Triple Click - Triple Play: Citizen Sleeper

Episode Date: July 7, 2022

Kirk, Jason, and Maddy dig into Citizen Sleeper, one of this year's, uh, sleeper hits. Set in a dystopian future full of corporations and depression, Citizen Sleeper is sort of a cross between a visual novel and a life simulation game. The gang talks about escaping digital poverty, the game's unique aesthetic style, and what it'd really be like to have your consciousness implanted into a robot body.One More Thing: Kirk: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard OsmanMaddy: Patricia Wants To Cuddle by Samantha AllenJason: God of War (2018)Links:Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy a Triple Click t-shirt: https://topatoco.com/collections/maximum-fun/products/maxf-tc-tclogo-shJoin 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

An emulated consciousness in a robot body. Are you man or machine? There's no time to figure that out under capitalism. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we talk about Citizen Sleeper, a sci-fi life sim with a deep story and a lot of stressful resource management to do. All in a worn-down robot body. Good luck, underdog. I'm Maddie Myers.

I'm Jason Shire. And I'm Kirk Hamilton, and hello. Hello. It's us. Hi. Hello to both of you. Hello, hello. Hello. Welcome back for another episode of our podcast. Yeah, of our podcast. Triple-click.

Yeah, we're still here. We're still doing it. I think we should keep doing it. That's my opinion of it. I think it's going pretty well so far. I'm having a good time. And I think we should keep on going with the show. And while we keep on going with the show, I think we should also keep on allowing people to support the show, not just by listening, but by becoming a member of maximum. fun, which is our podcast network. Yeah, I agree with you on this one too. Mm-hmm. I know, it's controversial, but allow me to elaborate. So here's the reason why I think somebody should become a member is because they would get

access to bonus episodes. So, for example, let's say you listen to part one of our Sweet Code and 2 series, and you thought to yourself, boy, it didn't seem like Maddie liked that very much. And then you were to listen to Part 2. And you were like, huh, Maddie still didn't seem to like it. But you weren't able to listen to the third final part of Vars we go to two series because you weren't a max fun member. Well, that would be tragic for you because all is revealed to that episode. And I think it's worthwhile to go to maximum fun.org slash join, become a member, get access to that episode and also a billion other episodes like the one where we made Jason watch die hard or the one where we made Jason play Call of Duty Modern Warfare.

Those are the two I always cite because those are some favorites of mine. But there are a bunch of other episodes in there And I just think they're cool On me for making you play Suicodin too As you guys forced me to do stuff too Without even winning a bet You can just get away with it It builds character

Anyway, that's the URL you would go to As Maximumfund.org slash join But that's enough of that, right? We all played a video game. Let's talk about it. Kirk, take us by the hand And lead us into a strange world Yes, we're talking about a game

that came out a little while back that has been the talk of the triple-click discord, among other places. We had some listeners who were very excited about it. They did a game club on it. That was where I first heard about it. But I've just seen people talking about it, and we have all played it and are going to talk about it. This is a game called Citizen Sleeper.

So, Citizen Sleeper is a narrative-focused cyberpunk life sim set in a broken-down space station called Erlinds. In the Outer Reaches of Space. You play as a sleeper, a corporate-owned artificial life form with an emulated mind who awakens aboard the eye and has to make a new life on the station. Avoid corporate bounty hunters who are looking to capture you, fend off your ongoing decay due to the built-in planned obsolescence of your sleeper body, and generally make your way in a strange new life. The game is developed by Jump Over the Age and is available on PC, Switch, and Xbox,

and it's also currently on Xbox Game Pass, if you have that, and you want to check it out. That's it, short but sweet. It's a pretty simple setup. It's a really cool game that I'm super into, and I'm curious what the two of you think. So, Maddie, I know you've finished this game. So how about you go first? What do you think is Citizen Sleeper? I did finish this game. I finished it all in one day.

It has been a while since I played a game in that way. It was July 4th. I could see that for this one, though. And I hadn't had time to play it previously. So I was like, I've got one day to play this six-hour indie game. I'd heard it was six hours. And I was like, I probably won't finish it. And then I did.

And then I went to see some fireworks. works. That's my story. Just kidding. I can give more details. I really enjoyed this video game. It felt like the time flew by. There is a lot of reading to do in this game, kind of like a disco elysium. Or Norco is the other much more modern game that I would compare this to because that also came out this year. And I think the two are probably going to get compared a lot because they're both text-based indie games that are about corporations owning an entire area and the people in it. And they also both have robots in them. But Citizen Sleeper, I think, is very coherent in the kinds of feelings it wants to leave you with. And I really enjoyed the feelings it left me with. There are a lot of

different endings. I played to the end of every quest line. I didn't see every ending in the game, but the game allows you to play through to the end of every quest line, which I think is really neat. It's like the game wants you to leave feeling as though you tied up every quest line. I don't know. every loose end. And that might be a little contradictory in a game that is also describing a corporation owning people, which is a very unsettling image and should be stressful, perhaps, but then this game sort of starts stressful and ends allowing you to tie up every piece in a way that games rarely do. So yeah, I ended up leaving a lot more satisfied than the way that I came in, which was confused and unnerved. Yeah, that's true. It has a real.

emotional arc that is it kind of gradually becomes more and more human as you play it, which is something that I appreciated. Jason, how much have you played and what are you thinking of it? I think my steam timer is like five hours, maybe six hours at this point. So I made a, I made some good progress. I'm not quite done, but it looks like I finished some of the storylines. Yeah, I like it. It feels like a very disco-elisium inspired. It's like a very, way more serious disco-elisium, disco-alusium minus the humor, which I think. think is kind of the one downside of this game is that it really doesn't have the humor that makes Disco Elysium works so well. And so sometimes the Purple Pros can, at least for me personally, it got to me

a little bit, got a little bit grading. That said, it's a really wonderful game and I really enjoyed it despite that. It's really beautiful. The drawings of the characters are really nice. It's really got a cool gameplay system. At one point, for example, I was, I found myself in this like, a cycle where basically, I mean, you need to get this. So you have these two bars, these two condition bars. One of them is slowly deteriorating because your body is just like slowly decomposing unless you get a stabilizer drug to fill it back up again. And the other is you're just like day to day energy that you need to be refilling on a near daily basis. And I found myself in this cycle where because I was deteriorating and all the way towards the end of that bar, I couldn't do much on any given day. But I needed to earn. enough money to be able to restore that bar and also restore my energy, but I could barely scrape enough to get by. And it was just like a giant, tedious waste of time where I spent days and days and days just like barely floating by. And I was like, oh, yes, this is a capitalistic satire of corporate America here. I get it. I get it. It does hit that point home quite a lot.

But yes, this is, it was a fun. It was a very enjoyable experience. And yeah, beautiful game. Yeah, I really like it as well. I actually really like the tonal consistency, and I appreciate the near-total lack of irony to this game. Like, I don't need this game to be funny, like, Disco Elysium, and actually, like, another biting satire of corporate, you know, of corporate truths or whatever. Like, that'd be fine, I suppose.

I've experienced a lot of those lately, and sometimes they work, in the case of Disco Elysium, sometimes take a game like Outer Worlds. It can just feel like they're just, it's not really. doing much for me at all. And in this case, I think this game has a really warm energy eventually, but it's very mournful and very cold at first. And it's, like I said, totally lacking in irony. And I find its tone to be maybe the strongest thing about it. I think it's so consistent.

I mean, I've been playing this game very differently from you, Maddie. I've been playing this for the past week and change. And I'll just play 30 minutes at a time, kind of treating it like chapters, since this is very much a life sim. You mentioned this, Jason, but you kind of wake up in the morning. You have to get food. You got to make some money so that you can maybe buy food or if you're lucky, buy a little bit more, you know, whatever that thing is that repairs your body. The stabilizer, yeah. The stabilizer. Or eventually you get scrap and you can repair yourself if you level up the right ability.

So it's very much like, I got to do this, but then I got to check in with different people. There are these ticking timers going, you know, oh, after this many cycles, the ship is going to come around so I can meet it and go do some work. But this guy has a debt due and I'm trying to help him pay off his debt. but the people are going to come to collect in four more cycles. So it would be stressful, but because you get in that life rhythm and you're kind of just rolling through it, it stops being stressful. And I just found playing it a little bit every night, playing up until maybe a chapter break in one of the character's stories, has been a really great way to play it.

I'm maybe two-thirds of the way through, I'd say now. And it really kind of feels like a book to me. And yeah, I don't know. I actually really like the tone. I like that it has this sort of warm, kind of. kind of remote energy a little bit. Your character is very remote and a little bit removed from everyone else. And I dig that about it.

It also gets less stressful as you go, no matter what. So as you said, there are all these different ticking timers. And the first few conflicts that you're facing are really stressful, or at least for me, they were. Especially that bounty hunter. The bounty hunter, yeah. So that's one of the big ones. And I think players face these certain ones no matter what. You don't have to complete every quest line if you don't want to.

Although I recommend it having done that. But the first couple that you're going to face no matter what are that there's going to be a bounty hunter after you, or the corporation that you're escaping from because you're owned by them as a little robot, you are going to have to escape bounty hunters no matter what. And there will be a ticking number of days that you have left in those scenarios, depending on how you choose to proceed with the story with that bounty hunter. And then the other one is your stabilizer. I can't remember how quickly you managed to get to the doctor.

And I mean, it all turned out okay for me. Obviously, I survived. But I was pretty stressed because I was like, man, I am waking up in a box. Nobody wants to be my friend. Nobody trusts me. The first guy that you work for, he only takes like a week or something before he's like, get out, I don't trust you anymore. And there's like a ticking time bomb on like his trust of you at the bottom of the screen that's like the longer you stay here, the more this guy doesn't want you to

be here. I don't think there's a way around that. There may very well be, but I certainly didn't find one. So I was like, oh my God, I'm going to die. There's somebody after retrying to kill me. Also, you have these creepy dreams where there's like some, this sort of weird aspect of your programming that's like a sort of, I don't even know if I can explain that plot. because even though I played through all of it, I still don't fully understand that part. It's pretty abstract. But you have to escape this sort of ephemeral aspect of the programming of the space station that's after you in some way.

And as I sort of defeated each of those conflicts, I also got to know more and more people around the space station and very, very slowly began to feel as though I was actually making friends. And the more that happened by the time I got to the end of the game, I was like, I have a home here. I have friends here. I don't want to leave the space station. I don't know. It's been so long since I played a life sim like that where I truly felt like I was making an actual home for my character. It just, I don't know. It's like the thing that I think Animal Crossing is always trying to evoke in me that very rarely happens, but I actually achieved it in this game where I didn't want to leave at the end. I think that is a very special trick that this game pulls. And to compare it to the other life sim that I'm currently playing, Persona 5, the big difference with citizen sleeper is something that you basically just described, is that at first, no one really wants anything to do with you. And all of your relationships are very chilly and transactional.

You know, people will say, oh, you're a sleeper, which in this world is you have this sort of digital consciousness so you can just close your eyes and, I mean, literally press the Y button and go into a hacking overlay where you see the streams of data going off. and you're kind of half here and half not here. So everybody sees that as very useful. So at first, these people you meet, they'll be like, oh, cool, well, I can make use of you. And then over time, you kind of get to know them a little bit better,

and the relationships warm up. And that makes them feel so much more meaningful once they've kind of really become, you know, you've actually been there for one another and you have this, you know, the writing helps, the character writing, and the character designs. But, like, you feel a fondness for these characters where in a game like persona,

Everyone just immediately thinks you're the coolest dude ever and wants to be your best friend. I mean, granted, like, there's a little bit of development that you have to do, but it's a much more permissive thing where it's just this fantasy of being cool and popular kind of from the start. And so I appreciate the way the game, like, leaves a lot of emotional space to build up the relationships over the course of the game. And it also makes it really hard for you in a way that something like Animal Crossing or The Sims doesn't. Like, those games, I mean, of course, they're very different feeling life Sims, but the whole point, of it is that every aspect of the game feels really good and setting up your home is cozy automatically, whereas this game is like, no, you're living in a box or like a barrel basically.

In the cold reaches of space. Everybody's like, wow, that's where you're living. Well, I guess you're a homeless robot. So what does you expect? Also leave. We don't think you should live here. But yeah, over time, you get to build a home. And I mean, the other part of it that I really enjoyed is the fact that the entire game is just watching bars fill up. Like, that's the piece of it that I like, over time, I'm like, does this game feel a little too good to play? Considering that I'm supposed to be living in a corporate hellscape, it might. Because watching bars fill up is extremely satisfying.

I don't know. The game never really gets super difficult, but by the time I was at the end, I felt like a freaking expert. Like, I would know exactly where to get the most energy efficient food, how to set up all my stuff so that I would, like, have the most efficient day. I would just, like, go from place to place and be like, I'm killing it. I'm amazing. I know exactly what the tasks are that I need to do in order to proceed in each quest. And I'm just, I'm a townie. I live here now. And it felt great by the end. But it's

interesting that you guys describe it as a not stressful experience because I find it to be a very stressful experience overall because there's so much to do and you have to really decide like who am I going to focus on. And so for example, I mean that that early guy Draggos, like the first guy meet who pieces out after a little while. I assume that if I had spent enough time with him, I could get him to not leave. I don't know. Same with some other, well, I don't know. I'm saying through my experience, I'm assuming that like I'm really picking and choosing who I want to focus on and that by using my valuable dice rolls, which are even more valuable as you lose more and more health than you have fewer, fewer actions per day to take, I'm prioritizing and essentially giving up

on some quests in favor of others, and I've already failed a couple of quests as a result of that. There were some quests I failed, too. And I don't find the game not stressful. Like, it is actually, like, I agree with you, that especially at first it's very stressful. And that winds up kind of factoring into what this game is saying about capitalism or how it represents capitalism,

because this isn't the first game to have this be true, but it's certainly noticeable for me that this game is experientially, in terms of the story, a critique of capitalism, in that it portrays these very alienated characters in this world that's very cold and corporate controlled and a lot of, there's a lot of downsides to that. But mechanically, it's just an expression of capitalism because in the game, you, through dint of the economy

and your work, like you work and you make money and you gain more and more security and you improve your living quarters and you maintain your friendships and are able to help your friends out, sometimes directly with money and the more money you make, the more comfortable you are until, I mean, I'm even at a point now where I'm like, I've totally got this thing dialed in and I'm pretty in control. And there's some stuff I'm having to deal with. So I'm maybe at the phase where

you've got a good job, but you still have some student loans to pay off. You went to college. You got a high paying tech job. This is exactly what I'm saying. Yeah, I'm in the kind of midpoint. You worked hard and you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps and then you succeeded in the end, which again, it's sort of unmeatingly what this game is. And I, again, don't think this is what the game is actually trying to say. But you are bootstrapping it. And I don't read a grand statement of that because I don't think, I think this game is not a satire of capitalism. I think that it is a representation of capitalism and a really interesting one and one that shows all of the ways that you can build a life within this kind of system and find, you know, human connection and meaningful relationships in that kind of a system without saying capitalism. Yay, it's great. This is the best way for things to be.

Far from it. I mean, the game is very clearly, you know, showing a lot of the downsides of this kind of a thing, too. It's just sort of letting you exist within it. And in that way, it's kind of a really pure life sim in a certain way. It just feels like live your life in this kind of a system that we've engineered. And I think it's really effective at that. I mean, it's consistent with the rest of the game. It doesn't feel like an inconsistency or attention to me. I think it also feels more like attention that's baked into the game. in the midpoint where there are some moments where you're collecting Intel by hacking for

multiple factions in the town that are sort of working against each other. And I actually wish that that tension had come into play more because I kept collecting Intel and then eventually you don't really have places to put it or you can put it in places that doesn't really affect the plot anymore eventually. And I just was like, I feel like somebody should come up to me and be like, hey, hey man, you've been collecting Intel on like every faction in this town, this whole game, and giving it to random people who ask you for it in exchange for scrap and just other stuff you need. And we don't think that's cool anymore. But there is a certain point.

That's funny because I was wondering if someone was going to say something. Yeah, I've been wondering the same thing. And it feels like that's not going to really matter. There are some plot lines that like kind of go in that direction, but not as many as I expected. But to sort of highlight one of the plot lines that I think works really well at critiquing a capitalist system. is one that I don't know if either of you have gotten to in full yet, so I'll try not to spoil the way it ends, but when you cross the greenway,

there's like a ferry you can take to cross the greenway, and then there's this sort of basically a communist little mushroom refinery where they're just growing mushrooms and hanging out. And if you work for them for long enough, they give you a place to sleep there, and there are many other places that you can sleep besides your crate that you get delivered in. But this is one of them. And also you can make friends there and you eventually learn more and more about the mushrooms and how they, because people work on them, the mushrooms sustain them. And it's sort of this symbiotic relationship rather than just a power dynamic where it's like, oh, this is a big corporation and CEOs are providing, but they get to keep all the spoils. It's instead just purely symbiotic where the mushrooms are providing people, but also they're providing to the mushrooms. And that's spelled out.

increasingly over the course of that storyline in a way that I thought was really nice. And I liked that. I mean, it is idealistic to have an anti-capitalist game include these sort of more communist-leaning characters who are just on a farm on the space station and to have that be one of the more idealized plot lines in the end that like doesn't really have a ton of downsides, to be honest. And there isn't a lot of critique of that part. But I also liked it because I felt like I needed there to be more hopeful stuff.

in this game because there are some plot lines that end in a sad way. So I liked that the people who were just growing mushrooms end up having a storyline that it certainly goes some places. I'm not telling you guys where it goes, but it's much more about a symbiotic systems

relationship as opposed to you getting more and more powerful over time, if that makes sense. It's like you're giving things in order to get things from the space station in the greenway. You know? Well, that's interesting because the rest of the game is about getting more and more powerful

over time to escape your kind of cycles of, I mean, so it sounds like I'm the only one of the three of us who had that experience where I had to spend like 10 cycles just breaking out of the poverty rut because I was so sick and tired. I managed to avoid it. But I, there were some moments when I got kind of close to that and was a little worried and had to be really careful about what I spent my actions on to avoid ending up there. So, okay, so well, you won capitalism. I mean, I tried, have you tried just bootstrapping, Jason? Yeah, so the way that this game works for people who haven't played and are listening along is that when you're, that first bar that I talked about, that kind of stability bar, when is that is at 100% you get five actions per day. But as it declines, you get fewer and fewer.

And as your energy declines, those actions tend to be like lower quality too. And so one thing we didn't mention is that every time you do something, there's like a probability involved. So every one of your actions is based on a dice roll. from one to six and six being the best possible outcome. If you only have ones and twos, I mean, your options are limited. You can go into this like hacker node and spend those for some guaranteed something or another's. But if you want to do normal actions like helping people out on the space station, you're probably going to get terrible outcomes by using your ones and twos.

So in general, you want the higher outcomes. Or at least neutral ones. And that might result in no money for you. Yeah. Right. Well, so which again just keeps you trapped in this cycle of poverty. And so like I really, I had to spend a long time and it got pretty tedious. I was a little frustrated with the game.

But I realized that was, I guess, how I was supposed to feel. But I had to spend a long time just kind of like eeking, slowly heaking out money and then having to spend it all on different things. And I didn't have an option but to spend it up because I had to fill my energy. It reminded me of that infamous Terry Pratchett quote about the guy who keeps buying the cheapest boots, even though they wear out in six months. And he's like, I can't afford to buy the better boots, even though. they'll last me a longer time, so I have to buy the cheaper boots, but in the long run,

the cheaper boots are more expensive than the better boots, but just because I'm trapped in this cycle of poverty, I'm screwed here, and it was very reminiscent of that. But it sounds like once you get your way out of that cycle, you lift yourself up, and then you become super rich, and you can do whatever you want on the space agent. Well, that's kind of an overstatement. I had the feeling that you're describing in the early goings, but then for me it was, there's a a mercenary who comes through and I helped her with her ship and then she just gave me

a huge chunk of money and was like go get me a shipmind and she basically gave me the money and said you better get me a shipmind so I knew that at some point if I didn't that would be very bad but also she gave me a hundred but there's no timer on that importantly

so there isn't actually any pressure on that way well right there isn't as much pressure so exactly but it was basically the largas of you know a person with enough money to give me some that was just the toehold I needed. And then a few kind of wise decisions or like, you know, getting a few things in a couple of upgrades. There's a character upgrade.

If you're, you know, your first break, you're working a kind of low-wage job and then you get something that gives you some sort of an opportunity. And, you know, all of this stuff does feel pretty directly analogous to, you know, real-life cases that we're all citing, which is, I think, interesting on its own the way that the game does this. And I didn't feel trapped in that cycle, but I felt the first. fear of being trapped in that cycle, which is certainly something I'm familiar with from life, too, is that feeling of like, oh, my gosh, if I could just never get out of this, if I don't, you know,

find a wealthy mercenary friend who can just give me a hundred bucks to go buy the things I need. Yeah, yeah, there were some moments, too, when I just so happened to have a lucky role that I was like, wow, I was really on the edge of death there or, like, destruction of all my assets, and that was just lucky. And this game does not reward saves coming. Like, I remember there were a couple of moments in Disco Elysium when I did a little bit of savescoming just to like get an outcome I wanted and that game made it really easy to do. This game has a lot of auto saving and just doesn't even have a savescoming system that I know of. You basically can't do that. So the fact that there are dice roll probabilities is just kind of for your own knowledge. It's not like it's a situation where you're like,

okay, this is a 90% probability. I'm probably going to get it. But you know, if I if I somehow get that 10% lost, then I'll just quickly reload. The game doesn't really want you to do that. I'm sure you could, but it's not designed for that. Yeah, like the narrative stuff even, you know, this is definitely a game where things going wrong doesn't feel like the end of the story. It's all written into the story. So when you get a bad outcome or you're not able to help somebody or you can't come through, I mean, the story just keeps going and it never really feels like you messed up and blew it and you would want to load a save or I have certainly not felt that way at all. And it's never even occurred to me to save. gum, which is also just not even possible. I don't even think there's a save option. It just saves when you quit the game, and then it loads you back up where you were. I think, can we talk about the interface, the way that this game looks? Jason, can you describe?

What does this game look like when you're playing that? It looks like a big old chip with a series of nodes. It looks like Prisone 3 portable, doesn't it? That just came to me right now a little bit. It does look like for Sona 3.4. It looks like the Mass Effect Hacking. mini game to me. Like when you're like connecting the like same picture in nodes.

I mean some of the hacking mini games on this kind of remind me. Yeah, it's a little, it's very off putting it first. Yeah. First when you're like, what the heck is this game? Right. You don't really, it's not really enjoyable. And it also, towards the end, as you've unlocked more and more of the ship, it's actually pretty tedious to navigate your way around the whole thing.

Because it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Yeah. But it's cool. It's the coolest. choice. And the way that the actual, I mean, when you're like actually reading stuff, it's a big column sort of like Disco Elysium in the right side of the screen. And you can see pictures of folks, a lot of gorgeous illustrations of these characters, these weirdos, sci-fi characters in the game. And yeah, it's a cool interface. I really enjoy it. It feels like it's all, it's got a lot

of thought to it. Yeah, I think, I agree. I think it's interesting and kind of dovetails with the the way the game keeps you very remote at first and then brings you in because it's so top level. I didn't know what to make of this when I started playing it. I just because it's very much like you're looking at this way zoomed out space station and you can't even see the whole thing at first. And then the more you unlock, the more you can rotate, then you go up a lift and it goes up to the center and you start to really see, oh, and you can kind of rotate it. Okay, so it's this big, you know, it's spinning like round circular space station with some sections missing.

It's a halo from Halo. Yeah. It's kind of a halo, but it's missing some sections because it's very, you know, it was kind of destroyed and rebuilt as this independent space. But yeah, I really like that about it now, where I was kind of turned off at first. I just wasn't sure. Okay, so is this game just going to nose and pressing a button and reading some text? Which I guess it is. But then, right, these character illustrations, which are beautiful, as you both mentioned, you know, you kind of zoom in, even though you don't actually zoom in.

I mean, I guess the camera does zoom in somewhat. You see a little bit of where you are. you're at some bar, you're at a shipyard, you're at a loading dock, whatever. And then the character comes up, and it's this evocative writing, so you're kind of picturing in your mind where you are. But it draws you in and then zooms you out, and you're always zooming out. I think that's very interesting. You can also, there's this hacking overlay, which we sort of mentioned,

where you press a button, and it goes into the hacker view, which is sort of like, I always think of gunpoint as a game where at any moment you can just press a button, and then suddenly you see all the hacking stuff. See the matrix? Yeah, you see the matrix. or the way that, you know, a game like Watch Dogs works, even where there's kind of an underlying system connecting everything.

Yeah. So far, for me, the hacking world has been pretty separate from the main world. Like, you can kind of... Well, have you been doing the storylines of the hunter and the killer? Yeah, there's the thing and the thing for a guy that I can do where I have to do it in the hacking world. Yeah, NeoVend, the Vending Machine. Your friend, the Vending Machine.

Right. That, oh, my gosh. Talk about characters that I love. That one is a vending machine that speaks to you through the clicking and worrying of its 3D printer, which I think is such a cool idea. There's a lot of writing. Like there's a lot of little touches like that. That's really nice.

It's really just the world building of this game was very impressive to me. I mean, like, yeah, the moment-to-moment dialogue is fun to read. But there were a lot of moments when I was just like, somebody came up with a lot of ideas for this. And that is just impressive that you're like, I mean, it's not to say it didn't like Norco. I actually did like it. And I think if somebody liked Citizen Sleeper, they should definitely check out Norco. But Norco is mostly just a character drama about the idea of this sort of capitalist hellscape world. And it's kind of underbaked by comparison to Citizen Sleeper where it just feels like Norco they really thought about the characters a ton.

And Disco Elysium is similar where like the grander problems of that world. You just get the briefest glimpse at them and maybe you wonder about them but you don't get to find out. Citizen Sleeper is like the game for somebody who wants all of the above where it's like the hard sci-fi of like. Like, how the heck does this place work? What are all the corporations? Who are these people and why are they here? You get a lot of answers to most of those questions. And not in a lore dump type of a way, like just in regular conversations, which is

impressive. And then also just you still get the character drama on top of the fact that you're a robot. And so you have all these considerations about your physical form and how you work in a literal sense and that influencing all your actions. I don't know. I was really, really impressed by the fact that it all made. sense. I think Citizens Leaver more than any of those games could have actually just been a novel and it would have been totally fine. True. It doesn't need the video game aspect of it as much

as interesting as the whole cycles and the Life Sim stuff is. It is cool. Yeah, but I think the lore building is where it really stands out and that I think could have been an interesting book. Yeah, that's an interesting thought experiment. I'm not sure if I agree, only because a book that told this same story would be just a little less remark. And so I guess is it just because games have a novelty to them? Well, it would not be the same story. It would be more of a focus. It would have to be more focused just by nature.

Well, you know, but like a formerly corporate-owned robot lands on a space station and has to make some friends. And like that just, I feel like that story has been told many times where there's something distinct about. Yeah, every time I turn around, I'm reading about a corporate-owned robot who lands on a space station. Who talks to a vending machine who befriends a sentient vending machine. This again, I say, turning off the television. Well, you know, these are very familiar ideas, though, for the cyberpunk genre. I don't know if I agree, but. Really, Maddie and I are reading very different books than Kirk.

I feel like I need to be getting out more. I'm not interacting with these pieces of media. But I think part of the issue, actually with it being a book, is almost that it has such a video game arc that we've described, where it's like you level up and then you sort of complete the loop of all the different ways that you can be existing. and surviving in this world without scraping by. I mean, I'm making it sound as though I'm a robot billionaire by the end of this game, and I'm truly not.

Like, you never get more than a certain number of actions per day. And I think if anything, it's emphasizing that you're surviving within this crappy system and you're maybe even happy some of the time, but it's not like you're ever really thriving in it. Right. But, like, that being the end of a book is just weird. Like, being the end of a video game makes logical sense to us because we're like, yeah, that's how the video game ends.

You become somebody who's surviving. drives within that system and then you roll credits and maybe you get to see the ends of a couple of quest lines. But if a book worked that way, it would be so weird. Like, I can't even think of an example. The end of misery is Annie Wilkes finally realizing that actually it was weird to kidnap that author and she's like, I've figured out all of my mental problems and I've decided to calm down. Like that would be so weird. Books done it in that way. I don't know. No, yeah. I mean, I haven't seen the ending so I guess, but I can sort of assume a few things about how it will end, given the kind of story that they're telling. I feel like I've seen more of this kind of story.

Just, I mean, cyberpunk as a genre has been flourishing in video games lately. Just, you know, I've talked many times about Soma, but then also Disco Elysium in other ways, cyberpunk 2077 in other ways, which we're going to talk more about that game at some point. And, um, cyberpunk 27, also a lot of cyberpunk stuff. I would say about 207. of them. 277, 277, 20,000-77 cyberpunk stuffs in one game.

But it's basically, if a game is experimenting with identity and your body versus your consciousness and what it means to separate the two and like artificial life and an artificial body

versus an artificial self, there's a really interesting concept here with the idea of an emulated mind, which is what a sleeper has where you're not a human being who is put into an artificial body. You're an artificial mind that was created, that was emulated based on a real person somewhere else. And you have some of the memories from that person, but they're very vague. And there's this beautiful storyline where this is just a sort of food vendor in the street. There's an ongoing storyline where he'll ask you to tell him a story.

And you can just kind of go into your memories and try to, you can tell him a true story. You can just make something up. or you can tell them a real memory that you have. And it's often so abstract because it's like you kind of have this weird, vague memory of this time that you felt awake. Like it's not even, you know, a specific thing. But it's really cool that the game is exploring that. And then making it mechanically real, too, in the way that you just like shift between these layers of reality, the way that you can always see the code underneath everything.

You're kind of this other kind of consciousness. You're in this altered state at all times. And that's cool. You're a gamer. are very good at that. Yeah, I mean, video games really lend themselves to that kind of, that kind of exploration. I really like that you don't have an existential crisis about it in that type of way. You're cool with it from the start. It's true. You are like, yeah, this is a weird existence. But it's not like you're constantly going around being like, but who am I really based on? And am I even real?

Other people say stuff like that to you, but you, I at least clocked it as insulting and was like, yeah, everybody's such a dick about the fact that I'm a sleeper robot. Like, why can't everybody just move on. I'm just trying to make my way in this hell of a world the same as anybody else. And that does seem to kind of be how it goes in the end. It's just that it's like, yeah, you're a robot, but so, I mean, everything else is all so bad. So we're all just trying to get by here. And I like that. I like that it wasn't a big deal. Are we all robots in a way? Well, I mean, we, I will, I will circle back and beat cyberhung 277 at some point. But I do know from the 10 hours that I played that the state of consciousness and, you know,

Hianu Reeves whispering in your ear all the time. and that is an idea that is central to that game is just the idea of putting a human consciousness into a chip in somebody's head and sharing memories in that way and hacking memories. Like that, all those ideas are very central in that game and central in a lot of cyberpunk stories.

And I just thought it was kind of fun that Citizen Sleeper opens by introducing all those concepts and then it's kind of like, okay, but the real conflict is you have to eat food still. Right. It's very matter of fact about, some of the more high concept stuff and pretty practical about what you actually have to do. Which works. It kind of ties into the game's overall vibe in a way that I really like to.

You might be a robot with an unclear consciousness, but you still have to go and do tasks for people to make money. Look, your body is deteriorating and you got to fix it up somehow. It's not free. You got to keep it going out. Well, it's a really cool game, and I'm very glad that I've played. As much as I've played, I'm certainly going to finish it. It's been a really wonderful thing to play. It's worth it. And I would say keep playing through the credits. Like they give you a continue button.

So if you're like, oh, I haven't beaten all the quest lines, don't worry. They're going to let you go back and finish each one of them if you want. Are there a lot of different endings? Uh-huh. Okay. Yeah. It's cool. I'm curious.

A lot of possibilities. Is there like one true ending or is it just like a bunch of flat like contingent possibility? You know, it's hard for me to describe this without spoiling it. So like each quest line has an ending and there are multiple ways that you can either leave the space station or not. I chose to stay every single time. And I saw more than one person saying that they consider that the true ending. And I do too because by the end of the game, I was like, I really have a home here. I don't actually want to leave.

And there was one quest line when I actually did think, okay, this is the one that's going to get me to go. I won't say which one. But then I failed at it. And I was like, I guess I can't leave anyway. And then the ending where I had failed at that one was interesting too, where I was like, I'm actually stuck here after all. And then that was cool to see how that played out. So I don't know.

I didn't see every ending, but I saw every ending of my playthrough, which I think is a good way to do it. And I don't want to replay it because in my head, I'm like, that's how each of those stories ended. So I recommend that experience. Nice. I like that. Yeah, I like when there isn't like a true ending where you go off with Joey.

I mean, yeah, I mean, I hung out with Joey from friends. Oh, no, oh, you mean Joey. I've already repressed Sukodin, too. I don't know you're talking about. Joey Triviani, that's definitely who I was talking about. Yeah, I hang out with Joey triviani. That's it. I do a spinoff show with Joey.

Now I want to start a spin-off show called, like a spinoff Sikodent 2 show just called Joey. It should be. But the spelling changes all the time. Honestly, I think I would check out a spinoffozo. game about Joey from Sweet Co2. Of course, you know. I think you're gonna, I think by this time next year, you'll be like, hey, Jason and I started playing Sucodon 3 and 4 and 5. And I'm just really into the series now. You know, I know we're about to like stop talking and take a break, but I have thought about Sweet Coaten 2 a lot since we beat it. I do have to admit that. I've thought about it a lot. And I've like sort of jokingly brought it up a lot in conversation. I don't know, man. You're saying that it's burrowed into your brain. It kind of has. It kind of has. It kind of has. I We'll admit that. Interesting. We'll have to unpack this more.

Well, that's something for the future that we'll have to keep an eye on. Yeah, a sleeper version of myself. As Maddie becomes a JRP theme. We'll only remember Sweet Coden 2 in the future. For now, that's Citizen Sleeper. A very cool game. Let's take a break. And then we'll be back with one more thing.

Hi, I'm looking for a movie. Oh, I got you. There's that new foreign film with the time travel. There's an amazing documentary about queer history on streaming. I told you about this classic word giant. robots fight. Or there's that one that most critics hated, but I thought it was actually pretty good. Ooh, I know. The one with the huge car chase, and then there's that scene where the car jumps over the submarine. Wow, who are you eclectic movie experts? Well, I'm Evie Waddy. I'm Alonzo Duraldi. And together,

we host the movie podcast Maximum Film. New episodes every week on maximum fun.org. And you actually just walked into our recording booth. Oh, weird. Sorry. I thought this was a video store. You seem like a lady with a lot of problems. I'm a psychic. My name is psychic, Carrie. I'm Ross. Oh, what a pleasure to meet you. Of course, I knew your name was Ross,

as I am a psychic. But please, take a seat. Well, I was hoping we could talk about my podcast. Yes, I know. It's called, Oh, no, Ross, and Carrie. Yes. We investigate from science, spirituality, and claims of the paranormal.

You took the words right out of my mouth. Yes. This whole podcast, it sounds like it's been a real challenge for you lately. Actually, it's a lot of fun. Yes, exactly. Because it's so fun. I don't know how you do it. This will be $75.

Okay, that seems fair. Oh, no, Ross and Carrie. At maximum fun.org. You knew it was a dot org. I have a gift. All right, and we are back with one more thing. I'm going to go first because mine is pretty short, and it was already Jason's one more thing a little while ago,

but I just want to second a recommendation that Jason made, a book called The Thursday Murder Club that I have been reading. I'm very close to the end, a book by Richard Osmond. That is just wonderful. And I read it thanks to your one more thing. And I'm really glad I did. So I wanted to underline your recommendation. And talk a little bit about it, I guess. This is, as Jason has already described on the show, a murder mystery. You could call it a cozy murder mystery. It is set in England. It does take place at a retirement home with some very friendly senior citizens who are all wonderful characters, a group of retirees who meet in a little club, they call the Thursday

Murder Club where they go over old cases and try to solve them. And then, of course, there is a real murder in their retirement community, and they begin working with the police in many delightful ways and solving the case and revealing their various skills in the ways they all work together. And it's such a delightful book. It's so much fun. I'm just cackling out loud reading it because it's, you know, it's very quintessentially English. It's very, you know, the type of humor. There's a whole lot of cultural references that go over my head, but that I can still appreciate. One of the main characters, Elizabeth is a fantastic character, just an incredible... Yeah, she's the best. You say a lot of delightful characters, but Elizabeth is

really the star in the show. Well, Joyce, though, Joyce is just as good a character. Joyce is great, yes, yes. Elizabeth is like the Sherlock Holmes, like you want to see her plans unfold and... Yes, I mean, Elizabeth, is very fun, but a little bit of a, like, she's the ultimate mastermind, where Joyce is so fun because this book switches perspectives from chapter to chapter, so it can follow all four members of the murder club, as well as the two detectives, who are all really great characters. Elizabeth, of course, yes, who has this mysterious background that makes her the ultimate badass mastermind. But Joyce, her chapters are all told through her journal that she's writing,

and she writes with this just wonderful style and has this very unassuming way of speaking, and that's kind of her superpower, is that she's, She's very observant, but just seems like this nice old lady. And anyways, it's a great story, a fun mystery. And I think I just love how much compassion and truth it has when talking about the lives of elderly people. I think that that is actually a really special thing about this book. It's at times very sad. I mean, just as someone whose parents are getting older and have become, at this point, you know, elderly people.

And I'm dealing with more and more of, like, thoughts about when they won't be around. and how when you're that age, when you're in your 70s and your 80s, it's just death is always kind of there. This book, I think, includes that as just a part of their lives in a way that feels very, it's very true, it's very compassionate, it's very human. At times it's very sad, but it's never modeling or anything. It's just kind of there because when you live in a retirement home, I mean, people are just dying all the time. And so it's just a kind of background thing. But also, I think, like a really essential part of what makes the story work so well and gives it its kind of, emotional heart. So anyways, I think it's like a really, a really wonderful book, and I'm

really enjoying it. So it's kind of wanted to co-sign Jason's recommendation. That's the Thursday Murder Club. I know there's another book. I believe they're going to make this into a movie and make a terrific movie. You can fan cast it a million different directions. There's a lot of, a lot of actors who would be great on it. So I'll totally watch that. Yeah, like a Merrill Street Helmandi cast it. Sure, sure. So many people come to me. Is there any male characters in there? Oh, yeah. There's a couple of great mail characters. You could see like a Morgan Free Freeman and the Emma Kellan. A lot of great elderly

faves of mine I can picture. I'm going to check out this book for sure. It's super good. So anyways, really recommend it. It's great. I bought the sequel, but I haven't read it yet. It's on my nightstand in a pile of like 12 others. I have a feeling it'll be good. If it's these characters again, it'll be good. Okay, so I know Jason's is going to be one that will be fun to talk about.

So, Maddie, why don't you go next? Yeah, mine is also a book. So I think it makes sense. Madis, it's not going to be fun to talk about your saying. No, it will be. Well, I know that I have some thoughts about Jason's, and that will probably mean that it will go on a little bit longer. And Maddie's is something that is new to me, so I will ask Maddie for hers first. Mine is new to the world.

So my friend Samantha Allen wrote a book. She has written multiple nonfiction books and is a journalist, and this is her first novel. And it just came out on June 28th, and I pre-ordered it. As Jason would be proud, I pre-ordered this book. Nice. I was a good thing. And I read it upon release. And it's amazing.

It's called Patricia Wants to Cuddle. Okay. How to describe this book? Great name. Great cover. So this, as I said, it's a fiction book. So this is a book about a season of The Bachelor, although it is a version of The Bachelor that is called The Catch. This is a tragic comic horror novel about The Bachelor and the Prison of Heterosexuality that is The Bachelor.

And they all go, there's four content. left, four ladies all vying for the attentions of this like washed up tech bro, Jeremy. And these four contestants, the book is told from each of their perspectives. It also switches per chapter to each of these women's perspectives and their competition with one another. And they all go to this remote island where there is a mysterious monster, a mysterious female Sasquatch Bigfoot that is preying upon the islanders, but only certain of the islanders. Islanders, pretty sure it's just the straights. This is a very gay book, and it is very much

about how The Bachelor is a hilarious prison of heterosexuality, and it is about how the contestant, who is pretty clearly signposted as the final girl, even from the very first page, Renee, is the closeted bisexual contestant who's not sure she wants to be there. And it's all, it just plays out like a horror movie basically, a slasher movie where she sort of discovers the part of herself that she truly is and also survives this Sasquatch at the same time. I don't know. It's hilarious. It's so strange. And I love it so much as somebody who loves horror movies and also think Samantha's one of the funniest people ever. So yeah, Patricia wants to cuddle. If you think any of that sounds cool at all and you like it when a

Sasquatch is a metaphor for being closeted, then maybe you should read this book. What a fun premise. It's great. It's so fun. And yeah, I just, I don't know, I want it to be a bestseller because I've already been fancasting the movie in my mind because these four contestants, one of them is like a Christian Instagram influencer. Like, they're so colorfully drawn and I just, I need it to be a movie. So people need to buy Patricia Wants to Cuddle by Samantha Allen so that that can happen. Yeah, that's a great setup. That sounds awesome. It's great. Nice. So Jason, what is your one more thing? Okay, so my one more thing is God of War 2018. I've been all this talk of the God of War sequel, which is coming out later this year, has gotten me to replay the first one,

and it is tremendous. My goodness, what a game. That's Jason's take. It's a good game. I've been playing it on the, it's pretty, pretty good. I've been playing it on the PS5. So it's running I like this beautiful 60 Frims a second. At one point, I started a new game plus, but I said screw that and just switched a new game, which is a way better way to go. Because if you haven't played a game in four years and you don't remember anything, it's like you do not want to be overwhelmed by all the commands and skills and stuff. So started a brand new game.

I've made a good chunk of the way into it. I'm like about scaling the mountain now in the first part of the game, which I guess is not super far into it. but considering my limited gaming time, I've stuck with it for a while. And yeah, man, it feels so good to play. It's so much fun. It's so enjoyable. It's so beautiful. It's written so well.

It's so throwing the axe feels so good. And yeah, it's such a like you, I'm sure I said this in 2018 on split screen when the game came out, but you really don't expect, like, you expect certain things from God of War. You expect this like, McKizmo, machismo, and like, lusty women with their tithing. out and like quick time events and yeah a lot of stuff that just really is not in this like this is really the series going for like the prestige art form level of like really high quality stuff there isn't any of that stuff in there um what you have here is a story about this like super angry guy who has all these repressed emotions who is trying to communicate and like learn how to interact with and

how to raise his son. And I find that super interesting. Even if, and I know Maddie, you're very sick of like the dad, the dad troops and games. I'm just allergic to them. It's just, there's nothing I can do about it. Which totally understood. And like if you don't want to watch a dad's story, this is definitely not the game for you. And you can, it can be really frustrating looking at Cratos and be like, man, you got to handle

this toxic masculinity like, fucking deal with it, man. But it is so, the game is so deftly constructed and like so well written. And there's so many like. There's such a great cast of side characters who all have their incredible, like, really good storylines. To the point where, like, one of the best things about the game is you eventually get this talking head named Mamir, who just hangs out with you and makes wisecracks the whole time. And one of the best parts of the game is that when you're riding around in your boat exploring the world, he will just tell these stories. And they're all amazing Norse mythology stories that are just so much fun to listen to. The game is also brilliant, has this brilliant mechanics.

where like if you get interrupted, he'll say, okay, we'll hold that thought. We'll come back to this later. And they do a really good job of like actually putting a pin in it. And then he'll return to that spot as soon as you get back in. But anyway, it's just such a well-constructed, just clever package of a game. There are all these great puzzles. The combat is really, really fun. Throwing the axe just never gets old. Like you throw this axe and you summon it back with just the press of a button and it just feels so good every single time. just pressing the triangle and pressing the triangle button and Kratos sticks his hand out and just the axe flies back into his hand. Just feels so good every single time. Yeah, it's gotten me very, very exciting for, excited for the sequel, revisiting this game. Yeah, I've been kind of, I was replaying at someone PC, just because it was a really good PC port, and I downloaded it and started playing it.

And then was like, oh yeah, this game's really fun. And they just kept playing it. It is really fun. I've been, because I can just, I think I play it through Moonlight onto Steam Deck rather than, because it can, the Steam Deck can run it, which is like one of those Steam Deck miracles where you're playing. Like 30 minutes a second movie. It looks good, yeah. It looks basically the PS4 version. But running it at 60s is a little nicer.

A thing that's cool about this game, and Maddie, I was thinking about this when you were talking, we were talking some about open world games and signposting and the best possible path last week on our Q&A episode. And a thing that this game does really well is the structure of the world is really cool. That was something that struck me replaying it is that it is at times open, more open than like a Metroidvania style game, even though it does have elements of that where like you'll get an upgrade for the whatever, you know, for your kids bow. And then that can open a door that you couldn't open before. But it's also just that the world is like it's open, but not exactly. And it's kind of a spoked thing where there's a main area that you can explore and gradually unlock, but then you'll go out into these side areas.

But then there are optional areas. There are optional spokes. There are puzzles that you can solve. It has a really nice mix. Like, just the feeling of playing it for an hour. You always get a nice variety. Like, I'd kind of forgotten that because my memory of it is very, like, smashing and throwing the axe and destroying because it's very satisfying and physical.

But the game, the experience of playing the game, it's a lot of exploration, a lot of cool puzzles. They're never mind-blowingly cool, but they're always pretty cool because given the way the axe works, it allows it to like mechanically, like you can throw it somewhere and then recall it from somewhere else. So you can lower a thing and then cross it, and then as it's going up, you move, you know, it's like... So when it's stuck in something, so like, for example, one thing I just did is that they're like these poison areas and you can stick your axe into something to freeze the poison

so it stops. But then to get to the next area, you have to call your axe back and you have to be positioning yourself in the right place. there's a lot of cool stuff like that. Right, it allows for a lot of cool positional puzzles, I guess, because you have the two states where the axe is somewhere in it's frozen, or you've called it back. Anyways, there's a lot of just cool design and stuff like that.

And those tools, I'm sure, all already exist for the sequel. It definitely made me excited about the sequel because, you know, they've built all of this stuff now. It all works. And now they can build new stuff and come up with new ideas and kind of expand it a little bit. And that'll be cool. The story, I'm very curious of the story of the sequel. is going to be good because the story of the first one does work pretty well in general.

And I'm kind of like, this is the kind of thing where more characters and more stuff could actually make it feel, you know, kind of overblown or bloated or, you know, you can't do the arc again with the father-son thing. So it's like, what's going to be the core of this? How's it going to work? Well, you can. I mean, their arc was definitely not resolved in the first game, the Cratos, Atreus. There's still a lot of room for development there.

But, yeah, no, it's going to be really interesting. So one of the things that you should know, Maddie, because I'm sure we're going to do a triple play of Ragnarok, even if you don't play the first, which, or a double play if you don't feel like playing Ragnar. But either way, we're going to talk about it. But one of the things you should know is that the entire first game talks about Thor and Odin, but you never see them in the entire first game. So they kind of like, you see statues.

They're hinted at. You meet their kids. And like, so their power and their presence. They're real bastards too. They're awful dudes. Awful people. Their presence is really hinted at. But in the, in Ragnarok, we're going to see them.

and we've already found out that Odin is played by, of all people, Richard Schiff, aka Toby from the West Wing, which is incredible. So I'm very excited to see that. And yeah, man, there's so much that they could do with the sequel that I'm very, very excited for. Who knows what kind of new weapons they'll be adding in and what kind of new stuff. But, like, man, God of War 2018, it's so good. I might replay through the whole thing, which I don't too often. Yeah, for a kind of dead summer, it's a good one to replay this summer, given that the sequel is coming

and there's kind of not that much going on. And it's been just long enough that you might be surprised by how much you've forgotten, even if you played it when it came out. Right. Well, I forgot a lot of the story stuff and like the relationship stuff. So that is a good, kind of a good buildup to the sequel. So very excited. Very excited at that. Nice.

It makes me want to go play it again. All right. Well, that's another episode of Triple Click on the books. We did it again. In the bag. We sure did. In the bag. In the can.

On our belt as a severed head to regale us with stories as we, as we explore Midgard Who's, do you, would you take our severed heads to explore Midgard if you could, Kirk? Yeah, Jason, if it could just be you telling me JRPG trivia. Take Jason, he's a way better story teller, which is why you shouldn't kill me.

I can just be there alive, but take Jayson's head. We would leave you in the tree because he's kind of stuck in the tree and then they cut his head off and they'd take it up to me. I would tell you NFL stories the entire time. Wow. Okay, wait, never mind.

Maybe I would leave the head behind. NFL and gambling stories. Yeah, maybe that would be. That would actually be pretty entertaining, I think. Yeah. All right, well, I will see the two of you next week. See you next week. Bye.

Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network,

and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximum fun.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpods and email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum fun.org. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned. Audience-supported.