03: What Does the i Stand For?

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 may be able to turn into an intergalactic library overrun by space pirates where a bunch of cats have been kidnapped. We are, as always, presented by Friends at the Table and supported by our patrons at friendsofthetable.cash. 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 your long time... 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. You know, I'm not a hobby person. It's not true.

I have jobs. Hobbies that become jobs. That's true. You know, I have a closet full of gun ply I haven't built. You know what I mean? I don't get tinkery. 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 and very funny. So what you're saying is we should do a season of the show that in some way requires you to build Gunpla. Yeah, you would think by now. If not by now, then when? I want Perpetua to already be that. I know. I keep thinking of like a town in Perpetua that is all miniatures. Oh, that's cute. Keep talking about that. We'll find that. Keep reminding me of that, and we'll find a way to work it in. I think that's a great idea.

I realized something interesting about the place we're going tomorrow in Perpetua. And I'm excited about it. uh i'll have to listen to that to find out that's that's a while off still but you'll get there keep listening you know uh that is the voice of janine hawkins and first time co-host alia campora hi alia welcome to side story for the first time Of course. Happy to have you. How...

For people who don't know you from Friends of the Table, for people who've only jumped on board here because all they care about is video games, maybe? Where might people know you from? Where might people know, or what should people know about you? What should people know about me? I have been the producer and contributor to Friends at the Table through its run.

Very much recommend you listen to Friends at the Table. Big time. I've also been doing a lot of Twitch streams over on Friends at the Table. We'll get into it later, but I've been streaming a lot of Fields of Mysteria. And you can also listen to a Star Wars podcast that you and I do awesome, which is called A More Civilized Age.

Yeah, we just finished Rebels, which was 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 KOTOR coverage. oh my god yes um yeah and then i am also reluctantly over on blue sky at alley dash online if you want to follow things of me there even though i don't really It's been very funny, Allie, over the last...

two to three months to hear you go from saying, I'm not online anymore, really, or like, nothing, I don't say a thing there, to now being like, I'm in blue sky, I guess. I have to be somewhere. Welcome. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad to talk about games with you. Like you said, we'll talk about Fields of Mystria shortly.

We could jump into that now if that's where y'all are at. Like, if you guys want to talk about Fields of Mystery, we can shuffle. I'm not afraid of shuffling. I mean, we did kind of spoil the surprise. I'd hate to keep people in suspense. about the space pirates and the library

Yeah, the Space Pirates in Fields of Mystery. Oh, I thought you meant the other way. I thought you were saying you spoiled the suspense of what one of the topics would be. No, we should keep people in suspense about that. Let's keep people in suspense about that. Let's talk about... Space Pirates.

I will tell you the truth, though. If there was an update a year from now where a spaceship landed in Fields of Mysteria and, like, a group of space pirates showed up and they were like... cute somehow i would not be surprised do you know what i mean i'm not sure they'd be pirates But everything else I am on board with. Who decided they wanted to do some...

They wanted to open up a, they come to the Saturday, the Saturday Bazaar thing, the Saturday market, you know, to sell space fashion to you, you know? We used to be pirates, but we decided we really like fashion more.

Tell me about Fields of Mystria, the farming sim slash life sim 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 it came out in early access last august so it's been out for just under a year at this point um i know it's uh the same there's really it gives 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 now for weeks and weeks and weeks.

Months and months and months, actually, I guess, right? You've been doing Mystery of Monday now since last... yeah basically since release i i took yeah i took it came out kind of an extended break in january just because holiday post whatever has the winter time on the farm and um 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 has, like, changed the structure of how I've ever played one of these games for myself. Really? Say more. Well, like, yeah, I mean, I really appreciated, like... the the like feeling of like sitting down on sunday and being like damn what am i gonna do at my farm tomorrow like am i gonna focus on my chickens or like do i really have to get a bunch of seeds and like you know this is

these sort of games are things that you can fall into like i i knew with it being early access like if i just 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. 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 keep playing it through release. So I'm glad you did not fall into that trap. But so, yes, now you've seen some of those updates. You have been playing it in this.

That means you've 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 are you just behind? I'm about, I'm a little bit behind because of Miss Weeks. I'm about to start.

I just ended summer I'm about to start okay okay gotcha gotcha gotcha Janine I am 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 Janine as I've been playing it where I'm like oh I need to make sure that I have five fruits

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 Janine-ism 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 going to need a pineapple in winter because so-and-so wants pineapple slices. That makes sense, actually. I had not thought about that. Yeah. So, like, the thing that I do in all farming games...

is I will try to have a stockpile of things depending on like where I'm at, how badly I need money, etc. Like early on, it's usually pretty minimal. I'm not going to focus on having a stack of five high quality whatever. When I don't have any like basic stuff, I'm still focused on selling and not retaining. But as I sort of move along, then it'll be a thing of like, you know, in Stardew, it's gather a stack of five.

you know, basic quality things and then gather a stack of slightly higher quality ones 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 uh that's the only thing in video games that has ever made me understand people who hate weapon durability because i hate it when the food is perishable It sucks. I cannot imagine Perishable Food coming to this game because I feel like quality of life in that sort of way is 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...

Story of Seasons mode with a really heavy dash of sort of late 90s, early 2000s. Really, 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 know, you have the kind of and like those those things exist already in Harvest Moon and in Rune Factory and in Stardew Valley. But there is something about how cleanly they're drawn here, not literally drawn, how that. 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. you know, early 90s or late 80s, like Record of Lotus War, Slayers, like that style of big anime character is here.

Um, uh, and I think that the, so that's like stylistically what separates it, but, but in terms of playing, I've only played a little bit. I've only played like the first week. of place i'm well behind you ali but i was like immediately like oh i don't need to fill the water uh can ever um the shops stay open even when people are at like at the bar Uh-huh. When I started playing, I instinctively... every so often would go to the well and then do the watering can action.

Because I thought it was doing something. And then I realized it wasn't doing anything. 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 Dre and I were playing for like a little bit.

Oh. The like weird. Not dinkum. The one where you're like a realistic.

You're realistic. Oh, that one. The one. 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 steam group this is wow very ali do you have a do you steam groupings for you don't play you're not playing this i'm i'm a i'm a console head wait where are you playing this is this on console no yeah no i've been playing this on pcb because i've been streaming it but

Yeah. Okay. But generally sunny side. So yes, sunny side gives you a hose, which I think is fascinating. But you still have to refill the water tank sometimes with a pump. Sorry, I need to understand what you're explaining.

you have a, does that mean you have a buck, you have like a like a gas can filled with water and then a hose is attached to it or do you mean you have a hose you plug into a gas can with water what are you imagine the shape of a gas can so then what are you plugging you're plugging 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- And you're filling the shed up with water?

No, let me finish. Okay. On the other side of the shed, there is like a water tank. Like a boiler, but it's not heating it up. It's just a big water tank. 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. And then that's what the hose is. So even that, where 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, I guess. That's the closest I've seen any game do to the just... Your watering can just works. It doesn't matter. It's weird. We know that if you had to refill it, you were going to. So just fuck it. Just whatever. Just do it. Yeah. You know, 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 weeks in 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 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 simple, like not quite a stick figure. You know what I mean?

I thought that was a gravestone at first. And I was like, why are they using a gravestone as the- What? You don't know the symbol I'm talking about? It's their faces. No, no, no, no. If it's a person, it's this symbol I'm putting in our chat right now. this like blank character image.

And I was like, oh, it's like a gravestone. That's a weird way to mark something. Maybe I'll learn this. It's like a Nintendo silhouette. It's like a Nintendo silhouette. But it's a little on my screen. It's on the little map. So I thought it was like... Oh, maybe it's tied to 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 space. Is this what it looks like before you meet them? Like, you introduce yourself? Yeah, 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 one, but I kept seeing it. Yeah, I've not seen any gravestones in my game. Well, they're not gravestones. There are some things that are kind of like gravestones, but they're in the world. This is true.

You get the first drama Fields of Mystery that kills you. That's finally, yeah. I think someone should do that, actually. That would be... Not the 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 will 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 what has not gotten that much more common is shops staying open.

late because they're just a secret board you talk to i guess that when we played last year janine had that they didn't those just people weren't characters they were just They were just people who sold you things, whereas here, you know, 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 or into the general store to buy seats, you know?

And so it's like... I don't know how I feel about that stuff. I feel... It makes me feel... like a old asshole kind of like yeah 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 it can't be open all the time

You know, people in this town are just trustworthy. You might put the money in the basket. You know? And, like, I can recognize, like, you know, 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

sometimes you're just gonna 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 um well sometimes that is what you want from a game like this is the simi

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 season.

But like, if I didn't, I'm never going to not make it to the shop in time to buy the seeds. I can do that at midnight, rush home and plant them if I need to. You don't have to worry about like... Oh, on Thursdays, the restaurant is closed for whatever fucking reason. That stuff doesn't happen here. No one takes days off. I guess not. Stardew Valley 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. Go ahead. Yeah, I definitely feel like because like, you know, a lot of the. The experiences like this that reduce 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.

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 right like you know there's still that math that you have to do and the the thought of like oh i can't buy the cucumber seed so i'm i'm just not gonna have any more cucumbers this season like suck so like yeah things like the store i really like but like that feeling of

realizing that in stardew after the store closed and make i could have fucking done it and i fucked up that's the thing that kills me so that not having that little bit of extra friction really helps but you said you were you 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 I would expect the modding community to fill in instead of the dev team to? Sure. Or is it because of the way that I'm coming across it? The thing, for instance, is that... In the place that I met and with the update that came, you're able to get a... Once you get the horse, you can summon the horse basically anywhere except outside of buildings. And you're able to walk places a lot faster. It really opens up the ability to move in that game.

Um, and like, that's great. I got a horse. I feel like the horse would have been, it would have been closed. Like I was around year two when this, 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 if you just booted up the game after that, after you got the horse right away or whatever. But I also feel like...

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 that 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 Stardew 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, and that's one where... watching y'all do those streams was like one everyone has different styles of play and different things 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 you know what i mean like 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, you know what I mean? Who's got the animals. I don't want to. I don't want to deal with them. Yeah, exactly. I'm curious, Ali, because the other big difference here that I kind of alluded to was setting and characters.

I know people love the Stardew Valley characters. I get it. I think, you know, when I played that game, I put 20 hours in, which is not any fucking time, but like... You know, I had characters who I liked the most and I've played Rune 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, if 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 are 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 two or three other characters does not feel as common for me outside of big scripted events.

in the farming games I've played. Now, 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. um yeah so the there's there's definitely a little bit of friction on this for me and it's an early access so i forgive a lot of this and um yeah so right now the friday night thing

are only scripted for the first year. 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 um and like that is some of the best writing in the game but i also like could not even understand From a dev perspective, like how you calculate how many years of that you should even be writing. Right. Yeah.

they could do five years they could do 10 years like i you know the the I am not developing this game, but the thought of having to make that decision gives me anxiety. I think that's why you don't usually get it, right? That's why you don't usually have... 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 cutscene and you got up to two stars, you saw two star cutscene. 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 an event you can go to every week.

Normally you'll like, you know, Stardew 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 um and that's like their thing that they do but

Basically, I don't want to say unheard of, but like wildly uncommon to go there next Wednesday and hear them be like, right. So 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, because 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? Do you do five years of bar events or do you do two years of a bar event and then a beach event? 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 because... um 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

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 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 uh 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 blacksmith boy is also there and he like has a fight with a chicken. And it's like, you know, in, in, in places like that, I feel like the, the sort of like relationship events would just be. Between you and the person that you're giving the hard coins to and not like these opportunities to see them in context with these other characters. 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 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 loose threads or whatever. Whereas 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 character-ness that you have to sort of help that ball roll down the hill. Well, the recovery specifically, right? 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 a new challenge.

Go nuts. Right. Yeah. I mean, specifically, that is the like... covet 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 could you just

You know, you can live here if you put the work in. It's like cat sitting. It's like, yeah, you can stay at my place for a month, but you have to take care of the cat. Like, 100%. You know? Except in this case, you have to help us repair 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. So 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 Game... 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. Hot scooped. Damn.

But someone would swoop in and you'd be kind of SOL. They weren't always that mercenary, but it kind of depended on the game. They were always kind of playing with stuff like that. So you would often get to a point where... your scenes with them would have 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, etc. But it always just felt kind of shitty because it was always boiling it down to... romance relevant to this person because yeah because they want to marry them um and also uh In some games, 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 town would get married. Right. 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. It'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 novel-y narrative elements, which I don't mean that in a pejorative sense, but I mean that in the way of like, oh, there's a bunch of content, there's a bunch of story written for these characters, a bunch of 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 inconvenient. 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.

Yeah. But it almost wraps back around to reinstating the centrality of your needs if what the outcome was 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 there's no consideration there for like

It feels like there is no consideration for the player being sad for that. yeah yeah and and like finding that undesirable outcome where they've clearly like taken something and presumably you can still advance 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 go for the character who didn't have... I see. Because Harvest Moons and Story of Seasons stuff, one of the few games that I have always played with... a walkthrough or some sort of strategy thing. Normally, I don't like playing that way. But these kinds of games, if for nothing else than the fact that I need to know what gifts people like to maximize that.

is it's worth 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. Here's the person who doesn't have any other attachments. I'm just going to go with.

Sometimes that's like a god. Sometimes that's a merchant 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 whoever 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 have 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 the character dynamics in fields of mystery are because there are people in fields of mystery that i would have

stronger if I didn't feel like they had better chemistry with somebody else in town. Sure. The doctor and the evil poisoner. are an incredible 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 and always has her boobs out. She does.

calls you her guinea pig she does like the first hard event you get with her i'm obsessed with her but she has such a good relationship with the doctor that like i i don't expect the game to do the sort of thing of like oh we're gonna pair off 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 the chemistry that they have together without this.

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. And I can see somebody sort of being like. Well, I'd rather Celine hook up with Adeline. And so I'm going to date Rena or, you know, whatever else, or even March and the Reese, which is the.

Oh, those two seem... Yeah, I hung out with them the other day. I was like, oh, okay. I see the vibes. Because, like, Mark hates everybody. And then all of a sudden, he talks about Reese once. And I'm like, wait a second. You didn't shit talk Reese at all. Like you were like actually saying something about how cool he was. And like, okay, are y'all together? Like, okay, I'm going to leave y'all alone.

I want to hang out with Balor, who's the merchant guy. Yeah, and I like, I... 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... firmness of what it sounds like it is in 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 stardew is sort of like that too aren't there like people like the mean girl will hook up with the jock boy and 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 um At least for the romance characters and also non-romanceable characters, you know, because the mayor and Marnie are like a thing. Oh, right. Of course. Yeah, the mean girl and Alex, the football man.

I think we'll hook up. I think like Emily, is it Emily? something i don't know there's you know leia and elliot 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 who knows at this point um

Yeah. Yeah. I will say this game continues the longstanding tradition of these games where you go, why are none of these parents dateable? Oh my god. Yeah.

everything that's the curse that's the curse of a farming game and like you know sometimes i'll be like is this because i've gotten older it's like no this was always true it was always the parents yeah there was always hotter parents than anyone else like like just Going back to, going back to like Friends of Mineral Town and the family who does the chickens, like the, the mom, Lilla, who does the chicken. stuff was a smoke show uh-huh her daughter's okay but damn

Yeah, I will say, at least for the parents in Fields of Mystery, the relationships that they have with each other are adorable. 100%, yes.

I do not want to separate the shop owner lady who's always talking about like... um checks and balances or whatever from the the the goofy guy who runs the shop and is always saying puns uh-huh yeah the thing that fucks with me is the old woman who does not have... and she's like always talking about old flings that she used to have when she was like young and hot in the capital and I'm like you're still young and hot

take you out she's also like an Agatha Christie side character she's like she is what's her name Athene whatever who hangs out with Poirot sometimes like She's definitely in that mold. I hope that you... Janine, how far have you gotten in the Friday night? Not very far. I'm still in the first season. Then I will not. I mean, I've watched a bunch of yours. Okay. She eventually becomes the DM of those games and I'm fucking obsessed with her. Her game is the best one.

that's exciting also i'm i'm posting i posted uh popuri's mom lilia and now i'm posting popuri and i'm just saying Yeah, the vibes are similar, but just... The mom, it's like wine and grape juice, you know? That third one where her mom is frustrated or exhaling or something is so good. Really great. And going the opposite direction with characters who are great, but you can't romance them good. The kids are so funny. They're so funny.

Luke Dell and 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 bugs. Yeah, I was going to say, how did you feel about bugs? Not a fan. Never a fan at all. But the kids are so funny. The way that they walk around in their little group and hang out and sometimes have a... a babysitter or like oh you know someone guiding them around in the day it's so good you know from friends at 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 both

convincing but like fun 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 in games like is that i'm wondering if it's like is it a knock-on effect of more developers being parents where you remember the datification 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%. God, Luke is so excited about giving you a bug net so that you can go do bug catching. He's so excited. It's so cute. 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... And again, Rune Factory does this. There are other fantasy-driven... You know, Fantasy Life isn't a farming game, though the new one does have farming. The old one also had farming? Did it? Did it have like a farm you could have? I didn't realize that. I don't remember if it was like a farm farm, but there were like crops. There was a farming class, right? There was a farmer. I don't remember. I don't remember if there was an actual farm.

i'm searching for i'm searching the lives list uh paladin mercenary Magician, hunter, miner. Farmer, yeah, Farmer. Farmer's one of them. Farmer's the new one. Farmer is new for the girl who steals time. I think there was some sort of gathering. there was a woodcutter who let you do that type of stuff i think maybe but uh but yeah in any case um what was i even talking oh uh the setting like has I keep being like, okay, what's going on here? There's

I started doing the archaeology stuff. You go over to the ruins and start digging stuff up. I was like, oh, yeah, the headdress of the ancient witch queen. huh the who the what uh you know i'd say it's not quite too um what was the square enix um farming RPG that came out a couple of years ago Harvestella Harvestella has like Harvestella 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 Stardew Valley Rune Factory. I mean, Rune Factory has a lot of combat in it, but it's so tilted in that direction in Harvestella. You're just ignoring the fact that Stardew has that war going on in the background that they just occasionally talk about. Do they talk? I do not remember this at all about it.

How do we tell the children about the war? Okay, but what if you went to that war? That's what Harvestella is. One of the characters, yeah, well, in Stardew, one of the characters comes home in like year two or something from the war. Interesting. And he has PTSD. And that's why you can't date that mom. I was going to say, oh, cool, but that's not cool. She's like the hottest mom. Wait, wait. Oh, you can't date her because her kid has PTSD? Because she's married. She's married to a guy.

That's a classic situation in 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 is for. You're right. That mod exists, presumably. Yeah. Like instantly, right?

They're probably competing different mods. Stardew Valley mod. We're doing the research live. Date Jodi? I think her name is Jodi. Dateable Jodi. There you go. Dateable Jody. There you go. Reddit post, why is Jody like that? That's very fucked up.

I will say the fantasy element of Fields of Mystery is... i don't want to say subtle because you're casting magic obviously sure yeah but you know the way that it is sort of happening in the background is is really it makes the environment seem a lot more compelling as you're just getting into it And I do think that like the way that they have the sort of quote unquote main plot. split across two different paths one is interesting

One is you are raising the town rank and you're like upgrading parts of the town over time and you're getting like different scenes for that. But also the deeper you go into the mine, 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 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. the way that they weave those two aspects of, like, the plot or the story that you're uncovering really, really good.

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 a new festival because it only launched with one um a couple of quality of life updates um The ability to go deeper into the mines and then like a bigger cap on what the town renown can be. And the town renown is like the level, basically. Right, right, right, right.

Any quest you do gives you anything. It's like everything you do can increase renown, right? Even like selling. crops will increase town renown. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Doing quests for people is a big renown thing, too. And then also, I think another thing is that 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 the full game should be sometime this summer which is exciting that is exciting yeah i hadn't checked the roadmap actually but Yeah, it seems like they're getting there, huh? Also, if any of the people who are working on this game are listening to this, I want to say something kind of...

ridiculous if you're someone who is like, this is going to sound like I'm giving people who buy games homework right now. Y'all have to charge more than $14 for this game. This is not $14. Yesterday's price is not today's price. I would bet when they release 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 it's gotten a little more i feel 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 people

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 justifiably. I totally agree. Disney Dreamer Valley is $40. It's on discount right now at $30, but like, you know. These games are expensive out here.

start you know started with 15 i get you want to price it competitively to that but i think we all need to nintendo was selling games for 80 90 dollars more if you're in canada or whatever right 70 or 80 and then more if you're in canada like it's like a hundred dollars that's wild What do we do? And I'm the guy 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. I have to read this real quick. Please. Please tell me. This is from the Jodi marrying Jodi dating mod. Oh, yep. Please tell me this includes a storyline where she and Kent get help with their issues and divorce amicably. And the 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 am... It's a call that I understand, but also it's wild to read the work. She just silently divorces him when you marry her. That's crazy work. That's... What do we... Man, imagine being in the fucking bunkers of the Stardew Valley World War and you get the fucking mail that's just divorce papers. What the fuck is going on? No, because he's back by the time you're... Is he back?

I mean, he comes back, I want to say, at the start of year two. So if you move, like, super fast with Jodi, you could theoretically get there. It's got to be done before he's back. Otherwise... Then I wonder, like, where does he live? Does he live in that house? Well, she lives into yours, right? Yeah, he gets to keep the house. Where does Goku live? Is she the one who has the blonde, spiky hair kid? I forget who Joey's kids are.

it's a little boy it's a little boy the little spiky haired little like keith character Yeah. I see. Wait, no, Sam is dateable. Sam is the adult one. Oh, yeah, no, Sam is Goku. Sam is Goku. Anyway. Wild. Well, any other mystery thoughts before we take a break? I'm good. Play Field of Mystery is really good. Yeah. I have a theory that the doctor and the poisoner are dating.

Because specifically or have that relationship because the doctor looks like a gender swap Dr. Tomoe from Sailor Moon. And the poisoner lady looks kind of like Mistress Nine. That's a good theory. It might not stop me, though, from dating the doctor. I'm really thinking about it. I like the doctor a lot. Where are we at? I mean, Allie, we all know who you're trying to date. We've all seen the streams. Is that still true? Have you cooled on March?

Not at all. And in fact, last stream, I did the shooting star event, which is a spring event, which quote unquote binds our fate. um i think yeah i think that that maybe is like a he's definitely a marriage candidate for me now um 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 locking there. Like, I've never interacted with someone.

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 great.

It was very emotional. It was charged. I'm having a great time with him. Why can't you be his older brother? You cannot. And that is the thing that people are... I'm so... I was going to say, if I could date anyone in this game, I want to date Ulrich so bad. And I would be fine not 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. That's fine. But I want to know what his vibe is. There's so much fandom contention about this because there's been so... Can We Date Ulrich has been... a thing that people said again, again, again, again, again, 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 is not. Hey, ace people still date?

There should be people who don't want to date should exist in games and games like this. But like, if that's the case, That should be in the game. And that shouldn't be something we have to always film. 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 into 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 gonna want like okay what do they do on the farm like that is just gonna be like straight up like coding some shit for them like

Sometimes even in these games, it's a thing of, well, this person will have this child with you. So you have to make those assets also. Ulrich is nice looking and kind. He's kind. And I like that. Yeah. And because he's not dateable, you know no one else is going to date him. Yes. So maybe that's not the case. I would also settle for Darcy. I would settle for Darcy. Which one's Darcy? Darcy's one of the market.

Oh, Darcy's cute. Darcy's so cute. Darcy's so cute. Darcy's so cute. One of the Saturday market people. So is Mary, also one of the Saturday market people. One of the cutest characters. She's really cute. um i i my top three right now are valen the doctor um balor balor balor the the merchant and then i think reina who's like

Not entirely my type, but is kind of my personality-wise. She's so bubbly. But sometimes you see someone who's so... committed to getting it done in the war you know what i mean yeah all right i think she's like the best designed character she's so well designed like

Selene is kind of the cover girl of Mystria, and she's cute. She's good. I like that she has different hairstyles sometimes. That's also fun. But every time I look at Reyna, I'm just like, that's the kind of character that makes me want to like...

do fan art or something like that there's 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 sure yeah reina's giving molly she's giving um maru vibe 100%. What if Rada talked with American dub Molly accent? Oh my god. It'd be very funny.

Well, those are my top, so what else, what are the other, those are my top picks? In Ally March, but Janine, are you, you were also thinking Dr. Valen? I'm thinking so hard about Valen, just in terms of like... 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 interfering with her in Juniper. Yeah.

Which is a shame. It's complicated, you know. I don't love 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 fine also. I might go with Baylor. Yeah, I don't really get enough of what his deal is, but he has a good vibe. I like his vibes, I like his look. I like Eiland's vibe. The Baron's... The other Baron's... The same Baron's other kid. Yeah. Who is like...

But he's the type of character I play, not the type of character I date. Do you know what I mean? I mean, yeah, he's like... yeah he's a malkwin he's a little bit of a malkwin yeah yeah yeah he's like he's a little more fancy boy but go ahead fancy he's just like a dork yeah archaeology boy and like everything that he's like i I gave him 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. I'm not honoring the history of mystery because I gave you this.

strawberry bro like come on um and there's like the like arch typiness of some of the characters like are get um a little silly in that regard where it's like 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 nook ism of adelaide in terms of being like sorry it's adeline adelaide is our high rod she's like the the prissy rich girl who's always working for some reason and then she also like

during every town upgrade she's asking you for like thousands of dollars and it's like you have thousands of dollars come on man you're rich it's all it's all locked up in a trust she doesn't get to touch it of course sure yeah $500 worth of flowers in her fucking manor like I'm selling that shit for $10 a pop they're not her flowers they're the manor's flowers yeah they're sending them to the capital I don't fucking know but the way that I'm 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 helping me, but stop asking me for money. It feels like it's a success in terms of how the writing in this game is. Yeah, definitely. Agreed. It's funny that Selene, the 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, Selene's going to be the one who is leading me through all the mean town quest stuff. I like that Hayden is here for people who are fans of the Druid guy from Baldur's Gate 3. Halston, yeah. Yeah, Halston. It's basically the same to me. So, shoutouts. Shoutouts to them.

All right, let's take a quick break. We'll come back. We'll talk about some more video games. We are back and going to 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. You 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. It was one of my favorite developers. of all time. 30 Flights of Loving is probably the game that I played that first got me into Blendo games. I think that that's probably true. 30 Flights and...

Gravity Bone, which is the kind of... Well, the first one was Gravity Bone. 30 Fights of Loving comes with Gravity Bone and 30 Fights of Loving, and then, yes, Quadrilateral Cowboy came out in, like, 2016. I loved 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 Quadrant Cowboy had...

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 20s, going back to the early history of film in film, but aren't things that you traditionally see used in video games where you're like...

cutting but you're in in something like um Gravity Bone or 30 Fights of Loving, you'll be like walking down a hallway and the game will just cut to like 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 handcrafted narrative.

uh, games in a sort of first person, uh, mode. Um, 30 flights of loving is, is kind of the epitome of this where you are moving through levels and like, there is, there is a 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 30 flights. But generally speaking, you're like, Moving through a space, there's a 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 Blundo traditionally does is really systems heavy explorations of. um of uh uh You know, it's all set in the same setting. So like different parts of that world, but weirder in some way. Adam zombie smasher is a game about the zombie apocalypse and you're doing sort of.

You're destroying parts of a town to 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 and let you put in your next thing. But like actually in 3D in a way that. not the way like a star wars fight happens but is like oh the ship is slowly like a naval battle but in 3d um and that's like not at all like Quadrilateral 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, 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 Skin Deep has like completely melded together those two styles of games from the studio. It is a... First person. I've seen people call it an immersive sim, like Deus Ex or Dishonored. I just have that feeling sometimes. 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 have 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, put them in the back behind the book Return. And then, you know, you've 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 Meow Corporation, M-A-I-O, which is a corporation where, I guess, her job... is to be in a cryo-freeze

like to a cryo-freeze cabinet on a ship run by cats, on various spaceships run by cats. And if pirates or any other problems show up, she gets defrosted and has to go rescue all of the kids.

that's the pitch of this game can i say i love i love like fictionally i've i've i watched you play some of this game yeah and i really love that that concept of the idea of like instead of insurance being a thing that you pay into and then if something bad happens yeah they pay out it's like well the insurance is you acquire this frozen person and something goes bad You hit the button. Yeah. And then they get to work.

And what happens is you have these kind of really tight handcrafted levels. This is not a proc gen game. As far as I've played anyway, I've played a bunch of it at this point. Apparently I played nine hours of it, which doesn't, it feels like I played three hours. Apparently I played nine hours of it. And I've not hit any sort of like, and now it's a proc gen game or anything like that. It's not like there's an opening tutorialization and then it gets.

But there are these 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, you know, slamming their hand on a vending machine, chattering with each other. And your job is to navigate, distract, attack these pirates until you get the keys to release the cat.

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 any of the pirates who are still on the ship. You have to kill all the pirates or getting 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, 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. is I'll throw a box of like uh powdered detergent at someone or not detergent a powdered uh 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 causes it to start sparking. And then I'll throw it at 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. A reclamation jar. It is something like that, yeah. And if you don't go get it, it will float to a respawn pad, and they'll just respawn with a new body. So you have to go 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 chute, anything that sends 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, you are trying to trick someone to walk near a, a electric wire that then you're able to.

hit in a way that causes it to zap them. Or my favorite level so far is the galactic library. There's a whole library... spaceship where uh 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 that tends to be

Like Hitman, which full disclosure, Janine, you work on Hitman. 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 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. And then it... Return enough book. 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 system. 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 uh and so it became very fun for me to lure people with the book Or, you know, just get them to chase me through there and then throw a book past them as they were running through, causing them to get zapped. And then, of course, if you deliver enough of the book...

Because the pirates had been sneaking guns in the book, The book return is set up to give you a gun whenever you return three or more books. And that's like life changing. There is not you. This is a game about throwing deodorant at people, not about having a gun. And all of a sudden you have a gun. You're like, oh, I'm invincible.

It's so deeply funny. It is so hijinxy 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 vent. or all of that. And then on top of it, it's just like a things going wrong simulator where it's, I tried to throw a thing at a guy, but I missed it. I hit the window and now the entire bridge of the ship has decompressed. And now everyone's outside in space.

or I've set up a tripwire, 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 tripwire, and now I'm knocked out.

And now I'm knocked out. But I do have the auto... What is it called? What are the... defibrillator of an auto defibrillator set up um and when that happens it zaps everyone in the area so now that everyone's zapped and stunned for a second so i can quickly jump on the back of one of them and then like charge him head first into another one of them.

It is really, really, really funny in that way. And I'm really enjoying it. And also, Sung Woon Cho is there as a crime lord cat named Little Lion. And so... I don't know what's better than this. Wait, the cats do crime too? This one, you 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 it.

And so you have to do, you have to, he gives you some missions. You're like, you're like, first of all, you have to give him a bunch 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, Janine, I 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, as you mentioned, I work on Hitman. I really respect when a game does comedy through system. Yeah. And like acknowledges the comedy through systems versus trying to. write 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. that's i think and that's that's to me why i can be like this feels very immersive semi 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 Mystria thing of, like, sometimes it's funny when the player doesn't get what they want. And in Mystery or in Stardew Valley, 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, I want to 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. Um, and then be like, ah, fuck, I have to find a health thing again. Okay, great. It's Bluff City. It is Bluff City. Oh, this game is huge. All of the Blendo game stuff is huge influence on Bluff City. If I've never said that out loud, I apologize. But if you're a Friends at 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 at the Table, Bluff City was our first Patreon exclusive season. It's now totally available. There is a Patreon post with a link to it all, or I think maybe the Patreon posts are all. free to the public, but it is now just all on YouTube too, I think.

All of it or just 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 slash friends at the table. And that is like a single setting, but we play a bunch of games to tell...

To tell a broader 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 1 Bluff City game? I say Season 1 because it's free, because I know Season 2 we would all just say America's Playground, probably. Maybe not, because Allie, you weren't in America's Playgrounds, right? I was not. 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 our 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 the zoo stuff has been fun the zoo stuff has been fun it's occurring um yeah i it's when i try to think about it i 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. From Messy Business, which was Lacuna, I think? That's Lacuna. I think that's my favorite one. Yeah. Chris Andrews 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 through this one in space are all in the same unified setting. And it's a very silly setting, but it's very... thoughtful and like considered setting not thoughtful as in like huge, big ideas and world building, but thoughtful as in, like,

You will constantly be like, oh, shit, right. I remember because this is like, this is the big city on Earth still. Or 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, 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 you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 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 composers and programmers.

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 gotta get a you gotta get a cat expert let me tell you there are every ship has unique cats And then when you rescue them, they email you. And they go, Nina. They go, Nina, it was so good to see you. Not the circumstances we wanted to do that.

Have you seen Shark Bite 7, the horror movie about sharks? And you get to choose what you write back. You have 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 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 it so hard to be like, what is that thing that you're always talking about? Because it's like from the assassin.

guy that literally nobody likes in terms of nobody liked that character oh kai lang kai lang'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. You opened this message. This isn't actually the Asari military command. They're busy tending to what's left of their planet. So you survived our fight on Bessia. You're not as weak as I thought.

But never forget that your best wasn't good enough to stop me. Now the entire planet is dying because you lack the strength to win. The Legend of Shepard 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. If the email said Kyline, 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 Kai Lang, like people talk about how they don't like the end of that game. I think you don't like Kai Lang. I think Kai Lang is the actual problem. Not literally Kai Lang, but like metaphorically. Do you know what I mean? Like, I think if a game, there's a thing I say a lot over on Shelf by Genre. I think I probably said it on AMCA too. You probably heard me say this.

alley 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. Do you know what I mean? If it had me, I would give it the grace about certain things. And the second that I'm like, We talk about this a lot with Obi-Wan, the Star Wars show, where I'm just like...

I hate it so much that the 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 Mass Effect 3, I'm not saying they would have liked it if they liked Kai Lang, 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 and 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 mass effect 3 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 Citadel DLC, so that's my... Oh, Lord. Well, I was done with it. I was going to go back.

anyway i can't wait this podcast will be four hours long especially this is adult tlc so um but are i think i want to say aggressive to you Sorry, Allie, because it was on the same page. What did you say, Allie? And then I want to come to you, Janine. Are any of the cats passive aggressive to you? Like Kai Lang. Um, I don't think I've met a, well, little lion is little lion is very passive 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. 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? And maybe that'll happen. Janine, what were you 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... 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 a verse.

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 degree of polish. It's got a larger team behind it. Annapurna is publishing it. It doesn't have boxy people. It actually has people that are a little bit more inhuman proportions. When I first saw the art for Skin Deep stuff, I didn't even clock that it was Splendogames.

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... The previous Blendo Games games are...

I would describe them as, like, game developers games. Yeah, I think that's right. They're things that, like, they come up in conversation with people who are... like either critics or in press or our developers or things like that they're 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 like... Oh, it would be shocking. Whoa. That would be like, wait, are you secretly, like, what's your deal secretly? What's your job? Wouldn't 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 hope it does well for them i'm i'm such a big fan like this is this is

secret stan you know like this is high 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 tom francis game like there is something about these games that is 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. 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 what all was coming out week to week. what stuff that I would normally play for coverage or to talk about or to write about.

I just didn't keep up with those things anymore because I didn't have the time and because I was like, give me my delicious slop now that I don't have to 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 was making 30 flights of loving and the people who've also i know worked on other smaller things for years and years and years Not that this is a huge AAA 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 fucking great.

Is it time to talk about a little more anime? A little more classic? classic 90s fantasy vibes with lunar remastered collection uh which is lunar remastered collection yes sorry lunar i said lunar it's not lunar it's lunar explicitly not lunar It's Lunar with an A. Lunar. Oh, my God. Well, that's still how you say Lunar has an A. 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 Lunar. 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 ah sure yeah lunar yeah the ah the ah yeah sure right well lunar lunar remastery collection which collects both lunar silver star story complete and lunar to uh eternal blue complete uh which is a series of jrpgs that originally came out did the first was the first one You tell me, Ali, because you are the Lunar head here. And I don't want to get this wrong when I have an expert.

Yeah, so the, I guess I'm not sure about Eternal Blue, but I know that Lunar Silver Star was a Sega CD game that was... Ported by Working Designs. um back when and then had a remaster for the playstation um all supported by working designs and that was like a huge like overhaul of like

Redesigned sprites, environments were redesigned. It changed the game completely, basically. Whereas this new remaster is a pretty... um like 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 not in HD 3d or it's not in. Yeah. Yeah. No, in fact that there, there is a like classic graphics mode with, um,

like fake CRT filters. And then there's the quote unquote 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 the cutscenes in the game are... um like anime style animation graphics with some computer generations for the environment um and the um

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 there's 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 like upgrades there, which are...

It's fun to see that there's not a huge difference, but the differences seem like, 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. It sounds 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, do more on a stronger system, on a more powerful system, you know, they got something that's closer to the vision. Like, I wonder if the thing that 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 him all look all round and squishy.

God, some of those Final Fantasy remasters from the iPad ones in the mid-2010s were so gross. Very bad. So I wonder if they, if, 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. 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. It'd be a remake in some way where like, This game is about as straightforward of a game in this kind of turn-based JRPG style as you can imagine in my memory of it. It's been a while since I played all the way through it, but I put...

I put like 10 hours into Lunar 1 about two years ago when I was in early perpetual prep. I am in my JRPG seeking mode. And it's like, it is the most like... An adventurous boy and a faded girl from a village. A weird little animal. And a weird, oh my god, the weird little mascot animal. what is that one's what is this mascot no no no okay i almost i have to say i almost said the grand blue fantasy one

Which is Vern, is that right? Or something like that? Yeah, V-Y-R-N. Yeah, V-Y-R-N, yeah. But, you know, a little pet guy who hangs out on your shoulder. you know, roars and complains sometimes. I feel like a human nose and it always kind of creeps me out. It's like a human face on a creature. A little bit, yeah. The constant joke in the game is that everybody calls Null just a flying cat.

And he's always like, I'm not a cat. I'm like a dragon or something. No, because that's Vern again. I'm thinking of Vern again. God damn it. You're just taking 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 elder being who puts you on a quest Does that hit still? Because you can't... It really does. Yeah! Let's go! Yeah, I mean, I, you know...

Both of you have known me for a long time. We've written a lot of stories together. the same inspirations come up again. So I'm sure that you both heard me talk about Ludar very often.

You know, it was... Allie, you're playing a lunar... character i'm literally playing a lunar character like it is not even um i like my yeah my roll 20 sprite right now is my like account one is null and then my character one for veil is a recolor mia like there's nothing surprise about any of this but also it was like an anime jrpg game that came out when i was seven like With animation in it. I can't... There is a... There's...

There is a way there's something that gets missed. I've talked about this all the time. So I don't want to like re re walk through an argument or an argument, but like a thing 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.

casual ephemera, people talking about a game like this at the time is so important. 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 undersell. So you cannot oversell what the effect was of a young person in when this game came out looking at the anime cut scenes 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, again, Slayers or Lotus War or another contemporaneous anime. There's two. This is the thing I was thinking. 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. It was like maybe Mortal Kombat or something and thinking like this.

This is the future. This is it. This is where it's all going. Yeah. 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 you know what I mean. No, 100%.

you know there's there's a thing of like well games are going to look more and 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 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 yeah

And part of it is not just the anime parts, the literal animation parts. It is the... super familiar character archetypes. It is 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. Not that there's not comedy. I don't mean that it's like joyless.

if my memory alley 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 null right basically yeah i and it's interesting the um

So the translation has been updated for the re-release at least. Oh, interesting. And like... see people on reddit be like oh they they cut out this this line where like this character calls everybody in this town a hick like oh like you know it's not that serious but what they ended up doing was like re-translating the the japanese script for it because the

original working design script is still like owned by the old ceo or whatever so like there's still there's some like a lot of that stuff has been upgraded but there's still like a james bond reference for instance like there there is a lot of 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 what actually happened there, but it seems to be retranslated.

And the port, it seems also like when Working Designs originally took it over, they like scaled the difficulty slightly different. They like changed the mechanics a little bit. A lot of that stuff isn't here because it is a redo of the Japanese release rather than just a refresh of the English version back when.

but i guess more to the point of what we were talking about um 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 archetypes and the character actions are played and like how unshamefully 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. That is the point of this, basically. I think if anybody's had familiarity with the... luna's boat song which is the um there's like this blue haired girl singing sadly on like the the the um 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, she's like on the pier, right? She's like, she didn't get on the boat. This is exactly as far as I played last time, Allie. Yeah, and then like the ship is leaving and Alex is like, yelling to her on the pier.

over it and is like, I can't go without you. Just come with me. Take my hand. You have to do it right now. I was like, oh my god. They are in love. It's like high melodrama love relationship. It is not a game about Alex. that Luda slowly becomes the main character because of some twist stuff. 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 still good.

I need to at least dip into it. I am beset upon by all sides by games I want to play unfortunately right now. So it's hard to prioritize. Even thinking about farming games, we're a month out from that new Rune Factory, give or take. Oh, is there another Rune Factory?

Yeah, Fantasy Life is next. You know what? Fantasy Life is going to beat out Rune Factory, I think. But yeah, there's a... but the new factory this summer august it's june it's june oh no the thing that's in august is is story of seasons the grand bazaar remake oh that's right we are Grand Bazaar 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 of Mineral Town remake was good. Maybe it'll be fine. Yeah. Rune Factory Guardians of Azuma is June 5th. And there is stuff in this features trailer that looks, first of all, The last Rune Factory that came out, I think, had some real technical problems and limits when it came out. Was that Rune Factory 5? Yeah. They moved to fully 3D.

And they did it on the Switch originally. And it was, you could tell. It was really rough. The performance was rough. They're also aspiring to be a kind of game that... It didn't really need to be. It didn't need to be. 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 were like getting villagers and giving them jobs in town, which. is not what I associate Rune Factory with, you know? To be clear, there are NPCs and villages and stuff in Rune Factory historically.

but not in this mode of like, not in my, maybe I'm, maybe I'm wrong. I'm always open to being wrong. You don't get to tell them what to do. You don't say your job is to be a logger or a fisher or a miner or a herder. At 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 style of like you have a party and 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 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? I believe it is May 21st or 18th if you pre-order.

or who the pre-order might get me there's like a pre-load we've been waiting so long for fantasy life i cannot wait for this i even tried out that mobile game that was just okay but 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 and I was like well this kind of just seems like more

The one that I've already played twice. 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 that's i haven't i haven't like really dug in deep on the materials for it so okay yeah i mean i feel like the thing that's setting this one apart is the the town building too which yeah funny enough yeah yeah seems like a strange thing that's emerging out of this style of gameplay well you know what's happened since uh the flash fantasy life is you know uh build craft survive games have become the biggest thing

In the world. And they're like a cousin to farming games in many ways. 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, A New Beginning. I think it was Story of... It was their first or second one for the 3D. 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. A New Beginning is like a pretty solid game. That's one of the more solid ones of that period. Of that era, yeah. For a while. Yeah, I'm excited to see how it goes. Like, I am...

Fantasy Life, the original Fantasy Life, which came in 2012 in Japan, 2014 in the U.S. and 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, 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, Ali, you also tried to play and it sounded like you did not have a great time with. It made my phone too hot. Well, you know, the first one was... such a great execution on this style of game. We don't want to go too 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 out front of the table who are like,

I want to be on that episode. We're going to fight over who gets to be here. We'll stream it. There's four-player multiplayer, so we'll do some streams of anything. I'm planning on streaming it for sure. What lives are you going to prioritize? Maybe that should be the way that we do it.

People can do the stream or do the podcast. One or the other. I get to do both. Because then 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 awesome. No announcements to be made about Fantasy Life streams, except we're gonna stream it. No, we have to figure this all out right now. Now is the time. The Girl Who Steals Time. What a weird subtitle for this thing.

Is that the weird part or is the eye the weird part? Bestie Life Eye, The Girl Who Steals Time is a wild title. The Girl Who Seals Time feels like a Professor Layton title to me. Yeah. And the I is really weird because it's like, are they already planning a sequel? Like, are they going to go for two? Is the I really a one?

I don't know, but why is it a little I? Because it's not one. Not since Bravely Default have we had to think about this. I was going to say this. I was literally going to 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, it 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 2. Bravely Default 2. Well, the, I don't want to, I don't want to say the spoiler. Bravely default too. That's correct. Bravely second comes after bravely default and then bravely default. two comes after that. And there is the Bradley default twist that changes the title screen.

Yeah. I'm not going to spoil that, but that could happen here. Dragon's Dogma does this most recently. Also, Dragon's Dogma 2, the title screen for that game is Dragon's Dogma for basically the whole game. Oh. Huh. Here's... Okay, right. I immediately have an answer.

Producer Tomoya Asano stated that the reason for the game's title, Bravely Default 2, was due to his belief that Bravely 2nd did not live up to fans' expectations and its critical and commercial underperformance made it difficult for the team to continue on the series. Oh. Wait. Sorry. That's why it's called what? That's why it's called Bravely Default? That's why it's called Bravely Default 2 and not like Bravely Third or something. I see. I see. Interesting.

NY Bravely 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 forum. It stands for interactive. No, that's a great guess, but not quite. I'll tell you hot or cold. No one looked this up. But guess. I want guesses. Oh, my guess was the Roman numeral one. That's a good guess. It would be upcase. I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you, yeah, but maybe they're lying. Maybe it'll become, you know, I get it.

I will tell you right now. It's like personal. Holy shit. That's one of three things. Okay. All right. So you're one for one right now. Do you want to roll the bones and give me another guess? Um, individual, uh, intimate? No, that's great. That's great. Innovation? No, but friends is a good direction. In terms of you might play it with your friend.

Invitation? These are all good. No, that's internet because it has internet multiplayer. And one more. Actually, it's two more. So did the first one. Yeah, I'm just saying what the developers said. Okay, okay, okay. The third one is island because it takes place on an island. That's so great. 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.

Maybe it's like I, the person playing this game, you know, like the player is the I. No, I feel like that's already individual or whatever, right? You're right, that is already individual. What do we want the fourth eye to be? Maybe we should... Maybe it is... because there's like a deep dating sim in there. yeah maybe don't say it like that that was so dismissive maybe i want ice to sorry i want i to stand for um oh shit like

Ice? Do I, like, ice, iceberg? Ice level? Ice cream? Ice planet? Like, I want you to go out of the island and then you've got the ice wall around you. You know, like the Antarctic ice wall that's real. That was jokes. Sometimes 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. Keep living that life. You're doing great. You're good. You're great. You're so good. I'm thinking 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 um 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. What if it's ingratitude and you have to kill God? I guess it could be that. It could be that. Infidelity, you get married and you cheat on your spouse. Whoa. No, we already explained that'll be in Stardew Valley 2. That'll be... I think those are some good guesses. Please, you at home should start thinking about what the I is.

We don't have a question bucket. 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 Apple podcast review. There it is. Oh, wow. Allie, this is why you're a pro. If you put your guess for what the I in fantasy life I stands for, the fourth meaning. I might read your review. Maybe it's isolation. And at the very end of the game, they just sever your ability to do multiplayer ever again.

That's wild. You don't have to worry about it being live service, right? Yeah, it's your reward. Your reward is, we're not going to change anything about this anymore. It's fine the way it is. It's good the way it is. Wow. Wow. I got a review to read here, which maybe spoils a little bit about the ongoing Outward Let's Play. This is from Aub Meow.

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 is Keith's stellar blueprints gameplay. Go give these people money on Patreon. Thank you so much to Aub Meow. I do wish, Admiya, you had told us what you thought the I in Fantasy Life I stands for. But how could you have known? If I had seen that...

If I had logged in to check these reviews and seen someone saying, well, I think the Fantasy Life I stands for... Oh, the I is for infinity because you get to go into a time portal if you beat the game. 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 Infinity. You could see it on the screen if you... And it is the girl who goes through time. You're right. 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 right your favorite whatever one of your top classes and you get to like carry some bonus over and just keep That sounds like a great idea. We may have cracked the code. Or, what if the I stands for... Uh... At the end, it just becomes one of those 20 questions games.

the right the like it like an akinator style i know the thing you're thinking of my fear is if it's called intelligence in 2025 that it has a little LLM 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 i see yeah of course it's actually very funny yeah

You mean the floating head or the developer? Yeah, that guy. No, the head. Doctor whoever. Yeah, he's celebrating his... 15th anniversary with the Wii Fit yoga lady. They're married? They got together? Damn. I was going to say, what about the Wii Fit yoga man, but then I realized they're probably siblings. Dr. Kawashima and the Wii Fit Man? No, you're saying the Wii Fit. No, no, no. The Wii Fit Lady. I got you. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. 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. Are they going to make a new Wii Fit? Who could say? They're probably going to make a new ring fit. Yeah, ring fit. Yeah, exactly. All right. I think that's a podcast. I think we're getting too punchy to continue. Thank you for hanging out, everybody.

As always, you can support the show by going to friendtothetable.cash. I already shouted out, in fact, just recently, the Outward Let's Play that does, in fact, have some Keith Carberry blueprints in there. Not a lot. It's not a whole Blueprints Let's Play, but you should still go watch it.

We have ongoing streams on twitch.tv slash friends at the table. And the archives go up on youtube.com slash friends at 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 slash friends at the table i wish to flash mystery yet 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. Interesting. How much... uh final fantasy 9 feels like a good streaming game yeah um but i've been meaning to play it for a really long time the funny thing is that you haven't played it or you have played it i have played it i've been meaning to replay it for for basically the last two years um and i just haven't gotten around to it

streaming it seems like a good way to force myself to do that the only thing is that i forgot about the lunar uh re-release and then like our the rpg nostalgia itch has been scratched a little bit and also i just got that love scene with marge so i don't know how long i'm not i'm gonna be willing to not be playing mystery so i'll probably bounce back you didn't quit it jeez Did you start playing the Xenoblade X?

remaster i did i did play a little a little bit of it i locked the max and then stopped playing which is so great like what what is wrong with me so i have that's how i did it the first game i got up to the cut scene with the cool line guy and i was like i'm never playing this again i guess And I don't really know why I think it's because It's a big game

The game is, yeah, you don't get the mechs until like 40 hours in or something. And I feel like the movement in the mechs didn't really feel very good. It feels so good. Walking and running feels so good. And the mechs don't quite hit that, especially before you can fly with it. The first time I played, I played until I could fly with them, and then I stopped. Oh, I see, I see. At least I'm trying to get back to that.

Yeah. Also, one last thing about Lunar, because we didn't really... Oh, please. We clinked onto Fantasy Life, which I 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, like... the character writing is so strong and the the challenge of the game isn't like am i gonna give my healing girl this healing spell or like you know the that isn't the challenge of it i think it's interesting that like

They will take people out of your party for plot reasons at different points. And like the game experience ends up.

um and interesting and you're like oh shit that was my healer that was my yeah yeah i just had one where like the the girls cursed by a weird song because i was in this town don't worry about it um and then i like that was my big magic user and my healer and i just had to go into this this dungeon with just the boys and i was like nobody can heal anybody what the fuck am i supposed to do i mean he used those potions yeah

that stuff is great and uh you should if you are hearing us talk about things like lunar uh the silver side silver star story complete and i'm like damn i love that vibe you should listen to fabula ultima friends at the table we are like 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 Friends of the Table feed and listen to it because it's good. Yeah. Janine, you haven't heard this side of the game yet, so... It'll be new. 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 went out today.

I think. Oh, wait. Was it? Wait, I thought. Oh, okay. Don't worry about the release schedule. I see. Now I understand. Now I see where we are. I did not understand. Well, I'll cut all what I just set out so that we go back to Janine saying that she's excited. And I'm going to then come back in on saying like, yeah, me too. But I'm going to say it legitimate 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. Very excited. Go check that out. I think that that's basically everything. Please leave us reviews. Oh, Media Club Plus just finished up the Chimera Ant arc. Or is about to. I know they finished recording. I think maybe next week will be the finale of that. Allie, 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 like, I don't know, an hour later messaged me like, holy shit about the end of that arc. yeah no yeah yep i read up to what we were recording for i recorded that and then i immediately read the rest of the chimera ant arc 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 ant army on behalf of the chimera ants. It's like the best. The Khmer arc is the best love story ever told. Like, there's just no... It's unbelievable. I cannot believe where it ends up. I just... There's also multiple 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 go read it or watch it. I know it's against what is being spoken about in the Chimera Ant arc, but if you don't like the Chimera arc, you are a lesser being to me. Ally Queen of the Ants just said this. I don't mean it. I'm sorry. No, but I get it. I get it. I like Karafika a lot. I get it. But it's not enough to make me like Yorknew more than Chimera Anne. It's un...

We had a real anime-focused episode today. We sure did. Allie, it's unsurprising given you're here. Anime 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.

Uh, there will be outward LPs updated and I'd be doing every other week, which is more than twice a month. So there might be a time when I'm like, I just can't fit another three in, in a five week period or whatever, you know, if that's how it even, not to fall into. The bodybuilding form, how many days are there in a week thing. But some months have five weeks. And in those months,

If the first week has an episode that ends up with three episodes in a month. And so I'm going to try to keep the 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. So saying that out loud, just so that it's true and clear and everyone is on the same page. Thank you so much.