The Besties - Dreams

Episode Date: February 28, 2020

This week the boys explore Dreams, the follow up to LittleBigPlanet from developer Media Molecule and discuss their other favorite user-generated content games. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

so I'm in it I'm in the game that changed everything and I'm playing it and it is you're a baby Shrek running away from a daddy Shrek um and he's got a big fork I guess he's trying to eat you and you're running and you do press the triangle button to fart to go faster um like I was telling you guys about the immersive immersive gameplay. Yeah, sure. And then you reach the edge of the dock, and there's nowhere left to run, and so you press a button, and you pull out a Keyblade, and Kingdom Hearts music starts playing, and then you have an actual real-time Keyblade battle

with the Shrek father. Now, where does this fall in the Shrek slash Kingdom Hearts canon? Well, it's a bold new sort of thing realized by Dreams that from what I understand it, it's something of like a video game pilot. They don't usually do those. Yeah, sure, it's like a backdoor pilot. But I think that Disney realizes

there's no road left to hoe with the Kingdom Hearts franchise. And so now DreamWorks, I guess, is gonna snoop in, swipe it up. Now we do have boss baby summon oh i love it i'm very much looking forward to it yeah what about donkey donkey isn't in this no no no you can't summon it unless you say donkey sorry hold on russ you kind of stepped on chris's fucking pitch perfect shrek and Let's hear that once again.

Donkey! That's so bad, man. It was close, right? Can we all four harmonize? Yeah. Donkey! Donkey! Donkey! Who's this show for?

My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best Infinity Games imagination engine of the millennia. My name is Chris Plant, and I certainly played a video game this week. My name is Russ Presnick, and I know the best game of my dreams. Hello and welcome to The Besties, a game of the year show that goes all year long a book club for video games an experience of movement a religion uh this is the besties and uh welcome much enthusiasm welcome aboard no i do i'm excited about the future well it's just here's the problem we're gonna have to end the show because they don't need to keep making new games right because now that dreams is out that's all games dreams is all games i'm about i'm about as big a media molecule stand as it there comes at every time i read that

line or something approximating it like a review uh uh whether a user review or like a critic review it made my skin crawl because y'all, it's a wild game and they put together a wild package, but they can still keep making games. They still do need to keep making games because I think a lot of them can still be better than the stuff folks are making in Dreams. Okay, the show will continue.

Yes, the show will continue, thank God. So I just want to talk about, so okay, you had a few little big planets, then you had Dreams, which has sort of been... Tearaway, there was a Tearaway. been tearaway there was a tearaway do not sleep on tearaway that game kicks ass uh dreams has kind of been like very long on the radar i feel like it was announced a long quite a good while ago and it just sort of percolated uh if i remember correctly when it was announced it was sort of tied to the playstation move controllers right there was a lot of like well i mean it is still tight you can right i mean you can if you're a mad lad that still isn't a johan sebastian joust and just hasn't charged up all the time uh yeah i mean i actually haven't

messed with that i i would be curious too because from what i understand like it actually makes a lot of the painting sort of stuff in dreams actually feel really good, as opposed to just sort of wiggling your DualShock 4 around and hoping art comes out of it. I'm trying to look for when it was, let me see. I want to say it was three years ago, two, maybe three years ago. Oh, no, bud. It was revealed at PlayStation Meeting 2013. Yes, right.

It's been, yeah, because when they first revealed it, they had that weird puppet tech demo. And then it kind of shifted to being essentially LittleBigPlanet times 100, sort of. So this has been... It's a game about making games, basically. If that sort of sounds very daunting, I'll tell you what my experience has been like with it so far.

And I feel like that's a decent place to start this discussion. very daunting i'll tell you what my experience has been like with it uh so far and and if y'all i feel like that's a decent place to start this discussion so when you get in it has a very media molecule very inspiring sort of like um almost statement of purpose that we never get in in games like this that it's like this is a game it is about creativity creativity is incredibly powerful it's something that needs to be fostered these are tools to act as conduits for your creativity It's like this is a game. It is about creativity. Creativity is incredibly powerful. It's something that needs to be fostered. These are tools to act as conduits for your creativity. You get a little bit of tutorial about how to move your icon around and how it possesses stuff in the world.

And then you're thrust into some like just like little challenges like that. And then they kind of throw you into the muck and mire. There are some levels, sorry, some dreams made dreams made by media molecule that you can check out they're all uniformly pretty cool or you could just get nasty and start searching for spider-man imagination is the most powerful thing in the universe an idea should be protected at all costs um also here is uh peter griffin uh standing outside of the simpsons family's house and spongebob is uh reciting memes i mean it's it's all that's true it's extremely good searching for spider-man gives you um about 10 different like open world swing There's a swinging mechanic built into

Dreams, as is the best I can grok. So you don't have to build your own bespoke swinging mechanic. I don't think that's true. I think it's something that somebody has built and then has been because this is, in my opinion, the coolest thing about Dreams. What was fucking

Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Oh, Haircord Joee yeah this like idea of just like somebody can make a swinging mechanic or a swinging uh uh god what's a contraption like that in the game and then just share it and then anybody can use it in their level uh and it like automatically credits whoever you take stuff from so like i don't actually think there is a swinging mechanic built in i think it is something somebody built that has just sort of propagated throughout the community. The games are all, the dreams sorry, are all there's a lot of

variation. I mean, so much more so than you saw in LittleBigPlanet, which were all sort of especially the first couple were all sort of variations on platforming. There is a lot of different a lot more room for interpretation in here, there is a lot of different, uh, a lot more room for interpretation in,

in here. I played a lot of some first person games, third person games, uh, some like recreations, which are very interesting of like, did you play the PT one? The PT recreation is like profoundly accurate and wild.

There's a super Mario 64 recreation. That's actually pretty interesting. That feels pretty that feels pretty spot on and controls pretty well. There are neat games that are pretty well established, and those have seemed to have risen to the surface. There's one called Art Therapy that's kind of a little bit interesting where you have a baseball bat, you're in a museum, and you're running around trying to smash as much art as you can because you're a failed artist that wants to take it out in the art world and if security sees you with your bat out they will arrest you so you have to hide your bat wait till no one's looking and then smash like dinosaur bones and paintings and vases and stuff uh and there's fun animations when the stuff wrecks um there's also a lot of like half thoughts and really wild non ideas that are,

that are usually labeled as like, this is garbage. I wouldn't check this out. There's some interesting, like there's a series called opposite day that are like first person. They almost remind me of Stanley parable, like that kind of narrator playing with the player and communicating back and forth and very meta.

Here's where I'm at, because I know that you guys are not as bullish on this. So I wanted to say that piece and say that, and I didn't get very deep into creation. I have never been someone who leans that way. I don't think of myself as a hugely creative person. So I don't get very deep into those sorts of tools. What I would say is that,

and I know you'll have criticisms for it, but what it feels like to me is very early in the development of a sort of language of design in dreams or like a figuring out of like, what is possible in this tool set. I didn't tell you guys about the coolest thing. Someone recreating there.

There's a couple of people I think working together to sort of recreate Disneyland where it's like connected. Like you start in your hotel room at Disneyland and it's actually like the different areas of the parks are connected and you can walk from one land to another and actually like physically get on recreations of rides and ride them and stuff like that. And it's like, there's a lot of really interesting stuff that I feel like is so nascent right now because the whole thing is just getting started. But I walked away from it sort of feeling very excited about the potential of what could be created. So here's what I would say.

I think I agree that it's very early. But I would also say I was surprised that there wasn't like an ocean of high quality stuff given the fact that the game has been in alpha for a while. I feel like that's unfair i feel like there's a ton of like the stuff that is all featured is all like actually remarkable showcases of the tools you get art's dream which is like a two hour long game that medium molecule made and so like i don't think that's a fair credit well no i mean the game the stuff that they made is one thing i'm talking about the like fan user made stuff i know what fresh means like i don't feel like there's much of anything that is especially good art therapy the thing that justin mentioned i've seen that mentioned a lot like that i feel like it's kind of the the key example that i've

seen pop up in a lot of reviews of hey somebody made something really interesting that is you know a fun and it's like it's a game and it's not at like at all it is you it's like a stealth system that doesn't work you break things there's a score counter but like you can break everything on your first try it it is though very beautiful it looks fantastic and i've seen this discussion already amongst um uh people who work at universities teaching game design about how much trickier it's going to be to judge, you know, people who are applying to, you know, get into these universities. Because what Dreams does allow is for games to look very good and look very professional

when in fact, they are like below, you know, even what a like aspiring game designer would create and unity, but would look like not even close to his polished. So I think like what we're seeing right now is things that look great, but I am yet to see anything game design wise where I'm like, Hey, this is an original idea that actually feels like very competently honed i think that's for a number of reasons one i think it's just easy

there have been more arts tools available i think people have been using arts tools in vr to like design these things um and i think the other big thing is i don't even think people know how to qa this yet like like that was the thing that I kept running into is I don't think people know how to like get an idea of like what works and what is fun when does it stop being fun and when do the rules work and when do they not work everything just feels very very very very shabby doesn't mean it won't get better in the future it just means that is I agree with Justin the sense of like that's where we're at today. The impression I get with Dreams is that the core of it, specifically the stuff that like they have people making,

is more about experiences and not less about games. I think you can make like a Twitter video that's like 30 seconds long and goofy and interesting and like or maybe like a walkthrough of a level where it's just like watching someone walk through it but the second you're actually controlling it i think it's very different i mean it takes a lot of time rightfully but it takes a lot of time to make make your game feel good and i think the default like locomotion stuff in the game is comparable to like the default locomotion stuff that was sort of in LittleBigPlanet. And I despised the physics of those games,

like with a fiery passion. And they made Tearaway, which effectively addressed all of the issues that I had and was like a fun platformer to move around in. And now I'm back to LittleBigPlanet physics and I want to just never do that again. Griffin, I know that you are a huge Media Molecule fan, especially with LittleBigPlanet. So I'm very curious what your take is. Well, I'm that you are a huge Media Molecule fan, especially with LittleBigPlanet. So I'm very curious what your take is.

Well, I'm struggling with this conversation, to be completely frank. Like, I think that talking about dreams as if it was Game Maker Studio 2 or Unity is like bonkers because it's like not what it is. That's like saying like, WarioWare diy can't turn out great video games who's gonna qa all of the you know levels that people are making in super mario

maker 2 like it's a game like it's a game and it is a a game that only media molecule is making like it's the only it's the a game that only media molecule has made up to this point. I think it's important when talking about this game to have at least some sort of like history on the advancement of like the LittleBigPlanet formula, right? Because in the first game, it was very bare bones. Like you can paint platforms to run on and jump on and grab onto this. And there are a couple little gizmos.

And then in LittleBigPlanet 2, it's like, oh, now we're adding circuit boards so that you can program more advanced logic. And then, you know, they keep stepping it up and stepping onto this. And there are a couple little gizmos. And then in LittleBigPlanet 2, it's like, oh, now we're adding circuit boards so that you can program more advanced logic. And then, you know, they keep stepping it up and stepping it up. Saying that, like, all the levels in LittleBigPlanet 2 are just all platformers, I think does a disservice to, like, what that community got into and what, like, the focus of the game was and what was so exciting as somebody who's kind of embedded in that community is seeing, like far can we push it how far can we like can we make a a first person shooter in like something that was explicitly not necessarily made for that uh although as you get into three and stuff like it does sort of move in that direction i think looking at dreams uh it is like seeing again like what a seven year

advancement of those ideas looks like and i think if you approach it from the same way that you approach The Little Big Planet, it is a, like, it's a resounding success. Like, if you are the type, I don't think any of us, myself included, I have not put in necessarily, I've done, like, a couple hours worth of the tutorials, which is sort of a drop in the bucket, although I've really enjoyed my time with the tutorials.

I have not, like, gotten into contraption making. I have not gotten into the entire taxonomy of this game that sets it apart of just like, you can make an object and then save that object and then put it inside a scene and then put that scene inside of a larger dream and then give tags to that dream so that people can just type in the Spider-Man tag

and then literally just press go and play fucking 50 Spider-Man levels in a row. All of that is an evolution of what LittleBigPlanet did, and I think it is so smart, and I think it is so well made, and I think it's, like, I think it is gorgeous, like, it is this impressionist sort of art style that is, again, unlike anything I've seen in a game before, and to say, like, that it, that is a bad thing, because it's, like, not, it's going to trick people into thinking these games are better than they are i think i think it's just like how you're looking at it i

don't look at these things as like games i look at it like i'm gonna type in some dumb shit into the search and then see what people have done with these tools seeing how far they've pushed them seeing like how like creative they have gotten with these things. I don't, I really, I'm confused by what metric you all are using to be critical of dreams. It's kind of where I'm like, I don't feel like there's any, like, I don't see how any position other than it's extremely early and it seems like these tools are amazing.

I don't see how there's any other defensible position, honestly. We have the same position. What we're talking about is like what exists right now okay so well let me let me push back on what wake up and said because i think that's a really good point of this is a game it's an evolution of little big planet like i think that is definitely one way of seeing it i completely disagree i think the problem with it for me is it's nothing like that little big planet had a campaign you learned how to like play with the design tools within it's nothing like that little big planet had a campaign you learned how

to like play with the design tools within it it was limited to a platformer limited and then people bent it in a whole bunch of different directions dreams on the other hand is a set of design tools and then they have a showcase of those design tools, which is the like, what, two hour campaign. But the core of the game is the design tools, and it is not limited to any form. What they're saying is, this is a device, this is Game Maker, like you can go out and make your dreams. Not, hey, I made this like, I mean, there's obviously tons of filler, but the things that are at the top is like, hey, me and all these other people are working on a fantasy role playing game genre vendor. And in the title, it'll say three years of development. People like are using this to make games and we're at like day one of it. I think that's that's absolutely fantastic and very cool. and we're at like day one of it. I think that's absolutely fantastic and very cool.

But if we're talking about it as a game, like right now there is a two-hour demo of like what you can do with the tools. It's perfectly fine. It's like I'm kind of surprised that there's not more just because the game has been in development for so long, but I think that hasn't been the focus. And then there's like literally the very beginning of development on all of these like fan projects that they themselves are saying will take a couple

years will probably take even longer knowing how fan projects work which is again like that's super super awesome um it's just as justin said we are literally at day one of that, which makes it more interesting to me intellectually. Like of, hey, we get to see how game design works, even earlier than something like early access. I totally appreciate Dreams on an intellectual level. If I was recommending this to a friend who only plays a plays a few games a year i would say like friend unless you unless you are interested in game design unless you're interested in the tools there's not a lot of reason to hop in right now so what you're saying because i don't think i think i probably misinterpreted the gap between it's like i'm taking a very forward-looking

approach you're taking a very like right now you're sort of thinking like if you're gonna spend 40 on a thing today you could probably chill on dreams for a little bit unless you want game design tools right unless you want to get into the creation aspect and then it's the best deal on the planet like i think i think because most games are so polished these days i kind of have more of an appreciation for like being able to get down into the funk like getting into sort of the funky mire of what is out there right now because every spider-man for some reason someone made one spider-man and everybody got the same spider-man and they all run like my two-year-old it's like with legs kind of like wobbling out from underneath him it's fucking so and there there's like there's one spider-man i got really

deep into spider-man because i thought it was a useful like what are people doing in the spider-man field there's one spider-man game where the only thing that is new is that you can um switch to the black costume and you double tap zero and that like while you're swinging as regular spiderman there's a huge prompt at the bottom of the screen that says like circle circle to embrace the darkness in like 30 point font and you press circle circle and you chain in the black suit spiderman and then it says at the bottom of the screen circle circle to chase the light it's just like it's so wild i think it's so funny at the at this point and like so um you know i i think it's it's so interesting to see sort of like what people are are doing with

it like as a as a way of like i don't know sort of i i see what you're saying like if you're looking for like infinite free polished games like not even polished. I don't even think I mean, I love your Spider-Man description, but even like that LittleBigPlanet zone of like, oh man, this is a mess, but I can enjoy it. It's a goof.

I don't even know if it's entirely there yet. I think the difference, my guess at least, would be that LittleBigPlanet was starting with the structure of a 2D entirely there yet i think the difference my guess at least would be that big little big planet was starting with the structure of a 2d platformer correct that was much easier to build into variations on a theme or irony or comedy or even horror you know whatever it's easier to nudge that into something interesting rather than start with like nothing for you and the group was making shared progress on the same genre we're like i think you had a foothold in little big planet

if you weren't interested what we're talking about is two different audiences i am interested in the creative tools and so when i see they do these uh competitions right where they say and this one was just make the most realistic looking food you can i don't know if you guys fucked around with that right and but like calling that a video game is like unfair, right? Calling that, there are also like music videos and like all kinds of just like weird shit like that that I think is really, really neat. I think with LittleBigPlanet,

if you weren't interested in the creative tools, there was this part of you of just like, well, I'm never gonna mess with the creative tools. So like, I'm never going to like really appreciate like, oh, they did something really clever with the creative tools because I don't really know what the boundaries of that are but i like platformers and i can go in here and play a bunch of like cool platforming levels i think where we're at

with dreams and i think this is kind of what you're getting at is like we don't have that like there isn't a i like platformers so i can go in and play a bunch of good platformers because yeah the art therapy game is not especially, it is impressive from a creative standpoint from what they've done with the tools, but like I wouldn't, I'm not gonna play it a second time. It's a very cool proof of concept. Yeah, sure.

I would push back on saying, I think Art's Dream kicks ass. I thought that was a really like, it's the coolest thing I think Media Molecule has made, but that's, I guess. Yeah. Russ, can you weigh in one more time before we wrap up? I feel like you haven't gotten as much of a hand on this ball.

Yeah, just a second, whatin was sort of talking about and i agree like and i mentioned this earlier i think this is not a game maker i don't think that was their intention when they started making the game i could be wrong i don't know but my read of it is that it is 100 an experience maker And I realized that sounds like annoying and pedantic to like call it that but it is more a thing that you look at, like a music video, or like a relatively non interactive scene or something. And not so much a thing that you should play because the second that you start playing stuff, I think it does kind of fall apart. I hope we see more of that because that that sounds awesome. Like theneyland stuff the the food like there and i can't think of many things like that and and you don't have to worry about like game feel or good mechanics or anything like that

you're just like hey here is a literal in the way that like people play minecraft creative and make an incredible city but it has no interactivity that's fine because you can like appreciate the visual of it. And I think that's where Dreams does a good job. I just think everyone is so distracted to have like Shrek farting in a room. To put just like one last sort of optimistic pin in it, what excites me about sort of the open nature of like, hey, I made this Spider-Man swinging mechanic,

use it in any of your levels, is like there could be a like, hey, I made actually a-Man swinging mechanic, use it in any of your levels, is like there could be a like, hey, I made actually a pretty tight platforming like physics system that like actually feels pretty good. And then like everyone could yoink that. And then like- It just seems like something media molecule

should have just included at this point. Like I know it's not, I don't want to make it too difficult. I get a real sense of media molecule trying to not control the discussion in the way that's fair they did yeah i also think unless unless you have like really gone through what is available in the creation system saying that i'm surprised medium molecule didn't put something in there is a fucking wild thing to say yeah yeah i'm also

just glad medium molecule exists it, it's wild. I think this is a, brave is like not my favorite word, but like I kind of can't believe this exists. You should still toss him $40 for this game right now. That is where I'm at. Like, kick him a 40. Please support this dumb thing so it will continue to exist. We're going to take a quick break, and when we get back,

we're going to talk more about user generated content to continue this dreams discussion i wanted to talk briefly about everyone's favorite sort of uh systems for for users generating content obviously beyond good and evil 2 will be entirely created by the players maybe that's why it hasn't come out yet they're just waiting for the players to break in and finish it uh uh ditto what's your what's your favorite uh for me what was so formative was uh rpg maker for the playstation 1 i spent so much time playing that game i used to make like stupid stupid like games for like all my friends featuring us as characters. And I would spend a hundred hours like per thing and then like debut it whenever we

were all hanging out. And that was so cool. And I will never forget actually acquiring a Dex drive, which was a piece of tech where you could use it with your computer and download like saves off the internet and then drop it onto your playstation 1 memory card i think like 30 people had one of these and it was all the rpg maker community so i found this website where i could download all these other rpgs that people made and i was like so excited and they were almost invariably like here's peter griffin and he shoots spongebob to death. Here's Pikachu. Catch him and eat him, and there's his penis, and it's like, Jesus.

It was all such edgelord. There were a few really things that stick in my mind, but otherwise, it was all edgelord, completely horrific content stuff, and I remember my 13-year-old mind being kind of fried by that I'm really stupid I don't know if you guys have known this but I want to be honest about it I'm very stupid so when it comes to UGC games I can't figure them out and I get very lazy and I don't want to spend any

time but there have been a couple games like these that basically make me feel very smart despite my stupidity and one of them is Spore which was was a terrible game, don't get me wrong. But it did let me create hilarious penis aliens that would walk around the galaxy and basically do nothing because the game didn't exist. But the creations kind of felt like creations that I made without too much effort. I just, like, drew legs, and then they walked, and it worked great. So that I wanted to, to like call attention to but also and i mentioned this in the first half tearaway was another game that like effectively it's a

platformer like it's a straight platformer but throughout the adventure they're always giving you prompts of like draw a turkey hand or draw whatever like your dress and then that that stuff would get automatically injected into an actually good game so i felt like i was contributing to like the overall aesthetic of the game without um actually having to make the game itself which is why i thought that was very good i loved her way i think that is my favorite game of theirs by like a mile so i adore uh wrestling games, specifically wrestling games of character creation. And Fire Pro Wrestling is the best at this. Fire Pro Wrestling is a 2D.

It kind of looks like what would have happened if the NES and SNES wrestling games had evolved rather than the 3D era. And because it is much simpler to design stuff, and there is a massive player creation community online, you can download entire rosters into this game. Now that it's on Steam, it's even easier than before. So you can get the entire history of WWE, WCW, but you can also get every animal that has ever existed, every favorite character from a video game so if you want mario uh fighting 2b from near automata as i do that is available

um if you want to throw the oldest debate in gaming there there is basically anything and everything you could imagine all in one supreme battle royale. My favorite user-generated content game is Looney Tunes Duckamuck. I can't believe you're fucking talking. I can't believe you're soiling another podcast. It came out in 2007. It's literally, it's like absolutely genius. came out in 2007 it's literally it's like absolutely genius it's based on a 1950s short of the same name duckamuck about daffy duck being messed with i guess annoyed by an animator that's

constantly like changing the world around him it's like a meta uh short and this game duckamuck does the same thing except it casts you as the animator and lets you sort of like build the world around daffy you're constantly having to like draw new things uh that go into the game sort of like tearaway i think um and you find new mini games by like interacting with daffy's world um and it's him talking to you telling you like draw this thing there's one moment where you can draw a horse for Daffy that I've discussed at a certain point previously and

you can draw as I did a penis a penis and he says there's my steed and he goes and hops astride the penis and rides off. It's very good.

And what year was this? Did this happen? 2007. Okay. But there's lots of like. This was when we first learned that we could draw penises in video games. And everyone was extremely excited about it. As they say in Mythic Quest, the TTD, the time to dick, was was, it was much longer at that point.

So we weren't reaching for our dreams at the end of the game of this wild game in the original short, they pull back and show the animator is bugs bunny. And it's like, get it. It's bugs been messing with him in this game. They pull back in the animator is fucking Daffy duck. What?

What? He says the last line of the game. I just looked it up on Wikipedia. Well, if you can't beat them, be them. Damn, Duckamuck. Exactly, Russ. The fucking big ones, dude, pulling the strings.

He's the one doing this to himself? Is this what Matrix 4 is about? It's the shadow government. Yeah, so anyway, Duckamuck's matrix four is about it's the shadow government yeah so anyway um duckamuck's amazing yeah it's fantastic what did we ask folks we we frequently will ask you the the listeners at home to contribute to our program in a very ethical way not not a manipulative sort of hit record how much do we dog on hit record Joe on this show? I don't mean to hit

He seems like a very sweet person Honestly Pay him Pay the man his money So Frank wrote to our email address which is mail at besties.fan I wrote last week to talk about how great it is to be able to build a train set

for my son and daughter in dreams so they can drive a little train on adventures or once i figure out how to make characters i can model animal powers onto people to make my son's wild crap dreams come true i went out and got move controllers for this game in honor of that here is a haiku a train for your son whose voice says chugga chugga choo choo when triangle pushed if you want to see a train drop off a cliff and a broken ass daniel tiger trolley go in a circle and maybe derail i can publish my demo publicly tonight that's delightful that's so good so good will has a uh a nuanced take dreams should not count as a real game i don't want to make up my own game i only have three hours of free time a day i want to play pokemon or super mario on my switch while i watch tv

oh yeah hey you know what i just thought of for the first time in a billion years project spark whatever happened with that microsoft remember that they were like building lands that was like their dream that was like their kind of dreams style thing anyway sorry that's then they realized they couldn't make any money i guess i got an email from uh uh miles luna i don't know if it's miles luna of roosterteeth fame it is ah miles luna uh at first i found the sheer scope of what's possible in dreams to be a little staggering but the carefully constructed way in which the game introduces you to new concepts is charming encouraging and most of all, manageable. Medium molecules push for players to remix currently existing stages

rather than starting a brand new one from scratch as a clever way to ease people into creating without overwhelming them. It's tough if you're impatient and just want to build levels at the snap of a finger, but like any skill, Dreams will be most rewarding to the creators who put in the time to learn from it and practice with it.

Also, someone made a dream where you play as Robert Pattinson in The Lighthouse lighthouse and the fact that someone took the time to do that kicked so much ass i really like the tutorials in this they've gamified the tutorials in this game in a really clever way i thought i enjoyed them a lot do you guys have anything else you've been you've been playing uh i've been playing through uh dragon quest builders 2 which i think griffin might have mentioned in a previous episode, but I finally got around to it. It is great. It's like super lovely. There is like a UGC connection to this too, where you are

like designing your own town, but again, it has like the structure that I need because I lack the creativity. So they will give me like blueprints of like, you do this and then I follow it. How satisfying are building like the giant blueprints? Oh, it does. It feels great. It's like buying like a Lego set and following the instructions.

I love it. I just did back into Dead Cells for the Bad Seed DLC. Don't know if you guys have played that yet. Is that on Switch yet? Yeah, it's out on Switch. I'm having a hard time kind of breaking back into the scene, I feel like, because there's been a series of updates and now my like just drop two turrets and fucking run away and then win the game strategy doesn't

work anymore so now i'm having to actually like engage with a lot of the systems that i haven't had to and it's like beating the shit out of me so like i'm not having a great time uh but the the new content seems pretty cool uh but like all things in dead cells like it's going to take me a dozen playthroughs to you know see a good portion of it i've been checking out something called uh oh man what should i talk about should i talk about okay i'll let i'll huddle to a vote kunai or splitter steel oh splitter steel i don't care about splitter steel yeah uh uh so i i got this game splitter steel on um steam it's basically oh god prisoner's Dilemma, where there's a pile of money in the table.

You secretly, with the other player, choose to either split the cash, in which case you split the money equally. You can steal the cash, and if the other player chooses split, then you get all the money. Or you can steal the cash. If the other player chooses steal, you both lose all the money or you can steal the cash if the other player chooses steal you both lose all the money so it is uh you get basically two minutes to convince the other player that you're on the level and you're not going to take the money you go up in tiers as

you successfully get through these different uh encounters the money continues to go up and up and up uh and then eventually all your all you've got is basically the ability to type to the other person and try to convince them that you're not going to steal from them. There's also some meta elements that are sort of similar to like clickers. There is a very weird scene around this game developing that's worth checking in on

because there is basically this like a very vocal content of people that say you should never steal and have joined guilds that are based around not stealing and come into the world chat room to complain about people stealing do they then steal no they figured out the dilemma like that that's as hilarious reading the reviews. We're like, oh, this game sucks. You should just always share. And it's like, congratulations. Yes.

Yes. Ethics 101, you secretly passed it. You've invented unions again. Yeah, but it's a very weird, like there's a lot of problems with it. It is basically negated the valid like it almost everyone splits until the higher ranks because that's when you can really get a big payday it almost doesn't make sense at all unless you're just being punitive it doesn't make sense

to steal um but people still do it obviously but like it there's no there's very little back and forth at the early stages so there's a lot of like, let's just get through this until we get to the big rounds where there's actually some meaning to it. They're going to have to keep on it really hard, I think, to stay ahead of the meta on it and to keep it interesting. But it's a cool thing to check out. I have been quite, not been playing, I finished Control finally. And I want to call out one small detail.

I've criticized a number of developers for using cleft lips and cleft palates as a signal of evil in video games. Drives me crazy. Or just makes me very upset. And, hey, what a surprise twist. There's a character in Control who has a cleft lip. And he is, like like not good or bad he just kind of like you he's just kind of a complicated person yeah not a nice person not a mean person just kind of like i think plant's a very nice person quotes borat a little

too much what character is it is it is it a deal i'm? No, it's in the main campaign. I remember. Yeah, he oversees the Panopticon in the game. Oh, right. The one where the objects are getting out of control? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's just a great character. It made me so happy.

It's such a small thing, but after decades of otherwise, what a nice pleasure for it just to pop up in the game and not to be a big thing. It was great. Also, the game is fantastic. Had you not played Control before? I played, I would say that I played like 50% to 75% of it

and then just kind of paused and then came back to it recently. Your Xbox must have been really hot. I played that on PC. It must have gotten really hot. Oh, thank you. I think you're just talking about it because it ran like garbage on consoles.

Next week we're going to Oh God, I really actually don't. The next couple weeks are just going to be jazz, baby. Because we're waiting for Animal Crossing to come out. And Doom. Well, some of us are. Don't do this to me right now. Yeah, we're trying to figure out what we should do.

I think we're going to have a week where we just talk about some lesser known stuff that we've really been enjoying lately. That we've kind of been sitting on a discussion about. But next week is... Yeah. Next week we're all going to the farm oh it's gonna be good rune factory 4 for the switch just came out uh been revisiting that uh i think we're also going to talk a little bit about stardew which we've never really covered in in depth on this show it's fucking 30 years old yes it's older

than mario there's a tribute to Stardew Valley in Mario 3. Here's how the discussion went. Me. Hey, oh, actually, Room Factory 4, I remember really liking that on 3DS. It's coming out on Switch. We should check that out because I know there's a little bit of buzz about it. And I'm pretty sure all of you instinctively were like,

what if we also had another game in case we didn't want to play this game that we think looks like hot trash? I was excited. It was Frush who said said my eyes hurt looking at this game the graphics are quite bad but if you don't look if you don't look at the screen then if you look past the graphics well then it's just a bunch of ones and zeros flying past you i guess can someone in dreams make a better looking room factory 4 okay so Okay. So we're going to be talking about room factory.

I think we're just going to be talking about farming games in general. So if you have any farm game based memories, uh, then, then go ahead and bring that. But room factory for, for the switch will be the, or for the three DS.

Hey, I've been playing it on the switch. It's the same fucking game. So if you, that's right, folks, your dreams have been realized. Someone is finally asking to hear about your memories of playing farming video games.

I know. I know you thought this moment would never come. But here we are. Thank you so much for listening to our program. We have such a good time making it. And the fact that you all have enjoyed listening to it, I hope at least you're still here, really means a lot. If you could help spread the word about the show,

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to share those and bring new people onto the show who you think might enjoy it. We sure do appreciate that. That's it, right? We did it. might enjoy it. We sure do appreciate that. That's it, right? We did it. That's it. Wrap it up, Juice. All right, folks.

Thank you. Be sure to join us again next time for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Sweet dreams are made of these. Get out of my dreams. Dreams. Dreams, dreams, dreams. Russ, you got one?

Nope. The Besties is a Spotify original podcast in association with Vox Media. The show is edited by Jelani Carter. And our theme song is by Ian Dorsch. Besties!