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Ep.200: The Six One Indie Showcase Post Show [Sept '24]
157 Plays3 months ago
Our fifth indie game showcase is officially in the books. It's time open up, reflect on the production, on go behind the scenes. Plus: a game-by-game breakdown of all 45 featured indies.
The Six One Indiecast publishes every Monday at 8AM EST on all major podcast feeds and YouTube.com/SixOneIndie. Be a part of the discussion live and catch Clocked Out: The Indiecast Post-Show exclusively on Patreon.com/SixOneIndie.
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Transcript
Introduction and Host Greetings
00:00:11
Speaker
What is happening friends and family? Welcome to the post show for the September 2024 6-1 indie showcase. My name is Mike Townrow and I'm joined by my brother in arms, Kyle Stevenson. Cause Kyle feels like we've been through a war these past six months.
Post-Show Format and Acknowledgments
00:00:32
Speaker
it's Every single time we sit down to do one of these post shows, we're like, all right, we have a plan. We're good to go. We're not going to make it so as stressful as it can be. For some reason, it feels more stressful.
00:00:48
Speaker
Before we get into that, ah if you are unaware of how this works, this is a two-part post-show podcast. This first part with myself and Kyle, we go over some of the behind-the-scenes stuff, some production stories, ah talk about the process a little bit, answer a few questions from our 6.1 Indie Discord community.
00:01:08
Speaker
um so That's where that crazy energy is coming from. It's always a loosey goosey kind of time.
Game Discussions and Showcase Challenges
00:01:15
Speaker
And then the second half of the show, a bunch of other members from the six one indie crew are going to join us and we're going to talk about each of the individual games one by one. So if it, I hope it goes without saying spoilers for the six one indie showcase. If you have not watched the showcase yet,
00:01:31
Speaker
This podcast will will still be there. Just pause it, go away for a little bit, watch the showcase. We think it's good. um And come back and join in on the conversation. um Before we get super into it, I want to throw out flowers. Might as well. um First and foremost, huge thanks to all the devs and the publishers who helped make this thing happen. um Obviously, there's no showcase without the games themselves. And I know we say this every time. I think the lineup is our best yet.
00:02:01
Speaker
And like nothing, no discredit to to our alumni. It's just like somehow the indie scene keeps evolving. It keeps on re and-innovating on itself. That is not a word, but you know what I mean? Again, very tired. And yeah, it's just ah quite stellar. And and we're we're so grateful that we get to show off so many of these games and for a majority of the games being the first place that you guys get to see what these devs are cooking.
00:02:28
Speaker
um Big thanks, spoilers, five, four, three, two, one. Big thanks to Jenny and Des for guest spotting. They are both incredibly busy individuals, so super appreciate them taking the time to join in on the fun. And of course, all the devs who took the extra step to record themselves, talking about the game a little bit, and even hopping on for interviews and what I think we have, what was it, 21 interviews, I think? 21, 22, it's around there. Crazy.
Community and Partner Thanks
00:02:58
Speaker
um Big thanks to IGN for co-streaming a huge step for what we're trying to do here and build here at 6.1 Indie. Big thanks to Valve for, guess what? We finally got a Steam event. Hey. If you missed it, bit.ly slash 6.1 Steam.
00:03:16
Speaker
um All the games in the the both 2024 showcases are on there as well as all the alumni from previous showcases, demos, discounts, and just an easy place to wishlist all the games. um Of course, Vision Craft Productions, they made us look stellar. Once again, we are two ugly individuals and they just make us look so damn good. um I take that back for Kyle. I'll just talk about myself in that sense. No, it's okay. it's I'll allow it.
00:03:44
Speaker
um Vicarious PR, of course, for all the back end support. um It feels nice having some additional firepower in our in our back pockets. um and And the 6-1 crew behind the scenes, Becca crushing with the previews, Harry, organizational whatever, gravitas I'll call it, super helpful. um Obviously Kelsey managing some of the production side of things and just everybody keeping an eye on the Discord and everybody later on um joining the podcast and helping out with the submission process and and yeah the whole mineyards. Did I miss anybody?
00:04:22
Speaker
I don't think so. And the community, thank you for watching. Oh yeah, duh. We won't be able to do this without any of y'all watching, so I appreciate you. All right, all that is out of the way. Where do you want to start?
Showcase Production Insights
00:04:38
Speaker
We don't have a plan, by the way. This is just like me and Kyle having a conversation. We didn't talk about exactly, we never talk about what we want to, like,
00:04:46
Speaker
cover nope during this portion. So it's just very much a free form conversation. i will I'll start it off with just from my point of view, this is the first showcase that we've done where I at work have had a big workload. Sure. Yeah.
00:05:07
Speaker
combined with this, and now I understand what you've been going through for the past year and a half while you're trying to do everything else. sure it was just ah It was a big adjustment period. Yeah, it's a lot. Big time. um And like you mentioned at the top, we're very thankful that Vicarious, who is our day job and is now helping us with these showcases, allowed us to do like some of the things during work time, like with interviews and whatnot. so we're not up super late at night and and getting them done. So that was a huge help, but it was definitely a huge adjustment period to especially ramp up through all this, like during major gaming events in the summer.
00:05:47
Speaker
ah
00:05:50
Speaker
Yeah, um it's definitely a lot, but I will say, no because I don't want to like start with like, ah or it's easy to just so harp on how exhausted we are because that's just where we are. That's like the state of mind. yeah But man, I'm just so proud of this goddamn thing. I think we we all really knocked it out of the park. I think this is our best one yet. And again, sound like a broken record. I feel like we say that every time. but I think the the tweaks and adjustments that we made, um like including the devs themselves, inviting some of our friends to to do these these guest spots. um yeah We'll talk about it a little more later, but our vision of the indie scene and like indie showcases and stuff is so much bigger than
00:06:31
Speaker
us alone. i mean I closed out the showcase with that. It's like it's a lot bigger than one individual organization. like We are a community, so yep that was kind of the the goal going into it. and um based on the Of course, we're recording this on ah September 11th at 4pm, so yeah it hasn't gone public yet. But um early reactions have been over the moon so far. Our Patreon producers were able to watch it early.
00:06:57
Speaker
Um, so yeah, it, um, despite how exhausted we are, despite the workload, despite it all, um, despite the sleepless nights. Um, cause I pulled a few of those to to get the edits right in time. Um, hearing the reactions make it all worth it. Can I, uh, can I turn into a complete 180 and air some grievances right now? Sure. About the showcase process this time around filming locations.
00:07:27
Speaker
If you're going to have us be on the fourth floor of your building. Time out. Let's start home be beginning. No, I want to, I want to get to it now. If you're, if we're going to film on the fourth floor of your building, please ensure that there's a working elevator because we had vision craft and all their equipment were, which were very, very heavy. I have a terrible back and I'm completely out of shape. So I couldn't do a whole lot of the lifting.
00:07:57
Speaker
you know But it was like, it took us almost like 40 minutes to get everything up the four flights of stairs. 40 minutes is being at minimum 40 minutes. Sure. Yeah. Because it was also like the hottest day in New York city. That's this summer. It was awful. Have a working elevator. How dare you?
Game Submission and Selection Process
00:08:20
Speaker
So, uh, yeah, let's get get into the process a little bit. So, um,
00:08:25
Speaker
we started pre-production probably back around, we usually do it like a month or so ahead of time. We're always, once the the spring showcase ends, we we start like instantly talking about what we want to do for fall and like some of the changes we want to implement or things we want to try out. So pre-production process starts pretty quickly, but officially we opened up the submissions June 1st. Once again, we we broke our own records. We keep breaking our own records. So the total submissions, I think,
00:08:53
Speaker
Ooh, was it 1223? 1,223. That's individual submissions. Some of those submissions contain multiple games. So probably 13, 1400, something like that, maybe, um which is wild. So between June 1st and July 1st, so we we keep the submissions open a full month. like Myself, Kyle, and various members of the crew, primarily Harry, Becca, Austin, Matt, um all just once a week sit in a Discord call and individually go one by one, see what the vibe was. Let me tell you.
00:09:28
Speaker
this cut down process and Jim view the cricket also it agrees. Um, it was awful. There were a lot of, a lot of back and forth and it was, it was like the first one, at least from my point of view, it's a very good problem to have. Very good problem. that It was the first one where there was a lot more discussion of some people had favorites that didn't make the show just because it didn't fit the run of the show that we had. And felt it was too same to other things. It was the first time where we've had like actual like, like bummer conversations of not being able to include this game.
00:10:07
Speaker
because everyone wanted voted the other way kind of thing. Cause we don't push our weight around. We're just like, Oh, this game has to be in here. Whatever. It's a group effort group decision. yeah And, uh, man, there are a lot of good games that didn't make the cut that I, um, I'm hoping we get to show off in a future one. Yeah. I was actually chatting with somebody, um, over the past few days about the, they submitted I guess I could tease it a little bit. It's a showcase alum that that submitted their game, but it's the target launch day was a little too far out from from what we were aiming for for this show. So I encourage them to like circle back with us in spring, fall, whatever it may be. Um, but yeah, usually the the process is like, we go through things like it's pretty,
00:10:50
Speaker
It's pretty easy to to find like, oh, this, this seems like a banger. Like you you get that feeling as soon as like you see a, uh, something like a quick pitch or maybe the trailer is really interesting or, or some, ah some of the details that are under wraps peak our interest. Um, usually it's like a voting system, I guess. Like first what we'll go through that first round. If if if it's like,
00:11:13
Speaker
Let's say there's five of us in the room, which I think most of the case was five of us in a room. If three of us think it looked rad, like, well, it'll be moved on to the next round. Um, and usually that gets us like close on enough kind of, uh, it turns out that whittled us down to 300. Yeah. Let me, let me see if we still have the sheet up of like the round one cuts or whatever. Cause it was, the number was pretty astronomical.
00:11:39
Speaker
Yeah, and while you're grabbing that, so like from that 300, we did another round of whittling. to I think that's when we got to 100. And then was like the the rough conversations of trying to get that number down to as close. So our magic number seems to be 33 for the main showcase. So we know for a fact from doing four of these in the past, that 33 games in the main showcase keeps us around the 45 minute, 50 minute mark. um where We always try our best to stick under an hour or as close to an hour as much as humanly possible. but um
00:12:15
Speaker
This time around, there was just too many good games, and we were like, screw it, like pump it up a little bit. So I think the main showcase was 37,
00:12:25
Speaker
38? I think the main showcase was 38. Because in the script, I accidentally said 37, but the actual number is 38. So yeah, we we pumped it up a little bit. It's fine, whatever. So we pumped up that number a little bit, um just because it it was so hard to make some of these decisions. like Yeah, so and the number that I can find um that we sent does and Jenny.
Guest Involvement and Future Visions
00:12:51
Speaker
um to pick their games that they wanted to show off. That list of games sits at 68. So that was like our final round. but That was like our final, but like initially with everything that we greened, I think it was like 120, 130 or something like that. These colors are gonna make no sense to anybody else. But also the blues as well, which we were considering, ah which was like 300.
00:13:18
Speaker
Yeah. Cause the idea of when we wanted to seem future for a long time and to offset having to send the dreaded, sorry, your game didn't make this wasn't selected for the showcase, not because of a quality thing. It just.
00:13:35
Speaker
didn't fit the vibe we were going for kind of thing. um We were going to offer a Steam feature. And then we blewed everything. And at that point, it was like at, like you said, like 300, 400 other games. And we've had conversations on content before where it's like, you know, things like Next Fest, which as great as Next Fest is, it's a, the bloated Steam event with like 500, 600, 700 titles. And like, we did not want this to be that. We didn't want our first Steam event to be that. um we We did.
00:14:05
Speaker
eventually pivot and instead of offering those games a spot on the Steam event, we did go back and you'll notice on the Steam event, we went back to all of our previous alum and we're like, hey, you're going to be like, you're going to be included. You don't have to.
00:14:23
Speaker
have a discount, you don't have to have a demo. Just as a thank you for believing in us since doing the first show back in April, 2022, we want to finally give you this. and we always met Yeah. We always wanted to do it. So it it yeah felt nice to be like, Hey, we finally have it and we want you to be a part of it. Cause you believe that nuts way before then. Yeah. When we were up literally like, we're still nothing, but like, when we were literally nothing, um, and yeah, for, for the, the folks that we, uh,
00:14:50
Speaker
We had in mind for for a Steam feature, I um you know i sent them ah a separate email, be like, hey, just please reapply next time because a lot of that stuff was super sick and like really hard to cut. Like no matter what. There's one that I specifically want to mention, but I don't want to just in case it slips a little and it comes around for our so next showcase. Sure. um But it was one that you and I, I think we're kind of in for for the,
00:15:20
Speaker
the craziness of it all. And then there's like, Beck was like, there's no way. the Computer program is all I'll say. Oh my God. I love that game, dude. I'm so mad that didn't make the cut. So yeah, we'll, we'll dangle that carrot. Maybe, maybe he'll be in the spring one if it makes sense. But if that makes it in the spring one,
00:15:45
Speaker
I guarantee you, I'm gonna throw it at everybody's face. It's gonna be such a hit. It's gonna be such a damn banger. We know know taste. We know. We know. So ah so show showcase stuff, it's locked um around this time. um Not to get sad, but you know we're talking about like behind the scenes and like the process and like where our heads are at and stuff. I will say like both for twenty twenty three are both for March and September, um personally,
00:16:16
Speaker
the roughest time I've had personally in my personal life doing a production and like balancing personal stuff with professional stuff. um So around this time was when my cat, Harley, found out he had cancer and it was really sudden and passed away. ah we had We had to say goodbye to him. um you know He was my ride and die homie for 11 years and I took it unbelievably hard.
00:16:41
Speaker
um And of course, like back in when we were filming the March show, like my mom just lost her family, like her dog, like her companion. So like I was back in New York making sure she was okay, like helping her through through a really rough time. So like man, i I really hope the 2025 slate of shows ah improves and it's a little more stable, knock on wood. Of course, like now that we're we're closing production or winding production down, health issues have come up for me. um Nothing, quote unquote, bad. ah Too long, don't read.
00:17:19
Speaker
I have ske scoliosis. It turns out they missed the kid when they were diagnosing kids back in the day. um So I'm going through a bunch of physical therapy and stuff at the moment. um So that's been exhausting and I got bit by a dog last weekend as I'm trying to finish production on like the teaser trailer and catch up with some work. So it's definitely been a rough ride throughout. But all that's to say,
00:17:44
Speaker
um We locked the lineup a little, as always, a little later than we should have, ah because we werere were waiting to hear back from one particular game that that never got back to us. um So around that time, that's when we get Des and Jenny involved, um because this is when we're starting to figure out the flow of the show, the run of show, the script, how we want to format things. um So regarding Jez and Den, Jez. Jeez.
00:18:16
Speaker
Des and Jenny. I'll admit whatever that happens to whatever anyone does that, like that takes some real skill that your brain can actually compute and do that. That's crazy. I would have been thinking that because we were just going through our media list. I was probably thinking of Jez from, um, uh, windows central. Oh yeah. Who Jez writes for it. Um, but speaking of Denny, Denny, what the fuck?
00:18:39
Speaker
and ah I'm tired, man. I'm so tired des jenny of and Jenny. there We have a question from Cole, AKA the good sir, who has gotten a chance to watch the showcase early. Thanks to his support on patreon dot.com slash six one indie. Yes.
00:19:00
Speaker
How did you decide who to bring in to announce the games for the guest spots? It was lovely seeing Jenny pop out pop up from Wholesome. Also great seeing, I forgot to mention this, the Cryptmaster. How did you become such good frenemies with them?
00:19:17
Speaker
so ah feel free to chime in whatever. I think with Jenny and Des, it would, those were the first two of the puppets that's mine. Cause they're friends. Like they're, they're friends and inspiration behind what we do. Exactly. And we you mentioned it a little bit earlier, but like it in our minds, we want to get to a point where we're not all doing our own thing. And it's kind of all like a combined effort to uplift the Indies, like in one big event or ah one big time period. It doesn't make sense that we're all doing things at a different time and they're all close together. So like, We're all just doing it because we love indie games. So we want to uplift the super talented and creative people behind them. So like those two, like you mentioned, are huge inspirations to what we do. And it just makes sense for have them, you know, pick a handful of games and and highlight it on our show. Yeah. I think the conversation really started back at, or the idea really started back at PAX East in a March um where Kyle, Des, and I had a conversation on the show floor of like,
00:20:24
Speaker
this shared dream of like all these organizations coming together for like a really sick like week, weekend long event where we are it is a true collaborative effort. um So that's when like just right there I just asked, I was like, hey, depending on how production goes, would you be down to just have have a guest spot on the next showcase? then Des, one of the sweetest, most down-to-earth human beings on the planet instantly it was like, yes, absolutely. So um as soon as we got the lineup locked or as soon as we got to those like final 60, that's when I started sending out the um the list for Jenny and Des. Des in particular, so I gave them an option. um I was like, hey, you could either
00:21:09
Speaker
Like feel free to either like pick out of like some either wholesome or dames for games ah submissions that like just missed the cut and that you that you really believe in or we could give you a list of games of the of the the folks that we're thinking of. So Jenny. um took from our list, ah but coincidentally enough, there were games that were on her radar anyway. um And Des took from Dames games, like games that like were in consideration for Dames for games, so um but hilariously enough, there were
00:21:39
Speaker
games on there that have submitted in the past, but like timing didn't work out for previous showcases. So it all worked out in a nice way. That was super weird. Um, but the, the short answer there is like, just to like-minded individuals like us who have the same vision for what the future of the scene and and this sub-sect of the games industry looks like in terms of like showcase production and indie uplifting and all that good stuff. Yeah. And the crit master shows her sleep paralysis demon. Yeah, he's just around. He's just around. um To peel back the curtain there a little bit, another individual we were chatting with, I think it was, did we lock this in pre-packs? I spoke to body at-packs.
00:22:27
Speaker
ah but I think that's when the conversation started. So at PAX, Acapar Games, good friends of ours, especially Buddy and Xavier, um we're talking about like, oh, when's the next showcase? Talk about doing it in September, um away from other events and whatnot, like kind of of obviously this is the, actually we didn't talk about that either. This is the first time we're not tying ourselves to like another gaming event. Yeah. I guess we've been so living in it for so long now. Yeah. put it pivot it We'll put a pin in that. Um, but yeah, we were were talking to buddy from Acapara, um, about the dates and and the plans and whatnot. and And he mentioned, um, like possibly some things lining up and being ready to, to share around that time. Um,
00:23:11
Speaker
we We circled back with them at Summer Game Fest and we had conversations um in between as well. But at Summer Game Fest at the mix, um linked up again and solidified like.
00:23:23
Speaker
Yeah. So the, the sorry, we're closed date is going to be ready. The cabaret date is going to be ready. The, the beta for airframe ultra is going to be ready. And then the big one, which I occupy our fam. Thank you so much for this. The big one being a rain world, the watcher, which is probably the biggest surprise of one of the biggest surprises us of the show. Um, so since we had a,
00:23:48
Speaker
block of Akapara games um and we already were starting to do this new model of like guest spots and stuff. I thought it would be pretty funny if um Paul, one of the devs behind the Krip Master, the Krip Master himself, ah would do a little guest spot for us. And I was expecting him to say no, just purely because of bandwidth and time, but they are so kind to us. They're so down to earth and so goddamn creative. um And yeah, they they did a wonderful intro and outro for all the Akapara games. and and
00:24:25
Speaker
lightly talking shit about myself and Kyle and, and poking fun at the rest of the games. I was totally fine before it. Cause it was strictly targeted at you. Now he's mentioned my name yeah and now I don't know how to feel, but it's, it's super cool that a it's a game that we showed off in March yeah and we got him back to, to help us with the Acapara block. Um,
00:24:51
Speaker
It's just really cool. It's just fans of of showcases in general. It's, it's, it's kind of cool what we pulled off here with this one. Um, and I guess to, to unpin what we just mentioned.
Event Scheduling and Logistics
00:25:02
Speaker
So yeah, um, ah around pre-production time, we were talking about when we want to do this next showcase. Cause traditionally we were doing, um, before PAX is, um, I would say arguably we were the only ones doing before PAX when we first started. Um,
00:25:19
Speaker
like similar how the mix has GDC, like, and the mix has PAX West. I'm not going to take PAX West away from the mix and Justin and the crew. But we had PAX East on lock, but then... ah GDC impacts ended up overlapping. So like we were like us and the mix were like just all on top of each other, like trying to we avoid overlaps and stuff. we've We've had multiple conversations about that. um And of course a future game show started doing around packs as well. And obviously future game show has quite a lot of resources and and a big following. So it was hard to kind of compete with that. um And we heard through the grapevine, um
00:25:58
Speaker
actually with Buddy, with Acapara kind of tying everything together. He mentioned like you know the the best way to approach a Steam event, and and he he said he thankfully helped with with some some resources and information. Best way to approach a Steam event is to try to do something when there's nothing happening. So we we looked at the calendar, we looked at the official Steam events, um and we noticed that there was a gap the weekend of September 19th. So that's where September 19th came from.
00:26:27
Speaker
um And we almost made it through. And we almost made it through. Because the Dragon Age previews, I think, go live. Yeah, yeah. On the 19th. Again, we're recording it beforehand, so who knows? Yeah, who knows? Last year was Starfield, this year's Dragon Age. At least like the Dragon Age preview is not- It's not a review thing, yeah. Yeah, it's not as much of an impact that we need to feel like we need to move. Yeah. um That stresses me out just thinking of having to pick a new date. I know. um I will say um moving away from a PAX is interesting. um It was easier this time because we didn't go to PAX West, but we were planning on going to PAX West.
00:27:20
Speaker
um I think we're going to be a little more strategic with our spring timing because I don't want production to get in the way of us not being able to go to PAX East. We don't have a date in mind for spring. We'll talk about that after the holidays. We have another thing we still have to do this year that we have to figure out.
00:27:44
Speaker
It's mostly figured out. Don't worry. You know what I mean? Just like logistically and all that stuff. Yeah, logistics. Yeah. So yeah, that was the one weird thing about being away from PAX because it was like at least there was a firm deadline of everything needs to be done like two days before PAX. So like we were able to like kind of like unwind and celebrate with like all of our friends and like play a bunch of games and cover the events and stuff. So like it felt weird having to cancel because we're a little behind on schedule and like maybe a little too ambitious with with production this time around. So yeah.
00:28:21
Speaker
a little bit of a lesson learned for 2025, just being a little more strategic and aware of of the calendar instead of picking a ah day and be like, ah, that looks good. Yeah, the day that Mike is in Chicago for a music festival, yeah, that's good.
00:28:39
Speaker
um So yeah. Pre-production is still happening. So at this point, ah lineup is locked. Guest spots are in. um Everything is good to go. We wrote the script. And ah throughout this, we picked a venue in in New York, as always. A beautiful rental place. The idea here, you know we want to take advantage of fall, the vibe of fall. So we're looking at like wood walls, some brick, like stuff like that. um And we found this space in Queens.
00:29:10
Speaker
um And then, ah yeah yes, as Kyle alluded to earlier, um we got there, super hot day, early august first weekend of August, I believe, um probably like 90 degrees out, crazy humid, four floor walk up, elevator was not working, probably took us to get all the gear up. there was It was me, you, Harry, and then two of the vision craft folks, Ryan and Marcus.
00:29:35
Speaker
um Probably took us 45 minutes to get all the gear up there. Probably an additional 15 to see if that one person could figure out how to get the elevator working. There was also no one there from the place to help. Yes, so nobody was able to help. Because it was a film studio, a photography studio. And they said there was a front desk there, but nobody was at the front desk.
00:30:00
Speaker
um and Yeah, probably another like 30 to 40 minutes to like rest and recoup. So we definitely killed two of our like five hours that we had allotted. So if if we look sweaty during the show, face you know, why a little unkempt. Yeah. Um, cause I was bummed about that because the idea was to use that room a little more.
00:30:26
Speaker
Like the the the idea was like ah on the other side of the camera, there was like this beautiful brick wall and there was like hanging lights above us and and around the walls of stuff. So we were gonna like move around a little bit. I know it wouldn't work lighting wise, but to my on camera, my left, but in reality, my right was a beautiful windowed wall that had like a building nearby that had beautiful graffiti on it. It would have looked really, really cool, but we wouldn't have been able to figure it out just because we lost time bringing everything up. Yeah. So, um, good lesson there that maybe book a full day to be safe.
00:31:03
Speaker
Also, we're going to tease it in case it does happen in the future. We did find a sick, like diner. We found a sick, that's like a dream showcase filming place. I really hope with, I don't know if you caught what me and Clancy, Clancy, of course, our graphics person, he sure got individual shout out as well. Clancy.
00:31:24
Speaker
crushing it with the graphics and and helping with everything. Oh my God, he's a wizard. Shout out to also mario Mario Rivera, who's helping out with the interview editing as well. Saved our lives, because I cannot comprehend editing 21 developer interviews right now. I did that for March. It was not fun, and I was not a account manager then, so. It sucks. We still have to do all the thumbnails, Kyle. And we have to upload everything. That's the future, Mike and Kyle problems.
00:31:53
Speaker
um Yes, I don't know if you caught our back and forth in our internal discord, like but the the showcase planning discord of like the, the mutual vibe for next year. Oh, no, I didn't. So the, what me and Clancy had, the mutual thought me and Clancy had, because we were obviously too much, two bald mics were synced to a single brain cell. ah um Totally fits that diner's vibe.
00:32:20
Speaker
Okay. So I really hope we can make it work. I hope so. I think we'll have to... Now we're just planning. We're just airing all of our shit out in broad daylight, but we're going to have to plan early because it's something with the diner. It was a little bit on the pricier side, but something with the diner also, it was totally booked when the weekend out, the only weekend that we had available to film. It's definitely a high in demand location. Yeah. So that's something probably right after the holiday is pick a fucking date and book that shit.
00:32:50
Speaker
But yeah, it's, yeah, spring is going to fucking rock. Um, not to get ahead of ourselves. Um, yeah, I think, uh, aside from the fucking flights of stairs, uh, any thoughts about like the location and like how filming day in general went. I think it was awesome. Honestly, I think I i always forget this is our fifth one. Fifth.
00:33:17
Speaker
It's crazy, first of all. Weird, right? um In two years, fifth. Insane. um I feel like I become increasingly more comfortable on screen reading from the teleprompter. Sure. Even though there were a couple takes where I had to redo it and multiple times.
00:33:35
Speaker
um ah Yeah, just I'm more comfortable up there, even though I still don't know know what to do with my hands. like It's a lot like crossing my pockets. I'm the same way. like Especially when you're editing this thing for 25 to 30 hours, you become hyper aware of yeah every little goddamn thing. Exactly. I got to say, don't like my outfit in this thing.
00:34:00
Speaker
My beard was a little unkempt. My hands were just awkwardly like to the fucking side. I didn't know what I was doing. We need to copy or steal the ah how Apple does their presentations. It's one of these like usually like ah Fist yeah fists and palm kind of I've noticed that I saw a tick tock of somebody breaking down. I'm like, do you notice something that every one of these Apple individuals do? It's this exact hand maneuver. This feels like I'm a villain. Well, it's not, it's not the the hand teepee. It's open palm, like how I smacked you during the Russell story segment back in March. when i i very And it's like fist for the right. And then just read the belly button.
00:34:43
Speaker
Yeah. It seems too regal for six. hundred but I had to make sure I wasn't going to run over any cats, but then you could do like, you know, little hand movements. Sure.
00:35:00
Speaker
It's a treat for video watchers. Can we make that a gift? we can Tell you, no, we fucking started losing our minds. Um, you know I think it went well. i you know um there's There's a question about lessons learned, so we'll we'll save some of my ah additional thoughts there. but sure yeah I really like the location. I do wish we had the time to take more advantage of the space, but um the one I talked to you about this. The one like niche, quote unquote, error that nobody's going to notice, only me because I'm a psychopath. Our colors for September are like this yellow, orange, red, so so
00:35:40
Speaker
Pay homage to the fall, if you want to call that. And then the two blights that we used were the the March ones, like our normal like blue, purple. um yeah It's another thing that bothered me 25 or 30 hours into the edit. You could barely see it. You just see like the glow on our faces once in a while, but that was something that annoyed me.
00:35:59
Speaker
I love, um, from the edit, the things that I know were shot and how you edited them. Yeah. For example, there's a bit in the pre-show where one of the vision craft guys, um, Ryan, um, PD says, all right, put me back on the couch and we filmed Ryan putting them back in the seat. And it was like a 10 minute thing. it was ten minutes which obviously wouldn't work. So, uh, with your creative editing things, it works fantastic. yeah In my mind, that was gonna be like.
00:36:35
Speaker
Ryan jogging over real quick, just a quick like pick up, down, done. Yeah, but that skeleton sucked. Yeah, the the but I did buy a- Sorry PD. I bought a very cheap skeleton. Of course, ah the main skeleton PD prime stays in the town row household because ah I don't want to buy a plane ticket for this man um or a train ticket or whatever it may be. So I do end up ah hiring a stunt double, we'll call it, off Amazon. And like yeah, that skeleton we got was like...
00:37:07
Speaker
I think I paid 25 bucks for it. And man, in my mind, I was like, okay, we're not going to buy another skeleton. I'll either keep it at my mom's cause she's still in New York or Kyle will keep it at his ends or Harry will take it home just so we don't have to keep buying fucking skeletons. But man, this thing sucked. It would not stay together. Every time he moved or like we lifted him, like his his entire like hips fell out. yeah And it was like such a struggle getting him back together and ah it was a mess. So yeah. you know what joke didn't work out as planned, but we made it work. You know, it just popped on my head. Again, we were so tired after looking all that stuff up in the hot, hot summer day yeah of Harry just playing with the skeleton while we're there set up the cameras and stuff. I believe we put those videos in the discord and I tweeted them, but God, it was so, it it was so much fun. Yeah. That's the thing. It's always super fun.
00:38:03
Speaker
And like I love the vision craft boys to death, Marcus, Ryan, and and Manny couldn't make it this time around, but I love the three of them. I will never want to work with anybody else when it comes to these showcases. um They are such a ah delight and and pleasure to work with. um So yeah, it's always like a good time, good vibes. Everybody just makes it so easy. like We always struggle with the intro and the outro and like some of the in-between stuff. like if If there's something weird, like learning how to say saudade or something like that. Saudade. Saudade. No, saudade, the emphasis on the da. Sure. Saudade. Saudade. Achilles, my apologies. Yeah. But yeah, sorry from that. It's always such a ah ah good vibe. I will say this was a happy accident. One Kyle Stevenson was definitely the star of the show. yeah I think you had the most lines, I think.
00:38:59
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't realize it when we were recording or anything. Yeah, because we are the way we do like the scripts, like we'll write it out. And unless it's like a specific joke or a jab towards one another, like internally, we always joke about like how you don't like Robert Eggers, the witch. So like that's with with the one-eyed leeko joke, I said, like ah you don't have taste, blah, blah, blah. Or if it is something like an ACAB joke, I take the brunt of that.
00:39:22
Speaker
yeah And you just cut and no one will ever see. Accidentally, accidentally. um But yeah, usually we just write the script out and then from there we're like, okay, so scene one, you said the first thing. So scene two, I should say the first thing and so on and so forth. I guess we weren't really paying attention and you opened.
00:39:44
Speaker
almost every scene. And I think in my, in our brains we were like, Oh, Mike ended this scene. So that means Kyle needs to start this scene. And it was just that over and over again. That's fine. Which is fine. um And yeah, i with how we worked out and split up the, the outro, which is always like a long bit. I made you, I made you do some fucking work on that outro. It's okay. I hope people enjoy my voice. Yeah.
00:40:12
Speaker
um Yeah. but It was a good time. Yeah. Sometimes reading is hard. Sometimes reading is hard, especially far away on a little iPad teleprompter and finding the right speed and finding the right speed, finding the right, uh, uh, cadence, cadence tempo, uh, paying $80 to fucking mirror it. So it's not backwards Apple. What are we doing?
00:40:37
Speaker
What are we doing? Come on. Just give me a, food how is that not a built out? Why is that a premium feature of a teleprompter app? Of course it's going to be, well, I guess not. Of course it's going to be reflected, but you think like in most professional scenarios, it's going to be reflected onto the lens or a teleprompter device.
Team Reflections and Reactions
00:40:55
Speaker
You would think. Yeah. It was, it was no, it was 95.
00:41:01
Speaker
It was 95, because we thought we did the free trial, but it turns out we did the free trial back in March. So when I got home, Marcus was like, hey, so ah they charged me. I was like, okay, what's your Zelle?
00:41:17
Speaker
I think after shooting, we went to a lovely diner in Queens. Great pancakes. Great pancakes. I felt like we were like part of the mob.
00:41:28
Speaker
Oh, because where we were sitting, if we were on the elevated but yeah but overlooking the entire diner. Yeah. I forgot the name of the place, but it's like Queensborough bridge. It's very good. it's It's one of those like super tiny diners, but on the corner. Yeah. the Every, I think every single one of us ordered like a breakfast.
00:41:47
Speaker
giant platter, and then mozzarella sticks, and add them, and we were so hungry and tired. I did lunch and breakfast. Yes, exactly. We each got like a water, a soda, another juice or something. It was crazy. Forgot to mention the other reason we were super exhausted going into this. So the night before me and Kyle went to a SummerSlam watch party in somewhere in Times Square. Hell yeah, he did. So I think- Oh, that's right. Yeah. I got home, I think I got home in like Tibet at probably like 2 a.m. and I think like or like 1 AM m and you what were like 2, 3 AM? m um but let me Let me see what the text was. If you can find it. i mean yeah because it was I texted you and Harry because that's what we do. We check up on each other, make sure we're we're safe. yes so yeah it was That was crazy. Despite being burly men who may look intimidating, we like to keep each other in check and keep each other safe.
00:42:45
Speaker
yeah um But yeah so i yeah, I think I got home and like I was finally settled in bed at like 2 a.m. and then I believe for you, because I woke up to your text that morning. I think you were like 3 or 4 a.m. because you live in Gundamas, New York over there. um I don't see the exact time, but it was super, I know i just know that I had to two, three hours of sleep before I had to get up and catch the train back.
00:43:12
Speaker
Yeah. So we, we ended up, I think we said we were going to meet at Penn station at like 10 AM. So that means like you had to leave for probably like seven and I left at, I got left at eight. So a few hours sleep. Yeah. And of course how to make the pit stop at the, the CBS and 42nd street. Got the treats, got to the big cans of Celsius, the Celsius essentials. They're so good at a monster. Cause yeah, one day Celsius sponsor the showcase.
00:43:39
Speaker
It's not possible without you. Literally not possible without you. You, uh, I guess off-handedly or second-handedly already sponsored the showcase. So please hit us up. I'll throw a logo on there. I don't give a shit. Um, we'll give you the lesson. You pick a game and it'll be the Celsius. Oh my God. That'd be a great idea. Yeah. The, the Celsius live pick indie live fit, pick indie. Let's write it down.
00:44:09
Speaker
Seven essential vitamins, seven essential indies. I don't hate that. I hate that. This is a joke. We're not doing this. We're sticking with our no ads values. This is a joke.
00:44:23
Speaker
um So yeah, ah we film. I personally, I'm hanging out in New York just for for the following week to hang out with my mom. um I get back home mid-August, get the footage and start chipping away. And man, I started that edit probably, I started editing our stuff mid-ish August, like august like around Gamescom time. um That's when like trailers and stuff are starting to come in. And yeah, what I finished, I finally, finally finished it. so like
00:44:59
Speaker
picture lock, audio mixed, mastered, all of Clancy's graphics, um the whole nine yards of the thumbnail. um If I started the edit on August 20th, I finished it on August 6th at like 4.30 a.m. because I had had to get it to IGN during the day on the 6th. You mean September 6th? September 6th, sorry. So August 20th to September 6th.
00:45:29
Speaker
various chunks. I think it usually equates to like 20, 25, 30 hours of work, depending on how audio is is and whatnot. um And depending on how creative I need to get with the editing, if like something doesn't line up correctly, or if I think of something fun to do, like um granted, this is a quick thing and and a very loose example, but with the ah the Among Us bit. Yeah. Having like the screen go red and stuff. I'm very happy I did that.
00:45:58
Speaker
Also, we got to show off an Among Us thing. Yeah, it's fucking cool. We had to show off an Among Us. So there was Among Us representation on the showcase. There was Yooka-Laylee representation on the showcase. There was Rainworld representation on the showcase. It's pretty wild. It is wild, man. Very wild. We're very aware of how blessed we are to be in the situation that we're in and definitely don't.
00:46:23
Speaker
take ourselves for granted. If that makes sense, I'm losing my train of thought. But yeah, I want to, I want to make sure obviously we're putting out a high quality thing ah every single time we do it. But at the core of myself, I want to make sure we're still goofy.
00:46:44
Speaker
Oh my God. I mean, there's a reason I made a slight jab at Rockstar during this thing in the entire state of Florida. Exactly. Like i I very much want to make sure that we are still our goofy selves and we're not like, we don't randomly show up in like business suits and we're all like stuffy. And na ah that's, that's not me. That's not us. So it was a hilarious, like weirdly timed thing with, with our, our little Florida jab.
00:47:12
Speaker
polite jab, we love Florida, I have family in Tampa, don't worry. I've never been, I just assume all the stereotypes are true. so like we we You specifically say ah Florida is weird and this was before ah the Democratic party started using weird as a jab towards Trump and JD. I did not even know that. And I think it's just such like cathartic timing.
00:47:40
Speaker
and We're still on the pulse. We're still on the pulse, man. Cause that's just something I randomly said, right? At the end? Yeah. Like that wasn't written. Like you just like, yeah a lot of the stuff is not written. You just kind of think of it yeah on ah on the fly. That's wild. Yeah. Cause you know, traditionally red state. So, you know, just a funny little thing. I mean, it is weird. Um,
00:48:06
Speaker
I don't know. Do you have a, before we get into the questions, do you have anything else like in terms of like process stuff? No, I just, I do want to just ask cause this is the second show that we have a pre-show in. Yeah. And, and are you still, you feel good with it? Cause I know we opposed it for a long time and I think this year has shown that the way we do pre-shows are pretty good. Yeah. I think because we found,
00:48:35
Speaker
I think because we found a good theme behind the showcase and and by theme, I mean like using our mascot to host it, I think it is a really fun thing. And um sorry, Clancy's doing me stuff. And games that have like already released or have updates. Yeah, like calling it the play now pre-show, I think is really fun. um It's really cool that like, ah like headlined by things like the Sticky Business Among Us update, we get to show like upcoming content for already released games. I think that's kind of like a unique twist to how a lot of other people do pre-shows. So yeah, no, I, if you're, I'm assuming you're asking me. Like the audience and people listening as well. Like, thats you yeah how do you feel about the pre-show or are you cool with the way we do it? Obviously we want to,
00:49:24
Speaker
I think that is a sweet set spot because there's so many games that submit that have either already been released or have like a cool update. Yeah. And the pass we would have passed on just because we, we want to make the main show things like quote unquote, you've never seen before kind of thing. Sort of. Yeah. um Sort of. Yeah. But I like it. yeah I like having PD actually being part of the show and not just sort of a bird pigeon mascot kind of thing. Yeah. I will say I am very excited. I'm a excited and terrified to, um,
00:49:56
Speaker
casually drop into the the IGN stream and see the chat. yeah Will they get the, will they get PD? Will they understand what we're going for? Probably not. No, they won't. It's fine. Yeah. Um, yeah, I'm, I'm very curious how the reaction is going to be. It's a, that's like genuinely like pretty d horrifying. I'm, I'm, I'm preparing myself for the worst.
00:50:25
Speaker
It's iGen audience, it's whatever, like general AAA gamer audience. Yeah, yeah, no. When I say that, I just mean physically. Like they're going, oh, look at that big guy and make you know tons of fat jokes kind of thing. So I'm just preparing myself. We both got it last year. So like our March, I love it. So like, whatever. It kind of comes with it nowadays. It comes with the fucking territory, unfortunately. It sucks. ah we We were going to, um ah We were going to make a mention or I guess like a slight joke in the in the introduction of like, I think the line was, um everyone watching IGN, welcome, great to see you. If you're here for Silksong, we don't got it. We only got that clout. I'm sorry. Then I was like, Mike, we want people to watch. So we strategically left that out. As much as I enjoyed saying like, we don't have that kind of clout. um Yeah, no, Kyle made the right choice. so Yeah.
00:51:26
Speaker
Which again, it's a very smart thing you did with the hype teaser yeah to end it with a little slug cat from Rainworld. Cause Rainworld's huge. I made sure to pick the the blurry image of the slug cat that's in the trailer. Yes. And like make sure it's like jump cut a few times and like it goes into the the transition into the end card of the the teaser. Yep. Yeah. Very, very happy with ah some of the little teasy stuff that we got to do.
Showcase Highlights and Game Features
00:51:54
Speaker
itoact people apara are Yeah. Yeah. By the time we're recording this, yeah. Um, the teaser trailer, not the showcase. Oh yeah. Yeah. Cause I know also buddy from Akapara is like very, uh, antsy to, to finally talk about like their inclusion in the showcase. So that's why I want to make sure we dropped. Um, I hope I primarily opened it with sorry, we're closed and ended it with rain world.
00:52:17
Speaker
which my God, we say it all the time. ah The music in the showcase bangers after bangers, especially shop sorry, we're closed. Oh my God. What a fucking track. We've been getting so lucky that the final trailers we get just have amazing soundtracks to them. Yeah. Yeah. I really, I don't know how to actually execute this, but, um,
00:52:41
Speaker
Uh, sorry, another DM distracted me. Um, I don't know how we would, we would execute it, but I would love to do like a very super limited, like vinyl pressing of like the soundtrack or even like, as, as final head, like you are, I would, I would make sure I have that. Or even as, excuse me for the coughing as even as something as simple. And like, maybe we, this is something we bank for spring, drop it on BAM bank camp.
00:53:11
Speaker
Sure, yeah. I think Devolver does that. Yeah, that'd be cool. Yeah. If, of course, the games are are open to it. Absolutely, yeah. Because then there's licensing issues and yeah of course all that jazz. We would have to put it out for free. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Obviously. We made zero dollars every single time we do this. Which, i yeah, coming from my music and and band days, I know how to easily put stuff on like Spotify and music services and stuff. So, yeah, it's something we could easily do.
00:53:40
Speaker
So we'll say that we'll nug it for spring. Should we get into some questions?
00:53:47
Speaker
We shall. Sorry. I clicked on the wrong six one discord thing. Uh, and Johnson writes in with your partnership with vicarious PR, what's been different this go around? What does the team learn to help continue bringing incredible showcases? Uh, so two questions there. So yeah, we'll talk about vicarious first. Um,
00:54:07
Speaker
I will say it's it's still both parties are still like learning the process of one another because it is a very different kind of thing. um like Even like me and Kyle being in the PR world, it is a very different process of like marketing a video game versus not only marketing a showcase, but also like showcase production. so Definitely still figuring stuff out, but um the resources and the support has been like phenomenal. Vicarious were the ones to help kick down the doors for the Steam event and finally. um I was irrationally angry with um it just ended up being like a webpage that like
00:54:49
Speaker
It seemed like it was an unlisted web page. It's like a submission form. Yeah. like as As simple as that, we just needed it sent to us. But having somebody like Vicarious, who obviously they have V Publishing as well, um already have a Steam presence and like a publisher page, so like able to like make that process a lot smoother and actually get our foot in the door. so like i the steam Clearly, the Steam event hasn't happened without them, so huge step in the right direction.
00:55:15
Speaker
um Same goes for having a little extra firepower when it comes to pitching to IGN. um because diejam folkskes they like well Rob the next question next question as well. Shout out to Rob who um has helped so much for helping co-stream the showcase on IGN. but um like myself, Rob and some of the vicarious folks are mutuals and like have had meetings, got various events and stuff. um I believe, I think vicarious folks have met Rob, yeah whatever. Rob, you you correct me if I'm wrong. um So it was nice just to have like everybody kind of cohesively say like, hey, this is what we're trying to do. This is what we're trying to achieve. Look at this incredible lineup that we have. um Yeah, they they definitely help with like a little bit
00:56:03
Speaker
additional credibility, I guess. Not to say like we don't have that ourselves, but it's just nice to have a... I was about to say a bigger party, but like still vicarious is a Vicarious is very indie in their cell in themselves, like a small crew, a very small scrappy crew. um But it's nice having somebody with a pedigree like believe in our vision and believe in the execution of what we're trying to do with each other.
00:56:28
Speaker
Agreed. I couldn't think of anything else to add there. I'm just very grateful that they're giving time to work on things, carving time out of our busy day schedules and just so we can really try to do our best job of keeping our mental health and physical health in check during this whole thing. And God bless all the name drop folks. Like God bless like Nate Leona. Um, like every time I list like the 20 things that are on, on at least my plate in particular, like Nate asked, like Nate and Leona asked like, okay, what, what could we do do to help? What can we take off your plate? I was like, I don't know. I don't know how to pass this off to anybody else. Cause it's just going to take more time teaching somebody how to do this thing. Yeah. Um,
00:57:10
Speaker
But yeah, it's it's definitely like this this the the March show and the September show, we're definitely like, oh, this is how chaotic you guys get? Okay, we'll definitely massage the process a little more for 2025. But yeah, no, the support has been like phenomenal. Again, like I can't can's tell you how grateful, I think I can speak for everybody. I can't tell you how grateful we are to finally be able to offer Steam features um my god yeah to to coincide with these events.
00:57:39
Speaker
I mean, we, we all, I mean, we believe in what we're doing, but that gives us a little bit more credibility. Yeah, for sure. Going forward. yeah It makes us, it makes us a little more, not serious, but like serious. That way that we actually have like, we're, we're a player in the game. It's like, um, what's the line that Joe uses all the time when we do trophy room, like enthusiast press.
00:58:06
Speaker
Like we're, we're slowly getting less out of enthusiast press and more like actual traditional, we're doing the thing kind of thing. Yeah. Agreed. Um, and the second part of that question, what has the team learned to help continue bringing incredible indie showcases? I'm going to highlight one thing. Well, as I said, it kind of ties into Rob's question as well. Sure. Yeah. I just really quickly going back to what vicarious has done to help out big time.
00:58:33
Speaker
setting up a showcase discord for all the devs. Oh my God. Yeah. Such a huge help. And instead of you tracking people down through emails, like actually I'm in discord where all the devs are in there. So we can get assets and yeah answer any questions and we see the notifications pop up and everything. It's been a huge help and easier to put out fires that way than a traditional email thing. So that definitely helps just our, um,
00:59:03
Speaker
the nerves of like, oh my God, what am I forgetting? It's like right there. To provide a little context there. um So we set up, this is the first time we did this, like Kyle said, we set up a dedicated Discord server just for all the developers and all the participants. So all there's a few general channels that we have, like general chat,
00:59:24
Speaker
Ask questions and and just like quick resources of like links to the script links to the the assets of reform FAQ stuff like that and then each developer has individual private channels that they could ask specific things for and and um We could have conference specific conversations Taylor to each game for without like just case like because obviously we don't want to We don't want to have devs constantly um have like discord pinging in their ear while they're trying to like actively work on their game. So yeah it was nice to like make it in a, or form it in a way where like, um, the, the acium devs, for example, can't see the crime or punishment channel and like not get bothered, but it was, and it was also nice, especially around packs and games, calm, seeing, uh, the general chat pop off of like people who were attending get packs together, yeah attending games together. Um,
01:00:18
Speaker
yeah so i think Yeah, I agree with that. Process-wise, I think, oh my God, that's such a big thing. And that and that was ah inspired by um something that we do with Vicarious with a a lot of clients. um Yeah, absolutely, you're doing that moving forward. It's just it's so much easier.
01:00:38
Speaker
um Yeah. Do you want to, you want to bring in Rob's question? Cause Oh yeah, sure. Sorry about that. And Rob Manuel writes in, uh, what are the lessons that you learned from last year and how did you change in response and what does success look like to you and how do you measure it? I think the success question is a little easier. I mean, like the, the,
01:01:02
Speaker
The boring answer is like numbers and whatnot, but like I more care about reactions, like the conversation around the games and the champion, the individual individual games. um Of course, the biggest metric though is After maybe like a week or so, we asked the devs like, Hey, do you mind sharing any stats? Like how how was traffic to the steam page or wish lists? Like how many demo downloads did you get? What were social impressions? If the devs got any sort of boost, it's a win in my book, especially like, are
01:01:39
Speaker
especially being super DIY indie folks ourselves with, with a relatively small footprint, uh, compared to a lot of the bigger guys. Like if we were able to boost numbers that in any way, shape or form, huge fucking win that that's a success.
01:01:56
Speaker
And like, cause at the end of the day, I really hope that people are aware of this. It's this whole thing is not about six one, indeed. This thing is about the devs. Like, and I know it sounds so cliche and so like, whatever, but like, honestly, we, we do it for the devs. That's why me and Kyle are on screen a total of what? Probably 10 minutes. If that, yeah. Um, and that's why like Rob talking about lessons learned. Um, it was actually,
01:02:26
Speaker
It was when we announced the awards last year and Rob i had a response, like responded to like the tweet announcing things and like, Rob bringing up of like, okay, let's let's talk about diversity. Let's talk about the dev the devs on screen. Let's have these like critical conversations that like we we need to have. because News alert, me and Kyle, two straight white dudes.
01:02:49
Speaker
um So lessons learned, Rob actually helped spark, like that was like already going into it, that was the plan for the awards, but that definitely helped spark the thought of like it doesn't have to just be the awards. like why like The showcase doesn't have to just be me and Kyle. like Our job on screen is to segue from segment to segment, but like it doesn't have to be just us doing that. and so we could actually have the, the faces of the devs on the main stage themselves. Cause the best people to talk about the video games are the developers themselves. So that was a ah big lesson as well. And hopefully y'all really liked that. Cause I think that's going to be a staple moving forward, um, for, for ah a handful of the games, just having the devs themselves introduce the game and tell you guys about it. On that note specifically, when I tell you that our minds were
01:03:41
Speaker
blown to pieces when we saw the Piero Fauna featurette. We had zero idea that in-game but environments are all like actual physical paper made. And watching the trailer again, like after with that context, watching the trailer again, you could see it, it's clear. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, like as soon as Tomás sent that over, I was like, are you fucking kidding me?
01:04:04
Speaker
like For real. yeah So yeah, having those moments in the showcase, I think just help bolster. Elevate it. That we're dead first. And we're not the first people to do that. Like that's very much inspired by Day of the Devs and Indie World and the Anna Perna showcase as well.
01:04:23
Speaker
um But yeah, I'm glad we were were able to kind of adapt that. Again, like take inspiration from like a lot of the folks that that do inspire us and put our own little twist on it. um So that's definitely something we're going to keep on doing moving forward as well. Absolutely. Yeah. and Any other lessons learned that you think from from last year that we... You want the joke answer? Time. Yeah. yeah Time.
01:04:52
Speaker
Yeah. I guess the, the funny inside joke slash reality is, uh, no matter what we were like back in mid June, we're like, okay, once we lock this line up, we're going to start building the website and we're going to knock this out before we even shoot. Guess what website barely started that shit.
01:05:12
Speaker
um Yeah, so so time management is a ah lesson we keep getting faced with. um Hopefully as like the vicarious relationship is um further massaged a little more in terms of processes and we we figure out a more
01:05:33
Speaker
healthy schedule. Sure. Um, we'll, we'll, we'll, you know, I'm saying it now. I'm gonna claim it. When we have this post show for spring 2025, it's all gonna be fixed. Okay. I hope so for you and me both. Cause I know you, so you talked about what was going on with you, um, around the showcases. We all know for the March one, I got sick filming and it threw a wrench and everything. This one, my mental health was real, real rough. A lot of anxiety attacks, a lot of panic stuff. Like work was very, very hard and it was very, very stressful. So, uh, I tried to help the best that I could. I tried to do whatever I could. Um,
01:06:15
Speaker
you crushed it Thank you, ah same to you. um The week I got back from my vacation, which was the week after we filmed the showcase, um and you were gone. Like we had offsetting weeks. yeah um That week alone, I think I filmed 12 interviews.
01:06:38
Speaker
was big It was a chunk of them. It was the majority. And then ah doing that and then catching up on everything that I missed and a lot of um impromptu things that we had to get going for Gamescom or whatnot. It was a lot. So my mental health definitely took a big dip during this time. But yeah, let's let's make let's strive for spring next year.
01:07:02
Speaker
We're going to be smiling the whole time. Yeah. And i'd like, that's to say like, yes, like ah admittedly we we, we also push ourselves way too hard, push ourselves quite a bit. And that's because we, we love what we do and we love uplifting these games and like we do it to ourselves. Like it is what it is. But um yeah, that, that doesn't mean we don't.
01:07:26
Speaker
we're not having a good time doing it. I want to make sure people are aware that like, as soon as this ends, like what do I tell you? Like every time we wrap up a showcase cycle, it's like, I can't wait to do it again. Oh yeah. I can't wait for the next one. Absolutely. It's stressful in the moment, but like, but I'm so excited to see people though actually watch it. Cause we know it's awesome. Yeah. So we thought it was awesome. And thankfully, like, uh, thankfully folks like Jill Groat from the former and Jenny, uh, praise that Cole raised it. So like, hopefully those three individuals are a good, uh, test. Our thing is still say CG, Danny B you better not the whole showcase. Be like, yeah, I want, I want to count. I want to tally. I'm going to watch that live react like, like every year.
01:08:15
Speaker
um I will say the other lesson learned thing, and this kind of ties into time management. I tried my goddamn best to do it. um It just turned out again, like I came down to the wire with the deadline for spring 2025. I want an individualized feed. well ma Well, to the main video, I want subtitles embedded throughout the entire thing. And then I want a dedicated audio description version.
01:08:44
Speaker
yeah Like that is a major, major, major goal. And like, I pushed so hard to try to find the time to to get it done. But 4.30 AM m ah before a 12 PM deadline i made it yep quite tricky. So yeah, um I'd want to make sure like, cause we've gotten that question in the past before and like,
01:09:07
Speaker
The YouTube auto closed captioning is good. It's not great a hundred percent of the time. So yeah, I want to make sure folks are very aware that that's on the radar for 2025 productions. Yep. Um, the one last thing I want to mention before we get into our second part where the rest of the team joins us, we talk individually more about the games that we showed off. Um, I want to challenge everyone watching the showcase to find the ADR moment.
01:09:39
Speaker
because without Mike saying anything, I had no idea. That sounds good. That's how good it was. Yes. There is one moment of the showcase that is ah recorded in my bathroom. Yes. ah With, with my cell phone. Yeah. And without Mike saying anything, I had no idea. Yeah. I really enough. I, I, I'm shocked that it worked out that well. Um,
01:10:07
Speaker
Before we do kick it to everybody else, the the other thing, the other piece of news we didn't mention, ah at the end of the showcase, we announced that the Indie Game Awards are happening on December 19th. Oh yeah, the other big thing we're still doing this year. Yeah. So ah yeah, December 19th, it's happening. um Prerecorded. It's going to be, despite it being, we promised ourselves and like, this is, this promise doesn't make sense when it comes to 6.1 Indie and particularly myself, because I'm a fucking narcissistic overachiever.
01:10:35
Speaker
ah um I'm gonna keep it simple, but despite that, um we already have such cool shit lined up and locked in. I am so excited to to share details, like as more things get solidified, share details. Very excited. This for sure is going to be akin to our very first game showcase. It's a learning process. It's a totally different skill set, a totally different kind of thing that we're we're doing.
01:11:05
Speaker
With that being said though, it's going to be freaking cool. Yeah, I'm i'm going to reiterate what we shared last holiday season. Diverse cast of judges, like diverse presenters, developer first. Me and Kyle will be on screen a total of probably like six, seven minutes, if that item match. If that.
01:11:28
Speaker
if that It's developer first. You got your game showcases between March and September. It's awards only. I assure you, it's not going to be a three plus hour show. It's going to be tight. It's going to respect your time. It's going to celebrate a lot of a lot of what's happening that's been happening within the indie scene. And that continues to happen in the indie scene into the holiday season. Amen.
01:11:59
Speaker
Rock and roll. I don't know what that was. I don't know either. Hey, let's go talk about some of the games we got to show off. Would you like to try that again? Nope. Nope. I want to keep it in. Let's go talk about the games. Let's go talk about the games, you know. Cut it there.
01:12:33
Speaker
And we are back to the post show for the September 20, 24, six, one indie showcase. Mike and Kyle are here, but now we are joined by Harry Lazidis. Hello there. Becca Smith. Hello. And Austin Ernst. Hello.
01:12:51
Speaker
This is the long part of the podcast where we are going to talk about each and every video game shown during the showcase one by one rule of thumb. We're going to try to keep it tight tonight. Cause guess what? It's been a long showcase cycle. Mike Mike is tie tie kai kai tie tie. Everybody quite tired. So, uh, yeah, we're going to try to keep it tight. Cause there are a lot of games, but obviously we want to ah make sure we shout out, um, all of the wonderful developers, all of these remarkable projects. Cause man, uh,
01:13:20
Speaker
I think Kyle and I probably said it already on the first half. Spoilers, we recorded that a couple of days ago. I don't remember it. um This lineup is killer. it's I know we sound like a broker record every single time. i think it's Personally, it's my favorite lineup to date, um it just banger after banger.
01:13:36
Speaker
and yeah it's a There's a lot to talk about. um Before we get into the game-by-game stuff, anybody have any general overall showcase things they will would they would like to go over or or share their thoughts on, or shall we just get right into the games? Amazing job, you guys. like i yeah everybody I think it goes without saying, amazing job. I think PD could have stepped it up a little bit. you know i think yeah well you know We talked about it during the behind the scenes stuff. ah We will definitely um be purchasing a more sturdy skeleton.
01:14:16
Speaker
Oh, no. We talked about that guy. Oh, we talked about that guy. Sorry. My legs are still tired from all the the flights we had to go up and down with all the equipment. Oh, yeah. We definitely talked about that as well. I think I started the show out with that. Yeah, yeah I'm OK if we try a different venue in terms of elevator.
01:14:38
Speaker
yeah Yeah, no, but um for ah We shouted out everybody in the first half, but shout out to Austin and Becca for crushing it with the previews. um Obviously, as we go down the list, we'll shout out who wrote previews for what? Harry, I forgot. Did you write any previews? Well, shout out to you in general, just for like managing all the previews and then getting everything edited and polished up. but There will be at least one written by Harry. I forgot. And yeah, of course, I gave Kyle all of his flowers already. i
01:15:10
Speaker
Give him another. How why wonderful he is. There it is. But what color were the flowers? Blue. Oh. Black like his soul. and Who's say? Anyway, I won't go on a side tangent, but if anyone hasn't read Flowers for Algernon, it's a very good, emotionally powerful book.
01:15:29
Speaker
What a teacher thing for you to say. Petey's play now pre-show kicked off. Of course, Petey's play now pre-show featuring games that have been ah recently released them and may have been ah slept on ah because of course the AAA side of things are quite hectic usually. um So some of these games may have flown under folks' radars. So we kicked things off with Spirit City low pie sessions from mu mu jesus Moon, Jesus, MoonCube games, um if you're unfamiliar, Spirit City LoFi Sessions is a gamified focus tool set to a soothing LoFi soundtrack, discover and collect spirits, customize your cozy virtual space and facilitate your real life tasks with a collection of handy features designed to improve concentration and ease stress. ah This trailer in particular was for their 1.4.0
01:16:19
Speaker
ah update. um You could go to their Steam page, of course, please go to the Steam page wishlist by all that good stuff, but a whole bunch of new content, including hundreds of new items, ah new activities, new spirits, new music, the whole nine yards. So really cool stuff. um Personally, I have not jumped into spirit city yet, but I know like,
01:16:39
Speaker
with with especially with me and Kyle, our day jobs definitely could use a bit of ah additional concentration. So it's something I'm um'm interested to try and utilize while I'm like writing emails, knocking out press releases, all that kind of stuff. Has anybody jumped into Spirit City yet?
01:16:56
Speaker
No, but I see some of my friends on Discord in it constantly when they're working. Me too. Yeah. Like it seems like it works very well. Like it does the damn thing. So yeah. very I know just like lo-fi beats just in general are awesome to listen to in the background. So yeah, the game of fire. Yeah. It sounds like a great time. Yeah. I got to jump into it one of these days. It's also going to be a common theme of there's so many awesome games, but not enough awesome hours.
01:17:24
Speaker
Can we make that a shirt, please? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know, right? That's a good one. That that kind of goes that goes with this next one, which Matt has played. Matt has a review of it on sixwayindy.com, but Valley Peaks from Tub Club and ah those awesome guys.
01:17:39
Speaker
ah Embark on a cozy climbing adventure in Valley Peaks, a riveting first-person platformer where each mountain is like a puzzle. Install radio towers at the top of each ridge to connect the froggy inhabitants to the wider world. Venture further to the valley. Conquer peaks and unravel mysteries. Climbing games.
01:17:57
Speaker
all the rave nowadays. Frogs also, frog games.
01:18:02
Speaker
um Yeah, Matt couldn't make it tonight, but speaking for Matt, I know he adores Valley Peaks. Again, that review is up on 6.1indy.com. Actually, Harry, no note for future selves, but now when people are listening, our past selves that are referring to the present, um we should tag the Valley Peaks review as 6.1indie, so it pops up on 6.1indie.com slash showcase. So for the people listening in the presence, they could go to 6.1indie.com slash showcase and read Matt's review of value peaks because it's very good.
01:18:37
Speaker
You know what's wild? I totally followed that. that like i know um like yeah we were We were so locked in there. um my yeah watching i How many of us were locked in? I mean, I was not locked in anyway. same it takes like about that The trailer is after but like Matt reviewed it before we got this trailer for the showcase. He watched it was like, Oh my God, didn't even know that thing was there. So he's kind of reason to go back in and play more.
01:19:08
Speaker
Yeah. and Then we got Just Crow Things from Unbound Creations. You're a little crow trying to prove herself to the world, make new animal friends, poop on unsuspecting humans, and steal all the shiny trinkets. Each level is a little sandbox full of fun items to discover and puzzles to solve while leaving a bit of chaos behind. Why? Just cause. A-A-W-S cause.
01:19:30
Speaker
Well, this is loaded on the steam deck. I can't wait to play this damn game. Somebody that's been on my radar for so long and I'm so happy we got to show it here. i was like one No, you go ahead. I was going to say I was, I was lucky enough to sit down with the the developer Jacob or Jacob, excuse me. um I knew it beforehand, but his previous game ran on your parade. I had a great time with cause it's just like silly, goofy fun. Um, and this seems like the same, the same as that. So it's a good time. Good time. yeah i Good. Um, who's screaming? Who's child is screaming? oh Sorry. i'm so Sorry. You can hear that. Um, yeah well, just you know, everything goes, like yeah, everything happens once we click record.
01:20:16
Speaker
Oh man, this goes for all of these developers, ah lovely human beings also. I love that interview so much. I love all the interviews that like both I was lucky to be a part of, but like the others that unfortunately I had to miss out on like, oh, everybody's just so kind.
01:20:33
Speaker
and We said it in the behind the scenes stuff. like I think the best thing we implemented this time around was the Discord server to just keep everybody connected and be able to chat with everybody instantly. ah Yeah. Lovely. Too many emails in life. Too many emails. The next game we got, and we got an exclusive look for this one, Yellow Taxi Goes Room, another game that Matt reviewed.
01:20:55
Speaker
and adored, um so Harry does the same note as earlier, past, present, future, all that good stuff. ah Yellow Taxi Goes Room from Panic Arcade and those awesome guys make full use of your advanced moveset to navigate a handcrafted retro world without the jump button in this vibrant love letter to the N64 era's end of collect-a-thons. And then the exclusive we got here, and it's my favorite like stinger of a trailer, ah the rat update.
01:21:21
Speaker
The free rat update is coming on September 24th, a few short days away. If you don't already have the game, it will be on sale for 25% off, which mean it is right now. It's on sale for 25% off. The rat update will allow you to head to the pizza time at a level. And there you'll meet, ah so there you will find a secret pipe where you'll meet to your new rat pal. you all You also might find four turtles in the area where you meet him. He will, yeah. He will then follow you ah for the rest of your game session. When you close the file, he'll go back to pizza time. Uh, when he follows you cheese appears around the map and if he collects it, he does a little power pose and deliver some coins.
01:22:04
Speaker
you Love to see it. Has anyone else played yellow taxi yet? No, but I want to so badly. It is so very high on my list, dude. It's so good. It's a, I never thought like, so if somebody told me, Hey, there's this game that's Mario 64 meets crazy taxi, I'd be like, you're high. Those things don't work together. And man, it works so well together. Yeah. Cannot recommend it enough. Definitely one of my favorites of the year so far. I got to, I gotta go back to it and and run through it. But again, time.
01:22:34
Speaker
But yeah, Matt has a review up on a Z site. So please go check a look. And alumni came back because I will hype up this game until the end of time at Whisker Squadron Survivor.
01:22:48
Speaker
from Flip Fly, a smooth roguelike shooter from the creators of Race to the Sun, featuring a ragtag crew of feline pilots and a dramatic showdown against corporate powered robots called The Swarm, features a three act campaign with branching paths, epic boss fights, and a wide arsenal of characters, ships, and weapons. Becca and I got to talk to the dev, got to talk about, you know, we showed off Whisper, Swatch, and Survivor back in Kyle, what, March 23?
01:23:17
Speaker
I'm the wrong person to ask about time. Sure. In the past. I think that's correct. In the past, before it launched, so it was a great conversation just to hear like how far it's come and what things are looking like ahead for the game, both for Whisker Squadron Survivor and Becca, what were we joking? Untitled space game? I think it's the- Yeah. It's like untitled Whisker game, Survivor, I don't know. They've got something else coming up.
01:23:47
Speaker
Yeah. Um, if you haven't played with squadron, the the pitch is it's, it's broke like star Fox and it works super well. We've played it on stream together. It's, it's a fantastic time and great folks racist on one of those OG, uh, indie Vita bangers. It's so good. Kyle, do you have the physical for that? Yes. I think I picked it up last time I was with you in the limited like the shop. Yeah. Yeah.
01:24:12
Speaker
Next up, we got a showcase debut, Wretched from, From Beneath Software and Perp Games. You are a tech engineer from Earth Order to retrieve and return sensitive data from the tech mining, TEC? TEC or tech, I'm gonna say TEC. Mining facility on Titan. On arrival, you discover that the facility has been invaded by beings from another realm. Content with these abominations as you complete your missions and escape Titan.
01:24:42
Speaker
It's doom three and I'm stoked that we have doom three again. Oh, it's that one. Yeah. Yeah. It looks sick between this and actually the other game published by purple, which we'll talk about later. Um, painted in blood, like I'm getting actual first person shooter games in these. Yeah. It's rare that like, I feel like that we select FPS, but these both are doing something interesting, both visually and then like being like kind of this in particular, a retro throwback.
01:25:09
Speaker
And it hurts me to say retro throwback to an OG Xbox game, but it is what it is. That's the hard truth. OG Xbox is 24-ish years old, so. Yeah, so um this is out now in early access. um one A new episode, or episode one is available right now in early access. So, you know, Shiek Latt out.
01:25:31
Speaker
Uh, and then closing out the pre-show, which I can't believe that we were able to get this IP in this show. Um, both, I mean, both the core game itself, but the, the update, the DLC, uh, sticky business, the among us update weird.
01:25:49
Speaker
you can Just leave it like that. like just see you We have to show off a new Among Us thing. It would be sus to not. a so ah Developed by Spellguard Games, published by Assemble Entertainment. So stick your business first, um experience the joy of running your own cozy small business, create stickers, pack orders, and hear your customer stories. Time to build the cutest the cutest shop on the internet.
01:26:13
Speaker
And then when it comes to the Among Us update, announcing a free update for Sticky Business in collaboration with Intersloth, the creators of Among Us. This update introduces 60 brand new Among Us themed stickers available in 270 vibrant color variants. Get ready to add some sus to your collection coming soon to PC and Switch.
01:26:34
Speaker
boom I have not played sticky business yet. I believe Becca has, and Kyle, I believe the the girls have also, right? The girls have logged like 60 hours. Wow. They love, they love it so much. Yeah. It is peak QT with two. Yeah. It's just like, you know, a very fun management sticker business game. And I love that how detailed you can make the stickers and make them your own with with the, the pre-made assets and whatnot. And,
01:27:04
Speaker
It is just like unapologetically so chill and so fun. Yeah. Again, bonkers that we had an Among Us thing on here and shout out to Assemble. They are publisher wise, they're alumni. they um We had ah our brother and pigeon on on the previous show um with a fall of porcupine.
01:27:30
Speaker
So that was PD's Play Now Pre-Show, Spirit City, Valley Peaks, Just Grow Things, Yellow Taxi Goes Room, Whisker Squadron Survivor, Wretched, and Sticky Business. All games are available right
Current Showcase and Indie Game Awards
01:27:42
Speaker
now. So please head on over to 6.1indy.com slash showcase.
01:27:47
Speaker
and the 6.1 Indi Steam event that is happening right now if you are listening at this in between august august jesus if you're listening to this in between September and September 23rd, that is found at bit.ly slash 6.1 Steam.
01:28:05
Speaker
I'm getting into... Mike? Yes. Can I ask you a question? Please. Would you like us to alternate reading these? Because I know what you're reading all 40 games. I'm tired. I'm not reading anything. Yeah, exactly. That would be lovely. Kyle, hit me with the first one. I'll take the first one. Yeah. No. No, Mike has read them all. The main story case? Nope. Mike has no. The main showcase is a world premiere for Dunk Dunk from developer Badger Hammer Limited, published by Playtonic Friends. Dunk Dunk is an intense pickup and play multiplayer action basketball game. Precise player controlled throwing and dunking plus a unique stretchy block makes for nail bitingly tense matches. Play alone with a friend or a house full of friends. Banger. What a way to start the showcase.
01:28:52
Speaker
Also, what's not noted here, ah again, the end stinger for this trailer. ah Again, another IP I didn't think would ever show during one of our shows. Yooka-Laylee being playable in this game. Dope, dope as heck.
01:29:07
Speaker
um we We had a developer featurette ready for this, but since we had it set to the world premiere, unfortunately we had to cut that out of the show just cause we wanted to start it with like just the trailer. But the, um, I think we're gonna post it on socials, uh, just so folks could see it. But the dev mentions, um, a that this game was just being developed in their part-time as ah as a hobby, just in their spare time.
01:29:33
Speaker
ah before Playtonic picked it up for publishing. And um the inspirations behind this, it's Smash Brothers meets Rocket League, which is, yeah, perfect. I don't know how that works. I mean, ah you can see it on the screen, but yeah, I'm very excited to get her our hands on this. I'm excited to play this at like 3 a.m. during extra life and yeah scream at each other. yeah Me and Kyle knows to knows.
01:30:00
Speaker
Maybe about to kiss, maybe about to scream at each other. Yeah, who knows? Say my kiss. Will they kiss? Will they throw witches brew at each other's faces? Who's to say?
01:30:12
Speaker
Becca, how about you take the next one? All right. So next we had an exclusive look at Promise Mascot Agency. for their new mascot, explore a cursed Japanese town, recruit mascot friends, and come to the rescue when disaster strikes. Solve the mystery of your exile. Help a living finger work through her many anger issues. Turn promised mascot agency into the best agency in Japan in this open world narrative adventure. And our exclusive was the debut of the new trailer with all new footage, including a variety of never before seen characters. And that is correct. And we're listening at home. It's a living finger.
01:30:49
Speaker
Yeah, you heard that right. You are not mistaken. It looks like me. I was just bit za and thought was just about to say, I thought looked like a massive earthworm.
New Game Trailers and Previews
01:31:02
Speaker
And then Mike said that and I was like, Oh, put it on our earthworm. It's a one-to-one earthworm. Mike earthworm Jim. Has anybody played their previous game paradise killer?
01:31:16
Speaker
I played it a little bit. Yeah. It was rad. That's another one. That's like everybody like a Doris, but just something I just totally missed just due to time and stuff. But I promised mascot as soon as it was revealed during, I think it was like ID at X-Box earlier in the year. Um, yeah, man, the, the freaky little finger man and tofu men. I'm all about this. I can't wait. This is such a weird little freak game for a weird little freak like me. Yeah.
01:31:42
Speaker
brad
01:31:45
Speaker
I'm happy. Mascots are getting the, getting the love. yeah get or do I forgot who the, Oh, it was when me and Beck were talking with a lot of mode games. um During that interview, a cousin game works just came up in conversation of how like when That crew, a husband-wife duo, were um working on the early rendition of Sara Reclos. Kai's and Gameworks like helped them out with like a bunch of like resources and and assets and stuff. And I don't think they knew that we had Promise Fasca on the show. but So it was like a weird, fun revelation, just mid-conversation. It was real cute. Shows how much of a tight-knit family the the scene is. You'll love to see it. Austin, take the next one, buddy.
01:32:32
Speaker
I don't know. You want me to read? I want you to read. We're, we're rotating baby. Okay. The next game is the edge of allegoria. The edge of allegoria combines old, old school game boy RPGs with unhinged adult humor. Love that. Perfect for fans of retro handheld RPGs with two bit pixel art aesthetic who are tired of the same played out stereotypical fantasy adventure.
01:32:54
Speaker
Explore a vast world filled with secrets, dungeons, loot, and colorful characters who need your help, or maybe not. Fight against a bunch of different creatures, master your equipment and skills, prove your worth, and find out what's really happening in this crazy fantasy world. The exclusive was a trailer with never before seen quest line that tasks players with collecting dead horse parts to get your version of the bike from Pokemon. Yes, it was. Did you do you see me squint to make sure I was reading that correctly?
01:33:24
Speaker
That's why I wanted you to take this one. Oh, that's why, cool. There is a demo available now. We have an interview with, I believe Kyle, you handled that interview with Joe, AKA Button Factory Games, of course published by Cobra Tekko Games as well. And Becca was there, my apologies. Harry was over there. Because I previewed that one. Was Harry there? I feel like I was.
01:33:45
Speaker
He might've been. Who's to say? yeah I'm so excited for this game. I'm so excited. I'm just going to need that kind of showcase. You'll find out. Check out youtube youtube dot.com. Let us know in the comments. There's 20 of them. I can't, I don't know who's there for which one. Kyle, correct me if I'm wrong. This is the first game that we confirmed back in like. Correct. January, I think. Yep. We had a like a quick meeting with him yeah because we saw this like on socials and we thought it looked really, really fun.
01:34:15
Speaker
And we want to make sure that we got a chance to show it off. Yeah. Yeah. I remember we first came across this just all over on Twitter when we were in production for the last August showcase. I think like when we were still in the selection process and we were initially like, Oh, we should reach out to him for, for August. And then us being us, uh, we just forgot. So yeah, it was nice to kind of naturally over the holidays. And like, I i think we had that conversation in January. Um,
01:34:46
Speaker
It was nice that like we were able to sync up with Joe and make it happen. Cause yeah, this game is absurd and more old school Pokemon games. Yeah. I really hope I have to talk to Joe about this. I really hope that, uh, this is for me and Austin. hope we Hope we get this, get this thing on the the analog pocket. No, I'm saying please give me that GB file. It looks perfect for the analog pocket. Yeah.
01:35:11
Speaker
Side note, Austin started playing Pokemon Brown on the analog pocket, which is the first ever Pokemon Red ah emulator. but just got It just got a 20th anniversary update. Real good. Real good on the pocket.
01:35:25
Speaker
Who's next Harry? You're next. That's only Florida. Oh, Florida. Oh man. The joy of chaos is a showcase debut ah from the developer of mold breaker interactive. I was able to chat with them at, um, and may NYC too. So that was rad. I did. They were wonderful. ah It was, it was like a, it was like, hi, I'm Harry from six one. And he's like, Oh my God. Cause it's fun to put faces to Social media posts and everything yeah discord stuff. So it was great but enough about my side tangent But floridale man is a down on his luck guy in his 30s living in a sunny vacation state Similar to one you may already know One day his humdrum life is excitingly interrupted by a talking gator who pushes him to live every day to the fullest by throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks literally
01:36:20
Speaker
Emerging from the dusty grocery store attic, he calls home. Floridale Man then embarks on an epic journey to become the harbinger of chaos. He was always meant to be. The Floridale Man, The Joy of the Chaos, is a sandbox puzzle game about embracing the mayhem latent within us all. See the sights of Floridale, meet the locals, and sow chaos, which whatever tools are at your disposal. If things go off the rails,
01:36:48
Speaker
in the process, well, that's just part of the fun. And then the exclusive announcement is that the Kickstarter launch is on September 19th, which is right now. Go throw them money, please. ah There should be a demo available on Steam, TBD, I think Trento said TBD. um very very ah Becca and I got to chat with Trento, head of the studio, amazing human being, has such great values for running an indie studio in 2024.
01:37:21
Speaker
It was a great conversation of just talking about like the state of the industry, the state of the indie scene, but also ah talking about a Florida man throwing an alligator through a Wendy's drive through back in 2011. So that was great. Amazing. And Becca, you played it and you have a preview up on the site.
01:37:42
Speaker
Yeah, he sent over an early build, so there wasn't too much to, I mean, there was still a ton to do, but there wasn't like, you know, it's still early, and there's still lots of stuff that you can do, and there's still lots of characters that you can talk to, and personally, Florida born and raised, so it just felt like being home. Just felt like being home, picking up the mounted fish that's on the wall, talking to him, you know.
01:38:10
Speaker
there was There was something related to Cthulhu. It's great. And and and talking with Trento is fantastic as well because we just got to like rant about how funny Florida is. just just Just naturally connect about... Through trauma. Exactly. It's wonderful. No, it's, it's so silly. And, and I think one of the things that stuck out to me was how much they value like making it fun for everybody. Like they said, like, it's like, you know, good 10 plus like 10, 10 years old plus, like, you know, like it's, it's, you're able to create a chaotic sandbox game without having, you know, blood and bullets and guns everywhere and all that kind of stuff. And I think it's going to be such a fun time.
01:38:53
Speaker
And they, you know, tried to acknowledge like, why make a rated M game when there's another rated M game based in Florida coming out quite soon. Cool. Uh, next up we got Tripp from Bastinus Rex, another showcase debut with a demo available right now. Will you unravel the mysteries that hide in this train? A lot of surprises and colorful characters are waiting for you in this first person retro adventure.
01:39:21
Speaker
got to say, so this is the, so something new we do with, with the showcase where these developer featurettes Bastian being the first to kick things off for the rest of the, the showcase. Um, every time when I was editing this video, every time I see that man pop up on screen, I'm like, man, it's just a cool dude. This is a real cool dude. It's a real cool man. Um, I adore, um, this game, I, because it's a train because it's a narrative game because it has like a retro grungy vibe. Um,
01:39:50
Speaker
very much reminds me of subway midnight, except a little more definitely have some dark undertones to it, especially with that stinger at the end. But, um, man, I am just so intrigued by this game. This is one of the, one of the games that like, as soon as pretty sure as soon as we all saw it, we're like, yeah, okay, definitely. Um, yeah, really excited to see how this unfolds. It was really fascinating to see what this, the early builds looked like. Um,
01:40:19
Speaker
So technically this game was shown at, I think it was at an EEC three, um maybe like a year or so ago, but it looked totally different. Like it's, it's night and day. What this game is like Bastian, what we were talking about, like how we classify what this game like is for the showcase. Like is it a world premiere? Is it just like making a showcase debut, whatever it may be. And um yeah, he was talking about how he just like after, I think it was like in response to subway midnight. So it must've been a, uh,
01:40:47
Speaker
bit further back, just totally rebuilt the game from scratch. Like the core concept of the train still there, but just totally rebuilt it. And man, he's just on the right path. I can't wait to play it. And please on the editorial side of things, I don't remember who wrote what and what we have writing for. So if I forget something, shout it. This next three games were kicked off from our friend, Jenny Windham.
01:41:16
Speaker
from wholesome got to intro, uh, three games on our showcase as our, which we spoke about it before in the first half, yeah but Mike and I want to make, you know, unite the India vendors for these showcases. Um, and Jenny's a huge proponent of that. Yeah. Uh, before we get into the games, uh, it's something I forgot to share in the behind the scenes portion. Um, we didn't talk about the little last minute fire, right? Oh, we did it. I didn't know if you wanted to or not. Why not? Okay. Okay. So i obviously I shared the, once I quote unquote finished the showcase, so uploaded to the private link that we share with like media and friends and whatnot. um Shared it with Jenny, jet Jill, the indie council. um You know, IGN. IGN. They didn't acknowledge the receipt until it was
01:42:03
Speaker
Anyways, um so i Jill and Jennie are watching pretty much like at the same time, it seems like, and Jennie shoots me a DM and she's like, Hey, so amazing work. This is incredible. um Small thing. ah yeah My last name is spelled wrong.
01:42:20
Speaker
I was like, fucking what? And yeah, sure enough, I added ah an H to her her last name, which with the amount of times I've spelled that woman's name, but just through typing and email and whatever it may be. This was the one time I decided to add a rogue H in there. And this was after I shared it with IGN to set up their stream and the whole nine yards. um but Thankfully, shout out to Clancy. I already gave him his flowers and in the first portion of this podcast, but um he was able to whip up the correct spelling super quick in the lower third. And yeah, we got to work. And funny enough, when I re-uploaded it to the shared drive folder that me, that us and IGN have, that as soon as like it completed, they answered like, Oh, cool. Thanks.
01:43:07
Speaker
so I think we're safe. i like we let's hope Future us will know, present us will know, but yeah. Anyways, the games. Yeah, the the first one that Jenny got to showcase is Biotic Bay from developer Psychoflow Studio and Marina Oy, published by Kepler Interactive. A scientist uses a unique teleportation instrument to escape an ancient biomechanical world filled with imaginative technology, deadly traps and hidden secrets. And there is a demo available right to now on Steam.
01:43:40
Speaker
This one looked like it had a lot ah lot going on. like This one looked like it is challenging, and I was all about it. so Yeah, I played the demo um because I was going to write a preview for this, but then Harry claimed it. Sorry. If he gets the chance to write it. No pressure. um But yeah, no, it is really tough. like it was it's it's There's this like really big moment at the very beginning of the demo that's like mind-blowingly cool. and then Yeah, it gets really, really difficult really quickly. It's very much like, um, like limbo feels. Do you remember the old, what was it? PS3, PS4, the Swapper? Oh, yeah yeah what a banger of a game. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot. It's a lot like that. Yeah. Oh yeah. I remember that game. No, it's like a mind.
01:44:29
Speaker
No, but I remember getting like a the platinum for it or something because I i want to play this game this rocks and this game really does the cinematography well too in terms of like zooming in jumping out really seeing the whole scope of the the world that you're in that really like Struck me as a yeah, I'm gonna dig this game like it's somebody's business. Oh this game yeah i remember yeah Swapper is so good. and there's offer swa i kind of I kind of want to play that again now. It's such an existential game as well. oh my god and i was spoiler but I was too dumb back in the day when it came out. I couldn't finish it. I'm still too dumb now.
01:45:08
Speaker
we so your' obbi one Don't say these things. You're so smart. Bionic Bay is ah one of those games that like i've I've seen cross our our six one feeds on on socials and whatnot for probably a year now. And funny enough, we before we realized we had over 1200 submissions, we had a list of games we want to reach out to to see if they want to be a part of it. And Bionic Bay was coincidentally enough on that list. So I'm glad that we ah got to make it happen just kind of organically. But I could take Fishbowl.
01:45:43
Speaker
Alright, next one we got an exclusive look at Fishbowl from I Miss My Friends Studio. Fishbowl is a heartfelt coming of age story told over a month where you unpack puzzles to discover childhood memories, video call loved ones, work from home while taking care of yourself and your chores,
01:46:00
Speaker
to figure out life one day at a time. 21 year old, it was it aloe? It was aloe gets her first job in a new city and is living by herself while grieving her grandmother's death. The choices she makes each day will lead to a unique journey of self discovery. Our exclusive look is into the dream world inside of fishbowl. And we've also revealed for the first time a very special character in the trailer. So make sure to play the demo on steam, which is available right now.
01:46:27
Speaker
And I think the demos on PlayStation as well, if that's more your speed, I i think, think, think. Don't quote me on that. Becca and I got to talk to Rhea. Rhea, again, like everybody else, delightful human being. Incredible human. Oh my God. um Big part here, and and similar with a later game, Acum, got to talk about like just what it means to, because Fishbowl got some decent traction probably earlier this year, maybe late last year. um through PlayStation like once that demo dropped and and a lot more people got to get their eyes on it. So we got to talk about what it meant to get like the culture of India just like on a wider, more mainstream stage where like you know typically like Western audiences maybe aren't super familiar in seeing that in video games. So it was super great, super cool. um Another game that we've been talking to them since
01:47:26
Speaker
I think they applied for, for, they submitted for the March showcase in 2023 and, and we only pass on it because no last March, 2024. Um, we only pass on it because of the 2025 date and we're, we kept in our back pocket. So I'm like, okay, we're gonna offer them a spot. This game looks incredible. Like obviously, um, so I'm glad we finally got to make that happen and get an exclusive look on it. Made you cry right back up.
01:47:54
Speaker
It may be tear up at the end, yes. there's the The demo is very short, what they have um to play. It's very short, but it it makes such an incredible impression right right off the bat. you you or pretty much You have a couple of flashbacks um with Aloe and her grandmother, and then she is a um she works as an editor for a streamer. So there's a little bit of a mini game where you're editing the stream or the YouTube video or whatever it is that she's working on. It's like a little rhythm game kind of organization game. It's got one of those classic kind of sliding puzzles where you're unpacking something that I think her mother sent to her and it's you're like trying to fit everything and in the box and get things out and so like it feels there's little classic elements to it but it just it's so so stunning and I think it's I think it's gonna make us all
01:48:45
Speaker
Not necessarily nostalgic for 2020, because that was traumatic. um But make us kind of all revisit what isolation was like and and how we all had to get through it and things like that. But yeah, it's it's incredible. Also the coziest studio set up. It's a two person in studio. It's just in their apartment in India. And um just like, I don't know, just the vibes, the lighting. It was great. It was super chill. I can confirm that the demo is on PlayStation, by the way. Thank you. Thanks.
01:49:15
Speaker
Hopefully it still is in five days. Awesome. You just spoke. Take on the next one. oh man We're rotating. All systems dance is the next game developed, developed by mighty yell studios.
01:49:30
Speaker
Automation is not the answer. Dance is the key to disruption. That's just such a cool tagline. That whole thing is really cool. Help liberate citizens of a consumption obsessed corporate dystopia in all systems dance and expressive dance battle of adventure. Connect moves, express yourself, feel the music. That was at the end of the sentence. Join the movement. The revolution will not be choreographed. ah We have a developer interview available when the showcase drops. Yeah, with Dave.
01:49:57
Speaker
Dave's awesome. All systems Dave. Yeah. so If we may, let's let's talk about my DL studios. so ah More specifically, let's talk about Karina and Dave more specifically. Let's talk about Dave.
01:50:08
Speaker
um So ah first off, I love Dave. ah Dave is my second favorite Canadian behind Jacob McCourt. Don't worry. that's a bowl thanks I think I'm pretty funny. I don't think I'm a comedian, but I think I'm pretty funny. Am I third, fourth Canadian? Oh, there's a comedian Canadian.
01:50:26
Speaker
I was like, I had no idea Austin. you Yeah. I was like, whoa. I'm like, we just talked about background. My bad. My bad. My bad. My bad. So, um, at PAX East this past year, months ago, Jesus, um, me, me and Carl are walking through the halls. i I forgot who was with us, but we're, ah we're jacob mccourt your favorite Canadian. Was it Jacob? Yeah. Comedian.
01:50:56
Speaker
Maybe it was Jacob. I thought it was Asa. We all, we all saw this at the same time. Yeah. Okay. So, uh, we're all walking to go see Dave at the mighty yellow booth. Um, and coincidentally enough, he is on his, we see him walking towards us and he's on his phone typing and I bump into him. Like I put my hand on his shoulder and I was like, Hey buddy. And he was, he shows me his phone was like, no, no joke. I'm literally DMing you right now, ah yeah which is my favorite thing in the world. Um,
01:51:25
Speaker
So he like sort of whispers to us like, Hey, you want to see something super secret? And we're like, sure. We go to the booth and he pulls out a steam deck. He's like, okay, come to my office. And he goes in the middle of the fucking, uh, the walkway at PAX where it's like arguably the busiest area you could probably show somebody a secret hands-off demo. And um yeah, he shows us a little snippet of All Systems Dance. um The pitch he gave us was ah Tony Hawk, but dancing. And immediately Kyle and I's, our eyes just
01:52:00
Speaker
blew up. we we were we We fell in love instantly at that pitch. And yeah, Mighty Yell just knows vibe. Mighty Yell knows character and story and world-building. Their previous game, Big Con, is an outstanding narrative of adventure. um Yeah. I, I'm so happy that people finally got to see it in full during the glitch future of play show back in, uh, around summer game fest season, and then actually get their hands on it at PAX West. Um, cause yeah, buddy else, well, it was like really special studios that just deserves all of the love in the world. Yeah. Um, please, please give, uh, like all the developer interviews, give this one a watch to learn more about like what my deals philosophy is and how they, uh,
01:52:47
Speaker
ah look at how to develop games, because they're very much like, you can go get a violent game pretty much everywhere else. Us, we just want to have a good vibes, to have a fun time and showcase there's more to games than just, you know, beating somebody up or shooting them with a gun. and Yeah. And then his indie, like, what is an indie answer I really liked as well. So that was like, I was like, I like this. Also shed out to them for doing a dance video.
01:53:13
Speaker
Yeah, so technically that was the exclusive. ah the we got ah i ah The only reason we didn't put exclusive look or anything on there is just because um I didn't know if they showed off dabbing previously, but ah the exclusive we got was ah Dave dabbing, ah IRL. My favorite things. like Incredible. great Great dab, Dave. Thanks. Cut. The dead pan always gets it. Yeah. Incredible. I love that.
01:53:48
Speaker
Who is next? Harold is next. All right. Let's check out the world premiere of our lands by gram of legend. So our land is an Island builder where you make cozy little aisles for cozy little people to escape to. Everyone has their own preference and it's so up to you to craft their perfect slice of paradise. You recovered. It's okay. I want to hear you to read me a bad time story. Well, I don't want to read it too fast or like, I don't want to read too fast. And then I'm like, let me do an inflection. I do that. Craig, Craig. Uh, we, we set it on the showcase itself, but it seriously like so wonderful getting Graham back on the show again. He helped, um,
01:54:34
Speaker
in the opening segment of our very first showcase back in 2022, Super Space Club was a part of that. um So to actually like be the ones to debut his brand new projects, like, means the world fucking love Grant to death. He is such a talented human being. um I also love in his featurette, just the way he says, ah make cozy little islands for cozy little people. Just like his cadence there, it just like cracks me up. Like it just fills my heart so much. Yeah.
01:55:02
Speaker
um I will say ah there's two games in particular I want to give the this tip of the hat to, um and Hourlands is one of them. Banger soundtrack, banger music. oh No disrespect to anybody else's music, but man, Hourlands and then later on, bangers. Yeah. Real good. Anybody else got anything for Hourlands? This was the one that Kelsey really liked, right?
01:55:29
Speaker
Yeah. So when we were watching, uh, thank you for reminding me about that. When we were watching as like, we were just double checking the edit and stuff down in the living room. Uh, it was the first time she got to see the trailer and every like five to 10 seconds, she was like, are you fucking kidding me, Graham? Are you fucking kidding me, Graham? Graham, are you fucking kidding me? Like every time there was like a little, like the little fire popped up or a lighthouse popped up or there was like terror forming gang shown, yeah, completely up Kelsey Valley. Yeah, I'm excited for this to be our land and this to be your land.
01:56:07
Speaker
Like the song. Thank you. Shut it down. speaking of bans Next up, we got netherworld from hungry pixel, uh, action adventure satire. That combines us a real story, mini games and bosses to tell the story of Medoo, a jinx jellyfish who handles marriage crisis is with alcohol, drugs, sex blows and weird creatures.
01:56:33
Speaker
it laughly the opposite of a coachy little game im glad i didn't have to read that it's on this show don't we I think I remember correctly, I think this was, I'm sorry. There's more screaming happening behind me. I'm muting myself regularly. Um, I think this is one of the ones on the list that almost all of us immediately were like, it has, it has to be in this. showcase. Like once we saw it, it's just it's so it's so eye-catching and so strange looking and and even just the trailer on the scene page was just so funny right off the bat. So I remember this being one of the ones there was there was a handful of ones that all of us immediately were like yeah like that's one of them for sure and it was definitely this was one of those.
01:57:14
Speaker
And the great comedy definitely subverts the whole aesthetic too. So you're like not expecting it to be funny. And then you're like, whoa. And it gets you. And you're like, all right, I dig this. Yeah. The the video on Steam, and it was like status and then left left by wife. I was like, yep, yep. This is funny. It's going to be a good one. Yeah. Also a physical edition. The the one ah the one game that confirmed a physical edition for 2025. Very, very exciting. Very exciting. Calito.
01:57:45
Speaker
myth, rec, and pro show. Am I? No, I'm good. Am I? We lost Kyle. How long has he been frozen? I thought you've just been super concentrated anyways. Wait, can you not hear me?
01:57:59
Speaker
ah ah Becca. Okay. Rip Kyle kyle i see my voice exclusive look at myth, wrecked Ambrosia Island from polygon tree house and white thorn games. Your ship wrecked on a lost mythical Island as backpack Packer Alex. You must befriend the forgotten gods of Greek mythology and restore their memories.
01:58:22
Speaker
explored the dynamic island and its story sandbox to build new friendships, solve the mystery, and save the gods. A new 3D Exploro puzzle adventure game from the double BAFTA-nominated creators of Roki. Our exclusive look shows the new kind of island things that you can do on the island to chill out, collect old-school music cassettes, each containing a music track from the game, choose to sit and listen to your music collection in one of the island's many chill out spots, listening to whichever track you like,
01:58:49
Speaker
from your collection. And this is another one that we have a developer interview available and a preview available as well. Yes. Okay. On my end, everything was working fine. My voice was still recording. was Everything was good. So this we will see how these files look later. No, that's all right. We'll figure it out. Um,
01:59:14
Speaker
Yeah, so Mythrect, who was in that interview? I know Kyle, Becca, were you also? No, but I previewed it. Oh, okay, please. Yeah, so um I just want to say out of... and We all know all all ah all of these games are incredible.
01:59:30
Speaker
other than the pre-show ones, which are already out, obviously, Myth Recto. They're still incredible. they're so They're still incredible. I mean, I mean, I came out wrong. Get them out of here. I mean, out of the demo, out of the not complete games that we have in the showcase, this one feels the most complete and like ready to ship. Like sure when I was playing it,
01:59:52
Speaker
I did I did not want to stop it's it's so fun and relaxing it it's like it's everything you want from something because there's there's mystery and then there's a small portion of the island that you can explore but you can see how much more there is to see like once it unlocks and once you're able to to unlock there's like doors everywhere that are locked so there's these little secrets that you're hoping to find you have a like a little lighthouse that you can start putting stuff in and decorating but not too much stuff so you like can't it's not no spoilers for like the many different ways that you can probably upgrade your lighthouse and things like that you meet two characters even though you can tell that there's going to be tons more there's like a little bit of intrigue because they like they start talking about like you don't want to meet the other people on the island and you're like but why and so there's like
02:00:41
Speaker
You're stuck wanting answers. it's just it was it wast It's such a good demo that leaves you just perfectly wanting more. And it felt like, like, why can't I have more? Why is this not ready to go? It's so it's just, it's wonderful. So I cannot wait. Hell yeah.
02:00:57
Speaker
Uh, yeah, I was in on that interview with him and with alexia and getting to learn more about their take on the Greek gods. Cause there's been a bunch of different games to do their own versions of the the Greek Pantheon. Um, and I just really dug the whole idea of helping them remember who they are and remember that they are gods kind of thing. It's a very, very cool concept.
02:01:21
Speaker
Another game I'm um'm glad we finally got to link up with cause Alex and I have been mutuals for seemingly forever now. So great to see, um, great to finally link this up before Mythric launches. Cause I think it's pretty soon. It's it's still targeting 2024. So yeah, Becca, it makes sense that it sounds like it's, it's it feels like it's almost done. Kyle, since you broke the cycle.
02:01:43
Speaker
I did it freak and ah with the showcase debut. We've got ghost and a bottles. Octopus city blues demo is available right now on steam and itch in a world of ice. The last human city is tearing itself apart. Explore the underbelly of a monstrous metropolis in a surreal adventure about everything and nothing. Can we talk about me struggling with monstrous metropolis during filming?
02:02:11
Speaker
You just struggled right there. I did. I know. I was just trying to go right past it. That was the best take the whole time. Right there. Hell, it was three takes, right? something Three, four, sorry four five. yeah we We're seasoned at the planning at this point. So we're like, all right, we know which ones are going to screw up. Yeah. yeah And then have to do like two times. So we're good. ah My favorite thing whenever this game gets brought up is Becker's reaction to it.
02:02:42
Speaker
It's because my reaction is twofold. My reaction is that's amazing and what the fuck. um Yeah, I played the demo preview now available. This was the hardest preview for me because um It's so unexplainable, um but the level of creativity and uniqueness here is is just really commendable and really wonderful because i could I can't compare it to a single other thing I have ever played in my entire life. um It's so colorful, it is so strange. you You play as this guy who's like a tentacle trimmer and you live on a giant octopus trimming tentacles and there's like graffiti on the wall that says the tentacle is my grandpa and like you eat like a rotten sandwich and you pass out and somebody just like cuts you open and like puts a communicator thing in your stomach and there's just these just incredibly strange things that happen and it's you just want to keep playing because you're like what the heck could possibly happen next it's it's so so strange and i'm i'm completely in love with it it's so wonderful sounds like a typical monday night you know my dad is also a tactical And also but i have the commitment, I don't know, like the commitment to the bit. If you guys go on their Steam page, their blogs are written in a way that like, as if you're in that world, like they're written as if you're like on this octopus and there's crazy things happening.
02:04:10
Speaker
Also shout out to Becken for just keeping going. Exactly. I'm used to it. I'm used to it. I was told keep it tight. So keep it tight. That's my dead dad. I could make a joke about it. So anyway, as you go on their Steam page, every single blog post on the Steam page is written in this same kind of weird, ridiculous fashion. I'm just looking at Harry now because he's the only one listening to me. I'm listening to you. Don't blame me. Don't do this.
02:04:42
Speaker
ah just look at I'm looking. I'm looking. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right, boys. Teacher can listen to the one student while the chaos burns around him. Yes, exactly. Anyway, the point is, go go play the demo like it's you can't you just can't explain it. You cannot. There's just no way. I do. I do love when a game like takes a swing. Like you said, you can't you can't compare it to anything like it's it's like solely unique. Like I love when they genuinely just go for something. I appreciate that.
02:05:11
Speaker
Yeah. Speaking of appreciating stuff, Austin, appreciate Morgan metal detective. I always talk right before it's my turn to go and I don't even realize it. I don't even do it on purpose. Um, this is a world premiere, uh, Morgan metal detective by developer studio Morgan and published by sub silica. Demo is available right now. A cozy first person metal detector adventure game where you reunite residents of the beautiful Cornish Island of Glazden with with things they have lost. And with your late grandpa's help, maybe restore magic along the way. I was laughing at grandpa because of the previous conversation, not that one. My apologies, Studio Morgan. yeah Developer interview is available right now. Yeah, so who was that? It was me, Becca and Kyle. We were all in that conversation together. I wasn't there. it was just ah I wrote the preview. Lovely human beings, like all these human beings. um I will double down here.
02:06:06
Speaker
Harvey, I promise you, and I'm putting my whole ass out here. This was the game that simultaneously, all of us unanimously were like, fuck yes. This game rocks instantly in. You don't even have to finish the trailer. A metal detector cozy game? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I think maybe five seconds in, we were all through. Yeah, we're like, yes, we're in. We don't even need it anymore. This is like the one title where I was like, why aren't there a billion of these? I don't understand why this is a genre that's so untapped, but whatever.
02:06:35
Speaker
Like i I feel like personally, I don't think I've ever played a game where the core mechanic is a metal detector. that That's what I'm getting at. Yeah. Yeah. no Using the term genre was a bit loose there, but you understand what I'm getting at. Yes. The metal detecting genre. Yeah.
02:06:50
Speaker
Uh, one of my favorite bits about this interview is they were talking about, I forgot what event it was. Um, but at their x or something yeah, at their booth, they had a little, um, like box of, of dirt or sand and they had like hidden pins and stuff for the game and a little metal detector for people to go. And that is so fun. yeah And it's very, very good.
02:07:12
Speaker
Either he did or like a relative be like a custom metal detector. It was a custom metal detector. Yeah. Because it was too long obviously for, yeah, for that that purpose. And we also tried to get them a metal detector as sponsorship as well. Yeah. Um, yeah i I forgot the company's names, but, uh, Hey, if you're listening, that's really good. I like that a lot. That's awesome. yeah nos a doors I can't wait to play this game.
02:07:36
Speaker
Male detectors, I say in 2025, 2026, after Morgan comes out and then becomes a trendsetter, it's gonna be the new frogs. Yeah. but as this I love that as a statement, because I still have no idea what that would entail.
02:07:53
Speaker
the Where sirens are going off, the cops are coming after Austin. What did I do? Just ignore the background, that's fine. ah Well, Harry, while we ignore the background, unless the sirens are going off and I can skip you for now. Let's do it.
02:08:08
Speaker
All right. Oh, then Reggie, his cousin, two scientists and the most likely the end of the world exclusive looks close. I know I put this on the wrong spot, but this is definitely an exclusive look. We're going to see some co-op revealed. Get ready to go on a mind bending adventure in Reggie, his cousin, two scientists and most likely the end of the world. The new cutie cartoon platformer.
02:08:37
Speaker
developed by degoma control the direction of gravity as you run jump and explore in an outrageous time traveling adventure as reggie an unlikely hero from the 16 000th century on a mission to save science and ultimately the entire universe this is launching on steam nintendo switch playstation 4 playstation 5 and xbox series xs in 2025
02:09:05
Speaker
I really wanted the write-up to make you say the full title again. It's a time-traveling adventure as Reggie, his cousin. what a banker ah especially yeah brother and sister developer development team yeah leave it Even now, like I feel like most of but like most of us slash most of the gaming community playing Asherbot at the moment, and like really getting back into the platformers, 3D platformers. This looks like such a fluid, fun 2D platformer. And the co-op stuff looks fantastic. I love that they're doing not even not only traditional co-op, but sharing one controller, controlling a character, or two people controlling one character. um It looks killer and beautiful.
02:09:50
Speaker
Shout out to Kit and Krista for hooking it up. Yeah, I'm very excited to go full on with this game. Because it seems like full on chaos, especially with the name Reggie, his cousin, two scientists, and most likely the end of the world. And they were lovely people too. So and just like everyone else, like you want you want to be their biggest cheerleader and be yeah like, all right, I want this to be an absolute banger for you guys and just continue to do everything that you are able to do to make everything as awesome as it can be.
02:10:17
Speaker
yeah I think every time I see a message from the team, they're thanking us again for including them in the showcase. And I'm i'm just like, this is just like the most humble, wonderful, thankful team and they deserve it because this is just so cool.
02:10:30
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Even on, uh, like, uh, yesterday was our like re-announcement where we put up the hype teaser and all that stuff. Um, on every social media platform, like we're primarily on Twitter, but like, you know, just for the sake of like, just getting it everywhere. We, we toss on on TikTok, we toss on Instagram, we toss on Facebook, every single platform. I see, uh, the Reggie account just hyping it up and being super excited. I'm like, man, y'all rock.
02:10:54
Speaker
Yeah. Who's up me up. I think me up. Yeah. Do it. World premiere you up scramble star crossing from dusk. Sharp scramble star crossing is a brand new versus puzzle game with a twist. Play across two.
02:11:11
Speaker
Play across two-player arenas, ah matching colorful stars in the night sky. Use your new, you yeah use your unique star burst. Set up mind-blowing chain clears and top out your opponent by sending sealed stars to their board. Assume the role of one of 15 unique star clearers and fly into the sky and match stars to help save your planet. Compete against friends in one of our many two to four player competitive and casual modes. Learn about the mysteries of the planet in our immersive story mode and by making friends and rivals along the way. There is a demo available right now. Scramble star crossing a game you all fell in love with last year at play NYC. This is where we met the dusk sharp folks.
02:11:56
Speaker
um Yeah. You and Harry were glued to that. um It's so good. We sure were. We could not rip you guys apart from it. like All right. Cause the first game was like, all right, we, we get the rules. We played it way too easy. Now let's go like normal level. And it was like, we were locked in. We were not getting our eyes off of the screen. and Yeah. And the trailer, but you might look at it and you're like, what's going on here, but you are essentially collecting multiple, the same type of shape. See, ah you're collecting the multiple, the same kind of shape. And then you are um basically once you gather enough and you shoot it at one of the other
02:12:38
Speaker
the same shape on the other side and then sends it to the other, your opponent. And it's somewhere to kind of like a, a Tetris battle or a, um, what's that other game? ah league Thank you. Is it, is it Pokemon puzzle league? Yes. Thank you, Austin. Appreciate that. Uh, it's a ah top uh, Pokemon spin-off game.
02:13:07
Speaker
Yeah. That's a throwback for old taxi's panel. and some Yeah. But this game is so fun and so addicting once you're in it, once you get the hook and you discover like the power ups and whatnot. Um, it's a super fun time and genuinely really challenging. yes it really is ra up Absolutely.
02:13:26
Speaker
And I feel like it also looks sharper than last time we played in person. Cause I was also able to see the team at play and not play. with Well, play in YC within anime and YC. And the game definitely looks sharper. It looks somehow more beautiful um and just as fun. So it's really exciting that it's kind of getting the momentum to be like a big banger for everyone. They're also doing a cool thing. It's probably going a little bit too within the weeds, but um you and so I remember it was either at Plan YC last year or at PAX like we where we linked up our happen conversation. Instead of going into early access, they just keep updating the demo until they're ready. I think that's such a unique way to go about it. Just like give the demo out, like let people play it, massage it, fix bugs, add new content. And then once it's ready, just launch it 1.0.
02:14:21
Speaker
Yeah. Cool strategy. Banger. Speaking of cool strategies, Kyle Stevenson, Stevenson moving his mouth to say words. That's me. wow what strategy mayor From the developer Nicholas Seriani judo fury. You only need one button to come to compete in this fruity party game, press it, squeeze it and mash it in a series of silly mini games for two to nine players and claim your spot as the juiciest fruit of them all.
02:14:51
Speaker
That's me. i don't i say I don't know if I want that title. just this for yeah i wait i'm like You've never had those shorts that just say juicy across the board? I can't say I have. But you knew what I was talking about. Unfortunately. Yeah, I'm real glad that's not a thing anymore. That was weird. well Some people wore that and they should know.
02:15:17
Speaker
judiyel looks great um I love the hook that is just one button throughout these mini games. So yeah, it's Mario party, but we'll one button and cute, vibrant, hand drawn, like, but fruit.
02:15:30
Speaker
Yes. That should have been the tagline.
02:15:38
Speaker
And ah also love, as you saw in the trailer, um really love that you can play with a variety of inputs. So like one person could be in on Xbox controller, another person could, multiple people could share a keyboard, which is really cool. It's something you can view on a mouse.
02:15:53
Speaker
um So really trying to be as approachable as possible to to allow as many players to to join in. Oh, who's next? You? No, I went. It's Becca. I'm after Kyle. I was after you that one time because Kyle froze. I was generally not keeping track. I thought Mike was just doing it randomly.
02:16:18
Speaker
No, no, I have a method to my medicine. Does anyone remember when Kyle froze? I can make more music. I can make more music. It's a world premiere developed by BC Media Lab. ah Demo should be available.
02:16:34
Speaker
Question mark. We don't know. Cause we're recording this beforehand. Um, Lucha Libre ledger. The mask is a 2d side scrolling beat them up game with cooperative elements for up to four players. The game is about Mexican Lucha Libre with real Mexican star Lucha doors and the history of Mexico. It will feature a selection of renowned Mexican wrestlers who are represented by masked Republic's legends of Lucha Libre division. Among those they represent our Conan rush, Kara, Christie, James, and Mr. Iguana, and LA park.
02:17:03
Speaker
Hell yeah. very excited I sat down with them. um They are super excited to showcase to the world, Lucha Libre Wrestling. And if you don't know anything about Lucha Libre Wrestling, that developer interview goes into a lot of the history of it, but they are essentially like,
02:17:21
Speaker
like real life superheroes to the Mexican culture in real life. And it's really, really cool that they got to work with some of these legendary people and include them in the game. And they are equally as excited to be a part of it and showcase just the vibrant and culture of what Lucho Libre is. Cause it's massive. Yeah. Obviously like the easy comparison is like something like guacamelee, but guacamelee being very set in fantasy. And obviously, like literally where you see in the trailer, like sure, it's it's not like a true story by any means, but it's really cool to see something so grounded in Mexican history and and even in the trailer, just seeing a
02:18:03
Speaker
a more exaggerated version of like Mr. Iguana or like what, like that character would be if you put them in like a, like Jackie Chan adventures or something. That's what if the art style gives me the vibe of. Yeah. Also um they're voicing themselves in the game. Are they? Whoa. Yes. That's what they said to them. Yeah. I was super stoked that we got to show this off. um Yeah. I think it's going to be quite the banger. I'm very reminiscent of just like,
02:18:31
Speaker
super fun, like not overbearing beat them ups.
02:18:37
Speaker
Becca. Yes. And this next block, ah introduced by our friend Des, Destiny Cleveland, of course the founder of Dames for games. um There is, I By the time this airs, I don't know if the date's going to be public. There is a Games for Games coming up soon. So on the lookout for that. In the amorphous future. All right. So the first one in this next group is Peppered, an existential platformer from Mostly Games.
02:19:07
Speaker
Pepperd is an existential platformer where you have one shot at everything. Every choice, every boss battle, and every failure impact the branching plot line and determine how the story will go and how it will end. Demo available now. And Austin previewed it.
02:19:23
Speaker
Hello, hi, I did a thing. Yeah, this game's awesome. um When it talks about like the branching narratives, a lot of my play, when I played the demo, it was like, wow, my ending would be terrible because I'm terrible. And you feel that way. And there are checkpoints. So I was like, can I go back? No, you're kind of just like, this this is your this is your story now. And you're like, cool. um But you start on this like mythical day called immortality day.
02:19:49
Speaker
um and It's like the 100th anniversary of that happening. And so in world, you can like die and respond. And I think that's like a thing that they're like, Oh, this just happens here and because it immortality day, you know, this is what it is. But you're an intern and you're like, Oh, okay. I work at this crappy company. And then the, the ah like prophesized hero doesn't show up and you're like, I got this. I'm just an intern at this company. I'll be the hero. And you steal, I want to read something from my preview just to so I can get the terminology right. Hold on, hold on.
02:20:16
Speaker
It's the 100th anniversary of immortality day, and unfortunately it looks like the god of death will return. The known hero Theodore Glagalev, I'm probably not pronouncing that right, is a no-show, so he decided it's up to you to save the world by bringing a new life star and excruciating deaths. That's a mouthful, and I said it really fast, but you get what I'm getting at. but There's a lot of terminology going on, but it's fun. The first, like I don't know, 15 minutes of my demo, you're just rolling around in an office chair.
02:20:43
Speaker
And so I thought that was the game for the first part of it. Cause all you do is roll around and jump in your little office chair, but then it finally opens up and the platforming starts and it's, it feels crisp. It's, it's, it's nice. Um, it's die a lot, but really quick respond kind of a thing. awesome So yeah.
02:20:58
Speaker
It's good. It's something I should mention about these next three games, and including peppered. Um, so with, with Des, uh, these are all games that, um, like, like us, like dance for games, obviously gets, uh, countless submissions to, to be featured in their showcases. Uh, these are ones that like just missed the cut from their last show. So like, we just kind of let does have full rain.
02:21:19
Speaker
And funny enough, um, when I was chatting with the devs behind Pepperdink explaining like what we do and what we would need and so on and so forth, I, I mentioned that was like, Oh, I actually like, I know you guys like this, this game looks killer, excited to have you on. And they're like, how did you hear about us? I was like, I don't know. I, I, I think you came across my feeds, but like, you guys are definitely on my wish list. Uh, it turns out, uh, they had a Kickstarter over lockdown and, um, yeah, I,
02:21:45
Speaker
through it a few bucks. And I just totally forgot that I, yeah, I did that, it was a weird coincidence. But amazing to hear that it feels as good as it looks. It does. Yeah, hell yeah. Technically, it is Austin's term, but we'll go to Harry. We'll go to Harry for the next one. But I thought there was a ah method. Anyway, I will go. The Quiet Things by developer, Silver Script Games.
02:22:13
Speaker
an autobiographical narrative game based on real diary entries kept as a teenager. The Quiet Things seeks to explore mental health issues with a raw but brave look at childhood abuse and trauma, with a deep focus on storytelling through audio set foot in Alice's world and hear her story. And there's a demo available that someone may have played.
02:22:37
Speaker
and I did that. I previewed this next one, two, three, four total games. are This is the Austin crew right now. This is the block of of me. We're visiting world premiere as well. Yeah. yeah world premiere road premiere sorry It's heavy. It's heavy. As like the description says, it talks about like.
02:22:54
Speaker
Suicide, it talks about like cutting and like the addiction you can get from cutting. um And like just like using those topics is easy. I'm not saying it's like easy to successfully do that, but they do it well. like The perspective they're coming at it from, like they're not just using it to get you in the door. They're like actually doing it and using those topics well and thoughtfully. And it I do want to say it's not all doom and gloom. like There was a little instance where it was like, hey, this good thing happened because someone noticed that thing. And I'm like, oh, that's nice.
02:23:22
Speaker
Most of it is doom and gloom, but there is a little bit in there of like happy go lucky stuff. So, and I just, I just think they're, if they're going to tackle these topics, they do it right. That's the main point I want to make. And shout out to Alice, uh, most of you had a silver script to just.
02:23:39
Speaker
having the courage to like, it sounds like very cliche, very Hallmarky, but like having the courage to put her heart on her sleeve and and make a game about her story, not something you see too, too much, like an actual like autobiographical narrative venture. Right. And it it feels that way as you're playing it too. Yeah. Another one that um I think like Alice um ah Maybe last year, I remember quiet things submitted and like, it felt possibly a little too early and and similar just to give, I think we talked about this Kyle in the first half, but it gives some insight. Like we try our best like for, for this, for March, for example, we tried our best to stick with just 20, 24 games. Cause there, we have this showcase as well. That's when we can start getting into 2025.
02:24:24
Speaker
So that's where Alice and the Quiet Things landed when they submitted. So I'm so happy Des sought Alice out to to bring her back in. Because yeah, this is um it's special and like Austin said, heavy and I feel like necessary, honestly, to to get a story out there like this. You're muted. I agree. but be okay i agree with Also, Alice and the Quiet Things, it's a banger band name.
02:24:50
Speaker
o um She talks about it like ah like a rocker goth phase she goes through. Yeah. it's true you know saying um Since this is the Austin block and she's going to be talking about his ah impressions, I'll take this next one. Showcase debut for Once Upon a Rogue's Tale lizard child ah developed video game published by Poly Pirates ah with a demo available right now. Embark on a journey through your favorite fairy tales in this charming roguelike deck builder. Trade dice in battle to play lots of different cards or to use powerful character abilities, encounter story events, and make tough decisions that shape your journey as it unfolds into your personal storybook. Also was popping off during the, uh, after you played this in the discord.
02:25:37
Speaker
This was my favorite preview that I wrote. Um, it's, have you played slay the spire little game? That's pretty good. It's pretty good. It's a lot like 300 hours. Austin it's a lot like that. I have it on mobile. So trust me, I've put a lot of time into slay the spire too, but it's a lot like that, but they add like dice roll to it. And the dice roll, basically you can roll dice set before you do anything that like but essentially shows you like your energy for what you can do with your moves that your cards have. Um, it's like your, your mana to use, to use these abilities.
02:26:03
Speaker
Um, but that, that small angle to it really, really like carries a lot of weight. And I i loved it. You encounter like three major care. I don't want to say who they are, but like you start out as like red riding hood and there are two other characters you can start from. They're locked out in the demo, but they're two other like starting characters you can get. And then there are other fairy tale characters you go into, uh, you come in contact with and you, and you fight them. And then you, there are choices that will literally change, uh, your storybook that you're going, that you're creating as you play.
02:26:28
Speaker
So you can be like, oh, this is a villain. They're bad. But you can be like, I'm gonna be nice to them. They don't deserve that. And then something else happens. And you're like, oh, I've never seen this side of character X. Again, I don't wanna spoil things and on who's in there. But- Mr. X is in this game. Whoa! who What a fairy tale get. um But yeah, this was like my favorite game to play. I didn't want the demo to end. I played the demo again, cause it was that good. Cause I wanted to see how ah how else I could i could like ah strategize and get in there and do that again. But it's awesome.
02:26:56
Speaker
Um, and one of the notes I wanted to add to this is fairy tales don't usually do it for me. So those are my, my thing, but it doesn't hold it back at all. But I just imagine that, cause they mastered this, like say the spire formula, they, they tweaked it and stuff and they added the dice. I think it's like a key formula that I could see this working for a lot of different IPs. Like I think if they had like the right IP, it would be money, money, money. That's all I'm saying. Like this, there's something here. There's something here that is really, really promising. So really good. Awesome. Kyle.
02:27:26
Speaker
Take us to Venice. Let's go to Venice. Everybody developed by silent chicken. Sliding hero has a showcase debut right here on the six one to the showcase with the demo available on steam. Sliding hero is a top down puzzle Metro Metroidvania, where you slide in a single direction until hitting an obstacle trapped in a sinister 1700s Venetian Villa, explore a world inspired by Venice's carnival that will test your wits to overcome challenges, uncover secrets and unmask your destiny.
02:27:58
Speaker
Who chatted with silent chicken? Oh, I believe Harry and I. yes Yeah. What'd they say? Like, I'm pretty sure. Yeah. We chatted with, um, I think one of the, yep. The CEO, I think, or the head of a silent chicken, as well as one of the main artists of the game, um, getting to learn of their style and it being like very comic booky.
Game Mechanics and Demo Experiences
02:28:22
Speaker
Um,
02:28:23
Speaker
in the way that they're doing like their story and the character art and whatnot. Um, I love that this, similar to like what Austin said earlier about the metal detector game. I love how we're getting more of like these slide puzzle games. Like it's a really cool mechanic. Um, like with a ranger a month ago or so at this point, month and a half ago, whatever it was, um, getting more like that, I think is really, really fun and a nice little of like,
02:28:52
Speaker
way to train your brain or rewire your brain while you're playing, I think is really, really fun. Um, yeah, it looks gorgeous. It looks like a good time. This game has probably hard as hell, but this game has style. I wouldn't say it's hard, but it is a thinker. And I think those are different things that you can't just like willy nilly do things, but you do have to kind of sit there and then plot out what you're going to do. Um, but yeah, so the way I described this to y'all when we were talking is this isn't the most exciting way to describe it, but it's the best way I can. You remember those Pokemon puzzles where you're on ice and you can only slide in one direction. You have to like know the stones using strength or whatever, and you had to do it like just perfectly.
02:29:29
Speaker
it's that That is this game, but like they evolve on it, and evolve on it, and evolve on it, and there's combat. and yeah I found out that um the sliding games aren't for me. That's what I found out. I had a few bugs, too, when I booted up the demo. and Again, its it's a demo. It's a bug in a demo, so it's like it's fine. Who cares?
02:29:47
Speaker
But I originally boot up the game and I was just immediately stuck in a log and I was like, am I doing something wrong? There's a lot. There's like no sliding yet because I just couldn't move like some here on this case. Then there are like screen tears and fissures. But after that, after I got into the game, um which I just rebooted it and it was fine. um Yeah, it's there's there's a lot going on under the hood. There's a lot. Like I said, there's a lot of style to this game.
02:30:09
Speaker
um with with going from like corridor to corridor, there's a lot of like characters you can interact with. And they're like giving you these like small little hints that your character's past. And I can tell there's like a like a weaving narrative going on, but they the demo didn't have a lot of it. But I could tell it was like setting it up to like continue and be like actually thought provoking. And i I liked that about it. I wish I got more of that, but I understand it's just it's just a demo. It's probably just like the very beginning.
02:30:35
Speaker
but I liked what I played. It made me think, which I hate doing that, but it it does it does make you think. So yeah, I enjoyed my time overall. Hell yeah. Yeah, I'm excited. i Weirdly enough, when you described it as the Pokemon ice caves, gyms, whatever it may be, that made me go like, ooh, okay. Yeah, which I know like a lot of people that like when talking about like Pokemon gold and silver, like that, whatever gym that was, I think the seventh badge.
02:31:03
Speaker
um people fucking hate that gym. But for whatever reason, if you like get in the zone and like, there's something so satisfying about nailing that. I was just going to say that yeah satisfying you feeling you get when you finally figure out what your path is and how to properly just like get rid of these like hazards to get to other enemies and stuff. And yeah, once you put it all together, you're like, Oh yeah, I'm a, I'm a G right now. All right. I didn't see that coming. I'm excited to play like a modern take on that mechanic from somebody who's not Pokemon company. Yeah. That's a good point.
Horror and Narrative Game Previews
02:31:33
Speaker
Becca, please ah tell us about our most anticipated game of the year.
02:31:40
Speaker
Um, okay. Moving on. Thank you. That's the name of the game developed by rung organ and published by critical reflex. We have showed off mouth washing. The five crew members of the toolbar are stranded in the empty reaches of space shrouded in perpetual sunset. God is not watching developer interview. Becca's preview, all the things it's like, it's.
02:32:09
Speaker
I'm going to let you talk about the gameplay just based on your, on your preview. But I think like this is the type of game that is so best experience. If you have no idea what you're about to get yourself into. Yeah, I won't, I won't talk about story because that's something that you really have to experience for yourself, but it's just, it's just one of those games that you play it and you're like, they are doing it.
02:32:32
Speaker
exactly right and it has this nostalgic feel to it because of the way that it looks but it has a modern feel to it because of the way that it plays and you get such a small g glimpse um and you i'll so i'll say it again like i said earlier you just are left wanting so much more and you want so many answers um and i think just i i think the storytelling here is really the most incredible part but the fact that you just feel so unsettled because it it is really horrifying. Um, and in such a short amount of time, the way that they managed to, to make such an impact is really, is really incredible. And, um, my God. And, uh, by the time you're listening to this, it comes out in like three days. So, ah um, yeah, me and Kyle got to talk to the devs and, uh, something great conversation just about like grunge horror in general and like some of the inspiration, some of their favorite grunge horror titles. But, um,
02:33:31
Speaker
What I loved, what I love about this game and like something we got into during during the conversation was just how much this game fucks with the player in the best way possible. I love, it's so, I feel like it's a little cliche at this point, but when a dev does it with care and not as like a cheap little jab, it is so effective and mouth washing does that to the fucking nines. It is,
02:33:57
Speaker
I think we, well, we played this during next to us in February and both of us were like just over the moon about it. I'm so happy we got to show it here. Um, please play this game support wrong organ. Even if like you, you don't feel like waiting a few days and and you want something like kind of fucked up and gnarly play their previous game, how fish is made also very good. Um, yeah, grunge horror is alive and well, and we, we love it in this house.
02:34:27
Speaker
Austin, you haven't gone in a bit.
02:34:30
Speaker
I was talking a lot. I don't know what you're talking about. Okay. How do I actually pronounce this? Oh moot. Oh moot. I say ommut. Oh moot showcase debut developer or developed by Madam cyclone. It's pretty cool name published by megabit publishing embark upon a mysterious quest to find a woman from your dreams, along with a wise cracking yet ominous companion battling through strange and terrifying entities on the sinister journey into the murky depths of the red abyss, Was that one sentence? Holy crap, that was a lot, sorry. Effective. They got it all in there. They got it in there. Only one comma as well, very impressive. Oh, it looks gnarly.
02:35:10
Speaker
um ah i I love this CRT. So with the Showcase Dubu interesting thing here, this, ooh, it's been like so long now. I forgot the original name. um Oh, I know this. Aldertroke. Sorry, Kyle. I just like jumped in there. Nope. Nope. You had it. this good yeah This is the interesting thing that like, when we going through the submission process, the original name, Aldertroke, that's what we were familiarizing ourselves with. So this is an interesting showcase debut because it it is a the debut of the new name. And Kyle, I believe you were part of the conversation where you really got into what the name means.
02:35:50
Speaker
Yes, and I don't have the memory recall to get into that right at this very moment. Can I say something real quick? I do think the links on this page are wrong. I went to click on the Steam link, and it's for a different game. And same thing for the for the Twitter link. Good catch. Good catch. Mike is tired.
02:36:08
Speaker
Right when I clicked on that, you guys said that originally the name was blah, blah, blah. And I was like, oh, they changed the name. And he was like, no, that's just a different game. Yeah, essentially, you're
02:36:22
Speaker
It's very much based in like a Russian folk folklore and folktale. I might actually be confusing another game that we're about to talk about, ah but it's really cool how it's a hard game. He mentions in the interview, ah but it's not supposed to be frustrating. It's just supposed to be like, you're going to need your skills to complete it. um And I just love how right off the gate, gate he's like, yeah, you're a little companion, dude.
02:36:50
Speaker
Don't always trust him. i love that like He might, he might portray you. It's fine. Yeah. So, uh, I mean, just like visually that this like CRT filter of it all is just like, so cool.
02:37:04
Speaker
So yeah, very excited. Definitely something that, um again, I'm a little i'm a little weird, a little freak who likes little weird sicko games. I like when horror does some interesting shit. And yeah, right away, this is another one that um just purely based on vibe and style alone, um all the way to. And then the the gameplay itself was very surprising. I was expecting this to be just like a not chill, but a horror narrative venture, just 2d narrative venture point A to point B getting a cool story. I was not expecting the safe to assume maybe twin sticky action. Um, yeah. but also He also describes it as a ah fever dream. I love fever dreams. Yeah. Yeah. Harry.
02:37:53
Speaker
Next. All right, next one is a showcase debut called Painted in Blood by developer Madcraft and publisher Perp Games. Trapped in the haunting realm of an artist-twisted nightmare, engage in intense combats with grotesque enemies and monsters, experience unpredictable horror events that unfold dynamically, seamlessly blend classic retro FPS elements with modern elements.
02:38:21
Speaker
Not my jam, but I'm shit excited for the people who love it. Yeah, that's what I was referring to earlier with Ratchet, same thing, publisher, another really sick take on FPS. And this is so far on the lineup. This is one of the games um that like, as soon as I saw it, I'm just so ready to play. I'm just so in the mood for a boomer shooter and Pains of the Blood seems to be doing it.
02:38:45
Speaker
so It's such a unique fashion that also is very authentic to what it's trying to do. So like your doom, so your, your retro, um, re modern retro boomers, yours, like, uh, forgive me, father and, um, fallen aces, stuff like that are no, not fallen aces. Um, Ooh, the other new blood game that I am blanking on, but new bloods FPS dusk. That's what I'm thinking of. Um,
02:39:13
Speaker
What really drew me here was, and it's so like, it's kind of hard to tell in the trailer, but the animation of the enemies, it's kind of like you are operating at 60 FPS and it seems like the enemies are have like that. I forgot the technical term for it, but it's kind of like the spider versey kind of animation style to it where it's like skipping a frame or like a lower frame rate. And it's so effective. I think just like it's similar to spider verse and why that is so effective where You are watching a film in 24FPS, something super cinematic, but you it's playing a trick on your eye where the frames are dropping for the characters themselves. so um Yeah, really impressive to see that in our first person's shooter where things have to be so accurate and so precise. So yeah, super excited.
02:40:06
Speaker
um Speaking of super excited, that's me four one- eyeed leeo for from developer Morteska. velve Demo available now. One-Eyed Leko is a grim first person horror adventure set in a world inspired by a dark Slavic fairy tale. Awesome fairy tales. You love them. Explore an unsettling and twisted land set in 19th century Russia in your endeavor to escape your own evil fate.
02:40:33
Speaker
developer interview from Becca and Kyle, I believe you got to start the Vlad. Yep. scott So this is the one that I was thinking of before, of basically like a Russian folktale. um I know Harry loves, not Harry, excuse me, Harry. I know you have the link, but this is not Harry. This whole block is very much like, I'm so happy for you guys. I'm just covering my eyes. This is a knee block. like Exactly. So that that's what I was going to mention. was say block we We've heard you talk about how much you love Mondone and this is like that kind of visual style to it all. And Vlad was talking about how,
02:41:09
Speaker
Yeah. I'm glad was talking about how, uh, the main mechanic is you are just taking a little match and it's all like you use that flame to solve puzzles in the world. Um, and it's beautiful and like the black and white kind of like hand-drawn aesthetic. It's awesome.
02:41:30
Speaker
demo available now, which I previewed. and it is it's so interesting The way that it starts is so interesting. It's kind of like you're in having a little bit of a fever dream, but because it's got this really cool grayscale look to it, everything feels I don't know how to explain it feels like an old black and white movie like an old creepy black and white movie that you can't really explain what's going on at the very beginning and then you have this kind of strange creature that tells you he the main character is saying like I want i want honesty I want I want to find out the truth and you don't really know about what and then someone says you can only gain knowledge by finding and seeing Liko so he says like you know what
02:42:09
Speaker
I'm just gonna find Liko then and he just goes off into like this like dark scary forest and just starts you know looking for Liko and I'm like what a crazy guy.
02:42:23
Speaker
It's like, crazy boy what a crazy guy, this creepy creature. mo You just see these like long pointy fingers and the person just says, go find Liko if you want answers. And he's like, okay. And then just like goes off into this horrifying forest and starts burning stuff. And, you know, and I think it's really intriguing. And and I think it's based off of Slavic folklore, yes which I know Kyle mentioned, um,
02:42:49
Speaker
And um one of the things that the developer mentioned when we were speaking to him is that they like to base their games off of folklore because it is it is something that in ah certain cultures is so untapped and they were able to find something so creepy that really they couldn't think had ever been told before and I think that's really wonderful to kind of revisit and re-amp old stories from our past that that really freak us out. So I think that's what they're doing and I think it's really it's really really cool.
02:43:17
Speaker
And the demo was a really good glimpse of what you can expect. What ah immediately drew me to this, um, when just seeing ah across like the six one mini Twitter feeds and whatnot before they, they Vlad submitted it for the showcase. Um, and Vlad mentioned this in the feature at during the showcase. So like it's not only is it quite obvious, but like he, he does talk about the inspirations. Um, yeah, he mentioned eight 24 horror flicks and you know, it's easy to see Robert Eggers in this game and man,
02:43:47
Speaker
I am such a Robert Eggers sicko. I'm part of the Eggers gang. Eggers gang rise up. Nosferatu. Let's fucking go. Same week as Sonic three. We did a gang. Um, very excited to, um, have a playable version of like an Eggers inspired kind of world tone, mood, vibe, aesthetic. Um, it seems like he's hitting all the right notes. Um, I can't wait for this.
02:44:14
Speaker
Becca. Yes. Tell me about the dinos. Okay, I'll tell you about the dinos. I just need to scroll back up. I got distracted. Oh, I've got it. I've got it. Don't worry. Okay. I'm going to showcase the debut with clever girls from developer Osifrage Games. LLC? Did I say that right?
02:44:34
Speaker
I was really confident and then my confidence just immediately plummeted. Okay. Awesome. We'll go with that. Um, clever girls is a story driven relationship focused turn based dinosaur PG out with poachers with stealth and teamwork while also navigating relationship drama, explore a mysterious decaying Island, defeat overwhelming odds and escape capture. Another one that I'm pretty sure we got about three seconds into the trailer before we decided it was in.
02:45:04
Speaker
Yeah. Turn-based dinosaurs relationships. Yes. What's not to love? Also what a great, now um so again, like similar to how we were talking about metal detective, how is clever girls not a video game that we've heard of before? Like the name clever girls. It's perfect. Honestly. Yeah. I'm typically not a turn-based person, but they got me with, I, there's just something about putting like human dialogue to dinosaurs that I really like.
02:45:31
Speaker
Have you heard of the game? Goodbye volcano high yeah as well. Yeah. But I think it's, it's, I guess funnier is not like the, the term to really use here, but like more endearing with that. It's just like it's actual dinosaurs and not oh yeah it's great humanoid dinosaurs. Yeah. Very exciting. Again, I'm not a term based person, but like, this is my jam and I super cool that it's fully multiplayer, like play together. Yeah.
02:45:56
Speaker
Did I make up, was there like a flirting angle or did I make that up in the video? I thought there were like dinosaurs flirting with our dinosaurs or something. If that's not true. I think there's like some sort of like relationship system potentially. If you want to do that in your head, Ken and Austin, all power to you. Hell yeah. Nate does dinos. Also, Austin, can you tell me about some good old pups? Let me clear my throat one second.
02:46:24
Speaker
Let me clear my throat. my ran with my wow while wow Very happy that you gave me this one because this one looks like totally my jam. Haunted pause developed by Lazy Flog. Haunted pause is a cozy co-op horror game where you play as two puppies trying to rescue their human friend in a haunted mansion. Create your puppy, explore spooky environments and defeat evil creatures in an action packed adventure. This one looks awesome.
02:46:49
Speaker
Yeah, ah you are such a, a game I equate to you so much as it takes two. And this is, it seems like it takes two with pups and a little bit Luigi's mansion. I would say, yeah, just and then your dogs. Just put those together and then your dogs. And you get to dress them up. You get to create your own little pup. Yeah, you get to create a pup. COP, it's a that's what I'm going to miss, you know? It's the only cops I like, you know what I'm saying?
02:47:19
Speaker
Yeah, this looks great. This has been um kind of floating around for quite some time now. Another one that seems like it's close-ish, but yeah, very excited to like, I'm awesome, like I'm sure with you, like um I'm very excited to sit down with Kelsey and play this. I'm sure you're very excited to play with your partner as well. um Kyle, this seems like something the girls would love.
02:47:39
Speaker
like playing with the girls. They will rip each other apart. They'll have a great time creating their pup and then it all goes downhill. Exactly. Then when it comes to collaborating with each other to solve puzzles, everything's out of the window. Hey, that's my wife and I too. So it's fair. I'm always just a jerk. Like you're too slow. I'm i'm leaving. She's like, no. Uh, Harry.
02:48:04
Speaker
big Yeah, speaking of cute creatures, we got kitties. This is a world premiere of Inspector Waffles' early days by Galosso Games. And there's a demo. So a top-down detective adventure with point-and-click mechanics inspired by classic Game Boy games. Follow Waffles in his first days as inspector who wants to prove to everyone that he is more than just a rookie. But beware, your future worst enemy is hiding in the shadows.
02:48:35
Speaker
And we also did a developer interview.
RPG and Adventure Game Introductions
02:48:37
Speaker
I believe it was me, Becca and Kyle. And that was a really fun one. Guess what? They're making an actual Game Boy cart for this.
02:48:46
Speaker
i am my like I love making poor decision with my finances. fucking just As we all do. so gary got it Get yourself out of pocket. They're currently on sale by the time of this recording. oh my you want to Wait, well, yeah, I don't want to, I'm not impulse buying right now, but i super, buying super duper cheap. Do it on the show. support respect to one I'm absolutely not going to fall for peer pressure. I'm just going to ignore you guys. You want to know what that Game Boy copy looks like. The dev did give us a glimpse of it in the. Yes. ah so Yeah. Exclusively on our interview right yeah here. And this is just to note this is like a Charizard.
02:49:29
Speaker
All cats are Charizards. This is a prequel, by the way, yes just in case anybody doesn't know. This is a prequel to Inspector Waffles, which came out back in 2021. Yes. And the original Inspector Waffles, it it wasn't like this like um Game Boy looking type. It was a little bit different. Oh, yeah. Austin, you should actually go. I feel like you would really dig the first one. It's very, um it's very backbone.
02:49:58
Speaker
I'm looking at it right now and yeah, it looks like my, my, my, my kind of shit. Yeah. Yeah. So I find it fascinating that, uh, instead of just going the traditional route of like making a prequel in a similar art style that was already established that I'm sure he had plenty of assets that he could just kind of reuse and just create a new story like that.
02:50:16
Speaker
fuck it, game boy game, make a cart, go all in. it's so That's such a cool fucking book. We need more, and there's probably a lot of these, but they're they're just hard to make, but we need more well done, like detective style games. Those are those are what i what I was getting at. but Gameboy games, is that what you're leaning towards? because I don't know, but both are cool. I think, and hopefully I'm not just making this stuff off the top of my head, but I think when we asked him like what that why he made that choice to kind of go even more old school with the prequel is because it makes sense, because it's based you know before Inspector Waffles, so of course things wouldn't look exactly the same, it wouldn't be exactly the same. Man, the next one's going to be on PS5.
02:50:56
Speaker
ah Yeah, very excited. Also, just going back to the previous segment, Inspector Waffles, also another cop I like. He had to bring it back. He had to bring it back. The two exceptions. Yeah, we had to do a redemption with that.
02:51:14
Speaker
shout to the officers in the chat, ah respect, no offense. um Next up, we got a showcase debut for Acium from Thousand Stars Studio, another one that absolutely floored us as soon as we hit play on that goddamn trailer. The village of Acium is in turmoil. Chaos reigns supreme following the sudden and mysterious disappearance of the beloved co-mayors, demons eager to snatch the almighty celestial blue, are preparing to plunge ah plunge the world into internal darkness. It's up to Vishva Ramli, my apologies, and Guruji to dazzle the hearts of disgruntled villagers with extravagant turn-based battles and rally them against the demons in this Bollywood-inspired fantasy RPG. Bollywood-inspired fantasy RPG.
02:52:06
Speaker
Are you kidding on me? Oh my God, jinx. It's very exciting. Developer interview available as well. Who was in that one? I think that might've just been a solo Kyle. Oh, so, so, so, so, ok okay. Yeah. this So me, I talked with, I talked with, uh, Parth and Holly, um, from the team about this adorable,
02:52:33
Speaker
really eye-catching RPG game. Um, and they're just really excited and again to showcase their, the culture of India and Bollywood specifically, as well as making a game where it's all about, instead of doing like typical fetch quests or going slaying a monster or whatever, you're just going out doing random acts of kindness for folks. And those are the quests. And, uh, the funny thing in the interview they mentioned is so many people who, um,
02:53:03
Speaker
played the demo and did play tests and whatnot. They really wanted an option to be mean to the in-game characters. So they added it. Although they hope no one does that because they really just want to make sure they're so spreading kindness is the is the main goal. But they, the players wanted it, the players got it. Oh yeah. Yeah. i um This is a game that I don't understand an indie studio is making.
02:53:28
Speaker
Yeah, it does not look like it. It looks incredible. I think like we had the mutual gut reaction of like, oh, this is very Cana looking, which Cana also a small studio, but like had the backing of a major first party. um It's just, it's wild. and That team is so goddamn talented. And Ember Lab was like an animation studio before, right? yeah did Did I make that up? Okay. So like, even the fact that we're comparing these two, like, pretty good.
02:53:56
Speaker
Yeah, awesome. um Kyle, I'm going to skip you for now because I know one coming up you were super jazzed about. So, Becca, I know you were super jazzed about this one. I was. This is another showcase debut. We're talking about Near Mage from developers stuck in Attic. You have been invited to stay in Transylvania for the summer, only to find out that you come from a long line of witches. Meet your new vampire and striggly classmates. Embrace your destiny and enroll in the Transylvanian Institute for Magic, a supernatural adventure made in Transylvania. We don't get enough point in clicks like this.
02:54:32
Speaker
This is like classic point and click. This is like Lucas arts, like old school, double fine point and click. And I'm so happy somebody's carrying the torch of those, those libraries. Cause aside from the recent monkey Island game, I can't think of another that really, I'm sure they're out there, but I can't really think of another that really like broke through. Yeah. Someone's got to do it. Yeah.
02:54:57
Speaker
And I think one of the things, specifically Matt, I mean, we were all impressed, but specifically Matt brought up a few times is that you can like fully customize your character. Yeah. And that is really cool in something like this and something like a point click. Technically very impressive also. Yeah. To be able to pull off. Yeah. Beautiful. Just super eye catching. Gonna be a good one. Austin, tell me about the cops. Oh no. This is an exclusive book. The corrupt cops.
02:55:26
Speaker
A trailer shady world narrative crime or punishment developed by scale issue studios demo available right now Play as a corrupt detective on the mobs payroll and cover up their crimes read files collect information and them obscure evidence to frame an innocent bystander How could you who was at the wrong place at the wrong time after all crime pays? You like that you like that? I love it The exclusive you got here was there's new narrative trailer for that introduces the main characters are Kyle. I cut you off. Nothing. I just said no notes. That was a great line.
02:56:02
Speaker
it I'm so excited for this. I love playing as a ah dirty little bastard, you know? It's just framing people. yeah I love it. I previewed this one and um it's so cool. It's so different because I guess you're used to kind of playing as police and things and and then also playing as the bad guy, but playing as both is really interesting.
02:56:25
Speaker
Um, and you're basically like, you can tell that he's like, he's at the point in his life, this main character, where he's kind of like, I know I shouldn't be doing this, but do I really care? Um, and I will say the, the description says like, frame an innocent bystander. They're not innocent. They're not net like, he's framing like other.
02:56:46
Speaker
ah Other criminals like so it's like you're saving one criminal you're ruining the lives of other criminals, but it's so much fun It's like the Dexter conundrum where it's like he's a killer, but he's killing other serial killers Yeah, but it's so much fun because instead of going there and trying to solve the crime you're trying to pin the crime on someone else so you're like oh I'm gonna take this knife that actually did the deed and replace it with this knife and like I'm gonna put this lipstick here so that they think it was this woman and it's just a really interesting concept that I think is gonna be really fun in the long run once they've got you know more than one mission for you to do.
02:57:23
Speaker
I would like to also just admit right now, I did not realize Dexter was a serial killer who only killed all their serial killers. Oh, sorry spoilers. star I just, I just thought he was a serial killer on the horse. I've never watched an episode of that show and I knew that. Surprise. move up Sorry. Sorry. I had I had to use it. I had to do it. It's a really good show. It's on my eventually to watch list.
02:57:46
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I know. Dexter prequel coming to the Showtime 2024. It's a real one. Yeah. There is this year. There's a secret. I believe so. Wasn't there a post show? There's a sequel. Yeah. There is a secret Not The video game would go hard. The extra video game would go hard. she saying yeah that doesn'ly I'd be into that. Yeah. Whoa. Didn't expect that from Harry.
02:58:11
Speaker
I mean, come on, that sounds like a choice-based game that we can discuss another time. Yeah, it would definitely be like a telltale kind of story-based game for sure. Dexter will remember that. Anyway. I shouldn't have brought up Dexter. Enough fanfiction. Kyle, you were excited about this one. I sure was from developer backwoods entertainment. We stay behind with the demo available right now on steam. We stay behind as a single player, third person, mystery between dreams and reality. A comment is on course to destroy a small town, but it's inhabitants refuse to leave. Interview the people of laburnum Creek, explore a beautiful national park and unravel the secrets of this picture acts.
02:58:51
Speaker
town might be one of my favorite trailers of the showcase. Um, you think it's just another narrative based game and the cozy little town getting to meet the towns folks. And then there's a serious total shift and some weirds going on here. And I just love how the trailer played out. I love a narrative heavy kind of story like this. Um, yeah, I'm very, very into it. And I, I'd like the premise of a comment is come to destroy the town. No one wants to leave.
02:59:20
Speaker
Would you say, get out of here and it's not a one-to-one obviously, but this reminded me of like a different perspective, but they're going for the same vibe as like an oxen free type of game. So I would say, and and again, another game slash studio that I i always equate to you. um I forgot their second game and you reviewed the second game on six one indie of Virginia. Who? You Austin. what What game did I review? Last stop. Last stop. less ah It gives me that kind of a vibe. Okay. So yeah i I played the demo. Would you like to hear from me? oh yes i It's me again. I played so many demos.
03:00:02
Speaker
um Yeah. So it's, uh, I would say that it's life is strange kind of vibes. It's on that kind of spectrum. It has bits and pieces of everything we've mentioned. It has, honestly, yeah, bits and pieces of everything we've mentioned, but you kind of show up and you're a journalist and you are basically like... Time out. Please excuse Harry's banging around. no so sorry I thought I was muted. no that's okay
03:00:36
Speaker
His claw he's climbing his tree scratcher thing fell down my pants man. I felt like he hurt himself. So Oh, OK, sorry, my bad. saving He's saving the child. um So you're a journalist and you've basically shown up in this town to interview people to basically be like, why are you crazy people staying here when there's a comet headed right for you? um And it's, first of all, really, really beautiful because it's based in this like national park where like people are there to relax, it seems like.
03:01:09
Speaker
um But like the more people you talk to, the more kind of sinister it gets. Not in a way that it's like, is this going to become a horror, but in a way that there's something seriously going on here. that like are they Are those people trapped there? like What's actually happening? um So I think that it it leaves so many questions. And I just got to say, out of all the demos, the way that this demo ended,
03:01:33
Speaker
Oh, it's like, it's so good. I'm not going to say a thing. I don't want to spoil it for Kyle. I don't want to spoil it for anybody listening, but go play that demo just to get to the end. You can play probably like 15, 20 minutes and get that ending cut scene because it is impactful. Kyle, you said this was one of your favorite trailers, right? Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah. This, this one in the family record had a really good trailer. Like if, if this doesn't convince you, I don't know what you need, but it looks great. Big David Lynch vibes. Yes.
03:02:04
Speaker
So I know I feel like does he do the, the, the weekly videos still of like, it's Friday, separate September it's, or what is it? It's it' September 13th. And if you can believe it, it's Friday once again, and he would post that every week.
03:02:23
Speaker
I used to have a friend that would send me a link to him posting that every single week. yeah beggary
03:02:30
Speaker
Excuse me? We'll circle back later. Will we? Yeah, we will. um Next up, we got a world premiere. for Saudade from Aquiles. I had it locked in like for four games now. that You did the thing that we always talk about in high school, where you look ahead at what paragraph you're about to read, so you can practice it. I didn't do that. Cross through the barren landscape looking for a big enough rock to throw yourself off of, point and click in a post-apocalyptic Galiza through a cooking game with only one recipe developer interview available on the site.
03:03:10
Speaker
Another one we were like floored by. This is like the most art house. Give this game a Toronto film festival award or whatever you want to call our Tribeca award. Like mind boggling. Austin, you had your hand raised. ah Just check the Twitter link. It doesn't load for me. So I just wanted to.
03:03:32
Speaker
Okay. Calling you out on the podcast again, you know, thank you for keeping me in check. I could just send you a message now. I told most of you guys about this already, but I have a fun anecdote for, for so dead eight. Cause I was, I keep saying daddy, so daddy, ah dan because I was doing research, I can't remember why, I was working on something for the showcase and I was doing research on the recipe that you cook in this game. It's called Filoas, I think is how you pronounce it. And the first thing that comes up on the internet when you look up Filoas is Filoas dansangr, which are blood crepes that you like make with like pig's blood or like animal blood. And I was like, what?
03:04:15
Speaker
is going on. I don't think that that's the recipe that you make in the game because in the game they look like they're just just regular plain crepes because it mentions like three ingredients, which I think is like flour, water. There's a fourth blood salt. But yeah, but like the first thing that pops up is these blood crepes. And I'm like, what is this game? What's going on?
03:04:37
Speaker
Cool. Yeah. Did that Twitter link work for you? I removed it. Something fucking must have happened when they they filled out their asset form. Preaching and catching it. Also similar to Alice and the quiet things, Akiles is using this as like an autobiographical kind of thing of their journey. um in their, their, their homeland, which I'm blanking on exactly where, where it was, but super cool. I'm excited to show it off. Another one that's kind of hard to explain. You just have to like watch the incredible trailer to get an idea of what it really looks like. Yeah. Trailer trailer was fun. I liked the trailer. lot Yeah, it's a very good trailer. It's funny. It's like we, it was one that like really stopped us in our tracks where we, we watched it multiple times and then we read the premise and
03:05:28
Speaker
That's when it was like, oh, this is this is doing something. yeah yeah something when ground when you first When you first see it, like Becca, like she mentioned, it's like, you don't know exactly. We had to rewatch it. It's like, okay, what's what's it actually trying to convey here? Because it it takes a few a few watches, but then once you get it, it's like, okay, this seems important. Yeah, for sure.
03:05:48
Speaker
Next up, our good friend, the Crypt Master, crashed our party to give us four exclusive bangers from Akupara Games, the first of which Harry is going to tell us about. Yeah, an exclusive look, too, with the trailer with a release date announcement. ah Cabernet by the developer Party for Introverts, and like we said, published by Akupara Games. ah Cabernet is a 2D narrative RPG set in a 19th century Eastern European inspired world with a modern twist. Guide Liza, a young vampire in her new unlife among the unsuspecting town folk. Will you retain your humanity or to descend further into the horror you have become? And we also did a dev interview. I believe it was me, Kyle, and maybe Becca.
03:06:42
Speaker
No, just you and I, But this was a fun one for sure. um It was it was really interesting to kind of see them also expand their kind of size of games. The other game that they created was a lot smaller, more intimate, only a few minutes. But this seems to expand like exponentially in there. They were really excited to kind of tell us about like how much more goes into it and how much of an adventure it was to kind of make the game.
03:07:10
Speaker
and how to make an RPG that doesn't really have any combat. Yeah. That was a cool thing too, where it's all choices, like strategy, like what you can do instead of the violence and what you can do as a vampire trying to figure out this dual sided life to yourself.
03:07:30
Speaker
I might have been thinking of me because I did write the preview for it. Then that's where I got your name from. It's me again. I did the preview for this one. and And I really, really like it. You know, it's one of those things where it's like you feel like you've seen it before because it's vampires, which have been done. um But it it has such a kind of unique twist on it. And the characters were really, really intriguing. I really liked um the first couple of characters that you meet. And then the other thing that's really cool is that she can, like that there's like classic vampire elements. There's no there's no fucking glitter anywhere.
03:08:03
Speaker
um you know ah But anyway, you can like turn into a bat and you can influence people. And you can see immediately in the demo how those things are going to affect how the game plays out and things like that. And I think that's really cool.
03:08:20
Speaker
um But yeah, I really, I really liked flying around this at that. That was my favorite thing. It's really fun. Cool. Uh, you mentioned the glitter. I must say, um, when Kelsey was watching this trailer, uh, she was like, Oh my God, her story is like Carlisle story. said Okay.
03:08:42
Speaker
exhausting yeah Um, should mention also the release date is October 24th. Amazing. Very excited. Becca, take the next one. Okay. So we kind of mentioned this a little bit earlier, Olimode Games, their upcoming game, Sorry We're Closed. We had another exclusive look at it and the release date announcement, which is so, so exciting.
03:09:07
Speaker
Sorry We're Closed this is a nostalgic single-player survival horror game with rich lore, deep characters, and multiple endings. Explore unsettling locations with fixed camera angles, but fight in first person with demonic weapons. Open your third eye to see between worlds and uncover secrets and solve puzzles.
03:09:26
Speaker
Becca and I chatted with the team. First off, the release date there, November 14th. Can't wait. When we were talking about Graham's game, Hourlands, I mentioned there were two bangers, two music bangers. Star Wars Close has the second music banger of of the showcase. Shout out to Okumura with ah their song, Dream Eater.
03:09:50
Speaker
Obviously we we talked about it quite a bit in the interview where um very if you've played El Paso elsewhere in the past year or so, um music is a very big part of that game and Star Wars Close seems to be carrying that torch into Q4 2024 when this game launches in November where Okumara is really interestingly tied um to the gameplay and the narrative that is happening in Star Wars Close.
03:10:18
Speaker
um game looks fucking rad. I can't wait to play it. And the way the passion that the the team has for it is just like on another level. um It was funny, like they talked about how the game was initially revealed in E3 back in the day. It might've been over lockdown and um they weren't too sure that the that the game was selected and they were watching E3 and they showed they saw it pop up and they were so surprised by it. And the reaction, of course, was like outstanding, which helped open the doors quite a bit, which
03:10:52
Speaker
gets into like the importance of like showing indies on and on a platform like that um and like this. um Yeah, they're they're just like, again, two of the kind of human beings out there, um really excited for this. And yeah, um such a cool, unique take on survival horror, something we haven't really... Obviously, there's a lot of survival horror out there nowadays. We we talked about the renaissance of survival horror and they seem to be doing something quite unique in the space that not a lot of people are trying to do.
03:11:25
Speaker
Becca, did you have anything else to add? I kind of took over there. um Just that in general, the gameplay is it's one of those things, I think I mentioned this in my preview, it's familiar and also completely brand new, which is really fun because it has those fixed camera angles that anybody that played Resident Evil, that played Clock Tower, that played Silent Hill when we were younger,
03:11:47
Speaker
ah it will be so feel so familiar and feel so at home because you've got those those cool fixed camera angles. um But then, the ah like the description mentions, the battles are all first person and it it is seamless. there's there's They mentioned that originally there was no delay between it, but and then they added a delay because it made it a little bit smoother, but it is still completely unnoticeable. It's so seamless the way that you switch between the fixed camera angles to the first person.
03:12:13
Speaker
um I mentioned Catherine, the the like kind of story-based puzzle game Catherine. um It's kind of got that vibe, like the characters are really sexy, but there's this like fantasy dark thing happening and it's really, really dark. And then it also has these just neon colors that bring it completely to life. And so I think aesthetically it's incredible. Music-wise it's incredible. a Gameplay, it's incredible. This is a banger. It is so good.
03:12:44
Speaker
Yeah. Kyle. Sorry. I was muted. Take on on the next one.
03:12:51
Speaker
And an exclusive look with the trailer with the beta beta announcement video video bla hair bla blair video, coldt which we'll talk about again and in a second, uh, is bringing us a ah new look at airframe ultra. Welcome to the violent underground world of ultra circuit racing from the cracked asphalt of San Warro and the Ysidro edge lands to the hulking mega cities of the Texakali Zego zone.
03:13:17
Speaker
airframe riders from all across the Southlands compete for fame, fortune, and a chance of glory three feet above or six feet below.
03:13:28
Speaker
I cannot wait. They're bringing car combat back. Dude. It's like wipe out road rash. yeah like some metal in there Twist the metal. Oh, come on. And video cult. Video cult is obviously with the next game as well that we're going to talk about. ah Video cult, I don't know what the hell they're doing. Is that Harry and Kyle that got to chat with them? Correct. Cool. I guess, do you want to talk a little bit about the airframe half of that?
03:13:56
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. They were, they're very excited to show it off. Um, this has been in the works for a little bit. And like we mentioned, or like I just mentioned is they really want to bring back this genre of games that we've, a lot of us have played when we were younger, like the twist of metals, the vigilante eight series, um, back in the day. And we talked about like, what makes a good car combat game and how important it was to customize, uh, your, your frames in this one and your, your writers and.
03:14:27
Speaker
Um, I believe they also have like a character creator, like beta that you can go do and kind of customize your rider before you get a chance to play. Um, yeah, they're just super into the idea of bringing back a genre that's been long forgotten. When I finally saw this in motion, like in the trailer, it was like my standout of the entire show. Like I love seeing this in motion. and It's that cool. ah Agreed. So rad.
DLC Announcements and Showcase Reflections
03:14:56
Speaker
And, uh, the next one, obviously, um, shout out to the rain rolled sickos, you know, just shout out to the rain white. All those alerts. I mean, sickos in the most endearing way possible. Um, of course we got the exclusive look and the release date announcement for rain rolled the watcher it's launching, uh, in ah March, 2025. Um,
03:15:19
Speaker
The exact date is escaping me right now, but March 25, uh, rain world watcher is the DLC expansion of rain world journey beyond to something somewhere. Something somewhere only ever glimpsed. Uh, when the world beneath your feet cracks and crumbles, will you hold on all? Will you? Well, I can't with the sentence. Will you hold on to all you once knew or dive into the unknown trailer? I'm sorry to talk to video cult. It's fine. I'm also sidebar. I'm also dealing with something on the side. So I'm a little distracted. Um,
03:15:56
Speaker
yeah super so like i Again, another IP, another announcement that I can't believe that we got to reveal to people. Shout out to Acapara and our friends over there for really hooking it up and trusting us with like arguably four pretty substantial announcements for for that company and that leap the library.
03:16:15
Speaker
fun fact about rain world, uh, that we didn't realize until we did the interview, uh, the main game came out in 2017 and before it was released, the devs were working on it for a solid like seven or eight years. So it's a very huge, long love letter and a passion project of theirs. And it's really cool that eat now Eight years later, we're getting a new DLC, which is kind of cool. Yeah. Super sick. Happy for you, Rainworld Sickos. We did it. Thank you for being champions. Also legit, we are ah six days away from the showcase and um let me leave pull up really quick. Hold on.
03:16:57
Speaker
Hold on, hold on. I keep thinking it's like so far away and I'm just like, no, it's like this week. I finished up my last review and I was like, what do I do now? Cause we've been doing this for so long. Yep. So there are, uh, where is it? Sorry, I'm clicking a bunch of stuff.
03:17:16
Speaker
Yeah, ah there's 65 people waiting and I guarantee you all them are Rainworld folks. oh and Oh, the chat is popping off. Is it really? About Rainworld, yeah. It's not really like live. Currently live, it's popping up. We're six days away from this showcase and like people are just like so stoked for this. I'm so happy. Well, I love that because like people who probably loved it eight years ago or even six years ago, they're like, wait, it's there's more things happening? All right, I'll i'll tune into this. let's Let's see what's this about.
03:17:52
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, it's like, it's, and they're doing it right now. Like, like I'm trying to think like in five years, if they say there's going to be inscription DLC, I'm going to lose my mind and I'm going to wait on my computer patiently being like, all right, eight more days until I find more this. So I get it. When you, when you think about it, like that there started making it back in like 2010. That's crazy. That's ridiculous.
03:18:18
Speaker
Well, I remember he was saying it was like his side thing when he was like bored. He's like, I should be doing my schoolwork. I'm doing this and instead. It's fun. I could confirm we have one Silksong mention in the chat already. yeah it' or see you six days away Yeah. Can you imagine? I think we we talked about it a little bit. last ah part one, right Kyle? Where like we had the idea of, we were going to like write in the script, like, Hey, we don't have that kind of cloud, but we're with Kyle, because intelligently it was like, ah, leave it. Let them expect it.
03:18:55
Speaker
um Becca, close us out, please. All right. final game With a world premiere of the incredible Piero Fauna ah from developer Petun's.
03:19:06
Speaker
um i like pes I don't know the correct way, but it's fun. Hero Fauna is a charming exploration adventure game where the cute little flame ignites everything it touches and helps bugs in the dark, misty forest. In this forest, fire is a friendly element that Flora and Fauna look forward to and forest dwellers treat little flame as one of the deities. So yeah, super fun thing here. Um,
03:19:35
Speaker
I forgot if it was when submissions were open or like just as we were about to open them. Tamah is from Piedham's slid into my DMs or either my personal DMs or the 6.1 DMs. and just kind of like we were talking about showcases and and whatnot. And he got turned down from a lot of the summer showcases for some reason. Um, and he was just like telling us how, or telling me how like we were like his, his last chance for a big reveal this year. And like, he just had a kid and like working so hard on it and just like super excited to like properly show off the game. Um,
03:20:18
Speaker
And yeah, as soon as I saw what he was working on, it's just mind boggling again. um And that just went to an additional um layer with the featurette that ah follows after this trailer debut. ah All the environments are made out of paper.
03:20:39
Speaker
you Tomás is a mad man. Yeah. And is it is is it just him and one other person or just him? I think he is the primary dev. He ah brought on a composer and a ah sound designer, but I think game wise, he is the the primary person. yeah Which is wild. And what i while what I love about him too is that his game before this Papatura was one of the games that I'm like, oh man, this is so beautiful that it's just made out of
03:21:10
Speaker
paper in the paper world, but I never got around to it. So now I'm like, all right, now I got to play both of these is be like because they look so aesthetically unique in such a specific vibe that I'm like surprised I didn't get enough attention already that, you know, we're just going to blow it up and be like, all right, look at all these cool things that he's doing.
03:21:31
Speaker
Yeah. I also love the whole premise of a flame in this forest that should be destructive. And he's very clear of like, no, fire is a friendly element here in this game. Like people are looking forward to it. Yeah. It's very, very fun. Yeah. Yeah. This was another one that, um, as soon as we saw it and we like some of us had the conversation about this, we're like, Oh, that's the closer.
03:21:53
Speaker
Easily. yeah ah makes sense that This was our one non-2025 game and non-2024 game in here. We're like, okay, we'll get one just because we want to be the ones so to share this with folks. And yeah, I'm so glad that we got to. It's it's um <unk>s definitely, I feel like it'd be something special when it hits.
03:22:18
Speaker
Keep it tight, right? It could have been worse. It sure could. And but I'm happy that we all had a wonderful time. Hopefully. I'll do it again. My bad. Spirit City. Low five sessions. Let's delete it. Start over. I will leave this call. It's the fearsome poison now.
03:22:39
Speaker
Let's close things out super quick. thank you all so If you're still listening to this podcast, thank you all so much for hanging out with us and just being a part of the fun. Thank you so much for watching the showcase. Of course, we me and Kyle gave all of our flowers um in the the first part. So ah yeah, this was definitely in terms of like, obviously like the actual length of the show and the amount of games and our biggest yet, but also just in terms of like where we're heading, the new things we're trying, the the Steam events, the co-stream with IGN, like in those terms, definitely our biggest yet. And it's not lost on us that we are very fortunate to be ah in this place because of folks who believed in us and believed in this vision since day one. um So thank you so much for supporting. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for championing these indie devs and helping us
03:23:32
Speaker
do something a little different in in the indie scene. So please head on over to 6.1indie.com slash showcase. Every game has its own dedicated page where you can watch the trailers again. You can follow folks on socials. You can find the Steam page. You can find the interviews, all that good stuff.
03:23:49
Speaker
and um bit.ly slash six one steam, S-I-X-O-N-E steam. That will bring you to the steam event that is running between September 19th and September 23rd, 1 p.m. Eastern to 1 p.m. Eastern.
03:24:05
Speaker
um That includes all of the September, 2024 selections. That includes all of the August, 2020, nope, no, I keep saying, I keep wanting to say August, all of the March, 2024 selections and every single alumni from all of our previous showcases. So whether it's discounts, demos, take advantage of those, but also please wishlist everything, purchase games, all that good stuff, these devs, ah you know, it would mean the world to them. Yeah.
03:24:34
Speaker
I'm missing anything. You're all wonderful. all Yeah. I echo that till next. Oh, uh, also that we all, we actually ended the show with the indie game awards, uh, December 19th that's happening. So more details to come. Let us take a breather first and then more. Thank you so much. Farewell. Love you. Thank you.