Hello, and welcome back to Dev Game Club. a weekly podcast in which two veteran game developers look at games from the past to discuss their relevance and impact today. I'm Brett Duvill. I'm joined as always by my co-host, a man who has seen the 13 circles and heard the 64-bit word of God. Tim Longo. You've heard it. You've heard the word. Yes, but what are you referring to with the 13 circles? Why am I not thinking? It's just a quote.
It's something I think they say. Maybe when you open the door with the cubes? No, it's before that. I don't remember where that happens. I missed it. I missed it, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you may not have gone to that. particular room. You don't have to get to every room in order to get to 32 cubes, which you did. But before we talk about the Word of God, let's talk about the Word of Tim and why you're a little...
your audio may sound a little different. We'd address that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as, as well, everybody knows that we've been off for a couple of weeks. And as the discord definitely knows, I am.
not at home so i'm not in my usual setup i am mobile uh and using you know the i didn't bring any fancy equipment i just have what i have and so i'm using you know traditional gaming headset mic so it's probably well brett's going to try to fix the quiet part but um the quality is probably much lower than normal so you're you're just going to have to be that way otherwise we just wouldn't
be able to record and we'd have to keep taking a break i was gonna say for another couple weeks probably so um everything's fine it's all fine But yeah, if there's any audio quality drop, don't at me. Don't email me. We know. It'll get back to normal before too long. So don't worry about it. And then before we actually get discussing, I've been asked to announce that some of our popular Discord folks are doing a stream of Keep Talking and No One Explodes next week on May 27th.
You can come by on Discord. That's K-On and CalamityNolan. I don't have their Twitch handles in front of me, but come to the Discord. Another good reason to come look. there's an invite in the show notes um i think k-a-e-o-n and i think it's calamity nolan as well for his handle on twitch i'll look but i i think it yeah i think it's just those are both correct yeah yeah yeah
So yeah. So come, come check those out. I, I don't know that it's for any particular cause or anything like that. And I actually, I don't know that game. I mean, I know it's basically a. two-player maybe communication game where you have to sort of each person has to tell the other what to do? I think that that's basically what sort of game it is, right? Have you played it or seen it?
it's yeah i mean it's it's i i would call it in the um space uh was it called space team space team yeah it's in the space team genre but vr um Space team, I would say, created a genre to some degree. I have done my duty here to let folks know. Go check that out. Let's talk. So, you know, we'll get into the details, but I think the big thing we should talk about is getting to 32 cubes.
And we can talk a little bit about the confusion around that because there was some confusion and being able to open a special 32 cube door.
which which leads to some surprising things i'll just say um we are going to be spoiling this uh spoiling things in this uh you know what is it 10 10 plus year old game um so if that's not to your liking then you know maybe come back and listen to this another time and i'm i just can't call it out every time we're going to do it because we don't know when it's going to happen but consider yourself warned anyway so first the confusion
i i was like i've been waiting and hoping you would get to 32 cubes because i didn't want to tell you i didn't want to oversell it i just want to say i think something kind of cool happens you know it's kind of been i've been underselling it a little bit um but you know you almost oversold it because i was like there's no there's no way that
When you or anybody tells me that a video game is going to blow my mind, I take that very seriously. And so I was like, yeah, I think it's very unlikely that this game is going to blow my mind.
just so you know going into it so i think you appropriately downplayed it but almost too much in that it it did blow my mind it's i was like oh okay i didn't think it could but i was like oh And I specifically mean, yeah, and just to echo what Brett was saying on the spoiler part, for anyone who has not played this game and plans to play this game someday, even though it's 10 years old, and I think Brett did a really good job at not telling me too much.
I think it is critical that you do not listen to this episode because we're going to talk about, in moments, we're going to talk about something that is, I believe, very significant to enjoyment of this game. If you get 32 cubes and go through the door. Yeah. But if you knew going in, I think it totally changes the impact. All right. I think we have sufficiently warned.
Well, the first part is that, of course, you didn't realize that it could be any 32 cubes. Yeah, I mean, going back and reading your text, I understand what you're trying to tell me. But I was more focused on the language message than adding up the math on. I thought you were just telling me how many cubes you had at that time or something. I didn't, I didn't. You didn't add. I was like, oh, I've got 28 normal ones and then four anticubes. Yeah. And I should have said, and that makes 32, Tim.
No, I don't know why. I think I had it so, you know, in retrospect, well, because, you know, I think you knew what you were saying by that. Yeah, right. But I had it very ingrained in my head. And I think this is interesting. It's a small comment on the game in that the way that they present it to you... My impression is that when they say a number of cubes, it is the yellow cubes they're talking about. The anti-cubes are presented in a very, very special...
Like, oh, these are hard. These are like a different thing. Don't worry about those unless you want to do them. But the fact that they can be critical path if you want them to be is was to me.
you know in a kind of a lucky way i'm glad i didn't understand your text or read it well because it was a surprise to me because like because i got my 30 my 30 second cube was an anti-cube And it was, in fact, the QR code, Anticube, which was even more hilarious, which was funny because when you put in that, when you use the QR code.
Unfortunately, Google brings up a bunch of related searches to it. So it kind of, it almost sort of spoiled a couple things because without me even intending, it pulled up that thing for the QR code, that link. But then I saw a list of other searches people have done that were similar. So I was like, oh, here's the clock tower, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, crap. Yeah, I mean, mine. I guess mine did also did that, but I think it also shows up in the, like in the camera app or whatever in.
iOS. So it just like is there and then like you can click on it and it will take you there. But it also decodes it, I think. I don't know. It was a little weird. It's not like QR codes are not.
super thing for me anymore i remember it being a thing then but around that time years ago yeah yeah the funny thing i will say which is probably an obvious statement that i put down in my notes on that one is that The QR code, when you look at it up close, is constructed like, well, any QR code is constructed like the game is constructed when it comes to its visual language, which is just so meta to me.
wait a second, every QR code is almost like a series of Tetris pieces anyway, because of the nature of it. I don't know, do you know how many, what's the X and Y of a QR code number, is it? Is it 128 or 256? Well, I actually think it varies. Oh, right, right. I don't think it's one.
uh i mean i'm sure there's a upper range right like i'm sure 128 or something is the most um but i think it goes i think they started around 32 maybe i don't know don't quote me it's qr codes who knows nobody communicates that way anymore Yeah, I mean, it is definitely that. It's like, well, really, every QR code you've ever seen is a Fez puzzle. Yeah, exactly. Exactly, exactly.
It's so meta and so hilarious that they integrated into one of the anticubes. I also come to find out, which you maybe told me, or I don't know who told me, but no, I read this someplace online, that QR codes are actually... one of the least secure things that have been invented for the internet. If people are security-minded at a company, IT-wise, you should never allow your...
Because it just takes you to a link. That link could go anywhere, you know? Yeah, yeah. You should not just like randomly. be scanning qr codes out in the world that is definitely true yeah yeah yeah right but that was like their whole shtick you know um yeah which when i did this one in the game i was because of its subversion theme I was kind of side-eyeing it for a second because I was like, should I do this? I mean, I have to, but if it did something wacky, I wouldn't put it past them.
They had them in Beyond Good and Evil as well, if you remember. Yeah, that's right. And I think they were broken. I don't think the links worked anymore. Oh, they also had them in the Alan Wake remake, remember? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's true. They took you to videos, YouTube videos. That's right. That's right. Yep. Yeah. So there, you know, there was an era where those things were done.
yeah it's funny i mean i guess you hadn't so one of the things that um i sort of uh you know with the anti-cubes is like well you know when i had eight cubes One of them was an anti-cube. So I already knew because I had already gone through the eight door, you know, and I guess maybe you hadn't done that. I think I just didn't do the math, obviously, because I think I only had one anticube for a long time.
for the first few doors and then i got more after that so it was just the nature of me being being dumb and not not doing the math yeah so well yeah uh yeah so we think we got you through the door what's up no go ahead i said well we got you through the door and you know what uh how would you describe what happens next i have my own analogy um but What did you think of when you finally went through the 32 door? I mean, I don't know.
To be honest, I'd have to re-watch it. So basically, I don't remember the exact order of things because I was just kind of taking it in. It only happened the other night, and I still have a hard time remembering the ordering. but um you like it's a cut you know a lot of it is a cutscene there is a level playable level portion that's really fascinating where you find this stargate thing
And I definitely would like to hear your interpretation of a lot of this. But to a large degree, it's like the end of 2001. yep you know it's like it's like that's what that's the one i have okay is that okay good good we're on the same page we both saw that together a few years ago many years ago actually uh anyway um
Yeah, so it's like, yeah, I guess it's, what was the theme even in 2001? Because that was like a rebirth, right, theme in that. Well, it was him kind of entering the... the star thing the star child or whatever because later the next movie it's like a baby in there um um but i mean basically it's basically he touches the the The thing and the next it's sort of the next level of evolution for humans, I think.
is the thing you're supposed to think, which takes him into this kind of place beyond time and space, you know, David Bowman, which I think, you know, is sort of what's meant to be.
indicated here as well in some ways is like okay you're seeing through the veil right i mean you've been seeing through the veil the whole game and now it's like but it goes deeper you know And it's to really entice you to the new game plus, I think, of like, oh man, you know, it's only just begun, you know, I think is really the sort of feeling you're supposed to have from it.
much in the way I think that 2001 is meant to do the same thing, right? Because it echoes the beginning of that film where, you know, the... And the same thing here, it echoes the beginning of the game, where you have this moment where you see where, in the case of 2001, the apes evolve, right? These apes learn how to use tools. Right. And that allows them to dominate the other apes around them and eventually become human.
And then, you know, same thing here is that Gomez at the beginning of the game, you know, has seen like, oh, the world is not what I thought it was. It's not flat. It's it's actually three dimensional. And this is like at the end of the game, like, oh, the world is actually.
much more rich than i thought you know i guess is the sort of way i would put that in the same way yeah moment does in 2001 yeah you're right yeah that's a good because they they're they're the funny thing about the game that happens in the beginning and then there's a reboot then too i think right so there's like the game reboots and and kind of corrupts three or four times throughout that whole process
That's right. From the beginning of the game to the end of the 32-cube sequence. And it's the kind of game where it's like, how does it up the ante for you?
right each time to make you feel like something has evolved and the first one which we've talked about obviously going from 2d you know a square to a cube is like a great evolution because everyone really understands that and then you can pivot the world and it's like mind blown first first one but then here it's like okay so they did this this sort of 2001 psychedelic
approach which for me like it was very cool very well executed very cerebral and and metaphysical and all this kind of stuff and so i was really appreciative of it unskippable it's you know most of it is a cut scene there was a side of me at times where i was like ah they're just they're just fooling around they're just having what cool what cool psychedelic effect can we do in our engine let's do that right
Now, I would hope that every sequence has a meaning to them. Like, for instance, there's one where you're... It's hard to describe, and really the whole thing's hard to describe. So if you want to experience it, you should play the game. And if you're listening to this, it means you didn't listen to us earlier because you've now spoiled it for yourself.
But for those who have played it and seen the sequence, the one where they had the cube, and then a corner of the cube is cut out, and there's an endless... spiral that it goes down and the camera kind of goes you know you know the one i'm talking about where it goes into the corner of this cube and then sort of looks like super hexagon exactly exactly yeah um and you know just
stuff like that over and over again and then but my favorite sequence was which was a mini mind-blowing for me which um i just want to know how they how they came to came to these But you finally start the game over after that, and you're running around just like you did. Everything seems to be normal. Um, it's the opening town and it's still two dimensional. So you can't rotate yet. And all this, you're talking to people, they say the same, same stuff. Um, and then the world starts de-resing.
right um going lower and lower res and the music and the audio design brilliant does the same and kind of have this discordant you know this discordant music happening and then everything gets you know smaller and smaller number of pixels including gomez and then the for me at least the brilliant moment which i just could not believe
this game is is really astounding is that when the pixels get down to basically they're going almost like the game is going back through the eras of bit of video game bit numbers yeah bit whatever and so they get to they get to atari 2600 which is what eight bit orbit no that's orbit
Oh, that's 8-bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you're right. Oh, because NES is 8-bit, right? Yeah, NES is 8. Yeah, so Atari would be 4. Basically, adventure, right? Like the Atari game. And Gomez is just one cube of 4 pixels, essentially. And then the fez is one giant red pixel, which is your loading, which is the loading, like the red, the red square has been throughout the game. And that's, that is the fez.
Yeah. In, in a, from a certain perspective. So I don't know. It just, it's like a snake eating its tail situation for me. And I was just really well executed. And then eventually, yeah, you talk to this God Cube. I don't know what it said. But the most important part, do you want to explain?
what you get for this yeah and and this is why i did not want to like oversell it to tim because i knew he wouldn't have struggled to get there um but uh but you when you basically when the world then the game starts over again um it tells you you i guess i think you wake up in bed at that point right you're in your room yeah see i'm having i'm having trouble because the you
you this thing happens after you talk to that big cube right yeah and then i think it just it reboots again i think and then you wake up in in bed and you just are told press or i think you actually have to select new game plus even right it takes you back yeah yeah no you have to select that you wake up with that but then it reboots and you end up in that those pillar section with the big cube and it's talking to you oh right and then
And then the artifact, which I'll let you name, comes from the ceiling and you put them on. Oh, is it spectacles or something? Special glasses? The sunglasses. Oh, that's right. It's sunglasses. Yeah, okay. I did it. It was like three weeks ago. Oh, yeah. Well, the sunglasses, which is also a meta-commentary because it's the... it's like that famous pixelated sunglass artwork that is put used in memes and gifts, you know, it's hilarious. Yeah.
Yeah, so you get the special glasses, and what they allow you to do is to press the left thumbstick and be in first-person mode anywhere in the game. I mean, you can't do it while you're jumping and things like that. So there are limitations. It's not an action. part of the game. You can't move around while you enter in first person. But you can look in first person and it's like you mean the whole time?
All of this was here kind of moment, which really blew my mind back in the back in the day when I finished this the first time. Like I couldn't I like I was so satisfied at the 32 cube.
game that was like you know i at that point i've been like well i guess i'll go tidy everything up like like i'll just go find all the other stuff um but it really just blew my mind at the time um and just was i was just flabbergasted i was just like i can't believe this also has a has a first person mode that has been here though i mean it's just based on how they render the world
They've always been able to also render it in first person with perspective. Right. So, yeah, so it kind of it's taking you from the world is flat. to the world has depth, you know, and two axes, right? Well, three axes. It can be spun around one of these axes to actually the world does have a... perspective perspective to it so it's like layers of plato's cave or something like that you know it's it's like oh my god like how much further does this go um so i don't recall uh
to what degree it goes further. I don't think there's anything quite at that scale later. Though there are like three additional special cubes beyond the... beyond the ones that uh before beyond the 64 so there's a there's a total of 67 cubes they're kind of special meta cubes but i i honestly i don't remember too much about that part um because at that point i was like you know in my
you know fez bender of multiple days of just like playing for too many hours and towards the end it kind of gets gets a little bit darker i don't really remember uh but it's super uh it's a super good movement a good moment one of the one of the all-time moments in games for me yeah i would say the same for me too i like the the sequence
i think 2001 is you know i i really would love to hear from them like what some of their inspirations but i do think in 2001 was is a great analogy because that whole sequence From going through the door to essentially waking up after all of this is over and you're starting, it's, you know, you still have your cubes and everything that you had, maps, whatever, in the new game plus, but...
you now have first person. But that whole sequence, it was very, I don't know, I want to say spiritual. I guess metaphysical is still a good word for it. But it's still very self-aware as well. Like the sunglasses are a great example. It's like, of course, those are the sunglasses that Gomez gets, right? Because everyone's going to recognize them from an internet perspective.
the cube is a giant cube talking to you in another language, which if you haven't, which I still haven't deciphered, it feels even more ancient or something, you know? And, and then. And then you get this, this, this ability. And then the thing, so throughout playing the game, I wanted to say before we move on to something else. You know him waking up in bed like that also echoes the end of 2001 because my recollection is Dave Bowman also wakes up in bed in the kind of space beyond the whole.
weird transitions you know the the kind of psychedelic stuff that happens so i feel like it is it's got to be a direct yeah there's a lot of rainbows to try it in both cases you know um uh oh we forgot too there's a sequence where gomez is playing his drums uh yeah quite a bit in a very heroic way too so it's just like it was very much like what if we did this
sequence of events it's like what if we did this and then we did this and then we did this um uh but what i was gonna say is like the the thing that has really infatuated me while playing this game because of what we do for our day jobs and i think what we try to do on the podcast is it's really about the development of it and i've been so intrigued by the world rotation
And the way that they render it flat, but still somehow allow you to have this sense of three dimensionality. And I would even say collision, right? This sense of where is the collision at any given time for the platforming, at least. So it just really confused me. And there's times in the small rooms are the best time where you can see, I think, the smoke and mirrors happen more clearly than the open world areas.
But once you get first person, everything made sense to me about how they built the game. And then thus how they would then flatten each plane. I obviously rendering wise and programming wise, I don't know how they do that, but I can see like how you would design a game like this now based on, okay, if I rotate it because, and I would even throw in a little bit of Minecraft influence.
We've already talked about the music being Minecraft influence, but I think the world construction, because Minecraft I still think is, though other games had done it before, was really the big breakout. example of a game taking pixel-based art into a fully three-dimensional world. And so they kind of reverse engineered that for this game. So once you have first person, you can see how the level design was made.
you can see that actually these are three-dimensional pieces of art with pixel artwork on them, textures, placed in a world that is a space. And then once you, and then they just flatten it based on the camera perspective, which is obviously a brilliant thing that they figured out how to do. As you said, it's harder than it looks. But I just, for me, up until that point.
I couldn't understand how they built it. And now you can see literally behind, you can see the wizard, you can see behind the curtain. And we debated in pre-show like, Was first-person mode always intended to be the reward for New Game Plus, or did it come organically out of, oh, we have this ability because the worlds are actually 3D?
So why don't we give that to them? Those sorts of decisions are interesting to me because in game development, sometimes they come up organically and are not planned. What if they had intended the game to be a 32? The ending was the ending we saw, but they're like, we can go further. What should we do? They're like, wait a second, we can show them the whole world.
And then they started building around that. So it'd be really interesting to know that. I think because it's a game about perceiving things, that this was always planned. That this was part of the... you know the development of the game was was this because like you said i think you actually especially for some of the well I think it might even be the case that for some of the yellow cube puzzles, like they're easier to get in.
In first person mode, that might not be true. I'd have to go find the four that I didn't find of the yellow cubes or the. I don't know, however many bits, you know, pieces that are out there. I don't, I don't know if what I have left to find is just the big cubes or if there's like the other ones with the, you know, pieces, but you know, so, but my suspicion is.
they knew they were going to be doing it this way. That's my suspicion. Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think it's totally good suspicion, and I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case. But what I think what I'm saying is that they still could have made that decision during, we'll say pre-production or midway through the project, and they still could have made those puzzles easier to...
Once they had it, they could have improved some of the previously existing puzzles or added some in, taken some out, added some in. Oh, now we have first-person mode. Let's put some yellow cube puzzles in that are... you know what i mean so yeah it just depends on when they made the call but if they did have it from the beginning then because it's like there are times when the reason that it the reason i even thought that it might have been something that came up mid-development is
There are times when you can tell it's a little bit under implemented because you can. You can clip the camera through things. You can get it. Immediately, obviously, I went into QA mode. I was like, what can I break? You can clip it through things, and you can see some things that I don't think you're supposed to see.
So it's like, it feels almost like a debug mode that they made real. But even if that's the case, that's another meta-commentary because debug modes are important to game development anyway.
so it just works it's what regardless of how it came to pass it works on every level like it's a it's a brilliant master class in mind-blowing you know blowing the player's mind which like i said at the beginning when brett said he you know you use the word you know blow blow it'll blow your mind or blew your mind um That is very, very, very rare for me these days, especially for a game that's been out this long, not knowing that I guess I got to hand it to the...
the internet somehow because i didn't know you know it didn't it didn't get leaked um to me so i mean i think it's pretty surprising when well i mean an indie game maybe you know especially something like this that kind of comes out and has this kind of moment in the sun. And then, you know, it's not something that, you know, I think still is.
you know, in the forefront of, you know, many people's minds. Um, so, you know, it's easy for it to kind of get lost. And so if, if at the, if at the beginning people are like, let's keep the secrets, you know, then, you know, you're not gonna. you know, you're not going to just, you know, hear about them, you know, later because there's just no opportunity unless you go looking. Right. So, um, yeah, I think that's also true of, uh, uh, what I was going to mention.
Like, I think that the, at the, so a good counter example, I guess, is what I would say is, is, you know, the whole thing with. assassin's creed was i couldn't believe the original assassin's creed was i couldn't believe they had entirely through all the marketing all of it was like you're playing
you know, this assassin in, you know, the middle ages, dark age, I guess it's like 11th or 12th century. I don't remember exactly. So you're playing this character like, and that was the whole, like the whole thing. nobody was talking about the whole fact that oh and there's a framing story that ties all this together that's set in the present and like there's a special device you're going into to be the assassin right and
That was such a mind-blowing thing to me at the time. I was like, I can't believe they kept the lid on this and kept the secret. And it solved so many problems for them. But it is not something that was hidden from you in the intervening whatever, 15 years or whatever it is. I don't remember exactly when that game came out, but something like that.
It was something that eventually made its way to you, that there's a present time story in all the historical eras. I assume you know that about Assassin's Creed. What? You just foiled that for... No, no. Well, I mean, the two... Yeah, I mean, I think it's a good counterpoint or a counterexample because it relates to the series we're doing because... That is a franchise built by a big publisher who has way different goals than an indie game development. you know studio has and you know obviously
One simple fact is they made a bunch of sequels that all have the same conceit, so that's going to get less and less important to keep it quiet. But one thing I will say is that I do remember the marketing for the original game, there were times when... People were being interviewed for the game, and they alluded to something that was a secret that they couldn't talk about until somebody plays the game. So they were actually teasing it in the marketing.
that there was something. They just didn't talk about it. But in Fez's case, they never alluded to something like this. Really, the illusion, the things that they would mention was the mind-blowing aspect of rotating the world to begin with. It's like the initial mind-blowing thing was so cool.
on its own that people were probably satisfied with that they're like oh that's amazing not even thinking there could be another thing you know so it's like it's it's um yeah i don't even i can't think of another example like i yeah i'm not gonna bring up dark souls but uh i mean But anyway, I'm trying to think of what's another big franchise that could do something on this scale that isn't indie.
but i think the fact the key the key is that it's an indie game right that they had complete control over their um goals yeah i agree yeah i mean and you know while there was interest and and all that they could keep a lid on all of this and just let it be a pure experience that players got to have. I guess we can talk about some other things before we turn to takeaways, just to touch on anything else. I had a few mechanics and things that I thought were cool.
that i i had kind of uh you know noted down i had mentioned i had written down the qr code too with just a little smiley face like because i think it might have been was it my 32nd no it wasn't um But, yeah, and I mentioned the Hal, end of 2001 vibes, plus Tetris. And then, let's see. Oh, one of the mechanics I really liked was the time twister thing, the time twister pivot. Did you find those puzzles?
I'm twister. What do you mean? You turn this pivot and it's sort of like these green climbable ivy appears on the blocks. And then as it unwinds, they disappear? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're basically winding up. Winding up a thing that's counting down. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think they're called time twister pivots. Cause you're, you're rolling.
time back to when there was ivy there or something or maybe forward i'm not i'm not sure how it's what what about it makes it time it's but it is a timing thing and i i did like that um Cause it takes you on kind of surprising paths through the level. Cause you're like, Oh, and you're like, wow, I'll never get there. I was like, well, duh, I don't have to cross that whole huge.
space horizontally i can just rotate the camera and now i'm at the next corner um which is really really cool you just kind of have to like pay attention to where the entrance and exit is to the face of the plane that you're on um to make it to make it go fast because i remember the first time i did that uh having
these having going and like starting climbing and thinking like a normal platformer and being like i'm never gonna make it all that way you know that's impossible you know and then oh yeah i could just turn the turn the camera turn the world um So good. You had mentioned some other puzzles and things about the game that you were surprised by. Yeah, I've been surprised. So one that is a really kind of obvious one that I don't know why I didn't expect it to be a thing was simply time of day.
I don't know if it's in every level, but I feel like every outside level has a time of day. And there was this one level, well, I'm sure it's actually multiple levels that have these doors that glow at night. Kind of like the Mines of Moria. I forget the name of that door, but is that Doran's Gate? Doran's Gate, yeah. Yeah, Doran's Gate. Anyway.
And so, you know, I had, and I actually don't know how to get through those doors yet, but, um, they have like Tetris symbol, uh, symbologies on them. Um, I'm sure they say something, but, um, uh, The first time that that happened, because I was looking at this blank wall and then like, you know, night just happened to, you know, to, to come to pass and it started glowing, you know, and that's like a, that's like an amazing.
amazing moment where this this seemingly blank wall uh turns into a door um even more frustrating because i don't know how to get through it but that the fact so that kind of opens my mind to like oh Time of day probably is a thing in other places now that I need to think about that. That's a new variable. The other world that really surprised me that I got to late, I ended up kind of missing, I think, the way to get there, even though it wasn't.
i think it was really actually always open to me and that's another commentary back to the map like i don't i think the map is as good as it probably can be for such a weird game but there's times when i'm very confused about what my options are um using the map yeah yeah but um but the monochromatic world that looks like game boy yeah original game boy that section was really cool because
Because they do use color as an important visual language in the rest of the game. And having that be the case for that world is another... layer of variables to consider because you don't have color right and i think in that one you're also raising and lowering water finally which i knew would happen so that was cool um but color has so much meaning when you take it out It was interesting to see how they deal with that. So I remember liking that section. And then, of course, you know.
This is an obvious one too, but post the 32 tube door. I think pretty quickly after you go through that door to get to the stargate. they give you a very specialized level that you're climbing up where you have it's it's almost like a zero g level so you can jump further you have these super jumps yeah yeah yeah super jumps and and gravity's weird um
And that was just such a cool, glorious moment to mix things up on you because you're now having to judge your jumps differently. And there's these weird octopi there.
octopuses octopi um it's both could be either okay well there you go um and then of course the stargate's at the top and it's a whole big thing so that was really that was a nice moment but yeah the puzzles um There was another anti-cube that I think I wanted to mention, but yeah, the monochrome world is a good example of, I think they just...
they just did a really good job at understanding what their tools were and how they could subvert those tools to make new content for the player because you know you didn't have to learn a whole new rule set they just change the context. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I think that there's, there's a lot of charm in doing things like that. I mean, I think all the like.
other areas kind of have that as well but they do it in kind of colors and like you know you have that um you know that the world that i sort of think of as a bar i don't remember what it is it's like it got the owl on one side but at night it's neon and during the day it just kind of looks a little run down you know a little seedy i'd say not not necessarily run down it just looks like
oh this is a bar during the day you know kind of place um i i mean i think there's a lot of real character in in all of those spots so i think it's uh yeah it's uh it's it's really special and really thought through. I mean, I think things like that are definitely things that were not envisioned to begin with. But I think you find that stuff over time as you're trying to tell the story.
of your game you know trying to find your game um and you you know you're developing all those other spaces and things like that and what the puzzles are i think is a lot of the process of actually building it um but i do i mean i i will i will secretly believe i think or not so secretly i guess that uh they knew all along what the the big the big beats were so but uh yeah it's it's super cool super cool game it is one of one of the greats in my opinion and part of it is like that moment
of going through you know coming coming to and having that like oh my god and i can do this now um because i you know not to spoil any particular puzzle but being able to see in first person um I think it's mostly anticubes that you really need it for, but it makes some of the deciphering of the language a little easier.
determining what some of the images in on walls and things are because you can see them more clearly they're not kind of small and in the background there you you can kind of go and be looking right at them and see exactly what you know you see very clearly what you're looking at which you know there were definitely times when i was i was trying to get to the 30 second cube where i was like well i know that you know because i've played it before i know that
those maps mean something um but they're so small like they're hard for me to to read and then i'm thinking in the back of my mind it's like it's because you're not supposed to do those yet like don't don't cheat and go do those um because you know i i still have some of my notes i'm actually i took some notes in this note the same notebook here um
I've got all kinds of weird notes in here. I've got some stuff from when I worked on a 60 second shooter prime as well. Like, Oh, here's how I'll do this thing. And as well as notes for other, other games I've played, they're kind of puzzly. And I've got all, I've got translations of things in here and, and all of that stuff. So let's. It is something. It is something. I've got the number system here. And me figuring out the alphabet is here as well.
Though there is later, once I had almost figured out the alphabet all the way, I discovered what in the game tells you what the alphabet is. Or how to translate the language, I should say, more accurately. Yeah, we're talking about that pre-show. Obviously, we've all translated both ways.
alpha numeric stuff in the past and there's the brute force way because they have so much so much content to pull from when it comes to writing dialogue and writing that you know you probably could reverse engineer brute force but if there is a key which you've claimed i've seen and i have a suspicion but i'm not positive then that's really, I'm glad that they did that. But it's interesting. It's like, that seems it's really, how do you present that?
to the player appropriately enough. So yeah, it's tricky. I don't envy them. That seems like a hard one because you said you had gotten midway through translating and then realized that that key was a key. Yeah, I was, I think, running around various levels just to find more language that I could use as input because I hadn't copied everything down.
in my first 32 cubes this is the second time i was playing through it all and trying to find all the stuff i hadn't figured out yet um and the language was pretty late for me i think well i do have it is kind of, it's actually earlier than some other stuff, according to my notes. But I was more like, clearly at this point, I was starting to take notes of that. And I'm like, okay, I will, I will start.
oh yeah let's see what some other things are here too um now i realize what my scribble means um that as i was running around i passed by the thing that that tells you and i was like wait there's a whole bunch of language there huh um so and that uh that clued me in um to what i was looking for though i had seen it before and not recognized it for what it was so
Interesting. If it clicks for you, you'll be like, that's amazing. Yeah. Well, the problem with me and stuff like this, which I think we probably talked about with other adventure games we've played, I get... I convinced myself that I know what it is. This probably happened to Myst for me multiple times. I'm convinced that I know I'm on the right track and it's just not.
And I just beat my head against the wall on it and then never solve it. The other, the other notes that I have down here that I don't think you would bring up. based on history, that is a small thing, but important to me is that I actually am also kind of intrigued and surprised about what I would say how much lore there is in the game.
And it's hard to say that it's a narrative of any kind. Maybe you could call it fiction, but there seems to be some history to the world. There's some images on walls. both like hieroglyphics or you know pictograms as well as like artwork and things and like as an example when i started new game plus and was really looking around at the initial um
village, one of the rooms has portraits of people on them. And one of the paintings or maybe their photographs is of people in this town and people in the other town. like side by side you know and these these little tidbits of like oh well they don't live together anymore and they speak a different language so did they visit each other some point but everybody claims that they don't know what a cube is so was that in the like
who do they think the people with the bandanas on are if they, if they can't travel there, you know, it's like, so there's like, maybe it's just a fun thing they added in for no reason and just for fun. Or maybe there's actually a story.
There seems to be some alien stuff happening. There's octopi around. There's creatures with three eyes. There's a lot of little mysteries about the lore of the world, which is... always good for me yeah i don't care about any of that but um but i think there's enough information that goes into puzzles that I probably looked at all of it very carefully back in the day. Because you don't always know where you're going to get more data.
you know, that's going to help you solve something. I would say, but yeah, I'm curious to see what other puzzles you solve, because I, I feel like. um how to put this i feel like there are a couple of visual language things that open up a lot of puzzles that's That's what I would say. But you've got to interpret the visual language and then know how to apply it.
that's that's what i'll i'll be as vague as possible so um yeah but there's a lot of that so i mean to be honest i don't know if i will go any further until i translate the language yeah I think that that's my next goal before I start digging in again, I think. Okay. So I don't, I don't know how I'll do that, but we'll see. Just walk around and observe, I guess.
Well, let us observe a tradition of ours, like how I did that, which is to turn at the end of a series to our takeaways. You know, a few choice bits that we will take away. to our development lives uh or could take away to our development lives and as is tradition sir i will i will have you start yeah um My first one I've talked a lot about is very obvious, and it's first for a reason because it impacts the other two very heavily, and that is just their...
seemingly very focused goal of subversion throughout the game. That's the best word I've been able to come up with. I don't know if it's the perfect word, but... You know, they're subverting expectations. They're subverting the norms in video games, especially puzzle video games, subverting the player's perception.
subverting themes um even you know character themes uh story themes in the light story that it has subverting mechanics you know and it never breaks its own rules for sure which is obviously a cornerstone to these games because you want players to be able to solve things and it introduces new information like the language or something but I just love how one of the examples I wrote down in my notes was
Even the percentage completion is a subversion. And that's such a cornerstone part of a game. It's like, oh, I'm almost at 100%. And there's, oh, wait, that's only 32 cubes. Oh, OK, so 200 percent is 64 cubes. Oh, wait, you can get more than 200 percent. You know, so it's like, aha, you know, it's none of none of your regular rules apply here.
So I love that that is so pervasive in the game. How about you? Yeah, mine is, you know, I think mine is actually two parts, but I... first one i'll split into two and the um the first part of is exploring the consequences of innovation i feel like this does a really good job of taking this you know
central conceit of oh the world spins on on an axis and finding all the different ways that you can uh you know explore that you know summer you know some you probably think of right off the bat like the obvious like oh i can jump and it's you know it's counterintuitive which direction i should turn the world and you know just various things like that that are like just based around the core mechanic um but then layering on you know other things like well what if i couldn't
turn the world except you know in this one place using you know basically a device but my existing mechanics or if i could be turned in the world and that's how i would see different things or etc etc etc all those sort of little mechanical things that come out as a result um and there are more of those that come from the first person as well right so that that
you know i won't delve into because you haven't had a lot of time with first person but um there are some things that kind of come out in some of the puzzles where you're like oh this puzzle is solvable because of i mean it might have been solvable without first person but it's much more solvable you know having first person and there's lots of ways that they're exploring those things as well so just having this
You know, these innovative things that are going on in the world, you know, mostly around the core, you know, turn the world mechanic and then exploring all of those. That's bread and butter to any. any game that's introducing something new, but they've done it really well here. And I guess my second takeaway will be why I think so. So I'll throw it back to you, sir.
Yeah, my second one is, we talked a little bit about it in the first episode, but it really, now that I've gotten to the 32Q phase, it's... I put it down as kind of taking the classics and reimagining them, but I think maybe I'll restate it in that they're taking the classics and...
And it goes with the first takeaway and subverting them, like being inspired by them. We talked about, especially in the Nintendo games, I think Minecraft and Tetris are in there as well, obviously, but it's like, okay, we have...
Gamers that are going to play this game have a library of knowledge, most of them. And it's going to be these few games, right? These few franchises. And so now if we assume that... how do we take those assumptions that they make from those classic games and then repackage them into this game and then again see previous takeaway subvert them um and i think that's another brilliant
approach to what they were trying to do because you know tetris one of the most recognizable games ever of all time you know people understand those shapes or whatever they're very like primal in a way you know to be cheesy about it and they turn them into a language or they turn them into symbology that changes what they mean in this game um and you know in tetris you are rotating shapes
you know like that's the whole concept and so you know it's like and then once you get into first person i just had that minecraft moment of like oh yeah okay you know um and again it's not minecraft's not the only game but i do think it's the one that that earns their credit for that. So obviously not, not voxels or anything, but you know what I mean? So yeah, so that's my second takeaway.
Yeah, very cool. My second part of my two-part takeaway is, but not overdoing it. They don't, like, you tend to see a few... explorations around any given mechanic but not like 20 of them and and often not even like oh if i chain together this with this other thing and this other thing gets this complicated thing which i think you know The deeper you go in some more traditional platformers, the more it's like hard, physical, challenging sequences of a bunch of mechanics, right?
You know, and I think that that's not what they're doing here. They're not, you know, they have 128 or rather 64 of the main cubes. you know and they're kind of like so they're not trying to like i mean some of them break down to other pieces and things like that but most of those are like of you know a few are kind of scattered around at an individual level to fit together so you're not like
spending lots of time on mechanics i wonder if there's a there's a mapping of like how much time per mechanic they're spending on each cube like is it like there's two cubes per mechanic kind of thing or something like that um but i do like that they don't just have level on level or like extended long sequences of um you know chaining together much more complicated versions of the mechanics i think that that's because they kept their goal to be kind of approachable with the platforming and
Typically, when you're extending the use of your mechanics a lot, you're doing that by making the challenge much higher. For example, a sort of pixel-perfect platformer. Even like a Mario, the deeper you go in some of the worlds of a Mario game, the use of the mechanics are getting pretty complex.
or can be um that's my recollection anyway from the ones we've played um less so mario 64 more the the 2d ones i think anyway i just really appreciate that they they kind of introduce something new you know you might see it in a couple of worlds but not like now you're going to have to perfectly execute that for all time um it's just kind of like here's another idea
oh, cool, that is another idea. And now here's another idea, you know, and I like that in the platformer. Yeah, I wonder how much of that is also due to it being an indie game. Because there are constraints on the number of hours that the game needs to be, and value for your dollar and all that kind of stuff that larger publishers...
you know, obsess over requirements as well. Right. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very hard thing to do. What you're, that's that takeaway is a very hard thing to accomplish the right balance. The one thing I will say that it also is. I believe it to be player type. Player type has a big impact on that, right? Because there are those people who don't shy away from the high Twitch skill games, but...
than don't like puzzle games or vice versa. You know what I mean? So it's like the difficulty of the different axes. But yeah, they nailed it here and then take it from us, like having the right... Like being gratified with 32 cube, which I think is very attainable for most players. And then having this sense of, okay, to get to 64 is going to be hard, but I, you know, I'm willing to try it.
versus somebody putting the game down after an hour or two because it's just too hard or something versus getting to 32 and saying, oh, there's no way in hell I could go beyond this. That's really hard to accomplish. Yeah, they did a good job. My last one is really just literally focused around the world rotation. And it's basically forcing players to see games in a new way and remapping.
their brains and you mentioned it in this episode we mentioned in every episode that concept of bringing in your preconceived notions about a platformer and then realizing i have to rethink how a platformer works because i can rotate the world right every time i press left trigger or right trigger the rules change in every level and so
It's really hard in this day and age to take a genre and have players remap their brain to think differently because every genre is based on something and based on... everyone steals from each other you know it's like a platform their genres exist because of that right like you say platformer and you know there's a lineage there you say metroidvania there's a lineage there you say first person shooter
you know like all these preconceived notions come with that but it's very rare um to be able to take a genre and force the player to you know you gave that example earlier of like oh there's no way i can platform my way over there But then it's like, actually, it's as easy as pressing a button to rotate the world. But you have to think of that, and you don't normally have to.
Yeah, no, that's obviously key to the whole game. So I figured one of us would talk about it. I mean, I'm talking about it in my first point as well, I guess. But yeah, it's a whole... It's a whole thing. I mean, it's, I mean, it would have been remarkable, a remarkable game just for that. So, uh, it's, it's pretty cool. Um, my third one was, uh,
just to point out that it's a very lively looking game. You know, one of the things I really appreciate about, you know, sort of these more modern, you know, games that, you know. kind of appear as 2d even though this one of course is 3d that's the whole point um
But this is a game that's very lively in the sense that there are always things moving around on the screen that just add visual interest. So I guess I'm praising the art direction. But I can remember... going back quite a ways now like one of the things that i really appreciated about um was it humongous right who did the like the freddy fishes and the yeah fox and all this stuff you know it's like those were games that were just fun to look at like it was just
of you know even if you hadn't figured out what you're supposed to do you know on this the screen there was some coral moving around in an interesting way or you know something interesting was happening in a pajama sam game in the background you know at the and out with the in the you know the weird world behind the closet um you know or whatever whatever it might be and that hadn't
always been the case in earlier adventure games you know sometimes because of processing power or whatever um and i just really appreciated that like this feels like a a you know world with you know, birds that are flying around, butterflies, you know, whatever, you know, just lots of things that are just kind of keeping my interest all the time. So even while I'm kind of thinking about a puzzle.
The world is not static. It's interesting to look at and actually kind of diverting in a way that it makes it possible for my puzzle brain to work. aesthetic brain is just kind of looking at and like, yeah, this is actually really pretty. Um, so I, you know, normally I,
I don't kind of call out art direction specifically unless it really stands out. But in this case, I'm calling it out because it's sort of like, I don't know, pretty with a purpose. I don't know for me is like it is how it worked. Is that it, you know, it gave part of me something to look at while another part of me was hard at work at times. And I really love that about it. Yeah.
Yeah, it's a good point because the sense of place is really strong, and I think because it's got kind of a lighthearted feel about it, the gravity of the puzzles aren't as daunting. You know, because it feels like, oh, it's anything's possible in this world, as opposed to a game I haven't played, but and I don't think I'll ever play. And we commented on early in this series, like something like The Witness for me.
isn't interesting to me because i don't feel like being in the world or living in the world looked that interesting to me you know i mean it's not like i'm i think you're alone in that game or something everything's this sort of static and it's And Myst just gets away with it because I think the architecture is interesting, but it's not a very lively world. But here, I totally agree. You really get a sense of Gomez's world.
A really small comment on the first-person mode. Obviously, one of the first things I did was look at characters and how they do it, and the fact that all the characters are sprites. and probably I haven't looked at animals yet, but I assume that they are too, is such a brilliant maneuver in a 3D game because as soon as they do have to collapse things down, the sprite will still work.
um because it auto orients it's just like so brilliant so cool you know and in your first person it auto orients to you because it's it's a sprite so it's like oh wow yeah that's pretty that's a good idea yeah it's yeah it's so good it's so good it really is it's so good it's so smart um yeah very very smart game and and you know some of those things are definitely choices that they had to figure out along the way i think definitely yeah
you know what it looked like and um yeah and i think that they they found the right the right aesthetic for that stuff so
Anyway, those are our takeaways. Any other last minute comments? I guess we didn't talk about the artifacts in the end. A little bit of a confusing word because it... i don't know we tend to think of it associated with other adventure games of like giving you powers basically and they definitely don't here um is there i don't know i can't think of any other little topics that we uh didn't yeah yeah well we didn't talk about the maps very much um uh sorry i'm having a cat issue here um uh
I have only used one of them semi-successfully. I kind of figured out what... Oh, but maybe first-person mode will help me here. I don't know. Actually, so the maps are kind of cool. The artifacts, I agree. I think they're misnamed. Oh, the treasure maps, you mean? Yeah. The treasure maps, yeah. I think the artifacts are misnamed because...
Yeah, I only have the writing one, and as far as I can tell, it's probably just a key for letters or something. I don't think there's even an interface for using an object like that. Yeah, but that's the only one I have, so I don't have much I can say about them. Yeah, it's true that I think I only solved one of the treasure maps so far. I probably won't. get the all the cubes again um having having done it before but uh uh but yeah it was uh that was cool you're retired as
Says player. I've retired. I've, you know, I can't go back and be an amateur again. I've got, I've been pro now, so I have to just retire. Well, that's it then for Fez. You can shoot us reviews on... all the infrastructures. We love to get those, or you can shoot us an email. Oh, geez. Speaking of email, I sent you an email to read. I forgot. Um, I didn't put it in my notes here. Maybe we should do that first. So go ahead and do that. This was sent to dev game club at gmail.com.
Okay. I'm going to kind of turn it into a question, even though a question wasn't specifically asked. I think we can turn it into a bit of a question, but go ahead. Okay. um yeah you think we have time for um our next thing i think we should oh geez yeah we can bang it out real quick okay um says and platforming from father b Hi, Father Beast here. I got Fez on a Humble Bundle or something years ago and I played for an hour, but here we have an example.
but did not go any further, probably because I wanted to get back to another game and just sort of let it go. I was probably scared because I saw it as a platformer. You see, a lot of these innovative game developers have... these great ideas, but they have an unspoken expectation that we have all played Mario Metroid Castlevania, and I don't know what else. it is expected that we have the reflexes to handle some basic platforming stunts. A perfect example of this was a game called Vessel.
it had this cool game mechanic where you could turn liquids into temporary servants. You would drop the seed into a pool of water, and a minute later, a water creature climbs out. It also worked with other fluids like oil and lava. I found the puzzle solving with these things to be quite interesting. Then, about a third of the way into the game, I ran into a place I couldn't figure out. So I went and found a playthrough on YouTube. Apparently...
What I was supposed to do was jump and grab a swinging thing on the wall, swing around and around until I had built up momentum and then fling myself onto another platform. I tried for half an hour before giving up. It is disappointing that I was enjoying this game, and I will never get any further. Then, when you guys were discussing Fez, you went into detail.
on how the platforming in this game is very forgiving in order to make this more of a puzzle game and less of a pure platformer. So thanks for your discussion. I think I will go back and try Fez again, Father Beast.
It was a very timely email. It was. Yeah, I mean, I think that he may get more enjoyment out of it than he thought. I was thinking that maybe we could talk about... you know not to besmirch any games but just like games that are like oh man this is you know tougher than i expected or or you know rely i mean i'm definitely finding that i
that games that require twitch twitch reflexes are getting more and more difficult you know for me you know i'm trying uh right now i'm playing prince of persia the lost crown and there are some there's traps in there right like a prince of persia game and totally expect it um however uh sometimes they're just like oh man i don't know that i can
do this like i definitely spent half an hour probably today it was today or yesterday on a thing where i was just like oh man this is really hard and it really is just learn the exact pattern of this trap execute it perfectly you know and i've tried a couple a few dozen times uh you know and it's just like i really want to play this game but
if this is going to be a big part of it, it's going to be slow. So, and I'm just stubborn that way. Um, but I don't know if there, if you had any, uh, things like that you could think of. No, there's plenty of them. I mean, I'm actually stuck in a section like that in... Apsium Verge right now. I mean, this hits me all the time because, again, I don't know if it's similar in its age thing. Game playing time is such a premium that if I feel like the game is...
you know, too hard or wasting my time that I, I just will often put it down. Um, and his, his point on vessel, I think is a good counterpoint to, or a good example of proving your point to one of your takeaways as far as like for Fez. how well they did at finding that balance of difficulty for their game, which again, I think is really, it's one of the hardest things to do in game development in my opinion, because it's so many variables to take into account to make it good.
A lot of playtesting, I assume, things like that to nail it. But as a sort of related counterpoint topic to this whole thing, Hollow Knight. Yeah, I know. Um, so when I became obsessed with hollow night, um, and I'm, I, I'm nearly, I'm, I'm very close to the true ending, finishing the true ending. It's just beating the boss.
I got a lot of comments from people like Father Beast about it, both personally and on Discord of like, yeah, I just hit this wall. I got to this point and it's just games too hard. It's not for me, you know, and I just, I'm never going to be able to do it. And I think that was me before Dark Souls. And yes, I've mentioned it twice now. But my point is that Hollow Knight is very clearly tagged as a Dark Souls-like game, for sure. But it's also Metroidvania.
um and in and you know platforming yes but not exactly platforming i guess i'd say but um because it's metroidvania but um i think the interesting thing for me that i've I think I've shifted into a different mode of thinking because of Dark Souls in that things aren't impossible. I don't know how to say it, but it's like... the the things like you said with the trap it's like yeah i know what i have to do this doesn't seem fair
I shouldn't have to do this, you know? Oh, I'm not saying that. It's just, I, you know, I just know it's going to take me a lot of time. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you don't have the time, right. Yeah. Or don't want to spend the time.
Right, right. Yeah. So I guess we're saying the same thing. But I guess for me personally, I've actually kind of overcome a stigma that I definitely used to have if I feel like something is attainable. Like I have this moment I think I talked about while streaming Dark Souls. where i would say out loud while streaming i think i remember saying it multiple times and now i say it to myself when i'm playing a game like holonite and i make progress on a boss i say okay to myself i say okay so
what you're saying is it's possible because I, because I made enough progress, you know? And so it's a mental thing. I guess my point is that I got over this mental thing where it's like, for me at least. I know it's going to be hard, but once I finish, once I get it, it's going to be so gratifying. i think uh yeah i mean it's it's it is yeah no question i mean those are big fiero moments right it's just uh it's just like debugging though like it only feels good because it stopped um
But thanks for the email, Father Beast. That was sent to, as I said, devgameclub at gmail.com. I already mentioned the reviews because I somehow forgot we had email this week. We're on the web at devgameclub.com. And you can find my co-host soon, probably. returning to Twitch at twitch.tv slash Pim Longo Jr. with the J-R at the end.
We'll let you know when he's back. We also have a fan run Discord. There is a link in the show notes. Our intro and outro music was written and performed by Kirk Hamilton, commissioned by a friend of the cast, Aaron Evers, and our logo, that Discord, our merch. All kinds of funny gifts are by Mark Garcia. Have fun assembling a parliament of owls this week and good night. Good night.