Video Gamers Podcast - Rust 2 Hype, Rockstar Hacks & Triple I Bangers – Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

Gaming hosts Josh, Ryan and Ace are back with TWIG (This Week in Gaming), breaking down the hottest stories in gaming right now. From Rust 2 rumors heating up the survival scene, to Rockstar getting hacked again, and some of our favorites shown at the Triple I Showcase, the guys cover what matters most in video games this week. Is the future of these video games looking bright or chaotic? Tune in for laughs and everything happening in gaming you need to know!   Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Disratory, Ol’ Jake, Gaius, Jigglepuf, Phelps and NorwegianGreaser, Dettmarp and Night Wizard63   Thanks to our Legendary Supporters: HypnoticPyro, PeopleWonder, Bobby S.   Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/videogamerspod⁠ Join our Gaming Community: https://discord.gg/h2cHKAvSmu Follow us on Instagram:⁠ https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/⁠  Follow us on X:⁠ https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod⁠  Subscribe to us on YouTube:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@VideoGamersPod?sub_confirmation=1⁠    Visit us on the web:⁠https://videogamerspod.com/⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, fellow gamers, and welcome to the video gamers podcast. Rockstar gets hacked again. Rust 2 possibly leaked and a bunch of awesome games shown at the Triple I Initiative Showcase. What more could we ask for on another episode of this week in gaming? Before we get to that, some introductions are in order. I am your host Josh and joining me back from a beautiful. a round of golf in Sedona and still likely recovering from a killer wedding reception. It's Ryan.

Hi. I peed earlier and it looked like apple juice. So I am I am desperately in need of hydration. Do you need us to talk a little quieter, Ryan? No. You know, you want to go to like. Well, it didn't. It didn't help that I was gambling until two in the morning at the casino and then I woke up at

five because I couldn't sleep. So I'm running on fumes. And then in party time. Dude, Ryan always looks alert and awake. Like, yeah, look at him. He doesn't look tired at all, man. I just did an oil change a minute ago, too. I'd have like bags under my eyes, you know, black circles.

I'd look like somebody punched me. I'll sleep when I'm dead. Yeah. We're good to go. Yeah. I'm jealous. I'm like Bender. All right.

And joining us. He threatened to never heal me again if we stole too many of his Indie. trailers, so we definitely only stole a few. It's ace. You know what? You say a few, and then I look at our little document here. I stole all the good ones, too. I stole all the good ones.

I happen to notice a trend with all of these having really good graphics. Yay, man. Don't kill the messenger, you know? That's right. I make up with story, so whatever. That's fine. That's true. We got, guys, we have so many games to talk.

about we had the triple i is it the triple i initiative or is it just triple i initiative okay see that when you put an i and then initiative it makes yeah i know it is the triple i and it is the triple i and so what does the i stand for indie indie indie bud yeah it's an indie showcase even though they slipped in a couple indian initiative well they have partners who are indie developers but we'll get into that yeah yeah but we're saving that for Ace for the indie episode, but we do have to talk about how it is the best showcase because there is no host and there's just 45 minutes of game trailers. I was going to save this for you, Ace, but let's do it, man. We got to say, we got to say like,

showcases ever, dude. Way better. Way better. Oh my gosh. I love that. I know lame jokes. What was the streamer one? Yeah. What was the streamer one that was terrible? Oh, I don't remember because it was so bad. It was the last one where we were like, this showcase sucked, dude. It was like, oh, I can't, I can't remember which one it was. I can't remember what it was called, but man, it was agony to sit through. I know that much. It's like, dude, I love when people know what gamers want and the triple I initiative showcase was legitimately, and they even advertised it like this where they were like, no talking,

no commercials, no fluff, just trailers. Just game trailers. One trailer into another trailer, into another trailer. and then occasionally it'd say, hey, we're going to break this game down in the post show if you want more information, but then they just go straight into another trail. I'm like, this is how you make a showcase.

That's what I want to see. And all of the games they showed looked pretty darn good. Oh, we got a lot of really good games to talk about, like a lot. So we're going to dive into that here in just a second. We also have a couple news stories. But before we get into all the news and trailers, we do have an amazing review to read that came in. And guys, one of the reasons that we read reviews on this show is number one to say,

hey, we see everybody out there. You take the time to leave a review. We like reading them. And it's also to remind people to leave us a review because this is how other gamers find this podcast, realize, hey, they should give this podcast a shot, maybe become part of the community and all that. And normally we have Ryan read these reviews. but on this one I think we're going to pivot just a little bit.

And we're going to have Ace read this one. Don't even have it pulled up in front of me. Don't worry. It's in that lines. You can find it. You can find it. No reason whatsoever that we're asking Ace to read this one. Why I'm reading this review.

Yeah. But Ace, why don't, you know, since we felt we felt bad. We were like, man, we need to give Ace. Oh, you feel bad, do you? Okay. Just remember it's really important to, to let us know who it's from and then the title is also equally as important. You know, maybe I just won't read the title or anything.

I'll just go straight into the review. Take it away, Ace. Why don't you just, why don't you read this awesome review that we got? Well, this is a five-star review from Jay Yeckley, which thank you for five stars. We'll see how I feel about the rest of it. And it's titled Ace's mother.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get your laughed out now, boys. Josh Ryan and Ace are all genuinely great human beings and deserve nothing but good things to happen to them. I used to listen to a variety of video gaming podcasts, but ever since I joined the VGP Discord server and started subscribing to the Patreon for the pre-show content,

I've stopped listening to every other podcast with one exception. The thing that sets these three apart from most other podcasts is that you can actually get to know them as real people. They actually take time out of their days to chat with us in the Discord and play games with members of the community. It really feels more like a big family than it does something I'm paying to enjoy. Excuse me. We're out of breath.

It feels more like I'm paying to support my friends. Lastly, sorry Ryan and Ace. I love you guys, but I find myself relating heavily to Josh in both overall mindset and video game taste. I get shot twice here. All right. This is the best. Notting, Josh. Josh is like, man.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for the review. We appreciate it. I'm going to leave it at that. All right. Did you run out of breath during that review? I did run out of breath during that review because I don't have my soda bottle.

So did your mom. Oh, shit. Yeah. Man, the jokes are flowing. This all stemmed from, if people are wondering why we're getting reviews from Ace's mom now.

This all comes from part of the pre-show. Yeah. We do, I don't know. It's supposed to be short, but lately it's been like 15. 20 minutes of extra content minimum at this point. They've been going pretty long regularly.

It's behind the scenes content, inside jokes. I mean, it's definitely something that you want to be a part of. This is something that everybody who supports this podcast gets access to. It's pretty great, to be honest. And there was a running joke about Ace's mom that spawned from that. And then now we're getting reviews from Ace's mother, which is glorious. Dude, the listeners out there, you guys, guys rock man.

This is a spawn from that too. Yeah. All right guys. Let's talk some video games. Let's talk some news. All right. This one, we're going to tackle. We only have two quick news stories before we get into some of these trailers,

which I am excited about, by the way. We have some really, really good looking games coming up here. Yeah. Yeah. So, but let's dive in with the news first. This, this is the big story. And man, this is not the first time that this has happened. But Rockstar, the developer, if you don't know who they are, you know,

they just make small little games like, you know, Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto and, you know, some of the other little games that people might have heard of out there. Never heard of. They got hacked again. Now, I don't know if everybody out there remembers, but I feel like it was about a year ago. we got a glimpse into some what was termed leaked GTA6 footage where it was actual gameplay. And this was not supposed to happen, but a hacker group hacked into Rockstar's databases or whatever, got all this gameplay footage and then threatened Rockstar, tried to ransom it, released it to the world, much to gamers delight. Because we were like, well, okay, this game looks pretty awesome.

But they got hacked again, guys. by a hacker group known as the shiny hunters. Okay, also, all you hackers out there, you kind of get edgy names, man. That's a Pokemon reference. Take a lesson from like the Matrix show. Why is your hacker group named after a Pokemon reference? I don't know.

I actually do know what shinies are, by the way. I'm surprised. I didn't know if you knew what a shiny Pokemon was. I bet you hate the concept. So shiny. It's whatever. man you know i'm glad that Pokemon make people happy and shiny Pokemon make people happier happy happy happy yeah amazing um so the issue here is that this hacker group is once again

trying to ransom this information from rock star and saying hey if you don't pay this ransom then we're going to release all of this information uh rock star did respond to this and said that they are they don't have access to like sensitive files and stuff like that so they're not too worried about it but it's like that of course that's what you would say yeah so what do you like if you were rock star what would you do in this situation they have put an unbathomable amount of money into this game yeah yeah i cannot imagine them just letting it get leaked unless they were just hoping to use it as like advertising and publicity like i I don't see, like, I also don't see them negotiating with terrorists, though.

So I don't know. I don't know what they are. Yeah. Well, the thing is like, I just, I still don't understand why. I mean, Rockstar, it's a billion dollar company. It's so big. And this game is so big. Why are they using cloud servers?

Because that's how they supposed supposedly got in, you know. Everybody uses. Everyone uses a cloud server, but why? But why? Like, why? It's cheaper. It's cheaper. It's cheaper.

It's cheaper. You're relying on third party stuff, like to do that. And then you're putting, like, with something of this magnitude, like they're saying and like a lot of people are saying, this is, this could be a game that literally has its own economy that could drastically change, like, you know, quote unquote the world with, with how big this game could be, you know, and they're just throwing it up on a third, where they have no control. To me, if I was rock star, I would not, I would, I would do my own hosting and do whatever

I had to do that way to where I could have all my ducks in row with security and stuff like that. I just don't get, I just don't get why they're kind of like dishing it out. You wouldn't think after it's already happened once, they would have, they would have had some kind of precaution, something they could have done to, you know, not let it happen again. I think this is because this was a different route because this was through their cloud-based servers that they leased from another company. They got in through there. The hackers didn't actually hack Rockstar.

They hacked the company that Rockstar uses and then got inside, yeah. You cannot pay a ransom for something. No, that sets a bad standard. It wouldn't be the first time that they've been paid, though. Like, they've been around since 2020. You know, so they've hit some other big, big, big companies. They go after the big companies. So these hackers know what they're doing.

But Rockstar, listen. Are these the same people who hit Insomniac? I don't know who they hit Microsoft. I think, yeah, they hit Microsoft and some of the big ones, like big companies. They've gone after big companies. Yeah, I can't imagine these companies are paying these because, like, what's to stop them from just doing it again? You know what I mean? Like, you pay the ransom.

They go, cool, we won't give out the information. And the week later, they're like, ha ha, guess what? We want another ransom. We want more. You better put us on the payroll. Yeah. I don't know, man. But here's my thinking.

this game is global. If they'd leak something about this game, it's not going to hurt your game at this point, man. It's not like, let them leak it. It's just, it's free advertising at this point. You know what I mean? Yeah,

it's too late at this point. Unless you had like personal information about like people in the company that you were worried would do harm to like the individuals or something. But like, I don't know. It's a weird thing to do and then try to think that you're going to get some kind of ransom for at the same time. So it's like,

I feel like hackers are. really smart and like really dumb at the same time. They're not going to pay you money. Yeah, dude, they've gone after Microsoft, Ticketmaster, Cisco AT&T, and what pad. Oh no. The what pad? You don't want what

pad. What the heck is what pad? That is it. I don't know. I don't even know what that is, honestly. I don't know why Ace knows. I don't want to say what it is. I'm a little concerned. Yeah, I know. I'm a little certain. I'm going to keep that information to myself. All right. Well, you know what it is, and that's more than I do. Well, listeners.

You know. There's people out there going, I know what that is. I know what you are. Ace, you kinky. Oh, man. All right. Well, moving on to another kinky game. Guys, Rust 2.

Rust 2 might be a thing. If it is, I'm going to lose my mind. It's probably not a thing. Is that with the note at the top of the article? says, Josh. Is that what the note says? Yeah. I mean, I don't believe this note, dude. What was it? Citi Project Red.

Remember when they came out and said that we're definitely not doing Witcher D.L.C. We're definitely not doing it. Oh, and by the way, there's no more cyberpunk content coming. And then the week later, they were like, yeah, we might be having some Witcher DLC on the way, maybe. Here's a cyberpunk card game. Yeah. Yeah.

Go give us $54,000 on Kickstarter. Which wasn't even a computer game. It just looked. really cool. And then I found out it's a physical freaking card game. So yeah, disappointed Josh there too. Which I'm probably going to be on this one. But man, so there was a rumor where

and this was on Steam where Rust 2 showed up on the Steam database and people lost their minds and went, oh my goodness, are we getting Rust 2? I want Rust 2 really, really bad guys. Like if Rust 2

was announced and coming out, it would skyrocket to my most anticipated game, like, in a massive way, dude. The only thing that's as close to Overwatch Josh is Russ Josh. Oh, Rush does get close. For sure. Rush is I have done some terrible things to people in Rush. Yeah, he's turns into like the most, in which I'm listening to a new audio book, dungeon crawler Carl. I'm reading that right now. Oh, you are?

Okay. I'm almost done with it. Well, the first book at least. Okay, I'm halfway through the second. Princess Donut Love it Oh yeah she's awesome But yeah dude That's like That's how Josh gets like with the bad people

He gets just ruthless And it's my favorite Josh for sure So it's interesting to think that they would come out with this I mean it is such a big game It's so mind numbingly Like frustrating But you can't stop playing it And you want to play more

And you want to reload And you want to hit the reset And you just want to keep playing the game So, I mean, it would make sense. And if it makes dollars, it makes sense. You know what 50 cents says. I'm just not sure what you would do to make it a sequel, aside from just like, you know, up the graphics.

I don't know. Graphics are pretty good in Rust all right. That's it. I don't really have an issue with the graphics. I think you streamline everything. Like, honestly, Rust, too, I could see being a lot. They could do a lot, dude. Like, yes, you can polish the graphics.

You can make new maps and new, new, like, points of interest monuments and stuff like that. You could revamp a lot of like the base building, stuff, simplify a lot of things. I mean, dude, there's so much they could do that they've learned with Rust to go into a Rust too. So this is a rumor. The actual developer, uh, it frequents Reddit apparently. And people were kind of losing their minds on this.

And then he commented on a subreddit, the Rust Subreddit and said, you saw nothing when people started talking about this Steam page, which then of course fed into the rumors even more. People started losing their money. he came back again and said, now you're all questioning yourselves, is this real? Maybe? Which made people lose their minds even more,

including me. But then he did come out after the fact and said that he can confirm that the Rust 2 page on Steam is not from him. And that part at least is not correct. But he also didn't fully debunk that Rust 2 isn't happening. It's still a possibility. Yeah.

There's, saying there's a chance. I'll take it. Guys, I said this to you guys earlier, but like, I, I am really hankering for rust again. Yeah, you said that today. Let's go, dude. I'm in. I know. Well, we got replaced, which is coming out today, today.

Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there's that mouse PI game, but it's like, I might be willing to just blow that off for, like, some good rust. You don't get that option, unfortunately. I know. Hey, that's what Ace's mom said. Yeah. I know that we're doing Mickey Monjogs?

Oh, no. Now we know why Mickey wears gloves all the time. Okay, this is a PG podcast, pal. Oh, man. All right. That's your two news stories. We'll take a quick break and then we'll come back and talk about the cream of the crop of the triple I initiative showcase. I told you stopped talking about my mom.

Right. we'll be right back. All right, we're back. I really, really wanted to think of another Ace's mom joke. Yeah, no, no, no, no. He's like, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't just force these things.

So that's, all right, guys. Don't you do it? Never mind. Ryan, I set it up and I was like, there's no way Ryan's taking this one. There's no way. Uh, okay. So, again, we've already talked about this showcase.

If you haven't watched this showcase, watch it. but you know we'll have the links to these these trailers that we're talking about in the episode description so you can check them out um ace has a bunch of games uh saved for the indie episode this week so make sure you don't miss that episode either because there is a lot of really good looking games um we picked out a few that we were kind of most interested in or had the best graphics except for one game in this list but um the number one game that like honestly i don't know I'm not saying it's the best game of the showcase, but it was the game that I was most curious to actually see gameplay for because we got, when we first saw this game, the trailer for this game was one of the craziest looking trailers that we've ever seen. And we were like, this can't be real. Like, this can't be real. And then the developer came out and said, well, it was a mix of like curated scenes and gameplay with some gameplay mixed in. And then we went, yeah, okay, well, that seemed a little too good to be true. But we got a. better look at Alcahast in the showcase and it still looks pretty darn good.

It looks like it might not look as good, but it still looks pretty darn good. Ryan, this looks like a futuristic sky rim to me, dude. You know what I mean? Like how would you describe this game and what did you think about this trailer? Well, I know one of the reasons like what you're talking about is like, is this real, is this gameplay is because the ability, you know, most games and what we've, we've experienced, because I'm sure the development to do something like this is so astronomical, but, you know, you're, you're mixing potions on the fly with, with visual, you know, you can see it, you can see the

mix and you can see them put an enchantment on a sword or a charm, or, or you mix something up and you throw it at an iron gate, a rod iron gate, and it melts it away. So there, there's so much there that we were unsure of like, yeah, you can design something like that for a video trailer, but is this actual gameplay? If this is really truly going to be the gameplay, it really is like a super in-depth, awesome-looking Skyrim that is like just the next level or an evolution in gaming to where it really takes that next step to you can see so much more of what the character actually does, you know, with this, with this, you know, battle and in a way how you fight the enemy.

and how you enchant stuff and how you mix potions and it just all all of it looks so so cool I remember the second I watched the trailer I'm like oh I remember this game I was like is this is this really real you know I'm in this was real gameplay this was yeah I'm in the whole trailer was actual gameplay dude the sheer shield like you see the arrows like come through and then like it breaks when he like bashes or whatever in the old trailer I just remember all the stuff we're like there's no way this can be real like it can't be and then it's looking like it it may be. Yeah.

It's, I say for me, the main thing that they showcased in this with the actual gameplay was the physics in this game, where, you know, like you said, you see the cool animations with like,

you know, you open up a treasure chest and you find this like big vat of poison and you show it and like, you show the guy like filling up your bottles with poison and pouring it on your blade later on and stuff like that. But what they really showcased a lot of was the physics of, you know, there's a lot of like would be,

and the guy slashes through one and then this big statue like falls on one of the monsters, right? You see him like kicking the, you know, a monster off of a ledge and things like that, which, you know, that doesn't sound that unique.

But they also show you like impaling a monster and then ripping his head off and then throwing his head like at somebody else. Like you said, the Rod Iron Gate was melting through that with some of this acid and stuff. Like, dude, this game looks incredible to me.

It's supposed to be. be coming out in 2026 according to, you know, supposedly. Supposedly. Yeah. This game looks fantastic, dude. I mean, it's this one.

And then what's the, dude, I keep forgetting that game. It's not for Spoken, but it's the, Fate Keeper, thank you, Casey. I keep, fake keeper and Alcahast. I was going to, I was going to compare this to fake keeper, except for,

it just has a lot more interaction with the combat that I've seen so far. we haven't seen with fake keeper. Fake keeper looks a lot more heavy with the combat. Yes. Fag keeper looks more combat oriented, like from almost like a, I don't want to say soul's like, because again, that term,

I hate that the term's overdone, but fake keeper has a little bit more of that, like you have to pay attention to the combat. Alcahast looks like it's much more about your environment and how you interact with the environment that you're in while you're doing combat at the same time. Bro, give me more of these kinds of games, dude. Do you think the entire game takes place inside caves?

I don't know. Like I only saw stuff within the caves. I was like, that's going to get old. We're cave people now. Yeah. I mean, it's a dungeon crawler.

I mean, you're in a dungeon crawler. And the monsters all look like they're from the movie, the descent. So I was like, oh. Yeah. Yeah,

I love this kind of tone, this graphical style. Dude, give us games like Fatekeeper and Alcahest. Basically, I'm going to call them just modern Skyrim type games. I will play those all day long until I, get my fill. And then it's like, okay, like maybe the genre. This is a genre that I want to be

oversaturated because we don't have that many good games, dude. And like a vowed looked like it was going to be this. And a foul was okay. It wasn't bad. It wasn't great. But it's like it looked like it was going to be like the next best game. So I'm massively optimistic for Alca Hess and fake keeper when we get to play either one of those. But man, yeah, this game looks great. You'd probably enjoy Tainted Grail. I need to play Tainted Grail, dude, because I've seen so many people in our community talking about it. And gamers that have been playing it have said, dude, this game's really fun.

The main complaint was that it was just buggy and janky, but they say it's getting, like, a lot better. It's getting a lot of development help right now. Yeah, so I think that might be one I need to try out also. Um, all right, so that's Alca Hess. Watch this trailer, people. Like I said, link in the episode description. Definitely watch the trailer.

we got and listen i'm not the biggest fan of metroids but my goodness belmont's curse we got a much more in-depth look at with you know some commentary and this was one of the post show games that they dove into a little bit as well um dude this game looks incredible to me dude um the flow of the combat man you stoked i can already i can already though i'm so I'm so stoked, dude. I can already tell the devs from dead cells are working on this because of how the combat flows and how just fluid it all is.

Also, they made a kind of funny joke that this thing is set in France, like another popular indie game that happened to release. They did actually make fun of themselves about this, too, which I thought was really funny. I think it looks beautiful, the combat, the platforming, all of it looks so good, dude. It looks, you got your Belmont chain whip thing back and you're using it to drive.

reverse the area and launch from monsters to other sections. And then you have like wall jumps with spikes. It's just all of it looks like it's chaotic, but it has a flow. And you're fighting like a vampire Joan of Arc is like one of the first bosses for you even get to Dracula's castle. That's crazy. This, dude, this game looks, I don't, like I said, I don't really geek out about Metroidvania's that much.

But this one, I'm totally geeked over, man. This looks like it will be honestly like maybe one of the better Metroidvania's that's been made with like with how good the combat is. The boss fights, the art style, the movement in this game. It looks like it has it all. If you have not seen Belmont's curse again, watch this trailer because I am so in on this man. And it's coming in 2026. And they confirm that during the show as well. So guys, it's like this is what we were talking about before when you know like at the,

beginning of the year when we do our draft and we draft these games that we're excited for. And then we always go, guys, there's games that might be game of the year that we don't even know about. We don't even have a name for or anything. Yeah. And Belmont's curse is one of these, dude. This game's so impressive to me. So I can't wait for that.

Marketown, Ace. Josh talked good about Metroidvania. I know. Josh said something nice about a Metroidvania. I'll tell you what, Prince of Persia, I think it was the lost crown. You like that one. You like that's too. That was fantastic, dude.

Mark it. Fantastic. Mark in town. Someone gets a telly. I know. So I do like some Metroidvanias. They just have to be not massively confusing and repetitive, I guess. So I don't know.

Some of them put me off. I wish I knew what the magic formula was there. I do know what a magic formula is. And that's a survival crafting game where you get to be a pirate and play with your friends. And then recover your pirate ship and then go sailing the seven seas in your pirate ship and fight other pirate ships in a survival crafting game that feels like it's a combination of like Valheim and Black Flag maybe? Not that I ever played Black Flag. Probably a bit of C-A-Thieves as well, if I had to guess. Yeah, see a thing. Yeah, I could see that. I played the demo of Windbrose

for like legitimately like eight hours, guys. Bro, you were on this demo for a long time. The only thing that made me stop playing the demo was the fact that I was like, I want to just play this game and I don't want to put in like 20 hours to have to redo it. Windrose feels awesome. It plays awesome. Ryan, you were watching the trailer and you were like, bro, this game looks great. And you were like, I'm in. And then I got really excited because I love survival crafting games, especially with friends. What is it about Wind Rose that you thought made it kind of stand apart for you? From what we could see so far, I really love the PVE environment. I love the ability to go and and battle these other entities, these other captains.

And obviously survival crafting, I'm always big on survival crafting. I love that world. But it's just something cool of not just your standard military survival crafter or futuristic. Like this is a little different. You know, it's a little bit of a change to what we're kind of used to with most of the games we play now, you know, with Rust or any of these other ones. So, yeah, I am very excited.

I think it looks great. I think the gunplay, the, you know, the battling, the ship battles look intense. They look crazy fighting through a storm and battling these other ships. So I foresee a lot of fun and laughs in really good times and maybe some frustration, you know, playing this game. The game also looks really freaking good. It looks so good. It looks like incredible. I was not sure where I was on this game because, you know,

I feel like pirate games have a curse. There's like, there's never been a really, really good pirate game. Like genuinely, I get a, I love piracy. Like, I love piracy. Yeah. Yeah. You already hear of people. FDIC is right coming.

They're calling you now. I love the age of piracy. Okay. Clip that. Jack, slip that. Looking behind me, obviously, I love one piece. I love black flag. I love those kind of games.

He stole all of those. All pirated. From Pirate Bay on his external hard drive. They're all sitting there. All four billion episodes. But the thing that kind of sold me on this is I am a sucker for a good sea shanty. And rolling down to old Maui is one of the best ones. So I was super.

I was in. I was in from that moment. It's a damn tough life full of toil and strife. We whaler men undergo. I was like, I'm in. What is it about a. a shanty dude. They're so catchy. Yeah. It pulls you in, dude.

I will say this. As somebody that put a good bit of hours into Wend Rose, the combat feels really good, the building feels really good, the exploration feels rewarding. You know, I did get to do a little bit of sailing. I had not completed my pirate ship and recovering my crew to

actually go out to sea. This has some of the things that I love that Valheim had. Like, when you find something new, it unlocks a bunch of recipes for you. I'd love that in a survival crafting game because it really just rewards you for looking around and finding new stuff. All of it felt great. The combat felt good. The visuals were good. This is going to be one to keep an eye on. It is going to be an early access release,

which is a little bit of a bummer. But honestly, these survival crafting games can survive. I think that works for them. Early access. Yeah, for those ones. Because you're still getting consistent dev updates and you're also getting massive content updates at the same time. like satisfactory satisfactory had a ton of content and early access satisfiedory didn't feel

like an early access that's what I was going to say It just felt like it was getting constant expansions yep yeah so I'm excited for that one and that's coming later this month so it's who boy

we're going to have our hands full boys this game we have talked about a lot so we're not going to spend a ton of time on this one but Valor Mortis dude when we saw this game initially this is the best way I can describe this game is this looks like a first person lies of P

oh yeah I would I agree with that's that's a good description it's like a first person lies a P that channels the combat of dishonored and Bioshock yeah definitely Bioshock absolutely has the Bioshock dishonored vibes to it with the guy's hand

and the ability of the fire hand and then of course you know the melee from dissonored because there wasn't a ton of melee in Bioshock there's just the ranch but yeah right I was like, this just looks crazy. And I've never played a soul's like in first person. So I have no idea what that's going to be like.

Oh. But if the movement's on point, it looks good, dude. I mean, it shows, this trailer shows off a lot of the combat. It shows off like a lot of the monsters and stuff. Everything, every time I see Valor Mortis, I walk away going like, dude, that was impressive. Like, this actually looked like really good. And, you know, before we were getting these. kind of scripted in-game

kind of gameplay, you know, looks. But this one, we got a little bit more of the combat and him, like, fighting people and stuff. And it's like, it is, it's like a creepy, Bioshock meets Lys of P. That's the best way to put it. It looks good. It sounds good. Like,

this game, I mean, dude, I'm very, very curious. If this game plays anything like the trailers actually look, this might be an actual banger of a game. That would be killer. This is up here with, like, Clockwork Revolution for ones I'm really looking forward to.

Yeah, I mean, even like the first person parts, there's parts where he has like a weird grapple hook thing that he's swinging from platform on. In first person, he's shooting cannonballs out of the air. I saw the, yeah, the cannonball out of the air. Yep. Yeah. Dude, this game looks like it has it all.

It legitimately looks like a first person soul's like game that's really well done with a bunch of different. The atmosphere is. Yeah. Atmospheric. It's so good. It's killer. I'm super hyped to get our hands on this one. Yeah.

Yeah. So he's measuring the length of the sword. Yeah, yeah. And he checks it and he's like looking. Heck yeah. Yeah. Yep. So this one, this one went way up my list of like games I'm excited for. And they did confirm it's coming in fall of 2026. So we don't have that long of a weight.

We also don't have anything like, you know, up the calendar for that yet either. Yeah. They're going to move GTA up, dude, for sure. Oh, yeah, sure. Dude, GTA is not coming out until 2027. No. Don't say that. I'm telling you.

2030. See you there. All right. And then real quick, because Ace snubbed this one off of his Indies episode. And I actually thought this one looked pretty cool. And that is a game called Crop. That's it. It's just Crop.

And you guys know how I feel about farming Sims because I was like, guys. Yeah, there's a reason I left it off. Go do work. This game actually looks dark as anything and creepy as it. anything and it's like a horror farming sim but then it just goes off the rails really really dark it's got this really dreary depressing tone

to everything about it like even the farming stuff I'm curious about this one man this looks like if Outlast and Stardue Valley had a horrible horrible love child that they tried to drown it's true it's true it's not bad something I was just going to say dude I am actually surprised that you like it, but I'm happy because as I started to watch the trailer, I'm like, gosh, another one of these. I'm like, yeah, I'm not sure. And then as it went on, I'm like, oh,

okay, we're trying to unlock this mystery. We're figuring out what's going on. And the more you, you know, with these crops, I just, I got intrigued. So I'm not like as hyped as I am for these other games, but I'm definitely intrigued. And I was surprised that I had an interest for this. Like, because I'm not a, I'm not a cozy game farming. I don't want to, I work, I work every day. Like, I don't want to go do work on the game, you know. So I was surprised that. I'm like, okay, maybe, maybe a little bit.

Maybe a little bit of farming. Maybe. That's kind of the thing is this game definitely is leaning into the discovery and horror elements and whatever creepy thing is going on. Like at one point, they show you tending your farm in a biohazard suit. Yeah. And you're spraying like poison. So it's like, yeah.

So it's like, I wonder what's going on with this soil or this. story, but I think that is going to carry the gameplay part of it. And like, as much as I'm against farming sims, like, I have gotten sucked into some farming games where, because it's just, you know, it's, it's enjoyable, easy work. So it's like, I get that allure. But if you can couple that with a really intriguing mystery horror element to it, which this game seems to do, you have my attention now. So I'll be, I'll be watching this one with some veiled interest, but it was, it did enough to catch my eye to go like, Ace, I can't believe you're not going to bring this up.

Well, if you're not bringing it up, I'm bringing it up. For my own safety, I left it out. I couldn't take another farming simpatch best. Yeah. Well, seeing, you don't know me, Ace. You don't know. You don't know what I might like and what I don't like. So there you go.

I mean, you know, like I said, make sure you tune into the indie episode. Ace has, I don't know, like nine, ten games. Yeah, nine or ten games. On that episode, this is definitely not all of the games that were shown. And there are some absolute banger games that Ace refused to let us have for this episode. So make sure you check that one out

so that you know what to be excited for, what was, you know, what needs to be on your radar. But guys, you know, there's some really good games coming that we didn't even know about

a few months ago that all get me excited. Every year. It happens every year. Dude, this showcase alone had so much I'm excited for now that I just had no idea was coming. Like genuinely.

And listen, this is how you do a showcase. So if you're interested in the showcase, watch it because it's a fantastic watch. It's just a gamer's delight. Like if you like watching trailers and announcements and stuff, this is how you do it. So kudos to the Triple I Initiative Showcase. Y'all knocked it out of the park. Kudos to all these devs because these games look fantastic. Like we've said this time and time again.

The indie scene is on the up and up with their ability to create games that rival Triple Blay style games. So I mean, mad respect to the indie devs out there. I'm excited for a lot of these. Check out the episode description to watch these trailers and be excited with us. If you are excited, come join our Discord server. We have 1,300

plus gamers in there. This is not your ghost of a server. Everybody has a Discord server. This one is truly incredible. We say it all the time. It is growing like Wildfire. It is the best collection of gamers. on the planet.

If you have been looking for awesome people that share your passion and your hobby in gaming like we do, join it. Just be a lurker if you want, but you will see what we're talking about. We want you to be a part of it. It really is an incredible place. If you appreciate this podcast

and you like what we do three times a week, week in and week out, think about supporting the show. We are able to do this because we are supported by our listeners. So if that is something that you, think you know what guys i do i do want to support this i want to be a part of this there's a link in the episode description you can sign up on patreon only takes a couple minutes it's as little as five bucks a month you get access to the honestly i'm just going to call it incredible pre-show content at this point

um you know and a bunch of other perks as well guys that's going to do it for this episode what game are you most excited for that we talked about today that we talked about today i'm really excited balbant's curse win rose valermore as crop. There's so many good ones, man. Mine's Alcahast for sure. I think mine's still Belmont's curse because it's been so long since we've had a Castlevania and I want to see them do it right.

Especially a good one. Yeah. I am most excited about Alcahast, but I have a feeling that Belmont's curse is going to knock our socks off. I think so legitimately. Movement looks just so good. I'm so stoked. And I'm going to lose 100 hours in Winrose.

Oh, yeah. So, all right, listen, that's going to do it for this episode, everybody. Make sure you follow the show. Hit that plus button, that follow button that helps us out immensely in the algorithm. Plus, you get all our episodes the day that they release. So don't forget to do that. And until next time, happy gaming. See you.

Peace out.