Blood Dungeon Takes Us to Bullet Heaven

Blood Dungeon is a spectacular evolution of the Vampire Survivors formula. Developer Messhof plops the auto-shooting, upgrade-building bullet-heaven genre into something a bit more strategic and conscious of your time. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the art looks, at first blush, like Spelunky by way of a child’s sketchbook. In the back half of the episode, we chat about what to call these games, and then pick some of our favorites.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Griffin McElroy?

  Hey, let me ask you guys a question. What is your favorite song from Blood Dungeon?

• 0:06Russ Frushtick?

  Uh...

• 0:09Chris Plante?

  They have names?

• 0:09Griffin McElroy?

  I'll tell you mine.

• 0:10Russ Frushtick?

  You have one?

• 0:11Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, my favorite song in Blood Dungeon is someone that's like...

• 0:20Russ Frushtick?

  Oh.

• 0:21Chris Plante?

  That one's pretty good.

• 0:22Russ Frushtick?

  You're talking about Dick Whips. That's called Dick Whips.

• 0:24Griffin McElroy?

  Dick Whips is good. I think that is the name of the song. There's also the one that's like...

• 0:34Griffin McElroy?

  Um, and that one's from the Flood level.

• 0:37Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, yeah. That's Dick and Ball Whips, yeah.

• 0:40Griffin McElroy?

  Dick and Ball Whips is cool.

• 0:41Chris Plante?

  What's the one in the tower?

• 0:43Griffin McElroy?

  The ta- oh, the pit level?

• 0:44Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 0:44Griffin McElroy?

  That one's actually, it slows things down a little bit, where it's like...

• 0:53Russ Frushtick?

  Giant Dick and Ball Whips, yeah. That's a good one, too.

• 0:56Griffin McElroy?

  Why is that? Can I ask Russ why you keep going back to that? Why that well is such a rich... Why do you keep going there?

• 1:03Russ Frushtick?

  Have you ever played a game with Dick Whips before?

• 1:05Griffin McElroy?

  I guess not.

• 1:06Russ Frushtick?

  Before Blood Dungeon?

• 1:08Griffin McElroy?

  I'm starting to think that you wanted to do an intro that was very Dick Whip sort of centric.

• 1:13Chris Plante?

  You kind of had like an idea coming into it.

• 1:15Griffin McElroy?

  And I stole it with my drum and bass sort of beat, that idea.

• 1:20Russ Frushtick?

  I'm just saying Dick Whips are a big part of it, not only on the orally, but also visually.

• 1:24Chris Plante?

  You know what I think it is, Griffin? I think it is that you have kind of transported us back to the era of corn, uh, to the era of the 90s, and Russ has reverted to his 90s self.

• 1:37Griffin McElroy?

  His rude boy kind of era. That is so flattering, Chris.

• 1:40Chris Plante?

  He was always jinkoing it up. He was always coming down the hallway. He was, he had his, his nasty boy headphones on.

• 1:48Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:49Chris Plante?

  And he was saying, "Oh."

• 1:50Griffin McElroy?

  He had to cinch those jinkos way up, dude.

• 1:53Chris Plante?

  And he was like, "Yo, Cheech, you seen that new movie Clerks?" And they were like, "Yeah, I saw it."

• 2:00Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I could barely fit down the hallway.

• 2:03Griffin McElroy?

  Barely. He floated when he jumped.

• 2:25Griffin McElroy?

  My name is Griffin McRae. I know the best game of the week.

• 2:29Chris Plante?

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

• 2:32Russ Frushtick?

  My name is Russ Fraschig. I know the best game of the week.

• 2:36Griffin McElroy?

  Welcome to The Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a game of the year club, and just by listening, you are a member. This week, we've got a fun one, a weird one, maybe you have or have not heard of. We've talked about it a bit on this show. It is the new game from Nidhog developer Messhof, uh, and it is called Blood Dungeon. That's a, I mean, objectively rad name.

• 3:00Russ Frushtick?

  How is that not taken?

• 3:02Griffin McElroy?

  Blood Dungeon, I know, right? It sounds like a, like, edgy, like, 1993, like, Windows PC game, um, with, like, FMV sequences.

• 3:13Russ Frushtick?

  Or like a Winamp skin.

• 3:15Griffin McElroy?

  Kirk Cameron, like, fighting demons and stuff. Like, it sounds like one of those. But no, they did, this is a new game. What is it, Chris?

• 3:22Chris Plante?

  Blood Dungeon is a Survivor's like, but this time, rather than just aiming a random direction and, and get those numbers up, you're doing something closer to a platformer spelunky-like. You're jumping through these strange 2D environments that look like they were drawn fittingly in the back of a school notebook in the 1990s.

• 3:41Griffin McElroy?

  That's a good summary of what this game is, and we're gonna talk more about it after this short break.

• 3:47Russ Frushtick?

  This episode of The Besties is sponsored by Alienware. You know, gaming today isn't one thing. It moves between cozy, chaotic, and everything in between. One minute you're exploring something slow and immersive, the next you're in a fast-paced match. And somewhere in there, you might be creating, streaming, or seeing where the session goes. That's why Alienware systems are built with the performance to handle it all. With Nvidia GeForce RTX, it delivers powerful graphics that bring every world to life while optimizing battery life. So whether you're playing, creating, or jumping between both, everything runs the way it should. No interruptions, no slowing down. You don't have to adjust the way you play. You just keep gaming your way, however that looks in the moment. Be more Alien at Alienware.com/gameyourway.

• 4:35Russ Frushtick?

  Man, so when I played Blood Dungeon at Summer Game Fest, I was immediately smitten.

• 4:42Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 4:43Russ Frushtick?

  But I was also like, there's no way I'm gonna like, I mean, this is fun for 20 minutes, but like, I don't know how much longer I can play with it. I think I'm at like 15 hours at this point. I've played a lot of Blood Dungeon. Yeah, a lot.

• 4:56Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know if I'm quite that deep in it, but I have played it for, uh, for quite a long time. I spent a lot of time finishing up Fields of Mistrya, uh, in the, in the last couple of weeks, but I definitely, when I was not doing that, playing Blood Dungeon, uh, because it is, as you said, pretty much fun from the jump.

• 5:11Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 5:11Griffin McElroy?

  Pretty much fun from the start, uh, and it only gets funner.

• 5:14Chris Plante?

  Yeah, but... Fresh, what, what pulled you through 15 hours of a Survivor's like, or a bullet heaven?

• 5:20Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, some people play Vampire's, or it's like 300 hours, so...

• 5:24Chris Plante?

  Yeah, sure. But those people aren't you, you know? I want to know what, what got you through. It just got you hooked.

• 5:31Russ Frushtick?

  Um, so, I, let me take a step back, because I think it, it relates more into the, like, nitty gritty of how the game works, and I want to make sure that people have like a, a clear picture in their mind. This game is made by Messhof. Messhof, I think, is most known for Nidhog, which is like that indie fencing game where the giant worm eats you at the end of each...

• 5:51Griffin McElroy?

  And Nidhog 2.

• 5:52Russ Frushtick?

  And Nidhog 2.

• 5:53Griffin McElroy?

  Nidhog 2 ruled.

• 5:53Russ Frushtick?

  There was also a worm in that, I believe.

• 5:55Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 5:56Russ Frushtick?

  Um, and they also made, uh, Wheelworld, which is a very cool, uh, bike game. Uh, this feels like a return to form, this, like, freaky deaky 2D art environment, which I immediately found, like, instantly appealing. Like, it does not look like any other game out there. It really stands on its own.

• 6:12Griffin McElroy?

  It's got the same sort of jittery sort of, uh, animate, like, nothing is static on screen ever. Everything is always moving all of the time, which is a little bit, uh, you have to learn how to kind of just visually parse the screen if you want to have, like, any hopes at kind of scaling the, the sheer cliff face of difficulty that this game presents to you sometimes.

• 6:33Russ Frushtick?

  And it's worth considering who you're playing as. So I'm just gonna run down very briefly some of the characters that you're playing as in the game. Um, you start as, I believe his name is Gunman. He just has a...

• 6:44Griffin McElroy?

  Gun Guy, I think.

• 6:44Russ Frushtick?

  Gun Guy. Uh, he has a shirt, and I believe no pants, and he runs around shooting a gun. And then later on, you unlock, uh, a large naked barbarian guy that swings a sword around, and there's the Leech who...

• 6:58Griffin McElroy?

  He's got like a two or three pixel long penis that is visible at all times.

• 7:03Russ Frushtick?

  Well, you can, you can block it. If you're worried from a, you know, if you're a puritan...

• 7:08Griffin McElroy?

  If you're playing it at church.

• 7:09Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, if you're at a church, I would be wary. But you can block the nudity. Uh, and then some other guys, there's like Leech, who I like a lot. He has the aforementioned Dick Whips as his main weapon. Um, and so, and eventually you unlock Baby, who's a baby with a...

• 7:24Griffin McElroy?

  Who's a baby.

• 7:24Russ Frushtick?

  A magnum. Um, and all these characters can control very differently and have different, like, jumps and starting powers and sizes. Like, there's a guy who's very, very large, so he can't necessarily navigate it through this 2D platforming map super easily. Um, so they all feel very differently.

• 7:43Griffin McElroy?

  You can scale any wall, like, moving around the map is fairly easy, because you can climb any wall, hang from any ceiling. And you're also, because it's a Survivor, like, constantly shooting, like, whatever weapons you have equipped, you are constantly automatically shooting at, you know, the nearest enemy usually. Um, and then you are leveling up and getting, you know, choosing, drafting upgrades, whether it's like upgrades to how much damage your weapon does, or how many shots it shoots out, or charms that, like, give you different bonuses, like a shield that regenerates every 30 seconds.

• 8:14Russ Frushtick?

  One of my favorite, uh, perks you can unlock is just bigger bullets. And so the bullets will start at like, oh, you'll increase your bullets like 30% bigger. And then eventually it gets to like 250% bigger, and the entire fucking screen is like one big bullet.

• 8:29Griffin McElroy?

  Just full of bullets. Yeah.

• 8:30Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, which is very, very cool. Um, okay, so that's a lot of preamble. To answer Chris Plant's question, how did I play this game, which ostensibly, if you look at it, looks like a score chase game, which, like, I like score chase games, but not...

• 8:44Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 8:44Russ Frushtick?

  Not enough to play 15 hours in a week. Um... What I ended up doing was playing it similarly to how I play Binding of Isaac, because in this game, there's a number of challenges to chase, which in turn yield new unlocks. So if you fully level up the machine gun in a run, that might unlock a new perk or a new weapon. And then suddenly that weapon unlocks something else. And some of those unlock permanent upgrades and the bone shop that you're giving credits to, to like permanently upgrade your jump size and things like that. And so that's what ended up, I think, hooking me was just the idea of like building this arsenal of potential unlocks and using those different kits to have better success in runs.

• 9:29Griffin McElroy?

  It's really clever because it keeps you like, I think the core gameplay of the game is so good and so tight. And when you have a run that is like working well for you, keeping it going and keeping it alive and continuing to like pull yourself through these like near misses and narrow scrapes just for, you know, five sustained minutes. It's so like thrilling and, uh, and it feels just so, so good. But sometimes you like have to try and engineer a run and the upgrades that you get away from, you know, what is optimal or what you usually have found success with because you're trying to do one of these challenges. Like, uh, one of my favorites, it's really clever, is you just have to be in a state

• 10:13Griffin McElroy?

  of free fall for like five seconds and trying to figure out like, okay, where can I go that I could like act actually pull this off? It really gives you a lot to kind of sink your teeth into, uh, rather than just like grinding out the bone currency that you need to get the permanent upgrades.

• 10:31Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 10:32Griffin McElroy?

  Which, which I know Chris is not, when we have talked about survivor likes in the past, I know that has been a complaint of yours of feeling like, well, I gotta play this much so I can start having fun with it and you know, I have to grind out these upgrades. Do you, do you, have you felt that way playing Blood Dungeon?

• 10:47Chris Plante?

  I think this game is pretty damn brilliant. Um, at solving for the many problems I have with the bullet heaven or survivors likes, whatever we want to call them. Because you're right, my problem is I feel like my time is being intentionally wasted. I feel like I have very little control over what the game is. And I feel like it's like a dopamine gambling. Like I'm gonna play a run and hopefully I get a really cool build and that's gonna set off all my dopamine. And I realized, uh, most of these games have a bit more skill than that. There is more say in it than that, but it just wasn't working for me. What I like about this game is I feel like it's respecting my time and it is giving me actual goals that I can chase from run to run.

• 11:29Chris Plante?

  So the, the first bit is, uh, of those 15 hours that Fresh played, there's probably about five or six hours that I think is just this game. If you want to spend eight to 10 bucks, however much it's on sale for right now, you can get a great six hour game where you beat the first boss in every level and you unlock all the levels and you unlock the first round of all of the upgrades that you can do. And that feels like a very complete game and it moves very fast.

• 11:57Griffin McElroy?

  I thought I was done. I genuinely, that's why I dropped it and was like, well, I'll go back to Fields of Mystery because I guess I've done. And then I found the character who's like, and here's a big book of things you can unlock. And I was like, Jesus Christ, there's like 400 of these things.

• 12:11Chris Plante?

  And then it gives you really two directions that you can go. You can do that character unlock thing, or you can do the score chasing thing. And really you're gonna end up kind of doing them together if you want to accomplish either goal. And I think that is also really clever because it's like, hey, if you had a great time, great. You're not, you do not have to keep playing this game forever. It is not meant to just be kind of this like addiction loop that you use to like distract you from reality, which those have value to, don't get me wrong, I just struggle with them.

• 12:42Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 12:43Chris Plante?

  That I felt like most of the time when I sat down, I was making progress towards something in the game to unlock some new cool thing to see. And I was doing it with like intentionality that really worked with me. And then the unlocks themselves are just fucking sick. Like you mentioned the, the giant bullet fresh, there's like basketballs or volleyballs that you could unlock.

• 13:05Griffin McElroy?

  Dude, it's the, it's the most, I, that's an auto pick for me a hundred percent of the time. If I get the bouncer, I think is what it's called, absolutely every time.

• 13:13Chris Plante?

  There's turrets that fire lasers that then will ricochet across the world. It, it is a game where you feel truly rewarded, even though there are those upgrades that are, hey, we're gonna reduce reload time from 1.7 seconds to 1.3.

• 13:30Griffin McElroy?

  Oh God, those are so good though. I always reduce my reload time. It makes so many more bullets on the screen. It's great. There's a, I, the, the, the build crafty sort of on the fly stuff. I use that term kind of lightly, right? Because in this genre, it's a temporary thing. You die, you lose all of the upgrades, you start again, right? You don't lose the permanent bone upgrades, which are like, you know, you get more blood, which is what you used to level up. Uh, or, uh, you can unlock, uh, you can use more weapons at once, right? Like that stuff is, is permanent. Uh, but you start to draft things and like, I have had so many different builds where I've been like, hey, I wonder if I can try this. For instance, there is a shield, uh, that you can get, like I mentioned earlier, that you can take a hit and it doesn't drain a heart and it regenerates after 30 seconds.

• 14:14Griffin McElroy?

  And then there is a, uh, an upgrade called limit break that you get that when you take damage, when you take a hit, it like reduces your cooldowns by like 90%. And so you just turn into this like supernova of bullets. Using those two together, I realized like, oh shit, like if there's a big group of enemies that I'm, you know, struggling to take out quickly enough and they're shooting bullets at me and I'm so, I can just jump into them intentionally, right into the guts of them, take that, you know, shield break and then the limit break will like shred through all of them. There's so many different ways that like I have found to, uh, synergize stuff kind of on the fly. I think that stuff's really great.

• 14:55Griffin McElroy?

  I think what really works for this game is just the act of platforming in the context of a, of a bullet heaven game. Because it is, it is so much more, I love this genre. I've played so much like Halls of Torment and, uh, Bro Tato and like all, all the classics. But they're not like, they're not super challenging. It can get hard when there's lots of enemies on the screen and then you have to like avoid them, but it's not like, what you are doing in this game, I think is inherently much more engage, like it requires a level of engagement and activity and like millisecond by millisecond kind of decision-making that it achieves because you are also, you know, working on

• 15:39Griffin McElroy?

  this, you're working against gravity. You're like working with an additional axis, uh, than most other top down ones.

• 15:46Chris Plante?

  The previous top of the crop for me was Deep Rock Galactic Survivor, which had an understanding that on top of all of this, you should be able to have some strategy. And the way that you would burrow through caverns to create these choke points in the game gave you something to do. It turned the movement into the strategy of the game. And the same thing is happening here. And yeah, we talked about the fact that you can climb on any wall and climb on the ceiling. And then there are these like chain link fences that allow you to kind of almost move vertically and horizontally as you want. But then the level designs themselves are creating different strategies. The pit or the tower, as I called it, creates this thing where you are motivated to pick

• 16:28Chris Plante?

  weapons that, um, are going to rain fire down below you and then pick a perk that increases a 50% damage to any time you have the high ground over your enemies. So suddenly all these different perks have different advantages if you're in a vertical level or if you're in a horizontal level. Or there are levels where you can go underwater, but you have to actually surface to catch your breath after a certain amount of time or find an air bubble like Sonic. And these things create like game, like things that feel like skill-based challenges.

• 17:05Russ Frushtick?

  They create choice in your navigation beyond just avoid the guys. They, they give you options where, let's say I'm using the like bouncy ball perk. I'll go into a corner where I know I'm gonna get a ton of ricochets and basically turn that entire corner into like a death zone. Uh, whereas if I'm using something more long range, maybe I won't do that because it limits my mobility. So that, it seems like such a minor difference, but that extra added interactivity makes me feel much more in control of the run.

• 17:36Chris Plante?

  It adds some thrills, like a water, drowning in video games is one of my least favorite things. It's super annoying. The trick here is the water just feels like anything else that you're moving around basically, but you have that countdown timer. And when you have a swarm of enemies coming at you and you think, you know what, I bet I can go underwater to dodge it, but if they get above me, I, I

• 18:01Griffin McElroy?

  Can't surface, yeah.

• 18:02Chris Plante?

  Cannot get out. Uh, like that choice that you have to make. It feels, it's silly to say for a game that looks like this, feels very dramatic.

• 18:11Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 18:11Griffin McElroy?

  It does. And especially when you get into like flow state, which, which I feel like happens all the time while I'm playing this game, where there's a million enemies on screen, a million bullets on screen, and I am weaving between them, just getting away by the skin of my teeth. Like, it, it, it's so good. It feels so, so, so good. Um, I think, I think the game has a lot of stuff going for it. I think that there's a lot of stuff I would change about the game as well. Uh, the, the sort of first and biggest sort of thing for me is like, all of these different unlocks, it is, uh, it is very clumsy how you like can look at what unlocks you have to do. There's like two different NPCs you

• 18:55Griffin McElroy?

  can talk to, and one's like, here's all the weapons you can unlock. And one's like, here's all the challenges. And one's like, here's the weapons and the challenges. And you can't just like press start or like, you know, pin them or like do anything to-

• 19:07Russ Frushtick?

  And the game is weirdly cagey about certain unlocks where it like just won't tell you. But it'll just be like, huh, I don't know. And that's fine for a couple of them, but like a lot of them are locked off. And knowing what you're chasing, I think makes a big difference. And, and just knowing like, in the middle of a run, how close you are to completing a certain challenge would be nice. Uh, but yeah, you, there's just like a lot of varying back and forth between NPCs to figure out what's going on.

• 19:35Griffin McElroy?

  There's so many unlocks too, right? That like, even just like finding the one that you were looking at earlier, like it's, it's, it is, uh, I don't know. They have so much there mechanically and they, I don't know that they did quite enough, uh, interface wise, I guess, to, to keep it, to keep it parcelable.

• 19:50Chris Plante?

  What do you think is the expectation for a game like this? Because so many other survivors, like sort of bullet heavens, whatever we want to call them, come out at the $10 or less price point. And then it seems like the expectation is, well, they're gonna update this. Like, we're gonna get more and more of this. They're gonna refine the UI. They're gonna refine the golling. They're going to add more stuff. Do you think that is the same for a game like this?

• 20:18Russ Frushtick?

  I think, I think, look, if the game sells a million copies or whatever, it does really well. I think it's very easy for me to see how they could update this in a number of different ways to like, keep growing that audience. I think if it doesn't sell enough copies to justify continued updates, this feels like a very whole experience. Like, granted, there are some edges that I would love, will like, fix, sand it off, whatever. But largely like, so in that way, like, I think it's a relatively low risk project that clearly, I think this feels very consistent with the studio's past games. So in that way, like, it's kind of an ideal scenario where, where I don't imagine that there, they

• 21:00Russ Frushtick?

  need for this game to hit for it to save Messhof as an organization.

• 21:05Griffin McElroy?

  Right, yeah.

• 21:05Russ Frushtick?

  Obviously it'd be nice, but like, uh, you know, I think we'll just see how it does.

• 21:11Griffin McElroy?

  I think the game's going to do quite well. I think that like, I love Nidhogg. I think Nidhogg's really fun. When I, you know, uh, had like groups of local friends that I played games with, like, I feel like Chris, when, like, we lived in Austin together, like, we fucked around with Nidhogg sometimes, or groups of friends, because it's, it was such a fun game. But it was also like, really a multiplayer, like a local multiplayer game. And that is like limiting the audience of like, who's realistically gonna buy it. I think anyone can play this game and have a pretty fucking great time with it. So I do think that it's, it's geared to do, uh, to do well. I hope they continue supporting it, not just with like, expanding the stuff, uh, that is available, but like, maybe tweaking the stuff that is there. Cause my other big complaint about the game is just, uh, it

• 21:56Griffin McElroy?

  feels kind of unbalanced. Like, some of the weapons are incredible, like the bouncy ball one, like, that is a run winner if you, if you can find it. And some of the weapons are a jo- like, so, so bad. Uh, same, same with the upgrades. Like, there's a lot of cruft in the upgrades, I think, of just like, if it pops up and takes up one of the spots that you're choosing from, it's like, oh, fuck, like, I'm not gonna, I don't care about that one. That doesn't do anything. Like, some of that stuff, it feels like they could, they, they could make, like, mathematically maybe tweak to, to improve.

• 22:29Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I did get the sense that as you get deeper, I was having a lot more success, being more active about rerolling, uh, rewards when I leveled up. If like, I felt like there was, wasn't anything of value in this. And I'm sure some of the bad ones, there's ways to make them good, but you would, it would require so many items to like synergize for it to happen. So I agree with you. I think some of it just needs some tweaking, uh, for or against. But largely, I mean, out of the gate, it's a pretty fucking fun game. I've, I've just really enjoyed it. And it's the sort of game that, you know, we've been talking about handhelds being able to run, uh, Steam games, perfect for like a small handheld device. Uh, I haven't tried it, but I'd imagine, oh, plant, did

• 23:14Russ Frushtick?

  you try it on your Einthor? Was it very good?

• 23:18Chris Plante?

  It ran so well. Silky smooth. Weirdly, one of the few games that shows up is, um, not confirmed to support it. But yeah, I played most of the game online.

• 23:28Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. And that's great. I mean, you know, I think more and more, we're gonna see these smaller releases that are, again, not as risky to put out, but will find a home among either a dedicated fanbase or maybe, look, this is sort of game you watch video of. Like, if you haven't seen what the game looks like in person, to, take two seconds, watch a trailer, cause I think it immediately sells itself. And it, either it's your jam or it's not. I know some people find the art, uh, a little off putting, but I thought it was fantastic.

• 23:57Griffin McElroy?

  I, I wanna, I wanna record my gameplay. I've had moments playing it where I've been like, man, I bet that looked fucking cool. Like, I bet that looked really impressive. I wish I could see that. I wish I could watch that again. I do think it's a game that like, watching someone who is like, actually very good at the game, uh, would, would look pretty bonkers.

• 24:14Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I had an absurd combo with like explosions and then 50, explosions are 50% bigger. And then they're just, every time you hit with the whip, it explodes. And it just got absurd and really satisfying.

• 24:27Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, cool fucking game. It is, uh, let me check. It is $8.49.

• 24:33Russ Frushtick?

  Oh my god.

• 24:34Griffin McElroy?

  Now. So that's a, that's great. Just get this fucking game, man. It's a lot of fun.

• 24:38Russ Frushtick?

  It's probably on other consoles, but Switch seems like a very good platform for it as well.

• 24:42Griffin McElroy?

  It's $89.99 on the Nintendo Switch. I don't, no, I'm just kidding. I don't know how much.

• 24:49Griffin McElroy?

  That's Blood Dungeon. Let's take a quick break and talk a little bit more about this genre and maybe decide on a fucking name for it so that we don't have to continue saying four different things, uh, mixed all together.

• 25:00Russ Frushtick?

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• 25:44Russ Frushtick?

  into one iconic machine. Visit alienware.com/15 today.

• 25:53Griffin McElroy?

  I like Bullet Heaven. I like, I like it. I like Bullet Heaven. I think that's a good name.

• 25:58Russ Frushtick?

  Where, where did it come from?

• 25:59Griffin McElroy?

  Walk me through this, please.

• 26:01Russ Frushtick?

  What was the origin?

• 26:02Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, it's the, it's the opposite of a bullet hell, right? In bullet hell, you're a little guy and you're getting a hundred thousand bullets shot at you and you gotta go between them and get away from it. But in a bullet heaven game, you're the thing shooting a million billion bullets.

• 26:16Chris Plante?

  And you're being given rewards constantly.

• 26:18Griffin McElroy?

  And you're being given rewards constantly for it. I think that's kind of the opposite.

• 26:22Chris Plante?

  I mean, it's better than being called Bullet Hells, which was happening for a while and it-

• 26:28Griffin McElroy?

  It's not a bullet hell. Simply not accurate, right? Like, I, I don't think of, that, that term has such a limited application to, to me, I think, of like vertically oriented spaceship games. Maybe not spaceship every time, but I don't know. That, that genre feels so set in stone and has been since the eighties or whatever. I, I do think that this is a completely different beast that does not feel like that.

• 26:53Russ Frushtick?

  And the key difference as well is whereas in a schmup, you are generally the weakest thing on the screen, like one hit will usually kill you. Whereas in these games, bullet heavens, if you will, the strongest thing on the screen, uh, by like a mile.

• 27:08Griffin McElroy?

  You're the boss.

• 27:08Russ Frushtick?

  You're the boss.

• 27:09Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 27:09Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Uh, so.

• 27:11Griffin McElroy?

  So what are we, what are we, what's our highlights of this genre? Cause there's, there's so many different versions of this.

• 27:19Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. So I will say, I still really like Vampire Survivors, specifically on mobile. Uh, it's not a game that I play on PC anymore, console, whatever. I think on mobile, because it's relatively simplistic and because it runs really well on even a mobile phone, um, and it doesn't require like a very complicated input, I think it still holds up really strongly. I don't know that it's my favorite, but, uh, definitely worth considering, especially since it's free on mobile devices. Like, crazy.

• 27:49Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, yeah. I, my only thing that has kind of soured my relationship with Vampire Survivor, a game I've played so, so, so much, is I've never been able to really get into any of the DLC. Uh, I, and, and I don't really have a great reason why, um, the first one that dropped had like an insane difficulty spike right at the very beginning that I thought like, well, this is anti fun. Uh, and some of the other ones I've tried, I don't know. It's, it's- It is the OG, I think. Well, actually, I guess survivor.io is maybe, I always forget which one was the the original. But I feel like I have enjoyed a lot more games like Halls of Torment, I think is my gold standard.

• 28:34Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 28:35Griffin McElroy?

  I love the Halls of Torment. It looks like, you know, old school Diablo, different character classes that you are unlocking. But then there's like a proper loot system in the game. A lot of the kind of like, you know, loot reward systems are very ARPG kind of, you know, inspired stuff like your, like, like your Diablo's. And I just think that they did such a great fusion of that. And just a really cool looking game. And I played that one quite, quite a lot.

• 29:11Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 29:12Griffin McElroy?

  And honestly, am hankering. I have been hankering to return and start a new run.

• 29:16Russ Frushtick?

  I love Halls of Torment. It does the thing that we were talking about about tracking challenges really well. Like, you always know what you're chasing, which I think is very smart. My only nag on Halls of Torment, and honestly, it's a number of the games we'll probably talk about, that I think Blood Dungeon solves is, I don't think runs should be nearly as long as they tend to be in a lot of these games.

• 29:38Griffin McElroy?

  Thirty minutes is crazy.

• 29:40Russ Frushtick?

  It could take 45 minutes to finish a run on Halls of Torment, which is nuts.

• 29:43Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 29:44Russ Frushtick?

  And oftentimes, they don't have save mid run and things like that. So that's my only downside. But I love the like, permanent build crafting stuff in Halls of Torment. I think it's so smart. And yeah, definitely would love to see more games do that.

• 29:57Chris Plante?

  I mentioned Deep Rock Galactic Survivor. There's a few other things I love about this game. One, it is a quintessential example of a game that just kept growing. That came out strong, and has just gotten better. In April, there was an expansion that added a new class where you basically are a dude driving a bulldozer through the environment. Wonderful. But I think what's so special about it in particular, is it feels both like a bullet heaven, and like, kind of like a D make of the Deep Rock Galactic formula. It really keeps a lot of what that game does well. And that can be aesthetically, that

• 30:39Chris Plante?

  you are in these very dark environments. And basically, anything that has light is good. You want to be moving towards that. It has the actual mining elements from that game. And you're incentivized to mine both to get some resources and also to create these choke point paths. And I think the like, the visual fidelity of it just looks amazing. I, because Vampire Survivors was the first to really break big on this, I think they aren't always the most beautiful games. Ironically, Blood Dungeon intentionally goes so far into the not beautiful direction that it becomes beautiful. But Deep Rock

• 31:20Chris Plante?

  Galactic Survivor just looks nice. When you're in the center of a dark room, and you have what looks like zombie hordes, even though they're all bugs, just closing down on you. Sick. Love it. Video games.

• 31:35Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. I love BroTato as well. I'm a big BroTato supporter. I would say BroTato hews a lot closer to Vampire Survivors in, in how temporary kind of all of your build stuff is. But the game is, for one thing, a lot faster. I think the rounds are much shorter than than a Halls of Torment or a Vampire Survivor. You are drafting, you know, upgrades between levels. And when you level up, and you can carry six weapons at a time that are on screen, that your little potato man is carrying, which is very cool. And they could be six different weapons, or you could equip six slingshots. And then

• 32:19Griffin McElroy?

  try to just build a build entirely around like, getting crits with slingshots or whatever. The, for as silly as the game looks, it is, there is a community of like, build crafters out there for BroTato that is still like, still out there coming up with new shit. And I always really enjoyed going, going online and seeing like, how can I make things work with like, the brawler? How can I make things work with the, with the engineer class? What do I need to be drafting? And then, you know, seeing some stuff that people have done that is absolutely fucking busted, and then taking that back into the game and, you know, trying to make some more progress with it. I realize that's probably not everyone's

• 33:01Griffin McElroy?

  idea of fun. But for me, I just, the feel and speed of BroTato and the like, the complexity of like, the builds, I always, I don't know, I got stuck into BroTato pretty, pretty deep.

• 33:17Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 33:18Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 33:19Russ Frushtick?

  I played a lot of Megabank, which I quite enjoyed. This was the third person bullet heaven. I'm just gonna start using it. We're gonna, we're gonna, it's gonna go great.

• 33:30Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, feel it out.

• 33:31Russ Frushtick?

  Third person bullet heaven, where you can play as like, a skateboarding skeleton, or like, a wizard fox, and things like that. And I think it made the smart decision of, even though it is third person, even though it is 3D, keeping the visuals very, very simplistic, to the point where you can still have thousands of things on screen, and the game doesn't like, die on you. And in that way, I thought it was really strong.

• 33:58Griffin McElroy?

  It looks great. Looks like, it looks like a PS1 game, like EverQuest kind of

• 34:02Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it does.

• 34:03Griffin McElroy?

  polygonal kind of.

• 34:03Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I like the style of it a lot. It didn't necessarily grab me long term. I think I played it very intensely for like, three or four days. I'm not sure why that is, or whether new updates.

• 34:14Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, I have, I have thoughts. I feel, I loved Megabank. I love the aesthetic of it. And just the, the, it was a game about momentum, right?

• 34:25Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 34:25Griffin McElroy?

  So like, it was all about staying ahead of the pack of enemies that were behind you. The jumps were very kind of like, floaty, because you were supposed to land on a, you know, a ramp, and then slide down it to pick up more speed.

• 34:38Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 34:38Griffin McElroy?

  And just like, keep your momentum going. You're unlocking like, extra jumps that you get in midair. And there's so much stuff scattered around the map to like, to, to, to help you out and get you stronger, so you can move on to the next level. I think that the game had a lot of structural issues in terms of progression. Like, you had to finish a level, and then finish the run after beating that first level, before it would let you unlock the second level.

• 35:01Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 35:01Griffin McElroy?

  Then you would have to go in and play that level. Like, that stuff felt really clumsy. And also, a lot of the unlocks in that game were super grindy. Super duper duper grindy. Like, you want me to get 15,000 kills as this character to like, unlock this upgrade? I've been playing for 10 hours, mostly as this character, and I've got like, I'm not even halfway there. Like, that stuff felt very, yeah, I felt like it was a little bit too stingy.

• 35:27Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 35:27Griffin McElroy?

  With the, with the stuff that it was, that it was giving to you.

• 35:31Chris Plante?

  Also, with the four days, as long as the game can keep its price low.

• 35:36Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 35:36Chris Plante?

  When it comes to mine, for me, is Vital Shell, is, I started to treat these like, idle games, right? Like, as long as I can pull myself away from them, I can enjoy that time. If what I need is just a distraction, a break, it does that. I think the challenge is, they are, many of them are dopamine, you know, machines. And it can be hard to pull yourself away, even when you know that you're not having the best time. I will, I wanna, I wanna shout out Vital Shell, because I think it, it and Megabank get at something these games can do really well, which is just be a little snack, a little potato chip

• 36:18Chris Plante?

  of a genre, or an aesthetic that you love and crave, and maybe have not gotten enough of lately. So Vital Shell, that is the one that truly looks like it could run on the PlayStation one. Extremely low poly. And you play basically as an Armored Core mech, fighting fantasy polygonal shapes. They're almost hard to make out. And yeah, I want that. I would love a PlayStation one Armored Core game.

• 36:48Griffin McElroy?

  I'm buying this game right fucking now. I don't know how I missed this. This looks great.

• 36:52Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 36:53Griffin McElroy?

  Did we talk about this on the show?

• 36:54Russ Frushtick?

  I don't, I don't think we did.

• 36:56Chris Plante?

  Maybe you mentioned it. It might have been in honorable mentions. But yeah, it's six bucks. And it was what I needed for a couple of days. And then I put it down. And that was the last I thought about it, until now. But I really enjoyed it while I was playing it.

• 37:11Griffin McElroy?

  This game is $5.39.

• 37:14Russ Frushtick?

  Get in there. It's hard to regret.

• 37:16Griffin McElroy?

  Crazy.

• 37:17Russ Frushtick?

  The last thing I want to call out, just from a historical standpoint, I do not think this is the best Bullet Heaven ever made, but the first one that I ever played was called Crimson Land, and it came out in like the early to mid 2000s. And it was a top-down, kind of like an aliens vibe to it. You're fighting bugs and you would level up and you'd get perks, passive abilities, whatever, and it would increase your rate of fire, or your spread shot, or weapons, or whatever it was. Like, you can see the DNA in this game

• 37:51Russ Frushtick?

  in later Vampire Survivors games. I'd be curious to know if anything predates this, if there's any examples of like, other Bullet Heaven games before Crimson Land. Write in the comments if you know of anything before this, but this is the one that I always think of when I think about these sorts of games.

• 38:09Griffin McElroy?

  It's just like, I think the strength of this genre is they're so kind of like mechanically, like progression focused, and if a game can do that well, that's like some of my favorite shit in games. I think the reason that it is such a, I don't know, has become such a sort of cultural touchstone for video games as a whole, is you mentioned that Vital Shell game, and then I just bought it for $5.39, and then I downloaded it in a second and a half. Like, the games are so little, but they have such a huge footprint, in terms of like, how much you can get out of

• 38:50Griffin McElroy?

  them. Like, there's, it really is a unique exchange rate, I will say.

• 38:55Russ Frushtick?

  No, it's a great genre, and I agree. Like, as we see more of these handhelds coming out that could potentially run Steam, like, I think they're only gonna become more popular. Because the one thing downside of like, playing on mobile, these games on mobile is just like, from an input standpoint, like, touch is never gonna feel as good as having a controller.

• 39:15Griffin McElroy?

  Well, and also, you're dealing with some like, with some of these games, like, mobile bullshit, right? I played a lot of Archiro, one or two, I can't remember, which sucks, because I played a lot of, a lot of it. And it's, it is fun, but it is very difficult for a game genre like this, that is so built around its progression, to feel like, well, this would be going better if I dropped 20 bucks here. And, I don't know, a little bit of that.

• 39:44Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, props to Vampire Survivors for being not only free, but like, incredibly generous with what they give you. For, like, you really do not need to spend money at all, or even watch the ads at all, to do well and have a ton of time in that game.

• 40:00Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 40:01Chris Plante?

  Hey, I know that we have other stuff to talk about before we wrap up the show, but there was a really important announcement out of Gamescom that I think One Griffin McElroy is gonna care about. So I wanted to make sure that he had a chance to see this before we go any further. Griffin, did you, can you click the link that I just sent over to you?

• 40:20Griffin McElroy?

  All right, you sent me a YouTube link, let's see.

• 40:24Griffin McElroy?

  So we got Stage Tour. I'm watching Jeff Keighley, and he's talking about, oh damn.

• 40:31Chris Plante?

  Whoa, what does that game look like?

• 40:33Griffin McElroy?

  Well, it's not, I mean, it can't possibly be Harmonix, because they're not around. It does look like Guitar Hero, though, holy shit.

• 40:39Chris Plante?

  Could it be Red Octane Games?

• 40:41Russ Frushtick?

  Oh my god.

• 40:42Chris Plante?

  Coming back from the dead to bring back the Guitar Hero experience with an actual plastic guitar that you can buy now, in the year of our Lord, 2026 or 2027, whenever this comes out. Yes, it is.

• 41:02Griffin McElroy?

  This is interesting. So it's just Guitar Hero?

• 41:04Chris Plante?

  It's just Guitar Hero.

• 41:06Russ Frushtick?

  And Red Octane, for what it's worth, so Red Octane, before Harmonix kind of launched the Guitar Hero series, and then they basically got shut, they became bought by Activision, which later shut it down in 2010. And then in 2025, they started a brand new studio called Red Octane Games, which is now making this game.

• 41:29Chris Plante?

  And, and we got the, we got.

• 41:30Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, so it's drums, is it just, is it drums also, and like, singing and shit? Or is it just guitar? Is it like, full band?

• 41:38Russ Frushtick?

  I have no idea.

• 41:41Chris Plante?

  I don't know. I think it's, I think it's just guitar.

• 41:43Russ Frushtick?

  They're really just showing guitar.

• 41:45Griffin McElroy?

  There's a karaoke mode.

• 41:47Chris Plante?

  It's got everything, apparently.

• 41:49Griffin McElroy?

  This trailer is only showing off the guitar bit, but then they'll show like, drums, and so now I'm confused.

• 41:54Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 41:54Chris Plante?

  Here's the thing. Here's what you need to know, the important stuff. We got the Chili Peppers. We got Slipknot. We also have Baby Metal in here. We got Blink-182, Fall Out Boy, Weetis. We've got the Teenage Dirtbag itself, in, back in video games. We've got Olivia Rodrigo. They, they, they are.

• 42:15Griffin McElroy?

  They really are. All in. So it's not called Guitar Hero at all?

• 42:19Russ Frushtick?

  No.

• 42:19Griffin McElroy?

  It's called Stage Tour.

• 42:21Russ Frushtick?

  Activision owns Guitar Hero, so they can't.

• 42:24Griffin McElroy?

  Well, that's crazy, because it's Guitar Hero. Like, it's crazy. It's Guitar Hero.

• 42:28Russ Frushtick?

  It also, well, but it does have drums, and it does have a mic, so you're right, there is a karaoke mode, so, I mean, it's basically a rock band, I guess.

• 42:37Griffin McElroy?

  I guess so.

• 42:37Russ Frushtick?

  It's coming this year, it's coming in December.

• 42:40Griffin McElroy?

  Hey, I'm all about it, man. I mean, the, the last attempt to revive Guitar Hero, was that Guitar Hero Live?

• 42:48Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 42:49Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. God, I can't believe I remembered that. That was 11 years ago.

• 42:53Russ Frushtick?

  Oh my god.

• 42:54Griffin McElroy?

  And that was like, a cool idea of like, a Games as Service version of Guitar Hero, but it really fell apart before it really got off the ground. This looks like Guitar Hero, man. I'm, I'm very excited for this, absolutely.

• 43:05Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, could be good.

• 43:07Griffin McElroy?

  Yep.

• 43:08Russ Frushtick?

  We have some reader mail before we wrap. Some of us, actually all of us, have been playing Big Walk, and Admin Chobe wrote in to say, "If you guys love the landscapes in Big Walk, you should definitely do the real thing. The game is a faithful representation of the Australian bush," which makes sense, because House House is in Australia. They're encouraging us to do a live show in Australia as well. "As more and more Australian indies find worldwide success, I'm excited to see people discover sides of our country that aren't just Crockett, El Dundee, Hugh Jackman, or putting shrimp on Barbies."

• 43:45Griffin McElroy?

  There's nothing wrong with that stuff either.

• 43:47Russ Frushtick?

  No, it's great. Yahoo Sirius, loved him.

• 43:49Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 43:51Russ Frushtick?

  Hopefully we didn't get canceled.

• 43:52Griffin McElroy?

  I didn't know, I didn't know that this was an accurate representation of any kind of real, it feels so misty to me, like, an island full of these colorful puzzles and stuff.

• 44:04Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I was saying, when I first played it, it reminded me of that open-air museum in Hakone, Japan.

• 44:10Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, did you go to that?

• 44:11Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I actually went with that, which was fantastic.

• 44:14Griffin McElroy?

  That's like, my favorite, my favorite single place on earth, I think, is that place.

• 44:19Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, but I do think the Big Walk map is inspired by a specific national forest in Australia.

• 44:27Chris Plante?

  Is it just because it's so far from us that we're always like, hey, did you know that Australia and New Zealand are like, the most beautiful places on earth? We only get reminded whenever it pops up in our pop media?

• 44:37Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, that's known. That is a known quantity, I think. Well, Australia didn't get quite as much of the good PR from the Lord of the Rings movies, but yeah.

• 44:45Chris Plante?

  No, no, it didn't, it didn't. But it has the Baz Luhrmann effect, you know?

• 44:49Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sure.

• 44:50Chris Plante?

  Let's not write him off.

• 44:52Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 44:52Russ Frushtick?

  It sounds like it's a real-world national park in Victoria called Wilson's Promontory National Park.

• 44:59Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 45:00Russ Frushtick?

  And, so if you wanna, you know, have some Big Walk fun, maybe be careful. Don't just fall off cliffs, there's probably fall damage in your life, so be careful out there. But, it sounds pretty cool. We have another letter, this one comes from Bass Toad, Bass Toad, I always forget how to say it. "They put Sonic in Fortnite, and he looks like shit."

• 45:19Griffin McElroy?

  Oh man, I didn't see.

• 45:20Chris Plante?

  Oh, thank you, thank you, thank, thank you. I am not wrong here. This is, Fresh has been sending me all this Sonic stuff, and he's like, here you go, little piggy, just open your mouth, you swine, you like your, your Sonic shit? And I'm like, no, I actually, Sonic fans have very refined palates when it comes to this thing. We have expectations, and you can't just do this to us. You can't make a human, a lanky human with a Sonic head, and call it a Sonic. And then, you know what Fresh tells me? He goes, "Well, it's not technically a Sonic, so they can do whatever they want." And I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about?

• 45:58Griffin McElroy?

  What do you mean, it's not technically a Sonic?

• 45:59Chris Plante?

  It's a robot.

• 46:01Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, so they made, Fortnite and Sega made a comic book.

• 46:05Chris Plante?

  Disgusting.

• 46:05Russ Frushtick?

  And in the comic book, the lore is revealed that the real Sonic and Knuckles, et cetera, Shadow, sent robot versions of Sonic, Knuckles, and Shadow into the world of Fortnite.

• 46:16Griffin McElroy?

  I'm sorry. No. We have robot versions of Sonic and Knuckles and Tails and the gang. We have Metal Sonic already. This is not Metal Sonic. This is a different robotic Sonic that just looks exactly like Sonic, except with human proportions.

• 46:30Russ Frushtick?

  I think it feels like something that maybe Sega was like, we can't have Sonic the Hedgehog with a gun, only Shadow can use guns, so this was.

• 46:38Griffin McElroy?

  Maybe, let's stretch him out, so he looks like an adult man in a Halloween costume.

• 46:42Chris Plante?

  I wonder if it's the opposite. I wonder, I agreed with Fresh at first, and now I wonder if they just saw the designs, and they're like, nope. And then Fortnite was like, this is the best we can do. And they're like, call him a robot or some shit, like, this is.

• 46:54Griffin McElroy?

  There's a certain.

• 46:57Griffin McElroy?

  There's a certain height of Sonic the Hedgehog that you can reach and a certain amount of accessorizing that you can do with Sonic the Hedgehog that makes him look now nude in an inappropriate way.

• 47:11Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 47:12Griffin McElroy?

  If you see a little hedgehog scurrying along the ground and he's not wearing any clothes, that's fine. If you see a little two-foot-tall hedgehog man and he's got on red shoes and he's got kind of a cute little round belly, that's fine. If the, if this is a six-foot-tall Sonic the Hedgehog with human proportions and he's got shoulder pads and a belt and, and anklets and boots, but no pants, now we're in dangerous territory. We're in choppy fucking water.

• 47:39Russ Frushtick?

  And he's standing next to-

• 47:40Chris Plante?

  It doesn't help that he has a streaker energy to him, too. Like, you know that if you took Sonic to a baseball game, he's gonna go out there. He's gonna hit the, the, the field.

• 47:51Russ Frushtick?

  Yes. Sonic is standing next to James Hetfield of Metallica, and it's not a good look.

• 47:57Griffin McElroy?

  It's not a great look. He's got his hands on his hips and he's thrusting his hips forward.

• 48:00Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 48:01Griffin McElroy?

  And it's like, "Put some fucking pants on, man." Like, I'm sorry, but you've crossed the threshold. You need, now you need pants, Sonic.

• 48:08Russ Frushtick?

  Now, I will-

• 48:09Griffin McElroy?

  It's like when they gave Sonic a scarf in that, in that one Sonic TV show, and then it was like, "That's weird. Why does he have some clothes on? Where's his pants?"

• 48:18Russ Frushtick?

  His neck is cold.

• 48:19Griffin McElroy?

  I guess so.

• 48:20Russ Frushtick?

  I will say they did a very good job on Eggman slash Dr. Robotnik. That skin is basically fantastic.

• 48:27Griffin McElroy?

  Cause he's a man, he's a person, he's a guy.

• 48:29Russ Frushtick?

  They also have tails in the game as a sidekick, and tails has proper tails proportions. Not a robot, you know, cute little tails, follows you around, flies around. So, they know how to do it properly, but I think they were like, "Oh, fuck. How are they gonna make Sabrina Carpenter and Sonic the same height?" And this is what they came up with, so.

• 48:49Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 48:50Russ Frushtick?

  Not ideal.

• 48:51Chris Plante?

  You picked two people who are actually about the same size as far as-

• 48:54Russ Frushtick?

  That's true.

• 48:55Griffin McElroy?

  I do think you, yeah. Um, we've been playing anything else? Any honorable mentions we wanna get around to?

• 49:00Russ Frushtick?

  Blueprints is a game about a cow.

• 49:04Griffin McElroy?

  Yep.

• 49:05Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, here's my-

• 49:06Griffin McElroy?

  That's it?

• 49:07Russ Frushtick?

  I'm gonna give, you know, here's my hot take, and I might feel differently, but hot take is, I think, everything, I'm gonna keep this spoiler free, but everything through the sanctum doors of Blueprints, 10 out of 10, unreservedly the best game I've maybe ever played. I think everything after that is like 8 out of 10. Not as-

• 49:27Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, interesting.

• 49:28Russ Frushtick?

  Not as good.

• 49:29Griffin McElroy?

  Gosh, that's-

• 49:30Russ Frushtick?

  Mostly because I think a lot of the late-game stuff railroads you into very small number of puzzles where, when I was drowning in like other things to chase, I was having much more fun, whereas here, I hit a puzzle, I'm like, "Well, we're gonna be here for a while." It's like running into a boss in Dark Souls, and you're like, "Well, I better learn it." Uh, it's just, I don't, I'm still enjoying the game, I'm still gonna see it through, but I will say, like, it's hard, I'm not really complaining because it took 100 hours to get to that point anyway, but like, once I was at that point, I, it feels like maybe they went a little too far. And maybe they were targeting the real major sickos and should've given me more of an off-ramp at some point.

• 50:15Griffin McElroy?

  Sure. That's, I mean, there are plenty of, I think there's plenty of off-ramps in the game. That is when I, that is when it became a much more collaborative exercise for me. That is when I stopped kind of being as precious about, about spoilers and started like looking for cryptic hints to kind of give me a boost. Otherwise, they, some, some of, the last few puzzles in that game are so bonkers that, uh, without some sort of crowdsourcing, I do not know how I would've-

• 50:41Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 50:42Griffin McElroy?

  If, if I would've ever done them.

• 50:43Chris Plante?

  Uh, y'all, you gotta fit in Shin Chan, Shiro in the Coal Town before the end of the summer.

• 50:51Griffin McElroy?

  What is that?

• 50:52Chris Plante?

  You gotta give me out on this. Shin Chan, Shiro in the Coal Town is basically the latest in the Boku no Natsu Yasumi series.

• 50:59Griffin McElroy?

  Got it.

• 51:00Chris Plante?

  Is, I think, the best way of thinking of it, uh, which is the series of games where you just go to a small town in Japan and enjoy the summer and collect bugs. These, most of those games did not come out to the US officially, uh, except for Shin Chan. Two Shin Chan games, inspired by the comic book, by the cute little character Shin Chan, who likes to show his tushy, um, have come out in the States. They are a little bit more gamey than Boku no Natsu Yasumi or My Summer Vacation. Like, you actually have stuff to do. But Shin Chan, Shiro in the Coal Town, that's the second one, it came out in 2024. I had been avoiding for a while because, one, I'm not a big Shin Chan person, I don't need to see that little kid shaking his tush all the time.

• 51:44Chris Plante?

  And, two, the idea of like a coal town, that doesn't fulfill my wanting to take a summer vacation. That sounds yucky and dirty and depressing. And, let me tell ya, no, I was completely wrong. It is some great chill-out, summer vibes. You do go to a coal town, but is this basically like a Ghibli theme park version of a coal town? It's, it's absolutely delightful. Um, it runs on the AY and Thor and has been a great bedtime cooldown game, but, yeah, it really, if you are looking for cozy games that are truly cozy, where the expectations

• 52:26Chris Plante?

  are to actually just hang out, collect some bugs, watch as the day turns from morning to afternoon to night, um, and is rendered in these, um, like, uh, the original Resident Evil way, where it's the beautiful preset backgrounds with your character moving around them in really distinct camera angles. Um, this is it. You, you can go play the game right now.

• 52:52Griffin McElroy?

  Hey, is this the same team that did Attack of the Friday Monsters?

• 52:56Chris Plante?

  So, I actually don't know if Coal Town is, but the one that did, maybe it is, because I believe the one that did, um, the Shin Chan before this was the same team.

• 53:10Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, so it was designed by Kazayabe, who, I guess, created the Boku no Natsu Yasumi series.

• 53:18Chris Plante?

  Yes.

• 53:19Griffin McElroy?

  Okay. I love that game. Um, I, uh, I finished sort of, uh, my first year of Fields of Mysteria and finished the kind of like big minds storyline and have, in a similar fashion, I think, finished my time playing Fields of Mysteria, uh, which I, I did enjoy, but I, I don't know, I kind of, um, it kind of just reinforced a lot of the stuff I, I said about the game, about the, in the episode that we, uh, did about it. I, I found the resolution of the story to be not so great, not that that's ever been like the, the strongest suit of this genre necessarily.

• 54:01Griffin McElroy?

  Um, and, yeah, I don't know that there's a whole lot more to, to say about it. I enjoyed playing Fields of Mysteria, but I, I don't think it's gonna leave as big of a, an impact on me as a Stardew or a lot of other cozy games.

• 54:14Russ Frushtick?

  It does make me wonder if it's, if it's whatever one of these you played obsessively first.

• 54:20Griffin McElroy?

  Sure. Oh, absolutely, right? This could be very much a case of like, uh, you know, back in the, uh, day when there were lots of MMOs, it was like, "Well, I played WoW, so like, I can't go and join Wildstar or whatever." Um, another game I've been playing is that my five-year-old has discovered Geometry Dash. Y'all know this fucking game?

• 54:40Russ Frushtick?

  That's just the jumping one, right?

• 54:42Griffin McElroy?

  It's just a jumping one to music. It's just jumping to music and avoiding spikes, and it's hard as fuck.

• 54:47Russ Frushtick?

  Despite the name not educational.

• 54:49Griffin McElroy?

  No, not at all. Um, it is, uh, it is wild, this game, because it, I feel like I played it, you know, it's such an old game, I feel like I played it back when it was just like, there's techno music and you're jumping over things and, uh, you know, sometimes there's like a little gate and now you're flying a ship and you have to dodge stuff, and the levels are, are like, you have to play them perfectly, basically. There's like a practice mode where you can set checkpoints, but for the most part, if you wanna like unlock stuff and, uh, you know, progress, then you've gotta, you've gotta just do a whole run and not die, and it takes a million attempts. Uh, and that is, I would say, incompatible to being five years old. So, there's a lot of like, "Hey dad, beat this level for me," and I'll sit down and

• 55:34Griffin McElroy?

  just as I start to get into flow state, he'll be like, "I want it back now." It's like, "Ah, I only had five attempts, you gotta let me really, I'm not gonna beat this one unless you let me really grind in there." Um, but they've added a ton of shit to that game, like, it's a whole, you can, uh, like, make your own levels, and some of the stuff people have done with the, the creation tools are like bonkers. It reminds me of Little Big Planet when people would make like, uh, turn-based RPGs. It's like, "How did you do that?"

• 56:01Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 56:02Griffin McElroy?

  And, I don't know, I think it's cool, music's great, I think it's free, I don't know, uh, but-

• 56:07Russ Frushtick?

  My kid's been wanting to play Steam World Dig, and it's a similar situation where we'll be like deep in a tunnel, loaded for bear with a giant fucking bag of gems, and I'd be like, "My turn!" Vroom, directly into like a giant, uh, bug that eats us, and, ugh.

• 56:22Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 56:23Russ Frushtick?

  It's hard, hard to turn that off.

• 56:24Griffin McElroy?

  It's hard. Um, thank you so much for listening to our show, The Besties. Uh, hey, we got a live show coming up, uh, in October.

• 56:32Russ Frushtick?

  It's closing in.

• 56:33Griffin McElroy?

  It's closing in.

• 56:34Russ Frushtick?

  We're gonna have some dope shit going on there. Uh, we're also gonna have very cool merch that we were making specific for the live show, so that's gonna be awesome.

• 56:43Griffin McElroy?

  Bit.ly/besties on Broadway. Get, get your tickets now, we're coming to New York City, October 9th?

• 56:48Russ Frushtick?

  October 9th, Friday, October 9th in New York City at the Town Hall, which is a very cool venue, historic venue. Roger Daltrey of The Who is playing like two weeks before our live show at the same venue, so, um, keep that in mind.

• 57:05Griffin McElroy?

  If you enjoy this show, we got a Patreon over at patreon.com/thesties. You can support, uh, this, this program and, uh, listen in to bonus episodes of The Resties and our bonus monthly bracket episodes where we, uh, take, take a guest and we do like, uh, you know, a silly bracket, like, uh, who would be the best video game roommate? Or, uh, which game has the most delicious-looking video game food? Patreon.com/thesties is where you can go to, uh, to, to sign up for that.

• 57:33Russ Frushtick?

  Please support us.

• 57:34Chris Plante?

  Are you allowed to say that Daltrey is opening for us? And like kind of some day-

• 57:37Griffin McElroy?

  I think we can say that, yeah, legally I can even say that.

• 57:39Chris Plante?

  Capacity?

• 57:40Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Chronologically. Um, next week, we're doing The Blood of Dawn Walker, a game that I can't keep the nouns straight.

• 57:49Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I really-

• 57:50Griffin McElroy?

  I've called it the Dawn of Blood Walker more times than I, I can count. Uh, the new game from-

• 57:56Chris Plante?

  Oh, what's the team?

• 57:57Russ Frushtick?

  It's called Rebel Wolves is the name of the team, but it's former Witcher developers basically making-

• 58:02Griffin McElroy?

  Like a vampire action game?

• 58:05Russ Frushtick?

  Very similar to the Witcher game.

• 58:08Griffin McElroy?

  Sure.

• 58:09Russ Frushtick?

  So, if you like The Witcher, keep an eye out.

• 58:11Griffin McElroy?

  Like vampires!

• 58:12Russ Frushtick?

  And vampires. This vampire's-

• 58:14Griffin McElroy?

  Maybe you are a vampire.

• 58:15Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, yes, you, you are, you are the Dawn Walker, yes.

• 58:18Griffin McElroy?

  Maybe you won't like it if you're a vampire.

• 58:20Russ Frushtick?

  Maybe.

• 58:21Griffin McElroy?

  I will say they don't get a rosy reputation.

• 58:22Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, yeah, they're not very nice in this game.

• 58:24Griffin McElroy?

  Blood of Dawn Walker, next week, join us for that again, and every week, please hear on The Besties, cause shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games?

• 58:58Griffin McElroy?

  Besties!