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Episode 23 - Tangle Tower
1.7k Plays4 months ago
Lets talk about guinea pigs for a while then too many Lorelais before we DEEP DIVE into TANGLE TOWER - a fun mystery game! And we talk about its predecessor Detective Grimoire and the demo for the third game in the series, The Mermaid Mask. It's, honestly?, just a good episode.
Email us! [email protected]
Games Mentioned:
- Lorelai
- Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
- Detective Grimoire
- The Mermaid Mask
- Tangle Tower
- The Dagger of Amon Ra
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
- Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon
- The Duck Detective
Recommended
Transcript
Dreaming of Guinea Pigs
00:00:00
Speaker
Do you want to hear my dream that I had? Oh, boy. um You don't have a choice. I am going to tell you. Just so you know, this that was a rhetorical question. OK, then I guess I'll just say yes to preserve our friendship. Thanks. So it's relevant to your interests. I had a dream that for some reason I adopted six guinea pigs. Six. Not two, which is a good starting point if you have not had little critters around, but six. And they were all different colors. One of them was really, really like chubby and cute. And I could not handle them, basically. For some reason, they weren't in a cage. I i don't know why. I don't know why. DreamMe wanted free roaming. anything Okay, so you're just wandering around. Where was Basket? I don't know. I think she was like upset with the guinea pigs and like didn't didn't want to fuck with the guinea pigs either. Okay. but Yeah, so i I have all these guinea pigs and so I ask like a friend to help and they're no help. I'm like, you're letting the guinea pigs like get through the gates and like what is going on?
00:01:19
Speaker
um And then the the little chubby brown one wanted to just be in my arms all the time. So I had to keep holding that one while trying to like herd these other five guinea pigs. And then Dream Me has a meltdown because she cannot handle the guinea pigs. She's just like, why did I adopt so many guinea pigs? Why did I? Why did I do? I'm like frying into this little guinea pig in my arm. as if it was something that happened to you and not something you voluntarily you went out it and did and and you went from zero to six guinea pigs i know i don't what is dream me doing that's so many guinea pigs i have two guinea pigs and they are oh
00:02:10
Speaker
They are a lot of work and time. They are. I spend a lot of time just maintaining these guinea pigs' ability to live on Earth. I know. They have to have enrichment and food all the time and affection. Unless you have a guinea pig, and I'm going to say this, and everybody listening is going to picture something. They're going to picture what they think is a lot of poop. ah now I don't like this word so but I'm gonna say it anyway cuz I just don't like the word poop I don't like talking about but that is all but I have to tell you guys there is so much poop like so like you will clean the guinea pig page of poop and then if somebody comes over
00:03:02
Speaker
three hours later, they'll be like, why don't you ever clean this thing? Oh Why are pooping that much? They go to the bathroom so, so much. God damn. What are you feeding your guinea pigs? if it was And sometimes, sometimes I'll go like two days, right, without sweeping out their cage. And I find one of them in like one of their little houses lying on a literal pile of poop, like just lying on it like, Like, oh, this is comfy. This is a comfy space to lay down in. Nice and warm and bushy, I guess. it's not No, no, no, they're hard and firm. and Oh, now they're hard and great. they're Well, no, they always are. They come out as like little pellets. Mostly they eat hay. um But yeah, and so if you had six yeah within a day, they would have made enough poop to climb like climb on and get out of their cage.
00:04:02
Speaker
to like build a mountain build a staircase with which they could escape and keep in mind in the dream they were free roaming so they were oh right everywhere why i dream about this i i really could not tell you is this your fault no nothing i all right i we've talked about this before do you nothing is ever my fault
00:04:33
Speaker
Except this, it's your fault because I think about your guinea pigs, which is weird and not weird and kind of creepy now that I say it. And they're so cute and they make little noises. What is it called? Weaking. Oh my God, weaking. Because it sounds like they they're saying, week, week, week, week. Oh my God. See, this is why I got six guinea pigs. That would have been so much noise in your house too.
00:05:02
Speaker
but Most of what guinea pigs do is ask for food. So that would have been your whole life. That's my life now. I think I'm gonna do it. Sounds great. ah Okay, you do it. And then we'll report back. Every time we podcast, there's just like little weaking everywhere. Oh, that's so cute. I thought you were gonna say every time we podcast, you have one more guinea pig than the last time.
00:05:28
Speaker
The visual of that is... hilarious to me. Anyway, that's my dream. You're welcome. Thank you. You're welcome. I'm gonna start the music now.
00:05:56
Speaker
Hey everyone, PushingUpRoses here. Welcome back to Save Your Game with me, as always, be very knowledgeable about guinea pigs, Matt Aucamp.
Cultural Misunderstandings: Warm Beer
00:06:05
Speaker
So when I have dreams about guinea pigs, it is often that I have left one, i've I've left one somewhere or rather I've left two somewhere and I've returned to them after a number of days or weeks and been like, oh my God, I cannot believe that I forgot about these guinea pigs and they have bred and there is now like eight of them. Oh God.
00:06:32
Speaker
that is oh That is every single time I dream about guinea pigs. it is they I've forgot about them and then found them somewhere they've reproduced and now there's so many more guinea pigs. I'm so glad that ah somebody else dreams about guinea pigs. and okay ah But hi, everybody. ah Yeah, I'm Matt Aucamp. Welcome back to save your game. Also, ah you can you can stop emailing us about warm beer. like We got.
00:07:07
Speaker
Roses. Oh God. We got so many emails from people in the UK being like, we don't drink warm beer. Sorry. My bad. We got so many emails of people being like, actually. The beer is, we call it cask temperature, and it is just normal temperature beer. And we don't have to make our beer so ice cold that you can't even taste it. And it's like, okay, all right, all right, all right. And then it's like, here's three more emails.
00:07:40
Speaker
so loud into I'm not, I'm not pointing a finger at any one of you. None of you knew that the rest of you were doing it. That's true. You probably thought you were the only ones and then, you know, if you knew we had already gotten all these emails about beer temperatures, you probably would have been like, okay, they got enough of it, but you didn't know. So you, you're all off, you were all off the hook before this episode. But from now on- But if you do it again, so help me. From now on, I think you can stop emailing us about the temperature of UK beer. Oh my god, you're right. There are definitely emails in here. Yeah.
00:08:26
Speaker
Well, thank you, everyone, ah for your ah input. Thank you, everybody, for your indignance. I'm sorry. I believe we even said in that episode, I don't think this is true, but this is what I've heard. For some reason, Matt, you always like say stuff that gets us a lot of emails.
00:08:52
Speaker
It's your fault. Even though it's never your fault, I don't know, kind of seems like it is. The thing, yeah, so this one is actually a little hard to discern, but because we know um there it's that it's not my fault, we can work backwards from there and figure out the logic here. So if I say it and it generates a lot of emails, it must be the fault of the people writing the emails for thinking this was something to have to email about. Wow, wow, wow. such a dude, honestly. it is its just It just so happens that that's just the case, and I don't. Okay. I can't. I can't. All right, Matt, what are we talking about today? What are we doing? What's on the docket? Is that the right word? Docket? I gotta look that up. I think that's the right word. I mean, back and unless you're trying to say something really wild that has nothing to do with what we're talking about, then docket, yeah, is the right word. No, I don't think it is.
00:09:51
Speaker
Yeah, it is. It's like what's on the agenda. and It says ah it to place on the docket for legal action. Yeah, it's like
Gaming Discussion: Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
00:10:01
Speaker
what's on the legal agenda. So your docket is like what what is due in court today? What cases do you have hearings for? All right, Matt, what cases do you have hearings for today? um Well, I've been playing. I beat. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. I thought you beat it last week. God, we've been, you've been talking about this game so much, I can't even. I told you guys I beat it last week. Okay, ah I played Lorelei with an A instead of an E. Oh my God. I played it. um I think you might like this game. Lorelei, the other, um it's the other ah Harvester games game.
00:10:50
Speaker
Oh, I didn't- That one is the one I'm referring to. Oh, okay, okay, okay, sorry, sorry, sorry. but No, uh, why would you possibly be confused? the odds that there are two Lorelai games? what way Why would you possibly be confused that I'm playing two adventure games called Lorelai? How could that possibly be confusing to you? I just don't understand. You know, I am a dumb. I'm just a dumb woman. Yeah, I know what you're talking about now. I've been playing Lorelei, and I don't know if it's my favorite Harvester games game, but it's up there. It's really, you know what it is? It's got the best graphics of any of them, and which is weird, because i it is not their earliest, or their latest game. It is not. Yeah. Huh, I thought it was. Man, I am.
00:11:47
Speaker
not on point right now. I'm just gonna look this up real quick. Yeah, no. Burnhouse Lane is a more recent game. Oh, yeah, you're right. I i did not realize that Lorelei was from 2019. And Burnhouse Lane is pretty but it is it is a little bit more like the cat lady in its like clunky clunkiness. yeah And Lorelei is so polished. It's really, I find that really interesting. It looks nice. Yeah, I'm i'm looking, it's it's more colorful that might have something oh to do with it. It definitely has. It's still that collage-y.
00:12:22
Speaker
kind of feel to it, which I like, I actually really like that a lot. It doesn't feel like that in the game though, is yes I think what i what I'm saying is like, Burnhouse Lane feels very collage-y and obviously Cat Lady feels collage-y. Yeah, definitely Cat Lady feels very much like a collage. yeah But Lorelei kind of doesn't, it all feels like like singular, like, like solid pieces of work. like Every background feels cohesive. um And once again, it is just chock full of references to the other games. Is it um related to the stories of the other? is it like a It's obviously not a continuation, but it is it it is it in the same world?
00:13:13
Speaker
it is definitely in the same world and it involves the queen of maggots. And it it explains why the queen of maggots called herself Lorelei, but it's a little bit of a cop out. yeah ah unless Unless there's a twist on that at the end that I haven't seen. I'm not you done yet, but i'm I'm really, really liking it. um So just to add to our harvester games discussion from several episodes ago. Very nice. I'm really enjoying Lorelai. I think, you remember when I said ah play all of them or one of them and not two of them? I think Lorelai's an exact, I think if you played one other one and Lorelai, I don't think it would ruin your experiences. Oh, nice, nice. Or you could just play Lorelai if that sounds like a jam, yeah. um Roses, what's on the docket for you?
00:14:07
Speaker
ah So I said I wasn't going to, but just in ah in preparation for today's game that we're covering, I did go back and play Detective Grimoire, the first detective Grimoire. And like I said, I had played it before, which is why I kind of wanted to talk about the game we're going to discuss. So I was like, you know what, let's just take another look at it so I can like refresh my memory. So I went through it and played the
Deep Dive: Tangle Tower
00:14:34
Speaker
whole thing. I did too. And you know what? I liked it more than when I first played it ah several years ago when it first came out. I don't i don't really know why, but i have I have a theory and it kind of ties into the other game that we'll be discussing. I have, yeah, and I think we should wrap that into our other discussion because, yeah, I have some feelings about
00:15:03
Speaker
ah how i Yeah, I have a lot of feelings actually about how the two compare. Yeah. um They are quite different. And I am glad I went back to play it because I think now I'll have a better yeah like refreshed memory of of things. ah But I wasn't going to because I'm like, I already've already played it years ago. But it's it was a good idea. I had forgotten. ah many things. I've forgotten how the UI was a little different from ah the game. Should we just say the game we're discussing? Yeah, we're talking about Tangle Tower today. Tangle Tower, everyone. So yeah, ah I'm glad I replayed it. It's a short game, so I was able to get it completed in like two hour, two-ish hours, I would say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me pull mine up. It took me
00:15:54
Speaker
Yeah. 109 minutes. So yeah. so Okay. Oh wow. 109. Yeah. You beat me. ah Sorry. I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to show off. You know, myself I think I think with those games that have voice acting, I think sometimes I do this too. I don't always listen to the full dialogue. Sometimes I will click along if I'm getting fatigued and obviously that's going to make it, you know, less time. I don't know if you do that, but I did that a lot in Detective grimoire because and this is
00:16:28
Speaker
It's the silly things that seem so ridiculous to complain about in a review or on a podcast, but while you're playing, have this like significant effect um that feel really petty. But everyone in Detective grimoire pauses for a second before they speak. And that is so, when you want to listen to the dialogue, that is so frustrating because then you just end up hearing just like, so then you end up kind of clicking through, but you don't hear any of the dialogue. Like, you just hear like.
00:17:02
Speaker
this
00:17:05
Speaker
right um Where it's like ah in Entangled Tower, ah I was skipping dialogue sometimes, but I was hearing like about half the sentences before I moved forward. and like I do think, again, as as petty as that is to complain about, I do think that something game designers have to keep in mind is like, um If we're just sitting, if we are able to read along and we're reading faster than the voice actors and we're just sitting there watching talking heads, your voice actors should probably speak pretty fast.
00:17:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's you know, I go back and forth on that because I was always told, you know, when doing narration or doing speaking to speak slower than you think, right, you should be so people can actually really think, you know, analyze and digest what you're saying. But yeah I get what you're saying, though, because there are times in adventure games where I really feel that the characters are talking ah way too slow. And I do think there's a difference between like, say giving a speech at a ah lower speed, and talking conversationally. You know what I mean? So these characters are supposed to be talking conversationally. And when you're talking so slow, it kind of takes me out of it, you know. And I think one of the reasons people say, especially in audiobooks to talk way slower than you think,
00:18:27
Speaker
is because people can speed it up if they need to. That's true. I find myself often doing that, too, in YouTube tutorials. I'll i'll speed up things a little bit. Or or even slow it down if I'm if i'm doing a tutorial sometimes. yes but harmless you know If I'm watching a YouTube video that's educational, I'll usually speed it up. ah yeah um I listen to almost all audiobooks on faster speed. I never do it with podcasts because podcasts are conversational. And I think I'm going to insult some listeners who are doing it right now. But I think it's a little unhinged to listen to podcasts because they're here for entertainment. Sure. And it's people talking. So and you're not just trying to absorb information, right? When you're listening to a podcast.
00:19:15
Speaker
you're supposed to be enjoying it. It'd be like, it'd be like all right, I'm gonna go hot tubbing. And then you jump in the hot tub and you're like, okay, I've i've touched the water and felt the temperature. I'm jumping out of the hot tub. What's what's next? Just enjoy yourself. I find I am a little ah guilty of doing that, but only, this is so bizarre. Only when I'm like, oh, it's really late. I got to sleep, but I have to finish this video. I have to finish this podcast. So I try to like squeeze it in. Because I'm so far in, I'm like, oh my god, I gotta finish it right now. Somehow that feels so much more excusable to me. I don't know why, because I feel like that is probably a pretty unhinged thing. But to me, that makes perfect, perfect sense. And I'm like, oh, I should start doing that.
00:20:04
Speaker
ah but you know ah there So on characters speaking slowly or fast, right there is nothing worse. been playing a like a narrative game where there's a walk and talk. yeah like This is especially the case in, say, um action adventure games, right? sure where If there's narration or there's another character walking with you and talking to you, or there's ah somebody's talking to you over a walkie talkie or whatever, and you get to where you're going, and you have to just stand there or walk in a circle because you won't hear the dialogue. There's nothing on earth worse than that feeling in a video game, right? Like, i yeah like it happens a lot in the... um the
00:20:57
Speaker
Star Wars like Jedi Fallen Order. and Oh, does it? I haven't played those. and star war what's the What's the other one called that people are really mad about because it was released with all those bugs? u oh ah Oh, Star Wars Jedi Survivor. It happened a lot in those games where I'd be walking and I'd get where I was going and the other person's still like, Yeah, i've I've been on this planet for 30 years and I've seen so many weird aliens come by here. i stuck I'm a star war. And I'm like standing there just like, God, I want to go hate stuff with my lightsaber. But unfortunately, I care about this story.
00:21:41
Speaker
Yeah, they do it. They do it somewhat in the God of the newer God of War games. But to their credit, they seem to have a better sense of timing than some of the other games. And they do it in LA noir as well. And I think that those conversations I think are just cut off if I'm remembering correctly, like if you're in the car, driving with your partner, you'll start talking and I think it just, somebody will have to let me know, but I i want to say it just yeah cuts off. But again, that's kind of incidental dialogue. It's just like, you're my wife and I had some, you know, it's not like story dialogue. I guess, I guess that that's the case for this too. There are definitely times in games where it's narration, it's stuff that would be
00:22:28
Speaker
you know, useful to know if you're curious about the story. But I know a lot of games do that thing where it's like, i Uncharted does this, and I think ah the Star Wars Jedi games do this, where they'll say, hold that thought, and then do something. And then if you go near the character again, they'll like pick up where they left left off, and the character will be like, so what was I saying again? But. so i think I think God of War does that. If I'm recalling correctly, it's like, hang out a second. in So in Star Wars though, when you come back to the character, they start the dialogue over again from the beginning. but no don oh And in um and then ah ah Uncharted,
00:23:13
Speaker
I remember getting to the point where I had built up so many of these, wait, hold on a second, conversations. It was like the game got confused of which one was the last one was told to hang on. ah That's great. And then know it like, i it just, yeah. ah I remember specifically like driving through the desert with Sully and someone else and ah there just being so many conversations that it just turned into like a chaotic jumble every time I got back in the car. That's amazing. Oh, but I love that. I don't know. That's that's seems like a bug, but it's also funny. yeah So okay, so we're talking about Tangled Tower today. Yes, we are. Do you want to
00:23:59
Speaker
ah jump to a break and then come on back and talk about this wacky detective. Wacky, yeah, let's do it. Let's put on that song that I play. I thought you had a name. No, I don't have, I have i haveve nothing.
00:24:33
Speaker
Hey, everyone! Welcome back to Save Your Game. I'm pushing up roses. That's my at-all camp. Hey, how was your break? It was good. How was your break? Good. I'm drinking some black raspberry sparkling water. It's got two Z's in it. Oh. It's cool guy stuff. Like razzle dazzle. It's like Bob Fosse sparkling water. Yeah, yeah, yeah. ah So, Tangle Tower. I got thoughts. I got thoughts, man. What do you think about, let's start with that name, because until I played this game, my ah mental image of what Tangle Tower was, was so different. Same, yeah.
00:25:16
Speaker
um I don't like the name yeah yeah of this game. I understand, having having played it, I understand why they named it that. ah What's really interesting is it is a detective grimoire game. That is the re recurring character, it's by the same devs, SPF, is it SPF games? SFB. SFB games. It's State Farm Bank games. State Farm Bank, they got a games division. ah Yeah, um, I, I didn't even know, like if I had seen Tangletower in a list of adventure games, I would not equate it to the style or the same world as Detective Grimmar. So I thought this game was going to be like, super hyper-puzzly, I think. I did not expect it to be like a closed circle Agatha Christie who done it, you know, type of a game.
00:26:12
Speaker
right well well before um i i i knew what it was and i just knew the name and people were talking about oh there's this really great game tangle tower it's an adventure game i i assumed it was some sort of hybrid right like i assumed it was some sort of like action adventure game or casual adventure game or adventure game with like some weird um I don't know arcadey elements and it's not that at all it is just yeah it's like yeah it's like a detective like deduction game and
00:26:45
Speaker
Yeah, and I wish it did have a name that it more implied that it was, it maybe they didn't want to do that. Maybe the doves were trying to make a strategic decision yeah by making it a little more vague so people wouldn't dismiss it based on the fact that it is a detective game, but also people who are looking for it might pass it by. It's a tough decision. and I get it. and And so then there was there was a lot of other things that surprised me too. I didn't expect such complex and loving animation in this game. Oh, it's really good. And it's, uh, so detective grimoire was also animated and it's pretty impressive. It's actually pretty impressive. It looks great. Tickle Tower is a little bit higher up there. They kind of go in this squiggle vision, uh, direction, which if you don't know what that is, uh, Beavis and Butthead, Dr. Katz, it just looks like it, it looks like 2d animation where the lines are always kind of moving.
00:27:42
Speaker
Um, and I really liked it and it's very expressive, very, very expressive. The characters are really animated. They don't just talk and move their hands. They like move and act and emote. Like it, it is. And all of them have like weird weird animations they do. like like There's one guy who just like wait wiggles his hands and his whole body around. like he's like he's like He's a ah so piece of paper waving in the wind. That's a good description. He's a paper waving. I like that. Everybody has these like very
00:28:24
Speaker
Again, big animations. And I didn't expect that because all the characters, i kind I like the style, but they're very, it's a very illustrated style and it is, they look like stickers. I love the style. I liked it in detector of grimoire. I like it even better. Entangle Tower, maybe. I like both of them. I like the style that they went to went through. Yeah, it's illustrative, a little bit of cubist, very slightly. I love it. I love how it looks. Yeah, me i I do as well, but you can see what I mean, right? Like when you look at that, you you you don't expect it to have such life to it. Yeah, I agree. Which, yeah, was incredibly, incredibly impressive to me.
00:29:09
Speaker
No, it was really good. I really like all the voice acting. I even I know that you're maybe not the biggest fan of a detective grimoire himself. I do like it. I do like basically all of them. I like detective grimoire. I like his sidekick Sally. So after going back and playing Detective Grimoire, the previous game, so it goes Detective Grimoire then Tangle Tower, and there's a demo out for their next game, and yes which yes which is called um mer The Mermaid Mask.
00:29:42
Speaker
yes i'm a little I'm a little confused. I am not understanding how Tangle Tower is a sequel to Detective Grimoire. Maybe I missed something, maybe you could tell me if I missed something. I think I can. but ok So at the end of Detective Grimoire, um it is implied that so the thing that you're looking for, or the person that you're looking for, you're looking for a suspect, and you find that suspect, you find out who who did the quote murder, and he gets away at the end of Detective Grammar. You're also not
00:30:23
Speaker
I mean, you know, Sally, who becomes your sidekick later on, I don't quite understand the evolution of how she became involved as a detective. And I thought the sequel to detect detective grimoire would be trying to catch the suspect that got away from the first game. But that's not that's not it. Tangle Tower is a completely different story with completely different characters, different setting. So what am I missing here? Okay. So
00:30:55
Speaker
um i don't I also don't know how Sally became involved. okay with that It seems as if they might be dating, but they're definitely partners. yeah um Because there're at some point in Tangle Tower, you see a you see like ah a map of everybody who is in love with each other. And there's a line between Sally and Detective Grimoire. Aww, that's sweet. but
00:31:26
Speaker
Okay. And yeah, that's implied in that that is implied in detective grimoire where you meet her character and they do banter and they do flirt. And it's like, Oh, she could probably be a love interest. But I'm not quite I wish I knew that part of the story of how she became also a detective. And like I said, it seemed like at the end of the first game, We're trying to find the suspect that got away. We never see him again. He's just gone, I guess. So that's something you're I'm a little confused here also. So again, what what I was trying to say is I think it was a really good idea to and to bring Sally back. She is such a good character. yeah she is way She was a good character in Detective Grimoire. She is an incredible character in Tangled Tower. I do not think I would have liked this game as much if Sally wasn't in it. um
00:32:17
Speaker
Oh, no, I she's a great addition. I love Sally. I love the banter. It's really good. And just to add to the voice acting thing, I like Detective grimoire a little I like his voice a little bit better now that I've played and once I went back to play Detective grimoire. I don't know what changed, but I like it a little bit better. I think he is the worst. He is the weakest of all the voice actors. I think these two games have such phenomenal voice talent. I think everybody is bringing it so hard, got it especially Sally. And I think the the voice of detective grimoire is just a little, ah it it feels like friend of the developer. I don't know that it is, I'm not making that claim. I'm just yeah saying it's got that kind of feel.
Character Dynamics and Interactions
00:33:06
Speaker
Also a guy hiding an accent, right?
00:33:08
Speaker
Oh really, I didn't know. I believe so, it sounds very much like it to me. Fair, that's totally fair. Which probably affects the acting too, but I just think there's some strange acting choices that he makes in his deliveries. I don't know that he's great at delivering a joke, but anyway. ah I'm confused by what you're saying because I didn't think the culprit at the end of detective grim markets away. He leaps into the hollow of the tree to try and escape. And then um the the boggy, the swamp monster comes out. right And I don't know that we see what happens to him, but i to me, I thought it was implied that he got beat up or killed by boggy. I but i guess I'm...
00:34:03
Speaker
Yes, you're right. That does happen. ok ah For some reason I disconnected that because Boggy is in fact a cryptid and should not be real, but is real. Oh, right. So that then that's just your focus. at that Yeah, that wasn't my, fault you're right. um I guess I just got confused because it did say to be continued. And I feel like it's not as smooth. I think it's fair to say that it's not the smoothest transition into the next game. Agreed, though I do, my feeling is I kind of like that in a sequel. I kind of like when a sequel doesn't start like the next day. When the sequel starts in medias res, a completely different situation and it almost works back to how it's connected. And I think this one does. So do you mind if we return to this question as we get a little deeper into the plot? Because I believe, I i feel as if these two are connected. and
00:34:59
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with that I agree with that notion. Um, I think we learn a little bit more in this game about who Richard Remington was in Detective grimoire, and we learn why he was where he was, it just doesn't necessarily, the the murderer in Detective Grimmar is not necessarily part of the greater conspiracy that we are in Babylon. But Richard Remington definitely is. Yeah, i think I think the reason it's so unsmooth for me is is that I don't know how Sally got there. I think if I i think if i knew
00:35:45
Speaker
It's just, it's just, what you just get really thrown in and some people are going to love that because that, that means you can kind of play it as a one-off and you don't necessarily need to play detective memoir. But I, I feel like I want something to transition it. Just some, even just one line early in Tangle Tower where she's like, I'm glad you asked me to be your partner. You would have, you know, you would never be able to do this on your own. Something like that. That would have been great. Just that would have been fine. Or something at the end of Detective Grimoire where she's like, I'm a little sick of this island. I think I'm coming with you.
00:36:22
Speaker
right Yeah, and exactly, exactly. again It seemed like an afterthought to put her in. that That is my opinion on that. I think you're probably right. And even if it was an afterthought, you can still go back and add, right? Any writer knows that, you know, if you get halfway through a thing and you decide to change something, you go back all the way to the beginning to start seeding it, right? Like, even even if you're like, oh, I thought of a cool twist. Yeah. You go back to like chapter one, right? And you just start subtly hinting that it's going to, like that the story's going there in very small ways. Like why they, at some point I guess decided Sally was in there and then never thought to even say, thanks for inviting me along. Like that's all I needed. I think I would have been, honestly, I think I would have been satiated by that to be honest.
00:37:19
Speaker
Yeah, so do you wanna talk about the ah the, the plot, the beginning of where where we start in Tangle Tower? Yes, let's talk about the setup. ah There has been a murder. Murder, most foul. It is most foul because this murder is of a 19-year-old a girl, which is very sad. um And we are, I guess, invited to investigate on this tiny island, this big mansion with two towers on it. and It's called Tangle Tower. and very much And much like the Duck Detective, we don't know who hired us.
00:38:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of those. I feel like there's a lot of stories that do that. Like, who? ha I don't know. I mean, yeah, I was going to say I was going to try to think of another one, but but my brain, my brain don't work. I know it happens a lot. Yeah, it does happen a lot. It's kind of a trope at this point. But we' we're in this very cool setting, you know, it's kind of this very wistful, ah it's kind of strange island with weird looking water, it looks very magical. And the house itself, it's a mansion with like two towers on it and two families live there, the fellows family and the pointer family.
00:38:47
Speaker
And they each all have their own separate rooms and it's a very clue like match match. And in fact, the game reminds me of clue. It reminds me of an Agatha Christie ah who done it type of type of a situation. And so your main setting is Tangle Tower. And i I didn't, I was overwhelmed at first. You know, you get into this, you get into this the main setting, right? And there's question marks for each room. Cause you have not quote unlocked them yet. right And I was like overwhelmed. I'm like, oh God, there there's so many screens. i'll tell this I'll tell you this. I love a game that starts you out with a bunch of rooms you can't get into. nice ah i do I was overwhelmed as well because
00:39:33
Speaker
From almost the very beginning, and you have, what, like nine characters you can talk to in nine separate rooms that you can investigate? yeah and you have And you can ask every character about every item, about every other character, huh and about, ah what's what's the other thing you can ask them about? Don't you have three categories of things? There's three, I, is there? Maybe I asked, I definitely asked everybody about everyone. That was maybe my favorite. That was very lorable to me. Wasn't it to you? Just asking it and about items too. Yeah. And it it it does. But yeah, that felt really, really overwhelming because it yeah it can yeah it was just like, Oh my God, I don't know where to start. I feel this feels like so much.
00:40:22
Speaker
It does, it does. But i you know what I like to do in these games? It's a very adventure game thing to do. And maybe you have a different like process for playing these. But I like to group everything together. So when i start much like Laura Bow, when I start asking people about people, I do it all in one go.
Murder Mystery Setup in Tangle Tower
00:40:44
Speaker
So like I went to Fifi. I asked her about everyone. i i went to you know The exploratory parts almost are an afterthought to me when I'm in what I call interrogation mode. Okay. And I'm just very focused. I'm very focused on the goal at hand, which is asking people about everybody, and then asking people about inventory items that I or clues that I have found. And honestly, that helped. I felt like a real detective taking interrogations.
00:41:14
Speaker
Um, I really, I really liked the brevity of it. It's not overly, uh, narrative heavy. And I like all the settings. Yeah. Um, yeah it's a very, it's very character focused, right? Like yes every, every interaction is unveiled, unveiling, revealing something new about a character, even if it's something you're not necessarily going to use for your investigation. yeah You're learning something just about their personality or about their opinions. And that's like, ah
00:41:46
Speaker
It's really hard to do that on this level. Yeah. Yeah. And everything is kind of, everything makes sense and everything is kind of intertwined and I like. Tangled Tower is intertwined. um yeah As much as I don't like the name i of as it being the name of the game, I really like the set. Tangled Tower rules. and no it's It's great. It's a great setup. ah Do you want to tell, do you want to describe kind of like what happened? like what's What is the murder? What happened? What are we contending with here?
00:42:19
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. um So you get to the murder and it is, yeah, like like Rosa said, it's a young girl who was painting, it is Freya Fellow, who's ah who is a 19 year old painter ah living in Tangle Tower. She was painting her ah aunt Flora, who is catatonic. but Yeah, I would say so. Or just selectively not talking. It's it'ss ah hard to tell. It's clear that- They say it's from trauma. There's some shit and yeah doesn't really want to talk. They say it's because her bird died and she hasn't spoken a word since her bird died. Yeah. um So she was painting this woman. ah There appears to be a knife in the painting and
00:43:17
Speaker
Freya appears to have been stabbed through the chest there and was laying on the floor dead. There is no other, there's no murder weapon besides the painted knife, which has blood on what appears to be the tip. right Right, like the painting wasn't totally finished, so it's not entirely clear what everything in the painting was, but there is a knife-shaped object being held by the subject of the painting, which is the woman Flora, um and it has actual blood on the tip, not red. Yes, actual blood. it it see And there's actual blood on the paintbrush. Right. um And well the red color, all the other paint pots are, and paint is normal, except for the red, which is blood which was tested, I guess, to be blood.
00:44:03
Speaker
Some other pieces of the premise that you find out as you wander around in this in that room, ah everything is like cracked in half. All the items you find are like have this mysterious crack running down the middle of them. um Other things you find out is that some of the some of these characters hate each other. ah Should we go through the characters real quick? ah Real quick, yeah, if we can do it quickly, sure. Sure, there is. Okay, I have little notes about each of them. So there's Fitzfellow, who is a handsome, muscular gardener. ah there is Yeah, he's he's like a a meathead. Is that what this is called? Meathead? I don't know. He's very mysterious, though. doesn't He's a man with not many words.
00:44:51
Speaker
There's Felix Fellow, who is Flora's husband, and he likes to carve a little figures, but he's not very good at it. And he seems very proud of his like past adventures, but he seems a little like a goofy blowhard. Yeah, he is goofy. There is Fifi Fellow, who is the daughter of Felix and Flora. She is an inventor. She is clearly in love with Freya. um And she is my favorite character. I oh never i got bored of talking to Fifi. ah she you know it Being very scientifically minded, ah you know her sentences are very terse and to the point and
00:45:36
Speaker
maybe even wasn't usinging to grimoirre If you make any jokes, she doesn't understand them and she just yeah literally. and But yeah, her and and ah Freya were very good friends. And i yeah, I think it is implied that she might have been in love with her. At some point you find all the couples in the game with lines drawn between them, and there's a line drawn between ah ah Detective Grimor and Sally, right and the only two people on there that are are sorry that are not on there are Fifi and Flora.
00:46:10
Speaker
Oh, okay. And it appears as if, like, the what I gained from that was that Fifi is trying to scientifically break down what the feeling of love is and why she happens to feel it for Flora. and should be Oh, sorry, Freya, not Flora. Freya. Her actual name is Fiona, ah but Freya called her a Fifi. so and Oh, and she seems to often be frustrated with Poppy because Poppy What is, did you get, oh, anyway, we'll get to that. There's definitely tension between the characters. So Poppy is another 19 year old girl. So Fifi is 19, Poppy is 19, and Freya was 19. So they all lived in this this tower and they became extremely good friends. But I think as friends often do, sometimes they just kind of part ways. ah Poppy even had a ah full aesthetic change. she's she She kind of pulled the roses.
00:47:07
Speaker
ah kind of very, you know, not goth when you were younger, and then suddenly uber goth, just very suddenly. So I think the tension between beefy and poppy maybe had something to do with their lifestyle changes. Right. Just as you get older, they seem frustrated, you know, I thought there was also maybe some sort of jealousy about poppy being closer to Freya. yeah that could be um but but then again poppy had kind of drifted away from freya so it's hard to say well anyway so poppy is a god if it's poppy pointer she's part part of the pointers she's goth she likes piano ah she's a musician if you ask
00:47:52
Speaker
about anybody's, if you ask her about anybody, she tells you a poem about them rather than gives you an answer. I love it. I thought it was great. There's Penny Pointer, Penelope Pointer, who is obsessed with birds and has bird wings on her hands. She's so crazy. What in the world? And she is really mad at everybody all the time. And she's in love with Fitzfellow. And they are engaged. Fitz and Penny are engaged. But it's kind of clear that I think, right? Yes, 100%. Okay, cool. And Fitz and Poppy are boning on the reg. Matt, please. They're definitely interested in each other. But I think I think it is implied that Fitz really does try to be loyal to Penny. He's not like a bad guy. But yeah, Poppy and Fitz obviously have a connection.
00:48:46
Speaker
There's, yeah, I think there's just, there's so many indicators that Fitz is also in love with Poppy. I, the entire time, thought that Fitz was definitely more than just interested in Poppy, but maybe I was wrong. So yeah. I think it's up for interpretation, because it doesn't, the game doesn't directly tell you. It's mysterious like that. You know, all these characters have their secrets. Then there is Uncle. Percy, pointer, who has very, he's the he's the wavy guy, and he's very recently taken up a strong interest in astronomy. And he he loves astronomy, and he spends all his time doing astronomy stuff. Allegedly. Allegedly, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:49:36
Speaker
i that character man I don't know what to make of him because his is animation in his setting he's always like bouncing up and down and looking through his telescope I'm like what is wrong with this guy but don't trust him before we got there he had recently hired a detective named Detective Hawkshaw. Yes. um We don't know why she's there at first. We just know that she's there for some reason and she's got a scar and a big cape. And ah she's angry at us. And she was it should be noted that she was there prior to the murder. We're there because we're investigating the murder. Detective Hawkshaw was already there. Right.
00:50:18
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So those are the characters. um Some other stuff about the setting um is that there are some rare plants that grow gems. Yeah, they look edible. That's more like a gem than a fruit and are valuable. there are yeah There's a golden beetle that lives here and yeah no one has seen for a long time. and Yeah, and people are kind of interested in it. There are several characters who have a ah vested interest in this golden beetle. there The water around Tangle Tower is weird and it mutates
00:50:58
Speaker
other it mutates plants and animals. That's why there's weird plants. That's why there's a weird bug. um There's also a bunch of weird birds. And this is very important at the end of the game. And I think will be important for the rest of the detective grimoire series as they keep making games. yeah um and is it Yeah, there's a there's a rooftop garden that only Poppy and Fritz can access. like You only get access to it from Poppy and Fritz's
Game Mechanics and Player Engagement
00:51:28
Speaker
rooms. Interesting. How convenient. yeah is that ah Is that all the major things about the setting and the people?
00:51:38
Speaker
Yes, I think so. And you know, another side is that ah much like any who done it, or clue style thing, there are secret rooms that you will find. So, you know, the game sets you up with all of the kind of basic rooms, all the characters rooms where they are in the game, you know, Penny is in the avery aviary, aviary, Poppy is in the music room, ah Professor Pointer is up in the I don't know, the upper part of the tower with the telescope. Yeah, the astronomy room. Yeah, ah Flora, for whatever reason, is still in the art room where the murder was. That's a little weird. Just standing there silently and seemingly by force of will can make her hair go perpendicular.
00:52:23
Speaker
Yeah, I wanna be like her. She seems awesome. um Yeah, and then you're you know as you go through the game, as you talk to players, you find out more about Freya. She seemed very beloved, so it's actually a little shocking. Yeah, most of them hate each other, and everybody loves Freya. Yeah, because she's an artist. Is that how people feel about artists? Everybody loves them? i get Yeah. everybody Everyone loved her. um So it is a little shocking that somebody would want to murder her. So I you know what I would say I want to we can talk about the quote puzzles but really that's not to me that's not the emphasis of the game. Those are just
00:53:08
Speaker
like fun little things. Obviously, that's ah not a roses thing. That is a math thing. These are logical puzzles. These are logical. Yeah. But they're very they're sporadic. They're not annoying. ah Some of them I would say are creative. There's about one per room. Yeah. Pretty much something pretty much every room Yeah, has something that you have to open. and there is a logic puzzle. Sometimes those logic puzzles involve hints from elsewhere in the game or elsewhere in the room. Most of the time the logic puzzles are self-contained. You can solve the logic puzzle just based on what you have in front of you. Yeah. And they run the gamut. Somewhere like a little tricky, but most were pretty easy.
00:53:48
Speaker
Yeah, most are fine. ah They're obviously they're not my favorite. But you know, I kind of I viewed them as because they were being used to open stuff. I just kind of wove that into my into my story into my gameplay and like, yeah, I'm just opening a safe. I'm just opening a lot. I'm just doing you know, like I'm just trying to to do that. And that kind of quelled my frustrations with ah puzzles like that. But I don't think we have to talk about those because really I think the bulk of it is interrogation and using your, I don't know if it's a notebook case file, using your case file to ah interrogate people and obviously finding new settings. A lot of investigation too. And you know, okay, the way this game works is like a ah ah much friendlier um ace attorney.
00:54:41
Speaker
ah yeah where you're going from room to room and there's usually a person in every room that you can interrogate. um You can look at anything in the room. like It's really wild how much they wrote because you can pretty much click your little magnifying cursor. It's not really a magnifying glass, it's just like a like an octagon that spins around when you click on something and zooms in a little bit. But you can pretty much click on anything and Sally and Grimmar will have like a little banter. that's Yeah, and I like the banter. It's it's very cute. it It reminded me, I know you haven't played Callahan's, but Callahan's is one of those games where you can look at everything and everything has a description. That's what it reminded me of. I'm like, geez, I'm clicking out a lot of stuff. And I had to like kind of stop myself. I'm like, all right, all right. Let's focus up here.
00:55:33
Speaker
but say it Same, same um but you know you also don't know which of the things you're clicking on are gonna turn into interrogation items. So like you basically have an inventory that you're not carrying around. It's an inventory of things that you have found that you can talk to people, some some of that you're carrying, but it's an inventory of things you can ask people about. And like I said, you can interrogate people, you can ask them about anything else that you found. And when you discover a contradiction, very much like Ace Attorney, you don't yell objection. But when you discover a contradiction, it will generally unlock a new interrogation.
00:56:15
Speaker
that you can, like a special interrogation for each character. Like called a suspicion. You can say you have ah a suspicion now. ah Right, so if somebody says they they've never been in the kitchen and then you find their footprint in the flower in the, this isn't in the game, I'm just making up, but then you find their footprint in the flower in the kitchen. ah Once you find that footprint, um Detective Grimoire will go into like a mind palace, right? And he'll be like, huh? something strange here. And it'll be like, what is- Something weird about that bird, yeah. And then the question will be at the top, what is strange about this, this kitchen? And then it'll be like, it'll have like a list of things and it'll be like, guy who said he'd never been in the kitchen, detective grimoire, house, shoe print, flower, pencil, like just a bunch of random things. And then- It's kind of like Duck Detective.
00:57:15
Speaker
Oh, again, you can. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. You can sort of you make a sentence. Yeah. um By picking the right. Some of them are tricky. Some of them are like, OK, I get where it's going. But it's not too aggravating in term. I felt and and we talked about this. I think we both felt that in Duck Detective, we were doing some guesswork. We were starting to. Right. guests and become deflated. Whereas in grimoire it is or sorry, tangle tower in tangle tower. it it It does do a great job in trying to guide you to the right answer with interrogation and includes and things like that. Yeah, I never got stuck. Good, good. I don't think I did either. I might have once
00:58:02
Speaker
once or twice, but I i don't think I got stuck. I probably got more stuck on the stupid logic puzzle. And that's not to say I didn't find it challenging. I definitely had to think pretty hard, but there was no point where I was like, I don't know what to do next. Right. um Yeah. Yeah. that That's why I say the game is very good at providing you the information you need to really feel like a detective, to really feel like you're using your noggin and you're really putting things together, that makes sense. You're not just doing guesswork. You're really trying to figure this out. I used my noggin. I used my noggin. I used my noggin so much in this game. I got that. I got a noggin workout. I got the noggin badge on Steam. No. um
00:58:46
Speaker
and bad i had the problem I had that problem much more in Detective Grimoire, where I felt like he was jumping he was coming to conclusions before I'd found all the background evidence, and then he'd be like, and you can't you can't exit them. You can't be like, I'll figure this out later. If Grimoire has jumped into his mind palace, you have to solve it at that moment, which I think is a flaw in the game. Yeah, I agree. I think you should be able to put it away and store it in a like deductions menu and come back to it when you've and when you feel like you've understood it. um Because the game isn't always correct right in ah in ah just determining you have all the evidence you need.
From Detective Grimoire to Tangle Tower
00:59:31
Speaker
yeah um You might have the pieces that fill the sentence, but you might not understand how they connect because maybe you didn't have ah what, you know,
00:59:41
Speaker
some other conversation yet, or you didn't see some other thing yet. And i think I think that's kind of why it feels to me like Detective Grimoire was almost like a trial. Like, let let's do something with these characters, with this style, with some of these mechanics, and we'll see how it goes. We'll make a shorter game, right? And they did. Let's let it bounce around in our noggins for a while, ah and then we'll do a better noggin game. Yes, tangle tower is even though it is very, it's very similar, you know, it's similar in style, it's similar in mechanic, it is just a more polished game, it is it works better.
01:00:17
Speaker
It's better in almost every single way. So I yeah i think ah you had a problem with Tangles Howard's ending, right? I did. i For me, some of the stories started to go off. some Some of the stories started to go off the rails. It started to become a very good story about, like, not cryptids was the mistids about mistids is what they call it yeah because it's it's cryptids that were created we're about to get into a like we're gonna get into some slight spoilers we won't talk about the ending yet though um but they talk about mistids which are cryptids that are made by
01:00:56
Speaker
the yucky water around Jangle Tower. Yeah, they they actually exist unlike a cryptid, which is maybe we don't know, you know, right ah but mistids there, you can actually find a mistid in the game. So yeah, and so I have a feeling that, and I might agree with this that the ending of Detective Grimmar was a little more succinct than the ending of Tangle Tower, but in every other way, Tangle Tower was better. The gameplay was better. The dialogue was better. It was better to have Sally with us the whole time. The characters were so good. The characters were just so good.
01:01:34
Speaker
No, it absolutely felt like I was in a true detective setting, a true close circle. Who done it? Agatha Christie, was it's very well made, I wanna say that. I still, I don't like, I was confused by the ending, to be honest. Yeah, I think we, yeah, we definitely should talk about the ending. um Yeah. But I do wanna finish my, um ace attorney comparison because I think there is something really, strong like I think there's something that people will find really familiar here, which is when you do have a suspicion, and you are making choices, like dialogue choices and having to pick the right one um and then present evidence to back up yeah the things that you're yelling at people. um it It is very much like the trials
01:02:32
Speaker
So yeah, I mean, the searching the rooms is very much like the investigations in Ace Attorney. And the ah ah interrogations are very much like the trials in Ace Attorney. It's, I think, it's just a lot more of a new audience friendly version. Because, you know, Ace Attorney, one of those games takes like 20 hours. There's so long, there's so many words. And this took about this took about five and just really flew by. Like I felt so entertained the entire time.
01:03:10
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. ah Agreed. I did too. And I assume that people know by now that if we're doing a lone deep dive, there's probably gonna be spoilers. There's gonna be spoilers. Yeah, it's just how it is. You know, if we're really focused, ah that there's that's just how it is. That's just how it'd be. Okay, so Sally killed everybody.
01:03:33
Speaker
she killed She killed Freya, and then to cover up a murder of Freya, she killed Flora, and to cover up a murder of Flora, she killed Penny, no. ah She was having a bad day, she killed another one. Financial gain, I don't know. Jealousy. ah um No, yeah ah so the the truth lies in these secret rooms. As as you go through, you know you you you talk to everybody, you so you might start to get your suspicions up, but you're not really gonna start solving the puzzle till you get to the attic. And that's when you start to realize what I thought was really cool. This idea that but the game's implying the whole time that there is a possibility Freya got stabbed by her painting.
01:04:31
Speaker
Yeah, so it's implying that, yeah. Because she was standing immediately in front of the painting, she falls over backwards dead, and she was stabbed in the middle of the chest right where the knife would be. And then from the attic, you look through the cracks and you see exactly down to the spot where she was stabbed, where ah her wound was on the floor. yeah And it's like, oh fuck, she fell over first and was stabbed second. And that to me was just like, it's because that's so simple. and it But it's breaking a assumption
01:05:10
Speaker
that you were just naturally gonna have and never going to question. And sure yeah and that's such like ah that that's such an impressive thing to do in a mystery is like find an actual assumption that the ah that the audience has made and then subvert it. Yeah. Also, I think we all knew that it wasn't the painting. ah well like there There are some, quote, supernatural elements to this game, but it has nothing to do with the painting. The painting did not come alive, it did not stab her. It's all like ghosts and poltergeists.
01:05:47
Speaker
um But yeah, what did you think of? So as before we get to the ending, how did you feel as the mystery started to unravel here? I loved where it was going. And you with any who done it, you know that there's going to be ulterior motives to something. So in this case, it seemed like a lot of the characters were very interested in that golden beetle, which is a misted. They call it the misted. And so I really liked that it had a focus now. edward It's not just characters, not just disliking each other. There was like another motive for a lot of these characters. ah We even find out that Professor Pointer isn't really into astrology that much and that he was more invested in what and entomology. yes Just the study of bugs. And that's that also is really interesting. like Again, I know that's such a minor thing, but I've never seen
01:06:43
Speaker
that as a character twist in a detective story is just like, he's pretending to be into one science, he's actually into another and he's just trying to hide it. Like that's so true silly and cool thing. We also learn that there were other people and other family members that once lived in this tower. And they are no longer there. And one of which is Richard Remington. Yes. From Detective Grimoire. Okay. Which is a cool tie in, right? I think that's very clever. And I and I thought it was also a cool tie in to have another ah clearly the writers really love cryptids. They love the idea of strange characters that you know, they started out with boggy, you know, the bog monster, and then they get a little bit more into it with these mistids. You know, let the bird, the ink dip bird and the golden beetle. Yeah, the gem fruits, which I think is is also such a cool idea. Yeah. So, yeah, there were other people living in this tower. And you can add I mean, you do get a little bit of a sense by talking to the characters that they were there. But the story really unravels in the other rooms when you're finding notes and photographs and things of that nature.
01:07:59
Speaker
Right, you find a secret room underneath Tangle Tower, and then you find a secret room underneath the secret room. ah um and Yeah, and what you find is, ah yeah, there was, somebody has been deeply, deeply studying this golden beetle. Yes. um Recently, too. like Recently. Yeah. And ah you find out that, right, you find more about this, like this old secret society, you find this um that there's this the the people who were who used to live at Tangle Tower formed some kind of society and then all left. yeah And one of their long abandoned hideouts in the in the building has been recently discovered by somebody else yeah before you found it.
01:08:57
Speaker
um And then, I guess then it just kind of goes straight to the ending, right? Yeah, kind of. We also, we also find out that the painting, it wasn't a knife, that- Oh, yeah! we did holding It was actually the feather of her beloved ink dip bird that Imply passed away. And so she was holding this feather, it just happened to look like a knife. So it is not a knife, it is actually a feather. I see you've played knifey feathery before.
01:09:31
Speaker
um So yeah, i ah so then I guess then you find the study, which is in the middle of the tower. yeah yep And then you kind of, then you head back to the original room and that's where the ending starts to unravel, that you head back to the crime scene. No, I thought the ending was very abrupt. I was like, what?
01:10:03
Speaker
I felt that there could have been way more story and way more setup to this entire thing. I felt like we were just starting when we found you know the secret society and like the other and there's another person that we need to suss out who knows about this. um i am un So should we should we reveal who the murderer is? Yeah, I do wanna say right before we reveal it, I thought we were going to be able to do, what there's
01:10:32
Speaker
There is a room in this game called the parlor, right? Or am I thinking of grimoire? No, there's a room in this game called the parlor. Is there? Which room is that? The parlor? I can't, I can't like it. The parlor? I can't imagine it at the moment. Or am I thinking of, okay, so also after this, I played um the demo for, and we think we mentioned this earlier in the episode. After this, I played the demo for ah Mermaid, the Mermaid Mask. And maybe there's a, one of these games has a room called the
Murder Reveal and Plot Twists
01:11:07
Speaker
parlor. Anyway. It's the Mermaid Mask, I think.
01:11:10
Speaker
ah So yeah, I might be wrong about it. It might be the mermaid mask that has the parlor, but I still thought we were going to get a parlor scene ok where we got to make our accusation. And no, we don't. um We get confronted by the murderer. which is the most confusing shit. i've ah like i Like I stand by my, I think it's too vague. I was ready to ramp this up after everything that we had found. Yeah. ah Okay, you wanna reveal? Big reveal? Yeah. For some reason that we will speculate on. ah There is one murder and it is Penny ah or Penelope.
01:11:57
Speaker
ah the aviary woman who with the weird, ah weird bird hands. ah She did it all. She is invested in the Golden Beetle. She wanted to find the secret society. It was also implied that she was ah very unhappy in Tangle Tower. And I think she wanted a reason to to leave. I don't know why you can't just simply leave. And she is detective. ah Right? Yes, the big the big kind of twist there is she is detective Hawk Shaw. Hawk Shaw. Yeah. um So
01:12:35
Speaker
Which makes no sense by the way because how can it's because we bounce back and forth between their room sometimes Yeah, so what is she doing? She's just running back and forth. She's just like leaping out the window like quick changing all of her clothes and she's like I actually I was thinking about that and I like the Visual of it was so funny to me that like I couldn't even get mad at the game. It's just so funny She's like leaping. She's just jumping out of the window. She's ripping her clothes off And the guy's like, her cloak just stashed behind a rock, and she's like, hey, I was just standing here the whole time. It's like a Mrs. Doubtfire situation. Right. But to me, I did find that frustrating. I'm just like, oh, well, how was I supposed to really come to that? How was I supposed to come to this conclusion?
01:13:27
Speaker
even though this the game was explaining everything to me. i i And even though clues were there to suggest Penny, I really didn't have a reason to think that she would have murdered Freya. um right What is your take on that? it's so It's hard because my two suspicions were Hawkmore and Penny. Hawkshaw. My two suspicions were Hawkshaw and Penny. Yeah. And I couldn't figure out why my clues were pointing to both of them. Yeah, Penny especially had some very like gratuitous clues. And you know, when mysteries do that, I think your natural inclination is to reject it. Right. Because it's that, oh, that would be too easy type of scenario, right?
01:14:15
Speaker
ah But they a lot of the early clues did point, pointer to Penny. And all the later clues pointed to Hawkshaw. Right. So it's, I don't know how much I love that twist just because my I couldn't suspend my disbelief enough that they were in two places at once and I could you know go between them. Yeah, I hear you. So Hawkshaw Hawkshaw was Penny. Penny has left the tower several times and she finds there's something there's some sort of gravity to the tower that keeps bringing her back. So she is she has grown insanely jealous of
01:14:52
Speaker
um and ah that not hyperbole the game is supposed to is implying that she has lost her mind yeah because she has grown so jealous of this these people who she discovered have left the tower the people the secret society um she's also discovered that the secret society is a misted hunting society yeah because the the ah water around Tangle Tower creates these mistids, they want to find all of them and that have escaped into the world and kill them so that people don't, I i guess, under so know the mystery of Tangle Tower or something? Yeah, thanks yeah um that's fair to say.
01:15:37
Speaker
ah so she was used So all these other suspicious things that were happening, Uncle Percy's pursuit of the Golden Beetle, she was kind of using against him um to help frame people, to help like throw suspicion off of herself. yeah um so ah One of these people that went to go hunt mistids was Richard Remington, and he was hunting Boggy, who we now know is a mistid from Tangle Tower. So ah much like Echo from um Detective Grimoire,
01:16:18
Speaker
she's more of like a bystander than anything else. yeah she is The greater story of Tangle Tower and the like the things that she encounters, um the things that motivate her have that tie into this greater conspiracy um that we are slowly unraveling game by game, but she is not part of that conspiracy. right um She's just been, again, driven mad by it.
01:16:50
Speaker
And I like that greater story. I love how it ties together. um I love the idea of this weird magical place that is spawning these mists that people don't want anyone to know about. yeah um I do like the greater the secret society. I do like the greater story. I just don't understand why Penny would specifically target Freya. and And I know that Freya also kind of knew some stuff about the Golden Beetle, right? They were implying that she also had knowledge of this mistid. So Freya knew about the Golden Beetle. Freya knew that Hawkshaw was Penelope.
01:17:38
Speaker
Oh, right. um But I, yeah, I guess I don't understand. I don't understand how killing Freya got Penny closer to her goals. right I don't understand why she would have needed to kill Freya for knowing that secret before she committed a murder. right that She had nothing to hide at that point. The best I can come up with is that Freya knew that Penny was Hawkshaw and would tell people.
01:18:13
Speaker
But again, what would that matter at that point? She hadn't done anything wrong yet. Yeah, she hadn't done anything wrong. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. See, that's where I'm a little like, ah it kind of loses me a bit at the end. I had no, I really didn't think it was going to be Penny. I thought ah the game was going to guide us elsewhere. I thought the game was guiding us to Hawkshaw. ah Yeah, it was guiding us to Hawkshaw. How were we supposed to know it was the same guy? Even if Hawkshaw was ah even a different character and then not Penny. I just i i don't know. i don't It's the motive that gets me. It's not ok if there was a better motive. Okay, so you all the whole time understand how the stories
01:18:57
Speaker
yeah Yeah, they connect well, I like it. I wanted to know more. But okay, but you're saying, so kind of what you're saying is it feels like it's just a coincidence that brought grimoire to the next step of this mystery, which yes I guess you're right, that is true. um And we don't need it like I think you mentioned earlier, we don't actually do an inquest. I believe we we go to a mind palace and at the end of grimoire where we really figure out who the murderer is and what's really happening in Laura bow there's an inquest in this one, we we get, you know, we, we
01:19:39
Speaker
interrogate our way to the end of the game, we figure out clues, but we don't actually ever guess who the murderer is, which I think is really interesting for a murder mystery game. We never say it's Penny and here's why, you know, we never get to that point. And that's an old move. and i And I wonder, I wonder just if the devs or the writers thought that maybe it was a little far fetched, and the game needed to give us that solution. interesting right yeah we you're right we don't we don't guess she just tells us yes by showing up and because we've learned too much it's one of those things you know so why she would have let us well i guess she thought we were going to pin it on somebody else or something um yeah probably i mean some of the game implied that it could have been professor pointer because we had established he was kind of a liar
01:20:35
Speaker
right And she wanted the golden beetle and she was trying to steal the golden beetle from him to, I guess, fund her way out of Tangled Tower. So maybe she was trying to get us to pin the murder on Pointer so that he's out of the way so that she can take the beetle because I guess her hawkshaw ah identity wasn't working to steal the beetle. So she was like, I gotta to try something else. um I guess we don't know who hired us by the end, right? No one says we hired you. I kind of assumed it was 10. So there's a weird, I wanna, that reminds me, there's a weird thing that happens. Maybe we can speculate on this. Kind of towards the middle of the game when we're really getting into it, we find this little electronic doodad with a message on it. And it's from Freya.
01:21:33
Speaker
that's true yeah we yes what is that is very weird it was never explained it was it was not explained that if did penny try to throw us by leading i don't know i i thought that was i don't need i did think i it is weird yeah it's never explicitly said i did think that that was Penny, I did think Penny says she was leading us at points. So I guess I didn't think about that specific moment or object, but I did think that there were moments
01:22:07
Speaker
Penny implied, yeah, she was leading us to certain things so that we would have but incorrect conclusions. See, that got my brain gears going. I thought, ooh, is there another part of this story that we don't know? is she Was she even murdered? Why are we here? you know I thought we were gonna be pulled into, kind of pulled into a conspiracy. If like Penny was bringing us here so we could stop Hawkshaw slash, uh, oh wait, sorry. Freya was bringing us here so we could stop Penny slash Hawkshaw from befrauding her beloved.
01:22:43
Speaker
ah Uncle Percy Pointer, not her uncle, but um ah yeah, that would have been maybe a little more interesting. And then she found out about us because we solved the murder of Richard Remington, who I guess is also like her uncle or something. right That would have been a really interesting conclusion, tied both games together, given us a reason to keep researching this conspiracy. You're right, that would have been really cool. ah And you know, I know it sounds like I'm giving a lot of criticism, but you know, murder mystery is that's kind of one of my passions. So we are going to deep dive into why the mechanics and the story and maybe don't necessarily align. But I mean, I still I still thought this was a great murder mystery game, and you know, and criticism is what we're here for. If we didn't think
01:23:39
Speaker
ah To me, ah the greatest compliment you can give to art is to ah really dig into it. Yeah, right absolutely. um And digging into something you're always going to find flaws and criticisms, but you're also saying, yeah, you're you're telling the artists that what they made was worth something to you because you've decided to dedicate your time and attention and analysis to it. Absolutely, absolutely. So so I do think this is flawed. I think grimoire was flawed. um it It feels like they set up these really cool mysteries with a lot of really cool characters at really cool settings and the gameplay is so much fun. So much fun. They yeah sort of fumble it at the
01:24:23
Speaker
I don't know anything about sports. The 50th yard line? The space plant at the finish line. Yeah. what's the What yard line is the last one? I don't know. Please. I have no idea. 50 yard line? I don't know. ah Yeah. they Whatever it is. Yeah. they kind of They lose me at the ending. um but I don't know. Who knows? Maybe the next game. um meet them the mermaid's mask, is that what it's called? I keep saying it. Let me check. the mermaid basket you the mermaid mask. ah Maybe mermaid mask will unveil some of this stuff. Maybe it'll make a little more sense. I don't know. Yeah, but it will. And all this criticism, you know, I know that devs even listen to our stuff. And I've given indie devs feedback and they've taken it to heart and try to apply that to the game. So criticism is always
Endings and Future Speculations
01:25:18
Speaker
meant to to act to help people with a better product in the future.
01:25:24
Speaker
That said, I want creators to make the thing they want to make, even if it's not what I like. But I but i do think yeah i think, yeah, I think something about the the ending of this game falls short. And I think it is true about grimoire too. Yeah, I would agree with that. Grimoire, I think even more, it was just such an abrupt ending. For me, it was abrupt. Tangle Tower. So the thing that we didn't say yet is the murderer gets away. um She knocks us out. This is how she committed the murder. She used the Golden Beetle to knock Flora and Freya over. And that's where all the- Yeah, she put it in a gramophone and the vibrations were so, that's why everything was cracked in the art room as the vibrations were so intense, it knocked them out. And so while Freya was lying dead on the ground, she was up in the attic and she had a harpoon gun, basically, yeah and shot Freya
01:26:20
Speaker
in the chest and then withdrew the harpoon gun. She also switched the blood out with the red paint so that people would be like, whoa, did the paint do the murder? Distracted, I think that was just a method of distraction. Agreed. And then she's like, then, you know, it's revealed in her conversation. She's a little too smarmy about all of this and you're like, what's, Why is she being, why is she like smirking in this way? And then it's like, somebody discovered, I think it's Grimmar who's like, we never you never took the beetle back. And she like laughs, and then we get knocked out. And then we wake up on the side the shore where we came in. yeah And she has gotten away. I wonder if this is gonna be some kind of, I wonder if the sea, I mean, I wonder if Mermaid Mask was gonna be a direct sequel to that.
01:27:16
Speaker
Wouldn't it be so funny if we never see her again? It's just like, the bad guy escaped and has nothing to do with the story from here on out. Were we talking about making a game or something like that where we're just like, yeah, we didn't, they got away. Or were they just gonna, people just keep getting away. We were gonna make a police procedural called Aw Man. Aw Man. figure out. They always get it just a little bit wrong or something falls apart and they don't get it. And it's never continued. That's just it. And they're just like, oh man. And then the next episode's an entirely different mystery. I love it.
01:27:57
Speaker
But yeah, i I want to say that, you know, ah we're talking about this game because we loved the game. I loved the game. yeah Yeah, I loved it. I loved. I really enjoyed grimoire. I loved Tangle Tower and the Mermaid Mask den demo. I'll say this. It is short. It is another amazing looking setting. The setting looks so cool. The mystery that you're starting to unveil is very cool. It's another ah sort of locked door mystery that I don't i can't imagine where it's going. and
01:28:31
Speaker
yeah um It's a short demo, so you don't you don't talk to any other you don't get to inter interrogate any other characters. so I don't know what any of the other characters are like, but but what I've seen so far, the setting, the gameplay, and the mystery all look as good as Tangletower and the some of the the like user interfaces and the graphics are even a little bit better. So what we're just seeing from SFB games is just
01:29:04
Speaker
a upward trajectory and that's incredible. Yeah, I'm very stoked. I really like this. This is what I want character wise and plot wise from a whodunit. I will say that I think they got that spot on. They have.
SFB Games' Future and Listener Engagement
01:29:22
Speaker
So SFB games did make another game that a lot of people have been talking about recently. It is listed on Steam as survival horror and exploration. But people talk about it as if it's an adventure game, and people have been really, really excited about it the past couple weeks. Okay, what is that? It is called but Crow Country.
01:29:48
Speaker
Oh, yeah. It was sort of a super hit. It looks like it was released in May, but people I didn't really hear people gushing about it till June. I had a few friends really enjoy Crow crow Country. it looks It's the game that kind of looks like Final Fantasy VII. It's got that early p like PlayStation look to it. Yeah, I think you're right. It was kind of a sleeper hit. Yeah, I remember first hearing it on like the end of the Aether podcast and then later hearing it on the Besties podcast. and It was like a little after it came out. Yeah, I didn't realize that that was a ah so ah SFB games.
01:30:25
Speaker
um Me neither until ah we were doing this episode and I was researching and i I'm really, I think I'm probably going to play Crow Country, but what I'm really looking forward to is Mermaid Mask. Yes, same, absolutely. All right, so do you want to, do you have anything else to say about the game before we wrap up? No, I highly recommend that you you all play it. I had a great time, I'm glad I played it and I would play it again. I think this game is also just this perfect um mix of a Mac game and a Roses game, right? like It includes so much of what you love and so much of what I love and then a lot of what we both love. yeah like This is where our our adventure game loves come together, is Tangle Tower. Yeah, so if you like any of the stuff we talk about in this podcast, you're also gonna like Tangle Tower.
01:31:18
Speaker
yeah um All right, do you want to throw on Prank ah pran ah the Tax Man? Yeah, I'm going to throw on. The Prank the Tax Man, Bino. Bino. His name is Bino.
01:31:52
Speaker
Okay, everybody, we're back. It's Matt, it's Roses, it's your friends. It's your egghead overlords. Yes, worship us. Do we wanna talk about what we're talking about? and Do we wanna give a little hint what we're talking about? Do we wanna talk about what we're talking about? Yeah, let's just do the next episode. All right, ah let's start the next episode right now. Okay, so many hi, I'm Matt, ah this is Roses, and um what have you been playing this week? ah Next week, we're gonna be talking about another indie game by Adam Brain Games, and it's called Dreams in the Witch House. I'm excited. I'm so and i am very excited. It looks like a me game. I have not started it yet, but it looks it looks really good, and I've heard nothing but good things about it. So if you wanna keep up with us, keep it a play.
01:32:43
Speaker
And then do it come back to us next week. Please come back. Please come back. Please come back. Oh my god, please come back. And bring a friend. Bring two friends. Bring a friend. Bring five friends. big say Bring five to 10 friends. but um But yeah, on that front, let people know. If you like this show, let people know. Let people know that you like it. Let people know they might like it. All that stuff. ah We are part of the Adventure Game Hotspot Network. When this comes out, the adventure game fanfare is only gonna be like a week away, right? Wow, are you excited?
01:33:25
Speaker
ah Am I excited? Yes, but it is going to be a weird time. right It's going to be great. I'm going to have a lot of fun and I am excited to see ah some eggheads there, hopefully. um And what what else do we got to tell him? What else we got to tell him, Roses? ah Please email us any questions you have or just thoughts thoughts on tangle tower ah thoughts on detective grimoire You can give us suggestions, but please limit them
01:34:00
Speaker
We get a lot of them. We get so many recommendations. That Q&A episode is absurd. We have so many recommendations. But we did it. We answered all of them. You're welcome. Because we're cool like that. Yeah, email us at mattandroses at gmail.com. Yay. And that leaves me with one thought left in my mind. Just one? Yeah, just one single thought. Sounds about right. What's your one thought? ah Podcast is art. I have a follow up. Okay. I'd love to hear it. Art is suffering.