Tired of the World? Try a Fantasy Life

The cult 3DS game Fantasy Life returns, now on all major platforms and PC. The sequel blends Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, and action-RPGs. Plus, we live the life of Teen in To a T, the new game from the creator of Katamari Damacy.

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

• 0:00Russ Frushtick?

  So I met some Lego dorks over the weekend and Lego dorks are legit.

• 0:06Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, for sure.

• 0:07Russ Frushtick?

  Lego dorks do not kid around.

• 0:10Griffin McElroy?

  No, they don't.

• 0:11Russ Frushtick?

  I went to the New York Botanical Garden, which was a lovely place in New York City, and they were doing an activation with Lego. And you have like kids come by and they build plants out of Lego and you get to keep the plants. It's really cute and cool. And the line was about three hours long. We did not wait in line. We knew to get there early because we knew about the Lego dorks. But holy shit, the Lego dorks brought it hard. They wanted that.

• 0:34Chris Plante?

  Isn't that kind of good for everybody who's not a Lego dork? Because all the Lego dorks, ton of people write online, meaning the rest of the area wide open for you.

• 0:44Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it was, it was much more empty. I mean, to be fair, I also waited in line, but I was smart enough to get ahead of the Lego dorks.

• 0:50Griffin McElroy?

  And I, I resent what you just said, Chris. I did not think of the Lego, and I also don't like throwing the D word around like that. Like Lego, Lego enthusiasts, Lego enthusiasts.

• 1:02Chris Plante?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:03Griffin McElroy?

  They're a tech, they're a tactile people. They're out there in the real world. I don't like this suggestion that they're all cyber.

• 1:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, it must be surreal to live in a place with an activation. Can you imagine if there was an activation in Huntington, they would call the police. Like no one would even, what do you mean it's activated? What are you talking about?

• 1:24Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, it was, I don't think anyone lives in the botanical garden. I also want to say to reiterate, I was also in line.

• 1:30Speaker 03

  Sorry, Russ, I would have to drive three hours for the nearest activation guaranteed.

• 1:35Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:35Speaker 03

  Guaranteed. Unless you're counting the time that they use Columbus as a test market for a new Snapple flavor.

• 1:40Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:40Speaker 03

  I definitely, definitely am going to have to be driving.

• 1:42Griffin McElroy?

  The time that they put tie dye coloring in the Ritter Park Fountain. That was sort of an activation.

• 1:48Speaker 03

  That was something of an activation. Yes, yes.

• 1:52Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Anyway, I'm too dumb for Lego is the upshot of this conversation.

• 1:55Griffin McElroy?

  You're too impatient for Lego.

• 1:57Russ Frushtick?

  No, no, no.

• 1:57Speaker 03

  This is a second story in, in a month where you are not going to wait in lines for anything.

• 2:03Russ Frushtick?

  I did, and I'm too, I tried to build it. It's like a 10 step process. I couldn't. It was a field of sunflowers.

• 2:10Chris Plante?

  Children, like one of the free ones for children.

• 2:12Russ Frushtick?

  It was for children and I couldn't.

• 2:16Russ Frushtick?

  There were instructions. They had tables set up with little plaques and they have all the steps and I got to step 10 and I was like-

• 2:23Griffin McElroy?

  Is this, was it a colorblind, before we make fun of you, legally you have to tell us that this is a colorblind-

• 2:28Russ Frushtick?

  It was not a colorblind thing.

• 2:29Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, cool.

• 2:30Russ Frushtick?

  It was a spatial reasoning.

• 2:31Griffin McElroy?

  Guys, good to riff.

• 2:32Speaker 03

  Was it like you were nervous because there were other people watching?

• 2:34Russ Frushtick?

  Well, yes, because I was also building my sons at the same time.

• 2:37Speaker 03

  And they see that you have glasses and there's a certain expectation.

• 2:40Russ Frushtick?

  Well, they all thought I was also a Lego dork, but clearly I'm not because I was drowning.

• 2:44Griffin McElroy?

  Clearly you're not.

• 2:45Russ Frushtick?

  Clearly.

• 2:46Chris Plante?

  That is tough because they don't want to humiliate you in front of your kid.

• 2:49Speaker 03

  They're looking at Russ and they're like, if this guy's this bad at Lego, he must love Pez. That's the only other thing that makes sense.

• 2:55Griffin McElroy?

  That's the rival to Lego in your mind is Pez?

• 2:57Speaker 03

  For dorks?

• 2:59Griffin McElroy?

  Alright.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, everyone tried to have a better pull, but none came. I guess I win.

• 3:04Griffin McElroy?

  Kynex, I'm a Kynex man myself.

• 3:06Speaker 03

  Alright, that's not bad.

• 3:07Russ Frushtick?

  Mous trap.

• 3:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, you dated yourself.

• 3:10Griffin McElroy?

  I only, Lego's okay. I only fuck with Bionicle though.

• 3:15Russ Frushtick?

  You need some circles in the mix. Can't all be squares.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  Everybody still really thinks Pez was better. Like they were like-

• 3:22Chris Plante?

  I think Pez was pretty good.

• 3:23Speaker 03

  Everybody's saying like, Pez is good.

• 3:25Chris Plante?

  It's a Lego without any of the fuss, you know?

• 3:28Speaker 03

  If you know Pez obsessives, like I do, it makes a lot sense.

• 3:33Russ Frushtick?

  Pez obsessives, pervert.

• 3:34Speaker 03

  Pez, they prefer Pezverts. That's what they say. That's their word.

• 3:55Speaker 03

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

• 3:57Griffin McElroy?

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

• 3:59Chris Plante?

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

• 4:03Russ Frushtick?

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

• 4:07Speaker 03

  And this is The Besties, a video game club. And just by listening, my friend, you are now officially a member. Welcome to our, thrall feels like too strong a word, but it's not wrong. This week we got two, count them, two games on tap. There's a sequel to Fantasy Life. And the creator of Katamari Damacy is back with a brand new adventure called To a T.

• 4:31Griffin McElroy?

  What's that, Chris Plant?

• 4:32Speaker 03

  I kinda spoiled it. I got my claws backwards.

• 4:35Chris Plante?

  You pretty much nailed it. I don't think people need to know anything else other than what's gonna happen in the show.

• 4:40Speaker 03

  Alright, let's take a break and we'll try to get our shit together.

• 4:46Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, first up, we have To a T, which comes from the creator of Katamari Damacy. It has that musical, fun-loving, bright-colored air to it. Justin, you wanna, you wanna give the premise of this one?

• 4:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, so you're a, a, a child named, who is by default named Teen. You can name them whatever you want. I couldn't figure out how to do it on the Steam Deck, so they were, remained named Teen, Teen on my game. And it is about a young person named Teen, beginning on their 13th birthday, who for their entire life has had their arms sort of locked in a T pose. And probably due to some sort of unknown parentage, it's, it's hinted at.

• 5:29Russ Frushtick?

  It is sort of alluded to, yes.

• 5:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, and, and you are basically like navigating the world as this child with,

• 5:40Speaker 03

  you know, seeing sort of the, basically a lot of like the accessibility challenges and, and solutions that the, the, the child has like throughout the day. And there is this like, sort of whimsical element too, where the child is able to like, occasionally spin with their arms out to fly like a helicopter.

• 6:02Russ Frushtick?

  Yes, yes.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  And you may feel like that's what the game, when you see the child fly like a helicopter, you may feel that that is what the game is about. But to this point, it does not seem to be about that predominantly.

• 6:15Russ Frushtick?

  It is not a new jumping flash.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  It is not about that mainly. Mainly, it is more slice of life challenges with like some.

• 6:25Chris Plante?

  Kind of mini-games-esque, different ways of like getting through the world.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:30Chris Plante?

  When you, it's like, how are you going to brush your teeth? When your arms are extended in a T pose? How are you going to eat? You have the support of a, a dog that helps you with a lot of things, like getting your clothes on. But it's basically just taking a very, very simple premise of you are a teenager who is in a T pose. How are you going to get through all of life? I, I, I spoke with Kida Takahashi at GDC this year, who is the creator who did Katamari. And what was interesting is it didn't. originate as a game about disability or accessibility, which is surprising.

• 7:09Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 7:09Chris Plante?

  Because once you start playing it, it feels like that's the only thing it could have been. But he really does start games from a very, very simple place, which is a problem and then extrapolating as far as possible. There is a creature who rolls a ball and gradually it accumulates everything in the world. There is a person who is in the shape of a T. How do they get through their life?

• 7:30Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I mean, it very clearly has like analogues to not only accessibility issues, but also just like the anxiety of like, he goes to school and he like is bullied at school and made fun of. And so there's just like a direct anxiety, like body dysmorphia aspect to it where he feels embarrassed about who he is and you're trying to like overcome that, uh, which I think in a lot of games, when you're trying to like deal with really heavy topics like that, it can come off as pretty intense and heavy. Um, but in this one, because of the presentation and because of the general tone, uh, it's very welcoming. And, and again, like slice of life anime is like a very good analog to it.

• 8:14Griffin McElroy?

  How would you guys like define the Kida Takahashi sort of style to somebody who has not played a Katamari Damacy? Or what was the, what was the other one that he made? Where you were like throwing a party for these little creatures?

• 8:29Russ Frushtick?

  That Nabi Nabi Boy was that?

• 8:31Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, Nabi Nabi. Yeah, I think.

• 8:32Russ Frushtick?

  Well, that was a different one, right? That was the one where you were stretching out, trying to, I think, encircle the moon or some shit like that.

• 8:39Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 8:39Russ Frushtick?

  What do you, what do you call that style of, of presentation?

• 8:43Chris Plante?

  I mean, I think it's 1970s children's entertainment, you know, and you can see it especially in this game, whether that is the style of clothes they wear, the like colorfulness of everything, but also the kind of hallucinatory nature.

• 8:57Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 8:57Chris Plante?

  Of the worlds that you're in. And even the games have that seventies, eighties era video game feel where.

• 9:06Chris Plante?

  The creator of the game is not really sure if their idea even works yet. They're just going in a direction and trying something new, not just doing like an established genre. It just all feels like these, the seventies never died for Kida Takahashi, who I don't even know if he was alive during that era.

• 9:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. Now, this game is, there's a little bubble that comes up as you start that says it was made in collaboration with AbleGamers, which I feel like is the only thing for me that like, I think that that allowed me to sort of like, you know, I'm not the one who should be judging how these things are like discussed and like what the sort of like most helpful dialogue is surrounding those things. So I think it's, it's helpful that they had AbleGamers like in that conversation because I think that it definitely feels, I don't know, I'm, I, I can't even say that feels right to me because it's not my place to judge, but I'm glad that they are involved in it to make sure it's being handled in like a tasteful way.

• 10:07Chris Plante?

  Right. I think that, I think that's right, obviously, but I also think the metaphor here is abstract enough that I found a lot of myself in it and challenges that I had as a kid. I, and some of that is like quite literal of like having disfigurement as a kid and the way that like you were seen and the way the world reacts to you and the way that you change yourself, but also just being a kid is awkward, being in your body is awkward. And I think this game is really interested in, in that. I mean, there's also the underlying puberty metaphor here that I think largely works.

• 10:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:49Chris Plante?

  What did you all think of the music? Because?

• 10:51Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, the music's amazing.

• 10:52Chris Plante?

  It slaps. Yeah.

• 10:53Russ Frushtick?

  It's so fucking good. So that, so there's like a theme song. I think it's, you're the perfect shape or something like that. It's like the theme song and it plays at the beginning of the episodes. The game is broken up into different episodes. And then there's like a mid-episode theme song about a giraffe who loves cooking, which is also fantastic. It's like very upbeat jazz. If you like the Katamari soundtrack, like this is all incredibly consistent with that.

• 11:19Chris Plante?

  Rebecca Sugar from Steven Universe did one of the songs.

• 11:22Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, great.

• 11:22Chris Plante?

  Give you an idea of the vibe. Yeah.

• 11:24Russ Frushtick?

  It's just done with such confidence. And like the theme song is like basically telling you the premise of the game and like all the challenges that the boy goes through. Actually, I wouldn't even say it's a boy. It's a teen, non-gendered. So you can be whoever you want, really.

• 11:42Russ Frushtick?

  And I just thought that was like, it was a fun way to present it. Just the structure of it being episodic and also just starting each episode with the theme song. It felt very anime.

• 11:51Speaker 03

  One complaint that I had about this was it doesn't have like a profile system. And I really wanted my kids to check it out and I got like Charlie played for like an hour. But then to see the sort of like beginning stuff again and get the setup for the premise, you have to like restart your entire game. There's no.

• 12:10Russ Frushtick?

  There is a chapter select. There is a way to specifically.

• 12:14Speaker 03

  Not making your own character.

• 12:15Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, sure.

• 12:15Speaker 03

  With kid, when you're splitting between two kids, they want their character, their progress, their, you know, so like that was, that was kind of tough because I couldn't. I showed them, but I couldn't make as much progress because I had to start restarting the game.

• 12:27Russ Frushtick?

  It's time to make a family share on Steam, buddy.

• 12:30Speaker 03

  What?

• 12:31Russ Frushtick?

  You can make a family account on Steam and have them have their own account and you share it.

• 12:38Griffin McElroy?

  You out of your mind?

• 12:40Griffin McElroy?

  Come home and my son has bought fucking $25,000 in CS:GO skins.

• 12:44Speaker 03

  You mad?

• 12:45Griffin McElroy?

  I can't be responsible. I can't do that, man.

• 12:47Russ Frushtick?

  Lock that shit down, guys. Come on, be a parent.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  I think, I do wish, uh. I wish it was more fun. Katamari Damacy is really fun to play and I really so much appreciate what this game is doing. And I think that that's really cool. There's a lot of running around with like confused, for me at least, confusing geometry and a confusing map, trying to figure out where you're going. Yeah. And I, I wish that there was more game here. Because a lot of the stuff is like repeated, things that you do repeatedly. And I get that part of that's like the slice of life episodic nature. But a part of it is just like a little kind of dull.

• 13:29Russ Frushtick?

  They do seem.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  I wish it was a little bit more fun.

• 13:31Russ Frushtick?

  I think they do acknowledge that like you don't necessarily want to be doing. The same mini game over and over again. So like on day two, which I thought was pretty funny. The mom was like, you know what? If you're hungry or you're not hungry, whatever, who cares? You do what you want. If you want to brush your teeth, I don't, it's up to you. You could have disgusting teeth. So it does let you skip some of the aspects, but I agree with you, like running through the world isn't necessarily the most compelling thing, especially when you compare it's like being able to roll up fucking earth.

• 13:59Chris Plante?

  How did your, how did your kids, you know, connect with it?

• 14:03Speaker 03

  They really dug. I mean, they both really enjoyed it. It's, it's very tactile, which is good for kids. It's, it's obviously like they got the idea. I mean, they got the concept really quickly. And, and I think that that was, that was cool. There is, there is like, they struggled some with the, like getting from A to B at the point where they like give you an open world and want you to run around. It's like, it starts to get kind of confusing about where to go. There's a lot of invisible walls, both like, and, and that got a little annoying for them. And the, the younger Cooper was a little bit that you have to be kind of good with like the button prompts,

• 14:43Speaker 03

  because it's not very intuitive. It's a lot of like looking to see, and I had to kind of be with her to remind her what buttons her left bumper or whatever, which is a dumb name.

• 14:52Russ Frushtick?

  Which is like seemingly intentional because they wanted it to feel awkward, but I also realized that like for a kid, that's a lot to ask.

• 14:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:00Chris Plante?

  Yeah. I mean, I think this is the forever problem with Takashi's games. Basically since Katamari Damacy, and I think

• 15:10Chris Plante?

  this isn't apologizing for it. I, I think we just should never expect the problem to go away because he doesn't play video games, doesn't really have interest in video games, and doesn't really have interest in traditional design of video games. And I think that results in these games like this. Honestly, like again, everything he's made once he's been away from a traditional developer system. For context, when he did Katamari Damacy, he was at a, it was Bendai Namco, I believe. And then has been away from that environment. And I think that's why we get these games that feel.

• 15:47Speaker 03

  Just strange. And again, that's not like, um, it's not a defense of it. It's just a good.

• 15:53Russ Frushtick?

  It's interesting because it doesn't feel to me, even outside of the premise, it doesn't feel that experimental. It feels like a more narrative game, which feels experimental to some extent for his work. Cause it tends to be more like, you know, fluid and like open ended. This feels way more narrative, way more structured in terms of telling a story. But the game itself does not feel like that different from like a traditional game in that way. So, I mean, there are obviously, there are people that are working in that organization that are like, we gotta turn this, you know, I'm glad he had the idea about the T, but like, we gotta turn this into a game.

• 16:33Speaker 03

  It's, but it's not, but like, it's not, and I don't mean this as a criticism. It's, it's not fun in the sense that you would think of a game being like, a lot of the other games have a fun central mechanic that is pleasant to interact with. And the micro, I get it, but like on the macro, I just don't think.

• 16:52Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, we've talked about it and certainly dragged games of the idea that like just moving around the world should be fun. And I'm not even talking about like the challenges that the teen faces when like opening doors. I just mean like in an open field that should feel good to run around and it feels fine. It's not, it doesn't feel great. Uh, and I think it was just not a priority for them to focus on the like, quote, game feel of it rather than again, the narrative and the like music and the art design, like all felt like that was the focus.

• 17:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:23Russ Frushtick?

  Of it and like, I'm going to put the soundtrack when it gets added to whatever. I'm going to put it on my play mix, uh, the playlist of like fun music. Cause it totally goes in line with the Katamari stuff. It's, it's really fun to listen to. I really liked it. I, I, I am continuing to play through it. I want to know the mystery of the boy and why he is shaped like a T. They certainly be, they're certainly emphasizing that is an important plot point. Uh, so.

• 17:50Speaker 03

  I know it can't be because his dad is secretly the king of all cosmos, but in my head canon.

• 17:56Griffin McElroy?

  Sure.

• 17:58Speaker 03

  It'd be nice.

• 17:58Griffin McElroy?

  Sure. Yeah, no, I mean, there's, the, the tracks have been laid for that particular reveal. I'm hoping it just doesn't turn out to be some sort of.

• 18:07Speaker 03

  But it's a different company. He doesn't own, he doesn't even get money for, he doesn't get Ziggy's.

• 18:11Griffin McElroy?

  Well, maybe it's a cry, maybe it's a Christ allegory.

• 18:14Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:17Griffin McElroy?

  Hey, let's take a break and then talk about Fantasy Life I, the girl who steals time.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  You are the crush child.

• 18:25Speaker 03

  From one Fantasy Life to another.

• 18:29Griffin McElroy?

  Yes, this is, this one's more explicitly a Fantasy Life, because it's the new Fantasy Life game, the new entry in the Fantasy Life series, which I really loved the idea of, and then never, they didn't really make a good one, until now.

• 18:43Chris Plante?

  Can you tell us a little bit about the original one before we dig into this?

• 18:46Griffin McElroy?

  I'll tell you about the original Fantasy Life. Came out in 3DS. It was developed by Level 5, one of my all-time favorite video game developers. They made Dark Cloud, Dark Cloud 2. They made, uh, I believe Dragon Quests 11? 11? 10? They've done some work on the Dragon Quests. Uh, they have, their work has an aesthetic that is so incredible.

• 19:08Chris Plante?

  Oh yeah, and Professor Layton, right, that's what I was.

• 19:10Griffin McElroy?

  Professor Layton, yes, of course. Nino Cooney. The way that they present their games is so, like, illustrative and painterly and carefully thought out and just like maximum aesthetic all the time. Fantasy Life was their take on the kind of pseudo-life simulator cozy genre. Came out on 3DS in, god, I don't know, forever ago, and it let you live these different lives, which are basically classes, and some of them were like combat lives, where you'd run around this, you know, these levels and fight monsters, but then most of them were like gathering lives, so you could chop wood or go mining, and then there were crafting lives, so you could make shit

• 19:54Griffin McElroy?

  out of all the stuff. And all those systems were interconnected, and each class, each life had like a different story that you could live, and there was like a lot of content there. But it was also the very definition of the like... Mile wide, inch deep kind of criticism that is so often leveraged at, at bigger games. Because Fantasy Life was not that fun to play. The combat was pretty, uh, pretty crazy simple and, uh, there just wasn't a lot of richness to those systems. I think they made another, was there Fantasy Life 2 that came out before this? I feel like I missed one. It's possible. I was so.

• 20:34Russ Frushtick?

  I don't think so. I thought this was it.

• 20:37Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, possibly, yeah. I, I, that, that was a game that I was super excited about because it was one of my favorite game developers, taking on one of my favorite genres, and it just fell flat. Uh, this one, Fantasy Life I, The Girl Who Steals Time, is very much the same sort of premise. Um, you are an explorer who crash lands on this island and you travel through time and you end up in this weird world and you gotta take on these jobs so you can earn some money so you can fly back home and then, but then you don't go home, you go to a huge open world and there's all kinds of shit to explore. And the whole time you are switching between these 14 different classes, I think, which again are split up between like combat classes.

• 21:20Griffin McElroy?

  So you can be a mercenary with a big two-handed weapon, or you can be a ranger with a bow and arrow, but then there are the gathering classes. You can be a farmer in this one. You can be, uh.

• 21:29Russ Frushtick?

  An artist.

• 21:30Griffin McElroy?

  An artist in this one.

• 21:32Russ Frushtick?

  But you're only, can I, so you're only playing as your character, but you are taking on different jobs, is that?

• 21:37Griffin McElroy?

  You're only playing as your character, you're taking on different jobs. In this game, they've made it like a single button press to swap jobs. It is not like a, uh, you know, MMORPG where you're having to like lock into a class and then it's like a pain in the ass to change it. The idea is like you have your combat class equipped, you run up to a tree and you press A and then you instantly switch to your, you know, woodcutter class and then you can start, you know, doing that side of things. But each class, you can customize the equipment of each class. You have different skill trees for each class. You have different storylines for each class. There's like, it's pretty, it's pretty meaty and I will say more substantial this time around than in the, well, in a 3DS game, right? Like you would expect it. This game's out on everything.

• 22:19Griffin McElroy?

  And I, I, I think that they have stuck the landing on that premise. A lot better than they did the first time around. That's, that's my setup. I'm, I'm curious to hear Chris talk about it because we have not actually had much of a chance to talk about.

• 22:34Chris Plante?

  Yes, uh, it is stuff to do the video game. It is absurdly big. Everything Griffin just said, multiply that by 10 and you're about like half the way there. There's just so much shit. The easiest way that I find to think about the whole life class system is remember the, um, the last 3DS? Zelda game that we loved where you would buy weapons. Link between worlds. Link between worlds and you would like acquire a weapon and then like get good with it and then you could unlock it permanently. And then you'd go buy another one. That's kind of how this works where if you think of these classes or lives as weapons. It's closer to a more traditional game structure.

• 23:17Chris Plante?

  Because you are just one person and like really what you're getting is the ability to use a hoe, the ability to use a fishing rod, the ability to use a sword.

• 23:27Chris Plante?

  The fun of the game like that Zelda game is deciding what order of those things you want to prioritize. So you know, right at the beginning, hey, I'm gonna need something for combat. And I'm gonna need something to harvest while I'm going from points A to point B. The challenge of the game for a completionist and Griffin, this is where I'm curious where your brain is at on this game. Is every time you walk anywhere, you are seeing all the other things you could be doing if you had it unlocked every other job. So let's say you're a tree chopper and, uh, uh, and you're really good with a bow and arrow. While you're going from point A to point B, you'll chop down some trees and then you'll see like all of this great stuff that you want to mine.

• 24:12Chris Plante?

  You're like, wow, shit, I better go back and learn how to do that. And suddenly you can get into a kind of vicious loop of just learning how to play or like unlock weapons for the game.

• 24:24Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I, I, it is a tough game that kind of asks you. To set the pace for it, which is, I think, a bit foolhardy. Because like, there's a point in the game where you're thrown into this, like, ancient city and you're like, go talk to this guy. You can pick up any job you want. You'll do like a quick little introductory mission and then you can switch jobs. If you want, unlock a different one, no big deal. After you do your first, like, unlock a job mission, you can skip the missions for each following job. So you can just say like, yeah, I want to be a, uh, an alchemist, but, uh, I'm not going to do the fucking fetch quest for it. They just let you skip it and now you have the class. So like, it'll take you a couple hours, but you can unlock every class. Then all of a sudden, what Chris is saying is not like that huge of an issue.

• 25:06Griffin McElroy?

  You do have to keep those classes leveled up if you go to like a hard dungeon, because the resources there are higher level. And you have to be like able to mine those higher level resources with like a higher level class in order to take it on. So like, there's so much stuff to do. There's so much stuff to unlock, so much stuff to explore. So many different progression hooks to, to get stuck in. And so when you get thrown in, like, I don't know, I went bananas and was like, well, I gotta unlock every class. I'm gonna start doing these missions, start getting some upgrades. And then I went a little bit further in the story and unlocked, like, fucking Animal Crossing. Like, it unlocked a whole, like, chunk of the game that I was not aware existed. Because I had spent so much time kind of spinning my wheels, leveling up all these different lives.

• 25:50Chris Plante?

  When you're gonna say Animal Crossing, it's, well, just really quick to dig into that. It's Animal Crossing, Animal Crossing. It's like, set up your entire town, refurbish an entire area, you know, decorate your house. It's, I mean, Animal Crossing.

• 26:05Griffin McElroy?

  It honestly reminded me of a mix between sort of Animal Crossing and the, uh, city building kind of aspect of Dark Cloud and Dark Cloud 2. If that rings a bell with anyone. Because you're like putting together these houses for your villagers. And your villagers are teammates that you can actually take out onto the field with you. And you can equip them with their own shit and they'll help you out when you're mining resources or fighting bad guys. There's multiplayer that will sort of fill that same role too, but there's this sort of offline, uh, you know, AI companion sort of thing that you got going on and they'll give you requests. And you have to fulfill them. Um, and so you do that and you're like, okay, cool. This is like Dark Cloud 2, this fucking rules. I'm gonna do this for a while. You do that for a while and then you turn the corner and it's like, oh, by the way, here's a whole other fucking like, here's a whole nother part of the game.

• 26:50Griffin McElroy?

  I feel like every few hours, the game would just throw some new mechanic at you.

• 26:54Chris Plante?

  There's a point right where Griffin's talking about where like you've done the Animal Crossing stuff for a little while and they're like, oh, hey, did you ever get around to going and doing that thing? And you go and do it and they're like, oh, good. Um, you should take that item you found to, uh, the other island on the map. And you're like, oh, the one in the past, the present, or the in-between? And they're like, well, it's in the present, or sorry, the past. But, um, actually, and then the map pulls out and you see a map view and a cloud raises and you realize, oh, there's multiple massive open worlds that they're just going to parse out through the course of the game. It feels like when people are in like junior high or high school and they're like, I'm gonna make video games for a living. And like, what are you gonna do? Well, it's gonna be Animal Crossing and it's also gonna be an open world combat game.

• 27:39Chris Plante?

  It's also gonna be Zelda and there's gonna be a metroid area and there's gonna be this. In what is, I find shocking and impressive is it mostly works. I don't, yeah, I don't think it's, any of it's bad. It's just a lot. You sound like a, you sound completely out of touch when you are talking about this game because you're just listing off most of video games in this one little thing.

• 28:04Russ Frushtick?

  Well, I guess to echo the question that came up in the first section, like, does it feel good? Is it very?

• 28:10Griffin McElroy?

  It feels better. It feels better than Fantasy Life 1.

• 28:14Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, for someone that didn't, like, does it feel better than like Animal Crossing? Just to move around the world?

• 28:20Griffin McElroy?

  I'm not even thinking about like, yeah, that's fine. Like, I'm not talking about that. I'm thinking about like the combat, right? That's a big element of the game is you're going through these dungeons. You can't get through the story of this thing without fighting some bad guys here and there, right? And the combat in Fantasy Life 1 was just like, we press A a whole, but like, there was not a whole lot to it. In this one, there is some more depth to it. I think it is an improvement, if this means anything to you at all, uh, over like a Rune factor. Which is very much doing the same thing of like fantasy mixed with farming stuff. Like I think it works a little bit better than that. And I could see it being like kind of engaging. There's ways of like, as you explore the areas and you do shit and you fulfill quests and you hunt these rare monsters and rare resources.

• 29:02Griffin McElroy?

  The areas themselves level up, so they become more difficult and more difficult and more difficult. And the rewards that you get become better and better and better. I could see that being like a pretty great little grindy experience with friends. You know, playing multiplayer. I don't, it's not like, the combat is not, it's not like hyper light drifter. Like they're not doing that.

• 29:23Chris Plante?

  It's a game about overlapping systems. Like it's a game about how does going out and solving these quests improve your town? And how does improving your town help you save these mysterious people who are turning into household objects? And how does doing that affect the future when you go to it? And all of those things. So I think because it is doing so many top level overlapping systems, any one system itself is pretty simple.

• 29:50Russ Frushtick?

  Which is, I think, fine. I mean, we, you know, I look at Stardew, for example, like the combat Stardew is not very good. Like it's very basic. But then we've seen games that have like evolved on the Stardew model and like made things feel a little bit better. But you're not, again, you're not going to feel like you have a full on like Zelda in your game.

• 30:11Griffin McElroy?

  But to continue, but to continue that analogy, I have only just unlocked farming. You don't start the game with farming. You have to unlock farming eventually.

• 30:19Russ Frushtick?

  Sure.

• 30:19Griffin McElroy?

  And it doesn't seem as rich and complex and fully featured and customizable as a Stardew, right? So it's like, this game does a lot of stuff. It does a lot of stuff way better than the first game, way, way better. So like, I know people who have an affinity for the first game. I bet they're ba-da-ba-ba-ba loving it. And I think it does all the stuff that it does. I mean, fairly well, like better than serviceable. Like some of the stuff is, I genuinely have been enjoying just running around and hunting monsters and checking off all my quests for all my different little classes and getting resources, going home, crafting a bunch of shit, selling it for money, buying new formulas to craft. Like, I'm pretty caught up in that stuff.

• 31:02Griffin McElroy?

  It doesn't do any of that stuff 10 out of 10 amazing, I don't think, but it, it does so much stuff so well. And so many of those systems that work so well are interconnected that, I don't know, I think it's just a, I think it's a really fucking impressive thing. That also like looks and sounds absolutely incredible. I'm, I'm obsessed with the whole like level five style.

• 31:25Chris Plante?

  Of level five games, I think it's the most playable, but the gameplay part is not always the best thing about a level five game for me. I, it's usually the art and the sound.

• 31:36Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, I like doing matchstick puzzles, let me just say.

• 31:39Chris Plante?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 31:40Russ Frushtick?

  They make fucking good ass matchstick puzzles.

• 31:42Chris Plante?

  That's true. That's true.

• 31:43Russ Frushtick?

  This, I, I will admit, I like, when you first pitched it and I saw the title, it sounded like Rune Factory. And I've played Rune Factory and I found it pretty intolerable personally.

• 31:53Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 31:54Russ Frushtick?

  And this sounds more enjoyable because it allows you to like a little bit pick your own course.

• 32:01Chris Plante?

  My big recommendation is if you don't have a Switch, but you want a Switch-like game, this is a great option. I mean, the original one was published by Nintendo and they have retained a lot of that energy. If this had been published by Nintendo, it wouldn't surprise me, but obviously that's a different world.

• 32:25Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it feels like Nintendo has their own slice of this pie at this point.

• 32:29Chris Plante?

  Yeah, they don't need this right now. Yeah.

• 32:33Russ Frushtick?

  We did get one letter I wanted to call out. This comes from Cody. Cody writes, "Hey y'all, loved your recent discussion of Shotgun Cop Man. One thing that stuck with me was the note by Russ, who sort of alluded to minimalism, stripping back components, mechanics to make it more fun." For those that aren't aware, this was on a Rusty's episode, but we talked about this game Shotgun Cop Man, which was like, kind of like a super meat boy with like 360 shooting mechanics to it.

• 32:59Chris Plante?

  You do everything with a shotgun.

• 33:01Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 33:02Chris Plante?

  Basically, you can jump, you can fly, you can kill.

• 33:04Russ Frushtick?

  Cool.

• 33:04Chris Plante?

  Yeah, it's pretty sick.

• 33:06Russ Frushtick?

  Back to the letter. Cody writes, "It reminded me of this quote from Antoine Desseaux." Oh my God, I'm not going to pronounce that. Antoine Desseaux est zoubré? Is how I'm gonna... Cool. Does anyone speak French?

• 33:19Chris Plante?

  Nah, man.

• 33:20Speaker 03

  Lots of people do, dude.

• 33:21Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, someone... I'm gonna say it phonetically and then someone can figure it out. Ex-oub-peri, who wrote...

• 33:28Speaker 03

  I bet if they know him in real life, then they probably recognize it.

• 33:33Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Why did I start doing the accent? Perfection is achieved not when there is...

• 33:37Chris Plante?

  Give it three more tries. Give it three or four more tries.

• 33:39Russ Frushtick?

  Perfection... This is the quote. "Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

• 33:46Speaker 03

  Oh, we love that.

• 33:47Russ Frushtick?

  I like that.

• 33:48Speaker 03

  Oh, isn't that nice?

• 33:50Russ Frushtick?

  Back to Cody. "I work as a backend engineer at Gearbox, building and maintaining the shift platform. We see a lot of that principle in a lot of code. Clean, elegant solutions that are always better than overly complex ones. For Justin, you see this principle in jigs. For example, a crosscut sled doesn't really need a bottom to do its job well. I assume that's a woodworking thing. Every unnecessary addition just gets in the way. So here's a challenge question. What is your favorite game that excels in doing less? Something that embraces simplicity in design, mechanics, and presentation."

• 34:24Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 34:25Chris Plante?

  Gosh.

• 34:25Speaker 03

  I don't think that... Are we talking about removing all the presentational aspects? Or like winnowing the gameplay down to, because I would argue that's two different things, right? You can have a very minimalistic presentation with a

• 34:38Griffin McElroy?

  More of the second, I think is what we're talking about.

• 34:40Russ Frushtick?

  I kind of interpreted it as both.

• 34:42Griffin McElroy?

  Really? Okay.

• 34:43Russ Frushtick?

  I think, I think, I'll give you an example. When I was reading this, the game that jumped into my head was N or N plus.

• 34:50Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 34:51Russ Frushtick?

  The 2D ninja platforming game that has actually a surprising amount of depth to it. But like the presentationally, like it's all like vector art. Like it's very, very simple, very minimalist, very focused on just presenting this very clean platforming game, which I think services the amount of depth to it. Cause there is a lot of like physics depth to like moving around that world and it allows you to just focus on that. So I don't know if that helps you guys think of this.

• 35:21Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, I, I think the incremental genre is pretty incredible at this kind of by definition. Like you can't have too much cruft there.

• 35:29Russ Frushtick?

  Remind me of an example of that.

• 35:32Griffin McElroy?

  Universal Paperclips, Cookie Clicker, like all of those things. Darkroom is

• 35:37Speaker 03

  Example of this?

• 35:38Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. I, I mean, Darkroom is

• 35:40Speaker 03

  There's not a UI for that.

• 35:41Griffin McElroy?

  Darkroom, or maybe I'm thinking of the Inson, which is the one that comes after Darkroom. One of those adds like a whole second, like exploration side of, of things. But like incremental games in general, like are just a simple UI for the most part and numbers that go up and mathematical kind of algorithms and that's just about it. And they are so sticky for me.

• 36:04Speaker 03

  Okay. To focus this a little bit, I would like to know your guys' favorite like elemental video game. Where like there's so, the, the mechanics are so threadbare that it starts to almost feel like a classic, like chess. Because you have like one mechanic and it worked. The one that for me was like, for a long time, it was like iOS was the best for this. Cause like

• 36:27Griffin McElroy?

  Absolutely.

• 36:28Speaker 03

  Flappy Bird and, not Flappy Bird, Tiny Wings and Tilt to Live.

• 36:34Speaker 03

  Uh, there was a lot of like really focused, small.

• 36:38Russ Frushtick?

  Cannibal.

• 36:38Speaker 03

  Cannibal. Oh, Cannibal's a clap. Man, you can still give someone a controller, give your kids Cannibal. It hits. It still hits. And that's just that one thing. It's great.

• 36:48Griffin McElroy?

  Super Hexagon.

• 36:50Speaker 03

  Super Hexagon is a great example. Was there an era of these?

• 36:55Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sure. Fucking what it sounds like. I mean, it sounds like when we were making, when, when companies were making, and by companies, I usually mean like two or three people at a time were making iOS games. You couldn't make, you couldn't get too complex because they weren't especially powerful in the early days. And also like people weren't quite sure how to make big stuff on them yet.

• 37:14Speaker 03

  A lot of people are also like willfully trying to jam more controls into games than, than a touchscreen can really like support.

• 37:22Griffin McElroy?

  And I feel like it was around like Infinity Blade came out and Apple pushed so hard, like, look what this fucking phone can do, guys. You're gonna shit your pants. Where then it all of a sudden like, I don't know. I feel like the, the tone shifted a little bit. And now it was more about recreating AAA experiences as much as you could.

• 37:41Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, I still think there's like a pretty large contingent.

• 37:44Griffin McElroy?

  Absolutely.

• 37:45Russ Frushtick?

  Card games and like more traditional like board game style games on there. But you're right. There's also the like, we're just gonna do Resident Evil 4, you know, on a phone.

• 37:54Chris Plante?

  I think Portal is a good example of this in terms of having a idea and extrapolating that as far as you can. And cutting anything else, like there, oh, there's a bad version of Portal where suddenly you have guns and you're just running around shooting stuff.

• 38:10Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it's also good. That's a good example of both because it starts from a very minimalist visual standpoint. And then they start like creeping in with like more interesting environments and things like that. So you kind of see the range of it, but the gameplay never gets technically more complex than the first Portal. It's really just the same idea.

• 38:28Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I also think Return of the Obedin. I think there are a few games where it takes an idea and sticks purely to that idea.

• 38:36Griffin McElroy?

  Well, it's a one bit art form. You don't get much more minimalist. If you were more minimalist than that, there would be nothing.

• 38:41Russ Frushtick?

  There'd be no bits, no bits left.

• 38:43Chris Plante?

  That's true. Griffin, did you ever get into the four kilobyte scene? Do you know about this?

• 38:48Griffin McElroy?

  Is that like Game Boy palette sort of shit?

• 38:51Chris Plante?

  No, that it's the like European demo scene where these artists would use just four kilobytes of information and create these like 3D hallucinatory visuals. They'd have big parties for them, kind of.

• 39:05Griffin McElroy?

  No, I mean, I don't know what part of that you think sounds like my, like it sounds, it sounds cool, but I don't, I would never, I would not know how to find those functions.

• 39:14Chris Plante?

  Something about that tinkering. But yeah, I, I'm super interested in, in people who do those sorts of things where you have as little information as possible and try to accomplish something.

• 39:24Griffin McElroy?

  Justin's more of the tinkerer these days.

• 39:26Chris Plante?

  He is, that's true.

• 39:27Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I'm more of the tailor, I think.

• 39:30Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 39:30Speaker 03

  And Russ is the spy. Listen, I, speaking of tinkering, uh, SteamOS is actually out.

• 39:37Griffin McElroy?

  Didn't you guys fuck with it? Did you guys? I'm so scared to fuck with Bazite because I just got it to work. I knew this was gonna happen, that I was gonna spend a day putting Bazite on my Rogue Ally and dual booting.

• 39:47Speaker 03

  To contextualize for people that aren't monitoring this space very closely, uh, for devices like Rogue, uh, the Rogue Ally, Ally X, et cetera, uh, that are default Windows handhelds. There's been a way to dual boot those into other, uh, operating systems, most notably Bazite, which creates a Steam-like experience, Steam Deck-like experience on the Rogue Ally X. Uh, but now Steam, Valve has released SteamOS that is natively, you can install it on the Rogue Ally, the Legion Go, other handhelds like that. Which is, is really interesting one because there's a lot of frustrating things about using Windows for your, uh, device.

• 40:28Speaker 03

  Not the least of which, like, if you don't want to mess with Microsoft, I completely understand that. And, and there's a lot of, most notably the Linux kernel will let you suspend your system like mid-game, which is not, doesn't sound massive until you start, don't have it.

• 40:45Griffin McElroy?

  A hundred thousand times.

• 40:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, a lot of other portable places, but like the, the, uh, so that is very cool. I have not done it because I have Bazite running and I don't want to mess with it. And I do not know. The use case for installing SteamOS on a device that already has another OS dual booting into it like, I don't, no one's gonna be there to help me. I'm gonna be way too down the well.

• 41:10Russ Frushtick?

  You'd wipe all that Bazite.

• 41:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'll go back to the start. We'd start fresh.

• 41:15Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I don't know. I, I don't have a rock ally, so I wasn't really motivated to do it, but it does seem like if you were to get one today.

• 41:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:23Russ Frushtick?

  Rather than getting Bazite, you would just do the traditional SteamOS.

• 41:26Speaker 03

  I think.

• 41:26Russ Frushtick?

  Very exciting.

• 41:27Speaker 03

  The more notable thing is this space. For this space to work, it has to be designed for and designed towards, and it's a much more noble, I think, useful thing of working towards than like VR, for example, which was sort of like the, the, the push. And I think the push for the next few years, rather than a graphical push, like the graphical arms race that has defined so much of gaming for so many years. I think it's gonna be more about this, like how small can you make it? How, how small can you make it run? And I think a wider distribution of a, of a, um, universal operating system, I think is, is a great way to get more of a standard there, because there really hasn't been one.

• 42:11Russ Frushtick?

  The SteamOS and like having a Steam Deck has like Linux pill me no, more than like no other thing. This has been like the turning point where Linux was scary before, and because there's all these new people using it and making it palpable. I can go into Steam Desktop mode and feel comfortable like messing around in there. And you don't have all the fucking cruft that are, that's floating around with like, you should upgrade to 365. Like there's, there's all sorts of upside to it. So I'm like incredibly jazzed to the prospects.

• 42:42Griffin McElroy?

  I have a lot, I have a lot of people I knew in college I need to apologize to.

• 42:46Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 42:46Griffin McElroy?

  For silently and sometimes verbally judging.

• 42:48Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, you pushed them down. You did all sorts of stuff.

• 42:51Speaker 03

  Uh, I would also highly recommend if you're thinking about doing anything like this at all, if you get one of these devices, get yourself. A mini keyboard, RII Ree or RII, I don't know if you pronounce, I guess.

• 43:03Griffin McElroy?

  Terrible SEO.

• 43:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know, right? RII, they make a lot of mini keyboards that have like the dongle stored inside the keyboard. There you go, Griffin. And like, if you're gonna be doing anything that requires you getting into the desktop, they're, you can get them for 25 bucks on Amazon, 22 bucks. They're really well worth it. I keep one in my backpack now in case I need to get in there and mess around.

• 43:27Griffin McElroy?

  I made platinum three in my Dota League using this bad boy.

• 43:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:33Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know if that's a thing. I don't know. Sounded right. Sounded good to me. Are we doing honorable mentions?

• 43:39Russ Frushtick?

  I thought we already started. It kinda sounded like we were.

• 43:41Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, cool. It felt like we had organically kinda just merged into it.

• 43:46Russ Frushtick?

  I finished this season of the rehearsal. I'd strongly recommend, once again, everyone watch it. I can't tell you anything about it. You shouldn't read anything about it, but that last episode was quite unexpected. It goes.

• 44:00Speaker 03

  I watched one episode, and I'm gonna give it the Justin McElroy thumbs down, did not enjoy, would not recommend, can't.

• 44:07Griffin McElroy?

  Hey, we warned you about the first 15 minutes of the first episode.

• 44:09Speaker 03

  I watched the sec, I skipped to the second episode with the singing competition and still a big no thanks.

• 44:17Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, that's a tough one for J-Man. I get that.

• 44:19Speaker 03

  No, it's not for me. It's not for a watch. It's from like a holistic like existence perspective. But yeah, yeah, got it. Everybody should make their art.

• 44:31Russ Frushtick?

  That's right.

• 44:35Griffin McElroy?

  I finished Expedition 33.

• 44:38Speaker 03

  Ah, yeah. How was that?

• 44:39Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, extremely good. I clocked in around 42 hours. I did quite a bit of the side content. It's pretty breezy, I think, by JRPG standards. I know that's a long time to play a game, but

• 44:52Griffin McElroy?

  I think that it's an ending of a video game that people are gonna be talking about for a while. I think they make some pretty bold fucking choices that I was really genuinely, I don't know, stuck with me in a way that I was.

• 45:06Speaker 03

  To what extent is it setting this up for like a, cause like everything about the, the, the structure feels like setting it up for like a big franchise universe type deal? Does it seem? Like that.

• 45:18Griffin McElroy?

  It's it is self it is definitely self-contained, but I also I could see there being more stuff to come out of it, but there's, I mean, the ending is an ending. The ending is quite, I don't know, it completes the the arc of the thing, and it does so in a way that the game definitely earns throughout its time. There is a the three act sort of structure of the game is as such that, like, when you start the third act, you could go right and finish it. You can go right and finish it, but it's got that sort of like, you know, do you want to go out and really explore, you know, more shit and fill out more of the empty spaces in the story and the characters, and et cetera, et cetera. And I really encourage you to do so. I don't know. The I don't want

• 46:02Griffin McElroy?

  to spoil it, obviously, but the ending is it's fucking wild that they ended it the way that they they ended it. And it's very, very cool to see a game come out and just like, I don't know, man, just beat ass in so many different ways and leave you with like a really thought provoking ending. It's like, I don't know, it's the whole package.

• 46:21Speaker 03

  There are parts of me that think that maybe I need to not go to sleep at 10:30 at night anymore.

• 46:26Griffin McElroy?

  And just stay. That's my secret. I just.

• 46:28Speaker 03

  I do not know how to make the math work otherwise to like finish that.

• 46:32Griffin McElroy?

  I I had a I've been staying up late a lot lately, mostly working on projects and shit. But yeah, I'll crank I'll crash a few hours of expo 33 in there where I can. You got to put in the effort. You got to put in the labor to be a real gamer sometimes.

• 46:48Speaker 03

  You're not gonna catch Griffin standing in line.

• 46:50Griffin McElroy?

  No fucking way, man.

• 46:51Speaker 03

  No way, unless he's got a steam deck in his hand.

• 46:53Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. I don't fuck with steam decks. I need the wrong ally because I need the fast load time so I can get in as much gaming as I possibly can. The most dense pixels as possible.

• 47:05Speaker 03

  Can I tell you guys what I have got been messing around with this week?

• 47:10Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 47:10Speaker 03

  It's called Survival Kids. You play Survival Kids? Hmm. It's on Game Boy Color. It's also known as Stranded Kids. Uh, it's a really interesting, I, I, it's fascinating, man. If you go back and play this little guy, you wa- you're a little kid and you watch it up on a beach and you have nothing and you have no information. And for a game from this era, that feels so strange, but you're literally like walking around a deserted island, finding like sticks and rocks to start like little fires. You're finding shells to dig meat out of to try to stay alive. You need fresh water. You need shelter. You're like trying to set up a whole like living situation.

• 47:51Speaker 03

  I missed this completely, but I did play later, this was, uh, continued as Lost in Blue. On the, yes, I don't know, right? So this, this is where the series started. They were called Survival Kids, whatever, whatever in Japan, but here they were just Lost in Blue because the Survival Kids name didn't really have the.

• 48:11Chris Plante?

  Did you see like that Survival Kids comes out in, uh, next week?

• 48:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's crazy timing. Like it's, I, I.

• 48:19Russ Frushtick?

  They're doing a Switch two.

• 48:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:21Russ Frushtick?

  Is that what you're talking about?

• 48:21Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 48:22Speaker 03

  It's good. Yes. An official, official, uh, re-release on the Nintendo Classics service.

• 48:28Chris Plante?

  Uh, that's great.

• 48:29Speaker 03

  So you'll be able to play that now.

• 48:31Russ Frushtick?

  You can go play now. But there's also a sequel.

• 48:33Chris Plante?

  There's a new, a reboot of it coming out.

• 48:35Russ Frushtick?

  3D version of Survival Kids.

• 48:37Chris Plante?

  At Switch two's launch. Yeah.

• 48:40Speaker 03

  Fantastic.

• 48:40Chris Plante?

  Fuck yeah, man.

• 48:42Speaker 03

  Fantastic.

• 48:43Chris Plante?

  Now's the time.

• 48:44Speaker 03

  That's, I listen, this was even more timely than I knew, but, uh, go check out Survival Kids. You can, you can play the re-release. Now, like you can go play the, the re-release of it.

• 48:53Russ Frushtick?

  The, it looks like the Link's Awakening engine is what it looks like.

• 48:56Speaker 03

  It's really in, like the things that they're doing, it's, it's weird. It's like, it definitely feels a little bit like proof of concept. Cause it's the first one in a very long running series, but there are ideas that I didn't know were in the ether at this point. Like in terms of like what a survival game looks like. So from that historical perspective, it's, it's, it's cool.

• 49:12Chris Plante?

  The Game Boy Color box art is also just real good.

• 49:16Speaker 03

  It can't be it.

• 49:17Chris Plante?

  Real, real good. Um, uh, my thing, Jaws, saw Jaws the other night. Pretty good.

• 49:25Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, with the shark.

• 49:25Chris Plante?

  It's summertime, baby. That means you've got to watch Jaws. You've got to watch The Sandlot. You've got to watch Dirty Dancing.

• 49:32Speaker 03

  Did you, did you ever see that play? Did I tell you guys about that play?

• 49:36Chris Plante?

  Oh, about the making of Jaws?

• 49:38Speaker 03

  About the making of Jaws?

• 49:39Chris Plante?

  Yeah. Did you like it?

• 49:40Speaker 03

  It's great. It's fascinating. I don't know if it would work as well if the guy who played Quinn's son is not playing his role. That, that, that was the context in which I saw it. So that was, uh,

• 49:51Chris Plante?

  Ideal, it seems.

• 49:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, definitely. He, he is so good at playing Robert Shaw. It's crazy, guys.

• 49:57Chris Plante?

  Imagine that.

• 49:58Speaker 03

  He's like so much like him. It's wild.

• 50:02Chris Plante?

  Doll's eyes. Um, cool. That's all I've got. Anything else?

• 50:07Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I mean, I've also been watching Devil's Plant, but I think you guys, I don't think the world's ready to hear Mark discuss.

• 50:12Speaker 03

  Hey, I found the stupidest reality show that's called Gotta Get Out. Do you know what that show's about? There's a room, a house full of people, half are celebrities, half are not. All the doors are locked. There is a gate. There is a million dollars on offer and a money clock that is ticking up. A dollar a minute or whatever, a dollar every few seconds. It's ticking up. And if you escape the house, then you get to take all the money that's currently accrued in the pot. But people are watching everyone else to try to escape. There are buttons to like crash the gates, to close the gates throughout the house. There is a watchtower where people are watching, but you can get escape attempts randomly. You can collect escape attempts like

• 50:56Speaker 03

  there's going to be a recycling truck coming through. If you hide in this recycling bin at 3:00 PM, there's an exfiltration strategy or like we've hidden keys to a Maserati out front if you can find it. Or you'll get people working as a team, uh, like one lady found a, a hidden Santa costume and she could use the Santa costume.

• 51:18Speaker 03

  And if they have a partner, they could decide to go back and split the money with their partner or not. Uh, and that's the whole show is called, you gotta get out.

• 51:27Russ Frushtick?

  That's great.

• 51:27Speaker 03

  Scrape dude. It's one of the dumbest things I've ever seen.

• 51:31Speaker 03

  Spencer from the hills is on it and he exclusively wears Heidi Montag t-shirts. And I do think that that is very good. I do have to give him credit for that.

• 51:40Russ Frushtick?

  Are they still together?

• 51:41Speaker 03

  Ones too. The guy's like a dozen.

• 51:43Russ Frushtick?

  Are they together still?

• 51:45Speaker 03

  Yes. Yes, they are.

• 51:46Russ Frushtick?

  They made it work.

• 51:47Speaker 03

  Very much in love.

• 51:48Russ Frushtick?

  Good. I love that. That's great.

• 51:49Speaker 03

  And have several kids.

• 51:51Russ Frushtick?

  Good for them.

• 51:51Speaker 03

  I'm one of them. It's my dad and mom.

• 51:54Russ Frushtick?

  I want, I want to thank the-

• 51:56Griffin McElroy?

  My mom and dad too, I guess. I love you, mom and dad.

• 52:00Griffin McElroy?

  Who's this old fu- who's this fucking old guy we played Dungeons and Dragons with? He's not Spitzer.

• 52:08Speaker 03

  He took us from our real parents.

• 52:09Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, man.

• 52:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, dude. Like a thief of the night. Um, what are we doing next week?

• 52:16Russ Frushtick?

  Good question. Next week, we are doing-

• 52:18Speaker 03

  Great question.

• 52:19Russ Frushtick?

  Two games, uh, due to some travel concerns, we want to make sure that portable games are an option, but we're doing Elden Ring Night Rain, uh, and Monster Train 2. Uh, so we'll be covering both of those games and I'm very excited, uh, for them because they're both pretty major, uh, I guess sequel-ish is for big games.

• 52:42Speaker 03

  Is that what we're calling Elden Ring Night Rain? Is that what we're calling it?

• 52:45Russ Frushtick?

  Well, that's why I added the ish. It's a sequel-ish.

• 52:49Russ Frushtick?

  I also wanted to thank our patrons over at patreon.com slash the besties. We have Kieran, we have Arianna, we have Camille and we have Sawyer. Thank you for being patrons. Thank you for everyone else for being so supportive and being patrons of the besties. Uh, we're doing our best. We hope, we hope you appreciate us, uh, in the way that we greatly, greatly appreciate you. Uh, we have a new episode of the resties that it's up and in your feed. Uh, and, uh, we're gonna have a new bracket coming at you real soon. So, uh, keep an eye out for that, uh, next week. I think that's it.

• 53:25Speaker 03

  Cool. Great. What can we do for us this week on the besties? Be sure to join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?

• 54:01Speaker 03

  Besties!