Triple Click - Triple Play: Loop Hero

Episode Date: March 25, 2021

Jason, Maddy, and Kirk dive into the latest big indie game hit, Loop Hero. They talk about its strengths, its weaknesses, the nature of addiction, opacity, and repetition. Plus: the best cookbook ever?One More Thing:Kirk: RE ViIIage Maiden Demo (and demos like this)Maddy: How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (Jenny Odell)Jason: The Food Lab (J Kenji Lopez)Links:Jenny Odell’s Bureau of Suspended Objects: https://www.jennyodell.com/bso.htmlOdell’s interview on the Ezra Klein show: https://www.vox.com/ezra-klein-show-podcast/2019/5/23/18636332/jenny-odell-how-to-do-nothingSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinJoin 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

Do you ever just feel like you're stuck in a loop? Do you ever just feel like you're stuck in a, hey, wait a minute, what's going on here? Welcome to Triple Flick, where we bring the corny intro bits to you. This week on the show, we're talking about Loop Hero, the auto-playing, world rebuilding, chain link, addictive, Indie Darling, that's got a whole bunch of people talking about meadow placement and the passage of time. We got a lot of thoughts, so let's get to it. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers.

And I'm Jason Dreyer. And hello. Hello to both of you. It's us. Welcome back. Welcome back to another episode of Triple Fricking Click. Welcome back. Friken Triple click.

Triple Frick. That works. We're a podcast about video games and we're listeners supported also by our wonderful listeners who sign up to become members of Maximum Fun, which is our wonderful network. Everything is just wonderful. We really appreciate all of our member listeners, people who make it possible for us to make this show. If you would like to be a member of Maximum Fun, that would get you some pretty cool things. get you access to bonus episodes of triple click each month as well as other Max Fun

shows and just the, you know, the knowledge that you're helping a listener-supported show keep on trucking. So if you want to become a Maximum Fun member, go to MaximumFun.org slash join. And the bonus episode that we're doing for this month is a little bit different. It's a beans talk. We're spilling the beans. Talking beans. Spilling the beans on some topics.

And this topic is our personal canon picks for different. media. So each of us are going to pick a book, an album, a TV show, a movie, and a video game that are, we think is a great thing, like worthy of our personal canon and also kind of defines us or says something about our personality is in some way important to us personally. So that's going to be a lot of fun. And you can become a member if you want to listen to that. That'll be out next week. And there's a bunch of other bonus episodes that you will get to listen to as well. Maximumfund.org slash join. One other thing, we are back on the Final Fantasy 6 bus. We're We're playing this game or the train.

Back on the airship. It's a ghost train or yes, maybe an airship. Oh, yeah, it could be a ghost train. We're going to be doing another triple click on or another triple play, sorry, on that game. Before we do a beans cast on it, the triple play is going to take place on April 15th, and we're playing up until the end of the first act, until the floating, the end of the floating continent. So that's what you want to kind of aim for. Who can say what that means?

Only Jason Trier knows. I'm reading off of a piece of paper here, and I don't know what that means. So that's for your planning if you're playing along with us, which is a fun thing to do. It is. All right. We're talking about a different video game today, a very exciting little oddball indie that Jason Schreier is going to tell us more about. Yeah. So this week we are doing a triple play on Loop Hero, which is a game that I think a lot of people have heard of now.

It has sold pretty well. It's become one of those big indie hits of this year so far. You know why that is right, Jason. It's because it was your one more thing, the other one. It is because it was my one more thing. I actually, no, it was a one more thing after it was a hit. Nope, it's all triple click. I think it's because it's published by Devolver,

and Devolver is very good at like coming out with this buzzy indie games. Or it's the triple click bump, one or the other, who can really know. Yeah, or the triple click bump, fair enough. Yeah, half a million copies, maybe like 90% of that is the triple click bump. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Loop Hero is kind of a strange game. It's the basic conceit is that you

play as this guy who is a hero who has lost his memories. And so the world is completely erased because he forgot it all. And you as a player have to kind of construct things around him as you go. And so the game is kind of divided into two sections. One section is a rudimentary building section where you're building up this village and you're placing buildings in it and kind of recreating the world that was erased. And doing that gets you kind of benefit. for the other section, which is the meat of the game, which is the loop section. And this is where your guy kind of walks around in a circle on a randomly generated path. It doesn't look like a big circle, but it's like a little bit jaggy as you go. And he fights monsters as he goes, except you don't

actually control any of the combat. You just watch him go in a circle. But what you can control is the equipment that he's wearing, the kind of monsters that are spawned by placing buildings around the loop and a bunch of other perks that you get by placing these like tiles on the map. And so as you watch your guy go, you're kind of making these strategic decisions. Oh, should I place this tile here? Should I place this swamp here? Should I place these vampires here? Et cetera, et cetera. And it's really addictive and an interesting game. And I guess we should start off with just like everyone giving kind of overall impressions. Maddie, you want to start us off with your initial thoughts? And then also tell us how much you've played so far.

Sure. I'm embarrassed to say that I have played this game for 10 hours but have still not beaten the first boss, which is a probably unusual situation to be in. Because it took me a very long time to figure out that at the top right of the screen, there are attributes that unlock for your hero. There's like a little one that pops up when you unlock an attribute. And I played this without even knowing that there were those special skills that you could unlock. And that is not a good way to play, which brings me to my next point, which is that loop hero does not really tell you that much about how to play it. You need to read a lot of cards in the game that describe each building that you put down and think in your head about how they interact. The game will not tell you, for example, that if you put down nine rock or mountain tiles in a square together, it will form a mountain peak. You just have to figure that out by happenstance. or if it does tell you, I don't know where that information is delivered.

No, it doesn't. It's very intentional. This opacity is intentional. Yeah. And there's, it's also just a very minimalist UI. Like, you can just equip your hero with new loot as it drops for monsters, but not necessarily with higher numbers because that strategy wise isn't always the best choice. Like it took me a while to figure out like, oh, I really need to be paying attention to like my evasion percentage, for example, and thinking about, how that helps me in the long term more than just brute strength helps me against certain monsters. And so all of those pieces are very opaque. And we can get into that in a second. The other thing about this game, though, that I've noticed is that it's very addictive and I'm not sure that I'm actually enjoying it. Like, I've played a lot of it, but I'm like, what was I actually doing with that time? And this game, I don't know. I'm curious to hear what you two think about it.

Like, I feel like I've lost a lot of time to this game, but I'm not sure what I gained from that. Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts and response to that. But Kirk, I want to hear your impressions first. Yeah, so I haven't played as much as you, Maddie, but I am actually farther. I'm in the second world. You are, yeah. I played a couple of hours. I think I just, I beat the first boss the first time I came up against him.

I think I just had a really good build. And it kind of gotten lucky because I still don't feel like I have a total mastery of a lot of the systems in this game, just because there's, like you said, there's a lot there, and the more I play, the more I realize that it is a very, it's a very facts and figures kind of a game. Like, it's a very spreadsheety sort of a game because it's so interesting. It's like a donut around the, it's like a donut whole kind of a game. There's a metaphor there that I'm not quite getting,

but it's everything but the gameplay in a certain way, right? It is everything in a game like, say, Hades, where you're repeating things and there's randomly generated elements, a sort of rogue light kind of a deal with a story that unfolds. And you're deciding on your build. Yeah, and you get a different build each time. So you're kind of improvising a little bit, but you're also unlocking things as you go.

And there's this multiple progression tracks that kind of keep you hooked. It has all that stuff, but there's no middle thing like in Hades, which I use as the example, both because it's a fantastic game, because we both played a lot of it and it's fairly recent. But that game, at the middle, there's just jumping around fighting guys. And that is the kind of basic part of the game that's really fun to do. And that's what I think of as the center. And then there's all this stuff around it.

That's all the stuff I just described, where Loop Hero builds a whole game out of just the stuff around it. And that's a really interesting kind of game to play. Like I'm finding it so different to engage with that it's making me just ask all these questions about video games in general. and, you know, the sort of progression loops they pull us into and how those work and the effects they have on me. So I'm not like enjoying it in the way that I enjoy most games in terms of, you know, that rhythm, that feel, that gameplay thing that you get out of so many games.

But I am enjoying it as almost more of an intellectual exercise because it's a very cerebral and intellectual game. So I am liking it, and I do have a lot of thoughts on it, but those are my kind of broad initial thoughts. Okay, so that's interesting. So my kind of overall impressions are I really liked it as I talked about a couple of weeks ago and it was my one more thing. And then I kind of grew to maybe I just get done with it. It doesn't kind of, I got tired of.

It got too repetitive for me. How far are you? I'm pretty far. I mean, I'm still on the second map, but I've gotten all three classes and I've made some progress, substantial progress in the building part of it. Part of it, by the way, I should mention we didn't talk about, we haven't talked about, is that, like, you have to, you collect all these resources that you then bring back to your building. While you're in the loop part, you bring back resources. Yeah, unless you die.

But, yeah, if you die, you lose, like, X percent. I think it's only you collect 30 percent. And you have the option every time you finish a loop and get back to your campfire where you started to retreat. You lose 70 percent if you die and you lose 30 percent if you retreat. Right. I think this is part of why I'm bad at the game because I know from, people telling me that I'm not supposed to put every card down, but I'll get really greedy and be like, oh, but if I put these cards in this place, then I'll farm all of these amazing riches. And then,

of course, my character will be, like, barely making it through every loop, which is why I've never beaten the first boss, because I'm constantly, like, throwing all of these absurd challenges or, like, poking my hero with these ridiculous combinations of things and being like, what will happen if I do this or this? I mean, that's part of what the fun of the game is, is trying different combinations of either weaponry or buildings or enemy types and seeing how they interact with one another. So, okay, so just going back to to finish the thought I was having earlier, is that it got really repetitive for me and I kind of got sick of it and just stopped playing. It doesn't really nullify like me enjoying it over the first few hours, but it doesn't feel like

a game that is designed for longevity in a lot of ways, which brings me to the point that I wanted to make, which is that it actually feels kind of unfinished in a lot of ways. I do think that the opacity is intentional. Like, I think it's supposed to be a mysterious game where you kind of organically are meant to discover things like what you mentioned, Maddie, about putting down nine mountains and creating, or putting down nine rocks and creating that big harpies. That's an exciting moment when that happened. It is.

Yeah, exactly. Cool. Something just happened. Or, like, suddenly, and, I mean, not to spoil things, but this is pretty early on, you can discover that if you place the vampire mansion next to a village, the village will get marauded and like turn into a haunted village. Sure. Or you can take advantage of the Blood Grove tiles and the vampires as well.

Like you can sort of play different enemy types off of one another. Again, if you read each of the cards and you're like, huh, well, if this does this, then I can use it against these guys. And I mean, that's the strategy of the game. Well, so the reason I think it's unfinished is because A, I think it just has a problem of being too repetitive and you're not, the game doesn't give you new stuff quickly enough so you can wind up really stuck, especially if you're not strategic about when you're retreating. You can wind up with the same tiles.

You're not unlocking a lot of new tiles, not unlocking a lot of interesting new decisions. You're just kind of making the same decisions over and over again, and that gets a little rote after a while. But the other thing is that the game doesn't give you, because it's so opaque, the game doesn't give you any indicators as to why you failed. So when you die, it might be because Maddie, as you pointed out, you place too many tiles on the map and made it too difficult for you. Or it might be because you just picked a bad build for your character and we're focusing too much on balance instead of just focusing on counter or just

focusing on defense. Or, and then this is what gives me the little kind of niggling feeling that made me want to quit. Or the game is just kind of unbalanced and it doesn't really feel super fair or like you can win in equal ways. And I'll give you an example of this, which is in the first map, I was stuck on the first boss for a while until I realized that really the only way you can beat him is to cheat in advance and know that he's coming and build tiles all around the campfire so they destroy all his little litch like stat enhancement buildings

and then you can crush him immediately. Interesting. Let me just ask about the first boss because I just beat the first boss in my first try and I've only fought him once and I was just a warrior build. That's amazing. You might have accidentally done what I just described.

Yeah, he was, I mean, he comes in right near the village. There wasn't anything. So he replaces the campfire. The boss replaces the campfire. So if you happen to have built, and then he's surrounded, his style is surrounded by nine different stat enhancement buildings. And they all make him super powerful. If you happen to build other buildings around the campfire, they won't appear. And so, like, he'll get super weak.

Like, you have to know that, essentially. Or you could have accidentally done it as Kirk may or may not have done. I wonder if I did. I can't totally remember. I know I always put a, is it a blood field? Is that what it's called? It gives you a treasure chest. Yeah, so that itself would have like...

So I had that fairly near, but I'm not... I didn't have anything else near there. It was a tough fight. Like I went through all three of my health potions fighting him. I already had those. And I was like, oh, I'm never going to beat this guy. Like at the beginning of the fight, I was like, oh, he's going to crush me. But then I just sort of brought his health down and then I beat him.

And it was, it wasn't super. Did you have like a specific build, like a defense build or something like that? No, I really wasn't thinking of it too much. Kirk is just really good at games. Yeah, that's what we've decided. I think I just got lucky. I think, because I've been getting kind of, the second world has really been making it clear to me that I need to spend a little bit more time, you know, thinking about my build and getting a little more. Like, I've been trying to play as a rogue because I unlocked that class and like just getting totally housed by the game.

Yeah, I don't get the rogue at all. Like Jason, if you have any rogue tips let me know Because I just went back to the warrior Because I was like, I don't understand this I don't get how to begin it's last I like the warrior and the necromancer I haven't really done much of the rogue So I think like I want to go back to the first world some

And then see if that was a fluke Because I've only beaten the boss the one time And like you said like when you started talking about that I was like I don't know about any of this Which makes me think the next time I fight that boss I'm probably going to get wrecked Because I had some coincidental thing going on Which is kind of fun

Like the process of like, oh, I want to figure this out is cool. I want to change I need to change the text. Right now I have the text with the like old eight bit looking. I change that right away. Yeah, you can change it pretty easily, which is nice. On the very first screen, I was like, I am not going to make it. I even change it to like the dyslexic friendly text and I am not dyslexic, but I was like, this is the most readable of these three options.

And I want to be able to read this freaking game. Like there's actually quite a bit of reading involved. Exactly. There is. actually it's good. It's like an interesting story and like has really really good writing. Let's talk about the story. I think it's okay. There was a weird grammatical error really early on that kind of threw me. Yeah it's like when the when the lit shows up he says something like this are good or something. I can't remember what it was and how it was like the first thing he said to me and I was like

wait what? And I thought maybe that my character was going to comment on that and be like, why are you talking to a weird man? Did I like forget how people talk? But then he didn't. I think this story is interesting. It's a Russian. developer, by the way, named four quarters. It just seemed like a translation, like a tense or syntax translation issue. I think it's interesting, though, to bring up Hades again, I think I'm a little spoiled because of Hades, because now I'm like, well, if I'm going to play this kind of a game that has this sort of a loop to it, so to speak, like this kind of a feeling where the story is doled out to me, even though I'm just slowly making progress through it,

I really want the story to be as good as the story in Hades. Like, I really want, I really really want to be so pulled in by this kind of right. It could be this good. And while it's cool, it's a great concept, I love, it's really abstract and weird, and I like that. It's this, like, cosmic unknowingness, this weird ambiguity of a world that it doesn't exist because everyone forgot it, but it also just doesn't exist, but then it comes back into existence when you remember it.

Like, that's very cool. And I like that it's exploring all that. There's a little bit of, like, missing charisma for me or something. Like, it just isn't quite, it doesn't. have to be a comedy game. It doesn't have to be funny, but there isn't quite that kind of bounce to the world. Like, it just, for this kind of a world, I could use a little more humor-making. I mean, you should just play Hades, really. No, and that's not what I'm saying. Like, you know, like, it could sound like that, and I want to be clear that I'm not saying, like, oh, I just wish this

was Hades. It's more, I wish it had a little bit more personality. Right, a little more Yeah. Yeah, I get it. I wonder if that's because you haven't played so much, Kirk, because I feel like I've probably seen more of the story than you for better or worse. I I actually think there are some story beats that are pretty strong. Like the idea of remembering a world and reconstructing it and the way that characters describe their own motivations as you meet different enemy types, I find really haunting in a kind of meta-game way. Like, it's pretty tired, I guess, as a trope for video game enemies to question you as a hero.

But like, you know, I'll drink down that smoothie every time and still get some protein out of it. Like, I still think it's an interesting trope. And so, you know, meeting the Harpy, for example, who I'm sure you've met and having her immediately question me and be like, I need to kill you in order to survive. There's a lot more of that throughout, which I really like, and I haven't beaten the game. I'm actually not sure if there even isn't ending or not, so I don't know how it all wraps up or if it does. There is there four sections and then a final boss. So I could envision a version of this that's like braid or something where rebuilding the world is actually a bad thing and like I'm

the aggressor. I can see some of the foreshadowing and in some of the enemy types. and the way they talk to me. But that could also just be me projecting onto the few crumbs of story that are there because mainly my takeaway is that there just isn't quite enough story. Like I enjoy the dialogue that I do see, but compared to something like Hades, where you feel very rewarded for continuing to play, this game just doesn't actually give you that much story by comparison. And that's a little disappointing to me. And it's also part of why I think I've spent more time on the game weirdly, because it ended up being that I would just, just play a podcast while playing and just or mindlessly like dangle a toy for my cat while playing

because you can play this game one-handed like this game is only mouse like you are clicking a buddy how much time during during the day do you spend dangling toys for your cat quite a bit of time but it's it is nice to have a video game where like he doesn't interrupt me with a gentle paw and be like i need you to put the controller down and play with me now this game i can play with my cat and click the mouse, the only action that you perform in Loop Hero. So I do really like how low impact it is. I think that that's like a really appealing thing about it. Like talk about friction, the friction on this.

Yeah, and just be reading the, you know, reading my phone or whatever. Like it, you do have to kind of focus, but if you slow it down, you can really just take it at your own speed. And it does make me think I would probably play the shit out of this on a phone. Like this would be a great game for a commute, especially because, A loop takes about exactly that long. I'm kind of surprised that this is only on PC, only because this is the kind of game that I would have expected to see.

But there are games like this on Apple Arcade. It's the kind of thing I would have expected to see as a big Apple Arcade. Like, hey, man, if you have Apple Arcade, you can play this. I mean, small development team, usual reasons why it doesn't have any ports yet. I'm sure it will be, especially after all the success. But, yeah, I mean, I think to your point, I think it all kind of speaks to what I was saying earlier about the game feeling like unfinished and by unfinished

I don't mean it in that way that like gamers sometimes use in a derogatory term like oh this game you mean the developers are lazy is right right yeah the developers are lazy no I mean I think that like it needed a little more time spent just nailing down the way that it kind of feeds

you rewards and feeds you story and feeds you new progression and stuff like that and also like a little more time yeah the loop the gameplay loop as it were and also a little more time like figuring out how much to keep opaque and how much to spell out for you. So, Kirk, to your point about, like, being able to look away, I've done that where I've, like,

during work, I'm on my laptop working, load up loop hero, like run a loop, look away because I'm working, and then just look back at the screen. And what's interesting is that, like, you might lose a bunch of a health or die even, and you won't know why. And sometimes, even when you're paying attention, you might not know why. because the game doesn't really give you that much information. And if there was like a log or something that you could check where it was like, oh, you got damage for X, you got damage for X.

And then you could know like, oh, okay, maybe I need to be giving myself more defense stats or maybe I need to be putting fewer enemy layers because I'm just getting overwhelmed by this point. It's just like the game kind of, it's funny because it's such a simple game and such a like frictionless game, as you said. But it's also a game that just throws a lot of things at you, like, cover the map can be covered with enemies sometimes and sometimes you won't really know why you died why you lost and that's really frustrating

yeah I don't actually think of it as a simple game and I should say like I don't I don't mean run the loop and go do something else I just mean like you can kind of play it at your own speed you can pause it so easily that you can kind of just be like on chat with somebody and like pausing the game and then checking in and because it's so low impact like just in terms of the interface that you're using like it's easy to do that but I don't actually do the thing you're talking about like

run it in the background. Like, because that, you do have to, I mean, you have to be equipping your guy if you're playing as a fighter anyways

and like kind of paying attention. No, all three classes you have to be equipping. Yeah, well, but like the thief, you know, like the rogue,

you don't even get gear until each time around. Oh, true. Yes, you're right. You know, it's suddenly changes the rhythm. Yeah, you're right.

But yeah, like the, it's, it's an interesting thing because it's not a simple game, but it is a very frictionless game. Right. So it's like,

or at least, it's frictionless in terms of the sort of interactions that you have to do with it, but it's not frictionless in your brain. Like, you have to actually be processing a lot of information. And I think that I agree, I get what you're saying and agree that there's a sort of an informational overload where you're not, it's not super easy to like grapple with everything you have equipped and like with what exactly your build is or what you should be going for and how

well it's working. And I definitely found at first I was like, I'm going to speed this sucker up. and I was going at the faster speed, and then I slowed it down when I started getting more serious about it, and slowing it down is really useful. Like, I found that actually taking it slower, and then to what you were saying, a while back, Maddie, also like running some loops with like one thing in the world, just like going kind of slow because... This is how you beat that first boss. These are two things I never did. I've never slowed it down. I never run the loop pointlessly.

I don't care. I don't have time for that. I want every loop to be full of enemies, and I want them all to come at me. I think I'll lose everything and that's fine. Am I wrong that if you, the boss comes out once you've played a certain number of cards? So like you want to be not playing too many cards too quickly or the boss will disappear. Interesting, Kirk. Interesting idea.

What if instead, though, don't do that and then I lose everything. That's a valid strategy as well. We can each try it and see how those two strategies work. Maddie, you are valid and you are understood. Losing is valid, okay? I am in defense of losing. Yeah, no, I will try those tips after this. But I also do think there's something to be said for Jason's point way back when he talked

about this on his one more thing about how this isn't a game type that I've played before either. I've seen people compare to auto chess. But I don't think it's actually that much like it. It's more like an idle clicker game or something like that or like certain phone games where you sort of check in on it occasionally. I mean, I know you do have to pay attention to it all the time if you want to be playing loop heroes strategically, but it is more similar to a phone game than not. So I don't know. I just

think that's cool. So even though this game, I certainly have my complaints about it, I like the idea of it enough that I'm excited about the idea of it influencing other things in the future. Yeah, I agree with that. I think that just the novelty of it alone is like a real thing to recommend it. Like there's a reason that people are playing this game and talking about it. And I think it's just, well, it's partly that there aren't. that many games coming out right now. But it's also, it's also just that it's very different. I mean, I've been playing so many games that all are kind of on similar frequencies.

Like there's like a looter kind of a game or like a soulzy kind of combat kind of a game or a shooter. Like you just get in these modes of gameplay. And to play a game that has that thing where it's like everything around the action, it's all just like this weird mental spreadsheet. It's just like a very, very different thing. And a really cool idea that I'm surprised I haven't seen done in this. way at least that I can remember. Like even though I've seen elements of this game in other games, it's really kind of its own thing. Yeah, it's kind of one way, one framing for it is like it's a

reverse tower defense. Yeah, I like that elsewhere. And I think that's, or kind of like you're a dungeon master. It feels a little bit like you're being a dungeon master. Yeah. Although I wish, I wish there's a game about being a dungeon master where you were making a lot more interesting decisions. Sure. I mean, it's, yeah. Because like, I've always, like, I've always been into the idea of like those simulation games where you're like making a lot of big decisions. And this is very much like it's like a simulation like game, a strategy like game. It's like a light version of like a dungeon keeper or even a 4X like a sieve. One point I wanted to bring up is a lot of people have described this game as addictive, myself included. And that's such a loaded word. Yeah, you did too. It's such a

loaded word in games and in describing games and like the concept of using a lot of critics and a lot of people like us who talk about games use addictive in a positive way, but obviously addictive can also be a very negative thing. And I'm curious, did you guys feel while playing this game that it had any particularly addictive qualities that you saw as either positive or negative? Did anything about like the dopamine rush that you get from it strike you in any particular way? Because I was thinking about this the other day. And I think I was in a state of addicted to it and then not addicted to it anymore pretty quickly. But I was thinking about the ways in which it had hooked me and if I thought they were healthy, you're interesting and I'm curious to hear your takes. Kirk did you have any

thoughts on that? Yeah, I do think there are some things about this kind of a game that are distinctly hooky or addicting or whatever word you want to use. This is similar to Hades, which I found to be an extremely addictive game. I was super hooked on that game. And I think that there is, I an element of loopiness to this kind of a game that is crucial to something in our brains, or at least to my brain and a lot of people I know's brains, that just makes you stick with it. And it's by breaking your time up into these loops. To use Hades as the example, you play one run and then you die. That's kind of the loop of Hades.

In loop hero, same deal. You do one expedition and you either retreat or you die. And like, because the game is broken into these little bits, it's just there's something in my brain that tells me when I finish one that I want to do another and that once I've started another, I might as well see it through. And those become like links in a chain. Like it really is just, you can think of it like one link to another link in each time. You're like, well, I'll just put another link in. But then you finish building that link and it's time to put another link in. And then you're like, well, it only took me, you know, 10 minutes to build the last.

one and you keep going and before you know it you have a 500 foot chain and like that's how it feels to me to play these games and other games don't always feel that way like a game like whatever dark souls or hollow night which i've both been playing recently like those just don't have that feeling because sometimes you beat a level and you're like well i guess i want to see the next one but it's much more about like big milestones that you reach and then you know you can go maybe do some side stuff but it doesn't have that like repetitive self-contained repeating like segmented quality. Yeah, I would argue even further, I would take that even further

and say on an even smaller level, it has the same sort of effect, like each one of your big chains you described, each one of the big links you described as a bunch of smaller ones in them, because in Hades, every new room is you're thinking to yourself, oh, what's the next room going to bring? What kind of rewards

I'm going to get next? And you're thinking on a micro level, each room has its own sort of compulsive quality to do it. And same with loop here where it's like each loop of the buger, addition has a same sort of effect. And sometimes it can work to your disadvantage in loop hero because you'll be thinking, oh, I want to see what's going to happen next on this loop when you really should be going home and leaving with your resources. What's going to happen on the next loop is

you're going to die and you're going to lose 70% of your shit. Right. You're going to die and lose most of your resources. Maddie, did you have any thoughts on this? You described the game as addictive. Yeah, I did. I think it is addictive, but I also think that I am not going to play it anymore because I feel like the experience that I had with this game was that I started playing it for this show. I played it for a couple hours. I probably could have stopped there and said more or less the same things. But the opacity of the game is almost what was addictive about it to me, at least for the past week of my life, because I kept being like, well, I don't really understand why that loop failed. If I just do one more and I do things

slightly differently this time, then I'm sure I'll figure it out. And then over the course of that next loop. I would think, or I would perhaps discover something new, but I wouldn't necessarily do wildly better. I might just do a little better or make some very incremental discovery or incremental change, but I'd feel almost like I had achieved something in that loop, which would then lead me to do another loop. And that's what led me to have multiple days this past week where I played it for three hours in a row. But then at the end of those three hours, I was like, did I actually learn anything at all. Like, I maybe learned four things about how to improve at this game, but it took me like several 30-minute loops to achieve almost nothing, which I think speaks to what you were

saying, Jason, about how this game doesn't actually dole out rewards satisfactorily as compared to something like 80s, where I could see my progress in a much more marked way, like finding new locations, reaching new rooms. This game, it's so opaque that I'm like, I don't feel like I know what I'm doing. Like I, and I wish I were getting a little more help from the game about what I should be doing because instead it's like purely exploratory and that's joyful and even addictive up to a point but I don't know I kind of want to beat the first boss but I'm also like I can be playing dark souls right now like I don't know well also beating the first boss will only get you to another level that is exactly like the first one as opposed to a game like

80s or it's like oh my god what kind of cool new level I'm going to discover next there isn't enough of a reward whether that's in the form of actual like reward to make your character stronger and also in the form of new things to explore and discover. Kirk, what were you going to say? I think that there is a distinction with types of addictive games that is worth drawing. You mentioned, right, that Jason, that addictiveness is not necessarily a good thing and that people use it as a positive descriptor for video games, but also video game addiction is something that some people think of as a bad thing,

and certainly we've all felt addicted to games in ways that were counterfeit. Definitely is. I don't think that needs to be prefaced. And I think there's an important distinction. When I think about games that I have been addicted to, which is really just Destiny. That's the only game where I played with addiction a little bit, like in that kind of unhealthy way. Like there's documentation of this on Kataku

where there would just be times where I'm like, okay, I really leaned into the addiction, partly because I was curious what it would be like. Now I'm going to stop playing this game because I'm playing it too much. I'm like not seeing my friends and sort of spending the whole weekend playing Destiny. And like any time... But you were seeing your virtual. friends. Sure. Yeah, you're six

aliens. My fellow guardians. So that kind of addiction is one thing. And the kind of addiction we're talking about with a game like Hades or Loop Hero, which I put in the same category, is very different to me. When I feel like pulled in by just the rhythms of a game, like either of these two,

as expertly designed as they both are, especially Hades, to just have that really slick thing where you're just making links in that chain and you love it. I generally find that to be a a pleasurable experience. I'm aware that I'm being pulled in and maybe I'll lose a couple nights to it in a way that I describe as losing nights to it. You know, it sounds a little like a bad thing. But it's a, I find that very pleasant and I like the feeling of being pulled along where it's actually

very different experience from me than a game like Destiny at the peak of like Taking King or wherever, where it was much more of this like all consuming process. It was a really different kind of game. There were a lot of segmented things that I was doing and there was a kind of a, well, one more mission, one more whatever strike, one more crucible match. But it was more like so much of the game was built into those, you know, MMO style loops, like where you're like chasing a piece of gear and you're in these long grinds toward like completing these super long multi-week quests. And you're also playing with friends.

So there's like this social pressure that kind of pulls you all in together and you're kind of like enabling one another. Like all of that stuff is so separate from a game like loop hero where it's just like like really well designed to make you just keep playing loops over and over again. And I think that that distinction is interesting and also sort of worth exploring and articulating a little bit just when we're talking about the subject. Yeah, I agree with you about the distinction, but I think I see it as more of a spectrum. And I think at times when I was playing loop hero, it was closer to the end of the spectrum that I don't personally enjoy that much anymore, where I was playing it

and I was like, looking back on it and being like, I don't know that I enjoyed my time with it. There were certainly times when I did enjoy playing it, but there were some nights where I was like, I was just playing another loop for no reason other than because I played another loop and clicked to the button. And I know myself well enough to know that I have that tendency when I'm playing games and I just have to be aware of it when anything that I play, where if it's like Assassin's Creed and I just want to get all the dots,

I'll sometimes be like pursuing dots that I'm not interested in. And I'll be like, I don't even want this dot. I don't know why I'm going towards this stop, but I'm already going here. I need to get all the dots. And then I'll kind of take myself out of it and be like, Maddie, you're not actually having fun right now. You can stop getting this dot.

Like you can go do something else in this game that you actually enjoy more. And that is, at least for me, the experience is more of a spectrum. It's not just like, oh, there's good addiction and bad addiction. It's like there's a series of compulsive behaviors that I engage in and some of them are rewarding. That game's encouraged. Yeah, yeah. And some of them feel rewarding. to me because I'm getting like cool story or cool design choices that are artistic and fruitful

and meaningful to me. But then there are also compulsive behaviors I engage in in games that are just compulsive behaviors. And then there are other behaviors in between those two states, at least for me. No, no, that makes a lot of sense to me too. Cool. Okay, well, so that is loop hero. I guess we've all been, we've all grown kind of lukewarm on the game. But it's interesting. If people are curious, it's so unique. People should play it. Yeah, it's definitely not as simple is that. I think that it's a really interesting game and I'm glad I played it. I think it's... Yeah, I agreed. And I think it also feels to me like the type of game that's going to improve a lot over time. And I think I might revisit it one day like if they approve a lot of the kind of flaws that I found with it and... Yeah, put it on phones.

Yeah, I'm putting it on phones. I'm sure it'll be on Switch. Um, cool. Why don't we take a little break and then we'll be back for one more thing. I'm Biz and I'm Teresa. And we're the hosts of One Bad Mother, a podcast about parenting. Parenting is hard. And we have no advice, but we do see you doing it. Honk if you like to do it. Didn't we have a bumper sticker a while back that was like honk if you did it? That's what it was. I think it was honk if you're doing it. Why did we not ever make them?

We did make them. I think they're still in the Max Fun Store. Honk, honk, you're doing it. Thanks, Viz. So are you. Each week we'll be here to remind you that you're doing. a good job. You can find us on maximum fun.org.

Hong Kong. Toot-toot. Maximum fun is a network by and for cool, popular people, but did you know it also has an offering designed to appeal to nerds? A show for nerds? On Maximum Fun, the devil, you say. It's true. It's called The Greatest Generation,

and they review episodes of a television program for nerds called Star Trek. They reviewed TNG, D.S. and are now reviewing Voyager. Hey, Star Trek. My daughter enjoys that program. Well, if she enjoys that and she enjoys humor of the Flashlin variety, might I recommend she subscribe to the greatest generation? Hey, are you calling my kid a nerd?

Why I ought to... Well, got to go. Become a friend of DeSoto by subscribing to the greatest generation on Maximumphon.org today. And we are back. Kirk Maddie, it is time for one more thing. Uno Mo thing. I don't know. I don't speak Spanish.

Uno, do you guys, how would you say one more thing in Spanish? I mean, UNO MAS. That's probably what I would say, but I don't speak Spanish either. Thing is shows in French. I don't know Spanish. I wasn't aware that there was going to be

a foreign language portion of today's episode or I would have studied. On other shows. O'Dvarachad. That's the Hebrew version. All right, there is. Let me go first

because I'm very excited about what I have to talk about today. So, Kirk, Maddie. As you both know, I enjoy cooking. I am the person member of our household who cooks. I do dinner every night. No, not your baby. This is shocking.

That's true. My child does not, my 18-month-old does not do a lot of cooking. Would have been my first prediction. We've cooked in your family. Although I'm extremely excited for when she's old enough to, like, be able to help stuff. And, like, I can bake cookies in there and stuff like that. Have a sous chef, finally. Yeah, oh, man.

So we're going to, my wife and I've already been talking. We're going to get her this little, like, step stool that's designed for a toddler to, like, be a kitchen cooking. We'll make rice crispy streets. I'm very excited. But anyway, I really enjoy cooking. I've read a lot of cookbooks over the years, just about a variety of things. Some are good. Some are not so good. But this past weekend, I discovered a cookbook that is the best one I've ever read. And it's one that I want to just scream on the rooftops that everyone who cooks even a tiny bit should get. It is called The Food Lab by Jay Kenji Lopez. Now, Jay Kenji Lopez is this guy who is best known for a website called SeriousEats.com, which I've been using for years.

So I probably should have known about this cookbook years ago. But, yeah, this cookbook came out in 2018, I believe. And it is basically Jay Kenji Lopez just using science and endless experiments, like the curiosity and willingness to endlessly experiment things to figure out the best possible ways to do anything you can think of in terms of, like, basic home cooking. So he will get into, like, the best way to hardboil an egg, the best way to sear a steak, the best way to make chicken stock. And the way he does this is by, like, first of all, he explains the science in really basic terms, like heat and temperature and proteins and the mailer effect and basic stuff, not like super-sciencey, like dull, esoteric stuff, but in a really, really digestible way, no pun intended.

But also what he does is he'll experiment with something 40 times to make sure, and then do blind taste testing with subjects to make sure that he knows that it's actually the best. With eggs, he'll just be like doing dozens and dozens of eggs boiled in different ways to see the exact amount of time you should boil an egg for, the exact amount of temperature you should do it at. And this book is phenomenal. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's like really you can skip around because it's divided into sections. There's like the pasta section, the meat section, the veggie section, the stock section. So anything, even if you're a vegetarian, even if you only want to make some sort of food, it will still be helpful to you in some way because it's so good at just breaking down the fundamentals of so much of this stuff.

And yeah, I mean, I already, I read through it. I've been reading through it over the past couple of weeks and I feel like I've learned so much. So do you just read cookbooks? Like is it recipes or is it like a sort of technique book? No. So this one is like, so the way it's structured. it's not recipes. So I find that a lot of recipe books are like not super helpful because you'll be reading through them and there might be like four or five things you actually want to make or can

actually make because you're reading this cookbook and it'll be like and then and then get the frog tails and you stick them in your veal sue reduction that you made four days ago or or some ridiculous concoction. But this book is very much, there are recipes in there but there are very much basic stuff that you can make. Most of it you can make every night. And then there will be some stuff where, or any, any night, I mean. And there will be some stuff where it'll be like, you have to prepare this in advance. But it's pretty basic stuff. None of it is like fancy cooking.

But it all feels like fancy cooking because it's so top-notch and the way he describes and puts everything in the top-notch. So the way it's structured is, like I said before, it's in these segments. So they'll be like the soups and stocks segment and the poultry segment and the roasting segment, how to roast the best beef, how to make the best hamburgers, the veggie segment. Everything you need to know about all the different types of veggies. and which ones are best roasted versus braised versus sauteed versus boiled. And he'll just go through each of these segments will just like do this in-depth breakdown on everything you need to know about technique and how to make certain things. And then it'll give you recipes. So it'll be like, now that I've broken down the best way to make a hamburger, here is my recipe for the best hamburger.

And then it'll give you like a basic recipe to follow. It's like a kind of salt. Have you read salt, fat, acid, heat? I feel like that was the most recent one of those great books. Samin Nasrat's book. Yes. also excellent, but this is better. This is the best one I've ever read.

I got to say. Wow. I really like salt fat acid heat. Yes, no, it's great. That's a great book and really good for like fundamentals of cooking and knowing how things. And really good salted caramel recipe in that book that I've used before. Nice. I haven't made it.

But based on this Kenji Lopez book, and it's called the Food Lab, once again, it inspired me last night to spatchcock a chicken myself. So I took a whole chicken and like took a butcher's knife and just cut out the backbone and batch cocked and it was delicious and man get this book i highly recommend anyone who cooks get this um promise this isn't an ad i promise that i discovered it came out like three years ago so it'd be a pretty bad ad anyway mattie what's here one more thing mine is also a book completely different kind of books yeah it is a book called how to do nothing resisting the attention economy and it's by jenny odell and i would say my expectation about this book based on its title and knowing very little about it was that it would be a pop psychology book that would be really easy to read

and would tell me to quit Twitter and that it would be like super digestible and I would read it and for a week I would think about quitting Twitter and then I would forget about it forever. You planned all this out before you bought it. I mean that's also kind of how this book is described colloquially and the ways that people write about it. Like a lot of times Jenny O'Dell will be like described by, you know, whatever media personality is describing her as like, oh, you know, she's the person who wrote a book about how you should quit Twitter, which, like, I don't blame reporters for trying to find a reductive way to describe an author because, you know, we've all been there. But that's really not at all what this book is. This is a very dense,

hard-to-read book. It's very academic. There's a lot of complicated ideas in the book. It doesn't take a stance on whether or not you should quit Twitter. It's very anti-capitalist in a class-based analysis. it analyzes how class plays a huge role in whether people are even able to disengage with technology, which is obvious, of course. But if you're thinking about who can go to these camps where you get rid of your phones, et cetera, or like who can quit their job for a year and just really disconnect and think about what they want to do with their lives, which like, it sounds like an amazing fantasy. Some people can afford to do it. Many people never have that opportunity. And yet, for, you know, human health, it's nice to take a break from working and take some time.

to yourself. And so Jenny O'Dell just really navigates the difficulties of that. And she does some research about like philosophy over the ages, different times when various groups have tried to disconnect from society and why and the fact that it's nearly always not worked and why, like, she talks about like cults in the 70s and so forth and like people living off the grid, which was fascinating to me because I just, I didn't know about a lot of that stuff. And I am always fascinated with the idea of living off the grid. Like I love meditation and like I like many other people fantasize about like, oh, if I could just, you know, live in a cabin for a while, I'd feel so much healthier.

And like, wasn't there a guy at the verge who quit the internet for a year? This reminds me. Yeah. I mean, this is classic. I feel like that's something a lot of reporters do is like a gimmick for a while and like it can work for a time. But this book is almost like the answer to those types of stunts and why people do them. And the conclusion of it is not her recommending that people do that at all, but instead

just encouraging people to be more aware of the role. that the Twitter economy, the attention economy plays in all of our lives and what it's doing to us. And I feel like it's a book I need to read again like every year. Like I got a lot out of it, but I'm also like I want to read it again because it's got so much going on in it. And I was playing loop hero for too much of it. So I probably wasn't getting it. You know, my attention was divided in the way that Jenny O'Dell would not recommend. So I really learned nothing from this book.

But actually, though, I did. I do recommend it. It's just, it's a lot and it's interesting. She is fascinating. So I check this out from the library because you were talking about it, yeah, I DM'd Kirk separately about it because I was reading it and I was like, I feel like this book is describing Kirk's lifestyle that I don't have, but no, he does. I, um, oh, I sort of have. Um, I, yeah, I heard her on Ezra Klein a couple years ago and it was a really cool interview in part because, you know, it's a lot of stuff that I'm interested in, too, about attention and focus that I've really been working on, but also just she seems like a fascinating

artist. She has this whole theory, and I'm going to see this is for memory, but it's this kind of idea that art is just about the attention that we pay to it, and that she made this thing, so she's from the Bay Area. She did this work called the Bureau of Suspended Objects, and it's just art that she took from the dump, and it's like objects from the dump presented in a way for us to pay attention to them. And the whole concept is that like, here is a thing. And it'll just be like, I don't know, something from the dump, like that someone owned and threw away. And yet by like putting it in this

place that we're paying attention to it, like it creates this different, it makes it different. It changes it in some way. And like she's so about perception. She's all about bird watching. So their conversation, I actually really recommend that podcast as well. This book so far has been really cool. But that conversation is about the book, but also just about attention. And she's so thoughtful and interesting about that kind of thing in a way that does seem important. And yeah, it goes way beyond just like Twitter is distracting and like you shouldn't use it. Like it's like much more profound and deeper than that. Cool. Sounds good. Remind us the name of the book again, right? It's called How to Do Nothing. And it's by Jenny O'Dell. Cool.

Kirk finishes off. All right. Well, mine is a video game because this is a video game podcast, not a book podcast. Is it? I forgot. Actually, we should start a book podcast. Some of that would be fun. I do a book club sometime. So it's a video game demo for a little series called Resident Evil that there's a new one of them coming out. It's called Resident Evil 8-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E. No, it's Resident Evil-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-L-E-E-E-L-L-E. Okay. So Resident Evil 8 colon age.

Age, correct. So there's a demo for this game out that you can play right now on PS5. I played it and I'm excited for this game because I've kind of become a Resident Evil fan over the last few years, thanks to Seven, which I really liked. And then the remake of two, which I friggin loved. And actually, and if I win my predictions this year, we'll all get to play and talk about next year. And then I was kind of medium on the three make and I'm really excited for the new one. And I, you know, it's not really like a very substantive piece of, piece of video game.

You just, you kind of escape from a dungeon. You're in like a vampire dungeon. There's some really cool environmental storytelling. It looks. Is that the tall lady that people are obsessed? So maybe toward the end, she, the large last shows up. And maybe, you know, that everyone's very excited about. Yeah, so it's this house with all these like lady vampires that run it somewhere it feels like in Transylvania.

You are probably some made-up place in the, you know, the Resident Evilverse. And it's very, it's very vampiry. And I just like this kind of demo, which is not from the game. I don't believe it is an actual segment of the game that I'm playing. I think they're planning on releasing another demo that will be. But it's more just you walk out of a dungeon, you explore. It shows off the engine, which the Resident Evil Engine looks incredible. I think there's some ray tracing going on here, like the reflections.

you're in this really like burnished living, like entry hall with light and the way the light is like reflecting off the wood just looks nuts. Like the whole, I was just like this looks so good. It's very scary, but you're never actually being hunted by anything really. It's more just like you're walking around. And it does also the thing where you hear the Resident Evil sounds, like you pick up an object and it's that like, kong like sound. And it just has the rhythms of Resident Evil, which I think just helps get people in the mindset. So it's an effective piece of like merchandising. It also just makes me think about like a horror demo and how effective that is.

How PT is still like the most effective trailer piece of promotional video game like whatever you want to call it software ever made and is still this thing that people talk about. And it's really legitimately scary and kind of a work of art on its own. This does not rise to that level. But it is a kind of sign to me of how horror works so well in these little tiny single serving experience. experiences where you're mostly just kind of freaked out the whole time because you're in a freaky space. And you're not going to have to play Resident Evil because it's only like 30 minutes long. And if that, and then it kind of ends.

Like you're not a character. You don't have to get through this to the next level. It's just, it is what it is. It's self-contained. But I actually really like that. Like it, I feel like you could actually collect all of these little demos for all of these kinds of games and like make a nice little simpler. Yeah, like, or just have a fun little thing where it's like, you just get to play this

for 15 minutes and that 15 minutes and none of them overstays. welcome. None of them. What you're describing is Wariaware. Yeah, like the Wariaware of horror game demos, which is, I have a new appreciation for them, I guess, for horror game demos. Did you play the Resident Evil 7 demo before you played

the game? You know, I don't think that I did, though I know they did something similar. I think they had... It was really cool. That's like one of the ones that I have played. You're like the cameraman, right? I did play it, yes. And you're like, the documentary crew that's going into the house that you're then go into in the game, and it's like, you're like,

fuck, I remember this. The guy went down there and then he got killed. I died. Yeah. Yes. Yes. That's very fun. And it was kind of an echo of PT as well. I mean, I think it was only a couple years after PT when that demo was made. Oh, but there was a hallway. I remember it. Yes. Yes. I definitely. Yeah, there was a hallway. You had to like keep doing the same actions over and over. I mean, even at the time everyone was like, well, I guess we're just aping PT. But you know what? P.T. was cool. And it's okay to just make another one of those. And it's fine if something's 45 minutes and it's just the same thing over and. over and it's spooky. Games should do that. I'm with you. Absolutely. Yeah. And I wonder what the next demo will be like. And I like that Resident Evil is going to pick up this baton that they're doing this. And that's right. Of course, the seven demo was very similar. And yeah, that that was very cool that you saw in the actual game. You'd see the place where the guy got killed in the demo. Yeah. It's about to get real at some point here. Yeah. It was like an actual prolog to the game, which I think is also just a more fun way to do a demo anyway, where it's like it's not the literal

game, but it's like a little bit more story for the people who care. It's like, I don't know. Which is kind of what the maiden demo is as well. Like, you're a different character and you kind of get killer. I don't know. I guess, yeah, you can't do. Like, I mean, it's a demo. It's not a spoiler.

This is making me feel like we have to do, we have to do a whole episode, a hot topic on demos, because demos are so fascinating. Oh, that would be really fun. Oh, yeah, we should definitely do that. I just remember back in the day, like, you would buy new JRP's from Square because they would come with demos for like the new Final Fantasy game. I remember getting, I think it was like Brave Fencer Musashi, an old PS1 game. It came with a demo for Final Fantasy 8, but the demo was like different characters than would actually be in that part of the game anyway.

It was like very much built to avoid spoilers, that sort of thing. There's a lot of demos have done a lot of interesting things over the years. Man, I still have some of my old PC gamer demo discs where you would buy the magazine and it would come with a CD-ROM that had demos for, you know, I remember full throttle was on one, I think. And it was a very famous Doom demo that was out there for a while. Yeah, it was kind of like the next level up from shareware when shareware was a thing and then demos. I'm glad that there's still a thing. Yes, yes, yes. Do we have time for a quick, a quick fun story in regards to titles of games?

Okay, I'm just going to go to you. Tell your story. So, first of all, this story is going to have spoilers for the original Bravely default, the 3DS game that came out in 2014. I assume both of you don't care about being spoiled on that game. Yes, yes. I can't believe spoiling it. Okay, so the Resident Evil 8 discussion made me think of this. It would be funny if I was thinking.

it would be funny if the game played around with that title in some way as part of the game. And it was like Resident Evil 8, age, and age was some important part of the game. And so I was thinking about Bravely Default because on the 3DS, this game is called Bravely Default Flying Fairy, which is a ridiculous name. And it was so, it was so funny. Big warning. Spoilers for the original Bravely Default. So tune out now. You can say goodbye. The episode's almost over.

You can say goodbye. If you haven't played this game and still want you. The game that came out in 2014, not the new one, the original Bravely Default. Tell the story. So it's called Bravely Default Flying Fairy. And the whole time there's a character who accompanies you, which is a fairy named Airy, A-I-R-Y. And she is like a constant companion giving you advice, giving you help as you go. Until about three quarters away through the game where the big twist is that actually she's evil and she was a bad guy all along.

Suddenly the title of the game literally transforms into Braley Default, lying Airy. and the Fs disappear and it's like lying airy will be on your screen from then on like every time you turn on the game that's the title how funny is that that's super good actually incredibly well done what happens to the Fs though like do the Fs just they just fade out

they disappear away forever well the Fs are Final Fantasy so the two Fs disappear and they become Final Fantasy right the Fs are always kind of seen as a Final Fantasy reference that they're like this is kind of a Final Fantasy it is so it really is okay on that note it is time for us to say goodbye. Kirk, Maddie.

So we will see members, MaxFund members, on Monday with this week's Beanstalk. Everybody else, we will see 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 Maxx. Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpod, send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience. Audience supported.