do it in the same order as somebody else.
47:46 --> 48:48 I do want to. This game definitely deserves praise. It's developed by one guy. Super, super cool, the way it's built out and planned out and all that. I have gripes and then I feel like too many of the items that open up traversal and exploration are sort of locked to late game or endgame in some cases. And I have an issue with that because, I mean, you were telling me about, you were going around looking for certain animals after you saw the credits. I don't know how you know that that's what you had to do because I still haven't found anything to tell me that that's what's going on. Unless the Internet told you, which that's super abs if the Internet just sort of collectively figured it out. But.
48:49 --> 51:24 So I'll say. I'll say that part, and I don't think it's too much of a spoiler because that part of the game actually is. It's required that you work with other people online to solve. And that's about the secret bunnies. And I'll just leave it at that. There are secret bunnies in the game and they're not relevant for the first part of the game. Like, we're talking post credit. This is post credit stuff, so they're not relevant in the beginning. So when you found it, you had not seen credits yet, so it wasn't necessary for you to find them. But I had seen a few of them as I played through initially, and I thought it was weird, like, what the hell is the point of them? And it's not until you beat the game the first time that then it unlocks the ability for you to actually do something with them. So when I found the first bunny that you found, because when you. You saw this really tricky spike room to navigate through it, and when you finish it, you're like, what? What the hell's the point? Right? I didn't get nothing. But it's because there's a. There's a bunny there, and that's what it was. And. But once you've seen credits, it will actually say you found a secret bunny, and that's how you know you're supposed to. You're supposed to find these things. The wider part of that puzzle, I haven't spoiled it for myself. I don't know. I've seen a lot of elements relating to the bunnies throughout the game. It's one of the themes in this game, so I know they're important, but I haven't found them all yet. I've only just. I've found credits, and I'm trying to get all the eggs. I think I have 46 of the 60 some odd eggs. And every so often, a certain level of egg collection, you unlock new items or new features of the game, and some of them are just wild. Right. Like. Like, everything from, like, stuff that affects your map to, I can't. I can't spoil this game. Like, there's a lot of secret stuff, and it's just a game that at first glance, you think it's a fun little Metroidvania slash puzzler, but there's more to it. And, like, I go back to tunic, where tunic is. At first glance, it's like a. It's like a souls, like. But at Zelda for the first, you know, five, 6 hours, then you realize it's actually a puzzle game. And the meta game of Tunic is where it gets really big. And even once you beat tunic and you get the good ending to tunic, there's a whole outside of the game meta puzzle that's really fascinating. Animal. Animal. Well, without spoiling, it has that as well. It's. It's a platforming Metrovania, but then there's 100% collectathon, and then there's a third layer that I've seen elements of that go outside of the game in really fun, interesting ways. But I. It's one of those games where I don't think many people are even gonna bother doing it because it kind of. It's kind of hard. It's kind of obtuse. I think you had said before, offline wolf, this game doesn't tell you nothing. Like, it really does not hold your hand. It tells you zero information. And that can be frustrating.
51:25 --> 51:40 Not just that, but trying to say this without spoiling anything. I find a lot of the end game content to feel like busy work instead of something that's drawing me in.
51:41 --> 51:41 Right.
51:43 --> 52:17 Like, well, there's no. Found an item actually shows. Like, I found an item that actually shows in a room you're in. Like, you'll see. Oh, use this item here. And I got that after a lot. And it's like, now I have to go wander every room. There's 256 rooms in this game. I don't want to go just wander 256 rooms to see what I find that I haven't yet. I've got 60 of the eggs, and I think I had, like, 55 of them when I beat the game.
52:18 --> 52:20 Oh, really? That meant you did way better than I did.
52:20 --> 52:50 Yeah, I found a whole bunch of them. And, like, I'm still looking around. Like, I've been forcing myself to do the end game stuff because I'm kind of over. Like, I just don't find it all that interesting. Like, it's not like, tunic, for me, tunic was like, I want to solve this. There's puzzles that are, like, right here and waiting to be solved. And this one is more like, yeah, go wander around and look again. See what you find.
52:51 --> 52:54 So go ahead. Go ahead, chart.
52:54 --> 53:12 Oh, I have nothing to contribute to this game. I've only watched. I've only watched Mister Murph play it last Sunday, and it looked very cutesy and fun other than what you've been spouting about how cool it is. And then wolf kind of also saying, I have gripes. I've been. If I were a steam review, I would be mixed right now because I'm getting.
53:12 --> 53:25 Yeah, I mean, okay, I should mention, like, for all the issues I have with it, the fact that this was developed by one person, it's absolutely spectacular. If you factor that in it way up.
53:26 --> 53:34 But my desire, just watching what we were playing and seeing if that's one person, that's freaking awesome. That's. That is really cool.
53:35 --> 54:19 Yeah. It exists, like, somewhere between, I guess, v. Vvvvvvvvvv. And what's the another world. I think those are okay. Like, two good places to put it between. And, you know, the fact that it was developed by one guy and you get this. It's a big game. I think I've got ten or 11 hours in it at this point. And, you know, there's. There's really cool stuff in this. There's stuff in this game I've never seen done before, which is rad. And then there's stuff in this game that I'm like, how did you come up with all that? And you're still giving me this busy work. It's frustrating, right?
54:20 --> 54:33 I. Watching it makes me want to play it, to be honest with you. But I have. I have. I will say it every time I want to go play it, because he's got. Giving me his foMo. Fomo's contagious.
54:33 --> 54:35 I'm a bad influence. I know.
54:35 --> 54:47 It did take me about 45 minutes to get into. I don't think I got into it until about the point where you get the disc. Up to that point, I was just kind of like, all right, this. This feels old hat, but, yeah, like.
54:47 --> 54:49 Once you get Celeste or something.
54:49 --> 55:35 Yeah. But once you get to the disk and the world starts to open up, then it's like, oh, cool. And as you find all the items to explore with and help you open up new areas. Oh, cool. And then you get to the end of the game and you beat it, and they're still giving you new stuff that drastically changes where you can reach and what you can explore. And it's like, why couldn't you give me more of this before I finished the game when I was still freshly exploring some of these areas? I don't like the sheer amount of backtrack that it's forced upon you. And I know Metroidvanias are all about explore, backtrack, open up new areas. But I feel like this is why, or this one is way too much backtracking, and it feels like it's by design.
55:36 --> 56:55 So. So there's a. You're right. This is a problem with Metroidvanias, but I feel it's one that was kind of solved with Metroid dread, which came out a couple years ago. In Metroid Dread, it has backtracking. It wouldn't be a Metrovania without it. But they did things in that game where at certain points in the game, certain areas would be locked off, so you didn't have to backtrack through the entire map to find out where you need to go next. They kind of gave you a pocket of map to explore and to kind of lead you through it a little bit better. Not like the old school Metroid, which was just wide open like this, where you just. You basically have to explore everything all over again for secrets. So I feel like they could have locked you down to an area a bit better and made a little easier on. On your sanity. Because I'm with you, I don't exactly want to go through all 250 plus screens to find secrets again. I like looking for the eggs, but the 62 that are there, it's a tad too much. I think some of them are very easy. To find 64. Okay? Which makes sense. 64, that's very pixel number related number. But it's like the item I got now. It flashes the screen, and it basically shows you where some secrets are. And now I realize that the item you got is the stuff above that, which really points you to where you find stuff. But now I've been going through every single screen, okay?
56:55 --> 57:07 It's differently usable. Like, let's say you're standing near a spot where, you know, because it doesn't make it clear where you can use one of the items that can break blocks.
57:08 --> 57:09 Right?
57:09 --> 57:18 And this one, not all the time, but oftentimes with this item, you'll see something in the background that's like, hey, use that here.
57:18 --> 57:18 Okay.
57:18 --> 57:37 And it's like, oh, okay. Or you'll see little sort of hidden messages from time to time and things like that. And I just wish, like, I get that that's endgame, but I wish some of the other things that I got after beating the game I had received before beating it.
57:37 --> 58:40 Right? Because that's my thing now is I've gone through the map. I'm basically in the middle of going through it for the third time. And when I say going through it, I'm going through every single screen looking for secrets because I'm trying to find these eggs, but I've gone through. This is the third time. Like, the first time is, you know, to beat the game normally. The second time, I was trying to find. I won't say what it is, but I needed a certain number of certain items, and I couldn't find one of them. There's just one that was hidden, and I had to go screen by screen by screen, checking every wall, every surface, using every brand new item I got, plus using the old items, because sometimes I just forgot. And I went screen by screen. I was taking notes on the map of what I did for each. Each screen to make sure. And eventually I found it very frustrating. It was one of the earlier rooms in the game, and it was up in a corner somewhere, and I felt stupid because I should have found that. It's like tunic, right? Tunic was like, you know, tunic was neat in a way that you'd exit a dungeon or a cave, and the exit would take you somewhere in the beginning in plain sight as an. And you realize, oh, I could have gone backwards to this dungeon if I'd. If I'd only explored better.
58:40 --> 58:40 Right?
58:40 --> 59:23 It's like that, but it's not satisfying in this. Whereas in tunic, it was cool because it didn't hit you with that. Very often in this game, you have to explore almost too much, and that's why I say it's not game of the year. I love this game. I think it's great, but I think that it's almost a grind. And I think the end, the postgame stuff is not as cool as some of the stuff that tunic was doing. Like, tunic also kind of bent into the nostalgia buttons with the map of the manual. Like, it was printed in the style of old manuals. It's really cool. There's also a lot of stuff outside of the game that's present in that. That's why I love Tunic so much. Had I not played Tunic the other year, I think I would have loved this game even more than I do. But I keep comparing to Tunic because it feels similar.
59:23 --> 01:01:08 Tunic is a hard follow up for anything. I mean, how clever that game was put together. Like you say, like the manual, you have to have them. You have to use the manual. It is not there for nostalgic purposes. It is there to beat the game. You have to use it. And I have never in my life played a game since in my forties where I was looking at a manual trying to, like, solve puzzles through the manual. I mean, if we didn't do an entire episode on Tunic, that would still be the best puzzle game that I have ever played because it had all the aspects of the souls, like, difficulty that I enjoy the look of the Legend of Zelda, which we all like, the top down isometric without the hot puzzles, but the puzzling and the clues and the stuff that was just so deep within the game that you had to go digging for it. But like Wolf said, like, you wanted to go dig for it. I. You know, usually if I'm like, I don't care about that puzzle, I'm not gonna worry about it. But I actually found myself drawing, like, the golden symbol that was cut in half that had sprung. I actually was like, I had a pen and paper. I showed you guys, like, my scribbles of a madman, of me trying to solve these puzzles, just running around, and I haven't done that with a game or wanted to do that with a game in years. Tunic is just. It's hard to measure anything against that game. It's almost unfair because of how well they did everything to make that game what it was. So my tunic is the bar that you have to jump to get the best game. Best puzzle game ever made.
01:01:08 --> 01:01:15 Yeah. No. And I don't want to compare this to tunic because that's just kind of unfair. Tunic was made by a whole team of people. It's.
01:01:15 --> 01:01:16 Right.
01:01:16 --> 01:01:39 It's 3d instead of 2d. So that gives them a lot more freedom and leeway to do things and, you know, camera angles. Got to play, got to be play with and things like that. But I do feel like, like Jake said, animal. Well, feels grindy almost on purpose. And it's weird to call a game with no combat grindy.
01:01:39 --> 01:01:40 Yeah. Right.
01:01:40 --> 01:02:29 Just having to go back and search every room again is a grind, especially after I've already spent a lot of after the credits game exploring stuff. And it's like, here now you have a thing that'll show you other stuff. Go do it all again. And it's like, come on. And sometimes there's little things that I don't notice, like background elements. And sometimes those background elements are super important to finding stuff, but the game never really makes that clear until you're almost at the end or at the end, and then it's like, oh, come on, now I have to go. So I'm not on my second time exploring the whole map. I'm on my, like, 6th time. That's the problem.
01:02:30 --> 01:03:24 Yeah, but, like, I mean, they do give you, like, the. The difficulty in traveling the map before is easier in that they give you things that make it so the platforming is trivial, which I appreciate, because at the 6th or 7th time, exploring the map, you probably don't want to have to do the tricky jumps anymore. And you don't have to, but you still have to go screen by screen looking for secrets. There's one. There's one item I got fairly early on, and I didn't know what the hell it did until after credits. And then I was just. I was just throwing it in every single room just to try it, just to see. And eventually it broke a block. And I was so pissed off because there's no way to tell what blocks it would affect. But once you figured it out, like, then I kind of had an idea what to look for in the screen, but it upset me because it wasn't just the ground, but also walls. And there's a wall that I broke with it, and I got really upset. That kind of, that kind of thing was a frustrating, but the walls don't.
01:03:24 --> 01:03:35 Make it apparent what will break. The floor doesn't make it apparent what will break. And I'm pretty sure I've still got, like, two more items I'll find before I'm done with the game.
01:03:35 --> 01:03:35 Yeah.
01:03:35 --> 01:03:40 If I continue playing to find four eggs. Two more items.
01:03:42 --> 01:04:02 That's interesting. I do like, though, that you get items and some of the items kind of can be used and substitute of another one. Like, you don't necessarily like. There's one puzzle where you have to use. It's a yo yo. It's one of the first things you get. But I did it with the. With the. With the frisbee. Right. There's. There's different. There's different ways of doing some of the traversal through the game.
01:04:02 --> 01:04:03 Oh, yeah.
01:04:03 --> 01:04:40 And that comes back to the element of it feels like you're breaking the game in a good way by using different items you think is maybe not expected. I think the guy playing for that in the whole, the way the map is designed is very cleverly designed. So if you want to use. You know, I don't want to say anything, but there's different items you can use at different screens to get the objective. And I love that about this game. And that's why I think it's so cool, and that's why I think people need to play this game. But I think. I think nobody in their right mind is going to do the third level of puzzles. I think a lot of people, even the second level, the 100% of the eggs, I think a lot of people are going to skip or bounce at that point, which is. Which is a shame, because there's. There's still. There's still a game there.
01:04:41 --> 01:04:56 I mean, there. There is one puzzle that does require, you know, multiple people like you. You need at least 50 players coming together to solve it. And I'm pretty sure the animal. Well, discord, I read, solved that in under 24 hours.
01:04:56 --> 01:04:57 Yeah, day one.
01:04:58 --> 01:04:58 So.
01:04:58 --> 01:05:37 And that's kind of frustrating, right? Because, like, when we look at tunic, the big puzzles of tunic that took at least a week, I feel for people to figure out before it was, like, public knowledge. Right. So it's. This is a game where if you are going to play it, try to go in as blind as possible and try and play with a friend or two at the same time. And if all of you stay blind and you just share what you found amongst your friend group, I think this is one of the water cooler games. That'd be a blast. Right? Like, I wish I played this at the same time as you, Wolf, because I think it would have been cool to bounce off ideas for off of you. That's pretty cool. Although I think you're further ahead now than I saw pinging you later. Try and wrap this up. I.
01:05:37 --> 01:06:17 You know, I will say, and this isn't, this is nothing against the game specifically. This is instead about against the community, which I might get flack for. I don't know. But I was looking online for that puzzle. I was talking about where the community has to come together to solve it. I was like, well, how did you guys know to do that? How did you figure out what was going on behind this puzzle? And it took me digging online for like an hour and a half to find that information. Everybody was just like, here's the answer. Here's the answer. And I'm like, but how did you get there? I want to know how you got there.
01:06:17 --> 01:06:23 Don't tell me the Answer. Tell me the Solution. Like, how did you get there? How did you stray to that? I get that, yeah.
01:06:23 --> 01:06:42 I don't want to just have the answer. I want to know what got you there. Because if I can find out if that I already maybe missed that or found that or whatever, and then maybe would have come to that conclusion or not based on how I'm playing, then I'll solve it. But I don't want to just be like, yeah, I did it there, right? That was frustrating.
01:06:42 --> 01:07:34 There's one boss which I know, I know from just mess around them that I have to beat it by using a certain number, a certain pattern of inputs. We'll say with a certain Item. I know that's what I need to do. But same if I go online, if I go to Reddit right now, animal, well, has a pretty active subreddit, but nobody's tagging things as spoilers. It's plain as Day in the subject line of what the spoiler is. So I had to, like, not go there. I have to purposely keep away from everything online because it's so front and center. The solutions to things. I'm with you. They don't, they don't let you find them gradually, like tunic. I felt respected more of that mystique behind the game where they didn't want to give the answer until the very end, at the very least, and they'd warn you multiple times, whereas animal, animal Wells community is just like, here you go, and I'm with you. Like Twitter, Reddit, igns walkthrough very front and center with the spoilers. There's nothing hidden. And that's, that is disappointing, I think.
01:07:34 --> 01:08:04 Yeah, I hate to say this, but it feels like it's all sloppy on the community driven end of it because one, like, directions to get to locations that you're looking for, if you need to find something are awful. They're just like, yeah, start in this room with this and this. And I'm like, what room is that? Like, tell me what color the walls are. Like, the map is color coded. Start there.
01:08:04 --> 01:08:37 Yeah. Yeah. Like, the risk is you read too much into the wrong section and you have spoiling parts of the game you didn't want to. Like, this is natural to want to have, like, clues or hints on a certain part, but. But you don't want to spoil the stuff that you want to figure on your own. Like, this is a game where you want to do as much of it as you can on your own. And it's like the games that you guys mentioned as well. Like, you don't. Nobody wants to play a puzzle game with the walkthrough hand holding you every step of the way. It's nice to have it if you really get stuck. Yeah. But the joy of these games is that you get to play them on your own, blind, and that's the important thing.
01:08:37 --> 01:08:37 Yeah.
01:08:37 --> 01:09:09 Like, I know for Animal well, it was a very popular stream game. Sorry, wolf. Just. There's a guy named Thor, the pirate software great streamer. He was playing animal well, and he has a very large following on Twitch, and a lot of them together were playing as he was streaming it. I think they're. He's the major reason the online puzzle got solved so quickly, because he had such a group of people together at once watching him go through it, and together they were kind of solving it. So I think that's kind of why it got broke so quickly. I don't think we had that with tunic, not. Not to that degree, because he's got a huge chat.
01:09:11 --> 01:09:33 Now. I I don't. I don't want anybody to come away from this thinking. I'm like, no, don't play this game. No, absolutely. If this sounds like it's up your alley, play it because it's a good game. Just go in knowing that, you know, if you hit endgame and you have not found all the items or a number of the items, you're in for a lot of trekking about.
01:09:34 --> 01:09:38 Yeah. If you like sounds, that may be your jam, right? Yeah.
01:09:38 --> 01:09:43 And I do think there's. The game seems like it also has a speedrun element to it.
01:09:44 --> 01:09:46 It looks like it would have that.
01:09:46 --> 01:10:08 It's. And I don't think it's a huge spoiler to say, like, after you beat the game, you come upon a room that has a giant clock and three numbers. And I'm assuming those numbers are beaded in this amount of time. And you get this, beat it in this amount of time. You get this, beat it in this amount of time. But I don't know what you get, and I haven't looked that up. That's just my interpretation of the room not knowing anything.
01:10:09 --> 01:10:59 There is an incentive to play through the game deathless. I don't know how possible it is, but there's an incentive. It's, I heard it's vanity only, just like it's a little icon. But you, if you solve a deathless, you get something to reward you for doing deathless, which is probably a second playthrough. It has to be. I mean, like, I mean, for a game with no combat, it's a lot of running. I died quite a bit. But yeah, it's. It's interesting. I know it's an awesome game. It's a fantastic game. It's one of my favorite games I played this year. I'm not going to mention it on game of the year this year. There's no way. I've played too many games that are great this year. But it's not that it's bad. This game is really good. On a dry year like on any other year, this could have been easily a game of the year pick. For me. It's that good. It just. Just a couple minor annoyances that kind of get tainted because I played something like tunic the other year, which was like you said, charge such a high.
01:10:59 --> 01:11:00 Damn bar the other year.
01:11:00 --> 01:11:04 The other year. Well, what, two years ago? Three years ago?
01:11:04 --> 01:11:05 Gosh, probably.
01:11:05 --> 01:11:07 Yeah. I don't know.
01:11:07 --> 01:11:13 We've got our tunic. Our tunic. Things that were 3d printed for us, still on display.
01:11:13 --> 01:12:42 That's true. Yes. That's how much I have mine. I found mine. I impacted. I have to put it back on my shelf because. Yeah, Jerry made those. Those are awesome. All right, well, guys, I mean, great games like these are, again, when people say the puzzle genre, I feel like a lot of the time people's brains go back to tetris, doctor Mario, luminous. And those are fantastic games in their own right. But I think puzzle as a genre is so vast and it mixes things like we talked about today, co op with your friends. Right. Which is that great. The anxiety and, you know, frantic pace of some of these versus like, you know, atmosphere is really strong in some of these games as well. Like, we have a game like animal well, which is platform focus. Right. Platform is a big part of animal well. So there's definitely. It's a genre that crosses so well with many different things. And I do like this genre a lot and I feel it doesn't get enough attention on, on games media and on YouTube and whatnot. So this is, this is great to go through these picks. Also, I gotta add, I don't want to forget for people, people watching YouTube, we did show clips of video gameplay from other channels. I do put those in the description as well. So please, you know, we. I always appreciate folks who are doing no commentary or long plays of these games. They need the recognition. So please, you know, if you want to watch more of these gameplay, please click the links in the description. It takes you to their channels. I'm trying to call it more because as somebody who has to be people who do YouTube, I appreciate when people take your stuff. So I'll make sure credit is given.
01:12:42 --> 01:12:45 Where it's due because they've done good sharing.
01:12:46 --> 01:12:51 Yes, it's sharing for the post AI world. We got to give credit where it's due, especially for this. So.
01:12:51 --> 01:12:52 Right.
01:12:52 --> 01:12:58 So for all the footage, it is care of other streamers on YouTube and I've put their links below or it will after this episode is. Is done.
01:12:59 --> 01:13:00 Boondabar.
01:13:00 --> 01:13:08 Um, I think that's an episode, guys. Is there anything you guys want to shout out or talk about real quick before we head out? No.
01:13:08 --> 01:13:20 Streaming on Twitch. Lance to dark souls three. Trying to get through dark souls. We're actually making some good headway. I'm surprised. I got three bosses down in two and a half hours. That's a record. So we're. We're killing it.
01:13:22 --> 01:13:26 Yeah. You have Erdtree coming out next month, I think, right? Next month, yeah.
01:13:26 --> 01:13:30 For Elden Ring, June 20. I believe it's its release. But I think I get it a week before because it.
01:13:31 --> 01:13:31 It.
01:13:31 --> 01:13:32 Because I already bought it.
01:13:32 --> 01:13:42 So I gotta not buy that game. I can't. I didn't beat the. I didn't beat the base game. I'm gonna want it hard to play that DLC. There's no reason for me to play that DLC.
01:13:43 --> 01:14:07 I'm honestly, like, I'm playing Dark Souls three and I'm getting the itch to go back to Elden ring and play it again so that when we go into Erdtree, we can kind of have like a refresher of what. What we're doing. But I don't know, because it's a long. It's a long game. It's not. It's not a short run. And if that comes out, I want to dive right into it. So next. Next month. Guys. Erdtree, come on over and hang out with me. I'm going to be playing some archery.
01:14:09 --> 01:14:56 Okay. All right, well, we are. Press me to cancel again. If you like the show and you've been watching either twitch or on YouTube, please drop us a subscription or a follow. They're free. And also, like the video, it does help us with that almighty algorithm we try and beat. And if you prefer to listen to your podcasts, we're available everywhere. Just a heads up, if you are like me and you're using Google podcasts, Google being Google is killing support for Google podcasts as they shove everybody to YouTube music. But of course, any other podcast app that picks up an RSS feed, you're going to be able to hear press b. So whether it's Spotify or Pocketcast or any of those apps, we're going to be there. So make sure you transfer over. We definitely appreciate it. Otherwise, yeah, that's it. That's the week this has been. Press me to cancel. Thank you and have a great week.
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