Vampire Crawlers and a Big Besties Update

This is a big week of change at The Besties. But before we get to the news, we all want to chat about one of the strangest spinoffs in indie games. Vampire Crawlers adapts the iconic Vampire Survivors into a dungeon crawling, roguelike deckbuilder. And... it mostly works? Stick around until the end of the show, when we chat about a big change for the future of The Besties.

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

• 0:00Griffin McElroy?

  I'll tell, I'll tell a true story for the cold open. I love it. Yeah.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a true story. Yesterday, we did a fundraiser for the Max Fund Drive and the more people donated to the drive, the longer my brother Travis would recap season two of Yellowstone, season two. And it was three hours.

• 0:23Griffin McElroy?

  How, let me ask it, logistically speaking. Yeah. If you, if it starts at, let's say 10 minutes. Yeah. And he's like already at episode eight.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Well, people can go watch the stream if they want to see.

• 0:34Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. It timed out perfectly. It's not really that. Yeah.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. But anyway, um, yesterday, uh, a patient escaped from, uh, the psychiatric hospital here, uh, who was armed in dangerance. And there was a citywide manhunt for this guy. And eventually he turned up, uh, at a, uh, Harmony House. And he was recognized by my wife, who then alerted the authorities and brought the manhunt to a close. That happened while I was listening to my brother describe season two of Yellowstone.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  These two events is what I'm saying to you.

• 1:15Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. The contrast could not be.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Same time. They were, they're, they happened at the same time, you know?

• 1:22Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  We, we come home from our day and we look at each other and we're like, so what happened in your, I have to say mine to her, you know what I mean?

• 1:32Griffin McElroy?

  I got tired from talking, from hearing about Yellowstone for too long. Yeah. And then she gets to be like, the plot of Halloween, I stopped it from happening. Right. Right. Sure. In real life. Yeah. But who is the hero here? Who? That's my, that's my. Who's the real hero? Sidney. Yeah. Yeah, not you. For sure, not even close. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:13Speaker 01

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

• 2:16Griffin McElroy?

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

• 2:19Chris Plante?

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

• 2:23Russ Frushtick?

  My name is Ross Fraschek. I know the best game of the week.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Welcome to The Besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club and just by listening, you have become a member. This week we're going to be talking about Vampire Crawlers. What's that?

• 2:41Russ Frushtick?

  That's not the full title of the game, Justin.

• 2:42Griffin McElroy?

  What is the full title of the game? I didn't know there was more.

• 2:45Russ Frushtick?

  The full title of the game is Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors.

• 2:50Griffin McElroy?

  That's cool. I like that they have not enough games have turbo in the title anymore and I'm always banging that drum.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  Wildcard is also good.

• 2:56Griffin McElroy?

  It's cool. Turbo wildcard.

• 2:58Chris Plante?

  Yeah, it's a, it's a deck builder turn-based roguelite where you crawl through the dungeons.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Beautiful. We're going to talk about that and a lot more right after this.

• 3:13Chris Plante?

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• 3:57Chris Plante?

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• 4:41Chris Plante?

  That's protonvpn.com/besties.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Vampire Crawlers is made by the people who brought you Vampire Survivors. Yeah. Right? Yes. It's in the lineage. It's literally in the title, too. Yeah. It says "from Vampire Survivors," which is cool. Yeah, not from the team that made Vampire Survivors. I like the idea that video games are making other video games.

• 5:07Chris Plante?

  It's a partnership, though, right? Justin, do you know what their partner developer also made?

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Um, something I like, I know, but...

• 5:18Chris Plante?

  Vostok Inc. Remember that one?

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:21Chris Plante?

  Yeah. Twin-Stick Shooter Grindy Game.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a progressive game. Okay, why is Vostok Inc. connected to the arcade simulator?

• 5:30Chris Plante?

  Arcade Paradise, they made that, too. Okay.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  Wow, damn, what a fucking... What a hell rate.

• 5:35Chris Plante?

  Yeah, that's a great... the great people to partner with.

• 5:39Griffin McElroy?

  Can I try and explain how they have adapted this? The manner in which this game works. It is remarkably similar to Vampire Survivors, despite the fact that the genre could not be more different. You are still going through levels where waves and waves and waves of enemies are coming at you, only now they're coming at you in a sort of flat perspective, and every turn you have mana that you can spend to use cards, and the cards are basically equivalent to the weapons and power-ups in Vampire Survivors.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:12Griffin McElroy?

  So if you know the fusions from Vampire Survivors, if you know, hey, if I get the Fire Wand and the Spinach Upgrade, then I can level those up into the Hellfire what? Like, that shit, all... That stuff works. All that stuff works, right?

• 6:27Speaker 01

  It's similar to Hearthstone, how Hearthstone benefited from your awareness of the mechanics of Warcraft already. So you know.

• 6:35Russ Frushtick?

  Leroy Jenkins.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  It's a, yeah, it's a metaphorical, like, you get it.

• 6:40Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it's, so you're going through waves of enemies. You get to move around like a little dungeon with like five floors usually. You see enemies in the distance. You can decide to go in after them. We're like, oh, hey, there's a candlestick. I'll smash that. Maybe it'll have coins or whatever. All that stuff. You know it from Vampire Survivors. Between your dungeon crawls, you get gold and you spend that in the town to unlock new survivors or upgrade your stats at a shop. Like Vampire Survivor, like it's so much stuff. It's just Arcana cards, all the characters. It's just one to one and they've done such a, I don't know, an incredible job of getting all of that stuff and making it make sense in the terms of like a very, very, very fast paced.

• 7:24Griffin McElroy?

  This is about the closest to an arcade deck builder roguelite that I can imagine because I don't know, it moves at such a clip, just like the original.

• 7:33Russ Frushtick?

  Justin, you play a ton of these.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:35Russ Frushtick?

  I feel like. My immediate thought was like Vampire Survivors meets Uno. And I'm curious if you think that is a fair.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Oh, that's actually really good. I mean, Uno, yeah, because you're like looking for streaks. There's reverses. There's like short, those short little runs where.

• 7:52Russ Frushtick?

  Can you explain the like numbers aspect? I've never seen this before in a card builder.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Me neither. So there's a mana cost to each of these cards. A lot of them are zeros, ones and twos. And basically the idea is that by playing cards in a sequence of numbers, in increasing mana order, they get more powerful. And that's applicable for every card. So like the greed card, for example, will increase the amount of gold that you earn. But if you get a zero and that costs one mana to play, if you have a zero mana card, like the whip that you play before that, that greed card will actually double in, in value. So you're like incentivized to play cards in like.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  A right order. There are some cards that can become wild and become connectors. But that's the basic idea is you're looking for like short straights to keep momentum going.

• 8:44Griffin McElroy?

  Right. There's also crawlers, which are like the characters that you choose to take into the dungeon, who are represented by cards that when you play them, they will usually give you some immediate benefit and then have an ongoing sort of thing. Pugnala is probably my favorite crawler in the game, has a benefit where you get some like extra might power whenever you play her card, but then the next like nine like buff cards that you play there, yellow coded cards also allow you to draw another card. And so it allows you to like really chain that together and look for like infinite combos with not a ton of planning and effort, which is very, very rewarding for me.

• 9:21Russ Frushtick?

  I think that's the big difference. And we were talking about pacing earlier. The big difference between this and Slay the Spire 2, which just came out and is like rave reviews, people are over the roof about it, is unlike something like Slay the Spire, where you spend a decent amount of time, could be 30 seconds to a minute, looking at all your cards on a given hand and saying, oh, I could use this and this will come onto this. The first thing you do in every round of Vampire Crawlers is just look at the mana costs and think, can I make a streak with these mana costs? Which is like a very different way of like playing through a deck build.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  And you're, sometimes there's a risk reward element, which is like, well, I have, there's a lot of cards that will draw more cards. Is it worth spending the mana to see if I get something that can pull a combo?

• 10:05Griffin McElroy?

  But that loop is so short. That loop is like literally a turn will take you five seconds. Unless you're playing a Pugnala infinite combo deck, then they'll, it'll just take one turn to get through the whole battle, but it'll take you a minute. But like, it's so fast and that is such a huge difference from Monster Train or Slay the Spire, where you're like, okay, let me run the math on this. I think I can get 20 poison on him, then play my two cost double poison card. It's like, you're not, it ain't all that serious. You are, you kind of know what you're doing because your deck starts out usually with like four cards in it.

• 10:38Chris Plante?

  And you know how to count up to five.

• 10:40Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sure.

• 10:42Chris Plante?

  Like, yeah, I, I, I'm just so impressed because this game truly feels like an adaptation of Vampire Crawlers. And like the truance, we're like, oh, I adapted a book into a movie. They somehow adapted one game into another genre, and I don't know if I've seen that. Because even what we're talking about here reminds me of that flow and feeling that you get playing Vampire Survivors. Where you're not having to think a whole lot. It wants you to have the thinking stuff happen when you go like before you go in to the actual mission. When you're saying, okay, this stage is a bridge.

• 11:22Chris Plante?

  And I am going to have two or three really, really long battles versus the other stages where it's a whole bunch of really short battles. When a long battle, I'm going to want to use a lot of buffs that can stack on top of each other over the course of an entire fight. Because by the end, I could have 300%, 400% damage that I'm spewing before the end of this. And the actual doing of it, it's kind of podcast game. Like you could, you can be chilling out.

• 11:51Griffin McElroy?

  Even that's generous.

• 11:52Chris Plante?

  Yeah, like I was playing on the plane and it was like a perfect playing game because I felt like I was doing like five things at once.

• 11:59Griffin McElroy?

  I've been catching up on TV shows while playing Vampire Crawlers, which is not to say that I don't like Vampire Crawlers. I'm hopelessly, hopelessly into it. It's just for me hitting that loop of like Vampire Survivors, where I'm going to go in here, I'm going to smash a fucking million dudes. Then I'm going to go back to base and figure out like what I'm going to spend this gold on. Cause it is like significant stuff, the like things you can buff at home. Like, oh, this one just gives you an extra mana point, like every time, or like an automatic point of art. Like it's huge transformational stuff for what you're capable of doing in your runs. And so like the carrot on that stick is big and juicy.

• 12:35Chris Plante?

  I, I see, I kind of struggle with that a little bit because I felt like.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  My, my one issue that I had with this, cause I actually like the moment to moment a lot. I found myself a little bit unmotivated between rounds, I think. Um, where you're playing with cards. I find that the incremental bonuses on like your damage and stuff don't really feel as good. They don't feel as impactful as they do in survivors where you like, actually can see that represented on the screen really quickly.

• 13:06Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  So for me, it's a little bit, because it is so close to vampire survivors. I found myself a little bit less enchanted by it because it feels a little bit like, to me, like one of those DMakes or something where it's more impressive that they did it. And not necessarily like, because I've been looking at these sprites and these attacks and these things for so long. That pretty quickly you're like, you can fill in your own blanks with your own mind as to what you, it would do in this context. And that, that to me was like, it kind of reduced the, the joy and the thrill and the excitement of like these upgrades and the different things you'll find.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Because it is so vampire survivors, you know what I mean?

• 13:53Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 13:54Russ Frushtick?

  The only thing that I noticed was that when you first start the game, the upgrades that you have access to are like, kind of the boring upgrades. They tend to be like, you get more gold or you get more experience.

• 14:04Griffin McElroy?

  And they're the ones that like, it makes sense to do first, like greed upgrade, I maxed out first and it took forever. But it's like, well, yeah, I do want to like double the amount of gold I'm bringing in so I can get the other upgrades fast. It's, it was the least interesting.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  If you ask me, I'd rather just have fun upgrades.

• 14:19Russ Frushtick?

  That's fair.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  That doesn't sound very fun, Griff.

• 14:21Russ Frushtick?

  Like eventually you do get, uh, one of the upgrades you get is the ability to have multiple crawlers in a single run. So you'll set up, you'll bring two or even three crawlers. So then you're comboing off their different passive abilities while you're playing a run. So instead of more hand size from a purple card, you're getting more hand size and more damage and more X, Y and Z.

• 14:44Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 14:44Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, Griffin mentioned you can add mana, like the, I think they, the later upgrades, which again, I agree, should have been a little front loaded. Start to feel much more tactile and like impactful in that.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  This is in early access, right? I mean, this is.

• 14:56Russ Frushtick?

  I don't think so.

• 14:58Griffin McElroy?

  It's out.

• 14:59Russ Frushtick?

  I imagine if it follows the Vampire Survivors flow, which.

• 15:02Chris Plante?

  Let's keep updating though.

• 15:03Russ Frushtick?

  It'll just, there'll be a ton of DLC and things like that.

• 15:06Chris Plante?

  The, the way that upgrades work in games like this is like a thing I always trip over. So this is.

• 15:12Griffin McElroy?

  You didn't, I remember this. You did not care for Vampire Survivors for this.

• 15:16Chris Plante?

  Vampire Survivors, I think I like lot, like it broke me in some way because it felt like here is the most successful of the we do not value your time video games. And, and I think my issue then honestly wasn't even with Vampire Survivors. I think it was kind of just where I was with video games and that like that type of thing. I am coming at this like a warmer spot to that, but there are the upgrades that you're talking about like, ah, and get more money or get more health or get more of these things where if you want to win in the game, you have to do that. I'm actually pretty fine with that. That's the name of the game here, but then there are also.

• 15:52Griffin McElroy?

  Actually, the name of the game is Vampire Crawlers, a turbo wild card.

• 15:55Chris Plante?

  Sorry, I really appreciate you making sure that we got that in there. The, there are also upgrades like, oh, now you can see where items are on the map. And it's like, that's a weird thing for me of like, why can I not just have the thing that I need to play the game?

• 16:14Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, that's the like hidden in the levels you will find, like you will see on the map when you were picking the level you're going into like, oh, this one has a relic that I haven't found. And that's, that's, that's one of those of like, hey, here's a a huge quality of life.

• 16:27Chris Plante?

  Yeah. And it's like, okay, now the game's in, it's what I wish the game just would have been. And if the idea was like, oh, well, the game's so complicated, we have to kind of pass these around little by little, but the game is in no way too complicated. In fact, it's more complicated not having those features.

• 16:44Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I think a lot of it is them just trying to pull maybe too much from the original source material, which also had relics that like seemingly should have just been in the game from the jump.

• 16:55Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  I also beat both the first and second levels the first time I I attempted them.

• 17:01Griffin McElroy?

  Whoa, boy.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Which felt which felt very different from Vampire Survivors where it's like you get overwhelmed and those this kind of speaks to the upgrades thing where like I don't really know why I needed the upgrades. I just had these two long runs where I, you know, finished the the level.

• 17:18Russ Frushtick?

  I think the I think that is a recent change.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  That's why I asked about the early access thing because that is something that feels like.

• 17:23Griffin McElroy?

  The difficulty for Kurt feels very strange.

• 17:25Russ Frushtick?

  I think that's a recent change with the genre. When Vampire Survivors came out, which seemingly doesn't, I mean, it was a few years ago. It's not that long ago, but when it came out, the the MO for these sorts of games, rogue light games, was that you would basically fail in like 30 seconds and then the next one you'd last two minutes and the next one you'd last 10 minutes, et cetera, et cetera. And since then, I think as it's evolved, it's made the smart choice of you should know what a run feels like proper before you get your ass handed to you.

• 17:56Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 17:56Russ Frushtick?

  And I actually think that's a better experience for me because it tells me, oh, this is actually something I would want to spend time with.

• 18:03Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  If you're backing into that, I mean, like if you're designing your game around that, yes. But this is a game that has inherited so much cruft from survivors that I feel like it is not able to make that independently feel good because you're if you look at the carrots with survivors, it's like being able to last a few minutes longer.

• 18:24Griffin McElroy?

  Sure.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  But also in like the cool synergies that you kind of figure out, right? There are synergies here that work that work differently, but that's part of the that's the fun. That's like the the the grist of it, I think.

• 18:36Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 18:36Chris Plante?

  I I also wonder if Survivors has changed more since the last time I played it because the level structure here is very different. So you're right, you beat level one and two and then you'll go to level three, which I think is the bridge. It's either three or four and it is very clearly a like. You need to go back and grind point. You hit this thing. You're not going to get through it and it's telling you, well, you should turn around. And then when you turn around, you discover that there are sub levels for the levels that you had just come from and that there are additional tasks and there's things that you're going to unlock. So you see that like, oh, this is the path to get powerful enough to then beat the bridge.

• 19:18Chris Plante?

  The problem that I have with that structure for me is it makes it really transparent that this is not an issue with my skill that like, I need to go back and I need to grind it out. And I'm curious for y'all, like, is there a point where you're playing these games and you feel like you know, oh, I made a mistake or like, I feel like I am doing really well in the game versus I need to like, push the, the button to make sure that I can now go get the gold and the health to play more.

• 19:54Griffin McElroy?

  It's definitely a lot. Like, I think that that typifies the, the, the genre that Vampire Survivors created. And that's not like, I don't think it's an inherently good or bad thing because I enjoy that, right? Like, that is very, that hearkens back very much to like RPG, classic RPG, dragon quest shit of like, yeah, you can't, sorry, man, you're not big enough to come in here yet. I think where I, uh, where I didn't kind of realize the deficit I was working under is that exact point. I got to the bridge and got my ass handed to me. Uh, I didn't quite realize that, like, it's not just gold you're getting that you're spending on stat increases and unlocking new characters and stuff. There's also sort of, uh, achievements that you're unlocking constantly, like from like, get a streak up to this level or get this character up to this level in one run or do this or

• 20:38Griffin McElroy?

  do this. And for doing that, you are unlocking like new stuff. You are unlocking, uh, the ability to like, uh, upgrade your cards at the blacksmith and like, there's, there's a few other vectors. But yeah, I mean, I don't, I, it's maybe possible to beat that bridge level if you like, know a few cracked early synergies, uh, that are available to you from the beginning of the game. But no, that very much felt like a, yep, okay, gotta go back to the, uh, gotta go back to the grindstone. But that's, I don't know. I don't, I like that about this game. It is a thing that doesn't bother me. And in fact, it kind of appeals to me about.

• 21:11Chris Plante?

  There's only like one thing I want to crack in there. The game is not called grindstone. It's called Vampire Crawlers, the turbo wild card from Vampire.

• 21:18Griffin McElroy?

  That's true. That's fair.

• 21:19Russ Frushtick?

  Very true. Very true. I, I think it is a nice. I like the fact that this game is here because it really is such a palate cleanser from playing a game. You know, I'm coming off of playing.

• 21:32Griffin McElroy?

  So much of what we played?

• 21:33Russ Frushtick?

  Well, yeah, so I aspire and also like even like Mugenics. I think about playing Mugenics where every turn is like this fucking math puzzle. And I love that. I was over the moon about it, but it's not exactly something I can wind down with.

• 21:46Griffin McElroy?

  No, not at all.

• 21:46Russ Frushtick?

  And this is, as Plant said, like the perfect airplane game, the perfect subway commute game. I mean, my only complaint, and I actually want to ask this to Justin. Justin, did you end up setting this on your tablet?

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Uh, on my phone.

• 22:00Russ Frushtick?

  On your phone?

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:01Russ Frushtick?

  And that seems like an amazing way to play the game. It's just not, you know, it requires some heavy lifting at the moment.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Square configurations. You kind of had the game at the top two thirds and then the touchpad at the bottom.

• 22:13Griffin McElroy?

  Are you using the fold, the fold?

• 22:15Speaker 01

  I will say this, it was not a great experience.

• 22:18Russ Frushtick?

  Is that because?

• 22:19Speaker 01

  If you, it's navigation really sucks.

• 22:22Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  Uh, on a tablet, it really sucks a lot because you're tapping the arrows in the direction that you want to go with the mouse. So like that's, it's not fun on a tablet. It's a bad experience.

• 22:34Russ Frushtick?

  But presumably.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  It runs fine.

• 22:36Griffin McElroy?

  Runs great.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, runs great. Not a pleasurable way to play it. I think it would be better if I had a, like, I think if I was able to use a controller and then had like a touchscreen and a controller, that might be like an ideal way to play it, but.

• 22:49Griffin McElroy?

  I have to imagine they'll come up with native, like, I don't know.

• 22:53Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, that was sort of my question.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  I mean, I, yeah, I don't know what it would, probably something on screen.

• 22:57Russ Frushtick?

  If it was natively like mobile friendly and you didn't have to use like an emulated mouse or whatever, don't you think that would be better?

• 23:04Speaker 01

  But I'm trying to think like, how would you get around the envi- like, I don't know. So there's probably some way to get around the environment.

• 23:10Griffin McElroy?

  Virtual stick, yeah. I'm enjoying the game a lot. I don't think it's going to get its hooks in me for forever, right? I don't think, I think that a game like. Slay the Spire 2 is gonna have a way longer tail.

• 23:21Russ Frushtick?

  100%.

• 23:22Griffin McElroy?

  Um, yeah, partially because like it's way more involved. The mechanics are a lot more involved. But also like, uh, I referenced the difficulty curve earlier. I feel like since I have unlocked certain upgrades or like figured out certain characters, like it is not a challenging game. Like it's just not, it hasn't, I haven't hit anything that's been particularly difficult in a while. And I kind of need that from, from a, a, a deck builder so that I feel like there's a reason to keep plumbing the depths of like strategies and stuff like that.

• 23:51Russ Frushtick?

  10 bucks though, man.

• 23:53Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 23:53Chris Plante?

  It's also just so cool. Like, like what, what Hoops was saying about the DMak kind of feeling of like, I just can't believe they made this. Right away, I'm hoping that I see a few more, especially indie devs try this with things that we like and that are familiar. Like this, I have no idea how this works, but I immediately was thinking of a spelunky deck builder and how I wanted that so bad. Um, or other versions of take the thing I know and put it in a different place because there are a lot of games where it's like, I don't need a sequel, but I do want a fresh taste of the thing I like. Justin is making a face that says spelunky deck builder?

• 24:34Russ Frushtick?

  That's good.

• 24:35Chris Plante?

  Sure.

• 24:37Russ Frushtick?

  Sure. No, no, no. I think, I think every IP should continue to aroboros, eat its own tail and shit itself out over and over again. So we can all get a big spoon and go over and gobble up all of it.

• 24:47Griffin McElroy?

  Gobble up their dookie.

• 24:48Speaker 04

  I'm hungry. I'm hungry. I like the, I like the circle dookie, but I wish it was squares.

• 24:57Russ Frushtick?

  I think we've seen some teams kind of struggle with this. You saw the Shovel Knight team do a bunch of spinoffs and none of them kind of really matched. Never quite clicked. I, I also want to say like, this is a really good representation of what maybe a lot of successful indie developers should consider, which is to say, if you have an insanely successful, massively popular one-off indie game, follow it up with a game that costs about as much to make. Do not make your open world MMO or PG and like break your company in half trying to struggle to get this huge like super risky project out the door. Make something that seems fun in like testing and just like push

• 25:40Russ Frushtick?

  it out there such that it doesn't risk the success you've already had because the fact that you would get two big hits is very, very slim. So please be careful indie devs out there. This is a good, good approach.

• 25:53Chris Plante?

  For sure. What was the name of this one before we wrap up?

• 25:55Russ Frushtick?

  This game is called Vampire Crawler. Vampire Crawler's The Turbo Wildcard From Vampire Survivors.

• 26:02Chris Plante?

  Great.

• 26:03Russ Frushtick?

  A game about cards.

• 26:04Chris Plante?

  And life.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  That's Vampire Crawler's The Turbo Wildcard From Vampire Survivors. We'll be back right after this with some thoughts from Russ Fresh Tech about the future of video games, controlings.

• 26:18Russ Frushtick?

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

• 27:00Russ Frushtick?

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

• 27:39Russ Frushtick?

  This episode of The Besties is sponsored by Alienware. You know, gaming today isn't one thing. It moves between cozy, chaotic, and everything in between. One minute, you're exploring something slow and immersive. The next, you're in a fast-paced match. And somewhere in there, you might be creating, streaming, or seeing where the session goes. That's why Alienware systems are built with the performance to handle it all. With Nvidia GeForce RTX, it delivers powerful graphics that bring every world to life while optimizing battery life. So whether you're playing, creating, or jumping between both, everything runs the way it should. No interruptions, no slowing down. You don't have to adjust the way you play. You just keep gaming your way, however that looks in the moment. Be more Alien at Alienware.com/gameYourWay.

• 28:27Chris Plante?

  Did you say controllers?

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Everyone is dying. The Steam controller, I have a Steam controller. I have one within reach, not the one you're thinking of.

• 28:36Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, I am thinking of the one that you have. Because this other one isn't out yet, almost.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:43Russ Frushtick?

  I'm kind of blown away that you still have the original Steam controller. Have you used it?

• 28:48Speaker 01

  I used it a couple of times. It was cool. I'd leave it in a cube. I just have a cube full of old controllers. Nobody wants them. What do I got to do with them?

• 28:54Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that's fair. The original Steam controller, for people don't remember, had one analog stick and two very large touchpads. And the rationale was they wanted to make a controller that could run any game. Like, if you wanted to play Command and Conquer or fucking Civ, and also Half-Life on the same controller. You could theoretically do that. Most people didn't like it. I know there were some diehard fans for it.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  It's like they had never heard any of the many idioms about trying to do everything with one thing, right?

• 29:22Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, sure.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Being all things to one people would be, would be one example. Or, you know, like, we know this doesn't work.

• 29:29Griffin McElroy?

  I find it to be functional on the Steam Deck, like using the Steam Deck touchpads.

• 29:34Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 29:34Griffin McElroy?

  I think it works alright.

• 29:36Russ Frushtick?

  We're gonna get there. What a segue, Griffin McRoy. Well done.

• 29:39Griffin McElroy?

  Great.

• 29:40Russ Frushtick?

  So, as we know, Steam went ahead, Valve went ahead and released the Steam Deck, big success. And Steam Deck OLED, big success. And now they are back with their next hardware release, which is a new Steam controller. The controller is not available for purchase yet. I got an early one because I'm great. And here's what I can say.

• 30:03Griffin McElroy?

  You saved Gabe Newell's life.

• 30:05Russ Frushtick?

  I saved him. He was scuba diving and I came out with all his knives attached to me.

• 30:10Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 30:11Russ Frushtick?

  And stabbed a shark.

• 30:11Griffin McElroy?

  He got trapped on the coral and Russ cut him free with his own knives.

• 30:15Russ Frushtick?

  For about 10 years, probably more than that, 20 years, I've been using an Xbox controller whenever I play PC games because it just worked. You plug it in and it just worked. I think those days are over. I think this is going to be my default PC gaming controller, maybe for the rest of my life. I like it. I like it a lot. It's really, really good. It feels, at a glance, you'll see, it has the analog sticks, it has the buttons. It basically has all the buttons that you recognize from a Steam Deck, if you use the Steam Deck.

• 30:48Griffin McElroy?

  Two sticks?

• 30:49Russ Frushtick?

  It has two sticks, it has two touchpads, it has two back buttons on each hand, so four back buttons in total. So, everything that's on a Steam Deck is on here, but it's been designed as a controller. It's not been designed as a handheld gaming Linux, whatever the fuck the Steam Deck is.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Probably worth noting at this point, it was designed, almost certainly, to be released as part of a suite of hardware from the Valve Corporation that currently does not make sense due to the world.

• 31:19Chris Plante?

  I think they've actually said something along the lines of like, why are we releasing it now? Well, it doesn't need RAM.

• 31:25Griffin McElroy?

  Doesn't got no goddamn RAM in it. So it's good to go. It's just springs and wires.

• 31:30Russ Frushtick?

  But honestly, if you have a gaming PC at home, or even if you have a Steam Deck and you want like a bespoke controller for the Steam Deck and you're just gonna prop it up, you can just use this too. This works perfectly fine, but I do understand the rationale.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Hey, why'd you, hey, cool controller. Why'd you buy it? I want to prop up my Steam Deck in front of me and play it with this controller. Oh, you're a psychopath. Yeah, that's me. A lunatic.

• 31:53Russ Frushtick?

  Not how I would.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  An absolute decrepit maniac.

• 31:56Russ Frushtick?

  Not how I would use it.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  I want to abstract these controls six inches out and stare at a tiny screen and enjoy them.

• 32:05Russ Frushtick?

  There's a lot of approaches I could take in describing this, but one thing I would say is if you find the Steam Deck a little bit uncomfortable, I did not have the same experience with the Steam Controller.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  Is that a weight issue or like an ergonomics you're saying?

• 32:16Russ Frushtick?

  Both. It's both. So it's, it's, doesn't feel heavy. It feels like a, like a 360 controller. I haven't done the exact weight measurements, but it's designed with like actual like grips that you would normally have holding when you're holding an actual controller. The controls are all spaced out in a way that like doesn't feel cramped. The buttons are a little bit bigger than you would find on a Steam Deck. Everything is just like designed for comfort with that in mind, but with the functionality of a, of a Steam Deck, like everything that that had. But there is one feature in this that I think is a fucking game changer. I love it so much. And it is magnets.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  It's the game changer. You press this button.

• 32:58Griffin McElroy?

  Everyone loves Steam Big Picture Mode. Well, what if you had access to that at the push of a button?

• 33:04Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, the, the controller has a magnet in it.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  How does it work?

• 33:08Russ Frushtick?

  Connects to a cable and the cable does two things. Uh, the cable charges the controller handy and the cable also acts as a pairing device, wireless pairing device for the device that you have it plugged into. So the hassle of like connecting via Bluetooth or whatever, it becomes moot because you're just dropping this controller on this magnetic charging dock and instantly it's synced with the PC that you want to sync it to. And when you want to play something, you just take it off the magnet and you put it back. I fucking love magnet charging.

• 33:38Chris Plante?

  So the charging dock connects to your PC directly?

• 33:41Russ Frushtick?

  Correct. It's a USB connection.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Windows consistently. I refuse to believe it.

• 33:45Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, even the, I have the Xbox 360, this is like my go-to gaming controller is the 360 or the Xbox Elite one. Um, and it has like a magnetic charging dock, but the dongle for pairing it is like a separate thing, which has always fucking annoyed me. This charging dock, I don't know that I have the cord length to bring it up on camera, but like it's huge. You guys could have definitely put some sort of fucking sensor or something in there, right?

• 34:10Chris Plante?

  Here's where I think it will work with the PC always is you know what runs better? Uh, Steam Deck often than my PC. Uh, Valve has somehow figured out how to make Windows run better than Microsoft. And I'm not sure how they do it.

• 34:26Griffin McElroy?

  Well, on the case of Steam Deck, it's um, the

• 34:28Chris Plante?

  Well, it's Linux saying, oh, ah, there it is. It all goes back.

• 34:31Griffin McElroy?

  That's the one secret is that they don't use this really fucking terrible, terrible operating system.

• 34:37Chris Plante?

  One cool secret will change your world.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  How does it feel moving a mouse around with the thumb? Does that feel, does that feel good?

• 34:45Russ Frushtick?

  I think it feels as good as it does on the Steam Deck, which is to say passable. It's not my favorite way.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  I always find myself taking out the index finger and

• 34:52Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I mean, sometimes you'll do that. I, I think it feels passable. I, I think if you're navigating a map or stuff like that, uh, it'll be fine. I very rarely play games that require me to do that on the Steam Deck. And when I do, it's like, okay. I think it's better, the better utility for those touchpads for me has been like, someone made a controller preset where like I can select all my weapons on a radial menu and things like that. And that stuff is fucking great. And whenever I switched back to PC, I wouldn't have it. So.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  So for UI navigation, in a just world, we would be using like a Halo style, Destiny style menu navigation with like a trackpad on controllers. I think that's the most sort of like fluid, elegant. I like that on the PS5 and you can do that.

• 35:38Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 35:38Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I mean, you can go into Steam Big Picture mode on your PC and it's designed with sort of that in mind. But you're right, when you mentioned the other hardware, I'm sure a lot of this was also designed with the Steam Machine in mind and running Steam OS, so.

• 35:53Griffin McElroy?

  Or Steam Link? What is the thing called? The headset? Steam?

• 35:57Russ Frushtick?

  The Steam in, uh, not index, frame.

• 36:01Griffin McElroy?

  Steam frame, yeah.

• 36:02Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, all that stuff, yeah, was probably designed with this in mind. I think it's a great controller.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Does it bring, I mean, can it, can it bring like, would you play a mouse game with it? I mean, like, does it get to that vision of like, like, would you play like Command and Conquer with this controller?

• 36:16Russ Frushtick?

  If I had the choice to use a mouse versus this controller in a game like that, I would use a mouse.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like long-term, like lap, that's what I, that's what I feel like the struggle for me still with like the living room thing is like, I have not found a good metaphorical solution that feels right. You know what I mean? Like, if it is something that feels endemic to mouse and keyboard.

• 36:37Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  It just like, it always feels weird on like a lap, even with like a, I don't know, it just never feels right.

• 36:43Russ Frushtick?

  You mentioned living room play. Uh, the luxury of being able to pick up the controller and if something happens in Windows and I can like go back to the window I want to go to or launch Steam, I can do that with the Steam controller. Like, it just controls the mouse.

• 36:58Griffin McElroy?

  That is, that is actually huge. I mostly play like Steam stuff on like my exercise bike in my office and it's such a pain in the ass.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Oh, God, yes, to get back.

• 37:08Griffin McElroy?

  That you can't do with like a controller and there's not a, the Steam button on a like Xbox Elite Controller or whatever is like a not reliable sort of friend in that situation.

• 37:21Chris Plante?

  Doesn't have the game changer button. That's what you're saying.

• 37:23Griffin McElroy?

  The game changer, yeah.

• 37:24Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I mean, like, I'm not playing Command and Conquer. I'm not playing Civ realistically.

• 37:29Griffin McElroy?

  For dorks.

• 37:30Russ Frushtick?

  So for the stuff that I'm playing, it's never really going to be an issue and it's nice to have that mouse support for, again, when something goes wrong.

• 37:40Russ Frushtick?

  Pricing is weird. It's different for every region because of the chaos of like what's going on with trade right now. It's a hundred dollars in the US. I've spent a lot of time looking at like the controller marketplace and feature sets and things like that. I think a hundred dollars is pretty in line with where things are at. If you get like a pretty high, relatively high end, there's certainly more expensive ones than that.

• 38:04Chris Plante?

  Yeah, the Elite 2 is a lot more. Wow.

• 38:08Griffin McElroy?

  Yes, 170.

• 38:10Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, so you're effectively getting everything that that controller had.

• 38:16Russ Frushtick?

  But my understanding is those Elite 2s tend to be a little bit lacking on the durability standpoint.

• 38:22Griffin McElroy?

  But can it do this? You just take shit off of it? This is my rifle. This is my rifle.

• 38:26Russ Frushtick?

  You can't, but Valve is saying-

• 38:28Griffin McElroy?

  There are many others like it, but this one is my- fuck, hold on.

• 38:32Russ Frushtick?

  He just broke his-

• 38:33Chris Plante?

  It's working, it's working, bro.

• 38:34Griffin McElroy?

  I did just accident- I did just open Steam Big Picture Mode.

• 38:37Russ Frushtick?

  It'll be okay.

• 38:39Chris Plante?

  No one, no one ever, Griffin, don't panic. Everyone wants to panic when they see Steam Big Picture Mode open.

• 38:44Griffin McElroy?

  Oh shit. Oh shit, I did it again.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  The thumbnails are so big.

• 38:48Chris Plante?

  Sidney, get in here, babe. I need you to turn off Steam Big Picture Mode. I don't know how I did it. I did it again.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  It's so loud. Why is the opening logo so loud, fuck?

• 38:59Chris Plante?

  You ready to game, nerd?

• 39:00Speaker 04

  Hit the game changer mode. Hit the game changer.

• 39:06Russ Frushtick?

  It's a good controller.

• 39:07Griffin McElroy?

  Cool.

• 39:07Russ Frushtick?

  I would recommend it. I think it's going on sale.

• 39:10Griffin McElroy?

  A hundo.

• 39:11Russ Frushtick?

  A hundo.

• 39:11Chris Plante?

  A cool hundo.

• 39:13Griffin McElroy?

  Are they gonna bundle it with the Steam Machine, do you think?

• 39:16Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, maybe eventually, but they still don't have a release date for the Steam Machine.

• 39:19Chris Plante?

  That's some real 2027 stuff, right?

• 39:22Russ Frushtick?

  This controller is- this controller is coming out next week. It'll be orderable on Steam next week. So I don't know how long it'll take to ship, but presumably if you want to get one Valve, I don't know how many they have flying around, so maybe order one if you want one. That's it.

• 39:41Chris Plante?

  Yeah. Yeah, what else you want to talk about? You want to talk about some like cool video games and stuff?

• 39:49Speaker 01

  In personal news.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Uh, no, hey, I just want to say real quick, this will be my last, uh, episode of the besties. Uh, I'm not dying. Sorry haters.

• 40:02Chris Plante?

  Show them.

• 40:03Griffin McElroy?

  In fact, he's the healthiest he's ever been. I've seen. Looking good. I've seen his.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  No, so I, yeah, so it will come as no surprise to anybody out there that I, uh, who's listening to this, that I've been struggling with carpal tunnel syndrome since 2020. And it has been an ongoing problem for me and I have, uh, continued to try to keep up with gaming and, and, and everything as best I can while still, especially in the last couple of months, having to be something of a passive, uh, observer to it. And I am recovering from surgery on my left hand. I still have to get surgery on my right hand. I still can't play, uh, like thumbstick based games. It still hurts too much.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  So my doctor did warn me that could happen. Uh, so hey, not on, nothing's wrong, you know, healing wise, but it does make it hard to keep up. So, uh, that is, that is like the one half of this is that it is really, playing video games causes a lot of pain. It's hard for me to play, uh, a lot of like thumbstick based games while mouse based games are still very easy. But by more than that, I think the, I've been covering video games since I was, it was my first writing job when I was 13. I worked for, uh, the newspaper. They had a column called game view that was written by a guy named Chuck Minsker. Griffin's good friends with his kids and, uh,

• 41:34Griffin McElroy?

  It was a real nepo baby gig is what.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  It was real. Yeah. So I got in there and I was reviewing video games. The first game I reviewed was gods on the genesis.

• 41:43Griffin McElroy?

  Hell yeah.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  Chuck's ass, dude.

• 41:47Griffin McElroy?

  The soundtrack rips with the get some of the stankiest FM keyboard I've ever heard, but man, the game sucks shit.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just, uh, I'll be honest because of like the hand stuff and also just like the way I want to engage with video games, I'm more and more interested in stuff like preservation and technology and like, uh,

• 42:08Griffin McElroy?

  Linux.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Linux, whatever. Uh, you know, I've got a lot of other interests like that and I would like to engage with video games in a way that brings pleasure to me. And, uh, so that is part of it. And I, and I have not gotten a lot of pleasure out of it for a, for a while now because we do have to work so fast to go through these games. But I keep, I mean, I've always wanted to keep doing the show because I love talking about video games and I love these, these jabronis here. Uh, but I feel like it's just, I don't want to sour my relationship to these things completely. And also I feel like if you are the sort

• 42:50Speaker 01

  of person that would be enough of a multi hyphenate interests in terms of like your genres, if you have a wide, broad enough palate to enjoy a show like this, then you, you know, you deserve someone in this seat who is like, has that same appetite and that same like, uh, that same area of interest. I'm always going to be interested in video games. I'm always going to be playing video games. It's just, I would like to get back to playing video games that I, uh, in the limited time that I have where my hands feel like, you know, where I'm good and I'm, I'm not like doing some other thing. I'd like to spend that time like in a way that is, uh, pleasurable rather than feel like I'm

• 43:30Speaker 01

  having to do it for a job, which is a sucky way to think about video games. I have, uh, always loved talking about them and I always will. And I've always loved doing this show. And, uh, I'm sad to not be doing it anymore. I'll probably dip back in when you guys talk about a game that I really like, you know, but, uh, from time to time.

• 43:52Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, we, we.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  But then that, yeah.

• 43:53Griffin McElroy?

  We will certainly have Justin joining us and, and guesting, uh, where appropriate.

• 44:01Russ Frushtick?

  And also, we should mention, we are in the works for what might very well be the only time that the besties do a live show.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  That's true. It's early, it's still early days on that, but what a, what a bar berder of a, of a moment that'll be.

• 44:22Russ Frushtick?

  Still early days, uh, looking, looking at a fall event.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  A fall release.

• 44:29Russ Frushtick?

  And we will keep you guys posted and Justin has assured us that, uh, he will.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  Oh, he's gotta come back. He's, he's the pitcher with the, the blown out arm who's like,

• 44:40Russ Frushtick?

  That's right.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  I gotta pitch the final game and coach is like, you can't do it. You're gonna throw your arm off. And he's like, I gotta throw the pitch.

• 44:49Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it'll be a rookie of the year situation.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Here's the one really important thing, for reasons that I think everyone will understand. I can't continue to promise that I will listen every week.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  I need, I need you, the listeners, to really keep something in your heart. If they get to the end of the show and they don't say, the besties is executive produced by.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Then I need you to email [email protected] and say they're doing it, Justin. They're, they forgot it. You know, like.

• 45:28Russ Frushtick?

  You should CC your agent also, right?

• 45:30Speaker 01

  To make sure that it's like. I can't be expected to. I, I will always be a listener.

• 45:36Russ Frushtick?

  Spiritually.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Metaphorically, you know what I mean?

• 45:38Russ Frushtick?

  Not a patron of our Patreon.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Is there like a listener, but like more aware of?

• 45:47Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Anyway, thank you for listening to the besties. And this is not me signing off. This is just me saying like, it's been really, it's always been fun recording the show and thanks for listening. Uh, and thanks for reading. This is like, kind of weird for me. I was thinking about it. Uh, I have been working in video games, like, pretty much continuously since I was, uh, 12 years old, 1992. So that is weird to be not doing that after, uh, what's that?

• 46:20Russ Frushtick?

  30, 32.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  34 some years in the game, but, uh, yeah. So anyway.

• 46:27Russ Frushtick?

  Thank you, Justin.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  You'll be missed.

• 46:29Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I'm gonna be, we, I'll give you guys a heads up. I'm gonna be weird for a few episodes after this. It's gonna be like a weird-

• 46:34Speaker 01

  God, I'm gonna, I think I'll miss Griffin most of all.

• 46:37Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Until 10 fucking minutes after I press stop here and I gotta look at his ass again.

• 46:44Griffin McElroy?

  Start doing another show?

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Just start doing another goddamn podcast.

• 46:48Griffin McElroy?

  Mine's just gonna be like weird alpha dog energy that like, I'm not gonna be able to explain, but it's gonna be like, I'm the big brother now. Like, it's gonna be-

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:57Griffin McElroy?

  That's the energy I'm gonna be bringing to the next episodes and I just want everyone to be aware.

• 46:59Chris Plante?

  So do we all kinda take a step up in the ladder of brothers?

• 47:03Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Congratulations. Chris, you're Russ now. Russ, you're Chris.

• 47:06Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, sweet.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Cold dudes.

• 47:07Griffin McElroy?

  That's my dream.

• 47:08Chris Plante?

  I like that. I thought Russ was Travis there for a second, but I got real confused.

• 47:13Russ Frushtick?

  Just a note for people listening, in case you're curious, the plan moving forward-

• 47:19Speaker 01

  It's not personal.

• 47:20Russ Frushtick?

  Not personal. Plan moving forward-

• 47:22Griffin McElroy?

  People will still say there's some weird secret beef happening because of-

• 47:26Speaker 01

  And there will be, but-

• 47:27Griffin McElroy?

  We'll never admit to it.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  That's none of your business.

• 47:29Chris Plante?

  And it will be fiduciary and he will get paid.

• 47:35Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, the plan moving forward is just for it to be, uh, Griffin, Plante and I, with special guests joining, uh, certainly we hope that Justin will be one of them from time to time where appropriate. But, uh, we are not planning on like dropping in another four.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  Get on out here, Jeff. Jeff Gerstman, everybody.

• 47:53Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, I thought Jeff Probst was coming in.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  I thought Jeff Healy, guys. I thought, I swear to God, I thought Jeff Healy.

• 47:57Griffin McElroy?

  So many great Jeffs.

• 47:58Russ Frushtick?

  So many Jeffs could be great here.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  There's a lot of, guys, what if you just only have Jeffs?

• 48:02Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  There's a lot of good Jeffs.

• 48:04Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 48:06Griffin McElroy?

  We should do an episode where we just talk about our favorite Jeffs and rank them.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  That's really good, Griffin.

• 48:11Russ Frushtick?

  Good bracket episode.

• 48:15Russ Frushtick?

  Well, thank you, Justin, for sharing that news.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, is that the end? Do you guys wanna do, are there honorable mentions you guys are gonna do or? I mean, those, that's normally what we do here, right?

• 48:25Russ Frushtick?

  Well, we have two quick reader mail, mails.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Hell, yeah.

• 48:27Chris Plante?

  Sex.

• 48:28Russ Frushtick?

  One of them is from-

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Do you guys miss Justin?

• 48:32Speaker 01

  Who's your favorite Jeff?

• 48:35Russ Frushtick?

  One of them is from Sophie. Uh, this is way off topic, but I finally started playing Blueprints. I didn't realize how heavily influenced it was by the book Maze by Christopher Manson. It's a much loved book in my household. It's a great read with kids who love solving types of puzzles. I thought I'd mention it in case you guys have never read it.

• 48:51Griffin McElroy?

  Didn't he cite that, the creator? I remember hearing these two things in conversation with each other.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  I think so. I saw him in an interview. It was on the carpet, a red carpet of something.

• 49:05Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  And he was there and they were like, so second game, he says, it's gonna be smaller. And they're like, can you give us any hints? And he's like, mm, R. I'm gonna say R now, so later I can, people can point to this and say, oh, he really was thinking about it. He said, but it's gonna be smaller. But the third game, he said the second game, he wants to reset expectations. Cause everybody's expecting too much after Blueprints, but the third game.

• 49:36Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. I can't wait.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Unbelievable, this guy.

• 49:40Russ Frushtick?

  We do have some breaking Blueprints news to share, and I'm only saying this now because it will probably

• 49:46Griffin McElroy?

  Is it the colorblind mode?

• 49:47Russ Frushtick?

  drown the comments. Colorblind mode is officially out.

• 49:51Griffin McElroy?

  No way.

• 49:52Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, on Steam as of this morning.

• 49:54Griffin McElroy?

  I just Googled it and there's, there was nothing there. It's this morning?

• 49:59Russ Frushtick?

  As of this morning, the patch is out. Uh, 1.7 has the accessibility mode. It has some other features that I'm sure are good. But one of them is colorblind mode.

• 50:09Griffin McElroy?

  Have you downloaded it? Have you, oh, wait, we got, so we're gonna finish the game, right? Russ loaded up, Russ loaded up, we'll do a live.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, this is awkward, but like next, I mean.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Next week, we kinda should. I would just like to, I would just like to know what Russ thinks about blueprints like.

• 50:31Griffin McElroy?

  That's fucking crazy.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  If it's a phone call, that could go on forever. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know how long that'll go.

• 50:36Griffin McElroy?

  That's not content. We could just record the phone call.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  I regret, I regret already leaving our Slack.

• 50:44Russ Frushtick?

  I, I do, for what it's worth, think that I will probably wait until next week when it comes out on consoles, because I think I'll probably play it on Switch 2.

• 50:52Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 50:53Russ Frushtick?

  It's easier to set up on a PC, so it might be a minute before I find my free time. But I sho- I assure you, over the next few months, somewhere, I will be playing.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Will you text me about it? At least, will you text me while you're playing?

• 51:07Russ Frushtick?

  I will text you.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  I, I just wanna know how they, like.

• 51:10Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I'm curious.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  I almost kinda wanna play it, you know what I mean? I almost wanna like, just to see like what, you know, I don't know.

• 51:16Griffin McElroy?

  Have you managed to remain fairly un-

• 51:18Speaker 01

  You know, there's gonna be different shit.

• 51:20Griffin McElroy?

  Unspoiled, Russ?

• 51:20Russ Frushtick?

  I know there's rooms.

• 51:22Griffin McElroy?

  That's fucking awesome, dude. I cannot wait.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  I know there's rooms. Next week's gonna be killer.

• 51:27Griffin McElroy?

  I might play it too.

• 51:28Russ Frushtick?

  Worried about being too dumb for the game, but we'll see how it goes.

• 51:30Chris Plante?

  Nah, man, you'll, nah, you're gonna, can't believe it's gonna be your game of the year this year.

• 51:35Griffin McElroy?

  It might be, the Besties game of the year.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I forgot. Yeah, yeah.

• 51:39Russ Frushtick?

  It is eligible.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 51:41Russ Frushtick?

  We have another letter. This one comes to Justin, maybe Justin's final rear male letter from the Besties. A letter from John. Dear Justin, as a From Evangelist, you did not mention the best parts of the show. The monsters, specifically Smiley. The survival aspect is super important, along with the dumb reason folks get caught outside after sundown. Please speak on paranoid face, you know what I'm talking about. Lastly, who is your favorite character? I'm a Jade stan. My girlfriend is a Kenny lover.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  Clean yourself up. This is a podcast for normal people that listen to video, that like video games, not weirdo.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Weirdo bad shows like From. We don't do this here. We don't talk about these things over here on the besties. Okay, we'll go do, we'll go do a From podcast and talk about From shit. I'm not gonna say, you're mad at me that I didn't spoil From. People need to go watch, like, you understand what you're mad at? Like, you didn't tell them all the best parts. I know. That's like, you watched the show.

• 52:44Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  You know?

• 52:45Russ Frushtick?

  I wanna know what the smiley is. Is that a spoiler?

• 52:49Speaker 01

  After people die, they sometimes come back and they have a huge smile on their face.

• 52:54Russ Frushtick?

  Like the movie Smile.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Like the movie Smile.

• 52:57Chris Plante?

  Smile, yeah.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  It, this season got so nasty. This is the dumbest show on TV. I cannot believe how much I enjoy it. It's like, it, it, it makes, it makes Below Deck look like the Queen's camping. Like, it is.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  It is unbelievable.

• 53:14Russ Frushtick?

  Was there a break between seasons? Cause my, my algo has been so thoroughly inundated.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  They're back, season four, and the grand twist of the whole, the whole enchilada has been revealed. You can say this about From that you can't say about Lost. At least From called it shot and said, this is what's happening. You can like it or you could not like it, but here's what's happening. And here's the answer, folks. I did not like it, but I am still watching.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  It is the kinda show where Sidney and I have watched every episode. And every once in a while, one of us will still be like, who the fuck is that? Who's that?

• 53:59Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, okay, that's the rear mail. Uh, any honorable mentions from people?

• 54:04Chris Plante?

  Um, there's a, a movie that I want, I want people to watch, cause I think you can actually stream it now on Hulu, and I think everybody here will enjoy it. It is called The Hot Rock and it does not look like you can stream it on Hulu. So, good luck seeing this movie. The Hot Rock is a heist movie written by William Goldman, who made like The Princess Bride and all sorts of amazing stuff. And it stars Robert Redford and what's his name, was it George Segal? Yes, George Segal.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  It's so weird that it's not a bigger, it's like, it's weird that it's not a bigger movie.

• 54:36Chris Plante?

  It should be a huge movie, but I think it had some weird rights issues. So it just was like not put out anywhere. Hoops, have you seen this movie?

• 54:46Speaker 01

  It's a ma, it's one that I watched, I watched pretty much every heist movie I could find before, uh, Steeplechase, that arc. Uh, it kicks ass. It's really good.

• 54:54Chris Plante?

  Unbelievable. It has five on-location heists in New York, including, I saw this in a, in a theater while I was in New York and the theater surrounded by people. I'm like, wow, this is such a great movie. And like, hey, you know what? Now we're gonna go rob a police station. And I'm like, oh, okay, this will be interesting. And then they go to case it and it is my old apartment in New York City.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 55:18Chris Plante?

  Which is wild. And they proceed to land a helicopter on the actual, it is wild. Um, it is such a cool movie. If you like on-location New York City heist stuff, you are, it is an embarrassment of riches. If you can find it, maybe it's on Hulu, maybe it's not. Um, if it's not, I have bad news for you. Uh, because it, the Blu-ray or DVD or whatever, it costs like a trillion dollars. But if you're in New York, it's currently playing at the Metrograph, so, there you go.

• 55:50Russ Frushtick?

  I wanted to mention, um, the fact that the fucking Elden, Elden Ring movie is actually happening? Like, they're actually shooting it right now?

• 55:58Speaker 01

  So crazy.

• 55:59Chris Plante?

  Unbelievable.

• 56:00Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, I think this was accidentally included in the newsletter last week, so I apologize. Uh, nothing got cut. We just didn't get a, a chance to speak on it.

• 56:10Russ Frushtick?

  I was like, maybe they'll do like a side story or something about this movie. Cause how else are they gonna fucking? No, the stills that are coming out are like a fucking Marika walking around like they're gonna just do the. I don't know how this story, it's one of the most complicated narratives in video game history and they're just gonna go fucking right at the gut. It's directed by Alex Garland, who's one of my favorite directors and writers in the world. And I'm just massively excited in this, on the same token, I am as excited as I am for the Elden Ring movie. I am negative excited for the Zelda movie, which I think is gonna crush my soul. I don't know there's a way to do Zelda live action and not have it be goofy as fuck.

• 56:56Russ Frushtick?

  I don't know that there's a way to do it. I could be wrong.

• 56:59Griffin McElroy?

  I'm glad you're not directing it then.

• 57:01Russ Frushtick?

  Me too. I'm thrilled I'm not directing it. I hope it's great.

• 57:05Griffin McElroy?

  You'd be so stressed out. Yeah. How am I gonna do this?

• 57:10Russ Frushtick?

  I don't know how to direct a movie.

• 57:11Griffin McElroy?

  It'll never work. Uh, you guys are there, yell louder when you swing the masters. I don't know, guys.

• 57:18Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, I think they both come out in the same year, so that'll be an interesting year.

• 57:23Griffin McElroy?

  I bet there's gonna be a lot of very thoughtful think pieces written about video games and movies.

• 57:27Russ Frushtick?

  I bet you're right.

• 57:28Griffin McElroy?

  I can't wait to read them.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  Wait, I wanna talk about my honorable mentions. It's YouTube channels. I just wanna say, I've been watching a couple of this week that, uh, people who are,

• 57:41Speaker 01

  sort of like tech tinkerers, like, uh, who are like approachable, easy ways into tech. If you wanna like start messing around with stuff. One channel that I just started watching this week is called Damn It Jeff, and this guy's great. If you wanna go over to the channel, it's called Damn It Jeff. Recent videos include stuff like, uh, how to repurpose your home cameras, how to repurpose like your Amazon Alexas, to make them your own, making, setting up your own home servers. Stuff that you can like, the idea of becoming more like digitally independent. Another one that I love is called Switch and Click. It's, um, And this, this woman takes a much different approach to these tech projects because she

• 58:26Speaker 01

  really expresses the like frustrations that she goes through as she digs into these rabbit holes, which is very common when you're messing around with tech and electronics and stuff. You know, you spend a lot of time banging your head against a wall because you don't have the proper documentation and stuff. And so her videos, which are similar in terms of like, you know, how to use old monitors or getting into like self hosting your own movies or, or music or stuff, or replacing Google's apps with your own self hosted things. But she really explains like how the parts that are challenging and the parts that are, it's much more relatable and it, it makes it seem a lot more approachable. And both of these channels, I get a lot of thoughts for stuff that I want to do in my own setup. So I recommend both of them.

• 59:11Griffin McElroy?

  Sick.

• 59:12Speaker 04

  Awesome.

• 59:13Russ Frushtick?

  I love it. Patreon. Okay. Real quick on the Patreon. So the Patreon is going to stay basically the same insofar as content. We're still doing Resties twice a month. We're still doing a bracket episode once a month. Justin will be on the bracket episode that is happening the next week. So keep an eye out for that. After that, we're going to continue doing bracket episodes. We'll have a few special guests joining us for brackets over the next few months. So get excited for that. They will be very fun. I'm very pumped. Not as fun as Justin, of course.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:43Russ Frushtick?

  But close, very close.

• 59:46Griffin McElroy?

  Super close. And we've engineered it so it's going to be as close as possible without ever going over the top.

• 59:52Russ Frushtick?

  That's right. So yeah, I think that's basically it on the besties, patreon.com/thebesties. Some new members that just joined, Ty, Chris, Magnus and Trevor. Thank you for being members of the Patreon. This show wouldn't exist without the Patreon. Thank you. Simple as that, literally. So thank you so much for all your support there and everyone else's support. You make it all happen. Plant, you want to recap what we talked about?

• 1:00:18Speaker 04

  I can't. I don't have access to the document.

• 1:00:21Griffin McElroy?

  I don't either.

• 1:00:22Russ Frushtick?

  I don't give anyone access to the document? Oh, what a disaster. Vampire Crawlers, the turbo wildcard from Vampire Survivors was the first game we talked about. We also talked about the Steam controller. We talked a little bit about Blueprints and the fact that it is getting the accessibility mode. It's actually already in on Steam and coming to consoles next week. We talked about The Greatest Show on Earth From. We talked about The Hot Rock, which is a movie you can maybe stream somewhere, maybe. Uh, we talked about the Damn It Jeff YouTube channel and we talked about the Elden Ring.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  Switch and click also.

• 1:00:54Griffin McElroy?

  Switch and click.

• 1:00:54Russ Frushtick?

  Love it. I think that's everything we talked about.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  Do one of you guys want to practice before I wrap up?

• 1:01:00Griffin McElroy?

  That's gonna do it for us, everybody.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, not that part.

• 1:01:02Griffin McElroy?

  Welcome back to the best.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  No, no, I'll do that.

• 1:01:04Griffin McElroy?

  Welcome back.

• 1:01:05Russ Frushtick?

  Justin.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  No, no, no, just the EP credit. I don't know if anybody wants to practice my EP credit.

• 1:01:09Griffin McElroy?

  This podcast, this has been a podcast brought to you by Justin. No, fuck.

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  We'll work on it.

• 1:01:17Griffin McElroy?

  This podcast wouldn't even be possible without his ass, Justin.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  That's good. I like that too. Thank you for listening to the besties. Be sure to join them again next time for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?