Triple Click - Triple Play: Hollow Knight: Silksong

Episode Date: September 11, 2025

Maddy, Jason, and Kirk finally crack into the long-awaited Silksong, the sequel to Hollow Knight that was seven years in the making. They talk about how Silksong compares to its predecessor, the classic origin of its musical motif, and of course, why Hornet is such a badass.One More Thing:Kirk: The Cloud Roads (Martha Wells)Maddy: Elden Ring Nightreign’s four-player mod by YuiJason: The NFLLINKS:“Enter Pharloom,” “Moss Grotto,” “Title Theme” by Christopher Larkin from Hollow Knight: SilksongTwenty Thousand Hertz on Dies Irae: https://www.20k.org/episodes/diesiraeSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinAll-New Triple Click Merch!! https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

Hollow Night's Silk Song is finally out and the takes are coming in hot and fast. Here's a take for you. Hornet is cool and I want to be her best friend. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. This week, of course, we're talking about Silk Song, our impressions of the game, the changes it makes from Hollenite and the sometimes mean pranks that it plays on the player. What a thing that we finally get to talk about Silk Song. I'm Kirk Hamilton.

I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Fryer. Hello. Hello. Oh, hello. Man, it was very difficult to stop playing a video game so we could record this podcast. I've got to say. We could be playing Silk Song right now, but instead we're recording a show.

Listeners? No, no. Oh, sorry, I am playing Silks song. Do we know that all three of us aren't playing it? That is what I sound like when I play Silkson. I have my window open this afternoon and I was playing and I kept worrying that someone outside was going to think I was a murderer or something. Someone's just dying in my house.

You sound like hornets, barks, like her little efforts. Yeah. They're great. Well, we are, in fact, a video game podcast. We're not just through people who play video games for fun all week and never make a podcast. No, we do make a show. That we work on. And we're able to put in the work to make this show for all of you because of the support of our lovely maximum fun members.

We're totally listeners supported. We don't sell ads. We don't have to worry about it. any of that nonsense, which is very, very nice. It's a great way to make a show, and that is only possible because enough of you chip in to support us. So if you would like to support triple-click, go to maximumfund.org slash join. You will support our network, maximum fun, which we love being a part of, and you will gain access to a whole bunch of exclusive bonus episodes for members only. The most recent one just came out last week is our spoiler

cast on the second two-thirds, maybe, of the legend. of Zelda Ocarina of Time. It was a very fun conversation about a wonderful game. And yeah, that's in the bonus feed along with a bunch of other stuff. And at the end of this month, we are going to record a beans cast, a spoiler cast about the game that we're talking about today, Hallow Night Silk Song. There's a ton of spoilery stuff to talk about with this game. And so we'll be trying to finish it by the end of the month. And we will do a beans cast about that. Anyways, maximum fun.org slash join. You'll get a ton of a bonus episodes. You support the show. What do you doing? Go join. Go become a member. All right.

With that out of the way, it's time. It is time, y'all, to talk about Hollow Night Silk Song. Did you prepare a statement? I can tell. I can just tell your face when you're about to read something. Hollow Night Silk Song is Team Cherry's long-awaited follow-up to 2017's Hollow Night. It is a 2D platformer set in a mystical world of bugs and other creepy crows. with a focus on intense, acrobatic fights and daunting platforming challenges. Players can expect a stiff and escalating challenge as they gradually unlock new combat and traversal abilities, all while exploring a sprawling and secret-filled map.

Silk Song tells the story of Sherma, a humble and devout bug who sets off on a pilgrimage to the kingdom of Farloom, where a once mighty theocracy ruled from on high in their shining citadel. Farloom has since fallen into ruin and is haunted by its zombie-like inhabitants who have been infected and corrupted by strands of mysterious silk. It's a dangerous road, but Sherma walks with her faith to guide her. On her journey, she meets a lone warrior harpist named Hornet, who is on a mission of revenge against those in Farlum who have wronged her.

Sherma explains to Hornet that all will be well, that their faith will carry them forward. Hornet is unconvinced and chooses violence at every turn. Part buddy cop movie, part revenge story, Silk Song explores this unlikely friendship in a variety. of ways. Who brought Hornet to Farloom and why? What has become of those who rule the citadel? And will Shurma ever convince Hornet to just kick back, relax, and sing a song together? Those questions and many more lie at the heart of Hollow Night's Silk Song. Which,

Hollow Night Silk Song, it's finally out. We're finally playing it. This game is real. And, I mean, not to give too much away, but it's pretty freaking good. Jason, what do you think? How are you feeling? I think Sherma is a good example. I think Shurma is a good of that parable of like the man is stuck in the middle of the water and he's like god'll send save help god'll save me and then helicopter comes and he's like no i'm waiting for god that's that's sure by in a nutshell lady i sent three boats this game is is everything i wanted it is phenomenal i love it to death um it is more hollow night which i think is an important thing because i think a lot of people got sucked into the hype expecting it to maybe not be more Hollow Night, but it is more Hollow Night, except it's got a lot of little tweaks and

improvements and kind of new features that I think you'll appreciate even more if you are obsessed with Hollow Night like we were back in the day. For example, I mean, one of the kind of big structural things with Silk Song that I think makes it better than Hollow Night is that there's a lot more guidance from the get-go. One of Hollow Nights, I think, flaws is that at the very beginning it can be impenetrable. A lot of people bounce off of it going in, especially before all of the hype built up surrounding that game. It was very easy to get lost in a new region without finding the map maker and without being able to get the map. It was easy to not know. There were parts where you wouldn't know what you had to do and there was no clear

mission or anything like that. Silksong remedies this by giving you very clear missions. It gives you quests, it gives you a lot more guidance. Even the map makers, it feels like the zones are better designed in a way where it's a lot, you're a lot less likely to get through an entire zone without seeing those little chakras from Miss Chakra, everybody's favorite singing, matmaker, even the singing. Oh, you mean, Shakira. Shakira, yes, Shakira. Because... Her maps don't lie. Your maps don't lie. Yeah, perfect. There. We should end it. All right. That's it for this sense of this. Chakra's singing is even better than cornifers with all, no real shade on cornifer, but

chakra singing is beautiful. Anyway, I think it's just like new and improved hollow night, better than in a lot of ways, more hollow night in a lot of ways. It's just perfect. I love it to death. And you have played a ton, right? Just so listeners know where you're coming from. I am well into the thick of the second act of the game.

I don't know if it's two or three acts in the game, but I think I'm nearing just based on where the story is and what I'm structurally doing. I think I'm nearing the finish line, but I've also done a ton of side stuff. I've seen quite a lot of what this game has to offer, and there is a lot of it. It is a monstrous game.

Again, more Holo Night. It's Holo Night, but bigger and better. Think about that sales pitch. I mean, Holo Night is one of our, it's been one of our triple-click picks forever. It's like one of our favorite games. It's a game that we all lot is one of our favorite games, one of the best games ever made. And this is just a sequel that takes all of the things that we loved about it and just adds more and improves a few things too.

I mean, what more could you ask for from a video game other than weird little guys in bugs? Weird little guys with surprisingly beautiful singing voices. Maddie, you're playing this as well. Jason says we, but I know you're not quite as much of a Hollow Night super freak as the two of us are. But I'm curious what you're thinking. I do like it. Oh, yeah, I know. And I really love Silk Song.

Nice. Jason, I agree with every single thing you said about the things that are better about it. But for me, it's like add a plus one modifier to all of those to the extent to which I'm enjoying Silk Song more than Hollow Night. It's not to say I didn't like Holo Night. I'm not here to say that. I'm just really, really enjoying Silk Song for pretty much all the reasons Jason said, it's clearer where to go. It's usually chakra is almost immediately available in a given area. You just run into her by seeming happenstance.

That's just good area, environmental design, and you can get a map pretty easily. It's not too onerous to collect the rosaries, which are like the in-game currency that certain enemies drop to get a map. It's not too expensive. It just feels like you can unlock the maps pretty easily in this game. And I remember in Holo Night, I've talked about getting lost in games before. I get lost a lot and often just be like, I don't even know where Cornerfer is. right now and like when am I ever going to find him again and like this game I've never felt that

way which is great I am only 12 hours in or so I'm I'm past the fourth boss and I'm if we're allowed to say area names I'm in gray more right now and I am digging it so so much and another thing that I'm sure we're going to talk about is that I really love Hornet as a character and she's such a big personality in this game and I'm just really enjoying having a character who talks and kind of bounces off the world in ways that the Hollow Night just is never going to do because they're like a silent protagonist and they're like a receptacle and that's part of what that game's vibe is and that's fine. But playing as a character who speaks and also like sometimes kind of rebuffs people or just has her own reactions to all of the kind of intense religious faith around her

and like kind of comments on the world. Like it just adds such another layer to the game for me that I'm really, really enjoying. I know I talked last week about feeling like, uh, like there's a story in Holo Night. it's cool. I really like it, but like I'm just kind of soaking in the vibes.

This is the game that made me be like, I actually really want to understand what's going on. And I've gotten super into like watching Hollow Night One lore videos that previously I never went back and watched because I'm like, I want to understand this. I've been really enjoying learning more about the lore this time and having a protagonist who is a big part of the world around her and reacting to it and talking. It's great.

Yeah, it really is remarkable how big of a difference those narrative changes make. I mean, I'm loving the game as well. I don't really need to go on and on about a million different things. I'm sure we'll talk about them. So let's just talk about that about Hornet and the world and the narrative setup because that's an immediate difference. I think that players will notice right off the bat. Hollow Knight told its story in a kind of passive way.

The Knight is a very mysterious character. and while there are character full NPCs around, the knight has essentially no personality, and that's for a reason that is explained in the narrative. They are essentially an empty vessel. And Hornet keeps turning up being this, you know, really cool, flashy ninja lady in this red cloak and just seems like she has a whole personality

and a whole story going on. We talked about this last week. So to play a game from Hornet's perspective, suddenly you're occupying this character. Also, Hornet has a clear motivation. She was captured by someone and taken to Farloom against her will and then escaped under somewhat mysterious circumstances in the opening cutscene. And now she's basically on a mission of revenge.

Like she wants to know who tried to take her. She knows that if she just leaves, they'll come back. There's actually, you can get to the edge of the map. And instead of just getting blown back by the wind like you were in Hollow Night, she actually stops and says, if I leave, they're just going to come after me again. I need to stay here until this is finished. So she's actually got a character motivation that is stated. And then also, this kingdom, Farloom, is fascinating.

It's this theocratic, I don't know, totalitarian regime that has fallen into total shambles. And yet also it like keeps echoing, the echoes of what it used to be keep ringing out in all of these really interesting ways. And you have this feeling of this oppressive force on high who's forcing everybody into, just awful conditions and awful, like, they have to work these terrible jobs. If you read the hunter's guide that Hornet carries to describe a lot of the monsters and enemies that you fight, a lot of them are creatures that were designed to, like, punish people for leaving their jobs or hold them in place. There are multiple prisons.

There are kind of prisons everywhere, because Farloom is the kind of place that just puts people in prison for all kinds of things. So all of that combined with Hornet just being this like arrow through the heart of this entire place, this unstoppable force, man, that's so cool. Like the feeling of cutting through this horrible, corrupt, desiccated place as this character who is so strong and confident, she's so direct with everyone. And actually, I'm watching her kind of grow. And as she helps people, she's realizing, you know, I like helping people. And I hadn't thought about that in a long time. And her character is kind of growing.

man, I mean, that is a real change from Holo Night and it's a huge improvement in my opinion. She's also got these great little physical flourishes. I mean, for one, moving around the world as her is so much fun, especially once you get the sprint, which really opens up the game. And I think if you're kind of on the fence about this game or you're not sure about it, play at least until you get the sprint because that really changes things in a big way. But then once you get the sprint, that's when, I mean, I talked about some of the improvements over Hollow Night, moving around the world feels so much better because you're going faster. Hornet is more stylish and fun to watch and fun to just watch animate.

Yeah, her animations are incredible. I think they're pretty much the same. That running animation, which she dips her head and she kind of moves low. Man, everything she moves. Or when she like kind of, yeah, spears up. And then as you get these different, you could get all these different kind of like move sets that change the way she moves in subtle ways. There's a lot of cool stuff.

And then there's little animations, little bespoke animations like. She like crosses her legs at a bench and she looks so formal. It's adorable. Or like there's a, at one point, you do a quest for someone and they'll just like try to get close to you and like taste something on you. And Hornet just smacks the little bug that is trying to suck him off. There's another bug who wants to give her an endearing nickname. And I can't even remember, like, call her like Honey Sweet or something. And she says, you shall not.

You shall call me Hornet or nothing at all. And that is very true to Hornet's communication style. She's fantastic. What a protagonist. What a great character. I'll be disappointed if, like, future games you don't play. Because I just want to keep playing as Hornet. Yeah.

And there really are so many other great characters as well. We talked about Chakra, Shakira, who, it's funny, you know, this game has an interesting relationship with pronouns. A lot of the characters in this game have no stated gender. And in the Hunter's Guide, Hornet refers to characters. Even, you know, one boss name has sister in the name, but she refers to them as they. the knight in Hollow Night was notably genderless, and Hornet actually is described as the gendered child

in this one bit of lore in Holo Night 1, where it was an unusual thing that Hornet was assigned a female identity. And so I kind of think of different characters, different ways. I guess I kind of want to throw that out there and just say, I think of Chakra as a she, and that may actually be the case. I'm not sure with this character, but it's just an interesting thing about this game and about Hallow Night too. But anyways, Chakra is so.

cool, this also kind of warrior who is touring their way through this kingdom. And I don't know if you've ever done this. There are so many little touches like this, though. If you lure an enemy to within chakra's reach, she'll just like destroy them. Like it's nothing. And I

wonder if we're ever going to fight. I kind of hope not because she looks tough. But there are just all these little details like that. Well, based on Hollow Night, I'm sure there'll be like an optional, crazy fight where you fight her at the Coliseum or something.

At the very least, where you don't kill her, but it's kind of like... But she kind of was like, you can challenge me and I'll allow it. I want to see what you really. That's how I can really know someone. Yeah. But there, I played a lot of this game on the Steam deck over the weekend because I was traveling. And it runs great on the deck and is a really great experience.

But playing it on the big screen is much better for me, at least, because of all those little animations. Like the reflection of Hornet in the water, the way she moves her legs, because her whole body is just black, it's very hard to make that out sometimes on the smaller screen. And on the bigger screen, you can just see she moves like a dancer in so many cool ways. And then a million other little animations and details that are just really cool. Yeah, she's so great. So William Pellon and Ari Gibson, the founders of Team Cherry, when I spoke to them a few weeks ago,

one of the things they told me is that one of the reasons this game took so long and achieved meme status as a result is because they were just kind of adding all this polish and reactivity. to the world. And what you just described, I just described Kirk about Chakra is a good example of that. Other things is like if you play music for people, they'll react to it. If you like, there are all sorts of little kind of animations that you wouldn't expect to happen, but just are delightful when you see them. Like characters running in, enemies running into each other and doing silly things. I mean, there's just so many small little touches that I'm sure there will be countless YouTube videos being like, here are the 1400 little details you missed in Silk Song. But all of that stuff, it really adds up. And first of all, you can see why it took so long. But second of all, I think it really just creates this holistic, just experience that just really feels special and bespoke and really just unique.

Yeah, it's awesome. I love it. And I mean, I know we're going to talk about the music. So, like, can we go ahead and just loop that in here? Because the sound design of Hollow Night 1 is absolutely one of the things that stands out about it. And that continues here. And it's, it's just such, I mean, to agree with Kirk, like, playing on the Steam Deck, it's fine, I've been doing that as well.

But playing on the big screen with like my good headphones, incredible. Love the music, but also just the weird little guys effect is so much higher tuned when you can hear their little bug language, which we also kind of alluded to last week and obviously continues here, where we as the player, we get it in our language and we get to understand what the bugs are saying. But in the world of the game, they're speaking in this kind of melodic way of just syllables. They kind of approximate, like, oh, the language sounds like this. I don't know.

I just really love that combination of world-building concepts, where the bugs have this other bizarre language, and that adds so much character to each one of them. And it's part of how you grow to love and also kind of, to fear some of them who make weirder noises are just like more unrecognizable to you as the game goes on. It's really effective. Yeah, so the music and sound design is all Chris Larkin, again, returning. And I think he has taken on an even more pivotal role in this game, in part because so much of the world is built around

music. I mean, it's called Silk Song, and that's not just a cool name. Like this whole world, the world of Farloom is built around music in these really interesting ways. Like, their system of units and measurements, at least in their religion, is musical nomenclature. You have to, you know, everything is silk, but you have to turn in a certain number of measures or stanzas of silk. You know, an early boss is called the fourth chorus. And it's some crazy mech that they made. And everything is like that.

And then the further you get, the more that I've played, the more I've, like, been amazed at how much music is just running through the whole game in the gameplay, the world building, the design. There are bells everywhere. I don't know. Where Chris got all these bells sounds? Like if they actually went and recorded a bunch of different bells. Well, it goes with like the religious symbolism throughout to have bells everywhere.

It's perfect. And your fast travel is the wonderful bell beast, which is this kind of huge killer panther bone creature that tunnels through these tunnels of bells through the kingdom. And whenever you ride the bell beast, you hear the bells all ringing. There's so much of that. And yeah, the language is really cool. I just ran underneath a fly. and I swear it went, Jesus!

I'm going to play a clip of it. So listeners can make up their own mind. Jesus. And there's one other thing about the music that I just wanted to point out that people might think is neat. And that is that a main theme, like one of the big melodic motifs

is this four-note motif, dun, done, don't, done, that Larkin wrote into, I mean, the opening menu. Every time you ring one of those big bells, it just rings these four notes. And those four notes are, I actually have like a lot of history. It's an old Gregorian chant known as the D.S. E. Ray, which there's a whole episode of the podcast, 20,000 Hertz, about this that I actually guessed it on.

But you'll hear it everywhere. It's, if you've seen The Nightmare Before Christmas, every single song in the Nightmare Before Christmas, making Christmas, that's the D.S. Erie. In K-pop Demon Hunters, there's a song that begins with them. called, what's it called? Like, it's the song, your idol. It literally begins with them singing the D.S.E.R.A. It's not even the melody. They sing like, the Seder A, D.S.

Yeah, they literally sing it because they're the idol, religious idol. They play with that in that song. Right. And it is a religious death chant. But it means death anyways. D.S.E. Ray is always associated with death. In Star Wars, it plays, like when someone has died, it's like constantly turning up to the shining

theme. Anyways, go listen to that whole podcast about it if you want to hear it. But it is like, kind of like a Wilhelm scream style musical motif that you'll hear more and more if you know to listen for it and Larkin is having a lot of fun with it especially given the religious overtones of the whole story when you hear the bells it kind of clangs this incredibly loud D.S. You're like, okay, okay, I get it. I posted that on Blue Sky and someone replied, subtlety is for losers, which I thought was pretty funny. So let's talk about death and the way that Hornet can deal it to enemies because there's a lot of really interesting stuff in this game.

So in Hollow Night, you could equip charms that affected your abilities and your skills in different ways. And then over the course of the game, you get a few magical spells. And you had to juggle kind of one of the core tensions was trying to decide whether to save up your soul power for healing or to use it to shoot fireballs and enemies or use other kind of more elaborate skills and spells you would get later on. In this, you got a lot more than that. You get a whole tool set that you can use. And the tools get increasingly elaborate and funnier and more interesting as you go through the game. But there's some good ones. Early on, you get this kind of spear, and then you got a multi-spear and, yeah, some other cool stuff.

And that, I think, changes the gameplay. It adds a lot more variety to the gameplay and gives you an opportunity to change up your builds in a lot of different ways between bosses. something, I mean, difficulty of this game has been a big point of discourse. And I'm sure we'll get into that, but something that I recommend that people do, if they are finding this game to be difficult, is play around with different belts. I think it's very easy to get stuck in your ways and be like, okay, I'm used to this way of doing things. I'm used to this tool or this crest.

But I have found that changing it up can actually help you take on bosses that were otherwise causing difficulty for you. But also, I mean, just the way that it makes the game feel over the course of the game, it makes it so some of these bosses and just fights in general just don't feel nearly as repetitive, which I think is a smart way of going about it. There's also this really cool currency system built in where in addition to rosaries, your main currency, you also have these shards. They use to craft tools. And so it kind of limits you and makes you feel like, oh, you can't just use them willy-nilly. You do have a limit on how many you can do. but it's not too limiting because you always will have like a good amount of stone chars that you can craft stuff with.

It's got a good balance I've found. I really like the tools. I do think that the stone shards system, it's a neat idea, but I have to say that I use tools so much in boss fights now that I just, and I have, I can carry so many shards that it's not really that meaningful of a limit on me. It's more just annoying when I run out of shards. if I'm like on a really tough boss and I'm burning through tools, you know, you use your shards every time you rest and you rebuild tools. It's just a little bit tedious.

Like I just have to go backtrack and farm some shards. It's a little bit like the blood vials and bloodborn, where you're kind of like, all right, wait, I guess I get this being a limitation, but also it's just introducing tedium to the game. For me, that's not such a bad thing, because if I'm stuck on a boss, it's only happened once. It was actually a not a boss, but a challenge room

where you fight waves of enemies. And it was hard enough that, going back in farming was actually like a nice little mental break because I needed it. Well, that's why I assume that's exactly why it's designed. It's designed in a way. There's a lot of subtle design in this game and I think that's one of them where like if you run out of stone shards, that is the game's way of telling you to stop just like hitting your head against the wall against the boss because I found that in this game oftentimes if you are running into a wall against a boss you can go back and you'll find so many other things, so many new things to do

and along the way you'll keep getting stone charts. So, like, that system feels to me like almost like a safeguard on the player. It's telling you, go do something else for a while. I'm not sold, but I get what you're saying, but I don't really feel that way. But at the same time, I think the tool system is super cool. And I got to say, I mean, if you are having a hard time, the number one tip I would give to anybody who's struggling is use your tools. Because when I was playing this game like it was Hollow Night at first,

where I was just using my needle and doing melee, attacks. It was pretty hard. And man, especially once I embraced the Sting Shard, which is a tool that you can build pretty early, it's actually a weapon that Hornet uses in Hollow Night. It's the sort of star-based trap that she throws out. And then if someone touches it, it just like blasts out a bunch of spikes and does a bunch of damage. That plus some upgrades that you can get for your tools that cause them to do even more damage. That thing is incredible. And it has changed. It's made the game so much more manageable for me, especially in those instances where the things that I'm finding the hardest are actually the rooms, you'll go into a room and the door slam and waves of enemies

begin coming at you. This happened in Hollow Night as well, but it happens a lot in Silk Song. It's a very regular thing. I find that harder to deal with than just a big boss with a bunch of complex patterns that you just have to memorize, where when it's a crowd, it's just so much harder to deal with. But the minute you can just throw a couple of sting shards out there and it just ruins people if they go across it, and then you also, you know, eventually you can have two tools equipped so you can be throwing knives and throwing them out there. It makes a massive difference. One other tip that I will give people, if you're playing this on Steam, you can, and it's, well, if you're playing this on steam, depending on how you have your control setup, you can set up custom control configurations.

So like when I'm playing on Steam Deck, for example, I set one of the back buttons to be a combination button press of up on the D-pad and right button because that's how you activate a tool. And I find that a little bit awkward, like doing a double button press to throw tools. But if you're using Steam, you can actually, like, you can do the Steam, you can go one layer up in the Steam OS and assign a double button press to a single button. If you have back buttons on your controller or something, it can really make things a lot easier. And that, again, will take a lot of, a lot of the load off in terms of how much damage you have to do. Yeah, that's a great idea. I'm going to do that. The other tip that I'll offer is that you should switch up your crests once you start getting

a couple of them because, um, first of all, it's nice to, once I got a crest that let me do a downward pogo, I switched to that and never look back. So much easier. I, I was like, those little red flowers, those are fine now. No problem. Yeah, no problem now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah, I was very worried about the diagonal attack. Before that, I was like, I'm never going to learn this. Like I can't get a handle of this. It's funny. Man, it brought me back because I felt that exact same way when I played the demo at E3 of 2019. I was like, man, this diagonal downward slash. Just takes them getting used to.

Hope I get used to this in the final game next year when I play it in 2020. But then cut to today. And I was like, oh, okay, thank God. You can, because I'm running into the same problem. Get a downward slash, yeah. But also, like, they all have such different rhythms. I mean, the Reaper is the one that I use the most because I really love the perk that it gives you where you can just, like, collect extra silk after healing.

But also, um, there, I would. I won't name them all, but there are a few others that really switch up your gameplay. And I found can be really cool and just like new ways to take on bosses and sometimes make certain bosses easier than others. Again, a lot of the stuff, yeah, man, if you're coming into this game without having played Hollow Night, you're probably not going to have a great time. But if you see this is kind of a continuation of Hollina, as far as the difficulty goes, that is. But if you see this as a continuation of Hollow Night, like it feels like, or maybe it'll take you longer to have a good time. I don't know. The other thing that I keep thinking is that as I see people kind of struggling with certain bosses, I think that like, um, naturally the instinct is to play

this game fast and to move fast and to be aggressive in your attacks. And I found that in some cases, that's true, but oftentimes bosses, um, that are, that you're struggling on, uh, the way to get past them is to slow down and watch their patterns because their patterns are always um always dodgeable or always doable in some way they're never unfair or random or sporadic so like if you're watching i don't know sister splinter and you're like man this this uh this spider thing keeps killing me with its claws and vines and stuff and then you start to realize that oh it'll always go left right left i could always dodge and get a hit on and then dodge and get a hit on like once you start to see that stuff. Kirk over text was comparing it to music site reading, which I think is a good,

a good way of looking at it. I call it dancing in my own head as well, like learning the dance moves with each boss, which I find really rewarding. And I totally agree. And I feel like the comparison that I would make to Dark Souls, which people love to compare these games to Dark Souls, and I don't actually think they feel that similar except in this one thing I'm about to say, which is don't get greedy. which is what I always tell myself in a boss fight in Dark Souls or any from soft game is like, Maddie, don't get greedy, don't get greedy. Don't try to hit them twice.

It's fine. Just wait for the next one. And this game is exactly like that. Like just get one really good hit on during that one specific window that you're waiting for. And that's the part that is dance like where it's like, okay, the boss is going to go left, left, right? And I just have to dodge, dodge, and then hit. And then I'm waiting. And they're doing this move.

Okay. now I'm going to go right up or whatever the next quote unquote dance move is. And by the end, I'm like doing the YMCA. And oftentimes when I'm beating a boss, I'm incurring no damage. Not because I'm like crazy good at the game or something because I definitely don't feel that way, but because I've just memorized every single telegraphed attack. And by the end, I'm just like, okay, I know every single thing they're going to do just from that animation that they do a millisecond before.

So then I just hit these buttons and I'm done. And again, the key is to not like hit twice just to wait it out. Just wait it out till the next round. Just hit one time and you're good. And after that, I'm like, this is cake to me. This is good. You eventually learn like, oh, okay, I can do two hits after this boss does this attack. And then I can do three hits after this or one.

I can do a downward attack as they run under me, which is a common one for me. Precisely. Or like, oh, that one's really short. I can really only manage one there or whatever it may be. Yeah, the punish window, as it's referred to, I think, by people writing tips or talking about boss fights in general. There's a punish window, which is the moment when the boss stands still for a second and you can get in a hit. Yeah, there are some later bosses where in their second phase, they may only have one punish window where you barely can get in any hits and most of the time is defensive. But yeah, like you said, Maddie, once I've learned, once I've learned the patterns, I find that it's not that hard to dodge.

Man, a really interesting thing that I've found with this game that I started testing out with. with the Mantis Lords in Hollow Night, actually, when I was replaying that game last week, was just taking the headphones off and playing with no sound on the bosses. And so I was fighting the Mantis Lords. I've beaten them several times. This is a Hollow Night One boss.

And I fought him a couple times in this replay and kind of got worked. I was like just, I know the moves, but I just hadn't played in a long time and I got killed. So then I was like, okay, let's just take the headphones off, no sound. And I beat them without getting touched. I, like, played it totally perfectly.

I responded to every single move. exactly as I was supposed to. And this time through, as I play through Silk Song, I'm kind of doing the same thing, and it's been a very interesting experience for me. This is, I'm sure it's partly particular to me to like the way that I get distracted by the music. I think it's also just the way your brain works. This is related to how, if you're in a very loud restaurant, your blood pressure spikes and your focus really changes.

This is just true of everybody. And when you're in a very loud environment, your brain is doing a lot of processing that you don't even feel, you're not aware of it. It's just processing all the noise. And so when the music is really intense and your adrenaline is up and you're really focusing, it can be cool and it can, like, kind of help. But once I know the fight really well

and I know what moves are coming, I don't need audio cues to tell me, I use the visual cues. And I really find with some of these bosses, these one big boss on the screen fights, that I just take the sound away completely and I play like 50% better. It's really interesting.

Wilds. I also do that for those fights because I also find it a lot easier, especially if I've done it a couple times. I'm like, I just need to focus on the animations and then it's way easier, which is too bad because I just compliment to the sound design. And I do stand by that. But sometimes I'm like, I just want to focus on these specific animations and get to the next part. It gets nothing against the music. I wish I could do it all, but it just makes it so much easier for me to not have that thing in my ears, you know, kind of elevating. Yeah, I feel that.

Sometimes they can get you on tilt when it's like. Like, oh my God, like the music fades, especially in Holo Night. It's like, how many times can I hear the same thing? Well, there's a boss who laughs when she kills you early on, too. I've never liked an enemy that laughs at you after they beat you. But also when you like, when you get those sound effects showing that you're close to dying or like when in Hollow Night, it would be like every time you took damage, it would do this like kind of crazy like fade out like the screen would freeze for a second. Man, when I fought Sister Splinter that boss, who we won't really describe, I suppose, because she's a little bit further in. man, I did almost the whole fight the time that I beat her with one health.

Like, I was down to one and it got crazy. And I was in the third phase and I'd never been there before. And I had one hit. And I was just like, I just went to like pure focus mode. And then when I beat her, like when she exploded, I was like, it was actually at my sister's house and everyone was going to bed. And I was just like, like, screaming quietly like in their living room. It was such a rush. It was totally that, that boss feeling when you finally beat a boss and you get that huge adrenaline rush and then don't know what to do.

with yourself. So something I've been thinking a lot about, especially reading people's thoughts online, some of which are truly bonkers. I won't name names, but I... You mean about the difficulty? Yeah, just about the difficulty. And this game in general, I mean, we've seen, we've all seen some insane hot takes. Sure, whatever. Some of them really misunderstand the nature of the game. I was reading an article that just, like, didn't really seem to understand a lot of the, even just the core mechanics, which have me thinking. And I actually think that one of the reasons that the difficulty discourses become such a thing. And one of the things that I think is really a barrier for people maybe is that they don't

really understand that this, that sook song, just like Hollow Night, is more of a platformer than an action game. And the bosses, the way to beat them is playing as a platformer. It is a 2D platformer at its core. And there's so much tough platforming in this game even outside of the bosses. But also the boss, like I think if you're thinking of them as like dark souls where you have to kind of like strafe and dodge and like parry and stuff like that, then you're not really thinking about this game right. The way to play this game is to think of it as like Celeste or like

a bullet hell game where you are dodging and jumping and dodging and jumping. And the attack button is almost kind of an extension of your jump. But even there, you might be doing jump words like bounce attacks from above, which often is the best way to defeat enemies because it puts you out of harm's way right afterwards. And I think when you kind of your shift your position and maybe you think, oh, I'm not really good at platformers. I mean, I'm not going to be that good at this game. I think you could be. But if you think of it as a platformer, I think you kind of, you understand its nature a little bit more. When I was first playing, I kept thinking to myself, man, this feels tougher than Holland in a lot of ways. And then I think the further I got into it, the more I thought,

actually, it's not that much harder. It's just that like, you really just have to meet it in its own terms and just kind of understand what it's doing. And there's some of some bosses in this game that are super easy once you just understand their mechanics and again, treat them as platformer bosses, as if you're playing a 2D Mario or something like that, Celeste might be a really good comparison. And in fact, there's one section of the game that is very reminiscent of Celeste. So yeah, I mean, I think that's the way to think of this. This is at its core, a platformer where you are jumping and avoiding obstacles and doing some precise, like, dashing around as you get more mobility mechanics and playing around with different, just kind of move sets there. And that's how you beat

everything in this game from actual platforming challenges to the bosses. Yeah, I totally see that. And I really like that reading of it, too. And I think it's actually explaining why I'm digging this game a little more than Hollow Night. And some of that is Hornets movement speed and just overall agility, she can really turn on a dime and you can kind of cancel out of moves into other moves in a way that I find really satisfying. And maybe that's like the fighting game fan in me. I don't know. But it just the controlling her movement came much more easily to me. Again, I'm not like saying it's all easy by any means, but just specifically getting Hornet to go where I want her to go is an experience that I feel like I have a lot more agency over in especially

like platforming difficulties and a boss fight where, oh, I need to really think about where I'm moving. And she just has so many movement options. It's great. Like we've talked about the dash a lot, but she unlocks more as the game goes on and I'm not as far as you two, so I'm sure there will be more. And that's really cool because every time I achieve another movement ability, it's really stacking for me. And I'm really seeing like, oh, now I can implement this way of moving into the next fights. And it's so rewarding and just fits perfectly into her arsenal. And I feel that way so much more about the movement than even like her weapon arsenal. I'm like, yeah, that stuff's great. Whatever. Fine. She like has all the tools and stuff. Kirk was talking about. Those are great.

But like I really feel control over movement. And that that's probably why. Like I really like that way of thinking about it, Jason, is that it truly is a platformer. And I like Celeste, too. So that's kind of explaining why I'm digging it so much. One more thing in the difficulty real quick is that there's been a lot of complaints about how you lose two masks when you get hit most of the time or when you run into a boss, you'll lose two masks, which is annoying, but it's made up for it by the fact that healing in this game is way easier than it is in hollow night, much faster. You don't have to hold the button instead you just press the button. But the tradeoff for that is that you heal, instead of healing your entire life bar, you heal just three masks as a result of that. But I think, I guess,

again, thinking of this as a platformer, the key to healing and another kind of tip, another big tip for this game is that you can do it in the air. And if you do it in the air, that means you can do it out of reach of a lot of bosses, which is a striking contrast. In Hollow Night, you could really only heal during boss fights when you knock them, you stun them for a second. And there would be all these, like every boss would get stunned for like a couple seconds and you could use that to heal as different points throughout Hollenite. But you feel like you're losing out when you do that Because you're like, oh, I want to hit the boss. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And in this game, bosses still get stunned, just like they do in Hollow Night. But you can heal anytime pretty much, as long as you get out of the way of a boss. Of course, if they then interrupt you, you'll lose the heel and you'll take damage. So it's risky. But a lot of the times you can find little crevices, again, little just kind of spaces in the air because you can do it in midair. And that is another key to just like mastering this game is heal in the air, a way. away from the boss, away from the boss's attacks. So I want to at least say that I don't think we should just say, yeah, this game isn't actually harder than Hollow Night and move on.

I think that this game is differently difficult. I don't think I moved on. I don't think I said that either. It's just that my position has kind of changed on thinking it's harder than Hollow Night as I've played more. Right. I guess I just, I would like to, I don't know, there are definitely some things about this game's difficulty that are significantly different. It's hard to really say one is harder or easier, but it feels very hard to me as a veteran of Hollow Night. It's a hard game.

And there are specific reasons that someone would, I think, fairly say that this game is a lot harder than Hollow Night. For starters, enemy AI is very different from the start. You're fighting a lot more intelligent enemies who do fallback attacks, which is just something that was not happening in Hollow Night for the first, like, many levels. It was almost all just brain-dead enemies that would kind of run at you, and you could manage them really easily. Like, imagine pretty much any enemy in Green Path compared to those big knights that you find in Green Path, who have the shields and how hard those guys are. Every other enemy in Green Path pretty much just, like, charges right at you, and once you know their patterns, they're really easy to deal with.

Those knights are, they're kind of the exception in the early hours of Hollow Night. In this game, super quickly, you're going to be fighting enemies that faint backwards, that throw stuff where their default movement is to bob and weave and pull away from you. And that can be very, very difficult to deal with. Like, it requires much more platforming skill. True. I also don't know this for sure, but it feels to me as though the default enemies take several more hits to die than in Holland Night.

I think that the number of hits required. Those ants. Oh, my God, those fucking ants. But even just like basic bugs that go around take like four or even five hits at first. And that, again, just means you're fighting for longer. you're going to take more hits. I find that even now when I'm fighting like really basic pilgrims or bugs, it's an even chance that I'll take a hit just because it kind of takes a while and I have to really actively stay away from them because it just takes like three or four hits. Another difference is that it takes

a lot longer, I think, to get your first upgrade for damage, where in Hollow Night you get a damage upgrade after like two or three bosses or something. Having just replayed it, it's pretty striking. You do, yeah, I think it's like two or maybe three bosses. You can start upgrading the sword or the nail. And then also you can do several upgrades by like just hunting around the map and finding stuff. In this game you don't get your first upgrade until like, I don't know,

a bunch of bosses, a whole bunch of areas. And you can wind up going through some really hard parts of the game that are technically optional. But with no damage upgrade, they're so much harder. There's an infamous area called Hunter's March fairly early on that I actually missed because I misread. There are these red orbs that you can bounce off of,

but I thought they were, an item when I first saw one and was like, oh, I guess I can't go there yet. And so I just missed it. And I kept playing and I went way beyond and I eventually got the first needle upgrade. And then I went back and did Hunter's March. And it wasn't actually so bad for me. But you can wind up in a lot of very, very difficult areas with no blade upgrade. So, like, there are definitely things about this game that are really difficult and that

if you're a Holo Night veteran, because it's differently difficult and also just, frankly, difficult. You mentioned that a lot of things do two masks of damage, and that is true, and it's mitigated somewhat by the changes to healing in combat, but in platforming, it really isn't, because it's hard to build up silk when you're platforming, and a lot of the time, if you make a mistake, platforming, it does two masks of damage, which just means you have fewer tries on a given platforming challenge, and some of the platforming, especially in, like, Act 2, where I am, is freaking hard, too. Like, the game is just hard. And then my last thought is, The other thing that this game is, is occasionally it is mean.

And I think it's mean in a loving way. It's mean in a funny way. It's playful. It's something that I actually really like about this game. It's a big part of its particular identity. But there are a lot of times where this game will put one incredibly annoying enemy between you and a boss just to make you have to deal with it every single time you're going to the boss. Or they'll have a sign leading to a bench where you can save that doesn't really lead to a bench.

like it does, but it's incredibly difficult to get to the bench, or the bench is broken or something. There are all these little jokes that the game plays on you that are a little bit cruel, and it's that kind of masochore thing that, you know, that video games have been doing for a while, that Dark Souls likes to do as well. But if you couple the sort of difficulty, all those kind of changes I was just describing with the fact that sometimes the game just kind of like pokes you in the eye for the fun of it, I think that that can just lead people to feeling like the game is more hostile than they remember Hollow Night Being. So I want to clear up a couple things.

First of all, there is one. The game gets even meaner later on. There's a section in the game that I just played through that involves poison swamps that made me maybe say out loud several times like, okay, William and Ari, you guys must be sociopaths for creating these runbacks, creating these gauntlets. I mean, you guys will get there at some point and you'll be like, what the hell is going on? Maybe you'll give up.

This is, I'm not saying this is an easy game. by any measure. Second thing is, I don't think it's like, it's certainly not easier than Hollow Night. It certainly feels like it was originally designed as Hollow Night DLC. And like I said, at the beginning of the show, it feels like a game that is like meant for Hollow Night players. It feels like you should have some mastery of it, although I'm sure you can pick up on the pattern recognition and the platforming, just picking it up. My point is only that like, as I started to see what it was doing and what it wanted me to do, it started to feel less like, okay, this is so much harder than Hollow Night and more like, okay, I have to reframe my thinking a little bit, play a little bit more

conservatively than even I did in Hollow Night, play a little bit differently as Hornet, experiment more. In Hollow Night, I don't think I ever change my charms once I got a couple of favorite ones. In this, I feel like you pretty much have to, if you want to like optimally take on some of the bosses. So it's more just like reframing my thinking a little bit, helped me see it less as like, oh my God, this is such a massive spike from Hollow Night. And more like, okay, most of this stuff is doable, even if quite a few things in the game do feel mean. Only a couple I've seen so far feel unfair. Maybe be like, oh, my God, what the fuck is going on here? Yeah, an important distinction.

And yeah, I'm definitely saying mean, but not unfair. Yeah, and then there are a few things that are just annoying, which are the boss runbacks, a couple of which in particular just take so long and are so grueling that they don't give you as much of a chance to learn the boss and their patterns. That said, again, just like I mentioned before, whenever I've run into a wall in this game and be like, this is driving me crazy. Like, I'm running out of stone charts from using all my tools like, this is so stupid. Going back and backtracking and spending a couple hours doing quests and revisiting old areas and unlocking new stuff and just getting more powerful and getting more familiar with the mechanics, always helped. And I always found that after I did that,

went back to the boss that I was running into a wall on, maybe took me, three, four, five tries, and then I would take him out. So that, I think, is one of the keys to getting past the difficulty of this game. Yeah. Also, like, just to allude back to what you were saying, Kirk, like the idea of the game being mean, I think some of those things are intended to be in the spirit of poison swamp lovers at From Software, like the way that sometimes those games can be mean in a funny way. But also, it's really, really hard to strike that balance.

And there are many players who just will never think it's funny. And I understand those people. Like, I feel like I often am very willing to laugh at myself and at the game when, like, I get to a bench and, like, I am attacked for sitting down or what have you. Like, I'm okay with that. Like, I will laugh in those scenarios. But I also think that's, like, a weird personality quirk that I have. Like, I guess I like Mass of Court. I don't know.

You're not alone. I think that's like a certain sense of dark humor almost that like this game is playing on. But that's also like to taste, you know? Like it is a certain person is just going to be like, well, that pisses me off. And like I am going to put the game down now. And I can I can even understand that even if that's not me. Because I'm like, well, yeah, that stuff doesn't have to be funny to everyone. It is to me.

This is something I talked to William and Ari about about Holland. night where there's a banker in Halloween night, who you give your money to and she keeps it safe. Yeah. And then at some point, she just vanishes with your money. And then later you can find her. And if you just knock her around, you get your money back. And I can't remember if it was William or Ari, but one said that the other was basically like, she should just take your money and you shouldn't get it back.

Yeah, you should never find her again. It was like, you shouldn't be able to get it back. And then they decided to be able to get it back. But that kind of joke is very much, the joke that's on the player is at the heart of this game. And I agree. I find it funny. sure it's not to everyone's taste. And I think, I'm sure some of the reaction that some players have

is just because the hype on this game has been so huge. Everyone's been talking about it for so long. There are doubtless people who have picked this up, not really realizing that it is an exceptionally difficult game, that that's like what Hollow Night was as well, and that the whole thing of the whole joy of this game is slowly conquering this elaborate, huge challenge that you just gradually learn and overcome. And not everyone likes that. And so I think that's also part of it, that people just went into the game not realizing, oh, this is going to be hard as hell. Like, you're really going to, you're really going to be tested. Which, yeah, sucks for them. I think that, I think that those pranks that it plays on you, those only work because the game feels so delightful

to play on a second-by-second basis. It feels so good. Running around his horn, it feels so good, slashing things feel so good, just hearing everything, seeing everything, the aesthetics are so perfect. like everything just works so well that I think that's what kind of works with the, it almost creates this joyful little contrast of like, hey, this game that is just such a pleasure on your eyes and feels so good in your hands

is gonna fuck with you and you're gonna like it and you're just gonna suck it up and you're gonna deal with it. It's a cruel world. She's navigating a cruel world, okay? What's the worst thing that can happen? You play more silks on. Exactly.

It's such a punishment. So like, yeah, these runbacks are just like, they're not so bad. When you realize it's just so fun to watch Hordet move and to hold the sprint button and just dump around and find, find new ways of like skipping parts and just like hitting platform and shortcuts to get better at it. Yeah, exactly. And it's just like it all works so well that even the frustrating moments can be.

And then it's all the more satisfying when you finally beat that boss and you're like, man, okay, that was that was worth it in the end. Man, when you two get to the part that I just did, you're just going to be screaming. I mean, I'm excited for the poison swamps now, honestly. I love a poison swap. I think it's optional the stuff I was doing, but you never really know with this game. Is any of it optional? I'm going to 100% this game for sure. I mean, hey, I did Hunter's March. I'm willing to do Hunter's March.

I'm willing to do anything at this point, right? Hunter's March's Child's Play. I'm sure it is. It already feels true. So yeah, I can't wait to see what horrors are in store. What a game. We'll be talking about it more in the future. We'll do in a beans cast. And who knows? Maybe we'll even talk. talk about it on another episode. For now, though, let's take a break and we'll be back for one more thing.

You know, we've been doing my brother, my brother me for 15 years. And maybe you stopped listening for a while, maybe you never listen. And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years, I know where this has ended up. But no. No, you would be wrong. We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing. Yeah. You don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on my brother, my brother, and me. We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening. And if not, we just leave it out back and it goes rotten. So check it out on maximum fun or wherever you get your podcast. All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show. Let's learn everything. So let's do a quick progress tech.

Have we learned about quantum physics? Yes. Episode 59. We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we? Yes, we have. Same episode, actually. Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters? Episode 64. So, how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news. We still haven't learned everything yet. Oh, we're ruined. No, no, no, it's good news as well. There is still a lot to learn. Woo! I'm Dr. Ella Hubber. I'm regular Tom Lum. I'm Caroline Roper, and on Let's Learn Everything,

we learn about science, everything else to. And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode. Join us every other Thursday on maximum fun. And we're back for one more thing. Maddie, what is your one more thing? Okay, so as you two know, I have a weekly gamer night with three other friends, and the three of them have actually gotten really into Eldon Ring Night Rain, believe it or not. And we talked about this game a little bit when it came out, and none of us were super into it. but I have also kind of unwittingly gotten more into it simply by virtue of the fact that on Thursday nights when one of us isn't there, because this is a notably three-player video game,

it's kind of like Destiny Strikes, but Eldon Ring style, I will play some Night Rain. And it's not my favorite, but hanging out with friends is my favorite. And playing Eldon Ring is my favorite. So we do things like this. And I've gotten all right. I've gotten better at kind of adjusting to the things about Night Rain that I don't love because I do really like hang out with my friends.

So we have been doing that just kind of trading off and playing when there's three of us. But most recently, we installed this mod that has been created by Ui, who's on Nexus mods as Ui. If people want to find her profile, it's spelled

Y, UI, like three letters. And she made a mod where you can play with two people. So for example, if you want to do duos, you can do that. And you can play with up to six players, which sounds wild to me. We have not done that, but we did do the full four-player,

the full four-person gamer night cadre, and it was pretty awesome, partly because we, so Ui has built in a thing where you can change the amount of damage that enemies do. You can increase it slightly. You can also decrease it if you want. If you're

playing, for example, with just two players, you want to decrease the damage a little bit so it's easier to get through the game. But in our case, in theory, we should have increased the damage, and instead we just didn't do that. And it was so much fun because once you have four players, I mean, I can't imagine Night Rain with five or even six, having done it with four.

You can just fully surround a guy and just destroy his life. A low-ranked monster hunter in a hunt where you're just wailing on the monster. It is so, so satisfying and fun. And like, it was just a really great time. And it was super different from some other Night Rain Runs we've had where, like, you know, we're all really quiet. And we're like, task, task, task. like only saying what's absolutely necessary.

Everybody is fully on the freaking task until we get to that final boss and like we're fully focused and also like kind of stressed out if we lose. You know what I mean. You know that energy where you're looking at that splash screen where you just lost and you're like,

okay. A lot of nights like that. This time though we were like laughing our way through it and being like, oh my God, this game is so funny with all four of us. So I really, really recommend this mod, especially if you are like me and you have a group of friends

that you're like, wouldn't it be nice if Nighterun was four players? or even five. I don't know. If you want to get that crazy with it, you can. I do think this mod is awesome. It's extremely easy to install. Ui is a great moder. She made it super simple. And I think the mod works really, really well. And it's really, really great. So can't recommend it enough. Makes Night Rain trivially easy if you add one more person. And it's also just a fun, good time with friends. So that's my recommendation of the week. That sounds awesome. Yeah, I would love to check that out. All right, I will go next. My one more thing is a book that I read over the weekend called

The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells. I guess I read it before the weekend because I mostly just played Slick Song over the weekend. But this was last week I read this book. Martha Wells, of course, the author of the Murder Bot Diaries, which I loved so much, which were just turned into an Apple show that was pretty good. That was fine. But she is a prolific writer who's created several different fantasy and sci-fi worlds. And the Cloud Rhodes is one of her series called the, are they the Roxura books? There are seven of them, the books of the Roxura. From 2011 to 2017, she published these books. And it was really interesting. It was not really what I expected. It's about a world with no humans in it. So it's already

very different from the fantasy or sci-fi that I typically read. You know, most of these fantasy books, it's human beings or even sci-fi like Miles Verlocosigan or whatever. It's all humans. It's not a bunch of really wild different species. It's just people. Where in the Cloud Roads, it's a world that is sort of ambiguously post-apocalyptic. There was a previous civilization that lived on this planet, but it's not really clear what happened to them. And now all the different types of people who live on the planet are like different forms of, I don't even know, they're kind of animalistic, but they're sort of, they have different like scales on their skin or like their beetles. They're like big walking beetles. And the Raksura, who are kind of the central people of

this story, are like transforming bird people. So they can look sort of like humans and then they shape shift into these birds. They're like kind of almost harpies. They have like huge wings and can fly. Some of them anyways. And they have a whole complex. So this is self-song D.L.C. So I was about to say a really interesting thing about it is that it feels very similar, especially to Hollow Night actually, where you're learning the intricacies of these complex, kind of social and hierarchical structures within these different species that sort of coexist on this planet.

And then they're kind of animalistic. So they move a little bit more according to instinct and like mating rhythms. And it's not really like they're humans, even though they are humans and they speak. And Moon, the main character, is basically a young man who is lost and doesn't know who he is.

but there's also just this other like animalistic layer on top of it. And it's really cool. It's a good story. I just found the whole thing to be tonally unusual. It's a pretty hard-boiled story in a lot of ways because it's a kind of survival of the fittest world. And there's a lot of just brutal kind of challenge and struggle. And they're really up against it the entire story. There's this other kind of evil similar species of flying people called the fell who are trying to wipe them out.

And it's this kind of. ongoing war, but it's all very occluded, and you find out the way things work sort of in a bit more of a show-don't-tell way. And there's still a lot about the world that I don't know because I've only read the first book. It was pretty cool. I wasn't like crazy about it the whole time I was reading it, but I really liked it. And by the end, I found the world to just be so distinct and interesting that it was a cool book. I think I'll probably keep reading these. I'll read the second one and sort of see where it goes because she's setting up a much bigger story. And of course, The Murder About books are so great, and she's just a good writer.

Like, she has a really good strong sense of plot and pacing. So I think that the books are all probably pretty good. So anyways, yeah, I liked it. That's The Cloud Roads. It's by Martha Wells, the first of the books of the Raksura. All right, Jason, it's time for your one more thing. Football is back, you guys. Much to the dismay of some spouses everywhere, the NFL has returned to take over.

Sundays of people who are into it. And I'm here with a very specific complaint. So this Sunday, I was watching football and I was watching the evening game, which here in New York starts at about 815. Football games are about three hours, maybe three hours and some change. And this evening game on Sunday was Bills versus Ravens, which is two of the best teams in the NFL and the two best quarterbacks in the NFL. So it was going to be a very entertaining game. The Ravens came out and were crushing the bills. And I believe the score was something like 40 to 25 in the third corner. And I was like, okay, I don't need to watch it anymore.

It's my bedtime anyway. I typically go to sleep between 10 and 10.30 because my kids will be up by 6.30 and I got stuff to do. So I typically try to go to bed 10, 10, 10, 30. And again, NFL games, it starts at 815. It's going to go to 11, 11.30. Next morning, I wake up. Look at my phone. Bill's Mount Remarkable comeback scores.

like 16 points in four minutes. Best game ever. You shouldn't have gone to sleep. Oh my God, I can't believe you missed it. The headline literally said, Jason, you specifically should not have gone to sleep. Why did you do that? I can't believe you miss this. You miss what was going to be the greatest game of the year.

I was like, shit. It lasted until like 1130. So I would have had, I would have been cutting my sleep. It's way past my bedtime. I'm an old dad. Anyway, cut to Monday night football. Okay, this time it's the Chicago Bears against the Minnesota Vikings, and I'm watching the first quarters, and it's like half time,

and the Vikings can't do anything. They have this rookie quarterback who is just like, seems incompetent, and the bears are crushing them. The bears get a pick six. It's like something like 16 to 7. I'm like, all right, this game's over. I'm going to go to sleep. Wake up the next morning.

Vikings mount remarkable comeback. You shouldn't have gotten to sleep. Oh my God. Fourth quarter, J.J. McCarthy. Jason Shrier, fool me once. For real. And I was just like, come on, you guys. But what if you had stayed up and nothing had happened?

Like, how are you can't know? So, I think two things. One is, I think games need to start earlier, which I realize might be a problem if you're on the West Coast because games already started, these evening games start at like 5 or 530 on the West Coast. I think you can move that up an hour. So those of us with small children can watch the entire thing until like 10 instead of having to stay up until 11 or 1130, which is just crazy town.

That's thought number one. Thought number two, this might be a little more controversial. I think that the NFL should say there is going to be something dramatic in this game. You should say. I don't know if this is doable. I would like to know. I wasn't sure if it was going to be this or you were going to say no more comeback. You're not allowed to go.

You're down by a certain amount. If the game is going poorly after the first two hours, it's fine. It's going to end there. I thought you were going to say essentially football games should. be two hours long. That would be nice. Yes, football games should be two hours long. I mean, a lot of that is commercials. You're always saying games are too long. Exactly. That's what you actually were talking about. People thought you meant video games when you made that post, but you were talking about football games. I was talking about sports games. All games are too long. Just games in general. That's why they came up with pickleball because tennis is too long. I think that one of the reasons you watch sports is so you can be there live watching this unforgettable moment.

like of athleticism or a crazy comeback. And like I'll never forget like, I don't know, the chief's like coming back against the bills and the playoffs at one year where like Mahomes had 13 seconds to score and like he somehow managed it. Like stuff like that you're looking for. And that's one of the reasons in the playoffs, you'll never turn off a game in the middle of it.

But like if there was some way to know if you were going to see something miraculous, I know which kind of defeats the point, right? Because part of it being this miraculous moment is that it comes out of nowhere and surprises you. But still, there's nothing that sucks more than being like, all right, this game's over, going to bed. And then with the Bills game in particular, there were Bills fans who left the stadium

because they thought it was, oh, of course, yeah. And so it's all just really, it's really, it shows you a couple things. One is that you have to just like stick with the game until the very end, no matter why, you've got to have hope in your team, especially. But the second thing is that games need to start earlier because some of us got bedtimes. Hey, so listen, NFL, Roger Goodell, Commissioner of the NFL, if you're listening to this, just start the games a little bit early. Huge triple-click fan.

We all know that. He is. I heard he is. And I will say, I mean, if I lived in California or Portland where Kirk lives, I could start, you could start watching football at 10 a.m., which is awesome. And then it's over by like 8.30 on a Sunday. That sounds amazing to me. I wish I could have that experience. But if I tried to convince my wife to move to the West Coast for that reason, I don't think it would fly. Oh, my God.

Yeah, that seems like a hard sell. Also, the Jets might have a quarterback, but we'll talk about that another time. Yes, we definitely look forward to future NFL updates from Jason Schreier. But for now, that's another episode of Triple Click. I am going to edit this and then I'm going to play some more Slokesong. I don't know if you. We're just going to go ahead and start playing right now. We have that benefit.

I've got a big to-do list going in that game. Well, I have to go be with my kids, but then I will play after the kids go to bed. I don't have to do anything. Jeez, just play Slokeson. I know. Well, this was a fun conversation and, yeah, a very fun game to talk about. Thanks so much everyone for listening, as always, and I will see the two of you next week. See you next week.

Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the 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, send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network

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