Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - The Next Big Xbox Exclusive: 12 Minutes - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 85

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

Go to http://betterhelp.com/kindafunny and take care of yourself. Go to http://upstart.com/KINDAFUNNY to find out how Upstart can lower your monthly payments today! Visit http://joinhoney.com/KINDA to get Honey for free. Go to http://sennheiser.com/podcast and use promo code KFGAMES to get 15% off any of their headphones! The creator of 12 Minutes joins us to talk about the incredible journey of the game and the video games he has been playing. Also Andy and Blessing gush about Splitgate. Follow Luis at https://twitter.com/facaelectrica Time Stamps: 00:00:00 - Start 00:09:10 - 12 Minutes 6 Years Later 00:22:07 - 12 Minutes of 12 Minutes 00:35:40 - Developing 12 Minutes 00:50:45 - Designing 12 Minutes 00:53:20 - What We’ve Been Playing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp Online Therapy. Without a healthy mind, being happy is hard. Visit betterhelp.com slash Kind of Funny and see if online therapy is for you. What's up and welcome back to the Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Geddes, joined by one of the coolest dudes in video games, Greg Miller. That's right. I'm still finishing off this jittery John's cold brew coffee, espresso blend. It was too much for me yesterday on the Kind of Funny podcast.

Everybody made my heart hurt, but I'm here to finish it right now. And thank God Andy's not on this podcast. I just love how much it looks like whiskey. And there he is, just down on it. We'll never know. Is it whiskey? It just looks like coffee. It says it's coffee.

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled. I don't know. What do you think? The new face of video games blessing at A.O.A. Jr.? What people don't know is that I drink whiskey every morning on kind of funny games daily. I just say that it's coffee. I just say that it's ice coffee.

It's not really ice coffee. It's Jack Daniel's whiskey. That is a lot. Yeah. No, it's a lot of whiskey. That's why by the end of the episode, I'm always just drifting into gibberish. By the way, Tim, I want to give you a shout out. or not even a shout out, an apology.

I want to apologize to you because a couple of weeks ago on kind of funny games cast, I said that you were wrong about the colors of the show being light blue, dark blue, and purple. Thank you. And I was paying attention. Don't give in to him. Don't give in.

Here's the thing. I was wrong. I was paying attention throughout the whole episode to the backgrounds. And there is purple theming going on. It's not strong purple theming, right? I still associate it more with the light blue, but there is a consistent purple there.

So I do want to give an apology to Tim Muffucking Geddes. Thank you. Thank you. Greg Miller from Kind of Funny. Blessing, would you like to apologize to me? No. And joining us off camera because this camera is not working all the way from Texas. It is the nitro rifle, Andy Cortez.

Greg, I am here, man. I don't know. It was a good bit, though, right? We're fun friends. Oh, yeah. We're great friends, great friends. And joining us for not the first time on Kind of Funny Games, but for the first time on the Kind of Funny Games cast,

We have the creator of 12 minutes. Luis. Thanks for having me, guys. Thank you for coming. Very exciting stuff. Very exciting stuff. Greg, do you want to set the stage for this real quick? Sure.

If you maybe don't remember, ladies gentlemen, I'm sure some of you weren't even born yet. Six years ago. Six years ago, Louise came through the spare bedroom. And I was spare bedroom. We did it in the living room of the apartment. Luis came in when we were doing kind of funny, year one. We'd only been going for four months at this point. We did a let's play for 12 minutes, a game I had seen at a Pax that I thought was awesome.

This little indie game that I had seen at the indie megabooth. Of course, I tapped none other than the biggest video game player we had outside of me, Nick Scarpino, to sit there and come out with me, Portie, and Louise, to sit there and go through and play this game. And then 12 minutes went completely dark for what feels like a decade. but in reality it was more like four years. And you see it right now of what the game looked like back then when it was this incredibly small indie thing, right?

This guy getting off the elevator walking through, we're watching the old best play if you're an audio listener. Louise. That looks solid. Why didn't they publish this game right away, right? It was done. It was already set. Look at the guy right there trying to get in his house.

This is awesome. Well, what's crazy about it, Louise, is like, I guess tell me from your perspective, right? Like you've written me a very, very nice letter when you reached out and you're like, hey, now that we're at the end of this journey. This is a game obviously being published by Anapurna. You know, it's on Xbox Game Pass. It's going to be this big deal.

We have Willem Defoe, James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley as the voice. Oh, please bear it. Let it go for a little bit longer. Playing parts in this game. What? where, how? Like what happened? Like what, it was so long ago,

but obviously the games come so far. And now it is one of, I think, Xbox's most anticipated exclusives. Like, where do you start this journey? Like, what happened? First off, how did we get connected in 2015? It was Pax, right? It was Pax.

I didn't even know about you guys. So, yeah, I was working on The Witness with Jonathan Blow. And I was working on this thing on the side. You got to talk about that later. So I was looking the arts for it. And I was like, I started to learn to program, trying to throw this idea of a time loop. And then got to a point that everyone said, look, this is pretty solid. You should check out if it's worth to keep working on it.

I was like, I'm going to go at Pax. I got a booth, and let's see how people react to it. And that's when you guys stopped by the booth. You played it. Then you guys had a panel, I don't know if that day or the day after, someone asked, I still remember this. Someone asked, Greg, what games do you like watching? And you said 12 minutes.

So the next day there was a lineup to play the game. And then it just snowballed. And then that's it. At the end of Pax, I was like, okay, this is, it's definitely worth keep working on it. So I just send it to some other people to play it, get some press to look at it. Everyone gave it positive preview.

So I was like, okay, I'm going to work on it. So this version you see here, I think, was, I think I was still working on The Witness when I show this to you guys. So then it was a year about to look for funding, figure out, man, it's so crazy to that. There was a soup. I was going to say, like that's the thing, ladies gentlemen. If you are an audio listener, trust me, we're going to play 12 minutes of 12 minutes here.

We are going to make sure we talk over it so it's still good content for you. You'll hear the voices. But I urge you if you didn't, even if you watched this let's play six years ago, turn on the video version of this to look at what 12 minutes was back then. Because if somebody who just tested it here to already see how crazy evolved it is, but still is the same thing. Like getting off the elevator is still the exact same. but obviously so different.

And that was what it was for me, Louise, right? Where we had lost touch. Obviously, you were making this game. We're making our products and doing all these different shows and stuff. And so when 12 minutes reappeared, I remember it starting and be like, oh, man, this kind of looks like 12 minutes, except that 12 minutes look like this in my head, not the AAA Xbox backed and a Perna-backed game we're about to get next week. Yeah.

Incredible. I do want to throw out really quick. the fact that Louis says I was an artist and just thought I would learn how to program a time loop and that's just the most bullshit thing I've ever heard in my life like that is so hard to just be like I'm an artist let me learn how to program what the hell was that journey like is that why it took six years because programming is not easy

super honest so I start my career at Rockstar Games in London oh my god we got to talk about this means history Jesus. And we were working on Manhunt, too. And when we wrapped at that game, it was a new studio at Rockstar. And I said, guys, let's, we have a chance to do an original IP.

Everyone pitch in ideas. So I wrote this treatment of a 24-hour time loop, like on a small village. And I throw it at them. Like, I don't know. This is too complicated when I do this. But it kept ruminating. Then I moved to Ubisoft three years later.

And once again, there was a moment you could pitch ideas. And once again, I'm like, maybe we can now do 12 minutes. No one wanted to do it. I was like, okay. So I tried to get friends to work on it, so I could just do the art. No one wanted to work on it. Until when I was finally here in California,

working on The Witness, like the studio at Techla, where we did the Witness, it's very open. So like other game developers would come in, like Danielle working on Storyteller or Mark 10 Bosch, she's working on Megakudian. So these guys, they come in, they open their laptops,

they program some game design in these, they show them to you, and they're like, this is fascinating. And like, I want to do this. So I just, everyone told me, look, just learn how to program. So I just, you know, every night, a couple of hours a night for a year. Just do it. Yeah, I mean, it took me a while.

I have to say that was a, because I had a baby at the time. And my wife went on a trip with the kid. So I had like one week where there was no one at home. And I'm like, I'm just going to dive into this, learn how to program. But, I mean, I've been surrounded by my programmers for many years. So like, like stuff like, you know, like to make a character move, I know none of this, right? You need to raycast the 2D position of the mouse

through a 3D camera to hit a collider on the floor so you know the X, Y, Z position. But I mean, I could ask programmers at work, like, guys, how do I make a guy move? And they're like, oh, go research about raycasting, and I would go. So I had these people that would kind of guide me a bit, and I worked with game engine,

so I kind of knew the background. It wasn't like going from zero to... Right. Hey, Greg, by the way, you have no excuse for anything when the baby is finally born. Okay. Well, sounds like all I need to do is get Jen and the baby out of the house for one weekend, and I can learn how to develop my video game idea.

Maybe you can learn how to be good at video games, how about that. You know what, everybody, before we go any further, let me tell you that this is, of course, the Kind of Funny Games cast, where each and every week we get together to talk about video games and all the things that we love about them. You can get it on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games or roost your teeth.com. If you want to get it as a podcast, just search your favorite podcast feed for Kind of Funny Gamescast and we'll be right there for you. If you want to get the show ad free, if you want to watch it live as we record it, and if you want the exclusive post show, you got to go to patreon.com slash kind of funny games.

Just like our Patreon producers, Omega Buster, Tyler Ross, Delaney Twining, Julian the gluten free gamer, James Hastings, Casey Andrew, Elliott, and Tom Bach have all done. Thank you so very, very much for that. And because of that, they won't have to hear our ads that we're going to do later for Upstart, Honey, and Senheiser. Plus, how cool is it that we're sponsored by Senheiser? It is the coolest thing. And I was the lucky one. That guy, and I know this is in the ads, so I shouldn't believe it with this. But I was the lucky one that got sent the Senheiser wireless earbuds.

And I've been loving those things. So fantastic stuff. Anyways, very cool. Enough about that. Enough about that. Let's get back to it. 12 minutes. We just talked about our, are the history, right?

The first time we did the let's play of the original 12 minutes, six years ago. But now, the final product, coming out next week, we wanted to look at the first 12 minutes of 12 minutes with you guys. Greg Miller is going to be playing it right now, and we're going to check it out, do a little commentary, and it's going to be a fun time. Let's see how much it's improved. Blessing, what's up? So as we're getting into it, can I ask? Because I know we're kind of driving this direction. What have you been doing the last six years, Louise?

Because you mentioned, Greg mentioned that the game that we just looked at in the previous let's play looked completely different from what we got now. Like, what is the last six years looked like for you? His wife and child never left for a weekend again. So the first year, I got funding and we flew to Hawaii and I just served for like eight to nine months. No, no, like the first year was like, was literally just what I thought would take a year of development. Just work deeper on the idea, like refining, like, you know, figure out the animation system, figure out how the camera would move, like all the things that were already kind of in a rough state. needed to be sorted out. And just closing like little ends on the story. But what kept happening

was every time I dug further into the game, there were more opportunities of more things to do. And about a year into development, the first funding that I got. So the funding story is also interesting. Like I started a partnership with Microsoft. They were the first ones who were like, dude, we believe in your vision. Here's some money. Just do it. Because everyone else, there was always all these constraints of you got a release here. and do this, and Microsoft was like, I did at Xbox, they were just do whatever, yeah, full control.

But then actually full control is not that much fun because I had to put my producer ahead and all the contracts and negotiations and managing a ton of stuff that is not game development. But anyway, a year in, the game was kind of looking the same, but it was more solid, but there was clear a lot more that could be done.

And that's when I started to speak with an approach. I mean, we had spoken before already. It was kind of, they liked the game. I liked what they were trying to do. And opponent didn't exist yet, interactive. They were kind of starting. But we wanted to collaborate. So we were like, look, this collaboration makes a lot of sense.

And there was also the, like, wouldn't it be cool if we had like voice acting in this game? And they were like, yeah, man, do you think we could get like some pretty good talent? Maybe let's figure that out. And so we kind of continue that collaboration and try to look what, all the other things we could put into the game to really bring into the next level. Can I ask, what was the reaction to getting Daisy Ridley? I mean, so the process of getting talent to do this is very, very long, right? It's almost like a slow motion.

The reaction, it was great. I mean, every one of them. Because, like, we kind of, yeah, I don't know how much I can share, about the process and everything, but it was exciting. You're at the finish line. This isn't the time to bungle the contract. I mean, it was super exciting. I mean, each one of them that embarked on the project.

Because, yeah, I don't want to spoil the game either, but the game has a lot of things going on. And the artist thing, honestly, was getting, anyone we send the material to, they're like, I want to look at the script. And they're like, well, there's not really a script. a script. Like, what do you mean? Well, there's like 11 documents with branching dialogue. So we had to convert it all into a kind of a script so we could even get actors to look at it. Just that took like

six months to figure out a way to convert it to a readable format. Yeah, and then it was just seeing actors that were interested, they were aware of the challenge, you know, because the recording sessions sometimes were pretty painful of, you know, like, you're having dinner and now he took fork from the table. Now you know this, this, this and this, and this happens. So you're doing the same scene with all these tweaks and variations and, right, and making sure they understand what point in the narrative they're in and also bring whatever they've built to the character at that point. There was all this gymnastics to do. How long does a recording session like that take? So we broke it down in like a month and a half, about 10 or more sessions. We made like three or four.

at the beginning, then we put all the data in the game to see how it was feeling and seeing like, because you don't see the faces, right? We were like, we have to really convey what's going on through the, how the voices. So trying to see, are the voices too theatrical, are the voices not conveying enough stuff, or little things we realized were, because like they're so good that they would inhabit the characters and bring layers that we were not seeing before. So after the first sessions, we would like, okay, let's improve this. on this character. Let's, they kind of textured the relationship this way. Let's bring this

in or tweak little things. So we did a bunch of sessions, put it in the game, then another set of sessions, put it in the game, then another bunch of sessions. And then once the whole game was done, we did a bunch of pickup sessions for things that weren't quite fitting with everything else. You mentioned, sorry, you mentioned the voice acting sessions being somewhat challenging. is that, was that a thing of there is so much dialogue because of the nature of the game? Like, is it a thing of dialogue branching because you don't know what information any player might have in any given loop? Like for me, I just played The Forgotten City, which also has a time loop mechanic in which in any given loop you might have done X, Y, and Z thing, but you didn't do A, B, and C thing, meaning that they had to account for the player character knowing certain things, but then also having to figure out, like, how to talk to certain characters, certain ways. Was it a lot of that? Or was it just the fact that it's a very emotional script with just a lot, a lot going for it?

I think it was mostly what you're saying and also there was like like for for for for Daisy and Willem they have it's not linear but there's this accumulation of information right everything they do

they would know what has happened up to that point yeah maybe they were happy and sad and now they're happy sad and excited or something yeah yeah let's say for example the main character is being a jerk we're like look now the scene starts and this guy has done all these things. But for James, there was this weird thing of,

you're doing this thing for the fifth time. You've already done this couple of times and you know the reactions you got from it. So you're trying to do it a bit faster, but you also don't want to piss her off. And then this thing is also gone. So there was this, the first sessions, we were trying to find the language that would work

for all these things to tie up together. But once the rhythm was found and they, and also the way the script was presented to them was, because each time you had a conversation it would explain you because you can talk about the same thing in the same loop or you can talk about something

you started talking in a previous loop and continue the next loop there was all these nuances that I had to find a way to have almost like symbols next to the script so they would know immediately what we're arriving at in the conversation but once we all found this flow

and we did something really cool like before we started we did like a table reading like movies where we made a fake tiny script and they could all bounce off each other so they could get a sense of what's about to come. So then when they came in, they could already, and we wrote back stories right for every character

from the moment they're born until the moment the loop starts. So they could just be the character, we could just throw stuff at them. That is so cool. So I am so excited for this game. And the announcements when we saw, I don't even remember when it was,

was it last E3 when the actor? It was 2019. The reveal. Yeah. Like that was incredible. And it's like such a huge. moment for, you know, an independent game to have like that level of voice cast. I mean, honestly, for video games in general, that's kind of, right?

Like, it's so, so damn cool. But, like, were you ever concerned about, and this might be a silly question, but were you ever concerned about the actors themselves kind of overshadowing the game? Or do you think that, like, they're bringing a quality that, like, you're like, hey, this game, they match it and it just enhances together? Yeah, I mean, the approach from the one. was so above all, the game is not out yet. So I'm like, maybe people will hate the game and it sucks, maybe they love it.

But this is like, from my point of view, whether the game is successful or not. But the major thing was I realized that this game had a lot of room to be, you know, like usually have these cinematic experiences in games, but you don't really have control. Like you have a cutscene, then you have a bunch of actions, then you go back to a cutscene. but this game was in a way kind of merging that in real time. So the approach I tried to take for the game was having this interactive thriller narrative to it where there's no goals, there's no objective,

the game doesn't tell you what to do, it's very accessible. So we built it around this. So having actors at this level that inhabit the characters kind of allows the premise that we're trying to build here to actually... It's a film. So if you have film actors, it really feels like a film.

It completes the idea that we're trying to build of this being a cinematic experience. So I think it merged well. I am worried that having this level of talent, people are expecting an extremely high-polished game of a studio of 30 people. But yeah, it's more of a small indie title

with these guys. I think they're going to like what they get. I don't think you have to worry about that. And I think it's awesome to hear you talk about it because I think when you see those kind of names attached to a video game, there's always that concern of, oh, that's really cool they got them. Is it not phoned in,

but is it something they did in a couple hours? You know what I mean? They did over Skype, recorded locally tossed it out there. The fact you're talking about table reads, the fact you're talking about a month and a half of doing this, them bouncing ideas, working these things, having this backstory, I think it really drives home, what your game is.

However, I have, we did something that's pretty classic for kind of funny, which is we kind of dove into this with the assumption that you know six years ago you saw this game and you know this. If people don't know what 12 minutes is, Louise, what is 12 minutes? Good point. So 12 minutes is an interactive thriller

about a man trapped in a time loop. You come home from work, you're having an evening with your wife, then this intruder shows up, he accuses a wife of a murderer, he attacks you, you pass out, and then you go back to the start of the evening. And you have to use the knowledge

of what's going to happen to try to change the outcome and break the loop. The loop lasts 12 minutes. Everything happens inside an apartment and it's in real time. Yeah. That's my elevator pitch. So with that, I think that's an excellent segue into us playing the first 12 minutes of 12 minutes. Keep in mind, we're doing the word. We're going to do this 12 minute run and ladies and gentlemen, if you're a podcast person, don't roll your eyes. You're going to get a great voice acting and we'll talk it through what's happening. But I've hit any key to continue. We are fading up on the antipurnal logo

Once should I start the the timer here because we do have the right Right, right? I was gonna get into the elevator. I would say yeah That's yeah, it's your name. Yeah, I would skip the intro. Oh, skip it, okay. Wow, I hit starting then exactly. So now when you press continues when I would start the timer. Alright, I'm hitting continue in three, two, one, go. It's like an AGDQ timer or something.

Yeah. There's gonna be a finish where we're gonna finish it. If you step on this polygon, you do 20 seconds. I'm gonna rub myself against this wall to phase through it again. Oh, you're playing with the game pad. Oh yeah, I'm playing with the game pad, please. I'm not some heathen over here, mouse and keyboard.

Also, for real, I think it would screw up the thing a little bit. Well, look at it. Look at it. It's exactly we saw before. The carpet is the same. The plant is the same. It's way more polygons, but it's the same exact thing. That's awesome.

That is awesome. This being an Xbox GamePass game, you've got to assume most people are going to play on GamePad. Do you think that that's the proper way to play it, or is it a mouse and keyboard game? It was designed as a keyboard only one button game. You can even be drinking a tea and use your... Like, you just have to... If you know how to open a file on Windows and drag stuff, it's going to work. But of course, we designed it hopefully to be really comfortable to play with GamePad.

By the way, that plant looks real good now. Holy shit. Yeah. I mean, the carpet looks great. He looks great. Again, this is ridiculous. Look at what we saw from six years ago. And now 12 minutes begins.

Oh, there we go. So what was that voice that we're hearing from this guy? So that's James. You know what you mean? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's locked from the other side. Yeah, there's the couch.

There's no gazpacha anymore. Oh, kissy-kissing. You know what I mean? Guess who made dessert? Let me know when you're in the mood. This is so dope. Right? It's just so crazy how it's like the same.

Like don't be wrong, it looks like a 20-21 game or whatever, but like it is so close to what we were doing before. Here we go. It's a good time for dessert. I'm ready to get wowed by this dessert. Just give me one second. Yeah, it's super weird to have seen the other one and look at this now. How much did the game change from that?

Because so far it looks very similar in terms of locations and what they're doing. Is it like drastically different or is it like an 80% skeleton? The design itself of the like the gameplay puzzles and design is pretty close to what it was. Like I would say that the third half of the game is much better than what it was on the original prototype. But then there's all these other layers that weren't there, that just what's the occasion I'll tell you for dessert just give me the dessert then but Andy I don't know if you noticed I took all the spoons yeah yeah and they're like waiting for yeah when the danger happens I want to kill your wife unless you give me a spoon

I love the effect of the the lightning kind of lighting up the room enjoy your meal so you just started to eat whilst you were setting the table So she's like, yeah, she ain't about it. I love that little VCR filter whenever that pause happened. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, that was awesome. So I wasn't at kind of funny six years ago when you were originally doing this let's play.

And so this is actually some of the first time I'm seeing actual gameplay of this game. That's not from one of the presentations or the trailers. And I'm just putting it together. This seems like it's very much an adventure game. So Louise, did you have any inspiration in terms of going about it as an adventure game? Or would you even say that that's an accurate description? Oh, yeah, yeah, like my biggest inspiration was, so now you could go to her and apologize for having started a meal, if you want.

Don't tell me how to talk to my wife. But I'll apologize. Dude, what I'm going to get around chocolate? Dude, what the hell? That was supposed to be special. Yeah, yeah, I mean, the first inspiration was because, right, there's a lot of... We got to clean up closet. So the bed is a mechanic to speed up time.

Oh, no. It's okay. It's okay. He's going to wake up the moment the cop arrives. Sure. So if you don't want to wait for him, you can just lay down in bed. Wait, so if the bed speeds up time, does it speed up the 12 minutes or do you still get 12 minutes a game play? No, no, no, it speeds up the 12 minutes in real time. Like, if the cop arrives, the cop arrives like five minutes into the loop. And if you press escape, if you go to the main menu, you can see how much time has passed. So you've played for like, right as like three and a half minutes of the loop. That's right. That's true.

That's really cool. Wow. That is so cool. That's the simplest thing, but my dumb, simple mind is like, wow. That's awesome. It's a clock that moves. We love it. Yeah, this is very inspired by point and click games.

But the thing I wanted to change in a way is the ambiguity of what you do in those games. I don't know what you can mix or what doesn't work, or sometimes something works in a situation and sudden doesn't work somewhere else. So here it's more. Like everything you pick up, like a mug, right? You can drag it to the sink, fills with water, you can give it to the wife, she's going to, right? You're going to begin with her mug with water. So in a way, hopefully all the elements that you see in the apartment, I mean, the only elements you're going to have for the whole game and you,

you can plan around, like if you're playing a shooter or a platform, you just know the verbs from beginning to end. But the idea is to be like, you know, it pauses when the inventory comes up, it pauses when you, when you have a... a dialogue option you want to go over so so you have time to think about it the stress is going to come from the the situation itself i'll get it Greg stick the spoons in the garbage disposal i'm right no we got i'm gonna have to spoon willem to foe here and it's not in the fun way i'm with the police turn around please what me yes you hands behind your back let's go hey listen

how shit is the green goblin i was gonna say did you know that's the goblin Greg give him a spoon maybe he'll go away okay good call everybody good call everybody good call First things first. I'm gonna do that's a X and the green goblin talking right now. The police turn around and a sky walker. Let's go. I'm gonna try to get dessert. Hey, listen.

What is this? Hey, you need to tell us what is going on, I warn you. Oh shit. Wow. There's your first loop. You ever get smacked into tomorrow before? Yeah, yesterday you mean. The hell just happened?

I'm gonna say it. There's nothing cooler than a time loop. Yeah. I love that this year. They are right now. This is awesome. I was going to say, this is the year of time loose for sure,

and they've all been bangers. Yeah, it's crazy how there's so many time loops games. They all saw you six years ago, and they're like, we're inspired. You got ahead of this. Come on. So yeah, now everything you've lived through, you can tell,

Are you that scared of my cooking? All that information stays. Yeah, yeah. James McAvoy understands everything. Just like real life. Come downstairs with me. Five minutes tops. No.

There's no progress bar other than the information that your character gets. The apartment doesn't change. You don't get armor. You don't get XP. It's literally him mirroring how much you learn. No, I'm serious. Please. Don't open that door. It's important. This isn't funny, babe.

So have you been playing some of the other time loop games that have been coming out recently? And playing those, are there things that you look at and you're like, oh, we did a similar thing this way? Or, man, I wish we took this thing and added it into our game. So there's a cop and a time loop. I didn't play many of them. I played a couple. So I'm part of the judge for IGF for a few years. So when like there was the something fatal, the one, forget, forget,

the name of the title. There was Elsinore. The, that was like the deadly, butel. Fatal, brutal, brutal. Something like that. But I, yeah, I didn't really look at other time loop games into, I mean, I had a pretty, there was something that I really wanted to do here. Like that, for example, a big, big thing for me that the other games

end up doing that I wanted to see if I could pull off is there's no, there's no recap of what you've learned. right? There's no there's no markers of what things are going to happen like you have to store all that in your head and interpret the situation and hopefully because

the loop is so short it's not it's not hard to do do you foresee the majority of people beating this game in one sitting so we've done extensive play testing and it takes it takes like six to eight hours no one's managed to do it faster than that

our chat is asking you Was it the sexy Brousel? Sexy Brutel? Yeah, that's what it is. They got it. Yeah, that game was cool. Another wilds I really want to play, but I just didn't have time to. I'm not going to eat the dessert ahead of time.

I'm not going to steal the spoons. I do some shoes, though. She shouldn't be wearing her shoes in the house, Tim. Well, I know, but we're trying to get her out, man. It's not happening. We already tried that. But then she asked me, you know, all right, fine, prove the day's restarting. And I didn't have any proof yet.

So now I've got to start looking at things like, you know. what's in your back pocket or spoons let's a second why do we have seven spoons now he's bringing sputes back I'll prove it to you

look at all these fucking spoons Dazzy three spoons have the same mark on him have you guys seen triangle the time loop film where it's like some people stuck in a boat that's really really good And there's something like this where there's a glitch where things get looped over and over

And there's like 50 dead birds in the same corner of the ship That sounds incredibly cool. It's very cool. It's very and it's not very well known that's some That's some prestige shit right there yeah yeah It's not a play double Do that music outer wilds though louise holy cow it's really good huh it's It's what I hear. And I met the devs because the game is also with Anapurna. And I remember seeing the game before they worked with them

and kind of their process a bit and super interesting. Triangle is free with ads on Amazon Prime video. So about the day we starting. I got everything to work yet. I got nothing to prove it with, though. I don't have the information to tell it, right? Are we looking on time, Barrett? By who?

The cop? I'm not trying to stress you out. I'm just trying to give you an example. I feel like 40 seconds from now. I can prove it. Take your time. Sounds like you've got all night. I know that you need to, the closet needs to be cleaned.

But I don't think that's good enough that we've probably talked about this for days at this point. Every item that gets like a, right, that little target thing can be used as a... Come on. I want to see a miracle. So now he's going to try to prove it with the phone. Oh, your phone. What about it? There's text for me, but that doesn't help. That wall would look real good with the big O-Land T-me on it.

I heard the doorbell. That was the thing. The thing of the other. And there we go. That's our 12 minutes of 12 minutes. Oh, no, open the door and easy right back. What does he want? There is, okay.

Let's play out. Did you tell her not to knock me out? Did you just tell us? not to open the door? You did, huh? I've already stressed multiple times not to open the door. Okay, okay. You know something about this? Come on, I know you're home.

Open the door. Ring goblins. Let's talk, man. Finish it! Please just tell me what's going on. Uh-oh. Did you, um... Did you think about locking the door?

I did, I already did. Don't know about it. Trust me. I remember six years ago. You just do some. There's also a knife if you want to grab it. Oh, look to the people. Still him all right. Still Dan record. Do you know something about this?

Yeah, I told you I know about it. Yeah, I get protection. Oh, gosh. Oh, shit. No! There's also something like, in any failure situation, like, for example, let's say you... There, oh no!

Oh, no, I didn't work. Like, if you had let that scene play through, you would have to be. through, you would have learned some things that are different from the ones you learn if you intervene. Sure. Hopefully, like, there's no fail state. Anything you do is just knowledge that will let you branch further into other directions. Man, you dropped your purse in the elevator.

Just wanted to give it back to you. Wow. Because it seems very puzzle game then. You know, it seems like the bulk of the game is used trying to solve what is going on and how to fix it. Yeah. Super, super cool. So wait, so what's the deal?

This is coming out August 19th? Yeah, yeah, in eight days. Woo, yeah. And Xbox Game Pass? Xbox Game Pass and Steam. Is it on Xbox GamePass PC, or just console? I think it's PC2. I should know that.

I appreciate it's GamePass every. I think it's GamePass every. I'm like 90% sure. I would text someone out to be double sure, but I think it is. What are you most excited for people to experience from this? So this is mostly from play testing. Like there's this Because the game doesn't tell you what to do,

there's definitely boundaries, but you cannot tell where the boundaries are. So there's this free-flowing attempt that kind of finding out what direction to go into. And then when you finally have a direction, you never quite know if that direction is the correct one. And I know that you'll be thinking that. So there's like things there to take,

that into account. And I think you get into this weird place stays that I think it's cool. I think you might get extremely frustrated or you might find it pretty original. But yeah, I'm just curious how people are going to react to that. And there's a little, I mean, because it's a time loop and because in an apartment, like things that are there from the beginning will be relevant four or five hours in. And there's all these layering of things that I think work pretty well. but I'm just curious how people are going to react to it. We have testers who love it and others who still enjoy it but kind of get really frustrated.

So I like that. There's a bit of both. It really depends on your type of player. How many of the testers took copious notes? Because this reminds me when I was playing Telling Lies and I just had a notebook full with scribbles and names and lines and stuff like that. Some took notes mostly of when you use the phone. You're going to call people and stuff.

But the game is designed for you to store it all in your head. There isn't really a need to, man, that's construction here. I hope I'm only coming through. No one here. But, yeah, I mean, I don't think you need notes. If you play the game, this has happened with some friends that are playtesting. If you play the game for like three hours and you wait a month and you play again, you're going to be confused.

Did I do that or did I think I wanted to do that? What do I know so far? It gets money. Yeah. So you talked about noodling it, right? when you're coming up with this D and moving it around to different places, let alone than actually sitting down to work on it. How long, you're talking with these scripts you're giving out to all the different actors

that aren't really scripts, but you know what I mean, in terms of how much dialogue there is, how many permutations there are, how long did that process take, like sitting there and writing a game this complex with this many branches? It took quite a while, actually. I think that was probably the trickiest thing. Like early on, right, very, very early on, when I decided to the game, I would just, you know, go to the beach with a friend.

And I'm like, look, you got home, a guy knocks at the door. What do you do? And he would be telling me, like, I'll lock the door. Okay, he breaks down the door. What do you do now? So I would start to see the possibilities. So everything would be very organic. So I started to kind of write a story this way of how far a loop could be interesting.

But very quickly, it became hard to visualize this. Because if I was writing it linearly, so what took a while was find a way to visualize, you know, but the same permutation in later loops where things have already happened, the same permutation in variations. So figuring out a way to visualize this was the longest. But once I had it, I had the skeleton that I could build on. I think it was maybe a year, a year and a half. I mean, there were other things in parallel as this was happening.

Sure. So feel free to dodge this question if it's spoilers. But if I wanted to speed run the game and beat the game, in the first loop. Is that possible? So I always have to answer to that question. One of the answers is, like I said, the main character is following what you know. So there's certain things.

Like, he cannot say in the same loop, look, I'm living the same day, there's a cop coming. You need to leave that. The same way you need to leave other things that allow you to say more things to the characters. So in that sense, you cannot convey a ton of information

to the main character in the first loop. But there's a lot of things you could do in the apartment because you know where stuff is and how to combine things if you've played previously that would allow you to advance. On the other hand, the concept of an ending to this game is a bit different from other games where you get to the end, you get the credits and it closes because it's a time loop. So what for you will be the ending might be different to someone else in a way. So it's not that linear in terms of doing a speed run to get to twin ending.

Luis, how long into the development were you and the team in QA still finding issues where maybe there were some conversations that were broken and you have so many different variations in ways that you can go about stuff.

How long were you into the development and you're like, oh shit, you know what? Nobody had ever really gone this path. We don't have an answer for this. That's one of the best questions I've had. So that issue is huge. And I'm going to write a blog post about it because when we got a QA team, they're used to levels. Right, you play level one, you play level one, you play level two, level three, you're kind of stuck.

There's no levels here. So, yeah, first was finding a way, like when I would do a fix, let's say, oh, I fixed something in the dinner scene. Like, what does it mean replaying the dinner scene? Does it mean taking out all the items? Does it mean giving certain items? Does it mean interrupting at this point? Does it mean doing the dinner when the cop shows up, doing the dinner, after the shows up. So it took us a while also with QA to find a way to make sure you would go, because they

wouldn't even know what a path would be, or if something that was happening was, that was the other thing. They were like, is this a bug or a feature, you know? Like, why is you reacting this way? Or they would forget, I don't know, like, you do something very early in the loop, but you've been playing like 20 loops. And it gets all blurry in your head. And you're like, oh, this is not working anymore, but did you do this? Yeah, I did. No, you didn't. So, yeah, so QAA first finding a way to keep track of the things that have to be done took a while and yeah like

I don't know like a week ago we found a bug or I mean it's hard not to spoil but there's you can do something with the wife that you once you know it you can do it earlier with her and you might ask to do it but she doesn't want to do it and then you ask to do it later and she wasn't remembering that you asked to do it earlier in the loop

because I didn't think you would want to ask her in those two specific moments there's a couple of those things yeah At any moment, did you ever think, like, oh, man, I wish I was just making a movie of this? Like, it seems so story-based, or has it always just been, there's a game here? Oh, completely. So that's another thing that I think I'm kind of confident about this. This is a video game from day one.

Like, the experience you guys played, that was the core of it. Like, the experience, and a lot of things that I try to do is, for example, when you're trying to prove you living the same day, I don't want to give you dialogue options. You have to figure that out. So a lot of the things you have to do, the dialogue options are there for the things that I could not find a way for you to communicate, right? How would I make you say that a cop is coming?

I try to have like an icon for a cop or... So the dialogues are kept to a minimum. Everything else is very mechanical, very... It's up to you to kind of mix and combine things and doing it at certain times in order to... Like, it's totally a video game in that sense. I don't think a movie would be able to do what this is doing.

So you mentioned earlier that you worked a bit on The Witness. Were there things that you learned working on that game or learned from puzzle games in the past that you brought into working on this game from a puzzle perspective? Yeah, a ton of stuff. I think from the witness, like, so Jonathan has a, like he has this attitude of,

let's kind of remove time and money from the equation until all the creative problems have been solved. And it's really true, for example, the witness, there was a moment where we had the island wrapped up, all pretty, everything arranged, but walking between locations was too long. And Jonathan was like, guys, let's chop the island and reduce it.

They're like, dude, it's going to be months. But it's going to make the game better. And you're like, yeah. Like, in a AAA, they would never do this, right? You wouldn't put, I mean, you could make everyone crunch, but those decisions would be measured against variables that are not, is the game better for it? So looking for publishers and looking for funding and even the whole development process,

I tried to make sure I had the room to do these things where like there was a lot of reduction, reducing the apartment, removing superfluous things. And sometimes you kind of feel the game is done, but then you play it, you're like, no, man, we still need to dig through these things. And maybe that's why it took so long. But it didn't took so long for me because I love the value. So I was just having a blast for five years or six years. It's not like a struggle.

It's like, I mean, once I finish it, I'm going to do the same thing. So there was that, the, being able to not get, you know, stressed out with time or budgetary constraints while they're trying to make these decisions. Yeah, and the other thing, I don't know if the game is doing that. That kind of, I've learned that was, like, a good puzzle is when you're, you're doing. puzzle is when you fail, you know why you failed. Right? Like in Super Mario, if you fail a jump, you like, I should have double jump, I should have done it. You know, or in a shooter, right? You're very aware of your constraints, right? In a shooter, you don't think about dropping the gun and picking up a coin or a rock.

You know the gun is glued to your hands. That's your tool. So that's something I wanted to solve because point and click, like I said, have this huge ambiguity that you get to a point. You're just mixing stuff randomly. We are having a goal in mind. So making sure that that would not happen in this type of game where the things you do are, there's more verbs to it, I guess. There's more of a water down. I don't know, yeah. I like your use of verbs. That's really cool. Is that like a normal thing in video game development? Speech? I don't know. I mean, I felt it fits really well, actually. Probably other people might have used it. I mean, there's, I think there's, I've heard that the

vocabulary, like there's a dialogue you're having with the game. And, And there's a language that the game defines between you and the game. And I think that's why you have that exterior area. Like, before you get into the apartment, you learn everything. You can look at objects. You can combine things. And now you know, like, hopefully you won't think, you know, I'm going to turn the oven on, put a spoon there. And you cannot use the oven so that's out of the picture.

Or I'm going to drag the couch to block the door. You know that that's not a verb here. So you take that off your head. And so having that very small amount, like you saw like 90% of the things in the apartment. So that's it. That's all you have. There's nothing missing or hidden or tricky that's going to come out later. It's up to you.

That's back to, I think, when I think of a good puzzle game. Like when it is that I love when I understand the mechanics of a game and I'm sitting there and I see the problem and I know the solution. But I can't, I have to figure out how to get there. And the amount of games I'll play that when I'm into them, when I'm into them, when I'm into a puzzling like that. You sit there and you're like, all right, cool. I know the answer is in this room. Like, this isn't the kind of game that makes me backtrack.

You know, I have to go back or I miss something critical here. I wouldn't have been able to get here. I'm here where I am now, which means I have at my disposal of ability to do this. I just have to figure out how. Before we move on, before we move on real quick, let me tell you about our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Senheiser, specifically the Senheiser Momentum True Wireless Two Earbuds,

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let us know that we sent you. Loan amounts will be determined based on your credit income and certain other information provided in your loan application. Go to upstart.com slash kind of funny. Now go for it, Luis. What were you about to say? Wait, oh, then you're going to put the sponsors. I see. Tricks of the trade. Yeah. Oh, I lost a train of thought there. Sorry, sorry. No worries. I'll see why being a good puzzle game, right?

Oh, I see. I mean, I hope the game is doing. those things. Like, I plan for it in play testing. It seems to be working. But there's also something interesting. Like, hardcore gamers when they go in the apartment, they hoard all the items. And they start... They don't even care what the characters are saying.

They're just, I'm going to unlock, and they have a horrible time. While people that don't play games and they take this more almost like a movie, they for example, you already had some things that would help you prove you're living the same day. Damn. But people that yeah, they are less of a game.

and they look at it more like the situation that they're in, it's kind of more designed to flow that way. Because everything everyone says, everything that's happening, it's there for a reason at some point in the narrative. So cool. Do you guys have any more questions about 12 minutes before we move on to other games? I just want to play it now. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Is there like an average amount of loops that you believe players are going to hit before they get around to the ending? Or is it very much free in the way that it can take you five loops? it can take you 30 loops, you know, it depends on how you play. So the loops really change because you can just leave the apartment and it loops. So some people loop more than others while others try to go longer. So measuring it by time turned out to be easier.

Like I think it's around like maybe 30 to 40 loops. Some people will end up with 50 or 60. Other might end up with shorter ones. But yeah, the six, eight hour mark of doing loops, no matter how long or short they are. Gotcha. assume that there might be mechanical reasons why you may want to restart a loop on purpose. Like you might want to, you know, take, you might make a mistake or take something from the top or want to take something from the top or you might want to get, regain an item or something.

Do you have those moments as well? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're going to have those moments. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not only screwing up something, but something that you're like, oh, because like the idea is hopefully that you kind of know, you should be able to plan your actions before you even play the game once you've been in the environmental. little bit. And sometimes you can already predict what's going to happen. I'm just going to leave the apartment. I want to go over this again.

Or just try a variation of that thing slightly different. Yeah. Very cool. Well, moving on from 12 minutes, Luis, what have you been playing? What have I been playing? So I've been playing. Most recently, I played storyteller. Ooh. Because I've been following storyteller since Danielle was working on it. like I don't know how like 10 years ago or more the old pixel version and I was really curious what the new version was and it's it's amazing I don't know if you guys checked the demo it's

I didn't see the demo but it was what press conference were watching with oh anapurna right yeah yeah and I that was my first time hearing about it explain what storyteller is louise storyteller is um it's a game where you have like like imagine a sunday comic book stripe You have three for four stripes squares and you have the elements to make a narrative so you can like put a girl and a boy they fall in love, then you put the grave and then the girl is dead and the boy is sad

then you maybe put another one and they get married. So you're given a goal, let's say make a tragedy and you're giving the elements and then you have to put this elements to make a story but you can rearrange them, right? You can change the gender, you can change what happens at the start at the end and yeah, you have to kind of build these narratives

out of the elements you're given. This hard style looks really damn good. Oh, it looks. Yeah. It looks amazing. I was really surprised. It's very in a trailer if you want to pop it up there. Yeah, like this is when it was going the other day, right?

That's what it looked like to me. It looked, again, like a puzzle game, right? In the way of a Sunday funny like you're talking about. Like, here's what the outcome you want it to be is, here's your pieces to try to piece it together. And it kind of plays like a visual cards against humanity almost in terms of like trying to lay out these different things you have from a deck. It's funny because when we first saw this at the Antipurran

thing, I immediately assumed that it was from the same folks as Florence, because it gave me kind of a florencey vibe in the way that in that game, you're putting together these pieces to tell a story, but that story is very much a very specific story that that game wanted to tell, whereas this seems way more free. And yeah, this is very much not from the Florence developers, but I do, I do like the art style of it and the energy of it because it does harken to that a little bit, but more on the creative side as opposed to the heartbreaking emotional side that Florence has.

I've been staying away from the demo for this one because I want to experience this game fresh from front to back, and so I've been trying to keep myself from going into it. But the more I hear y'all talk about it, and then also the more I see the gameplay of it, I'm like, man, I kind of just want to know how this works, because this seems like a very cool, very unique kind of game.

It won't spoil if you play the demo. Like I think Florence, like Florence is more of a linear story in a way, right? you're going to these set pieces. But this game is more like, it's almost like puzzles. Each level is a puzzle where you're learning these mechanics and then they keep getting crazier and crazier and more evolved and you have more stripes.

And then you start, I don't know, it's really funny because when it clicks on your head, the story you're doing, like when it clicks the puzzle solution for a story, it's really funny. And it's like at the end you literally have a story complete that makes sense. and then you can still keep switching stuff and you see automatically the outcome being built on what you change on each frame it's pretty original I think

and I've been playing what else I've been playing so I have this fascination for world engines so like I play a lot of flight simulator but on dev mode we just fly around the world Space Engine I don't know if you guys know that that game

so Space Engine is the old universe. You can zoom in into a planet or live out of a planet, you know, leave out of our galaxy and everything is simulated and rotating in real time. And you can just leave out of our galaxy, you can rotate our galaxy, you can go to other galaxies, and like literally every dot you see on space, you can click on it and you can fly there. So if you, but if you smoke a joint, you should put some nice music and you fly to there, it's a very unique experience. Like there's nothing like it. Like there's no man's has more of his crafting side of it.

There's elite dangerous, but it's very much of a simulation kind of thing. And then there's this in between that I don't think it's been fulfilled yet with any game, and I'm just seeing who's the first one to get there, to have this. You say elite dangerous is a bit more simi. How's

the flying in it? Like, is it no man sky style, or it's easy to get from playing to the planet? Or is it I started playing Outer Wilds recently, which I recommend it to Andy, and Eddie loves it. And in that game, the spaceship stuff feels very much like you have to learn

Yeah, no, no, no. Played in, loved it after I recommended it to him. Elite is flight simulator in space. You have to do the pre-check flight. Talk with the station to leave the station. You've got the planet they have to align with the prepare for the gravity alignment. There's all this.

It's pretty much a simulator. Man, this game was, I'm seeing a trailer from 2016, and on the website, man, they are still updating this. That's very cool. Oh, yeah. They just lose it on steam, and now they have, they got asteroid rings to, asteroid belts to have all the rocks correctly. They got HDR, they got nebula, they keep, and it's one dude that worked on this for.

This is crazy. Barrett, go to 822, 822 in this video, and let's just watch it for a second. Isn't this awesome? Like, you can go to ground level too, huh? Yeah, they're about to in the video, go into the ground level of this planet, and it is just crazy. And I mean, you see every dot you see on the background. You can go through that nebula there. You can go to every dot is a sun that has a, I mean, you can click on it and it will show you the system.

So like, oh, it's a twin sun. You can go to a Sagittarius, the center of our galaxy. And then you can speed up time so you see all the planets moving faster. And this is an accurate simulation. It's super accurate. No, no, no. This is 100%. The scale of everything is accurate.

It's ridiculous. Just like Star Citizen. Wow. It's just the old universe Like Star Citizen I think they I mean it doesn't have the Star Citizen I think it's pretty pretty when you get to them It doesn't have that

I mean don't have the budget either right Yeah definitely You see the sun's rotating there around that other sun Yeah oh shit Damn what I can't even imagine this with HDR on Like that would be cool in VR this works in VR This is insane in VR And yeah

Man. Well, that's super cool. Yeah. Andy and Bless, you guys have been playing Splitgate. You want to talk about that for a minute? Andy, you want to kick off? Yeah, dude. Well, we played it two years ago, I think, almost to the date on kind of funny games.

We did the let's play of it when the devs came over to our studio. Another game we put on the map. They gave us a sort of sneak peek at Splitgate. and holy cow, like obviously when we played the early demo, it didn't perform that great. And it was, you know, kind of spotty here and there when it comes to frame rate and all that stuff. But two years later, I think the game has gained a lot of traction on social media and TikTok in particular, where people just keep on bringing up how Splitgate is getting better and better. And if you're annoyed with Call of Duty and you're mad about the hackers there,

if you're mad about the if you're mad about apex legends or whatever it is if you're missing that halo kind of vibe with more of a modern feel tryout split gate and it is just gaining a lot of traction and momentum and we've been playing it for the last week or so and it's a blast I'm so impressed by the level of polish on it the way it feels way more like a game with all the battle pass and everything that they are trying to monetize it's a free to play game It is full crossplay and that's kind of what made it have this sort of recent resurgence. And yeah, like to anybody who's out there, it's like, man, I really wish I could be playing Halo Infinite right now. Download Splitgate.

It's free. It's full console, crossplay, PC, everything you want. And it is a load of fun. And once you start getting the mechanics of the way the portal start working against Splitgate is a portal and halo type of mesh. and yeah you just talked for like three minutes and didn't use the word portal until now this is halo with portals man that is crazy it is it is so cool portals it's got all the game types that you love from halo like like oddball or uh team swat which is what i've been really really digging recently it's a lot of fun yeah i so like you know i'm not a big uh halo person

historically just because they're not really owned an xbox over the years and the more Are you the kill zone person? Oh my God, I love Killzone. One of the best first person shooters. Oh, my God. Yeah, rest of peace, Shadowfall, bring it back. But Splitgate hopping into it over the last week. You know, I'm with Andy and kind of funny, right,

that like when it came to PC for early access, I jumped into it then, but it was that thing where the game didn't run too smoothly. And then also, you know, had less maps, had less modes, was mouse and keyboard. And it was everything that I wouldn't want out of a shooter. and it coming to PlayStation this last week was the thing that brought me in way more heavy and playing it and getting a hold of the portals and understanding the gunplay and getting into the flow of it, I absolutely adore it.

To the point where just last night, you know, like I hit up Yusef because Yosef was wanting to try this game out as well. And, you know, I hit that thing where I was like, damn, I could see myself playing this game for a while. Like I think this might be my new addiction for the time being because, The gunplay is so, is so good. You know, it has the, like, the halo elements to it that people talk about. But it's that thing where the more I play it, the more I'm like, damn.

Do you have physics? Can you throw stuff to the portal? No. Well, you can shoot through the portal. They have grenades in this game, but the grenades specifically are to take out other portals. And so, like, it's kind of a strategic thing. If you see an enemy portal, you can throw a grenade at it, and it'll explode the portal and make it disappear.

Yeah, there's a setting toggle, Louise, where, obviously it takes more rendering and shit like that to look through a portal because you're kind of rendering the game twice in a way. So looking through the portal, you have a setting there as well where you can look at it at low, high, medium, or ultra settings. And then the same with frame rate. So you can look through the portal and it can look kind of janky and gross and low quality. But if you up it, it takes more processing power. But looking through the portal will look just like you're kind of looking at the regular game. and you'll see there's you can shoot a portal way the hell up high and on the opposite side of the map

have a portal right next to you and look through and have an eagle eye view and shoot people through it it's so sick. Oh, I see you can snipe them. Oh my god, that's genius. And it's been my strat. It almost feels like cheating, to be honest. Every time I do it, I'm like, this can't be fair. I must be frustrating the other team so hard by the way I'm doing this.

Especially because you don't know when you're getting shoot from. And suddenly you get killed and you're like, that's definitely some portal in a random spot. I didn't even think to look, you know. There are physics in the way that you can do the thing that everybody does in portal where you shoot at the roof and you shoot at the floor. If there are portal services and you can just, you know, shoot through and keep going infinitely. And then if you shoot a portal at another floor, it will launch you up in the same way. You get the momentum.

You get the momentum and you go that way. I haven't done that as much because I haven't found opportunities to do that in a way that's effective and makes sense. But that is the, there is an option to do that if you want to. But yeah, in terms of modes, yeah, I've been loving the team swap mode like 80s. said, shoddy snipers have been getting into it. And funny enough, I've, usually in first-person shooters, multiplayer first-person shooters, I gravitate toward using automatic weapons. And so assault rifles, SMGs, et cetera. But in this game, I am way more about the DMR. I'm way more about the shotguns. I'm way more about the snipers. The guns that I usually don't gravitate to, and I assume

that is very much a halo thing, where those are, correct me if I'm wrong, Tim and Andy, like, those are the preferred kind of guns in Halo, right? And over the assault rifles. Yeah, I'd say so. Those are kind of like the more specials weapons. In this clip really quick, though, this is me and Mike. He's chasing me and I'm chasing him. Oh, that's awesome.

So the whole time, I keep getting shot from behind thinking, who the hell is third parting me? I'm trying to kill Mike. And it was Mike chasing me as I was chasing him through the same portals that he had laid out. It's freaking hilarious. You can use other people's portals, I guess, or only your own. Yes. but you can't see through them.

That's like the caveat of you can only see through your own portal. If you see a portal from either the enemy team or a teammate, it has like a blur effect. You just can't see through it, but you can't step through it. But it's kind of a risk because you don't know where it's taking you. And the second clip, Barrett, if you bring it up, there's a moment where Mike is chasing me.

And I know that I'm being chased from behind. So I place portals in kind of a strategic way, knowing that he's going to get tricked. and I go through it and he keeps looking at the portal and then I pop up right behind him. So it's kind of like this really cool. You could do so many things of strategically placing out a portal. What I've noticed is you always want to have one up because you can always have an exit plan if you are getting shot at and don't want to be chased down.

And so it's just so cool the amount of plays that you can make and fake people out. And it just it just changes so much about what you think of when you when it comes come to arena shooters and it just adds a really cool dimension. Yeah, one of my favorite strats to do is to do the thing where I'm perched looking out of a portal. But the first portal is right in front of me on the wall. And the second portal is behind me at an angle. So I can see my back in case somebody sees me looking at the portal.

If they try to run to me, I can shoot them as they're running on my back. Stuff like that, I think really makes this game interesting and fun. And Bear, I dropped another one in assets, one that I tweeted out the other day. And it was one of the first kills I got where it really clicked for. me the ways in which you can use the portal where it was I was having a long distance gunfight with somebody who's on the other side of the map and they moved out of the way and so I couldn't get a view on them and then I immediately shot a portal right behind them shot a portal right beside me hop through the portal and then ended up behind them and took them out and it was a very

satisfying thing to do in the moment and that is like that is probably the simplest of strats that you can pull in this game like it expands out from there in a way that is really cool and you know I I think I mentioned this briefly on PSLW that it's that thing where if you told me there's a game that is Halo Meets Portal, I would have been like, oh yeah, that sounds like a good game. But actually playing this game in practice, it is impeccable. Like, it is a really fun time. And so I think this one is probably going to stick around for a while, especially because it is the perfect appetizer, I imagine, for Halo Infinite. Because, like, people are hungry for that right now. People want to play it.

And this feels like the perfect thing to get a few months before that. And it really does sort of have that among us resurgence. two years after the time that it was out or whatever. The fact that that console just came out, but a lot of sort of conversations with the devs have been popping up online and on Twitter and on TikTok and stuff like that. And the dev was mentioning that, you know, we're struggling right now with server upkeep because as of last week,

we had 200 concurrent people playing and now we're at 40,000. That's amazing. And just today, six hours ago, they said that split gate's getting, next gen upgrade for PS5 and Xbox Series X. Awesome. Very cool. Very cool. That's awesome news.

But yeah, they just talk about the, the amount of players hopping in. And I think it is due to not only social media, but bigger influencers saying, I'm going to try out the split gate game. And we're just seeing so many people flocking towards it because it does seem to sort of be that new hotness right now. Yeah, super cool. Definitely, definitely go check that out. Real quick, before we end the games cast this week and head into the post show, I wanted to talk about a game that came out last week called The Ramp. It's another little indie game, Barrett.

I'm going to send you a link here to check it out. Bless, have you played any of this yet? No, sadly, no. I'm not gotten the chance to boot it up. So it's Steam only right now, and I just played it. It's a $599 game, very, very small, very, very content light. There is not much here. I played for about an hour and I am very close to.

I think I have one achievement left to getting all of them. But I'm having a fun time doing it. It is such a simple thing, but it reminds me a lot like Bless and I've been talking about of the old school isometric Tony Hawk games on GBA. But just there's no goals. There's no points for tricks. There's no anything. It's just chill out, vibe and have a good time, skating on a half pipe.

There's four different levels. This one we're looking at here is called the Mega Ramp. It's the last one. And you just kind of like, the game has a really fun sense of progression where level one is this, you're just on a little tiny half pipe and you're kind of learning the controls that are extremely simple, but they're not what you'd expect from. They're very anti-tony Hawk. It is way more using all the analogs to get tricks and spins going and way more focused on

the A button of when you're up versus when you're crouching for speed. And there's a rhythm to it that you're just. just kind of going back and forth on this half pipe. And then the next trial's type of like skateboarding game. Yeah, kind of. It's definitely, definitely the physics-based stuff. And you have to make sure you get you land right and, or else you bail like you just saw there. But going through the different levels at start, there's the four.

One's just a half pipe. Then one right here is just an empty pool that you're going through. And this one allows you to kind of do the grind mechanic, which is just the, the right bumper button that you can kind of kind of grind. And there's not too many options. You don't need to balance or anything. It's just more about momentum and speed. But the music is super chill, lo-fi hip-hop stuff. And it is such a fun game to just kind of turn on and skate around.

And like, it's kind of cool playing a game where there's not a point. Like there's not a goal or something you're trying to achieve, which then kind of turns into you making your own goals. And so for the majority of time I was playing, I was like, can I get enough speed to do a 720 over this little orange thing over here? Can I grind all the way around this pool? Like those type of things are where the fun really comes in. And like I said, very content light. But for $5.99, I think that the aesthetic and the kind of fun of the hour I played, I'd say it's totally worth checking out if looking at this right now seems like your vibe at all.

Tim, very limited up. Go for it. Did you try out Skate City? No, I have not. Okay. I think I might have tried out Skates City. I think you did bless and so did I. And I wasn't the biggest fan of it just because I feel like it did lack a bit of a direction.

Did this feel like you were playing not necessarily just to have fun in the sandbox, but more of a, you know, my goal is to do this trick. Like were you kind of intent on hitting those achievements or whatever? Let me answer your question with Barrett. Can you bring it up again? Yeah, just give me a sec here. And then also, Skate City was the one that launched an Apple arcade, right? Correct.

Yeah, I remember playing a little bit of that. But I think this one really, really hits is go to the beginning of it, and then can you give us some volume? It looks very attractive to play. Yeah. Like when you play with your fingers. Tech Tech. Yeah.

Go all the way to the beginning of this video. I think it's the UI and the sort of plain blue background that just kind of, I love that aesthetic. This sound is what? you're buying and what you're playing. It's just this super, super chill thing where it's like, like I was saying, it is, it doesn't so much feel like a video game as much as it is just kind of like a fun experience, just like that sound of the skateboard going up and down the ramp.

Like it's just that that Zen type of vibe that you are then adding your own challenges to. And I, like I said, had a lot of fun doing that. But I think that this is so simple and they committed to it being simple that I, I'm not looking for more from it. You know, whereas I think with the with the. I know what I was going for. Yeah, exactly. And again, the four levels and they perfectly kind of rise in how complex they are. And then by the time you get to the mega ramp, which again, you're going to get to,

you could get to it within 10 minutes of playing this game. But by the time you get there and you're jumping off, it feels rewarding. Like it feels like, oh, man, this is so nice to be able to just spin, you know, like three whole times and then do whatever moves you want when you're so limited in the levels before. But it's rewarding. It's a rewarding experience. So Mike L in the chat makes a very apt comparison. It's avert ASMR, which I think is very funny.

Yo, straight up, straight up. That's what it is. And that is oddly satisfying for sure. I was going to mention, it's funny that the way that you describe this game is very similar to how I described Skater XL playing it late last year, where I would say the difference is I did want more content out of that game. It's a game that felt like you needed more content. That said, I think with skating games, there's something special and kind of,

inherent to them that it is fun just to skate around and do tricks. Like, doing that alone was a good time. And I remember making the joke. And I made this joke very recently to Barrett that, like, the streets are my content. Like, that's how I felt playing Skater XL where it's like, oh, there's no content in this game. It's fine because I'll just try to do a kickflip over this table over and over again until I nail it. And then I can tweet the clip. You know what a game does that better, though, a blessing of just also making your own goals and making

the streets your content? Skate. Skate. Three. Skate three. Let's play screen three, Brett. Let's do it, bless. Let's do it today.

And with that, Louise, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been so cool. I can't wait for next week till we all get to actually play 12 minutes and hear what everyone at home thinks when they get to play as well. Remember, Xbox Game Pass, go check it out, support the homie. Very, very cool stuff. Where can people find you? I'm on Twitter, Fackeletrica.

You're going to have to spell that.com. I mean, if you, yeah, F-A-C-A-E-L-E-C-T-R-I-C-A. It's pretty easy to find. It'll be in the description. Yeah, 12-minutes game.com, and there's a 12-minute's game on, yeah, there you go, on Twitter. Yeah, those are the latest updates on what I'm up to and what the game is. I love that. Can't wait.

Well, we're about to do the Patreon-exclusive post-show. So you can go to patreon.com slash kind of funny games to check that out. We got a fun game of Bless Who that we're going to play. Until next time, I love you all. Goodbye.