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Episode 16 - Animal Well, The Quarry, Stardew Valley, etcetera
2.1k Plays6 months ago
We went into this one with NO PLAN, folks. It's free-style nerding today on the old podcast. Matt played some cool games and finally hit up that Stardew Valley update. Roses talks about Home of the Underdogs and some of retro games we really didn't enjoy. Plus, some ranting about game preservation.
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Email us! [email protected]
Games Discussed:
- Norco
- Callahan's Crosstime Saloon
- Eagle Eye Mysteries
- Citizen Sleeper
- Stardew Valley
- The Quarry
- Animal Well
- King's Quest
- Monkey Island
- Touche: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer
- The Gene Machine
- Orion Burger
- Inherit the Earth: Quest for the Orb
- Runaway
- Vortex Point
- The Room: Tribute
- Jurassic Park: The Ride - Online Adventure
Recommended
Transcript
Art and Mythology Humor
00:00:00
Speaker
It's weird, Matt. What's that? What paintings? Painting is weird. The Birth of Venus. It's weird. Just like, why is there, is that a zephyr? Is that supposed to be a zephyr? Like the guy blowing wind. Like a wind, wind gods are a thing, right? You know what? I'm thinking about King's Quest 7 way too much right now. Because there are wind gods in King's Quest 7.
00:00:24
Speaker
I've cheated and looked it up, and yes, it is Zephyr, and the person he is holding is Cloris, who is a nymph goddess associated with spring. Oh my god, I'm right. Yeah, good job. Thank you. I'm an artist. I do not remember the story of Venus. I don't know what's happening here. Is Venus the one that was birthed from the sea after...
00:00:54
Speaker
after Zeus jizzed in it was that oh my god well there's our cold open i just i want people to answer that i want people to write us in and be like yeah matt you were right what is the that is what happened
00:01:11
Speaker
So he doesn't jizz into the sea, which would be, that would be a weird thing to do, right? Yeah, why would you do that? I'm sure, I mean, the sea has existed for longer than humans, and humans have existed for a long time. Definitely somebody has stood on the side of the sea, and jizzed in too before. I'm sure, you know, captains have done it, because their love is the sea, right? Their love is the sea! Their love is the sea! They just have to give something back.
00:01:41
Speaker
Oh god. We're good at interpreting art.
Podcast Introduction
00:01:59
Speaker
Hey everyone, PushingUpRoses here! Welcome back to Save Your Game! With me, as always,
00:02:09
Speaker
the enigmatic, the effervescent. The greatest jumper that there ever was, Matt Aucamp. Hi, Matt. Now I know you're talking about me. The other things were like, uh. How's it going, Rezzes? How's it going, audience? Audience, who are you? Right us. To just say how you are. We'll just leave space for them to shout at their
00:02:48
Speaker
specifically I want you to write in if you listen to us on an iPod. Or a Zune. And Zune which was the superior MP3 playing device. For two seconds. Do you know I used to, I was such a big fan of the Zune that I always used to buy my iPods used and like I'd buy like two broken ones because they were too expensive for me.
00:02:57
Speaker
I was gonna say iPods, that's not.
00:03:16
Speaker
So I'd buy like two ones that were broken in different ways and I'd take them apart and I'd put the pieces together. So I'd have one working iPod. Yeah, most of the time it would. That's crazy.
00:03:29
Speaker
A lot of times the hard drive would get corrupted by whatever was wrong with the other parts so it wouldn't work for very long and then I'd have to buy another shitty iPod and take the hard drive out. But anyway, so I stopped doing that with iPods and started doing it with Zunes. And so I held on to the Zune for way longer than anybody. Do you still have one?
00:03:53
Speaker
No. Okay. I think I still have the pieces of one somewhere in a box in the closet, but I do not have a working Zune anymore. This reminds me of what you do with your glasses. You refuse to just buy a quality pair of glasses so you Frankenstein cheap glasses. What? Yeah, I'll do that with a lot of stuff. I just did that with my couch.
00:04:20
Speaker
Sweet laugh, I don't know why. That was your couch. I had a love seat that was in two pieces. I think my ex bought it from Wayfair. That website is expensive. Okay, go on. Well, my ex was rich. Oh, okay. I just need to put that out there. I have a lot of furniture from when we broke up and I moved out that she had bought me over time because she was just a rich person and didn't mind that I left with
00:04:48
Speaker
you know, the furniture I was using, because you're like, I'll just buy more. Like, holy shit. Must be nice, dude. Yeah, for real. But so I had this two piece love scene. It wasn't long enough. So I bought one. I bought the middle piece from the Internet. Got here. Turned out it was wrong. It was like very close.
00:05:12
Speaker
but the latches didn't fit together. And this is just yesterday. So I had to take it apart, drill new holes, unscrew the old latches, use a chisel and a hammer to pop out. I know, to pop out the sockets for the screws, hammer them into the new holes and line them up correctly.
00:05:43
Speaker
If you don't notice the very slight difference in the color of charcoal gray, you would never know this is two couches Frankenstein together. One day, one day, when the podcast gets really huge, I'm going to buy you a new couch and you don't have to Frankenstein it. Just have one.
00:06:06
Speaker
Oh, thank you. Yeah, this is, this couch is, it's narrow. It is, it's hard for like, you can't really do the thing where you lay down with your partner, like you spoon your partner on the couch and watch TV because like the butts don't both fit. Oh, that sucks. Like the rest of the body fits, but it's just like a little too thin for both butts to fit back to back.
00:06:36
Speaker
or front to back, whatever, you know what I mean. See, that's why the elk couch would have been great. I'm sure it was huge. Yeah, it was huge. It was like a cap you could, cap. It was like a couch you could nap on. And there's not like a ton of those. There's not, unless you want an even bigger one that like expand, or you can get one of that folds out.
00:07:00
Speaker
I mean, yeah, or it has to be you sized and or bigger and it has to be comfy. Yeah. And then you can nap on it.
Nostalgia and Tech Transitions
00:07:08
Speaker
So you guys may have noticed that we're not actually talking much about video games, and that's because we're going to we're going to talk about games. But we decided that we just needed a bit of a more informal podcast this week. You know, we've been doing this every week.
00:07:29
Speaker
That's pretty nuts. To have two people at different time zones, very busy people. We have put out an episode every week.
00:07:39
Speaker
And I was having a bad week. As was I. Yeah, it is. It can be a drain, you know, to sometimes, especially when we have something planned and we always do, you guys, we always plan our topics beforehand. We're serious about like what we talk about. Yeah. So I wanted like I almost wanted a full on break. I was almost like deflated to the point of like, no, it's very pathetic.
00:08:08
Speaker
But then I gave Matt a call and I felt better and that we decided to just do an informal one instead. So you're just going to hear us informally talk about adventure games. Yeah, I actually have been playing a couple games that I am really, really into. So I'm going to talk to you about those and then we'll just talk about like some of our favorites and shit.
00:08:29
Speaker
Yeah, honestly, I love doing that from time to time. I just like thinking about adventure games sometimes. Just feel like you remember that thing? Remember that weird adventure game? Right, exactly. So have you been playing anything at
Game Discussions: Norco and Stardew Valley
00:08:46
Speaker
all this week?
00:08:46
Speaker
I was meant to. Uh, so I can, I can mention what I was going to play and that I'm going to play this week and that's Norco. I was gifted Norco for my birthday. Oh, awesome. And it was, uh, as far as I know, it was a game of the year, I think in 2021. Uh, I think it was a game of the year though. I'm pretty sure that's correct. It looks really cool. It's an adventure game. It looks, how can I describe it? It looks, um, it's Pixley. Uh, it's not.
00:09:16
Speaker
but it's like very smooth at the same time. It's like this very smooth looking pixel game. It's got a CRT filter on it. Okay. It's smooth pixel art, but there's a CRT. Well, I think you can turn it off, but you probably shouldn't because it was meant to be.
00:09:34
Speaker
It was meant to have the CRT look to it. Yeah. You know what it looks like? It kind of, and this might not be the best graphical comparison, but I'm looking at a screenshot that heavily, heavily reminds me of Callahan's cross time saloon. And I think if you guys have played that and you look at some of these screen caps, I think there's like a city, New York screen cap that I'm looking at. I'm like, Oh, that heavily reminds me of Callahan's.
00:10:02
Speaker
It's one of those games where every scene is static in front of you. Just like hell hands. Yeah, it's all static. Yeah, you jump from a static screen to a static, and there's things moving in the screen, but it's not like, you can't move through the screen. Right.
00:10:24
Speaker
you have a little navigation tool in the bottom right of the screen that has blocks showing you all the directions you can move. And each block represents basically a different screen you're moving to. So. I kind of have a fondness for that. I really do. I have a fondness for those kind of old static screen adventures. And they weren't just in adventures either.
00:10:53
Speaker
I think they did it a lot in kids games. Have you played match? Have you played? Have you played any of the eagle eye mysteries games? No, I don't know these. Okay, these are games I played as a kid. They're lighthearted mystery games for children and was one of the first games I had that was talking for my computer. I had Sound Blaster at the time.
00:11:14
Speaker
And I was given this as a gift. And it was the first time I heard the computer talk. And it was fucking amazing. But yeah, everywhere you go on those screens or they're just static screens with hotspots on them. Okay. You know what I mean? Like you see your character kind of on the side. And if people are talking to you, you get thought bubbles and stuff like that. And I kind of dig that I kind of, I kind of dig the static screen thing, I think, or those other games, the legend games did that companions of Xanth. And I think
00:11:44
Speaker
Shanara, I never know how to pronounce that name, Shanara? That is what this is, yeah. There's static screens with hotspots, there's some little animations in it. When you chat with people, you kind of get like a little chat window with their head next to it. You never see yourself, it's first person, so you never see you. You are represented by a squiggly little,
00:12:13
Speaker
like smiley face, it's not smiling. Like a frowny face. Just like in real life. It's me. And you know, I'm sure we'll talk about it when you actually play it, so maybe I don't wanna give anything away now, but it's a really interesting, very narrative-heavy game, so.
00:12:33
Speaker
Yeah, and I think the person who gave it to me, I had just gushed about disco. And I'm sure that was kind of the inspo for for gifting me this game, because I can see there are some some similarities there. And there are some narrative similarities to disco Elysium. And the other thing I would compare it to is this the game that I always talk about, and for some reason, often forget the name of. Okay, give me a hint.
00:13:01
Speaker
It is, you know, it reminds me of Norco. Is that a good update? No. The Scholesium? No, it's by the people who made In Other Waters. They also made Citizen Sleeper. Okay. I was playing Norco actually at the same time as I was playing Citizen Sleeper and there was a lot of
00:13:27
Speaker
narrative threads that I could see between the two. I would almost put, if it was like a little rainbow, it'd be citizen sleeper and then Norco and then Disco Elysium. Yeah, but not the Thaumaturge as we... No, that would be the Disco Elysium part of the rainbow, like reflected in a puddle of oil.
00:13:56
Speaker
And Pokemon's there too. It's still always going to compare to Pokemon. But yeah, that was the game that I had it booted up. But you know, sometimes even gaming is exhausting when you have just having a bad week. So I mostly focused on art this week, but I am very, I'm very excited to play, to play Norco. So that's what's on my radar. What have you been playing?
00:14:25
Speaker
Okay, so I've been playing a couple things. I don't know where to start. What's taking over your brain? What is the game that you're playing that you're like, man, I can't wait to finish work to play this game? That is one thing. That is what I might be saving for a second. Because first, let me go through the other two. Okay, I have three. First, so I said I wasn't going to play the stardew until the update hit the switch. Right.
00:14:55
Speaker
but you couldn't wait. Well, because I loved playing it handheld and I didn't want to play it on my desktop, but I caved and I replaced my steam deck.
00:15:10
Speaker
You know, that's a good choice. I got the OLED steam deck and holy shit roses. This thing is so nice. So cool. Oh my God. It's like the steam deck, right? It's got steam on it, but it's a little, it's a little lighter. And that's the biggest problem with the steam deck. It's it's bulky and it's heavy. So like makes your hands tired. Yeah. This is just the slightest bit lighter. And that makes all the difference. Plus.
00:15:40
Speaker
It's got this OLED screen, which is so, so nice. And- Oh yeah, they're wild. I saw the, I saw the OLED switches and they are gorgeous. It looks so beautiful. It's, you wouldn't think this would make such a big difference, but the, the, the idea that the black is true black is, it's huge. It's like a huge, huge difference.
00:16:06
Speaker
And no, that makes a huge difference, even just like thinking about paint I use, you know, because I don't guys know this, but there are actually different colors of black. There are different, you know, there's a cool black, there's a warm black, there's a light black without being gray, believe it or not. Yeah, true black is dramatic. And it'll make such a big difference in contrast.
00:16:28
Speaker
Yeah, and there's so many games that use black, obviously. And you're used to seeing it as a sort of a bluish color. And when it is straight up black, it just makes things look so much more beautiful. Plus, I mean, all the colors pop a little more. Everything's a little bit sharper.
00:16:47
Speaker
So Stardew Valley looks gorgeous in it. And I'm playing obviously the new update. There's a ton of new stuff and a lot of just little things which make life just like slightly easier. Yeah, I saw some of the like, even like some of the practical things like bigger chest boxes and like, um,
00:17:08
Speaker
Why is that the only thing I can remember? What is wrong with me? Come on, roses. You know, I haven't I haven't actually unlocked. I haven't like gotten to the bigger chests yet, but there are there animals, but are there new animals? Yeah, there's a bunch of new animals running around.
00:17:24
Speaker
So just like little critters, I mean, so there are new animals you can get in your house and they're new fish, but they're also just like little more little animals just running around as you're walking around. Like you'll see more little raccoons or, what do you call?
00:17:45
Speaker
The things that are really ugly, but everyone thinks they're cute for some reason. Possums? Yes. How dare you? Possum is horrible, and we will not have this slander on Steve, your game. There's so many cute little design changes, too. Everybody now puts up holiday decorations for each season. Every river has these new waterfalls attached to them. Is there any very big updates?
00:18:13
Speaker
Like, I just thinking about the last update. What was it? Ginger Island was a huge update, right? Is there anything like that? Yes, yes. Their new festivals, their new NPC interactions. Love that. There's a bookseller and now there are books in the game, which
00:18:34
Speaker
either give you new powers that are also quality of life fixes, right? Like they make you walk a little faster or- Love that. Yeah, right. Or like things that were kind of obnoxious to do, you just had, you can like use these books to have little powers that make them a little easier. There's mystery boxes. There's a new type of tree. There's new crops for each season. Love that, yeah.
00:19:04
Speaker
Again, there's new fish. You can put hats on cats and dogs. There's so much new stuff. And apparently there's a lot of new late game stuff that I haven't even gotten to yet. So I played one year in the past week. And guess what, Roses? I did it!
00:19:33
Speaker
Community Center in the first year. All right, woohoo! Which I've talked about on the show before and I think I've, I think I implied that I, I think like,
00:19:43
Speaker
I've talked to somebody that they got from when I said that I at least implied that I'd done it before. I think it was before talking on the show that just it's possible to do it in the first year. Yeah, it is possible. And I want to do it in the first year, but I don't think I'd ever actually achieved it in the first year because of the red cabbage and some other things.
00:20:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's the some of those star crops. It's hard to get the the super high quality crop. Oh, right. Because when you're just adjusting to the game in that first year, you don't have your deluxe fertilizer yet and all sorts of stuff. So
00:20:18
Speaker
but I nailed it, I got it. I was actually worried because it wasn't until like winter, like 17 that finally my apple trees grew and I was able to put the apples in the fodder.
00:20:36
Speaker
bundle. So I then so then I spent the next like the last 11 days or whatever of that season. I was like, you know what, maybe I can also max out all my skills in the first year failed. That would be hard. That would be very difficult.
00:20:54
Speaker
still had a nine in foraging and a nine in combat. And I spent the last like three days of that season just foraging and combating. And I even found a foraging experience book, which gives you an automatic like 500 experience in foraging. And it's still, I still couldn't get there. It's so close. That's tough though. I feel like I didn't even
00:21:21
Speaker
Cuz I I feel like I say fishing for last although my last playthrough I wanted to make a lot of money very quickly So I tried doing a lot of fishing. I still got sick of it. I'm like, no, that's okay Well, that's good You just need to make so in order to do this You need to make so much money because you need to have so much shit like you need to you need to have stuff open and built Yeah, like for example, you need a truffle so you need a pig so you need to have a deluxe barn, right?
00:21:50
Speaker
just a deluxe barn plus a pig. That's like 50,000 gold there by itself. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. It was really fun to go back and revisit Stardew Valley. I probably will keep playing. I want to get
00:22:07
Speaker
I kind of want to 100% it again. It's been a while since I've done that, but I felt really cool. I don't know if I've ever 100%ed it. I've gotten incredibly close, but I eventually just kind of burn out, I think, by the end. I'm just like, okay, that's enough of this. Rose is every game I play, I romance all the characters and it gives them all flowers.
00:22:37
Speaker
If you're so this is a crazy thing about the game, so if you do that
00:22:42
Speaker
when you've romanced all of them to, I think it's eight hearts is the highest you can get without marrying them. Maybe it's 10, maybe it's 10 and then you get to 14 if you marry them. It's 10 if you are dating them. You can marry them at eight, but it still will go to 10. Oh, okay. So if you get all of them to 10,
00:23:07
Speaker
There is a scene with the, if you get all the male characters to 10, there's a scene in the, in the, what is it, the Star Drop Saloon? Yeah, the up Star Drop Saloon. Where if you walk into there in like the middle of the day after you've gotten everybody's 10 heart events,
00:23:29
Speaker
they will all be there together. And if you just stumble into that randomly, they all break up with you. They're all mad at you. You're all so upset. Harvey's the worst though. Cause he's like, cause I've seen, I've seen all the cuts. I don't, I don't do this anymore. I used to romance everyone and like divorce them and then erase their memories and then do it again. Harvey's is the worst. He's like, roses, I thought we were going to have a family together.
00:23:59
Speaker
I don't have a family. I'd be like, no! That fucking dork. He's my least favorite to romance. I got my guy, Elliot. He's my man. I like Penny. So yeah, and with all the women, when you romance them, when you get all their 10 heart events, it's at Emily and Haley's house. They're all gathered together and they all break up with you at once. Do you know the unless? No, I don't know the unless. What's that?
00:24:27
Speaker
so it's unless you have a rabbit's foot in your inventory at the time, and then you just hang out with all of them. That's amazing. I did not know that. And you keep your relationship with them. Just get lucky. But generally, then you marry one, and nobody's mad at you for some reason.
00:24:54
Speaker
Yeah, I've noticed that because you can romance pretty high up there. And I'm just like, what happens? I feel like these other characters should be feeling some kind of way. I know, but they just come to your wedding.
00:25:09
Speaker
in their boyfriend's wedding. And they're just like clapping and celebrating. Yeah, they're dancing and clapping. I have like eight hearts with Sebastian. I'm married to Elliot. Sebastian's like, okay, roses. Emily, I slept with you yesterday. You have no feelings about this. You have sex with Emily. You have sex with Sam. Do you have sex with any of the other characters? Before you're married, obviously.
00:25:37
Speaker
I think potentially they imply it with Elliot in the boat. Oh, okay. Cause they're like, Oh, the boat is shaking. Oh yeah. That's what remember. Yeah. That's it with Emily. Yeah. The tent is shaking. And with Sam, you're literally in his bed. Yeah. You're just literally in there. It's like, Oh, yeah. All right. With Penny. Penny has like the sexiest one where she invites you out to that, the, the spa.
00:26:04
Speaker
Yeah. And then she shows up and she's like, you know, in her bathing suit. And she's like, which you've only ever seen her so buttoned up. And she's like, hey, come here. And she is. Yeah. And then it's like, holy shit. And I think she kisses you. And then it fades to black and it's like, oh, God damn, you better hope nobody else walks into this scandalous. I know. I know. Like, oh, man, Penny lady in the streets, huh?
00:26:38
Speaker
Okay, so then the other thing that all that is Can you believe this is the one I didn't want to talk them like as much about?
Exploring 'The Quarry' and Co-op Gameplay
00:26:46
Speaker
Okay, so the other thing is the quarry I've been playing it with my with my partner
00:26:53
Speaker
It is a, I thought it was FMV for a long time before I played it, but it's not. It's just a really strongly, like mocapped actors. Right, right, right. We've talked about this before. Yeah. Yeah. I think really realistically drawn, like 3D, like very cinematic looking. Cause it looks, it looks rotoscoped. It looks hyper realistic.
00:27:22
Speaker
I mean, it's 3D, so it's very hyper-realistic, and it's like a choices matter kind of game. And it is your standard, a bunch of kids are at a summer camp, and then some weird shit starts happening. Story. Yeah. It's like a Stranger Things archetype, right?
00:27:46
Speaker
Yeah, sort of. Like a Stephen King-esque. Yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah. And it is very, very well written. Acting ranges, like, I'll talk about that in a second, but the acting I think is very, very good. And there's some really famous actors. There's like... You see David Arquette. There's David Arquette, yeah. There's the guy from, the kid from Detective Pikachu. What's that guy's name? Justice.
00:28:15
Speaker
uh justice smith i thought that was it but then i was like smith is such a smith is such like the i don't know the last name last name um brenda song brenda songs in it it's it's cool it's really
00:28:32
Speaker
really good, it's very, okay, the horror, I don't know, works as well as it should. There are parts where it does, especially towards the beginning. But this is also why, this is also my complaint about the acting. I think the acting is very, very good. But the problem is to pace it out in this game, in this like video game way.
00:29:01
Speaker
it's like something absolutely crazy happens and then they need a down moment. So instead of everybody going like, what the fuck, what the fuck, you just lost a hand, everybody's like,
00:29:13
Speaker
Okay, he just lost a hand. All right, so what are we doing now? And everybody starts joking with each other again and quipping about the situation or moving on to solving the next problem. And it really snaps you out of it. It breaks the momentum really strongly. There's also, because it is hyper-realistic, it's very uncanny valley to me. And I'm not sure how I feel about that.
00:29:43
Speaker
There's a lot of uncanny valley where you have to read characters' expressions and their expressions don't quite look human. So you're kind of like, are they mad or are they sneering or are they laughing? It's hard to tell. And there's a thing that me and my partner lose our fucking minds about where there's this one character in the game. I believe her name is Emma. I'll look up the actor.
00:30:12
Speaker
It's her name's Emma and the actor is Halston Sage, which I didn't see it in anything. She looks like a little familiar, but I think she plays Dazzler in one of the X-Men movies. She does not look familiar to me. She's done a lot of like kid stuff though, I see like Nickelodeon stuff. Okay, okay. So she's got a normal sized mouth.
00:30:36
Speaker
You're looking at her, you're like that person, even if it's a little big, it's a normal human sized mouth. In this game, it opens up to the size of like a quarry itself. It is an inhumanly large mouth and you can't stop thinking about how like her own head could fit inside that mouth. Is it supposed to be scary?
00:31:05
Speaker
No, it's supposed to, I think it's just Uncanny Valley. I think they were just motion capping Halston Sage or whatever. And there's just a slight miscalculation with the mouth physics. And it looks like she's trying to like hoover in her surroundings. I felt like very similarly about L.A. Noire, because that was also mocapped.
00:31:35
Speaker
And in that game, it's pretty important to read people's expressions and they try really hard and I'm like, are they constipated? I don't know. I doubt, I don't know. That uncanny valley stuff is wild to me. I've never thought about that before. What if, okay, you're an actor on a project and you're not supposed to be constipated, but you are. Like just that day, you just are.
00:32:05
Speaker
How does that inform your character work? Man, we asked the hard hitting questions on save your game. Yeah, we should be on in the actor's studio.
00:32:21
Speaker
He was famous for asking, what's your favorite curse word? We would be famous for asking, what do you do if you get constipated on set? Yeah, what do you do about that? Do you like- Does that inform your character? Do you view the character as constipated? Or are you acting as if you're not constipated, as if you're shitting all the time? Okay, so just to put a bow on the Quarry thing, I do want to say that there's another cool thing about the game, which is,
00:32:49
Speaker
you can't out-clever it, which, you know, as adventure gamers, we try to do a lot. And horror movie watchers try to do this a lot, because horror movies are always trying to subvert your expectations, or often, right? So when it's like, when somebody tells you, don't shoot unless you know who you're aiming your gun at, and you just hear a rustle in the woods,
00:33:14
Speaker
Sometimes you, the player are like, they're trying to get me. That's a fucking monster. They want me to remember not to shoot because you hear us, because you don't know what you're aiming at. So I'm going to shoot it and then you're inevitably going to shoot your friend. So like, so don't, you can't overthink it, right? Like if it's like, do you want to leap for safety or try and fight back? You might be like,
00:33:38
Speaker
what they want me to think, leap for safety. But if I fight back, no, leap for safety. And it was just so funny because as horror movie watchers, we are often yelling at the screen for them to do the obvious thing. Like, no, run away!
00:33:56
Speaker
This game takes advantage of that feeling by being like, as a player, you kind of want to do the not obvious thing, but that's going to get you killed. Do the obvious thing. Run away. Yeah. Yeah. It's so which is such a smart impulse on the game's part. Like, yeah.
00:34:14
Speaker
Anyway, so that's the Quarry. It's really cool to play it co-op because you each pick multiple characters. Like you say, there's two people playing and there's eight characters and it'll give you each four characters and the game divides it up into scenes by character. So it'll be like player two and it's a Ryan scene. And so player two plays Ryan and then it'll be like, oh, it's an Emissine now, player one. And it like,
00:34:43
Speaker
Which is funny because depending on how you pick, sometimes you'll get like five player two scenes in a row. Yeah. What is it? My turn based on who you pick. But yeah. Yeah. It's a really kind of cool way to do this kind of thing. That's awesome.
00:34:58
Speaker
Okay. Now that I know you can play a co-op, I might pick it up. Pick it up with somebody. All right, what is the game that you have been holding off on? So it's so insane that I haven't even discussed the big game that I've been playing yet.
Mystery and Metroidvania: 'Animal Well'
00:35:14
Speaker
I just went on so long about those two games, but I have not talked to you yet about Animal Well. Animal Well, yep, I knew that was coming.
00:35:25
Speaker
And I know every video game podcast right now is talking about Animal Well. And here's one of the things I don't want to talk too much about Animal Well. That's fine. Yeah. And for anyone who doesn't know, this is a Metroidvania game created by a dude named Billy Basso. You play just like a little blob egg guy.
00:35:45
Speaker
and running around this like Metroidvania world, it's all underground. You're in an animal well. There's animals everywhere and you're in like an underground wet series of tunnels. And you can play it just as a Metroidvania. You go around you, or as the Japanese call it a search action game.
00:36:12
Speaker
You run around, you find your progress gated in certain ways by obstacles, and then eventually you'll find items that'll help you get over that obstacle. There's no double jump, there's no dash. You said there's no combat, yeah?
00:36:34
Speaker
So there is, I would say yes, there's no combat, but there are things that are very similar to combat later on in the game. There are bosses, but you have to out-clever them. You don't hit them. You don't have a weapon. Is it like Undertale? Where you can kind of choose? No, no, no, no. Okay, got it, got it. No, no, no. Yes, you just have to use the environment. Okay.
00:37:01
Speaker
So it's more like a Nintendo boss, right? Where you're looking around in the environment and seeing, and looking at the boss's patterns and seeing how the boss reacts with the environment and what you can lure them into doing.
00:37:21
Speaker
Yeah, or like a Zelda. It's not always that in Zelda. You have to kind of get a hotspot or lure them. Yeah. And I think people have discussed for a long time whether Zelda games are Metroidvanias or whether they're adventure games or whether they're their own kind of games. And I think they're a little bit of all that. Yeah, they're definitely hybrid. So you can play it just as a Metroidvania and you will have a lot of fun and you'll discover that it is. And the game's beautiful, by the way. Yeah, it is. I looked it up.
00:37:52
Speaker
It's gorgeous pixel art, but you'll discover that as you play that it is a really clever metroidvania, again, based on puzzles, not combat. Every screen, you gotta think your way through it, and when you find a new object, you have to think of the traditional ways to use that object, and remember all the places you can use it, but you also have to think of non-traditional ways to use that object.
00:38:18
Speaker
Every object can be used in multiple ways. So on that layer, perfectly fun, fine game. But as you're playing, you're going to discover some things. You're going to, every now and then, while trying to solve a puzzle, maybe go a little extra, like solve it in a little bit of an extra difficult way, or notice some other extra difficult aspect of the puzzle that you then go solve. And you'll come across an egg. And you'll realize, oh, I guess I can collect these eggs.
00:38:48
Speaker
Wait, is this like Pokemon again? It's definitely, okay, this one is definitely not like Pokemon. All right, cool. Checking. So throughout the game, you know, like, and this is another thing, typical of many Metroidvanias, like the late game or the end game is often like going around finding collectibles, right? Yeah, yeah. So you're finding these eggs, but these eggs also sometimes unlock other abilities. I don't, again, I don't want to get too deep into this.
00:39:17
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's fine. So there's the second kind of level to it where you're unlocking, you're going through these really intense, really thoughtful, sometimes, you know, world-spanning puzzles, trying to find or, you know, like solve puzzles that get you these eggs. Yeah.
00:39:42
Speaker
As you're doing that though, Roses, you'll find there are yet more levels to this game. And deeper, you'll start to notice there are symbols.
00:39:55
Speaker
that are familiar or look like other symbols that you've come across. And you'll be like, wait, I wonder what that means. You'll start to notice noises that maybe happen at very specific time intervals. You might notice that there are certain animals that you see around the world that do not seem to interact, that do not seem to have anything to do with either the general exploration puzzles or the eggs. And there might be something even more mysterious to them.
00:40:25
Speaker
I like that. I like a game that's deeper than it initially looks. So I've heard of, I can't find it, but I've heard there's a website that's like, has everything in animal, has every secret in animal well been discovered? And it's like one of those websites that just says yes or no. And it just says no. I can't find the website, but I heard on a podcast that it exists, which is very funny.
00:40:50
Speaker
Billy Basso specifically says he's hidden puzzles in this game so deep that he doesn't expect anyone to ever solve them. Oh, that sounds like a challenge. You can't say that to the internet. I've heard that there are puzzles that require literally dozens of people to solve, meaning there are pieces of a puzzle in each game
00:41:17
Speaker
Like, each game has its own individual piece of the puzzle, and you need to collaborate with other people to solve it. Oh, I see. Sorry, sorry, sorry. My phone went off. Sorry, everyone. It's my bad.
00:41:30
Speaker
It's not important. Go on, Matt. This game is unbelievable. To play it just, again, as a Metroidvania, super fun, super kinetic, super thoughtful. To play it for its secrets is, you know, people have used this word, Metroidvania. Have you ever heard that term?
00:41:49
Speaker
I've never heard of that, no. I love it though. It's a bad term, but the idea about it is like, rather than your progress gated by abilities, your progress is gated by knowledge. So there's things like, for example, the best example is in Super Metroid, right? You could always wall jump, but 90% of players won't know that until they see those little yellow creatures that you follow.
00:42:15
Speaker
bouncing off the walls and then you're like, I wonder if I could do that. And then you do it and you're like, oh, I could have done this the whole time. A lot of times people call like the example of the Metroid Brainiac is Outer Wilds where it's like everything's there. If you know about it, you could just like beat that game in five minutes, right? But
00:42:45
Speaker
the thing that you unlock is the knowledge as you go forward. And so Animal Well, while it has again, Metroidvania stuff, like there are items that you find and they grant you abilities to pass obstacles. It's also this other thing where there is stuff from the very first screen that you don't even know to look for. Sure. That
00:43:08
Speaker
I don't, I can't even, I can't say it enough. Every screen in this game has some sort of mystery in it, that is.
00:43:16
Speaker
deep and rich and satisfying and it like just makes you feel like a genius when you solve it. I would highly suggest, this is a game I recommend to everybody because you can, again, you can play it on every level. You can play it just as a platformer and you can play it as puzzle game. You can play it as this deep, deep mystery. But I would highly suggest do not use a guide.
00:43:45
Speaker
like oh see sometimes we sometimes we actually encourage people to use guides but not this time right and i think that is one aspect of these metroid brainias right is this idea that if your progress is gated by knowledge if you just go look up that knowledge then
00:44:04
Speaker
There's there's no I don't think you'd have fun because there's no game there. You know what I mean? Yeah, I don't want to criticize again anybody for the way they play a game, but I just think if you if you play a game like this
00:44:22
Speaker
with a guide, you're just gonna not understand what's good about it. You're just gonna be like, well, that was boring, right? Because there's nothing there for you. The interesting thing is the discovery, so. Absolutely.
00:44:38
Speaker
Honestly, I played I played Stardew without a guide the first time because that was my foray into gaming like that. I hadn't played games like Animal Crossing yet or Harvest Moon or just any any Farmville just anything like it. I didn't even know guys were kind of an integral part of Stardew Valley. And it's that exploration that I think sealed the deal for how much I ended up loving that game.
00:45:06
Speaker
Just every discovery was like magic. I think there is a lot of magic in Stardew. Once you kind of break through that magic, I think you need a guide in Stardew to like figure out when fish breed and like when you can get certain fish in certain areas. But like, yeah, so anyway, that's Animal Well. It is blowing my fucking mind.
00:45:28
Speaker
This is like the most glowing review I've heard in a while actually. I am about, I'm 11 hours into it. I've already rolled credits on the game. So I've already beat.
00:45:40
Speaker
the whole Metroidvania part. I think I'm like 50 eggs in, I think I've found 50 eggs. You know what, I was gonna say what else I have discovered, but I think it'd be a spoiler because you see one of these things early on and you don't even know it's a secret. If you've played it, there's another secret that you collect after the eggs and I have,
00:46:10
Speaker
found three. So I'm pretty deep into it, but there's a part of me that feels like I'm still just scratching the surface. Like I've revealed probably 99% of the map and I still feel like there's so much I don't even understand. And there's still puzzles, to come across puzzles this late in the game that I'm like, oh, I don't think I know how to do this yet. I'll come back to this is wild.
00:46:36
Speaker
If anyone at home plays Animal Well based on this recommendation or is just playing it anyway, please write in. I want to talk more about Animal Well. I might even email you privately so we can solve some of these Animal Well. Hey, here we go. Solve some of these Animal Well. And I'll be there too.
00:46:56
Speaker
Yeah. I'll be like, hey guys, what you talking about? Nothing. Sports. Sports. Amazing. All right, so that's all the games I have to talk about in this free for all fucking episode.
00:47:18
Speaker
I really feel like it's such a good week for us to have this Free For All episode because I had, you know, I don't know if I could have gone through this episode not gushing about at least Animal Well and Stardew.
00:47:36
Speaker
Oh, I heard, I knew that was going to happen. I knew you were going to gush about animal well and I was, I was ready for it. I'm just like, all right, sell me on this game. Matt is very good on selling me on a lot of games. I try not to recommend games that don't suck. That's our whole thing. Like we're trying to champion these, these great, great games and great experiences.
00:47:59
Speaker
And this is, you know, this is a genuine, like, one dude developed it and one dude published
Adventure Games and Nostalgia
00:48:05
Speaker
it, right? Like, this is a... That's wild. That's just crazy. ...indie as hell, right? And Stardew Valley is India's hell. Yeah, it is. Concerned Ape is like a millionaire now, but he's still one guy. Yeah, it's wild that he does these updates
00:48:24
Speaker
for free. I just what a guy. What a guy. I guys I have still not booted up a stardew because I think I mentioned this in a few of our podcasts. I really did just finish a game like late last year. And I just don't I don't want to grow more parsnips again. I don't want to do the community. So I don't know it might be a little bit before I check out the updates. But
00:48:51
Speaker
We'll see we'll see what happens. Alright, so should we do the music and then kind of just chitchat about some Yeah, let's do it all right, I'm sorry. What was the name of the song again Matt name of the song Banksy rocks amino. Yeah, that's it
00:49:28
Speaker
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Save Your Game. Welcome back, Matt. Thank you. Welcome back to you. Thanks. Welcome together. Welcome. Did you have a good break? I had a great break. I'm very happy to hear that. How about you? Well,
00:49:49
Speaker
I had a good break. You know, I've been feeling very nostalgic lately towards adventure games. I don't know why. I mean,
00:49:59
Speaker
Actually, I think there is a solid reason why that I'm kind of glossing over here. I recently did a video for my channel on why I stopped reviewing adventure games. And so I had to, I was just kind of recalling and remembering all of these games that I had reviewed over time. And, you know, I used footage from all the games that I had captured over the many years of doing it. And I was just like, aw.
00:50:24
Speaker
I'm actually feeling a little wistful for some of these. And that doesn't mean I'm going to go back to doing retro gaming.
00:50:32
Speaker
Keep in mind, I didn't say I wouldn't review new indie games. So people may be surprised to see like, you know, a last door review or a dredge review or something of that nature. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. But in terms of the retro stuff, I really feel like I did everything that I could do. And I'm not saying I covered every game. I didn't. People are still upset that I didn't cover the remaining, you know, quest for glories.
00:51:00
Speaker
Which are a chore to cover, by the way, to capture in general, some of those, but I really think I made a lot of. I don't know I think I did a lot of adventure game reviews and.
00:51:15
Speaker
I don't know I was just thinking about home of the underdogs and like playing adventure games as a kid now answer me this question so I had a computer when I was young when I was very young, because my aunt had a computer and I was jealous of it she had a computer she had a tandy that could play Kings quest three and space quest one. I was very excited by this and so she
00:51:37
Speaker
gifted me a computer when I was very, very young. And this was in the early 90s. So nobody had computers at this time, you guys, not personal computers. People were my friends, like kids were playing console gaming, because he had Super Nintendo yet Nintendo, of course, Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis. And here I am with a with a fucking Tandy.
00:52:02
Speaker
And I really, honest to God, thought that was normal. So I would try to talk to my friends about King's Quest.
00:52:11
Speaker
Not even realizing that King's Quest 3 had already been out for like five or six years. I'm playing it as like a five, six year old. No, of course it's not normal. Nobody else is playing this. I felt so alone. But in my brain, I thought this was normal. I thought that loving computers and loving computer games and adventure games was something that everyone did because I just couldn't fathom not.
00:52:38
Speaker
Like what's your experience with that? Did you like have friends that you could talk to about adventure games with? No, I didn't. So I remember, I don't know. Yeah, I had Monkey Island, Secret of Monkey Island on like my family gateway computer. Yeah. And I remember playing it when I was
00:53:04
Speaker
I guess like seven and then getting really into it when I was maybe like nine. And like some part of me knew that nobody else knew what I was talking about. You know what I mean? Like I don't think I ever, I don't think I ever had a conversation where I was like, hey, you know,
00:53:25
Speaker
You know that game, Monkey Island? I just knew no one would know it. I don't know how I just intuited that as a kid, and I intuited it correctly, because I'd kind of bring it up. I'd be like, yeah, I like these games. I know there's one like Monkey Island. Did you ever hear of that? And people were like, no. And I'm like, yeah. Of course you didn't.
00:53:47
Speaker
I was pretty alone in my adventure game fandom. I tried to turn a couple people on to them as a kid, but everybody was interested in playing, you know, whatever, Doom or... Or just console games, I feel like, because those were becoming very popular. Like I said, I also had a Sega Genesis at the same time. And I loved it just as much, to be honest, for different reasons, because I could play, you know, platformers on my Genesis, but...
00:54:13
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like it was even worse for me because I'm going off a five-year-old that have already been out like King's Quest games. Like I do know some people that kind of like you who loved Monkey Island as a kid. I don't know any who loved King's Quest III. Well, I think even I would have felt that way, right?
00:54:38
Speaker
I remember a couple people saying like, oh, like King's Quest, I'd be like, no, not like King's Quest. Because for me, like I've talked about this before, I'd come from like being a huge fan of comic books, even as a little kid, and there was the big Marvel versus DC thing. So to me, you were either gonna be a LucasArts guy or a Sierra guy and you had to hate the other one, right? Which is silly.
00:55:07
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I always found that silly because when I was young, I just wanted to find any adventure games I could and play them. And it didn't matter what company it was. That's how you find the weird ones. That's definitely how I felt later. But, you know, yeah, I think I don't think I knew anyone that liked King's Quest, but I knew a bunch of people that knew what it was. Yeah. And no one that knew what the LucasArts games were.
00:55:35
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I was really young, like I said, when I got into these games. So I wasn't really aware of companies that just wasn't, you don't think about that the same way you watch movies as a kid and you don't care who the director is or who the company is. So I just wasn't thinking about it. So I would just go on home with the underdogs and just kind of gauge by graphic style, if I would like it or not, you know? So if it's got that really pixely look to it,
00:56:04
Speaker
like Monkey Island 2, we were just talking about this, a lot of games took inspiration from the aesthetic of Monkey Island 2. Oh my God, yes. I mean, even still, games are taking visual inspiration from Monkey Island 2.
00:56:19
Speaker
Yeah, I remember I just brought up that game. It's called Touche, The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer. Yeah. And it looks like Monkey Island. It's about the fifth Musketeer, apparently. But I found it very important. You look at that game, even now, you look at that game and you're like, I'm going to love this game. I know. Isn't that so disappointing? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:56:45
Speaker
That happened to me so many times on Home of the Underdog because we do like, especially with adventure games though we kind of judge with our eyes a little bit and we get excited for characters and fantasy and stuff like that. And there were so many times when I would download a game I'm like, what?
00:57:03
Speaker
is this or it just wouldn't download yeah uh touche was just kind of uh not memorable for me yes uh i had to like really recall it in my brain when i was like thinking about all these adventure games that i had played
00:57:19
Speaker
I don't know. I could make an exception for a review on this one, to be honest with you. It was so weird. I never played through Touche. I played a little bit of it. Yeah. And was like, this is kind of boring. I'll come back to it. And then I think just never did. There was a game. And again, this is all like coming, like flooding back to me as I think about all the games that I tried to play through Home of the Other Dogs. Do you remember a game called The Gene Machine?
00:57:51
Speaker
by name, but I do not. I don't think it's a game I ever played. Yeah, I never got it to run, so I never played it, but it's it's it's one of the things that's deeply embedded into my brain of OK, having wanting to play it like so badly. You know, I have a game like that, too. But talk about the machine and I'll talk about mine. I don't even know what the heck it's about. I'm looking at it now. And I'm like, this is kind of ugly.
00:58:20
Speaker
What if I want this again? It's a little, yeah, it's a little, it's a little weird. Like it's got the, there's like cartoony character graphics with like kind of slunkily painted background graphics and there's some really adult stuff in this game.
00:58:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's supposed to be a little it's supposed to be kind of sci fi ish kind of Jules Verne with like these kind of these incredible things that you're that you're working with. And I when I was a kid, I really liked around the world in 80 days, I liked that kind of fantastical sci fi. But now that I'm looking at it again, I don't know. Screencaps must have been amazing. I was a kid because now I'm just like, Oh,
00:59:13
Speaker
I don't know if I would like this. The character designs remind me of a much worse, oh, what's it called? Oh gosh. The Jordan-Meckner game, the train, when you're on the train. Oh, the Last Express. Yes, the Last Express. That reminds me of that. The Last Express was rotoscoped. It was rotoscoped, yeah.
00:59:36
Speaker
This does not look rotoscoping. It does not. That's why to me it just looks like worse. It looks like really bad rotoscoping. Right. Oh well.
00:59:47
Speaker
So the game that was this for me was Orion Burger. Oh my God, me too. Are you serious? Yeah, I remember seeing it in a magazine and just keeping that magazine forever. Like I'm gonna get this game one day. I'm gonna get this game and just never seeing it at the video game store. And like I was a kid so I didn't know how to find it. I still don't know when it came out.
01:00:18
Speaker
I think it, yeah, probably came out, yeah, probably came out while I was waiting for it, because it looks like it came out in 1996, and I just didn't know it was out. That's pretty late for adventure games, 1996s. And when I was older, I remember downloading it, and I just could not get it to run. And then I kind of forgot about it, because I don't think it was a well-loved adventure game.
01:00:47
Speaker
It must not have been, but we both seem to have really wanted to play this game when we were young. I had the same thing. I think I might have found it on Home of the Underdogs. Couldn't get it to run because we were at that time in the mid-90s where nothing ran on anyone's computer ever. I feel like I recall at one point
01:01:09
Speaker
recently, and when I say recent, I mean in the last maybe seven years. I did get it to run. And was so disappointed. It wasn't good. I don't remember it being good, no. This is the feeling I had about, inherit the earth, quest for the orb. That sounds very familiar. It's like an animal game. And apparently I think it has like a real big furry fan base online.
01:01:38
Speaker
Oh yeah, I do remember this game, yeah. Yeah, and it looks really great just from screenshots. It's just so boring. It's one of those games where you have to walk for 20 minutes before you get to your next screen.
01:01:56
Speaker
Do you think maybe we've been spoiled in a sense by all these new indie games? Because I have tried to introduce my friends to older adventure games, right? And they're just like, this is boring. You're just walking around. But see, my nostalgia is carrying it. You know what I mean? I'm on Blood Island and Curse of Monkey Island. I'm so happy to be on Blood Island. And people who grow up with it are like, I don't really understand. And I wonder if we had
01:02:25
Speaker
had nostalgia for Orion Burger or Inherit the Earth, would we feel differently about it? Well, I think quality generates nostalgia too. Yeah, that's true. Like, I think, okay, I feel two ways about this. Number one, quality, like, yeah, quality that generates nostalgia, you're not gonna be nostalgic for something that absolutely sucked unless it had something about it
01:02:49
Speaker
Like it needed to catch your eye and needed to catch your interest back then in order for it to stick with you this long. So there are plenty of games I'm sure we played as kids that do not trigger our nostalgia because there was nothing about them that interested us. On the other hand, I don't see anything wrong
01:03:14
Speaker
with the idea that like games have gotten better and some of these just aren't worth playing anymore, right? Like when you say, are we spoiled? Like, yeah, maybe, but that's a good thing, right? It's good that we don't have to play inherit the earth quest for the orb, a shitty adventure game just to get our fucking like thicks, right? Like that we can play
01:03:40
Speaker
better adventure games and get the experience we're looking for. We don't have to like scramble around in the dirt for something worse just because there's nothing else there. Honestly, you're hitting a really good point there because when I was playing adventure games and I was on Home of the Underdogs, that is what it felt like. Like I needed, because I loved adventure games so much. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would just go to some not great ones because I just wanted to find something to play, you know?
01:04:09
Speaker
I, yeah, no, I had the same experience. I just wanted to play more of this stuff. And it turned out there was not more like those LucasArts games. And that's just the thing that I eventually had to come to grips with is like, there were these for me, like nearly perfect, whatever, 11 games. And I loved them so dearly. And then,
01:04:39
Speaker
they're like, if I wanted to play more games like this, which I could, they just weren't gonna be the same. So like the Sierra games, I was going to learn to, I was gonna enjoy a lot of them, but it was not gonna be the same as the LucasArts games. And then I could go off and I could play Runaway.
01:05:00
Speaker
And, you know, I was going to be able to combine objects, walk around, explore a world, talk to characters. And it just was like, it would give me that fix, but it wasn't going to be good. Right. Yeah. That, that was another problem is like the quality on some of these games were so disappointing that you almost had to like keep looking. That's how I felt at least to like, well, got to scroll.
01:05:25
Speaker
in the grand adventure genre again, or it just wouldn't run. Or it would run, but it wouldn't come with voice acting because that was a CD-ROM thing at the time. So yeah, the first time I played Kellyanne's Crosstime Saloon was without voice. And
01:05:44
Speaker
I don't even, man, like I thought it was a good game without the voice. And then I played it with the voice and my mind was blown. I'm like, this is so good. The thing is there's a never ending well of art out there to enjoy. That does not mean that there's a never ending well of quality art out there to enjoy, right? Like there are, you know, maybe now there is that we've been, you know,
01:06:11
Speaker
the world is so big and art is so accessible to make, and there has been so many, so much time of culture existing, right? But just because you, yeah, if you find something you like, it doesn't mean that there's a never ending source of it that you just have to find, right?
Game Preservation Challenges
01:06:33
Speaker
There might be nothing like it, right? I don't know. But incidentally,
01:06:39
Speaker
It all is kind of coming back with people with modern, I guess, modern indie game devs who are our generation who were probably doing the same thing. Like, where can I find more of this type of of game, this type of Lucas Artsy game or this kind of, you know, King's Quest game? It's funny because you do still see that all the time.
01:07:03
Speaker
you still see people starting kickstarters almost on like a daily basis of like, I wanna go back to the old point and click adventure games that I played when I was a kid and I loved.
01:07:17
Speaker
maybe these people don't realize that there have been quality point and click adventure games being made for, made for years now. Like so many people had that same experience of like, there's just not as many of these as I want there to be, that at this point there kind of is. And it's just, they're all modern. Which arguably is better because now we can actually play them.
01:07:43
Speaker
Yeah, we can play them and they're good. Now, I do think that game preservation is a problem. I do think that we...
01:07:52
Speaker
as a society are not very good at game preservation. Companies don't put enough money into preserving their games the way that they put into preserving their, like companies put into preserving movies or music or any other piece of art. People do not put that sort of love into games.
01:08:13
Speaker
I mean, if you think about it, it's really a newer media than other things, music and movies and art, right? Visual arts in general that we've had around for centuries, right? It is new on that grand scale. And I don't think people always thought about this as art. You think back about some of the early consoles like the Atari,
01:08:40
Speaker
And I don't think people were looking at it that way. This is just that we're developing a game that's going to be great and people are going to play it and we're going to profit on it. And now it's becoming more of an appreciated form of art. Yeah. And I don't exactly know what the solution is to that, right? Yeah.
01:09:02
Speaker
video games are losing like we just saw the closure of how many video game studios just this week. Yeah. The week that we're recording this. And if they can't put if people can't put the money into new games, how do people put money into the preservation of games? Yeah. And yeah, there are games I swear that I don't think I would have ever found.
01:09:30
Speaker
if not people going hard on the internet to try to preserve them. And in fact, there's even games, not necessarily adventure games, but just computer games in general, that I remember that I don't think I'll ever be able to find again.
01:09:44
Speaker
You know what I mean? Because some of these kind of like, you know, indie adventure game devs now, there was a time before, you know, huge companies where people were just making computer games, you know, in basic or something. And I feel like I'm never going to find those again. That makes me so sad. Yeah, I think that there is this is.
01:10:05
Speaker
a thing that I am, it's going to linger in the back of my brain forever. It was a game, it was like a big, it was an adventure game of sorts. I don't know if you had an inventory or not. But I do know it was, there was a bunch of rooms,
01:10:28
Speaker
God, I remember so little about it. And because game preservation is so bad, I will never see this game again to the point where I won't know that it really exists or it's just something in my imagination. But there was, the guy was like 12 pixels.
01:10:45
Speaker
It was just a little guy, I think he had blue pants and a white shirt, and he had like peach skin, right? And he was just like a little guy, and he was running around a thing. And I think there was like several episodes of it. This is, as I'm saying it out loud, finally, it's coming back. I think he had a British accent. God, if anybody knows what I'm talking about, please write in. But you know, it reminds me, remember the Incredible Machine?
01:11:14
Speaker
Remember there was a little guy in the Incredible Machine called Tim that you could use in your machines. I'm trying to find a picture of Tim to make sure that what I'm saying makes any sense at all.
01:11:30
Speaker
Yeah, so Tim in the game, the little man that you could put in your machines is more pixels than this character was. But again, there was this little funny character that was made of just like a dozen pixels or so. And he had an English accent and it was like these little point and click adventures and they were flash games. But now all flash games are gone forever. Oh, that's true. Oh yeah, flash games? That is a separate,
01:11:58
Speaker
wormhole altogether. That's I have I have this app that was created where somebody as flash was dying. They just went and collected all the flash that they find on the Internet. And that's how I've played now. OK, these games aren't good.
01:12:15
Speaker
I was just gonna say that up front. But there was a, I guess, developer called Carmel Games. That used to make just tons and tons of point and click adventure games. It seems like from like 20, I don't know, 13 to 2018 or something like that, back in that range.
01:12:44
Speaker
And all the games were very similar and they were kind of like escape room puzzles and the...
01:12:50
Speaker
all the voice actors were the same guy. And there was a lot of gross out humor. Towards the end, there was a lot of like jokes about cancel culture and dumb shit. Oh God. I know, I know. But there was like these Sherlock Holmes games. There was Monster Squad. I'm looking at them now. Crazy Dad, Crazy Mom, Crazy Dad Christmas, Crazy Halloween. Yeah, I know. These are...
01:13:16
Speaker
I mean, they're absolutely insane. There was, they had a series called Vortex Point that had like eight games and it would like clearly was a rip off of,
01:13:31
Speaker
Gravity Falls. Yeah, that's actually what comes up when you look up caramel games like vortex point is one of the things that comes up. Dakota Winchester was their Indiana Jones knockoff and these were like, they were like spoofs of these things but also anyway, I am saying all this just to explain, I've played all of these games.
01:13:53
Speaker
because there's, you can look it up, it's called Flashpoint Infinity. There's this person, like there are this group of people who collected all these into a database and like one app. And saved all of these games. But I'm sure they didn't get everything. And I'm sure that we are missing thousands if not millions of flash games that are just gone forever.
01:14:23
Speaker
that just is awful. And I was like, I remember when things were changing like that, and I was like, is Homestar Runner still gonna be up? Cause everything, you know, like Flash animation, there was so much, I mean, that was the whole purpose of Newgrounds at the time, right? There was all these Flash, little Flash games and animations. Granted, a lot of Newgrounds was like a poop escaping a butt, right? Like a lot of Newgrounds was like real fucking horrible,
01:14:52
Speaker
amateur bullshit, but. I want to say that the last door started on maybe started on Newgrounds. There's a ton of adventure games that were. Yeah. On Flash. I'm like looking I'm like flipping through the Flashpoint Infinity app right now. And I'm seeing like there's a game called Lemon Noir. There is.
01:15:20
Speaker
I just saw one that was really, oh, Clop, remember Clop? Where- That sounds familiar. Yeah, Clop. You had to make something walk by controlling every one of its joints. Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, that was, those games are rough. But I believe Cube Escape started as Flash games, right? Anyways.
01:15:43
Speaker
I just, I remember, oh man, now I remember just all these games, but do you remember there was a game based on The Room? Uh, no. As in The Room, like the, as in- Yeah. The Bad Movie. The Cherry Moon Partly. So yeah, there was, I feel like that was a Newgrounds game. I'm going to look it up. Interesting. I bet. Yeah, it's called The Room Tribute from 2010. And, you know, uh,
01:16:11
Speaker
brands make games all the time. There would be like, here, Jurassic Park the Ride online adventure.
01:16:24
Speaker
And there was all those adult swim games, right, yeah, like there was a whole, at the same time all those AGS games were happening, here's the last door chapter one, you're correct. At the same time all those AGS games, so like Adventure Game Studio also existed and people were making games and sharing them on forums, and a lot of those don't work anymore either.
01:16:48
Speaker
The Trilby series, are those AGS games? Correct, yes. Okay, I am having a heck of a time getting those to run, because I think those were made in what, 2004-ish? They all run on SCUMVM now, actually. Oh, that's right. SCUMVM always saves the day, to be honest. I always look there first. I'm like, does it run on SCUM yet? There's no way a listener has gotten this far and doesn't know what SCUMVM is, but in case you are that listener, SCUMVM is a
01:17:18
Speaker
is an application that is meant to interface between especially old point and click games and modern computers. So basically, if you have the games, you can use this to emulate the running conditions for these games. You can just play them in this scum VM. It's like a virtual machine, basically. Yeah, almost exclusively for adventure games. I think it has some old,
01:17:47
Speaker
old school RPGs on it now too, but. Yeah. It's, yeah. I mean, it's called scum ice for a reason. I assume that's call back to, to monkey Island and the scum bar, right? Yes. Because I think it was initially just for scum games and then they expanded it to Sierra and they've been expanding it ever since. And every year there's just more and more games that run on it. I think check the updates on that. There might be games I've been trying to play that have been updated, which would be great.
01:18:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's wild. I remember it was just like a year ago or something that they added all the AGS, not all the AGS games, but like AGS compatibility and many of the games have been added now. Yeah, for sure. How are we going to, how are, how do we end this one?
01:18:34
Speaker
How do we end this one? Okay, how do we start? We were talking about art. So let's end by talking, and oh, we were talking about what we don't know about Greek mythology. How much of that is gonna be in the podcast though? So do you wanna talk about what we don't know about what, Mesopotamian mythology? How much do you know about Marduk? Nothing. How much do you know about Asher Bonapal?
01:19:00
Speaker
Nothing? What do you know about Gilgamesh? What is it? Is this Gabriel Knight? Are you just going to keep asking me what I know about things? I weirdly know a lot about the Epic of Gilgamesh, to be honest. I had to read it for a world mythology for my humanities course in college a bajillion A.J. four years ago.
01:19:30
Speaker
I've read it for a world mythology course. I've read it for a literature course. I own three different translations of it because I just find it fascinating. I think it's an incredible story. It would make a great adventure game. No, it wouldn't be so disappointed and weird. It would be so weird. It would make a very bad adventure game. I mean, most of what he does is fight stuff and fuck his friend.
01:19:58
Speaker
You know, it sounds nice. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. All right. All right. Well, this has been a fun chat, Roses. Always, always. I'm glad we got this in, even if we didn't have any focus whatsoever. Oh, we know we're always pretty focused, though. You'd be surprised. Have you listened to other podcasts? No, I don't listen to any voice besides my own. That's true. What about mine?
01:20:31
Speaker
It's just kind of a haze. It's going autopilot when you talk to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have an AI here that translates everything you say and just tells me what to respond to. Oh, good. But no, I always I always love talking about adventure games and kind of where what we've played in the past and that's I feel very wistful.
01:20:55
Speaker
Is wistful a sad word? It's not sad. I guess nostalgic is the correct word. Well, nostalgia also is a word that derives from sadness, right? That's true. The etymology of nostalgia is pain and home. Nostos and algos, right? I'm not feeling homesick. I'm just feeling like,
01:21:25
Speaker
Aw, adventure games. Yeah, you're feeling... What's a word for goodness touch? What are we feeling? Please write us. I guarantee there's a word in German for it. There's a word in German for every single sentimental. Yeah, I do feel a little sentimental, to be honest with you. Yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one.
01:21:55
Speaker
All right, Matt, you wanna take us out? Got any announcements for us? We're part of the Adventure Game Hotspot Network, so of course, go check them out, AdventureGameHotspot.com. Also, you know, review us, like us, all the different stuff. Oh my God. Why, you get angry at this. Do you not want them to do it? I don't know why I have such a visceral reaction.
01:22:17
Speaker
I'm gonna make you say it from now on, it's your bullshit. I'm gonna say it so sadly. For sighing at every time. They have to do it. We need it to happen. I will say it next time, okay? And I'm gonna be like, oh my god. Yeah, you're gonna be like, oh my god. And also don't forget to write us at mattandrosesatgmail.com. We'd love to hear from you.
01:22:44
Speaker
Oh, thank you. Yeah, I forgot about that. We almost missed everything. Well, I guess all I have to say left, and I don't know what you'll say back to this, but my point is podcast is art. And art is suffer.