The Besties - The Besties Indie Game Roundup - Fall 2023 Edition

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

Running out of games to play? That's wild, because there's a LOT of good stuff out there, but on the off chance that applies to you, we've got you covered! Join us as we discuss some of our favorite indie jams of the past few months; regardless of what genres you're into, you'll find something you like here, we bet!Games discussed: Blasphemous 2, El Paso Elsewhere, Chants of Sennaar, Pizza Possum, Japanese Rural Life Adventure, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, Satisfye Grips, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, Apple ArcadeSubscribe to our newsletter at besties.fan! 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!

video games make you boring listen to us because we've been playing so many games and it just rotted our fucking brains we don't have anything else to say like the intros where we talk about our non-games parents are right lives parents are right hey okay hey hey how about the weather see do you see what i mean how about the weather see now what if i'm like how about the megaman weather see now what if i'm like how about the mega man whoa oh i love this blue dude i love this blue dude i like how his gun feels i think it's a good feeling gun yeah russ how's your uh son you know but how's simon belmont oh fuck when he shoots that whip out and he's like oh my god right in dracula's face and dracula all like, nah, not cool dog. Hey, Plant, how's your spiritual walk these days? I mean, to ask you like where you're at

religiously. You know, it's kind of complicated because I was born Catholic. Earthworm Jim. I was born Catholic. Earthworm Jim. Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, plasma driven insane by the most stubborn graphics I do miss my kids though I miss earthworm jim

no shit not again Not again. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best games of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best games of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best games of the week. My name is Russell Strutman. Welcome to the besties. We're talking about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. I bet you didn't know that with every episode you get a free skit.

We don't advertise that enough. That in every podcast there's usually a free skit at the beginning. You know people call it a cold open. I call it a hot open because it starts hot. I call it a skit just now. We don't just have one game for you this week on this interactive entertainment buffet. There's a whole variety of electronic confections. Chris Plant, normally this is where I'd ask you to explain that,

but the concept of variety I don't think is something. No, like a potpourri, maybe. A potpourri, I believe. Potpourri. Potpourri. We're going to talk about that in all the games, all the hottest games right after this. This first one hurts.

Does it? Just about as much as it can. Does it hurt? Yeah. This one hurts a lot. Why is that? Yeah, it hurts me the most something could possibly hurt me. Why? Why?

It's causing me max pain. Oh, no. Maximum pain from this game. Oh, that's fucking funny, dude. That's funny, dude. They can use that, developer. Use that. That's yours.

Can I be honest with you guys? This is one of the games on this episode that I have not checked out yet. It's done bad. No, I'll be honest with you. I think it's just because the title made me think it was going to be a very thinky indie game experience. Sort of like a, like a Kentucky Route Zero or something. Like El Paso Elsewhere sounds like the sequel to Kentucky Route Zero. It does.

And honestly, tonally, it is not far off. Yes. From that game. honestly tonally it is not far off yes from um it's a 3d remake of kentucky route zero with guns a reimagining it does do the trippy el paso elsewhere is the game and it does do that trippy uh whatever that other game is called kentucky route zero thing of like middle america weirdness but there's also fucking zombies and slow-mo dodges and shit there is a there how about this the okay so just to start it is very much like max pain which is kind of antiquated i guess at this point uh the third one was a kind of a departure so what we're really talking about is like max pain one and two yeah from remedy um which were notable for uh being very john woo inspired like the the moves were

uh the move set was very much about like dodging shoot dodging slowing down time shooting guys while you're dodging and and that kind of like bullet what's the bullet ballet bullet time yeah bullet time yeah very matrix gung fu inspired too but yes thank you um and this is very very very much inspired by that um like not even not even just the gameplay like the entire like every aspect of the presentation was like clearly. Yeah. Like they are in love with Max Payne to the point where there's like an in-world like radio play or television like series that you can sit and watch in a room in the middle of a level. You're getting painkillers to like heal your health. It is Max.

It's weird. It to which like it i i wonder if they got to a point where they're like guys we can't hide this we should just lean in so far that it becomes like pastiche um but that is what it is and it is uh graphically i would say it's like even more it's not even max pain one levels because at least then you had sam lake's face levels because at least then you had sam lake's face smeared smeared across his polygons this is extremely like blocky uh it looks like ps1 like the sega saturn port of max pain yeah yeah it's a look though i gotta say i'm into it for someone who doesn't get normally go down for like i i like this this retro this this take on retro that is uh you know uh is just drawing on a different time period. I think it's very cool.

It seems like there are more of these coming out. We had, what was that? Neon White, I think, was also kind of pulling from this era. And yeah, I'm into it. I think it allows for some really creative art design while also just seeming different than pixel art that we've seen a million times or whatever. It starts as a Max Payne pastiche or whatever, but really it's like a love letter to Olive Remedy.

The worlds in this feel much more like control than they do anything else, or even the Xbox game that nobody played. Quantum Break? Quantum Break. Yeah, the worlds, there's like no ceilings in the rooms you're in, just kind of like phantasmagorical nothingness. And the reality breaks down a lot,

similar to, I mean, again, again every remedy game at this point um yeah it does a lot with with very little i don't know a better way of saying it like it also just to one one other thing the the feel wise definitely like a lot of max pain There is definitely like a little bit of that, like frenetic nineties first person action thing. Like a lot of the enemies and the, the actual encounters almost feel a little doomish or, or even serious Sam. Yeah. I was thinking Sam,

the waves of enemies, other ways it was pretty dumb enemies, like just tossing themselves at you um is uh is is is feels reminiscent of that there's also fucking rapping in it yeah there is rapping that's awesome like the tone the lead character uh is basically like a black monster hunter guy who's like fucking awesome uh voiced by the lead designer and at one point he just starts rapping in the middle of a level and it was like fucking great great i was like so into it every choice it's making is weird and i'm really i dig that it feels very fresh you like sit up and pay

attention because you don't really get a sense of what they're doing the the actual mechanics of the thing though are very basic i mean it's like run and get the green key to open the green door rescue the hostages get out it's just everything else around it from the world to the music to the narrative was like um really really sparse um and there there's a really like it actually makes a really good like the character kind of talking to you. Not just hearing his monologue, but kind of sensing that someone else is watching or listening, which I love that shit. Yeah, it's a pretty wild game.

Definitely worth checking out. It's, you know, it doesn't really have a lot of analogs except for... Can we talk about how it's like monsters and stuff? Yeah, vampires. Yeah, you don't fight humans. You can use a stake to wipe out several enemies that get close. That part doesn't feel great.

I think to get close enough to use the stake, enemies usually get hit in and there's not really a great feel for that. It doesn't feel very good to use the stake i think and it's mapped to the right thumb stick at least uh which is like a weird uh weird pull it could have used like a dash or something to make it feel a little more frenetic a la like the doom remake yeah but it does feel like a last resort kind of thing where

you're out of bullets yeah uh which i didn't struggle with very much it's pretty generous as far as that stuff goes and there's also like uh accessibility settings so you can like turn off like any of you could have like infinite bullet time or infinite ammo if you don't even want to think about it you just want to experience the story and vibe with it which is cool by the way and really well acted and yeah the voice acting is like fucking great and it's they also do like great cut scenes with like really clever editing like jumping through time and doing jump cuts and stuff that i don't know presentationally it just like feels like a really special game that i really dug uh if you have any nostalgia for that

that sort of thing at all i think you'll really dig it hey let's talk about chance of senar okay this is a fucking good game man write it down right now because you're it's very easy to forget this title i had to have someone say it to me three or four times before i could remember it and even if you say it you don't necessarily know what they're saying because it's like homonyms and shit of senar well senar is i don't i don't know what that word is two n's two a's two a's two a's um i played this one yesterday sort of obligatorily where i was like well i i want to come into besties being able to talk about some of the stuff i haven't given this one a shot yet doesn't seem like my jam let's play it for a half hour and then whoops it was two and a half hours later and i was uh deep deep deeply into it uh it's it is scratching the um you know mystery game itch the curse of the golden idol or uh return of the obra din like that level of kind of piecing together stuff bit by bit and unraveling a big mysterious

world as you go um does someone want to take a swing at explaining the kind of core conceit yeah chance of cenar i'll give it a shot so you're kind of dropped in this world and throughout the world there are symbols that you'll read on signs or someone will speak to you in these symbols and obviously you don't know what the symbols mean but they do have direct correlation to actual words in english or i guess if you were localized whatever language yeah so the simple example the first puzzle you run into there's a switch and the switch has two sets of symbols and if you push the switch towards one sets of symbols. And if you push the switch towards one set of symbols, a door opens. You push the switch towards another set of symbols, the door closes.

So, you know, those symbols are open door and closed door because the second set of symbols is the same in both. So there's like logic leaps that you're making to sort of assume what these symbols mean and then at certain points in the game you'll open up a notebook and they'll be like hey what do these symbols mean and you literally have to like write out what the symbols mean and they'll basically confirm if you're right or not similar to uh over din the way that if you fill in like a whole page correctly or what was it was three three different entries correctly it would like lock them in as you go through chance of cenar you are sort of like solving these little pictogram puzzles and if you can solve a whole page then it will lock those in and confirm it and then

you know if if you're talking to someone and you don't have all of the words translated it can be weird like there's syntax in these different languages for like plurals uh and so if you don't have that it can be like soldier soldier block door yeah if you have all the things uh translated then it will automatically sort of change it to soldiers or soldiers have blocked the door uh and and that's like pretty much it like there's other sort of environmental puzzles that aren't as interesting to me uh there's like a slide puzzle you have to do fairly early on that i'm like okay whatever uh not not especially challenging um just kind of seems like padding but the core mechanic of going through this world and like tentatively filling out your notebook based on what you think the words mean and then sort of confirming them later is very, very compelling.

And I found myself digging through every single item and talking to every single person and reading every single sign trying to fill out my pokedex so to speak yeah because you really are like every little piece on the wall or every word you speak is a slight clue to what you're trying to accomplish like where the game gets wild is that there's different sort of casts of uh like citizens in this world and each one has their own language yeah so after you finish sort of the first arc of the game, you are somewhere where people are speaking a completely different language. Now the game becomes about translating this one set of glyphs to the one that you already know and trying to figure out like what the commonalities are. But like it's not just one to one. This word is this word. Again, like there's different syntax rules.

Like, in this language, they have a special symbol that pluralizes the word that follows it. And so, like, all of a sudden, like, the structure of the sentences becomes different. That is, as far as I have gotten into the game, is like this second sort of arc, second language. But it really has enraptured me. Yeah, I got super into the trying to translate the language in Tunic. But in that case, it wasn't required at all to beat the game. It was just like a nice bonus if you kind of figured it out. And here, obviously, this is the whole game is like figuring out the languages

but uh i think the focus of that um just makes it really rewarding and like awesome when you like it all clicks and oh shit i totally understand what that guy was saying it sounds like really intimidating is it is it does it flow more naturally it flows very it gets it starts so basic yeah okay open close and then you know moving on from there i think the only time that it got kind of overwhelming for me is uh i i should have been you that you have the ability to like make guesses in your notebook about symbols like i'll put this down temporarily and then when you see that in the chat. Right.

But I wish I'd been doing that more from the beginning, like kind of trying to guess at or at least make a hypothesis about this symbol so that later, you know, you start to see it pop up when it's it's grayed out. But you see your word that you've like sort of drafted in there and you see if your word kind of makes sense. I wish I had done that from the beginning because that involved a good amount of backtracking once I realized that I should have been doing that from the start. And typing like that does not feel great on the Steam Deck. It's not very fun to stop your game and type this word in on that. Yeah, that's fair. I don't necessarily know.

I guess if you were playing on console, it would be similar. Yeah. Not a huge deal, but it was enough to discourage me from doing it. I didn't want to get in there and fool with it. Very cool, though. It is a different type of puzzle game than one I've ever played before. There was a very early kind of random stealth sequence that i didn't know if it would be that kind of scared me because i didn't know if that would become like a more prominent feature in the

game i've run into a couple of them they are not that um like mechanically complex uh the area i'm in now i am pretty much kill on site um so it just requires me to like not run towards the sword wielding uh jerks uh who who populate the world and sort of stick to the shadows um but i i it has not that still sequence involves pressing like two buttons so it's it it is not yeah i just thought it was weird like i didn't know if it was like to set me up for a lot more stuff. Yeah, I do not know. It has not been a heavy emphasis so far. Like I said, there's some environmental puzzle stuff that is just kind of, I don't know, checks the boxes. But it hasn't been enough to kind of get in my way.

it hasn't been enough to kind of get in my way. And it does deliver sort of frequent moments that I love in games like this where you, you know, pieces start to cascade in how they fit into place. And it makes you feel like the smartest person who ever lived. It's very, very cool. I also just really like the aesthetic of it.

The world is beautiful and like, you know, I guess just a really unique art style to it i would love to get a sprint a sprint would be good there is fast travel which i do appreciate um i just kind of always would love a sprint yeah and a you know a like a rifle and a double jump yeah if i could eat blood to get stronger game plus gyms yeah if i could turn into a hawk that would be great hey speaking of all these great mechanics let's take a break and we'll talk about a game that has some of them now we mentioned blasphemous 2 previously i i mentioned i think i was the only one that had played it oh no sorry griffin had played it earlier and then kind of bounced off of it for

whatever reason and so i'm very curious to hear what has uh caused him to return to it and and what the moment was when it all kind of clicked for him because it is definitely one of the best 2d metroidvanias i've ever played 2d metroidvania with like i thought it would be soulsier than it is it's more of a soul's light i mean that if that's fair to say they're aesthetically and you know the idea of like resting at uh checkpoints and the enemies respawn and stuff like that. But things that are at the base of a Souls thing I don't think are necessarily as much of a focus as the Metroidvania aspects of it. I bounced off of it originally because I played it for a few hours and did not feel like I was getting any stronger throughout the game, which is, I guess, a failing of my own part because there are plenty of ways to get stronger. in exchange for more flask charges that let you heal more or strengthen those flask charges or increase your max health

or your max fervor, which is like the mana that you use to cast spells in the game. None of that stuff is like mandatory. None of that stuff is like signposted in a way where you can't miss it, right? And so when I first played Blastmasters, I was running around and I'm picking up,

I just, my pockets were jangling with empty chalices and rosary knots and like a bunch of shit that I did not know what to do with. And I think what made it click for me this time was just sort of realizing that anytime you pick up something that it sort of files away in the quest items category of your inventory, pretty much all of that shit you can turn into someone to get stronger. Or get like a new, you get these little statuettes that you put on a mantle piece that unlock like different bonuses. Like there's one that make your melee attacks stronger and then uh if you pair them up you can unlock these hidden

resonances they call them which like have these huge crazy effects like giving you a barrier of thorns every time you do the dodge um all of that stuff like i don't know it once it clicks and you start hunting down those items specifically to like get the kind of upgrades that you want it was a fucking blast and i got i i breathlessly played through all the blasphemous two in like a week or so uh and in fact have dived into blasphemous one giving it another chance um it is a much harder game. Yeah. With way fewer kind of like empowering mechanics.

It's also like a stiffer experience. Like you can see where all the budget and like time went in on the sequel. Yes. The first one did like incredibly well. So I'm not surprised that they had a lot more time and effort put into this one. But yeah, i'd be

interested going back to the original would be a little bit rough for me because so much of the sequel is like refining that experience yes there's certain things like in blasphemous one if you fall into a pit or on onto spikes you die instantly yeah which makes platforming real fucking frustrating and hard uh that is not true in blasphemous 2 you just like take a bit of damage and then respawn next to it um i i yeah blasphemous 2 really really feels incredible like combat every combat encounter feels so good the bosses are bonkers um and yeah it's funny that justin was saying that it's not as soulsy because i think the aspects that are very soulsy are the amount that it doesn't directly tell you about that make the game

much harder if you don't kind of dive into it or i guess look stuff up yeah but but i actually think like a lot of this game can be figured out if you are patient with it like i played it before launch so there weren't any guides and realizing oh these kind of enemies are weak to mystical damage so i'm gonna like equip a mystical boosting thing yeah like there a lot of that stuff makes the game much more manageable from a difficulty standpoint but you do have to like kind of meet it as own terms i will say on just to counter that uh i i stopped playing it because there were no guides when i first got the code and using the guides really helped me out because there's a lot of stuff that smooth the edges off of the thing for example there is a way that you can unlock fast travel between every like checkpoint there are like these little fast travel

gates there's like a handful of them throughout the world that you can use to pop around the map, but there's also a way to unlock fast travel between any, they call them pre-dues, any checkpoint throughout the game. I don't think I knew that. Also, the vibe of the game is unlike anything. It's all Spanish Catholicism inspired.

There's more voiced lines, that you would expect it like really it's it feels high touch um there's a there's a dark a darkness to the world like a um i don't know how to put it a sinister nature to virtually every single thing that exists in the world uh That even when you meet someone, you're like, oh, this is just a lady who is very big, who takes cups and makes my flasks stronger. But then eventually she becomes more and more sort of flayed as time goes on. And you're like, oh, that sucks to see.

That's very upsetting. Okay. Just to clarify something, just because I think this is interesting. For me, I'm realizing now the thing about like for me to say a game is actually like has that soul's DNA at its core. I think you have to have like this idea of like XP, like losing experience or losing something of great value money or souls or your currency losing something like that um when uh on death like it's that idea of like i should i should push myself farther but the penalty is very high if i push but that like risk reward calculation

i think that is like the one thing so when i didn't say it was like it like souls that is that is the core mechanic there is for what it's worth like that mechanic is in the game you there is a punishment for death yeah it's called yeah but it's not it's it's fixable like it's a fixed cost sure punishment and it's not really like i don't know it's not that big of a deal it's not even a punishment too because if if you die you accrue what's called guilt which like reduces your mana bar but it also increases uh the amount of like currency that you get from killing enemies so like it kind of makes sense to have a little bit of that as you go through the world because it can actually help you out in a way there's like a risk reward system to it they also like reward you for removing your guilt you'll get like new

unlocks for just like paying the guy that'll remove your guilt yeah which is it's just like filled with like these little touches that didn't need to be there there's like a whole did you get like the true ending stuff i did yes okay but you used like a lot of guides to get there uh yeah probably okay i mean it's there's like a whole like meta game of like a riddle that you have to follow that like takes you all over the map oh right like get a true ending which is not required or anything. Fresh out of here nagging you on the guides. No, it wasn't a nag. You used a lot of guides.

I was going to say, the reason I did not see the true ending, and this is actually a little bit of a critique for me, is I think it's a little too hard to find all those steps on your own without some sort of map or something. You should try this thing called Google.

I know, but I wanted to see if I could do it without that. That's where I go for all my great guides. Thank you. You're welcome. I'm not flexing. I'm just saying it was a thing. I was trying to let you off, Russ. That was your off ramp, complimenting Polygon. You were supposed to stop talking. You're free.

I'm free for you. Great website. Great game. Great boss fights uh if you love metroidvanias uh definitely unquestionably play this fucking game it rules yeah okay the last game i'm going to talk about is called pizza possum and you're a possum who runs around and wait for it he eats pizza a whole bunch of listen lot. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll catch you next week here on the Besties. Pizza Possum is a bizarre arcade game. It's only like seven bucks. It's like a little mini indie.

Gotta wish you had said it's $70. This is a $120 game called Pizza Possum. If you get the collector's set with the feelies. But the ultimate team mode makes it so worth it the night vision goggles you see like a possum uh you uh the whole game takes place in a city that looks like like a mediterranean like cliffside city and it's an open world environment it's not huge but it is all open and the whole objective is you eat food it's not just pizza it's a bunch of different food and but there's a bunch of dogs on this city that will chase you down if they spot you eating food and basically set you back

to the last checkpoint and once you eat a certain amount of food you earn a key that can then unlock new areas of the map but previous areas are still viable for eating food so you're constantly circling back on old areas to eat more food to then progress to new areas it is kind of a great like if you're looking for a game to play with a kid great co-op opportunity for kids it does support two players uh i think the other character is a raccoon which is also an appropriate uh food eating creature what uh what platform i played it on pc i'm not sure what other platforms is on but it's definitely on pc um and i had a great time it was just like a very light silly silly, kind of low stakes arcade style game. Not something that you would play for like 10 hours

or anything like that. But I think if you're looking for something to kill a half hour with, you know, a kid, or you're just looking to fuck around, like Pizza Possum, fucking great. So much fun. I think we talked about a lot of indie games we might have a few more unhonorable mentions but before we get into that should we dive into some

reader mail i would love that let's do it okay let me pull open the mail bag oh there's just so much mail in here today the first letter that's just sitting right on top is from sophie and it says hey besties i'm a longtime fan of griffin's pokemon y nuzlocke run and i was wondering if any of you more realistically griffin had any recs for other nuzlocke's to watch on youtube or elsewhere happy halloween you know it's funny russ actually introduced me to this conceit by sending me some Jaden Animations Nuzlocke videos, which are great. They're like 15 minutes each and they are animated retellings of her adventures in Pokemon Nuzlocke. They are fantastic. Henry loves them too.

Henry has watched, I're, they are fantastic. Henry loves them too. Henry has watched, I think all of them. Um, so they are a very, not like they're not, uh, you know, playthroughs necessarily,

uh, cause they are incredibly truncated. Um, but they are super duper entertaining to watch. I will always sort of lean over his iPad whenever I hear him watching one to, uh, to tune in. I think those are the only ones that I've really ever watched, though.

Let's see what else I got here. I got this one from Sean. It's a very large letter written in Sanskrit. Luckily, I can translate it. My wife and I recently got an Apple family plan, giving us new access to Apple Arcade. Can you recommend a top five to ten list for Apple Arcade games? Top five to ten?

That's a lot of games. That's a lot. Let's do five. Let's do five. Let's do five. I'm going to say Ridiculous Fishing. We've talked about it before on the podcast. It's definitely one of the best on there that I have played.

I'm going to say. What the Golf? Ooh, What the Golf is good and What the Car. That can count as two. That's great. Also, a great game to play with kids. What the Golf, What the Car might be Mosey's favorite video game. It's not called Sonic.

I'm going to say Card of Darkness. Oh, yeah. Card of Darkness is great. Yeah. off what the card might be mosey's favorite video game that's not called sonic um i'm gonna say card of darkness oh yeah that game great yeah zach age and uh art by uh adventure time creator pendleton ward that one's great uh pocket card jockey that one's really cute hell yeah you haven't played that that's a fun one there's also like dead cells on there now. Stardew Valley is on there now. Yeah, I mean, once you get into like Dead Cells, Slay the Spire, like you're kind of good on those games. Grindstone. Grindstone.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a very, I tell you, it's weird, man. The Apple Arcade thing, I've been a subscriber since it started. And not to brag, but I've been a subscriber since it started. not to brag, but a lot of my subscribers haven't started. What used to be a really like killer way of filtering out, even more valuable than the access was like the filtering of the app store to just like choice nugs. That has gotten like a lot more uneven lately.

There's a lot more solitaire-type things and stuff like that, like filling the Apple Arcade at this point. I also got to say, the more I go, the more infuriating it gets that you have to sit through the fucking Apple Arcade thing every time that you start an Apple Arcade game. They just close almost immediately,

and then you got to see the stupid logo again. Sayonara Wild Hearts is also on there. Oh, yeah. Good pick, good pick, good pick. I got another letter here, a little tiny one I'm just gonna unfold, and it is from Georgia. Would you guys be interested in playing

a Danganronpa game or the Game Master Detective Archive Ring Code? Yeah. I mean, I have. Yeah, well, you... Is this the beginning of a sales pitch? Do you have it? What's it gonna take to get you inside of a Danganronpa?

I played every Danganronpa. I played Master Detective Archives earlier this year, but fell off of it because it's a switch exclusive and the performance is pretty shitty so um yeah that was the one where it was like had some robot stuff uh no no that was the one where you went into a mystery dungeon essentially to try and solve mysteries and you were guided by a ghost who was sort of building the dungeon around you.

It's basically Danganronpa. It's like solving murders via minigames. Justin, you might think of AI Somnium Files. Yes, that's what I'm thinking. Could that be where we are? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, maybe we can talk about those sometimes. I don't know if we will have time before Halloween, but if we do, it would be fun to do a B-segment where we talk about some of our favorite.

I'd love to go through the Nonary game with you guys sometime. Hell yeah, dude. Let's just do the Nonary games. We got time for like one or two more questions? Yep. Perfect. This one is from Casio. This is a retro game question, probably mostly for Griffin,

but I'd be thrilled to hear everyone's perspective. I recently managed to purchase an analog pocket in transparent purple. Hell yeah, don't me too. I'm wondering what games y'all would recommend for it. Thanks. So before we recommend games... For my call of history? Is this what you're asking us? Well, no, it's of the

platforms that the... I feel like you're going to set some helpful boundaries for us. Is that what you're doing? No, I'm mostly going to talk to Griffin directly. Griffin, hey, don't you already have an analog pocket? Are they sitting next to each other?

The purple one's not here yet. They just went on sale last Friday. But the one I have isn't transparent purple. That's fair. I don't know what it is that is surprising you about this. It's not surprising. I just want you to make sure that you're looking inward at times. No, yeah, no, I am.

But I'm a grown man and so you know i make i make the decisions that are best for me atomic purple decisions i'll probably mod one of them yeah um that's sort of that rationalizes it i'm into that rational uh okay i mean uh fuck man uh i mean castlevania pretty much all the castlevania gba games right especially aria of sorrow yes an all-timer uh i'm looking at my collection right next to me uh final fantasy tactics advance can't beat it uh metro mario golf games both the game boy color mario golf and the game boy Advance Mario Golf, but amazing. Both Metroid games,

I would say Minish Cap. Very, very good. Can't go wrong. Golden Sun, man. Golden Sun is real good. I'm exclusively talking about GBA games because I think they sort of far outpace Game Boy Colorames in terms of

quality okay gba sick you run fast punch fast it's all fast um yeah i the one i usually come back to probably the gba game i've played the most by a pretty wide margin is uh castlevania area of sorrow because it's like maybe my favorite Metroidvania game ever. Do you like it more than Dawn of Sorrow? Yes, I think so. They're very close. They are quite close. Wario Ware Twisted?

Nobody has that game though. That'd be wild. That'd be wild. Yeah, great. I got one other quick question that is on this like, have we talked about this before on the show? This one is from Don asking, on the subject of indie games, can I trick the besties into playing RimWorld if I say it's a Stardew Valley mod? Have any of you played RimWorld? I've tried playing it a couple times.

I struggle with this genre. I guess I don't struggle with it I just don't like it very much if I say I've played a lot of games like this and haven't enjoyed any of them that's not a struggle as much as it is just a personal taste thing but like can you describe what RimWorld is?

oh geez it is a sort of outer space settlement simulator where you uh are are you have like a team of people that have different kind of um characteristics and traits uh and you settle on these different planets and you have to try and make a go of it. But the challenges presented by those planets are different. The planets are procedurally generated. And like some of the traits of your colony

are good and helpful and some of them are very bad. It's very much like Dwarf Fortress, which is the other game in the genre that I've really made a go of a few times. And, uh, it,

it hasn't clicked for me on paper. Very cool. Like there's random events and there's like a, uh, like an AI storyteller that, uh, you know, as you play through and try to scrap out a life on these harsh planets,

like a story kind of, uh, is, is created, but it is i i find that it is like the stuff i don't like about the sims like managing your different meters and stuff it is that times a thousand and it just um i i it that is not to say it is a bad game i have heard rim world is is quite good um it's just i don't know that amount of micromanagement that these types of games require is just not very enjoyable for me um so yeah it does seem very intimidating that is why i've been scared of it and yeah one of those games that i'm sure once you put a hours in, probably one of your favorite games of all time.

But I think, yeah, this might be one of those. There are certain games I feel like just by dint of how we do this show and our age and responsibilities, it's hard for us to ever get this deep into a game. 141,000 reviews on Steam. Jesus Christ. Overwhelmingly positive. Yeah, I just want to say this person asked a simple yes or no question, and we have just absolutely belabored it beyond all belief. You are so...

It's a simple no. It's a hard no. It's a simple no. This is just a yes or no. Yes or no. No. No. Let's go right on to our honorable mentions and keep this train moving.

Yeah, baby. Sorry to objectify you like that plan. I didn't mean to No, I honestly when it comes from you, I'm okay with it and I feel, you know, flattered. You know what I'm okay with? The fact that I finished Phantom Liberty.

Yeah, me too. Yeah. I just wanted to say, with obviously like can't get into anything spoilery, but I do want to say that you are asked to make one or two pretty giganto choices in that DLC. And Griffin and I had wildly different experiences, not from a narrative perspective. I mean, obviously that, but just in the things that we did, just completely different. Mine was a pretty big bummer of a stealth sequence, and Griffin's sounded pretty sick. That's pretty fucking tight, yeah.

Yeah, so I finished that DLC. That's the Cyberpunk DLC for people that needed to remember what it was called. I finished the DLC, and after it ends, opens up like a different ending for the main game that you can kind of unlock. And that bugged out for me and I couldn't do it. Me too. I had a pretty bad bug also. I had a door that just didn't open that I couldn't get through. You know, it's deep in in that code you can't rid yourself

fully of cyberpunk yeah it's it's yeah that was a and the the final sequence i played was a pretty big bummer but uh other than that very cool dlc yeah i think the storytelling and like character development it was a hard it is one of the harder choices like not black and white choices that a um i think a game has kind of presented me before i was very very torn about who to kind of side with and um what to go for and uh yeah it was neat i kind of wish i had started fresh because now like that i finished phantom liberty i'm getting calls from characters that i did not meet because i well i'm i guess i met them the first time i played the game um but now i have no no no fucking clue who any of these people are um but yeah judy judy you know

judy yeah it is funny though you you can call characters that are important in the main game while you're doing the DLC, obviously, because it's like part of the whole thing. But some of the characters have absolutely nothing to do. And they sound so fucking surprised. Like you can call Judy and she's like, what's up? Like, what are you into? And you're kind of like just idly chatting with her about the DLC. Like, yeah, it's this weird, like different people and stuff with her about the dlc like yeah it's just weird

like different people and stuff and she's like oh that's cool yeah call anytime i guess but it's like i'm not i don't really have anything to do here but uh we have another indie a couple another indie games to talk about in this honorable mention yeah y'all are gonna do japanese rural life adventure for resties so we don't have to go too far into it but me and juice have both been getting real into that one um i'm i'm i'm i'm quite enamored with it it's apple arcade so yeah another apple arcade game dimension you're looking for another one of those it it really takes a lot of this the sort of life sim stuff that you would get in a stardew valley or a you know i guess animal crossing and really sort of simplifies it to a

one-touch format um the game is very much about like you have a book like a checklist of things you are doing to renovate this house in the japanese countryside um and it's it's very zen like in how it's like okay well i'm to go smash up some rocks and then lay them gently down to create a koi pond. And I might have to take a few naps along the way. But once I do that, I can unlock this shrine that will help me get a bamboo stick that I need to do this thing. It's not challenging at all. There's not a creative aspect to it, I should mention. It's worth mentioning that as opposed to Stardew or Animal Crossing,

there's not a lot of like, put these things wherever you want. It's a lot more on rails than that. Which I love. I think it's fantastic. I don't want to have to design a farm, thank you. Fresh, what are these controller things that you've been fiddling with? Yeah, so years ago when the Switch came out, I remember struggling to find something that made the Switch somewhat ergonomically okay to hold while you're in handheld mode, which I mostly played in. And I remember years ago I tried, I think it was called the zen grip back then which was made by satisfy um and it was good it definitely made the switch

easier to hold the downside was every time i docked the switch i needed to remove the grip off of it and that was a total drag so i kind of just like lived in my drawer and i never really touched it again um they reached out recently because they had a new version of it that basically allows you to dock it and so i've been using that which is really nice just because all the grips that i normally use on switch like the uh split pad pro for example yeah don't have the 3d rumble that is like proprietary to nintendo controllers and with all the actually genuinely making such a great use of that feature i know you wouldn't want to miss out on i mean all the first party games actually do make a great use

of that feature i know there's some cynicism there but they nintendo first yeah uh so i did actually miss those features so being able to go back and have like an option that was using the rumble of the grips, but have like actually good ergonomics has been really nice. Yeah, I use that split. Is the split grip the one? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I use this, this Hori split pad pro thing. It feels a lot better, but it kind of, it, it fucks the, the, the silhouette of the thing

so badly that it almost like starts to feel kind of silly. I mean, the silhouette becomes like a Steam Deck silhouette. Yeah, it's a lot. Yeah, it's very it's very chunky. It does not slide into bags or cases. Well, yeah, it is more comfortable for me to use. Yeah, which is to say good segue, because they also made a grip for this steam deck which i'm gonna struggle to even pronounce what they call this grip it's called the stealth grip but there's

a y in the middle of it crazy um but i am also like kind of there have been moments where i've struggled with the ergonomics of the steam deck i think it's better than the switch but still there are certain like buttons like the back buttons that i've struggled to hit and so they basically made a thing that you slot the steam deck in same idea and it has been like a dramatic improvement in terms of the ergonomics of the steam deck russ i'm looking at this thing man it's huge i want to believe you but this really turns it into a it's very big a lot yeah it's like laptop adjacent at this point i mean i don't think it's that much bigger than a normal steam deck which is already very big so you're already making a commitment for it um i mean it's sort of up to you i know justin you were recently talking about how

like a little old grandma you use a lap pillow to play steam deck games this might make it so maybe if i added some bulk yeah it would help i there are like a lot of buttons that i like previously found to be annoying to use on the steam deck and using this has actually helped a lot um to it does i could see how if you were supporting it a bit more like if your support was coming a bit more from the grip versus the like supporting the weight of it you know what i mean it seems like you could like maybe the friction this would add i could see how that might be a little bit easier on the on the wrist this adds like a dramatic amount of it's like you're holding sandpaper almost it's like so frictiony boy you're giving this a good

try to hire you away it's it's a fine grit sandpaper it's a big thick it makes it bulky and like sandpaper and it's only $50 we got to lose you must say i liked it uh i i've been using it and it hasn't uh been removed since i uh attached it so if you're looking for a slightly different ergonomic experience on your steam deck uh worth checking out i'm pre-ordering now yeah uh i have been playing a game called moon ring that uh fresh recommended to me and i think uh every indie developer has recommended to fresh it is free free dollars on uh on steam right now and it is made by one of the former developers on Fable. And it is a Commodore-esque, like, old, old, old school RPG, but with just infinite quality of life improvements that make it actually enjoyable and playable versus, like, going back and trying to play a Commodore game, which especially if you've never played them before, good luck. It's very charming we're going to talk about it i think quite a bit more on resties um because i know frosh has strong

feelings so i'll leave that there and then also i saw eyes without a face have any of y'all ever seen this movie no or heard of it it's like a it's a horror movie, a French horror movie from, I don't know, like 1960 or something. But it kind of falls in line with like universal horror movies, like Universal Studios. So if you like Frankenstein or Dracula or Invisible Man, any of those, this is like very similar vibes. I had resisted it for a while because it plays with like disfigurement, which is a thing that I usually am not a fan of in movies. But overall, I thought this was like,

it was just really interesting. And if you are like me, a person who's looking for just something new to watch during October of each year, I would say this is worthwhile and you should put it on your list. Wow. That's a lot of entertainment for everyone to ingest. We did it.

Don't eat them. Don't eat the game. Don't eat the game, especially not the Switch ones. They taste bad. I wanted to thank the following people for writing reviews for the besties on Apple Podcasts. We have Archibald Yates, GamerD945, and oh boy, Chunt Grunt punch is i guess what i'm gonna say out loud yeah well done uh next week we're gonna be talking about assassin's creed mirage the return of the assassin's creed franchise i have not played one i guess i played valhalla but i hadn't played one

in quite a while since then and i think think we're going to be jumping back in. Well, I'm, I'm excited. I'm excited to check it out. I know nothing about it. That'll be up next. And so much more.

You never know what you're going to get an episode of besties. So be sure to join us again next time. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games. Besties!