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S2 Ep91: Dating Sims
80 Plays6 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they pour their hearts out this Valentine's Day looking for love in all the wrong places!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Valentine's Day Episode Introduction
00:00:47
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I am joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? Lovely. That was my cheap joke I thought of in two seconds. Oh, right. Yeah, this is our Valentine's Day episode-ish. Yeah. When you're listening to it, I mean, it's actually further away from- It's around that time. Yeah.
00:01:13
Speaker
We're recording it sooner to Valentine's Day than you will be listening to it unless you are us currently as we listen to it as we record it. Right. But meta. Only if you count us hearing each other's voices as the podcast, not like playing back the podcast. We don't have like the headphones like a studio setup. That's true. If you really love me, I'm just saying.
00:01:39
Speaker
If you want bonus content, please check us out on Discord or tap our phones. Don't do that. I will get in so much trouble as I only have a work phone. You can you can commit like two crimes at once. It's like wiretapping and the corporate espionage at the same time. What a deal.
Humor and Segue with KFC Deal
00:02:08
Speaker
What a deal. Speaking of deals, I hear over at KFC, they got a good thing going where you can get like a whole bucket of delicious fried chicken and mashed potatoes, which I'm assuming are also in the bowl and gravy, which I'm also assuming is in the bowl. And that is an excellent, excellent segue to eating with soap. New episode of our new segment for, uh, for soapstone, uh, as I like head Dave off at the pass.
00:02:38
Speaker
He almost transitioned into the topic on time, like just perfectly. Such a good segue. You just can't even, can't even. All right, Jake, what'd you eat tonight? I had some lentils, but a cheese. And there's actually some mustard in the lentils too. It's nice, I like it. I'm imagining these as just like three dry ingredients put together. Not cooked lentils, just like sliced cheese and then a bit of mustard to kind of
00:03:06
Speaker
Right, making all the cookies together. The mustard was on the cheese. The mustard, no. Jenny made it because I didn't get home until like relatively late after work. So I get to sit down for a bit, eat some stew, come back. Nice. Record an episode of the, we're caught up. We're caught up. We're now in present time.
00:03:29
Speaker
Yeah. Well, have you had anything interesting recently?
Food Experiences
00:03:33
Speaker
Not at all. I mean, not today. Today was just a sandwich. It is as boring as it sounds. I'm going to take a second one while you think about it. Last night I had, I think it's three onion soup from the Pollitan near, near metropolitan. Yeah, that one.
00:03:54
Speaker
Right. Napoleon or otherwise from, uh, what was this? Napoleon. There we go. That's what it's going for. Yeah. But yeah, that, and it's got some American cheese in there. It's like pretty good. Although like for some reason, French onion soup doesn't like sit well with me much anymore. Just gives a weird taste of my mouth. I wonder if I'm like allergic. I don't feel allergic. It could just be like the acidity of the onions, but to be fair, a lot of that would have been cooked out. Hmm.
00:04:23
Speaker
But certain things like onions or apples, if I have some, then it just sits for a bit and I don't have anything else to like cleanse the palate. Um, yeah, it just kind of sits weird in the mouth. That could be it. Also, tortilla chips don't always like, uh, settle in my stomach super great. And I like ate a bunch of tortilla chips with it. So that could also be it. So I don't know.
00:04:47
Speaker
I got nothing there. Yeah. I usually will eat stuff and it's fine unless it's like leafy greens and then... You know how Wario charges up his downbeat? Yeah. Waft. I will not waft in Georgia. You're welcome. All right. Well, I mean, this segment's largely a failure, I think.
00:05:14
Speaker
I did have some good food recently. Oh, yeah. The other weekend I was out of town visiting some friends down near Baltimore, actually in Baltimore. Yeah. Exactly what it was. The address is in Baltimore, the city. We went out to a Mexican place that had breakfast tacos. Those were fucking amazing. How did they compare to breakfast
Daft Punk, Dating Life, and Simulators
00:05:40
Speaker
burritos?
00:05:42
Speaker
Because I mean, I've always been on the burrito train, but I've never tried a taco. I mean, obviously they're lighter. They're also like the small tacos. So not like I'm going to put up my hands for a relative measurement. So only Jake will be able to tell. Right. They weren't this big. They were more like that big. Right. We're looking at the size of an apple or so for the listeners at home.
00:06:04
Speaker
But like a flat apple. Right. Really flat, like two dimensional apple. Like a sliced apple. Yes, that's what I was going for. But it had like some nice ed chihuahua cheese. It had some scrambled eggs. It had some bacon and chorizo. Probably had some other stuff in there. Like some red onion cilantro. It was just a whole bunch of flavor kicking me in my mouth in a delicious way. And then had some spicy guac. I was also drinking tequila. It was a great brunch. Yeah.
00:06:34
Speaker
That sounds like a sounds like an event I also got to cook with Mike a little bit. Hmm. My I got to cook what I watched Mike cook I didn't really help right, but he made this braised beef ribs took a recipe from chef John And that was amazing and I saved that gravy and used in like three other meals, okay
00:06:57
Speaker
Sounds good of a beef drippings. I don't know who chef John is. So I'm just gonna assume it's the alter ego alter ego of little John. I Like that idea. Yeah, cuz I can chef John is like a very nice wholesome man who's been like a chef for 30 years my his recipes up on YouTube like once a week. Yeah Good stuff. Yeah, huh?
00:07:20
Speaker
Food's good. I think a breakfast burrito usually puts me out. Like the problem I have with it is it's like, it's a lot in the morning. And sometimes burrito, I don't assume it's like light fare. I'm like, I'm committing to something. I'm committing to postponing my next meal, an extra hour or two. Yeah. It's like, it's very much the opposite of blase fare, right? So I don't even know what that means. I think it's French.
00:07:45
Speaker
I think Blase Faire is carefree. Or is that Blase? I don't know French, I'm gonna stop here. I don't even know if Blase Faire is a thing. Blase Faire is not. Blase would be its own thing. Blaze Faire. 420 Blase Faire.
00:08:00
Speaker
Now that's a different episode. This one is, uh, the episode where we talk about, um, dating and give dating advice to people and the Sims and the Sims. We also give thrown in a little bit of woohoo. If you're lucky, you can be lucky. My take all night though, according to Daft Punk, I doubt that.
00:08:25
Speaker
Although, actually, I guess if Daft Punk was like walking around one of the band members, nobody would really, like they wouldn't really have groupies for the most part because nobody knows what they look like. I mean, to be fair, if somebody had like a several thousand dollar helmet on. Right, the helmet, yeah. I would assume it's one of the members of Daft Punk or somebody doing a good enough impression that they're like committing to a thing where it's like, that's pretty cool. You would have sex with them, right? And like, obviously.
00:08:53
Speaker
Yeah. It's a much more classy version of like bag over the head. Yeah. The Daft Punk mask. I need you to wear this. Oh my gosh. I need you to sing a Daft Punk song while this is around the world, please. Thank you. Yeah. But for all of us who are not lucky enough to be loved by Daft Punk, uh, we could always play some games to fill the hole in our lives and our emotions.
KFC Dating Simulator Introduction
00:09:22
Speaker
dating sims we've made it after i'm gonna just take a guess 20 minutes oh my god yeah so we uh we played some games that uh could loosely be defined as dating sims in preparation for this episode
00:09:40
Speaker
I feel like we actually missed doing a true dating sim, but we dabbled in the field. Yeah. So today or tonight we're going to be hitting up some of the KFC dating sim because it was free and Mimi. And I already owned a copy of honey pop. So I'll be talking about that a little bit. And Jake, you can chime in where I'm going to laugh. There you go. I need you to just be my sounding board.
00:10:07
Speaker
Man, I should really have a sound board for just stock laughs. Sound field sign. Sound field? Seinfeld. What am I doing? Sound field. There we go. I could get a sound field with a button that makes the Seinfeld sound. Which Seinfeld sound? The joke one. It's like, what is the sound for that? It's literally like the end of joke take sound.
00:10:38
Speaker
Future me, come back and put that sound right here in the podcast. Do you remember when we had structure? Yeah, I don't know. Once upon a time. I just found out that if I hit the mark button though, it actually puts a note right there and I can just come back and check it out later. Yeah, I don't have to stop recording now. Thanks Reaper.
00:10:59
Speaker
Next time I see your arms outstretched, I'll know. Cut this part where Dave was being blatantly racist. Whoa, it wasn't blatant. But yeah, KFC is a free one on Steam. It's also not just KFC, it's I Love You Colonel Sanders or something like that.
00:11:21
Speaker
Yeah. So one thing I didn't know is that this is actually produced by KFC, like the corporation. Oh, you thought it was independently made. It's just a hit piece. I thought initially it was just somebody who's like, cause around the time they had like the fast food, they're making like Y foods of everything. Right. They had like Wendy, they had a Ronald, they had a Colonel Sanders. I thought it was going in that theme cause it came in around the same time. Okay.
00:11:49
Speaker
So I figured if somebody was just like, LOL, wouldn't this be funny? But the marketing team is like, LOL, this would be funny and would also generate interest. So, yeah, no, it's kind of a, it's kind of a weird take because it's got like.
00:12:03
Speaker
an anime art style to some of the characters. Colonel Sander himself is like, it's him in school. Like it's supposed to be when you're at
Game Elements and Characters
00:12:10
Speaker
this cooking academy. But he definitely looks like an anime character, like 100%. Some of the other characters have like some different art styles that are vaguely
00:12:23
Speaker
I don't know. I don't want to say undertale because I'd be like pixelated but Not full anime just different style. I guess I don't know how to describe it, but it's less detailed I would say yeah because you have like van van the man-man. Yeah van van van man full-on Jojo. Yeah type style there's I Think you still pronounce it Ashley. Yeah, it is actually
00:12:50
Speaker
She's pretty standard anime then like your best friend is kind of like lighter anime Nothing super crazy animations or detail there. Yeah, you have pop who's just like a that's a kid The robots pretty simple to clank Is it clank? I feel like it's clank Clank or I really hope it's clanks probably clank. Yeah, I
00:13:16
Speaker
I'm going to let you keep talking while I fact check you. Okay. And then there's like Sprinkles the dog, which is the Corgi instructor. And everything is full meme about it. Oh yeah. It's very self-aware. It is clank. Okay. Thank you for going on. Ratchet and that guy from the dating center. That's what I think. I didn't think about it until now, but he's like a, he's like a cooking appliance. He's like, um,
00:13:40
Speaker
Mettaton. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, he looks like Mettaton. Yeah. Um, you kind of like, uh, went over the dog pretty quick though. He's the, he is the instructor, the CEO and a Corgi, you know, so the three things I aspire to be in. I think he has the most expressions as far as like, this is his love. This is his, uh, endearing face. This is his angry.
00:14:11
Speaker
Yeah, he's got some stuff going on. You also have the protagonist who is not super well defined. They're a blank protagonist, as oftentimes you have in a day to day. Yeah, you don't actually see your character at all throughout the game as far as I know. Yeah. You just know how you react to situations, which is pretty much always absurdity. And you can kind of just go off that.
00:14:33
Speaker
but you start out and you wake up. There's actually like a three day course or something like that. Well, it's like a three day semester. Like they chime that in pretty early. It's like, are you ready for like this crazy intense three day semester as is, you know, Canon in this universe. So like, you know, it's going to be a fixed length game. It's not like a full dating sim. Yeah. It's probably something you can do when I think it's like two hours.
00:14:59
Speaker
yeah you can beat it in well under if you just read kind of quick i left click like a motherfucker and got through that i'll be honest i screwed up kind of and i still i think it was an hour and 20 minutes total um and my screw up was basically like restart the game so that was that was something
00:15:20
Speaker
But honestly, a lot of it is dialogue as a lot of these dating sims are. And then you are given choices here and there for how you're going to react to situations. Yeah. I don't really know if there's a visual novel. It's a visual novel. Yeah, that's the best way to put it. Yeah. And I don't know if your actions really impact anything too, too much. It might just change arcs of the story a little bit, but it's kind of loop back to the same point, I think.
00:15:47
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I got the impression that there was more things I could have kind of figured out or done to change up events slightly. But yeah, I mean, it all kind of coalesces at the end, I believe.
00:16:03
Speaker
I mean there's a lot of times you can kind of like be a jerk and Colonel Sanders like won't like you for it or whatever I wonder if he stacked all of those together if you don't end up with them I feel like that's a plausible outcome, but I didn't actually care to test this theory Yeah, it's normal. I do research for an episode of the podcast A lot of the choices are between like you have a best friend who you've known for years. He's going to the academy with you owns Miriam
00:16:28
Speaker
And it's like, do you want to side with Miriam and like sit next to her in class or do you want to like suck up to Colonel Sanders? Yeah, she does. She will kind of like wing man for you, though, if you're friends with her. So like if you pick her instead of like sitting next to him or whatever, it just kind of comes back and helps you out more later.
00:16:47
Speaker
Generally, just the choices the game wants you to make is like work hard, be nice, and that's mostly it. And know the boiling point of water. That was the other one. If you got that wrong, you have problems. You should know that in Celsius and Fahrenheit, because that's kind of the easiest ones.
00:17:09
Speaker
Yeah, I actually had a moment where I was just like, uh, what is this C? And I was like, all right. Temperatures and other people's measurements. Water has calories now? Hold on. How many calories does it take to boil water? Uh, a hundred calories.
00:17:27
Speaker
The way I do it, yeah. So yeah, you could lose straight off the bat.
Humor with Colonel Sanders
00:17:32
Speaker
You wake up day one and it's like, hey, do you get out of bed when your alarm goes off or do you throw your alarm out the window? So I threw my alarm out the window. The game's like, shouldn't have done that. Don't try again. Shouldn't have done that.
00:17:50
Speaker
But yeah, it's not long till you you you're kind of introduced to everybody initially So there's Ashley who spells her name really weird and she's together with van van. They're good. They're the bad guys essentially Yeah in the same way you in the power Rangers universe you have
00:18:06
Speaker
those two over the top punks who it's not like the really badasses and like jockeying people. They're just like, we're kind of all we think we're cooler than you, but they're also goofy at the same time, kind of like a team rocket. Yeah, they are very much team rocket, I think.
00:18:22
Speaker
Like you straight normal people suck, we're cool and edgy. And we know how to cook. So to be fair, there are a couple of pictures of what people cook throughout the tournament. There's like cooking battles, arena battles.
00:18:37
Speaker
It's not as good as Food Wars, I'll say. Yeah. Food Wars is pretty bad though. But Van Van in a point, like terrible. Yeah. He like has on, played it on an axe blade. Yeah. Like this really nice octopus dish. I'm like, okay, they definitely have like a budget to design these.
00:18:58
Speaker
Yeah. They, they like had, there's only 18 people made the game all in total. It looks at the credits, so it's kind of impressive. But on the other hand, it's really short and maybe 18 people is a lot for this. Right. Um, but, uh, yeah, like the ax blade food, the, um, the student who I think is just named student, uh, like. Wait, is it the one who you never, you never actually get to hear them speak? Yeah. They're like the nobody. Yeah. They always get like shit on. Mm-hmm.
00:19:28
Speaker
for, like, he actually interrupts the teacher and then you never hear him speak again and then he dies from something. Yeah, he eats the octopus. He's trying to, like, tell you these messages but it keeps getting cut off. Yeah. And it's, like, one of his running gags. Yeah, he basically, like, has the prophecy and all this destiny stuff or whatever and you'd never hear any of it because nobody pays any attention to him. It's just, like,
00:19:52
Speaker
They do a good job of like red herrings. It might be curious like, Oh, what does that actually mean? Nothing. It's just filler, but it's entertaining filler. Yeah. It's just this bunch of over the top anime type stuff. Yeah. That fits together in like a nice little two hour block. It's just like right turns all the way to the end.
00:20:12
Speaker
Yeah, he dies eating that poison on the battle axe that the van van created Yeah, or it was octopus, but it's like not cooked thoroughly or whatever So it's poison then pop a little kid is just like oh my gosh food I'm gonna eat that eats it everybody like waits See what happens like just to watch this kid die basically and he's like perfectly fine and he he says I was like hmm
00:20:38
Speaker
tastes like poison. So clearly he's accustomed to that and has built up an immunity.
00:20:45
Speaker
Yeah. Also pop his, uh, his name tag says Bob. So he's just reading it upside down. And that's how he self-identifies. It's kind of great. It's just absurd bent to the entire thing. That's the part about it that I really like as far as, Hey, I'm going to sit down and just check out some weird stuff for a little bit. It's really good at that. Yeah. As far as like, is it enjoyable gameplay?
00:21:12
Speaker
It's not so much a game. Um, but if you like dipping your toes in the water of like trying to court somebody in a video game and went over the, what's the male equivalent of a waifu? Waifu. I don't know. Husbando, actually. Oh, I like that. Yeah. If you're trying to win over your husbando, it's a nice Spanish flair to it. I know, right? Yeah.
00:21:39
Speaker
It does like a nice light jall of it, I think. Yeah. To be fair, Colonel Sanders is kind of more focused on his career with KFC and chicken. And they really stuff that in there. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Like everybody else has some some kind of absurd moments and he, to a certain extent, does. But I kind of got the impression they're like, we're literally making the anime representation of the guy who like founded this company and grew old and died.
00:22:08
Speaker
And maybe we should watch where we step with that. Yeah. A lot of it is just his love of chicken and wanting to chicken and wanting to share it with everybody. Like after your first initial class, you, everybody goes to lunch for like, you know, the eight students. And he's like, Hey everybody, I brought in some, uh, delicious Kentucky fried chicken.
00:22:33
Speaker
And then whenever anybody goes to eat it, it's described in explicit detail how tasty it is because of the 11 herbs and spices, cooked perfection, very crispy. You've seen the commercials. It's one of the quiz questions too, the 11 herbs and spices. They really want you to know.
00:22:49
Speaker
Also that you can kind of you can quote-unquote learn the identity like learn the properties of herbs and spices one of them you eat his chicken and it like knocks you to the astral plane because this is food wars and You can ponder different things you can think about him to like grow closer to him you can try to analyze the food like the the spices involved in what you were eating in which case you would learn one of the the spices and
00:23:19
Speaker
But they censor them. They're just white text. And he can also entrust you with one of the spices. So I've figured out two. Got like nine more to go. Blank and blank. Nine of the eleven. I mean, one of them's got to be black pepper. Yeah, it's just it's just pepper. Pepper. Salt. Salt. Salt. We'll solve it right now in this episode. I mean, that's four. I could probably not anise.
00:23:49
Speaker
I'll let you think about that. While I give an example of one of the times that they do kind of go out with his character, so if you wake up in the morning and you waste time daydreaming, then you'll arrive to class sweaty because you have to run there or something. In which case, Colonel Sanders being the gentleman that he is.
00:24:08
Speaker
will offer you his handkerchief and I quote, it's so beautiful you hesitate to press it to your face but when you do the feeling is transcendent it has his natural scent on it it smells of the most delicious chicken you've ever smelled
00:24:26
Speaker
So basically what I'm hearing is he had like chicken grease just in his pocket.
KFC Sim as Marketing Tool
00:24:29
Speaker
I just thought he's exuding. Like he's pocketing drumsticks. It's, it's just, it's so silly. The whole thing's silly. Can we get the, uh, another quote? Sure. I know you have at least another one cute here. Up, up, up. Yeah, that's the one. Which one are we looking at? Sprinkles the dog. Okay. Yeah. So I'll let you, I'll let you say the quote. This is if you present him a treat.
00:24:58
Speaker
Can we zoom in? Cause my eyes are terrible. Let me figure out how zooming works. I zoomed too far. I don't believe that there's a thing. So basically you have some options with him and you can give him a treat at some point and you can choose between like chicken beef or pork. Yeah. You can give him like a chicken tender or something like a tendie. Chicken tendies.
00:25:27
Speaker
So when you give him the treat, you see the other students eyeing you jealously, but pay no mind to them. If they want to succeed in life, they should have learned the importance of carrying a range of dog treat flavors on them at all times. It's so good. And like the dog is just a great character in general. He's like very serious, but also a dog. They kind of play it up like up the dog there. He's like, oh, I'm having a conversation, you know, whatever. And then you're like, hey, reminding, I'm actually a dog. Yeah.
00:25:55
Speaker
There's literally a part where he comes in the class and he's like, all right, now I'm going to say up front, I'm about to do a dog thing.
00:26:03
Speaker
okay and he like looks out the window and sees a squirrel and he's like Terrence I told you never to come back here Terrence I will destroy you Terrence and it's just it's just the greatest thing you can like choose to intervene or just like let it happen but he gets it out of the system as you know he would he's a he's a professor he's the CEO so
00:26:27
Speaker
Yeah, CEO, teacher, dog. It's just great. There's, I wrote like several quotes here and I'm not going to go through all of them, but they're just very entertaining. Um, there is, you kind of like, can't take the game seriously as, I mean, you really shouldn't cause.
00:26:47
Speaker
Because why would you? But it's entertaining for like a once through or a twice through and see how your choices might not matter at all. They very rarely matter. The quiz we were talking about where you're like, oh, but it's a boiling temperature water. How many spices are there? Eventually the questions like you start getting distracted by Colonel Sanders and the only ways you can respond are like, I want to walk on the beach with Colonel Sanders or I imagine myself like walking down the... Getting married to Colonel Sanders. Getting married to Colonel Sanders.
00:27:17
Speaker
So it's, uh, it's interesting. I was kind of curious going into it. If it's like, is there a non Colonel Sanders route? Right. Is this like, um, a fate stay thing or it's like, Oh, maybe the protagonist ends up with somebody else, you know, whatever, but no, the answer is no. So jumping away from the names a little bit, what is your thought on this game?
00:27:48
Speaker
as a dating sim compared to some other dating sim. It's really not. It's just... Would you put it in the same category? I would have like dating sim light. Yeah, I mean it jumps into the genre.
00:27:59
Speaker
There's a lot of visual novels on Steam, which are like kind of an exploration. It's a story, right? Like that's what a visual novel. All of the Sakura games. Right. You can buy 20 of them for a dollar and I did and I refused to play them. It's just value. Yeah. It's just pad those steam numbers. Rookie numbers. Gotta get those up.
00:28:19
Speaker
Um, but it's really not a dating sim. It's kind of just a short, uh, silly story with some choices and like more production value than it should have. Um, but.
00:28:33
Speaker
Just the same. How many games was I really willing to play? For this episode, right? That's true. And my other question was going to be, how do you think this does, or what are your thoughts on it in the sense of a marketing standpoint? Because back in the olden days, the olden days of commercials, you should be like four minutes with a guy saying, lucky strike. These are the best cigarettes ever. Moms smoke them, kids smoke them.
00:29:00
Speaker
Like it was just here's everybody using this product and like it's great and it's the best yeah, this is before they had like smear campaigns for marketing or Where it's kind of just like casually thrown in yeah, like you see a bunch of people at a bar. They're all holding corona is like yeah You know what's good about my life
00:29:19
Speaker
this. I like holding beers. I was just going to say to our sponsor Lucky Strike, nothing we say here necessarily should impact our sponsorship deal. Big tobacco, I still love you. Right. Got to get that high.
00:29:38
Speaker
It's kind of interesting. I mean, I think back to the, I say that a lot. That's my line. I think back to, I think back to, it's kind of interesting. Uh, checks, checks, uh, cereal boxes, and you could like get a demo disc of a game or something like that. That's like an early throwing, um, are you familiar with that at all? Do you know what I'm talking about?
00:29:58
Speaker
where they'd have like little demo games or something. Yeah. There was a couple that were like actually pretty good, but the fact that it was literally box of cereal and then get a short game. I mean, your, your parents are going to buy you cereal anyways. So this is like incredible value as a child. Um, but also, you know, indoctrinate the young, right? So I feel like this is the next wave of that. Hmm.
00:30:25
Speaker
But it's an indoctrinate, not the young in this case, but like millennials. Yeah. Cause I would say like our age, cause we're getting close to 30, but I'd say up to like 35 and then down to maybe I'm getting like twenties. Yeah. Maybe we still have that like a anime meme culture going. I think we'd appreciate this as well.
00:30:50
Speaker
Yeah. And to be fair, a lot of people who would be going out for food are going to be millennials in that age. Yeah. Because you're just coming off of the, I still like fast food and now I have some expendable income where I can maybe go out for something. Right. KFC. I haven't had KFC in a very long time. Expendable KFC. And I'm now a little bit curious. Yeah. I don't know.
00:31:15
Speaker
Probably would have been more impactful if there wasn't like a Popeyes that was just as close and I was just like, oh, if I really wanted chicken, I could get Popeyes. They don't have an anime, but they do have chicken.
00:31:28
Speaker
I've eaten the Popeyes once. Yeah. Their biscuits did me in. So I haven't gone back in four years. I was running the numbers. Very tasty though. We might've talked about it on a previous episode. I don't recall. But running the numbers on, instead of buying a combo at Popeyes, you instead just bought biscuits. And it's
00:31:48
Speaker
It's a lot. The, the, the calorie number is a lot, but you have so many biscuits. Yeah. If you're saying value, if you're starving. Yeah. Um, I just really like the biscuits. KFC might be good though. I don't know. The game's all right. If you do your best and by that, I mean, follow the default route. Uh, you'll end up back at Colonel Sanders house at night.
00:32:17
Speaker
where he leaves the room and then you can investigate his possessions because this is a video game. You know how you do. And there's like there's a bunch of pictures up on the wall of him of like in Egypt and he's like an old man like actual Colonel Sanders and stuff. They don't explain any of this. And then there's an urn which had one investigated the text
00:32:43
Speaker
Here's lie, here lie the ashes of all my past careers and business failures, which is great. I'm imagining he just, uh, incinerated his previous business partners. Uh, that does, uh, kind of changed the tone of the game a little bit. Or if he was an old man and he's like some sort of vampire, so he finally fed and now he's young again, there has to be an explanation for it.
00:33:11
Speaker
And there also was a picture of him young as a baby. Oh yeah. Which I thought was cute. Cause he'd still had the goatee. Yeah. And the most like goatee mustache. And then he's holding up an ambiguous either rattle. It's a drumstick or a drum. Yeah. It's just, it's a, it's a solid experience. If you can spare like an hour and a half of your life, maybe two, you know,
00:33:36
Speaker
Do a little play through. I have everything else for spoiling the game up here, but I don't really want to, I don't really want to go through it. Check it out. Yeah. It's literally free. Yeah. Zero dollars on a Saturday morning. Be like, let's get, let's dip into some weird. All it costs you is yourself. Respect. Interesting. I can pay myself respect on more than one occasion. It's like, uh,
00:34:02
Speaker
It's not like I have any. So it doesn't cost me anything. It's like each time it's like you must pay your full self-respect. Oh, okay. So each time I'm paying zero. So it was literally always free. It's like a game where they didn't like actually check your money. They just deduct the amount. There you go. I will take the remaining funds you have in your bank account. I will give you everything in my bank account. Yeah.
00:34:28
Speaker
How many doll hairs did you want here? No, it's uh, it's it's interesting. I mean game of the year can hit it maybe probably not Uh, no Also, it's hard to make a joke. It didn't even come out like this here. I don't even know when it came out but I think it came out last year. Yeah Probably that makes sense I think the takeaway is that eat chicken out of 10
00:34:56
Speaker
Let's have chicken next week. Yeah, grab some chicken. Chicken can be good.
00:35:00
Speaker
Is there any other games, such as one that you may have previously mentioned, that you would also like to cover as part of this episode? Okay, so... This is my role.
Overview of Honey Pop
00:35:11
Speaker
It loosely falls under the category of dating sims, because, you know, very loosely Valentine's Day themed episode, honey pop. Yeah. For those who are not familiar, it is bejeweled with boobs. Boobjeweled. Ah!
00:35:31
Speaker
Nope, joke's not there. Yeah, I didn't hear any laughs from the gallery either. I'm just trying to think of something witty. But Bejeweled is like a Connect 3 game, right? Yes. Or more, if you're better than me.
00:35:47
Speaker
But basically, you have a certain amount of turns, but each time you go on a date with a girl, you play bejeweled. And the meta-progression is you can get better multipliers, but throughout talking to them on different segments of days, like, oh, it's the morning. I went to the cafe. Whoever's there, you talk to, try and get information about them. Right. And interrogate them. Pretty much.
00:36:09
Speaker
This is actually a classical trope of dating sims though. I didn't go back and play any flash dating sims, but this is a holdover. This is something that actually did apply.
00:36:20
Speaker
It's like, hey, when's your birthday? It's like, oh, March 26th. And then it's like, hey, quick question for you. What's my birthday? And you're like, March 26th? And then you get the bonus points. So you remembered. Yeah, that's the thing. One thing I thought was amusing is once you get information and then your quiz and like, hey, what is this thing I told you before? If you go back to look at the information about that person you're talking to, it says, nope. It blanks it all out. And it's like, ha ha cheater. No, no, no.
00:36:50
Speaker
So I got a meta cheat. That's why you have to use a separate text file. But throughout the day sections, you're taking the money you earn from playing Bejeweled, buying them presents and stuff to increase your relationship with them. And then as these dates progress- This is how relationships work, right?
00:37:08
Speaker
Yeah, I basically play match games in front of them ask them very blatant questions about their metadata birthday Social Security. How tall are you? I color bigger those boobs brother color Really just I'm showing an interest in you. Okay
00:37:27
Speaker
What's your favorite color of bra? No reason, no reason. So after you do all this, the end goal is to have enough successful dates, which is surprisingly hard because I suck up a jewel. But then as the game progresses and your relationship builds, they start to text you and send you dirty pictures. And then your final date, if you've won them over,
00:37:53
Speaker
is there's no way to fail. You just have to make enough combinations in succession. This is where it's lost. It's essentially like, sorry, younger listeners, where there aren't any. Right. The Sims. You basically have like a woohoo scene where
00:38:14
Speaker
As you're winning the date, air quotes, their clothes come off and they're like, wow, that was a great night. Yeah. And then you go to court the next person. In court. This man seduced me by asking me how big my boobs were.
00:38:32
Speaker
Your honor, they were really big. No, it's, this was actually, um, not that it's the topic of this episode, but it's related. Um, one of the first kind of early, Hey, this is a sexual content game on steam. Um, back before, like when steam was still involved, was still trying to determine exactly where they wanted to fall as far as letting stuff on steam.
00:38:57
Speaker
Let's have a green light. People can submit their own stuff. And people are like, we have a whole bunch of hands. There's the stonks and for graphic whatever's through the chart off the chart. But yeah, this is one of those early ones where it's like, it's a game, but there's other stuff.
00:39:19
Speaker
but it's still mostly a game and so it kind of it kind of they'll allowed this one before they opened the floodgates and stopped regulating anything and now it's just a hive of scum and villainy yeah
00:39:33
Speaker
artifact was the worst one honestly artifact was so much worse than honey pop honey pop is actually decent in that it's like it's a concise game it knows what it wants to do and i like conciseness and things you yeah i'm very concise i'm short i don't have a lot of words when i talk i was just saying it knows what it wants to do that then that's not me i have no idea what i want to do but you basically have
00:40:00
Speaker
I think after you beat the game, there's like 11 people you can court. Oh, wow. That's quite the, uh, quite the harem. Yeah. And for each different girl, they're a different type of person. Like, Oh, there's just 40 girls. There's your preppy girl. There's your goth punk chick. There's your too shy for society. There's your cheerleader. It's just all of these different things. It's a good life lesson though. Like, it's like learning something from the game is each girl is a different person.
00:40:29
Speaker
Everybody's a trope. Nobody has layers. Shrek has layers. Like an onion. It tastes weird in my mouth. Full circle. Like an onion.
00:40:47
Speaker
We're back. But yeah, it's not a terribly expensive game, and it's entertaining enough, but it's not a good... I'm not really a good judge of dating sims. Also, the game can be surprisingly mean.
00:41:07
Speaker
So like there are a couple of girls who are like the nicer sort. Yeah. But like, let's say you fail a date because you have like a broken multiplier. You couldn't score enough points on the date in the bejeweled game. Right. They'd be like, oh, like disappointed. Right. So I'm like wondering what the fuck you did on the day to be like, you just stopped expecting the next day. They're like, yeah, I'll totally go on another date with you. Right. Very forgiving. Basically another life lesson to take away from honey pop is like,
00:41:39
Speaker
Be considerate, but also you know persevere as long as the other person's still interested Sometimes you got to go out of your comfort zone Maybe you feel like you screwed up, you know Maybe it's like oh that didn't go so great but rather than getting stuck in your own head you get you get back in there Unless they tell you to leave them alone, then you leave them alone. I feel personally attacked They've leave me alone. All right, I'm sorry. That was my bad.
Realism and Advice in Dating Sims
00:42:07
Speaker
So, another question I had is, I mean, the obvious answer is yes. Yes, you are correct. Dating sims don't really closely resemble real life in any way, shape or form because of the tropian nature. Unless. Unless. Dating sims are your real life. Oh, that's sad for somebody.
00:42:31
Speaker
I'm sorry that she's three-dimensional. She's a saw All women should be respected I think that was lying something like that Probably yeah, I'm sorry. I interrupted they don't relate to real life
00:42:46
Speaker
That was my thought. Yeah. Like I don't know of any, cause I think the whole thing is escapism. Right. Where it's like, Hey, I'm not getting the attention for, from the other sex that I want. I'll play this fun dating sim or maybe it's just you're playing for shits and giggles and it's just fun.
00:43:02
Speaker
I mean, people play casual games for all kinds of reasons. Unboobing. It's mobile. Right. These birds are upset. I mean, throwing boobs into the combination, like, kind of lowers the overall requirement of quality to get some people buying it. There's a lot of crappy games on Steam, is basically what I'm saying. Steam Greenlight, again, tapping that button, stonks going up.
00:43:25
Speaker
More like Steam Red Life District. That's pretty good, actually. But yeah, I mean, they're not the best games and obviously they're entirely gamey, as some games are, where it's all mechanics and it's just arbitrarily defined. Like, I remember the first dating sim I think I played was back in, I don't remember the game, but it's like a flash game on Newgrounds or something like that.
00:43:51
Speaker
it didn't like have adult content it was just like maybe implied let's just like oh you literally spent three hours like going to your job earning money training your strength stat and your intellect so you can make more money so you can go on a date
00:44:07
Speaker
Remember all the quiz questions and then it's like black screen shows up fade to black. It's like sex happened. Well, you got the hmm I think something sexual happened mine was literally just the text on the screen sex happened. Oh No, I I don't recall actually because
00:44:29
Speaker
It was probably literally nothing, but as a person going through all of that, as like a young kid, you're like, Oh, I don't know how relationships work. I don't know how any of this is. I'm interested to see where this ends up. It turns out nowhere. And.
00:44:45
Speaker
Hopefully that's, you know, not real life also, um, for people's love lives, uh, this Valentine's day, you know, wishing you all the best out there, stay positive, keep going on. Uh, but, uh, it was just made by a game developer, right? You're like, how do we, how do we make some mechanics, draw some people in and then.
00:45:08
Speaker
make money or whatever. Obviously flash games are the wrong way to do that but and the new age on steam it's still garbage is what I'm saying like it doesn't equate to anything in real life. No definitely not.
00:45:22
Speaker
I feel like we need to add some whoa, whoa, whoa, quit hitting the table. I feel like we need to add some like helpful. Love advice, not just on a downer like, oh man, I was hoping for some recommendation. I like dating sims and I'm just like dating sims are stupid and people who play them are bad. I mean, maybe there are good ones out there. We didn't get around to checking out how to full boyfriend probably would have been a good one to cover, but my time is limited.
00:45:51
Speaker
And I did not plan accordingly. You must ask the right questions. One thing that's interesting that I'd like to address, but not actually dive into at all, is we basically played funny games and we played casual games like Connect 3. No matter how difficult, I'm still going to file it under casual game.
00:46:13
Speaker
But there's like probably a lot of cool stories out there. They're like visual novels, they're, you know, emotionally impactful. I'm sure they exist. And maybe they would quantify more as a dating sim than literally like what we've been playing or talking about. But they might actually have a good story. Those probably exist. Yeah, there's some good variations of the genre out there. Again, not really put a true dating sim.
00:46:42
Speaker
I did play Doki Doki though. That's true. Yeah. I mean, it has a mini game, so you can choose like based off what words you picked different girls like you differently. So if they like your words, they'll like you more. And that matters in the end. Um, it's just, it doesn't lead anywhere. That's the problem with that game.
00:47:03
Speaker
I still have it open. He's running. It's just me and Monica. Dave's got 3000 hours tagged for Doki Doki. Which he like just starts to compete with the hours you put in on honey pop to prepare for this episode.
00:47:20
Speaker
Again, I just love to open for that static image. You know what I'm saying, boys? But if you had to provide love advice to the audience and or me specifically, what would you provide from your years of dating? Right. I'm literally the worst person for this. You want to briefly contextualize that first? Yeah. As I have.
00:47:43
Speaker
Probably never been on a date as one would consider a date. I mean I've gone to dinner with my wife But she's the only person I've ever dated and we didn't really date prior to getting married so like There's no context that I could provide for anyone for how you should do it, and then you were married right well. It's just like I mean
00:48:11
Speaker
We hung out for a bit, like when I visited the state, but then like.
00:48:18
Speaker
it was really obvious we liked each other. So I'm like, okay, when we got the opportunity to move over, I moved over. And like skipping the whole like dating phase and like living with the other person's parents for an extended period of time. It's like, yeah, dating didn't really super come into the equation. So I don't know how dates work. All I know is movie theaters are not a great choice because you're not talking to the other person.
00:48:44
Speaker
I know. I've been saying that for years. I think some people are on the same page with me now, but like back in the day, like middle school, high school time, people are like, let's go see a movie together. And I never understood that. Cause I'm like, there's two hours of you not talk. I guess the point is like to make out in the movies. Yeah. But I'm like, why would you do that in public? Right. That seems, that seems like it came from a dating game. Well, I think that's from a dating center, right? So that's a bad idea.
00:49:10
Speaker
Like I feel like dinners always a good one or if you don't know the person a lot coffee or something like that like a lunch date So there's less impetus worst case you're getting food. Yeah, and if you know me, I never shut the fuck up about food So that's always a good thing to find some commonality over I feel like lunch is also a good one cuz like
00:49:30
Speaker
If you're not sure where your relationship is at as far as depth or you're just trying to get to know the person, you don't want to put a lot of pressure on anything. It's like, hey, I'm going to go do some other stuff in the afternoon. Have a cafe thing and then go your own ways and then revisit it if it worked out really well. Keep it light.
00:49:52
Speaker
I think that the other thing is like one of the biggest things is having a sense of self-respect and. Dear young people, you won't realize what this is until another 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I mean, that's, that's like one of the biggest things for me is like, I really struggled with self-respect for a huge part of my life where I was just like, I just don't feel like I'm worth anything. Cause I contextualize my worth through my lack of relationship.
00:50:18
Speaker
Well, like with somebody else. A lot of it is, you're like, do other people value me? Yeah. And it's not your friends or your family. Cause you're like, well, they're kind of a given. It's when an external person says, I value you. I think you're attractive. I think you're a nice person. I think you're an interesting person. Yeah. You value that so highly above anything else. Where if you don't have that, it's like, and you want to have it, you're like, Oh, I guess I'm garbage. Yeah. And it,
00:50:43
Speaker
It's a suck, it's a shitty place to be, and I've definitely been there. But over time you realize, oh, I'm me, I'm awesome, I determine my own self worth, and you have worth innately. Unless you're a really shitty person. Those people do exist. But those people probably do not think that they're shitty. So usually people who are self-aware are generally good people.
00:51:13
Speaker
Right. I mean, like, I don't know if anybody's really good, but, you know, they do okay. They do better than the others. Yeah. A lot of this is just me saying this to me for when I go back and listen. Right. Because currently I'm single and I don't have my worth defined by any external factors. Send in those emails. Hey.
00:51:34
Speaker
I got to say though, this is the long play. Two years. Two years so we can have a Valentine's episode. I've got a podcast, 91 episodes running. Check it out. I've had a sordid dating history that I'm not going to get into, but like I've- Date kills people. Well, that's morbid. That's morbid. Sorry, wrong word. We got to make it a little bit lighter on these jokes. We have like the racist one immediately from the first 10 minutes.
00:52:02
Speaker
It's a meta joke because you're not actually saying racist things. If you did, it would be less funny. It would just be lack of self-awareness. People start writing in like this is trying to make me really uncomfortable. Um, but I gotta say I do remember the early days of dating, uh, cause there was a girl I was interested in and she was interested in me and we got a chance to hang out. And this was like one of my first dates and I didn't know how to interact with the person or like make a move. How to human.
00:52:31
Speaker
Yeah. Right now I'm, I feel a lot more casual when I have been on dates or when I'm getting to know somebody in that regard where I'm just myself. But initially the first time I was just like, who is myself? Right? Yes. But like we went to go see a movie as like a doubles date. There's no way she's listening. Um,
00:52:53
Speaker
But it was the movie Water Horse, which is like a really shitty Loch Ness Monster related thing that came out a million years ago. Right. It was less impressive because there was actually Loch Ness Monsters all over the world when this movie came out.
00:53:10
Speaker
Yeah, there's like the zombie phase, there was aliens and then there was Loch Ness monsters. Yeah. Big fad. But I remember I did one of the moves where it's like, hey, if you were a pirate, would you rather have a parrot on this shoulder or this shoulder? Oh, put that arm around. And I did put my arm around here and we kind of like leaned up against each other. Uh-huh.
00:53:32
Speaker
And I was just like, it worked, but it worked because we were interested in each other. So if you do kind of sappy, corny things, it's fine because they accept you as you. And they understand the human nature of people are silly, people are weird.
00:53:49
Speaker
It's whatever. Yeah, and like understand that if you're super, you know, if you're anxious or uncomfortable or whatever, chances are that the other person is too. Not all the time, but consider that usually if you're with somebody and you don't know them, but you really like them and you like want things to work out, like the other person could be in that same space. Maybe they're not.
00:54:14
Speaker
But they could be literally the last two people I dated that was like talked about within like the first date. Well, I was just kind of like, hey, I like you, but I have no idea what I'm doing. Yeah, exactly. And I feel like a little
00:54:29
Speaker
I wouldn't say uneasy. Trepidatious. In my exact words, I said I felt like a little bit anxious. Yeah. Yeah, I kind of feel the same. So it was kind of cool to just. Acknowledge it, get it out. Clear the air and be like, okay, we're both on the same page. Yeah. That's something you can do with experience though. You can't really do that as like a kid because you don't know how to. I have anxiety though. What's your problem?
00:54:53
Speaker
As an adult you can kind of like if you've like hung out with other people, you know who you are, you know how like you want to interact, you know what you're looking for. You can just like grab the ice pick and just shatter it. You're just like none of this matters.
Episode Conclusion on Friendship
00:55:06
Speaker
I long break in the ice now because I'm at a point in my life, that's my catchphrase by the way. I always practice these things like I'm at a point in my life where
00:55:14
Speaker
An interesting thing. And then you're just like, I'm at a point where I don't care so much. So to be fair, if I was interested in somebody and I found them attractive, I would definitely do more stupid things and be more cautious with how I approach them and interact with them. Right. You don't want to, yeah, I don't want to come off the wrong way. Um, you don't want to be blase fair.
00:55:40
Speaker
But I'm at a point now more so where I understand it better. So I can kind of talk myself out of like, Hey, dumb brain space. Just talk to the person. Yeah. You miss a hundred percent of the shots. Wait, no, that's not right. Uh, you don't take, there you go. You don't take a hundred percent of the shots. That's what it was. Yeah, that's a good rule for going to the bar. Don't take a hundred percent of the shots.
00:56:10
Speaker
Didn't work out with her. Hey, are you free? What are you doing tonight? Oh man. We should just have like a life advice column, you know, just occasional episode. Jake, there is an episode I've been suggesting to you for two years that we will never record. Oh yeah. I know. Yeah. But you guys will never know on that cliffhanger. What time are we at? I don't know. Probably like five hours or so. Let me see.
00:56:39
Speaker
Not like five hours, but there was a lot of fives in it. It was like five, five, five, five, maybe. Yeah. So pretty, pretty close. I like how much a meta we've had in this episode. It's basically the appropriate amount of meta. Oh, you know what happens if you don't actually have the audio recording device selected when you hit the mark button, it just puts M's in the podcast. Thumber. Thumber.
00:57:07
Speaker
Oh, that's great. Farmer. So anyways, uh, yeah, this is hope you guys have a good Valentine's day. Yeah. And you're worth something. How you celebrate or how much chocolate you do or don't eat. Know that I value you as a listener. Cause that, that means something to me. That's right. That is the only thing about you. I love you. I thought you'd be nothing. Oh my gosh. That's kind of nice. And as a nice wholesome thing.
00:57:35
Speaker
It was simultaneously gay and heterosexual at the same time, depending on where they're listening. I was gonna say, as a wholesome thing, I love you as a person. Oh man. I value our friendship.
00:57:45
Speaker
Thanks. Nice. No, I also value our friendship, I think. Do you love me, Jake? Yeah, as a person. I wanted to get it recorded. I love you too. And documented. Thank you. Let me just mark this here, take that out of the episode. Now, so thank you guys for listening.
00:58:06
Speaker
We appreciate you. As always, you can send in your feedback and your Valentine's Day cards to soapstonepodcastatgmail.com or heart our podcast on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstonepodcast. Valentine's Day is a capitalist scam. We'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.