Triple Click - Secrets In Video Games

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

Whip out your metal detector and start combing the desert — it's time to talk about secrets. Jason, Kirk, and Maddy talk about the hunt for secrets in two recent video games, Elden Ring and Tunic, and some of their favorite secrets in modern times. And in true Triple Click fashion, they can't help but come up with some taxonomical categories.One More Thing: Kirk: Our Flag Means DeathMaddy: TunicJason: The DropoutLinks:Jason and Kirk’s old podcast about the Secret Hunters of Destiny: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0HMm97rD7D6eIxdF9N6cFcEd Fries’ conversation with Ron Milner about the easter egg he added to 1977’s Starship 1: https://edfries.wordpress.com/2017/03/22/chasing-the-first-arcade-easter-egg/ 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

I've got a secret, and it's a pretty good one. You say you want me to tell you my secret? I can't tell you my secret, and it wouldn't be a secret at all. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week we're talking about secrets and video games and how much fun they can be, focusing on secret-filled games like Tunic, Destiny, Mario, Zelda, and something called Ildine Ryeh. Never heard of it. I'm Kirk Hamilton.

I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Dreyer. Hello. It's us. Look at who it is. It's episode 99. What a tease. It's not quite 100. We're one away. This is as many rupees as we can't get it anymore. I don't know until we get the special wallet. Yeah, we got it. We have a whole week to get the special wallet. I hope we managed to get it in time or else we're going to be stuck at 99.

In time for Max Fun Drive, we needed. That's a very special wallet. Can I say, I think that 99 is actually a cooler number than 100. I think it's a better number. Spoken like a salesperson who decides prices for everything, hardware and video games and stuff. Are you the type of person who's like, oh, this Steam Deck actually calls me 639-99 instead of $640? That was always a thing. Do you remember that was always kind of a thing when we'd be talking about how much something cost and you just want to round it up? I noticed this when I'm reading video game blogs. That was always my bugbearer.

I was like, let's just fucking round them up. Just say how much it actually costs. It's $650. It is not $649. Yeah, I don't think any of us are in favor of including the 99. But it's a form of pedantry we could get into it any time. It does sound fun. So you're saying we should round up this episode and just to $200.

This is basically 100. Well, I guess, no, because if that's true then, right, because I do think that 99 is a cooler number than 100. Just because, like, you know, you party like it's 1999. You don't party like it's 2000, you know? It was Y2K. That was a bad thing. But Prince wanted to party like it was 1999.

So 99 is better. But 2000 was the Willenium. And the Willenium is now holds a special place in our heart. Well, I mean, I don't know. Does the Willenium still hold the same special place in our heart? I think so. I feel like the Willenium has been proven to be something we'll never expect. That's true.

That's true. It really has. I think not predict personally. It really has. Well, if you want to become a member and support Triple Click, it doesn't cost $499. It costs $5. We round it up for you. That's true.

We did round it up for you. We keep it nice and clean. And it helps us make this show. If you want to be a member, that would be very cool. You can support us and maximum fund by becoming a maximum fund member for $5 or $10 or more, you know. But it starts at five. And if you pay that little $5 per month, you get bonus episodes of Triple Click every month, including I think our next one is going to be in a couple of weeks.

And it's going to be about Horizon Forbidden West, a game that we have now all four. finished and are very excited to talk about. But there are all kinds of bonus episodes in our backlog that you can listen to. And you'll also be helping us make this show. So maximum fun. org slash join is where you go to do that. Not $499, not $9.99. We keep it simple for the people. That's right. Just a regular $5. Before we get to our topic, I feel like we should also say we have a live show next week. Somebody should say it. We do. It's pretty exciting. And I will. If Kirk won't, I will. I refuse. So it's all you know. Yeah. Kirk has been boycotting. this, he decided that he's on strike

and he doesn't want to say anything. So Maddie, it's a good thing you stepped up. Do you think we could build a whole false narrative that I'm really opposed to doing a live show? Kirk doesn't want to do it because he's afraid of how he'll look. Raw, uncut, uncensored. People think Kirk is like the friendly one. Like, oh, you can hear him smiling even when he talks, but you don't know. Rules with an iron fist.

No, I mostly record. I have my hood up. I'm sort of grimacing all the time. His eyes glowing like a Sith lord. Yeah. It's wild. out here. You do look like Grimmis, not like the facial expression, like the character from McDonald's. Like a big, like a big purple man.

Yeah, sure. Weird energy today. I like it, though. Anyway, we have a live show next week. It's at 6pm. E.T. Eastern time. That is when we are doing it.

On Tuesday. I guess I should have said it was on Tuesday. People don't know when we record. Tuesday next week. It really, all the vital information. It was Tuesday, April 12th, 6 p.m. Eastern. in 3 p.m. Pacific, we will be doing a live show on Twitch. Some people would deliver the information in that order.

I like to go 6 p.m. E.D. Tuesday. Maddie's an artist. You know, she's a creative soul. An artis. Maybe we should have, we should have done like an ARG and hidden the info, made it secret because that's what today's episode is all about. It's about secrets in video games. So I feel like really the existence of next week's live show should be a secret. That way we'll have two stream.

Two viewers on Twitch, it'll be hilarious. Which is what we want. We only want it to be exclusive. We want as few people as possible. Really cool. The new hotness is Twitch live streams with only a couple people who know when and where they are. But you, listener, you're going to be there.

Well, it's like when a cool band, instead of like playing Madison Square Garden or whatever, they're like hidden show like at this little like whatever and they don't tell anyone where it's going to be some store. It's funny because now I'm thinking about, well, yeah, if we did this, Secret show, then a lot of people wouldn't see it. But then that's what would make it cool. And I'm actually like starting to have real thoughts about the topic we're going to be talking about

because that is sort of a going concern with Secrets and Vinerians. Yeah, that's precisely correct. Yeah, it is cool. Well, so yeah, I think this is, okay, so today we're going to be talking about Secrets and Veneerian. And so I think are a fascinating topic. We've been playing, the three of us have all been playing a lot of Eldron Ring, obviously, and also a new game called Tunic, which is an indie game that we will talk about more in a couple of weeks. But what both of those games have in common is that they're both very dependent on secrets. As are many of video games, to be honest, but I think those two in particular are just part of the Zike guys today. I think secrets are super fascinating, especially when a game developer adds secrets to their game that they know that some players will never find,

sort of like our upcoming Twitch stream, which some viewers, some listeners will never find it. We've actually been doing them for weeks, and we just never told them. So secrets are really interesting. And I think I just want to draw a couple of definitions here because there's some, there's a lot of like language we use to describe secrets. There's mysteries or Easter eggs. Wouldn't be a triple click if we didn't have a taxonomy? If we didn't have taxonomy.

We do. And we have some categories for secrets too. We'll get into that a little bit later. But for now I just want to say, I think the difference between a secret and a mystery and an Easter egg is so a secret is something you can finish a game without finding, whereas a mystery is something that is unveiled over the course of the game. You can't like, you will learn a game's. by finishing it. Otherwise, it's a secret. An Easter egg is a type of secret where there's no reward. The

reward is just the discovery of it. So like, hey, look, there's an Easter egg that is, I don't know, to pick Eldon Ring, for example, there's a dude in Eldon Ring who has the Salare son from Dark Souls on his outfit. That's an Easter egg where it's like, oh, okay, cool, that's a fun little thing I just spotted. Or like, I don't know, destiny having a halo helmet in it somewhere, or something like that. Can I offer maybe this additional piece of information for the Easter egg definition? And that is that to me at least an Easter egg tends to be a thing from another thing. Like the Master Chief Helmet in Halo. It's come to mean that. I don't think it always did, but it seems as though it nearly always means that now. Not always. Okay. I would argue that yeah, either I just mean socially. That's how

people use the term. It could be a hidden message from the developers, like a secret that's just like, Hey, hello, you found us. Like, thanks for finding this thing. Well, like an adventure, right? The first video game Easter egg is the developer putting his name in the game. Exactly. Yeah, that's the type of thing. Like something, some fun little message.

Bing! Kirk here with a little bit of a historical addition that I wanted to make. So I was referring to Warren Robinette who made Adventure, the 1979 Atari game where he put his name into it commonly held as the first video game Easter egg. But as it turns out, I was double checking myself while editing the episode. in a 1977 Atari game, Starship 1, the engineer Ron Milner put in a little secret where you could enter a code and get 10 lives and it would say, hi, Ron, when you did it. And that was 1977. So two years before adventure, which makes it possibly the first Easter egg.

Goes to show, you really never can say that something was the first when it comes to video games. All right, back to the show. Bing! But anyway, a secret, I think what really categorizes the secret is that you'll find it, you'll think, oh, this is cool, or you'll think, oh, this is. isn't cool. And you'll get some sort of reward out of it in the game. I think that's kind of part of the definition of a secret. So that said, let's talk about some secrets in video games. I mean, do you guys have any that like come to mind as like your favorite secrets that you've found in a video game or you've learned about in a video game? Oh, sure. Like from my childhood,

the fact that you could find invisible blocks in Mario and that sometimes they would give you cool rewards was just a hugely important thing to me and my sister playing Mario games growing up. Like one or the other of us would discover it, would have bragging rights for whatever period of time elapsed before the other one discovered something else cool. And it was just awesome. And you would jump around wildly hoping to discover something hidden in a Mario game. It was the coolest possible thing. Would I do that as an adult? I don't know.

I think the way I'm playing tunic betrays that maybe I do and I would because I still get really freaking pumped every time I hadn't find a hidden ladder in tunic. So I think I am tapping back into whatever sensation that is of finding something that was left there for me to discover but has been purposefully made invisible and I just have to trip into it. I do really still love that feeling. Yeah, that kind of secret from when I was a kid, you know, I didn't own a lot of game console, so I'd go to my friend's houses and they would know about things like invisible platforms in Mario, you know, hidden areas in Zelda. and whenever they'd show me,

I presume they were learning about them from Nintendo Power or something, but it always felt pretty wild to me because the game doesn't really tell you about those secrets, which is a kind of a distinction, right? Where there are secrets in Eldon Ring that the game kind of does tell you about

if you go talk to everybody, or in Tunic. Tunic has this whole complex, built-in way of explaining things to you that we'll probably talk about more in detail in a moment. But in those older games, it's just this feeling of,

oh, man, so just at any moment in any part of this game, there could just be a secret thing hidden. That always felt a little bit overwhelming to me, actually, as someone who didn't have the console or the time. It's called trying to sell you the strategy guide. Trying to get you to pay to call the Nintendo Tiff hotline. It's interesting. I actually think that, like, that sort of thing, whether it's Mario's hidden blocks or other more esoteric things, like in Super Mario Brothers 3 in level, I think it's 1-2 or 1-3. if you duck while standing under on top of a certain white block for five seconds,

you will fall beneath the scene, like behind the scenery and you can run to go get a hidden warp whistle. That sort of thing is so esoteric and like impossible to know unless you have a guide, unless someone tells you that it almost feels like it would be considered bad game design today. Or maybe it would, at the very least, frustrating. Well, that, what you describe, I mean, you've sort of delineated in this list of secrets that we're to get to that some secrets are like that. Like you need a strategy guide. No one would ever just happen to be ducking sitting on top of that block for five seconds or however long it is. That's absurd to imagine. But my sister and I did not have access to strategy guides. So when we found secrets,

we truly were just accidentally finding hidden blocks or platforms because we didn't have that many video games. So we would just play Mario over and over. Okay. So what I was also going to say is that bad design is very much a subjective thing because if you're a young kid like you and your sister were and you somehow stumbled upon this one that like ducking for long enough in this one place, if you somehow to stumble on that, your mind would be friggin' blown like your head would explode

if you organically stumbled upon something that arcane. And same with like I wrote down here on my notes that emoed in Bloodborn. I brought this up a few weeks ago, how like basically you do this random emo just a head full of eyes in Bloodborn and you get some item. And while that, like nobody would ever think to do that, if you happen to be the one in a million player to think to do it

and you get something as a result of that, again, your head just explodes. And you're like, oh my God, I can't believe I found this. And then what's so cool, of course, which we've discussed many times related to Eldon Ring and From Games, is that there is the one person who figures out how to do that, but they have a mechanism to leave a note for you that can then tell you to do it and try gestures. kind of thing that you'll see where there's a secret in Eldon Ring in the very final area of that game,

I won't spoil. But it is like there's a whole huge secret, really cool thing that I'm sure you could look up and, you know, there's all kinds of websites that I'll tell you where to go. But I didn't look it up and I was just exploring the final dungeon and followed notes over to an area. And then actually you have to do, it's kind of an emote kind of a thing. You have to do something specific. So I'm walking around. I've followed this path.

Follow the notes that are like, try down, you know. this year, you know, all the usual ways that they tell you through the notes in the game where to go. And I get down to this area and I'm on this platform and there's nothing there. And I'm like, there's never nothing there. There has to be something here. And I see one of the ghosts in that game, which when you're playing these games, you'll see these white ghosts if you're online that are the outlines of other players just sort of flitting through your game. It's a really cool part of these from games. And I see the ghost go and do the thing that I need to do to access the secret.

I have no idea if this was, you know, they're kind of nudging people in that. that way they're playing that ghost for people more often or, you know, more commonly or something. But I saw it and I was like, how did he do that? And I go over and there's a little prompt and I like do the thing and then I go and see the secret. So these days, you have it built into the games in these really elaborate, really cool ways that definitely didn't used to be the case. Well, so this is, that's what makes Eldon Ring so brilliant and what's such a design, like that social aspect, I guess that's the equivalent. It's the in-game equivalent of being at the playground with your friends and saying,

hey, did you try ducking down this thing? Except now, instead of just being able to do that and just being able to talk about it on Discord, you also have this in-game mechanic that is like these notes and those ghosts, which I think are such a brilliant way of doing it and what can really make, I think, can let the designers get away with more arcane secrets because they know that a lot of people will have these guides.

And like, you can stick hidden passages in random places knowing that there will be notes telling you, telling the player, hey, there's a hidden passage over here. So can we talk a little bit about Tunic? Can we sort of lay out for people what that game is and talk a little about it? Because it does some interesting stuff with this. Okay, I guess I'll describe it. I think I've played the least of the three of us.

I've played a few hours, though. This is a really cool game. It's a new indie game. It's a Zelda-like, I'd say, if you look at it, you would think it's kind of Zelda-ish, an isometric, you know, third-person action RPG. But the trick of it, the sort of hook, is that it doesn't really, there's almost a meta layer of the game because as you're exploring it,

you have no idea what does anything. And a lot of the in-game text, like the UI, is this other language. It's in these kind of ruins, these glyphs that you can't understand. But then sometimes things are written in English. So it'll be kind of a mix. So at first, I just found myself kind of

intuiting what I'm supposed to do because I've played one of these games before. So I'm like, okay, well, there's a drawing of my guy rolling, and then it shows me holding the A button to run. I'm like, okay, well, that means. that if I hold the A button to run, but it doesn't say hold the A button to run. It's like written in some gibberish. And then as you explore the game, you find pages from a manual that you pull up and can look at on your screen.

And then as you go farther into the game, you're getting more and more pages from the manual. Some of the manuals are written in that glyph language, but some is in English. And also they're like I was saying, there are these kind of, you know, images that you can use to deduce what they're talking about. And the manual is like a guide and it has maps to all the areas. It's sort of telling you everything. So it's this extra layer of secrecy, basically, where the game is saying, you don't know how to do this, you don't know how to do anything, but we're going to slowly piece it out for you.

You're playing a game within a game, right? And you're looking through the manual like you're playing an old Nintendo game. And even like you're playing an old, you know, like Japanese import of a Nintendo game where the manual is written in a language that you don't understand and you're having to use context clues to piece it out. So there's all these layers of mystery in the game as you play through it. So one of the really cool things about that is that by not telling you, what anything does, it leaves you that sense of like mystery and exploration and wanting to just

discover things organically to the point where like games that just prompt you and tell you exactly what can be done don't leave any mystery for you. And I think that's, that's one of the reasons Eldon Ring has been such a big success is that it never, it never tells you what exactly can or can't be done in this game and just leave so many things mysterious and leaves so much potential for you. And I think Tunic has that same sort of effect. Yeah, which can be very satisfying when you do figure it out. And I certainly had many moments in Tunic where I was like, oh, this object is actually very similar visually to this other object. So if I do this action that I know worked in the previous instance here, maybe it'll do something similar or something useful.

And then that would end up working. But then there would also be times where it would do absolutely nothing or I would just be like, this is a cool looking object. Maybe that matters or maybe it's just a cool looking object or piece of architecture. I don't really know. know. And then there would also be times where I would figure something out, but I'd be, it would be almost by accident and not in a good way, where I would be like, I never would have figured that out. I just happened to see the right thing at the right time. Like it took, I, okay, for example, maybe this is how the game is meant to be played. I don't know. But like, at one point, before I played the game, my boss at Polygon Chris Plant was talking to me about

the game and he was like, man, I only just figured out how to level up my weapons in this game. And it doesn't really make any sense. But anyway, and he just said that in passing. And that, like, stuck with me. And then when I was playing the game, I was like, there's going to be a way to level them up. But heck, if I know what it is and what could it possibly be? So I was, like, working backwards and just ended up figuring it out.

And I don't actually know if the game ever does tell you how to do that. I won't betray it to the listener. It does. There's a page in the manual that actually just found that told me how to do that, or at least how to upgrade my health and armor and that kind of thing. and your strength, which I assume, I mean, it does apply to your sword. But it's, I just kind of figured it out on my own because I was like, I know this is possible to do. But I'll just keep trying different stuff until I figure it out.

Which is kind of, that's a classic feeling, right? It's, I don't know. Yeah, it's good and bad. The feeling of like, I'm just going to brute force this. It's also like, I heard someone tell me you can do this thing in this video game. So I know it can be done. But, I mean, it's not exactly discovering a secret, although, Tunic, every single thing is a secret.

Like, learning how to level up is a secret. I think it kind of is. It's like a way of discovering a secret that's similar to how we would have to find secrets back in those older games where it's just like, I'm going to press every button, then I'm going to hold them down, then I'm going to press them all in combinations. I did that for a little while and I found a very important ability. It's a useful strategy. I should try that.

Just try every single thing. Yeah, try pressing every single button at the same time. And see if it does anything. You make a spreadsheet. You put some tick boxes. Yeah. I want to try calling the Nintendo hotline and see if they have some tips. You know, I'm surprised Tunic doesn't have a hotline because it does have that energy.

And I think that's both what's good and bad about Tunic. Like, it does very much feel like a game that is playing to the audience that enjoys that sensation of discovering stuff in a game that is purposefully obscured to you. But there are some puzzles in that game that I thought were, a little too far where it was like, oh, I figured out how to solve this, but it wasn't that fun. But the great news is you don't have to do all of it. You can actually defeat the game without solving every puzzle that I know because I have done that.

So there are optional puzzles, basically, is what I'm saying. Like you can 100% the game. And I think you can get a better ending. So I hear I haven't gotten it. But it's like there's, I don't know. I don't want to spoil you guys. I think, do you think that tunic is coming out at a particularly good time for this kind of game? Because, you know, Eldon Ring obviously is such a mysterious game and it's so successful and everyone's playing it.

And it seems like a lot of people are really discovering. Even as we discovered when we were talking about the widely adopted eco-tech system of categorizing open world games. More and more people are telling you about eco-tech. Everyone's talking about eco-tack. Everybody. But everyone's talking about mysteries. And we realized that, I think, when we were talking about open-world games, I was like, wow, you know, all the games that we like are the games. that have mystery. And I think, Jason, you even said of all the games I had listed, you're like,

the only ones I've finished are the ones that are built around mysteries. And it seems like this is a really good moment as people are just embracing that more. And I'm thinking of a lot of my favorite games from recent years. I mean, inscription is a good one from last year. I was thinking, I was going to say inscription. Right. It's like deep in its DNA is that, that old feeling. It's that, but it's also, inscription combines a few different things where it has certain kinds of puzzles where you just have to keep observing different things in the room in order to progress and be, at least in the first act I'm referring to, you have to observe the room here in and be like, which of these things adds up to anything, these meaningless objects and like you just talk to the right characters

and you figure it out, which almost to me, I mean, it's what Jason refers to as a mystery, because you have to figure it out in order to progress. Right, it's supposed to a secret, yeah, which feels more optional. But I feel like inscription and tunic are doing something similar with the idea of discovery which is sort of purposefully obscuring what's really going on and that discovery is a pleasure that people have or they hate it. I feel like it's a very loved or hated reactions that people have to this kind of thing

where either they're like, I hate that this game won't just tell me what's going on. And I want to emphasize that I'm very sympathetic to that mindset. And if you are that person, I feel for you. And I've certainly had that sensation in my life about some things. With Tunic, I had fun. But I can't understand someone downloading it and being like, are you serious?

like tell please tell me how to jump that's an extreme but inscription also doesn't tell you what's going on and you just have to figure it out on your own but it does no no no no no tunic well tunic doesn't okay so both games don't tell you what's going on but tunic also doesn't tell you how to play whereas inscription tells you very explicitly all everything you need to know about how to play i think the the the not knowing exactly how to play or what things do might it frustrate people off of tunic and I think Tunics really cool, and we'll talk about it more in a couple of weeks, but that's a total extreme on the Eco Tag scale. It's way, way on the O. But they're both subversions of expectations, though. They're both like taking an old game and evoking that idea of secrets as reflected in old

games and being like, what if we take that and modernize it in some way? I think that's an important similarity that the two games have is that they both break the fourth wall in different ways and are evoking the feeling of within the game, you are playing a game or interacting with, in the case of Tunic Emanuel, in the case of inscription, all kinds of stuff that goes, like you've installed the game on this computer, you're someone playing the game within the game.

You know, like that, they're kind of invoking the memory of what it felt like to play those more old-fashioned games in a really conscious way by putting it inside the game in a fourth wall-breaking way. I'm thinking about Fez. So Fez is like, what, early 2010s? And that game, it made a big impact.

I feel like people talked about it. it, but in a way, I mean, Tunic reminds me of Fez in a lot of ways, but Fez was Fez ahead of its time, or was it just sort of a parallel track where mysteries were still kind of happening, but at a lower boil? It just feels like the early 2010s were nowhere near as focused on secrets and mysteries, at least not in mainstream games. Fez is definitely ahead of its time. It's just the true crime situation. Everybody likes mysteries now. Everybody wants to solve. Everyone wants to be a detective now. That's what it is.

So I think this to me, all of these games and this is like, guide of mystery games, going all the way back to Outer Wilds, it almost feels like it's, it's kind of a counterculture, like a reaction, a very, very much the opposite reaction to this trend that we've seen in bigger games, which is the developers,

not wanting any content to be in the game or any, like, important content to be in the game that the player won't be able to see. You know, it's kind of, it's really kind of an anti-capitalist game design. It really sort of is. It's like we're not going to get maximum value out of this game. We're going to decide instead to like hide things and not

embrace that mindset. Yeah, and like maybe you don't see it. Well, but it's also, I mean, yes, that's certainly part of it and then the other part of it. And I'm not kidding, I'm being serious. That's really cool. Well, the other part of it, which I guess is also said to capitalism, is just that the games have gotten so much more expensive to make that every single piece of

content now costs millions. Right, there are all these incentives to be sure the players see every single thing. Right. So you want to make sure the players sees everything. But the result is exhausting sometimes. Like, Aloy constantly reminding me like, oh boy, I got to go back and talk to that person. And I'm like on my way to talk to them. Like literally walking over as Aloy and she's like, who I can't forget to talk to them.

Oh, I just can't forget. And I'm like, Jesus Christ, Aloy, calm down. Maddie, I just did a quest last night. Oh my God. I just finished a game last night. There's a point where literally the last line of a cut scene is like, all right, Aaloy, go to that tower. And then the first thing you see, it's like zooms back into playable mode. Aloi, Aloi says to herself, I should go see that tower.

It's literally the first thing. But then like two minutes later, she'll say it again. Even if you're on your way, it's like, come on. I got it. Like, I know. So those quest reminders can just be annoying just because they're sort of repetitive and unnecessary. The things that bug me in that game, and I always think of this as the Tomb Raider

effect because this became a real problem in the new Tomb Raider games, is when Aalai tells you the solution to a puzzle, which is actually like more directly related to secrets and mysteries. It's like anti-secret in every way. It's like there's no such thing as a secret. She's sitting there looking at the thing and she says, I need to pull that thing down so that I can weigh that door open. And I'm like, dude, I'm looking at the puzzle.

I'm figuring it out. Like, please stop telling me how to solve the mystery, especially because these are like optional little, those little Zelda puzzles that are in that game that are cool. And I'm like, you don't, I don't even need to be doing this. This isn't even like main path. You can just relax guys and let me fail if I'm going to fail and walk away and maybe come back later.

Or maybe you never come back. Maybe you miss it. And that's okay too. I mean, that's part of what makes it so exciting in a game that doesn't tell you everything. I mean, we, you know, we talk about Eldon Ring all the time. But part of what's so exciting about that sort of game is that tripping over something and feeling like you were the only person to discover it, even if it was actually designed so that you would trip over it, quote unquote, and almost everyone is going to find this cool little cave and this piece of lore on an item. It feels like you're the only one who found it because your character wasn't like, oh, I should go check. out that cave and you meet like six NPCs who are like, have you heard about that cave? Shit gets real crazy when you go in that cave. You know, and when, so I'm playing through Eldon Ring now on New Game Plus

and there really is a lot of stuff that I missed the first time. As much as that game does nudge you in all these different directions and it points you in, you know, certain ways and tells you how to check things out, there are so many things that I missed. And I'm finding that in particular I'm really enjoying the mystery that is

Eldon Ring's story. This was my one more thing the last week, so I already talked about this a little bit, but piecing together what's going on in the world, who's who, what happened here, just, it's cool for a couple of reasons. It's cool because it's all very non-linear and spread out, and you can totally miss things. I'm talking to Sorcerer Roger Ruggier, who I totally basically missed the first time through, and he explains all this stuff. Yeah, and he has a whole quest line that you can do for that. He explains the night of the black knives, which like tells you more about Rani and on and on and on. So it's cool because it's so spread out, but it's also cool because the narrative itself is still a mystery.

Like, even with every single piece of information that could possibly be made available to me, there are huge holes and things that you just have to fill in for yourself because it just doesn't lay it all out. So not only are they content to have the story be missable in the parts that they are giving to you, they're also happy to not even give you the whole story and make it so that you have to fill in the blanks. And I'm really finding, it's funny, everyone talks about lore videos like Vati Vidya, who's fantastic, He does great work.

But honestly, it's been so fun not watching those videos and trying to piece it together for myself. I've found it so rewarding because I'm doing the work on my own and I'm trying to solve the mystery on my own. And yeah, I'll never solve it. But I don't think you can solve it. And so it's kind of liberating in that way. Well, you're a lore master, Kirk. You're an Eldon, an Alden lore, Lord. I was kind of a lore master for Destiny, for Destiny, too.

Lord. So I was at GDC in San Francisco a couple weeks ago, a game developers conference. I went to a panel on Baldersgate 3, where Sven Vinkie, who is a friend of the show, he's been on her, he was on split screen a couple times back in the day. He was talking about early access and the panel was not about this, but he mentioned one thing that really stood out to me, which is he showed this heat map of a part of Baldur's Gate 3. The game is in early access right now. Obviously, it's not coming out for real for a while still until next year at the earliest. He was showing this heat map. And the heat map is like how many players have been to each location, right?

And he was talking about how like he, they use that as interesting data, not just to see like, okay, are the players finding the main path, but also is the secret area secret enough or is a two secret or like how do we find the balance here? And that really stood out to me because like they, Larry and with Divinity Origilsson 2 and other previous games and now Belder's Gate 3, they are one of the few developers that is really not afraid to just not let players, like to make stuff that players will never see that most players will never find because they believe in the value of secrets. And I think that's super cool. And I think it's really balsy today to make big budget games where like there's giant swaths

of content that might have cost you millions of dollars to make in man hours and voice acting and motion capture. But many of your players will never actually see it. And I just think that's so cool when curious players are rewarded, stuff like that. It's kind of a value proposition, right? Because you can assign a value to something that costs money to make that not everyone will see. Like it's a very simplistic way to think about making something that the only way that it can have any worth is if it is seen by the maximum number of people.

Because there's actually value in something having been a secret and to not everyone getting to see it. Like withholding from the people actually gives it value as well. So if you spent money making it, you're still giving it value by making it secret. I wish more people could think that way because it's like an actually logical way of thinking about value. An important way to put that is not, I wouldn't even say like withholding it from some players. I would say withholding it from the rushing player or the player who doesn't take the time to explore. Well, yeah, some players.

Those players, yeah. Well, I just think that's an important distinction. So it's not like this game is saying, we are intentionally like taking things away from you or withholding things from you. It's more that it's like a bonus if you choose to play the game in a curious way, as opposed to if you're just kind of playing normally. And then kind of the flip side of this is that if you're a parent like myself or you're another, if you're a player who doesn't have a lot of time to poke around and to really spend a lot of time gaming and you're like, man, I have one hour of gaming time a night. Like I'm not going to waste it poking around and leave my hour's session, feel like I'm wasting my, like feeling like I've wasted my time. then this sort of thing can be annoying for you. But then again

I don't know, I found that in my limited gaming time, the nights that I spent accomplishing nothing in Eldon Ring were even more rewarding than like playing some other shit that just guides me the whole time. It's also a nice thing about the way that game communities and the internet work now

because like Destiny is a great example. So Destiny was a game with so many secrets in it that became super wild. And we talked to Datto, the Disney YouTuber who's like the master of finding every single secret. We had him on split screen at least once, right, to talk to him about this stuff. But he just dedicates days and days.

Right, we did a whole thing about that. And then, of course, later secrets, even after the Vault of Glass, there was some banana stuff that like Outbreak Prime quests. It was just this totally crazy crowdsource thing. I could never do any of that. Like, I have plenty of time to play video games, but I still can't do it. But it was really fun to watch him do it and to watch his videos about it. You can go and kind of experience the secrets, the really high level stuff, even if you don't have the time for it, just like you can go watch Vati Vidia or some other lore explanation for a game. You know, Moss Bag's amazing Hollow Night lore explanation if you didn't have time to piece that all together for yourself.

Let's go through a couple of secret taxonomy, because I feel like we can't do an episode of triple click without doing a text. We need some more categories. Yeah, we got to break it down. So I want to do, I just want to fire off some types of secrets. some types of secrets. The subversive secret. So, like, you find a bunch of gravestones, and the first two are empty. And then the third one has something.

Oh, it's a subversive secret. You're not calling this rule of threes? Okay. Well, it's not necessarily rule of three. Sometimes it'll just be defined. Maybe the first four gravestones are empty. Well, or sometimes it's, like, different areas of the world and, like, one area has nothing, whatever. The arcane secret, we talked about that, esoteric stuff.

The obvious secret, you see that waterfall. Better be a chest behind it. And, in fact, I go so far as to say that the obvious secret. Sometimes if there isn't a secret there, players will get mad. Like, sometimes the obvious secret needs to be there. Though it can be a joke. I feel like in From games, sometimes you'll follow the path around the side of the cliff, and then you just get to the wall, and there's nothing there,

and there'll just be a note that says, like, didn't expect done or whatever, just done with a guy falling down, and that can be funny. Didn't expect disappointment, yeah. Yeah. The curious secret, like in Eldon Ring, if you get on top of one of those flame pillars that go in and out of the ground, and you can find a secret entrance there. The curious secret is basically, what would happen if I did this?

And sometimes it'll just lead to instant death. And then other times it'll lead to something cool. The mechanical secret, weather affects spell damage. Did you know that? Like other mechanical secrets, I think are always really interesting. Breath of the Wild is full of those. The real world secret, Kirkue, this is one that I added. Yeah, this is an area.

Yeah, this is a real world. Yeah, so the real world right is when it comes into the real world. I think Destiny did that at least once. Yeah, destiny did that. cash thing. Yeah. This one is rare. The teasing secret, this instance it's something that'll be in the sequel. Yeah. Good stuff.

The imaginary secret. This isn't actually intended to be a secret, but people are convinced it's real. Like that's seven chest in the vault of glass. That's why I added that is because... Mew under the truck or whatever. Is that what... Well, and like, yeah, or like bringing back Ereth in FF7. The rumor, the playground rumor, playground secret? Yes. Urban

Legends, basically. But I had to just mention the vault of glass in destiny because I know I mentioned it before, but we did do, Jason I made a whole scripted episode of a podcast about the secret hunters of that raid. We'll link it in the show notes. It's pretty good. Yeah, it was fun. It was a fun, sort of a fun experiment in making that kind of podcast.

But what was interesting was a lot of the things that those people were chasing after were illusory. Like they were things that Bungie was kind of egging them on and there were maybe some things you could find. But they weren't actually going to lead to some amazing, you know, double yallerhorn or something. Like they were just weird little remnants of different versions of the vault of glass. but people still had a lot of fun and put a lot of work and built a whole community around finding them because it was real to them.

So I guess maybe that raises the question of were the illusory in the first place. And what's the value in discovering a secret? I mean, I had that experience sometimes with Tunic and just with games in general where I'll do some complex thing and then the reward is not very interesting. But of course, that doesn't matter.

The point is not to get some cool item sometimes. The point is to have solved a puzzle to get a golden coin or whatever it is, whatever completely useless trash is at the end of solving a really sick puzzle. Like in Breath of the Wild, it's usually a corrox seed, but I'm usually so tickled with whatever it is that I just did or whatever mystery I solved. I'm like, cool, a corox seed, fine.

Well, I don't know. I actually disagree with this. No, I know you usually feel differently. I think that the reward should be. I actually found that a little frustrating about Breath of the Wild. Yeah, and I actually think that's where Eldon Ring is really triumphant and that the rewards aren't always necessarily good but they're always interesting and they're always new and unique in some way. I mean, a lot of times it's just a mushroom for some reason.

Weird number of times you just get a mushroom for your troubles. A lot of times for me it's just random ass spells that I can never use because I do know a magic built. But no, there's always chances, okay, chances are higher than not you're going to find something useless. But that one time where you find like a secret medallion that gets you on a lift or like, Like some of their super cool stuff. Like when I found the Claymore and Castle Moorne and I just danced around my room for 10 minutes.

Sure. I do the Claymore dance. That's what we call it. We claim more users. But the fact, I mean, the fact that Eldon Ring just says so many more systems and possibilities for rewards just opens it up to a lot of cool stuff. Well, it doesn't have weapons that fall apart. So even if you do find a cool weapon in Breath of the Wild that's going to break. I personally do not mind this, but I know that plenty of people including possibly Jason Schreier do.

No, I never minded that. The problem was that once you got the master sword, it didn't matter. That's true. That was the problem. Kind of the greatest weapon. That's true. Yeah, so that's secrets in video games. Secrets are super cool.

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Kirk, Maddie, it is time for one more thing. Maddie, take us away because you've been talking about your one more thing already for the past 40 minutes. That's true. I know. So I picked Tunic. We probably will talk about this game

a little more in a couple weeks. But I wanted to talk a little bit about the easy mode in Tunic because I think it's interesting. I love it, but go ahead. Yeah, because it rules, and people should just turn it on. So I kind of think that and I kind of don't. Tunic has very limited easy mode options,

but I guess I should say the reason why I'm even talking about this at all is because the combat in Tunic is not very good, in my opinion. It feels floaty to me, especially compared to other really precise isometric games like Hades is sort of the go-to example for practically everyone. You really know what you're hitting and when. Death Store is another more recent example where it feels really good to play. I haven't played Destor. I've just heard these comparisons bandied about. Played a lot of it and it's quite a bit tighter than Tunic.

Oh, yeah. And I mean, I also feel like the comparisons are a little unfair. Tunic has a significantly smaller team. It was made by just one guy for a long time. It's really hard to fine-tune combat. Hades had an early access release that didn't feel the same and they improved it over time. I mean, it's sort of apples and origins in some ways. And I am sympathetic to Tunic for not having, you know, pixel perfect 60 frames a second, totally sick, Dark Souls combat in isometric form. However, because it doesn't have that and because the game does require you to defeat a lot of bosses, I would recommend turning on the easy mode, which is called no fail.

and it really just makes it so that even when you run out of health, everything just keeps going. You just have zero health, and the game just allows you to continue on. There have only been a few times I've used this. I didn't use the stamina one at all. There's another setting that just allows you to have infinite stamina. But I didn't mind the stamina regent.

That didn't really bother me. The times when I used no fail would mainly be when I had conquered an area or felt like I'd gotten whatever I could emotionally get out of having combat conquered an area. and I just wanted to explore it, and I saw some cool areas, and I just wanted to check them out for a little bit longer without having to slash every frog in the throat a billion times

and collect my souls. I would just turn on no fail. And it doesn't change the game. It makes it feel like your role-playing a video game because you can never die and you still have to kill all the guys. Because once they're agro, they're really agro, which is another thing about this game that is a little tough, compared to Dark Souls, but you still have to kill them in order to go about your day.

But you don't really have to worry about it because you know they can't kill you. So you're just kind of chilling and you can just do whatever you want. So yeah, I recommend doing that. I've seen people say they played the entire game this way and enjoyed the heck out of it. I think that's great and totally valid. And the game is actually quite enjoyable this way, more so than you might think. Yeah, I think, I mean, the stamina mode is kind of cool because you can just infinitely block with your shield. which is a pretty big boost, but it's not as big of a boost as just being invincible.

I'm finding that I really like it, and I'm more forgiving of the fact that this game's combat isn't that great, because it's kind of, it's what we've been talking about on this whole episode. It's not really the game's aim to just be a really great combat exploration game. It's also doing this whole big puzzle mystery thing. And that layer is so interesting. And I would say that layer is the thing that makes the game stand apart. So there are totally times where I'm just exploring and I'm like, man, it's partly that I just played 100 whatever hours of Eldon Ring.

It's partly that I played so much Death's Door last year, which really does feel similar but just plays a lot better. And I'm like, I don't need this, man. Like, I don't need this, like, being chased around by super tough enemies and having to figure out all the parry timing. Like, I just don't care. I want to open the door and get to the next area. And it's really nice that it lets you just turn that on.

And, yeah, the game doesn't really suffer for it. I like that it doesn't affect anything. You can turn it on, turn it off. I would definitely recommend people play around with it. It's a nice feature. true. I recommend it too. So Maddie, you didn't find that it made things feel less satisfying for you at all? I mean, no. I would say the only issue I had would be that sometimes I would turn it off and forget that I'd turned it off or turn it on and forget that I turned it on and be like, wow, I'm killing it.

And then be like, wait, I still have no fail mode on or I think I was on no fail mode and then I would die. And I'd be like, damn it, no, I got to go get my souls. But other than that, I just kind of turned it on and off so willy-nilly that I was never like, oh boy, am I achieving something or not? Like, I just stopped thinking about it. At this point in my life, I'm like, whatever. I've got past plenty of hard things in Dark Souls and I believe in myself, you know, I don't, I don't need, I don't need Tunic to tell me whether or not I've achieved something in life. Yeah, it seems, it seems less about the self-confidence thing or validation thing and more about the tension of the game, like that the tension would be gone. It's weird because you don't really notice it in the moment because I don't know try it I mean yeah I'll play around with

I don't know why but it's there's just something about it where you're just like huh I just feel like I'm a little stronger than I was before and then in the moment you're like oh right it's because I don't have the ability to die but if you still have to actually play the game like you can't just walk by guys because they'll still harang you you know yeah it's for me it's just that like when a game is kind of gooey in the way that this game is like it just has this kind of weird wonky feeling in combat. I don't get that much. It never feels that rewarding to master it because it's very difficult to master it because it's just kind of so floppy. And so I'm like, I'm not really getting that feeling of like satisfaction of like a Sekiro fight where I've really mastered

just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, like that's satisfying. This is just always a little bit whatever. So I care a lot less when I turn it on or turn it off because that's not why I'm playing. Yeah, there's that too. It's not like I have a great run in tunic and I'm like, wow, I really nailed that one. It's more just I'm like, I guess I happen to step aside and press a healing button at the right time. I mean, there's so many little things about it that I, they're just slightly, slightly different from Dark Souls in ways that bother me because it's so similar to Dark Souls in other ways, like the fact that when you step away to chug an Estis Flask in Dark Souls, usually the enemies will almost like respect your honor in those moments. Like their animations

are slow enough that they'll sort of like allow you to do that or they'll purposefully aim at you. but even then you can see that that's happening. Whereas in Tunic, they have no respect, no respect whatsoever. It doesn't matter how far away you go. It's a little random. They're kind of just swinging. They either will or won't attack you. And it just, I don't know, there's something about the timing of it

that just always makes it feel just slightly unfair at various points and unfun. And whenever it's feeling unfun, you turn on the no fail mode. That's my rack. There's an answer to that. Kirk, what's your one more thing? My one more thing is a show that we finished a couple weeks ago that I want to tell more people about, because I feel like people are hearing about it, but I'm also not getting the sense, I feel like more people should watch it because it's really good. And it's, our flag means death.

This is a half-hour comedy. It's on HBO Max. It's the showrunner is David Jenkins, though it's also executive produced by Tycho Waititi, who is just living his best life, this guy. He's got, what, Reservation Dogs, a new Thor movie, he's producing what we do in the shadows. He's making so many cool things. I just want to say, this is a terrible name. I've forgotten it like 10 times. after you told me to watch it. Yeah, so I guess, and what we do in the shadows is also sort of a bad name. And it's very similar. At least it starts very similar.

So what this show is, is it is a pirate comedy. It's kind of broadly how I describe it. Historical pirate comedy. Yes. It is based on some characters. Yes, no, not modern day. It's 1700s, 18th century pirates like the characters that you may have met in Assassin's Creed for Black Flag. The two main characters are Reese Darby, who people probably know from Flight of the Concords,

though he also featured in Half Life Alex, which a very small percentage of our audience will know. He's really good in that group. And he's in what we do in the shadows for like a second. That's true. I mean, a lot of, yes, like Kristen Shawl and what's his name for Nick Kroll, turns up all the people who are on what we do in the shadows. Regular comedian cast. Yeah, they're kind of regular crew turn up on this show as well. So Reese Arby is playing Steed Bonnet, who is a real person, I believe as a character in AC.

for, and Tycho Waititi is playing Edward Teach, otherwise known as Blackbeard, the infamous pirate. And the show starts out, and it feels very similar to what we do in the shadows. It's not a mockumentary, so there's no cutaways to people talking to the camera. But it has that same goofy energy where it's like people who are bad and scary, but actually are really sweet and funny. Like, it's that same sort of energy. They're very goofy. His whole pirate crew, they're all terrible bumbling pirates, and he's the worst pirate of all.

But then what's really cool about this show is once Blackbeard turns up, it changes. The show shifts at about episode four, and it becomes a much more heartfelt, much more interesting, and much more good show, I think. Like, it was funny at first. I was enjoying it plenty. But man, first off, Tycho ATT is a great actor. I didn't really know how good he is. And like, they just, it's a wonderful story of this, like, friendship, this relationship between

these two men. And then really all of the supporting cast. past, they really are just all fleshed out in all these surprising and really cool ways. And it winds up being this like emotionally involved, wonderful story. I really can't recommend it enough. We finish it. And I was like, that was so good. I just, that wasn't at all what I was expecting when I went in. It was just so much better. Yeah, I loved it. We watched it very quickly. And I'm extremely sad that there isn't more. Yeah.

It ends on a little bit of a cliffhanger, I would say. It just as a warning, because we finish it and I was. sad that that was where I wanted more very badly. So I hope they get renewed for season two. I went through a phase of thinking pirates were very cool when I was a teenager. And I feel like I've really tapped back into that self from the past watching this show. And now I think being a pirate is is really cool, super dangerous and really cool. Between this and the new monkey island announcement, it's pirates are really back in. Pirates are cool again. Back in the Zike guys. So my one more thing is a show called The Dropout.

Kirk, I don't remember if this is your one more thing or if you just told us about this before. No, I just recommended it. I have all these shows I've been watching that I haven't made my one more thing because my one more thing keeps being Eldon Ring. Got it. So I will make it my one more thing. Nice. So this is a show telling the story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, a.k.a. the big fraud company that claimed it was going to be able to tell people's

like all sorts of health conditions just from a single drop of blood. And then it turned out all to be just a giant house of cards that collapsed. And so the dropout is this mini-series telling the story, all sorts of angles to it. So it's got Elizabeth Holmes and it's got, and she's played by Amanda Seafreed, Seyreed. And you got Sonny Balwani, who's played by Nevin Andrews, aka Sayid from Lost.

He's so good. Their kind of relationship is the core of the show. But it's also got really just a who's, two of cast members playing... Yeah, pretty stacked cast. Playing all sorts of other characters from like Stephen Fry to like William H. Macy to

the guy who played who played the dad on that 70 show, Kurt Wood Smith plays David Boyes, the lawyer, which is amazing. But anyway, it's really, really good, mostly because Amanda Seafreed is really good as Elizabeth Holmes and she just really like

captures this role. Amanda Seafreed, who I first knew, not from mean girls, kind of for mean girls, kind of for mean girls, but really from Veronica Mars, which she plays Lily Kane. Which she's also amazing on. The beating heart of Veronica Mars, really. Not only the beating heart of Veronica Mars, also dead

before the show starts. She is a ghost. She is a ghost in the entire series. But an amazing ghost. It's quite a ghost. I didn't, I had no, like, her acting chops, oh my goodness, I didn't know until watching this that she could really like, this is like an Emmy deserving performance as Elizabeth Holmes.

She really, she masters the voice, the mannerisms, character. She is like incredible in this role. Worth watching just for that. It's a really good show. It's really handled very well. Although I will say that I did find out that this show is different than, so the story was broken by a journalist named John Carereru, who wrote a book called Bad Blood that I really enjoyed, great book. And this is, even though John Carrero is portrayed in this show, this was made without his involvement and without the work of the book, even though they take a lot of their sourcing from the book. So there's another thing coming. I think it's like with Jennifer

Lawrence based on the book, which will be more of like the proper journalistic show, I suppose, or movie or whatever it winds up being, as opposed to this, which is more of an unauthorized. It's based on a podcast called The Dropout, but a lot of the reporting is based on John Correyrus. So worth noting that this isn't quite the official version of bad blood if you care about that sort of thing, but still very good. I will say that I listened to that podcast and really liked it a lot. I thought it was better than the HBO documentary. And I can't remember if he was, I think he wasn't involved with the podcast.

But, you know, it was his reporting, and they do give him credit for the reporting. Like, it is very clear that he was the one who broke the story. Yeah, well, he's part of the story also. And there's some interesting journalism stuff. Pretty, pretty accurate, I would say. The conversations with editors between him and his editor, I was like, this feels like, you know, I mean, it's a little dramatized, but it feels like a believable conversation about. sourcing. Amanda kept turning to me. I mean, like, is this realistic? Is this realistic? I was like, yeah, this, this and this. At one point, they're talking about sources who are speaking on

background in front of the entire newsroom. And I was like, they would not be loudly talking about names like this. But minor stuff like that. I mean, compared to inventing Anna, for example. Yes. No, definitely. No, it's very, very much a much more honorable portrayal journalism. But there is one point where they're in this meeting with the lawyers and the lawyers like are inadvertently give out some info and I paused it and I was like to Amanda like that is the best meeting that any journalist could have possibly before. I was saying the same thing to Emily. That's so funny. I was like those reporters are so happy right now. Those lawyers just gave them the story and then I unpause it and the editor and the reporter turned to each other and they're like, now we can go. Now we

can go. So yeah, it was that was a fun moment because that's a great scene just because the whole time the lawyers are yelling at the reporters and I'm saying they're thinking, this is such a mistake for these guys like they're blowing it and I think they know it. Oh, that's such a good Yeah, extremely good. And that's real. That's like based on what actually happened if you read the book. But anyway, I really recommend bad blood. And I also recommend the show, which is really, really good. And it's not quite over yet. I think the last episode air is this week. So looking forward to finishing that. The dropout. Really good show. All right, that is it for this week's episode. Thank you to all of you out there for listening. Don't forget. We will have our live stream next week, next Tuesday. If you miss the live stream, the episode will just be in your audio feed. as usual. But if you can, check us out. Catch us on Twitch, Tuesday, 6 p.m. Eastern. Link to the Twitch will be in the show notes and also we'll tweet it and stuff, posting in Discord. So yeah, look forward to that. It'll be fun one. It's going to be fun. I'll see both of you then.

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. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience. Audience supported.