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Episode 37: Melanie Zawodniak (Gamer, Podcast Editor)
235 Plays16 days ago
In this episode, hosts Alan and Syrenne are joined by Melanie Zawodniak the editor of this very podcast! In this very casual episode, we talk about puzzle games, livestreaming, and Kingdom Hearts.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome to the Drakknek and Friends official podcast, where we peel back the curtain on puzzle games and the people who make them. I'm Seren, the producer at Drakknek and Friends, and I'm joined as always by Alan Hazelden, the head of Drakknek at Drakknek and Friends.
00:00:35
Speaker
Hey there. Today, we're joined by Melanie Zawadniak, who you may know from their work on the Drakhtech and Friends official podcast where we peel back the curtain on puzzle games and the people who make them.
00:00:46
Speaker
How are you doing today? hey that's me. I'm doing pretty good. ah So can you introduce yourself with some of the games that you've helped make? Um, you so, you know, um, when I was in high school, um, my friend was making like an RPG in Game Maker that was like about our friend group and I would technically, I counted. So like, I was like part of that, I guess. Sounds yeah great. When's it going on itch?
00:01:11
Speaker
Um, you know, probably like by the end of the quarter or something. Sick. Yeah. um happy happy for you ah yeah so what got you into game development um well i i don't know how to keep this bit going okay yes so melanie is not a game developer um melanie is the editor of the podcast melanie uh has a lot of fun stories and there's a lot of room for discussion so this episode is going to be a little bit different everyone uh thank you for bearing with us
00:01:44
Speaker
But trust me when I say this will be delightful.
Melanie’s Gaming Journey
00:01:48
Speaker
A lot of pressure being put on me. No, so i I already know how I want to jump into this. So Melanie,
00:01:56
Speaker
ah i you don't need to go into like your whole backstory and everything. However, one thing I'm very interested in trying to get you to... Like a story you' trying I'm trying to get you to tell what...
00:02:08
Speaker
what So for people for people who don't know, Melanie writes for a website called NintendoWorldReport.com and will occasionally ah Twitch stream. You have another podcast called Smashter Pieces.
00:02:24
Speaker
There's a few different things that you do online, like a few different places if people can find you. My question is... At what point in your life did you realize that you wanted a lot of your free time to be focused on video games and the video game industry?
00:02:42
Speaker
Because this is not your day job. You have a day job. We don't need to talk about like what that is. We don't need to dox you. But a lot of your free time is about and around the industry. So where to like what happened to to sort of shape that?
00:02:56
Speaker
I can trace that back to my freshman year of high school. This was the time where most of my thoughts were occupied by the fact that Super Smash Bros. Brawl was going to come out within the next year.
00:03:07
Speaker
um And that like consumed all of my attention. i was... following like news on it as much as I could, refreshing GameTrailers.com to see if there was a new trailer that day, checking the Smash Bros. Dojo every morning um one time while I was on vacation using the the Nintendo DS web browser to do it.
00:03:27
Speaker
um During this time, I came across a podcast that was just like a discussion podcast about Super Smash Bros. Brawl is coming soon. The name of this podcast was Show Me Your News.
00:03:40
Speaker
And this is like if there was a firm before after point in my life, it was this podcast because this podcast ended up being the foundation for like so much of my life because my friend group right now, um like the people that I've known for the longest are all people that I met because they were also fans of this podcast.
00:04:03
Speaker
I ended up like kind of being known person amongst the podcast fans and like even was on the podcast a couple times, ended up like being invited to the podcast host's wedding.
00:04:17
Speaker
And so many of us that were there at the time ended up like getting secondhand interested in doing podcasts. And at the time, like nowadays, everyone like has the idea of like, you know I could probably do a podcast. I'd be interested in it. And it's like at the like this was 2007.
00:04:33
Speaker
At the time, the average person had not heard the word podcast yet. So it was a novel idea. And most people didn't know how to even start with it. So I ended up in this friend group that started doing that.
00:04:44
Speaker
And specifically, we would talk about video games. um my My friend Joe that I do Smasher pieces with, he started his own podcast before me that for for his sake, I will not say the name of, but it was just a podcast just like talking about like video games that they had played.
00:05:02
Speaker
And we were in high school and early college, like none of the stuff we were doing was really that good. But it was stuff that like we realized we were passionate about. And those skills that I developed, quote unquote skills at the time, because it was like using audacity and like the cheapest USB microphone I could find and stuff like that.
00:05:21
Speaker
um But those eventually led to me ending up at a radio station at my college. where I and ended up being a lot more, don't want to say successful necessarily, but more of like directly involved than I'd ever planned to be.
00:05:36
Speaker
Because it was just something i was kind of doing on a whim. And then I ended up like changing my whole major to a radio, TV, film. And by the time I graduated, I was the news director at that station. i was the operations manager at that station.
00:05:47
Speaker
I went to the Democratic National Convention and recorded a news package that ended up winning awards. Which is still wild for me to think about to this day that I managed to like pull any of that off.
00:05:58
Speaker
And then I just go and get an office job um using none of those skills that I developed. So that leads me to around 2018 time, coincidentally, when another Smash Brothers game is about to release.
00:06:11
Speaker
where I'm just like, you know what, screw it. I've been following this NWR site for about a decade now on and off. So let's just send them an email, see if they're interested in anyone like joining and getting involved. And that's next thing I knew, I was part of the staff. I was helping cover stuff right away. I had within like two months of of joining, I think I had made a video about so the upcoming Super Smash Brothers game that ended up with like tens of thousands of views and stuff and was like pretty, pretty successful by
Career in Gaming Journalism
00:06:43
Speaker
our standards. And now that's just kind of the path that I've been on of like,
00:06:47
Speaker
This isn't my day job. It's not like the quote unquote industry I'm in, but I would sure love for it to be. And it's i've these skills that I developed over those years, both at like in my amateur podcast with my friends and also at my school's radio station.
00:07:04
Speaker
It was something that I wanted to keep alive, to keep doing because i didn't like um my day job's not glamorous. It's not sexy. I don't have a lot of fun with it. So if I'm really happy that I can like keep working doing those things that interested me at the time through NWR, through Draknek, through Smash pieces.
00:07:22
Speaker
And so that's kind of how, and video games are just the thing that I've been interested in my whole life. So it was just kind of easy to get involved in it that way.
Kingdom Hearts 2 Streaming Stories
00:07:30
Speaker
So that's how I ended up right here. And there's no shortage of Nintendo sites on the internet.
00:07:38
Speaker
What was it about Nintendo World Report that made you pick that one to like email and say, hey, can I, can I join your staff? um the easy answer is just kind of like that's the one that i happen to be following the most they've got like their own i got into it through like one of their bigger podcasts radio free nintendo which seren has actually been on before too many times and i derail it every time yeah yep also that's not a step that that is an explicit podcast for anyone who's listening to this and wants to go listen to that that is a that is a very different tone of podcast
00:08:11
Speaker
Oh, yes, for sure. um And so it just happened to be like the place I was paying attention to at the time. And my decision to join was like a little bit after like joining their discord and getting it a little involved there, which I'm not nearly as involved in that discord nowadays. But it kind of solidified me as like, OK, this is the place in the Internet that I'm kind of paying attention to now and carving out a place in so the just the next step was like sure let's let's see what happens if i try to get involved yeah and so it goes all right time for you to tell the story melanie there are so many stories i could be telling did start talking to you oh my god so there were a couple times that our paths crossed after i joined nmur but i have a feeling i know exactly when you're talking about
00:09:04
Speaker
Because and one point, my friend Joe, the one who I do this Masterpieces podcast with, He strong-armed me into agreeing to stream every single Kingdom Hearts game on the Nintendo World Report Twitch channel.
00:09:17
Speaker
um Which was not entirely consensual on my part, but I did eventually agree to it. But wow, a lot of people sure did ah say that they wanted me to do this.
00:09:28
Speaker
And so we were in the middle of the third game in the series, Kingdom Hearts 2. what um Pretty close to the end.
00:09:39
Speaker
And kind of just running up against like this part of the game that was just starting to give me trouble because I'm not very good at video games for how much I spend my life playing them. And suddenly me and Joe start having the dumbest argument in the world where we start arguing about when the last time we streamed was because it had not been the previous week.
00:10:01
Speaker
And Joe thought it had been a full month. I thought it had only been two weeks. And this was a very stupid argument that was happening on air. And then in the chat comes a message from Saren clarifying exactly how long it had been.
00:10:18
Speaker
And at this point, I know who Saren is because i had been following like the Radio Free Nintendo podcast that she had been on. She does she had done several things for NWR. So I knew who she was.
00:10:30
Speaker
But as far as I was aware at the time, she wasn't aware of who I was. So this is just a little bit terrifying. And it turns out Kingdom Hearts 2 is a game that she deeply, deeply knows very well.
00:10:44
Speaker
And Alan, I'm going to go off a hunch here and say you probably have an idea what it's like when Soren says to you something to the effect of why are you doing it like that?
00:10:57
Speaker
if So, Seren came in and taught me how to play Kingdom Hearts 2. And the way that she would describe it to me years later is that the thought that was going through her mind as she decided to send that message was that she was making a conscious decision to involve herself.
00:11:19
Speaker
And that she would go on to think, well, I guess these weirdos are part of my life now. Yeah, that's that's pretty much what happened. um To be clear, Kingdom Hearts 2 is a combat-heavy game where one of the four face buttons is for guarding, and Melanie was never hitting that button, and then she was running into trouble because she was taking too many hits.
00:11:45
Speaker
In my defense, at this point, I had realized my friends were not very good at giving advice for this game. and So I had started to ignore their advice.
00:11:57
Speaker
And turns so that telling me to use the the guard command was actually good advice. Yes. As it turns out, the summer of 2005, when Kingdom Hearts 2 originally came out, was a summer...
00:12:13
Speaker
that I had nothing going on, I didn't have work, I didn't have anything. And so I got to the point where after, you know, ah couple weeks, I was playing the entire game front to back every day.
00:12:27
Speaker
Just like improving my skill and knowledge of the game. This is like the game that more than any other video game that I have not worked on, I have played the most. And potentially it ranks among the games I've worked on too. I think Manifold Garden is number one, but... This sounds productive. Alan, what were you doing the summer of 2005? I was... Just... Graduating high school.
00:12:53
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, what were you doing in the summer? What productive things were you doing? I was probably hard at work on Zelda fan sites.
00:13:05
Speaker
Hell yeah. Hell yeah, it all comes full circle. So, yes, that is that that is how I became involved with Melanie and Joe.
00:13:21
Speaker
and i would love to to get some sense of, like, how far through Kingdom Hearts 2 had you gotten and without this ah valuable insight? Too um We were in the final world.
00:13:34
Speaker
It sounds like you didn't even need this advice then. You would have managed. No, there was a skill check. but We may or may not have spent an entire four hour stream grinding levels for me to be able to defeat a boss that was that I ran into during that night.
00:13:49
Speaker
That was intended to be a skill check about guarding. okay you How much could it have really been intended to be anything when it wasn't even in the the original release of the game, though? Yeah, they added it because it was a skill check about Garnic. All I'm saying is that I would have successfully finished the original version of Kingdom Hearts 2 that night. No, you would not have because you had further trouble with all of the subsequent bosses.
00:14:12
Speaker
Nope.
00:14:16
Speaker
nope Nope. Not even buying this argument it for a second, Melanie. You can grind and eventually you'll you'll manage to get through something. resign No, 100%. No, no, no, no, no. Melanie? Melanie?
00:14:30
Speaker
yeah What's up? So the next against Zygbar? Mm-hmm.
00:14:36
Speaker
I have a friend who I will put on blast. They have no idea that I do this podcast. I don't even know if they know what where I work. This friend, the summer after Kingdom Hearts in 2006, they said that they had been stuck on the Zikbar fight for like an entire year.
00:14:50
Speaker
And I was like, oh my god, what? I looked at their save file, and their save file had 700 hours on it, and they were max level. And they could not outgrind their skill deficiency.
00:15:04
Speaker
So this is this is pretty typical of the rapport that Saren and I have, where I'll say something, and then she will go no, that's not correct. no
00:15:20
Speaker
And I'll try to defend myself, and she will she will not let that stand. and Like, you just need to have, uh, like, integrity. You need to, like, know in your heart of hearts that what you're saying is true, and then she can't hurt you.
00:15:36
Speaker
here's here's the thing. The moment you let doubt into your heart, she's won. that That is like what a Kingdom Hearts character would say, by the way. That is exactly the script of a Kingdom Hearts game. um No, I think that the the I think the relevant detail here is that I don't do this about opinions I strongly disagree with.
00:16:00
Speaker
I don't just go, no. When Melody is jokingly, semi-jokingly doubling down on something that is factually incorrect, that's when I just switched to, no.
00:16:13
Speaker
Sometimes you got to commit to the bit for content. Yeah, but sometimes the content is just you and I on a Discord call. yeah Be that as it may. the content of your life.
00:16:27
Speaker
just i'm i'm I'm a method actor. Melody is second only to me and enjoying a great bit.
00:16:36
Speaker
Alan knows this. I'm always in for a bit. i I was literally a theater kid in high school, so i like the theater kid energy is still with me. Yeah, I... If you like bits so much, why do you refuse to let the podcast be sponsored by Hent.ai?
00:16:50
Speaker
No, I wanted to keep that bit. Thank you! I was so sad to cut it. Someone is gonna go to that website URL. That's the result! Right now. Don't care.
00:17:03
Speaker
I just, I'm so sad that, like, I'm the only one in the world that gets to hear the moment where at the very end of an episode, you like, you just pick up on the bit of sponsored by Hent.ai, and the audio cuts out as Seren is going, no!
00:17:17
Speaker
i to this day, I wish I could have been a couple of times. Yeah, this has been going a few times, listeners. guess this is in the middle of the episode, so there's a higher chance of resolving. God.
00:17:31
Speaker
ah Yes, yes, no, there are bits. There there are bits. um No, Alan, you... why For whatever reason, my mind is a blur this morning, as I'm trying to think of bits that I've suggested for different games
Workplace Dynamics and Podcasting
00:17:46
Speaker
that we've worked on. ah none of None of them have been serious suggestions, but there's definitely been bits on some of these games.
00:17:55
Speaker
So far, it just seems like the recurring bit is to just make the second half of the game in the last week of development. God damn- Yeah, Theron loves that. Yeah, that's not a bit that is a workplace mistake.
00:18:08
Speaker
i I think often about like the one episode where I i i just send Seren a message that says, ah love how this one just turns into Seren's airing of grievances. And then she replies in all caps, whatever I said, I'm right.
00:18:21
Speaker
That was for a listeners reference. That was the ah electrifying incident postmortem.
00:18:29
Speaker
And yeah, no, I was right. I was right. And you can tell, because as soon as I begin airing grievances, everyone just shuts up and starts giggling. Because they have no defense.
00:18:42
Speaker
Alan will like jokingly try and defend sometimes. The quality of the game is its own defense.
00:18:52
Speaker
i would I would argue the budget versus the sales should be the actual defense. i think I don't want to look at what the sales would have been if we hadn't added the secret ending.
00:19:05
Speaker
ah I think the way that I have talked about this podcast to my friends sometimes is that Alan is my favorite fictional character on a podcast. If I was in Saren's position, within a month, I would have killed him or myself.
00:19:23
Speaker
It's a... Look, we've we play up the workplace drama for the podcast. There's only been one time where we've come off a podcast and I've gone, oh, did Sorin?
00:19:36
Speaker
Like, is Sorin actually angry with me? Yes, that did happen once and I think that was the electrifying incident. It was. It's a...
00:19:46
Speaker
It's a good bit. It's a funny bit. No, I will say that our internal work meetings are remarkably more chill. This is the chillest place I have ever worked.
00:19:59
Speaker
Yeah, because the work meetings aren't content. You know the importance of playing up the bit and the character for content. And that's what I'm saying. I'm the aggrieved producer. That's my character.
00:20:11
Speaker
And I'm the ah like the hard-working creative who has a vision. all about you can definitely finish this video game without pressing the square button.
00:20:22
Speaker
God, no. Going back to Kingdom Hearts for a second, one of my other favorite details is that from the from that moment...
00:20:34
Speaker
from that moment on, I stuck around, was thinking that call, and i was and i just spent like the next hour ah correcting all of the incorrect information that Melody had been given by her very incorrect friends. in in Information such as you keep complaining about ah the Little Mermaid world in Kingdom Hearts 1.
00:20:59
Speaker
Why did you go there if you hated it so much? It's fully optional. Yeah, they did not. and they and i That was not explained to me. That it was optional, yes. um Like, I don't i don't know.
00:21:12
Speaker
um Anyways, like like Melanie said, Kingdom Hearts 3 is the third game. You have done how many games? You've done one, two, three, four, five, six.
00:21:23
Speaker
You're going into seven. Yep, hopefully by the time this episode airs, we will be playing Dream Drop Distance. Hopefully, yeah. Hopefully. Yeah, if anyone if anyone wants a good introduction to Kingdom Hearts, it's not that. However, you might get to see a 3DS render of a bad film render of CGI de-aged Jeff Bridges.
00:21:47
Speaker
This franchise. Anyways. I remember when Joe was like campaigning to get me to play these games. lived There was a literal campaign that went on for days. He made this video but where he was like naming off all the things that you could bet you get to do in Kingdom Hearts. And he referred to ah talk with someone that's ah allegedly Jeff Bridges and then talk to a second person that's allegedly Jeff Bridges.
00:22:10
Speaker
Yes, that is an accurate description of that game. So... Pivoting away from Kingdom Hearts, even though you know that I could talk about Kingdom of Hearts and Kingdom Hearts lore for
Introduction to Draknek Games
00:22:22
Speaker
days on end. Oh, I sure do know.
00:22:24
Speaker
Oh. It's all in my brain for some reason. That's not necessarily what our listeners are coming to this podcast. It's not necessarily, although it's going to be in the description. So they'll have some forewarning.
00:22:37
Speaker
I try and pick three things that happen during the podcast and put it in the description every week. And sometimes sometimes they're more serious than others. So how did you get introduced to To Draconeck Games.
00:22:59
Speaker
She's laughing because it's a very funny story. Alan, I don't know if you've heard this story. have no idea what's coming. This is a deeply funny story. And of course involves Sonic the Hedgehog. So as all things in my life do, this occurred live on air on the Nintendo World Report Twitch channel.
00:23:17
Speaker
where I was playing Sonic Frontiers because, um as part of like this whole Kingdom Hearts journey that I'm going on, um, I have retaliated by in between every Kingdom Hearts game, we play a Sonic the Hedgehog game because my brain is broken because I played Sonic Adventure 2 when I was eight years old.
00:23:35
Speaker
Um, And so the ah we were playing Sonic Frontiers, which was brand new at the time. And at one point, I am like messing with, I think, the activity cards on the PS5 UI for the game.
00:23:50
Speaker
At this point, Seren just gets like really mad at the game because like apparently the activity cards in that game were so bad that she was just really offended by it. So on the spot, she says, no, I'm going to show you like examples of good activity cards.
00:24:07
Speaker
And she immediately on air sends me download codes for a monsters expedition and bonfire peeks. And on air starts walking me through how the activity cards in those games work.
00:24:21
Speaker
And also pushing me through the introductory segment of A Monsters Expedition, which I will now take this opportunity to say rules. That like incredibly good game and incredibly good intro. Like, I don't know if Saran has told you this bit, but like every time I have someone physically in my house that has not been there before, I get them to play that intro section.
00:24:47
Speaker
That's amazing. think Yeah, I have gotten like four people to buy that game. It's a really good intro. And so I assume that Sorin didn't expect that to really really like be a... and a very consequential night but like i keep playing monsters expedition after that and i like i play through to the end of the game and i'm like oh this kind of rules and so saran then picks up on that and pushes me to try more games of this type and
00:25:18
Speaker
And so like I've tried Sokobond Express. I've tried ah i tried a little bit more of Bonfire Peaks, which is a difficult game for my brain to wrap my head around because it's like the three d and everything.
00:25:31
Speaker
um i got I played Patrick's Parabox, which I know you published instead of just developed, but also very good. um i of course, have played elect electronic Electrifying Incidents, which Also very good. That archive is on for reasons.
00:25:49
Speaker
Yes, it is. um Can I say that I've played Spooky Express? Yes, you can. Yeah, because that one also, like, yeah, it turns out some of these games are good. and so... um Some? and i mean before Before you started playing Drac Knight games, what was your opinion of puzzle games?
00:26:10
Speaker
I don't know that I really, like That's not true. You had an opinion, but the the opinion was tied to falling block games like ah Pokemon Puzzle League. Right. And then, as we've discussed on this podcast before, those aren't puzzle games. Those are arcade games or score attack games or any number of Geona titles, but not puzzle games.
00:26:30
Speaker
I would agree with that. i'm I really like Panel de Pon, but i don't think I don't think that's remotely the same kind of game as the stuff that Dracneck makes. So I wouldn't put them in the same category. I don't, like, off the top of my head, I'm not sure, like, did I ever even play a real-ass puzzle game before? I had played Baba is You little You played the Portal games.
00:26:48
Speaker
True, yes. um Those are like, everyone's played those. You've played Outer Wilds? Had I played that yet? I don't think I had played that yet. I think I played that later.
00:26:59
Speaker
Okay. And so, um I played a little bit of Baba Is You, never got very far because I'm not very good at these games. Like, don't mistake my enthusiasm for actual, like, skill. I'm very bad at them. um But...
00:27:10
Speaker
um This is kind of like an experience of learning like, oh, here's this whole genre of games that I wasn't even looking at that it turns out might be more interesting to me specifically than I ever thought.
00:27:25
Speaker
And I sure do wonder if that's like ever going to be a recurring problem that people talk about. But like, it's so funny that the way that this that this started for me was Siren gets really mad at Sonic.
00:27:36
Speaker
As I am wont do. Out of spite. Activity cards on PlayStation 5. This like throwaway feature that like most PS5 players probably don't even engage with or are aware of its existence in any way. think they don't even have them anymore in the same way. No, they do.
00:27:55
Speaker
um remember I remember, I guess, I don't know the details. I just remember, like, I'm in the the i in the Discord for Astro Bot speedrunning, and they, like, made a big deal about how they can't do activity cards anymore, so the Astro's Playroom speedrun is now very different.
00:28:07
Speaker
What? Yeah. It was, like, a very controversial debate over whether they should allow activity cards for the speedrun. Because you could more quickly fast travel between levels, yes.
00:28:20
Speaker
Because unlike Drakonet games, they would have multiple activity cards available at the same time. Yeah, it also became a question of like, because the the screen like completely fades to black during it.
00:28:31
Speaker
It became a problem of like, can you trust that this hat? This video hasn't been edited. Oh, sure. um Anyways, so you should also talk about your haunted freaking PS5. Yeah, Alan doesn't know about this.
00:28:49
Speaker
So I'm told that the in the development for Monsters Expedition, you were very, very careful about making sure that save files were like super triple backed up and like there would never be a problem with them.
00:29:02
Speaker
um And boy, mo void in my PlayStation sure do its best to prove that wrong. And not even through the in-game save backups, to be clear, Alan.
00:29:14
Speaker
Her PS5 would just delete the whole archive. That's no good. Yeah, and this is not something that is specific to this game either. I am constantly getting um like pop up notifications on my PS5 about like, oh, this game save data got corrupted. So we grabbed it from the cloud and put it back on. I'm like, okay, cool. That's nice.
00:29:33
Speaker
And so like every now and then, like I would load up Monster's Exposition. And this has happened like several times by now. I would load up the game and there's just no save file anymore. and and we can't send a say And we can't send a replacement save file for PS5.
00:29:49
Speaker
And so like there was one time where it's like it was like a funny series of events where the save file disappeared and like the PlayStation cloud had already like messed with it and overrode it with the the the blank save file, so I couldn't grab it off of that.
00:30:05
Speaker
But then like I noticed that the activity cards... funny enough um because apparently this game is a shiny example of activity cards the activity cards were still telling me like that i could go to points later in the game so i click on one of those activity cards and then suddenly here's my old corrupted save file we did our so we we did activity cards very well And like at one point, like as all this is happening, like I finally actually get like a real error code from the PlayStation about like what exactly is going on.
00:30:38
Speaker
So I send it to Saren and like her, she tries to look it up and she's just like, as best I could tell all that, all this error code is saying is some wild stuff happened.
00:30:49
Speaker
We have no idea what it was. Yes, it was a generic error code that says we've, we don't know what happened. So yeah, my PlayStation is cursed. um Also, it crashed at one point, which meant I finally got a crash log and the crash log had nothing.
00:31:04
Speaker
Was I actually the first one to ever crash the game? yeah i to my own understanding, you're the only person to crash the game on retail and PS5. That rules. I love that. It was very easy to find your log.
00:31:16
Speaker
Just go look up the list of crashes. Oh, there's only one lifetime. That happened today. So like very obviously my PlayStation is the problem.
00:31:28
Speaker
um And so this speaks to like, you you did a really good job programming that game. Like rock solid code. Alan, you personally did a great job programming that PlayStation. mean, all of the code that I put into that game. The royal you um i you.
00:31:47
Speaker
We should see about having Tyler on. Tyler did the PlayStation port for that game. He also did the PlayStation 4 for Bonfire Peaks. You have some very good stories to tell, Tyler.
00:32:01
Speaker
i don't know how much he remembers of the ah of like what how the activity card implementation, but he'd probably get a really good laugh out of listening to this part. So i should I'll just send him this link.
00:32:14
Speaker
I'll just like shoot him an email. ah and Like, hey, Tyler, listen to this episode. No reason. Yeah. And it's it's sad, too, because like I don't think I've ever had save file for that game that survived more than like three months, unfortunately. um ah So I've like never been able to 100% it. But i have played pretty like I've replayed is significant parts of it pretty often.
00:32:40
Speaker
ah have you as as someone who enjoys speedrunning, have you ah been tempted to engage with the speedruns of this game? I thought about it, but you kind of, you told me about how like a big part of the speed run was that they mess with the the refresh rate a little bit.
00:32:56
Speaker
And that's where it kind of becomes like, it's more than the, ah the input cap is tied to refresh rate where you can, you can move one tile per frame.
Speedrunning and Puzzle Games
00:33:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's, that's where I respect speed run like that a lot. um I very strongly believe that like, it it It is a valid type of speed run to just be like whatever it takes to finish the game.
00:33:22
Speaker
That counts. um But I'm not personally interested in doing that kind because it just isn't the kind of like activity that I'm interested in My personal interest in speed run is about like doing specific actions that are complicated and get wild outputs.
00:33:41
Speaker
um Movement tech in games is something that appeals to me a lot. And so speedruns that are very big on that tend to be the ones that I'm most interested in. And for as much as I think Monsters Expedition is a fantastic video game, the movement tech is not very impressive.
00:33:56
Speaker
Rude. You don't like tap buttons as fast as like can be possibly registered? Yeah, you don't like up, left, up, left, up, left just as fast as you possibly can. You don't like getting RSI?
00:34:10
Speaker
I will say that like that is very good, like overall control inputs for the game because yeah, I'm definitely matching those as fast as I can in the moment. And games that don't let me do that tend to be a little frustrating for me. So I'm very happy that that is something you guys think about.
00:34:25
Speaker
um Here's a question. Do you think the speed run for Lock Digital is oh go to the settings, click unlock everything and complete the final level as fast as you can?
00:34:36
Speaker
I assume that's the Any% percent run and there are several other categories.
00:34:44
Speaker
um So yeah, you played a lot of Lock Digital. I did, yeah. and Another game that I've gotten several people to play. And you were regular on the ah leaderboards for the daily puzzles.
00:34:57
Speaker
Yeah, the only thing that like stopped me from doing it kind of regularly was when I just kind of stopped like having this block of time in my morning where I was consistently free to do them. um And i actually just bought, like just like two days ago, bought the mobile version.
00:35:11
Speaker
And so I'm like, maybe we can get back into this. um You never 100%ed that game. That is correct. Because I asked why, and you said I was like, yeah ah you hadn't seen all the...
00:35:26
Speaker
extra mechanics and you said ah because it it's so good you don't want to spoil it all yeah um sometimes that works out yeah sometimes you just don't get around to it yeah um so what do you makes a really enticing thinking game when when i When I share ah Cerebral Puzzle Showcase with you, and i am when it goes live, and I say, ah so you know, best time of the year for thinking games, go, go, go.
00:35:58
Speaker
what What sections do you gravitate to it why? So this is probably not going to sound like a compliment, but like this is like how I think about it, where it's like...
00:36:10
Speaker
Something that happens to me a lot of thinking games, Dracneck especially, and I promise you this is me saying I like this, is when I get to a puzzle and I look at what it wants me to do and I'm just like, oh, you cannot be serious. And I just like dread it a little bit because it's it's a thing like I know that I'm not especially good at these.
00:36:28
Speaker
And a lot of like once these games actually start challenging me in a way that I kind of feel a little nervous about what it's going to take to finish one of the challenges.
00:36:40
Speaker
That is what gets me excited because like quote unquote puzzles in most mainstream modern games are not really puzzles. They are they are just busy work and activities.
00:36:52
Speaker
Sure, i guess we could call them that. But it's just like, it's like I'm playing like recently one of the Zelda games on Game Boy, one of the Oracle games. And it's like the entire puzzle in one room is just push these blocks until you find the one that moves and then the puzzle's over. It's like, that's not a puzzle.
00:37:10
Speaker
That doesn't get me. That doesn't make me think about anything. It just makes me. Also doesn't get make you go, oh no, what are you asking me to do? Yeah, kind of. A little bit, though, but for very different reasons. or Why are you asking me to do this?
00:37:25
Speaker
Yeah, that's that that's for me in a lot of video games, is why would you do this? This is fun. And that I think is what appeals to me. Like, that's what tells me that a thinking game is like actually really good when I look at it and it's like, wait, you want me to do what?
00:37:42
Speaker
And not because I think it's stupid that you want me to do what? It's because I don't know if I've ever had to think about that in a video game before. And it's like, it gets my brain working in ways that I've never had to make it work before.
00:37:56
Speaker
And so that's, and again, I'm not good at these games. It takes me some effort to figure out some of these puzzles, but that's like kind of why I love them.
00:38:09
Speaker
I love them because they are making me do things that I like. They are not just wrote for me over the course of the 30 years of my life. I've been playing video games because a lot of video games now, I grew up playing a lot of bad games and those got me to be really good at like pressing the buttons in video games. So when a lot of games ask me to just do stuff based on weird...
00:38:33
Speaker
technical input for buttons those i don't even really have to think about they they're they're just things that come naturally to me because when i was a kid i played a lot of sonic adventure 2 and spongebob squarepants movie game like stuff that was bad that i got really good at and so that's left me in the position of now like game like when games ask me to do things based on technical input it's not very interesting to me Games that actually ask me to think about what I'm doing, that make me solve a real puzzle that's not just pushing pushing a block into one specific spot, where and that's the only block you have to push. That's the actual like real stuff to me, the stuff that's interesting and new and cool.
00:39:12
Speaker
It's the thing that like every mass market video game isn't already making me do. And so that's why this is a space that I'm like finding myself get really interested in now, even though it's not something that I have a history in. It's not something that I even am good at.
00:39:29
Speaker
But it's something that is just a part of the industry that, to me... has wasn't present throughout my life and now I want it to be more present. And I think a lot of people haven't even really given the these games, that not even not even like the the classic question that gets asked every episode of like how do we get more people in the puzzle games.
00:39:50
Speaker
i think it's it's it's a thing of like I think a lot of people, when you try to describe a puzzle game to them, They're like, by default, not so interested in it for so for some reason, until you get them to actually sit down and touch it.
00:40:03
Speaker
And then they're like, oh, this is cool. This is actually really interesting. And I think that a lot of like the bad puzzles in mainstream video games is a big part of why people have that reaction too. And so i think a lot of people would probably have the same kind of reaction as me, where it's like, this is so much more interesting than I believed this space could possibly be.
00:40:21
Speaker
And I want to learn more about it now. So when you're making a puzzle game yourself, that's a great way to to learn about it.
00:40:33
Speaker
Have you ever heard a Puzzle Script, Melanie? So actually, i have obviously heard you talk about it on the podcast, but I've never really looked into what it actually is. So actually, I don't know what Puzzle Script is. Melanie, go ahead and give your pitch.
00:40:46
Speaker
So Puzzle Script is a free web tool for making puzzle games. where basically the only kind of puzzle game you can make is like grid based games, mostly with like a single player character moving on a grid with terrible pixel graphics.
00:41:04
Speaker
um And you make the rules of these games basically with find and replace rules. um It's like look for the situation anywhere in the world um and then if you find that, replace it with this other situation. So if you have a player and they're walking towards a box, find that situation and replace it with a situation where the player is moving that direction and the crate is also moving that direction. And that's how you get the rule of boxes are possible.
00:41:37
Speaker
um And it's not as approachable a tool as I would like. Like the, like you kind of have to like hit your head up against some like kind of arcane documentation to like understand how that translates to you can make a video game with this.
00:41:56
Speaker
But it's not actually that complicated. It's just ah you have to do it by typing text rather than like dragging things on screen. And once you've understood like the way that you program this game, and like it's not something that requires you to be a programmer to know. It just requires you to like think about game logic rules ah in a kind of different way to most other things.
00:42:21
Speaker
But once you've got the basics in your head, it's like really easy to just like make some very simple ideas very, very quickly. I might give that a try then because I i like i don't have any like ideas for like what would be ah a cool new kind of thing to do in a puzzle game. um like I don't have anything inventive like that, but like I'm kind of curious. like okay like If I just took the mechanics of Monsters Expedition, would I even be able to make an interesting puzzle in that? like Is that something I have in me?
00:42:49
Speaker
And i don't know, maybe I'll try that. I think there's, I think the monsters expedition rules, like you, like in public, you probably wouldn't want to try and like implement all of the edge cases, but like basic rules, like, think the rules are like satisfying enough. And like, there's enough possibilities of what you can do with a level that like, yeah, I reckon you could make like handful of levels that like are interesting levels.
00:43:13
Speaker
Mm hmm. so don I'll give it a try. You could also, like as an alternative, ah the PC version of Locked Digital also has a level editor. That's true. i haven't messed with that. i should. Yeah, it's really um really easy to bring levels in and out of that editor.
00:43:31
Speaker
um And then, yeah, you can just... you know, explore with different ideas and like different flows.
00:43:42
Speaker
And then you can spell different funny words with the junk letters. Yeah, I don't I don't like have a good idea for like what the step by step process of making a puzzle is, but that might actually be like the best position for me to be in to go in and try it.
00:43:58
Speaker
Like, where does my brain lead me without those preconceived notions? Yeah. Yeah. I'll give it a try. Yeah, absolutely. Do you have any questions for us? Well, how do how do you think we can get more people into puzzle games?
00:44:12
Speaker
Might I refer you to the last, I don't know, 30 episodes that you've edited? it's just real its it's It's like a funny parentheses somber how often comes up.
00:44:27
Speaker
It comes up because you's it is the question. Yeah, um but I do actually have a real question. um ah Obviously, like I'm not a game developer, so I don't have like good, insightful questions about the process of making a video game that like your usual guests do.
00:44:47
Speaker
um So instead of trying that, I want to ask something that well like can tell us a little bit more about you guys and maybe help to enrich the listeners at the same time.
00:44:59
Speaker
I'm interested, what is a movie that you that you have seen that is not like a super mainstream
Film Recommendations and Online Involvement
00:45:08
Speaker
success? The average person probably doesn't know about this movie, but it's one that you think is really, really good and people should watch.
00:45:16
Speaker
RRR. Okay. great Greatest movie i ever made. Do you want to talk a bit about that? No.
00:45:31
Speaker
Might not be the right subject matter to discuss on Earth. Sure, I mean, y'all can decide. RRR is a movie about... ah it It is a Bollywood movie. It is on Netflix. It is, I believe, three and a half hours long.
00:45:49
Speaker
It is an anti-colonialist Indian masterpiece. Yeah. and it has some of the best singing and dancing and action scenes and i every time i think of that movie i think damn movies could just be like this you know we could move this could just fun this could just be movies ah No, you should... and Anyone who has not seen RRR should go to Netflix. ah there's I could get into Bollywood and my strong affinity for that world. Um...
00:46:25
Speaker
In terms of like what's a movie that people might have heard heard of ah like made by white people? um don't know.
00:46:36
Speaker
i try um i I'll think on that for another minute. The scale of some of like what I was thinking. My answer for this would be like I Saw the TV Glow. Oh yeah, yeah that's very good. Yeah, which is, um if anyone's curious about it, it is a psychological horror movie about what it's like to be in denial about being trans.
00:46:55
Speaker
I had a panic attack watching that movie. Alan, you go. Yeah, I mean, so i I tend to watch films once and then like, um I might go like, oh yeah, that was a good film or like, yeah, I didn't really like that.
00:47:10
Speaker
um But like I think it's been a long time since I've like fixated on a movie and got like, wow, that was so good that I feel the need to like ah like tell people, like hey, you should go and watch this film.
00:47:23
Speaker
So i'm I'm trying to have a think about what... I've heard you recommend TV. at now I haven't heard you recommend movies.
00:47:34
Speaker
and TV a good answer too, if you have anything there. um Yeah, TV. um i I'm currently watching Scavenger's Reign, which is, i think, not as good as everyone made it out to be, um but still like good and weird and very interesting.
00:47:53
Speaker
think I've heard, is that the one that's like, and goes really hard into like the world building of like the biology of an alien world and like spends a lot of time on like making yeah like it feel real.
00:48:05
Speaker
It was based on a like 10 minute short animated film um that I think I like more because like it it's like just the same experience, but like compressed.
00:48:16
Speaker
um Yeah. So it goes. Yeah. But ah so that's that's what i've been watching recently. what's What's the TV? I mean, i I really liked Dark, um the the time loop TV show.
00:48:31
Speaker
i think the third season didn't quite... pull it together in the quite the way I would have liked it to but the first two seasons are like really impressive jobs of like taking a time loop concept and like actually thinking about it and like making it consistent and like making it feel like it was designed by people who are interested in like the interesting things you can do with time loops which There's a lot of time loop movies and TV shows which are fine, but like, don't really make sense.
00:49:07
Speaker
Like you think about it for two seconds, it's like, wait, but no, it doesn't, no, wait, no. And like dark, you look at it and go, Oh, and then, like, uh-huh?
00:49:18
Speaker
And that, and that, and that. And it's, like, really impressive. Like, oh, they just took the time to plan it out and then execute the plan and like, make it consistent.
00:49:30
Speaker
You can just do that. You can just do that. I like the sound of that. I've also heard you talk ah very fondly about Foundation.
00:49:39
Speaker
Uh... No, I think you're thinking of somebody else. I watched the first season of Foundation. Okay. And it was... a sci-fi tv show it like i i did like the book series foundation and like it felt like such a weird adaptation of that because like the books are like really interesting like ah you've got generations and generations and like like you've got different characters and like sure you've got some through line but like it's it's really like uh this is a long long timeline
00:50:13
Speaker
And the TV show is like, what if we compress this into a hundred years? Yeah. Oh, that always goes really well. um I heard that it got better or like that. I heard that people liked the show, like in the most recent season.
00:50:30
Speaker
um But yeah, I've only watched the first season. Um, yeah, I mean, if we're going TV, I would probably go Murder at the End of the World on FX Hulu. And then ah movies, the only other one that's come to mind is Sinners. So I'm not beating the white people allegations.
00:50:55
Speaker
I don't know. People all just need to step up. um Yeah, Alan, you've got to watch Sinners. You've got to watch Sinners. It's on my list.
00:51:06
Speaker
walked into Sinners not knowing what it was about, and that is a wild way to watch that movie. yes uh no no details um other than i might like for similar reasons that i like rrr who's to say um all right well thank you very much for joining melanie for this very weird and special episode yeah thanks for having me on ah where can people find you online if you want to be found ah Well, of course, i every now and then I do stuff for Nintendo World Report. I don't do it as much now. You're working on a review right now.
00:51:43
Speaker
I am, yes. It'll be out by the time this episode's done. Yeah, it's ah for for the video game Shoot and Order. ah Hopefully, by the time this that my review is done, I'll like the game better than I do right now.
00:51:55
Speaker
Yeah, hopefully it'll be a good video game by the end. Yeah. um um I'm most active on ah theten the Nintendo World Report Twitch channel, which is just twitch.tv slash Nintendo World Report, where um hopefully by the time this airs, we'll be doing the Kingdom Hearts games again.
00:52:11
Speaker
um And every month that so on the first... every month on the first friday of the month we do a competitive game of mario party where with stakes so like the where the first place winner gets to decide a a punishment game that the last place loser must stream for one hour and that's how i had to play league of legends one time so uh also i want to underscore for people who are like oh serena's involved with this channel not that part Not Mario Party. Yeah.
00:52:42
Speaker
And um I also do, um we mentioned a couple times my podcast with my friend Joe, Smash to Pieces, where we are playing one game for every fighter in Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, um which there's a lot of video games that that you have to play for that.
00:52:57
Speaker
But ah that's yeah that's all the stuff I really do. so Awesome. Well, thank you again for jumping on. Oh, also, you can, um if you like, if you go wherever you find your podcasts, and you search for something called the Dracneck podcast, I'm involved with that too.
00:53:12
Speaker
Yeah, I don't I don't know how to spell Dracneck. I think it's E-R-A-K-N-E-T.
00:53:20
Speaker
Got a wild auto-transcription on a video recently, which was Grat Neck. Oh, I've i've seen D-R-A-C-H-M-A,
00:53:35
Speaker
Drachma. It's great. It's a great username you chose, Alan. should You should have thought about it more like 20 years ago. so and Just change your username six times and throughout your life like I did.
00:53:49
Speaker
I think it's 25 years now. Damn. Okay. Well, again, thank you. And thank you for listening to the Draconec and Friends official podcast. Our music is by Priscilla Snow, who you can find at ghoulnoise.bandcamp.com.
00:54:02
Speaker
Our podcast artwork is by Adam DeGranos. Our podcast is edited by one third of the zone of my granicles, Melanie Zawadnia. Please rate and review us on your podcast service of choice. And be sure to tune in next episode for more interesting conversations.
00:54:22
Speaker
you