Video Gamers Podcast - Bonus Round: Game Demo Extravaganza - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: October 11, 2021

Gaming hosts Paul and Josh are back with a brand new Bonus Round! Steam Next Fest is over, but we tried out a LOT of demo’s and we’re sharing some of the more memorable ones with our gaming listeners. From scary to humorous, we tried a plethora of gaming experiences and are sharing some of our favorites in this awesome episode.  Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, Ad  Thanks to Razer for sponsoring the show. Use code: Multiplayer at checkout for your free gift! Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, before we jump into today's episode, we want to give a very special thank you to Razer for supporting this episode. Razer is a company by gamers for gamers, and they recently sent us the new Huntsman version 2 keyboard, which Josh and I think is just out of this world. The keyboard looks amazing, the RGB is wild, tons of effects, it definitely adds to the overall atmosphere of your gaming setup. And if you want to use the exact same keyboard, you can head to multiplayerpodcast.com slash Razer and make sure to enter promo code multiplayer and they will send you a free gift along with the keyboard. All right, let's get into today's show. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the multiplayer gaming podcast we are so excited to have you guys here with us today for this bonus round episode if you have not already done so please rate our podcast five stars and leave us a review in your podcasting app and also we would like to ask you to please

consider supporting the show. You can do that by subscribing in Apple Podcasts, or you can become a Patreon supporter by heading over to MultiplayerSquad.com. I am your host, Paul. And then joining me, I think this is the month that Cox Cable hates us the most. We have been downloading dozens and dozens of gigabytes over the last couple of days. It's Josh. Dude, I joked with you the other day. I'm pretty sure I pulled down 100 plus gigabytes in the span of like 20 minutes. Like, thank goodness for Gigablast. But all I could think about, like my dad brain, just like I am totaling the electricity bill as my kids leave the lights on. I'm just

sitting there going like, that's probably one-eighth of my data for the month, man. So this is a very fun bonus round episode. We've done this before, but we have Steam's Next Fest here among us. And this is a chance where there are just hundreds of game demos available for games releasing over the next year or so. And I know when we did this before, I definitely got one or two notices from Cox warning me that I was reaching my data limit. So since we have just played so many demos, hopefully we will be able to let you guys know what we were able to see, what we played around with, let you know some games maybe to look into, other ones to avoid.

Although, before we jump into all that, Josh, we have two new legendary supporters. We have never had two to announce at once. Why don't you tell the people who joined the legendary ranks? Hey, first of all, two, not one. I mean, we call legendary legendary for a reason. These are the people that just help make a difference amongst the show. It is the most support that you can pledge to us number one, when somebody supports the show like that. But for our community as well, there's always a lot of fanfare. Everybody gets super pumped when they see a new Legendary supporter. It's always been a lot of fun to do.

And man, I am loving this trend, Paul, because today we got two new Legendary supporters. Honestly, both of these people are absolutely amazing. The first one will go in order that they joined. Ad, straight up just Ad. He used to be Adam or something, and then he's changed his name a few times. But Ad, super cool guy. He was boosting the server for a long time. Thank you very much, Ad. We love having you around. Ad has not picked his game yet. I think the pressure of having to pick a game is weighing on him a little bit. So that's kind of funny. He said he forgot that that was one of the perks.

And so he started to scramble. And I told him, I was like, well, yeah, we've got a couple of games lined up. So it'll just be a little while. And he had said, yeah, I'm probably going to need a bit to figure this out. No pressure, Ad. You take your time. As long as it's not Fortnite, we're good. Yeah.

And then the other one, I love this guy to death. T-Foles has been around for a long time. Just an all-around phenomenal human being. Your cooking buddy, so to speak. T-Foles always posting delicious looking food, making me hungry. I am not that kind of cook. So really, I just need you or him to provide food for me, Paul. But yeah, no, T-Fol's been around for a very long time and just said, hey, you know what?

I really wanted to do something special for you guys. And he became a legendary supporter and has already picked out his game, which we will not spoil. But I'm pretty excited about that one, Paul. It looks like a fun one. It does look like a very fun game. I had no idea that game even existed until about 45 minutes ago. It looks fun. And it's technically a single player game, but you can also play co-op. So I'm kind of curious to see if you and I will be able to knock it out together. But we will keep you guys posted about that. Although it will be a little bit of time before we get to it because our next game

that we are covering as a deep dive is Deathloop. And then we have still not released the name of the following game, but that is the one that was picked out by legendary supporter Ace of Shame. I know you and I have jumped into that and already got a head start on that game. So we have tons of content coming up here through the end of the year. But here for this bonus round episode, let's go ahead and talk about some of these demos that we were able to play. And before we start talking about individual ones, whenever we do this, Josh, as you pull up Steam and you've got, I believe there were 780 demos to pick from for this Next Fest.

How do you go about picking out which ones you want to do for the show? This is going to sound really snobby, okay? I'm going to preface that right away. But what I do is I hover over, because you can hover over the title of the game, and it'll show you a few seconds of gameplay footage. Yep. Every single one that's pixel art i just immediately write off fair enough and i know that's terrible i love there are some amazing pixel art games out there like honestly like i am not trying to sound elitist in any way but when you have 700 demos to filter through, and like 680 of those are pixel art games, I just kind of go,

eh, I don't know how to pick one, so I'm just not going to pick any of them. Now, the irony of this is the very first game you told me to play is actually pixelated, but I guess we'll put that to the side for now. No, that's not pixel art. It's just really bad graphics, Paul. It's like the 8-bit graphics. It's 480 by whatever the 480 resolution is. Yeah. All right. So what I do when I pick out my demos is I'll do one of two things. I know that you're mostly going to look at the more popular ones, and I'm totally cool with that. Like, last time around, you found Ghostrunner, which I absolutely loved. And so I kind of let you pick the good ones. And then I try to pick things that I think

would be fun to talk about on the show. So I will either grab demos that have very funny names. I'm going to be honest, that's number one. So spoiler alert later, we're going to talk about Time Melters, because when I see a title like time melters that grabs my attention i don't even look at the preview i just download and i start playing i will also sort by most popular and i go straight to the bottom and i start working my way up and i always try to grab at least one terrible game this is how we found say no more which was the worst game i've ever played if you can even call it a game uh so i think you and i have slightly different philosophies for how to try to find these demos you're just a glutton for punishment man i want to find an amazing fun

game that i haven't heard of before you are just like let me go to the bottom of this barrel and torture myself with the worst game i can find sometimes it's more fun to talk about a terrible game and i feel like we gotta toss at least one or two in there oh we're gonna have i've got one or two of those today i can tell you right now paul you found some doozies uh we're gonna talk about a few of them. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So who should pick first? Do you want to take the first one or do you want me to? Well, so what we did too is you picked five demos, I picked five demos, and then we each played all 10 demos so that we could talk about them through various amounts. I confessed before the episode that there were two demos that I did not play all the way through. I did play a decent bit, enough to understand the game and talk about,

but I didn't make it to the very, very end. Right. So let's talk about one, Paul. I've got to bring this one up. Okay. And I have to preface this with a question first. All right. Wait, is this a

game that you picked or a game i picked it's it's just it's a game that you picked okay and why i know which one paul why do you hate me so much uh uh are you talking about peach leaf valley seeds of love you know it too okay all right for right. For everybody listening, number one. I am so excited to talk about this. Okay. So for everybody listening, you just simply said, here, Josh, here's some titles that we have to talk about. And I just went and I downloaded them.

I didn't even look at them. I just said, okay, like I just got everything downloading, which is why our internet service probably hates us. And one of the first ones I pulled up was Peach Tree Valley. Peach Tree, Peach Leaf. Peach Leaf. Peach Leaf Valley. And I just went, this is going to be a Stardew Valley clone, Paul. Yes. That's why I picked it. Oh, I know.

That's exactly why. I hoped it would be like Stardew Valley. And it's 100% why I didn't even look at it before I started playing it. And I don't know what's wrong with you, Paul. I started playing this game and I'm like, okay, okay. It's a lady. She's all, yeah. She really botched her job. She's stressed out with the stress of life. Hey, she's going to go to this farm to get away from the city life that the style of the game's high quality. I'm like, okay, these are like, I don't know, anime type graphics or something. I don't know what the term for it is, but you know, and then I'm like, okay, so go, oh, she's going to the farm. I'm finally going to get to play this game. You, you know, there's

no gameplay 10 minutes into this game. There is absolutely zero gameplay. She's walking through the woods. It's just a still screen with, with subtitles at at the bottom and then all of a sudden this insanely handsome pretty boy elf guy anime guy pops up who's all magical and i mean he's practically glowing and you can tell that the main character is completely smitten with this guy and i'm like well that's a little weird okay like maybe he was an elf or something so then i'm like, well, that's a little weird. Okay. Like, maybe he was an elf or something. So then I'm like, hey, maybe this isn't Stardew Valley. She gets to the farm. The guy is showing her around. She meets some second guy that's just this devilishly handsome, good-looking pretty boy.

And that's when I realized, Paul, that you sprung it on me. And this is a farming date simulator yes it is and I had some choice things to say about you buddy and I kept playing I kept playing until the third guy was introduced and

that's when I just went I'm done I'm 20 minutes into this demo no lie 20 minutes in I have not touched a key except for space bar to progress the dialogue in this game. And I realize it's a dating simulator. And I was just like, oh, my goodness, Paul. I'm going to kill you one of these days. Oh, I was actually chuckling by myself thinking about you playing this game.

Because you're this young woman who's just super thirsty for every guy in this farming village. And this game is bananas. It's just a YA novel for young teenage girls. That's how this game plays. And you get fired from your job. You're getting evicted from your home, which is kind of similar to the setup of Stardew Valley, right? In Stardew Valley, when you're super depressed and you're done with city life, go to the farm. And in this one, it's basically kind of forced upon you a little bit quicker. and then you just meet this old dude named earl at a farmer's market and he says come live with me on this farm and you go with him like this is this is not safe this is not okay josh don't go with strangers to their farms stranger danger people yeah and

basically every every man in this village is young and handsome and has long, flowy hair. And it's just a dating simulator. There's zero gameplay. There's no gameplay in this. Okay. Because I quit. It's not even a game. I had to wonder if there was at any point gameplay to this. Because after the third guy got introduced and I realized what you pranked me with. I just quit out at that point. Yeah. And I'm assuming that there's no gameplay whatsoever. This is just like a graphic novel,

almost. That is exactly what it is. They give you exactly one choice at the very end. They say, where do you want to start working the next day? And basically, you just pick which of the guys you were into, and your character is going to go start, I'm guessing, flirting with them. Now, I did write down one quote from the game, so this will tell you exactly what this kind of game is like. But as you get to the farm, there ends up being a bull that charges you on the farm. I don't know if you got this far, Josh the the the bull knocks you over and then here's

the next line as you get this you know very uh pretty boy image on the screen i can feel my pulse go racing as the feeling of muscular arms wrapped around my waist shock me back into reality uh so i don't i don't think this game is really designed for people of our age. And what we go for, I don't think you and I are going for the young, handsome, Japanime men. But Peach Leaf Valley, this is what you get when you just randomly throw a dart at a dartboard and you start playing. Apparently I am not pretty enough is what this game taught me yeah yeah oh man so peach leaf valley seeds of love is like the subscript and maybe that should have clued me in but i just got excited at a two-syllable valley game just hoping

it was going to be stardew valley yeah i did I did not see the Seeds of Love subtitle on there. Like I said, I just typed it in, I downloaded it, I clicked the icon, I started playing, and I really was not expecting what happened at all. So kudos to you, sir. You got me. Yeah, this one was a self-prank and a prank on you, but it was glorious. It's a well-done game, though. Like, honestly, it's a well-done game. Like, everything in it is top-notch. The sound was good. The graphics were good. The dialogue was actually well-written.

I'm sure this is somebody's kind of game, but it's definitely not our kind of game. Yeah. And I owe you one now, Paul. So just remember that. game yeah um and i owe you one now paul so just if you if you want some pg-13 romance with good looking dudes this game is for you yeah yep absolutely so all right so that was one of my games you want to pick out one of the ones that you picked well i picked that one but that was one of yours let's talk about you always mention always mention the kind of funny or the weird titles. And so I did come across one that is called Do Not Buy This Game.

And so that caught my attention. And I was like, well, who are you to tell me what to do with my money? Sure. So I downloaded it. It did have, you know, due to your pranks, I started reading the games that I was looking at. And this one had like Adventure, Parable, you know, some other stuff like that. Fourth Wall or something is some of the descriptors. And I thought this sounds kind of like the Stanley Parable, which I have not played, but I played the demo and I thought was very clever.

And so I picked this game up and it seems to follow the same vein. Again, I've not played the Stanley Parable. Yeah, but it was just a lot of fun, man is just walking forward at an agonizingly slow pace. And you see this button off in the distance and there's a, there's a narrator and he's like, Hey, whatever you do, don't push that button. And of course it's the only thing to do. So you're walking towards this button and this guy teleports you backwards

like four or five different times, but then he lets slip that he has a limited number of teleports. So you really need to stop. It's 100% a walking simulator, but it made me laugh several times. He tries to shrink you down so that you can't get to the top of where the button is. So then you wind up walking around these flights of stairs just over and over and over again. I mean, literally, the gameplay in this game was W on the keyboard, and that was it. Yeah, this is not even really a game. I felt like it was almost an aspiring stand-up comedian just taking his comedy to video games. That's kind of how it felt. It did feel that way, but it made me laugh. And honestly, there's not a ton of games

that make me just chuckle as like, this is the intended portion of this game. And so I kind of respected that because the guy was funny. It was a well-done demo. And I like the whole Stanley Parable aspect. That's a game that I want to play. I like that fourth wall. I like how you're kind of interacting without ever saying anything just through your actions and stuff. And so I thought it was a pretty good demo. The name of it was pretty funny as well. And through the whole thing, especially at the ending, it's just like, do not buy this game. And it's just funny to me that there's a guy that is going to name his game, Don't Buy This. And then that there's going to be a ton of people that buy this game anyway. Yeah. And the name is not even funny. He literally tells you the whole time. And this part did make me laugh more than anything else. It's very meta in that at one

time he says, okay, I don't want you to push the button. So I'm going to give you something else. Here is a box that has every known secret in the universe and it's gonna just give you secrets if you walk up to it and activate it and then it's just like really silly things that are all about the narrator so it's about him wetting the bed until he was six years old but then it does say that his biggest fear is that people won't like the art that he creates, which of course is thereby just commentary on this actual game, which is not even really a game.

And it doesn't look good. It's very goofy. It's clearly just like a vehicle for comedy, which I totally respect. I don't know if the game will play like the demo or if this is like a totally unrelated demo. But clearly, it's just leaning very hard into meta commentary, comedy, video game type stuff. Yeah, I like that it was just different. I think that's what really kind of set it apart for me is that I thought the graphics were fine. You know, it had some high textures and stuff like that. But yeah, it was just maybe it was just after Peach Leaf Valley,

it was a refreshing breath of air to kind of laugh a little bit. Yeah. And just kind of say, like, I'm going to push that button. And you're right. It does throw in some different scenarios. The guy really works to have you not push the button. But yeah, so that one was... I thought that one was pretty fun. I actually... There's two games that we tried that I put on my wish list, and that was one of them. Oh, okay. Gotcha. Yeah, I would imagine this one will be a relatively cheap game. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it kind of screams Passion Project by one guy, or at least that was my impression. $4.99 or $9.99 tops for purchase price. But if it gets me a few hours and a few laughs like that's fine i'd take a look at it sure all right for the next game here i'm gonna save my favorite one probably for last that way we've got kind of something to look forward to so let's talk a little bit about time melters because i mentioned that one already so let's get into this one. Time Melters. Cool name, right? Did you like that one? It is kind of a cool name. I will say out of all the demos, the Time Melters, the name and the icon are what drew my eye more than most. And I was like, how do you melt time?

That sounds amazing. I was going to say, I'm not too sure what that even means, to melt time. But my first impression on loading this game was that, wow, these characters look frightening. Like, you play this, I guess, like, not a young woman, but, you know, maybe like in her mid-30s. But she kind of looks like Quasimodo or almost like part orc. And, like, the shadows look really bad. You look like you have the plague, basically, is what she looks like. Or you've been living underground for many, many years and occasionally come up to the surface to gather berries or something. But the characters are definitely a little weird.

It's a very strange art style to the game. Even the monsters are kind of off a little bit. And it's kind art style to the game um even the monsters are are kind of off a little bit and it's kind of hard to put your finger on what it is but yeah like the main character is gaunt like she just looks sickly and i don't know why it could be like the tone of the skin or something but well i think it does take place in the 1400s which kind of explains that but hey it's another time loop game, right? Why not throw it here into the bunch? It's this game. I'm going to summarize this game, Paul, in two words.

Overly complicated. Oh, see, they do warn you, though, in the demo that it's going to feel overly complicated because they try to throw every ability in the demo that it's going to feel overly complicated because they try to throw every ability in the beginning they say normally you learn these abilities one at a time but what's the what's like the whole draw of this one uh you're a magic user like spirit caster thing and i didn't really know what this game was at first initially i thought it was an action combat game because you're just shooting like you're slinging spells left and right, and you're taking out these zombie things. And then the guy tells you, hey, you can create like a teleport spot so that if they get too

close to you, you'll instantly teleport back. So that kind of buys you a little bit of time. And I'm like, oh, okay, cool. This is like action combat-y spellcasting. Like I can get behind this. And then one of the zombies got too close to me and I died right away. And I was like, wait a minute. Yeah. That's how you die. There's no health bar. Like if they touch you, you're dead. And then I went, oh, well, that's kind of weird. And then, you know, you move on to the next level and the guy says, hey, now, instead of just setting a teleport spot, you can animate objects. You can animate this big tree and turn it into an

and it'll grab guys for you. And I was like, oh, that's super cool. And this demo is just learning these new abilities just over and over and over again, which I'm like, okay, hey, I got a great arsenal at my hands. This is perfect. And then the game just took a weird twist to me man and it became a time loop almost like strategy like real-time strategy but i don't mean like real-time strategy like starcraft i mean like tower defense yeah like tower it's a little tower defense in a way but it's like every time you would die you create a ghost of yourself that repeats the actions that you just took. That you run alongside.

That you run alongside, and then you die again. And then my brain just started melting. This is why it's called Time Melters, because my brain just started melting. And I was like, what? Like, what is this? Yeah, this one was really clever. Out of all the games we played, I thought this one had the most fun gameplay. So basically, you're chucking out these spells, but then you also start to get these additional abilities. And they're basically like the main

elements. You've got one for like air, earth, fire. And so you start generating these time loops where you're fighting next to your ghost. But then the game really kicked it up into high gear because you start playing this mission where there are basically four lanes that all of these enemies start pouring down. And this is where it almost gets a little tower defense-like, even though you're in third person mode. And so there's this guy who's like the time rift keeper, and he can't die or the level ends. And so you start running down these lanes and fighting monsters. You do the best you can, but then inevitably you die.

So now I'm going to start running down maybe the third channel while my ghost is going down the first. And I thought it was a really neat idea and it got really hard. And I was really surprised. Oh, I died so many times. Oh yeah, tons of times. It's not easy. I got frustrated at one point

because I forgot what some of my skills are and then I didn't realize how to use the ghosts and I couldn't get mana. It was the one right before the lanes one where you first start realizing that you have these time rift ghost things or whatever and i had no mana so it's like the first the first thing you need to do is kill the zombies that have mana icons above their heads right so that you can then suck up the mana so

that you can then infuse a tree but you're gonna die in the meantime because there's this huge horde of zombies coming after you but then it's like when you loop again, you see your character shooting the two zombies that have the mana things. And then your second ghost is animating the tree while you're crazily kiting these things around trying not to die. It just got bananas, man. And I didn't understand it at first. And then I kind of went... That's when I say that realization of like, wait a minute, this is like a real-time single-player ghost time loop MOBA action brawler thing. It's just like, what is this, man? Well, it's even got the pause all the action move, kind of like Dragon Age Origins or games like that, where I think you press spacebar and the camera pulls up and you can

see where all the enemies are. So it's not like full action like it presents in the beginning as you learn the abilities. It's actually very strategic. And this one I thought was really neat because they do also play with elements of time. So in one point, you have to save a villager who gets killed by like two skeletons. And they you you know yeah he's dead but what you can do is run all the way to the front place your teleporter start over so that way your ghost you know the teleporter is already there reset time teleport there immediately and save them so it really i think played very cleverly with all those elements i thought this one was very fun because it was clever. It was

different. It offered something I don't think I've ever really seen in a game. It was all new to me. Like I said, they combined a lot of different aspects to it. It's very interesting. It is not what it seems. I would equate this to almost like a puzzle game, to be honest. How do you beat this scenario using your ghosts and using your abilities, and you're going to wipe out a whole lot and have to start back over. But then it's like you try this tactic and you try that tactic and then you die and you go, okay, well, wait a minute, maybe I need to address the middle lane first, and that sort of thing. So I found it to be much more puzzle-oriented in how to beat each scenario, I guess.

It's like a fantasy puzzle shooter, almost, in a weird way. I don't even know how to describe it. That's why I'm saying it's eight different genres kind of blended together. And it's a little overcomplicated. You're right that they did warn you ahead of time. And they said, look, for the purposes of this, we want you to see your abilities, but your brain's going to hurt a little bit. Yeah. And they do say that the full version will have a full storyline. And you even hear little lines of dialogue that don't really make sense because it's in the demo,

but you don't have any kind of context for the world. But this one to me was one of the few that I thought maybe I actually would check this one out, even though it doesn't look great at first. The first five to 10 minutes of playing, I thought it was just very pedestrian. But once you start incorporating time and they really kick up that difficulty notch, I thought that's where it really took off for me. Yeah, this is one that's definitely worth checking out. I don't know that it's my kind of game, just in the sense that I don't know that I liked the chaos of trying to solve the puzzle. If I want a puzzle game, I want one where it's like I'm trying to think about how to approach something and The Witness or Talos and, or games like that.

I don't know that I would pick this one up, but it is a very cool premise. And I like the fact that it mixes strategy with action with time looping, MOBA puzzle. Sure. A little bit of everything. Yeah, probably something there that everyone might like a little bit of. All right. Well, at this point of the show, we're going to talk a little bit about Razer. We want to give them a very special thank you for supporting today's

episode. Man, I'll tell you what, Paul, I'm not done gushing about these Razer Huntsman keyboards. I absolutely love this thing, man. I own a Razer Tartarus, which is my gaming keypad. We now own the Razer Huntsman V2. I have had many, many Razer products in the past. They are top of the line. If you're a gamer, you know about Razer. And honestly, there's a reason because they make the best gear for gamers. And these keyboards are incredible, man. The optical keyboard, fastest key presses you'll ever see, built like a tank, amazing RGB. Let's be honest, everybody loves RGB and you can customize the snot out of this thing. And everybody can pick one up and see why we're gushing about it. If they head to multiplayerpodcast.com slash razor,

pick up your Huntsman keyboard, add it to your cart, make sure you use promo code multiplayer. And Razer is not only going to send you the best keyboard you've ever used, but they're also going to send you a really cool free gift along with it. All right. So, Josh, let's go ahead and move on here to our next game. We've covered two of mine and only one of yours. So what's the next one you got on the docket? Okay. This game caught me off guard because at first I was like, this is going to be very, very simple. And then I found myself diving into that. I got to get faster. I got to beat this

level a little bit quicker. And this is a game called Raze, R-A-Y-Z-E, but they say it like race almost. And I didn't catch it until the very end when they're kind of showing you some more levels and stuff. This is an interesting combination of a racing game that is a shooter trainer, like an aim trainer. Yes. And I had not ever seen something like that before. And when I first started playing it, I went, this game is insanely simple in its premise.

But then I found myself playing like six levels later, I found myself trying to climb the leaderboard and just get a little bit faster. And the premise of this game is that you're just floating in this three-dimensional map kind of thing. It's very Tron looking in a way. It's just got floating walls, and then there's these glowing panels. When you click on one of the glowing panels, your character starts flying towards that panel. And then as you click on another panel,

your character will change directions and pick up speed. And so the reason that this is an aim trainer is if you miss, click, and you hit a wall instead of the glowing panel, your character will slow down. But if you can chain clicking on these panels in succession, before you know it, you're doing like 700 miles an hour. Your character is whizzing through this map, which ups the difficulty level until finally you see the final gate. You click that, your character shoots towards it, and then you get a time for the map. And I actually played this a pretty good bit, man. And I found myself really enjoying it. The first few times I kind of went, this is dumb. Like, I'm not sure I like this. It's such a simple thing. But then the challenge factor kicked in

and I really wanted to get better. And I think the best I did is I was like 47th on one of the maps. It was like you're like 47th overall. And that's when I went, I'm kind of having fun here, man. So what did you think? Yeah, this one is incredibly simplistic. There's no controls at all. All you're doing is moving your cursor and clicking it. And this is the shortest demo

I think I've ever played. There's only, I think, like three levels and I beat all three within like five minutes. But then like they say, the whole point of the game is to get faster. You can discover some shortcuts. You're trying to climb that global leaderboard. And yeah, you're just floating in zero gravity. You click on something, you start zooming toward it. And the quicker you start clicking stuff, the quicker you move through the course. And it has really neat electronic music too. So I thought that that was really well done. Yeah, the music was really good. There was one level where you're flying towards this one gate. If you've done well, you're going really, really fast and you have to turn 90

degrees to click the next gate before you smash into the wall. Because if you hit a wall, you're done. It resets your run. And I remember thinking this is where like flick training comes in for aiming like snipers and stuff like that. Because as you're hurtling towards this gate through this little tunnel, there's this 90 degree turn. Well, you have to flick your mouse 90 degrees and click the other gate within the span of probably like a half a second. And I remember really feeding off that challenge and nailing it and then nailing another 90 degree turn to get to the gate. And that's when I was like, I actually see the benefit of this. Not only is this an aim trainer, which is really good, let's be honest, if you're into first-person shooters, aim trainers legitimately help out. But I loved the atmosphere, the electronic music, the speed,

you can always get faster. I like the leaderboard aspect. It's just one of those very, very simple in premise, but a lot of fun in execution things, I think. I don't know that I would buy this game because I feel like it'd get pretty repetitive. but it caught me off guard that the demo was actually as fun as it was. Okay. I had no idea that it was actually designed to be an aim trainer because I wrote that in my notes. I wrote, this is a great aim trainer, even though it's not. So I thought it was legitimately just supposed to be a game. But now that I know that it's also designed to be an aim trainer, that makes way more sense because this takes aim training but actually makes it fun. Right. Yeah.

Instead of clicking bots that are jumping around and trying to click ahead, it gives you a different means to do that. And I really liked the racing speed leaderboard aspect. Like I said, I think I played every level. I think there's like five levels. And I played every one multiple times to try to get my time faster and faster. And then I knew that we had a bunch of demos to get through. So I was just like, all right, that's good enough. I get it. But yeah, that one I thought was pretty fun. It's definitely worth checking out. I mean, if it's a $3 game, it's a no-brainer to me, especially if you want to practice your aim. But I thought it was a really neat premise. Yeah, this one's just so simplistic. I'm not sure there's really anything else to say about it other than you can play the levels very slow also. And so if you just want to play it as

a game and just finish the levels, you you can do that but i think you're supposed to stick on that one level and then just see how high you can climb so yeah and then you jump into some other shooter whether it's halo infinite or uh battlefield 2042 whatever who knows all right so next game on the list here i'm gonna go ahead and jump into the one that i had the most fun with just to make sure that we leave enough time for it here. We previously talked a little bit about Martha is Dead. I had read a couple of articles about it from some critics who were able to play it early, and there is a playable demo for this game. I thought this demo was crazy fun, and I think it might be one of the most disturbing, most well-executed horror games

that I have played. I thought it did this so much better than Resident Evil, so much better than other games in the genre. But what did you think about Martha is Dead? Absolutely gorgeous game, first of all. The graphics in this game really blew me away and i wasn't expecting that but like one of my kids came into the room while i was playing and they were like what is that like look how like real all that looks and i was just like i had no idea it explains the download size because the demo was 28 gigabytes yeah it was sizable. But the presentation is through the roof. The graphics are absolutely incredible. All of the voicing and stuff is really good.

I was... What about the puppet show? The puppet show was crazy, man. How creepy was it? It really was. This whole game starts off with a puppet show to kind of set the backstory with little marionette puppets and stuff. And I just went, what a cool way to tell the story before you jump into the game. And yeah, it had a very dark and creepy undertone to it.

This game is a horror game all around, man. There's some really messed up parts in this game. And we talked about it before. We knew it was a horror game. We said, hey, your sister dies in Nazi Germany or something like that. This is not a happy place when we talked about it. I don't know. I guess it was a couple months ago. But it's twisted, man. I don't know if we want to spoil anything. I mean, it's a demo, so I feel like we could. Yeah, I think we should spoil a little bit, because I know not everyone's going to go download it, but I want people to be excited for this game, because this is the one more than any other I think I would actually buy. So basically, we knew the whole concept of the game is that your twin sister dies, and you're kind of trying to piece together what happened with her.

Well, it's actually a lot more interesting than that because in the game, you basically see, you're an amateur photographer and you notice that out in the water, there's like a floating body and you run down to go see who it is, see if you can help them out. You think they're in trouble. And it turns out that it's a dead body and it's your dead twin. And so you are Julia. Your twin is Martha, hence the name. Martha is dead. You drag Martha out of the water and Martha has a very particular necklace that she wears. And so you take it off her and you put it on yourself. And then here's the real twist of the game. Your parents run up to the shore, realize that one of their daughters is dead. But now they think that you're Martha, who was deaf. And so you have all of your hearing.

Your parents are talking throughout the rest of the demo, but they don't know that you're able to hear them. And I thought that was a really cool element of the story. but they don't know that you're able to hear them. And I thought that was a really cool element of the story. It was very neat. And then I was like, I see where this game is going. And it's a very neat plot twist in the very beginning. And then you want to be Martha, because Martha is, for whatever reason, obviously the favored daughter. Beloved by the mom in particular. Yeah. And so you kind of go like well now my parents are

gonna love me thinking on martha and that's kind of creepy and sad in its own light yeah and then there's this weird horror scene where you cut off martha's face well and you put it on yourself because you're as you're assuming her identity right But you literally have to take her medallion. This skeeved me out. And I'm not squeamish, Paul, but you take the medallion and you literally skin her face in the game with your controls and then peel it off of her and put it on. And the whole time I'm just like, yo, this is really messed up. Yes. And that's why I say I feel like it executed horror so incredibly well. The one thing I will

say about the game is that we know photography plays a large portion of the game. You take photos in the world. The game kind of guides you. You have to take pictures, you go back to your house, you go into the dark room, and then you develop the pictures. And clearly, I think the game does place a little bit of focus on what's happened with Martha's soul and with you stealing her soul. They kind of throw this kind of verbiage out in the game. So I'm sure there's going to be photos that are going to have Martha's ghost, or there's going to be some kind of element like that in the game. So I'm sure there's going to be photos that are going to have like Martha's ghost or there's going to be some kind of element like that in the story. So I know that photography will play a key part. But what I did not enjoy is the actual photo taking because they literally teach you about real life photography. They tell you exactly how these things work. And when you

take the pictures, they have to have perfect exposure, focus, and framing. And once I did the first one, you can do it relatively quick. But a very big part of me just wanted to point and click this camera and be done with it. It's a weird mix of horror game with photos taking simulator. They legitimately... Obviously, the creator of this game has a passion for photography. Yes. For real. It kind of comes out of nowhere. It's teaching you about photography. And not only does it teach you how to take an actual photo, like you said, with exposure and f-stop and shutter speed and all that legit stuff,

it also teaches you how to develop them. Yep. And it even gives tutorials on the screen and then says, hey, this is actually how it really works in real life. But for the simplicity of the game, we're going to shorten the extra wash steps. So you only have to do it once. And I will say this. This is where the demo lost me a little bit because I don't care about that. I want to play a spooky horror game.

And I don't want to be shoehorned into taking these weird photographs and learning how a camera works. It was a little disjointing to me. I don't understand the point of it, other than the creator of the game has a passion for photography and wants to teach people. But that's what YouTube is for. Yeah, I could see it working really well. I think it's just going to come down to how many pictures am I going to have to take and how much time do I spend developing it? And in the world, So there is stuff like that that's just purely atmospheric. You can skip over. Clearly, your character is not going to be out fighting creatures or fighting monsters. I think it's going to be exploration, photography, getting clues in the spiritual realm.

Because right off the bat, they even give you other types of film. So they say, you know, this is IR film. It captures things you can't see with your eyes. And that stuff really appealed to me. I think it's just going to come down to, I hope it doesn't spend too much technical time on the photography. As long as that stuff you can bang out pretty quick and easy. I think this game is actually going to be very interesting and a really compelling story. I definitely do want to play this one. I think the game is going to be great. Everything about how they presented it is great. The pacing was a little slow in the demo. There's a part where you're in your house and you're just kind of looking around. And I found that to be very slow. That also tied into the photography

part. So maybe it's just that they did both at the same time. I did get a little bored there when they finally went like, hey, you should head down to the lake again, which is where all the face ripoff stuff happened. It's like, oh, okay, great. Here we go. And that part was great because there's some stuff with Nazis and you find your friend who's been blown up and that was nasty. And then you die, which is really weird well you'll get shot yeah well i yeah i guess so i mean they think you're dead at least but yeah and so i'll probably pick this one up because it does seem like a very neat story but don't expect like a lot of action this is definitely much more investigation slower paced much more environmental storytelling than anything else.

I think it might have a lot of potential for replayability because during those slow parts in the house, you have the option. Are you going to dress in Julia's clothes or are you going to dress like Martha? And I have a feeling that if you throw on Julia's clothes, there's going to be different dialogue and people are going to respond differently and i was kind of curious to know how all that stuff might work out they make it very clear that the two sisters have very different interests and they act very differently and i wonder if that'll also inform the ending of the game based on like how much you act like your sister how much of yourself actually bleeds through uh i'm not sure, but I think this one looks really interesting. Yeah. All right. What you got up next? All right. This one was probably one of my favorite, but it is also right up my alley as well. It's a game called Inscription, which is also kind of like a horror game or a creepy game. I don't know that it's horror necessarily, but it definitely

has a creepy tone throughout the whole thing. And this is a card based game. Surprise, surprise. Right. And the goofy thing about this is that this is not your fanciful cards that are exploding and casting fire and all that stuff. Like your cards are a squirrel in a, in a, I don't even know what a sloat is. I've never even heard of a sloat. I have a lot of veterinary background. It looks kind of like a mink or something. I don't know. You have these very, very mundane cards

and you are playing against this super creepy looking guy who you can only most of the time see his glowy eyes. It seems very simplistic. I can tell you, having played a gajillion card games, that there is a ton of strategy involved in how you play your cards and get them to interact and stuff like that. So the depth of the card play is actually much more than it appears on the surface.

But what I thought set this apart was, number one, just the creepiness of everything. The guy that you're playing against is basically forcing you to play. You're locked in his cabin. Yeah, you're locked in his cabin. And if you lose, he'll kill you, I guess, or steal your soul or something bad's going to happen. But the guy's bonkers crazy at the same time because there's occasionally where you come across a trader that you can trade cards with or something, and the guy will put on a mask in front of you, literally grab a mask and put it on his face and then pretend to be the trader. And I was like, this dude's nuts, man.

He's clearly insane. Yeah. And there's other parts where you can actually get up from the table and walk around and actually look around the cabin. And then it's like a puzzle game. So you're doing this exploration and you can interact with objects and stuff. I found a cuckoo clock. I could change the time. I set it to noon or midnight or whatever it was, obviously. So the little cuckoo thing pops out and there's a ring. And then it's like, so now you know you have this ring and you can use this ring somewhere else in this cabin. So it's this really neat mix of card-based game mixed with puzzle exploration interactivity game with a very healthy dose of creepiness mixed in. As you score points, the teeth are what are used to keep track of damage.

So that's like... It's got a phenomenal atmosphere. The graphics suck. It could run on a Super Nintendo. It could run on a Game Boy easily. Yeah, it really could. But I think they do that on purpose. And it all adds to that uncomfortable creepiness because the sounds are discordant and the graphics are bad. But everything kind of comes together to create this really neat game overall. I was actually really impressed with this. I'll probably pick this one up. This is the other one that went on my wishlist. Yeah, I did think that it was a very fun demo to play. There were a couple of things in particular that stood out to me. I don't know if there's ever been a card game that has quite the kind

of mechanic here in how you sacrifice cards. So basically what you do is you've got these various animals that you can play, but then you also have your lower level cards like squirrels. And so basically your cards will have a certain cost, except instead of being mana or energy, it's little drops of blood. And so if the card has one drop of blood, it means that it will basically sacrifice and kill like a squirrel, and then it allows me to play it down and basically my cards are going to fight the other guy's cards and if there's no card in front of mine it'll attack the player and so each player can only take so much damage what's also interesting is it's not like 20 hit points where if it goes to zero you lose it's just got a scale on the side of the table

and so you basically have to out damage your opponent by a certain amount and once the scale tips too far on his side then the game ends now i gotta ask you josh so you mentioned that the the weights on the scale are the teeth you also get this weird ability where you can cheat in the game So you're given these glass bottles that have cards or it'll have an item on the side of the table. You're allowed to have three and then basically, maybe you have a glass bottle with a squirrel

and it's like, okay, well, I need to be able to sacrifice three animals. I only have two squirrels. I'll smash this glass bottle. Now I've got another squirrel. Well, did you ever use the pliers? I did not. Oh, you didn't? You don't know, did you ever use the pliers? I did not. Oh, you didn't? You don't know about this? I know, dude, I do not. So I'm very curious to hear,

because I did use the squirrel bottles, but the pliers basically say give like one damage, like temporarily or something. And I was like, yeah, I don't know. That doesn't seem important to me. So I never did it. Why? What happens? It was the best part of the demo, Josh. So I was playing my one round and I could tell I was going to win if I just survived this one round, but the scales were tipped pretty far in my direction. So I was afraid I was going to lose. I thought if I clicked on the pliers, he would reach over and pull one set of teeth off of my scale, but that's not what he does he grabs the pliers sticks them in his mouth yanks out a molar and puts the molar on the other guy's scale oh no and your opponent says like wow i didn't think you would actually do that so it really just even adds even more to that kind of creepy atmosphere you pull out your own tooth to win this game and to help

tip the scales. I mean, hey, as terrible as that sounds, if you lose, the guy's going to kill you. So I guess it's worth a molar, right? Yeah. So yeah, this one I thought was kind of neat. It had some neat mechanics. The whole game is red and brown. Yeah, the graphics it's not much to look at it's it sucks in a in a weird way it they're not distracting by any means like i said everything kind of fits together but yeah it's just it's kind of hard to explain just watch some gameplay you'll see because they're not pleasant to the eye it kind of feels like when you watch a horror movie and they intentionally have like found footage which is low res, and it's not framed right, and the lighting's wrong. It's all kind of like that. It's all by design. It's not like it's poorly made. It's just how

they decided to build the atmosphere. And I actually really appreciated that. So even though I'm not normally into horror type games, I felt like Martha is Dead and Inscription might've been the two best, ironically. I think they were, to be honest. Yeah, there was some others that piqued my interest, but yeah, those two are perfect timing because I think they both released fairly soon too in time for Halloween and all that.

So right season, right release date, right games. Yeah. All right, well, we are almost out of time here. So I don't know if you have any more that you'd want to mention. The one that I did want to bring up is Storytellers. Yeah, we got to talk about that one. I was hoping we'd get to that one. Oh, good. Yeah. This one actually feels like a mobile game. I don't know if this one's coming out on mobile or not, but it's very simplistic. What a neat idea. You basically have story panels like in a comic book. They tell you what the story needs to be in just a single one line.

It might be something really simple like heart is broken. And then basically you can choose the theme of each panel and you can click and drag players into it. And you basically have to draw out the story that they're describing. Do you want to give people a description of what that might look like? Yeah. I didn't know what to do at first. And then the light bulb went off. Super clever. And that's when I was like, this is super neat. I have not ever played a game like this. It is a puzzle type game. And I don't want puzzle game to throw some people off because some people hear puzzle

game and they just instantly shut their brain off. And they're like, yeah, I don't want to do that. But this was a really, really neat like execution process kind of thing. So yeah, exactly. Like at the top, it will just say, ends in heartbreak. And you have two characters that you can move into the different panels, and you have maybe two scenes. So one might be chapel, and one might be graveyard. And you have three panels. So it's like, okay, well, you have the one panel where I'm going to make it the chapel,

I'm going to take the guy and the girl, and I'm going to stick them in there, and obviously, they just got married. And then I'm going to use the guy and the girl and I'm going to stick them in there. And obviously, they just got married. And then I'm going to use the graveyard in the second panel. And I'm going to put the guy's character on the tombstone and the girl in it. And then it'll be the girl standing over the guy's grave, mourning him. And then her heart is broken and you succeeded. You solved the puzzle. Yeah.

Well, that's like a two panel one. But towards the end of the demo, you've got six panels and it gets into crazy things like revenge. You know, revenge by poison is the, is the, just the topic at the top. You've got six panels. You have a chapel, a wine cellar and a graveyard or something. I can't even remember what the other one was. And you have three characters that you can use now. And just by clicking and dragging, you have to tell this story in each panel to get to the end panel where it was murdered by poison. Yeah. It was so clever. It really is clever. And it's hard. It took me a little while on some of these to go like, how do I get from this?

And you have to use certain things. So it's like, you might have to use the chapel to say that these characters got married and they're in love. And then you have to use another chapel where you introduced the third character. And then he does like a, Hey, my heart's broken because you're already spoken for, because you got married in this panel. So then the guy gets mad and he's in his wine cellar and then you have poison. So then he's like poisoning. But the things change to show that you're on the right track. Yeah. There's little animations that kind of show the repercussions of what your things are doing. And that does kind of help guide what you might need to change or adjust. Because you don't lose a level, you just keep adjusting it

until you solve the story. But yeah, one other example that kind of made me laugh is they have this pauper and you have a queen and it tells you that the pauper and the queen get married. Well, if you just immediately propose with the queen and the pauper, the queen says no because she looks down on him. So what you end up doing, because you've got at this point now, it's a lot more complicated. You've got a lot of options. Basically, you take the pauper, he puts on a disguise, you go and you kidnap the queen, you lock her in the dungeon, you go back, you take your disguise off with the pauper, the pauper goes back and saves the queen. Then if you propose, they get married. And so it's actually like funny and clever.

I thought this one was crazy fun for being as simple as it was. I'm with you on this one. I didn't know what to expect. Like I said, I had that kind of light bulb moment where I was like, oh, I see what they're wanting you to do. What makes me wonder, because the game is called Storyteller, is how many different ways are there to get to the topic? Yeah, there's probably multiple. Yeah, I have a feeling that people will tell the stories in multiple different ways.

And I think that's where a lot of the neat stuff is going to come from, is where I might use Heartbreak and the guy that tried to get married again, and then he got mad and he wanted revenge. Somebody else might go with a completely different setup to get to the end point. And it's not necessarily the end point, because that's always going to be the same. It's how did you, what story did you tell to get to that point? And I thought that was so clever, man. I'm really curious to see as it gets more complicated, if you end up with like 16 panels and you've got to tell a really complicated story, it could be a lot of fun. Yeah.

We're basically just about out of time, but any last game you wanted to bring up or none that really struck your fancy beyond that? Just do two quick hits. I tried a game called King's Gauntlet that I played for all of five seconds because it looked like a chess action game. And then it turned out to be probably the worst thing I have ever attempted to play. Chess with guns. It was so dumb. I think I literally had like three minutes total before I just exited and uninstalled

that. And then I've not ever been one for these like just straight up relaxing, almost like zen-like games. But this one game that I played called Exo One. So EXO and then the number one like spelled out is this odd gravity. You're like this just a marble almost, but you can alter your gravity to make yourself really, really heavy or floaty. And this entire game is just rolling or flying through these

really, really neat, peaceful alien landscapes. And that's all there is. So as you're up in the air and you see a big hill, you improve your gravity. You make your gravity really big. So your marble slams down on the ground, goes like 300 miles an hour. And then you let go of your gravity and your marble goes flying through the air and the clouds and stuff. And there's just this peaceful music. And I don't think I've ever played a game like that before. But I kind of worked for you. I legitimately was like, this is so relaxing right now.

I could just fly this marble forever. And then 10 minutes later, I got bored. But for that 10 minutes, I was like, this is so peaceful and zen. I'm really enjoying this. Oh, how funny. Well, by the time this episode comes out, I think Next Fest might be over or very close to ending. So you probably won't have a chance to jump into these demos. But maybe it'll give you a couple ideas to look into, especially Inscription, Martha is Dead. I think those are well worth checking out. Storytellers, all of these. So anyway, one thing I did want to mention that we haven't mentioned in a couple episodes is our free Discord server.

There's a link in the episode description but discord is a totally free app or you can just use it online and it just is uh like a discussion board for people who love our show josh and i post on there we interact with listeners of the show we take suggestions on there and so you know come hang out with us come take a look chat with other people who like the show tell us us what you want to hear, what games you want covered. A lot of what we do is in response to you guys. And that's probably the best way you can get in touch with us. We'd love to have you on Discord.

Yeah, we really would. And even if you don't want to talk, we have plenty of lurkers. We love our lurkers just as much as we love our active people. It's just a good way to kind of know what's going on with the show, what's going on with the community. So even if you're not a chatty person or you feel weird talking to a bunch of strangers that you don't know,

everybody that's in there loves the show. Like Paul said, we're both in there. We're very chatty. It's just a good way to kind of keep in touch. So don't feel like you need to talk. I mean, obviously if you want to, that's great, but there's still a lot of benefit there just to actually be in the server and kind of seeing some of the conversation and stuff like that that's going on as well. Yeah, it's also the quickest

way we can get information out there. So like now that we've recorded, we'll post what game demos we talked about. That way, if you get a heads up, you're able to play them and kind of know what we're talking about when we jump into the show. but that's it here for today so thanks so much joining us here for this bonus round we'll be back with our next episode on thursday for this week in gaming we'll see you then see everybody