Hades 2, Keeper, Ball x Pit, and More Fall Games

It's time for a video-game grab bag as the Triple Click gang talks about some of the games they've been playing recently. They dive into Double Fine's Keeper, the new indie sensation Ball X Pit, Supergiant's Hades 2, and Absolum. Also they get derailed by the term "friendslop."

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

• 0:03Kirk Hamilton?

  I am a lighthouse worn by the weather and the waves. I keep my lamp lit and sometimes when I need to, I grow legs. Welcome to Triple Click and if you got that reference, we can be friends. This week, we're doing a Fall Games Grab Bag with discussion of Ball X Pit Hades 2, Absolum, and Double Fine's lovely new walking lighthouse game, Keeper. Let's get into it.

• 0:30Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:33Jason Schreier?

  And I'm Jason Schreier. Hello.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Hello.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Hello, my friends.

• 0:37Jason Schreier?

  I was at Barnes and Noble over the weekend with my son. Took him to Barnes and Noble.

• 0:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Barnes and Nobles, actually.

• 0:44Jason Schreier?

  That's what Amanda says. Oh, my God, I can't stand that. Barnes and Noble over the weekend with my son, my three-year-old son. I took him there and I let him get this book that plays truck noises. And then on the way home, I was listening to a podcast in the front while he was reading his book in the back. And as these guys were talking about football or whatever, it kept getting punctuated by like fire engine and police car noises. And it just made me think, I think next time, since Kirk, you so meticulously edit our podcasts, I think you should just stick in random like fire truck noises. I think you just make a fascinating.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Because our listeners aren't getting pulled over and up and we want to simulate the experience of them getting pulled over.

• 1:24Jason Schreier?

  Well, Maddie, because they're not skipping ads on our show.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Of course not. They would never do that. They never skip anything.

• 1:30Kirk Hamilton?

  How many episodes can we say that there are no ads when there are in fact promos that play every episode?

• 1:35Jason Schreier?

  Those aren't ads. Come on.

• 1:37Kirk Hamilton?

  How many episodes in a row? I think we're at five now. Maybe we can go for six. We go for a half a dozen episodes in a row where we can say there are no ads.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Listen, I said nothing about ads. It's not my fault.

• 1:47Jason Schreier?

  None of those shows are paying us, so they're not ads as far as I'm concerned.

• 1:50Kirk Hamilton?

  That is, that is true. My check from John Hodgman got lost in the mail or something. Yeah, we're not a soundboard podcast. I don't have a soundboard set up, but I could set one up. I actually used a soundboard app for our live show. It was incredibly useful as a live tool on my iPad to like make synth sounds play and to make the little wheels spinning sound. I could have a soundboard. We could have a woo-ga horns and hype horns. Purr, purr, purr.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  You could add in all of the Silk Song sound effects, which is what our gamer nights have become punctuated with. Because my friend Tyler has a soundboard with all of the bug exclamations. And periodically, when we're playing a different game.

• 2:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Instead of bing, it'll say, Jesus.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Exactly. Or the flea, awwww! Is the main one. Plays all the time. It's pretty good. So, consider that.

• 2:43Kirk Hamilton?

  If you would like to support me buying a soundboard app in order to play a lot of dumb sound effects into our podcast, you could become a Maximum Fun member at MaximumFun.org/join. And you could either support that, or you could write in and be like, "I'm a member, and I absolutely don't want you to start doing that." Make your voice heard, whom we are another. We are, of course, a listener-supported show. That's how you support us. MaximumFun.org/join. And you become part of our network and support all the other shows on it as well. And you get access to monthly bonus episodes that we record for our members. Most recently, you will hear the Hollow Knight Silk Song Beans cast. And this month, we're actually gonna do something kinda interesting. We're gonna re-watch Indie Game: The Movie,

• 3:27Kirk Hamilton?

  the 2012 documentary that was such a big deal at the time. And we all kinda thought it might be interesting to watch it now, all these years later, 13 years later, and see what we make of it. And what the games industry was like then, what the world of indie games was like then compared to what it's like now. So, that'll be up this month. But of course, there are tons and tons of bonus episodes. And we really appreciate everybody who supports this show. Oh, and we have all this merch. We haven't mentioned merch in a little while, but we also have a bunch of new TripleClick merch. It's coming up on the holidays, so this is a good time to buy the TripleClick fan in your life some merch. We're adding some new stuff to the store in the near future. But really, there's already a ton of new stuff in the store. So, go check out the Max Fun store for TripleClick merch. There's a link for that down in the show notes.

• 4:13Kirk Hamilton?

  All right. Well, we've got a lot of video games to talk about today, so let's get into it.

• 4:17Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, we got a whole video game grab bag of games that have come out over the last few weeks that we've been playing and would like to talk about. Let's start with the latest game from Double Fine, best known for the Double Fine documentary, Psychodysy, of course.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  That's what it's best known for. On this podcast, it's best known for that. Yes.

• 4:37Jason Schreier?

  So Keeper is a new video game from Double Fine. It is a game about a walking lighthouse, because that, of course it is. And she has a bird and he, it, they go on a lovely little adventure. And Keeper is directed and designed by Lee Petty, longtime Double Fine employee. And we've all been playing it. What do you guys think?

• 5:04Speaker 01

  I love it. I completed it, actually. And I will say it's not very long. It's about 10 hours. I loved it. I loved every minute of it. I, this game is dialogue-free, beautiful to look at, beautiful to listen to. And you just wander around this wonderful mystical world as a lighthouse. You're, you're kind of playing as the light on the lighthouse, I would say. That's the main thing you have control over. And the light has different powers. It can kind of unlock or unleash different things. If you focus its beam at certain objects, or strange trees, or vines, or

• 5:49Speaker 01

  things that look like esophageal passages. There's all kinds of bizarre landscapes in this super colorful world that you're exploring in Keeper. And I just, I couldn't put it down. I loved it and I enjoyed every minute of it. And I, I really recommend it to anybody who likes a just dialogue-free, environmental puzzles only.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Game, kind of like Cocoon was a game I was comparing it to, which has slightly more complex environmental puzzles, I would say, but similar energy.

• 6:19Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, I almost feel like comparing it to Cocoon does it a little bit of a disservice. Cocoon is a more elaborate puzzle game. This is more of a playable painting is how I would describe it. The puzzles in this game are not even really puzzles. You just kind of like look at things and move some things around every once in a while. It's not really a puzzle game. It's, like you said, it's a vibes game. It reminds me of Journey or even like a little bit more, a little bit reminiscent of like Limbo or Inside, just because you are walking in a single direction, like a single path, linear path through this big artistic world and just kind of soaking in the sights and sounds along the way. I've played a bunch too. I'm surprised it took you 10 hours to beat.

• 7:03Jason Schreier?

  I feel like it's, it's less than.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  There's a bit in the middle where I got kind of stuck as to what to do, which admittedly could have just been me. So that kind of took me a bit, but I don't know, your mileage may vary. Most of the time I agree, Jason, the puzzles are very easy, but there are like a couple sections where I was like, I actually don't know where I'm supposed to go next. But hey, that could just be Matty directionally challenged Myers kicking it again.

• 7:28Kirk Hamilton?

  For what it's worth, the, how long to beat on this is pretty squarely at five hours. And I think I've seen that before. That's about a five hour.

• 7:34Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, five hours is.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  But listen, guys, I don't know what my play clock is. I, I might've just stood up and walked away and a couple points. Who can remember how long we spend playing a game these days?

• 7:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, and I think to, to stay on the Journey comparison, that's also the game that it reminds me of. I really like this game as well. I'm not quite finished, but I'm near to the end and have really been enjoying it. I think it's such a confident game. It's so beautiful looking. The soundtrack is really great too, composed by longtime Double Fine composer David Earl. All the sound design is interesting. It's a little bit removed from you because you're kind of, you know, looking down on this little diorama and all of the sound feels like there's kind of a filter of it or something. It feels kind of remote in a way that I think is really ambivalent. And kind of interesting, but it's a lovely score. It's all this kind of guitar and stringed instrument stuff, but also a lot of weird

• 8:28Kirk Hamilton?

  kind of percussive electronic stuff. I don't know, it's got a really nice vibe. So anyways, that was such a defining factor of Journey, of course, was Austin Wintery's score to that game. And it was such a kind of audio visual musical journey. This game feels that way, too. And it's so confident. I think one thing about this game that strikes me is it feels like a game made by people who have been making games together for a long time, which is the case. Lee Petty, of course, the director, he was like stacking way back in the day. That was his Amnesia Fortnite game. He's an art lead originally, so his games always have a really interesting visual style. But also JP LaBretton was a designer on this. He's been at Double Fine since I've been aware of Double Fine.

• 9:10Kirk Hamilton?

  And actually, another one of the designers is Asif Siddiqui from.

• 9:14Jason Schreier?

  Famous from the Double Fine documentary.

• 9:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, previously a cameraman who then became became a designer. So there are people working on this game who've just been there a long time and it has that feeling of coherence to it. And then it's the design is, yes, it is kind of a puzzle game. I think you've you've both accurately described the mechanics. What it is for me is a game of constant surprises. And I think in that way, it's also like Journey. It's always transforming. It's not what it looks like, at least. Like, you hear that it's a game about a walking lighthouse and you see these trailers where the lighthouse is kind of moving along and it's a beautiful weird looking world and you have a light beam and you think, OK, this is just going to be what the game is. And then it totally changes and then it changes again. And then again, like, it is constantly shape shifting and introducing these new acts.

• 10:01Kirk Hamilton?

  And each act is surprising. And that's actually something that does also, yeah, remind me of Play Dead games, of Limbo and of Inside.

• 10:08Jason Schreier?

  That's exactly why I made the Inside comparison, because, yeah, I very reminiscent of that game where you're just kind of you're you're walking through these these areas and you think you've got a feel for the game and then things just change.

• 10:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Right.

• 10:18Jason Schreier?

  Take a take a total 180, total.

• 10:21Kirk Hamilton?

  It's not about like developing one mechanical idea, a whole bunch of different ways. It's like introducing whole new things that you're doing with each kind of, you know, hour or so that you play.

• 10:31Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, which is interesting. It's kind of a unique way of making games because most games, I feel like, want to pad out playtime by creating these mechanics that you can then play around with in different ways. Like, oh, here's an outpost. You're going to learn how to conquer that outpost with combat and stealth and whatever. And then you're going to do that a dozen more times throughout the game.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, why are we clearing goblins in Keeper?

• 10:54Jason Schreier?

  Right, exactly. Clearing goblins.

• 10:56Kirk Hamilton?

  First you blind them with your light and then you sneak up and you press the button for the melee.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  No, there's nothing like that.

• 11:02Jason Schreier?

  This is a very different type of game. I mean, of course, it's like, we don't really have to get into the commercial side of it all, but for a lot of people out there who are price conscious, you might look at something like this and be like, man, I don't want to spend $30, which is a price point on a five hour, like, kind of artistic playable walking simulator, especially when something like Silk Song is 20 hours and I get a lot more enjoyment hours out of that. So it's kind of, you have to kind of figure that calculus, I guess, when you're considering whether to check out this game. The other thing I'll say is that it's on Xbox Game Pass, so that, I think it feels like one of those games that really is designed for a service like Game Pass, where if you're a subscriber anyway, you can just kind of check it out and be like, man, yeah, I'm going to spend a weekend playing this. Hell, yeah.

• 11:48Jason Schreier?

  I should note, of course, in the price discussion, that all three of us got early copies from Microsoft, and so we didn't have to pay for it. And I think if I personally, if I were weighing over, like, am I going to spend $30 on this kind of five hour, like, beautiful walking simulator? I might say yes. I don't know. It's hard for me to say, but a lot of people are price conscious these days, so it's worth noting.

• 12:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's worth noting, even if it's kind of a bummer.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's on Xbox and PC, by the way, which I appreciate. Like, some Game Pass games are only on Xbox, but I played this on my PC, which made it look awesome.

• 12:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm just really glad this game exists. I mean, games like this just don't get made that much anymore for a lot of reasons, many of which are pretty depressing. And it's really nice playing something this creative and this just confident in what it wants to be. So I really am just, it's nice that someone managed to make something like this in 2025.

• 12:42Jason Schreier?

  Let's talk about another game that I picked up a couple of days ago and have been kind of obsessed with. It's called Ball X Pit. I don't know how you're supposed to pronounce it. Is it Ball Times Pit?

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Is it Ball Versus Pit? Ball Cross Pit?

• 12:58Kirk Hamilton?

  It's actually 1,000 times resist.

• 13:01Jason Schreier?

  Right, 1,000 times pit. And Ball Ball X Pit is a fascinating game. It's kind of, it's best described as a cross between Breakout, which is that old game where you have a paddle and you're hitting a ball to break bricks at the top of the screen. A cross between that, between Breakout and Vampire Survivors. So just like Vampire Survivors, you are playing through a series of levels where you get to level up your character in each of these levels and select from upgrades that make your character more powerful. Your character auto fires. I guess in this you can toggle the auto fire off, but for the most part, your character auto fires and takes out enemies and you level them up to watch the numbers go up

• 13:44Jason Schreier?

  and you pick different abilities that will destroy things in more creative ways. Except in this, instead of just kind of shooting, you're actually hitting balls like you would in Breakout, which adds a lot of charm to it. It's an extremely addictive game. It's very dangerous. It's one of those, I'm playing it on my Steam Deck and it's one of those where if I take it into the bathroom in the morning, my leg will fall asleep because I've been sitting there for so long. Yeah. My wife knocking on the door being like, Jason, what's going on in here?

• 14:13Jason Schreier?

  But yeah, but I'm really enjoying it. It's, it's really fun. There's also a whole base building section that I'll talk about in a sec. But yeah, what do you guys think of Ball X Pit?

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's pretty fun. The base building part is kind of like Loop Hero 2, if people remember that game, which is another kind of loop based game that has like, you go out, you fight, you get resources from fighting and then you come back.

• 14:36Kirk Hamilton?

  The visual style too.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it reminded me of Loop Hero so much that I was like, is this made by the Loop Hero developers? It's not, but I'm sure there's an influence there. Nothing wrong with that. I, I lost several days of my life to Loop Hero, but it, you, so you build a base and similarly when you're collecting resources at the base, you're careening the collection off of the Walls and the way that you do with the balls or firing mechanism when you are in the fighting mode. And that's the fun part, really, like instead of just shooting straight up when you're out on the fields fighting, you can angle your attacks and get the balls to bounce off the walls and hit the encroaching enemies at various angles and try to hit as many at the same time

• 15:21Speaker 01

  as possible. And you get tons and tons of power ups as time goes on and it becomes extremely satisfying. And eventually you're just an unstoppable killing machine. And it's, I mean, that part's like vampire survivors.

• 15:33Jason Schreier?

  You haven't played a ton, right?

• 15:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm only a couple hours in, so.

• 15:36Jason Schreier?

  Okay, so, and a couple hours in, like, normal person means like one hour, right?

• 15:41Speaker 01

  You can't get lost in this game.

• 15:44Jason Schreier?

  So, the reason that this has more longevity than Lupiero, in my opinion, is that as you go, you unlock new characters that you can play as, and each of the characters you play as has a different ability. And some of them, the further you get in the game, have completely drastically game-changing abilities. There's also one building that you get in the base building section about halfway through the game, maybe a little earlier, that lets you take out two characters at once. And then, a large part of the game, once you get that building, which really transforms the entire game, a lot of the game becomes synergizing and figuring out, okay, these two characters can work really well together if I also then get this upgrade and then that upgrade and those can fuse together and do this thing. And so a lot of it.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Very Bellatro.

• 16:27Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it is, there is a little, or any rogue, like, really, is kind of like a big part of that. And so, to your point, yes, you are building an unstoppable killing machine. That is ultimately the end game. It just, you can do that in more interesting ways as you play further on into the game. I also, I was a little bit like, oh, yeah, this is kind of Lupiero-ish. I wonder if I'll bounce off this game, no pun intended, early. But the more I played, the more I actually found that it's really, really quite fun. And then it gets into this one, a couple of hilarious characters that I won't spoil because it's fun to discover them, but they make you question why you're playing this game and also laugh very hard. And there's some funny, some good comedy in this one. Kirk, what do you think of Ball Times Pit?

• 17:10Kirk Hamilton?

  It's good to hear that there are some decisions that you have to start making later in the game.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:15Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, I'm, I don't know, I've played for an hour. I just kind of play while we're watching TV. If we're watching something that doesn't require a lot of attention, like Great British Bake Off or whatever, it's kind of on and then I'm mostly focused on this game. And yeah, I mean, it's fun. It's so lizard brain. It's so, you know, just the pleasure of just watching things explode, especially once you finally get a good build going, just because you're like shooting balls everywhere and like, you know, they're, you know, you're, so it's this kind of advancing army of skeletons that you're fighting. And they're all in these little boxes, which is just kind of funny, like they all kind of got in sleds and then they're coming toward you. And of course, like later, there are some creatures that aren't, but at least in the early goings, it's just a bunch of boxes, but sometimes there's a big box

• 17:58Kirk Hamilton?

  and that's got a big boy in it and you need to spend more time and more balls destroying that, that box and that big boy. And, you know, it's frustrating at first, just like any rogue-like, because you're dying and you're not totally sure how you're supposed to get better. And then you start getting some better drops and better items and then you unlock some better characters and pretty soon, you know, you're making a ton of progress and like easily clearing the first boss, second boss and so on. And it has that same kind of exciting treadmill lizard brain satisfaction. But at the same time, in the early, you know, couple hours I've played, there, there have not been a lot of decisions to make. There is like moment to moment gameplay that's very satisfying, like the feeling of moving. You know, there's some skill to it. You can kind of catch your balls as they come back so you can then fire them off faster.

• 18:44Kirk Hamilton?

  So there is some kind of, you can't just kind of mindlessly play it, even though it starts to feel kind of mindless after a while. But at the same time, I don't know, like, I, I guess I'm, I'm so, it's such a contrast with something like Kingdom Come Deliverance, which I'm playing right now and I'm so in, I'm like so deep in that game. And it's this game that I'm like, it's really like engaging my brain and I'm like thinking and listening to people talk and like having these kind of deep, complex decisions that I'm having to make all the time. And then to play something that's just pure, just good time feeling, pump it straight into your brain and then just kind of watch the numbers go up and the balls fly around and the things explode. I guess it partly goes to show how different video games can be from one another.

• 19:27Kirk Hamilton?

  But also it, compared to something a little more in line with it, like Bellatro, for example. You know, that game just so quickly gets you into the decisions. And I think what made that game so fun for me as a rogue like is that it is all decisions. Like even, you know, there's just so much strategy. There are so many choices. You're always in the shop. You're always thinking about your build. You're always adjusting and improvising and reacting and making new decisions. And this game is so much purer than that. And that's fine. It's like a great toilet game. Great game for a second screen when you're watching TV, which, you know, for me, Bellatro is much more engrossing and I wouldn't really be able to do that to multitask. But it's, uh, it's definitely more that kind of, that kind of an experience. Just a very pure experience.

• 20:10Jason Schreier?

  So a couple of things. First of all, I don't want to oversell the decision making. It's not like, it's not, nothing like Bellatro. Like it's still, it's still very much a lizard brain game. You were still like, even once you were making more character decisions and thinking a little bit more about synergies, um, you are still very much just smashing faces and watching numbers go.

• 20:29Kirk Hamilton?

  It's Vampire Survivors is the same way.

• 20:31Jason Schreier?

  Exactly. Um, second thing is, uh, it's, yes, it's the perfect TV watching game. It's very funny, Kirk, to hear that. Uh, it's funny how much differently your brain works than mine. Cause I can play Bellatro and lots of other things while watching TV, um, as well. I have actually played most of Bellatro while watching TV. Um, but yes, so this is also the perfect, like loaded up on your Steam deck and they'll probably bring it to phones. I don't think it's on phones yet, but perfect phone game.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  It does feel like it should be on a phone. Yeah. In the sense that it's like a second screen game and a toilet game.

• 21:04Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Very much. It's in that lineage of Vampire Survivors. And, um, yes, if you like watching numbers go up, this is for you. Um, yeah, man, I don't want to spoil this thing that happens. Um,

• 21:18Kirk Hamilton?

  That's fine. Don't spoil it.

• 21:20Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Okay. It's just, it's a good joke.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  It is funny though. Like I, I will say there's like kind of some light comedy that I've seen even early on that I really enjoy. Like instead of clicking okay on dialogue boxes, you'll either say cool or whoa, which usually fits the moment. And I appreciate that. It's such a small thing to change that in a game, but it immediately. It clued me into the kind of humor that this game was gonna have and I really appreciated that. There's just some light touches throughout that add a tone of this is very silly. Like I even just the opening, like the place you are is called instead of Babylon, it's ball bilon. And I just was immediately like, this is good. This is

• 22:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Kind of enter the Gungian ish, like where it's this world that's built around balls.

• 22:09Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, the, the funny stuff. Yeah, it's good stuff. Um, and yeah, and some of that, I will say that to the game's credit, some of the characters that you unlock really do drastically change the way the game is played. I'll give you a couple of examples of early ones without spoiling some of the fun late game surprises, but like a couple of early ones. Um, there's one that removes all of the baby balls. So in this game, you get your kind of big special balls, which are ones that you can, um, uh, you can pick from. So you start with one special ball and then as you level up, you can pick like a fireball or an ice ball or a vampire ball that heals you over time and stuff like that. And so, uh, you have four of those, um, at least at the beginning of the game, four max, and then a bunch of little baby balls that you'll shoot out. So there's one

• 22:52Jason Schreier?

  character that only shoots out the big balls and doesn't shoot out baby balls. So you have to like really think about kind of your placement and catching them. Yes, Kirk is laughing because he is a seven year old.

• 23:02Kirk Hamilton?

  You just keep talking about big balls and I'm laughing about it.

• 23:05Jason Schreier?

  Hey man, I, I, I wasn't gonna say anything. I was gonna let the audience just snicker to themselves.

• 23:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Say big balls.

• 23:13Jason Schreier?

  You got baby balls and you got your big balls. I think baby balls is funnier than, I mean, that's part of the tongue in cheek of this whole thing is that it keeps saying baby balls, right?

• 23:22Speaker 01

  It's funny. It's funny. We're all seven when we play this game.

• 23:26Jason Schreier?

  So there's one character that you only shoot the big balls. Man, okay. Yes.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  We can't talk about it anymore now.

• 23:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Sorry, I've ruined it. I've ruined it. No, no, explain this character and their big balls.

• 23:38Jason Schreier?

  Um, and, and another character, uh, just as another example, another character, their balls. God, I can't, Kirk, you ruined it. Another character. Their balls come from the top of the screen instead of from them. And so like that makes you think about the game in a whole new way. That one is really hard to use. There's another that is twins and they each shoot out balls and it's like double as many balls, but have as much damage. You know, you can use them kind of like, like they move based on where the stick moves. They'll move in parallel to each other. Yeah. So you just have to, there's a lot more creative stuff that you get to experiment with later on. And then

• 24:20Jason Schreier?

  also the other big part of it, just like Vampire Survivors, is the kind of the fusions of abilities and figuring out which of these balls go best together and then which of the passive abilities go best together and how you can take out a level because the levels get pretty tough later on.

• 24:38Kirk Hamilton?

  That's true. And that is actually an early choice in the game that when you, you get these like, what is it called? Fission or fusion?

• 24:44Jason Schreier?

  You get a fusion reactor and then you can choose from that fusion reactor, whether you want to upgrade your levels, which is called fission, or combine two balls, which is called fusion, or the next step, which is evolution, which takes two balls and puts them together to create something totally new that has ultra powerful abilities. And yes, to your point, that is like the decision making you're doing a lot. And at the beginning, it seems pretty simple because you're just like, okay, yeah, I'm going to smash these balls together. And then, but later on, you have to actually think a little bit more because you only have a limited number of balls that you can use. And so you have to be a little bit more strategic. Again, it is not, it is still very much watching things explode, watching numbers go up. But there is a little bit of strategy. It's not on

• 25:28Jason Schreier?

  a scale for, it's like kind of closer to Vampire Survivors than Bellatro or Slay the Spire or other rogue likes, but it is a little bit more strategy focused than Vampire Survivors.

• 25:40Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, speaking of that, have either of you played Mega Bonk?

• 25:43Speaker 01

  No.

• 25:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Or have you installed that game? No. Are you aware of it? Yeah, I'm aware of it. It's like 3D Vampire Survivors. Right. It's just that it's, I think, doing pretty well, too, and is, I gather, very fun. I have it installed and haven't had a chance to play it. But just the fact that this game, that game, which is, right, 3D Vampire Survivors, and Polx Pit, which is Vampire Survivors, you know, combined with another game type, like, that's just kind of funny that the Vampire Survivors subgenre is really flourishing. And I don't know, it isn't every day that you see the birth of a new subgenre, which we did see with Vampire Survivors, and it's kind of been borne out by all these other Survivor's-type games. And now we're just like in a world where that is a type of game, and we're getting all these variants. I think that's kind of a cool thing to mark and to realize that that happened. And now we're kind of in the aftermath.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 26:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that's interesting. It's kind of like when Fall Guys came out, and then we started seeing a bunch of, like, party games that were kind of like in that vein. Was that, was Fall Guys Friendslop? Did that kick off the Friendslop revolution? I think so, yeah, I think so.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Kinda. Among Us, Fall Guys, kind of that.

• 26:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it was that era of, yeah, Among Us and Fall Us. Is Among Us Friendslop? That's also a good question.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  I wouldn't say it is. I mean, do we have to define Friendslop for the listener? I, I.

• 26:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, go ahead. What is, what is Friendslop?

• 26:58Speaker 01

  It's derogatory for a reason. I, people use it to describe a kind of cooperative or friends-requiring game. Some of you play with friends, but that it's kind of forgettable, hence the slop moniker.

• 27:11Kirk Hamilton?

  And like, seems kind of cheaply made, right?

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, cheaply made, rushed out.

• 27:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, Chained Together is a good example of, Fred, do you remember Chained Together? The game where you're trying to climb a really crazy obstacle course, and you're chained together, so if one of you falls, you all fall? I feel like that game, like, it looks like it was just thrown together in Gary's mod or whatever. I don't know if it was, but that, I think the quintessential type of Friendslop is a game that looks kind of low effort, but then is very, very fun. And then people just like to play it together, and they don't care that it doesn't look amazing. Is it Peak? Is Peak the one that, like, inspired this?

• 27:38Speaker 01

  I think Peak started the conversation, where it's like, yeah, it's fun for a few sessions, and then maybe the friends group moves on and plays something else. I, I think Peak is really fun, but I, I see why somebody might apply that moniker to it, especially if they don't like it that much. I don't know.

• 27:54Kirk Hamilton?

  So isn't Peak kind of like beautiful-looking and not actually low-effort-looking? Like, it has art design?

• 27:59Speaker 01

  It is. I mean, this is the thing about putting slop at the ends of everything.

• 28:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, no, yeah.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  I, that's all this episode's about, but, uh, it is something about. Uh, people online have come to do.

• 28:12Jason Schreier?

  So what are we gonna call this genre Vampire Survivor slop?

• 28:15Kirk Hamilton?

  I guess it's.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Survivor slop.

• 28:17Kirk Hamilton?

  I think you would call it like a vamp, a Survivor's like or something like that, which is awful. But then we have Souls like and Metroidvania, those already exist and they're terrible too. So we're not above giving things bad names.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Haven't you heard of people calling those like Dodge slop though, like or Dodge roll slop or whatever? It's funny how people have really come up with ways to describe Souls lakes in a derogatory way.

• 28:41Jason Schreier?

  So it's funny, this is a bit of a deep cut, but back in the day, in the late nineties, uh, in the StarCraft one map, uh, custom map scene, there was this genre of games. This is of course where MOBAs came from because Aeon of Strife was the first ever MOBA. And that eventually turned into Dota, which spawned the whole genre. There was this other kind of genre of games called like mass attacks. And what would happen is like, you would start with like a single character. And then eventually you would spawn a few more and then a few more and then a few more. And eventually you'd have this entire blob of an army that you would then send to attack another army. A little bit different than Vampire Survivors, but similar in the sense that you were watching these numbers go up.

• 29:22Jason Schreier?

  But the fun part about this genre was that it was always themed around some like pop culture, uh, reference. So there was Simpsons madness is one of them. And each, each player would be like Homer Simpson, Lisa Simpson, Martin, Martin Simpson, whoever. And then you would watch that character, uh, your upgrade over time. And then you'd get more of them and more powerful ones. It was, it was kind of similar to Vampire Survivor in that you were, you weren't really making decisions. You're just kind of throwing, throwing things, throwing and watching them, throwing enemies. Uh, kind of the opposite of Vampire Survivors in that you're, you're controlling the horde instead of the individual.

• 29:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. Like these auto battlers, like auto chess and other auto battlers where the fun is just setting up the battle. And then you just watch it play out according to the parameters that you input.

• 30:05Jason Schreier?

  Also, yeah, the Final Fantasy XII's combat system is kind of the same sort of thing where you're, the fun is setting up. Yeah, the gambit system.

• 30:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 30:12Jason Schreier?

  You're setting up these machines and then just watching them unfold. Anyway, Bollocks Fit, I am really enjoying it just as a. Timeless, like, time-killing game.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  It's perfect for that.

• 30:22Jason Schreier?

  It's a lot of fun to play, yeah, just while watching TV. Perfect TV-watching game. Uh, next up, Hades 2. We haven't done an episode about this, but I think the three of us have played a little bit more. So, we should talk a little bit more. This is, of course, the sequel to Hades. Um, we talked about it a little bit as a warmer thing a couple of weeks ago, but haven't done a super-deep dive into it. Um, tell me what you guys think of Hades 2.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  I would say my problem with Hades 2 is that Hades 1 was too good of a game. And almost everything that I feel about Hades 2 is, in my mind, anyway, being compared to Hades 1. And that's very difficult, because Hades 1 is extraordinary. And I think Hades 2 is good. I think it's a good game. It's just not, in my mind, quite as good as Hades 1, except that it's still good. It's just that it is, unfortunately, the sequel to a game that I think is one of the all-time best games in terms of storytelling, pacing, gameplay innovation, the entire conceit, the anachronisms,

• 31:32Speaker 01

  and like, the fun of having like, a gun in a game about Greek gods, and the entire premise of fighting through the underworld. Like, list goes on. I, I think Hades 1 is just extraordinarily clever. And Hades 2 is just a reflection, a refraction of a lot of the things about Hades 1 that I loved. And I, I wish it were just slightly better than it is. But I've played a lot of it. I, I've, I've beaten Cronus multiple times. I have seen a ton of the story, um, out here, romancing nemesis or trying to. I, um, I, I don't know. I, I just have mixed feelings about it.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  And I think a lot of them have to do with just how much, how much I was just really impressed by Hades 1, and the characters in it, and how Hades 2... Just doesn't quite grab me the same way, but what do you two think about it?

• 32:26Kirk Hamilton?

  It's so funny, isn't it? I mean, so I've, I've played more since I made it my one more thing, uh, have gotten further. And yeah, I mean, part of it is just that I've gotten into playing other games and so I've sort of lost steam on it, but there's definitely something there and it feels both totally unfair. You know, it's unfair to say this excellent game is not totally holding my attention just because, you know, another excellent game made by the same people came before it, but that is the case and that's, that's just, that is kind of the risk of making a sequel. You know, this is the first time that Supergiant has ever made a sequel. And I mean, it's kind of got the downside of making a sequel now. Like you can see why it was so cool that they didn't make sequels before.

• 33:12Kirk Hamilton?

  No matter what, you know, even a game like Pyre, which I think was their most divisive game, even that game was really interesting and, you know, and I think actually has been in retrospect, sort of reevaluated and some people have, have kind of come around on it.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would agree.

• 33:25Kirk Hamilton?

  But, you know, every one of their games, just you had that feeling of, of newness. You didn't know what to expect and not just from the story, but from the mechanics. And there is just this familiarity with Hades 2. And even though I, like I said in my one more thing, when I talked about this previously, I barely played this game. I played enough for us to kind of talk about it when it first came out in early access. And then I held off thinking, okay, I'm going to totally go in at 1.0 and that's what I've been doing. And I think that's a, a good way to play it, but it still has the same feeling of familiarity, like the, the rhythms, you know, the, the tone, the way the characters talk, the, yeah, certainly the, yeah, the gameplay rhythms, the boons, the, just the dialogue rhythms, the music, the whole thing of like,

• 34:09Kirk Hamilton?

  the way it feels as a, it's like, if you imagine the game as a big drum solo, like the places that the drums are hit, like they just kind of are in the same places. And that's familiar and cool and like worked really well with Hades, but it just does also have that familiarity, which when I'm playing a game, I mean, actually like I've started playing Absolum, which is the next game we're going to talk about, but kind of deserves to be talked about at the same time as Because it is also a roguelike or rogue light. It is also with a really game with a beautiful, striking animated style and a really fleshed out world. But because it's different, it's a different world. I'm not familiar with where this story is going. It's also a beat them up. It's a different style of game. It's something I've never really done in a roguelike.

• 34:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Even though I'm garbage at it and haven't gotten very far and don't even know if I'll stick with it because I like, don't actually really like 2D beat them ups. I'm immediately like hooked by it just because it's new. And I don't know, like, I think that is telling me as much about my bias toward novelty as anything else. And I think, I think maybe a lot of people feel that way, like it, it does not feel fair to hold against Hades 2 that it is familiar. Because it is also excellent. And yet, you know, me at least with my like embarrassment of choices for video games. I find myself drawn to other things because they are new and surprising to me.

• 35:24Jason Schreier?

  I think it's, it's the type of genre that is just very easy to burn out on, especially when it's so similar to the first game. I was thinking about this because Hades 2 came out just a couple of weeks after the release of another sequel that we were all enamored of, of course, in Silk Song. And Silk Song was a sequel to Hollow Knight in many ways, had the exact same rhythms as Hollow Knight, but we all loved it. And Kirk and I both really loved Hollow Knight as well, and we still loved Silk Song. Matty, you played less of Hollow Knight, but you also loved Silk Song. And I think the main reason for, I mean, they're very different types of games, but I think one of the main reasons for that is that in Silk Song, every level is handcrafted. And you're not kind of seeing the same thing multiple times, except when you're doing boss runs.

• 36:06Jason Schreier?

  In Hades 2, when you start, when you crack open that game, you kind of know you, every time you descend to a new sub level. Even if you're going up, uh, which they've added to this game to kind of switch things up in this one. You're still, you still know you're going to be seeing that level over and over and over again. And a large part of the appeal of the first game was like figuring out how to build a character and synergize. Kind of like what I was describing of Ball X Pit, where you're making a lot of interesting decisions along the way. But it's, I also feel like we all played so much of that first game that we already got that and kind of burnt out on it. And so it's, I, it's not shocking to me that, at least for me, that I burnt out or that I bounced off of Hades 2

• 36:48Jason Schreier?

  just because of the sheer amount of Hades 1 I played and the thought of just doing that all over again is just not, not grabbing me.

• 36:56Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, this is making me have a related idea that I'll just, I'll just throw in there because I'm having a thought and I'm gonna, I'm gonna articulate it. You're having a thought and you're gonna articulate it. Welcome to Triple Black. Go for it, man. So Jason, you guessed it on Chris Plant's show, Post Games, a couple of weeks ago. And you were talking about this problem of there being too many games. And then on the follow-up, the like, second part of this two-part series he's doing, he had Simon Carles on, who is a longtime game journalist turned consultant. He runs a game discoverability consultancy ship where he kind of helps people with discoverability and getting their games discovered. And it's an interesting conversation. And part of what he articulates is that when you're trying to sell a new game, you're

• 37:39Kirk Hamilton?

  not just up against the competition of like, the other new games that are out, but you're up against the backlog. And the fact that there have been so many thousands of games released every month or whatever on Steam, it's a problem this month, but it's just as big of a problem that all of the months leading up to this month have also had thousands of games. And so, you know, some of the most popular games are games from like, 2017, 2018 that people are still playing. And then he, he just kind of offhandedly said, you know, it's also hard to sell a new Assassin's Creed game when there are like, six other Assassin's Creed games that are much cheaper and that people may already have, that are pretty much just as fun, or that some people even like better, you know, that someone might review the new Assassin's Creed and say, "Yeah, it's really cool, but actually I think Odyssey is a better game."

• 38:24Kirk Hamilton?

  And you may have Odyssey, it was probably on sale for like, $4.99, you know, last holiday season, "So why would you pay $70 for Shadows?" And I just thought, these are all thoughts I've kind of abstractly had, I guess, but like, hearing them articulated that way was really helpful. And in, you know, in terms of this conversation, Hades 2, it's, it's that same feeling of like, "Well, we have Hades 1 at home." Hades 1 still exists. And like, for me, it's partly that I put, you know, 60 hours or whatever into Hades as well. And I just feel like I got so much out of it, that like, doing it again, even though it's really good, it just feels like, "Well, but my body is full of Hades." Like, I had all these hours of my mind in engaging with this, these rhythms and these

• 39:07Kirk Hamilton?

  systems and this game and this world and this story that like, to just do it again just, it feels kind of exhausting to me. And it, I don't, I don't know. And it is interesting to think about why that isn't the case with Silksong, as you, as you mentioned. And that's a very good observation, that like, the kind of- Less remarkable quality of any given room in Hades because it's procedurally generated is probably a big part of that, or at least a part of it.

• 39:30Jason Schreier?

  Well, but also the fact that you have to keep repeating the same zones over and over again and kind of going into it. By the way, Kirk, to your point, I mean, Hades 2 is a massive hit like right now as we speak it has 33,000 concurrent players on scene.

• 39:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, correct, sorry. That should, we should be clear that, yeah, I'm not talking about its sale.

• 39:48Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, you're talking about you personally. Yes, yes, yes. And who knows how many of these people like got, I'm sure there are tons of people out there who like were really into Hades and are also really into Hades 2 and maybe they found reasons to connect to it, the characters.

• 40:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, clearly, right? It's selling really well.

• 40:03Jason Schreier?

  Yes, exactly.

• 40:04Kirk Hamilton?

  And it is an excellent, excellent game.

• 40:05Jason Schreier?

  It's an excellent game, yeah. And I just think that like there's something about even psychologically, even the back of your head, opening up this game and knowing the number of hours you're gonna have to spend doing the same things over and over again. Maddie, you got to Chronos, you must have seen that first sub-zone so many friggin' times, right? And it's kind of, you have to be willing to accept that in a way and you kind of, in a way that you don't have to think about when you're playing something like Silk Song or another kind of bespoke game.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you have to beat Chronos multiple times to get to the true ending. And I've also gotten to the top of Olympus, another thing I'm gonna have to do multiple times in this game if I wanna see the quote unquote true ending, which I, yeah, I mean, I, I will say that's something that Hades 2 does have going for it is compared to Hades 1. It's kind of my main thing that I'm like, I appreciate this, is that when I got sick of, and I did get sick of going against Chronos, I would just switch and do Olympus for a while. And then when I got sick of Olympus, I would go back and do Chronos. And I, that's how I got to the top or bottom of both of those multiple times is because I just would switch off as I got tired of each of them, and they are fairly different areas.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  But the fact that that's a concern is...

• 41:20Speaker 01

  I mean, it's it's tough. It's a tough thing about the way the game is designed. But I I also think there are some other things about the game that I think are probably not grabbing you to. Like, we're all talking about how excellent the game is, and it is fun. Like, there's still some fundamentals of Hades 1 that are here, too, and they're still great. But I do think the story is just not as strong here, and that the characters don't immediately grab you. And that's sad to me, in part because, like, I'm just personally biased in the sense that I was like, oh, awesome. I get to play a female character in this one. I'm gonna be Zagreus's sister. That's gonna be so cool. I think Melinoe, Melinoe, rather, is not as interesting of a character as Zagreus.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  She's very one-note, and Zagreus was like a really well-rounded character. I don't I don't know why that is exactly. I've spent a ton of time with her, and I feel like she's often a cipher to me. And I don't know her that well, which is kind of odd. And also, the, I think some of that was the interplay between Zagreus and his dad, Hades, and the fact that you got to talk to Hades himself, who's, of course, the final boss of the game Hades, every time in between runs, and building that rapport between those two characters was so important. Whereas in Hades 2, the conflict is so much bigger. Like, you're fighting against time itself, and it's almost like the stakes are too high.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  And that makes it feel like it matters less, ironically, and like, it's less personal. Whereas in Hades 1, it was deeply personal and kind of petty and ridiculous at times that Zagreus was doing what he was doing. But that's what made him an interesting character, whereas Mel is like Master Chief-esque. She's like, I must follow my my orders. I must do my task over and over. And I'm, I don't know, there's something missing there. And then also, just, there's something magical about the, like, Meg, Thanatos, Zagreus, uh, romance, romances. I think that that chemistry is really, really strong, and I think they just really hit a jackpot with coming up with those characters.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  And the romances in this game, I I don't know why, but like, just somehow, I mean, I won't spoil all the characters. You can romance, but I I just, it's not, it's, there's something missing. I don't, I'm not quite sure what it is exactly, but like, there's, it's just not quite it. And I think some of that is because Mel Is just a very kind of staid, resolute character. And to compare that with something like Silk Song, it's almost like the opposite. Where Hornet is a character in a way that the knight was not. Like Silk Song is building on Hollow Knight's lore and mythos by adding character and adding lore and adding all this background and a voice to this game that previously didn't have that.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  And that was something that I thought was amazing about Silk Song and still do. Whereas this game, Hades 2, I'm, I'm kind of like searching for those characters that I'm like, oh, these are the ones I'm hanging my hat on and I'm remembering and I, I just don't know if they're there for me, but.

• 44:28Jason Schreier?

  Zagreus is so lovably bratty.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  He's so lovably bratty. He's just such a charmer. You can't help but love him.

• 44:34Jason Schreier?

  That's a good point. I hadn't, I hadn't thought about that, but Zagreus grabs you right away in Hades 1 and you're kind of like, man, who is this little prick? And then Melanoid, yeah, she doesn't really, she has her quest for revenge, but other than that, it's just good. And you don't even know what happened for a large chunk of the game.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. And she doesn't know her own family that she's getting revenge for. She's never met them.

• 44:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. I think that's a very good point about Hades' presence in Hades as well. Like just the fact that he's your dad and he's there all the time and you're always talking to him.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's great.

• 45:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Is a, it's a noticeable difference between the two games for sure.

• 45:09Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's fun. It's, it's also fun that the final boss of the game is just hanging out in your main base.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's inherently conical. And it, it just adds a lightness to it that then can be taken away when Hades 1 has its high stakes moments and those feel more important because the rest of the game has such a lighthearted tone and like sometimes a sexy tone. Whereas Hades 2, the stakes are like, again, really high. It's like life and death and the fate of the world and. Like, people are being tortured off-screen and you have to save them. Like, it's just, it's a really high level of intensity that somehow makes everything feel like it matters less. It's kind of funny how that works.

• 45:50Jason Schreier?

  Kirk, you want to talk about Absalom just real quick before we take a break?

• 45:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I'll just shout it out. I'm far from an expert in this game. I kind of described it, but I'll describe it again. It is a beat'em up rogue light, so it is structured like a Streets of Rage or TMNT, and it's made by Guard Crush Games, who made a recent Streets of Rage game. So they have a lot of experience in this world. So, you know, it looks like an arcade beat'em up, where your characters are kind of 2D, but they slide around, you know, up on a X and Y axis, and then you're fighting enemies that sort of move along as well. So it's all about counters and fighting, and it feels like a fighting game, honestly, which is part of why I'm not that good at it. Matty, I would love to know what you think of this game, if and when you get a chance to play it.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  I know, I want to play this. I'll let you know.

• 46:39Kirk Hamilton?

  It's, you know, it's pretty technical. It's not as technical as Street Fighter or anything, but, you know, you have a lot of moves and you unlock even more as you play. But it is just really cool. I mean, if either of you started, or anyone out there listening, has watched a trailer for this game or started it, it just grabs you. I mean, the art is beautiful, the music is killer, the story setup, it just hits the ground running. You're in the middle of this, like, really wild conflict. There's such cool character designs, just everything feels exciting. You know, you're on a really dangerous quest, the world has kind of ended, there's like horrible enemies everywhere, and you're really motivated to just get cracking and start figuring this thing out. And then, for me, the point of tension has been that I'm not very good. However, one thing I will note about Absalom,

• 47:24Kirk Hamilton?

  for anyone thinking about playing it, is that this game has those variable difficulty sliders that I have come to love so much, so you can increase the amount of damage you do and decrease the amount of damage that you take. It's in one of the, I think, accessibility menus. It took me a second to find it, but a listener actually mentioned to me, someone was emailing me about the music, which is really great, saying, "You've got to play this game because the music is so good." And also, there are difficulty sliders, and I think I wouldn't have even known if I had. I hadn't gotten that email, but that is a thing to know is that you can make it a little easier for yourself if you're not great at this kind of game. So I plan to play more. I can't really give like a super strong opinion of the game itself, other than to say it makes a hell of a first impression. And it did really stick out to me playing it so soon after Hades

• 48:05Kirk Hamilton?

  2, because it's so different and it's, it's a new world and it just, it showed me that I at least I'm kind of hungry for that right now for something new. So very promising seeming game.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it looks great. I'm gonna check it out for sure.

• 48:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice.

• 48:20Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I had dinner with Plant a couple of weeks ago in LA and he was raving about it and he was saying it's one of his favorites.

• 48:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think they did maybe a like whole besties episode about it. I haven't listened to it, but I think one of their recent episodes, they talk about it in depth. So I think they've played it a lot. If anyone wants to just hear some people talk about it right now.

• 48:37Jason Schreier?

  Cool. All right. Why don't we take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing.

• 48:46Speaker 04

  Moving is the worst.

• 48:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, but it's exciting, too. Our new Max Fun HQ office in downtown LA is actually gonna fit all of us in it. And the new studio is gonna be so nice. Plus, we'll have space for hangouts and events.

• 49:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, you're right. It's gonna be worth it, but boy, is it expensive. Maybe we can get some help?

• 49:09Speaker 05

  Hmm. Hey, cool listeners. If you want to get fun stuff and help us move, go to maximumfun.org/movingday, where you can get vintage merch or buy naming rights to stuff around the office. If you help us move by buying something, we'll invite you over for pizza and beer at our new place. Maximumfun.org/movingday.

• 49:35Speaker 06

  If you want to know what's going on in the world of movies, you should be listening to Maximum Film, so we can tell you all about it.

• 49:40Speaker 03

  Okay, but what if you already know what's going on in the world of movies? What if you're kind of obsessed with movies? Like maybe you have a problem?

• 49:46Speaker 07

  Well, then you should definitely be listening to Maximum Film, because we too have that problem and it's important you know you're not alone.

• 49:54Speaker 06

  We're talking indies you'll want to seek out.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  Blockbusters and blockbuster wannabes.

• 49:58Speaker 07

  Classics we can't get enough of.

• 50:00Speaker 03

  I'm comedian and writer Kevin Avery.

• 50:02Speaker 07

  I'm film critic Alonso Duraldi.

• 50:04Speaker 06

  I'm festival programmer and producer Dreya Clark.

• 50:06Speaker 07

  Together, we're Maximum Film. Smart about movies in Hollywood, so you don't have to be.

• 50:12Speaker 03

  But if you already are, that's also great. And hey, we see you.

• 50:15Speaker 06

  New episodes every week on MaximumFun.org.

• 50:19Jason Schreier?

  And we are back from that not an ad break, no matter what Kirk says. It's time for one more thing. Maddie, start us off.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Okay, so I rewatched slash watched a cartoon called The Venture Brothers. And I use that series of verbs because I watched The Venture Brothers when I was in college. And then I kind of stopped. I fell off in like 2009 and they just kept making Venture Brothers. And it kept going all the way to season seven in 2018 and I never finished watching it. And I really liked this show back in the day, but I wasn't sure if it was going to hold up. And I would say that parts of it do not, and that over time it gets better. And so I'm not sure if I would recommend-

• 51:12Jason Schreier?

  What is Venture Brothers?

• 51:13Speaker 01

  So Venture Brothers is an Adult Swim television show. And I say Adult Swim because I feel like it kind of is brothers in arms with like a Space Ghost or a Sea Lab or that kind of show, except that unlike Space Ghost and Sea Lab, which are reusing old kind of Hanna-Barbera style animations to like create a funny show with new dubbing and like edgy jokes. Venture Brothers imagines like wholesale new animation. What if a show like Johnny Quest were real? And then what would those characters be like if they were grown up? And they were kind of set in a more grounded reality? And like, how awful of a person would Johnny Quest be if he grew up?

• 51:55Speaker 01

  And like, had to try to deal with actual conflicts and not just running around in a kind of- Jungles and saving who knows who from who knows what. And that is, that is kind of what The Venture Brothers posits. It posits a world of protagonists and antagonists, supervillains, but kind of set in a gritty reality. And it's funny, it's a comedy, it's intended to be, but because it started in 2004, you're gonna have the characters in the first few seasons using the word gay as a pejorative. But then by the time you get to 2018, you're gonna have like multiple openly queer characters

• 52:33Speaker 01

  and like a pretty weirdly progressive show that like kind of tries to handle the fact that it like, it sort of introduced queer characters who seemed somewhat stereotypical very early on and then kind of makes them more well-rounded. There's a ton of queer content on this show, way, way more than I remembered. And I thought that was kind of fascinating and part of that is because animation takes such an extraordinarily long time to do and also because of what is parodying. A lot of these shows kind of scan as homoerotic because they're almost entirely male characters and like, we're all kind of familiar with the Hanna-Barbera setup, I think. Well, the ambiguously gay duo, right? Of course, I mean, that's what the ambiguously gay duo was lampooning and like the old Batmans

• 53:18Speaker 01

  and Spider-Man cartoons and so on, like kind of had some homoeroticism to them. And Venture Brothers leans into that at times. And then in the later seasons, makes it literal, which is interesting to see. So I, I, I don't, I don't know if I can recommend the show, but it's been really fascinating for me personally to watch. Uh, and it's all on Adult Swim streaming for free. So if for some reason you wanna like wander through kind of a history of what edgelord jokes were like from 2004 to 2018, you can do that. It's, it's streaming for free on this proprietary streaming app that Adult Swim has. It doesn't appear to be anywhere else and the streaming app sucks. I'll just go ahead and say that, it's pretty bad. The Adult Swim app?

• 54:00Speaker 01

  It's not gonna keep track of which episodes you have and haven't seen. You're just gonna have to remember that. Uh, but anyway, the show's called The Venture Brothers and um, it's been kind of, it's been like a nostalgia trip for me personally to finally complete it and see all of it.

• 54:16Kirk Hamilton?

  That reminds me of when the only way to watch Avatar, The Last Airbender was through the Nickelodeon website.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:21Kirk Hamilton?

  And it was a disaster. Like, it was like their streaming video player and it was such garbage.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  It's like that. I'm like, I don't, I don't know if there's like rights issues. There's like, I think Netflix has like the first three seasons, but not all of them or something like that. But if you want to just watch it all straight through, you can watch it on this shitty app. So, yeah.

• 54:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. Uh, Kirk, what's your one more thing? My one more thing was your one more thing a little while ago. And before I say what it is, I actually also want to say that I've been watching both of your one more things from last week. I watched Long Story Short, which is great. That was a great recommendation, Jason. You were, of course, right that I would like it. Really funny show. And Maddie, we've also been watching, Emily and I have been watching High Potential, which is a good kind of networky show. I've actually been playing Ball X Pit when that's on.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Perfect to play Ball X Pit.

• 55:09Kirk Hamilton?

  I feel like I already know who the killer is. I'm gonna focus on my, on my balls. So my one more thing is The Diplomat, the Netflix show. So he's focusing on his balls. I was, you gotta, you know, they're important.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  You gotta.

• 55:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Um, The Diplomat, which is a Netflix show. Jason, this was your one more thing. And am I correct that you have not, you're not up to date on this show? You, you stopped watching it some point? No, we kind of teffed out in season one at some point. Oh, man. Okay. So that means I get to tell people that The Diplomat is a really good show. Um, man, I started watching it kind of just, I think I just didn't have anything to watch and thought I'd throw it on, thinking it was just gonna be sort of mid, like one of those, I don't know, Jack Ryan-ish kind of spy shows where it's kind of middle of the road and maybe it has some fun episodes, but it's just something I can kind of put on in the background. No, this show is really, really great. It's really well-written. It's fascinating.

• 56:04Kirk Hamilton?

  It features an amazing lead performance from Keri Russell. And it's also a show that's actually about diplomacy, which I was not expecting going in and is maybe the most interesting thing about it. So this show, as Jason described, but I will, I will sort of recap. So this is a show, a show run by Deborah Khan, who came up as a, as a writer on The West Wing in the post-Sorkin era, the kind of malign- Era of the West Wing. And then she was, I don't know if she was showrunner, but she worked on Homeland. So she's kind of always been in that like government, you know, adjacent procedural slash drama world. And this is very much one of those. Carrie Russell plays a diplomat who is a kind of lifelong behind the scenes operator.

• 56:45Kirk Hamilton?

  So she's been focusing in the Middle East and knows all the players, you know, in Iran and in Baghdad. And she was there during the Gulf War and has been trying to, you know, advocate for peace and like help people, you know, whatever, stop killing one another. And she's like this lifelong operative, but she's not an ambassador or like someone who gets in front of cameras. She's like the person in the back rooms, meeting with people, trying to arrange, you know, secret meetings and stuff. So then she and her husband are sent to the UK and she is named ambassador to London, which is a really high profile ambassadorship because she is told in the first episode, she's being vetted to replace the vice president. Because the vice president has a scandal coming. It's like been, they've learned that like she had, you know, is funneling money improperly

• 57:30Kirk Hamilton?

  to something very quaint reason for someone to have to step down of office in 2025. But this is a little bit of a parallel timeline in some ways. So you kind of just have to go with that. So anyways, she's being vetted for vice president. She is put into this very high profile ambassadorship along with her husband. And her husband is also a really famous, well-known ambassador. And she's always kind of been in his shadow in a way, even though she is this incredible, incredibly capable person. And the show is basically about her deciding whether or not she wants to be vice president, deciding whether or not she wants to stay with her husband. They're like on the verge of a divorce at the beginning of the show.

• 58:09Kirk Hamilton?

  They have an incredibly complicated relationship. He is pretty awful in a lot of ways, but is also just a fascinating character. I mean, both of them are. He's played by an actor named Rufus Seawell, who I'm not familiar with. He has incredible chemistry with Carrie Russell. This is the second time after The Americans she's had just like amazing chemistry with her on-screen husband. And like, God, as much as I want to yell at her at times to be like, oh my God, you need to just divorce this guy. He is ruining your life. You, their relationship is so complicated and fascinating and they're just, you see how they love one another in this weird way and how they need one another, like professionally, like how in the end, you know, they're making these really important decisions about national security.

• 58:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Thousands of lives are on the line and they have to do what's best. And sometimes that means they have to stay together because if they split up, it would, you know, undermine their goals. So anyways, in this show, man, I mean, it's so well-written, it's really well-shot, something I will say about The Diplomat. Every season looks great. So much TV does not look good anymore. If you watch shows on Netflix, they're overlit, they're overexposed, they're not, just, it doesn't look like anyone behind the camera gave a shit. Like, it looks like they just set up each conversation and then you just point at the camera people and they talked. The Diplomat, really, they use light, they use shadow, they use interesting camera angles. They're constantly shooting from a distance, from up close. They move to handheld in really interesting times.

• 59:35Kirk Hamilton?

  It just, whoever is the director of photography on a given episode is like doing work and it's appreciated by me anyways. It's fun to watch a show that is mostly people in rooms talking and yet it always is beautiful and interesting looking and well-shot. So that's yet another thing I like about it. And just, man, it's such a great mix of procedural diplomacy. So much of diplomacy is just, can we get this guy in the room with this guy? You know, can we reveal that we know this information at this point? Or will that tell them too much about who told us the information? We know this guy is going to be killed, but we're not totally positive about it. We need to confirm it before we ask someone about it. Like, there's, it's all that kind of stuff. Kind of sounds like my job.

• 1:00:17Kirk Hamilton?

  It kind of, well, and that's, I think, why, yeah, any reporter would find it interesting is because it's about learning information, confirming information, and figuring out what to do with that information, which I think is what a lot of diplomacy is like. Obviously, it's very heightened, it's very dramatic, it's very dishy and exciting. I don't think that real diplomacy is quite so sexy and fun, but it's not like one of those shows, like so many of these shows, where it's kind of spycraft and they're doing diplomacy for the first two episodes and then they're in car chases and they're shooting people. Like, no one's ever shooting at anyone else in this show. And then, the only other thing I'll say is that, with that said, each season chooses usually one moment to do something outrageous. And then, something that would only happen on a TV show happens.

• 1:01:01Kirk Hamilton?

  And it like, totally like, elevates things and makes things get really melodramatic. And that has kept happening through two seasons. We're now in the third season, which is currently airing. It is so far very strong. I gather that it ends with another something or other. I'm sort of annoyed that everyone's already seen the season and their headlines implying something or other that's maybe controversial, so I don't know. But I'm really enjoying the current season as well. It's just a crackerjack show. It's smart, it expects you to keep up. It's made for adults. It feels, I don't know, I just haven't seen a show quite like this in a long time. And I love it. I'm really, I'm really a big fan. So that is my full-throated endorsement of The Diplomat on Netflix.

• 1:01:37Jason Schreier?

  One thing you didn't mention, of course, is that the West Wing's Bradley Woodford, aka Josh Lyman, and Allison Janney, aka CJ, are in this show, played pretty big roles in the show as well.

• 1:01:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I wasn't sure whether to mention, I suppose everyone knows about Allison Janney. She was a surprise to me when she turned up, which she does turn up in, in season two as the vice president. And it's this very fun moment where you're like, oh, hey, look at that. And she's so great, and her character is so great. The vice president is a great character, and Allison Janney is killing it. And I will not say who Bradley Woodford is. He is turned up in season three, but it is pretty cool, who he is. And I really loved his first appearance. I haven't gotten to see a lot, a lot from him yet.

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  He's just replaying The Dad and Get Out again, and it's part of the standard Get Out universe.

• 1:02:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, right, right, right. Actually, The Dad and Get Out was Josh Lyman, he was just retiring.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  Whoa, multiverse.

• 1:02:31Jason Schreier?

  My one more thing is a book that I'm reading called Workhorse by Caroline Palmer. It's a brand new book. And the first thing you notice about this book is that it's like, this big. I'm holding my hands pretty far apart. It is a tome. It is like, 550 pages. And the story of this book is really interesting. It's about, it's written by this woman who used to be in, an editor for a very long time at Vogue magazine, and it's a book about a woman who... Enters the fashion magazine industry at an unnamed magazine as an assistant or as an editorial assistant in 2001, back when the magazine era was at its kind of like luxurious peak and her kind of adventures through over the years at this magazine. And it is

• 1:03:12Jason Schreier?

  an interesting story. It is just like probably a solid 300 pages longer than it needs to be. There is so many, so much repetitive monologuing and there are so many details that just do not need to be in there. I almost, I like laughed out loud when I read this entire paragraph that was just dedicated to the, the food items in a catering set in some random little scene that like had nothing to do with the overall story. That aside, despite the bloated length, it almost feels like a video game in that it's just like too much padding, unnecessary amounts of padding. This would be a much better book if it was like 300 pages instead of 550 or whatever it is.

• 1:03:53Jason Schreier?

  But that said, it's a really fascinating story. The characters are extremely unlikable, which is fun. The main character especially is this kind of conniving, self-serving, just kind of like woe is me sort of character. But you wind up rooting for her because she is coming into this world as this kind of average, middle to middle, upper-class suburban girl who like had a comfortable life, but is coming into this world that is full of these just kind of upper crust people who don't have to work for anything and like are just kind of ushered away to their Hamptons houses every weekend on their, in their, in their private cars and take first

• 1:04:35Jason Schreier?

  class travel anywhere they go. And there's one great quote in the book that is like, they know Maine intimately, something like that. I'm paraphrasing badly, but they're emotionally familiar with Maine because they go there for their, their vacations and ski trips or whatever. And so it's really interesting watching this, this young girl who turns into a woman who like evolves as she like tries to navigate this world full of upper crust types and how she schemes and how she like. Maneuvers and works around it. It's also really interesting seeing this picture painted of the print journalism era before it all came crashing down.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that part sounds fascinating.

• 1:05:16Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, well, the luxuries that are just kind of described in this book are pretty out of control. There's

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  Anytime I hear about them, I'm like, wow, it's crazy how it used to be.

• 1:05:25Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, in this, in this magazine, in their office, they have a, an entire desk where you go to get petty cash and you fill out a form and you bring it to this desk and then they just give you cash, like they print out cash and you can just spend it however you want. It's like, it's ridiculous. They have these galas where they have black cars lined up for people. They provide these incredible outfits for all the women involved. They fly people around first class wherever they want, stay them and they stay in the ritziest hotels. They are like ridiculous perks that are coming with this. Yet at the same time, this main character is making $24,000 a year and living in New York City. So it's kind of like, it's,

• 1:06:07Jason Schreier?

  at one point, it's described as this job that you can only take if you, your family is wealthy enough for you to be able to take this job, which is one of the reasons so many of the people around her in this book are like upper crust types. And so that, that dichotomy is really interesting and watching, again, this woman who is a very bad person and does some really awful things, you kind of sympathize with that because it's all, it's like, she convinces you that it's the only way she can get around in this world is by like stealing from people and embezzling and doing all these really bad things. So that's really interesting. And yeah, it's a really fascinating book. I'm enjoying reading it for the most part. I just wish it was shorter. My goodness, like an editor really like for someone who worked in magazines for so long, you would think that maybe after working in magazines

• 1:06:52Jason Schreier?

  where you have such a limited word count for so long, it was just like, okay, here I can, I can spend all the words I want, but it is. I've, I've read a lot of books and this is one of the more bloated ones that I've seen, even compared to the like thousand word fantasy novels. At least those are just story, like those are bloated because it's all story. This is bloated because it's all unnecessary description and monologuing.

• 1:07:17Kirk Hamilton?

  This sounds like The Devil Wears Prada.

• 1:07:18Jason Schreier?

  I know, right? So, okay, so that's the...

• 1:07:20Kirk Hamilton?

  I have to mention that at least.

• 1:07:22Jason Schreier?

  So that's the most obvious comparison, but it's not that at all because there's no mean nasty boss, there's no editor, the editor in chief is like, doesn't even have a name in this book. There's no dichotomy between her and a nasty person above her. It's really, if anything, the people above her are just like cold and just like realistic, a lot more realistic than just like cruel depictions of Anna Wintour or whoever. No, this is more, it's more about her and then this kind of triangle of friends that she develops, including this one close friend who is a member of the upper crust and the relationships that the main character develops with her. And then her mother, who used to be a famous actress, and it's got a totally different dynamic. The only thing it has similar with Devil Wears Prada is that it's also in a big fashion

• 1:08:07Jason Schreier?

  magazine.

• 1:08:09Kirk Hamilton?

  God, it's more about class, where Devil Wears Prada was a little more about like bosses and girl bossing.

• 1:08:15Jason Schreier?

  Exactly. It's more about classes.

• 1:08:17Kirk Hamilton?

  They're from different eras, you know?

• 1:08:18Jason Schreier?

  And this is more about painting a very specific picture of New York City, the magazine industry in this era where it was all excess. And it's fun to read as a reader where you know it's all going to come crashing down, but at the time, it's just like ridiculous expenditures. And there's this one cute moment where like this one character is starting a blog and like, hey, could that turn into a company? I guess we'll see how that, how that shows up. It's, I'm very curious to see if there's some Gawker parallels that happen, happen there. If one day someone writes the, the great fiction book about the 2010s digital media.

• 1:08:55Kirk Hamilton?

  It'll happen.

• 1:08:56Jason Schreier?

  I would love to read that one.

• 1:08:57Kirk Hamilton?

  It'll be great, but someone will write it.

• 1:08:59Jason Schreier?

  Well, I would love to see a great one because we, we lived through that one, but this is, it's fun reading about an era that we just missed coming into as well.

• 1:09:09Jason Schreier?

  But yeah, I mean, this it's again, I would like more heartily recommend it if it was 200 pages shorter, but like, right now, I can just say-

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  It's too bad, because I want to read it. I might just muscle through it anyway.

• 1:09:21Jason Schreier?

  The thing, okay, the thing is, even though as I'm reading it, I keep thinking, oh, my God, I wish they were shorter. I wish this would get to some story already, instead of all this prattling on. It's still fun to read, and it's got, the writing is very, it really pops. Like, the writer is exceptional, and the way that Caroline Palmer writes it, it's never boring. It's just, like, tedious, if you can see the distinction.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  Well, you're kind of wasting my time with this bit, though.

• 1:09:47Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. But it's like, this feels like a waste of time, but it's still enjoyable to read, for the most part. I could do without. There are a lot of, like, fashion brand descriptions and, and name drops that I'm just like, I have no idea what any of this means.

• 1:10:01Kirk Hamilton?

  That's not your thing.

• 1:10:02Jason Schreier?

  And descriptions of clothes, like, what everybody's wearing at all times must be described.

• 1:10:07Kirk Hamilton?

  It seems like the kind of thing Jason Schreier would be into.

• 1:10:08Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, for real. Here in my, in my Triple Click sweatshirt.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  Because you're such a fashion plate, like, wearing different stuff every time we see you.

• 1:10:16Jason Schreier?

  Exactly. Definitely don't wear sweatshirts every day.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Definitely not wearing your Triple Click sweatshirt over and over.

• 1:10:20Jason Schreier?

  But, uh, but like, even, even, for the most part, even when it feels tedious and bloated, it's never boring, because the writing is good, and so it's fun to read. So I do recommend it. I do enjoy the book. It's just like, it would get a full-throated recommendation if it was shorter, and alas, someone really-

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  This is why we need editing.

• 1:10:39Jason Schreier?

  Maybe the paperback version, they can, yes, this is my editing. Editing is important. Yep. All right, that is that for this week's episode. Kirk, Matty, see you both next week.

• 1:10:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, I will see you both next week.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 1:10:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Triple Click 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. Email us at [email protected] and find links to our merch store and our Discord server in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

• 1:11:53Speaker 04

  Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.