The Besties - The perfect cozy games for fall [Resties]

Episode Date: October 17, 2023

It's that time of the year when the temperature drops, the cider heats up, and the comfy blankets beckon. Yes, it's Cozy Games Season! Frushtick and Plante kickoff the festivities with Japanese Rural Life Adventure and then list some of their favorite cozy delights. In the back half, the Resties discuss Moonring, one of the year's coolest surprises. Did we mention it's free? Subscribe to our newsletter at besties.fan for the titles of everything discussed  on the show along with bonus links! 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!

Hello everybody, my name is Christopher Thomas-Fland. My name is Russ Froschek. Welcome to The Resties, where the best of the rest, where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest this week we're talking about japanese rural life adventure and cozy games and moon ring which may be the least cozy game there is probably but also just an exception to life it's also free but we'll get to that later before we can do any of that, I need your help on something. Oh, boy. Okay.

So here's the real truth. It's almost Halloween time. And this happens to me every single year. I don't plan for it, but I love celebrating it. So I, you know, I guess I plan for it and then I watch a ton of horror movies, but then Halloween comes around and I'm like, I need a costume. I need to dress up my kid. I have not gone shopping. The Halloween warehouse is completely gutted. What am I going to do? So basically I'm wondering if you could help me come up with a way to create a Sonic the Hedgehog costume or maybe a Mario costume with what I have lying around my house.

Oh, gosh. Well, first of all, there's quite a divide between those two costumes. Sure, sure. I mean, I think the Mario I can get, like, unlocked because it's, like, jeans and, like, a... A red shirt. Yeah, right. I think I can do that. Well, but it's not even jeans like a... A red shirt. Yeah, right. I think I can do that. Well, but it's not even jeans.

He needs overalls. You don't have overalls lying around, do you? No, but you could like maybe take some jeans and then cut up some other jeans. Oh, so you're going to be one sketchy Mario. Yeah, of course. I mean, I think we've accepted that. I have not gotten my shit together until the last minute.

Yeah. It's not going to look great. What I need is serviceable, you know? Sure. Great isn't the enemy of the good. Is that the phrase? That's exactly right, yes. The enemy of me getting my shit together.

Well, do you have a list of the things in your house and I could point to things that might be useful? Well, like, so I have some blue trash bags. They're for recycling, right? Okay. And I thought I could cut three holes in it and then put my head and my arms through it. Oh, this is for Sonic. This is for Sonic, right?

So you're now Trash Bag Sonic. Yeah. And then I could like, I have some blue food coloring. And I'm not going to like put that directly on my face because that seems wrong. But I do have some vanilla icing. And I'm not going to put that directly on my face because that seems wrong. But I do have some vanilla icing. So I could fill that with the blue food coloring, mix it up, and then just kind of smear it over my face and my hair.

Okay. So you're a blue icing trash bag Sonic. Right. And is your intention to scar your child for life? Is that the plan? Or is that just going to be a happy side effect? My child will be thrilled. I will have sugary treat on my face and he will find that funny. And that other children are not my concern so long as I don't go to jail. Yeah. You know, well, what you've described might send you to jail. What I the problem really is like the only thing that I feel like i'm missing here is the shoes because everything else seems perfectly fine it's all in the shoes and it is

that's the that's the trouble with sonic and i think a lot of people make this mistake you know they get maybe like some blue sweatpants they get a blue shirt they get the blue icing on their face but then they forget about the red shoes red and white shoes very important yeah and i don't know i also don't think you're fast enough to be sonic for what it's worth that's why it's a costume you know like when you dress up as like the terminator i don't look at you and say oh you're not strong you know well it's an inward strength really sure that's true you're you you are the mental terminator that's what i've always said about you. I think it's going to be a disaster. But you know what? So long as you take photos and you share them in the newsletter, everyone will be happy.

I'm going to do that. I don't know about the icing. That seems like it could be actually troubling. Yeah. I don't even know why you jumped to icing. You can just paint your face using like face paint that exists. No, see, well, going and getting face paint, that's money. I actually think the icing thing. Icing is money. You have icing growing on trees outside? No, like Betty Crocker icing or whatever it is. That's money.

No, no, no. Not free. It has to be like a buck. It's icing, Michael. how much could it cost a dollar um i i don't know i okay i'm gonna i'm gonna try to do this i'm gonna my child wants to be a teenager ninja turtle that feels very doable to me like does he know which one he wants to be we haven't decided yet but but i do know a trick with this which is green sweatpants green sweatshirt right and then you get um you know the turkey baster like the foil turkey basters yes get one of those spray painted green or or like brown and then you can use that as the shell

am i like a bad parent the tray i thought i was picturing like those tubes that you'd spread. Oh, no, no, no. The tray. No, I'm not just going to cover my child in basters. Yeah, that's probably a bad idea. Weird. We've gone far enough. I really should just buy a costume.

I think I'm going to humiliate everyone in my family sounds to me like a fun halloween let's go to the break and then we'll talk about some video games okay we're back hey everybody it's us chris and fresh your best buds the rest buds and we are going to talk about japanese rural life adventure and every time it sounds like made up it sounds well am i saying rural right because you always make fun of me when i say roof like yeah no you are saying that's rural is fine yeah okay it does sound like it's not a real game which is pretty incredible in the age of, you know, like the various insert thing plus simulator. It sounds like a game that someone writing an episode of Law and Order about video games would say is a video game. Or like if you asked an AI for like, what are the best farming games?

Yeah. If you had a Japanese real life adventure and you're like, I don't think that's real. Yeah, it is available on apple arcade right now i think that's the way that you get it i i haven't yeah i think it might be exclusive yeah um uh so this is my apologies to but but i would tease this by saying if that aggravates you you should wait until the second half of the show because there is a free game that everyone can enjoy. That's true. And also, hey, there are other ways to play Apple Arcade games, including on like an Apple TV or an iPad or other things.

And we have a whole bunch of cozy games we're going to talk about, too. But let's talk about this one right now because it is it's unusual. And I am it has me rethinking like what my expectations for a video game of this type should be so the way it works is you um uh move into a decrepit um home in uh rural japan it's basically the house in totoro yeah kind of that's a nice because that house is fucked up too it's crumbling and there's like so it's bright not as cute as that house that's true yeah yeah and your job is to clean up the house by the floor uh uh pick up uh various uh flowers break rocks uh you know chop the wood do those things which you know improves your stamina as

you do more and more of these things and then you can kind of start selling some of that stuff so you can sell a bundle of flowers to get some money. And that is with a delivery person who comes every day at 1 o'clock in a cool little truck. And then in the morning, you can meet the older woman who comes by and wants to sell you stuff. So you can use that money to buy various seeds. And now you've got a farm going. Or maybe you want to buy some paper to fix up your walls in your house. And then as you do all those things, then that opens up the opportunity to access new areas. So now you can go to the shrine. And once you go to the shrine, maybe that opens up the ability to adopt a dog. And it just

is incremental bits of change the big difference here though between this and something like a harvest moon or a stardew valley is there's very little control yeah you are expected to do everything as the game demands it to the point where there is only one place to plant certain types of trees. So you buy it and you plant it there. When you lay stones on the ground to make a pathway to your house, those stones are going to go to the same way, whether I'm playing or Frost is playing or somebody plays, you know, 100 years from now.

It is all predetermined. You just need to fulfill the process, which I think is interesting because it's taking away a lot of why I think people like games like Stardew Valley Animal Crossing. who gets FOMO when I see how amazing everybody else's stuff looks, it's been kind of nice for me not to fret over the design and to just enjoy the process, which is effectively chores, and yet here I am. Yeah, you know at the end, you're going to end with something aesthetically pleasing. You're not going to have like an Ugo farm where all the tomatoes

and the strawberries clash and it looks horrible you know that it's going to look like a nice rural riverside chill pad and that's i guess pretty nice i i am of the mind that i need to feel like i'm having some choice and some impact to feel like I'm doing anything of substance, even though it's not something, you know, whatever Stardew Valley, not necessarily substance. But I need to feel like I have some impact on the world, whereas here it definitely the guided nature of it made me feel like I had very little. guided nature of it made me feel like i had very little yeah and i i think that is what's going to divide the people who love this game and the people who bounce off um i feel like i am somewhere in the middle i i agree i just we've been playing games for a long time and i'm we're just used to having like more gaminess to it but But I'm glad something like this exists because it feels like a fulfillment

of the cozy game promise, which is there are a lot of quote cozy games out there and we'll get more into the definition of what this little micro genre niche is later. But they still ask a lot of you. Like there's a lot of work to playing them and they can be quite not even work of complexity. I mean,

you look at study Valley and it has obviously the planting the farm and placing furniture in your house, but there's also like, Oh, here's every villager and every villager has a different like and a dislike and you need to remember what things they like and what they dislike. And you're trying to complete they dislike and you're trying to complete these tasks and you're trying to complete these quests and there's like a lot to focus on so

if you were like a new gamer stardew valley is like a lot to take in like i couldn't give stardew valley my mom i would give her this game yeah and you're right it feels like the perfect on-ramp to that sort of game and also the rewards are all all there, which the best part of Stardew Valley is where it's like, oh, the festival comes, or oh, you get a chill out at night in your little bathtub after a hard day's work. Or just the productivity rewards, like you're faster doing the things you were previously struggling with, with shortcuts and various other things. Yeah, and I think it is good about making sure it doesn't cut any of that stuff um all of that is still very much the i guess the entire point of this game i i think uh like a lot of cozy games the aesthetic is what carries it yeah um can you describe kind of like what it looks and feels i mean it looks like cozy river city ransom is what it looks like that now it's just like pixelated and cartoony and just like very chill and uh like if you were playing an snes farming sim game i guess there

were some like harvest moon games on snes it is in that milieu. Very autumnal. Yes. Yeah. It also is vertical mode for this game. Oh, yeah. And can be played with one hand, which I'm always a fan of. There's something, it just feels good most of the time. When you pick weeds, you walk past them them but then you kind of swipe your thumb across

the screen and you get them all at once it's a little strange to me why certain things are very easy and natural like that but then planting things and watering them is just as uh irritating and time consuming as it was in the original stardew Valley for, you know, early version of it. Or I guess more appropriately Harvest Moon where you're planting individual seeds and doing individual watering at first. But yeah, overall, it feels very, very good. And it is easy to just kind of, you know, pull up on your phone while you're watching something that kind of passively or or i guess on a commute yeah 100 no i i get the draw of it i'm kind of of the mind that i can do one of these every once every like two or three years and i'll like get super hard hardcore into

animal crossing or stardew valley and i'll play a ton and get really into it and then my tolerance for them like kind of falls off a cliff for a while i am kind of in that ab at the moment not everyone is so like if you're ready and willing to jump into another one go for it this is a very good one but, it's hard for me to like, because I know what the end game is. Like, I know it's going to be like a fun, bustling city, you know, town and my house is going to look great. I'm going to feel really satisfied. But like knowing the end of the road kind of takes a little bit of the thrill out of it for me. No, for sure.

I think that makes perfect sense. I also know I mentioned Japanese language learning on an episode a few weeks back. A handful of people responded in the comments about their experience learning too. And I will say for this game, there's a Japanese. You can change the language in it. And it's really, really simple language. So it's kind of a great tool for that, I have found. Being able to, I kind of just switch back and forth

because you're repeating a lot of the language over and over and over each day within the game. So being able to do a day in English and a day in Japanese has been really helpful. I think there are other languages in there. So if that is the case, I imagine that would be true for any are other languages in there. So if that is the case, I imagine that would be true for any of the languages in here. Just a good repetition and a lot of words that

you would probably use throughout a typical day, which is really neat. I want to tie this into a larger conversation about cozy games and this kind of phenomenon of like how how did it come to be what is it and and kind of what are our favorites so can you how how would you describe the cozy game and where it came from i mean arguably the origins of it i would look to something like harvest moon because you know you're looking at like the mid 90s and the idea of like a game that wasn't a shoot-em-up or a fighting game or a shooter or whatever it is it was just like chill on a farm i don't think it hit the mainstream appeal until more recently when you saw the rise of farming sim games, the farm villas of the world, and obviously Stardew Valley. But, you know, we've seen a lot of different games

try to approach the vibes of games like that that aren't necessarily farming games. Like, for example, Spiritfarer is, you know, a game that involves, like, ferrying dead people across the River Styx sticks and yet it is a cozy game because it's just like it matches that vibe of chill low-key like you're not going to be stressed out necessarily by what you're doing um so it yeah it's kind of been a long road but now i think it's like a major staple of video games yeah i also wonder how much of it is an aesthetic versus a style of

play because yes spirit fairer i think dwarf romantic comes to mind unpacking and very much so but what do you think of a game like tetris effect yeah no i know i know where you're going. It's not. That is not. I mean, look, I'm not one to say what makes you cozy, go for it. But Tetris Effect has like one cozy level. And then everything after that is pretty uncozy, in my opinion. It gets pretty intense in a good way. I love that game. Awesome game. But that's a pretty crazy game.

Here's another example that's not that it doesn't have quite the cozy aesthetic but i think has the vibes is grow up i don't think i played that remember uh i think we did i think we all did it was a a ubisoft game and you uh were this like a little red robot and you would plant seeds and you would grow these giant vines that went up to the sky, kind of Jack and the Beanstalk style. And it was an entire game about climbing. I don't think I played this game.

Really? I don't think so. Oh, you know what it was? Was it Grow Home? Was that the first one? There's like two of these, I think. I think Grow Home was... I don't think I played either of them. Yeah, Grow Home was the first one. Grow's like two of these, I think. I think Grow Home was... I don't think I played either of them.

Yeah, Grow Home was the first one. Grow Home was in 2015. Grow Up was like right after this. I cannot believe you did not play these. I don't think I did. We need to remedy this. But this is like proto cozy game to me. It is not quite doing the, again,

the autumnal almost cottagecore style, but it was weird to see an experiment like this from a major studio that is really just about the vibe of moving upward in beautiful nature and just kind of chilling out. It's a great, great series. Grow Home, great title grow up not a great title because your your seo your google juice is gonna be yeah it's hard to search for that game uh you did you did list another game on here which i think is much more in line with the traditional vibes of a cozy game and that was a short hike oh yeah which uh was is a tremendously good highly recommend it it's frequently on steam sales and stuff like that um it's like a three hour you're at like a camp ground and you're a bird and you're exploring the campground and talking to people and doing like mini quests and stuff

like that but man that put me in such a state it It was such like a nice experience. Yeah, for me, that's the essential like cozy game. Yeah. For my version of it, because there's no like perfect definition of this. But what I like things like Stardew Valley, I like things like unpacking to some degree here, Dreamlight Valley or whatnot. But there's still a lot of work to it. There's still a lot of following the systems. There can be even some stress and deadlines.

A short hike is, it's got that look, it's got that music, and you could follow the main path, or you can just fly around like a cool bird. That is not my favorite cozy game, though. Oh, I know what you're going to say your favorite cozy game is and i i would challenge you on whether or not this is a cozy game

can i guess yeah i guess your favorite cozy game is going to be desert golfing well did you is it because you saw it in the rundown you just read it it's not guessing yes but i also does not count as i've known you i have known you long enough to know of course this would be of course this would be your favorite i mean i've i'm sure i've talked about desert golfing on the podcast before it's a mobile game where you are golfing into infinity it's just a 2d side scrolling golf game i am on hole 1332 of the longest golf course ever made and it's fucking great there's no like graphics really the closest it gets to being graphics is like every 300 holes a cloud might float by like that's it um but it is a very meditative zen-like experience where you're just trying to

like finish each hole of golf and i have had it installed on every iphone i've had since it launched it might be on android too please uh search it and and see because if it is this game fucking rules um whenever i'm in the subway and i get stuck in the subway bam desert golfing whatever i'm watching something on netflix and i'm like don't i'm not super into it desert golfing can i ask you a personal question about this game sure do you think that there is a jewish reading of desert golfing and lost in the desert for 40 years kind of thing well that that for sure but also the like what does it all mean i good luck we'll probably never know i don't know i don't think it's a night so that's a nihilist approach to desert golfing and i don't think it's that i

don't think it's nihilism though like i think um you know like coen brother is a serious man right like it's not a downer movie dog that's a good movie it's a good movie it's a downer movie i always feel better after that movie do you after the tornado kills everyone we don't know if it does but i what i i well i'm also a sucker for job stories in general but i i i think that there's something very comforting about like, hey, life throws you a lot of curveballs and you just keep rolling. And maybe it'll keep going and maybe it'll keep ending. I don't know. I find that personally soothing.

That is a ball for my soul. I don't interpret desert golfing that way. I think desert golfing quite simply is a game about enjoying the journey not the destination because there is no destination so you better enjoy the journey and and i do it's just like a meaning of a serious man they they quote jefferson airplane how you know you gotta one pill makes you smaller that's true that's so true that's real deep um this is good. This is a lot of good games. We'll put this in the newsletter, just all of these

little delights, which I think folks will enjoy. The other thing I will say, and I actually just heard about this, so people should check it out. Our friend and colleague, Nicole Carpenter at Polygon is going to appear on NPR's 1A to talk about cozy games in an upcoming

episode, which actually should already be out, definitely be out by the time that you hear this. So I'll make sure that we include that in the newsletter too. Cool. You want to talk about a free game that is better than like most games? Yes. Cool. Let's take a break and we will talk about moon ring right after

this okay so we're back and we have to talk about moon ring set us up on like how you heard about this why it matters and then we can go from there sure so a friend of the show zach gage uh creator of ridiculous fishing and spell tower very good indie developer uh mentioned to me that he was playing this game moon ring and he said it was incredible and i having you know this podcast and having the job that i do it is so rare that someone is like hey have you heard about this amazing game and I can say no I've literally never heard of it and in this case I had literally never heard of the game moon ring so I was very pleased to go check it out uh I downloaded on steam as of this recording it has like 120 reviews on steam which as a frame of reference is like basically zero reviews on Steam.

Most like hit games have like 50,000 reviews, 100,000 reviews. This game has 120, which is a real shame because A, it's free and B, it fucking rules. And I'm really impressed by it. Okay, backstory. This game is made by Dean Carter. You might know Dean Carter's name because he worked on Fable. He was actually one of the co-creators of Fable alongside the one and only Peter Molyneux and has been making games for decades.

So he's like a very established game designer based in the uk and i guess has a real love for an era of video games that kind of peaked before i was really even playing them and that was like the early top-down ultima style of rpg these enormous kind of intimidating, overwhelming, but also like very well designed RPGs where you can have like free reign over and like a huge open world. And all of the gameplay systems really interact in interesting ways. But obviously, from a graphical standpoint, it's all very, very simple and 2D and, you know, basic. And that is what Moon Ring was inspired by. But Dean Carter has introduced a number of, I guess, quality of life features that kind of modernize the experience in really smart ways to make it so that someone who's never played one of those games, i.e. me, can get into this game and have a really good time. And I have.

Yeah, quality of life improvement is a vast understatement i mean it's the right it's the right phrasing but it's such a stark change over how these games actually played back in the day yeah i'll give you a simple example um traditionally there'd be like armor you'd say you you're a knight and you're running around you find some armor and the armor might decrease the amount of damage that you take there is armor in moon ring you can pick up armor it'll it will decrease some of the damage but you also have a system called poise and poise is basically like a shield that regenerates when you're not in combat and it allows you to

essentially take damage but not have it be so punishing that oh no I'm going to have to take a health potion now so long as you don't go under your kind of poise meter you're fine you can kind of like disengage and run away a little bit and get your advantage back

so that's like a very basic example of the way the systems are at work. And they all serve the greater good of the point of the game, which is this is a game about role-playing or having an adventure. It is not a game about managing inventory, which is the risk that you always run into

with these sorts of things. They purport to be one thing, but because of their design, they end up becoming another thing. Yeah, I mean, there is an inventory system, but you're not picking up staplers like you are in Starfield. or uh i found i found these scraps of metal that i could then use to repair a robot buddy that now follows me around and kicks everyone's ass um the scope of this game is wild you start off you're just on a farm um and you're kind of given a clue like hey you should check out this storage house whatever and in the storage house you find a key and in the the key you find to a chest and inside the chest is a note kind of leads you eventually to a capital city and in that

capital city they're like obsessed with these gods and there's gods that are very important to this giant open world that kind of dictate how everyone acts and who they follow and what their abilities are. And the gods are how the game handles character customization. Who you align with will determine your abilities and your skills and even your stats. So, for example, I found a god that was basically the Joker from Batman. All of his abilities rely on being, quote, mad. But remember, these are British people. So, you know, crazy insofar as like you'll run around and you can activate like a skill

that will allow you to enter kind of a madness state where you'll do way more damage and kind of like yell gibberish at people but if you get hit while in that state you'll get stunned so there's this balance of like oh do i want to activate this madness skill and get this increase of damage but you know you have that risk reward so you can really role play as like in this case fantasy joker running around throwing knives at people but if you get hit once you're just like kind of stumbling around uh stunned all the time so there are these like very interesting like kind of unexpected uh archetypes that you can

roll into using these god systems in like really smart ways yeah i was like massively intimidated for the first hour but slowly but surely i've been able to ease my way into it and i like found the discord for the game and they've been really helpful but because it doesn't have a huge following yet like there aren't a ton of guides for this game yet i do think over time given the fact that it's free and incredibly well made it will find its audience. But right now it's just like kind of really cool to just like figuring it out, figure it out on its own terms. Yeah. Yeah. This is a chance for people who are listening to the show. If you haven't heard about it already, it's not already out there.

By the time you listen to this, to get the experience that Fresh and i get a lot at polygon where you have something kind of before the world discovers it and it is nice and the bummer is yeah you don't have all the guides to turn to that it sounds like the discord community helps but there's something really cool about being able to play a game without the hype cycle around it and without all the other outstanding you know variables um in the same way that if you've ever had the chance to go to you know a surprise movie screening before a movie comes out or a movie festival or any of those things seeing it before the trailers exist is is a real trip um yeah and on your note of being able to get into it i i think the readability of the game is just

able to get into it i i think the readability of the game is just pretty impressive and by that i mean both like playing it readability in that you know where something like this might have even been an ascii game back in the day and by that i mean yeah represented by numbers and symbols and letters the visuals here are very very very clear you can tell what's happening. And, for example, your character can get wet. There's a little bar that shows your character's status, and it tells you that you're wet. You're not having to, like, figure out, like, hey, there's a squiggle over my line, and then I have to look up in some, you know, forum from 20 years ago, oh, that means I'm wet, and it'll variable rate it yada yada yada yada and it should it should be noted there's like gameplay implications if you like get drenched from the rain you know you might take more lightning damage for example there's like every all these status effects and there are many of them all have major impacts on the gameplay in really

interesting ways yeah yeah the other readability thing is it just is good about saving the text that you work through because there is a lot of text in this game. Yeah. And there is a lot of fantasy terminology and whatnot. And being able to easily parse through that so you're not lost is a huge help.

This is definitely the sort of game that when you played in the early 80s when this sort of thing came out or like the early i guess early 80s like the what would you say like late 80s was yeah it was really like peaky yeah yeah all 80s um you you had to have a notebook and you had to write things down and you had to not only write down what worked in the information like that but also write down what you tried that didn't work so you knew not to do it over and over again yeah the designer has said that the notes in the game and there there are notes that constantly update as you get you know more information about a quest for example those are designed to replace

the experience of actually writing stuff down because they know, oh, this is important. It's going to be saved so that you don't get lost or anything like that. Yeah. That said, it still leaves room for the old school vibe and the old school player. conversation system where as you talk with somebody, words are added to your kind of notebook, I guess, and they float around a character. And then you type in those words to continue the conversation. That, I guess, like word cloud that you literally form in the game and then you can use. That is one way of navigating the story, which is great.

So if I talk to Frosh and he says, there's danger out beyond pines. And then beyond the pines is floating over my head. So I know to type beyond the pines. And then Fresh goes, ah, yes, beyond the pines. That's where I saw the ancient Juggalo werewolf. Then I would like, no, okay, I got new information. But before all of this, if I understand this game correctly, if I had been like, you know, based off of other characters I've talked to and stuff I've seen in this world, I bet this character knows something about Juggalo werewolves. Yeah. I could type that in.

And if I just knew it, even without appearing beforehand, it would be like, okay, sure, let's skip to that part of the conversation. Yeah, that might be true. I've actually not tried it. It says you can type things that have not been mentioned yet. Okay, yeah. And I've tried it with some NPCs where there is a character called the Arachon? Archon?

Archon, sure, thank you. But I have mentioned it to a few different characters and gotten responses even when i don't have any text to show yeah that's cool that's like a really nice touch i mean that's a more evidence that maybe you should be mindful of what you're reading because you could arguably like who knows there might be a passphrase that you could say to the first guy you meet in the game that like gives you the best armor ever yeah yeah um which is kind of cool actually to have it that open

this it's a really special game yeah it's really I somehow worry that we're underselling this despite our enthusiasm it is really hard to put into words but I do think it's really interesting,

mostly just in the context of like to see the origins of a game like Skyrim. Like I can see it in this, but I also think the decisions that you're making and the like combat mechanics here are a lot more interesting than just like, Oh, I'm going to fire off my best spell like in combat because everything is quasi turn based like when you move they move kind of thing like every turn matters a whole heck of a lot so the fact that i can oh i'm gonna cast a spell

this turn so that when i move this guy is going to be stunned but his enemies are going to run into him and they're going to take damage from the spell I just casted. Like it's a little more tactical than like an action RPG, like a Skyrim, for example. So, but, but I can sense the, like the ambition of this game or games like this informing what were the earliest versions of the elder scrolls games and kind of determining how those games grew out of it so you know over the course of this year we've been talking about like reading list games and honestly like i think we might have to add at least one of these type of games in our list because you can really see how other rpgs have evolved from this format yeah yeah no i think that i think that is spot on um do we do we have anything else i think that's basically it um just as a reminder this

game is completely free uh you can download on steam you can download on hio it's basically on i think it's on PC and Mac, although I've heard the Mac version is a little bit behind where the PC version's at. I got it to work on Steam Deck. I wouldn't necessarily encourage that because there are some elements that are a little hinky on Steam Deck.

Specifically, it's designed to be played with a mouse and keyboard. Somebody on Steam Deck, because Steam Deck has that very cool deck specifically it's designed to be played with a mouse and keyboard somebody on steam deck because steam deck has that like very cool community controller layouts option where you can just like use other layouts that other players have used so i used one of those and it's been working pretty well i had to tweak it a little bit specifically to get the keyboard working but uh it's playable um but if you're looking to just like test it out i'd recommend just downloading it on a mac or a pc and playing it with a mouse and keyboard just to

like get your feet wet and then if you get really into it and want to play it more uh in a portable setting you have that option i also don't think it's on Mac officially yet. Okay. I tried to download it. That might have been just Zach being a cool insider dude. Yes, but I hope that's true that it's coming to Mac because it would be great to play this on a laptop. Yeah. Well, they make PC laptops, Chris Plant. Just a heads up. No, that doesn't sound right. I think, no.

Hey, do we have any honorable mentions that we should talk about? Oh, I have something that I have not watched yet, but I'm going to have watched it by the time this episode airs, and I feel pretty confident that I'll have enjoyed it, which is Wes Anderson has new Roald Dahl adaptations on Netflix. Do you know about this? No, I don't. Yeah, he released like three or four,

I think three short films on Netflix that range, I think, between like a half hour and an hour. And they're all based off of Roald Dahl stories. And they all look great. The people I follow on Letterboxd seem to love them. I feel like Wes Anderson has been on a hot streak really since, well, right the day after Isle of Dogs came out from then on,

it's been going really well. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Do you not like Isle of Dogs? It's not bad, but it's not, it's not. I like it. That movie a lot. I like that. Yeah,

I actually do. I, I think I like fantastic mr fox so much that i also love that i yeah i might be bringing too much uh expectation to isle of dogs i should go back and watch it see because it's not just island like island of dog it's like i love dogs but it's spelled isle i love dogs wow maybe that's why you didn't like it do you think that was intentional yeah i think it was that i love dogs does not feel like the sort of bumper sticker wes anderson keeps on the back of his you know like vintage pickup truck or whatever he drives

uh anyway that is exciting i love fantastic mr fox so it's cool to see him doing more roll doll stuff um and i i read a lot of those books as a kid so that is complicated for your doll but yeah certainly not not a great human guy with good opinions on things great writer though great writer and unfortunately that is a common situation where someone who is artistically very talented is also a bit of a shit heel so you know torn make it make a decision for yourself whether you want to experience it but i do like wes anderson stuff oh yeah so and it's okay to be torn natalie and bruglia taught us so much. She did. She did. What about you?

Anything that you want to share? You got nothing. You had so much time to come up with something while I yammered on. I was distracted. You were so excited. You were on Netflix adding it to your queue. And you couldn't be bothered to come up with some sort of halloween flavored movie and or video game that could get everybody really excited people love your recommendations and you're letting them down yeah i don't know man nothing i i'm the problem is everything that i've

recommended on this show before reservation dogs which i'm still watching and still enjoying i'm watching season three now dynamite love it um we talked about uh that ridiculous brian de palma movie didn't we what is what is your favorite throwback halloween movie like when you want to get nostalgic for childhood what what halloween thing do you put on yeah it's probably hocus pocus yeah probably i mean it's a little bit of a basic pick or nightmare before christmas even though arguably that's a christmas movie uh but i don't like because we've discussed this i'm not really like a horror guy so it's not like i'm gonna watch friday the 13th or anything like that i do like nothing but trouble but that's not really a halloween movie um you ever see that movie Freaks?

Yeah, that movie's really upsetting. Not the original Freaks, but the one with the guy from Bill and Ted. Not Keanu Reeves. Not the very well-known one. I mean Freaks and Geeks,

the Judd Apatow-produced television series. No, no, no, no, no. You mean Freaks with Emile Hirsch? What are you talking about? We're just going to cut. We're just going to cut off. No, no, no. This is Stan in the show.

You walked into a puzzle box, and I'm trying to find a way to get you out. But I think we're good. I think we're good. Alex Winter starred in a movie. Alex Winter starred in a movie. Alex Winter starred in a movie. I think it was called Freaks. It was on Looped. Freaked.

Yes, and it was with Brooke Shields, William Sadler. It was on Looped on Comedy Central. It must have cost them $10 the license for Comedy Central. Wow. Constantly. It is. And the poster is i mean upsetting wouldn't begin to explain what i am yeah so one of the characters is just a worm

man and one of the characters is just a big nose and one of the characters is a human cow. And the idea is he is sucked into a freak show and like forced to like live among the other freaks. Wow. I don't even know if it holds up because I haven't seen it in about 20 years. But IMDb says it's 6.3. And for a comedy, that's pretty good. Dude, John Hawks is in this. Wow. A very young John john hawks who does he play he plays cowboy john hawks plays the man who's a cow wow amazing was this like john hawks's

first role one of the earliest man we have taken quite the road here mr t is in it okay this is i don't know if i could watch this i i truly don't i i think you have to watch it now i like weird stuff this like actually makes me kind of queasy the the it's like the makeup effects of like it looks like a person's a giant nose yeah he is a nose okay yeah i don't i don't think that's gonna happen um maybe Maybe, maybe, maybe I'll try it. Probably not. Can we wrap up the show so I don't have to think about this movie ever again? Oh, yeah, that'd be good.

Let's do that. Cool. That sounds great. Hey, hey you, listener of the show. We just want to say thank you for listening. We wouldn't be able to do this without you. And we hope that you enjoy listening as much as we enjoy talking with each other. This has been another episode of The Resties.

If you want to know more about all the games and movies and freaks that we talked about, you can find that at besties.fan. That's our newsletter. We include links to everything, so it's really easy to use we're pretty pretty into it um but otherwise that's it i'm christopher thomas plant you are and this is the resties we're the best of the rest talk about the rest of the best resties