Triple Click - What's The Deal With: Stardew Valley

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

Eight years after it first came out, Stardew Valley is still getting patches. But what's the deal with this one-man-developed farming simulator? How was it created, and what makes it so appealing? Allow us to explain!One More Thing:Kirk: Children of the Sun (Steam)Maddy: Wingspan (board game version)Jason: Fallout (Amazon Prime)LINKS:Search Engine: “What are we gonna do about all these cats?” https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/whatre-we-gonna-do-about-all-theseTriple Click LIVE in LA! Saturday, June 8, 6:30PM at the Teragram Ballroom: https://teragramballroom.com/tm-event/triple-click-podcast/Preorder Jason’s Book! https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jason-schreier/play-nice/9781538725429/Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

If you ask a farmer to tell you about their day, you usually get some version of woke up, watered the crops, explored the mine, fought some monsters, you know, farm stuff. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. Today we're talking about Stardue Valley, the little life sim that could, which just received a huge update. And eight years after it first came out is just as much of a phenomenon as ever. Let's talk about why that is. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Shrier.

Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello, hello, my friends. It is beautiful out. The flowers are flowering. Spring is springing. Yeah, man. It's very exciting. Lovely in Portland as well. I'm loving it. The tulips are looking so beautiful. Oh, good. We love to see it. That's kind of on brand of what we're talking about this episode. But before that, a couple of things that you all should know. First of all, we are a listener-supported show. I'm sure you probably already know that. But we are. We're on maximum fun, the wonderful worker-owned podcast network that we have been. a member of since the founding of Triple Click, and we are entirely supported by you, our listeners. So if you want to listen to our show, if you want to support our show and get access to bonus episodes, including one that we're going to be doing this month, just coming up here on the new Fallout show that's on Amazon, which is going to be super fun, super fun to talk about.

But there's a ton of old ones in the archive going back to games and movies and all kinds of things. And also, you would be just supporting us as we make this show. So to do that, go to maximum fund.org slash join and become a member. And thank you so much to all of our members for supporting our show. The other thing I want to announce is something that we have mentioned before, but want to mention again. And that is that we have a live show coming up this summer, our second ever triple click live, which is super exciting. We're going to be on stage on Saturday, June 8th at 6 p.m. On Saturday, June 8th at 6.30 p.m. Pacific time at the Teragram Ballroom in L.

Los Angeles. That will be the same weekend as the Summer Games Fest. So we'll be talking about what we've seen at SGF and new games that were announced, things we're excited about. It's going to be a ton of fun. We're very excited. And you can order tickets now, and we hope that you do. There's a link for that down in the show notes. So again, that's Saturday, June 8th at the Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles. And of course, if you can't make it, you'll still be able to hear this show in the feed. But really you want to be there. You want to be in the room with us. Yeah, you want to be there. It's very fun. We had a great time at our last live show. You want to hear all the crowd noise before Kirk edits in fake crowd noise. Yeah, because he's going to add in like canned laughter and all kinds of stuff. You want to hear all the crickets. You want to hear all the jokes that fall flat? No, they all land and the

the electricity in the room is unstoppable. Yeah, it's going to be too loud. It's true. I actually edit the show to make the jokes seem worse because they're too loud. Right, because people are going to be like, this sounds fake now. The audience is too hot. It's crazy. Right, right, right. We need to make the working some balance here. So that's going to be super fun. Get some tickets. Come out, support us, see us live. It's good to be a great time. All right. Let's get on with the show. Speaking of lovely weather and blooming tulips and all of that. Maddie, what are we talking about today? We are talking about Stardue Valley, which has been just such a wonderful game for me to ease back into like an armchair after playing so much Dragon's Dogma 2 and all that friction. I mean, there is some friction in Stardue. And we can talk about that a little bit. bit. But part of why we're talking about Stargou Valley is because it had a pretty big update,

update 1.6, that came out on March 16th this past most recent March. But this game originally came out in February of 2016. So it's been around for a little bit. God, eight years ago. I know. I know. And I truly feel like the past eight years have been kind of revolutionary for farming sims and lifestyle sims of this kind. I think during the pandemic, we all, we talked a lot about Animal Crossing and how many people were playing that, the Switch game, New Horizons. And this game is like the Irr Farming Sim in my mind. It is the farming sim.

It makes every action feel good, and it makes chores feel satisfying, and that is a mix of a variety of things, some light-touch story and environmental, storytelling overall, some really pleasing pixel graphics, and wonderful music and also it all coheres. And maybe that's because it's all pretty much made by just one person.

And that's Eric Barone, who also goes by Concerned Ape Online and as a game designer. At this point, there's a couple other contractors who work with him to support the game, but he originally made it all by himself. And I actually wanted to kick it to you, Jason, because you talked to Eric Barone back in the day for your book. Yeah, my first book, Bloods, What and Pixel said a chapter about Eric's story and the story of Star Dew Valley. And something I think is particularly notable. Yes, to your point, he had a couple of contractors, but he is the rare, and I think maybe the only, or one of the only examples of a solo dev who's actually a solo devs. Because oftentimes in the game development world, people have talked about people who are solo devs, who actually just have someone else writing the music or have an artist with them helping them out. And it's kind of like this myth of For example, Toby Fox is not a solo dev. He made undertail with a couple of other people. Jonathan Blow is not a solo dev.

He made Bray. He had an artist on Braid and other team on The Witness and so on and so forth. But Eric Barone made Sardivalli entirely by himself. Every single aspect of that game he made by himself. He didn't even use an outside engine. He wrote of the code himself without relying on someone else's like physics or rendering or anything like that. or anything like that or any sort of like utility.

And had to learn a programming language from what I understand in order to do so. Like knew a little bit, but then was like, I'm going to just learn how to do this. I mean, Jason, I'll let you continue because you talk to him, but it's pretty wild. It's a wild story. So he started out, I'll give the kind of a bridge version of his story, which is that he started out making this thing as kind of like an experiment. his goal originally was he looked around at the Harvest Moon series, which he had grown up loving and playing on the Super Nintendo. And he was like, man, this series has kind of gone downhill.

There haven't been any good ones released in a while. What if I make a modern version that kind of captures what I really loved about the old games? And he started working on it. He thought it was going to be like this little Xbox Live Arcade project that he released in six months, maybe put out for free or something like that, and then moved on to like something bigger. And he saw this as kind of like he did this after he graduated from college as like a little, I don't know, in between gig before he got a real job, quote unquote. And then, of course, as often happens, it blew up and it wound up turning into a five-year development for him.

He started in around 2011 and released the game in 2016. He was supported by a very, very accommodating, very loving partner. his girlfriend at the time, I believe, turned fiancé, turned wife, who Amber Higman, who supported him quite a bit the whole way. He wound up getting a couple of odd jobs here and there during the development process as well, but she was also very supportive of him. They lived in their parents' house for a while, in one of their parents' house for a while. They had a very long saga. And one of the things that I think really struck me about his story is that, like, when you work on the same thing for really any extent of that.

period of time, as anyone knows. You find that, A, you get better at it the more you do it, and therefore, B, you want to just redo all of your old work as you go. And so this can really turn into an infinite long process if you don't have some sort of like external pressure on you to actually release the thing. And so, yeah, his saga had quite a few ups and downs along the way, but eventually he released the thing. And he found a publisher, Chucklefish. They got some Twitch streamers involved, built up some early buzz. He was also blogging about it at a time when blogs of indie games could actually get attention, 2011 or so, because there weren't a ton of indie games around back then

the way there are today. And yeah, I mean, pretty much immediately, this, it became a bestseller, wound up selling many millions of copies and turned into a cultural phenomenon. And really, I don't know if it changed his life, because the times that I've talked to him and met him, he's still been kind of living the same lifestyle, despite now being a mega millionaire. That seems to be the case.

Yeah, the game has made, I was Googling around in 30 million was the figure that I found. I don't know if that's accurate or not. The man is a millionaire, suffice to say. But we talked to him recently for Polygon Story about just asking him what he uses, like what tech he uses is kind of a classic bit for stories.

And I expected him to be like, oh, here's my computer, here's my build. And instead he was like, here's the candle I like to light at night before I fall asleep. Here's the fleece jacket that I've been wearing for 10 years. And like that was the kind of product that he was like, yeah, these are the things I used to get Stardue Valley done. Like that, I was kind of blown away by him as a person. I don't know. I really feel like that says a lot about the guy that he's just still that person.

Yeah. So when I met him, he was telling me about how his computer, he like put his monitor on top of a box. it would be at the proper height. And when I met him, he was telling me about how the most exciting purchase he had made is like a proper computer. He was, uh, when I met him, uh, we were driving a packs together. And I got in his car and the front passenger door didn't open. So you had to like climb it or the front driver door didn't open. So he had to climb into the passenger seat.

And I was like, man, how much money do you have? And you're still driving around this car. That's funny. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like that value, those values kind of are expressed in the game too, right? I mean, it is very much a game about rejecting the rat race, rejecting consumerism, and building something a little bit more sustainable out of somewhat more humble ingredients. So it kind of makes sense.

Like his personality really comes out in the game and I think is a big part of what makes it so special and what makes people love it so much. Yeah, I agree. I mean, you're kind of speaking to the actual story of the game. game, which it is really funny knowing that as far as I know, Eric Barone never had a corporate job of any kind, but the game begins with you working for, I mean, now I see the fictional Joja Mart is like an Amazon parody, but at the time, I think it was more of a Walmart parody. It's just that now times have changed and now we might think of it as an Amazon parody, but it kind of depicts like a series of corporate drones working in an office, like a massive

warehouse style office. and the main character who you get to design opens this mysterious letter from their grandpa that leaves them this farm. And they can leave it all behind, leave corporate life behind. And this is such a dream of corporate drones everywhere, including myself when I've had more corporate jobs than the one I have now, of just like, oh, what if I just moved to the middle of nowhere, it just had a little farm, and I just planted my little seedlings, and I would just eat would I grow? I mean, it's extremely naive because farming is actually like significantly more

difficult and high pressure than that. And I think it's like a uniquely corporate drone kind of a fantasy. But that's what the game is playing into. And very effectively so for somebody who never actually had to leave the corporate life behind and instead is fantasizing about it in a very different way. And again, I don't know that this is a man who leaves the house very often either. But but this is a game that is very much about leaving the house and getting in tune with nature and just carefully plotting your little seeds. But Kirk, I wanted to hear from you because I think you've played the most out of any of us. And I'm curious if that ever took on a quality for you of like really going hardcore into

Starter Valley because there is a subsection of it that is like really into min-maxing. Or if you like strictly tried to do the classic Kirk Hamilton taking a walk every day and not looking at Twitter. That's probably closer to what you were doing. But what's your relationship with Stardue Valley as a player? I've played it more in that second way, yeah, where I don't really min-max. The lure is always there because it's an extremely min-maxable game. The first two weeks of the game, you have a certain limited amount of money and seeds and time. So I think a lot of people listening to this have probably played it, but to explain a few of those mechanics to people who haven't. The things that set this game apart from Animal Crossing are those minutia for sort of

how you organize your time. And I would say, speaking of friction, the friction in this game is largely logistical. It's a lot of like understanding how and when you want to do things. And there's a limited time in every day. So a lot of your time is spent making decisions about how you're going to do, what you're going to do, which winds up really does feel, it feels like life. It is very much a life simulator because unlike an Animal Crossing, which runs according to the clock inside of your device. So you actually have 12 hours or whatever of sunlight every day in the summertime. So that's a long time to do stuff. In Stardue Valley, everything that you do, you know, the clock is ticking and it's moving right along. So you have to really kind of plan

things out and optimize your schedule. And as a result, you can really get into min-maxing where it's like, okay, well, I have these, I think it's like eight or ten parsnip seeds that you start with. And I've got, you know, this much time. And so I don't have very much money, but the best thing you can do for money, I believe, is you can go and forage in the woods. Because actually, if you get fruit and nuts out of the woods, that stuff you can sell at the store for more money than the parsnips, which take a little while to grow. So the minute you're starting to make those calculations, you're getting kind of pulled into the machinery of Stardue Valley, which is going to get you a little bit no matter what. Like, I always get eventually a little pulled into that. Well, okay, cool, my beanstocks are growing.

Those are going to be ready tomorrow, and then I can sell them and I can use that to buy this. And like, if I lay these out, I can water a little bit more efficiently by going, you know, you get into that kind of mindset and it can be very satisfying. But if you go too far into it, the way that, at least too far for me, I think, for my preference, you get very, you know, it turns into like, oh, man, I've kind of screwed everything up because my first week I, like, had extra seeds that I didn't water. You know, I forgot to water one of my plants. So it's like a little behind all the other plants. So every time I water, I have to be reminded of my mistake. That's like, that kind of thing can really kind of trigger your more obsessive tendencies.

And I think that can be, for me, at least, a less rewarding way to play the game. Though I think a very interesting aspect of the game that maybe we can talk about, like, thematically interesting. So I tend to play it in a more relaxed way. I've played it. I've done a couple of what I would call like committed play-throughs. When it first came out in 2016, I was still writing for Kataku, and I wound up playing it, just because I thought it seemed interesting and saw it was buzzy and really just got sucked in

and probably played a couple dozen hours and got maybe through a year or so in the game's calendar. And then it must have been on Switch. I think it came back. It came out on Switch a little later, maybe, and that's when I played it. Okay.

So I played the Switch version, and then I did that again. Kind of the same thing. I, like, played, I knew a little more what I was doing. I started a new game. I remember I was romancing Emily, who is the blue-haired girl.

And then I got to where I could ask her to marry me. And it was right before I actually proposed to my now wife, Emily. And I remember telling her about that. I'm like, I'm going to propose to Emily. And I'm also going to propose to Emily. And so that puts that. So how did it go with the other Emily? Pretty good.

You know what? I never went back to that game and finished it. I mean, I proposed. I think we never wound up actually getting married just because I kind of fell off of the game. So she's like, man, he left me at the altar. She's just frozen in time in that weird way that these games do. So anyways, yeah, that's kind of how I play it. I think it's a really interesting game.

I think it kind of fits in an interesting place up against Animal Crossing. I first played one of these games with Animal Crossing New Leaf, which came out in 2012. That was on 3DS. That was the first time I'd ever played any game of this type, like a cozy slash management, attend, and befriend game where you have a farm and you're making friends. And then I played Starry Valley in 2016, and then I played New Horizons, Animal Crossing New Horizons in 2020. And by then I was very comfortable with this sort of game. And they're all similar and different in different ways. I think a big part of the fantasy that you were talking about, Maddie,

that this game offers this fantasy of like this pastoral, you know, farm life. Romantic with a capital R. Yeah. Yes, like farming is actually backbreaking work that often doesn't pay well, and it's like very unfair and difficult in all these ways. And it's often very technical now. Like you actually have to really know how to use a tractor and various other devices. One, like, you're farming, like, you're farming as part of a, like, monocultural thing where you're just growing, like, corn so that they can use it for ethanol or whatever, and you just have tracks and tracks of land that have been reduced to just corn.

And it's, like, a very weird thing. Its government subsidies are really complex. None of that is in this game. This game is, like, the fantasy version of you just have this little farm, and you can do whatever you want with it, and everything grows in the soil, and it's great. Now, crucial difference between Sartre Valley and Animal Crossing is that an animal crossing, you're always in debt and you're paying off debt, which I think is very familiar. to real world farmers. But in Starry Valley, you don't have any debt. You just own your farm free and clear

and you grow whatever you want on it. So you feel much more agency over your life. And then another big part of the fantasy, I think, that we haven't really touched on is the social fantasy. Because the other big part of it is like leave the corporate city life where like you're really alienated and go to this small town where everyone knows everyone and you're the new guy and everyone is curious about you

and you can become friends with them and follow in love with them and have all of these different kinds of relationships with all these people in town and you're like immediately knit into the social fabric of this perfect little small town. And that I think is really appealing and is a big part of why people like this game so much. It definitely is.

Yeah, it kind of reminds me. So when I watch Fiddler on the Roof, which by the way, this is the second time in two weeks we talked about Fiddler on the roof. She has like a Fiddler alert that plays every time someone mentions Fiddler. I think of what my own ancestors are doing, the Jewish stettel life in the small town atmosphere where everyone knows each other and they were all miserable in many ways, but also had something

that like I think a lot of people here just like in our modern life can't really recreate or try to recreate online because that small town feeling is just missing. And so yeah, I think Stardu Valley appeals to that kind of sense of community that I think a lot of people just are lacking in their own lives and to extrapolate even further might be one of the reason that we see so much toxicity around video game culture and the way that people kind of get tribalistic about their favorite brands and stuff is because that's their community. It's like, I'm team Xbox. That's my community because they don't have that elsewhere and they don't have that kind of tribe to belong to elsewhere. And I think Starter Valley

offers that fantasy of like, hey, look at me. I'm part of this little village. Everyone knows each other. We're down in the, and there are like, I think the nefarious parts of that aren't. really captured quite as much. You don't see quite as much of the gossip and the backstabbing and the kind of uglier aspects of that. It's not quite there. I mean, I will say, though, I do feel like the other big strength of Star-Due Valley is compared to an Animal Crossing, which is one of my other kind of direct points of comparison in that I've played both a lot, is that Animal Crossing is a bit too twee for me. Like, when the characters are mean, it's still in a very childlike way, whereas Star New Valley is, it's funny and it is Tui in certain ways and cute, but it is also dark.

Like there are characters who seem depressed. Like there's like an alcoholic character. There are characters who are very downtrodden. I mean, Jojo Mart is an antagonist in the game and like the threat of corporate interference on this cozy little town. Like there's an actual conflict that is driving the game overall. And Animal Crossing just doesn't. It is pretty conflict-free in a fundamental way.

And sometimes that's what you want out of a game. I'm not trying to judge that. But I do feel like, at least for me, Stardu has just enough of that tension and story and sense of humanity in its writing, that it still preserves the fantasy while also allowing you to be like, well, I'm part of a community, but it has its flaws and it has its problems. And I'm actually making a decision to side with the local shopkeeper who is going to push, back against the like Walmart-esque company that's trying to drive in and like has cheaper prices and is like competing with him. Like that I think it's like a level of tension that Eric Brown just

chose to include and I really appreciate in a game and you don't see it that often, you know? Yeah, it's a noticeable difference between this game and Animal Crossing that there's a specificity to the town. I mean, each of these characters is a character and they're each written a different way. I wrote an article for Katakaku about how I tried to romance Haley. when I first played the game, who's the kind of quote unquote hot, like, blonde girl that you first meet, and she's kind of rude to you, and you're like,

oh, man, all right, I would, you know, it's a dating sims, so you're like, I must have her. Right, I must have her. I must convince bits and bites to like me by pressing. And you very much, you can do the dating thing of just like inserting gifts until eventually the person's like, okay, cool, you seem fine, and I like you.

But what I found with Haley at the time was I did that a little bit, and she was sort of not into it because there is a whole complex, like some type of gift and don't like another type. And she's also just, I think, kind of a little standoffish for a little longer than other characters.

And I found myself believing in the character to the point that I was like, oh, this girl doesn't like me. And that's fine. And the article was kind of about how the game wound up, for me at least, recreating this realistic experience of rejection,

just in like a kind of gentle rejection of like, okay, well, whatever, especially because her sister is Emily and I met Emily and Emily's really nice and like funny and sort of warm and I was like, oh, I like Emily and just started hanging out with her more socially and it was pretty cool that like obviously I know it's a game and I know these aren't real people

and they're written to fill these different archetypes. Because if they were, dating her sister would maybe be kind of weird. Right, also that. But like I think it's cool that because he wrote these specific characters it allows space for you to sort of understand them and then interact with them in this believable way. Where in Animal Crossing, I mean, you have like a rotating cast of characters going through your town. They're not exactly procedurally generated, but they sort of are.

They're very simple. There's different types that are written. And it just doesn't have that same feeling of like, you know, Eric Barone wrote this town. And he thought of each of these characters and he wrote them each to be like a different archetype and to fit into this kind of, you know, narrative tapestry. It's not literary exactly, but it feels kind of like a book about a small town with all these different people. or a TV show about a small town where each person fulfills a different role. Yeah, Amber gets some credit too

because Eric used to go on long walks with Amber like talking about the characters and their relationships and their characters and their relationships. That makes a lot of sense because the conversations are so strong in the game. Yeah, yeah, and it does, it feels like from what I've seen, I haven't played as much as the two of you, but it feels like a game where he got some female input for the

for the female characters. Yeah, which especially then. Well, they're all, and each. character is very well defined, yeah, for sure. Yeah. So have you guys, have either of you played the new update that just came out and, like, seeing the new content in there? I'm curious to hear about that what has been added. And the fact that eight years later, he's still releasing giant new patches. It's crazy. Yeah, I mean, it's totally wild how the game has changed since I even last played it on Switch. Like, last did a dedicated playthrough. There's a lot of stuff that I've never really engaged with.

One of the biggest being multiplayer. Yeah. That you can just play this game with your friends now, which is, totally awesome and really different. I mean, you can have a farm like Minecraft style where you're each contributing to the farm and each living in the town, which is just like, that opens the door to a completely different way of playing the game. I've never really engaged with that. Past that, I mean, there are all these farm types now when you start a new game. It gives you the option of choosing from like a farm with a bunch of islands and all this water running through it, which makes it a lot easier to fish, but gives you a little less room for farming. Or I started a farm in the woods. So it's kind of like there's a lot more trees and a lot more natural stuff so you can

forage more easily, which actually made it easier to make money early on. But again, there's like less tillable land, at least at first so you can't develop and you can't make as many buildings. There's a new farm, I think it's new in 1.6 that like is just for livestock and you start with some livestock, which is unusual. This is normally in the game. You start doing that a little bit later once you have more money. So it's totally built around that. And there's a new kind of grass that grows. I think it's like this bluegrass or something that the livestock really like eating. And so it makes it a lot easier to just have livestock right off the bat. So there's all kinds of stuff like that.

I mean, that's like really obvious because you start the game and it gives you new options. And he's added some of those over the years. But then there's like there's so much hidden stuff in this game, right? In addition to the town and the kind of animal crossing parts of it, the parts that feel like maintaining a farm and talking to people, there's like a whole adventure, almost action RPG, built into this game as well. Like I went really deep into the mine in at least one of my playthroughs.

There's a mine that you go through where each level is like subsequently more difficult than there are monsters that you fight. You can like craft Minecraft weapons like a sword and a shield. You're like getting unique resources down there. Yeah. There's a whole mystery that you're solving and you're like decoding stuff.

And then you run out of time. Like you just get tired. So you can only go so far before you run out of time each day. but you're like unlocking shortcuts. Kind of like a rogue-like. It feels kind of like playing a rogue-like, but it's built into the structure of the game. You're like getting more and more as you go.

Was that in the original release or was that out of later? Yeah, that was in the original. The mine was there, but he's expanded it significantly. I think at some point he added, I could be wrong about this, but I think he added a second mine to that second location you take the bus to. And then, so it's like the mine has definitely expanded.

And I don't know what's down there now. I mean, I didn't get there in my most recent play-through, at least not yet. But I'm sure there's like plenty more hidden. stuff because there are a lot of secrets and hidden codes and like, you know, even when you walk around the town, when you first get there, you'll see like weird statues and stuff and think, okay, that's going to be, I don't, like, there are still things where I see them and I'm like, I don't actually really know what that is. You get to the bottom and there's the sequel to Star Doe

Valley. It's a whole new game. You go through a portal into a new farm and a new town. It does kind of feel that way. I mean, there is also like a couple of little magical parts of the game, like literal magic that happened. Like, we're making it sound like it's purely There's a wizard's tower that a wizard lives in. Magic in this game and it is deceptively deep. I mean, I think that's part of why it's so popular because in addition to just kind of being a farming sim that has all the farming sim chores to offer, chores positive, complementary chores. It also has all these other elements.

Like you can be a person who's just really into mining and is like, I'm just going to go full mining mode on Stardue. Or you can be somebody who's really into fishing. you are. I don't know what's going on with you. The fishing is, I'm against it. I'm against it on all levels. It's a good way to make money in the early gardens. I will say that. Are you good at fishing, Kirk? I'm not. I find it extraordinarily difficult in this game. No, I didn't do a lot of fishing this most recent time, so I can't remember how good I am at it. I know that it's a very good way to make money and I've definitely done a fair amount of it. There was definitely a period in one of my playthews

where I was constantly going down to the beach and talking to the guy and finding the best places to fish. Yeah. So it can be, useful for the economy, but I don't remember it being particularly fun or being good at it. Yeah, but there are certainly weirdos who like it. Can I just say I've played like four different games over the past month that each have fishing mini games and they all drive me crazy. They're all terrible. I hate fishing mini games so much. For some reason, everybody's obsessed with fishing mini games and I can't understand the appeal at all. It's bizarre because fishing games can be great. We talked about dredge on this show recently and how fun it is to fish in that game. I mean, there are

games that really do it well. Of course, Dredge is a fishing game. They really figured out how to have to be fun. It's not a little mini game where you have to sit around and wait. It's a game where you're actively engaging the entire time. I think my lack of enjoyment is proportionate to the amount of time you have to just wait and stare at a screen, which is often the times of fishing mini games as reflective of real life fishing. Now I'm thinking about what makes a fishing mini game good. So like fishing is fun as a video game activity because it has a lot of interest. mechanical tensions, right? A lot of interesting mechanical frictions. Like, you're waiting, the line is getting pulled, but then you can't pull too hard.

Like a really good fishing mini game, you can't overdo it, or the line will snap. You know, you can't let it out too much or the fish will get away. So there's a lot of good push and pull, and it's pretty fun to do just in a sort of, you know, mechanical friction kind of way. But yeah, it's, it also has an element of randomness, right? Because you don't know what kind of fish you're going to get, which is a big thing. I remember an animal cross. like you pull up a tire and you're just like, oh, another tire. But then sometimes you pull up like a really valuable fish that you're very excited to go and sell. So it has a lot of elements I think that are very appealing.

It's a little bit of a slot machine, but it's a slot machine that's very fun to pull the lever on. But then I guess, I don't know, I'm trying to think of fishing mini games that I've really liked versus ones that I haven't liked. And Dredge is a very good example of how to do it right because I'm always excited to catch what I'm going to catch. and I like the process of doing it. This is a tangent, but it's kind of interesting. Well, there's a waiting. Okay, so the one that I've, that has been infuriating me recently is just one where you just

have to wait and just stare at the screen until an exclamation point pops up and then you press a button when the exclamation point pops up. Like those are the worst kind of. Yeah, I mean, Stardu has some waiting involved. And I think that is the part of the game that I both like and dislike. I truly have to get into the mindset, not just with fishing, but with the whole game of waiting and being patient. Because I don't really play with mods. So especially if you're starting over, which I did this most recent time, you get exhausted, like the game status exhausted so quickly.

And it's so frustrating in those first couple weeks because you're like, well, I'm simply a corporate drone. I, of course, can't cut down more than T-Tree's. You're really out of shape. I can't do anything. So I'm going to just need to go to bed at 2 p.m. Like, just from a realism standpoint and a story standpoint, I think it's very effective. But from a gameplay standpoint, it is infuriating. And I did have multiple moments, especially because I chose to play it on my Steam deck, but I'm playing it on Steam.

And I'm like, well, if I installed mods, I'd have to figure out how to install them my Steam deck. I don't want to deal with that. And I don't want to go and sit at my computer. You're too exhausted to deal with that installing mine. I am saying I'm too exhausted. Your meter is bottoming out and the sweat coming out of your brow. You know, at 6 p.m. when I stop working and I want to play some Stardue Valley, you know what I don't want to do? I don't want to become exhausted by installing mods for Stardue Valley.

I just want to play it. But I actually think it's good for me because it forces me into a mindset that is kind of more meditative that I really enjoy in games that are of this type where I have to be really intentional. with all the actions that I'm taking. Like in Stardu, I guess it's a sithe, the thing you use to cut grass with doesn't take up energy. So you can kind of use that and be like, all right, what are all of the grasses that I want to clear? Like I don't, it's not going to take up any energy at all,

so I can clear as much grass I want. But there's a cup of rocks that are just in a really dumb spot. So I'm going to like use up all of my energy on just those for today. But you do actually have to truly think through every single step that you're going to take. And that's probably good for me. I think it's, I think I can feel my brain being forced into a different mode. I think that's a large part of what makes the game so appealing for people. It's the logistical friction.

Logistical friction, the planning, the execution, the kind of like, all right, here is what I want my farm to look like. I'm going to make that happen when it is done after all of the trials and tribulations that I've gone through, of the energy that I've expended and the days I've had to sleep way too early. It will look like I envisioned it. And that is the big appeal of this game, I think, or at least one of the main tales of this game. And what I think is kind of interesting about that is that the game winds up, if you're not careful, turning into this productivity simulator that actually embraces some of the very, you know, things that the protagonist is supposedly leaving behind. And that, I think this is not a new observation about this game, but it is a very true one and one that I've found when I have played as I've sort of automated my farm and bought sprinklers and made it so that I can make more and more and more produce faster and faster.

The reason I'm doing that is because I want to make money because I want to buy more things for my farm and improve it. Have you considered making only corn and working directly with government subsidies? And if you get really into min-maxing, that is exactly what happens to you, is that you grow only the most profitable produce every single season. You started exactly the right time to make the most money. And really soon, you start to see how a sort of capitalist, like a series of capitalist incentives like we have in our actual world can lead to a massive monoculture where the entire middle of the country is like corn, because that's the only thing that makes any kind of financial sense to grow. And it's kind of weird. You get to this perverse thing where there's like one crop everywhere. And it doesn't make

environmental sense, but it does make financial sense. And that's not really a consideration in this game. So, man, here's an apocryphal story that I saw on the internet. I think like on LinkedIn, one of those LinkedIn things or something like that. Okay. So this guy, this like American banker is in South America on some trip and he's like in a fishing boat with this fisher, the fisherman, the South American fisherman. And the fisherman is like living this happy existence. He's catching fish and going home. And after a couple hours, he's going to take naps and hang out with his family. And the worker, the American guy, the banker is like, hey, why don't you take that extra time and catch even more fish? So then you can make some money with it, with the surplus, and then you can buy more boats and then catch

even more fish. And eventually you can become this business owner and you can have tens of millions of dollars. And the fisherman looks at him and he's like, what would I do with that tens of millions of dollars? And the banker is like, well, then you can retire and then you could go home and be with their family and hang out and do me one. And that's kind of like, that's Stardew, that feels like Star Do Valley in a nutshell. If you can, if you can't, you can, I don't know, maybe that's, how can we apply that to Starry Valley? No, I see what you're saying.

I think, no, I think that that's like a very, that's a great, a great anecdote and like, and very true to a certain way of playing Starry Valley. And that's what I think is really cool about this game. It's not just that one thing. It leaves room for you to become this like master, you know, super farming magnate. Yeah, farming magnate who is like making all the money in the world and is super optimized everything. And that can be very satisfying just from a like, you know, video game brain standpoint. But you don't have to play that way.

This game also makes it possible for you to empower Joja Mart to take over the town and like ruin everything. Yes. You can take what I would consider the evil path in the game and join with Georgia Mart. Exactly. That is possible. And then you can do some middle ground, like the way that I play it, where I do find satisfaction in optimizing my farm. But I like to get it to where, you know, I'm kind of making enough that I can build stuff if I want to, but it's not like super min-maxed out. And I have enough time to just explore and get to know townspeople and like go down their relationship storylines and get to, you know, get to know them even more and go down into the mine and find weird stuff and explore and just feel like I have enough time to kind of do whatever I want. Because you do have infinite time. in this game. You can just keep playing. You don't get old. You don't get sick and die. You can just go for years and years and years. So you don't really have that to worry about. There isn't that feeling of like, oh my gosh, I'm going to run out of time that you can start to feel in real life. And with that constraint lifted, you're free to live however you want. And maybe that's actually the

grandest fantasy that this game offers. Is infinite time? Yeah. Wow. Wow. That's true. I feel like it offers not only the fantasy of time, but also the constraints of just a video game rewarding you with dopamine. Like, yes, real life offers you that too, but not in quite as literal a way. Like, you do chores in real life and yeah, they might make you feel good, but like not in the same way that it makes you feel good to do them in stard you. And so that's why I think resisting the pole of min-maxing is actually. actually more difficult. I've never done it in Stardu, but I am also really sympathetic to it. And especially with new people checking out 1.6, update 1.6, I've seen that debate emerge anew where there are players arguing, like, you're playing the game wrong, but like everyone is sort of

equally right, because you can play it fully min-maxed, you know, corn demigod, or you can play it just like fully relaxed and just trying to like meander around and just meet every and go through the storylines, and there isn't really a wrong way to play. But the former way does feel rewarding. Like, the game can't help. I mean, I don't know. This is Eric Barone's fault because the politics of the game are pretty right there on its face. But because of the way it's designed, it is satisfying to do things correctly.

Like Kirk said at the beginning, like you do notice when your plants are not growing at the exact same time or rate because you didn't plant them correctly. So therefore, it is inherently motivating to have your plant. look all the same and pretty and lined up. Like, I don't know. I guess I'm saying that is a part of it that isn't like real life, but maybe people do have this problem in real life. I don't have this problem as much in real life as I do in video games, though.

Because a video game can look so perfectly cute. Well, that's the thing. The outcome is more guaranteed. You know exactly what it's wrong and how it's... And you get feedback a lot faster. You get feedback. And in real life, you often don't get feedback at all. Yeah.

Yeah, that's true too. I guess I mean specifically with plants. Like plants take a little while to tell you what's going on. No, with plants is exactly what I'm talking about. With real life, as someone who has to deal with like. Plants are never giving us feedback. Well, as someone who is dealing with a yard, especially in the last few weeks, I had to deal.

You guys saw my bamboo problem that I had to deal with. Yep. In real planting and yard maintenance and all the things you have to do to it, like there's so many variables that you don't know. why a problem might be occurring. Or like, I have a basement flooding problem, and that could be all a billion different reasons. Whereas in a video game, one of the things that makes the chores of a video game so much more satisfying is that you know exactly what is going wrong. That's a really good point. Yeah. And like if your basement flooded in Stardue Valley, that would be like a plot point. And there would be a townsperson who's a plumber that you would go to. Yes, there would be a

whole storyline. Yeah. Whereas in real life, you have to call four different plumbers. They all give you different answers and different quotes saying you don't know who's trying to rip you off or how much. It's just a nightmare. Yep. So that is largely true of Stardew. There is a bit of mystery in the game that I think is part of its magic. Like you can get surprising crops. You'll have a humongous, you know, whatever potato grow or bean or just something like each of the crops can kind of give you this mega version that's worth a lot more.

And it's not always clear what it was that caused that to happen. And it is a nice little mechanical representation of just the way that you. that plants surprise you when you have stuff planted in your yard or house plants, they can kind of do something that you weren't expecting in a way that can be really delightful. And I do like that he included that in the game, too. It's not all exactly predictable at all times because that would be almost start to feel a little bit lifeless at a certain point. Yeah, definitely.

I mean, I'm glad that it's generally good surprises in Stardue Valley because the basement flooding idea is terrible. And I hope Eric Brown doesn't do that. There was a blight, some weird bugs ate all of your crops. The locust infestation is going to make the next several years of the life. Well, that's just Frost Punk. Right, right. There are probably mods that turn Starty Valley into Frost Punk.

Yeah, you know, I'll have to look into that and see if there's any Starter Valley mods that are like the blight mod or like just like some dark soul's ass mob. Everyone in town dies. Like there's a plague and like everything is affected horribly. Like why? I mean the game, that's kind of. the end to the business of that game and that's why it ultimately is pleasing, even though it does have those moments of friction and those moments that the townspeople don't always like you. It's still a video game and it feels really good. All right. Well, I think we can leave it there.

Stardew Valley, if you haven't already played it, if you're one of those listeners that hasn't already play, you should play it. It's really good. I mean, we convinced you, I bet. I'm really, I've really, really been enjoying playing it these past couple weeks. And I'm like, maybe just spend my, my next month or so playing Star Do Valley. That wouldn't be a bad use of time. So on that note, we'll be back in a second with one more thing. It's Webby season. Hi, I'm Sequoia Holmes, host of the Black People Love Paramour podcast. And we are nominated for a Webby for the episode where I interviewed Haley Williams. In case you're unfamiliar, Black People Love Paramore is a podcast delving into the common and uncommon interests of black people in order to help us feel more seen.

We would love your vote to help us win this webie. Please take a second. Go over to the Black People Love Paramore podcast social media accounts and you can find them at BPLP pod across all social media platforms. Hit the link in bio and vote for Black People Love Paramore. Hi, I'm Travis McElroy. And I'm Teresa McElroy. And we're the host of Schmaners.

We don't believe that etiquette should be used to judge other people. No, on Schmanters, we see etiquette as a way to navigate social situations with confidence. So if that sounds like something you're into, join us every Friday on maximum fun, wherever you get your podcasts. And we are back for one more thing. Kirk, why don't you go first? All right. I will go first. I played a game while I was traveling. I was traveling to see the eclipse, which was amazing.

And while traveling, I played a bunch of games on my Steam deck. and one of the ones that I played is a new game that I played on Steam. I'm not sure what other systems it's on, but I know it's on PC. And there's a game called Children of the Sun. That is very cool that I really liked. And I think some of our listeners might dig too. It combines a lot of things that I really like in video games. So this is a game primarily developed at least by a developer named Renee Roth.

I'm not sure if it's a solo dev kind of thing, but it definitely feels like the vision of one person. Like it has a very strong authorial voice behind it. It's a game. It's basically a sniper game that's a kind of mix between puzzle solving and I guess it's really a puzzle game. It's like a sniper puzzle game. It looks really intense. It's a very sort of violently drawn game. It's a little like Hotline Miami in that very stylized, ugly, weird look. And in it you play a young girl who was raised in a cult like out in the middle of nowhere and the cult is called the children of the sun and it's you're basically escaping and wreaking vengeance on everyone in the cult for reasons that become clear or ish are sort of explained it's all a little bit abstract but are explained in

like very sort of stylized and overwhelming little cutscenes that play at various points through the story but it's it's very much a kind of sequential indie game and that it's just a series of little puzzle rooms that you have to solve. Each one is, you are this girl. She is circling some encampment of cultists, you know, of bad guys. And she has a single bullet in her gun. And she's going to shoot the bullet and has to kill all of them. This is a very violent and very gorgary game, very kind of weird and unsettling in a lot of ways.

I saw someone call it a feel bad game. And it is very much like a kind of an intense, gritty, you know, in that hotline Miami kind of way. So nothing like Stardue Valley on pretty much. the opposite. No. It's funny because, yeah, I was playing Stoddy Valley as well to talk about it for this episode.

And I was going back and forth between the two. Like, yep, these are very, very different games. Complete opposites. Yeah, they're very different. It's really cool, though.

I'd say that I would kind of compare it to super hot and I would compare it to Ghost Trick Phantom Detective. And then in terms of its aesthetic, it does have that hotline Miami thing. But the gameplay is very kind of super hot meets ghost trick. So you have a single bullet. Each bullet kills anything that it touches. but you only have the one bullet.

But the thing is, the main character is telekinetics, so she can move things with her mind. And as a result, you quickly unlock the abilities to steer the bullet and to ricochet it from person to person. So you'll be looking into, like, I don't know, like a farmhouse with a couple of guards out front, and there's one guy up in the window of the farmhouse, there's two people up front,

and like two people are staying next to a car, and the gas tank is exposed. So you have to figure out how to ricochet the bullet through all of those people, and each time the bullet hits one target, time kind of stops and you can re-ame it. So you can just go from there, and as long as you have line of sight on the next target,

you can press the button again, and it zooms to the next target. So you're kind of drawing lines, and in that way it feels like ghost trick phantom detective, which if you remember, that's a game where you're a ghost and you're kind of trying to Rube Goldberg your way through these puzzles to save people's lives,

and sometimes you'll have to, like, jump up into an umbrella and then trigger the umbrella to open which then causes it to fall down, which then puts you within reach of the telephone that you need to have rings so that someone picks it up so that an anvil doesn't fall on their head.

There's a lot of kind of positional puzzle solving. And this game is very similar. So as you're going, it's like, well, there's no one staying next to that gas tank, but if I hit that gas tank, I'll have the ability to re-ame myself again, which will give me the angle on that last guy that I've been missing.

And then once you have the ability to steer the bullet in mid-air, which feels like, you know, an Assassin's Creed or whatever, you shoot an arrow, and you kind of steer it at a guy, then you're really kind of driving around these increasingly complex puzzle rooms. And it's really satisfying and cool. It really has the rhythm, like the editing rhythm of Super Hot,

which is a slow-mo game where you kind of like time speeds up as you speed up. It feels really similar in that like time freezes the minute you pull the trigger. And then guys start to move slowly and then you just go through it. And it ends in this very abrupt just like dead, like text on the screen. You know, you did it, you beat it. It has that kind of in your face. rhythm and energy as well. I think this game is really cool.

I had first heard it, I think, from our former boss, Steven Totillo had played, I think a demo of it at some point and messaged me and was like, dude, I think you'll really like this game because it's just up my street. Yeah, it does sound like a good game for sure. Yeah, I really like this kind of game. Yeah, it reminds me of those games, like, from your description, it reminds me of like,

what's it called, Shadow Gamut, like those types of games in some ways, like those stealthish sniper games. A little bit. It's not really a stealth game. But more Roob Goldberg-ish. Yeah, it's more of a like shooting puzzle game because at least I haven't finished it and I gather it's not super long, which is good because it's very intense. I don't think like a very long version of this would be, I feel like there's a length that this game is probably going to hit that'll be just the right amount.

And it isn't really sneaking. Like you're not, at least from what I've played, you're never like sneaking around behind people. No, yeah, that's not, I mean in the sense that you're kind of looking at a, environment and figuring out where you have to shoot at the exact right time, that sort of thing. But yes, ghost strike seems like a good comparison. Yeah, seems really interesting. Yeah. It's really cool. Yeah, I really dig it and recommend it. I think, you know, there might be a demo of it that you can play, I believe, so anyone who wants to try it out can.

Children of the Sun. Interesting. Yeah, I think it's kind of a bad name. Like, I think it should have been called Rikasher or something, like something that implies what it's actually about. Children of the Sun is a little bit vague. But anyways, really cool game worth checking out. We've certainly heard worse game names. So I feel like at least it's like it's kind of evoking the cult and that's what it's about. Yes. Oh, yeah, yeah. Not too bad.

All right. I'll go next. So I played a board game called Wingspan, but it's also a video game. This is a pretty famous board game actually. Yes, we have this game. Yeah. So it's got a lot of little pieces. So the reason why this board game came into our house is because it was my wife's birthday and she's an avid bird watcher.

And so a friend of ours got Wingspan for her. her as a gift. And we played it over the weekend. And Dina was like a hundred and ten percent obsessed with this game. And there's single player mode of the board game that she continued playing. Well, I played something else because I was like, this is a lot of mental work. But I do think it's, I recommend it, especially if you like bird watching or anything akin to that, because it's an extremely detail-oriented game. So something, thing about the game that struck me as pretty funny right off the bat is that like immediately in the tutorial booklet they're like, okay, so we have a lot of little food tokens for each of the

birds because the point of the game is you're building an Audubon Society and you're collecting birds, but not all of the food tokens are precisely accurate to what those birds eat. And we know that. It was almost like they were like, we don't want to get any angry letters about this, but we only have four food tokens here. And we're aware that the birds eat different things. But we had to consolidate somewhere. And I was like, this game is amazing. I'm already so happy that this game is like already like coming out here being like, listen, we know a lot about birds and we know that you, the purchaser of Wingspan, probably also know a lot about birds. And you can buy different expansions for different parts of the world if you want different birds. So we have the

North American birds. Dina knows every single bird in what they eat. I am learning as I go along. The other massive credit that I can give to this game is that it has an extremely good tutorial system. So they actually give you multiple booklets that are like, play this fake version of the game before you play the real game. And it kind of continues into the real game, but like the first five turns or so, it's telling you what to do for every single turn and why? Because it's extremely complex. Like this is a game where you're like punching little things out of cardboard for like an hour before you even set up the game. It's like think settlers of Catan, but like several steps beyond in terms of little fiddly bits that are all over your coffee table for this experience. So each of us has a booklet and it tells Dina like for your first turn, here's what you should do.

Place a bird card on the board. That indicates this. Here's what you should feed the bird. Here's how many eggs the bird's going to lay. Eggs are currency. Food is currency. There's multiple dueling currencies in order to like unlock the birds for your Audubon Society. And there's a complex system of points by which your Audubon Society is graded at the end of the game.

And that is, that's essentially the game. It's just that in practice, it's significantly more complex than that. And if we hadn't had these little tutorial booklets, I can promise you I never would have understood this game. Like, ever. I truly needed it to tell me exactly what to do. And it kind of like, it walks you up to turn five. and it turned five, it was like, and now play the game. And I was immediately struck with terror.

I was like, I don't know, I don't know how to play a bird card. I don't know where I am right now. But I got through it and then I ended up being like, this is actually really cool. It's actually, I learned a lot and I like any game where I learn a lot. And I will say, though, like if you have somebody in your life like Dina is who really enjoys bird watching and really enjoys a game that is fiddly, for lack of a better term, for this genre of game, like very precise, very, like, lining up by little numbers and making sure everything works together.

Like, if you have someone in your life who has these qualities, you must get them, wingspan. You must, you must. And there's a video game version, apparently, which is preferable, in my view, if you don't want little fiddly bits. Our cats were really excited about this game and really excited for things they aren't allowed to play with.

So that's a concern. But, yeah, wingspan. Yeah, well, it's really just these little eggs that they wanted to steal and bat around. So that, I don't know. I did enjoy it, though, but Dina enjoyed it significantly more than I ever could have imagined. It was a perfect present for her. Didn't they just release Wormspan, which is about dragon? It's a fictional version of this thing.

Yeah, it's like a fully fictional version of Wingspan, which I think is maybe a little less fun. We did have a review on Polygon that was about that and was about, I mean, of course, people can disagree. But there is sort of a difference between having a bunch of fictional dragons and you're sort of like creating this menagerie of dragons and they have fictional stats as opposed to the lovingly pedantic levels of bird knowledge that is present in wingspan, which is fully accurate, beautiful paintings of these birds on every single car. Yeah, the art is really lovely. It's really like if you, it's, I understand almost like the divide between like the interest in something like Wormspan, which is like it's fictional versus wingspan, which is like, this is for bird nerds.

That is who it's for. That's who it caters to. And that is why it's fun. And they might be different audiences. But Jason, what's your one more thing? Did you know that there is an entire war between people who are, think that the feral cat population is killing all the birds and the people who want to protect the feral cat population? Yeah, man. Did you listen to the search engine about this?

Yeah, there's a search engine episode, which is fascinating about cats. Yeah. It's really crazy. We should link that. That was a really good episode. It's extremely good episodes. It's really intense. My one more thing is Fallout, the new TV show on Amazon Prime. We're going to get into this a lot more when we do our bonus episode on it later this month.

But I have really been enjoying it. So I just thought I would share it as a quick one more thing. So this show is of course set in the world of the video game series of the same name, which is a world in which America has been destroyed by a nuclear war. But before it was destroyed, kind of nuclear fission was popularized and turned into the kind of dominant form of technology. And so therefore, America kind of maintained and preserved its culture from the 1950s. So it's got this really unique culture and the games and also the show of this really

unique aesthetic of like 1950s crooning pop songs and like dresses and kind of TV looks, the kind of CRT look combined with high-end technology stuff. So it's a really interesting world. And it's also hilarious and dark and bleak and full of all sorts of juicy satire and post-apocalyptic goodness. So the show works really, really well. It's really, really good. And I think one of the main reasons for that is that it's a TV show. And I think we found now that with this and the last of us that video games adapt really well to kind of prestige television. And the reason for that is because the Fallout games are all about going on side quests and diversions and exploring. And the show allows for that. So for example,

there's that line, right? Walton Dawkins is like, the rule of the wasteland is you're going to get distracted by some bullshit. But early in the second episode, there's a scene where One of the main characters, this guy is this kind of member of the Brotherhood of Steel, this zealous, militaristic group. He finds these two people fighting, and one guy is, like, choking out the other guy. And so he jumps in, he intervenes, as he would if you were playing a Fallout game. And, like, you saw in the corner of your eyes some two guys fighting. And so our main character is grabbing the first guy. The second guy is like, why thank you, good sir?

Like, do you, sir? And he runs off into the wasteland. And the first guy is kind of like, look, he. in him forlornly, he's kind of like, man, like, it's just, guy was fucking my chickens. That to me was like the perfect fallout side quest, which is like, do you think you're doing something noble and good? And then there's this perverse subversion of your expectations in the funniest possible

way. So I really enjoyed the show. I think that is kind of a good, a good encapsulation of it. Also the kind of one of the lead characters, Ella Pernell, for me. Yellow Jackets plays this character named Lucy. And Lucy is this vault dweller who has to go into the wilderness, go into the wasteland and rescue her father, kind of the inverse of a Fallout 4's plot where you are the father going to rescue your kid.

And she is a great main character because she's very naive. And she kind of acts like the player character of the game where she just goes around and talks to everybody and does side questions and stuff. It's like she's playing in the way that I often play games. I'm like, well, I have to be nice to everybody. She tries to do the right thing. She's a good mean cake too. So yeah, she's a standout.

And yeah, the show's really enjoyable. We'll talk about it more in the future. So stay tuned for that. Yeah, I'm really liking it. And I'm excited to do a beanscast on it. It's really good. Yeah, we finished it over the weekend. And Dina really liked it too.

Even as someone who's never played a fallout game, I'll give that pitch for the listeners who are like, if I don't like fall out, she thought it was hilarious too. I think it's very approachable. So you have another spousal endorsement. Emily doesn't really like violent stuff and the show is extraordinarily violent.

I will say that people should know that it's like really violent. But she's into it. She's still hanging with it even though it's got so much violence because we're enjoying it so much. That's good to know. It's a lot of like comedic violence and non-human character violence. Like, you know, mutated cockroaches ate all. Balance on animals.

I know. That's a little tough. Yeah. But we're getting through it. It's such a fun show anyways. That it works for us anyways. Yeah. It's very, very good.

All right. With that, we've done yet another episode of Triple Click for you, folks. And we'll leave it there and see you next week. All right. See you both 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 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. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.