Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - We Played Star Wars: Galactic Racer - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: June 23, 2026

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Play high on Life 2 now on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC, with a demo newly available on all three platforms. Also, it is hitting Nintendo Switch to Wednesday, July 1st, and catch it on discount for the first time as part of the Steam Summer Sale. If you want to get our shows ad-free and our exclusive shows, go to patreon.com slash Kind of Funny. What's up and welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast for Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026. Of course, I'm your host Tim Geddes. I'm joined today by Blessing at E.Oye June. Good day, Tim. And Simon Cardi.

I'm here. You're here. Wow. I'm here. Still. Still. Still. It's been a lot of time.

Back from the UK. Yeah, this was an interesting one where we're talking about a Star Wars Galactic racer today. Y'all played it at Summer Game Fest, which, as you know, was a couple weeks ago. But the embargo for this was a little bit later. So we're recording with Simon while it's fresh and while he's here. I'm very excited about that. But that means that we are in this weird place where we're in the past currently.

before you guys are watching, which puts me in a weird place because I just want to talk about something that I did last night, which is going to be incredibly irrelevant to you later. But I don't think there's any better place for me to talk about it because it's not really worth bringing up.

I did all the Donkey Kong challenges. Oh. They announced that the Nintendo Directs, like the Nintendo achievements essentially. Yeah. And like, I don't know, I don't want to like get ahead of myself here. I didn't do all of the Donkey Kong challenges. Okay.

I did all of the class. classic Donkey Kong challenges. The Donkey Kong Bonanza ones are a separate situation. Okay. Which I don't think they made that clear. And not that it really matters, but, bless, do you have any questions? I, here's my thing. I don't feel like they made much clear during the direct itself.

That happened two weeks ago, y'all don't care about it. But like, my question is, was it easy? So that's why I wanted to bring this up. Yeah. I like this. I think it's a pretty cool feature for them to add. And it is a great incentive to go back to, games like Donkey Kong Bonanza that were a year ago and kind of just like get your hands on

them again like just an excuse to go back to something uh because on that side I was like man I miss this game I love this game so much I should finish my my problem with the bonanza part of it is in the modern games going forward it seems is you'll look at the challenge and pulling up the decay challenge on the switch is like a completely different app essentially like you have to go to the NSO icon and then go into the challenge thing and then you like see it all. It's not integrated into Bonanza. So then you have to like switch apps essentially to go back into Bonanza to figure out what you're trying to do.

But what I really like is the way it's integrated with the old school classic stuff because it, you hidden the challenge and it brings you to that level, to that challenge in the NSO. Oh, okay. That's fun. Makes a lot more sense because they're just ROMs from Super Nintendo and Game Boy and NES games, right? but I really like that feature of it felt like NES remix or SNS remix

but there's just no remix. It's just like putting you somewhere and like finish this level or like beat this boss or whatever and to your question of like was it easy like how difficult is it? They are measured in terms of their simple challenges and then there's hard challenges. So simple was just beat the first level of Donkey Kong country. Hard was beat

bramble scramble. Okay. And Donkey Kong Country too with sticker brush. The barrel level where you're shooting from Exactly And then another hard one was like Beat the final boss of Donkey Kong country Oh okay

You know So it's like oh it's kind of cool And then also like those are things I've done a million times But what I thought was kind of cool about it Is some of the challenges are like in Donkey Kong 3 Not country three Donkey Kong 3 Which I've never played

Is that a Gameboy game? What is Donkey Kong 3? Dong Kong 3 I think was NES I want to say There's a Donkey Kong 3 I'm getting the sense here of why you might have been furious. We had like Donkey Kong

Country 2 at 70 something on our top 100. Nintendo. Donkey Kong Country too. So God. I have a question. Yeah, what's your question? I don't raise my hand like I'm in school, but I've done it now. Um, today we established King Kong might be real. Does that mean Donkey Kong could be real? I don't think so. King Kong, I believe I buy it. Monkey can be big, but a big monkey with a tie. No, no, no.

I've learned a lot about Nintendo today. And so I never played it, but now I play a little bit of And I was like, whoa, this game plays way different than anything I expected. You're this little dude. What? You're blowing air up Donkey Kong. There was another one that I think. Is this part of the Kong war? See, the lore goes deeper than we could have ever imagined.

Thank you for bringing that up, Barrett. But I think, like, a lot of them, I hate from being real. Well, you're doing my pumping him up like he's a balloon. You're not pumping him up. You're pumping him to like, it tickles his little taint, you know? It's like dig-dug. Wow. So what about Donkey Kong, too?

Is that a game? I know that's a crazy question to ask. I think that might have been Donkey Kong. Junior? Because I'm Googling Dong Kong too and I can't find anything. Yeah. There was also Donkey Kong math or Donkey Kong

Junior math or something. Yeah, there was junior math. And one of the challenges I did involved math and I was like, this is kind of crazy. Like there was just numbers at the top of the screen and then all the vines that I want to say DK Jr. was like walking across

had different numbers on them. You have to get the numbers. At the bottom of the screen, there is a plus, a minus, an X and you need to use those, like you grab one number from a vine, then you grab the multiply, and you grab the other number, you're trying to make the number at the top of the screen. And I'm like, who the fuck do they think we are? I don't know. That's what we had to do back in the day. It was crazy though. Doing math out here.

They didn't have player obscure back then. You know nothing about Donkey Kong. Well, I, but what is, I thought I knew stuff. I didn't know anything. There's so many of these challenges. I was like, I, I've never really played through the Donkey Kong land games all the way, the Game Boy versions of the Donkey Kong country games. Yeah. And I was like very surprised that like the donkey Kong's like construction yard or whatever is a level in Donkey Kong land. Oh, cool.

It's got to cool. It was one of the challenges to play through it. So I was like, Kong land, was that just Donkey Kong country, the Game Boy version or was that, okay. But I mean,

it's not literally, not a port. It was just like the like equivalent in the same way that Mario land is the equivalent of Mario one. Was there a Donkey Kong country port for Game Boy? Game Boy Color. That I had. Okay. Yeah. Me in.

My point is, I liked this a lot because it was a quick, easy way for me to get a taste of a bunch of games that, like, maybe I've heard of. Maybe some of them I didn't. But I was like, all right, that was a fun hour for me to do all these things. And I have a greater appreciation. So I hope they do this for more franchises. Okay. I'm in. I like the challenges.

The bonanza challenges don't really love the way they're presented, just because it is kind of hard to, like, I feel like you need a phone up to, like, look at what you're trying to do. they do retroactively give you a lot of the achievements for things that you've already done in the game which I might oh that's kind of cool so anyway I'm interested everybody I don't even like bananas so you know yeah that's where I stand you don't like bananas it's the texture

they're mushy not for me okay I kind of get it I love bananas to the point I mean Barrett and I both have had to go through this are significant others for different reasons had to warn us that we are only allowed to eat a certain amount of bananas Oh yeah, you'll die. Too much potassium. Yeah, yeah.

I also hates bananas. It's a big contention in our house. How do we feel about a banana per day? Is that too much? That's okay. That's okay? It's okay. It's an apple a day is to say, and apples are so much better.

Because I actually, I'm with you. I don't love bananas, but I do like them in my smoothies. And I do my protein shakes every day. And so, like, if there's not a banana base in there, I don't know what I'm doing. You know, a small orange. Yeah. Yeah. We call them easy pealers back in the UK.

I don't know if you have that. Easy peeler. They peel easy. Yeah. Like if you stay in the sun too long. If you're watching live, you can just shout us out. You can't be part of the show because this is obviously pre-recorded. But if you love Simon and whatever energy he brings to the show as much as I do, please.

You get a different name. You don't call them easy pealers. Yes, we do. I can. When I get home, by the time this alert, I'll show you a picture of me holding a bag of easy pealers. Wow. Yeah. Remember, we couldn't do this without our producers over on Patreon.

So shout out to Carl Jacobs. Omega Buster and Delaney the Sompwining and Lacks Nomad. For now, let's begin with the topic of the show. Tots, that's, you know, over here, we're repealers. We call apples crunchy reds. Did you know that? You're not going to bullshit.

Crunchy reds is what we call them over here. You're not going to bullshit, man. I mean, here's the thing about the apples. I learned about apples are kind of funny. You saw, back in my day growing up before. I ate apples. Someone had me an apple. I ate the fucking apple.

Cool. I like that apple. That's a red apple. That's a green apple. I thought that's as deep as Apple. Pink ladies. And then Greg starts dropping all these names and stuff. I'm like,

hell out of here with these Granny Smiths. You didn't learn about Granny Smiths back in the elementary? Why are we given Apple stripper names? Is Granny Smith? What's the cleverer? What's the striper? Pink ladies, nice. I'll tell you later if you want to know.

I love a pink lady. Send me the pink. We played Star Wars, Galactic Racer. And let me rephrase that. I also like Golden Delicious Apples. What are the green ones? Golden Delicious.

Oh, those are the golden, and Granny Smith. I mean, there's lots of different. You get Braeburn, you can get... They didn't call the yellow gold-colored color ones, the golden-dolicious? No, they're green. I suppose they're a bit more yellowy green. I mean, it depends where you get them.

Star Wars? Star Wars Galactic Racer. I'm incredibly jealous. I didn't get to play it. Both of you got to play it. I did. Yeah. Star Wars Galactic Racer is a high-stakes reinvention of racing

born in the Lawless, Outer Rim. With the Empire Gone and the Galaxy Rebuilding, the Galactic League has created an underground, unsanctioned circuit. where syndicates bank, role, chaos, and champions are forged.

It's coming from Fuse Games, the publisher's secret mode October 6th, 2026. It is a $60 title. Bless, I know you have a deep love for Star Wars episode one razor

from back in the day, from when you went back in platinum did? Attempted to platinum it? Attempted to platinum it, but I used cheat codes and they punished me for it. I fucked up the platinum. So I would have to replay it again

if I wanted to really get the platinum. Gotcha, gotcha. But there's a lot of love for episode one, Racer, as of course, you know, I have. Simon. Yeah, yeah, I played it a lot. Okay. I played on PC, I think. Wow, that's crazy.

Did you ever play in the arcade? A little bit, yeah. Because that was cool. Then you got to actually do the, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, now that was pod racing. Now that was pod racing. You're right. I just get it out of the way.

Yeah, I get it done. Yep. Bless. Yes. What did you get to play and what did you think? So I got to play about 30 minutes of Star Wars Galactic racer, which is less than a lot of other people, because the way my schedule turned out, I had to cut my previous short so I could catch a flight on the way home to go, to come back

and react to Xbox and do all that stuff. But they threw me into the beginning of the game, did like kind of the start of the campaign. I want to say make a character, even though that's probably putting it a bit too much. I have a customized-ish character, got into a little bit of the Hubworld, walk around, talk to people, and then I did a couple of races. And then one of the people running the demo then was like, hey, because you have to leave early, we're going to cut you forward to allow you to do a pod race as well.

And so I did that as well. That good stuff. And let me tell you, you talk about my deep love of Star Wars Racer. I have an even deeper love of Burnout 3. Yeah, you do. And this game is just Star Wars Racer meets burnout. And I absolutely had a blast playing it because of that.

Right? As soon as I get my hands on the sticks in a race for me, it was evident, right? You like, I mean, the moment of magic for me was knocking into another vehicle and then the take down camera from burnout three pans over to them as they roll away and it comes back to me and I'm like, oh snap. And as the race goes, I feel that that rush, right? I feel the speed. I feel how fast I am going in this racer. And it all kind of clicks together for me. I mean, every single thing you're saying obviously speaks to me.

I love it so much though because I do feel like episode one. Racer nailed so much about what we loved about that pod racing in episode one. Yeah. The sense of speed, obviously the track, but the different pod racers that we see from the movie, like their vehicles themselves and the racers, but even just the way that the, what do we call them, the engines, I guess, the two different engines would like kind of bounce. There was like such a float to it all that as you turned, like, it just felt so unique and cool.

But I don't think the game ever captured the sense of destruction. in chaos that the movie did where these motherfuckers are like dying left and right and there was just so much crashing in like that guy's dead. You know what I mean? That guy had a family and it's so funny when you think about Star Wars episode one racer because you can you crash in that

game right. Like they have that but I never once thought about that in relation to burnout as a video game because burnout obviously has a lot of those same things and so yeah when you have a developer which secret mode has a lot of people that worked on old burnout games right when you have people that have that

expertise of how do we create fast-paced vehicular destruction? It's like a match made in heaven where this this feels right. Even as I'm crashing in the game, I'm like, man, this is giving me that exact feeling that I love out of both Star Wars Racer and burnout three. And it's done impressively well. One thing I'll shout out, I want to pass the ball to Simon, right? But I want to shout out how good this game looks. It is a stummer.

Like we, in this, in just this demo, we see a variety of different locations. that we're racing in. Some of them can't talk about, which makes me sad because the coolest one, in my opinion, and I can't talk about. But a lot of cool different environments, and they all are rendered really well,

as well as the cutscenes. Tim, we've been talking about the amount of racing games that we've gotten lately, whether it be Screamer or the upcoming clutch, games that have these story modes to them. This is one where, as we're getting into a cutscene,

I'm like, man, this feels like just a regular third person. action-adventure game that I'm playing. You get into the hub area and it is you walk toward a character that you're talking to. And they're rendered very beautifully and that is something that is really impressive to see in a racing game. You don't get that often in a racing game. And so I want to shout out the fidelity here because that is something that very impressed,

very much impressed me from my demo. Yeah. It surprised me how much of a story-led game it is, at least in the camp. I wasn't expecting to go straight into cut scenes like intro, walking around a hub. Like I hadn't looked, I'd obviously seen the trailers, but I hadn't gone too deep into it before I played it. And it is like a full-on narrative they're trying to tell. I thought it would just be quite basic, like, little, like, you know,

taught someone in between the race. But no, they're fully trying to tell a story of you taking down these other people in this sort of race tournament. And, yeah, there's not only how good it looks, but how it sounds as well. Yeah. Like Star Wars, the sound of Star Wars is so important. The sound like pod racing. Yeah, and all the vehicles, because pod racing,

I only got to play one race of pod racing as well. But, like, 80% of my time was in a speeder, which is what you start the campaign as, and the sound of that was perfect as well. And you said about the destruction, the way that each kind of vehicle class has their own almost like special ability or weapons. So like in the pod racing section,

we played as Subalba, and he has the two like flame thrower things that can come out of the side that you can use every now and then to try and burn people and send them flying, whereas the land speeder has this ability. And I don't know if you can like, how much it will develop over time,

if you can switch these like weapons or abilities in and out of your vehicle, but the one they give you in this is called the RAM jet and you basically push R3 to engage that mode and then use the boost button and you basically you're kind of, you can't control the speeder as well like it's harder to turn but you'll get extra speed and basically if you boost into anyone

with that engaged they'll basically be taken out like burnout mode and like you said burnout I have a huge lot for burnout too. I'm actually maybe slightly controversially burnout revenge is my favorite of them all I disagree, but I respect it, though, because burnout revenge doesn't get enough love. Yeah, I absolutely love that game. And the only thing this is missing is some sort of crash mode. I can see why it wouldn't work in a Star Wars universe, but like, I miss crash mode so much.

That's why I want to play when I go out to burnout. But yeah, this has got the core speed destruction and kind of looks like I don't know, I started playing burnout revenge a few months ago again. That game still looks good as well. And I think this will hold up for years and years to come. Yeah, I was really impressed. I want to shout out some of the details. Because one of the things that surprised yet delighted me was at the start of the race,

you know how in every racing game you have the start of the race, either mini game or thing that you're doing. And Mario Card is it's the, you know, hold the go button as the two is fading away or in other games. You might have different things. This one has a really fun thing where you're in the, I guess, cockpit of your speeder and you basically have to hit a button combination on the controller. It'll be a, like, the face buttons for like the first row.

Like you'll hit four face buttons in a row. and then you have to hit four directional buttons in a row. If you hit the four base buttons in the row, I believe that'll activate like a defense power up and then like the next one if you hit all four in a row, it'll activate like a boost power up. Basically, you can boost from the start of the race. Otherwise you'll have to build it up from the get-go.

Yeah. Basically, yeah, if you do almost like a little mini helldivers, like little input. Yes, that's a really good way to put it. Then you'll, yeah, you'll engage that boost from the star and we'll get a head start. It's really nice. The way they visualize it is the character in the, the vehicle is like hitting the buttons, right?

And it's like, oh, I was just about to say. Like, that sounds like the tactility of it is, is so nice. And like it's different in every like, uh, vehicle as well. Like, Sebulbers was to engage, I think maybe the fire thing from the start. Like it was like a six or seven long and it was a mixture of thing. So there's a nice little touch there. It's not just, it basically stops you from skipping the intro to every race and

making you watch them and take them in, which is really nice. And there's the actual, you know, like we all love pod race in my favorite. We all probably have our favorite pod racer. I was very, happy to see my guy Gascarano there speeding alongside me. Do you have a favorite pod racer? No, I'm not really a Star Wars. You're not going to dump a Ben Quadronero on me, less. He was there. Dude, I don't remember anything about Phanmenis, except like, did Darth mall? Did he drive any of those pods? Who's this guy? He had a stupid little motorcycle.

A squadronero, man. He actually, just some fucking respect. Yeah, my bad Ben. I'll hold my hands up now. I came second in my pod race to Ben. That's okay. What's up with the image of Kyla Wren next to Ben Quadreras? What is this? Didn't you know they're related? Contrary to popular belief, Ben Solo is not in fact named after

Obi-Wan. He's named after Ben Quintuio. I love that. I love that and I want to believe. I really do want to believe. No sign of Anakin or Anakin's Podracer. Do you think they'll hold it off for a let? Do you think it'll be in there?

Or someone else who drive it. That'll have to be just some, there won't be in the story. I'll tell you that. It could be like post-game, like, once you beat the full story, you unlock it as I was about to hit with pushback and be like, wait, no, we saw Anakin in the trailer, right?

I'm thinking of the trailer for the ex-com. Zero company. Yeah, for zero company. Well, no, because they're firmly placing this, like, in that Mandalorian era. I'd love to see what, like, the customization you can do with the pod racers, because we only got to try it with the speeders. And not only can you pick different speeder types,

but you can also go, like, aspect by aspect of it. So you can go to the engines. You can go to, like, the front bit of the chassis. the back and basically mix and match different styles and create your own racer, which is really cool, like, colors, like paint job, like, you can really create your own vehicle, which is really cool. They give you a couple of things I want to shout out, because I, I want to correct myself before the chat corrects me.

This wouldn't be Mandalorian error because we saw Jakku and we see the Star Destroyer crashed. So this would be like Force Awakens era. There is an intro crawl, and I can't remember what it says now. It says like post the Galactic Empire. So that would be, yeah. That Star Destroyer on Jack. Yeah, it's go. Like that...

Battle of Jakku. Which is like only a couple of years after episode six. How old's a bold? Wasn't it 15 after? Yeah. No, it's like... Battlefront 2 tells that story and shows that. And so it's like...

Okay, so... Yeah, it's... I want to say it's maybe a year or two after episode six. And then the very end of Battlefront 2, spoilers for Battlefront 2, I'm sure you were all going to play that. The very end of that then jumps like 15 years later. Gotcha. I do want to shout out that you can customize your character.

They had like mix and match. All British voices, which I loved. Yeah. If you picked that up. Outfits. Yeah, I don't know. It's fucked up. Give me an American.

You know, come on. You know? That's enough of them, baby. There's enough of them. Let us have our moment. But no, you can customize your outfit, helmet, and voice of the character. Yeah. And the colors as well, yeah.

Yeah. Character looks dope as hell. Oh, yeah. bit. Yeah, but it's all like, it's all very much covered, right? Like, all the options they give

for helmets and all this stuff, you're never going to see this character's face, I imagine. But I did like the voice that I was able to choose from my character. It was very much like a robotic,

kind of gruff, like this guy, this guy's been through some shit. What did you make of Kestar, Bool? Is that his name, the villain? Bustar Bool.

I didn't make much of them. Yeah, he's just a generic, like, kind of like son of a rich, like guy, like, I'm the best racer. And basically he's like, who are you and you're getting these you've got these two companions who are like

we're going to secretly fund you basically to try and take down this guy and take over the Galactic tournament and yeah a couple of things I want to shout out you already talked about kind of the systems we had in the race right with the I forget what you called it ramjet the ramjet right where you press

R3 you have two different modes the first mode allows to kind of do like a regular boost but then as your meter fills all the way you can hit the second mode and then yeah you had the faster boost like you like you described there's also drifting you press where to drift which feels good

again feels very burnout in my opinion but also they it feels it feels like you are racing these speeders like Star Wars speeders and so can you talk to me about the core of the game because we've seen a bunch of trailers and we saw the first one we're like oh my god pod racing's back and it's like wait

but there's no pod racers that's weird and then later they showed pod racers so we're getting different vehicle classes are they all racing together from what I've seen I haven't seen the mix of match But I don't know if that's saying you can customize, like maybe in non-story modes or something or in online. I'm not really sure because the pod racer was about three or four times, maybe two or three times quicker than the landspeas. So it seems unfair if they're in the same race.

I think it's for sure a different mode. Gotcha. So the story mode's kind of taking you from vehicle class to vehicle class, planet to planet. I think you'll eventually maybe, yeah. So you have to go plan it. We started on Jacu. That's where he did all my story racing. And then you can move on to, is it Lovtana?

I can't remember that. I got a question about this. because because of how I had to cut my demo short, I got to where you were essentially able to choose what race you want to do. Like it looks almost like a rogue light style. That is how it's treated. So you spend a league token in order to enter the tournament, right?

And then you have to get to a certain point through it in order to hit basically a checkpoint. So you need to at least, I think, four races or moments in order to basically get to the next section of the story. So, like, yeah, you basically choose your route like a rogue light. So there's like three days. different paths to take and then someone be like, oh, it's an eliminator race. So, you know, you have to not be in the bottom two every time check. One would just be a standard race. One was just like a

mystery encounter moment. It was like your engineer friend was like, I found this faulty part that like could help you in the race, but I haven't properly engineered it and like, is it worth taking the risk? I'm really boring. So I said, no, I'll stick and stick with what I got. Hey, do you want to play the game? Nah. No, no. It's like, do you want to take the risk? I'm like, you know what? I'm winning the race is I don't need this part. There was a third option that was grayed out. It's like if you'd accrued enough credits at that point, you could basically pay for them to be like,

no, let's get the proper part. So you could basically pay to get the good option there. I should have pressed, take the 40th to see what would happen. It probably means like you stole during the race or something, right? Something happens, right? But then, yeah, you basically need to do four of those events to then get to the next planet and carry on the story.

So, yeah, if you fail, I think you're given three, like, basic fails, I think. So if you crash three times over those four races, then you have to start that whole run again. I think because I crash. I did one of my races

that was like before the whole. I don't want to say that 100%. I'll have to look into it. What I can say 100% is that I crashed three times within one race and it ended the race for me. Yeah. So like you can't keep crashing,

which is the same as the original. That is one, like I loved what I played. That is one minor complaint I had so far, which is I also did that in the space of one race because I crashed once went straight first into,

wall where I just didn't see the turn coming. And there is a slight readability, I think, issue with, especially on Jack Hooker's, it's all the same color. And it's like, unless there's someone in front of you with lights guiding which way you go, it sometimes is hard to know. Is this a left or right turn? There's no like glowing light, light saying like, go

right, go right. It's like left very natural, which is cool, but also slightly changed to see where you go. But yeah, if you do make that crash, the respawn was quite unkind. It basically put me straight into another wall. I had no touch you. It starts quite quick. I just went straight into another wall,

didn't have a chance to turn. So that maybe needs a little bit of tweaking. They've got months before this game comes around so they can tweak that, but yeah, just a little bit of feedback there. One thing I do want to shout out is the dialogue within the races as well. Like you'll be mid-race and then you'll hear other characters talking and as they're talking

if they're ahead of you, you'll see, it'll go from like, you know, in racing games, you'll see like the three to above the character to show what place they're in. The three will turn into the character name to show that like, oh, they're speaking right now. And so they're building in that Oh, that's cool. Story into the race.

I mean, obviously, you guys are selling me. I'm already sold on this. This sounds so awesome. The story parts sound great to me. Is the story and racing very separate in the sense of, all right, there's a cutscene to set you up, and now you do the race and then the results. There's another cut in the cousin. It seems a bit like that.

During the race, there is like chatter, so you'll have the villain guy in the race. And they'll be like, it's you again. He's quite annoying. Do you think there's going to be any moments in the game that there's like predetermined results of the race where it's like not, you're not finishing the race. It's like something happens with a cutscene in the middle or something. I think it might be more simple than that. I also have no idea how much.

I wouldn't be surprised if this campaign is quite short. Yeah. But we'll see. I get the vibe of because they give you that Rogue light style map, that grid map, I think that's how they're breaking it up where it's like, all right, now you're just locked into gameplay and then later on, maybe after you finish this page.

Exactly. After you finish the race, like it adds to that rogue light element right as well because you get like, You basically have a choice of three upgrade parts to pitch. Like, do you want to improve your drifting or your speed? Like, so you are kind of, those aren't permanent upgrades. You can do permanent upgrades after completing, I think, a whole set of four. But, um, yeah, because I didn't get as far in my demo, right? It's not a roguerite, right?

Well, it's kind of like a mini one, right? It's supposed it's not really, it has a roguerite. It's more like, you know, a Grand Prix, right? You know, like, you've been four events and like, if you happen to completely crash out, you have to start it all again. That's a good way to put it. But yeah. I'm really into it.

Do you prefer one class over the other? Like, were you, was the pod racer like far and away the best or are they all kind of good in their own ways? Because I haven't even talked about pod racing yet, but I wanted to shout out. I think the default, like the bigger speeder stuff, I think feels great. In fact, I probably prefer that over the pod racing. That said, pod racing, I was blown away because they put you into the Tatooine course. What's the name of it?

Bunt to Eve Classic. Bonte Eve classic, which is the same course that they start off with in the N64. And you could have... That's that horrible little canyon bit, which you say... Yeah, you could have convinced me... We love. We love, Cardi. You could have convinced me this was a remake of the N64 game.

Like, when I was on that course, driving the speeder, even the UI was the same. Yeah. Like, as I'm doing the boost thing, it's the... Everything felt like I was playing the N64 game, and my mind felt blue. It does feel genuinely different as well, which is really impressive. Like, you said, like, the land speed of stuff, it felt like I was playing better. And then, yeah, we did this one pod race mode. I was like, oh, I'm now playing Star Wars Racer.

Yeah. It's impressive how each class, it's not just like all superficial. They do feel like completely different modes and different games to an extent, which is pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. I'd be intrigued to see if you can mix a match. Because I'm looking at this footage now.

Maybe you'll be able to mix like speeders and bikes and stuff like that. I can't, I think pod racing is its own separate thing. Yeah. It would be crazy to mix in land speeders with pod racer. It'd be crazy to him. Can you imagine that? Yeah, you can't mix. We don't live in a world that wild.

No. No, no, no, no. Anything else you all want to talk about with Galactic Racer for now? Yeah, I mean, I think I'm... Yeah, I mean, we think it's too much, but it's great. I can't wait for it. I mean, how good do you think it's going to be? I think I'm extremely high on it.

I would say that this was my game of the show. Out of the games that I played at Summer Game Fest. I enjoyed it a lot. I don't know. Yeah, I don't want to put like a score on what I think in my people. I think it would be very good. I don't think... I'll wait to see how deep this story mode is, how far that goes, because I do like story modes in these games and single player modes.

I doubt it's going to be a game I play for hours and hours online necessarily for me. So I'll see if it's just a quick little two to three hour story mode, that'll be disappointing to me. But if it's something a bit more engaging, then yeah, I think it'll be great. Well, everybody, guess what? This show is not over. And I'm not even doing the ad tee up right now. Well, I guess I am, but in a second, because what I'm telling you right now is before we let you go, we have a very, special interview. Today, Netflix announced unhinged, an immersive game experience starring Zoe Kravitz,

Sadie Sink, and Troy Baker. A friend of the show, Sean Crankle, the GM of narrative games at Netflix and studio director of Night School, sat down with Greg to tell him all about it. And you're going to hear it right after a word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by High on Life 2. Just four months after the February release of High on Life 2, the Squatch Games team is back with the kind of funny crew. Last time the dev stopped by, the game hadn't been released, which forced them into a very painful, agonizing secrecy. Today, though, the NDAs are off, and they can pretty much say whatever they want without getting yelled at. Mostly, they really want to talk about the following, though. A demo is now available for Xbox, PlayStation, and PC as of this week. Also, High on Life

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easy, breathable, and effortlessly cool. With a fit that creates natural movement and a wide leg that feels modern, not overwhelming. Plus, that signature, wait, for this price, moment. Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg. And we're back. What's up, everybody? It's me, Greg Miller alongside Sean Crankle. Now, hold on.

I got to actually look at the page because Sean's been around a long time in my life, in the video game industry. But to get the titles right, because he's highfalutin now, the general manager of narrative games at Netflix and studio director of night school. Hello, Sean. Nice to see you. I have actually just recently lopped one of those titles off in the last week. Lorenzo!

Where are the updates to the information from Netflix? Props to my man, Ram Diju, who is now studio director at night school. So now I'm just head of narrative games. But I'm real close with. You can finally talk shit about night school. Finally. That's what we're here for. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I mean... Sean, you're here, of course, because today you have announced Unhinged an immersive game experience. What the heck does that mean? It means a lot and a little all at once. I mean, I think... So, our goal...

So we are releasing what is ultimately it's like a thriller, horror experience. It is quite short. You know, it's under an hour, but it plays like a playable movie. And it's really built from the ground up to use your phone as a controller in a way that doesn't feel like a shitty D-pad on a phone,

but rather a bespoke control scheme for it. And so you get thrust right into this thing. There's very little setup beforehand, and, I mean, you just played it. I did. I just played it everybody. You can applaud for me. It's okay. Lorenzo, you want to applaud?

They can't hear it, but I appreciate it. He can applaud everybody. I will tell you this. I had a great time. You know that I'm a big horror fan, but I'm not necessarily a big fan of mobile games, phone games, let's try to get your phone talking to the TV. So it was, what are we getting? And again, Netflix games, whilst around a while, I still feel finding its footing as to what that identity is.

And we talk a lot about that. So for you to come here and bring this and I had seen the trailer, it was like, okay, what am I doing? And to get in there and have it be all through the phone, like it's using it as the controller, but it's not using it, like you said, as a D-pad and a thing. It is that the phone is the phone that the character is using in the game. Yes. So you're going through and your flashlight is going there and you have to tap your screen to interact with things and accept calls and you can read texts that I sat there when you left the room to get food, I think. And I sat there and read everyone in the text messages expecting a quiz, expecting something important to come through. And I was like, oh, this is just world building.

I know, I know. There was a couple things there. But I was impressed, man. This was fun. I love to hear that. Yeah. I mean, we just said let's do a very sort of narrow design input, but then have a very deep crazy story. So the design all started with us just going,

how can we use a phone as a controller that in a way that feels, like there's no esoteric stuff you have to teach people. If you know how to use your phone, you knew how to play the game, right? If anything, the only thing you had to like, you caught me, I was trying to use my flashlight.

Like I would have, I was like, no, no, it's a pointer. I'm like, oh, angle it down. By the way. 10 minutes in, I was like, oh, I can just put my thumb on it rather than be like this. We had it more realistic. So for those that haven't seen it yet, you know, your flashlight is on your phone,

obviously this way. In early days, we had it tested that way. You get fatigue. You just kind of don't want to do it that way. So, you hold your hand this way. Much more remote control. Much more like remote. Yeah. A Wii moat. And we just, I don't know, speaking of Wii moat, we just ended up getting inspired by a lot of the both Wii and WiiU

design philosophies and went back and looked a lot of those games and went, how did they build for motion controls that you don't have to overly tutorialize? How do they build things that feel magical in the moment? That was really the goal for this. Even before we knew the story and where we would go. We were just

into this idea of a flashlight and a phone that when you get a phone call, you hear it through your actual phone and when your character talks, it's happening up on screen. So, bring me all the way back then to the Genesis, I guess, because for folks who don't know, of course, night school, the name amongst names for so

long in that indie game realm, oxen free. People were all about the oxen free. After party. You know what I mean? You were there. And then you sold out to Netflix. This is what we do. When did that happen? When did you go to Netflix? I forget the actual year. So the sequence of event, uh, we put out oxen free one in 2016. We put out after party late 2018, if I'm not mistaken. We did a Mr. Robot game in the middle of that as well

based on the series, which was a phone thing. That led a little bit into this, right? And in 2021, we were talking to Netflix about bringing some of our titles just to the service at that moment. They didn't even have like a platform yet and weren't building towards that. So 2021 is when this went down. Like I had talked to them for three or four months. there was a lot of good shared sort of Venn diagram overlap of interests, but there wasn't a clear vision for where it could go. And they said, would you like to strategically partner with us and move forward?

So I was like, hell, yeah. So join the team then. But even during that time, you know, mobile was almost the exclusive focus for the last few years. And only in the last couple of years has the idea of developing for cloud-based TVs and using the phone in an interesting controller way did that start to really like proliferate. So the last two years, that's what we've been focused on. We did thronglets,

which was the funny black mirror tie in last year. Yeah. And that was exclusively mobile, but it kind of talked to the show in an interesting way. But in parallel, we've secretly been working on this for a little over a year and a half and wanted to have something

that could showcase the platform in a very exciting way. So then you make the strategic partnership. You come in and then, you know, again, highfalutin, GM of narrative games at Netflix. What does GM stand for, though? General manager.

You got it. They know that. They already know that. Don't worry. Greg Miller could too, but you could be the Greg Miller of narrative games. That's where I was going. I appreciate that.

Is it then, you've already done phone stuff. You're, it talks to me because you did Oxen Free 2, which I never thought we would see. We did awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Then you start experimenting more

and you're doing things tied with the phone. It's like, do you view these as challenges you want to go tackle? Do you view it as control methods you think would be interesting or do you view it as I'm trying to get the Netflix, user to understand that they can play games and I know not everybody has a Bluetooth controller. Like where is that Genesis coming from? I think it's the second and third one. So we, at the end of the day, we still start everything with like a story and a player

experience and sort of a player fantasy, right? So we go, okay, this might be a story about friends who die and go to hell. What's the best way to express that? What verbs can express that? Or in this case, it was not a game that should have a ton of backstory and lore. It's more of a what would you do thing? Like how do you get out of this house during a home invasion gone very wrong or apartment gone very wrong? And then we want to find mechanics that can sort of express that.

The second part or the third part of what you'd said too about just like getting Netflix members to even play a game. That's a huge challenge that we want to do too, right? And so we know we want to lean into cloud. We know that we have the opportunity to like just have a game pop up in front of people. And discoverability isn't nearly as much of an issue as it is in the rest of the industry right now. So if we know we're right there and we know we can grab you and do something really novel, then we go, how do we not turn you off with either overly obtuse game language or mechanics that feel like they'd be better suited to another platform? So that's the kind of headspace.

It's like we love telling a real, true, heartfelt story. We love letting you play inside of it. And then we want to make sure that we don't turn people off too early. Because we're not, we're not competing. This game is not attempting to compete with Resident Evil, nor should we ever try to do that. It's a very different thing. Yeah, I think, you know, that's funny. We've talked so much about unhinged mechanically,

but not the story. And to your point, right, you are in a home invasion. The power goes out. There's a hurricane happening. You, of course, are talking to your friend who lives across the street. What's going on? And then things go afoot. I mean, for the trailer, if you're watching that,

you eventually see someone is in your house in a mask ready to attack you. And so there's this horror lineage to it that I think fits so well, obviously, on Netflix, where I go to watch so many horror movies. movies. And then yeah, it's that ability, I think, to swing it back to mechanics. I want to talk about the product itself. But to swing it back to mechanics, something I found that I've been screaming from the rooftops is that if Netflix is going to come in and steal people like you, you know what I mean? Rip them away from independent game design. Give them highfalutin titles. I want Netflix to be pushing video games. And I mean that is, hey, you have this Netflix account.

It's been so long where I've been like, oh, you know, Xbox is trying to get into mobile. and maybe game pass can do it. And it's like, Netflix does that. There's all these great games on Netflix that you don't know about. And I remember those first days where I would turn on Netflix and it would actually give me an ad for a game on the TV. I was like, finally, what I think is really interesting about the demo you just gave me, you turn it, you hit, go into Unhinged, you get a little bit of it happening.

And then the QR code pops up. And it's like, all right, scan it. You scan it and it doesn't send you to a third party.com. It sends you to your app store to get the Netflix controller app, app, which again is so brilliant because your game is so simple in terms of, all right, cool, like the movements on rails and I'm aiming with my flashlight and interacting with different objects via the thing. But then the idea of now somebody has on their phone the Netflix controller so that when they

do see there is another game on there that their kid is talking about. Someone's mentioned they just want to try it. They are gamers and they've never done it. Now you already have the app on the phone, so go for it. Yep, yep. And it's the fact that it's just one app and that it will change on a per game basis this can feel pretty magical too. And that was, you know, I'm glad you keyed into that thing that happens at the start.

Like, we initially did all the things that I think as game developers and game consumers were used to, which is we had a thing about a connect sort of flow. And then we had a thing about how do we tune all the, this is where you're looking and that's where you're looking. We're like, how do we just get rid of all of that stuff and make people want to interact with it? So getting that first phone call, like basically the way the game starts is you've got a cat five hurricane outside. We see an establishing shot that pushes into an apartment. We are now in first person looking at a phone. You see your friend frantically calling you,

and she's rear window style across the street looking in. And the first call to action is just scan the code to answer the phone. And that even the way that when we play tested it, the difference between that and please connect everything to all this. It just made a world of difference, right? And then once you're in, then the phone just does it. And you are in the moment of getting this phone call. You're being woken up by your friend across the street.

she's like, why the hell didn't we leave when everybody else did? Because the hurricane's getting bad. Yeah. And it starts as a thriller, a very basic. What would you do thriller in this situation? What I like so much about it, right, is this idea of, sure, like, right now, Blessings playing in the other room. I was like, bless you should.

Somebody else says to play, go play, go play, go play. But I love the idea of the amount of people are going to see it on their Netflix, click on it. The phone rings, oh, scans, and they're into it without thinking they were getting into a game. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, we, again, I think we talked about this out there with the playtesting, too, where the first time the phone rings, people think that they're getting a real phone call.

So for demos, they've handed it off like, oops, this is for you. And we're like, no, it's for you. It's for you. It's good luck. And so one, I love that, yeah, they don't know that they're going to get into a game. A lot of, again, like, I think a lot of our design ethos also was to talk about it, how would Imagineers design a ride more than how do we build a game that's going to have these escalating mechanics and difficulty? So it's like it brings the, I think, a motion that you want of the best horror games, but the approachability of like, can you answer a phone and aim and look around? Yeah.

And so that all sounds very simple. I know it's not. So talk to me about, you know, you said a little over a year you've been working on this game. How do you, is it just a whiteboard? We're throwing ideas out of like what our next game should be. And then, okay, we started to honing it on the phone and then like, like, how do you iterate to make something seem so simple. We, it's painful every time,

and I wish we figured out a cleaner way to do it. Yeah. It's so freaking painful, but fun, painful, because we always have these two competing tracks. So we've got one track that is like that fantasy, and so we did know that we wanted to do dead, simple, thriller, horror. Like, we were like, let's not have it be a big lore dump game. So there's that piece where, like,

you're stuck in a situation that's tough, that you're underpowered and we're not going to give you machine guns. So there's this general fantasy of how do I get out of this? How do I use my wits to survive and be scrappy? And then there's mechanics that we find interesting that we're just prototyping. And so it's not necessarily even whiteboarding this stuff.

It's going, how does a flashlight feel? Okay, how does if we have a flashlight, how does that work with navigation? How much agency do you want to give in navigation? We had versions of this where you could free walk. It felt like ass. You would walk into walls. You'd stare at your feet.

you'd stare at the, and this is like, we never wanted the game to look bad. Like we want players to see what they would want to see, right? Yeah, so we're refining that for a while and that it's just like a lot of showing up with a lot of ingredients and then culling and pruning those and then refining those. And so by the time we got to what seems so dead simple, which is just like, it is look to move, it's turn a flashlight on or off, it's have a phone that can get texts from your friend, from your superintendent, from all these other people. You can make phone calls, things like that.

Once we did that, then you just refine, refine, refine. But even then, then it's like, let's build out a scenario and see how much control you want to give or take away. So you're just refining them together. And once breakthroughs happen on one, then it informs the other. So the story comes together where you're like, oh, shit, we found three or four things that this does well. Let's set up five situations that showcase those things. Okay, okay. And then talk to me about what it's like to make something like this.

and to make it so digestible. Again, you know, I mean, we talk about this being under an hour. I think I was like 35 or 40 minutes with it, right? Like, I feel like the traditional gamer who's listening and watching it, right? Your hair goes up. Like, oh, my God, my value. And then you go, oh, wait, this game's included with Netflix. So it's not like there was more money to it.

For you as a creative, is there freedom in that? Extreme. Okay. Extreme. Like, I think the whole goal on this one, not the whole goal, But a major goal is to go, if I want to show up and not have to climb the mountain of potentially weeks of investment into a title, which I play and love those games too, right? Yeah. But it's like if I want to in one night have friends over and have an experience and I'm choosing between a show, a movie, or this thing that's kind of a mix of all of it, like we've talked about.

But it's not FMV branchy stuff. It is still, you know, you're moving in a real space or whatever. That was the goal to go, how can we make a thing that people could. play and immediately want to play again, which helped us then make a lot of decisions around pacing, make decisions around how we tell the story, make certain design decisions. But yeah, it's very freeing, not in the way that is like, oh good, the game is smaller. We polished it like crazy. Sure. It's more just to say that you come out the other side feeling like you, you hopefully played an awesome movie, like played an awesome experience in a story. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that was one of the things that surprised me. We did a real brief overview, but jumping into it, right? I was like, okay, it's on rails and we're going through and do this thing. But the first time, the first time I died. The first time I died in the game, I was like, oh, like, I thought this was going to be almost a no fail. Like if I didn't grab the thing, I did it, but then this, and it was like, oh, no, this is, this is linear. I'm going and doing this. You're telling me a story. And these are the cinematic moments you've put into this game experience so that I get the movie you're trying to do. Yes. Yeah. And there's, you know, the thing that was an interesting debate internally for a while because we've done branching

dialogue for so long is like should we let you make a bunch of different dialogue choices and the team like fought me on it for so long because I was like of course we need that it's a phone why would we not do that yeah where it was also just like if you're talking a bunch why wouldn't you want that and what we found the the richer like agency in this was more about like oh my god don't call me right now, the killers in the room, blupe, hang up, or I'm going this way and finding out this new bit of information now. So our story, the script is still very branchy,

but it's not about you choosing dialogue. It's about what you do, where you go, when you go there. And that's a little bit more of that. So that part also was, like, that was like a new language for our team to learn because it hasn't really necessarily been done before where you've got these overlapping things of phone calls coming in that are stressful and annoying.

right because you said god damn it a lot a lot of it but I was like in the right way I think yeah yeah yeah like you don't want to get a call when you're hiding from a killer yeah so we were when you balance that and the timing of that it became this really fun kind of playground we haven't talked about the cast

I think that's definitely notable there's three names attached to it Zoe Kravitz Sadie Sink and then some guy named Troy Baker we've never heard of them here talk to me about this like is this the power of Netflix where did you have to sell them on what this was Troy Baker I

I was never even seen a video game. Yeah. It is that when we looked at the experience aspect of it and trying to hit with people who want to, you know, it would have wanted to watch a show or a movie. We're like, why not bring great talent in? Now, that said, we cast against who could play the parts well. And I think, you know, the interplay that you hear between Ava and Claire, who's the lead character and the friend that's across the street, I hope it came through.

Like, the performances, they killed, you know? So, like, even though these. are extraordinary names that turned in awesome performances and gave it their all. It was also like they were just the right people for it. They had great chemistry. And then when we started working with Troy, I don't want to spoil anything, but Troy

added so much to what his role is in a way that initially did not have the same depth. And without getting spoiler, I'll just say, there's aspects of comedy that he brings to the table. There's a lot of extra stuff that in

the moment he loves workshop and that shit. So he just, like, kept working with us on that. And I think he comes through in his performance capture as well. So now back to you being the general manager. Greg Miller. Of narrative games and Netflix. Yep. What does this moment mean to that division?

Like, do you see, like, this is like, you know, not to pat yourself and your former team on the back too much, right? But it's like, hey, we did this in a year. It's super cool. I think people are really going to like it. let's go make smaller experiences like that, or is it about working with, you know, outside developers, second party kind of deals to say, hey, here's what you could do,

or is it all the above? It's all the above. I think on the internal front, like looking at night school, and we have some other internal teams that are sort of spinning up right now. For those, it's let's keep building the ultimate, like, creative engine internally.

And that doesn't, I don't mean that we're going to keep making necessarily short experiences. Although if we learn from this, that this thing, you know, does gangbusters and people love it, we'll certainly be informed by that. like I think at the end of the day, it's still driven by story, world building.

That's the talent and the muscle we want to continue to grow, which means that that could take a different shape. Maybe it goes episodic. Maybe we've got multiplayer narrative. Like there's a lot of spaces to play in that I find really interesting. And then more broadly, yeah, like I now am sort of this mix of overseeing our internal teams, but then bringing in great new second and third party developers to build cool stuff. The biggest thing for me that I want to keep leaning on from this one is how does that phone

feel magical and like amazing and not like a pain in the ass. Because if you're playing the game and it feels like a pain in the ass or you're looking down to orient yourself, which I had eyes on you so heavy the whole time because I'm like, if you're looking down unless when we want you to look down, we have failed, right? Like if this thing is a suitable controller, you shouldn't constantly go, where am I doing? So that is exciting to me about this game. I mean, it's twofold. One, I think the style of story we told and the places we go,

go beyond what night school has done. Oh, sure. Yeah. This is not a traditional night school game. No. We aren't a bunch of kids out just having a good time, getting drunk on the beach. You know,

this thing goes, but so it's like approachable mechanics, pretty hardcore story. And I just love those two things kind of, you know, together. And then when I look at the whole slate of what we're trying to build off

for the next two, three years, it doesn't, it could be any genre. Yeah. You know, now one other thing on the, like,

this one specifically, we just know that on Netflix, there are many millions of people who love horror and love thrillers. And so this one, very specifically, we were like, well, why don't we serve them something that, yeah, that will make their heart rate go through the roof, but that they don't have to snipe things, you know, all that. Sure, sure. I mean, I was going to say there's, yeah, there's no Twitter, but there's a lot of twitching

stuff where I was just not getting there in time. I think, you can die. Exactly. And I think that was what was interesting to me, you know, this deep into being, not even my career, but a video game player was to what. what you're talking about of like learning what you wanted me to do with the controller, right? Where it was, okay, the phone starts, you know, straight up, right? I'm perpendicular to the floor and the, oh, no, no, parallel to the floor. Okay. And then it was holding it like

like, like, like, you're a grandmother tapping. And then I was like, wait, if I did this and I just put one thumb on it and I don't have to look it anymore. There's the pad of where I can ingest with it, which then led to, I imagine what you like where things were happening on the screen. Screen was changing. And I wouldn't notice it, I assume, until much later, because I'd be not even looking at, oh, hey, this happened on the screen, that's cool. Yeah, yeah, you had texts coming in.

You were getting phone calls coming in. You had concerns about the storm coming in. You have old texts from even before the game started. So that's another, like, fun instead of, you know, just telling lore through books that are laying around. It was more like, oh, you had a life before the game started. So all of that, like, so long as people still talk about it in a simple story way, right? Like, did you play that wild home and,

invasion thing that has a bunch of twists and turns. I'd way rather they do that than call it a particular genre, right? That's kind of where we're targeting. So talk to me about this. Of course, we're recording this ahead of time. No spoilers, everybody. But it's going up on 23rd. Game comes out on the 30th. June 30th is

what it comes out. This is an interesting one. You, I don't know, I know you're now general manager of narrative games and Netflix. I'm not sure if you've been looking at the video game industry a lot lately. Pretty bleak. A lot of bad things happening. all the time out there.

What I think's interesting and what I love your perspective on from the Netflix side, right? And being highfalutin there is for you, what are the metrics of success for this game? Because it isn't unit sold. I assume realistically it's not new Netflix members who join and then go, why do you join? I had to play on Hinge, right? Like what do you look at and go, this is what we're trying to achieve?

So per game, it's always going to change is the main thing. So like success criteria, some games, if they're a, Forever game. Some games, if they're a kid game, it's always going to change. This one, we want just a ton of people in the door playing this thing as like an event, basically. That's why we're launching it right before 4th of July weekend. That's why we have awesome additional talent involved. That's why it is as short as it is so that people can get through it. And so I think success on this one is that it feels like when a good Netflix movie launches and does well, they're not retaining members through rewatching the same movie 50 times except for K-pop

Demand hunters, but like everything else, you sort of move on. My son, thanks you. But yeah, on this one, it's getting a lot of people to play it and love it. And then from there, there's lots of micro-learnings that we'll do and take it into the next stuff, but because there's not even a such thing as a

narrative game on Netflix yet, we don't even know exactly what our signals are there. So that's why we just try to make the best game possible. Is that exciting or terrifying? It depends on the day of the week, legitimately. Sometimes Sometimes it's an anxiety-inducing thing in my side.

And other days I'm like, hell yeah. So I love leaning into the not knowing what tomorrow is going to look like and trying out these new modalities. But I only feel that way sometimes when we're confident in the thing we made, we just really believe in this thing. Like we're like, this thing is awesome. We love it. I mean, everybody can have different opinions about it.

But if we don't love what we're making, then how are we going to expect anybody else to? And on this one, the team super jazzed. They should be. It's a lot of fun. Really, really enjoyed it. Winding down, broad question, but pulling from where I just was talking about, the industry. Industry in general, yeah. Being highfalutin. Netflix.

Is Netflix in games for the long haul? Like I think, you know, we look around and we see conglomerates, we see this, we see that production company, like us being the fans who want the best for our developers. Are you feeling that way? Yes, yes. And I, fortunately, I feel that way because I see. what's ahead as well, right? I see what's ahead. I see the roadmap. I see what's being built and the commitment to it. And I see that, you know, there's still a learning phase happening. Like really on TV, the main stuff that's launched so far, we've had some great puzzle and party games. But that's stuff

that people also are like, I understand that design mobility, right? Like I understand what I'm coming to for that. So we're trying a bunch of new things and there's a bunch of faith all the way up through the top of the company that still is like looking to not just, you know, add a catalog of titles, but rather change how people play. And the thing I'm most excited about is, to the point of this industry being in, you know, some choppy waters at times, having our games just show up intermingled with other series and other things that are on that surface, discoverability is so much, you know, of a problem in the game industry.

And for us, we're able to surface this stuff and put it right there. So that's the other thing, like where it sits right now, you're going to start to see some of that evolve as well, like what the Netflix. just home screen looks like. Yeah, that's one of the things I'm looking forward to about this Brave New World and June 30th is turning on Netflix just to see for me as a user at home, where does it go?

Netflix knows I'm a horror. So is it being served to me right off the top? And is it, again, tricking me in fun quotes, to clicking it and seeing it and then be like, oh, I got to get my phone out. Yep, yep. Yeah, and there's cool stuff that you will see when it launches that leads you into it, that it's just educational enough.

I don't want to call it edutainment, like at the CD-ROM game, but it's like, you know, it is, it does just enough to go, here's what you're about to get into. But it is a thing that we just don't want people to bounce off of it because if it's, if it looks like you need like a PhD to play this thing, we're failing, you know? So we've got to ease them in.

I didn't even think about the July 4th business. That's a really smart idea, right? Because what I do love about it, and again, being digestible is it can be, let's watch a movie. Oh, wait, let's look at this first. Yes. We can get this done and then go to the movies. Yeah.

And it's, you know, it's like it's not a, it's certainly not a, multiplayer game, but I think it is a game played with others in a very fun way. Like, and we, again, we've done so much extensive playtesting. Sometimes we'll do it with two people in the room and they'll be like, nope, nope, nope, and they, you know, it's going back and forth. So it kind of becomes communal. And again, this is where it's, it's new for, it's certainly new for me too, coming from games and now being in Netflix, the behaviors at home of people watching Netflix are many times

more like, okay, there's always two or three people in the room. whereas in games, you know, appointment gaming is difficult, right? Like, or it didn't used to be difficult in the N64 era, but like now appointment gaming and expecting somebody to be with you in games is tough, but on Netflix it's like assumed. And so it's like, how do we design for that? How do we make sure that this thing you just played is still even fun for the person who's not playing it? Yeah.

Yeah, that's one of the things I was thinking playing it and finishing it of like, I'm excited to go home and show Jen. Yes. Yeah, yeah. I'll see if it's not, I'll see if she wants to play or if she just wants to watch. Not that she'd be scared of it, nor not that she can't control. But I think she might enjoy just watching the horror movie play out and seeing the tech itself. Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Awesome. Great job, Sean. What haven't I asked you about it that you want to talk about? We talked about June 30th. We did. June 30th. We're beautiful. I'm extremely proud of this team.

I think that this team has been like genre hopping for the last five years and doing pretty well at it. And I think this one, I'm like, man, we just leaned in. The only other thing I would say is like, we've talked about it through this very genre and mechanical way that it's like it's a horror game and it's scary or whatever but there's a lot of heart at it at the core of it still it's about these two best friends and the connection that they have as you make your way through it so even though it's it may be less touchy-feely than some other night school stuff we can't get rid of adding humor we can't get rid of heart we can't get rid of having your

homies back yet well hell yeah shone thank you congratulations thank you i'm excited for you i'm proud of you as always thanks for something so good to kind of funny over these years thank you for being kind to me and the delicious food out there. And let me play it. And if y'all could see this set, it's absurdly gorgeous. They've seen it once or twice because they see it each and every weekday

because Kind of Funny Games is all about live talk shows each and every weekday. YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games, Twitch.tv.com slash Kind of Funny Games podcast services around the globe. If you really like what we do, pick up a kind of funny membership, patreon.com slash Kind of Funny.

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We are doing all day long to support the rainforests and reefs. So go on over to twitch.tvs. And I would assume YouTube.com slash kind of funny games, but I didn't check that before I said it. So probably live on both places. we will be raising money, playing video games, and having a great time. We're giving away game codes, John. So maybe you toss in some Netflix codes.

You know what I mean? Give me some free months and do something. Let's talk later. We'll talk later, everybody. For now, though, the games cast is over. So until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve you. Are you one of those media strategy people clicking through slides, scrolling spreadsheets? Yes?

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