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Episode 25 – New Segments! and the Adventure Game Fan Fair
1.8k Plays4 months ago
Hey everyone, we're so sorry about the two-week break, but we're back with ENERGY! Matt has two new segments to present. One that's very normal, and one that's utterly bizarre. Roses went to England and played some arcade games. Matt went to the Adventure Game Fan Fair and we talk about a bunch of demos.
The rest, you're just gonna have to hear for yourself.
Email us! [email protected]
Games Mentioned:
- Die Hard: The Arcade Game
- “Dynamo Cops or something”
- Mario Kart
- House of the Dead
- Typing of the Dead
- Track and Field
- ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron
- Mortal Kombat II
- Tapper
- Baby Pac-Man
- Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures
- Mario Party
- Super Mario World
- Lamplight City
- Casual Birder
- Resonant Tale
- The Crimson Diamond
- Heir of the Dog
- Home: A Story of Light
- Phantom Fellows
- War of the Western Deep
- President Rocket
- Fogtown
- Quest for Glory V
- Liesure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards
- Freddy Pharkus: Frontier Pharmacist
- The Fan
- Carol Reed: Amos Green’s Final Repose
- Fran Bow
- Weird: Truth is Stranger than Fiction
- Krabat and the Sorbian King
- Wild Wild West: The Steel Assassin
- Dust: A Tale of the Wired West
Recommended
Transcript
Seaborgium and Mendeleev Clarified
00:00:00
Speaker
Is Seaborgium the one that's named after the guy who invented the periodic table? I don't know. It's a good question. Glenty Seaborg. Seaborg? I know it's one of the synthetic ones. There's so many that are just... um it sounds it sounds like It sounds like a monster, like Seaborg. I'm the Seaborg. You are the Seaborg. I'm the Seaborg. My atomic number is 106.
00:00:30
Speaker
Who created gary the periodic table? Oh no, that's Mendeleev, and there is a Mendelevium, right? so I'm just going to go ahead and assume that Seaborg is a sea monster. Seaborg is a seaborg was a scientist who was also a sea monster, and his atomic number was 106.
00:00:52
Speaker
He's like friends with the Kraken. The Kraken's atomic number is like really high. They they hit him on the teeth they can't fit him on the table the periodic table of elements. His his atomic number is like 906, which is still 06. Yeah, both of them. That's why they're friends. Amazing.
Awkward Show Start and Travel Stories
00:01:13
Speaker
Amazing.
00:01:16
Speaker
I'm always tempted to start the music there, but we can keep bantering if you'd like. No, let's do it. Let's do, let's do what? Start the music? The show. Yeah, let's do the show. Okay. Do you want to bring us in or me? I'll do it. Okay.
00:01:46
Speaker
Cause I will, in fairness, I don't remember who did it last time. Do you want to do it at the same time? Yeah. Let's do it at the same time. All right. Three, two, one. Hey everybody. And and welcome to save your game. I'm your host, Matt Auchen.
00:02:06
Speaker
i prompt went well i Sorry about your ears, everybody. That had to be awful.
00:02:15
Speaker
i'm leaving it it i'm not editing that we lead We go away for two weeks and we come back and that's the first thing we do to
00:02:25
Speaker
did Did you guys miss us? We were gone. We didn't even make an announcement. We're just like, you know what? This is going to be way too ah too busy. And we have been very, very busy. um You had a lot of traveling to do. We both did, yeah.
00:02:45
Speaker
um I went to the Adventure Game Fan Fair in Tacoma, Washington. By the way, I wanna say hey to Kat and Samir and Chris and Garrett and Bill, all people who were nice enough to come up and tell me that they enjoyed the show while we were i was at ah well I was at the- Did they say anything about me? No, not one of them. Oh.
00:03:14
Speaker
No, to a person, almost all of them were like, oh, it's a shame that roses couldn't come. Well, thank you for approaching, ah Matt.
Arcade Adventures and Game Preferences
00:03:24
Speaker
Yes, thank you for approaching. No, it's really nice to meet these people, to meet all you and talk to you. and Yeah, it was, well, we'll talk about the fanfare a little bit later, um yeah but. Yeah, I'm sorry. I wasn't there, but I was in fact in England also doing some game related stuff. Uh, cause I, I wanted to see nostalgia nerds bar. He has an arcade bar and I wanted to see that. So I went and honestly, it's super cool. It is such a cool little venue. Do you want to hear the games that I played at Barkadia?
00:03:57
Speaker
Absolutely, I do. Okay. The first game I played upon the Stuart Ashen's recommendation, which now I realize he was trolling, was Die Hard, the arcade game, which is not a Die Hard game at all. Apparently it's just called Die Hard. Okay. But it was like a different game completely, like Dynamo Cops or something like that. So I start playing this game and I'm like, what is this?
00:04:23
Speaker
um This is not, this is not anything. Uh, so I played diehard. I played, I played this really bad racing game. It's called like F seven. I don't remember. It was bad. It was the worst racing game I've ever played. now and F one zero. I don't know. yeah we're like this I know so little about racing games. Like, Oh no, I'm never going to find it because there's so many racing. They have never ever, I've never liked. to You don't? Well, I like Mario Kart, obviously, but only at a party. I racing games. Wow. OK. Yeah, I think they're so fun. ah Get some pole position, but that wasn't this. This was ah an incredibly bad racing game. It was two player. um I played with Elliott, who is Loki the Ravens handler. We played. I won, but not really. I just beat him. But that means I win, essentially.
00:05:23
Speaker
And what else did I play? We played, um oh, House of the Dead. Classic. Classic. Classic. I actually recommended to Nostalgia Nerd that he get Typing of the Dead. And I think that, I don't know how you would set that up. I do not know Typing of the Dead. Is it just House of the Dead but you have to type things in real quick?
00:05:43
Speaker
Yep. That's so funny. That rules. Okay. So I played, obviously I played House of the Dead. Uh, I played another, what are, oh, track and field, which is an amazing like Olympic game, very on topic right now. Like the one, uh, like the one for Nintendo that came with the track and field pad.
00:06:04
Speaker
Yes, I think oh my god. I had that was really hard like fast and hard and he'll like jump or he'll like run. Okay, so I had this but we had a like a little pad that you put on the floor and you would run. and Yeah, i've seen I've seen that, yeah, oh for sure. And there was a there was a, the long jump was my favorite because yeah what you'd do is you'd run and you'd have to run really, really fast and then you'd jump off the mat like you put your legs on either side of the mat, but it had to be a possible amount of time. So you so you'd like step off the mat so it was like you were jumping really far and then you had to step on back on the mat like quick enough
00:06:49
Speaker
that it wasn't because if you stayed off for too long you would just die because it knew what you did. That is so funny. Yeah. Wow, what a great game. Well, anyway, that it was an arcade game where you like literally mash buttons. It's pretty fun. It was is actually really fun. And then the last game I played that I actually had not played before. So they on top of having arcade cabinets set up, they also have um like little compact like little Genesis emulators. they're not They're not emulators. They're like the Genesis, the mini console with all the games on it.
00:07:22
Speaker
And somebody had been chipping away at Toe Jam and Earl, the second game, which is more of a side scroller and I hadn't played it. So I started chipping away at it. I'm like, this is way too, I don't know what I'm doing. This is ridiculous. But I love Toe Jam and Earl for real. I like the first one. I think it's insane. I don't know what genre it is still.
00:07:44
Speaker
Me neither, we have to, we should do an episode about Toe Jam and Earl. Cause I don't even, yeah I don't really, I didn't, I couldn't as a kid figure out really how to play it. I was just, I would wander around and look at all the weird shit. And then I would be like, ah, making zero progress. I think that was an adventure game. I think we can maybe consider it.
00:08:06
Speaker
some sort of adventure game. You definitely go on an adventure, and I don't think you fight shit in Toe Jam and Earl, do you? No, you don't fight, you collect stuff. You can die. You can die, yeah. All right, we're gonna, yeah, we're gonna play Toe Jam and Earl for the future episode. We're gonna have to think, we'll have to noodle on this. Yeah, we'll noodle on it, you guys. Yeah, we'll be noodling. If you guys are wondering where we're at in between episodes, we're off noodling.
00:08:31
Speaker
Oh, and I should mention one more thing. Stuart Ashens kicked my ass at Mortal Kombat 2. Whoa. It's not common. I'm pretty good Mortal Kombat player, but, you know, arcade cabinets, they're a little bit different. I'm i'm better at the console, the console versions. So you didn't play Tapper.
00:08:50
Speaker
He does not have Tapper. I know. I know. I listen. I know. However, last year when I was in London, we went to me and nostalgia nerd and Quang, who's another, ah hugh who was a game dev and a friend of ours.
Playdate Console and Game Exploration
00:09:05
Speaker
We went to NQ 64, which is a really cool kind of like Detroit blade runner inspired arcade game. And they had Tapper there.
00:09:15
Speaker
And I slayed. I don't know no if Nostalgia Nerd remembers how good I was because he was ah he had a drink. So i he could probably deny this. There's no other witnesses. I don't know where Quang had gone. But man, I am a very good Tapper player. If you ever get me at a convention where there's arcade games, I will be on that Tapper machine. So when I was in Tacoma,
00:09:42
Speaker
there was an arcade bar right down the street and we were so determined that we were gonna get to this arcade bar and we never did, it was just, ah we were just too busy. Oh, that sucks, that would have been fun. My favorite arcade game is a game called Baby Pac-Man, have you ever played it? Yes. You've played it the one that's hybrid between the arcade game Pac-Man and a pinball machine. Yeah, it's so adorable, honestly. It is so good. It is so much fun. And you know like you get bonuses from the one that you carry over into the other. It's so cool. And I had never seen it that there's a ah pinball ah arcade near me that has it. Now, I'm looking at pictures of Baby Pac-Man. Yeah.
00:10:36
Speaker
And I'm not sure that this is the, I'm not sure, is there another hybrid Pac-Man pinball machine? Because the one I'm thinking of has pinball up front, I thought, and Pac-Man on the bottom.
00:10:48
Speaker
I don't know, there might be. There might, you know how those old arcades go. Like sometimes you can get, their they make different machines for the same yeah thing. Well, have to go I'll have to go back to this place sometime soon and and I'll report back on whether or not I'm just misremembering or or there is a second Pac-Man hybrid ah machine, yeah. Have you played Pac-Man for the Genesis? It's an adventure game.
00:11:19
Speaker
listen it's okay it's called pac-man 2 the new adventures and i rented it out when i was really young i i used to watch that tv show pac-man the new adventures yeah it was like a cartoon maybe that's what it was based on because like it it's this insane insanely difficult Pac-Man adventure game where you were playing Pac-Man and you're, I forgot, I kind of forgot what the premise is to be quite frank with you, but yeah, yeah you go around.
00:11:53
Speaker
like solving little puzzles. There's a little bit of an action element to it. You get um you get a that you can like hit stuff on the screen with. And if you hit Pac-Man, he gets real fucking grumpy. And if he gets too grumpy, my friend, you cannot control him. He is off the rails. ah So I have a very old let's play of this game on my channel with Peanut Butter Gamer.
00:12:19
Speaker
from gosh, from like 11 years ago, so long ago now. And it's pretty funny still, because the game is insane. Like, I really want to put you know, we should that's what we should do the episode about is these insane, like, ah like, to like these these border cases, like the Pac-Man. Yeah, like this Pac-Man adventure game and Toe Jam and are all so The cartoon was just called Pac-Man, but Pac-Man 2 The New Adventures is a is based off of the cartoon. It's wild. It's so difficult. Pac-Land. Pac-Land? Is that also an adventure game?
00:12:59
Speaker
looks to be like an adventure game. ah sides No, it's a side-scrolling arcade platform game. Okay. That's Pac-Land. How many Pac-Man adventure games could there possibly be? Remember, there was a 3D Pac-Man that they had for, but that was on um ah the N64, right? Oh, was was there really?
00:13:23
Speaker
I ah let's look it um cat like this up is just say the episode where we Google things oh you're right it's called well there was a game miss man yeah maze madness yes maze's madness yeah but because remember they made like a 3d frogger for Yeah, I know. there That was the arrow where they were taking these games and they were like, oh, now they should all be 3D. Yeah, they should be 3D and ugly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Make it as ugly as you can. They should all be as much like Glover as possible. Fuckin' Glover. Why does that make me laugh so hard? That game is so difficult. Okay. So, anyway have you played any adventure games in the meantime?
00:14:07
Speaker
Yes. Oh, okay. I played a couple, although I do want to start by saying, I just want to put this out there. ah Yesterday, um one of my friends wanted to play a game and I was hankering for a Mario game.
00:14:24
Speaker
Oh, okay. but for I just wanna ask you this. What do you think of when I say I want to play a Mario game? I'm just curious. What you know what what do you think about when I say that? Fuck, okay, so if somebody said I wanna play a Mario game i and I had all games at my disposal, yeah ah the world's games, I would probably pull up Super Mario Land for the Super Nintendo. Okay.
00:14:49
Speaker
fair. They said Mario Party. That's not fair. no with the Also, I meant to say Super Mario World, don't you? You did, yes, you did. yeah Honestly, that's one of my, and we're going to talk about this on an in an upcoming episode, but Super Mario World is one of my favorite games of all time. I know it like the back of my hand. yeah Anyway, um so but that's what what I'm saying though is like, that's not really what I think about when I say I want to play a Mario game. I don't really, but that's what I ended up doing so yesterday. Okay.
00:15:24
Speaker
ah But this is like the first time I won at Mario Party. yeah So I'm pretty stoked, man. We play ah we played Party for the Switch. um I think it's called like All Stars or something like that. And at the end, I pulled some bullshit. I i had like a custom dice that you can ah set to go wherever you want it from one to 10.
00:15:45
Speaker
So ah I robbed the bank. I robbed the Mario bank. I took all the coins. And then I got a King Boo, which is a ghost character, to steal three stars from other players. And I won. I'm like, yes. And that was in the final two turns. I go kind of have no idea what you're talking about, but I believe you well that it rolls.
00:16:11
Speaker
it's All you need to know is that I pulled some bullshit and won. So that's something I played just yesterday. And I have been playing some demos that I think we're going to talk about today. Oh, yeah yeah, definitely. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Why don't you save those for our. our um Oh, um I don't know. I want to say this, though. I don't know if we'll talk about this in the demos, but I have been revisiting the Crimson Diamond because m It's gonna be out soon. It's gonna be out soon. I've also been revisiting The Crimson Diamond, and I am so excited. It's so good. I am very excited. I i might not, I'm gonna say maybe we won't talk about that too much. We might like mention it in the demos, but I am, I do plan on doing a review on this title. Yeah. I really love Deb, Julia, she's great, so yeah. There's no way we won't talk about it
00:17:09
Speaker
Okay, fair. On the show over the next month, right? Yeah, fair. You guys can definitely expect that. But also, yeah, look forward to a review from Pushing Up Roses on on this little website they call the YouTube.
00:17:23
Speaker
And 12 people will watch it and those 12 people will be like, do more, do more. Why don't you do more why did you do more adventure game videos? We don't watch them, but why don't you do them? but Why don't you do them? Well, if you're one of those people, here's luck.
00:17:37
Speaker
yeah hu
00:17:40
Speaker
All right, Matt, what have you been playing? That's not, ah I don't, yeah, I got roped into Mario Party. That we are not already gonna talk about. Yeah, like I said, I got roped into Mario Party. I did have a good time. um What have you been playing? Okay, well, ah so I'm playing a game that is, embarrassingly, I have not played before. Okay. It's one of those ones that's just like, for whatever reason has been just floating there,
00:18:07
Speaker
And i should have I should have played it very long ago and it just sits on my computer unplayed and I played a little bit of it at the adventure game fanfare in their little museum. We'll talk about it. but ah And hung out with the developer a whole lot at the fanfare and I was like, you know what? I should finally do this play this game. It's Lamplight City.
00:18:29
Speaker
Oh, cool. That's by garnila lovely. Yeah. but goodness Games by Francisco has been on the show before it is, uh, it's a detective game with some supernatural elements to it that takes place in a, yeah you know, an alternate, um,
00:18:49
Speaker
steampunk history and ah you follow a series of cases um that sort of dovetail into a larger case that has been haunting your life for I guess several months at that point. um You play, yeah, you play a detective called Miles Fordham. And I actually, for as much as people rave about Lamplight City and as much as it's like part of the constant adventure game conversation, there's a part of the basic premise
00:19:27
Speaker
that I didn't know about. I don't know why this isn't talked about, but I'm not gonna talk about it here. Because if you haven't played Lamplight City, then it might become a surprise to you as well. i haven't played I have not played it. So yeah, so if you, if anybody who's listening, it is really good. It's as good as people say.
00:19:46
Speaker
ah good It's a lot more story focused than puzzle focused. But the, you know, the interviewing of witnesses and the ah examining of crime scenes, the um unraveling of mysteries is very much gay very Gabriel Knight inspired. Yeah, I did clock that. That was definitely, definitely took inspiration from Gabriel Knight.
00:20:11
Speaker
Um, and yeah, I'm loving it. Um, this, yeah, again, it's a, it's a modern classic that I am only just now getting around to and I'm ashamed of because it absolutely rules. It is. That's great. It's a modern classic for a reason. Uh, if I may say, I also spied you playing quest for glory five.
00:20:32
Speaker
on an old computer, that's one of my favorite. It's like no no irony or sarcasm. yeah I love that. I think we both love that game. We will definitely talk about that. i'll I'll discuss that. I only played it briefly, but I'll discuss that when we talk about the fanfare.
00:20:53
Speaker
before we do that, um before we take our break and then come back and talk about the fanfare, I need you to go ahead and press theme B please. Okay. i Guys, I don't know what this is. ah Matt gave me some music to play and I guess this is the cue. So here we go. I'm going towards it. I'm about to press theme B. Here we go.
00:21:25
Speaker
Playdate with Matt. It's Playdate with Matt! The brand new ongoing segment ah in the Save Your Game podcast with me, your host Matt Aucamp, and my tag-along co-host, PushingUpRoses. PushingUpRoses, are you ready to have a Playdate with Matt? What?
00:21:46
Speaker
So in case you guys don't know, the play date is this amazing little, it's this amazing little console that is like, um it it is it is very small. It's about like two and a half inches by two and a half inches. It's palm sized. It has a one bit screen, right? It's just black and white, no backlight.
00:22:12
Speaker
um But yeah, and and a slightly nicer screen than say like a Game Boy. Yeah, like I would agree. But it puts you in mind of a classic Game Boy. And it's got a crank, you guys. Yeah, so it's this little yellow guy. and A loose crank. It's like, it's a tight crank, actually. This is a tight crank. So this, ah like a Game Boy, it's got a you know it two face buttons, an A and a B, and a little, um
00:22:44
Speaker
what What do you call it? um Up, down, left, right, button pad. A D-pad? An analog D-pad, yeah, yeah, exactly. And then, like ah Rosa said, it's got this little crank on the side. and um And the crank can be used for all sorts of games, like ah can be used to... um balance a surfboard that's surfing on a wave or it can be used to scroll through an inventory or um what else, ah open and close the little ah door on a ah window, right? Yeah, oh, that's cute. The the creators of the Playdate clearly did this as like a ah passion ah passion project and they got all these really cool developers to make games for them.
00:23:30
Speaker
Nice. And we talked about this on an episode on a Q and&A episode a little while back, and I did this ridiculous moonshot where I was like, look guys, I'll talk about the play date in an ongoing segment every episode if somebody just buys me a play date, because I can't afford one right now. And listener Chris bought me a play date! Oh my god!
00:23:55
Speaker
ah ah our new best friend. Yes, hello, best friend. hey Hey, best friend. Thank you so much. This thing absolutely rules. Do you know how you get games on a play date pushing up roses? Actually don't. I don't know how you actually get the games. How do you get the, tell me. It's super awesome. There's three ways. So there, the the thing also has the other things that this thing has ah just, I forgot to mention it does have a, um ah
00:24:28
Speaker
One of those, what do you call it? When it's inside, it knows when you're tilting it. Oh, i'd like a gyroscope. Yeah. Yeah. It has a gyroscope inside. So that comes into games play and it has connection to the internet. So that's really cool because you have like global leaderboards on these cute little arcade games. um Yeah.
00:24:49
Speaker
But one other thing is you have a catalog. You can download stuff straight from this shop. And most of the games are like one to five bucks. They're pretty cheap. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, they're cheap. They're cool. The other way that you get games is just by owning your play date, you get 24 free games. And the way they distributed them to you is in a season.
00:25:16
Speaker
And it it's called season one, so I don't know if they're gonna give more later, but every week, for me it's on Monday, because Monday is when I got it and set it up. um Every Monday I get two new games, and for the first 12 weeks of owning this thing, they just drop two new games in your library for you to play, and then you get like a week to spend time with them.
00:25:42
Speaker
Awesome. Before they give you new games and then you have those games forever. It rules. And on top of that, the last thing you can do is there's incredibly easy little, ah you go into the website, you log into your account and you register your device and you can go onto itch.io and download games from there for a lot of them or name your own price, right?
00:26:08
Speaker
And it makes it so easy. You just drag the zip files into the web onto the website, and it will sideload them into your device. That's awesome. It'll just send them to your device. It's so, so cool. um Clearly, these again, these are people that did this out of the love of it, and they've thought of every little thing. um So, roses.
00:26:38
Speaker
Yes. Now we have this new segment, um huh Playdate with Matt. And every episode for the foreseeable future, I'm going to quickly talk about two Playdate games that I've played recently.
00:26:53
Speaker
All right. Tell me about him. Yeah. We won't go through this whole description of what a play date is every time. this yeah We just wanted you to know what it is in case you're not familiar. You should go check it out. Exactly. They they are. They're really awesome. So I played a bunch of different games, but the two two adventure games that I really enjoyed. One came as part of season one. It was my first game actually that I got and it is called casual burger. Okay.
00:27:24
Speaker
It is like, ah it's like a a little top down adventure. I, you might even call it an RPG where you play this little nerd Stardew Valley-esque, like gave up his life and moved to a brand new town to take up birding. And so each bird is pretty much locked behind some kind of puzzle. So, you know, you might need to, you, you hear the calls of a bird.
00:27:55
Speaker
in a specific screen and you might need to chase that bird out of the grass. Or you might just need to wait with your camera for a certain amount, like track the movement of the bird and wait for a certain amount of time to take its picture. Or you might need to go around and talk to people and find inventory items in order to figure out how to get this bird. And there is, I think it's 27 or 28 birds in total that you kind of collect their pictures. So it's like,
00:28:23
Speaker
It's kind of like Pokemon Snap. It's kind of say it's like Pokemon. Yeah, exactly. ah And it's kind of like an adventure game. And it's very funny. It's very, very cute. um The birds all have ridiculous, hilarious names. let's let's Let's pull up some of the casual bird or bird names. okay There's the hammering bunk bellied tree tapper.
00:28:52
Speaker
There is a classic bird, everyone's favorite bird. um The sweet blue Herman, the emerald-throated trash topler. Oh, that one's named after me.
00:29:08
Speaker
it'ss It's really cool. It's one of the games you get for free with the Playdate. I don't know that everybody gets the season one games in the same order, so you might not get it as your first game like I did.
00:29:19
Speaker
But in that first 12 weeks, you will get casual burger and it's cool. So another game that I will talk about real quick and then I will save the rest for future segments of Playdate with Matt. um I played a game called Resident Tale and it is like this cute little Playdate version of ah like Zelda of a old top down Zelda.
00:29:50
Speaker
like i like Link's Awakening or something. Okay. I love Link's Awakening. You're this little elf thing and you're just wandering around and you you know ah collect items that give you abilities to go, like, you know, you got to get the bombs to blow up the rocks and you got to get the sword to slash through the bushes and like, like the old zeldas, the combat shitty, right? Like you just have a sword and you walk directly into somebody and that's how you attack them at this camp.
00:30:23
Speaker
yeah um But the combat's not really the point, right? The point is the exploration and finding finding all the little secrets. You collect um you collect treasures as you go around and those will help you unlock other items and hearts. And you go through a couple little dungeons and you're trying to ah find all the like ancient bells.
00:30:50
Speaker
to w ring them all at once to do, I don't know, do something, right? Like make the town good again. Make the town good. And there are lots of little like Zelda style puzzles. Like you got to step on the switches in the correct order and you got to go talk to all these random people. And it's very sweet and very cute. It fulfill and has like a kind of a modern sense of humor, not a lot of out loud laughs, but a lot of like, if you already know Zelda, you're kind of like,
00:31:18
Speaker
you know Yeah, of course. Yeah. So those are my two recommendations. Nice. Oh, I love I'm very interested in in casual birder. Oh, it looks so cute. It's so good. Casual birder is is great. It was the first game I picked up and it was I played it till it was the first game I completed also. Oh.
00:31:41
Speaker
These two games are some of the more popular Playdate games, but I swear, well, as time goes on, we'll get into some more niche ones and hopefully we'll have some cool recommendations for you or talk about some of the games that you recommended. um So again, thank you, Chris, and thank you ah Pushing Up Roses for being my co-host on this segment, Playdate with Matt. Play that theme bee.
00:32:11
Speaker
Playdate with my why do I have a segment? I guess this whole podcast is my got it you gotta get yourself a segment i' I'm gonna whip out another one towards the end of the show today and another segment Yeah, I got a second segment. Oh my god But I'm saving it Okay, thank you. um I have no segments. I'm just here. yeah You gotta go get yourself a segment. Let me tell you, a segment feels real good. You gotta to get yourself a segment. I'll think on it. ah Can it be like the murder she wrote minute? minute. Oh no. What have I done? We've given it her too much power.
Adventure Game Fanfare in Tacoma
00:32:53
Speaker
All right, I say we play a Grimm. We play a Grimm Fandango.
00:32:59
Speaker
Okay. And then we'll come back, question mark? Who knows? Anything could happen in this crazy world of ours. It could. I'm the editor. you I don't know. I could just cut it. Just end it.
00:33:35
Speaker
And welcome back to Save Your Game. I'm Matt Aucamp. This is Pushing Up Roses. Hi! Hi! How was your break? Uh, I mean, you were there. Phil, you were there as Wayne's world would say. Uh, I had a drink of this black cherry sparkling ice not sponsored zero sugar with vitamins and antioxidants. Wow. That sounds like a drink. It's really, it's really good. Just try to keep the energy up.
00:34:06
Speaker
Whoa, awesome. drink yeah I was losing out your energy as I kept reading the description like, yeah, vitamins and anti-axis. Don't ever like hire me for your sponsors because I'll just mess them up. Yeah, that's how we read ads. And we're like, please advertise on our show. All right. She looks like Squarespace is here. Yeah, let me just ah read. I can't fucking read this.
00:34:30
Speaker
you and Whatever. Make a ah website! Just go whatever, do it. It's not hard. Leave us alone. It's not hard, Gail. Go make your own website, Gail. Anyway, we're back. We're back.
00:34:50
Speaker
And ah what are we discussing today? So since I just got back from the adventure game fanfare, well, I got back a week ago, then I died from COVID and then came back to life. And I'm glad you're back with us. Thank you. Thank you. um It was the play date that brought me back to life. Wow. The doctor just turned to the crank for roughly an hour and then I came back to life. Wow. Oh my God. We're so lucky. Legend. but Welcome back. Legend. Uh, since I was at the adventure game fanfare, I thought we'd talk about a little bit what it was like, what happened there, and more importantly, for kind of our show and what we do here, ah some of the demos i we I played and that now you have played. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Let's do that.
00:35:43
Speaker
Awesome, so Fanfare was in Tacoma, Washington. It was- Which looks beautiful, by the way. It really looks like a gorgeous, I know we were kind of like, why Tacoma in terms of conventions? I would like it to be in Chicago. If anyone's listening to me, hi. Would love to have y'all in Chicago. But I saw the pictures of Tacoma and it is gorgeous. Yes.
00:36:13
Speaker
location was actually very, very pretty. I also was like, why am I going all the way out to Tacoma, Washington for this thing? I know. It's so far for you. Yeah. I'm an exact opposite end of this country. Yeah. But it was A beautiful place, right? Like it, like it was a nice temperature because it's like, this is one of the hottest summers, I think of all time in history. It's so hot everywhere, just everywhere. And it was just nice and temperate. And, um, there's, it was, here's a thing about Tacoma. No one is there.
00:36:57
Speaker
Oh, sounds like I'd like it. You walk down the streets and it is a whole city. Like it is a city, a city should have people in it yeah and things, right? And there's things. I don't want to say there's not things. There's plenty of things. There's plenty of buildings. There's plenty of stuff to do. ah And clearly people live there, but you could not tell that by walking down the street. It's just empties. I don't know why. it's It's not like it's a low population city either. Right.
00:37:26
Speaker
I just, I guess it's a city where people don't like to walk on this street. Yeah. I guess it's not like a bustling, a bustling city like Chicago or even like, uh, I guess like Philadelphia for you. Yeah. It's got 221,000 people. Where are they? Yeah. Yeah. I don't. That was a very strange thing, but it was it was still very nice. So first day was Friday, and there was, I actually didn't get to see a lot of the panels, but a lot of the panels are going up on YouTube, I believe. Oh, good. Over the next ah week or couple of weeks, um including on Friday, I hosted a panel along with Anna Vigu,
00:38:15
Speaker
um of Classic Gamers Guild. Exactly. Yes. I hosted, and you can, you can right now, you can go on the Adventure Game Hotspot channel and watch the live streams that are all like eight hours long, cause it's the entire day. Yeah. But if you want to scroll through and find specific panels or whatever, you can do it that way. um But yeah, so I hosted ah a,
00:38:43
Speaker
panel on Phantasmagoria 2. It was me and Anna Vigu and Paul Morgan Stettler, who plays Curtis, was our guest and our other guest was supposed to be Lorelei Shannon. And Roses, she got held up in traffic.
00:39:04
Speaker
that sucks, no, I know. So she just wasn't there. So we had to start this panel, and we started it, I think, like five minutes later, whatever, and she just wasn't there, and we had a ah laptop set up in case she could call in. Yeah. And she wasn't, and so we just kinda kept looking over to the laptop, like, uh-oh. ah But it was a lot of fun, and here's how why it rolled.
00:39:31
Speaker
um So we started the pay panel by talking to ah Curtis and we were talking to him about all this like, you know, the impact of the game and what it was like to work on the game and and how weird the game was, right? Yeah.
00:39:50
Speaker
And then we went out to the audience for questions and it was about halfway through. And it was like, oh man, are we really gonna be taking questions from the audience for a full half hour? Yeah, that would be rough. This is gonna be rough. And we got about four questions in and who walks through the fucking door? It's Lorelei Shannon. And the whole room went nuts and it just gave this panel a shot in the arm and it just got, it was like,
00:40:20
Speaker
It was like exactly when we needed that boost of energy. It just happened right then. It was so serendipitous. Amazing. Oh my God. That sounds like such fun. Oh, it was so much fun. It was a lot of fun. um So that was that. And there were a bunch of, of so there were like, there's like a little hallway.
00:40:44
Speaker
where there was a couple vendors and ah there were there was the room with the panels in it. And on that first night, there was only one room, like one additional convention room open, and that's where they had all the demos. And we can talk about some of those right now, so it's not just me talking.
Meredith Gran's Games and Writing
00:41:06
Speaker
Oh, well I have to work too, Dan. So there was you know there were a lot of people there that Showcased and some games I had already played like Meredith gran was there with? ah Station to station her who is so cool. I recently attended one of her streams one of her development streams and she's so cool I had the fortune of discovering that she lives right near me. That's amazing. It's very cool So ah we're gonna hang out sometime soon. Oh yeah Meredith Let's make it happen Oh
00:41:40
Speaker
a poo
00:41:44
Speaker
um So ah pla got to I got to see her and her game, which ah obviously we've talked about that demos briefly on the show before. It looks great. It does look really good. It plays great. There's all sorts of new um features to it that didn't exist in the pre previous game. It's gonna fucking rule.
00:42:11
Speaker
It is. it it And it once again, once again, I feel like this game was made for me. Like I feel like Meredith really understands the era that she's writing games for. Um, so where is, you know, in the last game, and we did a whole video on perfect tides and that game was very much the AOL era.
00:42:33
Speaker
ah You know AOL of instant messengers who's on your buddy list and and stuff like that and kind of a um and a High school coming of age type thing and she kind of segues very nicely into this ah College era now so which was my which was in 2003 which was also my college era and probably a little bit of yours and And my, yeah, I was the right age. I did not go to college, but okay. Fair. Well, I'm, I'm in college now. and I went for, I went for like a little while. It's a whole thing. It doesn't matter anyway. It's a whole thing, but yeah. So 2003, which, you know, we were still on the internet. It was, it was less of AOL at that point in time and more like.
00:43:21
Speaker
You're emailing people, you're maybe discovering other, you know what? 2003 was a weird time in terms of the internet because Facebook didn't come until like a little, like a little while later, right? Right. Okay. So I just, I, I find that really interesting. I think at that time, let me, Facebook came a little bit later and then remember it was only for people in college. Yes. That's right. And.
00:43:51
Speaker
So, i yeah, it was a while before well all my friends had had Facebook's and I didn't because I wasn't in college. Yeah, no, I say i what I had at that point in time, I was actually in a community college at that specific point and it wasn't listed. So I couldn't like you. You would still have email. You could still hop on the Internet, um but it was a little bit different. And I think Meredith.
00:44:14
Speaker
um very smoothly transitions into this new era of Mara's life. And yeah Mara was our our last character. She was in high school, and now she is in college. And there's just this air that you get when when when kind of starting and viewing this game. There's like this this like airiness, as opposed to like perfect ties, which was kind of heavy right away.
00:44:41
Speaker
It's actually interesting to see Mara set up as like a college student with new friends and new relationships and new things to do. And she appears, um you know, happy at this point. And and I'm not saying like it's gonna stay that way because I don't think it is. I think it's gonna go somewhere.
00:45:00
Speaker
Um, and I think it's going to be relationship, uh, focused, uh, kind of, but in a different way, if that makes sense. Does that make sense to you? Like I still think it's going to have a relationship focus.
00:45:13
Speaker
It does. I think you're right. And I think but it was really interesting talking to Meredith about her writing process because, you know, she is really serious about when writing these stories to make sure that she is digging something personal out. Um, when she talks a lot about the idea of coming up with a story idea, but not quite having it until it until she's pulled something up from her life that basically she forgot or something that um something that's meaningful. And yeah it's so clear. once Once you hear that that's her process, it's so clear yeah because you're like, oh yeah, that's exactly what playing Perfect Tides feels like. I think we can expect more of that in Station to Station.
00:46:07
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think there was like a lot going on in this demo, but what it did do is put me in this mood, this like perfect, ah just intrigued mood because like I said, Meredith is just so good at making, and I don't want to be like hashtag relatable, but she's actually earnestly good.
00:46:29
Speaker
at making relatable content and settings that you absolutely want to explore. at that very end you know They're very They're very dense city-like citylike settings. And I love that. Again, I was getting kind of those Willy Beamish vibes, which I like. ah Not everyone does. I like it.
00:46:50
Speaker
Um, but yeah, I found every, every setting in this kind of a little, like little college area. Cause she's living, she's not living in the dorms. I think she's like, is it a dorm? No, I think she's, no, I think she's living with friends with friends. Yeah. But like there are dorms, you know, that you can go visit to see other college mates and whatever. And I just love this little college town that she's, that she's created. It's, uh,
00:47:14
Speaker
yeah i i remember I wonder if I'll feel this way later, but I remember being very slightly overwhelmed in Perfect Tides with the map, with how it was laid out. I kept misclicking. I think that might be improved. I feel that it's a little bit better this time.
00:47:31
Speaker
right ah The other thing that Meredith had at the ah at the Adventure Game Fan Fair that I got my hands on and I'm so excited about, I i love so much, is the Perfect Tides comic book. oh cool Because Meredith did comics before she did yes ah before she did video games and it's very it's as sweet and cute as every everything else that she does. oh yeah her her If you guys don't know her,
00:48:01
Speaker
ah her big comic, her big web comic before, Perfect Tides, which is also published, I think by Image, is called Octopus Pie. So, anyway. Yeah, yeah, um amazing.
00:48:14
Speaker
So then ah Julia Minamata was there with Crimson Diamond, and which we've talked about earlier in this episode. Yes, which I think I will. I think I am going to do a review on. um I don't want to say too much about it, but I think we can kind of revisit what we have explored, which is that it is this beautiful a kind of Dagger of Amon Ra inspired parser game. Or one of Colonel's Bequest inspired more. What did I say? Did I say Dagger? Yeah. Oh my god. Do you want to take it again or do you want to leave it like that? No, just leave it. okay I know how important Laura Bow is to you. I i know, I know. Everyone knows, so i'm not I'm not embarrassed. It's just that I'm always thinking about Dagger of Amon Ra. But yes, in my brain, I was thinking of the Colonel's Bequest because of course you are yeah this is a parser game.
00:49:07
Speaker
Yes. Um, which I think is a risk, but I think it will pay off because there are not many devs wanting to do that style. Right. And she has, she uses the palette of these old games and the resolution of these old games. And, uh, she, uh, and the the music is on a, uh, what do you, what do you, I don't remember. Like Adlib or MIDI Adlib.
00:49:38
Speaker
But yeah, i supposedly whatever that old sound card is her- What's the good one? Roland? Roland, I think Roland MT something, yeah right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah Her, ah as she likes to talk about her composer, like went out and bought one right without without, like she didn't ask him to, he just went out and bought one. And those are expensive, you guys. Yeah.
00:50:05
Speaker
Yeah, so that he could compose it as authentically as possible. And the music is so good. The music is so good. Even beyond the dem, like the music, you guys don't, you guys can't even imagine what you're in for. um and It is so accurate.
00:50:23
Speaker
to Colonel's Bequest that I think if you would ah if you were to put screen caps of Crimson Diamond among a Google image search of Colonel's Bequest, you would be hard pressed to know what came from what. It is so accurate ah down to the to down to like the the font and and stuff like that. Oh, I'm so excited now. Oh my God, I'm so excited. um So that's Crimson Diamond. ah Let's see, what what do we wanna talk about next? ah What demos that I sent you, did you play?
00:51:00
Speaker
So I played ah a little bit of, maybe I don't know if I know if I'm pronouncing this right.
Game Demos and Impressions
00:51:07
Speaker
Is it hair of the dog or air of the dog? Air of the dog. It is air. ah Yeah. Okay. And I wasn't sure what they were like, kind of I know what they're going for, but I wanted to like get it right. ah the but i think Yeah, that pun is intentional. Yes. But yeah, I don't.
00:51:26
Speaker
I haven't really gleaned what this story is about. yeah Besides the fact that there's it's clearly like a mad scientist kind of guy. yeah And it's by um Tom Harwich who did Lucy Dreaming, which I know a lot of people really, really liked. But it's it's like more of like a period piece. Yeah, it is a London, early 1900s London.
00:51:56
Speaker
right like a sort of darker Victorian style. It's still that same highly, highly detailed pixel art yeah as Lucy Dreaming, but I i think I'm going to enjoy, and I think there's like a Jekyll and Hyde sort of deal to it. I think I'm going to enjoy Air of the Dog a lot more than I enjoyed Lucy Dreaming. um Like I'm i yeah really, really stoked for Air of the Dog.
00:52:21
Speaker
I really enjoyed the demo a lot. And I think I enjoyed it for a few different reasons. A, I'm a sucker for anything English. I'm a sucker for the accent. I'm a sucker for the for a timepiece like that. And I like a horror edge. So they kind of, they tease a little bit of this kind of Jekyll and Hyde situation, right? So basically you're a character that decides for whatever reason.
00:52:45
Speaker
to drink some of your uncle's like experimentation ah that's like on a be like like that's in a beaker. And it's called like Feel Good Juice. So apparently you just think, oh, isn't that made me feel? No, it turns you into a Jekyll character. But that's not actually where this game is going. um So you are not going to stay this Jekyll character.
00:53:11
Speaker
This is in the demo, so I don't know if this is a major spoiler or not. I don't think it is um because, again, we've all played the same amount of game. I recommend going through the demo. yeah But and at the end of that demo, you know you're trying to like get the antidote so you're not this Jekyll character. You're only a Jekyll at night. um And so you're trying to get this ah antidote to fix you. And unfortunately, it doesn't fix you. It turns you into a dog.
00:53:40
Speaker
and you find out that your uncle is also a dog. And now that you're both dogs, you can speak to each other. And so I think that, so that's, that's the intro, right? So I thought it was going to stay a very Jekyll and Hyde thing, but now we're, and now we're a dog. And so now I'm kind of wondering, what are we going to do with this dog? Like what kind of ah puzzles are we going to do in this London era timepiece? You know, it, this is,
00:54:09
Speaker
the game kind of make references to like this older London stuff. Like, for example, there's like a Sweeney Todd ah reference in in the town of London. um And there's yeah a few other things as well. But it's I now I'm wondering what in the world because they set us up for the Jekyll and Hyde mechanic. And now I wonder is what's going to happen next after the after the demo? Well, so, yeah, I think Tom Harwich clearly enjoys the idea of a game where you switch back and forth between like different modes, right? ah Like Lucy dreaming, you you would you could make yourself fall asleep and you can make yourself wake up and some of the
00:54:54
Speaker
puzzles had to do with bouncing back and forth between the two. And I think clearly that is what he's setting up for air of the dog, right? Where you are bouncing back and forth between these different states of being maybe Jekyll Hyde and a dog. and and yeah that's one Is it Jekyll and Hyde and a dog? Or was that really just to get your attention or to set the tone of what you're dealing with here? I think it's very clever, you know?
00:55:21
Speaker
Yeah, and the other thing Tom Harvidge likes is a lot of stuff to click on. I was just going to say that. I was just going to say everything has a description. It's all voiced. And honestly, that was one of the turnoffs of Lucy dreaming for me. But I think, but I play more games than the average person, first of all.
00:55:48
Speaker
because of it's an obsessive hobby, but second off, second of all, because I do this podcast and I do reviews. So, you know, I need to get through games a little quicker than the average person. So, you know, that's a particular, that's a thing particular to me. you know is not wanting to spend hours and hours looking at and clicking on every single thing. But yeah again, ah this this game, the aesthetic is really appealing to me. and yeah I think because the dialogue tends to, at least the descriptions tend to be on the terse side.
00:56:22
Speaker
I'm in the same boat, right? I've reviewed games, we now and now we talk about them on the podcast, and sometimes I like to get through them a bit quicker than your average person, then so I can go to work. yeah um and but I think because the dialogue, again, is a little bit more terse,
00:56:39
Speaker
Um, it's, it's very quick witted too. It kind of, the whole thing kind of reminds me of Discworld, but it's not as long winded as Discworld. That adventure game is long winded, my friends. That will make you tired real quick. But, you know, I think at least for the descriptions, they're more one liners, you know, like, Oh, she looks weird. You know, stuff like that. I'm making stuff up, but yeah. Um, so I didn't mind it as much as, as other games, I think.
00:57:07
Speaker
And I will also say, Tom is clearly very, very passionate about this stuff. yeah yeah And he's not going to half ass anything. He's not going to put something out just to put it out. He is going to put out something that is as high of quality as he can possibly make it. And I think you can guarantee that that will happen. um Tom Harwich, who also ah Lucy Dreaming won ah best voice acting at the Adventure Game Awards at night at the Adventure Game Fan Fair. So I think my favorite demo that I played all weekend was a game called Home, A Story of Light. Okay, I have not played that one. So this is your chance to sell it to me since it is now your favorite that you had played.
00:57:56
Speaker
Um, so it's, I don't exactly know how to sell it besides it just seems like a very well made adventure game. Um, ok they are still, I think looking for funding for the game. So if you, uh, so if you see it and you think it looks good, if you think it seems interesting,
00:58:19
Speaker
go support them in any way you can, you know join their mailing list, follow them on Instagram, wishlist their game on Steam so that they can sort of secure the funding they're looking for. But it was, you you play a little boy and a mouse. And the entirety of this demo is you're trying to get inside a pub to talk to your dad.
00:58:42
Speaker
um And obviously no one wants to let you in because you're a little kid. And and like an adventure game protagonist, to get in, you absolutely ruin a man's life. I like you. Of course you do. except Like no one will let you in, so you have to like, you distract somebody to steal something from them, to use it to light a fire, to get them blamed for the fire, to get them, they you know, like it is,
00:59:11
Speaker
It's one of those sorts of games and it has like, it's very high fidelity cartoon style graphics like- It's very beautiful, yeah. Like the early broken sword games. Yes, i was trying I was actually trying to think of a ah good example and I think broken sword is pretty is pretty comparable. um Everyone also has, this is something that they they don't shy away from people having heavy accents, heavy like ah northern English accents. And I really, really like that. Nice. um So yeah, home, a story of light. I think it also has some, it's going like based only on the logo, I think it's got some steampunk elements to it. Yeah. um
01:00:00
Speaker
But it the demo that I played um doesn't really have anything steampunk in it. It's just very, again, sort of Victorian England, and it's very sweet and cozy and comfortable. And I really am excited to play the to play the rest of the game. I hope it gets made. I hope they get it finished. It looks beautiful. It actually really looks really beautiful. Yeah, there's definitely something cozy about it. I just watched the trailer, and I'm looking at the screen caps, and yeah, man, it's that certain kind of adventure game, isn't it? It's one that just makes you feel certain type of way. Absolutely. I think that's really going to be the appeal of it.
01:00:52
Speaker
You know, it's sitting by a warm fire when it's raining outside. It's got that feel to it. So I played one more demo. Yeah, please. And it's our a good friend ah at the Phantom Fellows. His name is Paul. we are He is part of the Adventure Game Network. He is a dev. um I don't know his last name. I just realized that.
01:01:14
Speaker
Paul, I'm so sorry if you're listening. I do not know your last name, my friend, but I don't think you know mine either, so we're even. Anyway, ah Phantom Fellows is something I had been looking forward to even prior to meeting Paul because it's got this, um it's got this aesthetic of like the dark side detective and maybe even prior to that, the last door, which I think Matt and I had some ah contentious ah perspectives on that because I really liked it and I think you found it maybe a little too chunky for your well there was a lot of pixel hunting in the last I liked it yeah it was the pixel hunting I didn't like I liked it aesthetically but yeah gameplay wise a lot of pixel hunting
01:02:01
Speaker
Yeah, so this is very much ah kind of that same aesthetic where, you know, your characters, you know who they are, but they don't necessarily have facial expressions or their faces are a little bit more ambiguous. And I love the premise of this game. So the premise is you're essentially a ghost hunter.
01:02:18
Speaker
uh because when you were a little boy when your character was a little boy a ghost tried to haunt you and unknowingly uh you can communicate with this one ghost just this one ghost i don't think he can talk to other ghosts i think it is just this one ghost and so they have they have made this ghost hunting business together named the phantom fellows even though nobody can see your partner so it's really just a phantom fellow but is they call themselves the phantom fellows And it's got that mechanic that sometimes I don't like, which is you can click back and forth between you, Oliver is the character's name, and Engelbert, which is the ghost name. Kind of like you could do in Maniac Match and you can click you know to um who you want to control.
01:03:06
Speaker
I typically don't like that, but I didn't mind it here. I thought it made it was more so simple simplified, and I didn't mind it so much. Maybe because Maniac Mansion had those like three characters, and you're always like giving stuff to each other, and I'm like, I hate this. I really don't like this. ah This was a little bit better, and and it made more sense, I think, in this game. It's ah its it's not a voice, but it is very I don't want to say long winded, but it is very narrative heavy and it's got that kind of like bantery millennial humor. Let's call it. I'm going to call it that. Yeah, it's he clearly comedy is important to, you know, like that is that seems to be Paul Corman.
01:03:53
Speaker
Sorry, Paul. Oh my god, I knew that even I even knew I even knew that that seems to be one of his main focuses right is to make the dialogues very funny and what and Paul's comedy is also very um It's long winded is the wrong word because that has a negative connotation. Right. Paul will not jawined paul will throw words at you until you're laughing. yeah and That is a positive characteristic. He is a very charming dude.
01:04:27
Speaker
Paul actually hosted a panel, um one of my favorite panels of the whole weekend, which was on Sunday. um It was called the Pixel panel, and it was with Meredith Grand, Tom Harwich, Julia Minamata, and Paul. um And it was all just about like the specifics of pixel art. That's awesome. And how they do what they do, um the resolutions they work in, the colors, the how much they, um you know,
01:04:55
Speaker
ah adhere to like the you know the rules of pixel art and how much that they feel those rules are made to be broken, right? yeah it was That was a really, really cool panel that I really enjoyed. That's great. Yeah. And I agree. um I would almost call the dialogue rapid fire, but it's it's not difficult to read or anything like that. Like again, kind of referring back to Discworld, which is very much the same idea, throwing a lot of words at the player.
01:05:28
Speaker
But man, do they get boring. um and and helps us yeah disorld not it And maybe Yeah, No, no, not at all. And I think what helps is Discworld is also fully voiced. ah Phantom Fellows is not voiced. So you can read it in your own tone.
01:05:44
Speaker
uh at your own time and not be restricted by questionable ah voice actors of the time because I think the squirrel is like 95 or something like that um but I really I really I did laugh at the dialogue in phantom fellows um I did like the mechanic of switching back and forth and I'm I'm pretty excited, honestly, to see where the where this goes. It's another cozy game, but it's not as cozy as home, A Story of Light, because ah Phantom Fellow, again, it has that humor. It has that banter going for it. So I don't know how cozy I ever really felt other than I love the art. I actually really love this chunky. It's chunky pixel art with a glow underneath it. like everything Everything's glowing. Yeah.
01:06:30
Speaker
yeah Yeah, everything's glowing. I think it's really beautiful. um and then And then you can kind of use your imagination to determine how you want to talk, ah you know like Oliver or Engelbert. Great names, by the way. Engelbert, I don't know why I like that name. But yeah, i i'm i was I was looking forward to this game before knowing Paul. And now, after knowing him and playing the demo, I'm very much looking forward to the rest of it. Yeah, same.
01:06:58
Speaker
Um, so if that's the last demo you played, I'm just going to tear through the next couple, go yep go right ahead. So there was war of the Western deep, which is, uh, anthropomorphic, uh, uh, you know, animated game. It's very beautiful animation. Um,
01:07:17
Speaker
There is combat in it, which I didn't love, but leading up to that, all the, there's some like investigative stuff and really interesting sort of character work. And the animation is absolutely gorgeous. So that's by Sun Grove Studios called War of the Western Deep. I played a game called the President Rocket. Which- President Rocket? Yes, is, I mean, it's,
01:07:45
Speaker
It's just clearly Donald Trump. Like it's clearly a Donald Trump parody yeah and it's very foul mouthed and it's very, um i don't I don't even, I don't know what to say. Like the the humor sort of rubbed up against my sensibilities a little bit, right? Like it's sort of, I found some of the crudeness grading.
01:08:06
Speaker
sure And the voice acting is somebody doing a Donald Trump accent. So that can be a little grating too, but the puzzles were actually really fun to solve and ah the pixel art is pretty good. So President Rocket, and check it out if you if you feel like it. And the dev was incredibly cool and incredibly nice and he seemed really excited about his game. ah So yeah I really suggest you at least give it a look. um I played Fogtown.
01:08:35
Speaker
which is a puppet game. um They're going to make, they're making a TV show out of it. um Jack Allen from Adventure Game Hotspot is working as one of the people working on it. ah's cool The puppets are really cool. It's like a Sherlock Holmes parody. ah It's very, very nice looking. The gameplay was, it was sort of just like pick between two options. It was more, right you know, sort of,
01:09:03
Speaker
choose your own adventure visual novelty thing, but the dialogue was really cute and funny and the puppets are really nice looking. And that was all that really, really stood out to me. There were some other games that um are, you know, are interesting worth taking a look at. If you go to the fanfare dot.com, there's like, yeah there's a showcase where you can see all the games. So.
01:09:27
Speaker
Friday night, there was a talent show.
Panels, Trivia, and Retro Gaming
01:09:31
Speaker
And I got to see Al Lowe play the saxophone. That was pretty cool. It's actually pretty good. Saxophone's not an easy instrument to just play, you know? Yeah. Just seeing Al Lowe play the Leisure Suit Larry theme on saxophone was something that I didn't know I had needed in my life. But I was really excited to have seen it. Sometimes you just really need that. I didn't see the whole talent show.
01:09:56
Speaker
Sorry, I keep calling it a talent show. It was a variety show. God damn it. I wish it was a talent show. I would like, I would sign the fuck up. I don't know what I would do, but I would do it. It felt a little like a talent show, but hey, it was, you know, there was a trivia contest in the middle of it. That was a lot of fun.
01:10:15
Speaker
Oh, that's what I want to do for the next like adventure game con. I want to write a trivia game. Oh, you should. um And nobody will know a single answer because that's what happens yeah when you're too close to when you're too close to it. Yeah, yeah exactly. yeah um And then I did a panel that I don't know that I recommend people watch. I mean, if you find me very funny, I'm being very me the whole way through. So and, you know, but And the other the other two ah people on the panel were also very funny, but there was, we did a, basically like a riff track style panel of the game plumbers don't wear ties.
01:11:01
Speaker
ah which as my partner has put it, maybe should have stayed in the past. Maybe there is too much about it that is ah disturbing and upsetting and... um absolutely sexist that and racist that maybe this is one that we don't need to bring up as like, oh, an ironic example of the past. Here's what I know about you, Matt. is that yeah and because i do My whole thing is is riffing. That is what I do. yeah i I have a riffing show on Murder, She Wrote and other other things. That's the comedy that I write.
01:11:43
Speaker
And I know that there are times when the content I am talking about isn't always great. Didn't always write age well or didn't come across well. ah But I think you and I at least have the sensibility to make that then the riff. You know what I mean? Exactly. Yes.
01:12:03
Speaker
So if there is something, because it does happen in Murder She Wrote, it is a show that started in the 80s. They do have some problematic elements. ah In fact, one of the most requested, this is very much in line with what we're talking about, one of the most requested episodes I get to talk about is called The Indian Giver.
01:12:21
Speaker
And I'm just gonna leave it at that. It's it's very not good. yeah and And I don't know, and and this is where maybe you're got maybe you kind of run into trouble with plumbers don't wear ties, is there's not enough good parts to outriff or outweigh kind of these disturbing parts. You know what I mean?
01:12:41
Speaker
yeah that was definitely the case and i think the both the audience and the organizers and us in the panel felt at least towards the middle like okay we're kind of just repeating the same jokes and criticisms in some points because we're just seeing the same stuff over and over again and that maybe uh the video of the game could have been 25 minutes rather than 45 minutes. um There's just so much in that game that they just, it just repeats the same jokes over and over and oh boy. Yeah. So that the reason I don't suggest it is cause I don't, I don't know. I don't want to make somebody watch plumbers don't wear ties. And I think there were some audio issues with the live stream. Maybe when they put up like the polished video, it'll be a little better. um But oh man, there was one point.
01:13:34
Speaker
where we were in the middle of the thing and I was starting to feel okay about my jokes, right? Like I was starting, I was like, okay, I'm getting some laughs. This is, I'm starting to feel all right. And then Ken and Roberta Williams walked in and sat down and and I saw them in the audience and I looked away for maybe two minutes. And when I looked back, they had gotten up and left. Oh no, no. Yeah, so that was a real, ah you know,
01:14:03
Speaker
confidence killer. I mean, I mean, honestly, you needed a woman on that panel. You needed me. You needed a female. We had two men and a non binary person on the panel. We had no you know women. You needed you needed me. I'm telling you. ah There were some people from the audience shouting out and a lot of them were women, which I usually am pretty quick to stamp out people from the audience yelling out at a comedy show. Yeah, for sure. For sure.
01:14:31
Speaker
this ah but in this instance it was needed.
01:14:37
Speaker
um So I didn't really see, so then, you know, Saturday, and I'm gonna move a little quicker because this is a podcast about games, not about events, um but Saturday I didn't really see many of the panels.
01:14:50
Speaker
um And I'll just talk about one more panel. Yeah, go for it. There was the Pixel panel. But then my other favorite panel of the whole weekend was the YouTuber and Adventure Game Hotspot network member, one short I did a live speed run of King's Quest 6. Amazing, amazing, amazing. Honestly, I would watch that. I would go watch that. It was. I love that.
01:15:22
Speaker
It was incredible. He also did a live speed run of, give me a second. It's not, I'm not remembering it off the top of my head. Give me a hint. It's Sierra. Great. Oh, oh, this it's crazy that I forgot this. It was a live speed run of Dagger of Hamun-Ra.
01:15:46
Speaker
Oh my God, amazing. Ah! Love it. And it was so good and so funny. The way that people have found to break those games is just... absolutely hilarious and yeah ah Julia Minamata helped ah moderate this panel yeah because you know while one short I was doing certain you know thing while while he had to focus or while he was just clicking through some boring sections, Julia would sort of explain to the audience what was going on. yeah And they were just so funny and so good.
01:16:22
Speaker
once these panels are up i that is if if you only watch one panel don't make it either of mine don't make it yeah just just go watch this live speedrun like if you if you only watch one of these panels watch the live speedrun it was it was incredible That's great. I love adventure game speedruns because you think that they're not going to be exciting, but they are because how do you do it? There's no, it's the stupidest thing in the world. It's amazing. It's so good. Um, so the other thing that I want to talk about, the last thing I'll talk about, about the adventure game fanfare is they had a museum.
01:17:06
Speaker
nice they had a bunch of old computers set up and running and this is like you said this is where i played quest for glory 5 the way i originally played it as a kid which is on some like shitty old windows 98 computer you know it it was broken then and it's broken now They had, you know, they had like Colossal Cave on some, I don't know, I'm not, I'm not good at hardware. So you guys are going to have to fill in the points here, listeners, or maybe you could, uh, roses, if you know some of this stuff, but they had Colossal Cave running on some old ass computer. They had Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry and ah the early King's Quest games running on, and my partner,
01:17:55
Speaker
played like the first 20 minutes of leisure suit. Larian loved it. Okay. That's weird. I'm going to have to have a car with her. I don't know how that captured her the way it did, but it did. There's a charm about it. Those older, yeah, those older games, they, they grip you, man. Do you, do you want to hear my, do you want to hear my Lobos impression from quest for glory five? Yes, please.
01:18:21
Speaker
Prince of Chapere, you will now enter the rights of rulership.
01:18:29
Speaker
I love that stupid character. I don't know what his job is. Staccato with no inflection. Prince of Chapere.
01:18:43
Speaker
ah you ah been summoned to the righttes ah verx of rolllo she rollla but The voices in that game are so bad, but that game rules. They're so bad. They're so bad. I also played both me and my partner next to each other, sat and played Freddy Farkas. Why? Neither of us have ever played it before and we weren't You so enraptured. have But this museum been summoned to was really cool. the rights of Roloshep. Like there was all sorts of, there was, you know, mist on an original computer. There were,
01:19:20
Speaker
just all sorts of old, amazing games on classic hardware and it rolled. That's great. that That's super cool. i Man, I... Oh, I would love to play. i'm I'm big on emulation. I'm big on accessibility and emulating ah old games, but I would love to play Quest for Glory 5 on a shitty gateway. Like, come on, let's go. The thing is, I was too familiar with Quest for Glory 5 to enjoy it as much as I thought I would because I
01:19:54
Speaker
I was like, well, okay, I can't just start in the middle. Like I've got to start from the beginning and I've got to set up my right build. And I've got like, I was doing right. So it was like, I couldn't just sit down and play it for 20 minutes in a random spot. Cause I, I know it too well and I love it too much. And i so I was like, okay, I got to figure out exactly where we are. And I got to figure out, okay, what are my inventory items? What have I, what have, what has the player done thus far? And what has they not done? And it was like, okay.
01:20:21
Speaker
Either I need to sit here for five hours, or I need to not really play this very much. No, I get i get it. I play, dude, when I have a Quest for Glory 5 run, when I decide it's time to play that game again, I always, I start as a thief. I love yeah being a thief, even though in five its it's really pointless. But I will literally, I love this game so much.
01:20:44
Speaker
that I will literally sit down and play every class to completion and not sleep. I'll just do it. I'll like get into it. I will get into it. I really like that game, you guys.
01:20:57
Speaker
and So supposedly the next adventure game fanfare It is happening and it's gonna be in 2026 and I have heard it is going to be much morecent in much more like center of the country. oh god ah Not supposedly, i the this this part's a rumor. that ah That part is all confirmed. What is a rumor is that it is not going to be in a big city. It is going to be in a slightly smaller city just like Tacoma. But in the- But more central. More central, yes.
01:21:32
Speaker
And I will probably be at that one. so Oh, yeah.
Adventure Game Ranking Segment
01:21:37
Speaker
ah Matt and I can have our own panel. and It's just us pitching our new game based on our ah based on our buddy cop show called Aw, Man.
01:21:46
Speaker
Yeah. At that point. At that point. Oh, man. We'll an adventure. And we'll get like, yeah, we'll get like all these classic adventure game voices to come up and read our script for. Oh, man. Oh, man. Oh, man. Wow. We didn't we didn't solve this one either, huh? We didn't get this one. All right. Well, man, see you tomorrow. home
01:22:11
Speaker
just you guys wait there's gonna be like installment after installment of like aw man all right roses yes i have another segment but before we do that let's let's max amino okay and then we'll come back and i'm good this is this is a quick segment and then we'll say goodbye okay i'm gonna max it up hell yeah
01:22:56
Speaker
Roses. Hi. I've got a new segment for us. All right. the theme i i no there's no no no there's No, there's no theme for this one. maybe we can Maybe a listener can make one if they like. i think i think ok I think we should ask our listeners if they like this segment. and they yeah like This is one where they get to veto it.
01:23:20
Speaker
but or or tell us that we can never stop doing it. Because I stole this segment 100% from another podcast. like not even I didn't even like change it. I'm just like, oh, that is a funny idea. We're going to do that now. OK, I'm ready for it.
01:23:38
Speaker
Um, okay. Uh, it's a podcast about cereal by one of the McElroy brothers. It's just, ah like ceal so you guys, just so everybody knows, uh, so that I'm not, I'm plagiarizing, but I'm not doing it absolutely without shame. Okay. So what we are going to, we we are going to do, I have here.
01:24:01
Speaker
Oh boy. Oh God. I've called it a little bit, so it's a little smaller than it could be, but I have a list of every adventure game that's ever been released. ah Like I said, I called it a little bit. Okay. um Like I cut out a lot of the text adventures, I cut out some, I cut out remakes, ah things that were in multiple chapters. Okay. Or acts I like combined into like a single game, but it's still 3,286 games. Ugh.
01:24:32
Speaker
Sorry, I don't know why I had that reaction. It is an incomplete list and it is a cult list. um But what we are going to do over time, this is not gonna be completed in a day, Roses. Okay. Over time, we are going to rank all three times. What?
01:24:49
Speaker
so and We're just going to quickly and the thing is we haven't used the thing Most of these games we haven't played most of these games most of the world hasn't played Oh, ah oh I also cut out all the freeware games so like this list was like 6,000 Yeah, but now I cut it down to 30 like whatever I said, 3286, I think. um So what i gotnna what I'm gonna do, and I've got them all numbered here. So I am going to pull up a random number generator and minimum is one, maximum is 3286. And we're just gonna generate like a couple numbers in a row. okay And then we're just gonna, and whatever game comes up, whether we've played it or not, it's gonna go on a list.
01:25:39
Speaker
And so like at some point, you know, we're going to be putting, we're going to be deciding which is better Yoko Redux or, uh, Lenny loose jocks in space. Oh, good Lord. But for now, but hopefully so we'll get a couple that we know. All right. Ready? Yeah, I'm ready. Okay. First one. One, uh, 1,946. That is, uh,
01:26:07
Speaker
the fan. by Ezzahack Studio. The fan? E-Z-H-A-A-C Studio. So there's this segment's gonna involve a lot of Googling. Oh God, oh God, oh my God, what is this? I don't know. I don't know! Oh no! Oh my God, I don't think I wanna play this. I'll tell you, so okay, I think we can very easily say that this is both the best and the worst adventure game but of all time. like Yeah, I think that's pretty accurate. because One of the screens is just a bunch of torture devices, like saws. like And there's like a woman like tied up, but then on the next screen is like you're looking in the mirror and you're the you're not the you're the guy doing the torturing.
01:27:03
Speaker
Um, also the reviews are mixed, which is also, you know, I don't know. but Extremely short and disturbing. Here's one review. Bad. Cannot recommend.
01:27:15
Speaker
oh god oh man i go i so the fan So right now the fan is our only and adventure game on the list. So that is the best and worst adventure game of all time. All right. Next number, uh, 2,800. Oh, that's a good number.
01:27:31
Speaker
Please give us one that we, like, know. It would be so nice. Okay. Uh-oh. Amos Green's Final Repose. It is a- it is a Carol Reed game.
01:27:50
Speaker
It's a Carol Reed game. There's a series of like... ah is's but There's a series of games called carol like the Carol Reed Adventures. I've never played one. Yeah. But they are mystery games and they're first person and they are also FMV.
01:28:10
Speaker
Yeah, they're ah that's interesting. We got another live acted FMB game. It kind of looks good. Actually, yeah. I see that Adventure Gamer has actually covered covered it, the final repose. And gave it a ah ah four out of five. Yeah. And there's a thread here on Reddit that comes up that just says, I've fallen completely in love with the Carol Reed game. So maybe. Wow. Maybe we should play the Carol Reed games. Maybe. Maybe so. I like that.
01:28:40
Speaker
All right, so the and so right now, i I think I can make this decision for you because I think I know how you're gonna vote. Right now, the best adventure game of all time is Amos Green's Final Repose, and the worst adventure game of all time is The Fan. fan yeah All right, let's do another one. Okay. we got Okay, 1531.
01:29:03
Speaker
Okay, it's a good number. I like it. Yeah, not bad. That's not bad. Right in the middle. So that should be like, what, around the, around the 20, 2010s. Okay. All right. We have feran be ah Fran Oh, Bow. Yeah. I have played Fran Bow. Yeah. It was my game of the year when it came out.
01:29:26
Speaker
Holy shit, yeah, it is a, yeah it's like a very disturbing and violent horror game where ah when you, is it when you take your medicine, you enter into like a horrifying demon version of the world you're in? Yeah, you see things differently. It's one of those things we were talking about earlier with Tom Hardridge where he likes States of Being. And I think Frambo is a good example of that. And yeah, you play a little girl, it's a really good game. It's very atmospheric. I would put it in the horror genre.
01:29:56
Speaker
yeah And I would put that game above both of these games. Me too, absolutely, because if we've actually played it. And actually, it is good. It is actually good. very good So we're not even like... We don't even have to bullshit here. So Fran Bow is the best adventure game of all time. While ah the fan is the worst and Amos Green is like the median adventure game. If you want the standard adventure game, you play Carol Reed. Amos, what the whatever the hell.
01:30:29
Speaker
Okay, I when those words a miss green spot proposed came out of your mouth Okay Okay This is gonna be real good. All right. Next one is for a number 473. Okay early game early one. Yeah 1996 it is called weird Truth is stranger than fiction That's That's the name of it? The name is weird. The name is weird. Truth is stranger than fiction. Okay. It comes up, but I don't know why it comes up. It is a 1996 PC game. It looks like... Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no, no. It looks like a mist clone, but like a yucky mist clone.
01:31:26
Speaker
Oh, this is that all the way at the bottom for me and you know it. Yeah, this has like that really bad 3D of that era. where Yeah. Oh yeah, this is this one's bad. this is You know what? This is worse than the game where you torture a lady.
01:31:43
Speaker
Yeah.
01:31:50
Speaker
but yeah eric yeah Let's do a couple more. Uh, let's try to at least get five on the board before we go. Let's put, let's put five on the board. Okay. All right. We're at 2262. So, um, 2262. All right. We're getting a lot of high numbered ones here. Yeah. I noticed that a lot of recent, recent boys. All right.
01:32:14
Speaker
Oh, it's your favorite game. Say it with me, your favorite game, Krabat and the Secret of the Sorbian King.
01:32:29
Speaker
You know your favorite thing, Krabat and the Secret of the Sorbian King.
01:32:40
Speaker
What are these names? The 2019 adventure game from Rapaki Studios. Okay. Okay, so is this- Well, how do you spell Krabak? Please tell me. The standard English way. okay It's K-R-A-B-A-T.
01:33:00
Speaker
Okay, so Crabbot and the, okay. I see that there's a few of these Crabbot games. Oh my God, there's a bunch of Crabbot games. there's ah There's a couple of them that came up. Okay, so this looks, it's got very cartoony style. Yeah, and it looks like it takes place in sort of like the, um like colonial US.
01:33:24
Speaker
Yes, that is what it looks like. And there are, I just want to say I'm very impressed that the games that we're pulling, they do have reviews on prominent on prominent sites. Like the last game we talked about, the weird one, Kotaku had a review on that. I'm like, oh, okay, so people do know.
01:33:42
Speaker
about that. There's a Reddit thread on adventure games that's just called some love for Crobot is the secret of the Serbian game. Yeah, you know, it has a like it has a three point five on adventure gamers. OK.
01:33:58
Speaker
i And it's free in the Microsoft store, app store, and play store. Well, there you go. Okay. Maybe we should play Kraw-bot, the secret of the Sorbian King. All right. Where does Kraw-bot and the secret of the Sorbian King go for you? I think I, obviously here's what I'm looking at. Obviously it goes below Franbo. It does go below Franbo. It goes above the fan. It goes above the fan. And that's, that's exactly what I'm thinking. I can't tell.
01:34:30
Speaker
if this one should go above or below Amos Green's final repos. It might've helped if we played it. yeah he But I can't tell if it goes above or below Amos Green's final repos.
01:34:47
Speaker
i think Based on just looking, I would put it above in my, but that i'm I'm only going by looks alone. I'm thinking, I'm like thinking of like, if I was on home of the underdogs when I was young, what game would I choose to spend my time on and download because it took time to download games and I would probably choose krabat.
01:35:10
Speaker
That's just that's such a good point. Yeah. Because I'm looking at Cribot and thinking like, Oh, maybe I'll see if this is on Play Store still. And like, I can, like, I, I, this one is actually appealing to me. It looks like it'll be a little sloppy, but it looks like it could be kind of fun. i Here's our last one for this round of us ranking every adventure game that's ever been made. Okay. Six 12. Okay. We've got.
01:35:38
Speaker
And I got to delete these as I go so that we can keep them. Yeah, don't forget. Oh, no. Stop laughing. It's called Wild, Wild West, the Steel Assassin.
01:35:57
Speaker
but What is this? What is this? At first I was thinking it gives me, like, a dust tale of the wired west sort of um vibes yeah but now i'm looking at it and you're like there's a scene where okay i'm looking at a screenshot where you have at least four guns oh i there's more than four guns on my screenshot there's a zap and one of them's like uh you're zapping are we sure this is an adventure game we are not sure guys like i'm gonna just say this i don't know if this is an adventure game it looks very weird oh my god it's a licensed title what
01:36:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's a licensed game. It's based off the 1999 film of the same name and which is based off the 1960s TV series, The Wild Wild West. Which it looks like it's yeah, it's like a science fiction Western.
01:37:00
Speaker
um You know what? Put it at the bottom. No, wait. No, hold on. I think this goes above weird. Truth is stranger than fiction. Okay, fine. i will i I will agree with you there. It will can go above. I would rather play. I would rather try this game. You're right. Weird. Yeah, you're right.
01:37:24
Speaker
I said we were going to put five on the board. We've done six. We were having so much fun. I wasn't going to say anything, but I'm like, yeah, let Matt do his thing. That's so funny. Okay. My throat hurts from thinking about Krabat and Apis Green. What? Krabat and the Sorbian King.
01:37:49
Speaker
um creep
01:37:52
Speaker
Why does it make me laugh? It's just words. yeah Normal words. And they're just making me laugh. All right. So we've got the six best adventure games of all time as we see them now. If you guys need a real just like a really quick repeat them. We've got Fran Bow.
01:38:09
Speaker
Crobat and the Secret of the Sorbian King, Amos Green's Final Repose, The Fan, Wild Wild West, The Steel Assassin, and the worst adventure-making game of all time. Weird. Truth is stranger than fiction. All right, guys. How funny would it be if weird stayed at the bottom by the time we're
01:38:30
Speaker
How amazing would that be? ah If you made any of these games and we dunked on it, it's we don't we haven't played them, so they might be very good. ah they're just Exactly. It's just the funniness of how many adventure games there are ah in this. Absolutely. Anyway, thank you guys for listening to the show. Sorry about our two weeks off, and sorry that this is what you came back to.
01:39:00
Speaker
I'm having a great time. I don't know about anybody else. but i have having so my my My throat is is raw from laughter. this is a They've gotten enough publicity, but check out the Adventure Game Hotspot Network. Yes, please do. Check that out. ah You can email us um about the quality of our podcast. MattRosesAtGmail.com. Oh my god, yeah. Tell us if you like this segment or not, because I now love it.
01:39:27
Speaker
and i am i I want to keep doing the segment, but if you if the audience hates it, I have to just be like, yeah, right. Honestly, though, it's it's it's good enough just for you to say a title and just me burst out laughing hysterically. There's so many more. There's 3000 more. Oh, my God. This podcast is going to go forever. ah Yeah. Yeah. Six seasons in a movie.
01:39:54
Speaker
um And our seasons are 100 episodes long. long season Yeah, Rosie, do you have anything you want to let people know before we go?
01:40:06
Speaker
um um No. yeah ah really yeah I really thought about it. I really did. I only have and only have really one thing that's ever going on in my brain like all the time, but it's only one thing. Oh, what's that?
01:40:25
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's that you know podcast is art. That's so weird, because I had a dream that art would suffer. It's a dream.
01:40:39
Speaker
All right.