NOCLIP

Don't tell anyone, but I always thought they were podcasts. Welcome back to NOCLIP! Today, we're going to be talking about To the Moon, a narrative game focused around learning about characters through one's memory. I imagine this description will be quite short, because there isn't a lot I can cover without spoiling the plot. While technically a sci-fi story, the game revolves around one character's past, so those elements fall more into the background during the meat of the gameplay. The result is that despite the fantastical premise, the majority of the game feels very mundane which has the effect of making it easier for the player to relate to the characters in the story, and it's very effective because the game operates on a personal level. As you learn more about each of the primary characters, you can start to see the depth they have and that characterization and what you think about their actions and motivations will influence the way you perceive the overall story. It kind of sounds like I'm just describing how to read a story, but engaging with this game the way you would a book or a movie will probably do you better than coming into it like it was Chrono Trigger. This is an extremely well written story with very little interactivity, and it's well worth checking out if you're in the mood for something simple. We're going to be talking about what being a game brings to the table for this experience, how the game goes handles its characters, and we speak ill (and not so ill) of the dead. Thank you for joining us again this week! We're on the last of our Mystery May games after this, and it's so far been a year for actually covering the games that have been on our list for a long time. The tragedy of this game, aside from Johnny's story itself, is that we waited so long to play it that it feels to me almost obsolete as a game, though not as a narrative, which still feels very well written. Did you feel similarly to me, or were you more engaged due to the interactivity? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we ended up rolling a game that is has been on the list for less time than the other games this year, but one we're excited for anyway, Spiritfarer, so we hope you'll join us then!

Forget about Freeman, we're abandoning the podcast. Welcome back to the podcast! We may be into June, but we're in the ides of Mystery May right now, and the fates have deigned we play Half-Life, and I am not one to argue with the fates. Half-Life is one of the most influential FPS games of all time, and part of that comes down to the way the game builds a really impressive world for you to play through. Black Mesa feels as vast in some places and stifling in others as it needs to in order to create a tone that is full of anxiety as you conserve ammunition while fighting enemies with genuinely great creature design. It's part FPS, part horror title, like Doom was, but with this added environmental element that really pushes it to the next level. The other part of its influence is really just about how good the game was when it came out. Levels are mostly well paced, even from a modern perspective, movement through them feels fluid and like you're using all the parts of your toolbox, and the aforementioned ammo conservation feels well thought out. This one is an easy game to go back to despite it's age, and it's still just as moody while still having that over-the-top 90s sci-fi edge to it. We're going to be talking about Source Engine movement, the pros and cons of Xen, and whether we were or were not excited to turn on pumps. Thank you for joining us again this week! We've been consistently hitting the games that have been on our list for the longest this year, and Half-Life is one we've been dancing around for a little too long. This game still rules, particularly if you are a fan of its descendants, so if you haven't given it a shot yet, I recommend doing so. And then let us know what it was like over on our Discord, or in the comment section! Next time, we're going to be talking about To The Moon, which is not about the stock exchange, so we hope you'll join us then!

No, I'm Pod. He's Cast. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, for the second episode of Mystery May, we're going to be talking about The Wolf Among Us, a narrative adventure game from Telltale. Telltale's style of design really exploded with the Walking Dead, and has since led to a number of choice-based adventure games that would cite it as inspiration, but The Wolf Among Us sits in a unique position in their catalogue as the last indie property they would make a game out of following the studio's previous success. Because Fables, the series that the game is based on, is relatively niche, many of the players for this game were fans of Telltale's games specifically. This has led to the game having a particularly outspoken following, and a very positive reputation. And one it's earned, we think. The game centers around a murder mystery, placing you in the shoes and paws of Sheriff Bigby Wolf trying to identify the killer. And this mystery is very well written, with pacing that makes the game's five episode structure flow surprisingly well even when playing through the game all at once and characters that are deep enough to make sense of their motivations and, importantly, predict their reactions to your choices. Some of the mechanics show their age, with Telltale's usual reliance on QTEs and truncated dialogue choices introducing a little bit of friction, but if these are things you can deal with, this may be the best example of what Telltale can do out there. We're going to talk about the audience expectation that comes with writing a story using preexisting characters from two different mediums, managing tone with a mature premise but a silly pretense, and we revel in our success as podcasting magnates. Thank you for joining us again this week! As we've mentioned on the last two episodes, it's kind of crazy we hadn't talked about a Telltale game up to this point. We have different histories with the studio, but we both like the games inspired by them and have played multiple games from them in the past, so it was honestly a matter of time. Do you think The Wolf Among Us is The Wolf Among the best games Telltale has released? Do you jive with the general structure and mechanics of this now twelve year old game still? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, the fates have deigned we talk about Half-Life, so be sure to join us for that!

The guild authorizes you to hunt this podcast. Welcome back to NOCLIP! Today, we're going to be talking about Monster Hunter Wilds, the latest mainline entry in the series and the game that turned many peoples' computers into puddles of acid. Wilds is a follow up to Monster Hunter World both in that it was made by the same team and that it mechanically doesn't stray too far from the systems that World established. This is a good and a bad thing, because it means that the combat in Wilds is much more straightforward than it was in Rise, allowing you to establish a flow with each weapon and understand the basics fairly quickly. On the other hand, it also doesn't feel like it has innovated much, particularly in the ways the game seemed to advertise itself on. Focusing on the larger environments, Wilds seems to have overstepped its own capabilities a bit, making the new areas harder to traverse, and without your mount, taking a long time to do. Additionally, much of the tracking mechanics have been stripped out, meaning you generally know what you're hunting and exactly where it is when you set off, making the more-open world basically a nonfactor in gameplay. If you're a fan of the series mostly because of the combat mechanics, none of these things will be deal breakers, and the new focus mode and wound system changes the texture of fights enough to make them feel fresh again, but there is a lot of truly unnecessary artifice surrounding the game that can detract. We're going to be talking about what the story does(n't) bring to the table, the wonderful new monster designs, and the horror that is palicos talking. Thank you for joining us again this week! Monster Hunter Wilds was one of my most anticipated games this year, and despite what we talk about in the episode, I think it still holds up as a fun entry in the series, even if it isn't substantially close to some of the previous games for me. How did you feel about the game? Did you manage to muscle through the first 10 or so hours to get to where the game opens up for you, or did you bounce off of it? If you were a new player, did you find this an accessible game? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord server! Next time, we begin Mystery May, where we roll a die to determine our next episode based on our tables (which you can view on our website if curious!). We're starting with a “short” game (formerly “Pocket”), The Wolf Among Us, so we hope you'll join us for that!

Artists create, podcast, and destroy. Welcome back to the podcast where today we're going to be talking about Immortality. Immortality is a game from Sam Barlow, creator of Her Story and Telling Lies and it follows in the same tradition as those games. Largely player-directed, the game involves watching clips of three films and footage associated with them in order to gain an understanding of what happened to the people involved. There is a set point at which the game shows you its credits, but whether you feel done at that point is largely up to you. Differing from the previous games, rather than inputting text to find clips, you click on elements in scenes to cut between them, following actors or props or other elements to see new things, and you can control the speed of playback and even play in reverse. Your understanding of these mechanics and how the internal logic of the match cuts works really determine what kind of agency you can exercise in solving the mysteries, so your milage may vary depending on how much you liked the core loop of Her Story in comparison to this one. Even so, the technical prowess on display here is still incredible, with a surprising dedication to capturing the feel of the eras of film each of the game's three movies represent and performances that don't feel like an imitation so much as part of film canon themselves. We're going to be talking about the feeling of playing Immortality as compared to other games, the surprising directions the narrative takes and how it differed from our own interpretations, and in a spiritual successor to Haunting Those ROMs, we discuss what may be haunting THIS footage. Thank you for joining us again this week! Immortality has been on the list for a while because we have a particular soft spot for Her Story and how different that game felt to anything else, and while this is more refinement than innovation, it's still a really impressive title and would probably give you a similar feeling to us if it is the first of Sam Barlow's games you've played. Did you pick up on the game's secrets? Did you struggle to rewind because you were playing with a mouse? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we're going to be talking about Monster Hunter Wilds, so I hope you join us then and that you have some free time in the coming weeks.

You like the podcast that much? Let me invite you to hell. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we're doing another community requested episode (calling it Fanbruary at this point seems a bit silly) on Shenmue. An absolute classic action/adventure game that happened to be a blind spot for both of us. Shenmue centers on Ryo Hazuki, whose father is killed in the opening cutscene in a pretty rad martial arts fight. This sets up the events for you to uncover the reason behind the murder, which you do by talking to characters, learning schedules, driving forklifts and doing a little bit of fighting yourself. The variety of activities to do in this game are what made it so unique at the time and the fact that all of your verbs aren't based solely in combat still makes it stand out against most triple A titles released even now. That being said, it's an older game and the number of different control schemes and things to do may feel a bit unintuitive and clunky to you now. What hasn't aged as badly, surprisingly, are the visuals, which contain a lot more detail than you would expect from the early days of the 3D games. From character models to buildings to interior spaces, the level of fidelity on display is really impressive for the time, even if it did mean the game had to be spread out across three discs on release. Overall this game is a piece of history for good reason, even if the experience isn't as groundbreaking if you've been keeping up with modern games. We're going to be talking about the more positive aspects of schlocky elements of the game's story and dialogue, the good and bad ways in which the game's time-based mechanics impact the play experience, and we lament the necessity in our society to just go get a job sometimes. Thank you for listening to the podcast this week! Shenmue is a game that really works best if you are able to dedicate the time to immerse yourself in it, and as a result this episode is coming a bit late and also we maybe didn't get the premier experience it could offer. That being said, there is a lot to like here and even more to respect for the period this game came out, so all in all I think it was worth it. Are you a diehard Shenmue fan? What did you think of our speculation on further games in the series? Let us know over on the Discord or in the comments! Next time, we're wrapping up our suggested games for the year with Wanted: Dead, which should be a significant departure from everything else we've played this year, so much like Shenmue fans, I hope you're in it for the variety, and that you join us then!

This is not the anger of a vampire killer. This is the podcast of all humanity! Welcome back to Fanbruary! Today, we're going to be talking about Castlevania 64, an oft maligned entry in the Castlevania series and the first to be in 3D. In classic Castlevania fashion, your goal is to infiltrate a castle and kill Dracula to restore peace to the world, so it doesn't have a ton of innovation in that respect, but porting that formula to 3D means reworking the design of the platforming and combat, which it does surprisingly well…at times. Being on the N64, this game definitely has some amount of jank, but outside of some specifically problematic areas and letting the sometimes uncooperative camera slide, it feels better than you might imagine. Combat is very punchy, at least playing as Reinhardt, with his whip feeling satisfying to use and enemy effects like parts of skeletons falling off or heavy flinch animations giving meaningful feedback. The platforming is more hit and miss, but it's serviceable enough that much of the early and midgame challenges feel fair and fun to get through. It hits some weird difficulty levels at points where the systems just aren't prepared to keep up with the design, and it seems like a symptom of early 3D growing pains mixed with a team unsure how to work within the new limitations. Throw in the fact that the game hits that Castlevania cheesiness in its atmosphere and writing and the resulting game is much better than you may have been led to believe, which is to say, worth checking out, even if it isn't the most exemplary entry in the series. We're going to be talking about the importance of a game's first level, the differences between playing this at the time and in the present, and we wonder if this game's protagonist might also be a form of transportation. Thank you for joining us again this week! We've still got more Fanbruary coming up even though it's technically March now, so stay tuned. This was significantly more competent than we expected given its reputation, and overall had a pretty good time with it. Are you a big fan of the series and have opinions on this entry? Did you play this (or it's weird expanded version) on the N64 or is this the first you've really considered it? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we're going to be talking about Shenmue, so we hope you'll join us for that.

In time, you will know the tragic extent of my podcast, Welcome to Fanbruary! For our first listener suggested title this year, we're talking about Darkest Dungeon, an RPG with Lovecraftian themes and light roguelike elements. Darkest Dungeon is known to be a difficult game, and it sticks to this design ethos with a commendable level of commitment. Depending on who you are, maybe too much commitment. With a large number of random factors affecting everything from what characters you get offered, the results of looting and in-combat effects, playing through the game's dungeons feels like a Rube Goldberg machine of quirks, diseases, attacks and more triggering in a sequence that is almost always bad for you. This makes the climb for upgrades and ever-higher-leveled characters slow, but (I imagine) rewarding for dedicated players. And if you're looking to become one of those dedicated players, don't despair, or do despair, I guess, because the game's non-gameplay elements do a great job of selling an atmosphere of hopelessness and fear, underscored by a charismatic and slightly shmaltzy narrator. This game has a lot going for it, but your enjoyment is ultimately going to be decided by your level of patience and how much you like turn based combat. We talk about the game's difficulty and what parts of it we felt we could adequately prepare for, our biggest tribulations, and we discuss how part of the game could have been better if it was more like a pretzel. Thank you for joining us again this week, and thank you for all your submissions for Fanbruary! I'm sure this is starting to sound like a thing I just say every episode, but as usual, we are running a bit behind this month, but we will get four episodes out for Fanbruary that just might bleed a bit into March. This game tried and successfully defeated us, unfortunately, but I'd be curious to hear from more long-term players if they've found consistent strategies or what high level play actually looks like, given that I only exhibited low level play. Let us know in the comments or over on Discord! Next time, we're going to be talking about Castlevania 64, another game with a bit of a dismal atmosphere, but perhaps lightened by the jank of early 3D games, so we hope you'll join us then.

So this is the podcast energy. I'm overflowing with power! Welcome back to the podcast and to the first full episode this year! We're back from our now-traditional January break and talking about The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. This is the first full game in the series where you play as Zelda herself since the CD-i, which really did need to happen so we could finally stop pointing to The Wand of Gamelon as a standout of anything. This means that while the game hits a lot of the usual Zelda game beats, you interact with the world in a slightly different way. Link's tools are still available to you in the form of sword, bombs, arrows, but it is tied to a resource meter so you can't play the whole game in that way. Instead, you have the ability to spawn objects and enemies for a more open-ended approach to combat and puzzle solving. This is objectively cool, allowing you to use clever use of resources to bypass obstacles and come up with clever solutions and makes combat feel differently to other games in the series. However, this does also impact design in a major way with puzzles needing to be more open-ended and generic in order for you to have multiple ways of solving them, and it can get a little samey. How the game strikes the balance between novel, emergent gameplay and satisfying puzzle design is largely going to come down to taste, but it's at least an interesting thing to have tackled by Nintendo. We're going to be talking about the similarities between this and other Zelda games (and whether there are too many of them), how the more freeform design impacts dungeons, which are the meat and potatoes of the gameplay, and we test out a few new game design mantras about substituting Bigfoot in for content you couldn't finish. Thank you for joining us again this week! We're back and extremely ready to tackle Fanbruary in the coming weeks, with this game being one of those that came out last year that we just sort of missed. We have taken the longest hiatus from talking about Zelda games we ever have, which is maybe too much of a dedication to the series because it's only been a bit over a year, but it's always interesting to see what this particular pillar of the industry is trying to do. Do you agree this game feels like it might be more of a cult hit? Did you find it too similar to other Zelda games and wish they had done more to change it up? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we begin Fanbruary by talking about Darkest Dungeon, the turn based RPG roguelike, but don't worry if you haven't gotten a submission in and would like to. We still have a couple slots undecided, so let us know what you'd like to see us play!

The Smashiest balls were the friends we made along the way. The NOCLIP Awards are back again this year with all their usual prestige. I know you are all waiting with baited breath to see what games are getting the nod, while knowing full well that the games that released this year are of no object when you compare them to the games that we chose to play this year, which are the true contenders. When it is finally realized that we should be the true arbiters of taste, these awards will defeat all others in the public consciousness and weird new Elden Ring games will be announced on our podcast. This is the world I truly want to live in. One thing you will learn after listening this year though, is that this was quite a varied year. Which, admittedly we do try to do, but it comes out in the variety of games represented. It's a thing that always makes me feel good looking back through all the episodes we did and seeing the different experiences we had this year and seeing both how the medium is changing as well as the wealth of games from the past that are still unique and worth revisiting. I hope we've influenced you to check out something out of your usual comfort zone, and that this show can make you reflect on the experiences that you had. Thank you, as always for joining us for another year of NOCLIP and our dumb awards thing. We're taking a short break, but will be back mid-to-late January with an episode on The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. And please don't forget to get submissions in, through whatever channel you want (Discord, comments, email, twitter, whatever), for Fanbruary!

I need to see how handsome I am. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we're talking about Slay the Princess, a narrative focused “collect the endings” game that has a truly impressive amount of writing to account for all of a player's possible choices. The numerous endings, scenes and dialogue choices within those scenes, all voice acted by two people no less, are the player's primary motivation to try new things and follow new paths. Fortunately for the game, though, the quality of that writing is also surprisingly good. The tone runs the gamut between horror, comedy and romance, in part reactive to the player's decisions but also in service of a greater narrative, that is largely up to the player to interpret. The fact that the game ends coherently at all, let alone with the possibility of something with real emotional resonance is a testament to just how well put together the game is. We're going to be talking about the special something the game's visuals possess that gives it a familiar, appealing quality, the way your initial experience will shape the way you progress through the game, and we misinterpret the game as getting a little…steamy. Thank you for joining us again this week! We wanted something short and simple to end the year, and while this kind of filled that role, I don't think we were prepared for the surprising amount of depth on display here. We're also surprised the game came out as long ago as it did. Did you play it back then? How literally did you interpret the title? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we're coming back with The NOCLIP Awards, so we hope you'll break out the champaign for us next time, and don't forget to get your suggestions in for Fanbruary!

Do goola podcast sa bantha poodoo. Welcome back to the podcast! As we near the end of the year, we like to look back on a game or two that are more nostalgic for us, and Racer somehow got overlooked until now. Racer is maybe the first of our nostalgia picks that really holds up, at least in our opinion. This is a very straightforward video game, all the things considered, but the focus makes for a surprisingly solid racing experience. True to the movie, podracing in the game is extremely fast and almost 100% guaranteed to end with a lethal explosion. The tracks lose a bit of their focus as the game goes on, but the core mechanics are skill testing in an enjoyable way and the game is short enough that you can get to the point where you're playing it to improve very quickly. It's very mechanics first, but it being Lucasarts, due is paid to making sure that the world, characters and sound design fits with the movies. The presentation suffers in some ways, but the worlds of the game are well realized for the time and also Watto is there, which is great. We're going to talk about the feeling of playing the game for the first time and once you get used to it, the mechanics we did and did not remember using as children, and we spend a decent amount of time just complaining about the prequel trilogy. Thank you for joining us again this week! This is a great palette cleansing game after what has a been a heady year and one that I was really surprised by. I've come to expect the games we liked as kids to pretty much always be worse than you remembered, so for this to hold up as well as it does was pleasant, at worst. If you haven't played this game in a while, or god forbid, not at all, it's surprisingly accessible with a recent remaster and the original PC version on Steam, so maybe give it a look. Post your fond recollections of the N64 in the comments or over on our Discord. Next time, we're going to be talking about Slay the Princess, so we hope you'll join us for that.

I won't reach the truth with podcasts. They can't give it shape. Welcome back to the podcast, and as we finally finish the theme (and catch up on episodes in general after a hectic October) of Games Titled After Women's Names That Begin With “L.” Loretta is an adventure game in the technical sense; it leans heavily on narrative and player choice, with your actions dictating the events of your playthrough. Most of these choices revolve around how many people you do or do not murder. The story revolves around Loretta, the player character, having killed her husband and the fallout of that action. Whether that is justified or even a positive action is determined by your choices going forward, and Loretta has a personality that stays pretty consistent throughout. The game does feature a few gameplay elements outside of this, but they are honestly barely worth mentioning in a format like this. You're playing this game for its narrative and everything else is just around for the sake of variety. We're going to be talking about the fact the game needs to put you effectively in the shoes of a killer before being able to explore its narrative branches, the unusualness of the setting adding to the uncanny atmosphere and being a point of interest in and of itself, and murder. We say “murder” more on this episode than we ever have and probably ever will. Thank you for joining us! Loretta falls pretty comfortably in the realm of those games we specifically like, so we were fortunate it fell into this narrow theme and one that we're glad we could end it on. Was this game on your radar or was this the first time you're hearing about it? Did you choose to murder every person you saw in the game? Let us know in the comments or in our Discord server! We've pretty much caught up with our outstanding episodes at this point and will be hopefully bringing in some more variety in the upcoming months (though Fanbruary is on you guys). Next time, we're going to be talking about Star Wars Episode I: Racer, following the vague tradition we have of playing more nostalgic games around the holidays, so we hope you'll join us then, which you probably will if we've narrowcasted enough to pretty much only appeal to people our own age.

I'm on the podcast tonight? C'est la vie. Welcome back to the podcast! We're finally finishing our Halloween games this week with Amnesia: The Bunker. This is the fourth game in the Amnesia series and introduce some light combat elements as well as reframes the series' physics system to create an immersive sim type experience with several options to overcome obstacles. And of course, it's still an Amnesia game, so you'll be evading an ever present monster who wants to maul you. Set in World War I, the game makes good use of its setting with the intermittent sounds of combat keeping you on your toes and the crank flashlight and crude tools playing with the game's sound mechanics to ensure you never feel fully safe. The game also has a weird relationship with its own mechanics sometimes. With a single save room and the high lethality of the monster, you'll find yourself back in administration from time to time with more resources than you died with and new information of where and where not to go. This can sometimes encourage dying to reset and save precious generator fuel and to reroute, giving the game a bit of a fragmented feeling. However, if you don't mind these things or just do a good job of surviving, it has enough interesting things to be worth giving a go. We're going to be talking about the relative difficulty (and difficulty settings), how the options you have vary and where we think it could have been a bit more varied, and we connect the game to the first game in only ways that are wrong. Thank you for joining us again this week! I realize this has been a long October, but we did want to get through the games we set aside for the spooky time of year. And we ended strong as far as the actual fear went. Would have been nice to actually have landed on Halloween, but here we are. Did you struggle with this game at all? Did you find a use for the flare? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we're finishing yet another theme by playing Loretta, a final game named after a woman that begins with the letter L, so we hope you'll join us then!

What did you say? Podcast? We're not going to drop everything and do that. Welcome back to the podcast. We're still playing a bit of catchup this month, and to continue with our Halloween picks, we're talking about Cryptmaster! This is a dungeon crawler in the typing game subgenre, where you solve puzzles and fight enemies using abilities you type out. To gain the abilities, you need to find letters, which you can come across in a variety of ways, which fill out a series of blanks for each of your four characters, and then guess what the full word is, similar to a Wordle or a crossword puzzle style. This, objectively, is a weird and really cool system. And it feeds into the other elements of the game, encouraging you to engage in combat and explore the world, complete sidequests and play the in-universe card game. On the other hand, many of the things you have to do can become a bit tedious, especially relating to the soul resource you have to manage in order to engage in combat effectively, not to mention the huge number of riddles you have to solve with no artifice really over top of them. That being said, the end product is still extremely cool, builds an effective tone which walks the line between being funny and building the feeling of an underworld in a serious way, and is probably worth looking past the irritants if you're looking for something novel and interesting. We're going to be talking about how we responded to the challenge the combat posed, the different mechanical choices that did and did not work for us, and how mastering the combat requires the memorization of an educational curriculum in vocabulary. Thank you for joining us this week! Cryptmaster generated some light buzz when it came out earlier this year, and it was clear it was a game that fit into our preferred level of weirdness. The overall idea here is so cool and I think it's still great even with some of its contents working against your ability to have fun with it. Did this game overcome its flaws for you as well, or are you just a huge fan of riddles? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time we're finally finishing up our October games and preparing to move on to greener, less horror-themed pastures, but we're closing out the theme with Amnesia: The Bunker, so we hope you'll join us for that!

Welcome to cast space. Welcome back (finally!) to the podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about Omori, a turn-based RPG with a unique art style and dark themes. Though, as we discuss in the episode, don't think too much of Omori based on its genre, because it's really putting its worst foot forward. Omori has rich characters, relatable themes and effective comedy. It's a silly game in the same vein as Earthbound where you fight cartoon sharks and your happy characters will deal more damage against angry foes, but it's real strength is in making you learn more and more about your party members and their associated friends before stabbing you right in the heart. The game is billed as having psychological horror elements, and those are there, but the game is also profoundly sad and surprisingly moving. And on top of that, it has a combat system that has some depth to it, but takes a long time to come into its own and adds a level of tedium to a game that otherwise keeps you wanting to move forward. We're going to be talking about the slow build of the combat and where it shines, the tonal differences and how much of it we think was intentional, and we tell you how not to discuss Chrono Trigger. We've been pretty busy, so we apologize for the extremely long delay between episodes. Omori is at least a bit of a gem, so hopefully you enjoy the episode. We still have two more games for Halloween to cover, so we'll be staying in the genre over the next couple weeks despite the scheduling issues. Did you participate in the Omori Kickstarter? Is it a game you heard about later and checked out based on the art style or the themes? Let us know in the comments below or over on our Discord! Next time, we're going to be talking about Cryptmaster, so we hope you'll join us then!

We're old enough. Welcome back to NOCLIP, and beware, for it is Halloween! To kick off October, we're talking about Crow Country, a throwback survival horror game that does a lot to stand out in its field. The game is set in an amusement park and has a unique polygonal graphic style that gives an oddly whimsical aesthetic. It makes good use of this with its environments: haunted houses, underwater exhibits and fantasy fairy forests. Each new area feels a little quirky, but always with that chunky, blocky texture that sells the disheveled feel of the park itself. All of this is in service of a short but tightly executed survival horror game with disempowered combat, save rooms without checkpoints, item collection and puzzles to solve. It has the hallmarks of the genre, but each mechanic is implemented in a well thought out way. We're going to be talking about how the one location setting helps teach the player the layout while hiding surprises, how the simplicity of some mechanics shine light on progression and storytelling, and we make the tough call to shoot everything in sight. Thank you for joining us again this week! We're excited as always to start talking about horror titles, and Crow Country is the perfect first game to play in a month like this. It feels like a nostalgic throwback, but obviously brings with it the lessons learned over decades of innovation in the genre. How did you feel about this relatively short entry into the genre? Let us know over on the Discord server or in the comments! Next time, we're going to be talking about Omori, which is a more different kind of horror game, so we hope you'll join us for that.

Happy NOCLIP day, everyone, and welcome to our celebration of nine years of doing the podcast! Nine years is such a long time to do anything, but I feel like it gets overshadowed sometimes with ten years looming around the corner. Which makes sense, so rather than argue you should be celebrating an odd numbered year like this, I'm going to reframe this as the beginning of year ten. It's our decade celebration, which will last for one year until the tenth anniversary, so make sure you tune into every episode because it's a special time for us at NOCLIP. We'll really wow you by doing exactly the same kind of content we normally do, shock you with opinions that fall in line with what you would expect given our now extensive history, and thrill you by bringing on special tenth-year guests like probably no one, or just one of our friends you've already heard from before. And the best part is, once the clock ticks over to October 3rd 2025, we get to reframe it again as a big milestone. You are all eating out of the palms of our hands and we wouldn't have it any other way, you suckers. Seriously though, thank you all for listening to us, no matter how long you've been here. We actually have been slowly making changes over the last year, with a new theme song, our switch to remote recording and the process that has been getting us to consistent quality, and merging pocket back into the main show to try and streamline our lives and your experience. We're honestly very happy with where we are as far as content goes at the moment, but let us know if you have any suggestions for things because we take what little feedback we get seriously. We hope you've been enjoying the show and we have a bunch of exciting episodes planned on games both big and small, so we hope you'll play along where you can and we'll see you again next year!

I would recommend podcasters to rob banks instead because gambling is immoral. Welcome back to the podcast and to our very important series on games titled after women's names that begin with the letter L. Today, we're talking about Lorelei and the Laser Eyes a puzzle game from Simogo, developer of games like Year Walk and Sayonara Wild Hearts. Taking the form of an enormous escape room, where solving number puzzles and unlocking doors is the name of the game, you progress through an ever growing list of goals to uncover the “truth” as it is quantified in the menu. The game has a few consistent motifs that pop up to anchor you into the narratives main themes and provide clues to the puzzles, and combined with a story that has real concrete answers you can figure out yourself with the information provided, it really meshes a mechanical satisfaction with a narrative one. In the same vein, the difficulty of the puzzles really lands in a spot that will likely be satisfying for most people, if a bit easy for people who are diehard fans of the genre. Mostly more simple than you would think at first glance, recognizing patterns and identifying a pool of answers to choose from will serve you better than raw enigmatology in this case. The game isn't perfect, a bit too long, and if you're not a fan of puzzle games generally this likely won't change your mind, but it's a stylish package put together by a developer that really knows how to nail a tone. We're going to be talking about the interconnectivity of puzzles, the stylish execution of a visual style and we determine that person we often most agree with is ourselves. Thank you for joining us again this week! Not know what this game was going into it may have not been the best idea from a scheduling perspective, and maybe had something to do with us thinking it was bit overlong, but in the end it was still a good time. Do you think our devotion to Simogo's games is unhealthy? Do you just agree and enjoy their output? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we're actually interrupting the GTAWNTBWTLL theme as we enter October and will be talking about Crow Country, so we hope you'll stay tuned for that.

What's the definition of imaginary? A Podcast that only exists in your mind. Welcome back to the podcast! Our second game titled after a woman's name that begins with the letter L is Who's Lila, a pretty bizarre adventure game in which you control your character's face. The object of the game, at the outset, is to sell your responses in conversations by molding your face, Mario 64 stye, into an expression that will go over well. This adds a layer of complication into an already unsure situation which means that any conversation can have a lot of different possible outcomes. This makes more sense when you realize that the game is meant to be played repeatedly, with many short narrative branches that conclude and intend for you to restart after. Beyond that, there are puzzles to solve that step outside the bounds of the conversation mechanics and, in fact, other bounds, and these might be the highlight of the game for some people. As a complete package, this is a strange and experiential game with a surprisingly intriguing narrative that has a lot to grab onto. We're going to be talking about the hurdles and strengths of having an unprecedented mechanic set, the complicated nature of exploring the different paths in the game, and the benefits of an eyebrows first approach. Thank you for joining us again this week. There are days when I wish that if every game we talk about could be something like this. I love what this game does to innovate even if the complete package has its issues. Did the theming and odd concept sell you on this game? Let us know in the comments or over on the Discord! Next time, we're talking about the most recent of the games we're playing this month with Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, so we hope you'll join us for that!

The Queen of Podcasts is weak to fire. Welcome back to the podcast, and to the very special “games titled after women's names that start with the letter L” theme! To start us off, we're going to be talking about Lorelai, a 2D side-scrolling adventure game. Lorelai is the third game in a series that began with Downfall and the Cat Lady, the latter of which is by far the most noted. Not least of which is because we did an episode on it, trendsetters that we are. Lorelai is a not insignificant visual upgrade from Harvester's previous games, but the themes and narrative beats between the Cat Lady and Lorelai are very similar, just focusing on a different character in the same world. Otherwise the games play about as you'd expect. You collect inventory items to be used in puzzle solving, talk to people and largely just experience the story. The result is two very comparable games and one of them unfortunately comes out on top by most metrics. We're going to be talking about the narrative and character writing, the big swings taken visually and how they generally made the game more atmospheric and interesting, and we really step up to the plate for step dads for some reason. Thank you for joining us again this week! I've been unreasonably excited about this stupid theme, but with one exception: Lorelai was the only game in it that was a known quantity to me. That being said, as a big fan of the previous games by Harvester Games, maybe my expectations were somewhat too high. What did you guys think about this one? Are you a fan of the series and have thoughts on this game, or are you new and wondering why we care so much? Let us know in the comments or over on our discord. Next time, we're going to talk about Who's Lila, a mystery game and a game with a mysteriously weird method of interaction, so we hope you'll join us for that.

Please consider supporting our planned podcast expansion. Welcome back to NOCLIP! Today, in our last episode of our DLC theme, we're talking about Echoes of the Eye, Outer Wild's expansion that adds a new explorable area into the base game. Describing it like that, you can maybe see why we had originally planned this for Pocket, but this is Outer Wilds, so the exploration and puzzles in this expansion are dense and complicated. So our decision to end Pocket is already paying dividends, I suppose. Echoes contains one new celestial body to fly to, yes, but within it there are new areas, a clever use of old mechanics to create new interactions and, slight spoiler, many new subareas full of clues and puzzles to uncover. Similarly to the base game, talking about much in specificity would be a bit of a spoiler, but the thing to take away from that is that this feels very much like the base game. If you enjoyed the self-directed gameplay of Outer Wilds this is largely more of the same, but tonally and environmentally it does have enough to make it feel fresh. We're going to be talking about the difficulty we each had actually getting to the DLC in the first place, the satisfaction and frustration the new puzzles bring, and we talk about which of my actions were free of consequences. Thank you for joining us again this week! As we discussed on the episode, we may not have come back to play this DLC for a while, or possibly ever, had we not done this theme so it's exciting to jump back into a game that inspired such strong emotions when we last talked about it. Much like the original, this DLC can be tough to get into and tough to finish, but the journey is really the point in this game and the journey is extremely good. Did you play this right away when it came out or are you just now being reminded it exists? Let us know in the comments or over in our Discord server! Next time, we're starting the extremely catchy “Games Titled With Women's Names That Start With the Letter L” theme, which begins with Lorelai, so strap in for that!

I'm feeling full of beans. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we're talking about the DLC for Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Future Redeemed. This is an expansion type DLC which gives you a full new party of characters, starts you at level one and makes subtle but meaningful changes to the mechanics and has you set out on an entirely new story set in the same world as the base game. This is probably for the best given how long it's been since we've played the original, so we don't have to deal with high level enemies while forgetting all of the mechanics, but as is usually true with Xenoblade games, what is probably the most interesting development in the DLC concerns the story. The DLC features characters from far flung parts of Monolith's trilogy, and the ways and reasons they interact with your party take a focus in the narrative. Because of this the DLC focuses a bit more on the overarching narrative, which is on the more complicated side, but it still puts a decent focus on character stories, just maybe in a less impactful way than the base game. Mechanically, the new classes are largely fun and well designed, with some hitches here and there, and the new systems give you something novel to sink your teeth into if you are so inclined. All that said, the game plays mostly very similar to the base game so if you were a fan of that, you'll probably enjoy another 20-30 hours of this as well. We're going to be talking about how the mechanical changes affected our play, the characters and what archetypes they fill both in the story and as narrative devices, and we realize that maybe we've been the dumb guy all along. Thank you for joining us again this week! This was a game that we really liked originally and probably wouldn't have gone back to for the expansion for a long while if we hadn't done this DLC theme, so I'm happy we got the chance. If you've been through it, how did you feel about the changes from the base game? Did you feel compelled to fill out your affinity goals to level everyone up? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we're going to finish out DLC by talking about Echoes of the Eye, the DLC for Outer Wilds, so we hope you'll join us then!

Oh, podcast. Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket…for the last time! We're interrupting our DLC theme because of the episode 100 milestone, and we're talking about Super Mario Land. If you've been following for a while, you know that we started Pocket with an episode on Super Mario Land 2, so we felt it was appropriate to end it with the original Super Mario Land. This is a platformer and one of the earliest games in the Mario series. Released on the Game Boy, the limitations of the platform, and the age of the game, are both apparent in how it affected visuals and design, and impressive in how they were overcome. This feels very quaint to come back to, but compared to how simple the majority of Game Boy games were, this feels like a real accomplishment. With 12 levels over 4 worlds that explore different themes, this feels more like a Mario game than you might expect, and one that has some meat on its bones, even if it isn't very long. We're going to be talking about the level design in comparison to Super Mario Bros. and how much we think was hardware versus the state of game design in 1989, how the music carries the presentation despite the simple visuals distracting from some surprisingly detailed sprites, and we call for Mario to be restored to his former vehicle-driving glory. Thank you for listening to NOCLIP Pocket this week! To be clear, the podcast itself is going to continue on after today, but we think Pocket specifically has outlived its necessity. Moving forward, we're going to hold on to the same release schedule and cadence of games we talk about, but will be doing away with Pocket as a sub-show and incorporating the shorter, weirder titles into the main show instead. So basically we're making a big deal out of nothing. Pocket held some of our biggest surprises, so let us know, what was your favorite episode of Pocket? Did you try any games you wouldn't have otherwise? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! There won't be a next game in this case, so we'll catch you on the Xenoblade Chronicles 3 DLC episode next time!

I'm weak as a kitten and thick as two planks. I've always been this way. I'm proficient in podcasts. Sorry. Welcome back to the podcast! As our second episode in our run of DLCs, we're talking about The Shadow of the Erdtree DLC for Elden Ring. And yeah, this is the release that inspired the theme in the first place. Shadow of the Erdtree released over two years after the original game, and the scope of this DLC alone is evidence of that. Advertised as being “about the size of Limgrave,” the map is a sprawling multilayered world with numerous different areas, some of which are pretty well hidden. Being big isn't necessarily an indication of quality, of course, but it is a good thing to keep in mind when considering this as an expansion to Elden Ring. Being another open world to explore, the challenge in development is making the area interesting to be in and worth exploring. The world looks amazing. Potentially unbound by the setting of the DLC being in a kind of afterlife, each area has such a distinct visual presentation and runs the gamut from somber to chaotic to awe inspiring. The other half of the equation was maybe less successful, with mechanical rewards, like new items, weapons and spells, are spread more thin than in the base game, which makes exploring slightly less rewarding than you might expect. That being said, the novelty of the new items and weapons makes finding them exciting, and they can come in handy engaging in the DLC's many new combat encounters. Designed to be taken on very late game, the fights in Shadow of the Erdtree are difficult, and to combat this, they have introduced a new upgrade system to generally increase damage and defense, and on your first playthrough you're going to want to search these out for sure. I hesitate to say more, obviously there's a lot to discuss, and the length of this episode is testament to that. We're going to be talking about our experiences with most of the major bosses, the design of the world and its visuals, and we give you a great deal on a robe that may or may not contain untold eldritch horrors within. Thank you for listening this week, and an extra special thanks if you actually listened to the whole thing. This was a DLC that we, and a lot of people, were looking forward to and we wanted to put it on the list as soon as possible after release. Did you have a good time with this one? Did you find the difficulty to be off-putting? Let's talk about it in the comments or over in our Discord. Next time, we're going to be talking about Xenoblade Chronicles 3's expansion Future Redeemed, so hopefully you'll stop by for that one.

You want me to do some podcasting? Welcome back! Today, for episode 99 of pocket and for our first episode in our DLC theme, we're going to be talking about the Rogue-lite addition to Splatoon 3, Side Order. Adding roguelike gameplay to Splatoon's third person shooter mechanics works pretty well, giving you bonuses upon choosing rooms that are mostly similar to the gear abilities you'd get in game but with a higher potency and having a permanent upgrade system in the form of Marina's hacks, but is let down slightly by the difficulty. Taking on average only a few runs to complete, the game gets into the territory of grinding out wins kind of early in its runtime. Not to say that just playing the game isn't still fun, it just lacks the bite that make the genre as compelling as it is. The other aspects of the genre like feeling like an unstoppable monster at the end of a run are still there though, though the game notably lacks complicated build synergies, though that isn't a hallmark of every roguelike. As for everything else, you can see the care that was put into the visual design like all Splatoon games. An effort was made to make everything still seem cool and presenting a wide amount of visual variety despite the game's washed out themes. The narrative is pushed very slightly forward, with a focus on the development of Pearl and Marina's characters, which is welcome but not groundbreaking by any means. We're going to be talking about builds and progression, the incorporation of characters into the mechanics to help strengthen your bond, and this and other Nintendo games' DLC and expansion releases and why they're so weird sometimes. Thank you for joining us this week! It's always fun to revisit Splatoon every now and again, and especially with how strong the DLC was for the last game, this was one I was excited to try. If you're a roguelike fan, I'm mostly sorry this is gated behind a fully different game so you aren't able to just try this on its own. Let us know your thoughts on this one over in the Discord or in the comment section! We're hitting a big milestone next time as it will be the 100th episode of Pocket, so we hope you'll join us for that. We're pausing the DLC theme to celebrate and talking about Super Mario Land to refer back to our first episode on its sequel, so it's going to be a special one!

Karffin' Mofang podcast. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, as the last episode of Mystery May this year, we're going to be talking about Obduction. This is a game in the style of Myst by Cyan, the developers of Myst, and boy did they ace the assignment. Obduction is more accessible than the originals, yes, but it does get into that same headspace more and more as it goes on. So the game has complicated puzzles (and some less complicated ones), but while the design mechanically hasn't evolved too significantly since the 90s, visually, they have been able to create a world that looks very good and shows the imaginative otherworldliness these games are known for while using what are completely different techniques than what were used to create the visual elements of Myst or Riven. The visuals alone would probably have been enough reason to play the game at the time it came out, but it's still a cool experience now to see some of the environments created for the game and to explore them, very slowly, as you scour for clues. We're going to be talking about the pace of the game, the challenges presented both in and out of game, and we give some unsolicited advice on filmmaking, despite not being filmmakers ourselves. Thank you for joining us this week! This game did a surprisingly good job at letting us fulfill our “be people who can make any kind of progress in Myst games” fantasy, but still asked a bit too much of us to complete within the time we had. Are you a fiend for this style of adventure game, or did you pass this one by? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! The last few episodes have tested one of our weaker traits, being at all smart, but next week we are going to try and rally and prove we're good at something difficult, because we're playing Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC (as part of a theme with other DLCs)! We hope you'll join us for that.

Podcast to the shelled ones. Welcome back to the podcast! Today we're talking about Ecco the Dolphin, a side scrolling adventure game and a real classic of the Genesis era. Ecco is a weird game in a lot of ways, the most obvious of which is the fact that it's a game in which you play as a dolphin and all the surprisingly fluid movement that comes with that. Moving around in this game is surprisingly cool for the time, with the ability to swim very quickly around the map and jump out of water. This theme also serves well for other mechanics, including a breath mechanic to add some time pressure to levels and sonar which creates maps on the fly, both of which are really unique and play into the unique aspects of the game. The other reason the game is weird is that, without spoiling it, it does go to places you might not expect from a game about a dolphin. The fact that there is a narrative twist and a bunch of these cool and flavorful mechanics almost makes up for the fact that this game is an extremely unintuitive maze game. Maybe one of the best examples of a game that is fun to play but not fun to beat, completing levels in Ecco requires you to dodge randomly placed phasing-through-walls enemies while moving at high speed and trying to find nooks and/or crannies that contain crystals, which are just keycards. So it's a bit hit and miss but it is one of those retro games that is definitely worth at least looking into if you're interested in some of the bigger swings. We're going to be talking about how and why the difficulty of the game is what it is, how unexpected the twist was, and we fit in a mention of Blackfish because why not. Thank you for joining us again this week! Ecco got put on the list almost as a joke, but we're glad to have actually played it. Such is the whim of the dice. Were you aware of what this game actually was? Did you play this when it was a new game? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! This is our last randomly selected game for Pocket, so we're moving on to our next theme, a thing no one cares about but we have no shortage of anyway. Next time, we're starting a series of episodes dedicated to DLC and expansions and we're beginning with Splatoon 3's Side Order, so we hope you'll join us for that!

There is surprisingly little use for the podcast block. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, the dice have ordained we talk about Infinifactory. This is a game that has been on our list for many years at this point and the main reason we ended up putting it on the (now comical misnomer) Mystery May table was mostly out of fear. Fear of exposing our deep inability to play puzzle games with any kind of ability. Infinifactory is a game by Zachtronics, who are known for creating this sort of puzzle game in which you create machines to accomplish a task. This happens to be one of their most literal. Tasked with creating factories that create specific outputs from a never ending conveyor of inputs in the form of blocks. Using a litany of different tools including welders, rotators and pushers, you orient blocks and combine them together. This ramps up in complexity shockingly quickly and it's both impressive and intimidating, as the objects you create become less abstract and more like actual things. This plays into the game's thematic elements as you are creating these products for an alien race under duress. This plays into the visual and interstitial elements of the game, but also into a surprising narrative. Less surprising because of its content, more due to its existence at all. We're going to be talking about our struggles with the game as it progressed, the relaxed atmosphere of the game, and how difficult it sometimes is to buy burritos. Thank you for joining us again this week! We may have been slightly out of our depth in the second half of this game, but we wanted to play it because it is, at first glance, the most approachable of Zachtronics' games. And this largely bore out. Are you a long-time Zachtronics fan, or do you find these games kind of unapproachable? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we do not get to rest our brains, as we are playing Obduction, from the creators of Myst and following very much in its footsteps, so if you aren't as mentally exhausted as we are, we hope you'll join us for that.

Podcast.Mystery(1); wait(31) Welcome back to the podcast, and to, shamefully, our first episode of Mystery May! Quadrilateral Cowboy is a part heist, part desktop simulation game in which you use a portable “deck” to hack into security systems and use gadgets to get into locations in a cyberpunk dystopia. And the thing that really sets this game apart from most other games in this genre is that you actually have to do all the hacking yourself. It's not quite complicated on the level of something like Hacker Evolution, but the act of creating code yourself and then needing to execute actions in sync with it creates a really creatively expressive environment in which to solve puzzles. The game may add a few more things than were strictly necessary to be a satisfying collection of systems, but each of them is fun to play around with and get a hang of. On top of the strictly mechanical elements of the game, the game builds its world, one of skyscrapers and autoturrets, bombastically while setting up its characters in an exceedingly subtle way. The minimalist art style and lack of any dialogue betray how well the narrative elements are communicated by way of environments, character behaviors and gameplay setup. This is one of those games that, while definitely not being for everyone, shows how games can be used to communicate weirder concepts in ways few other mediums can. We're going to be talking about how the crunchy mechanics are used to design novel puzzle concepts, issues we had both technical and skill, and we set you up with a DC 17 vibe check. Thank you for joining us again this week! We know it's been a long time coming on Mystery May, so much so that it is now June (“Mystery Summer Theater” as Andy has taken to calling it), but appropriately, this game has been on our list to play for seven years so it's been a long time coming as well. Are you a fan of really finnicky mechanic sets like this, or did you look once at this game and say “maybe I'll play the next one”? Let us know in the comments section or over on our Discord! Next time, Mystery May gives us one of the most “thing that's not like the others” games on the list with Ecco the Dolphin, so we hope you'll join us then, or the suffering will almost definitely not have been worth it.

Pod bless you, Andreas. Welcome back to the podcast and somehow, despite it being the middle of the month, not our first game of Mystery May! Today, we're going to be talking about Pentiment, an adventure game in which you play as an artist as he is thrust into the middle of murder mysteries, however unlikely that might be. In each act you collect evidence and talk to the people of the town to gather information and do so in a way that changes the narrative of the game and the other options available to you. One of the most impressive elements is just this, the number of different paths available to you and the often very minor things that can affect a playthrough and flesh out your version of Andreas, as well as the world in which he lives. Given the historical setting of the game, this world building is a major part communicating the themes and helps ease the player in the politics and other messages the game is trying to engage with. And it is really successful at this. You may not learn anything specifically new about the era in which the game takes place, but you will come out with thoughts about the peasants' complaints against their governance, the relationship between a religious institution and the power of the state, and other pretty heady topics the game broaches surprisingly seamlessly. We're going to be talking about how the game's art style attempts to mimic the art that was created during that time period, the game's surprisingly solid writing and also the length of time we can listen to chickens before we just give up and turn the sound off. Thank you for joining us again this week! We'll be slowly rolling through our next few episodes due to things happening in our lives outside of the podcast, but we will be moving through four Mystery May games before anything else, and the first of those is coming next week on Pocket. Next main episode, however, will be on Infinifactory, so we hope you'll join us for that.

I can't just hide here forever and podcast. Welcome back to the podcast where this week we're going to be talking about Pseudoregalia! This is a metroidvania platformer that was originally developed as part of a game jam. The game is set in a castle and tasks you with navigating around to discover new abilities and, eventually, keys to end the game. The method by which you do this is some absolutely badass movement tech. I think it's safe to say that for the majority of people, this movement is the major selling point of the game. You are very fluid, being able to chain different moves together to cover huge distances and scale walls, turning most rooms into something of a puzzle, but one with many interesting solutions. You can string together wall jumps and slides and kicks and et cetera in a number of different ways to traverse the world and it is pretty much always engaging to do. There are certainly ways in which the game doesn't excel, but it is nonetheless a really fun way to spend a few hours, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to master these kinds of mechanics. We're going to be talking about the necessity of the map, an addition in an update, to navigate without going completely insane, the game's interest curve as you progress toward the end, and we codify the misty castle aesthetic. Thank you for joining us again today as we close out our time doing soulslike games with the least soulslike of all. Still a fun time and one that did become strangely popular. How did you hear about this game, if you had at all? Let us know in the comments below or over in our Discord. Next time, we're going to be talking about Pentament in our constant struggle to make every non-themed game as different as possible from the one we played before. We hope you'll be back for that!

Grand Covenant's Fourth Law: A podcast cannot lie. Welcome back to the podcast! Lies of P is definitely a game that turned some heads when it was announced, given that it's based around Pinnochio. Set in a city overrun by automatons, stylized as puppets, who have broken their safeguards and begun attacking people, Lies of P takes its themes and ideas from Pinnochio, along with some of its characters, but not necessarily its plot. In fact, the way it manages to weave this inspiration into the rest of the game is probably its most impressive narrative feat. This is particularly notable that the thing it's weaving these elements into is just a Dark Souls game. More so than any other game we've played, on- or off-air, this really feels like a FROM designed Souls game, or at least very close to it. The combat takes heavy cues from Sekiro and Bloodborne with the healing mechanics and stats from Dark Souls, you can tell the developers have been taking notes. And this can be both good and bad, because the game feels familiar and also very good to play most of the time, but it does also call attention to elements from the games (upgrade materials, consumable items, a prosthetic) that feel more or less necessary for this game specifically. It's a strange experience to some extent, but still a very good one if this style of game is something you already enjoyed. Is this game derivative? A little, for sure, but there is still some novelty to be found, particularly in its aesthetics. This and the combat mechanics that combine the weapon variety of Dark Souls (as well as a unique weapon recombination mechanic) with the satisfying defensive options of Sekiro, mean that as much as this makes you think about where its inspirations came from, as weird as the theme of the game is on its face, and as difficult as the game can be at times, it's still a very good time. We're going to be talking about the integration of the source material into the mechanical identity of the game, how auxiliary mechanics complicate the game both for good and for bad, and how they really should have just called the game Pinnochio. Thank you for listening this week! As you can probably tell, we've been doing a bit of a Soulslike run recently, which we'll be finishing up on pocket next time, but I think it's shown just how diverse this subgenre can be. Lies of P stands out less for its own identity but more for its devotion to the identity of the games that inspired it, and it's a complicated topic to discuss. Do you think this impressive adherence to FROM's catalog will be a positive change for these types of games going forward, normalizing the base gameplay and allowing for more diversity in how those mechanics are utilized and twisted to fit the game at hand, or do you think this is just one direction for the genre to go, with the other elements taking center stage as in games like Lunacid? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we're going to be sprinting as far as we possibly can in the other direction and talking about Pentiment, so we hope you'll join us then.

Banished into the depths of the Great Podcast. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we're talking about Lunacid, a game that is in its own words, inspired by old FROMSOFTWARE titles like King's Field and Shadow Tower. And while you can definitely feel the influence, the game does enough to stand out on its own that it's definitely worth playing. You play as someone cast into the Great Well, essentially an enormous dungeon, with escape being your only goal. This goal is pretty emblematic of the game, as well, as it is extremely vague and leaves the player mostly just exploring each area in hopes of finding clues to help them progress. This is a massive strength in that it preserves the mystery inherent to a lot of FROM's catalogue while forcing the game's exploration elements to the forefront, which the design is obviously very focused around. It also results in the game being a bit aimless, which depending on who you are can be a little frustrating, but with enough meaningful rewards to find to keep you playing. Weapons and spells are extremely plentiful, offering a lot of ways to interact with both combat and the world itself, with some specific interactions like unlocking paths as well as more player-driven things like being able to skip some obstacles and reach strange locations. Lunacid is nostalgic, thanks to its aesthetic design, but it is also a captivating world to explore that folds in more recent design trends to make something more transcendent than just a copy of its inspirations. We're going to be talking about the games by which Lunacid's design is influenced, the presentational choices from character designs to the music's genre and style, and we discuss whether we were or were not in “the know.” Thank you for joining us again this week! This was a game I knew I wanted to do pretty much as soon as I'd heard about it, so while we aren't exactly day and date with its release, it was one we scheduled as soon as possible. Did you play this game in early access or since it's been out in full? Did you find it to be more or less similar to Dark Souls? Let us know in the comments below or over on our Discord! We're sort of continuing on a trend for the next episode and we're going to be talking about Lies of P, the Soulslike that features Pinocchio for some reason, so we hope you'll join us for that!

Hold down and swipe up to podcast. Welcome back to the podcast! For our last episode in Fanbruary, well into March at this point, we're going to be talking about Mario Hoops 3 on 3. MHTOT (lol) is a bit of an anomaly in the Mario sports game pantheon, as it is a DS game that makes heavy use of the touch screen in its control scheme. This seemed like a pretty innocuous suggestion when we got it, but playing this game is a whole experience. It is without a doubt the most complicated basketball game I've ever played, and it is really interesting, but I'm not sure where this would even fall on the good game-bad game scale. The overall content is pretty limited, but that is partly made up for by just how difficult it is to get a handle on the controls. There isn't too much preamble for this one, honestly, it's just mad swiping on a DS for a few hours. We're going to be talking about the insane control scheme, the insanely lengthy tutorial, and how this game is exactly like The World Ends With You. Thank you for joining us again this week! This episode was requested multiple times and honestly I'm so glad we finally got to it. It's such a bizarre time capsule for when new hardware brought innovations, some of which were good and others which were Mario Hoops 3 on 3. Was this a game you had heard about, or enjoyed when it came out? Did you actually play it with other people, and if so how was that experience? Let us know in the Discord or down in the comment section. Next time, we're going to be playing Pseudoregalia as part of our souls-like themed month we're trying to do, so we hope you'll join us for that!

You could pod another cast. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, for our second bite at the Fanbruary apple on the main cast, we're going to be talking about Valheim. Valheim is a survival game that largely captured the audience for this type of game when it released in early access with it's Norse theming, boss laddering and robust base building mechanics. Since those halcyon days, the updates to the game have slowed down a bit and the player base has dwindled some, but it still remains one of the most popular survival games. Now, we are not the most avid survival game players. You might say that we all but never play these games. But, we gave this the old college try despite being very unfamiliar with the conventions of the genre, and for the most part managed to get by. Valheim is a game about very slow resource accretion with helpfully well defined goals, those being to build a shelter, improve your equipment, find a way to navigate to each boss, and defeat them for powerups, and then proceed down the line. It is compelling to have an extrinsic goal in a game like this, but there are also myriad decisions that place it squarely within its genre and make it lack some appeal outside that audience. We're going to be talking about chopping down trees, mining copper, and chopping down trees. Thank you for joining us again this week! Following our stated objective of playing games we wouldn't normally during Fanbruary, this is squarely outside of our usual comfort zone. That said, the game has its merits and I hope we were able to identify them successfully. And if not? Why, you can let us know down in the comments or over on the discord, from whence this suggestion came! Next time, we're taking a look at Lunacid, a King's Field inspired title, so we hope you'll join us then!

We are not enemies, but we are a podcast. Welcome back to Fanbruary! For our second game of the month (don't look at the calendar, please), we're going to be talking about Wet, a third person shooter that iterates on the mechanical innovations of games like Prince of Persia and Max Payne, and takes its title both from a shortened version of the term “wetwork” and also people who are bad at naming things. Wet is honestly a fascinating game just in the sheer difference between its relative obscurity compared to other games from the era and the amount of effort that was clearly put into it. The mechanics are fleshed out, if not always polished, the visuals hold up pretty well for its period, the soundtrack features over a dozen guest artists and that's not to mention the insane voice cast (and I mean that literally, we entirely forget to mention it in the episode). And yet, if you're like anyone I've talked to about the game, you've probably never heard of it. While we may not know exactly what caused this game to fall into obscurity, we can look at it now and see what it brings to the table. We're going to be talking about the game's exploitation film theming and aesthetic, how the mechanics come so close to realizing their potential, and the impossibility of asking your parents for a game called Wet. Thank you for listening to NOCLIP Pocket! We are slowly getting our wheels spinning again after taking most of January off, but Fanbruary is underway with five whole days left in the month! We like to do games we would most likely not do outside of the fan-suggested month, and while Wet fell more into the “we would have never thought about it” category more than the “we would never play that” one, we still wanted to give it a chance because of cool it looked. Was Wet a game you had played, or even heard about? Let us know down in the comments or over on Discord! We'll be back next time to talk about Mario Hoops 3-on-3, so we hope you'll join us then.

You did not survive the podcast, Raziel. Welcome to Fanbruary! As we have for the last three years, this month we're going to be looking at games suggested by members of our community and we're starting today with Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver! This is an action/adventure Metroidvania title from 1999 and, especially considering the era in which this released, it has a lot going on. The game has full voice acting for all characters, a not insignificant world to explore and a large amount of side content for the player to stumble onto. Over the course of the game you will pick up a few traversal abilities, health and mana upgrades, spells, and an upgrade to your weapon by exploring the world. That said, this game shows its age pretty significantly and has a number of features and design decisions that maybe don't hold up so well playing them in a modern context. Whether that be controls, enemy design or the mechanics of puzzles and combat, there is always something off about most systems that really put a hinderance on your enjoyment of the game. What are these? Well, tune in to hear us discuss the exploration-focused world that the game presents, the different things the game tries in the Metroidvania genre, and to hear us say what every 90s kid would about water levels and swimming. Thank you for joining us again this week! We got a lot of great suggestions from you all for this month and it has been genuinely hard to narrow down which games best meet our criteria for great Fanbruary titles, and Soul Reaver felt like a good pick to start us off because it's fairly well-known, but not one we would likely go back to had it not been suggested. After playing it, it's fair to say that we understand why the series has the reputation it does, though it's also a pretty powerful reminder of the effect nostalgia can have on our perception of something. Were we too harsh on the game? Are you a long time fan who is upset we only played this game and skipped Blood Omen? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we're going to be talking about Valheim, which will be our first episode on a survival game, so we hope you'll join us then!

A podcast inside a podcast inside a podcast… Welcome back to the podcast! For our January episode, which we kind of did so you didn't forget we exist before Fanbruary begins, we're going to be talking about Cocoon. Cocoon is a puzzle game developed by Geometric Interactive, a studio formed by members of the developer Playdead, and while this game is something else entirely than Limbo or Inside, the style they bring is definitely present. Cocoon is not a horror game, yet it creates a sense of eerie foreboding all while being saturated with color and without the threat of death to the player hanging over their head. It's an intriguing world to exist in, and that's not even getting into the actual puzzle mechanics. These involve ducking in and out of different playable areas which you can physically carry with you and eventually imbue you with additional abilities. It's almost hard to explain in a way that impresses upon you what makes it interesting, but it's a great set of mechanics to center the puzzles on, which get progressively more complicated in the ways you might expect and in some ways that you definitely won't. It's a very satisfying, but not overly difficult experience and one that is well worth giving a shot. We're going to be talking about the puzzles that really had an effect on us and the way we see the game, how the sound and visuals work together to create an incredible atmosphere, and we use the word Kafkaesque in what seems like a safe scenario but probably still use it wrong. Thank you for joining us! Cocoon was a game that we were both excited for given its pedigree and one that feels thematically appropriate as the first of a new year. What was your experience with Cocoon? Did you find the puzzles as satisfying as we did? Were you able to create a more satisfying interpretation of the themes? Let us know in the comments, or over on our Discord! Next time, we're heading into Fanbruary, the month where you the listener chooses what games we play. We've gotten some great suggestions so far, but it's still open for the next couple weeks if you want to give us any further games to consider. Our first full episode is going to be on The Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, so we hope you'll join us for that!

The awards show least likely to be compared to Dark Souls What a year it has been! We played some comical old PC games, overrepresented horror, had some unnecessary and frankly inscrutable themed months and most of the good games we played came as suggestions from you guys. Okay, so maybe it was exactly the same as every other year, but it's all about the content variety, really. This year had a good amount of that, at least. And of course, as has been said for untold past millennia, variety in games played means excellent choices for the NOCLIP Awards. Today, we're bringing back some old favorites as well as new categories. From Best Soundtrack and Smashiest Balls to Coolest Ancient Artefact and the Another Man's Treasure award (in which we find the most worthless collectibles), we're recapping the truly standout moments of the year and reflecting upon the games we played and talked about. We hope you can use this opportunity to join us in celebration, or at least get drunk and yell at our bad decisions. Thank you for listening this week, and for your continued support over the last year! Contrary to the joke in the beginning of this description, things have changed a decent amount for us. We crossed 100 YouTube subscribers this year, which is funny, but still a milestone. The podcast is also being recorded mostly fully remote at this point, which was a learning curve (that we're still climbing, so thank you for bearing with us). All that in addition to the usual time spent and decision making we do to try to make the show as entertaining as possible means that we put forth some effort to make this thing. That said, we as always had a great amount of fun even with the worst games we played, and continue to love doing it. Thank you to everyone who listens and we hope we continue to be, at minimum, satisfactory in 2024.

This early in the game, I doubt you have the podcast to back that up. Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket, and the final episode of the year! We decided to try to do holiday themes this year and based on our success rate, I doubt we'll go for it again. Cthulhu Saves Christmas is a novelty follow up to another comedy RPG by this developer, Cthulhu Saves the World, but this time it is obviously themed around Christmas. The game is a throwback RPG with turn-based combat and (kind of) random encounters, where you lead Cthulhu and a party of festive followers around locations from different Christmas mythologies to defeat an evil league of ne'er-do-wells. On top of that, the combat has numerous systems, including a character specific mechanic involving building and spending chicken power as well as shifting the moves available to you based on your use of yet another recharge system. If that all seems like a lot for an indie game as short as this one is, well, you'd be right. There are a lot of good ideas present here, but it lacks the focus that's necessary to really bring it all together into a game that is both novel and fun. That being said, if the game's particular brand of humor speaks to you and you can appreciate the presentation, with a particular highlight on the music, this could still be worth the pretty low asking price. Thank you for joining us again this week and this year for NOCLIP Pocket! We hope your holidays are going well (or at least better than the games we chose for this month, lol). I want to spotlight the upcoming Fanbruary event we're doing here, so if you have suggestions of games we'd like to play, let us know over on our Discord or in the comments (or an email, or wherever else you're comfortable doing so) and we'll put those games in the running for an episode. Check out the last two Februarys for some examples of what we chose if you're looking for inspiration. Thank you for listening this week, and next time we post a pocket, it will be one of the games we chose, so we hope you'll join us then!

I will podcast unfulfilled! Happy holidays! To celebrate the season, we're talking about a game that has at least one time on the internet been compared to Home Alone, and that game is Trapt! Trapt is a game in which you prepare and trigger traps within a 3D environment to attack and kill your enemies. Unlike what you are probably imagining, the game plays nothing like a tower defense game or even a puzzle game. It is instead the clunkiest action game you've ever played. As you have to trigger traps manually with most of them affecting only a single tile or a row of tiles, most of the game consists of meticulously leading the pretty manipulable AI into specific parts of the map where all of your traps are set up to trigger them all at once. But this isn't all bad! Well, the gameplay is kind of a wash, but there is more to the game than that: the narrative and character work are also really bad! But in this case it is a major boon for the game, because if there is a reason to play it, it's likely for this absolute camp. Every enemy you kill has a backstory and unique entry and death dialogue, with some levels having up to ten enemies, and each stage begins and ends (at least) with a cutscene. There is a lot of story content to enjoy, and while the plot itself is pretty basic, and character's motivations seem very easily swayed, the melodrama of it all is very worth it. We're going to be talking about how the game itself plays and what we expected from it, the dialogue we found especially hilarious, and we defend our choice to make this a holiday episode. Thank you for listening to the podcast this week! We talk a bit of trash on this one, but the game is still doing something unique (even though it's the fourth in a series, technically) and deserves some flowers for that. We didn't have a bad time or anything, it's just a fairly basic execution of the concept. Have you played other games in the “Deception” series? Is the first one you've even heard of? Let us know over in our Discord or in the comment section! Next time, we're going to be rolling out the green carpet for the NOCLIP Awards, so get your bingo cards ready and start making predictions! We hope you've had a good year and we'll see you in 2024 for more episodes!

My intentions are podcast. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we're going to be talking about The Fall. Despite being almost ten years old, I'd consider this to be part of the new wave of adventure games, ones that seek to capture some of the elements of the classic games but without the more obtuse elements. The Fall mostly manages this, using a 2D sidescrolling style which limits the amount of screen searching and navigation you have to do to find all the pieces to each of the puzzles. It's not without its stumbling points, but for the most part the puzzles are well designed and placed very smoothly into the difficulty curve. Slightly more questionably, it also includes combat mechanics and some exceedingly light platforming, but the mechanic set is well rounded and it's easy to overlook some of the less polished aspects. The kicker, though, is that what you didn't know you were actually here for is the narrative. The game is shockingly well written, both for the genre and medium as well as the time period, doing a great job of communicating its themes without dumbing them down for the player to understand. It's a sci-fi narrative focused around AI that feels very focused, and honestly ahead of its time, and it's well worth playing just for the story alone. We're going to be talking about the more misguided elements of the puzzles and mechanic systems, how impressed we are that we cared about the characters at all, and ways to improve coffee…puzzles. Thank you for joining us again this week! This is a game that had made it onto the Mystery May list for how long we've known about it, but having now played it, it's surprising how little it shows its age. Certainly in some mechanical ways it feels old, but we were impressed by its maturity. Let us know what you thought in the comments section or over on our Discord! Next time, we're doing what may be our first ever Christmas special, and talking about Cthulhu Saves Christmas, so we hope you're in the spirit for it then.

I've got some oomph in my bloom. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we're talking about Super Mario Bros. Wonder, a new 2D Mario platformer, which in a weird way kind of feels like part of a trend of Nintendo making more nostalgic releases, like Pikmin or Metroid Dread and remaking Link's Awakening and Mario RPG. Mario Wonder is a classic 2D Mario game like we haven't seen since the New Super Mario Bros. games, but unlike those games, Wonder has a direct goal of making more innovations and changing the basic gameplay of Mario. This is a AAA video game, though, so don't expect something so radically different and risky, but with a more whimsical aesthetic and a surprising mechanical section in each level, it certainly feels much different than past games. And this is definitely a good thing, Wonder lives up to its name by giving you something new to discover in each course and encourages you to explore to ensure you see as much of it as you can. In addition, the game contains new powerups, a badge system that can change your moveset and the layouts of the world as well. All this to say, this game isn't the next best thing in the history of platformers or even just Mario. It is refreshing, and fun, and well designed and it looks and sounds very pretty, but it isn't going to stress your abilities, it isn't jam-packed with content and much of the gameplay is straight out of previous titles in the series. This makes up the bulk of our conversation: in a very mechanically driven genre, is what Mario Wonder provides different enough to be recommended despite the polish that comes with being a first party Nintendo title, is it too different, with differences in kind appearing partway through every single level while not giving the base platforming room to shine? We'll discuss this and also be talking about the importance of collectibles and how they influence you as you play, the difficulty management present in the badge and character systems, and we take a hard stance on how Toads are treated in the Mario canon. Thank you for listening again this week! As one of the more anticipated Nintendo releases this year, we were excited to get into it and it is interesting to see how it compared to each of our expectations. Or maybe it was very boring to see and I'm just trying to drum up excitement to try to convince you to listen to our podcast, who's to say? Either way, what did you think of Mario Wonder? Are we just extremely old and have been playing platformers for too long, or was this game easier than you would have expected? Let us know in the comments or over in our Discord! We are getting into the holiday season and so next time, we're going to be getting into the spirit by talking about that classic Christmastime game: Trapt on the PS2. We hope you'll join us then, if only to figure out how that makes sense.

The podcast is watching. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we're going to be talking about Rollerdrome, a game that mixes the extreme sports of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater with the extreme crime of gun violence. In Rollerdrome, you are tasked with eliminating all the enemies that spawn in waves within a level while performing tricks to reload your guns, and doing so quickly to maintain combos and end up with a high score. Maybe the concept doesn't sound simple at first, because it isn't, but even so the game is still much harder than you might expect at the outset. The game's short length means that compared to the amount of time you have to practice for it, the challenge ramps up quickly, with levels in the first round of the game being able to kill you repeatedly if you aren't careful, and probably still a few times even if you are. Is the game worth learning well enough to push through these difficult stages? I'd say yes. The act of getting better at this game is incredibly satisfying because the mechanics all play so well into each other. Your weapons all serve very distinct purposes and each contain different mechanics to get used to, like timing or charge-up mechanics, but all feed off of the same ammo pool, meaning that managing your resources by sprinkling tricks in wherever possible is a major part of keeping combos up and even just surviving. This means that when it clicks, your runs look very fluid, improvisational, but controlled. We're going to be talking about, yes, the difficulty and how we each felt it handled it, the game's light narrative, and we discuss the pros and even better pros of being able to skate on a huge monster's ass. Thank you for joining us again this week! Rollerdrome is one of the rare video game ass video games done for Pocket, and one that didn't really take me by surprise. But just because I got exactly what I expected from it doesn't mean it isn't great. Did you feel that Rollerdrome was a satisfying challenge, or are we babies? Let us know in the comments, or over on our Discord! Next time we're going to be talking about The Fall, which is an ancient (by today's standards) indie adventure game, so we hope you'll join us then.

Use the Holy Pod to follow the Golden Cast Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we're talking about Tunic, a game styled very much after the classic 2D Zelda titles, but with some other influences that will become apparent as you play through the game. Tunic is a colorful, cute game, with a fox wearing a shirt as a protagonist and bushes that squish and bounce when you cut them down. This seems to be to lure you into a false sense of security because the game itself is actually much more difficult than its aesthetics would lead you to believe. The combat in this game is simple in terms of your actions, but has depth in execution. Regular enemies can pose a threat early on, some much more than others, but the bosses of the game are all tests of your abilities. Beyond that, the game primarily focuses around navigation puzzles and exploration, rewarding the player with upgrades and items they can use to get stronger, make fights easier or open up further paths for traversal. And you can't forget what is essentially the selling feature of the game, the instruction manual. There is a booklet programmed into the game itself that you pick up pages from over the course of your adventure. The book mostly isn't written in a readable language (though it can be deciphered with some dedication), but it gives hints on everything from what you should be doing to how to perform basic actions like the dodge roll, explaining invincibility frames, and what the different parts of the UI mean. Collecting pieces of this manual is a driving force for a lot of reasons, and we'll get into all the things it means for the experience in the episode. We'll also be talking about the accessibility of certain features and how much the average player should be accommodated, the ups and downs of the combat and our experience with the bosses, and Dark Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls. Thank you for listening to the podcast again today! This one was always going to happen eventually, and now that it's done we're left with some complicated feelings, but this game is genuinely incredible in a lot of ways. How did you get along with Tunic? Was the difficulty on par with what you look for in games, or were you taken aback by the level of challenge? Were you able to solve the end game puzzles or did you leave that for the more cryptographically-minded out there? Let us know down in the comments, or over on our Discord (where you can also suggest games for us to play)! Next time, we're going to be talking about Super Mario Wonder, the newest Mario platformer, so we hope you'll join us for that.

I'm just podcasting my Wares. Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket! Today, we're talking about Anodyne, a Zelda-like indie game from ten years ago, which, boy does that just feel like forever these days. Anodyne doesn't so much have a shtick as it just tries to be a solid action adventure game while exploring its mechanics and themes, and realistically that's all it needs to be. This is a decently well focused game that understands its own scope very well, and because of that it manages to hold up incredibly against the passing of time. Anodyne takes place within a dream and explores a variety of settings from apartment buildings and hotels to fantasy forests and abstract representations of “place,” which keeps each new area feeling fresh which does wonders for keeping the player engaged as they go through it. Its mechanics are mostly simple, as it doesn't port over the item collection aspects of a Zelda game, but it does have depth in the mechanics it does have, which are both a little surprising and largely unexplained. It manages to hold a bit of mystery all while being a focused, unassuming little game, and is definitely worth playing if you haven't already. We're going to be talking about balancing tone in a game with so many different aesthetic elements within it, what areas we felt were most well executed and most unexpected, and we no joke read a definition out of a dictionary, so get absolutely pumped for that. Thank you again for joining us this week! It's been a couple months since we've done an entirely unthemed pocket, and Anodyne has been on our list for a while (it was relatively new when the podcast started, unbelievably), so we finally got to bring it out. If you played Anodyne, were you early enough to have played before the remaster? If not, do you think the game holds up after so many years? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we're going to be talking about Rollerdrome, and for no other reason than we wanted to. Which changes the tone of the end of these descriptions, I'm realizing. I got very used to being able to just sort of follow a formula. But it's not “Retrovember” where we're talking about all the games featuring 90's trends like rollerblading or something, so this will just have to do. We hope you'll join us then!

I'm as podcast as you are. Welcome back! For our final episode of Halloween, we're talking about Dredge, the fishing game that takes its aesthetic inspiration from cosmic horror, and of course, H.P. Lovecraft. In Dredge you play as a fisherman and you catch fish to pay for upgrades to your ship, repairs, etc., all while working toward the goal of collecting several relics for a mysterious man who lives on an island by himself. Which isn't weird at all. The fishing itself is engaging enough, but the atmosphere of the game is where it really shines. There is a sense of foreboding as day turns to night and things start becoming more dangerous. This ends up being the main point of contention as far as how successful the game is, because while the aberrant catches and mysterious strangers are all very interesting, and the darkness always hides an unknown threat, the other half of the game is inventory management and resource collection. The more mechanical half of the game can be satisfying, but the tension is broken during extended periods of supplying metal and wood to upgrade your ship, making sure your fish are perfectly tetris'd in your storage, and managing net catches. The game is pulled in two directions, with one wanting to be an atmospheric, dread inducing horror title and the other wanting to be a pretty decent management sim. None of it is quite enough to make the game bad, or not worth playing, and the narrative makes up for it by being just mysterious enough to lead the player along and make them want to learn more about the characters, but it does feel like a weak spot in an otherwise good game. We're going to be talking about the curse that is trying to do cosmic horror in a video game, how we engaged with the story of the game and our expectations, and we redesign the Pokemon games to make them better, just as a free bonus. You're welcome, Game Freak. Thank you for joining us again this week, and for the month of spooky games that we look forward to all year. And we even kinda did it twice this time. How was everyone's Halloween? Did you play anything particularly scary, or do anything else to get in the mood of the season? Let us know in the comment section or over on our Discord server! Next time, we're going to be shifting gears a fair bit, and talking about Tunic, so we hope you'll join us then.

Welcome home. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we're talking about Midnight Manor, a late entry suggestion for Pocket this Halloween that ended up probably saving our schedule. Midnight Manor is a short horror-themed platformer from a solo developer that encourages players to play the game multiple times in different ways to see all the narrative possibilities it has to offer. Mechanically speaking, the game is simple, revolving around carrying items necessary for progression from place to place and navigating the titular manor. This simple gameplay lends itself, in a way, to the multiple ending-based design of the game, encouraging you to make small optimizations to make each successive run a bit faster, but admittedly does very little to make the game more engaging to go through each time. With no enemies, and therefore no fail state, to speak of, what is left to really engage with lies in its atmosphere, music, art and narrative content. All of these things are subjective, but given the short time investment to actually complete the game, and even seeing all the endings isn't going to add all that much to your total playtime, it is likely worth the low barrier to entry to playing. We're going to be talking about how character design can raise questions and eyebrows and our thoughts on the intentionality of it, what vibes the presentational aspects of the game put off, and we theorize on what this game may be a sequel to. Thank you for joining us again this week! Midnight Manor was a strangely nostalgic experience that harked back to indie games during our more experimental years when we were just trying anything we could find. That said, it's a mixed bag, though still more polished and with more thought than you might expect from a project that was this tiny. Did Midnight Manor send you back to a simpler time? Did it get you to play through it more than once? Let us know in the comments, or over in the Discord, where the suggestion for this game came from. As I said at the beginning, our time was rather tight this month, and our last Halloween game is going to bleed over into November a little bit, but we're always happy to try weird things for October and this certainly qualifies. Next time, we're going to be talking about Anodyne for a bit more of an adventure-y feel for November, so be sure to check back with us then!

Dismember their podcast. Welcome back to NOCLIP! Today, we're going to be talking about our first horror title for the Halloween season with Dead Space. Specifically, we're talking about the 2023 remake of the game with only a limited understanding of the original. That said, this is a game that makes a pretty brutal impression very quickly, so we did pick it up quickly. Dead Space is an action survival horror game in the same vein as Resident Evil 4, with an over the shoulder camera. The game's hook is centered around its enemies, the necromorphs, forcing the player to cut off their limbs to dispatch them efficiently, and this is accomplished in about the most inelegant way imaginable: with power tools and a phenomenally heavy boot. The game is gory and over the top, and while it stumbles over some of the more nuanced elements of the artform, like character development and story, sometimes an extremely raucous horror title is exactly what you want. Which isn't to say this game goes full Doom. The violence is extreme, yes, but it has scary moments, sometimes maintaining something resembling quiet for seconds to even minutes at a time. It builds and releases tension in quick bursts, and uniquely handles its music cues so as to allow the player to jump scare themselves at times, making it a perfect game for that mid-October horror kick. We're going to be talking about the arsenal and how the game's take on weapons sells its premise and mechanical hook, how the remake's expanded take on Isaac Clarke impacts its narrative and storytelling, and we produce two extremely professional box quotes for them to use on any future physical releases of the remake. Thank you for joining us again this week! The remake of this game re-sparked our interest in doing it for Halloween, despite continually putting it off for other things, and honestly I'm pretty glad we waited. The visual spectacle of this game is one of its major selling points and the more modern version of it probably helped it take effect. That said, have you played the original version of the game? Do you think we should have played the original over the remake? Let us know over in our Discord or in the comments! Next time, we're going to be talking about Dredge, the Lovecraftian fishing game that released earlier this year and took the world by storm. Or at least, by drizzle. By squall? Some people liked it, for sure.