The Besties - Vampire Crawlers and a Big Besties Update

Episode Date: May 1, 2026

This is a big week of change at The Besties. But before we get to the news, we all want to chat about one of the strangest spinoffs in indie games. Vampire Crawlers adapts the iconic Vampire Survivors into a dungeon crawling, roguelike deckbuilder. And... it mostly works? Stick around until the end of the show, when we chat about a big change for the future of The Besties. 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'll tell a true story for the cold open. Oh, I'd love it. Yeah? Yeah, it's a true story. Yesterday, we did a fundraiser for the Max Fund Drive, and the more people donated to the drive, the longer my brother, Travis, would recap season two of Yellowstone, season two, and it was three hours. How did, let me as it, logistically speaking, if you, if it starts at, let's say, 10 minutes. Yeah.

he's like already at episode eight. Well, people can go watch the stream if they want to see. Yeah, it's timed out perfectly. It's not really that. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, yesterday a patient escaped from the psychiatric hospital here who was armed in dangerance and there was a citywide manhunt for this guy.

And eventually he turned up at a Harmony House and he was recognized by my wife. who then alerted the authorities and brought the manhunt to a close. That happened while I was listening to my brother described season two of yellowstone. These two events is what I'm saying to you. Yeah. The contrast did not be. They happened at the same time. They were, they happened at the same time, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. We come home from our day and we look at each other and we're like, so what happened in your, I have to say mine to her. You know what I mean? I got tired from talking, from hearing about Yellowstone for too long. And then she gets to be like, the plot of Halloween, I stopped it from happening. Right. Sure. In real life. Yeah. But who is the hero? Who? That's my, that's my big question. Who's the real hero? Sydney. Yeah, probably. That's easy. For sure, not even close. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My name is Justin McRoy and I know the best game of the week

My name is Griffin McRae I know the best game of the week My name is Christopher Thomas Plant And I know the best game of the week My name is Ross Fraswick I know the best game of the week Welcome to the besties We're talking about the latest and greatest

And home interactive entertainment It's a video game club And just by listening You have become a member This week we're going to be talking about Vampire Crawlers What's that? That's not the first.

Full title of the game, Justin. What is the full title of the game? I didn't know. There was more. The full title of the game is vampire crawlers, the turbo wildcard from vampire survivors. That's cool. I like that they have not enough games have turbo in the title anymore and I'm always banging that drive. Wildcard is also good.

It's cool. Turbo Wildcard. Awesome. Yeah. It's a deck builder turn based roguidite where you crawl through the dungeons. It's pretty much right. We're going to talk about that and a lot more right after this. Vampire Crawlers is made by the people

who brought you vampire survivors Right? Yes. It's in the lineage. In fact, the title screen. Yeah. It says from vampire survivors,

which is cool. That's cool. I like the idea that video games are making other video games. It's a partnership though, right? Justin, do you know what the partner developer also made?

Something I like. I know. But Vostock Inc. Remember that one? Yes. Yeah. Oh, that was... Twinsick shooter, grinding game.

Yeah. Progressive game. Okay, why is Vostock Inc. connected to the arcade simulator? Arcade Paradise. They made that too. Okay.

Wow. Damn, what a fucking... What a hell of these guys. Yeah, that's a great people to partner with. Can I try and explain how they have adapted this? The manner in which this game works.

It is remarkably similar to vampire survivors, despite the fact that the genre could not be more different. You are still going through levels where waves and waves and waves of enemies are coming at you, only now they're coming at you in a sort of flat perspective and every turn you have mana that you can spend to use cards. And the cards are basically equivalent to the weapons and power-ups in vampire survivors. Right. So if you know the fusions from vampire survivors, If you know, hey, if I get the fire wand and the spinach upgrade, then I can level those up into the hellfire. What, like that shit?

All that stuff works. All that stuff works, right? It's similar to Hartstone, how Hartstone benefited from your awareness of the mechanics of Warcraft already. So you know. Leroy Jenkins, things like that. Yeah, it's a metaphorical, like, you get it. Yeah. So you're going through waves of enemies.

You get to move around like a little dungeon with like five, five, floors usually you see enemies in the distance you can decide to go in after them we're like oh hey there's a candlestick i'll smash that maybe it'll have coins or whatever all that stuff you know it from vampire survivors between your your dungeon crawls you get gold and you spend that in the town to unlock new survivors or upgrade your stats at a shop like vampire survivor like it's so much stuff is just arcana cards uh all the characters it's just one to one and they've done such a i don't know incredible job of getting all of that stuff and making it make sense in the terms of like a very, very, very fast paced.

This is about the closest to an arcade deck builder rogue light that I can imagine because I don't know, it moves at such a clip just like the original. Justin, you play a ton of these. Yeah. I feel like. My immediate thought was like vampire survivors meets Uno. And I'm curious if you think that is a fair. Oh, that's actually really good.

I mean, Uno, yeah, because you're like looking for streaks. There's reverses. There's like short, those short little runs where... Can you explain the like numbers aspect? I've never seen this before in a card building. Me neither. So there's a mana cost to each of these cards. A lot of them are zeros, ones and twos.

And basically the idea is that by playing cards in a sequence of numbers, in increasing mana order, they get more powerful. And that's applicable for every card. So like the greed card, for example, will increase the amount of gold that you earn. But if you get a zero, and that costs one mana to play, if you have a zero mana card, like the whip that you play before that, that greed card will actually double in value. So you're like incentivized to play cards in like a right order. There are some cards that can become wild and become connectors. But that's the basic idea is you're looking for like short straits to keep momentum.

going. Right. There's also crawlers, which are like the characters that you choose to take into the dungeon, who are represented by cards that when you play them, they will usually give you some immediate benefit and then have an ongoing sort of thing. Pagnala is probably my favorite crawler in the game has a benefit where you get some like extra might power whenever you play her card. But then the next like nine like buff cards that you play, their yellow coded cards also allow you to draw another card. And so it allows you to like really chain that together and look for like infinite combos with not a ton of planning and effort, which is very, very rewarding for me.

I think that's the big difference. And we were talking about pacing earlier. The big difference between this and Sway the Spire 2, which just came out and is like rave reviews, people over the roof about it, is unlike something like Slai the Spire where you spend a decent amount of time, could be 30 seconds to a minute, looking at all your cards on a given hand. saying, oh, I could use this, and this will come on into this. The first thing you do in every round of vampire crawlers is just look at the manacos

and think, can I make a streak with these manacos? Which is like a very different way of like playing through a deck builder. And you're sometimes there's a risk reward element, which is like, well, I have, there's a lot of cards that will draw more cards. Is it worth spending the manna to see if I get something that can pull a combo? But that loop is so short. That loop is like literally a turn will take you five seconds, maybe, unless you're playing a Pugnala infinite combo deck. It'll just take one turn to get through the whole battle,

but it'll take you a minute. But like it's so fast, and that is such a huge difference from Monster Train or Slate the Spire where you're like, okay, let me run the math on this. I think I can get 20 poison on them, then play my two cost double poison card. It's like you're not, it ain't all that serious.

You are, you kind of know what you're doing because your deck starts out usually with like four cards in it. And you know how to count up to five. Yeah, I mean, sure. Like, yeah, I am just so impressed because this game truly feels like an adaptation of vampire crawlers in like the truessence. We're like, oh, I adapted a book into a movie. They somehow adapted one game into another genre and I don't know if I've seen that. Because even what we're talking about here reminds me of that flow and feeling that you get playing vampire survivors where you're not having to think a whole lot.

It wants you to have the thinking stuff happen when you go, like before you go in to the actual mission, when you're saying, okay, this stage is a bridge and I am going to have two or three really, really long battles versus the other stages where it's a whole bunch of really short battles. When a long battle, I'm going to want to use a lot of buffs that can stack on top of each other over the course of an entire fight because by the end I could have 300%, 400%, 400%, percent damage that I'm spewing before the end of this. And the actual doing of it is kind of podcast game. Like you could, you can be chilling out. Even that's generous. Yeah, like I was playing out on the plane and it was like a perfect playing game because I felt like I was doing like five things at once. I've been catching up on TV shows while playing vampire crawlers, which is not to say that I don't like vampire crawlers. I'm hopelessly, hopelessly into it.

it's just for me hitting that loop of like vampire survivors where i'm going to go in here i'm going to smash a fucking million dudes then i'm going to go back to base and figure out like what i'm going to spend this gold on because it is like significant stuff the like things you can buff at home like oh this one just gives you an extra mana point like every time or like an automatic point of art like it's huge transformational stuff for what you're capable of doing in your runs and so like the the carrot on that stick is big and juicy i i see i i I kind of struggle with that a little bit because I felt like my one issue that I had with this, because I actually like the moment to moment a lot,

I found myself a little bit unmotivated between rounds. I think where you're playing with cards, I find that the incremental bonuses on like your damage and stuff don't really feel as good. They don't feel as impactful as they do in survivors where you like actually can see that represented on the screen really quickly. Right. So for me, it's a little bit, because it is so close to vampire survivors, I found myself a little bit less enchanted by it because it feels a little bit like, to me, like one of those demakes or something where it's more impressive that they did it and not necessarily like, because I've been looking at these sprites and these attacks and these things for so long that pretty quickly you're like, you can fill. in your own blanks with your own mind as to what it would do in this context. And that to me was like it kind of reduced the joy and the thrill and the excitement of like these upgrades and the

different things you'll find because it is so vampire survivors. You know what I mean? Yeah, for sure. The only thing that I noticed was that when you first start the game, the upgrades that you have access to are like kind of boring upgrades. They tend to be like, you get more gold or you get more experience. And they're the ones that like it makes sense to do first. Like the greed upgrade, I maxed out first, and it took forever. But it's like, well, yeah, I do want to like double the amount of gold I'm bringing in so I can get the other upgrades fast. It was the least interesting. If you asked me, I'd rather just have fun upgrades.

Yeah, that doesn't sound very fun, Griff. I agree with you. Like, eventually you do get, one of the upgrades you get is the ability to have multiple crawlers in a single run. So you'll set up, you'll bring two or even three crawlers. So then you're comboing off their different passive abilities while you're playing a run. So instead of more hand size from a purple card, you're getting more hand size and more damage and more X, Y, and Z. Yeah.

Griffin mentioned you can add mana. Like, I think the later upgrades, which again, I agree, should have been a little front-loaded, start to feel much more tactile and, like, impactful in this way. This is in early access, right? I mean, this is... I don't think so. I don't think so.

I imagine if it follows the vampire survivor's flow, which I'll keep updating, though. It'll just, there'll be a ton of DLC and things like that. The way that upgrades work in games like this is a thing I always trip over. So this is, I remember this. You did not care for vampire survivors for this. Vampire survivors, I think I like lot like, it broke me in some way. Because it felt like here is the most successful of the we do not value your time video games.

And I think my issue then honestly wasn't even with vampire survivors. I think it was kind of just where I was with video games. and that type of thing. I am coming at this, like, a warmer spot to that. But there are the upgrades that you're talking about, like, get more money or get more health or get more of these things, where if you want to win in the game, you have to do that. I'm actually pretty fine with that.

That's the name of the game here. But then there are also... Actually, the name of the game is vampire crawlers, a turbo wildcards. Sorry, I really appreciate you making sure that we got that in there. There are also upgrades like, oh, now you can see where items are. on the map. And it's like that's a weird thing for me of like, why can I not just have the thing that I need to play the game?

Yeah, that's the like hidden in the levels you will find. Like you will see on the map when you were picking the level you're going into like, oh, this one has a relic that I haven't found. And that's that's one of those of like, hey, here's a huge quality of life. Yeah. And it's like, okay, now the game's what I wish the game just would have been.

And if the idea was like, oh, well, the game's so complicated. we have to kind of pass these around little by little, but the game is in no way too complicated. In fact, it's more complicated not having those features. Yeah, I think a lot of it is them just trying to pull maybe too much

from the original source material, which also had relics that seemingly should have just been in the game from the jump. I also beat both the first and second levels the first time I attempted them. Whoa boy. Which felt very different from, vampire survivors where it's like you get overwhelmed and those this kind of speaks to the upgrades thing where like I don't really know why I needed the upgrades I just had these two long runs where I've you know finished the the level I think the I think that is a recent change that's why I asked about the early access thing because that is something that feels like the difficulty for it feels very strange I think that's a recent change with the genre when vampire survivors came out which seemingly doesn't I mean it was a few years ago it's not that long ago but when it came out the

the MO for these sorts of games, Rogue Light games, was that you would basically fail in like 30 seconds, and then the next one you'd last two minutes, and the next one you'd last 10 minutes, et cetera, et cetera. And since then, I think as it's evolved, it's made the smart choice of, you should know what a run feels like proper

before you get your ass handed to you. Right. And I actually think that's a better experience for me because it tells me, oh, this is actually something I would want to spend time with. Yeah. If you're backing into that, I mean, like, if you're designing your game around that, yes, but this is a game that has inherited so much cruft from survivors that I feel like it is not able to make that independently feel good. Because if you look at the carrots with survivors, it's like being able to last a few minutes longer.

Sure. But also in like the cool synergies that you kind of figure out, right? There's synergies here that work that work differently. but that's part of the, that's the fun. That's like the grist of it, I think. Yeah. I also wonder if Survivors has changed more since the last time I played it because the level structure here is very different.

So you're right, you beat level one and two, and then you'll go to level three, which I think is the bridge. It's either three or four. And it is very clearly a like, you need to go back and grind point. You hit this thing. You're not going to get through it. And it's telling you, well, you should turn around. And then when you turn around, you discover that there are sub-levels for the levels that you had just come from and that there are additional tasks and there's things that you're going to unlock.

So you see that like, oh, this is the path to get powerful enough to then beat the bridge. The problem that I have with that structure for me is it makes it really transparent that this is not an issue with my skill. That like I need to go back and I need to grind. it out. I'm curious for you all. Like, is there a point where you're playing these games and you feel like, you know, oh, I made a mistake or, like, I feel like I am doing really well in the game versus I need to, like, push the button to make sure that I can now go get the gold and the health to play more? It's definitely the lot. Like, I think that that typifies the genre that vampire survivors created.

And that's not like, I don't think it's an inherently good or bad thing because I enjoy that, right? Like, that is very, that harkens back very much to like RPG, classic RPG dragon quest shit of like, yeah, you can't. Sorry, man, you're not big enough to come in here yet. I think where I, where I didn't kind of realize the deficit I was working under is that exact point I got to the bridge and got my ass handed to me. I didn't quite realize that like it's not just gold you're getting that you're spending on stat increases and unlocking new characters and stuff. there's also sort of achievements that you're unlocking constantly, like, from, like, get a streak up to this level or get this character up to this level in one run or do this or do this. And for doing that, you are unlocking, like, new stuff. You are unlocking the ability to, like, upgrade your cards at the blacksmith.

And, like, there's a few other vectors. But, yeah, I mean, I don't, it's maybe possible to beat that bridge level if you, like, know a few cracked early synergies that are available to you from the beginning. beginning of the game. But no, that very much felt like, yep, okay, got to go back to the grindstone. But that's, I don't know, I don't, I like that about this game. It is a thing that doesn't bother me and in fact, it kind of appeals to me about it. There's only like one thing I want to correct in there. The game is not called grindstone. It's called vampire crawlers, the turbo wild card from that's true. That's true. That's fair. You got me there. Very true. I think it is a nice, I like the fact that this game is here because it really is such a pallet cleanser from playing a game.

you know, I'm coming off of playing So much of what we played? Well, yeah, so I had the spire And also like even like Mugenics I think about playing Mugetics Where every turn is like this fucking math puzzle And I love that I was over the moon about it

But it's not exactly something I can wind down with No, not at all And this is as plant said like the perfect airplane game The perfect subway commute game I mean my only complaint And I actually want to ask this to Justin Justin did you end up setting this on your tablet? it?

On my phone. On your phone? And that seems like an amazing way to play the game. It's just not, you know, requires some heavy lifting at the moment. It's in a square configurations. You kind of had the game at the top two-thirds and then the touchpad at the bottom. Are using the fold, the fold. I will say this.

It was not a great experience. Is that because if you, it's navigation really sucks. Oh, yeah. On a tablet, it really sucks a lot because you're tapping the, arrows in the direction that you want to go with a mouse. So, like, it's not fun on a tablet. It's a bad experience. It's a bad experience.

It runs fine. Runs great. Yeah, runs great. Not a pleasurable way to play it. I think it would be better if I had a, like, I think if I was able to use a controller and then had, like, a touchscreen and a controller, that might be, like, an ideal way to play it. But I have to imagine they'll come up with native, like, I don't know. I mean, I was in my head.

I mean, I don't know what it would. Probably something on-screen. is natively, like, mobile friendly, and you didn't have to use, like, an emulated mouse or wherever, don't you think that would be better? But I'm trying to think, like, how would you get around the environment? Like, I don't know. So there's probably some way to get around the environment.

The art virtual stick, yeah. I'm enjoying the game a lot. I don't think it's going to get its hooks in me for forever, right? I don't think, I think that a game like Slay the Spire 2 is going to have a way longer tail. Yeah. Partially because, like, it's way more involved. The mechanics are a lot more involved.

But also, like, I referenced the difficulty curve earlier. I feel like since I have unlocked certain upgrades or, like, figured out certain characters, like, it is not a challenging game. Like, it's just not. It hasn't. I haven't hit anything that's been particularly difficult in a while. And I kind of need that from a deck builder so that I feel like there's a reason to keep plumbing the depths of, like, strategies and stuff like that.

10 bucks, though, man. Yeah, 10 bucks. It's also just so cool. Like, like what Hoops are saying about? the demake kind of feeling of like I just can't believe they made this right away I'm hoping that I see a few more and especially indie devs try this with things that we like and that are familiar like this I have no idea how this works but I immediately was thinking of a Spelunky deck builder and how I wanted that so bad um or other versions of take the thing I know and put it in a

different place because there are a lot of games where it's like I don't need a sequel but I do want a fresh taste of the thing I like. Justin's making a face that says, Spalunky deck builder? Sure, no, no, no. I think every IP should continue to Oroboros eat its own tail and shit itself out over and over again so we can all get a big spoon

and gobble up all of their dookie. I think I'm hungry, I'm hungry. I like the circle, dukey, but I wish it was squares. I think we've seen some teams kind of struggle with this. You saw the shovel night team do a bunch of spinoffs and none of them kind of really matched. Never quite clicked. I also want to say, like, this is a really good representation of what maybe a lot of successful indie developers should consider, which is to say, if you have an insanely successful, massively popular one-off indie game, follow it up with a game that costs about as much to make. Do not make your open world

MMO RPG and like break your company in half trying to struggle to get this huge like super risky project out the door make something that seems fun in like testing and just like push it out there such that it doesn't risk the success you've already had because the fact that you would get two big hits

is very very slim so please be careful indie devs out there this is a good good approach for sure was the name of this one before we wrap This game is called Vampire Surve... Vampire Crawlers, the Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors.

Great. A game about cards. And life. That's Vampire Crawlers, the Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors. We'll be back right after this with some thoughts from Rush Froshtick about the future of video games, controllings.

Did you think of controlies? Everyone is dying... The Steam controller, I have a Steam controller. I have one within reach. Not the one you're thinking of. I mean, I am thinking of the one that you have because this other one isn't out yet, almost. I'm kind of blown away that you still have

the original steam controller. It was fun. I used it a couple times. It was cool. I'd leave it in a cube. I just have a cube full of old controllers. Nobody wants them. What do I got to do with them?

Yeah, that's fair. The original steam controller, people don't remember, had one analog stick and two very large touch pads. And the rationale was they wanted to make a controller that could run any game, like if you wanted to play command and conquer or fucking sieve and also half-life on the same controller

you could theoretically do that. Most people didn't like it. I know there were some diehard fans for it. It's like they had never heard any of the many idioms about trying to do everything with one thing, right? Yeah, sure. Being all things to one people would be one example. Or, you know, like, we know this doesn't work.

I find it to be functional on the steam deck, like using the steam deck touch pads. Yeah, I think it works. Yeah, well, that's all right. We're going to get there. What a segue. Griffin McRoy. Well done.

Great. So as we know, Steam went ahead, Valve went ahead and released the Steam Deck, big success. And Steam Deck OLED, big success. And now they are back with their next harder release, which is a new Steam controller. The controller is not available for purchase yet. I got an early one because I'm great. And here's what I can say. You saved gave Newell's life.

I saved him. He was scuba diving and I came out with all his knives attached to me and stabbed the shark. He got trapped on the coral and Russ cut him free with his own knives. For about 10 years, probably more than that, 20 years, I've been using an Xbox controller whenever I play PC games because it just worked. You plug it in and it just worked. I think those days are over. I think this is going to be my default PC gaming controller, maybe for the rest of my life. I like it.

I like it a lot. It's really, really good. It feels, at a glance, you'll see. It has the analog sticks. It has the buttons. It basically has all the buttons that you recognize from a steam deck. If you use the steam deck. Two sticks?

It has two sticks. It has two touch pads. It has two back buttons on each hand. So four back buttons in total. So everything that's on a steam deck is on here. But it's been designed as a controller. It's not been designed as a handheld gaming Linux. whatever the fuck the steam deck is.

Probably worth noting at this point, it was designed almost certainly to be released as part of a suite of hardware from the Valve Corporation that currently does not make sense due to the world. I think they've actually said something along the lines of like, why are we releasing it now? Well, it doesn't need RAM. It doesn't got no goddamn RAM in it. So it's good to go. It's just springs and wires.

But honestly, if you have a gaming PC at home, or even if you have a steam deck and you want like a bespoke controller for the steam deck and you're just going to prop it up, you can just use this too. This works perfectly fine, but I do understand the rationale. Hey, cool controller. Why did you buy it? I want to prop up my steam deck in front of me and play it with this controller. Oh, you're a psychopath.

Yeah, that's me. Not recommended. Not how I would serve. An absolute decrepit maniac. Not how I would use it. I want to abstract these controls six inches out. out. Stare at a tiny screen and enjoy them.

There's a lot of approaches I could take in describing this, but one thing I would say is if you find the steam deck a little bit uncomfortable, I did not have the same experience with the steam controller. Is that a weight issue or like an ergonomics, you say? Both. It's both. So it doesn't feel heavy. It feels like a 360 controller. I haven't done the exact weight measurements. But it's designed with like actual like grips that you would normally have holding when you're holding an.

actual controller. The controls are all spaced out in a way that doesn't feel cramped. The buttons are a little bit bigger than you would find on a Steam deck. Everything is just like designed for comfort with that in mind, but with the functionality of a steam deck, like everything that that had. But there is one feature in this that I think is a fucking game changer. I love it so much. And it is Magnus.

It's the game changer. You press this button. It changes the game. Everyone loves Steam big game. picture mode. Well, what if you had access to that at the push of a button? The controller has a magnet in it. And the magnet connects to a cable.

And the cable does two things. The cable charges the controller handy. And the cable also acts as a pairing device, wireless pairing device, for the device that you have it plugged into. So the hassle of like connecting via Bluetooth or whatever, it becomes moot because you're just dropping this controller on this magnetic charging dock. And instantly it's synced with the PC that you want to sync it to. And when you want to play something, you just take it off the magnet and you put it back.

I fucking love magnet charging. So the charging dot connects to your PC directly. Correct. It's a USB connection. There's no way that's going to work in Windows consistently. I refuse to believe it. Yeah. Even the, I have the Xbox 360.

This is like my go-to gaming controllers, the 360 or the Xbox Elite one. And it has like a magnetic charging dock. But the dongle for pairing it is like a separate thing, which has always fucking annoyed me. This charging dock, I don't know that I have the cord length to bring it up on camera, but like, it's huge. You guys could have definitely put some sort of fucking sensor or something in there, right? Here's where I think it will work with the PC always, is you know what runs better? Steam deck, often than my PC. Valve has somehow figured out how it to make Windows run better than Microsoft. And I'm not sure how they do it. Well, on the case of Steam Deck, it's, um, well, it's Linux.

saying, oh, there it is. It all goes back. That's the one secret is if they don't use this really fucking terrible, terrible operating system. It always goes. One cool secret will change your world. How does it feel moving a mouse around with the thumb? Does that feel good? I think it feels as good as it does on the Steam deck, which is to say, passable.

It's not my favorite way. I always find myself taking out the index finger. Yeah, I mean, sometimes you'll do that. I think it feels passable. I think if you're navigating a map or something, stuff like that, it'll be fine. I very rarely play games that require me to do that on the Steam deck. And when I do, it's like, okay.

I think it's better, the better utility for those touch pads for me has been like, someone made a controller preset where like I can select all my weapons on a radial menu and things like that. And that stuff is fucking great. And whenever I switched back to PC, I wouldn't have it. So for UI navigation, in a just world, we would be using like a Halo style Destiny-style menu navigation with like a track pad on controllers.

I think that's the most sort of like fluid, elegant. I like that on the PS5 and you can do that. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you can go into a Steam big picture mode on your PC and it's designed with sort of that in mind. But you're right when you mentioned the other hardware. I'm sure a lot of this was also

designed with the Steam machine in mind and running Steam OS. So that... Steam link? What is the thing called the headset? The Steam... The Steam in? not index, frame,

Steam frame. All that stuff, yeah, was probably designed with this in mind. I think it's a great controller. Does it bring, I mean,

can it bring, like, would you just play a mouse game with them? I mean, like, does it get to that vision of like, like, would you play like command

and conquer with this controller? If I had the choice to use a mouse versus this controller in a game like that, I would use a mouse. Yeah.

It's like, long term, like, that's what I, that's what I feel like the struggle for me still with like the living room thing. is like I have not found a good metaphorical solution that feels right.

You know what I mean? Like if it is something that feels endemic to mouse and keyboard, yeah. It just like it always feels weird on like a lap even with like a, I don't know. I do want to mention one. You mentioned living room play. Uh, the luxury of being able to pick up the controller and if something happens in windows

and I can like go back to the window I want to go to or launch steam, I can do that with the steam controller. Like it just controls them out. That is actually huge. I mostly play like Steam stuff on like my exercise bike in my office and it's such a pain in the ass. Oh God, yes. To get back. That you can't do with like a controller and there's not a, the steam button on a like Xbox elite controller or whatever is like a not reliable sort of friend in that situation.

It doesn't have the game changer. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like I'm not playing Command and Conquer. I'm not playing Siv, realistically. For dorks. So for the stuff that I'm playing, it's never really going to be an issue. And it's nice to have that mouse support for, again, when something goes wrong.

Pricing is weird. It's different for every region because of the chaos of, like, what's going on with trade right now. It's $100 in the U.S. I've spent a lot of time looking at, like, the controller marketplace and feature sets and things like that. I think $100 is pretty in line with, where things are at. If you get like a pretty high, relatively high end,

there's certainly more expensive ones than that. Yeah, the elite is, whoof, is a lot more. Wow. Yes, 170.

Yeah. Right now. So you're effectively getting everything that that controller had, uh, but, uh, my understanding is those elite twos tend to be a little bit lacking

on the durability standpoint. But can it do this? Do you just take shit off of it? This is my rifle. This is my rifle. You can't, but Val, There are many others like it, but this one is my...

Fuck, hold on. He just broke. It's working. It's working, bro. I did just accident. I did just open it. It'll be okay. No one ever, Griffin, don't panic.

Everyone wants to panic with this. How do you get out? How do you get out? Oh, shit. Oh, shit, I did it again. Oh, the thumbnails are so big. Sidney, get in here, babe. I need you to turn off Steve Big Picture mode.

I don't know how I did it. I did it again. It's so loud. Why is the opening logo so loud? You ready to game here? Just to hit the game changer mode. Hit the game changer mode. It's a good controller.

Cool. I would recommend it. How much is it? I think it's going on sale. A hundred. Hondo. Hondo. A cundo.

Cool Hondo. Are they going to bundle it with the steam machine, do you think? I mean, maybe eventually, but they still don't have a release date for the steam machine. That's some real 2027 stuff, right? This controller is coming out next week. It'll be orderable. on Steam next week. So I don't know how long it'll take the ship,

but presumably, if you want to get one, valve, I don't know, how many they have flying around. So maybe order one if you want one. That's it. Yeah. Yeah, what else you want to talk about? You want to talk about some, like, cool video games stuff? You're inside Amazon, New York, I saw Arcade.

In personal news. No, hey, I just want to say real quick, this will be my last episode of the best. I'm not dying. Sorry, haters. Showed him. In fact, he's the healthiest he's ever been. I've seen his right.

I've seen his records. No, so I, yeah, so it will come as no surprise to anybody out there that I, who's listening to this, that I've been struggling with carpal tunnel syndrome since 2020. And it has been an ongoing problem for me. And I have continued to try to try to. keep up with gaming and and everything as best I can while still, especially in the last couple months having to be something of a passive observer to it. And I am recovering from surgery on my left hand. I still have to get surgery on my right hand. I still can't play like

thumbstick based games. It still hurts too much. So my doctor did warn me that could happen. so hey nothing's wrong you know healing wise but it does make it hard to keep up so that is

that is like the one half of this is that it is really playing video games causes a lot of pain it's hard for me to play a lot of like thumbstick based games while mouse base games

are still very easy but more than that I think the I've been covering video games since I was it was my first writing job when I was 13, I worked for the newspaper. They had a column called Game View

that was written by a guy named Chuck Minsky, Griffin's good friends with his kids, and the... It was a real Nepo baby gig, is what I was saying. Yeah, so I got in there and I was reviewing video games. The first game I reviewed was Gods on the Genesis. Hell yeah.

Shut up, dude. The soundtrack rips with some of the stankiest FM keyboard I've ever heard, but man, the game sucks shit. Yeah, I just, I'll be honest, because of, like, the hand stuff and also just, like, the way I want to engage with video games,

I'm more and more interested in stuff like preservation and technology and, like, Linux. Linux, whatever. You know, I got a lot of other interests like that, and I would like to engage with video games in a way that brings pleasure to me. And so that is part of it.

And I have not gotten a lot of pleasure out of it for a, for a while now because we do have to work so fast to go through these games. But I keep, I mean, I've always wanted to keep doing the show because I love talking about video games. And I love these, these gibronies here. But I feel like it's just, I don't want to sour my relationship to these things completely. And also, I feel like if you are the sort of person. that would be enough of a multi-hyphenate interests in terms of like your genres. If you have a wide, broad enough palette to enjoy a show like this, then you, you know, you deserve someone in this seat who is like, has that same appetite and that same, like,

that same area of interest. I'm always going to be interested in video games. I'm always going to be playing video games. I would like to get back to playing video games that I, in the limited time that I have, where my hands feel like, you know, where I'm good and I'm not, like, doing some other thing. I'd like to spend that time, like, in a way that is pleasurable rather than feel like I'm having to do it for a job, which is a sucky way to think about video games. I have always loved talking about them, and I always will, and I've always loved doing this show, and I'm sad to not be doing it anymore. I'll probably dip back in when you guys talk about a game that I really like, you know, but from time to time.

Yeah. We will certainly have Justin joining us and guesting. We're appropriate. And also, we should mention we are in the works for what might very well be the only time that the besties do a live show. That's true. It's still early days on that. But what a what a bar burner of a moment that'll be. Still early days looking at a fall event.

A fall release. And we will keep you guys posted. And Justin has assured us that he will attend. He's got to come back. He's the pitcher with the blown out arm who's like, I got to be a rookie game. And coach, you can't do it. You're going to throw your arms.

arm off and he's like, I gotta throw the pitch. Yeah, it'll be a rookie of the year situation. Here's the one really important thing. For reasons that I think everyone will understand, I can't continue to promise that I will listen every week. So I need you, the listeners, to really keep something in your heart. If they get to the end of the show and they don't say, the best he's is executive produced by Justin's

Then I need you to email Justin at mbmbam.com and say they're doing it Justin They forgot it. You know, like... You should CC your agent also, right? I can't be expected to... I will always be a listener... Spiritually.

Metaphorically. You know what I mean? Holistically. Not a patron of our Patreon. Is there like a listener, but like more... aware of yeah for sure anyway thank you for listening to the besties

and this is not me signing off there's just me saying like it's been really it's always been fun recording the show and thanks for listening thanks for reading this is like kind of weird for me I was thinking about it I have been working in video games like

pretty much continuously since I was 12 years old in 1992. So that is weird to be not doing that after what's that?

32 years. Yeah. 34 some years in the game. But yeah. So anyway. Thank you, Justin.

You'll be missed. I'm gonna be, I'll give you guys a heads up. I'm gonna be weird for a few episodes after this. It's gonna be like a weird. God, I think I'll miss Griffin most of all.

Yeah. Until 10 fucking minutes after I press stop. up here and I got to look at his ass again. I would start doing another show. Just start doing another god damn podcast. Mine's just going to be like weird alpha dog energy that like I'm not going to be able to explain but it's going to be like, I'm the big brother now.

Like it's going to be. Oh, yeah. That's good. I like that. I just want everyone to be aware. So do we all kind of take a step up in the ladder of brothers? Yeah. Congratulations.

Chris, you're Russ now. Russ, you're Chris. Oh, sweet. Cool dudes. That's my dream. I like that. I thought was Travis there for a second, but I got real confused. Just a

note for people listening In case you're curious The plan moving forward It's not personal Not personal Plan moving forward People will still say there's some weird Secret beef happening

And there will be But That's none of your business And it will be fiduciary And he will get paid The plan moving forward Is just for it to be

Griffin Plant and I With special guests joining certainly we hope that Justin will be one of them from time to time where appropriate but we are not planning on like dropping in

another fours. Get on out of here Jeff. Jeff Gersman everybody. Oh I thought Jeff Probst was coming in. Come on in Jeff Peely. Guys, I swear to God, I thought Jeff Teely. So many great Jeffs.

So many Jeffs could be great here. There's a lot of, guys, what if you just only have Jeffs? Yeah. There's a lot of good Jeffs. Yeah. We should do an episode where we just talk about

our favorite Jeffs and rank them. That's really good, Griffith. It's a great bracket episode. Well, thank you, Justin, for sharing that news. Yeah, I am shocked to learn. Are you guys, are there honorable mentions you guys are going to do? Or are there?

Well, we have two quick reader mail, males. Hell yeah. Sick. One of them is from... Who's your favorite, Jeff? One of them is from Sophie. This is way off topic, but I finally started playing blueprints. and I didn't realize how heavily influenced it was

by the book Maze by Christopher Manson. It's a much-loved book in my household. It's a great read with kids who loves solving types of puzzles. I thought I'd mention it in case you guys have never read it. Didn't he cite that, the creator? I remember hearing these two things

in conversation with each other around the time of the game about. I saw him in an interview. It was on the carpet, a red carpet of something. Yeah. And he was there and they were like, so second game, he says, it's going to be smaller

and they're like can you give us any hints and he's like mm R I'm gonna say R now so later

people can point to this and say oh he really was thinking about it he said but it's gonna be smaller but the third game is that the second game he wants to reset expectations

because everybody's expecting too much after blue prints but the third game yeah I can't wait unbelievable this guy We do have some breaking Blueprints news to share, and I'm only saying this now because it will probably... Is it the colorblind mode?

Drown the comments. Colorblind mode is officially out. No way! On Steam as of this morning. I just Googled it, and there was nothing there. It's this morning? As of this morning, the patches out. 1.7 has the accessibility mode.

It has some other features that I'm sure good. That's crazy. But one of them is colorblind mode. Have you gotten it? You downloaded it? Have you checked? Oh, wait. We got...

Russ loaded up. Russ loaded up. We'll do a live... I was going to say, this is awkward, but like next... I mean... I mean... Next week, we kind of should...

I would just like to know what Russ thinks about blueprints. Like, and not... If it's a phone call, that could go on forever. You know what I don't know how long that'll be. That's not content. We could just record the phone call.

I regret. I regret already leaving our slack. I do, for what it's worth, think that I will probably wait until next week when it comes out on consoles, because I think I'll probably play it on Switch 2. Okay. It's easier to set up on PC. So it might be a minute before I find my free time, but I assure you over the next few months somewhere, I will be playing. Will you text me about it? At least will you text me while you're playing. I will text. I just want to know. how they like yeah I'm curious I almost kind of want to play it you know what just to find out like how they see like what you know how they have you managed to remain fairly you know there's gonna be different shit unspoiled rest I know there's rooms that's fucking awesome dude I cannot wait so I might play it too worried about being too dumb for the game but we'll see how it goes nah you're gonna can't believe it's gonna be your game of the year this year that might be

the best he's getting it's yeah I forgot yeah yeah yeah yeah It is eligible. Damn. We have another letter. This one comes to Justin, maybe Justin's final rear-mail letter from the besties, a letter from John. Dear Justin, as a from evangelist, you did not mention the best parts of the show. The monsters, specifically smiley. The survival aspect is super important, along with the dumb reason folks get caught outside after sundown.

Please speak on Peronofface. You know what I'm talking about. Lastly, who is your favorite character? I'm a Jade Stan. my girlfriend is a Kenny lover. Clean yourself up. This is a podcast for normal people that listen to video,

like video games, not weirdo, weirdo bad shows like Frum. We don't do this here. We don't talk about these things over here on the Mesties, okay? We'll go do a From podcast and talk about from shit. I'm not going to say,

you're mad at me that I didn't spoil from. People need to go watch, like, you understand what you're, mad at? Like, you didn't tell them all the best parts. I know. That's like, you watch the show. Yeah. I want to know what the smiley is. Is that a spoiler? After people die, they sometimes come back and they have a huge smile on their face. Like the movie smile. Like the movie smile. Yeah. It, this season got so nasty. This is the dumbest show on TV. I cannot believe how much

I enjoy it. It's like it, it makes it makes below deck look like the Queen's. It's like the Queen's campus. It is unbelievable. Was there a break between seasons? Because my Algo has been so thoroughly and undated. They're back. Season four and the grand twist of the whole the whole enchilada has been revealed. You can say this about From that you can't say about Lost.

At least From called it shot and said this is what's happening. You can like it or you could not like it, but here's what's happening. And here's the answer, folks. I did not like it, but I am still watching. It is the kind of show where Sydney and I have watched every episode. And every once in a while, one of us will still be like, who the fuck is that? Who's that?

Okay, that's the Rear Mail. Any honorable mentions from people? There's a movie that I want people to watch, because I think you can actually stream it now on Hulu, and I think everybody here will enjoy it. It is called The Hot Rock, and it does not look like you can stream it on Hulu. So good luck seeing this movie.

The Hot Rock is a heist movie written by William Goldman, who made The Princess Bride and all sorts of amazing stuff. And it stars Robert Redford, and what's the name is it, George Siegel? Yes, George Siegel. It's so weird that it's not a bigger movie. It's like it's weird that it's not a bigger movie.

It should be a huge movie, but I think it had some weird rights issues. So it just was like not put out anywhere. Hoops, have you seen this movie? It's one that I watched. I watched pretty much every heist movie I could find before Steeplechase, that arc. It kicks ass. It's really good. It's unbelievable.

It has five on-location heists in New York, including, I saw this in a theater while I was in New York, in the theater, surrounded by people. I'm like, wow, this is such a great movie. like hey you know what now we're going to go rob a police station and i'm like oh okay this will be interesting and then they go to case it and it is my old apartment in new york city that's awesome which is wild and they proceed to land a helicopter on the actual it is wild um it is such a cool movie if you like on location new york city heist stuff you are it is an embarrassment of redries if you can find it. Maybe it's on Hulu.

Maybe it's not. If it's not, I have bad news for you because the Blu-ray or DVD or whatever costs like a trillion dollars. But if you're in New York, it's currently playing at the Metrograph. So there you go. I wanted to mention the fact that the fucking Eldon Ring movie is actually happening. Like, they're actually shooting it right now. So crazy. Unbelievable.

I think this was accidentally included in the newsletter last week. so I apologize. Nothing got cut. We just didn't get a chance to speak on it. I was like, maybe they'll do like a side story or something about this movie because how else are they gonna fucking...

No, the stills that are coming out are like a fucking Marica walking around. Like they're gonna just do the... I don't know how this story. It's one of the most complicated narratives in video game history and they're just gonna go fucking right at the gut. It's directed by Alex Garland.

who's one of my favorite directors and writers in the world. And I'm just massively excited. On the same token, I am as excited as I am for the Eldon Ring movie. I am negative excited for the Zelda movie, which I think is going to crush my soul. I don't know there's a way to do Zelda live action and not have it be goofy as fuck. I don't know that there's a way to do it.

I could be wrong. I'm glad you're not directing it then. Me too. I'm thrilled I'm not directing. I hope it's great. You do so stressed out. Yeah. How am I going to do this?

I don't know how to direct a movie. I'll never work. You guys are there. Yell louder when you swing the Masters? I don't know, guys. I think they both come out in the same year, so that'll be an interesting year. I bet there's going to be a lot of very thoughtful think pieces

written about video games and movies. I bet you're right. I can't wait to read them. Wait, I want to talk about my honorable mentions. It's YouTube channel. I just want to say I've been watching a couple this week that

people who are sort of like tech tinkerers who are like approachable easy ways into tech if you want to like start messing around with stuff one channel that I just started watching this week is called Dammit Jeff and this guy's

great if you want to go over the channel it's called Dammit Jeff recent videos include stuff like how to repurpose your home cameras, how to repurpose like your Amazon Alexa's to make them your own, setting up your own home servers, stuff that you can, like, the idea of becoming more like digitally independent. Another one that I love is called switch and click. And this woman takes a much different approach to these tech projects because she really

expresses the like frustrations that she goes through as she digs into these rabbit holes, which is very common when you're messing around with tech and electronics and stuff, you know, you spend a lot of time banging your head against a wall because you don't have the proper documentation and stuff. And so her videos, which are similar in terms of like, you know, how to use old monitors or getting into like self-hosting your own movies or music or stuff or replacing Google's apps with your own self-hosted things. But she really explains like how the parts that are challenging and the parts that are, it's a bunch of more relatable and it makes it seem a lot more approachable.

And both of these channels, I get a lot of thoughts for stuff that I want to do in my own setup. So I recommend both of them. Sick. Awesome. I love it. Patreon. Okay, real quick on the Patreon. So the Patreon is going to stay basically the same insofar as content.

We're still doing resties twice a month. We're still doing a bracket episode once a month. Justin will be on the bracket episode that is happening next week. So keep an eye up for that. after that we're going to continue doing Bracket episodes. We'll have a few special guests joining us for brackets over the next few months, so get excited for that. They will be

very fun. I'm very pumped. Not as fun as Justin, of course. Yeah, well, I'll have this. But close, very close. Super close. We've engineered it, so it's going to be as close as possible without ever going over the top. That's right. So, yeah,

I think that's basically it on the besties, Patreon.com slash the besties. Some new members that just joined. Ty, Chris, Magnus, and Trevor, thank you for being members of the Patreon. This show wouldn't exist without the Patreon. Thank you. Simple as that, literally. So thank you so much for all your support there and everyone else's support.

You make it all happen. Plant, you want to recap what we talked about? I can't. I don't have access to the document. I don't either. I don't know why you're being so. Oh, what a disaster. Vampire Crawlers, the turbo wild card from vampire survivors was the first game we talked about.

We also talked about the Steam controller. We talked a little bit about blueprints and the fact that it is getting the accessibility mode. It's actually already in on Steam and coming to consoles next week. We talked about the Greatest Show on Earth from. We talked about the Hot Rock, which is a movie you can maybe stream somewhere, maybe. We talked about the Damn It Jeff YouTube channel. And we talked about the Elton Ring movie. Switch and Click also.

Switch and Click. Love it. I think that's everything we talked about. Do one of you guys want to practice before I wrap up? That's going to do it for. No, no, no, no, not that part. Welcome back to the best. No, no, no, just the EP credit.

I don't know if anybody wants to practice my EP credit. This podcast, this has been a podcast brought to you by Justin. Oh, fuck. This podcast wouldn't even be possible without his ass. That's good. I like that too. Thank you for listening to the besties. Be sure to joining them again next time for the besties,

because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Stees Thanks.