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Creature Kitchen - Ep 100
24 Plays20 days ago
We're so back... To talk about slightly creepy, very cozy little games!
Music is "Fork and Spoon" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Transcript
Return After a Long Hiatus
00:00:04
Speaker
all right we rolling baby oh my god forgot what this software looked like god yeah that's my voice wait do you have do you have different like view on i'm sure your side is different than mine i just see our little uh waveforms being like written out in front of us that's what i see too i It's so weird because I haven't like it feels like it's been like a year since I've seen those.
00:00:33
Speaker
Well, I've got news for you. Holy shit. It's been. I mean, at this point, we are weird. air It's brown. oh it's I'm losing my mind.
Personal Updates: Marriages and Engagements
00:00:50
Speaker
hi We are five days away at the time of recording from having yeah a full calendar year in between episodes so i'm sure one one i me it is edison hello everybody i'm i'm sure by the time you're hearing this it's all it's been a full calendar year if not longer since the last time we did anything
00:01:14
Speaker
Yeah, dude, it's it's been one year since you've listened to me. bit up but de we did um hi i we did not even rock, paper, scissors or anything to figure out whose episode is. No. I think we're just going for it. oh Yeah, dude. We'll figure it out. It's so, so much has happened. Dude, you got married.
00:01:38
Speaker
I'm engaged and like almost married. I'm like yeah very close to being married. I call her my wife every day. I love this lady. Adorable. God.
00:01:49
Speaker
ah yeah I got to see you get married. it was It was beautiful. Yeah. It was really awesome. I was so happy to get to see that. i was so glad I got to be there. Yeah, i'm I'm glad you were there, and I'm glad that we weren't recording an episode of a podcast or a guest, so it's it's fine that we've been away for a while. Yeah.
00:02:07
Speaker
but We did talk about it a lot right around that time, but it was like, hey, I'm getting married. I'm like, yeah, that's a lot of work, dude. I. Yeah. The the wheels of life just just keep turning and they turn. Oh, goodness.
Introduction to 'Creature Kitchen'
00:02:22
Speaker
But you know, it doesn't stop fucking videos, games coming out that I like and want to scream about. And I've got like such a back backlog. I've got so many games from the last year to talk about. And I'm so excited to be back with you, James.
00:02:37
Speaker
i'm I'm so excited as well. this I miss this energy. I miss being able to chat and just go. Yeah. yeah i know you i I don't know where we're at in the order. I know we didn't establish anything, but you've got a backlog. I feel like you've got more to work through than I do. So if you want to get this show on absolutely go for Let me Set me on fire. Let's get in here.
00:03:01
Speaker
all right, James. Yeah. You know Yeah. You know, i love, i love a little critter. A little, a little freaky critter, little ghoul, little goblin, little, a little freaky guy, little dude that makes me happy.
00:03:21
Speaker
Man, it would be so nice if I lived in like a cute little cabin out in the middle of the woods and it was a little spooky, but like in a really nice, like kind of comforting way. And there were just like a ton of little guys and little critters and they were like all over the place. And I got to like,
00:03:36
Speaker
Just take care of them and live with them and like have a good time. That would be that would be great. it It is. Honestly, it is because it's called Creature Kitchen. And that's the game. It it really is like that. That is most of the game. um We'll get into it. There's some really interesting twists to this that I think you'll you'll be especially interested to hear about because I feel like I'm going to say a couple of words and sequence and you're gonna be like those What do you mean? and We'll get there.
00:04:05
Speaker
um My famous stunned reaction when things don't make perfect sense immediately. yeah God, it's so good. But ah hey, so this game is dev'd by a team. They are called The Rat Zone.
Exploring The Rat Zone
00:04:20
Speaker
For anyone who is listening, and this includes my lovely co-host James, I would love for you to go to a website called therat.zone.
00:04:31
Speaker
That's all you need to type in. It's just the rat.zone and it will bring you to their website. I'm going to read you. It it is a GeoCity style HTML only website. As you can hear from James's laugh. Have you ever find yourself in this situation?
00:04:49
Speaker
i'm playing a triple A game, but I'm having an issue. It's too good. Clearly, this is a functional video game here at the rat zone. We understand your concerns about video video video games. I will also put out it is concerning.
00:05:07
Speaker
Concernies. Sorry, we understand. We understand your concernies about Vito games. We take special care to ensure that every video, every game we make is of the lowest quality. Truly, we are proud to be the foremost games developer. Do you want to know more?
00:05:27
Speaker
TM, yes. Games TM in quotes, quote unquote games TM developer. capital um God, I love this team so heavily. can't. Yeah, the discord. You can join the discord, which I love that the discord icon is the Twitch icon that someone like liquefied and scooched to be the discord icon.
00:05:51
Speaker
It literally is just the like the Twitch logo. And then someone took a liquefy brush and turned it into the discord icon. And you can click that to go to their discord server. God, it's so good. They put out this game in February 6th of this year, 2026. It is.
00:06:08
Speaker
i got it for my birthday. My wife bought it for herself and then I played it. um and she never did but she watched me play a bunch of it it's a team it's like five to seven people i can't fully tell from their website you can go to the rat list in parentheses list of rats i can see several people rat list yeah uh Several people who worked on this game. I love several of them.
00:06:34
Speaker
My favorite does not want to be perceived, so I won't read their description out loud, but they are great. ah Absolute Goob. I love that their description of they do artist and evil goblin of the team uses bad programs like Blender and Microsoft to make 3D art.
00:06:51
Speaker
Allegedly use the used to be a technical artist artist, parenthetical fake discipline. And had to use Lua at some point. And then it goes into, does anyone know how to use, how to write HTML or CSS? I don't know how to use it.
00:07:08
Speaker
And then it just kind of goes off screen and it's all like one big block of yellow text. And then the last end of it says text box slash don't I love this team. I love their vibe. Everything is perfect. I don't know if Jake Mathern is actually a person or a chicken. They didn't get a job compared to everyone else in the in the rat list. They don't have like a job.
00:07:32
Speaker
um Just a vivid viv SSH living in a cruel world comes out of the woodwork to implement grapple hook. I don't know what that means. Maybe 10 seconds before you read it out loud. and i I'm fully, I'm having an... not They're the only one that's not a rat. They're a chicken. i don't i don't know if they're a person or an actual human human chicken.
00:07:58
Speaker
so there's that, and then down at the very bottom, there's just four question marks and the description just being, wait, what the fuck How did you get in here? yeah um... so It's so good. work on this Yeah, I don't know. It's like a team of like ah roughly five to seven rats. I have no idea. They've got three games.
00:08:17
Speaker
um One of one of their games actually looks really cool. ah Besides, like a lot of their games look really cool. All their games look rad. Creature Kitchen is great. Their other game that I'm really interested in playing now is called Cinder. It looks very like ah Iron Lung, which famously got a whole movie since we last recorded. But ah Cinder looks very Iron Lung.
00:08:39
Speaker
I clicked on the him button. I'm so sorry. I'm going to listen to i did it's completely unly i know's good You can re refresh the page and it gets rid of him, but he is there. um So just ah I wanted to write a little bit about their process for making this
The Rat Zone's Unique Mission Statement
00:08:57
Speaker
game. And normally, usually on these, is they have like a press kit that gives you like a little of like my inspiration when I made this game. They don't have that, but they do have Domitian.
00:09:05
Speaker
um on their page and it starts with mission statement and i just want to try my best to get through one paragraph of this before we get into this game so i'm so sorry to anyone listening that we're immediately going so off the rails and not talking about this game but i am fully invested in the rat zone is that not why we're here at this point what do people sign on for when they listen the show if not that If you're not interested in the rat zone, like that's fine, but you're in the wrong place. Like you've got to go somewhere else. It's not fine. Get out of here.
00:09:39
Speaker
God, wait until I talk about funny raccoon game. We're getting there. That's another episode. Again, a Gremlin game. I've been playing some Gremlin Goblin like sub two hour games. If you listen to an Allison episode, it will be like a two to seven hour game that was like five bucks that I found under a barrel in the back of an alleyway.
00:10:01
Speaker
um i love every single one of them so dearly, but we're getting off the rails again. This paragraph um mission statement, a.k.a. what the fuck is video games? Axiom one, the end of video games in 1612. The first video game was invented. it couldn't be played by humans, though. It was a rodent only console named name of Coolbox. And for centuries, it held a monopoly over the video game market.
00:10:31
Speaker
Until December of 1982, when the big one, the jet black turd itself, Atari game E.T. was unleashed. It demonstrated how destructive video games could actually be when made for humans, especially on home console. A big oopsie, a mistake, the likes of which we was never repeated until the tragic film release All Dogs Go to Heaven 2.
00:11:05
Speaker
Needless to say, i didn't read their entire mission statement yet, but I definitely will be going to. It's so fucking awesome, dude. I love this so much. I'm so glad I got to do research on this episode because I hadn't seen this when I played the game. I just played the game. And then now I get to see this. And I love you, the rat zone. I love you with my whole heart. Please. I have a wife.
00:11:32
Speaker
But like we can we can make something work if you just want to hit me up. I want to I want to be a member of the rat zone so desperately.
Gameplay Mechanics and Style
00:11:42
Speaker
I love you.
00:11:43
Speaker
But my what I wrote for their process in making this game is little gamer, little gremlins made something beautiful. And I want to tell everyone that you should play it and enjoy it ah enjoy the found family experience that comes with this game um now is when i start talking about the actual game itself um so if you want to like 12 minutes into the episode I know. I'm so sorry. If you want to like soundbite here of skip to 12 minutes deep in the episode to listen to the video game. ah Now you can put that way back in the episode and people can make that choice for themselves. ah Absolutely not, though, because you this is the this is the price of admission. Yeah. dude ah Yeah, dude, you want to listen to it? You should play this game.
00:12:32
Speaker
YSBTG episode. This is what you can't do. you can't meet us at the rat zone. You don't deserve the game synopsis. You don't. But we're going to get into the game synopsis. Here comes the fun part. This is a Resident Evil style cooking game.
00:12:53
Speaker
So that, okay. So now we're at the part where I have my my infamous reaction. Yeah, right? um That is what this game is. If you play it, it is a Resident Evil puzzle game cooking simulator. It's Cooking Mama meets Resident Evil, where you take care of little ghouls and goblins like the Fresno Night Stalker and a raccoon and a bird and a the creature, which is just like this tall dog thing. i it's it
00:13:25
Speaker
calling it a dog is kind of a stretch it's kind of like a horse beast thing it's great it is the stretch wind runner type dog i love those dogs um but also like mothman's here and the sasquatch here and there's like an octopus in a tree he's pretty chill i like him quite a bit um and You get to cook meals for all these guys. ah You unlock recipes as you go They're hidden all throughout and you have a bunch of puzzles. I'm going to kind of describe the first five minutes of this game and I think it'll kind of sum up a lot of the systems. I had to replay it recently because I got through to the end and I kind of forgot...
00:14:08
Speaker
all of the beautiful things that are in this game and the like really subtle way it starts, because this game really did truly make me like cry a little bit when I beat it because it's so sweet. It's so beautiful. It is like genuinely this heartfelt story and it it's so good. You you start off just in the woods in the dark and you see this like blue spirit orb down the path. And it's a little spooky because you're in the woods in the dark. And the only thing in lighting up anything is this blue spirit orb. And if you stand there for long enough, a little text will pop up on the screen and tell you to press F to turn on your flashlight.
00:14:49
Speaker
From there, you see that actually it's just like a little path. there's a little path through the woods and you are out in the middle of the woods and it is a little spooky, but there's some like fireflies and it's kind of cute. Um, and you follow the path and follow this little spirit orb and it leads you to the quaintest little cat cottage you've ever seen out in the middle of nowhere.
00:15:08
Speaker
Um, everything's locked. I don't really know why. um but you start opening some pantries and cupboards and going through what's in this little cottage. Cause that's all you got to do.
00:15:19
Speaker
Um, you find some sugar, some bread, maybe some maple syrup under the sink, ah some salt. If you dig around in the pantry, you might find some water. There's a mixing stand and and a stove. There's a sink where you can get and Mess with several different things. ah And you find like a little wind chime on the porch in a rocking chair and you're not quite sure how what to do with any of these things. But they're there.
00:15:48
Speaker
um You can ring the wind chime and a bird shows up. But that's all you really know. and on the pad on the counter is a little box of recipes. You look in it and find a recipe for toast and a recipe for pancakes to make some toast. You have find some bread, you put it on the cutting board and you start chopping it up. it It has a very Resident Evil style like manipulation and screen look to it when you get into the cutting board. It just looks so nostalgic of like that PS1 era chunkiness. ah You cut up your bread, you throw it in the oven.
00:16:24
Speaker
it kind of freaks out at you for a little bit. But after it's done shimmy shaking around and you see the void inside of the oven, um out pops toast.
00:16:35
Speaker
Don't worry about the void in the oven. It's fine. It's not going to hurt you It's just there. No one knows how ovens work anyways. Like, it's just like you put it in. Some shit happens. It shimmy shams around and toast.
00:16:48
Speaker
Has my oven been shimmy shaming this whole time? Do I need to check on it? ah If it's not, you might need a check on it. Uh... Take that shit outside, pop it on the plate, ring the bell, and the bird comes down and it eats some toast. And it liked that.
00:17:05
Speaker
This is the only thing you know how to do. So I guess I'll make the next recipe and you make some pancakes and you find out after you feed the bird the pancakes that doing very similar Resident Evil style cooking mama in a Resident Evil of like visage.
00:17:20
Speaker
Um... yeah and it's like and looking at the sorry to jump in but looking at yeah the kind of the pictures in the video of this game describing it as a resident evil type presentation doesn't i think make as much sense until you look at it and it's like oh yeah clearly it looked like the the background gets a little bit obscured the the activity you're working on becomes kind of center focused and you've got this like things are kind of moving of their own accord in a very like kind of stilted liminal yeah yeah little bit inscrutable kind of way yeah there's also the puzzles which we haven't even gotten to of like trying to figure out you feed the bird the pancakes you realize that the bird's favorite food is pancakes and for gifting it the pancakes it brings you back a key which opens up the fridge and the fridge gives you more ingredients in a couple of recipes uh and then with the new recipes you can give
00:18:14
Speaker
new things to new animals as they start showing up and the more people you feed and take photos of and fill out this little scrapbook that's over on the table behind the door ah behind the front door um you start filling out these bios of these people and of these critters um And you learn their favorite foods and you learn what they like and what they dislike. And you get little pictures of them and you can update your scrapbook and get to know everyone. and you get their names as you take these pictures and like do all this stuff. And to unlock new rooms, you have to like go through a puzzle of like, I need to find the three orbs throughout the garden, digging up, finding a shovel to find an orb to put into this thing, to open a box, to get a key, to open a new room, to find a new ingredient to feed to my new friend.
00:19:04
Speaker
it's very resident evil style puzzle silent hill style puzzles in this very ps1 ps2 style game but the like actual mechanics of playing the game outside of the puzzles which is very resident evil style in itself is very cooking mama style crafting to make these things to gather the keys and rewards back from all of these little critters that are running around your world.
00:19:31
Speaker
It's so charming. It's so wild. And I love... That's literally just the first point that I had of things to talk about. that the like The cute guys is so much of it. And actually finding all of these cute guys as you discover more about them and discover their favorite foods. And you might find little notes hidden around that tell you about them, tell you their story. And you get to learn about why everyone's here in this spot. There was someone here before you who was taking care of them and they're no longer with us. They have moved on. You are kind of. starting to take up this mantle and you're kind of doing it
00:20:09
Speaker
Not necessarily hesitantly, but it feels like you're kind of like, oh I'll do this while I'm here. And then as you do it more and more and you get to know these cryptids more and more, you discover some of these like little cut scenes and little moments and little story bits.
00:20:26
Speaker
That's all just text on screen, but it builds this deeper understanding of everyone. and You really develop this like sense of found family of all of these people need people. Someone to take care of them. They're kind of outcasts. No one likes them. They don't get to be with regular society. No one wants Mothman just hanging around. No one wants this giant, weird deer or dog to just be there. But you start taking care of them and giving them a place to be in a place to feel more seen. um And they hang out with you and they tell you funny little stories and give you little gifts.
00:21:01
Speaker
And then as you build it and build the scrapbook and build this like little family, you get to really develop this sense of home in a way that I've not really experienced in a game in a while um where it feels like I belong in that little place.
Emotional Storytelling in the Game
00:21:18
Speaker
It feels so nice and so cozy.
00:21:21
Speaker
it has such a quick pace to it, too. Like if you really sit down, I 100 percent of the game in seven hours. I beat it in an afternoon. I started at like. like noon and I was done by sundown. it was just a weekend. I beat it over the course of, I think two days, really. i yeah played it through four hours at one, one night in four hours the next night. And it was just, I underrepresented it. I beat everything. I got all there was to do. And honestly, that's what I cried. Cause I was like, I don't want to leave these little guys behind. And every once in a while I do pop in and just make them a sandwich.
00:21:55
Speaker
Cause like, it's nice. Yeah. Yeah, um um so I was starting to get ah honestly to be a little bit embarrassingly truthful. I was starting to get a little emotional just with you describing that.
00:22:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's beautiful. It is a genuinely beautiful, gorgeous, sentimental game. And if you do ever feel like you don't fully fit with everything going on and you just need a little place to escape to and be for like 10 minutes where you don't have to worry about Anything but chill in with your friends and maybe making the Fresno Nightwalker a bowl cereal. Or Mothman a sandwich or just taking care of a cute little dog. Like it's real nice and it is really just so pleasant and it's a great place to just escape to for a little bit. It's supported on most platforms. I believe it was on PC and Mac. I saw it on i played it on my Steam Deck a little bit here and there just whenever I feel like I need a moment and I just need to step away and step into
00:23:03
Speaker
something calm it has full controller support uh i believe it's also on nintendo switch uh i don't know if it's on xbox and playstation usually that's something i put in my notes i didn't do that today um but it's on sale right now but ah right now being fed the 12th twelf of May, I guess. Yes, May the 12th, 2026. It is currently on sale. is Yeah, the the whole process. No longer evergreen. But it goes on sale pretty regularly. It's like six bucks on sale. It's like eight bucks full price. It's so worth it for just a moment of like a really peaceful, nice...
00:23:43
Speaker
place to be and also a really fun, cool puzzle game because it does have some very fun puzzles that aren't that hard because like that is one of the things with Resident Evil is. Yeah. If you don't know what you're doing, they can be a pain in the ass. These ones really aren't that bad. They're really, really not bad.
00:23:59
Speaker
um i think there was... one that i had to search for and it was for an achievement and it was because the version i played didn't give you a little like marker when you had made uh a recipe uh that got added in an update but one of the achievements is to make everything and i was like i swear i've made everything am i missing something and i i had to look around for a while that shouldn't be an issue for people playing now though um Because yeah when you when you talk about Resident Evil puzzles, ah the word obtuse comes to mind. Yes, for for a lot of them. So I'm i'm glad to hear that's not the case here.
00:24:38
Speaker
They can be a little obtuse. They are a little like, OK, that's silly. But all of them are contained within the room that. uh you unlock the the like puzzle for that room is all inside of that room all the pieces you need should be there there are a couple of things that are a little harder to find there are like some mushrooms that are hidden over maybe by some water somewhere if you need need some advice on how to find specific things um but uh
00:25:09
Speaker
Yeah, like it's it's really not too terribly hard to figure everything out. Like I said, I 100 percented it with no walkthrough in like seven hours. ah And also it's much smaller than a Resident Evil or a Silent Hill. Everything takes place in this one house and like the surrounding woods. And it's it's a pretty big house, but it's not like.
00:25:31
Speaker
anywhere near the resident to mansion, resonable to mansion or like even the resident evil one, like house that you are in is way the bigger than this. It's way more condensed. It's way faster. It's not near as tedious, which I really, really loved.
00:25:50
Speaker
That kind of makes me wonder because you you described how quickly you can go through but you also a little bit earlier mentioned like, yeah, it's ah a good like escape for just a few minutes if you want to be part of this little world and be be part of this little kind of found family you've built for yourself. So ah I'm curious for someone going into it like myself, I'm almost certainly good. I don't know if we're still doing the bit that we do. we're Oh, I don't know. Maybe I will. Maybe I won't play this. Yeah, very passionate about that. You always make incredible recommendations. Like, yeah, of course, I'm going to check it out as soon I've changed it. It's more for the audience than is for you at this point. But yeah, for the it's for the love of the game. It's for the show.
00:26:28
Speaker
ah But no, ah of course. So for myself and anyone else who's jumping into it, is it better experienced kind of all at once where you have that kind of through line? Or is it better? Is it just as good if you take it in little bite sized chunks?
00:26:45
Speaker
I think it would be best served if you you don't necessarily need to beat it all in one weekend, even though you probably could. But if you beat it over the course of like a week or a week and a half, I think would be best. If you have some longer gaps, you might be a little like, where was I again?
00:27:01
Speaker
but that shouldn't be too hard to pick back up. um I don't think you necessarily need to. But I am whenever I find these short little games where it's like anywhere from two to three.
00:27:13
Speaker
I expect like five hours. I love being able to sit down and play those in a weekend. um Little Gator Game is a really great one. I recommended that one a while back on the show. Little Gator Game is another one. It's like four hours long to beat the main story. Not 100%, but just to beat the main story is like four to five hours. It's a great like sit down for a day and just play through the whole thing.
00:27:34
Speaker
It's so fun. I love games like that. And I have a bunch to recommend coming up here soon. So keep an eye out for that. If you do like that, James might have some longer form stuff for you.
00:27:46
Speaker
You're getting bite-sized, like little nibbles from me. Cause I love that. Um, But yeah, if you really want a wholesome, spooky adjacent game with like a really fun story, some really actually cool recipes, some of the stuff from the game, I was like, i kind of want to make this IRL.
Game's Length and Platform Accessibility
00:28:03
Speaker
And it's nice because it does break things down into simple enough pieces where it's like, yeah, this wouldn't be that hard to do.
00:28:10
Speaker
like to make this in real life um which is one of the things cooking mama always did so well and i feel like this does fairly well as well um and you want some fun puzzles and you're looking like you want to just be find that little niche and that little home and that little family that you can just like always come back to and make a little sandwich for i really really recommend creature kitchen creature kitchen's so fucking good Creature kitchen. Also just fun to say. i know that's not nearly the main point of what we're talking about here, but.
00:28:41
Speaker
Yeah, it is fun, though. I love Creature Kitchen. This game is so fucking good. Thank you, the rat zone. Thank you, all of the rats on Domitian.
00:28:52
Speaker
You did not. ah That is axiom two for them is stop wasting my fucking time with games that are too damn long. You achieve that and you really do such a great job of like having such a wonderful story in such a short, concise package.
00:29:11
Speaker
It feels so good and it does feel like something I can come back to and always hang out in this place, but I don't ever have to. and it's not going to be this like 120 hour Persona 5 slog that after a while, my God, I just want to be done, please. Yeah.
00:29:29
Speaker
I know exactly what mean I just finished. um i I don't have notes lined up on it, but I just recently finished playing through the Outer Worlds 2. And that's exactly. I'm curious.
00:29:42
Speaker
Good game with some flaws that I will actually genuinely be be very happy to talk about. um at a later time but the the main thing is i definitely i experienced exactly what you're talking about i had this long form game i was only able to to go at it like an hour or so at a time it's two hours ago and for a longer game like that you really can kind of lose track of what's going on what's interesting what threads you're following where like kind of i mean in a ah very literal sense lose the plot
00:30:14
Speaker
Yeah, which which game I know games like that have ways to get you caught back up quest logs. things like that But yeah, it's not always what you want, right? You want to get your money's worth out of a game. But sometimes you just want a a more manageable experience that you can yeah finish and be like, ah, i I know how I felt about that game the whole time. And it was within the last month.
00:30:40
Speaker
Yeah, dude, it's. It's real nice. I actually really love that feeling. And have found so many recently. So I'm excited to get to recommend those to some people because I feel like AAA has kind
Indie vs. AAA Game Complexity
00:30:53
Speaker
of lost the plot. Oh, for sure. If you're new here and you're just tuning into episode 100 because it's the first time we've uploaded a Reasonable.
00:31:03
Speaker
the episode's basically over we don't know how to wrap up an episode this is the elongated like will credits essentially so hi thank you for listening i hope you love this episode please check out this game you should play this game i like to thank the academy etc yeah but uh i really do feel like triple has lost the plot with so many things but like i feel like just i'm tired of games being 90 plus hours long i'm i i can't don't have time like I don't have time. i just don't.
00:31:34
Speaker
i'm ah I'm a whole adult now. Yeah. I've got things to do. The most time I can put into something like that, I'm going to put into like a Minecraft or something where I can like put down for a long time and to just come back to this world and enjoy.
00:31:49
Speaker
But I don't know. I'm I'm so excited to get to to play all these absolutely bitchin games, for lack of a better word, because they really are. This so good. i'm in love. I just want to scream about how much I love these people and the beautiful, amazing game they made.
00:32:12
Speaker
i do love the energy. My my mind keeps going back to I know it's ah probably a decade old at this point, but the the the the viral Tumblr post or whatever it was that was going around just like, hey, I want worse games made by smaller teams in less time for more money. And I'm not kidding. Yeah.
00:32:32
Speaker
whatever the yeah exact words were, that sentiment holds true more and more as the time goes on. And we're we're definitely getting a a bigger wave of those kind of like indie or even double A games um much much more so than we used to. But it's still that it's happening. It's still there.
00:32:52
Speaker
I love i I love that it's happening. I'm sad that it's because game studios have laid off so many amazingly talented game designers. Yeah, but they're like, what do I do?
00:33:03
Speaker
And now they're like, I guess i'll I've got like three friends who were also recently laid off in the same wave. Let me and my three friends all get together and make a game in a year to throw out and hopefully make some fucking money. yeah so we can survive.
00:33:20
Speaker
Yeah, but then they make this beautiful, like heartfelt, amazing game where I get to feed cereal to the Fresno Nightcrawler and just have a good time. and I fall in love and I'm like, why can't anything AAA do anything close to this good? And it's because they just lose personality when you get that big.
Creativity in Indie vs. AAA Games
00:33:39
Speaker
Right. You really can become a homogenization of a thousand people's person and personalities instead of this refined, beautiful vision from like three or four people. exactly and then you start getting into the the push and pull of oh with a smaller team and more constraints there's there's more focus for creativity and there a lot of incredible art is born out of like requirements or restrictions but then you also have system you can do some things in larger triple a games you could never do in smaller ones that are also engaging for a lot of people for a lot of different reasons and there's room for both of them and there's
00:34:13
Speaker
issues with both of them and yeah like great incredible things have happened on on all sides of that and it's it's not necessarily to say that one is wrong the other is right but ah a smaller tighter game experience with a more focused vision like that it just it hits so right it really does and i i I love that I ah there that we are living in a renaissance forum like literally actually we are living through a games of renaissance when it comes to some of these incredible small games and it's all due to AAA shitting the bed and laying off a hundred thousand people over the course of the last three years.
00:34:58
Speaker
Yeah. And they all need something to do. So they're all just making some incredible games. They are just king banging this out and it's never been more accessible with Godot and with DaVinci Resolve for like assets and Clip Studio Paint and all of these beautiful open source, like smaller, easier, more affordable things for.
00:35:22
Speaker
Adobe, Unity or Unreal. Unity, yes. Unreal, less so. Unreal's doing some interesting stuff in the creator space. They they are. But like...
00:35:34
Speaker
God, we are we are in a ah golden era and I'm so here for it. Yeah. But at the same time, it feels like games are shitting the fucking in bed because AAA keeps on falling apart.
00:35:45
Speaker
Yeah, and every time that happens, it's it's a a huge, like, it's a humanitarian disaster because now these people are out of a job, but like... you You can't help but feel like that creates art out of it in a way that couldn't happen otherwise, which is a yeah very complicated thing to say because I'm – what I'm not saying is it's great that these people lost their jobs.
00:36:10
Speaker
I want to be very clear about that. Very much on that. Yeah. I am not at all wishing that these people lose their job, but that is this thing that is leading to some of the the best art I have ever seen in my life is a direct result of this this industry churning through people and building all of this skill and then just laying them off the second it's not profitable because, oh, the game is made. I don't need you to make game anymore. It's over now.
00:36:45
Speaker
is Yeah, you know never mind the the idea that updates ah game to maybe. Right, exactly. If you're going to be a company that makes consistent money for more than one hit at a time, you're going to have to have a team of people who know what they're doing consistently.
00:37:01
Speaker
yeah People who are really trained and versed in an engine, otherwise all the people who were really good at that engine retire and then no one knows how to to make an Elder Scrolls game anymore. almost like...
00:37:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's like every other company on planet Earth has figured out that maintaining somebody who already has a baseline level of knowledge who can build upon it is way better for everybody around than dumping and then rehiring and then dumping and rehiring again every time you've got like a wild hair up your ass about making something new.
00:37:40
Speaker
g yeah and then i'm in ah not to ah because we're very quickly hitting old man yells at cloud territory yeah i'm making animal noises i don't think this could be selfish i'm not along with this world uh last thing that just ah a last grievance at the end of this episode is so wild that we have lived through like three games that have like come out and then fully like triple a huge games that live service games that have come out and then fully flopped and then been pulled within like three weeks of coming out are you talking about the concord and high high guard yes yeah yeah yeah
00:38:21
Speaker
And then Concord, which was a Sony one. And it's like, how is this? How is how does this keep happening? How can you just do this? This is wild. You can do this. i don't understand how this is sustainable, but whatever.
00:38:35
Speaker
I'm this isn't my not my circus, not my monkeys. I'm just happy that we're living through the renaissance that we have of all of these beautiful, amazing games coming from all of these smaller teams that are making some like getting fucking paid. I hope I really hope these people are making money and actually able to continue making these games and funding their studios the way that It seems like they are because like so so many of these games I look at are like doing great for where they're at. And it makes me so happy to see.
00:39:06
Speaker
i really, really want more games like this. Please rat zone. Make more games like Creature Kitchen and others because Jesus Christ, I cannot imagine a world without ah a piece of art like this. Like genuinely.
00:39:22
Speaker
Thank you. Absolutely love to see it. I think that's all I've got. I think I'm out of words about this now. Now that I've i've gotten all of it out. Apologies for the the rant at the end of your episode, Creature Kitchen. and You don't deserve that. You deserve your own beautiful, happy thing, but also...
00:39:41
Speaker
You just juxtapose everything that I hate so well because you're so perfect in every way. You're everything I look for in a game that the second I look at you, I'm like, why can't anyone else get their shit together and do this?
00:39:56
Speaker
I mean, narrative foils. Yeah, unfortunately nothing can exist in a vacuum. And even the things that are great remind you of things that aren't that it's just human nature.
00:40:09
Speaker
Yeah. But I love you. I love you so much. Thank you for being this light and in a in the world right now, because Jesus, we need more little moments like this where we can just have a nice time and enjoy ourselves.
00:40:23
Speaker
Yeah. Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening to me. app I've been Allison. I've been James. I forgot that we did that at the end of the. yeah du We introduced ourselves at the end, not at the beginning. Just like every good podcast. I'm beginning to notice some cracks in the foundation here. Anyway. listening again Well, bye.
00:40:47
Speaker
Bye.