Proof & Pixels
Jeff and Mo discuss two of their favorite things, bourbon and video games. In each episode they'll give their thoughts on a bourbon (picked alphabetically) and each bring a video game to pair with it.
Proof & Pixels
EP 2: A Little Angel's Au Revoir
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
With numbers out of the way it's time to jump into the alphabet.
Up next is the letter "A" and the guys have a great lineup ready.
We'll be tasting Angel's Envy Kentucky Straight Bourbon Finished in Port Wine Barrels.
For games Jeff is bringing Au Revoir and Mo is bringing A Little To The Left.
Other games discussed in this episode:
Deathsmiles
Blood Dungeon
Neo Drift Out: New Technology
Wall World 2
Email:
proofandpixelspod@gmail.com
Mo:
Bluesky
Artwork Credit: Potomax
Welcome to Proof and Pixels, a podcast celebrating our love for bourbon and video games. My name is Jeff, and with me is my co-host Mo. Mo, how you doing, man?
SPEAKER_04I'm doing great. I'm happy to see you again, talk to you, and I'm can't wait for this episode. How are you doing?
SPEAKER_00Yes. Oh, I'm doing good. I'm doing good. Um, it's been been a busy month, so I'm um, but I'm excited to get back to this. I started a new job and just it's been been hectic, a lot of things going on, but I'm excited to do this. I think the first one was a success. I think the first episode was did good. It came out good. People seem to like it, at least the ones that have talked to me about it so far, some of our our friends that went and gave it a listen. So yeah, I'm I'm excited to keep it rolling. I think we've uh we're gonna have a nice groove here going.
SPEAKER_04Let's keep it rolling, definitely, and it's we'll get better, I think. Even better. So um are you happy with the jump? Are you happy if or do you hate everyone already?
SPEAKER_00No, no. No, they're good people. It's a it's a small I was in a like a smaller office last time. Um I do like I do like contracting work for like electrical, like electrical work, and uh I I I do like the office part of it, you know, like estimating, or well, I don't do estimating, but uh I moved into like the same industry, but I'm doing something a different job related to the same industry. I'm like dealing more with manufacturers now. So yeah, and like ordering and like it's it's still working with with like actual products that people that you know like wire and all that kind of stuff that they use in electrical. So still the same field, just doing a different type of job, and it's a lot, it's it's definitely a lot more intensive as far as like the workload and the I don't know, just the the hectic, how hectic it is, because it's just a full day. Your full nine hours is like non-stop from beginning to end. So and it's a lot to learn too. So but it's been fun. I've I like it so far. Good people. The place I'm working at is it's they're all good. It's a good staff, it's a smaller staff again, so yeah, it's fun. But uh yeah, how have you have you been?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, um I'm still looking for a job. I will have uh a second job interview um on Friday and have to prepare a study case or a case study, that's the right way for it, and a presentation. And um yeah, I hope I will do that successfully and have a new job then. It would start and starting with uh first of December, so I would have a little bit time for something else in between, would be nice too. Maybe try to my tr my uh to um get into game developing again because I left that aside to to do some trainings to have a better um placement on the job market. Yeah, so that's what I'm doing most of the time. Yeah. I've been to a nice concert. There was a great oh yeah, I did see that that you came into that. It looked like a lot of fun. Yeah, absolutely. It was a classic German hip-hop festival, so the the bands from 20 years ago. Some that's cool. Some were making uh music um all the years and performed well, and those who didn't the last 20 years or something, yeah, was a little bit awkward time to time, but was fun. I met some people I have seen last time 30 years ago or something or something. So person friends from back in the day. So that was pretty special. And it was uh very close to my home, so I could just drive home, sleep at home, and go there the next day again. So that was pretty cool. Also had a weekend with my best friends. We do this every year, one one time every year for the weekend, and a lot of drinking, talking. Everyone brings a uh top 10 or top 20 list of music songs. The theme this time was best uh 90 songs, 90 songs uh without rap. So that was fun. Oh, okay. Yeah, so I had a great time in between the two episodes. Cool, good stuff, man. Yeah, I'm happy for you that the job is good. I'm happy to seem to be the the right step. It it is the same, you know, scenery and the same uh um economy, but um different jobs, so nice step. Yeah. Uh you were forced into it, but I think it's a good thing for you, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. It was unfortunately I didn't have a choice, but I had to do it. So but uh it was good, it worked out, and uh hopefully it'll be I think you know early, it's too early to tell, but I think early on it's it's gonna be one of those things that I'll I'll feel like this was a good thing that this all happened because I was getting the the last job was getting kind of stagnant, so it was just a a it was gonna be time for a change in the next few years anyway. So for me too.
SPEAKER_04So I'm optimistic or also I I'm not sad. Good luck to you, man. Good luck. I'm yeah, yeah, I'm I'm hoping you get it. I'm optimistic. That's enough for me. I'm at at that moment I try to do cherry picking, you know. Um every variable should fit the money, the job, etc. So we'll see. Next time, next episode, we're smarter, I guess. I hope. Okay. Alright. So let's move on to through the bourbon, I would say.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, let's get into our bourbon. So if you were following along with us, so on this episode, we're gonna be doing Angel's Envy, uh, Kentucky Strait bourbon. Um, and I've had this one before. It's it's pretty solid, but I'm I was excited to try it again because I I really only had it at a tasting before. So I haven't ever like actually got a bottle of it, so it's nice to pick up a bottle. But I don't know what about you? Do you have any experience with this one?
SPEAKER_04No, absolutely not. Never saw it. Okay. Um that's nothing you would find in a normal shelf in a in a supermarket or something. Yeah. You have to go to special liquor stores. I saw just now that it was imported from the US to France and they distributed it to uh special liquor stores here. Okay. I think I ordered it via Amazon. That's also always an option for me. Because here in Europe you can order liquor from Amazon.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's good. That's that's really nice because like I was like I was saying in the last episode, every state's kind of got their own rules here in the in this in the US. And the issue with our state, which is funny because like alcohol is like very readily available anywhere. Like you can buy it at a gas station or you know, or um a convenience store or even like a pharmacy, you can get liquor here and stuff. So it's like it's available everywhere in the state, which you know contributes to really bad, you know, DUI or driving under the influence problem here. But yet they have a rule, they have a law here that we can't you can't order, you can buy it at any store here, but you can't order it here on the internet. So you I can't like bring liquors into the state from like through any kind of internet source, which is insane because they just let everybody, you know. I mean, you can go in, get gasoline, get, you know, like fill up your car, walk into the convenience part of the of the gas station and like buy a single beer that's like on the shelf, and then just walk out with it and go get in your car after you've gassed up and or fueled up and and leave with and who knows you could be open carrying that. I mean it's it's just ridiculous the way the rules work here, but it is nice that it's that we can get a lot of stuff here. It's just I can't go about my own means of getting it. I have to actually like search the stores here for it.
SPEAKER_04I mean, it's the better experience to go to the store and choose something that's more fun, I think.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04If you have the variety there, it's nice.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It's just it's just like a yeah, like regional stuff, it's a bummer because it's like if I want something that's regional, I have to like have the store. Most stores I can't just be like, hey, can you guys order this? And because it's you know, they have to order what they can sell. But there are like smaller stores here where you can be like, Do you guys ever carry this? And they're like, No, we we can get it, but we've never we've never brought it in. But there's like one store where like my wife and I do that sometimes, and usually if we ask, we'll come back like a week later and they'll have a couple bottles on their shelf to like test out, and we'll go and buy them, and then they're like, Okay, well, this someone's buying this, so they'll keep bringing it in. So it's kind of nice. That's like the only way we've kind of influenced the system, but yeah.
SPEAKER_04I mean, that's cool. I I think it's under the line more expensive than buying it by uh at Amazon, but it's cool, that's possible. So to maybe have uh the your little straw next to your your place and get to know the the owner and stuff could be nice too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. It seems that's usually the kind of the way it has to be done if you want to try to get something that's hard to get a hold of in our region of this of the country.
SPEAKER_04Okay, then let me talk a little bit about Angels Envy. You already said Kentucky Straight Bourbon, but they they are not allowed to call it Kentucky uh Kentucky Straight Bourbon.
SPEAKER_00Yes, I did say that, and I forgot I forgot what the label said. I was I was trying to remember what the damn label said.
SPEAKER_04It has to continue with the finished in port wine barrels. Yes, yes, yeah. So it has to be called like that because it first matures in four to six years in the chart oak barrels, and then gets a finish in uh for six months in in port wine barrels. Which was something special back in the day when they founded um the this bourbon brand in uh in 2010, because uh at the at that time it was not mainstream to give the Kentucky Straight Bourbon uh finish in other barrels. Right. So uh Angels Envy wasn't the the starter bourbon, but it made it uh a little bit more popular because of one of the founders, Lincoln Henderson, who is in the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame. He worked on brands like Woodford Reserve and Gentleman Jack. Okay. Yeah. Both brands I uh know too. Um I like the Gentleman Jack, it's okay. And uh Woodford Reserve is also good. I really like the double oaked, so if any of the double oaked Woodford double oaked, it's one of my favorites so far. Yeah, yeah, that one's solid, yeah. I really like that one. Yeah, we see what we will taste here uh with our podcast, but um that's a really good one. So his son Wes Henderson got his father out of retirement uh and told him, hey, you can you can experiment a little bit with Bourbon if you want. And so they had the idea with the portwine barrel finish. This bourbon has uh 86.6 proof, has the classic I would say the classic uh combination of corn, rye, and mortted barley. So 70% corn, 80% rye, 10% mortar barley. And gets his special taste through the portwine barrels. The name Angels Envy is some kind of joke Lincoln Henderson made because I don't know if you know the term um Angels Share. That's okay, yeah, yeah. The barrel loses uh five around five percent of volume every year, and they call it the Angel Share because the Angels take something from the bourbon or from the whiskey. Oh yeah, okay, yeah. And Lincoln Henderson said that's the Angels Envy because we got the better part of it. So the Angels envy us having a full barrel of this bourbon. Okay. So that's that's why the Yeah. I like that too. So anything else to say about it? I don't think so.
SPEAKER_00So we could Yeah, so uh I so like I said, I've I've I've never like actually dove into a bottle of this before, but I have had it at a like a I've had a tasting of it. Kind of like beer, like flights of different stuff, like different alcohols, but there's one specifically that I can that I was doing like flights of of bourbon stuff. So I got a I got one of those and they had an Angels Envy flight. And so I tried that because it was basically like I think there's three or four different at least for uh their main retail stuff that they sell. There was like I think there's like three or four different types of Angels Envy, there's like the the rye and uh a bunch of uh like I think one of their more expensive like aged bottles and stuff like that. But um, yeah, I got to try all those, and they were pretty cool. And like uh I this one obviously was part of it. I'd it was solid. I remember being like, yeah, that's pretty good, but it wasn't like my favorite in the flight. Like there was um they had some other ones, like their rye. Uh I believe I was telling you about that, that their rye uh Angels Envy is that's finished in rum barrels as opposed to port port wine. So that one like comes out because it's finished in the rum barrels, like it has like a really, really nice, like sweet note to it and kind of a sweet finish to it, which is really good. It's like it's very, very drinkable that stuff. It's like very much you could sip on that like all day. It's just it's almost like food tastes a little bit like bourbon candy or something, man. It's just but uh I really like that one. That one's really good. This one, I I was like, it was one of those things where like I was like, oh, that's their regular one. So it's like you didn't I didn't really think about it at the time because I wanted to try all the other selections they had, but yeah, I think I like this one. It's definitely, I think, like flavor-wise, uh flavor note-wise, like it's it's a vast difference from what the what we did last episode, 1792, I think. Because it just has a completely different palette, I think, or flavored uh palette to it. So I get like I don't know, this one it's obviously doesn't have I for me, it doesn't have as much of the like the caramel note to it. The port wine barrels, I get like a touch of that. I don't know if it's like maybe like there's something kind of on the tongue, and I don't maybe that's from the port port wine finish. Is that like maybe like the tannins or something that like you get a little bit of that on your tongue that like the way tannins are when you drink wine? Like it it it's not it's subtle. I I don't think it's like hits you heavy with that, like the way wine does, but I I do get something there. And I like I don't really get flavor-wise, like get a lot of like the port wine finish out of it, but I don't know, maybe that's just me. I don't know if you like how much you can really recognize any of that in there.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely on your side there, I I think about it the same way. I my first thought was why just six months in the in the port wine barrel?
SPEAKER_00Could have been more Yeah, I would I would think like if they wanted to have it if they wanted it to have more of an impact on your on your palette, like because of the port wine finish, like then why not age it longer? Because you're gonna get that effect a lot more for people. Also on the colour. Imagine it would be a little more red would be nice for you. But yeah, I don't know. It's I think it's solid. It's not like the best bourbon I've ever had, but I mean I mean it's not like up there with the elites, but it has a it has a solid taste to it. I think it's it's definitely I think appealing. I I don't think I I don't know if it stands out a lot the way like our last one, 7292, does, where like you can really like pick out the flavors in it, but like this one, it just feels like more of a s like a straight just bourbon flavor to it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean in the notes I had vanilla and caramel and fruit, not as much when I tasted it. So I would say the same uh what you said, not much fruit or caramel or not as intense, you know. Yeah, I had I had um wood. My first thought was wood. I I tasted nearly laying on my tongue the the wood. Um it was way more uh wood or toasted oak taste in comparison to the 1792. And yeah, the I mean it stays on the tongue, the oak or the wood, and then I don't know if you if you really taste it or if you just believe it because you know it's Port Wine berry finish, but a little bit of berry or yeah, tannin taste.
SPEAKER_00I could definitely see that, yeah. Cause it that and that that's what I'm I think that's for me too, that's where like one of the notes that comes especially like towards the end of the taste, like it has that I get a hint of like that tannin-y, like maybe berry like uh like wine type. Maybe not tasting like wine, but just that that effect that you get from you know tasting obviously grape, you know, uh grapes have been turned into into wine, and like it has like a little bit of that aftertaste to it. But yeah, I'm with you on that too. The the caramel for me like doesn't it just didn't come out at all. Like I didn't I did not get caramel out of it and the fruit notes either. Like I other than like that, the fruit notes that are associated with the wine part of it, I think.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. But it's it's a smooth one. It's yes, it is it's around and smooth, doesn't give any much edge, you know. If you like edge, no you miss it, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, it doesn't uh it doesn't really bite you at all, like very hard.
SPEAKER_04It's it's just no spice. Almost no spice. Maybe for us no spice. If you give it to an almost non-drinker, uh yeah, they would say it's strong, but yeah. Uh you don't taste the alcohol very much, I think. So and no also not the rye. Um so just a little spicy, almost no spice in my yeah, it's really, really light on the spice, I think.
SPEAKER_00I don't think it really is even there at all. Like it that's what I was saying, like it just feels like a straight bourbon that doesn't really have you know what I mean. Like it's it's like one of those like drinking I don't I think it's obviously better than like you know, just drinking a straight like Jack Janiels or something or a Jim Beam, but definitely it does have it does have more of a straightforward flavor the way those do. Like those don't have a lot of variety to them. And I feel like this one has a lot of that too. Other than like you're just gonna get the bourbon out of it and you're gonna get that port wine kind of a little bit out of it. And maybe that's the point. I don't know, maybe that's what they're going for. I because it yeah, all those other notes that you would normally get in like a mid-range, like decent bourbon like this, like they're not they're not really there.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean it's like it's a comfort bourbon. You can sit down with it, enjoy it without really thinking about it or thinking, oh, I have to keep this glass uh for the whole evening or night. I don't know if it's a s if it's a recommendation for starters for people who don't have experience with the bourbon, because I remember the wood on my tongue. It's not as intense if you keep drinking it. But in the beginning I thought there's my tongue is uh is a wood piece, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So yeah, I I could see that being a turn off, especially for people that are just getting into bourbon as well, like it being people that don't really like IPAs that will try an IPA and just be like, I all I taste is like the harsh, like it just tastes like a tree, you know. Yeah, yeah. So it's just like I well, it's funny because it's I always say that now because like I'm not a huge IPA fan, but I'll drink them here and there. But um it's someone from uh uh podcast another podcast uh that I listened to. He always describes IPAs. I mean he loves IPAs, but he agrees that there's not a ton of variety to IPAs, like if you've had one, you've had a lot of them, and like he always describes IPA taste as drink as uh tasting a tree's asshole. Yeah, why not?
SPEAKER_04I mean, I like them and I shared them with my neighbors who are a little bit older and didn't know it. And everybody was almost disgusted by it, and I thought, what? Why?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's one of those like harsh I feel like with people that only are only used to like like loggers and like domestic stuff here and stuff, like they I have a hard time getting into IPAs.
SPEAKER_04It was the first time I really concentrated on the on the taste. I really, you know, and then thought, oh yeah, it's it's pretty harsh. But I like I like harsh beers, you know, the strongest in Germany. I have no problem with them. I I like it. Okay. It's very herby, no, no, no, not herbie, it's that's a different. But it's a stronger taste, you know. I I like those. Yeah. So uh it didn't bother me the the the wood, but it was very dominant in the taste. Not the wine part. But I would say overall it's a smooth one. And I would recommend it because of its taste, but uh I had to pay more than fifty euros, so like around sixty dollars. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. I think that's too much. For that price you can get two similar as good um for the same price.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I would agree with that. I think this is one of those that if you're gonna try it, like don't try it over a certain price range, because it's not worth, you know, a little bit of that higher end price. Because there's yeah, like you said, there's gonna be other bourbons that are way more worth it that you could spend less money on. But it is solid for what it is. I think if you're I think it's worth a try if you're someone that really likes their variety of bourbon, so it likes to try something different. Because this one does, as much as like we we've been saying that it it does feel like more of a straightforward bourbon and goes down, you know, it's an easy drinker and stuff like that. It also like there is something to be said for that little port wine like kind of finish to it that it has. Like, that is a different experience than what you would normally be used to in in bourbon. So if it's that sounds like something intriguing to you, then I would I would definitely recommend it. Maybe not for a steep price, but it it definitely is I I would recommend it to somebody who definitely who wants to try something different with a bourbon.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, the one glass in the bar is perfect. If you want to experience different tastes in bourbon, I mean go ahead. I want to try as much as I can. You don't have to buy the whole bottle, but um go taste it. Yeah. It's worth it definitely to at least at least try it. And the bottle, I mean, I realize that uh the guys and girls in uh Kentucky are more creative with creating bottle shapes because if you compare it to Scotch or something, every bottle looks the same. And every bourbon I have has a different uh shape and and uh on this bottle. And I like this one. It's very huge, but it's uh looks nice in the bar. So that's a plus point for me too. A little bit of bottle design.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the bottle design's cool. They're big bottles too. I mean, they're still your standard this you know, standard volume is every other bottle, but it's just that the way that like it's like a thinner design as far as it's like thickness, um, and so it's like a little wider too at the same time, and like a stretched wood ford reserve. Yeah, pretty much, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's uh and like all their all their their whiskies they do with that same bottle style. So it's they just do like different colors for the labels to make them stand out from each other. But I the one thing I always thought was interesting about it is like they put their labels on the side of the bottles instead of on the back, um, because they have like a wing design on the back of the bottles, like a like angel's wings pretty much on the back of it, which I always thought that was neat. That was like a neat thing to do.
SPEAKER_04And since my bar has a wooden background, it it looked like the bottle would be empty, and I saw the the wings through it. Oh right. Yeah. The colour of the berm is almost the same like the wood in the background. So I saw the wings. Yeah, it's a nice one. Yeah, it's a cool bottle. I like the I like the design. Yeah. And I'm curious uh about the other ones. But they are pretty expensive, so if I might get lucky, I I will taste it somewhere.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, if somebody's doing like single glasses of them, I definitely I would definitely recommend the aged one. I kind of I remember somewhat it. I mean it same idea. It's just it's like another bourbon that is a little more high-priced. It so it's kind of falls in with a lot of the higher priced bourbons that all have you know that similar taste to them. But I do highly recommend the rye. And that's the thing too, is that like I don't drink rice straight a lot. I usually like to mix rice because I like the spice to kind of mix with other things that that ries have. But uh this the Angels Envy's rye, I would definitely recommend as like a drinker on its own, because it is it's it it's really good.
SPEAKER_04Okay. I will I hope I will at some point have the chance to try it. Yeah. Or try more of they're all called Angels Envy, but different add-ons.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they just have different add-ons, yeah, to the to the whiskey thing, to the like the regular title. Yeah. Okay. So that is the bourbon we we drink for this episode. Um, very cool. So check it out if it sounds interesting to you. So let's get into our next section. What have you been playing? So um, you want me, I can start it off if you want. I'll go ahead and I believe you kicked it off last time, so I can kick it off this time.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00For me, I had a couple standouts. I'm still on my arcade kick, although these last couple weeks with the new job starting, I have not been able to play nearly as much as I was over the last like two months. But uh, so that my my gameplay has drastically died died down, but uh still hanging in there. In this last month, um, so the one of the bigger standouts, and this is a game I played before, so I played Death Smiles again, and that's a shoot-em-up, uh, side-scrolling shoot 'em up that uh was made by uh Cave, who's vastly I think when we recorded last episode, I haven't really I hadn't really dove into Cave stuff yet, into their shmups, and I I haven't played them all. I haven't played everything they've made, but I played maybe like three or four of the games they've made, and I am like I think I'm all in. Like I played Pro Gear, uh I played uh Escalooga and uh like there's one called like Esprade or something. I don't know. They got a bunch of great a bunch of shoot-em ups. They're they're one of like the more back from the 90s, they were one of the more premier like shoot 'em up arcade companies. But Death Smiles is one of my all-time is an all-timer for me. And that one I was already familiar with before I started getting into cave stuff. So I went to a Magfest, which uh for those out there, Magfest is uh music and gaming festival that happens uh in Washington, DC uh every year. It's usually at the beginning of the year, and it's a huge, huge uh con that a lot of people go to. Maybe one of the bigger cons on the east coast uh of the country, uh, maybe if not the biggest, because it it there's like we're talking tens of thousands of people that go to it. I've never been on a con. That's that's sad. Yeah, I I went I started going to Magfest specifically, just for one, to meet up with all the all of our friends at Polymedia because I had never met any of them before. So I started going those as a way to meet up with all of them. And uh I went like a couple years, it was like the first one of the first ones they had after COVID happened when cons started kind of coming out of the shadows again. I went to one of the earlier ones, so it wasn't as bad, and then I went to maybe one or two, maybe one more after that. But I've heard that it's gotten back to what it used to be, which is like it's huge, like almost almost a little too much, uh, because there's just so many people there. But anyway, it's a fun time. Um, I played this at the very first, or maybe the second, the last one I went to, maybe um magfest, uh, with a friend, a friend in the uh from the polymed discord and um in the network, uh Captain Diracma. He and I uh beat this game at one of the Magfests together, and uh it was a great time. We had a good time with it. I mean, he was already familiar with it, and I just kind of jumped on because he, you know, everybody's just around in the arcade they have there, and I was the nearest closest person to him, so he's like, You want to play this? And I was like, Hey, heck yeah, why not? It was shumps, shum ups aren't usually my thing, but at the time I was like, Yeah, well, I'll give it a try. But I loved it, it's great. Like this game, it's so you play as like witches, they're like um it has a little bit of like that anime type like style to it.
SPEAKER_04I think LC pictures right now, it looks extremely ugly. It's uh one of the ugliest games I ever saw.
SPEAKER_00That like anime like witch or anime like girls type style to it. It's it's a kind of a funky game, but it has the thing about Death Smiles is it it it's very gloomy looking and it kind of has like a weird background because it since you're playing as like witches that like and that's basically instead of having like a ship or something, you're the witch on a broom and and you shoot stuff at enemies and stuff, and it that's supposed to have like it's like a little bit of like a horror theme to it, and I think that's why the game looks the way it does, why it has like the art style does where because you're like fighting like monsters and stuff like that, and it's supposed to have and like even the music has like a little bit of like a horror influence. That what that's one of the things I love about it is the soundtrack. It it's weird, it's just one of those weird games that like I shouldn't like it because it's not usually my style of like gameplay aside, it's art style and it's like the characters in it aren't usually something I would ever get into, but I don't know why this game works for me, it just does. I think it might a lot of it's the soundtrack because the soundtrack has it's just uh you know, like another synthwave type kind of soundtrack, and I don't know, it works for this game. I I don't know what it is. All the elements about this game are a lot of them are things that I shouldn't be into, but when they're all put together in this, I had I had such a good time, and this is like one that I always remember fondly. And so I picked up a copy of it on uh 360 because it was ported to Xbox 360. I picked up the the version, the port that it had there, and that that and so I replayed that again. That's what I played for this, but uh yeah, it's great because the that console version has like in it doesn't just have one version of the game, it has the arcade version, it has the version that was made for Xbox 360 for the console, so has a little bit of a different style to it. Uh it also has like an arrange mode and has a couple different type of modes. There's like a black version, which is kind of common with uh these schmupp games, um which they they the black versions, I don't really have a lot of familiarity with them because I haven't dove enough into shmups yet to understand like what the differences are between like arrange modes and black and like black versions of of cave games, but they're I know that they're like more well regarded amongst the shmup community, like um if there's you know whatever game and it's like the black version of the game or something. Uh I I don't I don't I haven't dove into them enough to know what that entails. I'm sure it has something to do with you know how the game plays, like maybe enemy patterns and things like that. I mean, a lot of like Schmupp playing I feel like is just like for the hardcore players is about how hard the game can get. Like that's the appeal of them, is how tough they can get. And so that's I feel like that's why they awake a lot of different modes for these those kinds of games, is just like to sp spike the difficulty curve on you know for the hardcore players. We know a few of them.
SPEAKER_04They can explain everything out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they they would be able to explain it a lot better than I can, so because I'm just kind of touching the surface of this whole genre.
SPEAKER_04So we have to invite one of them at least at some point.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they'll be able to give us the in and outs because uh yeah, I don't I don't have enough knowledge yet to to know into. And that's the thing is I can't I haven't dove into them so hard that that much, like because I'm not that good at them yet. So like sometimes they can get a little too overwhelming for me. I'm starting to find that I like bullet hell style shoot-em-ups, but it really has to have all the right elements for me because if it's just total, total chaos and you can't think straight because there's just so much going on, like that sometimes that get that can be too much for me. Uh that's weird, like certain games I've been able to, and that's the reason why I said I like cave uh specifically, because like cave does their their shmups are like bullet hell shmups, and or leave the majority of them. And I don't know what it is about their formula, but it works for me, and like they make more sense to me, and I'm like I feel more confident when I play those ones as opposed to like bullet hells made by other companies. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I like bullet hells, but if it's a twin stick shooter, top-down twin stick shooter, then I like bullet hell, but I'm bad at schmupps. And if I look at pictures of of uh how is it called again? Death smiles? Death smiles, yeah. There's so much shit going on on um It's a lot, it's a lot. It's the purple stuff, the enemy bullets, and the rest not I don't know. It's crazy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's just like it's I feel like the a lot of the schmupp community is just like about the challenge. It's about like being able to like challenge yourself and the leaderboards, you know. Yeah, getting on the leaderboards and getting through runs without with only one credit and stuff like that. Like that's that's kind of where it all lives, I guess. So uh yeah, but that's a fun one. I yeah, I will agree that there's some parts of it that look very ugly and like the 360 version of it, that mode of it, I didn't like as much. It had more of like a CG style to it, and I didn't really care for that. I like the original arcade version uh a lot more. I think that it because it used it it used the the characters were you know using like more of the uh a drawn style, and yeah, I I just think it looked a I think it looked better. I think the 360 version looked cleaner, but it was like I don't know, it looked made it kind of look generic too, I think. But yeah. Alright. I played Blood Dungeon. Do you know Blood Dungeon?
SPEAKER_04I do not. I am not familiar with Blood Dungeon. Yeah, it's um somehow not very popular. It's made by the Nidhawk devs. Do you know Nithawk? I guess so, because you probably played it on uh Pulymedia Pulykill Con at some point with someone. Oh, okay. Uh new game 1v1. Oh, okay, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They made a a survivor-like or bullet heaven, uh how you want to call it. It's uh a 2D platformer, and you're running around a map and have a starting weapon, and you kill enemies, collect their blood to get stronger, then you level up, and then you can choose to improve your weapon or get some passives or a new weapon, and you try to survive as long as possible. Ideally until you kill the third boss and then you like it is um with roguelights, you can get some meta progression uh currency and uh unlock um better movement, um more health, uh unlock new characters and stuff. And it's very hectic. Also on the more ugly side, uh there's a toggle you can switch off or switch on uh nudity. So there's a male and a female character, uh the male character swinging his dong uh around and screaming. It's pretty crazy. You see some some things coming back from Nidhawk. Uh one enemy is uh a character looking like the characters you control in Nidhawk with this little sword. And one some of the bosses are worms. If you win at Nithawk, one or two, there's a big worm coming and swallowing you. So it's crazy. And uh Blood Dungeon is the same kind of crazy. I would try to get the platinum there, but you have to beat every stage with every character, and there are some stupid characters. I'm not a good platformer, not my my biggest skill set uh is in platforming, so I have problems there. Uh and there's a character that is very slow and fat and big, and he doesn't fit through every hallway, you know, and you have to turn around where the all the family is coming from, so that will be uh difficult. That's my schmup moment to uh knock my head against that wall to somehow beat the game and get the platinum. So yeah, I recommend it. If you like um Nidhawk, if you like roguelikes, if you like survivor likes or platforming and weird stuff, bloody weird stuff, then buy that game. It's yeah, I thought because of Nidhawk devs it would be uh much more popular, but I think not many I think less than a few hundred uh reviews on Steam and I'm on true trophies, uh where you can see how many trophies you got uh on PlayStation games and uh how many people are playing that game, and it's not very much. I think below a hundred people play it there. Oh, okay. So yeah, go and buy that game, it's fun.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Yeah, I look into the screenshots of it, I I've never heard of it, but I it does look interesting. I might be something I might have to check out someday. Yeah. It does it it has like the style of it kind of looks like something I would get into. So it's unique. I like uniqueness.
SPEAKER_04If somebody is doing something special for the first time, not copying it, I think that's always a good thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, definitely. What's the second game? So my next one is another is another arcade game. So this one is probably surprised. Yeah, I know. So um my next one is gonna be a Neo Drift Out and New Technology. And um I believe this is part of a series uh called the Neo Drift Out series. Um, I think this one is like one of the more popular ones. I think this one was even ported to some maybe a few consoles, not all of them, but it's a game by SNK or published by SNK. It's done by the uh Visco Corporation. And uh yeah, if you know SNK, then you'd know probably the style it has, because this one's from 1996. So uh definitely yeah, it's a racing game. So this one, instead of being like, and it's not your traditional racing game where you're you know behind the vehicle or even a top-down, it's more of an isometric look where you're kind of a little turned at a like a like an angle while um seeing the track. And it's you only you don't see like a ton of the track, it's not like a like Ivan Iron Man Stewart's like super off-road where like you can see the entire track and then you're just driving around it and stuff. But this one, like it's a little more zoomed in, so it that kind of lends itself to the difficulty of the game because all it is is it's basically like rally racing, kind of, because it's all done on like dirt courses, and like there's a there's a snow course and stuff. So um from A to B? Not not rounds. No, you're just doing yeah, you're gonna try to get from one point to the other. And the way it the way it lends itself to an arcade style is that you have like checkpoints, like the way like an outrun or something uh has, like where you have to get to that checkpoint, otherwise I think like it depends on the track. Like certain tracks, even if you don't make it to the to one of the like I think they want to say that most of the time there's like maybe two or three checkpoints, and it's like if you don't make the first one, it'll just start your round over and you lose, which you lose a credit. But if you make it to that first one but you don't make it to the next few, all you're back behind, all you're behind on is time because you're trying to get to the finish line with it a certain amount of time, and most of these tracks take like two minutes max to get from point A to point B on the track. But you're it's basically a time trial because you're trying to beat the top times. So most of them all have for you to like it's because pretty much to like get a game over, or not a game over, but uh um uh lose a credit on a given track, you lose a credit by not by getting to the finish line you know over the the designated time. They say like you gotta get to the end, the best time on this track is two minutes and two seconds. So you gotta get under two minutes and two seconds, and it goes all the way down to like the tenths and like hundredths seconds, um, the way it counts your time. So you gotta be under that time to be able to qualify to get to the next race, and it's like six tracks, but they're very they can get really difficult. Like the first I got really into it because like the first three tracks are not a problem at all. You get through them, you do pretty well, like you get kind of get a feel for the game. Oh, I'm a good driver, yeah. And then it spikes the difficulty hard after that. Like, I think it was like the fourth level. I had that was the hardest level for me. It wasn't even the final level, it was I want to say it was the fourth or fifth level. I was like killing myself trying to get this time. I know it was like getting as close as like like a second or two seconds off, and I just could not get there in time, and it was driving me mad. Like, I it took me like the better part of probably like two hours worth of just doing this one track to get through it. Like it was it was a pain in the ass. But uh, it was fun though. Like it was like it was just weird how like the difficulty spiked, but it's weird because like once you did that level, if you could get through that level, the final two levels, they weren't a cakewalk, but you were like prepared for them because of how hard that like I think it was the fourth level, how hard it was. It was just like because like the final level I was expecting, I was like, Oh god, here we go. Because like the fifth level was easy, like I did, I think I beat it in like two runs, and I was like, okay, and then I but I knew the file the final one was gonna be tough, and it was tough, but it didn't take me nearly as long as that other level did. But it's a good time if you if you want like a little bit of a different style of racer, just like a little different take on it. Like this one is definitely fun. Like it is like I said, it's a little more zoomed in and you're driving pretty fast. So, like when you come up to turns, it gives you it's kind of like like a rally game where like it's where it's telling you what the turn is that's coming up, it'll give flash like a. Image of what turns the next. And it's just about your reaction times. Like you just have to like start into your turn. Because like you know, with rally racing, you're drifting a little bit through everything because you're not on asphalt. So it's yeah, you just have to get a feel for how the turns work in the game, and you have to be able to like make the turns and and like learning not just being able to get through a turn, but learning how to get through a turn quickly, where like about your approach, which is a lot of what racing and like rally is and those kind of like types of racing is about, is like it's not just about being able to make it through the turn, it's about how you enter the turn and how you exit the turn because those milliseconds, those seconds can those half seconds and stuff can make a big difference in your total time. So that and that's what this game is a lot of about is like learning how to take certain turns the right way so that you can shave sometimes like a half second off your total time or a quarter of a second. Sometimes that's the difference. Sometimes you win, you get, you know, oh, I would I would get through a race and have like I would have done it in like under you know two hundredths of a second before the like actual time. Because if you hit even like a tenth of a second over, it's you lose your credit, gotta start over. So it's it's tough. It's a it's a tough time, but it's fun if it if it looks appealing to people, like the style of it, it it definitely is a nice challenge. That's what I really appreciated about it. It was like that it gave me that determination once it started getting hard of like, no, I can do this, I know I can do it. I just have to be, you know, you gotta wipe the hands down and be like, all right, I can't have any mistakes, like I have to focus. And it it really brought a lot of that out in me, which sometimes games I'll just give up. I'll be like, no, this is like I don't want to kill myself, like you know, like a Dark Souls or something, where it's like, I don't want to kill myself trying to learn how to do this correctly. It's just it's not fun. But like this is one of those that it brought out that where I'm having fun and I know I can beat it, I just have to focus and and do it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, sounds like a game you you didn't beat uh in your childhood, and now you come back to the experienced, more calm character. Um you're able to power through and um you know approach it a little bit a little bit smarter back in the day, and then finally you can do it.
SPEAKER_00I felt accomplished after getting the finally getting the win in it. I was like, oh my god, that was like that was it was great. It was a good uh it was just a fun experience. I was like it's it g it's one of those games that gives you that feeling of like like I powered through it and like I feel good about myself because I powered through it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's nice.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I mean, I'm not much into uh retro gaming. There are some games copying that style, you know, Art of Ready, for example. It's pretty new, you know it? Um it's yeah, I think I've heard of that, yeah. And it looks really good. Also, I mean reminiscent through the old days, but yeah, not as pixelated as back in the day. So that's a good alternative for people who don't play arcade games every day. Nice. Yeah. Alright, what was your last one? Yeah, my last one is Wall World 2. Um when I talked about Blunt Dungeon, I I said I like unique games who don't copy uh ideas uh already been there. So Wall Wallworld is an exception of that because it copies Dome Keeper, which is a pretty I don't know, I think pretty known um roguelite where you have a dome on the ground and underground you go digging for resources. And Wallworld is you go a w uh a wall up and down with a spider robot and you look for places to dig into the wall, and then you go into the wall and yeah, gather resources. You have a drilling um device and you destroy the stones in there to get resources. Uh that was the Warworld 1. I really liked this game, the original Warworld. Went through to the platinum within 15 hours or something. So good amount of hours, I think I would say. And was really looking forward to Warworld 2. Um, and it's pretty much the same game. Difference is that you encounter enemies in with in the wall in the wall. Uh so you have to shoot them a little bit. It's not too difficult, it's a little bit more hectic, and like in World War One, every few minutes, I think you have two minutes, and then there's a wave of enemies is coming. So you have to go back to the spider and shoot them. At the beginning we have uh a machine gun, but you can uh find other uh blueprints for for other weapons, and um you can with your uh resources you you collected, you can upgrade the weapons, you can upgrade uh your drilling device, you can upgrade uh the guy you are uh controlling so that he's faster and stuff like that. And you have uh submissions to to find uh uh special blueprints or equipment or anything like that, or just to kill uh a big um alien creature. And in World War II you have this the main quest, you have different uh areas to to visit and uh to to um follow the main quest. And in the hub you have the possibility to use your uh Meta Progression Currency I don't know how it's called to improve your spider, improve your equipment. And there's also uh the possibility to buy new stuff for your wall digger, uh the character you're controlling. And there's a bar where you can buy temporary upgrades like uh some drinks that um that you run faster or drill faster, stuff like that. And there's also a fat guy sitting um talking to you sometimes and giving you side quests, like finding a cat or something. Yeah. So I did all that. I have three areas unlocked. I was able to successfully uh finish all quests and side quests, and nothing happened. There's no new area, there's no new main quest uh goal, there's no side quest goal.
SPEAKER_01Oh wow.
SPEAKER_04After nine hours of playtime. And I don't know what to do. The only thing I could do is go back, replay uh the the quests I already did, and to hope something will happen. Which I probably won't do because that's I'm a time waster, you know. So I think I abandon uh the game. Although it's yeah, I I really like the first one and the second one brought some more things uh in the mix, so I was optimistic about it. But I already saw also on two trophies uh some maniacs uh playing those games uh really quick and someone got the platinum within three days and forty-five hours of playtime. So imagine three days, forty-five hours of playtime. He did the platinum, so it's possible, but I don't know what to do, and um there's no guide for it or something. I have no no clue what to do next. So I think I will abandon it. Maybe I will give it a try sometime, but I have so many games to play. So yeah. If anyone listening to this knows something about the game and came got got farther than me, then please tell me. I think Burger Champ, uh friend of us, is interested in it too. Maybe he's smarter than I am. He possibly is, um, and can tell me what to do next, but yeah. That's a little bit, you know, yeah. Disappointing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I'm familiar with Wallworld. I've heard the name and I I know um I don't know a ton about it, but I've I definitely know of its existence, so but I've never tried it out myself. But it's cool. It looks pretty neat. It definitely looks like something I would maybe enjoy.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I like it more than Dome Keeper. I'm I think the most people know Dome Keeper. I think I thought it was exhausting a little bit, and Rodig uh Walgord 1 is yeah, more relaxing, more arcadey, I would say, and you progress pretty fast. And that's cool. Okay. So that's the recommendation if you want to try it out. And as um, I think that's the normal case for the for every episode of the most likely we'll bring some some roquelets to the what are we playing right now. Yeah. So you want to go ahead with your main game today?
SPEAKER_00Alright, so my game that I brought to the show, um, I feel like this one's gonna throw a little bit of a curveball. I don't know. I don't know if we're if we're if anybody was expecting this, but I played a game called Au revoir. Like Au revoir. French Au Revoir. Yeah. Yeah. So uh so this is a game from 2025, actually, very recent game, even though it doesn't look it. Um the reason why it appealed to me because I wanted to do something a little different for this episode, or just you know, in general for the show, our point is trying to get more casual games that you could sit and have a drink and play and just enjoy yourself. So I was like, well, I need to get one of those because I had a beat-em-up last time. Let's let's do something a little more, maybe not you know, not cozy as far as gameplay, not cozy as far as the game. But so this is a point-and-click adventure, and uh it's um has like the reason why it grabs me is it has more of an older PC game looks to it. It actually has like a PS1, like PlayStation 1 type visual style to it, a little bit of that like early polygons type uh uh design to it, like all the characters and the world and everything looks very, very like uh sharp corner, like early polygon world like type stuff. And so it has like a mix of like PS1 or PS1 and like I feel like it also kind of feels like a 90s PC game, too. But this game um is made by Invisible Studios, um, who this is like basically their only game. I did see that they've made like one other game, but it's not anything I haven't really looked into it um to see, but this seems to be like their most prominent game. Like I said, it's from last year, so you know I think they're just uh a dev that's just getting on their feet. So it seemed to do pretty well in the indie circles, I think, as far as uh a point and click goes, like uh it's I think it may have won an award or two. I didn't really look into which ones, but um, it it seemed to do okay for itself. Uh it's published by uh Nintius Games, who has quite a few games under their belt that they've published. I don't know as far as like if there's anything that's like really well known amongst the indie community, but so with this game, obviously since it was a point-click, it's very narrative-driven. I'll try to talk about it as far as like a general storyline. I don't know if I really want to give everything away because being a point and click and being it's kind of like a you don't play a detective, but it has a lot of these point and clicks, if you've played them, have like more of a detective-y type feel to them where you're doing a lot of investigative stuff because you're learning clues and stuff to like get to secret second or I mean different areas of the game and trying to like solve puzzles, and so like these games lend themselves really well to like that kind of detective-investigative style. And this one is no exception, so it takes place in the future, it's 2071, is when this game takes place, and uh you play this character named Tristan, and he's what's known as a sentinel, and this world in the this future world that they've created has a little bit of um that like futuristic, like neo noir, like cyberpunk y type like feel to it. Um a lot of like neon type colors in the game, and uh it has a very much of for me, it felt like Blade Runner a little bit. It it definitely you could tell that there was some influence of the Blade Runner movie in there a bit because like it's even like the way this game starts out, you're playing this, like I said, this guy named Tristan, and what he is is he's known as a Sentinel. In this world, this future world, the big thing, or at least the thing that he's related to is he works for a company named Au Revoir, so that's what the game is named after. And they've developed this new technology, or well, it's not new in the world, but they've developed a technology where they've created a synthetic brain, is what they specialize in. So the idea behind that is they create synthetic brains and they sell them to people. That's like their how they make their money, is uh what it is you can buy this brain, and what it what they can do with this technology that they've invented is upload your consciousness into this artificial brain or into the synthetic brain, and then replace your brain with it, apparently. And so basically, like you're still you, but you have a brain that can basically plug in to like whatever a mainframe or like the internet or whatever. So it has a lot of that, those like cyberpunk type kind of influence, a lot of like those cyberpunk properties where it's like dealing with connecting your brain to the net or connecting your brain to computers and stuff like that. But uh, it's the idea is that people do this so that if their physical body dies, the brain, as long as the brain isn't damaged, they can be still there as long as their brain's not damaged, they're still exist inside that brain. Their consciousness does. So even if their physical body dies, they can be uploaded and transferred into another person who has a synthetic brain. Okay, so that yeah, yeah. So their consciousness can take over. And like the idea behind it is in the world, is from what I gathered, was like they can't just upload into anybody, they have to like upload into basically like someone who's died, and their body's usable, and they have a synthetic brain, so we can upload this consciousness, and now you can use this body as your body. So basically, you you can essentially live forever. So the sentinels is what this your main character you play as is, and the sentinel, what sentinels do is they work for this company, and they're given he's given tasks of like this guy, like they can track the brains since they're obviously like artificial, they have I'm sure they have sensors and stuff in them. And so when someone dies, they get a report of it as well, not just the police or something, or whoever, like when the when someone dies, so they they're like, Okay, this person's body's dead. We need to go pick up his brain because that's what he's paying us for, his service is he has a synthetic brain. So, like Tristan, what he what the sentinels are is like they have art, they have synthetic brains as well, and what he is is like a carrier, so he can go to where someone dies because they do it right off the bat early in the game, so you can get an idea of what's going on. Is he shows up to a crime scene where like a guy where the police got everything taped off, and this guy, from what the looks of it, got hit by a car or something, and so he's dead. But he's a client of the company, so Tristan goes, uploads his brain, his consciousness into his own synthetic brain, and then takes it back to the office so that it can be uploaded into their mainframe so that they can find another body for that guy, and that's that's what he does for a living. It it's like I said, the the Blade Runner, if it's not just from the cyberpunk thing, the aesthetic definitely feels like a blade runner type thing. It's in the future, so like they have flying cars and stuff like that, and um, you know, it's a futuristic-y type a little more worldwide. It's like, but it also is mixed with more of a with you know the world we have now, too. So it it it definitely felt a lot like that, even the way it starts out, because it starts out, you're at a bar. Well, like this outdoor, like open kind of bar kind of thing, like kind of something you'd see like in like Japan or something, where it's like an outdoor where like there's like a market, and so you know, you just pull up uh there's like bar stools in front of these little uh hut like hut things that are set up, and there's like a bar there, and the guy's just like having a drink at the bar, and then he gets a call in from the office of someone's died, they're right, and they're in he's like, Oh, they're right down the street from me. I'll go and they're like, go pick up his brain, bring it back, or go pick up his consciousness, bring it back to the office so we can upload him. But it's weird the way it starts out, it reminded me because he's like at the bar talking to the bartender, and then he's like, Oh, I gotta get up and just like the way that that scene was set up, it reminded me so much of the Blade Runner scene where he's getting food at the beginning, and he's like, you know, and then the cops come and they're like, We need you, you need to come with us, or whatever, and stuff like that. It just it felt very much like that was a huge influence on this game. And this game is also this dev Invisible Studios is out of Brazil, so the whole game is in uh Portuguese. All the obviously all the subtitles and all the text in the game is in English, but the the actual like all this because the game is fully voice acted, but all the voice acting is done in Portuguese. So yeah, it's it was kind of cool. It was like a different little bit of a different thing because you're just I mean you a lot of the times I feel like you read you read a lot of the I mean there's like always subtitles and point clicks anyway, so you're reading a lot as it is. And so like I don't know, it just it was kind of cool. Like it it was like I liked that it was in another language. I thought that was kind of that was kind of neat.
SPEAKER_04It was just like you could you couldn't change that, okay? Uh because it also released on PlayStation three days ago. They always tell you Oh yeah, voice Portuguese. Yeah. No. Just subtitles. That's yeah. That's interesting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it yeah, it was kind of it was neat to see that, like, because it's just not something you see every day from most games. Like, they don't make the choice of we're making this game in our country, we're gonna do it in our language, and that's just the way it's gonna be. You know, like you're just gonna have to read. Which is great. I I think that's welcoming. Because I I mean I have no, I mean, I will, you know, I I'm a horror guy, so I watch a lot of horror films. I watch a lot of international horror films as well. So, like, like reading subtitles is like not a huge deal for me. So, like, I I had absolutely no problem with it. And I thought it was cool. I just thought it was like that was the other reason why I thought it kind of reminded me of Blade Runner, because like in even though Blade Runners obviously in English, they have that other language that the people speak on the street. They like they've like kind of developed their own language as like a mix of multiple languages in that in the world of Blade Runner, and like I don't know, that's what it felt like to me. It just felt like it was like, oh, they're just speaking Portuguese, that's what everybody speaks in this world. So it's just like it was cool, it was it was definitely cool. It was it was a nice like change of pace from the same old, just you know, game in English. So but this game, as with most point clicks, well, I don't know. I haven't played a ton of point clicks to know that they all kind of go the same way, but this one definitely has like a bit of a twist at the end. It's not so what the idea is like you early on you go in and upload that guy, but then Tristan's noticing that he's having like weird images sometimes in his brain, and he's kind of worried that like all these people he's been uploading and and dumping into the into the uh mainframe that like a piece of them or like a residual part of them is like staying with him and he's getting like memories that don't belong to him. That's what he suspects. You kind of as you investigate the game, you kind of learn whether or not that's true, or if it's something else is why he's getting different memories and stuff like that. But it's really cool. I don't want to like give away the whole plot of the game, but what ends up happening is he has another job come up where he's gotta go get this guy, this like high-value client or something that they have. But the problem is that the client is died, at least their last signal they had of him where they think he died, was in this area called the disconnected district, which is like the slum of their world. So and like cop the the police presence isn't high there, like there's it's kind of just left to destroy it to you know, like feed on itself. It's like one of those type worlds where the slums are just like, oh, we're just we ignore it because we only care about our our nice air part of the world or part of the city. So he has to go into that area, so it's kind of like dangerous because he's got to go in there and find this body, and who knows what's he's he doesn't know what to expect in there because nobody goes in there very goes into that part of the city very often. And so it's kind of cool. You you interact with different people, you have like a chief that you report to when you go to the building to upload people. There's like a uh this lady that you is like your um you know your uh person in charge of you that you have to talk to every once in a while. And uh what ends up happening is like this body he's looking for, uh it's just he it's to him, it's just another guy. It's another just another job. Just gotta find this guy. It you go into this slum and you kind of have to find your way in because like the entrance to that part of the city is being blocked, is being like guarded because there's like something. I think it was like a high amount of like alert going on this city, so the police aren't really like allowing people into the slum. And so he's gotta like find a different way in. So he has you have to go through the sewers, and this game, like any point other point and click, has puzzles to it. The puzzles in this game aren't incredibly hard, like they're pretty easy to figure out, and there's not a lot of them either. Like, so I I've I know with some point and clicks it can get very like puzzle heavy, and where you gotta like do this to do that and stuff, and Um, you really gotta like rack your brain to figure out how to solve the puzzle and stuff. Like this one was I thought was pretty straightforward. I didn't think it was I didn't think that anything was overly difficult, but you have to go into the sewer and find a way through. Um like there's a good puzzle in the when you're in the sewer that like to get through one of the sewer doors, for some reason the like seal around the door is like corroded and dirty, and so he can't open it, but there's these robots down there. Um, because like the city, though they in this future world they've developed, they have like these robots that are just used for cleaning. They're and they're not like human-looking robots, they're just like kind of archaic, like like they I think they were on they like float or they're like on treads or something, and they just have like you know arms and a head and everything, but they'd look like a robot, and they're like cleaning robots, so you see them around the city sometimes just like cleaning walls and stuff like that. And there's a couple ones that are like out of order in the sewer, so you have to figure out how to get that one online, get one online, get it working. And there's a little puzzle involving like its control panel, and it's weird because like it has to do with like there's numbers on the wall that are in certain colors, like there's like graffitied numbers on the wall, but they're all done in different colors, so you have to like but then when you open up the panel of the robot, he has corresponding numbers with different colored lights that kind of correspond to that. So you have to kind of figure out the what they're wanting you to do in that puzzle. Like like you have to like it's basically like math. You're gonna have to do a little like equation of okay, I I have to turn on these colors because it makes this number according to the number, what the colors represent on the walls and the numbers they represent. So it's it was kind of cool. That was a cool little puzzle.
SPEAKER_04That's a cool puzzle. I I think that's what I what I would like about that game. When I think about uh point and click games, it's always you have six items and you want to uh somehow find out how to solve it in the next puzzle, and then just take the item, hover over the next thing. Uh does it interact? No, okay. I take the next item, hover over Yeah. Does it interact? No, okay, next no. That's my experience with uh point and click games.
SPEAKER_00So Oh, okay, okay. With this one, it wasn't and then like the they I didn't think the puzzles were incredibly hard, but they were like I I did like I appreciated the few puzzles it had, because they were all different from each other, like you didn't have to like do the same repetitive thing over and over, other than like when you upload me somebody, there's a puzzle to do there as well. So like it's you have to sync your brain waves or their brain waves or with yours when you go to upload them into your brain. Like, there's so it brings up this little menu and you can see the waves, just like a like with like a like a wavelength going across, and there's like two waves, and one of them's yours and one of them theirs, and they're obviously going completely different motions and stuff like that. And basically you have to adjust I think it's like three selections like frequency, there's amplitude, and then like position, so that changes your wave or the wave as you adjust those knobs, like it'll change that wave, and then you have to basically get them to match up so that they look in sync with each other, and that's how you can upload the guy's brain or his consciousness into your brain. So it's pretty cool. I mean, it's it like you said, that one isn't incredibly hard, too. It's pretty self-explanatory because like you look at it and you say, Okay, yeah, if I turn these little knobs on here, it changes the frequencies, and um, so yeah, it's pretty straightforward. Um, but it's all it was anything, it was all a lot of stuff like that. Like it just wasn't like overly complicated. So eventually what ends up happening is he gets into the slum, he does a little bit of investigating because he finds the area where the guy was killed, but the body's gone. And then he ends up finding, he comes across like the areas he's coming across when he's doing this this investigation, he finds a bunch of dead bodies. So he's like, people are getting killed like left and right, but he doesn't know why. And then he's got to search for this guy, and he talks. There's a couple people like on the there's like like homeless people on the streets and stuff, and so you can interact with them and talk to them and see if you can get any information out of them, which most of the time you can't. And then there's one specific homeless guy that you talk to near where that guy was killed, and he ends up coming into play later in the game, but that'll kind of reveal too much. So I you just that guy specifically you talk to him, it kind of seems like a nothing conversation, but then he ends up coming back later in the game. And but anyway, you end up going like down the streets, you chain checking like different areas, and there's like a spot where you go across the cemetery. It's weird, it's like a s it's not even a cemetery, it's like it's like right in the middle of like it's like if you put a cemetery like on a like on like a sidewalk corner of like a city. It's really weird. It's like this little enclosed area that's like gated and it's not very large, and there's like six caskets, but they're above ground. So it's like almost like more like a what would you call that? Like a I don't know, like like a crypt almost kind of it's really weird, but it's like just in the middle of this city. But um, you go in there and there's like you find a car, so you need to be able to get to different parts of this part of the slum in the city, and so like, but the car's dead, and you so it needs a battery, and you end up going to the cemetery, and there's a kid in there, and he has an arcade machine that he's playing, and you're like, and he's got it running on a bat on a car battery, and you're like, Hey, can I I need that battery? I'll bring it back, but I need to use it. And the kid's like, only if you can beat my high score on on this arcade machine, and so like you have to actually play like and it's the thing, it's like you're it's you're using a mouse uh yeah, you like you're using the mouse, yeah. You're using the mouse, and you have to like click on the joystick and actually move the joystick left and right and stuff like that. And the the game that you're playing is like basically a um a very simplified, like it's basically Tron, if you're familiar with the old Tron arcade game where it's like the lines you just have to cut off each other so that their line will end and stuff. That's basically all it is, but you don't even have vehicles, it's just you're just lines, so you're just creating a line as you go, and you have to cut off the other line, and you have to do like six or seven rounds of that to be able to kick, and it gets faster and faster as you go to each round, and you just it until you can get the high score on the on the our kid, and then the kid gives you the battery. And it's funny because like he tells the kid, I promise I'll bring it back, I'll be back. And you're like, I was thinking to myself, I was like, I wonder if he actually ever brings it back to him. And then as I played, as I got towards the end of the game, I was like, you actually do have to go back and give the kid the battery. So I was like, well, that's good that they made it part of the game. They actually do have to give the kid his battery back. That's pretty funny. But um he um ends up going to other parts of the city, trying to figure out where this guy is. He ends up finding the body in like this weird morgue where it's called Afterlife Morgue, and it has like this bright neon sign, and it's empty. It's just like one room you walk into with a control panel, and it's bodies hanging on like hooks on like a conveyor, like like a almost like a meat, like a meat packing plant, and you like use a joystick to or like use buttons to like shift over to each one. So I don't know if it's like in their world, maybe you can buy like pieces off of body parts or something off people or something. I don't know what the purpose of that was. It was really strange, but it was really odd to see. But you end up finding out that that's where they took him as he's in that morgue, and so like you find his body, but the brains someone removed his brain. So you have then you have to do more investigating to try to find his brain. And um yeah, there's like a part where you have to use his you have to take his finger off of his body and go back to where he was murdered, and you end up finding out that there's a control panel, an access panel that his finger works for that like opens up a secret room where you can, and then you end up doing a lot of invis there's a lot of like this is where like the rest of the game comes in, and like there's a bunch of like bad a bunch of story stuff comes in about the company that you work for and like the shady things they're doing behind the scenes, and doctors that are doing shit that they shouldn't be doing for the or doing the research they're doing for the company and like how they're going about their work for this company. Like, it's you start finding out that it's like they might be doing this shit, like they might have done like bad illegal things or be doing illegal things to make this business work, and you so it's like you're trying to investigate it, but then as you go on, you start wondering like who the players are involved, because like the the CEO kind of it becomes like a player, uh a big part of the story, and you end up finding out that like his consciousness might be actually not in his actual body, too. And like you learn that the body you're looking for might be somebody more important than you thought it was, that like the guy that died wasn't the original brain, it was somebody else's consciousness that was controlling that body, and so you're it's it's pretty cool. It's um, you know, not to like reveal the whole plot line, but it you kind of learned how you're involved in it too, because you work for the company and it it kind of leads into why Tristan's having the weird memories and glitches he has. Because a cool effect that it has is every once in a while when you're in a room, and you know, like any point click, you're kind of looking around with the cursor to see if there's things you can click on. And so, like when you're moving the cursor around to different items looking for things that are actually clickable, sometimes you'll you'll go across an item that you can't click on, but once as soon as you you like highlight the item, he glit like his brain glitches. It's weird because they'll do a cli the whole game, the screen of the game will do like a weird glitch where like it it almost looks like the old like TV glitches where like all the the screen like basically becomes unlike seeable because there's like lines going through it and like everything gets all jumbled up. That's the way the what the game does to you, so you can get the fact that he's having like a brain glitch, and then it's crazy, like he'll pop back in and he's fine, and you're in the room you were in, but that item that you highlighted is gone. So it's like it's I was like the whole time I was like, Is he actually seeing those things or are they were they not originally there?
SPEAKER_04Just a memory of someone else, maybe, no?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, or is it a memory of those things used to be there? So he's having like a like a deja vu basically of like they used to be here.
SPEAKER_04Are those getting important later? So is it good if you remember them?
SPEAKER_00No, you'll like the items itself that you highlight are just nothing things. And I think what it's supposed to be presenting to you is that like that exactly, like you said, it's supposed to be telling you that like you've seen this room before, even though your Tristan hasn't been there before. He's he has a memory of being here. So there's something about his brain going on in his brain that like he's having memories of of these places, even though he's doesn't think he's ever been to them before. So that ends up tying into the into the actual story about his involvement with this company and stuff, and you start like learning about is he more involved with this company than he thinks he is, as far as like Sentinel. So it's also also a little bit of him like wondering who am I, kind of, because it's like because he's usually I mean like you have to remember he hasn't a synthetic brain too, so it's like he starts to wonder of like, are my memories actually my memories, or like like am I not the person I think I am? And it's it's a lot of that tied into it. But the thing was like you get to the very end, and I don't really want to give away the whole end because it just like gives away the whole like how everything's tied in, but like it the this game has five different endings, and took a my took away my question, yeah. Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah, they and they all they're all ambiguous endings. That's the crazy part about them, is they're all open for interpretation of however you want. Like, not and I feel like I kind of did some research on it, and I don't think any one of them is meant to be like the true ending of the game. It's kind of just like whatever ending you like the best is your true ending. Because they all involve doing different things, and I only got a couple of them on my on my playthroughs, but I went back and I watched somebody's gameplay of them so I could see what the under other endings were, and I'll probably go back to get them because you get an achievement for unlocking each ending. But I'll probably go back to them eventually, and they all like watching the other ones that I hadn't unlocked yet. I was like the thing about them too, like I say, I say ambiguous because like you kind of interpret them how you want to, and I they all don't feel like like a happy ending, but of course this game I don't think is supposed to make you feel good about anything, you know? So it's like it just you know, you're in a futuristic world where some shady stuff's happening with people's brains, like it's not really maybe not meant to have a happy ending, so like all the it's like whatever ending is more appealing to your own sensibilities, I guess, is like is like the one. But it it seems from what I've what I've researched, like it doesn't seem like they consider any ending the true ending. But your decisions do affect which ending you get, so because there's certain times where you can do different dialogues when you're having certain conversations, and then there's like the end the the final ending of the of the game when you're doing like the last part of it involves uh doing an upload of somebody, and I won't say who that is and who who it involves, the people that are involved in it, but it involves you having to upload somebody and take them back to your to your to the business to up to decide whether or not you should upload them, and you're kind of like stuck on whether or not you should be doing your job, or if you should just say screw it and abandon all this. Because you kind of come at this point, you've already had some realizations about what's going on with all this, and so it's kind of you there's a lot of there's little things that you can do when you're going back to your building because you have to venture all the way back from that slum that you're in back to your original, to your vehicle at the entrance. So you have to like go all the way back, and while you're doing that, he keeps glitching because one of the things I forgot to say is that when you upload somebody, when he's on his journey back, he can actually like tap into his own brain, or well, there's the game. What the game does is it'll kind of like make him like like glitch like he's having like a headache or something, and then it'll bring up this screen where you can his brain, his own consciousness, Tristan's, can talk to the person he's just uploaded. And he has to, it's part of his job because they'll a lot of times they're like, What the hell's going on? What happened? They're like, and he has to like the first guy you upload, you have to tell him, like, you were involved in an accident, your body isn't usable anymore. So I'm I uploaded you and I'm taking you back so that you can be uploaded into a different body. And the guy's like freaking out, like, what? Like, what he's like, well, this is what you paid for, this is what you, and he was like, Okay, all right, all right. And he kind of like a accepts it, but it's like you can talk to the consciousness that that you've uploaded. I mean, there's it it's triggered by the game itself, like you can't just freely do it whenever you want, but the the final ending of the game when you're trying to get back to your to the to your uh to Au revoir, you there's you have to speak to like multiple consciousness consciousnesses that you've uploaded it, uploaded, and you there's like a moral decision you have to make about like what you're gonna do when you get back to your work. So that's what the whole game like kind of leads up to is like deciding you kind of learn the truth about everything, about you the company you work for, about yourself, about the people involved with the company, and it's kind of like alright, I have to make a decision on like what I think is the right thing to do. But I don't know, it was like I said, it's weird because I feel like not one of any one of the things feels like for me, they didn't not one of them felt like the right thing to do. Like any of the options that I would have had. I was like, I don't I I feel like all these don't end well for anybody. Like they're all it's it's just like perpetuating the the issues in this world or something, like no matter what decision you make. So I guess that's kind of why maybe they don't they've never really said that there is a true ending, because it's I guess that's a little bit of it, is you just kind of have to accept which ending you like the best, um, even though it's not the like happy, you know, you know, uh Sunshines and Rainbows ending. But yeah, it's um I don't know, it's a cool game. I I would I would recommend it if you like point and clicks. Like it I don't think it's gonna like blow you away by any means. Like I wasn't like the the best point click I've ever played, but it had a cool story to it. I did love the vibe of it. I mean, I was a sucker for the graphic style of it because I love PS1 graphic style.
SPEAKER_04It looks like a cyberpunk 277 D Make.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, pretty much. That's that's what it felt like to me too. I've never played the Cyberpunk before, but like I it does what it that's kind of I've you know obviously I know the I know of the game's style. I've watched gameplay of it, but it definitely had that feel to it. It has like the all those all the cyberpunk worlds that have been created in media, like it it just has like that feel to it. And I I I'm not like a huge into cyberpunk stuff, but I definitely am been known to like get into one if it's if I find it interesting.
SPEAKER_04So I mean it would be cool, it would have been cool if you if the endings would be much more different from another. So if you we if you could have decided to be the bad guy or the good guy or save someone else, like the other thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that's what it that's what it it kind of it has that decision of like it's kind of like you're choosing between the lesser of two evils is what it what it feels like. That's kind of it doesn't feel like if you choose one over the over, you've like c solved the problem that they have in this world or something. It just feels like you have to like which outcome do you think is less evil? Okay. So that's that's kind of what it what it felt like to me. But uh it was cool. It's I I had a I I would I would recommend it. It's like I said, it's probably falls in line with with your run of the mill point and click. I've been if it I think it's more about if you like this style of world, if you like its graphical style, then you probably and the story, if the story sounds interesting to you, then it would be definitely be worth playing. I mean I I I just don't I would say don't expect it to be like your favorite point and click. I didn't it didn't like blow me away, but it it was fun for what it was. I had good time with it.
SPEAKER_04I understand that you liked it because first of all, there was an arcade in it, and you had to play it. Uh second, uh you have a confused brain, and when you're done, you have to walk all the way back to your car. That reminds me a little bit of another game you really like, so no surprise to me.
SPEAKER_00Pretty much, yeah, yeah. It's like this game, it was like it was like if I had kind of that feel to it, except for the only difference was this I didn't kill anybody in this game. So I was like, yeah, I was like, uh this is like has like a little bit of that feel, but you don't you just don't kill anyone.
SPEAKER_04So you went straight back to Hotland, Miami after that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, pretty much. But it it was good, it was cool. Like the it I do I do like a cy a good like cyber quunk style game every once in a while, or style anything in media every once in a while. So it hit the right note for me. It was a cool time, but um, yeah, I would I would recommend it. I'd I'd probably give it like somewhere around like um either between like a seven or an eight out of ten, maybe like seven and a half, maybe eight. I mean, I might have liked it a more a little more than most people would have, so maybe I would give it an eight, but it's probably like a solid seven out of ten for most people. I mean, if you really like the story, it's probably a good eight out of eight out of ten.
SPEAKER_04And I mean it's five bucks, right?
SPEAKER_00So yeah, yeah, it's super cheap. I mean, and where you buy it too, because it's available everywhere. Like you can get uh it released on consoles this year. Um it previously was only Yeah, yeah. So it was previously only available on PC, so like got you can get it on GOG, you can get it on um Steam. I mean it's pretty much available anywhere and now on consoles. So uh yeah, it's it's a cool one to check out if it sounds that sounds like something you'd be interested in.
SPEAKER_04And how long did you did it take it for you to beat it?
SPEAKER_00It's it's actually that was the other thing about it too, is it's relatively short, too. Um so I think the price point is probably hits the right mark because it was I want to say on my first playthrough, it was probably like two and a half hours to beat. Because it's not an incredibly long story. You kind of just jump right into it from the bat. So um it, yeah, it's not super. I think if you once you get a feel for for it, you could probably finish it in like maybe, I don't know, probably like an hour and a half, maybe or something like that, if you already knew what you were supposed to do. So but it's it's a quick game. So I would say keep that in mind. And I and I think the price point justifies it being you know, or it being a quick game justifies the price point because it's not super expensive. I mean, like you can get it on sale. I think I bought it on Gog on sale for like three dollars or something like that. So it it was I mean, if you buy it on PC, it's probably gonna be cheaper than it would be on consoles. So because I I want to say steam price on it too was only like $350 or something like that. So I I would yeah, I I'd say I'd give it a recommend. For that price, it's it's worth giving a shot if you would just want like a nice little you know, few uh a couple hours of uh of a good point click.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, when you mentioned uh if you if you know the game, you don't you uh you will run quicker through it. Um the different endings if you want to reach a different ending, do you encounter a different path or is it always the same as just decisions?
SPEAKER_00It's the same. It's decisions mo it's decisions, it's not it you still go through the same paths, it's just about the decisions you make. In the last like ten minutes of the game, it has to do with uploading a couple people and like you there's decisions about when you talk to them, whether or not you suppress one of them, like they're them because they they keep interrupting you while you're going back to your to your to A revoir. And so like they keep interrupting you and trying to like basically influence you to be like, you need to upload me. And the other guy's like, no, upload me. You can actually like decide whether or not you want to silence one of them or not. And that has an effect on the game. And then you also, when you get back to your to the to your company, there's another decision that also can be made about like whether or not you do upload, because you can actually end the game without doing that final step. I guess I'll give that away. So that's one of the possible endings is doing some interaction in the in the company, but then not doing what you're supposed to do to end the game, but also doing that. Going and doing the upload has a couple different endings. Not doing the upload has a couple different. There's like some decisions in like the final 10 minutes of the game that will just make will branch how the how the ending works.
SPEAKER_04Okay. So create a safe state 10 minutes before the ending.
SPEAKER_00I I would say for those out there that want to check it out, if you want to create a save state around the time there's a an area you get to called the amusement park. And when you figure out how to turn it on and open up a certain door to get into the a building that's in the amusement park, that point would probably be the point to create it to do a save state. Because that's like in the like the final 15 minutes of the game, and that's like opens up this where you kind of learn the truth about everything. And um, yeah, that's kind of at that after that point is where you have to start making decisions. So but yeah, good stuff. That was uh yeah, that's a revoir. Uh good good time.
SPEAKER_04Really cool.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so what did you what did you bring to the show this time around?
SPEAKER_04I brought a cozy little puzzle game.
unknownOkay. Okay.
SPEAKER_04Did you know that?
SPEAKER_00Hmm. I don't know that one.
SPEAKER_04Let me look it up, but uh yeah, I'll it's it's way more popular than I thought. I didn't know it before we had to search for a game of A either. I had it in my in my library because of PS Plus, I guess.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Hmm. Interesting. But anyway, it's uh published by Secret Mode. Um I just checked. They also published Star Wars Galactic Racer, which is pretty recent and pretty beginning.
SPEAKER_01Oh wow. Oh yeah, that's a that's a big one.
SPEAKER_04It's developed by Max Inferno, which basically has two persons, Annie MacMillan and Lucas Steinman. Uh those two are a couple and they come from Canada. But that's important because this game is heavily influenced by the day-to-day life of a couple with a cat. Okay. What more to that later? It's now released on every platform, including mobile. Um I think it's a very good game to play on on your phone. Originally or initially this game was a game jam game, and everyone who played it liked it. And now it's had become a huge success with over one million copies sold, so a way bigger game than I thought. It's all about arranging and organizing everyday objects like books or pencils or stuff in the kitchen or something in a drawer. It's a puzzle game with about 100 puzzles, a little bit more, I guess. And you have to arrange things uh objects I I just said um by size, by colour, by shape, or other ki characteristics.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_04For example, um you have a few books and you and they are thrown all over the place and you have to put them in order. And you can do that by putting them or arrange them by size. It's my usual approach take the biggest book and put it to the left, and the second biggest right to that, and so on. Yeah. That's the more easy puzzles there. Uh some puzzles take a little m a bit more time. Uh or you have to actually lose a little bit of brain power because um sometimes there are many things to put in order. For example, a draw tray containing many screws, nails, and nuts and very in various shapes and sizes, and they are laying lying all over the place. So you have to take every one of them and put them in the right correctly shaped form of the draw tray. And if you do so, you always get a little ping, so you or or a vibration in your controller. I played it on PlayStation. Um so that can take a little bit of time. Um some puzzles if as if you solve the puzzle, you get a star. Most of the puzzles just have one star, but some have two or three stars. Yeah, one of the first puzzles with uh three uh solutions were some glasses with picket food in them. I got one star for arranging them by size, from left to right. One by the filling height of the glasses, so the highest filling height on the left and the lowest on the right. And the third star I got by um arranging them by colour. So one was just yellow, uh the next was yellow and a little green, uh to mostly green and then fully green. Very simple, and I got the three stars. So I think that would be uh a a great game to to play with your partner because you can learn about their brain, how it functions. Because I would sort everything by size, and maybe and probably my partner would order it in colour because that's more beautiful for her, you know? I'm the practical one, and she is the aesthetic one. So um pretty cozy, pretty easy, not much challenge in the game. You get a little challenge by a cat who some from time to time interacts with your arrangement. You sort your noodles by size or or or f or shape, and then a little cat paw comes and throws all over the place again. Um so you have to sometimes do acts um a little faster or just um hold something until the cat is gone again, and then you can continue arranging stuff. I think they implemented a very nice accessibility option because if you're not able to solve the puzzle, you can get a hint. And this hints are shown as a sheet of paper full of pencil scribblings, which you can be reduced by using a rubber. Is rubber the correct word or is it a British word? You know, the eraser? Is it eraser in the States?
SPEAKER_00Oh eraser, yeah. In the States it's eraser, yeah. Eraser, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Rubber is something else. Use yeah.
unknownRight?
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay, okay.
SPEAKER_04Is rubber condom?
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, rubber we use like rubble's rubber is just like a general anything made out of rubber, kind of like yeah.
SPEAKER_04Alright. So uh erasers.
SPEAKER_00Well, if you're talking about Yeah. It's also a slang term for for yeah, preventing pregnancy. Okay.
SPEAKER_04So not rubber. And then you can use an eraser and you can put it anywhere on the sheet, and you can um erase the part you want to reveal. So you can I don't know, um start on the right corner to just see how the first two glasses are ha have to be arranged. Because sometimes it's it's not shape or color, but they have labels on them, and you have to arrange them so that everything the one glass to the next fits together b uh with the labels. And that was something I didn't realize in the first place, so I didn't think about it very long. I I think you can solve every puzzle there if you if you take a minute. But I wanted to see the the hint system, and so you can you check take the eraser and r uh erase uh parts of the scribblings. And I think that's very smart. You can you don't have to get the full solution, you can just get a little hint on the place you want to and then continue with a puzzle and try to solve it that way. You can also skip every puzzle. You can could probably possibly um skip every puzzle through the whole game. So you don't forced to solve any any puzzle, you can just go through it. Um so maximum of accessibility, I would say. So your four year old could also solve it or or play the whole game or try every puzzle, which I think is very neat. And there's also a daily mode called Daily Tidy, uh where you get every day one puzzle, and you have to solve 30 to um to beat that mode. I tried it a few times because you have one day uh in between your solvings uh that you can not solve one puzzle. Uh but I always forgot to revisit it and I didn't have the time to boot up the PlayStation, so I wasn't able to progress there any further. But that's uh another mode they implemented. Yeah, there are also two DLCs to the game, which I didn't play because as I said, I got it on PS Plus. And I thought I I'm I'm pretty sure they want to um to sell their DLCs with it. But I wasn't very excited by the by the puzzle puzzles. I I'm I think some were inspired by better puzzle games, or at least better for me, like Patrick's Paradox. I need I personally lead more challenge, but we are searching for games you can drink a bourbon uh with, so that was a perfect game for it. Uh even if you if I drank uh uh three too much, um I was still able to solve the puzzle, so it's it's fitting the theme. There were also some puzzles I disliked. Um for example, you had to arrange stars to get a is it star sign? No, what is it called? The zodiac sign?
SPEAKER_01Oh zodiac sign, yeah.
SPEAKER_04But it's not zodiac, it was always the cat shape.
SPEAKER_01Uh oh, okay, okay.
SPEAKER_04Shaped by stars or lines in between the stars. And it was just picking up a star and moving it around the the TV until it was uh vibrating and showing uh the lines between the stars. So it was just a chore, you know? It was not solving anything, it was just moving things around until it makes click. And that was pretty boring. And there was also one puzzle uh where you had a microscope and some kind of snowflake you saw uh on that microscope microscope, and when you moved around, you could hold uh X and move around on the platter and um to find pieces that fit the snowflake. And you could also around the microscope was a uh a ring you could adjust to zoom in and out. And when I zoomed in to make the pieces I found for my snowflake form to fit, and I released the X button from the zoom ring, had always flipped to the left. So I had to readjust everything, it was really annoying. And when I finally uh got my first snowflake, uh I thought I would be done, but there was a second snowflake and a third snowflake. So that took me like ten minutes and was extremely annoying. I mean I hated it more than realizing that the first returnal bus after a run of one and a half hours had a third phase. It was more fun than the snowflake microscope level. So not everything is balanced there to perfection. Maybe it's better with playing with mouse and keyboard or just mouse. Okay. I don't know. For PlayStation, it wasn't perfect. Yeah, music and sound, um the moving and stacking and clicking and placing objects uh produces a satisfying little sound. Uh so it has almost like uh ASMR quality. When you feel the vibration and you place something it makes ping, that's very satisfying. That was nice. The music is just light instrumental background noise, which like in my first game, 60 Parsix, is something you shouldn't actively listen to because then it gets annoying. And after I listened to the music, I uh muted it. So maybe I'm a little bit sensible there, but uh this elevator music is nothing for me. So yeah, uh it's a clever game, very nice graphics. I didn't say anything about that. It's hand-drawn visuals, um very nice, nice sound effects, easy puzzles, only sometimes a little bit annoying or infuriating on very few occasions. Um But for the purpose here of this podcast, I can absolutely recommend it. Um especially if you buy it on sale. It's slow uh it's like 49 14.99, at least in Europe you can get it on sale, I think pretty often. And yeah, it's the only game by this by these two by this couple that didn't do anything else. I guess because uh it was so successful. Um so um high praise from the community. I liked it, but I got addicted a little bit to it because you can fly through the through the puzzles and if there's something only uh you you you solve the puzzle and you see oh there are three star three stars. The moment you say uh you realize okay, I have to approach it different ways, uh is pretty interesting because sometimes you have to think out of the box, out of your box in your in your own. So that's something uh special about the game. And it's creative. It's not uh not every um puzzle is simple. Sometimes you have to think about the uh the solution, sometimes it's just um actual. But overall it's fun. I would give it uh seven out of ten. Okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's pretty solid. I think it sounds interesting. I I think I think like that would be fun. It sounds like something that it would probably maybe like like a cool activity to do, like a game to play with my daughter or something. We could kind of have fun because she really I think she has a lot of fun with those styles of puzzles, a lot of like arranging and like the a lot of that kind of stuff. At least the from the some of the puzzles you described, it definitely seems like something that we would maybe have a little fun together playing.
SPEAKER_04Yes, for people who uh excessively tidying everything up uh would be very satisfying, for sure.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_04And uh, as I said, play it with your partner. It could be interesting. Especially if you just move together or something. That'd be fun.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Cool, good stuff. So seven out of ten there. So that was a little to the left. A little to the left, okay.
SPEAKER_04We also write that down in our Excel sheet. Oh, yeah, yeah. I think we will link that to the show notes.
SPEAKER_00You wanna we decided to put of these main games that we're bringing to the show, we're gonna put them all in an Excel sheet.
SPEAKER_04So As well as the Burms.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so that there'll be a nice reference there for uh for people. But yeah, we'll link that in the show notes so that uh yeah, you can check out these games if in case you forget the name of the game that we uh that we were talking about in any given episode. So cool. That is a little to the left. All right. Alright, cool. So that definitely I I might I might end up picking that up, though. That sounds kind of interesting. I I think I would have a little fun with that.
SPEAKER_04Do we have a PlayStation or just Xbox?
SPEAKER_00Uh just Xbox.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Oh, Game Pass has much more games than I think. Maybe it's on Game Pass. Because of the D L C I could imagine it's on Game Pass too.
SPEAKER_00Alright, cool. So that was the games for this episode. That was uh yeah, those are a good time. If you guys like those, uh go and check them out. Um so uh I guess we'll close it out. Um hope you all enjoyed. But yeah, we want to say thank you for listening to Proof and Pixels. Um, if you have the thirst to drink along with us on our next episode, we will be drinking Brothers Bond straight bourbon. So this one I think we we kind of agreed upon. We threw around some ideas for the letter B, and um, this is kind of the one we fell on only because we could have done one of the more mainstream bourbons that people have heard of, but I don't know. I mean, that's one of the reasons we wanted to do this podcast is so that we could try new stuff that we haven't had before. So this one's interesting. I don't I don't know anything about it, I've seen it before, and I definitely do want to try it. So I'm looking forward to that. Uh I guess we'll talk about it more in the episode, but this one is kind of a somewhat of a celebrity bourbon because the people that own it, I guess, are also the creators of of if you're in the States, there's a show called Vampire Diaries, and those guys are I think two of the creators of the show or something. I can't remember if they're in the show or if they created the show. I forgot. I'll have to look into it, but we'll have all the information in the next episode. So but um I don't know.
SPEAKER_04That bourbon must be red then.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's the vampire uh vampires.
SPEAKER_04I never heard about it before. Not the not the bourbon and not the show you just talked about. Not the show either, yeah.
SPEAKER_00The the show I only know by name because it's it's just you know it's on a local channel here, so I've I've heard of it. Never bothered to even give it a look. So because it's yeah, I think if if you're in the States and you've heard of it, you probably know that it's maybe it more of a teen-oriented or like not a teen show, but like something that's more appealing to a younger crowd. So yeah. So I don't know, but that should be fun. We'll we'll we'll see how how it goes with that. But that'll be the next one. So uh we also have uh if you want to reach out to us, uh you can find me. I'll kick it off uh at Blue Sky at uh at Jimmy Mook. And I also have a YouTube channel um where I do uh trading card openings because I'm a big trading card collector, and I also do some game reviews here and there, um, some gaming related content like pickups and stuff. So definitely check that out. That is at Jimmy underscore mook, that YouTube channel. But then uh Mo, where can we find you?
SPEAKER_04You can find me on Blue Sky as Mr. Mo 1994. And uh if you're interested in roguelights, um you can find there also a link to my list with over 300 games I put on a tier list. And yeah, if you want to talk about them, go ahead.
SPEAKER_00I'm happy for it. And if you'd like to reach out to the podcast with uh recommendations on what we should be drinking or what we should be playing, uh you can email us at proofandpixelspod at gmail.com. So yeah, reach out to us there if you want to send us an email. We definitely would love to read it out on the show uh and get you know the listeners' thoughts on whatever you're interested in related to our show. So uh yeah, thanks again for listening. Uh Mo, this was fun. This was a good one. I'm looking forward to the next one. Bees, I feel like game-wise, bees got some variety for us. So I'm gonna I'm excited for that.
SPEAKER_04So yeah, I have a lot of bees in my list.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, definitely. Yeah, people have done it.
SPEAKER_04We recommend. All right, yeah.
SPEAKER_00All right, thank you all for listening. Thank you all for cheers. Cheers