03: What Does the i Stand For?

[Music] What's good internet? It is April 29th, 2025, and this is not an intergalactic library overrun by space pirates. It's side story, a podcast about games. And the stories we tell them maybe we'll turn into an intergalactic library overrun by space pirates where a bunch of cats have been kidnapped. We are always presented by friends at the table. It's supported by our patrons at friendsatatable.com. I cannot underscore how much your support has meant. We currently have three episodes of our outward LP up for $10 patrons. People have been deeply enjoying the goofy edits I've been doing. You've been taking a particular relish in those edits that has been. I'm people. As a person who's known you for a long time, it's nice to see you have fun with a thing in the way you're having fun with those things. I don't have hobbies. I'm not a hobby person. I'm not a true. I have jobs. This is all for jobs. I don't have a closet full of gunpla I haven't built. You know what I mean? I don't get tinkly. You're gonna say I have a closet full of guns. No, absolutely not. I mean tiny plastic ones. Little plastic bazookas for the various gunpla over there. But I don't have like. I don't do that style of deep learn the tool. You know, create small little things these days because I'm so focused on these things. But yeah, so it's nice. It's fun to be fiddly in that way. So you're saying we should do a season of the show that in some way requires you to build gunpla? Yeah, that would be good. You would think by now. If not by now, they will. I want perpetual to already be that. I know. How do perpetual that is all miniatures? Keep talking about the. we'll find that. Keep reminding me of that. We'll find a way to work it in. I think that's a great idea. I realize something interesting about the place we're going tomorrow in perpetual. I'm excited about that. I have to listen to that to find out. That's a while off still. But you'll get there. Keep listening. That is the voice of Janine Hawkins and first-time co-host Ali Akampura. Hi, Ali. Welcome to Side Story for the first time. Thank you for having me. Of course. Happy to have you. For people who don't know you from Friends of the Table, who've only jumped on board here because all they care about is video games maybe. Where do my people know you from? Where do my people know? What should people know about you? What should people know about me? I have been the producer and contributor to Friends of the Table through its run. I very much recommend you listen to Friends of the Table. I've also been doing a lot of Twitch streams over on Friends of the Table. Twitch.tv/FriendsOfTheTable. We'll get into it later. I've been streaming a lot of Fields of Mystery. You can also listen to a Star Wars podcast that you and I do Austin, which is for the more civilized age. Yeah, I'm just finished with Rebels, which is really fun. We had ups and downs throughout that. If you are someone who likes video games a lot, you should go back and listen to our co-tour coverage. Oh my god, yes. Enjoy. Yeah, and then I am also reluctantly over on Blue Sky, Ali Dash on Line. If you want to follow things of me there, even though I don't really post. It's been very funny, Ali, over the last two to three months. You go from saying, "I'm not on Line anymore really." You're like, "I'm not, I don't say anything there." To now being like, "I'm on Blue Sky, I guess. I have to be somewhere." So, welcome. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad to talk about games of you. Like you said, we'll talk about Fields of Mystery shortly. We could jump into that now. That's where y'all are at. I'm not afraid of shuffling. We did spoil the surprise. I hope to keep people in suspense. About the space pirates and the library. Yeah, the space pirates and Fields of Mystery are. Oh, I thought you meant. I thought you meant the other way. I thought you were saying you spoiled the suspense of what one of the topics would be. Yeah, we should keep people in suspense about that. Let's keep people in suspense about that. Let's talk about Space Pirates on Librarian. I will tell you the truth though. If there was an update a year from now, we're a spaceship landed in Fields of Mystery and like, a group of space pirates showed up. And they were like, cute somehow. I would not be surprised. Yeah, I'm not sure they'd be pirates. But everything else I am on board with. Everything else I am on board with. Who like decided they wanted to do some, they wanted to open up a, they kind of the Saturday, the Saturday Bizarre thing, the Saturday market. Oh yeah, yeah. You know, to sell space fashion to you. You know, we used to be pirates, but we really like, you know, fashioned more. Tell me about Fields of Mystery. The Farming Sim/Lifesim from NPC Studio. It is their first game, which is Wild. Because I think it is extremely well crafted and pretty polished, especially for an early access game. We came out in early access last August. So it's been out for just under a year at this point. Give me the same feeling that Stardew Valley gave me when I first played Stardew Valley like way back when it released. Which is, okay, the people who made this have played a lot of these games. And they know what they want. And I respect that. Yeah, I mean, Ali, you've been playing it after weeks and weeks and weeks. Months and months and months. Actually, I guess, right? You've been doing Mystery and Monday now since last. Basically, since release, I took, yeah, I just came out. Kind of an extended break in January just because holiday post, whatever. Has the winter time on the farm. And I mean, an interesting thing about the way that I've been playing is forcing myself to stream it and only play a week of in-game time per week. Right. That's why I don't. I mean, I've been playing the structure of how I've ever played one of these games for myself. Really? So I've- Well, yeah, I mean, I really appreciated like the feeling of like sitting down on Sunday and being like, "Damn, what am I going to do with my farm tomorrow?" Like, "Am I going to focus on my chickens?" Or like, "Do I really have to get them to just seeds?" And like, you know, this is these sort of games are things that you can fall into. Like, I knew with it being early access, like if I had just played it, played it, played it, I would have put like 60 hours over three weeks into it in the first three weeks. And then by the time the update came, I would have been like, "Well, I played it. I'm done." Yeah. The- The- The early access thing for me, it always happens to me. I think invisible ink is the only time I've been able to stick with a game through all of early access and like keep playing it through release. So I'm glad you did not fall into that trap. But so, yes. And I've seen some of those updates. I've been playing it in this- I mean, she's been playing it not quite in real time. But when you zoom out enough, you're like, "If it's a week, if you're playing once a week, and you're playing one week of a thing at a time, does that mean you're in spring again now?" Or you just behind? I'm about to- I'm a little bit behind because of misweeks. I'm about to start. So I just ended summer. I'm about to start- Okay. Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. I'm very curious about your reaction to it because I do feel like as I've been playing it, and we played a little bit of Stardew together, and I've also seen you stream other types of these games that I've like taken on like Janinez as I've been playing. Or I'm like, "Oh, I need to make sure that I have five fruit." And I like hold on to all of these things. And then I'm like, "Why am I holding on to all these pineapples?" or whatever. That's a Janinez is the- is hoarding pineapples? I have a system that is important because everyone has favorite gifts and recipes and stuff. And you don't know, maybe you're gonna need a pineapple in winter because so-and-so wants pineapple slices. Let me make sense, actually. I've not thought about that. Yeah. So like the thing that I do in all farming games is I will try to have a stock pile of things depending on like where I'm at, how badly I need money, et cetera. Like early on, it's usually pretty minimal. I'm not gonna focus on having a stack of five high quality whatever's when I don't have any like basic stuff. I'm still focused on selling and not retaining at that point. But as I sort of move along, then it'll be a thing of like, you know, in Stardew, it's a gather a stack of five basic quality things, and then gather a stack of slightly higher quality ones once you have- once you're starting to get those a little more reliably. And then eventually you have, you know, the dream is to have a stack of the high quality things so that whenever you need to make a gift, you can make a really, really good one. That's, yeah, that's- and that's not- that hasn't always worked. There have been some games where the food is perishable. That's the only thing in video games that has ever made me understand and people who ate weapon durability? because I hate him when the food is perishable. - I sucks. - I cannot imagine perishable food coming to this game because I feel like quality of life in that sort of way. - Oh yeah, no, because when they've never, it's so important to its identity. I guess we should say it is a life sim and farming sim in the Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon or what is the story of seasons mode with a really heavy dash of late 90s, early 2000s. I guess 80s and 90s anime vibes is really what it is. Really diverse characters, but all drawing on archetypes that are very familiar if that's a space that you're familiar with or like a genre space you're familiar with. So you have the kind of, and those things exist already in Harvest Moon and in Roon Factory and in Stardew Valley. But there is something about how cleanly they're drawn here. Not literally drawn, how they're written, how they are, what their animations are, what their poses are. That really feels of a kind with a certain style of early 90s or late 80s, like record of Lotus War Slayer. That style of big anime character is here. And I think that's like stylistically what separates it. But in terms of playing, and I only played a little bit, I played like the first week of play. So I'm well behind you, Ali. But I was like, oh, I don't need to fill the water I can't ever. The shops stay open even when people are at the bar. I tell you, when I started playing, I instinctively, every so often would go to the well, and then do the water and can action, because I thought it was doing something. And then I realized it wasn't doing anything. And I was just watering the well. And I was like, I was really shaken. I was like, because I've played a lot of these games. I have never, even the ones that are for babies, like actual babies. I've never played one where you don't have to refill the watering can. Even like, what the fuck is it called? That one that, that one that, that Drain I were playing for like a little bit. Oh, the one that I was playing for like a realistic Japanese. Oh, that one. The one, um, ooh, I don't remember the name of that game. It was also with an S though, right? Wasn't it like, so hang on, I'm looking in my, where's my gather and craft steam group? This is wow. Very, Ali, do you have a, do you steam groupings? You're not playing this on a regular basis. I'm, I'm a, I'm a console head. Wait, where are you playing this? Is this on console? No, yeah. No, no, no, no. I've been playing this on PC because I've been streaming it. Yeah. Okay. But generally, yeah. Sunny side. So, yeah. Sunny side gives you a hose, which I think is fascinating, but you still have to refill the water tank sometimes with a pump. Wait, sorry. I need to understand what you're explaining. You have a, does it mean you have a buck, you have like a, like a gas can filled with water and then a hose is attached to it? That's true. Do you know what hose you plug into? A gas can with water. What do you know? Imagine a sheet of a gas can. So then what are you playing, you're playing the hose into the wall to a faucet? The hose is attached on a reel to your shed. You have a shed. And then on the other side of the shed. You feel on the other side of the shed? No, let me finish. Okay. On the other side of the shed, there is like a water tank. Like a, like a, you know, a boiler, but it's not heating it up. It's just a, it's just a big water tank. Yeah. And it has a meter on the side. And periodically you have to go to your hand crank water pump to pump some water from the ground into that tank. Uh-huh. And then that's what the hose is. I see. So even that where you have, you're pumping water still. When you have technically a non-immediately finite source of water, you do still have to pump to refill the tank, periodically. Yeah. I see. That makes some sense. Yeah. That's the closest I've seen any game due to the just, you're wondering, can't just works. It doesn't matter. It's weird. We know that if you had, if you had to refill it, you were going to. So just fuck it. Just whatever. Just do it. Yeah. So like all these games are abstracted in some important way. Like for instance, there's only four months of the year because it's just four seasons and it's four, you know, four weeks and each thing. So like where they dial in on that is where a lot of the interesting choices about what a game feels like is. And so seeing that the water can is always full. Seeing that it just tells you where characters are on the map. There is something I didn't understand at first, which is it will mark the location of your, the character you're looking for with a particular icon that's like, I think it's like the silhouette of a person. It's like a, like a simple, like not quite a stick figure. I thought that was a gravestone. And I was like, why are they using a gravestone as the, what? You don't know the symbol I'm talking about. I'm going to put it in. It's like a piece of pieces. No, no, no, no, no, no, if it's a, if it's a person, it's this symbol I'm putting in is in our chat right now. This like blank character in which I was like, oh, it's like a gravestone. That's a weird way to mark something. Maybe I'll learn this. I can't even Nintendo. It's a kid Nintendo silhouette. But it was, it's a little on my screen. It's on the little map. So I thought it was like, oh, maybe it's head of the archaeology stuff because there's so much archaeology stuff in here. Maybe this is like a symbol that's going to become important that's like, oh, a general waypoint symbol. No, no, it's just a character. Is it something like before you meet them? Like you introduce yourself? Yeah. And then like, and then like, if it was like, bring this thing to this place, it's marked like that, I think. Oh, okay. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it is just the first time I kept seeing it. I have not seen any gravestones. I'm like, hey, well, they're not gravestones. You know, there are some, there are some things that are kind of like gravestones, but I'm like, this is true. You get the first drama field of mystery that kills you. That's finally, yeah. I, they someone should do that actually. That would be not that kills you, but the like, you're the one person. One out of 10,000 people has the weird thing happen. You know, but my point being, wow, it just says here is where this character is. Here's where this quest gets turned in. I would say that's gotten a little more common in the genre, but it's still often not as clear as it is here. I will tell you, it has not gotten that much more common as shops staying open late because they're just a secret board you talk to. I guess that wouldn't we play last year, Janine had that. They didn't, those are just people who work characters. They were just, they were just people who sold you things or is here, you know, the, the people who run the general store will go to the tavern or the inn to hang out at night, but like you can still go into the tavern and, or into the general store to buy seeds, you know. And so I think. I don't know how I feel about that stuff. I feel, it makes me feel like an old asshole kind of like, it puts me in the position of people that I'm not usually in the position of who are like, well, this shooter is for babies. Where it's like, well, but the store, but they can't be open all the time. You know, people in this time, they're just trustworthy. They're just putting you up on the money in the basket, you know. And like, I can recognize like, you know, it, it doesn't need to make sense because it's not about that. It's about facilitating the things you want to do in the world and kind of operating on the good faith of like, yeah, sometimes you're just going to need to buy something and game time has passed in such a way that it's inconvenient and it doesn't matter. Like, it's not the part of the story that matters, right? Yeah. Well, sometimes it is like that, but sometimes that is what you want from a game like this. This is the semi version where you're like, oh, right, everyone has a schedule and like, oh, look, they leave the shop and that means that I can't buy the thing until tomorrow. So it's nice to remember what their schedules are a little bit, but I will say as the person, yeah, as the person who always runs into friction with these games because it feels like I'm not optimized in playing. There's still a time schedule in this game for things like the seasons, but like if I didn't, I'm never going to not make it to the shop in time to buy the seats. I can do that at midnight, rush hour and plant that if I need to. You don't have to worry about like, oh, on Thursdays, the restaurant is closed for whatever coming season. That stuff doesn't happen here. No one takes these off. I guess not. You know, start to, you know, start to have having to add the phone so that you can call a store to be like, what are your hours? Are you even open to this? You didn't have to run into town only to be disappointed that it was closed. It's such a like, this is funny, but also I can understand why you wouldn't want this. Yeah. I get it. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely feel like because like, you know, a lot of the, the experiences like this, the reduced friction in terms of like the stores being open and stuff like that. Like I feel like the convenience there I like in the game because it's not like there aren't these other time constraints other like in other places like you said. And like the idea of like, oh, the store is closed, but I only have eight days left in spring and cucumbers take seven days to write. Like, you know, there's still that math that you have to do and the thought of like, oh, I can't buy the cucumber seats. So I'm just not going to have any more cucumbers this season like suck. So like, things like the store, I really like, like, I feel like that feeling of realizing that in stardew after the store closed and make I could have fucking done it and I fucked out. That's the thing that kills me. So that's it. not having that little bit of extra friction really helps, but you said you were re-realized. But with some of the updates that have come along, I like the more that they come around, I'm wondering like, are these gaps that like I would expect the modding community to fill in instead of the dev team too? Sure. Or is it because of the way that I'm coming across it? Like the thing for instance is that like in the place that I met and with the update they came, you're able to get a horse. Once you get the horse, you can summon the horse basically anywhere except out of sight of buildings and you're able to walk places a lot faster. It like change it, it like really opens up the ability to move in that game. And like that's great. I got a horse. I feel like the horse would have been closed. Like I was around year two when this came around and I think you need at least one of the Hayden farm upgrades to even unlock the horse. So it's not like they added the horse and then like just put it up the game after that update. You've got the horse right away or whatever. But I also feel like because it's an early access, like if they wanted to scale the time of moving a little bit, like I don't know there's just something about it how it like is such a big change in terms of like timing immediately. Then I'm like, is this the design decision that I would have made? And like I think the fact that it's an early access is making me consider those things a little bit more and also making me consider those things more is that the farming game that I did right before I started doing this was multiplayer star do with you, Janine and Keith, a friend of the table person, and Dre and Sylvie came in on those a little bit too. And that was like we played at vanilla for like one session and then started pulling in mods. And that was my first experience with like a modding community for these types of games. So now I'm just like the like measurements in my head of like utility of some of these things is just like all sort of skewed in terms of the way that I'm thinking about how that stuff is managed, I guess. Yeah, well like and that's one where watching I'll do those streams was like one everyone has different styles of play and differently. They want to focus on. And then two like oh wow this game does just change with enough people to do everything all the time. Like that that is almost like a quality of life improvement is having someone who says yeah I'll do the watering today or I'll go into the mat. Like the animals. I don't know. Yeah, I don't want to deal with them. Yeah, exactly. I'm curious. Allie because like the other big difference here that I kind of alluded to was was setting and characters like I know people of the start of valley characters. I I get it. I think you know when I played that game I put I put 20 hours and which is not any fucking time. But like you know I had characters who I liked the most and I've played green factor games all the way through and have had favorites and stuff. But I think there was just instantly so much character through the set of characters here so much personality. They feel so not just distinct from each other but like I've seen these archetypes before. You know I've seen the mean boy blacksmith type. I've seen the sort of suspicious doctor many times before. I love that character every time it turns out. But there is something about the way that the writing is delivered here and I'm curious if that is I'm getting a lot of that because I just started and then like it kind of fades or like you know the first Friday when they're like oh come to the tavern on Fridays because we all hang out and it's like oh here's the card players and they're having a little discussion and here's the people at the bar who're just catching up and here's the fucking D&D group starting their new campaign. Like that shit doesn't happen in specifically the the feeling of bumping into a conversation already happening between the two or three other characters does not feel as common for me outside of big scripted events in the Farming Eves I play no again I am not the farm master maybe that is happening all the time in these games and I just don't know about it but it happens so often here and I'm curious if that continues post week one season one year one etc. Yeah so there's there's definitely a little bit of friction on this for me and it's an only access why forgive a lot of this and yeah so right now the Friday night things are only scripted for the first year. People will still go on like people will still go to the bar on Fridays but you won't get those sort of like overarching story like week one week two week three you're like seeing their events progress over time and like that is some of the best writing in the game but I also like cannot even understand from a devs perspective like how you calculate how many years of that you should even be writing. Yeah you know they could do five years they could do 10 years like I you know that I am not developing this game but the thought of having to make that decision like gives me. Just like why you don't usually get it right? Why you don't usually have normally in farming games the sort of conversational continuity will happen in like your romance scenes or your friendship scenes where it's like those will call back on a previous one because they can trust like well you got that relationship up to one star so you saw the one star cut scene and you got up to two stars you said two star cut scene so you can have like a thing that feels continuous there you don't often get it in something like an open area that you're going to or like a like an event you can go to every week normally you'll like you know start a valley for example I mean in most of them they'll be like okay these two always hang out together at the bar on Wednesday nights and they have some line about like the chickens are doing great you know and that's like their thing that they do but it's basically I don't want to say unheard of but like wildly uncommon to go there next Wednesday and hear them be like right how's that chicken doing oh I don't know she's just kind of weird this week and then you come back next week and you know it's so I do also like I wonder how much they're holding back on that stuff until release um oh sure that's kind of one of the easier things to just be like we'll show you up until this right and then but actually we have four or five or plus years of this already written we're just not going to put that in the early access because that would be giving it all away up top right yeah that's possible right also wonder like do you do five years of bar events or do you do two years of a bar event and then a beach event right and then like half of it you know yeah I mean that's another thing with the game is that there are kind of beach events I feel like I've missed a lot of them um because uh just I when I wake up I tend to buy vegetables and my animals and people seem to leave the beach by like one o'clock or whatever but like you can go to the beach and people have uh bathing suits so they have different sprites by the way and they're also like a different like combinations of people will be at the beach that day like just hanging out with each other um and that's really fun that was like a secret that I didn't realize until like um halfway through my first summer um and yeah I mean like I can't speak to how rare it feels in this game but I feel like the sense of community that you get in in fields of mystery is something that really sets it apart like just because the archetypes are so clear the like relationships that the characters already have with each other are so clear and then like when you as you're going through heart events with people or doing the like town upgrades with people you'll get like specific pairs of like you know the the the guy who is the farm that's right next to you will um the first heart event that you get with him is like you come over and talk to his chicken and then the the mean black boy is also there and he like has a fight with a chicken like you know in in in places like that I I feel like the the sort of like relationship events would just be between you and the person that you're giving the heart coins to and not like these opportunities to see them in context with these other characters um and then just in terms of like I mean like a lot of these games are like you arrive at this town this town needs certain updates and you you do those updates over time but I feel like you know the something I was really charmed by is that like you know the story with stardew is that you arrive at the town and nobody kind of gives a shit about all that stuff and then you're the only one who does and then you sort of like you know build this community by all of these these loose threads or whatever where is mystery you know everybody kind of has this investment in the place that they're in already they just haven't had the opportunity to like have the time and the space and the you know the player characterness that you have to to sort of help that ball roll down the hill um and specifically right yeah yeah yeah yeah and it's like well they all have to live their lives, they all have stuff, they have to take care of already. They don't have the time to deal with this new challenge and you're here and you're already dealing with new challenge, so go nuts. Right. Yeah. I mean, specifically that is the like, Kavette of the game. Basically, there's like the rich girl in town, the like, Baroness's daughter who's also running the town for some time, who gives you this farm as sort of like a like like a work home sort of like, we need this help. So can you just, you know, you can live here. It's like, it's like, it's like cat sitting. It's like, you can stay at my place for a month, but you have to take care of the cat, like 100%. You know, in this case, it's you have to help us prepare from this bad earthquake. Yeah. I will say like, some of these, some farm games, this is a thing that like Harvest Moon did for a spell pre story of seasons to like Harvest Moon, Harvest Moon, did for a bit, which I always hated and it feels kind of like an attempt to build the sense of community, but I think it just always, it always just made me feel bad, which was that for a while in Harvest Moon games, every love interest had an alternate like a rival, like a like someone who, if you didn't romance them, was going to romance them. In some cases, there was a timeline there where you could be romancing someone and then you would get scooped, that scooped, but someone would swoop it and you'd be kind of so well. It's sort of, they weren't always that mercenary, but it's, you know, it kind of depended on the game. They were always kind of playing with stuff like that. But there was so you would often like get to a point where your scenes with them would have the other, the rival involved. Oh, interesting. And it's sort of, I feel like it was supposed to build that feeling of like these people have relationships, they know each other, et cetera, but it always just felt kind of shitty because it was always boiling it down to romance. It was always a love trying element to this person because yeah, because they want to marry them. And also, in some games, there would be, there would be potential romances that didn't have a rival, like the traveling merchants and stuff sometimes wouldn't have a romantic rival. But for the most part, like the people who were living locally all had a potential rival assigned. And if you married that person, they just wouldn't get married. Like everyone else in time would get married. All of that stuff, and they would just be single forever because you stole the one person they were going to love. And I thought that felt terrible. Yeah, it feels pretty bad. They got rid of that, but it was like the worst possible solution to that problem of like, how do we make these characters feel like they're in the same world? That's wild. That's interesting because it's funny how that intersects back with the first part of the conversation we had, which is like the quality of life, convenience stuff, where it's like, where does the sim kick in and the loose visual, novelly narrative elements, you know, which I don't mean that in a majority of sense, but I mean that in the way of like, oh, there's a bunch of content. There's a story written for these characters, there's a dialogue and you're moving from one chapter of it to the next with these characters or whatever. And like, it's not, it's a different vector because it's not, I'm in convenience, I'm frustrated by my inconvenience, but it is, I'm being frustrated by the game's attempt to make the world not fully revolve around me and my needs. But it almost wraps back around to reinstating the centrality of your needs, if what the outcome was, and this other person who you decided doesn't get what they want just the end for them. There's no more, like they don't get to move on from this. They don't have, they're not part of your ending with character A, they're just character B off in the corner, you know, it's very sad. And there's no consideration there for like, like, it feels like there is no consideration for the player being sad for that character. Yeah, yeah. And like finding that undesirable outcome where they've clearly like taken something. And presumably, you can still have the non-romance path with them as just an NPC in the town still, and they don't ever talk about it. I don't know about that. No, okay. Because I would often, I would often go for the character who didn't have, because Carvest Moon's and Star of Season stuff, one of the few games that I have always played with a walk through or some sort of strategy thing. Normally, I don't like playing that way. But these kinds of games, if for nothing else, then the fact that I need to know what people would give people like to maximize that, is it's worth doing. But like, that also meant that, you know, even when I was like emulating them or whatever, playing them on like my Nintendo DS, like, there was always the opportunity for me to be like, okay, this person is the one, like in these games, at least the ones that had this system. Here's the person who doesn't have any other attachments. I'm just going to go with them. Sometimes that's like a god. Sometimes that's emergent, who only shows up on weekends or whatever. Sometimes that's the guy who's only there in the summer. Those are usually the ones that don't have those other entanglements. But it's like, okay, I guess, because I don't want to, I don't want to see like, you know, wherever the fuck is clay or whoever the fuck, I don't want to see him just like alone forever. Because of me. Janine, you can't fall in love with someone because you're pity for them. You can't. It's the opposite. I'm refusing to fall in love with someone because I have pity for someone else. Oh, I see. Right. I see. Wow. So true. I, you know, thinking of this dynamic is really coming to light how sort of smart the character dynamics in fields of mystery are because there are people in fields of mystery that I would have strongly, personally, stronger if I didn't feel like they had better chemistry with somebody else in town. Sure. The doctor and the evil poisoner are do they have a couple? I have not seen them together yet. I would love to see that. I would love to hook up with the poisoner lady who poisons you who works at a bathhouse that always has her boobs out and she calls you her guinea pig. She does. Like the first heart event you get with her. I'm obsessed with her. But she has such a good relationship with the doctor that like I don't expect the game to do the sort of thing of like, oh, we're going to pair off other like other characters. But the writing that they have together is strong enough that I can kind of put on my shipping lens and sort of enjoy these these the chemistry that they have together without that. So like I, you know, I don't know that there's like a one-to-one for everybody. But like the three sort of young woman girls are all to click together. I could see somebody sort of being like, well, I'd rather Celine hook up with Adelene. And so I'm the date Reena or you know, whatever else or even March and the Reese, which is the Oh, those two seem. Yeah, I don't know what they have in the day. I was like, oh, okay. I see the vibes. Yes. Because like, Marching hates everybody. And then all of a sudden he talked about Reese once. And I'm like, wait a second. You didn't shit talk Reese at all. You were like actually saying something of how cool he was. I'm like, okay, are y'all together? Okay, I'm gonna leave y'all alone. I want to hang out with Baller. Who's the merchant guy? Yeah. And I like, I love that like the characters are strong enough and the like interactions that they have with each other are strong enough that you can sort of make these lines for yourself without the like, the like firmness of what it sounds like. It isn't a harvest moon game. In terms of like, oh, you these, they are absolutely coupled. And if you engage with either of them, you are breaking up this pair essentially. Isn't it starting to sort of like that too? Aren't there like people like the mean girl woke up with the jock boy? Yeah, there are definitely some pairings. I don't know if they'll like get married and stuff. I don't know how far that goes, but there are definitely like, at least for the romance characters and also non-romanceable characters, you know, because the the mayor and Marney are like a thing. Right, of course. Yeah, the the mean girl and Alex, the football man, I think we'll hook up. I think like Emily, is it Emily and Shane or something? I don't know. There's, you know, Leah and Elliott, you know, there's there's definitely like, they are designed as two sides of a coin in a sense. Like, they have sort of clear like parallel characters that they do socialize with, but I'm not, I don't really remember. And also, there's been so many updates that I know at this point. Yeah. Yeah, I will say this game continues the long-standing tradition of these games where you go, why are none of these parents dateable? Oh my god. Yeah. That's the curse of a farming game. And sometimes I'll be like, is this because I've gotten older? It's like, no, this was always true. It was always true. The parents? Yeah. There was always hotter parents than anyone else. Going back to friends of Mineral Town and the family who does the chickens. And the mom, Lilla, who does the chicken stuff was a smoke show. Uh-huh. Her daughter is okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I will say at least for the parents in Fields of Misery, the relationships that they have with each other are 100% like. Yes. I'm such a, like, I do not want to separate the, like, shop owner lady who's always talking about, like, checks and balances whenever from the goofy guy who runs the shop and is always saying puns. Uh-huh, hold to ya. Uh-huh. Yeah. The thing that fucks with me is the old woman who does not hate Elsa. Yeah, she does. She's, yeah. And she's like always talking about old flings that she used to have when she was like young and hot in the capital. She has, like, you're still young and hot. Let me take you. She's also like an agatha Christie side character. She is. She is. Uh-huh. What's her name? Athene, whatever, who hangs out with horror sometimes. Like, she's, she's definitely, she's, I'm not all that. I, I, I, I hope you think you. I hope you think you. Do you need help for her if you've gotten in the Friday nights? Not very far. I'm still in the, the first season. Then I will not. I mean, I've watched a bunch of yours. Okay. But she, she eventually becomes the DM of those games that I'm fucking up so scared. Oh, that's so good. That's so good. That's exciting. Also, I'm posting, I posted, uh, Papuri's mom, Lillia and I'm posting Papuri and I'm just saying. Yeah. Yeah, the vibes are similar, but just the mom, the mom, it's like, it's like wine and grape juice, you know? The third one where her mom is like frustrated or like exhaling or something is so good. Really great. Um, I'm going the opposite direction with characters who are great, but you can't romance them good. Uh, the kids are so funny. They're so funny. Uh, Luke, Luke, Dylan, Maple, Luke's little, I have to tell you, I looked a lot like Luke when I was Luke's age. Luke has huge little Austin energy. I do not like bugs the way Luke likes. Yeah, I was going to say, how did you feel about bugs? Not a fan, never a fan at all, um, but the kids are so funny. The way that they like walk around in their little group and hang out and like sometimes have like a, a babysitter or like, oh, you know, someone guiding them around in the day. It's so good. You know from friends on the table that I love really well played and well written, like child characters. It's so hard to do in a way that's what can be insane. I think like it's been getting better. Yeah. Like I don't know again, I don't know if it's just my perception, but I feel like kid characters have been getting better. There have been more kid characters. I've been like, that one's fun. Yeah. Um, in games like, is that I wonder if it's like, is it a knock on effect of more developers being parents, you know, from the data, the occasion of games and stuff like that. But the other side is like, people have actually been around real children and know the ways in which they are funny and stuff. Yeah. Totally. 100%. Count Luke is so excited. They're like giving you a bug net so you can go do bugs. Yeah. He's so excited. He's so excited. Um, the other last thing that I just want to point out is like, I think one of the things that makes this cool is it does feel like there's, there is anything in room factory does this. There are other fantasy driven, you know, fantasy life isn't a farming, even though the new one does have farming. Uh, but. The old one also had farming. Did it have like a farm you could, you could have? I didn't realize that. I don't remember if you had like, if it was like a farm farm, but there were like crops, there were like, yeah, there was a farming class, right? I think this is a farmer. Was there a farm? I don't remember. I don't remember if there was an actual farmer. I'm searching for, I'm searching the lives list. Uh, paladin mercenary magician hunter. Farmer, yeah, farmer. Farmer is one of them. Farmer is the new one. Farmer is in, it, farmer is new for the girl who steals time. Yeah. I think there was, it was like gather some sort of gathering one. There was a wood cutter who let you do that type of stuff, I think, maybe, but, uh, but yeah, in any case, um, what was I even taught? Oh, uh, the setting like has, I keep being like, okay, what's going on here? Um, uh, there is, I started doing the archeology stuff. You go over to the ruins and start digging stuff up. I was like, oh, yeah, the headdress of the ancient witch queen. Like, huh? The who? The one? Uh, you know, I'd say, um, I'm going to do the one. You know, I'd say it's not quite to, um, what was the square annex, um, uh, farming RPG that came out a couple of years ago, harvest Stella. Harvest Stella has like, harvest Stella secretly is just a JRPG that has a lot of farming in it, but like is a JRPG that is like the bulk of what you do in that game. It's not the sort of harvest, or the sort of a starting value ruin factory. I mean, room tractor is a lot of combat in it, but it's, it's so tilted in that direction in Harvest Stella. Um, uh, but like, it's ignoring the fact that Stardew has that war going on in the background that they just occasionally talk about. Do they talk, uh, do not remember this and all about. Uh-huh. There's just like talking about like, what do we, how do we tell the children about the war? Okay, but what if you went to that war? That's what Harvest Stella is. One of the characters, yeah, well, that in Stardew, one of the characters comes home in like year two or something from the war. Interesting. And he has PTSD. Okay. Yeah. I, I would give a say like, oh, cool, but that's not. She's like the hottest mom. Oh, wait, wait. Oh, she can't date her because her kid has PTSD. She's married. She's married. She's married to a guy who's, who's fighting in the war. I say that's a class. That's a classic situation which you could date her. I think historically speaking. I'm not saying they should put that in the game, but someone's going to pull the trigger on that at some point. Someone's going to pull the bandaid off and you can date the mom where the guy is gone. You know, that's what modding us for. You're right. That mod exists presumably, like instantly, right? They're probably competing different mods. Stardew Valley mod. Uh-huh. We're doing the research live. This is Jody. I think her name is Jody. Mm-hmm. The dateable Jody. There you go. Reddit post, why is Jody like that? This is very fucked up. Mm-hmm. Uh-uh. I will say the fantasy element of Fields of Mysteria is, I don't want to say subtle because you're casting magic obviously. Sure. Yeah. The way that it is happening in the background is really, it makes the environment seem a lot more compelling as you're just getting into it. And I do think that the way that they have the sort of quote unquote main plot split across two different paths. One is you are raising the town rank and your upgrading parts of the town over time when you're getting different scenes for that. But also the deeper you go into the mind, the more interactions you have with like the ancient dragon statue or at least the spirit of the ancient dragon statue and like a lot of plot and upgrade stuff is locked behind how deep you've gotten. So it is, it is very fun to see the like, there's the like, you know, mundane plot quote unquote and then the fantasy plot. And those are like two different things that you can put your time into that I think makes the like the way that they weave those two aspects of like those plot or the story that you're uncovering really, really good. And have they been updating both of those with updates or is that like, yeah, I think the last update both had like, you know, the updates have typically been, there's new festival because it only launched with one of a couple of quality of life updates. Go be the ability to go deeper into the minds and then like a bigger cap on what the town renowned can be. And the town renowned is like the, the like level. Right, right, right. Yeah, that is where you, like any quest you do gives you any, it's like everything you do can increase or down right even like selling crops will increase town or now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, doing doing quest for people is a big renowned thing. Right. So and then also I think another thing is it was only planning on being in early access for a year at least that's what they said at launch. Right. So the full update should be some or like the full game should be sometime this summer which is exciting. That is exciting. I hadn't checked the roadmap actually but yeah, it seems like they're, they're getting there, huh? Mm-hmm. Also, I, if any of the people who are working on this game are listening to this and I'm going to say something kind of ridiculous if you're, like, you know, you're going to be someone who is like this is gonna sound like I'm giving I'm giving people who buy games homework right now. You'll have to charge more than $14 for this game. This is not a. $14 yesterday's price is not today's price. I would bet when they release a full price it will go up. I hope it goes up to above $20. I know I'm giving us homework. I know times are tough but that's why you have to be able to charge more than $20 for something that is so this is like not a small little game and it is 2025 you know. I use a $25 game minimum. I agree yeah. Okay I was 14. I would say though that like it's gotten a little more I feel like this was sort of frowned on for a while but has at least anecdotally gotten more common of just like we're gonna put it in early access at a low price. Totally. Because I think maybe because there have been so many early access games that came out and then got abandoned that there's a little bit of reticence. Totally free. Disney's real value is $40. It's on discount right now 30 but like you know these these games are expensive out here. Start you know start to with 15. I get you want to price it competitively to that but I think we all need to Nintendo was selling answer $80.90 more if you're in Canada or whatever right 70 or 80 and then more if you're in Canada like like $100. That's wild. What do we do like and I but I and I'm like I who just said you shouldn't charge $14 you have to charge more. I'm just trying to get us somewhere you know they deserve to be paid. Please please tell me this is from the this is from the Jody marrying Jody dating mom. Oh yep please tell me this includes a storyline where she and Kent get help with their issues and divorce amicably. And mod creator says I thought about that but I really didn't know how to really approach that which is fair. Currently she just silently divorces him when you marry her. Perhaps I'll add some extra events about the divorce in the future. You know I I am just calm and I understand but also wild. Why? She just silently divorces him when you marry that's crazy work. That's what do we. Man imagine being in the fucking bookers of the starving family world war and you get the male that's just divorce papers. What the fuck is going on? No because he's back by the time you're we see back when I mean he comes back I want to say at the start of year two so if you move like super fast with Jody you could theoretically. You got to erase you got it got to be done before he's back. Otherwise. And I wonder like where does he live? Does he live in that house and then she moves into yours right? Yeah he gets to keep the house and like they should all right. Where does Goku live or whatever fuck her? Goku? Is she is she the one who has the blonde spiky hair kid? I forget who Jody is. Jody has a it's a little boy it's a little boy that little spiky hair little like keep character. Yeah I say wait no it Sam Sam is dateable Sam is the adult one. Oh yeah no Sam is Goku. Sam is Goku. Anyway. Well any other mystery of thoughts before we take a break. I'm good. Played Fielder. I'm really good. Yeah. I have a theory that the doctor and the poison are are dating because specifically or have that relationship because the doctor looks like a gender swap doctor Tomoe from Sailor Moon and the poison or lady looks kind of like mistress nine. That's my that's my story. It's a good theory. That's a good theory. It might not stop me though from dating the doctor. So I'm really thinking about it. I like the doctor a lot. Where are we at with I mean Ali we all know who you're trying to date. We all see the stream. Is that still true. Have you cooled on March? Not at all. An impact last stream. I did the the like the shooting star event which is a spring event which quote unquote binds our fate. I think yeah I think that that maybe is like a he's definitely a marriage candidate for me now. And I was actually I was I the mechanics of that were weird because it's like you get a pin that you give somebody I thought that it was going to be at least a thing of like you need to get X amount of hearts with them before you can do that. I think that there is a little bit of walking there like if you I've never interacted with someone I wouldn't have been able to do it. But I was kind of curious I guess they didn't want to put people in the position where like if you have the same heart level with three different people they didn't want to just randomize who you would be there with. Yeah but yeah it was it was great. It was very it's very emotional is charged. I'm having a great time with him. I can't you think she's older brother. You cannot. And that is a thing that people are I'm so I was gonna say if I could date anyone this game I want to date Ulrich so bad. Yeah I like Ulrich. I would be finding that dating him. I just want to know what's up. You know what I mean I'm fine with I'm fine with if he's like I don't want a relationship that's awesome. But I want to know what his vibe is. There's so much fandom contention about this because like there's been so like can we date Ulrich has been a thing that people said again to get a get a get a get a get a get a in since release. Right. And then you have the flip side of that which is like well there should be ace representation. There should be. And there should be. But that's a lot. But still date. Yeah. But there should be there should be people who don't want to date should exist in games in games like this. Yes. But like if that's the case that should be in the game and that shouldn't be something we have to always. Yeah. And it should not just be a thing that people are arguing about on Reddit or whatever. Like it is not representation just because he's cut off in that way. So like the sort of like conversation around it has been more annoying than the actual like just reality of it which is that you could probably only code so many people to the game. Right. Um so well romance is inherently going to be a lot more writing and also a lot more like usually you're going to have like extra sprites and like all of this other stuff and they have to have special responses to things. And then also when you marry them usually you're going to want like okay what do they do on the farm like that is just going to be like straight up like coding some shit for them like sometimes even in these games like it's a thing of like well this child or this this person will have this child with you. So you have to make those assets also and like you know I get it but also Ulrich is nice looking and kind. He's kind. And I'm like that. Yeah. And because he's not dateable you know no one else is going to date him. Yes. So maybe that's what the kids maybe ask for Darcy. I would settle for Darcy. Which one's Darcy? Oh Darcy's one of the market. Yeah. Oh Darcy's cute Darcy's so. Darcy's so cute. Darcy's so cute. Yeah. One of the Saturday market people. So is Mary also one of the Saturday market people. One of the cutest characters. Oh yeah. She's really cute. Um I my top three right now are Vailen the doctor. Um Bay Baller Baylor Baller the merchant and then I think Reina who's like not entirely my type but is kind of my like personality wise she's so bubbly but sometimes you you know somewhere you see someone who's like so committed to getting it done in the war you know what I mean. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah. I think she's like the best designed character. She's so well. Yeah. Like Celine is kind of the cover girl of mystery and like she's cute. She's good. Yeah. Um I like that she has different hairstyle sometimes like that's also fun. Um but every time I look at Reina I'm just like that's the kind of character that makes me want to like do fan art or something like that's there is something about her that is just like really polished and like exceptionally cute. I don't know I just she's great. If you told me Reina was a sailor moon character I missed somehow I'd be like oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Reina's giving Molly. She's giving um Maru vibes. I'm gonna rate a talk with American dub Molly accent. Oh my god. It'd be very funny. Well that was my top. So what else one of the other was my top picks. What in alley march but Jeanine are you you were also thinking Dr. Vailen? I'm thinking so hard about Vailen just in terms of like I want to I want to pick a character that I do find like cool and attractive. Yeah. But I also am not happy with the idea of of interfering with her in juniper. Yeah. Which is a shame. Yeah. It's complicated you know. I don't love the a lot of the this is my curse with farming games is I often just don't find the guy is anything special. Other than Ulrich I think Baylor is just his fine also I might go with Baylor. Yeah I don't really get enough of what his deal is but he has good vibe. I like his vibes. I like his looks. I like it. Alyn's. Vib the the barons the other barons the same barons other kid who is like but he is the type of guy. - The type of character I play, not the type of character I date. Do you know what I mean? - I mean, yeah, he's kind of a Malquin. - Yeah, he's a Malquin. He's a little bit of a Malquin. - Yeah, but yeah, he's like a. - He's a little more fancy boy, but go ahead, say more. - He's a little fancy. He's just like a dork archeology boy and like everything that he's like, I, like, even a birthday present the other day and he's like, "Oh, you have such a great knowledge of old traditions." And I'm like, "No, man, I just gave you a birthday present." - Birthday present. - I've got honoring the history of mystery, because it gave you the strawberry, bro. Like, oh, yeah. (laughing) And there's like the, like, arch-typiness of some of the characters like get a little silly in that regard. - This is the one thing they care about. - Yeah, Adelaide is that way too. She, I, another strength of this game is that, like, I think the, like, very easy Tom Nookism of Adelaide in terms of being like. - Sorry, it's Adelaide. Adelaide is our hyrod. - Adelaide is our hyrod. - Karen. (laughing) - She's like the, the prissy rich girl who's always working for some reason. - Oh, sure. - And then she'll also, like, during every town upgrade, she's asking you for like thousands of dollars. And it's like, "You have that's a dork, come on in." - You're rich. (laughing) - It's all, it's all locked up in a truss. She doesn't get to touch it. - Oh, you're sure. - Yeah. - She has like $500 with the flowers in her fucking manner. Like, I'm selling that shit for $500 for flowers. They're the manners flowers. - Oh. - Yeah, there's something in the capital. I don't fucking know. But the way that I, like, the way that I feel that sort of way that I would, like, about Tom Nook in terms of like, I understand that you were probably me, but stop asking me for a buddy. It's like, it's like, it's a good feeling. It feels like it's a success in terms of how they're writing in this game is. - Yeah, definitely. Agreed. It's funny that Celine, the kind of poster character for this, who is like the daughter of the general store owners, is like not the central. I didn't know Adeline existed. You know, I was like, "Oh, yeah, Celine's gonna be the one who is leading me through all of the town quests." - Yeah. - And it doesn't seem to be the case. So, I like that Hayden is here for people who are fans of the Druid guy from Baldur's Gate 3. - Paulson, yeah. - Yeah, Paulson. This is basically the same to me. So, shout out. Shout out to them. All right. Let's take a quick break. We'll come back. We'll talk about some more video games. [music] We are back and gonna talk finally about an intergalactic library overrun by Space Pirates. I think maybe before diverging back to old, to 80s, 90s anime vibes, actually. But skin deep is, I believe, out now. I know that the embargo is up and I can talk about it. This comes out, maybe it's tomorrow. It comes out tomorrow, April 30th. It is on steam. I don't know what the launch price is. It's not on here yet. I can't pre-order it yet. But if it's for $14, I would also say that they should raise their price. Skin deep is the latest game by Blendo Games. One of my favorite developers of all time. Thirty flights of loving is probably the game that I played that first got me into Blendo Games. I think that's probably true. Thirty flights and a gravity bone, which is the kind of, well, the first one was gravity bone for thirty flights of loving comes with gravity bone and thirty flights of loving. Yes, Quadro Letter Cowboy came out in like 2016. I love that game. I'm a big fan of the game Flotilla. These games used to be made primarily by Brendan Chung as a solo dev, but that has not been the case now. I think since Quad Cow, I think Quadro Letter Cowboy had a full team. They are very distinctive stylistically. They tend to be very boxy. They have their roots in old source and quake mod scenes, making unique levels. They have a history of pushing kind of the storytelling structure of games towards techniques that you don't traditionally see in video games. Things like montage, which have a long history going back to the early twenties. Going back to the early history of film in film, but aren't the things that you traditionally see used in video games where you're cutting, but you know, in something like gravity bone or thirty flights of loving, you'll be walking down a hallway and the game will just cut to further on down in the hallway or cut to a memory your character is having in this moment for a second or two. And historically, the blender games have really walked between two different lines, I'd say, which is really carefully hand crafted narrative games in sort of first person mode. Thirty flights of loving is kind of the epitome of this where you are moving through levels and there is interaction that you're doing, but you're not like you can't really fail a level. I guess there's some like falling through some platforming stuff in thirty flights. But generally speaking, you're like moving through a space. There's that kind of fun spy slash crime story happening that's told in fairly abstract kind of impressionistic ways that is like stylistically really cool. And also historically, the characters have been big cube people with big cube heads. The other type of game that Blondo traditionally does is really systems heavy explorations of, you know, it's all set in the same setting, so like different parts of that world, it weirder in some way. Adam Zombies' masher is a game about the zombie apocalypse and you're doing sort of, you're destroying parts of a town or until like keep the zombies from spreading through the streets. Flotilla is a wildly cool, fully 3D space combat roguelike where you're moving your little like ships around in actual 3D space from like a third, not like you're not piloting them. It's turn-based and you're like putting in directions and then they kind of play while operatic music plays and for like seven seconds they might like shoot at another one and then it pauses unless you put in your next thing. But like actually in 3D in a way that's not the way like a Star Wars fight happens but is like, oh, the ship is slowly like a naval battle but in 3D. And it's like not at all like thirty flights of loving. Quadro little cowboy kind of walked the line there where its core kind of gameplay loop was about going into a level and sort of programming in a heist figuring out where and how you would hack certain things and set up certain sorts of interactions between different computer systems, very grounded in like as like you know freaking and kind of 80s and 70s, 80s and 90s early hacking while still being in the traditional kind of big cube shaped characters mode. And that kind of started to blend those two things together. I'm here to tell you that a skin deep has like completely melded together those two styles of games from the studio. It is a first person. I've seen people called an immersive sim like Deus Ex or Dessander. I don't think this is- Sometimes. But it is a stealth action game first and foremost. You're not reading note cards to learn. You are kind of. You're not- you are reading note cards to learn passwords for things. You are sometimes reading you know about the way that people kept showing up and putting books into the library book return with guns in them. What should we do with all these guns that are in these books? I don't know. I was put them in the back behind the book return and then you know you read that stuff but it doesn't have that same sort of overarching structure that something like Deus Ex has. Instead it is a level based game in which you play Nina Pasadena who is an insurance agent for the Mi'al Corporation, MAIO which is a corporation where I guess her job is to be in a cryo freeze cabinet on a ship run by cats on various space ships run by cats and if pirates or any other problem show up she gets defrosted and has to go rescue all the cats. That's the pitch of this game. I love- I love like fiction. I watch you play some of this game and I really love that concept. The idea of like instead of insurance being a thing that you pay into and then if something bad happens they pay out. It's like the insurance is you acquire this frozen person and if something goes bad you get thrown out. You get thrown out. And then they get to work. And what happens is you have these kind of really tight handcrafted levels. This is not a proxgen game as far as I've played anyway. I've played a bunch of it at this point. I've played nine hours of it which doesn't it feels like like three hours. I've played it for nine hours of it. And I've not hit any sort of like- and now it's a proxgen game or anything like that. It's not like there's an opening tutorialization and then it gets proxgen. But you- there's tight handcrafted spaceship levels where there might be four rooms or six rooms and those rooms have the space pirates patrolling them. The pirates tend to just be doing their thing which is like walking around slamming their hand on a vending machine. with each other. And your job is to navigate, distract, attack these pirates until you get the keys to release the cats from their little cat jails that are all over the spaceship. And then to call in a cat escape pod, load them up. And now at the point of the game that I'm in, you then have to get yourself extracted, either by killing the pirates who show up. To reinforce and leave the pirates who are still on the ship, you have to kill all the pirates or getting the the key card for the pirate ship that has now landed and then stealing that to escape. That is like the high level in play. It's a lot like something like heat signature. The Tom Francis game that came out again about 10 years ago around the same time as quadrilateral cowboy, except it's in first person. It is a hijinks simulator. It is a game where there is a comedic layering of systems. It's like something like an even more comedic take on hitman. Where you're doing things. I mean importantly, there are guns in this game, but they're fairly rare and you get them in very silly ways. And they're not something that you are constantly able to use. And it's a big deal if you find a gun or like a grenade or something like that. Instead, you know, I will say at this point nine hours in the number one way I can get a easy clean kill. And it's only sort of clean. I'll throw a box of powdered detergent at someone or a powdered deodorant at someone which is flammable and then I'll light a lighter and throw it at them. Or I'll take a like a metal like electric conduit and smash it against the wall which calls it to start sparking. And then I'll throw it at the big the big powder cloud which will then explode and probably kill them. Now when they die, they don't actually die. They get knocked out or they die and their head pops off their body in a little hover, a little hover globe like a snow globe but a head is in there. Reclamation jar. It is something like that. Yeah. And if you don't go get it, it will float to like a respawn pad and they'll just respawn with a new body. So you get the head and then get it out of the ship and throw it into space. I tend to do that the most by just opening an airlock and tossing them out because it's fun. But you could like flush them down the toilet or put them in a trash shoot and send them out into space and then they're gone for real. And that sort of like interaction is the way you deal with all of the problems in this game. You are trying to trick someone to walk near a electric wire that then you're able to hit in a way that causes it to zap them. My favorite level so far is the galactic library is a whole library spaceship where I'll say really quick also there are side objectives that you can also check as soon as you start a level if you're going to play this game, I advise you to immediately look at your map and then hit down on the D pad to see your side objectives because it tends to be like hitman, which full disclosure, Janine you work on hitman. So I think it's probably worth saying that out loud before we get harassed for stupid reasons. But like that, there are like opportunities sort of in the level and once you know what those are, you can kind of like actually piece together how the level works. So for the library, for instance, one of the side objectives are like find the hidden cassette tape because there's like music that you can find on the cassette tapes. Return enough books to get a reward from the book return slot and then it's zap someone zap one of the pirates with the anti theft book security systems. And so it turns out on this library ship, which has like six rooms, there is a there are in the hallways security like perimeter security zones where you can't pass a book through it without getting zapped. There will be like an electric zap which will stun an enemy or damage you a little bit. And so it became very fun for me to lower people with the books or you know just get them to chase me through there and then set up throw a book pass them as they were running through causing them to get zapped. And of course, if you deliver enough of the books because the pirates had been sneaking guns and in the books, the book return is set up to give you a gun. And that's like life. There is not you this is a game about throwing deodorant people not a year about having a gun and all of a sudden you have a gun you're like, oh, I'm invisible. It's so deeply funny. It is so high jingsy in the way of oh my god someone is coming. Maybe I can like hide above them in the little alcove in the roof or hide in the vents or all of that. And then on top of it, it's just like a thing's going wrong simulator where it's I tried to throw a thing at a guy but I missed it. I hit the window another entire bridge of the ship has decompressed. And now everyone's outside in space or I've set up a trip wire but then I forgot it was there and I'm trying to run away because a bunch of new space pirates just showed up but I run into my trip wire. And now I'm knocked out and now I'm knocked out but I do have the auto what is it what is the what is it called when what are the defibrillator of an auto defibrillator center and when that happens it zaps everyone in the area. So now that everyone zapped and stunned for a second so I can go to jump on the back of one of them and then like charge him head first into another one of them. It is just it is really really really funny in that way and I'm really enjoying it and also someone show is there as a crime lord cat named little lion and so I don't what's better than this. We the cats do crime to this one you and and little lion used to be criminals together used to be assassins together. Yeah so but you know situations have brought you back into relation with each other. Uh huh. And so you have to do you have to he gives you some missions you're like you like first so you've to give him much of money so that he'll give you advice and then he sends you on a mission to go get like some special things that are all weird and goofy like a big hot air balloon. You're like why do you want this and then you know play to find out what happens. But yeah I genuinely don't know if anything else popped out for you for me like comedy in games is so hard so anytime anyone's even trying to do it I'm excited. Yeah and I you know this is you know you as you mentioned I work on Heyman and I really respect when a game does comedy through systems. Yeah and like acknowledges the comedy through systems versus trying to right their way into being a joke genius kind of thing. I feel like that's the shit that's like it's so easy to feel when someone is not confident in their humor or is too confident in their humor versus just being like well here's how we want the game to work. And sometimes this is going to go bad in a funny way and let's embrace that. Yeah. That's I think and that's that's to me why I can be like this feels very immersive to me is because there's that thing of like things can combine in ways that you just don't foresee because that's how the world works sometimes. Right in a way going back to the mystery of thing of like sometimes it's funny when the player doesn't get what they want and in mystery or in sort of valley that maybe that doesn't always fit the desire of the player in the meta sense but here it's like I want my desires to be to be I want a fumble I want to like I want to keep forgetting that there's glass on the ground and keep stepping in it and then like die hard like take a little damage. And then they'd be like I have to find a health thing again. Okay great. And the other city it is bluff oh this game is huge all of the blend of game stuff is huge influence on on bluff city like if I've never said that out loud I apologize but if you're a friend of the table listener and you like bluff city huge influence on the way the bluff city works and also like was doing bluff city you know for people who don't know from friends of the table of bluff city was our first Patreon exclusive season. It's now totally available both there is a patreon post with a link to it all or think the patreon posts are all free to the public but it is now just all on YouTube to I think is that all of season one just season one sorry but all of season one is now available on YouTube now I think which is of course YouTube.com/transit the table and that is like a single setting but we play a bunch of games to tell to tell about our story but a lot of them are mostly standalone in terms of like getting a new sense of it. What's everyone's favorite season one bluff city game I say season one because it's free because I know season two we would all just say America's playground probably. Maybe not because now you weren't in America's playground right yeah it's still a good one though regardless. I think for me it is truly just I think it's the first one the box of the bird the. Our fiasco first fiasco game yeah our very first fiasco I think to me is it was such a immediate thing of like you could feel everyone immediately just locking in on like this is what we're doing I get it. Yeah. I think it's a good stuff has been fun. This is your stuff has been fun. It's a crime right? Yeah it's when I tried. to think about it, I feel like I can easier say who my favorite bluff city character is in my favorite game. Who's your favorite bluff city character? Chris Andrews. From messy business. For messy business, which was La Cuna? That's La Cuna. I think that's my favorite one. Yeah. Chris Andrews is rules. But for people listening, we played all these different games. And that is what Blendo was doing well before I was doing bluff city, right? Because all of these games from the game about the zombies, you know, through this one in space are all in the same, you know, unified setting. And it's a very silly setting, but it's a very thoughtful and like considered setting. Not thoughtful as in like huge big ideas and world building, but thoughtful as in like it, you will constantly be like, oh, shit, right. I remember because this is like, this is the big city on Earth still are like, oh, right. I remember from playing Flotilla, there's all these cats in space. Like cats are a major part of the space economy for some reason. And the way that that stuff layers is I think really impressive, especially since this game is the game, I think with from them with the most writers and the biggest team at this point, there's an FAQ on the site that lists all the different writers. And like, there's, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine different guest writers on top of Laura Mache, who is the narrative director of the game and Brendan, who's the creative director, who I'm sure also did some writing work on it. Along with a bunch of other artists and composer and programmers and one part Mimi Kwan did all of the cat art, it says here, which is love that. I love to have a cat art developer. Yeah. So I mean, that's a huge part of the game right? You got to get a cat expert to that. Let me tell you, there are every ship has unique cats and then you, and then when you rescue them, the email you and they go, Nina, they go, Nina, it was so good to see you. It's not the circumstances we wanted to have. I want to do that. Have you seen Shark Bite 7, the horror movie about sharks and you get to choose what you write value of two options most of the time. And normally it's something like, I don't like shark movies, but I am excited for this new vampire movie. I might have this backwards, but like that's the gist or like, oh, I can't wait. Do you want to see Shark Bite 7 with me? You know, like how friendly do you want to be to these cats? And there's, that is what I suspect the additional writers were writing was all of the cat email content that feels like contract writer material to me. Do you ever get like a mean one like the one that you get in Mass Effect 3? I've literally just taken so how to be like, what is that? I think that you're always talking about. Because it's like from the assassin guy that literally nobody likes in terms of nobody like that character. Who's the assassin? Oh, Kylang. Kylang's email. Yeah, like wait, let me add this. Because he emails you from like somebody else's name and he's like, good, okay, I have it. Yeah, I have it too. He opened this message. He's an actually the sorry military command. They're busy telling to what's left of the planet. So you survived our fight of the sea. You're done as a week as I thought, but I've never forget that your best was it good enough to stop me. Now the entire planet is dying because you let the strength of the wind. The legend of shepherd needs to be rewritten. I hope I'm there for the last chapter. It ends with your death. It's funny. Because he doesn't know you would have opened an email from anyone. Well, the email said Kylang, I would click it in an instant. I might have clicked it first. Mass Effect 3. What are we? I have been a Mass Effect 3 defender in my life. There are parts of it I really like. I think Kylang, like people talk about how they don't like the end of that game. I think you don't like Kylang. I think Kylang is the actual problem. Not literally Kylang, but like metaphorically. Like, I think if a game, there's a thing I say a lot over on Shel by genre. I think I probably said on the MCA too. You probably heard me say this, Ali, but like there's a point in there's a point at which I start being, when I know I haven't actually liked a thing is when I start like complaining about little pedantic things that are like that I would have otherwise accepted if I didn't dislike the game already. If it had me, I would give it the grace about certain things. And the second that I'm like, we talked about this a lot with Obi-Wan, the Star Wars show where I'm just like, it's the, I hate it so much. Like production quality is not something I can hand wave. And I really think for a lot of people who didn't like the end of aspect three, they might, I'm not saying they don't, they, I'm not saying they would have liked it if they liked Kylang. But if they had fucking stuck the landing on all of the rest of the game and you get to the end and it's like a little deflating and you don't necessarily like the three choices you're given and blah, blah, blah. I think a lot of people would have like extended, they would have remembered all the good times they had during this session in the whole series and would have like been like, okay, well, I didn't love how it ended. The little boy was kind of stupid, but like whatever, aspect three, what a triumph. But it's that there are stumbles throughout that game that like land you in a place where you go, ah shit, like I'm just not, I just didn't have the time with this I wanted to have. That's how I feel anyway. I don't know. I also never played to the Philadelphia L.C. So that's my. Oh Lord. Well, I was done with it. I was going to go back anyway. This party has would be four hours long. Especially this is a Philadelphia. So, um, but our thing I want to say, I think to you. Sorry, Ali, because there was on the tape, what would you say, Ali, then I want to go to you, Janine. Are any of the cats passive aggressive to you? I don't think I've met a pet. Well, little lion is. Little lion is very passive aggressive. Because you're used to be friends and now, and now he's like, you know, oh, Nina, you're lowering yourself to work with me again. Interesting. You know, he's like that. Um, so, but yeah, I would love for there to be a shitty cat who's like, I didn't need you to rescue me, you know, you need what we're going to say. I was going to say a thing that I think is interesting with this because of the increasing amount, because of the increasing amount of money, um, and marketing and like publishing weight that has, that is going behind Blendo games. Um, it's interesting to increasingly be moving towards, uh, like this game is really, you've talked about this game in a way that I think is fair, like as a continuation of this, of the Blendo games is averse. Um, but I think this is the one that's going to probably bring in the most new people who are going to have none of that context. Yes. Just because it's getting marketed really heavily. It has a certain publicing. It's got a large, yeah, it's got, it's got a large, a larger team behind it. And a perno is publishing it. Um, it doesn't have boxy people. It actually has people that are a little bit more. Yeah, it has, uh, when I first saw, when I first saw the art for skin deep stuff, I didn't, I didn't even clock that it was, that it was Blendo games. Um, so there's a lot of stuff there. It's like a lot of people are going to be entering into all of this with this game. And I think from what I've seen, it's actually a good game for that. But it is also really interesting because these games or, you know, the, uh, the previous Blendo games games are kind of, I would describe them as like game developers games or like, I think that's right. There are things that like you, they come up in conversation with people who are like either critics or impress or our developers or things like that. There are a lot less likely to come up in conversation with just like, you know, you, I, if I was having dinner with a bunch of friends who just casually play games and one of them had a glint of recognition if I said 30 flights of loving. That would be, oh, it would be shocking. Whoa. That would be like, wait, are you secretly like what's your deal? What's your job? What if you work in the industry? Like, yeah, whereas this like, it's getting a lot of banner treatment, you know? So I'm really curious to see how people are going to respond to that world if they're going to connect the dots and dive back or if it's just going to kind of be a standalone thing. I think it has the strength to be a standalone thing. Yeah. But yeah, I'm curious. Me too. I'm so much better than I'm such a big fan. Like, this is, this is a secret stand. You know, like, this is hot. It's not an undeserved platform. It's overdue. Yeah. And I have been, I have been in the same way that when there's a new time Francis game, like, there is something about these games and it's so to my sensibility. I will say I tend to be, I think one of my, one of the reasons we're doing this podcast is so that I get to play games. I wouldn't play otherwise, right? Like that is I am so bad when I'm busy with other work when I was working at Possibility Space. I did such a bad job of staying abreast of like what, what all was coming out week to week, what stuff that I would normally play for coverage or to talk about it or write about. I just didn't keep up with those things anymore because I didn't have the time and because I was like, hmm, give me my delicious slop now that I don't have to, to like weigh in on whatever an interesting new thing is that came out. This is a game that I would have played even in that era. It's so to my own sensibility and like, it's so fun to see this stuff get to, it's so fun to see the person who is making 30 flights of loving and the people who've also I know worked on other smaller things for years and years and years. That's like a huge triple A game by any means, right? Like I said, there's like 20 people on the credits. It's still not a huge game, but it's nice to see them getting a push in this way. I hope it does really well for them just because I think it's fun and great. So yeah, that's skin deep. Is the time to talk about a little more anime, a little more classic 90s fantasy vibes with Lunar Remastered Collection, which is. Lunar Remastered Collection. Yeah, sorry Lunar. I said Lunar. It's not Lunar. It's Lunar. It's not Lunar. It's Lunar with a name. Lunar. Oh my god. Well, that's still how you say Lunar. It does, but it is pronounced Lunar, I think. I mean, I pronounce things wrong all of the time, but I'm pretty sure it's. I pronounce it Lunar. Maybe it's Lunar. I mean, it's a Japanese game and Japanese pronunciation of that word would give it more of an awe. Sure, Lunar. Yeah, the awe, the awe. Yeah, sure. Right. Well, Lunar, Lunar Remastered Collection, which collects both Lunar Silver Star Story Complete and Lunar 2, Eternal Blue Complete, which is a series of JRPGs that originally came out. Did the first one, was the first one, you tell me, Ali, because you were the Lunar head here. And I don't want to get this wrong when I have an expert. Yeah, so with the. I guess I'm not sure about the Eternal Blue, but I know that Lunar Silver Star was a Sega CD game that was ported by working designs, back when, and then had a remaster for the PlayStation, also ported by working designs. And that was a huge, overhaul of redesign sprites, environments were redesigned. It changed the game completely, basically. Whereas this new remaster is a pretty. As much of one to one as they could do of that PlayStation release, it's not like another big, like we're putting in a new engine and it's. It's not an HD-30, or it's not in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no. In fact, there is a classic graphics mode with fake CRT filters, and there's the "remastered" mode, which is. There's not a huge difference between them, and it's actually kind of interesting to see the difference, because the remastered stuff is like the cutscenes are redrawn basically because all of the cutscenes of the game are. Like anime-style animation graphics with some computer generations for the environment. And the. Like in one of the first towns that you go in, like in the classic version, quote-unquote, there's like fish in the water, but they're still. It's still this pixel art. And then in the remastered versions. It basically looks the same, but the fish kind of move around. There's like very slight upgrades there, which are. It's fun to see that there's not a huge difference, but the differences seem. I don't want to say respectful, but they're at least meaningful in that way, where it's like they're not trying to reinvent the wheel, you know? Yeah. It's a bit like an intention sort of thing. Like this is the thing you get with not to go back to farming games, but Harvest Moon on the SNES versus Harvest Moon 64. People will often say that like Harvest Moon 64 is what the original was intended to be, but because of like time and hardware constraints and all of those factors couldn't be. So when they had the chance to kind of do it over or do more on a stronger system, or a more powerful system, you know, they got something that's closer to the vision. Like I wonder if the thing happened there was instead of, you know, because we've seen a lot of really awful remasters of games from that era where it's like, yeah, we're going to make them all look all round and squishy and it'll look great. It's a lot of fantasy remasters from like the iPad ones in the mid 2010s were so gross. Very bad. I wonder if they, you know, it was like, well, we can count on, you know, more processing power. We can count on more memory. Like what are the changes we can make based on the original vision that are, you know, take advantage of that, but like, you know, we don't need to redraw everything. People are going to be mad at us if we do like no one wants that. So why bother? Yeah. Well, and there's stuff that feels like you can't, well, you could change it and remaster, but it'd be more than a remaster to be a remake in some way where like, uh, this game is, is about a straightforward of a game in this kind of turn based JRPG style as you can imagine in my memory. It's been a while since I put it all the way through, but I put, I put like 10 hours into Lunar one about two years ago when I was an early perpetual prep. I'm in my JRPG seeking mode. Um, and it's like, it is the most like, uh, an adventurous boy and a faded girl from a village and a weird, oh, and the, oh my God, the weird little mascot animal. What is that one? What is this mascot? No, no. No, okay. I almost, I have to say I almost said the Grand Blue Fantasy one, which is Verne. Is that right or something like that? Yeah, V, R, VYRN Verne. Yeah, VYRN. Yeah. Yeah, VYRN. But, you know, a little, a little pet guy who hangs out on your shoulder and, you know, roars and complains. It's like a human nose and it always kind of creep me out. It's like a human face on a creature. A hundred. A little bit. Yeah, I, the, the, like constant joke in the game is that everybody calls an all just like a flying cat. Right. And he's always like, I'm not a, I'm not a cat. I'm like a dragon or something. Oh no, that's Verne again. I'm thinking you're Verne again. God damn it. You just take him over that spot in my head. I've even played that much Grand Blue. Damn it. Anyway, it is one of those. It is like, it is like you're from the little village and fate aligns that you meet an, an elder being who puts you on a quest. Does that hit still because you can't, you can't really does. Yeah. Let's go. Oh, God. Yeah, I mean, I, you know, both of you have known me for a long time. I've talked to, we've written a lot of stories together and the same inspirations come up again. So I'm sure that you both heard me talk about Luda are very often. And you know, it was, you're playing a Luda character. I'm literally playing a Luda character. It is not even, like my, yeah, my rolled 20 sprite right now is my like a count one is Null and the my character one for Vale is a recolored Mia. Like there's nothing. No, I'm surprised about any of this. But also it was like an anime JRPG game that came out when I was seven. Right. Right. With the animation in it, like I can't, there is a, there is, there is a way, there's something that gets missed. I've talked with this all the time. I don't want to like re re walk through an argument or an argument, but like I guess I think I've said a billion times, but I think there is truly something about the way games exist as pieces of interactive technology that makes their archival difficult or part of what the archival experience is requires that you also archive contemporaneous like casual ephemeral people talking about a game like this at the time is so important. Like if I could have my way, this game would ship with anonymized form posts or like would license old reviews or something because you cannot under sell what the effect was. So you cannot oversell what the effect was of a young person in when this game came out looking at the anime cutscenes throughout it and like how what the production value sense was, how magical it felt to be playing a game that suddenly broke out into something that looked like against likeers or Lotus War or another contemporaneous anime. There's two, this is the thing I think he's like people talk a lot about the pursuit of photorealism in games, right? And you tell this story sometimes about like I forget, I forget what it was was like maybe Mortal Kombat or something and thinking like this is the future. This is where it's all going. I think there's a much less talked about but no less present sort of strain of gamers where like the pursuit wasn't photorealism, it was like I'm playing the anime. That was also me but you know, I hadn't yet been consumed by my anime self but what I mean. No, 100%. There was, you know, there's a thing of like well games are going to look more realistic versus games are going to look more and more like this other media that I adore. 100%. Like they're going to get closer and closer until I can just play, you know, the movie. The movie directly. And that feels like, that feels like a lot of the poll for Lunar from the time was like look how close we're getting to this, to this beautiful picture. And part of it is not just the, the anime parts, the literal animation parts, it is the superfluous. familiar character archetypes. It is the like the sense of open-ended adventure that feels like sitting down to watch an anime you love. Like that was, that is, it is played completely straight. Nothing, there's no comedy. I don't mean that it's like joyless. In fact, there's like, if my memory, Ali, please correct me if I'm wrong, is like there's constant bickering and bantering in every cut scene. That's like the whole purpose of Nol, right? Basically, yeah. And it's interesting. So the translation has been updated for the re-release at least. Oh, interesting. And like, it's so weird to see people on Reddit be like, oh, they cut out this line where like this character calls everybody in this town a hick. Like, oh, you know, it's not that serious, but what they ended up doing was like re-translating the Japanese script for it because the original working design script is still like owned by the old CEO or whatever. So like, they're still, there's some like a lot of that stuff has been upgraded, but there's still like a James Bond reference. Like, there was like, in the original Japanese script then, that was not a early 90s localization decision. I suppose so. It seems like there's a lot of disagreement on like what actually happened there, but like, it seems to be re-translated. And the the port, it seems also like when working designs originally took it over, they like scaled the difficulty slightly different. They like changed some of the mechanics a little bit. And a lot of that stuff isn't here because it is a redo of the Japanese release rather than just a refresh of the the English version back then. But I guess more to the point of what we were talking about. In terms of like the comedy and stuff, like, yeah, the I the what I have found revisiting it is that I am so surprised at how straight some of those arch types and the character actions are played and like how like unshamedfully it is truly just like a love story between these two people. And then the like supporting cast is two other couples. Like, there's no, there's no like we all know what's happening here. Like that is the point of this basically. I think if anybody's had familiarity with the Luna's boat song, which is the there's like this blue-haired girl singing sadly on like the the the crow's nest on a ship or whatever. The scene right before that, before she gets on the boat is her being like, I can't, you know, I'm too nervous to travel. Alex, you should go on without me. Yeah, on the pier, right? She's like, not you didn't get on the boat. This is exactly as far as I played last time, Alex. Yeah, and then like the ship is leaving and Alex is like, like, yelling to her on the pier over it. And it's like, I can't go without you. Just come with me. Take my hand. You have to do it right now. And she was like, oh my god. Like, this is they are high-maladrama love. Yeah, yeah. It is not a game about Alex that like, Luna slowly becomes the main character because of some twist off. Like, it is always just a game about them and how much they are in love with each other. Shout outs. I appreciate it. I'm glad it still hits. I'm glad it's so good. I need to at least dip into it. I am I am beset upon by all sides by games. I want to play unfortunately right now. So it's hard to prioritize. You know, even about farming games. Like, we're a month out from that new Roon Factory. So give her take. So also fan. Is there another Roon Factory? Yeah, the fantasy life is next. You know what? Fantasy life is going to beat out Roon Factory. I think. But yeah, there is a but the new story. Not for the summer, August. And it's June. It's June. Oh no. The thing that's in August is is story of seasons that grand bizarre remake. Oh, that's right. We are cooked. Grand bizarre was my favorite of the harvest moons. It was one of the early DS ones. It had a really good system. I'm curious about the remake, but I'm a little bit worried because it looks like they've kind of tinkered with it a little bit. But you know, the friends in Mineral Town remake was good. So maybe it'll be fine. Yeah. Roon Factory Guardians of Azuma is June 5th. And there is stuff in this features trailer that looks. First of all, you know, the last Roon Factory that came out, I think had some real technical problems and limits when it came out. Was that? Was that five Roon Factory five? Yeah. They moved to fully 3D and they did it on the switch originally and it was you could tell. It was really rough. It was kind of game that like it didn't really need to be. It didn't need to be as big and flexible as it was aiming to be. It just felt like they weren't quite ready to be doing that. Well, they're putting out another one and it seems bigger and even more flexible. But it also looks really solid visually in a way that the previous one didn't. And again, this is trailer, so who knows. But it has a bunch of stuff that I really didn't expect like a village building mode, for instance, where you are like getting villagers and giving them jobs in town, which is not what I associate Roon Factory with, you know. To be clear, there are NPCs and villages and stuff in Roon Factory historically, but not in this mode of what, maybe I'm wrong. I'm always open to being wrong. You're going to tell them what to do. You don't say your job is to be a logger or a fish or a miner or a herder or a shop. And most you get to be like, hey, you come with me so I don't die in this dungeon. Totally. And that all seems to be here too. But that's style of like you have a party at it's like an action RPG and you're floating around on your umbrella like it's a breath of the wild paraglider. Who knows if it's going to be good, but I'm optimistic. I like to be optimistic in my life sometimes and this is one of those cases. My guess is I'm going to run into the thing, the thing of I wish all of your parents were the ones who I could romance though because all of these characters look like they're 17, you know, unfortunately. But, but you know, we'll see. We'll see if it's good. When is fantasy life? I believe it is May 21st or 18th. If you got it. Or who the pre-order. There's like a preload. We've been waiting so long for fantasy life. I could not wait for this. I even tried out that movie. I'm a little worried about that. Oh yeah. I'm a little worried there won't be enough new because this is sort of the thing that when I, you know, they released the mobile game over here late, belatedly. But, and I started it and I was like, well, this kind of just seems like more of the one that I've already played twice. Yeah. And I'm a little worried it's going to continue in that vein of being like, well, it's going to be these systems and then a very thin story that is different. But, who knows, that's not, I haven't like really dug in deep on the materials for it. So I know. Yeah. I mean, I feel like the thing that's setting this one apart is the town building too, which-- Yeah, funny enough. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like a strange thing that's emerging out of the style of gameplay. Well, you know what's happened since the Flash Fantasy Life is, you know, build craft survived games have become the biggest thing in the world and they're like a cousin to farming. But, okay, I will say that story of seasons a new beginning, which is one of the first ones to be called story of seasons. I believe unless I'm misremembering something. I don't think it was harvest moon in the beginning. I think it was story of seasons. It was their first or second one for the 3DS. That one had a system where you had to kind of like animal crossing new horizons. Interesting. Build the houses for people and place them and sort of decorate the city and there's like a tourism element where like you had to make the city kind of appealing for people to come visit to help it grow that much more. And like you had to place all the individual merchants and things like that. And they were still going to do their thing. But you were literally picking up and dropping and crafting. Like all of that stuff was there. I knew beginnings like a-- that's a pretty solid game. That's one of the more solid ones of that period. Of that era. Yeah. So like they've there's been dabbling for for a while. Yeah, I'm excited to see how it goes. Like I am fantasy life, the original fantasy life which came to 2012 in Japan in 2014 in the US in North America, which is wild because it means that you could have been 10 when the first one came out and be 21 now, which is a little curse. And which also means like maybe you just never played these games if you're listening to this. You've never heard of them. There's only the two. There's the first fantasy life and then the mobile one, which Al you also tried to play and it sounded like you did not have a great time with. It made my phone too hot. I literally just-- Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, the first one was such a great execution on this style of game. We don't want to go two down, two deep down the rabbit hole because we will cover this game when it comes out. I think this might be the first game where we have enough people at the table who are like I Want to be on that episode. We're gonna fight over who gets to be here. We'll stream it. There's four-player multiplayer So we'll be streaming everything I'm streaming it for sure. What what lives are you gonna pray? Maybe that should be the way that we do it is like People can do the stream or do the podcast one or the other I get to do But you still get your you can still talk about it. No, I wouldn't stream it then because I don't have to do both I can just do this that's fine and then I can play it at my own pace, which is also useful Anyway, no announcements to be made about fantasy life streams except we're gonna No, we have to figure this out right now now is the time the girl who steals time what a weird subtitle for this thing Then he's like that the weird part is the eye the weird part is your life I the girl who steals time is a wild title the girl who steals time feels like a professor latent title to me Yeah, and the eyes really weird because it's like are they they already planning a sequel like are they gonna go for two is the I really A one Really is it a little why I It's not one no more not since bravely default if we had just gonna say this I was literally gonna say is this a bravely default situation I Muted myself so I could go check if I was making that up or if I was right no, he was bravely default and then Something I forget the name of that I shouldn't forget the name of because I reviewed it you reviewed it and then bravely second and Bravely second and then now there is bravely default to Ting bravely well the I don't want to I don't want to say the spoil then bravely default to that's correct Bravely second comes after bravely to fall and then bravely default To come after that Second and layer is that the same and there is the bravely default there is the really default twist that changes the title screen Yeah, we know which you are not gonna spoil that but that that could happen here Dragon's dogman does this most recently awesome dragon's dogma to the title skater that game is dragon's dogma for basically the whole game. Oh Huh, I hear okay, right. I immediately have an answer The loser Tomoya Tomoya Sano stated the reason for the game's title bravely default to was due to his belief that bravely second did not live up to fans Expectations and it's critical and commercial under performance made it difficult for the team to continue on the series Oh, wait sorry. That's that's why it's called what that's why it's called bravely default to and not like bravely third I see yeah, I see interesting And we're really second is sort of a non-sequel I guess right Passively, but we don't know what the oh Here we go. I'm on a I'm on a form is this is the time for interactive No, that's a great guess, but not quite I'll tell you how they're called no one looked us up But guess I'm with guesses. Yeah, oh, I had my guess was the Roman numerale That's a good guess I'm gonna give you I'm gonna give you yeah, but maybe they're lying. Maybe they'll become up for you know, I get it I'll tell you right now individual. It's like it's like person. Holy shit. That's one of three things Okay, all right, so you're one for one right now. Do you want to do you want to roll the bones and give me another guess? Individual Intimate no that's great. That's great, but a close No, but friends is a good direction In terms of you might play it with your friends Invitation these are all good now that's internet because it has a multiplayer and one more Actually the first one. Yeah, I'm not I'm just saying what the developers said okay. Okay. Okay The third one is island because it takes place on an island And then they said there's a secret fourth thing that they'll talk about later So there you go there will be a twist with the eye. That's the fourth thing gonna be Maybe it's like I the person playing this game, you know like the player is the eye No, I feel like that's already like individual or whatever you're right that is already individual What do we want the fourth eye to be have maybe we should Maybe it is intimate because there's like a deep dating sim in there. Yeah, maybe That was so dismissive Maybe I want I just sorry I want I to stand for Oh shit like Ice do I like ice iceberg ice ice cream I plan it like I want you to Then you got the ice wall around you, you know like the anardic ice wall. That's real That was just yeah, so the people think I say things seriously. I don't believe in the ice wall Me either if you don't know what the ice wall is good job People live in that you're doing great. You're good. You're great. You're so good What if it's like and then you about the first fantasy life game which shockingly had like a deep felt story about like tolerance and like different ways of living which isn't that surprising if you think about it as a game about Choosing a way to live a life, you know What if it's like ideology or or like I you know what I mean like something about like The ways you could shape your life or ignorance You have to kill God it could I guess it could be that it could be that In fidelity you get married and you cheat on your spouse No, that's the we already play that we get started Valley - that'll be I think those are some good guesses. Please You at home should start thinking about what the eye is We don't have a question bucket to say we do have an email But I don't know that we're doing questions yet on this show. I don't know Write it in your five star apples Wow, this is what you're a pro if you put your guests with the eye and fantasy Fantasy life eye stands for the fourth meaning I might read your review Isolation and at the very end of the game they just sever your ability to do multiplayer ever again That's wild Like a sort of don't have to worry about it being live service, right? You just don't yeah. Yeah It's your reward your reward is we're not gonna change anything about this anymore. It's fine the way it is Wow Wow I gotta review to read here, which maybe spoils a little bit about the ongoing Outward let's play This is from all but me out Best blueprints let's play don't get me wrong the podcast and the outward let's play are both great But the real star of the show skits stellar blueprints gameplay go give these people money on patreon Thank you so much to ob me now I do wish ob me how you would told us what you thought the eye in fantasy life I stands for but how could you have known if you have if I had seen that if I had logged in to check these reviews and Seeds someone saying well, I think the fantasy life I Is for infinity because you get to go into a time portal if you beat the gay. Oh, that's actually so smart Infinity is such a good guess It's unbelievable. You can imagine that the actual name you get a title screen that says fantasy life Infinity I keep wanting to say fantasy star by the way. I'm so fantasy star brained for some reason always Fantasy life in finit you would see it on the screen if you and it is the girl who goes in time you're right Yeah, I wonder if it's like you prestige like you get it because I think the original one had new game plus kind of but like What if it's infinity at the end because you prestige your one class and your favorite your whatever one of your top classes And you get to like carry some bonus over and just keep playing That sounds like a great idea That's we may have credit code. What if the eye stands for Uh Go to Iceland at the end Intelligent. Oh, in the end it just says it just it's just like it just comes under those 20 questions games The right the like it like an accumulator style. I know the thing you're thinking of my fear if it's called intelligence in 2025 that it has A little LL I'm in there, you know, and I don't want that. I don't want them being like actually after you beat all the content we wrote it keeps writing content for you Oh god, no, they just hired the brain age guy late in development and that's why Oh, right. Yeah, yeah It's actually very funny You mean the floating hat or the developer? Yeah, that guy. Yep. No, no, it's the head Dr. Poo ever yeah, he's he's celebrating his 15th anniversary with the we fit yoga lady. I hope we're gonna say they're married They got together. Mm-hmm. Damn. All right. I was gonna say what about the College man, but then I realized they're probably siblings so I Dr. Kawashima and the we fit man. No, you're saying that we fit. No, no, no We fit lady Okay. Also, I don't want to assume they're together just because they work together. They just work together. Yeah, you don't know what their deals are. I think I'm going to make a new Wii Fit. Who could say? God. They're probably going to make a new Wii Fit. The Fit, yeah, Ring Fit. Yeah, exactly. All right. I think that's a podcast. They were getting too punchy to continue. I think so. Thank you for hanging out everybody. As always, you can support the show by going to friends of the table.cash. I already shouted out in fact, just recently, the outward let's play that does in fact have some some Keith Carberry, Blue Prince in there. Not a lot. It's not a whole Blue Prince let's play, but you should still go watch it. We have ongoing streams on twitch.tv/friends of the table. The archives go up on youtube.com/friends of the table. If you are moved by hearing us talk about fields of mystery, you should show up to the next. Mystery of Mondays twitch.tv/friends of the table. I know so much mystery. That's not what it is. Yeah, I typically do those over at 1230 Eastern time on Mondays over on the twitch channel. For this month, the month of May, which is coming up, I'm going to probably be doing some Final Fantasy IX. I might be switching between the two. How much Final Fantasy IX feels like a good streaming game. Yeah. But I've been meaning to play it for a really long time. The funny thing is that we are in. I've been meaning to replay it for the last two years. I haven't gotten around to it and streaming it seems like a good way to force myself to do that. The only thing is that I forgot about the Lunar Re-release and the RPG nostalgia. It has been scratched a little bit. Also I just got that love scene with March, so I don't know how long I'm going to be willing to not be playing mystery. I'll probably bounce back. I didn't quit it. Geez. Did you start playing the X-re-release? I did. I did play a little bit. I locked the max and then stopped playing, which is so great. What is wrong with me? I had to go. That's how I did it the first game. I got up to the cutscene with the cool Lion Guy and I was like, "I'm never playing this again, I guess." I don't really know why. I think it's because of the game. The game is, yeah, you don't get the max until like 40 hours in or something. I feel like the movement in the max didn't really feel very good. It feels so good on like walking and running feels so good and the max don't quite hit that, especially before you could fly with them. The first time I played until I could fly with them and then I stopped. I'm going to at least try to get back to there. Yeah. Also one last thing about Lunar because we didn't know you really. We cling on dependency life with that. You completely understand. I do just want to say that you should play it. It's very good. The interesting thing about revisiting it is that the character writing is so strong and the challenge of the game isn't like, "Am I going to give my healing girl this healing spell?" That isn't the challenge of it. I think it's interesting that they will take people out of your party for plot reasons at different points and the game experience ends up being different because of that. Interesting. You're like, "Oh shit, that was my healer. That was my big damage healer." Yeah, I just had one where the girls were cursed by a weird song because I was in the stow and don't worry about it. That was my big magic user and my healer and I just had to go into this dungeon with just the boys and I was like, "Nobody can heal anybody with the f*** that I was supposed to do." Yeah, that stuff is great. If you are hearing us talking about things like Lunar, Silver Star Story Complete and I like, "Damn, I love that vibe. You should listen to Fabula Ultima, Friends of the Table." We are doing that thing. We are doing that you go to a town and get cursed type beat. Yeah, if you're listening to this on Tuesday, the character creation came out over the weekend. You can go listen to that and the actual first episode of us playing that is coming out this Thursday. So go to the table feed and listen to it because it's good. Yeah, you haven't heard this side of the game yet, so it'll be new. No. Let me tell you. I'm also just so excited to stop having to keep the secret of who I'm playing. You don't have to anymore. It's out now, isn't it? Oh, is it? That was character creation just one out today. I think. You're going to go with the bar. Oh, wait. Was it? Wait, I thought. Oh, okay. Right, right. Don't worry about the release schedule. I see. I see. Now I understand. Now I see where we are. I did not understand. Well, I'll cut all what I just sent out so that we go back to Jadine saying that she's excited. And I'm going to come back in on saying like, yeah, me too, but I'm going to say it. I'm going to get a bit instead of like that. Yeah, I cannot wait for people to see the characters you've all made for this season. It is wild. Some real big swings. I'm very excited. So go check that out. I think that that's basically everything. Um, please leave us reviews. Oh, MediaCup Plus just finished up the Chimera Antharch. Oh, my God. Or is about to. I know they finished recording. I think maybe next week will be the finale of that alley. I already said over there. I don't know if you heard me that I said the thing, which is you did an episode and then I'm like, I don't know, an hour later, messaged me like holy shit about the end of that arc. Yeah. No. I read up to what we were recording for. I recorded that and then I immediately read the rest of the Chimera Antharch and then more afterwards. Yeah. Because I had to because I just literally had to. So if anyone's listening to that podcast and keeping up with them, I respect you. I didn't do that. And I'm fighting in the Chimera Anth Army on behalf of the Chimera Anths. Like the best, the choir and arc is the best love story I ever told. Like there's just no like it's unbelievable. It's I cannot believe where it ends up. I just. There's also a lot of love stories actually happening, which is why it's the best love story. And they're all they're great. It's all good. It's all good. It actually is great. It's good actually. So people should really be watching. I know it's against what is being spoken about in the Chimera Antharch, but if you don't like the Chimera, you were a lesser being. Ali Kree to the ass just said this. Yeah. No, but I get it. I get it. Yeah. I like Karapika a lot. I get it. But it's not enough to make me like York knew more than Chimera and it's. Anyway, that's all right. We had a real anime focused episode today. So, Ali, this is it's unsurprising to give in here. Anyway, fan. Anyway, thank you so much for listening to us. We'll be back in a couple of weeks with more. We'll have another outward episode in the intervening week trying to do those every other week. It's really supposed to be twice. I want to say this into a microphone so that I can have the flexibility. The promise when we launched it was twice a month, there will be outward LPs updated. I'd be doing every other week, which is more than twice a month. There might be a time when I'm like, I just can't fit another three in in a five week period or whatever. If that's how it evens not to fall into the bodybuilding form, how many days are in a week thing. But some months have five weeks. In those months, if the first week has an episode that ends up with three episodes in a month. I'm going to try to keep every other week thing up because I like when they're in off weeks with the podcast dropping, which is every other week. But I want to leave the possibility open that there might be a time when because of travel or busyness, it doesn't hit. But I'm going to still hit the twice a month on those months. Saying that out loud just so that it's true and clear and everyone is on the same page. Thank you so much. Friends of the table. Cash to be continued. [Music]