Fortnite's Humongous Simpsons Update Raises an Awkward Question

Fortnite’s new Simpsons update reimagines the entire experience through the decades-old cartoon. You can select from Homer, Lisa, Flanders, Moe, and other playable characters, then skydive into a faithful recreation of Springfield. The detail is absurd, down to the operable trap door button in Mr. Burns’ office. It feels like the culmination of Epic Games’ efforts to be the black hole that pulls in every corner of mainstream pop culture. Fortnite has become so big and so appealing that it raises the uncomfortable question floating around the rise of similar Forever Games: are most people motivated to play anything else?

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

• 0:00Russ Frushtick?

  I think that I hit the right note in, um, Let It Go in the shower this morning and no one was there to witness it. And I don't know. Oh, no. I think I hit it. I'm like 90.

• 0:12Griffin McElroy?

  Are you talking about the past is in the past? That one? Do you harmonize with it?

• 0:17Russ Frushtick?

  Are you right there with Adina? Are you guys cresting the wave together? I can't sing it now because I'm worried from just a rights issue.

• 0:25Griffin McElroy?

  Well, that's bullshit.

• 0:25Russ Frushtick?

  It would be a tonal match. The AI would match it perfectly to Adina. Yeah.

• 0:29Griffin McElroy?

  I think it would be okay. Actually, we, uh, Rachel has like a filter she can apply to songs to make them not get snagged by the algo.

• 0:37Russ Frushtick?

  I think that's too close to AI and I don't trust it, quite honestly.

• 0:41Griffin McElroy?

  It's all physical. Like it's, she puts it in a crank and she cranks it through it. And so you should sing. Yeah. So give me a past is in the past. Like I've done it like three times now and it's not.

• 0:52Russ Frushtick?

  I know, but it's not.

• 0:53Griffin McElroy?

  I'm sick too. So like.

• 0:55Russ Frushtick?

  Acoustically speaking, I know I set this recording booth up for that specific purpose, but.

• 1:00Griffin McElroy?

  So yeah, there's post-processing for that too. She can add reverb and like.

• 1:03Speaker 02

  I know what the problem is. You, you want to feel like you're in the shower. So.

• 1:09Griffin McElroy?

  No, I don't. Wet water.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  Russ, honey, I'm about to flush.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  Russ, Russ, I'm about to flush, sweetheart.

• 1:19Griffin McElroy?

  Wet hair.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  Dad, open the door. Open the door. Open the door. It's me, your son.

• 1:25Griffin McElroy?

  Scaring into the middle distance.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  Let it go.

• 1:31Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, you're right.

• 1:36Russ Frushtick?

  It was good, right? It was good? No, you're, I think you're right.

• 1:38Griffin McElroy?

  Fuck, yeah, it was good, dude. Hell, yeah, dude.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week.

• 2:03Griffin McElroy?

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

• 2:05Chris Plante?

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

• 2:09Speaker 03

  My name is Ross Fraschek. I know the best game of the week. Welcome to The Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club and, and just by listening, you have become a member. This year, we're talking about what if a very old video game was about a much older TV show? And here we are. The Simpsons have invaded Fortnite. Chris Plant, remind me about The Simpsons.

• 2:36Chris Plante?

  Oh, well, it all started a long time ago when a man named David Si... Look, it's called Fart Night. That's what you need to know. Fortnite has been sitting on the Fart Night pun for years and years, wondering, when are we gonna get to use it? And old El Barto came up and spray painted that thing and changed the world. And now it's all anybody wants to talk about.

• 3:02Speaker 03

  And we'll, they will be among them right after this.

• 3:07Chris Plante?

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• 3:51Chris Plante?

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• 4:36Chris Plante?

  That's protonvpn.com/besties.

• 4:43Speaker 03

  I don't want my, I don't want my cheeky intro to be mistaken for cynicism because when you jump out of the bus and it's all of Springfield, it's cool. Yeah, I liked it. It was fun. You can go to the Simpsons house and run around and y'all, being in the Simpsons house is weird because I know how to get around the Simpsons house. That's a, that was a very surreal moment is like clearing Bart's, Bart's room, like slicing the pie into Homer and Marge's room.

• 5:14Griffin McElroy?

  Does it put a thumb on the scale of where players drop when you kind of like turn the different destinations into a bit of like tourism in that way? Because I mean, it would be a real hotspot.

• 5:27Russ Frushtick?

  Well, they have four, Fortnite always has like hotspots as you, if you will, that people are meant to gravitate towards, but they, it's not just the house. There's also like the power plant and the city hall and all sorts of stuff are represented.

• 5:42Chris Plante?

  They, the Simpsons fans have been chasing this dream since like the first year that this damn show came out. We've got a lot of versions of this, you know? Beginning with my favorite 3D recreation, the, the 3D Simpsons PC game that moved at about four frames per second, but it did let you go around a version of the Simpsons house. Then we got Simpsons hit and run. We have so many damn games. What is wild about this? And I think I said this to you fresh while we were playing is, oh, this is what happens if you have that AAA budget or you have that Grand Theft Auto style sense of awe where every time you crest a hill, you are stunned that they put that

• 6:26Chris Plante?

  much effort into whatever you're seeing.

• 6:28Russ Frushtick?

  I want to take a step back before we get too deep into it because I think there are probably a lot of people.

• 6:33Griffin McElroy?

  I am very, I did not play Simpsons Fortnite. I covered some other stuff for this week. So I'm desperate to hear like, is it a season? Is it?

• 6:42Russ Frushtick?

  Sure. I think there are a lot of people that like haven't played Fortnite in a while. I, for what it's worth, have been, I like started playing Fortnite when it, Battle Royale started launching and then I went dark for like two years. But I've been basically playing every season for the last like three years. So as you would imagine.

• 7:00Speaker 03

  Fortnite isn't fun to talk about. It's just fun to play.

• 7:02Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  It's the problem with Fortnite. It's not fun to podcast about. It's just fun to play and enjoy.

• 7:06Griffin McElroy?

  Except now, it's so out of pocket that I think it, yeah.

• 7:09Russ Frushtick?

  I think this was a, a pretty extreme moment. So in this case, normally a season's about three months, but they've been doing these mini seasons that usually occur right around this time of year that focus on like a specific franchise. So last year was a Star Wars.

• 7:28Griffin McElroy?

  That was the one where you can make Darth Vader say fuck?

• 7:30Russ Frushtick?

  Yes, right. Where Darth Vader says fuck. And he had thoughts about cryptocurrency. So that was last year and this year they're doing Simpsons. And I think last year the map was like, had like mostly Star Wars stuff, but there were still like a lot of Fortnite stuff carried through. This was like, they started from zero and built Springfield from scratch within Fortnite.

• 7:51Speaker 03

  The whole map at Grif is like, any big landmark from Springfield you can think about is there. It's all rendered in like a pretty large scale and like crucial characters are in the world at those locations and there's quests hard to like going to find them.

• 8:06Russ Frushtick?

  And not even just the macro, but also the micro. So if you were to walk into the Quickie Mart, for example, there would be show accurate magazines and snacks and shit like that.

• 8:18Griffin McElroy?

  That's, that's profoundly wild.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  It's like wildly detailed. Every environment is like that. Like you can run around Springfield elementary. You can walk around. Oh. Fucking the the what the best one, right? I parachuted onto the side of uh the the power plant onto a balcony, right? Walked into the huge glass doors into Mr. Burns's office. Hit the button on his desk to drop the trap door in front of him. Then drop down the trap door to where the uh oh, first of all, I released the hounds. There's a button, release the hounds, which makes hounds go around the area and attack people who are at the the in the region. And they I think that's at the Burns, the Burns Manor. And then you can push the button for the trap door and go down into the trap door.

• 9:05Speaker 03

  And there's like treasure down there and it's that's all fully rendered too. And you have to dig your way out of it like it's.

• 9:11Russ Frushtick?

  It's truly wild. The fact that they made this engine.

• 9:13Chris Plante?

  Yeah, so complete also that they need to still have Fortnite stuff in it. Because that is ultimately their brand. So they have made Simpsons versions of Fortnite characters. Yes, like the Peely.

• 9:29Russ Frushtick?

  Well, Peely, but Peely is later revealed might just be Professor Frank, who transformed himself into a banana.

• 9:36Griffin McElroy?

  I do like that a lot.

• 9:38Speaker 03

  The story's still unfolding.

• 9:39Griffin McElroy?

  Can I say I've been, I was going to play this already. Uh, Russ, that pushed me over the edge to where I might actually certainly download in the middle of this podcast. That's very, very strong, very, very good.

• 9:50Chris Plante?

  And then there are Disney Plus animated shorts set also within this stuff.

• 9:57Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, they made like several four minute shorts.

• 10:01Griffin McElroy?

  So explain what that means. How do you watch? Does it just like appear? Is it like a cut scene?

• 10:05Chris Plante?

  You can go to Disney Plus and because Simpsons is on Disney Plus.

• 10:10Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 10:10Chris Plante?

  And then they have shorts that they release, you know, like every couple of months. And they have Fortnite shorts that are airing every week that are related to.

• 10:19Russ Frushtick?

  Transmedia. And you can also watch them in the game as well.

• 10:23Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, that's what I was more curious about.

• 10:26Speaker 03

  There's also a lot of battle pass stuff. There's characters. There's like increasingly specific references, like the battle pass. It starts out with like basic characters and you get like Ned Flanders and then you get like Zombie Marge and then there's like Homer in a devil costume. And the Ned Flanders stuff is like, man, like the glider is a huge mustache. It's just like, has trimming shooting out of it. Like, there's a His alternate costume is nothing at all, is the ski suit. Yeah, the ski suit. Like, all the props are so, there's like a left-handed emergency kit that's like his back piece that Flanders wear. Like, that's just that one character. Like, there's so many different, like, unlockable, like, little in-gags like that for the show.

• 11:10Griffin McElroy?

  So, yeah, Russ, you might be able to speak more to this, having played, like, all these seasons. What is the fate of this content once this, you know, mini-season is over?

• 11:21Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that's a good question. So traditionally, it basically vanishes. There is an element that I'm not 100% up on, on the creative side of Fortnite, where people, like, can make their own maps and things like that. Whether that means that it could be playable or experienceable after the fact. I know part of the challenge here is, like, just keeping download sizes down. Like, you can't just keep this map downloadable for everyone forever, because it just makes the scale of the Fortnite download too huge. But it would be, as Plant said when we were playing, it would be a real shame if hardcore Simpsons fans only found out about this a month later. Like, the season ends at the end of November. So realistically, this

• 12:03Russ Frushtick?

  is your chance. If you found the game in December, and you wouldn't be able to play this map, that's a real damn shame.

• 12:11Speaker 03

  I think that they will. I would, I mean, obviously, they could bring it back, but I feel like they'll leave it. I was interested, it's been a long time since I logged into Fortnite, and I was really interested to see the extent to which those experiences. Uh, it's starting to look a lot. It's beginning to look a lot like Roblox, like the, a lot of the, those experiences that are like, there's a sort of role playing category and it's like all those like obbies and like K-pop, Demon Hunter, Grow a Garden, Tycoon, all that stuff from Roblox is happening over Fortnite. With just like better mechanics and like-

• 12:47Russ Frushtick?

  It was actually a recent lawsuit over a game called Steel the Brain Rot, which apparently is very big in Roblox that also got ported to Fortnite and who owns the rights to that? Uh, so it's getting very dicey on that front as well.

• 13:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, but there was more experiences that like, I actually got my kids into Fortnite. Like they both played, we played trios and got a victory royale. It was crazy. Like it was, it was a lot of fun. So that matching is still working like really well, cause us three dorks were able to get in and have a, have a good match. So I don't know.

• 13:16Griffin McElroy?

  We have to share that yesterday, Justin got in the Bessie Slack and excitedly shared that him and Charlie got a victory royale. And then 21 minute or 20 minutes later, Russ said, this was my win from yesterday and put up a video of him winning a victory royale. And Plant did point out fairly that Justin got a victory royale with his kid, flexed with a solo royale. Um, it was a really, and as me, like as a spectator to that whole thing, it was so uncomfortable, guys.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  I stopped paying attention. I didn't even see all that stuff play out. I just told you guys about the great stuff from my life and then moved on.

• 13:54Russ Frushtick?

  I know and I was sharing the great stuff in my life too. It doesn't mean it's a flex or a-

• 13:58Speaker 03

  A challenge. Russ, I didn't take it that way. I didn't take it at all.

• 14:01Russ Frushtick?

  I didn't take that way either.

• 14:02Speaker 03

  I didn't take it at all, but had I taken it, I wouldn't have taken it that way.

• 14:05Russ Frushtick?

  We can all have good moments in our lives. It's okay.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  There is this part of me, whenever I play Fortnite, there's this part of me that's like, man, are we wasting our time? Should we have stopped here? This is fun, you know? Like, I feel like we, there is, I should, I would be a happier person if I was like, I'm just gonna play some fucking Fortnite this month.

• 14:24Russ Frushtick?

  Sure.

• 14:24Speaker 03

  And I'm not gonna do other stuff. I'm not gonna play, I can't. Fortnite is like working so hard to just be fun and play it. And I'm like, why do I keep putting myself through it?

• 14:33Griffin McElroy?

  Justin, this, this pays-

• 14:35Speaker 03

  Our bills. There is not an insignificant number of people who listen to this very show, who do only have time to play Fortnite and maybe like two other games. And then they listen to us because it's our job to go out bravely, I might add, into the world to play those other games on their behalf. And then to come back and to tell them, hey, don't worry. We we got you covered. We can tell you what to say at the cocktail parties you're all going to. You keep playing Fortnite. We're here for you.

• 15:05Griffin McElroy?

  This is great, Chris. We need a new heuristic here on the besties that we apply to every game we talk about, which is, is it worth pulling yourself away for a few minutes from the sweet glowing pleasure box of Fortnite, this incredible joyous sandbox? Is it worth a little bit of that sweet Fortnite time or not? I don't know.

• 15:31Russ Frushtick?

  Justin, I have a question for you specifically.

• 15:33Griffin McElroy?

  Hit me.

• 15:35Russ Frushtick?

  Last year during game of the year period and before it, there was a little game called Astro Bot.

• 15:40Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 15:41Russ Frushtick?

  And one of the points you made about Astro Bot, which is not totally off base. I definitely can see your perspective is that it really is just one giant fucking ad for PlayStation and its brand.

• 15:51Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, right.

• 15:52Russ Frushtick?

  Well, how do how do you feel about Fortnite, which is not just a Simpsons ad at this point, but also a multimedia brand ad for like Marvel and Disney, you name it.

• 16:04Speaker 03

  I mean, it's pretty whack. Obviously, I think I think it's all pretty whack. Yeah, I mean, it is. But it is also like, if you're a fan of something and you do like, like, this is a very, to me, okay, okay, okay. For me, here's the difference. This is a very like healthy and like rewarding way of engaging with something that people love, right? This isn't like, this feels less like capitalizing on and more like.

• 16:32Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, they do do capitalization.

• 16:34Griffin McElroy?

  They do capitalize on it, but it's like Simpsons.

• 16:36Speaker 03

  It's celebratory. To me, this feels like it's very, and there's like, to me, there's so much more in here.

• 16:45Chris Plante?

  Then you could ever like, like, uh, just kind of experience in one run. It's like very loving, very like thoughtfully recreated, very richly detailed and also like free.

• 16:59Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 17:00Chris Plante?

  And Astro Bot.

• 17:01Russ Frushtick?

  As long as you have willpower, you it's free.

• 17:03Griffin McElroy?

  Also, Russ, you should know this, that when we're trying to lobby and position games in the game of the year discussion, we all say a lot of shit we don't mean. We will say fucking anything.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  Truth about Astro Bot, I just didn't like it because I like guns and coins and stuff.

• 17:19Russ Frushtick?

  Coins.

• 17:20Chris Plante?

  There's one, there's one other detail here too, which is Astro Bot doesn't have like Mario coming in and then punching Astro Bot in the dawn.

• 17:29Griffin McElroy?

  That's a circle. Yeah, you're a hundred percent right.

• 17:31Chris Plante?

  That's like what, what makes this work weirdly for me is a sensation that there were people on every single creative team that has partnered with, with Fortnite and Epic that was pissed about a decision that still ended up going through in the game. There are so many people who would be thrilled if it was just their, their IP during their IP time and you couldn't have the crossovers or you couldn't have your characters have guns or you couldn't do all E. I mean, there, there are, I would say rumors of very, very intense fights over which characters

• 18:10Chris Plante?

  could wear shoes, once they added shoes because of like very specific partnerships with like Nike and Reebok.

• 18:18Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, it's very clear, like LeBron has a skin in the game.

• 18:21Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 18:22Russ Frushtick?

  The fact that he can wear fucking, I don't know what he has to deal with. Adidas is like so counter to the idea of like, that would never be allowed in advertisement, on court, whatever it is, but because Fortnite got so fucking big, Epic was able to use their legal strong arming to just let them do whatever.

• 18:39Chris Plante?

  And so this isn't the like, you know, IP free or like a lawyer free.

• 18:45Russ Frushtick?

  IP freely.

• 18:46Chris Plante?

  Some people would like. It is also not just being able to play with your toys, but it is so leaps and bounds further than any other one of these sorts of collaborations that it feels still. Funky and weird and unlike anything else, which I think allows it to stay fresh despite it being a collision of a thousand different commercials.

• 19:07Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that's really the reason why I've been playing Fortnite for the last whatever, however, many years is just they do a very good job of keeping it fresh in ways that like PUBG didn't, like they just didn't know how to scale it or the engine couldn't handle it, whatever it is. And here, every month or two, the game is changing in either minor or major ways such that I can remain interested. And also, I just use it as a, it's my golf equivalent. Like I have, I take meetings during it and like discuss actual work.

• 19:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, crazy.

• 19:38Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I do a job too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 19:42Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, it's.

• 19:43Chris Plante?

  No, you do. I've been on those calls with you. It's kind of incredible.

• 19:48Speaker 03

  I think there's also something to be said, though, for like, these, these things are going, like, I want to bring up the Roblox thing again. These sorts of like IP mashup, like capitalizations will happen outside of the stakeholders in those things. And I think that a lot of the, the ways that you, like, I've seen my kids try to play games on Roblox that are like just utter garbage with like the thinnest veneer of some IP that they like put onto it. I think there's a big difference. Like, there was a mini, there was like a Disneyland Adventure within Fortnite, right?

• 20:22Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  And I, when I went into that, I had never seen this, but like, you go in, it's like kind of a cool recreation of the park. And there's, it's like dropping you into mini games that are set in the attractions. You're like, like running around, you know, realized versions of these and like doing little mini games and stuff. It's like, it's so much better. I mean, it's just better. It's like better content. It's like better stuff. It's, it's worthwhile. It's more attractive. It's like more pleasurable to engage with. And I think that that is a meaningful difference where it's like not some AI garbage that some robot is cranking out based on whatever IP you plug into it. But it's like, people who at least care about these, these properties are doing something interesting with them. Uh, in, in Fortnite.

• 21:02Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 21:02Speaker 03

  It's also, by the way, the Roblox parallel is a little bit off because Roblox is almost instant because the assets are endemic to Roblox. And a lot of these Fortnite, like mini experiences, they want to try to lure kids into like this. There's a download that you have to do before you can like get into it. Cause there's a lot more assets in the Fortnite experiences than the Roblox experiences. So I don't know if they're going to get there because it's like, it's tough when your friends like, come play this with me. And there's a couple of minutes where you gotta wait for it to download. Where Roblox is always like so seamless. It's like, I jumped into this, come jump in with me.

• 21:32Griffin McElroy?

  The number, when we used to stream Fortnite, the number of streams, we had to start late because one of us wouldn't realize that there was a fucking, you know, 25 gigabyte patch to get, uh, Peter Griffin in the mix, uh, was, was quite frequent.

• 21:46Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, last thing I'll say on this, uh, as definitely a fan of what they're doing. Obviously I'm still, you know, there's no better representation of the consolidation of power within the games industry than like Epic and Fortnite and what they're doing. So I'm, there's also that like a little bit bitter pill in the aspect, but with that power, they are making a good game. So I feel a little bit torn on that front. Um, but I will say, I watched a YouTube video. It was just like a YouTube short of someone playing as Goku, gliding in, landing on the Simpsons, uh, roof, going through the door and sitting on the couch with like fucking Darth Vader and several other like known characters and the Simpsons theme playing

• 22:31Russ Frushtick?

  like it was the beginning of like a Simpsons couch gag. And I, three years ago, if I'd seen that video, I'd be like, oh, that was, that's fucking AI, like that's a joke. And the fact that it exists in the real world as like a legitimate game is wild. Um, so that's kind of the, it really is the peak of what they've been trying to do for many years.

• 22:49Griffin McElroy?

  Am I going to be, if I start playing now, am I going to be like way behind?

• 22:53Russ Frushtick?

  That's

• 22:54Speaker 03

  You guys are having such a good time.

• 22:55Russ Frushtick?

  There's no behind in Fortnite.

• 22:56Speaker 03

  I'll play this afternoon. It's Fortnite. You just play.

• 22:58Chris Plante?

  It depends on how long it's been. If it's like you haven't played since the beginning, you're like, oh, wait, there's you can super jump and there are cars.

• 23:06Griffin McElroy?

  No, I mean, I can look and see the last time we streamed this game.

• 23:08Speaker 03

  You can eat a blinky fish and do teleport jumps now.

• 23:10Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, you'll be fine.

• 23:11Speaker 03

  Drink a squishy and have super speed.

• 23:13Russ Frushtick?

  Also, if you haven't played in a while, I'm not going to tell this to Justin because it might hurt his feelings. But if you haven't played in a while, they'll probably match you with bots.

• 23:21Griffin McElroy?

  So, oh, yeah.

• 23:22Speaker 03

  Dude, there's no argument in my head about that. Sorry, was I? Sorry, was I? No, it seemed like all bots. Everyone was very bad. But I think the last person, the last like three people we killed seemed like they were angry. So they might have been real, but pretty much everybody else just kind of took it. I was playing with a seven and 11 year old, man. I was not bragging. I'm just saying it's a really, it's a great matchmaking experience.

• 23:45Russ Frushtick?

  It is. It really is.

• 23:46Speaker 03

  That's the only thing I want to point out.

• 23:47Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, is there a better fucking moment? I play some competitive games with Henry on Roblox sometimes. Is there a better moment than when you can fucking clutch up a win in front of your child? In that experience, holy shit, man. I feel so tall.

• 24:00Speaker 03

  Cooper had to bail because it was too intense.

• 24:02Chris Plante?

  She turned it off. Is there a better moment than you see that joy in your kid's eye? And then you turn to him and go, yeah, but they were all bots. So like.

• 24:13Speaker 03

  Uncle, Uncle Russ texted him to let him know privately.

• 24:16Russ Frushtick?

  They gotta know the truth. It's important.

• 24:18Griffin McElroy?

  Can we take a break and then I'll talk about the future of esports?

• 24:21Russ Frushtick?

  Yes.

• 24:25Russ Frushtick?

  This episode of the besties is sponsored by Lisa. You know, we are starting to get into the cooler months of the year. And you know what I love in the cool months of the year? An incredibly cozy mattress that you can just cozy up into. You got the blankets and everything and I will speak from experience, but maybe not my experience. Because Lisa sent me one of their mattresses. But it was timed as such where actually my son, who was becoming a toddler and needed like an actual bed, needed a mattress. So we had him use the Lisa mattress. And every time that I get into that. Bed to read him a story at night. I am incredibly jealous of his mattress because holy cow,

• 25:10Russ Frushtick?

  that thing is incredibly comfortable. Lisa was awarded the best hybrid and best memory foam mattress by New York Times Wirecutter and is featured by West Elm as their go to mattress partner. You can go to lisa.com for 25% off select mattresses plus get an extra $50 off with promo code besties exclusive to our listeners. That's L E E S A dot com promo code besties for 25% off select mattresses plus an extra $50 off. Let them know we sent you in the survey after checkout. Lisa.com promo code besties.

• 25:47Griffin McElroy?

  I haven't played a game in my life that has turned me off faster than Q up. Have you guys fucked with it yet? No.

• 25:55Speaker 03

  I tried to, but it wouldn't work on Steam Deck. It needed a mouse and keyboard. So I quit.

• 25:59Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, there's no controller support, which is a huge bummer because it would, uh, you could, I was actually playing it on my rogue ally last night. You can like, kind of move the cursor around and anyway, that's a weird way to start. Uh, you start the game up and it asks you to like, do some settings, like come up with this random number for our random number generator. There's like some gag shit of like, uh, turn up mouse sensitivity, uh, rate the game, but then you can turn up developer sensitivity and the higher you turn it, the more stars you end up giving the game. It is like so full of these gags about modern games as service kind of contrivances, uh, that

• 26:39Griffin McElroy?

  are objectively very funny, but then it drops you into the game with fucking no explanation as to what's going on or what you're doing here. And it is very much a game about kind of like unpacking what's happening here. Uh, and

• 26:52Chris Plante?

  And what's happening is you are flipping coins.

• 26:55Griffin McElroy?

  You're, you're flipping a coin and it's either going to be heads or tails, Q or up in this game. Uh, and Wait, which one is Q and which one is up? It doesn't fucking matter, man. Cue his heads up his tails. Okay. I think that's, that's, that's probably the best analog. You got it backwards, Griff. No, okay, maybe. Uh, you are, you cue, you genuinely do join a matchmaking queue, uh, because this game does have- Is it real? I believe it's, yeah, so it has online play. I believe it's like asynchronous where like, once- Okay. You queue up with a team, like it automatically runs all the math of what's going to happen. I don't think it's actually happening in real time because there's certain prompts you can like dismiss or not dismiss and I don't see how that would happen if, you know, eight players were all kind of doing the same thing.

• 27:39Griffin McElroy?

  So you're put on a team of four and then it first to three wins after coin flips, uh, wins the match. And then you go back to the, the, you know, fucking Fortnite splash screen sort of games as a service menu where you can look at the shop and you can, uh, check your messages and you can form a party and like, it has all of these trappings that make you think like, that they've genuinely made like an Overwatch of coin flipping. Um, so that's- How did you feel? How did that make you feel, Griff? Bad, bad and not good and confused and not great. Um- Is it a joke? Then you get some messages pretty quickly. Then you start getting messages, right? Uh oh.

• 28:19Griffin McElroy?

  And that's where the, you start to get some explanations for the rules in these messages. Like, hey, when you, uh, have these skills that activate at these certain points, here's what that actually means. Uh, here's what these different currencies are actually for. Here's what's actually going on. Uh, you get messages from like people who are like, wow, you seem like you're winning maybe a little bit too much. Here's some currencies for you to use. Uh, you start to invest in the, that side of things, the not coin flipping side of things. And that's when the game kind of reveals itself for what it is, which is an incremental game, the new jam from Frank Lance, who made Universal Paperclips, which I think kind of established a lot of the norms of the genre of incremental idle games, only-

• 29:04Griffin McElroy?

  The incremental, the, the, the building that you're doing, the strengthening that you're doing is all entirely personal. So you, you have a hero that you pick, sort of Overwatch style. You only have handful, a handful unlocked. At the beginning, you can unlock more as you go along. Each hero has like a different little modifier, a different little thing. But for the most part, a lot of the payoff comes in this huge skill grid. Each hero has like certain special skills, but then you'll unlock skills that you can place in the grid wherever you want. Those skills will trigger on wins. So if your team wins a flip, it'll trigger this skill. Uh, some of them trigger on losses. Some of them trigger when the game starts. Some of them trigger when the game ends. Uh, genuinely, uh, anything you can

• 29:48Griffin McElroy?

  think that could happen in a very simple, uh, first to three coin flip challenge, they have found a way to make a game mechanic out of it in some way. Uh, sometimes you'll have skills that trigger other skills. So to say like, on a loss, this one will activate all the skills surrounding this node and you start to build these insane chain reactions to like maximize the currencies that you get at of for each win and loss and match win and, and match loss, right? So you can get a bunch of skills or there's also gear, there's items that you buy in a shop that you like have a loadout equipped that basically do kind of the same thing. Like this will give you 500 XP each round that will be multiplied maybe by your skills. You're trying to like build these multipliers and build these chain

• 30:30Griffin McElroy?

  reactions and utilize your heroes like special abilities, but like, none of that shit affects the coin flip.

• 30:41Griffin McElroy?

  You don't get a skill that makes you win more coin flips. Okay. Vitally. You don't get any kind of ability that will make it more likely that your team will win a coin flip. The coin flips are going to happen and then the points that you get for the result of that coin flip are entirely your shit, entirely your build, entirely everything. So like the only kind of like-

• 31:01Chris Plante?

  The messages, if I can just hop in really quickly there.

• 31:03Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, please, please.

• 31:04Chris Plante?

  The messages that you will get will be from the game creators.

• 31:08Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 31:08Chris Plante?

  And if, let's say that you lose four rounds in a row and each round you losing a shutout. Like you, you didn't get a single coin flip right. You will get a message that's like- Fairness is our top priority. Something seems to be amiss here. We've rejiggered the flibbelflops and we are assuring you that there is peak fairness happening at all times. And as, as you know, a sign of gratitude, take these coins. And then you will take those coins and there will be a Ula, which if you actually read the Ula, thousands of words, at the bottom it will be like, and also we now own all of the like rounds of your game.

• 31:50Chris Plante?

  We own all of your personal data. We own all of this shit, which then we'll have a link to another story. And that's the other side of the game, which is the visual novel side of the game.

• 32:00Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, so there's, there's a whole news feed where you will see like on the splash screen, like of all the legal trouble that like the company that made this game is getting in, but it's like a fake, it's a real website, but it's like a fictionalized, like in-universe sort of coverage of the Q-up esport. What, all of that is like, it's really funny and it's like really, really, uh, it, once you kind of understand what it is and, and how it doesn't really impact the coin flips or like the build shit that you get into, these like chain reactions you try to build between your skills

• 32:41Griffin McElroy?

  and your items and your hero skills to make it so, uh, you can get like billions and billions and billions of points with a single match of Q-up, whether you win or lose. You could have a setup where like, uh, you have items that trigger on losses and you have skills that trigger on losses so that when you lose, you get more points than you do when you win. It's all about like how your build allows you to harvest resources from the matches, whether you win or you, or you lose. Uh, and engaging with that stuff is so confusing at the start because it doesn't explain fucking anything and it kind of slow rolls that shit out to you. The multiplayer aspect of it is really great, um, because there is like a ranking system, sort of like Overwatch style.

• 33:23Russ Frushtick?

  For a second, do we know for sure that the multiplayer is real multiplayer?

• 33:27Griffin McElroy?

  Yes, it is real multiplayer. And the reason that you know that, my favorite part about the multiplayer is you will see people on your team and people on the other team. Like you'll win a flip and then you will see that they have just earned 72 quadrillion points. And it's like, how the fuck, what is your setup? Yeah. That you were able to get that, right? So it's like, imagine you're playing Universal Paper Clips, only there was like asynchronous multiplayer and you could see that like this person was getting shit in the like exponential Googleplex like, you know, uh, there, there's also certain interactions, like one of the characters has a skill called, I think meta awareness. And what that skill does is you pick one of the playable characters in the game.

• 34:09Griffin McElroy?

  And if that player is on the other team, when you start, it adds a point to this like meta awareness stat that will then like multiply your score or do like all this other shit. But if you guess wrong and that player's not on the team, that stat resets. So it's genuinely like knowing like, okay, which characters are people playing the most? And if I pick that, then it's actually going to give me this stat. Like that is what that whole character is kind of based around. It's just like, it's a, all this stuff about the coin flip esports and the, the, the Overwatch sort of pastiche and all that shit is all a joke, but they also have made a game mechanic out of the trappings of it, the system of it, the menus of it.

• 34:48Chris Plante?

  It's a thing at the end of any game where it adds up your score and it has all these different bonuses, except for you are designing the contraption that creates that math.

• 34:57Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 34:58Chris Plante?

  Right. That's the whole game is, is creating the bonus chain and optimizing it, knowing that you can actually have it go the other way too. You can actually design a chain that, that destroys.

• 35:10Griffin McElroy?

  Yes. When you lose, it gives you a base score of like minus 500 points to your ranking, right? If you have like a bunch of shit that like just multiplies your score, then that will go, you will lose so many points. You have to have shit in there that will just like add some base score to counteract that because you don't want to like multiply a negative number.

• 35:29Chris Plante?

  Sure.

• 35:29Griffin McElroy?

  It'll really fuck you over. Um. So like, that is, that is the side of things. That is the incremental part of things. You're earning gold that you use to buy items. You're earning XP to like, level up your heroes and get these new skills.

• 35:40Russ Frushtick?

  But the like, end results, and I realize this is a weird thing to ask about an idle game, but like, the end goal, I should say, is like, learning more about the universe, the like, visual novel stuff.

• 35:50Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, the end goal is to like, build these insane chain reaction things with your skills and items. That is the end goal of this as an incremental game, right?

• 35:58Chris Plante?

  And then for narrative, I think, I think what Frank and his team are getting at is, one, the absurdity of fairness in competitive games, that you have people who want fairness, but then also want upgrade pass constantly. And then also the way that if a game does have fairness, how it can loop you into all of these other mechanisms that are, the separate meta-game that you can play that keeps you spending money and keeps you buying coins and all of that stuff. It is, it is a game that is very much grappling with the anxieties of this.

• 36:36Russ Frushtick?

  It's grappling with Fortnite.

• 36:37Griffin McElroy?

  I think it's saying less, I think Overwatch is a more apt comparison than, like, obviously, it's saying a lot about games as service and the sort of intrusiveness of that kind of formula. But I, for me, it feels less like a shot at Fortnite and more a shot at esports competitive play.

• 36:53Chris Plante?

  Esports competitive play. Sure.

• 36:55Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 36:57Griffin McElroy?

  But like, also, when you build a chain reaction that gives you a fucking ton of points, it feels pretty, it does scratch that, you know, that Universal Paperclips incremental game, like, holy shit, I just, I'm rich. Like, it does hit the number go up itch.

• 37:12Chris Plante?

  That's the trick, right, though? That's what Frank is so good at, and I think of Lucas Pope is so good at with something like Papers, please? Where it's, hey, we are going to make the thing that we are creating feel good, so you get how it became so powerful.

• 37:25Griffin McElroy?

  Right, yeah, absolutely. It's a really interesting game. I do wish there was controller support, because I think I would play it a lot more,

• 37:34Griffin McElroy?

  you know, on my Rogue Ally X, but it's, it's, it's one of the more compelling incremental games I've played in a while.

• 37:41Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it's very interesting. Do you want to jive into some reader mail? Yeah, I'd like that if you don't mind. This letter comes from Alexander. Hi besties. My parents have never played a video game in their life, but they are now retired and they've developed an interest in trying some out. They even went so far as to buy an Xbox Series X. I'm glad they're still selling, y'all. And two controllers. My question for you guys is, what are some games you'd recommend that are simple enough for, to be fun for people who are learning to use a controller and understand game language, but whose content and themes are interesting and engaging for adults, which I think is a different request than we've gotten past about teaching kids to play games. So far, I've gotten the Portal 2, but would love some other suggestions. Two-player games would be

• 38:24Russ Frushtick?

  especially welcome. Thanks. I have one, although I hesitate to give it.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  What is it?

• 38:32Russ Frushtick?

  It takes two. It's either It Takes Two or Split Fiction.

• 38:35Speaker 03

  Oh, God.

• 38:36Russ Frushtick?

  I hesitate to give it.

• 38:38Speaker 03

  Did you edit out a part where they say they don't love their parents?

• 38:43Russ Frushtick?

  I think for someone that has really never played games much at all.

• 38:48Speaker 03

  Or heard a story before. Like, that's the problem with Split Fiction is like, that's very insulting if they've read a bunch of... I have to assume they've ingested other media if they haven't been playing games this whole time, right? So like...

• 38:59Griffin McElroy?

  Missing, missing the Split Fiction episode of this podcast has truly put a pretty wide gap between me and I feel like the rest. I feel like something happened in that episode.

• 39:09Speaker 03

  The gap is between you and the listeners. Like, that's where the gap is. We're over here.

• 39:14Russ Frushtick?

  I think some of the listeners agree with us. Some of them don't. That's okay.

• 39:18Speaker 03

  Cause I think that, man, I'm continually like, kind of bowled over by how good the Jackbox games are at getting non-gamers into games by using a device that they already feel comfortable with. Like, we played the, not to get into all the mentions, but I played the 11 compilation that came out for, for my birthday. We had some people over and it was like... A wide range of people never played a game before, but there's like a, uh, they have a new sort of like murder mystery game in there. Where you have to answer, they, you have to answer personal questions about yourself. And then one of you is the murderer and the way they hint at people is they reveal answers that this person gave.

• 40:03Speaker 03

  To the personality quiz. So you're like trying to find the criminal by how well you know their personality and there's one in every round. That's a lie. So you have to try to like, figure out there's like fake information, but that's like, that's like a parlor game. That's right on the edge of digital. And like, I think that that's a really good place to get people in for stuff.

• 40:20Russ Frushtick?

  Although it doesn't use a controller, right? You're using phones for that.

• 40:23Speaker 03

  So yeah, you can use phones. And what I think is for me, I think the best thing about them is that they are like on streaming services. Like they're not just on Steam because for me, I don't have it like endemic that Steam can be on my living room TV. Right? It takes a few cords being plugged in, but I can't just press a button on the Apple TV and like the jackbox will, will start up there. So that's, that's kind of nice.

• 40:48Griffin McElroy?

  I, I feel like Portal 2 is a wild first, first pay. It's obviously a great game and I think you, you get there, but I mean. In introducing games to, you know, both of my kids at this point, like there's a certain amount of easing in. To like familiarity with a controller before, operating two thumbsticks at the same time. And one of those thumbs has to move over to buttons and one of them has to move over to a secondary D pad. Like that is really pretty difficult to understand if you've really.

• 41:20Russ Frushtick?

  Clearly these people are using bumper jumpers. So that's not an issue.

• 41:23Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, that sounded like I assumed they were using bumper jumpers.

• 41:30Russ Frushtick?

  I sort of get it with Portal 2 because you are for most of the early game in a quote, safe space to like learn everything. The other thing I wanted to call out.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  Want a break is half TV show.

• 41:43Russ Frushtick?

  That's true. Yeah, you can really relax.

• 41:45Speaker 03

  So you can like, they can like, take a break from playing video games if that gets to be a bit much.

• 41:49Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Uh, Stardew co-op would probably be another. Yeah, I was gonna say that too, and it's not a bad idea.

• 41:55Chris Plante?

  I think also any of the beat'em ups, like Castle Crashers, we've talked about it quite a few of these lately. That I think are solid. Um, and yeah, any of the story games until dawn, like, I don't know if until dawn's not on Xbox.

• 42:10Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, the first season of Walking Dead would be very good. Yes.

• 42:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's not bad.

• 42:15Russ Frushtick?

  I played that essentially in co-op with my wife and it was a really great experience. That was a definite like, uh, easing, easing Rachel into, we played through all of those.

• 42:23Speaker 03

  You know, honestly.

• 42:24Russ Frushtick?

  Anything else.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  I think Blueprints would be, I mean, it's not two players, but it's definitely a two, like, it's a two per, it could be, it's a great two-person experience. I've heard from a ton of people that played it with a partner and really enjoyed it.

• 42:36Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 42:37Chris Plante?

  Yeah. Uh, and, and last one, anything with Lego at the beginning of the title.

• 42:41Speaker 03

  Good to avoid, yeah.

• 42:42Chris Plante?

  Almost now Lego Voyagers and stuff like that, that'll be good.

• 42:45Speaker 03

  I, I, yeah, once you've played one of them, you've played them literally all, but I guess if they've never played even one of them, then you could get them one.

• 42:52Chris Plante?

  There you go. There you go.

• 42:53Russ Frushtick?

  Voyagers, Justin, you don't know. Change the game.

• 42:57Speaker 03

  It's a delight. Voyagers changed the game.

• 42:58Chris Plante?

  Y'all, I want to hear some honorable mentions, because I know folks have been playing some other stuff, watching some good stuff. I'm sure Hoops, you, you got a good book that you're gonna tell me about?

• 43:07Speaker 03

  Uh, I, no, man.

• 43:09Russ Frushtick?

  The good book.

• 43:10Speaker 03

  I only read like really spicy stuff, like really steamy stuff, and I, it wouldn't be appropriate for this audience. Um, I just finished Bride, it was very, very, very, very sexy, hot stuff. Mates up next, looking forward to it. Not the topic today, I want to tell you about Haunted Hotel. I know, what's that? It's a show. It really did come out on Netflix, which is one of the big ones. Uh, it stars Will Forte as the owner of a, uh, a hotel that is completely overrun with ghosts. And then he, in his like, thirties or forties, dies.

• 43:48Speaker 03

  And leaves the hotel to his sister and her two kids and a demon named Abaddon, who also lives in the hotel. So Nathan is a ghost in the hotel and he's getting adjusted to ghost life. And he is sort of the in-between between the ghosts and his sister. And this is like a long, struggling business. It does not do very well because of all the ghosts. And the stories are really like about the, the ghosts and how they interact with the family and how Nathan is adjusting to be non-corporeal. Um, it's, it's like, it's extremely funny. It's really funny. It's a little more like tonally, it is not unlike a, a Gravity Falls or stuff like that, but it's more.

• 44:33Speaker 03

  It's animated. Sorry. I should have been more clear about that. Yeah. It is an animated series and it's, it's, um, it's more grown up than those. It's, it's like a little more adult tonally. I think, uh, there's stuff that's like, that would be kind of on the line for, for our kids. Like a Beetlejuice tone? Uh, yeah. Beetlejuice is a, yeah. Beetlejuice is like right, right there. Um, not heavy on like the profanity or stuff, but there's like some pretty big questions. A lot of it is like, for instance, there's an area, there's an episode where Nathan, the, uh, the ghost who, who's played by Will Forte starts sinking into the ground, uh, and won't, and will continue to sink into the core of the ground until he discovers the meaning of life. And he's got a few days to

• 45:14Speaker 03

  figure it out. So he and his niece, uh, the one of the, you know, the young girl who is the, the daughter of the mom who's inherited the hotel, uh, have to figure out the meaning of life in like a few days before he sinks the, into the earth. And there's like murderers that died in the hotel and still try to kill the kids, but they're non-corporeal. So the kids get a big kick out of it. That kind of like, it's that kind of a thing, but it's like, it's very, it's just really, really funny. And it's, I feel like it's tough to find stuff. I think, not tough. I think people are afraid to do comedy that is on the line of good taste because they don't know how to do it funny enough that they can get a, that they can sell it. Right? So there's

• 45:56Speaker 03

  a lot of shows that I think aren't funny enough to get close to the line of like, what is like appropriate, what isn't, and really like push the envelope in a way that. It's just uncomfortable, right? It's just like actually trying to make you think about stuff and it's just on the line there, but it is funny enough that it sells it, right? That it can get into those like topics that are on the edge and do them with like taste, but like in a really, really genuinely funny way. And I think that that is what this show is. It is not like the sort of, um, I think there's an adult animation style that wanted to be so comforting for people that it got, never got close to anything that approximated

• 46:37Speaker 03

  strife. You know, it's, it's a very sort of like comfort watch kind of animation that adults have gotten into. This to me, it feels a little bit more like I've got, I'm gonna say married with children, like that level of edge at that time period, if you know what I'm talking about, where it's like, it's not bad. It's just like, people don't normally talk about some of this stuff. So it's kind of, it, it feels bad. I feels edgier than maybe it is.

• 47:02Chris Plante?

  The cast is killer. I, Elias Coop, Skylar Jazano, Jimmy Stimson, like some Diedrich Bader, hell yeah. Yeah, Darius show fans stand up.

• 47:15Speaker 03

  There is an episode where the, the, the son, who's a little bit older, gets into a multiplicity kind of situation because the hotel, because it is haunted and so cursed, like any number of magical things can happen. He gets into a multiplicity situation where it's other sides of his own personality and discovers that like, his mom prefers almost every other version of himself to him. So it's him trying to figure out how he can

• 47:45Speaker 03

  kill these other versions of himself because they're, because he's losing his mom's love, or at least that's, that is the impression. But that's the kind of like, it's like, it's, it's, it's funny. It's, it's like, right on the line and it feels like mature in an actual way, but it's like, it's called haunted hotel. It's on Netflix and they're making another season, um, according to Netflix. So.

• 48:04Chris Plante?

  Cool. Sounds great.

• 48:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's great.

• 48:06Chris Plante?

  Can we talk about Luminous?

• 48:08Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 48:10Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, did anyone else play Luminous Arise?

• 48:12Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I played it. Uh, I know Plant played a little bit. We talked about it on Resties.

• 48:17Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, great.

• 48:18Russ Frushtick?

  As well, a bit, but.

• 48:19Griffin McElroy?

  So you've laid, you've laid the groundwork. It's, it's the new jam from Enhance, which is, uh, Tetsuya Mizuguchi?

• 48:27Russ Frushtick?

  Yep.

• 48:27Griffin McElroy?

  Is that his name? Uh, his studio creator of, uh, Rez and, uh, most recently Enhance made Tetris Effect. And I would say Luminous Arise is very, very, very much in that same sort of trance-like aesthetic vein. I mean, Luminous has always sort of been, uh, about that life and Luminous Arise, I think, takes the, the knob of that trance-like shit and turns it all the way up and then tears it off.

• 48:55Speaker 03

  Can you guys talk the core? I feel like it's been a long time since Luminous had an intrigue.

• 49:00Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, I'm excited for this. I love to see people explain this.

• 49:03Russ Frushtick?

  I tried doing it on Resties and I really struggled, so go for it.

• 49:06Griffin McElroy?

  You got it. I believe in it. And Luminous, you have a board, a grid where you are dropping, uh, blocks. The blocks are two by two blocks. And the segments of those blocks are one of two colors. The base bog standard shit is like, there'll be white squares and orange squares and some arrangement of those in a two by two little block. You're dropping those, uh, into this grid. It's affected by gravity. So if you drop half the block on a stack, the other half will fall down to the ground. Uh, when you create a two by two pattern, at least that is one color, then it kind of locks in. And, uh, what is also happening is set to the beat of usually trance music.

• 49:49Griffin McElroy?

  There is a bar that sweeps across the grid. As it passes by one of these completed two by two, single color blocks, it clears it. Uh, and you will get points. Uh, if you can do four of those two by two blocks, you get like a multiplier, a combo. And if you can do that over multiple, you know, bars of music, these, these bars sweeping over, that combo will increase more and more and more and more. You also don't want to fill up the grid, uh, and not have room to place a block because then you will lose. You will lose the. So the point of like getting high scores is setting up these scenarios where you can build a combo where you build this huge structure of one color and then when it clears it drops bricks of the other color onto other ones and they form their own huge bricks and it's

• 50:32Griffin McElroy?

  building combos and figuring out like when you want to cash out like a little segment that you've been setting up without creating a scenario where you've overfilled the board with these like little isolated colors that aren't going to clear.

• 50:46Speaker 03

  Now, my wife just says it's Tetris.

• 50:49Griffin McElroy?

  It's, it has many similarities to Tetris because Tetris, you're doing the same thing. You're trying to decide when you build and when you cash in so that you don't fuck yourself over. Luminous is very much doing that. However.

• 51:00Speaker 03

  I also, the, the other element to Luminous is like, is, and this is definitely the case with the Rise. It's like, it's a, it's not just about the gameplay, but like the aesthetics that you're creating is like almost part of it. I, if you think about like Rez itself was based on a Winamp visualizer. This is like, this feels like that, like trying to take the, how can you take the gameplay and make, like bring it into the visuals and bring it into the sound. So it's like a, a synesthesia kind of, kind of deal.

• 51:32Griffin McElroy?

  That, that like, I feel like that conversation always gets a little bit dicey in how much of that is just kind of like, uh, marketing buzz and all that shit. With Luminous, because you are, the, the information you're working with is kind of inherently pretty simple. It's two colors and you want to keep them together. That's the basic premise is like, you don't want to create these little checkerboard patterns where there's one and one and one and they don't hit. You want to sort of match colors together and that at a very base level is not hard to do. So you start operating with this sort of hind brain sort of, uh, thought process that then kind of like gets hooked with the, with the music that builds

• 52:16Griffin McElroy?

  and flows and changes as you go. And so this, I, you know. It is trying to lull you into a bit of a puzzle trance, which was very much what Tetris Effect was aiming for as well. Here, I just think it's a little bit more inherent to the structure of Luminous. The other thing that it adds is like, as you clear these things, you're charging up a burst meter that you can activate by pulling a trigger, uh, which then kind of freezes time a little bit. So you can drop blocks in to build these huge structures. As you widen the structures you're building of one color, blocks of the other color disappear from the board. So you can keep building and building and building and building until like, you run out of time in the burst and it clears it in one sort of huge explosion that's like, very, very satisfying.

• 52:59Speaker 03

  And then a fucking chameleon comes out and like, licks your face.

• 53:01Griffin McElroy?

  A chameleon will come out and lick your face. It is also like, an oh shit button that you can pull sometimes if the board is getting too dicey, uh, because it's a little bit effective. And I really like that addition a lot because, uh, I don't know, Luminous has felt like a game that can break you out of that trance when you're doing so bad. When you drop a few blocks incorrectly and you fuck up your structures and you feel like, oh god, recovering from this is gonna suck. It takes you out of the thing, knowing that you have this option, this emergency brake that you can pull.

• 53:29Speaker 03

  God, that's a really good, that's a really good, uh, when you're doing Tetris, you're like, seeing all these gaps, right? And when you mess up a spacing, it's like, you just move on to another gap, or like, another gap is created.

• 53:42Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 53:42Speaker 03

  In a sense. And like, with Luminous, it really does, you see this ugly funky chunk of blocks, you just know, I'll never get to you, you suck, I hate it.

• 53:50Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. There's also, uh, special blocks that will spawn in sometimes that will chain, so it will clear every block of one color as long as they are touching. So if you like, have been very good and disciplined about like, making sure you are not isolating these different colors, you can like, really, really, really, set up a huge combo with that too. Um, it's fucking great. It's really, really, uh, I, I got really hooked on this, I think on PSP, and it was like, the perfect game on PSP, because you could just like, pick it out, pick it up, zone out, uh, and, you know, do a little bit of score chasing. There's this whole like, element of this game where you have a little avatar who's like, this little fucking penguin shaped crystal dude, and you'll Unlock new parts for him and there's a gotcha pawn where you can like unlock new parts and.

• 54:35Speaker 03

  Some of the ways it reshapes items like and like when your blocks merge, the way they merge is like aesthetically. Really cool. I'm flicking through some of the different like there's a, there's a, there's one where you're making like vegetables. You start off like small green things and as you like do a block of four green things, it's like a larger broccoli. And then when the screen clears, it looks as though it's been like chopped in half. It's very cool.

• 54:58Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I will say the soundtrack to this one hasn't, uh, I, I can remember past luminous games, playing them and then like saying like, oh, fuck, I gotta, what was that song? And adding it to like a playlist. Cause I, you know, was really vibing with it.

• 55:11Speaker 03

  Shining.

• 55:12Griffin McElroy?

  What's that?

• 55:13Speaker 03

  Shining.

• 55:14Griffin McElroy?

  Shining.

• 55:14Speaker 03

  That was like the big solo from that, the first game. I don't know if it's.

• 55:17Griffin McElroy?

  I haven't played, I haven't played all the journeys and all the songs yet. So like, maybe I just haven't gotten to them yet, but I, it's been slightly.

• 55:24Chris Plante?

  And you know, you're, you're, you're a dad now. You're out of your house era. When you were playing this original one, you were at the club every night.

• 55:31Speaker 03

  He was.

• 55:32Chris Plante?

  You were hitting up the raids.

• 55:33Speaker 03

  Pass a fire around.

• 55:33Griffin McElroy?

  He was a big Hattaway guy. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Um, I also wanted to talk about, uh, I don't want to go too hard on talking about the AYN Thor shit. Cause we've talked about it so much. It's still infinitely insane to me that we have a 3DS that you can basically do whatever on. And to that point, I saw a Reddit post that someone made of them playing fantasy star online on their AYN Thor connected to the internet. Using a ROM hack they designed for Dolphin GameCube emulation, setting that all up took me like two days. But now I have a handheld where I can play fantasy star online on the game cube with this custom rule set called return to rag goal.

• 56:13Griffin McElroy?

  And you can fucking play that shit online on your handheld with other players and that is insane to me. That is patently so wild. Um, I've been setting up Steam shit with Game Hub, uh, on it too, which works.

• 56:27Speaker 03

  You doing Game Hub or Game Hub Lite?

• 56:29Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, Game Hub. Uh, and, and that works surprisingly well with some games. Um, but the real highlight for me this week is I have a handheld version of fantasy star online. Uh, in a ROM hack that is way more fun to play than the original fantasy star.

• 56:43Chris Plante?

  Uh, I'm going to drop in a real quick brush and then I'll throw it to you, but humanity is my pick for this week.

• 56:49Speaker 03

  Hell yeah, dude. Yes.

• 56:51Chris Plante?

  It's so good.

• 56:52Speaker 03

  We still got a little something left in us, dude. Heck yeah, man. I so agree with this. This is a big choice, man. Good for you.

• 57:00Griffin McElroy?

  Unpopular pick probably just from the current vibe, but like-

• 57:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, but like, fuck it. What did we do? Did I miss something?

• 57:08Chris Plante?

  We as humanity are half off on Steam right now.

• 57:14Speaker 03

  So there's a noose pick. I love that.

• 57:18Chris Plante?

  Before, uh, Luminous arrives, the same studio made a video game called Humanity where you play as a ghost dog Shiba Inu and you guide hundreds, if not thousands of people through lemming style puzzles. It is the most PlayStation one ass video game.

• 57:36Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:37Chris Plante?

  It is a total delight. Um, and you can get it now for, I think it's like 15 bucks because of a sale. Thanks to Luminous, so you should check it out.

• 57:48Russ Frushtick?

  Great. Uh, real quick, my, I have two things. The first one is Hades 2, which I'm closing in on the end of Hades 2. Uh, which is exciting. I think when I finish it, I'll, I'll have deeper thoughts, but just keeping the people updated on it. Uh, Justin, I would recommend just deleting your 40 hour save, starting from scratch, but I realize you might not do that. Um, the other thing I want to- No?

• 58:13Speaker 03

  No, I mean, like I'm, I, I have thought about it. I genuinely have. I would just have so many other things to play.

• 58:18Russ Frushtick?

  I know, I know.

• 58:19Speaker 03

  That's kind of heartbreaking about it. Like to be honest with you, I would love to say, yeah, I have the time to do that. I just don't.

• 58:25Russ Frushtick?

  I think it's a lesson is what it is for the future, which is to say, I think when the opportunity arises next time to play an early access game, maybe we play for three hours and then stop.

• 58:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:38Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 58:39Speaker 03

  Maybe.

• 58:40Russ Frushtick?

  It's a good lesson.

• 58:40Speaker 03

  We will be talking about this a lot next week, I imagine, so.

• 58:44Russ Frushtick?

  Um, the other thing I want to mention-

• 58:46Speaker 03

  You know what? Rachel is the only smart one among us because Rachel has been fighting Hades the whole time and like won't even like tries not to listen to the episodes. I'm not sure how she does it, but she avoids talk and like, you know, I thought, I thought, oh, you're missing out, but like-

• 59:01Russ Frushtick?

  No.

• 59:01Speaker 03

  There's a definite wisdom there.

• 59:03Russ Frushtick?

  Definitely. The other thing I want to mention is a show called Pluribus, which is on Apple TV.

• 59:08Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:09Russ Frushtick?

  Plus, I don't know what it's called these days, but yeah. This is the Vince Gilligan show, the creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. He has a new show. It stars the woman who played Kim on Better Call Saul, if you're familiar with that. I forget the actress.

• 59:24Speaker 03

  Rea.

• 59:26Russ Frushtick?

  Claye.

• 59:27Speaker 03

  Claye?

• 59:28Russ Frushtick?

  I don't. Rhea Sehorn.

• 59:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:30Russ Frushtick?

  Rea Sehorn, some, yes. She's a dynamite in this. I don't know how much I really want to say, but I feel like if you're a fan of Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul, you understand Vince Gilligan's capability of making a really fucking good show.

• 59:44Speaker 03

  This one's much more sci fi from the look.

• 59:47Russ Frushtick?

  Definitely more sci fi.

• 59:48Chris Plante?

  This is him doing a Damon Lindelof style show.

• 59:51Speaker 03

  That was the vibe I was getting.

• 59:52Russ Frushtick?

  What I would say is there's a high concept to the show that I'm not going to talk about right now, but the high concept, similar to Severance, is revealed very, very, very early on.

• 1:00:02Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:00:02Russ Frushtick?

  So I think that high concept is enough that I was like very interested in where the show would go. In addition to the fact that like dude knows how to write and produce like a really fucking amazing show, so.

• 1:00:14Chris Plante?

  I would recommend to anybody who's curious about it, watch the pilot, specifically a sap, because word's going to spread around the show and people are just going to start talking about the show for what it is. And the pilot, I'm sure is thrilling if you already know what's happening, but it is especially great to discover what is going on alongside the pilot. It's one of the best pilots I've ever seen. It's really.

• 1:00:41Speaker 03

  Man, and I really, especially for when you're talking about like, talking about being limited on time, it's really nice to get on board the show where like I, you know that the creator knows how to deliver on a full series. Like knows how to tell a story, knows how to end it, knows how to like do it on his terms. So it's like.

• 1:01:00Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, they, they're, they're signed up for two seasons through Apple, but he said he has idea for ideas beyond that. But he's also said he knows where presumably where it would end. So I'm sure he has the seasons at least blocked out in his head. So yeah, you know, at least you'll get a good, actual full story out of it. Sick.

• 1:01:21Griffin McElroy?

  Love it.

• 1:01:23Russ Frushtick?

  Real quick, I wanted to thank the folks over at the Patreon, patreon.com/thebesties, where you can get new episodes of Resties and Bracket Battles and all sorts of good stuff, some new members that recently joined. We have Steven W., we have Doug, we have Michael S., and we have Cataquack. Thank you for being members of the Besties Patreon. We greatly, greatly appreciate it. As I mentioned, we have a new episode of Resties. We go a bit deeper into Luminous, which is there, and we also talk about a game called Escape from Duckoff, which is a genuinely great extraction shooter. I was not expecting that.

• 1:01:59Griffin McElroy?

  Single-player extraction shooter?

• 1:02:01Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, single-player only extraction shooter.

• 1:02:03Griffin McElroy?

  I love that.

• 1:02:03Russ Frushtick?

  Featuring a duck. Cool. Who wants to talk about what we're doing next week?

• 1:02:10Speaker 03

  Uh, I can. Um, we're gonna start, you know, game of the year. It's closer than ever before, and we've got a couple more big releases, but there's a lot of stuff that has come, and we've enjoyed to different extents, and we kind of want to like, circle up, take a lay of the land, talk about the things that we maybe want to spend more time with, talk about things that we have been enjoying, just kind of take stock of the stuff so we can, uh, figure out how to spend the rest of this year. There's a lot of games, I mean, Russ brought up Blueprints right before we started, which is a really good example of a game that a lot, that, uh, some of us loved and some of us can't play. So I don't know how we're gonna have those conversations.

• 1:02:48Griffin McElroy?

  It's gonna be a really fucking intense year for goatee discussion.

• 1:02:52Russ Frushtick?

  So to say of our friendships, we just wanted to like, do a little table setting, you know?

• 1:02:57Griffin McElroy?

  We are doing other, like Kirby's still coming, Metroid's still coming this year. We're not like locking shit in, but it, that is.

• 1:03:03Speaker 03

  I don't want to hear any numbers. You know, I'm not trying to rank. I'm just trying to figure out what, what still needs a little bit of that extra attention.

• 1:03:10Russ Frushtick?

  Yep. Cool. We did it.

• 1:03:14Speaker 03

  I'm excited. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks so much for joining us for this week on the Besties. Be sure to join us again next week for the Besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?

• 1:03:53Speaker 02

  Besties!