The Besties - Creature Kitchen Is an Alternative to Expensive Gaming

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

This week, the Besties chat about two relatively low-priced games that have won over huge audiences: Creature Kitchen and Scritchy Scratchy. In the back half, we talk through the recent PlayStation price hikes and consider what alternatives gamers have as the hobby gets more and more expensive. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

Can we bring back a movie quoting? Um, I don't know. Chris, let me ask my wife. Oh, I, uh, I, I love my life, but you know, you know what I love even more than my wife? Was, who? Who? That's crazy. I love lamp.

Oh, man. Oh, dude. Yeah, dude. Fucking yeah, dude. I thought, Chris Plain, I thought you were going to bring back like unchin' shin on cundaloo fucking quoting where it's like let's cut that sheep eye everybody thinks like this big pretentious dude over here but you know what yeah shake and bake yeah he likes the slop too like chrys'll slop down with the hogs a lot of

people he doesn't talk maybe you don't air that side out here on besties enough but like in a between between every criterion edition DVD Blu-ray that you have in your shelf you'll sneak a fucking Encino Man in like you'll put some real genuine stinkers in there too man I feel like Talladega Knights and Stepbrothers fell into this weird like hole where kids are still into it

like I'll see I'll see kids wearing a Step Brothers t-shirt it's like oh really it peeped there for you huh Stepbrothers it got way better Oh I think actually what you're supposed to say is Wawa wewa Yeah we you are

You have to say that You know I'm realizing the problem with movie quotes is they don't have a lot of substance and he kind of run out of material pretty fast. Yeah. It also isn't a fucking movie podcast. I get so sick and tired of hearing

about these goddamn uninteractive flits taking up my time. Yeah, baby. Yeah. Oh, boy. My name is Justin McRoy and I know the best game of the week.

My name is Griffin McRoy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Frustick. I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties. Where we're talking about the latest and greatest

and home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club. And just by listening, you, my friend, have become a member of that club. This week we're talking about Creature Kitchen. Chris Plant, what's that? Creature Kitchen looks like a horror game where you're out in the woods,

but what if I told you, it's a cozy cooking game for a whole bunch of critters? Are we also talking about scitchy, scratchy, Or is that? We're also talking about Screechy, scratchy. Thank God I got so scared that I played a game

that wasn't for job. We're also talking about screechy scratchy. Griffin, what's that? Oh, it's an incremental game about scratch off lotto tickets. Hell yeah. Hell yeah.

We'll talk about that and so much more right after this. This is the kind of retroesthetic I can get into from the moment that boot screen loads up. Now this, this is nostalgia. You're talking about PlayStation nostalgia.

That's where it's at. Yeah, man. It's got that Crow County. Was that that game? The Resident Evil, like, yeah, man. I love that shit. I love this vibe so much. Yeah, it is a very early era 3D.

I would say like probably halfway through the PS1's life cycle era 3D, right? Yeah, they're figuring out some tricks. Yeah, they're figuring it doesn't have like a perpetual flicker. The animals actually look like the animals that they're intended to be. Yeah. Outside of the just aesthetic of it, which has obviously been done quite a bit recently,

it does feel like the in aesthetic in a lot of indie games. Just from a structural standpoint. Can I take a guess? Because I didn't actually play it. And I watched a lot of trailers for it. And the trailers, I feel I tell you, is it sort of like Pocopia with creepy woodland creatures where you're trying to feed them

and attract them and make a fun home for them? That's the vibe that the trailers give off. There also is maybe a hint of some sort of sinister twist waiting just around the river bend. The way I've been describing it to people that don't know the game is it is the mix of inscription and cooking mama. Okay. I'm going to hop in and talk about how the game actually works. Yeah, please. The game is is Baby's first deduction game, and I say that as a compliment.

And the way that this works is you go out. and you walk into a house, you're like, what do I do in this house? It's all the mystery. There are some recipes. There's locks on almost every door. And you realize I need to make these adorable critters some food because I am in the creature kitchen. And you get a camera, then you take photos of those animals, and that will tell you what they

want to eat. But it's like, when I say light deduction, it's like a taste of Italy. So you'll look through your recipe sheet And you will find Various foods like Is that an actual What animal I'm assuming this game doesn't take place in Italy

But what animal would have like a taste for Italy As part of it? I think this was one of the cryptid It's a cryptid type animal So it's not just raccoons So it makes a lot more sense once you know that right Right sure So you know they're meatball

Yeah cryptos Cryptids love meadol subs Meatball man Bitford been to Italy Yes So there's this loop of go out and find recipes that are hidden around the environment, go out and spot Pokemon Snap style critters, get a photo of them, learn what they want to eat, and then go out and

foods. And you might find like mushrooms out in the garden or you might find some like bread and salt in the cupboard. And once you have all of that information, then you can be like, well, I know this, this crater. I know that it's hungry for a meatball sub. And I have a, and I have I think the step that I need to make a meatball sub. I'm going to toss those ingredients and a magical space time oven, and it's going to spit out the meatball sub. And then I can go deliver that to the critter. And the more you do that, the more recipes you unlock,

the more little areas of the house that you can get. It's a very simple, clean, effective loop. Yeah. Yeah, the animals, if you, for example, the raccoon is like one of the first guys you see. if you feed him the three meals that he's requesting, he gives you a key, and that key might unlock a door in your house. It might unlock a cabinet,

and in that cabinet might be cheese or flour or whatever, some new ingredient, and then you can use those ingredients to feed additional animals, et cetera, et cetera. This sounds great. This sounds right up my alley. I'm not hearing the inscription side of things, and I imagine maybe some of that is some vibe tonal shit.

Yeah, it's total. It's not a card-based. game, you're not doing that level of it, but tonally, there is a foreboding sense of dread. I'll give an example. At one point, pretty early on, you've done like three or four animals, and you're like cooking, you're facing your oven, and you just hear a knock behind you, and you spin around, and you open your front door, and there standing at your door is pants. Sentient pants.

Okay. And the pants run into your house, sit at your table, and seem to want some sort of food. And when you take a picture of the pants, it adds it to your recipe book, and it says, the pants want something in particular, but you are not given any clue

as to what you need to give the pants. So I made the pants ice cream, just shot in the dark. The pants did not care for ice cream and ran away. That's part of the mystery. Okay, fucking A. All right. There's actually maybe a slightly closer inscription

comparison here, and that it also has mild escape room vibes. Because, again, you're in this room and you're trying to figure out how to navigate the space, how to unlock these doors. And there are little puzzles that allow you to do that. So an early one is that you, under the little bureau that has the Polaroid camera that you need, you'll find a puzzle box. And there are three symbols on it or four symbols on it. And you need to figure out where those symbols relate. else we're in the house,

and that's going to help you get another recipe and maybe another food item. I am curious, hoops, you played this, right? Yeah. It looks like a spooky game. It looks like a horror game, is what they're going for.

What was your impression of, like, the mood that it actually... Did you get scared? He's trying to ask if you got scared, like a little baby. I'm trying to ask you a little baby. I was really, really scared. No, I think that it actually.

actually it was a nice counterpoint to there can be things that yeah there's things that I like about the cozy for lack of a better term I like methodical things I don't mind that I like the sense of like slowly building your ingredient collection I found that very satisfying um and so like it not looking super cutesy and not feeling super cutesy uh to me I've I found it a little more palatable because of that. Like I found it a little less, because it can get a little grading, I think, the, like, super soft aesthetic

that a lot of these games tend to adopt. I think this would blend into the noise a lot more, I think, if it looked a lot cuter, a lot more cutesy. They also do a very smart thing with ingredient stuff, where as you're going through the house and you're finding new ingredients, in or even outside if you find a mushroom, things like that,

you will discover that ingredient. And anything you've discovered goes into your pantry. And your pantry is an infinite, well, infinitely repeating hallway. Okay. They're like, you never run out of stuff, but you could just like keep walking and walking and walking. And there are like little puzzles in that infinite hallway as well.

But I like the fact that like there wasn't this element of where the fuck did I leave a flower. Right. You always know where the flower is because you've already discovered it because it's in the pantry. I went into the pantry without clocking what it was. And I, so I just kept walking. And I was like, this is in like the first 30 seconds of playing the game. So I was like, I guess there's a really fucking long hallway.

It's crazy. And then in another tab, I had previously accidentally opened emulation station. And it had gone into screensaver mode and started playing misdemeanor mode. and started playing Mr. Biggs the next to be with you. I did not realize this had happened. Why? Why does the violation station have that fucking functionality? It's like, I don't know.

I don't know why that was like a part of it. Were you emulating Mr. Biggs to be with you? Now, it might have been a screen saver from a game that had that in it, like one of those like mix-up video things. You know what I mean? I know Mr. Big did the themes anyway. It doesn't matter. The point is I'm walking down to this hallway.

I don't know is endless. and I've been out for two minutes and I'm about to stop and then I hear I'm the one who wants to be with you and I'm like, holy shit what is going on in this game? Another three minutes down the hallway just waiting for the next to be with you

to change or alter it in some way or the lyrics become more food centric it famously has the most powerful key change in song history. That would have been the moment right. All the shit falls off the show. smile. Yeah, dude.

Holy shit, man. Yeah. Yeah. So that took a little while to unspool that puzzle. That was a bit more of a puzzle than they meant it to be, I think. I don't know if the developers of the games we talk about ever listened to our show. If you developed this game, that's a pretty pre-bo Easter. I feel like you can pick up the ingredients in the right order.

It will just start blast it. Hold on, little girl. Just like, oh, shit. That would be a good achievement. It sounds cool. It sounds like the game you maybe shouldn't talk too much about, like, what. Is it surprising sort of the shit that comes down the part of the more you play? One thing I want to hit is like it is a good game to play with a kid and also a good game to play if you're just old.

And for two different reasons. One, you're playing this with a kid. It looks scary and is not. And it is like Mr. Rogers levels of grade A material for teaching a young kid. Like I know that this looks scary. I know it feels scary. It actually isn't scary. Like this is, these creatures are actually just as hungry.

They're hungry for food. This is, you know, when it rains outside, it is not menacing inherently. In fact, it can itself be cozy. And I think it's doing something that I find very. nice of like subverting the expectations of what this like scary environment should be. I found it really fun to play with my kid who can get very overwhelmed by Thunderstorms because we just don't have them a lot in California. It's also I think a good game with there is thunder.

That wasn't an issue. No, that's what I'm saying is because it's like creating it a safe. It feels very cozy and safe, right? It's taking a thing that normally would be scary and isn't. And then also for playing with the kid, the deduction is so simple that it's like a fun thing to just talk with your kid through. Of like, hey, what do you think that this crow wants? They really like cheese. They really like crackers.

What are we going to get? For the adult, though, because I don't want to like limit this to like, oh, this is a kid's game. It hits a very specific type of nostalgia. And I think in gaming we think of nostalgia as like indirect nostalgia where I'm nostalgic for Mario. But really what I'm nostalgic for is being six and like having no problems. And this has that vibe of like, oh, I'm going over to grandma's house and I am making food there. It feels much more one to one with like the things that we're actually nostalgic for, which is very simple chores, spending time in a loved one's home. the like sound of the rain outside.

I just found it very transportive and how it brought me back to, I don't know, I just felt like a little kid playing it. I would also say it is, it gets harder. Like I wouldn't say hard, but more opaque in terms of the puzzles. Like the first few are like incredibly on the nose and like it requires a little more deduction,

but not stuff that like you wouldn't ease yourself into. Like I think it does a very good job of easing you into. that level of deduction to the point where, you know, it might take a little bit before you figure out the next like step of the puzzle. And that's cool. Like that's what I wouldn't want to spoil for people because that's the magic of it. I'm starting to get the scritchy scratchies to want to hear about scurgy scratchy, but I do want to hear Hoops' thoughts before we before we do that. I was just noticing what Griffin was sort of hinting around at. And I wonder if games like animal well and inscription and

others have like I feel like it's tough for a game like this that is a little bit mysterious because I feel like there's now kind of an expectation of like maybe this entire thing changes. You know what I mean? Nobody wants to talk about it

but there's a lot of games that I think are playing in that space of like you know don't ask too many questions. Don't talk about it too much because there's like a lot more layers that you don't want to spoil for yourself. And I wonder if games like that have put out, that's a really tough expectation to fight back against, right? Yeah.

If you play the whole game thinking like, it's a game within a game, it's a dream. Right. This is a computer. Is there another shoe, you know, way to drop? This is what we're telling you it is. To set your expectations. This game is very helpful. Exactly what we're telling you.

I truly think it's the inscription comparison that immediately, like, juice said, like sets my mind to like, oh, damn. Is there another game? There's nine metaphysical layers. It's just a tone thing. entirely. I like that too. It's also worth noting that this game has been

massively popular on Steam. It's found a real audience. It is at present. It might not be the case when this actually publishes, but at present the highest rated game on Steam for 2026. Wow. That's... Higher than any other game.

Well, congrats. I'm sure it helps. It has a lower price point, which I'm sure helps. But also, it's a fun game. Like, they did a really good job. So, congrats to them. Is it Scringy? scratchy time? I think it is Scratchy and Scratchy Time. I feel like ScraCic Scratchy is

a really, really solid, really fun twist on the incremental idle game genre. It is a little I did feel a bit overstuffed since we did just also do Barry, Barry, Barry, which is very much a kind of like novel incremental style game.

I feel like, I almost wish itchy or screechy scratchy came out like a month later, so I had a little time for a palette cleanser. It is a scratch-off lotto-ticket simulator. You start off and you have a day job cleaning plates, I guess at a restaurant, you click a button to make a plate appear and then you have to use your mouse to wipe off the plate. Or your touchscreen, I didn't realize this until today, but it's also on iOS, which is probably kind of a better place to play it, maybe on a tablet or something like that.

But then you unlock the ability to spend the money you are earning on this day job on a lotto ticket. So you buy that one. It's a simple lotto ticket and you start to win those. You start to make more money. Now you can afford some upgrades

like increasing your luck or increasing the strength or width of your coin. Get those huge, chunky JFK silver dollars. And now you're scratching with intent. You jackpot, you get points, prestige points, when you restart your run over again

with like increased, you know, earnings and there's a whole skill tree that you can get into. And so you start doing that. Your coin gets way bigger. Now you're playing way bigger tickets, way more expensive, but you got your luck up to the point

where those are turning a profit for you now too. And then you start to unlock automation systems. Uh-oh. Now of a sudden you can have a little robot that will scratch off the tickets for you. Now you've got a little guy who's going to claim your prizes for you. you. He can be upgraded so he gets rid of bad tickets. So that's the thing that I think is very

novel about Scrazy Scratchy. All that shit is so rock solid fucking right over the plate incremental game stuff. I mean, would you say, yeah, I was going to say, like, where's the novel part? So the novel part, the novel part of this is, one, the sort of whole scratch-off ticket mechanic, right? Sure, yeah. Which I will say up front, I thought about you instantly juice because the first thing you do when you start playing the game is it's like, it warns you like, hey, hey, this is going to be repetitive, a hand and wrist movement. Yeah, I played like the first 20 minutes of it.

I thought that was neat. I've never seen a game ever, ever do that, where it's like this game's going to be sort of physically strenuous if you were doing the scratching off. There's two other options, one where you can just kind of hold it over your cursor over the thing. I don't know how that would work on iOS, but on computer you just sort of move your mouse over. And then there's one where you can like click in to hold. So it's like changing the option.

You either don't have to hold your finger. down to click or you don't have to move it. It'll sort of auto move it. But I actually ended up switching to that because I also found the repetitive motion of scratching. Very cool at first, but then less cool as time went on. What is cool is like you start to get into these loops, right? And you're like earning more money and you're like increasing your speed with which you're

like moving through the same shit every time you prestige. The new tickets you unlock as you like reach certain price tiers, they start to have sort of risky elements to them. Like, this ticket is going to have, like, a huge prize. It costs more money than any other ticket you've gotten, so you have to be, like, smart about how you spend it. It has a huge jackpot, huge jackpot. But it also will sometimes have a symbol in there that will make you lose a lot of money.

And if you start feeding those through, like, your automatic robot machine and clicking through them, you will go fucking bankrupt in 10 seconds. And so with those, it becomes a sort of, like, balancing act of like, okay, I got my easy money down here going into the. machine. I can't put these guys in the machine yet because they'll scratch off the bad stuff. Whereas when you're doing it manually, you can start to see like, oh, there's that goddamn worm again. And if you don't finish scratching them off, it doesn't, it no longer counts. That element alone, like really, I found to be really interesting because the whole sort of

process through which you move through idle games is you are repeating a action, a click, a tap, a whatever, a manual action so that you can like increase your ability to like automate that manual action. And this one kind of gives you a reason to like still think about that sort of half of the of the experience. I know if you don't play incremental games, that sounds like an insane sort of like this one makes you interact with it still. Yeah, there was, uh, Barry, Barry Barry actually did something similar where you had to at one point make shakes and you needed like specific berries for the shakes. So it does actually slow. I thought Barry Barry did an excellent job of this idea. I never felt like that. I almost hesitate to call that an incremental game just because

like it is, to me it feels so manual and it feels so, uh, like you have to be, you're very active. You're very active. You're always moving around sucking up, Barry. It's not an idle. Incremental game is fair for that. It is not an idle game, uh, sort of at all. Whereas this, like, you can set up a pretty rock solid automated system and, you know, kind of just have it on. Does this do the like go away for three hours come back and you have money? No. So this doesn't do, yeah. Yeah, so maybe that is like the modifier, the technical thing that makes it an idle game. This is still like more interactive than that. Like you are until you get far enough in the game to get the machine that subscribes to a certain lotto ticket for you and buys them for you, like, then you are going to be like clicking in there from time to the time to do it.

Oh, sorry. No, please go ahead. I really struggled metaphorically with this one, man. It does hit that. It's rough. Like, it really, there's not a layer of abstraction you can get to where it's like, I'm running a factory. You're not. You're a monkey.

Yeah. You're a fucking monkey. It is like so far removed Griff from the feeder. It's like so close. It's like one, really, really, really. Hair, breath away from like, I worried I'd play this one for a million hours. And at the end, I'd have a script for Hamlet. You know what I mean?

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, no. I will say that it does not overstay its welcome. I finished it in like a few hours of playing it. And so it is not, this is not a, there's one I think on iOS called Idol Revolution that does kind of like do that where it puts you through this gauntlet of like incremental progress and then you get to the end of it. And it's like you're wasting your fucking time. You have wasted your goddamn life. We're going to give you one upgrade point.

If you want to do this whole fucking thing again, you can't. But you are absolutely blowing it, dude. Well, look at Clover Pit as a really interesting counterpoint, right? slots are gross in a very similar way. But in Clover Pit, you're in head. Sorry, go ahead. Yes, please trust. For people that aren't aware,

Clover Pit was a slot machine-based roguelike, where you could, like, modify the odds as well. For sale in a bundle with Scritchy Scratchy. It looked more like our last game. Yeah, for sure. But the difference with Clover Pit is you were in hell. You know, like it made it clear. It's like, this is hell.

Yeah. But it's like, I don't know. I don't feel like scitchy scratch, it doesn't sound quite as self-aware. Clover Pit is way, I think Clover Pit is, it is a much deeper game. I'm still playing Clover Pit from time to time, guys. It's on iOS now. And I'll just like, get in there and I'll be like, yeah, there's a lot of these memory card runs I have not finished.

I would love to fuck around with Clover Pit. This doesn't have that. You're not buying, you're not drafting like relics. Like, it's not, it is not quite that rogue lighty. But yes, like Justin said, I'm also going to talk a little bit about Rackcoin, I think, this week. And so playing a lotto scratch-off ticket game and a quarter-drop game at an arcade together. It really told me a story about myself that I wasn't ready to hear.

I don't mind to admit that sometimes I'm a nasty piss boy. I just need the game to recognize that I am a nasty piss boy and I'm wallowing in my own filth. Yeah, yeah. Like that's what I need to be treated like. I need a dumb. So to show how much it knows that you are the nasty piss boy, the actual Steam page. The first screenshot is dirty dishes and the words, tired of your day job. The second screenshot is a photo of a yet-to-be-scratch, scratch-off ticket.

The third screenshot is jackpot. The fourth screenshot is a robot, and the final screenshot is super jackpot. It is literally telling you, like, yeah, are you sad? But here's the thing. Okay, as obviously I think that that is off-putting, generally speaking. I also think it is like, if you look at, fuck. Open up the iOS App Store, click the games tab, go to top unpaid games, and then take your finger and go like this.

And you're going to see goddamn 49 of the 50 games that pop up are exactly this, right? But this one is also like five bucks, and it doesn't ruin your life. I agree with the hoops of like the fact that is literally gambling as the aesthetic is a choice. But I am. But like so is Volatra, arguably. Yeah. Well, very different thing, but just to finish that thought. Just as the aesthetic.

I don't think it's actually a game. Yeah. To finish the thought, I agree with Griffin. I much prefer this where it is a you pay one price. It is not here to bleed you of money. And it is not really here to like mega bleed you of time. I feel like the games that we used to like play of these that we got really into were like, you could lose 30 or 40 hours.

Oh, for sure. Yeah. This is. No, I appreciate. I really truly, uh, I actually, uh, I don't know that I've played a ton of games. The last one I can think of was like, I think it was called Mage Tower or Wizard Tower was,

and that, oh God, the... Wizard Tower. Wizard Tower was... That one kicked ass. What was the corp? That one kicked ass because you had an incredible wizard's tower. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean?

The Norp, Norp. Norp, it was Norp. Oh, the Norp Analogue. The Norp Anologue. That kicked ass. You were creating life. That was awesome. There is this, like, I don't know,

I feel like pretty burgeoning genre right now of idle incremental games that are short. Like, they are well contained. They are three, four hour things that are just, like, tight. And this game also has, like, some narrative happening in the background that seems like arcane and sinister as well

that, uh, that, you know, also kind of has a payoff sort of at the, like there's other stuff happening other than the get, get rich monkey scratch off ticket sort of, uh, I don't know, lizard brain stuff, but it's, uh, I really enjoyed it for its like, uh,

brevity and its density a little bit where it just gets in, you get the good feeling. Do you have you seen, you guys see the commercials on TV, usually midday, and it's like, hey, I'm Barry Williams from TV's the Brady Bunch. And when I'm not up on stage, singing to my fans, I love royal slots. And then he's on like a huge pile of gold coins. It's like, every single pool, there's a million coins. And then you're watching it, it's like, you know, it's not gambling. so what are people doing?

And it's like, you're just pretending to play the slot machines. I feel like we need to be, you can only be so chin-strokey when you abstract out the dopamine extraction mechanism. You can only be so like, hmm, it really makes you think before you're like, no, you're just doing the thing. Like it's like, you know what I mean? It's just that. The problem is, I now want that video game in which I am watching TV. and then a former Brainy Bunch member is my narrative guide through scratchy.

See, you're trying to make a great point. And what you did is you pitched me on game of my wall. I'm sorry, I'm crazy to mine. The Norp Anologue Rooderick cooked me so bad. That's the only way I can think anymore is incrementally. I don't even know what I'm going to say next, guys. It's word by word. How do we feel about using things that are like large,

predatory scratch-off tickets or slot machines or whatever it is to convey something else? Yeah, no, that's fair. Like, is, I don't know. It's a good question. I'm not entirely sure I would say sort of authoritatively one way or another. I don't think that scitchy, scratchy is necessarily telling that exact story. Like, the story stuff is like quite, quite light. You don't sort of run into it a lot.

So it's not like, you know, the game wraps up with you. kind of like, you know, throwing all your tickets through a big steel fan and then leaving your house and stepping out in the sunlight and saying, I beat, I beat gambling, fuck off, call she or whatever it's called. It's not exactly doing that, but there is like something to that loop that is also kind of present, but way more cloaked in almost every video game that comes out now. the like, you know, feedback loop, hooky, how can we make our game, like, pulling as many? Like, that's so inherent to the thing now that, like, I don't know, I don't, I'm not worried about scritchy, scratchy contributing to the larger problem. I think it is more kind of seeing what it can

explore in those mechanics without, you know, bleeding you dry or making you sing 10,000 hours into it. I don't, I don't love it personally. But, like, if I have to be, like, very real with myself here, I don't, we play first-person shooters and we don't go out and shoot people. Like, I, I'm always very hesitant. I don't think that's the, yeah, yeah. To draw a connection between that. And I know what, like, the logic here could be like, oh, we have just so fully normalized gambling culture that it, this is not, it's not a game like this gets everybody to go get on call sheet, like Griffin mentioned.

like Gherfin mentioned, but it's like yet another thing. That's too. By the way, guys, that's our two mentions of calls. Yeah, we have to get up to five or else they are not going to give us her trillion dollars. I just feel I, you can also, it doesn't have to be necessarily like a negative or like a, this is hurting you

or making you like more inclined to gamble. It's just like there's a wide range of different things you can engage with. And I think that if a game is going to use, I'll use this term, weaponize this sort of like dopamine mechanic, I think it's got to reckon with that, first of all, in the story of the game.

Like, it's got to recognize, like, this is what it's doing. And it's also got to, I think, deliver on something more meaningful or more useful or something with a little more toothsome than just like, boy, it's easy to get addicted to stuff. Because I feel like there have been a lot of these types of games that have made that point really elegantly. And if you're going to start talking about, like, especially, like scratchers and what they mean

in areas of like really obvious income and quality and like the sort of like what they represent and how sort of like I don't know loaded they are for a lot of people I don't know it's just like if you're going to get into that you're going to make do the scratching thing like

I feel like you can if you're using these mechanics that are very clicky and addictive and you know stick with you then I think that you owe it to the audience or the player to like give them something more enriching. I think it's a missed opportunity, for sure.

And I think that there were probably elegant ways for this story to be a little bit beefier and touch on some of this stuff. I think that is a perfectly fair criticism. There is also an interesting read on it, which is if you were to play this game a lot and basically unlock a bunch of upgrades, whatever it is, and then go and play a real scratch-off ticket with its real odds. You can't upgrade luck, IRL. Yeah, you might be a little.

A little discourage. Like, it might be like, fuck this shit. I'm going back to the fake ball with no state. I will say this. My desire to scratch off a lottery ticket has maybe decreased since playing this game. Also, y'all, it's not about gambling for me because every other single fucking video game on the planet is gambling. I mean, every single, every loop box, that's like that ship, that ship done sale. Right.

Let's take a break and then talk about other. other monetary things in the world. Yeah, I tried to think of a good way to bridge that gap, but that's it. Point, you want to take it in? Yes, I just want to pull up the PS5 price increase, so I get the prices right really quick. One second. The price is right. The price is wrong, Bob.

The price is wrong, Bob. Whoa, we, wow. Welcome back, everybody to the best things. That was what you wanted. I gave you what you wanted, you dirty dollars. The price is wrong, Bob. Oh, you got me, but let me tell you, it's merely a flesh wound anyway. We are here to talk about.

This actually kicks ass because it's so much easier. I work so hard to come up with new things to say. It's exhausting. Yeah, for sure. No, this is much better. It really flattens the playing field. It allows me the unfunny one to really step up. The PlayStation 5 has gotten a,

price increase. Wow, wewa. Wewa. Wewa. That rules. They should have made other movies besides

Borat in our defense. Yeah. On April 2nd, which is like after you are listening to this, the PlayStation 5 will cost $649.99. So fucking crazy.

Digital edition cost. 599.99. Do you think it was originally April 1st and then they were like, oh, fuck, we need the movie. We can't do it.

Oh, I, I 100% think that is correct. Yeah. And the PS5 Pro will be $899. Sorry? What, what, okay, so can you, I don't follow this shit nearly as closely as I used to. What was, what were those prices before?

This, how much is. Everything went up $100, I believe. Okay. Is that right? That is my understanding as well, yes. So it is now considerably more expensive to buy a PlayStation 5. All these years. later than it was to buy one at launch.

This is from what I can tell the first time in history where the major council's prices are going up as they get older rather than down. What did they say about, I mean, I assume the obvious like tariffs and RAM and Flash becoming like impossible to source. So the, they obvious are very cautious. So the statement says with continued pressure in the global economic landscape, we have made the decision to increase the prices of the PS5, PS5 Pro, and the PlayStation Portable globally.

Because these prices, they went up everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Do any of you want to do a quick explainer of why this is happening? Or should I? I mean, my understanding is RAM prices are through the roof right now, mostly driven by AI demand. Yes.

And so you're running into a situation where all these manufacturers just have to pay more for the components. the only way that they can make up the difference is by increasing the price. You've seen companies like Valve, for example, Valve is not at this very moment selling steam decks. You can't buy a steam deck. Valve delayed the release of the steam machine. All that new shit, I think, was supposed to be out, like, first half of this year. Yes, correct.

And they announced that it was delayed. They might make it in 2026, but who knows? And it's all because of this RAM shortage, which is directly impacting basically everything. anecdotally this this is uh i think probably most of us are kind of familiar with this but it the extent to which it has impacted the like retro handheld market is is genuinely across the board everyone super duper duper significant ianio that has had like insane fulfillment issues like not able to ship out the consoles that and that's in addition to the the minimum tariff increase that uh basically hit all those companies as well so yeah production is also

So down, like, you can't, you can't pre-order, like, the production of those has gone so far down that, like, stock is, like, impossible to find. And there's, like, a whole ecosystem of, like, eBay scalping. It's, it's really, it's affected just pretty much everything, man. Yeah. So, it, this, exactly what Gryffin said, this is much bigger than games. I mean, basically everything has ram in it now, because comically, before this period was the rise of the smart home and the smart car and the smart everything. So everything's going to be affected. We can't help you with that, but we can't help you with the video game side of things.

So what I wanted to talk about with the rest of the show, just a little bit, is what y'all think this means for what people should be playing or maybe where their interest should go or what are some cheaper options that they can pick up or how can they dig into like their old hardware. What are options as kind of the top of the line just gets more and more and more expensive? I have enjoyed video games the most in the past 12 years, sorry, 12 months I would say, in like a non-monetary fashion. There are so many ways to engage with the hobby and like engage with games from gaming's history and like so many different ways to engage in it that are. like free. I mean, free. So to me, I feel like this presents a really great opportunity to issue the latest and greatest.

Let it pass you by. Let it do its thing. You don't need to scratch off a lot of tickets. Just wait here. Let history do its thing. And you go back and play the many, many, many, many classic games that you could just download and play right now. play decades worth of video games on many of the devices you already own right now.

And don't give your mind anybody. I would also say, like, I think more and more games in Creature Kitchen is a good example of this are not nearly aiming for that top tier. Not pushing the releases. Yeah, for sure. That allow you to play games on devices that are not nearly as powerful as you would see on a high-end machine or even a medium-tier machine. So I'm encouraged. by that because I think if the goal

is to reach a mass market and do some in addition to like making something cool, make some money in the process, they're going to start making games for devices that can actually run those games. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my number one tip is if you are not in the PC gaming yet, you should be.

And when I say PC gaming, I don't mean go out and buy a $2,000 machine. I mean, if you truly do not have a PC in your house, just I machine with Windows, try to find a used one. whether that is at like a garage sale or an estate sale or companies offload these things constantly or there is the new cheaper Mac, the MacBook Neo, which I think is going to be very interesting.

What's going on with that? I keep seeing like emulation people talking about it and it looks insane to me this device. Yes. It looks like an iPad with a tablet on it, which basically is exactly what is. it is. What it is. And power-wise, it's like a high-end iPhone. With a keyboard.

And it plays emulation games very well. But the thing about modern MacBooks is you can dual boot Windows on it pretty easily. You can even emulate Windows games on it pretty easily through a thing called whiskey or wine or other tools. Yeah. But being able to access these games, games that are either free, like, There's a great stuff on HIO every week or being able to play these games that cost five or six bucks. And are some of the highest rated games of the year. Both of the games that we mentioned this week are extremely beloved by their audience.

They're also just tend to be more exciting than a lot of the stuff that we talk about. I don't think it's an accident that most of what we talk about on the besties these days falls in this category versus the large-scale AAA category. It's just where the most interesting stuff is happening. Yeah, I would agree with that. I'm also going to say, maybe this is too far down the rabbit hole, especially for newcomers, but like the more I mess with Linux, the happier I am. It's just so much nicer than playing games on Windows.

What distro you're running, baby. Jesus Christ. I'm using Bazite for my handheld, but it's... I don't... I wish people can see Hoops his face right now. You want the actual number of the distro? No, man, I thought we were going to talk about Linux. Not Linux-based architect.

I'm talking about Linux. I want to get in. I thought you were going to run an arch. I thought you're ripping down to the chrome. I thought we were going to talk about Linux. No, no, no. I'm not trying to make a garage door opener. As line is intended.

I just like the fact that it goes to sleep and wakes up when I want it to. Jesus, that's it's it, man. That's really it, guys. If it can't do that, why did you make it? Genuinely, I have a PC in my room because I live in a New York City apartment and space is a luxury. The PC for like a week straight was turning on at 4 a.m. and I could not figure out why. I would spend hours debugging it just to figure out why it was doing that and couldn't figure it out to the point where I just fully shut it off every night.

That's fucking terrible. Like, guys, that's wild. And I know they're working on it. I know they want to get windows in a better place. They are making concessions, especially with the MacNeo because the MacNeo is doing it. everything that all those Windows netbooks were doing in a much smoother way, but it's going to be a couple years before Windows maybe gets its shit together. Hey, listen, don't get a MacBook Neo for God's sake.

Just learn one Linux distro. Get a very cheap laptop. Put Linux on it. Learn Linux. Linux is open and you can use it and you're not going to get hemmed into these fucking crazy architectures. You can put Windows on there and you can put MacOS on there. You know what they're going to start doing?

Trying to jam AI down your throat instantly. And both of those, as time goes on, are going to become more bloated and more bogged down with trying to get you to sign up with shit. Just swallow the pill. What color is that pill? Just real quick, what color is the pill? What color is the pill? You're really trying to remember which one's the good one, right? What color is?

No, no, no, no, no, no, that's fair. Which one's the good one? It's a fair. No, no, no, no, I know what Griffin is saying. Griffin is saying that I'm dawdling on the edge of Manusphere nonsense. Dude, you're fucking... You're surfing it, but I'm just saying if you took the time to... If you take the time to engage with...

Why not? You're not going to spend money on video games for a little while. Why don't engage with something a little different? And free yourself from some of these operating systems. On the game level two for Linux, you can look on YouTube of ways to make your own Steam machine, basically, since they're not selling them right now. And there are people who will help you do that. If you hear Linux and you're scared,

but you hear a steam machine and you're excited, it's okay. Just chase the words that help you get to where you need to be. That's what I did. It's all the same destination. It's all, it's well, I also. All Linux distros are the same. It's really impressive.

Go for it, Griff. I, I, go off, go off. I've had a really, it's really impressive to me the game hub and game hub light situation on Android devices right now. I feel like that has really freed a lot of those games to like Mugenics I can play on the fold seven. I want to hear about that. Yeah, I've been shopping around specifically for a lighter weight. I want to play Muggenics for a long time device because the Rogg AlliX, I have. have trouble sort of, it's a big beefy boy.

It's a big boy. Yeah, I mean, I don't think this is like a good, this is not a thing to get for gaming, obviously, because it's a folding phone. But like, as an aspect of that, it's great. Because what, the way I have it, it's set up basically is you, the fold seven is a square once you unfold it. And then I have Game Hub on there. And Game Hub, if you don't know, is an Android app that is basically a, you

gateway between you and your Steam collection and also a gateway to like run those games on the device. It's basically creating a little envelope around the game that allows it to run on that device and lighter weight games, non-3D games are obviously a lot easier

on that setup. What's cool about games like Mugenics and like mouse first games like that is it renders in the square the top like three-fourths are the screen and the bottom is just black and it's space to use it as a track pad.

So you're basically like, you can use your thumb to, like, guide the mouse and interact with everything on the screen, one finger. And it, like, you can create a shortcut on the home screen of your phone. So it's like very, it's a very short bridge between that and your Steam collection. Yeah. And it is a little bit like, Jankey, it's a little bit, you know, because it is not, you know, it's not officially, officially supported. A lot of its community run and stuff like that.

And there's a lot of concern. Game Hub is run by a company called GameSER, and because you have to provide your login details, there's some privacy concerns with that. So Game Hub Lite is a community-run version of that, which is just a little bit behind, usually. I have had, I think the shit you can do with Game Hub, and Game Native is another one that I've messed around with a little bit.

It's really impressive. They do have issues with sleep. restore mode. I feel like if you have it off for a certain not particularly long amount of time, like it will lose connection to your Steam account and then the game is... Whatever weird thing it was doing, it just forgets it. It was doing it. And so, like, it's not like picking up a Steam deck or a rockboard.

You pick it up, you press the power button and it's, like, happening instantly. Which is, I don't know, I hope they can get that. I mean, I hope fucking Steam OS just comes out. There's also occasional weirdness, just to be fair on that front with like the saves and cloud saving sometimes, where it doesn't like necessarily, like the container of the game doesn't exit properly. And so, for example, with Mugenics, if you leave, if you're playing on the game hub, if you quit out of a match, you don't get the Stephen penalty. It doesn't realize that you've done it. like you just go back into the game as normal, which is, you know,

non-ideal, but you're playing on your phone. It's cool. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Cool. Yeah, it's interesting. Things are pretty dire, but you can play cheap games pretty easily. Hey, one other recommendation, by the way,

if you're looking for a big suite of games that you may never have checked out, there's really great stuff for, like, Amiga, like Amiga Vision and Amiga Gold, and the Exa-Dos program, where they have like a large amount of gaming history that you can download and kind of dig through. And like I understand the legal issues surrounding this, but like, I mean, I personally just this is where I'm coming from as a person. I think that it's not right to if you can't buy something, I think it's wild to say that you can't obtain it.

That's wild to be. You're saying you can't walk down to the. Amiga store at the corner to grab all these hits on carts like God intended. Yeah. I think if I made a game back in 83 with me and my buddies, I think that I, if I, if someone said to me, hey, Justin Romero, would you prefer people not play your game and not give you any royalty or play your game and not give you any royalty? I think that people would say

Justin Romero would say Yeah I don't get any fucking money from that regardless The thing I made Nobody does I don't know what happened to it Steal it please I'd much prefer people play it Thank you Also you can go to the library to play modern

And stuff ironically the issue that Justin's talking about If you want to get a fucking turbo wedgey by everybody else in the library You're already Who's the biggest dork in the library It's the guy playing video games I love the library. Should we dive at D'Arable Mentions? I had one thing to call out, but before I do, I do want to call out this more important piece of data.

The Colors of Modern Rock came out in 1993. It was on the Sega CD, and it features the song To Be With You by Mr. Big. Yes, that had to be what it was. Thank you, Derek. That's from our researcher, Derek, who's in the studio with us. And this is the first time we've used Derek's services. he's been here for five years and finally it paid off so thank you Derek huge you're welcome i also wanted to call out uh tom scott who is a youtube luminary uh made many videos for like

many years about random engineering and city design things uh has returned to youtube uh with a new video about uh how he broke a 142 year old bell uh if you like uh weird interesting design engineering videos. I know this guy. Tom Scott's dynamite. He makes good shit. And I think he has a new series on a Nebula, but the videos are also on YouTube. So if you want to watch that, we'll have a link in the newsletter. Y'all, TV is so good. Television is great right now. I have three quick television recommendations that I can provide more context on as necessary. The last one laughing, UK, is back for second season. Did I bring that up yet? mentioned it last week.

Jesus Christ. Excellent. It's really, Justin, you did a solid Sam Campbell run earlier in the episode. You had like his intonation perfectly and it made me want to watch this right away. Yeah, it is. We've been watching a lot of it.

The, and also I'm much older than him and he more likely has listened to me for years. Oh, no, I'm, to be clear. He ripped you off. It's much more likely that he has patterned himself after me.

It was an echo of an echo, you know, bouncing off the back of the cave. for two decades. That one's really good. Neighbors is a show on HBO Max. It's one of the best things I've seen, if it weren't for my third recommendation this year. Absolutely. It's little vignettes, little mini documentaries.

Each one is about two warring neighbors, and they're almost all to a person maniacs. And it's a show about, what happens when two people who are both big, strong personalities are forced to live next to each other. And a lot of the episodes devolve from like love to hate. We watch the relationships between the neighbors. But it is a show about what it means to be a neighbor in America in a way. It reminds me a lot of like, Errol Morris stuff.

It's still very humane. It's not like as nasty as it seems. It might seem on the outset. It like, it definitely is searching out really bizarre stories, but it is a, uh, it's a doc. You should mention. What? Yeah, yeah. It's a documentary.

Yeah. Yeah. Yes. It's a documentary about where each story follows like one pair of neighbors or each episode will have like two sets or one set of neighbors. But one is about just for example, uh, a man who has a problem with a woman who has built a eight foot high privacy wall around her entire property because all of the neighbors say it makes them look like a drug compound has been built. So all the neighbors rally against this woman who is

also in her own way a maniac. And we watch all of them fight with each other. It's fantastic. Third thing is jury duty was one of the best things to come out a long time ago. And it's back for company retreat or jury. What are your thoughts on that? What are your thoughts on that? Have you watched it? I've watched a couple of, we've watched three episodes now. And it is, there are moments of delight in there, but I don't know, maybe I am comparing it too much to the first season, but the first season I could not put down.

And this one, I don't know, hasn't necessarily hooked me quite as much. But again, like, I worried that this show, because the first season was based so much around this, like, surprise twist. maybe it's fighting against that in my head. Let me back, let me, very quick backstory. Jury Duty was a show on Amazon Prime.

It was also a documentary and the premise was a guy is on a jury. And everyone on the jury is an actor and everyone in the proceedings is an actor. In fact, everyone there is an actor except for this one guy. So they're Truman Show the show. And jury duty made sense because it's very procedural, right? like you are sort of corralled. It's very guided as an experience, right? If you're on a jury, someone's telling you where to go.

So it's easier to like stage. This second season is completely separate. It is called company retreat. And it is a man is hired as a assistant to an HR director of this family-owned hot sauce company. And they're headed out on their company retreat. And on the first day of the company retreat, this HR director does something so, humiliating. He has to leave the retreat and he leaves it in the hands of his assistant. And he says,

I'll tell you what to do. I'll run the whole thing by you. I'll tell you what's happening, but I can't be here physically. So the company is currently in a time of transition where the owner, his son is taking over and his son's a real, uh, seems to be kind of a lovable dole. But he is at risk of running the company in the ground. Maybe they're going to sell the company. But it is all staged around this one guy who is the most affable, sweet, kind-hearted, on board with every single thing that happens and supporting everyone around him to a point where it's like, you want this guy to get some sort of huge payday at the end or something

because he's like so game. And what's amazing about the show that I think is really fascinating is they keep giving him opportunities to bail. Incredible. There are scenes where people, the HR director looks him in the eye and says, if you don't want to do this, you leave with me right now. And the guy says, no, no, no, I can handle it. It's like he, he chooses, he chooses it.

And that's his like one, his, if he has this like, this hubris that is bringing about this fate, it is that this man does not have the sense to say, I cannot deal, I cannot handle the situation. Do you think they have a plan if he bailed? Like, that's a big expense. I will say that this season feels so much more improvisational than the first. Because like you said, like the first season of jury duty was very gag, gag, gag, gag, gag, like, in a good way.

Like, they all hit. James Marston is one of the jurors, and it's fucking hysterical. Like, he's not playing anyone. He's just playing himself. It is just the duchiest celebrity. That's their justification for the cameras. Right. So that's why it's like all being documented is because he's on the jury, which is also really smart.

This guy on season two is so down that there are things that he has like suggested that they do to solve some problem that then they go and they actually do that and they film like a whole scene around it. Which is like feels so it's not as it doesn't feel as like tightly packed. You know each episode is going to have like a series of wild things that this guy's going to run into. The second episode a huge crate. the same episode a big crate of Doritos goes missing like a huge crate of Snacks Sos Doritos

and they all launch into an investigation as a team building exercise that this guy suggests he suggests that he suggests Yeah we should go through everyone's rooms

You hear him say it on camera You know maybe as a team building exercise we should all look around for the turidans And so they are having to I have no idea how they did this but they're having to follow

this man's insane for the Doritos and there are like individual scenes. It's really, did you get to the hypnosis? No, I don't think so. There's a group, they have a hypnotist come as a team building thing. And everyone in the company is hypnotized almost, except for this guy. And he starts getting them to reveal things about themselves and about the company that everyone else has been hypnotized for and has not hurt.

or process and he is the one like living with the weight of all the things that people are it's it's incredible it's really incredible uh that's on prime as well um Jeffrey Bezos sucks ass uh but you know but he makes it but he makes a killer show what can you do man i think last one laughing is also uh is also yeah it's all Bezos sorry i've i didn't mean to me i have been enjoying this new season of jury duty it's i will say the competition is kind of fierce with uh with One Laughing and I don't know, there's a lot of really funny shit happening. I've heard something fascinating about Last One Laughing, just as like an aside about that on the rest of entertainment.

That show did so well in the UK, the first season that Bob Mortimer won, did so well in the UK. And they invented this idea, which has not been in the many, many other international versions of that, they have not had a returning champion. But Bob Mortimer returns as the, like, defends. as the like defending champ. And the show has become so popular and takes six hours to shoot and is so lucrative

that they were saying the stakes are actually quite high because if you can win, you are guaranteed another big payday on one of the biggest shows. So it is like, it is now the competition has even bigger stakes because you're playing for your role to stay

on this incredibly lucrative TV show. That's incredible. I never even thought about that. So that's like if the play is, escalating. That's, that's, what? Have you seen how many versions of the show there are? Like, if you go on Amazon and you search Last One Laughing, there are like 30 last one laughings from across the world. Because, like you said, it's so easy to shoot.

This is called Documental and came from Korea. I don't know if that's like a branch off or, or it is. Documental was the first. Yeah, I hope it got paid for it because there are a trillion of these now. I am almost positive that. And we'll have Derek check this, but I'm almost positive that last one laughing does credit and those different versions, credit. Credit documental as like original concept. I just want to say it.

I mean, it is identical. It is not. It is very, it is identical. I mean, it's the same show. I do want to say, I do think that the Chris Getherd shows Night of Zero laughs event was even predated documental if we're just sort of like. I mean, if we're going to confront it, I think that it's worth confronting Griffin. Derek just tried to sell me his stable coin, so I don't think he's a good

free story. Yeah, get out of here, Derek. This is the last straw. Oh, okay. He finally shows up and we have to let him. Okay. Very quick on mine, Sonic Racing Cross Worlds. Y'all got to go play it.

Everybody, you didn't get into that Mario Kart world. Sonic Racing Cross Worlds, it's waiting for you right there. They added Mega Man to it. They added Pac-Man to it. They have a SpongeBob man to it. Everybody's in this game. Finally, Steve gets a moment to shine from Minecraft.

Minecraft Steve does have his time. Thank you, Chris Plant. Thank you to everyone else. We have some members of the Patreon I wanted to call out. We have Scant. We have Nathan H. We have Tom and we have Inclement Heather, which is a funny name.

I like that one. Good name. Thank you, everyone over at the Patreon for supporting the show. We have new bracket. battles every month. We have rest these episodes to a month, and we greatly, greatly appreciate it that Patreon allows

this show to exist, literally. It would not without it. So thank you so much for all your support there and to people that have joined. We greatly appreciate you. I think that's it. Plaint, you want to recap? Yeah, very quick, though, with Frush out next week,

how are you all feeling about maybe bringing back movie quotes? I think we can just keep that going. Um, I mean, Derek says no. Derek says no, and he does still have voting power today, even though it's his last day. I mean, I think next week we're going to be talking about the Super Mario Galaxy movie, and I'm sure it's going to have a lot of great quotes. Like, here we go. Oh, yeah, you can quote the shit out of that.

So, you're telling me there's a chance. Okay. Okay. We talked about Creature Kitchen, Scitchy, Scratchy, Last One, Laughing, U.K., neighbors on HBO Max, Jury Duty Company, Retreat, Sonic Racing Crossworld's GameHub Light, Mr. Big Song to be with you. And that video, I helped make a 142-year-old bell, and that's okay. He broke the bell to be fair. He didn't make a video.

Thank you so much to join us. Be sure to join us again next week for the besties, because should the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!