Triple Click - How Hollow Knight Became Such A Phenomenon

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

On this, the day of Silksong's release, it's time to go back to where it all began: Hollow Knight! The Triple Click gang talks about Team Cherry's 2017 action-adventure game, what makes it so special, and how it became a cultural phenomenon. Plus: they revisit Kotaku Splitscreen's 2018 interview with the developers of Hollow Knight.One More Thing:Kirk: Split FictionMaddy: Deep Cover (2025)Jason: The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of AgesLINKS:“Hornet” and “City of Tears” by Chris Larkin from the Hollow Knight OSTKirk’s review of Hollow Knight: https://kotaku.com/hollow-knight-the-kotaku-review-1827367425A video of someone beating the Absolute Radiance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rg8UBKtt1oExcerpts from Kirk’s August 2018 Splitscreen interview with Team CherryJason’s 2025 interview with Team CherryFolding Ideas on Silkposting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSkbylysplISupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinAll-New 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

Is Silk Song being unfair to the rest of the industry? Why does it cost only $20? And why did it kill my cat? Welcome to Triple Glick where we bring the Silk Song Takes to you. This week we are talking about Hollow Night and how it became a cultural phenomenon. Man, that game is just so good, you guys. It's just so good. I'm Jason Shrier.

I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello. Hello. Hey, hello. Hello, my friends. no construction in my apartment today. You hear that? Sounds of silence. I was really sweet to the episode. It's pretty, pretty real. It's been driving me crazy.

It's interesting. So Maddie is actually currently sitting in a room with no walls. It's just like a couple pieces of wood. They just sawdust everywhere. I'm in the decou tree right now. It's really just, I've decided to go outside. I don't need to be in my house ever again. And I don't need They turned your house into the outside by knocking down all the walls and sawing them into sawdows. It really felt that way. It's not what this show's about, but like being, living in a place where construction is actively happening around you is perhaps the most distracting, possible thing that could ever happen. Man, especially when you have to record yourself. There was a house next door at our last house where they were cutting tile to read you the bathroom for, I swear, two years.

They would just cut tiles. And they waited until they saw me press the record button. like all right it's tile cutting time boys yep that's how it feels that's how it feels i feel like it was it was actually that house kirk was owned by a rival podcast yeah yeah that was the get played house they were just trying to take us down at me yeah it was nick wiger's um wow man this uh this morning i dropped off my daughter for her first day of kindergarten uh there a lot of firsts in the air and i said to her sophie you know that i feel very similarly to you because because this week's Silk Song comes out.

And it feels like you're going to school for the first time. It's just a week of first. It's so similar. It's exactly the same. Hey, did you know that we are a listener-supported podcast? Did you guys know that? I just found this out. We are entirely supported by listeners.

And if you want us to make triple-click happen, you can support us too by going to maximum fun.org. Join, become a member. And in addition to making the show happen, you also get a monthly bonus episode. including one that will have just gone up by the time you're listening to this about the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. We've all finished the game. We are going to jump in, talk about it, talk about the whole thing. It's going to be a lot of fun. I think people are

going to really enjoy listening to that. That is a bonus episode that you can get if you become a member, but you also get many, many others, including deep dives into video games, maybe even a future deep dive into Silk Song. Lots of good stuff. So go to Maximumfund.org slash join and help us make this show possible. All right, Kirk, what are we talking about today? Well, what could we possibly talk about? But Hollow Night Silk Song, a game that is out actually as you are listening to it.

That's true. We are talking about Hollow Night, really. We will talk some about Silk Song, which is coming out the day you are listening to this in which none of us have played. But, you know, we're going to talk about Hollow Night. We're going to talk about this game. We're going to talk about its legacy. We're going to talk about why it became what it became and why Silkson has become such a hotly anticipated game.

But, yeah, we just thought this seemed like the thing to talk about. I mean, it is very much the topic of the moment in the world of video games. Rare has the video game been, the indie game that can command this much attention that can, you know, announce a release date and cause waves of other indie games to delay their release dates to get out of its way. It's just a really remarkable phenomenon and a really great video game. So let's start by just talking some about Hollow Night and, you know, kind of go back over it. I know I have been replaying it the last week. Just I played a big chunk of a game that I already had going.

I have replayed it once in its entirety. This would be my third replay. This game fits me like a glove and is very, very comfortable. So I just picked up a game on Steam maybe right after Green Path. actually right after you meet Hornet, and then played all the way through a bunch of bosses. And I've just been having a great time with it. And I believe the two of you have been doing that as well. I have.

So let's just start with some kind of general Hollow Night thoughts. We have not talked about this game in any detail in such a long time on the show because it's been a long time since it came out. So let's just talk a little about our relationship with this game as it currently stands. Maddie, I know you've been playing, so why don't you go first? Sure. Yeah, this is actually my third time playing it. What's sad is I've never actually completed the end. entire game, but this is my third time through. I feel like it's a ceremonial act at this point.

I knew that I wasn't going to beat it in time, but I just wanted to experience some hollow night vibes. And I think vibes is a really great word to describe hollow night. That's what makes it really special is how unique the world design is, how beautiful each of the different worlds is, the music, the little adorable bugs. I was talking to a friend about it earlier today and like the comparisons to Dark Souls, I think we'll get to that. I think there's some parts of this game that are very difficult and punishing in ways that Dark Souls is, but it also really rewards exploration and patience, which are my favorite things about any game, but especially Hollow Night and Dark Souls. And I'm remembering that and how much I enjoy that aspect of it, except Hollow Night is also very cute.

It kind of takes the idea of what we perceive as being ugly, which are bugs. Like a lot of people are grossed out by bugs. I'm not really, but I get that people are. And it makes them very cute, but also a lot of them are unnerving at the same time. And they have this kind of strange way of speaking in this game and kind of a poetic way of describing the story to you. I please don't make me explain the story because such like Dark Souls, I don't know that I can. And kind of that combination of like very cute, very strange and otherworldly and poetry is just, it's unique. It's not really like any other game I've ever played. And I think that's part of the fascination with it and why we keep returning to it. Yeah, I like that a lot. I agree. I think the writing and the humor, the tone are

pretty distinct, even while it has some mechanical similarities with other games. It is very funny. I'm struck all over again by how cute and funny and endearing it is. playing it. Jason, you've been playing it as well. I know you kind of fell down a rabbit hole and played a big chunk of it. So how is that? Yeah, I, I, um, on this recent play through. So I, I started up again, like many people did after the Suck song announcement. And I was like, all right, I'm just going to play through the Hornet fight just to see her in action and get in the mood. And then accidentally like, accidentally like replayed half a game. And then eventually I was just like, I can't play more or I will burn myself out. Yep. Yeah. The song's release. Um, yeah, the thing that

struck me in 2018. I probably talked about this with you then, Kirk, and then that struck me again playing it over the last couple of weeks is how good the writing is. And Team Cherry, the developers of this game, is a team of three people. Ari Gibson and William Pellon are the co-founders, and they're the ones who have been with it since the start. The third member, Jack Vine, is a programmer who came on a little bit later. I think he came on towards the end of Hollow Night and has been working on Silk Song, obviously. What about Dave Kazi, though? He was the original programmer. He's no longer at Team Cherry. Oh, so you're talking about

sulksong. Got it. Yeah, so, but my point is that Ari and William are the ones who have been there from the beginning, and Ari and William are, as far as I understand it, like the main Arias is the main artist, and William does programming and also does a lot of the writing, if not all of the writing.

And I was really struck by the fact that they don't have like a single professional, like a professional writer they brought on to do all this dialogue and flavor text, and yet still managed to really, like, strike this, really, this tone that is unlike any other game I've played. And there is something about the way that the characters talk, the way that they kind of, it almost feels like it's like it was translated to Japanese and then back to English, not in terms of

the grammar, but in terms of the kind of the way that every line seems to have multiple meanings and is seems to be written in metaphor and just kind of has this funky, tone that you don't often see in English written games, which tend to be a little bit more direct and a little bit more straightforward. It's obviously very clearly inspired by the Souls games in terms of text. And every time you play a Souls game, you'll see some line that feels like it came out of a, I don't know, Walt Women book, but it's really just telling you to avoid the goblins that are ahead of you. And that really struck me on this play-through also, and again, got me very excited for playing Silk Song.

And then, of course, the other part is that it just feels so good to play. I mean, smashing things with your nail just never doesn't feel fun. There's a lot of interactivity with the environment. You can just smash every single, like, vase and insect carapace that you see as you travel through the halls. And then really, it really starts to kind of click once you get that first mobility mechanic, the dash, because then you're just dashing along everywhere you go. And that is just so much fun. Gets even better as you get, like, the ultra dash, and then the double jump.

and the wall climb and so on and so forth and gets really cool. The other thing that really struck me that I had kind of forgotten about the game is that after the fungal wastes, which is like the third zone that you go through, it really becomes nonlinear and you can really just head in any direction and do a lot of different things in any order, which is also something that you don't see a lot in this kind of game. A lot of Metroidvania is a little bit more contained because they want you to be gated based on certain objects

and they want you to make sure that you get that object before you go in a certain direction. This also has a lot of gates, but a lot of those start to open up after you get that wall climb mechanic from the Mantis Village, and then you can start, you can really just explore almost the entire world. And there's so much optional stuff also. I think the number of main bosses that you need to beat is like six or seven or something small like that, and they're like 40 bosses total. So yeah, that also really struck me.

But man, what a game. I mean, we on this show have been raving about it. it for many years. It's been part of our triple-click picks forever. We were raving about it after we first played it in 2018, and it's been remarkable to see how many more people have discovered it since then, and obviously, Silk Song is, it's going to be a thing. It's going to be, it's going to be, it's going to be an adventure. It's already a thing. Yeah, I'm trying to think what we should talk about first of all of those things. I think staying on the tone and the writing a little bit, just because that's something that has struck me playing it for this third time. So,

There's an interview that I did with William and Ari back in 2018. It was on Kotaku split screen, and we'll maybe play an excerpt from it at the end of this chat, just because it's really fun to go back and listen to it. I went back and listened to the whole thing. It is interesting to hear how different my speaking voice was then. I've definitely taken some voice lessons since then, and it's actually really strange to listen to these subtle differences that maybe I hear more than anyone else. But it's a really cool conversation, and I was struck by several things listening to it.

One is that, yeah, they say that they initially planned the game to be much more contained and much more linear, you know, structured and a much more unlocks. You know, you get this ability, then you can get to this area and a more traditional Metroidvania way. And then it just started to become more nonlinear as they continued to build it out. And then, yeah, I mean, you play the game now. There were multiple ways to get everywhere. I got to the what the ancient kingdom that you can reach. And usually you do that with the tram pass through the deep nest. But you can also go another way.

I think you can go through the Royal Waterways and get there. Like there are multiple paths if you want to go a strange path. And by the third time I'm playing it, I know exactly where to go to get, you know, a piece of pale ore so that I can upgrade my nail. And, you know, to really kind of go as quickly as possible. And I really work through the game super quickly, even though there's still plenty for me to do. But, yeah, the tone and the writing, I think there are kind of two different tones in this game. There's the tone of the world, which is this fallen kingdom of Hallown Nest. And that's kind of the backstory, the familiar Dark Souls backstory, where there was a king,

and there was, you know, the king is a worm, and there were these, like, great beings that came from another kingdom, and that eventually there's an infection. The infection is kind of light, and like the moth and the beings of light. And there's all this, it's this really cosmic wild story that is eventually explained, actually pretty straightforwardly, if you go and just read all the signs on the wall. But it's written in a very elegiac, kind of beautiful, poetic tone, mostly because you're reading, you know, the inscription on a fountain or a sign that you find welcoming you to town,

like these things that are written to be kind of pronouncements. And then there are the characters within the world, often, many of whom are very silly or are just people hanging out. One of the best characters is Iselda, who was voiced by William's wife, who says the inimitable line, Bapa Nata. Ah, Bapa Nata. Which is maybe the greatest line of dialogue in any video game.

And she's just, you know, she's this kind of tired lady waiting for her husband to get back. He's out exploring the kingdom and writing maps. And just all of the dialogue that you have with characters in the world, like it tends to be very silly. It tends to be a little bit lighter and a little more conversational. And so there are these two tones at work. And the game really seamlessly blends them together and makes the whole thing work. And it really does have a distinct vibe.

I want to read a line of dialogue because I think it helps to illustrate this. I didn't have any like off the top of my head, but I just found one. So like one of the first things, I believe this is, what's the name of the first bug is like the elder, the elder bug or something like that? The one of the top of the one in the town was like the first guy you meet. I forget. But yeah. I think this is one of the first things he says to you.

He says, there's something strange about you. I've seen all types pass below, but you, you're almost familiar, though I'm sure we've never met before. And that one line of dialogue is so interesting. I mean, it just kind of conjures so much and leaves so much to the imagination. And it's never really explained why he says that. It's just kind of like, it's so evocative. It makes you feel like, oh, man, like, this is such an interesting world where, like, for some reason I look, my little character who's never really explained. We don't even get a name for him is kind of seems familiar to this guy who has seen all.

all sorts of stuff going through that. And then you, you have to kind of piece together what that means and what, like, combine with all this other stuff as you find, like, what that, what the lore behind your dude is and the elderbug and why he might have seen something like you before. Yeah. I mean, you are, there are a lot of lines of dialogue as people see you and recognize you as a vessel and one of this is this sort of like recycled vessel that's back. Yeah. And, you know, you're, you were what you're like, you could have elevated to become the hollow night, but you didn't. That's even one of the possible endings of the game. And. And so. And. You know, you're, you were, you were what you're like, you're like, you could have elevated to become the hollow night. And you didn't. And. And. And So when you know the full story and replay the game, it is very much like Eldon Ring as a recent example, where things people say to you make more sense because you now have the full context for why they would be reacting that way, especially Hornet, actually, who is such an interesting character. And I'm so glad that Hornet is going to be the main character of Silk Song, only because her story is clearly very interesting. She is acting with more agency in a lot of ways than the vessel or the knight. the character that you're playing as, because as it turns out, they're kind of operating almost according to some built-in impulse.

It's not totally clear why your character is doing what they are. I mean, obviously, they're doing what they are because they're a video game character and they just cut their way through this world. But Hornet is on a kind of separate quest and has her own really interesting backstory. And so you can almost see Hornet intersecting with the night throughout the story

as though she's on her own quest and is having her own adventure, which is such a cool way to have an NPC interact with your NPC. They do that a few times in this game, actually, and it's really neat. And I think the original plan for the Hornet DLC was that you would play as Hornet throughout the same world of Hallowness, and she would be on her own adventure through it. But it gradually expanded to become an entire other game. A whole new world, an entirely new setting, and then it became a new game from there.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, to your point, Kirk, a lot of stuff makes more sense, and you're right. It is, I had forgotten. It is explained that you're the vessel and that there's like other... It's like that true ending stuff with the radiance where you go down into the abyss. Yeah, no, I remember. I haven't seen that stuff since 2018, so it's escaped my memory a little bit. But yes, with Solk-Song, it's going to be really interesting because Hornet talks and your character in Hollow Night does not. So that'll add some interesting depth to the story.

There's also going to be a whole quest system. Kirk, you mentioned before about how Team Cherry had originally planned for Hollow Night to, to be this kind of linear adventure, and it gradually expanded to become this massive, nonlinear world. Similar sort of thing happened with Silk Song. I spoke to Team Cherry a few weeks ago for a story I did in Bloomberg about the development of Silk Song, and they told me that originally the idea was, okay, this is going to be a smaller scale world than Hollow Night, but we'll have these quests in place, which will give you incentive to go and revisit previous locations and maybe see them in a new light or find new things to do in them. But then gradually, of course,

in true Team Cherry fashion. They just wound up, like, making too much stuff. And the scope creep got to them, and the game got even bigger than Hollow Night is. And it has all sorts of new structural. They actually, I didn't put this in the article, but they were hinting to me that there's like some sort of structural mechanism that will help kind of help you understand, like, or the scope of the game. And they didn't tell me any more than that.

I kind of don't want to know anything else other than just like, I'm going to jump in and play Hornet and discover everything for myself. But yeah, it seems like there's going to be some. some just kind of a whole layer of depth to it. This might even wind up being bigger than Hollow Night or deeper than Holo Night, which is a scary thought. Yeah. It's kind of astounding that the game's successful because I feel like what we're describing

is usually like a horror story that we tell about other games, especially games that don't succeed, where it's like, oh, they wanted it to be linear. But then it just sprawled outward and became all of these other kinds of things. It started as a kind of more straightforward Metrodvania, whereas I would say, like, yes, there's a Metravenia, a base to Hollow Knight, but it's so much more exploration focused because every area is massive. And I mean, I've had you guys play some Metroid on this very show, and I know you have.

A lot of them you can beat in like 10 hours, especially if you know where to go. This game feels so big. And I mean that as a compliment, it feels big intentionally. And it feels like you could just explore forever and discover more and more. And that's because a lot of it is big. A lot of it was really designed outward and outward. And the fact that they achieved that and that it was successful and that they're doing it again and it, well, I guess we'll find out if it's successful or not is kind of wild. Like the scope creep didn't get them and said they embraced it and they worked.

Yeah, I have a theory about that. And I think it's that the scope of the game creeped, but they did not expand their team size. They just took longer, which seems to me like, at least in this case, an approach that worked. When I talked to William back in 2018, I asked him, you know, you're, you guys have been. so successful. You know, this is kind of the moment when a small studio hires a few people and grows and becomes a mid-sized studio. Do you think about that? And he said, something along the lines if we think about expanding and what I think is, we got to not do that. And then he essentially said, this team is the one that made Hollow Night. So this team is going to be the one that

makes the next thing because we really like Hollow Night. And that approach is so unusual. It's weird that it's unusual, but it makes total logical sense. You say, well, we made the thing that is good that we were happy with with this group of people in this way. So we're going to keep doing that. Like why change? Why grow? Why hire people? Why expand? And that seems to me to be a crucial wise decision that they made. Yeah, I have a few thoughts, Maddie, on that to answer that kind of question of like how do they avoid some of the problems that kind of plague other game teams that try to do the same thing. I think Kirk is right, keeping the team small. And it's funny, correct that you say that because in 2025, a lot of what they told me is that like we wanted to

recreate everything we did for Hollow Night because that process was so much fun and it was so successful for us. So everything they did, even to the point of announcing the game's release date two weeks in advance, which is exactly what they did for Hollow Night. Like everything they would did for Holland and they wanted to for this. It seems like they've been consistent about that. I mean, you know, you know, this whole time. Yeah, they really know they have a very clear vision for that. Although I will say with Hollow Night, they were a lot more communicative because they had to be. And they posted more development updates and like told people more about the game in advance. But anyway, that's aside the point. So a couple of thoughts. One is that their development

methodology is such that like they can create things and have them in the game really, really quickly. I think a lot of times with scope creep, what happens is that like teams imagine these worlds and ideas and features on paper and maybe even do them on prototype, but actually getting them into the game in a way that is kind of, like, tenable over the course of the entire game, systems that work over 10 hours, 15 hours, whatever, is a lot more challenging, and that can become a problem. I think it helps that this is 2D. I think that kind of reduces a lot of the complexity of some of this stuff, is that it's a big 2D world, and you can very easily, like, once you know Hornet's core mechanics, you can just play around with any type of enemy or boss

and get it in the game and, like, test it out and see if it's working. I also think that that like the one of the big differences between this and a lot of development health stories is that the game's nature didn't change. It was always the same game. It wasn't like, oh man, like we don't really know what this game is. Like, is this going to become a multiplayer live service thing? Is this a shooter? Is it a stealth game? Is it trying to be uncharted? Is it trying to be Assassin's Creed? Is it all the above? Which are like legit questions that people have to ask sometimes after two years of making a game. It's like, what is this game even? Here, they know exactly what the is and it's just a matter of like making more stuff for it and that takes a long time a lot of the

scope creep is also polished so like making it so the world interacts when hornet throws a star at a thing and it explodes in the right way that sort of stuff and then also the kind of the the flip side of all this is we don't know if the game is like too unwieldy like we could be playing silk song and be like man they actually they put too much stuff in this like this is way bigger than it needs to be and some people feel that way about hollow night so I don't know I mean And it's hard to say if it was a success until we've actually played the thing. Because sometimes you can get too blinded and be like, oh man, this game, like we're bored of this stuff.

So let's make it bigger and add new stuff. And then eventually it gets too big and you don't even realize that it's gotten too big. And now it's out of hand. Yeah, I think, yeah, I mean, I have no idea how Silk Song is going to be. Though I do think that one of the reasons that Silk Posting and the hype around it has become what it is is because in the world of video games, it feels like more of a sure thing than your average video game, only because it is such a straightforward idea in the first place, a 2D Metroidvania.

I mean, Hollow Night was a straightforward game, right? It's not revolutionary. It wasn't like you played it and thought, wow, I never would have thought to put all these things together and that it would be fun. You play it, and it's just a really refined, really good one of those with incredible vibes. Beautiful music. By the way, we haven't mentioned Chris Larkin by name, but I do think that Chris Larkin, the composer is an essential part.

of this game's spell and what makes it magic for me at least both the music and the sound design, the atmosphere and it sounds so amazing and that's a big part of it but like this game as a game is not that dissimilar from so many other games that have come after it

there's been some really great ones these kind of hollow night like clones or at least games inspired by it Ender Lily's Nine Souls these games that people really like that are really fantastic that are just doing the same thing and it's a known thing so when you look at Silk Song and you're like, well, they're going to do it again with that character that was really

cool from the first one, seems like it'll probably at least be pretty good. And in addition, I am also very, I'm pretty confident because they seem to just have a very strong sense of what works. I got the sense listening back to my conversation with them from 2018 that they just played Hollow Night a ton and really just had a feel for what they liked and what they thought worked. The, you know, I asked them about the feel of the nail. When you attack in this game, there's a physicality to it, and you're pushed back sometimes, or all the time, from anything that you hit. And there's this kind of push and pull to the world that really feels exceptionally good. That sticky friction, as Tim Rogers would call it, is really strong in this game.

And I asked, you know, well, when did you get that dialed in? And one of them, Ariar William, was like, well, you know, pretty early. Like, it really just was kind of there. And it's such a straightforward answer, but it also just indicates that they knew it worked, really quickly. And then it just seems like so many other things in this game are the result of a really confident design. Two examples come to mind. One is the charm system. So in this game, you create your character build through charms, and you can equip a number of them, and they do different things, and they seem really subtle, and a lot of them seem not that powerful at first. And then,

over time, you start to realize that actually these charms really lead to some very diverse bills. You can have, I don't know, one that replaces your health with more health and you can take more damage, but you can't replenish it. Or there's one that gives your spells a lot more power, or one that gives you much more reach on your attacks, or lets you not get bounced around, or gives you a longer invincibility window. And you start to combine them. Quick casting with a long invincibility window means that you can heal so fast that you almost never take damage in a fight. And so suddenly you have a dramatically different build. All of this stuff is so, fine-tuned and precise that it's, you would, in another game, it wouldn't really make a difference

and you wouldn't even really care about the charms. But because it's so well-balanced, it winds up really mattering. The other one that comes to mind is navigation and the way that the map system works. I think the map system in this game, all of the particulars of it are brilliant, and I still haven't seen someone just take each element and just steal the whole thing. And I really think more games should. There's this weird, it's a really particular combination of when you look at the map in an area where you haven't bought the map, you just see, you don't see anything. If you have the compass equipped giving up a precious charm slot, you do see an icon where

you are, even if you're in unmapped territory. Once you've bought the map, you can see a basic map of the area, but you don't flesh out the map until you explore. So you need this whole combination of different elements to fully be able to see where you are on the map at any given time, and it makes it so that any new place that you're exploring is fully mysterious. Even if you've bought the map, you don't really know where you are. And you have to sit down and sketch it out to really see.

And it's all really subtle stuff. I don't have to outline every single tiny little bit of it. But the overall result is that the exploration in this game feels mysterious and exciting throughout the entire game, no matter how much of it you've played. Anytime you're in a new area, it feels exciting. And it's something that it's so refined. I mean, they clearly knew exactly the effect they wanted to have on players. and they did it perfectly.

And the whole game is kind of full of stuff like that. Exciting and not so dangerous. Yeah. And like to talk about the map, part of why it also feels so special is because it is a line drawing. You're purchasing the map from a character. Is this name Cornifer, right?

Cornifer, the best. He's the greatest. So like, of course it's not filled out because it's a literal line drawing that you kind of imagine he's created as he's explored the caverns himself. And then as you explore, you're filling it out. But also, I love when games do this.

You're literally holding up the map. And like, you can get attacked when you're holding up the map. You have to actually kind of think about where you're standing when you're going to look at the map because life goes on. And your little character is just holding the map. And he's so freaking cute. And I do feel like that makes a difference is the fact that you have to physically go to someone by the map. And then it's almost like you're adding your own notes to the map. as you're going through.

And kind of to build on that, the charm system, like to have a kind of RPG-esque mechanic in a Metroidvania, there's far from the first example of this, but it can change the game so much that it's this huge difference to me as a big Metroid fan. And it's something that makes the game feel very different. Not a bad thing. But it's just, it's a Hohalo Night feeling where you're like,

this whole game can feel totally different depending on how I decide I want it to feel. I can just go full health, which I tend to do because I'm not. The night has never felt quite as comfortable to me to inhabit as Samus does. So I, you know, I like to add my health on. But like you can really design the knight according to your own specifications. And that is its own just layer of just a type of game that feels different to me than your other Metroidvania is where the whole designing your character thing is just, okay, now I have the or now I have the whip, whatever it is.

Like, I'm just getting new items or traversal mechanics, and that's how my character is being designed. They're going back to something they were before, or they're collecting an arsenal of weapons or movement abilities that will be the same. Every player will be the same by the end of the game. They will have the same collection of abilities. But, like, Hollow Knight kind of purposefully isn't that way. You can sequence break really easily in this game.

You can completely skip bosses. You can just explore and explore and explore. and if you're me, never actually complete the game. Like, that is just kind of a unique thing about the game that it really rewards you just having your own experience with it in a way that most Metroidvanias don't. So we should talk about the story behind the story here. Yeah.

Kirk, you mentioned silk posting before. Yeah, should we say what that is? Yeah, but to transition us into this conversation, I want to play a little clip from my interview with William and Ari from 2018. Please enjoy this. So I have a few questions about the future. So you guys are doing a Hornet expansion. Is that that still happening?

Yeah, we're working on that. That is super exciting. And can you give us any sense of when it might be out? Hmm. No, we can't. Because we don't know ourselves. Yeah, we, yeah, we don't want to start giving out dates until we're pretty, we're pretty confident. So, I mean, they weren't lies.

So, okay, so I shared this that last week, but I'll share it again. because it's remarkable. In February of 2019, Team Cherry announced Silk Song. They said, hey, we're turning that DLC into a full game. And at the same time, they said that Hollow Night had sold 2.8 million copies, which at the time, very impressive, amazing stats for an indie dev and pretty much set them up for life, like set them up financially to be able to do whatever they want for the rest of the studio's existence since there were only three of them. Cut to today, a couple weeks ago when I spoke to Team Terry, they told me that the game has sold 15 million copies. That's a remarkable number for several reasons.

One is that it puts them in the kind of the pantheon of the best-selling indie games ever. Obviously, they were already one of the most influential games ever, but one of the best-selling indie games. But what really strikes me about that stat is that that means that 80% of their sales or about 12 million copies were sold in the last six years, so since Silk Song was announced. and I'd be willing to bet that a lot of those came in the last two to three years when the hype really reached a fever pitch. And what happened along the way is that like Suck Song was announced a lot of people were excited.

People said, oh, that's really cool news. And then somewhere, and I think maybe we could try to pinpoint exactly when, but somewhere along the way, over the last six years, Suck Song turned into a cultural phenomenon. It turned into a meme. It became the running, like, biggest topic in every chat of every, Nintendo Direct, Xbox stream, game awards, anything. It became the biggest question, where's Silk's song? It became up there with wins of winner and Half-Life 3 as like these ongoing.

And Blood-Born, Blood-Born, Remain. But like, almost more so because- Hold on, hold on. It felt real. This is a thing that was announced and in development. Yeah, but I just mean that before every press conference, yeah, or like people would spam that. People would be saying, oh, is there going to be a blood-borne remake?

But I feel like the fact that it's real. But I'm talking about things. things that were in announce, that were actually announced that people are waiting for, right? It's like up there with wins of winter. So, and then I think, and maybe we should try to, maybe we should talk about this. Like at some point, like, I am not 100% sure, but I have some theories. But like, I don't know when this game turned from a sequel that a lot of people like us were really excited about into this like phenomenon that became, you mentioned self-posting earlier. that is the kind of the reference to the expletive that people do on Reddit

where it essentially just making things up in truly insane fashion on the Silk Song Reddit. There's currently one, as we record this, the top of the Silk Song subreddit is like someone photoshopping a tweet from me that is just complete nonsense about, what is it? It's like saying there's an 8-bit version of Slick Song coming out. It's like breaking Jason Shrier, a soul. song will include a retro-inspired pixel mode available at launch. Like, what? What is going on here?

When did this game become a phenomenon? So I think this is kind of a pandemic-era thing. I'll refer people to a video I mentioned a little while back on the show by Dan Olson of folding ideas. He gave a talk at Pax about silk posting, and it's actually really well researched and really funny and interesting where he goes through the history of this subgenre, this of meme, this phenomenon. And I think it started around like 2020, 2020,

maybe 2022. So it kind of post-pandemic, but it's a little bit of like post-pandemic internet weirdness. He references a Twitter user Sean Vids, who was at least one of the sort of purveyors of silk posting, who would just tweet in all caps, Silk Song, at any, just randomly, like during some, you know, Nintendo Direct or some other press conference.

And then people would see that. And, you know, it's the kind of thing that a person would tweet if they had just announced, oh, Silksong is coming out or whatever. And so then all the replies would be like, wait, what? What happened? When's it coming out? And people would be retweeting it and sharing it. And he just kept doing it.

And if you look at his Twitter feed, it's like, I don't know how many instances with him just going Silkson out of nowhere. And then everyone kind of just reacting because people can't help but see that word and think the game is coming out. And I think like any meme, you know, it just sort of takes on a life of its own. It's not totally clear how it began, even though you can trace it back to its beginnings. And it just ties to like, I don't know, like a broader feeling about video game hype. I think it's a really interesting, almost crowdsourced parody of video game hype.

And some of it relates to something I said earlier that I think that Silk Song feels like more of a sure thing than your average, you know, unreleased video game, only because it seems just pretty safe that it's going to be cool so people can just get excited about it. Because, like, yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be silksong. We kind of know what it's going to be. And as a result... To be fair, to be fair, it seemed pretty safe that cyberpunk was going to be great, too. Yeah, it's not the same. Like, any big AAA game, but any big AAA game, like, any number of things could go wrong.

And they always do. Like, that story is very familiar where we're like, oh, man, I can't wait. Like, Assassin's Creed Unity, look how great it looks. And then it comes out and it's like, oh, what the hell? You know, like, that happens all the time. With this kind of game, I just think anyways, I think that's part of it. I'm not saying it is a sure thing. I just mean that like for a lot of people, it's very easy to get excited about it because you're like, yeah, sure, it's almost certainly going to be pretty good.

And so then they can lean into the hype and the hype can kind of become its own organism online. And that's what's happened is that it's like grown and grown and grown to something that no one could have, yeah, no one could have predicted. So to that point, I think that the biggest factor is the complete radio silence from T-Sherry. So they announced the game, February 2019. They did an E3 demo and trailer in June of 2019. They did another update like New Year's December 2019. And then after that, for the next six years, they essentially said nothing about this game. And I think that built up this mystique around it.

It was like, why are they so quiet? What's going on over there? Why aren't they appearing anywhere? Why aren't they tweeting? Why aren't they posting a Kickstarter update? They said they were going to be talking about this game in your interview, Kirk, in 2018. They said, we like talking. We'll probably be talking the fans.

We like talking about development. it and they didn't do that. Then, 2022, and this is where I think the biggest turning point was, 2022, E3, Xbox Conference, they said all of these games that were showing at this conference will be available in the next 12 months. I'm GamePath. And they announced Silk Song there. And then someone tweeted at Xbox, like, even Silk Song?

Is that coming on the next 12 months? And Xbox was like, yeah. But that's what we said. And then, obviously, that didn't happen. I believe in the beginning of 2023, Matthew Griffin, who does publishing and marketing for social stuff. song marketing for silk song which by the way he wrote a job marketing for silksong he tweeted like we we meant we want we hoped it was coming out on the first half of 20203 but we have to

delay it development continues everything's going well and that was the last of their communication for like another couple of years and that silence i think just allowed fans to fill in the blinks themselves in a way that like i don't know there are some indie games that go silent and people just don't care about them again, but for some reason, this had sticking power. And for example, I was thinking about like comparative indie games,

indie games that also have been in development for a long time. There was that one game that was announced ages ago called The Last Night, and it was this cool-looking cyberpunky thing. Then it turned out the director of the game was like a hardcore gamer gator, and people soured on that. And that game still hasn't come out. It was announced like 12 years ago and still hasn't come out. And I was thinking about that.

Why does nobody care about that game? That game has also been silent, look cool coming out. Not a sequel though, right? That's definitely a crucial difference. That's a big part of it. But also just like something about this game, yeah, just had this sticking power and just became this myth. And then also combined with that, you have all these people just being like, oh, people keep talking about Slick Song, I should check out Hollow Night and see what all the fuss is about. They buy the game. They see how cool it is. Yeah. They see how awesome it is because it's really, it's such a good game. It's one of those rare games that really lives up

to the hype, I think for most people who play it. I'm sure, of course, there are people out there who doesn't click with for whatever reason, but like for a lot of people... And they are not shy to tell you about it. That's sure. They're not sure to write in. But yeah, it really seems to click with a lot of people, resonates a lot of people and lives up to the hype. And then that drives even more excitement for the sequel.

And yeah, I'm willing to bet that a lot of people who are silk posting like discovered the name in the last two or three years and just got really excited about it, which is awesome. And man, I don't... The steam numbers for Silk Song are just going to... be bonkers. I can't wait to see like the concurrent players on Thursday when the game goes live. It's going to be wild, man. Yeah. Do you feel like people were worried the game was in trouble too?

Like that almost felt like part of the narrative, but not in a negative way in the way that like people get really concerned about a game. Like, you know, the way I get concerned about Metroid Prime 4, for example, where I'm like, what's going on with that? Are they okay? It's like a little different than how you might feel about Silk Song where it's like, how long could this possibly be taking, which is almost like an insulting way to put it, but it's like, well, you guys already have the base game. And you already know what you're doing next. And also that character was in the base game. And we fought her and we saw her attack patterns and like saw her jumping around and stuff. So like, well, not just that. We played with her demo in 2019. Yeah, exactly. She feels the same way to take. Yeah. Maddie, I think that like,

I had that same thought when I was talking to them. I have expected them to be like, so we had this personal tragedy. It took her ear off of the game. Or like, we went through COVID. It was so rough. And instead they were like, no, we were just having a good time. We just loved working on it. And it was just amazing to work on it. And the game kept growing and everything takes a while. That's all they said. Yeah. I think that also, I think you're right that that also added to the mystique of this like big, just like everyone just having to theorize about like whether they had some tragedy that was Mari McGain. And also just like what's taking so long? It's just like a blanket open quest. And like that mystery almost of like, well, maybe it's just that good.

It's fascinating because as developers, they completely opted out of hype and they opted out of the entire online experience of most indie developers where you're constantly posting. You think you need to keep your profile up so that people can know what you're doing. It's exhausting. It's draining. It takes this portion of your energy that you could be spending making the thing that you want to make. And they just didn't do that at all. and then focus on the game. And then at the same time...

They had done that. It's worth noting they had done that for Holiday. In many ways, they had to. Yeah, of course. Yeah, because they had a Kickstarter and... No, it's certainly true that they did this because, I mean, they didn't have to do this because they had already made plenty of money

and they were already very successful and their game was very high profile. So it's like someone was able to do this and now we can see what happened. So anyways, they opted out completely. They just got to focus on making the thing. And as a result, then, The fandom around their game and the broader video game internet took up the slack and did it for them in the most insane and almost parodic way possible.

And it's so funny. It's such a distinct phenomenon. I mean, it's kind of thing that's just not happened before because like you're saying, yeah, like, I mean, it can only kind of happen in these very specific circumstances. Though I do think that there are some lessons to be learned from the whole thing for creative people in general. Like it isn't, not everyone has the luxury, of course, of doing what Team Cherry did. But I do think that people have more ability than they think to shut things out, to get offline, to quit posting, to get off blue sky, to just sit down and like work on your work and like do something actually meaningful. And seeing people do that at such an extreme is a good reminder of that. It's harder than you make it sound, though, I will say.

Like, it's hard to just be isolated. I'm not saying it's an all or nothing thing. I'm not saying people have to completely get off the internet. People do not have to do it to the extreme that Team Cherry did. I am simply saying I think there is something to be learned here, not like to be emulated 100%, not that this is a pattern that must be matched point to point by every single person, that there is something to be learned from watching people do things

the way that these two guys just did it. I agree. I think the mystery factor, even if they did it completely unintentionally, which it kind of sounds like they did on some level, It ended up building mystery, like not just hype, which is kind of like, okay, you can build hype by releasing a lot of trailers still and like having the game, you know, look cool, look cool and then hopefully it is cool. They didn't do that. It's instead like it was mysterious. It was like, well, what's happening with it? It was like an ARG or something, but obviously it wasn't an ARG. It was almost like everyone was looking for clues that weren't there in like posts and like just not stalking the developers per se, but like truly. the subreddit was looking

every possible place they could for clues about what was going on with Silk Song it was comical mostly That is funny when they, Jason, when they told you that people will sometimes come by their studio hoping that it'll be like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory instead. It's just this kind of depressing office where they're just like

have a couple computers. It's like a couple guys working on a video game? Yeah, man. Yeah. Yeah, I mean that mystery you can only get away with all this stuff if you make a successful game in the first place. Otherwise, nobody will care. Like you do need to be in the public eye if you're trying to start something to do it first and then for your sequel. I think, I don't know if I 100% agree with you, Kirk. I think what worked for Silk Song can only

really work for Silk Song because they had that baseline. No, again, I don't want to say that everyone should do what Silk Song is doing. I think I've been clear at this point that I'm saying that people could get offline a little bit. Yes, I know. Even like, I think sometimes you do need to be very online if you're trying to sell a game to people for the first time. Yes, for sure. But anyway, one more thing I just want to talk about real quick. before we take a break is the people not being normal around this game, the takes around this game. And I personally will be trying to avoid as many of those as possible once the game comes out. Very difficult to do that when you have to for your job, read a lot of articles.

But like the ones I've seen already, oh my God. It's going to be a real time online when this game comes out. Is ruining, ruining the video game industry by not giving people more of a heads up about its release. state, among other things. I can't wait for all the takes about. Silk Song is overhyped, actually. Headlines. I mean, we were all there for blueprints earlier this year.

It's going to be like that again. A massive indie game that's very successful. I mean, just people can't help them. Take it up to like blueprints and like to the 100th power. Like this will be so much bigger than that. It's going to be. Yeah, I'm just saying it's like the same type of thing. Yeah.

But we will be talking about the game because we will be playing it and talking about our thoughts in the game. And I'm very excited for that. next week. Yes, we'll be talking about it next week and yeah, can't wait to play it. What an exciting time to be a lowercase G gamer. All right, so I, in my conversation in 2018 with William and Ari, I gave them a little like speed round, a lightning round at the end of the conversation that was really fun and I had basically forgotten every single question I asked them. And I thought that I would include it here just as a sort of fun thing for everyone to listen to as we get ready

to play Silk Song. So that is going to play after. after this. It's just like five minutes of really quick questions for them about their own game. Then we will hear a couple MaxFun promos and then we'll be back for one more thing. So let's take a break and do that. So we're almost out of time, but I want to do a series of lightning round questions, which tend to, when I do lightning rounds, they tend to like turn into longer answers, but I always tell people to try to have short answers. So I'm just going to ask you some questions, mostly about Hollow Night, about your favorite things or whatever. If I ask a favorite thing, you can each say one. If it's just a with one answer, you know, one of you can go. We'll go one right after the other.

We're going to try to get through them all. Are you guys ready? Let's go for it. Okay. First lightning round question, what is your favorite charm in the game? Gathering Swarm. Defender's Crest. All right.

What is your favorite region? Kingdom's Edge. God Home. Okay, this next one, I think I know the answer, so I have a follow-up prepared. But here's the question. What is your favorite enemy? It's not, hmm. I really like Flugmon.

Oh, all right. Hmm. I like those giant spiders, and I can't even remember what we called them. The ones where they're like, their heads. They're stalking something. Stalkers. Stalkers devout? Yeah, they're just weird, and they're like face splits open and is their arms.

Oh, yeah, I know those guys. I actually thought you were going to say the primal Aspid, which is my, that is another thing. Yeah, I knew. Yeah, I knew I said enough for that. That because my follow-up question was going to be What is wrong with you? But you didn't say that, so that's not my final, my follow-up question. Okay, next question.

Can you both beat every challenge in the game? No. I haven't done, I haven't done Path of Bain start to finish yet, I think. Or maybe I have. I did in the end. You did it once. Have you beaten all the Godmaster stuff? I haven't done, no, no, definitely not.

Because, I mean, if you're including, like, doing an all-binding run, then I don't know if I'll ever do that. Yeah, we made a friend of us, who's done a lot of testing on the game, go through that gawlet. Yeah. I couldn't if I wanted to. That's the answer. I'm okay at Halloween. I'm not really that good.

And I watched a video of somebody doing the absolute radiance with, you know, if you get hit a single time, you die. And I was basically screaming at an ever-escalating volume the entire video. I'm sure you've seen videos of people doing this. It was outrageous. It was listeners, go watch it. Even if you've never played Halloween, just go watch, find a video of someone doing it. because it was the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. Oh, yeah.

People are amazing. Yeah, we can't be like that. If we get too good at the game, we'll lose the stagiv on, yeah, we'll make challenges way too hard. Yeah, I can see that. It's hard enough, guys. It's definitely hard enough. Okay, next question. What happened to quiral?

We don't know. Yeah, we're not sure. Okay. Next question. Was the king having an affair with Harrah the Beast? We can't. Yeah, we probably shouldn't. We can't answer law things too explicitly.

You can make up your own mind. Okay, you can punt on that. That's fine. Okay, next question. When you go to fight the radiance for the first time, Hornet yells something that sounds like, get good. Get do! Is she actually telling me to get good?

It's a happy coincidence. Is the actual word geck-do? I believe it's geck-to. A geck-to. Something like that. It's not quite that, but I believe me, I fought the radiance, like 7,000 times. Yeah, yeah, that's true. So it could be an equivalent.

kind of meaning to get good. She's psyching you up to go to go fight the radiance. It does seem, it seems too good to be true. Like, this has to be, yeah. Yeah, I did it so many times that I started hearing that and then realized that a lot of other people had heard it and pointed the same thing out online. But I was just saying they're like, okay, I get it, hornet. I'm not good enough to be trained.

Stop telling me to do that. Okay, next question. Do either of you actually use nail arts? Are you cyclone sometimes for fun? I use great slash. Okay. Next question. Why were the Mantis tribe members unaffected by the plague? There is a very good reason for that.

Extremely good. There is legit. Yeah, I'm not being that. Yeah, and nor is it that far. You can probably extrapolate why, but we probably won't. I think there may be something in the text there that sort of clarifies it. Okay. Okay, last question.

Is Grubfather a villain or is eating his grubs simply a normal thing for his species to do? William? Yeah, not sure. It's weird. It's weird. I was surprised when he saw it. We all were. It was quite a shot. Yes, I was disappointed.

But then they kind of don't sound like they're upset to be in his stomach, was my thinking. So I sort of then, I felt like I was rationalizing to myself that I'd watch this horrible thing. And I really didn't want to believe it was bad. So you guys aren't sure. Bugs do a lot of strange things. Who are we to judge them? That's true. They're bugs.

They're not humans. That's a very, that's probably a healthy way to look at things. Well, we're out of time. Ari and William, I've really had a great time talking to you. I really, really like your video game. Listeners, go play Hollow Night. If you haven't yet, what are you doing? It's very good.

William and Ari, thanks for coming on the show. Cheers, Kirk. I'm Emily Fleming. I'm Jordan Morris. And I'm Matt Lee. We are real comedy writers. Real friends. And real cheap skates.

On every episode of our podcast free with ads, we ask, why pay for expensive streaming services when you can get free movies from apps with weird names. Each week we review the freest movies the internet has to offer. Classics like Pride and Prejudice. Cult classics like Point Break. And holy shit, what did I just watch classics like Teen Witch? Tune in every week as we take a deep dive into the internet's bargain bin.

Every Tuesday on maximum fun.org or your favorite pod place. The Flop House is a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it. Guys, how does E.T. poop? Uh, well. Well, he's not that regular, but as he's gotten older. He has two cloacas, one under each arm. Oh. No, I'm just looking forward to you going through the other ways in which Wild Wild West is historically inaccurate.

You know how much movies cost nowadays when you add in your popped corn and your bagel bites and your cheese critters? You can't go wrong with Henry Cattle Mustache. Here at Henry Cattle Mustache is the only supplier. The flop house. New episodes every Saturday. Find it at maximum fun.org. And we are back for one more. thing. Jason, how about you go first? So I've been playing a video game called The Legend of Zelda

Aquina of Time along with you two. And after finishing that game, I was inspired to pick up another Zelda game, which is the Legend of Zelda Oracle of Ages. For people who aren't familiar, this along with its companion game, The Legend of Zelda Oracle of Seasons, were to Game Boy Color games that were made in conjunction, by Capcom in conjunction with Nintendo. made kind of co-developed by both companies. I didn't know that. Yes, and they're top-down a lot like Link's Awakening, use a lot of assets from Links Awakening,

which was the first Game Boy Zelda game, except a lot more expansive and bigger. And these are two games that are kind of, they exist in parallel, and they're linked in a lot of ways. There are a lot of cool features that link them. Like, once you beat one of them... Linked? Yeah, exactly.

Once you beat one of them, you can, like, get these codes called secrets. You can find these people in the world who will tell you secrets, and then you can use those to, like, get items in other games. It's a really cool system. And then once you beat them both, you get this special, like, final boss that you could only get once you beat them both. But they're each completely, like, entire Zelda games, like Link's Awakening, each with eight dungeons and a ton of items and a lot of cool stuff, each with trading quests. And, man, what a delightful game, Oracle of Ages is. It takes so many of the ideas from Links Awakening, but it also...

also came out after Ocarina of Time. So it takes a lot of ideas from O'Carina of Time too and a lot of items from O'Corena of Time, which is a lot of fun to see in action. And then it also has a lot of its own ideas. Like, for example, instead of a hook shot, you get what's called a switch hook and you like extend it like you would a hook shot, except instead of grappling onto something, you just switch places with it. So like you can switch places with an object that is across a pit from you.

And you can use that for some cool and clever puzzle solving. A lot of other cool stuff like that. I won't get into all the specifics. But man, this is a dense, puzzle-heavy, just incredibly fun game that I highly recommend to you two, especially, but also to anyone to check out because it's aged extraordinarily well. A lot of these 2Ds, Zelda games have. It's really, the main gimmick is just like Agarina of Time. You can travel back and forth between the past and the present, but it's done in a much

different way. Unlike Ocaryana of Time, where in order to do that, you have to go back to the Temple of Time. In this, you get this harp that lets you travel through time, not wherever you want, but in a lot of different places throughout the world. At first, you just have a song that you can play that lets you travel back through time when you find these special markings, these special markers on the ground, which you can find all over the map. And then eventually you get the ability to travel back in time wherever you want, depending. First, just from past to present and then eventually from either direction. And it plays around with that idea in more elaborate and more interesting ways, I think, than

O'Reary of Time. O'Reary of Time kind of set that baseline and Ages just kind of takes that even further. So, for example, there's a dungeon in Oracle of Ages where, so you guys remember in the Spirit Temple of Zelda, how you do part of it as a kid and part of it as an adult. In Oracle of Ages, you have a dungeon where the. stuff you do in the past impacts the dungeon in the present. So like for example, you bomb a wall in the past because it has that marking that shows you can bomb it. Then in the present, it will also be opened for you. You wouldn't be able to just bomb it open in the present. You have to do that in the past. And

there's a lot of cool stuff like that, cool ideas like that. There's also just kind of like different areas that you can explore in both the past and the present, which again is kind of the foundation for that was set in Ocourine of Time, but here it's done much differently. So just another example, there's this whole Goren area. It's called the Rolling Ridge. And the Goren's in this game, they really like mini-games. So each of them has their own kinds of mini-games. And during this section that you're doing this, you have to get items by like completing mini-games and then bring them to Gorans, like both in the past and the future. And that has an impact on what happens in the past, in the future if you're doing it in the past so that you're like you're continuously going back

and forth between the two time periods and like interacting with the different gorans seeing their descendants and like trading items with them and eventually getting the key to unlock the dungeon but for this dungeon you can't just have one key you need a key in the past and a key in the present so again so many cool ideas and this game is just so dense with ideas um it's so cool oracle of seasons is um it's a little bit different in that you're not traveling through time the main gimmick there is that like you control the season so stuff might reflect stuff might work differently in the winter than it does in the summer or the fall etc um but yeah man these games are so cool and if you like Zelda you like you pretty like like i highly highly recommend

playing them um i just again just on a whim i just like download oracle of ages and was like i'll check it out because the switch two if you're or the switch if you have um uh the online subscription you can just download game boy games and just play them and oracle of ages and seasons are both on there. And I wound up playing all the way through. Now I'm up to the sixth dungeon. I'll probably just finish the game because it moves pretty quickly. Because of the way that the Game Boy works, I talked about this a little bit when we did our triple play of Ocarena of time. But these 2D Zelda games move much faster than the 3D because you can navigate the world a lot more quickly than you can in the 3D game, which I find very refreshing and comforting and just easy to play through.

And these games are so dense that like even if you're stuck on a puzzle or you don't know what to do next, you move around so quickly that it's pretty easy to just kind of figure it out and you don't have to waste a lot of time. And man, there's so much good stuff. It's so quirky and funny. There's so much humor in it. It feels like a legitimate Zelda game. It's just like a top-down 2D game that probably a lot of people haven't played the way they played Ocarina of Time. So, man, go check out the Oracle Games. I will probably play through this and then through Oracle of Seasons just for kicks because yeah, super good. Nice. Oracle of Ages. Yeah, I've somehow never played. these and I would love to after hearing you talk about them because after Okina, I've got some Zelda

withdrawal, you know? That's the thing, right? It's like, Akkina's so good and then you're just like, man, that Zelda formula really hits. I just want to keep playing Zelda. Yeah. These Oracle games are so low impact. And unlike like some of the other ones, some of the more modern ones, they don't have to go through before you actually get to the meat of it. Is the owl in the game, though? No, I don't believe so. Great. Great news. Yeah, the owl is not an Oracle. of ages. You actually get guidance from what's called the Maku tree, which I guess is the the, I don't know, sibling of the decou tree.

Yeah. Yeah, man, you guys should both check them out. They're really good. If you both play them, maybe we could do like a triple play of the Oracle games at some point in the future. Yeah, that sounds great. It could happen. It could happen.

It could happen. I'd probably start with ages. Maddie, what is your one more thing? Mine is a movie called Deep Cover that is a comedy. that stars Bryce Dallas Howard and Orlando Bloom and Nick Muhammad, who I knew from Ted Lassow, but hadn't really gotten to see him outside of that. And he's really funny in this. But I feel like I see him, saw him as a comedic actor in that performance, whereas I don't really think of Bryce Dallas Howard and Orlando Bloom as comedic actors. And they're playing really broad,

wonderful characters in this and really getting to show some of their comedic range in a way that is just delightful. So here's the premise. Take some of it. place in London. Brace Dallas Howard plays, she's an American in this movie. She doesn't have an accent. Everybody else has British accents except her. And she's like an expat who's trying to make it in like the London theater scene. There's like it's not dissimilar to Broadway and that there's like a real high end theater scene in London. And she's failing. And so she's teaching an improv class to characters who are largely really bad at improv, including Orlando Bloom's character and Nick Muhammad's character. Orlando Bloom's character similarly also like sees himself as like an amazing actor who's just never had his big break and like is starring in all these horrible commercials instead. And Nick Muhammad is just like a really shy finance guy. He actually works IT with finance guys so he like can't even keep up with them. So like you got all these socially awkward improv characters. And they run into a cop who is also kind of a failure and he recruits them to help with a drug bust. And basically is like, I'm specifically recruiting improv actors because, like, they know how to

yes and in these scenarios. And, like, a lot of times cops are just too awkward to figure it out. So, like, improv actors are really great for this. And the three of them end up going to, like, participate in this bust and, like, try to bust a convenience store worker who's, like, selling some drugs on the side. And they yes and their way into, like, this massive conspiracy and end up having to stick with the three characters that they invented just for this convenience store job. And it spirals wildly and they get fully ensconced into like a massive gang war that's extremely dangerous and keep having to like amp up their characters, come up with more backstory. It's so, so funny and like such a great premise for a movie. Obviously the cop comes

into question at various points because, like, you as the viewer are like, why is he letting them do this? Is there something else going on with this character? But, and like, that obviously comes to a head. But, like, mostly it's just an opportunity to see three extremely awkward improv actors. Like, you can kind of imagine their dynamic being in this scenario where they have to pretend to be big, tough drug lords who totally know what they're doing. And the results are so good. We watched this a few weeks ago, and I've still been thinking about how funny it was and how great the premise was. And I just love watching actors make fun of themselves. And there's so much joy in that in this movie that I really appreciate.

So yeah, it's called Deep Cover. Great title. Obviously, these improv actors are in deep cover for the entirety of this film. It sounds amazing. Where did you watch it? I was on streaming. Prime Video. It's on Amazon.

Yeah, Prime. It sounds super fun. It sounds like Hit Man, a little. bit the Glenn Powell. Yeah, a little bit. It has hitman energy, yeah, and that it's like a person that should is mostly just into acting and performing, but ends up getting in way over their head. Learn something about themselves by the characters that they play, which I'm guessing happens.

Yes, of course. A little, like, spies like us. I guess this is a, like, kind of familiar comedy set up. Like, people have to pretend to be badass. But it works. It works. Yeah, that sounds super fun. We'll totally watch that.

A great cast, too. Yeah, it's great. Well, I'll go last. My one more thing is a video game called Split Fiction that we have talked about on the show before. I heard of it. But that I have now finished. My friend, Dan, and I have played through this game really in a kind of wonderful way, just like an hour or so every night. He's on the East Coast, so he can't stay up super late.

And we just hop on once every week or two and play an hour or two, which kind of amounts to an act of the game maybe. And we've worked through the whole thing. and man, I really am impressed by this game. I did not play Joseph Ferris and Hayslite's previous game. It Takes 2, the one that was the kind of Dark Horse Game of the Year winner several years back. I played the first part of it with Emily and was like, it was a little annoying, and also that kind of game isn't her thing. These games are actually fairly difficult, and so Dan and I actually might play through that just because we want to keep this going. We've just been having a great time chatting and catching up.

But that was how we played through all of split fiction, which I, I think I talked about back when we talked about that game when it came out earlier this year. But now I've finished it, and I won't spoil anything because the ending of this game is spectacular. I had heard that that the final kind of hour or so is like really mind-blowing, which is not a huge surprise. That's kind of a standard for these hazelight games. If you remember brothers, A Tale of Two Sons, kind of a similar game where this was a co-op game that you play with yourself, where you're controlling two brothers. through the whole game. That game also, really, it's neat throughout, but it's the end, and it's the kind of final run of puzzles that turns it into something really kind of amazing

and makes you come away from it just feeling like, wow, I've never done something like that before. That was so cool. Wow. This game has a very similar feeling at the end. There were moments, several moments in the final hours, where I was on, you know, on Discord with Dan, We're watching things happen on screen and doing them. And I'm just saying to him, I do not understand how they did this. Like how the game programmers and designers rigged this up so that it would work as seamlessly as it does. It's just totally crazy. So it's worth playing just to see that stuff.

But also, I just think it's a very fun game. So just to explain it just a tiny bit that we did talk about it. This is a split-screen co-op game. The whole game is played in split-screen. If you play it. online with a friend, you still see the split screen because sometimes you need to kind of look at the other screen to see what's there. And also, the game itself is working within the aesthetic confines of a split screen game. So it's playing with the idea of split screen.

So like sometimes it's just left and right, one character on the left, one character on the right. Sometimes it's split horizontally, top and bottom, sign scrolling. Then it will go merge to a single screen where you're both visible on the same screen. then it shifts all over the place and it would not work without being presented the same to both players. You play as Zoe and Mio, I want to say, are their names. They are two young writers

who are recruited by this horrible tech company to try this exciting new virtual reality technology where they get sucked into a virtual construct that builds their stories and their brains into reality. And then, of course, this is actually a nefarious plan by Raider, which is the name of the guy in charge of the company. I think the company is called Raider, which is sort of funny.

Not suspicious at all. It's called Raider. Share your ideas with them. He's very funny. It's very much like the writer's epitome of a shitty tech guy who just wants to steal everybody's ideas. I remember it being like really straightforward, not in a bad way. Just like, okay, I understand immediately. It is incredibly heavy-handed.

Yeah, it is very... Not known for subtlety. Yeah. I mean, I... Yeah, very cringe at times. Joseph Ferris, not. Not a subtle writer. This is a game that I think some people just bounce off of because it's fairly silly.

You know, the main characters start out, especially very surface level. Zoe writes fantasy and she's very positive and Mio's very dark and she writes sci-fi. And they don't understand each other because Zoe's so friendly and Mio's so suspicious. And it starts out that way. I think, honestly, if you kind of just get on its frequency, it winds up being really lovely. each character develops and you watch their friendship grow. None of it is surprising, but it's actually, it's really nice to watch them start to like each other and to see two people kind of talk about the stories they write and the ways those stories reflect the hardships that they've

been through and come to understand one another by like actually going through one another's stories and to see them by the end, like rooting each other on and kind of coming to like fantasy or sci-fi. Like, it's all very silly and reductive and simple, but also very charming. And then, I mean, the game is just so well presented and well designed and slick. It looks brilliant at all times. It plays so smooth, so amazingly. It is constantly shifting gears. You're never doing the same thing for more than 10 minutes.

It's hard. It was hard for us as guys who can play games, but not actually that hard. Like, a boss will kill you and you'll think, boy, this is hard. And then you'll beat the boss the next try. Like, we never felt stuck. And just, it's so silly and delightful. full of ideas and generous and, I don't know, its own thing to play a split-screen game like this in 2025 is really remarkable. So, yeah, I just wanted to kind of report in now that I've

finished it and to say that I think it's a really, it's a really amazing game. And that final hour, I mean, my God, but really the whole thing is just really delightful. There are some beautiful moments, a lot of big surprises, some real humor of some comedy, like we were laughing out loud throughout several sections in the game. For every cringe video game reference, there's also a bit of gameplay humor that is legitimately hilarious. So I really just recommend it to anyone out there who's thinking about it, or especially who has a friend they want to kind of catch up with and play a game with. It is a real winner. I'm really on board with split fiction. So yeah, good game. I really liked it. That's nice to hear. I did like the gameplay when I played it, but yeah,

I don't know. I know. You hated the character. It's fine. I think I could totally see how it could become even more astounding gameplay-wise. And I did really admire, like, the way that the split screen changed over time, like, scene to scene. Like, I could see how impressive it was, even just from what I played. It's really clever. And that stuff is cool. You just, for me, it helped to just get in the mentality of, like, rolling my eyes and laughing. And, like, Dan and I were laughing together. We're like, oh, boy, like, I wonder where we are if this is maybe you remembering this tragic event that happened to you. Like, you have to, with your friend, it actually makes the corneringer parts of the story better

if you can get in that mindset. Like it actually... That makes total sense. It makes it more enjoyable. And then the gameplay is, yeah, like, sensational and so you're having a lot of fun. And so for that, it, like, worked really well. Like, we weren't looking for something super moving.

And then actually, there is some nice little emotional beats. You know, there are some moments in the story where we were like, oh, that was really nice. And we could kind of share that as well. So it kind of helps to go in with the right mindset, maybe. Anyways, yeah, cool game. And a cool podcast. Way to go. Triple click. We did it.

Another rep. I made another episode. We did it. Time to go play Silk Song. Yeah, Silk Song is out, and we're all playing it as you're listening to this. And also out is our Aquarina of Time, Beanscast, which is in the bonus feed for members. So go listen to that as well. If you can tear yourself away from Silk Song for long enough to listen. Or maybe if you're not into Silk Song and if Holly Knight is...

That's true, yeah, if you're not. You could just go listen to Akrona. Or you could listen while playing, Kirk. Not everybody has to hear the music at all. time. No, I'm sorry, that's not actually a valid way to play the video game. I don't, I don't know what you're talking about. I agreeable. All right, cool. Well, this was a lot of fun, and I will see the two of you next week. 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 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 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. See you next time. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows. Supported directly by you.