How Hollow Knight Became Such A Phenomenon

On this, the day of Silksong's release, it's time to go back to where it all began: Hollow Knight! The Triple Click gang talks about Team Cherry's 2017 action-adventure game, what makes it so special, and how it became a cultural phenomenon. Plus: they revisit Kotaku Splitscreen's 2018 interview with the developers of Hollow Knight.

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

• 0:04Jason Schreier?

  Is Silk Song being unfair to the rest of the industry? Why does it cost only $20? And why did it kill my cat? Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the Silk Song takes to you. This week, we are talking about Hollow Knight and how it became a cultural phenomenon. Man, that game is just so good, you guys. It's just so good.

• 0:30Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:31Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:32Speaker 02

  And I'm Maddy Myers. Hello.

• 0:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Hey, hello. Hello, my friends.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  No construction in my apartment today. You hear that? Sounds of silence.

• 0:43Jason Schreier?

  I was really excited for the episode. That drilling is pretty real.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  It's been driving me crazy.

• 0:49Kirk Hamilton?

  It's interesting. So Maddie is actually currently sitting in a room with no walls. It's just like a couple pieces of wood. There's just sawdust everywhere.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  I'm in the Deku tree right now. It's really just, I've decided to go outside. I don't need to be in my house ever again, and I don't need walls.

• 1:04Kirk Hamilton?

  They turned your house into the outside by knocking down all the walls and sawing them into sawdust.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  It really felt that way. It's not what this show's about, but like being, living in a place where construction is actively happening around you is perhaps the most distracting possible thing that could ever happen.

• 1:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Man, especially when you have to record yourself. There was a house next door to ours, at our last house, where they were cutting tile to redo the bathroom for, I swear, two years. They would just cut tile. And they waited until they saw me press the record button. And they're like, all right, it's tile cutting time, boys.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  Yep, that's how it feels. That's how it feels. I feel like they knew.

• 1:40Jason Schreier?

  It was actually, that house Kirk was owned by a rival podcast.

• 1:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that was the Get Played house. They were just trying to take us down a take.

• 1:48Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it was Nick Weiger's house.

• 1:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Weiger.

• 1:53Jason Schreier?

  Um, man, this, uh, this morning I dropped off my daughter for her first day of kindergarten. There are a lot of firsts in the air. And I said to her, Sophie, you know that I feel very similarly to you because this week Silk Song comes out and it feels like you're going to school for the first time. It's just a week of firsts.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  So similar. It's exactly the same.

• 2:14Jason Schreier?

  Hey, did you know that we are a listener supported podcast? Did you guys know that? I just found this out. We are entirely supported by listeners. And if you want us to make Triple Click happen, you can support us too by going to maximumfun.org/join, become a member. And in addition to making the show happen, you also get a monthly bonus episode, including one that will have just gone up by the time you're listening to this, about the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. We've all finished the game. We are going to jump in, talk about it, talk about the whole thing. It's gonna be a lot of fun. I think people are gonna really enjoy listening to that. That is a bonus episode that you can

• 2:55Jason Schreier?

  get if you become a member. But you also get many, many others, including deep dives into video games, maybe even a future deep dive into Silk Song. Lots of good stuff. So go to maximumfun.org/join and help us make this show possible. Uh, all right, Kirk, what are we talking about today?

• 3:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, what, what could we possibly talk about but Hollow Knight Silk Song, a game that is out actually as you are listening to it?

• 3:21Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 3:22Kirk Hamilton?

  We are talking about Hollow Knight, really. We will talk some about Silk Song, which is coming out the day you are listening to this, in which none of us have played. And, uh, but, you know, we're gonna talk about Hollow Knight. We're gonna talk about this game. We're gonna talk about its legacy. We're gonna talk about why it became what it became and why Silk Song has become such a hotly anticipated game. But, uh, yeah, we just thought this seemed like the thing to talk about. I mean, it is very much the topic of the moment in the world of video games. Rare has the video game been an indie game that can command this much attention, that can, you know, announce a release date and cause waves of other indie games to delay their release dates to get out of

• 4:02Kirk Hamilton?

  It's way, it's just a really remarkable phenomenon and a really great video game. So let's start by just talking some about Hollow Knight and, you know, kind of go back over it. I know I have been replaying it the last week, just I played a big chunk of a game that I already had going. I have replayed it once in its entirety. This would be my third replay. This game fits me like a glove and is very, very comfortable. So I just picked up a game on Steam, maybe right after Green Path, actually, right after you meet Hornet, and then played all the way through a bunch of bosses and I've just been having a great time with it. And I believe the two of you have been doing that as well.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  I have.

• 4:40Kirk Hamilton?

  So let's just start with some kind of general Hollow Knight thoughts. We have not talked about this game in any detail in such a long time on the show, because it's been a long time since it came out. So let's just talk a little about our, our relationship with this game as it currently stands. Maddie, I know you've been playing, so why don't you go first?

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah, this is actually my third time playing it. What's sad is I've never actually completed the entire game, but this is my third time through. I feel like it's a ceremonial act at this point. I knew that I wasn't going to beat it in time, but I just wanted to experience some Hollow Knight vibes. And I, I think vibes is a really great word to describe Hollow Knight. That's what makes it really special is how unique the world design is, how beautiful each of the different worlds is, the music, the little adorable bugs. I was talking to a friend about it earlier today and like the comparisons to Dark Souls. I, I think we'll, we'll get to that. I think there's some, some parts of this game that are very difficult and punishing in ways that Dark Souls is,

• 5:39Speaker 02

  but it also really rewards exploration and patience, which are my favorite things about any game, but especially Hollow Knight and Dark Souls. And I'm remembering that and how much I enjoy that aspect of it. Except Hollow Knight is also very cute. It kind of takes the idea of what we perceive as being ugly, which are bugs. Like a lot of people are grossed out by bugs. I'm not really, but I get that people are. And it makes them very cute, but also a lot of them are unnerving at the same time. And they have this kind of strange. Way of speaking in this game and kind of a poetic way of describing the story to you. I please don't make me explain the story because such like Dark Souls, I don't know that I can.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  And kind of that combination of like very cute, very strange and other worldly and poetry. Is just, it's unique. It's not really like any other game I've ever played. And I think that's part of the fascination with it and why we keep returning to it.

• 6:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I like that a lot. I agree. I think the writing and the humor, the tone are pretty distinct, even while it has some mechanical similarities with other games. It is very funny. I'm struck all over again by how cute and funny and endearing it is playing it. Jason, you've been playing it as well. I know you you kind of fell down a rabbit hole and played a big chunk of it.

• 7:00Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I I on this recent playthrough, so I I started up again like many people did after the Silk Song announcement. And I was like, all right, I'm just gonna play through the hornet fight just to see her in action and get in the mood. And then accidentally like accidentally like replayed half a game. And then eventually I was just like, I can't play more or I will burn myself out. Silk Song's release. Um, yeah, the thing that struck me in 2018, I probably talked about this with you then Kirk. And then that struck me again, playing it over the last couple of weeks is how good the writing is. And Team Cherry, the developers of this game, is a team of three people.

• 7:38Jason Schreier?

  Ari Gibson and William Pellin are the co-founders and they're the ones who have been with it since the start. They're the third member, Jack Vine, is a programmer who came on a little bit later. I think he came on towards the end of Hollow Knight and has been working on Silk Song, obviously.

• 7:52Kirk Hamilton?

  What about Dave Kazi, though?

• 7:53Jason Schreier?

  He was the original programmer. He's no longer at Team Cherry.

• 7:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, so you're talking about Silk Song. Got it.

• 7:58Jason Schreier?

  Yes. So so but my point is that Ari and William are the ones who have been there from the beginning. And Ari and William are, as far as I understand it, like the the main Ari is is the main artist. And William is is does programming and also does a lot of the writing, if not all of the writing. And I was really struck by the fact that they don't have like a single professional, like a professional writer. They brought on to do all this dialogue and flavor text and yet still. Managed to really like strike this really this tone that is unlike any other game I've played. And there is something about the way that the characters talk, the way that they kind of, it almost feels like it's like it was translated to Japanese and then back to English, not in terms of the grammar, but in terms of the kind of the,

• 8:43Jason Schreier?

  the way that every line seems to have multiple meanings and is is seems to be written in metaphor. And it just kind of has this funky tone that you don't often see in English written games, which tend to be a little bit more direct and a little bit more straightforward. It does, it's obviously very clearly inspired by the Souls games in terms of text. And every time you play a Souls game, you'll see some line that feels like it came out of a, I don't know, Walt Women book, but it's really just telling you to avoid, avoid the goblins that are ahead of you. And that really struck me on this, this playthrough also, and again, got me very excited for playing Silk Song. And then of course, the other part is that it just feels so good to play. I mean, smashing things with your nail just never doesn't feel fun.

• 9:28Jason Schreier?

  There's a lot of interactivity with the environment. You could just smash every single like vase and insect carapace that you see as you travel through the halls. And then really, it really starts to kind of click once you get that first mobility mechanic, the dash, because then you're just dashing along everywhere you go. And that is just so much fun. Gets even better as you get like the ultra dash and then the double jump and the wall climb and so on and so forth and, and gets really cool. The other thing that really struck me that I had kind of forgotten about the game is that after the fungal wastes, which is like the third zone that you go through, it really becomes nonlinear and you can really just head in any direction and do a lot of different

• 10:08Jason Schreier?

  things in, in any order, which is also something that you don't see a lot in this kind of game. A lot of metroidvanias are a little bit more contained because they want you to be gated based on certain objects and they want you to make sure that you get that object before you go in a certain direction. This also has a lot of gates, but like a lot of those start to open up after you get that wall climb mechanic from the mantis village and then you You can start, you can really just explore almost the entire world. And there's so much optional stuff also, like, I think the, the number of main bosses that you need to beat is like six or seven or something small like that. And there are like 40 bosses total. So yeah, that also really struck me, but man, what a game. I mean, uh, we on this show have been raving about it for many years.

• 10:51Jason Schreier?

  It's been part of our triple click picks forever. Um, we were raving about it after we first played it in 2018. And it's been remarkable to see how many more people have discovered it since then. And obviously Silk Song is, it's going to be a thing. It's going to be, it's going to be, uh, it's going to be an adventure.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  It's already a thing.

• 11:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm trying to think what we should talk about first of all of those things. I think staying on the tone and the writing a little bit, just because that's something that has struck me playing it for this third time. So there's an interview that I did with, uh, William and Ari back in 2018. It was on Kotaku split screen and we'll maybe play an excerpt from it at the end of this chat, just because it was, it's really fun to go back and listen to it. I went back and listened to the whole thing. Um, it is interesting to hear how different my speaking voice was then. I've definitely like taken some voice lessons since then, and it's actually really strange to listen to these subtle differences that maybe I hear more than anyone else. But, uh, it was, it's a really cool conversation and I was struck by several things listening to it.

• 11:48Kirk Hamilton?

  One is that, yeah, they, they say that they initially planned the game to be much more contained and much more linear, you know, structured in a much more unlocks. You know, you get this ability, then you can get to this area and a more traditional metroidvania way. And then it just started to become more nonlinear as they continued to build it out. And then, yeah, I mean, you play the game now, there are multiple ways to get everywhere. I got to the, um, the, what the ancient kingdom that you can reach. And usually you do that with the tram pass through the deep nest, but you can also go another way. I think you can go through the royal waterways and get there. Like there are multiple paths if you want to go a strange path. And by the third time I'm playing it, I know exactly where to go to get, you know, a piece of pale ore so that I can upgrade my nail.

• 12:33Kirk Hamilton?

  And, you know, to really kind of go as quickly as possible. And I really worked through the game super quickly, even though there's still plenty for me to do. But yeah, the, the tone and the writing, I think. There are kind of two different tones in this game. There's the tone of the world, which is this fallen kingdom of Halon Nest. And that's kind of the backstory, the familiar Dark Souls backstory, where there was a king and there was, you know, the king is a worm and there were these like great beings that came from another kingdom and then eventually there's this infection. The infection is kind of light and like the moth and the beings of light. And there's all this, it's this really cosmic wild story that is eventually explained, actually pretty straightforwardly if you go and just read all the signs on the wall.

• 13:19Kirk Hamilton?

  But it's written in a very elegiac, kind of beautiful poetic tone, mostly because you're reading, you know, the inscription on a fountain or a sign that you find welcoming you to town, like these things that are written to be kind of pronouncements. And then there are the characters within the world, often many of whom are very silly or are just people hanging out. One of the best characters is Iselda, who was voiced by William's wife, who says the inimitable line, "Bapinada."

• 13:52Speaker 03

  "Bapinada."

• 13:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Which is maybe the greatest line of dialogue in any video game. And she's just, you know, she's this kind of tired lady waiting for her husband to get back. He's out exploring the kingdom and writing maps. And just all of the dialogue that you have with characters in the world, it tends to be very silly. It tends to be a little bit lighter and a little more conversational. And so there are these two tones at work and the game really seamlessly blends them together and makes the whole thing work. And it really does have a distinct vibe.

• 14:24Jason Schreier?

  Can I, I want to read a line of dialogue because I think it helps to illustrate this. Please, yeah. I didn't have any like off the top of my head, but I just found one. So like one of the first things, I believe this is, what's the name of the first bug? Is it like the elder, the elder bug or something like that? The one on the top of, the one in the town?

• 14:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, yeah. I forgot, but yeah.

• 14:43Jason Schreier?

  I think this is one of the first things he says to you. He says, "There's something strange about you. I've seen all types pass below, but you, you're almost familiar, though I'm sure we've never met before." And that one line of dialogue- Is so interesting. I mean, it just kind of conjures so much and leaves so much to the imagination. And it's never really explained why he says that. It's just kind of like, it's so evocative. It like makes you feel like, oh, man, like this is such an interesting world where like, for some reason, I look, my little character, who's never really explained, we don't even get a name for him, is kind of seems familiar to this guy who has seen all sorts of stuff going through that. And then you, you have to kind of piece together what that means and what the, what like, combined with all this other stuff as you find, like what that, what the lore behind your dude is and the elder bug, and why he might have seen something like you before.

• 15:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I mean, you are, there are a lot of lines of dialogue as people see you and recognize you as a vessel. And one of is this sort of like recycled vessel that's back.

• 15:37Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 15:38Kirk Hamilton?

  And you know, you're, you were what you're like, you could have elevated to become the Hollow Knight, but you didn't. That's even one of the possible endings of the game. And so when you, when you know the full story and replay the game, it is very much like Elden Ring, as a recent example, where things people say to you make more sense because you now have the full context for why they would be reacting that way, especially Hornet, actually.

• 15:59Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, she says that.

• 16:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Such an interesting character. And I'm so glad that Hornet is going to be the main character of Silk Song, only because her story is clearly very interesting. She is acting with more agency in a lot of ways than the vessel or the knight, the character that you're playing as, because as it turns out, they're kind of operating almost according to some built in impulse. It's not totally clear why your character is doing what they are. I mean, obviously they're doing what they are because they're a video game character and they just cut their way through this world. But Hornet is on a kind of separate quest and has her own really interesting backstory. And so you can almost see Hornet intersecting with the knight throughout the story, as though she's on her own quest and is having her own adventure,

• 16:45Kirk Hamilton?

  which is such a cool way to have an NPC interact with your NPC. They do that a few times in this game, actually, and it's really neat.

• 16:51Jason Schreier?

  And I think the original plan for the Hornet DLC was that you would play as Hornet throughout the same world of Hollowness, and she would be on her own adventure through it. But it, it gradually expanded to become, oh, actually, a whole new world. An entirely new setting and then it became a new game from there. Yeah, I mean, yeah, to your point, Kirk, a lot of stuff makes more sense and you're right. It is, I had forgotten, it is explained that you're the vessel and that there's like

• 17:17Kirk Hamilton?

  It's like that true ending stuff with the radiance where you go down into the abyss.

• 17:21Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, no, I remember. I haven't, I haven't seen that stuff since 2018, so it's it's escaped my memory a little bit, but yes. With Silk Song, it's gonna be really interesting because Hornet talks and your character in Hollow Knight does not. So that'll add some interesting depth to the story. There's also gonna be a whole quest system. Kirk, you mentioned before about how Team Cherry had originally planned for Hollow Knight to be this kind of linear adventure and it gradually expanded to become this massive nonlinear world. Similar sort of thing happened with Silk Song. I spoke to Team Cherry a few weeks ago for a story I did on Bloomberg about the development of Silk Song. And they told me that originally the idea was, okay, this is gonna be a smaller scale world than Hollow Knight,

• 18:03Jason Schreier?

  but we'll have these quests in place, which will give you incentive to go and revisit previous locations and maybe see them in a new light or like find new things to do in them. But then gradually, of course, in true Team Cherry fashion, they just wound up like making too much stuff and the scope creep got to them and the game got even bigger than Hollow Knight is. And it has all sorts of new structural, they actually, I didn't put this in the article, but they were hinting to me that there's like some sort of structural mechanism that will help kind of help you understand like the scope of the game. And they didn't tell me any more than that. I kind of don't want to know anything else other than just like, I'm gonna jump in and play Hornet and discover everything for myself. But yeah, it seems like there's gonna be some, some just kind of a whole layer of depth to it.

• 18:47Jason Schreier?

  This might even wind up being bigger than Hollow Knight or deeper than Hollow Knight, which is a scary thought.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's kind of astounding that the game's successful because I feel like what we're describing is usually like a horror story that we tell about other games, especially games that don't succeed where it's like, oh, they wanted it to be linear, but then it just sprawled outward and became all of these other kinds of things. It started as a kind of more straightforward metroidvania, whereas I would say like, yes, there's a metroidvania. Virginia based to Hollow Knight, but it's so much more exploration focused because every area is massive. And I mean, I've had you guys play Symmetroids on this very show, and I know you have. A lot of them you can beat in like 10 hours, especially if you know where to go. This game feels so big, and I mean that as a compliment. It feels big intentionally and it feels like you could just explore forever and discover more and more.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  And that's because a lot of it is big. A lot of it was really designed outward and outward. And the fact that they achieved that and that it was successful and that they're doing it again. And it, well, I guess we'll find out if it's successful or not is kind of wild. Like the scope creep didn't get them and said they embraced it and it worked.

• 19:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I have a theory about that. And I think it's that the scope of the game creeped, but they did not expand their team size. They just took longer, which seems to me like, at least in this case, an approach that worked. When I talked to William back in 2018, I asked him, you know, you're, you guys have been so successful. You know, this is kind of the moment when a small studio hires a few people and grows and becomes a midsize studio. Do you think about that? And he said, I, something along the lines of, we think about expanding and what I think is, we gotta not do that. And then he essentially said, this team is the one that made Hollow Knight. So this team is going to be the one that makes the next thing because we really like Hollow Knight. And that approach is so unusual. It's weird that it's unusual, but it makes total logical sense.

• 20:43Kirk Hamilton?

  You say, well, we made the thing that is good, that we were happy with, with this group of people in this way. So we're going to keep doing that. Like, why change? Why grow? Why hire people? Why expand? And that seems to me to be a crucial wise decision that they made.

• 20:59Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I have a few thoughts, Matty, on that to, to answer that kind of question of like, how do they avoid some of the problems? That, that kind of plague other game teams that try to do the same thing. I think Kirk is right, keeping the team small. And it's funny, Kirk, that you say that because in 2025, a lot of what they told me is that like, we wanted to recreate everything we did for Hollow Knight because that process was so much fun and it was so successful for us. So everything they did, even to the point. Point of announcing the game's release date two weeks in advance, which is exactly what they did for Hollow Knight. Like, everything they did for Hollow Knight, they wanted to do for this.

• 21:32Kirk Hamilton?

  It seems like they've been consistent about that. I mean, even, you know, this whole time. Yeah, they really know they have a very clear vision for that.

• 21:37Jason Schreier?

  Although I will say with Hollow Knight, they were a lot more communicative. They had to be. And they posted more development updates and like told people more about the game in advance. But anyway, that's aside the point. So a couple of thoughts. One is that their development methodology is such that like they can create things and have them in the game really, really quickly. I think a lot of times with Scope Creep, what happens is that like, teams imagine these worlds and ideas and features on paper and maybe even do them on prototype. But actually getting them into the game in a way that is kind of do like tenable over the course of the entire game, systems that work over 10 hours, 15 hours, whatever, is a lot more challenging and that can become a problem. I think it helps that this is 2D.

• 22:22Jason Schreier?

  I think that kind of reduces a lot of the complexity of some of this stuff is that it's a big 2D world and you can very easily like, once you know Hornet's core mechanics, you can just play around with any type of enemy or boss and get it in the game and like test it out and see if it's working. I also think that, that like the, one of the big differences between this and a lot of development hell stories is that the game's nature didn't change. It was always the same game. It wasn't like, oh, man, like, we don't really know what this game is. Like, is this gonna become a multiplayer live service thing? Is this a shooter? Is it a stealth game? Is it trying to be Uncharted? Is it trying to be Assassin's Creed? Is it all the above? Which are like legit questions that people have to ask sometimes after two years of making a game. It's like, what is this game even?

• 23:06Jason Schreier?

  Here, they know exactly what the game is. And it's just a matter of like making more stuff for it. And that takes a long time. A lot of the Scope Creep is also polished. So like making it so the world interacts when Hornet throws a star at a thing and it explodes in the right way, that sort of stuff. And then also the kind of the flip side of all this is, we don't know if the game is like too unwieldy. Like, we could be playing Silk Song and be like, man, they actually, they put too much stuff in this. Like, this is way bigger than it needs to be. And some people feel that way about Hollow Knight, so I don't know. I mean, it's it's hard to say if it was a success until we've actually played the thing. Because sometimes you can get too blinded and be like, oh, man, this game. See, like, we're bored of this stuff, so let's make it bigger and add new stuff.

• 23:50Jason Schreier?

  And then eventually it gets too big and you don't even realize that it's gotten too big. And now it's out of hand.

• 23:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I I think, yeah, I mean, I I have no idea how Silk Song is going to be. Though I do think that one of the reasons that Silk posting and the hype around it has become what it is is because in the world of video games, it feels like more of a sure thing than your average video game, only because it is such a straightforward idea in the first place, 2D metroidvania. I mean, Hollow Knight was a straightforward game, right? It's not revolutionary. It wasn't like you played it and thought, wow, I never would have thought to put all these things together. And that it would be fun. You play it and it's just a really refined, really good one of those with incredible vibes, beautiful music. By the way, we haven't mentioned Chris Larkin by name, but I do think that Chris Larkin, the composer,

• 24:37Kirk Hamilton?

  is an essential part of this game's spell and what makes it magic, for me at least. Both the music and the sound design, the atmosphere, it sounds so amazing. And that's a big part of it.

• 25:01Kirk Hamilton?

  But like, this game as a as a game is not that dissimilar from so many other games that have come after it. There's been some really great ones, these kind of Hollow Knight-like clones, or at least games inspired by it, Enderlilies, Nine Souls, these games that people really like, that are really fantastic, that are just doing the same thing, and it's a known thing. So when you look at Silk Song and you're like, well, they're gonna do it again with that character that was really cool from the first one. Seems like it'll probably at least be pretty good. And in addition, I am also very, I'm pretty confident because they seem to just have a very strong sense of what works. I got the sense, listening back to my conversation with them from 2018, that they just played Hollow

• 25:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Night a ton and really just had a feel for what they liked and what they thought worked. The, you know, I asked them about the feel of the nail. When you attack in this game, there's a physicality to it and you're pushed back sometimes or all the time from anything that you hit. And there's this kind of push and pull to the world that really feels exceptionally good. That sticky friction, as Tim Rogers would call it, is really strong in this game. And I asked, you know, well, when did you get that dialed in? And one of them, Ariar William, was like, well, you know, pretty early. Like, it really just was kind of there. And it's such a straightforward answer, but it also just indicates that they knew it worked really quickly. And then it just seems like so many other things in this game are the result of a really confident design.

• 26:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Two examples come to mind. One is the charm system. So in this game, you create your character build through charms and you can equip a number of them and they do different things. And they seem really subtle and a lot of them seem not that powerful at first. And then over time, you start to realize that actually, these charms really lead to some very diverse builds. You can have, I don't know, one that replaces your health with more health and you can take more damage, but you can't replenish it. Or there's one that gives your spells a lot more power. Or one that gives you much more reach on your attacks or lets you not get bounced around or gives you a longer invincibility window. And you start to combine them. Quick casting with a long invincibility window means that you can heal so fast that you almost never take damage in a fight.

• 27:11Kirk Hamilton?

  And so suddenly you have a dramatically different build. All of this stuff is so fine tuned and precise that it's, you would, in another game, it wouldn't really make a difference and you wouldn't even really care about the charms. But because it's so well balanced, it winds up really mattering. The other one that comes to mind is navigation and the way that the map system works. I think the map system in this game, all of the particulars of it are brilliant and I've, I still haven't seen. Seeing someone just take each element and just steal the whole thing. And I really think more games should. There's this weird, it's a really particular combination of when you look at the map in an area where you haven't bought the map, you just see, you don't see anything. If you have the compass equipped, giving up a precious charm slot,

• 27:53Kirk Hamilton?

  you do see an icon where you are, even if you're in unmapped territory. Once you've bought the map, you can see a basic map of the area, but you don't flush out the map until you explore. So you need this whole combination of different elements to fully be able to see where you are on the map at any given time, and it makes it so that any new place that you're exploring is fully mysterious. Even if you've bought the map, you don't really know where you are. And you have to like sit down and sketch it out to really see. And it's just, it's all really subtle stuff. I don't have to outline every single tiny little bit of it. But the overall result is that the exploration in this game feels mysterious and exciting throughout the entire game, no matter how much of it you've played. Anytime you're in a new area, it feels exciting.

• 28:36Kirk Hamilton?

  And it's something that, it's so refined. I mean, they clearly knew exactly the effect they wanted to have on players, and they did it perfectly. And the whole game is kind of full of stuff like that.

• 28:47Jason Schreier?

  Exciting and also dangerous.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, and like to talk about the map, part of why it's also feels so special is because it's, it is a line drawing. You're purchasing the map from a character. Is his name Cornifer, right?

• 29:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Cornifer, the best.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  He is the greatest. So like, of course it's not filled out because it's a literal line drawing that you kind of imagine he's created as he's explored the caverns himself. And then as you explore, you're filling it out. But also, I love when games do this. You're literally holding up the map. And like, you can get attacked when you're holding up the map. You have to actually kind of think about where you're standing when you're going to look at the map because Life goes on and your little character is just holding the map and he's so freaking cute and I do feel like that makes a difference is the fact that you have to physically go to someone buy the map and then it's almost like you're adding your own notes to the map as you're going through and kind of to build on that, the charm system, like to

• 29:47Speaker 02

  have a kind of RPG-esque mechanic in a Metroidvania, there's far from the first example of this, but it can change the game so much that it's this huge difference to me as a big Metroid fan and it's something that makes the game feel very different, not a bad thing, but it's just, it's a HoloKnight feeling where you're like, this whole game can feel totally different depending on how I decide I want it to feel. I can just go full health, which I tend to do because I'm not, the Knight has never felt quite as comfortable to me to inhabit as Samus does, so I, you know, I like to add my health on, but like, you can really design the Knight according to your own specifications and

• 30:29Speaker 02

  that is its own just layer of just a type of game that feels different to me than your other Metroidvanias where the whole designing your character thing is just, okay, now I have the Morph Ball or now I have the Whip, whatever it is, like I'm just getting new items or traversal mechanics and that's how my character is being designed. They're going back to something they were before or they're collecting an arsenal of weapons or movement abilities that will be the same. Every, every player will be the same by the end of the game. They will have the same collection of abilities, but like HoloKnight kind of purposefully isn't that way. You can sequence break really easily in this game. You can completely skip bosses. You can just explore and explore and explore and if

• 31:11Speaker 02

  you're me, never actually complete the game. Like that is just kind of a unique thing about the game that it really rewards you just having your own experience with it in a way that most Metroidvanias don't.

• 31:23Jason Schreier?

  So we should talk about the story behind the story here.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:27Jason Schreier?

  Kirk, you mentioned silk posting.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, should we say what that is?

• 31:33Kirk Hamilton?

  To transition us into this conversation, I want to play a little clip from my interview with William and Ari from 2018. Please enjoy this. So I have a few questions about future, about the future. So you guys are doing a Hornet expansion. Is that, that's still happening?

• 31:47Speaker 04

  Yep, we're working on that.

• 31:49Kirk Hamilton?

  That is super exciting. And can you give us any sense of when it might be out? Hmm. No, we can't because we don't know ourselves.

• 31:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, we, yeah, we don't want to start giving out dates until we're pretty, we're pretty confident.

• 32:05Kirk Hamilton?

  So I mean, they weren't lying.

• 32:07Jason Schreier?

  So, okay, so I shared this stat last week, but I'll share it again because it's remarkable. In February of 2019, Team Cherry announced Silksong. They said, hey, we're turning that DLC into a full game. And at the same time, they said that Hollow Knight had sold 2.8 million copies, which at the time, very impressive. Amazing stats for an indie dev and pretty much set them up for life, like set them up financially to be able to do whatever they want for the, the rest of the studio's existence, since there are only three of them. Cut to today, a couple of weeks ago, when I spoke to Team Cherry, they told me that the game has sold 15 million copies. That's a remarkable number for several reasons. One is that it puts them in the kind of the pantheon of the best selling indie games ever.

• 32:50Jason Schreier?

  Obviously, they were already one of the most influential games ever, but now best, one of the best selling indie games. But what's really strikes me about that stat is that that means that 80% of their sales, or about 12 million copies, were sold in the last six years, so since Silksong was announced. And I'd be willing to bet that a lot of those came in the last like two to three years when the, the hype really reached a fever pitch. And what happened along the way is that like Silksong was announced, a lot of people were excited. People said, oh, that's really cool news. And then somewhere, and I think maybe we could try to pinpoint exactly when, but somewhere along the way over the last six years, Silksong turned into a cultural phenomenon. It turned into a meme.

• 33:34Jason Schreier?

  It became the running, like biggest topic in every chat of every Nintendo.

• 33:40Jason Schreier?

  Direct Xbox stream, Game Awards, anything. It became the biggest question, where's Silk Song? It became up there with Winds of Winter and Half-Life 3.

• 33:52Kirk Hamilton?

  And Bloodborne, Bloodborne Remake.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  But like, almost more so because it felt real.

• 33:57Jason Schreier?

  Bloodborne Remake isn't a real thing. This is a thing that was announced and in development.

• 34:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, but I just mean that before every press conference, every Sony press conference, people would be saying, oh, is there gonna be a Bloodborne Remake?

• 34:06Speaker 02

  But I feel like the fact that it's real.

• 34:08Jason Schreier?

  But I'm talking about things that were in announce, that were actually announced, that people are waiting for, right? It's like up there with Winds of Winter. So, and then I think, and maybe we should try to, we should talk about this, like at somewhere, like I am not 100% sure, but I have some theories. But like, I don't know when this game turned from a sequel that a lot of people like us were really excited about into this like phenomenon that became, you mentioned Silkposting earlier, that is the kind of the the reference to the expletive that people do on Reddit, where it's essentially just making things up in truly insane fashion on the Silk Song Reddit. There's currently one, as we record this,

• 34:50Jason Schreier?

  the top of the Silk Song subreddit is like someone photoshopping a tweet from me that is just complete nonsense about, what is it? It's like saying there's an 8-bit version of Silk Song coming out. It's like, breaking, Jason Schreier, Silk Song will include a retro-inspired pixel mode available at launch. Like, what? What is going on here?

• 35:13Jason Schreier?

  When did this game become a phenomenon?

• 35:16Kirk Hamilton?

  So I think this is kind of a pandemic era thing. I'll refer people to a video I mentioned a little while back on the show by Dan Olson of Folding Ideas. He gave a talk at PAX about Silkposting, and it's actually really well researched and really funny and interesting, where he goes through the history of this subgenre, this of meme, this phenomenon. And I think it started around like 2020, 2021, maybe 2022. So it's kind of post-pandemic, but it's a little bit of like post-pandemic internet weirdness. He references a Twitter user, Sean Vid. Who was at least one of the sort of purveyors of Silk posting, who would just tweet in all caps,

• 35:57Kirk Hamilton?

  "Silksong!" at any, just randomly, like during some Nintendo Direct or some other press conference. And then people would see that and, you know, it's the kind of thing that a person would tweet if they had just announced, "Oh, Silksong is coming out," or whatever. And so then all the replies would be like, "Wait, what? What happened? When's it coming out?" And people would be retweeting it and sharing it. And he just kept doing it. And if you look at his Twitter feed, it's like, I don't know how many instances of him just going, "Silksong!" out of nowhere. And then everyone kind of just reacting because people can't help but see that word and think, "The game is coming out." And I think, like any meme, you know, it just sort of takes on a life of its own. It's not totally clear how it began, even though you can trace it back to its beginnings. And it just ties to like,

• 36:43Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't know, like a broader feeling about video game hype. I think it's a really interesting, almost crowdsourced parody of video game hype. And some of it relates to something I said earlier, that I think that Silksong feels like more of a sure thing than your average, you know, unreleased video game, only because it seems just pretty safe that it's gonna be cool, so people can just get excited about it. Because like, yeah, it's gonna be, it's gonna be Silksong. We kind of know what it's gonna be. And as a result-

• 37:09Jason Schreier?

  To be fair, to be fair, it seemed pretty safe that Cyberpunk was gonna be great, too.

• 37:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's not the same. Like, any big AAA game, but any big AAA game, like, any number of things could go wrong, and they always do. Like, that story is very familiar, where we're like, "Oh, man, I can't wait." Like, Assassin's Creed Unity, look how great it looks. And then it comes out and it's like, "Oh, what the hell." You know, like, that happens all the time. With this kind of game, I just think, anyways, I think that's part of it. I'm not saying it is a sure thing. I just mean that like, for a lot of people, it's very easy to get excited about it, because you're like, "Yeah, sure, it's almost certainly gonna be pretty good." And so then- They can lean into the hype and the hype can kind of become its own organism online. And that's what's happened is that it's like grown and grown and grown into something that no one could have, yeah, no one could have predicted.

• 37:53Jason Schreier?

  So to that point, I think that the biggest factor is the complete radio silence from Team Cherry. So they announced the game February 2019, they did an E3 demo and trailer in June of 2019, they did another update like New Year's, December 2019. And then after that, for the next six years, they essentially said nothing about this game. And I think that built up this mystique around it. It was like, why are they so quiet? What's going on over there? Why aren't they appearing anywhere? Why aren't they tweeting? Why aren't they posting a Kickstarter update? They said they were going to be talking about this game in your interview, Kirk, in 2018. They said, we like talking, like we'll probably be talking to fans. We like talking about development and they didn't do that.

• 38:35Jason Schreier?

  Then 2022, and this is where I think the biggest turning point was 2022, E3, Xbox Conference, they said, all of these games that we're showing at this conference will be available in the next 12 months on Game Pass. And they announced Silk Song there. And then someone tweeted at Xbox, like, even Silk Song? Is that coming out in the next 12 months? And Xbox was like, yeah, that's what we said. And then obviously that didn't happen. I believe in the beginning of 2023, Matthew Griffin, who does publishing for and marketing for Silk Song, marketing for Silk Song, which by the way, what a job, marketing for Silk Song.

• 39:08Kirk Hamilton?

  That's a whole job. That kind of does itself.

• 39:10Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, right. Marketing for Silk Song, he tweeted like, we meant, we want, we hoped it was coming out in the first half of 2023, but we have to delay it. Development continues, everything's going well. And that was the last of their communication for like another couple of years. And that silence, I think, just allowed fans to fill in the blanks themselves in a way that like, I don't know, there are some indie games that go silent and people just don't care about them again, but for some reason this had sticking power. And for example, I was thinking about like comparative indie games, indie games that also have been in development for a long time. There was that one game that was announced ages ago called The Last Night and it was this cool looking cyberpunk-y thing. Then it turned out the director of the game was like a hardcore gamer gator.

• 39:53Jason Schreier?

  And people soured on that. And that game still hasn't come out. It was announced like 12 years ago and still hasn't come out. And I was thinking about that. Why does nobody care about that game? That game has also been silent. Look cool coming out.

• 40:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Not a sequel though, right? That's definitely a crucial difference.

• 40:07Jason Schreier?

  That's a big part of it. But also just like something about this game. Yeah, it just had this sticking power and just became this myth. And then also combined with that, you have all these people just being like, oh, people keep talking about Silk Song. I should check out Hollow Knight and see what all the fuss is about. They buy the game. They see how cool it is. Yeah, they see how awesome it is. Because it's really, it's such a good game. It's one of those rare games that really lives up to the hype, I think, for most people who play it. I'm sure, of course, there are people out there who doesn't click with for whatever reason. But like, for a lot of people.

• 40:35Kirk Hamilton?

  And they are not shy to tell you about it.

• 40:36Jason Schreier?

  That's sure. They're not sure to write in. But yeah, it really seems to click with a lot of people, resonates a lot of people and lives up to the hype. And then that drives even more excitement for the sequel. And yeah, I'm willing to bet that a lot of people who are Silk posting like discovered the game in the last two or three years and just got really excited about it, which is awesome. And man, I don't, the Steam numbers for Silk Song are just gonna be bonkers. I can't wait to see like the concurrent players on Thursday when the game goes live. It's gonna be wild, man.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. Do you feel like people were worried the game was in trouble too? Like, that almost felt like part of the narrative, but not in a negative way, in the way that like people get really concerned about a game. Like, you know, the way I get concerned about Metroid Prime 4, for example, where I'm like, what's going on with that? Are they okay? It's like a little different than how you might feel about Silk Song, where it's like, how long could this possibly be taking? Which is almost like an insulting way to put it. But it's like, well, you guys already have the base game and you already know what you're doing next. And also, that character was in the base game and we fought her and we saw her attack patterns and like saw her jumping around and stuff. So like.

• 41:49Jason Schreier?

  Well, not just that, we played with her in the demo in 2019.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 41:53Jason Schreier?

  She feels the same way. Yeah. Maddie, I think that like I had that same thought when I was talking to them. I half expected them to be like, so we have this personal tragedy. It took a year off of the game. Or like, we. Went through COVID, it was so rough. And instead they were like, no, we were just having a good time.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  Part is wild.

• 42:07Jason Schreier?

  Loving on it and it was just amazing to work on it and the game kept growing and everything. Takes a while, that's all they said. Yeah, I, I think that also, I think you're right that that also added to the mystique of this like big, just like, everyone just having to theorize about like whether they had some tragedy that was Maury McGee.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  And also just like, what's taking so long? It's just like a blanket open question and like that, that mystery almost of like, well, what, maybe it's just that good.

• 42:35Kirk Hamilton?

  It's fascinating because as developers, they completely opted out of hype and they opted out of the entire online experience of most indie developers where you're constantly posting. You think you need to keep your profile up so that people can know what you're doing. It's exhausting, it's draining, it takes this portion of your energy that you could be spending making the thing that you want to make. And they just didn't do that at all. And then focus on the game. And then at the same time.

• 43:02Jason Schreier?

  They had done that, it's worth noting, they had done that for Halloween. In many ways they had to.

• 43:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, of course.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, because they had Kickstarter and yeah.

• 43:09Kirk Hamilton?

  I know, it's certainly true that they, they did this because, I mean, they didn't have to do this because they had already made plenty of money and they were already very successful and their game was very high profile. So it's like someone was able to do this and now we can see what happened. So anyways, they opted out completely. They just got to focus on making the thing. And as a result then, the fandom around their game and the broader video game internet like took up the slack and did it for them in the most insane and almost parodic way possible. And it's so funny, it's such a distinct phenomenon. I mean, this kind of thing has just not happened before because like you're saying, yeah, like, I mean, it can only kind of happen in these very specific circumstances.

• 43:50Kirk Hamilton?

  Though I do think that there are some lessons to be learned from the whole thing for creative people in general. Like it isn't, not everyone has the luxury of course of doing what Team Cherry did. But I do think that people have more ability than they think to shut things out, to get offline, to quit posting, to get off Blue Sky, to just sit down and like work. On your work and like do something actually meaningful. And seeing people do that at such an extreme is a good reminder of that.

• 44:20Jason Schreier?

  It's harder than than you make it sound, though, I will say, like, it's hard to just be isolated.

• 44:26Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm not saying it's an all or nothing thing. I'm not saying people have to completely get off the internet. People do not have to do it to the extreme that Team Cherry did. I am simply saying, I think there is something to be learned here, not like to be emulated 100%. Not that this is a pattern that must be matched point to point by every single person. That there is something to be learned from watching people do things the way that these two guys just did it.

• 44:47Speaker 02

  I agree. I think the mystery factor, like even if they did it completely unintentionally, which it kind of sounds like they did on some level, they ended up building mystery. Like, not just hype, which is kind of like, OK, you can build hype by releasing a lot of trailers still. And like having the game, you know, look cool, look cool, and then hopefully it is cool. They didn't do that. It's instead like it was mysterious. It was like, well, what's happening with it? It was like an ARG or something, but obviously it wasn't an ARG. It was almost like everyone was looking for clues that weren't there in like posts. And like, just not stalking the developers per se, but like truly the subreddit was looking every possible place they could for clues about what was going on with Silk Song.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  It was comical, mostly.

• 45:33Kirk Hamilton?

  That is funny when they, Jason, when they told you that people will sometimes come by their studio, like hoping that it'll be like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Instead, it's just this kind of depressing office. Have a couple of computers.

• 45:44Speaker 02

  Couple of guys working on a video game.

• 45:46Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, man.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:48Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, that mystery, you can only get away with all this stuff if you make a successful game in the first place. Otherwise, nobody will care. Like, you do need to be in the public eye if you're trying to start something.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  You gotta do it first and then for your sequel.

• 46:00Jason Schreier?

  I think, I don't know if I 100% agree with you, Kirk. I think what worked for Silk Song can only really work for Silk Song. Because, because they had that baseline.

• 46:08Kirk Hamilton?

  No, again, I don't want to say that everyone should do what Silk Song is doing. I think I've been clear at this point that I'm saying that people could get offline a little bit.

• 46:15Jason Schreier?

  Yes, I know. Even like, I think sometimes you do need to be very online if you're trying to sell a game to people for the first time.

• 46:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, for sure.

• 46:23Jason Schreier?

  But anyway, one more thing I just wanted to talk about real quick before we we take a break is the like people not being normal around this game, the takes around this game. And I personally will be trying to avoid as many of those as possible once the game comes out. Very difficult to do that when you're you have to for your job, read a lot of articles. But like the ones I've seen already, oh, my God.

• 46:46Kirk Hamilton?

  It's gonna, yeah, it's gonna be a real time online.

• 46:48Jason Schreier?

  Silk Song is ruining ruining ruining the video game industry by not giving people more of a heads up about its release date, among other things.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, like are there gonna be Silk Song is overhyped, actually headlines.

• 47:01Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, we were all there for Blueprints earlier this year. Like, it's gonna be like that again, a massive indie game that's very successful. I mean, just people can't help themselves.

• 47:10Jason Schreier?

  Taken up to like Blueprints and like to the 100th power. Like, this will be so much bigger than that. It's gonna be.

• 47:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I'm just saying, it's like the same type of.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:18Jason Schreier?

  But we we will be talking about the game because we will be playing it and talking about our thoughts on the game, and I'm very excited for that next week.

• 47:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, we will be talking about it next week. And yeah, can't wait to play it. What an exciting time to be a lowercase g gamer. All right, so I in my conversation in 2018 with William and Ari, I gave them a little like speed round, a lightning round at the end of the conversation that was really fun. And I had basically forgotten every single question I asked them. And I thought that I would include it here just as a sort of fun thing for everyone to listen to as we get ready to play Silk Song. So that is gonna play after this. It's just like five minutes of really quick questions for them about their own game. Then we will hear, you know, a couple Max Fun promos, and then we'll be back for one more thing. So let's take a break and do that.

• 48:10Kirk Hamilton?

  So we're almost out of time, but I want to do a series of lightning round questions, which tend when I do lightning rounds, they tend to like turn into longer answers. But I always tell people to try to have short answers. So I'm just gonna ask you some questions, mostly about Hollow Knight, about your favorite things or whatever. If I ask a favorite thing, you can each say one. If it's just a thing with one answer, you know, one of you can go. We'll go one right after the other. We're gonna try to get through them. Are you guys ready? Let's do it.

• 48:33Speaker 05

  Go for it.

• 48:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay, first lightning round question. What is your favorite charm in the game?

• 48:38Speaker 05

  Gathering swarm. Defender's crest.

• 48:40Kirk Hamilton?

  All right, what is your favorite region?

• 48:43Jason Schreier?

  Ah, um.

• 48:45Speaker 05

  Kingdom's edge.

• 48:49Speaker 04

  Got home.

• 48:50Kirk Hamilton?

  Um, okay, this next one, I think I know the answer, so I have a follow up prepared, but here's the question, what is your favorite enemy?

• 48:58Speaker 04

  It's not, uh, hmm, I really like Flugmon.

• 49:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, all right.

• 49:02Speaker 05

  Uh, hmm.

• 49:06Speaker 05

  I like those giant spiders and I can't even remember what we called them, the ones where they're like,

• 49:10Speaker 04

  They're called stalking something, stalkers, stalkers devout, stalking devout?

• 49:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, they're just weird and they're like face splits open and is their arms.

• 49:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, yeah, I know those guys. Nice. I actually thought you were gonna say the primal aspid.

• 49:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Which is.

• 49:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, I knew, yeah, I knew I said enough for that.

• 49:27Kirk Hamilton?

  That, cause my follow up question was going to be, what is wrong with you? But you didn't say that, so that's not my final, my follow up question. Okay, next question. Can you both beat every challenge in the game?

• 49:37Speaker 05

  No.

• 49:37Speaker 04

  Uh, I haven't done, I don't think, I haven't done Path of Bane start to finish yet, I think. Or maybe I have, I did in the end.

• 49:44Speaker 05

  You did it once.

• 49:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Uh. Have you beaten all the godmaster stuff?

• 49:47Speaker 04

  I haven't done, no, no, definitely not, because, I mean, if you're including like doing an all binding, Yeah. like run, then.

• 49:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:55Speaker 04

  I don't know if I'll ever do that.

• 49:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, we, we, we made a friend of ours who's, uh, who's done a lot of testing on the game, uh, go through that gauntlet.

• 50:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, I could, I could if I wanted to, that's the answer.

• 50:06Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm okay at Hollow Knight, I'm not really that good. And I watched a video of somebody doing the absolute radiance with, you know, if you get hit a single time, you die. And I was basically screaming at an ever escalating volume, the entire video. I'm sure you've seen videos of people doing this. It was outrageous. It was, listeners, go watch it, even if you've never played Hollow Knight, just go watch, find a video of someone doing it. Cause it was the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen.

• 50:26Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, people are amazing.

• 50:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, we can't be like that. If we get too good at the game, we'll, uh, we'll lose perspective on, yeah, we'll make, make challenges way too hard.

• 50:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I can see that. It's, it's hard enough, guys. It's definitely hard enough. Um, okay, next question, what happened to Quirrell?

• 50:42Speaker 04

  We don't know.

• 50:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, we're not sure.

• 50:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay, um, next question, was the king having an affair with Hera the beast?

• 50:48Speaker 05

  Uh, we can't, uh.

• 50:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, we probably shouldn't.

• 50:51Speaker 05

  We can't answer lore things too explicitly. You can make up your own mind.

• 50:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay, you can, you can punt on that, that's fine. Okay, next question. When you go to fight the radiance for the first time, Hornet yells something that sounds like, get good.

• 51:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Is she actually telling me to get good?

• 51:09Speaker 05

  It's a happy coincidence.

• 51:11Speaker 04

  Is that the actual word, gektu?

• 51:13Speaker 05

  I believe it's gek tu.

• 51:15Speaker 04

  A gektu.

• 51:17Speaker 05

  Something like that.

• 51:18Kirk Hamilton?

  It's not quite that, but I, believe me, I fought the Radiance like 7,000 times.

• 51:22Speaker 04

  I don't know what that means.

• 51:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, that's true.

• 51:23Speaker 04

  So it could be an equivalent kind of meaning to get good.

• 51:26Kirk Hamilton?

  She's psyching you up to go fight the Radiance.

• 51:28Speaker 05

  It does seem, it seems too good to be true. Like, this has to be, yeah.

• 51:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I did it so many times that I started hearing that and then realized that a lot of other people had heard it and pointed the same thing out online. But I was just sitting there like, okay, I get it, Hornet. I'm not good enough to be Radiance. Stop telling me to do that. Okay, next question. Do either of you actually use Nail Arts?

• 51:48Speaker 04

  I use Cyclone sometimes for fun.

• 51:50Speaker 05

  I use Great Slash.

• 51:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay. Uh, next question. Why were the Mantis Tribe members unaffected by the plague?

• 51:57Speaker 05

  There is a very good reason for that.

• 51:59Speaker 04

  Extremely good.

• 52:00Speaker 05

  Well, there is legitimately.

• 52:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm not being that.

• 52:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, and nor is it that, that far. Like, it's.

• 52:06Speaker 04

  You can probably extrapolate why, but we probably won't, you know?

• 52:09Speaker 05

  I think there may be something in the text there that sort of clarifies it.

• 52:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay. Okay, last question. Is Grubfather a villain, or is eating his grubs simply a normal thing for his species to do?

• 52:21Speaker 05

  William?

• 52:22Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, not sure.

• 52:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, you're not sure?

• 52:26Speaker 04

  It's weird. I was surprised when they started. We all were.

• 52:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was quite, it was quite a shock.

• 52:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, I was, I was disappointed, but then they kind of don't sound like they're upset to be in his stomach, was my thinking. So I started then, I felt like I was rationalizing to myself that I'd watched this horrible thing and I really didn't want to believe it was bad. So you guys aren't sure?

• 52:43Speaker 04

  Bugs do a lot of strange things. Who are we to, uh, to judge them?

• 52:47Kirk Hamilton?

  That's true, but they're bugs. They're not humans. That's, uh, that's, that's a very, that's probably a healthy way to look at things. Well, we're out of time. Ari and William, I really had a great time talking to you. I really, really like your video game. Listeners, go play Hollow Knight if you haven't yet. What are you doing? It's very good. William and Ari, thanks so much for coming on the show.

• 53:03Speaker 04

  Cheers, Kirk.

• 53:04Speaker 05

  Thanks, Kirk.

• 53:08Speaker 06

  I'm Emily Fleming.

• 53:09Speaker 07

  I'm Jordan Morris. And I'm Matt Leib.

• 53:11Speaker 06

  We are real comedy writers.

• 53:13Speaker 07

  Real friends. And real cheapskates. On every episode of our podcast, Free With Ads, we ask, why pay for expensive streaming services when you can get free movies from apps with weird names?

• 53:24Speaker 06

  Each week, we review the freest movies the internet has to offer. Classics like Pride and Prejudice.

• 53:30Speaker 07

  Cult classics like Point Break. And holy sh**. What did I just watch? Classics like Teen Witch.

• 53:37Speaker 06

  Tune in every week as we take a deep dive into the internet's bargain bin.

• 53:41Speaker 07

  Every Tuesday on MaximumFun.org or your favorite pod place.

• 53:52Speaker 03

  The Flophouse is a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

• 53:56Speaker 08

  Guys, how does ET poop?

• 53:58Speaker 07

  Uh, well, he's not that regular, but as he's gotten older.

• 54:02Speaker 08

  He has two Chloe, I guess, one under each arm. Oh.

• 54:05Speaker 03

  No, I was just looking forward to you going through the other ways in which, well, lol west is historically inaccurate.

• 54:09Speaker 08

  You know how much movies cost nowadays? When you add in your popcorn and your bagel bites and your cheese gritters. You can't go wrong with a Henry Cavill mustache. Here at Henry Cavill Mustaches, the only supplier. The Flophouse. New episodes every Saturday. Find it at MaximumFun.org.

• 54:27Kirk Hamilton?

  And we are back for one more thing. Jason, how about you go first?

• 54:31Jason Schreier?

  So I've been playing a video game called The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time along with you two. And after finishing that game, I was inspired to pick up another Zelda game, which is The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages. For people who aren't familiar, this, along with its companion game, The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons, were two Game Boy Color games that were made in conjunction, by Capcom in conjunction with Nintendo, made kind of co-developed by both companies.

• 55:01Kirk Hamilton?

  I didn't know that.

• 55:02Jason Schreier?

  Yes, and they're top-down, a lot like Link's Awakening, use a lot of assets from Link's Awakening, which was the first Game Boy Zelda game, except a lot more expansive and bigger. And these are two games that are kind of- They exist in parallel and they're linked in a lot of ways. There are a lot of cool features that link them. Like, once you beat one of them. Yeah, exactly. Once you beat one of them, you can like get these codes called secrets. Like, you can find these people in the world who will tell you secrets and then you can use those to like get items in other games. It's a really cool system. And then, once you beat them both, you get this special, like, final boss that you can only get once you beat them both.

• 55:42Jason Schreier?

  But they're each completely like entire Zelda games, like Link's Awakening, each with eight dungeons and a ton of items and a lot of cool stuff. Each with trading quests. And man, what a delightful game Oracle of Ages is. It takes so many of the ideas from Link's Awakening, but it also came out after Ocarina of Time. So it takes a lot of ideas from Ocarina of Time, too, and a lot of items from Ocarina of Time, which is a, which is a lot of fun to see in action. And then it also has a lot of its own ideas. Like, for example, instead of a hookshot, you get what's called a switch hook. And you like extend it like you would a hookshot, except instead of grappling onto something, you just switch places with it. So like you can switch places with an object that is across. That's cool.

• 56:23Jason Schreier?

  A pit from you. And you can use that for some cool and clever puzzle solving. A lot of other cool stuff like that. I won't get into all the specifics, but man, this is a dense, puzzle-heavy, just incredibly fun game that I highly recommend to you two especially, but also to anyone to check out because it's aged extraordinarily well. A lot of these 2D Zelda games have. It's really, the, the main gimmick is just like Ocarina of Time, you can travel back and forth between the past and the present. But it's done in a bit of a, in a much different way. Unlike Ocarina of Time, where in order to do that, you have to go back to the Temple of Time.

• 57:01Jason Schreier?

  In this, you get this harp that lets you travel through time, not wherever you want, but in a lot of different places throughout the world. At first, you just have a song that you can play that lets you travel back through time. When you find these special markings, these special markers on the ground, which you can find all over the map. And then eventually you get the, the ability to travel back in time wherever you want, depending first just from past to present. And then eventually from either either direction. And it plays around with those with that idea in more elaborate and more interesting ways, I think, than Ocarina of Time. Ocarina of Time kind of set that baseline and Ages just kind of takes that even further.

• 57:42Jason Schreier?

  So for example, there's a dungeon in Oracle of Ages where, so you guys remember in the Spirit Temple of Zelda, how you do part of it as a kid and part of it as an adult. In Oracle of Ages, you have a dungeon where the stuff you do in the past impacts the dungeon in the present. So like, for example, you bomb a wall in the past because it has that marking that shows you can bomb it. Then in the present, it will also be opened for you. You wouldn't be able to just bomb it open in the present. You have to do that in the past. And there's a lot of cool stuff like that, cool ideas like that. There's also just kind of like different areas that you can explore in both the past and the present, which again is is kind of, the foundation for that was set in Ocarina of Time, but here it's done much differently.

• 58:27Jason Schreier?

  So just another example, there's this whole Gorin area. It's called the Rolling Ridge. And the Gorins in this game, they really like mini games, so they each of them has their own kinds of mini games. And during this section that you're doing this, you have to get items by like completing mini games and then bring them to Gorins, like both in the past and the future. And that has an impact on what happens in the past or in the future, if you're doing it in the past. So that you're like, you're continuously going back and forth between the two time periods and like interacting with the different Gorins, seeing their descendants and like trading items with them and eventually getting the key to unlock the dungeon. But for this dungeon, you can't just have one key. You need a key in the past and a key in the present. So just again, so many cool ideas and this game is just so dense with ideas.

• 59:13Jason Schreier?

  It's so cool. Oracle of Seasons is, it's a little bit different in that you're not traveling through time. The main gimmick there is that like you control the seasons, so stuff might reflect, stuff might work differently in the winter than it does in the summer, the fall, etc. But yeah, man, these games are so cool. And if you like Zelda, you like, you pretty much, like, I highly, highly recommend playing them. I just, again, just on a whim, I just like, downloaded Oracle of Ages and was like, I'll check it out, because the Switch 2, if you're, or the Switch, if you have the online subscription, you can just download Game Boy games and just play them. And Oracle of Ages and Seasons are both on there. And I wound up like, playing all the way through. Now I'm up to the sixth dungeon. I'll probably just finish the game, because it moves pretty quickly. Because of the way that the Game Boy works, I talked

• 59:56Jason Schreier?

  about this a little bit when we did our triple play of Ocarina of Time, but these 2D Zelda games are, move much faster than the 3D, because you can navigate the world a lot more quickly than you can in the 3D game, which I find very refreshing and comforting and just easy to play through. And these games are so dense that like, even if you're stuck on a puzzle or you don't know what to do next, you move around so quickly that it's pretty easy to just kind of figure it out. And you don't have to waste a lot of time. And man, there's so much good stuff. It's so quirky and funny. There's so much humor in it. It feels like a legitimate Zelda game. It's just like a top-down 2D game that probably a lot of people haven't played the way they played Ocarina of Time. So, man, go check out the Oracle games. I will probably play through this and then through Oracle of Seasons, just for kicks,

• 1:00:40Jason Schreier?

  because, yeah, super good.

• 1:00:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. Oracle of Ages.

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've somehow never played these, and I would love to, after hearing you talk about them, because after Ocarina, I've got some Zelda withdrawal, you know?

• 1:00:52Jason Schreier?

  That's the thing, right? It's like, Ocarina is so good, and then you're just like, man, that Zelda formula really hits.

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  I just want to keep playing Zelda. Yeah.

• 1:00:58Jason Schreier?

  These Oracle games are so low-impact. And unlike, like, some of the other ones, some of the more modern ones, they don't have 40-hour tutorials that you have to go through before you actually get to the meat of it.

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  Is the owl in the game, though?

• 1:01:10Jason Schreier?

  Uh, no, I don't believe so.

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  Great, great news.

• 1:01:14Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, the owl is not in Oracle of Ages. You actually, you get guidance from what's called the Makku Tree, which I guess is the, uh, the, the, I don't know, sibling of the Deku Tree, yeah. Yeah, man, you guys should both check them out. They're really good. If we, if you all, if you both play them, maybe we could do like, a triple play of the Oracle games at some point in the future.

• 1:01:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that sounds great. That's a really cool game. I'd probably start with Ages. Matty, what is your one more thing?

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  Uh, mine is a movie called Deep Cover that is a comedy that stars Bryce Dallas Howard and Orlando Bloom and Nick Mohammed, who I knew from Ted Lasso, but hadn't really gotten to see him outside of that. And he's really funny in this, but I feel like I see him, saw him as a comedic actor in that performance, whereas I don't really think of Bryce Dallas Howard and Orlando Bloom as comedic actors. And they're playing really broad, wonderful characters in this and really getting to show some of their comedic range in a way that is just delightful. So here's the premise. Takes place in London. Bryce Dallas Howard plays, uh, she's an American in this movie. She doesn't have an accent. Everybody else has British accents except her. And she's like an expat who's trying to make it in

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  like the London theater scene. There's like, it's not too similar to Broadway in that there's like a real high end theater scene in London and she's failing. And so she's teaching an improv class to characters who are largely really bad at improv, including Orlando Bloom's character and Nick Mohammed's character. Orlando Bloom's character similarly also like sees himself as like an amazing actor who's just never had his big break and like is starring in all these horrible commercials instead. And Nick Mohammed is just like a really shy finance guy. He actually works IT with finance guys. So he like can't even keep up with them. So like you've got all these socially awkward improv characters

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  and they run into a cop who is also kind of a failure and he recruits them to help with a drug bust. And basically is like, I'm specifically recruiting improv actors because like they know how to yes and in these scenarios. And like, a lot of times cops are just too awkward to figure it out. So like improv actors are really great for this. And the three of them end up going to like participate in this bust and like try to bust bust a convenience store worker who's like selling some drugs on the side. And they yes and their way into like this massive conspiracy and end up having to stick with the three characters that they invented just for this convenience store job. And it spirals wildly.

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  And they get fully ensconced into like a massive gang war that's extremely dangerous and keep having to like amp up their characters, come up with more backstory. It's so, so funny and like such a great premise for a movie. Obviously, the cop comes into question at various points because like you as the viewer are like, why is he letting them do this? Is there something else going on with this character? But and like that obviously comes to a head, but like mostly it's just an opportunity to see three extremely awkward improv actors. Like you can kind of imagine their dynamic being in this scenario where they have to pretend to be big, tough drug lords who totally know what they're doing. And the results are so good.

• 1:04:35Speaker 02

  I we watched this a few weeks ago and I've still been thinking about how funny it was and how great the premise was. And I just love watching actors make fun of themselves. And there's so much joy in that in this movie that I really appreciate. So yeah, it's called Deep Cover. Great title. Obviously, these improv actors are in deep cover for the entirety of this film.

• 1:04:56Jason Schreier?

  It sounds amazing. Where did you watch it?

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  Um, it was on streaming, uh, Prime Video.

• 1:05:01Kirk Hamilton?

  It's on Amazon.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, Prime.

• 1:05:02Jason Schreier?

  Cool.

• 1:05:03Kirk Hamilton?

  It sounds super fun. It sounds like Hitman a little bit, the Glenn Powell.

• 1:05:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, a little bit. It has Hitman energy. Yeah. And that it's like a person that should is mostly just into acting and performing, but ends up getting in way over their head.

• 1:05:17Kirk Hamilton?

  And learn something about themselves by the characters that they play, which I'm guessing happens.

• 1:05:21Speaker 02

  Yes, of course.

• 1:05:21Kirk Hamilton?

  A little like Spies Like Us. I guess this is a like kind of familiar comedy.

• 1:05:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Setup, like people have to pretend to be badasses.

• 1:05:28Speaker 02

  But it works. It works.

• 1:05:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that sounds super fun. Um, we'll totally watch that. A great cast, too.

• 1:05:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's great. It's great.

• 1:05:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, I'll go last. My one more thing is a video game called Split Fiction that we have talked about on the show before.

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  Heard of it.

• 1:05:41Kirk Hamilton?

  But that I have now finished. Uh, my friend Dan and I have played through this game. Really, in a kind of wonderful way, just like an hour or so every night. He's on the East Coast, so he can't stay up super late. And we just hop on once a week or every week or two and play an hour or two, which kind of amounts to an act of the game, maybe. And we've worked through the whole thing. And man, I really am impressed by this game. I did not play Joseph Ferris and Haze Light's previous game, It Takes Two, the one that was the kind of Dark Horse Game of the Year winner several years back. I played the first part of it with Emily and was like, it was a little annoying. And also, that kind of game isn't her thing. These games are actually fairly difficult.

• 1:06:23Kirk Hamilton?

  And so Dan and I actually might play through that just because we want to keep this going. We've just been having a great time chatting and catching up. But that was how we played through all of Split Fiction, which I think I talked about back when we talked about that game, when it came out earlier this year. But now I've finished it, and I won't spoil anything because the ending of this game is spectacular. I had heard that, that the final kind of hour or so is like really mind blowing, which is not a huge surprise. It's kind of a standard for these Haze Light games. If you remember Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, kind of a similar game where this was a co-op game that you play with yourself, where you're controlling two brothers through the whole game. That game also, really, it's neat throughout, but it's the end.

• 1:07:08Kirk Hamilton?

  And it's the kind of final run of puzzles that turns it into something really kind of amazing and makes you come away from it just feeling like, wow, I've never done something like that before. That was so cool. Wow. This game has a very similar feeling at the end. There were moments, several moments in the final hours, where I was on Discord with Dan, we're watching things happen on screen and doing them. And I'm just saying to him, I do not understand how they did this. Like, how the game programmers and designers rigged this up so that it would work as seamlessly as it does? It's just totally crazy. So it's worth playing just to see that stuff. But also, I just think it's a very fun game.

• 1:07:51Kirk Hamilton?

  So just to explain it just a tiny bit, though we did talk about it. This is a split-screen co-op game. The whole game is played in split-screen. If you play it... Online with a friend, you still see the split screen because sometimes you need to kind of look at the other screen to see what's there. And also, the game itself is working within the aesthetic confines of a split screen game. So it's playing with the idea of split screen. So like, sometimes it's just left and right, one character on the left, one character on the right. Sometimes it's split horizontally, top and bottom, side scrolling, then it will go merge to a single screen where you're both visible on the same screen. Then it'll just, it shifts all over the place and it would not work without being presented the same to both players. You play as Zoe and Mio, I want

• 1:08:36Kirk Hamilton?

  to say are their names. They are two young writers who were recruited by this horrible tech company to try this exciting new virtual reality technology where they get sucked into a virtual construct that builds their stories in their brains into reality. And then, of course, this is actually a nefarious plan by Raider, which is the name of the guy in charge of the company. I think the company is called Raider, which is sort of funny.

• 1:08:58Speaker 02

  Not suspicious at all. It's called Raider. Share your ideas with them.

• 1:09:02Kirk Hamilton?

  He's very funny. It's very much like the writer's epitome of a shitty tech guy who just wants to steal everybody's ideas.

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  I remember it being like really straightforward, not in a bad way, just like, okay, I understand immediately.

• 1:09:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Kind of in a bad way.

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  Well.

• 1:09:18Kirk Hamilton?

  It is incredibly heavy-handed. Yeah, Haylight not known for subtlety.

• 1:09:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I.

• 1:09:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, very cringe at times. Joseph Faris, not a subtle writer. This is a game that I think some people just bounce off of because it's fairly silly. You know, the main characters start out especially very surface level. Zoe writes fantasy and she's very positive and Mio is very dark and she writes sci-fi and they don't understand each other because Zoe's so friendly and Mio's so suspicious. And it starts out that way. I think, honestly, if you kind of just get on its frequency, it winds up being really lovely. Each character develops and you watch their friendship grow. None of it is surprising, but it's actually, it's really nice to watch them start to like each other and to see two people kind of talk about the stories they write and the ways those stories reflect the hardships

• 1:10:09Kirk Hamilton?

  That they've been through and come to understand one another by like actually going through one another's stories and to see them by the end like rooting each other on and kind of coming to like fantasy or sci fi like it's all very silly and reductive and simple but also very charming and then I mean the game is just so well presented and well designed and slick it looks brilliant at all times it plays so smooth so amazingly it is constantly shifting gears you're never doing the same thing for more than 10 minutes it's hard it was hard for us as video as guys who can play games but not actually that hard like a boss will kill you and you'll think boy this is hard and then you'll beat the boss the next try like it never we never felt stuck and just it's so

• 1:10:53Kirk Hamilton?

  silly and delightful and full of ideas and generous and um I don't know its own thing to play a split screen game like this in 2025 is really remarkable so yeah I just wanted to kind of report in now that I have finished it and to say that I think it's a really it's a really amazing game and that final hour I mean my god but really the whole thing is just really delightful there are some beautiful moments a lot of big surprises some real humor and some comedy like we were laughing out loud throughout several sections in the game for every cringe video game reference there's also a bit of gameplay humor that is legitimately hilarious so I really just recommend it to anyone out there who's thinking about it or

• 1:11:31Kirk Hamilton?

  especially who has a friend they want to kind of catch up with and play a game with like it is a is a real winner I'm I'm really on board with split fiction so yeah good game really liked it

• 1:11:42Speaker 02

  That's nice to hear I did like the gameplay when I played it but yeah I don't know

• 1:11:46Kirk Hamilton?

  I know you hated you hated the characters

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  It's fine I I think I could totally see how it could become even more astounding gameplay wise and I I did really admire like the way that the split screen changed over time like scene to scene like I could see how impressive it was even just from what I played it's really clever

• 1:12:03Kirk Hamilton?

  And that stuff is cool you just for me it helped to just get in the mentality of like rolling my eyes and laughing and like Dan and I were laughing together we're like oh boy like I wonder where we are if this is maybe you remembering this tragic event that happened to you like you have to it with your friend it actually makes the Cornier parts of the story better if you can get in that mindset. Like, it actually-

• 1:12:23Speaker 02

  That makes total sense.

• 1:12:24Kirk Hamilton?

  It makes it more enjoyable. And then the gameplay is, yeah, like sensational, and so you're having a lot of fun. And so for that, it like worked really well. Like, we weren't looking for something super moving. And then, actually, there is some nice little emotional beats. You know, there are some, there are some moments in the story where we're like, oh, that was really nice. And we could kind of share that as well. So it kind of helps to go in with the right mindset, maybe. Anyways, yeah, cool game and a cool podcast. Way to go. TripleClick, we did it.

• 1:12:49Speaker 02

  Another ep.

• 1:12:50Kirk Hamilton?

  We made another episode.

• 1:12:51Jason Schreier?

  We did it.

• 1:12:51Kirk Hamilton?

  All right.

• 1:12:52Speaker 02

  Time to go play Silksong.

• 1:12:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, we're, Silksong is out, and we're all playing it as you're listening to this. And also out is our Ocarina of Time Beans Cast, which is in the bonus feed for members. So go listen to that as well if you can tear yourself away from Silksong long enough to listen. Or maybe if you're not into Silksong and if Holly and I-

• 1:13:10Speaker 02

  That's true, yeah, if you're not.

• 1:13:11Kirk Hamilton?

  You could just go listen to Ocarina of-

• 1:13:13Jason Schreier?

  Or, or you could listen while playing, Kirk. Not everybody has to hear the music at all times.

• 1:13:18Kirk Hamilton?

  No, I'm sorry, that's not actually a valid way to play the video game. I don't, I don't know what you're talking about.

• 1:13:22Jason Schreier?

  I get it.

• 1:13:23Kirk Hamilton?

  All right, cool. Well, this was a lot of fun, and I will see the two of you next week.

• 1:13:27Jason Schreier?

  See you next week.

• 1:13:28Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 1:13:31Kirk Hamilton?

  TripleClick is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddy Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. TripleClick is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join. Find us on Twitter at TripleClickPod, send email to [email protected], and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

• 1:14:29Jason Schreier?

  Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network- Of artist-owned shows- Supported- Directly- By you.