The Besties - The Awesome Games of the Future

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

Crave the era of demo discs? It’s returned thanks to Steam Next Fest. This week, The Besties discuss 10 demos of anticipated games. Plus, we share some of your favorites. And we talk about a very special Justin McElroy video! Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

Can I tell you guys an idea? Sure. I think I'd like to create a Chris Gaines style, alternate identity for myself, that just talks about the adults only video game market. Because every time I glance off of it in Steam while looking for other things like today. Is it a glance?

Is it a glance? It's a glance, and sometimes it's a lingering glance, but it is a glance. Sure. But I do think that they're, cause I don't know about Steam histories, right? Like I don't know how that all works, right? I don't want to think you're there.

But I do would love to have another dirty dog identity who just like, it's his whole thing. Cause I think it's fascinating. It's an underserved, it's a journalistic fascinating. It's an underserved journalistic niche. It's super underserved, and people are working very hard on these games. Very hard on these naughty games, yeah, for sure. They're so hard.

They're working hard on both ends, on the playing and the creating. Ba-bing-bong, another Chris, another Chris zing-zing. That's what they call it. The user reviewers of these games are working really hard to do some incredible justification like you've never seen in these reviews. And I just wish someone was covering the space

in an engaged, positive, sex positive, non-sexual way that just allows you to talk and have some fun. That's a tough needle to thread, my man. It's tough, it is. Sex positive and non-sexual are tough. That's a tough needle to thread, my man. It's tough, it is. Sex positive and non-sexual are tough. That's a tough one to do, but. How are you going to monetize this, you know, public service that you're providing?

I'm going to sell it only fans of me writing it. Oh, I love it. In the buff. So that will be power. That's cool. Yeah, but it's not me, it's whoever. You know what I mean? My brand can't sustain this. It won't be Justin Will you wear a mask like the mask like a like a mask? That's kinky I like that yeah, I don't like contributing to this. My name is Bolladare the master of your

fighting the latest and greatest in adult entertainment Bolladare how do you feel about Sex Desert, Mad Lust? Well, if you've played Sex Desert the franchise at all, you know you're in for top-tier storytelling and some of the most monatious curves in the biz. Scorpions, sex scorpions in the Sex Desert, you know they've got them in spades, especially if you're willing to pay for all the DLC.

That's downloadable. Come on. Downloadable, come on, Baudelaire, no. The future is now. But there's so many. I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin Macri and I know the best games coming up. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the week.

My name is Ross Froshing and I I know this game of the week. My name is Ross Froshing, I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive inter-game mint. It's a video game club just by listening. You have become a member. This week we're digging into the Steam Next Fest for October 24th.

What if games were free now? What if games were free and shorter? And not complete? yeah, I'm finished Yeah, I mean I guess we kind of spoiled it. I was gonna let plant explain it But that it said it's a much you kind of you kind of did it a bunch of demos It's a bunch played a bunch. We'll talk about a good ones and the bad ones Look at that over the horizon whoo. Oh, it's a cloud of games. Oh shit.

We're dead. They're swarming. We're toast, man. I have not, is this a new thing? Cause I've been gaming for a while and I don't, I remember hearing about Steam Next Fest. I don't think I have ever. I can't tell if you're joking

cause I'm pretty sure we've done an episode. We have, yeah. Oh, did we? Oh, shit. You might not have been in. Maybe we were absent, but. Maybe I was sick. We've been doing this for a long, yeah. Oh, did we? Oh, shit. You might not have been in. You were absent, but maybe I was sick. We've been doing this for a long time. You know, like it all kind of blurs together.

Yeah, Steam Next Fest, it has been growing exponentially. That part probably feels very new, because it used to be, you know, you could get a few demos here and there. Now it's like every game that's coming out, you're going to get a demo, including all those horny games. Yeah. Anything you want, you're gonna get a demo, including all those horny games. It's anything you want, you can try, you know, a good 15 minutes to an hour of it. Yeah, this is cool. I mean, I, before we, before we jump in, I want to say, and I'm curious if

anyone else felt this way. Did anyone else feel a little bit depressed playing all of these games, because it's a lot, a lot of high quality games that I know for sure will not Necessarily sell a ton of copies because there are so many Hmm. Oh, yeah, like the creators. Yeah. Yeah creators. Yeah. I mean yes for sure I guess I always kind of hope that the cream like Rises within reasonable expectations.

I mean, I know. So much cream though. That's a lot of, it's a lot of cream. It's a lot of DLC. Downloadable cream. I definitely felt that knowing it's just not possible for every great game here to like find its audience. And that, I mean, even just scrolling through

the list of demos, there were more games I wanted to play than I knew I could play of demos. Yeah. Right. I hate how it turns you into Simon Cowell or you're like looking for reasons to dismiss games. No, rogue light elements, I'm not in the mood. Try something else. No controller support? Forget it. Forget it. But it's great, I'm not in the mood. Try something else. No controller support, forget it.

Forget it. But it's great for TG, for the gamers, I think. Because no matter what you freaking want, man, there's gonna be something coming out. That's true. And you can try it during, is Next Fest over with right now? Or is it still coming?

I think it will be probably coming to the end, if not. But a lot of the time, the demos stay sharp. I think it's one of the great benefits for Steam, for me, is when you hear about something that is of interest to you on Steam, you are usually typically just within a couple button presses of being able to keep track of that thing, which I think is to the great detriment of PlayStation or Xbox, when you hear about a console game, you don't have that instant like way to get into the ecosystem and stay there. So I think impressions on Steam are a lot more valuable in that sense, right?

Because if you can get someone onto your Steam page, you can have them click that one wishlist button and you've got them. Like you're, you know, you'll be able to keep tabs on this stuff. Which I really appreciate being able to like look at a game and think, oh, that's interesting. I will come back to that. And I, it's a lot harder to, I mean, I know it's possible but when you're on the consoles, you're like, when are you at a console and also like hear about, you know

you're just not always right in front of it. Yeah, sure. Why don't we get started? Cause there's a lot of games we can go sort of round robin. Yeah. Let's do it. Who wants to start? I'll start it off with a game called Mandragora. Mandragora.

I also checked this one out. This is one of the three I dipped into. It's that like plant that looks like a ginger plant. It looks like a person. That's what the name, I guess, referenced. If it screams, it kills you. Yeah, precisely. This game is a side scrolling Dark Souls-y kind of game.

I've played a number of these. We've all played a number of these. I think where this one stood out to me was visually speaking, it looks like very, I guess, painterly and vibey in the sense that it's like a fantasy setting, which is pretty typical, but it has like an artistic element to it. I think we're playing. It reminds me, I think, in a lot of ways actually of that,

No Rest for the Wicked game that we played earlier this year. Yeah, I'm just trying to remember that game. Exactly right, it reminds me of that. But in side scrolling. Not just artistically, like the heft of it. Like every hit is very slow and deliberate and methodical and it sort of requires you to dodge and parry as you would in a FromSoft game.

Yeah, and I think a lot of the 2D souls likes tend to miss that. They tend to be a lot, I guess snappier. Even games that I really love, like Blasmus 2, for example, doesn't have this feel. It doesn't have that weighty feel. So I thought that was really great. Yeah, overall, I was pretty impressed by it. It didn't feel so hard that I was throwing my Steam Deck across the room. But I liked what they were doing.

Pretty hard, though. Here's the thing, Griffin. I'm great. You're great at games. That's true. It does lock you into a single class, and it kind of drops you into the middle of things. This is such a tough genre to demo,

because you really have to get stuck in and work your way up to figure out how everything works. The demo, yeah. All this stuff, you get adjusted, right? Difficulty and all this stuff gets tweaked before. Yeah, or more importantly, you play a tutorial and you ramp up to where you are in the demo and it's not quite as tough.

Yeah, you only had one class to pick from, right, when you played it? Yes, I think it's like the warrior class or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's nice. No, it looks really promising. Plant? I played a game called Gladio Mori.

Did any of you see this game? Yeah, it looks, was it like fencing or fighting or some sort of sword fighting thing? What was happening? Yeah, so a number of the games are incomplete. Like not incomplete in a demo sense, but like, oh wow, it could be years before we play this or it could be days, I have no idea.

And Gladio Mori is one where I really can't tell if it is days or years. How much of this is intended? Yes, but it is a blast either way, and it is a realistic sword fighting, or just combat game, where you are a gladiator, and you look like, you know the figurines that artists use to like learn to draw?

Yeah, yes. Like they're like just kind of rounded edges? You look like a that basically. And you have full control over the positioning of your weapon. So I don't know, for anybody who's ever had to do sword fighting training for like theater, the position's like one, two, three, four, five, six. Like basically two different above the head positions, four different kind of

block or parry positions, and then different types of swings. And those are assigned to your button prompts. So when you kind of like move into battle, you are trying to block and parry and attack the same way you in theory would as like an amateur swordsman. The cool thing about it is sword fighting moves very quickly. So it lets you and encourages you from the beginning to change the speed of the game, whether you're in single player or multiplayer. You can change it down to like a quarter of real time. So effectively slow motion. So you're getting in there.

The other cool thing about it is it is really scratching my Bushido blade itch. I was gonna say. Of what happens if you play a sword or sharp weapons combat game with like real damage. So the humor of it, I guess, is like almost a human fall flat where you are, most people are not good at this. You are kind of blocking, but then somebody swings and kind of falls into your sword. And like, then your sword gets stuck in them. And then as they're wiggling to get unstuck,

their battle acts like nudges into your side and cuts you open. And it's game over. Yeah. It- Wait, they're still swinging at you after your bat, your sword is like stuck in them. Yeah, you have to kill them.

So like in, and as they bleed out, there's still like time. And if you like take out their leg, they like hobble. But if you like get into their gut, it kind of like, it literally looks like they're like slowing down. I can't tell how much of this is me like Phantom, you know, where your brain's trying to make sense of it. You're like, oh wow, the character's actually slowing down

because they're bleeding out. It really helps that it all looks like toy figurines, like faceless figurines. Yeah, right. Yeah, it has like a good sense of humor in that way. And that's where I mentioned the, what is this coming out soon or in a long time? Because if they're planning on adding realistic

graphics, I think it would be a waste. Honestly, I think it could find its audience as it is, um, but it does have like some polish that still needs to be done. It, the menus feel like very rudimentary. Um, the multiplayer, uh, looks really messy. You can have like large-scale kind of like I think like eight person battles. But it's fun as hell already. And that to me is like the big sign. If your game can like look like this and be a bit of a mess. And I never had trouble finding a multiplayer match.

That is a really positive sign. And I think people will dig it. Sick. I played, even though I kinda didn't want to, I played the demo for The Rise of the Golden Idol. Oh. The sequel to The Case of Golden Idol, which is one of my favorite sort of mystery games

in the, you know, Obra Dinn kind of lineage. If you did not play it, the first one, you fucking should, because it's, if you have a Netflix subscription, you can play it for free on your phone, basically. It is a mystery solving game where you are presented with a sort of usually still screen kind of diorama, usually during or just following a murder or a death that has taken place. You look around the screen, you look around the area for clues, which you

collect in the form of words in your journal, and then you solve the mysteries by sort of filling in the blanks of each case using the words that you have collected. It's a really simple premise. The mysteries themselves are not simple. Case of the Golden Idol had a DLC that came out after release that featured some really, really at times pretty obtuse mysteries. But yeah, I played, I don't know how much is here because I played the whole first act of the game, which includes a tutorial and then three cases following that. And I was like, I don't want to get to, I don't want to actually spoil this for myself. I got a question for you, Griffin.

Yeah. In terms of gameplay, did you notice anything different? So they more or less doing the same thing. Gameplay wise, they're doing more or less the same thing. It looks a lot better. Still that kind of like disturbing art style a little bit. It kind of reminds me of like, like late 80s, early 90s PC games was the first game.

Yeah, sure. Is that still the same thing? Yeah, I would say more like early 90s PC games. But the, I mean, the art style is so like grotesque at times. What I do think is cool is that the game is separated into acts, sort of like the last game, and each act has a few mysteries in it. And then at the end of the first game you basically getmystery that you use pieces from each of the cases within to solve what you just saw, the story of what you just saw

in this handful of cases, which I think is a cool way to handle that and it helps you really understand what is happening in this chapter of the game before you move on to the next one. It's fucking great. I'm psyched about the final. Yeah, and it's out in a few weeks, November 12th is when this one is dropping,

and I'm gonna definitely dive into it head first then. But yeah. Juice? I got a little one for you guys we'd like called Billionaire. What's it called? Okay, I'm very curious to hear what you think about this one.

Okay, I think it's early. Yeah. I'll be interested to see if they, okay, so here's the thing, it's a pachinko game. Yeah. But it's a deck building pachinko game. So you're basically building a deck of pins where you drop your shot and then it bounces off the pins and the pins have different effects.

So you bounce off one that has like a plus 200 but it shoots you back up and then there's another one that you could put above that that's like a mine cart and it takes your ball over this way and if the ball hits these things you'll so you're basically trying to like, set up beneficial paths by filling in the pegs with different things after you've shot, you add new pegs, and I think you're kind of like, building a collection of- It's like a more engaged peggle.

You're kind of removing some of the randomness of Pachinko. Like you're trying to, to the best of your ability, wrestle control from anything that is. And if you were to do that in Japan, you'll get your legs broken, but here. Yeah, Peggle, it's not unlike, what was the one, do you guys remember? Peglin?

Peglin, yes. Sort of similar to that, except you are placing the Pegs and the way that the Pegs all interact and stuff and work together, it is, kind of reminded me of Luck Be a Landlord. It's like that level of fidelity with the way the different icons work together. It looks cool too. It looks like grindstone is a simple sort of lowly style.

My concern would be, I really like conceptually and I enjoyed playing it. I think that, I don't know if, when you come up with decks in Bellatro, you know that you're gonna have pretty full control over how those decks play out, right? There's a fidelity of, I will be able to control exactly how this expounds.

there's a fidelity of I will be able to control exactly how this expounds. This feels like too far to the other end of that where I'm not sure I would have enough control over the placement of the pegs and the angles of the shots and stuff. I'm not sure I'd have enough control over that to make it feel like a satisfying thing I was setting up because it does kind of feel pretty random once you take a shot. You almost would feel like a satisfying thing I was setting up. Because it does kind of feel pretty random.

Once you take a shot. You almost would need like a preview line that actually shows you like three shots in what would happen. Right. And it starts to get computationally pretty difficult. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will say that the enjoyment I had was mainly seeing like, the screen gets very chaotic when it's all happening.

And right now it's sort of set up to where you're getting a lot of points pretty quickly. And so it feels very satisfying and like a Vegas sort of way. But it's really interesting. I'll be interested to see if they can pull it together. It's called Billy Ball. Ballillion Ballillion. Ballillionaire. I'm very glad that you brought this one because I was probably most excited for this. Honestly, only played it for like 10 minutes.

Basically everything but the game feel was amazing. Like the sound, the art, everything. And I couldn't tell if it was like off by some tinkering or what the physics themselves felt a little strange For a thing that I felt really relied on physics But I'm I'm really hopeful that they'll figure this one out because it's such a great premise It's a good really good premise. I hope they yeah Fresh you got one Yeah, I'm gonna do a very quick one. This is the game is called atomic owl

it's kind of a Celeste platforming game with like really really gorgeous pixel art It's like a narrative for your I don't know he's got like a magic sword and it's talking to you and it's got a lot Of sass to it But the actual gameplay is really just likeeste with like very, very light combat elements to it. I only mentioned it just because I was kind of blown away by the pixel art. It's rare that I like.

Yeah, this looks staggering. It really is stunning. The writing wasn't necessarily for me. It was a little in your face in weird ways, but I thought the gameplay was really fun, good platforming and good feel to it. And I thought the gameplay was really fun, good platforming, and good feel to it, and again, the art was... Is it a Metroidvania, or sorry, a search action experience? What I played in the demo,

and I played through the whole demo, was not, it was like linear levels. I don't know if it opens up or changes in the full game, but yeah, what I played was pretty linear. They called it a roguelite, so... Oh, interesting. Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed that based on what I played was pretty linear. They called it a roguelite. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed that based on what I played. I thought, yeah, but that's interesting.

Yeah, this looks really good. Griffin, what you got? I got one more, and it's like my... One of my most anticipated games is Heroes of Hammerwatch 2. Quick history, Heroes, Hammerwatch was like a Diablo style game, came out, didn't really set the world on fire. Then Heroes of Hammerwatch.

I love, for what it's worth, I love the original Hammerwatch. Yeah, I mean it was- It's like Gauntlet, Gauntlet is that big book. It was like Gauntlet, but it was like on Xbox Live Arcade and it was like sort of a big deal when it came out. Heroes of Hammerwatch, inspired by that first game, was a rogue-lite with a really, really great sort of feel

and structure to it, bunch of different classes, kind of Diablo, kind of Gauntlet. Really good progression as you level up. Tons of progression systems. I got really, really, really into that game, Rusted 2, we played it together, great multiplayer. Oh my god, so good. Like, it's so fun, so great.

Then Hammer Watch 2 came out, was it earlier this year? Or I think last year? Yeah, I think so. And I didn't like it very much, and it got sort of passed over, I would say, in general. They took a lot of swings. They took a lot of swings. Of like, day-night cycles and quest givers and giant open world. It was like a lot going on in that game

and it just didn't really land. So then I guess when they announced their participation in Steam Next Fest is when they also announced Heroes of Hammer Watch 2, because this announcement is like a month old. Yeah. And the demo is out now, and I mean, it's fucking great, man.

It's fucking great. It's really good. It's really good. It feels as good as, I think it's running in the Hammer Watch 2 engine. Correct, yeah, visually speaking, it's using Hammer Watch 2's engine, and brings some of the features over. There's loot, which you didn't really have,

if I remember. Yes, so the way that it worked in Heroes of Hammer Watch is that your loot was run-based, so when you restarted, you lost basically everything, and then as you went, it was sort of, you would find a wand in the dungeon, and it would boost your stats a little bit, and then you'd maybe find a robe that matched it,

and you could boost your stats a little bit, but if you died, you lost all that stuff. It was just a run-based thing. Now there is a proper hack hack and slash looter game like element of you are getting gear, you're upgrading it, you're hanging on to it. But then there's also trinkets that you pick up as you go through the dungeon that do provide

those run-based upgrades. There's almost vampire survivor style skill upgrades that you find as you go, which are also run-based. But then again, you are finding resources to upgrade the town, you're leveling up, you're skill points, you are leveling up vendors so that you can upgrade your potion. There's so, so, so, so many carrots in the game.

And it took me all of two runs to say, okay, I'm gonna fucking get really, really into this as much as I did the first Heroes of Hammer watch. Russ, you referenced something crazy about the character when you changed characters. Yeah, did you try that? I mean, yeah, I tried different characters. Okay, so when you're playing the game,

I was playing, I think I started as a wizard and I wanted to make an archer. So I was playing the game and I was like, I'm gonna make a new character, I'll just try and archer, I'm sure I'll start from the beginning, whatever it is. You instantly get dropped in exactly where you were standing as the new character, but you can use all of the features that your town has had,

like all the upgrades that you've already unlocked. And I don't know, there's something about not having to rerun the tutorial as a new character felt very fluid and kind of impressive. Yeah. Yeah, I really like that. It was a minor thing, but it just felt like... No, it is neat.

Yeah, I think... I'm super psyched for this. If you like ARPG hack and slash, looter games, this is going to be a fucking good one. Yeah, and it does feel like they've kind of beta tested a lot of the aspects of the engine specifically with Hammer Watch 2, which has gone through a lot of patches. And I think they know pretty clearly at this point what the fans are looking for. So this really feels like a good fit.

Hey, real quick, Tenebroussomnia. Yeah! Is, looks, it's uh, it's a Okay, let's call it a point-and-click adventure with a 2d Retro aesthetic kind of reminds me of like Creepy Some scary like fantastic oriole not quite that advanced graphically you are a woman who is investigating

her ex-boyfriend's house because he has gone missing. And when you find out him is a very scary scene, and then you have to do different puzzle type elements, nothing too super complex in the demo, it's only about 20 minutes long. And you're also at a certain point starting to get chased by scary monsters that are trying to come to your progress,

which is, feels interesting for a point and click adventure where you're like not exactly sure where you're going and now you're also being chased by monsters but you do get a gun, which also you don't expect from games like this really, you don't normally get a gun. Justin is really bearing The demo it's on the demo scratchy. Oh, it's not the demo. So there's an FMV component that is not in the demo Yeah, so the the other big thing about this is that there are air full motion video?

sequences in in the game that have a completely different style to dislike sort of retro aesthetic Those were not Included in the demo so I can sadly not speak to those and if I'm being honest it tempered my enjoyment of the demo Because I did spend the entire time waiting for that and I did not get what I craved Yeah, sorry, but. But that's okay. It looks, I'm gonna play it, it looks great. But I need to see the F and V parts. But if you like scary stuff, it's neat. I don't think it demos great, I will say.

In 20 minutes, I don't think you really get what's interesting about this. For example, you get a gun and bullets, but no real reason to use the gun and bullets, which you would in the game, right? It just feels like it doesn't feel like a whole experience. It just kind of feels like a sliver. Yeah, this is the problem with the Steam Next Fest demo model. In general, I feel like is a lot of developers are just trying to be a part of it and not necessarily ask themselves, am I ready for it? Is the game at that point?

And maybe, I don't know if it's a good or a bad idea to do that because any hype is good hype, I guess, but at the same time, you can only get one chance often to get in front of somebody and you gotta be mindful of the foot that you put forward. I would be interested to see playing if that is accurate with Steam. I would wonder if it is, how much of it is a game

of like number of impressions, you know what I mean? Even if you're not ready, just the like getting any oxygen. Yeah, isn't that like the marketing rule that you have to be seen like three times before anybody would ever buy your product? Yeah. But it does seem like if someone were to have a bad experience with a demo, you just wouldn't.

It's true. I would never play the game again. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. Absolutely. So the game, one of the other games I brought is a game called Heartworm, which did any of you look at the art for this game? No. No, I'm Googling, I'm searching these as we talk about them. Tenebrous Somnia looks fucking rad.

It does. It's really good. I left links in, my games have links in the doc if you want to use them. Oh yeah, I'll make sure that they get into the newsletter. Heartworm looks like a throwback to, there is the original Resident Evil kind of, but for me, like Parasite Eve sort of stuff.

It is a retro horror over the shoulder shooter game. And it is kind of the definition of what we've been talking about. The game itself, I really don't know if they should have put the demo out, there's a lot of work that needs to be done on the game. That said, I have a feeling that when it is ready, they will nail it because everything else is killer. The art design is amazing. The audio is exceptional. There's an intro video to this that is pre-rendered CG that looks like, remember that Saturday morning cartoon reboot. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like that type of really rough CG in the best way possible. Um, and they seem to know the different types

of audiences. So when you start the game, there are two choices you can make. One is, uh, do you want tank controls or do you want modern 3d controls? And the other is, do you want tank controls or do you want modern 3D controls? And the other is, do you want the shooting where you like kind of lock in and stay positioned like the original Resident Evil or the kind of over the shoulder thing?

So they're already working towards making it feel like a very comfortable game. The big problem for it, and I'm not sure how you get past this, is it is pre-rendered or it's meant to look like pre-rendered background. So the camera is locked in position. And I forgot that when you are running around a city or a neighborhood and you have those locked cameras, you never know when the camera angle is going to change. And with it, the direction that your controller is going to change and with it the direction that your controller is going to move your character. Which is why they did tank controls in the first place. Yeah. You would just keep holding that direction and you would keep

moving forward but with modern controls that does not work. Yes. Kind of interesting. So that has been a challenge and it feels like the thing that they're working through. It's not a deal breaker for me because everything else is so enjoyable, but it certainly is jarring where you basically, when you get a cut of the camera, you kind of stop moving and have to rethink how you're going to move around.

I'm so into this PS1 era kind of. This Renaissance. Really, it's kind of building up. Pro country and I think Loon Acid was another game I played last year. I feel like it's coming back in a big way. I don't know why this one works on me so much better than 8-bit, maybe because it's not quite as

you know, well-trod territory. Yeah. But it really, it hits. Maybe that's the last time I was happy is when games look like this. I have another one. I have one more that I didn't get to play, but I'm just curious if you guys know anything about it because it looks fucking sick, is Midnight Murder Club.

Yeah. Oh yeah. It's like a, I mean, I literally couldn't get into it to like, I sat in the lobby and tried to get a game going. I couldn't, but it is a, seems like a first-person shooter that is in a pitch black environment, in a, in a like a pitch black mansion. So it has a little bit of that like murder mystery sort of vibe to it, but it is also about like sneaking around in the dark and not, not getting killed. But again, with like it, they, to be fair, like they recommended that you get on at night

and there'd be more people playing in the evening, et cetera, et cetera, easier to find a cue then. But like, it looks really neat. The idea of like being really careful about, you know, noise and light. And you can see like flashes in adjacent rooms are very clear. You can see like a in adjacent rooms are very clear. You can see like a lot of God beams coming through,

like people using flashlights through rooms that you can use as clues and looks really cool. I think we'll play this when it comes out. The developers have reached out a few different times over the months because they're like very like convinced that we will dig it. And usually people when they reach out tend to know what we like. So I was already very curious about this one.

So I'd be into that. I have one more. I also was not able to play because it was not running on Steam Deck, but I watched enough footage to know it's the sort of game that I would probably really enjoy. It is called Secret Wizard Boy and the International Crime Syndicate.

The Russ Frustick story. The Russ Freshtick story. The Russ Freshtick story. It's very obviously a parody of the PS1 era Harry Potter games, but told in fucking outrageous buckwild physics jokes and pun. It is unhinged. Now this is my shit. This looks good. It looks really very, very, very good. Like it's it is on this now. This is my shit It looks really very very very good. I'm bummed that wasn't able to play it, but definitely one to keep an eye on

Jesus Christ this looks good. Yeah It's like a lot of murder and it looks like a goat simulator set inside of Hogwarts Y'all there's a new lonely mountains downhill game called lonely mountains snow riders Did any of you get into lonely mountain the original one? I love the first. Yeah, it was very hard. But I liked it yeah, I loved it first game. Yeah, I played a bit of a horror game. It was very horrorish, but I liked it a lot. Yeah, I loved it. And this one has snow physics. So you take the joy of the first game. These are like, you look almost like little toys going down a giant snow mountain.

It's like tilt shift. Yeah. And this one has snow effects, which is very cool because you can see the lines that you took previously when you failed zipping down the mountain. Oh, interesting. And yeah, this is, it's, it's a really impressive balance of difficult and try, try again and then kind of like hangout game.

And I don't fully understand how it even pulls that off, how I don't get annoyed playing this game as I like try and learn how to get down. And I think it helps that, and this is even more so it seems in Snow Riders, that there are just a lot of paths. So if you want to like gradually just make your way down the mountain, you can probably do it with minimal crashes. But if you really want to like carve out time and find shortcuts and everything, you're going to be eating shit over and over and over again in the best way. Yeah, very pretty, very chill, very great steam deck game that I hope also comes to Switch. I think the original one did, so hopefully we see that there.

Nice. Yeah, let's take a break and we have a couple more recommendations for people, from readers, who sent in stuff that they played. Okay. What are our readers into? What are our readers into? Some people in the newsletter at besties.fan left in the comments some recommendations for other things that they highly recommend. This one comes from Beetlebat. Rivals to demo on Steam Next Fest best smash like there is. I believe this is Rivals of Aether 2. Yes. I think the cool people call it Rivals 2, but Rivals of Aether 2. I didn't play the original. Nor did I. I almost got into this one.

I was watching the trailer for it, but I thought that I was only going to basically be able to play these on Steam Deck because we were traveling all weekend. Yeah. And I didn't know if it would be the best fit. Was Rivals of Aether the one that had like a huge mod community where people were like

adding every character imaginable? I mean, it seems like the type of game that would that would be true. It's like sands and yeah, sure. So the shit was in the first one. I'm sure the second one will support that as well, which is really cool. We have another recommendation. This one comes from Dayton highly recommend to keep driving. It's a road trip deck builder with a full radio of vibey indie rock. That's cool.

Yeah, this one looks, for some reason I saw this and I thought Hoops might bring this. It seems like your speed Hoops. I'm very curious if you dig it. Yeah, you know what, honestly, I probably would have. The next Fest list isn't exactly the easiest to parse. There's a lot of good stuff on there. Yeah, this looks really good though.

Yeah, we got this one from Alex. Besties, if I said 2D Gothic-like isometric pixel art indie, would any of you be as enticed as I am? Don't sleep on- Isn't that in every video game? Don't sleep on Drova Forsakenkin by Just2D Developer, which came out last week for PC and Switch. Gameplay is fun, story seems engaging, pixel art is nostalgic and captivating. by Just2DDeveloper, which came out last week for PC and Switch. Gameplay is fun, story seems engaging, pixel art is nostalgic and captivating,

it really seems to capture the early gaming feeling where NPC and quest don't hold your hand and you actually have to pay attention to things with a really well done power curve for combat. Check it out. It kind of looks like Children of Morta, Juice. Oh, it's like an ARPG top-down. It kind of reminds me Juice. Oh. It's like a RPG top-down, kind of reminds me of Krall. You guys remember Krall? Oh yeah.

Krall, Krall was cool, man. I wonder if that's the same developer, because it really looks- It does look like Krall. No, I don't think so. What's the name again? It's called Drova Forsaken Kin. Yeah.

One last one, and this is just a question for us. Cool style too. From Aetherzee, sorry if I got your name wrong. After hearing about y'all doing cardio and games at the same time, however many episodes ago, I boldly took my Steam Deck and Pro Controller to the gym to play Yakuza like a dragon on a treadmill. The next episode, I listened to you all describe that you do this in the shame-free comfort of your own homes.

It actually got me to do cardio though, so I'll be back to it. Any tips for sweaty controller hands? I mean, I don't let that bother me. I grip hard enough to counteract the sweatiness. Yeah, I have special, I have prescription gloves. So. Maybe get those Wii wrist straps just in case.

I mean, goose aside, the pro controller, the elite, whatever it's called, the Xbox One has like a textured grip to it that maybe helps the thing. For that price you could get a bike. That's a really good point. Just get a nicer bike with that. Fantastic. Do we have any honorable mentions

people wanna call out? I wanna give a shout out since it is, is this our last episode before Halloween? I think so. Yeah. Probably. There is a YouTube channel that is very horror movie focused called Dead Meat that I've been watching for years now

and pretty single-handedly has gotten me into horror as a genre of films. The host of the channel, James H. Deese, who I've played Sea of Thieves with a bunch of times, just does a really, really great job sort of breaking down what makes horror movies cool and shares sort of like cool stories from the creation of those movies.

And if you are, I don't know, if you're the type of person that likes horror movies, but doesn't have the time to watch them or is too scared to watch them, this is like a great way to kind of like educate yourself about what horror movies are doing. So check out the Dead Meat YouTube channel. Has checked us out, this guy's shredded.

He left out the part where he's... And he's shredded. And he's shredded. Hey, I went to Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights for the first time. And let me tell you, what a delight. What a wonderful thing that is. Is that the, like, more graphic?

Because there's, like, Oogie Boogie Nights, and that's, like, for kids? Yeah. Oogie Boogie Nights is what if you just go to California Adventure and now they give you like Skittles and you can have short lines on the rides. And that one's in Disney so it's like a good experience for everybody. Halloween Horror Nights is what if we take over Universal Studios and we fill the back lot, at least in LA, with tons of haunted houses,

like eight or nine or 10 haunted houses. Wow. And they put a lot of money into them because more than half of them are promoting their movies. So they're like, oh, we can justify doing animatronics for the Quiet Place haunted house because like, hey, it's been one big promo for the Quiet Place. A virtuous circle as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah. I'm eating good with all these animatronics over here. You keep on going for it. The thing that blew my mind is this thing. We were there from like 7 till about 2.30 in the morning. I think it actually closed it too. I know. And that it is so chaotic. I mean, you have people the second you walk in, people in purge costumes charging you with fake, but real sounding and smelling chainsaws. And yet everything is good vibes. Everybody is like, not starting shit. Like, I feel like I see more drama at Disneyland these days of families who like, wish they didn't have to spend this much time with each other than I saw at 2 a.m.

at Universal Studios. Do you think it's like a metal show thing where you go to a metal show and you're like, it's like terrifying people and then all of them are like sweethearts? Yeah, and everybody really wants to be show and you're like, it's like terrifying people and then all of them are like sweethearts. Yeah, and everybody really wants to be there and they want to preserve it.

Like I think everybody there really loves it and they like really are protective of it. But yeah, I had put off doing this for a while and I wish I hadn't because now that I've gone, I had such a great time. And in terms of like scares, I did not like haunted houses as a kid. I don't know if I've changed or maybe it's just the fact that it's Universal Studios, but nothing was that scary.

It was like most people were laughing the whole night, you know, like it just has like a fun energy to it. So yeah, if you're in the LA or I think they have it in Orlando, if you're in either of those areas, definitely check it out. Cool. Cool. I've always wanted to go. I don't know how I'm going to make that happen. I wanted to shout out the New York Mets who are no longer in the baseball playoffs. My run of caring about sports is over. Oh man. Thank you all for staying with me through this tough time. I love the Mets and they've once again lost.

Hockey season just started baby, hit up, hit up, submit, get on that Rangers tip. Yeah, I guess I'm probably closer to the Islanders just from a regional standpoint. Yeah, yeah I guess so. But do the, you should do the, you should do the Rangers. It's quite honestly a relief because the time sink, and I've talked about this before,

of following baseball is so long. You have to watch it every day. There's a game every day. I love baseball, but it's just a lot of time and energy. And so farewell, New York Mets I don't care what happens in the World Series All right Fantastic. Yeah, I need one more thing

Yeah Super quick. I just want to say that if you like this show I could say with almost 100% certainty you will enjoy an Interview I did for polygon with one Sam Barlow, where we talk about FMV games. That's the end of the sentence, and that's an hour. It's an hour of us going as deep and esoteric as we can. If you like FMV games, then you can find that on YouTube and listen to us talk about FMV games for an hour. It was really fun to do.

I think it may be unlistable. I have absolutely no idea. It's great. I really enjoyed conducting the interview. It's a really, really enjoyable interview and I'm so appreciate you doing it. And I was no problem at all playing. I will say if you guys do want to have a picture of me on your website, I would love to get you one from the past five years.

It's no problem at all. I know that Polygon has some that they already own, but if you guys just wanna, I know how to get in touch with me. I have a beard now. It's a whole other look. His brand is wild. So if you would like to reach out,

I'd be happy to get you some new JPEGs. If you're gonna go through the trouble of animating a digital puppet of me. And that is part of a, it was released alongside a fantastic documentary that Polygon has been working on for years, I mean, literal years about Spycraft, the FNV game Spycraft,

and its place in the geopolitical sphere. It's an incredible, incredible piece of work, incredible story. I'm in it just a very tiny bit to talk about SpyCraft as an F&B game, but frigging great. Go watch it. Thank you. We are also putting up new Monster Factories

every Wednesday, basically through the end of the year on the McElroy family YouTube channel. I think the first one went up on Wednesday the 23rd. So go check it out. Eight episodes. What games you doing? The first game that we're doing is Dragon's Dogma 2. Oh boy.

And the other ones, we'll leave a secret until they come out. Hey, I read a scary book real quick. It's called Fever House. It's part of a duology about a hand that when it is in people's possession, gives them these murderous, violent impulses. And the government is trying to track down this hand. And it is basically like laying waste to a city because these mobsters also want to possess the hand.

So the mafia and the cops are all trying to get a hold of the hand, but it's a two-parter. And there's a government coverup about the hand. It's really, if you like Stephen King or something like John Dies at the End, those early books from him, I think you will dig this a lot. It's called Fever House.

There's a two, there's a second book in it. I have not read yet. That would be a tough job. It's awesome, yeah. So true. Chase it down the hand. Should I wrap up all the stuff we discussed? For sure.

We talked about- Are you sure? Cause I think Russ is just warming up. And he's ready to go. I think his temperature is rising. Rising. We talked about Mandragora, is that how it's pronounced? Mandragora?

It's a demo. Sure. Atomic Owl, Secret Wizard Boy, and the International Crime Syndicate, Heartworm, Lonely Mountain Snow Riders, Gladio Mori, Bollionaire, Tenebrous Somnia. It thinks like it's gonna be fine. In your head, you think this is gonna be fine when I say it. Bollionaire, Tenebrous Somnia. It thinks like it's gonna be fine. In your head you think this is gonna be fine when I say it.

And then by the time it gets to your mouth, it's like, that's not what I was thinking. It's Bollionaire. Bollionaire. Tenebrous Somnia, The Rise of the Golden Idol, Heroes of Hammer Watch 2, Rivals of Aether 2, Keep Driving, Drova, Fors forsaken kin and that is it Did you miss the midnight murder club midnight murder a cup? Thank you, which we're gonna talk about more another time. I

Look forward to it. I want to thank the following people for being patrons of the besties You can go to patreon.com slash the besties Remember all that stuff about patreon and iOS and stuff like that long story short short, if you're already subscribed, don't worry about it. If you haven't subscribed yet, just subscribe through a browser. That's the only, that's the recommended way. Otherwise, if you do it on your phone, through the app, it'll charge you an extra thing that goes straight to Apple

and not to us. Anyway, thank you to these patrons, Kenda, Nathan, Josh, Nathaniel. Thank you for being patrons of the besties. Thank you to everyone else for being Patrons of the Besties. What are we doing next week? Oh man, it's a big one. Jesus, yeah.

Oh. Yeah, it's Dragon Age. It's Mail Guard. Dragon Age is so hard. This episode's gonna go up before people have a chance to play it. What? Which is interesting.

I guess we'll obviously be very mindful of spoilers, but yeah, this is gonna be a wild one. I don't know how this is gonna go. All right, well, I'm looking forward to it, and I hope you are too, Lister. It's gonna do it for us for this week on the Besties. Be sure to join us again next time for the Besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends make the world's best games? Besties!