Conversations: Will Theseus Get What’s Coming to Him? Minos with Kacper Szymczak

This time Michaela comes on the show for her first solo conversation episode with Kacper Szymczak the Creative Director of Artificer Games. We had lots of fun chatting ancient sources, inspiration, what is canon when it comes to myth, and what makes a game fun to play! Find Minos on steam here https://store.steampowered.com/app/3181650/MINOS/ and get to building some labyrinths or mazes or whatever they're called! Pre-order Liv's Odyssey adaptation (!!!), The Odyssey: a Modern Retelling. https://geni.us/TheOdysseyBook Submit your question for the next Q&A via email http://mythsbaby.com/questions or a voice note https://www.speakpipe.com/LTAMB. Get ad-free episodes and so, so much more, by subscribing to the Oracle Edition at patreon.com/mythsbaby http://patreon.com/mythsbaby. Enter ourpodcast guest https://www.mythsbaby.com/contact form if you'd like to be on the show as a conversation guest! CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. I try to provide direct warnings when there is reference to anything with overtly traumatic themes but be aware that Greek mythology regularly features assault, death, and many other potentially triggering events. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here:mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Liv Albert?

  Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful, and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com/grouptrip.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.o.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's go.o.gle/workspacewithgemini.

• 1:46Liv Albert?

  Hi, everyone, and welcome back to Let's Talk About Myths, baby. Today is a episode I'm a little nervous about, but that's fun and exciting. If you can't tell, it's Michaela Panglish, resident Hermes, producer of the show, researcher, etc. And this is actually my first solo conversation episode with somebody. I feel like it went well.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  But I guess you all will find out and see. This episode, I talked with Kasper Shimczuk of Artificer Games on the new game they came up with called Minos. All about the labyrinth and the minotaur and it's, you know, it's a fun little rogue type game. Where you just, you build the labyrinth and fuck up some Greek heroes and that's always fun and exciting. So without further ado, I'll let us get into the episode.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  Conversations. Will Theseus get what's coming to him? Minos with Kasper Shimczuk.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  I guess the easiest way we can start is if you want to introduce yourself and we can go from there.

• 3:23Speaker 03

  Well, name or surname? I was expecting you'd be saying my name.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Kasper Shimczuk.

• 3:29Speaker 03

  Perfect. That's amazing. Spectacular.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 3:31Speaker 03

  Yes, close enough. You got it.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  Kasper Shimczuk is the way you would say it if you were Polish, born and raised. And I am the creative director and CEO of Artificer. And I suppose the reason I'm here is to talk about Minos or Minos. We haven't yet decided.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  It's corrected. It's corrected multiple places.

• 3:59Speaker 03

  One of those. Yeah, probably. Yeah, yeah.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  And do you want to tell me a bit about Minos the game? Minos the game? There, I'm doing it. Great.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  There you go. Yeah, so Minos is a game about the Minotaur in a maze and all a lot of other things around it. So the basic setup is this, there's a Minotaur in a maze. And there's heroes coming from across the land in adventures to slay the famous monster for glory, gold, whatever. And so you designed the maze, you control the Minotaur and you set up traps in the maze so that the traps, the maze and the Minotaur kill everyone. And the key focus point, like in terms of gameplay, is the layer of the construction and labyrinth design.

• 4:47Speaker 03

  Actually, maze, we were, uh, thought that, or, um, our vocal community, that labyrinth is not the same thing as a maze. Did you know that?

• 4:57Speaker 04

  In my mind, it is, but

• 4:59Speaker 03

  So, yes.

• 4:59Speaker 04

  Fair to anyone else.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, but like, in theory, labyrinth, which is, which I find extremely stupid, but please bear with me. Labyrinth is, um, a, well, it's a maze with no, uh, with no crossings.

• 5:16Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  So basically, in practice, that's just a long windy corridor. That's it. That's what, yeah, which is like, how is this a thing? What's, what's the purpose of this word even? But, okay.

• 5:32Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, that's, that's very interesting. I know, because labyrinth, etymologically, I can say things mostly at eight in the morning, um, because it comes from the, the, the word in antiquity for the, the double-headed axe that's found in, in, um, Minoan culture, which was called a, a labyrinth. So, and I, because, you know,

• 5:53Speaker 03

  So cool.

• 5:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, the labyrinth was known for

• 5:57Speaker 03

  Making a note for

• 5:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's a lot of like, I, we spend a lot of time looking up words here because we're just like, but why? Uh, that's so fun. So what, um, what like sparked this idea, like to bring?

• 6:13Speaker 03

  Um, so I have a drawer full of game ideas. I've been doing this for 20 years now professionally. And so there's a, there's a lot of games, like my biggest fear in life. Let me step this up. So my biggest fear in life is, um, I will die too soon to be able to realize all my game ideas.

• 6:34Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  You know, and I'm just getting more, right?

• 6:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  So I need to step up my game. And so, um, one of those was to make a game about designing labyrinth because, mazes. Because, um, I find it a fascinating thing to work with. To make the player feel like they're designing an interesting maze.

• 6:57Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 6:57Speaker 03

  That's, that's something somewhat mind bending, right? So whenever you want to depict something mind bending, you use the maze. So like, for example, in the, uh, titles to the movie Inception, there's a lot of mazes there. There's no mazes in the movie. There's literally nothing related, right? But, you know, um, it's, it's a symbol of things being spatially complicated, I think, on a two D surface.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, so base of that, I was playing with this idea, um,

• 7:39Speaker 03

  of making something interesting out of it. And so obviously naturally, um, My Inter works, you know, in a...

• 7:49Speaker 04

  Thematically, yeah.

• 7:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, it makes sense.

• 7:52Speaker 04

  He's known for it.

• 7:53Speaker 03

  Also, yes, widely known character. It's a big, massive free IP, you know?

• 8:00Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  So a huge brand, out of the box, also never been done before. As in, My Inter has been present in some games and some movies, et cetera. Like even, you know, Heroes 3 has a My Inter, right? And many others. But it's always a character in the, in the backgrounds, always something, you know? And, um, I think that's an interesting story to latch on to.

• 8:25Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 8:27Speaker 03

  Even though we're not necessarily retelling it, um... If we want to segue into that for a second.

• 8:35Speaker 03

  I was assuming that's kind of what you want to talk about primarily.

• 8:39Speaker 04

  Yes, we can definitely, we'll definitely be talking about it. I wanted to touch all the bases as well because I am a bit of a like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm a very like, why person, tell me things in a happy way.

• 8:50Speaker 03

  Okay, alright, good, good, good.

• 8:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, because you're very right in saying that the Minotaur has never had the forefront of sort of anything. And we haven't as, I guess, in the wider culture, kind of accepted sort of like his sympathetic, sympatheticness, where, where it's like, this was a, I mean, I feel like the, the one that got the closest to it recently was actually the Chaos TV show on Netflix, which I'm still mad that they canceled because it is so good. But, oh, it's, it is so good. Jeff Goldblum is Zeus.

• 9:33Speaker 04

  It, I know, I know, I know. I swear they just released him on the set and they were like, do what you want.

• 9:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it starts with like, like the show starts out with Money for Nothing playing, and it's just, it's just gorgeous. It's, it's so well done. It's, it plays with myth really fun, in a really fun way. And it plays with the Minos and the Minotaur myth really well. In that it depicts it in a different way, where the Minotaur isn't, I won't give you spoilers, but he isn't quite as monstrous as the traditional story tells us, which is great. And that's one of the things I first noticed and I was really happy about was that in your game, I was playing the demo, was that he is named and he has his name from myth because we often default.

• 10:24Speaker 03

  It's so frustrating because people come and a lot, we have a lot of comments, comments saying, oh, it's a, it's a wink to Baldur's Gate.

• 10:35Speaker 04

  Yes, you're right.

• 10:37Speaker 03

  No.

• 10:38Speaker 04

  We promise it's not. Yes, it's the, it's the actual, the name he had. And he is a very interesting character in that who's to say he would have grown up to be monstrous if he didn't grow up in the environment he was.

• 10:52Speaker 03

  And, yeah, which is the story of any human, basically, everyone who's, who we perceive as evil.

• 10:59Speaker 04

  Yep. And and it's one of the things we we talk about a lot, mostly in terms of like Medusa and such is like these creatures, these monsters, quote unquote, are just living their life in a place. And then it's the heroes that are coming to them to like to mess with them and they're getting their asses handed to them. But it's like, it's not actually, the monster's not actually doing anything but existing in their environment. And then outside forces are coming in trying to kill them. And that's why they're viewed as monstrous is because they are actually capable of killing a man, which is, you know, not probably not hard when you're half bull, half man, but.

• 11:43Speaker 03

  Yep, exactly. And I I would say um that's that's something that I find interesting in a lot of uh settings in a lot of stories and it's like it's not necessarily only monsters. So I've been delving into the history of piracy recently and like the birth of piracy and the golden age of piracy. That was pure economy.

• 12:03Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 12:04Speaker 03

  Like was these like like um pirates like would be basically forced to be doing this out of necessity and hunger and all that. So, you know, um. We could probably extend it to all the villains.

• 12:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:19Speaker 03

  Think of.

• 12:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, truly. I I think it's there's a very, there's a very interesting thing that um happens there with it's just perception. And who is being quote unquote like um victimized where you know, when a when a large um empirical system is like, oh, hey, these people are attacking our ships and taking our goods and now we can't as easily go about um trading our wares. Let's all talk about where we got our wares or what the wares are. But something is creating a barrier. They're the bad guys and they're being shown as bad. But it's like, we also created a system that pushes people to the margins. And people are, we are nothing if not um like. Good at thinking of new and interesting and fun and creative ideas to survive,

• 13:04Speaker 04

  especially when we're forced to in those positions.

• 13:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. And so you have the story of this child.

• 13:09Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 13:09Speaker 03

  Who has been cursed through no fault of his own.

• 13:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:12Speaker 03

  And so he was born different and so everyone hates him. It's like, that's a very universal story, right?

• 13:20Speaker 03

  Um, so obviously we took some liberty with the story, with the myth. So my licencia poetica sort of is that, well, this is myth, right? So there's probably a lot of tellings of the myth. Um, so this is our telling of the myth, which isn't, not exactly canon. And, oh, funny, funny thing, we, uh, of all the silly random comments we had, uh, under our materials, there were comments like, "This, uh, the monitor depiction isn't historically accurate." I'm like, dude.

• 13:57Speaker 04

  What's historically accurate?

• 13:59Speaker 03

  What do you mean? Yeah, what's?

• 14:01Speaker 04

  With a mythological creature.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but like, that's, that's one change that we sort of had to do is, our, um, monitor is, has more of a human face.

• 14:14Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 14:14Speaker 03

  Because, like, you still have to empathize with this creature. So, uh, basically, if you were playing a cow, that's, that's really difficult to, to have that convey emotion and, you know, be attached to, unless you're a furry, I guess, but, um.

• 14:33Speaker 04

  Fair.

• 14:34Speaker 03

  Fair. Yeah, like, so, yeah, that comes, that, that I've heard a lot of as well. Dude, like, your game's gonna be huge with the furries, okay?

• 14:42Speaker 04

  And you know what? They are very generous with their money bunch and nice, they're nice people. I will give them that. I, I just, I just go, I, I listen and don't judge. I listen and don't judge.

• 14:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like, I, yeah, whomever, like, I, yeah.

• 15:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:01Speaker 03

  I, I would love to have even, I don't know, Al Qaeda buying my games. That's, that would be great as well. I don't mind. Um, so, um, and one more thing that we do in that regard, and going back to, to the fact that it is a child, so we, this is, this is going to be a bit of spoiler area, but we'll probably be doing a lot of that here anyways, so.

• 15:25Speaker 03

  In the beginning of the game, the Asterion is a child, like a human child, but with a bit of, a bit of, a bit of bull.

• 15:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:34Speaker 03

  If you've played ICO, that's sort of the reference we've been using, as in, a cursed boy looked up somewhere, somewhere.

• 15:41Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:41Speaker 03

  And so that's one of the big changes through the, to the myth. So the problem with the myth, through the perspective of an interactive medium, is, um, in the myth, in the core canon telling of the myth,

• 16:01Speaker 03

  Asterion is 100% passive, like has no agency, which is not a good trait for a protagonist, right?

• 16:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:08Speaker 03

  Therefore, as in any Greek tragedy, uh, seeking, uh, happiness and ever, whatever,

• 16:20Speaker 03

  the turning into monster is partially of his own doing.

• 16:25Speaker 03

  Right? So, so that's, uh,

• 16:31Speaker 03

  sorry, I lost my trailer footer. Yeah, so that's, there, there are several things here in the myth that, that don't necessarily work for a video game.

• 16:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:39Speaker 03

  Another one would be, well, as you probably noticed, in most video games, you win.

• 16:46Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 16:47Speaker 03

  Like, the purpose is victory. Even if you, yeah, even if you somehow fail at the, at the end, like, no, I'll bleed or whatever. It's kind of like you were trying so hard and winning so hard that you had to lose. And, you know, and that was, then that wasn't even interactive at that moment, right?

• 17:04Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:04Speaker 03

  So, um, so as you can probably, uh, imagine, the encounter with Theseus isn't exactly going the, uh, uh, uh, the, uh, the canon way, right?

• 17:17Speaker 04

  Yeah. That's nice. At least, you know, that'll, that'll feel good for all of us who have our feelings about Theseus.

• 17:23Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, 100%. Yeah, it's very, uh, it's very...

• 17:26Speaker 04

  It's hard, eh?

• 17:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's kind of like Glorious Bastards.

• 17:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:32Speaker 03

  Like, there's no way he's gonna die, right? Right? Right? Oh my god, he died! Yeah, sorry, spoilers. Yeah.

• 17:41Speaker 04

  Well, you know, we can all, we can all live out our, our, our feelings of how things sort of gone in antiquity with this one then. And that'll be nice because, ooh, if only Theseus could have been stopped at some point, that would have been great.

• 17:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:56Speaker 04

  Great. So how did, yeah, go ahead.

• 17:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, so one thing I also wanted to add to this is I believe that when you tell a story, that like retelling a story that is somewhat well known. You can't really tell the exactly same story because they kind of know the story. And the point of listening to a story is hearing a new story. So therefore there has to be some changes, at least in, in how things happen, right? To make it interesting and fresh.

• 18:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I think there's something you said earlier with, you know, the canon of myth, which I think is like a common, some, I think, people outside of like mythological studies or comparative myth, often think that there is a canon to myth. But yeah, and when you kind of sit with myth and, and study it for a while, you, there's a very quick realization that the idea of canon in, in mythology is just not true. Because of how these stories move around and how different people interact with them and what different people see in them. It changes. And so I come from a, a very like myth heavy culture. Yeah. So like I know I said, I have some Polish ancestry, I do.

• 19:15Speaker 04

  But I'm First Nations. And so like I grew up in a very myth heavy environment where I was told stories orally from my elders and other people, of other people I knew. All throughout growing up and no one ever told the same story in the same way or with all the same elements. They were like, you know, certain touchstones that stayed the same, but people would play with the details. And I think that's really important because I find what happens with myth is that it is something that, it is a, it is a didactic experience. It teaches an individual sort of.

• 19:53Speaker 04

  How to act in situations or how to think about what one should do in certain situations? And so to kind of look at the um, the the Minotaur myth and to assume it always went the way it did. Um, from the few, you know, sources that we have, it's like, well, we have only, you know, a Oh, Liv would know better, um, but like maybe one or two, like hard sources. Um, like, uh, like written sources. There's a lot of other like pictorial um, things. I know my favorite, there's a my favorite image from pottery is actually a pacifé holding baby Asterion. And it's very like, it's, it's, it's, it's suddenly like you see that and you're like, oh, okay. Well, like

• 20:38Speaker 04

  now we're getting this idea straight from antiquity that it's like people are remembering the Minotaur was once a baby. And that

• 20:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 20:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. So suddenly it's like, okay, so that idea of him being just purely monstrous is not quite just the, the strict thing. Because he is being humanized in those moments. And even that he has his own name, you know, that he is, he's not just the Minotaur, he is named. Is another thing like we name things we care about, like, you know, I, yeah, like I in a high school, I had a, had a boyfriend who's family owned a farm and I'd visit and they had cows and I remember naming one once for some stupid reason. And then, you know, months later.

• 21:23Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 21:24Speaker 04

  Yeah. His mom was like, oh.

• 21:26Speaker 03

  Oh, time to blam story, Jesus.

• 21:29Speaker 04

  And I was like, I was like, why would you tell me this? This is horrible.

• 21:34Speaker 04

  But the act of naming is a very like personal and intimate thing to do because it just humanizes a person immediately or humanizes a thing. Um, and so I, I think that's very interesting to look to, to know that, like. Asterion, the Minotaur, was not just a monster throughout history. And that his story wasn't static, you know, X, Y, Z happened. That when people would tell these stories to their children or to other people, that they would put their own spin on it. And you know, the Minotaur would always stay, maybe there'd always be a labyrinth. You know, maybe Theseus would always show up and do his Theseus thing.

• 22:17Speaker 04

  But the little details would change from person to person. Um, and there were some purists who don't like that, and that's, that's fair.

• 22:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course, yeah.

• 22:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, we're allowed to have our preferences.

• 22:31Speaker 03

  So I think there's a, it's really hard to make everyone happy, obviously. But there is, like, he's still, um, like, I'm a big believer in approaching stories in a sort of hero's, hero of a thousand faces, you know, rookie story way. As in, there are rules, there are expectations. Um, sure, you can subvert expectations, but for example, you don't get to change the genre. Like, for example, um, um, oh my God, what's the title of the movie?

• 23:08Speaker 04

  Ooh, what happens in it?

• 23:09Speaker 03

  Ah, Vampires, Mexico.

• 23:12Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 23:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, that one, Tarantino or Rodriguez, was that Rodriguez? You know which one, Tomahayek.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  Just Google. What's the, From Dark Till Down, yeah.

• 23:24Speaker 04

  Oh, there we go.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  So, I, I believe From Dark Till Down wasn't super successful. It, it's a cult movie, but it's like, wasn't super successful because it changes the genre. Like, and genre is a, that's a, that's a deal, the customer made with you, the audience made with you. Like, I came here to laugh, or I came here for action, or I came here for whatever. And sure, it's a better play, I want you to surprise me, but within the confines of this thing, right?

• 23:49Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 23:49Speaker 03

  So, for example, if Asterion, at the end of the game, you know, um, a UFO came and he'd like fly out back home to Mars where he's, where he's from or whatever.

• 24:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:01Speaker 03

  Then, yeah, well, that's, you know, sure, you can do everything and surprise everyone, but it's kind of like with the, uh... We've lost, right? It's like, we had, there were rules established here and you're breaking all of them. And so now anything can happen.

• 24:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:19Speaker 03

  Why should I care?

• 24:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's less stakes.

• 24:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, because when there's, when there's mystery, and I think of every story is a mystery to some degree. I feel like there's a huge overlap between mystery stories and so all stories and games in that as you watch the plot unfold, and this is very clear in like Agatha Christie stories. You watch the plot unfold, you, you watch the, you follow a detective, like trying to reveal a plot. And at the same time, you're having this gameplay experience of trying to figure out faster than they do.

• 24:54Speaker 03

  And so as long as they're not cheating, as in like they're not withholding any special information that the audience wouldn't have, then it's a great story. And it's, it's kinda, it's kinda a similar thing, right?

• 25:05Speaker 03

  It's a deal. And so the myth again is a similar deal, right? So it has to has these elements. But we have to change them a bit to make it interesting. But I also respect the audience's expectations to have Theseus there somewhere, have Ariadna there. And, you know, and like have a bull person.

• 25:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, there, there are certain things that are like, yep, those should remain probably. They're, they're very, they're core to the myth or in a way that it's like, they have the elements, but then play with the sort of the dressing.

• 25:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you still have a lot of room to, to have fun with the extra context and the depth, like for example. Uh, so the way Minos is structured, it's a rogue-like or rogue-like game. And for whomever isn't really into games, so the con, like the way it works is you play a level, you design a maze, you put in traps, enemies come, you slay them all. And so then you move forward to another maze and you redo this and you unlock more traps and new tools and upgrade your monitor skills, whatever. At one point you might perish and when you do. You retain some of your progress and you have to start from, from, from the beginning.

• 26:19Speaker 03

  So, but now you have different traps. Now you have like, there is the, the things you unlock and the things you collect. These are, it's a now new subset, subset of all the tools, so they combo differently. And so your game is somewhat different every time, every, every time you play it. That's the gist of it. And so for this, we needed to solve the problem of, so, so it's not one maze. Because you have to, you cannot indefinitely work on one maze, but it's gonna be boring. And we also wanted to be pretty snappy and so you finish a level in like fifteen, twenty minutes. So how, why would Monitor move to a different maze, right?

• 27:03Speaker 03

  And so the solution is, it's not a maze, it's, what is better than a maze? A maze of mazes, right? True. Obviously. So, so what, what happens in the game? Well, then again, spoilers.

• 27:18Speaker 03

  You go through the maze of mazes, deeper, deeper underground and

• 27:25Speaker 03

  the whole structure is a sentient maze that eventually talks to you and explains things. Like how it's been created by Hefesis to be the ultimate problem solver and to figure out what maze designing is all about. And so it kinda uses you to like, gives you tools to observe you, how you do this, so that, so that learns from you. And so it's, it's all like a massive clockwork underground structure where

• 27:59Speaker 03

  Asterion receives like trap designs from, from the maze, from Brontos and

• 28:08Speaker 03

  When the traps set up in the maze kill enemies, blood flows through elaborate systems of pipes and and hydraulics, basically, deep underground, where the blood is filtered out to retrieve iron from the blood, from which new traps are constructed. Okay. Yeah, so that you get more traps for killing enemies. And that's, so there's, so there's things like that, that, you know, they don't, they're not contradictory to the myth.

• 28:44Speaker 03

  And it's a stretch. It's a stretch. It's a, it's a big extension of the myth. But it's like, as you keep adding layers, it's okay. So why are they, why are they sitting there? Like, where's the, what's the purpose of Daedalus sitting there? I was like, why, why are we moving from one maze to another? Right? So you can make all these interesting things that Lara can delve into when they're, you know, their play for is like 20 hours of it, right? Yes. It's gotta be a bit of that. Something.

• 29:25Liv Albert?

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• 30:09Liv Albert?

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• 31:18Speaker 05

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• 32:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's an entire subset of classics that's like reception studies, but specifically like video game reception studies. And so like, this is something that gets talked about a lot is like, how do you change the story to fit a game format? Like, because, you know, especially like, especially with a sort of like a myth like the Minotaur, where there is actually not that much compared to some other myths. But if you want to make a game entirely around the one thing, which it like deserves in and of itself, you've got to be able to take liberties because it needs to be able to fit a gaming format. And I think that's gets people a little like moments.

• 32:46Speaker 04

  But, you know, they accepted Hades. Yeah, where, you know, they were like, oh, like, you know, you know, people were like, oh, they just accepted the idea of Zeguius in and of itself. And then it was, they would ask us about it and we're like, oh, man, Zeguius is like, the name itself, a mythology, shows up like once or twice within one, within one like mystery cult. Like, it's not a thing. And so it's, you're, you're allowed to sort of play with things because it's also true to how stories work and how they exist throughout time. It's like, we're allowed to take these themes and apply them to the here and now

• 33:30Speaker 04

  in ways that are readable for the person here and now. And, yeah, so, but, you know, some people get upset. And I think that's fair because there are things I get really, really upset about, too, canon things, mostly books.

• 33:46Speaker 03

  I think, so I think people are only upset if it's not great. If, and more often than not, if your, if your work is great, and then everything, you know, everything is forgiven. To give you a good example.

• 34:05Speaker 03

  Oh my god, I love this story so much. So Witcher 3 came out a long time ago, right? And so, we would be discussing this in the studio and like, like, so this element is great, the story is great, the quests are amazing, the alchemy system, the crafting is so bad.

• 34:21Speaker 04

  I would never use it.

• 34:22Speaker 03

  The interface, yeah. It was just so awful. And we were like, "Oh, you're just salty because the game is extremely successful." It's, you know, it's Witcher. It's like the best game ever. Everything is good about this. And a year later, they patched this, like they re-overhauled the thing. And when I talked to the devs at some point, we were like, "Yeah, that was like, the alchemy, yeah, we fucked it up. That was bad." So, again, when you're successful, when the game's, like, when the rest is amazing, then, you know, you can do whatever.

• 34:59Speaker 04

  It's like the Majora's Mask time situation in like the original N64 version, where it's like, you can just go back to day one, if you want to trigger certain events, you have to like sit there and wait for the actual time. And that was such a pain in the ass when I was younger. I was just like, "I just need it to be 3pm on the second day to do X thing." And I have to sit here waiting from, you know, 8am on the first day, to, I'm like, "Okay, here we go. We're just gonna sit and wait." And you know, when they remade it for the little guy, the DS, the, yeah. They made it so that there's actually a system where you can go and like pick which time to go to,

• 35:41Speaker 04

  and there's like a notebook system that like keeps important information down, like people's schedules and stuff. And I'm like, "That is so helpful." Because people's big issue with the game was how difficult that was to work with. I meanwhile loved Majora's Mask.

• 35:56Speaker 03

  100% of the people were like, "Oh my god, this is bullshit. This is insane here." Like, the whole point of playing Majora's Mask in the past was to sit and wait.

• 36:05Speaker 04

  Yep. It was a very, it was a very contemplative game. It was so dark. And I remember just being like... Like, I look back now and I'm like, how did, how was it okay for me to play that when I was so young? Like, I'm like, I'm like, do I have like, mental health issues because of Majora's mask? Did that ruin me? That introduced me to the dark side of the world too young? What happened? But yeah, you're right. Like, we can kind of forgive things. And like, we were talking about like Assassin's Creed earlier too, like the first game.

• 36:34Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:34Speaker 04

  Where when it came out, it was just so amazing. And we, we could look past just how every little mission was literally the exact same thing. Offered over again with a different skin. Because it was so phenomenal.

• 36:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was when we started to realize what we sort of will be doing for.

• 36:51Speaker 04

  Oh, truly.

• 36:52Speaker 03

  The foreseeable future.

• 36:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're, they're Montreal based, aren't they? But they're French company.

• 36:59Speaker 03

  Like, all of, yeah, it's a French company. Like, there's, it's like, okay, it used to be over 5,000 people.

• 37:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:05Speaker 03

  Worldwide, but nowadays, might be a bit less.

• 37:09Speaker 04

  Ah, wow.

• 37:10Speaker 03

  But I think, yeah, I, I think that Assassin's Creed one was in Montreal, right? That was Paris, Zilean. So, sounds French or Canadian, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't in, in Paris.

• 37:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, because I do, I do remember in the, the Summer Olympics, when the assassin was like, they had the assassin during the opening ceremony. Yeah, they do.

• 37:32Speaker 03

  How cool.

• 37:34Speaker 04

  Seeing like clips of it, and I was like, I have to look this up. And I like, watched it and then I like, sent it to my sister and I was like, is that the assassin? And she was just like, yeah. And I'm like, okay, he's at the Olympics. Hell, yeah.

• 37:47Speaker 04

  I'm just like, oh, I'm just a gamer. Yeah.

• 37:50Speaker 03

  Like, yeah, one of the gifts Obama got from, from our prime minister was a Witcher 3, right? Yeah, it's, it's a thing now.

• 37:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, I would think so, because it's, it is a, it's a written by a Polish author. So and it's well known, oh gosh, Witcher.

• 38:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's yeah, it's a wild existence, whole game.

• 38:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, I always. My, my thing that always freaks people out is when I tell them that when, because I'm a completionist for like maps. I'm like, I must finish the map completely before I do the story.

• 38:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:21Speaker 04

  Which always means that when I'm ready to go into the story, I'm way overpowered. And I'm just like, la la la la la. Um, but instead of taking a boat and just boating around everywhere, I just swam the whole thing. Because I was like, I don't want to get in and out of a boat. I remember my friend being like, you psychopath. In Witcher 3.

• 38:39Speaker 03

  Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, but I, I can, I can get behind us. Uh, so I was, I was mopping up the map of Witcher 3 as well.

• 38:48Speaker 04

  Oh, my God, yeah.

• 38:49Speaker 03

  If the distance made sense, but usually the distances are pretty short. So it made no sense to just find the boat. Also, the, uh, the monsters will destroy my boat. Like, why bother?

• 38:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, I can just, you know.

• 39:01Speaker 04

  You know, I just put on like a, put on a my favorite album.

• 39:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:05Speaker 04

  Put on a podcast or something.

• 39:06Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah, oh, yeah.

• 39:08Speaker 04

  Evening, like, just gonna do that and it's fine. Um, but yeah, so it's this, um, this, how do we like? The, the world of like, I think people feel a lot of the times like gaming is such a perfect, um, medium for exploring, uh, myths and history. Which, um, in a lot of ways is true, but then there's also specifics about like, how do you make a game? And how do you make it work for the vast majority of people? That is, I think, stuff that my, my people, classicists, don't think about because we want things to be so true to what it originally was. But then we get upset when things change, but it's like, okay, but that really wouldn't work in a video game is the problem.

• 39:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:48Speaker 04

  And, and we don't know those parameters. So like, was there, so you were saying a bit about how there was some pushback from, um, people being like, well, that's not canon.

• 40:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's just a little bit.

• 40:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:02Speaker 03

  So there's, there's several approaches to this and, um, there's, there's game developers who be like trying to be as accurate, uh, as possible, as true to the source. Uh, I'm, I'm the, uh, I'm very much the Assassin's Creed way here. If nothing is true, everything is permitted.

• 40:18Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 40:19Speaker 03

  So, um.

• 40:22Speaker 03

  All I care about is not telling the story. For me, it's all about the novelty of the interactive experience. And everything has to serve that.

• 40:33Speaker 03

  For my game's story is always secondary. So.

• 40:39Speaker 03

  And therefore, obviously, it will inevitably, at times, uh, fall victim to gameplay. Like, for example, we don't want a game to end when you meet Theseus.

• 40:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:54Speaker 03

  And we want the player to be able to succeed and like, it's difficult. And so, when, so again, uh, there, there's a system. One of the reasons we have labyrinthus, like the maze of mazes, the sentient maze of mazes in place, is whenever you'd get game over situation. As Asterion falls down, the maze kills everyone in the maze. Uh, locks it up and trans, like there's an elevator that rises from the ground where Asterion falls and elevates to a safe place, like protects from, from harm, right, to, so that it can, it's kind of like the, uh, my god, what was the myth? Not the Sisyphus myth, but the, uh,

• 41:39Speaker 03

  uh, the one with the hawk and the liver, oh my god.

• 41:42Speaker 04

  Oh, uh, Prometheus.

• 41:44Speaker 03

  Prometheus, thank you, yeah. So like, you know, endless suffering in this amazing fun maze. You get to maze things.

• 41:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:53Speaker 03

  It's amazing. Right?

• 41:56Speaker 04

  But I'm Chang.

• 41:59Speaker 04

  And, yeah, I think there's, it's so, so true to life. I'm like, life is suffering.

• 42:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. But that's, yes, that is 100% true. Yeah, yeah.

• 42:11Speaker 04

  Unfortunately, I will have to continue to pay taxes, so.

• 42:15Speaker 04

  I am, I am, I am hurting, but it's fine. It's fine. The government needs it for something. I don't know what. Um, but yeah, so there are these little things like

• 42:28Speaker 04

  that make, so what was your, um, sort of like, your, your focus for like, what for you makes like a good game in this aspect? And like, what was really important for you to, to?

• 42:43Speaker 04

  You may rant and rave as much as you like about this.

• 42:47Speaker 03

  Oh, no. So, like, au contraire. So, I don't think there's much to be said about this. So, um, my point is, so, there's, there's two legs to this. One is make it a good game, which is, of, like, all of knowledge of game making comes down to this, as in, making an interesting learning curve, letting the player discover things and learn uh, in somewhat steady pace, while at the same time providing just enough obstacles and challenges to make, to keep things interesting, giving them some space to

• 43:29Speaker 03

  um, to control the challenge, as in, like, if things get too boring, let them speed up. If things get too hard, let them slow down and whatnot. So, as I keep making those games, like, I realized there's more, more, more rules. And things you can do to make the game better. And, but, the, the more interesting in this context part is making

• 43:56Speaker 03

  the maze building interesting. Because if you were to take a grid piece of paper right now, and was like, you, you go draw a maze and have fun, be like, oh, here's a maze, wasn't super fun. And after your third or maze, you'd be like, this is, this is, I'm not doing this anymore. This is, this is unfun. So, the key challenges here was to, what, what's the starting point? Like, what is the player working towards? How to make this interesting? So, it everything clicked when I realized, it, like, it has to start with a very clear problem and challenge to solve.

• 44:37Speaker 03

  That the maze is the solution to. So that's, that's where we went, the tower defense kind of path. So we have enemies, like there's entrances to the maze and from the get go, you see enemies coming from, from the entrance. And there's an indicator, this group of enemies is big, they're gonna fuck you up. And so you need to, you know, do something about this.

• 45:02Speaker 04

  Protect yourself, yeah.

• 45:04Speaker 03

  And so you designed the path, you put in the traps, you split them up perhaps. And maybe, so there's, there's a lot of mechanisms there, like you can reorder the enemies in the group. So, so for example, you'd have a shielded enemy in front who would like, like, uh, who could dismantle the traps in front of the group, right? So, okay, so we're gonna send him a different path, lure him away, do something with, with him down there and have the, um, like handle the rest of the group with, in a different way. So as you, as you progress through the game, these, there's more enemies that keep making the problem of handling the whole group more and more, uh, difficult and interesting.

• 45:49Speaker 03

  So at the beginning, you like, there's, there's just basic adventures, so any, just any number of traps on their path will be fine, just design the, the walls in a way that they go through the path. So through the traps. And once you have that, then, okay, so here's an enemy who is far more like, who gets more powerful with every other enemy in the group. And so you just had like, the simple solution is to isolate them, but what if they're in the middle of the group? And then it gets tricky and so use rotating walls and pressure plates and whatnot to

• 46:22Speaker 04

  Separate.

• 46:23Speaker 03

  Dismantle, yeah, it's a lot of sorting problem, could be. And the canvas for that is the labyrinth, the maze, right? So you, in theory, you could probably do this in a linear fashion, but the concise, confined space of the maze makes it an interesting spatial riddle.

• 46:45Speaker 03

  Sort of.

• 46:48Speaker 04

  See, these are things I don't think about.

• 46:50Speaker 03

  But this, these are the things I only think about. Like, I'm trying to limit my life and scope of things I'm in. I work, I touch and do all day to just think, well, things like that. This is what makes me happy.

• 47:04Speaker 04

  That's fair.

• 47:05Speaker 03

  Infinitely.

• 47:07Speaker 04

  I would get so frustrated.

• 47:09Speaker 03

  Life, yeah.

• 47:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm the type of person who will like, when I can't solve a puzzle in what I deem as the correct.

• 47:14Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, I hate that as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:16Speaker 04

  Oh, I, I just, I'm like, I need to pause. I need to, don't smoke, kids, but go outside and like chain smoke for a bit. Stare off into the middle distance with like no sounds. I'm like my, my friend who lives in the building beside me.

• 47:28Speaker 03

  Exactly my creative process.

• 47:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like you, you need this moment. Yeah. So like, I think that's a, and I think, I, oh, where is my brain going?

• 47:40Speaker 04

  Take a sip of coffee. Let's see what happens. Hmm.

• 47:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. Weren't you on, where'd you went off, Kayla, Alice?

• 47:47Speaker 04

  Somewhere. The, the, the sky is gray. It's got lost in there thinking about nicotine and the French.

• 47:57Speaker 04

  Yeah. So it's, it's an interesting summer, but I think the, the, the labyrinth is great for that because it allows, um. It's an easy thing to interact with as players. We understand how a maze works.

• 48:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:10Speaker 04

  And understand its construction. And we understand, yeah, or we can conceptualize it better. And it is a really, um, you know, easy thing to, or not easy, but like, it's a good medium for sitting and thinking.

• 48:24Speaker 03

  Like, everyone knows what a maze is. Everyone has solved a maze at one point. Everyone tried to draw one. Yeah. What, what, you know what? I can tell you what really fucks things up and like, where like people get completely lost is when.

• 48:40Speaker 03

  They get to use a door.

• 48:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:44Speaker 03

  One that splits. So the way our doors work is there's, there's the auto-closing door that will close after one enemy passes through. And you can, there's modifiers, you can make it a different number of enemies. And so this creates an alternative path for whomever didn't go through. Like if there's, if there's no other way, they'll destroy the door. But if there's other way around it, they'll, the paths will split. And this is where like the minds are exploding. Like, oh my God, this is what? Like this is, it's just two paths now instead of one, dude. You, you got this.

• 49:21Speaker 04

  Work on one artery and then work on the other, but.

• 49:24Speaker 03

  Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the, the mental, I never expected that, that the mental leap of creating two paths from one with a door is gonna be such a hurdle. It's, it's, it's mind-boggling, really.

• 49:39Speaker 04

  I, I do like just the way the human mind works sometimes, the way that it surprises. I know the first time I sat down with it and I was playing the demo, I was just, it came to like, now build the maze. So there are things. I was like, what if I just like, build it so they can't get to him? That was like the first thing my brain did.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  The first thing everyone does.

• 49:57Speaker 04

  I was just like, ta-da, I did. Oh, I can't let them in. Okay. Well, I'm just.

• 50:02Speaker 03

  So, so that, that's an interesting point. So like this is, this is something literally every single person I've ever seen play do. And so we were thinking of, so there's, there's like narrative reason for this. Obviously, the, the labyrinth, like he wants them to come in and be slain because that's the purpose of the maze. Right? That's, uh, like, but obviously that's sort of a bullshit reason. So, like.

• 50:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. Wait, like, can't we just not have them in? Like, wouldn't that be simpler? Um, and yeah, but again, let's like in, if you had that in a movie, like in a movie, you'd be like, why won't they just build a wall? This is so stupid and unbelievable. Or, or there's this made up reason that is very, like, very thinly veiled logic, right? Now, in a game context, what makes it significantly different is.

• 51:03Speaker 03

  You tell the player, like, from the get-go, like, this has to be done in the setup, where you set the world rules, like, you know, like, it's Harry Potter, there's gonna be magic. Alright? Yeah. Okay, magic letters, sure, fine.

• 51:17Speaker 03

  So...

• 51:20Speaker 03

  So we're thinking of a more elegant solution, but like, ultimately, this is where you set the ground rules, so changing the button that lets you let in the start the enemy's movement. It's just blocked and says, "No path to there." That's it, that's like, there's no explanation there. It was like, "Okay, that's, these are the rules of the house." Yeah. "I will henceforth adhere to those, and, you know, and have fun." I, I trust, and most players are like this, like, then I would say, I don't have the data, but like, 95% are like, "Tell me which is the way to fun." "What are the, what's the setup, like, what are the rules?"

• 52:01Speaker 03

  Then they would love to break it, like, that's one of the hu- huge, um, strengths of the rogue-like and rogue-like genre. Um, so you set the rules, they're like, they're gonna be like, "Yeah, okay, like, whatever you say, I'm gonna try to follow, and if it's fun, then it's fine. If it's not fun because of your stupid rules, then, you know, then I hate you forever, but if, if you make things fun with these constraints, then, yeah, sure, let's go." Mm-hmm. And then comes the element where they try to, uh, break the game with, like, "Hey, so there's this damage multiplayer if I use this, and this will combo with this other thing."

• 52:43Speaker 03

  So, for example, um, there's rats in the maze, and you can unlock the ability to, uh, make, uh, oh, to, so where Asterion can eat rats. Okay. For health, yes, so, um, but there's also an artifact that makes rats twice as big. So, and there's an artifact that picks rats angry and biting anyone who comes. So if you combo these three things, uh, they're like, the game changes into...

• 53:17Speaker 03

  Like a rat managing game?

• 53:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:20Speaker 03

  Where you're like, okay, so where are the rats in the maze? I'm just gonna, I need access to some rats in case I get low health.

• 53:28Speaker 03

  And I'm just gonna send all the enemies through these piles of rats that are going to mutilate all of them.

• 53:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:35Speaker 03

  And, you know, the game stops working in the way it was designed, sort of. Obviously, that's one of the co-mos that were like clearly pre-designed. And so, wow, congratulations, you found, you found it and broke the game. Wow, amazing, good for you. But that's kind of where the peak satisfaction comes. In games, like, oh, I broke your game, I'm so good at this. Sure you are.

• 54:01Speaker 04

  It wasn't already in the, the system. Yeah, I had, I had a friend who was, we couldn't show him games because like within 30 minutes, like, well, if you did this, this, this and this.

• 54:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:11Speaker 04

  It'd be so easy. I would be like, shut up.

• 54:15Speaker 03

  Like, that's, that's, that's, that's a gamer itch to be scratched, right?

• 54:21Speaker 04

  Truly, yeah, yeah.

• 54:24Speaker 03

  Um, and you, you've played Minus for a bit, right? So I just recently, and I, like, we never found this, I, as, as we were developing the game. And so someone recently in our community on our Discord, shared a video where they killed literally everyone with one trap and a lot of doors and a lot of pressure plates. So they built this structure, so there's this trap. Okay, so the setup is this, almost all traps, or basically all traps in Minus, they work once, right? So unlike in other, other defense games, they spring once, they kill one person and they're done. Some traps are slightly more effective, yadda, yadda, but like, most of them, they work once, kill one specific target.

• 55:05Speaker 03

  There is this trap that kills the third target and works continuously. So every third target that steps on the trap, it springs. And so they designed a sys, like a very elaborate system of doors and pressure plates linked to the doors that you'd reroute continuously the whole traffic through the maze, through this one single trap, and butchering them all. Which is like, oh my god, like... So, someone from our team was like, "Oh my god, we need to patch this, we need to patch this sound." We're like, "No!" Dude, that's, that's, that's what they paid for. That's what they came here for.

• 55:41Speaker 04

  They figured it out, like, that's kind of glorious.

• 55:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:45Speaker 04

  Like, wow.

• 55:48Speaker 04

  That's so funny. Just like, "I made a conveyor belt."

• 55:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. It was like, because I think it's a very, um, a MacGyverian experience. Where like, "What if, could I, could I, would this work?" And when it does, it's absolutely amazing.

• 56:06Speaker 04

  It's satisfying. It, it, and that's, and that's, you want to leave those things in, because you do want, you don't want people to just be frustrated by the whole thing and be like, "Why can't this work?" Or what, you know, X, Y, Z.

• 56:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 56:17Speaker 04

  You know, let, let, let the, let the, let the player have a win.

• 56:21Speaker 03

  There has to be, like, there has to be ways. So, the prob, the problem is, on one hand, they want to break the game, but on the other hand, they don't want the game to be broken.

• 56:30Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 56:31Speaker 03

  So, um, you cannot have these synergies work indefinitely. As in, because when things get hard, and they can't quickly find a simple solution, they will fall to their tried and tested, um, let's say, uh, broken cheats, right, of combos. So, the game has to be somewhat resilient to that in the long term. As in, "Well, you figured this out, amazing, great." Um, but this tripe, uh, this trap is like the specific kind, and so, and they're from depth, I don't know, from, say, level 7, there is these new enemies, not a lot of them, but they are immune to this.

• 57:16Speaker 03

  Right? So, now you have to find, like, the, the most hated enemy in the whole game. Uh, actually, there's two, but the first most hated enemy that you encounter is the trap disarmor.

• 57:28Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 57:29Speaker 03

  Very simply, he just disarms the trap he approaches, right? So, everyone's like, "Oh my god, what am I supposed to do now?" There is obviously, uh, there's, there's tons of ways, there is millions of ways to solve it. But like, your first encounter, like, you were like, "I got this, I figured this out, this is so, yeah, I figured this game out, let me just, just show me the credits, okay?" And then you encounter the disarmor, and like, shit.

• 57:55Speaker 03

  Everything I had so far ceased to work.

• 58:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, it just needs a small adjustment, but like you can use the doors.

• 58:06Speaker 04

  I'm like, what if, can I just put him in a small room by himself? Will he starve to death eventually? That would be, yeah, I would be, I would be so frustrated.

• 58:17Speaker 03

  So many ways, yeah. You know, like the simplest way is to, you know, put out, put in a door, isolate him and just smack him in the fucking face.

• 58:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, there we go.

• 58:28Speaker 03

  Like in combat, he's just such a wimp, so.

• 58:32Speaker 04

  Usually, everything is going to have its weakness and like that is important. You can't just give, you know, like a character that there's like nothing you can do against. Uh, I mean, there is some, um, fun in those sort of like almost impossible characters to go against, but they're not part of the main part of the game. There's something you seek out to, to hurt yourself with later.

• 58:54Speaker 03

  I, I think especially in, or maybe not necessarily only strategy games, but mainly in strategy games, like some of the strategy games are like, here's this. So you finish your level, you go to next level and you're like, what the hell is this? How am I supposed to even, where do I, how, how do I start with this? Because there's so many enemies. It's so packed. It's so difficult. It's so complicated. And then you, then you find a place where you can start. You take up one enemy or whatever, right? And so you, you work your way, it's like with the Hitman series, for example, or Assassin's Creed, but Assassin's Creed is like far more, like, I know, easier, casual.

• 59:32Speaker 04

  Linear, yeah.

• 59:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, where they're like basically just press a button and everyone dies, right? So like, but in other, like same or old school games, like you have to work towards your goal and every single enemy is sort of a challenge. And, and then you beat the whole thing. And you look back and you're like, oh my God, I'm so good at this.

• 59:53Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 59:54Speaker 03

  Like this was, like you remember, you have this experience of feeling this is unbeatable. And then you get it. Like I've been playing, playing Slay Despire 2 now, like

• 1:00:05Speaker 04

  Oh my God.

• 1:00:05Speaker 03

  literally everyone in the industry. So I just went to GDC and it's like meeting people, everyone who was flying through Europe. Uh, Steam decks are extremely popular in the industry. And so it was like, yeah, I was playing, I was playing, uh, Slay Despire 2, uh, on, on my plane here. When my plane landed, that was like.

• 1:00:27Speaker 03

  The the last leg of the of the trip was like eleven hours, all of it, like seventeen hours. So when the plane landed, I was like, I could do more of this.

• 1:00:38Speaker 03

  I'm not ready to get off. Yeah, but like. Um, it it's it's a very roguelike game in that. You you start playing, and it's like, how am I supposed to be the third enemy? And then you do these, you know, and then you go and face the bosses and yell it and was like, yeah, I could I could do this all day. Hit me with more because I have this amazing combo. I've broken the game. Um, which, yeah.

• 1:01:04Speaker 04

  And that's like, is that that's something that's like such an incredibly satisfying feeling.

• 1:01:08Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:01:08Speaker 04

  And it like creeps up on you in a way because you start off like, and I think that's this is where like roguelike games kind of um, excel at because they just, they're like, okay, keep going, keep going. Oh, you don't have enough experience, you don't have enough. Um, uh, uh, like goods, materials, or equipment that you need, you're you're gonna you're gonna die. You could sit here for twenty minutes and be really good at dodging and just be, you know, like going down on things. Which is its own feeling in a way as well, but it's, there's something about the the dying and doing it over and over again and building yourself up. That is such like a, you get to the end of it and you're like, you're like, I have been forged through the flames of X.

• 1:01:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, oh, a hundred percent.

• 1:01:50Speaker 04

  I'm so powerful now and like games should do that. It's like, um, the one game like.

• 1:01:55Speaker 03

  Because like compared to toys, games are all about overcoming, right? So it's it has to be an interesting enough challenge and a problem. And Sid Meers, Sid Meers once said, and I think that's the ultimate definition of a of a game, like games are interest, series of interesting choices. And so making problems, right? And so solving these interesting problems is what, like, that's the juice of the game. That's where the whatever cool enzymes you get from from playing a video game. Um, that's that's where the shot comes from.

• 1:02:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, and it's in true, and like, there's something to say also about like, you know. Like, like, I love a good, very linear, linear story-based game as well, but I tend to find those much more relaxing, you know? It's like, it's more like, this is a, this is a way I can turn my brain off and just kind of enjoy a good story. Versus like, when I want to be challenged, or like, when I want to just, I don't know, hate my life, that's when I go to like Dead by Daylight, and I'm like...

• 1:03:00Speaker 03

  Okay, but like, let me separate there. I'm, I'm gonna challenge what you just said. So what do you mean? Wha- what would you say is a good linear story? Like, give me a game example.

• 1:03:10Speaker 04

  For me, I think...

• 1:03:14Speaker 04

  Honestly, I feel like a lot of the Assassin's Creed's fall into it. It's sort of like, you go from point one, two, three, four, and there are like side missions and stuff like that.

• 1:03:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay, okay, okay. I, I thought you were talking about like games that are like strictly narrative games. As in, not a game that has gameplay and a story, but like...

• 1:03:31Speaker 04

  If it's a strictly story game, that's, that's more of a brain thinking game, because I have to be in the story versus like, yeah.

• 1:03:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, because my, my point would be, because I was hoping you would say, let's imagine you did.

• 1:03:46Speaker 03

  That it was one of the Telltale games, like, so the pinnacle of, of narrative story design. But these games are all about choice. So again, like, it's like, what, what made them great, and what made them huge, and what made now the... My god, what's the title of the game? Their new game. Uh, the, uh, Dispatch. Yeah, so what makes, what, what, what started this, what made this interesting? Is, you would always, back in the day, you would always have choices in, in stories. Like, do I go this way, do I like, uh, do I betray them, or do I follow them, or whatever?

• 1:04:24Speaker 03

  But, the thing that made this new, uh, wave of narrative stories is that when you make a choice, the game tells you, the game has remembered your choice.

• 1:04:38Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:04:38Speaker 03

  It doesn't really matter if it actually leads to consequence, but you already feel the, the weight, or like... Yeah, oh, maybe the sort of choice doesn't matter. I'm, you know, I'll take the money and you get a pop up that says, oh,

• 1:04:51Speaker 04

  you know, this person will remember this.

• 1:04:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:53Speaker 04

  Oh, no.

• 1:04:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, which is very clearly this will come back to haunt you.

• 1:04:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:59Speaker 03

  Individually. And it's a promise. It's like the Chekhov's gun, basically, right?

• 1:05:03Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:05:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, it's the democritism more suitable to this podcast, probably.

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of the best one yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithgemini.

• 1:05:57Speaker 06

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• 1:06:43Speaker 04

  I think another game I think of that's I think for me is very like linear is, oh gosh.

• 1:06:51Speaker 04

  The name of it, is it like, it's like A Plague's Tale or something like that?

• 1:06:54Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, the rats.

• 1:06:56Speaker 04

  Yes, yeah, and it's.

• 1:06:57Speaker 03

  The one with the rats, yeah, Plague's Tale, yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's very, it's a fun game to play, you know, it is fun to play, but it is, it is one point to the other.

• 1:07:06Speaker 03

  Word.

• 1:07:07Speaker 04

  I was, I, problem is, I actually really love rats, like who I had, like, I had them as pets growing up.

• 1:07:13Speaker 03

  Ah, okay, okay.

• 1:07:14Speaker 04

  And I'm just like, they're so cute, and my mom is like, oh.

• 1:07:16Speaker 03

  I want to make a rat game, so, so the reason is, so, uh, gonna segue here a bit, but.

• 1:07:24Speaker 04

  Go for it.

• 1:07:24Speaker 03

  Because you, if, I, clearly I found my patient zero for the game, so, back in the day when plague of COVID would, you know.

• 1:07:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:37Speaker 03

  Reign the world. I decided this is the perfect, the perfect time to read The Plague, or what's the, what's the original title?

• 1:07:47Speaker 04

  There's a.

• 1:07:48Speaker 03

  Uh, Uma is the Polish title and the, by Kami, or whatever you spell.

• 1:07:55Speaker 04

  Oh, oh, oh, um, The Plague, yeah, about Kami, yeah.

• 1:07:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay, well, that's a fitting, that's a fitting title, alright, so. Uh, so I just said, well, I always wanted to read this book.

• 1:08:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:09Speaker 03

  What better time, right?

• 1:08:10Speaker 04

  I just picked that one up, actually.

• 1:08:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, so you, you might save it for the next pandemic, because like this, because, so I like to read books that, like, I like to read pirate books when I'm by the sea, right? Or like urban adventure when I'm in the city.

• 1:08:26Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:08:27Speaker 03

  And fantasy books when I'm in the forest, so. You will have to wait a second for the context, yeah.

• 1:08:34Speaker 04

  Read about the plague.

• 1:08:35Speaker 03

  Read the plague. So, amazing book, great game idea there.

• 1:08:39Speaker 04

  Ah.

• 1:08:41Speaker 03

  To be, um, to be the manager of a city where the plague is raining. And like, so you have people who want to get out of a district because there's like, the outbreak starts there. But you don't really want them to get out. You sort of do because, well, you know, you need a place.

• 1:08:59Speaker 04

  The people and you don't want them to.

• 1:09:01Speaker 03

  But, you know, it's, yeah, I, I think this makes a lot of these interesting choices. And going back to being a villain.

• 1:09:08Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:09:09Speaker 03

  Where it's the only inevitable choice. So if you were in this, in a pandemic situation where you are locked up with people who you know are sick and you think you're not sick, but no one really knows, but you're locked up in this. And so this guy who made this, who made this lockdown is the villain.

• 1:09:30Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:09:31Speaker 03

  I think that's like, that like, that's the common thread to most, through most of the games and stories that I would like to work on. Like, make the player, make the villainous choices that are inevitable.

• 1:09:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, got it. It's sort of like when you get to the end and you're like, oh, I was the bad guy all along. Um.

• 1:09:50Speaker 03

  Oh, no, no. So I want the player, no, no, no, no, not in that. I want the player to know, like, to be like, I have to make this. Like, this will hurt me more.

• 1:09:59Speaker 04

  Oh, gosh. My heart.

• 1:10:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:04Speaker 04

  Must I be the bad guy? But can you at least like, have like a little pet rat where you're like?

• 1:10:09Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, sure, 100%.

• 1:10:10Speaker 04

  You can turn and you can like pet it to like calm yourself down. It's like, it's you and me, buddy.

• 1:10:18Speaker 04

  We're in this together.

• 1:10:19Speaker 03

  Still going back to Minotaur.

• 1:10:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:10:22Speaker 03

  I, what I really like about this is like, so you're just this horny teenager, huh? Wink, wink. Uh, locked up in a maze and there's these dudes who are raiding your, your, you know, your, your solitary place. And you're like, what are you doing here? Why are you, get out?

• 1:10:41Speaker 04

  Get out of my swamp. Yeah.

• 1:10:42Speaker 03

  Why do you hate me? Yeah, exactly. And so, uh.

• 1:10:49Speaker 03

  On the narrative side of things, we present them to be like adventurers who are like, you know, just... They don't really perceive you as a person. And you know very well you're a person. And Daedalus is present.

• 1:11:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:11:05Speaker 03

  To re-establish that and be the, uh, uh,

• 1:11:10Speaker 03

  a father figure.

• 1:11:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:11:12Speaker 03

  And a mentor. To re-kindle that constantly like, oh, you're, you know, they're evil. Well, not evil, but they're like, they're just greedy. And while they're doing their thing and you have to do whatever to survive. And so that's why the game has so much gore. So the traps will dismember and throw pieces of meat around and whatever.

• 1:11:37Speaker 04

  Also, we love it.

• 1:11:39Speaker 03

  Also, yeah. Yeah, it's, it's basic UX. It's, that's the rules of UX.

• 1:11:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:11:44Speaker 03

  Basic feedback. Like it has to be like the, when you click a button in Windows and like animates and there's a sound. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. Yeah. And so,

• 1:11:56Speaker 03

  but it also, that's, that's towards creating this interesting, maybe not dilemma, but, uh, the paradox of

• 1:12:08Speaker 03

  doing evil things and perceiving yourself as an okay person.

• 1:12:14Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

• 1:12:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I hate it when a game does this quietly. Like, for example, there's been a lot of memes with Uncharted, like, "Oh, just an adventurer, you know, just, I just came here to steal this thing, also killed 400 guys while doing it." But, you know.

• 1:12:31Speaker 04

  It's, it's...

• 1:12:31Speaker 03

  They started it.

• 1:12:33Speaker 04

  Wash my hands of it. Like, it's like, um, you went there.

• 1:12:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So, so I'm trying to, I like to make this... Like the choices you make as a player, clear to the player and like make this as optional as possible usually like but Minos might not be the best example here but overall I I think it's interesting to give the player a choice between bad and worse and have them become, you know, it's it's like Rambo four when pushed killing is as easy as briefing, you know, it's it's it's that, yeah.

• 1:13:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, uh, circling back to the Daedalus of it all, I this is something I um have noticed recently in the in in sort of any not any Minotaur but modern Minotaur stories is sort of this um turning of Daedalus into this very like father like figure like you were saying this very like taking care of Asterion kind of figure. Um, and it's it's very much still a modern thing, um, because from my knowledge of the ancient sources and I've done some looking into it mostly because I like what um writing about family dynamics and history. So I I call it daddy issues. I like.

• 1:13:49Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah, 100%.

• 1:13:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, I it's it's, you know, I'm writing an entire thesis on Telemachus's daddy issues. I'm like, there is so much I could fill a book, um, but this it's very much something that doesn't exist in antiquity because I've written about Daedalus and Icarus before about um how he's like, he's he's a present father, but he's not very active with Icarus himself. Um, which eventually leads to sort of Icarus not being guided well enough to be able, at least that's my opinion. Um, but then, yeah, seeing this thing where now it's suddenly like he is that has a super sympathetic

• 1:14:27Speaker 04

  sympathetic relationship to Asterion where there's this like care and because, you know, we know he was he was asked to make the labyrinth. He is the builder of the labyrinth. So there's like this like, I I like this idea of like him trying to.

• 1:14:43Speaker 04

  Make Sterion's life more comfortable. And so it was like, it was, or, or a touch of normalcy, I guess. Um, some humanity, other than leaving this child by himself. And so, yeah, I wonder where, like, how, how you guys got to, like, the we need to have Daedalus and we need-

• 1:15:01Speaker 03

  We're going into very spoilery territory. And like, as much as I don't care about spoiling the game to into, into the person, I think you'd appreciate the story really pretty well. So I'm just gonna tease it.

• 1:15:17Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:15:18Speaker 03

  So there's, there's two points I would say, uh, in the story. One is a very significant factor that as you progress through the maze and go deeper and down, the maze of mazes, Asterion, through solitude, grows more and more mad.

• 1:15:35Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:15:36Speaker 03

  Which is a massive factor in his relationship with Daedalus.

• 1:15:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:15:40Speaker 03

  And the second, uh, take, like, the second point, the second teaser is, um, we have a slightly different, uh,

• 1:15:52Speaker 03

  story reason for Icarus's, um, wings falling apart.

• 1:15:59Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:16:01Speaker 03

  And maybe someone got jealous.

• 1:16:04Speaker 04

  That's so fair.

• 1:16:04Speaker 03

  Uh, huh?

• 1:16:06Speaker 04

  I've, I've been that younger sibling.

• 1:16:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah, a hundred percent.

• 1:16:11Speaker 04

  I, I remember my sister kept stealing one of my games from me to play with it, to play it. And I was so mad about it. I, I, I looked her dead in the eye, was holding the disc and snapped it.

• 1:16:21Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 1:16:23Speaker 04

  She was just like, why?

• 1:16:25Speaker 03

  And also, so, so going back to, going back to, to, like, what can we do with the myths and the canon? I think there's several elements in the, so to speak, canon, which I now know is not a thing. But just, so, but going back to, say, the Wikipedia version of the myth.

• 1:16:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:16:48Speaker 03

  Um, and like, now talking about the Icarus myth.

• 1:16:53Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:16:54Speaker 03

  The-

• 1:16:57Speaker 03

  With the key, the protagonist not being Icarus here, but Ostrion. It's, it makes more sense and makes the story more interesting, adds weight to, to, to, to the character to shift the agency towards the protagonist. Gets a lot of screen time and so like his actions should carry more and so it's his actions that trigger a lot of these story events.

• 1:17:29Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:17:30Speaker 03

  Rather than, you know, this thing happened because someone else did something, you know, sort of randomly. Yeah, like you, you wouldn't care about that unless, you know, unless it's attached to your character.

• 1:17:43Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. Hmm. I always kind of forget how much like game building is psychological too.

• 1:17:50Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:17:50Speaker 04

  Like, oh my gosh, you just have to understand how people think and interact with the world or interact with things. I'm just like the dirty academic who's just like, read my paper that is non readable.

• 1:18:03Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, but like, yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. So again, different schools, you know, so there's different schools of design, obviously, but I, I've come to believe deeply that game design is all about evoking emotion first and foremost. And everything has to follow that. Like, that sounds kind of obvious, but, um, it's, it gets important when you're like, so do we make this consistent? Do we make this logical? Do we make this follow the plot? Do we make this follow the Wikipedia, Wikipedia version of the myth? Or do we make this a lasting experience?

• 1:18:36Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:18:37Speaker 03

  And like, because you will have, you will have conflicts like that arise every single day, million times a day as you're making a game. And so, what I lean towards nowadays is, well, yeah, a hundred percent emotional way. Hit him hard and doesn't like, if hit hard, players forgive a lot, like.

• 1:18:58Speaker 04

  This is true.

• 1:18:58Speaker 03

  You know, it's like Star Wars, makes no sense, but it's fun and dramatic and it's fun and it's funny and silly and all that. So, you know.

• 1:19:08Speaker 04

  And the Ewoks are great. I don't care what any of the older fans say.

• 1:19:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:11Speaker 04

  They're wonderful.

• 1:19:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:16Speaker 03

  Let's agree to disagree.

• 1:19:18Speaker 04

  That's where I'm just like, it's obviously I was born in the 90s. I was just like, Ewoks, yes. I remember the television series.

• 1:19:27Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah, that alluded. I watched Star Wars super, super late and saw some of these things, you know, went above my head all the way.

• 1:19:34Speaker 04

  That's so fair. But yeah, I think that that is one of the important things is you have to make people care. And if people don't care, they're not going to keep coming back to it. Um, and you want people to keep coming, coming back to it as well. And you also want people to be invested in the story. You want people to have that that feeling. And I think actually Asterion is kind of a great character for that in the sense, or any actually any monstrous character from antiquity. Because they are a very, you know, goes into like monster theory where monsters are a reflection of society. And this is like, this is really, really.

• 1:20:11Speaker 04

  People who study this better better can do a more beautiful job of explaining bit, but let's like even like from vampires, when it got super popular to like zombies where it's like that that fear of like the masses and and consumption and and it what we are super into is a reflection. And then so those monsters then are a reflection of real people. And it highlights shadows in a way that I think is is really interesting. Like, I just wrote, I've just read a book that just called its main character was a was a zombie. And she's just like, she's, she's, she's constantly questioning this, this overarching, like this hunger she feels, this unending hunger and

• 1:20:53Speaker 04

  her arm falls off one day and she's like, my arm, but what can I do? Like, she's just like.

• 1:20:59Speaker 03

  Not good.

• 1:21:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, like a stray dog comes and tries to like eat it and she's like beats the dog off with it and is like waving it at him like, go away. And then she's like, oh, my God, that's my arm I'm using. But it's this this thing where these, um, the monsters, the other, they, they are, I think, closer to people than the heroes. And ancient Greek heroes especially because I, I, we love to make ancient Greek heroes our modern day heroes, but our modern day heroes are very different. Like in true reality, like ancient Greek heroes are just, they will do whatever they can to win glory, even if it's bad.

• 1:21:38Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, oh, oh, hundred percent. Yeah, our thesis is such an asshole.

• 1:21:42Speaker 04

  And that's like, that is very true to the story. Like, like, that's probably as close to canon as you can get.

• 1:21:48Speaker 03

  At canon, yeah.

• 1:21:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, because they, it's, it's not about being a good person. It's about having everlasting reputation. And if you have to do bad things, you know, throw a child over the walls of Troy, that you do that thing because.

• 1:22:02Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:22:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, they don't care. So, but like.

• 1:22:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, the, uh, the reference we used for, for the thesis, for, for the guy who did the portrait and the guy who did the voice acting. It was like, that was super straightforward. I was like, Gladiator, come at us. Am I not merciful? That's, that, yeah, that's, that's the vibe. That's where we're going for. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, sure. Of course. I got it. And both of them nailed it. It was like, that was extremely straightforward. Yeah.

• 1:22:26Speaker 04

  Oh, I love that.

• 1:22:27Speaker 03

  On that topic, you know what's the key reference for the vibes in our game? It's Beauty and the Beast, because it's the same fucking story. It's literally, yeah, except there's no last, right? But.

• 1:22:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:22:37Speaker 03

  Apart from that, um, that's, because that's the vibe, like with the angry mob, like, guys, I'm just, can, can I just have my breakfast here in peace?

• 1:22:47Speaker 04

  Can I just live in my castle with my talking furniture? Like, truly, I've done nothing.

• 1:22:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:54Speaker 03

  It's, uh, yeah. Also, also, one, one of the reasons we're like, yeah, we should probably make the protagonist like, slightly ugly.

• 1:23:04Speaker 03

  Uh, so that he may be likable somewhat.

• 1:23:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:23:08Speaker 03

  Obviously, we still have to do the narrative legwork and, you know, give him the agency, like, understandable and whatnot. But if, you know, it's really difficult to get behind an ugly, ugly character.

• 1:23:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, they have, they have to like, if they're, if they're ugly, ugly, they need to at least be like ugly cute, where it's like, oh, that's disgusting. I love it.

• 1:23:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, that that's fair. That's human minds. We we love cute things. Um, yeah.

• 1:23:36Speaker 03

  Obviously, it's not as cute as say taken from because the beast and Beauty and the Beast kind of taken from looks like taken from Lion King, you know.

• 1:23:46Speaker 04

  So. Yeah, he's a weird amalgamation of creatures.

• 1:23:50Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:23:51Speaker 04

  I don't like him. I didn't get to watch Beauty and the Beast very much because my sister loved it so much. She destroyed the VHSs of it.

• 1:23:58Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:23:59Speaker 04

  She she would watch it, rewind it, then watch it, then rewind it, then watch it.

• 1:24:03Speaker 03

  It's an amazing movie.

• 1:24:04Speaker 04

  Yeah. And after the second VHS book, my mom went, no.

• 1:24:10Speaker 04

  Buying anymore. Like, no.

• 1:24:12Speaker 03

  That's an amazing uh birthday present.

• 1:24:16Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. No, when it came out on DVD, she it was like.

• 1:24:19Speaker 03

  No, VHS, Hondo of VHS.

• 1:24:21Speaker 04

  Oh, why? What do I have? I have a VHS of Black Cauldron because that was my favorite movie as a child. Why did I like such dark movies? To be fair, dark movies were what the nineties had, like secretive NIM and.

• 1:24:36Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Also, yeah. So I so here's this thing. So I I was born in eighty six, so I kind of grew up in the nineties. So like all the media.

• 1:24:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:24:47Speaker 03

  So I I think it's the media that you intake between being, I don't know, sent seven or ten till you're seventeen or twenty. Like, that's that range. It's where whatever you watched there and listened to, like this is like this made you.

• 1:25:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:25:02Speaker 03

  Obviously, if something is really, you know, above and beyond, you like it, but your taste is settled. So, uh, I hundred percent agree that the stuff in in the nineties was extremely dark and like you'd have massively dark movies being made and massively successful.

• 1:25:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:25:23Speaker 03

  And I think that's changed. And one of my rubs with the modern market is like I'm I'm doing nineties things in terms of vibes. And everyone's playing peak and RV there yet, you know. And I was like, oh, why? It's so it's it's well, it's fun. Okay. But wouldn't you want to explore the dark depths? of humanity and what makes us all monsters and everyone's like, no, we have it in the news now. Yeah, fair. That is, yeah, that is, yeah.

• 1:25:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure. Share the longest unguarded border with the country that is making choices. And it's real exhausting to be right beside it, but you know, it's time.

• 1:26:12Speaker 03

  We have war like right there. So I kind of know what you're.

• 1:26:16Speaker 04

  I know. I'm going, I'm going to, I'm taking my mother to Greece this summer, this summer, early summer. Yes. And she was, she messaged me the other day. She was like, should we be worried? And I was like, ah, we're gonna be in roads. It'll be fine. Like, they're not gonna, like, if they're gonna.

• 1:26:32Speaker 03

  Far from the things, yeah.

• 1:26:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I'm like, honestly, this like, if they're, anything they're going for is like US military bases and that's on Crete. So if they do do that, like, which unlikely, like.

• 1:26:41Speaker 03

  Oh, by the way, you should totally go to Crete. I would.

• 1:26:43Speaker 04

  I know.

• 1:26:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:26:45Speaker 04

  It needs to be a trip.

• 1:26:47Speaker 03

  Extremely disappointed in Knossos.

• 1:26:49Speaker 04

  Oh, I know. Oh, I already know.

• 1:26:51Speaker 03

  Okay, okay, okay. Cause I didn't. I came was like.

• 1:26:54Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Sorry.

• 1:26:55Speaker 03

  What is this?

• 1:26:56Speaker 04

  I know. It's Arthur Evans' wet dream where he was just like, this is what I thought they were. And it's like.

• 1:27:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:27:01Speaker 04

  Come on.

• 1:27:03Speaker 03

  But that's, here's the, here's the thing. So as we were working on the Minos trailer.

• 1:27:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:08Speaker 03

  Like, we had to base that visually on whatever on things, the ancient Greece pillars color should be like. And like, everyone's like, oh, these colors are off until we did them like these red and black. And it was like, yeah, that's ancient Greece. I'm like, well, okay.

• 1:27:24Speaker 04

  Well, that's what, that's what Arthur Evans put it as and his weird French painter that he had come and just to redo all the frescoes.

• 1:27:31Speaker 03

  Like you, you made someone paint over.

• 1:27:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:35Speaker 03

  A pillar or two in this rugged place in the middle of nowhere.

• 1:27:39Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:40Speaker 03

  And so now you have to find the color palette for this ancient culture forever and ever till the end of time. Because that's, you know, it's, it's little now.

• 1:27:51Speaker 04

  Some guy decided in the, you know, late 1800s or early 1900s.

• 1:27:57Speaker 03

  It's not a bad color palette, could have been worse. Like four, yeah, right?

• 1:28:01Speaker 04

  Could you imagine if you picked like, like a vomit green and then like a neon orange?

• 1:28:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:06Speaker 04

  It could have been worse.

• 1:28:08Speaker 03

  Okay, that's, yeah.

• 1:28:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:28:13Speaker 04

  Oh, oh, this is very exciting.

• 1:28:15Speaker 03

  Although, although, oh, sorry, I need to, I need to nerd out a bit. So, so, so when I went to, to Crete and then went a couple of times, like the most exciting place. Uh, this is, um, okay, context, I've, at the time I was reading, uh, oh my god, Jared Diamond's second most famous book, which is Guns, Germs, Steel, I think? Yeah, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. He's an anthropologist, a brilliant one. If you've, uh, his, his most famous book, uh, for which you get, I think, Polysaurus or whatever other book, right? Uh, the, about the fall of civilizations, that, that one is a fucking banger. But, so Guns, Germs and Steel talks about how the inventions

• 1:28:59Speaker 03

  through history of humanity led to changes in the course of history, human, yada, yada.

• 1:29:05Speaker 03

  And so he talks about the disc of Phaestus, are you?

• 1:29:08Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:29:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, probably you are. So, finally, some, obviously, this is the place. This is the podcast where I can nerd out about this and everyone knows and you understand. So, like, for me going to the archaeological museum in Herakion to see this, the Phaestus disc in, like, in, in real, that was, it was a religious experience for me. It was like, oh my god, this, well, obviously, it's just a small rock, but if you know, it's so, yeah.

• 1:29:41Speaker 04

  This mystery and I'm sitting here and I'm like, one day, somebody is going to decipher Linear A and I don't want it to be someone in the field, only because I don't think we deserve that.

• 1:29:52Speaker 04

  I think it should be just some good puzzle solving citizen.

• 1:29:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, the uh, what's the, what's the name of the rock in the British Museum with the languages?

• 1:30:00Speaker 04

  Rosetta Stone.

• 1:30:02Speaker 03

  Rosetta Stone, thank you. Like, that one is big at least. And it looked so cool. It's like from a Kubrick movie, right? And, but like, but the Feist is like, yeah, it's, it's there.

• 1:30:14Speaker 04

  But it has these beautiful little things on it. And it's like, it's just, it's just so cool to think about, like, what was happening? I find it beautiful, because I'm that kind of nerd, where I'm like, is that a shark or a tuna? I don't know.

• 1:30:27Speaker 03

  My point is, if you didn't know and just saw it, you'd be like, yeah, it's a rock with, with signs on it, right?

• 1:30:33Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:30:33Speaker 03

  But once, once you know that the, uh, it's probably been printed, for whatever reason, you're like, oh my god, that's so crazy.

• 1:30:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, this, this reminds me of, um, when I was in Athens. I, I go there like pretty much every year. But, uh, I went to the, I, I went to the, um, inscription museum that they have there by the National Archaeological Museum. And I was the only person there.

• 1:30:59Speaker 04

  Because it's literally just like stella writing on it. And the Athenians loved to set up giant rocks that had all like their, their rules and regulations on it, which is like, interesting, that must mean people can read for the most part. But what they have there is the first evidence of, um, uh, Greek writing as we know it now. That was found, and it's this tiny little fragment, and it just has these like little scratches on it that you can barely read. But it was one of those things, I turned, I walk and looked and I was like, oh my god. Oh, there it is, like, that's the birth of modern Greek, like, like, I'm like,

• 1:31:34Speaker 03

  Oh, so cool.

• 1:31:36Speaker 04

  And I was, I was being such a nerd in that museum and the, uh, the, you know, because you know, like Greek museums, the small ones that always have somebody like following, staying in the room with you because, especially if you, if you are obviously not European, because they're like, you know, North Americans, they're gonna touch shit. And I'm like, I promise.

• 1:31:54Speaker 04

  I'm Canadian, I know better.

• 1:31:58Speaker 04

  But she was so, because eventually we started talking, and she was just, I think she was just like, who is this person just so excited about like writing on rocks? And I'm like, look at it.

• 1:32:08Speaker 04

  This is amazing. But she was so, she was so cute. She's like, where are you from? I went Canada. I was, I was like there in June or July. And she was like, oh, it must be cold there right now, like it's winter, right? And I went, no.

• 1:32:21Speaker 04

  You're very sweet. I'm I'm in the I'm on the west coast. We don't get winter. We get rain.

• 1:32:26Speaker 03

  Alright, right.

• 1:32:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, but oh, yeah, well, I'm very excited about this. This is gonna be very fun. Um.

• 1:32:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, this, thank you.

• 1:32:35Speaker 04

  Yes, I will, um, if if there's anything else you'd like to share before the end.

• 1:32:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know, I'm supposed to be selling the game here, but I'm not sure how I hold on does this. So like, fight a game, everyone. Yeah.

• 1:32:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, uh, so when the uh, release date was, was.

• 1:32:54Speaker 03

  But it's.

• 1:32:55Speaker 04

  It's gonna be coming out, I think, afterwards.

• 1:32:56Speaker 03

  Soon, yeah.

• 1:32:58Speaker 04

  Okay, I think I don't know if um.

• 1:33:00Speaker 03

  Depending on, right, because like this is gonna be published whenever, so.

• 1:33:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:33:05Speaker 03

  Um.

• 1:33:06Speaker 04

  Cause I can just, let me find my my calendar.

• 1:33:09Speaker 03

  Adjacent, point in time to this release, there will be news probably, I don't know.

• 1:33:14Speaker 04

  Perfect, let me see if I can go to my production calendar. Where'd my production calendar go?

• 1:33:20Speaker 03

  Where's your production calendar?

• 1:33:21Speaker 04

  There it is. Okay, it'll definitely come after.

• 1:33:27Speaker 04

  It'll definitely be airing April seventeenth on something like that. I'll try to get it early.

• 1:33:32Speaker 03

  Alright, so, game is already out.

• 1:33:35Speaker 04

  There we go.

• 1:33:37Speaker 03

  All the spoilers.

• 1:33:39Speaker 04

  Perfect.

• 1:33:40Speaker 03

  Oh, well, alright, alright, good, so.

• 1:33:44Speaker 04

  Buy it anywhere. We can link it in the in the description.

• 1:33:49Speaker 03

  No, no, I'm assuming everyone already bought it.

• 1:33:52Speaker 04

  Better.

• 1:33:52Speaker 03

  And so I would be extremely disappointed if they did. And uh.

• 1:33:57Speaker 04

  Perfect.

• 1:33:58Speaker 03

  Disclaimer at the beginning, uh, play the game first, purchase it first, like, you don't have to, actually, you don't have to play it. You can just purchase it.

• 1:34:07Speaker 03

  Better, um.

• 1:34:09Speaker 04

  Very fair, yeah. Your next game, you should you should make a, you should make an ancient Greek farming sim. That's all I want.

• 1:34:18Speaker 03

  Already underway. It's a different thing, but you will love this as well.

• 1:34:21Speaker 04

  But I just, I just don't want.

• 1:34:22Speaker 03

  I will, yeah, well, I will meet you here in a year.

• 1:34:26Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:34:28Speaker 04

  Sounds perfect.

• 1:34:42Speaker 02

  Let's talk about Myths Baby is written and produced by the one and only Liv Albert. Michaela Panglish is the Hermes to all you Olympians. The producer wants more coffee and sleep but can't have both. Select music by Luke Chaos. Thank you, Luke. The podcast is part of the Memory Collective Podcast Network, a collection of creators that all strive to bring you accurate and reliable information on the ancient world. These include the wonderful friends at Movies We Dig, the partial historians Sweet Bitter, and so much more. Get ad-free episodes and more by subscription to the oracle edition on Patreon at patreon.com/MythsBaby or via the link in the episode's description. Perhaps we'll do some fun gaming stuff there

• 1:35:22Speaker 02

  with Minos. Wouldn't that be fun? Anyways, are you a scholar, academic, or an expert in something from antiquity, from Greece, to Rome, to Egypt, to anywhere in the Near East? We would love to have you on our show as a conversation guest. Go to mythsbaby.com/contact and fill out our podcast guest form. We want to hear from you, so reach out. Anyways, talk to you all later. Bye-bye.

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Docs. The headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 1:37:11Speaker 07

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• 1:37:29Speaker 08

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• 1:37:42Speaker 07

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• 1:37:56Speaker 08

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