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Episode 45 - Loco Motive
1.4k Plays7 days ago
Come take a train ride with Matt and Roses and help us solve the murder of Lady Untervald. If only Matt still played adventure games, instead of SGG (Shoot-Gun Games). First, though, some orders of business: We have a surprising TEETH UPDATE. Roses got a new toy! Matt's new favorite game was finally release. And two cool games got release dates.
And now, the main event: A retro-styled murder mystery adventure game set on a train that HONESTLY WE SWEAR WE'RE NOT JUST SAYING THIS BECAUSE IT GETS SAID ABOUT EVERY POINT-AND-CLICK GAME has major Lucasarts vibes.
And, by popular demand, Ranking Every Adventure Game Ever makes its triumphant return.
Email us! mattandroses@gmail.com
Games Mentioned:
- Blake Stone
- Stardew Valley
- Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector
- Kings Quest V
- Cabernet
- Rosewater
- Loco Motive
- Pine Hearts
- Orion Burger
- Valiant Hearts: The Great War
- Puzzles in Motion: Backstreet Boys
- Backstreet Boys Save Christmas
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Transcript
Introduction & Adventure Games
00:00:00
Speaker
All right. So what what should we how should we open this podcast? Well, it's been a it's been a bit. It's been a bit. We've lost it. We've lost it. We don't know how to start. We've we've lost our little bit. Well, yeah, I mean, I don't play adventure games anymore is maybe like the biggest change. um What?
00:00:22
Speaker
Oh yeah, i don't I just, yeah, no. i like i What I realized ah while we were ah while we were taking our little break, which I guess we'll explain when when we're actually in the show. This isn't the show. This is just me and you chatting before. Yeah, just me and you. Yeah, I don't play adventure games. i What I realized was they're for big frickin' nerds. I see.
00:00:45
Speaker
And so now I only do shoot shoot gun games. You mean ah fiat like first person shooters? i Yeah, i call him ah i shall I call them SGGs, shoot gun games. Shoot gun games. Okay. Is this your way of resigning from the podcast or?
Podcast Direction Debate
00:01:06
Speaker
Uh, no, I think we should keep doing the podcast, but I just, like from now on, it's going to be about Fortmite. Okay. But I'm looking at our notes and it's going to be about overblotch and it's going to be about boom. Oh, boom's my favorite. yeah I like, but I like boom. three I like boom, but I like creak more.
00:01:29
Speaker
Oh, Craig. Yeah, with a soundtrack by MIM. ah yeah No one's going to get that. And that's OK. Well, someone's going to get that.
00:01:43
Speaker
um ah No, actually, my favorite SGG is Blake Stone.
00:01:51
Speaker
Just as for Blakestone, bring back Blakestone. Just as for Blakestone. Okay, yeah, but I'm looking at our notes and it says we are to talk about adventure games.
Health Updates & Challenges
00:01:59
Speaker
So if you can't do that, I don't know what the stuff is. Yeah, I wanna talk about Blakestone Aliens of Gold. It's the year 2140. Okay, all right, nope.
00:02:34
Speaker
Hey, everybody, and welcome back to Save Your Game. ah It's me, Matt. I'm at all camp. This here? Oh, you wanna know who this is? You wanna know who my friend is standing next to me is? In her a lovely evening gown brought to you by Dior.
00:02:51
Speaker
ah
00:02:54
Speaker
Holy shit, I'm sponsored by Dior. Well, it's Dior Lite. It's the knockoff Dior. Dior's discount brand. the Dior they sell in Kmart. um He's pushing up roses, my friend. Hey, everyone. How is it going? Hi, Matt. I've missed you, Matt. I missed you too. We were dying for a second. I know, my god. Like both of us.
00:03:20
Speaker
Yeah, so everybody, both, okay, here's the thing. Both of us had a medical emergency. Both of us had a drama emergency. Like we just both were just like, fuck. we can Like, just both of us, like our lives collapsed just real, real short, right? Like yeah everything's fine for both of us. They were just like, little, little chaotic moments. Oh, in fact,
00:03:50
Speaker
ah Roses, do you, this this might be surprising. Do you wanna play, um you know what song I need, right? Yes, I don't have it on the thing, but I am gonna be playing the teeth update.
00:04:18
Speaker
day Okay, it's a teeth update. ah this Yeah, ah roses, do you have anything to say in this teeth update? It seems weird that we just suddenly have a teeth update.
00:04:30
Speaker
Well, my teeth still feel bad, but I have no answers. But what about you, Matt? Do you have a teeth update? I have a teeth update. I got all my four. Look, I've had i've had four dark passengers for the past 15 years. Four little buddies who've been doing nothing but causing me pain in my little mouth. And I've been afraid to get them out. And they're calling my wisdom teeth and they are gone.
00:04:57
Speaker
They've been pulverized, ripped from my gums, and thrown in the trash can. Damn, I wish you had kept them. I think, Chief, they're so cool. i was I was a little, I was anxious. didn't want to I forgot to ask, but um but now I have four holes in my mouth.
00:05:17
Speaker
Yeah, I tried to get you to show them to me, but it was a bad picture and then you called me a freak.
00:05:25
Speaker
Like, can I see your stitches and you're like, haha, you freak.
00:05:32
Speaker
Many, no, I wasn't even on painkillers. I was just, I was just fucked up with laying in bed too long. They only gave me like naproxen. I didn't, I wasn't, I wasn't fucked up. Naproxen's not the strongest painkiller for anything surgical. It's kind of like a, it's kind of like a Tylenol, but. Yeah, it's stronger, but like it's definitely not as strong as like hydrocodone or like morphine. So when I ran out of naproxen, right?
00:06:02
Speaker
They were like, you can take ibuprofen. yeah And um they were like, you can take 600 milligrams and then you just have to, then you you take it every six hours. You can take 800 milligrams if it still hurts. And that's every eight hours. And I looked at the bottle and the bottle of ibuprofen says take one and maybe two if on your first dose. Oh i yeah, I know. It's taking fucking four times.
00:06:31
Speaker
Yeah, you can. That's what my, like, one of my dentists is like, hey, if you need, take four every eight hours. As long as it's spaced out, you can do that. It's unbelievable. Yeah, I know. It's wild. ah Yeah, it's the worst thing I think my jaw just really hurt. Like, who knows what that guy did while I was passed out? He was probably just like yanking it back and forth. Like, I gotta to get in here.
00:06:54
Speaker
Yank, just like. Four hours later. I didn't, and like right away it was my sockets hurt and I got dry sockets unfortunately. Oh my God, that's awful. And ah so right away, like that's what, that hurt so bad that when that started healing, then it was like, oh my fucking God, my jaw hurts so bad. And so like by the time you were ready to start recording,
00:07:20
Speaker
And that I was like, I can't talk this week. Yeah, I
Gaming on the Steam Deck
00:07:24
Speaker
kind of figured because I've had my wisdom teeth out and in adulthood when they're impacted like that, it's tough. It's ah it's a tough painful surgery, especially if you end up getting dry socket, which not everyone gets, by the way, everyone. ah That's what happens when like a blood clot is dislodged. So and obviously even when you get a tooth out, you're going to blow when you get your wisdom teeth out, you're going to bleed and you need that blood clot.
00:07:48
Speaker
See, I tried so hard to follow like all the instructions. Well, I did follow all the instructions. The problem is, this is what I figured out, I had had my wisdom teeth for so long that I've just gotten used to, basically every time I close my mouth, I do a little, so like i i i I make a little suction in my mouth. I'm like, most of the times I so i close my mouth because I had space between my molars and my wisdom teeth.
00:08:15
Speaker
and sometimes food would get stuck in there. So just like pro, pro, pro, pro, preventatively, there's the word. I was gonna say prophylactically. Not the same thing. yeah So ah preventatively, I would just go like, all the time. and um I don't know if that's picking up on the mic, but it's basically me sucking the back of my teeth. Yeah. And ah so like,
00:08:42
Speaker
what I realized is probably while I wasn't paying attention or while I was asleep, I was just sucking on the back of my teeth because it just becomes such a habit. right So the fact that it took me so long to get my wisdom teeth out made me develop habits that root like that like made my wisdom teeth harder to heal. Anyway, so that's my teeth update. um I have the My tops, my topses are fully healed over. yeah There's just like little divots, but I still have two holes in the bottom. The bottoms are tough because they're literally a part of your jaw. Wisdom some teeth are a part of your jaw. So it's ah it's a tough heel. It really is. And so I figured, and then while you were dying of dry socket, I had surprise strep throat.
00:09:32
Speaker
you but I could not believe it. Let's talk about this because you say it's surprise strip throat. Yeah. Roses, how long did you have st strip throat? Like three weeks.
00:09:46
Speaker
and like How many episodes did we record that apparently you had strep throat while we were recording? like i like Two to three. Yep, at least two. Because I thought, okay, listen, I didn't realize that since COVID strep throat doesn't present like it used to, especially in adults. It does not present like strep throat. i have strip I've had strep throat. I used to get it like every year as a kid.
00:10:11
Speaker
And you can look in your mouth and kind of tell. And then the other giveaway is like, you have problems eating, it's hard to swallow. It's very painful. And it was. But I looked at my throat, I'm like, what's a little red, it's a little raw, it is really painful. But maybe I, I don't know, maybe I talked too much, right? I don't know what I I don't know what I thought happened there. So I finally went to the doctor. And even he was like, he looked at my 30s, like, you know, I don't know, I don't know if you have it. But I already treated three cases today. So we're gonna, yeah. So we're gonna give you a test. And I had it, I had strep and it was wild. I was very surprised that it was strep. Didn't look anything like it. Hey, this is, you know what? This is streptown. This is streptown. So let me just scrape that throat.
00:10:59
Speaker
ah So gross. um Yeah. But yeah, I got on antibiotics and felt better immediately. yeah They work really fast. Modern medicine. Modern medicine, folks. And we won't talk about our our drama, but we are both, we're recovered. We're back to health. We're recovered. In that time, did you happen to play any games? I play, well, here's the thing. Here's the thing.
00:11:27
Speaker
ah My mental health took took a dip over the last couple weeks. And I don't know if this is gonna make you sound like a great friend or a bad friend, but we were texting. And I'm like, damn it, I just wish I could play a game.
00:11:43
Speaker
in bed because I have a tablet, I can't run games on it. And the way I play games usually is on my giant desktop, my my editing ring, and that's in my studio. And I was like, all wallowing. And you're like, you should get a steam deck. And then you can wallow in bed while playing Stardew.
00:12:02
Speaker
Matt, you were supposed to get me out of bed. I don't know if that was a apparent to you at the time.
00:12:09
Speaker
However, I did buy the steam deck. It came immediately. I didn't realize that and this is going to be my segment for for what I played is just talking about my steam deck. So
Citizen Sleeper 2 Review
00:12:22
Speaker
yeah, yeah. um So I was actually kind of surprised that you can just buy like the Steam Deck on Steam, as it's like it's like it's a game or something. It's been wild since the very beginning. each like add You can just add like Civilization III and ah ah ah Cyberpunk and a Steam Deck to your cart. Yeah, you can just add a Steam Deck. Also, ah two different Blakestones are on Steam. I just looked it up. Two?
00:12:53
Speaker
Yeah, Planet Strike and- Oh, Planet Strike. I think I knew that. Oh, what? Really? I didn't know. I think I did. I did not know their subtitles.
00:13:04
Speaker
Planet Strike and Aliens of Gold. That does not sound, this latter doesn't sound familiar. But yeah, i yeah you can buy it on Steam. I bought it. It came within like two days. I was stoked.
00:13:17
Speaker
And i got it's so easy to set up. Dude, it's the best. I can't believe I have access to all my Steam games wherever I go. ah so I got my steam deck and brought it back into bed. It is this feeling that the first time you do it, like it like it that wear it wears off, right? But the yeah the the first like month maybe that you have your steam deck, you just can't believe and the stuff you can just play in your hands. Yeah, yeah. I think it's gonna be really helpful and useful for me because while, I will say this, wallowing in bed is not great, right? It's not the best idea.
00:13:54
Speaker
You should try to get out of bed. However, I do think that playing a game is better than just staring at a wall in bed and disassociating or being depressed. So it's something, you know? I honestly think it's better than mindlessly staring at TV either, right? I do too. Yeah, I do too.
00:14:15
Speaker
the but One of the reasons I was like, oh, you should get a steam deck is just because we had um I thought, I thought something might perk you up. And I don't think he played either of them yet, but we got two really cool codes. Yeah, we did. During our dead time. And hopefully these are things that, well, one of them I'm gonna talk about in a minute, but the other one hopefully we'll talk about pretty soon. Yeah. In a upcoming episode.
00:14:51
Speaker
Yeah, we got some really, we got some cool code. So what else do you have anything else to say about the Steam Deck before I? um I will say that I played the game in its entirety that we're talking about today, which is locomotive.
00:15:05
Speaker
And I feel like it was very easy to play an adventure game on. And I don't know if that's because this was the first thing I booted up when I got the Steam Deck. I'm like, you know what? It's time to play locomotive. ah So I put that on there right away. So I don't know if it's because of how locomotive was designed or if it's just pretty easy to play adventure games on the Steam Deck.
00:15:28
Speaker
So yeah, it depends. I've played a bunch. I've had my Steam Deck for a while. I actually have one of the OLEDs, which, fuck those OLED screens are beautiful. Yeah, they're cool. um But i had I've played... There's two ways that adventure games go. um One is if you have the ability to control your character, like use your D-pad or your stick to walk around, generally what the game will do is like when you approach a hotspot, it'll highlight you press X or A or something.
00:16:03
Speaker
And you can interact with it and those ones really great. Yeah, we' really good on a steam deck and locomotive is like that. But if you do not have the ability to walk around and it expects you to still use either the joystick or the thumb pad, the track pad, to control a mouse, it's miserable. It sucks so bad. And i've played I've played some entire point and click games using a mouse in that way. And it's should like and and it's like fine, but it's just not, it doesn't feel good.
00:16:42
Speaker
yeah That's fair, it is tough to, especially if it's like, can you imagine doing like a hidden object game on the same deck? That might be fucking miserable. And I've complained on this show before about like you'd think um that touch screens would make that easier, but then your fucking finger's just in the way. Right, yeah, I did notice that. I'm like, eh, this is a little like cumbersome.
00:17:10
Speaker
But I will say first for games like similar to locomotive but the hotspot situation. I think last door would work very well on steam deck because that is a hotspot situation. I really love it. I'm glad I bought it. It was kind of expensive, but I think it'll be worth it. I think it'll be worth it. I think you'll get your value out of it. I've had to buy two steam decks because one of mine died almost like a couple months after the after the warranty ran out. um ah The battery just I think it was when I was in Louisiana um and it didn't shut off all the way. I had a problem with that steam deck where it wouldn't it was having
00:17:49
Speaker
Sometimes it would shut off and then just turn right back on and I couldn't figure out why. um And so it ended up being on in my bag while I was walking around Louisiana, known for its heat. ah And then when I got to the airport later that day, it just wouldn't turn on and it would never turn on again. Oh no, it would never turn on again? No.
00:18:14
Speaker
ah i think i think yeah I think something melted. ah oh but But I yeah just like overheated and wouldn't work anymore. So yeah i I've bought two and I had to think a lot about value when my first one died. Like should I buy another one or did I just like, and I was like thinking like, well, I've played, I've had it for over a year and the amount of games I've played that I wouldn't have played if I would ah was only able to sit at my computer and play them is huge.
00:18:50
Speaker
And so, yeah, so over time, I think like it is worth it. Yeah. I agree. Just don't bring it to a melty place. ah Yeah, or at least make sure it's off. Yeah, for real. That's really unfortunate. So I played a game.
00:19:10
Speaker
during our time off that I fucking loved, and everyone knows what it's gonna be, because I've been talking about it. I know what it's gonna be. Citizens leave for two rules. Yep, yep, yep. It's so good. So, I've talked about it before, like the,
00:19:30
Speaker
The basic premise of Citizen Sleeper, you are an android that is programmed two like with the body and thought patterns of a specific human um who owes a debt to a corporation and they sleep while this android works their debt off. And you play a sleeper that, they're called sleepers, and you play one that has escaped. And so the basic premise is that you're trying to survive out in this space world.
00:20:00
Speaker
um while but and like but with a space world that's kind of hostile to you, because you're a fugitive. And and and it's a it's sort of like a hyper-capitalist society.
Upcoming Game Releases
00:20:17
Speaker
So trying to survive and trying to make the money to survive and find the resources to survive is really hard. um Citizen Sleeper does away with something citizen sleeper two does away with some things that citizen sleeper one has for example in citizen sleeper one uh this see if you can catch the metaphor here um you are uh your body is always because you are the property of a corporation um you are
00:20:45
Speaker
programmed with planned obsolescence. so Your body is constantly decaying, um and it becomes harder to even perform actions in the world as your body decays, and so you need to keep buying very expensive medicine to make your body work. um They do away with that in Citizen Sleeper 2. Okay, and did you like this change? Yeah, I felt less desperate the entire time. Okay, that's fair.
00:21:12
Speaker
And when you feel desperate in Citizen Sleeper 1, it is purposeful, right? It is part of the ah the point that they're trying to make. um But like Citizen Sleeper 1, the game is all, and in this game, you're building a crew. You're going on missions rather than being stuck on one space station. um You get to explore several space stations. And so the things that you have to, you have to save money for fuel and supplies. um The missions can be really stressful because you can only keep five days of supplies in your ship and you go out on missions.
00:21:52
Speaker
And you kind of have to complete them in five days because if you run into supplies, you start starving. Um, the other thing and your dice start breaking. And then, so instead of having five dice to apply to actions per day, now you have four, now you have three, now you have two. Um, so it becomes when things get more desperate to you, it also becomes harder to achieve anything. Which is again, see if you can catch the metaphor there. Um,
Locomotive Game Discussion
00:22:21
Speaker
right and they add a really, they add a concept called stress.
00:22:30
Speaker
Oh, God. Which is is very stressful, which is if you fail while on a mission, you gain stress. ah Either the mission gains stress, which is like um sometimes that means that somebody else is competing with you and they've just gotten ahead of you, or somebody's hunting you while you're doing your mission and they've gotten closer, or you are doing a mission on a break ah ah wreck of a spaceship and when you fail, you cause the spaceship to fall apart a little more.
00:23:04
Speaker
So there's both like the stress on the mission, and then there's personal character stress. And when your gain character gains stress, you have a larger percentage of chance that one of your dice breaks every day. okay And that could get really unlucky. Yeah, I'm sure. I feel like I don't realize it had a dice ah mechanic.
00:23:30
Speaker
Yeah, that's you get you roll five dice every morning, every day when you start a new day and you get to apply them to actions. So it'll be a thing where like, oh, if you have a full, and you your skill adds to your dice roll. So if i have a i if I have a four in my dice inventory and I have a plus two on that skill, then I have a six and I'm going to ah complete that action perfectly.
00:23:56
Speaker
but if I have a three and I have a minus one in that skill, now it's two, and I have a 50% chance of having a negative outcome and a 50% chance of having a neutral outcome. And if you have something in the middle, it's gonna be something you know like 50% chance neutral, 25% positive, 25% negative. And then it's just, again, it's like ah that's just random.
00:24:20
Speaker
I feel like that would stress me out so hard because that that was one of the things in disco that I found kind of stressful, but also fun at the same time. It was very fun, but also just that had that chance factor was like, oh yeah. And it's I mean, like, that's what makes the game addictive, too, is you just want to see what your dice rolls are every day. And then when you get bad ones.
00:24:42
Speaker
you wanna see what tomorrow brings. And if you get good ones, you wanna go do your actions, right? So it's it's it's a really addictive loop. And um and again, just like Citizen Sleeper 1, the point of the game is really uplifting. And really it it is, if you think about it this way, like the solution to the problems of capitalism is community, um which is something I truly, truly believe in. And that's what both games are about. As you,
00:25:12
Speaker
make sacrifices to help people and to make friends and to build communities and to help communities, they end up coming back to help you tenfold. And so your body's breaking down. you You have to make money for food. You have to get money to make your body stable. You have to make money to not get killed by an assassin that's hunting you. You have to do all, like you are in a desperate situation. but that right But even when you're in that situation, you gave a hundred credits to somebody who needed to rebuild their ship and was in a tight spot. And then suddenly that person is now your, like, appears and saves you from a fate. And right they are now your best friend, and now you two are in it together. Right? It's like King's Quest. It's like you helped the mouse.
00:26:01
Speaker
And then the mouse helps you. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, it's exactly like King's Quest. Citizen Sleeper 2 is like King's Quest 5. It's a really, like Disco Elysium, just very well written. A lot of dialogue. ah and very well written and ah about socioeconomic problems broken into game mechanics and story beats that make them digestible. yeah And even if you do not want to sit there and interpret the politics of it, like if you don't if you're not if you're not good at literary interpretation or you just don't like it,
00:26:36
Speaker
Um, you're still going to absorb the messages passively. Sure. Right. Like you get who the bad guys and the good guys were in disco Elysium and you get the broader messages, even if you don't understand the intricacies of the difference between neoliberalism and, uh,
00:26:54
Speaker
socialism, right? right um And same with citizen sleeper, right? Even if you don't catch the capitalism metaphor, you do get this sense of like, I made friends and these friends are helping me through a tough time and kindness is a superpower. It's just, again, it's really uplifting, especially in a time where in order to survive in America, we will need to build community.
00:27:22
Speaker
but yeah So that's Citizen Sleeper 2, it's really good. um I don't know if you wanna leave this in or cut this out, but you have a code for it sitting in our inbox. I always have a code for something. I would highly suggest checking it out. it's Yeah, that's probably the next the next game I'll play on my Steam Deck. Okay, before we talk about what we're talking about in this episode, I wanna mention two things to our listeners, and it's two release dates that popped up.
00:27:51
Speaker
um First of all, so these are two games that we've talked about a lot. Let me make sure I have them right. Okay, these are two games that we've talked about a lot and they both had release dates ah an announced during our absence. Oh, great. So first one, Francisco's Game Rosewater. Nice, nice. Go Francisco, front of the show.
00:28:19
Speaker
Hell yeah, Grintislav Games out March 27th. Great. Oh, that's coming up. Yeah, can't wait. Yeah. And then the other one, which we talked about. You say strange antiquities, because if you're not going to say it, I'm going to be sad. Oh, you're going to be sad. It's Cabernet. Oh, right. Right. I knew that. Yeah. I was hoping in my heart that it would be strange. We knew it's we knew its release date. We were embargoed on its release date. So we knew it a little ahead of time. But now it's public. So February 20th.
00:28:52
Speaker
Wow, yeah, that's really cool. Kevin is coming out, and I think we will be talking about it on the show. Yeah, I think we will be. Yeah, so around that time. All right, you want to play some, ah you want to get out our dicey roll arena? Dicey roll arena.
00:29:12
Speaker
That's my new favorite thing. Absolutely love it. All right, so you want to pull up put on some monkey prance arena.
00:29:25
Speaker
Well, yes, I do. And then we'll talk about Arthur A. Ackerman, Herman Merman. Herman Merman. Diane Osterhagen in Locomotive.
00:29:52
Speaker
Hey everyone, welcome back to Save Your Game. I am Pushing Up Roses. This is my co-host, Matt Aucamp. Hey! Hey, what's up? Hey! How's your break? Good, I peed and got water so I've undone my progress.
00:30:08
Speaker
We gotta get it back, you know? I mean, what is yeah life besides undoing your progress? but yeah but undoing your progress You sleep just to get tired again, you pee just to drink again. Terrible. Fucking awful. ah But you know what the good thing is, is we have things to distract ourselves, like amazing games, like the one we're going to be talking about today.
00:30:35
Speaker
Citizen sleeper. No, Matt. Oh, locomotive. We're talking about locomotive. Yeah, it was ah it was the first game, like I said, that I put on my steam or not. I already had it on there, but it's the first game I played on my steam deck and I really loved it. I had already put it on my best of list because I had played through some of it and I just recently had a chance to finish it and it remains high up there. It's a very good game.
00:31:05
Speaker
Do you feel like you, having played now the whole thing, we we both were really hyped on it even before we played the whole thing because we really, you know, we felt really strongly about its beginning. um Do you still feel that it is your number three game of 2024 now that you've played through the whole thing?
00:31:25
Speaker
Yes. Okay. Yep. I don't think I would change it. I don't think I would put it higher. I don't, I don't think I would put it lower either. I we remain. That's where it remains. but Yeah. What about you? Would you change it? No, I don't think it would crack my top five. I think it would still be in my, I think it would still be in my like, um, it's really, it'd be like in my top 15. I think, I think it stays where it was. I think my, it,
00:31:56
Speaker
I'll talk about it. I do have some complicated feelings about it. Yeah, yeah, for sure. um but Where do we want to start here? Because it's this is not going to be a super huge deep dive, because this doesn't quite rely on narrative the way that some adventure games do. I think this game is more in line with those old LucasArts games. you know Monkey Island didn't have the most insane plot line, so it wasn't a Hobbs Barrow you know type of situation. It was more fun, comedic, intriguing.
00:32:27
Speaker
um it took a little It took me a while actually I think in my life um because I was so into adventure games and so into comic books, the comic books of the 90s specifically. um that ah because That's when I grew up. That it took me a while to be able to really absorb a story wholesale because I think in both cases,
00:32:56
Speaker
ah there's stories that rely more on a string of moments sure than on a full-on narrative. um And there are narratives, like there's a narrative to Monkey Island, but where oh we what sticks out to you is not like um the three act structure of Monkey Island, it is, it is um the insult sword fighting and then finding who Herman Toothrod on the island and then um chasing around LeChuck with a root beer bottle. And then you're like, you know, on you think I'm actually thinking more Monkey Island 2, which has a slightly more complex plot. And again, even that, it's just like, I think about moments rather than the full the full story. And I think I feel the same way about this. Yeah, I do too. um
00:33:48
Speaker
I think that kind of falls in line with whodunits because when you were presented a whodunit structure, you kind of already know what that structure is a lot of the time and in murder mystery, um which is fine. I don't need to be surprised by a new structure in murder mystery. But that being said,
00:34:06
Speaker
these kind of things rely more on moments and character situations and dialogue. So like I could tell you the the plot of locomotive in like a sentence, right? I mean, it's in the trailer, somebody gets murdered, and your character or characters get involved in it somehow, and you need to figure out who did it.
00:34:28
Speaker
um And it's not, and then when I say you need to figure out who did it, what I really mean is you need to just play the game. This is not a Laura Bose situation where you are it just expected to know. It's not, it's not like that. It's way more merciful than that. No one's going to ask yet. There's no point in the game where somebody asks you to solve the murder. Correct. Yeah. Which I was, I was happy about. I'm just like, uh, what is it going to do? I didn't solve it until fairly late in the game. ah sure i like like i Like when the game basically gives it to you is when I got it. Yeah, it's not really a game that, you I mean, you can be thinking about who the murderer is, but again, it's more reliant on the the journey, the moments that you have, um the beautiful settings. I thought the puzzles were great. I have a lot i have a lot of good things to say about locomotive. What were some moments that stood out to you then?
00:35:21
Speaker
So I loved the first, I guess the first act was basically a prologue. I loved the prologue and the first act with the character Arthur Ackerman. Yes.
00:35:33
Speaker
It was so, I don't know, it was just so fun to revisit kind of this train, closed circle, whodunit situation. The characters, even though obviously this is a modern game, it really had the fun factor for me, that Monkey Island had. It had that fun factor. Like these characters are well voice acted. It's beautiful. Oh my God, when I saw some of these animations. Great, incredible voice acting. Yeah.
00:36:02
Speaker
you're right that it's beautiful and it's got this, like the fact that it all takes place on a train and the top of the train is is rolling along ah and you can see the wheels rolling below you and you can see the the um ah skyline passing above you at all times. is so it It gives it such ah an atmosphere, like a consistent, interesting atmosphere that you don't always get in like a point and click game.
00:36:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's true. And you never, even though you are majority majority of the time you are on the train, you are in other places in flashbacks, which is nice. It gives it some nice change of scenery. um But even though you are on this train a lot, it doesn't feel like you're backtracking too much. You are, trust me, you are going to go back and forth ah in these train cards.
00:36:55
Speaker
ah but they did include like a run, you know, a little run animation. I never felt too frustrated by going around these carts, you know, these. No, because it's, you you're either going left or you're going right. You don't, yeah you're you're not having to memorize like a complex ah point and click map, you know? Right, right. um I really, I gotta say, I really liked these puzzles up into a point.
00:37:21
Speaker
I'll say that. okay um i This game takes a turn in mechanics near the end. It becomes more in line with ah like Day of the Tentacle, ah which we'll talk about a little bit more. But I really liked the puzzles that you did with each specific character. I think they made sense.
00:37:42
Speaker
without being overly easy. ah It was rare that I got stuck. I think I texted you. I'm like, I got stuck in the stupidest way. I just didn't scroll my inventory. I forgot I had a cuff that I needed. Yeah, there's only like two times in the game where you have enough inventory to need to scroll.
00:38:00
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And usually that's not a problem with me, but for whatever reason, I just didn't. So i did I did like the puzzles. I thought they were fair with with exception of a couple. There's some big exceptions in my opinion. Yes. and and Yeah, same. It almost kind of falls almost directly in line with some of the LucasArts games, if you kind of reflect on the structure of the story and the way the puzzles work in the end. But I really liked playing as Arthur Ackerman, who is the attorney. So in in every whodunit, you have a list of characters, right? They all have
00:38:37
Speaker
different roles that they played. Kind of this this older lady this kind of she's the ah the owner, I guess of the train that you're on called the Royce Express. And it's one of those situations where she's going to do like a will reading, she's constantly making amendments to her will.
00:38:56
Speaker
um And now everybody in her life wants her business. They want to be in on the will. um Everyone kind of has a motive for her to die. um And that includes her family and like her estate people as well. ah So like the attorney, which is us in the first part.
00:39:18
Speaker
um her accountant, I think is one of them, a competitor, like ah who wants to buy her out. Everybody has a motive. It's very Colonel's bequest. You know, you're in this situation with all these weird characters who are all kind of terrible in their own way. Yeah.
00:39:34
Speaker
But
Locomotive Game Jam Version Comparison
00:39:35
Speaker
my favorite character is Donnie Donato. yeah okay
00:39:44
Speaker
He is this scheme with the accountant, with the accountant character, this like gambling scheme using ah using wooden poker chips that he just keeps making and a magnet at at this roulette wheel on the train.
00:40:01
Speaker
And it it it reminded me very heavily of being in Grim Fandango and messing with the roulette with the roulette table and and having this like little casino area. But Donnie Donato, yeah, he's just like this. He's like this Brooklyn crime monster guy. Yeah, he at some point he tells you he's like, people call me Don. Get it, Don. I love that character. I love his voice acting.
00:40:31
Speaker
I think it's so funny. I yeah, that character made me laugh and I was so glad he came back at the end because we actually we kind of get him arrested. I mean, he is he is doing illegal things and we needed to get there, you know, in order to find out motives and see if he was possibly in on the murder. Yeah. um But he comes back later in the game and I think he's hilarious. What did you think about the the way the story was told, because we start kind of in present day with Arthur Ackerman, our first character. Yeah, there's a framing device that runs throughout the whole game, which is that um you are being questioned after the murder at a police station. um Each character that you end up playing
00:41:24
Speaker
is being questioned one at a time. And that's your introduction into each section. ah And, okay. i think i have to talk about I think I have to talk about this now. I um i played, so this game is, ah a this is an extended version of a game that was made for 2021 Adventure X Game Jam. This made in two weeks. um I didn't even realize I owned this, but I had it from like an old itch dot.io sale.
00:42:04
Speaker
Oh, okay. And then i I just, I was like, wait, I have a game in my library called Locomotive and it's the same, it's Locomotive, right? Wow. How did that not come up? I'm shocked. It's like an hour long game and it it is, you know, it doesn't have voice acting. i It's got the same sort of, it's got the same sort of really colorful pixel art, but it's not quite as,
00:42:29
Speaker
um detailed and the story is much more truncated. And what I found is that I think I preferred the truncated story. wow Because once you play the original version, yeah it starts to feel like um the expanded version, the full game, is is not like, it's not like fulfilling the original vision, and it might be, I don't know. I don't know the creator's brains, right? But it doesn't feel like it's fulfilling the original vision so much as it feels like it is expanded it's trying to expand on it so that it's longer. So that made me a little more frustrated with the, or at least, ah yeah, a little less happy about the scenes in the police station.
00:43:23
Speaker
um I also didn't really like the Herman Merman section at all. Okay, that's fair. I was gonna ask you what you thought about the different character sections. I thought Herman Merman as a character was a little obnoxious. And I i didn't love the puzzles in his section. um I found myself more stuck in the Herman Merman section than I was in any other section. okay um And it just didn't flow to me the way the Arthur Ackerman section. And then later,
00:43:52
Speaker
um the the triple character sections did. But one thing I did like is that you go over similar sections of time as the as each character. right So so so there's ah there's interesting things that'll happen. like um You'll see something, like there'll be a chef that's traumatized by a recent health inspector visit.
00:44:20
Speaker
and you just think it's like a little throwaway gag, but then later you see exactly why. You'll see something weird. And it helps you with the puzzles. It's like, oh, I have to be the health inspector because that's what they said. I have to traumatize these guys. Yep, I have to traumatize these these people. How am I gonna do that? You'll see a, ah yeah, you'll see like a a guy who's incredibly drunk and then you'll flash back as a different character And the guy's sober, and you're like, oh, I gotta get this guy drunk. Yeah, I thought that was clever. And you'll see this cello case that's stapled shut. And you don't even think about it until you play as another character. And you're like, wait, why the hell? the Yeah, I should have questioned why this cello case was stapled shut.
00:45:07
Speaker
ah But ah yeah. So those those things I thought were interesting that this game has some replay value. If you play it a second time, you'll be like, oh, okay, I know what this is. um But I do think the game was a little stretched out in places. How about you?
00:45:30
Speaker
I don't know. I don't know if I found it stretched out, but I do agree that Herman Merman was a little obnoxious. And I think I liked the section. i I got stuck maybe once or twice. i did I did like it. I did like that I kind of knew what I had to do. and and traumatize some chefs. That was very fun. So I don't know if I find it stretched out, but I do feel that Herman Merman would have been better as another non playable. I think he would have been better as just another character kind of in the cast, let's agree.
00:46:06
Speaker
I would have liked to play just as Arthur Ackerman and maybe the third character, Diana. and And I got to say, Diana deserved way more screen time. Oh my god. Yeah, yeah I thought she was a very cool character. I want to learn more about her story and how she was involved.
00:46:25
Speaker
And her solo section is so short and so easy. Yeah, it is. It's maybe the easiest the easiest section, I would say, um which is fine. They don't all have to be equal amounts of of difficulty level, but i I do think Diana as a character should have gotten more play time.
00:46:50
Speaker
Or, or I wish it kind of would have stayed Arthur Ackerman, because I got to really like that character. Same. Yeah, I really liked that character. I wanted to keep playing him. um I loved all of his interactions with the other characters, so that was too bad. The the part I disliked the most, and and and obviously we are critiquing this game, but I always feel like I have to say, I still loved this game. Yeah, of course. I will play this game again. We wouldn't dedicate an episode to it if we didn't love it. Correct. but i And this is a personal preference, too. I do not like playing more than one character at a time. so I knew that I had to play different characters, but that's all separately. You know, you play Arthur Ackerman, and then you play Herman Merman, and then you play Diana. However, in the last couple parts, you are controlling all three characters to solve puzzles, much like in the vein of Maniac Mansion or a Day of the Tentacle. And I get so
00:47:48
Speaker
overwhelmed yeah by that. In fact, in one of these settings, it's almost exactly like Day of the Tentacle because you're using toilets to transport items. You said that so casually. You're using toilets.
00:48:03
Speaker
I'm trying to be objective here. Yeah. Imagine, imagine somebody doesn't, who's never played neither game and you're just like, yeah, it's the same as you're, it's the same because you're using toilets. What the fuck transport items to each other. And I just get, I get very overwhelmed by that and.
00:48:26
Speaker
I think sometimes when you have multiple characters, it's not always apparent to the average person what you need to do, because it's information overload. You suddenly don't remember who has what inventory and what needs to go where. And some people might like that, and that is great for you. And you will probably like the end of the game. I just got over overwhelmed. i didn't it It was a little bit of a letdown for me.
00:48:51
Speaker
but i mean I mean, endings are hard anyway, so I am giving it a little grace because it's very rare that I just love an ending to anything. yeah um So endings are are tough, just ask Stephen King, the man can't end anything. So I get it and I empathize, but I do wish, I think it could have been better without the controlling of three characters.
00:49:17
Speaker
i I liked those segments. I did feel the same level of, hope I did feel at least initially the same level of overwhelmed as you did, especially because there's talking. And I was like, am I supposed to have dialogue between every character and every other character? That seems like way too much. And again, like that sort of thing of who's supposed to have what i inventory item at what time felt very overwhelming, but the puzzles felt very doable.
00:49:43
Speaker
in both sections. So I didn't feel that so overwhelmed that I wasn't able to appreciate the novelty yeah of them. And yeah, obviously the toilet inventory um is a nod to Day of the Tentacle. did you Also, did you catch the reference to Full Throttle in Diana Osterhagen's section?
00:50:09
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, she pulls out, so just for the listener, she pulls out, ah they they they burn out on a motorcycle of the scene and it plays the full throttle theme. Yeah.
00:50:23
Speaker
yeah yeah This is definitely very inspired by LucasArts specifically. ah Like I said, it's the toilets, the motorcycle, the casino. I think that i think I equate that. Oh, even the ah there's a handshake puzzle that of course reminds me of Monkey Island puzzles of, you know, rhyming insults and little games like that. So yeah, very heavily inspired.
00:50:47
Speaker
even some of the theme music, like the background music, reminded me a lot of Monkey Island 2. Same, yep, absolutely. ah Yeah, which is which is, again, fine. you know we We have our love-hate relationship with the adventure game nostalgia, the point-and-click nostalgia stuff. um yeah But in this in this in this specific instance, I think it was fine.
00:51:16
Speaker
I do too. Yeah, I do too. And maybe that's because it wasn't fully meta, you know, it wasn't specifically calling out anything and, yeah and you shouldn't, you know, you shouldn't have to just call out what you're, what you're referencing, right? And if you are inspired by something, it should show, or if you're trying to express something, shouldn't have to say it, you know, all the time. So I liked it too. It didn't break forth walls like that. Uh, so I was happy with it.
00:51:44
Speaker
And I think because it's displaying a lot of the same levels of skill as some of yeah those early LucasArts games. And so, you know, there's a lot of times maybe it feels maybe one of the things that feels frustrating. And this is just kind of catalyzing in my mind at this moment.
00:52:00
Speaker
one maybe one of the things that feels frustrating about so many point and click games referencing LucasArts games is like, man, you're nowhere near that level. I know, I hear it. Stop pretending like you are being a Monkey Island because you are not there. And Locomotive really does have a high, the quality is really high. Yeah, I was gonna say like they're therere there for me. They're better quality than LucasArts.
00:52:27
Speaker
um But that, of course, that's because LucasArts doesn't make games anymore. We're comparing
Puzzle Design in Adventure Games
00:52:32
Speaker
modern to, you know, retro technology. So it's a little little, it's not the most fair, but I would say they did a good job um taking those inspirations and implementing them. So want I want to talk about a couple of things. First, I want to ask, did when did you when did you know who the killer was?
00:52:52
Speaker
I had an inkling prior to figuring it out. Okay. Uh, just when I saw the, I saw the killer working with their, we'll call them accomplices a lot. And it just felt weird. I'm just like, why, why, why? And just by, by deduction too. I think you get, you can talk to all these characters and get a good sense of who they are.
00:53:16
Speaker
I think I solved it the moment they appear in the scene where you know it's them, um but before it's revealed. I think okay them being there, it was like,
00:53:28
Speaker
Oh, there they are probably the killer. And then yeah I didn't recognize that it was one person working without accomplices right right until a little bit later. And then- They were using people that got to their knowledge. That didn't know, yeah. yeah um So also, we both alluded to one puzzle that was particularly un unfair. Like there were some frustrating puzzles. I think probably both of us felt frustrated by some puzzles. But there's one puzzle I felt that was truly unfair. I'm not I don't know if me and you have the same one. But do you want to do a three, two, one same time? I don't know if I did I say I had one because now Oh, okay, you don't? Well, mine mine is really the toilet stuff. I hated it. oh I actually hated those puzzles. You don't feel like there was one puzzle that was just
00:54:23
Speaker
ah frustratingly unfair. Frustratingly unfair, frustratingly unfair. There was a couple of puzzles I find that were unfair, right? Like there's some- Could you name one, name one that's like just kind of unfair to you. So I know where you're going. Okay, so like,
00:54:38
Speaker
This is not reminiscent of the one that I found unfair, um but they there's one where you have to make a knife slippery and you have hand cream and butter, right? yeah And you can put butter on the knife. You can't put hand cream on the knife. And once you put the butter on the knife specifically, if you try to put hand cream on the knife, he's like, no.
00:54:57
Speaker
um right Also, yeah if you use the knife on the butter rather than butter on the knife, he says no too. um yeah i did I did think that was kind of so weird. So you have to mix, this is spoiler, but you need this spoiler. ah You have to mix the hand cream and the butter and then put it on the knife. You won't do it once it's already on the knife. And it's just like, why does why does it let you put butter on the knife?
00:55:22
Speaker
right and then not let you put hand cream. It just didn't make any sense. It was just like, you have a very, and there's- I felt like that was just not thought through. They should, cause like, that seems like such an easily fixable thing. Yeah, well, there's so much in that where it's, there's so much in the game where it's like, okay, if you use item A on item B, he has no idea what you're talking about. But if you use item B on item A, yeah he does it. And it's like, it's the same thing, um which is very frustrating.
00:55:53
Speaker
um I'm trying to think what section is your is yours in the Herman Merman section and what it is is it's a ah It is a sort of I guess you could call it a pixel hunt I see. Okay. All right. Why don't you go ahead and tell me I'm is it is it the mouse? No, gonna be able to do a three to I thought you had one and I was wondering if we had the same one But no mine were the toilets Okay. So I was about to blurt toilets.
00:56:19
Speaker
yeah ah No, it's the smudge puzzle. The smudge puzzle. there's a there's a There's a scene where you need to discover, you need to figure out the hand ah hand gesture. Oh, in the cult? Oh, I figured that one out. But I didn't even know, you can't see a smudge on the painting. But but it's there.
00:56:44
Speaker
It says there's a smudge. If you click, you can't click on the painting. You can't, the the painting is not a hotspot. Just the smudge, which is a like three pixel by three pixel hotspot. True. Oh my God, roses. It's because you played on the steam deck. Yeah. And so you had a hotspot. You had a hotspot, yeah. i yeah I didn't. Oh no. Oh no. Because you need to find it with the mouse.
00:57:14
Speaker
h And so there's no smudge on the painting, right? Like you can't visibly see it. right right And you can't click on the painting. You can't have him like look at painting and he's like, Oh, what a nice painting. There's a little smudge over by the hand though. Right? Like that doesn't happen. You just have to click this tiny little dot on the painting. Yeah.
00:57:38
Speaker
that you don't have, and there's no reason you should know it's there. It's just a horrible, horrible puzzle. um it's It's worse than your general, it's worse than your general pixel hunt because you, again, you can't see it. In a pixel hunt, you're generally supposed to be able to see, oh, so this one thing is slightly different color than the rest. You can't see it. It is just, if you happen to drag your mouse over that section and the hotspot appears,
00:58:08
Speaker
you'll know it's there. But if not, but again, on the steam deck, it'll, it'll highlight it for you. um Interestingly, that that reminds me of a clue you have to find in Dagger. I don't know if you you played this relatively recently. So you might remember that there is a painting forgery scheme going on in that plot.
00:58:30
Speaker
And you actually have to touch one of the paintings and the old master's gallery. It doesn't look off. It does not look off. You just have to touch it. And it's wet. And that's how you know that there's stuff. Which is like, what? Who does that? But anyway, that's beyond the point of a really dumb criminal. Well, that game also has a hotspot in the middle of a painting, too. Yes, it does. You can see it. But it's sparkling, yeah. Yeah, you can see it.
00:58:54
Speaker
I guess like in locomotive, the point wasn't for it to look like a smudge. The point was it to look like it was painted over. So I guess that's why they didn't make it look egregiously smug. It didn't look like it was painted over. I i know. and you ah So I called Dirk Chisleton. There's a hotline. There's a hint line in the game. And he says, he he like pointed me there and so I went back and I was like, you can't click the painting. What are you talking about? I can't click the painting. So I just like out of frustration, I was just like dragging my mouse all over. yeah And then it was just like, and then a hotspot popped up that said smudge. And I was like, what the fuck? And the thing is it's immediately, it's like a centimeter away from the head ah right of a anotherther of a character.
00:59:44
Speaker
right so i yeah i mean that's hardly noticed too yeah had i not walked over to that character i would have not even seen the hot spot because you can actually talk to that character from different points on the screen and you can walk in place front right and you can walk in the front of the table at any point you don't have to walk behind the table and again the painting itself isn't a hot spot right which is how that puzzle should have been right there should have been the paint whole painting should have been there should have been a look at mo like feature for the painting. And then he would say, um oh, this looks like a great painting, although the hands look a little weird or whatever, right? Yeah, um agreed. And that's tough, because I'm sure like when you're designing it, it makes total sense to you. But all you need is like one play tester to be like, I couldn't find it. Yeah. And then you'd be like, oh, OK, well, let's just let's expand this. Yeah.
01:00:41
Speaker
um I couldn't figure out how to wake up the, uh, the hyper drunk guy. Cause I couldn't scroll my inventory. I was so frustrated. I didn't know what was going on. And I called, I called the Dirk Chisleton hotline too. And he, and I'm like, I need more help. I don't know. And he's like, yeah, just give him the the spicy soup. I'm like, I want to, I would love to give him this. but And yeah, I just had to scroll and find a cup.
01:01:08
Speaker
I was so frustrated by the whole Herman Merman section that by that point I was i was doing Dirk Chisleton a couple times. I didn't do Dirk Chisleton in any other sections, but in Herman one I did it like four times. So ah here's another thing. the other The last thing I want to talk about is um I do want to talk a little bit about the original, the game jam um version because there's some big differences.
01:01:37
Speaker
um First of all, um there's a different killer. Oh, I did not know. i I might have to play the game jam version. You only play Arthur Ackerman. The killer is a different person. Some of the characters, okay, like the the sister with the hearing horn is not a character.
01:02:05
Speaker
in the game, but the puzzle where you have to steal a healing hearing horn from a lady to make a cocktail in it, and she's a re-corker. That is in there, but she's just deaf woman in the game, okay and has no connection to any other characters.
01:02:26
Speaker
ah The, obviously, I think this is probably obvious. Diana Osterhagen is not in the game at all. There's another character who is, i well, she might be, there's a character who is the daughter of somebody else, like a daughter-in-law, I think, um who gives you, she actually is the one who tells you the handbag story that clues you to why you should give the briefcase to the twins. Yeah.
01:02:52
Speaker
um She might be named Diana Osterhagen, but she's just like a passenger on on the train. okay um Also, in ah in that in the Game Jam game, and it gives you a setting. Apparently this all takes place in 1939 in Switzerland. It does? It does? Yeah. I'm confused. Maybe you can help me. Someone help me with this.
01:03:21
Speaker
i okay When I found, um, what's her name? Uh, oh God, the, the main, the woman who gets killed. What's her name? Um, Unterwald. Unterwald. Later, and Lady Unterwald. Lady Unterwald. I found her like birth certificate for a puzzle and I swear the year said 38. I think it said 1838.
01:03:49
Speaker
Really? I don't know, wouldn' we did well we'd have to look at it, but i' yeah I remember thinking that her birth certificate said in 1800s. Date. Okay, that's fair. what one of I mean, either one of us could be wrong here. like It wasn't something that I paid such close attention to, but um even yeah even in the wiki, like locomotive takes place in the 1930s. Okay, well then I must have read it wrong. But in the...
01:04:18
Speaker
were in the Game Jam version, it specifically says Switzerland 1939. In the in the and the full version, Arthur Ackerman says, there's a joke, an optional joke, um and that's a line of dialogue where um Arthur Ackerman's like, the story takes place where all good mysteries take place in a ah ambiguous European locale. Yeah. Yeah.
01:04:47
Speaker
um But yeah, ah I'm trying to think there's there that the scene. The last scene on the train, the classic LucasArts boss fight scene, is fully, almost fully in the original too. Which was surprising to me. That was kind of fun. It wasn't too difficult, so I appreciated that. It's a little more graphic in the original, by the way. yeah ah What you'd think would have happened to the guy
01:05:28
Speaker
absolutely happens to the guy on the... okay um But yeah, ah what else do you have? Oh, and then the scene where Arthur whips off his belt and then knocks yeah the gun out of ah bad a bad guy's hand yeah is just as random in the original as it is. in the in the full game. you yeah Still, there's nothing that indicates that Arthur is a belt. A belt whipper. Belt whipper. That you don't have any control over it. not it just It's the weirdest moment where she's like, why the fuck did that just happen? Yeah, I found that that train section, kind of that action section, a little strange.
01:06:17
Speaker
um but like again and overall this was so fun it seems like they were trying to shoehorn that moment from the original into the full one and they just kind of lost its context uh so it's it's much it's much less weird in the original, but also that belt scene is still like, what the fuck? like You have no agency there. He just does it. I don't know. It seems like they should have made the belt a inventory item earlier in the game and given the use so that you as the player will use the belt on the gun right when the time comes.
01:06:57
Speaker
right
01:06:59
Speaker
Yeah, and then um ah closing thought is ah our good friend, front of the show, Alistair Beckett King, actually is in this game. He voices one of the characters. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, it's so cool. um And the character looks like Alistair. Yeah. it's It's so great. I love, there's like a little a little secret society in this game. And ah it's so cute. It slightly reminds me, it's a little Discworld-esque, right? It's got kind of this ah goofy, kind of goofy meaning to it and motivation. But
01:07:36
Speaker
It's a group that started with a very specific purpose, but then got so lost in in how much, like fell so in love with the theme of their group that they're yeah that everything about their group just became about the theme. That's such a funny idea. It is funny. ah Speaking of like funny, would you call this game a humor? It's funny. Did you laugh at this game? Cause it is goofy. Let's, but you know, let's put that out there. It's meant to be lighthearted and and kind of goofy.
01:08:06
Speaker
I think, I can't remember a scene where I but I'm pretty sure, like I have a vague memory of having a couple small out loud chuckles, but then there was a lot of that that's sort of like, a you think back on it and you're like, oh, that was funny. Like for example, that secret society, it's that's such a funny idea is like, if me and you formed a little society to, you know, I don't know, whatever,
01:08:39
Speaker
a little, ah a secret cult to control the stock market. But we made it about, but we called ourselves ah the Falcon.
01:08:50
Speaker
Falcon ears, right? And then we got so obsessed with making everything Falcon related that we forgot to manipulate the stock market. yeah like That's basically the case here. that's so It's so funny ah in concept, but it didn't really wasn't really laugh out loud. How about you?
01:09:09
Speaker
i I feel the same way, but it's more of like a mental, like this is cute, this is very lighthearted. There was a part where um you're in a literary agency, and instead of agents now reading your script, they put it through an electronic board to see if it meets the requirements, and you have to short circus short circuit this board. ah You have to sabotage it.
01:09:33
Speaker
And when you do, all it says after is blarg! Like, let's consult the board. Blarg! A funny thing, ah here's another thing that I think is funny, is like how how often you ruin everybody's lives and make and do a bunch of illegal shit and destroy everything in an adventure game just to solve the puzzles. Yep, it's very guybrush.
01:09:58
Speaker
So the idea in this game that you are in a police station having to explain it to some police is also wasn't laugh out loud funny at the time, but is funny in retrospect. It's like like a magic guy brush having to ultimately he saved the day, but having to be like, oh, yeah. i yeah I stole this and I stole that and I ah drugged this guy. yeah I almost killed this person. like It's like that in concept is so funny. Yeah, it's very, even if it's not a laugh out loud, funny game all the time, it's definitely, it's got that humorous feel to it. It is lighthearted. like This is not a serial killer, like dark adventure game.
01:10:47
Speaker
So that's
Adventure Games Ranking
01:10:48
Speaker
locomotive, everybody. I think it is worth it is worth checking out. um yeah you know For my and my preference, honestly, I think I might enjoy the original a little better. um Because it's just it's just more succinct. And you know not everything that's shorter is more succinct.
01:11:10
Speaker
I could say, oh, Harry Potter is a story about a little wizard boy who beats a bad wizard guy. That's not more succinct, right? That's just abbreviated to the point of worthlessness. But I do i think that the um ah the itch.io game jam version is that is legitimately more succinct. But,
01:11:34
Speaker
I think a lot, but it doesn't have that that amazing voice acting. It doesn't look as as good. It's not. Obviously, it's not as long and involved. So I think a lot of people might disagree with me. So yeah. And I love the voice acting and that the animations are so special. They're just really good. They're really, really animated and expressive. And yeah, it's one of my favorite parts about about the game. um So, yeah, everybody check it out.
01:12:05
Speaker
Roses. Yes. this is This is up to you. Okay. Do you wanna play and Trunky Smellerino? Whoa.
01:12:19
Speaker
Don't look in that trunk. Do you wanna play Trunky Smellerino and then do do a quick ranking every adventure game ever. Yeah, let's do a quick rank. You wanna do maybe three?
01:12:31
Speaker
Okay, yeah, let's do it. Yeah, let's do that. let's What am I playing? Smelly Trunkarino. Smelly Trunkarino. And wait, before you do, why don't... Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoops. No, I saved it. What were you gonna say? ah Why don't we just say, why don't we like you said before, why don't we say our goodbyes? Like like like like we're doing a regular old episode.
01:12:53
Speaker
final goodbyes. No, ah we are part of the Adventure Game Hotspot Network. Check them out. They have a bunch of cool stuff going on over there. They have some other cool YouTube series and podcasts and reviews on the site. ah You can check us out on Instagram at save your game podcast. Yeah, that's right. And you can email us, madaroses at gmail.com. Yeah, please do. um We love our Instagram, so I gotta get some art up there of Hanson Swanson. I promised him, I promised him that I would draw a portrait. Yeah, he's been pissed. He's been he has been banging on the stairs nonstop. I haven't actually let him out. ah He stopped banging a couple of days ago, maybe.
01:13:44
Speaker
Did you check to see if he was alive or? No. No? Okay. Well, let's not find out. I was sick. I was sick. I was sick. I didn't feed him or check to see if he was alive.
01:13:58
Speaker
All right. Smelly Trunk Arena. Smelly Trunk Arena.
01:14:18
Speaker
everyone, welcome back to save your game. I'm pushing up roses. This is my co-host Matt Aucamp and we are going to rank some adventure games. So this is the segment where we are attempting. We have a ah list of every adventure game ever released. Uh, it's like 4,000 almost. And we are trying to rank all of them, even if we haven't played them. Um, so we're picking and they are picked at random. Um, roses, give me a number between one and 10, but don't say eight.
01:14:50
Speaker
Seven. Okay. All right. So ah number 428 from 1996 from Sanctuary Woods Games. ah It is the video game Orion Burger. Burger. Okay. So this game, I have played some of Orion Burger. Whoa, really?
01:15:12
Speaker
Yes, it's hard to get running. But I have played some of it. And it was a game that I constantly saw on Home of the Underdogs when I was younger. I loved the screencaps. It looks a little bit broken sword-esque. It's very 2D, cartoony. And it looked awesome. It looked like a really cool space quest, you know what I mean? Yes. That being said, when I did play it, there was some letdowns.
01:15:41
Speaker
Yeah, and it's hard to run. ah It's one of those. And it's difficult. It kind of suffers from a lot of those things that adventure games from the mid 90s suffered from is very, very difficult, a little underwhelming. But man, I just i I don't know. There's something I really like about it. What do you think looking at it?
01:16:01
Speaker
Okay, so this was a game I saw in a video game magazine. I have i only ever had like three video game magazines my whole life. um And I saw this advertised in a video game magazine when I was a kid. It might've been the same one that advertised Curse of Monkey Island. oh wow Or wait, not ki either Curse of Monkey Island or that The Vague Promise of Monkey Island 4.
01:16:30
Speaker
okay Cause I remember seeing some, that in a magazine. Anyway, so I saw the, uh, like an advertisement for Orion Burger, an interviewer about it or something. And I was so, so excited. Yeah. It's one of those, it's one of those games where it's like, if you are an adventure gamer or a fan, you will like the aesthetic of this.
01:16:50
Speaker
Yeah, the aesthetic is really cool. It's like ah like ah like a cartoony like kid gets abducted by aliens and something about a burger. And I was so excited to play it and I just never saw it come out. It just never appeared in my local like video game stores.
01:17:07
Speaker
okay and you know and it wasn't as easy to follow developments back then. So I just never saw it and never got to play it. But it has a special place in my heart because it appealed to me so strongly back then. um it has and It has a place in my heart too, even though I don't think it's very good. i Yeah, i've I've heard that it's not very good. Here's another interesting thing about it, a fun thing.
01:17:36
Speaker
um As of December 22nd, 2024, it is now supported by SCUMVM. Oh, yay, I can play it without it like breaking. Yeah, I remember seeing this a couple of days ago and being like, oh, interesting. um So I would put it, i I don't think I'd put it as low as it probably deserves. I think I would put it in the top like, you know, and this is because we've only ranked 80 games. I would think I'd put it in the top like 30.
01:18:05
Speaker
I would. Yeah, it's still it's still an interestingly good quality game. And obviously it has that nostalgic factor where we're both yeah remembering the excitement of of seeing it advertised. So I would put it in top 30. I might put it like.
01:18:25
Speaker
Man, okay, I guess it can't go here, can it? I was saying- No, we cannot put it above Portal, Matt, even though you're thinking about it. I was thinking of putting it around Clam Man, because it seems to, it feels like a similar sort of idea, but then the one below Clam Man is Amnesia Rebirth, and I guess it would be really insulting to put it above Amnesia, which is a legitimately good game.
01:18:54
Speaker
Well, let's put it below amnesia then. Okay. So above wave tail, it's about fair. It's about two above midnight girl, which I think is actually a good place for it. That's a good place. Yeah. Um, okay. Here is our Ryan burger. Here's our next one. Uh, 3,237.
01:19:16
Speaker
who Uh, it's a 2024 game. Oh boy. I know. I have not played it. I also have not played it. It is ah from Hyperluminal Games Limited. It's pininhart Pine Pine Hearts. OK. OK. I don't know. so But this feels like OK, so I've been maybe this will be this will not.
01:19:46
Speaker
this article will not be out by the time, this review will not be out by a time by the time this episode comes out. but So I don't wanna spoil it, but I've been working on a review for a game that came out last year that is similar to like little Gator game or a short hike. Which are these games where you're just kind of like a cute little guy who has like a very simple task and you run around a cute little funny world. Yeah, I love the short hike.
01:20:12
Speaker
where, um and there's something, there's these these types of games that have come out since a short hike that have this sort of similar feel where it's like fun first and um not not too complicated of a story. And this almost looks like it fits that. And like so what I call those, yeah what I'm calling these now is ah playground games.
01:20:39
Speaker
Oh, that's cute. It's like a little playground you can play in, right? like like Yeah. Short hike is like, you there is an objective, but mostly you're playing in a little playground. Yeah. um And same with a little gator game. It's just like, there's just a lot of fun little stuff to do. It's got a lot of good reviews.
01:21:00
Speaker
Um, yeah. And people are saying it's a wholesome adventure, similar to a short hike, low gamer. And it's got, yeah, it is said to be similar to the little cater game, um, and the game that I am reviewing that I won't say. Yeah. Well, that being said.
01:21:18
Speaker
I it's always tempting to put these a little bit further down because i'm putting in our more exploration. Yeah, they're not as much of an adventure adventure, but. I mean, that said, I just put it on my wish list.
01:21:34
Speaker
Okay, well there you go. 20 bucks seems like, I don't want our podcast to be about this, but 20 bucks seems a little high in this game. Yeah, maybe. But anyway, so we'll wait till it's on sale. Sorry hyper-illumino games. But yeah, I think, I think it's gonna go in a top half for me.
01:22:02
Speaker
I'll put it in the top half, but, um, cause then immediately I'm like, I want to play this now.
Game Interest & Ranking Debates
01:22:09
Speaker
Okay. Well, that's definitely speaking to, to its trailer and, and everything. So, okay. We'll put it above something that you didn't feel that way about where you looked at something and you were kind of impressed, but you didn't wishlist it. Okay. Yeah. So it's, that so then that goes ah probably ah above the,
01:22:30
Speaker
Oh man, okay, so that that's like around the, okay, so let's, we're looking around the 40s. Okay, like we were here forever. It's probably the first place, first game on this list where I'm like, no, I don't think I, cause below that's Will of Arthur Flabbington, which I wasn't like, I was like, ah, it looks fine, but I don't, I don't feel a need to play it. Um, but below that was an Acronist, which I did play and was like, yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah.
01:23:00
Speaker
um What where do you think? So that that that would be like 37, below the Ben Jordans, above we were here forever in Will Flappington. I will put above Flappington for sure.
01:23:16
Speaker
um
01:23:19
Speaker
I trust your judgment on this, because you were more of a cozy gamer than I am. I wouldn't have even played a short hike, if not, if you hadn't told me about it. So you have more experience. So I trust your judgment on where you want to put it. With these sort of cozy platformers. Again, I'm calling playground game. Let's see if we can get that off the ground.
01:23:40
Speaker
We'll see, when my when my when my mysterious my mystery review comes out, if anybody picks up on it. Stop making fetch happen. I'm trying to make fetch happen. um All right, why don't we, we'll leave it there then. i Sometimes I feel like I get more um I get more say on where these end up on the list because I'm looking at the list. You're looking at the list, but how you do I always say whereabouts it's going to be. so Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I just, I don't want to, I don't want you to feel left out. of the Like I knew where Orion burger should have went immediately, so I'm glad I was able to ah communicate that. Okay. This next game I don't think came out, so I'm just going to delete it. Okay. I'm looking at the developer's website and it just isn't there.
Ubisoft Games & Valiant Hearts
01:24:32
Speaker
well Okay, so this game is by, this is weird. okay We've never seen this very ah popular company ah appear on, this company just hasn't appeared on a show even once. okay um It was released in 2014 and it's by Ubisoft.
01:24:56
Speaker
Okay. Just dance 2020. All right. It's called Valigan hearts. The great war. well It is a 2d comic book adventure. The story of four cross destinies and broken love in a world torn apart. What? Okay. I don't like Ubisoft.
01:25:20
Speaker
this It makes me sound like a capital G gamer, but I do have a real distaste for Ubisoft and they're like the way I think most people do. The way that they try to like pump money out of their customers and they underserved. I really wanted to play Prince of per Persia and the Lost Crown.
01:25:37
Speaker
ah But I couldn't bring myself to like make a Ubisoft account. And so I like I bought it on Steam and then asked for a refund because I was like, I'm i'm just not going to. Anyway, don't even get me started on the Just Dance series and their servers because I will blow a gasket. But this said this looks really good. This looks really good. This is a game that I think we would play. I mean, look at the overwhelmingly positive over 22,000 reviews. And this illustration, it's got this illustration style that's like pen and ink, ah but colored. That's really, really nice. um yeah Like I can't tell, and it's got like, it it tries to make itself like a playable comic, which yeah sometimes those kinds of games are really successful and sometimes they're really not. yeah um But this looks, it looks really good and it looks legitimately kind of epic and legitimately kind of heartbreaking.
01:26:36
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I'm pro back to like, if I saw it on Home of the Underdogs, what would I think? And this is one where it's similar to Orion Burger. I'd be like, yes. There's just no question that you would pick this up, right? You would just yeah immediately. um But that said, we haven't played it and it is Ubisoft.
01:26:56
Speaker
So it's at the bottom. No, it's not at the bottom. um here So here's my thought. I want to put it by Orion Burger, but continue with your thought. Okay. All right. All right. That's fair. Here's my thought is, you know, what we had this exact same reaction to what the game legend of hand. Oh yeah. Legend. Yeah. Yeah. We looked at it and we thought we've never played this game. I don't know that I'm going to run out and play it, bright but it looks beautiful. It looks like something that if we did take the time to play it, we'd be like, Oh, this rules. Okay. So.
01:27:33
Speaker
My thought was if we put it below, my thought was, my first thought was, what if we put it just below Legend of Hand? only because it's Ubisoft. So it belongs below cloak and dagger gates game. Until you said that I was going to say put it above it because I think graphically it is more impressive. yeah but yeah Because it's Ubisoft. And you I don't think you'd want to put it up above murder she wrote.
01:28:07
Speaker
but that's just where we are. It's what we have to do. I think this is gonna be one of those ones where we look back and like one day we're gonna have played both these games, both Orion Burger and Valiant Hearts the Great War and we're gonna look back and be like, why is Orion Burger 10 points above Valiant Hearts the Great War? How did Murder Sherode get up to number one? When did you put that there?
Adventure Game Party Planning
01:28:31
Speaker
it's um ah Dude, I think we should have an adventure game party. Okay.
01:28:40
Speaker
and Hear me out. It's only me and you. But that's okay because we'll save time that way because we don't want backseat gamers ruining our stews or whatever. So we're going to have a venturing party where we play the games that we say we want to on this list that we have. We'll order pizzas. We'll get pizzas. Audience, we haven't played, but but are above ah above number 40.
01:29:09
Speaker
but We inexplicably put really high up our list. Dude, it's going to be the best. We could stream it. Your guinea pigs can be invited to this party because they're not backstreet cameras. What is backstreet cameras? Hold on. There has to have been a backstreet boys game.
Speculative Backstreet Boys Game
01:29:33
Speaker
No. Let me. All right. It's but looking backstreet boys.
01:29:40
Speaker
video game. Puzzles in motion, Backstreet Boys, PC Mac. Well, no. Is this just an electronic puzzle? Backstreet Boys, save Christmas. This has to be fake. Video game, oh, no, that's fake. Okay, I was gonna say no. Backstreet Boys, save Christmas is... No!
01:30:05
Speaker
Hold on. No, I refuse to think that that's real. Save Christmas.
01:30:12
Speaker
solve a Backstreet Boys mystery.
01:30:16
Speaker
Hold on, i now now we have to, I i can't dear possibly move on with my life until I see if Backstreet Boys, it's on video game Fanon. So that's, Fanon means fan cannon.
01:30:33
Speaker
It was released in limited qualities and it's now very rare. ah The game received yeah ah mixed reviews, but has gained a cult following over the years because of its absurd plot. i It was originally going to be an action platformer centered on ancient Japanese mythology, but it failed to gain any interest. Core-san games
01:30:58
Speaker
I don't know what to believe either. Is this- I need to talk, you know what? We gotta bring in the big guns. I gotta talk to LGR. He has every game ever made. He doesn't really, but he has a lot. I wanna see if he has any intel on this. I have a feeling that this is a fake wiki. Yeah.
01:31:17
Speaker
um But wouldn't that be so cool? But wait listen, what is real is puzzles in motion from 1999. That is just the Backstreet Boys with puzzles, like as in a board game. It's just you do puzzles. You just put puzzles together. But it it is real. Games plus video plus music, it says.
01:31:43
Speaker
I want to put puzzles together okay while singing quit playing games with my heart. There's literally one page on the entire internet that contains backstreet boys save Christmas and the word and the, and that it's gotta to be fake. All right. All right. sorry first everyone Somebody knows video game fanon.fandom dot.com and is laughing at us yeah and is um losing their minds that we are believing that we for a second believe that was real.
01:32:09
Speaker
We just wished and hoped. We just wanted to play it back. We just want to play, yeah. Everybody wants to. Everybody. Podcasting is art. And art is supper. Yeah. Yeah. Am I sexual? wo
01:32:33
Speaker
ah You're not supposed to answer, my all my boys are supposed to answer. oh sorry my heterers and all what do you have to say all My heterosexual male friends are supposed to answer. but i what i asked When I the boys, the group, when I ask the group chat, hey guys, am I sexual?