The Besties - The Best Video Game Kings + Shovel Knight: King of Cards

Episode Date: January 10, 2020

In this episode of The Besties, the boys debate which are the very best video game kings of all time. They'll also dive in to the latest addition to the Shovel Knight franchise, King of Cards. 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!

I guess you could say that I really dig this game. And it gave me the, I got the royal treatment from this one. And I figured let's just go ahead. Sorry, Chris and Justin. I figured let's just go ahead and get these all out of the way. That way we can sort of disarm Russ before we get into the actual meat of the episode. So if you have anything like. Oh, okay.

Okay. Wow. I mean, thank you, Griffin. You really are the knight in shining armor of this podcast checkmate this king is running the board let me look at the cue cards and i don't have a what and then maybe we can edit in a joke after that got it god i think we should shovel that crap out yeah i think it's maybe a little on the nose just to say the word shovel? What if I said like, shovel tonight, baby. Shovel tonight, baby.

Walk me through that. So, you really put me in a pickle. God, I wish Russ hadn't died. Milk and rookies. You fucking head. His ghost is still with us. My name is Justin McElroy and I dig this game.

Damn it. My name's Griffin McElroy and I played it. My name is Justin McElroy, and I dig this game. Damn it. My name's Griffin McElroy, and I played it. My name is Christopher Plant, and I'm Shovel Knight. My name is Russ Froschig, and I'm drinking milk and rookies. What does that mean? What does that mean? Because you said it during the cold open, too, and I don't know what it means. Okay, so my thinking is like king, and it's like a chess thing, and rook is a piece on a chess board, so it's milk and rookies.

That sucks, man. You guys didn't think of that one, did you? Boy, oof, a doof. Hi, it's Justin McElroy, and this is The Besties, a game of the year book club that goes all year long. We're back talking about regular games after perfectly summarizing 2019 uh a lot of people say there are no games but we have the courage to dig deep and find the games that dig deep i like that thanks russ i it's even better when you fucking

hang a lamp on it uh but anyway we're about Shovel Knight, part of the Shovel Knight Treasure Trove, King of Cards. It's also, if you do not own the Shovel Knight Treasure Trove, it's also available as a standalone product. Although at this point, you should just, if you're interested in Shovel Knight, you should just have Shovel Knight Treasure Trove. I want to meet this person that has no interest in Shovel Knight, but loves kings

and cards fresh can you kind of catch us up on the whole journey of shovel knight uh i could try i don't have the years but i do know there was this indie studio called yacht club games uh who made this game called shovel knight i want to say 2015, I want to say. Maybe? It was before that. What, is this a test? Are you going to tell me how long ago? No, no, no, no, no, no.

You're close. It's 2014. 2014, pretty close. So they came out with this game. It was basically a throwback style game in the spirit of Mega Man, that kind of era of NES games, but made with modern design

mechanics we've absolutely discussed the original Shovel Knight on the podcast previously it's a terrific game highly recommended and since that came out the team basically has spent a ton of time working on these post-release campaigns, which basically focus on various side characters as the new hero for like effectively a DLC campaign. And the latest is the King of Cards. I want to get his... Night King? King Knight? What's his name?

King Knight. It's the latest hero who is starring in his own campaign and probably the most fleshed out and involved of all the post-release campaigns so that is what we're talking about today specter of torment was the uh second expansion that was also it had it was had some narrative heft that was that's still probably my uh my favorite one because it was like super transformative yeah uh but i also think it's worth mentioning that all of the additional campaigns the uh there's plague of shadows specter of torment

and king of cards were all kickstarter reward bonuses for a campaign that happened a very long time ago at this point i looked into it because i couldn't remember how much uh they were they were seeking uh so the the kickstarter campaign went live march 17th 2013 and the funding goal was 75 000 and it went on to collect a total of 311 000 still for super low so low like for for game development especially one like of the scale of Shovel Knight, which is like, sure, it's a retro style sort of reimagination of like the NES, like DuckTales, Mega Man sort of era is still like a pretty big project. Like that is not a ton of cash for one game, let alone what is essentially like four games at this point. Yeah, that's basically the budget for like a shoulder. They could animate a shoulder.

You could animate one shoulder in God of War for $311,000. Also, I believe the expansions when they were like stretch goals or whatever on Kickstarter were, oh, we'll add some more characters and they'll have their own movement and that'll be fun. And then they just kept making big huge media expansions that are effectively standalone games right i i mean this is everything that you hear producers of video games saying not to do where it's like just expansion creep of yeah i mean sure we could make a character but why not just make an entire extra campaign? And people are like, no, that's a terrible idea.

You'll never ship anything. And yet here we are all these years later, and they've shipped, what, these three standalone campaigns and the four-player kind of like Smash Bros. game? Yeah, I would be curious to know how much of this like continued development and uh not even feature creep like the sort of like general scale creep that has been going on for all of these games is like out of necessity because they were promised in this kickstarter campaign and how much of it is just like this is the stuff they want to be this is the stuff they want to be doing like that and that's not a that's not a a knock against them like i by all. By all signs seem to be pointing to the fact

that Yacht Club Games is like fully, fully in on Shovel Knight. Yeah, I think they probably could have done a low rent version that would have checked the boxes of the Kickstarter campaign. But I think after the enormous, for the size of the team, the hit that was Shovel Knight is absolutely enormous.

After that enormous hit, where all this team, this team is still very jazzed to make Shovel Knight stuff. They basically said, hey, we're just going to make it as good as we can damn well make it and take a lot of time with it. And they did. And I think the results are pretty. I think the results are pretty... To that point, it's worth noting that the next project they've announced is Shovel Knight Dig, a new Shovel Knight game that is also more about... It's more about digging.

That's my one knock for Shovel Knight is that the digging leaves much to be desired. Who wants to walk us through the basic mechanics of this particular product? I can talk about King of Cards. So this is ostensibly the last expansion of Shadow Knight. Although I guess there's five other members of the Order of No Quarter that they could ostensibly sort of. Which bears mentioning, by the way, that a lot of these are like remixed levels, right?

Like we're reconfiguring levels to suit the different mechanics. Kind of. I think that's maybe the least true. I don't know plague of shadows was the first expansion and that one pretty much was like a side story where like the levels were not that different uh specter of torment like the locomotion mechanics were so vastly different from uh shovel knight that the the levels were pretty dramatically different i feel like i feel like it's pretty it's like the same palettes right and it's the same

more or less areas that you're going into you're going to see a lot of sort of familiar scenery but the way that the uh levels have changed have you know a lot of it has been truncated uh the levels aren't nearly as long I feel like as they were in the in the first Shovel Knight because it is also a game about the same sort of platforming stuff that you could expect from Shovel Knight. But there is also a big emphasis on a card game, hence the name, which maybe we should just like dive in. It's two parts, right? It is this still pretty retro inspired platforming thing. I think the nearest comparison to Shovel Knight was DuckTales where, you know, you had the cane that you could bounce on enemies or you could just hit enemies with it. And so a lot of the platforming wasn't just jumping from place to place. It was

also bouncing on an enemy's head, or bouncing on your cane on this one thing so that you could get some extra height. And they did that really well. And each following expansion had sort of a different gimmick for getting around. And in King of Cards, it is this shoulder bash that you do. So you dash through the air bash into something that's like it that's like your one big wario it is war right that is the nearest comparison is wario but you have sort of two attacks and it's that shoulder bash but then if you execute a shoulder bash into something you will start twirling twirling beautifully through the air like a dancer and while you are sort spinning, you can jump on enemies and bounce on them or, you know, bounce off of objects in the

environment. And if you successfully bounce on one thing, you can dash again sort of in midair. So those are the, that's like the hook is, you know, you dash into an enemy, it sends you twirling upwards into the air, you bounce off another enemy, which then lets you chain another shoulder bash into something else. And so the trickier platforming segments are all about sort of doing that. Yeah, I do want to mention regarding this, when I first started playing,

I was like, this seems like really simple. Like you think about the moveset that Shovel Knight has or even the Death Knight have, there's like a lot of ways to interact with the environment. And this seemed like very straightforward. And very quickly, I realized how much variety comes from these interactions

that you have where you're trying to basically dash into something, get a second jump, get a second dash. It like turns into more of a puzzle game. Yeah, it's puzzle solving. And I had the same experience as you, Russ.

Like the first level, I was not sold. I was was actually like this is it like but in the areas where like there are certain walls that you can't bash and so like yeah you can't you can't get the extra jump off this wall so now you have to find something to put you into the spin state so that you can start moving around but that like it does get kind of puzzly and i think that that's neat and i think it's a and I didn't think that there was much more meat on the Shovel Knight bones for them to really hang a whole sort of expansion on. And I think that this idea does a good enough job. My problem is that King of Cards also has the more sort of RPG-y stuff that the Shovel Knight games have had so far of finding

these special items that you can expend your energy on, like a lance that just fires straight forward or a mouse, an exploding mouse that will like run forward until it hits an enemy and pops. I don't think that that stuff plays as well with this core mechanic because it's like you have this puzzle element of like, what can I dash into? Where can I start my chain? What can I, where do I need to use this second this second dash and i feel like when you start adding like and also i can throw a lance through the air or also i can throw bombs through the air like it doesn't it doesn't like uh it's not it's not designed for it like you almost feel like you're upsetting the flow of the the design to integrate those sub weapons yeah i felt like that existed almost to make the game easier if you wanted it i found myself saving all of my cash for like you can get like different outfits that

have other features and i was not using my cash to unlock those abilities because the only time i really needed those abilities was if i was struggling and it's like oh i don't really want to do what they're sending me the only one i will say is kind cool. There's a bubble that you can get that's sort of like, it's almost like a little bit of a do-over. Like, well, I didn't quite get my dash far enough, but you can bubble and then dash again. So it can help you reach some hidden stuff and also make some jumps a little easier.

But there's like shields you can get. Like, you can get a shield. And it's like, yeah, theoretically, you could use that to get past the tough part but it's like it's not designed for it it almost feels like you're like uh breaking things a little bit like if you had like a double jump in portal 2 yeah i mean yeah it's not that um but that's not the entire game is it yes justin can you tell us about the cards a little bit because this seems like it would be your jam uh oh um incorrect um oh no okay no

great misjudgment on your part um so part of king of cards and and this isn't necessary like you don't i wouldn't say you like have to interact with a lot of this there are ways like you could work around not doing this at all if you didn't want to but there is a card game built into king of cards called joustus yes and you uh boy describing mechanics of card game so it's basically a nine by nine grid with gems on it and the grid sizes change but and the number of gems change but like there's a nine by nine grid with gems on it and you have to uh have a card over a gem to claim it and whoever has the most gems wins the trick is you cannot put a card directly onto a gem you have to scoot one of your cards push one of your cards onto the gem and other people can push your cards

your opponent can push your cards off the gem every card has arrows on the top bottom left or right that show the directions it can push some cards can push farther and they're more powerful but the game is really about getting cards that have a lot of flexibility in terms of which ways they can push and which ways they can't be pushed from because a card with an arrow I say left can't be pushed in that direction it will oppose it it's really hard i mean it took me probably four or five matches to even like grok what they were trying to tell me and even then i found it like very hard because i'm like really bad at slide puzzles and it does have a slide puzzly feel to it i i'll disagree with that because i despise slide puzzles and i really like joustice a lot.

Okay, it might have not just clicked for me. I don't think there's a way, suffice to say, like it's a very hard game to even like explain without seeing it. The closest I can think is like a territorial control like Go. I mean, I'm sorry, Justin,

you did the absolute best job you could do. And I think even then, if you haven't played it, it's almost impossible to sort of visualize it. I'll say in its defense, I think that it's actually a really deep game. And for me, it was my favorite part of the game. I liked Joustice way more than I liked the platforming side of things. Because in addition to the grid, there's one bumper dead zone outside of the arena, like a ring of dead zone that you can push cards into and just knock them out, but that's it, so, like, if that dead zone's full, you can't push

something else into that, so a lot of the game is, like, setting up corners for you to push your card into and lock it into place so that nobody else can get into it, and that, like, to me, I feel like that was, like, that added a strategic element that I really liked, and also, like, deck building building because you acquire new cards either through purchasing them from this vendor which is by far what I spent the most of my money on or whenever you beat an opponent you get to claim one of the the cards that they have left on the board but the same can happen to you so it's sort of like triple triad going and so like pretty early on in the game like i stacked my deck with like

cards that had arrows all over and double arrows which can supersede single arrow defenses and like had this deck and i started to play with it and i lost constantly because i defended against myself right like you can't if you have a card with arrows on all directions you're probably not going to be able to push that one because it's defending in all directions too so you also have to have like kind of a strategy of like well i gotta have some weak cards that are going to be able to push that one because it's defending in all directions too so you also have to have like kind of a strategy of like well i gotta have some weak cards that are gonna be like my pushers that are gonna it's so limited in mechanics but like i had a lot of fun like trying to crack like the best strategy for it my complaints are about jousters are twofold one i feel like mechanically um it felt and it wouldn't feel this way if you got really deep.

A lot of times it felt random. Like I felt like I was just playing the position instead of playing a strategy, which I think is like not uncommon for a lot of games with depth. I mean, like you can say the same thing about chess, right? Like if you're playing chess well, you're thinking ahead two moves.

You can see the opponent's cards, you know how they'll be able to answer you. But there's so many different variations. It's just like not easy to just sort of guess or not sort of plan uh until you get really deep in the other problem i had is just when i felt like i was really starting to get a pretty good handle they start introducing new mechanics into joustice things like there are bosses that can blow out a line of cards with a meteor strike. Or there are, later on as you progress,

they start introducing big boulders on the field of play and cards that have bombs in their arrows that can actually blow things up if you move them too far to the left or right. And to me, that kind of feels like if you're introducing new mechanics into your game maybe it's not that strong of a game like you know what i mean like you're not you know it's like it feels like monopoly hearthstone did that with with its dungeon boss fights so like and that's a very strong game so i don't know yeah i mean that's

a fair point i guess i'm i'm using game in like the literal sense of like, I wish I was just having fun playing this game that I understood rather than like folding in new stuff that I have to kind of be aware of. That feels more video gamey to me than card gamey, if that makes sense. I also think like it just comes too quickly. I think if you really understood,

if every player felt like they really understood the game and then you throw in those twists that's fun because it's like well i really have a grasp for this and now some spice but i had that same feeling where it was like i don't even know the game yet and now you're like removing cards from the table i'm still i still just want to know how to ride my bike let alone how to ride my bike off some really sick ramps. This is interesting because I feel like I was that person where I played every Joust. No, and this is not me saying that you guys are wicked stoops because you didn't learn the game fast enough. But for me, I played all the jousts matches that were you know available and

by the time like those new mechanics showed up like i had kind of started to get bored with the like just pushing cards thing like for me like it evolved at like a at a good pace uh where i guess it's just like you know to each their own uh i was also very much on board with this because i like an in-game trading card game i like an in-game mini game i've always liked like triple triad and all that shit did you play gwent no because i didn't really care for the witcher 3 which is its own sort of kettle of fish this game aesthetically the jousting stuff reminded me so much of the game boy color pokemon trading card game which i like adored oh yeah so i think there was like a certain element of nostalgia there for

me i think this one is a mixed bag. I think the strongest expansion is Specter of Torment, which if you've played Shovel Knight and didn't play that one, like do, because it's really, really rad. It's sort of the, it's probably what? Ninja Gaiden? Castlevania was the one that jumped out at me.

Well, no, you can like climb walls and jump and like dash like slash and stuff like that. That one was really good. But what impressed me about King of Cards is that they found more meat on the bones. After Specter of Torment, I was like, what else is there? What else can you do that's not going to feel so completely tired? While I think it's kind of a mixed bag, I don't think you can call it tired. I think it stands out very much as its own thing.

Yeah, I would also say just from like a value perspective, and I don't want to put like dollar amount equals good situation, but like the treasure trove, the Shovel Knight treasure trove, I'll say specifically on Switch because it's like perfect on Switch

is really one of the best things you could just get. It's just like a ridiculous amount of content for what you're paying. I didn't play the multiplayer mode, but like now there's like it's all right versus multiplayer now but there's also co-op through all of the campaigns which is outrageous it really is just like an astonishing collection they've made and it really does feel like this was their like dream game that they just got to keep building over multiple years whereas normally you would just release a game and be done with it.

I'm going to toss on one more recommendation before we wrap this segment, but I have a feeling a lot of people who listen to the show already have played Shovel Knight. Maybe they own the collection. If you enjoy this sort of game, you should really check out The Messenger. I feel like it is similarly a really well-made game

of this ilk that switches back and forth between 18 and 16 bit and i feel like nobody played this it is the the the sad version of this story where i think it is just as well made with care but came a little bit later and just didn't get a ride this wave quite as well yeah i mean that this certainly was in a window of like i feel like what retro city rampage i forget what what i feel like down hawaii the new one well that was a newer one i'm talking about like back in 2013 2014 like this the d there was like a bubble yeah of d makes and this one for me was was always the always the best one it's also worth noting like uh treasure trove came out in 2017 on switch it

was like a launch window game for the switch and if you own it you have king of cart like it just they just added that to it like for for free which is like the the value proposition is is pretty pretty wild but uh we uh we have many more kings to discuss uh but first we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back right after this. King of Cards is a pretty good king. The King Knight is very good. He's an adult-sized king. I didn't mention this, but the character is very funny. The animation is very funny.

He portrays a complete doofus. When you start a level, the flashing text on the screen is make way is what it says so uh king knight is very funny what are some of your guys favorite kings in video games i'll go first my favorite king i thought about this for a while um because there's been many many kings and i don't want to take any of yours but my favorite king is king ddd of the kirby games and now am I a huge kirby fan not really do I love those games they're okay they're not the best but there's something very interesting about king ddd and it's this generally when you have

an adversarial king you know a king bowser if you will they tend to be angry they tend to be curt with you uh when they're interacting with you there's something about king dd who dd who is effectively a large penguin in a bathrobe who is like very overjoyed with everything he's up to very thrilled to be there to have an opportunity passionate man he's a passionate man and he shows it not only in his smile which is large and enormous it's also his outfit which is like a neon series of colors i don't want to guess the colors because i'm colorblind but it's very bright and colorful and and cheery and uplifting and whenever i see him whether it's in a kirby game or even in smash brothers which he has obviously been a member of smash brothers for quite some time.

He's just like so exuberant and thrilled to be there that I just get like really jazzed. So I appreciate, I think there's a lot of like downer kings in video games and he is not one of them. I think there's a way of looking at Kirby's adventure where Kirby is a usurper. Yes. Who makes his way through like all of these different environments

to commit regicide at the castle. And he rolls up. And gluttony. And King Dedede is just, like, welcomes him with open arms and, like, doesn't sick the palace guard. I guess he does kind of in the form of, like, monsters and stuff. But then he rolls up and King Dedede is just like, okay, we'll settle this in the boxing ring. Yeah. Which seems fair.

And it's like, that's noble. There's a nobility. There's an honor to that that I really like. My favorite king in video games is by far King of All Cosmos from the Kanabari Damacy series of games. It is the type of king that I think I would like to be where he is just doing his best, but sometimes that means casting all of existence into oblivion

and then sending his dipshit son out with a cool ball to try and save it. I don't, I don't, he's a terrible person. Yeah, he's pretty lazy. He may be the funniest like character like of all time. I get very excited anytime I see King of All Cosmos in any games. I replayed, what was it?

Katamari Damacy reroll on the Switch, which I think came out last year uh and i got very very nostalgic for and i love the aesthetic of the like cut scenes in those games and i love the aesthetic of the king of all cosmos and queen of all cosmos and also very exuberantly dressed uh yeah and he you know he barfs up rainbows and uh tool tips for when you need help in a game. I really like that. King of all cosmos. Very big also. Big, strong body.

Huge body. Powerful body. I think the king of all... I'm looking at this list and king of all cosmos I think would beat any of the kings you've picked. His asses. He's generally supine though. He usually is just like not putting a lot of effort in.

Yeah, that's all he needs though. He still towers above the rest of you. That's true. You guys' weak, pathetic kings. Plant? Oh, I'm going to let Justin go first. Okay. Well, I love Burger King. He is delicious.

Obviously the most delicious of any of these kings. What? Wait. He's delicious? Well, he provides a lot of delicious flavors for everybody and surprises them with burgers. So Sneak King is the most prominent of the Burger King video games that if you're too young to remember this,

were sold for $3 at Burger King. You could buy it, which is a bargain, honestly. Pocket Bike Racer, Sneak King, and Big Bumpin' were the three Burger King games. I have two. Sneak King, and Big Bumpin' were the three Burger King games. I have two. Sneak King is probably the Burger King's number one most popular appearance. It is a stealth game where you sneak up on people and deliver them hamburgers. Here are two.

I want to share two things about Sneak King. First is these games came together because Microsoftrosoft and burger king met at the con film festival to accept awards for their advertising campaigns for respectively i love bees which was a halo to rpg and subservient chicken which was a burger king promotion and they got to talking at con and said you know what we should uh we should make some some sick ass games i want to read you guys a paragraph from wikipedia burger king's creative control over the game impacted its development to find a set of rules the first rule was that there was only one king character developers had the idea of the xbox avatars playing the game and finding

the crown to become the king but the idea was rejected because burger king said players could not become the king the next idea was to have one person be the king and the other players lay traps to interfere with his deliveries but this idea was rejected by burger king because the king could not be exposed to danger so that's why they made a stealth game in order to better capture the accuracy and the authenticity of the king's movements the king was flown to britain for motion capture and blitz games edward lindley describes sneak king as the riskiest game concept of the project because it is the appearance and antics of the king himself that give the game its humor and life without him the game simply wouldn't work until we had finished the king model and motion capture in the game we couldn't be certain the concept would gel so yes they flew the actual burger king to britain to mocap him for sneaking is it like the luchadors

where they can't like remove the, otherwise he loses all his power? I guess so, yeah. That's terrifying. Why would you need to sneak up on someone to deliver burgers? Wouldn't they accept them with open arms? I mean, yeah, but you're kind of undermining the conceit of the whole thing. That might expose them to danger, Russ. Oh, I see.

There can be no danger. That is reasonable. The danger of having his feelings hurt if they weren't hungry at that moment. That's a danger. That's reasonable. I really struggled to find a good king because the three of you took the best kings um turns out there are not many other great kings in video games after you take the burger king uh and the king of all cosmos and whatever fresh brought king k rule but then i remember from king's quest i remember special king uh king bowser in super mario brothers the movie played by dennis hopper this is a cop out

i don't know that he is referred to is he referred to as king bowser in the movie or i thought he was just sort of bowser the scale man. He was like a president. He is unquestionably the king. He is turning people into alien dinosaurs with itty-bitty heads on big ol' bodies. You know, like kings do. If he's not the king,

someone should have stopped him, right? Yeah. People would have voted him out. Yes. He would have lost the election, we can't share images but i just want to i want everybody who is listening to this show and not driving a vehicle right now to close their eyes picture a middle-aged dennis hopper with his tongue sticking out a prosthetic on it that makes it extra long and pointy and with the most bleached hair gelled

and it's pointing in five mini mohawks. It's a beautiful thing that Nintendo really did not like. What that tongue do though, Dennis Hopper. The Goombas too are worth checking out if you've never seen the Goombas from that film. Holy shit. Yeah, they're amazing. A brief side note.

Recently, I did some research into this movie. It turns out in an earlier script, there were two cameos from none other than Bruce Willis in this movie. Both of them taking place within a vent with Bruce Willis playing his role as uh John McClane from Die Hard they kept passing him in the vent I guess the Mario Brothers need to keep clamoring through and then they presented them to Bruce Willis and

surprisingly shockingly he turned it down I didn't know why but oh that's too bad that would have been fucking funny I have I have a photo of the art director because i uh once was planning a story about this movie a long time ago and it's the art director in miyamoto minutes before miyamoto actually saw the movie for the first time and it's the last time that miyamoto has seen anywhere near this movie we uh we ask for your uh thoughts when we go into an episode like this you can share them with us via email at mail at besties.fan or you can share them with us on

Twitter we're at the besties pod and if you follow us there you can find out what we're going to be discussing and share your feedback there as well we asked for your thoughts on Shovel Knight Jum said I think it's absolutely stellar that Yacht Club games continue to put so much time and dedication into expanding this game

over the course of so many years basically of no charge Jameson said it's really incredible how Yacht Club was able to do four completely different characters who all play so well and so different from each other and any other platform and character out there Brynald can't say enough good about Shovel Knight each campaign feels

so different both mechanically and in tone controls always feel good, even when mechanics are changed or taken away. Easily one of my favorite games of all time. Nick, each campaign just got better and better. They finally did the ultimate game in a game, a card game. A lot of love for Shovel Knight.

Yeah, I do think they're like- It's a nice story. Yeah, it's a really nice story. And this is becoming a little more common as you see these games really take off you look at a game like stardew valley or hollow knight where the game launches and um it is extremely extremely good when it launches but the support for it is enormous and because of the sales of the game it allows them to make like the game a much larger project. And eventually, you know, in the case of Hollow Knight, they ended up making like a full sequel, which is coming out this year.

So it does seem like there's this element. You know, we talk frequently about toxic fandom and stuff like that. But there's there's an upside, I think, to fandom, among other things. that but there's a there's an upside i think to fandom among other things and that is that people get to support the things they really love and the people that made them initially get to make dope shit that was like the one of the biggest hooks for kickstarter back when you know kickstarter was such a huge driver for indie game like debut splashes and i think you can count on you know one if i'm being generous two hands the the number of stories that ended up like this where the game got made and the like amount of financial and

emotional investment that went into those campaigns like actually paid off in a huge huge huge way and I don't know like maybe it was easier to do that back in 2013 or or so like i don't know i don't know how much how often that is happening these days maybe i'm just like not as well plugged in anymore because like for every shovel night i feel like you get a star citizen and maybe isn't the best uh yeah isn't the best example since the the community for that has like cons and shit like that so next week we are going to be talking about black mesa zen that is an expansion to a fan-made remake of a game that came out 22 years ago but january is fine you don't need to worry about that i mean it's not to be fair it's not really an expansion as much as it is if you bought Black Mesa, which was a remake of the original Half-Life.

You are now getting these after levels. The end of the game. Damn. I gotta say, Russ, this semantic argument is a fucking good energy to finish an episode out on. Thank you for quibbling. Thank you for the pedantry. If you want to check that out, do so.

And we can talk about it next time i assume you're already following and listening to us on spotify if you're here but if you just kind of stumbled uh onto the show we'd ask that you go ahead and hit that follow button and perhaps more importantly uh if you like this show you like video games uh tweet about it at the besties pod or tell your friends to follow and listen on Spotify. And thank you for being here. We really appreciate it. Yeah, I should mention if you are tweeting about it, it's very easy to link to the show. All you have to do is type in besties dot fan into Twitter and that will automatically drop in a cool little link directly to the show and a

little clip from the latest episode. So it's pretty cool. The future is here. I didn't even know that the future is here and it is the besties. So 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? 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!