Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to 8bit to 4k where you talking all things game. Literally from 8bit to 4k. I'm pillow pat and with me I have two other co hosts. We have Mike of many names.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Howdy, howdy, howdy.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: And we have Jack Zoman.
[00:00:16] Speaker C: It's me, I'm here.
[00:00:17] Speaker A: First I'd like to make a shout out to our patreons supporting us at the shout out tier. We have Codex, Ninja, Robogon, Skipius, Skip Skip, Skippius Esquire, Skippius Esquire, and Labana.
We do have a Patreon come support the podcast. $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month will get you exclusive fee to some behind the scenes audio for prep work before each show and $10 a month gets the exclusive feed. We'll also shout out your name during the intro of every episode. We also have a discord. The link is in the episode description. Come join the family.
Give us some advice on think the podcast is going. Give us some topics and just tell us how you feel about it.
So I don't know, I wanted to maybe jump into some small talk with you guys, see how you guys are feeling.
What's going on? It's been a couple weeks since we've gotten together. Record this. So Jax, we'll start with you. What's been going on?
[00:01:20] Speaker C: So as of when we're recording this, which we're recording this on the 11th of September, Silksongs has been out for a week. Hollow Knight Silksong has been like the most anticipated game on Steam for years for many, many people, myself included, because I fucking love Metroidvanias in general and love Hollow Knight in particular.
So that's most of what I've been doing in the past week. I've already put like 20 hours into silksong in the past week. I should check out playing a lot of other games.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: Oh God.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: I've seen lots of playthrough or people playing the Silk song and there was a lot of hype for it. Like I really want to get into it and it's probably going to be on my very soon to get bucket list so I can sit down and enjoy it, but lots of other things.
[00:02:10] Speaker C: If you haven't played the first game, you should because it's a good game, but you do not need to play it to enjoy what Silksong has to offer.
There are some allusions and references to the events of the first game, but nothing that's like going to impact your ability to Understand or follow or care about the story of Silksong.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: You may care a little bit more about Hornet as a character who Hornet is the main character you play as in Silksong.
[00:02:35] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: You seem to get a little bit more love for her if you've played the first one because she is a character that shows up in the first game.
And then once you start it here, it feels like a little bit more Hollow Knight. If you've gotten through the first one, it just feels like more. Only now there's the world had the personality in Hollow Knight. Hornet has so much.
[00:02:57] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: And so there is still the world's personality that's going on around her. But Hornet has this just like mixture between adorable and fierce personality.
[00:03:09] Speaker C: Yes.
And also, like, the world has a personality. It's not the same personality as the world of Hollow Knight was.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: So I was gonna ask you, I know you say you don't have to play the first one to get into the second one, which, you know, I appreciate when games do that.
But I curious, is there a lot of world building in the first one that would make sense in the second one, or is it just like, kind of like, okay, you know who this main character is.
And are you talking story crossover or.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Are you talking about world crossover? Because those are different.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: I would say both. I would just say, is there like a lore standpoint or.
[00:03:45] Speaker C: The first game dumps you in, knowing nothing.
You explore a ruined kingdom underground and you learn about that ruined kingdom. The second game opens up with Hornet having been captured by bugs from this other distant kingdom and taken to it. So you are physically not in the same space at all that the first game was set in.
It's the same world.
There are references to, like the Weavers, for example, which you will learn in Silksong what those are even if you didn't play Hollow Knight. But if you played Hollow Knight, you know about the Weavers and Hornet's history with them.
So, like, you come in with knowledge and things will make sense quicker. But Silksong still is going to explain what you need to know to enjoy Silksong.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Yeah. They're each distinctly individual stories.
There's a little bit of character like Bleed over in that because of Hornet's past, you have a little bit of history. Bleed Over. The lore is mostly separate from where I'm at. I have to say that because neither of us are anywhere near finish, as far as I'm aware.
[00:04:59] Speaker C: Given how Hollow Knight ended, I don't see how there could be tiebacks to it. Where the Events of Hollow Knight meaningfully affect this. But I could be wrong. Mike and I are both somewhere in Act 2. I don't know which of us is further right now.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
Saying that did not understand that there were going to be acts that just showed up.
[00:05:19] Speaker C: To be fair, they opened the game with act one. So I was like, oh, this has acts. For some reason didn't know what acts entailed on it, but we saw that it had acts immediately. So that's not a spoiler that there is an Act 2, by the way.
[00:05:33] Speaker A: So just out of curiosity, because I've never really got into like the Hollow Knight genre like I said I want to.
So it's a Metroid mania.
Yes.
So not being much into the genre, are there like skill points involved? Is there like leveling up or how's, you know, without being a spoiler warning, how does that work?
[00:05:55] Speaker C: So it doesn't do like straight up Castlevania games do. There is not experience points in levels. You do gain a lot of just actual raw power over the course of the game. You can get like weapon upgrades, you can get tool upgrades, you can get more health, you can get more silk or soul in the first game, which is like your magic meter.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: It's significantly more towards the Metroid than the Vania side.
[00:06:22] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:06:22] Speaker B: It's a lot like Metroid in the stance that there is a progression. That is not exactly. This gives you more stat. It is.
[00:06:31] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: This gives you new tools.
[00:06:35] Speaker C: I'm gonna go to the original for an example because I don't think anyone's gonna care if I spoil what abilities are in an eight year old video game. So in Hollow Knight, you start out, you have a little sword you can slash. You can slash in every direction. If you try it, you'll figure out quickly that if you slash down and jump on something and slash it while you're landing on it, you'll bounce off of it. And you can use this for traversal. But then as you play the game, you get access to a dash. You get access to a like ground pound that breaks certain spaces. You get access to a super dash that you have to stop and charge up. But then it just launches you flying.
You get a double jump, you get access to a dash that can pass through things.
And I'm sure I'm missing a progression power up or two.
So that's like Hollow Knight has a lot of like, oh, I got this new power. I can reach this place now. Silksong doubles down on that. It's very Metroid in Its design in that regard. It's very much about, oh, I got this new power from this event that happened after this boss or whatever. Where does that let me go now?
And the map is sprawling and there's a lot of paths without spoiling what they are or anything. There are multiple ways to reach Act 2, which is crazy. Metroidvanias usually have one path that is the intended path. And then maybe you can break the sequence in some way. This game straight up has two paths to get to Act 2 in addition to. There's tons of sequence breaks. Like the jumping off enemies that I mentioned for the original Hollow Knight is back in Silksong. I have definitely manipulated enemies to a position to where I can jump off of them and get up to places that I'm clearly not supposed to be able to get up to yet in multiple cases.
In one of them, I just ran into a boss that I couldn't beat yet and had to go back down before I died because I was pretty sure if I died it would be a pain in the ass to get my. To recover my rosaries. So that's another thing these games do. When you die, you respawn at a bench, which is like a campfire. In Dark Souls, all of the enemies in between where you died and where you respawn are back. Technically, it just respawns every respawnable enemy in the game. You then have to corpse run back to your body to regain full power and to get your money back.
If you die during this corpse run, all the money you lost is actually lost.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: Now this is very Dark Souls. Like this is straight up the soul level.
You're losing your souls and knowing things. I've frequently called it Souls because that's just the pill I've got.
[00:09:17] Speaker C: Yep. And these games are fucking hard. Hollow Knight was a hard game and Silksong is harder.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: It's a bit of like the. It's not just bosses that are hard or fights that are hard. The platforming is top tier difficult at times.
I have. I've noticed that there's a lot of like very finicky movement to get to progression force. But it's very natural in the progression that's pushing you towards. So yeah, despite the fact that it is a difficult game on the face of it, it is a difficult game.
It eases you in just enough that like, here's how you're doing the thing. Here's a little more advanced version of it now. Get the full gauntlet of it. Get the pain.
[00:09:59] Speaker C: Both Hollow Knight And Silksong are extremely good at the show. Don't tell tutorials.
I. On the first episode of this podcast, I mentioned my love of Super Metroid.
Super Metroid, when you get the grappling hook, provides you with multiple rooms where even though you're in Norfair, the like heated lava portion of the world, these rooms you have to grapple across gaps and there's no lava beneath you so that you're allowed to fuck up without it being like a game over.
Silksong does very much the same thing. You get this new power, you need to use it immediately for these low stakes things so you can figure out how the hell it works before you have to use it in fights or while being attacked and you're trying to run away.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: There's. There's a little thing that I want to point out and that if this is something that even mildly interests you, if this is a, a genre that you either want to try and get into, like pillow, or you're a very big fan of it and you just haven't picked it up yet, just do it.
[00:11:01] Speaker C: Yeah, it's.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: The game is $20 for the original and $20 for silksong.
[00:11:06] Speaker C: They are regularly on sale for seven and a half to 10.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: They are. We're as. We're at 30 hours for me almost he's at 20, probably 25 closer to. I don't know if we're even halfway done with the game. We have no idea where the baseline is.
[00:11:22] Speaker C: I don't know if there's more acts than two or not.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: There could be three. Like we. Now that we know that there's one and two, the immediate thought is, well, maybe there's three.
[00:11:32] Speaker C: Yeah, that's my assumption.
I don't know.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: I know there are a couple of five act structure things. So like, maybe it's a five act structure game. Could be a two act structure.
[00:11:42] Speaker C: Yeah. No. No freaking clue. And that's part of what's so exciting is that there's this game that you actually like, are encouraged to discover shit in and are rewarded for discovering shit. Mike and I have both found different cool powers in the game where the other person was like, wait, you got what? Where?
[00:12:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know where. I have a thing that Jax doesn't have. So I don't know how to tell him where to get it because, yeah, like, I don't remember where I got it, but I got it like 10 hours ago over there and it saved my ass for this thing. And then he has put on I Haven't touched.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: I put on a stream of someone playing Silksong like when I went to bed and I only caught like the first like four minutes before I fell asleep. But the game looks like gorgeous like.
[00:12:31] Speaker C: Art detail wise, the art is top tier, like hand drawn cartoony art. It's fantastic. The music is exactly the right moods. It's haunting, it's exciting, it's, it's perfect artistically. Both Hollow Knight and Silksong are 10 out of 10 games period.
They are, you know, gorgeous to behold and experience.
[00:12:58] Speaker A: What I like about games that do like the cartoony art style is it literally makes the game timeless. Like it doesn't have an expiration date to graphics. I mean let's look like the first one I can think of off top. My head is like Wind Waker from Legend of Zelda. I mean it came back way on GameCube. You played it today like you wouldn't even know. Like it's just a cartoony art style. It's great.
[00:13:19] Speaker C: Wind Waker still looks good even though it's 20 plus years old. And there are very few 3D games that can make that claim. Almost all of which are from Nintendo on the GameCube specifically by the way, because the other ones I can think of are like metroid prime and F0GX. That one I guess isn't. Nintendo made it.
[00:13:40] Speaker B: But like it's, it's, it's also a slightly weird thing. So there is one little bit. You are an insect and if people have real big problems with insects. Yeah, you might have a very tiny problem. Take a look at some of the pictures and things because they full stop.
[00:13:56] Speaker C: If you have like arachnophobia to the point where you cannot see spiders in games without freaking out, you cannot play this game. I'm sorry, it does not have an arachnophobia setting. It would ruin a lot. There are bugs everywhere, many of which are spiders.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: But take a, take a look, take get like a screenshot of, of what some of the enemy types are like so that you can take a decision on whether or not this triggers your like arachnophobia. Because they have done such a good job of making what like my roommate cannot deal with bugs. You're him. They are adorable to him.
[00:14:34] Speaker C: Yeah, the art in this game is adorable.
In Silksong, the fast travel is with this. They call it a bell beast, but it's basically just a big four legged bug.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: He's my travel bubby.
[00:14:46] Speaker C: His mannerisms are like a dog.
So it's a big bug puppy. And you can pet him.
It's great.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: So other than Silksong, you guys been into anything else? Been doing up to anything?
[00:15:00] Speaker C: I. I still play Path of Exile and obviously League of Legends, but no, Silksong's been absorbing most of my free time.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: League of Legends, I, I reopened the original just to get a feel for the intro to to base. Hollow Knight. Oh, the mood they have, they have different moods immediately and it's, it's really telling in how the game is played.
So, like, I did a little bit of the original Hollow Knight. I've been messing with a couple of other little indie games. Something called Nunchell Intrude. But I mean, I've put almost 30 hours into silksong, so, like, it didn't come out a week ago. And I've put almost a work week in.
[00:15:41] Speaker C: I want to put into context how much I love this game. I decided $20 was not enough and I bought the OST for Silksong and went and bought the OST for the original Hollow Knight that I didn't actually own already. I gave team cherry 40 bucks last week because when they fucking deserve it.
[00:16:01] Speaker A: Like, yeah, when you get like a producer or developer of any game that like, you can tell they put some love in their game and the game I'm all down for. And we'll talk. I'll talk a little bit more about it later. I am totally down for throwing more money at someone that I support, like, because I want you to keep doing what you're doing. Please.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: This was also so well purchased initially that like, we literally crashed Steam Nintendo Store. If there was a platform that was selling Silksong, it crashed because Silksong was that popular.
It deserves every ounce of that praise.
[00:16:39] Speaker C: On day one, there was over half a million concurrent players on Steam at their peak. That means literally half a million people at the exact same moment playing the game on Steam alone.
[00:16:52] Speaker A: I mean, that just goes to show you, like, how much people appreciate just a single player like story game. Like, it doesn't have to be an online game with microtransactions for someone to just give you money. Like, we enjoy single player. Like, I enjoy a single player game like story where I can just like, like you guys are telling me, like, the way you're talking about. I'm like, oh man, I really love this game.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: So the. I will put it down. I love Metroid games.
Hollow Knight, the original I did not beat. It is still probably the single best one in the genre until now. And I don't know if Silksong will beat it, but so far it's on pace too.
[00:17:36] Speaker C: Yeah, because it's literally just more Hollow Knight. Everything that was good about Hollow Knight is still here, but refined, but made more dynamic. Like Hornet's movement is way better than the knight's movement ever was in Hollow Knight fluid.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: The animations are beautiful. The soundtrack is dazzling.
[00:17:57] Speaker C: I will say, on the note of the soundtrack, I haven't found a single song that's quite as good as Greenpath from the original Hollow Knight yet.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: Greenpath is cool.
[00:18:05] Speaker C: Greenpath is the second place you go in the original Hollow Knight. It's like where the color starts showing up because the first area is very drab and gray. And it has one of the best soundtracks of any game, any region, any. Anything. It's one of the best songs in gaming. It's so good. If you think Hollow Knight music, that's probably the song you think of.
[00:18:28] Speaker B: There was this one image from the trailer that I haven't gotten to of this mind boggling, beautiful color scale zone.
And if the trailer's music was anything like what I remembered, I want to get there.
[00:18:46] Speaker C: We'll get there. I know there's a. There is a snowy zone at some point in Silksong, I've briefly run in there and then gone, oh, fuck, I will die if I stay here and had to leave.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: Yeah, there's. There's one power up that both Jax and I, when we got it, looked at it and went, oh my God, that's so cute.
[00:19:04] Speaker C: Yes. Yes.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: We can't talk much more about it.
[00:19:08] Speaker C: Yeah, it's almost like aerial movement. Power up is one of the most adorable things ever. And it's adorable your character is this like fierce hunter bug, but when she uses this power, she's fucking cute.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: And. And it. The personality is dripping off of this game.
[00:19:29] Speaker C: Yes. All right, well, I'm glad that glazed Silksong enough.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: I was gonna say. I think you guys have. I'm excited that you guys have this game that you're able to talk about for forever.
It's always good when you get a game that, like, just makes you excited to play it and feels good.
So just moving on real quick. Right before we get to our main topic, I want to touch back a little bit on our.
Our games that we backlog. Our backlog challenge that we've called it. I'm assuming not many of either of you two have got a really a big chance to dive into yours. Mike, I think you were saying earlier, you haven't really even got to Pick up Ghost.
[00:20:09] Speaker B: I mean, both of us have been.
[00:20:10] Speaker A: Playing Silksong, but yeah, prior to that.
[00:20:13] Speaker C: My wife had me playing Ocarina at.
[00:20:15] Speaker A: A time, which is fine.
I, however, did have a chance to dive into my backlog just a little bit. I said I was going to change mine to Kingdom Hearts, so I want to talk about that for just a second. I did get to dive into it. I'm loving it.
It's just making me excited from, like, my childhood. You still own the original, the Disney characters. Yeah. So I haven't been, like, playing a whole lot into it.
Just kind of like I don't want to jump in and finish it in one weekend kind of thing. There's a lot to it.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: It's a long game.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: It's a. It's a long game.
It's, it's. It's a beautiful game from when it was made.
There's a lot of cool story to it.
However, before I get into the good, I want to talk about the bad that I'm feeling with it. And right off the rip, things that I hated the most about it. The controls. The controls are awful. And these are all things that got fixed in two. But yeah, one.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: One is weird.
[00:21:12] Speaker A: The jumping. I hate the jumping.
[00:21:14] Speaker B: The jumping or the field?
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Both. They just. They aggravate me.
It's the direction of combat. Things like that just make me mad. I don't like the parry system.
And again, all this stuff is stuff that gets fixed into.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: I don't know if the parry is not fixed, the movement definitely smooths out, the jumping smoothens out, the combat becomes a little better.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: But these are the same kind of like quorums I've had with most games made in this area in an open world, like, the jumping is just awful. Like, trying to create, like a open world environment where it's not, you know, and it's fine. Like, it doesn't take away from the gameplay at all. Because the game of Kingdom Heart is not about the controls. It's about the story. It's about the connection that you start to feel with these characters that you're meeting along the way that you've already had a connection with probably growing up, you know, Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Donald, if.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: You were raised with Hercules people.
[00:22:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So you already had like a connection with these. And you get excited when you see them. I mean, like, I know I got excited when Tarzan joined my party when I was in the. The jungle. I was like, oh, this is awesome. And you get to. It's just really cool. I'm really enjoying it.
It's still there. It's a collecting game. Like, you got to go around and collect your stuff and do your things.
I'm getting. I'm getting lost a lot of the times where I'm just like, okay, you know, it's not easy. It's not an easy game. By no means to know exactly. It doesn't, like, direct you where you need to go. You kind of just got to figure it out. But there's only, like, four rooms to figure it out in, so it's not too bad.
The Tarzan one was definitely the one where I got lost at the most, but that's where I've left off. I know there's still a lot of games to go or a lot of worlds to go. I don't like the gummy through. Like, the gummy ship really makes me mad. I don't like the gummy ship. The transition into the world. I want to let me do it once, but, like, let me just skip. Let me just go to the world. I don't want to do the gummy ship every time I go someplace.
[00:23:15] Speaker B: You don't like the gummy combat, you.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: Know, it was cool the first couple times, but having to do it from each world to the next one, that just.
I'm good. I'm good. I don't want to do that over and over and over again.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: I think you only have to do it the first time you go to a world.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: I've had to do it every single time.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: Have you gone back to another old world?
[00:23:36] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: Okay.
But I think it's because I've played Kingdom Hearts, because I think they.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: They have, like, missions that you can do during, like, the gummy to where you score, like, a certain amount of points or you shoot a certain amount of, like, thingies.
[00:23:49] Speaker B: I don't want to do 100 times or not. Starcraft Star Fox.
[00:23:54] Speaker A: Yeah, it. So it reminded me of a lot of the Star Fox, and it also reminded me a lot of the credits in Super Smash Brothers, if you remember those.
[00:24:01] Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: Like, and it was fine, like, for the first couple, but then it was just like, kind of like, hey, I wanted to go back because if you got to go to a shop, at least where I'm at now, you got to go all the way back to Traverse Town. And if I'm over in, you know, the Coliseum, I got a gummy ship twice to get to Traverse Town. There's just no quick way that I found. And I could be wrong. It could be something that I discover later on I haven't played the first.
[00:24:29] Speaker B: Kingdom hearts since, oh, six.
Summer of 06 was when I played Kingdom Hearts and I played it over a summer so I have some distinct memories of it. But it has been a very long dive. We're talking almost 20 years now.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: It like, I'm getting into it at a bad time because I've been spoiled with a lot of modern like gaming, you know, with like you skip dialogue or you can do this. And you know, back then if I was a kid, like I wouldn't have cared. Like the, like we talked about it, I think last time with Ocarina of Time and like the stuff that takes forever to do as a kid, I didn't care about that because all I had was time as a kid. But you know, when now I'm like, all right, I'm going to get this in on the weekend and okay, wait, nevermind. I'm spending four hours in a gummy ship shooting boxes like, all right, so. But even with all the negatives, I'm still excited to play it. Like, that's not. Hasn't been enough to turn me away from it. But I know I'm excited to get into two just so I can see the progress in mechanics.
So moving on, we're going to get to our main topic here.
So tonight we're going to be talking about indie games and the ones that left impacts on us.
And this was a pretty exciting one because there's a lot of really good indie games out there.
So Mike, let's start with you. What do you got?
[00:25:52] Speaker B: Okay, I'm going to start off with, I will call them my favorite indie company, period.
They are possibly like, I have not played a game from them that I did not love. I'm missing one game from their library because it was not a game that I wanted to play. But even that game I heard was pretty decent. But the games of theirs that I have played, I fucking adored.
The company is supergiant Games and I'm talking about their initial game Bastion, which was kind of breathtaking when it, when it first showed up. It was something so new and an indie game that left an impact when indie games were not a big thing. This was, it's not the first indie game by any means. Like this came out in 2011. But Bastion really like showed what kind of polish you can put behind a game that doesn't have a long story. Like, I have eight hours played of this game. I've beaten it twice. It's, it's breathtaking. In a very unique way, Bastion does something that most other games don't do. In that it feels like it is a living game. As you're walking around, as you're moving around, there's this narrator and this narrator is commenting on what you are doing at the time. Unlike most narrators in games which comment on a bit of storytelling, a bit of this is what we want you to know. This is where we're trying to push you towards. Or this is.
This is like a directional. No, this made it feel like they saw me playing and went, huh? We can. We can enhance this. And so it feels alive in a sense that most other games don't.
It's not a platformer. It's. It's similar to Hades in gameplay in that it is sort of isometric semi. It's 2D but in a 3D sort of field over the shoulder and you're action fighting. But it is not roguelike like Hades is. It is one story going through 1. 1. I don't know, really, like you have a life as opposed to this. This roguelike backtrack that you go through. It's level based, but every level builds itself up around you as you move forward. So it feels like progression happens because of you. And the story is unique, kind of heartwarming. And I've mentioned him briefly, this voice actor, this narrator, the dude's voice is like liquid velvet in your ears. It's this deep, deep bass of a voice that just sort of caresses you in a weird way.
[00:28:44] Speaker C: It's so good. It's so good.
[00:28:48] Speaker B: It's a Find the story game that feels so polished.
And this is the first game whose soundtrack I bought. This is one of my first, like, very much like we were talking about. Hollow Knight Bastion's soundtrack is on a list. I have a CD of it. Admittedly, I'm sort of dating myself. I have CDs still.
But like, I have the digital soundtrack, obviously, because I've bought it before.
It's. I mean, it's so atmospheric.
[00:29:20] Speaker C: On the dating yourself, on having CDs, I'm gonna point out I bought a CD, like a physical CD last year and I think the year before that as well.
[00:29:30] Speaker B: For music.
[00:29:31] Speaker C: For music.
[00:29:32] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:29:33] Speaker C: Now this is because one was the soundtrack for the Weird Al movie and one was Rammstein's publisher label, whatever you wanna call it, did not make a digital version available for me to buy of their newest album. So I had to. And then rip it to be able to listen to it.
[00:29:51] Speaker B: I mean, the most recent CD I bought was probably three or four years ago, but I haven't bought a CD.
[00:29:57] Speaker A: In probably, I don't know, 20 years to use them.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: I have to use it in my car because my car is the last thing I have that has a CD player.
[00:30:05] Speaker C: Just buy a portable CD drive or DVD drive for your computer for like 25 bucks and rip it.
MP3s.
[00:30:14] Speaker B: I was gonna say, like you just drive somewhere.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: I do remember putting CDs in, ripping the music and sticking them in my itunes so I could listen to them on my ipod.
[00:30:24] Speaker B: Did that a ton.
[00:30:25] Speaker C: Bastion is a game worth doing that for.
[00:30:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh my God. The soundtrack. If. If you don't already just love video game music, this is one of those that can bring you in. It's such, it's such a great. And they're. They're not long. Some of them are very short. You'll get minute and a half songs. There's a couple that are like 30 seconds and then there's four minutes, five minutes. It's all atmospheric music. There's no real dancers, but there's such different tone and feel.
I. I can't like, if we weren't talking about Hollow Knight so recently, this game would be one of those ones that I am praising to the ends of the earth. Bastion is one of my. Like, I give this game a 10 games. This is. I have no technical flaws with it, only that there isn't enough of it.
[00:31:16] Speaker C: Fair enough.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: All right, Jax, what about you?
[00:31:18] Speaker C: Alright, I have a weird mix of games I've chosen, so I'm gonna start with the one that I think is an important indie game historically in addition to being like one of my favorite games, period.
So I love Metroidvanias. Two of the three games I've picked to highlight for indie games fall into that genre, by the way. But the one I'm gonna talk about is a little title you may or may not have heard of called Cave Story. Cave Story was made by one dude. Daisuke Amaya wrote the soundtrack, he did the pixel art, he programmed the game. It is an actual one man project.
[00:31:59] Speaker B: He is Toby Fox before Toby Fox, yes.
[00:32:02] Speaker C: He released this game in 2004 and he released it for free.
This was a free video game. You can just go and download Cave Story from the official website today.
There is an English patch available for it because yeah, he's a Japanese developer and you can then just play it. You can go play Cave Story right now. There is no barrier. It'll run on your computer. This game like runs on anything.
[00:32:27] Speaker B: It's like 178 megabytes.
[00:32:30] Speaker C: Yeah, it's. It's small but Cave Story, yeah, it's a Metroidvania. It's. It's a side scrolling platformer. You run around, you fight things, you get power ups that enable you to access new places. But this one is fairly light on the exploration and more about the platforming and combat. And it's got a really good like world building and plot and story and characters.
I have had one of the characters from Cave Story as a replacement for my start button on my computer for 12 years now, ever since I started using open shell.
This game is so good.
It's. This game made me cry.
It has so many moments and elements and replayability. Because there are different versions of power ups that you can choose that lock each other out. There's two different ways to do the access to the end game. One of which gets you access to a bonus super fucking hard area and one of which doesn't. And you get a different ending if you do that slightly. It's so good. It's dark. Like this game has a cute little pixel art, cutesy art style. Your character is a robot who wakes up with amnesia and learns that you're a war robot that was sent here to capture the people of this island and the red flower that grows here that they can be used to turn them into bioweapons.
And now a madman is trying to use that to use them to take over the world.
[00:34:12] Speaker B: Now if you don't trust getting Cave Story from a website, you just don't trust it. It is awesome.
[00:34:18] Speaker C: I'll drop the link in the episode description.
[00:34:21] Speaker B: It's also like I will link us to it frequently for sale. But you can pay the guy 15 bucks.
[00:34:27] Speaker C: I'm going to push back on that actually. And here's why. The version of Cave Story on Steam was published by Nicholas and Nicholas sucks. Not Nicholas, like Nick the name, but like N I C A L I S.
They're pretty poorly managed. They encouraged a racist atmosphere within the company and there was controlling shit like they are actually a bad company. Do not give Nicalis money. I will link Cave Story in the episode description. The reason I'm talking about Cave story this was 2004.
Western indie games did not exist by any like reasonable level in 2004. There was basically none. There were Japanese indie games. If you've heard of the Touhou series, that's Japanese doujin game. It's what they call indie games. But Cave Story was the first one that Got an English translation patch and came over to the west and inspired.
Like we would not have Braid, we would not have Super Meat Boy. We would not have Hollow Knight and Silksong if not for Cave Story. That is not hyperbole and it is literally the direct progenitor of all of those things.
[00:35:49] Speaker B: It's also very noticeable that like you can look at some of the visuals on this and go, oh, this. It's not the gameplay that inspired it, but this definitely inspired undertale.
[00:35:59] Speaker C: Yes, very much so. Visually, this is the inspiration for undertale.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: That's actually what I was going to say. Like it looks very undertale ish when I'm looking at these like, yeah, pictures of it.
[00:36:12] Speaker C: That's why the Toby Fox comparison is so apt. Because this game definitely influenced him heavily.
[00:36:19] Speaker B: This was the reason that he became, if I'm not mistaken, he has like done an interview and Cave Story was one of those things where he went, oh, one guy can do it, I'll do it.
[00:36:30] Speaker C: And that's why it's so important, is because it was purely made by one dude.
It inspired so many devs. That's why it is the progenitor of all of these western indie games. Because prior to this, the perception was that one dude couldn't make an actual complete like full game in its entirety. They were either projects done by a group of people or they were a commercial product by a company.
[00:37:02] Speaker B: Side note, as we were talking about undertale briefly, if you have a chance, get it now. It's on sale for two and a half bucks.
[00:37:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
So yeah, I wanted to talk about Cave Story because I think now, 21 years later, a lot of people just don't know about it. And it's just so good.
Like it's actually just. It's a good video game as well, I guess.
[00:37:24] Speaker A: To stay on the topic of solo developers, I'm going to talk about my indie game, Stardew Valley. It's probably one of the indie games that's probably had the biggest impact on me because this, you know, Jax mentioned it earlier when we were talking in pre show. Like this isn't a genre that I normally get into.
So Stardew Valley came out in 2016 and it was made by one guy, Concerned Ape. I forget his actual name, I think it's Eric or something.
[00:37:54] Speaker C: So.
[00:37:55] Speaker A: But he goes by Concerned Ape. And it was just one guy and he made this wonderful like farming game. And on the surface it looks like your generic farming game. You go buy seeds, plant seeds, put seeds in, or put plants in Bin, get gold, repeat. And that's what it, you know, it's what it looks like on surface. But when you.
[00:38:18] Speaker C: The key here is like it is very heavily inspired by the Harvest Moon franchise in terms of its like, structure and the core basics of it.
[00:38:27] Speaker A: Oh yeah. And you know, everybody loves a good.
Most people like a cozy, you know, sit back farm, enjoy life. But like when you get into this game, there is so much more to it. There is an entire world that's out there with a story. And I mean I don't want to like spoil anything because it's still like a game that if you haven't gotten, I would highly suggest sitting down to play. You know, I got near 200 hours on it and there's still tons of me, tons for me to learn on that game. It has endless progression. You know, there's cave systems that you can go that never end.
There's relationships. You can get married. You can decide whether you want to, you know, not get married. You don't have to. You can do whatever you want. It's your life. Like you inherited this farm from a family member and you get to do with it whatever you want. You want to focus on farming, Cool. That's what you can do. Do you want to focus on cave and combat and exploration? You can do that. Do you just want to be a forager? You can do that. Do you want to be a fisherman? You can do that. You can do all the above and they have skill trees for each everything. You get better and better as you go. It's, there's an entire like evil corporation that's trying to take over your farm town and turn it into a, you know, lack of better term, a Walmart, you know, is coming in to take out your mom and pop stores.
And it's just, it's got so. It's so cozy and you can just sit down and play for hours. The soundtrack is great. There's the four seasons that you can go through, you know, each one offering something different. There's festivals every month, there's birthdays that you can keep track of. You can play with a friend. Now it's multiplayer. You know, it didn't start off that way, but now it's multiplayer. You can, you know, you could play that, sit down with your significant other and play this game and get married to your significant other. You can have kids. Like the kids don't really do anything yet. But I mean, I know they're working on another game too. It's something like the Chocolatier or something like that. Something he's working on.
[00:40:37] Speaker C: I hope it eventually turns out good. We don't know much about it beyond that.
[00:40:41] Speaker A: Yeah, there hasn't been much into it. But I know there's a lot of hype. Because this guy listens to his player base. He cares about his games. He cares about his reputation. Like he doesn't just throw out garbage hoping to get money and then kill the game. And then that's it. It's just. It's one of those. I have like four copies of this game.
[00:41:03] Speaker B: Unlike the guy.
[00:41:04] Speaker A: I have one.
Yeah, I don't even. Haven't even heard of that one.
[00:41:08] Speaker C: He's a dick.
[00:41:09] Speaker B: Unfortunately. Fez is a good game.
[00:41:13] Speaker A: I've bought like four copies of Stardew Valley. I bought it on my phone, I've bought it on my computer. I bought it on the switch. And I think I got it. It's either Xbox or PlayStation. One of those two. I think it was on one of those. But like I got four copies of it. It's the same thing I did with.
What's the game?
I'm drawing a blank. The ocean game.
[00:41:36] Speaker C: Ocean game.
[00:41:37] Speaker A: Subnautica. Subnautica.
[00:41:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Great game. Horrifying. Great.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: Horrifying. But yeah, I mean, that's. That's it for.
[00:41:44] Speaker C: I did want to mention as a tie in to me and Mike talking about Silksong earlier, Eric Barone, who is Concerned Ape, voiced a character in Silksong. He is listed in the credits and has confirmed that is him specifically that he won't say who because he didn't want to spoil things for anyone. I don't know what his voice sounds like. So I don't know if I've met one of them.
[00:42:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:04] Speaker A: Oh my God.
[00:42:05] Speaker B: I have no idea. Yep. That's one of those things. There's a bunch of little itty bitty.
I'm going back on this one now. Voice acting in it. There's a voice acting in it in this game.
The words don't make sense. That's its own little made up language. You have to read the text.
But it adds so much atmosphere.
[00:42:22] Speaker C: It adds so much character. And Stardew Valley also has voice noises when they talk that give the characters personality. Even though it's just like a sound being repeated. It's really good. I will say, like old rare games like Conker or Banjo Kazooie. It's the way that like voices are done there.
Yeah.
[00:42:47] Speaker A: Oh, that's Banjoey for sure.
[00:42:49] Speaker C: Let's make a noise that sounds like talking but isn't actually intelligible speech in any way.
[00:42:55] Speaker A: I will say Conker's bad fur day. Full voice acting.
[00:42:59] Speaker C: Yeah. Crude earlier Conker games. Not that one. I forgot about that one.
[00:43:06] Speaker A: Banjo Kazooie is great though, what you're talking about just like.
[00:43:09] Speaker C: Yes. It adds so much gibberish.
[00:43:12] Speaker A: Oh yeah, absolutely. Gives them voice.
[00:43:14] Speaker C: And Stardew Valley is so good. And also like we need to. I want to emphasize this briefly. Stardew Valley is one of the best selling video games of all time. It has sold over 40 million copies.
[00:43:28] Speaker A: I know he's not a solo developer anymore.
It's now. It's a very, very. And when I say small, I mean small team of people because it just got so big that he couldn't maintain it anymore on his own. And like from what he's put into it, like he deserves all $40 million or 40 million.
[00:43:49] Speaker C: $40 million.
[00:43:50] Speaker A: 40 million purchases in what he's put in. Because he conservatively.
[00:43:57] Speaker C: Conservatively, this game has made him like $200 million and he fucking deserves it.
[00:44:02] Speaker A: Oh yeah. Cuz like it didn't change. Like he didn't like change his thing. He's like, he's still updating the game to give people what they want, not what he wants to put in it what the people want. Which is awesome.
[00:44:15] Speaker C: Absolutely. And kudos to his girlfriend who supported the both of them while he made Stardew Valley.
[00:44:21] Speaker A: Oh yeah, I forgot about that too.
[00:44:23] Speaker C: Like, she is an absolute badass for believing in his project enough to basically sacrificed several years of her life to working her ass off so that he could focus on completing this game.
[00:44:37] Speaker A: But it paid off for Stardew Valley is incredible.
So she's probably got Louis Vuitton's now and she probably doesn't have to work anymore.
[00:44:46] Speaker C: I hope so.
[00:44:47] Speaker A: All right, Mike, what's your next one you got?
[00:44:50] Speaker B: So this is a little bit more.
It's not an obscure indie game because I'm not going through anything that's truly obscured. Well, actually there's one game that's pretty obscure on the list over this.
But each of these is. Is a game that has done something unique in its themes or in its gameplay or something about them.
I'm sort of splitting this into two because the first one of the games from this developer is a very, very short game and it should be talked about. But the second game is. Is really where it becomes a. A true like long form game.
There is this beautiful game. You may have seen a couple things of it a little while ago.
It's Called Gris.
And Gris is this almost water painting of a game where in how its art style is. That is utterly, hauntingly beautiful. It is a game that is simultaneously depressive and hopefully it is sonically completely unique from a game that I've ever done. Sound is a very big thing in this game, as is color specifically because this is. This is a. It is not a told story, but it is a story about depression and. And how it feels to be depressed. And it's manifested through this. This breathtaking, beautiful game. This was one of the first games I streamed and I was astonished by it. Absolutely floored. It is a platformer. Just. Just. Chris is a platformer. Almost no combat whatsoever. Three and a half hours maybe.
Absolutely worth it. It is. It is a physical experience that without any dialogue made me cry. It is a. It's astounding.
[00:46:48] Speaker A: I'm looking at it now. Its art style reminds me of another game. I can't think of it.
It's got that same like, you know, Japanese inspired water painting, oil painting. I can't remember the name of that game.
Like a dog.
[00:47:05] Speaker B: One other game.
[00:47:06] Speaker A: Yes, that one.
[00:47:08] Speaker C: Yeah, you're thinking of Okami. Okami is a Zelda like game. It's extremely good. It's not an indie game.
[00:47:13] Speaker B: Yeah, it is a classic like art painting. But it is more.
This gets into a little more. Neva is very watercolor and Okami is very like harsh actual paint.
[00:47:28] Speaker C: Okami's art style is inspired by like Japanese calligraphy specifically.
[00:47:33] Speaker B: I believe it's Ukiyo e painting.
[00:47:35] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, it just. For some reason, maybe it was the dog that just made me think of it when I was looking at the.
[00:47:41] Speaker B: The dog.
[00:47:43] Speaker C: I wouldn't be surprised if Okami is an inspiration for that.
[00:47:48] Speaker B: Well, it isn't maybe for that one. It definitely feels like it could be for their next game in this point. They've released now a second game and because of how Gris made me feel, I bought this game immediately.
Their second game is called Niiva and Ni va is more of a combat game. But it is still. It's. It's more along the veins of like Hollow Knight or In the Blind Forest. There is some platforming. There is. It's 2D left and right. There's a little bit more dialogue in that. I actually hear them say Ni Va.
But again, it's beautiful. The water, the color, the way that it's. Its story is told throughout it. It's the. The basic premise of Niiva is this. This young. This young girl finds an Older wolf and a very young wolf that are like spirit manifestations in the same way that like.
Oh, how did I forget that fucking movie.
Not Spirited Away, but same, same person.
[00:48:57] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, it's another Ghibli movie.
[00:49:00] Speaker B: Another Ghibli, Yeah. It's.
[00:49:01] Speaker C: It's this really Mononoke.
[00:49:03] Speaker B: Yes.
That is a direct inspiration for this in not just the. The art style, but in the like the theming of. Of the story.
It's very heavily inspired in like what is being done to this world.
And so it's really like this. This brief chapter story that is this girl who becomes a woman and this little wolf pup as they grow and sort of try and see what's going on in this sort of half decayed but also like vibrantly beautiful world as they grow together and throughout the time. And it's.
It's another one of those games that is hard to describe what it does in the minute by minute, but the feel of it is just great.
And the music and the visuals. I didn't cry like I did in Gris yet. I have a feeling I'm going to because it has that very same feeling that like Ori and the Blind Forest gave me. And so that there's. There's this connection between these two that really holds true. And then with the visuals going in between this, it's just.
It's a. It's a breathtaking. It's an experience that I was not expecting.
[00:50:24] Speaker A: And I think fair enough.
[00:50:25] Speaker B: More people should, especially out of the two, I will say Gris is the bigger experience.
It is a feeling that I think people should give it a try. This is like what I would put down for. This is why games are art. This is a piece of art that you play through and you feel.
And then Ni Va is a little bit more of a game that is also an artwork.
[00:50:49] Speaker A: Always love a game that just captures you and makes you feel emotions. Especially from a company that isn't well known.
Speaking of Jax, your next one, I'm.
[00:51:00] Speaker C: Pretty excited on a game that makes you feel emotions. I'm actually gonna skip to the third one I have listed then.
I think this is one of the most important indie games ever made. So there have been a lot of indie games that fall into the category of super fucking hard platformer. We have things like N VVV Super Meat Boy. And they're all great games, but if I had to pick one that I think literally every single person should play, that game would be Celeste. Celeste is incredible.
This is a very simple, super hard Platform game with super fast response.
You miss a jump and you hit a spike and you die. You're back to try again. In literally one second, you will die. Assuming you don't use Easy mode, which I'll talk about briefly because it's one of the reasons I think this game is important. You will die literally thousands of times on your first playthrough. But the point of Celeste is that you are playing as this young woman named Madeline who is stressed about life and doesn't know what to do with herself and says, fuck it, I'm gonna climb this mountain. And decides to climb a fictional version of a mountain that actually exists in Vancouver, British Columbia. And undoing this climb, she sees a personification of her anxiety and depression that gets dubbed Badeline because again, she's Madeline. So her bad version is Madeline.
And she stubbornly presses on and she meets people on the mountain and makes friends and has to go through a journey of growth and finding herself and reconciling with the negative parts of herself.
She has to resolve her problems with Badeline and accept Badeline as being part of her. Celeste is incredible. It is a journey of self discovery. It makes me cry every fucking time. I'm literally tearing up talking about it. Because this game is so good at being emotional. For a stupid, like, challenging platformer game, it's incredible. Like you should play Celeste. It is regularly $5 on every platform you can think of. Go buy it somewhere and play Celeste. It's that good.
And the developer is a trans woman. The story is kind of about that. In some ways she's awesome. She's made a whole bunch of Super Mario World ROM hacks that regularly get featured at Games Done Quick.
She regularly donates a lot of money at Games Done Quick events to the charities that they support.
[00:53:44] Speaker B: I think she has another game before this one.
[00:53:47] Speaker C: She's made a couple other games. Towerfall is the other one that people have actually heard of, but Celeste is the one that literally everyone should play. And I mentioned it's super fucking hard. Celeste has an assist mode. They developed this game as being a hard game, Maddie and her team. And the way that it's played without using assist mode is what they intended. But they realized that even though that is what they want the game to be, because self discovery and accepting the bad parts of yourself is hard. It's supposed to be that, like it's thematically appropriate for the game to be difficult. Locking a lot of people who aren't really good at really hard 2D platformers out of being able to experience this game would have been worse for the game and for the world as a whole. Frankly, Matty was quoted as saying, from my perspective as the game's designer, assist mode breaks the game. I spent many hours fine tuning the difficulty of Celeste, so it's easy for me to feel precious about my design.
But ultimately we want to empower the player and give them a good experience. And sometimes that means letting go. Celeste is one of those few games that I would say is damn near perfect. I would literally not change a single iota of anything in Celeste. I cannot think of a flaw that needs to be changed. The flaws that exist in this game are good. They are beneficial to the overall experience, even if they can be frustrating in the moment.
Go play Celeste.
[00:55:19] Speaker B: I. I have also done much less of Celeste. Celeste.
Like, I'm a very big fan of Super Meat Boy.
I. I did a little bit of Celeste and it was very good. It is difficult. Very good. And then I bounced off it to another game that was coming out because I was waiting for something else. But it is. If you have any desire for any ounce of the story or the gameplay, pick it up and take a look at it.
[00:55:52] Speaker C: I summarize. Like the basic story beats, that does not spoil the emotional impact of this in any way, shape or form. I promise you, it's that good.
I've left out so many little details that will make you go, oh my God, there is so much soul in this game.
[00:56:10] Speaker B: Yeah, there's. I. I have a feeling we're going to be doing a couple of these episodes because I'm now looking through a couple of other things. This game has made me think of other games and me now going, I really wish we were talking about this one as well, but it's not part of my topic list and I can't make it go that long.
[00:56:27] Speaker C: Yeah, we can't. We don't want to hold you guys for like five hours while we talk about every indie game we love. We all love a lot of indie games.
[00:56:35] Speaker A: So yeah, I was going to talk about it in any game that had much less of an impact on my life.
But I was just going to give it credit. But I think I'm gonna say go ahead and save that for another episode and skip to one that I think just has a great story to it. This is a game that how game developers should be if something goes wrong. How a true case of zero to hero.
I want to bring up no Man's sky from hello Games.
And so everybody listening to this probably has heard of no Man's sky if not played it.
So no Man's sky was released in 2016 and if you played recently, Cyberpunk, you can kind of get an idea of how the release went on this.
It wasn't as so much buggy as it was just an empty game with nothing. Like it was just. They. They said it was a procedurally generated universe with planets that you could visit, which was true, but these planets were just empty, boring, nothing to do.
A lot of people were upset about it. I bought the game at the day it released because I love the idea of space exploration. I still do.
I liked the game when it came out because it just gave me, you know, I could just time sink into it, fly around, explore, do different things. It was a basic game as far as basic go. You farm some resources, you build some stuff. Didn't have a really a story to it. There's a small story to it, but it was nothing and a lot of people were mad and upset. Let's skip now. You know what? Nine, nine years to current day where it is probably the. One of the most successful games of this genre.
This game is now fully multiplayer where you can get on and play with your friends, have your own bases, your own towns, your own cities with a its own economic system.
You can be in debt, you can do all sorts of things.
You can now they just most recently in their last update and these are updates that have been 100% free. These could have been paid DLCs for what you. And you get paid DLC worth of stuff.
Most recent. Now you can finally build your own custom ship that you can stand up and walk around in like you can build it however you want. I've seen people building ships from Helldiver.
If you frequented that game, you know the. The big old drop ship that you get to ride on. I've seen ships from Star Wars.
The creativity is endless on customizing and building your own ship. And it's really awesome. They have a central hub now in the game where you and all the other players playing, you know, on a server or whatever, how it is. You don't know what server you're on, but are just put in this little hub. You can go out and do quests, missions, anything you want to do. It's an endless game.
Right now I think they're doing a lot of testing for their newest, newest game that's coming up. And I think it's like no Fires, which is a game that I cannot wait for.
This is a Publisher and a developer that I can get behind. They did not give up on their game. They didn't throw in the towel. When everybody else seemed to give up on them, they said here, you know.
[01:00:21] Speaker B: What, I think we need to explain a little bit about what happened there because no Man's sky.
[01:00:25] Speaker A: Okay?
[01:00:25] Speaker B: If, if you remember briefly when it was first coming out, Sony was pushing this game very, very, very hard. We were talking about it is an indie game. Sony originally tried to push this game. They bought it, tried to make this a unique thing for the PS4 and it got hit by a really bad like development hell problem where they were just getting pushed on deadlines that they didn't have problems with.
They got flooded, lost like 60% of their asset data.
So they were having huge issues. This is like a seven man team. It's not a solo game, but it's a very small company at the time.
And Sony just refused to give them the extra time to finish things and put the polish in that these are the things we promised and we're trying to give them to people and Sony wouldn't let them. They pushed it out really early.
I also much like pillow got the game on release and I put like 40 hours in and I enjoyed it, but I did not do what everyone was trying to do. I stayed on one little planet sphere and tried to learn the entire language because that was just what was catching me. But most of the, most of the big promises that they initially tried to give just weren't there and they suffered for it pretty badly. Like this game was immensely negatively reviewed when it first came out. It got a lot of flack, pretty rightly so for the state it was released in. The amount of things that they said they were going to give and they didn't.
And then the team went, we, we can put all of this in. We should have put all of this in. We're going to, and we're going to make sure that everyone who was promised this game gets this game. And so they push forward and put another release in there. And now at this point, nine years later from its release, much like a game like poe, there are seasons to the game now. They have rotating content so that even if you like playing the game, even though it's a very similar style, it has an endless quantity of things to do and they're giving you seasonal reasons to come back if you want to do it. None of these things are paid as far as I'm aware. There are no microtransactions, there are no microtransactions.
[01:02:39] Speaker A: That I know of either.
[01:02:41] Speaker B: So this is a game where you put money in up front and that's it.
You are getting potentially with, with what Jax and I have done with PoE, thousands of hours of content in a game.
[01:02:55] Speaker C: PoE being path of Exile, not Pillars of Eternity.
[01:02:58] Speaker B: It's true.
[01:02:59] Speaker C: I can't just say there are two.
There are two different games that are both abbreviated POE that can be a huge time investment and came out at similar points in time.
[01:03:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
And no Man's sky is a game that there are. There have been several games in this genre that have promised a lot and this is the first one that truly went. These are our promises. We're going to deliver them and we're going to make sure you get them in a relatively timely manner. Now like when it came out in 2016, you didn't get a lot and they had to fight to get rid of Sony and now they are a fully self published company as well.
When they got rid of Sony, I think that was like three years after the release.
They, they finally were able to start giving more to people and it has showed this, this game has put forth so much effort.
[01:03:55] Speaker A: They have met and beated their expectations and it really shows. If you go to like read the reviews or anybody talking about this game like they have went above and beyond where they had to have gone like for free.
[01:04:09] Speaker B: They've.
[01:04:10] Speaker A: They've done like I just looked, they've.
[01:04:12] Speaker B: Done visual overhauls, changes and changed everything.
They have put, they've changed it all so much effort into this game and it is starting to really show. This is a wonderful.
Unlike most of the other games we have talked about, this isn't like a cheap indie game amongst guys. Like 40 bucks if I remember. 40, 50 bucks, 60 bucks. Right now it is a full 60. Okay. So yeah, this is a full like and it almost looks like a AAA title. But this is, this has the effort, this has the push to it. There's. There's so much quality within this game.
[01:04:49] Speaker A: I'm excited to talk about it more but for the reasoning of time, I'm gonna go ahead and move on.
Mike, you got one more game you want to talk about?
[01:04:59] Speaker B: Yes.
This is a game that I'm guessing unless I have talked to you about it, none of you know exists.
[01:05:09] Speaker C: You're the only reason I've ever heard of it.
[01:05:11] Speaker B: When we started talking about indie games that have made an impact, I had a different couple things that popped into my head for what I think should it have been. And then I, I was Looking down my Steam list just because and I stumbled upon this game that I found a long time ago while I was in college.
Thomas was Alone and Thomas Was Alone is an exercise in you can make a game without any background in art. Each of them has been something that is his really like Gris has really shown what you can do with art and Bastion what you can do with sound.
And Thomas is what you can do if you have charm and story. Thomas Was Alone is a game where you play as basic shapes. There's a square, there's a rectangle, there's a tall rectangle, there's a short rectangle, there's a bigger square. And it is a basic left, right level platformer where you play as a bunch of shapes, basic shapes. Now there is someone who very much like Bastion is telling the story in real time as you're playing it. However, unlike Bastion, he's not really reacting to what you are doing. He is sort of like directing the narrative forward and it's unbelievably charming. For a game that is about squares, this is a surprisingly feel good game where I made the square jump into a corner. Like I, I. There's so little that I can say without actually starting to spoil that there is, there is a story behind this, the square and there's weirdly personality.
It's such a weird, truly unique indie game that I've never gotten quite the same experience.
And it shows you don't need an art background to make a game.
[01:07:16] Speaker A: When I first looked this game up, I thought it was Geometry Dash.
From the first clip that I saw.
[01:07:22] Speaker B: It'S, it's a $10, it's frequently on sale for five or less.
[01:07:27] Speaker A: It's $5 right now.
[01:07:29] Speaker B: @ the time of recording I would give them, when I bought it, it was one, I would have paid 20 because this is another one of those games where they fucking deserve the money that they get. This is something so wholly different and it's so like as, as a person who wasn't an aspirational game designer for a while, I did a lot of my college work into like game theory, game design, game games in general.
This is such an inspiration. It's, it's so wholly different and completely unique and I, I keep repeating the same things because I don't want to start spoiling things about the game.
[01:08:13] Speaker A: All right.
Thomas was alone. Go check it out. It looks like it's fun little platforming game.
[01:08:20] Speaker B: It is a puzzle platformer.
[01:08:22] Speaker A: Well yeah, puzzle platformer. I briefly went through, read the reviews a lot of good reviews on it. Go check it out. Looks like a fun little itch, scratch your brain kind of game. All right, Jax, you got one more game.
[01:08:34] Speaker C: All right, talk about. So I want to talk about a game that would not have existed without Cave Story and I feel like is the complimentary opposite end of the Metroidvania scale to Cave Story. I want to talk about An Elysian Tale. Now this game came out for the Xbox 360.
It was technically published by Microsoft, but I say technically because the developer won a contest and therefore Microsoft then published the game was the prize of the contest. So he got an Xbox Live Arcade release because he won a contest. And this game leans heavily on the Vania side of Metroidvania. It's more like a side scrolling platformer rpg. There is some Metroid style, you get a power up and it lets you access new areas. But it's much more of a story driven action adventure kind of Metroidvania, which is fine. This was a game mostly made by one dude. The developer of Dust and Elysian Tail made everything except the voice acting. Actual voice actors were hired, like professional voice actors you've heard in dubbed anime. If you watch dubbed anime, voiced several of the characters in this game. He didn't compose the soundtrack, but he did all of the art, all of the programming and I'mma be real a little bit. He did all of the art. It kinda shows this game is a furry game. I mean like the furry fandom. Furry. For better and for worse. I don't think this is like the most amazing game ever. I'm not going out and saying you should play Dust and Elysium Tail. It's a pretty good game if it appeals to you. If this sounds interesting, go play it. It's on modern platforms. It's been ported to Switch, PlayStation 4, it even runs on Linux.
But the reason I think Dust is important is that this was one of the knock on effects of Cave Story and its success.
Dust sold well. It's a good game. It made the dude a lot of money. I don't have exact numbers, but I think it sold something like half a million copies.
Which for 2012 release.
Oh.
An Elysian Tale has sold more than a million copies across all platforms as of 2014. It was only two years after release.
Like wow. Yeah, exactly. So this game's good. It's like an 8 out of 10 game. And the reason I think it's important is that there was a time when there were contests. This the only reason this game exists is because this dude's prototype managed to impress Microsoft enough in 2009 that they then gave him a contract to make the rest of the game and publish it on Xbox Live Arcade. There have been a bunch of contests like that over the years. Epic's done a bunch of them before. The current iteration of Unreal Engine, where the licensing terms are much more reasonable. Unreal Engine used to be very expensive to license and Epic literally ran contests where the winner of the contest won like the first million dollars of their game made with the Unreal Engine royalty free.
Which for an indie game, that's insane. Most indie games never make a million.
[01:11:57] Speaker B: Dollars and royalty free is huge for something like that. Royalties on a game like that are insane.
[01:12:04] Speaker C: Yes, because most of the licensing on the software that makes your games work, whether it's the game engine like Unreal or Unity or any of those, or the like backend they use to play the video that they've got in the game or whatever, all of those things. The physics engine, if they don't want to make it from scratch, they're licensing an engine. And those licensing terms usually take a percentage cut of the whole game. A lot of professional published games. One of the reasons AAA is so expensive on top of, you know, they have multiple thousands of people working on your average AAA game is that a non trivial percentage of the entire game is going to all of the tool makers that make the tools that make the game possible. This is why like EA for example, forces everyone to use the the Battlefield engine, whatever it's called, Frostbite, because they own it so they don't have to pay licensing fees.
So this dude made everything himself and got his game released. And it's good. It's a little like I'm trying to find the right word. I want to be mature.
[01:13:15] Speaker B: It's very anime.
[01:13:17] Speaker C: So kind of the developer is Korean ethnically. So it's got a lot of elements of like Korean folklore and some Korean art style to his drawings.
If you've seen like the Legend of Korra is animated by a Korean studio, there's that kind of vibe to it. Like he's clearly come from the same place of where he studied art and wanted to become an artist to make the game.
But it's a fun game. It's got a lot of like this is a very combo centric combat system, which I think is something that's unique among Metroidvanias.
The only other one I can think of off the top of my head is Guacamelee. That's very Combo centric.
It's a fun game. I highly recommend it. I don't think it's like the most important game in the world or anything, which is why I saved it for last. But I think it's incredible that this dude was able to make this game happen in the first place.
[01:14:15] Speaker A: Talking about like dreams, talking about like the engines and their licensing, like, made me remember. And I don't know if you guys ever heard of this game or played at Cult of the Lamb.
[01:14:25] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm aware of it.
[01:14:26] Speaker A: I haven't played when it first came out. It's great. When it first came out, it was using Unity and right after it came out, Unity changed their policy or something like that.
[01:14:37] Speaker C: Their license terms.
[01:14:39] Speaker A: Yeah. And this furious at them. Yeah. Almost canceled, like deleted the entire game just to be like, no, I'm not paying that. Because they were going to charge like a ridiculous amount per download. Like it was something. I don't remember the. Exactly.
[01:14:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Unity engines that when it was originally told what they were doing, there was such a large backlash going down that they had to completely change or they would have lost 40 to 50. Because there are a lot of games now made in Unity.
[01:15:16] Speaker C: There's so many games made in Unity. Most phone games just period.
Hollow Knight and Hollow Knight Silksong are made in Unity.
[01:15:26] Speaker B: They were the ones who explicitly they came out and said, we will switch engines if this keeps going.
[01:15:32] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm glad that Unity backed down because I didn't want to wait another two years for Silksong minimum. Yeah, switching engines is a lot of work.
[01:15:42] Speaker B: You can't just port things over. Sometimes it completely breaks everything.
[01:15:45] Speaker A: It's not easy. That's why some games just don't ever get engine updates because of how hard it can break your code just to do anything simple. Like to us it sounds simple. Like I'll just. Just copy paste it. But it's not, you know, anything like that. It's.
I mean, World Warcraft, for example. Like, people are like, why don't you update your engines? That's why it would. Their game is too entrenched with code.
So wrapping things up. We're running out of time.
Real quick. Before we say good night, do you guys want to plug your twitches and where anybody can find you playing these games?
[01:16:24] Speaker C: Yeah, I stream right now Super Metroid twice a week. League when I feel like it and Hollow Knight Silksong whenever I'm playing it and at my computer on Twitch tv.
[01:16:35] Speaker B: Jacksonman, you can occasionally badger me into streaming at Twitch tv Megamoneynames I'm much less frequent at streaming. I should be more the games you'll I may not be streaming Silksong because I prefer to do that while talking to people. But like when I go back and do more Ghost of Tsushima that I think I'll be doing fully on stream.
[01:16:58] Speaker A: It's a good game to watch in.
[01:16:59] Speaker C: The discord and just pop into a channel when Mike's in it. He might be playing Silksong and you can just get him to stream it to the channel while he plays.
[01:17:06] Speaker B: I'll do that.
[01:17:07] Speaker A: Yeah, you can find me at Twitch tv. Pillow Pet I'm if I'm on I haven't been a very active streamer lately.
Had a pretty busy life going on right now.
But when I do stream it's typically just going to be league, maybe an Ocarina of Time randomizer. I need to create a better docket for streaming and be more active.
But yeah, that's all we have time for tonight. This has been 8bit to 4k.
With me was Jackson and Mike of many names. I'm Pillow Pet. Good night.
[01:17:46] Speaker C: Bye bye.
[01:17:47] Speaker B: Good night everybody.
