Everyone's Reacting Totally Normally To Blue Prince

Blue Prince is out, and people are definitely having a normal one. Maddy, Jason, and Kirk talk about some of the initial player reactions to the highest-reviewed game of 2025, and how sentiment has changed since the first day or two. They talk about the pros and cons of RNG, when the game clicked for each of them, and what they've been seeing over the last week.

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

• 0:04Jason Schreier?

  The game Blueprints teaches us an important lesson. Once you take 50 steps, call it a day. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. Today, we are getting back into Blueprints and talking about the first week since the game has come out. Some early frustrations, some early delights, and much more.

• 0:31Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:32Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  And I'm Maddy Myers. Hello.

• 0:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Hello.

• 0:36Jason Schreier?

  Hello.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  It's us again. We're back.

• 0:39Jason Schreier?

  We are back. Are you guys, are you two Streetlight Manifesto fans? Do you like Streetlight Manifesto?

• 0:46Kirk Hamilton?

  They're not like my favorite band, but I've listened to them. I was never quite into that whole style and in that era of rock music.

• 0:54Jason Schreier?

  They're, Maddie, they're a big ska band.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  Okay, sure.

• 0:58Jason Schreier?

  Legendary in certain circles. Anyway, they just announced a new album for the first time since 2013, which is why I picked them up.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  Big Jason Schreier news.

• 1:08Jason Schreier?

  It is big news for multiple reasons, but also they, like many other people, have beaten George R.R. Martin to announcing that they finished something new.

• 1:17Speaker 02

  Are we keeping a running tally of just people who've beaten George R.R. Martin to doing a project since Winds of Winter?

• 1:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Specifically ska and pop punk bands that have beaten George R.R. Martin.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  That makes sense, yeah.

• 1:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Long awaited followers.

• 1:30Jason Schreier?

  I guess, I guess a little bit of context here is that it's like a meme, like when will Streetlight Manifesto ever release a new album?

• 1:37Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 1:38Jason Schreier?

  It's kind of like.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  So it's a big deal. Okay, that's cool.

• 1:42Jason Schreier?

  By the way, do you guys remember in like, in the early 2000s, mid 2000s, there was this blog called Finish the Book, George, that got some controversy because it was all about critiquing George R.R. Martin for not having finished the latest book. And that was because it was three years late.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Yup.

• 1:57Jason Schreier?

  About, about A Feast for Crows.

• 2:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Does that website still exist?

• 2:02Jason Schreier?

  I don't know. I mean, it's obsolete now.

• 2:05Kirk Hamilton?

  He's outlasted them.

• 2:08Jason Schreier?

  But you know what is finished? Our monthly bonus episodes, which you can get by becoming a Maximum Fun member and supporting the show. Go to maximumfun.org/join and you can make Triple Click possible. Sign up. You can become a member for as little as $5 a month and get monthly perks, monthly bonus episodes from us, including one we are about to air. I think it should be in the bonus feed about the time that you are listening to this episode.

• 2:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Exactly the time you're listening to this episode.

• 2:38Jason Schreier?

  About. Simultaneous.

• 2:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, simultaneous release.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Right, right on time. You're getting two apps.

• 2:43Jason Schreier?

  Shadow drop. We're pulling an Oblivion remake.

• 2:46Kirk Hamilton?

  And it's out now.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 2:50Jason Schreier?

  About the TV show Severance. So that was a fun conversation. We talked about the show, both seasons one and the more recent season two. We talk about its relationship to parenting and

• 3:03Speaker 02

  The nature of

• 3:03Jason Schreier?

  Thoughts on the characters.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Humanity and

• 3:06Jason Schreier?

  All sorts of good stuff.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  The human soul. Is it real or not?

• 3:10Jason Schreier?

  Very fun conversation. You can get that if you're a member. Once again, maximumfun.org/join. Become a member today. All right. One more thing before we get started is that last week we announced that we are doing another Triple Click Live this year.

• 3:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Hell, yeah.

• 3:28Jason Schreier?

  July 11th, we will be in Portland, Oregon, where we will be doing all sorts of fun stuff and live podcasting. If you can't make it, we'll still throw it up in the show feed, but it should be a lot of fun if you can make it. So please do come out. And also Kirk, are you going to take us to Powell's? Because I feel like I gotta make the pilgrimage to.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, man. Well, we should do a, we should do a Jason Schreier book read at Powell's. That still hasn't happened and I've still been lobbying for it. I'm sure they would say yes if you asked. Just saying. Yeah.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  We'll be there. We'll be close to it.

• 4:01Jason Schreier?

  I don't know if I have it in me to do both of those things, but we'll, we'll see. I, and I don't do book reads. Whenever I do an event, I do a Q and A. I hate reading.

• 4:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay. Everybody else reads the book. Jason just answers questions.

• 4:15Jason Schreier?

  Somebody else does a dramatic reading of the book. What do you need me to read you the book for? Like, go listen to the audiobook if you want someone to read you the book.

• 4:22Kirk Hamilton?

  It's true. I guess with nonfiction, a book reading is a little bit less common than in fiction. Sometimes it's a little more like they're telling you a story and that makes a little more sense.

• 4:30Jason Schreier?

  They're trying to hook you in. Also, in fiction, there are fewer questions to ask. In nonfiction, I feel like you can get a lot out of Q and A because people have a lot of interesting questions.

• 4:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, if you want to ask Jason questions, write emails to Powell's Books.

• 4:45Kirk Hamilton?

  And request his presence. No, just kidding. Don't do that.

• 4:48Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Tickets in the show notes. Triplic Live, Portland, Oregon, July 11.

• 4:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Come see the show. It's gonna be awesome.

• 4:53Jason Schreier?

  It's gonna be fun. All right. Today we are talking about Dun Dun Dun Blueprints.

• 5:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Can you believe it? If you're out there, can you even believe it?

• 5:03Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, we're still playing it. B L U E P R I N C E. Now that it's out in the wild, we thought it would be fun to kind of talk about some of its quirks, some of the player reception it's been getting, which I think has been a little bit different than the sentiment that we all expressed last week. We'll talk a little bit more about our own feelings of the game and what we've been seeing online and kind of try to gauge the criticism and talk about how we might feel about what we've seen from folks. And also, our sentiment has shifted a little bit as more and more people spent more and more time with the game. But before we jump into this, I want to give a quick spoiler caveat.

• 5:45Jason Schreier?

  So at this point, now that people have been playing the game for a week, we're going to be a little bit open with some kind of very, very early information about the game. So this is, since it's such a nonlinear game, it's impossible to know what people have or haven't seen. But we'll be talking a little bit openly about some of the early rooms and we'll be talking a little openly about the first major puzzle, Is the puzzle involving the paintings in each room? So if you don't want to have any of that spoiled for you, if you're waiting to start the game, if you want to go in completely fresh, maybe pause, maybe skip to one more thing, or maybe listen to this episode down the road, once you've already played some of it.

• 6:29Jason Schreier?

  Once again, we're not going to get into anything big. We're not going to spoil any major moments or plot or anything like that.

• 6:35Kirk Hamilton?

  No, we will save that for, we've got to do a big spoiler episode on this show like way down the road, but that'll be much later.

• 6:41Jason Schreier?

  Yes, much later, but for now, we are going to get into a little bit of the early stuff so we can get specific without kind of walking around the details.

• 6:50Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 6:51Jason Schreier?

  All right, folks, so let's talk about player sentiment because I think this is really fascinating. Blueprints is the highest rated game on Metacritic since it, since the review embargo lifted last week. I believe it's at a 93 right now. But the player reviews have it at like a seven point something or another. Granted, a lot of times, player reviews are because a game like has a black person in it or like mentions women. But in this case, I think there's some interesting reasons behind that. And the three of us have been talking about how we've seen some player negativity, especially in the early days of the game.

• 7:36Jason Schreier?

  So let's get into that and we can kind of color this by talking about our own perspectives and what we've been, what else we've been playing, what else we've been feeling about the game. Kirk, I know you had some strong feelings when you started seeing some of the player reactions to the game, especially on Thursday and then Friday, as it was coming, as the game had first come out and during that first 24 hour period. What was your kind of take about all that? What did you see and what was your take?

• 8:03Kirk Hamilton?

  It was really interesting. I mean, anytime I've had so much time to digest and really, you know, go deep with and ponder my relationship to a piece of art like this. It's always going to be jarring to watch a lot of people immediately experience it and experience it in all the different ways that people experience things, right? To play, especially playing a game because it's so interactive. You can play a game a thousand different ways. And it has been very interesting watching people. I'd say my main takeaway is just that people are very different and people play games very differently. And so watching all of those different approaches sort of collide at the same time was, you know,

• 8:45Kirk Hamilton?

  it was kind of surprising, like definitely to see people who were incredibly frustrated very early on because I didn't feel that frustrated by the game, so I didn't really relate to it. Though of course, that feeling is valid and I understand why they would feel that way. And then I think that all of those different reactions and all those different ways of playing were supercharged just by the fact that so many people who had played the game had spoken so glowingly about it, you know? I mean, we, the three of us are in unanimous opinion, not just that the game is good or fun, but like really that it's an all-timer. And Jason, of course, you've been like so excited about it for so long, so vocally. And I think a lot of other people have been too. And I get why I feel the same way. I think that that also kind of supercharged everyone.

• 9:29Kirk Hamilton?

  And it almost felt like this sprint on the first day. I was shocked to see people who like rolled credits, or at least were saying they had rolled credits, like the afternoon after the game had come out, where that was like a weeks-long experience for me. And so, yeah, I mean, that's so far from how I experienced the game that it's actually hard for me to even get my head around what that might be like.

• 9:49Jason Schreier?

  So let me be specific here. So this, of course, for people who are not familiar, for whatever reason, it's kind of a cross between a rogue-like and a puzzle game. The reason I bring this up is because what has frustrated a lot of people, from what I've seen, is the RNG of it all. Because this is a rogue-like, there's a lot of randomization. Every time you move into a new room, you are confronted by the algorithm, which is deciding which rooms that you actually get a chance to potentially draft. It's called drawing in the game. So you draw three rooms and you can only draft one of the three. And that was really frustrating for a lot of people who Like maybe got into a situation where they knew they wanted to solve the puzzle in

• 10:30Jason Schreier?

  the laboratory by drafting a boiler room next to it, but then they couldn't find a boiler room and they tried 20 times and just did not enjoy it. And one, one thing that I kept trying to say to people, among other tips, and we can kind of get into some, some tips if people might find that helpful. But one thing I was telling, trying to explain is that this is a game where you can't really go into each run thinking about one puzzle that you have to solve that time. You have to go into each run thinking about like, okay, what am I going to solve from what is given to me? Or what am I going to learn from what is given to me? And that's how you ultimately make progress in this game. But that can be really tricky for people to wrap their minds around, especially at first, when they're expecting to make a little bit more progress.

• 11:15Jason Schreier?

  And when the game says to them, your goal is to go and reach room 46. I actually would argue that the game makes pretty clear in that early letter that like, actually, the goal is to wander and take paths that aren't necessarily the obvious ones. But still, I can see why it was frustrating for people when they first started. Maddie, you mentioned to the two of us that you had some similar frustrations when you started playing the game. So do you want to talk about that? And how you kind of got past them?

• 11:41Speaker 02

  I mean, I would say they're still frustrating sometimes, and I can talk about that, too. Like, this is a key part of the game. And I think it's probably illustrative if I talk about where I am right now and how I've tried to embrace Kirk Hamilton's mindset last week of just being patient and just accepting what whatever comes, whatever blueprints gives you, which is a weird mindset for a game.

• 12:04Jason Schreier?

  Zen and the art of blueprints.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  So here's my situation. I'm on like, day 88, 65 hours, something like that. Who's, who's counting? Me. And I have not, I don't, I'm trying to think of like, a non spoiler way to say this. I, I have.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  I have the ability to enter room 46, but I can't get back to the ante chamber. And just through a series of comedic events, I, every time I draft a room, and that's not to say I haven't been to the ante chamber before in my life. I've been in there. I've been in there one time and that's it. I haven't been able to get back. And this is a game where you do have to get back at least once in order to get to another step in there. But so I've just been doing other things. I, I've been trying kind of to get back there, but like, there's a whole lot of other stuff I can do in the interim. And one of those is the puzzle we're going to talk about today, which is like

• 13:03Kirk Hamilton?

  You played 65 hours without getting, wow.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I'm at day 88. So, you know, and you might be thinking to yourself, now, Maddie, are you really bad at drafting rooms? No, I'm really good at drafting rooms. I've discovered so much stuff. I have cracked a lot of safes. I have completed that puzzle and I've drained water all over the state. I've explored all kinds of places that you can explore when you drain water. I've unlocked permanent unlocks. I've unlocked ways that you can change the orientation or not the orientation, the probability of what you draw. Like there's, there's different ways to make the game easier over time that we kind of haven't really gotten into.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  But like there's items and then there's also like rooms that help you, uh, change the rarity of different kinds of, of rooms. I, I'm pretty, I'm far enough. It's really just kind of funny to me at this point that every time I'm almost at the ante chamber, I just, something's gone horribly wrong for me. But, but I mean, I do have to just kind of find that comical at this point. And it's not like I'm not still enjoying the game. And someday I'll get in there and I'll watch the credits roll and then I'll keep playing the game. But it's not that important to me right now, I guess.

• 14:13Kirk Hamilton?

  I think this is really interesting. You're in such a fascinating place.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  I know, it's weird.

• 14:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, it's unusual, I think, or at least I don't know if it is or not, I suppose, but I think maybe it is that and you've you're kind of stuck taking the other approach to the game, which I would actually argue is the more satisfying approach to the game.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  I would agree.

• 14:33Kirk Hamilton?

  I was I was talking to a friend of mine who also started playing this game right when it came out. He beat it, I believe, in eight hours, or he rolled credits. He he reached room 46 in eight hours. And he said he made it through so fast because he's very good at games like this, and in particular at the kind of strategy puzzle solving that it took to get there. And that he, first off, when he realized that he was gonna make it to the to room 46, he got kind of mad at himself, almost. He was like, no, like, it's too soon. There's so many other things going on.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  There's some luck involved with items, though, and with rolling the correct rooms to have the items you need for those rooms.

• 15:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, and so and that was definitely his takeaway, was I just had a really lucky series of runs and one in particular. And now, you know, he's been playing another, I don't know how many dozens of hours, and we've been texting, and he's farther than me in some ways, like, and I'm really, really far. So I'm at day 100 at around 70 hours, and I'm like way, way past 46, and I'm doing all kinds of stuff. And and so he's farther than me in some places and not in others. A way that he described it was, he's like, I have my video game brain and my narrative brain.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:45Kirk Hamilton?

  And they're both very different. He's like, my video game brain moves really fast, and and it like processes these puzzles and like, kind of breaks them apart and and solves them really quickly. And it was his video game brain that carried him to 46. He's like, my narrative brain is actually slower and kind of takes its time with things and doesn't like make connections as quickly and gets stuck a little bit more. And he's like, now I'm fully in the sort of narrative brain part of the game. And while I don't know that everybody experiences the game that way or thinks of it across those two axes, I thought it was really interesting. And then to hear your description of basically, you were you were playing the main gamer goal of the game, right? Which is like, get to 46, the letter lays it out to you, and that's your goal.

• 16:28Kirk Hamilton?

  And then you're having to kind of let that go, only because the game keeps kind of stymieing you, and then embrace the narrative half instead.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, there have been many runs where I've almost made it, but we don't need to talk about those. There've also been dozens of runs where I've purposefully burned them, because I've just been like, I'm just gonna get. Safe coats this time, or I'm just gonna observe this other specific thing in the rooms. So like, that's also happened in the intervening time, where I've just decided on some other puzzles that I'm like, well, this is what I'm gonna do for now. But yeah, it's weird. I'm incredibly unlucky. But I also am not turned off by the game. And I think that's like my personality and what I get out of games and what I like about it. And it's not gonna be for everyone. Like, there is something about the game that requires just that patience and repetition.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Like Kirk wrote a really good newsletter entry about this game and how it uses repetition. It's very beautifully written. We should link it in the show notes. And I think that's something about the game that's really effective, is the fact that you're rebuilding rooms a lot of the same times. And it can feel kind of meditative. And sometimes you notice something completely new in a room that you've seen dozens of times. And you're like, well, I never really thought about the fact that there's actually like a queen chess piece in here. And what does that mean, actually? Or whatever puzzle you might be on. And that's really cool. I think that's like a cool thing about the game. And also, you can like play it on your Steam Deck while watching TV. And it's not that big of a deal either, if you're burning some runs that way.

• 18:03Kirk Hamilton?

  I really liked the besties episode about this, which I just listened to. It was really just Griffin and Justin McElroy talking to Plant, Chris Plant, our friend who was just on our bonus episode, because Russ actually can't play the game because of his colorblindness. They haven't added the colorblind setting yet, which is really too bad, because I think Russ would love this game. But it was very fun listening to their conversation. Griffin is like full sicko mode, similar to Jason. And Justin is maybe probably around where I am. And listening to him first say, "Blueprints is the dark souls of thinking", which I just thought was a very funny thing to say and had me scratching my head. But secondly, he made an observation that I thought was very cogent, which is that this game, there are kind of two games here.

• 18:47Kirk Hamilton?

  There's the puzzle mystery game that you're solving, the story that you're unspooling, all of the broad mysteries that you're putting together. And then there is just the rogue Like or Rogue Light, the game where you just build the house and you move through it and you try to get as high as you can get. And that if you get kind of stuck at any point in the one game, the cognitive thinky story game, you can just go play the game. You can just see what rooms you draft and kind of see what happens. And that a lot of times by doing the second thing, you learn new things that help you along in the first things, in the first thing. And they're very different processes. And that's kind of like, I don't know, it's another way of articulating the fact that there are kind of these two different things going on in this game.

• 19:30Kirk Hamilton?

  And that playing it sort of requires you to mode shift between them. And that's kind of where a lot of the ultimate understanding of the game comes in, where you sort of see the two, the two halves of it in the ways that they overlap.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:44Jason Schreier?

  So I have a couple of thoughts on the kind of the negative reactions that we've seen. Maddie, the fact that you played 65 hours and still have a gutter of surprises.

• 19:54Speaker 02

  Maybe I am really bad at the game.

• 19:55Jason Schreier?

  Mind vugging to me.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  I had a conversation with our guides editor, Johnny, about it earlier today because I was like, am I bad at the game? And he was like, no, you're just supremely unlucky. Like I was describing everything I was doing. So I did get this verified by a guides writer.

• 20:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Bing. And a joyous bing at that for Maddy Myers has reached room 46. She messaged me as I was editing this episode on her very next run after we recorded run 89. She finally made it to room 46. So whoo, Maddie has made it to 46 and no doubt solved a whole lot of the additional puzzles in this game outside of room 46. Okay, back to the show. Bing. Bad at the game just feels very pejorative, but.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  I don't know that you can be bad at this.

• 20:40Jason Schreier?

  But you can, you can get better at it. And I think that one of the things that's been a little like, I don't know, frustrating for me, or at least a little just kind of, I failed to understand is that like, I think people have a very different reaction to being bad when they start this game than they would to being bad when they start any other type of game. Like when you start Elden Ring and you die. The first boss, you're not just like, man, the stupid RNG is killing me here. You learn how to get better at it. Well, it's not RNG. Here, well. There is a little bit of RNG in Souls games, but that's not the point. Let me finish the thought. When you, when you're playing Elden Ring, you're like, okay, I can learn how to progress by getting better at this game. Keep playing it until I understand it.

• 21:25Jason Schreier?

  With a game like Blue Prince, because there are so many different ways to manipulate the RNG, because you can keep playing and gain new things along the way, or because you can just learn how the mechanics work a little bit better, whether it's by just continuously playing until you start to understand things, or reading drafting guides that you can find throughout the house. You can get better at it and those kind of, some of those earlier frustrations, you can mitigate a little bit, you can never make the RNG go away. And there will always be, I mean, over the course of my 308 days of the game, I certainly had some runs that were blocked by RNG, especially towards the end, when you kind of have fewer goals to pursue. But, um, but you can get better at it.

• 22:08Jason Schreier?

  And like, one of the things that you have no idea about when you first start playing, but will probably figure out by the time you've gotten, I don't know, five, six, seven, 10 runs in, is that you can only, except under certain conditions, you can only draft each room once. And so then you're like, oh, okay. So if I go left and right and like, get these dead end rooms out of the way here, that means they won't pop up later. Oh, okay. If I start, I'll, I start realizing, maybe you start realizing that like, locked doors start appearing later and the higher gem cost rooms are more likely to appear later. So maybe you start stockpiling gems and keys in the early rows, so that when you get further, you're not like gated off by an annoying locked door or something like that.

• 22:53Jason Schreier?

  Or maybe you learn how to bypass security doors, et cetera, et cetera. So like, you do get better at manipulating the RNG, or at least mitigating its effect. And that is something that it's been really interesting to see people not have the patience for, because they're expecting to just like, come in and be really good at it right away, because there aren't any combat mechanics. And so you kind of, I think game. Players are just so used to the way that games function that like they wouldn't expect a puzzle game like this to also kind of play by the same rules as an Elden Ring or any other sort of like a Hades. Cause like Hades, you play Hades and nobody would get mad at the game because they couldn't get to the Hades boss to the fourth level of the game like on their first run.

• 23:37Jason Schreier?

  But in this game, it seems like a lot of people have gotten mad at it for not allowing them to make progress further on. And the other thing that I think was really helpful for a lot of people, and I said this in a few different places, was to kind of switch the, flip the switch in your brain that kind of, or change the definition of your brain, in your brain of what progress actually means. Because progress in this game doesn't mean getting to room 46, as Matty has aptly shown us. Progress in this game means learning new things and just kind of starting to understand new puzzles. And I think that first painting puzzle that I alluded to earlier is a perfect example of this because it really gives you a lot of things. When you first start to realize, whether it's because you landed on the study or like

• 24:21Jason Schreier?

  you piece it together in some other way, there are clues all over the place.

• 24:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Classrooms give you a lot of clues. There are clues everywhere. Once I learned from the study, but there are clues on how to solve this puzzle everywhere that I see now.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Also, you can just kind of figure it out.

• 24:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Or you could just figure it out.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  That's what I did because I'm a genius in this one respect.

• 24:40Jason Schreier?

  However you figure it out, it does a couple of things. One is it shows you the depth of the puzzles in this game and especially once you decipher the message and figure out that it means like 20 different things at once, it really shows you the depth. But two, and this is the most important thing, is that it gives you a goal for each room in the mansion and suddenly you're drafting for a different reason. And then that keeps compounding because the more you play, the more goals you'll discover and the more new rooms you draft. And that is really the number one trick, like tip of this game is to draft rooms you've never seen before. The more rooms you draft, the more goals you'll get. Eventually you'll have this notebook next to you with like 15 different goals you want to solve. And then it's a lot easier to hit that zen mindset that Kirk was talking about last

• 25:22Jason Schreier?

  week where you just are playing and taking whatever comes your way because you know you will have a lot of different potential things to do. And then you'll get way less frustrated when you haven't seen a boiler room in 20 runs because you have so many other things that you could potentially be working on or exploring or trying to figure out as you go.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's largely how I've played, but I will say, like, if you're a person who feels immediately frustrated by the game, it might just not be for you because that form of frustration you're feeling is the whole game. And it does require you to either enter the mindset Jason's describing or not. Like, I actually do feel like that is the only way to play this game mindset wise is like the, the therapy mantra, progress isn't linear. Like, you guys probably aren't familiar with that one, but I know I am. And this game is like a metaphor for that in the sense that it's like, you have to be okay with just not achieving what you set out to do today. And maybe something else wonderful happens and you're grateful for that. Like, it sounds so

• 26:24Speaker 02

  cerebral when I put it that way. But that is kind of the, the thing we're describing because also that RNG of the early game that you're talking about, Jason, just to kind of finish the thought, it's also in the later game. It's just in higher forms, like the kinds of RNG that I'm struggling with aren't, isn't to do with any of that early game stuff. It's like having certain items in the right room at the right time, because you need that in order to get to the step that I am on. And like, I've just accepted that it won't happen sometimes. Like, sometimes I'll have like every item in the entire game and I'll be like, well, I have none of these six rooms that I needed in order to use any of these and like achieve what I

• 27:07Speaker 02

  wanted. So I guess I'm burning this day. And like, that also requires patience and also throwing away all my items and just kind of be like, okay, well, they'll, maybe they'll come back to me, you know, like, I'm just happy.

• 27:21Jason Schreier?

  They will. Well, I mean, when you're in that situation, oftentimes you can find that your items, one of your items or a couple of your items have uses that you didn't even think about.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  Well, that's also true. And that is a fun part of the game as well. And there is the, what's the check closet? I can't remember what it's called. I love that thing.

• 27:36Jason Schreier?

  The code check. There are multiple ways, as you go, you'll find there are multiple ways to kind of retain items from run to run. But yeah, I mean, I think more importantly, something that I found interesting is that the sentiment I saw on Thursday and Friday after the Like, right after the game came out, really seemed to turn over the weekend and then into this week. And I think there might be a couple of reasons for that. One is that people, a lot of people flock to the game after seeing the high reviews and just kind of expected this immediate gratification. Maybe they didn't and they bounced off of it. Maybe they stuck with it and they grew to appreciate it. A lot of people, I imagine, check this game out on Xbox Game Pass where it is included with your subscription and so very easy to

• 28:21Jason Schreier?

  sample. And I imagine that there were some people who sampled it there and then got mad and complained about it on the internet and then stopped playing and so stopped talking about it. But also, I mean, I think that this is a game whose earliest hours are its hardest to really appreciate. And the more you play, the more you get into it. So it was only natural that in the first day, you would have some people bounce off of it or some people got frustrated by the early hours because it's really after a couple hours. And even I enjoyed seeing this in a few places. You have a lot of people who like talked about how frustrated they were in the early hours and then they went to sleep and couldn't stop thinking about Blueprints and then came back to it and just gripped them regardless.

• 29:02Kirk Hamilton?

  I have enjoyed partly the frustration of seeing someone engaging with the game in a way that I feel is just sort of incomplete or they're really rushing to judgment. Just because it feels like fair play for how the three of us reacted to Tunic. I kind of feel like this is karma coming back on us. Because I, we played a fair chunk of Tunic, or at least I did. Maybe this is just me and I shouldn't speak for the two of you. But I played a chunk of Tunic and I was like, man, I don't know, the combat isn't quite my thing. I like, I know there's a lot more here, but I'm just kind of bouncing off of it and never went back to it. And I've heard from listeners over the years who have just said variations of the same thing. You guys, you love these kinds of games. You love Outer

• 29:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Wilds. You love these Metroid Brania games, these games with hidden layers. You love Animal World. You love, now you love Blueprints. And why on earth did you not give Tunic enough of a chance? Because Tunic is so amazing. And I, you know, I, whatever, I had the Experience that I had, this is actually making me want to go back and yet again, try it because I know it really is great. But it's just a little bit funny. I, I feel that that is how people feel like when I see someone saying, oh my God, RNG screwed me on my second run in blueprints. Like this thing sucks. And I'm like 100 hours in or whatever. Like it's that same kind of feeling and I, I have a feeling that people have felt that way. Listening to us talk, if not just about Tunic, but about plenty of other games.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  Probably about all kinds of games. Yeah, I'm sure people feel that way.

• 30:28Jason Schreier?

  Okay, so yeah, I, I think so that reaction is one thing, but the way people have been, some of the discourse I've seen has just been not normal around this game, probably because it's the highest reviewed game.

• 30:40Kirk Hamilton?

  It's the hype. Yeah, I think the hype is super charged.

• 30:42Jason Schreier?

  It seems like something that people just want to be like rah rah critics. You suck like, I'm going to take down this game, a peg. It deserves to be taken down. But like the, the, some of the, the stuff I've seen, I was going to say tweets, blue skies, that I've seen are pretty, pretty radical.

• 30:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Some of that is just processing a game when it's out on social media or in Discord or on a forum. I mean, like when I played the game.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm like telling jokes.

• 31:07Kirk Hamilton?

  When I played the game, I had plenty of misconceptions about it, but they were constrained to a text message with you, Jason. I'd be like, wait a minute, is this just this? And you'd be like, oh man, you have no idea. Just wait. Cause I wasn't posting about it in public. I think that's some of it is just you're playing, you're just kind of sharing, you're talking about it. And yeah, you have, you don't have a sense of what everything is yet. So then you'll post something that in retrospect will turn out to not be accurate.

• 31:29Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that's true. I, yeah, that's a problem with social media that we don't have to get into right now and the feeling of processing your feelings there.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  And do you think maybe another benefit was that, I mean, this wasn't true for me, but for a lot of press members, they started playing this game really early. Like didn't get codes come out and months ago and like that so rarely happens for us.

• 31:50Kirk Hamilton?

  A month ago.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Still though, it was like a while. And that's really nice. I mean, I, if developers take anything from this, it should be the fact that if, if critics have a really long time to sit with your thinker of a game, they'll use it and they'll appreciate it more than if they have like a week to play it. I mean, I don't know how critics would have felt about Blueprints if they'd only had it for a week. Probably not the same, though. Like, I don't see how they could have. And reviews would have been super different, too.

• 32:20Kirk Hamilton?

  It is like, I mean, we're getting a sense of two different ways of talking about the game. One is if you played this game for a month before you really could say anything about it. And the other is if you started talking about it immediately as you started playing.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:33Kirk Hamilton?

  And they're very different. And a game like this specifically, a game that starts one way and presents as one thing, and then gradually unfolds into something that really isn't like anything else. Like, that's very hard to talk about because it's so complex and nuanced and just kind of unusual, that it makes you appreciate it. You know, when you have taken all the time to have all of that and see it in its, as much of its entirety as you can. And you're gonna then talk about it in a very, very different way from someone who just starts and immediately is like posting, being like, okay, I did one run. I don't know, like, what's up with the dartboard?

• 33:09Jason Schreier?

  I don't understand the hype. Like, I don't get it. Why is everyone raving about this game?

• 33:14Speaker 02

  I built a couple rooms. What, what is this? It's just rooms. I don't get it.

• 33:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Right.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  There's accounts.

• 33:18Jason Schreier?

  It is true. Yeah. And I think it's, games, unlike a lot of other art forms, sometimes require a pretty big commitment before you understand. But like, I don't know, I was always, I've been resistant to be like, oh, it takes X number of hours and then it gets good for you, because I don't really think that's true.

• 33:34Kirk Hamilton?

  I, yes, I completely agree. I reject that. I've seen people say that people describe it that way, be like, critics say this is one of those that takes 10 hours to get good games. And no, it is not. It's good from the start.

• 33:45Jason Schreier?

  I was, I was.

• 33:46Kirk Hamilton?

  In my opinion.

• 33:47Jason Schreier?

  Like, I, it was so long ago that I barely remember at this point, because this game is like occupying the waking hours for a month. But like, I remember being into it right away, but then really being hooked when I first discovered that kind of that painting puzzle and really started diving into it and be like, okay, like, I see what this game is trying to do here. There's a lot beneath the surface that isn't what it seems. And then especially when you decipher the message and you're like, oh, my God, what does this mean? This means like 40 different things.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:16Jason Schreier?

  But yeah, I think that it's, it's not a game. I don't know. Maybe it's all up to luck, because maybe you could, in theory, I guess, go a bunch of runs without seeing anything interesting, but that just seems very unlikely to me unless you're really just drafting yourself like three dead ends from the entrance hall and then you're just literally not seeing anything.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I mean, we have to just be okay with the fact that not everybody's into cerebral games, right? Like, we're

• 34:43Jason Schreier?

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  It's okay to not like it. But I also think that like, maybe it would be nice if we shared some of the things that hooked us. So we aren't just only talking about this realm of people that we don't understand.

• 34:54Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, well, I spoke about mine. What was yours, Maddie? Like, what first kind of made you really into this game?

• 35:01Speaker 02

  I really liked the music sheets puzzle. That was probably my first, like, big across rooms puzzle that I was like, oh, this is really cool. At first, I thought it would be involving the actual song, which isn't quite it. But like, I thought it was really fun that there was an actual song.

• 35:17Jason Schreier?

  Did you play it, Maddie? I played it.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I did. I mean, you know, I played it. Anyway, but I always think it's fun when there's music in a game. Anyway, I loved that. And just kind of discovering that, I was like, oh, sweet, there's gonna be piano in this game. But I also was always really interested in the paintings the whole time and was kind of like, okay, I'm gonna have to figure those out later. And then that was fun. But I think probably what really hooked me, just as a concept, was the first time I got to the security room and especially like figured out the terminal password. That was just a really fun moment for me to be like, oh, there's all these other terminals. What are these? That's interesting. And then like the key card system and just kind of like the first time you're there, you don't

• 36:02Speaker 02

  really understand how that could possibly benefit you, where you're like, why would I turn the key card on to high? That doesn't make any sense. Whereas now I do it. Every time I have a key card or the utility closet. And like, things like that, where like, you're discovering a room and you're like, oh, there's a lot of power here, but I don't know how to use it yet. But this is a cool room and it's got a lot of cool stuff in it. And there's like, this wider world that is, you know, only now becoming visible to me. I think just that sensation in this game is what makes you want to keep playing and be like, I want to discover more and that's exciting and fun for some people. What about you, Kirk?

• 36:40Kirk Hamilton?

  I think for me, it was, I mean, it was a number of different things. I started playing this game and was taking notes on everything right off the bat. And then had a lot of, in retrospect, useless notes. Where I was just writing down everything. But I do think that because I was just keeping a list of every name that I saw and starting to figure out who's the staff of the house, who lives here. And I was getting that pretty quickly, like my first couple of runs, I drafted a lot of rooms. My first run, I got pretty high, just because, I don't know, I like, kind of instinctively, I guess, just filled up the lower ranks, which meant then I had enough gems and keys to get to the higher ranks. And then just, I think, had pretty good RNG and didn't know what I was doing and then, you know, failed out, but I had a lot of rooms drafted. And as a result, I'd just seen a lot of things.

• 37:24Kirk Hamilton?

  I'd seen this art, I'd seen the chess pieces, I had been like, you know, looking at the photos that I'd been finding, realizing that I could use a magnifying glass on things. Yeah, I think that finding the password for the security station, which I don't think I did the first time, but I definitely did pretty early on. Like, I had a couple of breakthroughs early on that made it clear that if I just kept playing, I would keep learning more. And then, yeah, Jason, I think, like you were saying earlier, once I started figuring out that I needed to get this word grid puzzle sorted out by, by solving all of the different illustration, like the drawings on the wall, that then gave me something to shoot for, where I was just like, oh, well, I really want to get something over in like, whatever, D8, you know, like way super far over

• 38:08Kirk Hamilton?

  to the right, where I've never gotten before, because I just want to know what letter is going to be in that word, or in that room. So that was also like, a good goal to have. And also, I really just enjoyed the smaller puzzles. I really liked the Dartboard puzzle, I'm still doing it.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  Me too.

• 38:23Kirk Hamilton?

  It keeps getting more and more complicated.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  It sure does.

• 38:27Kirk Hamilton?

  And as much as I've like got it, I always make my way through it. It does throw me sometimes. Sometimes I'm just sitting there being like, oh my God. Because it's like, it's so nestled, you know, layers deep within itself that I just can't do it. But it's very good for my brain to do mental math. And I was giving this advice actually to someone in our Discord. But a piece of advice I would give about the dartboard puzzle. You should always do it for sure because you always get keys and keys are very, very important. And you usually draft that room in one of the first two ranks. So you always want to do it. And the thing is, you'll figure out the rules probably pretty quickly. And if you ever get stuck, you know, you only have to do a few steps each time. If you get stuck on like the hardest one, you can just brute force it.

• 39:09Kirk Hamilton?

  And I did that plenty of times where I would be looking at some combination of colors. And I didn't totally get what the order of operations was supposed to be. And I think I knew what it was and then I wouldn't get it. And then I'd reevaluate and I still wouldn't get it. And then I would just be like, screw it. And I would just guess one to 20. It takes about a couple of minutes because you, you know, you've learned the first two answers that you already know. And you just click through and then just go around the circle until you get it. You might work out what the mechanic that you're not understanding is. But also you might just get the keys and be able to move on. And then the next one won't be so hard. And I also really like the parlor puzzle.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  Me too.

• 39:44Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, the guy on the island says that he likes big butts and he cannot lie. And then the other guy on the island says that, you know, he always tells the truth, whatever.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 39:53Kirk Hamilton?

  That I really enjoy that puzzle as well. There are a million different variations of it.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  I like how you didn't explain it at all and you just like told a joke. Anyway, it's a logic puzzle about lying and telling the truth and it's fine.

• 40:06Kirk Hamilton?

  It is a classic, the classic riddle is there are like three people on an island and one can only, it's like liar's island or something. And like the people on liar's island will only tell the truth, whatever.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  It's, it's fine. The listeners figured it out.

• 40:20Kirk Hamilton?

  You know what it is. It's basically, yeah, you're looking at three containers and you have to figure out which one has the gems. And it's so fun, because I think I've only ever gotten it wrong once, even though I have found myself just staring.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:33Kirk Hamilton?

  There was one, I wish I could remember what it said, but it was like, it was a paradox to me.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Some of them are very hard.

• 40:40Kirk Hamilton?

  It was just the statement on the box was both true and untrue, until I finally, like, realized how to think about it. Bing! Kirk here editing the episode. And in the moment, I couldn't remember what the box said, but I actually went and looked it up, because I had posted a screenshot somewhere. And the box said, "All statements that contain the word gems are false." And if you've played the game, it's one of those things, just like a lot of blueprints, where the minute you start overthinking it, you're in trouble. And actually, the solution to a lot of the puzzles in this game require you not to overthink things. But I was just sitting there staring at it for seriously a couple of minutes, like, okay, wait. So that means this is false, because this statement

• 41:22Kirk Hamilton?

  contains the word gems. But if it's false, then it's also true? So anyways, there's definitely a solution. It's not actually a paradox. I had just been playing too long and kind of stared at it for too long, and then thought myself in circles. But it's just one of those funny things that happens sometimes when you're playing this game. Okay, back to the show. Bing! And so I really just find those enjoyable, like, purely on their own terms. Every time, especially in the early goings, every time I would drop the parlor, I'd be like, well, this is gonna be an engaging couple of minutes while I stare at these boxes and figure out which one to open. So I just found all of that stuff enjoyable, and wasn't really too hung up on getting too far. And then, you know, after that, like, I was off to the races, you know? Anything frustrating that

• 42:06Kirk Hamilton?

  would happen when I was really trying to get to 46, I knew that I could just let go and just do another run, and I would, I would get there eventually.

• 42:14Jason Schreier?

  We're gonna wrap it up soon, but one more quick thing is that I'm also seeing in some of those early days, some of the kind of quick snap reactions to the game, were scoffing at critics for making comparisons to games like Outer Wilds and Oberton and other kind of... Finky games in recent memory.

• 42:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Really? Who would?

• 42:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, why are you? Jason, you gotta, you gotta stop reading all this. Where are you going?

• 42:39Kirk Hamilton?

  He was scoffing.

• 42:41Jason Schreier?

  I mean, in this case, it's especially off base because one of the things that you won't see right away and you won't start to realize until you've really sunk a few hours into this game is the story. And the story under the surface is way more in-depth and way more interesting than you have any idea it is when you first start the game. And a lot of that is uncovered through archaeology, the way that Oberden works or the way that Outer Wilds works, even if the mechanical comparisons are not quite there. So yeah, if you're coming to this game and you've seen those comparisons and then you start playing it and you're like, what? This is just a resource rogue light. Who, who would compare this to Outer Wilds?

• 43:23Jason Schreier?

  Just do yourself a favor and don't rush to snap judgment because maybe chances are you haven't quite seen what the game is just yet.

• 43:31Kirk Hamilton?

  I think that that speaks to that same idea I was talking about in the early goings of this episode of these two separate experiences, that the rogue light game where you build the house is the one experience and the narrative experience can feel very separate, especially at first. And I think that if you're not really seeing the narrative thing at all, which it's possible to not really see it at all, you could get all the way, I don't, I don't know for sure, but I think you could pretty much play the game where you get to room 46 and like the narrative stuff would just be really backgrounded if you saw any of it. You know, the, the safes or whatever, like that stuff isn't necessary for reaching room 46.

• 44:06Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, Kirk, can I make a point of clarification? I actually think it's three different components here because the mystery and the puzzle stuff you can do without getting into the story. You can unlock all of the permanent additions to the house as an example, just by solving puzzles without ever learning a single thing about Marian, Marygold, or what the deal is with Herbert Sinclair or any story stuff. So I think those are kind of three elements. And the story stuff, I would argue, is the, the furthest buried. It's the one that really takes the most effort to excavate, to dig out, and you really have to work at it. Not that hard, but you have to pay attention to to get it. And then, once you do, it's very rewarding. But that's the type of thing that like the early hours, players and especially people who bounce off of it, won't see.

• 44:50Jason Schreier?

  And again, it's OK if you bounce off this game.

• 44:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm, I think we're saying the same thing. Yeah. Like, I think that that stuff is just hidden. And like, the mechanical game of unlocking the house and reaching 46, that's just the game that I think people focus on at first. And what really makes Blueprints such a work of brilliance is the way the two things overlap and the way the one, the, you know, the just game, the roguelike game, gradually gives way to the other and eventually becomes this incredibly rich tapestry of all of them. And that's what critics are talking about when they've played 100 hours and they want to talk, just scream from the mountaintops about how brilliant this game is. And I think if you're, you're playing initially, you're kind of really just seeing the one part of it. And I think that's part of it as well. Can I actually point out a couple of things that I didn't mention on last week's episode?

• 45:35Kirk Hamilton?

  I know we're almost out of time, but I want to shout a couple of things out just because they're interesting. Last week, I mentioned Betrayal and House on the Hill, the game, as a sort of aesthetic similarity to this game in that in both that tabletop game and in this game, you're building a house. And I wanted to mention another game that I was not aware of called Castles of Mad King Ludwig, that is a much closer comparison point to this game mechanically and aesthetically. And this is me, not really a tabletop expert, you know, just pointing to the one game that I was familiar with. But Castles of Mad King Ludwig looks really, really cool. Look that game up. And also, I wanted to shout out the book Maze by Christopher Manson,

• 46:15Kirk Hamilton?

  which Tonda Ross, the director of this game, has said many times was one of his inspirations for it. It's this book where each page in the book is a room in a 45-room house. It has a lot of similarities with Blueprints. It sounds really cool. It's incredibly difficult puzzle. I guess no one's really ever properly solved it. It seems like a very interesting story. I kind of want to get a copy and just look at it. So I wanted to mention that as well as like two of the big, clear influences on this game. Jason, I know you talked to Tonda.

• 46:44Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, Christopher Manson actually has a cameo in this game doing a certain. Oh, that's fun. Drew some puzzles in this game that you'll discover at some point if you keep playing. All right, we're gonna take a break. I hope everybody out there who is stuck with Blueprints is still enjoying it. And if you are not enjoying it, that's okay, too.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  But if you are, keep going.

• 47:08Jason Schreier?

  We'll talk about something else next week.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Will we? No, we-

• 47:10Jason Schreier?

  Well, you can't promise that, Kirk. All right, we're gonna take a break and we'll be back with one more thing.

• 47:20Jason Schreier?

  And we are back, Kirk, Matty. It is time for one more thing. Matty, take us away.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  Okay, so my one more thing is a documentary that I watched a while ago, but I just never talked about on the show. And I wanted to because it's really good. It's called Hail Satan, question mark? And it's from 2019. I'm not sure where it's airing now because I haven't looked into that. So my apologies. But it's really cool. It's about the Satanic Temple and the members of it and their political leanings, which are pretty far to the left, and just their, what they believe in as an organization and what they don't believe in as an organization. And they kind of are like, I don't want to say they're not entirely serious about their religion,

• 48:05Speaker 02

  but they do periodically use it to troll right wing causes such as like campaigning to get a statue of Baphomet next to the Ten Commandments, for example. They do, there's a big part of the documentary that's about them trying to achieve that and saying like, "Look, if we're gonna put up the Ten Commandments, you should let us put up this huge statue of like a horned god, because that's what we believe in." And in so doing, they often achieve their true end, which is to get the Ten Commandments removed from whatever public place they're being stationed in. But the other cool part, the documentary is just kind of like hearing about the leftist intra disagreements in the group

• 48:45Speaker 02

  and how I, I thought they were really fascinating. It's, it's a 2019 documentary, so a lot of them are about like 2016 and President Trump and like them kind of arguing internally about like how to handle just the rise of the alt-right in like the kind of mainstream sphere of America. And I thought those parts of the documentary were really interesting and- It doesn't like have a happy ending per se. Obviously, they haven't achieved everything that they hoped to. But I think that kind of thing is really neat, and I think their methods are sometimes funny and sometimes just interesting. And so if you're, if you're a person who's interested in that, in sort of like religious activism, then you'll probably enjoy this documentary. And you might enjoy it either way if you just don't really know

• 49:28Speaker 02

  that much about the specific group of people and the kind of work that they do. It's called Hail Satan with a question mark. And I thought it was really interesting because I didn't know that much about these people. And yeah, it was good.

• 49:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice.

• 49:41Jason Schreier?

  Cool. Kirk, what's your one more thing?

• 49:43Kirk Hamilton?

  My one more thing is a modification of the Oscars game that my friend Sam and I have been playing together. So I mentioned maybe a year ago that my friend Sam and I had been watching all of the movies nominated for Academy Awards in 1994.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  I remember this.

• 49:57Kirk Hamilton?

  And we had done, we had undertaken this project thinking, oh, this will be really fun. We'll watch all these movies from this year. This was the year of Pulp Fiction, Shawshank Redemption, and Forrest Gump. And we'll watch all these movies and then, you know, that'll give us some interesting insight into this very interesting year in cinema. So that took us like, I don't know, three or four years because we don't get together that often. And, you know, when we do, we try to watch one or two movies, but it takes a long time because, you know, movies are long and also we just don't get together that often. So we've kind of modified the game. And so I wanted to share the updated rules because it's actually been really cool. So now what we do, each time we get together, we get together once or twice a month, he comes over and we roll a 100-sided dice. This is

• 50:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Sam, who also, incidentally, is also the dungeon master for my D and D game.

• 50:44Speaker 02

  So he's got a 100-sided die handy?

• 50:47Kirk Hamilton?

  Actually, we use the like, the 2D10 where the one has like 10s and one has one. Because I don't have a 100-sided die because I'm not that, that much of a maniac. Anyways, roll 100-sided die. And then whatever year comes up, we go and look at all the best picture winners for that year, and then kind of pick what we're going to watch. And there have been, we have to like, kind of adjust it sometimes. Like we'll roll, you know, whatever. If you were like 1917 or something, there's just, we're not going to go that far. I don't even think the Academy Awards existed then. I think they started in the 20s. So like, there are some years that we'll roll, or we'll roll 94 and be like, well, we already watched all of those. But it is actually a really great way to sort of take the choice paralysis away. Even when you're looking at older movies and classic

• 51:31Kirk Hamilton?

  movies, there are so many old classic movies that we haven't seen. And take that away, and you just suddenly you have a list of, you know, five or six movies to choose from. And most recently, we rolled 72, which we have chosen to mean movies that came out in 1972, not the 1972 Academy Awards, because that's going to be the 1973 Academy Awards for movies from 72. So that's how we interpret it. 72 is Cabaret, Deliverance, and The Godfather were all nominated for things. Cabaret actually won way more Academy Awards than The Godfather, which is very interesting. It is good. That was when Marlon Brando won for The Godfather and refused to accept the award. He sent a Native American woman, Sachin Littlefeather, to accept it on his behalf.

• 52:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Also, Charlie Chaplin was nominated because his movie Limelight had been aired, like, or screened in Los Angeles for the first time that year, even though it was 20 years old. Which one, Best Picture? The Godfather won Best Picture. But it did not win Best Director. Bob Fosse, I believe, won for Cabaret. I might be wrong about that. And like, it didn't, it, it won a couple of other things, but it was like, Best Picture, but not like, all of the other really top line things. Oh, it won Best Adapted Screenplay, I think. Anyhow, we watched The Godfather. It took us like, a whole day, because we take forever and we talk a lot and pause the movie and have conversations. But man, I mean, this isn't groundbreaking or anything, but The Godfather is a really freaking good movie. It's like, really good. Hot take.

• 52:59Kirk Hamilton?

  And it was, man, it was fun to watch a movie that just, you could eat it off the screen. Every shot is like, lit with this just chewy 3D light. It's so tangible, the way these sets look, the, the, these really long takes they do, where they're like, at the wedding, and people are talking, and they're dancing, and they're walking into the foreground and having a conversation. The framing, all of it, I mean, I don't know. They don't make movies that look like that anymore, and it's- Too bad, because that movie looks freaking awesome. So it was fun to watch that. We're gonna watch Cabaret next time, which I have never seen and am very excited about. Anyways, I just wanted to share the way we've modified that game. It's been really great and kind of better for infrequent get togethers than trying to stick with one here.

• 53:42Kirk Hamilton?

  So if anyone out there wants a way to try watching movies, try the Oscars D100 dice rolling Best Picture game.

• 53:52Jason Schreier?

  Cool. That's sound fun.

• 53:54Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm gonna work on the name. That was kind of a long name. We'll workshop it.

• 53:57Jason Schreier?

  Workshop it. Take it to TripleClick Naming Academy.

• 54:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, Spider Mansion.

• 54:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's no Ghost Lawnmower.

• 54:04Jason Schreier?

  My one more thing is a video game called Lunar, the remastered collection, which came out this week. Are you guys familiar with the Lunar series?

• 54:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, familiar. Haven't played them though.

• 54:14Jason Schreier?

  The Lunar series is a series of JRPGs from the 1990s. And there were a few of them, but there are only two that are really worth talking about, which are the ones in this compilation. One of them is called Lunar Silver Star, and the next one is called Lunar Eternal Blue. They were both released on the Sega CD, I believe, and then re-released on the PlayStation 1. And this is a remaster of the PlayStation 1 versions. And these are really interesting games in a lot of ways, and this remastered version is a cool compilation. The remaster is pretty bare bones. It's just got them all in like HD and adds like a couple of new features here and there. Like a revamped inventory system and like a speed up combat and stuff.

• 54:59Jason Schreier?

  So I'll just really talk about the games themselves. These are really interesting JRPGs. They're kind of classic turn-based JRPGs. The first one is like as tropey as it gets, where you play this guy who wants to become a hero called the Dragon Master. And so he has to go around the world, like solving these dragon trials to earn their respect. And then fighting off this big, bad, evil dude and becoming the Dragon Master. And the big, bad, evil dude wants to destroy the world and become god, et cetera, et cetera. Couple of twists and turns along the ways, but they're fairly predictable. Second one is a little more complicated. Than that, but still pretty tropey and classic JRPG style.

• 55:42Jason Schreier?

  These games are very much kind of the quintessential turn-based Japanese role-playing game. It's got everything you think of. It's like you go to a new town, you do some story stuff, maybe you recruit a new character, you go and fight through a dungeon, you fight a boss. It's all turn-based. You buy new gear every time to make your characters more powerful, gain levels, you gain new skills as you go, you fight bosses, you watch story unfold, and on and on it goes until you defeat God. Yep. And they're very comforting in a way. There are a couple of things they have going for them, really. One is that they're very charming. And there's a little bit of controversy involved in the writing surrounding them,

• 56:26Jason Schreier?

  actually, because they were localized by this company called Working Designs. And when they were localized in the 90s, to kind of spice up the localization, the guy behind Working Designs, Vic Ireland, put a lot of pop culture references into them. The most notable one is like a Bill Clinton joke, but there's all sorts of stuff in there. At one point, you like talk to an NPC and he'll be doing an Austin Powers impression. At another point, yeah, there's a lot of just kind of, there's also a lot of like jokes and humor and style that you would not see in other games in that era, like fart jokes or like jokes about sex and stuff like that.

• 57:06Jason Schreier?

  A lot of stuff that I think was, in some ways, revolutionary for the time, because most localization was so stiff and staid and boring at that point, that this really was a breath of fresh air in some ways. But in other ways, has not aged particularly well. So that's interesting to play today. It's still got a lot of charm, but it's also got a lot of cringe. It's also got a lot of moments where you're just like, oh, like this is, this is a little unpleasant. Got really good music. It's got, it's just got, it's a very pleasant game to play, especially while you're doing something else, watching TV or something like that. I played through the entirety of the first game and have just started the second game

• 57:49Jason Schreier?

  as kind of like an unwinding thing on my seam deck in bed while like watching TV, watching something on TV with my wife or something like that. So it's very good for those purposes. And I think people who played it back in the 90s and like want to revisit it will do well, will get a lot out of this remaster. It's also nice to have just like a way to play these games on a modern system because they weren't playable before, other than with emulators or like digging up an old CD or something like that. So that's nice, too. I certainly don't think you two should play them or that like people who aren't fans of turn-based JRPGs will be into these games. But like if you are, if you're into turn-based JRPGs,

• 58:32Jason Schreier?

  you could, you could, you could do worse than the Lunar collection. They're just enjoyable experiences, I would say. And Kirk, you, I think, would really enjoy the soundtrack of the second game especially because it's really cool. And it's got some like unique tracks with like jazz and other genres that you don't normally hear in JRPG. So there's a lot of good stuff in that soundtrack. I'll, I'll send you a couple of tracks later.

• 59:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, send me the highlight tracks at the very least.

• 59:03Jason Schreier?

  But yeah, it's, it's a, it's a cool series and I'm glad I've been playing through these remasters. I'm glad they exist. I have a couple of kind of granular gripes that I won't get into. But overall, I've been enjoying the experience. So yeah, if you're into JRPGs, check them out, whether you played them back in the day or you didn't. I think they mostly hold up well, other than some bad jokes here and there.

• 59:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Nothing wrong with a good Austin Powers joke.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, that seems fine. That should be preserved in amber forever, I think.

• 59:33Kirk Hamilton?

  We've come all the way back around and now Austin Powers references are funny.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  I think they kind of are in a quaint way.

• 59:40Kirk Hamilton?

  It's like Shrek. Austin Powers and Shrek, they're kind of the, they operate on a similar frequency.

• 59:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, different Mike Marriers eras, but both important to highlight.

• 59:49Jason Schreier?

  There's a, there's this great podcast called Comedy Bang Bang, and they, they have reclaimed Borat, my wife jokes by just making them endlessly, in an ironic way.

• 1:00:01Speaker 02

  Scott Aukerman is never gonna let them go. He just, he just kept making them all along.

• 1:00:06Jason Schreier?

  They're phenomenal. Borat, my, my wife jokes. My wife. All right. On that note, it's time to say goodbye. Kirk, Maddie, I will see you both next week.

• 1:00:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, see you next week.

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 1:00:21Kirk Hamilton?

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

• 1:01:19Jason Schreier?

  Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows. Supported. Directly. By you.