Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Animal Well Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast
Episode Date: May 9, 2024Bless hosts, Andy and Roger review Animal Well, and Greg reviews Cryptmaster! Run of Show - - Start - Housekeeping - Animal Well Review - Ads - Animal Well Questions - Cryptmaster Review... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Yo, what's up? Welcome to the Got of Funny Games cast for Thursday, May 9th, 2024.
I'm one of your host, Blessing, Adioia Jr. joining me is my Raj Ally, Roger Bricorni.
What up, bless?
We got the nitro rifle, Andy Cortez.
What up, bless?
And we got WWE superstar and Greg Miller.
Barrett, are we live on YouTube? We are.
We are.
I thought I was going to be able to skate through that one.
You know what I mean?
Like I said it, and I was like, oh, no one's going to notice that one.
I was like, oh, I'm going to notice that one.
I was like, I shit.
How are you guys doing today?
Good.
Good.
How are you doing
in the big boy
seat hosting
in the show?
Yeah.
It feels weird.
I'm usually not
hosting the show.
And so I'm like,
welcome to the new
world order of games cast.
Anything can happen.
Oh, no.
You should have went into it.
Of course,
I'm hosting because we've got
two reviews that we're doing today.
Of course,
Roger and Andy have played
the one and only animal well.
And Greg Miller has played
Crip Master,
and I played a little bit of Cripmaster as well.
So we're going to talk all about it.
Of course,
remember this is kind of funny
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Housekeeping for you, today, you've already gotten some big Xbox talk on Kind of Funny Games
Daily on YouTube, Twitch, and podcast services.
Up next, more Pokemon Nuslock on.
YouTube and Twitch with Nick and the crew.
And if you're a kind of funny member,
today's Greg Way is Greg's shout out to Scotland.
Shout out to Scotland and Steven, my Georgia Peach.
Thank you to our Patreon Producers, Delaney Twining,
Kieran Hovesapien, and Carl Jacobs.
They are brought to you by or frames,
shady rays, and better help, but we'll tell you about that later for now.
Let's begin with, and forever will be.
Topic of the show.
Tats, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad.
Again, I'm so like, I'm in cave to D mode still.
I love it, you're killing it.
Um, topic of the show.
we're doing two reviews.
We're going to start off with Animal Well.
Which has been played by Roger and Andy.
Roger, how much of Animal Well have you played?
I finished Animal Well.
I have about 16 hours in the game, 14 hours, I think, to finish it,
and then I started up a new game,
which might give you a little tip of what I think about the game.
It took, I beat it.
It took me around maybe, it says 11.
I'm going to go a little bit less,
because you leave it idle there sometimes.
right out a couple notes, open
Instagram, scroll it.
You're like, why is this in my algorithm?
I guess I'll buy this jacket or whatever, you know what I mean?
You buy jackets off Instagram?
Sometimes it hits you, you know?
Sometimes you get hit with the algorithm.
You get hit?
On TikTok, I bought on the TikTok shop one of like those push-up boards.
Oh.
Because you see all the buff dudes.
They're like, oh, I use this push-up board.
Is it the ones where like you put them in certain slots?
Yeah, there's like all these different slots.
So you can do a different kind of push-ups?
Target these muscles.
Yeah.
And I started using it.
And I hated it.
Like, it just made my palms hurt using it.
But even still, I'll see stuff on TikTok shop and I'm like,
maybe I should pull the trigger.
Can I see a nice shirt?
Can I borrow it?
Yeah, you can borrow it.
You can have it.
Shoot, I don't use this thing.
I hate this thing.
We're going to work.
Leave it here.
No, Nick will be so mad about it.
Greg, do you play any animal wall?
No, I haven't.
But I played a bunch of Cryptmaster and I forgot to write down how many hours I wasn't.
And I was after games daily.
I was something I was supposed to go do.
I'll be right back.
All right, go for it.
Go for it.
I'll check at the computer.
Yeah.
While he's doing that.
Andy, I want to start with the question.
What is Animal Well?
Ooh.
Animal Well is a very untraditional Metroidvania made by Billy Basso and published by Big Mode Games, which is video game donkeys publishing arm who, you know, a couple years ago put out a tweet.
It was like, hey, I'm getting into video game publishing.
I want to look out for cool games.
Here's one that we signed.
It's called Animal Well.
Check it out.
And Animal Well is one of the most brilliant,
brilliantly designed in terms of like puzzles and getting to the next spot.
And how am I going to solve this problem right here?
The thing with Animal Well is like,
it's been at a lot of different conventions.
It's been shown off a million different places.
You and I have seen it at least three or four times.
I got SGF.
Different little events.
In the studio.
In the studio.
The thing is,
Animal well does not, in my opinion, demo well at all.
It's a game that you need to sit down with and to fully understand what they're going for.
This is a metrovina that, again, not traditional because it doesn't have, he doesn't have combat.
You're not shooting a little gun.
You're not dashing and, you know, parrying and trying to, you know, charge up a weapon or whatever.
You are just a little, you're a little guy.
You're a little animal guy walking around in a big animal well world.
and you are trying to
get the four pieces of the Triforce,
I just say that.
I know there's three,
but you know what I mean?
In this case, there's four.
You're trying to collect the big four things
in the world.
And it is a game that will keep on surprising you
and keep on surprising you
with just how impressive the design is.
Yeah, absolutely.
You mentioned that it's appeared at many an event,
and I, like, there have been so many events
where it feels like the talk of the town.
Like you mentioned it doesn't demo well,
because it is a game that you want to dig deeper into.
But I think the thing that does, that it does immediately,
that captures people is have such a great style, art style.
Like visually, it's incredible.
And even in just the hour that I played,
I had moments already with like the firecracker, like, things like that.
Where it's, oh, man, this is really engaging visually already.
And it seems like one that with the hype around it,
with the talk around it, has the potential to be a breakout indie critical darling.
Roger, do you feel like so far, after beating Animal Well,
that it lives up to that?
for you. Oh, it lives up so much more than that for me of like I am not traditionally a
Metroidvania person. I'm exactly like you right where it's like you say that word to me and it's
like sure whatever it doesn't really mean much to me. It doesn't move the needle for me. Yeah, it doesn't
move the needle for me. So I booted up the game of like hey everyone's talking about this game.
Let me boot it up for a minute literally was like trying to be like 15 minutes I'll give it
three hours later. I'm like this game took me by surprise in such a way. I'm going to be
Hey, we're, we just changed the video.
I can't wait to hear the score.
We just, we just changed the review score.
We are now doing a 20 point review scale, right?
From zero, from one to ten.
And then point five's in the middle, right?
Unless, well, is it, do we have a zero point five or do we have a ten point five?
Do we have zero?
Do we have zero?
We do have zero point five, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
So the thing like it would be a 19 point zero.
That's below Gallum.
Zero point five is like Gallum if you're playing like on a netbook with like through cloud
services, but really bad internet, you know, that's like, that's point five.
out of 10.
Oia exclusive.
But since we're doing it,
we're starting off right,
Animal Well is a 10-10
masterpiece for me.
No way, really?
Absolutely.
Awesome.
It is a game that took me by surprise
in such a real and genuine way.
And now, stick with me, guys.
The way that I can best describe this game
is it feels like a video game
that exists in a movie
where you're like going up the attic
in your grandma's house
and you're opening up the forbidden door
and you're looking through a bunch of just old antiques
and then you find Animal Well
on the floor.
and then you put it into the NES,
and it just feels like a game that wasn't created,
it just was always been there.
It feels like...
It feels like...
It feels like a modern classic,
but a timeless classic at that as well.
Every single moment in this game,
even when I was completely and utterly lost,
I was having so much fun
and also extremely frightened for what is going to come next.
There's so much atmosphere here in the game
in every single moment.
And it's just fun.
Like, it is a fun time to play, and it asks so much of you to go in there and actually
find all of the hidden secrets and to learn what all of these items mean.
But it works so well, man.
Like, every single moment in this game is additive.
And you and I had such different experiences playing this game.
It was great.
And it was great coming into work.
And you and I talking and having the playground experience of you drawing things on a piece
a paper and be like, have you seen this thing? Have you done this thing? What does this look like for
you? How do you get around this puzzle? It is, for me, like, it is not a perfect game. But I don't
think I've played a game in the last decade that is as close to being perfect as this game. And that's,
that's truly what I feel about it. Yeah, I, when you talk about atmosphere and vibes, like visually,
what, along with the audio design, like, they use so many of like the way, way old school bleeps and bloops
that you just haven't really heard in a long-ass time.
I think the audio design is fantastic.
And what the game reminds me of,
you mentioned, like, you know, the lost game in the attic.
To me, it feels like a lost game that never came out on a console
that was, like, shuttered within a year or whatever.
Like, it's such a wild, old vibe that just kind of,
it puts you in a time and place.
And with the way that, with the way that it's designed,
it's, I don't think it's, like, super player friendly.
There's a lot of moment.
This is not a...
This is not Prince of Persia lost crown
where you're going to have a lot of like
kind of player help and tool tips and loading screens
with a tip and trick to tell you how to...
How to fast travel or whatever like that.
This game does not hold your hand.
It is a little unfriendly in a lot of moments
and it reminds me of sort of what a lot of people
were talking about when it comes to Dragon's Dogma.
It's like...
Jackers Dogma, too, rather.
There's a lot of friction there,
but it really makes magic in a lot of moments.
I love coming into work to talk to Roger.
And I'm also really surprised that Roger doubled back on it again
because when we were first talking about this game,
I was like, wow, I'm like kind of weirdly into this game.
I didn't think it was going to be for me.
Greg was like, can you try it out and play it for review?
I was like, yeah, sure, of course.
And after a couple of hours, I was like, wow, I'm weirdly into this,
even though it's not generally my vibe.
And coming into work and talking to Roger about it
and having those cool experiences of Roger went way east on the map,
and I'm way west, and we're experiencing stuff that like neither of us have really ever seen.
And then Roger, maybe a week later, and by the way, shout out to Big Mode games
for giving us these codes really, really early.
Like, I think that there's been a lot of great discussions on Twitter so far.
I've seen from a lot of people in gaming Twitter, people working in media saying,
like this does not feel like this publisher's first release.
Like they did such a great job with getting this game out there really, really early.
So we had a lot of time to kind of dissect what this game is and what the puzzles are.
But to go back to really quick, because Roger, there was a moment where I had asked you several days after our first discussion and you were like, yeah, I think I fell off of it.
I talked to Barrett as well.
And we were all kind of like, oh, not so into it.
So what brought you back to it?
It was just the curiosity?
Yeah, it was.
I had the hard stuck moment where I was like,
I don't know what's, like, how to get to the main story, right?
Like, I don't know, some story, quote, unquote.
I didn't know how to get to the one of the next bosses or whatever.
And I was like, I was hitting that wall.
I was like, I don't know what I need to do.
What do I have to do?
And then I was like, you know what?
Let me just double back.
Let me just see, maybe there's some hidden thing or whatever.
And I was having so much fun just finding the little nukes and crannies
and going into different areas that aren't even like hardlocked before.
Like it wasn't like I found a new item or anything like that.
But it was just like, oh, I just realized like, oh, I'm, I'm thinking.
about the game differently now.
Like three, four, five, six hours into the game.
I'm like, this, I thought that I needed like a new item or something.
No, I was just thinking about the game completely differently than I was now in that
moment.
And yeah, it was taking that break, taking like a day or two or whatever it was, and then coming
back to it.
And I, yeah, I'm usually the person that I have this weird thing where when I get really
lost in a video game, I get a headache, like a really pounding headache.
And I had none of that.
And that's what like 90% of my playthrough was of going back and doubling back
and putting things on the map,
and I was just having a great time.
To ask a question about that,
I'm curious,
because earlier you talked about
how much fun it is,
and, like,
you having the most fun in this video game,
and now you're talking about,
like, the directionless nature of it.
That was one of the things I noticed early on
is, as I started playing,
I'm like, I started going to rooms,
and I go to the right most rooms,
and it keeps going, it keeps going,
and I'm like, oh, man,
I'm way off the path that I was,
and then I'll go and I'll start,
like, you know, following that path,
and I'm like, okay, this path keeps going to,
and then I'll go up,
And I'm like, oh, this keeps going too.
Like, I, it is truly, hey, go whatever direction you want and get lost in this thing.
And at first blush, I think that's neat.
I think that's cool.
But it's also a thing that I get nervous with with the way that I play video games because I very much am like, oh, but I want to, I'm.
But I should go back right now.
Yeah, I need to go back.
Like, I don't want to, like, lose track of this thing that I was doing before.
For you, Roger, when did it start to lock in for you in terms of the fun in getting lost in it?
Because when I realized that that's what they wanted me to do, right?
Like, there wasn't like a player.
issue here. It wasn't like, oh man, Roger should have went left when he should have went right. No, it's, this is exactly where they want me to go. And there's so many moments in the game where, yeah, you and I, you and I, we had the great experience of, there's, what, four main items in the game. And I went and got one. And then you went and got a completely other one. So you and I had completely different experiences for a very long time to the point where I was like, I don't even know where this thing that you, your first item that you got, where you even got it, because I got so lost on the other path. And once you and I had that conversation, I was like, oh, this is what they want us to do.
Like, they want us to just completely get lost.
And I think it goes back to what this game is, right?
Like, you are a little blob inside of essentially a animal well of apex predators, right?
Like, that's what's so cool about this game is that you are never, at the end of this game,
you never feel like you are the powered up super Metroid.
Like, you are absolutely just a little blob that has, that has the adaptive nature of, like,
the cool prey that you see in, like, Nat Geo, right?
where it's like the sand mouse that like hides and camouflages.
Like you just get smarter and you get and you are able to adapt to this world,
but you never feel strong.
And being able to explore this world and just get smarter and learn more about it
and find the little things in the background where it's like,
oh, this is glowing.
I thought that was just a neat little background thing.
Oh no, that's really important.
That connects to this.
Oh, it's like you're almost learning a different language in this world.
That's one thing I really loved about the visual nature and style of
it is like this game doesn't, when you're first in this game, you haven't really seen anything
that looks like this. And because it's not traditional by any means, all of the stuff that
you're finding in the world looks so alien and different to you. And everything that you're
seeing in the background looks like nothing, but because everything looks like nothing, there's
probably something there.
And there's so many little things in the, in every like screen that you're kind of walking
through that might help you progress to a certain point that at, you know, when you're looking
at it, you're just like, oh, that's just like an art asset or whatever.
But it's probably going to help you on your journey.
This is not, again, when I bring up being non-traditional, this isn't like hopping into
Metroid Dread and running around a Samis and seeing a green door.
Oh, I don't come back to that later.
But you have the red gun.
You're like, oh, my red gun shoots the red blast and that won't open the green door,
but I'll know about that green door later.
Like, there is nothing obvious like that really at all, aside from very, very obvious designed doors that, like, are locked.
Like, you walk into the door and it'll say locked.
You're like, all right, I either need a key for that or I need to figure out some sort of puzzle.
But, yeah, Roger's spot on when he's talking about this game.
You're learning the language of what this game is and what the developer,
wants you to absorb from it.
And it just gets more and more brilliant and surprising as you keep on going.
And I fucking love experiencing a moment.
I'm like, God, that is so smart.
The developer is so smart in this moment for, you know,
laying the foundation for what would be this big ass secret this early on.
And now I come back like, holy shit, this stuff is like,
this is one of the smartest games I've ever played.
I just, I had a great time with it.
My score for this game,
because when you are going towards,
you're getting like the four McGuffins,
one of the ones that Roger walked in here
and was like, dude, this is like one of the best things
I've ever experienced.
And I experienced it, I was like, that show was amazing.
And the rest of those moments
didn't quite reach the highs of that,
nor did the ending of this game
really hit me in a way that I thought it was.
I felt like I was supposed to be like, really, like,
I think of my Outer Wild experience when I hit the end of that game,
and I'm just like overtaken, and I have tears of my eyes,
and I'm not sure why, you know?
Like, music is swelling all this, all this stuff.
I thought it was still, I think it's still like an amazingly designed game,
but I think it was a bit uneven in spots.
I give this game an 8.5 out of 10,
right on the precipice of being amazing.
And I do think that if they did try to make the game,
more player friendly,
I think that would be a disservice to it.
Because you are just supposed to,
this is so old school by design,
you are supposed to
kind of learn and make your own way
in this well without getting a tutorial pop-up
that says, this item does this,
make sure you look out for this.
It's so brilliant in a lot of ways
and it just falls short because of the other three,
call them like boss fights if you want,
or you're not fighting.
You just only have a sword, you know.
I'm interested in that, right?
Because, you know, we talk about the game
as being a Metrovania.
Rogers talked about how it's not a
Metroid style.
You feel like you're this strong being
by the time you get to the end of it.
How is it in terms of progression?
So you're not getting hard locked in moments.
Is there like a, do you feel different
from the beginning of the game
to the middle of the game?
Or is it really, hey, whatever it is at your disposal
is what you're able to use
to solve the puzzle of how to get to the thing
or finding a key or whatever.
You know what I mean?
So yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.
So there's the main core of this game
is that there's four items, right?
And these items are essentially like almost household items.
Like, I mean, I guess the non-household item
is the firecracker, right?
I don't think anyone's got that at their house.
Maybe you do.
I don't know.
I mean, listen.
You don't know what I'm doing.
I don't judge.
But then it's like, it's like bubbles.
And then it's a yo-yo and there's like a frisbee, right?
So it's like, it's very simple things that, yeah,
of course, there are definitely moments where it's like,
oh, clearly that's, I need to throw a frisbee.
there, so if I don't have a frisbee, I can't do anything with it.
But there's a huge chunk of this game that, like, just with, like, the first item that you get,
which I believe is just the firecracker and then the frisbee, right?
Or did you get the-
I got the firecracker and then the bubble-blower?
That is wild to me, because I replayed the, I started the game again.
Just in the hearing this nonsense.
But it is just wild to me because, like, I started a new save last night, and I still,
I got the frisbee again for the first time.
I was like, how the fuck is he?
Like, what direction did he go?
I don't know how this worked, but it's awesome.
I have no clue, yeah.
Yeah, keep on that.
No, you're good.
There's a great, there's a big chunk of that game where once you get that first item,
like you can just solve a ton of areas in that game, right?
Like you don't feel hardlocked until hardlocked, quote unquote,
until you start to find those areas like in any Metroidvania where it's like,
oh, clearly I can't jump this high.
So there's something I need there.
But yeah, by the end of the game, you have all of the tools you have.
And the cool part about it is like, there's still puzzles that I'm like,
oh, I'm missing an item for sure.
It's like, no, you're not missing an item.
You're just not thinking about it correctly.
Like you just need to figure out the different ways to use that item.
And that's what's cool about these items is that they're so deceptively simple, right?
Like a yo-yo, you're like, oh, it's like, I get it.
Like, it's just glows in the dark and you can throw things at it.
It's like, no, you have to actually throw this yo-yo at random things in the environment to really get to know,
oh, shit, this yo-you can do X, Y, and Z.
And it's like all of that exploration that they do not tell you in when you pick up that
yo-yo.
It doesn't say, hey, that yo-you can, you know, do whatever, break this object.
And you have to find that out yourself.
And that's like half the fun is like doing something, trying something.
And you're like, this is not going to work.
It's like, oh, fuck, that works.
It's crazy.
There were so many moments where I felt hard stuck where I'm just like,
what do I do?
I don't, yeah, what do I do?
But also because you can't just, there's a lot of like little save spots in the world.
It's a little like landline telephone.
You go up to you hit save.
And whenever you die, you will spawn back at the last place that you saved at.
But you can't just fast.
traveled to landline any of the phones that you find in the world, which would have been super, super
convenient.
But you have to go back and kind of like, what rooms did I go through?
What rooms have I?
Oh, shit.
I hadn't saved in a while.
God damn, I'm way the fuck back over here.
This sucks.
It's going to take a while to get back to where I just was.
But one thing that you find yourself doing because you've learned the language of what the game is,
is you have maybe three or four items.
maybe you only have two of them,
but you realize how they interact with the world.
And now you're kind of going through every level.
And it wasn't,
there's some stuff we cannot talk about.
There's a decent amount of stuff we can't talk about,
unfortunately,
because of the embargo guidelines.
But even then,
I don't think we would even want to talk about it.
I was going to say,
it sounds like this is the kind of game
you want discovery for us.
For sure, for sure.
There are definitely some moments
so that I accidentally use an item somewhere,
or like I deliberately use an item somewhere
thinking it was going to maybe interact with the world in one way and it did something completely
different. I'm like, oh, shit. Oh my God. Now I have to look out for all of these things because I know
that this item interacts with them in this way. And that shit happened by accident, you know? And like,
it was such an awesome moment of this. I felt like I was like lost in the forest and I just learned
how to make a fire, you know? Like, it felt so damn cool. And like having that player agency just
add so much more to the experience
because then you feel like you have
you feel like you have ownership over this now
it's like oh shit now I know
I remember seeing one of these items
way the hell on this region of the map
let me go all the way back there
see how it interacts with it
when you open up the map
you can kind of like zoom out a bit
you can drop down all your markers
I was dropping down
several little different markers
to denote where things were in the world
which is something I kind of rarely do
because games are always
very, very player-friendly
and games are always going to have
map markers telling you what certain things
are. I found myself using so
many of the little icons
whenever you open up your map, you could drop
a little swirly icon and whatever the hell that
means. To me, it meant something, you know?
And this icon meant something else
that I would drop down.
And it reminds me of when
Eldon Ring first came out
and I think it was Jason Schreier
mentioning he had a little notebook
of notes that he was taking.
Maybe it wasn't Eldering, but...
Is it the Witness maybe?
Because a lot of the way you guys...
It just reminds me of the Witness, and the Witness is one of my favorite games.
Witness, very, very, very similar thing, but, you know, I think...
It may not have been Eldering, but I remember someone mentioning, like, I was writing down a lot of stuff,
and that turned a lot of people off.
And it's like, well, you don't have to do this, but I found fun doing it that way.
And as somebody who rarely ever drops down custom markers in Metroidvania's, I was doing that all the time.
And it just made the experience much more enjoyable.
Everybody in Chai is saying it definitely was Alderman
that he was talking about.
Yeah, no, that's the reason
why I started up a new save
is because I was like,
I wish that I knew that information going in
because I think,
not that I would have had a better time,
but I think it would have been a more efficient way
to use my time,
but that's also part of the fun, right?
Like, I'm definitely going to,
for my next play-through,
I don't know if I'm going to actually finish it again.
I don't know what it's going to look like,
but I already have like drawings
on a piece of paper and I'm like,
okay, well, this thing is in this place
because I didn't get the stamps
that comes in a little later in the game.
So I'm already writing things down
on a piece of paper.
Like, it has gotten me so invested in, like, an actual tactile feel.
Like, I need, I want to actually understand and find all the secrets and do it in a,
in a linear way.
But there was this one moment specifically talking about the map markers and all that jazz
where I'm not going to spoil it for anybody, but like, there is this big moment in the game,
which you and I were talking about that I thought it was like, it was a, it was a, it's a
boss moment, essentially.
Where it's like, hey, you got to do this thing.
And I was like, really?
there's no, that can't be right. You actually really, you can't be making me do this thing.
So then I went through the entire game. Literally back, double back, I had unlocked everything in this game pretty much.
I went through every single room and I put markers on every single room. Just be like, okay, it's not here.
It's not here. It's not here. And I had so much fun doing that, which in most games would be like, why the fuck, anti-fast travel?
I can't believe I can do this, blah, blah, blah. I was just having a great time because every single room, I was like, oh shit, now I can do this thing.
Now I can, I can double back. And then, yeah, I went through the entire.
a game, I think there's 64
mark as you can put, I like max that out
three times. So like I had to 64, I have
to go back and remove them and then start doing
the other one and remember where I put them. And then I was
like, oh, they don't, they,
I guess there's no secret here. I just have to do the
thing that they're asking me to do. And then it led
to such an intense
gamer moment of me
sitting in bed in my Steam deck and Leanne's
sitting next to me. And she's like, what's
what's happening? I'm just like, I'm just not good enough.
I'm just, I just need to get. It's me.
Yeah, it's me. The game is not bad. I
need to get good right now. And that moment of finally doing that thing and getting there. And I remember
just being like, oh, like I did it. I had the full on gamer moments. I fully succeeded at this thing.
And it felt so satisfying. And I agree. And I understand what you're saying of like that is the height
of that game. And then everything else feels like an epilogue. But to me at least, from what I've been
reading from the interviews with Billy Basso of like, this game is so deep and there's so much more to find.
I understand that.
Did I hear some comment?
There's something in there
that he thinks is going to take years or something?
Yeah.
So it's weird because I can't tell
if there's actually something there
that's going to take 10 years to like figure out.
But he says that he's designed this
to have that long lifestyle.
I love that.
Which is insane.
And also the cool thing about this game really quick
is like the way that he built it
from at least the interviews that I'm reading
is for it to be able to like run on anything.
So like you just need like a one gigahertz CPU to run it.
And like that's it.
So you can run on anything.
and he also developed it
in a way that like doesn't rely on unity
or anything. So like again, like
you can put this on like a flash drive and bring this to school
and like play this game fully.
Which is super fucking rad.
But yeah, there's there's so much depth
to this game that I see some of the achievements.
I see one achievement that's like wild and I'm like
I don't even know how the fuck I'm going to do that. I don't even know if that's
even possible. But it seems like there's so much depth to it that even when I
finished the game it's not going to be done. So yeah,
I'm in a weird place because like part of me wants to look at
the IGN guides but then also part of me it's like
That's going to ruin the fun, so I don't know.
That's awesome.
I want to bring some YouTube super chats into the equation,
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And we're back.
What's that sound happening from over there?
In 80s, the laptop started speaking.
They're trying to mute this shit.
No, this is a, it was like, hey, you.
It's a, it's a ROM hack tutorial that I was looking at.
Allegedly.
Allegedly, not really.
Minecraft.
I want to dive into some super chats that we got.
I want to start off with Mara who writes in and says,
the conversation around Animal Well reminds me a lot of Tunic.
Would you say that's an apt comparison?
Absolutely when it comes to, well, I think the thing with Animal Well,
is like most of these secrets feel ingrained into the gameplay,
where Tunic, a lot of it felt extracurricular.
And there's definitely a lot of stuff you can find after the fact in Animal Well.
I'm not saying that like
there's a lot of like little eggs
that you could find around the world
that when you unlock all them
it's like finding a little corox seeds
you get something special for it probably
and I got a decent amount of them
it's always cool whenever you found them
but I was always like
oh man I wish I was like getting a tool
for the thing that I'm really suck on right now
because I thought this was the secret I was looking for
I'll take it up I think so much of the enjoyment
from the puzzle solving
and just discovery from Tuneik
was that
I spent so much time in the post game for Tunic
trying to just like, what the hell else is there here
that I'm slowly discovering. But you still have those awesome
moments of, you know, oh my gosh, I can't believe that
the developer thought to do this for this moment. I had a lot of those
moments of discovery in Animal Well for sure. I love that more of these games are popping
up that are willing to have secrets and willing to not hold the players' hands.
And I think part of that comes from just a lot of
bigger games and bigger successful games having success with that, I would look towards the Souls games
for being like maybe even the ones that really made developers realize like, oh, we can really
lean in on being very just, you know, not forward with the player in terms of how our mechanics
work or how our items work and stuff like that. But like Chances in R is another one that I feel like
maybe there might be some comparison with where a game that I pick up and I'm like, oh, I don't know
I don't know shit about what this game is trying to tell me, but then the more you play, the more
you understand the language of it. And I think that stuff was really cool. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, I'm just going to keep on hounding Raj to play Outer Wild.
I will.
Outer Wild is so much of, it's very, very reminiscent of just being like a 3D version of this
with how you are organically learning the language of the game.
I want to bring in two superchats that are about separate things, but I think they loop into
some of the conversation.
One, Austin Bennett writes in and says, I feel like not enough people are talking about
how Animal Wells on PS Plus Extra, Sony should be doing a better job at advertising, my opinion.
And then also Maximilian Malvenda writes in and says,
Would you say handheld keyboard in mouse or controllers recommended?
I'm curious on what platforms you guys played the game on?
Steam, YouTube?
Yeah, primarily a decker.
So, deck, but I will say very, I had a breakthrough moment when I was playing on the deck.
That fucking D-PAT sucks so bad, and it feels so bad for this specific game.
Playing with an Xbox controller, specifically like the series, new ones where it has like the clicky.
No, not even like the elites, like just like the regular new one.
Oh, got you, got you.
has like a clicky D-pad.
It feels so much better.
Like, playing this on the Steam Deck
literally made my thumbs hurt.
So that's my experience, personally.
Yeah, I probably played around
60 to 70% of it on the Steam Deck
and played the rest on my desktop.
And I was really excited at, like,
oh, how's this game gonna look on my...
This game's gonna look insane on my OLED
because it looks really good on the Steam Deck
whenever you have...
When I say like that, Steam Deck?
Steam Deck?
Whenever you have, like, the scan lines on...
Yeah.
on the Steam Deck OLED looks freaking fantastic.
When I played on my desktop, I turned the scanline effect off.
Really?
It didn't look as good as it did on the Steam Deck for me.
So I turned that scanline effect off.
But yeah, primarily on handheld.
If you are comfortable playing games on keyboard mouse with like directional inputs,
I think that's kind of really, really weird.
Whenever I see people playing platformers like that,
but I know like our homie Bob Wolf from Wolf then plays Mario games with like a fight pad.
where he's like...
That's nuts.
Using directional input.
Yeah, he does a lot of like his...
I can't talk, though.
I played all the Ocreen at a time on my laptop.
Allegedly.
Allegedly.
But I went controller for sure, yeah.
And I didn't really have issues with the Steam Deck.
Maybe it's like a difference between the OLED and the older version.
I had no issues with the controls there.
It felt great to play super responsive on both platforms.
I want to bring another one from Cognitive Clips who writes in and says,
can y'all confirm that Animal Well is kind of like Halo 2
meets Halo 3.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
100%.
Of course,
that's a donkey reference.
And it's incredible, right?
Because we were talking about it
during a review roundup
on KVD earlier before this,
that, psych is Halo 3.
You know, this is being published by Big Mode.
Big Mode is the Dunkees
publishing brand that he's initiated,
right?
And this is their first game.
And what a big success,
well, critically successful at least so far.
I'm sure it's going to sell copies.
But as your first title,
damn, like what a slam dunk.
Yeah.
And it makes me fascinated about where they go from here.
You know,
I would love to see more, like, labels like Devolver come through.
And I've been thinking a lot about Devolver recently, just in terms of how well they'd be able to carve out an identity for themselves on the indie space.
Like, they probably are the most successful indie publisher.
And then, like, below them, you probably have an Anapurna and a few others.
But I want to see more of those.
And, yeah, like, if Big Mode is able to lead off with this and then use this success to have follow-ups that are of this ilk, I think that's super awesome.
Yeah.
To just jump in so you know, as we're recording right now, it's the number five top SLA on Steam.
At number one, Hades, number two, steam deck, number three, V rising, number four, Helldivers
Two, number five, Animal Well.
10% off for its debut, so it's $23 bucks instead of the usual 25, I guess.
Worth it.
There you go.
Any final words on Amble Well before I move on?
Yeah, I was just personally taken by this game.
It was an emotional experience for me in a lot of moments, whether that's the music's
swelling in a certain moment, and I'm tearing up, but also just the emotions of being a
hardcore gamer and just just just get just getting at it and you know what that means you know the vibes
dude i was there with stella blade i get it yeah exactly you're just sweating you're trying to do the
perfect platform and you're like oh i think i got this i think i got this i can do this i can do this um but yeah
it just it it it this game really is special in my heart and i i specifically that one moment that
i alluded to earlier i'm going to remember that moment for the rest of my life uh that is
top tier moment i hope you all enjoy it and play it for sure it's an absolute contender
This is like, I don't see how this doesn't make my top 10 this year.
I was that enamored with the experience.
I was going to ask, because contender, I was associated with 10 out of 10.
That's more so it's a top 10 contender.
It has the opportunity to be in the contender, the top 10 at the end of the year.
But there's no opportunity.
For years you've been like, is it?
Is it a 10?
But there's no opportunities missed.
No, we're not doing the shit.
You got to stop with this.
You just think like Andy's given every other game like a 10?
Listen, all right, you know, we've played games we love.
It's a contender to be in the top ten, for sure.
Like, easily for me.
Yeah, there you go.
My number one.
Well, Greg, let's talk about a real video game.
My man.
Let's talk about Cryptmaster.
What is Cryptmaster, Greg?
Cryptmaster is a delightfully hard game, I think, to maybe, it's so many different things at once.
And I feel like audio listeners, you owe it to yourself to look at a trailer for this
if you have no idea what Cryptmaster is, right?
The way I jotted down my notes to destroy.
describe it right is that it is an old school first person dungeon crawler RPG except that
you're controlling it and attacking it by typing if you were to glance at it I think you would
get big typing of the dead kind of vibes right you are entering in words with your keyboard and
then hitting the button to enter them in and make it happen in the game you're controlling with
the arrow buttons you can use a game pad you can also do voice control for it but you can use your
You're going on basically imagine a dungeon grid system with the arrows on your keyboard, to move around.
You know, you move in, then you do what you want to do.
Move in, grid by grid, square by square, to advance through this world and rise from your crypt.
The idea here is that you have been awakened by the cryptmaster, who is this head, the skeleton man talking to you right here, a necromancer.
He's awakened the four heroes of old.
You are undead.
you are there.
And then the idea is that you ascend from your crypt to the top of the tower to help
this necromancer like do some bad things probably.
You know what I mean?
But along the way,
you get into battles,
you learn new attacks,
you learn new defenses,
you open chests,
you solve riddles,
you play a card game and you do it all by typing out words on the screen.
You know,
for me,
this is on our scale,
an eight out of ten.
This is a great game.
But to get all away from that,
the word I would use to describe cryptmaster is ingenious.
Yeah.
I did not fully know what I was signing up for.
I saw the typing.
It was like, oh, that's a Greg game.
Keyboard.
I know.
I hate that part of it.
I hate to have to play the PC.
Steam currently there are not cloud saves.
So then it's like I got to,
I'm asking it.
Me and Andy are trying to track saves down through.
And it's like every Greg Miller PC joke, right,
is like coming to life as I'm like,
where is it in the fucking C drive menus?
Blah, blah, blah.
But it was as you look at it.
Wait, you hear about it.
Real quick.
Are there any updates for cloud saves in the future?
When I had hit them up about where they actually store their saves,
they said they're working on it.
So again, I mean, if you want to...
Yeah, this, Chad, this isn't a situation where you right click the game in Steam
and then go to like browse local files.
Yeah, no.
Because the save file is like in user local temp low.
And the developer, Dave is like...
There's no like Cryptmaster file that the save is in.
It's like the developer like Harton Williams or some shit.
Yeah.
So the idea of...
one of the things about this, I think, of what makes the game so brilliant, so special,
so unique to see and so in line with what we're talking about, right?
Is that the developer here is Paul Hart and Lee Williams.
It's two guys made this game, right?
And Akupara is publishing it.
But it's like that level of indie.
And like today's May 9th, we talked about this on Games Daily, right?
It's a crazy special day for indies.
You have Animal Well, you have Crip Master, you have Little Kitty Big City.
You have a Crow country, right?
Yeah.
Like there's all these ones.
an ex-resist apparently.
Yeah, there's all these indies that have dropped today that are like something special.
And this game is ingenious.
Like I said,
is the adjective for it.
It has so many wonderful ideas in it.
And it's crazy to be on the same review as Animal Well,
because I have my Greg notebook where I had to go through and take notes and put down things
and make my little cheat sheets and start drawing things out and leaving myself numbers and go,
like,
that's what this game is.
It is a, you know,
going through doing this in first person.
It's black and white.
It has this awesome art style to it.
could change the shade if you want to a color, but it's still like that black and white,
just two-tone monochrome kind of thing, right?
And the idea, yeah, is going through and typing, which is so much fun because
everything you type, with the exception of your attacks, I would say, is a puzzle into itself.
The game starts, right? You have woken up. You are these things and you're coming back online.
You know, the crit master starts giving you chests. But the deal is that he opens the chest,
only he can see what's in it, and then you have to type to him, touch, feel,
Lift, taste, smell, eat.
And then you have a certain amount of things.
He describes what it tastes like or smells like or whatever.
And then you have to guess what it is.
In this instance, you would guess, you type it in.
You get it right.
The letters you used for the word it is, then get distributed between your four players like Wheel of Fortune.
So you have these blank tiles underneath your name, they start filling in words there.
The wordle.
Exactly.
I've been describing to people as wordle meets an adventure game.
That's awesome.
So then you can sit there and just get.
as long as you want what the words are,
if you get the guess,
it would fill in the thing,
and then that would become an attack or a defense
or just a piece of backstory.
And like every character has so many different words
and so many different things to do.
And it starts off so simple of right,
and I don't want to ruin stuff.
It's of an attack, right?
But then it becomes the longer ones of like,
oh, well, you know,
if you did this, your next attack has two damage or this,
or you can help this person or revive that or do this.
It's all like party base and cool down base.
And so, yeah, like I have,
I've been describing it as rural meets an adventure game.
And it's so, I think InGenus is like a really good way to put it because I heard about
this game just from Greg mentioning it, I think in one of the meetings of, hey, crewmasters
coming out this day.
It seems like it could be a really, really big thing.
I've seen people talk about it.
Our style reminds you of a description quite a bit.
100%.
Yeah, yeah.
Our style kind of has that.
But then, you know, I had gotten the code from Greg.
I started playing it at home.
And I was expecting to like maybe play it for an hour because I had a bunch of games to play and
I'll spread between all of them, right?
I boot up Cryptmasters, start playing it,
and I just couldn't stop playing it.
I still need to get back to it.
I probably played around four to five hours,
four to five hours.
How much did you play,
Greg?
I haven't rolled credits yet.
I'm six hours in when I couldn't get the save thing to work,
and then I left my safe here last night.
I was like, ah, fuck, I was going to finish it.
I would say I'm within an hour and a half to two hours of finishing it.
I would think probably on the shorter end.
It came with a walkthrough that I cracked to look at like,
how many chapters are there?
And it's like, oh, okay, it looks like I have one.
one regular chapter and then like the end.
So I feel like I'm right there.
But it's so fascinating because the way you essentially level up your characters is by
figuring out what the word is to then get the new abilities.
And so you have essentially like four wordal problems at the same time that you're solving
at all times and you'll get into fights with a bat or whatever that's in the crypt.
And one of the first abilities that I was able to unlock that I'm sure is probably across
the board is like hit because I had found like, oh, okay, well, H and T were like the first
and last letter.
Hat.
I'm sure.
Yeah, I'm like, time again hot.
And I'm like, maybe it's hit.
And then I'm like, okay, they're like, now, now your character has that ability to
hit things.
And so I'll get into a fight with a bat.
And I, like, I click hit.
And then I have to wait for my turn again.
I click hit again.
And I take out the bat.
And then I get those, or I get to choose a letter from what the bat was named or whatever.
Yeah.
When you defeat an enemy, right, whatever the enemy's name is, you can then your
loot is taking the letter.
So, but it's, it is Wheel of Fortune.
So you guess A and it lights up.
And then none of your things go.
You're like, fuck.
There's no A in any of the words I have.
And so again, once you unlock one of the words for these four characters, then you get a new word down there.
So then it is like, even if you've used A before, obviously, it behooves you to do it again if you've been paying attention to try to fill in and do this whole thing.
And you can guess as much as you want to.
Like there's not really a limit to it when you're just exploring the world.
Yeah, exactly.
So when you're just out in the about, if you wanted to just stop and say, okay, this is a five-letter word and I have a TH in there.
You could do that if you want to.
But again, going to fight an enemy right?
gets you then the ability to pull from their letters to open up more to make the guessing easier.
And there's also other ways, too, of like, this is where it gets, this is a blessed game.
This is a puzzle poppy game, which I think if I would have heard, it might have kept me away.
And I'm glad it didn't because getting into it and realizing, oh, like, this is crazy.
Because like the chest stuff, I think is easy in the front, right?
And then as you get going, it does get more like, well, fuck, it's, it's a long cylinder with a,
fucking tail.
What is he taught?
You know what I mean?
Like that one got me too.
And I was like, okay.
And so, like, you go through and you.
you get in if you don't get it he just goes,
hmm,
it could it be that important and shuts it.
And you get no letters and you get nothing out of it.
Right.
Now, to the game's credit,
there are hints if you want to turn them on.
You can get more choices or more,
uh,
guesses for that and help on that.
Same thing with,
uh,
these piles of,
you'll run into these skulls that are piled up.
You go there.
The skull will tell you a riddle.
And then it is like,
you know,
it's like you fucking deal with the riddler of like,
okay shit.
What does you know what I mean?
Like,
you know,
like,
you know what you're,
there are a lot of the riddles,
Riddles are older ones that you've heard somewhere else or whatever.
Or if you're like me, you just Google it.
I'm like, listen, I ain't got time.
I'm trying to do a million things in this game right now.
I don't know.
But it was like, okay.
Like they weren't riddles created by the game.
Correct.
They're like kind of,
they're riddles that you were.
Exactly.
Yeah.
A doctor gave birth to somebody.
It was his wife.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was going to see the,
I was going to do like the whole like,
I forget the God of War Rackner Rock,
the exact phrasing of it.
But like, what do you,
not what do you dig?
when you keep removing, it only gets bigger.
It's like that kind of like...
Yeah, what grows the more you take away from it?
Yeah, what grows the more you take away from it?
Love or something or your heart?
I thought it was a hole. I forget what it was.
Boner. It's a hole.
Anyways, you have that. And again, the same thing there where if you fail enough, it'll ask you, but you could turn it on the options as well.
Just turn on like, hey, give me hints or help me out or whatever, I don't think.
So like, but you're going through that and you're answering those and those then fill in your thing.
So you go, there's so many words for all these characters that you are constantly
going and finding it. The more you
get, you'll level up, when you level up
if you want to toss it back up, Barrett,
all the character names are there, right?
It'll add another letter to the character name,
because the character name is your health bar.
When you get into battle and you take a hit,
one of your letters of the character name letters
goes away. So Jorro could just
become Jor, right? And that'd be, okay, well, I've
taken one damage or whatever, and of course
you can fall and do that. But like, get a character
named Benedict Cumberbatch. Exactly, exactly.
Get a big Humberbun out there.
One of the things I like is when you do get
of combat when you get a bit further into the game because they each character kind of has their
own role that they're playing and so like you're a warrior or a bar to see which and a thief slash
assassin yeah and so I think it's the bar that has abilities that then buff other people's abilities
and so like I'll get into a fight with a bat or like a walking skull or some shit and it is the first
thing I'm like all right hit and I type it in I'm like jab all right uh I'll use like I'll just type
and yell so the bard can like refill the cool down to my other characters real quick so I don't
to wait and I'm like, all right, cool, hit, jab, yell. All right, hit again. All right, jab.
It's all in your mind. It really isn't me typing as fast as possible. It feels like you're hacking
and there's like a flow state to it where it really is. I'm like, all right, Jora isn't buffed by
him doing his thing. So I use Jora. I use the other two people. I go to the bar. He goes,
this little thing because he's like a zombie or whatever. Gives them back their thing. Do their
attacks again and you really get going. As you escalate and go with the enemies, right,
you start getting into like, okay, well, this guy's got a shield and on the shield is
B, meaning that if any of your attacks have a B in it, you can't use. That'll be blocked, right?
Other things are like, this guy's immune to knock down or just this guy can't use letter T words.
And like, there's all these little things that you get in there where you need all the attacks,
you need all this stuff, which is why like my notes are both cheat sheets for words.
And then also like me being like, all right, I'm sick of fucking wasting it.
And like, did I already guess an eye? So I'm like writing it down. But even then it gets kind of muddled into the
you better than I am. Because I would click the same letters over and over. I'm like,
oh yeah, certainly this has an eye. And it'll be like no eye. And I'm like, I guess I have
And see, that's one of the things, and I want your question in one second.
That's one of my things that for me brings down the experience is that it's an old school looking
game. And I want to even say inspirations of this like, for FPS dungeon crawler, right?
And kind of like a severed way.
But there's a few quality of life things that I just don't understand why.
And I understand it's a small dev team.
Yada, yeah, yeah.
But like, why they weren't there of like, give me something to indicate what I've guessed on these
words if I wanted to, right?
Like I understand it being.
It's just, it is frustrating.
be part of one of those like quality of life.
Exactly, right?
Same thing with the map.
Like,
I think I was playing this in a way that was detrimental to it in terms of,
all right,
it's my afternoon these two days at,
at IGN,
kind of funny,
right,
where I'm just going to go in the streaming lab
and play it there.
But that meant like,
I need to make progress.
And so at some point,
the style of the game in that black and white,
right,
it became a little bit grading to be playing so long on.
I was like,
I can go for something.
And then everything kind of starts to look the same.
Yeah. And so it would be that thing where I would go get a cup of coffee and then do an email and have a meeting and come back and sit back down.
And he's like,
sit back down and be like, wait,
fuck,
did I come in that door or did I,
am I going towards?
Okay,
and then there'd be like another time where like I finally solved like,
because not only is there the chest puzzles,
the skull puzzles,
there's then the narrative you're on where you get to like,
oh,
how do you open that door?
What does this person need for me to do the thing to get McGuffin?
And then it would be that idea of being,
I'd finally get.
to what I think it is. No, okay, you got the next part of it, but you really need to go talk to
this guy that you saw what I feel like was an hour and a half ago. And I'm like, where the fuck was
that guy? There's no overworld map. There's local maps. But again, they're very basic. So I was
like, shit, where what? And it wasn't hard to find, but it was that moment of like, fuck, I don't
know where he is off the top of this. I feel like there's just little things like that that could
have gone further for me of like, okay, cool. Like it's, it can be as challenging as I
want it to be, but it also can be as welcoming
as I want it to be. How would Snowbank
Mike experience this game as somebody with a
keyboard that doesn't have letters printed on
the buttons? It's going to struggle. It's going to struggle.
That's where my question goes. You mentioned that there's voice
commands, where you can actually say the words? Like, how does that work?
Is that an accessibility thing? It is an accessibility thing.
And one of the warnings they pop up on is this is an accessibility
feature. It might not be the best thing in the world kind of thing.
So I didn't even screw with it, but it is there
in terms of if you wanted to speak to it.
The Cryptmaster makes a joke about it in the front.
games hilarious the writing is great the Vio is great the surprises like you guys are talking about are great
like there's a few things where it's like you get to not even the boss you get to the guy or gal you
were going to go talk to right and it's like oh i didn't see this being the thing oh this is a
really fun game of trying to finish what you're doing in a very interesting way i don't want to
spoil right like there's a bunch of that there's this little cute card game in there like there's
so much going on in a way that i think every time you think you might have figured it out or
like, okay, is this the thing?
Like, something happens.
Like, when I leveled up the first time, I was like, oh, I didn't see that coming.
That actually is encouraging me to play a way I wasn't.
Because once I feel at least the way it's been going for me almost at the end of the game now is that basic attack I was fine with.
Like when they get into the, well, if you do this, then that attack that I don't even use will be doing two times the damage, but you'd skip it.
And I'm like, I'm doing fine.
I'm killing.
Don't worry about me.
I got a way to break through the armor tile when it pops up because, again, the enemy names are also there.
health bars, right? So you'll see the character's name, but then there'll be a shield in the middle
of it, right? So you know you have to use your armor breaker on that. And I was like, okay, cool.
I don't need this intense thing, but whatever. Yeah. One of the things I want to shout out is
how contextual a lot of the stuff you'll write in is and how well they account for it. Because you can
at any point, just write in words, right? Because you're guessing whatever the letters are and the
abilities they want to unlock. And the narrator, the cryptmaster will comment on anything that you
that you write and most of it will be like oh i don't know what that is why would you say that
why would you say that but there are a lot of things where i'm like all right maybe it's sword
and he was like sword that'd be nice to have right now and like there's so much of that where i'm like
damn that's pretty impressive and i was telling a friend about that and they're they're like yeah
how do they do that like are they using AI and i'm like i don't think they're using AI one of my notes
right is the the serotonin hit of i don't think this will work oh shit it worked like that
that's this game's got so much of that where you either on the puzzle take the chance and it
works or you're messing with a dial because like some of the doors are locked and you have to
like put yourself in the character who you're trying to get to his head of like what would
they do those things they don't I'm trying to I don't want to speak too out as turn on it I feel
like they don't reuse a lot of their things so like there's one where it was I'm wandering through
and like what the fuck is with all this shit on the wall and then you got the I'm like oh and I ran back
and I'm looking and taking notes on what's on the wall you know what I mean like but I'm on
I'm on patrol for that as I play other stuff and it wasn't really happening the
same way.
I'm like, that's really smart about it.
Like, they do a really great job of keeping you invested, entertained, even when you
are sitting there going, what the fuck do I need to do?
Like, there's, in it, there's one section where it's like, you get to a little island.
And it's like, oh, well, we got to figure all this out.
And like the first, he's playing eye spy.
And the first ones I got so easy.
And then it was like, this one begins with R.
And I'm like, rock.
No.
The shit else is.
Rock, rock, rock.
Like, no, no.
Is it a cap sensitive?
Yeah, I think there's like a lo-fi aspect to it.
You're talking about how like it can feel indie
and which almost makes it...
This sounds like the most indie game ever made.
Which makes like the contextual aspect of it
really impressive. But yeah, you listen to the voice acting
and almost, I'm like, are you the computer mic?
It's not like the most like, you know,
not the best voice acting ever heard.
But it fits because everything kind of feels that way.
Like even the art style.
The art style is very unique and they go for it
in the art style, but it is also.
I think like Greg was alluding to before.
It's hard to look at sometimes.
Like I'll see the characters.
I'm like, it's an ugly looking character.
But it's purposely ugly, but I'm also like,
ooh, I also don't like looking at it all the time at the same time.
But so much of it feels like a, like, I don't know if you guys remember if you guys
used New Grounds back in the day.
And you would find like an ingenious game on New Ground where it's like, oh, there is a lot
of promise here.
Like you are, whoever made this Flash game has like a lot of good ideas.
It almost feels like that where you can tell it's a small team, but it's a small team
that's really smart and really like understands a vision that they have and we're able to kind of
see it through in a way that fit within their means.
And it's a game that I would recommend.
Like I think if any of this sounds interesting to you or if you're somebody that's just
looking for something different or weird to play, I was shocked by how much it pulled me in in
the first hour once I realized what was going on.
And again, like I said, a lot of different accessibility things with the hints and whatever,
but it's also like they recommend you playing real time.
But if you're not the best hyper or whatever, you can set it over to turn base.
So you can take your time, do it.
There's an option in there.
to turn on predictive text so you can start writing
and it would kind of fill it in for you or whatever.
Like there's a bunch of stuff in there to make this.
Have you tried the controller?
No, I never did.
Of course. PCs are weird so I didn't have one plugged in.
I was like, I don't know.
That's my question to you, Greg.
It's like what drew you to this game?
Was it the art style?
Was it the fact that you like Word style?
Like wordle?
I like word puzzles like that.
Yeah.
Like I like those kind of things.
I've been playing Wordle here and there again
in the New York Times app.
And so it was like this popped up.
I was at the Barrett showed the trailer
that it had the IGDF award.
in the front. I was at that. And so when they won,
I was like, oh, right, I remember when this game
this game had one of those moments where, like,
I forget what it was, but it saw it somewhere, yeah.
It popped up and everybody was like, oh, it was like, oh,
it won an award this year at GDC, and I was like, oh,
shit, fuck, I got this on my open critics team, and then I got to get over there.
There's no open critic page as of right now for it. Fix it.
I don't know who, open critic, I don't know if you're watching, how to fix it.
If a chat knows, fix it, Nick, fix it. Nick,
fix it. He said he'd fix it, audio, listeners.
But yeah, it stood out to me that way.
And I was like, I like Whartle.
I love this setting.
Again, like a horror
RPG-ish.
I use RPG so lightly.
It really is like unlocking new words,
which I guess is leveling,
and then opening up and leveling up and getting to,
come on.
How do you get an open critic page?
Frank's fucked.
Well, there you go.
That's been A&AWall.
That's been Cripmaster.
Yeah.
Two game reviews in one episode.
Let us know in the comments below.
How excited are you to play these games?
Have you already been playing them?
Let us know your thoughts below.
Until next time, of course,
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