The Besties - The Future of Video Games (In Demos)

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

The Besties take a trip into the not-so-distant future of video games, digging into a batch of awesome demos from Steam Next Fest. Whether you want to live the life of anime-style Duke Nukem or an alternate reality 19th century nun, you will be satisfied! 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 have Bellatro dreams, and it's a real freaking problem, dudes. I keep having dreams of these jokers in my head. Not a joke. I got full-blown Tetris effect going on, but instead of pleasant sort of geometric shapes, it's 150 clowns, and they want to quiz me about numbers, and they want to yell at me about the arrangement of my clowns and how I'm not optimizing my chip multipliers.

Are they locked to the cards, or do they come out of the cards? Well, fuck, Russ, they didn't before, but thank you for teeing up that killer. For unlocking that. Oh, we got some notes from the producers. Oh, yeah, it looks like the clowns are going to come out of the cards now. Thank you so much, Russ, for that helpful tip. Griffin, would you be interested in making a rewrite of Pac-Man Fever that is just about Bellatro, Bellatro Fever?

Do you think you could do that for me and professionally master it and record it and get buckner but not garcia because garcia died on it um it feels wrong to do it without garcia if i'm being honest um and also it feels like you're putting me on the spot you're like trying to make me do a parody song live and it's not live like not live this is something i want you to take out no but like clearly the audience is listening to this going like oh damn here comes another one comes another one of Griffin's great songs. And I don't, I genuinely do not have it in me today. Yeah, I wasn't asking for that. I did Google like how to cure Bellagio fever. And I found that there's a real article on parade.com.

They do have 150 Joker quotes to make you appreciate the madness and put a smile on that face. Okay, good. Maybe this should help a lot. I think like 150 Jokers, that must be a Bellatro article. It has to be. Could you maybe give me one? If I could just get one out of the water. Give me a number.

Give me a number between one and 150. 150. Okay, great. The last one gotta be the best the best one he probably has to click through like 10 pages of clickbait ads that's probably the best one you'll never believe what honey boo boo looks like now okay are you ready melissa mccarthy dead that's like half of mine. No matter the situation, always wear a smile. Joke. Oh, that's nice.

That's actually pretty good from the Clown Prince of Crime, I think. That ought to do it. Oh, I feel myself calming down already. Oh, good. They're coming out of the cards.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy. I know the best demo and maybe game when it comes out of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best alternate history 19th century video game of the week. My name is Russ Frusher, and I know the best game of the week. Hello, folks. Welcome to the Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment It is a video game club and just by listening you my friend have become a member special special welcome to all our Buddies joining us from patreon you can support us there patreon.com forward slash the besties If you like what you hear, there's a lot more of it there

Exclusive to you And we appreciate it. And the rates are very reasonable. Today, we are giving a reminder that video game gods, they giveth and they taketh away. We have been granted a reprieve, Fred, from Unicorn Overlord. A temporary reprieve of temporary reprieve as a state a stay of execution of fun as we uh are dipping into the the hottest latest and not yet released games in the world of steam russ fresh dick how did you hit upon this great idea uh we didn't get unicorn overload code in time and steam next Fest had just happened,

and there was a big list of demos. I was like, we should just play these demos. And so that's how it happened. Wow. That's really behind the curtain. Have we talked about how Unicorn Overlord sounds like a Jeff Minter-ass game, if ever I did hear one?

Yeah, can this run in Winamp? Is that part of it? Yeah, sure. We're going to talk about that and so much more right after this oh before we get into the demos i wanted to mention this one thing uh we already mentioned the patreon at the top of the show the next bonus bracket battles episode is live on the patreon right now if you haven't listened to it and you're a subscriber you can do that right now it is called the best first levels wherein we duke it out on the best first levels of all time uh we had a lot of fun with this one as usual it was

another late night record and uh things got a little buck wild here is a clip from that episode. Okay, so just to recap, most fun to play, we're saying, what, Bloodborne? Yes. Most fun to play is Bloodborne, yes. Oh, well then there's no need for the... Oh, no, no, no, most fun to play is Resident Evil 4. Right, that's what I thought. Yeah, if Resident Evil is most fun to play,

then Bloodborne takes most narratively or visually interesting, or the sounds. Now wait, you said that you would try to skip that level when you could how is that most fun to play i think it's most fun to play but griffin said that it's like just as a definite and then he said he can't well we're lumping it justin if you'll remember at the beginning of the show if you'll remember uh we sort of lumped in sort of design significance into most fun to play. So from that standpoint, I do feel like...

But I think we narrowed that even down more to just fun. Yeah, I think that it has... You're right, Juice. There has been a bit of a collapse of that leg. Oh, fun versus good. No, I think it's safe to say

Resident Evil is still fun, but Bloodborne is good. This is going to be great, though, because... This is important dialogue. I mostly want to talk about which game has more good levels after the first one. Because here's the thing, I can make a case for

Bloodborne winning this handily because you can make infinite of those Thumerian labyrinths. Yeah, but those aren't good levels. We have so much fun here. Oh, us. Yeah, you can go to patreon.com slash the besties if you haven't subscribed yet and listen to anything.

You can listen to, obviously, the episodes that are already live, and you will also get anything moving forward as you subscribe, including an episode of The Resties, which is coming at you next week uh and another episode of the resties later this month and then uh so on and so forth i wish we only recorded this show at night if only that weren't like completely antithetical to the life that i live and have built for myself and my family yeah this this creates a nice contrast from the nighttime fun that we have. Absolutely.

Okay, I think we're going to get into the demos now. Griffin, why don't you start it off with a little game called Lightyear Frontier? I took a look at the NextFest games, which is sort of where we pulled these demos from. There was one that stuck out called Lightyear Frontier. That demo is out now. It is, I mean, free as a demo. It comes out in two weeks

from when we're about, when we're recording this, March 19th is its planned release date. And it is going to be early access when it comes out. It is a sort of farming sim, survival sim, first person experience in the vein of a like a slime rancher. I think it's probably the most accurate comparison here. accurate comparison here. You crash land on an alien planet, which you are tasked with sort of exploring and domesticating and in some cases sort of revitalizing. And you do that by tooling around

inside of a giant fucking mech. You have a mech that you use for your farming and your building and everything and that is sort of the main kind of uh hook of of the game it seems shocking to me that this has not happened before yeah i i i no man's sky actually does i think let you do a bit of mech based for me it doesn't go quite as hard on it as this one does. There's sort of like a master blaster thing going on where you can hop out of your mech to, you have like a basic pickaxe that you can use to kind of get around. But for the most part, you are going to be in your mech

and your mech, very quickly, you find a bunch of different attachments for it that are basically like the analog of like tools in a farming game. And so what it does with that is kind of fun where instead of you, it's, it's so tired going around and planting seeds in the ground with your hands. Instead,

after you build a plot, you get out a seed cannon and you shoot seeds into the ground in a first person shooter style, which is very, very good. You have a vacuum that you can use to pick up stuff off the ground, or you can use it to suck up water,

which you can then use with a hose attachment to water your plants or clean up the environment. Is it like Tears of the Kingdom where you're constantly switching your arms and things? Yeah, but it's instant. It's very very fast it's not some um it's it's it is it is very smooth um you you will have to get out of your mech frequently also because this game has some really delightful physics uh where your mech feels heavy as hell you start out with like very kind of weak jump boosters uh that you can use to sort of hover in the air a little bit.

But if you don't land on flat ground, like the physics engine will just topple your mech right over and then you have to get out of it and flip it in order to get it back on its feet and off its ass, which is really like, you would think that would be annoying. It is hysterical every single time. I mean, it sounds like Helldivers style physics.

It is, yeah, I could say that maybe a little bit um it is not a uh i i i played quite a bit of the demo i don't know quite how like deep of an experience it is going to be i don't think that you can maybe even know that from playing a demo for a game in this sort of genre um But I didn't run into any like deadly enemies or anything like that. Like it seems like a very chill, vibey game. The soundtrack is incredible. It is, there are shades of outer wilds there, which is about the highest compliment I can pay.

Just that sort of like, you know, space folk kind of- Banjos. Banjo, yeah, space banjo tunes. space folk kind of banjos banjo yeah space banjo tunes um you can build uh lots of different sorts of uh habitats for yourself you start with like a basic tent and then there's different sort of refineries you can build you can build a uh like an upgrade station for your mech which then you can customize with different uh like aesthetic upgrades uh or like you know mechanical upgrades uh there's a lot to do in this demo i probably sunk uh like a couple hours into it which is you know uh quite quite generous i feel like for a demo um did you play it on steam deck or on a pc

no i played it on pc i didn't i didn't uh know sort of how well a demo would handle on steam deck i don't know if that's even something that developers really care about optimizing for um but yeah i mean after a couple hours i had explored the world and found a bunch of different like weird alien artifacts and i had built myself like a little farm and a little homestead uh and it it seems like a really clever sort of uh take on on this genre that is genuinely just really kind of enjoyable to play uh i mean the aesthetic is it has multiplayer also you can play with up to four people um it it yeah i i i could see myself say i it was one of those like demo experiences that is uh ultimately kind of a good thing where i hit a point where i was like wait a minute i'm probably gonna play this game a lot yeah i'm going to stop

playing the demo now uh because i want to be able to kind of you know uh go into it and uh not not feel like i've already done everything so yeah that that is definitely an instinct that i have with especially with these sorts of bigger games and you're not sure if the save is going to carry over yeah exactly um so yeah it comes out in a couple weeks and i'm i'm definitely going to pick it up uh this is this is you can get the demo now and i like if you like games in this genre um then i really do feel like this is gonna this is gonna scratch an itch for you um i like that the fans of this genre take note what's that fans of the genre take note thank you thank you justin fans of the genre take note yes

i was gonna say i like that the the mech has flowers all over it i think that's very yeah mine didn't mine looked like an old chevy i customized mine like a good american chevrolet um and and that worked for that worked for me i'm done cool i'm gonna talk about a different game which is it would be wild if the inverse were true uh total total uh tonal shift going on with my game which is called mullet mad jack this game fucking looks buck wild and it's why i picked it out of the list i don't necessarily know the it's like an ultra colorful cyberpunk this game looks fucking sick russ yeah how did you hide this from us i i said i was gonna play it uh it it is like a super colorful super gory violent cyberpunk game the basic premise is you are stuck in like a running man style death game show and you have to run through these levels, and you only have 15 seconds to live in each level,

but every time you kill someone, you get three extra seconds to live. And it kind of turns it into these, like, death sprints where you're, like, running through, trying to survive by doing these kills in a very rapid fashion, and, like, on screen, there'll be, like, cheers and celebration, like, from the audience that is

watching at home on the like fake live stream um as you kind of progress through it uh there's a host to the live stream and she comes on at the end of each run and it's like telling you know basically says how you're doing and you're trying to like rescue a girl in like very tropey traditional fashion um as you kind of progress these levels it looks kind of like uh um hotline miami if it was a first person shooter yeah a little bit like yeah as a place to start like very harsh like intense high contrast very colorful but like intense a vibe to it i think it's sillier than uh hotline miami in that way like i don't think it has the like over serious tone that hotline does right but uh it definitely has a similar like you know passion for extreme violence uh you'll get as you're kind of

running through these levels you'll use mostly uh shotguns, and sometimes you get like a sword and things like that. And then you'll get these like broken bottles and various other things that you can kind of like do finishing moves on enemies with. And those are like incredibly gory where you'll just like jam a bottle into someone's face. And then you'll see like plus five seconds of life because you use the finishing move so there's that whole like constant like game it's like if ever you needed to highlight the idea that like people with epilepsy shouldn't play a video game this is i mean there may be accessibility settings we don't know but yes it is it is it is it is it definitely says at the top of the game and it might need to be repeated like

16 other times throughout the game because within the first 30 seconds my mind was like fully awash with uh the intensity that they're portraying here it looks like um an anime adaptation of that film crank yeah yeah that's pretty good like i gotta keep my heart going so i just have to do crazy shit yeah and like i say that in a really flattering way as a fan you've got a phone that you're holding and your other and you're offhand at all times that has the timer on it but it also has a display of i assume mullet mad jack in sort of like uh like uh wolfenstein guy style fashion correct this looks like my shit man i cannot wait to play this game there's also like you can kick there's like a bullet stormy kind

of thing where you can kick guys into things and you'll get more points so you can kick them into like a fan or like a vending machine and then the vending machine will like pop out sodas and you can get various upgrades that like enhance the power of the soda the thing that i haven't really gone into there is not to like you know we've talked a lot about we've talked about a lot of roguelikes recently this is i guess one of them um insofar as you're going through these levels and at the end of each level you get a new upgrade or a new passive ability that will enhance your ability to keep going. I was mostly playing on like easy and normal just to try it out. And I didn't have too much difficulty surviving.

It's not like one of those ultra hard roguelikes. But it was fun to be able to like, oh, I'm going to use a shotgun for this run now. Or I'm going to be able to do like dual weapons, things like that. Here's what I will say. dual weapons, things like that. Here's what I will say. I think aesthetically and presentation-wise, I was like floored, blown away,

totally over the moon about it. It didn't feel like the gameplay was able to match that level of depth and uniqueness insofar as like, I didn't feel like I was doing a lot of different stuff by the end of the demo, which is slightly concerning. I hope that the full version has, I think, more maybe level diversity or

upgrade diversity, enemies, stuff like that. Because I felt like I was kind of running into the same kind of loop. But the loop was fun, and I do think, you know, it's a free demo, so at least people can kind of check it out for themselves and see if it's up your alley. I can see how that

is a problem if you're literally off the video but i i am encouraged that they're like driving sequences towards the end of the video like yeah i wasn't able to try any of the driving out in the demo um yeah a little bit more interesting places but there's also just a moment where somebody's getting their head smashed in with a book so is there a i don't see a release window or anything yeah i haven't heard anything about when it's finally coming out i feel like with steam next fest stuff that stuff tends to be relatively close to release yeah and this felt like for a demo very polished like and i was playing on steam deck it ran great so uh yeah i'm not sure exactly when the final version is but probably pretty soon

well that sounds cool. I'd like to play it. I'm going to leave the episode, I think, because I've sneezed about 80 times, and I feel like I'm really... Oh, no. Well, that's okay, Griffin. That's all right, Griffin.

You did your job. Thank you, everybody. Good luck. I hope these last two games aren't very good, or else I'll feel bad for missing them. Okay, well, we'll take a a break and we'll return without Griffin, uh, who I'm sure is probably fine,

but maybe not. Nope. Bye. I have one that it's like, I feel like this game is one of those. It's like, Oh yeah, that figures. It figures is something you'd like. You feel like this game is one of those. It's like, oh yeah, that figures.

It figures is something you'd like. You weeb. You dork. I want to push myself in a well for enjoying Diceomancer, which is. I mean, the name alone. I know. It's tough, right? It's tough, right?

It's tough. Yeah, I knew from the name. Like, hold on. Welcome in. There's room in the back. Fold down the seats. It knows. Hey, scoot over hey scoot over solitaire i haven't played you in weeks um no so this is a uh run based uh i feel like at this point the slay the spire structure is so ubiquitous i don't know a short form way of saying it but you've got a uh run based game where you have a choice in what kind of level

you're going to take on. Do you want to do a fight? Do you want to heal? Do you want to go to a shop? Blacksmith, that kind of structure. And you are building a deck of cards that you use to do battle here. But there's sort of two tweaks on that formula uh which is always sort of some

permutation of magic the gathering uh or or the like uh in this one you are uh able to basically tap cards in the way that you would do in magic um not mechanically the same the same idea where some cards you can play as an action uh those same cards, though, will have a mana value, and there's different colors of mana, and you can basically discard that to get that kind of mana, and then you use the mana you've collected and the actions to activate the cards, and the cards are usually block something, attack somebody, whatever.

So that's a small tweak. That's something else you have to kind of like manage and so you're basically if you don't want to use the card in question you burn it and get the mana back to spend it elsewhere is that um it well there's the mana is like has different colors so you're it's not to spend elsewhere as much as it is to like specifically on a blue. Some cards have an action cost and some cards have a mana cost. So you have to have the mana and the action. This is all very whatever. I know how hard this is to like. And you also haven't mentioned dice yet.

Yes, but we built to that, Russ. So this is the big twist is it's got dice in it. So this is the big twist is it's got dice in it. No, it has a element of randomness on almost all the cards have some element of randomness, except for your very basic like attack and block. And the randomness is in the shape of a die. And that die could be anywhere from, you know, a D4 to D20, you20, all the way up there, there's all kinds of different die. And that is what will be represented on the card.

So you may have an attack that does 4D4, which is not revolutionary at all for people who do tabletop games, but it's not necessarily something that has been part of this genre. This idea that every card has an element of randomness and that makes it a lot more sort of like modular. But they build on that with the ability to change numbers permanently also based on a dice roll. So for instance, when you start, you have this card called the One Die. It's extremely powerful,

and what it does is, if you play the One Die, then any number that is currently on the screen, you can permanently change to a D6 roll, like to whatever you roll your D6. So imagine you come up against a boss, he's got like... Most of the enemy health bars are segmented a little bit to prevent you from wiping them out with one of these.

But you might see a boss who has 25 health and you can play the one die to basically lower it to six or four or three or whatever the dice roll is. Some of those are permanent. Some of those are temporary stat boosts. So you may roll a D4, like adds to your attack on one of your cards, but it's only for that round. So you want to use that card, you know, as much as you can. The look is very cool. It has a a I always hate talking about aesthetics because it's not my area of expertise but it reminds me of sort of a

80's Japanese animation or like a lot of like 80's lower budget animation it kind of looks like David the Gnome or which I don't think was I think that was actually Spanish but you know you get the idea it's got that vibe to it it's like I don't want to say Miyazaki because that

summons up some of this painterly it's like David the Gnome or like TV animation I think is a good analog to it because it's not the highest of it's not even a quality thing it's just like an aesthetic thing there's a little bit more simplicity to it than you would see in like the movies of that era.

Pastoral would be a word. I think I would sum it up. It's very chill. There's a little bit of light animation sort of like in the background, but it definitely does have that. It has a very chill, distinct vibe, and that's very cool.

I'm looking at this screenshot and I want to fuck this goose up so bad. You play from first person, which is kind of interesting. So like when you play, uh, like the crossbow card, for example, you see yourself take out a crossbow and,

and take the shot. So that's kind of engaging. Um, and they've got some fun little, uh, it's, it's, it's early, right? So my thing I would say right now is it feels like one too many levels of

randomness to where like the complexities of that are tough to do on the fly. Like the layering of the dice on top of the cards sometimes makes that a little bit hard to do on the fly. Like the, the, uh, layering of the dice on top of the cards sometimes makes that a little bit hard to keep track of everything. Like if I get, you get the choice to choose a new card at the end of a round, very classic for this sort of genre. And I found myself really struggling to know like what would actually be helpful. Um, and that part of that's inexperience, right? It's a demos. I haven't played it a lot, so I so i didn't have that experience but part of it is like it's not as much of a slam dunk to get

that card because there's a chance it could be good and a chance it could be bad you know it's it's a little bit more risk reward um it's interesting talking about this out loud because i am realizing that like a lot of this is verbatim D&D. Right. Like it doesn't occur to me. It didn't occur to me in practice of doing it. It doesn't feel like that, but it is definitely what that idea of you make an attack, but you're not going to know how much damage.

Yeah. You'll know. Oh, it's going to do at least seven, but it might do as much as 30. Right. You get like a lucky break. Yeah. Every now and then.

I want to go back to the aesthetic. One, if people check it out, I strongly encourage you to watch a video of it. Yeah, seeing it in motion is nice. Yeah, they look almost too simplistic, but the art, it reminds me of like Sesame Street interstitials in like the 70s and 80s. Oh, yeah, like late 70s sort of yeah yeah yeah yeah

and it's like it's really pretty i it's very the way the characters move in it is they they almost like pulse um yeah this looks great it's very chill i don't know when it will be out um but well worth uh well worth playing the demo well we worth checking out. It's developed by Ultra Piggy Studio, which I like. That's called Dicomancer. Cool. Spelled just like it sounds. Traditional spelling of Dicomancer. Chris, play it.

You have one more demo for us to talk about. Sure, I got one more. And then I want to talk about demos in general just a little bit after this. But I brought Indica, which have y'all heard heck yeah dude yeah yeah maybe every day it's a game no no it's not a weed game i mean it's not a well you know what maybe it is a weed game here's i will say if it is not a weed game calling it indica is a very strange choice it's a choice it's It's a choice. It is 19th century Russia, but it's an alternate history Russia.

And you play as a nun who has been booted from her monastery for, I guess, heresy because she hears an inner voice. And I think she believes that that inner voice is the devil. And the demo starts with you finding a man who, I think she believes that that inner voice is the devil. And the demo starts with you finding a man who I think believes that he has been told by God to go heal his arm. His arm is kind of like injured or just looks almost destroyed. Not just set out to this like – I think it's like a – what is it called?

Not a hospital but like the places where you'd go to get better in the hills back in the day. A nunnery? Sanitarium? I think like a sanitarium. And that's kind of the premise of the game. There is in the demo one big puzzle that you go about solving by kind of modifying the environment. When these puzzle moments happen, your brain gets kind of taken over by the devil and reality shifts and you have to pray to adjust the environment back to normalcy. But you have to let it go into the devil space uh also to like kind of navigate through the space so you're kind of merging these two environments to get from point a to point b

if you use any one environment you wouldn't be able to get to the end that does not make any sense to me is there any way to like let me try it again ready okay so you need to get to from point a you need to get from let's say you're in a big factory and you start at one side of the factory for people at home it's a 3d like third person 3d third person very realistic looking game okay you're now in a factory and you look to the other end of the factory and you see a doorway in the upper, the second floor of the factory. But there are barriers blocking between you and that door and that door is on the second floor. There's no stairwell. How are you going to get up there?

You can go into this kind of like devil vision side of yourself and the environment shifts. And suddenly there's a stairwell but now there are huge gaps between you and that door so then you need to shift back by praying to the real world to be able to get a little bit further and you're shifting back and forth to kind of navigate a 3d space you got it do you have a sense that like that's the main mechanic that goes throughout or you don't know so that maybe but here but here's what I love about this game. It's not that. That stuff is like fine enough and interesting.

What I love about this game is it is cinematic in the truest sense of the word. playing this, how few games that even that want to be cinematic and want to borrow from movies, actually consider how movies are made on a shot by shot basis, like how cameras work, where they should be placed, what lenses you should use, how you should light it, and that every shot you make has to have those choices made. So in an example, just the very beginning of the game, the very beginning moment, you open on this fuzzy image and it's almost like polygon-like, looks like a PS1 model of like half a face, but you realize that you're just out of focus. And as you come into focus, you see this woman's face against the snowy background and she's distraught, right? Now you cut to a wide

shot and you see that this woman has what looks like a dead body right next to her. Then we cut in closer to get like a reaction. There's a lot of these fisheye lenses that are used to like put you in her head. Then we cut to a shot that is like her looking down at the body and the body moves. Now suddenly the man is alive. All of those things, it sounds so simple when said out loud that is not how most video games shoot that scene most video games it's just like i don't know here's a wide shot and the guy's waking up but each of those shots it's like we are bringing brought into the world and we're meeting the character and now we're learning the mystery

of the situation is this man alive or dead and we're learning the mystery of the situation. Is this man alive or dead? And we're learning the next step. Each shot is moving the story along and using the lenses and the lighting and honestly the performances, which are unbelievable. I do not know how they mo-capped this game, but they are exceptionally realistic. It's fantastic and if if all this game is it is mostly a kind of like lightly playable film yeah that would be okay because the performances are stellar and the writing is just really interesting so i mentioned that it's about um this alternate history 19th century russia the game is really just picking at the church, specifically the Russian Orthodox Church,

and like, what is faith? What does it mean to have voices in your head? What does it mean to make choices to care for people when that goes against institutions? And it is wrestling with it. I mean, what's kind of cool is that if it's alternate history, 19th century Russia, it might as well be real alternate history 19th century Russia, it might as well be real history 19th century Russia because I wouldn't know the difference.

That is true, except for you do ride a motorbike that pretty much immediately I was like, I don't think those ever existed. Ed Begley Jr. wasn't around back then. Yeah, but it is great. The music is great. How it is thinking about video games too there are collectibles in the game that are like religious artifacts but when you collect them it kind of triggers almost like an arcadey point score as you become closer to god weird which seems like antithetical to the visual style they're going for, but I don't know, it works. It's just, it's so nice whenever I get to play a game and you can feel people making choices.

And even if I don't like every choice, they are like constantly choosing to do something. Swings are being made, right? Yes. They anticipated you being in the situation that you are in. Like you can feel them sort of communicating to you because they have thought through this. Yes, and they anticipated what you anticipated.

So you go into a moody environment and you're like, okay, and this is when the like moody music comes on. And instead like a really eerie, funny, electronic-like drone comes on. I don't know. It just kind of – it felt like it was always a step ahead of where my brain thought the game would go um very quick for the developer um they were in russia when they started this game i believe it was 10 of the 14 developers left at the beginning of um russia's war on ukraine um and they have been making it i think in kazakhstan um since then um which i mean again when you play the game you would understand quite clearly why

they decided to leave yeah um uh but yeah it is it's really promising i really i really hope that they stick the landing it is It is right now for me, well, this and Dragon's Dogma 2 are kind of my two most anticipated games for moving forward. This one, it looks like Q2 2024. So we are closing on the actual release. Yes.

Yeah, this looks sick. I did want to talk about demos a little because I have a question for both of you, which is when did demos come back? This is actually – when Russ suggested doing demos, I was like, what are you on about, man? People are doing demos? Like I really – for me, I kind of thought demos went away with like post-360. That was the last era where I feel like, and demos were a big deal back then.

It's like a late 2000s, early 20 teens. Like we would do the 90s, like the shareware era is all demo. We would do, but, but as far as like on these like marketplaces, we would do like posts of like, here are the demos that are out this week on it. It was a huge deal when a big demo would drop. Yeah. I think what happened was because companies need to pay for certification,

even for demos, it was basically a loss for them. So that's why you see very few demos these days coming to consoles. They do have like PlayStation. I know if you subscribe to like the highest tier, you can get like free previews of games, or I guess it's included in the subscription. But those I think are just like the finished game and you just get like a portion of it. Like you just play for a certain amount of hours.

Right. So they don't need to recertify it. But for demos, it was like a huge cost. Now, in the case of this episode, it's pretty clear. We just used Steam games. it's pretty clear we just used steam games and obviously on steam you're not necessarily having to pay extra when you upload the demo versus the finished product so i think that is why we've seen especially smaller games trying to like make their self-known they're using uh things like steam next fest as a way to like get more attention which mission accomplished i like demos i i think

it's a good i think this won't be the last time we do this format, if only because like, you know, we traditionally in many years past, we used to all play four different games and come together and talk about all four different huge games. And that's obviously a lot and not something that we can always do. But these like kind of bite sized experiences, I think are easier for each of us to play our own thing and then come together and kind of pitch it and it's also like great because it'll mean that I think some of these games will get full episodes in the future if they you know really do a great job so I think this is like a really good preview format yeah it's fun to see on the

demo note that you were saying fresh I also feel like we're seeing more demos where they kind of are just the opening of the game and the save progress continues from it yeah which makes sense i guess is like an investment in what you're talking about of like getting it certain like it's worth it if it's not just giving people a taste, but actually getting them hooked into the game. I think Unicorn Overlord does this. I know Final Fantasy Rebirth does. I did actually hear someone did that, where they played the demo of Rebirth and then played the main game. And did say that they had to walk slowly as Cloud through the fire twice, even though they said they would just progress

where they were at the end of the demo. But broadly speaking, I think it's a good thing when there are demos that were the main progress carried over. I do. I've got to be honest, though. I don't like when there's a demo for a game that's not out yet. I like demos as like a, oh, I'm going to buy this right now. Yeah.

I don't know. I don't like seeking that stuff right now. Well, I think in a lot of these cases these aren't gonna go away when the full game is out i know but i wanted i worry i'll forget i guess that's why we want it now maybe i have to start i want it now well maybe i'll start wishlist it's just so much stuff comes out that i never know when i'm gonna be in the mood for something like some of these sound sound like, oh, I'd play that right now, but in two months, I don't know, man. Yeah, I've been wishlisting a lot more using Steam and that really helps because it'll just email you

when the thing is actually out. And developers love it when you wishlist. That makes them very happy. Okay, I think we have some reader mail that was specifically regarding this topic because obviously we pivoted and changed the subject of this episode. But we sent out a letter as part of our newsletter, besties.fan, for that newsletter. Sign up if you haven't joined already.

And asked people what they've been playing using, I guess, not only the Steam Next Fest demos, but also any other demos. And so we got some recommendations this first one comes from Kate Normal Fishing was an easy favorite from NextFest Haunty and Tales of Kenzara as close seconds I looked up Normal Fishing

I instantly regretted not having played this because this game looks fucking dope it's like a Game Boy fishing game with like a narrative i guess it's like legend of the river king it kind of that was my immediate thought was like legend of the river king um it kind of looks a lot like that uh and i'm super psyched about it uh this is coming from the developers called the borg and uh yeah it looks sick a lot of people actually in the comments were mentioning how much they like normal fishing it seems like it's an early big hit for people i okay so i

clicked this expecting like very cutesy legend of the fisher king um river king whichever it is uh aesthetic no these these looks are hilarious the there's like a giant crab monster everybody looks like a little bit like they've been playing some indica um this looks this looks really good but this but it is like game boy level like kind of art style i yeah yeah yeah very pixelated uh but yeah weird definitely weird uh yeah this looks sick um the next one we have is from andrew uh pepper grinder is my most anticipated game from this fest and probably possibly for the year don't know if any besties love celeste but i feel like it lives in that space of challenging but satisfying platforming very pumped fresh and i can't remember if we talked about this on a besties or a resties like a year or

two ago maybe longer i think it's like four years ago that we might have played an early time ago we we got access to a demo of this through i think the igf the independent games festival and we're really into it but it was so. And I am thrilled to get back to it. I honestly, I did not bother playing the demo because I already know I'm going to really like this. And I want to play the full game. Yeah, it would not surprise me if we ended up doing a full episode, whether it's a main Besties episode or a Resties or something on this. But yeah, definitely stay tuned because it looks pretty effing sick i downloaded that demo it's it's cool it reminds me of like a dig dug met echo the dolphin oh like

that like the the the digging through with your drill it's very the the motion of trying to get those arcs right reminds me of like trying to get a a flow going and echo the dolphin yeah the second ori game had a mechanic that was kind of similar but it's cool to see a a flow going and echo the dolphin yeah the second ori game had a mechanic that was kind of similar but it's cool to see a game that is like fully built around that idea uh cool we have another recommendation this comes from ruth pine hearts it's an absolutely gorgeous adorable game i played the demo for an hour and desperately wanted more do you guys have you heard anything about pine hearts no i'm not familiar with this one do you uh pine arts on steam is described as a as a cozy little narrative adventure game set in

the sleepy scenario of pine hearts caravan park uh explore the great outdoors uncover items unlock new paths and secrets through the park yeah it looks it's very chill, very colorful, isometric. You play as a person who looks almost like a mushroom because they're wearing a little beanie. Yeah, it looks a little tunic-y, but probably not combat heavy as much as just exploration. Yeah. Yeah, just very cutesy art style. Tunic-y by way of Costume Quest.

Yeah. Is Costume Quest still a relevant reference? The kids of today? No Costume Quest? There was like an Amazon kids show, I think. So maybe, maybe. You never know who was raised on Costume Quest. Okay, we have two more letters with recommendations.

This one comes from Brooke. I just played a demo for the upcoming Stardew Valley- that was really good it's called little known galaxy and it's available on steam deck it's stardew except you're on a spaceship once again how have i not actually um you know how has there not been a stardew valley on a spaceship before that seems like a missed opportunity yeah and i want stardew but it's the martian you know what i mean like i'm harvesting my own dookie to eat potato potatoes you're completely alone there's no completely alone i i throw little birthday parties for myself like i have to i have to give myself quests that would be amazing as the game goes on you get more and more imaginary citizens

of this is actually an extremely good idea for a video game, but we have to stop right now. There is a game called Mars First Logistics that kind of reminds me of that, where you have to build the vehicles to accomplish very simple tasks. Yeah, but you don't have imaginary friends. Yeah, you don't have to tear us down, Russ. We're just having fun.

Okay, we have one more letter. We weren't really going to do it. This letter comes from Ian K. Death double blind caught me by surprise it's a really great ace attorney like about investigating a murder in a circus I was so taken with the writing and replayed the demo to learn more about the characters and the art is solid too okay we have to talk about the phrase ace attorney like if you are so deeply enamored of that format that you've played all those and you're like there's got to be more exactly like this my heart goes out to you because i would

say ace attorney like it's not a genre that is particularly replete with i mean capcom made like a gajillion of them they're clearly there's a there's a lot but like that should be enough but not for anybody it's just like a visual novel, right? Like that's more with like light gameplay mechanics. But most of it is like just a visual novel, right? Yeah, it varied in the amount of like puzzle solving that you would have to do or investigation and so on. Yeah. That sounds cool. Those games are ones that I feel like are so in my head.

They're so perfectly fit to play with a stylus. In my head, that's the ideal way of playing those games, where you have the screen in front of you, but also a stylus in your hand. Is it because you feel like you want to rest the stylus against

your chin, like you're thinking about it? Yeah, I know, with the fidelity to tap the tap the stuff on this anyway oh um i i should have mentioned actually super quick with diceomancer i played it on steam deck and right now it does not have um traditional like controller support like it was i was using the trackpad to play through it the text was was very tiny so obviously pre-release but not not optimized for for steam deck currently okay i think we have some honorable mentions uh i've been very busy i saw dune part two last night and it that two movie duo is is one of the best series of any movie I've ever seen.

Like, movie-wise, fucking, they both rule, and the second one rules, and it sticks the landing, and, man, I was just totally blown away. If you have the ability to see it in a theater, please do so, because it is really quite the experience. I know everyone can't always get to a theater, or it's not safe, but for people that can, please do so because holy shit, I had such an amazing experience and

I just want more people to really have that experience as well. For what it's worth, never read the book. I knew it had sandworms in it. That was basically it. And I was just so impressed by their ability to not only summarize the things you needed to know about this world and bring you in in a way that made sense, but did it in a way that didn't feel like I was doing homework to try to keep all this stuff in my brain. I was very engaged with the first movie. And then by the time the second movie came around, like they felt like they had done all that groundwork. So it's really just kind of a sprint through like a various like action scenes and like, you know, serious character development moments that,

uh, just make, it's just so like well produced and gorgeous. And the music is amazing and performances are great. I was just blown away incredible the other thing i want to talk about is a game called ultros which is a metroidvania uh that is unlike any video game visually speaking that i've ever seen it is like a totally trippy uh like psychedelic metroidvania which i don't think anyone has really tackled that art style in that genre before.

And I'm going to talk about I'm going to talk more about it because we're doing a Resties episode about it that's coming out next week. So stay tuned for that. But yeah, if you're into like weird, trippy Metroidvania games, Ultros is definitely worth checking out. It's available right now for everyone. So definitely look into it because it's bizarre. I have actually two books that I wanted to recommend. I finished Crooked Kingdom, which is the sequel to Six of Crows, which is part of a duology in Lee Bardugo's fantasy world. If any of that makes any sense to you at all, you know what I'm talking about. But this is a uh i've talked about

this series before it's interesting because there is a trilogy of books that i think are weaker than these in this fantasy world and this duology of six of crows and cook a kingdom follows a gang of like six thieves inside this fantasy world and that felt a lot different than a lot of these types of books um and you really feel her like improving over the, the series. But the, you know, you should read, you should read those. I think you can start with six of crows fine, but the, the background colors you get in the first trilogy, which is a shadow and bone, which has turned into a Netflix series.

That's it's that same like series. The other one I want to recommend really quick is the appeal uh and this is a book that actually sydney and i decided to read together so we're reading that sort of like asynchronously and talking about it it is a um murder mystery set in a british community theater and someone in the community theater is murdered and the but the way the book is told is and there and plant there's a word for this and and you probably know but uh uh uh the whole thing is like letters oh uh epistolary epistolary it's an epistolary novel thank god thank god we can explain it around for this it's epistolary like e hyphen because it's an epistolary novel thank god thank god we keep plants around for this it's epistolary like e hyphen because it's like all digital uh digital it's all like emails uh between

people in the theater group right and that is like the uh there's a couple of like court filings and stuff like that but as a framing device you see the like the first thing in the book is these two like law students texting each other about the case. And then you are reviewing the evidence, quote-unquote evidence with them. And the evidence is these emails that went back and forth through people in the community group, in this community theater group. So a lot of it is like – a lot of the emails are like regular, just drama. It's like just theater drama, which is hilarious.

There is a backdrop of a fundraising campaign for a child's like cancer treatment that may or may not be legitimate. So that's like one of the colors in there, but you eventually are having to, the game of the novel really is trying to like suss out the signal from noise to find what is like these interesting, funny, but ultimately like not relevant diversions from like the actual case. And it really does build up. build up uh it's very impressive the extent to which it can mimic the beats of a traditional novel with you know a build to a climax and an anticlimax like a real sense of like uh things

speeding up and accelerating and and and intensifying towards the towards the end of the book um but i just how do you read a book like that with another person? Well, what we do is we set a page goal for the nights – for the weekly night that we're going to talk about it. So like by next Wednesday night, you have to have gotten to page 100. And you stop there. That kind of makes sense. Can I make a recommendation for a different approach? Yeah, please. Voices, that you read it back to each other as characters.

um voices that you you you read it back to each other as characters um and then you perform the role of um terrence and she performs the role of philip but then you also perform the role of jeffrey and the role of uh jessica and then she performs the role of everyone else one problem with that plant is i do that for a living, and she is not getting it for free. You know what I mean? Like, if she wants me to turn it on, you want me to crank up the well after hours? Hold on a second. I think I have a little, so I just had to do some voices for the kids' stories,

so you know that that took the last I had in the tank. I do have friends who they alternate each night reading a book to each other when they're going to sleep. And I think it's the cutest thing I've ever heard. That is so nice. I could not imagine. I would fall asleep right away in both scenarios. That book sounds great. My thing is Like a Dragon, a dragon infinite wealth i'm still just

heck yeah baby i love this game so much yourself from don donko island yet i i i did not finish it but i i have forced myself to step away from it because i do want to keep moving there are 14 chapters in the game i am uh at the start of chapter 13 so i'm nearing the conclusion but good golly i what's amazing about this game and i i've played quite a few yakuza games have not finished i think all but one and i've there are many i haven't played nonetheless you can still really enjoy all this game's kind of like retrospective nature that it's it's always looking back on those games because the way it works if you don't know what happened in those games is kind of like a novel where the character is just giving you these little

anecdotes from their past um so even if you don't have that like nostalgia kick, it still works really well at fleshing out these two main characters in the game. Yeah, I didn't feel lost when new characters were introduced as I'm playing through it. I'm nowhere near where you are. But I really appreciated that, that like they didn't talk down to me because I didn't understand that kiryu had a relationship with such and such yes in it well i we're gonna we really are gonna do a spoiler episode at some point uh in the next quarter and we'll go into it more then but i i think this game is really something special and i hope more people play it i finished it and it and it it's one of the best endings I've seen in a video game.

Can't wait. Okay, I think we did it. Plant, you want to recap everything we talked about? Yeah, we talked about a lot today. We talked about Lightyear, Frontier, Mullet Mad Jack, Diceomancer, Indica, Death Trick, Double Blind, Little Known Galaxy, Pineheart, Normal Fishing, Pepper Grinder. We also talked

about Dune Part 2. Sounds like a frigging Manchurian candidate activation code. Just the way you read those off, I was like, who am I supposed to test me? Justin brought two books with Crooked Kingdom and The Appeal. And then also Ultros and Window Kill we're going to talk about on next week's Resties. And we're also going to talk about Unicorn Overlord on next week's Besties.

There is a demo for that for the people that don't want to buy it and want to just check it out. You can download a demo. Apparently, it's quite long. It's like six hours. So we can do that. Cool. I want to thank the following patrons from the Patreon at patreon.com slash the besties. Will Jones, Jade, Tapias Sari, Andrew Mallitz, and Gartholomew Jones, which I hope is your real name because Gartholomew brings me a lot of joy.

Thank you so much for all the support and for everyone else who has supported the patreon we love how it's growing and doing and uh we love doing the bonus content it's been a an absolute blast so uh yeah thank you we already talked about next week justin you don't have to say it out loud again if you don't want to but you can wrap up unicorn overlord is gonna be a surprise i feel like you know what guys i'm i'm trying to keep it in check lately because i've i've been on a weird a weird tear of of really getting into games that i otherwise wouldn't touch i'm trying to not make decisions before i've seen it you know I mean? There should be an easier way of saying, like, keeping my mind open. Right.

If you're looking at the front of it, you wouldn't necessarily have an opinion based on what the front looks like. Do you ever take a book from a shelf when you're at the store, and then you look at the book jacket, and you don't really even read it? You just look at the jacket, and you're like, fuck this it. You just look at the jacket and you're like, fuck this. And then you shove it back on the shelf. Do you know what I mean? I do. I do.

I wish there was a way to summarize that. I'm trying to avoid that. That'll be next week. Unless it doesn't, you know, things happen. And I hope you'll join us for that and so much more. Until then,

be sure to join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games Besties!