Triple Click - Switch 2: Switch Harder

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

Nintendo officially announced the Switch 2 last week, and there's oh so much to discuss. Jason, Maddy, and Kirk give their initial impressions of Nintendo's next console, talk about how it will fit into a post-Steam Deck world, and debate whether Mario Kart is any good. Then they talk about PlayStation's failing live-service initiative. Plus: a bonus Burning Question!One More Thing:Kirk: Trap (dir. M. Night Shaymalan)Maddy: Building Outside the Lines (HGTV)Jason: The Puzzle Maker: Cebba’s Odyssey (Steam)LINKS:Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

You know, everyone's talking about this Switch 2, but not enough people are talking about Switch to the Poles. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. This week we are talking about Nintendo's new console. What is the deal with that thing? Is it really just a Switch, but bigger and better or worse? I'm Jason Shrier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers.

Hello. Hello. Welcome back to another. episode. I hope you two are doing just fine on this cold winter day. Yeah. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Just ignoring

everything else. Yeah, I'm doing great. Me, like me personally. Ignoring the rest of the world. Yeah, you personally. You're doing. Laser focused on the weather and the screen in front of me. Like, if we're just talking about me and like how I am, then yeah, everything's good. Well, video games are pretty cool. We should talk about them. They sure are. Yeah. Yeah, they're cool.

If you, if you too like getting a distraction from all of this and listening to us talk about video games every week, then you should become a member of maximum fun, the network on which our podcast is on, on which our podcast is on, on which our podcast lives. You're a writer, not an editor. It's fun. I'll pass that to Kirk, and Kirk will handle making that into something coherent. See, this is why we need to, we need money because Kirk, we have to pay Kirk to edit our words into coherence.

Yeah, because Kirk normally edits all of our words, like the order of them in every episode. He's really meticulously. Every episode takes four months. I have to take the extra time to take Jason's mistakes and like loop them over and over and over. So people really hear them a bunch of time. Well, that's, yes, that's the bonus content you'll get. And speaking of bonus content, we have a lot of cool stuff that you'll get if you become a member, including a fresh, hot take, beans cast, aka spoiler cast, on metaphor refuntazia.

which the three of us have recorded and will be up shortly for bonus feed subscribers for members of the show. And you also get to help make the show possible because we don't have ads. We just are able to do this because of all you find folks out there. So to those of you who are already members, thank you very much. And if you are not, it is never too late to join. Go to maximum fun.org slash join and you too can become a member. Okay, before we get started with today's main topic, I have a little bonus treat for you guys. which is that we got a question for last weeks that I wanted to do for last week's burning questions episode, but didn't get to for reasons that don't make sense in a second.

So let me read out the question, and then I will explain the deal. So this is a question from Dan, and Dan says, hi, y'all, why do you, so many modern games include sections where you slide down a slope? Whether it's Jedi Fallen Order, Final Fantasy 16, or Dragon Age the Veilgard, I feel like my character is always sliding down. down a gravelly slope. Is it just to hide a loading screen or is it something else? Thanks, Dan. And you two were wondering about this too, right? Yeah.

Like what's with all this slope sliding? None of us had the answer. But it's true. It's also, it like requires a whole bespoke animation and you like sliding down. So it seems like a he has a left. So I texted a game developer who worked on the Jedi games and asked him, hey, what's the deal with slopes? And he was very, very graciously gave some time. time to answer this question. So this is from Justin Perez, a designer formerly at Respond,

now at Giant's School, and he gave me permission to quote him and use his name. And he says, I'm going to read you a few of his texts. He says, it's primarily a more interactive, action-driven version of a one-way door. Speaking for Jedi specifically, though I'm pretty confident it would apply to other examples as well, it was somewhere we didn't want you to go back, we didn't want you to be able to go back the way you came. It was also, also another way to break up the standard cadence of walk, run, jump actions and a change up to mix into the platforming gameplay. It feels good to mix and match traversal moves and a slide, just like Wall Run was a useful tool to create opportunities to chain them together. In the context of Dan's

question, though, mainly the one-way thing, and also regarding the modern games piece of the question, it's probably also because we actually don't need the same loading screens we used to, hidden in or otherwise. So a fast-moving slide is a way for us to push you quickly into the next section where we used to just have to make you wait to load that next chunk of the level in. Now it's already ready for you to go to immediately. That's really cool. It makes sense. Kind of the opposite. The opposite of the door. Yeah, that does make sense. Because you are seeing where you're going. So, of course, it's there when you get there and it feels like you're in motion. I mean, I get it. I didn't really think about the fact that it is also a one.

one-way door. Of course, you can't go back up. Well, that's the thing. It's like one of those things where you see behind the curtain. It's like, oh, games are just constantly manipulating you. It's like, oh, we want you to be funneled into this one area and you can't go back. So this is how we're going to do it. And you don't think about it because it's a cool fly. Yeah. Interesting, right? So yeah, so this, I had to wait for it. He didn't respond to me until after we recorded last week's episode, which is why we didn't get to that. But here we go. So thanks to Dan for asking the question and thanks to Justin Perez for answering it. Now let's get on

to the show. Last week Kirk won a prediction when Nintendo announced the Switch 2. Nintendo opened their announcement by saying congratulations. Kirk Hamilton is a triple click 5. Could you imagine it was like big confetti and it was like

Kirk this one's for you? It was a two and a half minute teaser trailer that showed off the new and approved switch model and promised more to come, much more to come on April 2nd. We saw a couple of things. There was a new Mario cart in there.

There were joycons that seemed to snap with magnets instead of those rails. It's bigger. It's got a, presumably it'll have better specs because it's been eight years since the since the switch came out. It's actually going to have worse specs. It's crazy. They're going to make it worse. It's bigger, but it's a bit.

It's worse. Worse than the Switch. And it's got a bunch of other things. I don't know. What did you two think of the Switch 2 reveal? Does it make you pumped for a new console? I mean, yeah, I can't help it. I enjoyed it a lot.

I watched it. I had a good time watching it. I also happen to really like Mario Kart games, by the way. And that's the only game they showed us in the reveal. And given the fact that the reveal was structured, kind of like a just, to hardware reveal. It really didn't seem like we were going to get any games shown off, very different structurally than the Switch 1 reveal that had a bunch of games, a bunch of examples

of people walking around town and going to roof deck parties playing the Switch. This was like, you know, blank background just looking at the device. So the fact that we got a Mario Kart reveal was exciting to me personally. But if you don't like Mario Kart, then I guess you might be somebody out there who's like, why isn't there a new Mario game or Animal Cross? I just say if you don't like Mario Kart? I mean, I don't know. Do these people exist? I don't, it's a great point, Kirk.

What am I saying? Everyone likes it. I'm not like a huge Mario Kart person. I'll play it and have fun playing it, but I wouldn't like, it was not something I would go to nor, like, I've had a friend over and they want to play it. Yeah, I'm neutral on Mario Kart. I don't know. So I had a good time watching it.

Bing. Kirk here editing the episode. And I know, I know there's a lot of people out there who don't like Mario Kart. That was just like a crack that I made. It was just kind of a joke. I definitely know that you're out there. I shouldn't make that kind of joke anymore. It just struck me as sort of funny in the moment.

Anyways, if you're out there and you don't like Mario Kart, I see you. I know that you exist. It's okay. Bing. Yeah, to your point, Maddie, it's interesting comparing that I rewatched the first one a few times and then I watched this one a few times. And it's really interesting making that comparison point because for the Switch 1, it had come out just after the Wii, which was kind of this weird hybrid console where there was a tablet attached to the console

and you could use the tablet to play games on the go, but only within the, like, a short radius of the, of the console. So you could take it to the bathroom, which is nice. But you can actually. And then so they, when they announced the switch, they really had to show what it was. And so that teaser trailer that they first announced for that was a really good selling point for it. It was like, okay, you instantly understood that this person was playing the new Zelda game.

Then they took their console on the go and then they brought it on an airplane. and played Skyrim and so on and so forth. With this one, they didn't need to do that. They just needed to communicate that this is just like a switch, except better and bigger. And they even stuck in a screen that was like, we'll play all of your old switch games, or most of them it said,

which I think is just like, the caveat here, I think is that it won't play like Labo and other things that require the very specific form of the first joycon, because these are new joycons. So I don't think you have to worry about like your old, I don't know, shovel night not being playable on the Switch too. But yeah, but all they had to communicate this time was, hey, it's a Switch, but more, but worse.

It's a Switch, but it sucks now. It's way worse. But Kirk, what did you think about it? Yeah, I mean, I'm excited for it. I'm excited to be excited about the Switch again. I think, you know, it's been a little while really since the Steam Deck came out, since I sort of just replaced the Switch as my go-to handheld for most games. games. It's been a while since I've been that excited about the Switch. I was excited about

some Switch games, you know, Tears of the Kingdom comes to mind as maybe the most recent one that really got me excited. But it's been a while since it felt like Nintendo was really in the game. And I think, you know, that's just due to the somewhat extended feeling weight for this new console. Like it's kind of felt like Nintendo was waiting too. I don't know if that was the case or not, but there was just that sense like, well, they've got a lot cooking, but they're waiting. And then, you know, even things like Echoes of Wisdom would come out and just actually not run perfectly on the switch. And there was just this feeling like, oh, these developers might be kind of bummed that it's coming out on the old hardware because they maybe prepped it for the new one. And so there's just been this feeling for a while that Nintendo is kind of in a holding position.

And now they will, you know, leave that holding position and get back into the game, I think, in a pretty exciting way. Or hopefully, knowing Nintendo in a pretty exciting way. So I'm excited for that. And I'm happy, I'm fine with them not making any huge changes. I really like the Switch. So fine for them to release a new one that's just more powerful. Yeah, it's funny. I feel the same way that I'm fine for them to just be like, hey, it's the Switch, but better.

But at the same time, a little part of me can't help but be disappointed that Nintendo hasn't come out with some big surprise. And maybe they're winning. There's something bizarre. Like we none of us understand at all, like a larger two or whatever. I mean, sometimes that stuff is fun. There are a few hints that they're, might be something like that. There's a mysterious button on the right joycon that was that the was shown in the trailer but didn't have a label. There are rumors on the internet that it's

like a C button and it has some sort of social features attached to it. But it was notably unmarked in the reveal trailer. And then the other big kind of quirky hardware rumor is that the joycons have these infrared sensors that can make them function like computer mice. And in fact, in the trailer, they hinted at that too, where like the controllers were kind of placed on a table, a surface of some sort, and moved around as if they were mice. So those seem to be the two quirky, innovative elements of this. And maybe that will be enough to like add a whole host of new cool ideas that the first switch didn't have. I think it might be. And also, yeah, I've seen some of the complaining about, you know, oh, this isn't Nintendo at their most inventive, you know,

people who love it when Nintendo comes out with a genuinely weird console with a bunch of new ideas. Though it is worth keeping in mind that Nintendo does really well when they do iteration, like the Super Nintendo, the Game Boy Advance. I would even maybe, to me, at least the 3DS kind of just feels like an iteration, even though I know it had the 3D. The 3D just wound up being such an inessential part of it. And it was mostly just doing what the DS did so well and that made the DS so popular, just in a slightly more powerful, you know,

but very similar kind of a system. So, like, I'm happy for Nintendo to do this. Like, you know, video games benefit from iteration in software and in hardware. And Nintendo is nothing, if not inventive, on the software side. There's also, you know, there's one little thing that I noticed about the Steam or the, about the Switch to that I don't know. I don't know what'll come of it, but it could open the door to a lot of really cool stuff, is that the system has a second USB port. Yes. And that actually opens the.

the door to a lot of really cool stuff to just using accessories. At the very least, you know, I could see them selling like a USBC headset that does audio and also has a microphone. So there's like integrated chat allowing for more online and maybe just a better integrated online experience than the switch one had, which was of course infamously terrible and you had to use the phone for or you had to like use the phone app for chat. It was totally. There's a separate app on your phone so you can play multiplayer talk to your friends. Now you can be charging the switch and also plug into it. if you're playing remotely. And who knows, they haven't shown the accessories for this,

but I could imagine maybe the new pro controller will have some kind of a plug in it that'll allow for that too. What if you could charge your iPhone on the switch too? Right. I mean, probably, right. That's what it's for. You're right. And then, you know, you go beyond that,

and it's like you can imagine Nintendo releasing all kinds of cool accessories. And you just picture things like, what's it called, RingFit Adventures? That game, which you've played that, right? Yes, I love that game. I played a ton of that, too. Yeah. Oh, and you played that too. So there's a lot they can do that's inventive outside of the console itself

needing to be some weird freak show that no one wanted. So I'm kind of, I'm excited about the possibilities there. Yeah, I'm with you, especially since the weird freak show element of the Switch 2, the mouse potential of the JoyCon is something that I think is completely unhinged and makes no sense at all. Like, I'm excited and love it in the sense that it's the most Nintendo idea ever, because I'm like, why would you do this? Why would I want that? Like, ergonomically, my living room is in no way set up for that and I have no plans for it to be at any point in the future. Just patently absurd. But I do love the idea just because I'm like, great, there's going to be some sort of bizarre functionality here that one specific switch game, like in a one-two switch or a we-sport situation, will launch with it. It will be amazing in that one game and then no one will ever use. it again because Everett will be like, why? Why does this exist? At the very least, it does strike me as

something that will be in one game at launch and then we'll never turn up again. That maybe not, only in that I can think of it as being good for aiming. For shooters, yeah, that's how I was about say. But this is what I'm saying ergonomically. Like, do you really want to play all of Metroid Prime Force sitting at a desk? Like, I mean, I'll do it, I guess. You could presumably, imagine like holding the switch with your left hand with that joycon plugged in and then your right one like sitting next to you you would just see kind of a surface next to you yeah you wouldn't need to be to death are they going to sell a surface that i put on my couch this is a good opportunity to remind everybody that jason likes to play switch games with the two joycon in separate hands oh my god that's right

down on down to the side jason jason games with his hands at his side on the couch with one joie con each hand Or at least you had mentioned playing some games. You have done nice. You guys are thinking of the Wii. That's what I did with the Wii. Oh, okay. Is that I kept them like in a weird position. I have a memory of you talking about the JoyCon.

Maybe with the Switch ones too, but that's all the, I play it so rarely on the TV. Like usually I'm playing it. Right. So, okay. So I want to get at the kind of the elephant in the room, which is that Kirk now has twice, including once accidentally mentioned the word steam deck. And I think that the thing about the Switch 2 that is like the biggest warning sign for Nintendo is that it's entering a way more crowded landscape that it created because of the Switch's success. So in 2017, the Switch right out the gate was a massive hit.

For multiple reasons, one was the hardware itself. Another was launching with one of the greatest games of all time and Breath of the Wild on it. So that helped sell some systems. And then Mario Cart shortly afterwards just like. set it on fire. But at that time, like, any time an indie game developer would announce a game, the first question would be, so when is it coming to Switch? And what would happen is in that first year of development, and I've done a little bit of reporting on this, there were some games that came out, some indie games and smaller games that came out that, like, became hugely successful on the Switch

that might not have otherwise, because there was such a massive, like, rabid fan base of Switch owners who wanted stuff to play on it. The Flame and the Flood was one of those games. Shubble Night wasn't Trouble Night. shovel night. Although shovel night had been popular before that. But yes, it was big. It was a Switch launch set up. I won Hollow Night, of course. Yeah, I was going to say Hollow Night. Which was successful, but then truly smash. Exactly. And that was 2018. So that was the second year of the Switch. So things have changed. Like now when an indie game gets announced, people are like, so how does it run on the Steam deck? Like, it's a very

different conversation. And the Steam deck, even though it doesn't offer the Nintendo library, the Nintendo First Party library, it does offer a lot of advantages that the Switch doesn't, including most pivotally that you can have your entire Steam library on there seamlessly and just go back and forth. And a lot of people have these kind of massive Steam libraries that they've been building up. And Steam, of course, has a whole lot of games that don't need to be separately ported to the switch in order to run on your Steam deck. So the Steam deck has a lot of big advantages. We've also seen Xbox and PlayStation are both reportedly, well, Xbox has said they're entering the handheld realm. PlayStation is reportedly re-entering the handheld realm.

Well, it's a different landscape. And while I think Nintendo can still find a lot of success because they still have Mario Kart and Animal Crossing and Zelda and so on and so forth, I don't think it's quite the same market where they can come out with this thing and everyone will just be hungry for stuff to play on it and buying it up every time it hits store shelves. I mean, just as an example, like from my own life, anecdotally, it used to be 2018, 2019 or so that like any time,

someone sent me a code, a developer was like, hey, I want you to cover your game. Can you check this out? I would be like, sure, send me a code on Switch. And now I'm always just like, no, send me a code on PC and I'll just like switch between my desktop and my Steam Deck. So I don't know. Granted, the Switch has sold 150 million units and the Steam Deck is only in the millions, possibly 10 million at this point. So way different install bases at this point. But like, still, it feels different than it did back then. What do you guys make of the landscape for? Nintendo right now. Yeah, I think what's really interesting about what you said is the fact that Nintendo created this. Like, Nintendo came up with this. And I remember when the switch was announced,

I was like, I don't really know if I want like a big weird handheld. Like, I don't really understand what this is. Meanwhile, I was like, all I want is a big weird handheld. Give me it. Yeah, me too. Okay, but then as soon as I had it in my hands and I understood like the full potential of what it can be, I was like, oh my God, this is exactly what I want, which is like always the Nintendo trick, right? Like they show you something in a commercial and you're like, that looks weird and I don't understand how it fits into my life. Like even seeing people at the rooftop Mario Kart party, I was like, I don't understand if that's really going to be me. I've never played a switch on a rooftop. I feel like I should. Anyway, it doesn't matter. It's, it is different now because I'm like,

well, I have multiple handhelds in my life. I can play any game I want on the handheld device of my choosing. I have PS5 remote play on my Steam deck. I can play Xbox games on my Steam deck with the XP Play app that I mentioned a few episodes back. It's extremely easy for me to do that now. Like, every game in my entire house that I own, I can play on a handheld device. So the Switch just doesn't feel unique anymore. And I don't know how many people feel that way or if that's like going to drive people to buy it or not. But it does seem relevant, especially given that the Switch 2 is purely an upgrade situation. Like if we leave aside the, the weird fun aspect of the mouse part of the joycon and like other, you know, C button reveals to come, that the draw of the switch to is like,

well, it's a more powerful switch. It's going to play Echoes of Wisdom or future Mario Kart with 24 racers or whatever you can imagine. It in a more, you know, it's going to be more possible to play these like high, high intensity video games on it. But is that enough to get people to buy it? I'm not sure. Especially if they are. already own a Switch. And the Switch is like one of the most best-selling consoles of all time. So people already have it. They have it. Not only that, but Nintendo hasn't yet run into the kind of the same massive wall that Sony and Microsoft both just ran into, which is that everybody can play Fortnite on their old console so they have no reason to upgrade. Nintendo hasn't at that point yet because the Switch came out in 2017.

Switch plays Fortnite, PS5, and Xbox Series did. They both came out in 2020. Neither has surpassed their predecessor in large part because people are just playing their old games on the PS4 and have no need to upgrade. And so if you own a Switch and you already have Mario Kart 8 and you're ready to have Fortnite and you're ready at Minecraft, do you really need to pay $450 or whatever it is to upgrade? Yeah. Yeah, I think it kind of goes both ways for Nintendo. Like the fact that the Switch 2 plays the same games that you already have,

have for the Switch 1 is kind of a nice incentive to upgrade whenever you decide to, because you can just play all those same games on the Switch 2, and then presumably any games that are only on the Switch 2, which will probably be the most exciting games. And then, to me at least, I don't know, it seems to me that the Switch is just so locked in with families and families with kids, that the Steam Deck doesn't really provide an alternative there. I mean, I'm really kind of just looking at my nieces and sort of the way that playing games, works for them, but, like, the idea of them playing games on a Steam deck is just, like, it's just not even a thing where, like...

No, you're right. You're right. Were they excited about the Switch 2? Like, do they know about it? We haven't talked about it, actually. I'm sure they are. I mean, they're excited about games in general, so I'm sure they are. So anyways, yeah, I think that there are a lot of families out there who are just like, oh, yeah, Switch 2. Sick. We'll get one for Christmas. Like, and it's just going to be, like, totally like, a done deal.

There's not going to be any, like, oh, well, PC gaming, et cetera, partly because, oh, we can just play all the games we already have. Plus, there's a new Mario or a new Mario card or whatever, and then whatever comes down the road. Like, Nintendo has been very good to a lot of those families. And that's just families. I think there are also just a lot of people out there who just play games on Switch and are like, yeah, I'll just buy the new one.

It plays all the games I already have, and it's more powerful. So that's a big advantage for them, despite, like you said, the fact that it's a more crowded field. And especially for, like, Capital G gamers or whatever, like the core market, there is some more competition now with the Steam Deck and the Rog Allies. and whatever all these other handhelds. The capital of G gamers

are the ones who are like who don't play games. They just post about that's true. Lowercase G gamers can use Steam Decks. We all have Steam Dex and we're lowercase G gamers. It's true. It's true. But still like the more intense audience that owns multiple consoles as opposed to somebody who's like, all I have is a Switch and I

only bought it for a Mario card or I only bought it for Animal Crossing, which represents I think a pretty sizable percentage of those millions of switch owners, which there's wrong with that. I think that makes perfect sense. And those people, I'm kind of being convinced by your argument, Kirk, that those people might just be like, well, yeah, of course I want the next Mario card. I bought this one so I could have that other Mario card. And now I'm going to get the next

one. But it's Nintendo. So they're probably going to put the new Mario cart on the Switch 1. No, no way. You don't think so? Oh, no, no, no. That would be new for them, though. Well, the whole point of this. They have put, like, even Breath of the Wild was on the Wii. Well, the new Mario card has like 24 racers or something. That's true. It's like a more advanced game. And Maddie, that's just because it was announced for Wii and they felt like they couldn't take it back.

That's true. The new Mario cart will be a switch to your exclusive. I can almost guarantee you of that. Okay. I think that it's worth keeping in mind that we're kind of talking in a vacuum here. And like Nintendo, for all we know has really been like loading it up. Right. And in April, it's just going to be like, bam, like new 3D Mario.

Like, bam, Mario Kart looks totally sick. Like three other things like Splatoon 4 coming next. year, like a bunch of other stuff and it's like, oh my God, like, this is so exciting. Plus a ton of third party games that run on it and it's going to be like, I think the same people that we're talking about who like just play games on Switch may well see that if that's the way that it goes and just be like, oh yeah, of course, obviously we'll just buy this, you know, when they have a bundle over the holidays. It's like it's an easy, easy decision.

Yeah, if you're a switch owner, maybe now you get to play Eldon Ring or like Red Dead Redemption too and stuff like that. Yeah, which would be pretty cool. Like that opens all those bigger games. Yeah, I mean, something that I think is really, really worth pointing out here and is a really big strength for Nintendo this time around is that everything about this is crystal clear. For all of the, and I've seen a lot of hot takes about like, oh, Nintendo is missing. It's like innovativeness, like innovation. Like there's no surprising and delighting here.

I will never forget sitting at E3 2011, I believe it was. sitting next to Kesa McDonald and we were at the Nintendo E3 presentation and they announced the Wii U and Reggie came up on stage and they showed off this weird thing and it said Wii U and Kesa turns to me and she's like

was that a new council or an accessory for the Wii and that was Nintendo's eternal problem. To this day I think most people don't even know that they released a console called the Wii U. With this, this is fun fact the first time in Nintendo's history that they've ever announced a new console that has like a at the end that is like a successive

release as opposed to like the era of new 3DS and 3DS light and new super nymphs Super Nintendo yeah Game Boy Advance was a little bit clearer at least but like they did some super confusing branding stuff this is very clear and

it will be very clear I imagine in April when they're like all of these games are for Switch 2 only you cannot play these on Switch 1 I think they will make that crystal clear because if they don't then like the selling point of this thing will be nil. Like they can't do what Sony did and do the whole cross-gen release strategy. And I think it's very doubtful that like the games they plan and

releasing aren't going to run on Switch 1. They won't be, switch one won't be powerful enough for it. This is all speculative by the way. This is not inside info, but this is. Yeah. I'm just saying that for reset era for when they make a threat about this. My sense is kind of that the Switch will still have a like fairly healthy life for several more years just because like Indies are going to keep releasing on it. Right? Like there will be a lot of people with a good incentive to just be like, well, a ton of people still have switches. I'm going to put this game out on Switch and Switch 2 and Steam and wherever else. Yeah, and hopefully it's easy for a game company to just be like, okay, we're just going to release this on the Switch ecosystem.

And then it'll kind of like it is on PlayStation where it's just kind of like it'll say, this is a PS5 version and this is a PS4 version, etc., etc. So hopefully that is all pretty seamless. But yeah, I mean, the brand identity of this thing, like from the beginning of that trailer, it was very clear like, you see that's, switch, yep, this is different. This is bigger. It's a new one. It says it has a two on the controller. It has a two on the system. It's like really trying to show you this thing is new. This is a new console. If you want to switch to, if you want to play a new part Mario Kart, you get a switch to. Yeah. And you make a good point in comparing it to the Wii U, which has really been something I've been thinking about this entire time, is how the Wii U is like the comparison point that I hope

this, I hope it isn't a comparison point. I hope we're looking at a Game Boy Advance situation, a Super Nintendo list goes on, pick your Nintendo iteration. That's obviously what I would prefer here is a console where I feel like it's an actual upgrade. It has a reason to exist. But I keep thinking about the Wii U because it's so recent and because it just felt like such an example of a notable failure. So recent. 13 years ago. I mean, it's like the most recent one before the switch itself. So It is recent enough in my memory anyway. But yeah, it is also an example of a thing where they were trying something that they hadn't fully baked yet with that tablet.

And at the time, again, I was like, I don't understand the point of this. And it never made sense until the Switch 1 came out. And then I was like, oh, that's what they were trying to do. I get it now. So the Wii was just like the weird one. And it's not going to be an expectation setting thing where we need to compare everything to that. Yeah. With each subsequent Nintendo console, it becomes clearer that the Wii is very much the outlier.

Most Nintendo systems are just a thing that plays games and a controller with buttons on the A-U's to play the games. Well, no, that's not true. I mean, the N64 came out and it was like cartridges when the rest of the industry was going to disks. And also, it had this controller with like three. Yes, but like compared to the Wii remote and the motion control. Sure. But every, every, I mean, the DS was like blue people, like everyone was like a touch screen. Like, what the hell?

Of course. Yes. You can get, I don't mean to say that they're all identical or anything. I just mean that like, by and large, Nintendo's at its best when you're just like playing games with a controller. Oh, sure. Some of those controllers are more similar than other ones. But like the Wii was just like dramatically different than pretty much any other Nintendo console when you zoom out to a certain distance. Sure.

The point I was making was just that a lot of them have been innovative in other ways. And again, I mean, in a few months, we could be talking about how, like, this weird mouse thing has really changed everything. And, like, who knows what kind of possibilities it will bring to the table. Miyamoto has some Mario Paint, too, and we're all in our minds are blown. Well, Mario Payne seems like a logical use for the mouse. I've seen that floated a lot. But every time somebody's like, Maddie, Metroid Prime 4 with the mouse, I'm like, I don't want to play that game with a freaking mouse. Like, I'm worried about my arm.

I played Metroid Hunters with the stylus. and that was pretty cool. Yeah. Okay. You never know. I mean, it's rare for a Nintendo game to come out and like it not to feel good in your hand. So like I think if they're doing a mouse, it'll probably, it'll probably work. It'll probably be pretty good.

You can imagine it for Mario Maker and also for like, you know, like Zelda Maker, like some of those other maker type games in addition to Mario Paint and all of the like more user-generated creative games that, yeah, a mouse could be incredibly useful. And there are just like a subset of Nintendo Sicko. who do amazing things in those games, giving those sickos the sicko tools they need, I am all in favor. Yeah, same.

Or like PC ports that are way better with a mouse, RTS games or like other kind of like, I don't know, SIV 7, that's probably going to be on that. They got to put out some type of gamer pillow. If they're going to make me play Siv 7 with that joycon, I need something. I got to do something on the side of the couch. I'm picturing, you remember the attachment for the 3DS

with the insane second like thumb wheel that you could stick on to it. Like they'll come out with some kind of lap thing that's like the licensed Nintendo mouse pad. Like a TV tray, like a licensed Nintendo TV tray, but instead of like eating my meal off of it, I'm playing Siv 7 on the switch too and I'm frantically clicking the joycon. I really am excited to feel it in my hands. He's like, that's the thing is like just actually touching it. And it's bigger, which I actually approve of as well. We haven't really talked about the size of it, but those joycons, the original ones,

always felt a little fiddly to me. So I'm also happy to see, like, those other ergonomic changes while I'm talking about ergonomics so much. They look more comfortable to my eye. I think they probably will be. The button to detach the joycons is a lot bigger now. I'm excited about that. Another rumor that's been going around is that there'll be Hall effect sticks for those

joysticks. I'm really hoping that's true to prevent JoyCon Drift, which has been kind of the bane of Nintendo's existence throughout the Switch 1 life cycle. So I'm just excited for like a very literal hardware upgrade here in terms of everything working better, having more longevity, feeling better in my hands. Like those joycons are little. And I have little hands. Maddie, did you ever play Mario Paint on the Super Nintendo?

Because it came with a mouse and... Oh, yeah, that's right. I never played it. That's amazing. That's a good sign for Mario Paint to come out. out then if there was a previous I'm so if there's like a Mario Pain 2 I'll I will play the hell

I'll play so many hours that game they have this like musical like conduction thing oh my God it's so good well and again for kids I mean man like my nieces will love that shit if they come out with a Mario Payne game for the switch like every kid is going to play that

like and that again like it's just such a great selling point for the console if that's what they do it's exciting so yeah we'll put a pin in this discussion because it's still so early. April 2nd is the Nintendo direct that they've said where they're going to talk more about this thing. And that's when we can expect, like, the real lowdown, the release date, the price, the launch lineup, like what teases they have for future games coming to this thing. That'll be really exciting.

So we'll count down the days until then. Real quick story before we move on to another quick topic, which is that last Wednesday, Do you remember there were all those rumors flying around like, oh, Nintendo Switch 2 is going to be revealed tomorrow, like on Thursday. So on Wednesday, I went into the city, and I was working out a coffee shop for a bit, and I kid you guys not. I'm sitting there at this kind of big table in Starbucks, and next to me, a group of teenage girls, three of them, sits down,

they pull out a switch, they prop it on the table, pull off the joycons, and start playing Mario Kart. Oh, my God. Like on the rooftop in that commercial. Like in the commercials. Was there a filming crew behind them? Were there red solo cups? And were they all like Benetton ad beautiful?

I was like, this is an omen. The switch do is definitely getting enough to learn. You were right. It was an omen. You were a part of an ARG, actually. I was Nintendo telling you something. I'm going to be in the next reveal trailer. Just in the background.

So real quick, we don't have a ton more time, but we should talk a little bit about the other big news from last week, which is that a website called Bloomberg. Barg? Blombard. I'm I saying that right? Blombargo. It's like a kind of like a substack thing. Yeah, it's a substack. It's a billionaire.

They're building it out, but it's... I think they're going to make it. Bloomberg News reported, some guy named Jason, I don't know, whatever, Bloomberg News reported that PlayStation canceled two more games, two more live service games from Sony Bend,

which was the developer behind Days Gone and the Socom games way back in the day, and also BluPoint, which is the development, behind the Demon Souls remake and the Shadow of the Colossus remake and was purchased by Sony a couple years ago. And Blue Point is especially noteworthy, I think, because for many years now, since Demon Souls, people have been theorizing and speculating about what they've been working on. And yes, as I reported last week, it turns out it's a live service game. This one was a god of war, live service game. The Sony Ben game was a new IP. But it's worth noting, PlayStation said,

2022 that they were going to release a dozen live service games by 2025. And I think they've released two, maybe. Does Destiny count? Hell Divers 2 they released. That was a hit. Concord. Concord they released. Did they, though?

Was pulled from stores after less than two weeks. And then they canceled a bunch, canceled naughty dogs, last of us online, canceled Spider-Man online, canceled Twisted Metal, canceled a London studio game. cancel these two. And they've announced a game called Fair Games with a dollar sign. They've announced Marathon. They've announced or hinted at the Horizon game from Gorilla Horizon Live Service,

which is different from the Horizon MMO that was made in Korea. That was just reportedly canceled this week. Two different projects. Horizon Online is actually made by Gorilla Games, the makers of Horizon. So that initiative has not worked out quite the way Sony. have hoped. Man, this is such a waste. Really just looking at this.

It really is. It's such an unbelievable waste. Like, I can't believe the magnitude of the fuck up here, honestly. Like, looking at it and thinking about it. Like, the amount of money wasted. The amount of people who threw themselves at projects that were canceled. And just thinking of the opportunity costs there, it's really mind-boggling for me. The number of different things that they could have been doing instead of this. And the only other thought I have looking at it is that this is one of those hindsight as 2020 kind of deals.

But as we've seen, you can't release a whole bunch of live service games because people only like play one or two of them. And so you reach market saturation to a certain point. And like, again, I am a saxophonist. I don't know about this kind of thing. I don't think this is hindsight in 2020. We've been saying that like we said this back then too, to be clear. Yeah, we did. Yeah.

I mean, it seemed evident at the time. But like we now are really seeing. that play out and it's like my god the it's the most colossal mistake it's it blows my mind so you know it's really the real shame here and the real colossal mistake is uh everything you said is

accurate but also the other part of that equation is that like many of these companies that Sony has had on live service games are single player studios their studios made up of people that's what's wild about it and so so not only is the opportunity cost of like oh they're not going to release something until the PS6

but it's also like it's like trying to fit a round peg into a square hole or vice versa. It's like taking these people who have all these experience working on single player games and making them do a multiplayer game, which almost never works out. Didn't work out with Anthem. Didn't work out with Suicide Squad. Didn't work out with Redfall. Like it almost never works out because when you're good at one thing, it's like you have a bunch of

guitar players. Yeah. You have a bunch of guitar players. You're like, hey, we're going to do a drum line. Sort of brass quintet. Yeah. God. It's such a mess.

It's very upsetting. And I mean, even just thinking about, it's hard to imagine how much money was poured into this. If you really add up all of the titles together. It is an unfathomable amount. And then to stack on top of that, the human cost of people working on these projects that they weren't suited for because they wanted to be making single player games or they were just specialized in that regardless of what they wanted to do, they had specialties. Like, it is actually unfathomable the size and scope of this. Yep. So that's cool.

Yeah. It's definitely, we don't know exactly how much money. I bet it was enough money to remake Bloodborn. Just saying, I bet it was enough money to do that. Just an idea. Get it on the Switch too, I say. Just throwing it out there. Could have done that maybe for small percentage of this money. I suspect there are other reasons that game has never been remade or ported or remastered. I'm just saying, just to put things in some sort of helpful context. But yeah, in BluePoint's case, you know what's crazy about the Blue Point case is that like they were, a studio that remade things and remade things very well and then got an opportunity to make a new game. But instead of kind of starting a little bit small and being like, hey, we've never made our own thing. We've never designed our own game. We don't have a ton of design experience at this studio. We've only made things more beautiful and redone them. Maybe we should start small and like do

something in a couple of years. It was like, no, we're going to do a live service thing. And they did. Most of them actually. Yeah, no, the next Fortnite. Yeah. Most of them actually worked on God of War, Ragnarok. So it's the last few years that they've been doing this other, this new thing. But it was clear, I think, to a lot of people on that team that it was never going to work out. Because when you have a bunch of single player people like assigned to a live service game, it almost never comes together because it's really, really hard to make a live service game at all, let alone if you haven't done it before.

Man, there's an argument to be made that Fortnite has single-handedly destroyed the video game industry. Through no fault exactly of its own. Just by being good and making everyone want to emulate it. By being good. Well, but it's not just that. Two ways. One is by making everyone want a copy of. The other is by taking players who would otherwise be buying new games every year and having them just play Fortnite. So it's kind of consuming like both the player base and the developer base into the Fortnite sphere.

Ford. Yeah. It's all just very sad. The story of PlayStation over the last few years. And if you think matter. We're now almost five years into the, not almost four, just after four, just over four years into the life cycle of the PS5. And at this point in the PS4 era, I feel like we have a lot more. Night and day. Night and day. This puts it in context, just the magnitude of the failure and all the games that we don't have as a result of this. Like the different and probably better games that we didn't get as a result. Yeah. But at least we have fair games coming. Yeah, I can't wait for fair games. Maybe it'll be great. It might be great.

That's the thing. Hopefully it will be. I feel like I keep thinking about that suicide squad story you did Jason and all the other kind of versions of it where the people who are actually making the game know it's not going to work. Like there needs to be some type of mechanism. I can't imagine what it would be because clearly getting lower people to communicate with leadership in a way that works for them is like one of the inherent difficulties of a corporate hierarchy no matter where it is located. but just thinking about those hundreds of people or thousands of people depending on which project we're talking about and all of them knowing this isn't working this isn't going to sell we already know this and then just having to continue to trudge down that doomed road is very overwhelming emotionally to me and I wasn't even there like all I've done is read an article about it like being in it I think that's a little more complicated yeah well I don't think it's necessarily like I know this isn't going to work because sometimes you you can't you don't don't really have the full picture. Yeah. And you always have hope, surely. You have hope or you you feel like, oh, there must be something I'm missing. I don't have the birds out of the entire project,

just like the little sphere that I'm working on. But yeah, I mean, I don't know, these things are so complicated. And the live service games, especially this idea of having a game that is so good and so fun and so compelling that like people won't want to play it infinitely is so difficult to create that the fact that Sony was like, yeah, we're going to make 12 of them. Great. Great idea. And I've seen it theorized on the internet that like Sony took this approach because they were like, hey, we'll put out 12 and maybe two of them will be such big hits that they make up for the rest of them. I don't think that was the strategy here because I think that these games are too expensive to justify the costs of that.

Like a lot of these studios are hundreds of people who are being paid for years of development. I mean, the last of us online alone must have cost. lost upwards into the nine figures just because it's like a couple hundred people on LA salaries working for four years. Doesn't the fact that they cancel so many of these games like disprove that theory just on its face? Like they canceled the game. Yeah, I mean, unless the theory is like, oh, we'll take a bunch of shots and maybe some of them will get canceled and some of them will work out. I don't know. But yeah, I don't know.

And then you have a flop as big as Concord. I don't know. There's a bigger conversation to be had here that maybe. Yeah. And one of them needs to be as big as Fortnite. to even remotely imagine breaking even. It needs to be the most big game in the world that every single person has heard of.

And we don't have all the numbers because companies are opaque about this stuff, but even Hell Divers 2, even the success of that game, I cannot imagine that has successfully paid for all of the flops and cancellations. There's no way. And there's also the cost of like forcing

all of these single player studios to make, you know, a service game where they don't want to do it. I'm sure you have a lot of attrition there. Yeah, that's true. Like everyone's suffering through making a game that you then cancel. is horrible for morale.

There's so much cost here beyond just the monetary cost. If that was, in fact, this strategy, that's a terrible strategy. But I feel like it couldn't possibly offend. I'm sure they wanted these games to be good. It was just a total failure. All right. On that lovely note, let's take a break, and then we'll be back for one more thing. The Flop House is a podcast where we watch a bad movie, and then we talk about it.

Guys, how does he teep poop? Well, he's not that regular, but as he's, He's gotten older. He has two cloacas, one under each arm. Oh. No, I'm just looking forward to you going through the other ways in which Wild Wild West is historically inaccurate. You know how much movies cost nowadays when you add in your popped corn

and your bagel bites and your cheese critters? You can't go wrong with a Henry Cattle Mustache. Here at Henry Cattle Mustache is the only supplier. The Flop House. New episodes every Saturday. Find it at maximum fun.org. Ego some John Hodgman. At Ego some, some Janet Varney. And we're the hosts of E. Pluribus Motto, a podcast dedicated to exploring the mottoes of every state in the union.

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it's time for one more thing. Maddie, what's your one more thing? My One More Thing is a television show that Dina and I watched all of over the course of a weekend because it's just feel good. And if you're out there listeners and you're like, I just want to watch something that's going to make me feel really good inside. I recommend this show.

So it's an HGTV show, which means it's about building things. And we love HGTV shows. But this one's a little different. So it's called Building Outside the Lines, and it's a father-daughter building team. But the daughter is only 14 years old. And the father is a middle-aged fan. He does construction and design. and she also does construction and design.

And their dynamic is the cutest thing you've ever seen in your life. She is like a design prodigy of sorts, like has genuinely incredible creative ideas, is inspiring to watch. Her father is so supportive of that that it just will warm your heart and all these projects that they do. And also their projects are really cool. So they aren't just like, oh, they're flipping houses and they like sell an apartment or something, which is like a lot of what HGTV does. does and I watch plenty of those shows that enjoy them. I'm not trying to say those aren't fun to watch in their own ways. These are like they'll build a treehouse for somebody or they'll build like a she

shed for a single mom who's like, I just want somewhere cool to go and like, you know, make art for myself or like and they often use like unconventional materials because they're like repurposing them for their builds in a cool way. So they'll like take like a water tank or something and turn it into a hot tub. and they'd take like this old grain silo and turn it into like a cookout location. It's so, so cool. And we've like learned a lot about building strategies from watching this. And also just had a really good time watching this amazing father-daughter duo that's just incredibly charismatic and sweet to watch.

So yeah, really recommend it. Just watch the first episode. And if you like the vibe, you will like the entire show. It is called Building Outside the Lines. And probably says a thing that about a kind of. of mood we were in that we were like, this is all we want to watch. That sounds awesome. I feel like Emily will love that show.

We'll totally check it out. She will. It's really pure and good. As a father of a daughter, I love a good father-daughter. Yeah. It's so, that part of it is so like just gentle and you're like, oh, like they're working together and he's such a good dad. It's like, I don't know.

It's just really good. Very cute. Kirk, what's your one more thing? One more thing is a movie that I watched on a plane this weekend. A great plane movie. I was going to say this movie sounds like a great plane movie. I want to hear more. Yeah, it was perfect.

This is Trapp, the recent thriller directed by M. Knight Shyamalan. It's a movie that I would say is great for the first 45 minutes and then becomes bad. And it's still worth watching for those first 45 minutes, though I was very disappointed by, in the end, like the script. and just the kind of the second maybe half-ish of the movie. But the first half is so much fun, and the premise is so good that it's worth watching just for that and also for sort of the weird beauty of a perfect premise that kind of was then spoiled by its own execution.

I don't know. This is a movie about a father and a daughter. The father is Josh Hartnett. His name is Cooper, I believe. He's a firefighter. Real All-American guy, aka, you know, know, upstanding, handsome white guy with his daughter, takes her to a concert that's essentially like, I would say it's been compared a lot to the Taylor Swift Eros tour. It struck me a little

more like an Olivia Rodriguez concert. It's for a fictional artist named Lady Raven, who incidentally is played by M. Knight-Sharmalant's daughter, Salika, or Salika, I'm not sure how to pronounce her name, but she plays the Olivia Rodriguez-type performer. So this dad is being such a good dad, and he's taking his daughter to this big concert in Philadelphia and they go in and it's so exciting and she's so excited and, you know, she sees the star getting out of her limo and going in and she waves at her and it's so exciting and he's being so cool and supportive and such a goofy dad. And then you notice there's like a lot of police at the, at this concert for some reason. You notice him noticing them and he keeps kind of looking at the police in a way that seems

like he's maybe uneasy about how many police there are here. And then, of course, it is revealed, and as something that anyone who's heard about this movie knows, that he is, in fact, a serial killer known as The Butcher, who has currently got a victim tied up in a basement somewhere that he's checking in with on his phone. And it turns out the police, like the FBI and this master profiler, have learned that he's going to be at this concert. And the whole concert has been set up as a trap to capture him finally because he's killed so many people and he's eluded them. So then the movie becomes basically watching this guy, Josh Hartnett, who is very good at being very charming but also very terrifying, kind of put on his friendly dad face and charm people to try to figure out a way to escape this building that has been set up, or I suppose this arena that's been set up to capture him. It's like the best premise for a movie I've ever heard. It's so good just as a like pulp nonsense kind of just fun, dumb thriller.

And it is that for the first 45 minutes. And then it just gets too complicated They introduce more characters The action moves outside of the arena He keeps making these increasingly outlandish escapes That rely on the police being just morons And it's just very frustrating Like there's a point where I was like, why, why didn't you just do this

As like a reverse diehard where the whole movie takes place In the concert and like we build up to you know Finally going backstage and like interacting with the singer So I mean you know it's like a really flawed movie But a movie that I really enjoyed And I do think actually that Selika Shamalan is really great. Like, it's very funny that it's a movie about a father, like, doting on his daughter and doing this very nice thing for her when the movie itself is, like, M. Night Shyamalan taking his actual singer daughter and then, like, casting her as the biggest act in the world where now she's Olivia Rodriguez and she gets to put on this huge show. And she really sells it.

And she's also very good in the dramatic scenes that she has to do. So I was, his gambit paid off. and, you know, that worked out, and I really thought she was great. But really, Josh Hartnett is kind of the reason to see it. He's a lot of fun. He was great in Oppenheimer, too, and I think he's great in this. And it's still like, it's a good plane movie. It's a good, just want to watch a dumb, fun thing kind of movie.

And I do recommend it for all the critiques I could make of it. So that's trap. I don't know if it's streaming. I watched it on a plane, so I'm not really sure. But I'm sure it's very easy to find. It's so disappointing because I watched the trailer for that, and I too had thought that it was all going to be said in the concert. And it's very disappointing to hear that.

Yeah, that would be so good. Oh, wow. It would be so much better. It's like, it's the thing I think, and I don't know, but it's that M. Night Shyamlan has so much creative control. He kind of like, I don't know if he does every, like, he kind of just has his own little, like, team that he, and he writes and directs the movie. And there's no other writing credit. And I would have to think that if some, like, a group of writers were working on this, they would just be like, there would be someone in the writers room saying, you can't leave the, you can't leave the concert. this whole thing has to take place there.

And climax on stage somehow, like the big peak has to take place, you know, on stage with the artist under the lights and all of that. And they don't do that. And instead, there's all this nonsense with his family and they, like, leave. And then it just becomes a sort of a really boring thriller. So, yeah, it's too bad. My one more thing is also about dads and daughters. Wow. Weird theme.

So a few weeks ago, we got an email to the triple-click account from a game developer guy named Parker Crane. and he said, hey, I got a game. I'm a big fan, and I got a game that you guys might enjoy. And it's called, and it's called the puzzle maker, colon, Sebba's Odyssey, which, not the most inviting name, sorry of Harker. But I thought it'll be into it. Pretty cool, yeah, we will. I thought it looked pretty cool because it's kind of like a grid,

kind of like a fire emblem thing. But it's actually, and the way he explained it was that it's kind of like an into the breach style puzzle game. And I was like, okay, it sounds really interesting. And so I downloaded it and I started playing it on my Steam deck. and I have since played through all 200 plus puzzles because it's really, really good. Nice. So the reason this game is about dads and daughters is because there's also like a little story attached.

It's kind of told in these little vignettes between each of the puzzles that involves a dad and his daughter and is surprisingly heartwarminging and heart wrenching also. But putting that aside because the real mid of this game is the puzzles. This game, it's kind of reminiscent of Into the Reach, but it also really reminded me. me of all things, those Queen's Blood challenges in Final Fantasy 7 a rebirth where you had to like put cards in specific positions to cause chain reactions and stuff. So that's the way this game functions. So like there might be, um, you might start off with like a slime and a knight is next to the slime and all you have to do is have the knight attack the slime and the slime nines and then you win. And then the next puzzle's like, okay, now there's a hole next to the slime and there's a rock,

but the rock is on the other side of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, the map and there is this little mechanism that pushes the rock and you have to figure out how to get the knight down to the lever to push it and manipulate the rock into the hole so then you can kill the slime and it gets increasingly complex from there because there are a ton of different types of characters and enemies and level manipulating tools that you can use along the way there are teleporters and then there are priests who can give each of your characters an extra turn because normally each of your characters can only go once as part of the puzzle flow. And it gets really, really interesting and fun and addictive because it's got that kind of bite-size,

like one more level sort of feel where you do one and you feel really smart and you're like, oh, I can do just one more before I go to bed. And before long you've played 20 of them because they really, it has so much variety with all the different types of enemies and characters that the game is constantly introducing that it just never really gets old. A few downsides, it's a little bit sloppy. It feels, or I shouldn't say sloppy, it feels a little amateur in that there's some kind of, like a lot of the hint messages, for example, are kind of off, or like tell you the wrong thing,

or like there's some kind of names that are wrong that feels like they needed to be, and it needed a level of polish to it. The game itself doesn't have any bugs or anything like that, but there are a few puzzles here and there where like it feels like you can kind of break them or beat them in a way that is unintentional because like usually most of the puzzles require you to use all of the characters you have at your disposal but like occasionally I found puzzles where I could just beat it with only using two characters or something and totally broke it. But for the most part it's just so good. I really enjoyed it and I think both of you would enjoy it quite a bit as well. It is very much

like a cerebral tactical game feels into the breach. It's just a good comparison. Tactical breach wizards, but like at the beginning of tactical breach wizards, when it feels more puzzlish and less like ex-comi, like trying to strategy. Or like the puzzle rooms in that game. Or the puzzle rooms, exactly. It's like imagine kind of grid-based puzzles where each character can do a specific thing and you have to like maneuver your way through it and it's very easy to like undo so you can just

press a button and then undo your last move or press another button and reset the whole thing so you can really experiment with like all the different mechanisms and what does what. And as it gets more complicated, it gets really interesting because you can play around with these abilities to do combinations in ways you wouldn't expect. Like, hey, you know, this enemy will punch something and move it to one square over. So then if you cast ice to like make a slide, you can have it punch something and that thing will slide all the way over here. And then it'll trigger this thing and trigger that thing. And you can turn it into a whole Rube Goldberg-esque

device. And yeah, just a super fun game. I recommend people check it out. Again, It's called The Puzzle Maker, Sebba's Odyssey. It's on Steam. I really enjoyed it and play through the whole thing, which is more than I can say for a lot of games that I try. Check it out. It's really cool. Awesome. Yeah, I'll play it for sure.

All right. And that is it for this week's episode. Kirk, Mani. See you both next time. Yep. See you both 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 D.J. 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. Find us on Twitter at Triple ClickPod. Send email the triple click at Maximumfund.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

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