Triple Click - Astro Bot Is Delightful

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

The new PlayStation 5 exclusive Astro Bot is an extraordinary platformer, one that just continues to surprise and delight Jason, Maddy, and Kirk. The gang talks about their favorite moments, what makes a platformer feel good, and whether all those PlayStation references might be a little much.One More Thing:Kirk: Furiosa: A Mad Max SagaMaddy: The Fall Guy (2024)Jason: The God of the Woods (Liz Moore)LINKS:Oli Welsh’s Astro Bot review: https://www.polygon.com/review/447564/astro-bot-reviewJason’s interview with the game’s director: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-09-06/playstation-s-astro-bot-is-a-model-for-the-video-game-industry?srnd=undefinedFeaturing excerpts from “Astro Bot,” “Crash Site,” and “Disco Tree” by Kenneth CM Young from Astro Bot, 2024Preorder Jason’s Book! https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jason-schreier/play-nice/9781538725429/Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

Turns out the new PS5 exclusive Astrobot is a game as a service in that it does the service of being a really good game. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. Today we are talking about Astrobot, that delightful platformer that also doubles as a tour through PlayStation History from Cratos to Apiscape. I'm Jason Schreier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello. Hello, my friends.

Welcome back. to another episode. Here we are. Dear we are. We are talking, today we're going to talk about a massive PlayStation exclusive that is really just blown our minds recently. It's called Concord and it's really cool. Everybody's playing it.

Yeah, everyone is. Everyone is talking about it. That is true. You could have said that and been accurate. That is true. Everybody is talking about it. Maybe they should bring it back because everybody is talking about it. The morbious maneuver.

Before we get into Concord chat, probably not a good idea to name your game after an aeroplane that failed spectacularly. They're naming their game after a cute Massachusetts town, I thought. That's true. Also, a Jewish hotel in the Catskills at one point. But before all that, we're going to talk about Maximum Fun. Have you heard of Maximum Fun? Have you guys heard of Maximum Fun? It's pretty cool. It's the network.

Tell me about it. It's a network that we are part of, the network of which we are part, of which triple click is an integral part. And we are, of course, an entirely listener-supported podcast. And you can help us make the show possible by going to maximum fun.org slash join and becoming a maximum fun member. You get to help us make this thing every week. And also you get a bunch of bonus episodes, including when we just recorded about the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Deadpool and the Wolf. and also some really, really cool stuff that we're going to announce in the near future. The next few months are going to be a lot of fun.

We're really excited. We got a really cool thing coming. So get ready for that. And it's a huge backlog full of bonus episode. So what are you waiting for? Go become a member. Help us make this show. Maximumfund.org slash join.

All right. Today we are talking about a video game. It is a triple play for Astrobot. Yay. The delightful new mascot platformer from PlayStation. This is a game by Team Asobi, which is a team in Japan of around 60 people that previously made other games in the Astro franchise, the first of which was a VR game. And then more recently, they made the PlayStation 5 tie-in game Astro's Playroom that was released inside of every PS5. so probably the best-selling video game that they've ever made or will ever make.

And now they have made a full-fledged platformer game. Astros Playroom, of course, is more of a tech demo, a smaller scale thing. This is a full-fledged game. You can buy it in the store for $60 called Astrobot. And Astrobot is a colorful, delightful 3D platformer starring a robot on a quest to save other robots, many of whom are dressed up as PlayStation characters, and it kind of doubles as both a wonderful 3D platformer in its own right with its own ideas and themes and also a tour through PlayStation history.

There are worlds and mascots and themes based on pretty much every PlayStation game and franchise you can think of from Uncharted to Ape Escape. And we've all been playing it. I, for one, have really been enjoying it. Let's all give kind of some initial impressions. Kirk, what do you think of Astrobot? Yeah, I think this game is delightful. I'm just constantly delighted by it. Every level adds some new surprise, some bit of joy. It's really just a wonderful game. I mean, every moment with it has just been me laughing and enjoying myself. I haven't really found anything to dislike about it. Though I think it's kind of interesting. I mean, it's interesting as a PlayStation artifact and as this sort of nostalgia trip, and in particular a nostalgia trip for the Japan Studios games that it's kind of calling back.

like a lot of these oddball failed franchises from Sony's past. I think the game, I think that is a very interesting thing about it, that Sony has always kind of tried to have a Mario or a Mario style game, like a 3D platform or Ratchet and Clank or Spiro, whatever, like all of these sort of series, most of which I'm actually not that familiar with, I should say, but I'm at least aware of them and they're all referenced in this game. I mean, Ape Escape is a great example. That's not a game that I knew.

I actually, Dunkie, the YouTuber, just posted a whole thing. video where he just played ape escape for the whole video. I think he said it was something else. I think it was like one of those videos where he says it's for a major up like current game. And then the whole video is just him playing apiscape. That's pretty good actually. And I was like, what is this game? And I just happened to see the video. And then, which is a kind of, I kind of, I think a kind of typical donkey troll. And then I was playing this game. And there's a whole level that is just this loving ode to ape escape. And I really liked Ollie Welch's review for Polygon. He talked about this at length about the Japan Studio tie-in and how some people at the team who made this game

are from Japan Studio, which of course was closed a few years ago. And this is a kind of bittersweet tribute to a lot of those games. So I kind of have found it to be very interesting as a PlayStation artifact, even though I'm not personally super attached to any of those games. But as a game, I mean, this game is tremendous. I think it's so, so great. Yeah, I want to get in a little bit later. We'll get into the kind of the PlayStation of it all and how that makes the three of us feel, because I have some thoughts on that. But Maddie, why don't you give your impressions first? I am also really, really enjoying it.

It's so freaking adorable. Like, I know this is like a huge part of what makes the game work, but it's not just that Astrobot is a cute little robot. It's that every single thing in the world that he interacts with is also a robot either kind of a bad robot or a good robot. Like even the plants are little robots and they have little robot eyes and like little platforms that he jumps on or. somehow also robots. Like if he were to drink a cup of tea, that would be a robot. Every single

thing has the cute little blue robot eyes. And it's just, it's so adorable. I feel like I'm really on adorable overload with the PS5, but overload makes it sound like it's a bad thing, and I'm actually enjoying all of it, because I was so obsessed with Nix in Star Wars Outlaws, which we talked about last week. I just like love every single thing Nix does. And like, every time my wife walks by and watches me playing the PS5, she's like, oh my God, so cute. And then I started playing Astrobot and like that's all she says now about it. It's like, oh my God, you're playing such a cute game. And I'm like, yeah, all I do is cute stuff. The PS5 is the cute machine. Everything on it is freaking adorable. So yeah, I'm pretty obsessed with it. And I know that

we're going to talk about this in a little bit, but something really striking about this game is that it is a one-hit death game, which makes it sound like we're playing Sekaro or something, like something really difficult. Like one-hit and Astrobot is down. He is. back to his last save point. But it works because every mechanic is simple enough and visually clear enough as to exactly what you did wrong and what you need to do, that it somehow is never frustrating. And in my head, I've just been comparing and contrasting that a lot with Kirby and Mario and kind of the similar games that we've all played that are really cute and really kid-friendly, family-friendly, all-age-friendly, I guess I should say, because I'm enjoying this

and I'm not a child. But it's effective because it's so visually clear every time as to what you're supposed to do and it makes failure not feel that frustrating. That and the constant save points, I would say, are the two things that make the one-hit death possible. The quick respawn. Yeah, well, so you know what I think makes the one-hit death possible also in addition to what you just described, is that the PS5, remember the whole selling, one of the big selling points of the PS5 was like, solid state drive, no more loading times.

Yes. In this case, it really benefits the game because there's no loading. So as soon as you die, you just pop out and right back up. And so it doesn't really matter. Death doesn't feel punishing at all. Yeah, and I actually know how the SSD was installed in the PS5. She was frozen in ice and they took a chainsaw and they cut it out of the ice and then they jammed it in there. And then we got these fast loading times.

Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing. Well, first you have to rescue it from a giant monkey. Yes, of course. Of course. You had to punch an octopus into outer space. Yeah, that's right. because of course the PS5 itself is the spaceship upon which Astrobot lives and drives and travels.

I wish that my PS5 had little eyes and it was cute like that. Why doesn't my PS5, I want to get some little googly eyes to stick onto the front of it? Why doesn't our PS5 fly into space? I don't know. A lot of questions here. That's also a valid question. I mean, that is a question I've been asking ever since I got it because it does really look like it should be flying into space. This game finally explains why the PS5 is this huge honking spaceship-looking thing because it turns out. that's exactly what it is. It's Astrobat spaceship. And finally, the lore has been revealed to us all. It's all explicable now.

It's not ugly, actually. Well, in Astro's playroom, part of the lore was that these little creatures lived inside of your PlayStation. So it's pretty, yeah, it's fitting that it would then become a spaceship. So, yeah, I also think it's really delightful. I played a ton of it. I just beat the third galaxy, so I made some good progress in it. Yeah, you're further than I am for sure. Yeah, I made like, I've gotten like a hundred, 20 of the little bots or something like that.

So, yeah, I made it pretty well. I thought you were going to say you played a hundred hours. Yeah, 100 hours. I've been min-maxing and just rerowing my character. I think what really strikes me about this game is I was thinking a lot as I'm playing, as I often do when I'm playing a platformer, is like, what makes this good or bad? Because platformers in many ways are the hardest game to talk about because so much of it is just feel. as opposed to something like Star Wars, which we talked about last week, we could talk about Star Wars forever in terms of story and mechanics and ideas,

atmosphere and lore and aesthetics. Whereas a platformer, it's very difficult to describe what makes it feel good and what doesn't. But a couple of thoughts that I had. One is that I think this game, obviously the controls feel really good, and I'm sure that took a lot of prototyping and iterating and multiple games to make work. I think having that floating mechanic makes it feel extra good because you never feel like you have to precisely make every single jump and get frustrated. You're talking about the double jump that lets you kind of levitate float. That doubles as a weapon, which is kind of a fun of time.

Oh, yeah, fantastic. Kind of Kirby floating in the air except more of a sore and also laser beams come out of your butt. And then the other thing, and this. Your feet, but okay. Sure. And this is the other, I prefer by, I prefer butt, Astrobutt. It would be funny if it was his butt. The other thing that really struck me, as I was thinking about this, is the pacing of the levels.

And I think the levels are really exceptionally well designed because they all feel meaty, but none of them really feel like they wear out their welcome. They all move at a certain pace where you just feel like you're zipping through things. But you can also slow down and look for secrets and try to find all the puzzle pieces and the hidden bots. And they're all really good at just kind of introducing ideas and escalating them and subverting them in that classic Nintendo way where you get a mechanic and then you learn how to do it in the easiest scenario and then you kind of advance from there. And also they just keep like completely subverting your expectations. I mean, I got to this level in the second galaxy, the mouse level where you get that ability to shrink and I was just like squealing with delight. It was just so brilliant. There's another level where you get this ability to slow down time and it just feels incredible.

And man, there's just so much. Where the, good old casino. Where Joker is high now. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah, there's just so much good stuff in this game. And I think the reason that it feels so good to me is mostly about the pacing and the tempo and the way that you just feel like you're constantly making rapid progress and just having fun the whole time.

It never slows down. It never takes a breath. It never is just like. like, hey, this is the boring part. This is the cutscene part. Which even Mario games kind of interrupt your flow a little bit when you have to watch some cutscene you might not care about where Bowser like is stealing the princess away again or wants to marry her in Odyssey or whatever. This, I think, does a better job of just keeping you engaged the entire time. You never want to put down your controller at any moment in Astrobot. So, yeah, I mean, I just think it's a brilliant game.

I think up there with the best of the best in terms of 3D platformers. Yeah, to speak a little bit on the rhythm of this game. So the composer for this game is Kenneth C.M. Young, who I know as Kenny Young, because that's what he used to compose as. He is a nice guy and a really good composer who wrote music for the Little Big Planet games and also for Terraway, both of which have fantastic soundtracks. And you can kind of detect that DNA in Astrobat as well. Feels a little, little big planety.

It has that kind of diorama-like physicality to it. And his music is super fun. Like these songs are, they're very silly. There are some reprises of earlier Astro games where there's that song about the SSD and the song about, like there are songs about the parts of the PS5 in the pack-in game that are reprised here. But also there are some originals. There's like that tree song.

What is he's like, hey, it's me, the grabbing tree. How do you like my can? And you can kind of hear what he's saying in the background while you're jumping around. And the lyrics kind of changes you go through. And he's like, all right, now it's time for something new. And it's like it's like a kind of a kid's television energy. And it really just bounces along. I really enjoy the bounciness of this score and think it really fits with the way that the world feels.

And then the other thing is the way that the world feels. I think that this game, like it runs at this just crisp, perfect frame rate. It like looks so shiny and beautiful. And just the way everything moves. is remarkable, especially given that most of the time I've played games like this, I've played them on the Nintendo Switch. And there is something to be said for the computing power of the PS5. There are just little things they'll do in this game where they'll drop seven million apples on you. And they're all just rolling around without dropping a frame. I mean, just this beautiful

looking, overwhelming amount of visual information or leaves and little colored leaves. There are all these little flourishes. And it really adds to the game because it makes it just just feels so like bouncy and abelient and kind of beautiful and busy in a kind of lovely way. And I think that whole audiovisual milieu is just like really, really appealing. Like it just makes you want to just keep playing and keep bouncing through the game. It's very joyful. It's hard not to smile while you're playing this game. For sure.

And something else about it that is hard to nail, but I would say that the game does nail, is the fact that you need to replay levels most of the time. Like you're not going to catch every bot the first go around. And you hit these kind of choke points for bosses where you're like, okay, I need a certain number of bots to progress. Or if you're me, you just want to get all the bots if you can because you just want to see that number be the correct number. And that's a brain problem I have. So you're going to be replaying levels. But every time you replay a level, you get to collect this little bot that's in a birdhouse.

And then it tells you where to go to collect the bots. It's like it admits a little screen. Yeah, exactly. And I, God, I wish more games did this because I'm often replaying Kirby levels to collect all the puzzle pieces and they don't always include something like this. I mean, maybe there's a Kirby game that does and I just haven't happened to play it. But usually I just have to find stuff on my own and be like, okay, I guess I didn't ever go over here before. Let me try that and see if it works. But in this game, you get a clue, but it's not too obvious of a clue.

It's just a little bird that's like, I think it's over here. I don't, I'm not going to tell you anything about what is over here. here what you need to do. I'm just kind of giving you a general idea. And then I'll go over there and be like, oh, actually, there's this whole other area that I didn't even notice before or something to unlock or poker prod and then just some other amazing series of animations that'll happen. Like there'll be secret worlds you can unlock. I mean, it's just so rewarding to explore. I mean, this is all the stuff you like about a platformer is when you're exploring every nook and cranny and then being rewarded by something. But also being rewarded by playing and replaying levels and not

feeling like that's a frustration is huge because it's really hard to make that work in like a Kirby game or a similar type of game. Yeah, you have to replay them to unlock the secret stuff as well. And then they're on top of that if you kind of explore each galaxy on your ship, you can also find these one-off challenge areas, which are the hardest thing in the game. And they're super fun. There are a bunch that you guys should find in, I think they're in Galaxy 2, where they're like these magnets and they get scattered. There four of them get scattered around. the map and they're very hard and very fun. And then on top of all this,

Kirk, you mentioned the ape escape level earlier. So, okay, so the majority of the levels in this game are platformer stages, classic platforming, jumping and smashing enemies with your fists

and shooting lasers out of your butt. But they're also, at the end of each galaxy, there's a level that is themed on a certain game. And I really, I want to talk about some of them, and I don't want to spoil them for you guys, because they're so good.

I think we shouldn't spoil them, yeah. No, so I won't say what they are, but we can say we already mentioned ape escape, and that's the first one. But that one, as an example, instead of doing the typical platformer stuff, you put on you get the special ability to catch apes and you have to go around catching the apes, just like you in ape escape. And other ones are based on famous PlayStation franchises, and they transform you in a way that you would expect if you were playing a game in that franchise.

And they just feel like these glorious homagees to the, those games. But I think they work incredibly well because they feel good and they feel fitting with Astorbot and they don't just feel like, hey, you remember that PlayStation series you like? Now we're going to throw it, like shove it down your throat. I want to talk about the PlayStation stuff. Yeah, we got it. A good segue into that. So I'm of two minds on this. On one, I don't really feel much emotional attachment to many PlayStation franchises. So like I'm kind of of, it doesn't do much for me when they're like, remember, Eco? Remember, like, crash bandicoot? You didn't just start sobbing upon seeing crash.

And just being like, oh, my God, my childhood. No, none of this is for me. But, like, I don't know. I don't, I feel like they kind of, they push the edge of being nauseating, of being too much for me, but they're not quite there. And I think it's for a couple reasons. One is that it feels something about it doesn't feel cynical. It feels like all of this is being done with love. And the way it's done, I think one of the keys to that and the reason, one of the key reasons behind it not feeling cynical to me is the descriptions of the characters when you find them and how lovingly crafted they are. And they're not, they don't feel like

advertisement. So when you find each of these bots, some of the bots in the game are kind of generic robots and then some of them are skinned based on characters from PlayStation history like I don't know solid snake or like Joel Pyramidhead yeah pyramid head is a good one and then when you when you get them you'll see this incredible like one-night description um that doesn't advertise for the game I think a lesser game would have been like this is Joel from the last of us 2013 buy it for 69 99 yeah the trademark yeah no link to the store God but in this it's like And I chatted some notes down because like when you find Ellie, it'll be like immune survivor aspires to be an astronaut.

Yeah. When you find Joel, dependable smuggler, tells the occasional white lie. And it has all these clever, like, really great descriptions for them that makes it feel like, oh, man, this is like a, this feels like a worthy, loving tribute as opposed to a cynical cash grab, like metaverse type thing. Like, nobody would ever look at Astrovite and be like, this is the Metaverse. You would be like, oh, okay, cool. This is like this. I guess. It feels like, but it isn't because it's not like the cynical meta, like every, every metaverse thing is about brands working together to advertise one another, whereas this

really feels like a celebration. And I think the descriptions are just one of the reasons for that. There are others too, the musical cues and the way that just like the, the way it's all modeled and looks in general, the aesthetic of it all. But yeah, I mean, to me it doesn't feel cynical and it doesn't feel too nauseating. It's on the border maybe, but like it doesn't too far for me. What about you guys? What do you guys think? Yeah, I think I agree largely because, and part of why they don't feel like advertisements and instead almost feel like personal jokes is that they're so under explained. Like as you said, like for the L.E. one, for example, if you'd never played The Last of Us, you would have no idea what any of those phrases meant in a good way, I think.

And it's not like in a way where you're like, okay, I guess I need to play a game to figure this out because they don't tell you what game it is. And they aren't like, oh, and by the way, you should check out the last of us. Like, that's not the vibe. It's just like, here's a little Easter egg, which I realize that term itself has been so overused to refer to essentially advertisements, but I'm not trying to use it as an insult here because I actually think it's like the correct usage of Easter eggs is to have something that feels rewarding if you get it. And if you don't get it, you're not like mad at it. You're not like, oh, this is some dumb thing that I don't know what it is and I need to like solve a puzzle from a game I've never played.

Like, it's just like, either it's a robot for your checklist and you're like, great, I get that dopamine hit of checking off another robot on this level or it's also the additional hit of like, oh, and this is one of the ones I recognize. That's cute. And then you just keep moving along. And it's fine if you do or don't recognize it. It feels neutral to me, neutral to positive. But, Kirk, how do you feel? Yeah, sort of the same. And it's grown on me over time.

I've felt more and more enamored of it and more on board with what it's doing, the more I've played. At first, it just struck me as very funny that Sony has wound up in this place, where their little tech demo mascot, basically the character that I don't know, Valve has characters like this in their VR demos, where there's just a little robot that walks you through how to use the VR headset. Like if that character now was Mario, like Sony had pinned their hopes on this little guy who initially was just supposed to show you how cool your PS5 was or how cool your PSVR was before that. now suddenly this guy is carrying the Sony brand forward. And that struck me as kind of funny. I was joking to people as I started playing this. I feel like this game is going to end with an announcement of the release date of the PS5 pro. Like the credits are going to be like, you know, Q1, 2025.

That would destroy some goodwill with me. Right. You put up a beefed up processor in the PS5 at the end and you fly off to the horizon and the release date comes up on the screen. But as I've played it, of course, like you say, Jason, like you both are saying, like that has faded. I don't really actually feel like this is cynical at all. And it's just a matter of volume. And like you were saying, Maddie, application.

Like, it really isn't like MCU stuff or a kind of, you know, multiversal, like, oh, you really should know what all this stuff is for it to even make sense. Like, none of this makes sense. It's just a silly robot world where some alien stole the PS5 parts. Like, there's just no, there's no story. You don't need to understand it. So I don't know who half of these references are. Yeah, same. I didn't have a PS1 or a PS2.

I didn't play a lot of these games. So, I don't know. The ones that I get, I enjoy, they make sure to throw some in there that anyone with a PS5 will get, you know, some of the really big, recent ones like you were saying, Jason, The Last of Us, things like that. But there's plenty of obscure ones that I don't get, but I know that someone who does get them will just enjoy that as, like you said, an Easter egg in the truest usage of the word. And something I really like also that has kind of underlined that or tied it all together

for me is the hub world in this game, which I think is fantastic. and maybe we can talk a little bit about, there's a planet where you send all of the bots that you rescue. And then when you go to the planet, you can unlock new areas based on how many bots you've rescued. But the way that it works is just totally wonderful. I mean, you'll go up to, there's a kind of a, you know, a big chasm between you and the area you want to get to. And a little sign that'll say 60 on it. And then you hold down triangle, and if you have 60 bots freed, you can then access the, you know, you can cross the chasm. But the way that you do it is you have to.

summon all the bots like Pickman, and they all kind of come around. And it's all of these little... They're so excitedly towards you. They're so happy to be there. Right. They're all making their little like sounds and they're jumping around. And because this game has that kind of visual look, like it has that style where it's just impressive to see all these little characters rendered at once. It's just fun to look at. But then also interspersed with all of these regular Astero bots, there are all these little random characters from all these different PlayStation games from over the years. And they're all just mixed in together.

And then they'll, like, form, you know, like, two of them, they'll, like, stand on each other's heads to form a chain that you walk across. Or they'll make, you know, ropes that you swing across. And it's, I think, random, which ones are where. So it's actually really, like, impressive from a design standpoint that they were able to make it work. It's so seamless and funny. And then there's all kinds of other things, like they'll all team up to lift something heavy or they'll jump and they'll weigh something down to break it. Like, there's a whole bunch of different of these group animations that they do. and each one is just really charming and funny on its own and sort of serves to tie together further

this weird meta thing that they're doing where they're just little bots and cosplay for different PlayStation games but they're all working together to a common goal I think that it's just really lovely it's it's really charmed me as I've played more and more the cosplay makes it even funnier because you'll be walking on this rope bridge that is all your astrobots and then you'll step on like crados and then next day and we'll be like the guy from the character from journey and you're just like stepping on his cloak. It's pretty great. Yeah, I think that

that Hubworld is really cool. You collect these puzzle pieces as you go, and then the puzzle pieces are like these, unlock these shops that you can then use all of the coins you've been collecting to like buy gacha, like different figurines. Yeah, that don't seem to matter for any particular purpose.

It's all collectible. It's just fun, platformer collectible stuff. And then there's one shop that like lets you customize your, I think it's your ship. customize your little dual sense chip, your controller ship that you have to like press the buttons on on each level. Speaking of dual sense, by the way, this game really takes advantage of the PS5 controller in a way that not a lot of games have. One of my favorite mechanics that this game

offers and introduces pretty early is you'll be presented with this row of blocks and you have to walk up to each of them and like one of them will feel a little bit different in. your hands than the other, and that's the one you have to push in. I thought that was really cool, and like, unlike anything I've seen before, and the dual sense really, really just makes that work, which is pretty cool to experience. Yeah, it's really putting every other game to shame, right? I mean, I feel like when Astro's Playroom came out, I was definitely, like, excited for the potential of the PS5 controller. Like, you can, like, feel Astrobot's little footsteps in the sand, and, like, they feel good in your hands. And, like,

I mean, it's a tech demo, but like at that time, I was like, oh, it's so cool. Like, this is, this is what the controller is going to be like for every game. And I still actually, personally, just for my own hand size, really prefer the PS5 controller. And it's like what I use on my PC and everything. I love it. And I don't really feel like other games have taken advantage of it in a way that either did anything at all or didn't just irritate me and become a feature that I turn off. And so now playing Astrobot again, I'm like, oh, yeah, the

PS5 controller can feel really good and can have just extra little elements that just tell you what a puzzle could be or how to solve it. And that's kind of what it was meant to do is have just slight vibrations. There are few that I liked Spider-Man and felt good with the web slinging and Returnall did a, did a fun trigger. Like it would change the real stand-up. do that trigger thing. I do remember us talking about that. It's another PlayStation exclusive. Yeah.

Really, yeah, there haven't been a lot of PS5 exclusive. That's true. And like God of War used it, but it didn't use it a ton. The same as Spider-Man where they used it some, but it does, it's not quite the showcase. It's not Astrobin levels. Yeah. Right, where when it's raining and you can feel the rain falling on the controller and little footsteps and stuff.

Yeah, I find a few games, Ubisoft games actually tend to work on PC with the PS5 because I play most games on PC. I do appreciate it when a game like, I believe Avatar worked with the dual sense. Oh, really? That's cool. And Star Wars Outlaws works with it. And actually, a Jedi Survivor also works with it. And whenever a PC game works with it and I can just plug it into the PC and play with those extra little, like, haptic features.

That's nice. But it's rare that they go as whole hog as Astros, certainly, or any PlayStation exclusive. And really the issue there, I don't really know how it all works, you know, whether Sony, like, gives people. extra money to develop for their controller so that it will have the features or what, like if that ever happens. No, I have no idea. And if they don't, it would explain why it doesn't happen very often. Of course, because right, like it's, I mean, you're talking about a controller that some subset of people will use, but there's not a universal standard. The way that there is more of a universal standard with just boring rumble, I wish there were a universal standard. I know, what has Microsoft

released their new controller? It'd be cool if Microsoft released a controller and then there could kind of be some sort of parody with this advanced haptic setup just because then more games would go a little further with it because I agree I really like it I think some people don't like haptics but I love like more haptics I want the controller to just go totally nuts in my hands on play yeah I think they're fun I like the haptics I turned off the speaker because that was annoying the hell out of me I just play with headphones so I don't you don't hear the controller speaker okay I just know I turn it off it runs through my headphones I never have the speaker on because it annoys like people around Yeah, I've heard of it.

If you live with someone else, you might want to turn it up. Yeah, it probably bothers the shit out of your dog. And then the one thing I didn't find very pleasant is the motion controls, especially the motion controls with the monkey claw ability where you're climbing and you have to tilt the controller to climb. I feel like that was in Playroom as well, that same mechanic. There was a couple carryover mechanics from Playroom. And I remember being like, I can't really adjust this, especially when you're under pressure. Like you have to do something quickly.

It doesn't feel great. No, not great. But the other special abilities that you got always tend to feel great. There's one rocket one that I love. The punching is amazing. Punching is so good. Yeah, Nintendo's arms. Just tribute to arms.

Yeah, it's funny to imagine a game like this, like throwing in all the Nintendo references too. Like that would be the ultimate metaverse if it was like, now we're going to do references to everything, tributes to everything you've ever played. We are ready player one now. Do you think this game benefits from the fact that Nintendo hasn't put out a 3D platformer in a little while? Like there hasn't been like a proper, you know, 3D Mario game. It's kind of landing at a really sweet spot where I'm just ready to play one of these. I like these games, but they're not like my number one genre. Each time I play one, I'm like, wow, this is just like a pure cut of frosting.

I love it. But I, you know, I wouldn't just play them back to back. But it's kind of perfect timing. Like I haven't played a game like this in a long time. So it's, I'm totally, you know, I'm ready to eat some frosting. Yeah, definitely does. Also benefits from the fact that it's trying to do something pretty different than the last two major 3D platformers we've seen,

which I think are Psychonuts 2 and Super Mario Odyssey, are the two kind of big high-profile 3D platformers that I can think of in recent memory. And those games are just trying to do very different things. Psycho-Nuts 2 is obviously way more focused on narrative, and there's a lot more focused on hub worlds and just very different type of game. Like a ton of abilities. A lot of very dense game from a design.

and not abilities that are bespoke for each world instead abilities you carry on. And Odyssey is also just feels like it's trying to do very different things. Instead of moving kind of from level to level in a more linear fashion, you're exploring one big hub for a while and trying to collect as much as possible there and then moving to the next one. So just very different type of design. I think more than anything, this benefits from the fact that it's a little bit more old school at a time where there hasn't been a game that feels quite like, this in a while. And also benefits from the fact that it feels amazing. Like it might be the best feeling platformer that I've ever

played. And I say this having played, this is quite a contrast, but my daughter is really into exploring the castle in Super Mario 64 on the emulator. And Super Mario 64, I don't know if you guys have ever gone to replay that,

but it feels like dog shit. Yeah. It is like garbage today. By today's standards. Obviously, revolutionary for its time, but today it's impossible to play. And so I'm very used to playing those controls. And then moving to this, it's like, oh my God, this is a dream. This is, phenomenal. Jalopi to a Ferrari. You're suddenly just flying around. Exactly. Yeah. Friken Astrobot. Who would have thought that Astrobot would be this like, yeah, to your point,

Kirk gets like this tecto mascot is now. And here we are. And here we are. I love the little guy. I thought it would be pretty good, though. I mean, Astro's playroom was freaking fun. Like, I feel like it was Like, Astrobot rescue mission was amazing. I mean, it's one of the best VR games ever made. I did try it and immediately get nauseated and it's sad. Especially because even compared to other VR games, it was touted to me as the one that like I would be able to play. It still is.

Like it's right up there with Half Life Alex and a couple others that just I would still tell someone to play it if they could. Yeah. Though it's harder and harder to play, which is a tragedy. If you have no inner ear issues, check it out. Here it's great. And Astros' playroom is great. So I actually came into Astrobot with pretty high expectations.

and it met them. But I mean, I did go in being like, this game will be good. I know this game has been previewing super strong for like a year, right? I mean, everyone who's played it and talked about it has been like this is good. I mean, I feel like I knew it was going to be good when I started playing. Yeah, because I played it at Summer Games Fest and told me. Yeah, it's going to be a slam dunk. Amazing even then.

Let me tell you guys a little bit. I have a couple of insights from the development of this game because I just spoke to the director, Nico Doucette, who is a Frenchman living. in Japan who runs the studio of Japanese people. Game was made by 60 people in three years, so small team. A couple of interesting things he shared. Wow, really? I love that alone. What a, what a statistic.

Yeah. That's great. Yeah, I mean, here's something we've talked about a lot before. A lot of those people have been together since the very first Astra. So it's like very much a game that's like iterating and carrying on ideas and lessons. Love it. He told me a few fascinating things. One is he told me that every two weeks. They have a milestone every two weeks and then they all gather to play the game and they have these meetings where everyone gets to

say one thing they liked about it and one thing they want to improve. And he was like, what I focus on is what everybody says they want to improve. Because the stuff they liked, great, fantastic. But we need to fix this. Get better. Of course. He also said, and this you guys will find very interesting, he told me that like

at a certain, there's like, they have some kind of fundamental ideas for each level or like some goal they have for a level. But then at a certain point everybody on the team is allowed to contribute ideas and just can say like we want to do this. Okay. Let's go with that. And he was saying that like there's like quite a lot of that democratic approach, not that it's

like the ultimate democracy at the end of the day. He makes a final call. But like it really helps keep motivation up. And he said that motivation like really turns into good traction for the production of the game. He said it was like a really good production, which I mean, rare in the video game industry. Yeah. And so when he told me that, I was like, hmm, have you seen the Psychonauts 2 documentary? because there was a whole plot where the director of that game and the design team led from a top-down direction

and other people felt like they wanted to contribute ideas but couldn't and it led to a lot of turmoil and the director was fired. He was like, no, I haven't, but I was like, hmm, quite an interesting. Yeah, quite an interesting contrast there. And it really, I mean, I haven't interviewed people on that team largely because Japanese, it's very hard to interview Japanese developers, cultural language barriers. But from talking to this guy, he seems like a very, got a very healthy approach to game direction and game design. And it sounds like this production went pretty smoothly. The other thing you said, and this is really the key, is that like they were fine with making a 15-hour game.

And they did not feel the need to like bloat it and make it feel like 40 hours long and like get the scope out of control. They were just like, nope, this is the game we want to make. It's going to be cool. Let's do it. And I feel like, who knows how this. game will sell. Maybe it won't be the cajillion million dollar game that like Sony is hoping for, but

it's also not going to be Concord, so there's that. Yeah, there is that. I do feel like that's the perfect length for something like this. I mean, Kirk, you were describing it as frosting and it does feel that way. Like, it just feels like it can't, if it were 40 hours long, I don't know if I would ever

get to the end, but knowing it's 15 hours, I'm like, great, I'm going to complete it. I'm going to catch all the robots and I'm going to be satisfied with my life choices leading up to that point. And that's just, that's exactly what I want to hear. That in hearing that the team has largely stayed together. That is a triple-click staple, something we always advocate for on this show. Yeah, it's a cool thing to see just in light of recent news. I feel like I've read an editorial on every game site that I read about how games as a service and the games industry are both broken and there is maybe some way to fix it, but it

doesn't seem possible and what are we going to do? And game scopes need to shrink, game teams need to shrink so that budgets can shrink, so the games can shrink so that we can actually have a sustainable industry. But it's a lot of, you know, punditry, basically, around this industry in crisis. And hearing that makes me so happy. I don't know if this is really, you know, the answer or anything like that. I just now heard it from you two minutes ago. But I think that that is really cool to hear, given how great the game is and how it's not like, it's just visually speaking. This game looks unbelievable.

It's one of the best-looking PS5 games, but it does it in a way that is not as resource-intensive and as labor-intensive as something like a god of war, like a game that requires hundreds of people. It just looks beautiful because it runs really well. It's very simple and clean. It's shiny. It has great art and really good animation, and that's it.

It's very cool to hear that a small team made it, I guess. That makes me happy. Yeah, and it's really, I mean, I think indicative of, what could happen if big publicly traded game publishers cut back on the chasing home runs and are just content with like singles and doubles. Because like I said before, I mean, this game isn't going to sell 20 million copies, but maybe they'll sell three or four million copies. And that'll be awesome because the budget for this game was likely much smaller than the big

thousand people monstrosities that we're seeing at so many companies. So it will almost certainly turn a profit as a result of that. not to mention the fact that like Sony doesn't have to pay a cut to this PlayStation store because it's their store so they get to keep all that right um so yeah i mean it just feels like yes it feels like that kind of that infamous meme like what is that i want like worse games or smaller games of worse or whatever yeah yeah and then this game looks incredible this game looks as good as anything out there so that's the other part of this too i want amazing looking games that play perfectly yeah and i'm not kidding for sure yeah yeah yeah yeah Yeah, it also feels like a game where, like, I think you have kind of an unfair advantage with platformers because you're not like, you don't have to discover fun gameplay along the way. You don't have to, you have to, you have kind of these, these tricks that you can lean upon, especially when you've been making platformers for the past few years and experimenting with all sorts of ideas along the way. It's not like, I don't know, like an anthem where you're kind of like, what is this game and you spend four years trying to figure out what it is. feel good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

With this, it's like, I think they did a lot of prototyping at the beginning, and Nico Desette was telling me that, um, that, uh, from early on, they had a lot of stuff mapped out and a lot of the stuff that is in the final game, they have, like, had in place for years and they were just kind of polishing and, um, and spicing it up along the way. Um, but still, I think that like this game really speaks to, not only the chemistry and and the scope and all the stuff we just talked about, but also just a very clear vision that everybody understands. Here's one more tidbit that I loved from my conversation with him,

and this is all in my Bloomberg column, so you probably saw that last week. We'll throw a link in the show notes if you haven't. But another tip of that I thought was amazing was he was talking about how, like, his spoken Japanese is pretty good, but his written Japanese isn't quite there. So what they do, since they're like 75% Japanese and 25% expat, What they do is instead of design documents, they'll, like, draw images and use that as kind of their design documents and use that as kind of like a baseline, which I thought was really interesting.

And another, like, I hear so many stories about a director who fails to communicate their vision or, like, will only say, like, I know it's not that, but I don't know what I want. And this idea of, like, communicating through images in this visual medium that is video games seems like such a key part of what made this game a success. So, yeah. And it has so many great visuals and striking moments. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's a very visual game. It makes sense that they would have, yeah,

that they would have communicated visually when, when designing these things and coming up with those ideas. I think it really does speak to the strength of staying in your lane or of picking a lane and staying in it. I mean, the advantages of this as a platformer, yeah, it's undeniable. Playing it, I'm over and over again, I'm struck by the fact that the platform is almost the fundamental type of video game, right? in some ways. And as a result, they're just working with this very raw format. They're not trying to do Star Wars Outlaws.

They're not trying to have space combat and stealth and, you know, syndicate loyalty. Criminal factions that you're like navigating. Like that, those kinds of games are so complicated and so difficult because they're like 10 different things. It's not one lane. It's 10 lanes. And it really, this really is evidence that if you just pick one lane and do it really well, you can do it in this more sustainable, smaller team way.

with a really delightful result. And I think we keep finding that in the indie world. Like so many indie games, by necessity, pick a lane and just do the one thing. And then, you know, a game like Hades maybe will come along where it does the one thing. And then also maybe has a cool story. And like that even feels really special and unusual. But mostly a lot of the best indie games just do one thing super well. And as it turns out, like for me at least, especially, I don't know, the more do everything games that I've played and been disappointed by,

the less interest I have and yet another one that's just going to do a whole bunch of things kind of okay. I mean, maybe if it's set in Star Wars and the Star Wars part is cool, I'll be into playing it. But for the most part, I kind of fall off of those and I'm more interested in just like, show me your best idea, give it to me straight and like make it clean and good. And this game is like clean and good. I mean, throughout it just is very simple and very straightforward. And like, yeah, it's just frosting. They didn't waste their time with like six different layers of cake and it's fine. Clean good frosting, the Astrobot story.

All right. Fantastic game. Highly recommend it. Astrobot. Super cool. Man, who would have thought? Friggin Astrobot. If you had told me four years ago,

like Astrobot would be one of the best games of the PS5. It is. All right. Let's take a break and we'll be back with one more thing. One thing we all have in common. We all have a mind. It makes me so scared because I'm like, when is the bad thing going to happen?

And minds. be kind of unpredictable, an eccentric. Everybody wants to hear that they're not alone. Everybody wants to hear that someone else has those same thoughts. Depression Mode with John Moe is about how interesting minds intersect with the lives and work of the people who have them. Comedians, authors, experts, all sorts of folks trying to make sense of their world. It's not admitting something bad if you say, this is scary.

Depression Mode with John Moe. Every Monday at Maximumfund.org or wherever. you get podcasts. Soundheap with John Luke Roberts is a real podcast made up of fake podcasts. Like, if you had a cupboard in your lower back, what would you keep in it? So I'm going to say mugs. A little yogurt and a spoon. A small handkerchief that was given to me by my grandmother on her deathbed.

Maybe some spare honey? I'd keep batteries in it. I'd pretend to be a toy. If I had a cupboard in my lower back, I'd probably fill it with spines. If you had a cupboard in your lower back, what would you keep in it doesn't exist. We made it up for Soundheap with John Luke Roberts. An award-winning comedy podcast from Maximum Fun made up of hundreds of stupid podcasts. Listen and subscribe to Soundheap with John Luke Roberts now.

And we are back. Kirk Maddie, it is time for Ones Moors Things. Maddie, what's your one more thing? My One More Thing is a movie. Again, we watched The Fall Guy, which is a rom-com, but I highly recognize. recommend. This is a rom-com about a stuntman played by Ryan Gosling. That's why the title is called that because he's falling for lead actors and has to do a series of pathfalls. But also because he is seemingly set up in a series of bad scenarios and has to find his way through it. It's a thriller as well as a rom-com, which I didn't know. I didn't really know what the plot was of this.

I was just like, Ryan Gosling, Rom-com, I'll watch that. And I think if that's all you need, then that this movie is perfectly good, but it's also a love letter to stunt people. It has a lot of stunt people in it, who worked on it. Really, really cool stunts in the movie. Emily Blunt also plays, like, the love interest, and she's an aspiring director, which is fun.

And, like, over the course of the movie, she starts, she goes from being, like, a camera woman to a director, and, like, you know, their relationship changes in that time. There's a little time jump. And the movie she's directing is so absurd. It's like just the worst kind of Marvel crap. Like I don't even know what kind of movie this is supposed to be.

It's garbage. It's called like Metal Storm or something like that. And it's like Cowboys versus Aliens. And like the plot makes absolutely no sense. And like all the characters in the movie are like, this is going to be a massive hit. Probably the least believable part of the movie is the idea that anyone would want to go see Metal Storm. But you have to just kind of go with that. And that's just like a really funny thing in the background of the sort of overarching

thriller mystery of Ryan Gosling trying to get Emily Blunt's character to kind of fall back in love with him and also not become the fall guy in an elaborate series of plots whereby people are working against him. I don't want to spoil too much, but it's like sort of there's like a weird murder conspiracy involved in the plot as well that I did not expect from a rom-com and ended up really enjoying. So yeah, I dug this a lot and I recommend it if you like romantic comedies and cool stunt tricks and performances. It's called The Fall Guy. I really want to see this movie.

Two fun facts about this movie. It's been on my list forever and I'm definitely going to see it. It's directed by David Lach who is himself a former stunt performer. He like, I think co-directed John Wick with Chad. What's Chad Stahelsky? And he's directed some other movies as well. But of course it's very cool that he would then make this movie about a stunt performer. It's great.

And he has great respect for stunts and like John Wick like all the movies he makes. Atomic Blonde, I think he directed, have incredible stunts. Yeah. And it's also an, it's like an adaptation of a TV show. Yeah. Which I didn't know when we were down staying with my mom after my dad died during this incredibly stressful two-week period. We were just looking for stuff to kind of, for her to watch on TV.

And on one of the like channels, the like million cable channels that they had, this show was on. And I just saw the fall guy. And I turned it on and I was like, the fall guy. What is this? And it's this like, I think it's a 1960s show. He was like infiltrating a prison. or something to get some guy out who knew something.

Yeah, it has a totally different plot. Like, I looked into it. But I think that he is a stuntman. I think it's the same basic setup, I believe. That part is the same, but then a lot of other stuff is different. I guess the main similarity is that he's not only a stunt guy, but also part of all these thrillers and conspiracies and other things. He gets hired by people to do stuff.

Yeah, exactly. It was funny, though, just watching it. I was like, I've never heard of this show. And, of course, I think they were showing it specifically because the movie had just come out. But yeah, I'm super psyched to see this movie. I'm glad to hear it's good. I think you will really dig it. We had a really good time watching it.

Do you two still get the WGA screeners for films? Yes, I do. No, I do. I do not a member of the WGA anymore. I couldn't justify it any longer. But neither is Maddie. No, I am still. I'm just not in the Vox Media Union,

but they still let you be part of the WGA for like sort of a few years grace period. And they're like, maybe you'll join a union again. I'm not sure if that's going to happen for me or not. But I am still in the WGA. So they send me screeners. It's funny to say let you because they're really saying is you pay fees for no better. I pay a small fee to get advanced movie screeners.

And essentially it's like the most expensive Netflix by mail I've ever subscribed to is the WGA screener system. Kirk, what's your one more thing? Mine is also a movie that I watched and kind of a broader thought about movies as well. The movie is Furiosa, a Mad Max saga, which is, steaming on HBO currently, but... Big flop this year. Big flop. But also a movie I want to see similarly.

Like, Kirk and I are switching here. I want to check this one out. It's pretty good. I mean, I think, yeah, I didn't do well at the box office for whatever reason, but I liked it fine. Neither did the fall guy. Well, I think testament to the fact that you two didn't see it in theaters, despite, like, loving Mad Max.

Yeah, I don't go to that many movies in the theater. It was, man, this was, this summer was. was pretty weird for me. I think I probably would have seen this. I have no, no, no, I'm not, I'm, this isn't, this speaks to the overarching movie theater problem, but that's another story. That's just my point. Sure. No, no, yeah. Your point is well taken. I could have seen it and I did not. It's true. So I watched this movie and enjoyed it, uh, for the most part. It's like, it's not Fury Road. Fury Road is one of my favorite action movies. Honestly, maybe one of my favorite movies. One of the greatest movies. I've seen it so many times. It's just an unbelievable movie. I would watch it

at any moment. And Furiosa kind of expands on the backstory, of course, of Charlize Theron's character Furiosa. It tells her story how she came to be with Immorten Joe and kind of, you know, what led her to break the Immorten Joe's wives out at the beginning to set the plot of Fury Road in motion. Bing! Future Kirk here chiming in just to say, because I didn't say it when I was talking about the movie. Charlize Theron is not in Furiosa. In this movie, the role is played by Anya Taylor Joy, Who's good? She does a good job. Just wanted to mention that in case anyone hadn't seen it and didn't already know that. Okay, back to the show.

Bing! So it's kind of subservient to Fury Road throughout, to begin with. It just feels like an inferior movie because Fury Road is the main course. This is just an appetizer. It's also a kind of broader and more world-building type of movie because it is a saga. It starts with Furious as a child. Then she is kidnapped by a guy, what's his name, Dementis, played by Chris Hemsworth, who's pretty wonderful in the movie, playing a very horrible but kind of charismatic, evil man,

who is a sort of new, and he's the villain of this movie, though Immorten Joe is also in it. Of course, Immorten Joe becomes the main villain of Fury Road. And the best parts of the movie, really the best sequence in the movie is basically another car chase on a war rig, just like Fury Road. And I was just like whooping and hollering and loving it because George Miller can do this thing like nobody else. He's amazing at it. Other parts of it a little less so.

there's more CG in it, which people were worried about in the trailers. It is a thing in the movie. I mean, the movie is doing like bigger stuff. Like there will just be a shot, like a wide, wide, far out shot of like 500 motorcycle riders crossing the desert with this massive cloud of dust. And like, you just can't do that with actual vehicles, the way that they use actual vehicles in the chase sequences. So I don't know, there are things about it that are a little gooey looking, but by and large, still totally a cool movie and I recommend watching it. And I was struck by the editing of this movie. And I was really thinking about it because, as I mentioned last week, I've also been slowly watching Rebel Moon, the Zach Snyder two-parter, which I'm like pretty mixed on.

It's kind of whatever I've just had it on. It's very ridiculous and silly. But it's a really striking, like, counterpart to Furiosa. They're actually really similar movies. They're both a story of a woman who was, like, abducted or taken as a child and raised by a super evil person and turned into a weapon of war who then turns on her masters and like becomes like a weapon of freedom. And like they're kind of and they have a similar tone. Like they're very kind of operatic and intense and like really dramatic. But Rebel Moon is what like seven hours or something long in its totality. I still haven't finished it.

I'm on part two. And it just goes on forever. And like, you know, Zach Snyder just likes having a sequence where they're like threshing wheat. And you're just watching people thresh wheat in slow-mo for literally five minutes. Every shot just goes on 30% longer than it arguably needs to. Where in Furiosa, the movie is just like moves along. It's like more than two hours long. But like George Miller does not play.

He just goes. He points to the camera at exactly what is happening. The edits are like, bam, bam, bam. I was looking at the editing credits. So Furiosa was edited by two people, Elliot, Notman, Natman, and Margaret Sixall. And Rebel Moon was edited by Doty Dorn. Doty Dorn, like, got nominated for an Academy Award for Memento. She's a really good editor.

So this is clearly like, Zach Snyder's, like, vision is you will make the shots longer. We will make everything long. Like, this is, you know, according to the vision of the film, where Furiosa is much, much tighter. It's just, it was a very interesting exercise for me to think about how much of a role editing plays in the way that a movie feels and moves. And seeing these two very similar movies, like really close to one another was actually really. really interesting for that. So I maybe recommend them as a counterpart. Like neither is a bad movie. I'd say Furious. I enjoyed far more. But they're kind of interesting comparison point, particularly for editing and pacing. So yeah, the Furiosa, man, it's good. It shouldn't have

bombed. I'm kind of bummed to hear that it did. Yeah, same for me. And same for the fall guy, which I also was like kind of sad that it didn't do well in theaters and was like, I'm going to check that out. First day on streaming. And I did it. Dang it. I'm going to turn into a streaming sensation. I'm trying. I'm out here. It just speaks to, yeah, nothing does well in theaters these days. I know. My one more thing is a book called The God of the Woods by Liz Moore, which is a pretty popular book this year.

It's getting a lot of buzz. It is a fiction book, kind of a mystery thriller type. And it is set in a summer camp in the 1970s, mostly, although parts of the book are also set in the 1950s and 1960s and so on. And it's quite interesting. It's about this young girl who gets kidnapped, and she is the daughter, the sion of the family, the very, very rich family that owns the camp and owns the property in which the camp is based. And who would have thought this?

But it turns out that 14 years earlier, that same family had a son who also disappeared. So there's this big question of, did I, did I, did I? say kidnapped before? I meant disappeared. Like, we don't know if it's a kidnapping. We don't know what it is. So we have this mystery, this kind of this dual mystery where this family doesn't know what happened to either of these children. And then there are a lot of kind of, there are other characters who are in the mix. There's another camper whose story we learn about who was like good friends with the girl that disappeared. There's the counselor who was supposed to be kind of in charge of the bunk. And then one of the campers disappeared on her watch. And we also learn about the very rich

family at the heart of it all. And it's really interesting. It's a book that kind of, it does the thriller thing where there are a lot of chapters ending on cliffhangers and a lot of twists and turns in the story. But it also has a lot of interesting ideas, explores wealth and kind of disparity of wealth and who gets it and whether rich people ever really face consequences or whether they're always like destined to just be able to get out of them and control their own fates and so on. And it's really cool. It's a cool book. Also, it has a lot of good nature stuff. One of the things, one of the details that I enjoyed most, which is a very summer camp thing. I don't know if you two ever went to summer camp, but this is a very summer camp thing. So every camp I feel like has a thing where

like you wake up one day and surprise, it's this thing. It's our big theme day. Whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Color war is a big one or like one camp I went to there was lazy day, which is like the day you could do nothing all day. Once the Grinch invaded the summer and then there was gold hidden all around the camp and it was very fun. Oh my goodness. Did you go to leprechaun camp or?

Yes, it was leperkin. Oh, okay. Everyone in Indiana goes to lepricon camp. It's a Hoosier thing. And in this camp, it's survival. Like, I don't remember it's survival day or survival period or whatever it was.

And basically they take the kids and they drop them in the woods and they spend all this time again. You've seen yellow jackets? It's We actually did have a day like this and it was like take everything you can carry

and if you didn't bring enough food too bad it was horrible but also it's one day and you're kind of fine even though you're complaining the whole time and it's like build your own shelter

and learn how to survive in the woods there's even there's this great little detail that like it used to be that like they would just drop the kids off and that was it but now too many parents complaints and now a counselor is like in the background watching

We had a counselor, a few counselors there. Which, I mean, extremely reckless to do it without a counselor watching. Yeah, it is. Whatever. Very yellow jackets to do with no counselors. But yeah, no, it's a cool book. I enjoyed it. It's a fun thriller, very easy read.

I can see why it was so buzzed about this summer. So, yeah, cool book. The God of the Woods. It's called by Liz Moore. It was a good writer. She has a few other interesting books that I'm open to check out as well. And yeah, go back. All right.

Awesome. That is it for this week's episode. Kirk, Maddie. I will see you both next time. Yep. See you next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton.

I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun podcast. network and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximum fun.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpod, send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening.

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