The Besties - The Sleeper Hits of Spring 2022

Episode Date: May 20, 2022

This week, we're circling back with some of the lil' guys you might have missed this Spring while you were traipsing in the bluebonnets, or collecting berries or whatever. Games discussed: Shotgun King, Vampire Survivors, Haiku the Robot, Mini Motorways on Switch, OlliOlli World, Dungeons of Dreadrock, Rogue Legacy 2, Peglin, Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus?, Songpop Party, Forager, Fall Guys, Citizen Sleeper 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!

Well, I planted a couple pear trees yesterday. This is the beginning of my favorite folk song. Go ahead, juice, do the rest. Is that four pear trees, or... What? How many pears is it? A couple. That's four pears total.

No, but once these beautiful babies start producing, I'm expecting big things. Big, beautiful, juicy pe juicy parents and let me tell you boys you are not invited because these beautiful babies are all for me i got bartlett shitty well i got bart let's i'm putting in all the work i'm the little uh i'm the little you know aunt that's collecting the grain for the winter and you can't just show up once these beautiful juicy boys start growing in and say oh i'd like a pair too i meant to come help you plant how tall are they like at a starting point right now they're about three feet tall

there's a lot of oh the trees are Not the pears themselves No the pears I'm assuming will be If you just imagine the best pear you've ever seen Like big beautiful juicy Colors What? Perfect I don't see color Me neither

What about body Juiciness Oh juiciness for these I mean if it's rated on TLC, these are going to be like crazy sexy coal. Because I've put a lot of care into these beautiful, beautiful two boys. Are you going to grange them? Are you Googling, Russ?

No, this is just from Stardew Valley. Oh. What's granging? Do I need to do that? I've been into pear farming for, I guess it's been about 18 hours now. Sure, sure. So there's still a little bit of the terminology I'm a little bit unclear on. Yeah.

I think it's like if there's a county fair and you want to present your pears, you put them in a box and then. I assume they'll want to have the fair at my house. Yeah. Because the pears will be too big and juicy and they're not even going to want to... Like, they're not going to want me to pick them. They're going to want to come and eat them right off the tree.

Are you going to do them up? Because you've got two because of pollination. And pears. Are you going to do them up like a Harry and David gift box and wrap them in gold foil before you give them as gifts? They are actually bred to grow with gold foil. Wait, they're bred? That's amazing.

What? No, I have a breadfruit tree in the back. That's just to keep the deer away. Because they get scared and confused. What's that doing up there? Did I mention my raspberries? Oh my God. confused what's that doing up there did i mention my raspberries oh my god my name is justin mackar and i don't know the best games of the year that we didn't need to talk about before now.

Yeah, that's a weird con. My name is Griffin McElroy, and there's so many great games that we have kept secret from you. Yeah. To keep our own special reserve. My name is Ross Froschek, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Ross Froschik and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. Chris Plant is continuing his boycott of the program this week until we retroactively name

13 Sentinels the best game. It says here Eva and it's like three A's, which is weird. So Plant, we hope you will relent because I certainly won't. which is weird so plant we hope you will relent because i certainly won't uh this week we are going to be talking about some you know not every game is uh sort of juicy enough uh like a pair like a beautiful beautiful pair not juicy enough to support its own environment its own episode rather so uh we wanted to collect some of the ones that, you know, just some quick hits. Some like, hey, you should check this out.

And we're going to be, can I say spilling the tea? Is that, is that? I think that's negative, right? Isn't that like gossip? Yeah. We'll be drinking the tea. Okay.

Yeah. Right after this. I'm thirsty for tea. Spill it. Or drink, like, dump tea on me. Okay, so, again, these are, like, games that I think we've seen in the last couple months, but not necessarily, like, the biggest, like, AAA releases, because, spoiler alert, there basically haven't been in, like, three months, major releases.

Yeah, I feel like the, I feel, everyone kind of knew when COVID hit that there would be like a lull. And it's interesting how games are in different sorts of development and some people adapted better. But I feel like we are really hitting the lull at this point. Like I feel like we are now hitting the like where we have not caught up yet with the uh the law you know i was game development i was thinking that too and then i was talking to friend of the show jason schreier okay and he said that he just thinks there are fewer games being made overall interest and that it's not a covid lull as much as it is like ea or activision used to make like a ton of different games and now like activism makes cod basically and but what we're seeing is obviously these

smaller titles coming to things like game pass or steam that are sort of filling in what were previously like these tentpole gaming moments and that like this last february where you know elden ring and dying light 2 came out and all these other games is kind of a weird aberration and maybe not going to be the norm yeah there's also pacing issues because we were inundated a few months ago we were fucking wild yeah it was an embarrassment of riches like a big game like um you know a dying light 2 that sort of got buried by a lot of the other big releases right around then i think could really like uh find purchase right now because it's a

little bit dry yeah in the fields in the game fields yeah i'm sure if people had known where all the games were going to fall maybe some shifts would have made i would have happened i do you guys get irritated i this is this is like a tangential this conversation but it is sort of also the cause of this conversation I feel like on the stores where there are a lot of games like I guess most of the stores at this point all the digital storefronts I feel like

and Steam is probably the best at this but like I get so frustrated looking at all the different games that have been dumped on like the Switch store the PlayStation store and having no idea, like having no way to like, certainly I'd enjoy some of these, like I have law of large numbers.

I have, I would have to enjoy some of these and it is so hard to find like without actually like physically downloading and playing them, especially these have no like no reviews or feedback systems or anything like like the switch store for example well first of all it's so hard to find thank god it's so hard stuff because that pays our bills so thank you we're here for that but secondly i would say there are websites like for example i never ever browse the e-shop like blindly i I always use DekuDeals.com,

which does not sponsor the show, but it is a very good website that basically sorts by sales that are going on on Switch right now, but also includes the Metacritic score and all sorts of other stuff that you would actually want to know before buying a thing.

So that certainly helps. Yeah, I like sometimes just scrolling through the e-shop the e-shop's a fun one because if you go to like best sellers or great deals or featured uh it's like oh i know these guys i love these guys dragon ball i at least recognize him at his great works and then you click into it and it's like, do you want to spend $35 on a game called Equestrian Training? And it's like, I think, do you want to spend $2.19 on Salad Bar Tycoon Extended Edition? And it's like, is that as good as Zelda?

Well, the pricing is hilarious because when you look at, especially in Switch, you see this where it's like, $50 to play this, like, there's no way, this seek and find game, there's no way. And then you see another, it's like $278. It's like, well, this can't be anything. There's no way. Well, it's also, the Switch is such Wild West

because people, they set prices like $50 for a crazy matching game, whatever. And then they'll do a huge discount and because of the huge discount it gets put on the like best seller list for deals and then that like the people are really like screwing with nintendo nintendo needs to get their shit together in terms of sorting that store because it is not a scientific process no not at all okay but let's talk about what what's good. Okay. I'm going to start with a game called Shotgun King,

which is on Steam right now. I'm not sure if it's on any other platforms, but I know for sure it's on Steam. That's where I played it. And I think you guys are going to love this game. This seems both Griffin and Justin palatable. Shotgun King is basically a roguelike chess game where you have a single piece you are a king a shotgun king in this case and you are up against a number of different traditional chess

pieces pawns knights brooks etc each level you are given your kingly abilities which is to say you can move one space in any direction or you can shoot the other pieces with a shotgun and so you basically move through the levels deciding do i want to use a shotgun or do i want to move but also on top of that you are getting perks that alter your movement abilities your shotgun abilities uh the enemies that you're facing so for example you might pick a perk that increases your ammo capacity on your shotgun but it also makes two knights spawn every single round whereas previously it might be you know something easier so it's really really cool you can there's like uh single use cards where you can like turn your knight turn your king into a knight so you can move like

l-shaped knight ways um this i mean i haven't played a ton of it but there's a sort of a campaign mode with multiple difficulty settings and then i think there's a survive for as long as you can mode which seems pretty cool but i haven't played that one yet it's like six dollars and it's really well made um sounds fun on steam video games being hot as hell and i have not played vampire survivors yet which seems wild because it really yeah i haven't played it so completely and but so i this morning i bought it so it's like how about be fun to play it maybe stream it do a little bit of something with it and it's like two fucking dollars and it's like how did that what are you guys sure you want to charge that much for it because like everybody's

playing it and talking about it and it seems like you could maybe get even more than two dollars i mean i don't want to question it because like that i feel like you do what you got to do to get if you've got like an untested thing yeah um how many people would take a flyer on it for two bucks i mean yeah especially if they heard some buzz about it it's great like you really can't wait if you've got like an untested thing, how many people would take a flyer on it for two bucks? I mean, especially if they heard some buzz about it. It's great. Like you really can't beat it for like- I can't wait. Yeah, I'm excited. It looks-

It's great for if you're doing like, sometimes I like to ride the bike while I'm playing and it's literally like you can play with one thumb. Like, so it's a perfect for that. Yeah, it seems sort of like it's just an alpha move where games like that or like hollow knight launched if i'm not mistaken at 15 and has stayed at 15 forever and then sometimes goes down to 750 and they knew how fucking good that game was but they were just like no we're just going to charge

like basically nothing for one of the greatest games ever made and so sick um Hey, I want to talk about Olly Olly World because I know I've brought it up on this show. It has come up previously. But for me, it falls in this category of hot as hell games that I am surprised not more people are talking about. It is just such a brilliant evolution of of what ollie ollie world or the original ollie ollie games did uh which is to say like super simple you know uh one or two input

skateboarding downhill jam uh it does that by and also layers on like a really fun sort of world and vibe and upgrade system and mission system. The levels are all very colorful and memorable. The music is probably my favorite game soundtrack of the year so far. It's just great. And it's out on Switch, and that's where i've been playing it and it is kind of the perfect switch game where like i can just pick it up and over the course of like five minutes just like slam my head against a level until i clear it uh and you know you don't need to remember a whole bunch of stuff the muscle memory kind of stays with you for long enough

that it bridges the gap between ollie ollie world sessions but uh it is it is phenomenal yeah it's kind of funny because this this is now two games in a row that i have intentionally not played yet because i knew they would both be really really good on steam deck and i wanted to wait until i got a steam deck which hasn't happened yet um but both vampire survivors and ollie ollie world i think would be great on steam deck which hasn't happened yet um but both vampire survivors and ollie ollie world i think would be great on steam deck but maybe i'll just get ollie ollie on switch and yeah fuck it ollie ollie world has like a couple of load load times like i think i like yeah i haven't played in a couple weeks but um like loading into a level takes like a little bit longer than you want it to take so maybe that'll be better on Steam Deck.

I don't know. But it is great, and it scratches an itch that nobody else is scratching right now. And I do appreciate that. Come over there and scratch your itch. My skateboarding? You want to come jam with me, bro? Yeah.

Come jam with me, Russ. I'm going to. Can you imagine me and you? Boom, boom, hop, jam. Can you imagine me and you? Can you imagine me and you? We would make two widows that day, the day we tried to jam. Instant widows. Instantly.

Same jam. Two dead boys. Me and you. Can I do two quickly? Yes. First is, I just want to say Rogue Legacy too, because I know you all did it on resties it's gotten so much better it's got my how are you into that right now i had i would have no way

of answering yeah but like how many areas have you seen i've beaten the first boss and i've gotten to the second area the other two that sort of branch off in the first area i can't yeah yeah no i i know yeah i've got two bosses under my belt and i've hit the third and came very close to finishing the third i was i am loving it it's so compelling and like it has so much shit to do and i'm loving it i wish i wish the money came in a little faster because it is really defeating to like have a sick run where you go through and you make like you know 4 000 gold early in the game you're like hell yeah there's a lot of money and then it buys you like a single upgrade and it's like oh well okay it feels like it should get a little bit

incremental i i agree with that by design like that's the game but i just want it to be i just want it to be a little bit faster i I didn't, there's a house rules section where you can kind of tweak, like, enemy damage and, like, all those parameters to kind of make it what you want to make it. I didn't see one in there for gold gain, which is disappointing, but yeah. Otherwise.

If you tried it early, dip back in. It's great. Yeah, and I think if you wanted to make it faster, you could just make yourself, you know, decrease enemy health, and you'd basically get to later levels, which in turn drop more gold. Yeah. Real quickly, I just wanted to mention also Songpop Party. Songpop's a franchise, but this is in the Apple Arcade.

And it is, you pick a playlist. It's a game I mean you don't you don't really play it by yourself you play it with other people online or in person you pick a playlist that's like a genre of music and then they start and then you play name that tune basically and it's whoever like buses in first gets the most points and I I just have to say, after getting my clock cleaned by teens for very long in my, in my adult years, it is so nice to just be like, Oh, that story of a girl.

Oh, thank you. I know it in three milliseconds. Absolutely. Oh, that Oasis children. That's Oasis. You didn't recognize it instantly.

These songs are in my bones there's like four playlists i can do that with uh and it is very fun and satisfying it would make a fun uh part of game two i thought that song was called absolutely i fucking i don't know i mean my current loader over here wow um but the those are two two recommendations I want to make. I have two other meaty ones, but do you want to hear one of those? Break me off a beefy boy. Y'all fuck with Peglin? I've played Peggle.

Okay, so you know Peggle, Griffin, Russ. I'm going to hand you something extremely powerful with this recommendation, and I just want you to be responsible with it, okay? Peglin is a... I mean, it's the Peggle RPG. We should... Wow, that alone. Wow.

I got chills. It's the... We should tell people what Peggle is, just for the people. Peggle's like, okay, so it's like Plinko or Pachinko, or you're basically shooting out a ball, and then the balls hit pegs, and then you get points for hitting the pegs. And then you do it again.

Very physics-focused. But in this game, in this roguelike, you are playing. It's more pachinko because it's going down rather than up where Peggle was like you're firing up and this is what you're firing down. But like, what is this Peggle? No, you fired down and you fired down. Peggle. What are you talking about? Great.

You know exactly what I'm talking about. Then Peggle RPG. So you have a assortment of different balls, and that's your ammo. And each one has different properties. So there's a bouncy one, and there is a dagger that's more powerful if you hit special blocks that turn your attack critical. So at the top of the screen, you're squaring off against an enemy who has a health bar and you have a health bar. Um, and they are attacking you between each round. You are trying to hit as many pegs as you can because each peg acts to the, uh, adds to the strength

of your attack. So if you hit a bunch of pegs in one round, then you're going to do a very powerful attack. You can augment that by there's special pegs that replenish all the pegs on the board. And there's pegs that turn your attack critical, which makes it like more damaging. In between rounds, you can refill your health or upgrade a ball or get new balls. There's like stone that is very basic. There's,

there's one that turns every eighth peg you hit into a bomb that hits every enemy on screen and then in between those levels you can level up um the the the pegs your balls rather so that they can do more damage you can kind of build a strategy around like i'm gonna have a bunch of these kind like these fireballs that ignite bombs immediately or i'm gonna have a bunch that replenish the peg so I'm always hitting a bunch of pegs. Did you play Beast Breaker? It does kind of sound like Beast Breaker. Yes, I find this more engaging than Beast Breaker.

I didn't like the pace of Beast Breaker as much. I think that Beast Breaker put a bunch, a little too much cruft around the core mechanics. There was a lot of narrative and a lot of... Yeah, exactly. This really scales it down and it's much more focused on the gameplay and building up like a good deck of uh ammunition if you want to call that i don't know a good stack of ammunition that that works well together oh man i like the art style as well it's like nes type era yeah it's

very it's very cool it's on it's on steam i can't imagine it's very expensive it's 20 it is early access uh so there's like like they're still building uh the stuff around it i think there's like three areas i heard about it on um giant bomb they were talking about it there and they said there there was like three three different stages you can get the difficulty also ramps up pretty quickly but it's one of those where if you have the right set of tools then you're you're working well together and if not you're probably gonna struggle i can't it pisses me off because we keep talking about games that i just want to play on a steam deck i know this is so good this would be a great switch yeah i'm sure it'll come to switch as well almost all of these will come to switch if they

haven't already yeah um have you guys played uh not dungeons of dreadrock that was the game that it yeah dungeons of dreadrock what was that what was the um legend yeah that was like the first person rpg right rock was maybe uh yes grimrock yes not dreadrock don't get it twisted okay uh so there's a there's a game i think it came out on iOS last year, but it's coming out on Switch, I think this week, called Dungeons of Dreadrock. That is a really clever, very condensed, very old school dungeon crawl, almost like puzzle style game. Where you are an adventurer going into a dungeon to save your brother. And there's like 100 levels, and you just go through and avoid enemies and set traps for them,

and everything's like super retro and tile-based, and it's kind of got some... It's like a turn-based, right? Yeah, well... Where you move and everyone else moves? Sort of. where you move and everyone else moves sort of uh yes that is that is how it works in sort of rogue like uh like traditional rogue movement style um but it's it's neat and it's very challenging uh but yeah i don't have a whole lot to say about it it's weird to me that it is coming

to switch it works on ios so well on steam it's like four bucks uh if you want to play it there also but uh it's just got a really dope aesthetic and uh it's it's another one of those like really great just pick up and play and you know smash your head against a a floor of this dungeon and then oh move right now i understand why you mentioned legend of groomrock so offend effectively this is like a top down like if you were playing instead of being first person like legend of grimrock this would be a top down of that yes that's yeah that's another good way of putting it it's got dna from a lot of different things yeah uh but it all comes together to make a a really polished and uh fun fun little package yeah that looks cool yeah i've got one called

haiku the robot oh that sounds so sweet yeah it's really cute it's uh it's on steam it is a metroidvania very very very much inspired by hollow knight uh which is to say a lot of the sort of oh you heal by standing in one place and charging up your energy mechanic um the ability to sort of customize your character through these like chips that you install that like make your attack longer or you know let you pull in uh resources magnetically stuff like that it's rather than holonite's sort of smoother art style this is more you know 16-bit era uh pixelated but if you are sort of dying over the fact that silk silk song has not come out yet um this uh seems like a good way to sort of uh get you along it's not enormous it's not like 40 hours like holonite is it's probably six to eight hours uh but i've been really enjoying it it has some uh cool uh characterization you know they do the

thing where you keep running into the same npcs all over again which again is a hollow night thing and a dark souls thing and so they they do that as well um uh yeah i've been digging it i think it's really neat that's that is on Steam. Henry saw a YouTube video with like Hollow Knight in it and he wanted to play it really, really bad. And I didn't have the heart. We've tried a couple of times. I didn't have the heart to tell him

that game is the hardest fucking nails. Yeah, he's going to die almost immediately. Oh, just a lot. And he's feeling a little hot to trot. We just polished off Kirby, which did you guys beat the new kirby game i'm very close i'm very has is the has the best ending sequence of any like mainline nintendo entry it is are you talking about like the end end or the like because there's like a bonus ending there's a i don't know man the end end the end end end i

don't i don't know there's a there's a bit where you with know, man, the end end. The end end end. I don't know. There's a bit where you, with a almost Halo-like ending to the game that is a fucking blast. Oh, I think I know what you're talking, with King Dedede? No. Oh, then I haven't seen that ending. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, so he doesn't enjoy watching me play games. He wants to be in control of them. Good for him. Good for him, but also Hollow Knight ain't ain't the one not yet that's a tough it's a tough boy boy not yet you're not ready for this boy you can play rogue legacy 2 probably if you turned on the accessibility stuff yeah yeah of course that'd be fun uh is that is that it no no i have one more and and sounds like juice has one more as well i want to hear russ's one okay uh my one more juice just mentioned or you were uh griffin was talking about uh how certain games uh are really good on ios uh one of

them which uh came out a while ago uh for apple arcade was mini motorways which i didn't play a ton of on ios but it did just come out on switch and i've been playing a bunch on there um really great strategy game where you're basically placing roadways to get cars from one point to another point and eventually it sort of expands the map out such that you're making these like really intricate like webs of interlocking traffic while also having to deal with the fact that oh you already placed some roads in a really shitty position so you have to accommodate that and it's just got this like very minimalist art style um yeah i don't know i find it really soothing and and chill if you're looking

for a chill puzzle game highly recommend it it's great on iOS as well, so you can play it anywhere. I will. I have one more question for you before we move on to Chris Plant's secret digital recommendation. Guys, who pressed mute on Uncle Marcus? That's the question posed to you by a a new game what's the title of it press this one this one this one's called who pressed mute on uncle marcus is this part of the who pressed mute like series or is it it's part of the

it's part of the it's a spinoff of the Who Press Mute-iverse. Okay, so you gotta get, just let me get through it, okay? Just indulge me for a second before you start doing other things, okay? Who Press Mute on Uncle Marcus is an FMV game. Stop. Okay? Just stop it. You're embarrassing yourselves with your facial reactions that I'm guessing. It is an FMV game where you are a young woman named Abby who is about to play a trivia night via Zoom or, you know, a Zoom equivalent with her family.

And this is an annual thing you do every year for your mom's birthday. thing you do every year for your mom's birthday just before the trivia night begins you get a call from uh uncle marcus who is yes we've brought out the star power for this one it's uh andy buckley who you remember is david wallace from the office okay and he was also on on uh veep for a long time he's he does a good job he's he's bringing. But he says, okay, I've been poisoned. We were all at a meeting, a family meeting about who's going to take control of our family business a week ago. And I was poisoned at that

meeting. You, Abby, were the only family member who wasn't at that meeting. So the only one I can trust. I need you to figure out who poisoned me. During the quiz. I need you to figure out who poisoned me. Okay. During the quiz. You both have so many questions, and I love it. I can't wait to take them.

The mute is sort of like a cute nod to the fact that he's been poisoned. Exactly. Griffin, did you have a question? My question was Russ's question. Okay, yes. I was hoping that the stakes would be a little bit lower. But please continue. No.

So what happens basically is you are simultaneously playing this trivia night with your family via Zoom. And each one's like an actually really well-performed different sort of character, all of which are like suspects. different sort of character, all of which are like suspects, but it becomes a sort of like, it almost feels a little bit like a cozy mystery sort of vibe because you are in this one, rather than cottage, you're in a, you know, a Zoom meeting and playing trivia with your family. And you're able to like have one-on-one conversations. Every round of the trivia game pairs you up with a different family member who you choose and then you talk to them uh uh both about the answers to the quiz and also about the the meeting that you missed and trying to get clues out of them so you're like trying to figure out and each family member has a different personality so you're kind of trying to figure

out what is the best approach you know are you going to push hard on asking questions about the meeting? How important is it to them that they win the trivia quiz? Can I ask, is Uncle Marcus in the corner of the Zoom just dying the whole time? Uncle Marcus is not in the Zoom itself. He is sort of like, he checks in on you. He's watching the Zoom. And how much time does he have i i mean it is it's how dire does it look for about to the end of this zoom

call he he at the end of each at the end of the game you need to tell him who poisoned him and with what so he can take the right antidote or else he got it. Okay. That's so that's, those are the stakes. And it's one of those where, um, you get to the end. The first time we play it, you are not going to uncover enough to save his life. So you start again.

So it's a roguelike. Different. It choose. Yes, exactly. Choose different, uh, conversations,

different options, whatever, to try to uncover all the evidence that you missed the previous time. And the evidence that you do uncover is persistent, and you can skip conversations that you've already had. Oh, my God. The dream of a family conversation, being skipped. Right. Yeah.

Yes, again, Dad, I know how disappointed you are in me. Let me skip that real quick. Press tab. You know if you like this sort of thing. The performances are good. I don't actually. I don't know. I can't tell if this sounds good to me or not.

I mean, it sounds like, you know, it's got some, yeah, as Justin said, like cozy mystery vibes. It seems like it could be fun. Like that Hitman level. It's very interesting to see people sort of like explore different applications for FMVv it's a very interesting way of handling it it's not perfect um there there are like interstitial conversations that pop up every time you play that you can't skip so they're very brief but it like feels very languorous because it's like i i have seen this exact conversation before please don't do this again but the performances are good that the mysteries is interesting how's the dad make does he sell it what oh i mean this is andy buckley

he does it i mean everybody's like bringing it and it's fun and there's actually like some pretty funny you have uh there's one cousin that is a uh like relief worker in war-torn areas. And when it's his turn to ask the questions, rather than ask traditional trivia questions, he asks empathy questions. So he tells you your scenario and then you have to act in the way that that person would react in that scenario. Like your village has just ran out of water and climate changes is threatening your home. How do you react? Like,

what's your, what's your take on that? So it's like, he's like more concerned with that. And it's, and it's really interesting. There's, there's a lot of cool stuff like that,

but it's, you know, it's, it's very, it's a very neat idea. And I think it's pretty well executed actually. And well acted, well written.

This is whales interactive, which has been releasing like a lot of games like this i mean they've had like you guys don't know how many whales interactive games i've let slide and not brought to you but um this one's a really um this one's a really interesting uh uh take on it cool and it's the they're they're i don't think we're to get a game this year that has a better title than that. It's great. I mean, it's great. Even the art on it is cool. It's like a little bit of a Saul Best

kind of style. But it's very well done. I like it. I don't know. I like it. You don't have to be embarrassed. I'm not embarrassed. What made you feel like I was embarrassed? I'm just saying I like it. I don't know. I like it. Cool. Okay. You don't have to be embarrassed. I'm not embarrassed. What made you feel like I was embarrassed?

I'm just saying I like it. Okay, good. I'm glad that you like it. I should also mention Abigail Hardingham is the lead, your sort of avatar in it. She has done a lot of TV in the UK. I don't know if audiences around here would know her as well, but if you're familiar with UK TV, you'd probably know her. Broad Church.

Probably. She's in the missing. I think we have a phone call or a phone message, I should say, from the erstwhile Chris Plant, who has dialed in from his convention to make a plea for people to play a very specific game let's listen to that oh hello everybody it's christopher thomas plant and i am calling in from the babylon 5 super cruise having the time of my life but i did want to tell you about a game that I have been loving, and that game is

called Citizen Sleeper. I think I mentioned it on Orestes a little while ago. A little bit of context, it's by Gareth Damian Martin. They are the editor of Heterotopias, a zine that's about game spaces and architecture, which I love. They also made this game called In Other Waters, which was very clever, but a difficult game to parse at times. You were this AI helping out a xenobiologist on an ocean planet. Very cool, very minimal. Citizen Sleeper, the new game, has a similar premise, but it gives it some real body. And I mean that quite literally. You are a copy of a human consciousness. I'm dripping over my words today, friends. And you've been put into a synthetic body and then sold into servitude by,

presumably, your original conscious self. So you, this sleeper, you've escaped to a space station and you're in a bad spot. You need food, you need shelter, you need to stay safe from mysterious forces that appear to be hunting you. And you needed to get it all together in the very limited time that exists in a day. And that's how the game works. The game is kind of like Persona without all of the RPG battles. So you have a limited number of things that you can do in a day and a whole bunch of options in terms of what you can choose from. So you pick what you want to do. And then you also have a number of dice that are rolled at the beginning of each day. And you apply those dice to each of the activities you pick. So higher numbers that you roll,

those increase the odds of good results in a selection. Say that you want to go break down some scrap. You roll a really high number, and you do a great job, and you make a lot of money off it. Lower numbers can actually cause trouble. So say you want to go gamble on the kind of stock market of the space station. You could lose cash, and that would be bad. So there's this tension of how do I spend my time?

How do I survive? Again, you have to eat. So that's going to take some time each day. That's really fun. But the reason I'm recommending this, frankly, is the writing. I adore the writing. It's so compassionate and curious and sensual. Damian Martin, they are just such an immensely gifted and talented writer.

And I feel that Citizen Sleeper, by having just a little bit more game here, and I would say art that is a little more welcoming, it really invites, I think, a larger audience in to appreciate their writing. So I know that reedy kind of games can be a hard sell, that the system may sound complex, but good news, the game is on Game Pass, so you could just go try it. And I really think you should. I promise we will be talking about this game at the end of the year, so I encourage you to check it out right now. And that's it.

I need to go back to my Babylon 5 cruise because I forgot to mention this. I am actually the captain now. I am steering the boat, so I need to save us from crashing into this island. Bye. Thanks, Chris. We didn't just put that in the recording. We need to save us from crashing into this island bye thanks chris we didn't just put that in the recording we listened to it definitely like all of it yeah repeat what he said juice just like broad strokes somebody press mute on me oh oh no terrible news somebody press mute on uncle justice hey can we take a break and then talk about cute little yellow guy a cute little yellow guy that i uh have befriended sure okay

so griffin you wanted to talk about pikachu yeah he's an electric mouse and he he fucks around with ash ketchum and together they always kill team rocket stop it i want to talk about playdate and i want to hear what you guys think about playdate playdate is the new crank based gaming handheld uh that has that is taking the world by storm i i adore the playdate because it is so niche and weird and has big teenage engineering vibes because they're the i think manufacturer or something for it uh and it's so delightful to see people who are not into that vibe or that scene like comment on videos or reviews of the play date like this looks stoop where's the where's the halo like get very very upset about the fact that it does

play uh some calculator ass looking games i mean is it wrong to wonder where the halo is no i mean for myself that is it is human nature um yeah the the play date gosh okay so if somebody is like not at all aware of what the play date is how would you all i would love to hear it's a plastic yellow rectangle no it's like square it's the the shape is weird because it's almost a perfect square what is it like two and a half inches square uh yeah maybe something like that it's little little. It's real little. And it just plays basically games that were specifically designed for it predominantly. I mean, that's all it plays, right?

There's like a seasonal release date thing. I haven't personally played one, so it's just y'all. Oh, okay. I thought you have one, right, Juice? Yeah, I've gotten... I didn't get it until about a couple weeks ago, so I have not unlocked that many games. when you first get it uh there's two one is a it's it's it it's basically

tnc surf yeah i mean right i mean uh it is basically tnc surf but with a crank so you're like a you're on a huge wave and you're using the crank to adjust your direction on the wave and you try to do like tricks and stuff like that very very like good application of it and fun and cute um and the other one casual birder yes casual birder is almost like a um you know how they would make it's it's got uh uh link's awakening vibes which is part of like a whole genre that maybe it spawned of game boy games that were kind of like adventures like super lightweight rpgs where this thing's only got the two buttons on it it's got b and a and a d-pad and a crank uh and in casual birder you are new in town and in this town everybody's obsessed with taking pictures of birds and you get in on it too and so you go around and meet all the people and you meet birder bullies and uh try to fill out basically your pokedex of of birds by walking

around the world and whenever you see a bird you press a button to pull out your camera, you aim the shot, you use the crank to focus it, and then you take a picture. And it's cute. Is that how you reset the film as well, with the crank? I haven't gotten that far.

It seems like it'd be authentic. It's really neat. I really like it a lot. I've unlocked, I think, all the games at this point because i had like press access or something like that and this is the one that i uh i've probably played the most uh that and benet fadi's benet fadi has a game on it called zipper have you played zipper juice no i don't think i've gotten that one okay so in zipper it is a samurai action puzzle game where you use the d-pad to like chart a course through this grid battlefield that enemy samurai are on uh and you want to dash alongside the enemies but the enemies will move as well and so there's a lot of different ways that like

if you stop if you end your movement next to an enemy, they will slash you and kill you. If you run, if you dash into an enemy, I think it will kill you. There's a lot of ways. You have to basically chart your path through this battlefield perfectly, anticipating where the enemies are going to move

and sort of planning your own dash through it. Now, you use the d-pad and you sort of like chart your path and then you can use the crank to see like uh shadows of the enemies and see how they are going to move and so you you could have a chance to kind of like see how the enemies are going to react to your move before you commit to it. And so the whole thing is just you trying to find this perfect path. It's a tough thing to describe, but there's also a timer on the whole thing.

So it's all about like finding the smoothest, fastest path through a room using this kind of like future sight thing. It's very cool. It is not like anything I think Foddy has made before. He is the one who made Quop and Get Over It and a bunch of other stuff like that. Is Lucas Pope doing something on it?

Lucas Pope is doing something on it. He's the creator of Obra Dinn and Papers, Please. But I do not, I don't think it's on it. Yeah, no, Lucas Pope's game is not on it yet. Which like, that's all i want i love oh come on i want that new lucas um it's such a great it just feels good it reminds me of um when i was a little kid there's a show called the great space coaster and there was a guy who had this like flip up little tv that he would show cartoons on and it just looks so sick and you put cartridges in it

and you watch little cartoons and it just looked awesome. And I had this like as a kid I was so fixated on it because it looked like amazing. It is kind of a novel. I don't think that they would

necessarily even necessarily buck at that description. Like it is a novelty in the sense that like it's trying something new and different. This idea of hardware that's very specifically built for a certain type of game. I'm glad to have it though. Me too. And I do think that it's very interesting.

I do think that it's a very interesting, it's, it's sort of a, you know, you know what it almost feels like a, a physical writing prompt, like for, but for game design, right? It feels like someone's like, okay, I want you to write an essay constrained to these very specific rules, right? Or maybe a game jam is a, is a better analog where it's like, it's a physical game jam. Like, all right, here are your limitations. It looks kind of like a Game Boy and it's got to use a crank. Best of luck. And it is interesting to see how people respond to that. from the games of people being sort of like challenged by the device a little bit or like

excited by the limitations almost if if that makes any sense and it's also got like the the people of me it's got a pretty stacked cast of of game devs uh there's a there's a snake type game called snack uh made by i know zach gage collaborated on it and it's just snake but you can jump so you can jump over your own body instead of smashing into it and like the things you have to pick up to make your body longer which is what happens in snake it moves and sometimes jumps onto the snake's back so then you have to jump over your own back to eat the apples or whatever to make yourself longer um it's it's it's got a lot it's got a lot sort of going for it i think it's like 180 bucks we should also add that you probably can't get

you cannot find it yeah it is it is in very very limited supply um but uh yeah yeah i pre-ordered it many many months i love i just love i love uh if you love sort of gear if you love tech and like gaming hardware if you own many nintendo 3ds and game boy advances and stuff uh it's it's i mean it's the shit it's really cool looks like these are running you about 450 on oh my god so yeah i know it's a lot um we have some reader mail of people sending in games we missed might i can't wait to hear this yeah suggestions uh the first one comes from chan i released a super mario world kaizo rom hack called love yourself it's very beginner friendly and designed to help ease players into kaizo level design not to mention many other beginner hacks have uh released recently

and now is easily the best time to get into Kaizo. For people that don't know, Kaizo is a genre of fan-made platforming levels that traditionally have been extremely hard, but it sounds like there's sort of a movement to welcome more players into these levels. So that's really cool. Yeah.

into these levels um so uh that's really cool yeah uh that that that life i feel like got uh a lot of coverage during like you know mario maker one and two coming out more than like i had i had seen kaizo runs on you know hdq and what whatever uh but there were levels that were like specifically like okay here is a gauntlet we are going to teach you how to shell jump like from the ground up. Yeah. Uh, and, and the idea of like a whole ROM hack of that sounds neat. This next letter comes from Joe.

Uh, this came out a couple of years ago now, but I kickstarted Eagle Island a while back. It's a beautiful pixel side-scrolling roguelike where you attack by throwing an elemental owl i really like it that sounds pretty cool i like owls yeah well have you played it no i just i i weirdly remember the kickstarter campaign for it i haven't played it looks cute uh this comes from ska punk bond theme song uh ember knights it's in alpha and really scratches that castle crashers itch couch co-op hades is a pretty okay elevator pitch for it that sounds dope yeah this does look cool uh i don't know

but you i am just like i am on steam green light like right now just like googling these games as you mentioned them it's been a it's been fun we have from randy uh gunfire reborn borderlands ish roguelite across the obelisk oh sorry so these are two games uh gunfire reborn is the borderlands ish roguelite and also across the obelisk is a multiplayer slay the spire that sounds intimidating the fuck i don't know how that would work but i guess uh like hearthstone uh one more uh comes from adg which would it's a collecting crafting game with the most stunning illustrated art style it's a pretty quick play but the storyline the grim take on fairy tale tropes is one of the most enjoyable i've played it's relaxing atmospheric and fun that sort of runs the gamut of possible uh things it's all emotions people might like there can be not just that game but with all these games this looks good too these are hey thanks thank you to these people specifically

for sending in some games that i am probably going to check out yeah they sound sick what else have you all been playing i booted up Fall Guys for the first time in like whenever it launched was the last time I played Fall Guys. But they just announced that it's going free to play in June. And I kind of wanted to boot it up before that happened just to see how much progress it has made.

I think the bones of it have not seemingly made that. I mean, they've added features much like playing with squads and and doing friend games stuff like that but the like core back end of it seems pretty similar but the just the minute to minute of the game continues to be super fun and i always love the aesthetic and the characters and just like screwing around uh running through these obstacle courses has always been really fun i am hoping

that with the free-to-play release it will i think be a big moment for them they might be able to like sort of clean up some of the uh just slower parts of the loading and the waiting for a new round to start that's the only thing that still kind of keeps me a little bit at arm's reach with it but i think it could be really good. And obviously, I think they got bought by Epic. So they certainly have that back end to fall back on that Fortnite's been using forever. So if you bought it, now is a good time to try it. It sounds like they're going to be giving people that already bought it a bunch of free stuff when the game goes free to play.

So that's pretty cool. I like free stuff. I've mostly been playing rogue legacy 2 uh it's it's it's a very good game that we already talked about this episode uh i have also been diving into a game that i have slept on for a really long time called forager y'all play for oh i played that game yeah it's it's i think everybody has played that game but me i'm just really late to the party there's a little pickaxe guy and he runs around yeah you play pickaxe guy he runs around a little island and collect stuff and then can craft items to expand the island and you know create new inventions and y'all already know what it is

but it's on switch and i'm i'm and I've been sort of catching up with it because I've always, it's one of those games that I see like anytime I'm on the iOS app store, I'm just looking for a new time waster. I see Forager on there and I'm like, oh yeah, you. I missed, I forgot about you

and I get back into it. So that's what I've been getting into. Juice? No, I mean, everything I've mentioned that's what I've been getting into. Juice? No, I mean, everything I've mentioned is stuff that I've been playing. Cool. I used up all of mine. Well, I wanted to thank the following people

for writing reviews for the besties. Lincoln Park A, I guess Canadian Lincoln Park. Get Money Myrick, Wonko the Sane, Omahaaha ron and major bacon thank you for writing reviews on apple podcasts for the besties podcast which you're listening to right now uh and thank you everyone else for the names that you see is this just a random selection of people who leave reviews are these like hand-picked the best names i mean it's a mix but i do like picking some of the best names it's usually okay good usually a fun way to do it but i don't want to look if you have a normal name that's fine

too there's certainly a shot on my you're just not going to get you're not going to get called up to the big leagues yeah uh i'm going to you might i'm going to read because plan is not here i'm going to read through all the games we mentioned. It's going to be really quick. Shotgun King, Vampire Survivors, Haiku the Robot, Mini Motorways, Olly Olly World, Dungeons of Dreadrock, Rogue Legacy 2, Peglin, Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus, and Songpop Party were in the,

that was in the first segment. You could scrub back if one of those sort of jumped to mind. We talked about the Playdate handheld system in segment b um and some recommendations was the kaizo romhack love yourself uh as well as eagle island ember knights gunfire reborn across the obelisk and which would which would is spelled with a y instead of an i by the way and fall guys and forager and fall guys and forager that's a lot of games busy week what are we doing next week guys next week we're playing a game called v rising which i have not played but none of us have but it's rising up the steam charts and i'm and i'm and i'm very excited to play it i can't wait and we'll be here with all

of that and so much more so 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!