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Perfect Tides - FIXED
118 Plays7 hours ago
**FIXED** If you downloaded this episode within the first seven hours of it being uploaded it was Dropsy again. Whoops! Who is the clown that uploads these?? Anyway now its the correct episode. Sorry about that!
Ben and Jess travel back in time to the year 2000 to talk fan fiction, forums, and first loves as they revisit the excellent adventure game Perfect Tides.
Quest Quest podcast is Ben Vigeant and Jess Morrissette.
Editing by Ben Vigeant
Show art by Kevin "WilcoWeb" Wallace
Watch us on Twitch!
Ben: https://www.twitch.tv/ps_garak
Jess: https://www.twitch.tv/decafjedi
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Talk with us on Discord!
https://discord.gg/ve9fqjgPp2
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Transcript
Introduction and Hosts
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello, my name is Ben. I am half of the podcast known as Quest Quest. The Adventure Game Podcast, and I'm Jess. I am the bottom half.
00:00:43
Speaker
ah i I didn't say. Oh, I thought we were liking one of those horse costumes. and like like Oh,
00:00:58
Speaker
Oh, brother. are doing, Jess? I'm pretty good, Ben. How are you? oh just
Weekend Adventures and Storm Encounters
00:01:04
Speaker
dandy. i We were talking about this a little bit before we started recording, but I just took...
00:01:10
Speaker
uh, like, uh, we're, this is a, a occasional, one of our occasional Sunday records as opposed to our, our typical time. and So, so I'm, I'm haunted by something that you're not going to feel for a little bit, which is of course the Holy spirit.
00:01:26
Speaker
Well, happy Sunday, everyone. Yes. But I'm also haunted by Uh, I have to go back to work and I, I took a couple of days off this week. I took half the the week off because I was showing some friends and around the city that I live in.
00:01:43
Speaker
And they, it was, I got to meet their their kid. Oh. oh who's Who's three years old. hadn't met their kid. Very cute. Very a cute young man. And it was us like going to stuff and racing against the terrible weather this week.
00:02:03
Speaker
Because there were some pretty nasty storms that hit Chicago. but Isolated T-storms? What? Isolated tea storms? I wouldn't even call them isolated.
00:02:14
Speaker
i would say. Pervasive. Yeah, they were pervasive tea storms. But now it's 64 out. So it's great. Like it was unbelievably hot out.
00:02:26
Speaker
ah and then And then after like just being like walloped by a bunch of ah ah pervasive tea storms. uh now now it's nice and like chilly so but yeah so now i have the the the sunday scaries with like the added spice of it's like oh and it's after like a a break but we went to uh you know we went to the zoo oh wow yeah and ben what the best animal
00:02:59
Speaker
I mean, so they put in, it's been a long time since I've i've been to the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, um which is like a small, that's ah it's ah it's a small public zoo, which is honestly great, especially with kid and like with a kid.
00:03:18
Speaker
and like a young kid and also ah like it's free ah but they, i don't remember this being there the last time I was there, which was probably well over 10 years ago, is that they had like this enclosure that like this this tube that went around like there where the the lions are and so you got to be like right up next to the lions like kind of how ah most places you know the the pool with all the seals you can yeah the otters you can poke your head up yeah yeah yeah and so this was like that like you got to be like a couple feet from the lions wow you really make fun of them then Yeah, you could finally make all those jokes that you have about lions. Like, I just walked in and I just looked the lion in the the face, the the head, you know, with a huge mane, and I said, Happy Pride Month!
00:04:19
Speaker
Oh, Ben. Yeah?
00:04:23
Speaker
ah oh ben yeah That's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty good. But I'm not lying.
00:04:35
Speaker
Great. But ah we, we, we did that. And then it was just like, right as like, we're wrapping up like the skies opened up and some, some friendly zoo staff like waved us into the visitor center where we just like stood there because uh like we didn't have any other way like we didn't drive there and we didn't have a car carrier so we couldn't take an uber out so it was just like we're just stuck here until it is it moves to a drizzle and we can catch a bus
00:05:10
Speaker
We also had a ah wildlife encounter ah this week. I went to the the aquarium in Newport, Kentucky. Whoa, that's like ah that's like a zoo that's just water.
00:05:22
Speaker
You know, i call aquariums wet zoos. That's what a lot of people are calling them wet zoos. yeah It's a compound word. I mean, we have some issues sometimes with the auto captions here in this podcast. And I just want to be very explicit.
00:05:39
Speaker
Wet zoo is one compound word. There's no space in between those two. Great. Okay, but I'm sure that the the the actual people that transcribe this i will pick that up and and be sure to make that modification.
00:05:54
Speaker
I just don't want any errors. They're going to come back to haunt me later. um But I went to an aquarium and Ben, I got to touch a manta ray as it swam by. um They had like the little petting area and I stuck out. They have all these signs that it's like you can only use two fingers. That's be your middle finger.
00:06:14
Speaker
and your index finger. It's like they have all these signs just like always use two fingers and it just shows them there with no context. So that's kind of fun. But you reach into the water. You get a because with like if you took a photo that sign and then read something kind of saucy, you're talking I would medium virality on blue sky. Yeah, know, I thought about it. literally thought like, I think I could go medium viral on Blue Sky with a photo of this and the right caption.
00:06:41
Speaker
And i was like, this is low hanging fruit. Yeah, I can do better than this. But yeah, the the ray swam by and I touched one of its wings. i don't want to brag, but you know. How how did you touch it?
00:06:54
Speaker
Two fingers? Two fingers. Yeah, I mean, well, they acted like there were so many signs. I didn't know, like, what would happen if I used one. Good, good. um But you know what? and Unlike the crocodile hunter, I live to tell the tale. Wow.
00:07:09
Speaker
Timely reference. Um... did you like shake your fist and go like, you're a difficult fight in quest for glory one. can always run away from you at night. if i saw Yes. You're not worth it in quest for glory one. I'm sorry. It is true. Like it's like most of those like more animal ones are just entirely useless. Just if you are going to drop something that I can sell back to the healer, uh, I'm running away from you. I'm sorry.
00:07:35
Speaker
If you don't have pockets full of cash or a claw or something I can whack off, ah of your body. Want to take that one again? ah Yeah, if you don't have an important body part that I can steal from you and sell ah or some goblin gold in your pockets, not going to happen.
00:08:01
Speaker
Yeah, the the goblin that won the the poker game. i love the combat goblin trading zone area in Quest for Glory 1. Oh, like the little goblin. Yeah.
00:08:17
Speaker
Like all the little silly things that... yeah all the little text. It's like, oh, this guy lost all of
Disney's Entertainment Strategy Challenges
00:08:23
Speaker
his lunch money. This guy, like they all... Yeah. Some very fun...
00:08:29
Speaker
little uh uh writing and just the graphics of the bodies just st thrown all over the screen it's like that is brutal what was the hero doing like we saw him just like take a couple of stabs at these guys in the gut they're trying to kill him and true it's like he comes by every few days Oh, not if, uh, not if it's me, you're, he's coming by, as many stamina potions as he can carry because I am playing quest for glory one to get everything maxed out to 100. And so I, because yeah, I got to, especially back and forth.
00:09:11
Speaker
Yeah, especially if you're going to keep that character around, you've got to max out quest for glory one. And to a degree quest for glory two, because at the time you get to three and four, then it's it's too much of a pain to max things out. so you gotta get those. You gotta catch get those points while you can while the getting's easy back in Spielberg and Shapir.
00:09:31
Speaker
Is this the most we've ever talked about adventure games prior to the I had that thought. Well, let me change the subject. Speaking of ah ah ah Spielberg, I watched Disclosure Day. i went to Disclosure Day on on Friday, his latest film.
00:09:46
Speaker
You want to know what? What? It was pretty all right. Yeah. It was a nice afternoon at the theater. It just happened seeing my friends off, and I was like, here I am downtown, and I've got free time.
00:10:01
Speaker
It's all taken a movie. What an exciting, what like I, there, there's nothing more power. There's no more powerful feeling to me than the feeling of, you know what?
00:10:13
Speaker
I think I'm just going to go see a movie. Like, and I like without, you know, without any sort of planning or anything, just going like I'm near a movie theater right now. Let's just see if I can go to a movie.
00:10:26
Speaker
It does feel so powerful. Yeah. Like, I mean, a, it says something about like your schedule, your, your autonomy, your agency as a human being. No, there is something very special. It's just like, I don't have to ask anyone's permission. I don't have to invite anyone along. I don't have to like clear out my day. I'm just going to see a movie. Yeah.
00:10:46
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, i still haven't seen The Mandalorian and Grogu. i had never thought there'd be a day where there'd be a Star Wars movie in theaters for several weeks. And i'd be like, i don't know. i may wait this one out. I think you're you're running out of time to see it in a theater. I don't think it's going to be staying in there for too much longer. Well, was at Target just yesterday and all the Mando and Grogu stuff was on end cap clearance. So things are not looking great in Star Wars land.
00:11:16
Speaker
I posted this today where, you know, Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Marvel, all all on the decline.
00:11:29
Speaker
And everyone's talking about sports. the the The era. and And I want to be clear when I say this, saying this is a celebration because I was tired of it. And I say it as a Doctor Who and Star Trek fan. like It's like I'm tired of ah because you know what?
00:11:47
Speaker
Too much. Too much. Wow. And too ubiquitous. was it's It's like a thunderstorm that's not isolated. Yeah. Yeah, pervasive T-Storm. Yeah, like it was a pervasive Marvel, pervasive who, pervasive Star Trek. It's like the the a period when there's four different Star Trek shows in production. That's too much.
00:12:10
Speaker
What I really enjoy watching is Disney just wildly over correcting for what they think the audience wants. But because they are basically the Titanic and their turning radius is so slow that they're trying to adjust for what they thought the audience wanted four years ago when they didn't like the last big thing.
00:12:34
Speaker
And they're like, we're going to fix this with Mandalorian. But it's a moving target that they missed by several years at this point. It's, it's a, a, well, it was like, first they, they overreact to like some, some fan reaction of the last Jedi and, and we get the rise of Skywalker and then yes people don't like that either. And so they're like,
00:13:01
Speaker
uh-oh and then there's all the marvel stuff informing it too because you have like these projects that are heavily reliant on disney plus series for people to understand it's like if you want to understand this is exactly what i was saying this is yeah exactly what i was saying yeah too much too much too much yeah too much and now i think the answer was well mandalorian grogu will take this movie and we'll try to make it in such a way as i understand i haven't seen it but the reviews suggest they really tried to make it incredibly friendly for people who have never seen the series before and they put a ripped hut in it
00:13:33
Speaker
I mean, that's the one thing I like about it. Yeah, no, me too. I've always wanted a sexy hut. Yeah, I mean, for all those years. I want slug with a six pack. That's exactly right. For those years, we sexualized like Leia in her slave girl costume.
00:13:49
Speaker
But the whole time there was just nothing for people who wanted yeah more of a hut body type. But now finally we have a sexy hut. But it's not hut body type because because then if you're fetishizing Jabba the Hutt,
00:14:03
Speaker
Like they're, they're like, well, we've got the the the thing for you. We're going to make him, uh, have, give him a six pack. But ben but it's like, but if you want Jabba, he's got to, you know, he's got to be large. It's got to be many huts.
00:14:18
Speaker
How many huts do you know? I know all the huts. Jabba. Jabba. Ripped hut. Yeah. Ripped hut.
00:14:28
Speaker
I'm just saying, what if like most of them are ripped and Jabba just let himself go? Oh, that's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah, what if... Well, and and and as we all know, in in in in Star Wars, A New Hope, the special edition, Jabba is much more slim when he shows up and he's hectoring Han Solo. So somewhere between, yeah like somewhere during Empire Strikes Back...
00:14:57
Speaker
he he gains a fair amount of of weight. And maybe that's just like also, maybe that's just part of his species life cycle. They they just get larger.
00:15:07
Speaker
We don't know a lot about this. He also has a completely different personality in his brief, a new hope, which has been there since the original theater. I saw the original theatrical cut and people will tell you this came around later.
00:15:19
Speaker
it was always there just like McClunky, just like the rest of it. Uh-huh. yeah and and also sitting up here on my shelf right now and i i also have the original and you have the laser discs yeah i've got the laser discs got the vhs's and i've got the film reels i got them all they call it the holy trinity that's what they call the holy trinity of the holy trilogy yeah speaking of the holy trinity what have you been playing Wouldn't it amazing if I'd been playing Trinity, the Infocom adventure right now?
00:15:51
Speaker
By the storytelling master mastermind, Brian Moriarty? Yes. LucasArts, Brian Moriarty. That's right. know You know, Ben, what I played a lot of this week that I haven't played in forever, and again, I'm worried because this is still very, like, adventure game talky for this podcast. I feel a little bad bringing this up, but... yeah we really you know people people who like
00:16:22
Speaker
scroll through this podcast hoping to just get to the adventure game stuff or yeah or missing actual on-subject talk in the first three minutes. They're probably talking about something like why you should put salad in a bread bowl instead of soup right now. And they're just skip, skip, skip 45 seconds. Yeah, no. But little they know, I'm talking about an adventure game. I played a lot of Leisure Suit Larry 7 Love for Sale this week. I was working on a YouTube video about a weird Leisure Suit Larry promo release from 96. I gotta watch that video. I saw you you post that. I'm very excited about that. It's a fun one. Yeah, I wrote it quick version. I wrote about a little program called Larry Pops Up, which is like a desktop buddy that Sierra released to promote Leisure Suit Larry 7. But wanted some Leisure Suit Larry 7 video footage to put into that video.
00:17:14
Speaker
So I did a playthrough. I have to say, mean, A... There's enough stuff it that don't think I'd ever feel comfortable streaming it in front an audience. It is, it's not as maybe mean-spirited as a good chunk of Leisure Suit Larry 6 might be. It's maybe not as problematic as some sections of Leisure Suit Larry 5 are, but it's certainly a lot raunchier. Like, there's more actual nudity, more, uh,
00:17:43
Speaker
more depictions of sexual acts and things like that on screen than you see in some of the others. But what really struck me is, boy, what a high-quality production that game was. The graphics, the sound, the voice work, the crazy interface they put together with it, with the hybrid point-and-click with optional text parser and all that sort of stuff.
00:18:10
Speaker
It is such an ambitious game for Sierra, and one that I imagine they must have spent a good bit of money on. It's too bad that they couldn't have used that as like, you know, the beginning of a new adventure game engine that would appear in, or a new version of the SCI engine, or at least the interface that would appear in later games.
00:18:33
Speaker
That UI really did some neat stuff and have a lot of potential. And they finally got past that weird phase you see with games like space quest six and leisure suit larry six where you have so much interface on the screen oh the big chunk at the bottom which has the thing where it's like look you can rotate the inventory item amazing three we will use this for it we'll use this for precisely one puzzle the entire game but you can do it yeah did now you could like there's one puzzle where there's a little thing hidden in the corner can you find it
00:19:11
Speaker
You'll, don't, and then you'll rotate every other ah item just in case, but there will never be another thing hidden behind something else. They must have felt really whoever they're, they're, they' There must have been someone at Sierra that like came up that idea and just like visualize.
00:19:29
Speaker
It's like, oh, this is going to be, there's going be so much we're going to do with this that like when you rotate this and you'll be able to like take things apart. This will be a ah whole new place to do puzzles. This will be so great.
00:19:44
Speaker
And, and it is like, okay, we'll, we'll do all the code for the rotating items so we can do this. And then, you know, Yeah, isn't that real?
00:19:55
Speaker
Yeah, but Lucha Suit Larry 7, the interface is mostly invisible until you need it. It's really impressive. It would have been a great UI to use for other games, but sadly, by this point, there weren't going to be a lot of other adventure games, and the ones that were coming out, everything seemed to be like an ad hoc a la carte approach to how we're going to like, isn't it Quest for Glory 5 or was it? No, is Gabriel not 3 that like used the like simulator engine basically to run itself? Isn't that right? ah
00:20:27
Speaker
I think I saw someone say that, but I do not know that. Yeah. for I've just only seen someone say, is Larry 7 the last of those games?
00:20:39
Speaker
It's the, of which games? Of the Larry games? Of that, well, I know of- Of
Listener Engagement and Feedback
00:20:43
Speaker
that era. The last of, yeah, like the- Yeah, before you to like, magna cum laude and box office plus. No, no, no, I meant like the last of those, SEI.
00:20:55
Speaker
Ooh, that's a good question. It might they Are there other, like, you know, Is Torren's Passage later is like, because King's Quest 7 is before that, obviously.
00:21:12
Speaker
And Fantasmic Gloria 94, 95. this is 96. I don't know the answer to this. I'm just like, is Leisure Suit Larry
00:21:34
Speaker
Oh man, here's what I'm seeing. I just looked this up on Wikipedia. They're saying it used the SCI 3 engine, huh which I didn't know existed. The only games it says that used SCI 3 were Larry 7 and Phantasmagoria 2.
00:21:53
Speaker
Oh, you know what is I think Phantasmagoria 2 might be the last one. Yeah, that would check out. I think let me look this up. ah Phantasmagoria.
00:22:06
Speaker
That might be wrong. I which that's we were that's oh, no puzzle flash 96.
00:22:17
Speaker
So, uh, don't know. I don't know what it is. The thing is, it's not important. Someone can lightly tell us on our Discord. Yeah. Send us an email, questquestpodcast at gmail.com, if you know what Ben and I are talking about. Yeah.
00:22:33
Speaker
And if not, we'll also sent send us an email. Yeah, we'd just love to hear from you. I mean, it's just like, hey, how are you guys doing? Hey, what's up? How was the zoo? How was the aquarium?
00:22:45
Speaker
The wet zoo?
00:22:48
Speaker
So anyway, so so Larry 7, do you think it was it, would you say it was ah a good end of an era game though? Because it's like, I mean, I would say the final L low, Larry, but technically like there's Reloaded, which kind you know. yeah no yeah yeah I think if you can, if you're there for what a Larry game brings,
00:23:14
Speaker
I think it's a pretty good end of an era. But in a lot ways, it is a very Leisure Suit Larry, Leisure Suit Larry game.
00:23:24
Speaker
i don't think it's so good on its face that it transcends the fact that ultimately, if Larry isn't for you, i don't think Leisure Suit Larry 7 is going to be the one that wins you over.
00:23:36
Speaker
but Does it know that it's the last Larry? No, I believe that there is, if I'm not mistaken, there may be a teaser somewhere, like maybe an Easter egg or something, teasing Lucha Suit Larry 8.
00:23:51
Speaker
Do you know Lucha Suit Larry 8 was going be, Ben? What? Lust in Space.
00:23:58
Speaker
That's pretty good. That's not bad. I mean, finally, Sierra could have a space-based adventure game. A space-based adventure game. Oh, and now that that switches things up even more.
00:24:12
Speaker
people at always that is silly ah we want ah go ahead go ahead i just say People had always why Wilco just
00:24:22
Speaker
I think a leisure suit Larry, it's well, first off, we don't know if that was just a tossed off joke in the same way where, uh, whatever that, like the space quite quest, uh, seven.
00:24:34
Speaker
Absolutely. people People are just like, Oh, this is what was good. Like the back to Roman numerals. Like obviously that wasn't going to be in the name. Like that could have also just been income poops like Al Lowe just saying shit, you know, yes like, uh, uh, like I don't, in any case, if you're listening I've never, I, I think this is, I've, I've never completed a Larry game. That's, that's a huge Sierra blind spot. Never played it.
00:25:05
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I've played them briefly. But never played. Yeah. No, I mean, I'm nostalgic for them the same way I'm nostalgic for every Sierra game because I played them when I was a kid, when I was too young to be playing them. But, you know, if you've never felt called to play a Loser's Suit Larry game, don't know that you need to. don't know that you need to. don't know that you need to, Ben. There are plenty of other filthy games out there.
00:25:32
Speaker
Name 12. Okay. Leather Goddess of Phobos. Leather Goddess of Phobos 2. Leather Goddess of Phobos 3. Leather Goddess of Phobos 4.
00:25:43
Speaker
Leather Goddess of Phobos 5. And so on. And so on. Strip poker. I'm sure there are several CD-ROMs advertised in the back of an issue of Computer Gaming World with strip poker themes. All of those. Yeah.
00:25:59
Speaker
All right. Well, then we're good. Yeah. All right. Yeah. okay Okay. Case closed. Ben, why have you been playing? So this is this is ah another double dip. Two weeks of double dips in a row. But this is, I'm i'm double dipping on a game that I mentioned I was playing i think probably a year over a year ago. um So if you're if you're the the person maintaining the Quest Quest wiki, of course, you can double check this for me.
00:26:30
Speaker
um The game Core Keeper So Core Keeper is one of those millions of games where you're like a a little a little someone running around and and digging holes. And you you get gold and iron and whatever other ores and you make stuff.
00:26:55
Speaker
You know, it's like a like Terraria or Minecraft or whatever. Like it's more Terraria-ish because it's 2D top down. you know, it's one of those. It's just one of those.
00:27:07
Speaker
And so I was like, I got it 2024 and I played it a little bit then. And then I just put it down. I was like, okay, it was just one of those. It's fine.
00:27:18
Speaker
And then this week I was just kind of like, you know what? I'm in the mood for that kind of game. and there's been two years of, you know, various updates and changes and whatnot to the game.
00:27:32
Speaker
know I'm having a great time. Having a great time running around. but But here's the thing. I love in these games, I love exploring like a big cave.
00:27:48
Speaker
You know, that's what adventure games are all about. Colossal caves. Yeah. Exploring a big cave. I love exploring a big cave. the The base building and all of that, like and a lot of the progression stuff, I'm not quite at like definitely the base building I don't give a shit about.
00:28:09
Speaker
And a lot of the progression stuff, I tend to try to figure out this stuff by myself, but I know that I just need to like go to. So it's like, yeah, it's like because I'm definitely now hitting a point where I'm like, all right, I know that there's like a whole bunch of other stuff have to do. And there's probably.
00:28:30
Speaker
some combination of shit i yeah have like have to do some special item I have to do to summon a boss or something.
00:28:41
Speaker
i or like I have to build a specific type of dwelling to summon a certain type of character or whatever. And so this is where I usually fall off, but I've been playing intensely this week.
00:28:54
Speaker
So I don't know if I'm i'm gonna hold on or or not, but I'm having a good time with it. Corekeeper, it's a good example of one of those games. Ah, one of those games. Your daughter ever get into Minecraft?
00:29:08
Speaker
Oh yeah, she's way into Minecraft. She's kind of taking a break for it right now. She is back on The Sims 4 in a big way. I'm like $9,000 into The Sims 4. I really need help from someone.
00:29:25
Speaker
is an endless, bottomless expense to keep up with The Sims 4. There are just seven new expansion packs a month. I don't know how it happens.
00:29:36
Speaker
That game came out in like 2012, don't know. Yeah. And I think EA said like, we're not making more of these. You're just getting more DLC. like You just got to live with it. Yeah, here here's a new sofa that looks like a vampire would sit on it. We'll take your $40, please. glad I'm not swallowed into that.
00:29:57
Speaker
i'm so glad i'm not swallowed into bad just glad. I just wasnt wasn't swallowed into the Did you ever play Sims? My computer, when I was in high school, did not.
00:30:11
Speaker
It was just underneath the system requirements for it. Oh, man. So I didn't have it. And then i played it a little bit in college, but that was kind of when i wasn't as you know like if it was going to get me it would have gotten me in high school um yeah like you know that was i was certainly playing a lot of games in college i'm gonna say i didn't but uh you know you're playing awesome like games like halo constantly you're just like at lamb parties like well we were like ah my we we did play halo uh we yeah played uh
00:30:49
Speaker
Yeah, we we played ah the PC version of love Halo 1 or 2. Warthog. And like on my freshman dorm floor alongside Counter-Strike Source and a bunch other stuff. So, you know.
00:31:07
Speaker
We were playing Quake back. Yeah, I a few years behind or ahead of you, I guess. we were playing Quake in the dorms. That was pretty cool. Quake in the... I mean, that is pretty How many of you've ever played it's Software's Quake? It is of the most visceral, brownest games you'll ever play.
00:31:25
Speaker
Oh, man, yeah. they found They found some ways to make games as brown as possible back then, and we all loved it. But speaking of games that we love...
00:31:37
Speaker
Today, we are talking about the the wonderful game Perfect Tides.
Game Discussion: Perfect Tides
00:31:44
Speaker
Is this a rerun? No. Is this episode a rerun, Ben? No, it's not ah not a rerun. I thought we already talked about Perfect Tides. We spoke about Perfect Tides Station to Station. It's sequel. And we we did so ah with me only having played a little bit of that game for the purposes of I wanted to keep it fresh for my stream. we And we did that.
00:32:09
Speaker
ah So we could have ah a ah wonderful discussion with ah the developer, Meredith Grand. I recommend everyone that's listening. I am going to say that if you are listening to this, there is almost a 0% chance you did not listen to our Meredith Grand interview. But if if you haven't, for some reason...
00:32:30
Speaker
ah go listen to it because it's one of my favorite episodes. It's a fantastic insight into a creative process. You'll love that episode. And when I was revisiting this first Perfect Tides game, I was thinking about a lot of the stuff that she said ah in that interview, specifically you know, one of the the things that we discussed with her was ah kind of like this nature of nostalgia.
00:33:03
Speaker
um And ah like she had such a wonderful answer to that where like she talked about it's like, I'm like, she said something like, ah you know, she's not interested that,
00:33:21
Speaker
ah that you know, in 1980, whatever you went to see Ghostbusters, she's interested in who you saw Ghostbusters with, which I think that's such a great answer. Perfect. That's such an interesting yeah answer.
00:33:34
Speaker
So Jess, you just played Perfect Tides. how about ah you you give us a little bit of ah a capsule? Okay, so for those of you not familiar with Perfect Tides, it is point-and-click adventure. ah Definitely inspired, I would say, on a continuum between Sierra and LucasArts. Definitely more on the Sierra side of that continuum. Absolutely.
00:33:57
Speaker
the The plot, the the plot behind this one is you are Mara Whitefish, a ah young girl, 15 years old, um who lives on the island of perfect tides. And you lived there in the year 2000, a crucial turning point.
00:34:15
Speaker
for our culture. She is a kid growing up very online and an active part of an online community, a fan fiction community where she has a number of friends where she posts her stories.
00:34:30
Speaker
And it is a slice of life coming of age story about Mara as she tries to figure out how to exist in her world as she, as she gets older, how to get along with her family, how to navigate changing friendships, what it's like to be trapped between this world of adolescence and adulthood.
00:34:55
Speaker
Um, Yeah, I mean, it's... Or even like childhood young adulthood. Yeah, yeah. Because she gets caught so much in this game, and it was really striking to me revisiting it i there There are a lot of moments of her being extremely like like a child and having like kind of like, for example, here's a small thing and, and, you know, maybe, maybe you or a listener will be like, Ben, what the hell are you talking about?
00:35:36
Speaker
ah But it's like, When you give ah yourre your mom a ah package in this game and she opens it, she gives you the bubble wrap because she's like, I know that you'll enjoy playing with us.
00:35:52
Speaker
To me, that feels very like, here's ah here's a kid thing. Like, this is a yeah like a toy, you know? like Because I remember that. I remember like the thrill of like your parents being like, here's the bubble wrap. And it's like, yeah oh, yeah. Yeah. No, and I mean, there are moments where Mara feels like she's being treated like a kid by others and she really pushes back against it.
00:36:15
Speaker
And then there are moments where she genuinely still feels like a kid, which I think really does speak into that weird in-between moment that a lot of us are at, you know, around age 15 or so. Oh, yeah. And then and then also...
00:36:32
Speaker
Like, i you know, ah ah Mara as a ah ah character has such a um young, isolated nerd's ah ability to read the room, which is to say...
00:36:56
Speaker
can't and so Mara ah will frequently say too much or provide a lot of extraneous information. i love that. That feels way too familiar oh to me. Like oh teenage Jess was happy to hit you with some fascinating trivia if you wanted to hear it.
00:37:22
Speaker
And I mean, you know, like adult Ben will still do that too. ah But, or, or like there's a ah sequence and we're not going to get too spoilery ah on this, but yeah.
00:37:38
Speaker
Like there's there's a ah moment where Mara unwittingly says too much to like about some of the trouble that like their family is having to somebody like an adult in town.
00:37:52
Speaker
And it like it becomes a little bit of a like family scandal. And she doesn't know. Like she just doesn't have the context to know that you're you're not like like you shouldn't do that.
00:38:05
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And she's a fascinating character in the sense that she's very thoughtful. She's self-aware in lot of the ways the teenager might be self-aware in all the positive and negative ways that she's very much in touch with her own emotions and thought processes. And the game vocalizes those well.
00:38:26
Speaker
But also certainly there's that lack of awareness that comes also with being an adolescent. You know, there there are lots of opportunities. mean, a lot of this game is about her relationships with family, with friends, with that romantic interests. It ranges through through quite a few different relationship dynamics. And there are a number of occasions because she's a she's a teenage kid who's dealing with some stuff. She's dealing with some grief.
00:38:53
Speaker
She's dealing with some feelings of isolation. She's dealing with some feelings of she doesn't want to be treated like a kid anymore. um And there are oftentimes where this drives a wedge between her and friends, her and family, other relationships. And she...
00:39:07
Speaker
Occasionally, he has those moments where someone will extend an olive branch to her in the midst of a conversation. And sometimes you're given the choice as to whether or not Mara accepts that or not. in many cases, she simply just decides she would rather burn things to the ground in that way that a teenager might be tempted to do it's There's some real heartbreaking moments throughout this game as you see her try to navigate changing relationships.
00:39:35
Speaker
but And I think also Mara ah feels that she's being left behind by like that so many, people... both physically in that like people ah the the island of perfect tides, again, that that she lives on, which is, i believe you know i believe, modeled on ah Fire Island off of ah New York.
00:40:02
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah. It is getting more expensive. There's a lot of construction going up that you see in the game. Like today, Fire Island is like ah a pretty big ah and ah expensive, I would assume. I've not been there, but like gay tourist destination outside of New York.
00:40:26
Speaker
Which is in the game. that's That's a big part of the game. um But i it is, you can see that it's pricing out their family. um and And it's pricing out other families too.
00:40:40
Speaker
um And the... i So she's starting to feel left behind because of that. It's also like there aren't that many other people that her age on the island anyway.
00:40:54
Speaker
so it's it She has to take a ferry to the mainland just to attend high school. and But also she feels left behind. the very first thing that happens in the game is a conversation between her and her best friend Lily where Lily ah like says that she just had sex for the first time. And already like you know already that it you know that Like, you know, that that's like, ah oh shit. Like, you know, well, he's an adult.
00:41:27
Speaker
Yes. And it's immediately like you feel like this is thrown up a wall between Mara and her best friend. Mara, who feels like, you know, this is like Lily has just somehow, you know, move beyond her in a very in a very real way. um And yeah, you you see that throughout this, you know, she has an older adult friend, Simon, who lives in a nearby beach house and, you know, seeing this gap here between, I would put Simon, what would you say? Like 23, 24? Yeah. he yes he's I would say about mid 20. Like, I think it, I forget if it says how, how old he is. i can't He's like, col either he's yeah, he's said yeah. And
00:42:13
Speaker
I assume earlier mid twenties. Yeah. And, you know, sort of navigating that relationship of someone who's at a very different place in life than her. I mean, while she's, you know, going through a lot of typical teenage rebellion, uh, kind of moments as well.
00:42:30
Speaker
It's a real mess. So called life kind of situation. So, now, now the The game is very, very set in its time, which is to say it is, you know, the the year 2000 is very specific year 2000 references.
00:42:54
Speaker
is like it. And for me, like it i and for me uh i am i just like a year or two younger than this like then then mara and the fiction of the game and also uh uh meredith grand who designed it um But like, so when I played Perfect Tides, and I'm sure we'll go a little further into this, but when I played it, I was able to immediately ah relate to it like, as did, because i was playing it for the first time on the on the stream with Sarah and Grayson.
00:43:44
Speaker
And all three of us were really able to relate to ah the the experience from it, like specifically, like, you know, on a on a very micro level of the,
00:44:00
Speaker
ah you know, being... the the the lifeline that internet communities could offer a very awkward nerd uh which which the three of us could all relate to and the specifics can relate to that part at yeah well the specifics of the and i remember
00:44:25
Speaker
Like in being that age. Yes. And I, and I remember when you and I spoke about perfect tides, uh, like before you'd played it, uh, you, you said, well, I don't know. Like if, if this particular, like if, if it will hit me, ah because you know, I am like, because you're, you're about what? Like about 10 years, seven years older, maybe then Mara would be. Yeah. So I would have been like,
00:44:56
Speaker
you're having just finished up undergrad, I would have been, you know, off at grad school, uh, around 2000. So yeah. with been So yeah. So what was, ah like, how did these specifics hit you?
00:45:13
Speaker
You know, i definitely related to it. much more easily than I thought I might. Like, I felt like, you know, me being at that sort of Gen X millennial cusp, I thought that maybe it's like, ah, this is going to skew little bit too millennial to really speak to me. But, you know,
00:45:33
Speaker
I was a relatively early adopter of, you know, internet communities. I was out there, you know, as part of them early on and was pretty heavily invested in them in a way, even as a young adult, in a way that I suspect isn't that different than how Mara was approaching these sorts of things. And I have to say, i mean, I joked earlier, but obviously I grew up a pretty nerdy kid as well. And I think when I was in college,
00:46:01
Speaker
I think that maybe... I had a sheltered enough experience growing up that I don't know. Maturity wise, I don't know that I was a lot different as I was forming a lot of these friendships on the internet as a 18, 19, 20 year old than a lot of 15 or 16 year olds would have been at the time. yeah I wouldn't say I was a, an immature kid, but I certainly wasn't a terribly worldly person at that point. yeah,
00:46:32
Speaker
I definitely related to it. I mean, and anyone who watched my streams of this on Twitch can probably tell I related to it um because I think I cried like eight or nine times over the course of this you know relatively short adventure game. um it It hit me. And I will say a lot of it, you know, i i felt some of that, oh, you know, online friendships are falling apart.
00:46:58
Speaker
Forums are closing. What's going to happen to this community? I knew I felt some of that. I feel like some of her relationship drama and friend drama hit me even harder. And it broke my heart every time she would be mean to her mother.
00:47:12
Speaker
that That got me really good, but I definitely was able to relate to this pretty easily. that that little That slight age discrepancy ended up mattering almost not at all. How did it strike you being the father of someone that is almost Mara's age couple years yes yes no this was something a young woman like yes this is something that hit me as well yeah i'm my daughter because I don't have that this experience so I'm I'm actually like yeah I'm i'm actually quite uh curious yeah I mean my daughter just turned 13 um yeah just just in the last couple days as we were 15 at the start of the game
00:47:57
Speaker
Yeah, and that is terrifying. And some of the sorts of themes that Mara is grappling with with her friends, you know, I've i've seen in my daughter's life already as well. And i also anticipate that i want to stress here. The thing I can't relate to is I was the best boy who's ever lived. I never misbehaved. Yes, yes, yes. You was go and I are very, very similar. Like Mara, like, uh, like she starts smoking at one point in the game. Yeah, no, I could never, ever ever ever, ever, ever, ever do that. No. way no No, no, no, no, no. And in fact, like if I saw like one my classmates smoking, like it would be all I could do. I wouldn't do this, but every cell in my body would be like, you've got tattle on them. You've got to get in there.
00:48:51
Speaker
Oh, oh, oh, I know this well. And I didn't tattle. So don't. I didn't either. i don't cut I'm not a snitch. Well, I am a snitch, but i don't act on those impulses. That's the important thing. Every part of me wants to snitch on everything. I remember remember seeing one of my 15 year old classmates light up a cigarette and being like,
00:49:11
Speaker
so like absolutely shocked it was i was i was just like what the hell is going on you can't do this do you well isn it yeah no yeah but but yeah i mean it is hard for me to relate to any sort of like sense of teenage rebellion i never rap rebelled as a teen my my rebellion as a teen was only uh following the rules harder yeah Yeah, I quit the wrestling team, like I'm Emilio Estevez in Breakfast Club or something. That's as hard as I ever revealed. But, i mean, I would assume most teenagers have their moments where they're eventually going to start deciding to say,
00:49:52
Speaker
hurtful things to the people who love them and be in situations that are way over their heads and not feel comfortable coming to an adult to ask for help with those situations. And i know that awaits me. And that part of the game terrified me slightly because i can I can't imagine this is part of a future I'm going to witness secondhand before long.
00:50:15
Speaker
Yeah. ah So, yeah, for me, when i played the game, it was especially, you know, as I think i've I've said already, like totally blind, no idea, had no context, never read Octopus Pie or any of the other stuff that the designer, Meredith Grand, worked on. So I had absolutely no context for it. It was just like, oh, I like the art.
00:50:42
Speaker
this looks neat and it is beautiful and yeah the the art is quite good um and uh so you know when in that in the early you know first hour of the game When you like log on to forums and it's like, all right, well now I'm looking at the fan fiction of all of these strangers and, ah and we have like this and we're all teens, but there's also a couple adults in this forum, which we gotta like, we,
00:51:23
Speaker
for For reference, i to prepare for this, I watched, and you can find this on YouTube, i i there are developer commentary YouTubes. There's three of them where she went through and played through the the game and provided her her commentary. So I watched that ah in preparation for this.
00:51:50
Speaker
And like one thing that she mentioned, I believe was, you know, it's like, yeah, you know, like there's mostly teenagers, but there were a couple adults and it wasn't like,
00:52:03
Speaker
I remember, and I mean, this was also the case on your forum,
Nostalgia and Online Communities
00:52:07
Speaker
is like, there is a window the internet, and this is probably not like, today we'd all be like, ugh. No, that doesn't seem good. Yeah, that doesn't great. But like, at the time, was just like, yeah, there'd be teenagers and 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds and 40-year-olds and 50-year-olds all interacting with each other on one forum, and sometimes you'd all know that, and it was just like,
00:52:31
Speaker
All right. Like, whereas now that sounds like absolutely not not the beginning of an upsetting Kotaku article about a YouTuber. Yeah. it's It's like if I find out that teen is at all like appended to to your age, and like, and I'm interacting with you online, I'm like, get me out of this. Get me out. Not okay. Not okay. Yeah. like no are and and you know like or younger obviously like it's just like no like whereas it's like yeah when I was a teenager when I was like you know uh uh like Mara's age I was on forums and in uh like ICQ chat rooms and all that crap like and and yeah like it's also
00:53:21
Speaker
those internet spaces were so real. yeah And kind of freeing um at the time because it's like, you know, when no matter what type of teenager you are, like if you're,
00:53:43
Speaker
a weird nerd like Jess and I were, or you listening to this adventure game podcast, because you were too. If you're listening to this podcast, uh, you have a straight, no jocks policy. If you're a jock right now, you're going need to turn this off. Yeah. Um, but like, I mean, everybody, and I think this is actually one of the, the, the points of the, the, the game is that, uh,
00:54:10
Speaker
You know, every everybody goes through some form of of this phase. Like Tamara, ah like her her problems are are so painful and and strong. She's the only person that experiences them. And it's like, no, everybody, including all of your other teenage friends, also feels the same way.
00:54:32
Speaker
ah in in different degrees. um and But Tamara, it's a very... like It's like no one understands. She's feeling these feelings harder than anyone's felt them before. Sure. She's invented them. and Yes. um but ah But yeah, like those spaces are so real because you're ah when you're a teenager, and especially then, because there there was so...
00:55:02
Speaker
Like there was very little odds that you'd run into someone that you actually knew them because like you couldn't even like, it was very rare that you'd be able to even put your photo on them. You don't like, and most, like a lot of people weren't using the internet anyway.
00:55:18
Speaker
ah and and so it's like, you know, they're, they're kind of this refuge space where you're, you're kind of disconnected. Yeah, my experience, most of those people on those forums were from Denmark.
00:55:33
Speaker
and That's true. Yeah, yeah, you were, you're like ah a 19-year-old running a Space Quest forum and you're just like, wow, everyone on the internet is from Denmark.
00:55:47
Speaker
Yeah, I was like, should I pretend I'm from Denmark? What would that even look like? Yeah.
00:55:55
Speaker
ah You'd have to change your name for one. Well, they're just in Denmark. Yes. Yeah.
00:56:04
Speaker
But anyway, he could be, you know, yawns. But ah anyway, like, i you know, it it was it was just a lot of, it was very interesting to to hear her talk about like the forums that that she was on. Like she,
00:56:24
Speaker
was on I think it was like these AOL fan fiction forums ah and she says um on the the commentary something like you know I've tried so hard to find those even though I know that they're not there anymore and they're not like on archive they're just gone And the thing is, is that that's not something I can relate to. i have no interest in reading any of my posts from when I was 13 years old. or I don't read any of my posts. I don't wanna read anything I wrote on the internet prior to like six months ago. Yeah. Every now and again, some, some fucking freak will like, or God forbid retweet like some like post of mine from like a year ago. And I'm just like, are you murderer? Yeah.
00:57:14
Speaker
Yeah. then No, I mean, first of all, like, and I look at the person, like, is there, it did I, did I, did I say something stupid? Yeah. I hate that person you retweeted. Never do that again. First of all, that the version of me from a year ago uh, is dead now. I'm, I'm smart and I've got all my shit together now.
00:57:34
Speaker
And back then, yeah stupid stupid shit do i look like three months ago me yeah i don't think so me was a total fucking jackass but now today i've got it going on it's crapping them you know that's what you always say that's what you say as soon as you log on to record these it's like jess it's crapping them ah i always laugh politely
00:58:03
Speaker
ah Now, i but yeah, those, and I remember... those in and i remember the, the, the moment, because then also in the game, as you start to make actual friends, the online, like you start to kind of vanish yourself from the online. and And occasionally tell them how much better you are than them because you have real life friends on a few occasions.
00:58:36
Speaker
And, uh, uh, I remember that. i don't I don't think I was ever a dick about it, but you know, maybe, no maybe I was, i doubt I was, but, uh, I definitely ever, did you ever fall in love with an anthropomorphic deer on a web forum? I didn't do that.
00:58:56
Speaker
I didn't do that. but That's one part of the, the experience I didn't do, but I can tell you i did uh, I got involved with a, uh, space quest fan game.
00:59:09
Speaker
And then, ah then like more or less quit internet forums and just ghosted them. Yeah. Yeah. yeah
00:59:22
Speaker
Oh, well. And if you're disappointed a lot of Danish people that day.
00:59:31
Speaker
and and and so i you know, I'm sorry, but the the game eventually did't come out ah and I won't name it, but you could you could easily find It it exists.
00:59:45
Speaker
It might have, ah you know, they theyve they it might have struck back. You know, Ben doesn't like to brag about this, and he tries to diminish his involvement in this project, but behind closed doors, he's told me all the parts of that game that are good, he was responsible for. yeah So he is proud of his work. He said the things that aren't working weren't mine. The things that are, that's me.
01:00:08
Speaker
That's actually, would you believe that's true of every project I've ever been involved in? It's a really common pattern. um Yeah, no, I would believe.
01:00:25
Speaker
but I thought that was great. Like, and then, and then like just but these, these other people, bad ideas, you know,
01:00:35
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes they ruin your good ideas. Yeah. yeah
01:00:43
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, it is, it, it's, it's funny because it's like, you can, you can, someone playing this can relate.
01:00:55
Speaker
on On many different levels, you can you can relate to the the the specifics, the year 2000 specifics, the the references, some of the style parodies and stuff like that that are contained in it, which are lot of fun. But the thing is, is that like any like any great movie,
01:01:20
Speaker
coming of age anything uh the the the themes are universal uh it doesn't matter if like the specifics are like you know like people love american girl books remember that e did you see there was uh like a ah discourse uh an online discourse over this there was this uh story i think it was in the new york times a month or two ago about how like this uh one publisher of like uh children's books or like teen books it started going and like modernizing the references yes in the and that's not unheard of in young adult stuff like i think like even some like the old judy bloom books and stuff have gotten that that's horrible like
01:02:08
Speaker
You know, that that assumes a level of stupidity in in the audience that it's like, you know, like ah ah when I was a child, I i read ah the like books that took place before me and I wasn't just like, oh, wait, what? Why didn't they use the internet to solve that problem? Like I wasn't...
01:02:32
Speaker
I wasn't very like, I, you know, I remember reading little house on the prairie. I wasn't just like, well why didn't they use a car instead of a covered wagon? That doesn't make sense. You know, i disagree. i think we haven't gone far enough with this.
01:02:48
Speaker
I don't see why like Falstaff couldn't be constantly drinking like Baja blast and the Shakespeare plays he appears in. Like, would that like, I mean, the bard is inaccessible to a younger audience.
01:03:03
Speaker
And i mean, I think if you had maybe more modern product placement and things like that, people could really like understand Shakespeare. Yeah. Do you remember Romeo plus Juliet, Ben?
01:03:16
Speaker
Of course I remember Romeo plus That is my coming of age story. I've just sort of taken that specific adaptation of Romeo and Juliet and substituted it for my own teenage years. That's how I feel like i grew up.
01:03:29
Speaker
Mm-hmm. and And who were you? what John Leguizamo? Absolutely. i was John Leguizamo. I had the mustache. I had the like very awesome engraved silver pistol. um whenever This is a level of specific details on Romeo plus Juliet movie I haven't watched in a very long time. If people bit their thumbs at me, I would pop off. I'm not a Baz Luhrmann fan.
01:03:59
Speaker
You're not a Baz Luhrmann man. I'm not a Baz Luhrmann man. I have his, his stuff bounces right off me. I'm just like, Hey, tone that down. Baz.
01:04:10
Speaker
Baz Luhrmann. A little less, please. God, I love that movie so much. This is too much. Turn it down. A little too young to fully appreciate Claire Danes. This is the second Claire Danes project that i have referenced here. I can't. What's the other Claire Danes? My show, so-called life. I can't contextualize being a teenager without reference to Claire Danes, apparently.
01:04:38
Speaker
That's why. yeah I've related to her work more than any other fictional character. Yeah. It's just, I see a lot of myself in Claire Danes. ah So for, uh, for, for Mara, the, the, the game is split into, seasons.
01:04:59
Speaker
Uh, I, and, uh, each kind of
Emotional Impact of Games and Music
01:05:04
Speaker
serves as a narrative, like its own big narrative chunk usually takes place across maybe one or two, two days, I would say. Yeah. Two or three. Yeah. Yeah. yeah Uh, in, in the season.
01:05:19
Speaker
ah which means that all of your recurring sets get a nice seasonal makeover. Like it's the imagination network. Oh, yeah. And Bara gets a new outfit for every season and and her walk icon changes to match the new outfit. And yes i can't tell you what a load bearing decision that is. Like in terms of how little effort that probably took versus how much joy I took away from it.
01:05:50
Speaker
I loved it. Like, it was just such a lovely detail. There's a lot of really lovely and smart little details in the game like that, which is also carried over into Station to Station, v station which has like, updates the UI per.
01:06:08
Speaker
And the, like... It speaks to me that it's a game coming from someone who has real affection for these Sierra games that it it is wearing the aesthetic clothes of.
01:06:29
Speaker
like the, you know, ah fixing, like changing the UI with clothing changes and some other changes, which I won't spoil. ah The also,
01:06:45
Speaker
i when You are in an interior that isn't ah prominent enough to be a full scene. So it has an inset with a border.
01:06:57
Speaker
i it every single one of those has a really beautifully done border that. Can you describe one? Because that's how you reacted to this. Oh, gosh. You know, like there's one, the one I was thinking of just now is you go into a bodega at one point. And basically the framing of it becomes all this lovely pixel art, just crap you might find in a bodega. Like a pack of cigarettes, a best grandpa ever greeting card, like various foods and sundries and things like that just rendered in this really lovely frame around the scene to create that
01:07:36
Speaker
interior feel of a space but it's something that sierra would do here and there occasionally in their games and it was always so charming and here it just adds so much personal personality like i think there are two ways to i mean one way to show your love for these older games when you decide to make your own game is like i'm going to the ultimate deep cut references like that's sort of like stair quest it's like you we're going to tell sierra jokes i think this one shows In a lot of ways, to me, maybe a more interesting and more mature way of showing that love. But yeah, picking up on the spirit of what made these games feel so special rather than just a very specific, you know, hyper narrow casted reference to something.
01:08:25
Speaker
Yeah, i the that that sort of thing, those borders, the UI, um the the writing. um another Another really good border is ah the bathroom, and it's all like soap and yeah bubbles and stuff like that. Like, that's really, really good.
01:08:46
Speaker
eat Yeah, that one almost feels like a Pepper's Adventures in Time kind of vibe, I feel like. i don't know. It's such a great look. Yeah. And, i you know, another another thing I like, and this carries over also, is that, like, you have these...
01:09:03
Speaker
very finely detailed, ah bit backgrounds and then larger kind of chunkier pixels on all of the, uh, characters.
01:09:15
Speaker
Uh, and I don't know something about that choice, especially as they get kind of closer to the camera and they become really big and chunky. Uh, like I, I, I love that choice. I don't even know like the, the, the specifics of it. It's just, I love it.
01:09:31
Speaker
I do too, especially because Mara's sprite is so wonderful already. She usually has like a shock of hair that's covering one eye and then this giant eye that's visible that's so expressive. I mean, i feel like the character sprites at times almost have a little bit of like the Lucas arts, big head kind of style in a way that allows for a very emotive, expressive, uh, uh, sort of, uh, aesthetic there, but no, that I like the chunky character pixels as well. Yeah. The, it has the Sierra character portraits, but yeah, that's true. Generally Sierra games, certainly of the era that it's evoking the, the, uh, the characters on the screen not the portraits were generally not very emotive like that's right not see whereas this you may not have a nose and eyes yeah and mouth necessarily yeah i will say it almost reminds me you know mentioned pepper's adventures in time earlier the aesthetic here in some ways almost reminds me a little bit more of some of the way that
01:10:44
Speaker
Sierra would choose to render its young adult, uh, and edutainment titles. I feel like, you know, the, the more expressive, slightly more cartoonish characters maybe have a little bit of that vibe, but, uh, it works beautifully here. I think that, you know, again, characters are immediately recognizable. Their personalities come through not only in their portraits, but in their sprites as well. It's, uh, it's good stuff.
01:11:09
Speaker
The, uh, i the The game is, it also has points, which is fun. Another Sierra thing. Like, it gives you, and it doles out points in an interesting way, which is to say that, like,
01:11:27
Speaker
You know, to kind of just signal, all right, you're youre you did the right, like you you you moved stuff along. Yes. There's a little points chime. you know, it's no Police Quest 2 Police Chime.
01:11:39
Speaker
That's for Dan. Nothing is. That's a demerit for it. But. yeah That's what I wrote in my Steam review. that was That was why I didn't give it a thumbs up. Yeah, it is. I thumbs down everything that has a score that doesn't have the Police Quest 2 score chime. And then i thumbs down Police Quest 2 for a number of other reasons. So you just can't win for a losing.
01:12:00
Speaker
um Is there a game that you do like? No, not yet. But I'm going to keep reviewing. Yeah. but Like the... Yeah, it is actually funny that it does have a score. And... i But, ah like, again, that's it's just... it's it It speaks to...
01:12:23
Speaker
the The strength and maturity of where, ah like, this particular moment in ah adventure games right now and in independent adventure games, that we can have something that is this...
01:12:44
Speaker
ah coming of age like this very maturely written very sensitively written uh story that it's just so funny because it uses the the language and the grammar of games that would be like fantasy or police procedural yes or unlucky in love sex adventure uh honestly it has the most in common with that probably but uh it uses it uses those aesthetics to make a game that would certainly have been ah possible in most respects technically at the time but would have been commercially impossible
01:13:38
Speaker
at oh yeah i don't know what people would do with this game it like if you if you dropped this into the lap of someone like in the golden age of sierra they would not know what to do with this yeah yeah and and sierra was the one making the most risks uh with that that type of you know those types of games and trying to make stuff that were quote unquote more sophisticated and adult um whether or not they succeeded i leave that uh to you the listener uh but it's it's so interesting and it really like you know ah you you you isn't it so wonderful that a game
01:14:25
Speaker
that that we have two games like this. Yeah. Yeah. No, i mean, it really is I mean, you're right. It's telling its story, especially the first perfect tides, you know, using the mechanics and the grammar and the aesthetics of these classic Sierra games. But It manages to be so effortlessly funny. it manages to be so incredibly heartfelt and heartbreaking. it imagines it manages to connect on an emotional level that I think it's really hard to find
01:15:03
Speaker
examples from the Sierra catalog, the LucasArts catalog, any of these sorts of classic adventure games that are able to do this with such a ah great batting average. You know, they there are great moments that do all of those things spread out across the Sierra and LucasArts and 90s adventure game canon in general.
01:15:23
Speaker
But this one's just hitting dingers at every at bat. And it is it is very impressive how a depth deft it is and being both very funny and heartbreaking. And sometimes, like, often simultaneously. Yes, absolutely.
01:15:46
Speaker
Like, and the i And, you know, ah i it isn't a spoiler to say there's just so many parts of the game where you might be looking through your fingers because there's just a level of like, oh, no, don't, no, no, no, don't do that. Yeah, no, no, yeah, you, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah know There were several of those. I mean, I think you could probably put together a pretty good Jess's cringe face compilation from my stream of just like me lean back in my chair like,
01:16:21
Speaker
sucking in air between my teeth as, uh, as I see Mara make a terrible, terrible decision. Yeah. And, but I mean, again, that's what, you know, the, the, uh, again, as you know, a, a well-told story like this, a well-told coming of age story. And I'm going to again, return to, talking about how it's universal
01:16:53
Speaker
or like how a good one is universal is that it's like, despite the weather, however many of the specifics apply to you, that you look at it and see something in it that, that makes you feel like, Oh my God, how did she know this about me?
01:17:10
Speaker
Yes. Yes. Yes. And it's like, Oh, I thought I was the only person that's, that, that, no, some of the things that, she put into words around Mara's romantic relationships.
01:17:28
Speaker
were feelings that I don't, that I experienced and feelings. I don't know that if I could have put into words myself to describe what I went through. and it's just like, well, there it is. It's just like laid bare on my screen right in front me. It's like, yes, I know this exact same thing that you're feeling right now. And I didn't know how to vocalize it until this game gave me the language to think about it. Yeah.
01:17:52
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, it is. that's something that makes it really painful. It does. I mean, it yeah, it It is. i mean, and and painful in that good way. i mean it's cathartic. ah ah Cathartic pain, I believe. But yeah, I mean, that there are some painful moments. I mean, all of us have been in...
01:18:13
Speaker
when we were teenagers and and maybe adults as well. We've been in tough spots with friends where we don't know where we stand with them and don't know if the things that used to make us friends still apply right now. And we know how hard that is to go through. And we've all been there in relationships where we don't know where things are headed or what we're supposed to do or what we mean to someone else and what they should or shouldn't mean to us. I mean, we've all grappled with that kind of thing.
01:18:43
Speaker
And I think also it really captures well how when you're in the thick of something like that, ah you really have a strong feeling of like, it it feels if you're in some sort of social difficulty with, you know, someone you're in love with, or, you know, with your best friend or with your mother, or you have an older brother that you don't get along with. um
01:19:16
Speaker
Like, To you at that moment, that feels like the most important thing in the world. And that's you magnified a million times if you're a teenager and you have like all these fucking chemicals you know yes cooking your brain at the same time. And like i you know one of the the nice things about like looking at this is ah both the nice thing and the the terrible thing, which is like you look at it you go like,
01:19:48
Speaker
Oh, she doesn't know that, like, how, how like, it's not a big deal. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But unfortunately, you it's it's just like, yeah, well, there's shit I can do about that right now, though.
01:20:01
Speaker
it's I just have to watch this. ah It is tough. I mean, through the eyes of an adult, knowing that it's like, at the end of the day, this is going to be okay. But also being put yourself back in the shoes of your younger self and knowing it's like, no, in that moment, that does seem like the biggest thing that you've ever had to face as a human being before. And I think, again, that's that's part of that universality of of coming of age stories. You know I think that being able to
01:20:32
Speaker
remind ourselves of what it's like to be in again, you know this world where your brain is being cooked by the process of being a teenager, as you said before. and it feels like to varying degrees, you're either the main character of this world you're living in or the least significant person possible. And it's sometimes both at the same time and trying to figure out just how you're supposed to get through it. Yeah. I mean, that's, uh, that's the experience I think that we're all drawn to with any sort of coming of age story.
01:21:07
Speaker
I think the best compliment i can give something like this is that, and i and And I'm also teeing you you up to to start talking about your own experience with this too. But it's like when I watch a particularly good movie that really moves me,
01:21:30
Speaker
ah i I feel kind of sensitive and brain-opened for a little while that I didn't feel before.
01:21:44
Speaker
Like if I see a movie that really moved me in some way, I walk around and I'll listen to like music and I'll hear it a little more intensely while I'm under the post- movie glow yeah of of of seeing that. Like if ah like there are some movies that like I saw it and they they really cast a spell on me and they really, really made me you know feel strong feelings. And then I listen to music and I'm just like, oh my God. Like, you know, wow. you know Something really emotionally happened to me. And Perfect Tides...
01:22:25
Speaker
is uh uh one of those games and i believe that you would agree with me is that correct that's absolutely correct i mean i ben is hinting at a post i made on blue sky not long after i finished the game i'd streamed the final episode of it and i posted on blue sky that it had been nearly an hour since i'd finished the game and i'd turned off all my streaming lights and taking off the grease paint and all that sort of stuff. And i was still sitting at my computer in the dark and i was listening to Bell and Sebastian, which was a band that around the year 2000,
01:23:05
Speaker
meant a lot to me. they And I still love their music, but at the time that was like me discovering a band that just and already is a kind of twee Scottish band that's writing some pretty emotional songs and things like that. What were you listening to? you Which one? What album? I was listening to the album If you're feeling sinister, which was the one that really, really hit me first. And I was listening to it. as I said, on Blue Sky, I was just thinking about all my friends from around the year 2000, lot of whom
01:23:45
Speaker
I haven't seen or spoken to now in 25 plus years. And just think it's like, gosh, all those friendships yeah had that were part of me at the time I was in grad school and I had all these tight knit relationships with all these people that were going through grad school with me and experiencing this weird transition period in our own lives and educations and careers and everything.
01:24:08
Speaker
And it's just like, oh gosh, I've drifted apart from all those people. You know, I've drifted apart from my friend Tom, who introduced me to Belle and Sebastian while I was in grad school. And yeah, i mean, it's that same experience. You know that's the kind of emotional reaction I was having after finishing this game. It made me think back to friendships that I don't really have a direct connection to anymore. It made me think back to what I was doing around this same time period. And yeah, i mean, that's...
01:24:42
Speaker
that's something special when a piece of any piece of pop culture can make you do that. I mean, that I'm not usually one for a lot of wistful nostalgia. That's I don't spend a lot of time sitting around in the dark, listening to music that makes me want to cry. I think old friends, but this game did that in a really wonderful way. I mean, and and i posted that on blue sky. And I don't know if you knew this, Ben, i immediately just went over and basically copied and pasted that.
01:25:11
Speaker
as my steam review for perfect tats. i was like, Oh, I didn't see that. Yeah. I've like, this sums it up. I just made that my steam review as well. Cause I felt like it, it was my most honest evaluation of that game in the moment. I think that's what that game did for me. um So yeah, that was, that was my experience with it. It definitely opened me up in that emotional state that ah that a meaningful, impactful piece of pop culture might.
01:25:38
Speaker
Oh, I'll read that review helpful. Oh, thank you, Ben. And you know what? I'll give it an award. You can do that. It just cost, ah yeah, steam points. So I'm going to give it the beautiful award. Oh, wow. Thank you, Ben.
01:25:58
Speaker
got first place in a beauty contest. There we go. The award has successfully been granted. Ben, could you also, if you wouldn't mind, leave some comments on some my achievements when you get a chance? yeah. I feel like I've had a lot of achievements lately that have gone unnoticed. So, you know, if you could just hit my old chivos. I've just started commenting on my own. So here's the thing that you might not know you can comment on your friends or your own achievements in Steam. A thing I discovered just a few weeks ago.
01:26:33
Speaker
And it still makes me laugh. And I've just started commenting on my own achievements right after I do them now. If I remember to. So I've, you know, on Core Keeper, which I was talking about having played recently, I have been commenting on my own achievements. Like I wrote under the most recent one, big news. Then...
01:27:01
Speaker
then out of all the millions and millions of steam users how many achievement comments do you think get passed through the steam servers a day like i think it's got it i mean steam is huge it's huge it's like beyond used all over the world do you think there are more than a hundred comments placed on achievements because yeah i mean part of me is like probably like in the three digits a day. But given how big, here's the thing, is it's like, you know, maybe that's really popular in one country.
01:27:40
Speaker
Yeah, or it could be some games that are- It's very international platform. And so it's like, you know how it is, like where you discover it's like, oh yeah, like that social- In Denmark, like yeah, huge. That Orcut, Google's first social media platform was really big in Brazil.
01:27:57
Speaker
Remember Orcut? Yes. Yeah. Did you ever use Orcut? Yeah. No. I used Orcut a little bit. You know me. I've just stayed on Dig from the... Oh, let me... What's going on on Dig today? oh that's a great... Yeah. Hit the What's Going On On Dig theme music, Ben. Oh!
01:28:14
Speaker
Well, it didn't jump to you slash AI. It jumped me to slash tech. yes i Wow. They must have listened to podcast. I was going say, this is in response to our podcast. We're the only people who've talked about dig in years.
01:28:27
Speaker
And I bet their AI algorithm picked that up. And I'm going to say slash tech entirely about AI. So yeah, I want to say, you know, we're recording this on June 14th, 2026. And you might be asking yourself, what is the top story of June 14th, 2026? Yeah. um The top story in the world today.
01:28:48
Speaker
ah Microsoft argues proprietary token capital and learning loops create AI moats, not underlying models. Yeah, you know, i was thinking that's the biggest news.
01:29:00
Speaker
That's what I heard everyone on the Sunday morning talk shows talking about. Meet the Press was talking a lot about token capital and learning loops and AI moats.
01:29:14
Speaker
What sort of horrible alternate reality does this website exist to? Oh, man. this This is just insane.
01:29:25
Speaker
Anyway. hate this so much. This is. Anyway, ah we can't do this again. We can't do this again, Ben. Yeah, this is this is also kind of built on the assumption that I liked dig before, which I didn't. I've never always thought it was kind of a bad platform. Yeah, it was like, all right, well, this shitty thing is still bad. What do you want?
01:29:50
Speaker
Um, so what if we did a platform called dig dug where instead of liking comments, you like pump them up like a balloon, like the dig dug guy does. Well, I'm sure some people on online would love that now. i
01:30:09
Speaker
So I'll take my clicks where I can get them, Ben. Sure. Uh, do, do we have anything else to say about the very, very good game? Perfect tides. Well, mean, this is one of those episodes that we have every so often where you and I both really enjoy a game and don't really have controversial or hot takes about it. It's just sort of us spending an hour or so saying, like, this great game is great.
01:30:35
Speaker
And, you know, I think that, if anything, I hope we've communicated to listeners who maybe haven't heard of Perfect Tides or maybe haven't had a chance to play it yet. Um, that it's a game that clearly made an impact on both Ben and i I mean, it was, uh, or Ben and me rather, uh, gotta get that right. I don't want to, I don't want people in my mentions. Hmm.
01:30:59
Speaker
Hmm. You know, it's, I I've been kind of cooking on this thought all day and I don't, I still don't think it's entirely cooked. So sorry. You have this slightly raw thought, uh, you know,
01:31:14
Speaker
so Adventure game fans, and this isn't all of, you know, hashtag not not all adventure game fans or whatever. But but most. a A large group of adventure game fans are looking for games that they they either only want to talk about games that came out between 19, let's say 84 and eight. Yeah.
01:31:56
Speaker
Uh, those plus something that is directly, you know, evoking that. And it's like, Oh, we're, we're making a, this is just like King's quest or whatever. Right.
01:32:13
Speaker
You know we're like this, this fan fate of Atlantis sequel will definitely happen. Uh, now, uh,
01:32:25
Speaker
and, uh, so, you know, this, this thought of mine is is one, you know, maybe, maybe try this out. If, if you're someone, you know, that, that fits that description that, uh, isn't definitely isn't listening to this podcast and is like scanning through ours and going like, Oh, are they talking about space quest? I'll listen to that.
01:32:51
Speaker
Uh, and good news for next week.
01:32:56
Speaker
But, you know, it it it's
Modern Adventure Games and Conflict of Interest
01:33:01
Speaker
there. There are there are a couple thoughts I have here. One is, is that, i you know, this game is.
01:33:12
Speaker
About. a very specific type of nostalgia. And so maybe loosen up your your death grip on nostalgia.
01:33:25
Speaker
to to broaden that definition a little bit, uh, that, uh, because it is, ah like it is a nostalgic game in some ways. It will make you feel wistful that perhaps, you know, revisiting secret of monkey Island might,
01:33:45
Speaker
But, ah you know, just loosen that grip there a little bit. And then the other one is, is that, ah you know, there's ah a, ah you know, a group of ah players that that really want games to be taken seriously and, you know, thought of as a a sincere, you know, form of art or something like that.
01:34:11
Speaker
And it's like, you have to, then you have to really pump up games like this and you have to really yeah pump up this, this type of, uh, this type of adventure game.
01:34:23
Speaker
Uh, because this is, you this, this is the, the sort of thing that it is really, uh, wonderful and special, uh, that, that we're in a period where we're getting games like this.
01:34:40
Speaker
yeah And that's why I sincerely i do believe like right now, this decade, the best adventure games are being made. and And so you know like ah that's that's this thought I've just been kicking around in my head. is it's It's just like, you know to me, playing a game like this, playing you know playing games like you know our favorites, Norco, Immortality, stuff like that,
01:35:08
Speaker
ah i you know I think it's like, oh, we finally arrived at ah at a time where we're making like some real you know ah things of substance. Not to say that Secret Monkey Island isn't a game of substance or something like that, but that it to that the the genre has matured to a point where...
01:35:34
Speaker
ah we're getting these games that are so ah that ah are are so strongly emotionally resonant.
01:35:48
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, something that if I could add to that, you know, something that I think, you know, again, we talk constantly about how much we love Norco and immortality, but something that I think separates perfect tides from those games, you know, it does have that maturity. It does have that level of artfulness, you know, that I think connects it to him, but something that separates it is also this game can be,
01:36:13
Speaker
very silly it's very fun it's downright hilarious at times too i mean it's not a homework game it's not a no that's right if if something that really drew you to those classic adventure games was the fact that comedy tended to be a mainstay in so many of them even king's quest has its share fair share of comedy strewn uh strewn in this game has those fun and silly laugh out loud moments alongside tackling some real
01:36:43
Speaker
emotion along the way as well so yeah yeah it's not a homework game is a great way to put this yeah we we've really focused a lot on what a emotionally impactful thing this is but yeah it's it's i can almost say with with certainty it's not going to feel like a chore to play it yeah it's it's a pleasure to play absolutely and and yeah you know that is always the the challenge of this sort of thing where it's like oh yeah you know the writing is so good And it really made me feel feelings. And then like, i i can certainly feel myself if I have no, if I hadn't played this, hearing that and going like, I think I'll go back to Core Keeper. That makes me feel nothing. and That's exactly what I want.
01:37:24
Speaker
Yeah, like exactly. Yeah. I mean, there is that there's something to be said for filling nothing. um and that You shouldn't knock that. Yeah. and we We don't want to, we don't want to suggest filling. Nothing isn't a perfectly valid thing to do as well, because i mean, I think we all chase that high, which is to say that neutral all the time.
01:37:42
Speaker
Yeah. but But yeah, Perfect Tides, great game. ah and And we'll definitely i have ah a podcast where we talk about station to station in a more kind of thorough non-interview format so we can do a little bit more in depth on that. But, ah you know, Jess, we'll play it. So we'll be at some point after that, whenever that is.
01:38:11
Speaker
And Ben and I also need to discuss a little bit some of the ethical concerns around the fact that he appears as a character in Station to Station and what sort of conflict of interest that poses for the podcast. And, you know, we we are sensitive to, and we get a lot of emails about, you know, sort of the ethics this podcast. For reference, a ah drawing likeness of me shows up because I kickstarted it at that level.
01:38:37
Speaker
uh he's uh he's an investor ben's a big investor in the sequel so uh yeah we we'll have to we'll we'll wrap past legal we'll see ben may not be on that episode it could be just me doing a solo quest we'll see here's the funny thing about this and maybe we'll talk about this when we get to that but uh it is still not i'm still not clear on which drawing is me in it.
01:39:08
Speaker
And also there, there are some like scenes and sections I haven't seen because there's a lot of different like little side things that you can do in the game. So maybe I just didn't even see it, but there is one character that does look a lot like me, but I i didn't kickstart at that tier.
01:39:27
Speaker
So the question is, you get a plus up? Did I, did I get a mistaken plus up or have I just not found myself in Because there is, it's like, I forget if the the photo I sent had facial hair or not.
01:39:46
Speaker
Because whatever it is, the drawing that where I'm like, that guy kind of looks like me. And other people are like, that kind of looks like you. The facial hair is different from whatever my photo sent. So I'm like, it's probably someone that looks similar to me. Yeah.
01:40:04
Speaker
Wouldn't amazing if you kickstarted something like that and you just showed up in the game? It's like, there's Farty Ben and everybody's just like constantly talking about here. The guy shows up at parties and just farts constantly. Look at this piece of shit. I would have so much, like, you know, obvious. ah that someone That feels like some sort of like, you know, the golden age of sketch. Unfortunately, like a kickstart didn't exist then, but like sketch show thing, it's like,
01:40:32
Speaker
Oh, you know, that's really nice. Or like a weird curb your enthusiasm plot where it's like, you made me look like an asshole the game. No, no. I celebrated you. You're very funny. You have like spoken dialogue. Listen, you only gave $200 and now you're complaining specially featured?
01:40:52
Speaker
Yeah.
01:41:00
Speaker
I mean, roast culture is so huge right now. I don't know if i' know how much of like you know comedy you follow, Ben, but yeah roasting is just
Humor and Listener Engagement
01:41:10
Speaker
all the rage. i I'm more into to broasting.
01:41:14
Speaker
Like when you do a chicken. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we have a button on our air fryer for that. Oh, that sounds great. All right, well, this has been... i'm not trying to boast about my brost. You're not a boast broster? brost broster? I'm not a brost broster. Do you post your brost bros posts?
01:41:31
Speaker
I post my best bros posts.
01:41:40
Speaker
I'll boast. I don't post my bros. per Wait, I'll, I'll boast. I don't post my best bros.
01:41:53
Speaker
There it is. I sometimes post my best breast bros, bro.
01:42:05
Speaker
Like a chicken breast. All right. Let's see. Let's see. Okay.
01:42:18
Speaker
oh we'll stop there. Thank you so much for listening to quest quest, the adventure game podcast. I'm Ben PS underscore Garrick on Twitch. I'm Jess Decaf Jedi on Twitch. You can also find links to us in the show notes. Uh,
01:42:34
Speaker
And please rate and review. It helps people find the show. And even if it didn't, it helps my self-esteem. So five stars just to make me feel good.
01:42:45
Speaker
And be sure to go on Steam and comment on some of Ben's achievements in games recently. Please comment on my or your own achievements. Just start commenting on your own. That's valid Let's start.
01:42:58
Speaker
Let's get it so there's someone at Valve that like is just like why there's like you know why does our little spreadsheet that tracks the number of comments on achievements why has that got like is there some sort of bot situation why has this number gone up so high because I feel like our listenership could probably make a noticeable dent in those numbers oh yeah those uh the our 200 listeners which is more than i've said in the past so good job us uh our 200 listeners uh definitely and all the ones we lost too along the way i mean we've gained way more than 200 yeah think about that we just lost like probably 150 along the way yeah and added 200 new
01:43:45
Speaker
Anyway, so thank you so much. Rate and review, send us an email at questquestpodcast at gmail.com. And join us as next week when we discuss Space Quest.
01:44:18
Speaker
All right. Here's a question for you, Jess, about Space Quest 4. Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers. ah Are the sequel police cyborgs?
01:44:32
Speaker
Are the sequel police cyborgs? And note that I didn't call them Time Rippers. I got it correct. That's true. a lot of people think that the sequel police are the Time Rippers, and this is something... Time Rippers sounds bad.
01:44:47
Speaker
It sounds so terrifying. It sounds scary. Roger Wilcox are the Time Rippers. Those guys can't be good. Yeah. and It turns out the title is a reference to some supporting good guys that appear for 45 seconds in the game, not the villains that plague you the remainder of the game. And are those villains Cyborgs?
01:45:09
Speaker
You know, Ben, i think they are Time Borgs.