Video Gamers Podcast - Deep Dive Double Header: Stardew Valley and Outer Wilds - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: July 12, 2021

Gaming hosts Paul and Josh are bringing you a fantastic episode. This week we nominated a game for the other host to play and are now deep diving both games. Josh nominated Outer Wilds for Paul to play and Paul nominated Stardew Valley for Josh. Two gaming powerhouses that are very different gaming experiences then each host is used to. Don’t miss this amazing episode!   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

The world needs heroes to protect us from bad takes. There once was a man named Paul who said that Star Trek was better than Star Wars, and we can't stand for this type of injustice. Join the fight against bad takes and support the show over at MultiplayerSquad.com. But Josh, I'm scared of Patreon, but still want to help. What can I do? Well, future hero, you can now subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts and get amazing rewards like two bonus episodes each week, early access, and ad-free episodes. Paul said it's more so that you don't have to listen to my terrible intros anymore,

but we all know how bad his takes are. Now, listening to the multiplayer gaming podcast where we release new episodes every monday and thursday we are excited to have you guys here for a family friendly conversation in the world of gaming please Please support the show by becoming a Patreon supporter at MultiplayerSquad.com or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. You'll help fund the show, and you'll also get some awesome perks, including two Quick Take episodes every single week. I am your host, Paul, and today I am joined by my co-host. He keeps waking up with every day feeling exactly the same as the day before. It's Josh. And that feeling is called old age and a sore back, Paul.

Yeah. Sore knees, sore back. Lots of bones cracking every morning. Dude, I put a desk. I was chatting with people on our Discord server that I spent almost five hours yesterday putting this desk together for my daughter. Oh, right. You know me. I'm a handy guy. I actually do woodworking. I'm good with tools. It took me five hours to put this desk together. I was so sore at the end of the day. And when I woke up

this morning, I slept really good. I woke up this morning, I went to just jump out of bed, and everything in my body just cracked. And I went like, oh, I went to just jump out of bed, and everything in my body just like cracked. And I went like, oh, I suck right now. The mind is willing, but the body is weak, huh? It's not like I played like, you know, an entire game of football or, you know, did some wrestling or something, man. I put a desk together and it just about killed me. So, yeah.

Well, yeah. Welcome to Old Man Corner. You know, we're a couple of dads. desks together and it just about killed me so yeah well yeah welcome to uh old man corner this you know we're we're a couple of dads we are no longer spring chickens and you know as the old age comes it's just gonna bleed out into the podcast a little bit a little bit so there you go heed our warnings youngsters yeah so today we have a very special episode because we have decided to do another two for one which we did one of these not all that long ago with knockout city and operation tango oh that's right operation tango and before we jump into the two special episodes this week josh i think you've got a couple of user-submitted reviews for us.

I do, Paul. We are sitting, currently as of this recording, we are at 240 reviews. Ooh, very nice. That's just on Apple. That's pretty close to a big number, and that number is 250. Right. And so once again, I am putting this out there that if you are our 250th review, I will read your review word for word. So if you want to share your grandma's cookie recipe with the world, you know, that is your chance. But we, yeah, I know.

That's high stakes. I hope it's a good review. And I hope it includes lots of emojis and sound effects that you need to include while reading it. Okay. So the sound effects would be pretty hilarious. The emojis thing was done for our 200th one. So, you know, but yes, we, we, you know, we really do need these reviews. They help the podcast out a ton. We read every single one of them and share them and talk about them. It's, it's honestly one of the joys that we get from doing the podcast so uh i've got two the first one comes in from frodo garfield oh that's interesting i mean i like both those characters so sure and uh

they are from great britain and the title of this review is awesome show for gaming and frodo garfield says i've been listening to the show for six months now. It is exactly what I was looking for and couldn't find before. It's great. And my three sons all love it, too. Love the deep dives. Shout out for having a Dragonlance fan on the team. Have just become a supporter via Apple Podcasts. Translates well to the highlands of Scotland.

Oh, very nice. That's the first review that's mentioned Apple subscriptions. So that's kind of neat. It's super cool. Also, I want to go to the Highlands of Scotland. So if you ever want to host the podcast at your house, just reach out to us. Yeah. I've watched a lot of Outlander.

I want to see the Scotland landscapes. It's beautiful. Dude, I would love it. But I also love the fact that it's a fellow Dragonlance fan. He gets my older references. Fellow nerds. Kudos to you, Frodo Garfield. And then our next one comes in from McNugs01.

This one is titled Favorite Podcast. And McNugs says, I've been listening to these guys for almost a year now. I'm pretty sure I've gone back and listened to every episode they've made. They're just so entertaining. Even if I've never played the game they're talking about, they are so descriptive that I never get bored listening. I also love that they are a family-friendly podcast, so I can listen without having to worry about anything provocative being said. Keep it up, guys. I always look forward to your next episode.

Oh, thank you so much. this around my family. You know what I mean? Honestly, it's one of the things that we're pretty proud of, you know, is that we are a family show. You don't have to worry about, you know, what your kids are hearing or can you listen to it in the car and stuff like that. And I love seeing that in the reviews. Yeah, absolutely. Because I'm such an avid podcast listener. I've got, I don't know, probably 30 or 35 that I'm subscribed to. And shockingly few of them can I play in the house unless I'm using earphones. So it is nice to have, you know, one family-friendly option while you're in the car or to play out loud in the home while cleaning. So yeah, we're very happy to bring that to the masses. So yes. Well, thank you so much,

Frodo Garfield and McNugs01. We definitely appreciate the reviews. It definitely means a lot. Absolutely. So, question, Paul, did we... I mean, I don't know if you're leading up to that or not. I'm getting old, so I'm forgetting things. But did we talk about how we got to pick the two games that we're going to talk about? No, not yet. So, that was what I was going to bring up next. So this is a special two for one because we did not decide as a group, what are we going to play?

And this was your idea to do something a little bit different. Why don't you tell the people how we ended up with these two games? I thought it would be funny. We have joked around in the past about making each other play games that we hate or being forced to go back and play some games that maybe we've reviewed or didn't

give a fair shot or something like that. And then we don't want to subject ourselves to torture. So we kind of threw that out the window. But then we were kind of chatting about it. And I thought it'd be a cool idea to say, hey, Paul, why don't you pick the game that I have to play, and I'll pick the game that you have to play? Because you and I, we share a lot of similar tastes in gaming, but we also have very different tastes on other ends of the spectrum. I joke about Animal Crossing, and you say, Oh, that's an amazing game. And I go, No, that game would kill me. And then there's a lot of games that I am really big on that I'm surprised that you haven't tried. So I was like, man, this might be the chance to force Paul to try one of these games.

And we agreed. And we said, okay, for better or worse, man, we shook hands on it and we said, okay. And that's how we came up with the game. So why don't you tell people what game you picked for me, Paul? And why? Yeah. So I picked Stardew Valley, which I have talked about a little bit on the show as being one of my all-time favorite games. I think it is the best casual game I have ever played.

I loved nothing more than playing it on my Switch. I would pop in, and I wouldn't play marathon sessions, but every single day, I would just clock in 30 to 60 minutes while laying in bed before laying down every night. And I know it's totally not your kind of game. You are not into the casual genre at all. And I thought if there were ever a casual game that you might like, it would be Stardew Valley. I know you're not crazy about the farming kind of mechanics in games, but it does have a little bit of combat. It's got some storylines,

some things like that. So I thought that would be interesting. And then what's the game that you picked for me and why? So I love trying out a lot of different games. You know, I've made it very known that I have game ADD. There is one benefit to that in that I spend a lot of money on a lot of different games. And every now and then, one game just really hits the mark for me. And one of those games that you have heard me talk about

and I've talked about on the show, I actually brought this up in a recent bonus episode that we did for our Apple subscribers, is a game called Outer Wilds. Not Outer Worlds, which is the Fallout successor. Don't confuse it. This is Outer Wilds, not Outer Worlds. But Outer Wilds is one of those games where you remember this game forever if it's it's unlike any other video game that exists out there it was a complete and total just mind-blowing game for me I didn't know what I was getting into I didn't know what to expect and then all of a sudden there's just this masterpiece of a game and you had heard me talk about it but I it was one of

those games where I was like Paul is never going to play this game. And so that was one where I was like, I want you to experience this game, so this is the one I'm picking for you. I like the fact that we both picked what we both viewed as very good games, because I know you're a huge fan of Stardew Valley. You know I'm a huge fan of Outer Wilds.

So instead of trolling each other, which we could have done and would have been funny, we actually wanted the other person to say, hey man, I want you to experience this game and see if it resonates with you like it does with me. Yeah. And with it being a two for one, it means that we have an awful lot to cover. So I think we'll have to kind of just jump right into it. But what are we going to cover first? Outer Wilds or Stardew Valley? Let's do Outer Wilds first. Okay.

All right, let's jump into it. Let's talk about Outer Wilds. All right, the description that I have for Outer Wilds I grabbed from Wikipedia because the Steam one was not very good. Wikipedia has it described as a 2019 action-adventure game that features the player character exploring a solar system stuck in a 22-minute time loop which ends as the sun goes supernova. The player continually repeats this cycle by gaining knowledge which is retained and can help them on later loops. All right, so one of the interesting things about Outer Wilds is when you fire up the game for the first time, there is no cutscene,

there is no text that explains what you're doing. You literally just, it tells you press a button to wake up, and you're just walking around and talking to people and figuring out how the game functions. There is no explanation for better or for worse, and you just kind of have to learn the game on the fly. So do you want to tell the people a little bit, like, what is this game? Who are you? What's the overall purpose? What's going on? So it's kind of like you mentioned, I honestly kind of like how they introduced this game, because like you said, you wake up, you're looking up at the starry sky. You see something. There's like a comet or something explodes up above, which kind of just like, what's that?

But then your guy wakes up and he starts just wandering around the town talking to people. And it's this very quaint, cutesy little planet that he's on. But this game, man, it's so hard to describe because it does a lot of different things, but it is mostly an exploration game where the more you explore, the more you learn about the galaxy that you're in or the solar system that you're in, I should say. And like you mentioned, every 22 minutes without fail, the sun will supernova and it resets the game. So it doesn't matter what you're doing. It doesn't matter how much you're going like, no, just give me 30 more seconds. That supernova is coming and you can't stop it. And then boom,

you wake up again, just like you do the very first time. So it's this very, very cool time loop mechanic that we have seen in a lot of movies, but I don't know that we have seen... I mean, I don't know that there's any other video games that have put this mechanic in there as well, or if at all, like Outer Wilds has. Can you think of one? I don't think any other game has done it, or if there has, it hasn't had a very high level of success. This is the only one I know that does it. So, you know, this is exactly the same kind of plot mechanic that you see in movies like Groundhog Day or The Edge of Tomorrow with Tom Cruise. And so I know that before when you had talked about Outer Wilds,

you had kind of described it with having that kind of mechanic. So to kind of give you guys an example of how this works, the very first thing that you're supposed to do in Outer Wilds is to obtain the launch codes. You kind of figure out that you're some kind of junior astronaut, and it's the first time that you're going to go up into space. But before you can get in your ship, you're going to go up into space, but before you can get in your ship, you need launch codes. And so basically, you start walking around, you can talk to people, you learn a little bit about your town, and basically, you kind of find

out that your purpose is to explore the solar system, and you're going to learn more about an alien species that has been wiped out called the nomai and basically once you obtain the launch codes usually that first run through that first you know time loop you're basically stuck on the planet maybe you take off into space but you don't get too terribly far and then all of a sudden the game kind of makes like a almost like a menacing kind of sound and then you see on your screen you see like a very quick replay where the game's been recording everything you've done you see snapshots of everything you did throughout the day and all of a sudden the game says wake up and once again you're looking at the stars but guess what now you already know the launch codes

you have them from the last playthrough so now you can go straight to your ship, take off and start exploring once again. And so that's kind of the mechanic that makes Outer Wilds a little bit different. Yeah. And part of the, like you kind of mentioned, you're stuck kind of on your home planet. I mean, you might make it to like the moon, like you said, your first run through. But you're in this solar system, and you are open to fly anywhere you want at any time. There are no boundaries whatsoever once the game turns you loose from the little tutorial area. And that's kind of neat, in a way, to me. I imagine to some people, that's kind of neat in a way to me. I imagine to some people that's probably a little disorienting to be like, where do I go? Like, what do I do?

But you can just see a planet off in the distance and say, well, I want to go check out that planet. And then you'll fly over there and maybe you die. There's something that happens and you die and it resets. Or you go to this planet and you're kind of wandering around the surface of the planet and you don't really find anything of interest. So you're really not sure what you're supposed to do at first, but very quickly you start to realize that you are learning certain things from almost everywhere that you go. Now, some of those won't make sense,

but you will find these ruins on a planet and you start reading about the Nomai. And you start to go down this rabbit hole and then the sun explodes. And it's like, oh, man. So then the next time you respawn, you fly to that planet right away and you start looking around even more. You go back to those ruins and then that kind of opens up a new area. Or maybe it says, hey, there's this secret that's over on this planet. And then so you hop in your ship, and you fly over to that planet real quick, and you want to try to discover that secret, and then the sun explodes. And then it's just kind of rinse and repeat.

But there is a very cool sense of you are always figuring something out, whether you really even realize it or not. Yeah, it's kind of like... So I guess it would maybe help to say how this game functions. Like, this is not a shooter. There is no combat in this game. It is very heavily focused on exploration and just simply putting the pieces together to figure out who the Nomai were, why they disappeared, what they were after, because they had been exploring the solar system in search for what you end up finding out later is called the Eye of the Universe. And so it's almost kind of like this very blurry image of your solar

system's history, and it's going to very slowly come into focus. So your solar system has five planets to explore. There's some other stuff that you can explore and take a look at. The game does not have any gear. There's no direct missions per se. Kind of the driving factor in this game is your ship's computer. So when you get inside your ship, there is a computer that you can access, and it's almost kind of like an ever-expanding web. So if you discover some kind of clue, like maybe you read a tablet that mentions, oh, if you want to get to the Southern Observatory, there's actually an underground entrance near the equator. Well, now your ship's log will plug that into there. And so you can kind of mouse over the clues that you have.

And if you go and explore that element, it's going to branch out and then start to give you more and more clues. So the game is very open-ended, but it's kind of that ship's log that kind of gives you a little bit of direction to know where to go. You're not forced to memorize everything that you uncover. That ship log is such a benefit to the game because honestly, there's so many times where you might just get sidetracked looking around and not really finding anything that makes a lot of sense to you. Like you'll find a lot of stuff, but maybe it doesn't make sense to where you're at in the gameplay. And so having that ship's computer, remember some of the clues and some of the points of interest that you found and stuff like that is honestly a lifesaver. I don't know how well this game would work without it. I almost,

it's almost like that, you know, how like on a crime board where they're trying to like get to like the bottom of plot where it has like the guy's picture and then there's like string connecting everything yeah it's kind of like that like honestly it starts piecing together all of these different puzzles and you start realizing that this thing over here which you didn't understand is actually linked to this thing that's over on the other side of the solar system. And the beauty of this game is that as you play it, it starts to make those connections more and more. And that's when the story really starts to open up in this game. And you start to understand the depth of what the developers have crafted. And it's almost like one of those movies where there's just that amazing

twist at the end you know where it's just like you don't realize how great it is until you get to the ending of it and then everything kind of makes sense and then your brain it's almost like that rewind when the sun goes supernova like you said you see all those flashbacks right it's it's like your brain almost does that and just goes like whoa and then just your mind's kind of blown um it's pretty incredible man like like i said we're not going to spoil any of that stuff but i love how they crafted this game um but yeah you're right there's no shooting there's there's the mechanics of the game are actually pretty simple i mean you fly your ship your ship's a little wonky.

I mean, it's made out of like wood and like cardboard or something. Yeah, basic materials. Yeah, they even kind of joke about that where in the very beginning, like the first time you die, you spawn right next to the guy who the very first go around, he tells you, hey, you need to go get your launch codes. And so the first time that you die, you can talk to him and then you can even say like oh i already talked to you i have the launch codes and then the guy's like what are you crazy you know and but it you know it's kind of funny that it you know plays into that mechanic where you've got these time loops but no one is aware of the time loop except for your character but i i think that you know since the whole game kind of revolves around that time mechanic, I think that probably the most important question about Outer Wilds is, do you feel like that mechanic improves the story and the gameplay? That's what it revolves around, but do you think that actually improves the experience? 100%, I think it does. Because I'll tell you why.

There is always that sense of impending dread. And when you start to get clues and you put them together, or you find a new location on a planet that you never found before, or maybe you learn something the previous go round, and so now you beeline it to go explore what you learned about. You realize that's actually been there the whole time. I have seen speed runs done of this game, and you can beat this game in about 10 minutes. Legitimately, everything is right there in front of you. You just don't know it. And that, to me, is part of the beauty of the game. And without the time loop mechanic, I think this game just becomes like a walking simulator with some really neat graphics

and it's in space. But sans that mechanic to reset everything, I think that's the heart of it, in my opinion. It's a neat game, but if you didn't have that mechanic where it resets you, and then you take what you learned the run before, and now you use it for this next run. I remember spending some like 22 minutes just sitting on a planet, like reading or talking to somebody. And it's like, you don't care, right? Because there's no, the only detriment to the supernova is that it ends whatever you're doing at the time. And so if you're not doing anything super important, fine, like, okay, I'll just fly right back to what I was doing. It's not a big deal. But where it really comes in and adds that sense of dread is when you are really far down

that rabbit hole, or you've just discovered this new location and you want more time. Like you need that time to explore this, but you know you don't have it. And that's why I say I love the music when a music starts, because there's always that ominous music that starts playing before the supernova. Like the underlying hum, and then it kind of builds and grows. Exactly. And that's when you're just like, no, no, please. I just need more time.

Yeah, and it's true. But see, the other thing that we have to kind of bring up is that because you have 22 minutes, I just need more time. there's these two planets where they're called the hourglass twins, right? So they're linked together and one is pulling the sand off of the other one. So throughout that 22-minute loop, if you fly to them right away, the one planet's just filled with sand and the other one is just kind of this empty husk. But 12 minutes in, the one planet has pulled half of the sand away from the other planet, and now you can explore more area for the planet later on. There's another example where there's this thing called the interloper, which is this comet that

flies into the solar system and flies out of the solar system. but there's only a certain time period where you can actually catch up to that comet, right? And so everything is based around that time loop. So without it, I think the game completely falls apart. I get that to some people, they're like, I don't want to reset my game every 22 minutes. That sounds frustrating to me. But in this case, it only heightens the sense of discovery and what's at stake. Yeah, so the time is definitely key. And kind of what you're talking about is just the fact that there's only certain things that can be done certain times within that 22-minute loop. And the fact that the clock is running, it does add a little bit of that

impending pressure to do something. It doesn't technically change the story or the lore as you uncover that. And I will say that it's a very clever element to try to use it in a game, especially because it's been so successful in so many movies and TV shows. I will say that for me, I did find there to be some pros. I did find there to be a lot of cons. Like, there's one planet that you go to very early in the game called Brittle Hollow, and you have to do a lot of almost like platformer kind of puzzles where you've got a jump between surfaces, and in the middle of the planet's core is a black hole. And if you mess up any of your jumps, or if you run out of fuel, or if you go too high into the air, then you end up being

sucked into the planet's core, or you can actually fall too far, land on a surface, and die from fall damage. And I just found myself having to retread old steps pretty often to where I felt like it was almost kind of a wash. I felt like it puts a lot on the table, but it also takes a lot off of it. It really just made me want to see more developers use this and maybe find more clever ways to use the mechanic. I felt like in this game they did use it well, but I don't know that I needed to retread so much old ground, if that makes sense.

No, it does. And in the beginning of the game, honestly, it's kind of a slow start because, like I said, there's going to be a lot where you're just wandering around this planet and you don't know what you're looking for. And so it's almost this just aimless wandering until you find this cool thing. And then that starts to open something up. But then once that... Your ship's computer we talked about, right? When you don't have any links going on between these clues, and you're not really sure what you're supposed to be doing, there is a little bit of that stagnation until you find the next thing. Now, once the game progresses and you get 20 hours in, I think at that point you'd know exactly what you need to do.

And it's just unlocking after unlocking and trying to find that next thing. And it's not that this game takes 20 hours to enjoy by any means, but I think it's kind of that slow discovery that they're going for. But there is a lot of that going back to the same place you just were. And you had mentioned it, there's five planets in this game. I love the names of them, right? You've got the Hourglass Twins, you've got Brittle Hollow, you've got Giant's Deep, Dark Bramble. There's something later on called the Quantum Moon, which is super cool that you start to learn about. You have the Interloper, the Quantum Moon, which is super cool that you start

to learn about. You have the Interloper, the Comet, and you can go to all of these places. So there is a lot of backtracking to it. That's probably one of the negatives. I think it's good to point out because no game is perfect. And it's kind of like Subnautica in that way for me. You know I love Subnautica, but there are moments in that game where you're just kind of wandering, right? And you're like, dude, I want to know what I'm supposed to do, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do. So you have to just kind of spend time until something comes up. And that's definitely not always the funnest thing to have to go through. Yeah, so I do have some more thoughts about Outer Wilds.

I'll try to kind of enfold it within the other segments here on the show. So Josh, do you have a couple of community reviews for us here that you yanked from Steam? I do indeed. So, okay. So there were a lot of reviews on this game.

It's definitely a popular game. First review is a recommended. This guy has 26.6 hours on record. And he said, I paid $16 for this, and I still feel like I ripped the devs off. Obviously, he enjoyed the game. $16 is a little bit cheaper than what the going rate is, but I think it does go on sale sometimes too. Here's one that we just talked about.

This is not recommended. One hour on record. Oh boy. Wasn't really willing to give it much of a try. Played for an hour. I'm stuck in space. Where to go? What to do?

I want to take a break. All progress will be lost. Where's the save button? How do I save? Is there auto save? Don't know. The game won't tell me. Bye bye game. Yeah, I can understand that. The game doesn't provide a whole lot of specific details in that regard. And if you do quit early, then you're basically like canceling out that one time loop. You can't just like save your progress. The game forces you to always start on a day. So if you quit in the middle of a cycle, that's just going to be a little bit of lost time. Right. And then this one touches kind of on the same thing. So I'll read

this one. 1.8 hours on record. No save function. Not for a casual gamer. Repeating sections over and over is not the way to make an engaging game. So, I mean, number one, the game does save itself. You do start over every day, but the whole point of this game is that it doesn't matter, right?

Even if I hopped into this game brand spanking new, and I know what I know now, I could go to any point in that game at any time during that loop and be able to discover exactly what I needed to discover to access what I need to access. So it's like I get it for a new player. You don't know that. But that is kind of the neat thing about the game. So, all right. One last one for Outer Wilds here. This one is recommended 26.2

hours on record. I'm thinking maybe this game takes about 26 hours to beat. That's two reviews there. For $24.99, you can play a piece of art that will break your heart. I adore watching others play Outer Wilds just to recapture a piece of what it felt like to point my duct taped little death trap of a spaceship into the dark places that I feared more than I understood and to do what Feldspar would do, floor it. I sat in front of my computer and cried at the end. Six months later, I'm still crushed that I can never play it again. There's no better use for your computer than playing this game. Wow, high praise indeed. I will say this. I identify with that review right there because having played this game and beaten it,

I get it. And it's one of those things, like I said, it's like one of those movies where you don't realize until the very end. It's like the prestige, right? Like you and I love that movie, Christopher Nolan movie. And that's one of those movies where it's a great movie until the end.

And then you realize, like, oh my goodness, this movie is incredible. But you don't really realize it until you get to that point. Yeah, the game definitely has its fair share of reveals along the way. And, you know, you had already mentioned we're not going to ruin or spoil the ending. But the game does give explanations for why there is a time loop and why it's there and why the Nomai are now gone while you're doing all of this. So the game does do a pretty good job of explaining it all. All of that is to say it's not all terribly easy to understand. I do think it helps to have a base level understanding of time dilation, and space, astrophysics.

Those things do help because it actually does come into play in the game. It's not at a level that's inaccessible, but I could also see how this game would really be confusing to a lot of people if that does not interest them whatsoever. My kid would hate this game. Honestly, they would enjoy the gameplay, but there are some pretty deep scientific principles behind what's going on. And the story does get very in-depth and a little convoluted as to the interactions

between the Nomai and, like, your character's race, the Hearthians, and why are these planets the way that they are, and why are things changing? There is definitely a lot to follow. And of course, anytime you bring in time loop mechanics, things just get confusing sometimes. And this game is not immune to that at all.

It's got a great story, but before the show, I even read a full refresher of the story, because it's been a little while since I've played. And even then, I was like, oh man, this ain't the easiest thing to follow, man. There's even full 20-minute videos you can watch on YouTube where people break down astrophysics versus quantum mechanics, and how these things don't play well together, and so how this game kind of uses both of those to have this story so if you even want to really dive deep it can even be pretty educational it is a pretty deep game in that regard both in the lore inside the game and also the science behind it all

yep all right paul so that was uh that was four reviews we always play a game where we try to guess what we think the user score is the overall user score is um so you've been nailing this lately we've both been pretty close lately i think we're i think we're honing our our art here but uh what do you even nailed a few right on the head yeah recently yeah i mean i know that this game was up for some Game of the Year stuff in 2019. I think most people will like it. My guess is 90%. I figure it'll be somewhere right around there. All right. My guess, I do like this game. I'm not going to hide it. My guess was 91%. So once again, you and I are within one percentage point of each other. The actual overall, uh, steam score on this is 94%. So it is, it is a beloved game. Yep. It is high. I

actually, I mean, I thought maybe I guessed a smidge high cause I was biased, but yeah, 94% positive reviews on this. Yeah. I mean... That's high. That's very high, especially for a game that's like this. Because like I said, there's not any other games that are like it. It's not like this follows a tried and true formula where most people are going to love it. This is definitely a very different type of game. And so for the reviews to be as high as they are i think you know says something about the game

itself so all right well i guess that means uh i get to introduce uh this next segment then right yeah dj hit that sound clip hey baby you wanna jump in a time loop with me and start all over again that's terrible, Paul. Let me try that again. Very nice. Let me try that again. Okay, you want to do it again? All right, sure.

All right. Hey, baby. Want to start a time loop and jump? I forgot what I just said 30 seconds ago. Anyway. Start all over. Yeah, let's start all over again. I was trying to make a funny time loop,

and then I just completely just butchered that so bad. So yeah, this is the segment Make Love, Marry, Murder. It is. And this is how we rate games. I am very curious, Paul, because I have not been able to get a read from you on this game whatsoever. I will start off by saying, to me, this game is a marry. I have recommended this game to so many people it is a phenomenal game there is no other game out there that's like it i can't find very many

faults with this game at all it was mind-blowing when i was playing it i don't see anything that i can really complain about on this i think it's a merry i think it's one of those games that will stick with you long after you're done playing it. And if you find somebody else that has played it, you're just like super excited to be able to talk to them about their thoughts about it and stuff like that as well. So for me,

it's an easy Mary. Okay. Well, Josh, I, I really hate to say it. I think this game has such a fantastic idea. I found the execution all around to be frustrating and annoying.

I hate to say it. It's a murder for me. Oh my goodness, a murder! I found everything about this game to be designed for the exact opposite kind of person as me. I mean, I'll just give you like a couple examples, right? Like, your fellow astronauts who have gone out into space before you have decided to write everything in the know my language, which means every single time I walk up to a tablet or every time there's writing on anything i have to press the button to translate it like why can't i just walk up and read it and then everything in this game

plays the same stupid banjo song over and over the the title menu people inside the game like one of the first people you meet is just this dude sitting on brittle hollow he's playing the same banjo song over and over um you know what i thought the very first thing i wrote down about outer wilds is i feel like someone wrote an average book and they randomized the chapters, but also pulled out chapters 7, 9, and 14 and just said, here, read this in a random order. Because you put together the pieces of lore in just kind of whatever you happen to stumble across. And I think that that's a very cool idea. I just, I didn't care about anything in this game.

I didn't care about the Nomai. Even the character that you play, he's an alien with four eyes and goofy ears. I felt no connection to my character. I didn't care about the history of the planet. I really wish I did, Josh. I feel like anyone could take this idea and make a fantastic game. This is solely personal preference, all right? The game is executed incredibly well. I just

don't personally care for any of it at all. And I'm sorry, Josh, you look sad. I am a little sad, man, because I know what this game holds. But this is, see, here and again, right? This is why we did this, because I love this game. Like I said, I tell everybody about it. I think it's phenomenal. And I know it's a game that you would never play on your own. And so to have you experience it is great. And then to have you experience it is great and then to have you hate it but the funny thing is like this this is the kind of game that i would play i love space games i love exploring new planets you know i love no man's sky i love mass effect but this one just didn't do it i just found the the annoyances and the things that detracted just outweighed the pros. I did think that it was very cool the first time you go to every planet or comet. That is very neat. Like the first time you see the giant, I mean, I guess this is semi-spoiler-ish, but like you already talked about the hourglass planets. It's because it looks like an hourglass. And the first

time you see that, it's incredible. The first time you see the planet with all the really tall twisters, it's kind of like the movie Interstellar. The first time you see some of these planets, it's very mind-blowing. I didn't care about the lore, and this entire game is about discovering the lore, and this one just didn't speak to me.

That's really just what it comes down to. I mean, honestly, if you don't care about the lore and the nomai and't speak to me that's really just what it comes down to i mean honestly if you don't care about the lore and the nomai and the mystery behind why they disappeared and stuff like that then there's really not much driving you at that point you know i mean if you it it's a game where you kind of discover these mysteries and you unravel these mysteries and as you do that you unravel more mysteries and like i said they all kind of interlink to a pretty epic conclusion but if you can't get behind the lore and why your character is out there exploring and trying to learn about this then at that point it's just gameplay mechanics which are fine there's nothing wrong with that but there's nothing stellar about the actual flying around and walking around and jumping and stuff like that. Like they're all,

they're all fine, but that's not what makes this game what it is, you know? So I get it. I mean, you're one of the few people in the world that doesn't like the game. That's fine, Paul. Yeah.

I'm in the 6%. And you know, I, the game felt like work. I forced myself to play it a lot. You told me, don't look up any guides, just discover stuff organically. I completely disregarded that, Josh, because I said, I'm only going to have so

much time. If I didn't know what to do beyond three minutes of playing, I said, I don't have enough time to play this game 26 hours. So I did occasionally look up a little bit of hints to point me in the right direction so i i got about halfway through this game um this might sound really stupid but like honestly if you just played a human who started on earth but you uncovered some kind of artifact teaching you about the nomai and it started from there i might have cared more to me it was just kind of silly it was just like i don't i don't care i don't identify with these aliens i don't care at all are you paul are you xenophobic you don't even have a name in this game like why should i care

about this dude he's got no name he's not a human you don't have a name your character has no name whatsoever even the people that talk to you don't actually address you by name or anything like that. Yeah, you like how I just completely ignored your xenophobic accusations. I'm just going to brush right past that. wilds but you know one mary one murder we haven't had this in a very long time but josh let's go to the leaderboard and see where this game stacks up all right so if you're new to the multiplayer gaming podcast every time we do a deep dive of any game, we rank it on our leaderboard, which you can find at multiplayerpodcast.com. It's right there on the main page. You just have to scroll down a bit. And even though we cover games, sometimes they're single player, sometimes multiplayer, wildly different genres. We just have a little bit of fun of coming to a consensus where we have to agree,

where does this game rank on our leaderboard? If we were going to recommend games, kind of where does this fall? So a couple things do matter. Price, the amount of hours you can clock into this game, how good is the experience? All of these things kind of build in together. So right now, we have 46 games on our leaderboard, although we recently discovered that I screwed up and deleted a couple by accident. So there are a couple missing that we're going to have to add back on later because we did do a full leaderboard review. So a couple of the games are currently missing. So right now there are 46 and we have to figure out where to

put Outer Wilds. I hope you got your boxing gloves on, Paul. Josh, I mean, where do you start when we're in such different places? Like if you were going to rank this by yourself, where would you put it between 1 and 46? I would put it top 15 for sure. So top 15, you're looking at like Destiny 2, Rainbow Six Siege, Call of Duty, Black Ops Cold War, Resident Evil Village. You'd put it in that range. so top 15 you're looking at like destiny 2 rainbow six siege call of duty black ops cold war

resident evil village yeah i would put it in that i mean as much as i love the game i get that maybe not everybody and it doesn't have any multiplayer you know it's it's a little bit shorter of a game um but i would put it easily anywhere between like 11 and 15 if it was just solely up to me yeah if this one was up to me i'm looking in the 30 to 35 range like i'd way rather play it takes two i i enjoyed playing it takes two with you it was just a limited experience it was kind of goofy but i liked it i liked payday too uh the cycle kind of sucks these days so maybe i'd put this above the cycle so i think if it were up to me i'd have it in that 32 range so i guess we got to meet somewhere in the middle here just put it at 15 that's how you meet in the middle it's the low end of my range paul come on

we have a very different definition of middle uh man i don't know i have a very hard time placing this anywhere above no man's sky far cry 5 or raft i think those games are all right really superior they they are good games and they are multiplayer games i mean those they're all really well done. You can talk me into somewhere here in the early 20s, simply because Operation Tango, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, those games have limited time where it becomes old kind of quickly. So I could be talked into that range. I'm kind of torn about whether putting it one above vermentide or one under vermentide too so definitely below it's definitely below for you all right well would you want to put

it at 22 then this feels like a huge compromise to put this above a way out rim world i mean these are games that i really love those games one games won Game of the Year, Paul? Because guess what won Game of the Year? Outer Wilds in 2019. That's not like that's a recent year. They did something right. Yeah, well, I don't know which Game of the Year awarded it. There's so many.

If you want to put it one below Vermintide 2, then I trust you will treat me kindly when it comes to Stardew valley because i'm a little afraid that it's going to be somewhat similar when we get there uh but if we want to clock it in at 22 i'm okay with that i feel like that's a good spot i would rate a higher you would rate it lower that's a good compromise all around this way we're both unhappy yes nobody nobody wins paul we all lose that's how it you know, it's a good compromise, right?

Oh, goodness. Somebody somewhere is going to look at our leaderboard and then yell at us and be like, I can't believe you have Outer Wilds, which is a masterpiece of a game, all the way down at 22. And then I'm just going to be like, Paul did it. Yeah, I feel like Outer Wilds, it's kind of polarizing. You're either going to really, really love it or you're just, it's kind of polarizing you're either gonna really really love it or you're just it's not gonna be for you it's gonna 94 of people love it paul

94 i i'm pretty sure stardew valley is much higher than outer wilds so i'll i'll remember some of these arguments if i need to pull them out in a minute uh josh at this point my goodness we could almost finish this episode on just Outer Wilds, but we got a whole other game to cover. So let's go ahead and start on Stardew Valley. Hey guys, this episode of the Multiplayer Gaming

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Stardew Valley, according to steam, they say you've inherited your grandfather's old farm plot in Stardew Valley armed with hand-me-down tools and a few coins, you set out to begin your new life. Can you learn to live off the land and turn these overgrown fields into a thriving home? All right, so Josh, there's so much you can do in Stardew Valley. You run your farm by growing crops. You cosmetically design what your farm looks like. You raise livestock. You go fishing. You craft foods and materials.

You mine rock and ore. You sell stuff that you collect and produce. You fight down in the mines. You socialize with other people in Pelican Town. You even date other people. You can get married. You can have kids. It's basically a life simulator as a farmer.

You said it, man. There is so many different things that you can do in this game. I had no idea. So for somebody that was completely ignorant about Stardew Valley, I thought it was straight up just a farming simulator. Legitimately, I just thought that's all you do is you build a farm. I knew that you grew crops. I thought you just sold those crops, bought new stuff so that you could build a bigger farm. There's townspeople, but I thought that's just people walking around

for atmosphere. They're just there so that when you go to the store to sell, the town doesn't look dead. And then I started playing this game and i mean you forgot about fishing you forgot about you know the the the shopping the interaction with all the people the foraging you can just wander around and pick pick your berries and vegetables and stuff uh you forgot about upgrading the the community center and that whole aspect of the game. I mean, it blew my mind how many different things there are to do in Stardew Valley, because I thought it was just like, build your farm and grow some crops, man. Yeah. And I was going to bring this up later, but this is kind of a, I guess, a better time to bring it up. I think the most impressive

thing about this game, it's all done by one person. That is nuts. Concerned Ape. He wrote the music. He did all the animations. He wrote all the dialogue, all of it done by one person. Totally incredible.

I don't know that any one person has made a game with this level of success and appeal. Like a lot of times you'll hear about small development teams like Valheim or Cuphead being with two guys, but the fact that one person did all of this is a mighty fine achievement. I had no idea that

it was one guy. I mean, that tells you something right there, because the first time you told me that, my mind was blown, because there's little skits. The very first skit that I remember in this game was like with the wizard and he made me eat some mushrooms and then i went on this magical trip and earned like learned earth like how to talk to the earth or something like that and that part i was legit laughing out

loud during that scene because i was like what is this game right now? What is going on? For a game that's very kid-friendly, it has a lot of very funny elements. In a lot of ways, it kind of reminds me of watching Shrek. You can enjoy it as a child, but if you're an adult, there's definitely a lot of subtext that sticks out a lot more that you fully understand, where maybe at first glance, it all seems very G-rated.

But one of the things that did i that i did find funny because i did reinstall stardew valley and i did start playing it again i kind of forgot that the opening of the game does have like a little bit of a movie cut scene explaining how you get there so your grandfather dies but before he does this, he leaves you a letter, and the instructions are to open the letter basically when all hope has left your soul, and you feel like you can't take modern day BS anymore, go ahead and open this letter. And you open it, and basically your grandfather tells you to go start your life fresh by living in his old farm that he's left to you. Now, I did think this was very funny, Josh,

because I don't know that you needed to wait to the point of nearly being suicidal to open this letter. I did find that very funny, because he holds onto the letter for years. Who would do that? Nobody. Okay, if you gave me a letter and said, Josh, only open this letter when you feel like all hope is lost. The second you leave, I'm opening that letter

because I want to know what's in there, man. I'm not going to stash it in a drawer somewhere and then be like, oh, this is my ticket to happiness now. Yeah, you can have happiness now. No, wait until you're riddled with depression and now you can open this letter. I did find that to be very funny. So basically, this is how you kind of end up at your farm.

It's a very small, quaint town. There's a handful of people. They're all very talkative. They give you kind of like a little orientation of the town. And Josh, do you want to talk a little bit about what the farm initially looks like? It looks like a dump. Literally. It is. Yeah. I mean, it's all overgrown. There's rocks and shrubs and trees and

fallen logs. I mean, it's a hot mess. You have your tiny little house that's a one-room studio. It doesn't even look like a farmhouse. And that's it. Your grandfather might have loved you, but he didn't love you that much because he did not leave you something very good. That's for sure. Oh, yeah. But I mean, it does give you something to do. I mean, you kind of know right away, hey, I got to clean this place up a little bit. So at least that's what I did is I just started instantly clearing out some trees, smashing the rocks, that kind of stuff. And just saying, hey, let me reclaim a little bit of the space for me so that I at least have somewhere to start, which I think is a good introduction.

That's kind of a neat way that they introduce you to the, hey, this is your area. Why don't you start making it your own? Because the first thing anybody wants to do is just clean up the gigantic mess that's just sitting there and going, I got to get this stuff out of the way if I'm going to actually make anything. Yeah. So you start kind of taking care of the land, pushing the overgrown wildlife a little bit back. And the game gives you a little bit of money. They give you a few seeds. And the mechanics are very simple. You use your hoe to dig a hole in the ground. You plop in the seeds. If you have fertilizer, optionally, you can lay that down. And then you basically pull out your watering pail and you water it. And every day you water

your crops. And after a certain number of days, depending on what you plant, some things only take a couple of days. Others might take a week or longer. And then you get your produce and you can walk over, you pick all of your fruits or vegetables or whatever it might be. And then basically the game lets you use those materials. You can either just sell them directly and and now you can buy more seeds, or you can start to use the game's crafting type system to turn this produce into other goods.

So basically, long story short, over the course of the game, you're making your farmhouse bigger, you're building stables, and you start taking care care of animals which is going to give you like eggs and milk you're growing your crops and all of these things you can now use the crafting system to turn into more complex goods in a way it's almost a little bit like satisfactory in that regard just on a far more basic level you know you can basically plop milk into a cheese press and after a certain number of hours, it's going to plop out some cheese. You can turn your eggs into mayonnaise. You can turn wheat into beer. You can turn fruits into wine, honey into mead, coffee beans into coffee, all of these various things. And also, you can get different quality goods. So if you use the fertilizer and you care for your crops well,

you're going to get higher quality, which is going to give you higher profits, and you use all these things to improve your farm and make it bigger and better. Yeah, you know, there's just so much going on in this game. At first, it was a little daunting because I almost felt like I was missing something. I think I initially approached this game in the wrong mindset, because I wanted to just work on my farm at first, right? For me, it's like, hey, let's get the basics down. Let's get everything set up. Let's get a good farm going. Let's do that. And then I had to go into town to sell some of my crops. And then there's this whole like, oh, there's all these people in town that are wandering around.

And you can talk to them and you can give them gifts. I think I gave somebody a rutabaga or something. And they were like, oh, hey, this is great. Thanks. And then I was like, well, now I've got to get everybody gifts. I can't do that. And then there's a homeless guy. So, of course, I'm trying to find as much food as i can to give like the homeless guy but then

he like i gave him something he was like oh thanks but i don't want that and then i was like dude like how can you not want this delicious horseradish raw horseradish so but then you know i discovered the mines and i was like oh or like okay crafting game everybody needs or and that's where you find that stuff um this game is a project lovers just dream man because i was just content to focus on my farm at first uh and then i started realizing you you know the fishing is pretty in depth you can get all these different fishing rods and these different things there. The townsfolk, you can spend hours upon hours upon hours learning about them and talking to them and learning what they like and what they don't like and pursuing that. There's these random monthly events where they have the flower festival and stuff like that.

So, of course, I went to the flower festival. There was a dance. So I asked one of the single townspeople to dance with me, and they shot me down. And I was like, come on, man. I gave you a flower. How dare you deny me my dance? All right, nice guy. Right.

And then there's an adventurer's guild so then like there's this whole combat portion of the game which you don't have to do but i thought that was pretty neat it just it's one of those things where there's so many different systems in this game i was kind of blown away in the fact that it's like if you were the kind of person that loves having one project after another, and you want to work on this, but then now you want to go work on that, there is no shortage of that stuff at all. Yeah. So in the very beginning, you are focusing almost all of your time on the farm. And your guy has an energy meter. And so anytime you dig a hole in the ground, or anytime you water a crop, it uses your energy. And so anytime you dig a hole in the ground or anytime you water a crop, it uses your energy. And so in the beginning, you're kind of capped off at how much you can

actually do. You can only do so much in your farm or like chopping trees down or whatever you might be doing. And sometimes you luck out because if it rains that day, guess what you don't have to do? You don't have to spend energy watering your crops, which is kind of fun. And once you start exploring the mines, that's when you start getting the ore. And so the ore, you can smelt into bars, and now you can start to use that to build a whole ton of stuff that give you quality of life improvements. So for example, in the beginning, you have your basic tools, which only let you work one tile of the ground at a time. Pretty soon before you know it, once you've upgraded your tools a couple of times, you can press and hold with your hoe, and now he'll dig a three by three

grid all at once. And you can water a three by three grid at once. And so your tools do a lot more. You can start to build sprinklers. So every single day when you wake up, those crops are already watered. And then that'll start to give you more time to go explore the other parts of town, whether it's fighting in the mines or talking to the people. So the game kind of goes through phases. In the beginning, it is a little bit of a farming simulator, but then pretty soon you start shifting your focus and you have the time and the energy to do all of these other things. All right, so there are a couple of funny things in this game,

Josh, that I don't know if you ran into or not, but the game does have a little bit of RNG. So every once in a while, birds will come and they'll pick at your seeds and they'll eat them. So you have to start putting up scarecrows in your field. Did you ever have a witch fly over your farm and screw around with your eggs? No. What? No. So yeah, yeah. There's a witch in the town. So you do have a wizard and a witch, which is kind of funny. But if you have your stables with chickens, so every day you have to feed your chickens the grass that you cut in your fields, but they'll start to lay eggs. And the witch will actually turn one into like a void

egg. Well, now you can incubate a void egg. And now you've got like this void chicken that lays more void eggs that makes void mayonnaise. and there are funny things in this game that develop that way and by the end of the game you can raise dinosaurs ostriches there's a whole wide variety of animals you can raise slimes and you can give slimes to people in town they all hate slimes by the way don't do it but it is funny how this game kind of gets a certain level of ridiculous in the game in a very funny way. Because in the beginning, you think, oh yeah, it's just a farming simulator. But soon you're warping using these special statues around the island.

The wizard has some magical abilities with him. So it does get a little bit funny. The game is constantly throwing new and new things at you, especially the longer you play. Because the game does track your months and your years, and certain things unlock over time. And so that does make things fresh. There's always new stuff that you can do in the game all right so the last thing i did want to talk about is the socializing around town what were there any people that stuck out or any special interactions with people anything that kind of stood out to you here's here's where i started to get a little lost in this game because it was easy for me to focus on my farm.

It was easy for me to go into the mines and go down all these different levels and fight these monsters and farm ore and stuff like that. The city part for me was a little daunting, because one of the things in the game is there's a calendar near the general store that tells you the upcoming birthdays for the month. And I don't remember where I knew this, if you had mentioned it before I started playing or whatever. But somewhere along the way, I knew that you don't really want to miss somebody's birthday without giving them a present. And so I had this just crippling anxiety, Paul, of missing somebody's birthday and not giving them a gift. So no matter what I was doing, I would drop everything to go try to find this person. And all of these characters, yes. And they all look the same to me. I get that they have different color hair, but they're all like like pixels the graphics in this game are not very advanced and so i did not like memorize who is who so i would spend i mean 20 minutes wandering around

this town trying to find the person whose birthday it was you you know, and then I give them like, hey, I got you this radish, you know, and then I give it to them. They're like, oh, is this for my birthday? And I'm like, yeah. And they'd be like, I hate radishes. And then I'd be like, no, like, what have I done? Oh, that's funny. Yeah, you definitely don't have to give people gifts. It's a little bit of a shortcut. If you give them a gift, it improves your meter with them quicker. So if you pull up the menu in Stardew Valley, you have, I don't know, is it eight or ten? I think it might be ten hearts. And then basically, as you talk to people and you give them gifts of things that they like,

your disposition with them goes up over time. And to me, this is actually one of the things that I really loved about Stardew Valley. So I'm sorry that you had kind of a false impression that you had to do this. I never sought people out. If I ran into them, I would talk to them. And this is where I thought the game took a really interesting turn because, boy, these people in the town, they're scandalous. You start learning hints and rumors and things that these people are doing behind other people's backs. So I'll give you a perfect example. And this is the kind of stuff I love in Stardew Valley. In my first playthrough, I ended up marrying Abigail, which is Pierre's daughter. She's the one that's got the purple

hair. She loves pumpkins. I would always just keep pumpkins in my house. I'd give her one every day. Ended up marrying her. Well, her dad, Pierre, runs the general store, so you're constantly talking to him. And her mom is Caroline, the one with the green hair. Well, as you start getting close to Caroline, she starts to tell you, oh yeah, I'm on my way to the wizard's house. I spend a lot of time with him, but don't tell Pierre. He gets really jealous. Not the wizard. Well, if you talk to the wizard, the wizard ends up telling you, when you get close enough, that he thinks he may have a daughter who's living in the town. And when you talk to Abigail,

eventually she tells you, yeah, my hair is always always purple i don't even have to dye it it's almost like there's magic involved like it's a part of like her makeup and so you start to put these things together yeah there's there's affairs there's all kinds of stuff going on in the town it's very funny when you start to uncover some of the secrets oh my god i had here i thought the pierre family was just the nicest family ever such a wholesome family you know you've shattered my my view on these poor people well what's funny is i do remember the town has like the town like drunk lady oh yeah that is like just give her beers give her beer every day she's alive she's always in the saloon just getting smashed like bothering the bartender like you know i went in there one night because i was like i'm sure this is where

all the townspeople are and you she's just sitting there like right next to the bartender demanding drinks and stuff like that and i was like okay this is pretty funny i'm pretty sure she lives in the little rundown like trailer that's there yeah you know like it's just one of those... It's pretty hilarious. I had no idea that the characters go that in-depth, because I did not make it that far in the game. They do have their

various personalities. Like I said, the homeless guy, he was easy for me to recognize, because he's always... He looks different than everybody else. And the mayor so and the mayor because the mayor was the other easy guy all the women and men in this game look the same to me otherwise other than like what you mentioned like the color of their hair so i'm sure he's got a

big old mustache big old gray mustache dude i probably that's probably why all the women in this game hated me because i was just going around giving flowers to everybody because I couldn't tell who was who. And so they're all probably like, this guy's terrible. Well, I hate to tell you, Josh, but the mayor,

he gives you a quest where you got to go recover his underwear. I, I got another house. Yeah. I always did in a house, dude. I walked all over every inch of forest in the mine looking for this dude's purple underwear. And I did not even think to go in somebody's house to do that.

Oh, you can find it. So that's got a little bit of an implication, right? Like, why is this there? But then you can put them on and wear them around town and people will comment. And Lewis gets really mad. He's like, why are you mocking me by wearing this around town and people will comment and lewis gets really mad he's like why are you mocking me by wearing this around town you know and and so it's it's very funny uh the interactions with the people i did find really interesting and there's even cut scenes with the characters so as you are doing the overall arc of rebuilding the community center you're also building these relationships with the people while you're exploring the mines there's just an awful lot to do the game has no

shortage in that regard um but i think we'll probably just kind of leave it at that for for stardew valley so steam reviews josh you got a few for this one? I do. And again, this is a very well-known game. There was no shortage of reviews on this one. I can imagine. Yeah, okay. So, first one, recommended. 69.4 hours.

I wake up at 6 a.m. to begin my day and water my crops. By 11 a.m., I am too exhausted to do anything and sleep for 19 hours, completely neglecting all social life. Just like in real life. Yeah, there you go. Now, the energy meter in this game is also a little intimidating to me, because I felt like I was just wasting my day if all I did was chop down three trees on my farm. Because that's about what you can do. Chopping down three trees, you're done for the day, you go to sleep. And it might be like noon.

And then I'm like- Your guy goes to sleep early a lot in the early days. Yeah, and I mean, if I had to chop down three trees on my own, I'd be dead for the rest of the day too. So I get it in the one sense, but then in the other, I'm like, I haven't talked to any townspeople today. I haven't checked out the mine.

Like I didn't forage anything. Like what am I supposed to do? Well, and later in the game, you're doing a lot of cooking. So you're carrying around things that'll replenish your energy. So you can do more as the game progresses and as you start to learn the cooking. But yeah, especially in the beginning, there's a lot of days you wake up at 6 a.m. And you're going to bed at 9.30 because you're out of energy. Okay. So this one is another recommended 66 hours on record the new update promises to improve the

quality of your marriage doesn't work my wife is still pretty upset i play stardew valley so much okay that's funny so this game has undergone a ton of updates. They did add multiplayer. You and I hopped in for a little bit to check out what the multiplayer was like. And I mean, for a game that is well known and has been very successful, it's pretty cool that this guy is still just adding stuff to this game, even to this day, which is pretty funny. Oh, there's stuff that's been added to the game that I've never seen. I was just browsing through the patch notes because I played this game well over 100 hours on the Switch, and then here on PC,

I kind of played for about 7 or 8 hours just to get re-acclimated. But there's the trash bear that'll clean up the town if you bring trash to him and i'm like i have no idea that there's stuff like this even in the game called a raccoon oh that's a trash panda yeah yeah so yeah this game continually gets more and more updates which is very cool all right this one is a not recommended uh 5.6 hours on record This game is good if you're that kind of person who likes to be nice in video games and not do anything. It's the game for people who should see a therapist. What's wrong with this game that would require therapy? That seems a little strongly worded.

I'll say this. Before I knew anything about Stardew starting valley i always just viewed this game as a super relaxing just chill game so maybe that's what this guy meant is it's like hey if you just need a way to relax and like veg out or something but that doesn't equal therapy either so i'm not real sure i just that one was kind of funny uh more so that because he's like if you like to be nice in video games like you're somehow forced into being nice you don't even have to be nice in video games, like you're somehow forced into being nice. You don't even have to be nice. You can be a jerk to everyone in this game. Yeah. All right.

And then last one, this is not recommended 108 hours on record on this one. I legit uninstalled it after two days because it was ruining my life. 14 hour session, then an eight hour session. I would absolutely not recommend this game to anybody with a life. That is this game's biggest drawback. It's too good.

Okay. Now, I'll say this. There were not a ton of negative reviews. Hint, hint. Right, right, right. For our next part, which is guessing the score. Yeah, and if you guys made it this far into the episode,

congratulations. And you already know the rules. People want more, Paul. People want more. What did you write down for your guess? All right. I knew without actually looking at the score, I know that Stardew Valley is beloved by people.

I shot for the moon on this one and said 95%. Okay. I shot the moon even higher i put down 97 percent 90 i knew this was going to be overwhelmingly positive without a doubt so 97 was my guess well paul your moon is closer than my moon because it is 97 buddy oh it's actually so i always take the overall reviews but the recent because steam breaks it up into recent and overall the recent reviews were actually like 98 so whatever updates this guy is doing is making an impression with new players as well so but yeah 97 on the dot paul

wow we're getting very good at this your reward is to introduce the next segment paul all right let's do it hey there baby is there an airport nearby or was that just my heart taking off i can't believe you didn't address abigail paul didn't you say that to you married yes yes i did i didn't forget about your wife? That was a long time ago, Josh. I haven't spoken to Abigail in like three years. All right, so make love, marry, or murder. I have talked about how probably in the last three years, other than Overwatch,

I think this is the game I've probably played the most. So clearly for me, it's Amari. I really like it. This one ticks off a lot of the boxes that I like. It's a little bit silly, a little bit goofy. There's a lot of drive to just amass wealth and a bigger farm. I don't know. I feel like it's escapism at its best.

Life is very simple in Stardew Valley. You know, and I enjoy it it it's a very quaint game it's my cup of tea what about you all right well i mean there's a lot to do in this game right like i mean i kind of said that earlier there's way more depth to this game than i thought i laughed out loud at the wizard mushroom moment you know that's early on in the game and all that uh the townspeople freak me out i feel like i'm completely ignoring them because i'm focused on a lot of other stuff so i'm sure i'm just completely ruining all relationships with them um i don't like this game paul and there's no middle ground no one no one can say this is a make love game this is

absolutely either mary or murder i legit really gave this game a solid try right i have like 10 hours on of play time i i've done most of the aspects i have seen people now in my defense to somebody that says start you know 10 hours on started valley is not a lot i have seen screenshots of people that are on year like 300 in this game yeah like your characters would be dead like i don't know how people play this that long but there there are people that legit play this game as like a lifelong game because there's that much you can do in it. I want to recognize the beauty that is in this game. And the fact that one guy made this game is bananas to me. The problem for me is, even though I gave it my best effort, it's just not my kind of game, man. Big shocker. I really wanted to like it. I've mentioned before, I've almost bought this game on my own just to see, right? Like, oh, maybe you'll like it. It's got a freaking 97%

positive rating. What's wrong with me, Paul? What's wrong with you? You didn't like Outer Wilds, you know? But I don't. I don't enjoy it. It feels like work to me. And as goofy as that sounds, because I know for you, you say it's super relaxing. But for me, my day was get up, chop down a tree, water my plants. I've got half my energy left. Oh, crap. I better go to town and talk to people. Walk into town, talk to people, give people all the wrong gifts. Wait, what was I doing? Do I need to go fishing? Let me go to the beach. By the time I walk down to the beach and collect a seashell, it's getting close to nighttime. I'm almost out of energy.

I walk all the way back to my farm. And then it's like, well, it's kind of late. I don't really have any energy left. Let me go to bed. And then I go to bed, I wake up, and I do it all over again. And so for me, it was just this loop of, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. And I think that's the problem is that it's like, Josh, you're not supposed to be doing anything.

Do what you want to do. But that doesn't resonate with me at all. And so I just got to where I was like, I'm not really having fun with this. It feels like chores to me. And I get that it's like a lot of people like that, but I don't like that just real life simulator. I don't want to have to water my crops every morning, right? That's not fun for me. Build sprinklers and you don't have to. I know you, there's all the progression. And then there was the whole crafting thing. And I was like, this crafting sucks. I don't need to build gravel paths. I did build a scarecrow.

Oh, I never knew that. You know, I built a scarecrow. I got a chicken coop. So I mean, I definitely did some of the upgrade stuff. But it's just not my cup of tea. And we've talked about that. Honestly, I really wanted to like this game just to be able to say like, hey, I tried it and i liked it i don't so but i feel so weird saying murder on stardew valley like i can i even do that it feels wrong it's like murdering a child i know and it's like but i can't say i want to make love to it because i don't like the game either so i'm gonna officially murder it but i feel really guilty about that. Fair enough. Yeah, I did not expect you to like it. But, you know, it just shows different strokes for different folks.

It's funny because half of what you said are exactly the same complaints that I have about Outer Wilds. You know, like some lack of direction, things feeling like a chore, not feeling fun. And who would have guessed that you and I would each pick a game for one another? And my game included combat and yours didn't. I know, right? Who would have guessed? I know. Honestly, people have said this to us. It's one thing that I love about the show. It's one thing I love about being your friend is that as gamers, we play games together all the time,

but it's really neat to see the differences in the type of games that we like. Because like I said at the beginning of the show, we have a lot of overlap. Obviously, there's these games that we both love, but it's very interesting to see the types of differences that we have. And people like listeners have picked up on that. And I like that because it's not always us touting how great some game is or how terrible some is. People get a lot of different viewpoints. I, I,

I enjoy it. All right. Well, Josh, let's do this again. Let's go to the leaderboard and see where Stardew Valley stacks up. All right, Josh,

bottom 30, Paul, 47. Bottom 30, Paul. Looking at our list here. 47 games. Where should we even start with this one? Let's put it down like 40 somewhere. 30? Get out of here. I don't know.

Not even. I guess I owe you. You're not putting this with hood. All right. I wouldn't put it there. All right, let's do it like we did last time. Where would you put it? If it was up to you.

If it was up to me, I'd have it at four or five. I would definitely have it above Valheim. The question for me would be whether I'd put it above or below Rust. And that's me. Another thing here that comes into play is that you and I play games very differently. You will play longer sessions, whereas I am much more likely to play in 15 to 30 minute chunks. Stardew Valley is the perfect game for that. I can play just one day and the game saves. I turn off the switch and I go to sleep. And there's a lot of times that I'll do just that. Stardew Valley is never a game that I would sit and play for hours on end um so for me it's kind of funny to rank it so high when i wouldn't sit and play it for a marathon session

but to me this is the perfect kind of game to just clock in a few minutes here and there and i have no problem playing this game months on end it doesn't get old for me in that regard so i i would have it here in the top five where where would you put it i really shoot brace for impact paul you're really you're really trying to i mean i went like 10 to 15 at least for mine um i would rather play stardew valley over civilization civilization six and human fall flat and Cycle and Payday 2. So you're looking at the early 30s.

As soon as we get into the late 20s, I start hesitating. I'm thinking early 30s. I hear ya. Honestly, we have to put it up a little bit higher than that. I just don't know that I can say that Stardew Valley is better than Outer Wilds, man. Yeah, see...

I mean, I guess the world agrees with you because it's 97% versus, would we say for Outer Wilds, 94%? 94, yeah. But that's the public. They're not us. I mean, that's the public. They're not us. I mean, that's true. We gotta decide. I think for me, basically the infinite playability of Stardew Valley puts it in that No Man's Sky range, is kind of what I was thinking. Raft, as much as I love it, it's still pretty limited, despite recent updates. So, I don't know know i felt like as a compromise maybe we could go as high as 19 for you paul 19 so putting it below no man's sky i would much rather play no man's sky and if you think about it they're kind of a similar vein in the

sense that there's almost an infinite possibility of gameplay to do there yeah um so i mean i could see putting it at 19 if that made you feel good and it does kind of recognize the mass appeal of stardew valley yeah this will just be another one of those entries that's gonna look bananas i know like because toward the middle it doesn't make much people that love stardew valley absolutely love stardew valley they'll put it number one oh there's tons of people who propose in real life in the same way that you propose in stardew valley like people take it very seriously i will say one other thing out of most of the games that we have covered on the show not a whole lot of them are very couple friendly stardew valley is absolutely a game that you can play with a partner or a spouse even if they're not someone who really loves gaming i know a lot of

couples really appreciated the multiplayer because they'll dive into stardew valley together yeah so all right then we'll clock it in at 19 maybe you should put like stardew valley 19 and then in parentheses put because josh hates it and then and then for outer wilds put because paul hates it quantify it a little bit yeah kind of like how the beatles agreed that every song would be written by lennon slash mccartney but then, yeah, Paul McCartney started arguing to switch the names around. That way, if he was the primary writer, he'd be the first name. So that's kind of almost what you want.

You want to note a little bit there. We can't have people think we're crazy. Two top-ranked games way down in the 20s. Oh, man. Yeah. How wild. Stardew Valley below Deep Rock Galactic is a crime.

That's the fun of the leaderboard, right? I mean, we do not pretend that the leaderboard makes any sense to people. That's kind of the beauty of it. It's just... It's a little bit insane. Have a slice of our chaos, right? Yeah, exactly. All right.

Well, I think that's all that we have for today. So if you guys have not already supported the show please do that either with patreon at multiplayer squad.com or through apple subscriptions you can find us on social media everywhere at multiplayer pod and also come join us for free on discord we would love to have you guys there making suggestions for the show giving us questions for future bonus round episodes if you want to join our discord there making suggestions for the show giving us questions for future bonus round episodes if you want to join our discord there is a link in the episode description and there's also a link at our website multiplayerpodcast.com so i know this is a long

one this one might be in the running for our longest episode i think it is you know what i think it might people keep saying man we want more so we we gave them a really long episode i'm sure our listeners won't mind as much it's just a little bit of extra work on on my behalf of editing the show but i'm happy to do it so hopefully you guys enjoyed the episode and then we will be back with a twig episode for this week in gaming on thursday we'll see you guys then week in gaming on Thursday. We'll see you guys then. Paul, it's a time loop. This hour and a half is going to reset.

Oh, no. Don't make me do all this again. I'm old. I need to go to bed. See you, everybody. Bye.