Indie Impressions: Grunn

[00:00:10] Welcome, welcome, one and all. It's another Indie Impressions episode. It's me, Jake. You know me from the Pre-Order Bonus podcast, but I have a guest and I am super excited to have this guest on the show. We have got Bo, Bo Po from the Underplayed Podcast joining us. Bo is awesome. Big fan of Bo, big fan of Bo's Twitch streams. That is Bo, two underscores Po. You need, you need both of them because it took me actually in an embarrassment.

[00:00:40] Embarrassingly, amount of time. I don't know if it was hours or days it took me to find. I could have found the link somewhere else. Anyway, super wonderful streamer, wonderful podcaster, talks a lot about great indie games with Disco Cola. Underplayed is fantastic. You recently got this new season out that's really fantastic. And I have not been super great listening to the new season, but I did listen to you guys talk about this game and Inscription.

[00:01:09] And so that is the episode I highly recommend. But enough me talking. Bo, why don't you say hi? How's it going? Hello, Jake. Hello, everybody. It's so great to be here. It's such an honor. I am a huge fan of you, Jake. I also love seeing your stuff on Twitch. Everybody go follow twitch.tv slash chipdip18.

[00:01:31] I'll say it a couple times throughout the episode if I have to. But hello, everybody. It's great to see you. I'm so excited to talk about Grun. Grun is a game that I've, I'm still kind of reeling actually from it. So I ended up beating it in two different stream streams. And that second one, I mean, we're going to get into it deeply, but holy cow. It just, it really rattled my brain.

[00:01:59] My brain is still vibrating from all the rattling. That's a great word for it. Vibration. This game causes vibration. Yeah. In your brain, in your nerves, in your thoughts. Yes. And it's important that it's vibration and not vibes, because this is not a vibes game. No. This is a vibration game. There are vibes. There are vibes and they are thick. But there's also subsequent vibrations that occur.

[00:02:28] Yeah. I've just been living in a constant, I guess, state of aftershock. Totally. Just having completed the game. It is. No, yeah, totally. That's been my experience too. You are very recent in playing this game. And I've actually had the good fortune of being able to watch several hours of you streaming it this past week as we sit down to record. It's been just like within the past seven days.

[00:02:53] And that's been just such a joy to revisit the game in that way. And then I've also picked the game back up over the past few weeks and just gotten a few of the endings again, re-explored. Yeah. And I initially played it back around when it came out. So it's been in my brain for a while. And it's also really fresh again. Very good. We'll talk about this in a moment.

[00:03:18] But playing through this game, I was super curious about the speedrunning community behind it. So I was like, this game has to have a speedrunning community. And so what I'll probably do, actually, is just put in the description here the link to the speedrun.com videos, which I highly recommend watching as well. But folks, a little bit about Grun. So this is obviously the game that we will be talking about tonight. So this is developed by Sockpop Collective.

[00:03:45] But very specifically, the game says it's by Tom Vander Bugart, which my Dutch is awful and my German is also awful. So I'm not even going to try to pronounce that well. Yeah, I think you got it pretty close. I've been saying Tom Vanden Bogart or Bugart kind of interchangeably. So I think we're kind of close. The only reason I am avoiding Bogart is because the Harry Potter creature is a Bogart, right? The one that shapeshifts. Oh, yeah.

[00:04:15] I thought that was a Bogart. Oh, my gosh. This is Hermione Hermione all over again. For folks who remember when Harry Potter first came to the States, everybody in the United States of America called Hermione Hermione. Hermione. That's so embarrassing. And then we heard it said out loud as Hermione. And you know what? People, you know, older generations are like, I remember when JFK was killed.

[00:04:45] But I remember when I heard Hermione from the first time. I was at elementary school and I was like, no, that name sounds dumb. That moment shaped you forever. Yeah. So anyway, it could be Tom Vanden Bogart for all we know. But Tom is also just what I've been calling him. Tom from Sockpop. Tom from Sockpop. Lovely fellow. And Sockpop. I actually was very lucky to get a key for this game from Future Friends.

[00:05:11] So I just want to thank Future Friends for the opportunity to play this game the weekend it came out. And when I got the press email, the guy from Future Friends described Sockpop as an indie dev boy band. Which I really liked the description of. So it's basically a handful of guys who make games, really short, kind of smaller experiences on average. And they've just released dozens of games.

[00:05:41] I love what they do. And a ton of their other games are on my wish list on Steam. I just think they're making lots of really cool, experimental, weird stuff. Yeah. From my limited experience with Sockpop collective games, is they're just typically like even 20 to 40 minute long, short, little weird things. And Grunt is, I think by traditional gaming standards, is still a short game.

[00:06:11] I have, I think, between five and six hours on record having played it. And I got, there are multiple endings. And I got just under half in that play time. Nice. But yeah, so Grunt is a robust, big experience compared to other things as Sockpop. Definitely. I think I spent a grand total of around 10 or 11 hours to get all the achievements. And then I played the demo for this game when it was in NextFest months before it came out.

[00:06:41] I think this was in NextFest in June 2024. Okay. And I played it, I played it for like four hours when it was just a demo. And I never spend that much time playing a demo. And now I've replayed it a little bit this past week too. So I've put in like so many hours into this. That is so many hours into Grunt. That's great. Yeah. So shorter game. We'll talk about all sorts of details here.

[00:07:09] Last thing I want to say, this was released October 4th, 2024. So this game is still relatively new. I played this on Steam. Now, as far as I'm aware and that I could find, it is only available on Steam. Can you fact check me on that? Or is... I have notes here. It is on PC and Mac apparently. But I played on PC as well through Steam. Okay. So there you have it. Just from the...

[00:07:34] Just sometimes when I play games like this, I always wonder if a game like this is going to make it to Switch. And I would typically say no for something like this. However, Grunt kind of... I don't know. It made a bit of a splash when it came out. Like so Switch owners who are listening, will this come to Switch? I would say there's like a 20% chance it makes its way there, which is much higher than

[00:08:01] something I would give for this type of game just because it was so popular. And I don't know what porting experience they have over there. Yeah. I don't know. I can't say for sure if it'll come to Switch. But one hurdle that it has cleared is it has gotten at least 500 reviews on Steam and has

[00:08:21] achieved that overwhelmingly positive status, which is where your game needs at least 500 reviews and it needs at least 95% of all reviews to be positive. And it's sitting at over 600 positive reviews right now. So that helps a game become much more discoverable on Steam. And I think once you get that snowball rolling, it's probably easier to make the pitch to get this game on other platforms.

[00:08:51] But every platform is going to be different. Every game and publisher and developer is going to be different too. So I hope that it comes to more platforms because anytime an awesome game comes to more platforms, we should celebrate that because it's just an opportunity for more people to try a great game that they might not have otherwise. Yeah, I would love to see some sort of like definitive edition of Grun with two extra endings.

[00:09:18] Oh, and I have to imagine there were ideas that were maybe scrapped or just like some content that maybe was kind of built out that didn't make it into the final build. So that would be super cool. That would be cool. But we're daydreaming here. So don't get your hopes up. Exactly. It would be great if this thing came to other platforms, but currently no signs there of that happening. Let's see, folks, you've listened to Indian Impressions episode. You kind of know how this all goes down.

[00:09:47] We will be talking about Grun in three different categories. The first one will be the art direction. Here we'll talk mostly about the visual art aspect that we see. It has a really kind of unusual filtered low poly style. So that's something that we could discuss. Music, audio, all that stuff is totally fair game in here as well. Next, we'll be talking about the narrative. We talked briefly, Bo and I, before recording about what spoilers we should try to avoid.

[00:10:15] And I think with Grun, it's really difficult to map that out. So typically in the pre-order bonus podcast, we don't go beyond 20, the first 20, 30% of a game. Well, all that stuff we talk about vaguely or thematically after those moments. Here in Grun, I think we've kind of decided that we'll avoid really special moments of discovery and what's considered the correct. I'm doing air quotes, correct or good ending of the game.

[00:10:41] So that stuff we will talk about after a spoiler warning, after we do our third category, which is the game design. And then after we discuss the ending and some of those spoiler moments, we'll discuss who we recommend this game for. Who we think would probably get the most bang for their buck, their most enjoyment out of playing the game like Grun. So we'll bring it back to the top. We're talking about the art direction. I kind of use this random descriptor here. The reason why I think it's like, it's like, it's low poly for sure.

[00:11:11] Right? Like it's very much makes you think of like late nineties, early two thousands, probably just late nineties. The polys here are pretty, you can see what geometric shapes are there. But I don't know. Like when you first start the game on a, on the bus, you get up and you go and you can, if you'd like talk to the bus driver and you look at the bus driver.

[00:11:35] And that polygon or the many polygons that make that bus driver's face, they're shifting and they're not really, it's like liquid polygons. Maybe like what is like with the filters, you know what I'm trying to say? Maybe you could say it better. Yeah. So there's an animation technique. It reminded me of is, I don't know if you've seen like cartoons where still characters will sort of jitter and vibrate as they stand there.

[00:12:03] To sort of give a liveliness. So even if a character isn't actively speaking or isn't actively moving, we can simulate this idea that they are alive by giving them squiggles. And it's actually this technique called squiggle vision. And then you see it a lot on 2D animation. One, I could actually relate this to an indie game. You see this in the indie game, Tangled Tower.

[00:12:29] And there's a follow-up to Tangled Tower coming out, hopefully this year called The Mermaid Mask that I'm really looking forward to. Oh, yes. But this is really, I just love this because it really captures your eye and it seemingly doesn't require a whole lot, even if the character is just standing still. And so I think we're sort of getting that in a 3D look here. It's sort of taking the squiggle vision 2D squiggle vision idea and applying it to polygons. And yeah, it's that sort of aspect.

[00:12:59] It's the low poly stuff. And it's also just how they're staring at you with very blank faces. It's sort of off-putting, isn't it? It is very unsettling, right? So I like this. We'll go with squiggle vision, right? So you get the squiggle 3D polygons doing their things. On top of that, there are idle animations. And so these characters, these NPCs that you interact with, one, you can't understand any of them. Literally, it says, cannot make out what they're trying to say.

[00:13:26] Yeah, they talk to you in like a, oh, sort of voice. Yeah. Which would have been so fun to record. Because there's still a lot of personality, I feel like, in each of them. But anyway, this is the world that you stepped into. These characters are not right. And so you kind of get from the beginning of the game, this really unsettling, like, what exactly is happening in this game? Now, of course, the game is pitched as a very normal gardening game.

[00:13:56] And it's very tongue-in-cheek in how it's presented. And so you kind of already know that, just reading about it. But getting into the world, you're like, what is wrong with everybody here? Yeah, you arrive on a bus. You're the only passenger on this bus. You're being hired for this job to take care of these grounds. And you immediately feel like an outsider. You immediately feel like you're almost a different species than these other people that inhabit this town.

[00:14:25] You're not supposed to be there. And this is kind of made plain, just as you're going around. One, just not being able to understand what anybody is saying, you know. And then two, I loved the sounds of this game. So kind of just talking a little bit about art direction. You're in this unsettling world with just unsettling people. But as soon as you pick up the garden shears and you're just going, just bumping into things and you're just snipping, snipping, snipping away.

[00:14:52] I got to say that this game had some really pleasant, really pleasant audio design. Just kind of the sounds of the tools and the things that you're doing as you're cruising around. It all sounded good. And like you could get into a rhythm. And I felt like there's this weird contrast of like this really nice, sharp, clean audio design. And this like really, you know, moving, unsettling world, which it almost to me kind of brought on the sense of like daydreaming. Right.

[00:15:22] To like what extent is this world you're in actually real? So I don't know. I think the art direction worked really well for the kind of mystery that this game keeps. I was about to say this game presents many mysteries to you. Now, this game throws mysteries at you like they're rocks. And I think the art direction really complements that because it's just everywhere all at once. But at the same time, you can find a rhythm while you're in this world. Definitely. Yeah.

[00:15:50] And while I'm snipping, while I'm doing that, those chores of just cleaning up this lawn, I love the auditory experience of this game. And a lot of it is the sound effects like you mentioned. And sometimes audio cues are sort of cluing me into directions to look. Um, so once you do enough of a certain activity that sort of unlocks an event sometimes, and that event coincides with some sort of noise.

[00:16:18] And so there's a magpie bird that, that shows up and it might squawk. And so that tells you, oh, maybe you should turn around. Um, so I'm getting a lot of that. So that auditory feedback is really cool in this game. And then also as I'm moving through, I'm noticing the color of this world. Yeah. I think one of the things that drew me to this game when I first saw it in a showcase or something, maybe like a year ago, was just the, the weird sort of aberrated colors.

[00:16:47] There's a lot of like, what looked like pastel colors, but also some darker colors mixed in there too. And I just love this color palette in here. I, I'm with you. This has a really wonderful color palette. And there are these pastels that you want to associate with like a really happy countryside, just like little village out there. Right. But the way this game, this is what's so wonderful about it.

[00:17:15] I keep coming back to the word unsettling, but none of it feels right anyway. You know, just because of how all these colors are kind of thrown at you and the game's like big mascot, if you will, is this garden gnome. And you encounter this garden gnome. And it, I, to me, this is pretty emblematic of what you're looking at. It looks totally normal. Garden gnomes should be normal. People have them.

[00:17:39] But at the same time, it's small enough that when I first saw it, I was like, oh, this was, this was all over the game's promo material. And that was squiggle vision. I was like, wait, is there an idle animation on this gnome? Right. And so I think the game is really good at being inviting, maybe in its foundation, but really in its presentation. It's just like, it's creeping, you know, it's creepy crawly. It's giving you heebie-jeebies everywhere you go.

[00:18:08] There's an uncanniness everywhere you go in this game. Because everything in this game, at least at first, I'll say at least at first, is very much of this world. When you go to this lawn and start cleaning it up, it looks like a lawn that could exist. You know, it's, there are graphics that obviously look like a video game, but everything is sort of laid out in a logical way that we as humans are used to.

[00:18:35] There's a path that runs along the side of this property. And that makes sense. There's a road with a cornfield and a gas station. There's a church and a park. And all that stuff just sort of makes sense. There are logical items in logical places. But then the deeper you look, the more experimentation you try, the more that you discover that the rules of the world are sort of doing whatever they want.

[00:19:03] This game operates with its own sort of set of otherworldly rules, too. So that mismatch of what we're seeing and then how what we're seeing behaves, that's sort of what's giving me the creepy crawlies as I'm going through here, too. Yeah, no, I think you've said it really well there.

[00:19:24] The last thing I want to say related to art direction and just kind of the audio experience is that you have, you collect an array of tools. Hey. And my favorite one by far was the magic trumpet. Oh, yes. And the magic. Were you just tooting that thing everywhere when you first found it? I first found this thing.

[00:19:48] You find this object and it doesn't really make sense in your toolkit because the other ones kind of have to do with gardening, right? And you get this magic trumpet. First of all, it's definitely clarinet shaped, right? Like. Yeah. And then you play it and it's like. Like, clearly you don't know what you're doing. And this thing is just loud and obnoxious as heck.

[00:20:13] Like, and I picked it up and this is when I first started running into these like uncanny moments of like, hey, wait, something here is not logically correct. Something here doesn't make sense. And it just became my magical trumpet of protection because I just didn't know what it did. I just knew that it was loud and it caused like this color distortion to kind of come over the screen.

[00:20:36] And so anytime I got scared, I would just started tooting my magical trumpet as I was running along, which ended up actually being a really good strategy to find some things. But yeah, I don't know. I want to bring that up because I think you say it well to kind of reinforce this point. Things seem like they should work logically, but you get into just how off, off beat a lot of these sounds are and a lot of these actions are.

[00:21:06] That you just start trying to find a logic that makes sense. And I think a lot of that just ties really neatly into how the game is presented through the art direction. Yeah. And, you know, the horn, the trumpet, whatever the instrument is, it was kind of central to you as you're exploring around. And like when you think of the game, you think you might tend to think of like, what tool were you always going to?

[00:21:32] And I always think back to the shears, you know, because that's what we see first in the promotional materials for this game. And it's not like I was trying the shears on everything, but I think that the shears are just cemented in my mind when I think of Grun. I see in the promotional materials for this game, like this is a very normal gardening game. I see the garden gnome, which itself is a really sort of off putting thing in real life.

[00:22:00] So I see why they centered on that for promoting this game. Yeah. But then also you see the clipping and you just get the sense that something is amiss. And so I will always associate the shears with this world, I guess. So, yeah. And the fact that it's in first person, it's right up in your face. It's so memorable. I love that. Yeah. The shears was the grounding item for you playing this game. This is real. This is true. Right.

[00:22:29] As everything else is falling apart. And a lot of people will approach this like how I did and I think how you did as just like this is a get your chores done first game. You know, like because that's your only directive at first. You've got to do this job. That's really all you know how to do. You get the shears immediately. And so this is a gardening game. It is a very normal gardening game for the first, I don't know, five, ten percent of it. And then it turns into something else.

[00:22:58] Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's that's well said. Let's see. As I'm thinking about kind of the experience here, I always bring this up. I feel like whenever I talk about music and I'm going to say it again. So I'm sorry for folks who've heard me say this a million times. But I feel like making music for video games is incredibly difficult. Oftentimes it needs to be there to enhance the experience, but not detract from it.

[00:23:25] And so a game like Grunt, there are moments of music, but I could not hum the melody. I could not tell you exactly what the tunes were like unless they were used for specific like audio related mechanics like the magic trumpet, for example. Right. And so I don't know, like, I guess this is I always feel weird talking about this.

[00:23:49] I think the music was done well because in the moments of like heightened emotion, there was something blaring in the background that contributed to that emotion. But there was nothing thematic. Like, for example, I'm playing through Final Fantasy VI right now. And I'm listening to that soundtrack all the time because I love it. And it's very, you know, orchestra, like symphony focused type music. There are clear themes, motifs and melodies. That's important for a game like Final Fantasy. I don't think.

[00:24:19] Well, I don't know. Maybe a creepy garden gnome theme would have worked. But they didn't try it. So they can't say it didn't work. There you go. But I do think that what they had in terms of music was probably fine because it didn't detract from the experience. Does that make sense? Yeah. I think the music in here does the job of augmenting moments, like you said.

[00:24:39] When it needs to show up, it really reinforces what's going on and really heightens the emotion of what you are experiencing, for sure. And I actually liken this to another 2024 indie game that happens to be my favorite indie game of 2024, Animal Well. Animal Well was very similar where Animal Well definitely does have music. But I would never remember to listen to the soundtrack of Animal Well.

[00:25:06] I wouldn't get in my car and think like, oh, you know what? On my drive to the office this morning, I'm hitting up the Animal Well soundtrack. And similarly here, I think the music is effective for sort of underscoring things, augmenting things, adding to things. And I don't think it really needs to do more of that. And actually, maybe the soundscape being a little lighter on the music front adds to that uncanniness that we've talked about.

[00:25:33] Yeah, it's strange because one way of describing this game... Oh, shoot. I glossed over this in the opening notes, so we could talk about it now. But I've seen a lot of descriptions for this game as a horror game or horror adjacent in some capacity. I wrote here FPS gardening sim because at the end of the day, you're doing gardening and first-person perspective. And when I think of horror games, you know, I mean, there is a really specific style of music that accompanies those.

[00:26:02] However, specifically in the genre of horror, not having music and emphasizing silence or emphasizing audio is really paramount to some of these moments. So, for example, I would consider Bloodborne... I'm sorry, we're calling out all the big ones tonight, guys. Please do. Yeah, I love Bloodborne. Grunt sits up there in the company of Final Fantasy VI and Bloodborne. Bloodborne has very important musical moments.

[00:26:32] It very much has boss themes. Even like the music box, right, that you can use with Father Gascogne. Oh, yes, totally. Yeah, it's great for underscoring moments. And it also has thematic and story elements, too, when you hear that stuff. Yeah, right. And it works in that setting. Now, I haven't played Silent Hill 2 remake because I'm a giant wimp, but I've watched a lot of streams of it because I'm always sickly curious. And that's another one that people are like, oh, I love the music for this.

[00:27:01] But it's like not... But do we love the music for it? It's like music's in there, but it very much, I feel like, falls into this camp of how do we augment or enhance these moments versus how do we create specific memorable themes, right? And so I think Grunt kind of leans on the side of, no, yeah, having the creepy garden gnome theme. Well, we don't know because it's not there, but maybe it probably would detract more than add. Totally.

[00:27:28] And this is a game where you can choose to do something and maybe doing a certain activity could trigger a certain theme to start playing in the music, if it had more music. Like, let's say you start doing stuff with the gnome and then the gnome theme plays. Well, another thing you can do in this game that I love is you can choose to explore a route and then decide, you know what? I actually don't understand enough about this.

[00:27:59] Canceling that, I'm going to just do a 180 and go explore this thing over here. And I feel like if themes were playing for certain events and moments all the time and I was canceling what I was doing, I think that would be really disorienting in a non-complimentary way. So I actually am really thankful that there aren't all of these situational sound cues and music cues happening. Yeah. And I'm sure they thought about this. I'm sure Tom thought about this. Yeah.

[00:28:25] And I actually am really thankful that it is sort of a lonelier soundscape, even though I love a good soundtrack. I did a volunteer music radio show for 10 and a half years. I love music. I love discovering music. I love music in indie games. But I think this is a really bold, clear example of you don't always need to have a jam-packed soundtrack in your game. Man. Beautifully said. Loved it. Okay.

[00:28:55] Anything else about art direction that you would like to get out there before we move on to narrative? I don't think so. I would just say, as we keep going, we discover more otherworldly things. And I guess a lot of that comes out through the visuals, obviously. And I reached a point where I wasn't sure what I was going to see in this game.

[00:29:19] And so that discovery, which happens largely through the visuals, was just always such a fun moment. Like, you know, I will spare details, but you know what I'm talking about. Oh, yeah. If you know, you know. If you know, you know. If you don't know, listen to the spoilers or just buy and play the game. All right. Definitely. Moving on to narrative. We've talked about kind of the premise of the game. You arrive on a bus alone, seemingly to do this job.

[00:29:47] And so you arrive on a Saturday and you have a directive from the gardener. You read the, or excuse me, not the gardener, but the property owner, the house owner. They leave notes in the tool shed. It's like, hey, if you could get this all tidied up by Monday, that's what you need to do. And so that's how you start the game. And you go into the tool shed. You read these instructions. You find some shears and you find a key to unlock. I think that's the key to the bathroom, right? The toilet. Yeah.

[00:30:17] And so you're like, okay, I'm going to start shearing. But you notice that you need to remove all the molehills. This is also in the directive. You need to remove the molehills and you also need to water the plants because the plants are really seriously suffering. The flowers are looking bad. They're beyond saving, in my opinion. Yeah. I mean, it's a miracle that you would be able to bring them back to life. Yeah. They're in a sorry state.

[00:30:44] So you have the shears and you're told that the trowel and the watering can are supposed to be nearby. Yeah. And so you start shearing. You're out there shearing. You're having a wonderful time. I love trimming the hedge in particular. Oh, yeah. Hedges are great. A nice clean hedge with a clean line, clean corners. Like that's a beautiful thing. And this is a low poly game. So those edges and corners are especially sharp, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Very appealing. Very appealing geometry.

[00:31:13] Great curb appeal to this place once you're all done. So you get going and you realize quite quickly that you're missing two tools. Yeah. You're missing the trowel and the watering can. It's like, oh. And honestly, that's where you go from there. At least that was like the narrative sense of urgency that I had was like, okay, I got two days to clean up this garden. It doesn't look that bad. I think I can manage this relatively quickly.

[00:31:42] Time does tick by in 15 minute increments. So you are on a timer and you reach this point. At least I did was like, well, where is everything? Right. The magpie will squawk. And that is kind of your first clue of, hey, you can find a tool somewhere off of this property. I think in terms of like a narrative setup, I mean, it checks all the boxes, right? Right.

[00:32:08] If this was just a regular gardening sim, I think I would just be super frustrated. I'm like, you're like if I were going into this, like have you played like power washing sim or lawnmower sim? I've watched videos for sure. Okay. Yeah. Well, a game like that, which my kids are actually really into. Yeah. I'm like, okay, I can't do this. This is an adventure game. I think that was a moment for me. I was like, you know what? I've heard that this game is wacky.

[00:32:33] And I guess this is the narrative moment where I have to leave the property to figure out what the heck is going on. Yeah. And that seems like kind of a dangerous thing to do because immediately this guy who's hiring you to do this is saying like, my house is off limits. He's making that very clear. Yeah. You still have the option to approach the door and try to open it. And you're told like, this is off limits. Don't go in here. But you feel like you're super limited.

[00:33:01] Like you are given this shed, this little dinky shed that you're supposed to sleep in. That's also where your instructions are. And it's also where a phone is. And it's also where your shears are. And it just feels like this is a very limited space. I should not break the rules. Like if I were to leave this property, I would be breaking the rules. But it becomes very clear that you're supposed to leave this property. Yes. You must leave. And you don't really have a lot of means to do so.

[00:33:31] And so I actually spent, I don't know how long. It probably felt much longer than it actually was because it's not like this property is sprawling, right? But I was like, okay, so then what do we do? How do we get off the property? This is where I get to mention watching you stream this on Twitch because I saw a lot of these opening moments. And I saw them with your sort of through your fresh eyes. Like I got to see how a newcomer to this game was behaving.

[00:33:59] And it really opened my eyes to how they guide you and how they narrow things down so that even though it is really mysterious, and even though you don't have two of your tools, like what the heck? Why don't I have two of my tools? It still really narrowly guides you in a way where I feel like it is intuitively pointing you in the right direction, maybe even when you're not even noticing that it's doing that.

[00:34:24] One of the ways that it does this is when you step over the bridge to go into the lawn, there's a plank that breaks or falls down, and then you can't go back over the bridge. So that's limiting one direction. But then another thing that it does, and I think this kind of fits into the narrative, is it gives you these Polaroids.

[00:34:47] And the Polaroids are sort of pointing you to these points of interest throughout the world. And so looking at these Polaroids, you see one for the cabin that you're staying in. You see one for the churchyard that's next door. You see one for the fence, and maybe there's a weak spot in the fence. So I was just noticing that you were kind of exploring those Polaroids one at a time and using those to sort of narrow down where you should go.

[00:35:17] Yeah. Oh, I love having this outside perspective. Yeah. This is also a psychoanalytical foray in how Jake plays games. Do you feel like you're being watched? Kind of like how you feel like you're being watched while playing Grun? Like you feel like the characters of this world are always watching you, even if you can't see them. They are. Yeah. You know, I think that's part of the world building and the storytelling, too. I agree. And I'm glad that you bring this up.

[00:35:47] And this does become a really key part of the narrative. And so as you find these Polaroids, one of the early ones is the weak spot in the fence. Like there's, I think it says something like along the lines, like Rada needs to be replaced. And so you know it's weak, and you know we have garden shears. And this is the first moment of experimentation, right? It's like, can I use the garden shears for something other than shearing? Can I use them to get through this wall? Guess what, folks? Yeah. You can.

[00:36:13] It's a teaching moment for not only the shears, but what you will do dozens of times with other tools throughout the rest of the game. Really? Yeah. You have to get creative. And as soon as you get through the fence, and this is kind of the last thing I'll talk about the game linearly, because I think after this moment, the game no longer is linear. Like you really can approach it, or you can try to tackle these different points of interest from the Polaroids. Just whatever way kind of seems to make sense for you.

[00:36:42] So you break through the fence, and you're in a part of the yard that is closed off, and it's also unkempt. And so the first thing I did was I started shearing. I was like, okay, back to the little grindstone. Oh, there's a patch. I missed the patch. Back here, you know. Yeah. I've got to cut this grass. And then you get this prompt at the bottom of the screen. It's like you get the sense that this does not need to be trimmed or whatever. Yeah. You're getting hints. Yeah. Really unusual hints.

[00:37:07] People telling you what your gut is kind of telling you to intuit as you're going through the game. And then it's back here. Well, there's a door. And there's a rusty car. And then you're like, well, what can I do with the shears? What can I interact with? And you discover that you can interact with many things. And a key that I was looking for is found back there. And that's also where you find, I'm not going to say it, but the first moment that I was like, you know what?

[00:37:37] I need to be paying a lot closer attention to what's happening in this game. Right? Yeah. You're talking about when you turn around. When you turn around. Yeah. Something happens. Something wonderful, wonderful, beautiful happens to you. And I saw that moment. I saw that reaction that you had to it. It was wonderful. It was grunderful. It was grunderful. It was only something that could happen in Grun. And so from here on out, you can, I mean, the narrative is going to evolve quite a lot.

[00:38:05] But from that moment, you realize, okay, I have much more mobility in this area and I can actually access some of these moments of the Polaroids. Hey, I have an idea of maybe where I can get the watering can. Because you find out the watering can is somewhere off property. Right? And yeah, this is why from this moment, I don't think I'm going to talk about narrative like quite so linearly. But maybe we'll go into more like thematic and kind of vague descriptions. We'll get into more concrete details when we get to the spoiler section.

[00:38:32] But yeah, it's this part of this moment of the game where it's like, okay, it's time to explore. It's time to see what the heck is actually going on. And I think it was this moment that I was like, okay, all the fidgety weirdness of the art direction is telling me a lot more than I was listening to when I first entered the game. Yeah, totally. There's another sort of creepy moment that can happen in the toilet. And I only mention this because this is also in the opening area.

[00:39:02] But you see another thing that's off-putting. And so those two events, and maybe you're not familiar with it yet. Maybe you didn't see it. I didn't. But this is something I maybe want to get into during the gameplay section is just like, what kinds of things did we discover? And maybe it's more of a spoiler thing too.

[00:39:24] But one thing I love about this game is how everybody who plays it has their own journey of discovery and learning. And I love games that let us explore the same world. You and I can explore the same world. We could each play for a handful of hours, and we would each come out the other side with a different list of discoveries and tips and tricks to trade with each other. This game is that to a T.

[00:39:54] And I love watching people stream it. I haven't just watched you stream it. I've watched a couple other friends on Twitch stream it. And every time I see someone play it, I notice how differently they behave from me and also how differently they behave from everybody else I've watched play. So a little bit of your personality comes out in how you play too. Yeah. And I think this is a perfect segue to talk about gameplay, sort of game design.

[00:40:20] And the game very much is, I mean, it's sandbox puzzler. I saw somebody describe it as which you can hear the hesitation in my voice. Like, I don't love that description. It's not wrong. It is kind of like this web of interconnected, I mean, fetch quests, if you will, because you need to find items so you can do other things and you can get past certain points in the game.

[00:40:45] But at this point, the game, yeah, nonlinear and you do spend a lot of time learning. And so the Polaroids are probably the number one game design mechanic here to talk about. Like, you're going to stumble across these Polaroids and sometimes right off the bat, kind of depending on your exploration, you're going to know what that's pointing to. Oh, there's something here that I didn't get. And it's indicated when you look at your Polaroids, there's a checkmark system next to it.

[00:41:10] And so you can, like, partially complete or fully complete a Polaroid, which amounts to some type of a task. Sometimes that task is as simple as discovering things. Sometimes it's, like, single interaction. Sometimes I feel like it's layered interaction within a specific space. A bunch of these I never solved, to be honest. A bunch of these I tried to solve them multiple times. And I was like, you know, I just don't have the item that I need to accomplish this.

[00:41:37] And so it felt like as much as there's discovery in this game and learning and there are moments of clarity and moments of, like, oh, my gosh, I can put two and two together. There are plenty of moments of, I don't know if this is a dead end, if it's a red herring, or if I'm just too dumb to figure out the Polaroid. Yeah, it kind of does. So this game reminds me of Outer Wilds in a few ways. And you just reminded me of a new way that it reminds me of that game. Okay, yeah.

[00:42:05] Where Outer Wilds is a game that I played a couple years ago. We reviewed it on Underplayed. It was actually our 10th featured game. So it was featured on our 10th episode of Underplayed really early on in our show and part of our first season. And one thing that we talked about in that episode is how Outer Wilds gives you all of these hints and all of these breadcrumbs to larger mysteries.

[00:42:31] And when you look at the big map of mysteries in your ship in that game, you have all these big question marks. And then leading to those, like a conspiracy cork board, if you will, but in a digital format, are all these smaller, there are all these smaller question marks with lines leading to things. And things are connected in all kinds of intricate ways.

[00:42:56] And it was so fulfilling to sometimes find all the small breadcrumbs that led to the big breadcrumb. And then you've got a large mystery of the game solved. You've got a huge chunk of the game sort of figured out. And that's a whole segment. And then you can sort of work on the next segment. But there are times where you get maybe 70% of the breadcrumbs. Yeah.

[00:43:21] And you might try for two, three, four, five hours to find the next 30% of the breadcrumbs for that mystery. And you might not come across them. And so you feel like you have all of these bricks to a building, but you don't know how to build the building. And so I think that is kind of going on in Grun too.

[00:43:41] But what I appreciate about Grun is with the Polaroids, how they sequence them out sometimes, you will get the sense that this Polaroid leads into this Polaroid and that leads into this Polaroid. So there's a really nice sequencing effect. And they're not spread around in a nonlinear fashion so that I don't know what order to explore them.

[00:44:05] So I appreciated that sometimes I was told, okay, this is A, this is B, this is C. And I would work on C and I'd be like, I'm so stuck. What is going on? And I'd go back to my Polaroids and I'd go, it's C. I should be working on A. And so the checkmark system and then the more linear fashion than how Outer Wilds does it are things that I appreciated a lot. Yeah.

[00:44:32] The Polaroids are all labeled by number and letter if need be. And so, for example, you can have Polaroid 1A, 1B, 1C. And those are order the way that Bo's describing here. And so you got to, I don't know, I felt like, I don't know, I felt like I was herding cats. I think my brain just got a little bit of information saturation at some points.

[00:44:56] And then I had to stop and I had to think, okay, what avenues can I explore here? And that's typically when I like settle myself down, then I'd pull up the Polaroids and I'd be like, okay, do I know what this is? No, I don't. So I'm not going to work on that right now. Do I have an item that seems it might work here? Yes, I do. Let's work forward with that. And so I think at this game, because a bunch does, it can feel like a bunch gets thrown at you. There is a logic and there is a system to accomplishing these tasks.

[00:45:26] And so I agree with you very much in that, like the game is designed for you to beat it. It really is, right? It's designed for you to really be able to piece things together. The other thing is that you accrue quite the bag of items. I know there's one achievement in there, at least for having 20 items on your person. Yeah, there are achievements for all kinds of things. There's one for getting all of the coins or most of the coins, I think like 25 coins or something. Yeah.

[00:45:56] And so that's an entire dedicated run to just doing that. And you don't have to do every single thing to roll credits or to get the true ending. Right. But we use all of these loops. It's a time loop game, really. That's another way. It's like Outer Wilds. But we use all these loops to build this library of knowledge that we can draw from when we're trying to solve the next mystery. Yeah. Yes.

[00:46:23] Which is, you do, like you say, I mean, it really plays like a time loop game, even if the game doesn't present it. I mean, there are some moments I feel like when you have a, and we're even using time loop and speed running lingo here. When you have a run that dies, you know, you are sort of teleported in a way back to the Saturday morning when you first show up on the bus to continue. And of course, your knowledge, the gamer, you know, the player knowledge carries over.

[00:46:52] But so do your Polaroids, I believe. I believe that's right. Yeah. So you can accrue knowledge in game as well as what. Yeah, there's a meta progression, which I always like a good balance of. I like when maybe most of the information is on the human side, like most of the progression is the learning on the player side. But then some of it is in game. Some of it is that reference material that keeps me from guessing.

[00:47:20] I can always go back to that menu to go to those Polaroids, see what I need to check off yet and what I've already done. Yeah. And there will be somebody actually, as I was streaming this, they pointed it out in the chat room that in the chat room, you can tell I'm like ancient because I said that instead of just chat told me. I didn't even catch that at first. Oh, no. Oh, no. I'm right there with you. Yeah.

[00:47:50] Chat told me. Sorry, let me get my lingo right. So chat told me that on the Polaroids, like when you need a specific event to occur, it actually will be labeled on the Polaroid. What event you need to. I know. Isn't that awesome? And I didn't notice that for a long time. Actually, I might have not ever fully noticed that until I watched you stream. That's one of maybe two or three things that I learned watching you stream, actually. Yeah, the information's there. It's great. Yeah, so good.

[00:48:18] And I wish I would have noticed that when I was playing at first, like back in October. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I think the game design here is super wonderful. You do get into this open sandbox. Like I said before, I kind of hesitate to call it a puzzler. It's not exactly entirely a fetch quest. It just feels more like a lab kit of experimentation, right? Yeah, it's a playground. Yeah.

[00:48:45] It's a playground where there are lots of weird things and you have tools for interacting with those weird things. And objects and people and events don't behave how you would think. Because, again, it's like otherworldly rules for how these things happen. Yeah. And just to iterate on that a little bit, it's not exactly like video game logic, right? Video game logic dictates that a boss will have three attacks and then a window for punishing.

[00:49:15] Or video game logic kind of dictates that you go to the waterfall and there's treasure there. That's sort of like this meta knowledge that we kind of expect every single game to either have by genre or whatever it is, right? The logic of the world of Grun is simply like a non-human logic of like, hey, if I try this thing, I might get this thing to respond in this way. I might get this consequence. Now, you need this nice combination in there.

[00:49:44] Because everybody, you mentioned this, Beau, and I'm going to avoid spoilers talking about this, but Slater in the chat was saying, oh, my go-to tool was the hammer. Yeah. So what Slater means is they were just swinging the hammer around everywhere they went, right? That's what they meant? Yes. Okay.

[00:50:04] So like when you come across like a Polaroids problem, the first go-to solution, because you do some trial and erroring in this game is for Slater, take out the hammer, bonk it with the hammer. Does it respond? Does something happen? You know? For me, it was the magic trumpet. That was my go-to like, can I magic trumpet things? You're just blowing that thing everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. I was probably the most obnoxious gardener to ever show up in that villager.

[00:50:32] But I will say, again, without spoiling, if you take the trumpet and you just blow it, walking around every square foot of the game world, you will find things. You will find things that you won't find if you do the same thing with the other tools. Yeah. And I love that. And I love Slater's strategy, too, because it reminds me of a really cool moment that I had watching a streamer friend play this.

[00:50:59] So I was watching a streamer named Spiffany play Grun. So you can check them out at twitch.tv slash Spiffany. Spiffany played through Grun. And Spiffany, similarly, was sort of wildly just swinging the hammer at one point. I don't know if she was trying it on everything. But she used the hammer at a certain spot to get an item.

[00:51:26] And at that point, I had not discovered how to get that item. And it totally opened my mind to how everybody can explore this game differently. Because in that moment, she potentially unlocked a path to discovery that was way different than mine.

[00:51:44] Because by getting this item, by swinging the hammer at this particular spot, she had this item that she could then use in a different place to get another item to then take to another place to do a thing. Yeah. Again, without details. I didn't know how to get that thing with the hammer. I was wondering, how do I get this thing? And so in one second, she revealed to me, without even trying, how to get this thing.

[00:52:12] So again, that's just why I love watching people play this. Because there was another moment with the hammer during your stream with a part where there's water. Yes. And you used the hammer. Maybe it was Slater who suggested this. It was. It was, yeah. Yeah. Do you want to talk about that moment? Yeah, sure. So there was this moment with the water. Because we're speaking in vague terms now. Because really, you should just play this game.

[00:52:39] There was one moment where I simply could not figure out how to fully complete the water moment. I kept getting stuck. And then I discovered a way out, a way to accomplish it. And I did that. And then Slater in chat was like, oh, I can't, like, Slater, I mean, similar, was like, oh, this is how I did it. I just used this. And I was like, wait a second. What? You had a much simpler solution to this problem than I did. You know?

[00:53:08] And so, yeah, this just speaks, I think, to really wonderful game design. Because we talk about way too often. And I hate to bring this up. But we're not going to get into it into too much detail. But the yellow paint problem. Right? The yellow paint problem, for those who are not familiar. In fact, when I'm teaching my introduction to humanities courses, I actually spend moments in my lecture talking about the yellow paint problem. This is when I talk about the unit on video games. It's become that pervasive.

[00:53:38] Anyway, the yellow paint problem is how often and in what manner should game developers create intentional design to guide a player through a specific mission, through a specific walking space? So, typically where the yellow paint problem comes up. And from what I understand, it's called the yellow paint problem because in Resident Evil, there's yellow paint freaking everywhere. Right? To tell you where to go. Totally. Which, honestly, I don't know.

[00:54:07] What I've come to discover as both a gamer and somebody who's watched people play games on Twitch is that people are dumb. And people need... Well, and when you're streaming, you have the streamer debuff. Yeah. Which is where you become approximately 40% to 60% less aware and less perceptive. Yeah.

[00:54:31] So, you know, in a typical sort of solo play session alone off stream, I might find the yellow paint annoying. During the stream, I might super appreciate it or I might not even notice that it's helping me. And I might just think like, I'm really good at this video game intuitively. Right. It's the yellow paint doing its job. It's the yellow paint doing its job, right? And so, in the world of Grun, it does not have the yellow paint, right? There is no yellow paint really telling you.

[00:54:58] The closest thing that you'd have to yellow paint is the Polaroids that are pointing you towards specific areas and telling you, indicating whether or not you've accomplished a task there. But because the world is open, right, it can't really tell you where to go. And so, I think it takes really, really smart game design to be able to have Spiphany play Grun one way. Bopo plays it one way. I play it another way. I caught, actually, Emily, right?

[00:55:27] So, a specific egg who has been on the indie impressions. She and I talked about Phoenix Springs. I remember I watched like 20 minutes or something of her streaming because I was like, no, I want to play this game. So, I can't watch anymore. But she played it differently, you know? Yeah, totally. And to be able to have all these people play this game in totally different ways and still manage to get to the end of the game, which it shocks me to this day. I know. How few people actually finish games. It is quite the achievement. It is a huge accomplishment.

[00:55:57] And the thing with Slater pointing out the thing with the mallet and the place with the water. Yeah. I didn't know about that. So, after playing this game for, I don't know, between the demo and the full game, 15 to 20 hours total, I still didn't know that. I'm still learning about this game every time I sit down to play it or watch it. And it makes me wonder how much is in this game that I actually don't know about yet. Because I've done every achievement.

[00:56:25] I've gotten all 11 endings. I, in my prime, which was, you know, kind of in late 2024, when I actually got into speed grunting this game. I kind of got into a speed grunting phase with this game. Ooh, nice. I could speed run the true ending in about seven and a half minutes without menu quitting. Because menu quitting is not interesting to me.

[00:56:50] That's where we reach a level where it's just like, I'm not coordinated and smart enough to do that. But I don't usually speed run games. Don't find that interesting at all as just an activity. Loved that with Grunt. Interesting. And a lot of that had to do with how this game also gives you multiple options for doing things. Like the part with the water.

[00:57:18] Either you can use the lever or you can use the mallet. Yeah. Like the little dome structure that leads to the maze. There are two ways that I know of to get across that gap that you can't cross. Yeah, dude. Yeah. I know of two ways. There could be a third. Or for another place in the game, there's a boat that takes you across a pond to the park. Yeah. And there's an or.

[00:57:46] Well, I know of two ways to get that or. Oh, interesting. Two places where that or exists. Ors come in pairs. It checks out. That's true. Right? That's true. So there's an example of like, there's a logic to the game. But then maybe what we do in the next few steps doesn't follow the logic of our world. So I do kind of walk back what I said a little earlier where like the game doesn't really operate with realistic rules.

[00:58:16] Actually, I would say that items that you find, like a coin or an ore, will clue you into how to use those items. You know, you use a key and a lock. You use an ore with a boat. But then what you find on the other side, sometimes that's what flips something on its head. So I like that there's that balance of reality and fiction going on with the rules.

[00:58:42] But yeah, it's the different paths, the different options to solve problems that I love too. And I think that's how a lot of people are able to get to the end of the game despite their different styles of play. And then a huge thing for me in this game, I haven't mentioned this enough yet. I actually did talk about this game with other people a lot as I was playing. Oh, okay. And I started doing this back when the demo came out.

[00:59:10] So when the demo for this game was just a small section of the game, there were only like a handful of endings. There weren't 11 endings. And you know the dome structure that leads to the maze? Yeah. That wasn't in the demo. Oh, interesting. When I played the full game, I was like, what is this? So there are whole entire new concepts in the full game, which is great. But I remember playing the demo when it came out for NextFest. And I played that for like four hours.

[00:59:40] I would talk to Emily a lot about it. We traded tips back and forth about what we found. And then when the full game came out, we started doing that again. And we had to erase a lot of our knowledge from the demo because they changed stuff. Oh, interesting. Some stuff was the same, but they changed stuff. I wonder if that's because they knew people had played the demo and they wanted it to be fresh.

[01:00:05] And I also wonder if it was because they just had to tailor the demo experience to be shorter. So they sort of mended things so that it wasn't, it was easier to tie things up, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that activity of sharing knowledge was central to my experience too. And I don't get to do that in a lot of mystery games, especially when a game is so new and not a lot of people write about it online.

[01:00:35] Yeah. At a certain point, if you know people playing it, you kind of have to talk to them if you want to find everything. And we were so passionate about the game that we wanted to do that. And it felt very much like a water cooler game or a playground game. And what I mean by that is it's the game that you go home and you play for a couple hours each night. And then you go talk to your coworker who's playing it or you talk to the kid at recess who's also playing it. Yeah.

[01:01:03] And you go, this is what I did last night. I found out what this coin does. And they go, wait, what? I haven't found the coin, but I found this trumpet thing. And you go, oh, I found that and I couldn't figure out how to use it. And then they go, well, I found this place where you could use it. And so you trade info back and forth. And I found that so intoxicating when I was like in the first five hours of this game. Oh, man. I love that. Yeah. And I think it just kind of speaks to how this game.

[01:01:33] I think one of my biggest frustrations when people say like, oh, like you could be grunt. I think how long to be has that like four hours or something. And sure. I think you could beat grunt in four hours. But this game is so dense in that way. Right. Being able to bake in multiple paths to specific achievements. Right. Where you do need for that like true ending. You do need specific things for it to happen.

[01:02:03] Yeah. But it is a huge web that, you know, is overlapping lots of different paths in order to accomplish that. So, yeah. Really cool to see. And something else. I always check this because, you know, this is the kind of stuff that I'm excited about. On Steam, just seeing like the percentage of completion for specific achievements. And I feel like for grunt, they are much higher than average. Meaning that, you know, this is all anecdotal. I haven't run like a full scale analysis of this.

[01:02:33] But it seems like the game design, because of its density and because of multiple paths to accomplish the same goal. It allows for much higher completion rates of specific achievements and endings of the game. Which I always think is very cool. And often when you're working toward a really specific achievement, you might not realize it even. But you might be working toward another chapter of optional content that this game is offering. Yeah.

[01:03:01] And again, if you find a route to get to a place that maybe ties into two or three optional activities. Well, now you know how to get there. You know, you've got that first part checked off. You just have to go back there and do the other one or two things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, as I was playing this game, I did get into a very specific rhythm.

[01:03:28] My hands and controller just melded into one where I was on the start of each new run. Just accomplishing specific tasks to get these items. Because I knew I was either going to need them or the ones I still need to explore what ends they served. I am curious about something now that you say that. As you're going into every run, are you going into the run usually with a checklist in your mind of what you want to do?

[01:03:58] And if so, how often did you change your mind about what you wanted to do? I, let's see. Yeah. My checklist was just growing longer and longer and longer. And typically my goal was how fast. I always started speed running the game basically in my own way. Yeah. How fast can I accomplish all these goals? Which of these goals are really necessary?

[01:04:22] So I can get to, okay, I need to explore these options here and see kind of what these items do. There were a few things that kind of made me change my route. Sometimes I would stumble across coins earlier or in easier locations to acquire. And I think at one point I needed to spend, I don't know, 15 or so, you know, coins. At the hay bale girl? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The merchant, if you will.

[01:04:52] There's so many NPCs that I would love to ask what on earth they are doing and why are they with the company that they are with? And how are you there? Yeah. How did you, because I don't see you doing what I had to do to get here. Yeah. Anyway. Exactly. Yeah. So I was on a relatively fixed route, but that route did get modified as I was going through the game.

[01:05:13] My goal really was to just accumulate as much stuff as possible because, and this is actually the last thing I'll say about game design, because there are these wonderful epiphany moments where you just get a chain of, like, if you've been accruing a bunch of items in Polaroids, and then finally you find something new and you're like, wait a second. Because I did this thing, there are like five or six other things I can go run and do right now. Let's go check them out. And sometimes that ended in a death.

[01:05:40] Other times that just ended in like this snowballing effect of learning more and more about what was happening or what you could do in the world. Totally. And there are things that kill you in this game, which ends your run. So that's kind of like a game like Outer Wilds, but there's never like that strict of a time limit, I guess, because while the time does elapse, it doesn't feel like it's super strict.

[01:06:09] It doesn't feel like it's elapsing really fast and you just don't have enough time to do what you want to do. And it's just so easy to jump back into a new run. It's instant. You can start running around. The run is really nice in this game. You feel like you move at a good speed. Yeah. So I never felt the stress, I guess, because large discovery or small, I'm always learning something new in every run. And I value that. And there are games where I might do a loop and I don't really get something out of it.

[01:06:38] I always get something out of a loop in this game. Yeah. This is one thing that I really admire about the game Cuphead is that one, if you are stuck on a boss, no boss is longer than four minutes. That's a really long boss in Cuphead, right? Yeah. Yeah. But just getting the visual feedback of how far into a boss you were or how far into one of those run and gun levels that you were. And then knowing that you can instantly restart with, you know.

[01:07:04] So if you feel like you're a minute into a boss, that minute is adrenaline pumping because these Cuphead bosses are tough, right? But you really don't feel like you lose anything because you just hop right back in and it's only been a minute, you know? Yeah. It feels encouraging. Like the game isn't punishing you necessarily for dying. And another motivation for exploring and possibly dying in different ways is there are endings tracked in the achievements.

[01:07:34] And some people care about that too. And so I was trying to find all of the endings, which most of them are deaths. Which made me look at this game in a way that's different than other games where I'm usually trying to avoid death. I'm usually building up a list of I need to avoid doing these activities because those all equal death. But in this game, there are 11 different endings. And at a certain point, I was like, okay, I have seven endings. What are the four ways to die that I haven't found yet?

[01:08:04] And now I'm just like, okay, I'm going to go to the dog. Can the dog kill me? I need to go to this place with the water. Yeah. And so I don't do that in so many games, but I do that in Grunt. Yeah. Grunt. Yeah. Is very good for that. Folks. We are at the spoiler section. There's a few things that Bo and I just got to talk about when it comes to what the heck happens here. If you have not played Grunt, a part of me thinks that we've almost already said too much.

[01:08:32] But the other part of me is like, yeah, but you're not going to. I mean, your play is going to be so much different than ours, despite you knowing everything that we have said, despite how vague or not we have been discussing it. So if you haven't played Grunt, I just highly recommend that you pick it up. Right. And so who do I recommend this game for? We'll get to that at the end, but it's for you, man. Just play this game. But from here on out, we are talking spoilers and where to begin.

[01:09:02] I had no idea that this game, the true ending. And I always say that with a question mark, because that's what the achievement is like. Good ending? Question mark? Yeah. Yeah, I got to say, man, you fight this demon. Yeah. This is a non-combat game, but you need to fight a demon to stop everything from blowing up. You get a sword in this game. Yeah. Okay.

[01:09:31] And there are actually two ways to get a sword, by the way. I was going to say, did you know that there are two swords in this game? I didn't know this until I beat the game, and then I was obsessing while playing it. I was like, there's got to be amazing speed runs. And so just on stream, I pulled up the world record, which I think is like, I don't know, four minutes, 57 seconds. And I was blown away at all the things that I had missed in the game, including a secret

[01:09:59] sword that you can find so that you can kill the final boss. And I found that secret sword. I learned about that secret sword by watching Emily's stream. She found that? I mean, I think I know what the, it's the one in the park. Yeah. Like behind the gazebo? Yeah. Yeah. I did. I, for some reason, didn't dig up that molehill, but then I watched her do it and I was like, okay, that's how I get that earlier. Cool. Got it. And I'd gotten the other sword up to that point.

[01:10:28] So I was like, okay, that's how I can shortcut that. So that's when I started building the speed grunt in my mind for getting the achievement that's like, do the true ending within 10 minutes. I was trying to build up all these strats in my mind and I was like, but I've got to do that whole sequence in the house where I grabbed the sword, which I don't like. If only I could skip that. And then there is a way to skip it. It's great. Yeah. You just dig up a sword.

[01:10:59] It's amazing. And some people will happen upon it super early in their playthrough. Yeah. And they'll be like, what do I do with this? And like we've said before, you can use the sword, not just on the demon, you can use it to cut grass. You know, you can use it to kill the guy in the maze. You can use it for, and so then maybe that prevents you from needing to get the hammer for some things.

[01:11:23] So I just love how getting something new then makes you question what you actually need to do for subsequent runs. Yeah. So yeah, I had no idea that sword was there. So I kind of want to talk about my last three minutes of the game where I got the true running because my mind was just all over the place. So we have to find the four idols. Yes.

[01:11:51] You have to find the four idols. Now, I can't remember where you learned about it, but let's see. So you get to the secret hallway in your cabin, which shows up on day two. And I think you go to the end of that once you have the key from the worm slash magpie, and you open that, and the guy in the window tells you about the idols. No, that's not how it happened for me. That is why...

[01:12:20] So you're talking about the snert demon kid hallway? I'm talking about... Yeah, I'm talking about just how you discover that the idols exist. That's the secret hallway in the cabin that spawns on the second day. I never got to the end of that without dying. Oh, okay. I die every time. So how did you find out about the idols? Let's see. I found out about the idols. Who was I talking to? It was...

[01:12:49] There's one guy that you can actually talk to and understand. Let's see where... Oh, I'm drawing a blank, but that hallway... Oh, no. Yeah, I gotcha. I never figured it out. I gotcha. So, okay, maybe I found this too, and I just am not remembering. I'm only remembering the guy. This is wild to me. This is like a major part of the game, to figure out that you need the four idols. And so, yeah, because I can't remember who I was talking to. No, it was somebody's journal. Maybe it was...

[01:13:19] Did I read something on a computer? Oh, you went to the convenience store, and you used the computer, and you found the journal in the house. It was the journal in the house. That's what it was. That's what it was, yeah. So, somebody... We assume the homeowner who you're working for says that they find that there are five magical sort of entities that live around here and that you need the idols. I think that's the most detailed account of what you're supposed to do. Okay. When I think back to it, yeah.

[01:13:48] And so, you have the... It says five in there, and one of them is presumably in the shape of a worm, and I had that worm, which I referred to as the cosmic worm because it does have abilities. Yes. And so, I think at that point, when I had read that journal, I had three of the idols. And so, I had the shy kid idol, which I stumbled across with the magic trumpet. That was... Yeah, you were just... You were blowing the trumpet everywhere, so you were bound to find that one.

[01:14:17] So, I found that one from there. Let's see. I figured out how to kill Snurt Demon Kid. Yeah. You have to get the boat by giving the dog the bone. Yes. Which you get from the skeleton by using the hammer. And that's the part that I was talking about where I saw Spiffany just using the hammer on the skeleton, and I never thought to do that. And that's... Yeah. Okay. So, I started using the hammer because Slater was like, you don't use the hammer very much.

[01:14:46] I was like, do I need to use it more? So, I did. I got the bone. Yeah. I got the toy boat from that small fishing house hut, whatever. Gave it to the kid. Defeated the Snurt Demon. And then got the Snurt Demon. I'm sorry. We sound like people losing our minds with these terms. This is all real. Snurt Demon. Snurt is like soup, just for people's context. But you should know that if you're listening to the spoilers. It is a bowl of soup, but it's supposed to sound like the word snot, right?

[01:15:16] Yeah. Okay. Because it looks like... It's not soup. Yeah. Yeah. And then, let's see. Those are two of the idols. Oh, and then the Gnome Idol, which... Yes. But probably most people's first idol. Yeah. You have to kill a Gnome. Yeah. And if you kill the Gnome on your property, it has a coin inside. So, it's actually really handy. Yes. So, it should be part of like a lot of your runs.

[01:15:44] And then, that allows you to go to the gas station. Once you go in the gas station, it summons the parade of Gnomes that lead you to the door. Yes. And then, you can just pick up the Gnome Idol easy. So, I had those three. I had read that there was five magical entities. So, in my mind, I was like, okay, so there are two more idols that I need to get. And I was like, I have the worm. I don't know how to make...

[01:16:11] I didn't know what to do with the worm at this point because all I had really done with the worm was I gave it to the fishermen. Because you get this kind of directive that you need to kill the worm. Like, the worm is the problem, right? So, you give the worm to the fishermen. You turn around. You hear a loud noise and flash a color. And then, on the bottom of the screen, it's like something happened behind you. And you turn around and the fisherman's gone, but the worm remains. Yeah. So, you're like, great. Yeah. This is a cosmic worm. That's... Exactly.

[01:16:41] So, I picked up the worm. And then, a new bridge opens to this new location, which I went to. And I actually, to this day, I haven't figured that out. You enter this what looks like a church and there's very clear water in there. And it's inviting you to throw something in there. More of an optional area. More of a side area. Yeah. Yeah. But let's see. At that point, I was like, okay, you know what? I have three idols. I need two more. I don't know how to kill the worm. And so, I'm going to explore what I've learned about this strange disc.

[01:17:10] From the hay bale girl who's living in a gnome hideout? Whatever. Which, I thought the strange disc wasn't a computer disc. I thought it was like a frisbee. I mean, it's pretty thick. That's where I was at. Yeah. So, it's like, what do I do with this? Do I use this on the dog? Because my logic mind went to... Oh! Do I throw this for the dog? My... I still had animal well on the brain. Yeah. Clearly. But it was for the computer.

[01:17:41] Yes. It was... So, for the computer, I think by that point, I was breaking into the office on Sunday. So, I had to use the hammer to break open the glass door to get to the office. Yep. Because from this random girl at the hay bale, you can buy the office key and the strange disc. Yep. So, I went into the office and then, let's see, with... You can activate the computer in there and it opens you up to one realm where you get the apple. Right.

[01:18:09] And then, what I didn't realize is that if you insert the strange disc, it offers a new realm that you can get into. And so, I went in there and my first thought was, I'm gonna die. Because it's like this dark forest. Oh, yeah. It very much looks like it's gonna kill you. You're like, this is definitely one of the endings. Like, I am... One of the eleven is going to trigger now. And surprisingly, it doesn't. It takes you to a different office in a house.

[01:18:36] And then, that's kind of what I discovered what was going on. Or maybe I'm thinking about this out of order. From there, what did I do? How did I get the fourth item? So, then you had... Did you mention the maze? Yeah. So, before I went and insert the disc, I actually bought the compass at the same place. And before I went to the office... It was actually somebody in chat. It was Wade who was like... He was like, wait a second. What's the description on the compass or something? Something like that.

[01:19:06] And then I read it. And it's like, for people who feel really confident. And I was like, wait a second. We could try this in the maze. Because maybe we won't get lost in the maze if we're confident. Right? Which is what you're supposed to do. You find the tall man who has been giving you all sorts of jump scares. Oh. Hate that guy. Yeah. Hate that guy. So scary. And I was like, well, this is the tall man. And this is... Wait, I didn't know about the tall man idol. No, no. But I was like, I hate this guy. I was like, what if I hit him with a hammer?

[01:19:36] Yeah. Per Slater's advice. Per Slater's. Yeah. So all these people in chat give me good ideas. And then... So I smacked the guy a bit. He dies. I was a little surprised. And he leaves the idol. And so I ended up with the idol. And then I did the strange disc. And I ended up with four idols thinking I still needed to get a fifth one. Is that right? Yeah. Because it's in the house that you get the church key. Yep. You get the church key, which leads you to the final spot.

[01:20:05] Leads you to like the church, like, I don't know, worship place where you need to descend down into a tomb. Yeah. Ooh. But you need something else to descend down. You need the flower gem. Yeah. I can't believe I had this item on me, to be honest, because you're supposed to water plants that have a specific flower emblem on the pot. And so, yeah. I just happened to have the flower gem also.

[01:20:35] And so. Wow. That's great. I mean, it was wild because it just kept going. And then so I go down there and I was like, wait, for idol spots, I'm just going to put these in here. And then it's like something happened. You're like, oh, do tell. Yeah. I'm like, okay. Anything could have happened at this point. Oh, definitely. When you emerge from the catacombs, right? And you look out in the congregation.

[01:20:58] I was like, I found another ending because the pews are filled with skeletons and the creepy old lady in the back. It's incredible. It's incredible. An image from this game that will just be seared into my memory for a very long time. The shock of seeing not just one skeleton, but dozens of them. And one of them even jumps out at you as you're leaving. It's so good.

[01:21:29] It's so good. And I was terrified because one of my earliest deaths was clipping too many white flowers in the churchyard. I saw that moment. Yeah. And I was like, so, you know, PTSD trauma flashes of being surrounded by a bunch of staticky ghosts and dying. So I just booked it out of there. I was like, I hope I make it. Um, ended up from there. It kind of, it kind of forces you to go to the house. Is that right?

[01:21:58] Isn't the world on fire at that point? It closes off a lot of paths. Um, it really directs you to go through that door that you haven't really been able to go through yet. It's open for the first time from this side. So you're like, I definitely have to go in there. and I know you started this game in one stream you finished it in your following stream I didn't get to watch that following stream live but I did go back and watch your VOD oh really? I thought it was interesting how you went in the house

[01:22:27] and you explored the rooms in a much different order than I did you started going around like going upstairs first and then you went back you were like something isn't right you went back downstairs you started checking all the rooms again and then you talked to the spirit in the room that's like in the first room to the right as you enter the house yes yeah and that's where I went first so that was interesting to see like how even just in one small area of this game

[01:22:56] how two people behave differently I think I was in panic mode because I was like I'm probably being chased I'm probably going to die I think right is it upstairs that you get teleported through the computer room I was trying to think of how do I get out of here well you were probably thinking like I've been here before through the computer through the strange disk but I haven't entered it from this side so like I get what's going on but it's I'm disoriented right? yeah

[01:23:26] yeah it was super disoriented and then there's this ominous timer I think you have something like two and a half minutes before the world ends and the spirit of the homeowner is like well you got to kill the demon out front and you're like wait what? I was like wait what? don't tell me this like yeah what combat am I suddenly finding myself in? thankfully this owner is quite prepared he's like hey run up to the attic check out the boxes my holy sword is up there you should be able to kill

[01:23:56] the demon with it yeah I think at that moment I was about ready to scream or I was screaming internally I was like are you I was like are you throwing me into a combat scenario right now yeah because at this point anything could have happened in this game and I was like I'm gonna lose this run there was a lot of demon coming there was a lot of stress there's a lot of stress and exhilaration from you I could tell but you still kept your cool enough like you you were focused and you went up to that attic

[01:24:25] and you went to all those boxes and you did the boxes it was so perfect you did the boxes in the exact same order I did you're like oh really open the first one oh it's not in there let's go to the left one let's just go clockwise open that one that's not in there open the next one ah it's not in there and then it's like in the second to last box that's exactly what happened to me and those boxes are filled with mostly useless things I think one's got a bunch of rubber ducks yeah it's really comical I love that I didn't realize how funny that was

[01:24:54] until I watched someone else play that part but just a really nice touch like let's not make the box empty let's put something funny in there yeah let's just put a bunch of random crap in here stuff that you would put next to your holy sword in case yeah exactly in case the world ending demon yeah we've all I mean I keep my silver bullets in the attic right next to my Christmas decorations yeah oh man but anyway it's chaotic and then it was pure chaos

[01:25:22] ran to that final hallway stepped out the front door saw the demon and was just like I guess now or never I was like you know what full aggressive just lunge and attack and all you gotta do is hit the guy once I was so relieved so great and you had the purification stone so you were safe which I had no idea would be important at all so it's gotta be one of the deaths I'm assuming you kill the demon king and then you die definitely one of the deaths

[01:25:52] is not having the purification stone that's one of the endings it's a super super bummer if you're not going for it which that happened to me and then I would relate a lot of my experience to what you've described these past several moments but when I got to the part that takes you down into the tomb I didn't have the flower gem oh I was like oh no and then there were there were a couple more attempts

[01:26:21] where I had to remember everything again and then I found all the idols and the flower gem then I did it okay and the flower gem was was tough for me sometimes to remember even when I was speed grunting and I was yeah really knowledged there was a run that was beautiful it was perfect I was hitting every corner perfectly I was I was being very efficient with space and I never had to pause to like question

[01:26:51] what I should do next like it was just cemented in there but I forgot the flower gem and I get to the church and I'm like oh no that's the one thing I messed up so I had to redo that run that's a bummer but yeah the last the last three minutes of this game are a roller coaster ride it feels like you're on a carnival ride and you don't know what will happen and I love that in games too I love when you are just like strapped in

[01:27:20] for this exhilarating ride and you cannot predict in a hundred years what will happen yeah and that's what happens at the end of this game yeah it just goes from bonkers to bonkers you're it's a bumper car rally it's so wild just kind of going everywhere pure adrenaline I loved it I just I was super fortunate that I had the flower gem and the idols because I mean otherwise I would have been like wait so what do we do I mean thankfully the flower gem

[01:27:50] is indicated on the door you know as the greenhouse part of the property where you're cleaning up now I I think at that point my brain was so saturated with the route that I'd established and the coins I needed to find I was like can I memorize where all of the flower pots are the flower icon pots are yeah there are five of them and they are I feel like they're for the most part

[01:28:19] going to be like church park and house like I feel like there's a specific triangle where they are and then there's one across the river not quite at the convenience store right yeah it's it's one of those situations where there are few enough where it is really manageable but there are so many that it's likely that I'll remember four out of the five yeah and it's like which one did I

[01:28:48] forget this run and it's a different one than I forgot the last run every time I mean I was really tempted during the stream I did you know I did this during tactical breach wizards where I kept the defenetration count on screen I was really tempted to put a text box on screen just of like okay where are the coins that I'm getting and then where the flower pots that I needed to get just to have it like written down definitely handy to have something sort of you know nearby to keep track of some

[01:29:18] of this stuff because you're right that number five I feel like is perfect for that where it's yeah I will get four out of five of these every time and then I'll have to try to think which one did I not get and then I'm going back and I'm checking all the locations right what a miss beautiful I want I want to ask you about a couple of miscellaneous activities and if you know how to do them or if like you're even aware of them yeah yeah so a lot of these have to do with achievements um I'm curious if you found all

[01:29:48] the ghosts no I did not okay I would recommend doing that there's one that I think is kind of unreasonable and I had to look up where it is and I don't think I would have found it on my own but I found where where is it yeah where is it it's near the dog but temporally it doesn't show up anytime it shows up at a specific time oh that's what kind of makes it tough yeah okay um but I think there are seven ghosts

[01:30:17] somewhere around that number and I found six out of the seven another thing that I loved probably my favorite miscellaneous activity was gathering the band on Sunday morning did you find all the instruments I found the trumpet and the symbols I cannot find the triangle it was one of those things that like as I was exploring I tried to keep in the back of my mind could not find the triangle I think what might help you there if I'm thinking of the right yeah I think I I know

[01:30:46] where to get that it's a sequence of things you have to do okay and there's there may have been a corner you just didn't quite look into to get a thing and I'm being super vague about it because I don't want to even though this is spoiler sections I don't want to spoil stuff that you haven't done yet but sure just so that you know there's I know how to get it and I've run by it a thousand times you've run near it I think and then did you ever go

[01:31:16] into the cornfield I did not know you could until I watched the speed run yeah I discovered two major things on the speed run and the first is that you can get toilet paper and give toilet paper to somebody who's in the toilets and that person is the one that I alluded to earlier in the narrative section the person that person is looking at you over the wall and I think it's the snert

[01:31:44] kid I never noticed the snert kid is in the toilet go go to the toilet kid on the on Saturday I hate snert kid all my homies hate the snert kid man dude snert kid sucks but yeah go into the toilet snert kid is spying at you spying on you and there are other places in the game where people are looking through windows at you and stuff it's super creepy and then in the house at the

[01:32:14] end you might have noticed like the soul pieces I would explore that if you didn't do that whole thing that might be like interesting for you to do wait are all the soul pieces within the house I believe so yes okay I got two and I yeah I think the third one is in there okay because I was curious I was like I had those I assumed I was going to need them for the fight with the demon and I

[01:32:44] was like well I can't we can't really go anywhere yeah so yeah I just never found the third piece there's there's also something really fun you can do with the worm when you get I won't even say where it is but there's something really fun with the worm that is a clear end for the worm because you you mentioned giving the worm to the fisherman fisherman just you know disappears and there's the worm again you go to the magpie you because that's what I thought to do with the worm give the worm to the bird birds love

[01:33:14] eating worms I the worm persisted after that there's there's a final spot I'll say for the worm and then there's other stuff with like the fish there's just the miscellaneous tasks of carrying all the items finding all the money making popcorn and I just had a lot of fun as sort of an extra layer in this game of finding all that stuff this

[01:33:43] this is an example of an achievement list where I love yes going through and just having this fun customized task list for myself and I might only want to do a couple of tasks in a play session but I just want to keep going through this achievement list yeah I let's see I looked at some of the achievements and this is maybe we're actually coming in

[01:34:12] there's anything else with spoilers that you want to get out let's get about who we recommend this game for oh man I don't wait so see I have a question for you though yeah yeah how do you get through the hall that appears on the second day in the cabin I'm pretty sure it comes from a key that you get from the worm and I think it either happens by giving the worm to the

[01:34:40] magpie but did you do that did you give the worm no I didn't oh I think that's what it is so okay you get you give the worm to the magpie you turn around and you get one of those instances like the fisherman where it's like something strange happened behind you and you turn around and the the magpie and the worm are there and you can get the key and the key is called like the strange key that key opens the door

[01:35:10] at the end of the hallway and in my opinion the first layer of this game is doing the gardening the second layer second or third layer might be finding your way into that hallway and then opening that door because through that door you get more narrative stuff okay and I encourage you to at least do that as your next step because that was my evolution

[01:35:40] of play is doing the gardening then getting through that door talking to the thing that's through that door leads you on one of the paths you can take to eventually find the true ending but you did it in a completely legitimate way too no yeah it's just these multiple paths you know what's wild is so when I figured out that you could exercise the snert demon as I referred to yeah you give the you know the kid the toy boat whatever and he

[01:36:09] disappears you get his idol I assumed that snert kid was gone and so I was like great let's go do the hallway oh and he shows back up he shows back up oh I don't think I ever got to experiment with that combination so yeah snert kid I learned was a much more powerful eldritch being yeah than I was anticipating okay so this actually does remind me of another spoiler thing but we learn through the spirit at the

[01:36:38] house that all of what you've been doing all of the idol gathering has sort of been a setup because gathering the idols at the church is what summons this demon and you think you're doing the right thing and it's actually you've been manipulated I think is my interpretation right and then the soul that you meet in the house that's the true soul that's the guy who's like I'm the one you should listen to this is what you've got to do and then that's what leads us to the the finale the ending that's nice

[01:37:07] and light and happy and we yeah get our final ending there that I love it because yeah the there I think the only thing I maybe picked up on there is that the guy that you talk to feels quite different than the guy that's been creeping on you that I assumed you were hearing talk to you yeah and I never thought of it that way I thought of it more as just like the game giving me instructions but it could be a voice in your head that could be a way to

[01:37:36] interpret it for sure yeah I I don't know I don't know yeah but it's open and enough for fun stuff like that let's see I thought I had something come to mind just oh there's one thing I wanted to mention I didn't bring it up in game design because it was super fun to experiment and learn or just learn about this by myself and it's that the spatial incoherence of the game where you would see this tiny

[01:38:06] opening in a hedge and you I'm thinking specifically the picnic ending right yeah where you have to do all the tasks in each of the areas and it gives you like a little slot to go into yeah you approach the slot and you're like you're like what is this but the closer you get to it you can actually fit inside and it turns into a path right so it's like this I don't know Alice in Wonderland you kind of just jump and go through you don't really jump you walk but you were changing size as you're

[01:38:35] walking I just thought it was some cool like I don't know video game development wizardry to kind of make that stuff work because the same thing happens when you go into the dome into the maze because you it's tiny or when you go through the bottom of the church when you unlock the doorknob and you go all the way through you go through these impossible spaces like physically spatially impossible cannot exist spaces and I think when

[01:39:05] I first noticed that noticing that I was like wait how much is in this game like how many space how many rooms are there that I can really get into in this place and so once I discovered that being able for example to insert the disk into the computer and then have different realms show up to walk through that became a much more natural logic than when I first discovered those tiny slots that you could walk through so just like a really cool moment that

[01:39:34] yeah just more epiphany moments that felt really great to experience yeah I get the sense of how big this world is when I'm in that first layer doing all the chores I'm going I know how big this property is I know how big the surrounding properties are but then I quickly realize okay all those rules can jump out the window there's another similar spot in the toilet when you give the

[01:40:03] toilet paper to the guy like you go into a small crevice and it leads you through this like really long tent and I assume that's actually you're being transported to the tent in the cornfield but that's just a theory I think it's meant to be the same place but who knows who knows right if you I would love to look at like have you ever looked at just like zoomed out like all of the

[01:40:31] rooms in a video game in like a level for example and you see they're all over the place you know yeah I just did that with Fez we reviewed Fez on our podcast and there's an online interactive map that shows how they all connect and when you look at this entire map it's super vertical and it also spreads out pretty wide horizontally too but it really opens your eyes to

[01:40:59] how little you're perceiving it can all connect sometimes yeah I'd like to look at that for Grun I think that would be really totally really I would love for somebody to build that out yeah very cool stuff all right let's come out of spoiler territory we were talking spoilers for quite a while so we're gonna fun where we're gonna we're coming up on like two hours here just so easy to talk I'm having so much fun so much Grun

[01:41:27] so much Grun this is you know what's funny though is like we could talk about this game for probably as long as it takes to beat this game true you know there's a lot in there and I'm I'm learning plenty of things and taking notes of some things I want to take a look at too back in the game but finally let's see who would I recommend this game for so let's start with you who would you recommend the game Grun for well I would

[01:41:55] recommend it to somebody who would love it as much as me and so I'm kind of working on this problem backwards and I just want to maybe just give a pitch and maybe that'll lead me into an answer okay but I find this game transfixing I find this game highly interesting for the reasons we talked about earlier where it celebrates experimentation and exploration and doing this

[01:42:23] time loop and learning all the time I'm always learning something new when I go into Grun and I think if you like games like Outer Wilds where there's this pretty big world but also small world to explore and just to always come away with new learnings I think you would like this because it's a smaller scale and sometimes we look for those shorter experiences when we don't have as much time so fans of time loops

[01:42:52] fans of mystery games fans of games with light horror we haven't talked about it a ton but there are some jump scares in this game but I think there are an appropriate amount I never got overwhelmed with how many jump scares there are and you will do runs in this game where you don't encounter any jump scares so I would say that this game going back to the horror question it's light horror it's mostly unsettling it's

[01:43:20] psychological it's kind of a thriller it's kind of a slow burn it's kind of cozy yeah it's all these things combined so if that concoction sounds really alluring to you I think you should check out Grun oh that's a great pitch I like that quite a lot I think what I would add to what you are saying here is that I would also recommend Grun if if you have any any interest in speed

[01:43:47] running at all now I love watching speed running and challenge runs and so typically I'm the I'm the guy like even right now I actually have a bunch of twitch streams up because I want to pump those numbers for people that I like but amazing but what I would I like to do on twitch when I'm actually paying attention is I love speed runs I love challenge runs I love people who are playing indie games right and I am fascinated by speed runs and the speed runners that I watch

[01:44:17] are the ones who will explain what it is that they're doing and why or how a certain skip works or why they're accomplishing this specific glitch or why this glitch is banned in this run whatever so lots or people who do challenge runs I actually watch a lot of people who do challenge runs of from software games because I love from software games and it's cool I love hearing people say well this is what I do to bait this specific attack so it's easier to dodge so I can do this kind of damage or whatever it is right

[01:44:47] if you have any interest in speed running at all grun is man it got me thinking so much about the speed run it got me thinking so much about how to optimize getting from place to place and how to just do things quicker and more efficiently so I could accrue more items so I could explore more right and so I mentioned this but after I beat it I immediately looked up the world record for true ending like I said four

[01:45:14] minutes 57 seconds and it was just so fun to watch how somebody who optimized this now that record is with quit outs just to add yeah fair yeah I saw one I think it was before that one was set it was it used to be at like five and a half minutes and that one had quit outs as well so people are working on that speed run all the time it sounds like and yeah I back that up totally this game is speed run friendly it's speed run

[01:45:43] approachable this could maybe be baby's first speed run it was kind of my first speed run game I think I've maybe tried speed running other games but this game is so approachable with speed runs because when you know everything you can finish the game in under 10 minutes and get that true ending and that is a really fun manageable accomplishment and I loved doing

[01:46:09] that on stream and again I don't I love watching speed runs here and there I love listening to people's passions for them but I don't really like doing all the homework for it but this is a game where I think you could maybe get into it and maybe it would open the door to trying other speed run challenges for you yeah I personally as much as I love speed runs I've only I tried learning the speed run

[01:46:37] for untitled goose game any percent oh nice and then a short hike all golden feathers oh cool yeah both really cool speed runs to look at right and both relatively short I let's see I couldn't give you times on either of those because I didn't actually sit down and time myself the untitled goose game one I got pretty good at but there's a there's a specific glitch that you need to do to shortcut the final sequence have you played untitled goose game yeah several

[01:47:07] times and we're actually by the time this episode comes out our episode on untitled goose game for underplayed might be out or it might be imminently out and we actually talked to a game dev who helped us review that game it's Oscar Losada Suarez from tri-band the makers of the what the golf what the car games okay oh cool very cool so we had a dev who works on a lot of like comedic games to help us review that very funny game and

[01:47:36] I've I had played it back in like 2020 and I just recently replayed it for our show so yeah I'm very familiar there are some really cool speed run there's some speed run strats in there and some really cool tech you can do yeah very cool things you can do in there but coming back to grunt I would say man like this game kind of works for everybody I think like you said the horror is quite light like there are jump scares and I'm a super

[01:48:05] jumpy guy playing this and like the cabin factory have kind of been the cabin factory especially it's been kind of my limit for scary games for a little bit yeah but the jump scares are super manageable and they're really predictable for the most part right and unless you stumble across one for the first time from there on out you can shrug them off quite easily and yeah people who are fans of shorter games absolutely how long to be has this at four hours I would say

[01:48:34] you're only doing this in four hours to get the true ending on your first run if you are listening to for example the spoiler section of this episode I think it'd be extremely difficult to do this in four hours without some sort of external help I think it'd be possible don't get me wrong but I feel like for example when I beat the game at like five and a half hours I got really lucky happened to have the flower gem for example the majority of the idols as I was going into that

[01:49:00] final sequence so I would say more realistically this is gonna be it's six five to six hours I swear it took me six to seven hours to get the true ending yeah and I think that's even with talking to people and like sharing tips yeah so yeah I would not trust how long to be on this one I think that's skewed quite low but still a relatively short game I would also say you mentioned this achievement hunters I love the way that the

[01:49:30] achievements are figured out in this game and once you have beaten the game and you know what's going on it doesn't feel like some sort of insurmountable task to go do things right this isn't like hey you need to farm these enemies for a one percent drop rate on this item exactly yeah that's my least favorite type of achievement no there are all these like tiny carrots on sticks and you just feel like oh I can get the next tiny carrot oh I can get the next baby carrot and then you've eaten a whole bag of baby carrots yeah by the time you're done with the

[01:49:58] achievement list it's great yeah so really big fan of that I'm gonna go back I probably won't 100% this because I know myself and I know my time but I'm gonna go back and get some because it's a fun game and it's easy to hop back in and kind of do some of this stuff yeah I think that's what I'd recommend it for oh the last thing I'll say just related to speed running in this is I looked up a bunch of the categories and one of them is dog ending it's what sorry it's dog ending dog ending yeah world record is 24

[01:50:28] seconds and some change I can believe it yeah because that was definitely my shortest ending you know it took me a minute or so but yeah I went I I told my co-host disco cola about all about this game when I talked about it on our show and I told him like it is a time loop game but to get all the endings they can range in length from one minute to one hour yeah and I think I think that is a really cool part of the elevator

[01:50:56] pitch for this game yes yeah there's just a lot of fluidity in there kind of in terms of how you how you engage I did a quick attempt I think I got 38 seconds nice or for dog ending knowing kind of what to do it's funny though because you watch some of these these these speed runs and you're like okay mouse and keyboard mouse sensitivity is cranked up to 11 yeah that's one thing I didn't have as well I wasn't quitting out to the menu and I didn't have my I was using gamepad

[01:51:26] yeah like yeah you you all can yell at me online but I don't like playing first person games with mouse and keyboard I like playing with gamepad and it works on the gamepad just fine but I wasn't able to turn with you know really fast accuracy so that's another that's another yeah I guess things slowing me down that's exactly why I don't watch competitive shooters on twitch because my brain just starts shaking watching some of these dudes like

[01:51:55] Valorant players or whatever I'm like this doesn't look fun to me actually yeah I can't follow it I can't follow it I can't follow like the really fast fortnight stuff I I don't even comprehend what's happening yeah yeah so if you have a slower brain I like run is gonna be a wonderful game for you so I think that's all I've got on grunt any last things that you want to get out about grunt

[01:52:22] before we close it down um see no I I again on who we'd recommend the game to I would say just like if you like playing games that are unlike anything else you've played to there are people out there who just always want to chase that new feeling what's new what's different what's unlike anything I've played that also describes grunt so I just wanted to mention that as well yeah absolutely agree with that folks it's been a long one we are pretty much at two hours

[01:52:52] thank you so much for listening to bone I talk about grunt just real quickly here want to give another shout out underplayed podcast is the podcast that Bo was a part of they're just starting which season is the one that's coming out that's we're in the middle of season seven season seven right really good stuff in there they always got interesting people on there as well too you've got devs that you're talking to some humble onion was the most recent person you had on there that was

[01:53:18] really cool and also catch this stream twitch.tv slash Bo that is Bo two underscores P O Bo Po please check out that that stream always a good time I loved man crow country on there was a lot of fun to watch I had so much fun with that one yeah thank you for thank you for the support and joining and again I also love the stuff you're doing on twitch twitch.tv

[01:53:48] slash chip dip 18 that's right go follow all right folks that is going to be it for us tonight thank you so much for listening folks you are listening to this maybe because you are a subscriber on the period of bonus podcast for the indie past many of you are not if you would like to hear more episodes like this the three dollar indie past here does get you access to a bunch of episodes like this I've got over a hundred on there but of

[01:54:17] course there's a bunch of free ones that's how you're listening to this if you just want to give me support in that way please do I highly appreciate it if you want to listen to the period of bonus podcast we have recently hit 200 episodes and so we've probably covered a game that you have played at some point yeah congratulations you guys that's so great I listened I listened to your 200th spectacular recently and I had a great time so fun listening to you and Cameron talk about all kinds of like 200 themed topics around games and

[01:54:47] just reflect on things super fun thank you yeah folks check out that episode that is a really fun one Cameron and I we typically do one episode a week dedicated to a specific game but that one we let our hair down and we just kind of kind of talked about things and you will hear the infamous punching story from Cameron which I highly highly recommend you listen to just for that but folks thank you thank you so much and until the next episode take care