Triple Click - Prince of Persia Is 2024's First Great Game

Episode Date: January 18, 2024

Less than three weeks into 2024, we've already discovered what will likely be one of the year's best games: Ubisoft's Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, which the gang is loving. Maddy, Jason, and Kirk talk about the new game's satisfying platforming, the time-twisting story, and how it feels a whole lot like Hollow Knight.One More Thing:Kirk: Guitar Zero: The Science of Becoming Musical at Any Age by Gary MarcusMaddy: Liftoff by Casey JohnstonJason: Battle of Ink and Ice by Darrell HartmanLINKS:Maddy’s Prince of Persia review: https://www.polygon.com/24033589/prince-of-persia-the-lost-crown-review-ubisoft-switchFeaturing excerpts from the Lost Crown soundtrack by Gareth Coker and MentrixSupport 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

You may be wondering, what is a Metroidvania? Well, it's a portmanteau of Metroid and Castlevania, but really, it's just a good time. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. Today we are talking about Prince of Persia, the lost crown, because I guess some prince lost his crown. Maybe you should go to the dentist and get it replaced. I'm Jason Trier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers.

Hello. Hello. We've made it despite design. faster this week. Yes, I've survived the worst weekend of weather that I've ever seen in Portland, Oregon. And I gather maybe one of the worst weekends of weather this city has ever had. And here I am alive. It's kind of all I want to talk about. How long did you not have power? Yeah. So it was, it was freezing here, below zero wind chills. And in my house, we did not have power for almost three days. Wow. For two, three days and two nights. Including no heat. Like no heat, no electricity. No heat. No heat. No heat.

We wound up asked me anything about generators and how to get your heater running off of a generator. And I can tell you a lot more than I could have told you a few days ago. Yeah. I know about propane and how propane works in the cold man. Wow, you're just like Hank Hill. I've learned a lot. Wow. And Hill is my new best friend.

Cool. Propane for the wind. Propane accessories. You know all about them. Well, maybe one day we'll do a bonus episode about surviving the apocalypse for any time. Triple prep. We can do some prep. In the meantime, we have a lot of other bonus episodes,

which you can, of course, listen to by becoming a supporter of our show, become a maximum fund member by going to maximum fund. By going to maximum fund.org slash join. And signing up and helping us make this show possible. That's how we do this thing. We're listeners supported. And we have bonus episodes every month in appreciation for all of our supporters, including the one we just did in December,

is a beans cast, a spoiler cast where we did a deep dive into Baldur's Gate 3. And this month, we are going to be doing an episode where we talk about the best other things of 2020. We already did our best games in 2023. Now we're going to do all the other stuff, the movies, the books, TV shows, etc., etc. So look forward to that. And if you are looking forward to that, but you're not a member, and now's your chance, maximumoffend.org slash join. All right, Maddie, what are we talking about today. We are talking about a video game called Prince of Persia the Lost Crown that I started playing and then I started haranguing you two to start playing. And I mean, I have the luxury being able to do that and tell you to that despite the game only being available to our

listeners on today this very day that the episode drops because I got a code for my Nintendo switch from work because I'm the person at Polygon who likes Metroidvania's and Prince of Persia the Lost Crown is a Metroidvania. It's made by Ubisoft, Mampilier. They actually made a couple Rayman games that I really love called Rayman Origins and Raymond Legends. I don't know if you two played those in the early 2010s. I sure did. They're so good. And I haven't thought about them in years until I played this game, which I truly just, I installed it for work. I had no expectations. And I wasn't immediately sold, you know, first couple hours. I was like, this is fun.

I'm having a good time. And then a couple hours later, I was like, wow, I really don't want to stop playing this game. And then maybe 10 hours later, I was like, this is my life now. All I do is play Prince of Prussia. And now I'm almost done. I think I'm on the final boss, or at least I freaking hope so, because it's really hard and I haven't beaten it. And I may never beat it. This might be as far as I get in this game.

But I'm obsessed. I'm really enjoying it. And I want to hear what you two think. Oh, also I should say this is actually my first Prince of Persia game. I'm not a Prince of Persia person. So I think I want to hear from Kirk first because, Kirk, you're more familiar with the Prince of Persia legacy. And maybe you even have feelings about the Sands of Time remake that has been much delayed and is not this game. So don't be confused, listeners, if you're thinking this is the remake of Sands of Time.

It's not. It's not that. Okay. Maybe we can just list some other games. that are not this game. Well, I've had this conversation more than once where people are like, oh, is that that new Prince of Persia that they've been making? And I'm like, well, yes, but it's not the one you might think it is. Right.

It's not the remake of the old game. Yes. I really like this game from when I've played of it. As I mentioned, I didn't have power for this weekend. I would have much rather been playing Prince of Persia than doing anything that I did all weekend. But I wasn't, unfortunately. And I didn't have the Switch version at the time, though I actually do now. and thanks to Ubisoft's sort of cross-save compatibility,

I was able to take my PS5 save and load it up on the Switch. And I will say the Switch is a great way to play this game. That's like my Metroidvania machine. I played Hollow Night on that, and I played Metroid Dread, and now I'm playing this. So, yeah, I have played the Sands of Time. I believe I reviewed the Forgotten Sands, which was a 2010 Prince of Persia game for Kotaku.

I don't have very strong memories of it. Bing! Future Kirk here trapped in a temporal. anomaly as I edit this episode and existing in parallel with my past self. Just wanted to say the reason I don't have strong memories of it is that I didn't actually review it. That was Stephen Totillo. But I definitely did play it.

Anyway, back to the show. Bing! But it was a pretty good game, more of a platformer. And I've always thought of Prince of Persia as more of a platforming series than a combat series. And I've never thought of it as a Metroidvania series because as far as I know, it never has followed that format. It's been a little bit more just a series of levels.

So Prince of Persia is a cool series. It goes way back. I mean, Jordan Mechner, the creator of Carotica, created this game next. Like it was his follow-up to Carotica. So it's one of the first video games. You know, it really goes way back. You can look at footage of the first Prince of Persia and see some really interesting stuff. 1989.

Wow. Yeah, 89. And Carotica, of course, a game that is really interesting that I learned all about last year because I contributed to the big digital eclipse sort of museum piece that celebrates Karatica. And I did something about the music for that, for that game that was really fun. And that process, of course, taught me a lot about that game and about Jordan Mechner. So that's the kind of genesis of Prince of Persia, which then at some point transferred to

Ubisoft and became a Ubisoft, you know, a Ubisoft endeavor, I believe was owned by Broderbund before that. It's kind of one of those long publishing sagas. So Ubisoft bought it and then they put out the Sands of Time, which is a really legendary game. It was really beloved by egg-headed game critic types because it did something with a platformer where it kind of allowed for the narrative to fit the platforming into the story

because the whole game is being told by the narrative. It's being narrated by the prince. So anytime you would die. Ludo narrative consonants. We love to see it. Every time you would die, would say like, wait a minute, that's not what happened. And it would kind of flash back.

Plus, the game was built around a time rewinding mechanic that was really cool for a platformer at the time because you'd like screw up a jump and you could just like rewind time. That game holds up. Was this before after Bastion? Oh, way before. Way before. And before Bastion was like. And before Braid and so on.

Well, Bastion had the narrator. That's what I'm referring to, which can't take that. Oh, yeah. Sanso Time was 2003. So this was much, much earlier. And a really cool idea, which then, of course, Braid played with that idea to Jonathan Blow's Braid where you rewind time and it's a platformer you can control time

or at least in some parts of braid. So that was that game and it was really cool. It was like a thinking person's platformer kind of. There was some combat but the platforming and the puzzles was always the sort of central attraction. So here we are playing this game.

It's a Metroidvania. It feels to me much much more in line with actually Hollow Knight. My beloved Hollow Night it really takes some great lessons from Hollow Night. We can go these specifics later. But I have not been able to play as much as I wanted to, but I've just gotten the second sort of major power-up, which is a teleport warp time-bending ability that seems to be a huge game changer and came after a really cool narrative sequence in this game. So that's how

far I am. We can maybe talk about anything up to then. I don't actually want to hear anymore because I do find this game very delightful and want to be surprised by it. But that's a fair chunk that we can talk about. I don't want to spoil any of the other power-ups after that. I think that one that Kirk is on is around when the game really clicked for me. I mean, that makes it sound like I wasn't enjoying it before then. But that teleport was when I was like, oh, this is so cool. Like, now I can do anything, which is always how you feel when you get a power up in a Metroidvania.

And then you're like, wait, there's like 16 more doors. There's so much I still can do. What? But it feels for a second like you can do anything. So Jason, what do you think so far? Yeah, I love it. I'm a little further than you. Kirk.

I've done a few more things. explored a lot more of the underground areas, which are extremely hollow night. Yeah, it's a really just a fantastic Metroid vina. Like, it feels up there with Metroid dredge in that kind of that upper echelon. I don't think it's quite Hollow Knight level, but Hollow Night is really a masterpiece. But it's clearly very inspired by Holo Night. It's got a lot of similar feels in a lot of way, even the way that you kind of swing a sword and make contact with an enemy has very similar kind of,

sensations. The airdash, which you get pretty early, feels a lot like Kalo Nights air dash, even the order of events. So you get the air dash first before you get the double jump. I'm assuming. Have that in my notes. Yeah. It's a cool way of doing it because you kind of, you learn to maneuver space in a different way than you would with the double jump. And then you can add the double jump on top of that, which I assume will come at some point because there's got to be a double jump. Also, I'm kind of struck by how much inspiration it takes from Dark Souls. There are a lot of shortcuts that you unlock between your save points.

And it doesn't do the whole Dark Souls thing of you lose all your money when you die and you have to go back and get it. But it does do the Dark Souls thing of when you die, you respawn at the nearest tree. Those are the equivalent of bonfires or benches in Hollow Night. and you have to find your way back to where you died. And all the enemies are back to, too, whenever you're back. Right. Well, yeah. But not when you, not every time you rest. Well, enemies respond constantly, actually. Like, they just, there are times you'll just go back through an area and they'll be back.

That's more like Metroid. Yeah. Like, that was why in Dark Souls, I always was like, this is kind of easy. It's not like Metroid where they just respond every time you turn around. The point I was getting at is more that when you die, if you've unlocked a shortcut, you can get back to where you are more. quickly, which adds to that rewarding feeling of exploration and being like, oh, okay, great, found a shortcut now. I don't have to worry as much. And you keep your items too, like not just your money, but like an item you get.

Like in Dark Souls, if you just only barely get a precious key, you have it the whole time even if you die. Right, right, right. You don't really lose anything. So it's not quite as kind of, doesn't quite have that sense of danger that Souls games do. But yeah, I really like it. I mean, the one big downside for me, and I'm curious if you guys have experienced it, is the bugs.

So I've gotten a few really nasty ones, including one side quest bug where I was talking to this character. I don't remember exactly what the sidequest was, but I was talking to this character, and then suddenly everything kind of froze while I was leaving the room, and there was a weird camera glitch, and then I left the room. And now when I check my journal, the side quest is just like completely blank for me. It's like totally glitched out. And so that sort of thing, that combined with a few other kind of weird bugs here and there, give this, sense that like, oh man, this game needed a little more time to cook. What are you playing it on? I'm playing it on the switch.

Oh, wow. Okay. But these aren't like performance bugs. Right, right. These are kind of like gameplay bugs. So yeah, so that's been a bummer for an otherwise excellent game that I'm enjoying quite a bit and feeling like, oh, wow, like we're only, it's January 18th the day we're publishing this and we're ready on to, we're already seeing a strong like 2024 contender.

like, hey, maybe this will make some of our lists at the end of the year. But that bug stuff, I mean, it's a bummer. It's a big, big detriment on a game that I'm otherwise really enjoying. Yeah, for what it's worth, I haven't had any of that. And I've had a couple of crashes, like just straight up black screen crashed to desktop, like maybe two or three, but everything was still there when I booted it back up and nothing worse than that. So that's too bad. And I wonder if there's going to be a day one patch that maybe fixes up some of that. That'd be nice. I haven't had any yet either.

Like I said, though, I haven't played that much. I did see some folks who have gotten it early. I think if you subscribe to Ubisoft Premium Plus, whatever it's called. If you subscribe to their service, you can play the game a few days early. And I was looking at a thread, I think, on... Ubisoft Premium Plus Super Remake Plus Turbo. Right. I was looking at a thread, I think, on Reset Era.

and some people were saying they had run into a side quest bug as well. It might be the one you're describing. Interesting. I do think that's a thing, which is too bad just because in this kind of game, you really count on your progression being consistent. So that's a bummer to hear. I think, so let's talk a little more about how this game plays if we can, because I have a bunch of notes of all of these interesting things they're borrowing,

which, you know, it's definitely a game where you can look at each individual element and kind of trace it back to something. Like there's a map vendor that you find in levels at homes. There are a lot of things in this game that feel lifted from Hollow Night. But then again, it's really hard to do that. Jason, you mentioned the feel of the game, the way that the Air Dash feels, the way that combat feels, the physicality of your sword swings. I should say Sargon's sword swings, the main character.

And yeah, I feel with this game more than any platformer that I've played that my exact Hollow Night skills, carry over to this game. Like it feels like I really practice these exact skills and now I'm getting to use them. Like the float, the feel of the air dash, the way that you can stick to the wall and then air dash back to the wall.

It just feels exactly right. I wrote this in my note. So if you play saxophone, you get really good at playing like the B-flat blues. That's like a key of the blues that you really just, it's the first thing you learn on sax. And then even when you're like professional, You just have a million likes in B-flat.

Every tenor sax player, it's like B-flat blues, I can go. So then you learn a bunch of other tunes. You learn how to play over different changes, which is kind of like other video games, other platformers that I've learned. But then every now and then, someone will just call a tune that's like full-on B-flat blues, and you just get to shred in the key that you're really comfortable in. And this game feels like that to me. When I'm in a really thick fight, I'm like, dude, I can do this already because I learned how to do it.

It's kind of the B-flat blues of Metroid-Banias for me. Wait a minute. Okay. So what you're describing, the Holo Night skills 100% translate to the platforming. The fighting feels totally different because you're dodging and countering, which you're not really doing in Hollow Night. I mean, Hollow Night doesn't have, like, dodge encounter cues. I definitely wouldn't go that far. I think the Dodge Encounter is really cool.

It's like a sort of Securo-style color-coded Dodge counter. You mean the parrary. Like a red attack. A red attack is a dodge. A yellow attack is a counter. Yeah, that will, so like when you're fighting bosses, that to me feels totally. different. That feels more like a securo, more like a traditional action game than a than a Holo Night. So I'm surprised do you feel like your, your Hollenite skills are

translating? Well, really, I mean, the platforming is a huge part of this game. I would say a bigger part of the game than the combat. So those are the skills I'm talking about. But no, even in combat, I mean, the verticality using the air dash to stay above an enemy, attacking downward to bounce upward. Like a lot of those moves are the same moves that I use in Hollenite. And I find myself thinking geometrically in the exact same way about a fight where I'm trying to get up. I'm moving over. I'm like tracking the enemy. And it's just these little brain patterns that I've trained into that part of my brain

that just reawakened the minute I started playing this game. So, okay, the reason that I bring this up is because I actually found it really fun and interesting and subversive that I had, I'm like conditioned to do that jumping over an enemy, bouncing on them, like, air dashing away and so on. But then the game switches that up. by throwing some tough bosses at you that require you to use the parries and the counters and fight them in a very different way than you would fight in a normal Metroidvania. I guess Metroid Jed has some similar ideas.

The Perry concept is in there. And I think that's where they got it from to kind of continue Kirk's thread of where they got their influences. Like parts of the Perry, like I don't remember what they call it. It's like a plot parry where they're like, if you parry a yellow attack, you will get a little cutscene play out. A sick cutscene where like Sargon does a sweet kick to the person's head or whatever. And they call it something like that, like a narrative theory or whatever.

And it's like kind of motivates you to do it not only because you're going to then have a successful counterattack opportunity, but also because if you're in a boss fight, then you get this cool cutscene and you're like going to maybe advance to the next stage of the boss fight and take down a bunch of health. It's great because it's training you to do something that's really important. But most of the time I'm honestly sliding under the bosses. That's my favorite thing to do. I don't jump over them.

I love sliding under them. It's so good. So there's some tough ones. Man, this game, one of the things that I really like about this game, similar to Hollow Night is how challenging it is. The boss, I was just finding a boss that was a royal pain. The one that is, it's kind of like a crab with a giant shield that you have to like get under or around, but it's kind of a pain.

to get in under. I won't get in too much detail, but it's very fun to fight. They definitely get harder and harder pretty linearly, which is great or terrible, depending on how you feel about me still not having beaten the final boss. Well, you'll get it. You'll get it. It's fine. I'm fine.

You'll pull it off. There are a lot of difficulty settings, unlike a lot of games of this nature. Unlike, um, Holo Night doesn't have difficulty settings, right? Yeah, and Metroodd didn't launch with them, but I think it has them now. out of them later. Yeah, one of the difficulty settings is even like peri timing, which I find the peri timing to be enjoyably tight in this game. And actually since recently getting good at Lies of P, which also has very tight peri timing and a really similar Perry Dodge, red, yellow, et cetera system. Like, it's cool to learn another peri timing, but it is slightly different than the

peri timing in each of these games and it's hard. So it's kind of cool that you can adjust it. It's kind of a classic video game thing, huh? Like how many years of those cues been in place of like red got a dodge yellow got a parry or blue sometimes yeah it's like it's like purple is rare yellow is legendary blue is common yeah uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh but um yeah the the challenge is really enjoyable i find and i think really as kind of takes it up a notch i found that playing there are a lot of metrovania is released every year i really like the genre so i try to check out at least some of them um the ones that i bounce off and don't wind up finishing are usually the ones that are easier, not necessarily because I dislike them just because there isn't

really anything keeping me going. And in this game, I feel like what is keeping me going is that difficulty in feeling like I'm gradually getting challenged and I can't wait for like really tough platforming challenges, like what Hollow Night does with Got Home. And I'm excited to see what's coming, although the bug thing is kind of that that albatross as I go that is making me like, maybe I should just wait. Yeah, I hope you don't run into anymore. I've really had good luck with it, so I'm hoping that that just doesn't happen to you anymore. I'm finding the game to be welcoming in some clever ways that go beyond the accessibility settings too, and I think those are worth mentioning because while this game is challenging and you can

adjust the difficulty, but I'd say playing it on the default difficulty setting, that kind of feels like where they tuned it, and that is, it's a hard game for people who like hard games. Like this is for people who like Hollow Night, which is a very difficult game. Or Metroid from way back. They've added some nice stuff. Like there's this kid who will give you a hint. So for a very small amount of currency, you can just get a hint on where you're supposed to go next. And that can be really useful.

I always pay for those because I just like the dialogue in this game. And she always says the hint in a fun, poetic way. And I just like hearing what she has to say about the ongoing events. So I'll just pay for them. It's only like 30 bucks or whatever the currency is. Feathers. I don't remember. It's almost nothing, especially once you're a little later in the game.

And you're making that much from a single-in. And I just like making small talk with the NPCs in this game. I'm really enjoying them. Yeah. So that's really cool. It's just helpful to know that you can go check in with someone and have them tell you where to go next. There's also a really nice feature that Frustick wrote an article for Polygon about that. I think he was very right to call this feature out because it's so cool, where one dedicated button, it's just down on the d-pad, just snaps a screenshot and adds that to your map,

which is so useful for a Metroidvania because you don't have to mark something. In Holo Night, for example, you have these map markers and you have to kind of remember, okay, wait, this one just looks like a little bughead. What does that mean? Does that mean like a high jump or does that mean? And you still have map markers too in this game

if you want to use them, but being able to take a picture that's like, okay, I can't get across these stupid spikes yet and I don't know why, whatever. And then later you have a power where you're like, oh, that's easy now. And you can just quickly scroll through the map and look at all your pictures

and be like, still don't know how to do that one. Oh, but I can do that. And then just go straight there. It's the best. Right. So it's a way that you can check your map and then remember where the places are that you'll be able to use a new ability when you get it. Also, little things like when you're in a boss fight and you die, you can just retry the

boss fight right from the start of the fight. You don't have to go do a dumb run. Also, those trees that Jason mentioned, the bonfire-esque trees, they're always placed next to the very difficult platforming challenges. So if you do die on one of those, you just, can start right away. And also, usually the platforming challenge is you just lose some health each time you screw up.

Like, so it'll be, I don't know, there was one that I just did, which was this room that fills with poison. Do you guys remember this room? Yeah. And you have to kind of, it's a classic Prince of Persia style thing where you're jumping across poison and then you have to time it. So suddenly some, you know, safe ground comes up in the poison. You jump on that.

Go up to the wall. You hit a, what would you call it, I guess like a trapeze, like a pole that you swing around. And you have to do that, shoot across, use the air dash, go. There's a bunch of spikes everywhere. It's just totally crazy. And I mean, I'm sure some very skilled player could do it on their first try, but you totally eat shit a few times before you pull it off. But the nice thing is there's a tree right there.

So you're slowly losing health, but it's not that stressful feeling of in another game if you're really kind of far away from a checkpoint. And you're like, oh, my God, I'm going to need my health. You know, I'm thinking of the, what's it called in Hollow Night, that really ludicrous the path of pain in Hollow Night. I just remember that like you're so far away, especially as you get farther into it, like I would kit myself out just for healing

so that I could get just a couple of hit points so that I could keep going. And that's a little less of an issue in this game. But that's also what makes it all the more satisfying when you beat it. There is a balance there. You don't want the save points to be too frequent. I mean, for what it's worth,

the game is going to slowly do that. And that's another thing about it that I find really satisfying. So eventually you get more and more kind of platforming challenge opportunities and they'll be way far away from a whack-wack tree. And you have to just have enough health on you to get through it. Or if you're me and you're not that good at it,

you just kid out your amulets, which is like your collection of little power-ups that you can only edit at a tree, which I also like as a- Speaking of Holo Night Influence, just saying. Yeah. So you choose your amulets, which have different powers, and you collect different amulets over the course of the game.

And usually those really tricky, far-off platforming challenges that don't lead to a new area. They're clearly optional. We'll have something really good as a reward. Like my favorite reward is a blank amulet slot because then I can just add it in a little that for amulet. That's the best reward. But those eventually are only reserved for the hardest platforming challenges.

Like you can buy a couple of them from the shopkeepers, but eventually they're sold out, quote, unquote, and you're like, what, I just can't buy infinite amulet slots? And then you've got to just start getting really hard on the platform. platforming challenges, which is so fun. It's just great. Yeah, I'm 100, I feel like I'm going to 100% this game. I just say it has that feel to me. Yeah, I'm absolutely doing that. Like, I am leaving my final boss run to go complete more platforming challenges, insisting to myself that if I just had more amulets or the right amulets, the final boss will in fact be easy, which is, of course, how every Metroidvania should be designed. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I mean, the really difficult

challenges that I've done, which are pretty early in the game, if you want to do. then there was one to get a Xerxes coin, where you have to basically get in and get out, which is another fun kind of challenge. So you start in the air, basically. You jump across some spikes. You hit a pole. You swing from the pole down to the wall.

You drop down to the next level. You jump over some more spikes. Hit another pole. Land on a platform that falls away after you're on it for a second. Jump up to the wall, and then you get the coin. And then you have to get out, which I didn't realize the first time I did it. And then was this wonderful feeling of like, oh, God.

Okay, so I have to plan this whole thing out. and you wind up building this whole kind of intricate dance in your head where you work out all the timing and go through it. And I can only imagine. I mean, that was the first one of those. So I'm sure they get much more complicated. Plus, it was designed to be completed just with the air dash. So once you've got a double jump and whatever else,

you're having to like, you know, juggle all of your abilities in the air without touching the ground through this whole challenge. I mean, if it were any other game, if the jump and dash, if everything felt different and I was having to learn a whole new kind of jam, I don't know that I would be as satisfied with it, but because it's this literacy I already have, it feels so good and so comfortable, it maps so onto what I already know how to do.

I'm just, like, loving that. It's like an excuse to use all these skills. It's so cool. You have to be good at it to enjoy the challenge. That's for sure. Yeah, I think that on top of all of this stuff, the one part of this game we haven't really talked about is the story, which I find pretty interesting as well.

The story in short. short is that you're playing as this guy who's kind of a warrior of this Persian kingdom. And the prince gets kidnapped and you have to go and save him and you wind up in this big area, which is where the game is set called Mount Coof, Cuff. And it is essentially kind of like a time prison where people can potentially stay for years without realizing like there's different people who are in different accelerated timelines and all sorts of wacky time shenanigans are going on, which allows for some cool stuff. There are a couple things that I really enjoy about the story.

One is that you as an immortal are a member of this kind of elite force with six other dudes who are also dudes and gals who are also immortals. Dudes and ladies. Can I ask a quick question? I want to make a like a distinction here is that your group of soldiers are called the immortals, but they are in fact mortals. That is correct. They're humans. Because you meet actual immortals in this game. I know.

And I was a little confused at first. I was like, wait, am I an immortal? I loved that. When the blacksmith makes fun of you for saying you're an immortal and she's like, you're immortal, you dumbass. So just wanted to point that out to listeners that you are immortal actually, but your group is called the immortals. Continue to Sarah Jason. So the thing I enjoy about this is that they are all keeping you company as you go. And so they'll duck in. They'll come help you fight some enemies.

They'll say some things and they'll jump away. And it really feels like you're exploring this area with like a group of people, which I think is a really cool kind of unique feel. that I haven't seen it at some of games like this. The other thing that I think is really cool is just the time genetics and how that also kind of weaves with the gameplay because a large one mechanic is that you are trying to restore things that are out of time in levels of the game of areas of this mountain. And so, for example, the fast travel points that you find throughout the mountain,

you have to kind of hit this energy orb to restore them back into their proper reality and proper place and time. And I think that's a cool, just a cool concept. And it's fun to do. And it's fun how every time you get into an area where time is messed up in some way, like the screen turns all weird. Yeah, it turns all purple and spooky. You know something, something funky's going on over here. Yeah. Yeah. It's a little like that game's singularity. It's a similar idea where you arrive at an island where time is all screwed up and that allows for a bunch of cool narrative developments because you'll meet characters and at first I was kind of like characters from your squad and at first I wasn't really that into all of them like I didn't know who they were but as you meet them it gets more interesting

especially because sometimes you'll meet one of them who appears to be very different or like a lot of time has passed for them because that happens for people or you'll even meet soldiers from the conflict you were just fighting in and they've been here for like 50 years and like old men and that stuff is really cool it's just like a very clever. It's almost like a loss. Like it feels a little like the way that loss just throws these surprising weird time twists into things. They're having a lot of fun with it. And yeah, I'm definitely more into the narrative now that I've played a few hours than I was at the beginning, which is really cool. I really, I'm really on board. Yeah, I really dig it. It reminds me of Ocarina of Time as well,

in that instead of playing as Princess Zelda, which you never get to do, you're not playing as the Prince of Persia you're playing as just some guy who is trying to protect the Prince, along with a lot of other people whose job that is. And you're pretty naive at the outset. Like Sargon's a trained warrior. He's good at fighting, but he also is in over his head at the outset and the way that every video game character would be, like he's level one, as it were. And then as time goes on, and he's meeting more and more people and learning more about kind of the palace intrigue aspects of the game. And like, why would somebody kidnap? the prince what's really going on with this situation and he's getting powers along the way as well he

gets to become battle-hardened like my my sargon and my current era of fighting the final boss is like totally kidded out like you know if he were to go back in time say and meet young sargon that would be like a totally different guy and i always really liked that concept in ocarine of time of like link changing over time but still being being sort of a fundamentally pure of heart person who has to like learn about his place in this larger world and it's like the story of identity across all these generations and i don't know i really i really like that as a storytelling device in a game it's a classic one but if it ain't broke you know is this just part of your year-long campaign to get us to let you in the prediction that's who could say who could say i

mean the time travel part is in there too i think that's cool sargonne doesn't get an ocarina though or at least you Has it yet. See, this is kind of like far cry too, like the way that time and like fire is like a metaphor for the passage of time and malaria is like decay over time. So true, man. Keep it going. How far can you go? Probably vamp for a little bit longer. Can I make, I'm going to make a couple of small mechanical complaints that I'm just going to lodge.

I wish that when you started running, you kept running in the next screen. That is something that kind of bothers me. If you have to do a slide and then if you hold down the right trick. to run as Sargon, he stops running in the next screen. And I was like, come on, let me run through multiple screens. It just kind of would have expected that. It's like a little mechanical blip. And also, I wish there were an easier way to map movement onto the D-pad instead of the

thumbstick. I'm okay with the thumbstick, but I really prefer the D-pad for a game like this. I found a way to do it. Like, you can put movement on the D-pad, but it's a little weird. I think it doesn't quite work. Like, I hope that they just patched the game and release a second control setting where they just make it work where like the two things that the dpad does are just mapped onto the thumbstick clicking or something i don't know and you can just fully control the game

with the dpad because i would at least really prefer that for all movement you mean that's interesting is that how you play hollow night as well yeah and i believe that how i played metroid dread too though i'm not sure if that game lets you do that or not but again actually you know i don't really find that i didn't find that metroid dread had quite as demanding platforming am i remembering that wrong like i know that game was tough no i think you're right No, it was more of, yeah, the shooting and the bosses were tougher than the platform. This definitely feels, I haven't felt this type of, like I haven't felt this way playing a game since Holla Night. Like this type of really wild, tricky, trapsie.

For me, it reminds me of Celeste, which we haven't mentioned yet. It is, yeah, it's got some Celeste in it. Celeste is a good comparison. That game is so hard, but also similarly has some really extensive accessibility settings where you can, like, in my case, just have infinite air dashes. because that's like the only way I could get through that game. And still feel like I could be kind of good. Yeah, Celeste is a good comparison. Yeah, the platforming, I think the idea of just being constantly in the air above a lot of spikes

and it's just like using the walls to jump off of. And then I think this game, unlike Holo Night and unlike Celeste, has those poles that you were mentioning where you propel yourself in a given direction and it plays around with those in some fun ways. But yeah, I mean, it's just pretty classic stuff. A lot of this stuff harkens back to the NES days and has just gotten more and more refined over time. And the feel of it is always what makes the biggest difference between like a great platformer and just a good platformer or a mediocre platformer. And I think this just takes, they probably the mechanic, the systems designers and the people who were designing the platforming, the animators and so on probably just played so much Hollandite because it really just has the same sort of rhythms as how long. low night in that it just all feels like incredible like it's so slick and it just feels so smooth

and it feels like everything you want your sargon to do he will do it's very responsive it doesn't you never really feel like you're your the game is is kind of holding you back in some way it always feels like you're jumping exactly when you mean to dashing exactly when you mean to and I have never felt even in the tough parts of this game, never felt like it was being unfair or anything like that. It always feels like. His move set is remarkable too. He has a lot more moves than the game really teaches you just between the dodge, the different kicks you can do out of a dodge, like the running jump kick. You can do a jump back, which is a nice, speaking of souls, it feels a little bit like a souls game.

Where just a dodge while standing still does a jump back, which is very helpful. You can do a downward attack or like that downward slam if you hold that. down the button. So if anyone is playing this experiment just in an empty room with all the different moves Sargon can do because they are all very helpful. His charged attack actually is really useful for a lot of slower enemies because it does a ton of damage. I was forgetting to do it for a little while and then I remembered, okay, wait, once I know this attack rhythm, I can, I know when I have time to do a charged attack and it's super worth doing. Yeah, the other kind of negative, and Kirk, I'm surprised you haven't brought this up because you were the one who first complained

about it to me is kind of the way it looks. And I think It has kind of, I don't mind it necessarily, but it does have kind of a generic luck where, Kirk, I think you pointed out to me, I think you texted me the other day that it kind of looks, it resembles a mobile game or something like that where like the faces are a little bit generic, a little bit just kind of like, oh, I've seen that in a lot of different games before. In fact, I saw some people, some memes on Twitter about black hairstyles and how so many different black characters and video games use that same killmonger hairstyle where it's just like, The side cut, the locks. Yeah, the locks that are just like jutting off to the side. And even that just feels so generic. And Sargonne, I think, is an interesting character. And he's got some, some, an interesting enough personality.

But the look of it all, it just feels very like, oh, okay, this looks like a lot of games I've seen before. Yeah, that does bug me. It bugs me less now. I think that I've played a little bit more because it's, I've just sort of adjusted to how it looks. And I do, I think the voice acting is good. I really actually think the music. is fantastic. Kirk here, just to shout out this game's composers. It was composed by a two-person team, Gareth Koker, who some of you might know as the composer behind the Ori Games, a really

fantastic composer, and Mentrix, an Iranian musician, whose actual name is Samar Rod, who I was not familiar with, but she's super great, and she brought, I think, a lot of the Iranian influence to the soundtrack. It incorporates a lot of cool Persian instruments and sounds that's very specific to the culture of the characters in the game. So yeah, it's a fantastic soundtrack, and I haven't even heard all of it, but I can't wait to hear more. It's really, really cool stuff. So shout out to those two composers for doing great work.

The music is really good. Really, really cool. And the animation, I should note that even though the art direction itself is a little generic, the animation is really fantastic. Right. And so that's something I've noticed in cutscenes is that actually, like, Sargon's face, like, when they're having conversations, it looks really cool. even if it's like a mix of the graphical style and the art style,

it does just look a little bit like a generic game. Like it looks like one of those games you'd see an ad for during the game awards in the middle of some huge run. Yeah, which I feel like we did. And I feel like that's part of why this game just didn't stand out to me at all. Like I had no... Because there was an ad during the game awards, that's why. Well, and really, when you think about Ubisoft,

like when you think about something like Valiant Hearts or Child of Light, like they are an artist's studio, even Rayman. And they make games that are like vibrant and really amazing looking. And I do think this game becomes quite beautiful, like environmentally. Yeah, some of the environments are surprising and wonderful. Exactly. Like the more I've played, the more I've uncovered like a really cool, like a solarium with, you know, constellations up on the wall.

Like you'll find your way into these really beautiful looking areas. So actually, I really don't mind how it looks. And furthermore, this game runs beautifully on the Nintendo Switch. It runs 60 frames per second. And that's really cool. It's just that, yeah, partly compared to. some other Ubisoft games where you can tell they let their artists off the chain,

make something that looks really dramatic, make something that looks beautiful. This game is a little more like, makes something that looks like any other game and then just happens to be like amazingly designed and really fun. And the game would probably be better served if you looked at it and you were like,

whoa, what's that? Like if it just had that too. Because then it would also be sensationally made and I just think that would probably help more people be interested in playing it. But in the end, it hasn't matter that much to me the more I play. Yeah, that's a,

Hallenite has for sure. Yeah, Holo Night does have an extremely distinct visual style. It's extremely, yeah, you look at a holiday.

And so does Celest, honestly. Like, Celeste looks a really certain way. And so does Metroid dread. Metro Jed is a very specific, like very kind of metallic tones. Yep.

Like shiny and dark. Yeah. Yeah, I think the animations not only in the cutscenes, but also the gameplay animations are really good. And I think that's a large part of what helps it feel so.

Yes. Just like satisfying whenever you do anything is because it's animated really precisely and feels and looks really good. Yeah, and I mean, Sargon's animations are fantastic. It's definitely one of those things that you don't think about unless it's not working, but like every animation in the game, especially enemy animations, are very clear and easy to read. And once you learn all the moves, it's like super easy to tell what's coming and what the timing is going to be.

Since we're sharing complaints, I'll share mine, which is not really a complaint, I wish that there were even more environmental puzzles in this game because there are a few that I don't think you two have really gotten to yet. But every now and then there's just like a really big room with a bunch of gears in it or a bunch of weird boxes where you're like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do here, but I can't figure out how to progress. And then you just have to use your powers or like step on a series of buttons

or move things around in a certain order and then air dash around to get to the right place at the right time. I simply love that type of puzzle. I just love it. Like it's, it's Metroid, it's Zelda. It's what I love about that kind of game. I could play that forever. It's portal to me.

And when you solve it, you're like, I'm a genius. It's obvious. I was supposed to teleport from here to here. And now it's so clear and I'm the best. It feels so good. The main puzzles that I've been solving are the ones where you use the glave or the boomerang, whatever it's called, the sort of modified boomerang, which is this, or I guess it's the bow that becomes this boomerang, where you throw the bow itself and it

becomes the spinning device that can kind of power various devices. So you'll come into a room where there's a bunch of lifts, and each lift has this circular, you know, like ring attached to it that if you throw your boomerang onto it, it'll make the lift activate. And what I really like about that kind of puzzle is that it, you're basically leaving something in the room that's activating one thing, but you can only activate one device at a time. So you have to think about when you're going to pull it back to you, which will cause the thing that was going, like the lift that was moving,

to lower and then throw it to cause the next one which you need to activate to, you know, raise or lower. Yeah, I love that. And when you have multiple powers in play and you need to remember which one to hit it at the right time, it just feels so good. And you got to feel like a genius. It's in line with like, I guess, I mean, it is a puzzle, but it's in line with the platforming because the platforming is itself a puzzle because you have to figure out the order of moves that you're going to do. The puzzles are just give you a little bit more downtime and force you to think, I think, a little more creatively.

But the whole thing is very holistic. I think that all of the movement, all of the platforming, all of the puzzle solving really feels like it just sort of stretches in one direction or another direction. And it's only really when you're just in a room with a boss that you're just doing a fight and it's a little less puzzly. But the rest of the game really feels holistic in a way that I think is super impressive and a lot harder to pull off than it might feel when you're just doing it and not thinking about it. Maddie, before we go and Tika Ray can go to one more thing, you know what game? has incredible environmental puzzles and nothing about them is cross-code. Wow, that is true.

There we go. We got them all in there. Now that we've come full circle, I guess we'll leave it there. Prince of Persia of the Last Crown, pretty good video game. Great game. We'll take a break and be back with one more thing.

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Find the flop house on maximum fun.org or wherever you get podcasts. We are back. It's time for one more thing. I think we all have books this week. Triple book. The tri-book. Triple book. Triple-read.

Triple-read. I'll go first because although mine is a book, it's really more of an activity than I'm doing. So I read a book called Lift Off. It's by Casey Johnston. And I got this book because I started following her on Blue Sky and reading her blog, which is about fitness. It's called Ask a Swole Woman. I don't know when I started following her. But she has pretty good political opinions.

So I feel like it started because of that. And then I was like, oh, she's a fitness blogger. Okay, I guess I'll read her blogs. And then I ended up buying her book and reading all of it in like a day. And now I'm doing her weightlifting routine. So the full title is lift off, couch to barbell, not really applicable to me because I've done powerlifting before the kind where you lift the bar over your head. I used to do it in my 20s and actually keep up with it. And then time went by.

I don't have a gym membership. I haven't for like a decade. I don't own a metal bar that's that size or a way to put it anywhere in my house. And I probably never will. But the purpose of liftoff is to. teach you the fundamental weight lifting exercises that you can do with either your own body weight or free weights that would basically allow you to eventually lift the 45 pound bar that is in a gym. And I'm talking about the big bar. Like if our listeners are never, never lifting weights,

I can't blame you. It's a very specific type of hobby to want to do. But it's like that really big one that you see in like power lifting competitions where they lift it over their head or they do like the deadlift where they're lifting it from the floor and using their entire body. And I didn't necessarily need the book, but I really like reading books like this because I'm always curious just what different people use to motivate them to do something that is really repetitious, which is exercise. And Casey Johnson has a lot of really great meditative explanations of how she's just always correcting her form. That's just how she thinks about it. Like even now, she can lift way more weight than I can or ever could even in my 20s.

She's always correcting her form and just kind of meditatively thinking about that as she lifts. And I think that's really cool. So I've been doing that and kind of getting back into that and remembering how good it feels to do body weight exercises and lifts that use your entire range of motion. It's very satisfying as an exercise. So if you're a listener who's never done that, liftoff is a really good beginner's guy. to getting into it, you don't have to get all the way to the end of lifting a 45-pound bar, let alone one that has plates on it. But that is what the eventual design of the book is for.

You can also just use it to learn, like, the basic exercises that are full-body exercises for lifting weights and are really useful for pretty much any person that wants to, like, get a little better at taking the cat litter inside or whatever heavy thing you're lifting in your day-to-day life that you wish were easier. for you. And so yeah, I recommend it. I'm really glad I got it and that I'm back on the, back on the train, getting stronger. Casey Johnson, Kataku split screen guest. Yeah. Yes. This was a surprise reveal for me. So Casey is an old, Casey is an old, a very old friend of mine. She used to write about games for a spell. She was at Arcechnica for a while. She was more of a

tech slash games writer. And I've known her since like, since I was, coming up in the in the beat. That's cool. And then a few years ago she got into weightlifting and started doing pivoting to that as her kind of her main beat and that's what she's been writing about since. But she came on when she was starting or maybe a year or two after she had started, Ask a Swolewoman or her kind of for her body weight lift or her weightlifting and and bodybuilding kind of advice routines and columns and stuff. And she came on and talked to us a little bit about that.

what was it, 2017, 2016? Wow, yeah. No, yeah, it was a while ago. It was cool. She was a great guess. Yeah. She's very awesome. Ask Usul Woman is great.

I feel like there's a lot of overlap there. Like if you are into games and getting better at a game, then you might actually really like weight lifting. Even if you don't think you would. And even if you're like, oh, I don't want to like pack on a bunch of body weight. Like, it's so nice to be able to lift that cat litter though. Just lift it with ease. Bring it inside so easily, pounds and pounds. It's really, really nice. Carrying in the groceries, like tons of bags at once, if that doesn't sell you what will.

Yeah, being strong. It's like getting power-ups at Sargon. It's exactly the same. So Kirk, why don't you go next? Nice. My one more thing is also about acquiring a new skill. So last time, two times ago, I don't know. Recently I talked about Kelsey McKinney essay about learning piano and mentioned that I'd been reading a book about learning music as an adult. And I finished that book. It's really good. I just wanted to shout it. out and recommend it to anybody who was interested in that Kelsey McKinney essay. And in this topic, the book is called Guitar Zero, the Science of Becoming Musical at Any Age. It's by Gary Marcus, who is a noted... Is that a guitar hero joke, by the way? It is because it was written in 2012 when more people would remember that. Gary Marcus is a cognitive psychologist. He's like a professor at NYU and kind of a big deal in the world of neurology and psychology. He actually writes about AI too.

He's, I think, pretty skeptical of AI and wants more regulation of it. He has a book called, it's like rebooting AI that's kind of about the rules for AI and how we should tackle that. I think he wrote that in 2019. So he's an interesting guy who I think writes about a lot of interesting things. This book is about how he actually played guitar hero, probably, I'm guessing, in 2007, 2008, and has never been musical at all. Like, he just could never count rhythm. He couldn't sing in tune. He could never just play music in any capacity, but he's always loved music and wished that he could.

And then he played Guitar Hero and he was like, oh my God, this is the first time in my life. I've ever done something musical successfully. Like I'm playing a song and Guitar Hero and it's rules. So then he set out to learn guitar. At the time, I think he was kind of in his late 30s, so like right around 40, and started learning and became fascinated, I think, by the process, the challenge, what it is that music. requires of your brain, especially the guitar and how weird and demanding it is to learn. And he then wound up writing this whole book where he goes and talks to all kinds of people, famous musicians. He talks to like Pat Mathini and much of other famous guitarists,

but also neurologists and people who understand the brain and understand language. There's a lot in there about language and how children learn language. He looks a lot at how children learn music and, you know, the way that it's so much easier for kids to learn music and to learn language as well, why that might be all the different parts of your brain that music requires you to use, whether there's like a talent, like what talent even means. It's a really, really interesting book, just if you're into this kind of thing, if anyone out there knows of Oliver Sacks or has read his book, Musicophilia, which is similar. Oliver Sacks, of course, a neurologist who really got into music in the brain as well.

It's like that. It's a little more approachable, but it is really a really fascinating book that I found super interesting. I've become really interested in this subject because some of my friends and people I know are adults who are learning music. I hear from strong songs listeners all the time who get inspired, you know, listening to that show and are like, all right, I'm finally going to do it. I'm going to learn guitar. Or pick up the guitar that I put down, you know, when I was younger, which is probably the coolest thing that's ever happened because of strong songs. Like, it always makes me really happy. And of course, I've been really getting serious about guitar over the last couple of years.

And even though I'm coming at it from a different place, because of course, I've had a lot of musical training, I still can really relate to that feeling of forcing your brain to just build these new connections and this new gray matter that can handle this bizarre thing that is the guitar fretboard in particular, because the fretboard is so this strange math equation of sort of recursive strings that don't really quite follow a pattern. So anyways, it was really, really fun for me to read it in particular. And I think he's a great writer and has a lot of fun just tackling his own process. So it's a great book.

I really recommend it. Guitar Zero, The Science of Becoming Musical at Any Age by Gary Marcus. So yeah, big recommendation for that one. Yeah, that sounds great. All right, Jason, hope your book is good. What is it? How'd you do? My Womber Thing is also a good book.

It's a book called Battle of Ink and Ice by Daryl Hartman. And it is set, it is a nonfiction reported book that is, set in the late 1800s slash early 1900s, and it's about two things, the ink and the ice. It's about the polar exploration of that era and this battle between Robert Piri and Frederick Cook, who are both explorers from America, who both claim they've discovered and they were first to discover the North Pole. And it's about at the same time, the ink is the newspaper battle of the era between the New York Times and the New York Herald.

and each of them are kind of run by these fascinating characters. The Herald especially is run by this guy named James Gordon Bennett Jr., who is this debauchorous, like, playboy, fascinating dude who goes into exile in Paris and has all such an interesting anecdote surrounding him. And what's really interesting is that this is a very different time for the newspaper business. This is an era where, like, newspapers are unafraid to just, like, post fiction and make things up and do these super splashy. I mean, if you think clickbait is bad in the modern era,

like this is really out of control, crazy stuff, the stuff that would be printed in this era. This is where the term yellow journalism comes from. And there's an interesting kind of, there's an interesting anecdote in the newspaper sections of this book about that term, especially, and where it came from. It came from this kind of two newspapers, both printing the story.

I'll leave the specifics to this. the book, but it's really interesting. And it's also about William Randolph Hearst and his empire and Joseph Pulitzer and his empire and a lot of really interesting news moguls of the time in their battles. And so the book is structured in kind of, it's a confusing structure in some ways. It bounces around a lot between the newspaper stories and the polar exploration stories. But fundamentally, it's about this kind of who's going to be the last surviving, who's going to be the victor of the newspaper wars and who's going to be the polar. explorer that actually reached the North Pole first. And so there is some interesting narrative

tension there. And it's really well written. It's a very well-constructed story. It doesn't try to, um, there isn't any purple prose or embellished text the way that the newspapers of the Times might have included. It's a very straightforward telling, which I appreciate there isn't like made up dialogue or anything like that. And I always, I always appreciate that with a non-fiction book. As we well know. Yes. Yes. Yes. And so I'm really enjoying it, despite what can be a kind of confusing structure to follow, it's a really good story and really interesting. If you care at all about the newspaper business,

and even if you don't, I mean, I think it's pretty interesting. There's some good kind of details about exploring the North Pole and those kind of frigid Arctic adventures that explorers would go on, scientists would go on back then, and that stuff is really interesting. And there's a lot of foreshadowing for our modern era, some stuff about fake news and that, term being popularized at the time and a lot of other kind of interesting little nuggets that kept pepperin in throughout the story. So yeah, I'm really enjoying it. Also, the first book that I'm reading

and my new Kindle that I mentioned last week, which by the way, I paid the $20 to just get rid of the ads. My life is finally in peace. They did get me. But yeah, really good book. It's called Battle of Ink and Ice. Came out last year by Daryl Hartman. And yeah, I recommend it for sure. Wow. Sounds like two books that I need to read. read. Great. Great. I just have to finish Prince of Persia. That's what we're here to do. Recommend books to people. Which is going to be easy. I'm going to wrap it up real quick right after this. It's going to be the easiest fight of my life. And with that, it's been another episode of Triple Click, folks. Yeah. We did it again. This was fun. Yeah. See you both 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 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 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. A worker-owned network Of artist-owned shows Supported directly by you