The Besties - Mewgenics is a Meow-sterpiece

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

How do we celebrate a new release from one of the most acclaimed indie game designers of all time? With Ron Funches, of course! The fifth Besty joins us to chat about Mewgenics, a tactics-RPG about cats, breeding, hoarding, and well… eugenics. Plus, Ron shares what it was like to approach his time on Traitors as a gamer. 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!

Is there a letter in video game history that has carried the weight of the world more than the M at the beginning of the video game title that we are discussing today? It's a tough game to talk about because you really need to hit that M so hard. Or else it sounds like you are providing a sort of full-throated endorsement for sort of genetic exclusion. as a kind of like philosophical policy. You're trying to say that eugenics, the video game, wouldn't sell. Yeah, no. Well, it depends on the region.

That depends where, what audience you're talking about. What a country! You just really, muigenics. Because otherwise you could sound like you're like a snobby person who's like, I've been playing meugenics, and that's still not good enough. That is how you sound all the sense. time, Griffin. Yeah, I know.

That's why today I'm going to be calling it the kitty cat game. People are calling it Balders Gatto, which I think is spectacular. I do like that. Real good. 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 Frasic. I know the best game of the week. My name is Ron Funches. And I know the best game of the week.

Yeah. Welcome to the besties. We got Ron back. in the house, Justin is not here. He is getting carpal tunnel surgery as we speak. Ron fucked up Justin's wrists just because of this. Yes, I did it just to be here. It's been too long.

And there was only way to give me back. And that was just to beat him down, Jay Leno style. Like the mom has done. Don't let anybody fool you. That's what's going on. I need to understand what you have just said. which is has Jay Leno recently had his ass beat by the mob? Or vice versa?

Does he beat asses? He's a large man and he has a variety of impressive cars. I could see him fitting into that lifestyle very well. Who knows? This week we're talking about a game by Edmund McMillan, the creator of Binding of Isaac that has been in development for over a decade called Muge. The Kiddycat game.

Chris Plant, what is Mugenics? Muginix is the latest game from Edmund McMillan. You might know him as the co-creator of Super Meat Boy, of the binding of Isaac.

Come on, you know who this person is. You've been listening to this show for a while. I should emphasize here also co-creator of Mugenics because created it with Tyler Glale

and many other wonderful people who I'm sure that we will talk about fresh, can you describe what the hell the game is? I don't know how to describe the game game. Let me do it in the A segment because it's a little complicated,

but it's a tactical strategy game with cats. Yep, and breeding. Yeah. That you're going to see a lot of cats making love and being murdered in some of the most horrific ways. Sometimes in the same room. Sometimes, yeah, sometimes at the same time. So we're going to talk all about that and more after this short break. Ron.

Yeah. When I reached out and said, hey, this is. is the game we're talking about. What was your immediate reaction? Is this a game you were looking forward to? Had you heard about it before? I had not heard a single word about this game coming out. I was unaware of it. In many ways, I thought you were joking. I had to quickly give it a Google, but then when I heard about the background of who the creators were, of course, is a big Super Meat Boy fan and Binding of Isaac fan. So I was excited. to play it and I'm a big

Final Fantasy Tactics is one of my favorite games of all times. So let's see this kind of tactical strategy game that mixes in the bit of like, rogue-like elements of you never know what your skill set is going to be from run to run. Something that's been interesting to me

because the majority of games I've been playing lately have had that some type of element of that, whether it's been Absalom or Cloverpit or something of that nature. So I just think that right now, that's kind of the hot thing to do. And in many ways, it's beautiful because it brings back such a sense of play of you not

knowing what's going to happen from run to run. Yeah. Yeah. It's really astonishing. From a genre perspective, it couldn't be more different from, uh, from a binding of Isaac. I don't even, it's very, I mean, I mean, okay. So it, insofar as it is a tack, a turn-based tactics game.

Why don't I, can I just to try to describe the core loop? Yeah, please. Okay. So you've got cats, generally four of them, and you send them on missions. So they'll go out, and before you send them on a mission, you'll select classes for them. So maybe you've got a cleric cat, and you've got a hunter cat, and a tank cat, what have you. And as they're going on missions, they'll level up, they'll get perks, they'll get passive perks, they'll get active spells they can cast, they've got mana, total mana, things like that. And the maps play out like tactical RPG maps.

if you played Baldersgate 3, incredibly similar in terms of combat. You've got move distance and turn speed, you know, an order of turns and things like that. So imagine that. And as Ron mentioned, it's randomized. So the perks you're getting when you're leveling up are random. Some of them are specific to your class, but some aren't.

And you're basically going through these adventures where, you know, cats get injured, cats get mutations, various things can happen to them. And then when you finish an adventure, you bring those cats back to your house and you, watch them fuck. And those cats that are fucking have babies that have elements of the original cats. So maybe those elements are their original stats. Maybe those elements are spells that the parents had. Maybe they're disorders that the parents had. There's like a variety of different disorders you can get. And so that's the loop. And the big thing to keep in mind is once you've taken cats on a run, you cannot take them out again.

They're going to live in the house. They're going to breed. But you're not taking them out again. is a slight exception to that, but that's the basic loop. Yeah. Or you can grind those cats up, maybe not grinding them up, maybe they're going to a healthy home for advantages with various shop owners. Yeah, you can donate the cats to... Yeah, well, you do want to hoard these cats, you're not going to keep them forever.

At some point you're going to be like... No, you don't ever see them again when you do donate. You don't. You don't. And the places they go are pretty empty. No, they don't seem like great, huh? I don't know. Tink seems like, at least Tink is like,

invested in the health of the of the cats that's true like wants to provide she might be been in the army yeah possible uh i have spit the the tactic side of things is really really uh really beefy like you can really sink your teeth into like uh on a run you might have a team of cats who are real lightweights in the like constitution department can't take many hits so you there's a way of playing the game where like you're playing very conservatively waiting turns so that enemies come a little bit closer and you are making sure that you're not taking unnecessary damage because it's not hard to lose a cat on a run doing that. So like it takes a lot of especially when you get further in the game and there's like you can go into different places

and there's there's tougher enemies and there's multiple like acts of the game. So like all of that requires a lot of brain power and it's very rewarding to invest in. I think I have spent more time looking at my house full of cats and saying like, okay, which ones of yous is cousins? Because I don't want to make you two get together because that rarely goes well. There is an inbreeding mechanic that you do have to keep in mind. And it is not difficult to end up in a situation where you have multiple cats in the house who are their own grandpa. Well, that's what I love about this game is because I didn't, I've been playing for days and I haven't been paying any attention to that. I just been letting my cats just make love freely.

I'm sure a cousin or uncle has gotten in there. How could they not? And I've been really focusing on the tactics and the run side of things. So it's, yeah, the game is so much. Yeah, apparently you're fine. A little inbreeding is fine. My general rule is it's the Rudy Giuliani rule, which is if it's your second cousin, it's fine. Yeah.

And that'll consider, that'll be counted as like lightly inbred, which I would say almost my entire house is lightly inbred. Once you start getting to, like, medium, like, that's where you'll start to see cats with, like, really serious problems that maybe are going to have a real tough time in the world. And those are the cats that generally get shipped off the NPCs. One of the NPCs you can upgrade, I think Tink is who it is, will, you send them kittens. They only want newborn kittens. And so if you send them enough newborn kittens, they will start to give you more, like, information on the breeding side of things. so you can look at like a genealogy of a cat.

You can look at their family tree. And when I did that, when I unlocked that, it immediately showed me like, all of my cats are immensely inbred. I would look at their family tree and there would be like one cat that would just branch through like three generations. And it's like, Jesus Christ, that is ghoulish.

So like, yeah, I mean, that stuff isn't very much in the, this is the point I was trying to make earlier. It's not like Binding of Isaac from a genre sense. from a, there's a million ways this thing can go and it's not going to tell you fucking any of that stuff at the top. That feels very binding of Isaac to me. However, because you can unlock those different like information points, I think it's a bit more of a sophisticated thing than Isaac where you would need to download like

mods and stuff to have any idea what any of the items actually did. You do kind of get that eventually with some investment, but you're going to be just kind of throwing spaghetti at the wall for a little while before, uh, before you. get results like that. Yeah, and that feels like a big correction from Isaac. I think even like McMillan has said that he wished that the item descriptions was something that had been in the game much, much earlier, that it didn't require mods to be able to add that.

And this, from the beginning, you can learn about like the characters that you're fighting just by hovering over them. It will give you a lot of information when you're actually in the battle. and then all these other hint systems, yes, you're constantly getting updated with, hey, here's a little bit more direction on how to play this thing, so long as you are using that time between runs to go chat with all the various parent cat grinders. I don't, again, don't know exactly what they do. Ron, I think the thing, when Griffin was talking about Binding of Isaac as well, I think the thing that is most similar to Binding of Isaac is you get these amazing combos where like this perk, interacts with this perk, so on and so forth. It feels like I've done every single one I've had at least one of those.

I'm curious, was there any, like, for you, a specific moment or a specific cat that, like, just got insanely overpowered? Oh, yeah, a couple times of this had some fun cats that, I mean, I love it when the cat can both heal itself and then range hill others. And then I just love a fun mage cat or my thief cat. just the variety of traits that comes through is probably my favorite part of the game and it's interesting for me

because I was a little bit hesitant about starting it because I was a fan of the binding of Isaac R. style and other things but like just the idea of playing as cats. There's been a lot of cat games recently that have come out and they tend to be like, oh, I don't know if I want to play this game about cats and stuff But then I found myself every night, like coming home and just being, it would be the, like,

the thing I wanted to play before I go to bed. And just for that, just to be like, oh, what kind of run can I put together? What kind of, when you start mixing and matching the power ups as well that you get that are also, like, you know, a little bit obtuse in the way that you don't know what they're going to do until you kind of try them out for the first time, you know, the just the multitude. of options in this game, I think is my favorite part of it. I had a tank that had a passive perk to, every time you started a map, you started a map with a friendly rock,

a rock that was alive, and it would move on its own and attack enemies on its own, like a familiar, basically. And that was pretty good. And then I got a perk that was every, well, the perk also means that every other rock you summon will also be alive, which is fine, but, like, I didn't really have any abilities

to summon rocks until I got an earthquake perk that makes this giant spread of rocks show up all at once, and then suddenly I've got fucking 15 familiars running around, just rocks slamming into everything. No, I never had that.

That sort of combo, if you're thinking about, there's a lot of this stuff is, like, just intuition, like the way the game is designed with tagging and, like, what counts as a rock versus not. Generally,

there's a logic to it. So you can kind of like, rather than using a guide online, which again is Isaac, that was like a common thing for Isaac, this is all about just like, well, I'm going to try this and see how it plays out. Yeah. It sort of defies guides. There's so many variations, both to your cats and the items and the perks and the disorders that like to play it with a guide, it is much more about improvising.

That is the hook. It's just so random. Yeah. I want to go into like the big thing because people might be listening and they're like, okay, so it's called eugenics and you breed cats and then you annihilate the ones that aren't good. Like what's going on here? We should talk about the disorders and like how they work and how they are incredible. Because one of my best runs really brought this game home for me.

So the disorders that you can get in this game, they are based off of things that cats can have. They are based off of things that people can have. And they can range from autism. To the thing that one of my cats had, Taki Sinsia. Have you heard about, do you know about this? No. Or Tachy Sinsia? It's a disorder where for a period of time, you feel like time is moving faster than it is.

So you and your body feel as if time is moving it in like fast forward, even though obviously in reality that is not happening. Whoa. And in the game, the way that this was expressed is I had a cat who had incredible speed. Like within like three rounds, I could move 13 squares. I could basically move anywhere in the field, but I had zero strength. And at a certain point, I had negative strength. And I didn't know you could have negative stats. Turns out you can't in this game.

But I put the healer collar on this cat, and suddenly I had a cat that could go anywhere on the screen, anytime I wanted to heal people, and then also zip in and out. And it was an incredible run. It was instantly, I could build around that. So I was like, well, if I have this person, then I also will just really, really, really put all my resources into a tank. So I had a tank who attracted every hit and then also had broken mirrors around its neck so that it would just deal out pain to anybody who attacked it. So I now could send this tank in wherever I want with another character that could throw your cat. I could zip in and out with my health healer and anything else I did controlled the match because it basically paralyzed the enemy. There

was nothing for the enemy to do in almost every single fight I went into. Yeah. And I mentioned that it wants, I think there is a way of approaching this game where you see the disorder and it's purely as a negative thing, that is not how it wants you to think of them in this game. They're just another creative way of finding an exciting way to experience the match. Yeah, it's intentionally balanced so that you can figure out a way

not only around the disability or the disorder, but to use it your advantage. I had Ebola for one round. Ebola makes everyone catch Ebola. Basically anyone that's standing next to the cat will catch Ebola. any cat that has Ebola will deal bleed, like three or four bleed damage to every cat that it interacts with. So if you're very, very quick at finishing matches, all your enemies are going to be bleeding and you can sort of survive and get through it.

But it's incredibly perilous. Like you're just like on a knife edge for every single match. So it is really does not shy away from those like challenging scenarios. It seems ambitious, right? Like I know Edmund McGillan has talked a lot about, um, he has. is dyslexic and dyslexia is is one of the like conditions that a cat can have in the game. I don't know like what the mechanical sort of interpretation. It's really tough.

I think it swaps threes and fives in like man accounts and also in all texts whenever you're reading text. The s is turned into fives and like it is really challenging to play. I mean, it's doable. To me that kind of, I don't know, it walks a very, very tricky line of like, I don't know, not minimizing like a real world thing, but instead kind of, also not just like flat out kind of like celebrating it where it's like you have a superpower,

and it's just sort of like a different, your cats are behaving in a different way. They control in a sort of different way. I love it. I think that's really interesting to come out of a game like Mugetics, which I don't know, on the 10 would not seem so thoughtful about that. I mean, as a father of son with autism and then recently I'm going through an autism assessment myself.

It's just kind of cool. I always have believed in looking these type of things as character traits. And to see that in gameplay mechanic, I think it's fun. And the thing that you could never do in a major AAA game, you know, that's what I love about indies in the games like this right now because we see so many games that feel so paint by numbers and whitewashed and to have a game that has such a unique art style, that has such a adult themes to it and at the same time it celebrates and uh but doesn't sugar

codes disorders or disabilities or you know whatever you want to call it i think is just if anything it's interesting and it makes you talk and that's what good art does yeah yeah sure i i i want to give also a building on that just a thank you to frushtick because freshick obviously huge binding of Isaac fan. Griffin, I know you are too. I was simply just not able to ever get into this game because of Clef Lips. Finding of Isaac. Edvin's work. It really, really, really put me off. And I didn't think it was necessarily mean or anything, but it just made me, for whatever reason, I couldn't get past it. And Fresh, maybe, like, I don't know, three weeks ago was like, you need to just talk to him. Like, actually, like, you're a reporter. Go and talk to this artist. Like,

that's what you do. And, and, and, you do. And. And, and. And, you know, And I, this is on a post game's thing that's coming up, but talking to him and it's amazing how wonderful it is to just have those conversations with an artist where they're vulnerable and you realize where they are coming from and how it can open you up to art and how easy it is to close yourself off without ever asking that question. I mean, Ron, you mentioned like just having conversations. it's so I don't know it was it's so energizing to have something opened up to me this piece of art that I had really kept off it and realized like no

this person's coming from a lot of the same places I am again as a father of neurodivision kid and Edmond is going through similar experiences like where you end up finding yourself on the same page and it's like why was I of all the things for me to be upset about in this world and there are plenty this was not this was not the one

yeah yeah I'm curious to hear, Russ, I think you've probably played more than the rest of... I've made it to act two. I've played this game a whole lot, but I know it probably pales in comparison. I started much earlier than you guys did. The cool thing to me about binding of eyes, the reason I finally kind of got into it, one, I downloaded that mod, it told me what all the shit actually did.

That's now baked into the game for what it's worth for people. Is it really? Yeah, it's now like an actual feature in the game, so... Oh, that's great. That's long overdue. That makes a lot of thin. The thing that, like, really did it for me is, like, realizing, like, okay, every time you play, if you finish a run, it's going to unlock some new path.

It's going to unlock some new boss, some new thing. And that has happened to me every time I have finished a run in like a new area. It has this game has unfolded in a way that I was really hoping that it would, but was worried maybe it wouldn't. Like when you start out, there's only four classes. And you get a couple other ones like pretty quickly. but I was like, okay, I kind of get sort of, but then it threw another one at me, and I anticipate that there are probably more coming down the pipe. Does that, do you feel satisfied in how much it is like continuing to expand in as long as you have been playing it in terms of like, oh shit, there's like a whole other level that I haven't even gotten to? It is expanding in ways that I think Binding of Isaac never did.

And the reason for that is because of the way the cat classes interact. So in Binding of Isaac, you might unlock an item that'll show up or something from finishing a run, things like that. Because you're unlocking these classes and because of the breeding system where the classes interact with one another, it does get to an almost infinite levels of potential. Because I'll give you an example. One of the earlier classes that you unlock is a druid. And the druid's main attack ability is actually not an attack. an area heal and it gives all your friendlies in an area above.

Which is useful. There's a passive perk that hunters can get where the first thing that they attack in a map will be charmed. So an enemy for five turns will be a friendly basically and we'll attack its own enemies. I

bred a baby kitten cat that had that passive hunter perk of the charming enemies for five turns and turn that baby kitten into a druid, which meant that when I started every round, instead of that area healing people, it charmed a giant group of enemies at the beginning of every single round. So suddenly, instead of having being charmed, I had an entire army of enemies that would just wipe out the map and make things incredibly easy.

So it's those sorts of like layered combos that where they interact with one another, that, I mean, outside of like, hey, new area unlocked, new class unlocked, like, just keeps coming. What's incredible as freshly the experiences you are having are so much more complex than a thing that I described with, like, zipping around the map. But you feel that sense of like, oh, I am powerful and I am breaking the game and I am the smartest person alive from like your third round. Almost every run. Almost every run. And it doesn't even have to, like, with the breeding stuff, for me, The game is chaos because you don't know. Like when you pick your classes for each cat, it doesn't tell you exactly what ability they're going to start out with.

It doesn't tell you exactly what passive they're going to start out with. And then when you level up, you get a choice of things, but it's not guarantee what it's going to be. The breeding is where you try to control that a little bit and say like, okay, well, at least I know this one is going to start out with like really good stats and it's going to have this ability from its mom and it's going to have this passive from its dad. And so like when I toss him in and I make him. and I make him a fighter, I know he's set.

Like, he's going to be, he's going to absolutely be good. But it doesn't, you don't even need that. Like, I started out with a fighter who had a passive that, um, any weapon that you used would do triple damage, but it would break immediately. And then he also had an ability that would let him summon a weapon. And that was like from the jump, from the rip. This guy was like a monster that absolutely clear. And then I desperately, desperately tried to breed him.

Like, please, please pass on this incredible ability. this fusion of abilities, he was unfortunately very aggressive and quite low libido and in love with his mom. He's a fighter. Yeah, so like there was a lot of, there are a lot of reasons why I couldn't

continue to squeeze the juice out of that one. But like, I, this game's mind blowing just how much, just how much variety. I genuinely think it puts Isaac to shame even because even in Isaac, like you can find these insane combos

and every run is going to be different. But ultimately it's like, Like, you're working towards having like a gun that shoots a screen full of like homing death knives that can kill shit in one hit. And it's like, that's very satisfying when that happens and you can just storm through a run. To me, like, I don't know the results you are getting out of this because the combat is so sandboxy, it just feel, it really feels like anything can happen. And that's, I get why this game took, you know, 12, 13 years, however long it took to make. It's, that's just a lot of shit to keep in mind. One other big thing that we should talk about.

And Ron, I want to hear your take on it. There is so much music in this game. Oh, my God. What did, Ron, what did you think of it? I mean, I like it a lot. I think the music is one of the standout parts. I mean, I feel like this game is a real testament that where the sum is bigger than its parts

because every bit of it feels so like a, a love letter of like not obviously not like a deadline that you needed to hit like the animation I think is so wonderful in it and the different enemy types and the way that the they move or the way that the poop enemies have this just griminess to them and I think that the music itself is just fun and every part of it is just top notch and like kind of transports me back to like, were like 20, 30 years ago where I'm like, oh, people are just making games because they love making games, not because they're trying to make a million billion dollars, you know. Yeah.

Although this game I anticipate is going to make a million billion dollars. Yeah, I think that's exactly that amount. Steam concurrence yesterday, I think it was like 64,000, which is like almost the peak of Binding of Isaac. And I think it's only going to grow from there. This feels like a game that is just going to be. I just open Steam. It is now also given the top banner spot, which for an indie.

game is bonkers. The music, I love how it, uh, each basically like level has a theme. So the alley where you start out has eaten rats, which is probably my, still my favorite jam from the whole game that I keep getting stuck in my head. And when you start out, you just hear like a little bit of like the accompaniment, like a little bit of the background music. But by the time you reach like the boss fight of the chapter, like the vocals kick in. And I don't know, it's, I was really skeptical at first because I was like, what is this?

fucking Zoot Suit Riot. Like, is this just going to be all kind of like the hits of the early Otts swing Renaissance? But no, it's really a great soundtrack that, I don't know, I want to hear people who are smarter about music. Well, I will just say this about the lyrics specifically. So the second area, second area of the game you go to is basically the sewers. And there's a song that is entirely about poop.

And I did write down some of the lyrics here. It goes, the clattering clank goes from tank to tank. and nothing ever seems to go back from whence it stank, just like a subway station, but the only mode of transportation comes in the form of flotation and it's no vacation. The music is from Ridiculon, by the way,

which is just fantastic. They're a terrific duo, and highly recommend it. And at the same time, they're doing that with lyrics, and all this is about poop, there is a throwaway reference that ends one song to inchworm sung by Danny Kay and Hans Christian Anderson. This is like music made by people who know the history of music.

Yeah. It's incredible. Ron, what is it as we get to the end of this segment? Is there a specific thing that you think just keeps bringing back to the game, like when you get done with at the end of the day? What is it about this that is like drawing you back? Well, I mean, at the base level of it, I think these games always remind me of chess,

where you have to worry about movement and direction and form of attack. And so, again, whether it's final fantasy tactics or advanced wars, like, they always, especially now that I'm older and I've kids, it is something where I can put it down for a bit, pick it right back up. It's my perfect style of game for me right now. But I would say what keeps me coming back is just the, like, the differences in the options in the runs and knowing that like I can get through a run in probably like 20, 30 minutes and have a full fun time and you know and learn all these different new traits that I have and have

like I think I mean what Chris was talking about is my main like thing where I just loved I had a little ninja thief that could run around teleport into any area that had high grass or water when I was in the sewers that was most of it and so then I could teleport in, mark them Lava shot, hit high damage, and then get back out. And I was like, this game is just so fun in every form and in every way. It just hits that addictive thing where it's just like, I just want to do one more run. And that's what I love about it. If this isn't my game of the year, I will be really, really surprised.

Like, really surprised. The words of a man who has not played Romeo was a dead man yet. Once you play Romeo with a dead man, then we can all come back and we can chat. But I'm feeling like, yeah, it's, I, I don't know about Goody, but like, I also don't see myself not, not playing it anymore. I started to, it's funny, I started to, I wanted to do a new piececraft series, my World Warcraft series with all the new housing stuff that they added. So I downloaded, wow. And I started to play it again. And then I was like, uh-oh, I, I'm going to get pulled into this again.

Oh, no, I'm going to, it's going to be like post-college all over again. I'm going to lose control my whole life. I can't, but then Mugenics came in. It was like, hey, actually, instead, can I interest you in a brand new game that everything's different? I got that catnip for you. You got that catnip, yeah, and it really, it pulled me. It saved me from the hole.

I do appreciate Mugenics for that. It's fantastic. Let's take a quick break, and we'll talk about more games and more stuff with our pal Ron. So stick around and we'll be right back. Ron, it's always a delight to see you, whether it is here on one of our other shows or on the big screen or my TV screen. And it was such a delight to see you join the cast of Traders for this season. You have talked quite a bit about your experience on the show, and it is the sort of central thesis of your upcoming Infinite Tour. of comedy.

I am very curious to hear about because I watch a lot of reality shows, a lot of reality competition shows and have, you know, for as long as they have been around and have played a lot of video games. I'm curious to hear about sort of your experience playing a game like traders with the kind of, you know, built-in game sense that you likely have from, from, you know, you know, also being a lifelong gamer. Whether there's any kind of crossover to those skills, obviously Traders is sort of a different beast

than just a sort of survivor or, you know, more traditional reality show. But yeah, no, I think there's definitely skills that translate that were useful for me for as far as like some of the gameplay-wise. I think what was a detriment for me is that I looked at it so game-like that I didn't think about as much of how social these people wanted to be and how big of a deal that was. So for me, yeah, you know, similar to like if I was playing blueprints or missed or whatever back in the day, you know, I had a little notebook that I'd keep in my room so that whenever at the end of the day I could go through and cross-reference things and just look for inconsistencies and stuff.

and I very much looked at it like a game. And, you know, playing a lot of Among Us, which is a lot of what the traders is like, you know. And then the only thing, I guess one thing I've never talked to anyone, is that my main stress reliever while I was there, because you could not have anything with any type of internet access, is so that I was able to bring it like an old, I guess not old, but I have one of the,

I guess the Anbernik Game Boys, Yeah, so I just brought that and to play some old Tetris and ROMs on that. And that's what kept me mostly saying while I was there because you're very isolated and away from people. So you got to come up with different mental tricks to just keep yourself grounded. So, yeah, it's very gameish in ways. But then also then you're like, oh, my God, these are a bunch of housewives and they're like just angry. And so I was just like, okay, look for inconsistencies. look for faithful people

because I was like Game of Fine I was like faithful people are going to be good and telling the truth and then look for people who are lying, inconsistencies in their story and then I found out like

oh wait some of these people are just bad people who like lions so I mean Traders is like the at least the Traders is weird because it's different sort of things in different countries

right like in the UK version of the Traders it is not largely sort of celebrity casting, right? It is sort of more traditional, kind of like how on Survivor, they've just bring in just people who apply. And to me, traders in the U.S. has always seemed like, I don't know, that social aspect of the game, it seems like there's a pretty huge finger on the scale of, well, that's Tara Lipinski

and Johnny Weir, so like they're probably going to work together. the housewives know each other obviously from like being part of that circuit and so that's that seems like it's pretty built in it seems like a lot of that stuff is kind of decided before the game even starts whereas like on survivor if you talk to each other in the hotel before it starts they kick you right off of the of the show so you don't you know spoil that first boots on the beach kind of experience of like oh god I need to make some friends now or else I'm boned when it comes to the first vote yeah no was that how you felt going in was like that there were the like alliances pre-built?

Well, I didn't know who would be there. So to me, you know, it just was a surprise. And I kind of came into it because I'm not a very, I don't really run that much in celebrity circles. And most of my friends are like either comedians or people who have known for like past 20 years. So I just have a lot of just normal people friends. So I wasn't going in there being like, oh, I'm going to know this person.

I'm going to make an alliance with this person. I was like, oh, they're probably just. going to be people and I'll just treat them as to me I thought it's going to be a plus because I'll be like if I know them from before then I'm going to have preconceived notions about them where as they're being picked on who's a traitor or not so that doesn't matter if I like oh this person is great so I was just trying to be like oh if I don't know them that's great but for me I just could feel the difference between like just even just in the way that people treat me or spoke to me because you know they thought uh Donna Kelsey was a traitor but they talked to her with a lot of respect and a lot of fear because they knew that the swifties would come at her but when they thought I was a traitor they you know chose to not speak to me very kindly or treat me with a lot of respect because they didn't know my background and I don't really go around promoting it so yeah you know I just like to see who people are at a base level if they don't know who you are so you know to me that revealed a lot about

different people there. So I had a lot of fun in doing the missions and meeting some cool people who I now really enjoy outside the castle. But then I also met people where I'm like, ooh, I don't like these people no matter what. I mean, it's interesting because I know it gave you the impetus to get the autism assessment. It's interesting because I know how uncomfortable you were in that situation for that to be like a representative thing that you would then, uh, I guess, associate with like your normal day to day,

which is obviously that is so far from your normal day to day. So why would that be the thing that be like, oh, clearly I'm reacting to this in like kind of a negative way. I mean, how is that represented? Like how did that connect to like what your normal life is? Um, that just reminded me of situations.

It wasn't the first time. It was the most public and the most intense, uh, that type of situation had happened. But it was not the first. time where a group of people had been around had all like misjudged my intentions or misjudged the way that I was coming at things and that had been me in high school or me in other forms in school and so and then watching it back and seeing myself under stress and under like I think

just being a performer in general like naturally I've been able to mask pretty well so when I was under stress and they had these cameras on me for 18 hours like I could see more mannerisms or more ticks in myself that reminded me of different stems that my son had. So kind of seeing that back and then getting a lot of just DMs. People feel like, at first they were rude. They were like, oh, screw this autistic. But then they turned to like, oh, man, I really see myself in a lot of these, as an autistic or neurodivision adult, I see.

myself in these interactions and I was like oh okay these messages are better I like these messages but they're still confusing to me it's it's really truly on paper bonkers the crucible that NBC that peacock or Al I don't know who actually produces the show overseas who is the originating company but as a sort of like I don't know learn learn a lot about yourself in social situations it's seems like a castle where three people are murdering other people and also Alan Cumming is there peacocking to the to the max it seems like maybe the they have conceived of the ultimate sort of test yeah of someone's sort of social yeah that's what I felt because I feel like the game is many things to many people

and it's really fun to watch now but haven't done it because I remember watching it and just making fun of like Deontay Wilder making fun of people when they were like crying or being like, oh my God, it's a game and they don't even get it. But like when you go in there and you're like, you're isolated, you're running on lack of sleep, you're not eating as much as you normally would, and you have these people accusing you or you're accusing others, like it becomes very, very intense and very real. And so to me at a certain point, I was like, oh, I think this game is kind of like, how, who are you when you're under pressure, when you're under stress, when you're being tempted

by money when you're being tempted also by just like fame to be here longer to be on TV longer like what are you willing to do and um you know i at a certain point i was like mm i'm not willing to do too much i'll be me if you like me let's do it if not send me home a weird follow-up question to that once you have done a show this big people on other game shows want you that seems to be like the the formula and TV. Are there other reality game hybrids that you would want to do at this point? I mean, I always want to host something. So I think I'd like to make my own thing, really.

So I'm working on pitching a couple of ideas. I'd never say never. So I'm open to things. But like I don't see me doing something where I'd have to like leave my family for a while and just be away. I didn't really like that part of it. I like my, you know, what my oldest, especially when he was younger, he wasn't as verbal, so I didn't know.

But my youngest made me well aware how much he missed me and how much he did not like me being on for that long. Yeah, and you can't even like call or anything. Yeah, exactly. Oh, gosh. That's brutal. I really, as someone who has watched these types of shows, And it's always kind of like, I don't know, wondered what it would be like to be on it.

It was genuinely very, like, I don't know, cool and impressive to see you doing traders. Thank you. That's a one thing people do. They're like, oh, it was really, it's like if you want to see a normal person. Truly, genuinely, it's, it's, everybody else on that show, even the people who are not, you know, do not appear to be total fucking dirt bags from the jump, still are kind of like, you know, space aliens. in the way that they, like, well, that's just not how anyone really actually talks about anything. It's obviously... Yeah, how did you come out as the one that was neurodivergent?

Like, you're not saying, I just said I am. I'm not saying I'm the weirdo in the hoop. No, sure. No, you're right. Yeah, they got a different test for narcissism. That's right. Real quick. You feel like also as a comedian, as a touring comedian, that this is a pretty rich vein of, like, when I saw you announced sort of your tour and that you were going to be talking a lot about traders stuff, it seemed like, well, yeah, it does seem like there would be a lot to talk about from doing that experience. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm still learning it because I'm still going through my assessment right now. I think I have like two more weeks and stuff. And I think once that's finished, that'll unlock some more things for me to talk about that I feel more comfortable talking about once I have. full confirmation on things.

But I just always talk about my life and this like really affected me and affected me in a big fashion in a way that was both negative and positive and to have people see it. And you know, and then also I'd never been in a situation before where, I mean, unless I was in a role, but to have someone be me and then have someone else be able to control kind of the edit and the narrative of me is something I mean. never been used to. And so to have the ability to go out and do stand-up comedy and kind of reframe things. And my way is something I've always been positive and into and people are interested in.

And again, such a new group of fans coming out. So I usually, it's about 10, 15 minutes of trade or stuff. And then it goes back into like what I do and my just life stuff and my family and whatever I'm going and through. But I got to kind of serve both right now because there's people. who like are coming who have no idea about me other than the traders and then they're mixing in with people who have been fans of me for a long time and then the traders reminded them that they should come and support me because they're like how dare these people be mean to my friend you know it's

kind of beautiful but it's like forcing me to kind of like serve both right now yeah that's awesome we'll definitely include a link to the uh to your site with all the tour dates uh coming up the I'm going so many places. That's so cool. Do we have any letters? We have a couple letters. I just want to go through them real quick. We were talking about Dragon Quest 7, the remake, last week,

and a couple people wrote in about that. One of them from Stephen, I think we were talking about how it was like comfort food. I think the comfort food thing is a false dichotomy. For me, Dragon Quest games are nice to play specifically because they don't drag you through the story so much. The pace of Dragon Quest games has always been tuned to provide a kind of comfort. The friction isn't antithetical to the flow. It is the flow.

As an analogy, Star Doe Valley would feel paper thin if it didn't require a certain amount of being busy. Which I thought was an interesting. That was comparing comfort food and it's like need to talk to everybody specifically. Yeah. I think that's very apt. I think that's the main reason people are such people who are Dragon Quest weirdos are probably mostly because of this exact reason. It's just kind of nice to play.

And then the other letter, this is one I want to hear Ron's answer on. It comes from Bing, bong, Bing, Bong, Egg Steam. That feels offensive to me. I mean, it'd be to me. To New Yorkers? I guess so. Okay. I have four boys.

Like every parent, I'm gradually showing them the things I love for my childhood. What video games are you specifically going back to share with your children? Oh, I'm so glad you asked me this because I was going to bring it up and I forgot. Yeah, my son is almost four right now, and he has just, he was such an outside boy, which I love and was pushing for it and happy for him. And then suddenly it was the Super Mario movie. He loved the movie. And then I was like, well, do you know about the game? And he was like, Mario's a game?

And I had part, analog 3D. the little 64 clone. And so we've been playing Super Mario 64 together. We've been playing Smash Brothers. And then one of the best things that I love, which I never thought about, but I have an evercade for it. And so we've been playing a lot of ROM hacks on it.

And I didn't realize that a lot of ROM hacks are just like what a toddler would come up with if they were playing games. Because we were playing Original Smash. And my son was like, I want to be Bowser. And I was like, oh, Bowser's not in this one. I'm sorry, maybe we can go play the other ones and we find Bowser. But then I was like, oh, he is in the Smash Remix ROM hack.

So he just got played that. And now he's just fully in love. We've been playing the Mario 64 that has Sonic in it instead of Mario because he's like, oh, I want to play this, but I want to be Sonic. And I was like, we can do that. So it's like really, and I feel, especially for if you're going to start off with 3D games, which can be difficult sometimes with little kids. But the open worldness of the, like, Mario 64 in particular, my son was just, he played for a full half hour and never entered the castle. Like, he just walked around the grounds, climbed a tree, jumped into a hole, and was having a blast.

Yeah. And it's been really, really fun to do that type of stuff with him. I've been really, because it forced me. And I never played OG. I actually never had a Nintendo 64 when I was a kid. that. So I just went back and got one and going back and playing those old games with him. We were just playing Donkey Kong 64 before we started this up. It's just been really beautiful. Just the wrap on loop, right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I forced him for five minutes of the wrap before we get started. You got to eat your vegetables. Mario 64 is a good call out. I've been, my son definitely struggles with controls still, but for whatever reason he's very into the penguin slide specifically like falling off the penguin slide and despite his struggles with controls and Mario 64 is not an easy game to control

he is very good at jumping into the chimney to go suicide off the side of the penguin slide but like that has been a huge hit well I don't know if you've been playing with the 8-bit Bluetooth 64 controllers and I feel like that's been such a game changer Oh, just size-wise? Do you think those are good?

Sides-wise and just control-wise is so much easier. Oh, 8-bit dough. Yeah, I got to check that out. Yeah, I got one right here in my hand. I don't mean the product placement, but it's cute. Look at play. That's nice. It's good stuff.

I like that. I've been playing Majora's Mask for a video series with like a wired N-64 controller, and it is not a good controller. I mean, it's a good version of the N-64 controller, but holy shit. every time I touch this thing, I'm like, what were they thinking? Why did they make it look like a pitchfork? Why did they give me this trident shape? What if you didn't use one third of the entire controller?

Amazing. Why not? Yeah. I've had such little success getting Henry to actually play old games. He plays nonstop, like, games. And he loves, like, Mario Odyssey, and he loves Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, and he loves, you know, Kirby and the Forgotten Land. but every time I have tried to make him play an older game,

it is very much fucking back to the future to, what is this a game for babies? And I feel so, I have always felt that way whenever I've tried to make them watch like a TV show or a movie or something and been so terrified that they'll be like, this actually sucks. You pick the wrong time, you missed your window,

and now I'll never like it again. So it's so wild, though, because Henry will read the entire Ocarina of Time manga. But if I'm like, do you want to play the thing? He's like, that game looks so. There's not a jump button. He just does it when you get too close to the edge of a thing. I'm like, yeah, I don't know, man.

The controller was terrible. You couldn't reach most of the buttons. So, yeah, they had to make him jump automatically. I'm sorry. Yeah. Mosey has really gotten into the classics just because Nintendo Switch Online has those different portals where it's like S&S, Genesis. And I think the feeling of the smorgas board,

of like, oh, you open it and there's just infinite stuff. But the other thing I would add, if you want to go try the retro consoles, but you don't necessarily want to spend money right away, if you have a retro game store in your town, a lot of those places have, like, demo stations where you can play the game on a classic TV. And that's where my son played Mario 64 for the first time, and then we end up playing it at home.

But being able to be in like that space where all the different old flashing screens that don't look at anything that is what is in your house right now is pretty cool to just watch. I mean, the stores kind of are like little museums that you also can buy stuff in,

which I guess is like how real music is going to. That's most museums. It's a museum was all the gift shop. Yeah. Cool. Before we wrap things up, Ron, is there any honorable mentions, anything else you're playing or doing or things you're excited about?

I mentioned them playing Clover, playing Absalom, like them both, got to go back, finish dispatch. Really like that game. But that's about it, really. People can just, yeah. Oh, I've been doing a fun YouTube series where I explain games that I play in about 30 seconds. So if you can send them to people who don't play games or your significant other or anyone, or just watch them and see how fun and accurate they are.

I've been doing this on my YouTube. So if people want to follow my YouTube at at Ron Funches as my favorite series that I've been doing, You're going to do a Mugetics? I was going to say, I can't wait to hear a 30-second Muginix breakdown. Absolutely, I will. That sounds awesome. I watched Wonder Man on Disney Plus, a couple episodes in. It's really excellent.

It happens to be an MCU show, but it's really just about acting. And, oh, my God, the acting in the show is just, like, through the roof. Fantastic. Great people. I know a lot of fun people in there. My friend X Mayo is in it. My friend Brandon Wardell is in it. I have not seen it, but I recommend it.

It feels like a very true to LA acting show in the way that like Barry was to some extent as well, even though obviously Barry went in other directions. No, that was still true too. The murders. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, I mentioned it. I, uh, downloaded the, uh, downloaded wow for to do some new piececraft stuff with it because the big thing. There's like a whole new expansion out. I actually think it doesn't come out until next month that I, again, could not be less interested in. playing for me whenever I dip into that game it is always like they've added mini golf or some shit like i just want to see what weird kind of uh thing they have allowed you to do other than kind of engage with the high fantasy trappings of the thing and the housing system in that game is pretty

wild y'all you can really uh it's very open-ended you get a house for free and you can like have your own neighborhood with like other people if you want to and the decoration is very much like you can drag and drop anything anywhere and resize it and it can all clip into each other. You can make it look like total garbage or you can make it look like really, really neat. And so, like, I don't know, I've only fucked around with it for like a couple hours, but I've seen some people do some really neat stuff with it. And they've also done some interesting stuff for like,

there's quests for your houses and like it ties back into, I guess, the rest of the game in some ways that I don't quite understand yet because I don't know if I can get back into actually playing Wow at 38. Yeah, probably not a good idea. Not a good idea. Genuinely Mugenics has bumped out the like maybe 45 minutes of free time that I have during the day. I cannot possibly spend, you know, hitting up Razor Fink crawl and getting back together with the squad. But I don't know.

The housing stuff is very neat. I have always enjoyed that part of MMOs more than the like raids and hardcore shit. And it feels like there's a lot to a lot to sink your teeth into there. Cool. I've been playing Romeo as a dead man, as I mentioned. Is that out? It is out. It is the new Grasshopper manufacturer game.

You also know them as Suda 51 is the head crater there. It is so good. We're going to be talking about it on a RESTES. It is everything, so far, everything I want from a Suda game without the stuff that I don't want. But I did write down just what happens in the first five months. minutes, just to give you a taste. You play as a half-dead man, saved by your grandson from the future, who died when saving you, but now lives as an animated patch on the back of your jacket. You are a deputy at a local police department, but you are now in the future because you have

joined a space-time special agent FBI. After doing that, the world has exploded, and the planet is now islands spread across multiple dimensions and your job is to find the alternate versions of your girlfriend, Juliet. By the way, your name is Romeo. Juliet is actually a FaceTime fugitive and there are many versions of her. Okay, so just focused.

Very focused. It's a really good game. I need a 30 second video explainer from Ron of everything you just said because it went. I feel like it went. Add it to the list, Ron. I'll put it on there. Ron, where can people go to secure tickets for your upcoming tour or any other sort of performances?

Oh, it's easy. Ronpunches.com. That's just my name and then dot com. Is there any other stuff that you would encourage our folks to check out other than your tour and your YouTube channel? You can watch a loot on Apple TV if you like. You can buy some merch at my store at my thing or you can get a cameo from me. I didn't know. I'd like it.

I thought I'd hate it, but guess what? I like it, and I'm good at it. So, heck, come on, bye. You could just, like, not do them, so it's entirely, like, up to you, right? You have total freedom. It really is, and it's mostly been, I used to do a lot of affirmations and stuff with my getting better podcast, and it's just been mostly a lot of that. And then sometimes people ask me to see father figure from New Girl, and then I'm like,

I don't mind doing that. Cool, right. Well, thank you again for joining us. I wanted to thank our patron. over at patreon.com slash the besties. We have Judd E. We have Andrew C. We have Josh K.

We have Cody W. Did you go through and just pick normal ass name? Because usually it's shit like Bing Bong Bang, Bing, Egg Steam. I try to slot in a wacky one. But I guess these are some of the more recent subs and they're just Normie names today,

which is disappointing. Sorry, guys. Thank you for being patrons. Thank you to everyone else, including the weirdos for being patrons. We really appreciate you. Next week we're doing Re-Animal. Do you know what that is, Ron?

Have you heard of that game? This is from the team that did Little Nightmares. Scary. A lot of things with animals. I know. Very consistent. You're like a little guy pie running around, a very scary environment. Kind of like limbo, but in 3D.

Or little nightmares. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it should be interesting. I'll check it out. Cool. But I'm going to check out Romeo must die because that's been on my list. Yeah, that sounds right up my alley. Re-animal next week.

Also probably still Mugentic. Yeah, we're probably still going to be talking about Mugens. I'm sure, despite his carpal tunnel, we'll still be buying Mugetics. Yes. So, yeah, join us again next week. And thank you for joining us this week. And thanks again to Ron for joining us. And we hope you'll come back next time for the besties.

Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Yes. No one's ever actually answered that before. Besties. Thank you.