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S2 Ep105: Supraland
73 Plays5 years ago
FULL SPOILERS: Supraland
Join Dave and Jake as they get REAL SMALL in this week's episode!
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Join Dave and Jake as they get REAL SMALL in this week's episode!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
00:00:03
Speaker
What?
Introduction and Caffeine Anecdotes
00:00:37
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? Peachy. That was pretty good.
00:00:47
Speaker
I said it faster than I was supposed to. It was supposed to be more of a inhale pause. How's it going tonight, Dave? So yeah, I expect more of like an iambic pentameter type of cadence. Now you're just blazing through it. Are you on something tonight? Just amphetamine. Oh, wait, what? No, no, caffeine, I suppose. Um, I've had a fair amount of caffeine recently as an attempt to stay awake for late night support and whatnot. And.
00:01:18
Speaker
I'm just really thankful for it, but a little side story. I watched a YouTube video where there was a doctor who was talking about a guy who drank two gallons of caffeine for finals prep. And it does all sorts of terrible things to your body at two gallons. He literally had a seizure.
00:01:41
Speaker
he had like five heart attacks after he made it to the hospital. His muscles started deteriorating and because, I mean, blood wasn't going to them at that point. They're like, well, this heart needs to go faster. There's a whole thing where it like prevents it does something with your potassium levels or whatever. But it also caffeine like prevents
00:02:08
Speaker
a receptor that would block or stop adrenaline. So at like two gallons, his glands were basically pumping out adrenaline as fast as possible. And the reason he had the heart attacks, the cardiac arrests, is because his heart was beating so fast, it just stopped and instead just shook. That was what literally happened in this guy's body.
00:02:37
Speaker
Wow. That's legitimately terrifying. Yeah. So comedic to think about and out of context, but holy shit. Yeah. So there's just like, you're supposed to have like, I think 400 milligrams is like the maximum you're supposed to have per day and two gallons as well over
Societal Pressures and Coffee Culture
00:02:55
Speaker
that. He had like four pots of coffee. So he keeps studying.
00:03:00
Speaker
Don't do that. I feel like certain things are kind of overemphasized as far as schooling and needing to be the best in a capitalist society, especially when it starts to take into your physical welfare. Yeah. But I mean, how many times have you worked on something or just existed but felt bad for not being productive?
00:03:26
Speaker
I feel personally attacked all the time. It's not just you. It's me. It's everybody's in our field. It's people outside of our field, you know? It's wild and crazy. We got to work those fields. I was going to make a brief anecdote, not even an anecdote, a very short story saying that I brewed some, I used the French press this morning to make some coffee. It's good stuff. Caffeine can be good for you. It can dirty extra dishes, but
00:04:00
Speaker
But that was much heavier than that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. French press is like a couple of cups of fancy coffee.
00:04:09
Speaker
Like I'm not here to attack coffee. I'm too dependent on it and I'm afraid it might fight back. Um, but like French press coffee is a luxury. There's a reason coffee is literally a luxury that we're willing to overlook tons of human rights abuses in order to consume, right? Yeah, just coffee. Uh, other things too, but
00:04:33
Speaker
My advice is turning point by you guys has they have different varieties of French press flavors, but even just going over there for like, hey, I'm not going to sit down for brunch. I just wanted to go a cup of coffee. I would drink that for like three days. Yeah.
00:04:52
Speaker
Like I would literally let it get room temperature or I put in the fridge and I would just like take a sip every half hour hour because I liked it that much. Have you ever, um, this is going to degrade the quality of the conversation a little bit, but have you ever, uh, had microwaved coffee? Like instant coffee? Like, uh, reheated in a microwave. Um, yeah, I've definitely reheated some stuff.
00:05:19
Speaker
Because it's weird. It's like I personally I don't mind cold coffee that much because it's just like, oh, it's extra bitter. You know, awesome. I'll go for it. But if you microwave coffee, it like returns it, it removes some of that bitterness and returns it to just heating it up is enough to change the flavor dramatically, which is really cool.
00:05:42
Speaker
Yeah, I just don't feel it ever meets the same as when it was fresh. Yeah. But I also stand by that for everything you put in the fucking microwave. I think it's like a genius way to heat something up. But goddamn, is it quick. It's just like a microwave meal sort of thing as plastic container. And you're just like, this is garbage once I put it in the microwave.
00:06:05
Speaker
I like to put the little plastic stoffers things like right into the oven. Just get straight to that point. Well, no, I put a metallic tray under to catch all of the food that would have run through. Gotcha. And then when it hardens, I kind of manually pick out the hard plastic. I'm just ingesting plastic alongside your meals in support of big oil. Not sure how this helps them, but okay.
00:06:33
Speaker
Oh, to finish that story though, the guy ultimately made a recovery. I don't know if it was a full recovery or not because he had muscle atrophy and damaged his kidneys and stuff, but he lived. So we'll see if he makes it to medical school, which is what he was studying for. I'm going to say you can recover from that.
00:06:53
Speaker
As somebody who's had some degree of muscular atrophy, like I've been in the hospital for, I think my max was three weeks in high school. Yeah. And you don't realize it, but you're just like sitting in a bed, you're not moving around a whole lot. Um, but like once I got out, I'm like, Oh, it's Wednesday and look at a frisbee practice. Yeah. And just like even walking to the car, I'm like,
00:07:15
Speaker
Oh shit, these legs haven't been doing too much. And you feel it. But it's something I came back from. I walk normally-ish now. Yeah.
00:07:24
Speaker
They try to get people into physical therapy like really quick. Yeah. If they need to correct this for sure. After your hospital stays happens faster than you think the body, the human body is very adaptive. And sometimes that, that harms us. I mean, it's just like, I need to save a fat for winter. And you're like, yeah, sure you do. Um, but, um, yeah, I don't know. I'm going to keep drinking coffee, but not that much.
00:07:54
Speaker
I, at some point, might not actually physically interrupt the podcast, but I'll say like a trigger word to get you on a rant, at which point that would be my cue to go run over and get some coffee from the kitchen. You're just like, how do you think that relates to Fallout 76? I'm just, see ya. Is there such a thing as true morality? VRB. Right. I mean, that would actually just be like, no.
00:08:22
Speaker
Most things are relative. Oh, fair enough. Oh man. But speaking of true morality, Superland. Superland. Superland.
Introducing Supraland
00:08:37
Speaker
I think super means something.
00:08:41
Speaker
Possibly. Um, for those who are listening and can't determine what we are saying, it's spelled S U P R A land. I've been calling it super land, but it comes out like super land all the time. It's also a Toyota and footwear. That's what suit the Supra. Huh. I've never worn a Toyota on my feet. I probably never will. I'm more of a Tonka tough type of shoes guy.
00:09:11
Speaker
I'm just imagining like the plastic trucks and you just it's the what were the the shoes that had the rollerblades Or not the rollerblades the rollers in the back Healy's healy's yeah. Yeah, I'm just imagining that's those but they're just like full on Yeah
00:09:38
Speaker
Sorry, I totally interrupted you talking about the actual game when I was looking up the definition. No, I should have used that time to grab the coffee. That was a chance. I was gonna say Super Land is an adventure puzzle game.
00:09:53
Speaker
Yeah. And the puzzle part's not obvious either. It becomes obvious. Yes. Yeah. It's more of you're on an adventure. This is a unity type of game. So the assets aren't super crazy, but a lot of love and creativity is put into this. Mm-hmm.
00:10:15
Speaker
But it looks kind of like a kids game because essentially you are like a little toy piece and like a giant toy box. Yeah, like a like a sand castle type of toy box. So the design of it is actually pretty cool and fun and gets you in that childlike adventure mindset.
00:10:34
Speaker
But essentially the plot is kind of simple and bogus. We start off on this quest to find why the blue pieces, you guys being the red pieces, and why they've stopped your water supply. I don't know what you need water for being plastic. But yeah, you're like plastic, almost like Gumby figures. Yeah. Like 2D cutouts almost.
00:11:00
Speaker
You kind of like set off on this little adventure. You start off with a wooden sword pretty early on. Rapid fire wooden sword. Yeah, you just mash that left click. There's none of these Minecraft slow swings. Wait for it to charge.
00:11:16
Speaker
But once you've kind of set out, you'll encounter these obstacles saying, hey, you got to do the thing to go over here. And so you start to explore. And as you're exploring, you find, oh, over here, there's some money. I can use the money to buy an upgrade, which might help me get to where I need to go. Or you'll realize you have like a missing piece of a mechanic you don't have yet. So you kind of explore until you find it.
00:11:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's really in the vein of those like, it reminded me a lot of those old style adventure games where it's just like, hey, go explore this area. You found a new mechanic or tool or whatever, go to the next area.
00:11:56
Speaker
And like, I don't mean to say that derivatively, it was a breath of fresh air, especially the early game. I really enjoyed having some of those adventure, um, sensations kind of like reawakened because I don't really play adventure games much anymore, not like actual adventure games. Um, exploration for exploration sake as much. Yeah. I didn't really get that. And since, um, links awakening. Hmm.
00:12:25
Speaker
I'm just exploring for exploring sake. It felt cool to find things and then get upgrades. Yeah. And the upgrades in this are actually like, they're fairly cool. The game's also very tongue in cheek. There's a bunch of
00:12:40
Speaker
like funny achievements or self-referential mentions, it's very lighthearted, pretty much start to finish. But the upgrades, I remember there's an early upgrade where it's just literally like a visible health bar before you just had numbers for your health, like a fraction. And now it's just like, oh, now you have a visible health bar. Congratulations.
00:13:03
Speaker
But I was like, it was easy to get. It wasn't like I spent a bunch of money on it. I was just like, oh, that's funny. I'm literally filling out the UI. Yeah. I also like that. So in certain town hubs, they'll have these shops, which you can use coins to purchase things.
00:13:21
Speaker
But initially, you can get like a max of 40 gold and certain
Exploration and Mechanics of Supraland
00:13:26
Speaker
things cost like, oh, 120. Yeah. But as you explore and find these upgrades hidden in chests and these secret areas, you might be like, oh, your max money's been doubled. Yeah. Or you can double it again or double it again. Or you can find things to increase your health, increase your damage. And you can also find these barrels.
00:13:46
Speaker
which are physically hidden versus being like stuffed into a chest. If you turn that and slam that into the shop, it will unlock another upgrade for you to buy. So I think all of those aren't necessarily mandatory for progression. I don't recall. They're not. I never found all the barrels for the first area. Yeah, one shy. But it felt cool to have that extra bit of tactility.
00:14:14
Speaker
actually a bit of hands on this. It makes coins matter, right? Yeah. Because you're always kind of like, find them laying around. And then you can find them in chests. And then also through like a little bit of combat. Yeah, there's actually an upgrade you can find that enables like coin and health drops from enemies. It's, it's very
00:14:38
Speaker
I don't know how much we've talked about like iterative games in the past or like building mechanics on top of mechanics and things like that. But this is kind of a iterative light style game where they're like, hey, well, instead of just new tools, you got an upgrade and now something fundamentally works a little bit different in the game.
00:14:58
Speaker
like now enemies drop money, your current chance is higher, or you can break these tombs that are spawning enemies. Not tombs, they're wooden crosses. Just like little cool interactions with the gameplay that I enjoyed.
00:15:17
Speaker
Yeah, I like it. But also, as you get upgrades throughout the game, it encourages you to kind of go back. I definitely miss some things. Oh, yeah. All right. You can't get through here now. You still have to come back. And sometimes I forgot. Other times I was redirected back. I'm like, oh, yeah, the breakable glass. And then I curb stomp it. And then I have access to the new area, get a new chest and upgrade.
00:15:41
Speaker
Yeah, it definitely has those. It's not, I guess it's not really a Metroidvania. It's an adventure game. But those Metroidvania like moments where it's like, here's clearly an obstacle that you will need something to get through. Come back and check this out. And
00:16:02
Speaker
I actually wanted to mention real quick for the buying the upgrade that increases not to continually compare this to Legend of Zelda because they're very different games, but that's immediately what I thought of when you mentioned that is like I remember in Ocarina of Time, you'd have like a rupee bag that could only hold so much money and you could just not buy expensive things until you got a better bag that would hold additional money. It's the same mechanic exactly.
00:16:29
Speaker
Um, games have that for sure. What's weird is like,
00:16:36
Speaker
Again, we've played a decent enough of games over time to where like, as soon as I saw it, I knew what it was doing. And I felt like a lot of the early game, like, Oh, gotcha. I 100% knew everything was going on. I'm like, all right, this is being gated by something else. I have an obstacle here. What's missing? I need to find this piece. Oh, this is missing something else. So you can kind of work backwards. So I'll try and approach puzzles the same way.
00:17:06
Speaker
Uh, sometimes I'll just be like, I don't get it. Be stuck. Um, but then when you do figure things out, I'm like, yeah, okay. Okay. Yeah, that's cool.
00:17:19
Speaker
It's kind of funny, because you mentioned I don't get it with some of the puzzles. And I agree with that entirely for the second half of the game. The first half, I was thinking, man, I actually considered some of my brothers and sisters-in-law really young. They play Minecraft. They play other games like that. I was like, would this be a fun adventure game? I don't know if they really played adventure games. Could this be something I'd recommend in for them?
00:17:49
Speaker
Seems super age appropriate, doesn't really, there's nothing bad in here, right? I'm like some of these puzzles. Right, it was a little gratuitous, a little bit. But other than that,
00:18:03
Speaker
It seemed like good basic puzzle solving, nothing to like a Talos principle, like brain teaser in like the early half of the game. And then it started to ramp up. And I was like, this might be like the point where they would reach out and look at a walkthrough because I'm considering it now. And it kind of just continued from there.
00:18:29
Speaker
But we should talk about we should talk about some of the mechanics and some of the mechanics, some of the unlocks and things you can play with. OK, so the sword, you may want to left click and just hit enemies. Right. That's really my advice to anybody who's playing this game is hit the enemies with your left click until they die. That's good advice. But Dave, I don't like melee combat. Hold on. There is a gun that shows up. The first MacGuffin, right?
00:18:56
Speaker
Yes. So throughout the game, you have to find three different MacGuffins, which are kind of more major upgrades rather than these miniscule. I have five extra health and one extra damage, which doesn't matter as much, but a lot of these become tools. So like the gun, you can definitely kill enemies, but there are certain things where it needs, you should projectile into it to unlock a gate.
00:19:20
Speaker
Yeah. And I do appreciate that the game calls them the guffins. It's like that is what, that's the meta term for what they are. Right. It's, Oh, it's the plot device, the McGuffin. So they're just like, yeah, no, that's still just what we'll call them. Gun was pretty cool. The gun sees a lot of upgrades, um, through course of play. Like eventually you can shoot out, um,
00:19:43
Speaker
like orbs and then detonate them with alt fire with beams to cause like radial explosions. And I had a lot of fun with that. It felt kind of like playing Quake or like Unreal Tournament. Oh, the very first upgrade you get is speed also. Like that's the one I would recommend. Get that freaking speed upgrade because you want to move at Doom speeds.
00:20:09
Speaker
Yeah, it feels good when they kind of introduce those little things. Because as soon as you get like the hey, AOE damage, you need to do a puzzle to get out of where you're going. But the next time you see enemies, they have like a bunch clump. They're like, go fuck up that guy. It's kind of like nudge nudge. Use that big AOE thing you got. And then you do and money shoots out everywhere. And it's really fun.
00:20:31
Speaker
That's the money shot. That's what they call it. It's when you shoot them and money falls out. Yeah. Um, so that's the, that's like, that's a pretty early upgrade. I think like the second thing you get other than the sword, you never get a shield. I kind of expected there to be a shield. It doesn't happen. Uh, but you get a force cube, the purple. Um, it's basically someone, a companion cube.
00:20:55
Speaker
Yeah, that's mainly used to some is like put on a pressure plate. Like you stay here. I go home. Yeah. You go that way. I'll go home. Or you can put it onto yourself for a height boost. Yeah. If you're trying to like, ascend, basically. And you can use them in conjunction together. Or sometimes you just need it to be in a place temporarily. You only have one at a time.
00:21:23
Speaker
There were times I would put it somewhere and I'm like, you hold this here until I get in position. Okay. Then it's someone another one. I didn't care where it dropped, but it disappearing would trigger the event that needed to happen for me to progress. Yeah. Like flip a switch to off, pressure plate rises, something like that.
00:21:43
Speaker
There's also a beam gun you can use to create a tether, which you can kind of like swing with, like your Tarzan a little bit. Or you can connect it between two points. I think it's mostly wooden surfaces. I think it's, well, it's just wood until you get the gold upgrade. Yeah. Which is just nice. Which is just golden wood slash gold things. Yeah.
00:22:10
Speaker
I feel like around that point in the game, it got a little bit fuzzy for me. Yeah. Yeah, me too. It's the puzzles get really kind of abstract. But yeah, that upgrade that upgrade is nice because you can create walkable surfaces between two points. You just and it's a literal beam, which is kind of cool. I haven't seen a lot of other games do that even with the puzzle from a puzzle perspective. Create your own walkable surfaces or you can block things with the beam. It's tangible.
00:22:39
Speaker
So one puzzle might have you, there's like a laser going to a receptacle and you need to block its flow. So you create a tangible beam up near the laser and then you drop your force cube on top of your tangible beam.
00:22:56
Speaker
So that the laser is completely obscured. And it's like, I like this. I like those like kind of little micro interactions. Those were the puzzles that didn't piss me off. Yeah. And it's good because it's encouraging multiple mechanics in conjunction. Whereas some games have definitely had the sin of, Hey, here's this one thing. All right, you're in level two. You ever gonna see that fucking shit again?
00:23:19
Speaker
You're like, oh, okay. But I feel the mark of a good puzzle game will always build on those mechanics. It won't leave something you learn in level two behind in level eight.
00:23:29
Speaker
Yeah, there actually was a reference to that in the game too. I might have missed that. Where there'll be like little NPCs that usually tell you like, hey, you have everything you need to solve this puzzle. Or here's a little hint or something like that. And I got to the point where you have like a little, it's called a Superball launcher.
00:23:52
Speaker
But like these little yellow, it's essentially a tennis ball, more or less launcher. And you can like fire into this receptacle, open a door.
00:24:03
Speaker
But then you need the tennis ball on the other side. But if you retrieve the tennis ball, the door closes. And the guy asks, are you part of the 99%? I'm like, what are you talking about? That's not a hint. Went back and forth, couldn't really figure it out. And then went back to the guy, and he's like, 99% of players will have forgotten that they could hold doors open with the force cube. And I'm like, oh my gosh. I am part of the 99%.
00:24:35
Speaker
He got me. Freakin' boomed me. So anyways, I got boomed. I definitely abuse that a little bit, but I did forget sometimes, because sometimes you're looking directly at a puzzle or a problem and you're like, I need to be over there, but this is in the way. Stairs at it aggressively until a thought pops in. I think
00:25:02
Speaker
That's, that's one of the gripes I have with this game. So this game is like, I'm pretty sure it's overwhelmingly positive on steam. Really good reviews. Um, I would, I think it should probably be positive if the developers are listening to it. I think you guys did a great job with the game, but there's minor gripes. And one of those was, especially as I get older, if a game doesn't respect my time.
00:25:27
Speaker
I don't respect the game as much. And sometimes I just need a binary state. Do I have everything I need for this puzzle or not? And not like explore everywhere else in the world to find one thing that I need here. Sort of upgrade.
00:25:47
Speaker
It's vague, but you know what I mean, right? Sometimes you can jank your way through the puzzles too. I literally avoided some puzzles or solved them with non-standard. Basically standing on top of a cube, jumping really far, triple jumping, and getting extra distance to just cheese my way through sections I was supposed to complete some other way. Because I just had no idea what to do with the solution.
00:26:17
Speaker
Yeah, there's some things that get a little bit vague later on. The one thing that I literally looked up, not like there was only one, but the one thing I was just staring at and going back and forth and like, I kind of know what you want, but I don't know what you want. Yeah. And this was the
00:26:36
Speaker
Hey, there's flies on my crops. You need something bright and purple to take these flies away. I'm like, oh, my force cube's purple. Force cube. They're like, that ain't bright enough. I'm like, well, fuck. I'm out of ideas.
00:26:52
Speaker
But apparently, you need to go do some other puzzle first, going through a guy's backyard to get a crystal. Then one of the mechanics in the game is having these different key cards, which you can put in front of a machine. And depending what you drop into the machine, color that key card for that specific door. Yeah, you can color a lot of things. Yeah, you can color other items as well. But you need to take this crystal, put it near the coloring machine, put your force cube into the coloring machine. Because it's purple.
00:27:22
Speaker
But here's the thing, the force key wasn't bright enough in the fucking first place. Why is this crystal suddenly magically bright and working? It was minor things like that where I might've thought of the actual solution, but then shut down the idea for another reason. Like, Oh, well that can't be right. Why would that be? And then it was actually the solution.
00:27:44
Speaker
when the red herring is just another herring. You're just like, herring's not gonna work here, what are you talking about? I do really like the painting mechanic though. I think one of the first times that comes in, there's like a guy who's trying to get into a temple, into a church, and you can get like, the holy people will have halos above them, and there's like a stone ring
00:28:13
Speaker
next to the shop quote-unquote where the guy's like my stuff's useless just take it instead of selling it to you.
00:28:20
Speaker
And it's just like a stone ring and you can go paint it. And I painted it the wrong color. I think I painted it like green or something. And then walked over and the guy tries to go in the church and you sit there holding this stone ring above his head. And the guy is like, your holiness isn't the right color. You're like, wow, that's one, super racist. But two, all right, I know what the solution should be.
00:28:46
Speaker
One, how the fuck did you find green? I think I don't know if it was actually green. It might have been white. I think it was probably white. It was one of the flowers out there. OK, there is a key card somewhere where it's like, hey, you need a green thing to open this. I never found anything green. So that always haunted me. Yeah, there is a green thing eventually. The teleporter transport thing shoots these short range grenades that you can port to like it's a disk teleporter from Unreal.
00:29:17
Speaker
But those projectiles are green. You can just shoot one of those into a painter. Interesting. Yeah. I guess I didn't get that far. But one thing I did like about that little getting into the temple puzzle is I initially just took the ring off of a statue nearby. And I put it over the guy's head and like, this is it. I'm smart. And then the guy said, oh, that's not the right color. But as soon as I had that clue, I'm like,
00:29:46
Speaker
Oh, OK. So I had the paint machine. I knew this guy needed a golden ring. So I went around looking for something yellow and I had that in the back of my mind. Yeah. So they did have certain good intuitive clues to say like, hey, here's where you need to go. And that was a good example of it, at least.
00:30:06
Speaker
Yeah, they just fall out later. Like those clues cease to exist and you have so many mechanics and ways to interact with things. Eventually you can tether this walkable beam, you can tether it to your force cube to another surface. And now the world is completely open. Like there's so many things you can access that in conjunction with triple jump and a thing that you should projectile, you can teleport to and you're like,
00:30:34
Speaker
I don't even
Puzzle Design and Challenges in Supraland
00:30:35
Speaker
know if I need to solve these puzzles anymore. I'm just going to cheese my way through it. Um, the one thing I felt was the most cheesy, but I thought it was a really great addition to the game is I think it's the second McGuffin. Hmm.
00:30:49
Speaker
Where essentially, that's the magnetism belt. Yep, yep. This is my favorite in the game, actually. So when you get it, every time you get a MacGuffin, they're like, hey, you're forced using MacGuffin to get out of where we would now trap you. So I fell in this hole. And if you turn on Q, essentially like lightning shoots around you. It's like this magnetic attraction.
00:31:13
Speaker
So anytime you're near metal, you can kind of just ascend right up and move around it. And you're kind of, if you let go of anything, you're just kind of held in place there through magnetism. So essentially all these other things you see now in the world, which are just like toys and contraptions, like a wrench randomly in this giant toy box you're in, you now see as options. You're like, oh, shit, cool.
00:31:38
Speaker
Yeah. So in one of the areas you go in, there's like this giant axe, not giant axe, a giant simple wood saw. And I thought it was just scenery, right? But now when I went back, I'm like, oh, this is the only way I can actually get out of there, is use the magnetism to go up. And essentially, I was able to go
00:31:58
Speaker
outside on this big cliff area. I did get a screenshot of where I kind of clipped through some stuff. Didn't break through any floors. It's just the camera itself. But it opened up so much more. And that was a real good feel.
00:32:13
Speaker
That's one of my favorite implemented upgrades in the game, because it doesn't really add complexity to any mechanics. Small metallic objects will follow you, and you'll be able to float around large metallic objects, basically. But it feels so good. A lesser game would have just given you magnetic gloves or something like that, and allowed you to climb up surfaces. But this is literally like,
00:32:42
Speaker
You gain the ability to hover adjacent to anything that's metal and there's buttons for going up and down and you can just metal elevator up stuff. It feels really awesome, especially in combat. There's a there's a hidden like wave defense part of the game that I didn't beat because it got really hard and I didn't find. Yeah, it said near the start, actually, there's
00:33:10
Speaker
crystal you have to color with the paint tool and then you can open the path to it. But there's a large metal, I think it is a saw actually, like in the center of this wave defense thing. And one of the strategies is actually just ascend and hover in the air and then use your gun and like fire out these projectiles against the waves of enemies coming at you.
00:33:31
Speaker
And it's like, this is an adventure game. That's actually a really cool idea. That's when the game's at its best is when it's throwing those ideas together and letting you have fun with it. Yeah. There are times you can also just kind of think outside of the box where it feels good.
00:33:48
Speaker
And they also don't usually punish you too much. So a lot of times you might like, here's a key item, literally like a key and you can take it to where you need to go. But if let's say for some reason you lost it or you got into like a really dumb place, you're like, oh, it's such a pain. Usually wherever that key item is spawned, there'd be a button to respawn it.
00:34:08
Speaker
Yeah. She's like, I don't know where the fucking box went. New box. And then you try again, which is nice. There's one box. It fell down a cliff. You need to go retrieve that one box because it's fairly open world and those things can happen. Oh, yeah. There's a lot of physics involved. Things flying, dropping, sliding. Did you ever shoot anything through a wall like a battery?
00:34:41
Speaker
Yeah, no. This is the Rocket League reference area you're talking about? Yes. Yeah. I thought that was fun to do. Essentially, if you're holding an item, you can walk around with anything. And usually, depending how heavy it is, you can't really jump too much. But if you have your gun out, if you left click to shoot, you essentially shoot whatever you're holding out a little bit based on its weight.
00:35:01
Speaker
I threw an opening, not literally through a wall.
00:35:06
Speaker
But there's a part of the door that needs to be opened for that to happen. The door needs to be powered. So you kind of like look through this window and shoot this battery. It kind of just snaps into place. Haha. Yeah. No, it feels really awesome. There's also a completely optional quest, quote unquote, I guess around there.
00:35:26
Speaker
where there's all these girls that are obsessing over this character who's like diamond three and Superball. It's basically Rocket League. And he's like, if you can find a way to get rid of them, that'd be great. And then there's this guy who's like, nobody likes me. And he's like bronze two or something. And the solution to the puzzle is they have these like trophy insignias for diamond three and bronze two in their houses.
00:35:54
Speaker
You just detach them and you switch them. And the girls are just like, wait, he's bronze, too. Oh, that's lame. And that's bad. Then they'll appear over at the other guy's house if you place. Yeah, that took me a little bit, but I did appreciate that. That was when I actually looked up after the fact. I didn't figure it out in the game. Well, it's a nice make you think outside of the box because you can sometimes just pick up items and you don't always know what's going to be used for something.
00:36:23
Speaker
But once that happened, I'm like, oh, what happens if I move these? Yeah. That just worked. There's also a cool puzzle next to that where you can use iron anvils to build a chain of lightning to complete circuits. And you have to use a platform that can move back and forth by blocking it to complete the circuit.
00:36:48
Speaker
And there's, there's all these aha moments for the well-designed puzzles where you're like, I have all the pieces. I don't need superpowers or items that I'm missing from somewhere else in a giant area. And you can just do it. And I, I, I thought about like, you can get sponges, submersed them in water and then they're magnetic. They're, um, they conduct electricity. I'm like, Oh yeah, that's smart. I'm keeping this pocket that knowledge.
00:37:18
Speaker
Jake makes his own superconductor at home. Yeah, right. Entirely. Sponges. But I mean, that's really weird.
00:37:28
Speaker
where the game excels is when the moment that you reach an area, all of the puzzle pieces for that puzzle are right there. And you're like, all right, let's just apply it. There's one area near the end of the game that I kind of in general had gripes with. It's the one where you have to take that crystal and color it, move the bugs and have them eat all the plants and stuff.
00:37:57
Speaker
In general, I just dislike that area. I think it's probably the weakest one in the game or close to it because there's tons of things to do, but the area is gigantic and you don't know where different mechanics are going to interact. And it just feels unfocused because of that to me. Yeah, certain things like that just did not connect as well. Mm-hmm.
00:38:22
Speaker
But other ones seemed fine and you felt good when you were like, oh, I can jump up here to gain access to this and just approach things from a different way. Anytime you're gated into a, this is the only possible solution ever.
00:38:38
Speaker
those can still be pulled off, but it needs to be done in a way where it, it feels intuitive. Yeah. We're clever for solving it. If a puzzle is play tested as someone's like, I don't know what you want me to do here, but I understand I have to do something and it becomes simply trial and error. It doesn't feel good when you've actually figured out the puzzle. You're just like, it was bound to happen. The monkey's in typewriter situation, right? Right. Yeah.
00:39:07
Speaker
Like there are cool moments in that area, but in general, I think I would rather have a gated puzzle where things are just straightforward as to a really vague puzzle where I'm like, I know that there's a problem here and I'm going to try to solve it, but actually the solution is hidden behind something else, right? You actually don't have all the pieces you need. That's, that's the most frustrating thing for me. That's what I'm really talking about when I'm talking about respecting your time.
00:39:38
Speaker
If I'm not supposed to try to solve a puzzle immediately, I prefer to know that as the player, personally, rather than thinking you can. And you're just like, why is it not working? Yeah, exactly. Maybe if I time the jump differently, I'll be able to make it across this ledge. No, you need three additional jumps, my friend. Yeah.
00:40:01
Speaker
It's a hundred percent that I actually like, I spent way too long in that area because there's a little door I was supposed to open on the side to bring the crystal through with the bugs, to eat the carrots and make my escape. I realize listeners are going to have no idea what I'm talking about. It's terrible. Carrot bugs. Right. Uh, but I never opened that, like that door. I thought I tried and it didn't work. So I didn't like attempt again.
00:40:30
Speaker
Um, and I just, I just spent like an hour in the stupid area when the solution was right there. And, uh, it just, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth compared to like some of the other great stuff the game does.
00:40:46
Speaker
Yeah. I feel like some of that will always be on the developers for puzzle games. At the same time, I don't know if you can literally account for everybody. Yeah. Certain things that might be intuitive for me might not be for somebody else and vice versa. They might say, oh, why didn't you just try this? I'm like, why would you try that? Oh, I guess that does make sense. Yeah. It depends on like the different schools of thought.
00:41:12
Speaker
It does, it does feel really good to ace a puzzle where you're just like, you just go like math mode, analyze the situation. You see the variables and you're like, and I will condense these into the solution, the proper path, implementation success. And you're just like, I am better than this game. Then you get to the next puzzle and you're like, I have no idea what I'm doing. I want to look up a walkthrough. I can empathize less with the first sensation and a lot more with the second, but your results may vary.
00:41:43
Speaker
Yeah. There was a bonus thing in there too, where it directed you to go to a website, which was a series of questions. I looked it up. Apparently it has 92 questions, if not more. I think it's just more of a fun, Hey, do you like puzzles and riddles? Here's this thing, which is the more modern version of the impossible quiz. Good luck. Yeah.
00:42:11
Speaker
That's not prong. I think is what it was called. Not prong.com. Yeah. Yeah. And I looked at it until I realized it didn't have anything to do with the game. And I was like, Oh, this isn't some meta. Uh, what's the term? It's not alternate reality AR. Yeah. Well, it is AR, but is it not alternate reality? Maybe it is. It's usually the term for like Google glass, et cetera.
00:42:41
Speaker
Yeah. The things Valve does, you guys know what I'm talking about? It wasn't that. It was just like, here's more puzzles if you felt like them. But the game doesn't tell you that. And it's near an actual puzzle where you need the magnetic buckle to solve it. You have to scramble this guy's hard drive with the buckle. Oh.
00:43:07
Speaker
Yeah. Never did that. Okay. Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing. This is another puzzle where it's like, am I meant to solve this now? And you really, really don't know. Um, I'm not a fan of that, but again, I'm not the most puzzle gamey person. I have to play puzzles and a very specific way to really enjoy them to their full effect. Yeah.
00:43:36
Speaker
There's also sometimes just, I know we've already said it, but sometimes it's a little bit vague. There's a lady who's like, hey, I want you to make my garden pretty. I had flower seeds, I had water, and I had flowers, and I put them around her on the grass, and she's like, could you make my garden pretty? I'm like, what do you want? And so I left because I was getting upset.
00:43:57
Speaker
Yeah. See, that was when I actually got like immediately because there's little, um, the different seeds were head colors that matched the pots. Well, those are pots. Yeah. And so big squints on that one.
00:44:15
Speaker
So yeah, I got that one, but other ones definitely gave me trouble. One of those things to interrupt entirely. I know you're good. So I can derail you and possibly get that coffee I keep talking about.
00:44:29
Speaker
So as you access electricity and you have the magnetism belt, if you're near something that is electric and you are yourself magnetic, I understand in electrical terms this is bullshit, but you can create a little, a chain lighting between yourself and your conduct.
00:44:49
Speaker
So if you shoot a projectile across that blue line relatively near, it will shoot a blue projectile, which you can use to charge other things or go into a blue receptacle. And I thought that was really cool. Oh, yeah. Because I was like, as soon as I saw something blue, I'm like, I get it. I didn't even make chain lighting. I was like, that's so cool.
00:45:11
Speaker
I think that's probably the mechanic the game like did the best is just different ways you can like recolor any of your projectiles in different ways if they're just physical project like things you can pick up you can paint them if they're energy in some way if you shoot them through an energy beam it will
00:45:31
Speaker
change the color. So by the time you get to the personal teleporter thing, it basically shoots out a grenade in a really short range, and then you can upgrade it for a slightly longer range. As soon as I saw it was green, I was like, ah, any puzzle that involves the color green, this is going to be a component of. And I thought that was actually pretty well done.
00:45:59
Speaker
But yeah, I'm less of a fan of the second half of the game. There is there is a cool segment. Did you get to Blue Kingdom?
00:46:11
Speaker
Yes. And then you might like this segment, but I was actually going to mention this is something I was not keen on. Yeah, I felt both for a while. I have pros and cons, but I'll let you start. Okay, so basically, there's this blue guy who keeps harassing you. At a point, you get the blue kingdom, but he steals all your shit, like all of your shit. He steals your double jump. Yes. That's your boy.
00:46:37
Speaker
Like you can't do cube, you can't do beams, you can't jump more than once. You don't have any money. So you're forced to essentially go through this little blue kingdom area, getting pieces of it back.
00:46:51
Speaker
But this goes back to the being forced down a linear pathway of, hey, you need to get five gold to before this next thing. This is then your next key to get the next thing. Yeah, literally had to do one after the other. I understand from like a design point, that's much easier to do is to have those gates.
00:47:11
Speaker
But it's such a huge pain in the ass. It's like, hey, I have all these cool tools now. And they're like, but what if you just had jump later, fucker? And I'm like, oh, OK, nice. I just felt like I was kind of dragging my shoes through the dirt on that one for a little bit.
00:47:27
Speaker
Yeah. It's kind of the, um, it's a subversion of a really common gaming trope where you start out fully powered. Like there's a lot of games like this, but the one that springs to mind for me, Mega Man is a great example. I was going to say prototype is also one of them where prototype two, I think you start off and it's just like, here's everything, all of the powers, pure destruction, and you lose them all.
00:47:56
Speaker
and then you're building back up to that point. This is the opposite. The Dragon Balls? The Dragon Balls? The Dragon Balls. The Dragon Balls. They just keep scattering everywhere. You get all the upgrades at the game, get to the end, and it's like, all right, now that you don't have them, do you still have the situational awareness to slowly get them back?
Combat and Game World Discussions
00:48:20
Speaker
And it doesn't take like a crazy amount of time, but it was slow. And it is an area that's really, like you said, linear and what the solution actually is, but it's in an open space.
00:48:36
Speaker
So I probably wasted time in this area compared to like more concise puzzles. Um, but in the end I felt it was like, it was okay. And there were some cool, there were some pool stuff afterwards, but, um, you have to go back and get, there's literally just enough money in the area and you can't leave this and go back and like farm area for farm money from enemies.
00:49:02
Speaker
you specifically have to get these items and then buy them back from the blue guy. I don't know. I understand the tease of power in some games. It's like, hey, here's what light game could be like to kind of whet your appetite. But I think even more of, if you remember Adam Sandler in 51st dates,
00:49:25
Speaker
Actually, yes. All right, here we go. Drew Barrymore. So he falls in love with this girl. They have a great time together. But spoilers, she has amnesia. So the very next day, he has to essentially start from ground zero to try and win her over again. It felt like I had this deep committed relationship, thought they went on a date for a day. And then it's like, hey, that's all gone.
00:49:53
Speaker
So it felt more like a kneecap and an inconvenience than anything else to me. But still, it was an interesting design choice for sure. Not a bad one, just wasn't for me. Yeah, I think it could have been. If it happened slightly faster, I probably would have been happier with it.
00:50:14
Speaker
But in the end, that was, that was okay. It falls under the second half of the game where everything's a little more, a little slower. The puzzles take a bit longer to solve. They feel a little, little more contrived. Also, 51st States was really just a worst groundhog day, right?
00:50:37
Speaker
51st dates is more of a comedy. I mean, I know Groundhog Day was a comedy too. That's the thing. It's like, or it was a romance comedy. But like at the end of the, I mean, I guess they did both have lessons in the movie. Yeah. I can't really refute your statement with a hundred percent accuracy. So I prefer Groundhog Day, but you are, you are correct. That's funny. But yeah, I don't know the game.
00:51:05
Speaker
For all of my gripes, I think, given the number of tools they give you, it might have been, just taking like a step back and looking at this from a game design standpoint, it might have been inevitable. Inevitable. And you have a double wall that the game turned into a
00:51:25
Speaker
a puzzle genre by the end of it just because of the number of things they were giving you. This wasn't Legend of Zelda where it's just like here's 50,000 ways to kill people because that game is based on violence. A lot of the items and things they give you are strictly puzzle applicable.
00:51:49
Speaker
And so that's more ancillary where it's like, Hey, are you in this area? Have you been here for a little bit? You guys might try and kill you. Yeah. So enemies will spawn periodically.
00:52:01
Speaker
They do bunch up too. I think I don't know exactly what the spawning logic is, but the game won't spawn them really close to you. But sometimes I spent like significant amount of time trying to solve a puzzle. And then I went to like the border of that area and there's just like the gang. The squad has prepared to defeat me. There's like 20 of these guys that are rushing at me. I'm like, all right. This is more fun than what I was doing over there. Let's go. Battle Arena.
00:52:32
Speaker
Well, it's also cool. You can get an upgrade for the block to essentially instagib people. Oh, yeah. So you can like spawn a block on or in an enemy and it'll take damage. And I was like, that's cool. Like a physics and they're just like, they get pushed to the side.
00:52:49
Speaker
It makes me wonder what this game would have been like if they would have kept the adventure focus and just like introduced more types of enemies and things like that because more combat, I guess. Eventually, there's guys that will block your attacks or reflect them with shields. So you have to do a little like side strafe or maybe, you know, you drop the block on them, you shoot the ground near them.
00:53:13
Speaker
You just hit them with a sword, but it starts to feel a little bit like quake when there's a bunch of enemies and they can actually do damage to you. Um, yeah, if you stand still for like three seconds against a horde of enemies, you're dead. Yeah. But I mean, you have enough tools with the jumps and stuff to get around, but I do feel that you physically have to move. Yeah. I don't know.
00:53:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think overall my impressions with it are good. We spoiled very specific things, but if that doesn't bother you that much because you made it this far and you probably haven't played the game, I would still recommend it on the contingency for the second half of the game. If you start getting exhausted, just grab a walk through.
00:54:04
Speaker
and then resolve not to follow the walkthrough 100%, just fix that one thing, get to the next puzzle, maybe it'll be better. Because some of those late game puzzles were still pretty good. They were just interspersed between ones where I was like, ain't nobody got time for that literally, right? It was just...
00:54:25
Speaker
But yeah, no, I do recommend it. It's unfortunate that I can't get the soundtrack for it because I think they license the music individually from what I saw online.
Conclusion and Listener Interaction
00:54:38
Speaker
Interesting.
00:54:39
Speaker
So if the edit goes like I planned, then I guess the trailer music will be what we used for the entry or something. But you can't find the OST for it. There was a couple cool tracks I liked in there, though. Musically, the tracks do fit this kind of micro game. And I love that one of the trailers was
00:55:02
Speaker
Here are all these other games bragging about how big their worlds are. It's like Skyrim is this big and like Oblivion is this big and like Just Cause is nine kilometers. And then it's like Super Land and it zooms in real small and it's like nine feet by nine feet or something like that. And they're like, that's clever marketing. That is.
00:55:29
Speaker
Yeah. Overall, definitely good, fun puzzle and exploration. Doesn't carry through the whole way through the game, but still a pickup for sure. It goes on sale. I just pick it up on sale. And hopefully people will continue to keep the adventure genre alive. It can't all be survival crafting, right? I like those too, but you know, it's fun to mix it up.
00:56:00
Speaker
Yeah, I'm just waiting for the next Talos principle, honestly. Yeah. I feel like they're destined for a sequel. The second principle. Talos's other principle. Talos's addendum. Right.
00:56:22
Speaker
Talos, return to principles. Got him. Talos, return to the principal's office. I'm just going to keep thinking of dumb jokes until we wrap this up. Yeah, we're going to wrap it up. As always, if you guys think of dumb jokes that you would like us to read aloud on the podcast, you can send those in to soapstonepodcast.gmail.com, or you can join the dumb joke discussion at facebook.com slash soapstonepodcast. And we are always happy to hear from people.
00:56:51
Speaker
or not, it's really up to you. You know, balls in your court. The super ball is on your side of the field. Make it to diamond three. As always, we'll see you in the next one.
00:57:24
Speaker
you