The Besties - Mixtape Is a Musical Magic Trick

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

Mixtape arrived alongside a flood of euphoric reviews and a variety of discourses across various social media platforms and gaming groups. With a tiny bit of distance, we talk through what does and doesn’t work about this riff on the modern musical with the help of Friends Per Second co-host Lucy James! Heads up: After the main conversation, mailbag, and honorable mentions, we’ve included a full spoiler convo on the game. We hope you enjoy it! 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'm glad you're all here. This is a very important moment. Lucy, especially, I'm glad that you're here because I've come up with a business proposition that I think you're all going to be very interested in. You know when you're waking up in the morning and you feel like you want fruit and you don't want normal fruit,

like a blueberry or even a raspberry, you want something quasi-tropical, maybe a little bit tangy that's got seeds in it, the humble healing. You know that feeling. Yeah. So your business proposition is the Kiwi. Griffin, people have already invented the Kiwi.

So the idea that I would bring the Kiwi seems like a pretty simplistic idea. You guys are getting on the ground floor of something that I don't think anyone has come up with. Jeff Kiwi? That's pretty good. Pretty good. Is that that? It's not Jeff Kiwi. It's better than that.

Appealable Kiwi. Appealable Kiwi. What, it's just nice to look at? No, no, no. Oh. Jesus Christ. Like an orange. Yeah.

Like an orange. More of a rind than a skin situation. So you don't need a knife. You don't need a peeler. You're just peeling it off and kiwi is inside. So instead of being stuck with an orange, you've got kiwi, which is it. It's great. Right?

It's great. I'll tell you why. I don't like touching the hair. I like eating a kiwi. I don't like to touch the hair. It looks like a gonad. And I just can't. I don't, it's not my favorite fruit to touch.

It, all fruit I think should have a peelable rind. Apple, give me the choice of, do I want to go nuts on it? And I know I'm not one to talk about eating fruits with the rind on. Sure. I realize that this opens up old wounds. But give me the choice whether or not to remove it. That's all I want. What do you say to those people who eat, you know, who just eat it like an apple,

who don't peel the kiwi and just go straight in? I'm not one of those people. but I know that it exists. Okay, I was worried for a second because you might have to be booted off of this guest spot. That's wild. Yeah.

That would have been horrible. It's the curious truth. For every normal person on the planet, I think they're going to be thrilled. And the good news is I've also already got branding figured out, which I know. Okay, hit me. You know, if you're just in the supermarket,

you see a Kiwi, you wouldn't necessarily notice, you know. Right. Okay. So think about a hard-boiled egg. Also peelable, right? Right. So what we're doing is we're mashing up the two, and what do we end up with?

hard-boiled kiwi freg can i can i what are you mashing up again freg where is the f r coming from

egg it's a fruit egg and it's in the shape of an egg yeah it's a kiwi fred i know that you don't want you don't want to like

split the the money because there's a lot of money to be made here yes with fruit egg i think we do need to go find a partner and we go

um Jeff Keeleys, appealable Kiwis, appealable peelables. That's cool. That's, okay, so Chris is on branding. But wait, wait, wait. Or Frege.

Or Fregg. Okay. Fregg. Now, you're, I do see what you get, you can fit Fregg on a shirt. You can't fit what you just said. Jeff Kiwi, Jeff Kiwi presents Fregg.

Brigg. Oh, I like that. I like that. Yeah. It's a world exclusive. Yeah. Can we get the R&D team on next getting the fuzz off of peaches. Otherwise, perfect fruit.

Weird mouth feel when you go in the skin. Just give it to me smooth and shiny, please. I got the man from Del Monte on the phone. Oh, good. Okay. He says yes. He says yes. Well, you canceled. He's got a lot of time on his hands. My name is Griffin McRoy. I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Planned and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Ruff. I know the best game of the week. Let it rip Lucy. Go for it. My name is Lucy James and I know the best game of the week.

Welcome to the best. He's where we talk about the latest and greatest in home, interactive intergamement. It's a Game of the Year Club and you, just by listening, have become a member. This week we are talking about a coming of age, charming adventure music odyssey called mixtape with Lucy James from Friends Per Second. Thank you for joining us for this conversation. Thank you for having me. I like that there's no better guest for someone with the experience of growing up on the U.S. West Coast than a British person like me. Well, it was made by, I think, an Australian person.

Yeah, that's Australian. Also, the childhood depicted in this game was had by nobody. So, Chris Plant, what is mixtape? Mix tape is an adventure game about a trio of teenagers in Northern California in the 1990s on the eve of their last night together before they part ways into adulthood. It plays a bit like an interactive movie where largely swassar animated film, the controller being handed over for the big emotional beats. It was made by the Australian developer Beethoven and Dinosaur and published by Anna Perna, the two previously partnered on the Artful Escape in 2021,

another music game-soaked adventure. Did I write that down this time? Yeah, I was right off the dome. I'm trying something new. It's called Being Prepared. Whoa. That's so good. So yeah, that's a mixtape.

We're going to talk more about it after this short break. Can I start off by asking a question, which is how come any time, like a coming of age, sort of tender adventure game comes out, the conversation that sort of happens around it reveals all of us just to be the biggest fucking dorks who have ever or consumed any media ever. The number of people who are like, that's not how my childhood went. Nostalgia? I don't think so.

You didn't spend your childhood flying around hovering through beautiful fields Writing dinosaurs Writing dinosaurs Shut that shut just hush Everyone but not us We are here to have I think a better talk about mixtape I think this is actually gonna probably be the best

And the only conversation you need to hear about mixtape I think that's gonna kind of promote it Is that? Lucy do you want to tell people like a little bit of like What the hell this story is? actually is, who is Stacey Rockford, Van Slater, and Cassandra Marino? These are a pair of a trio of little punks. It's their last day of high school, and they have this big, wonderful road trip planned,

but Stacey has kind of thrown a wrench in the works, and she is actually leaving the group to go to New York to find Bella del Tone, who is a premier Hollywood music supervisor because Stacey's lifelong dream, I think she's done since she was in eighth grade that she wants to be a music supervisor because her skill is to make mixtape. So she's made this one great soundtrack that will be the backing of their one last night

as they go to the classic Hollywood at Hollywood high school party. They need to find booze, be with the cool kids, avoid Jenny Goodspeed. And they get, and they kind of have this little nostalgia-fueled trip down their friendship. They talk about what it's going to be like in their futures that are as yet undefined.

And it's basically just, it's a kind of adventure game slash walking sim, but it has a really great licensed soundtrack that has already been added to my Spotify. And yeah. Really good. Like I started playing this yesterday and like finished it over the course of the day. It's not the longest game in the world. I think I was putting it off one because we're also playing another game that is incredibly compelling.

But also because like, I don't know, I feel like I've played games like this in the past. and they have fallen so flat for me, because one of these different things, whether it's like the soundtrack or the framing or the, you know, whatever, just if it doesn't work for you, then the whole thing kind of doesn't. I just assumed this game was not going to be for me, but I think they do a really good job of sticking the landing

on just this core concept of like, this is a person who makes soundtracks to their life. I know that sounds insufferable, but actually for a video game, it's a really, really, really good framing. device and the songs they pick are pretty dope. Yes. For me, the music really

clicked because it's not contemporary music. Like, it doesn't fall into the garden state trap of, you have to hear this new song. It's going to change your life. And not to say that that soundtrack is even bad. I love the shins, my friends. Yeah, it was just everything around to the soundtrack that was bad.

Yeah, I was doing this whole thing. Oh, God. Yeah. Oh no, quick, don't think too hard about Garden State. People can't see what Lucy did, but it was somewhere between Natalie Portman and the child and the Shining doing red rum. Yeah, no, because that's the thing she's like, I just like to do something that no one has ever done in this spot, in space and time, and it's just, I can't think about it. And then she does the thing the kid from the Shining does.

Like, we know that someone's done that before. The kid in the Shining did it. What are you talking about? Here, the main character, I want to get your read on this, because I feel like I'm not seeing this part in the conversation, she is insufferable, but I think that is the point. The character, Stacey, is your friend who makes mixtapes? And is your friend who's like, um, I know you want to listen to your favorite music, but have you actually ever heard of Lush? Maybe you would rather be listening to Silver Chair right now, and you're like, no, actually, I want to listen to what I like. And they're like, no, no, no, we're going to put in some Roxy music.

And then eventually the worst thing about this friend and best thing is you're like, fuck, they were light. They're good. Like this music is good. Harper's Bazaar does in fact fucking rock. Damn it. Yeah. I feel like this is another part of the annoying part of this like conversation is people saying like, well, this character. So these teens say the most sufferable shit.

And it's like, you're telling me that if a character. character is in some way has a fault that they are all of a sudden like you can't have any kind of emotional sort of connection to them when i think it's a staple of the genre that this is that this is which is the coming of age kind of uh teen comedy like your super bads like your book smarts uh like days and confused i think is it days and confused like your fairish empire records uh pharis beulers day off right like ladybird like the lady bird is is terrible like that's a terrible person who like says the but it's like yeah because they're kids man and they're like kids suck dude they're crazy they all say crazy shit i think it's easy to write this thing off is like a a nostalgia play

because that that term has become so uh firmly like commercialized in the way that like stranger things is like the nostalgia show that people talk about because they you know they they eat old ego waffles i'm having trouble thinking of 80s shit they go to a big mall and everyone has the craziest hair but like this is this whole game is just about like being a being a a senior in high school and about to become an adult and having this like huge vacuum in your life that you're about to create by leaving all this stuff that you know and trying to fill it with just like shit you think is cool. And that makes you an insufferable hipster.

That's, I don't know, that seems so, so, so deeply relatable. Yeah. And like a really deep primordial level. The beat by beat might not necessarily sync with your life personally. But it would be surprising if anyone watched this and didn't find some relatable, like, oh, here's that person I hate for no really good reason. Like, everyone has that in their life, which I don't know. think this game clicked for me in a really big way. Lucy earlier described it as a walking sim, which I do understand where that comes from. I think that's a hybrid. Yeah, it's a hybrid of things.

It's more adventure game, you know. But I would see, it's like, I would, I would just say there's just so much being thrown at the, at the wall when it comes to, like, describing the game when really it's just, you know, it's just a great story. Right. I think I know the formula to this game and it's genre. It is a musical. And where a musical, and where a music, Music number, like the singing would happen is when you play. Because in a musical, it's like you talk and talk and talk until the emotions are so high. It can't be described anymore. And then boom, you bust into song, right?

And here it's you talk and talk and talk and there's a lot of talking. Like there are large parts of this game that are just unplayable animated film. And then you get to a sense memory and it's like, oh, you have to feel this. And that could be like Tong's French kissing. That could be digging through a. a drawer, like a drunk drawer for like old ticket stubs. It's these like very tactile things, making a slushy where you're blending all the flavors together.

It's not. Yeah. Did I play that Skipping Stone minigame for a long time? Oh, man. Because I thought like, yeah, I bet I'll get it an achievement or some shit if I get to the fucking Greg Miller is somewhere crowing over his platinum in fucking mixed tape for skipping stones. Yeah, yeah. There's a there's a there's a the nature of the construction of this game is like a

A story punctuated by these memories set to music and each one of those little memories is like a tiny Many game feels dismissive, but like it is the the you see something and it reminds you of your first kiss and then you go into this song that You've set to the soundtrack of your first kiss and then you French kiss with two tongues and one stick controls one tongue one state controls the other tongue and you just slap them together until you stop. And there's not like a, you're not collecting, there's no fail state. There's no like, there's no fail state. I don't think for anything in the entire game, right? Nothing is really up in the air. You can like, if you, so there are skating sequences and if you like accidentally hit a car, it'll like rewind like a VHS tape. Yeah. That's about it. Uh, which is fine. I mean,

there's been actually a lot of shitty discourse about the like, is this a game, fail state, no fail state, whatever. Go back. can play journey. You can't fucking lose journey and no one was making a big hullabaloo about whether that was a game or not. Like, it's an for lack of better term, it's an experience

that you enjoy. And I actually think part of the reason it works in ways that like a lot of these very, very narrative heavy games don't work for me is because of the pacing. Because you're never in a thing for more than like three minutes. Three or four minutes is like the cap.

And you're always moving to the next thing. I remember in their last game, which I liked, I thought it was a good game, but like they would be long dialogue sequences or long just like 2D platforming where you're walking around a ship or something. And it just killed the momentum. And here you're constantly moving. Even if you're just having a conversation, because those conversations lead to little interactive bits, you feel like you're constantly moving forward. I think that the pacing is great. And the non-interactivity, I think, kind of gives way to something. really cool and profound

when it starts to kind of synchronize with the music. Like I talked about doing the Skipping Stone game for a long time, partially because like, one, it was, I thought there was something going on and also it was one of the more interactive parts of the game. But also, like, there's a sequence that is so kind of lovely

where she's having this memory about a time that her friend ditched her, And this song, most of all, plays. And it goes to like black and white. And then you sort of just control her as she floats through like frozen time and can kind of just sort of sway to the music. At a certain point, snaps start in the song. And Stacey starts like snapping along with the, with the beat out of it. Like, I don't know.

That stuff is so like, you don't have to do any of that. There's no reason to do any of that. But the game gives you so many opportunities to just like get on its wavelength in a really, kind of straightforward, simple way that I feel like hooked me more times than it didn't. I was going to say, I'm a kind of person who's, I don't necessarily deliberately soundtrack my life to music, but I have a very strong pull and a very strong tie to certain songs from certain parts of my life. And yeah, limp biscuit.

Well, no, like, I have a very strong connection to like static by Beck when I was playing Okami back in like 2006. I like, I have just weird connections with certain things. And so I really love the way that those moments were punctuated by songs, even if they weren't the ones that I would listen to. And it just, there is something so wonderful about the marrying of emotion to music. And I think I feel that specifically in my real life. And so even though I didn't grow up in the big suck, I grew up in the northeast of England, but there was so many parallels that I could make to my own life, especially the big one where you were going out over the field. And I think they say, let's waste an afternoon.

it's never wasted, which was a really beautiful line that I thought. And it just reminded me of the amount of time that, yeah, my friends and I did waste a bunch of time. There was a big field at the back of my house and you'd have to cross it to go to the supermarket, which we would do pretty much every day. And it's just, I don't know, there was so many ways that I could relate my experiences to this game. And the music just really helped. I can never have silence on one of those people. So I loved it.

Yeah. Yeah, it's terrific. I think we're going to do a, like, a full-on spoiler at the end of this episode after the honorable mention so that people can stop if they don't want to have it spoiled if they haven't played it yet. But I would really, if anyone, like, digs on narrative gameplay at all, I think this is, like, one of the most unique approaches to a narrative game that I've ever played. It just is incredibly, capably put together.

and I think a lot of people are really going to enjoy it. I think so too. I think the writing in this game is so, I don't know, it is so representative of when this coming of age genre kind of works the best where the characters say a lot of really kind of inane hipster shit that a senior in high school who has reached sort of the top of this very local food chain

sort of succumbs to, and it's tough because it is, it is cringe-worthy stuff that they say at times. And then there will be a scene that is like really, really beautiful where a character will say something really, really profound. There's a scene where Van, I forget his last name, your sort of stoner, wasteoid buddy is like talking, Van Slater is like, he's made an album, he doesn't want to play it for anyone, but he has this bit where he talks about his, the sort of creative process and what he enjoys about it and how when a superhero gets bit by a magic rat that gives them their powers, all of a sudden they have a purpose. And he's like, if you decide to make an eight minute long, like, synth Odyssey, like, you've got some homework to do to, to like learn

how to do that. And that feels like a purpose to me. Like, I found that to be, to put something into words that like, I don't know, I had never been able to before. And it was coming out of the like, wispy moustachio mouth of this virtual teenage. I adored this game. I really, really loved it a lot, and I feel silly for kind of holding it at bay, because I assumed it was going to be something that it really was.

Yeah, I think it's just a hard pitch. It's hard for you to really connect to it until you're playing it. And that's just, unfortunately, the nature of it, or fortunately, I guess, the nature of it. So in that way, I think it's on Game Pass, things like that. like they're and 20 bucks yeah if you want to buy it so realistically not huge investment I'm sure if you were waiting you might come on discount at some point but overall like man go and play it go and play it

right now because I want to talk about all the spoiler stuff so go you go and you go and then you go and you hit pause and then come right back um usually we do a sort of b-sadement here we're gonna hold off because we're going to do the rest of our end-of-show business before we do spoiler discussion on mixtape. So, Russ, do we have anything from the reader mailbag that you want to dump out? Yeah, we do. We have a couple letters from folks. This one comes from buckling swashes. This is in reference to our Saros episode that we last week, and I mentioned the game Outland, which was a Metroidvania that that team made. Russ mentioned Outland, and the Xbox 360 version is still available for purchase and backwards compatible on Xbox One and series consoles. So that's good.

That's one way to play it. I kind of wish it was on PC, but whatever. Oh, did you say it wasn't, you couldn't get it? Yeah, as far as I can tell, there is no version available on PC anymore. But yeah, you can play it on. I probably own it on Xbox 360, so that's something. The other letter comes from Stephen in relation to the Steam Controller conversation that we had. I was testing out a Steam Controller.

I continue to really love it, but I do have some notes. but I'm going to read Stephen's email first. There are now methods of making the PS5 controller work with full wireless capability on PC. I'm curious if those on the best you feel with this in mind, is the steam controller the ideal PC controller? Okay, so a couple things. One, I just like the fact that it works. Like, you don't have to, like, install GitHub drivers and whatever else to get it to work. But the note that I do have for people, and I don't know that I made this clear enough in the last.

episode, if you're playing a lot of games that aren't in Steam, so maybe they're on the Xbox store, or maybe they're on EGS or whatever, the Steam controller will not work out of the box. I think there are workarounds to get it working, but it's going to be a little bit of a pain in the ass. For 98% of the stuff I play on PC, it's on Steam. So it's not an issue for me, but like, even like Itch, I would be mindful if like stuff on Itch might not work, although I do think you can add HIO stuff to Steam to work around that way. I also, after spending however long the PS5 has been out, I don't love the dual shock five, or if that is even its name.

I don't either. I don't know what it is about it. I feel like in some ways it's like ergonomically really great. I really despise the triggers. I think they feel pretty bad. I understand kind of the concept of there being a modular resistance there that they can use to emulate things in games, and I hate how that feels every time.

Like in Seros, you get that little bit of tension at the half-squeeze so you know when you've switched to a weapons alt-fire mode. I thought that felt really bad. I think using that makes the triggers feel like so squishy and kind of weird, and they're also a little too far away. I have, like, decent-sized hands. They're a little far away from where I, like, hold the grip. I don't know.

I would much, much rather use a 360 style. Lucy, do you get the hand cramps from the... Yeah, I can't use a dual sense. God. Dual sense, yes. I mean, the fact that they called it the pro version, the dual sense edge, tells me that they don't have... Awesome, dude.

A single woman working in marketing on that controller. Have they been making motherboards this whole time? Because it has motherboard energy all over it. The dual sense edge does sound like a min's razor that has like nine blades on it. and produces its own jail. It sounds like something you'd find at a CDo store. But no, I can't do it. I can't do it because I just get really bad hand cramping with it.

And I use the, I feel like such a broker record. I have the, what is it, the Xbox Elite Series 2 because the back pedals are great. That's my, yeah. It's a little heavy. Honestly, it's a little heavy. My favorite video game controller in my house is a fucking Power A Nano. switch controller.

It's like this big. It's like a good, it's like a baby. But like it, my hands time to kind of get perfectly around it and there's no extra sort of like space and everything. It just, I have to move my fingers so, so little because it's a tiny little baby controller. I don't know. I don't need much bigger than that.

Lucy, did you try this? Have you tried the steam controller? I did. Yeah. I like it a lot. I did put a hold on a pre-order thing. So I'm just waiting on my email. Because I'm just fully in the steam ecosystem at this point.

Yeah. I mean, who isn't? Ross, have you dropped it yet? Have you done that thing? I heard about this this morning. Lucy, do you want to tell? I haven't dropped it, but you should tell people what happens. So if you drop the steam controller, I can't remember the height that it has to fall.

I think about three feet. It'll scream. We'll get the little Wilhelm scream. Not every time. They said every six or eight times, but you'll get a little scream. What? Yeah, the controller screams when you drop it. Why?

They thought it was funny. Yeah, but fucking why, man? Is the controller a little... Is it a little bit heavier? I guess that's a good point, Chris. Yeah, you're going to get a lot of smash steam controllers. It's just like when Nintendo, you know, when Nintendo made all the cartridges taste so good. Yeah.

And then people like had to keep eating them. Yeah, that's right. Don't do that, guys. Like, don't do that. Do we have any more questions? It hasn't come up. I think that's it in terms of reader mail. Which means we can jump into honorable mentions before we dive into the spoiler-heavy mixtape conversation.

Lucy, have you been playing anything of note or watching anything. It doesn't have to be a game. You could talk about anything we're doing. I don't talk about what I've been playing because of embargoes. But I have been watching Widows Bay on Apple TV. Oh, yeah. Chris Plain is a big fan of Widows Bay. I watch No TV.

I watch Widows Bay. It is the only show that we tune in. Other than Vanderpump Rules, which we are slowly getting through, we're almost at Scandival, very excited. Widows Bay is the one thing that we tune into every week. And I thought it came out on Wednesdays. It comes out on Tuesday evening. So we watch the latest episode.

It is as if... So it's an Apple TV show. You wouldn't know, because Apple is notoriously terrible at promoting anything other than severance. But it is Matthew Reese from the Americans, and he is basically playing a Basil Faulty-esque character who is the mayor of a New England island. And it is basically, he's trying to promote tourism. And unfortunately, the island is just haunted as hell.

Horrible bad things have happened there. And so it is this comedy horror mix-up that is absolutely hilarious. There is a joke from the first episode with a calendar. Chris, do you know the one I'm talking about? I think about every day. And it just has this, um, And the horror is so effective. Like we were watching the last night's episode, which is the episode all about the book.

And it is fantastic. It's like edge of the seat stuff. What I think they get with like the horror writing is that horror and comedy are both the same thing. They both are going to work because they surprise you. It's not what you suspect or expect. Yeah, it's all about the build up and then the pay. Yes. And because of that, they can build up.

They can be like, we are building up something. but you don't know which it is. So it's going to catch you off guard either way. And oh, it's so good. Like, they're like, they're literally just like shaking it in front of you. Like, they're like, it's coming for you. It is coming for you. Please just tell me what it is.

So I can know if I can be happy or really upset. And the writing is just, I love seaside horror. It's some of the best stuff. Why is it, why is this seaside? I mean, I feel like so many different examples from classical literature have tapped into this. but there's something about the seaside where every piece is so big and deep. We don't even, as people know, what's at the bottom of it.

Like, at the bottom, it could be... We don't. I didn't know this about my wife until, like, literally a year ago. We were at the beach, and she returned to me, and she's like, it's what I'm most scared of. And I was like, wow. Out of nowhere, she pops a beach. And she's like, it's what I'm most scared of.

And I was like, why? And she's like, you could just keep falling forever. And she's like, anyway, I'm going to go get our kid. It's like, what the thing? Popsicle time. My favorite thing about Widows Bay, though, so I never saw Parks and Rec, but I know that some of the writing staff

worked on Parks and Rec, and my friends say that you can definitely feel that vibe. The creator of the show, Kate Diploid, I believe. Dipol. Dipold. Is maybe most famous for the infamous thought I was going to a Halloween party,

went dressed as the Babadook, but it was more an adult's drinking wine vibe. She's the Babadook from that. Incredible tweet. Yeah, it's fantastic. That is incredible. Also, the director is Hero Mirai, who is the longtime collaborator of Childish Gambino and Flying Lotus, director of Atlanta, really one of the best directors working today. And you feel it big time.

Like, on top of it being well written, there's a tough needle to thread between the balance of humor and scares. And they nail it. Also, I will say, there are people who are like, I don't like horror. I think you will still like this. I would put it more in the thriller camp, the kind of like 60s, 70s thriller, than... It's not weapons. No. You're not getting...

No, not even actually remotely weapons. Okay. Sometimes Rachel, my wife, Rachel, wants to watch weapons, but she doesn't remember it very well. She hasn't seen it. She doesn't remember what it's about, so she'll watch a trailer. and she'd be like, no fucking way, man. That's the scariest goddamn trailer I've ever seen. And then, like, a month'll pass and she'd be like,

let's just watch a trailer for weapons just to see if I'd be into it. It's just like, no, why is that guy like Yardtzing in that guy's face? Holy shit, no, no weapons, get out of here. I love Matthew Reese, man. Let's go someplace nice like the beach. Yeah, right? Open Ocean. I mean, I think we're all playing the same other game right now that is embargoed and can't talk about at the moment.

Well, I'm not. Well, I am. But I'm also playing another game that I can talk about, and that game is called Blueprints. Yay! Oh, fuck yeah. There it is. This is our weekly Blueprints update. Progress is being made, folks.

I'm on day 12. Are you still playing with Alex? Still playing with Alex, my wife. We are playing, yeah, usually a day or two a night. Now that the runs have gotten considerably longer, it's usually one day because a run could take like an hour or more. Sure. We're on day 12. How do, I mean, does it matter?

I mean, I guess I can do this without spoiling anything. How many permanent upgrades have? Sure. So we just got the server room unlocked. Oh, cool. Yeah, that's a cool one. As well as we just unlocked the gem mines. That's a permanent upgrade.

We also have the orchard and the sidehouse. We have the basement key stored in the, what's that room co-check room is living in there while we figure things out and we are viciously taking notes

on... Have you finished? Have you made it to room 39? Okay. No. So I think it's room 46 and so you have not made it there

but man, the notes are thorough and we've made a lot of progress on it and it's delightful. I will say this though as far as I can tell the colorblind's patch is still not on switch two.

I check every single night. That's so wild. So far, I will say there's really two major things that I've seen that, like, for sure, I cannot do. One of them is the billiard, the dartboard puzzle, and one of them relates to the breaker room. There's like a light thing in the break room. Neither of those at all possible for me to do until that patch drops.

But thankfully, I have my wife whose eyes work. Good for her. but it is, I think, for people that are still waiting, if you want to play it on console, just a heads up, as far as I can tell, it's not, at least on Switch 2. It might be on the other platforms. Google seems confused whenever I ask this question because it keeps referring back to,

yes, the patch is out, but it's only out on PC. So keep an eye on that, but that's a good video game. I'm glad I'm the first to play it. It's fun. I've been watching, Rachel and I watched almost all of the Martin Short documentary called Marty Life is Short on Netflix, which like there's been a real sort of

a huge generous crop of this exact type of documentary for different people lately. We watch the John Candy one and the Steve Martin one. And there's just this is an era that is being pretty heavily plumbed for documentary fodder. Mel Brooks had another good one. And man, I could watch. I think an infinite amount of home movies of like that second city TV all star cast all fucking hanging out together. I would watch just that on a loop basically forever. It goes into like his whole career not quite as like exhaustively as some of these other documentaries. The the movies

made by Lawrence Kazdan who is you know a very prolific writer wrote like a bunch of Star Wars movies and a bunch of movies that Martin Short was in that were not successful that a lot of people haven't even heard of at all. And so they're like old friends who have known each other for a while and he's the one making the documentary about Martin Short. And so a lot of it is far more kind of like personal. Like there's an extended sort of bit of the movie where they talk about how his wife bought this lakehouse, I think in Toronto, sort of sight unseen.

And they just have parties. and they have a lot of home movies of like Tom Hanks coming over to play Bingo or Catherine O'Hara coming over to, you know, play croquet in their yard. Like so much of the movie is just these people who are gods in my mind all like hanging out together and trying to make each other crack up. And like it's interesting to learn about Martin Short, but there's not a thing. I don't think there's a ton to learn here. Did any of you guys watch any of these documentaries like the John Candy one of the?

Only one that I've watched that isn't an SCTV one that is similar as the Gary Shanling documentary, which was fantastic. Yeah. Strongly recommend that. So I'm familiar with the format of it. A lot of them are like, the John Candy one in particular, obviously like he's been gone for a while so they can't get the sort of current perspective. But like a lot of it was on sort of his struggles to like have this identity as like a big funny guy. And sort of the baggage that comes along with that. And this movie is, and bear in mind, we have about 20 minutes to go.

We stopped it last night because we felt like obviously he's had some personal tragedies sort of lately. And I don't think the movie is going to have the most sort of upbeat ending. So like, obviously, I think that the conclusion of the movie is going to be, you know, pretty, pretty sad. But there's just so much, there was a lot in the John Candy Dock, too, and the Steve Martin one of just like these, these comedy people who I idolized growing up in this unseen footage of them just kind of like hanging out

I love that shit, man. Can't get enough of it. That's lovely. Do you have anything? Yeah, just widows, Bay. I'll second that. I want to talk about the spoilers, dude. I just want to talk about the spoilers.

Yeah, yeah. Let's say right here, friends who are listening who do not want to be spoiled on mixtape, which, again, I would encourage you, and maybe this is bad practice, to host a podcast and to say this, but I finished it in about three hours, three and a half hours.

You could really get through this thing. So, you know, if that doesn't sound great to you, thanks for listening to the besties, thanks to all our patrons on Patreon. Wait, let me shout out a couple of patrons on Patreon just in case they are the ones that don't want to be spoiled. I don't want to make sure that they don't get cut out.

Props to Jeff, Jeff C., CamV, Cameron, and smells like, fun. Thank you for being members of our Patreon. Thank you to everyone else. We support our show. We have a new episode of the Resties out right now. And we have the bracket battles episode, which is the

pre-justin departure bracket battles episode. Forever in our hearts our EP, Justin McRoy, we thank you for all. We didn't give him credit last week and you know what? I think it's important that we internalize that credit from now on so that even though it might not

audibly. Big on Shoeser, thank you for everything you do. What will happen in our hearts. Maybe you could make a jingle. In our mouths, we've got to... Just like something you just play. Yeah. Yeah.

Executive producer, Dustin metal. Something like that. Yeah, that's strong. Okay, so if you don't want to be spoiled on mixtape, understandable, please turn off your device or change it to another thing. Turn off your phone. Turn off your phone completely. Before we get into deep spores, I want to hear briefly,

from Chris Plant because Stacy, my read on Stacy is that she is basically him going into college. But for snobby films. Is that a fair assessment? Kind of. I was snobby, but I don't know if I was

actually snobby about film in that way yet. I think I was just annoying. I think that's what you're getting at. And the answer is yes. That was me. So the game, like we said, is about Stacy who is about to go off to New York and they had this road trip that they were going to do because her friend Cass is going to go to college in Southern California. I think probably like USC, UCLA, maybe UC Irvine.

And Van is going to... Name five other Southern California University. You see San Diego Chapman. Please don't do this. I'm ready for it. But yes, what is relatable about... that to me is I loved my high school friends. But many of us were friends, and I think this is common, by circumstance.

Like, you are making friends with people who are like, well, this is the closest to who I am that is available to me from this pool of 300 to 700 people at my high school. 669 people went to my high school. I will never forget that number. Nice. Thank you. but there is that feeling of I found in the game oh these people are a good fit for this moment and they are realizing that they will probably never see each other again

at least in this capacity and I think that is like the sadness of the game and I think that's why Stacey being insufferable is important because she doesn't really belong here All of them don't necessarily belong where they're at. And seeing somebody have to tell that to people that they love or not tell it, but tell it in so many words, is like a hard thing. That's a really tough moment.

And I think that's what I found really relatable about it. And in like that mix of like sadness and not wanting to hurt people and them not wanting to hurt you. And like the hurt is inevitable is kind of what this game is getting at. Yeah, the game doesn't show this. but I can picture the like, oh, it's the first time back in town for a holiday break or whatever it is. Yeah.

And oh, I actually had this other thing and oh, we can do like 30 minutes here and get a coffee and catch up. Oh, that's actually not going to work. No, we'll catch up again. And then six years passes. Like that's... The game doesn't show...

I think very purposefully, the game doesn't show that. It also doesn't, since we were in full spoiler territory here. Like, the game starts to sort of dabble in, not dabbling, that sounds like a sort of accidental way of approaching it. Like there is this sort of unspoken romance angle that I felt coming off of all the main character.

There's this sort of like light polycule sort of suggestion that is happening here. And you spend the whole game saying like, oh, and, you know, Stacey's ruined these plan she's canceled this road trip they've been planning for years now and you think like you know at the end maybe she'll cancel her trip and you know they'll they'll they'll she'll show up and be like we're going to hit the fucking road to that doesn't happen like everyone kind of sticks to the path right everybody sort of stay the suggestion is that yeah tomorrow they're not going to see each other and you know may never again uh i thought that was i don't know bold i think if the easy the much easier answer would be to do it the other way, but like, it also would feel like a, um, a contradiction to the sort of

entire bittersweet vibe of, of the entire thing. I think what makes that ending so effective is the setting being that 90s, free online era where, you know, like, even when I left my relatively small city, let's be real, but, you know, to move to London, you know, that was still, Facebook was around, you could text people, whereas at this point, your world was so small. And it was, you know, those friends of convenience who were around. And the fact that someone leaving would, that would be the end of things. Like, you would miss so, so much. There wasn't an easy way to catch up on everything. And I think that's what really resonated with me. It's because I missed when my world was that small, you know? I miss when, you know, going and hanging out of the green in Newcastle

was the big thing that you did. You know, those stories that they do. little vignettes of, of just like a random, what could be a random night, are the things that you still hang on to years and years later. And so, for me, it was kind of this sort of longing for that time, even though I never experienced it. And when it comes to the friendship, it's like, I had friendships like that. And I think the, particularly in the final third, when it's the, the, under the bubbling sadness between all three of them, it's like, it's like they are approaching every conversation as if it's going to be the last, which I think, makes that ending moment, which is the don't let go, let go.

Oh, that really hit. Can you describe like how that how works? Yeah. Not the first time a game has pulled that idea, I think, where you're holding your friend's hand and you have to hold in both triggers to do it because it's sort of a mini game. And it says, don't let go. And then the don't disappears after a while.

And I kept on holding it just because, like, I still had this part of my brain that was like, I bet. if I keep holding on, I bet there's another ending where I do go, but like, no, I can tell you all right now, there's no sort of bonus to be acquired for holding the, maybe there's an achievement for like you held on to Van's hands

for four hours or something, but it, you got to, and it immediately pans out to this like needle drop moment that like hits. Yeah. That controlling both hands and controlling two things at once is one of my favorite tricks of the game. And it reminds me of what Hayslight Studio was doing

before they started doing co-op with brothers. Because when you control two things, you end up telling a story. So like you have the tongue, the French kissing game where you zoom in and you are just two giant tongues. And how engaged those tongues are, it's telling you, who was interested?

There's another moment where Slater and Stacey, when we flash back before Cassandra had entered their little trio, are taking a photo booth photo set together. And you are controlling how they lean into one another. And there is a story there. Are they both leaning into each other? Is Stacey leaning in more? Is Slater leaning in more?

And you end up taking photos of this. And those photos mean something very different depending on how you do that. You don't have to read that way. that's like the game isn't forcing you to think about that. But it is giving you that opportunity to kind of cast your own version of the story with that, that subtext. And I think the, yeah, the romance stuff ties into that. It's like, I think to Griffin's point, I agree. I think it's all done intentionally.

There's like a real logic to it. But the fact that no one is acting on anything tells you either like they weren't ready or it wasn't actually like it was purely potonic. like your mind kind of goes to a lot of different places. And the fact that the game doesn't give you a set answer of, oh, here's that moment when Stacey and Van are departing and they have a big romantic kiss. Like I would have killed. It would have ruined the ending for me if that's how it ended.

Because it's not a game about that. It's a game about experiencing the moment they're in and then realizing you have to let go. It is also, I think a reason why I've read a lot of writing about this game of people who were not sort of able to connect with it on a sort of nostalgic level. And I joked earlier that like no kid had this life. And that is also, I think, purely intentional. The place that the game takes place in is not real.

It's not a real place, but it's also not necessarily set in a very specific part of the country. I guess there is the map that you do see. Pacific Northwest, Northern California. Yeah, there's lots of redwoods and pine. So you can do the math from there. Time is also Places too. The time period.

Right. 1999, but it really is... Is it 99? I thought it was earlier than that. I think it's 99, but they have even said, I mean, you have a cassette player, a vinyl player, CDs. CD burning. Sierra TVs, but like it is, I think, a little bit displaced from time, but it is, I

would say, elder millennial. Uh, like, what would you... It's a little bit of Gen X. I would say... Somewhere in that gap, I would say, between late Gen X, early, early elder millennial. Like the fashion is very. Yes. It felt like the time that the game was taking place was around the time I was like a toddler.

And so like I didn't know when Portishead's debut album Dummy came out in 1993. I was six years old. So I wasn't necessarily in that vein. But I think the reason that some people kind of failed to, not fail, but have trouble connecting with it sort of on a nostalgic level. is that I think the story and a lot of these sort of like the coming of age genre that this game is I would say pretty

closely modeled after like a Ferris Bueller or a whatever like a book smart is it is like wish fulfillment it's like aspirational in a way like I never I never went to a fucking

kick ass party with like 200 people at it do they exist by the way that's such a I don't think so I don't think. They do. I went to one when I was in high school.

It was my last, I was pretty straight edge in high school until my graduation night. And it was voluntarily, were you in cell straight edge or? No, it was just, you know, it was like a theater kid, a theater kid. So like drama school. Pretty straightforward. Like, oh, we're just going to hang out at the diner and drink sodas, whatever. Anyway, I went ham on that last night. And in my memory, probably not 200 people.

and probably not burning a cottage down, but like that's what it felt like in my memory. Yeah, it's played up. So much of this game is cartoonish, including like it's art style, right? It has that Spiderverse 2.5D kind of choppy animation style that is like really fucking slick,

really well done here. But also it's like, at that party, the Camilla Cole, who's like the coolest girl in town, comes down in a beam of flight from the sky. Like there's so much deeply unsirious stuff happening here. So it's like, this is the last day that everybody would love to have. Like, I would love to have memories of me fucking going down and mountain on skateboards with my friends and doing fucking tricks and then going to this kick-ass party and flying through a fit.

Yeah, like, that doesn't, that's, that doesn't happen in real life. But it's still, you can still kind of like love that because it, you understand that it's like good and it represents something that is so desirable. It's also a mix tape of teen movies. Like that party that you're talking about is dazed and confused. I think there's moments that are borrowing even from some moments from last of us. There's the Ferris Vula escape through the escape over the fences. There's a good chunk. The other thing I'll say about the nostalgia of it all is like it is quite literally the point of the game.

It's not running from that. It is a game structurally. And I don't think we've actually talked about this. that is about reflecting on memories. The entire structure of the game is going from one person's room to the next and then looking around the room and remembering moments that have already happened. So the game is really playing with how do we big fish style remember things. It is also very much playing with Peter Pan and not wanting to grow up.

I don't think it's like an accident that you fly many times in this game. I think it is really aware of the Peter Pan syndrome that is kind of at the heart of the game. So it is a game about nostalgia. Like it's not, I think at the very beginning, Griffin, you said, you know, this isn't the, here you want transformers. Here's your transformer, sloppy little piggies. Yeah. Yes, we're looking at the past, but we do actually want to think about how we think about the past, which is a different thing. mean to tie it altogether. I spoke to

Johnny Galvatron, who's the writer and director back at Dice, so back in February. And I asked him about, you know, why this kind of of NorCal, Portland setting. And he was like, well, I didn't go to America until I was in my 30s. And for an Australian who's from the outside looking in, America is like this fantasy land. And I was writing a fantasy story. So where else would you set it other than places like

California and Portland? And I think that's reframed how I approach mixtape because it's like it is a fantasy. It is a fantasy of these pieces of childhood that maybe someone would have had a part of it, maybe two things, but no one had this in age life

you know? Right. I mean, look at the day that Ferris Bueller has. Yeah. Like it's fucking crazy. Yeah, there's no way, man. But you watch Ferris Bueller and love it despite that no one. This is what drives me crazy. I know I brought this up when we started talking

about the game, but I really do feel like when a game like this comes out, it is part of this broader conversation. A lot of it's coming from people who are not approaching the shit in good faith even remotely at all, which I understand that that is there. But I feel like people with these types of games have so much trouble with like, it's not representative of my own sort of experience and therefore, like, who is this thing for? When it's like, this is, I really, this isn't represented. It's not, it's a cartoon, like, it's very, very cartoonishly sort of presented a lot of the time, and it, it uses the framing, and it uses the, the, the insufferable tone of its characters sometimes, and it uses the music to, like, tell a bigger

thing about, like, the moment that you stop being a kid and this stuff that you've, like, rocked with for 18 years is all of a sudden not as, not as big a part of your life anymore, maybe gone entirely. And that's so, that's so universal. And it doesn't seem to be a gap that people struggle with in movies because people watch Ferris Bueller and no one's like, I don't even live in Chicago. It's like fucking calm down guys. I know it's bad for him to talk about like the conversation or whatever, the discourse. I think it's worthy because if you look on Steam right now, like there's a lot of downvotes for quite frankly bullshit reasons. Yeah, right? And it's it's, oh man, that's that shit is always frustrating, but it's it's

Just it's embarrassing, man. I want to wrap with a little splash of joy from each of us, which is, I would love to hear y'all's favorite, like, mini-game, like playable moment from it. I mean, it was mentioned earlier, but I think the B.J. Thomas sequence in the rain where Stacey sees that Cass has lied to her about going out and spending time with Jenny fucking good speed. and then seeing that whole sequence play out in slow motion as she's like floating backwards and there's a great beat in there where you're flying over the school and the song is playing

and there's bus drivers or on the roofs of all the buses clapping. I don't know if it's in that sequence or one of the other ones, but that moment I thought it was so fucking good. Yeah. Griffin, how about you? That one's up there for me. I really, I love David Gray

his music I've enjoyed for a long time and there's like an extended sequence where you're kind of like rebuilding or it's like a memory of you putting together the Ritz which is their like derelict cabin in the woods hang out that's like a few different things oh fuck no it's the van

train to rent me it's a sea rink oh it's so fucking funny I can't believe I forgot about it but your van and you are the other two are like hey go in there and get us movies and he's like I'm fucking super drunk and they're like please just do it and you just stumble around.

And I don't know, if we describe it, it's not going to sound funny, but the execution is god-d-de-ne. You knock over everything. You knock over everything, and it's so funny, and you hear the warped voice of the cashier the whole time, like, come on, man. Man, it's good.

I feel like my answer's kind of basic because it's the very opening of the game, but going down the road to Devo, it's so good. But it's like, I forgot that when we were kids, we would yell, car. And, you know, even just that moment, like, trying to do tricks and just, yeah, that is such a good Devo song, too. It's become my top plate of the year already.

Give a backup, Chris. I'm sorry I took yours. You check my, but I'll, a bonus, the photo booth sequence, the flashback with Slater. So good. So good. And also, I did not know that song, Wichitao by Harper's Bazaar. It's really good. It's real good.

it's real good. You mentioning the car thing made me think, I kept thinking about Wayne's World a lot while playing it. And Wayne's World obviously had that kind of like

confessional style like turn, break the fourth wall. And the head banging. And the head banging. That's more I would say like high fidelity sort of butter. There's a lot of high fidelity in here.

A lot. Yeah. It's a good fucking game, man. Good game. Really good. Really, really good. Glad I played it. Okay.

that's really going to do it. We've done all of our ending of show business, so we're probably just going to wrap up. Lucy, thank you so much for joining us. Where can people find your word? Thank you for having me. I'm Lucy James Games on everything. You can find me avoiding discourse on the end.

And you've got the Friends Per Second podcast, which is fantastic. Highly recommend it, friends of the besties, certainly. Okay, we're not going to do the rest of our shit. We're just going to say, oh, wait, what's next week? Oh. We're going to play Fours of Horizon 6 next week.

Oh, okay. It's a car game. We were coming so dangerously close to telling people what game we're playing right now. Yeah, that's true. I'm excited to play Forza Horizon 6. The game we're talking about ain't it, though? Keep chasing those clues, gum shoes. So join us next week for automotive bit of revelry with all of us.

I mean, Lucy's not going to be here. Lucy's going to be doing other important stuff. I'm with you emotionally. Cars, man. Thank you. Good. And hopefully our listeners are as well. Thank you so much for listening to The Besties.

Keep on listening to The Besties because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games? The Besties is executive produced by Justin McElroy. You're welcome. Besties!