Indie Impressions: Phoenix Springs

[00:00:11] Welcome, welcome, one and all. It's another Indie Impressions episode. It's me, Jake, from the Pre-Order Bonus Podcast. And today I am not alone. I'm actually really excited for today's episode. I'm a newer... I guess I've been listening to this No Small Games podcast for a little while now. But I'm a newer fan to it. And I'm a huge fan of Kate and Emily, the two hosts who are in that show. Kate has been on the show. She and I talked about Magical Delicacy this summer. And then finally,

[00:00:41] got Emily here on the show too. Emily, how are you doing today?

[00:00:44] Hi, Jake. I'm doing awesome. I'm really excited to be here. I'm a big fan of your show as well. And I really loved the episode that Kate was on. It was very interesting to hear both of your takes on Magical Delicacy. So I'm excited. And I'm very glad to get to talk about this game too.

[00:01:02] Yes, it is a great game to have a conversation about. We are talking about Phoenix Springs. Now, this is a game. It came out on October 16th.

[00:01:11] Is that right? This year? Yeah. And this is Caligram. That's right. Yes. Oh my gosh. We're only in November. Okay. This is Caligram Studios. This is a self-published game. It's a point and click adventure. I believe it's only available on Steam and GOG.

[00:01:31] Hopefully, with the success that it has had, it comes to other platforms. It'll be a big win for the studio for sure.

[00:01:39] And there's a lot to say about this game. Let me just say there is a lot to say about it.

[00:01:44] But before we get into our discussion, just really quickly, thank you, Patreon subscribers, especially those who make the Indie Impressions series possible.

[00:01:54] You make stuff like this happen. You make it work. And I'm super grateful for your support in that regard.

[00:02:00] Super grateful for all the listeners as well. Just having another space to talk about indie games, I feel like is super valuable.

[00:02:07] Indie games, there's a million of them. And we need more spaces to talk about all the millions of games that there are out there.

[00:02:12] Which is, before we get into the categories, I want to point out and want to give Emily a minute to talk a little bit about her stream and No Small Games, the podcast.

[00:02:22] Because I've mentioned this a lot of times on this show and our main show, Indie Games.

[00:02:28] If we were to do like a pie chart and by sheer number of games, Indie Games is like 90% of them, 95% of them.

[00:02:36] Last stat I saw, there's like 14,000 games released on Steam up to the date that I saw, which was probably last month, on Steam alone.

[00:02:44] And you can imagine out of 14,000 games, most of those are indies.

[00:02:48] And so, Emily, No Small Games, you guys talk about indies a lot.

[00:02:51] And I love the way that you cover them.

[00:02:53] And so I'd love for you to just talk a few seconds about you, about your stream and about your show.

[00:02:57] And then we'll start talking about Phoenix Springs.

[00:02:59] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:03:00] So No Small Games is an indie game recap and review podcast that Kate and I started spring of last year.

[00:03:09] So we've been going for about a year and a half now.

[00:03:12] Most of our episodes are deep dive reviews into just one game at a time, similar to Indie Impressions.

[00:03:20] So we cover a little bit of the plot.

[00:03:23] We don't typically go beat for beat on the plot and then discuss our takes and our experiences with the games.

[00:03:30] We've also recently started doing one episode a month that we call the Indie Game Roundups that have been really fun.

[00:03:36] These are like indie game news, really high level reviews of some new releases, demos we're playing.

[00:03:43] It's sort of a more freeform way that we get to talk about more games than just the like 20 or so that we cover in depth per year.

[00:03:52] Because like you said, there are so many and it just felt wrong to only cover so few in these really deep dive episodes.

[00:03:59] It's funny that you mentioned that because I've recently changed the Indie Impressions schedule and the way they do episodes for the same reason where there are lots of indie games.

[00:04:10] I tend to play a lot of indie games as well.

[00:04:12] And I was trying to like, I just keep this running Google Doc of what I'm doing and scheduling.

[00:04:17] And I had this list that was just growing of games to cover.

[00:04:20] And I was like, I'm not, I can't feasibly put out like four episodes a week.

[00:04:25] How do I get more of these games in there?

[00:04:28] So yeah, I've just, some of the indie impressions are like, okay, we're going to talk about these three games because they're similar in these ways.

[00:04:34] Maybe talk about what they have to say about the industry.

[00:04:36] So yeah, this is something that I think is probably the most difficult thing about indie games coverage, right?

[00:04:42] It's just that despite them taking up so much of this pie chart, so much space, they tend to get so much less coverage than other mainstream games.

[00:04:53] And part of that is just the feasibility of it all.

[00:04:57] We want to cover all these games, wonderful games from wonderful people.

[00:05:00] And it's just freaking difficult, right?

[00:05:03] It is like take Steam Next Fest.

[00:05:05] I mean, we have three a year now.

[00:05:07] Well, the June Next Fest featured, I think, somewhere in the vicinity of 1800.

[00:05:15] 1800 demos.

[00:05:17] Most of them, like you said, are indie.

[00:05:18] In October, it shot up to 2600.

[00:05:22] There's just no way.

[00:05:24] It's impossible.

[00:05:26] Yeah.

[00:05:26] Thanks for sharing those numbers.

[00:05:28] Those are wonderful numbers because that's just how many had demos for Steam Next Fest, right?

[00:05:35] And not to mention all of the games that have storefronts or even have just like trailers of some kind or some sort of devlog.

[00:05:43] It's a wild industry.

[00:05:45] And we don't need to get into this right now because we need to talk about Phoenix Springs.

[00:05:49] But just I guess my final thoughts on this are I always believe that at this point in the history of gaming, there's actually enough gamers out there.

[00:05:59] Like there are billions of people who live on this planet and, you know, millions, if not billions, have played and engaged with video games in some capacity.

[00:06:07] But the huge disconnect is how do you get that perfect niche indie game into the hands of the player and, you know, X location?

[00:06:16] How do you get them to know about it?

[00:06:18] And then how do you get them to buy it and play it and really enjoy that experience?

[00:06:22] This is maybe my optimistic take.

[00:06:24] There's no shortage of gamers.

[00:06:25] It's just that it's just the avenue right between the game that's being made and the player that's extremely difficult to walk, to connect.

[00:06:37] I totally agree.

[00:06:39] I also really firmly believe that there's a game for every single person, even somebody who doesn't consider themselves a gamer yet.

[00:06:45] And I totally agree.

[00:06:46] Like, how do we how do we get even more gamers into the space and start to really expand their idea of what games can look like and be?

[00:06:54] Yeah, I agree with that for sure.

[00:06:57] So listen to No Small Games podcast.

[00:07:00] Emily, follow Emily's stream.

[00:07:02] I I'm a big lurker on Twitch these days.

[00:07:05] I used to be really good about chatting, but not so much anymore.

[00:07:08] But I love looking at Emily's streams because you've got a lot of I don't mean this isn't negative.

[00:07:14] Right.

[00:07:14] But in one of your tags is chatty.

[00:07:15] And I actually love this.

[00:07:17] Yeah, because Emily's really good at just talking and engaging about whatever the game is, whatever chat saying.

[00:07:24] So even though I'm not like participating, I love just like listening to you talk on that show.

[00:07:29] So follow her on Twitch.

[00:07:30] It's a it's a great stream.

[00:07:32] You've got a great community over there and you're covering lots of indie games.

[00:07:35] So help support not only me through indie impressions as you already are, but support others who want to cover as many indie games as possible.

[00:07:43] So that's my pitch for that.

[00:07:44] I appreciate that.

[00:07:46] Thank you.

[00:07:47] All right.

[00:07:47] Phoenix Springs.

[00:07:48] And you guys heard the side that I just gave.

[00:07:51] It's I really enjoyed this game.

[00:07:55] Just like I want to get this out there because I'm afraid that I'm going to sound overly negative talking about Phoenix Springs.

[00:08:01] I really enjoyed it.

[00:08:03] I loved looking at this game more than anything.

[00:08:07] Like it is just so beautiful.

[00:08:08] And I'm as I talk about a lot of indie impressions, I'm really obsessed almost with like color palettes, but also balancing art direction with visual clarity.

[00:08:20] Because it's it's one thing to have like a really beautiful game, but not know where you're supposed to interact.

[00:08:26] Right.

[00:08:26] I feel like Phoenix Springs does a fairly good job of that as well, too.

[00:08:30] So I want to, you know, tip my hat there.

[00:08:32] But but what we'll do is I've given kind of my opening thoughts.

[00:08:36] I'm going to give her opening thoughts as well, too.

[00:08:38] And then as is customary of anybody who's listened to the period of bonus podcast or indie impressions, we love talking about things in categories to keep ourselves organized.

[00:08:48] This episode will be a little different.

[00:08:50] So I do want to run through how we're going to break down Phoenix Springs.

[00:08:55] First, we are going to talk about the art direction.

[00:08:57] And this is relatively broad.

[00:08:58] We're going to cover Kate talked a lot, for example, about audio design and magical delicacy.

[00:09:02] So we'll talk about just art direction broadly, whether that be audio, visual, other components as well.

[00:09:09] And then we'll talk about the game design.

[00:09:11] Like I said, this is a point and click.

[00:09:13] And so we'll talk about what it takes to kind of unravel this mystery.

[00:09:16] And then we'll talk about narrative.

[00:09:19] And I do want to give a warning here.

[00:09:21] I'll give another warning.

[00:09:22] But the whole game is going to be up for grabs here, in part because it is difficult to decipher.

[00:09:29] But there's just a lot that I think we're going to hash out when it comes to the narrative.

[00:09:33] So there will be lots of spoilers.

[00:09:37] So if you want to go into the game without knowing anything, you'll have to stop the episode there.

[00:09:42] And then finally, who we recommend the game for, who we think will get the most enjoyment out of it.

[00:09:48] So just starting before we get into art direction, Emily, what were you just like your overall summarized thoughts about the game?

[00:09:55] Yeah.

[00:09:56] So to start with, I think there are a lot of people out there who are trying really hard to make the case that games are art.

[00:10:04] To me, that's something that's undeniable.

[00:10:06] But if you need evidence of it, this is the new perfect thing to point to, to say it is without a doubt.

[00:10:13] Games are art.

[00:10:14] This is a piece of art.

[00:10:16] You said you're going to sound very critical of it, but you did enjoy it.

[00:10:20] I think I'm going to sound critical of it.

[00:10:22] And I don't know if I enjoyed it.

[00:10:25] I think I'm still processing that.

[00:10:27] I will say that I really appreciate it.

[00:10:29] I think this is a, over time, I think we're going to look back and see this as potentially a really important game.

[00:10:36] You know, but did I, did I love playing it?

[00:10:39] I don't know.

[00:10:40] I spent a lot of my time yelling at it.

[00:10:44] So I, I have a lot of mixed feelings.

[00:10:47] And I'm really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the narrative, especially because I definitely walked away with more questions than answers by the end.

[00:10:57] Yeah.

[00:10:58] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:11:00] Sometimes I think that lands really well.

[00:11:02] And other times it just makes, it almost feels like a story will fizzle out, right?

[00:11:07] And so when we get to that spoiler section, when we talk about the narrative, we'll be able to get into those thoughts.

[00:11:14] We'll, we're starting with the art direction.

[00:11:16] I already said this kind of, as I summarize my thoughts, I really loved the art direction here.

[00:11:21] Um, I'm a big fan of bold colors and this game is chock full of them.

[00:11:25] The majority of the game, I feel like, well, especially after this one turning point, when you enter Phoenix Springs, there's a lot of yellows, greens and reds, which I feel like normally are colors that maybe aren't paired together.

[00:11:38] And, and, um, just generally.

[00:11:40] Right.

[00:11:41] I found it to work extremely well, um, just because it's, it's a mystery game, you know, you're kind of playing in the detective role and I feel like the colors really match this intensity of feelings.

[00:11:54] And, um, because like the dialogue and the writing is really intense, even if it's not easily understood.

[00:12:00] And I just kind of felt like the color, the art direction really matched that.

[00:12:04] And so I, I don't know, visually really, really appealing.

[00:12:07] It kind of has like almost a specific comic book art style.

[00:12:12] Um, there were some cut scenes that I found to be really beautiful.

[00:12:16] Like whenever we saw like Iris, uh, dormer, the main protagonist who you're playing as, there are a few moments where in these like sort of transitional cut scenes, you just kind of like see her facial expressions because you typically see her from afar.

[00:12:30] And I just thought, wow, there's actually a lot of emotion really captured in a lot of these faces that we see.

[00:12:36] We see a lot of portraits of people in these cut scenes.

[00:12:39] And so I found that to be really enjoyable.

[00:12:41] I, I was actually looked forward to the cut scenes, put them, push the mouse aside, lean back in my chair.

[00:12:46] And I was like, all right, let's see what they're going to show me.

[00:12:48] So I felt like it was a really, really stunning experience in that way.

[00:12:52] I agree.

[00:12:54] I agree.

[00:12:54] Um, I, I have some of those same thoughts in my notes about the cut scenes in particular.

[00:12:59] Um, and, and overall totally agree on the aesthetic and the color palette choices.

[00:13:05] It had a very pop or modern art feel to me, which I felt paired really well with this sort of neo-noir futuristic world that we sort of find ourselves in.

[00:13:16] Um, but I really, really agree about the cut scenes and especially where we see Iris, because you do, you get this completely different understanding of her as a character from the cut scene and from being able to see her facial expressions, her, um, her dialogue.

[00:13:31] And she, I believe is the only voice acting we hear throughout.

[00:13:36] Um, I don't think that, I don't know that we hear.

[00:13:41] I think that's correct.

[00:13:42] She maybe, she sometimes tells us what other people say, right?

[00:13:45] But.

[00:13:46] Yes.

[00:13:46] Yeah.

[00:13:46] I don't think we ever actually hear any other voice acting and her tone is so expressionless and, um, austere kind of, it's just very, um.

[00:13:56] Yeah.

[00:13:57] Blunt.

[00:13:58] Um, and, and so you can kind of get this impression of her as this very monotone character, but then you see her face.

[00:14:05] And you get this totally different understanding of what she's experiencing.

[00:14:09] So I, I totally agree.

[00:14:10] I, I could have used more of the cut scenes, especially since I found myself spending a lot of time walking back and forth between the, the gameplay scenes and just watching her walk across landscapes.

[00:14:23] So I, I really agree.

[00:14:26] Yeah.

[00:14:27] Yeah.

[00:14:27] Um, I think like if you were to take a snapshot of this game in most instances, I'd be like, you know what, that'd be something that I, I would use as like a desktop background.

[00:14:37] Right.

[00:14:38] Like it's super beautiful in that regard, but yeah, it just, it just, the game I think really shines in that, in those cut scene moments.

[00:14:45] Right.

[00:14:46] Um, because otherwise, uh, sometimes let's see, uh, like, I don't know how am I, how am I trying to come up with the right phrasing here?

[00:14:56] You know what, let me take, I'm going to take it back to the voice acting here in a second.

[00:14:59] Cause you mentioned that.

[00:15:00] And then I'll kind of get into this thought that I have about the art direction.

[00:15:03] Yeah.

[00:15:04] Yeah.

[00:15:04] So the voice acting, um, it's, it's pretty muted.

[00:15:07] It feels really flat.

[00:15:08] Right.

[00:15:09] And it almost has this kind of radio static on it.

[00:15:13] Like there's a specific filter.

[00:15:14] I couldn't tell you exactly what it is.

[00:15:16] Um, and I'll be honest, when I first heard it, I was surprised because I thought, I don't know, I was, I guess I was expecting for like a detective mystery game.

[00:15:28] Like, I don't know, something a little more theatrical.

[00:15:30] I don't know why.

[00:15:31] My, my expectations were off.

[00:15:33] And then I heard that and I was like, Oh, this sounds like a transmission.

[00:15:38] Right.

[00:15:38] Which becomes important.

[00:15:39] I think later in the game, um, because you do encounter something.

[00:15:44] Anyway, we'll get to that when we talk about narrative, but I actually grew to really enjoy it.

[00:15:48] It kind of, and I think I was prepared to enjoy it because I had played a thousand X resist earlier this year, which is another game that sort of features this really flat voice acting.

[00:16:00] And what I'm kind of come to see also in Phoenix Springs is that this, this kind of voice delivery, like there's enough, I feel like smirk and sarcasm in the tone.

[00:16:10] Especially like you said, she mentions other people's thoughts.

[00:16:13] And, uh, there's like one point where she is talking to a DJ who's not paying any attention to her really.

[00:16:19] And she has plenty of snark up her sleeve to be, to talking like what this DJ is doing.

[00:16:25] Um, I found that like, there was enough personality in there that like, I almost feel like the flatness in there, I guess, translated for me to be impatience.

[00:16:36] Which is why I think the voice acting worked for me because Iris is so like frustrated with these kind of random dead ends that she's running into.

[00:16:46] That that voice acting helped me feel that kind of frustration and impatience that she was dealing with.

[00:16:52] So I did really like that.

[00:16:53] I think it, yeah, like I said, it really ended up working for me towards the end of the game.

[00:16:58] I agree.

[00:16:59] I feel like, um, just something about how she delivered that frustration made me feel like I was actually developing a rapport with her.

[00:17:09] There were many, many times where I felt like she was speaking to me and we were, it was almost like a buddy cop detective situation, you know, where I would get frustrated with her and vice versa.

[00:17:20] And we weren't making progress.

[00:17:22] And, um, so I, I thought that was really interesting.

[00:17:25] I don't get that from a lot of other games and characters where I, I almost feel like I'm in dialogue with them directly.

[00:17:35] So I, I thought that was pretty brilliant.

[00:17:37] I don't know if that was intentional or not, or just a result of me streaming the game and yelling at it quite a bit.

[00:17:43] Um, but I thought it was cool.

[00:17:46] Now that you say that, I'm thinking about some of the comments she made.

[00:17:50] Because there were moments of frustration for me where I was like, I have no idea what combination here is going to advance the game.

[00:17:56] And so I started doing things that felt illogical.

[00:17:59] Just, I was throwing crap at the wall, you know, just like trying to make it work.

[00:18:03] And sometimes Iris would say things like, nope, that's not going to work.

[00:18:07] Or that doesn't make any logical sense or whatever.

[00:18:10] And I thought to myself, like, I guess now that you're saying, I'm like, oh my gosh, she really is speaking to you.

[00:18:15] She really is speaking to the player.

[00:18:17] I feel like more than she is speaking to herself in moments like that.

[00:18:21] Yeah, there are moments where you, because you, you typically have three options for what, how to interact with anything in the space to talk to, look at, or use.

[00:18:31] And more often than not, when I would select to use, I would get something back from her along the lines of, I could do that.

[00:18:38] But why?

[00:18:40] Like, okay.

[00:18:42] You know what?

[00:18:42] I don't know.

[00:18:43] I'm trying things.

[00:18:44] Give me a break.

[00:18:46] So.

[00:18:47] My gosh, that was a great, like, impression of her.

[00:18:49] Because that is absolutely the delivery, right?

[00:18:52] The delivery is like, but why?

[00:18:53] You know, like, it's, it's like 50% of a question, but like 50% also like almost an accusation.

[00:19:00] Yes.

[00:19:01] Very accusatory.

[00:19:03] I completely agree.

[00:19:04] But why would I do that, right?

[00:19:06] Yet.

[00:19:07] Yeah, I liked her.

[00:19:09] I don't know.

[00:19:09] Now that we're talking about her more specifically, I'm like, she is like, so like, she makes me bristle.

[00:19:18] But gosh, dang it, Iris.

[00:19:19] Like, there's something about you.

[00:19:21] I'm just kind of compelled to go along this journey with you.

[00:19:25] And I, I do think kind of talking, circling back to a moment we've already discussed.

[00:19:29] I think part of that is just those, the revelatory moments in the cut scenes where it's like, maybe now this is a fresh thought that I've had.

[00:19:39] But like, when we see Iris soften in those moments of like clarity or where she feels like she's making progress.

[00:19:46] I feel like maybe that's where we get a little more empathy, right?

[00:19:49] Where it's like, okay, we've done, like, we've accomplished something.

[00:19:53] Let's figure out what happens next.

[00:19:55] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:19:58] All right.

[00:19:59] Any other, let's see, we can talk about the music in here and the audio design.

[00:20:04] Holy cow.

[00:20:05] I really liked, this is early on in the game when you are at the university.

[00:20:10] And there's the, I already mentioned the DJ and the music playing.

[00:20:14] I just loved subtleties where like, if you're not in the room where the DJ sleep experiment is happening,

[00:20:21] the sound feels like it's in another room.

[00:20:25] You know, the bass tones are a little louder.

[00:20:26] Everything else is a bit more muted.

[00:20:27] And so I feel like just kind of those decisions, the really deliberate footstep sounds,

[00:20:33] it all felt really like there's not a whole lot happening.

[00:20:39] I feel like in terms of sound, but there's enough in there that it felt like it filled the room.

[00:20:44] So I never felt like I was, I never felt like there's an absence of sound, but I feel like

[00:20:49] it was almost invisible in the way that like, I didn't notice it as a distraction, but purely

[00:20:56] to enhance the kind of experience that I was having.

[00:20:59] Does that make sense?

[00:21:00] It does.

[00:21:01] No, I totally agree.

[00:21:02] I, when I sat down to write specifically my notes about sound and music, my first thought

[00:21:08] was what sounds.

[00:21:08] Um, so I do, I think that they were crafted in a really strategic way.

[00:21:14] I felt like every single sound, every single, um, you know, uh, filter or treatment of the

[00:21:20] sound too was clearly a decision.

[00:21:23] Nothing was superfluous.

[00:21:25] I really appreciated that there was only ever music when it made sense for there to be music.

[00:21:30] There was no like, oh, let's add a soundtrack.

[00:21:33] There are songs and I think they're used in really powerful ways, um, but not as sort of

[00:21:41] a throwaway kind of, um, aesthetic thing, which I re I really appreciated.

[00:21:45] Um, I didn't even notice that about the music coming through the, yeah, that is how invisible

[00:21:50] it all was and very immersive.

[00:21:53] I didn't notice the music coming from the other room, but it was there and it just felt, it

[00:21:57] felt like it created this space in a, in a really, um, in a really grounding way.

[00:22:02] Um, I did like how the, I think the quality of the sounds sounded different depending on

[00:22:09] where you were when you got to like the desert spaces, it all felt really crackly and grainy

[00:22:14] when you were in sort of the rainy neighborhood.

[00:22:18] It all sounded kind of mushy and like a lot of that rainy ambient noise.

[00:22:24] So they, I think they did a great job, but to a, to a degree where it's actually hard

[00:22:28] to go back and reflect on specific moments.

[00:22:33] Yeah.

[00:22:34] From what I understand, this is just really one of those difficult things about, I think

[00:22:39] more so in video games and movies.

[00:22:42] Um, I remember reading and I'm struggling to remember who it was with, so I'll have to

[00:22:46] look this up, but I was reading, uh, it was an interview with somebody who does music for

[00:22:50] games.

[00:22:51] And, uh, when they're sending kind of like these scratch tracks to the, cause typically

[00:22:57] a lot of in, in, in these space, uh, specifically these composers are contracted, right?

[00:23:02] And so the developers, the main developers will say, okay, we're looking for this type of music

[00:23:06] for this.

[00:23:06] And, um, the musicians, the composers will send pieces over and kind of get feedback

[00:23:11] on what it is exactly they want for the game.

[00:23:13] Um, and I remember, uh, one of these, uh, composers was talking about their experience

[00:23:17] about how like they have to write music.

[00:23:21] This is like the impossible task.

[00:23:23] I feel like of the video game music composer, you have to write music that enhances the experience,

[00:23:28] but can't be like too distracting to what the player is doing.

[00:23:32] You want it to enhance the decisions that they're making, but not like necessarily force them

[00:23:37] to make specific decisions.

[00:23:38] Like, and I think this is true of course, of music across all spectrums, but I just remember

[00:23:44] this person writing that they had written something that had a really strong melody for

[00:23:48] some, um, part of a video game and the game, uh, Lee, the designer got back to them and

[00:23:54] said, I'm sorry, this is too distracting for what's how it's going to be used in the game.

[00:24:00] And I think about that a lot.

[00:24:02] And in the context of Phoenix Springs, I think you're absolutely right where it's like the

[00:24:06] music was used perfectly to really enhance those, like, especially the cut scenes, right?

[00:24:11] These specific powerful moments of the game, but I couldn't hum a melody that I heard from

[00:24:18] the game, you know?

[00:24:20] And so if I were to go back and listen to the soundtrack, like by itself, it would be listening

[00:24:25] to the music for the first time.

[00:24:26] And I don't think that this is a bad thing because video games like movies are, they're

[00:24:33] really just like multiple art artistic mediums mixed into one and they're all supposed to

[00:24:39] be complimentary.

[00:24:40] But yeah, again, the cut scenes were so good.

[00:24:44] And the way that music was using those specifically just, I don't know, really enhance the emotion

[00:24:48] of what, what was happening or what was being expressed.

[00:24:51] Yeah.

[00:24:52] And now that I'm thinking about some of these different cut scenes and the few scenes where

[00:24:55] there was music independent of cut scenes, I couldn't even tell you, I don't know that

[00:25:00] there's a specific genre or like sort of ecosystem of instruments or genres or anything that maybe

[00:25:12] carries over across all of the songs.

[00:25:15] Some of them are super ethereal.

[00:25:18] And I don't even know what genre I would classify them as.

[00:25:21] But then there was some sort of the techno thumping in the university.

[00:25:27] But it all felt like it overall fit cohesively into the game, into the story.

[00:25:33] Nothing, nothing jumped out at me as not fitting of what was going on in the moment.

[00:25:38] So they did.

[00:25:40] I feel like that's a really impressive feat.

[00:25:44] Yeah, I agree.

[00:25:46] It's a job well done, but it's a shame because it's a job not well appreciated, maybe in that

[00:25:51] regard.

[00:25:52] Makes me think of translation.

[00:25:55] I've done some translation just with my career and I've done some translation for video games.

[00:26:01] And something that really sucks about translation work is that it is really supposed to be absolutely

[00:26:07] invisible.

[00:26:08] You're not supposed to be able to tell that the work is translated.

[00:26:11] So you can translate a text like 99% in such a way that is invisible to the reader, but everybody

[00:26:18] will dogpile the 1%.

[00:26:20] You know, the 1% of mistakes or the 1% where people are like, well, this doesn't make sense.

[00:26:25] Oh, this is obviously where this was translated or something like that.

[00:26:28] And it's a shame, right?

[00:26:29] And so where, yeah, in the case here with the music, it's supposed to be invisible.

[00:26:37] But then how do you appreciate it?

[00:26:39] Yeah, they did it too well.

[00:26:41] It does its job well.

[00:26:42] They did it too well.

[00:26:43] They did it in such a way that the way that it was supposed to be.

[00:26:46] But yeah.

[00:26:48] Hopefully that makes sense.

[00:26:49] Listeners, let me know if not.

[00:26:51] This morning has been wild.

[00:26:52] But we're going to continue on unless there's anything else about art direction you wanted

[00:26:57] to get in there.

[00:26:58] No, I think that covers it.

[00:27:00] Okay.

[00:27:01] So we'll be talking about the game design.

[00:27:04] So just a quick reminder.

[00:27:06] Things are a little out of order.

[00:27:07] We'll do narrative next.

[00:27:08] Next.

[00:27:09] So the game design here, the gameplay, how the game works.

[00:27:12] Well, it's a point and click adventure.

[00:27:14] So you're going to be playing this with your mouse.

[00:27:18] I don't think I use my keyboard at all, actually, to be honest.

[00:27:23] And you are in different 2D scenarios and you find different interactable objects and you

[00:27:29] click on them to try to glean more information.

[00:27:31] You don't really gather items.

[00:27:33] So you don't have...

[00:27:34] The inventory you have is like a giant thought bubble.

[00:27:38] With all these different ideas that you have gotten from interacting with different objects

[00:27:43] or talking to different people.

[00:27:45] And then from there, what you do is you combine some of these objects and then use them.

[00:27:51] So, for example, several times in the game, you'll come across a terminal.

[00:27:55] And then what you'll do is combine maybe two thoughts that you had.

[00:27:59] And then you'll click on the terminal.

[00:28:01] And then you see what it produces.

[00:28:03] And oftentimes it'll produce not very much.

[00:28:05] But sometimes it'll produce progress.

[00:28:08] Or what that progress might look like is that you just get new ideas to try on different

[00:28:13] objects in the game.

[00:28:16] I think as far as point and click adventures go, I liked that basic mechanic.

[00:28:20] I thought it worked pretty well.

[00:28:23] I also felt like this game had a million red herrings.

[00:28:27] Like, there are so many thoughts.

[00:28:30] There's one moment in particular where you're trying to figure out a password.

[00:28:35] And I think I picked every wrong answer before I got the right answer.

[00:28:42] And I don't know if I liked...

[00:28:44] I don't...

[00:28:45] Like, I get like in a point and click, you're supposed to be doing a lot of pointing and

[00:28:49] a lot of clicking.

[00:28:51] But I feel like in this game, I felt dumber than I did clever.

[00:28:56] I don't know.

[00:28:57] Which doesn't always feel great.

[00:29:00] I felt the same way.

[00:29:01] I felt dumber playing this game than Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, which I think most puzzle

[00:29:07] fans would agree is a very challenging puzzle game.

[00:29:10] But I felt more adept there than here.

[00:29:18] I haven't played Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, but I have heard that.

[00:29:21] The general sentiment is if you do not have a notebook with you, you're lost.

[00:29:24] But here, I found myself just getting more frustrated with trying to figure out what I

[00:29:30] was supposed to do.

[00:29:31] Sometimes I felt like I even knew what I was supposed to do, but not how.

[00:29:37] Like, something, you know, where I could tell a human being, this is my strategy for

[00:29:43] solving this puzzle.

[00:29:44] And they'd go, yes, that absolutely makes sense.

[00:29:46] But then I couldn't figure out how to communicate that within the UI of the game to actually

[00:29:52] achieve that.

[00:29:53] And I just, I think, like, fundamentally, these are like the most basic point and click

[00:29:59] mechanics out there, right?

[00:30:00] Like this, in some ways, this is the most boiled down version you can get of a point and click

[00:30:05] adventure.

[00:30:06] But just that one shift of having ideas instead of objects in your inventory, I think immediately

[00:30:14] makes it all more convoluted and challenging.

[00:30:18] Because when you're talking about a physical object, we have some understanding of how two

[00:30:26] physical objects or an object and a physical space might be compatible or incompatible, or

[00:30:31] what the result of combining those might be.

[00:30:34] But you can combine any idea with another idea or an idea with any object.

[00:30:42] And like you said, most often, you're going to get very little or nothing from those combinations,

[00:30:49] but they're not fundamentally incompatible to do.

[00:30:52] So you just wind up testing a lot.

[00:30:55] There's a lot of trial and error.

[00:30:57] And when some of this involves moving Iris from one space to another, or one scene to

[00:31:04] another, and then listening to her voice acting telling you every time that you're wrong,

[00:31:11] that just the time investment in this trial and error is so great.

[00:31:16] And I think that was what just produced a lot of my frustration in this whole process.

[00:31:24] That was my main feeling about the overall point and click experience here.

[00:31:30] I think you have stated it beautifully and just with 100% accuracy, especially in it.

[00:31:37] I feel like I'm just going to repeat a lot of what Emily just said.

[00:31:40] But what you said about if you have objects in an inventory, there is a specific logic that

[00:31:47] comes with physical objects, right?

[00:31:49] If I have picked up rusty key, you know, video game logic dictates that there is a rusty lock

[00:31:56] somewhere where I can use this key.

[00:32:00] And so with thoughts, yeah, everything is just on an equal playing field.

[00:32:05] All of that kind of logic that comes with the physical situations that you mentioned,

[00:32:10] has disappeared.

[00:32:11] And it is very much video game logic to have rusty key go with rusty lock, you know,

[00:32:17] because you might pick up seven different keys, silver key, gold key, bronze key, winged key,

[00:32:21] whatever it is, right?

[00:32:23] And the deeply ingrained decades old video game logic is that whatever that adjective is,

[00:32:28] will combine with something else of the same adjective later in the game.

[00:32:33] And so you have an idea of, oh, I found three locks and I have four keys,

[00:32:38] which keys do I use, you know, right?

[00:32:41] And something that kind of, I kind of feel like that this was done purposely tongue in cheek

[00:32:47] is I used to be, I don't have the time anymore, but I used to do a lot of achievement hunting in video games.

[00:32:55] Where then 100%ing of video games achievements was still a great joy for me.

[00:33:00] It's just very rare that I get the chance to do that.

[00:33:02] And I noticed, I always check, I pulled this up, this game has something like over 80 achievements.

[00:33:08] And I was like, oh, I would never 100% this game.

[00:33:11] But the wild thing about this is that most of the achievements, I feel like, come from using illogical

[00:33:17] object combinations that don't work.

[00:33:21] And so I'm like, wait a second, am I getting achievements for playing the game as badly as possible?

[00:33:26] You know, like, so I don't know, it kind of made me laugh a little bit.

[00:33:30] I was like, oh, I wonder if this is a dig at Achievement Hunters.

[00:33:32] But at the same time, I racked up a ton of achievements because the primary strategy,

[00:33:39] like you said, for this game is trial and error, which doesn't always feel great.

[00:33:45] I don't mind brute forcing a section or two in a game, right?

[00:33:49] I'm just like, okay, I don't have the brain power to figure this out.

[00:33:53] I'm just going to try all these different combinations.

[00:33:56] But when you are in a scenario where you have a potential of, I don't know, if you have 12

[00:34:01] different thoughts that you can use on one object, and then, I don't know, statisticians

[00:34:06] tell me if I have 12 objects, and I can have them interact with each other once, how many,

[00:34:11] you know, different dozens, hundreds of combinations are there to try to figure out

[00:34:15] the way that going forward?

[00:34:17] You can't brute force this game, not without beating your head against the wall.

[00:34:21] And so, yeah, I wish that there was, I don't know, I said it.

[00:34:26] And as much as I like this idea of having the inventory being your thoughts in your mind,

[00:34:29] I think it's very cool on paper.

[00:34:32] But in practice, man, hitting search, the search bar for a guide becomes very tempting very quickly,

[00:34:40] which, to be honest, I used a few times in this game.

[00:34:42] We'll talk about one in particular.

[00:34:44] I did too.

[00:34:45] I mean, I started using a guide pretty fast.

[00:34:48] Yeah, I think, I'm proud of myself.

[00:34:51] I made it through the residence.

[00:34:54] Where's the Leo Domer residence?

[00:34:58] Yeah.

[00:34:59] Not his house.

[00:34:59] No, definitely not his house.

[00:35:01] The little neighborhood area?

[00:35:03] The neighborhood.

[00:35:03] Yeah, yeah.

[00:35:04] I made it through the neighborhood, and I was like, you know what?

[00:35:06] I'm feeling pretty good about myself.

[00:35:09] And I did most of the university.

[00:35:09] That is impressive, because I didn't, and I don't even feel ashamed of it.

[00:35:14] I started looking up a guide.

[00:35:15] So I really like what you said about video game logic.

[00:35:18] I think that this game kind of spits in the face of video game logic a little bit,

[00:35:23] which was, I think another part of my frustration was feeling like I was going back to zero in

[00:35:29] terms of all of my years of playing games and feeling like they've taken this tool set away

[00:35:34] from me that I could use to figure out these puzzles.

[00:35:38] And not only, I think, are there a lot of red herrings in the topics that you receive,

[00:35:44] but I also felt like there were multiple unfired Chekhov's guns in the game, which I found

[00:35:50] really frustrating.

[00:35:51] For example, and this is starting to get like minor spoilery, in the residence section,

[00:35:59] there's a padlock at one point.

[00:36:01] Yes.

[00:36:02] And so my whole focus became, we must get a key.

[00:36:05] And I think Iris even says this, we have to get a key to open this padlock to get in.

[00:36:10] You never open the padlock.

[00:36:11] You never get in.

[00:36:13] And that just deeply felt so wrong to me.

[00:36:18] If there was a waterfall in this game, there would not be treasure behind that waterfall.

[00:36:23] No, but there would be a treasure in a sand dune or something.

[00:36:28] Yeah.

[00:36:29] Yeah.

[00:36:30] So I mean, like, is this a, is this a, is this good game design?

[00:36:35] I mean, sure.

[00:36:36] I think it's, it's always interesting when a game like subverts traditional expectations

[00:36:41] of what a video game should do and how it should accomplish those tasks.

[00:36:45] So I think like if I zoom way out, like, sure, this is really interesting.

[00:36:49] But when we zoom back in and it's me playing the game, I would have liked, like, I don't

[00:36:55] know, give, toss me a bone here or there, you know?

[00:36:59] Now, don't get me wrong.

[00:37:00] Like, it was super rewarding if you managed to figure out something by yourself, right?

[00:37:05] But there are a few sections where I was like, I never, I never would have made those connections

[00:37:11] right there.

[00:37:12] And I think in part that comes from the, the, the dialogue writing starts out much more grounded

[00:37:19] and then it gets more and more abstract as it goes through.

[00:37:23] And then you start questioning, um, where exactly is this game taking place?

[00:37:28] Like how reliable is the information that I'm getting?

[00:37:31] And when I felt like when I was about halfway through the game, I was like, I don't know if

[00:37:35] I can trust most of anything that I gleaned from people, you know?

[00:37:40] So, so I feel like in principle, yeah, like having this type of subversion of video game

[00:37:46] logic is fine.

[00:37:47] But like in practice, playing this out, there was just not nearly enough logic for me to grapple

[00:37:54] onto to do something besides brute force or to just look up online what I was supposed

[00:38:00] to do to get through to the next part.

[00:38:02] Yeah, especially when the whole thing is taking place in a, in a world that's different from

[00:38:08] hours.

[00:38:09] And like you said, it's a little difficult to, to even unpack where in time or space

[00:38:14] it's taking place.

[00:38:15] And so I don't know that I can trust my own logic about how my world works and apply it

[00:38:20] to the game.

[00:38:23] So you wind up, I mean, I, it was a matter of brute force or looking up a guide, you know?

[00:38:30] Yeah.

[00:38:31] Yeah.

[00:38:31] And so Calligram Studio, I'm thankful that they did this.

[00:38:36] They anticipated this to some degree, because if you go to their website and then this is

[00:38:41] actually in game, I double checked as well too.

[00:38:43] They have a tips section, which is just super important.

[00:38:49] I actually think that's how I got through the resident and university without looking

[00:38:52] at a guide too often.

[00:38:55] Was it, they have this tips.

[00:38:56] It's like, when you're going through the game, do this, right?

[00:39:00] Always click Leo Domer, for example, or, for example, on, on these objects.

[00:39:06] And I was like, okay, good.

[00:39:07] So I do have somewhat of a guide and then they actually just have their own walkthrough

[00:39:12] guide to get through the game.

[00:39:14] Wow.

[00:39:15] Which I'm like, very cool.

[00:39:18] I'm glad that's there.

[00:39:20] But at the same time, if it needed to be there, doesn't that also kind of say something

[00:39:26] about the design?

[00:39:27] So I don't know if this is an exercise in like meta game design or, or what.

[00:39:33] Yeah.

[00:39:34] That's.

[00:39:34] I'm left more confused.

[00:39:36] That's a little bit how I feel about Lorelei and the laser eyes having this physical notebook

[00:39:42] that you can buy, which I bought and found essential because it included some templates

[00:39:48] for things that you would have to draw out for yourself if you didn't have the guide that

[00:39:54] they produced.

[00:39:55] And again, it's like, oh, is this a fun, handy thing?

[00:39:57] Or is this a sign that you made a game that was a little bit too difficult for most people?

[00:40:04] Yeah.

[00:40:04] I don't know.

[00:40:05] Kind of bringing this back to, I guess, my initial comments just about the video game

[00:40:10] industry.

[00:40:11] Right.

[00:40:12] This is another big problem that indies have.

[00:40:14] Like, I firmly believe that there's probably enough gamers out there who would play a game

[00:40:19] like Phoenix Springs.

[00:40:20] And I'm assuming Lorelei and the laser eyes who don't need the walkthrough guide, who will

[00:40:26] buy it and just enjoy it.

[00:40:28] And there's probably enough of those people out there.

[00:40:31] Right.

[00:40:31] To make the game like sustainable.

[00:40:34] Right.

[00:40:36] But the issue is, are all of those people being reached with this type of game?

[00:40:41] And this is something that is really difficult.

[00:40:43] I feel like for people to any game designer, any game of any level.

[00:40:47] Right.

[00:40:47] Is, well, who's your demographic?

[00:40:49] Who's a target demographic?

[00:40:50] Who do you want to buy and play and enjoy this game?

[00:40:52] But also, who's actually going to end up playing it?

[00:40:55] Right.

[00:40:56] And if for me, like, I did like the game, but I also don't think that I was a target demographic

[00:41:05] for this game, even though I ended up being one of the people who played it, you know?

[00:41:10] And so, again, like, I'm a little conflicted.

[00:41:14] I think it's like my personal opinion is that this game design is just too opaque.

[00:41:18] Right.

[00:41:18] Right.

[00:41:18] It is just it's just too difficult to really figure out how to progress.

[00:41:24] Right.

[00:41:26] I don't know.

[00:41:27] I guess I'll just leave it at that.

[00:41:29] This is a problem that I don't have a solution for.

[00:41:31] Right.

[00:41:32] I'm not going to tell Caligram Studio you did your game wrong.

[00:41:35] But I'm going to say, like, as somebody who ended up playing this game, it felt way

[00:41:39] too opaque for me.

[00:41:39] Yeah, it's a shame because I think every other aspect of the game really felt tuned

[00:41:47] into everything else and everything exists in service of the story, I would say, except

[00:41:55] for this, except for some of these puzzles.

[00:41:59] And maybe I'm wrong.

[00:42:01] Maybe there is some way that something about how, like you said, opaque the puzzle solving

[00:42:06] is and how frustrating and confusing is.

[00:42:09] Maybe that's the point.

[00:42:10] In which case, sure.

[00:42:12] Okay.

[00:42:14] But then that then.

[00:42:15] Yeah.

[00:42:15] But from my experience, it didn't feel like it served my understanding of the plot or the

[00:42:21] characters.

[00:42:23] Yep.

[00:42:23] Okay.

[00:42:24] I totally agree with you.

[00:42:25] I think you've said that really well.

[00:42:27] All right.

[00:42:28] I'm ready to just tackle what the heck I think maybe possibly transpired in the course of my

[00:42:34] time in this game.

[00:42:35] Is there anything else about gameplay or mechanics you'd like to get out there?

[00:42:38] No, I think we covered it.

[00:42:41] All right, folks.

[00:42:43] It's time.

[00:42:44] This game is relatively short.

[00:42:47] I think How Long to Beat has it at about four hours.

[00:42:50] And you've heard us talk about how difficult some of these puzzles are.

[00:42:53] So I think if you're a super genius, you could probably beat this game in 90 minutes.

[00:42:58] But if you're like the rest of us, I think four hours is a fair amount of time to tackle

[00:43:04] the game.

[00:43:05] That being said, from here on out, we've kind of made light allusions to different moments

[00:43:10] of the game.

[00:43:10] I don't think we've really mentioned anything that goes past the halfway mark of the story.

[00:43:17] But everything's fair game up until right now.

[00:43:20] So spoilers, you are warned.

[00:43:23] Alarm bells, flashing red lights, spoilers incoming.

[00:43:26] I'm not sure that they will help you very much at all, to be frank.

[00:43:30] So if you're taking the off ramp here, thank you so much for listening.

[00:43:35] We appreciate that.

[00:43:36] If you're sticking around to try to figure out what the heck happened in this game, please

[00:43:40] let us know what the heck you think happened in this game in some sort of comment.

[00:43:45] But anyway, okay, here we go.

[00:43:47] So we start with Iris Dormer.

[00:43:50] And she is an investigative reporter.

[00:43:54] This is what I understand.

[00:43:57] And she is trying to figure out where her brother Leo has disappeared to.

[00:44:03] And so she doesn't have a lot of information.

[00:44:07] She's not really in contact with him.

[00:44:09] She makes some references to their parents.

[00:44:13] So they had some sort of upbringing together.

[00:44:16] She does mention, and this does become important, that it is her little brother that she is looking for.

[00:44:23] And she's on this wild goose chase to find him, which takes her to all sorts of wild, wild locations.

[00:44:33] But I mean, as far as like basic bare bones plot, like that's it.

[00:44:37] You're looking for your brother.

[00:44:38] You're trying to find him.

[00:44:40] Along the way, you discover that he's a bioethicist, which I think is a really...

[00:44:47] I was kind of surprised.

[00:44:48] I don't know.

[00:44:49] He was a professor at this University of Life Sciences in this maybe near future, it feels like, time period.

[00:44:59] And you will find him relatively early on, and you will see him as a very old man.

[00:45:08] And so immediately you're wondering what the heck happens.

[00:45:11] And then soon enough, you're transported to this location called Phoenix Springs, the title of the game.

[00:45:17] And that's when the word Phoenix really became...

[00:45:20] I was like, oh, okay, Phoenix.

[00:45:21] This is a mystical bird that is reborn every so often.

[00:45:26] And that's kind of where the game goes from there.

[00:45:28] And so I don't even know where to start with this narrative.

[00:45:32] That's kind of my synopsis of the majority of it.

[00:45:35] Do you have anything to add to that?

[00:45:36] Any details I'm missing?

[00:45:38] I started to have a lot of questions really early on in that first sort of third or half of the game about what we were even doing.

[00:45:47] Because Iris is, I don't know, what would you say?

[00:45:52] Maybe mid-30s-ish?

[00:45:55] That's how I, yeah.

[00:45:57] So like you said, it is very surprising to see that Leo is a very old man, given that he's her little brother.

[00:46:03] Um, I also immediately started wondering how estranged they were.

[00:46:10] Like you said, there's a reference to their upbringing, but then she seems to be discovering everything about his adult life for the first time.

[00:46:19] So I felt like I was missing context that I would have guessed Iris would have about when they became estranged.

[00:46:33] But you don't learn any of that context, really.

[00:46:38] Which gave the whole thing just such a dreamlike feel to it.

[00:46:46] You also, you change locations from the very beginning.

[00:46:50] You change locations in really, again, kind of dreamlike ways that feel very abrupt and startling.

[00:46:57] At one point, I think the very first scene, you start on a train.

[00:47:02] And then within a few minutes, realize you're not on a train at all.

[00:47:06] You're on a sofa in front of a window, or not a window, like a screen that's projecting the outside.

[00:47:15] So I feel like I couldn't ever trust changes of location to be what I thought they were.

[00:47:25] You know, you'd progress from her apartment to the neighborhood, to the neighborhood, to the university, etc., etc.

[00:47:33] And you finally get to Phoenix Springs.

[00:47:35] And just the way these happen in this sort of abrupt, unexplained way, it made me feel like I wasn't really sure how or when or how quickly anything was happening.

[00:47:49] Yeah, I think you nailed it.

[00:47:52] It very much is like dreamlike storytelling.

[00:47:55] It's very like scene-based, right?

[00:47:59] You're in this specific scene.

[00:48:01] You kind of go through these different thoughts and emotions.

[00:48:04] And then you're instantly transported to the next one, right?

[00:48:07] Which I think is somewhat common in like Detective Noir's storytelling, right?

[00:48:12] It is those movies I'm thinking of in particular heavily focused on just framing and lines and stark contrast and colors.

[00:48:21] And so I think all of that is kind of deep within, you know, deeply embedded in the DNA of Phoenix Springs.

[00:48:27] But you're right.

[00:48:28] I mean, it was, I don't know why, but it was really jarring to go from the train scene to the room, which I assume was like her apartment.

[00:48:35] And this is like the first 20 minutes of the game or something.

[00:48:38] I don't know.

[00:48:39] So, and this is kind of the tutorial for the thought idea mechanic.

[00:48:46] But yeah, as you, the game, I feel like started picking up a bit of a story when you're like, okay, when I got to the university,

[00:48:54] I felt like I actually started getting information on her brother where you found out that like he gave this signature for approval for a specific statue that was going to be featured on the campus.

[00:49:07] As somebody who works in academia, I was like, ah, they nailed this bureaucracy beautifully.

[00:49:12] This is exactly how it goes.

[00:49:13] You need all these random signatures to get whatever it is out there, right?

[00:49:19] And so I felt like I was like, okay, we're making progress.

[00:49:22] We're discovering information about her brother.

[00:49:24] But you're totally right.

[00:49:25] Like I think in terms of logic of like what the relationship was, it didn't, I never really clicked for me.

[00:49:33] But I want to say during like the university sequences, I just let it go.

[00:49:37] I was like, okay, you know what?

[00:49:38] We're just trying to find this guy.

[00:49:40] And we're getting some information about who he is.

[00:49:42] And then you go to like this library section of the university.

[00:49:46] And this is where I first learned that the game was going to be really convoluted.

[00:49:51] Because there's a bunch of bookshelves.

[00:49:53] And I was like, okay, trying to find information on my brother.

[00:49:57] I know that he was a professor here.

[00:49:59] And then literally you're clicking his name, like Leo Dorma, on every single bookshelf until you get a hit.

[00:50:06] And then I found another name, which I've forgotten by now.

[00:50:09] But somebody who had like co-written a book with him.

[00:50:12] And then I was like...

[00:50:13] Amrita Thomas.

[00:50:14] Yes.

[00:50:15] Thank you.

[00:50:15] Amrita Thomas.

[00:50:16] Who never comes...

[00:50:17] Another Chekhov's gun.

[00:50:18] And she never comes up again after you need that one piece of information to find Leo.

[00:50:24] Nope.

[00:50:24] Yeah.

[00:50:24] And then I took her name and I was like, I guess I'm going through every single bookshelf again with this name.

[00:50:29] You know?

[00:50:33] So I felt like I was making progress.

[00:50:35] I hit the bookshelf.

[00:50:36] So I was like, I'm not making progress.

[00:50:38] And then you take this...

[00:50:39] Because what's happening at the university right now, I should mention this.

[00:50:42] It's like there's some sort of riot has just taken place.

[00:50:45] University's in total shambles.

[00:50:47] I couldn't tell.

[00:50:48] So again, time lapse here was super fuzzy.

[00:50:51] I couldn't tell if this university had been shut down for several weeks, if the riot had just happened earlier that day.

[00:50:58] Because this DJ is doing this sleep deprivation experiment where people are trying to dance and avoid sleeping for long periods of time.

[00:51:06] And so you wander into that room and there's a bunch of people passed out on the floor.

[00:51:10] Two people dancing that you can't talk with.

[00:51:12] And then the DJ.

[00:51:13] And I was trying all these names on the DJ.

[00:51:14] And the DJ is just giving me absolutely nothing.

[00:51:19] I think narratively, I was like, wait, what?

[00:51:23] Where are we going?

[00:51:24] You know, that's where my first big question mark was like, I'm not finding squat here.

[00:51:30] Where are we going?

[00:51:31] Yeah.

[00:51:33] And during this initial part of the game, you get a lot of hints and suggestions that the whole thing, your whole life, your whole world is taking place in this really authoritarian kind of atmosphere and government.

[00:51:48] And so I kept waiting for that to play a part in anything.

[00:51:53] And again, it doesn't, as far as I could tell, unless I missed something dramatically.

[00:51:58] It doesn't seem to really, it's like the, it's the ambiance of everything, but not relevant.

[00:52:05] Right.

[00:52:05] Right.

[00:52:07] No, yeah.

[00:52:09] Because there's a lot of mention of banned books and banned studies.

[00:52:12] Yeah.

[00:52:13] And the, she talks, ours talks about how the terminal is government issued and yeah, there are limits.

[00:52:21] Oh, she, at one point in the resident or not in the, in the Leo's home, you find a stasis pod.

[00:52:28] And she references, oh, that's the sign of big pockets and like big connections.

[00:52:33] Um, those are typically outlawed or something like that.

[00:52:38] Yeah.

[00:52:39] So I don't know.

[00:52:41] That's the backdrop, I guess.

[00:52:42] Right.

[00:52:42] Like.

[00:52:43] Yeah.

[00:52:44] All stuff that I feel like, again, on paper is super interesting, but you have all of these threads that aren't really woven together into very much.

[00:52:53] And so you're kind of left looking at more threads as you're gathering them.

[00:52:57] You've got a bunch of spools of threads.

[00:53:00] Right.

[00:53:01] Yeah.

[00:53:01] A bunch of cool narrative threads here.

[00:53:03] They all look really pretty.

[00:53:04] It was really difficult to piece them together.

[00:53:07] Um, but yeah.

[00:53:08] So the first, I remember to get out of the university, I was like, what on earth do I do?

[00:53:14] Because I felt like all signs were pointing towards the DJ because it was the only person that you could talk to.

[00:53:21] And like, there are other terminals in there and they were all like dead ends or they're like, oh, this terminal is destroyed beyond repair.

[00:53:28] And so.

[00:53:29] Yeah.

[00:53:29] I had to look it up and it was like, oh, you need to go flip the slide on the projector.

[00:53:36] And you have to do it twice, which this was another moment.

[00:53:39] There are frequently solutions to puzzles in the game where you have to do what feels like the wrong thing multiple times, sometimes two, three times.

[00:53:49] Uh, which really got to me, especially when Iris is piping in these really sassy dialogue lines about how you're going nowhere with these actions.

[00:54:00] And then it turns out you have to do them multiple times.

[00:54:02] Yeah.

[00:54:05] Yeah.

[00:54:06] That I agree.

[00:54:06] That was a, that was a hard moment.

[00:54:08] That was a hard moment.

[00:54:10] Emotionally.

[00:54:13] It was just like, oh, it's the projector slides.

[00:54:17] And yeah, same thing.

[00:54:18] There's like six of them.

[00:54:19] Only one of them has the important information that you need.

[00:54:21] And then you needed to have the right combination.

[00:54:25] At this point, I think I was working with 10 different threads ideas that I could have pieced together.

[00:54:31] I looked at the guide and it's like, oh, you're supposed to use Leo Dormer's name on the slide that has the forwarding addresses.

[00:54:38] And I'm like, oh, if I look at this backwards, right?

[00:54:41] Like knowing the solution.

[00:54:43] Sure.

[00:54:43] Yeah.

[00:54:43] It makes sense.

[00:54:46] But because like you're saying, I was so focused on the, this sort of authoritarian, you know, government and how it was dictating what kind of knowledge was being produced in a university.

[00:54:57] Something that's very on my mind right now, believe it or not.

[00:55:00] But, um, uh, I was just like, oh, we're just looking for the address.

[00:55:06] That's it.

[00:55:07] We actually don't care about any of this other stuff, even though this other stuff is like compelling, but actually it's getting us nowhere.

[00:55:15] So I don't know.

[00:55:17] In this way, I feel like the game is at odds with itself narratively, right?

[00:55:21] It's actually a very interesting game, but so little that actually matters to progress the game.

[00:55:29] So it was this weird tug of war of like, I want to know more about this story, but actually I want to know more about this world.

[00:55:37] But the world doesn't really matter to make progress in the story.

[00:55:44] Yeah, it really kind of begs the question why they created this really fascinating backdrop to something that had nothing to do with it.

[00:55:53] When the narrative is just completely, the narrative could happen in a vacuum and you wouldn't, you wouldn't lose anything that's, that's currently there about the narrative.

[00:56:05] And then the backdrop is fascinating, but doesn't add anything to what's going on.

[00:56:11] And so both, I mean, felt a little unfulfilled to me.

[00:56:18] Yeah.

[00:56:19] Yeah.

[00:56:20] And this is, this is like the first half of the game.

[00:56:22] So kind of jumping ahead, we get to Leo's house and it's a bit of more on this, right?

[00:56:28] We learn more about Leo as a bioethicist.

[00:56:31] Like you mentioned, there's a stasis pod.

[00:56:32] Clearly he's doing a bunch of stuff that's illegal, you know, um, he's getting death threats.

[00:56:38] Yeah.

[00:56:39] He's getting death threats.

[00:56:40] We learned that he's sick, like a bunch of his students write him a get well, better card.

[00:56:45] And so again, we're gleaning like all this information, but like when it came to actually unlocking the, the room, there's like a panic room or like a bunker where we assume Leo is.

[00:56:55] And we're trying to investigate if he's there right now.

[00:56:57] Um, this was the next massive brick wall for me because you get these numbers and I was like, oh, okay.

[00:57:05] Numbers pass, you know, key will type in these numbers.

[00:57:08] And it's like, nope, that's not it.

[00:57:10] And then it turns out that you're supposed to fail.

[00:57:13] So you get the security questions.

[00:57:16] To reset the password.

[00:57:18] Yeah.

[00:57:19] Yeah.

[00:57:19] You're resetting the password and then you need to find clues in his house to answer these questions.

[00:57:25] And, uh, I was like, no, I don't know.

[00:57:29] That was another moment that I like how you described it, where once I found out the solution to get the, to try an incorrect password multiple times to, to enter this sort of reset sequence.

[00:57:42] It makes sense in retrospect, but I didn't know that the world, that this world behaves that way.

[00:57:51] Yeah.

[00:57:51] Partly because it's so different from ours.

[00:57:53] And I, that's not something that happens every time I enter an incorrect password into a thing.

[00:58:02] So it didn't feel like it was something that I was going to be able to logically intuit, but it would make sense reverse engineering it.

[00:58:14] Yeah.

[00:58:14] Which, you know, is that good puzzle design?

[00:58:17] I don't know.

[00:58:18] Oh, I'm a little skeptical about that.

[00:58:22] It's not how my brain operates.

[00:58:24] Right.

[00:58:24] And again, like if we're thinking about this as like a big meta critique of what video game logic has become over decades and decades of game design.

[00:58:33] I think sure.

[00:58:34] Yeah.

[00:58:34] It's interesting to think about when zoomed out, but when playing it, I feel, I'm feeling more frustration than I am appreciation of what's happening there.

[00:58:43] Um, so yeah, narratively you see Leo, you, you discover he's an old man and he's like, don't go to Phoenix Springs.

[00:58:49] And so of course this is where video game logic does come into play.

[00:58:52] When everybody tells you don't go somewhere, that's exactly where you go here.

[00:58:56] You get sort of transported to the train right there.

[00:58:59] Um, and then, uh, this train sequence.

[00:59:04] Sure.

[00:59:04] It was cool to actually get into Phoenix Springs though.

[00:59:08] You have to walk the desert.

[00:59:11] You find a random or the NPC is actually at the train station where you get off.

[00:59:15] If you talk to him in enough, you get something called the one Oh one.

[00:59:20] And I was like, one Oh one.

[00:59:21] That sounds like some sort of highway or in.

[00:59:25] Yeah.

[00:59:26] The, my, the Californian in me was like, ah, yes, the one Oh one.

[00:59:29] I got you.

[00:59:30] Yeah.

[00:59:30] The one Oh one.

[00:59:31] Yeah.

[00:59:31] So I'm from Washington state, right?

[00:59:33] Like, so West coast, same thing.

[00:59:34] I'm like, I'm like, great.

[00:59:35] I'm looking for a highway.

[00:59:36] So I'm walking down these tracks and I climb up on a hill, find a radio transmitter.

[00:59:41] And I'm like, looking for this highway.

[00:59:42] And I'm like, there's no highway.

[00:59:44] I don't know.

[00:59:45] I looked at the guide and it's like, Oh, if you go to this desert panel and you look

[00:59:50] in one of the background, like frames, layers, there are rocks that are somewhat shaped in

[00:59:57] one zero one formation.

[00:59:59] And I got to the location after looking at the guide and I was like, these are like 70% obscured

[01:00:07] by random sand dune.

[01:00:09] There's no way on earth.

[01:00:12] I would have figured this out.

[01:00:13] Like if there was no guide for this game, I would have been stuck here for 30 minutes

[01:00:17] and I would have thrown in the towel.

[01:00:19] Yeah.

[01:00:19] I beg to differ that they look at all like one Oh one, uh, like digits.

[01:00:23] I, I managed to find them because I was clicking on the rocks and, um, Iris kept saying they

[01:00:29] do look a bit like digits.

[01:00:31] And I was like, Oh, well, okay.

[01:00:32] If you think so, maybe, but the, the radio transmitter also felt like a red herring because

[01:00:37] I immediately thought, okay, maybe one Oh one is a frequency.

[01:00:40] Let's see what we can do here.

[01:00:41] That doesn't help.

[01:00:42] Oh yeah.

[01:00:45] Nope.

[01:00:46] That doesn't help.

[01:00:47] Yeah.

[01:00:48] So after Emily and I have, you know, tripped and blundered our way into Phoenix Springs,

[01:00:53] um, the game doesn't get any more clear.

[01:00:56] It like Phoenix Springs definitely feels like some sort of dreamlike location.

[01:01:02] Like it doesn't feel real.

[01:01:04] It's just this oasis in the middle of a desert.

[01:01:06] And here I was like, okay, I think we're full blown.

[01:01:08] I think we've left reality at this point.

[01:01:10] I think for me, I was like, I don't know what, and I kept trying to piece together because

[01:01:15] the word Phoenix has to do with rebirth.

[01:01:18] And then we see like Leo experimenting with like the things related to rebirth.

[01:01:23] And so I'm like, okay, the story's got to come together here in Phoenix Springs because

[01:01:28] of the name of Phoenix Springs.

[01:01:30] It's an oasis.

[01:01:31] And because what we've learned about Leo as this bioethicist, when in reality, we find

[01:01:36] this community that's speaking in extremely vague and abstract ways.

[01:01:42] Um, and we're, and we're like trying to put people's memories back together.

[01:01:47] And this for me was, um, I was like, I don't know.

[01:01:52] I felt like we had left behind a whole lot of what we had discovered up until this point.

[01:01:58] Like to me, this is where I divide the game in half.

[01:02:01] Like there's before Phoenix Springs.

[01:02:02] And then you get to Phoenix Springs where it felt like I was playing a brand new game

[01:02:06] in terms of, uh, who I was talking to and what themes I was engaging with.

[01:02:11] I agree.

[01:02:13] And I think if there's, if there's something they missed in the second half in this Phoenix

[01:02:20] Springs portion, it's that you sort of lose your, you lose any sense of direction.

[01:02:27] I mean, in like a, a practical way, but also from a gameplay perspective, because your

[01:02:34] whole mission for the first half is we have to find Leo.

[01:02:38] You find him, you find him halfway through, and then you wind up in Phoenix.

[01:02:41] And I felt a little like directionless.

[01:02:46] I mean, there were lots of things to look at, lots of people to talk to, but why, what

[01:02:50] was I trying to do?

[01:02:51] It felt really unclear.

[01:02:53] It just felt like, I guess the, the objective now is to learn information, but to what end

[01:03:00] was unclear.

[01:03:03] Did you feel that at all?

[01:03:05] When did you, when you arrived at Phoenix Springs, did you feel like you had a goal?

[01:03:07] When I arrived to Phoenix Springs, I was like, okay, Leo said, don't come here.

[01:03:13] His is one of the few ideas that still remains.

[01:03:16] Because when you do accomplish a task, a lot of these ideas will disappear and you can no

[01:03:21] longer click on them, thankfully.

[01:03:22] Right.

[01:03:23] So I was like, okay, Leo was here.

[01:03:27] He visited this location at some point.

[01:03:29] I kept thinking like, am I finding some mystical springs where he took like, I don't know, a

[01:03:35] bath and that made him age or what is happening here?

[01:03:40] But when I first, you find what the Mason and this is somebody, oh my gosh, what was

[01:03:47] it?

[01:03:47] You get the prompt actually, when you first get to the desert to find the crying one.

[01:03:51] The crying one.

[01:03:52] Yeah.

[01:03:53] This super ominous, really vague title.

[01:03:56] And so when I found somebody who's finally crying, you know, or finally found somebody

[01:04:00] who was crying, I'm like, are you the crying one?

[01:04:02] And I'm like, well, okay, they are the crying one.

[01:04:04] And you are uncovering the past.

[01:04:06] Finally, for once in this game, finally, two points connect that feel like they should.

[01:04:12] Are you the crying one?

[01:04:13] It looks like you're crying.

[01:04:15] And yeah, finally, you get there.

[01:04:17] Okay, sorry.

[01:04:17] I'm not directly answering your question, but to directly answer it, I felt like I was still

[01:04:23] looking for Leo, I guess, you know, and emphasis on the I guess, right?

[01:04:27] Because we had found him, but he didn't tell us anything.

[01:04:30] And did he die immediately after we found him?

[01:04:35] I kind of got the impression that was it.

[01:04:37] Otherwise, we would have talked to him more instead of just going directly to Phoenix

[01:04:42] Springs.

[01:04:43] So I was like, I guess we're trying to find more information about why he got old.

[01:04:47] That was like my main motivator at that point.

[01:04:49] I was like, okay, well, why did we find our little brother much older looking than us?

[01:04:54] I suppose here at Phoenix Springs, we're going to find out why.

[01:04:59] Yeah.

[01:04:59] Um, but I agree.

[01:05:01] My motivation started tanking, especially because, um, irises would walk and there is

[01:05:08] it.

[01:05:08] You can actually figure this out after we beat the game.

[01:05:10] You can double click for her to go faster.

[01:05:13] You can?

[01:05:14] Oh no.

[01:05:15] Oh God.

[01:05:16] I wish I'd known that.

[01:05:17] Yeah.

[01:05:17] Cause you just spend so much time watching her walk and this woman has no sense of urgency.

[01:05:22] No.

[01:05:22] To her.

[01:05:24] No, no sense of, yeah.

[01:05:27] Beautifully said.

[01:05:28] So I spent a lot of time there just like clicking on different locations waiting.

[01:05:33] It's probably only like 15, 20 seconds, but 15, 20 seconds in a video game and it adds up.

[01:05:38] And when you don't have a clear sense of direction, it's like, okay, very, and I hate it.

[01:05:44] I hate it when I do this, but very often be like, okay, it's probably going to take her

[01:05:48] a while to get here.

[01:05:48] Let me check my phone real quick until she gets to the next panel.

[01:05:51] Yeah.

[01:05:52] So the game's pacing just tanked.

[01:05:55] It nosedived for me here.

[01:05:56] Things got super slow.

[01:05:59] And I, yeah, my motivation wasn't that great to find Leo and I really just stumbled my way

[01:06:05] forward.

[01:06:07] Everything's very static in that moment too.

[01:06:09] I think there's maybe a little bit of movement in the background, but again, it feels like

[01:06:15] if there had been some more cut scenes, the cut scenes felt like such a breath of fresh

[01:06:19] air because they were so dynamic and you got so much more detail rather than these really

[01:06:26] zoomed out macro views of, I mean, beautiful settings, you know, kind of swampy areas and

[01:06:33] forests and caves, but very lacking in detail and just very static.

[01:06:40] And I agree.

[01:06:41] I just, I felt like I've lost the plot here.

[01:06:45] Why am I here?

[01:06:46] What am I doing?

[01:06:47] No one I talked to is helpful.

[01:06:50] Or even, again, even feels relevant.

[01:06:54] It's hard to say, it's hard to say if any of them felt relevant at the time to what I was

[01:06:58] trying to do.

[01:06:59] And I feel like Iris even says things to that effect about specific people.

[01:07:04] Like they won't be of any help.

[01:07:06] It's like, great.

[01:07:09] Yeah.

[01:07:10] I think narratively we had reached the boy who cries wolf at this point where it was

[01:07:15] like, oh my gosh, there's actually quite a few NPCs in Phoenix Springs.

[01:07:19] There's probably like six or seven, right?

[01:07:22] Some of them are just like outright hostile and won't talk to you.

[01:07:27] Or at least Iris is like, I don't feel safe around this guy.

[01:07:30] The carpenter, for example.

[01:07:31] So you can't really talk with him or interact with him.

[01:07:34] Or I think it was the healer, which is like, I don't want to talk to you.

[01:07:38] And I feel like in those two moments, the game gave me something a little more clear that

[01:07:42] was like, these are dead ends.

[01:07:44] I appreciated that a lot.

[01:07:45] Yeah.

[01:07:46] But at that point, at that point, though, I had experienced enough things where you

[01:07:51] have to try things that feel like dead ends to get the right answer that I didn't even

[01:07:55] completely trust that anymore, too.

[01:07:58] Yeah.

[01:07:59] No, I agree.

[01:08:00] For me, it was the boy who cried wolf.

[01:08:02] At this point, wolf had been cried so many times that it was just like, I don't really

[01:08:07] know.

[01:08:08] Right?

[01:08:09] Eventually, once you stumble your way through Phoenix Springs, you get to what felt like

[01:08:15] was the most revelatory moment of the game.

[01:08:18] You go inside this ritual site, which is like a burnt tree.

[01:08:25] You go, you take an elevator down.

[01:08:27] And then you're in this like, relatively bare bones room.

[01:08:30] But it's like, there's a pool in the center where there are bodies that can be brought in

[01:08:34] and out and put into.

[01:08:36] That's so that's the second time you get to Phoenix Springs, right?

[01:08:39] Oh, that's right.

[01:08:40] I even go back to Leo's house for a second.

[01:08:44] It's all blurry.

[01:08:45] That was the moment where I was like, I fully don't know what's going on anymore.

[01:08:51] Because you help Mason, the crying one, right?

[01:08:55] And then and then go to that ritual site again.

[01:08:58] But it's you're in the midst of this ritual.

[01:09:01] And it's happening to her.

[01:09:03] But it also happens to you.

[01:09:05] And then you like pass out and you wake up in front of Leo's house again.

[01:09:09] And somebody in my chat actually pointed out, which I wouldn't have noticed.

[01:09:12] The address is different.

[01:09:14] The numbers are different.

[01:09:16] They're they're like transposed.

[01:09:19] Really?

[01:09:20] My patience was probably so far spread.

[01:09:24] That there's no way I would have noticed that the address changed.

[01:09:27] No.

[01:09:28] Wow.

[01:09:29] What eagle eye chatter.

[01:09:31] Yeah.

[01:09:32] That's right.

[01:09:33] You go to the ritual site and then you're transported back to Leo's.

[01:09:36] Thank goodness you don't have to go through the whole rigmarole of right.

[01:09:40] You go and find Leo and he says pretty much the same thing.

[01:09:43] Is that right?

[01:09:44] Yeah.

[01:09:44] He's like, don't go to Phoenix Springs.

[01:09:46] It's like, oh, well, too late.

[01:09:49] Yeah.

[01:09:49] Back in Phoenix Springs or back in the desert.

[01:09:51] That's right.

[01:09:52] Yeah.

[01:09:53] Then you just kind of I just you just rush back to the ritual site.

[01:09:56] I think.

[01:09:57] Yeah, I think.

[01:09:58] I think so.

[01:09:58] There is a little bit of a puzzle.

[01:10:00] You have to figure out how to get in.

[01:10:01] There's another.

[01:10:03] Luckily, you only have to help two NPCs in Phoenix Springs to get to sort of the end game revelations.

[01:10:12] There was a moment you meet this guy on the beach who draws.

[01:10:16] He never speaks to you, but he draws you pictures in the sand.

[01:10:19] And there was one moment where he drew five concentric circles.

[01:10:25] And my first thought was because this was the second time.

[01:10:30] It was around the second time that you show up in Phoenix Springs.

[01:10:34] My first thought was, is this indicating that I'm going to have to do this five times?

[01:10:40] And that was when I was like, I don't know if I have it in me to keep going.

[01:10:46] Thank God it was only two people that you have to help.

[01:10:51] Yes.

[01:10:52] Yeah.

[01:10:52] Oh, my gosh.

[01:10:53] I don't think I talked to him the second time.

[01:10:55] Maybe you don't need to.

[01:10:56] That's so interesting.

[01:10:57] I was I was never sure what the conditions were to trigger progression, to be honest.

[01:11:05] Yeah.

[01:11:06] The game really hits like you hit Phoenix Springs and the game just poofs.

[01:11:13] It just goes horizontal.

[01:11:15] You know, it just like any sort of linearity that was there before seems to disappear, even though, of course, you need to trigger specific things in order to progress in the game.

[01:11:25] But yeah.

[01:11:27] OK, so second time you're in the ritual site, then you're right, because you need the baker.

[01:11:33] This is the second person that you help to go down this elevator.

[01:11:37] And then you're in this room where you can essentially project people's memories from their bodies onto a screen.

[01:11:46] This was a moment finally where I felt like, oh, my gosh, OK, I don't need to look at the guide because I just was like, OK, I'm going to do this.

[01:11:54] I try every single idea out on all of these different bodies and their memories.

[01:11:58] I was like at that point, I feel like I had fewer.

[01:12:01] And then I was like, OK, let's just kind of see what happens.

[01:12:04] Right.

[01:12:05] Because I want to know what's going on now in your notes, which I have up here.

[01:12:09] You have a really good summary here, so I'm not going to read it, but I'd like you to kind of go over what you glean.

[01:12:15] Oh, yeah.

[01:12:16] From from viewing all of these memories in this ritual chamber.

[01:12:21] Yeah.

[01:12:22] OK.

[01:12:22] So to recap some stuff that we've already touched on, but just to kind of piece it together.

[01:12:28] So you're playing as Iris, the sister of Leo.

[01:12:33] You are a reporter.

[01:12:34] Leo is a bioethicist.

[01:12:38] Also was involved in that.

[01:12:40] I thought it was maybe important that he was involved in that statue, you know, project at the university.

[01:12:47] There were ties to make a big deal.

[01:12:49] Yeah.

[01:12:49] The whole architect thing.

[01:12:52] And then somehow to me, he Leo and the baker boy that you help were sort of tied.

[01:13:00] You also the baker kid is also the person who you find the first time outside of Phoenix Springs in the desert.

[01:13:07] Just these people.

[01:13:09] They'll reoccur.

[01:13:10] Oh, it is?

[01:13:10] Yeah.

[01:13:10] The same face.

[01:13:11] Freak.

[01:13:12] Yeah.

[01:13:12] I didn't even get that.

[01:13:13] OK.

[01:13:13] OK.

[01:13:13] So and then Mason is the crying one who you help and is also actually a Mason.

[01:13:20] So as a builder.

[01:13:21] So these are the three main people who like you run into from what I gleaned in this chamber, Leo and Mason were building something together.

[01:13:31] Maybe they were.

[01:13:32] I think it was implied they were building Phoenix Springs to be a.

[01:13:36] I don't know, a city, a compound, something.

[01:13:40] There was a huge flood and an accident.

[01:13:43] And from what I understood, Mason was maimed horribly.

[01:13:50] Um, they and transported to a hospital where they were going to do the surgery, this sort of experimental surgery, maybe.

[01:13:59] Iris actually sees in these memories that she was there at the hospital covering the surgery as a reporter, but then somehow was approached to be to participate in it.

[01:14:11] And I feel like it's implied maybe that there's some sort of fusion of Mason and Iris or Mason's consciousness is somehow put in Iris's body or vice versa.

[01:14:29] And then.

[01:14:31] And and now maybe they were both preserved in these stasis pods, but somehow this seems to be to me again, this is all intuiting from really vague images and things that Iris says.

[01:14:46] That to me seemed to probably explain why Iris is so young and Leo is old and has now died.

[01:14:56] Something else that's really important, but I don't I actually don't know how in what way it's important.

[01:15:03] The first time you go to Leo's house, there's a note on his dining table that says something about how just things are really chaotic.

[01:15:12] They're in danger.

[01:15:14] It says Uncle L in panic room, presumably Leo signed M.

[01:15:19] And Iris kind of makes the conjecture that Leo has a niece or nephew named with the first initial M, presumably for Mason.

[01:15:32] But what?

[01:15:35] How does that help us?

[01:15:39] I have no idea.

[01:15:41] Yeah.

[01:15:42] Like this.

[01:15:44] This is why I really liked your what you summed up here, because one, you add a lot more information I couldn't piece together.

[01:15:52] But two.

[01:15:52] Yeah, I think.

[01:15:54] Drawing Mason.

[01:15:55] I mean, this is the thing about this game.

[01:15:57] Nothing is confirmed.

[01:15:58] And Iris actually goes out of her way to do that.

[01:16:01] And I think maybe because she's a reporter, she's like this.

[01:16:04] No, that you wrote about here, for example, Uncle L in panic room signed M.

[01:16:08] She's like, oh, we should we can assume is probably Leo, but we don't know that.

[01:16:12] Right.

[01:16:12] And this is even true at the university.

[01:16:14] There's like a blacklist that the university administration has written up.

[01:16:20] And then part of a name is it's like Leo D.

[01:16:23] She's like, well, that probably is my brother.

[01:16:26] We can't assume that it's my brother.

[01:16:28] Yeah.

[01:16:28] You know, and so there's these hints that, again, with video game logic, if something says signed M.

[01:16:35] And there's only one person in the game that has a name that starts with M.

[01:16:39] Then you should be able to conclude like definitively that M is Mason.

[01:16:44] Right.

[01:16:44] But this game goes out of its way to say that you cannot make that kind of conclusion, which I'm not going to I'm not going to hear to Phoenix Springs logic.

[01:16:54] To me, it makes sense for it to be Mason.

[01:16:56] Right.

[01:16:57] But yeah, when I was watching those final scenes, I had seen I understood something similar.

[01:17:03] Right.

[01:17:04] Mason was the builder and something that Leo was trying to construct.

[01:17:10] Leo is kind of obsessed with this.

[01:17:13] Like, was it cricket playing a liar, which comes from Greek mythology?

[01:17:18] And shoot, I can't even remember exactly how it's portrayed in game.

[01:17:21] But anyway, I feel like that has something to do with this kind of whatever it is they're constructing.

[01:17:27] From what I remember in the image, though, Mason is like crushed by a shipping container.

[01:17:33] Like it is gruesome.

[01:17:35] Like injury.

[01:17:36] Right.

[01:17:36] Right.

[01:17:37] And when you are looking through these memories, I can't remember if it's the body that's in the water tank or if it's something that's seen on screen.

[01:17:47] You actually get a quick flash of what Mason's body is like.

[01:17:51] And Iris says something to the effect of like, I can't believe like Mason should not have survived that accident.

[01:17:59] Right.

[01:18:00] Like I remember being like exceptionally horrific.

[01:18:03] Right.

[01:18:03] And gruesome.

[01:18:05] And yeah, so they take Mason in for this like experimental surgery.

[01:18:09] That's kind of what I got.

[01:18:10] And then a part of me was like, well, Leo's a bioethicist, but we know that he's doing like illegal things kind of in this realm.

[01:18:16] And so I assume something is kind of happening there.

[01:18:21] To me, like when Iris started showing up in these memories as somebody who was reporting on the scene, I started to question.

[01:18:29] I was like, listen, R is like, is Iris actually Leo's sibling?

[01:18:37] Yeah.

[01:18:38] I started like questioning because like everything, like everything foundationally narrative about this game because I was like, how is it that Iris doesn't remember reporting on this?

[01:18:48] How could she not remember reporting on an accident that was like under her brother's supervision and not having any contact with him?

[01:18:57] And so like my mind started going towards like, okay, super traumatic event occurs.

[01:19:03] Did people just like block this out of their memory?

[01:19:07] Like what kind of trauma exactly are we trying to resolve?

[01:19:10] And so that's kind of where my interpretation of the game was led to because of these scenes here.

[01:19:17] It's like, okay, we're stuck in a specific trauma that people can't resolve.

[01:19:22] And that's why we keep coming back to Phoenix Springs, because in Phoenix Springs, we have helped resolve trauma by restoring memories and identities to people.

[01:19:35] But again, you hear me saying this with a lot of question marks, like I'm not super committed to this interpretation, but it was like the best thing that I could come up with was that like, I don't know how much of this really exists in Iris's mind.

[01:19:48] I don't know if Iris is really just like helping Mason resolve a trauma with some random professor that she's not actually siblings with, but is compelled to solve Mason's trauma because of how intense it was.

[01:20:06] Yeah, I came out of this thinking, wow, this is a really beautiful moment visually, but I don't understand squat.

[01:20:13] And so I was like, is this a time loop?

[01:20:16] Because we keep coming back here.

[01:20:18] So the long and short of it for me is like, I just interpreted this as like, there's a specific trauma here that is not getting resolved.

[01:20:25] And our actual objective in this game is to resolve this trauma so that all the parties involved can move on.

[01:20:32] But with more specific detail than that, I don't think I could confidently give you anything.

[01:20:37] Here, here, here, here's a kind of random assortment of thoughts that I have just to add in some things again that like might be relevant, they might not.

[01:20:48] One just detail that I found interesting is, I like where you're going with questioning sort of Iris's identity and maybe our identity like the, are we really Iris?

[01:21:00] Who's Iris?

[01:21:01] Are we them?

[01:21:02] Are we even the person that we're actually seeing in the memories?

[01:21:06] Where is that boundary?

[01:21:07] We actually never, I don't think, ever actually get identified as Iris Dormer.

[01:21:14] I don't think we ever hear our own last name.

[01:21:18] Do we?

[01:21:19] If we do, it's at the very, very beginning.

[01:21:21] I don't know if you hear it.

[01:21:23] You only see it when you hover over Iris as an interactable object.

[01:21:29] Oh, does it say Iris Dormer?

[01:21:32] Well, now I want to boot up the game to confirm.

[01:21:34] Yeah, I'm not sure.

[01:21:36] Now I'm feeling pretty confident that you do see the name.

[01:21:38] Okay, okay, well that, that's good.

[01:21:39] That answers a question I had.

[01:21:41] Okay.

[01:21:43] Another, oh, another just kind of addition, little detail that I thought was interesting.

[01:21:48] So the grasshopper and the liar had something to do with the myth of Eos.

[01:21:54] And one of the, one of the like most sort of important stories about Eos is how she fell

[01:22:01] in love with a mortal and somehow managed to swing a immortal life for him.

[01:22:08] But in this sort of like monkey's paw situation, he got immortal life, but she didn't guarantee

[01:22:14] him immortal youth.

[01:22:16] And so he just continued getting older and older and older for all eternity, but never died.

[01:22:21] And that felt, again, it feels like a, maybe a connection to the plot, but in what way?

[01:22:29] Hard to say.

[01:22:30] Is it, is it another red herring?

[01:22:32] Not sure.

[01:22:33] The fact that there were stasis pods all over the place in this story definitely made me

[01:22:39] start questioning, are we in a dream or coma situation?

[01:22:43] Is all of this actually just taking place in Iris's mind?

[01:22:47] And we're not actually physically going anywhere.

[01:22:51] We meet Mason, the young woman, Mason.

[01:22:56] We meet her alive and well in Phoenix Springs, but then we see her body maimed and just consciousness,

[01:23:06] consciousness, without conscious.

[01:23:09] Yes, yes.

[01:23:11] Consciousness-less in this, in this pool.

[01:23:14] So how, how are those things both true?

[01:23:18] How did we go from Phoenix Springs back to Leo's house and then back and why?

[01:23:23] And how much time had passed between those moments?

[01:23:28] All great questions.

[01:23:30] Yeah.

[01:23:32] Here's my like overall question that I don't have an answer to.

[01:23:37] Is this a game?

[01:23:39] Is this story concretely about the plot and its characters?

[01:23:43] Or is this allegorical?

[01:23:45] I love this.

[01:23:46] I love this question.

[01:23:47] I don't know.

[01:23:48] I won't really pretend like I have an answer to it, but just as like a think experiment,

[01:23:55] this is, I mean, in part, the game to me is so divided in halves.

[01:24:00] You have up until Phoenix Springs and then Phoenix Springs.

[01:24:03] Up until Phoenix Springs to me feels like it doesn't, it isn't allegorical.

[01:24:07] It feels like there is a story that's meant to be followed and that there's supposed to be

[01:24:13] a conclusion and a resolution that we're working towards.

[01:24:16] The second half of the game feels like it has to be allegorical, right?

[01:24:21] Metaphorical at best, right?

[01:24:22] Or at worst.

[01:24:24] And, but the big problem is, is that because you do go to Leo's house and then you go back

[01:24:30] into Phoenix Springs, the two halves are connected, right?

[01:24:34] And one of my kind of final takeaways too is going back to just the name of Iris, Iris also

[01:24:42] being a part of your eye, right?

[01:24:44] I just, I almost wonder if Iris is really just literally like a lens into this story, right?

[01:24:53] Whether or not like Iris is real, I don't know.

[01:24:57] Like, I'm really questioning when I get to the end of the game, I really started questioning like,

[01:25:02] I just don't think that Iris and Leo were actually siblings.

[01:25:06] I actually just think that Iris became, for whatever reason, some sort of look into what

[01:25:12] happened to Mason.

[01:25:14] And I'm kind of, one of my keys of evidence to substantiate that interpretation is just

[01:25:18] her name.

[01:25:19] It's just Iris, right?

[01:25:20] If that, that's, maybe that's the role that she fulfills.

[01:25:24] And like mechanically, that's who you play as.

[01:25:27] And that's how the player kind of interacts with this world memory allegory thing.

[01:25:33] So I don't know.

[01:25:35] I, by the time I get to the end of the game and even after the ritual and after all of this

[01:25:39] stuff that we're talking about with Mason, you, or I should say Iris wearing the headset

[01:25:46] that kind of allows you to see these memories, you extract Mason's body from the pool and

[01:25:53] then you walk into the pool so you can start examining your own consciousness.

[01:25:59] And so it becomes this like weird tautological, like, okay, now I'm going to be reflexive about

[01:26:06] who I am.

[01:26:07] And when that happened, and again, another beautiful cut scene.

[01:26:10] And I was like, oh my gosh, we're going to get an answer now.

[01:26:13] I was like, because I was like, okay, instead of trying to get all this information from these

[01:26:17] other locations, we're going to go straight to the source.

[01:26:19] We're going to Iris, man.

[01:26:21] And then it boots up the scene where it's just like you on an island and the baker is there

[01:26:27] and some dude who's having some sort of issue with the radio transmitter.

[01:26:35] And then that was it.

[01:26:37] And I was like, crap, we actually didn't get anything after that.

[01:26:40] We just got all I kind of left with with that final, final scene was like the radio significant.

[01:26:47] Her voice sounds like it's being transmitted.

[01:26:49] We see this radio in the desert as well.

[01:26:52] I was like, okay, there are pieces there, but none of the puzzle pieces actually fit.

[01:26:57] Yeah, I agree.

[01:26:59] The fact that your last scene, you leave them with three people all together.

[01:27:06] And there are really only three people who are of significance in this story.

[01:27:10] But the three people you wind up with at the very end are not those three people.

[01:27:14] Who is this other guy?

[01:27:16] You don't know.

[01:27:17] Why is he there?

[01:27:19] The radio guy, man.

[01:27:22] And the baker.

[01:27:24] So I this is why I kind of connect Leo and the baker in my mind, because the way Iris is

[01:27:30] responding to what the baker sandwich, I wish I had actually written down what he said, because

[01:27:34] she says something about how it even though it makes no sense, it feels important, basically.

[01:27:38] Um, but the way she responds to him, it kind of feels like she's feeling some sense of resolution,

[01:27:46] which made me feel like maybe this is Leo.

[01:27:50] Because she does say maybe she found no, no, you're right.

[01:27:54] She says something about like, yeah, I don't understand exactly the same, but I see the lucidity

[01:27:59] in him.

[01:28:01] And I was like, okay, very specific word choice there.

[01:28:04] The last, you know, hour and a half of this game have been anything but lucid.

[01:28:09] And so you're right.

[01:28:11] Iris has some kind of resolution.

[01:28:13] But that resolution really did not translate to me as a player.

[01:28:17] So and then she she I think and the baker both get in the boat and they just kind of sail off and

[01:28:22] then credits roll.

[01:28:23] So what does this mean?

[01:28:25] This was by that moment in the game, my brain had so completely disconnected from what was

[01:28:31] going on.

[01:28:31] I actually forgot about the part where you walk into the pool or what was going on there.

[01:28:35] I think I was just like along for the ride and not.

[01:28:39] I stopped connecting any dots.

[01:28:42] Um, yeah.

[01:28:44] I don't know.

[01:28:45] So I think I this this thought kind of ties us into those last part who I'd recommend this

[01:28:52] game for.

[01:28:52] But if there's anything else about the narrative, any other clues you want to throw into the mix?

[01:28:57] Right now we've got this giant stew boiling with probably a million ingredients, but maybe

[01:29:03] none of them make sense with each other.

[01:29:05] So the stew might not taste good.

[01:29:07] Sorry, extended metaphor here.

[01:29:09] But anything else you want to throw into the pot?

[01:29:12] Uh, something I've been thinking about a lot today and trying to piece together because again,

[01:29:16] it feels like it could be significant, but it could it could also be nothing is trying to

[01:29:20] figure out who are the other inhabitants of Phoenix Springs because some of them feel important.

[01:29:27] Um, the surgeon in particular, the healer, I understood to be the surgeon who actually

[01:29:34] performed the procedure on Mason.

[01:29:37] And there are five big statues, right?

[01:29:40] One is a one is a chemist.

[01:29:43] One is a an architect.

[01:29:45] One is the Mason.

[01:29:49] One is I interpreted to be the surgeon.

[01:29:52] And then one is just an a third person, a kind of a thinking figure.

[01:29:57] Um, and three of those people for sure are present in Phoenix Springs as actual people

[01:30:06] at different points in the game.

[01:30:08] Um, so again, I have a lot of clues bouncing around in my head.

[01:30:15] I haven't figured out how to stitch them together into anything that makes sense yet, though.

[01:30:22] Yeah, holy cow.

[01:30:24] Um, so I said I like this game after this conversation.

[01:30:28] I think I still like the game.

[01:30:32] But when it comes to who I'd recommend this game for, you got it.

[01:30:37] I mean, on vibes alone, I think I recommend this game because sure, it's just beautiful to

[01:30:45] look at.

[01:30:46] Like we talked about the sound design, the music, like all that stuff.

[01:30:49] Like I think aesthetically, this game is very pleasing.

[01:30:52] And I think if somebody wants just an experience where, um, you want to enjoy video games as

[01:30:59] like visual art.

[01:31:01] Yeah.

[01:31:01] Like Phoenix Springs absolutely checks all of those boxes there.

[01:31:06] Um, I think what makes this game hard to recommend for me is that it feels like it shouldn't

[01:31:12] be a vibes only game.

[01:31:14] It feels like it should be a narrative heavy game, but the narrative is just too washed

[01:31:21] out.

[01:31:21] Like it fizzles out and it doesn't ever really tie up any loose ends concretely.

[01:31:27] And so I don't recommend this if you're looking for a narrative game.

[01:31:31] Um, to be honest, I do recommend it if you're like, if I just want some really weird dream

[01:31:37] like, um, vibes based game, that's kind of short.

[01:31:41] Yeah, I definitely recommend it.

[01:31:43] Um, and I would recommend, highly recommend going just to the Caligram studio site, looking

[01:31:48] at their tips and then just having that guide at the ready on your phone or however you

[01:31:53] play games, just kind of a quick access.

[01:31:56] Um, even though we've kind of talked about the big pain points, I think in progression

[01:32:00] of the game here.

[01:32:01] So if you've listened through all of this, we've kind of given you a summary of the guide

[01:32:05] to get through some things.

[01:32:07] But, um, yeah, I don't know.

[01:32:10] Who would you recommend this game for?

[01:32:11] I think, um, I think I, I agree with your sort of recommendation as well.

[01:32:20] I would say that if you're a fan of art films, you know, films with an E, you know, if you

[01:32:27] like things like Run, Lola, Run or Pi or these really cerebral films, um, this is going to

[01:32:35] kind of give you a very similar experience.

[01:32:37] I would say though, play it with a guide.

[01:32:41] Don't put yourself through the frustration.

[01:32:43] If that's what you're looking for is that experience and those vibes, play it with a guide.

[01:32:49] The times when I did figure out solutions to some of these really convoluted puzzles, I

[01:32:55] didn't feel like it was a very rewarding experience to get it.

[01:32:59] So I don't think you're missing out if you just use a guide, find the solutions that way

[01:33:04] and just experience what amount of story there is and all the, the aesthetics.

[01:33:09] Yeah, I think you're right.

[01:33:10] And we were talking about earlier why they would have made their own guide.

[01:33:14] And I almost kind of feel like that's why, right?

[01:33:16] Like, um, don't, don't get too hung up on the frustration.

[01:33:19] I think the frustration, sure.

[01:33:21] Like we've talked about, we've mentioned certain moments where like, feels like you're

[01:33:24] very much in line with Iris and how the investigation is going by feeling that

[01:33:28] frustration with her.

[01:33:29] Um, but it's definitely not worth it to just be like, I guess, I don't know.

[01:33:34] I do recommend this game for the ultimate masochist who just really wants to be frustrated

[01:33:40] at some of these puzzles, um, in the, in the logical ways to, uh, kind of progress what's

[01:33:46] happening in the game.

[01:33:48] Um, let's see.

[01:33:49] Uh, other, the good things to know is that it's a shorter game.

[01:33:52] I know a lot of us are pressed on time.

[01:33:54] And so, um, like I said, if you're a super genius, you can get through this game in 90 minutes.

[01:33:58] If you're doing a second play through, you could get through this game in 90 minutes.

[01:34:02] Sure.

[01:34:02] Um, but it will probably take you about four hours.

[01:34:05] I think, uh, my steam library has me maybe a three and a half, four hours to get through

[01:34:10] this one.

[01:34:10] And, and bear in mind, I was using a guide pretty heavily in the second half of the

[01:34:14] game.

[01:34:16] Um, and even in the first part of the game, like, uh, Leo's house, for example, I just

[01:34:20] was like, you know what?

[01:34:21] I'm just going to have it up.

[01:34:22] I was playing on steam with two monitors and I just had the guide up on one screen.

[01:34:25] Um, and I was playing it on the other, which I think is a super valid way to play this game.

[01:34:30] Um, and then as I've also mentioned, I recommend it to people who want to look at a game that

[01:34:35] I think is metacritical of how video games work.

[01:34:38] I think in that way, um, Phoenix Springs is a really good example and very successful and

[01:34:44] sort of illustrating, um, I mean, literally, but also figuratively just how video games

[01:34:50] function and how we think they're supposed to function.

[01:34:53] Um, although I, I do struggle finding a lot of appreciation and enjoyment in that while

[01:34:59] being frustrated.

[01:35:00] Yeah.

[01:35:01] I guess if you want to sort of, uh, untrain yourself from everything you thought you had

[01:35:06] learned about puzzle games or the point and click genre, here's a great opportunity.

[01:35:11] Yeah.

[01:35:12] Um, this is thinking, thinking about like how I would use this game.

[01:35:16] Um, so most of, you know, but new listeners to the podcast.

[01:35:20] So I, I teach, um, at a university and I, in the department of humanities and philosophy

[01:35:25] right now.

[01:35:26] And so I have a unit.

[01:35:28] We're just actually starting it today as of this recording on video games.

[01:35:31] Um, this would be a game that I would love to show as, uh, as I wouldn't assign this

[01:35:38] to play, but I would show this on screen, uh, for a lot of things that kind of explaining

[01:35:43] video games and how they work.

[01:35:44] And then also using this as an example of how it counters a lot of what video games do.

[01:35:49] So I do think that this game would be like really good to inform people at a university

[01:35:54] setting about sort of the intricacies of video games.

[01:35:58] Um, but that is a hyper specific use case for this game.

[01:36:03] And I don't think a lot of people will be using it for that.

[01:36:06] Um, yeah, I think that's what I've got.

[01:36:08] Um, before we wrap up any final thoughts that you'd like to get out there about Phoenix Springs

[01:36:15] the game.

[01:36:18] I think I'm, I'm just, I'm glad I played it and I know I sound hypercritical of all of it.

[01:36:24] I think I, I really appreciate it.

[01:36:26] I still can't say definitively that I enjoyed it, but I really, really appreciate it and

[01:36:32] that it's out there.

[01:36:32] And I think Caligram studio created a masterpiece.

[01:36:38] I just don't know what it means, but I think it's great.

[01:36:42] Like, I love that it exists.

[01:36:44] Um, I think they really nailed a lot of elements of the game and I'm going to be thinking about

[01:36:51] it for a long time and mulling all this over for a long time.

[01:36:54] And I, you know, sometimes use that as my best gauge of like how impactful a game has been.

[01:36:59] And if that's, you know, in that case, this has been super impactful for me.

[01:37:03] Mm-hmm.

[01:37:04] I, I'm really glad that you mentioned that because a lot of times how a game will sit

[01:37:09] in your mind and your memory, right?

[01:37:11] I think does really determine like, um, not just as quality, but also your feelings towards

[01:37:16] it and what the game was actually able to accomplish.

[01:37:19] Right.

[01:37:19] Um, I'm sure we could talk at length to different games where it's not even like the ending

[01:37:23] or resolution that stood out with us, but like a specific moment right within a game, um,

[01:37:28] that maybe just kind of lasts or lingers.

[01:37:30] Right.

[01:37:31] And that, that's a good way of knowing, okay, this is really how I felt about this game.

[01:37:34] Um, yeah.

[01:37:36] Okay.

[01:37:36] Folks, this has been a great episode, a great conversation.

[01:37:39] We are over an hour and a half.

[01:37:41] It's been lovely having you on Emily.

[01:37:43] Thank you so much.

[01:37:44] Um, really quickly before we close out here, Emily, what is the best way that people listening

[01:37:49] can support you and what you're doing?

[01:37:52] Yeah.

[01:37:53] Well, first off, thank you, Jake.

[01:37:54] This has been amazing.

[01:37:55] I had such a great time.

[01:37:57] I'm really glad that we got to really dig into this game.

[01:37:59] It's been, this has been the most fulfilling part for me of having played the game.

[01:38:04] So thank you.

[01:38:05] Me too, yeah.

[01:38:07] Um, let's see.

[01:38:08] Y'all can find me, um, on Twitch, Instagram, um, Blue Sky now, no longer on Twitter really.

[01:38:16] Um, and, and most other places online as a specific egg.

[01:38:21] Um, and you can find me and Kate on nosmallgames.com.

[01:38:25] We have all of our podcast episodes there.

[01:38:28] You can also find it anywhere you get your podcast, um, Spotify, Apple podcast, all kinds

[01:38:33] of places.

[01:38:33] Um, but we also have articles, um, on our website as well too.

[01:38:38] So we're working on a lot of different types of content right now.

[01:38:42] Yes.

[01:38:42] You two are busy, busy people.

[01:38:44] I'm really impressed with how much you guys can do.

[01:38:47] Um, yeah, folks, please support Emily.

[01:38:48] Yeah.

[01:38:49] Support her in one or all of those ways.

[01:38:52] Um, that would be really cool.

[01:38:53] Just as we discussed at the beginning of the episode, there's a billion indie games out

[01:38:58] there.

[01:38:58] And those of us who are interested in indies are doing our best to kind of shine light

[01:39:02] on, uh, what these indies are doing.

[01:39:03] And so no small games, Emily, um, these, these are folks, these are people that are doing that.

[01:39:09] They're doing that work.

[01:39:10] Right.

[01:39:10] Um, again, thank you so much for listening.

[01:39:13] Uh, thank you so much, patron subscribers.

[01:39:15] I really appreciate you guys, um, making stuff like this possible.

[01:39:19] If you're a new listener, I am going to make the pitch.

[01:39:22] Um, $3 a month does give you access to the indie pass on our Patreon.

[01:39:26] This gets you three episodes of indie coverage plus a newsletter every month.

[01:39:32] Um, so thank you so much for your support and until the next episode, take care.