Triple Click - God of War, Last of Us, And Other Roguelikes

Episode Date: February 15, 2024

It's time to analyze roguelikes — the latest trend sweeping games from God of War to The Last of Us — as Kirk, Jason, and Maddy get ready to dive into a dungeon full of random levels, cool weapons, and permadeath. One More Thing:Kirk: Scavenger’s Reign (Max)Maddy: King of the HillJason: Super Bowl 58LINKS:“Grounded II: The Making of The Last of Us Part 2”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC3C7GMMfDUPreorder 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

This is the game that never ends. It just goes on and on, my friends. Some people started playing it, not knowing what it was. Turns out it's called a roguelike, and it's really pretty fun. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we're talking about rogue likes and all the new games from Hitman to The Last of Us to God of War. They're adding rogue like modes post-release. There's a lot to talk about, so let's get into it. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Schreier. Hello. Hello. Hello, my friends. Hi. Hello. Hello. Hi again. Hi, everyone out there from here at Triple Click HQ, our listener-supported podcast headquarters.

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You can listen to those and many more at maximum fun.org slash join, which is where you can become a member. Thank you all so much to all the members out there who keep this thing going. All right, let's get into it. Yay. This week, we are talking about rogue-like modes and roguikes, and the kind of rogue-like fever that has swept the world of video games over the last year. Yeah, I guess so.

The premise here is. that roguiles have been slowly gaining in popularity over the last maybe four or five years. But this past year, or maybe six months, it's been a really interesting time in that a few major games have had these infinitely replayable, randomly generated modes added to them, like God of War Valhalla, Hitman 3 became Hitman World of Assassination, The Last of Us 2 in its sort of PS5 re-release, got this no-return mode. And they're all interesting in different ways. and just made us think that it would be kind of fun to talk about rogue likes and this style of game

and why it's becoming more popular and these different versions of it that we've seen. So I guess I should say before we get into why we like these games, why they work, why they don't work, when I say roguelike, this is one of those annoying semantic video game things where people will get very particular about what it means and what it doesn't mean. Of course, the root here is this game rogue, a very classic game that has a series of very specific parameters is attached to it. And it used to be saying that a game was a rogue-like meant specifically that it was exactly like rogue in these ways.

And then they would say it's a rogue light if it has rogue elements, but it's a little softer. You love taxonomies, though. I feel like you would love this all definition. You know, I do like taxonomies, and yet I hate genre. Is that kind of an interesting paradox? No, that's in all things. That totally makes sense.

That makes sense. I like finding meaningful distinctions. I mean, I think we all hate being excessively prescriptive, too. Like don't be drawing the lines and getting mad about them. We're not in favor of that. It's helpful for it. Right. I guess I find taxonomies to be clarifying and I find genre to actually be confounding.

They're almost opposites in a weird way, even though they're so similar in terms of whatever, their modes for categorization. So anyways, I'm not that concerned with that. When we're talking about a rogue like on this episode, we're just talking about a mode that is designed to be replayed over and over again in which you lose some element of your progress, even if it's just how far you've made it. through the procedurally generated levels or through the thing before you have to start over and that has some element of procedural generation but also probably gives you something that you carry on as well and then past that I mean all of these are very different actually

like all the different modes in these games I've talked about and then in other games that we've liked so you know that that's just a pretty broad term that can mean a lot of different things so let's start just talking a little bit about I don't know when each of us got into these kinds of games and what the first one of these was. I have a feeling I know what it's going to be, maybe for all three of us.

But Maddie, why don't you go first? What's your history? Are we all going to say Hades? Is that what we're all going to say? Are we boring? Oh, no. Okay, fine. I'll be the one that says Hades.

Okay, good. Then I'm allowed to be the nub. The newbie who says Hades. I don't really feel like this was a genre that I knew a ton about pre-Hades, which I think is probably true of a lot of people. people. A lot of listeners are probably right there with me and playing Hades and being like, oh, this is a format of game that exists. This is very cool. And I really like the structure of it.

I also like that Hades, by having a kind of specific home base that your character keeps returning back to, it can do some fun storytelling maneuvering where every time you return, you talk to different characters around your home base once again. And they're like, oh, you're heading back out there, how did it go last time? And the plot advances, even though you're kind of this immortal demigod, Zagrius in that game, who can't

die per se, but certainly can be reset back to home again, which is just as annoying as dying in any video game would be. And even though the plot can advance and your progress is advancing as you go along, you still

kind of have this very repetitive kind of entry-level set of enemies that you're having to face every single time over and over, even though they become just dust on your boot heel by the end of it. And you're just freaking amazing by that point. I really like that.

And I feel like I probably would like a lot of other roguelike since even though Dark Souls and Metroid games are obviously a different genre, they have some similarities in terms of the repetition, going over old areas, fighting the same enemies over and over again. That stuff I got. I really love in a game. I love perfecting my little combat mechanics.

And rogue likes are all about that. And that is something that's really fun about Hades and really fun about some of these other modes that we're going to talk about. Nice. Jason, what's your history with rogue likes? Yeah, I mean, I've been playing a lot of them for a while. I don't know if you would count the original Diablo since it was so inspired by Rogue.

I think the one thing, what was interesting about the original Diablo was that it was originally conceived as a game with Permadeath, which would have made it like a real Roeck because every time you try to go down the dungeon, you lose and then you have to go back. Eventually, Blizzard decided,

no, we're not going to do that. They still do that as a mode. Well, it's a mode, yes. And there's a hardcore mode. I remember playing. So when I was playing Diablo 2, a shitload back in high school, I probably would have done

a Permadeth mode a couple times. Maybe that counts as a rogue like. More recently, I mean, I got really into enter the dungeon. I played some dead stuff. definitely was really into Hades. The three of us talked about that game a lot and really loved it. But I played a lot of these types of games.

And the thing that I always enjoy about them is that feeling of kind of like being able to really experiment with new ideas or new builds every time you go. And Hades is really fantastic at that because there's something really exciting about like, all right, you're doing a Poseidon build and you get just the right ability. randomly generated from the door as you go through and you're like, man, yeah, now I can really deck it out and get some Zeus in here and so on and so forth. Enter the Gungeon was also really good at that because Enter the Gungeon is a game where it's kind of you're going through a procedurally generated dungeon and there's these random gun drops and each of the guns just does totally wild, crazy things and that's the whole, the whole idea is that it's just, it's the gungeon, it's all puns about guns. And so there's a ton of different types of guns. And so there's a ton of different

types of guns and weapons you can find as you go and they make the experience really refreshing because even though you're killing the same baddies every time you're doing in a different ways based on the gun drops you got and it's really exciting when you find the best possible gun like at the beginning and you're like oh sick this is going to be a good run I could feel it and that I think is something that's always really just kind of contributes to that lasting appeal is like getting to know a game so well where you know like okay I'm going to make a lot of progress this run. And a lot of games that do that repetitive sort of thing are kind of like that. And once you master them, you know, like, okay, this is going to be good. Even something as simple as threes,

which I play on my phone all the time, sometimes I'll just know, like, okay, this is going to be a good run. Oh, yeah, still. Every single, every single night. That's like the longest Jason's ever played anything is three. Oh, yeah. Well, threes is the best game ever made. You have to understand. It's the perfect video game. It is kind of a perfect game. It's hard to argue with We should maybe do an episode about threes at some point. I don't know. There isn't even much to talk about. It's just like a flow state game.

Like people have asked me like, how are you so good at threes? Because I've gotten pretty high scores and I'm just like, I can't even describe it. Yeah. I didn't realize you were still playing it. I feel like we talked about it years ago and I didn't realize you were just still doing it. Just by habit, like whenever I just have like when my wife and I are watching TV in bed and I'm just like want to kill a few minutes, I just do it. By default. I also like to have something to do while I'm talking to someone or like, well, I'm just kind of a multitasker of my nature.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. I think that, I think, is the real appeal is, like, getting to know a game so well that you're like, all right, got this awesome thing. Now I'm going to really do well on this run and just kind of having that sort of mastery. And to your point, Maddie, I think Dark Souls has a kind of similar thing where it's like you really get to know a boss fight so well that you're like, oh, yeah, I'm doing really well on this run. I'm really going to nail out this time. I'm master, I dodge this ability just right. Oh, yeah, I really, really pulled it off this time. Although, the difference with the roguelike is there is that random chance aspect.

That's really what you're talking about is the good feeling. It would be like if Dark Souls had a random role at the beginning of Vosbyte that is like, this time around, you're going to get five extra S this blast or whatever it may be. And you'd be like, oh, great. Well, so what I think of specifically is kind of speed running. And how when you're speed running something, It's almost like you're treating every game as a roguelike because you're like, oh, this boss didn't use this ability this time.

This is a good run. We got to start over. Yeah. But yeah, there's a lot to like about rogolikes in general. And, Kirk, to your point earlier, I think the reason that we're seeing so many of these big games add them is because they're relatively cheap to make. You don't need to make a ton of new assets. You don't have to design a ton because you do this procedural generation.

So you don't have to customize every single level you're doing. There's a lot of kind of compelling reasons. to make this sort of content part of your game. And when you do it as well as Valhalla does, then, man, that's a win. That's a big win. Yeah. Yeah, we'll get into that in a minute

because, yeah, I want to talk a little bit about, a little bit of specifics about those three examples that I cited, just to give a little of my background. Yeah, I'm sort of similar to you, Jason. I've been playing these games for a little while, not as far back as rogue, though. I did play the original Diablo as well and didn't know that was... Fun game.

Yeah, it was fun. I thought it was really cool at the time. Like when it came out, whenever that was. And he's like, fresh mean, and you're like, oh, my God. And there was that feeling of sort of, it's like a high, when it's not high risk, high reward. It's low stakes in a certain way because you die a lot and you're not that attached to whatever is happening in this moment.

So it's low risk, high reward, I guess. I suppose, yeah. So I'm thinking about. Low risk multi reward. Random reward. The mindset that I think about when I imagine the feeling of playing a roguelike is actually the game FTL, who's made. The speakers then made another game called Into the Breach, which was also a fantastic rogue-inspired game.

And FTL is a game where you're in control of a starship that's trying to make it through this sort of journey through the stars, and all kinds of different things can happen to you along the way. You have to be able to sort of really quickly issue orders. You can pause the game, which is actually nice, in issue orders. You get very good at pausing and, you know, oh, no, the engine is on fire and, like, the warp drive is out, and we're not going to be able to jump and we're being attacked. Oh, we've been boarded. And, like, we have to vent the air out of this one section.

and it's a lot of sort of ship management and it gets very chaotic as you go. And of course, you die a lot in that game, just like in all of these kinds of games. But there's that feeling that you get when you're on a really good run. Just your ship, it's got everything it needs. You have all of the, you know, all the oxygen

and all the power and your crew is like super good and you have that feeling of it's both, I'm really excited because I have this cool thing. And also, I recognize that this cool thing could vanish at any moment. And it's probably already happened to you once or twice. So there's kind of an impermanence to it that I think really just dovetails well with the way that video games work. And it's one of the things that makes all of these kinds of

games so fun. Incription, another good example. You wind up with a really good hand in a deck building, rogue-like. I know there are a million of those that people love. You can get a great hand, and you get a great set of cards, and it's a really good feeling. But you also aren't too attached to it. And sometimes in really long games, you know, you get too attached to a certain thing. Like in Dark Souls, you kind of wind up a little locked into your build, especially before you get a re-spec or in the older games where you only have a certain number of upgrade maths. So you basically max out a weapon and then you just have to stick with that. Or just not even systemically.

You just get good at playing a certain way. So then you just always do the same thing to every boss. What I really like about these kinds of games is that they allow you to use a lot more of the game. So they push you to try different things because whatever. Hades obviously was a game that I loved as well. We all loved it. I think it was a really big moment for this style of game just because so many more people liked it. A big part of that is the narrative stuff you were talking about, Maddie.

Just that it had such a cool story that the story was built into the repetition. And also, I think that just this was something that Super Giant, the developer of that game, had been building toward. Like, they had been working on making games that encouraged you to try different things. I really love their game transistor because, the systems of that game, it's not a roguelike, but that's built into it. You have this upgrade system for the sword that you're using, and you get some abilities that you really like. But if you take damage, your abilities are the things that take damage in that game.

So whatever move that you've been relying on over and over again will get broken if you take a hit. So then for a limited amount of time, you suddenly have to reconfigure the sword to work totally differently. And sometimes if you take a bunch of damage, you'll find yourself just like at the far reaches of your ability tree, using stuff you never even knew existed before, and then realizing that that's really fun. They kind of force you to change up your play style. A lot of games don't do that because they want to give you options and make you feel empowered.

And then that's something that Hades did as well, especially with incentivizing you to use different weapons, because each weapon in that game is like a whole different game. And I found for a while I was like, spear boy, I just used the spear all the time. And then I realized like, oh man, the fists, like the punching fists are really awesome and they're totally different. And eventually I've played that game entirely through with every weapon. Yeah. It's, oh, now I just want to play Hades again.

Man, this is really getting good. And you're going to play Hades too pretty soon. I am and I'm so excited. So do we want to talk about God of War Valhalla for a second? Let's start with that. So I think that these three examples we're going to talk about. So that's God of War of Valhalla, The Last of Us 2, No Return, and Hitman World of Assassination,

are all actually interestingly different than what we were, then we were, again like Hades or FTL, which is designed from the bottom up to be a reality. roguelike. These are roguelike modes that are added to the game, which I agree, Jason is a really cool thing to see, and it does seem like it's more doable. I think that's the sense playing it is. You're like, oh, this seems like this wasn't too hard for them to make. And it's a great way to just keep using the great combat system they made for God of War, for example. But it does feel a little different because you kind of unlock different abilities, but you're basically,

you know, you're Cretos. You have the, like, Cretus abilities that you had in the main game. But anyways, yeah, let's start with Valhalla. I know, Maddie, you played a lot of it, right? What did you think of it? I did. I did. I feel like God of Or Valhalla is actually really leaning on the narrative elements that can be used to great effect in a rogue like where there is kind of the home base, Hades-esque, where the conversations change pretty much every time there's a character you can revisit. Like if there's someone there, you're like, oh, I better go talk to this person because they haven't been here in a couple of runs. I got to check back in.

But also over the course of each run, you run into. people you know and you get to have conversations with them as well. And I really liked all of those aspects of the game. I think people probably remember God of War Combat is fine to me. I know this is blasphemy to the two of you. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. But it's not like this doesn't work if you don't love the God of War Combat. It's perfectly fun and you can still get something out of it just from a story vantage point, which is the way that I was engaging with it. And I still really liked changing up my play style as much as I could. I mean, it's Cratos.

There's only so much you can do. He's never going to be a live archer like his son. You're not going to totally change things 80's style. You're going to have an axe. But I did really like the opportunities and encouragement to continue to change up how I was playing. I did have to totally remember how to play God of War in the first place. I'm sure that also happened to the two of you at least a little bit in playing where I was like, oh yeah. I'm like Thor in this game.

I can throw my axe and it'll come back to me. So that was cool. But mostly I just was like, man, other games should do this with their stories. Like they should have more opportunities for the characters to kind of leave the house, go do some battles and then come back and have like an overarching story back at home base. Again, because just as a storytelling mechanic, I think it's really effective and really cool. And I just was really pleased with it. happening in a god of war game. You're just describing midnight sense again. I am. And that's another

great game. Yeah, it's something I really like about Valhalla is that it takes a lot of ideas from Hades in clever ways. One that comes to might immediately is kind of guiding you along a path that rewards you for sticking to a certain ability. And so like we were talking about, like, it's very much like you mentioned out of you're encouraged to try different play styles as you go with Kratos and play around with the different weapons. But it does more than that. It kind of like the abilities are loaded in such a way that like you will get certain ones or you'll be more likely to get certain ones if you go down a certain path. At the beginning you're given one of two choices to make and you can say, okay, I'm going to focus more on the axis time or I'm going to do go with the chains this time or whatever it is.

And I think that's a smart way to approach this type of game because it really feels like you're kind of tailoring a build and you know the best way. the optimal way to beat enemies as opposed to just kind of like having to choose from a hodgepodge of different abilities every single time. And so I think that's a smart idea and something that Hades really nailed. The other thing is kind of the giving you special bonuses if you choose specific things. Like at the beginning of each run, if you choose a specific shield and a specific type of perk or whatever, you'll get extra bonuses for doing it that way, which is another thing that Hades really mastered. Yeah, that's true.

I guess it wasn't even really fair when I said that, you know, you're kind of Cretus and Cretus is Cretus, because actually, God of War did introduce a ton of different, you know, shields, for example, and runic abilities. There are so many runic abilities. Three, yes, and three big weapons, each of their own. And Valhalla, spoilers, but there's a whole new type of weapon. It's not quite a weapon, but I guess it's a new rage type of weapon as well.

Do you mean like the blue sword That's technically from the other god of war games? Yeah. Yeah. And not a new weapon if you think about it. Sure, new for this iteration of God of War. I had to look that up because I've never played the original God of Wars. And so Cratos pulls out this blue shiny sword and he's being all emo about it and not answering questions from the mirror about what it is. And I was like, well, Google, Google, what the heck is a sword?

Yeah, you didn't play 2018, right? I didn't. I was playing Dante's Inferno. So that was the whole, the reason I asked that is because the whole, there was a giant plot point in 2018 about him putting the chains aside and then taking him back out when he had to, which is like a big part of the story as well. Right. Yes. Similar echoes of that. Yes. Yeah. So I actually have appreciated that from what I've played. Like even just being encouraged to use the spear, which is a weapon that's pretty cool. But I never really used it in Ragnarok. Well, because you don't get it till the very end of the game. So, you know, how many opportunities to use? Right, and it's not essential. It isn't encouraged in the way that a game with this kind of rogue-like system can be like,

okay, you now have runic abilities for the spear and only the spear. So you better use the spear. And then I can also just say, all right, cool. On this run, I'm using the spear. We'll see what happens. Where in the main game, it was just much more likely to be like, well, this is a big boss fight. I'm just going to use my axe because the axe whips. And like I can use the axe for everything.

Actually, ditto for the blades, for that matter. I don't use those that much in the main game. They're so fun. Yeah, no, they're great. I mean, all the weapons are really balanced. There's a sense playing this that I get playing a lot of these modes. Just that I'm getting to really enjoy the work of all the people who made this game. Like, a whole group of people spent forever designing that spear and making it into this super cool and very distinct weapon.

That then, I'm guessing, it got like 10% of the combat time compared to the axe and the sword for most people playing Ragnarok. So now they add this mode that's like, all right, now we're really going to let you use it. Dido for whatever, shields that have like a really kind of unusual combat style. When am I using the shield in God of War? Never. I'm all offense and no defense. That's it. But I actually, I kind of enjoy the shield play in the game in Valhalla, like using a shield

as a weapon and a defensive maneuver. It's fun. Yeah, it's a smart way of encouraging players to just not feel as committed to things. And then to just sample the vast array of systems and abilities that are put into these games. like God of War Ragnarok was overstuffed but God of War Valhalla doesn't feel overstuffed because it edits for you that's true and that's true of the story as well

Maddie you were talking about loving the idea of having a game where you're in a kind of home base where you talk to everybody then you go out and do stuff and I was thinking well structurally that is the same as I don't know Horizon Forbidden West like there's a base in that game

and you go out into the world and you come back Or Swaykodan too or whatever Mass Effect or any of those like RPGs but it doesn't quite have the same feel because the game isn't as tightly edited. It's not like you're in a loop where you just go out for 15 minutes and then you're back in this room and you talk to everyone again. And it's like really layered where each time you see someone you know they have something new to say, it's a much more sprawling and just very differently paced ability or a very differently paced setup.

So I think that it's a really cool to see a game edit itself in this way. And it's, I don't know, I wish that every like big AAA single player game, did this. It's really cool that so many of them are. Well, so the advantage that Valhalla has is that most of the people coming into this already know all the characters. And so it's much easier to connect to like, oh, cool, Freya has something to say when you already know about the relationship that Kratos and Freya have. And it's a lot more impactful when Freya is saying, we want you to be the new god of war here when you know all that history and context. Hades, one of the things that was really good at was

kind of like introducing these new characters and making you care about. them almost from the get-go and make you want to keep talking to them and seeing what they have to say. But most games just don't have that same level, same caliber of storytelling, chops, and character building. And I'm specifically thinking about Horizon Forbidden West, which is a game that I thought was good, but like I just never cared about the characters in that game for one reason or another and had no interest in doing any of their quests at the base or anything like that. Hades did have the advantage that these are all mythological characters. I mean, you do kind of no morphiases or whoever from the beginning.

So obviously their takes are distinct and the characters are cool and you're interested in them. But yeah, they did have an advantage. Yeah, sure. But Zagrius being such a compelling kind of snarky, like, protagonist helped a lot with that as well. So a lot of that was a writing. No, for sure. Like those characters in Horizon Fruit and West, if they had been written with the same verve and excitement as Hades, like they would have been the same situation, even if they're

not mythological characters. Yeah, I think it's an interesting contrast to a rogue-like mode that doesn't have that kind of a story. I guess let's talk about The Last of Us 2 a little bit. I think I'm the only one that's played that, the no return mode in the new PlayStation 5 version of the game. And it's really interesting. I mean, it's critically compelling and I think really well-made and fun to play. I mean, the combat in The Last of Us Part 2 was always for me. it's probably its strongest aspect.

I mean, when you're in the thick of it in a game or in that game, like when Ellie is in Seattle and she's in this kind of sprawling outdoor mall, going in and out of buildings with clickers and infected and scavengers running around and the AI is just absolutely incredible. The animations, the way that the fights are designed, it's some of the best combat design I've ever experienced in a video game. And it kind of, it's really interesting to take that and just totally remove it from the story. So no return is totally just structured as it feels to me like multiplayer levels, like every level in it feels like a multiplayer level.

It would work just fine as a multiplayer, you know, whatever control point. Like a left for dead kind of a multiplayer shooter or? Like the Last of Us, like the multiplayer and the last of us was just fantastic. Like it had a really good competitive multiplayer mode and it was set in maps that were different areas from the game. These maps feel kind of like those maps. Like it feels like playing Horde mode in Gears of War II. where you'd be in a multiplayer map, but you'd be fighting against enemies. This feels kind of like that.

And you have to make it through an escalating series of levels. They get more and more complex with different types of enemies. You can play as Ellie, you can play as Abby. And then eventually you can play as like Dina or Joel or like all kinds of characters who wouldn't have even been doing what they're doing. Because there's no narrative framework at all. There's like none. The only narrative that exists is just what guns have you gotten?

What upgrades have you got and what path are you taking through the levels? And I understand that decision. it's probably the best decision that they could have made. It would have been very strange for a game with such a, like, weighty story to suddenly add, like, new story elements or even new, like, dialogue barks for the characters. Yeah, because they would have had to, like, set it during a specific time in the game, which is kind of what I thought they were going to do when I heard about this mode. No, and I think, I mean, I think that given the options, this is the best choice for them to make. But it is very interesting to then play through this game that still has some of the awfulness and the intensity of the violence, which was a part of the narrative of The Last of Us Part 2. When you kill an enemy in this game, their friends will call out for them by name.

This is in the roguelike mode. That still happens. So you're still feeling like, wow, I feel bad for murdering these people in that way that was an important part of what The Last of Us 2 was trying to do. I remember that just got stupid after. No, I know you guys didn't like it. But the Lasopus Part 2 was going for something very weight. They were trying to make the violence feel impactful. We're just telling jokes.

We're picking up what you're putting down. It's interesting seeing all of that put into the context of a just straight up action game with no story. Because it's really good. I mean, when you're playing it, you're on the edge of your seat. It's like incredibly designed combat with some of the best action systems I've ever interacted with. It's just very weird to be playing as Ellie just. because it accompanies the game that it accompanies. I don't really know how to resolve that or what to do with that.

It's still cool that it exists. The people who made it are probably really proud of it because it really is like an amazing rogue-like experience and it only falters for me because of the single-player game that came before it, which is just kind of a weird thing. Ludo-narrative dissonance in a nutshell. It's like ludo-narrative dissonance across games almost. There's no narrative.

It's just ludo on its own. remove the narrative and yet still it's still there. Well, it's literally narrative distance because it's the same characters as the game. And we have a narrative association with this. Yeah, that's a very good point. I wonder if they had made it without... I think it probably would have

worked better for you if it was just kind of randomly generated. I wonder. I wonder. That's a very good point. I don't know if it would. Because I feel like you need the emotional resonance of seeing these characters even if that's paired with the kind of mental weirdness of being like, what? I'm fighting as Abby and Joel in co-op or whatever.

I don't know if there's multiplayer at all. I think they could have just made it that you play as one of the kind of minor characters from the game. And you're just that one character. And you just get to be that person throughout the whole thing. That could have been. Or you're just Ellie the whole time or Abby the whole time. No, but not Ellie or Abby. No, that's the point is like you're not playing as someone that you know super well.

You're like some person. Yeah, like a minor character from the game. And like you just play as them the whole time. I could have seen that actually working on. a little better. And just they're on some scavenging mission where they're running into a bunch of enemies that they have to fight through. It would have still been the same exciting combat. I don't need to be playing as Ellie for that to feel exciting to me. I could just be playing as some person. It'd be nice to have like the same person that you kind of get attached to over the

course of the game. But it doesn't need to be. Yeah. And then it would kind of be its own story about this individual person that you get to know, even if they barely talk at all, you would still kind of feel like you knew them in the way that you play a video game and we all. kind of feel like we know Master Chief on some level because we are him, even though he doesn't have a personality at all. Yeah, I feel like that'd be interesting if they just had a no return protagonist, who just was the protagonist. And then you don't have the baggage of like, oh, I'm playing his Abby.

And I have Abby's backstory. Right. Or the weirdness of like when you play as Joel, I think Joel just has all of Abby's animations because they didn't do all new animations. So it's not like Joel does his animations from the first game. Wow. So it just gets a little. What an insult to Joel's memory.

It just gets a little weird. I think some people actually do think that. Did you guys watch the new documentary they just put out grounded to? No, I really, I kind of want to. It sounds interesting. Yeah, how is it? Have you watched it? Yeah, it's good.

I mean, it's hard to watch any video game documentary without comparing it to the Psychonauts one, which is so transcendent that it just like blows everything out of the water. And so this one, it'll spend like 30 seconds on something that might have been an entire episode in the Second Nut Psychumentary. Well, right, this one's two hours long to me, right? It's not 30 hours or whatever. But it's interesting. There's a lot of good stuff in there, a lot of interesting kind of info about the making of the game and how it all went down and how COVID affected them. And then how the hack affected them and so on and so forth.

Yeah, that was a dark time online. They mentioned the word crunch. That's good. Yeah. They talk about trying to fix their work-life balance issues, which I thought was interesting. Nice. That's good. They talk about kind of hiring producers and working to try to make things better for the next game.

Nice. Yeah, I'm definitely going to watch it at some point. So let's talk a little bit about Hitman World of Assassination, because that, I think, is another really cool and really interesting rogue-like mode that was added. This was last fall, I guess. This was added to Hitman 3, where really what they did was they took all of the levels from the first two Hitman games. This is of the more recent trilogy. There are all of these huge levels with a billion NPCs in them and all of these challenges that have been designed over many, many, many years. They took all of that and put it under one roof,

and then they built a new roguelike mode that uses every single level, every single challenge, every weapon, every system they've ever made for all of these games. So just like years and years and hundreds of hours of work. And they've turned it into this one roguelike experience that, to me at least, feels a little different than the other ones we've been talking about. It feels like... Yeah, it sounds way harder and more ambitious and complex. It could only exist in a game like this.

feels like a final exam. It's really, really fun. I mean, it is super fun to play, but it's just like if you've played a lot of hitman, it's so cool to use all of the knowledge that you've built up over years, not in a way that felt very challenging at the time. Like for me, I just played the Hitman games. I know Sapienza pretty well, because I liked that game many years ago. So to have a new challenge in it where it's like, okay, you get one shot, you got to take this guy out and then get out, and it's that kind of, you know, one-shot, you know, disposable run mentality that really lends itself to this kind of game. It works so well. I think that it's amazing that they did it. I felt kind of almost, I don't know, relieved to see them take all of this work and this incredible

thing that they built and actually turn it into a box set, you know, a criterion collection that has everything under one roof, just because there were so many times over the years where it felt like Hitman was going to get kind of derailed by various stupid things that shouldn't have been derailed by the online requirement of the first game or the fact that the second game tried to fold in the first game but then you can only get the one on Steam and the other one wasn't on Steam or I don't even remember this. Yeah and it was like hard to understand what to buy. Well so wait can you back up a second and talk about how it actually works. Yeah. Oh yeah. How does this work as a rogue like so you have to

go through every single. Oh okay I thought I talked about this last year on the show but I guess I can explain it. So you are once again, Agent 47, and you're given this kind of compound, this underground layer that's your kind of home base. And it starts with nothing in it. And then you unlock a few basic weapons and you go to a computer and it gives you your first challenge. Just like being an assassin anywhere. You start out in a featureless basement with nothing in it. Exactly. Unlike a couple weapons. Well, and the idea is that there is this like a more kind of ongoing narrative where you're just building yourself up as a freelance assassin. Got it. So you go to the computer and the computer says here's three missions.

There's one in Sapienza, there's one in the U.S. small town, and there's one, like, I don't know, wherever, on this island. And these are randomly, this is part of the random element, is that the missions are random. Yeah, it gives you a choice. And then they're chosen from the locations of the first three games. But because between TLC and these games, there are like a billion areas. Like, it feels totally ludicrous. If you came to it fresh, you'd be like, how is this game so big?

each of these areas is this fully fleshed out massive, you know, interlocking, complicated contraption of a world. So you can just pick which one you like best or just which one sounds most interesting. And it gives you some parameters and a target and you go there. It's not totally random. I think they've put some thought into which characters would make interesting targets. But it could be anybody, you know, it's not like the known targets from the story that are still walking around in the world.

It'll just be some civilian or some guy who's in a hard-to-reach building. And then he'll have some guards around him or whatever. You have to try to take them out and then get out. If you do, over time, you build up better guns and better starting loadouts and soon, by the end, I didn't get that far. But by the end, your little underground bunkers, like weapons all over the walls and all kinds of cool shit everywhere. It's fully decked out. Yeah. And it's become your bat cave.

He's basically a super villain. Terrifying. So it's just cool. It's like a really smart way of... Wait, so what is the rogue like of it? Exactly. Well, it's that you only have one shot. It's not like...

On each map, you only have one shot? or progress, like, the entire run, you only have one shot? On each assassination that you attempt? And each, okay, so it's basically like you have, everyone is an elusive target, basically. Yes, it's very similar to the elusive target. So when you said it was a rogue, like, I was imagining a run where you have to, like, keep assassinating targets without ever dying. Like, that's what I was picturing.

And you said it was, like, rogue-like. Well, it's sort of both. Like, you're working your way through a syndicate, and that's a series of missions, and those missions all tell you who your target is. And if you screw up, you lose your progress. It's definitely a rogue like. And then at the end, you have to take out the syndicate leader, and that's like an elusive target where you don't know who they are and you have to identify them, you know, based on clues by exploring the map. Got it.

There's kind of that feeling of stress but also relief that comes with, okay, I don't have to quick save. I don't have to do any saves coming or whatever. I just have to figure this out. And it leads, again, to really using all of Hitman's systems, which, again, this is like a really complicated immersive sim. But because it offers so much freedom when I would play it, I'd always just like, I don't know, kill the guy in the best most silent way possible and then finish the level. And it was very rare that I would like, everything would go perishaped and I'd find myself having to shoot a bunch of guys and run and try to get out. But in this mode, that does happen. And it's really fun whenever that happens.

Are you ever in a situation where they're like, okay, you have to kill this guy, but you only have a briefcase? And it's like just an absurd situation where you just have to feed him to that. Usually, though the original game does have that because there are those, I can't remember what they're called, oh, escalations, I think, where you'll have a target and then you have to kill the target again with an increasing series of restrictions. And eventually those do get to where it's like you have to kill all three of these guys within 30 seconds of one another using only environmental kills. And they've always designed it where there is a way to do it. You just have to figure it out. It almost gets into speed running territory to bring it back to that, Jason. Right.

Where it's like a puzzle where you just have to figure out like, oh, what's the exact? one way that I can do this and there's going to be only one solution to this specific puzzle. Yeah, that is interesting. I guess rogulike is a decent name for what that is, but it's almost like its own entire category of thing as you've laid it out. Yeah, there's definitely that element of impermanence and the way that it forces you to improvise with what you've got. And I think that all of those elements are, it really feels like you're playing a roguelike. But then again, right, because it's such a huge game, it's the culmination of so many. many different levels and so many systems.

And it has all these interesting things in common with the base game. It's sort of its own thing. It's true. But I love what they did with it. I mean, I really do, I would love to see more games, especially games in this style,

design this sort of challenge, you know, like arcane games, any kind of immersive sim or stealth-based game. Yeah. Like a Death Loop version of it or something. Well, there was Moon Crash. Yeah, Prame Moon Crash actually is a great example.

It reminds me of the Eldon Ring mod where it just randomizes which boss fight you're going to get. I mean, that's kind of more of a microcosm version of what you're describing. I don't know how you would randomize everything in Elton Ring, but I'm always fascinated by watching those runs where it's like people who just suddenly have to face Molania or whatever, but they have almost nothing at the beginning of the game. And then like later in the game, they're like, oh, this is actually really easy because I'm way far along. Like to just have the addition of randomizing specific enemies and assets from a game,

or like the Legend of Zelda randomizers. Those are always really fun streams to watch for the exact same reason because it's like just adding in the element of random chance on top of mechanics and a character that you already understand how to how to deal with all of that. But what if they were in this totally other permutation? That is the recipe for fun. Yeah, it's a thing that players will do on their own with mods like you're talking about.

But it's really cool when the designers of the game have the freedom and the ability to do that kind of thing. And yeah, I think it's totally the kind of thing people should do more of. It certainly has made me want to go back to all three of those games, actually, all three of the games that I've said. I've gone back and played and have been really happy to do it. Rogue likes are cool. Rogue likes are cool.

I think that's our verdict. And Hades 2 is going to be great. Do we have any other single player game that we wish had a roguelike mode? We can end on that. I'm trying to think of what. I can't just say Metroid. That's not allowed. I would say that like anything like, I mean, Resident Evil does have modes kind of like that.

Like some of those time trial modes in Resident Evil are really fun. And any kind of survival horror game in that style is great. I think Dead Space would have been really fun to play something like that in the Dead Space remake. Oh, yeah, that'd be great. Any game like that where you're kind of managing resources and fighting your way through rooms full of monsters. Like it really lends itself to this sort of thing. So, yeah, those come to mind anyway. What do you think, Jason, Sweet Code and Two Roguelike?

I like, I mean, there are a lot of Final Fantasy randomizers that I think are always really fun because they start you off with like an airship and it'll be like you have to go around and get X number of key items and it's a very fun way to play those games. Yeah, it's the same kind of idea. Yeah, it's a very cool. It's a similar idea. And you really have to know a game extraordinarily well in order to be able to play this and get good at it.

And so yeah, it's interesting. That's cool. Yeah, it's definitely a cool ongoing trend and we'll see how it develops. It's cool that all these recent big games have had this and I hope we'll get to see more of Yeah, I hope there are more. Yeah, and then in the meantime, Hades, too will come out and we'll get to play that. And that'll be pretty cool too.

Maybe Tears of the Kingdom will stick in. That would be wild if that happened. That would be wild. If they were just like, yeah, we're going to make a rogue-like version of this. God, that'd be sick. Yeah, it would be pretty sick. I would play it. All right, let's take a break, and then we'll come back with one more thing.

My name's Doug Dugay, and I'm here to talk about my podcast in the middle of the one you're listening to. It's called Valley Heat, and it's about my neighborhood, the Burbank Rancho Equestrian District, the center of the world when it comes to foosball, frisbee golf, and high-speed freeway roller skating. And there's been a jaguar parked outside on my curb for 10 months. I have no idea who owns it.

I have a feeling it's related to the drug drop that was happening in my garbage can a little over a year ago. And if this has been a boring commercial, imagine 45 minutes of it. Okay, Valley Heat, it's on every month on maximum fun.org or wherever you get podcasts. Check it out, but honestly skip it. These are the Chronicles of the Rancho Questure District in Burbank, California. Hello, Sleepyheads.

Sleeping with celebrities is your podcast Pillow Pal. We talked to remarkable people about unremarkable topics, all to help you slow down your brain and drift off to sleep. For instance, we have the remarkable Neil Gaiman. I'd always had a vague interest in life culture, food preparation. Sleeping with celebrities, hosted by me, John, Mo on Maximumfund.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Night night. All right, and we are back with one more thing. Jason, how about you go first?

Yeah, so I really, Super Bowl 58 just happened, and I kind of want to recap it. Problem is, we are recording this the week before the Super Bowl, because Maddie and I are going to be traveling after the Super Bowl. So as people hear this, they will know the outcome of what happened. But we don't. So instead, I'll just try to recap it based on what I think will happen. Well, this is great. Okay. The chiefs just came out like all cylinders firing. They like looked up at Taylor Swift in the box and they were like, man, we got to do it for Tatee. She just announced a new album. She just won the Grammy. Like, we got to do this for her. And so Travis Kelsey and Pamohons teamed up to score 40 touchdowns. And they scored 210 points. And Travis Kelsey.

won Super Bowl MVP. And after his ceremony, the 49ers, whatever, scored, I don't know, seven points. They won. And Jason placed bets on all the above and won. I did. I did. And one big time, which I'm now in Vegas spending all that money on the craft table. So Travis Kelsey gets up and it's like an incredible game.

He's like, oh my God, like I've never played this well. And he gets up and he's holding the Super Bowl MVP trophy. And he's like, Tay, Tay, this one's for you. and then he kneels and he pulls out a ring out of the trophy. Like he grabs it from within the trophy. Wow, like they pre-placed it in there because that's how confident he was. That's how confident he was. I'm going to win and propose.

And he gets on one knee and proposes to Taylor Swift on the Super Bowl stage. Do you think the listeners are bored listening to this? Because like they all saw this. Yeah, they know this happened. Yeah. And they're like, why are they going over this point by point? We know. Yeah, it's all anyone's been talking about for the last week.

We've all seen this. It's pretty wild. And meanwhile, on the other side, so Brock Purdy, he is the quarterback of the 49ers. I don't know if you guys know this. This is a fun tidbit. Brock Purdy, who has just played in the Super Bowl, he is called Mr. Irrelevant because he was the last pick in the NFL draft. What a rude name. Nobody, well, it's kind of like.

But he's like reembraced it now because he's not actually irrelevant. Well, it's not about reembracing it. No, it's just that's what you. call like the last pick in any draft, Mr. Irrelevant. That's, that's just the name, Mr. Relevant. And so Brock Purdy is the first, like, last pick to, or like, first in a long time to, like, become a starting quarterback and really sees, like, the opportunity. And so it's pretty cool that he made it to the Super Bowl, but alas, the 49th defense is

not able to stop Travis Kelsey and Pat Maloney's just, like, going to town, just running train all over them. And yeah, just congratulations to the chiefs and to Travis, Kelsey, and Taylor Swift, I'm getting engaged. She said yes, by the way. Of course. At the Super Bowl. And yeah, and congrats to Usher, who came out and just did an incredible halftime performance that involved. Yeah, congrats to him on that.

To congrats to him holograms of every dead singer that you could possibly think of just showed up on stage with him. Frank Sinatra and Usher did a duo. Frank Sinatra. these have all become memes by this point Kurt Cobain and Usher Like Kurt saying all apologies together Yeah yeah yeah David Bowie was up there It was pretty nuts

It was pretty rockin In fact people loved it so much They extended the halftime to be an extra couple hours Just to fit everybody in And that was pretty astounding Yeah that's pretty controversial Like everybody was up really late that night watching Just the halftime show

but it was fine. The players weren't tired at all after that. They still were doing great. Yeah, they're energized by the music. Oh, also one more thing happened. Crypto came back. Oh, cool. That's right.

And now we're all in on crypto. That was wild. We all got rich. We went to the moon. We rode the whole thing to the moon. Yeah, well, Matt Damon came out and he was like, Fortune favors the mold. And they're all like, oh, actually, yeah, it does.

That turns out you're right about that. That's true. That's true. We got some crypto, yes. It was a big sun. So, yeah, Super Bowl 58. Just a great time. Just a really, a really great performance all around. And congrats again to the Chiefs and Travis and Tatee. Yeah, excited for them. Nice. Well, thanks, Jason, for that entirely accurate recap of everything that happened on Sunday. Maddie, what is your one more thing? All right. My one more thing is a television show called King of the Hill. So, Dina and I have actually been watching King of the Hill for months. And it's a really good television show.

There's like 19 seasons of it. People know I didn't watch television growing up. Wasn't a thing in my house. Dina is too young to have grown up with King of the Hill. We have a seven-year age difference. Just a fun fact. I'm 37. She's 30.

Anyway, so we're watching King of the Hill. Did you do watch this show? Yes. A little bit, but not regularly. Yeah, because it was after The Simpsons. So I would always watch it. You're right, and you were a Simpsons person. I know that.

So I. I really love this show and I'm now one of those people who's just trying to convert others into becoming King of the Hill fans and that is what I will now do on this very episode. So the premise of this show,

this joke came out before people were making all the jokes about boomers that they make today but it is about a man who lives in Arlen, Texas and his name is Hank Hill and he is a boomer and he loves Ronald Reagan and the show is an

extremely gentle, sweet mockery of the idea of being those things that is kind of almost on Hank Hill's side and lets him be right about things, but also allows his young son Bobby to repeatedly own him. And Bobby is, of course, a millennial, although he's 10 to 13 on the show, depending on which episode or arc you're watching. And it is like the most relatable possible television show for someone my age. I didn't grow up with a Reagan-loving person in my family, but both my parents are from the South. My dad actually moved around a lot growing up. We don't need to get into Maddie's backstory. But there's many jokes in the show that I, Maddie, can really understand because like they really remind me of family members and like a lot of the politics and specific time

period of the show just really, really work for me. And it's also just heartwarming in a way that I really didn't expect. Like a lot of humor from this time period has kind of a mean, disaffected spirit to it. And that's fine. I mean, I grew up listening to Nirvana. I was really upset about Kurt Cobain being in the halftime show, by the way. I was really upset by that decision. It's pretty sacrilegious. I can be disaffected and jaded. I can get on board with humor like that. But that's not like King of the Hill is at all. And I really like it. I'm really digging it. There have been just so many episodes that Dean and I have had like full conversations about I'm being like, wow, like this reminds us of this or that happening in our childhoods or just, you know, conversations we've had with our boomer parents.

So if that's you, just try the pilot episode. It's an incredible pilot episode. But also watch the whole show. It's really, really good. King of the Hill. Good television show. Now that we're grown up millennials, I feel like we appreciate the merits of propane a lot more. See, it never stops being funny is the thing.

Like Hank Hill's obsession with propane throughout the entire show is really good. It's incredible. There's an early episode where they have a flashback to Hank Hill as a child where all the other kids are talking about their career goals and they're all like, I want to be an astronaut, I want to be president. And he's like, I want to sell propane and propane accessories. And like the joke is like Hank Hill's dreams came true because he just was like, I know who I am. And he knew who he was for moment one.

Love it. It was funny, Maddie. A few weeks ago, I was talking about learning a lot about propane because we had to run our house off of a generator. And you immediately were like, Oh, yeah, like Hank Hill. And even at the time, I was like, interesting pull for Maddie. Like, yes, I guess he is a famous pop culture character associated with propane. But why Hank Hill?

Well, he's the famous pop culture character associated with propane, actually. An interesting thing about that show is that, so that show was co-created by Greg Daniels and Mike Judge. So Mike Judge was the creator of Beavis and Butthead who would go on to write office space. And, like, he wrote Idiocracy. Yeah. And there's definitely like a kind of a sour, like a darkness, a cynicism. Yeah, like idiocracy is kind of not my thing. No, it's pretty mean.

It's pretty mean. But Greg Daniels would go on to make Parks and Recreation in the office. And so they kind of balance each other out. Yes, that's where I'm going with that. It's a cool mix of their two mentality. Their two approaches to storytelling and character. It's pretty great. It's like if Parks and Rec is too clawing and idiocracy is like weird and mean,

King of the Hill is there for you. I know people love it. I've always wanted to watch it. Maybe people will just watch it. It does seem like a pretty great show. really funny. I love boom power. I've always loved boom power.

Oh, my God. Fun to have a character who talks funny. Yep. Nice. Well, my one more thing is also an animated television show and one that is really interesting. And I think that maybe some listeners won't have heard of. So the show is called Scavenger's Rain. Do either of you know this show?

I've heard of it. I haven't watched it. Maddie's heard of it. So this is a show that's on Max, R-I-P-HBO, but it is a Max show. I started watching it because some friends recommended it. They were like, this show is really cool. You should check it out. Emily and I just put it on.

And whoa, it makes a hell of a first impression. It's not like anything I've seen in a very long time. It's an animated show, definitely a very adult animated show. It's not like a kid's cartoon at all. It's about a group of people on what appears to be kind of a colony ship that's set out with a whole bunch of other colony ships in a kind of some sci-fi future. And they got lost. the beginning of the show is basically the people at the home base saying, oh, one of our ships didn't make it through the jump. And then it just cuts to this show.

And the whole show is about a handful of people, kind of three main groups. I haven't finished the first season, so maybe there are more. But it's sort of three main groups of people who have made it off of the ship, which was stuck in orbit, and onto the surface of this alien planet, and are trying to survive and kind of get back to the ship and just make it out or get home. But what sets it apart from any other shows that have had that kind of lost in space, you know, that kind of setup, is the imagination on display, the way that they've imagined this alien world. Because I've never seen anything like it. It's so thrilling and strange and constantly surprising and interesting. This world is just totally bizarre.

It really feels like what it would be like to be on an alien planet. They can breathe, so there's oxygen. So they are able to walk around. But everything beyond that is just the weirdest-looking plant or animal or creature you've ever seen behaving in a way that kind of explains itself biologically. Once you see how it's working, there will be like a huge sea slug will pull up onto the beach and it'll start like eating these eggs that were out on the beach because those are its eggs that it's putting into its sack because there's a storm coming. So then it goes and floats out in the ocean and they actually hide inside of it to get out of the storm so they don't get. hit, or I don't know, I mean, it's, I can't even describe it. I could try, and I would just fall short. I could not possibly describe the visual strangeness and splendor of this show.

It reminds me at times of old 80s anime that I used to watch. There's definitely some body horror, some pretty crazy stuff that happens. Sometimes it reminds me of Miyazaki movies, of Studio Ghibli movies, where, you know, like a little weird freakle just kind of walk through the frame and you never see him again, but it's this delightful two seconds of just something beautiful and weird happening. But yeah, it kind of just defies description. You really just have to see it. Episodes are half hour long.

I really recommend it. If you're feeling like, I'm watching all the shows everyone's watching, I'd love to see something more imaginative and odd, something that kind of sparks my imagination. Really, the show is not like anything I've almost ever seen. It's very, very weird and very cool. We're both really, really loving it. So, yeah, I just kind of wanted to shout it out

for anyone who thinks that sounds interesting. I think a lot of our listeners would like it. So that's called Scavenger's Rain. It's on Max, and it's very, very good. You can also watch it if you want to keep up with social conversations at Polygon.com with your coworkers. That would be another reason why maybe you would want to watch it. All of our Polygon.com worker listeners up there. The folks at Polygon are into it.

It's definitely like a cool sci-fi show that people refer to it. Yeah, I can see that. I'm not surprised that people who are into like kind of. more interesting, like hipper, edgier stuff or into it. It definitely feels like groundbreaking in a lot of ways. And I'm just there being like, Dale Grubble's a really funny character on King of the Hill.

You guys heard about this? You guys heard of Hank Hill? It's pretty interesting. They still let me work there. I don't know. That's good. They haven't run you out just yet. All right, well, that is another episode of Triple Click. Thank you all so much for listening. And thanks all of our members for supporting our show.

Until next week, Maddie and Jason, I'll see you that. See you guys 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 Maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at TripleClick. pod, send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

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