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Episode 17 - Moon Logic and Ashens
2.3k Plays6 months ago
PushingUpRoses and Matt Aukamp talk to Stuart Ashen (Ashens, of YouTube fame,) about moon logic and weird, unfair, bizarre, beautiful adventure game puzzles. Also, Matt played Lil' Guardsman.
Ashens' talk on moon logic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7nk_Apf35A
Email us! [email protected]
Games Mentioned:
- The Adventures of Mad Dog Williams in the Dungeons of Diridion
- Kings Quest 6
- Heaven's Dawn
- Baldur's Gate 3
- Aladdin
- Lil' Guardsman
- Papers Please
- Disco Elysium
- Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh
- Monkey Island II
- Operation: Stealth
- Chrono Quest II
- Police Quest 1
- Runaway: A Road AdventureA
- Discworld
- Codename: ICEMAN
- Lone Eagle: Columbian Encounter
- Police Quest IV: Open Season
- Kings Quest 5
- Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards
Recommended
Transcript
Opening Joke and Introductions
00:00:00
Speaker
Do you guys want to hear a joke? Go on. I like how Matt's not answering. I don't think he wants to hear a joke. Matt is joke Switzerland on this one. Okay, this is for Stuart only then. What's green and fuzzy and can kill you if it falls out of a tree? I don't know. What's green and fuzzy and will kill you if it falls out of a tree? A pool table.
00:00:31
Speaker
Oh, you can hit see when it falls out of the trace. Wait, wait, wait. I got perfecting for this. Yeah, I guess that would be great. I guess these are all things that are true about that. Cool. Do you want to start the show?
00:01:11
Speaker
Hey everyone, PushingUpRoses here. Welcome back to Save Your Game with me, the bubbly, the newly haircutted. That's true. That's true. The greatest runner in the world, Matt Aucamp. Hey Matt. I'm so fast is the thing. He's so fast, yeah. And so you couldn't imagine how fast I can run. Is that it? If I run faster than imagination, like that's pretty crazy fast.
00:01:40
Speaker
I don't even know what that means. Also, we have a special guest with us today, Stuart Ashens from the channel, Ashens. Hi, Ashens. Hello. Thank you for inviting me on. Yes, thank you for being here. Hey, thanks for coming.
00:01:56
Speaker
Ashens and I, or Stewart, used to be on a website together that will not be named here, but I think you know what it is, viewers and listeners. I'm just a viewer. YouTube.com. No, stop it. Archive.org. Yeah, we're both on Archive.org. We used to be on this aggregate video reviewer website, and I tried really hard to be friends with Stewart, and he just ignored me.
00:02:24
Speaker
And then like 10 years later, he accepted my friend request. I have no memory of you ever getting into it. But to be fair, I have almost no memory of that period at all anyway. I think it was on the website for about 14 seconds, maybe a little bit shorter. I probably just shut my mind off to anything from that site at the time.
00:02:49
Speaker
Yeah, honestly, people don't even know that I was even a part of it. But that's because my content was very bad at that time. My content is not bad anymore. So people actually watch it now. I hope. It was right. Come on. Stewart, would you like to tell, I'm sure people know who Ashens is, but for our listeners at home that maybe aren't familiar, would you like to tell people who you are?
Stuart Ashens and His YouTube Channel
00:03:15
Speaker
Certainly. I'm just a man with a man's courage. And I put things on YouTube and I've been doing it for about 18 years now, which is...
00:03:26
Speaker
more terrifying every time I say it. Oh my god. They haven't even had that website for that long. Oh, they have. They've had it for 19 years because it was about six months old when I first uploaded, I think. Wow. You're an old teen. I'm so old now. Oh, dearie me. Yeah, I started off reviewing
00:03:47
Speaker
reviewing in inverted commas there, sort of bad electronics and cheap knockoff items and things and just kept it going for some reason. And I have a penchant for very old games, which is where I tend to branch off into sometimes.
Gaming Nostalgia: Mad Dog Williams & Baldur's Gate 3
00:04:03
Speaker
Absolutely, I think we're all part of the gaming space in some way. But I didn't know that you had a little bit of a soft spot for adventure games until I joined your stream. Usually I joined the quiz streams just to torture myself with my lack of knowledge about obscure stuff. But you were playing the, oh God, let me see if I get this right. The Adventures of Mad Dog Williams?
00:04:29
Speaker
Yep, the Adventures of Mad Dog Williams in the Dungeons of Doridian. I made myself remember that. I don't even know what this is. The Adventures of Mad- No, Mad Dog Williams. Oh, you gotta look it up. In the Dungeons of Doridian.
00:04:45
Speaker
Okay. Well, yeah. It's not paid off. Released in a surprising number of formats. Really? Somewhat surprisingly. They really wanted people to play this Mad Dog game. Okay. Just blanket release of Mad Dog. It's Mad Dog season, everyone. Get to the shops. People are clamoring for it.
00:05:06
Speaker
Just people standing in the middle of the street screaming mad dog tears running down their face. It was the Skyrim of, what is this, 1981? When did this come out? This came out in, this is disappointing. This game came out in 1992 and I would like to say that King's Quest VI came out in 1992. They were a little behind, whoever did. It looks like a game from about five years before and that's when five years in gaming meant a lot, you know.
00:05:36
Speaker
to be polite to them, but it is certainly a game. Yes, let's put it there. It was one we Claire played as a child, but never got anywhere with. She was like, oh, we have to try and complete that one day. Well, I can see why. And then the last game you were playing was also an adventure game on stream, Heaven's Dawn, am I right? That's it, yep. The one I can never remember the name of, so I'm glad you could. Honestly, terrible name.
00:06:06
Speaker
I keep wanting to call it Heaven's Gate. That would be a very different game and probably not something Twitch would allow. But yeah, anything point and click tends to go down quite well with the audience.
00:06:23
Speaker
For streaming especially, I think those narrative, but especially if they're kind of not great and we can all riff on it a little bit, those are your best bet, I think. Whoa, so Heaven's Dawn seems like a weird combination of maybe like Legend of Chirandia style pixel graphics, but then there's these screenshots that look like really crude 3D.
00:06:49
Speaker
Let me look at this. It's all 2D, entirely 2D. Oh, what am I talking about? No, there are FMV sequences at the start, which, yeah, look like they were rendered entirely out of cones and cornflakes package. It's not good. Wow. And the pixel art is beautiful. Yeah, it's beautiful. But the 3D, yeah.
00:07:16
Speaker
It could be a shame how many beautiful pixel art games are just so bad. I know. It's disappointing. It is disappointing. I had a thought. What was it? Oh yeah, our first segment, of course. Matt, come on.
00:07:37
Speaker
You could've had any thought in the universe. You could've been thinking about the speed of my run, for example. Yeah, yeah, that's true. I could've been inspired by something. I could've been thinking about how I'm an artist. You could've been thinking about how you're an artist. Yeah, exactly. So what have you been playing lately, Roses?
00:07:57
Speaker
So, OK, hear me out. We just recorded a couple days ago. That's true. And I know I had no time to play the game that I said I was going to play, which is Norco. It's an indie adventure game. But however, I did have time to watch Stewart play and finish Mad Dog and then start Heaven's Dawn. So I'm just going to use that as my experience by proxy playing these old bad games.
00:08:26
Speaker
I didn't even know what Heaven's Dawn was. I'd never heard of it. I'm very intrigued. I don't, is it not American? I have to look this up now. I need to know how I missed it. I think I would assume it's Australian just because the few bits of voice acting in it all sound Australian, but that could just be dubbed. Yeah, but only during the beautiful FMV sequences. So where can people see these two videos specifically on Twitch or on YouTube?
00:08:55
Speaker
They are on Twitch, yes. But they will have fallen off Twitch fairly soon. So, because they don't keep things very long on Twitch for the walls. Go get it, go get it everybody, go quick. It may have already gone, I'm sorry. That's okay, I'll do a let's play on it. Well, Stuart, have you been playing anything cool lately? I'm gonna have to level with you. I have played nothing except Baldur's Gate three since it came out.
00:09:23
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I need to stop playing Baldur's Gate three and play something else. Yeah. So how many hours are you into that game? Literally hundreds. I actually don't know, but a lot of hundreds. I just keep finishing it and then going, Oh, this, this would be cool to try this sort of build. Oh, I'll start. And then you start all the way over again.
00:09:45
Speaker
Yep, so we do a complete to-dit five times. I think I'm on the sixth one. Wow! Holy cow, what is it that makes you just like, you can't get enough of it?
00:09:58
Speaker
I don't really I don't normally get like this with games where I'll sort of just keep playing the same one over I play a game finishing go right that's it for the time being I might go back to something like well from soft games like Dark Souls and that because they tend to you know be slightly different the next time round but this one
00:10:15
Speaker
I love turn-based combat and it's just so well done. It's so well written. There's so many different things you can do or do differently. Even the sixth time round, I'm finding new stuff. You know, it's an incredible game in that sense. But it's the combat I like really.
00:10:33
Speaker
I have not played it yet because I have a problem with losing myself to video games and just not doing anything else. I don't even want to look at my Steam for how many hours I put into Stardew Valley. I don't even want to look at it. It's harrowing at this point. And I guess the last game I got really kind of like that with, but it's not a long game, is Disco Elysium.
00:10:59
Speaker
which I actually did want to just replay again with different stats. But I lost like three days to that game. I don't know what happened. I didn't do any art. A video happened and I don't even know how I got it out there. I was just very, very into it. So Baldur's Gate, I realize that it's very good and people love it and play it, but I think I can't sacrifice myself to Baldur's Gate.
00:11:27
Speaker
I can understand that, because it will suck you in, like a big D&D hoover. You should stream it, and then you're doing two things at once. You're playing a fun game, and also you're sort of kind of working a little bit.
00:11:46
Speaker
I couldn't do that because people would be backseat and go, oh, don't do it like
Streaming Challenges and Backseat Gamers
00:11:49
Speaker
that. You can min max it like this. No, I must play my Baldur's Gate how I want to play it. This is my fun time. Go away. That's true. And with adventure games that are hard, hard AF, it's hard for them to backseat games. It's just like, well, we don't know what to do. Yeah, we don't know either. We are also as confused as you are.
00:12:10
Speaker
Or they just like a smugly watch and be like, you're getting closer.
00:12:19
Speaker
I've never, I've never, I've never streamed a video game, but I've definitely played an adventure game in front of somebody. So. Though that happens because I primarily stream adventure games when I'm not doing my impressive no death run at Aladdin on the Sega Genesis. Go me. Yeah, it's still on Twitch. I saved it. I have a no death run for the Genesis.
00:12:47
Speaker
And you know why I did it? Because someone on Twitter, some dude, said I was lying about it. And that I was a fake gamer girl. I know. I know. Guys, I know. So yeah, I beat it and it's still up there. That's why I did that. Holy cow. I could never do that with that game.
00:13:10
Speaker
That game was so tough. I can just do it like nothing now. It's just muscle memory at this point. I would often stop playing that game to go get an apple from the kitchen and see if I could do the thing where he rolls the apple down his arm and bounces it up and catches it and takes a bite. And so then that would be what I did for the rest of the day instead of playing the alive game.
00:13:33
Speaker
I thought you were going to say you were going to recreate the bit where he throws an apple at a guard or something else. You know, I don't know what it's like in England, but over here there's not just many guards standing around.
00:13:45
Speaker
That's what I was thinking. That's probably because he throw apples at them so he puts them off. That's why we have no guards here. They're afraid of getting used to a well guarded country. But all the guards have left with applesauce on their face. OK, Matt. Matt, what have you been playing?
00:14:15
Speaker
Oh, I thought you'd never ask. No, like you said, we just recorded like two days ago. But I did manage to get a little bit of the game Little Guardsman in.
Game Discussions: Little Guardsman & Book Projects
00:14:32
Speaker
So Little Guardsman is like a very cute, cartoony game. Full disclosure, we did get codes from the developer.
00:14:45
Speaker
Oh, we did? Yes. I am very bad at this. You might want to go check it out, pushing up roses. It's in your email. If you've ever played the game Papers, Please, which is for people who don't know, is like you're in a Soviet
00:15:09
Speaker
styled country and you play a border guard and you're checking people's like
00:15:17
Speaker
passports and transportation documentation against a series of rules, and then making very hard ethical decisions about whether you let some people skate by and let your own family starve, or whether you are brutally strict about the rules.
00:15:40
Speaker
It's dark, man. Yeah, it's a real dark game. So this is like a bright, sunny version of that. I was wondering where this was going. I'm like, what? So Lil Guardsman, you play a little girl, a little girl named Lil, who she takes over for her dad, who is a Guardsman, maybe got an apple thrown at him or something, whatever. He's not.
00:16:08
Speaker
He's not guarding the kingdom. It's like in a cartoony fantasy kingdom of elves and orcs and wizards and such, right? So you watch his guard booth for the day and...
00:16:22
Speaker
you're doing basically the same thing as papers please you are but it's like not dark it's happening uh yeah no there's a little bit of dark humor but it's about being silly and fun and funny and you know some of the decision decisions you make about who to let in and who not to let in um
00:16:43
Speaker
will seemingly, and again, I'm very, I'm only like an hour in, but seemingly they will affect the rest of the world and maybe have, you know, sort of cascading consequences towards the rest of the story. It looks adorable. I looked up, I'm looking at a screenshot and it looks absolutely, I have a soft spot for like cartoony adventure games, my jam.
00:17:13
Speaker
It's very cute. It's very, it's very sweet. It seems to be very funny. It seems like also there's a lot left to discover. It's also like surprisingly difficult because after the first day, one of your dad's bosses tells like
00:17:36
Speaker
incentivizes you to get a perfect four-star rating on every person who comes through. And I, after that first day, after the tutorial, I cannot get a four-star rating to save my life. I get a three-star rating basically every time. So it's like one of those games, easy to learn, difficult to master, just in terms of,
00:18:04
Speaker
you just have a lot of options on how to interrogate these people, tools to use to like X-ray their bags or spray truth serum on them or things like that. And it wants you to pick, you know, it wants you to like pick the exact right things to uncover each person's secrets and stories and then allow them or disallow them entry. So that's a little guardsman. I'll probably, I mean, I'll definitely play more of it, but.
00:18:35
Speaker
Yeah, I thought you were gonna compare it very directly to Papers, Please, while I'm looking at the cutest screenshot I've ever seen in my life. I was about, oh no. Yeah, again, on the third day, her dad starves to death because you couldn't pay for his food. No, it's just, again, it's a silly, sweet version of this, of Papers, Please.
00:19:01
Speaker
I will actually check that out. I usually do. Stuart Matt is amazing at game recommendation. So if you ever want to escape Baldur's Gate 3 for something else, he is really good at pinning down really great adventure games.
00:19:20
Speaker
I currently have a list of games I have to play for an upcoming book. And they're all favorite games of somebody. So I'm hoping they're all good. Disco Elysium is on the list. So that's good. Hi, that's awesome. We just had an episode about Disco Elysium. It is an incredibly good game. As if you needed anyone to tell you that. Yeah. That's the prevailing opinion, yes. Stuart, are you in another book?
00:19:47
Speaker
Yes, yep, I'm joining forces with other YouTube man Dan Nerdcubed and we're doing a retro versus modern games book where I make him play a load of retro games, which he has not played for the hideous crime of being too young. And he has recommended me some more recent, mostly indie interesting games because I haven't played them because I'm too old.
00:20:11
Speaker
Yeah, and then we'll, at the end, say, all these games were good, and that will be the conclusion of the book. Spoilers. That sounds, that sounds fascinating. That's a really cool premise. Matt, we should write a book. Can we just steal Stewart's premise? Yes. Sorry, Stewart. We're going to write your book. We should have kept a secret. Stewart, why was I not asked to collaborate on this book?
00:20:40
Speaker
All right, we gotta move to the next segment. Matt is well aware that I will harass any creator that doesn't want to collab with me. Basically every creator that comes in the show. Reza needs to ask them why she wasn't involved in all their major works.
00:21:06
Speaker
Tom Cruise, why wasn't I in cocktail? Why? Why wasn't I? I love cocktails. I would have been perfect for that. He didn't try to indoctrinate me into Scientology. That's all I'm saying. I do think, though, we should move on to our next segment, though.
Moon Logic in Adventure Games
00:21:25
Speaker
We
00:21:27
Speaker
watched, we both watched and really enjoyed Ashen's your video on moon logic in adventure games. And we wanted to dig a little bit deeper into that subject with you on this podcast. So why don't we take a quick break, listen to some spank your ex arena and be right back.
00:22:08
Speaker
Hey everyone, welcome back to Save Your Game. I'm pushing up roses, that's Matt Aucamp, and that's Stuart Ashens. Hello. I pointed, I don't know if anybody could feel that, but I was pointing to Matt, and then I was pointing to Stuart. Yeah, I mean, as long as you got the general directions correct, but I think we're both east of you, so.
00:22:31
Speaker
You'd just be pointing in the same direction. I do not actually know what direction I'm sitting in right now. Is that bad? Right, let's see, so if you're in Chicago, so I'm a little southeast of you, and Ashins would be a little northeast of you. So let's make sure you got the directions right when you point it. Okay, I will, I will check on that. You mean you don't have a giant compass on your desk? I thought you liked adventure games. I don't.
00:23:00
Speaker
I haven't found one on the ground to pick one up yet. You haven't killed a load of rats in a cellar and been given it as a reward. You have to fashion one out of sugar water and a cork and a needle. So that's why I haven't found my inventory on the dirty ground.
00:23:25
Speaker
Uh, and speaking of finding inventory on the dirty ground, today I would like to talk a little bit more about MoonLogic with Stuart. Uh, if you haven't watched it, he did a great talk about MoonLogic. Uh, it is on his channel and I think that your channel is just called Ashins, right? Correct. A-S-H-E-N-S. One word, like Madonna. Why would it be two, why would it be two words?
00:23:49
Speaker
How would it be two words? Ashens. As hens. As hens. As hens. It's 10 perspectives on things. We feel that corn good. As hens, we feel fox bad.
00:24:13
Speaker
Chicken wire fence? Dunno. Dunno. Okay, well, thank you for clarifying that it is one word. Um, so yeah, I watched your talk and I like, I love that you put the stipulation that we're not going to talk about Sierra games in the talk. We might talk about them here. Uh, cause they do come up, you know, a lot in moon logic, but I always appreciate when people go off the Lucas arts.
00:24:41
Speaker
And I don't care what people say about LucasArts. There are some moon logic puzzles in LucasArts games. But I like that you kind of skipped over Sierra. Not skipped, you know, purposely excluded. Although you did have a bonus Phantasmagoria too at the end there, which I appreciate.
00:24:59
Speaker
That was, yes, one of my favorites. Oh, I've just remembered I got an email from the guy who, who was the main actor in Phantasmagoria 2's asking me to go on his podcast. I don't know how to put that to him. Yeah, he has a podcast, Conversations with Curtis, I believe it's called. Oh my God, I haven't left it too long. I totally forgot. Oh, how do I add me?
00:25:21
Speaker
You know what? I actually liked Phantasmagoria 2, and I liked it better than Phantasmagoria 1, and I don't know if that's controversial or weird, or what? What are your guys' opinion?
00:25:33
Speaker
I've never played the first one, but I like the second one. I played it so long ago now, I can barely remember. I could probably play it again, actually. I just vaguely remember being annoyed by the puzzle that I mentioned in the talk, and he's in an office. And I remember the ending, obviously. Oh yeah, the ending is, goes somewhere.
00:25:53
Speaker
Yeah, it was, I just remember enjoying it. It's one of those things where you're in the world of the FMV game of the time. And often they wouldn't get people in who could do the sort of basic of acting and just be, we've got Jeremy from accounts. He'll be the hero. This is not working guys, but phantasmagoria too. You know, everybody brought it, you know, there was a performance in everybody and that really elevated it to
00:26:20
Speaker
you know something you were interested in seeing where it went as opposed to you know i can't pick up the envelope or whatever you're getting the ones where you feel like they spent a million dollars on all the tech around it and then 15 cents on the actors you know
00:26:37
Speaker
I mean, that is kind of what happened though, isn't it? Even for the, just the pixel art voice acted games were all other programmers and friends of friends and people who are not voice actors at all. Phantasmagoria 2 at least had some charm too. I recall people actually kind of liking the characters and feeling even a little,
00:27:03
Speaker
like sympathetic towards some of them, because as spoiler alert guys, people die in Fintaz Magoria. That's that's what happens in these games. But like, yeah, there's I did. I did. I mentioned it in some video. People are like, oh, yeah, Trevor, that character. I love that character. Like that's rare for a live acted game, because usually the quality is not good. I think that Fintaz Magoria one is probably
00:27:33
Speaker
a better, like a better story, which is hard to say, but it just, because, and maybe it's even a better game just because of how weird Phantasmagoria II is. But for some reason, I think I had more, like I'd be more willing to go back to Phantasmagoria II than I. There's something a little more fun about it.
00:27:59
Speaker
Fun? It is the charm, isn't it, I think. Yeah, there's a charm in just how weirdly serious it takes all this really strange stuff it does. All the emails you have to check, you guys. You gotta check those emails. Some of those emails creeped me out. I'd forgotten about the emails. Yeah, that was quite a lot of the game was email related, actually. Sure was. It's got one of the best tag lines of any horror game, isn't it? A puzzle of flesh.
00:28:29
Speaker
That's really sort of evocative and creepy. When they say a puzzle of the flesh, are they referring to that weird meat computer that you play with at the very end of the game? The one that's like the alien computer where it's just like a bunch of buttons on a sack of alien goo. Yeah.
00:28:52
Speaker
Or, or is it because people get, I'm gonna go a little dark here, but that's okay. Cause it's, it's, you know, it's who I am. Is it because people get like their flesh, like, you know, like cut up? Cause it's one of those games guys. It's one of the, what are those kind of games called? Not, I guess not exploitation, something else. Just slasher. Sure.
00:29:17
Speaker
Body horror, yeah. Body horror, yeah. That's it! Oh, that's it, yes. Stuart, good job. It is body horror. I wanted to talk about moon logic for a second. Do either of you know the origins of that term? Because it fits what's happening so well. The idea of, yeah, maybe this would be logical if we were on the moon, if we were moon people, but do you guys know where the term came from?
00:29:42
Speaker
have no clue as the etymology of it, actually. Yeah. I kind of do. OK. I might be cheating a little bit. I might be bringing up my video on Moon Logic. I did a video on Moon Logic. OK, so the earliest to the earliest term that was used for this, I do remember this now, is for a Roberta Williams game. And it's as early as 2000. So a long time ago, this term has been around for a while. It started out
00:30:10
Speaker
as like dream logic like I couldn't dream of like what is this this is so insane like you could only dream of this kind of stuff um and then it just kind of slowly went into moon logic and I think I think the etymology is kind of like
00:30:29
Speaker
Like if you look at the moon, like you go crazy. So it's just saying that like these things are crazy. Or yeah, like you said, you could only figure this out on the moon or something like that. But it started out as dream logic in 2000. I remember it being called dream logic and I totally forgot that. Yeah. Dream logic makes it like, dream logic seems like a little bit more self-explanatory of a,
00:30:56
Speaker
of a term, and you're saying it is only as recent as 2000 that this concept was being discussed? Wow. Okay.
00:31:08
Speaker
I don't know what they were calling it prior. And, you know, it could be because that's just what we were used to. If you really think about it, I mean, adventure games had moon logic until the end. Even LucasArts, which, you know, they didn't have soft locks. They didn't have unwinnables. But insane adventure, insane puzzles have been around up until 2000, honestly, because I'm trying to think what Roberta Williams game were they even talking about?
00:31:37
Speaker
Quickly to the Google Tron. Asking all the hard questions here today.
00:31:47
Speaker
Do you guys- Okay, hang on. Sorry, let me explain this. I think what was happening was I think people were playing these older games in 2000 as adventure games started. Yeah, and I think people started to refer to those old games, but especially the Roberta Williams games as having dream logic. Right, do you guys feel like there's a difference between dream logic or moon logic and just absurd puzzles?
00:32:18
Speaker
For example, like an example of moon logic, obviously, this is the one everyone goes to, would be the Guybrush Threepwood using a hypnotized monkey to turn a fire hydrant, like the bolt on a fire hydrant, because in America,
00:32:44
Speaker
the tool that would be used for that is called a monkey wrench. So there is a logic, but it's absolutely bonkers, right? Now, there are other puzzles where it's just like, there is no reason why a person ever would think to do that and it doesn't hold, like even when you know the solution, it does not hold any kind of logic, right? Do you guys feel that those are just two sides of the same coin or do you feel that those are different
00:33:15
Speaker
I think they're connected, but it's that thing of, like the monkey wrench, there is some sort of logic path you can kind of follow, but it's also the intent of it. It's supposed to be a bit of an absurdist gag, right? Or monkey wrench, we're using a monkey as a wrench. Oh, sorry, you couldn't work it out.
00:33:35
Speaker
The proper moon logic stuff isn't necessarily something absurdistic. It can be something quite mundane, but something that you would just never think to do because it makes no sense, either in circumstance or just in general.
00:33:49
Speaker
Yeah, I think I think the monkey wrench thing was more. It's like a pun puzzle. Almost. It's like you have to think of a pun to get to that solution. And even though it's frustrating, I'm not sure I'm not exactly sure if it's like the moon logic that we're discussing, or if it's just like aggravating and like, really, guys, really, this is the puzzle you went with. So
00:34:15
Speaker
uh actions what do you feel is like a very mundane example of moon logic there's a great one and i always mention this because it uh was a game i had as a child and could never do it until i read because obviously in the day's pre-internet you had to wait for somebody to bring out a magazine with a solution in and i read the solution and was like great i could have tried this for the rest of my life and i would never have worked this out
00:34:42
Speaker
So it's a game called Operation Stealth, which I think was released in America as James Bond The Stealth Affair, which is weird. In America, it had a James Bond license. And in the UK, it didn't. I don't quite know what happened there. I did not know that.
00:34:56
Speaker
It's very odd. Also, the game was totally written to not be James Bond, and they didn't bother altering it. So like James Bond works for the CIA and things like this. Anyway, like claims or something. That's it. John claims. Yes. Subtle. And there's a lot of instant deaths in this game. There's a lot of
00:35:26
Speaker
incredibly bad and I mean horrifyingly bad arcade puzzle sequences the second of which even with a walkthrough I never got past absolutely hateful oh god uh but there is a bit in it where you are essentially kidnapped by some people and stuck on a boat they tell you to rock chuck off the boat and you drown obviously you don't want that happening
00:35:49
Speaker
But beforehand, you have purchased from a man sitting on a beach an inflatable bracelet, whatever on earth that is supposed to be. So obviously you're going to use your inexplicable inflatable bracelet to escape. I could never work out how. And the way you do it is you have to inflate the bracelet first. They then apparently wrap your hands in the rope and then you deflate it underwater, freeing the hands.
00:36:16
Speaker
The problem is you can only inflate the bracelet while you are waiting on the boat for the dialogue to finish. And at that stage, you've been led to believe by the game that there is nothing you can do during the dialogue sequences. They're like a cutscene. You have no control. But in fact, you can bypass it. I think you press both mouse buttons or something and get to the menu and then inflate the bracelet. But like, I didn't know you could do that.
00:36:45
Speaker
That is tricky. Yeah. The thing is, after the talk I did, somebody mentioned afterwards, oh, you do know that that's not even the worst one in Operation Stealth by a huge margin. I'm like, what? And apparently, and having seen it now, the video, it's astonishing. There is a part where you swim underwater, like going into the enemy base, because James Bond always does that, doesn't he?
00:37:13
Speaker
And you have to go to a certain screen underwater, click on a rock that looks exactly like all the other rocks in the background and get a rubber band. If you don't do that, you're soft blocked. You're complete. That's the end of the game. You go through the bits. That's the
Unforgiving Game Mechanics and Puzzle Logic
00:37:29
Speaker
end of it. And my God, I wish I'd known that at the time as a little addendum, but, um, that cracks me up so hard. It's not moon logic, that one. That's just the hidden object of doing this sort of thing, but all the same.
00:37:42
Speaker
It just cracks me up that such an emphasis is placed on an elastic band to win the situation. Do you want to know what the rubber band does? I do, yeah. This is astonishing. I think it's the last thing you use in the game. Do you know, I've just remembered, it wasn't rockets behind it, seaweed, sorry, for anybody who's, for all those vacation self purists out there. People are using this as a walkthrough for operations.
00:38:12
Speaker
I will piece together this game from podcast mentions. They listen to every podcast. They're like, I hope this one mentions Operation Stealth, because I've been listening to them for years. Come through 140 hours of Spanish politics podcast. Justin, they'll tell you how to do the second maze or something.
00:38:38
Speaker
No, so you've got your rubber band and yeah, you can soft lock if you haven't got it. But at the very end of the game, I think it's actually nice at the last thing. No, I'm saying the penultimate thing. Basically there is a bomb when you are on Dr. Wise helicopter. Oh my God. She get everyone. She get it. Yeah. So you have to wrap the rubber wrap band around a bomb. And basically,
00:39:04
Speaker
When he throws you out of his helicopter, the bomb goes with you, he throws the bomb after, I can't remember the specifics, and basically you land at a dinghy, the bomb lands on you and blows you up, but because you've put the rubber band on it, it bungees back up to his helicopter and kills him instead. Oh my goodness. That is a really impressive rubber band.
00:39:23
Speaker
Yeah, what kind of rubber band is this exactly? It's God's own rubber band. The joy is that rubber band that soft locks if you don't get it appears halfway through the game. And that's the penultimate puzzle you use it for.
00:39:39
Speaker
That is rough. That reminds me a lot of Sierra games that, you know, you got to do something early on and you won't know that you're messed up. You just, you'll just go on forever, not understanding why you're stuck.
00:39:53
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, we talk about it on this show, so that's the dead man walking scenario, right? You have lost the game, but you won't know it until you spend five more hours in the game. Oh, yes. There's a game, another one I had as a kid, which is one of the worst examples of both soft locking or dead man walking is such a perfect example for that one, or perfect description.
00:40:18
Speaker
and also instant deaths from things you just can't avoid or you just will, how would I have known to avoid that? You can't, you just walk into a location and you die. It's called Chrono Quest 2. It's a translation of a French game called Explorer 2, I think. And basically you've got a time machine and for some reason you've used it like an idiot and now you're stuck in some random time and you've got to get back home, blah, blah, blah, the usual stuff. But your time machine travels through time by
00:40:48
Speaker
Do you remember Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future 2? Where the thing on top of the DeLorean that Doc Brown had just put banana peels in. It's a similar thing to that that powers your time machine, but it's only metal. So you just stick bits of metal in it. But depending on the bit of metal and the amount of it and the type, you go to a different time period. So you've got no idea where you're going at any stage. And it's just full of things you can miss right at the early on and then you die later.
00:41:18
Speaker
bizarre sequences where you're talking to people who incidentally have really early sample speech and it is astonishing you know you'll talk to them and they'll say ah so what do you like blue or red you say oh i quite like blue death you must die what what i didn't know and no stage has it meant blue or red before it's just instant game over it happens all the time and also
00:41:43
Speaker
the worst thing there's things like you're talking to somebody they'll say oh would you like a magic item would you like the magic bag or the magic potato or whatever and you choose one of them and if it's the wrong one that's it you'll find out in about an hour of gameplay and it's instant death even though they both sounded amazing you should have taken the oh
00:42:04
Speaker
I honestly, when I was doing the Moon Logic, when I was writing it, my original idea was, oh, I must mention ChronoQuest 2 in some way. And then I thought, I can't do this because that's like an entire talk in itself, this bloody game. It's like Discworld levels, like everything is just off.
00:42:23
Speaker
absolutely is the worst example i know of of soft locking and instant deaths and it mixes them both together in a horrifying way things like there's just a massive beach and you have to click on the two pixels where there's a bit of metal and things like that oh god but i i do recommend the game do it with a walkthrough but it's an interesting sort of uh
00:42:44
Speaker
Yeah, art experience. The art's quite interesting. The sound is very good. It's a well-crafted game in that sense. It's just that the puzzles were made by the world's most hateful man.
00:42:56
Speaker
I mean, a lot of these games I really adore. I mean, I grew up on Sierra. Those were my first game. So my brain is wired for this kind of gameplay. And if you put me in a game like Myst or The Witness with logic puzzles, I'm like, what? I don't get it. I don't understand. Put cheese and machine. That's what makes things work.
00:43:20
Speaker
I cannot stand missed. There's something for me, it feels like the gaming equivalent of an accountant's Excel spreadsheet or something. I just can't derive any fun from it. You know, I'd much rather have police quest where you lose instantly. So you didn't check your tires or whatever. It's just, there's just something more to it.
00:43:40
Speaker
We just spoke about that particular that particular puzzle, which I can't decide. I don't think it's moon logic. I just think it's aggravating where if you don't check your car, there's a bomb. If you do check your car, there is no bomb. That's just cruel.
00:43:56
Speaker
If you don't lock the doors, it's instantly stolen. If you do lock the doors, it's fine. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Don't check the tires. Your tire explodes. Do check the tires. You're fine. Yeah. The bomb is the craziest example of that because
00:44:11
Speaker
There is either a bomb on the car or there's not. Like, looking at the car doesn't make the bomb disappear. Like, it's not like he's like, you don't have Schrodinger's bombs in America. All they had to do is put in like a bit of dialogue where he's like, oh, good thing I checked. Somebody put a bomb on my car.
00:44:33
Speaker
Does that happen to police ever? No, it doesn't. I don't think that's ever happened. At the station? Or at the station when this happens? No, it makes no sense. I want to point out another something else you mentioned in your talk that I cracked up immediately because I had no idea where it was going. I believe Matt has played this game. I have not. It's from Runaway.
00:45:03
Speaker
And it's where you throw peanut butter on a perfectly normal looking shed that you can probably just open the door to. I laughed so hard at that solution. I almost found it like a little charming in a way. Who thought of this?
00:45:24
Speaker
The great thing is there's a huge complicated puzzle chain in order to get the peanut butter as well. So you wouldn't even know you had peanut butter. But then as you quite correctly say, this is shed. It looks a bit rickety or going to go through the window. There's some way of getting in the doors. Note you throw peanut butter over it and instantly get inside just like real life. Is there a time
00:45:48
Speaker
or any game that you kind of liked this more dream logic, this more kind of wacky style, because I actually do have an answer for that. I actually really like Discworld, and it is the hardest game I've ever played. Nothing makes sense. Nothing. Nothing makes sense. Those puzzles are wild, but at the same time, it's like the most accurate franchise game I've ever seen.
00:46:11
Speaker
It just reeks of Discworld to me, and I put myself in that mindset, I guess, when I was playing it. And even though I had to use a walkthrough, I actually kind of dug it. I actually thought everything worked really well. So when is this kind of puzzle fun? How do we make it fun and not aggravating?
00:46:31
Speaker
I think it goes back to what we said about charm and characters and things. With Discworld, it's so well-written and funly performed that you're always interested to see what's going next. You'll give it more time. Whereas a game that will just kill you immediately for doing the wrong thing, you're going to get more fed up with very quickly, aren't you? Especially if it's not so well-written.
00:46:56
Speaker
So do you think that's why people get very upset at like King's Quest? Because that was a point where we're not, we can't really rely on charm. Not as much at least. It may be at the time super innovative, but it's not like you're talking to characters. It's not like you're having these long charming dialogue trees. You're just trying to figure out what to do.
00:47:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's fair. There's certainly a charm to the King's Quest games, but as you say, it's not the sort of charm, not character based, you know, that it was remarkably difficult to do that with a handful of coloured pixels and some text.
00:47:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's that thing of also sense of humor, I think, is a big part of it as well. That's true. Where Discworld is, you know, genuinely funny, Monkey Island is very funny. Whereas a lot of the old games took themselves very seriously. That's true. And I think that I think that's actually where some of my aggravation for the more serious games came from. So I'm like kind of forgiving games.
00:47:55
Speaker
like Discworld because they just have this humor to them and charm. And we joke about the Monkey Ranch puzzle in Monkey Island, but we love those games. Whereas I think back to some of the Sierra games where they were less reliant on humor. And it was very, I mean, maybe with exception of like,
00:48:15
Speaker
Leisure Suit Larry, which do we call that humor? I don't know. Up for debate. Yeah, it's hard to say. Up for debate. But my example is like Codename Iceman, where it was so serious
00:48:30
Speaker
I couldn't with it. I was so aggravated I couldn't even riff on it for a stream. It was just aggravatingly difficult and there's nothing for levity. There's nothing like cheering me up or making me smile or making me be like, oh you, there's nothing like that at all.
00:48:50
Speaker
You've just reminded me of a game I wanted to recommend to you, and I've totally forgotten the name after starting speaking. So that's brilliant. Hang on a minute. I'm going to try and remember this. Give us a hint. Maybe we can help. Oh, it's one I streamed. It's like a kind of more homebrew version of something like Codename Iceman, but you spend most of the game fishing.
00:49:13
Speaker
Oh, Falcon, something, Lone Eagle, the Colombian mission or something. Yes. Lone Eagle, Colombian encounter. Found it. Yes. Yeah. And it's all written by one man. And this man really likes boats and fishing and everything else comes second. It is an astonishing game. I just brought up the screen caps and I'm overwhelmed.
00:49:43
Speaker
I cannot recommend that enough for a streaming game. It is astonishing. It was just good fun to play anyway, but do bear in mind that when you finish the incredible, um, of incredibly long fishing sequences, there's not actually much game after all before. I mean, are the fishing sequence, like, I mean, are you, is it a collectathon? Like what, what does the fish do for you? Kind of you.
00:50:09
Speaker
Do you know, I think you're just collecting the fish to sell for some money or something and then just the game edge. I can't really remember. It was just so many fish. Oh, you have to keep getting different equipment to catch bigger fish and things like that. And when you start playing, you assume it's going to be a tiny little subplot, but no, it's like most of the game. And after three hours of it, you're like, how is this still happening?
00:50:35
Speaker
I would feel so disappointed if I got like what looked to be an adventure game, right? And it's just fishing simulator. But you're forewarned, there's a lot of charm in the game in its way. There's a lot of fun to be had. But yes, I wouldn't be putting it up there as the greatest point and clip games ever made. But it's for somebody who is a fan of the genre, I think you'd get quite a lot out of it.
00:51:02
Speaker
Oh, for sure. Yeah, I can see why it reminds you of Iceman. It's got that kind of... I don't know what to call those games. And coincidentally, Iceman reminded me of Operation Stealth as well. Oh, yes, of course. You know? Yeah. I've been trying to conjure up really interesting
00:51:27
Speaker
instances of moon logic from games. Or just these are the things where it's just like, how would you possibly notice all this puzzle? I was thinking of one very mundane puzzle in a game that we hate to love and love to hate, which is Police Quest III Open Season.
00:51:45
Speaker
I haven't played that one, even though arguably people consider that one of the better written police. Oh, so that's the one that's FMV. No, no, no, four is FMV. Four is FMV. Police quest four is what I meant to say. Oh, okay, got it. Open season. The FMV one, which it occurs to me that the ending of that game
00:52:12
Speaker
relies on a completely random puzzle solution. In order to find the problematic antagonist of that game, you just randomly leash a dog in the park. Okay, like you put a leash on a dog? You put a leash on a dog. Okay. And it drags you all the way to the house of the
00:52:41
Speaker
serial killer. I'm sorry, what? Yeah. You just, there's no, as far as I remember, have you played the Police Quest games, Stuart? I've only ever played the first one. That's a good decision. Yeah, well, because we were talking about the first one earlier, and that's what got me thinking about the fourth one, where, yeah, there's a point, I can't recall any reason why you would think to do this.
00:53:11
Speaker
There's just nothing, there's just nothing that's even hinting at like, oh, there's a leash on that dog over there. There's like nothing. I mean, I think there's something hinting at that like you wanna leash the dog. Like I think there's something that leads you to going like, I should catch that dog. But then the dog just leads you to the solution to the case that you've been painstakingly putting together clues for.
00:53:39
Speaker
for hours now and like following leads and interviewing people and then at some point you catch a dog and it just drags you to their house where you find the bodies in the fridge it's like oh okay well okay yeah I mean I could if I thought to leash a dog much earlier I could have saved myself a lot of time
00:54:01
Speaker
Imagine if you took the puzzle out of that game and then recreated it in like the plot of a film or something. Imagine you're watching speed and at the end Keanu Reeves is like, I'm going to get you Dennis Hopper. And then he puts a leash on a dog and is just carried all the way to Dennis Hopper's house. Like, yeah. You know, there is a, um, there's a rule that I've heard in Pixar and this is, this isn't
00:54:25
Speaker
interesting in terms of, I've never thought about this in terms of like adventure game puzzles, but there's a rule that Pixar supposedly has where you can stumble into a bad situation, but you can never stumble into like a solution to a situation. Like you can, you can by chance end up in trouble, but you can't by chance
00:54:51
Speaker
fix your own problems, right? Like you have to use skill or cunning or friendship or whatever to solve puzzles. And I think that's like, I think maybe that's the problem we're talking about. When it feels like you lucked into the solution, even if you did something active to make it happen, that's when,
00:55:13
Speaker
your experience just feels hollow, right? That's exactly it, yep. That's a screenwriter hat on for a minute. So the thing is you lose the agency of the character if he can just luck his way through things. It doesn't feel like they've done anything to, you know, progress. And when you are controlling or you are that character and it's just like, oh, well, I thought I'd come up with a plan to beat the serial killer by finding him in his house, but I put a leash on a dog and he led me there.
00:55:42
Speaker
You feel short changed, you know? That's like, why did we need to do any of this? We could have just got like one of those canines to help if that's it. Yep. One does not simply walk into Mordor. One puts a leash on a dog and he drags you into Mordor. Strand? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What if that was, if Lord of the Rings was they put a leash on a dog and suddenly they're at, yeah.
00:56:08
Speaker
They're at the volcano, and it's like, oh, I guess I'll just toss this thing in. Good work, Slido. I have a question about a puzzle that maybe you guys have submitted. Maybe we can brainstorm this. Maybe there's insight for this. This is a puzzle from King's Quest V. Have you both played it? Have one of you played it? I've never played a King's Quest at all.
00:56:34
Speaker
Nope. Did you hear my visceral reaction to that? We're going to fix it. Stuart, we're going to fix it. Don't worry. We will play a King's Quest game. This is going to happen. I'm going out to London later in like July, August, and I will go to your house. Oh, no. Yeah. Matt's like, oh, God. I don't want to be party to this threat.
00:56:59
Speaker
It's not a threat, it's a fun time. Why don't you like fun? We're gonna play King's Quest V, because that is the most moon logic out of all of them. Matt, I know you've played, I think, yeah, you've played it. I have played all of the King's Quests. Okay, great. Well, no, I have not played the, whatever, the, was it 2019? Oh, you did, 2015.
00:57:25
Speaker
of 2015, oh, it was that early. I've not played that one, like the one you visit, but I have played all of the other King's Quests, including Mask of Eternity, the weird semi RPG.
00:57:41
Speaker
Okay, so there is a puzzle. Let me know if this sounds familiar to you because King's Quest relied a lot on fairy tale fantasy, some that was more well known than others. And some of the puzzles kind of followed that as well. So you get stuck in like a witch's swamp. All right.
00:58:00
Speaker
and there are some there's a few things you need to have in your inventory you need to have a pouch full of tiny little emeralds like earring size and you need to have a honeycomb that you got earlier in the game before you get stuck you have to have it this is how this puzzle works i don't know someone help me you squeeze honey
00:58:19
Speaker
onto the ground onto a certain screen mind you it has to be a very specific screen you squeeze the honey onto the ground right now you have now you have a splash of honey on the ground for no reason then you flick the emeralds into the honey
00:58:37
Speaker
It gets stuck, right? Because honey's sticky. A little like elf comes out, gets stuck in the honey, and the elf leads you out of the forest. Yeah. Did you know the elf was there beforehand?
00:58:53
Speaker
No, no, you have. Oh, that's crime. That's an absolute crime. Yeah. Yeah. That had been arrested if all the police hadn't been hit with apples. Terrible. Yeah. I wonder, I don't, for whatever reason, I don't remember that being a puzzle I got stuck on. Are you sure we're not at any point given a hint that there is somewhere.
00:59:16
Speaker
in elf who likes jacks i'm like positive i'm like positive i believe you you have a much stronger memory about these things than i do but also i
00:59:28
Speaker
for whatever reason, I remember that that is not something that I had to look and walk through for. How the hell did I figure that out? You just got used to it. Like, well, I've got to try everything. Honestly, at that point, you're stuck in a setting. I mean, you just try everything on everything. That game is wild for being unfair to the players, right? I mean, we've talked about it so many times that you have to. We've talked about this a bunch of times. I'm going to tell you because I want your reaction. So
00:59:57
Speaker
Have you heard of the cat and stick, the stick cat boot puzzle? Stick cat boot puzzle? I don't think I have. Stick cat, boot, mouse, basement. Okay, so there's a point in King's Quest where a
01:00:15
Speaker
You are just walking through a screen and you see a mouse run by and then you see a cat run by. And you can just stand there for a second. The cat will grab the mouse and kill it and walk away with the mouse. Rose's, correct me if there's any detail I'm getting wrong here. Later, you will be kidnapped by some criminals and locked up in a basement. And then you will just
01:00:45
Speaker
rot down there and die. For insane reasons, by the way. You walk into an inn and the guys at the inn are like, I don't like you. Rub them out. And they just kill. They lock you in the basement. And so.
01:01:02
Speaker
Okay, so you're thinking, so like it's a Sierra game. So you're like, okay, I must've done something wrong and you play again. Well, eventually maybe you'll realize if I, maybe if I stopped the cat from eating the mouse, the mouse will become my friend and later untie my ropes while I'm in the basement. As most are famous for doing.
01:01:25
Speaker
And if you don't figure that out, you're just gonna keep dying in the basement over and over and over again. Now, there's a second wrinkle to this, which is you have a stick and a boot. And I can't remember, and Rose, maybe you do, one of them, if you throw, say, the stick at the cat.
01:01:44
Speaker
you later need a stick and you don't have one. And so you lose there. You have to use the boot. The boot is the correct- You have to use the boot. It lets you throw either the stick or the boot and you have to throw the boot. So you have to, first of all, you have to know that the mouse is somehow gonna rescue you in the basement. Second of all, you have to know that the way to get the mouse to rescue you is to stop the cat. Third of all, you have to know that there's a specific item you have to throw at the cat to stop it.
01:02:11
Speaker
It's just surely unfair. And it happens quick. You can miss it entirely. Because when you're playing a new game, you're just kind of exploring the world. You're looking at the screens, trying to figure it out. This is almost like an action sequence that happens, right? You've got to be like, it's almost like a telltale press button now to do it. Now, granted, I didn't get stuck on that puzzle because I so desperately wanted to help the mouse. Right.
01:02:41
Speaker
I just wanted to. I just wanted to. I'm like, I don't I don't want the most to die. I didn't know it was my friend or anything. But over time, I didn't even I would have wanted to help the mouse, but I was like, I didn't even know what was happening. I was like, oh, wait, there's oh, oh, whoa, whoa. OK. All right. Well, that was weird.
01:02:58
Speaker
And there's another thing in that game, and then maybe this happens in other games as well, where you can interchange some inventory items, right? Like I think you can, there's like three store owners that wanted, they like lost their items and they'll give you something if you trade them for it. So like the tailor wants a golden needle. The toy guy wants a marionette.
01:03:24
Speaker
the toy guy, that's his toy guy. Sorry, the toy guy. I was going to grow up to be a toy guy. Yeah. And you can interchange like some of them, but. There's there's a few things you do that is just incorrect, completely wrong, and it seems correct at the time, like you can give gold to the to this impoverished family.
01:03:52
Speaker
even though you need that golden needle for like the tailor. That game is so cruel. It is so cruel, but I love it. I love King's Quest V. I am a stan. I will always stan that game because it was one of the first talking games I ever had. And I was just entranced by the whole thing, honestly. So I guess this is what we're saying is this is a high recommendation for this game.
01:04:20
Speaker
And so this is King's Quest V, the one where you won't get any of the puzzles, basically. Yeah, basically. Yeah. I mean, yeah, there's even there's another puzzle again. We've talked about it on the show, but we can't stop talking about it because these things are crazy. There's a there's a puzzle where.
01:04:36
Speaker
What is it? You need a baked item and you have bread and a pie. And you can give a person either one of them. If you give them the pie though, later you will be faced with a Yeti and die. It's a mutton chop, actually. It's a mutton chop. It's always a mutton chop. A mutton chop and a pie. Yeah, so later,
01:05:01
Speaker
you'll be faced with a yeti and you'll die. If you give them the mutton chop though, then you have the pie. So I guess the rest of it just makes sense to you, right? Ashens.
01:05:12
Speaker
So the Yeti will only kill you if you don't have a pie. Classic pastry Sasquatch. So it is, if you use the pie on the Yeti, you throw the pie in the Yeti's face and you get to escape it. And that's also like a quick scene. Like this Yeti is just barreling at you. It's just a game of this. Like this is,
01:05:40
Speaker
Like you said in your talk, you could not use Sierra games because you would just be talking about them all day. This is the example of that. Like these are just, this is a game where just every five seconds you run into another moon logic puzzle that if you don't figure out, which would be impossible, you are trapped in an unwinnable situation.
01:06:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's lovely. I don't know what this does about me. I think my brain is just full of worms or something because I also didn't get stuck on that puzzle because I wanted to offer the Yeti the pie to make friends with them. I didn't want to kill him.
01:06:22
Speaker
Instead, you threw it in his face and... And he died, yeah. Oh, he dies! He dies! It's pretty bad, Stuart. He like falls off a cliff. Oh. Well, it looks like poor Yeti. He kills you if you've got mutton chops.
01:06:40
Speaker
And so we had Alistair Beckett King on the show a couple months ago. And he made the point that some of these puzzles are not only just, you know, just bonkers by themselves,
Cultural Misunderstandings in Game Development
01:06:56
Speaker
right? They are also perhaps culturally specific, right?
01:07:00
Speaker
So, for example, the monkey wrench puzzle. You don't call them monkey wrenches over in England, you call them spanner. You just probably call them spanner. You would know what a monkey wrench is, I think. But you wouldn't generally use that term. Yeah.
01:07:15
Speaker
But does the pun make sense to you? Or would you be like, what? Kind of, yeah. But still, it's a bit, I think it's just a weird puzzle anyway. So he has a theory that some of these puzzles,
01:07:31
Speaker
especially again, the cultural contextual ones or pop culture ones, right? They made it over to other countries, Eastern European countries, German, non-English speaking countries, right? That had different cultural references. And when they solved these puzzles, they were like, oh cool, this is that kind of game where you just do random stuff.
01:07:55
Speaker
and things happen. Because as little as these puzzles make sense even in English, in another language, they make even less sense. So then when game development studios started developing games in Germany and Russia and Spain,
01:08:18
Speaker
they kind of thought the trope of the genre was to make puzzles that didn't make sense. So then in the early 2000s, we just started getting all these games from non-English speaking countries where the puzzles literally didn't make sense in any context because they were just like, oh yeah, that's how you do it.
01:08:40
Speaker
We love these nonsense games, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I think, so like when you play a game like armed and delirious with the crazy grandmother who stores all the stuff in her bra and she is a crazy animal and beast family. Oh yeah, I just told Stuart about this game. Remember, you looked it up on stream. Yes, yeah, an Israeli game I believe, yes. Right, so the thought being just like the absolute,
01:09:05
Speaker
Insanity of that game just comes from people being like like you said yeah, I love those nonsense games that Americans
01:09:14
Speaker
It's a really good point. It's a really good point. Again, Alistair Beckett King's point, not mine, but it's an amazing point. Yeah, it's really good. I never knew that. You've reminded me of something here when we were trying to play Leisure Suit Larry, and what a great game that was. Yeah, great. I mostly remember being run over and creeped out in equal amounts in that game.
01:09:39
Speaker
At the start, it has like a test to see if you're of a certain age or not to be able to play it. Oh my God, yeah. And we were not of that age at all. We were like teen, young teenagers. And the thing is, there were all such American references. We didn't have a clue what they were talking about. You were just guessing to get into the game. It's like, who the hell is Spyro Agnew? You know, I've got no frame of reference for this whatsoever.
01:10:04
Speaker
I feel like some of the questions like who's president at the time, it was like Ronald Reagan or something. Yes, that one we did know. A lot of those questions were also like there were jokes there, too. Like the answer to the question was a joke that you would have to know the facts to be able to get the joke. Right.
01:10:29
Speaker
And I remember being a little kid and my dad had the game and I knew I wasn't allowed to play it. So I would basically just try everything and keep getting kicked out of the game, but write down the questions and what the answers weren't until I got the right one. That's exactly what we did, exactly what we did. And by the end of it, we could play it most of the time and then
01:10:55
Speaker
Generally wish we were playing something else. There might be breasts in this, but it's also not very fun. I think we got a copy of police quest shortly afterwards and just played that instead of her. Did you know that it is speculated that Al Lowe wrote a little bit, writer of, at least to Larry for listeners who don't know, wrote a ghost wrote a little bit on police quest.
01:11:23
Speaker
Oh. Mm-hmm. Today, today I learned. Well, today you learned. I did this because I had to do a police quest video. But if you notice in police quest, there's like some close-ups of some like beautiful sexy women. And what does that remind you of? Reminds you of Leisure Soon Larry. Really? It was not obvious. The outlaw's contribution to games is, let's then put a sexy woman here. And they're like, oh, you.
01:11:53
Speaker
You've done it again, sir. You've done it. My favorite thing about the Leisure Suit Larry games is how many jokes are not even, how many jokes are just single entendres to the point where you can't call them jokes. Where it's just like, there's a thing that looks like a dildo and you're like, oh, there's going to be some pun about it. And then you click on it and it's like, that's a dildo.
01:12:16
Speaker
Okay, I thought there would be a joke. No, no joke here. Just a dildo. Well, those are just funny by nature. I guess we should start trying to wrap up here. Yes, we should wrap.
01:12:34
Speaker
you know, everybody make sure you go check out Ashton's video on Moon Logic. I know we've had sort of a rambly conversation about just the general concept here, but Ashton's puts a lot of work into making a very concise and linear, interesting talk about the subject. So go check it out on his YouTube channel.
01:12:58
Speaker
Stuart Ashens, thank you so much for being on the show today and just kind of bullshitting about bad adventure games with us. Not at all. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, absolutely. Is there anywhere, anything you want to plug for the listeners anywhere they should go to find you and your stuff?
01:13:17
Speaker
Yeah, you can find the YouTube stuff on YouTube under Ashens, A-S-H-E-N-S. You can find the Twitch stuff on Twitch under Ashens, A-S-H-E-N-S. You may notice there is a connecting factor here. Just Google Ashens and you'll find all the stuff. All one word, you guys, all one word. Only one word, yep. Rose, you got anything in the pipeline right now?
01:13:44
Speaker
Um, yeah, actually. I'm actually working on a modern indie adventure game review. I don't want to mention what it is quite yet, because I don't want to influence people. But that's what I'm working on. And my latest video is out right now, which is on diagnosis murder.
01:14:00
Speaker
Please watch it. It is. I grew up with these detective shows and I thought diagnosis murder was more grounded, like grounded in reality. It is not. It is not grounded at all. So check that out on my YouTube channel.
01:14:17
Speaker
We are part of the Adventure Game Hotspot Network. You can check them out at adventuregamehotspot.com. I guess I should mention, we haven't mentioned in a while, the Adventure Game Fanfare is coming up in just a little bit here, and it's about, what, two months away at this point? Yes, yeah, about it. Because it's the weekend of July.
01:14:43
Speaker
of July fuck. Of July fuck. The best day of July. The weekend of July 26th at the University of Washington in Tacoma, Washington. I will be there, roses may be there, but also a lot of your favorite adventure game creators will be there, including a lot that we have talked shit on on this podcast today. Sorry, Al Lowe. This is not that bad.
01:15:13
Speaker
So, so, you know, go check that out. Think about, think about buying tickets. Think about taking the trip out. It'll be, it'll be a fun time. And remember to email us. Matt and roses at gmail.com. Anything else you want to say roses before we say goodbye? Stewart, do you want to go with me to the adventure game fanfare?
01:15:34
Speaker
the adventure game fan, where is this adventure game fanfare? Why, it's in Tacoma, Washington, the weekend of July 27th. What weekend is that? July fuck. Ah, yes, now I'm interested. You know, it is the place in the US that is the absolute furthest away from where you live. Oh, perfect. One could not get further away.
01:16:02
Speaker
in the US from England than Washington State. I shall say no thank you very much unless I can find a magical teleportation device then.
01:16:13
Speaker
I'll look around on the streets and in tree stumps and stuff, you know. All I'll have to do is put a leash on a dog and it'll just drag me there. Drag you there. I guess I only have two more things to say, which is thank you, Stuart, for joining us. And Matt, you might have a response to this, but podcast is art. Well, art is suffer.