The Besties - Fortnite's Humongous Simpsons Update Raises an Awkward Question

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

Fortnite’s new Simpsons update reimagines the entire experience through the decades-old cartoon. You can select from Homer, Lisa, Flanders, Moe, and other playable characters, then skydive into a faithful recreation of Springfield. The detail is absurd, down to the operable trap door button in Mr. Burns’ office. It feels like the culmination of Epic Games’ efforts to be the black hole that pulls in every corner of mainstream pop culture. Fortnite has become so big and so appealing that it raises the uncomfortable question floating around the rise of similar Forever Games: are most people motivated to play anything else? 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!

I think that I hit the right note in Let It Go in the shower this morning, and no one was there to witness it, and I don't know. Oh, no. I think I hit it. I'm like 90. Are you talking about the past is in the past? That one? Do you harmonize with it?

Or are you right there with Adina? Are you guys cresting the wave together? I can't sing it now because I'm worried from just the rights issue. Well, that's bullshit. It would be a tonal match that AI would match it perfectly to Adina. Yeah. I think it would be okay, actually. Rachel has, like, a filter she can apply to songs to make them not get snagged by the alga.

I think that's too close to AI, and I don't trust it, quite honestly. No, it's all physical, like, it's, she puts it in a crank and she cranks it through it. And so you should sing. Yeah, so give me a past is in the past. Like, I've done it like three times now, and it's not. I know, but it's not. I'm sick, too, so like. Acoustically speaking, I know I set this recording booth up for that specific purpose.

But there's post-processing for that too She can add reverb I know what the problem is You want to feel like you're in the shower So No I don't Wet water Russ honey I'm about to flush

Us I'm about to flush Wet hair Dad open the door Open the door It's me a son Daring into the middle distance Let it go

Oh, you're right. It was good, right? It was good. You're right. Bokia was good, dude. Hell yeah, dude. My name is Justin McRoyan. I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McRoy. 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 Fraswick. I know the best game of the week. Welcome to The Besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club and just by listening, you have become a member. This year we're talking about what if a very old video game was about a much older TV show. here we are. The Simpsons have invaded Fortnite. Chris Plant, remind me

about the Simpsons. Oh, well, it all started a long time ago when a man named David's... Look, it's called Fart Night. That's what you need to know. Fortnight has been sitting on the Fartnight pun for years and years wondering

when are we going to get to use it. And Old Alberto came up and spray painted that thing and changed of the world, and now it's all anybody wants to talk about. I mean, we'll, they will be among them right after this.

I don't want my, I don't want my cheeky intro to be mistaken for cynicism because when you jump out of the bus and it's all of Springfield, it's cool. Yeah, I liked it. It was fun. You can go to the Simpsons house

and run around, and y'all, being in the Simpsons house is weird. Because I know how to get around the Simpsons house. That was a very surreal moment. It's like clearing Bart's room, like slicing the pie into Homer and Marge's room. Does it put a thumb on the scale of where players drop when you kind of like turn the different destinations into a bit of like tourism in that way? Because I feel like it would be a real hot spot. Well, they have four.

Fortnite always has like hot spots as you, if you will, that people are meant to gravitation. towards, but it's not just the house. There's also, like, the power plant and the city hall and all sorts of stuff are represented. The Simpsons fans have been chasing this dream since, like, the first year that this damn show came out. And we've got a lot of versions of this, you know, beginning with my favorite 3D recreation, the 3D Simpsons PC game that moved at about four frames per second, but it did let you go around a version of the Simpsons house. Then we got Simpsons hit and run. We have so many damn games.

What is wild about this? And I think I said this to you fresh while we were playing is, oh, this is what happens if you have that AAA budget. Or you have that Grand Theft Auto style sense of awe where every time you crest a hill, you are stunned that they put that much effort into whatever you're seeing. I want to take a step back before we get too deep into it because I think there are probably a lot of people. I am very, I did not play Simpsons Fortnite. I covered some other stuff for this week. So I am desperate to hear, like, is it a season? Sure.

I think there are a lot of people that, like, haven't played Fortnite or a while. I, for what it's worth, have been, I, like, started playing Fortnite when a battle royale started launching. And then I went dark for, like, two years. But I've been basically playing every season for the last, like, three years. So, as you would imagine. Or not is it fun to talk about. It's just fun to play. Yeah.

It's not fun to podcast about it. It's just fun to play and enjoy it. Except now it's so out of pocket. Yeah. I think this was a pretty extreme moment. So in this case, normally a season is about three months, but they've been doing these mini seasons that usually occur right around this time of year that focus on like a specific franchise.

So last year was Star Wars. That was the one where you can make Darth Vader say fuck. Yes. Right. Or Darth Vader says fuck. I remember reading about that. And he had thoughts about cryptocurrency. So that was last year.

And this year, they're doing Simpsons. And I think last year, the map was like had like mostly Star Wars stuff, but they were still like a lot of Fortnite stuff carried through. This was like they started from zero and built Springfield from scratch within the Fortnite. So the whole map at Griff is like any big landmark from Springfield you can think about is there. It's all rendered in like a pretty large scale. And like crucial characters are in the world.

at those locations and there's quests how to like going to find them. And not even just the macro, but also the micro. So if you were to walk into the Quickey Mart, for example, there would be show accurate magazines and snacks and shit like that.

That's, that's, it's buffoundly wild. It's like wildly detailed. Every environment is like that. Like you can run around Springfield Elementary. You can walk around. Oh,

fucking the, the best one, right? I parachuted onto the side of, uh the power plant onto a balcony right walked into the huge glass doors into mr burns's office hit the button on his desk to drop the trap door in front of him then drop down the trap door to where the uh oh first of all i release the hounds there's a button release the hounds which makes hounds go around the area and attack people who are at the in the region and they i think that's at the burns the burns manner and then you can push the button for the trap door and go down into

the trap door and there's like treasure down there and it's that's all fully rendered too and you to dig your way out of it like it's it's truly wild the fact that they made this engine so complete also that they need to still have fortnight stuff in it because that is ultimately their brand so they have made simpson's versions of fortnight characters yes like the Peley. Well, Peely, but Peely is later revealed might just be Professor Frank, who transformed itself into a banana. I do like that a lot.

The story still unfolding. Can I say I've been, I was going to play this already. Russ, that pushed me over the edge to where I might actually certainly download in the middle of this podcast. That's very, very strong, very good. And then there are Disney plus animated shorts set also within this stuff. Yeah, they made like. several four-minute shorts.

So explain what that means. How do you watch? Does it just like appear? Is it like a cutscene? You can go to Disney Plus, and because Simpsons is on Disney Plus, and then they have shorts that they release, you know, like every couple months, and they have Fortnite shorts that are airing every week that are related to the game. And you can also watch them in the game as well.

Okay, that's what I was more curious about. There's also a lot of. battle pass stuff there's characters there's like increasingly specific references like the battle pass it starts out with like basic characters and you get like ned flanders and then you get like zombie marge and then there's like homer in a devil costume and the ned flanders stuff is like man like the glider is a huge mustache that just like has trimming shooting out of it like there's a uh his alternate costume is nothing at all is the uh the ski suit yeah his like all the props are so there's like a left-handed emergency kit that's like his back piece that flanders wear like that's

just that one character like there's so many different like unlockable like little ingags like that for for the show so yeah russ you might be able to speak more to this having played like all these seasons what is the fate of this content once this you know mini season is over yeah that's a good question so traditionally it basically vanishes there is an element that i'm not a hundred percent up on on the creative side of Fortnite where people like can make their own maps and things like that, whether that means that it could be playable or experienceable after the fact. I know part of the challenge here is like just keeping download sizes down. Like you can't just keep this map downloadable for everyone forever because it just makes

the scale of the Fortnite download too huge. But it would be, as Plant said when we were playing, it would be a real shame if hardcore Simpsons fans only found out about this a month later, like the season ends at the end of November. So realistically, this is your chance. If you found the game in December and you wouldn't be able to play this

map, that's a real damn shame. I think that they will, I would, I mean, obviously they could bring it back, but I feel like they'll leave it. I was interested, it's been a long time since I logged into Fortnite, and I was really interested to see the extent to which those experiences

is, uh, it's starting to look a lot, it's beginning to look a lot like Roblox. Like the, a lot of the, um, those experiences that are, like, there's a sort of role playing category. And it's like all those like, obbies and like K-pop demon hunter, grow a garden, tycoon, all that stuff from Roblox is happening in Fortnite with just like better mechanics and like, it was actually a recent lawsuit over a game called Steel the Brain Rot, which apparently is very big in Roblox that also got ported to Fortnite. and who owns the rights to that. So it's getting very dicey on that front as well. Yeah, but there was more experiences that, like, I actually got my kids into Fortnite. Like, they both played.

We played trios and got a victory royale. It was crazy. Like, it was a lot of fun. So that matching is still working, like, really well, because us three dorks were able to get in and have a good match. So I don't know. We have to share that yesterday Justin got in the Bessie Slack and excitedly shared that him and Charlie got a victory of Royale.

and then 21 minutes or 20 minutes later, Russ said this was my win from yesterday and put up a video of him winning a victory royale. And plant, you did point out fairly that Justin got a victory royal with his kid flexed with a solo royale. It was a really, and as me, like as a spectator to that whole thing, it was so uncomfortable, guys.

I stopped paying attention. I didn't even see all that stuff play out. I just told you guys about the great stuff for my life and then moved on. I was sharing the great stuff in my life, too. It doesn't mean it's a flex or a challenge. I didn't take it that way. I didn't take it at all.

I didn't take it at all. But had I taken it, I wouldn't have taken it that way. We can all have good moments in our lives. It's okay. There is this part of me, whenever I play Fortnite, there's this part of me that's like, man, are we wasting our time? Should we have stopped here? This is fun, you know?

Like, I feel like we, there is, I should, I would be a happier person if I was like, I'm just going to play some fucking Fortnite this. And I'm not going to do other stuff. I'm not going to play. I can't. Fortnite is like working so hard to just be fun and play it. And I think, why do I keep putting myself through it?

Justin, this pays our bills. There is not an insignificant number of people who listen to this very show, who do only have time to play Fortnite and maybe like two other games. And then they listen to us because it's our job to go out bravely, I might add, into the world to play those other games on their behalf. And then to come back and to tell them, hey, don't worry, we got you covered. We can tell you what to say at the cocktail parties you're all going to. You keep playing Fortnite.

We're here for you. This is great, Chris. We need a new heuristic here on the besties that we apply to every game we talk about, which is, is it worth pulling yourself away for a few minutes from the sweet, glowing, pleasure box of Fortnite? this incredible joyous sandbox, is it worth a little bit of that sweet Fortnite time or not? I don't know.

Justin, I have a question for you specifically. Hit me. Last year, during Game of the Year period and before it, there was a little game called Astrobot. Yeah. And one of the points you made about Astrobot, which is not totally off base, I definitely can see your perspective,

is that it really is just one giant fucking ad for PlayStation. and its brand. Yeah, right. How do you feel about Fortnite, which is not just the Simpsons ad at this point, but also a multimedia brand ad for like Marvel and Disney, you name it.

I mean, it's pretty whack, obviously. I think it's all pretty whack. Yeah, I mean, it is. But it is also like if you're a fan of something and you do like, like this is a very, to me, okay, okay, for me, here's a difference. this is a very like healthy and like rewarding way of engaging with something that people love right this isn't like this feels less like capitalizing on and more like i mean they do do capitalization they do

capitalize on it's like simpsons like it's celebratory to me this feels like it's very and there's like to me there's so much more in here than you could ever like like uh just kind of experience in one run. It's like very loving, very like thoughtfully recreated, very richly detailed, and also like, free. Yeah. An astrobot. It's so long as you have willpower,

it's free. Also, Russ, you should know this, that when we're trying to lobby and position games in the game of the year discussion, we all say a lot of shit we don't mean. We will say fucking anything to get our game in place. I just didn't like it because I like guns and coins and stuff.

coins there's one other detail here too which is Astrobot doesn't have like Mario coming in and then punching Astrobot in the dawn That's the cycle Yeah you're a higher shit right

That's like what makes this work weirdly for me Is a sensation that There were people on every single Creative team that has partnered With Fortnite and Epic That was pissed About a decision

That still ended up going through in the game There are so many people who would be thrilled if it was just their IP during their IP time. And you couldn't have the crossovers or you couldn't have your characters have guns or you couldn't do all. I mean, there are, I would say, rumors of very, very intense fights over which characters could wear shoes once they added shoes because of like very specific partnerships with like Nike and Reebok. I mean, it's very clear. Like, LeBron has a skin in the game. Yeah.

The fact that he can wear a fucking, I don't know what he has to deal with. Adidas is like so counter to the idea of like that would never be allowed in an advertisement on court, whatever it is. But because Fortnite got so fucking big, Epic was able to use their legal strong arming to just let them do whatever. And so this isn't the like, you know, IP free or like a lawyer-free future that some people would like. It is also not just being able to play with your toys, but it is so leaps and bounds further than any other one of these sorts of collaborations that it feels still funky and weird and unlike anything else, which I think allows it to stay fresh, despite it being a collision of a thousand different commercials. Yeah, that's really the reason why I've been playing Fortnite for the last whatever, however many years is just they do a very good job of keeping it fresh in ways that like PubG, Didn't. Like, they just didn't know how to scale it or the engine couldn't handle it, whatever it is.

And here, every month or two, the game is changing in either minor or major ways such that I can remain interested. And also, I just use it as a, it's my golf equivalent. Like, I take meetings during it and, like, discuss actual work. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah, I know a job, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's.

No, you do, actually. I've been on those calls with you. It's kind of incredible. I think there's also something to be said though for like these these things are going like I want to bring up the Roblox thing again these sorts of like IP mashup like capitalizations will happen outside of the stakeholders in those things and I think that a lot of the ways that you like I've seen my kids try to play games on Roblox that are like just utter garbage with like the thinnest veneer of some IP that they like put onto it I think there's a big difference like there was a mini there was like a Disneyland adventure within Fortnite right yeah and I when I went into that I had never seen this but like you go in it's like kind of a cool recreation of the park and there's it's like dropping you into mini games that are set in the attractions so you're like running around you know realized versions of these and like doing little mini games and stuff

it's like it's so much better I mean it's just better it's like better content it's like better stuff it's worthwhile it's more attractive it's like more pleasurable to engage with And I think that that is a meaningful difference where it's like not some AI garbage that some robot is cranking out based on whatever IP you plug into it. But it's like people who at least care about these properties are doing something interesting with them in Fortnite. Yeah. It's also, by the way, the Roblox parallel is a little bit off because Roblox is almost instant because the assets are endemic to Roblox. And a lot of these Fortnite like many experiences that they want to try to lure kids into like this, there's a download. that you have to do before you can get into it

because there's a lot more assets in the Fortnite experiences than the Roblox experiences. So I don't know if they're gonna get there because it's like, it's tough when your friends like, come play this with me and there's a couple minutes where you gotta wait for it to download

where Robox is always like so seamless. It's like I jumped into this, come jump in with me. When we used to stream Fortnite, the number of streams, we had to start late because one of us wouldn't realize that there was a fucking, you know, 25 gigabyte patch

to get Peter Griffin in the mix was quite frequent. Last thing I'll say on this as definitely a fan of what they're doing. Obviously, I'm still you know there's no better representation of the consolidation of power within the games industry than

like Epic and Fortnite and what they're doing. So I'm, there's also that like a little bit bitter pill in the aspect but with that power they are making a good game so I feel a little bit torn on that front. But I will say I watched

a YouTube video. It was just like a YouTube short of someone playing as Goku, gliding in, landing on the Simpsons roof, going through the door and sitting on the couch with like fucking Darth Vader

and several other like known characters and the Simpsons theme playing like it was the beginning of like a Simpsons couch gag and three years ago if I'd seen that video I'd be like oh that was

that's fucking AI like that's a joke and the fact that it exists in the real world as like a legitimate game is wild so that's kind of the It really is the peak of what they've been trying to do for many years.

Am I going to be, if I start playing now, am I going to be, like, way behind? That's really, you guys are such a good time. There's no behind in Portland. I'll play this afternoon. It's Fortnite. You just play it. It depends on how long it's been. If it's like you haven't played since the beginning, you're like, oh, wait, there's, you can super jump and there are cars now.

No, I mean, I can look and see the last time we stream this game. You can eat a blinky fish and do teleport jumps now. Yeah, you'll be fine. Squishy and have super speed. Also, if you haven't played in a while, I'm not going to tell you. this to Justin because it might hurt his feelings. But if you haven't played in a while, they'll probably match you with bots. Oh, yeah. Dude, there's a little argument in my head about that. Sorry, was I, sorry, was I, no, it seemed like all bots. Everyone was very bad.

But I think the last person, the last, like, three people we killed seemed like they were angry. So they might have been real, but pretty much everybody else just kind of took it. I was playing with a seven and 11 year old, man. I was not bragging. I was saying it's a really, it's a great matchmaking experience. It is. That's the only thing I want to. to point out. God, is there a better fucking moment? I play some competitive games with Henry on Roblox sometimes.

Is there a better moment than when you can fucking clutch up a win in front of your child in that experience? Holy shit, man. I feel so tall. Cooper had to bail because it was too intense.

She turned it off. Is there a better moment than you see that joy in your kid's eye and then you turn to them and go, yeah, but they were all bots. So, like. Uncle Russ texted them

to let him know primarily. They got another truth. It's important. Can we take a break and then I'll talk about the future of e-sports? Yes. I haven't played a game in my life

that has turned me off faster than Q-Up. Have you guys fucked with it yet? No. I tried to, but it wouldn't work on Steam Deck. You needed a mouse and keyboard, so I'll quit. Yeah, there's no controller support, which is a huge bummer because it would... I was actually playing it on my Rogg ally last night.

You can, like, kind of move the cursor around, Anyway, that's a weird way to start. You start the game up, and it asks you to, like, do some settings, like, come up with this random number for a random number generator. There's, like, some gag shit of, like, turn up mouse sensitivity, rate the game, but then you can turn up developer sensitivity, and the higher you turn it, the more stars you end up giving the game. It is, like, so full of these gags about modern games as service kind of contrivances.

that are objectively very funny but then it drops you into the game with fucking no explanation as to what's going on or what you're doing here and it is very much a game about kind of like unpacking what's happening here and what's happening is you are flipping coins you're you're flipping a coin and it's either going to be heads or tails cue or up in this game wait which one is cue and which one is up it doesn't fucking matter man cue is heads and up his tails. Okay. I think that's, that's, that's probably the best. I think you got it backwards, Griff. Oh, okay, maybe. You are, you cue, you genuinely do join a matchmaking cue, because this game does have, is it real? I believe it's, yeah, so it has online play. I believe

it's, like, asynchronous where, like, once you queue up with a team, like, it automatically runs all the math of what's going to happen. I don't think it's actually happening in real time, because there's certain prompts you can, like, dismiss or not dismiss, and I don't see how that would happen if, you know, eight players were all kind of doing the same thing. So you're put on a team of four and then first to three wins after coin flips wins the match. And then you go back to the, you know, fucking Fortnite splash screen sort of games of service menu where you can look at the shop and you can check your messages and you can form a party. And like, it has all of these trappings that make you think like they've genuinely made like an overwatch of, you know,

of coin flipping. So that's... How did that make you feel? Bad, bad and not good and confused and not great. Is it a joke? Then you get some messages pretty quickly. Then you start getting messages, right? Uh-oh.

And that's where you start to get some explanations for the rules in these messages. Like, hey, when you have these skills that activate these certain points, here's what that actually means. Here's what these different currencies are actually for. Here's what's actually going on. You get messages from like people

who are like, wow, you seem like you're winning maybe a little bit too much. Here's some currencies for you to use. You start to invest in the, that side of things, the not coin flipping side of things. And that's when the game kind of reveals itself for what it is, which is an incremental game, the new jam from Frank Lance, who made universal paper clips, which I think kind of established a lot of the norms of the genre of incremental idle games. Only the incremental, the incremental until the building that you're doing, the strengthening that you're doing, is all entirely personal. So you have a hero that you pick, sort of Overwatch style. You only have a handful unlocked. At the beginning, you can unlock more as you go along. Each hero has like a different little modifier, a different little thing.

But for the most part, a lot of the payoff comes in this huge skill grid. Each hero has like certain special skills, but then you'll unlock skills that you can place in the grid wherever you want. Those skills will trigger on wins. So if your team wins a flip, it'll trigger this skill. Some of them trigger on losses. Some of them trigger when the game starts. Some of them trigger when the game ends. Genuinely, anything you can think that could happen in a very simple first to three

coin flip challenge, they have found a way to make a game mechanic out of it in some way. Sometimes you'll have skills that trigger other skills. So to say like on a loss, this one will activate. all the skills surrounding this node, and you start to build these insane chain reactions to maximize the currencies that you get for each win and loss and match win and match loss, right? So you can get a bunch of skills, or there's also gear, there's items that you buy in a shop that you, like, have a load out equipped that basically do kind of the same thing. Like, this will give you 500 XP each round that will be multiplied maybe by your skills.

You're trying to, like, build these multipliers and build these chain reactions and utilize your heroes like special abilities but like none of that shit affects the coin flip you don't get a skill that makes you win more coin flips okay vitally you don't get any kind of ability that will make it more likely that your team will win a coin flip the coin flips are going to happen and then the points that you get for the result of that coin flip are entirely your shit entirely your build entirely everything so like the only kind of like the messages If I can just hop in really quickly there. Yeah, please, please.

The messages that you will get will be from the game creators. Right. And if, let's say that you lose four rounds in a row in each round, you lose in a shutout. Like you didn't get a single coin flip right. You will get a message that's like, fairness is our top priority. Something seems to be a miss here. We've rejiggered the flibble flops and we are assuring you that there is peak fairness happening at all times. And as, as, you know, a sign of gratitude, take these coins.

And then you will take those coins and there will be a Yula, which if you actually read the Yula, thousands of words, at the bottom, it will be like, and also we now own all of the rounds of your game. We own all of your personal data. We own all of this shit. Which then we'll have a link to another story. And that's the other side of the game, which is the visual novel side of the game. Yeah, so there's a whole news feed where you will see, like, on the splash screen, like, of all the legal trouble that, like, the company that made this game is getting in. But it's, like, a fake, it's a real website, but it's like a fictionalized, like, in-universe sort of coverage of the queue-up e-sport. What, all of that is like, it's really funny.

And it's like really, really, once you kind of understand what it is and how it doesn't really impact the coin flips or like the build shit that you get into, these like chain reactions you try to build between your skills and your items and your hero skills to make it so you can get like billions and billions and billions of points with a single match of queue up, whether you win or lose, you could have a setup where like you have items. that trigger on losses and you have skills that trigger on losses so that when you lose, you get more points than you do when you win. It's all about like how your build allows you to harvest resources from the matches whether you win or you lose. And engaging with that stuff is so confusing at the start because it doesn't explain fucking anything and it kind of slow rolls that shit out to you. The multiplayer aspect of it is really great because there is like a ranking system sort of like Overwatch style. Sorry, for a second. Do we know for sure that the multiplayer is real multiplayer?

Yes, it is real multiplayer. And the reason that you know that, my favorite part about the multiplayer, is you will see people on your team and people on the other team, like you'll win a flip, and then you will see that they have just earned 72 quadrillion points. And it's like, how the fuck, what is your setup that you were able to get that, right? So it's like, imagine you're playing universal paper clips only there was like asynchronous multiplayer and you could see that like this person was getting shit in the like exponential Googleplex like you know uh there's also certain interactions like one of the characters has a skill called i think meta awareness and what that skill does is you pick one of the playable characters in the game and if that player is on the other team when you start it adds a point to this like meta awareness stat that will then like multiply your score or do like all this other shit but if you guess wrong and that player's not on the team that stat resets so it's genuinely like knowing like okay which characters are people playing the most and if i pick that

then it's actually going to give me this stat like that is what that whole character is kind of based around it's just like it's a all this stuff about the coin flip e-sports and the the the overwatch sort of pastiche and all that shit is all a joke but they also have made a game mechanic out of the trappings of it the system of it you're menus of it it it's a thing at the end of any game where it adds up your score and it has all these different bonus except for you are designing the contraption that creates that math. Yeah. Right.

That's the whole game is creating the bonus chain and optimizing it, knowing that you can actually have it go the other way, too. You can actually design a chain that destroys you. Yes. When you lose, it gives you a base score of like minus 500 points to your ranking, right? If you have like a bunch of shit that like just multiplies your score, then that will go, you will lose so many points. You have to have shit in there

that will just add some base score to counteract that because you don't want to multiply a negative number because it'll really fuck you over. So like that is the side of things. That is the incremental part of things. You're earning gold that you used to buy items.

You're earning XP to like level up your heroes and get these new skills. But the like end results and I realize this is a weird thing to ask about an idol game. But like the end goal I should say is like learning more about the universe, the like visual novel stuff.

I mean the end goal is to like build these insane chain reaction things with your skills and items. That is the end goal of this as an incremental game, right? And then for narrative, I think what Frank and his team are getting at is one, the absurdity of fairness in competitive games, that you have people who want fairness, but then also want upgrade pass constantly. And then also the way that if a game does have fairness, how it can loop you into all of these other mechanisms that, that are the separate meta game that you can play that keeps you spending money

and keeps you buying coins and all of that stuff. It is a game that is very much grappling with the anxieties of this. It's grappling with Fortnite. I think it's saying less, I think Overwatch is a more apt comparison. Like, obviously it's saying a lot about games of service and the sort of intrusiveness of that kind of formula. But for me, it feels less like a shot at Fortnite

and more a shot at East Sports competitive points. Sure. Yeah. That makes sense. But also, when you build a chain reaction that gives you a fucking ton of points,

it feels pretty, it does scratch that, you know, that Universal Paper Clips incremental game, like, holy shit, I just, I'm rich.

Like, it does hit the number go up, itch. That's the trick, right, though? That's what Frank is so good at, and I think of Lucas Pope is so good at with something like Papers, where it's,

hey, we are going to make the thing that we are shaking feel good so you get how it became so powerful. Absolutely. It's a really interesting game. I do wish there was controller support because I think I would play it a lot more on my RoggalliX, but it's

one of the more compelling incremental games I've played in a while. Yeah, it's very interesting. Do you want to jive into some reader mail? Yeah, I like that if you don't mind. This letter comes from Alexander. Hi, Bestie. My parents have never played a video game in their life,

but they are now retired and they've developed an interest in trying some out. They even went so far as to buy an Xbox Series X. I'm glad they're still selling, y'all. And two controllers. My question for you guys is, what are some games you'd recommend that are simple enough to be fun for people who are learning to use a controller and understand game language, but whose content and themes are interesting and engaging for adults,

which I think is a different request than we've gotten past about teaching kids to play games? So far, I've gotten them Portal 2, but we love some other suggestions. Two player games would be a specially welcome, thanks. I have one, although I hesitate to give it. What is it? It's either It takes 2 or split fiction. Oh, God. I hesitate to give it.

Did you edit out of a part where they say they don't love their parents? I think for someone that has really never played games much at all. Or heard a story before? Like, that's the problem with split fiction is like, that's very insulting if they've read a bunch of... I have to assume they've ingested other media if they haven't been playing games this whole time, right? So, like... Missing the split fiction episode of this podcast has truly put a pretty wide gap between me and I feel like the rest. I feel like something happened in that episode.

The gap is between you and the listeners. Like, that's where the gap is. I don't know if the listeners... I think some of the listeners agree with us. Some of them don't. That's okay. It's chilling. Because I think that, man, I'm continually like kind of bowled over by how good the Jackbox games are.

Oh, yeah. Getting non-gamers into games by using a device that they already feel comfortable with. Like we played the, not to get into an honorable mentions, but I played the 11 compilation that came out for my birthday. We had some people over. And it was like a wide range of people. Never played a game before. but there's like a they have a new sort of like

murder mystery game in there where you have to answer you have to answer personal questions about yourself and then one of you is the murderer and the way they hint at people is they reveal answers that this person gave to the personality quiz so you're like trying to find the criminal

by how well you know their personality and there's one in every round that's a lie so you have to try to like figure out there's like fake information but that's like that's like a parlor game that's right on the edge of digital. And, like, I think that that's a really good place to get people in for stuff.

Although, it doesn't use the controller, right? You're using phones for that. So, yeah, you can use phones. And what I think is, for me, I think the best thing about them is that they are, like, on streaming services. Like, they're not just on Steam. Because for me, I don't have it, like,

endemic that Steam can be on my living room TV, right? It takes a few cords being plugged in. But I can just press a button on the Apple TV and, like, the jackbox will start up. up there so that's that's kind of nice um i i feel like portal two is a wild first first pick it's obviously a great game and i think you you get there but i mean in introducing games to you know both of my kids at this point like there's a certain amount of easing in to like familiarity with a controller before operating two thumbsticks at the same time and one of those thumbs has

to move over to buttons and one of them has to move over to a secondary D-PAT. Like, that is really pretty difficult to understand if you've really... Clearly, these people are using bumper jumpers, so that's not an issue. Yeah, that sounded like, I assumed they were using bumper jumpers. I sort of get it with Portal 2 because you are, for most of the early game in a, quote, safe space to, like, learn everything. The other thing I wanted to call out...

If you want a break is half TV show. That's true. Yeah, you can really relax. So you can like, they can like take a break from playing video games if that gets to be a bit much. Yeah. Stardu co-op would probably be another option for them. Yeah, I was going to say that too, and it's not a bad idea. I think also any of the beat-em-ups, like Castle Crashers, we've talked about quite a few of these lately that I think are solid.

And yeah, any of the story games, until dawn, I don't know if until Dawn's not on Xbox. Oh, the first season of Walking Dead would be very good. Yes. Yeah, that's not bad. I played that essentially in co-op with my wife, and it was a really great experience. That was a definite, like, easing, easing Rachel into, we played through all of those. No, honestly. I think blue prints would be, I mean, it's not two players, but it's definitely a two, like, it's a two-per, it could be, it's a great two-person experience.

I've heard from a ton of people that played it with a partner and really enjoyed it. Yeah, yeah. And last one, anything with Lego at the beginning of the title. It's good to avoid, yeah. No, Lego Voyagers Like that, that'll be good Once you played one of them You played them literally all

But I guess if they've never played even one of them Then you could get them one There you go There you go You didn't play Voyagers Justin, you don't know Change the game It's a delight Voyagers changed the game

Y'all I want to hear some honorable mentions Because I know folks have been playing Some other stuff We're watching some good stuff I'm sure Hoops You got a good book That you're gonna tell me about I know man

The good book I only read like really spicy stuff, like really steamy stuff and it wouldn't be appropriate for this audience. I just finished bride. It was very, very, very sexy hot stuff. Mates up next. Looking forward to it. Not the topic today. I want to tell you about haunted

hotel. I know. What's that? It's a show. It really did come out on Netflix, which is one of the big ones. It stars Will Forte as the owner of a hotel that is completely overrun with ghosts. And then he in his like 30s or 40s dies and leaves the hotel to his sister and her two kids and a demon named Abadon who also lives in the hotel. So Nathan is a ghost in the hotel and he's

getting adjusted to ghost life. And he is sort of the in between the ghosts and his sister. And this is like a long struggling business. It does not do very well because of all the ghosts. And the stories are really like about the the ghosts and how they interact with the family and how Nathan is adjusting to being non-corporial um it's it's like it's extremely funny it's really funny it's a little more like tonally it is not unlike a gravity falls or stuff like that but oh it's animated it's animated sorry i should have been more clear about that yeah it is an animated series and it's it's um it's more grown up than those it's it's it's like a little more adult tonally. I think

there's stuff that's like that would be kind of on the line for our kids. Like a Beetlejuice tone? Yeah. Beetlejuice is a close. Yeah. Beetlejuice is like right there. Not heavy on like the profanity or stuff, but there's like some pretty big questions. A lot of it is like for instance

there's an area, there's an episode where Nathan, the ghost who's played by World Forte, starts sinking into the ground and won't, and will continue to sink into the core of the ground until he discovers the meaning of life. And he's got a few days to figure it out. So he and his niece, the one of the, you know, the young girl who is the daughter of the mom who's inherited

the hotel, uh, have to figure out the meaning of life in like a few days before he sinks the into the earth. And there's like murderers that died in the hotel and still try to kill the kids but they're non-corporal so the kids get a big kick out of it. That kind of like, it's that kind of a thing. But it's like it's very, it's just really, really funny. And it's, I feel like it's tough to find stuff. I think not tough. I think people are afraid to do comedy that is on the line

of good taste because they don't know how to do it funny enough that they can get a, that they can sell it, right? So there's a lot of shows that I think aren't funny enough to get close to the line of like what is like appropriate what is it and really like push the envelope

in a way that it's just uncomfortable. Right? It's just like actually trying to make you think about stuff and it's just on the line there but it is funny enough that it sells it right that it can get into those like topics that are on the edge and do them with like taste but like in a really really genuinely funny way and i think that that is what this show is it is not like the sort of um i think there's an adult animation style that wanted to be so comforting for people that it got never got close to anything that approximated strife

you know it's it's a very sort of like comfort watch kind of of animation that adults have gotten into this to me it feels a little bit more like I'm gonna say married with children like that level of edge at that time period if you know what I'm talking about where it's like it's not bad it's just like people don't normally talk about some of this stuff so it's kind of it feels bad I feel edgier than maybe it is the cast is killer I it a liar Skylo Gizondo, Jimmy Stimson Damn So, Deedric Bader, hell yeah

Yeah, the Harry show fans stand up There is an episode where The son who's a little bit older Gets into a multiplicity kind of situation Because the hotel, because it is haunted and so Cursed, like any number of magical things can happen He gets into a multiplicity situation Where it's other sides of his own personality

and discovers that like his mom prefers almost every other version of himself to him. So it's him trying to figure out how he can kill these other versions of himself because he's losing his mom's love, or at least that is the impression. But that's kind of like, it's like, it's funny. It's like right on the line and it feels like mature in an actual way. But it's like, it's called Haunted Hotel. It's on Netflix and they're making another season according to Netflix. Cool.

Sounds great. Yeah, it's great. Can we talk about luminous? Yes. Do anyone else play Luminous, Arise? Yeah, I played it. I know played a little bit. We talked about it on Resties as well a bit.

So you've laid the groundwork. It's the new jam from Enhance, which is Tetsuya Miziguchi. Is that his name? His studio creator of Res and most recently, Enhance made Tetris. effect. And I would say luminous arise is very, very much in that same sort of trance-like

aesthetic vein. I mean, luminous has always sort of been about that life. And luminous arise, I think, takes the knob of that trance-like shit and turns it all the way up and then tears it off and turns it in a river. I feel like it's been a long time since

luminous had an intrigue. Can you talk about the core? I'm excited for this. I love to see people explain this thing. I tried doing it on Resties, and I really struggled to go for it. You got it. In Luminous, you have a board, a grid, where you are dropping blocks. The blocks are two by two blocks, and the segments of those blocks are one of two colors. The base bog standard shit is like there will be white squares and orange squares, and some arrangement of those in a two-by-two little block.

You're dropping those into this grid. It's affected by gravity, so if you drop half the block on a stack, the other half will fall down to the ground. When you create a two by two pattern at least that is one color, then it kind of locks in. And what is also happening is set to the beat of usually trance music. There is a bar that sweeps across the grid. As it passes by one of these completed two by two single color blocks, it clears it. And you will get points.

If you can do four of those two by two blocks, you get like a multiplier, a combo. And if you can do that over multiple, you know, bars of music, these bars sweeping over, that combo will increase more and more and more and more. You also don't want to fill up the grid and not have room to place a block because then you will lose. You will lose the game. So the point of like getting high scores is setting up these scenarios where you can build a combo where you build this huge structure of one color. And then when it clears, it drops bricks of the other color onto other ones and they form their own huge bricks. and it's building combos and figuring out like when you want to cash out

like a little segment that you've been setting up without creating a scenario where you've overfilled the board with these like little isolated colors that aren't going to clear. Now, my wife just says it's Tetris. It has many similarities to Tetris because Tetris you're doing the same thing.

You're trying to decide when you build and when you cash in so that you don't fuck yourself over. Luminous is very much doing that. However, I'll say also the other element to luminous is like it is and this is definitely the case of their eyes it's like it's a it's not just about the gameplay but like the

aesthetics that you're creating is like almost part of it like if you think about like Rez itself was based on a win amp visualizer this is like this feels like that like trying to take the how can you take the gameplay and make like

bring it into the visuals and bring it into the sound so it's like a a stenesthesia kind of kind of deal that that like I feel like that conversation always gets a little bit dicey in how much of that is just kind of like marketing buzz and all that shit with luminous because you are the the information you're working with is kind of inherently pretty simple it's two colors and you want to keep them together that's the basic premise is like you don't want to create these little checkerboard patterns where there's one and one and one and they don't hit you want to sort of match colors together

and that at a very base level is not hard to do. So you start operating with this sort of hind brain sort of thought process that then kind of like gets hooked with the with the music that builds and flows and changes as you go. And so this, you know, it is trying to lull you into a bit of a puzzle trance, which was very much what Tetris Effect was aiming for as well. Here I just think it's a little bit more inherent to the structure. of luminous. The other thing that it adds is like as you clear these things, you're charging up a burst meter that you can activate by pulling a trigger, which then kind of freezes time a little bit. So you can drop blocks into build these huge structures. As you widen the structures you're building of one color, blocks of the other color disappear from the board. So you can keep

building and building and building until like you run out of time in the burst and it clears it in one sort of huge explosion that's like very, very satisfying. And then a fucking chameleon comes out and like licks your face. A chameleon will come out and lick your face. It is also like an oh shit button that you can pull sometimes if the board is getting too dicey because it's a little bit effective. And I really like that addition a lot because, I don't know, Luminous has felt like a game that can break you out of that trance when you're doing so bad.

When you drop a few blocks incorrectly and you fuck up your structures and you feel like, oh, God, recovering from this is going to suck. It takes you out of the thing, knowing that you have this option, this emergency break that you can pull. That's a really good. that's a really good when you're doing Tetris you're like seeing all these gaps right and when you mess up a

spacing it's like you just move on to another gap or like another gap is created in a sense and like with luminous it really does you see this ugly funky chunk of block I'll never get to you you suck I hate it there's also special blocks that will spawn in sometimes

that will chain so it will clear every block of one color as long as they are touching so if you like have been very good and disciplined about, like, making sure you are not isolating these different colors. You can, like, really, really, really set up a huge combo with that, too. It's fucking great. It's really, really, uh, I got really hooked on this, I think on PSP.

And it was like the perfect game on PSP because you could just like pick it out, pick it up, zone out, uh, and, you know, do a little bit of score chasing. There's this whole like element of this game where you have a little avatar who's like this little fucking penguin shaped, crystal dude and you'll unlock new parts for him and there's a gotcha pond where you can like unlock new parts and some of the ways it reshapes items like and like when your blocks merge the way they merge is like aesthetically really cool i'm flicking through some of the different like there's a there's a there's one where you're making like vegetables yeah start off like small

green things and as you like do a block of four green things it's like a larger broccoli and then when the screen clears it looks as though it's been like chopped in half it's very cool um i will say the soundtrack to this one hasn't uh i i can remember past luminous games playing them and then like saying like oh fuck i got a what was that song and adding it to like a playlist because i you know was really viving with it shining what's that shining that was like the big solo from that the first game i don't know if it's i i haven't played all the journeys and all the songs yet so like maybe i just haven't gotten to them yet but i it's been a slightly and you know you're you're you're a dad now you're out of your house era when you were playing the

this original one, you were at the club every night. He was. He had to pass a fire around. He was a big Hadaway guy. Yeah, for sure, for sure. I also wanted to talk about I don't want to go too hard on talking about the AYN Thor shit because we've talked about it so much. It's still infinitely

insane to me that we have a 3DS that you can basically do whatever on and to that point I saw a Reddit post that someone made of them playing Fantasy Star online on their AY and Thor connected to the internet using a rom hack they designed for Dolphin GameCube emulation. Setting that all up took me like two

days. But now I have a handheld where I can play Fantasy Star online on the GameCube with this custom rule set called Return to Raggole. And you can fucking play that shit online on your handheld with other players. And that is insane to me. That is patently so wild. I've been setting up Steam shit with Game Hub on it too, which works. You're doing GameHub or GameHub light? uh game hub uh and and that works surprisingly well with some games um but the real highlight for me this week is i have a handheld version of fantasy star online uh in a rom hack that is way more fun to play than the original fantasy star i'm going to drop in real quick fresh and then i'll throw to you but humanity is my pick for this week hell yeah dude yes it's so good yeah we still got a little

something left in us dude heck yeah man i so agree with this this is a big choice man good for you Unpopular Probably just from the current vibe but like Yeah but like Fuck yeah What did we do Did I miss something?

We as humanity Are half off on Steam right now If you want to play it So there's a noose pig I love that Before Luminous Arise The same studio made it

A video game called Humanity Where you play as a ghost dog Shiba Inu and you guide hundreds, if not thousands of people through lemming-style puzzles. It is the most PlayStation 1-ass video game. Oh, yeah, man. It is a total delight.

And you can get it now for, I think, it's like 15 bucks because of a sale, thanks to Luminous. So you should check it out. Great. Real quick, I have two things. The first one is Hades 2, which I'm closing in on the end of Hades 2,

which is exciting. I think when I finish it, I'll have deeper thoughts, but just keeping the people updated on it. Justin, I would recommend just deleting your 40-hour safe starting from scratch, but I realize you might not do that. The other thing I want to, no. No, I mean, like, I'm, I have thought about it. I genuinely have. We just have so many other things to play. That's kind of a heartbreaker about it.

Like, to be honest with you, I would love to say, yeah, I have the time to do that. I just don't. I think it's a lesson is what it is for the future, which is to say, I think, when the opportunity arises next time to play an early access game, maybe we play for three hours and then stop. Yeah. Yeah.

Maybe. It's a good lesson. We will be talking about this a lot next week, I imagine. The other thing. You know what? Rachel is the only smart one among us, because Rachel has been fighting Hades the whole time and like won't even, like, tries not to listen to the episode

I'm not sure how she does it, but she avoids taught, you know, I thought, I thought, oh, you're missing out, but like, there's a definite wisdom there. Definitely. The other thing I want to mention is a show called Pluribus, which is on Apple TV. Oh, yeah. Plus, I don't know what it's called these days, but, yeah. This is the Vince Gilligan show, the creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. He has a new show. It stars the woman who played Kim on Better Call Saul.

If you're familiar with that, I forget the actresses. She's name. Clayah? Clea? C-horn? Rhea C-horn. Yeah. Raya C-Horn.

Yeah. She's a dynamite in this. I don't know how much I really want to say, but I feel like if you're a fan of Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul, you understand Vince Gilligan's capability of making a really fucking good show. This one's much more sci-fi from the look. Definitely more sci-fi. This is him doing a Damon Lindelof-style show.

That was the vibe I was getting. What I would say is there's a. high concept of the show that I'm not going to talk about right now, but the high concept similar to Severance is revealed very, very, very early on. So I think that high concept is enough that I was like

very interested in where the show would go in addition to the fact that like dude knows how to write and produce like a really fucking amazing show. I would recommend anybody who's curious about it watch the pilot specifically a sap because words going to spread her out the show and people

are just going to start talking about the show for what it is. And the pilot, I'm sure, is thrilling if you already know what's happening. But it is especially great to discover what is going on alongside the pilot. It's one of the best pilots I've ever seen. Yeah, it's really, man, and I really, especially for when you're talking about, like, talking about being limited on time, it's really nice to get on board with the show where, like, you know that the creator knows how to deliver on a full series. He has to tell a story, knows how to end it, knows how to, like, do it on his terms. So it's like, you can feel confident about it.

They're signed up for two seasons through Apple, but he said he has ideas beyond that. But he's also said he knows where, presumably where it would end. So I'm sure he has the seasons at least blocked out in his head. So, yeah, you know at least you'll get a good, actual full story out of it.

Sick. Love it. Real quick, I want to thank the, folks over at the Patreon Patreon.com slash the Besties where you can get new episodes of Resties and bracket battles and all sorts of good stuff. Some new members that

recently joined. We have Stephen W. We have Doug. We have Michael S. And we have Catacwack. Thank you for being members of the Besties' Patreon. We greatly appreciate it. As I mentioned, we have a new episode of Resties. We go a bit deeper into Luminous, which

is there. And we also talk about a game called Escape from Duckov. which is a genuinely great extraction shooter. I was not expecting that. Single player extraction shooter. Yeah, single player only extraction shooter. I love that. Featuring a duck.

Cool. Who wants to talk about what we're doing next week? I can. We're going to start, you know, game of the year. It's closer than ever before. And we've got a couple more big releases, but there's a lot of stuff that has come, and we've enjoyed to different extents.

And we kind of want to, like, circle up, take a lay of the land, talk about the things that we maybe want to spend more time with, talk about things that we have been enjoying, just kind of take stock of stuff so we can figure out how to spend the rest of this year. There's a lot of games, I mean, Russ brought up blueprints right before we started, which is a really good example of a game that some of us loved and some of us can't play. So I don't know how we're going to have those conversations. It's going to be a really fucking intense year for Goaty discussion. So to save our friendships, we just want to, like, do a little table setting, you know? We are doing other, like, Kirby's still coming, Metroid's still coming this year. We're not, like, locking shit in, but that is...

I don't want to hear any numbers. You know, I'm not trying to rank. I'm just trying to figure out what still needs a little bit of that extra attention. Yep. Cool. We did it. I'm excited. I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks so much for joining us for this week on the besties. Be sure to join us again next week for the besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties