Podcast appearances and mentions of kelly did

Is He a Jerk (and Kelly Did the Same Thing) by Maine's Coast 93.1

Al and Kelly talk about Grimoire Groves Disclosure: We received a free review code for Grimoire Groves. #gifted Timings 00:00:00: Theme Tune 00:00:30: Intro 00:02:23: What Have We Been Up To 00:12:16: Game News 00:36:28: New Games 00:39:42: Grimoire Groves 01:12:37: Outro Links Harvest Moon Pre-Orders Bugaboo Pocket Release Date Fields of Mistria 2nd Update Go-go Town “Spring Cleaning” Update Sun Haven “Festivals” 2.0 Update Autonomica (Farm Folks) Name Change Coral Island 2025 Roadmap Everdream Village Contact Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/ Transcript (0:00:30) Al: Hello, farmers, and welcome to another episode of the Harvest Season. (0:00:34) Al: My name is Al, and we are here today to talk about cottagecore games. (0:00:36) Kelly: And my name is Kelly. (0:00:40) Kelly: Yay. (0:00:41) Al: Welcome back, Kelly. How are you doing? (0:00:44) Kelly: Good. (0:00:44) Kelly: It’s always nice to be back. (0:00:46) Kelly: It’s so funny, because all of my voice recordings are just– (0:00:46) Al: Always nice to have you. (0:00:52) Kelly: oh, it’s like memory lane looking at all the past podcasts. (0:00:56) Al: You were last on talking about fields of mystery, which we might have stuff to talk about with (0:01:00) Kelly: Yes, yes. (0:01:04) Kelly: Yeah, I saw there was a note, but I (0:01:06) Kelly: I haven’t checked it out since we last spoke. (0:01:10) Kelly: Yeah, how have you been? (0:01:10) Al: But yeah, your first one of the year you did three last year. (0:01:12) Kelly: Oh, yeah, 2025. (0:01:14) Al: Let’s see if we can get you above three this year. (0:01:19) Al: Cool. Well, I have Kelly on this episode because we are going to (0:01:23) Al: talk about grimoire groves, grimoire groves. (0:01:28) Kelly: Yes, it’s like a little tongue twister. (0:01:31) Al: Yes, grimoire groves. (0:01:34) Al: Got to say up front, obviously, we received a free review code (0:01:38) Al: for the game, which actually can. (0:01:40) Al: I don’t know. No, that was a joke. That was a joke. That was a joke. (0:02:00) Kelly: No, no, no, no, I would absolutely pay money for this game. (0:02:11) Al: Spoiler alert. Yeah, so we’re going to talk about that game later in the episode. Before (0:02:15) Kelly: And thank you, Al, for that. (0:02:22) Al: that, we’ve obviously got a bunch of news, but first of all, Kelly, what have you been (0:02:26) Kelly: I have been up to taking care of a stray cat and then just trying to start (0:02:33) Kelly: planning out stuff for the spring for the yard. (0:02:36) Al: Oh, yes. Is it garden talking time? What’s your plans for this year? (0:02:39) Kelly: Yeah, but also we’re trying to… I don’t know yet. I’m still waiting but I have to (0:02:47) Kelly: clean up the yard because I prioritized weeding other areas of the house last (0:02:51) Kelly: fall instead of the garden, so it’s still kind of overgrown. (0:02:56) Kelly: I’m trying to get dirt so I can level out the borders of the (0:02:59) Kelly: yard and then tarp them. So exciting. And besides that, I’ve (0:03:08) Kelly: been playing Infinity Nikki for three solid months. This broke (0:03:11) Kelly: my streak, actually. I still play the game every day, so it (0:03:12) Al: No, I haven’t played it (0:03:17) Kelly: didn’t actually break my streak. I just was the only game I was (0:03:19) Kelly: playing for three months. (0:03:22) Al: Fair enough. I haven’t played Infinity Nakey. I’m pretty sure that Dalin plays it as well. (0:03:29) Al: I think we’ve talked about it before, but if you’ve been playing it for three months (0:03:34) Al: straight, I guess you’ve been enjoying it then. (0:03:36) Kelly: - Yes, yes, I think there were definitely moments, (0:03:39) Al: This is the dress-up game, right? Yeah. (0:03:41) Kelly: yes, there were definitely moments where I was playing it (0:03:43) Kelly: ‘cause I just was like, I don’t really have anything else (0:03:45) Kelly: I’m trying to play at the moment, (0:03:48) Kelly: but there is a lot of content and it looks really nice (0:03:51) Kelly: and it’s just like fun to run around the open world (0:03:53) Kelly: and like collect your stuff. (0:03:55) Kelly: It’s just a collecting game. (0:03:56) Al: Yeah. Look, you’re talking to a Pokemon player, right? Like, I know what collecting is like, (0:04:01) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:04:03) Al: I know the feeling. I think it’s a unique part of it, is the fact that it’s a gacha (0:04:10) Al: collecting game, but with outfits, I think is fun. (0:04:12) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:04:14) Kelly: Yes. (0:04:15) Kelly: And unfortunately, there are some things (0:04:19) Kelly: that you cannot beat with essentially not doing the gotcha, (0:04:22) Kelly: but you don’t have to do everything. (0:04:24) Kelly: It’s not going to stop your story progression. (0:04:27) Kelly: You’re just not going to get bonuses. (0:04:30) Al: Right. They’ve got to have a reason for you to pay money, right? (0:04:30) Kelly: You’re just not going to get the coolest outfit. (0:04:33) Kelly: Did I– absolutely. (0:04:36) Kelly: And did I spend some money to get a frog outfit? (0:04:40) Kelly: Yes, but it was a surprise. (0:04:42) Kelly: There was a dog outfit and I needed it. (0:04:44) Kelly: But also like the game is free also, so. (0:04:47) Al: Yes. And, well, yes, exactly. Tell me that three years ago. The thing about these three games is, (0:04:48) Kelly: You just have to you have to restrain yourself. (0:04:57) Al: yeah, you’ve got to make sure that you’re not going over the top, but you’ve also got to think (0:05:00) Al: about how much time and fun you’ve gotten out of games. Like, you know, if I think about Pokemon Go, (0:05:04) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:05:07) Al: I have obviously, I’ve definitely put too much money into that. But also when I think about the (0:05:07) Kelly: Ah, yes. (0:05:11) Al: amount of time that I spend in that game. Like, I spend hours every single day. (0:05:16) Kelly: Oh, I was Pokemon go is probably my highest. Yeah (0:05:17) Al: For eight, for nine years now. (0:05:22) Kelly: Like I don’t and I I I go back and forth on playing it but that game has (0:05:27) Kelly: That’s my most played game because of that (0:05:28) Al: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, ever. Yeah, that don’t think is… (0:05:31) Kelly: Like it beat my Sims like legacy of like, you know playing that from like 10 years old or whatever (0:05:38) Al: I think the thing is that because it’s so accessible, but also because you’re playing (0:05:41) Kelly: It’s so accessible it’s in your hand (0:05:45) Al: it for so many years, even if you only played half an hour every day after 10 years, which (0:05:47) Kelly: Mm-hmm. Yes, exactly (0:05:54) Al: in a year and a bit, it’ll be 10 years since the game came out, if you’ve only played half (0:05:58) Kelly: That’s disgusting, don’t say that. (0:06:05) Al: an error, but you do it every single day for the for the for. (0:06:08) Al: 10 years, that is nearly 2000 hours. That’s the thing, the (0:06:12) Kelly: that’s insane but yeah no it’s it’s true yeah exactly but yeah it’s so it’s like (0:06:15) Al: numbers just add up so fast. And let me tell you, it’s way more (0:06:20) Al: than half an hour I’ve played every single day. (0:06:20) Kelly: okay yeah yeah and it’s like okay so like if I put some money in it every (0:06:26) Kelly: year like I’m getting so much out of it you know and I played love Nikki which (0:06:31) Kelly: is what is the phone game before like there’s been other phone games before (0:06:36) Kelly: this too but that was the one I got really into which is different like (0:06:40) Kelly: setup wise, but essentially it’s just an outfit game again. (0:06:42) Kelly: Gotcha outfit game and again, it’s like okay. I played that game for like four years. I put some money into it (0:06:49) Kelly: But I played it a lot like I spent so much time playing that game (0:06:52) Al: Yeah, as long as you can afford what you’re doing, that’s the important thing. (0:06:56) Kelly: Exactly, but yeah, what have you been up to? (0:07:00) Al: I have been procrastinating playing Grimoire Crows. (0:07:06) Al: Every so often, I end up in this situation where I’m like, this is a game that I need to play, (0:07:11) Al: and then I end up not playing it very much. And instead of procrastinating by playing other games, (0:07:17) Al: I procrastinate by doing other things instead. So I’ve not really done much this week at all. (0:07:20) Kelly: Yep. (0:07:23) Al: I have started a shiny hunt for Regigigas in Pokémon Sword. I’m at the point where I need to (0:07:38) Al: actually get through the rest of the legendaries. I don’t have a shiny if I want to finish my (0:07:43) Al: living decks, because I’m 110 left. And so I’m going to run out of non-legendaries very soon. (0:07:48) Kelly: Oh, my god. (0:07:52) Al: And so I thought, let’s start this one, because I can’t just… Yeah, exactly. (0:07:55) Kelly: Start breaking it up. (0:07:58) Kelly: Yeah, no, I understand that. (0:08:00) Kelly: I used to do that with Angry Birds. (0:08:04) Al: You’re going to have to explain that. (0:08:10) Kelly: Since Angry Birds came out, any phone that I get, (0:08:13) Kelly: I download Angry Birds and beat the whole game again. (0:08:15) Al: You replay it all again, oh my word! (0:08:16) Kelly: 3 stars? (0:08:18) Kelly: I’m less about it now, I just kinda go back to it when I’m bored. So like, you know, I have my phone for a while, eventually I get all the stars. But there’s certain levels that even after all these years of replaying it, they’re just difficult. And they piss me off. So I’ll break it down. (0:08:25) Al: look it’s fun it’s a fun game but I can’t say i’ve played it in the last 15 years (0:08:48) Kelly: I always break those up when I go back to get the 3 stars for them. So it’s the same thing where it’s like, I don’t want to do the really tough thing repeatedly and then just get frustrated at the game. Like it’s boring, you know? It gets boring. (0:08:56) Al: Fair enough. My 15 years might have been a bit of an exaggeration, however it is only (0:09:04) Al: 15 years since it’s 15 years since the first game came out. I can’t believe it’s been 15 years, (0:09:06) Kelly: Yes, yes, because I played it on the first iPhone I had, or an only iPhone. (0:09:09) Al: that’s wild. It was it was definitely it was one of the it was one of the early games that made you (0:09:20) Al: go ’this is why I want a touchscreen’ and it was that and (0:09:22) Kelly: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. (0:09:26) Al: Fruit Ninja and Digital Jump. Those were like the three that made me realize I get it, (0:09:27) Kelly: Yes, I never got into Fruit Ninja. (0:09:36) Al: I would like a touchscreen please. (0:09:38) Kelly: Yep. Well, that was the thrill of like, you know, with the iPhone too. It was like, oh, this is so sick. I can, I can play these fun games. I can do this for a peggle. (0:09:48) Kelly: I played peggle so much on that phone. It’s pinball. (0:09:52) Al: Okay, no, I didn’t. I didn’t play that one. I don’t think I need more games. (0:09:54) Kelly: Oh, you should look it up. I think you like peggle. (0:10:03) Al: Yeah, fun. All right. I think that’s all. Is that all I’ve got to talk about? I’m shiny (0:10:09) Al: hunting. I think so. I played… You were the one that you were you were spying me on steam. (0:10:16) Al: Was it like half an hour I played of Grimoire Groves or something? (0:10:16) Kelly: Oh, yeah, I was watching you all week because every time I’d sign on to the Steam, it’s (0:10:22) Kelly: like you’re the only person I know that has the game also. (0:10:22) Al: Oh, I’ve got an hour and 20 minutes apparently on steam there. Okay. That was yesterday. (0:10:26) Kelly: So for like the whole week, it was like 12 minutes playing. (0:10:30) Kelly: Yes, now, I see it now, but I was like watching it. (0:10:37) Kelly: I know because like two days ago, I was like, he’s still, he is cutting it close. (0:10:43) Al: Look, well, the problem was you messaged me and you said, “I’m loving this game. I’m (0:10:48) Al: played it so much.” And I’m like, “Okay, cool. I don’t need to then.” (0:10:52) Al: Yeah. No, I legitimately think that’s all I’ve (0:10:53) Kelly: Also, I’m the problem. (0:11:02) Al: done this week is like shiny hunting and Pokémon Go. (0:11:05) Kelly: sometimes it’s like you just get that mental block where you just can’t (0:11:08) Al: Yeah. Oh, I did do… I know. I did do the the Scarlet and Violet Quack Quack Quack Quaville (0:11:09) Kelly: even you’re just like oh I gotta I gotta do this but I can’t (0:11:20) Al: raids. I don’t think I’ve ever figured out how to say the name of that. (0:11:21) Kelly: What? What is that? I actually did not play Scarlet and Violet. (0:11:22) Al: Pokémon. Did you not? Um, it’s the, uh, it’s based on like carnival dancers. Uh, let me send you. (0:11:36) Kelly: Okay (0:11:38) Kelly: But like what is it you do the dancing like you (0:11:40) Al: It’s a Pokémon. Oh, no, no, just like a raid, like a normal Pokémon raid. (0:11:45) Kelly: Oh, but it’s like dressed up like a carnival dancer (0:11:49) Al: No, no, clearly you completely misunderstood this. This is just a Pokémon. (0:11:51) Kelly: Okay (0:11:52) Al: A Pokémon that is based on a carnival dancer. That’s the Pokémon, (0:11:57) Kelly: Oh, but that’s what you’re waiting for (0:11:57) Al: but they’ve done, there’s a raid to defeat it and capture it, yes. (0:12:01) Kelly: Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I thought this was like a costume Pokemon. You know what I mean? (0:12:05) Al: Oh, no, it’s not. They’ve not done that in the main games yet. Um, yeah, that’s it. (0:12:06) Kelly: Okay (0:12:12) Al: That’s the entirety of that. It was a raid. I did it. There we go. Done. Uh, (0:12:17) Al: should we talk about some news? Because the section is being a little bit of a disaster. (0:12:21) Al: Um… (0:12:23) Al: So, first up, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, we have some news on Harvest Moon, (0:12:30) Al: The Lost Valley, and Skytree Village, the ports or remasters, however they want to call them, (0:12:38) Al: for Switch, which for some reason they’ve decided to do, is up for pre-order now. (0:12:44) Al: It is $40 for the two of them, which still feels like too much, but (0:12:51) Al: I feel like it says a lot. (0:12:52) Al: When they’re selling two full games that they originally sold individually on separate consoles, (0:12:59) Al: and they’ve ported them both to the Switch, and they’re selling them both together for $40. (0:13:03) Al: That shows you how much people definitely want to buy these games. (0:13:07) Kelly: Yeah, cuz a lot of these remakes are like still a full 60 dollars alone. Yeah (0:13:11) Al: Exactly. The good ones are. (0:13:15) Al: So it’s coming out in June. Previously, we just knew it was coming out in the summer. (0:13:19) Al: We don’t have an exact date as far as I can see, just says June. (0:13:23) Al: And if you pre-order it now, you get a free acrylic standee (0:13:27) Al: with some of the worst art I’ve seen for a Harvestmen game ever. (0:13:31) Kelly: I can tell you really like this one. (0:13:33) Al: I haven’t even played these games, but I know for a fact they’re bad (0:13:36) Al: because I talked to Rachelle about them and they did not like them and yeah. (0:13:39) Kelly: I can never remember which ones are bad but the art for this one does not look good. (0:13:47) Al: These were I think the first two they did after the split between Harvestmen and (0:13:53) Al: so these were the first ones that weren’t by the original team. (0:13:56) Al: They were by Natsume and let’s just say they hadn’t made any games before and you can tell. (0:14:08) Al: I do, I will, I’m so strongly of the opinion that I think that people sometimes are judging (0:14:17) Al: Harvestmen too harshly purely because they’re angry that they kept the name and didn’t give (0:14:23) Al: back but that’s how these things work and I’m sorry you dislike that but I think if you actually (0:14:29) Al: played some of the newer games they’re not as bad as you think but these ones I’m pretty sure are. (0:14:37) Kelly: - Fair enough, I think that’s a fair point. (0:14:40) Al: The way I described it in the last episode I did with Micah is (0:14:43) Al: they are so close to having a good game. (0:14:47) Kelly: Oh, with the new ones. (0:14:48) Al: Yeah, they’re so close. So close. (0:14:51) Kelly: Maybe next– maybe next game, they’ll hit it. (0:14:52) Al: what we said for three games now. Each game they do is better than the last. Yes, but (0:15:00) Kelly: OK, so they’re growing slowly. (0:15:02) Al: they do still make some bizarre decisions in those games. They’ve also released a whole (0:15:07) Al: bunch of screenshots. And yeah, I mean, they basically look like the original games did, (0:15:13) Al: but with, I guess, more pixels, but not more pixels on the actual models, just more pixels. (0:15:20) Al: So it’s like– (0:15:20) Kelly: No, they look like knees, but like with a little bit better quality. (0:15:22) Al: Yeah, yeah, that’s exact. It looks better quality, but not in a good way. (0:15:30) Kelly: No. (0:15:31) Al: It looks like HD kind of, but it’s like you’ve got HD upscaled basically, right? (0:15:39) Al: Like you were recording on a really old camera and you’ve upscaled it to HD, (0:15:43) Al: so it’s like everything is shiny and lots of pixels, but it still doesn’t look good. (0:15:52) Kelly: - Yeah, no, it’s not right. (0:15:53) Al: These were a DS and a 3DS game, I think, originally, so they have had to merge the two screens. (0:16:02) Al: However, I think the bottom screen was mostly just like for the map, (0:16:06) Al: and so they now have a mini map on the screen, so… (0:16:09) Kelly: Okay, I feel like a lot of games like this have like the map or like controls or something at the bottom (0:16:14) Al: Yeah, yeah, so I guess we’ll see. (0:16:19) Al: I don’t, I’m gonna buy this. (0:16:22) Kelly: I like, did you notice that it’s so you said it’s releasing in June, but then at the top (0:16:23) Al: I’m gonna do my duty for the podcast, you’re welcome. (0:16:33) Kelly: it says ships in April to June. (0:16:36) Al: Yeah, if you scroll down to the product description, it says release date June 2025. (0:16:41) Kelly: interesting so this game is worth that $25 basically (0:16:43) Al: Apparently, the acrylic standee is worth $13. (0:16:48) Al: So yeah, well, I don’t know what to say. You probably shouldn’t buy this. (0:17:02) Al: But I will. Next, we have Bugaboo Pocket. (0:17:07) Al: Have announced that the release date is on the 2nd of April. I don’t know if you’ve (0:17:11) Al: seen this game, Kelly. It’s a bug game. It’s like a bug Pokémon, but like on… (0:17:12) Kelly: I have not. What is this? (0:17:20) Al: How do I describe this? It’s like virtual pets. So like Tamagotchis. (0:17:24) Kelly: Oh, okay, I see it now. Now I got the screen page, but it’s got like way more details. (0:17:30) Al: Yes, yeah, it’s very much like modernized in terms of how you would interact. (0:17:37) Al: Quality of graphics and is much more intense from that sort of aspect of things. (0:17:43) Al: But I think you also can, for lack of a better phrase, because I’m very tired. (0:17:51) Al: It’s the end of the weekend. Do science on them. I don’t know how to describe it. (0:17:57) Kelly: Like, experiments? (0:17:58) Al: No experiment. No, that would be immoral. No, inspect them and look at them. (0:18:06) Kelly: Oh, OK. (0:18:07) Al: There is like if you have… (0:18:09) Kelly: Oh, and pin them. (0:18:10) Kelly: It looks like you can pin them. (0:18:11) Al: Yeah, but those are dead. Like you’re not pinning a live one, right? (0:18:13) Kelly: Yeah, that would be immoral also. (0:18:18) Kelly: I hope so. (0:18:19) Kelly: I’m just looking at pictures. (0:18:22) Al: So yeah, it’s much more involved than a Tamagotchi. (0:18:28) Kelly: The graphics look really cool. (0:18:30) Al: Yeah, Cody is excited to play this. (0:18:33) Kelly: I’m sure that makes sense. (0:18:36) Kelly: This looks really cool, honestly. (0:18:37) Al: Anyway, coming on the 2nd of April. Next, we have the Fields of Mistria 2nd update. (0:18:45) Al: It’s out now, Kelly. Have you played it yet? (0:18:48) Kelly: Not since, uh, November, end of November, since we talked. (0:18:54) Al: Yeah, that was just the first update that was then, so. (0:18:56) Kelly: Yeah, ‘cause I had finished everything that you could possibly do at that point, (0:19:00) Kelly: and I was like, “Okay, I gotta, I don’t wanna kill the game for myself.” (0:19:00) Al: Yep. (0:19:04) Al: We were on the same page at that point, right? Basically, I think we’d both done everything you could do in the game and didn’t want to destroy our enthusiasm for the game. But does that mean you’re definitely not going to get jump into the game with this new update? (0:19:13) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:19:20) Kelly: I’m probably going to wait. (0:19:23) Kelly: I mean, I started breeding for different color animals (0:19:27) Kelly: and stuff, like the tears. (0:19:28) Kelly: So I had been failing my time with that, (0:19:30) Kelly: but mostly because I didn’t have a new game. (0:19:34) Kelly: But yeah, I’m going to wait and see. (0:19:35) Kelly: I got games coming out soon. (0:19:37) Kelly: We got “Rethopia.” (0:19:38) Al: Yes, oh, yes, that’s that (0:19:41) Kelly: I got a solid amount of games currently. (0:19:43) Kelly: So I gotta actually, like, focus on them. (0:19:46) Al: That’s fair. We’ve already covered what’s out in this update, so let’s not spend too long on it. (0:19:50) Kelly: Mm-hmm, okay. (0:19:50) Al: Next we have Gogotown. Their next update Spring Cleaning is out now. I presume you haven’t played (0:19:59) Al: this game. It is fun. It definitely feels very polished for the way that I talked about it in (0:20:07) Al: the episode I did on it. It’s very polished what is there, but it feels like it’s a long way to go (0:20:13) Al: to feel complete. (0:20:15) Kelly: Okay, that’s fair. I mean it seems very ambitious looking so hopefully they just get there (0:20:16) Al: Yeah, a number of things in this update, you can now store a tool and a vehicle on (0:20:29) Al: yourself, it says in a patented Townco dimensional pocket. Basically, you had vehicles, but you (0:20:36) Al: had to like park them somewhere. So now you can keep one of them on yourself. So you have (0:20:40) Al: to keep running back to the parking spaces, which is a nice update. There’s also (0:20:46) Al: a Town info app that gives you a bunch of information on the Town. 360 degree camera (0:20:52) Al: rotation, which is good. I like this. Oh yes, what was that? You’ve asked for it. We’ve (0:20:56) Kelly: I like their note on this. (0:21:00) Al: put in an experimental setting for you to rotate the camera 360 degrees. Fair enough. (0:21:05) Kelly: The screenshot is definitely making me dizzy though, looking at it too long. (0:21:07) Al: Yes, you can definitely tell us experimental. There’s some things that move out of view when (0:21:13) Al: when they shouldn’t do and stuff like that. (0:21:17) Al: A work in progress. (0:21:17) Kelly: But I mean like they they they put it out there that it’s experimental so. (0:21:20) Al: Yep, yep, and they’ve also added (0:21:23) Al: infinite seeds for your farming, which I am intrigued by because I thought (0:21:28) Al: when you planted a seed, the plant never never seemed to die. (0:21:33) Al: It just seemed to always grow new stuff. (0:21:35) Al: So you essentially had infinite stuff, right? (0:21:38) Al: Because as soon as you had a seed, you just (0:21:39) Al: planted it and you had that plant forever. (0:21:40) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:21:41) Al: But maybe I’m misremembering. (0:21:44) Kelly: Maybe they changed it. (0:21:46) Al: updates as well. But yeah, those are the main ones that I noticed. (0:21:49) Al: Next, we have Sunhaven have released their 2.0 update. (0:21:53) Al: And you’re like, oh, 2.0, that sounds like it might be a big update. (0:21:57) Al: It’s festivals. (0:22:00) Al: It doesn’t particularly feel huge. (0:22:02) Al: I’m intrigued as to why they decided to go for 2.0 at this point. (0:22:06) Al: OK. (0:22:10) Al: It adds a furniture festival, a garden (0:22:12) Al: festival, a pet festival, a mushroom festival, a snow festival. (0:22:16) Al: And a bunch of other (0:22:19) Al: furniture and stuff like that related to that. (0:22:22) Kelly: Okay, interesting how much of the game is actually out? (0:22:26) Al: Well, it’s no longer in early access. (0:22:28) Al: So I feel like I think they might have I feel like they’ve done everything that (0:22:32) Al: they said in the Kickstarter, like it’s the story is done and stuff like that. (0:22:38) Al: When I see people talking in the comments, they’re no longer complaining about things (0:22:43) Al: they’re talking about translations being bad. (0:22:49) Kelly: Yeah, this one’s been on my wish list, (0:22:50) Kelly: so I’ve been just waiting to see. (0:22:54) Al: I think I own it, yes, I do. (0:22:56) Al: I kick-started this one, I just haven’t played it yet. (0:22:59) Al: So this came out initially in 2023. (0:23:03) Al: Or was that, no, that was the 1.0, I think. (0:23:06) Al: Yeah, 2021 is when it first came out. (0:23:08) Al: And this was when I was still well and truly (0:23:11) Al: primarily Switch, but it wasn’t on Switch yet. (0:23:15) Al: And then I got a Steam Deck, (0:23:16) Al: and then suddenly I was very much on the Steam Deck, (0:23:18) Al: except for games that weren’t on the Steam Deck. (0:23:21) Al: but I had kind of really moved the path. (0:23:24) Al: I’m just thinking about this game, because it was, you know, it had been like two years or something since it started. (0:23:32) Al: Sometimes I do think that there is like a time period where if you’re not going to play a game (0:23:36) Al: within that time period, you’re probably never going to get to it. (0:23:38) Kelly: Yeah, no, definitely it definitely gets harder and harder to go back to it (0:23:44) Al: So maybe I’ll get to it one day, who knows, there’s so many games. (0:23:48) Al: Next we have farm folks or, as it is now called, (0:23:54) Al: Autonomica? Good job, going from a game name that was just slightly awkward to say to one that I don’t know how to pronounce. (0:24:02) Al: Autonomica? Auto… Autonomica. (0:24:04) Kelly: Oh, Tom, oh, oh, Tom, I don’t know, I don’t know. (0:24:08) Al: Autonomica. That’s what you were trying to say, wasn’t it? Autonomica. (0:24:13) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, something like that. (0:24:14) Al: No, I don’t think it’s Autonomica. (0:24:18) Kelly: I don’t think it is either, (0:24:19) Kelly: but I was just trying to see if I could say it. (0:24:20) Kelly: And apparently I can’t. (0:24:24) Al: For those who don’t know the story behind this game, it was started as farm folks, and then the company that was making it went bust. (0:24:32) Al: And then another company basically, I don’t know whether they bought the company that went bust or whether they bought the rights to the game and the code and stuff, (0:24:40) Al: but they continued development. So the company that’s making this is not the company that did the Kickstarter for this game. (0:24:46) Al: Although I’m pretty sure I saw somewhere that they are going to honor the Kickstarter, which is always good. (0:24:52) Al: Um, don’t take– (0:24:52) Kelly: nice isn’t there another game with like a similar ish name to this new name but (0:24:54) Al: I’d need to confirm that, but I feel like I saw that somewhere. (0:25:05) Kelly: also like how do you go from farm folks which is like the most generic farm game (0:25:08) Al: Yeah. (0:25:10) Kelly: name I’ve ever heard now which is not saying a lot because a lot of these farm (0:25:14) Kelly: games have a lot of similar names it is but how do you go from that to what do (0:25:16) Al: Naming is hard, all right. (0:25:20) Kelly: What are you calling it? Autonomica? (0:25:22) Kelly: Autonomica. Oh, it’s a musical artist. Yes, I knew I’d seen this name somewhere before. (0:25:24) Al: Autonomica. Autonomica? (0:25:30) Al: Oh. (0:25:36) Al: So they’ve made they have went the new (0:25:38) Al: company that took over the game have basically been moving it in a different direction. (0:25:43) Al: So it’s it is still farming. (0:25:46) Kelly: It looks like Fortnite with Farfian. (0:25:46) Al: It’s not. (0:25:49) Al: Yeah, they’ve never really explained their reasoning, but they’re like, it’s not just farming. (0:25:53) Al: It’s so much more than that. (0:25:55) Al: So therefore we think farm folks is a misleading name and I’m like, OK, but I don’t. (0:25:58) Kelly: Okay. That makes more sense. But I don’t get anything about farming from this name. (0:26:04) Al: No, but you do get the automation part of it, which I think they’re really big enough. (0:26:09) Al: The college so that their new blurb on steam is Autonomica is an open world life simulator (0:26:16) Al: game that seamlessly. Oh, my word, I hate this so much seamlessly merges resource (0:26:22) Al: management and automation with farm building, extensive customization, (0:26:26) Al: PvP slash PvE battles and elusive phantoms. What is this jumble of words? (0:26:34) Al: Play solo or with friends to build your mega farm factory with almost no limits. (0:26:38) Al: It is a farming game. It’s just like a industrial scale farming game. (0:26:44) Al: Right. And I get why they wanted to change. (0:26:48) Al: Why they wanted it to be clear that this was not the same game that they took over. (0:26:52) Al: But also it is farming game. (0:26:57) Al: Like you can’t say it’s not a farming game. It is a farming game. (0:27:01) Al: Build your mega farm factory, they say in the new blurb. (0:27:04) Al: Like I don’t understand the issue with it. (0:27:06) Kelly: All of these screenshots, too, are just like, what is that game? (0:27:09) Al: Yes, Factorio. Yeah. (0:27:11) Kelly: Factorio? (0:27:14) Kelly: It’s like that, but with farming more. (0:27:16) Al: Open world 3D Factorio. (0:27:20) Al: Which I honestly am excited by. I think this game could be really good. (0:27:25) Al: I just don’t understand why they really didn’t like the name and they decided to change. (0:27:29) Al: But I don’t think this is a better name. (0:27:32) Al: That’s all I’m going to say. I get why they didn’t like the old game. (0:27:35) Al: Old name. I’m not sure this is better. (0:27:37) Kelly: Honestly, they can take this if they want to, but I think it should have been (0:27:44) Kelly: auto-pharmica, if anything. (0:27:46) Al: I would, yeah, I would certainly be more better. Yeah, I don’t disagree with you. (0:27:49) Kelly: It would be better than this. (0:27:54) Kelly: I would assume that this is some sort of space or underwater survival game (0:28:02) Al: Oh, interesting. Yeah. Anyway, they changed the name. RIP farm folks. Long live farm folks. (0:28:03) Kelly: just going off the name alone. (0:28:08) Kelly: It’s so weird too, because I don’t even like farm books. (0:28:14) Al: Yeah, yeah. (0:28:18) Kelly: I digress. (0:28:19) Al: Coral Island have announced their 2025 roadmap. They have 1.2 planned to come out in the first (0:28:27) Al: half of the year, bringing multiplayer and revamped romance. (0:28:32) Al: Which I was looking at what they say about the romance. So let’s talk about the multiplayer (0:28:37) Al: first. There’s probably not a huge amount to say. Basically, it looks like it’s stardew (0:28:41) Al: style multiplayer. You’re all multiple people on the farm. Great, fine. I’m sure it will be (0:28:46) Al: great for people who love. I am not particularly interested just because I don’t want to actually (0:28:51) Al: play my games with other people. I like these games because I’m playing them on my own. (0:28:52) Kelly: I have no desire, I have no desire to play these. These types of games are for me to play by myself, so I can be a maniac, like, let me be a psychopath by my- (0:28:59) Al: Exactly. Exactly. (0:29:03) Al: I have tried so many times to play multiplayer Stardew, and I just can’t because I have to be (0:29:08) Kelly: Oh, no. No, no, no. (0:29:10) Al: the one who has this. The problem is, right? You have to organize to play at the same time, (0:29:16) Al: and that is just not fun. Organizing times for these. (0:29:16) Kelly: No, because either you’re micromanaging all of it, too. (0:29:25) Kelly: It’s like, how do you organize the time to play together and also organize how you’re (0:29:30) Kelly: playing together? (0:29:32) Al: Yeah, the best way to do that is just be like, right, you do the farming you do the mine, there you go, go, go do your jobs. (0:29:32) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:29:38) Al: And yeah, I don’t, I don’t particularly find it fun, I get why people might. And so if you are excited about Coral Island multiplayer. (0:29:46) Al: There you go, it’s coming. I hope you enjoy it. I’m not going to do this. (0:29:48) Kelly: I think the only multiplayer game I like is Monster Hunter, to be quite honest. (0:29:58) Al: So I was also looking at the romance revamp that they’ve got. (0:30:02) Al: And I think the only difference is, so there’s a bunch of heart events that existed already. (0:30:10) Al: And it looks like you have to see the previous heart events to unlock certain, to unlock (0:30:17) Al: more hearts. (0:30:18) Al: So once you get to five hearts, you have to watch the heart events for them before you (0:30:24) Al: can do heart six to eight. (0:30:26) Al: And then you have to watch another heart event and give a locket. (0:30:32) Al: Before you can start dating and do the next two hearts, which then you have to watch the (0:30:37) Al: other events and propose before you can get married and do the other five. (0:30:43) Al: I do think this is better because what I found when I was doing this, because I got married (0:30:49) Al: in Coral Island, is I had no clue that there were heart events still to do, which is probably (0:30:55) Al: still going to be a problem here, but let’s put that aside for a minute. (0:30:59) Kelly: There’s no like there’s no like heart marker next in like the (0:31:02) Al: So there are hearts, but it’s not like, it’s just like how many hearts you have. (0:31:09) Al: Like there was no like indication that there’s an event you should be doing. (0:31:12) Al: So like I got to 10 hearts and then I went and tried to propose and they were like, oh, (0:31:17) Al: I’m not ready yet. (0:31:18) Al: And I’m like, but this is the point where I meant to be able to propose. (0:31:20) Al: Why can’t I do it? (0:31:22) Al: And I googled and it was like, oh, because you’re missing heart events. (0:31:24) Al: And I hadn’t done any of the heart events. (0:31:27) Al: And I don’t know how it happens in Carta Island, but in Stardew, (0:31:29) Kelly: How– so I was going to say, it’s similarly set up, (0:31:32) Al: I was always finding the heart events. (0:31:37) Kelly: like you just trigger the event when you encounter them (0:31:40) Al: Yes, and there are a few heart events in Stardew that were very niche and you (0:31:41) Kelly: in a certain location. (0:31:46) Al: wouldn’t immediately find, but like by that point, you’re like, oh, (0:31:51) Al: I know that these things are coming, so I should be expecting them. (0:31:53) Al: I hadn’t done a single one in Carta Island. (0:31:56) Al: How had I not triggered any of the heart events? (0:31:59) Kelly: Yeah, that’s crazy. That doesn’t seem like a good sub. (0:32:00) Al: It was very confusing. (0:32:02) Al: And also, I don’t think the heart events are required in Stardew for marriage. (0:32:10) Kelly: I don’t think they are either. I think they’re just, like, for you. (0:32:12) Al: Yes, and you can get extra points by doing them. (0:32:16) Al: And they’re nice, and you want to know about the story because all the characters are good characters. (0:32:16) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:32:22) Al: I was going to say great, but no, not all the characters are great. (0:32:22) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:32:24) Al: All of them are good characters. (0:32:28) Al: Um, but yeah, I just, it was really, so if they have a. (0:32:32) Al: Way to make it clear. (0:32:34) Al: That you’re now expecting to see events, then that would be good. (0:32:38) Al: Um, I don’t know. (0:32:40) Al: Um, we’ll see, I guess they don’t talk about that. (0:32:44) Al: I don’t think, but it’s interesting restricting it that much. (0:32:48) Al: So you, you have to see the events before you can continue your heart progress. (0:32:53) Al: Uh, I don’t know how I feel about that. (0:32:55) Kelly: Yeah, that seems kind of iffy the way you just described your past experience, so I guess we’ll see. (0:33:00) Al: Aha, the revamped romance system unlocks at heart level two and you’ll see a prompt (0:33:05) Al: in the relationship UI whenever a hangout event is available. (0:33:10) Al: That is good. (0:33:11) Al: It’s now making it clear when you can do something and when there’s something to do. (0:33:15) Al: That is good. (0:33:16) Al: And if you click on them inside the menu and it shows like all the stuff that you’ve done (0:33:22) Al: with them, you know, the stuff you’ve learned that they love and stuff like that, and like (0:33:25) Al: there, the birthday and stuff, it says unlock requirement, see hangout event. (0:33:30) Al: I don’t know what happened to three but anyway, whatever. (0:33:37) Al: I think that means for heart two and for heart four. (0:33:41) Al: That’s what I think it’s talking about. (0:33:43) Al: So they are definitely making it much more visible, that aspect of things. (0:33:47) Al: So that is good. (0:33:48) Al: They’re also adding more heart events for after marriage, which is also good because (0:33:52) Al: one of the things I’ve really complained about Carl Island is that your spouse ends up turning (0:33:55) Al: into a hollow husk after you get married. (0:33:58) Kelly: That’s pretty sad. (0:34:01) Al: - It was so sad. (0:34:02) Al: The minute you got married, (0:34:05) Al: they just stand in your house all day doing nothing. (0:34:07) Kelly: Oh no. (0:34:09) Al: It was the worst. (0:34:09) Al: I’ve taken your life (0:34:11) Al: and you are now just an ornament in my house. (0:34:15) Al: It was so sad. (0:34:16) Al: So hopefully that’s improved a lot with this. (0:34:20) Al: And then the 1.3 update will include your kids growing up. (0:34:27) Kelly: that’s cool that’s what I literally just started like wondering if it’s like generational like do (0:34:27) Al: And it is, I wonder how far it will go. (0:34:30) Al: I don’t know. (0:34:36) Al: I would expect not. (0:34:38) Al: I expect it would just be, oh, they grow up to be a teenager and then they stop sort of thing. (0:34:42) Al: That is my expectation. (0:34:44) Kelly: that makes sense because that’s a big that’s that’s a lot doing (0:34:44) Al: I don’t think they’ll go full hog. (0:34:49) Al: Especially as they could actually make it like real-time in-game, right? (0:34:52) Al: For every year, they are a year older. (0:34:54) Al: And so you would actually have to do 18 in-game years. (0:35:00) Al: Before your child is an adult. (0:35:04) Kelly: - Hmm. (0:35:05) Al: So they could just go, I’m sorry, if you’ve played 18 years in this game, you’ve played too much. (0:35:12) Al: But I mean, I don’t know, maybe it will work. (0:35:14) Al: I mean, I do know that some games where you have kids that grow up, (0:35:18) Al: you then die and you become your kid. (0:35:20) Al: They could do something like that. (0:35:22) Kelly: That’s true, that would be cool. (0:35:23) Al: And then you inherit the farm and, you know, 20% of it is taken in tax. (0:35:31) Al: Yeah, so they’ve not got a huge amount of information in the 1.3. (0:35:35) Al: They also said there’s going to be a Merfolk festival. (0:35:39) Al: But they’ve not got any details on how the kids grow up. (0:35:42) Al: But that is coming in the second half of this year. (0:35:44) Al: Have you played, you’ve not played Coral Island? (0:35:46) Kelly: No. I really try to avoid early access. (0:35:47) Al: No. (0:35:50) Al: Well, it’s not early access anymore. (0:35:51) Kelly: Uh, oh, it’s out, out? (0:35:53) Al: Yeah. (0:35:54) Al: The 1.0 came out just over a year ago. (0:35:58) Kelly: Okay, I must have missed that. (0:35:58) Al: and then they go and they go on. (0:36:00) Kelly: I thought it was still in early access, still. Okay. (0:36:00) Al: 1.1 sometime last year? No. The 1.0 was technically not early access, but realistically (0:36:06) Al: was early access. The 1.1 feels like what the 1.0 should have been, but the multiplayer (0:36:12) Al: was always coming after early access. So I don’t feel like you would be missing out if (0:36:17) Al: you played now compared to if you played two years ago, you definitely were missing out (0:36:22) Al: in a lot. (0:36:22) Kelly: Okay, okay, maybe one day (0:36:24) Al: All right. And we also, we all maybe, maybe, probably not. We also have (0:36:30) Al: a new game by the developers of EverDream Valley. In fact, this is a sequel to EverDream (0:36:36) Al: Valley called EverDream Village. I get what they’re doing with that name, but also I am (0:36:42) Al: going to constantly mess up. Which one is which? They also feel the wrong way around, (0:36:47) Kelly: The valley and village is like too close to each other. (0:36:53) Al: you start in a village and then you go out to a valley. (0:36:53) Kelly: Yes, it should have been, this should be a prequel. (0:36:57) Kelly: Yeah, this is the prequel in my, (0:36:59) Kelly: I literally thought like this should be the prequel (0:37:00) Al: Set 10 years after the events of EverDream Valley, EverDream Village brings a whole (0:37:07) Al: new chapter with living, breathing village and a world beyond your farm. Now you’re built, (0:37:13) Al: this is the thing. It’s like the problem was EverDream Valley wasn’t really a valley. It (0:37:17) Al: was EverDream Farm. Right. And if it was that way, it was EverDream Farm and then EverDream (0:37:21) Al: Village. That makes more logical sense to be our expansion on that. Right. You’ll build (0:37:22) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:37:28) Al: relationships explore mysterious islands. (0:37:30) Al: The Valley may have been home but it’s time to explore a world full of new adventures, (0:37:44) Kelly: - Yeah, it doesn’t seem right, there’s something off. (0:37:57) Al: NPCs and endless possibilities. I don’t really get whirled and (0:38:00) Al: abilities from village. I know what they mean. I know what they (0:38:02) Kelly: - No, but I think they just mean the world of Everdream. (0:38:08) Al: mean. I know what they mean. Build your ideal cozy farm in a (0:38:12) Al: living village. Form bonds with fellow villagers to lend a hand (0:38:16) Al: as you grow crops, care for animals and craft a corner of (0:38:18) Al: paradise. Sail across enchanted islands to discover new resources (0:38:22) Al: and adventures along the way. Maybe it’s definitely not a (0:38:25) Kelly: Maybe there is a world. (0:38:28) Al: village. (0:38:31) Al: Anyway, I mean, you can ride a pig in Evergreen Valley, so they hopefully have something like that in this game. (0:38:36) Kelly: I’m looking at that right now. (0:38:38) Kelly: That actually looks really cute. (0:38:39) Kelly: That’s a good feature. (0:38:40) Al: I haven’t played this game. It’s been on my list for forever. (0:38:44) Kelly: The first one. (0:38:45) Al: Yes, well, the second one is now yet, so of course I’ve not played that. (0:38:48) Kelly: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:38:50) Al: It’s just coming soon. They’ve not said when, it’s coming just soon. (0:38:54) Kelly: One day. (0:38:54) Al: One day. All right. (0:38:56) Kelly: Do you see this tag at the bottom on their news updates? (0:39:00) Al: The second one is that in the Evergreen Valley page? (0:39:04) Kelly: On the Steam page, yeah. (0:39:07) Al: Where am I looking? Where am I looking? (0:39:07) Kelly: I guess this is who they base the pig off of. (0:39:11) Kelly: Let me send it to you. (0:39:12) Kelly: I’ll just send it to you. (0:39:12) Al: There’s too many pages here. That’s the problem. (0:39:13) Kelly: I would do that. (0:39:15) Kelly: It really is. (0:39:15) Al: On their news. Oh, happy birthday, Peter Curleytail. (0:39:18) Kelly: Recent events, yes. (0:39:20) Al: I don’t know what to say. That is quite a pig. (0:39:24) Kelly: He’s a little frightening, but kind of cute. (0:39:26) Al: Yes, that is quite the pig. (0:39:29) Kelly: But I like the interpretation of him. (0:39:31) Al: Yeah, I like the name Peter Curleytail. (0:39:35) Kelly: Yeah, I. (0:39:36) Kelly: I’ve never seen a pig like that before, so it’s a little haunting. (0:39:42) Al: All right, that’s us done with the news. (0:39:44) Al: We are now going to talk about grimoire, grimoire. Is it grimoire? (0:39:51) Al: Grimoire. Grimoire grows. And grimoire is something that’s a witch term, isn’t it? (0:39:59) Al: like what it what I keep hearing great (0:40:00) Kelly: Yeah it’s always like I feel like it’s like swamps and grimoires and uh no it’s um what (0:40:00) Al: memoirs and lots of these witchy games. (0:40:08) Al: That explains that because, right, okay. (0:40:10) Kelly: is it a grimoire is a the book it’s the book it’s like your book of spells that’s what it is. (0:40:17) Al: And the grove is the land that you’re doing (0:40:22) Al: because a grove is like a kind of forest type thing. (0:40:26) Kelly: Yeah, yeah. But no, it’s a little book that you… (0:40:28) Al: Okay, makes sense. (0:40:30) Kelly: have all your information in. (0:40:33) Al: So, a quick introduction to this game. (0:40:38) Al: It is described on Steam as join the witches in their quest to restore the grimoire groves, (0:40:45) Al: master magic, grow cute plant creatures, and discover the mystery of the rainbow socks (0:40:52) Al: in this cozy roguelite dungeon crawler. (0:40:55) Al: The way I would describe this in my whole one hour and 20 minutes playing it (0:40:59) Al: is it is kind of cult of the lamb, but without actual, without. (0:41:09) Al: Combat the way you interact in your runs is different. (0:41:13) Al: It’s not combat so much. (0:41:16) Al: And it’s less about building a village and more about restoring nature. (0:41:24) Al: Would that be a fair way of putting it? (0:41:26) Kelly: Yeah, I think so. It’s, it’s, it’s… (0:41:29) Kelly: But you still, I feel like I’m fighting. (0:41:31) Kelly: Maybe I feel less like I’m fighting and I’m more surviving. (0:41:31) Al: Yes, okay, so I mean, okay, you could make an argument that it is basically just fighting, (0:41:39) Al: but it’s it feels so you’re feeding the plants instead of fighting them, I think is how they (0:41:44) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, but no, I’m just I’m just being a jerk. I think it’s I think that’s a good. (0:41:44) Al: describe it. So that’s why I’ve been like is not. No, no, it’s, it’s, it’s fair in terms (0:41:50) Al: of game play is very similar to most other Roguelike action games. (0:41:51) Kelly: Yes, I also think it it has that. Yeah, yeah, it has that cuteness that I think (0:41:59) Kelly: cultural land kind of has, which is why I think like they remind me like like you said like it (0:42:04) Kelly: makes you think of them. You have the juxtaposition. Yeah, yeah. (0:42:06) Al: I think the cuteness works much better in Cult of the Lam (0:42:09) Al: because it’s… exactly, exactly. (0:42:12) Al: Whereas here, the whole world is cute. (0:42:14) Kelly: But I love the saturation in this game. So like that for me is like, and I loved Call to the Land. (0:42:21) Al: Okay, I will say the game looks lovely. (0:42:24) Al: It looks really nice. (0:42:25) Al: I do love how the game actually looks. (0:42:28) Al: The graphics, the design of the characters, (0:42:36) Al: and character, but also the plants and everything. (0:42:38) Al: I do like all of that. (0:42:39) Al: That is all nice. (0:42:41) Al: I will absolutely agree with that. (0:42:44) Al: Yes. (0:42:46) Kelly: I just think it’s like you don’t always, you don’t really get a lot of games that are like, (0:42:52) Kelly: it’s like saturated, but it’s also pastel, like there’s two different kind of colored (0:42:56) Kelly: tones going on in the game, which I think is interesting. (0:43:00) Kelly: Like the backgrounds are more saturated, but the creatures, the plants are a little more (0:43:04) Kelly: pastel leaning, but it’s so vibrant. (0:43:07) Kelly: Like a lot of games, they’re so dark a lot of the time or like aiming to be more realistic (0:43:11) Al: - Yeah. (0:43:13) Kelly: in their tones, I guess. (0:43:15) Al: Yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:43:16) Kelly: Yes, but yeah, no, I love all of the designs. (0:43:17) Al: No, you’re definitely right about that. (0:43:20) Al: You wouldn’t look at this and think it was something else. (0:43:20) Kelly: I love all the little plants. (0:43:23) Al: That’s very true. (0:43:23) Kelly: No, exactly. (0:43:26) Al: So I guess there’s two main parts to this game, (0:43:29) Al: and there’s obviously a lot of other things, (0:43:31) Al: lot of things that I won’t have done in the main area. (0:43:33) Al: But like most of these roguelites, (0:43:37) Al: you have your hub, (0:43:38) Al: which is an area that is run– (0:43:41) Al: was previously run by some other witch– (0:43:44) Al: I can’t remember her name, maybe– (0:43:45) Kelly: Is it lavender? (0:43:47) Kelly: I think so. (0:43:49) Al: and it’s been taken over by thorns, (0:43:53) Al: and it’s all dreary, and you are to restore it. (0:43:57) Al: That’s the main idea. (0:43:58) Kelly: You’re the young spry witch coming in to fix it. (0:43:59) Al: And you do that by classic cliche, (0:44:05) Al: but it’s there for a reason. (0:44:08) Al: and your runs that you do. (0:44:11) Al: I think of roguelites specifically talking about roguelites not roguelikes (0:44:22) Al: well let’s not have that debate again. I find there are two types there are ones where (0:44:31) Al: your hub the point of the hub is to improve your powers skills etc to then do the runs and the (0:44:38) Kelly: Mm-hmm. Yes, I was going to say, very– (0:44:41) Al: runs is the purpose of the game and that would be your like Hades stuff like that. (0:44:49) Al: And then there’s this type of thing this and Cult of the Lamb where your hub is the point of (0:44:55) Al: the game and the runs are to gather resources for doing things in your hub. (0:45:00) Kelly: I would say it’s kind of like a mix, I think, between Cult of the Lamb and Hades in that aspect. (0:45:07) Kelly: Because I do think Cult of the Lamb, there’s so much that you do in your hub area. (0:45:12) Kelly: And I don’t think this quite has near that amount of stuff. (0:45:16) Kelly: Like, you have a lot of updates and things you can interact with. (0:45:20) Kelly: I don’t want to spoil anything. (0:45:22) Kelly: But Cult of the Lamb, you could like run the village until you ran out of resources. (0:45:28) Al: I guess my point is like you’re not the run isn’t the like with Hades you are escaping hell (0:45:28) Kelly: like I spent like five minutes like you know up (0:45:31) Kelly: and then I got another run (0:45:37) Kelly: the sole purpose yes (0:45:40) Al: and your run is escaping hell and if you fail you go back to the hub world and you try again. (0:45:45) Al: Whereas in this and with Cult of the Lamb the point is the runs you’re doing to do (0:45:50) Al: things to bring back you’re never like disappearing and I think that’s that is very much (0:45:53) Kelly: No, that’s a fair point, yeah. (0:45:58) Al: why I liked Cult of the Lamb because I was building up this thing and I really hate the (0:46:05) Al: overall feeling of Hades where if you fail you fail and you’re back to the start and you have (0:46:09) Al: to start again and so I was really excited for this because I was like oh maybe this will be (0:46:15) Al: another one that I like because it’s that sort of style but I mean I guess I need to say at some (0:46:21) Al: point I didn’t like the combat in this game. I didn’t but I feel like (0:46:24) Kelly: Did you try it on easy mode? (0:46:27) Kelly: I d

"We like affirmations Annie. We want you to make us feel good about ourselves. Ok, I'll keep that in mind," promises producer Annie, but that's a pretty tall order when you're recounting the slap heard around the world! That's right today we're welcoming back Producer Annie to answer all of your questions about what went down behind the scenes during Kelly's big moment. Questions our lovely bitchettes asked include: Which of the moms knew about Kalani, and how planned out was Kalani's inclusion overall? Did Abby conspire with producers to oust Kelly? What were the productions concerns about the situation, who had a say in what happened next? Most importantly of course, how many "showmances" were happening on-set? Tune-in to discover the answer to these questions and much more!Quotes“Dance Moms fans are mean. I'm grateful or them but they are mean." (01:02-01:06 | Christi)“Well, isn't everyone a little bit actively dying?” (04:35-04:37 | Annie)“Well I didn't know what a [whore bath] was. Well now you do. the more you know! Back to the Barre, providing quality education here." (31:57-32:07 | Christi & Kelly)“Did you guys want Kelly off? Did you plan to get her off the show? No. No. Just Abby did, and Abby always gets her way!" (35:30-35:39 | Christi, Kelly & Annie)LinksSubscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarreThank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiakFollow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhylandFollow Annie on IG: www.instagram.com/annebreiter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Al and Kelly talk about the story of Dave the Diver Timings 00:00:00: Theme Tune 00:00:30: Intro 00:03:12: What Has Kelly Been Up To 00:04:19: Tangent 1 - The Scots Language 00:11:53: What Has Al Been Up To 00:21:22: News 00:35:50: Tangent 2 - Rockstar North 00:44:55: Dave The Diver Upcoming DLCs 00:53:45: Kelly’s Mechanics Thoughts 01:02:31: Dave The Diver Story 01:16:01: Tangent 3 - Game Hyperfocus 01:18:44: Dave Story Conclusion 01:29:12: Outro Links Research Story “0.9” Update Sprittea “Moving & Grooving” Update Loddlenaut “Goddles” Update Outlanders “Wandering Star” DLC Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma Trailer Dave the Diver Upcoming DLCs Contact Al on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheScotBot Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/ Transcript (0:00:30) Al: Hello Divers, and welcome to another episode of The Harvest Season. (0:00:34) Al: My name is Al, and we are here today to talk about Cottagecore games. (0:00:36) Kelly: and my name is kelly (0:00:41) Kelly: whoo (0:00:42) Al: We’ve not come to a conclusion on whether David the Diver is a Cottagecore game or not. (0:00:45) Kelly: maybe it’s like a bungalow, like you know bungalows are the the the cottages of beach towns (0:00:50) Al: Well, the problem there, right, so if Cottagecore games are for lesbians, what are bungalow games (0:00:57) Al: for? (0:00:58) Al: games for them. (0:00:59) Kelly: non-binary people (0:01:01) Al: I’ll take it. (0:01:04) Al: All right, excellent. (0:01:04) Kelly: I don’t know! (0:01:07) Al: Fantastic. Well, OK, so I think it is a college school game, right? (0:01:11) Al: Because, yes, there are some, like, stakes and stuff, but there’s fewer stakes, I think, than, say, Stardew Valley. (0:01:18) Kelly: Yeah, and I would say also it’s like you still have like the mines in Stardew Valley? (0:01:23) Al: Exactly. Yeah, that’s what I’m meaning. The mines in Stardew Valley are definitely scarier (0:01:28) Al: than most in here. But you can’t ignore nighttime entirely if you want to. The only stuff that (0:01:28) Kelly: Yeah, I would say that the nighttime is the scary part. (0:01:39) Al: only spawns in the night are some fish, which you want if you want to collect the collection, (0:01:44) Al: and a few optional side quests. I don’t think any part of the story is required for you (0:01:49) Al: to go out at night? Or was there one, maybe? (0:01:50) Kelly: I think there was, unless I’m mistaken, I think there was one with the more eels. (0:01:53) Al: There was one. Yeah. (0:01:57) Kelly: It’s been a while. I played that part I think a year ago now so that’s (0:02:03) Kelly: been a while, but I think one part was required and then after that it was like (0:02:07) Kelly: you don’t have to do this again. (0:02:10) Al: So yeah, I think it counts. If Stardew counts this counts. (0:02:13) Kelly: Yeah, I think so. You have farms, you have little (0:02:18) Al: You do, you do. (0:02:18) Kelly: Fish tanks and chickens. (0:02:21) Al: Yeah, the chickens is the most un-feature-rich thing in the game. (0:02:27) Kelly: Yeah. (0:02:28) Al: Chickens exist and if you turn up you get an egg. Great, congrats. (0:02:32) Kelly: You can name them, but you can’t pet them. (0:02:36) Al: All right, cool. So we are here to talk about (0:02:40) Al: well, we’re here for the final episode of Dave the Diver Month. (0:02:44) Al: Two weeks late. (0:02:49) Al: And I’ve got Kelly along to talk about the story for Dave the Diver. (0:02:52) Kelly: Hey, um, I loved this game. I got it, I think the day it came out, and I played it until my fingers hurt. (0:03:01) Kelly: So, weirdo, oh, yeah, yeah. (0:03:03) Al: So hopefully we’ll have lots to talk about in the main topic then. (0:03:08) Al: Exciting. So before that, we obviously have some news. First of all, Kelly, what have you been (0:03:14) Kelly: I have been actually getting ready for a trip to Scotland. (0:03:21) Al: Woo! (0:03:21) Kelly: Woo! (0:03:22) Kelly: But besides that, I’ve been playing Day of the Diver to catch up on the DLCs, playing (0:03:29) Kelly: Solitaire because that is my brain-dead dissociation game, and I’ve actually started doing Dooling (0:03:38) Kelly: Go again, which has been interesting. (0:03:40) Al: In fact, what are you learning? (0:03:42) Kelly: I decided to try Japanese, ‘cause I– (0:03:44) Al: Okay. (0:03:44) Kelly: I’ve tried Spanish, I’ve done German, I’ve done Italian. (0:03:48) Al: So you’re not trying to learn any Scottish Gaelic, or I think Scots is on there as well. (0:03:52) Kelly: No. (0:03:56) Kelly: I didn’t even think about that, to be honest. (0:03:58) Kelly: Which would have been interesting, ‘cause I was just like, (0:04:00) Kelly: “Oh, let me try something that’s completely different than, you know, any of the, like, uh, Latin languages, or German language.” (0:04:09) Al: Germanic. No, it’s just Gallic. They don’t have Scots. I thought they had, I thought (0:04:10) Kelly: Yeah. (0:04:15) Al: I’d seen some where they have Scots, but they don’t. Is it? So, well, okay, so this is gonna (0:04:18) Kelly: Interesting. Can you speak, Scotts? (0:04:22) Al: be a whole tangent, but we’re going for it anyway. I’m just checking. Yeah, Google doesn’t (0:04:27) Al: have it either, it just has Gallic. They all call them Scots Gallic, which is technically (0:04:32) Al: not true, because Scots is a language and Gallic is a language. Gallic is a language (0:04:36) Kelly: Mm. (0:04:39) Al: longer than Scotland has existed. But anyway, that’s not neither here nor there. So I definitely (0:04:44) Al: can’t speak Gallic. I can speak some Scots, but a lot of the Scots that I know is not (0:04:51) Al: stuff that I knew was a different language. So when I was, a lot of people in Scotland (0:04:54) Kelly: Okay. (0:04:57) Al: grow up learning what some people refer to as Scottish English, which is like a weird (0:05:03) Al: amalgamation amalgamation of English and Scots. And so (0:05:08) Kelly: So kind of like Spanglish, like when people grow up in like, you know, like mixing Spanish and English words in the theme. (0:05:09) Al: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it’s when you start to like encounter people outside, you (0:05:20) Al: realise, oh wait, this word that I’ve been using is a word that is not English, right? (0:05:26) Al: And to a lot of people, they would just think it’s, oh, it’s just a dialect word, right? (0:05:30) Al: But it’s from a different language. We just use it not in… So I would never use an entire (0:05:36) Al: sentence in Scots because that’s just not how I grew up. (0:05:39) Al: But a lot of the words that I would use, obviously not on the podcast, not when I’m (0:05:46) Al: working because I don’t work with many Scottish people, but like in my day-to-day life, there (0:05:51) Al: are a lot of words that I would use that would be Scots. Like for example, in the classic (0:05:56) Al: Scottish way, I’m going to use a weather word, a word about the weather. So the weather here (0:06:02) Al: today is drich, and that is a Scots word that means, it basically means overcast, right? (0:06:09) Al: Like it’s cloudy, it’s just not nice, it’s like it’s not sunny, but it’s not like pouring down (0:06:14) Al: with rain, it’s just, it’s drich. So that is an example of a Scots word that I would use (0:06:16) Kelly: okay (0:06:20) Al: most days because of the weather. It does, yeah, it’s a d, drich. (0:06:21) Kelly: is that does it start with a D or a B so so is it kind of like it almost reminds (0:06:28) Kelly: me of like dreary you know what I mean in this sense and I would kind of use (0:06:29) Al: Yeah, it’s, yeah, yeah, it’s kind of, it definitely, yeah, I would say, yeah, they’re almost synonyms. (0:06:33) Kelly: that word to (0:06:39) Al: I would say that drich, I think, can be used in other contexts, whereas drich entirely would be (0:06:42) Kelly: Outside of weather. Yeah. (0:06:45) Al: about the weather. So like you would talk about, oh, that’s a drichy meeting, or people were drich, (0:06:46) Kelly: No, that totally makes sense. Is- so he’s like… (0:06:51) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:06:52) Al: or whatever, but you couldn’t say something else with drich other than the weather. So yeah, that, (0:06:56) Kelly: Okay, that makes sense. That’s so interesting. Is… (0:06:59) Kelly: like, I’m gonna totally butcher this, but like, (0:07:03) Kelly: can I? Like, how do you say that? C-A-N-N-A-E? Is that considered Scots? (0:07:10) Al: Oh canny. Yeah, that would be another. So this is where we get into some technicalities of (0:07:10) Kelly: Yes. Yes. Yes. (0:07:17) Al: where English comes from. So modern English is itself, it comes from not just old English, (0:07:28) Al: but it also comes from old Scots, and old is, you know, auld lang syne, that’s A-U-L-D, (0:07:32) Kelly: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. (0:07:35) Al: that’s Scots for old. And so a lot of English words… (0:07:40) Al: Scots are, you know, very similar to Scots words because, you know, both languages come (0:07:45) Al: from both old languages, Old English and Old Scots. (0:07:47) Kelly: Okay (0:07:48) Kelly: So it’s kind of like it’s like Portuguese and Spanish and like German and like Dutch kind of where it’s like you can (0:07:49) Al: Yeah, yeah. A very… exactly. Yeah, and you wouldn’t know every word and these sorts of (0:07:55) Kelly: Understand them, but they’re not exactly the same (0:08:00) Al: things, but some words you could maybe guess at, like “old”. Most people would be able (0:08:05) Al: to guess what that means, stuff like that. Different words. (0:08:06) Kelly: Mm-hmm. Yeah, in the context. (0:08:10) Al: Clearly different language, but, you know, you can kind of guess what it means because (0:08:14) Al: they’re similar languages, absolutely. But, like, one example of the Old English/Old Scots (0:08:19) Al: thing is, so you’ve got fox, the animal, and you know what the female fox is called? So (0:08:26) Kelly: I feel like I do, but not right now. (0:08:28) Al: it’s a vixen. So fox with an F and vixen with a V. I can never remember which one it is, (0:08:36) Al: in one of Old Scots and Old English. It’s Fox and Fixing. (0:08:40) Al: They can, they can, they can. The other interesting thing is that there’s also a lost letter from (0:08:50) Kelly: and v and f kind of can sound the same too, you know, yeah. (0:08:59) Al: Scots that is not used anymore thanks to the anglification of keyboards. So when (0:09:10) Al: typewriters started becoming a thing, they were obviously, they used the standard QWERTY (0:09:14) Al: layout that we’re using now. And the letter is called a yod, and it kind of looks like (0:09:20) Al: a cross between a z and a y. And it has a sound like a y sound. It’s kind of like a (0:09:22) Kelly: Okay. (0:09:24) Kelly: Okay. (0:09:26) Kelly: Okay. (0:09:29) Al: y, but it’s not quite the same. And I can give you an example of a word that this would (0:09:33) Al: be used in. Do you know the company that does all the logistics at airports? (0:09:40) Al: And they’re called Menzies, do you know them? M-E-N-C-I-E-S. So they do a lot of, like they (0:09:47) Al: are a huge worldwide company that do logistics at airports. So if you’re at an airport and (0:09:52) Al: you look out on airside and you see, you know, people with their high vis on, in most airports (0:09:59) Al: in the West, they will be Menzies employees. Which is actually fun fact, that company started (0:10:07) Al: out as a paper shop in Scotland. (0:10:10) Al: But that zed is not actually originally a zed, it was actually a yod. (0:10:10) Kelly: Oh, that’s cool. (0:10:18) Kelly: Okay. (0:10:19) Al: And so the word ‘menzies’ shouldn’t actually be said menzies, it said ‘mingies’. (0:10:25) Al: Yeah, and so there’s a lot of words, a lot of places in Scotland that you might notice this (0:10:30) Al: when you’re over here, a lot of places in Scotland that have zeds in their name in the middle, (0:10:34) Al: and it’s not actually a zed, it’s a yod. So there’s a place in near Glasgow, (0:10:40) Al: that’s called Calane, and that’s C-U-L-Z-E-A-N, but of course that zed was a yod, (0:10:47) Al: which is why it’s Calane, not Cal-Zane. (0:10:50) Kelly: Okay, so you guys all just acknowledge that it should be pronounced (0:10:56) Al: We just ignore the fact that it’s a zed, because that’s what you learn. (0:10:59) Kelly: Yeah (0:10:59) Al: I didn’t know for a long time that it wasn’t originally a zed. (0:11:03) Kelly: Okay (0:11:04) Al: But yeah, we don’t pronounce it like that. (0:11:06) Kelly: Okay, sorry to derail (0:11:07) Al: But yeah, so you will. (0:11:10) Al: So it’s fine, I’ll put this in specifically as a section on the Scots (0:11:15) Al: language for some reason. But yeah, so you might hear some people, (0:11:18) Al: if you ever see the paper shop that still does exist, Menzies, (0:11:21) Al: some people will call it Menzies, and some people call it Menzies, (0:11:25) Kelly: Oh, very interesting, that’s pretty cool. (0:11:25) Al: because it depends on who you are. (0:11:28) Al: There used to be a politician in Scotland calls Menzies Campbell, (0:11:30) Al: and nobody would ever call him Menzies Campbell, (0:11:32) Al: despite the fact that it’s spelled the exact same way. (0:11:34) Kelly: That was a fun fact. (0:11:35) Al: But they still call the paper shop Menzies for some reason. (0:11:38) Al: So Ming is fun fact. (0:11:40) Al: There you go. That’s your Scott’s language history on the Cottagecore podcast, (0:11:46) Al: The Harvest Season. (0:11:48) Kelly: I’m just really good at derailing the podcast, what can I say. (0:11:52) Al: Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that. (0:11:55) Kelly: What have you been up to, Al, besides history lessons? (0:11:56) Al: What have I been up to? (0:12:00) Al: I have been playing, well kind of playing, Harvest Moon, Home Sweet Home, and Coraline 1.1. (0:12:10) Al: I quite often, if I’m like trying to play a game for a podcast and I’ve not quite got (0:12:14) Al: into it yet, I will feel guilty about that and not play any other games. (0:12:22) Al: So I have played about two in-game days of Harvest Moon Home Sweet Home. (0:12:28) Kelly: That’s it! (0:12:28) Al: That’s it. (0:12:29) Al: So we’ll see. (0:12:30) Al: Hopefully I’ll manage to play enough before the podcast that I’m recording in a week. (0:12:36) Kelly: It’s crunch time! (0:12:38) Al: - It’s crunch time. (0:12:40) Al: So we’ll see. (0:12:40) Al: The annoying thing I also found out is that, (0:12:42) Al: so it’s, I don’t know if you’re aware of this game, Kelly, (0:12:45) Al: but it is a mobile game. (0:12:48) Al: So it’s on Android and iOS. (0:12:50) Kelly: the harvest moon one (0:12:51) Al: The new Harvest Moon game, yeah. (0:12:53) Al: And they haven’t enabled cloud safe for it. (0:13:00) Al: So I installed and started playing it on my 13 inch iPad. (0:13:00) Kelly: Oh. (0:13:05) Al: And that is now the only device I can play this game on. (0:13:05) Kelly: Oh. (0:13:09) Kelly: That’s… that’s so… wrong. (0:13:10) Al: I just ate is bizarre, because a special. (0:13:16) Kelly: Especially on like a harv– like, I’m assuming the Harvest Moon game, you know, it has a lot going on. (0:13:21) Al: Yep, you should be here. (0:13:21) Kelly: You’re dedicating a good amount of time to playing it. (0:13:25) Kelly: Yeah, like, you have items, you have things that you’re building up, like, why would– (0:13:30) Kelly: Like, don’t most of these games have that built in by now? (0:13:34) Al: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s not even you don’t even need to do much. You just need to say yes, you can do it. (0:13:44) Kelly: Yeah, and especially with I feel like I’m sure they’re different games, but like just having like knowing that animal (0:13:52) Kelly: crossing (0:13:53) Kelly: Is whatever Pacicapia is like shutting down their app? (0:13:54) Al: Bocky camp (0:13:57) Al: Yeah (0:13:58) Kelly: Wouldn’t you kind of want to make sure that your app is there to like fill the void? (0:14:02) Kelly: - I enjoyed. (0:14:03) Al: Anyway, so that’s that that’s another reason why I’ve not played a lot of it yet is because I can only play it on one (0:14:08) Al: Device and it’s the 13 inch iPad which I like as a device, but it’s not the best for a mobile games, obviously (0:14:15) Kelly: Is it annoying to like, hold for… Is that what the issue is or is it? (0:14:19) Al: That’s part that’s part of the issue although I do have it on a (0:14:22) Al: I stand at my desk, so I (0:14:24) Kelly: Mm. (0:14:24) Al: don’t have to hold it when I’m at my desk, but that means that realistically the only (0:14:27) Al: time I’m playing this game is when I’m working. Which is not a great way to play a game, right? (0:14:29) Kelly: Yeah. (0:14:35) Al: But anyway, whatever. It’s especially annoying because they haven’t disabled playing it on (0:14:39) Al: Macs as well, so now you can play iPad and iPhone stuff on Macs, which is great. It’s (0:14:46) Al: a great feature, but it means that I’ve installed the game on my Mac, but I’d have to start (0:14:52) Al: and you saved to play it there. (0:14:54) Al: Like I was like, this is great because there are like so many ways for me to play this. (0:14:59) Al: I can play it on my iPad during work. (0:15:00) Al: I can play it on my Mac when I’m sitting in front of the TV. (0:15:04) Al: I can play it on my iPad mini when I’m in bed and I’m like, nope, you get one of those. (0:15:09) Kelly: Yeah jokes on you. That’s annoying. (0:15:10) Al: One of those. (0:15:11) Al: Yeah, I should have just gone with the Android version, but the problem is the Android version (0:15:16) Al: crashed when it first came out. (0:15:18) Al: So I couldn’t play it for, in fact, I don’t think it’s, I think it’s still not working (0:15:18) Kelly: So they kind of, they, they dug you into a little corner. (0:15:29) Al: So, I’ve done a little bit of Carlisle in 1.1 as well, because I hadn’t been playing (0:15:34) Al: that yet, so that’s that, and I have gotten very much back into Marvel Snap. (0:15:40) Kelly: Whoa, I haven’t heard that name in a while. (0:15:42) Al: Yeah, so it was, oh they make, they make loads of real decisions, but they’re quite good (0:15:46) Kelly: Did they, like, fix the game? (0:15:47) Kelly: Because I know they were having… they made some kind of weird decisions last winter. (0:15:54) Kelly: Okay. (0:15:54) Al: at fixing these things quickly, like you get multiple changes a week. (0:15:56) Kelly: Okay. (0:15:58) Kelly: Okay. (0:15:59) Al: So, if there’s something that’s completely killing the game, they kill that really quickly. (0:16:04) Al: They’re pretty good at that. (0:16:06) Al: No, we’re at the end of a season, and the next season has like a new type of ability, (0:16:12) Al: which is the first time they’ve done that since launch, so that’s exciting. (0:16:15) Al: And a lot of new Spider People cards, which is also cool. (0:16:21) Al: I do like some Spider People. (0:16:23) Kelly: when did they release marvel snap? was it like around this time last year? (0:16:24) Al: But it’s only a year, I don’t know. (0:16:29) Kelly: right? is it older than that? (0:16:29) Al: It can’t only be a year, really. (0:16:32) Al: No, two years, October 22. (0:16:33) Kelly: okay okay. I didn’t think it was only a year old but I was like I don’t I don’t keep up with that (0:16:39) Al: Yeah, yeah. (0:16:40) Kelly: game so there’s also that. there just happened to be a streamer I was watching who was like obsessed (0:16:46) Kelly: with it for a while. (0:16:47) Al: I really love it, because it’s, I like card games, but one, they’re so hard to keep up (0:16:55) Al: with all the cards, right? (0:16:57) Al: And the good thing about Marvel Snap is so many. (0:17:00) Al: There’s many different types of playing are viable. (0:17:02) Kelly: So it’s not like you get one or two meta that are like (0:17:06) Al: Exactly, exactly. (0:17:06) Al: There’s like, you know, Destroy decks are really good just now. (0:17:10) Al: Move decks are pretty good just now. (0:17:12) Al: There’s also like a couple of other types of decks that you can use based on multiple cards. (0:17:18) Al: Like I have played four different decks and won with them over the last two days. (0:17:23) Al: So it’s, yeah, it’s pretty good. (0:17:25) Al: Discard decks are still quite good as well. (0:17:27) Al: Like there’s lots that’s working just now. (0:17:30) Al: And yet there are a few cards that if you don’t get them, you’re unlikely to get up to like (0:17:35) Al: level 100, rank 100. But I’m unlikely to get there anyway. And it’s still fun. Like it takes a long (0:17:41) Al: time to build up the ranks anyway. So, you know, it takes it only now are my rank 60 now. (0:17:49) Al: And, you know, granted it’s only been, I’ve only been playing for two weeks of this season, (0:17:57) Al: which is about half of it, but… (0:18:00) Al: It’s like, I… Yeah, I think it would have been unlikely for me to get to 100 anyway, but… (0:18:06) Al: So yeah, and also the actual matches are simpler than most card games. (0:18:11) Kelly: Okay. (0:18:12) Al: So you’ve only got a few things to think about while still having a lot of different strategies. (0:18:17) Al: And obviously they’re fast. (0:18:20) Al: You know, you can get a match and done in a cut in, you know, the longest matches take five. (0:18:20) Kelly: Yeah, no, it seems like, you know, I I’m not a big Marvel person, but it seems like a fun game with a lot of creativity and like options. (0:18:34) Kelly: And the fact that they’re still actively updating it, I think says a lot. (0:18:34) Al: Yeah. Yeah. It’s obviously making money. Um, so yeah, I mean, basically the reason why (0:18:42) Kelly: Yeah, that too. (0:18:46) Al: I’m back into it is because, um, Hannah, uh, from the ISE slack, um, she walk got, she (0:18:54) Al: came over and was like, Oh, I’m interested in this because I hear that it’s quite similar (0:18:58) Al: to what the new Pokemon trading card app will be like. So I want to see how this works before (0:19:02) Kelly: Oh interesting, smart of Pokemon. (0:19:04) Al: to see how similar it is and compare it to that. And so when she said that, well, yeah, (0:19:12) Al: exactly. It will be interesting to see how much it actually is because we don’t know much details (0:19:16) Al: about how the battles will work. Um, but it will be very clever if, if it is, if it works out well. (0:19:22) Al: Um, but because she came through and did that, I was like, Oh, now I really want to play (0:19:28) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:19:28) Al: and I haven’t stopped playing since. So that was two weeks ago. (0:19:33) Kelly: I… I trust me. I understand. I understand. (0:19:37) Kelly: I’m sure you’ll get out eventually. (0:19:39) Al: Yeah, this is my problem, is I don’t play games casually, I play games until I stop (0:19:40) Kelly: You’ll be free. (0:19:46) Al: playing them, and it is my life until I stop playing them, and then I never think about (0:19:52) Kelly: Yeah, literally, I completely understand. (0:19:55) Kelly: That’s why I’m not allowed to play stuff like Cafe Mix anymore. (0:20:01) Kelly: I like… it was a phone game, you know? (0:20:05) Kelly: But it was a phone game that, uh… (0:20:07) Kelly: Once I started playing events, I got really hooked, (0:20:10) Kelly: and I was good at the events, and I kept winning events, (0:20:12) Kelly: and then I would get money out of it. (0:20:12) Al: Yeah, yeah, my (0:20:14) Kelly: And it was just like, it was like, you know, daily. (0:20:16) Kelly: It was a daily thing where I’d go in, I’d play five games, I’d do this, (0:20:20) Kelly: and then the events. (0:20:22) Kelly: were like, “You have to play all weekend, otherwise you won’t win,” and I’d be like, “Well, I have to win.” (0:20:27) Kelly: Um… (0:20:28) Kelly: So now I’m just not allowed to play that game. (0:20:30) Kelly: But I do that with all games, that’s why I played Day of the Diver until my fingers hurt, you know? (0:20:33) Kelly: That’s, uh… (0:20:34) Al: Yeah, yeah, I just I never got into cafe mix because I just didn’t like the gameplay like it felt too imprecise (0:20:35) Kelly: That’s what I do. (0:20:39) Kelly: Yeah. (0:20:41) Kelly: It’s… it is. (0:20:43) Kelly: It’s very sloppy. (0:20:44) Kelly: Which I think can work in your favor if you know how to use it correctly. (0:20:50) Al: Yeah, probably, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to learn. You know, it’s like, I loved like (0:20:52) Kelly: Yeah, no, that’s fair, that’s fair. (0:20:56) Al: shuffle, Pokemon shuffle, which is not, I know it’s not the same game, but it’s, it’s like similar (0:21:01) Kelly: It’s very similar, yeah. (0:21:01) Al: ideas in some ways. But I much preferred that because it was very clear, like, it’s precise, (0:21:07) Al: right? This place goes to that piece and that’s it. Whereas with Cafe May, it’s like, oh, you’re (0:21:11) Al: kind of like circling. And it’s like, I didn’t. (0:21:14) Kelly: Yeah, no, it’s it’s definitely very different in actual gameplay (0:21:20) Al: Cool. So that’s what we’ve been up to and a (0:21:22) Kelly: Yeah (0:21:24) Al: tangent on the Scottish language. (0:21:27) Al: Now we’re going to talk about some news, some game news. (0:21:30) Al: First of all, we have the zero point nine update of Research Story is out now. (0:21:35) Al: So this includes a new NPC, (0:21:39) Al: lots of extra content for the NPCs, a cooking system and your classic on a daily (0:21:47) Al: Cottagecore game, the daily summary, when you (0:21:50) Al: go to sleep, gives you everything that you’ve done in that game. (0:21:50) Kelly: I laugh, but honestly I need things like those. (0:21:55) Al: Well, that’s the thing. And it’s like you have, like, especially in farming games where (0:21:56) Kelly: Like when games don’t have that, sometimes I’m like, “hmm, what was I doing? (0:22:05) Al: you are selling a bunch of stuff on a daily basis, it’s good to know one, how much you (0:22:06) Kelly: Mmhmm. (0:22:09) Al: actually sold, and two, how that break broke down. You know, that was a key point of Stardew (0:22:11) Kelly: Yeah. (0:22:17) Al: is trying to figure out what was the most efficient stuff. (0:22:20) Al: This is really nice in that it’s building up into other things as well, so it’s like, (0:22:26) Al: “Oh, here are the people you talk to, and here’s the XP you gained,” and that sort of stuff. (0:22:32) Kelly: Yeah, no, it definitely does help, and I think also with farming games it’s so easy to get sidetracked on things. (0:22:38) Kelly: So it’s, like, good to see at the end of the day, like, “Oh, I actually did not sell as much stuff that I wanted to,” (0:22:44) Kelly: or “Didn’t talk to the right amount of people,” or, you know, “It’s two days until I have to buy something that’s really expensive, I better start selling a bunch.” (0:22:53) Al: They have also released their roadmap to 1.0, so they’re getting close. They have two more updates (0:22:59) Al: before the 1.0. That is 0.10 should be coming out at the end of September. That is player (0:23:06) Al: customization. 0.11 should be coming out at the end of the year, and that is orange hearts and (0:23:14) Al: shimmers. The orange heart events that will be for NPCs. And I don’t know what shimmers means. (0:23:20) Al: Oh, shiny creatures right in front of me. (0:23:23) Al: I always got to translate into Pokemon. (0:23:27) Kelly: Translate, yeah. (0:23:31) Al: And then the 1.0 will be coming out in Q1 next year. (0:23:36) Al: So if you’ve been looking for 1.0 to finally get into this game, (0:23:40) Al: it’ll be next year, be warned. (0:23:41) Kelly: Have you played the, um, is there an Early Access? (0:23:45) Al: Yeah, that’s what this is. (0:23:46) Al: I haven’t played it. (0:23:47) Al: I know that Cody has played it, and I think Bev played it as well. (0:23:50) Al: and they had a chat about it on one of the episodes. (0:23:53) Al: And they both really liked it. So, I don’t know. (0:23:55) Kelly: It looks cute. I like the note about married life events because I feel like a lot of these games kind of end events once you marry your characters of choice. So that’s nice. (0:24:02) Al: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, not looking at anyone in particular, Coral Island. (0:24:11) Al: Uh, Spirity have also got an update out now. The moving and grooving update, um, was animations. (0:24:20) Al: Hahaha. Hmm. Yeah, did you play it? (0:24:22) Kelly: This game is so upsetting to me because I really wanted to like it so bad. (0:24:27) Kelly: So like, seeing this update, it’s like, these look so funny, and like, they look so silly but it’s like, I’m not gonna go back to play like this. (0:24:34) Al: This is the problem is like you can like everything about a game, but if you don’t actually enjoy the core loop of the game (0:24:40) Al: It doesn’t really matter (0:24:40) Kelly: Mm-hmm (0:24:42) Kelly: Yeah, and I gave it I think I put like 30 hours in or something so I like I gave it a good (0:24:45) Al: Oh, wow, that’s more than I put in I may be I may be put in ten hours (0:24:48) Kelly: Try (0:24:51) Kelly: I wanted to like it so bad, but what can you do? (0:24:53) Al: Yeah (0:24:54) Al: Yeah, I wonder how much of it is just like a personal preference thing, right? Like some people just don’t like certain times of games (0:25:00) Kelly: Yeah (0:25:02) Kelly: I (0:25:03) Kelly: Mean, I don’t know cuz I love games like this. Typically. I wish I could I play this like back in (0:25:10) Kelly: fall so I can’t remember exactly what it was, but I know some things were just like (0:25:15) Kelly: kind of really repetitive in like a (0:25:19) Al: I think that the repetitive bit is probably my problem, is that the bathhouse you did upgrade, (0:25:27) Al: but it didn’t really feel like you were progressing. Whereas with farming games, (0:25:33) Al: you go from like a two by two square that you’ve made of turnips to thousands of crops over your (0:25:41) Al: farm, and tens of animals giving you millions every season. And it didn’t feel like there was (0:25:49) Al: level of progression to aim for. And that was what I think really lost me about it. (0:25:56) Kelly: Yeah, I agree because I updated like I think as much as I possibly could in the bath house, too (0:26:03) Al: but it’s like oh now I have three baths it’s like oh is there right okay (0:26:06) Kelly: Yeah, there’s actually a second floor yeah, but it doesn’t add that much (0:26:15) Al: yeah anyway but if you’ve if you enjoyed the game there’s more updates to it and you know (0:26:17) Kelly: But yeah (0:26:21) Al: as you say these animations are pretty goofy and fun and add some more (0:26:24) Kelly: Yeah, they look so silly and cute, you know. (0:26:26) Al: they add some more character to the npc’s next we have a new update for (0:26:33) Al: Laudelnot coming out on the 19th of September and oh boy do I hate the names (0:26:38) Al: that they give these updates this one is the Goddles update what’s a Goddle you might say (0:26:45) Al: that’s a good question this includes a new secret cave biome that houses three mysterious Goddles (0:26:52) Al: was this cavern forgotten by guppy what ancient abilities do these Goddles have (0:26:59) Al: I’m still not quite sure what I got all this is it the little (0:27:03) Al: like tree looking thing in this image, maybe. (0:27:06) Kelly: I don’t know. I think it’s cute that it’s like, oh, plant these to prevent pollination, uh, pollution, but you know, still it’s like, yeah, to your point, like, what is this made-up word? (0:27:20) Al: Yeah, I think this might be one of those updates that if you have played the game, which I (0:27:26) Al: haven’t yet, that you might be more interested in it. Yeah, I want to play this game at some (0:27:34) Kelly: It looks cute. I like whatever this aesthetic is called. I can’t think right now. (0:27:42) Al: Yes, I can’t remember either. They’ve all got fancy names. (0:27:44) Kelly: Yeah, but I like this game design. I think that (0:27:48) Kelly: style of animation is very cute and very fun for a little underwater game. Yeah. (0:27:51) Al: It works, it works, yeah it works well especially when all your creatures are axolotls, which (0:27:58) Kelly: Yes. (0:28:00) Al: the goofier an axolotl is, the cuter it is. (0:28:04) Kelly: That is true. That is, it is unbeatably cute looking. (0:28:10) Al: Next we have a new DLC for Outlanders, this is the Wandering Stars DLC, and I mean if (0:28:18) Al: you’ve played Outlanders you can look at it, I don’t really think we need to go into the (0:28:21) Al: details of this. (0:28:24) Al: Outlanders is a city builder game, so I’ll probably not play it, because every time I (0:28:29) Al: try and enjoy a city builder I just get frustrated with them, it’s not my kind of game. (0:28:34) Kelly: I get too into city builder kind of games and then it’s also really not enjoyable for me and like actually just stressful, so yeah. (0:28:42) Al: I think part of my problem, so I used to love City Builders, I was obsessed with SimCity2 (0:28:49) Al: so much, but I think part of the problem is that they never work well with controllers. (0:28:58) Al: They’re just not fun to play unless you have a mouse and keyboard, and that’s not how I (0:29:03) Al: game anymore in my life. (0:29:04) Kelly: It’s so funny because I’ve (0:29:04) Al: I am past the point. (0:29:07) Kelly: I’ve flipped from like being a controller only person to (0:29:13) Kelly: playing a lot of games mouse and keyboard now with like an occasional controller and (0:29:18) Kelly: It’s true a lot of these games are so different when you have the option to mouse and keyboard them (0:29:24) Kelly: Like there’s some games where it just makes such a big difference (0:29:26) Al: Yeah. Yeah. I just like, the way that I game nowadays is sitting on my sofa, watching TV (0:29:33) Al: with Rona, because that’s the time we get together and that’s how we like to spend our (0:29:34) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:29:38) Al: time together. So I’m not going to go, Oh, sorry, Rona. I’m going to go into the office (0:29:41) Al: and play games on my computer. Like, I’m just not going to do that. So, um, but I used to (0:29:47) Al: like when I was a student or whatever, I would, you know, be up till two, three. (0:29:56) Kelly: It’s tough (0:29:57) Al: Yeah. Finally, we have an update on what was called Runefactory Project Dragon and is now (0:29:59) Kelly: The sacrifices (0:30:10) Al: called Runefactory Guardians of Azuma. (0:30:14) Kelly: that’s a kind of oh wait so i’m sorry to cut you off but was it called rune factory project dragon (0:30:21) Al: Yes. So I don’t know if that was ever meant to be the title, because when you see project you (0:30:21) Kelly: and they changed that’s interesting (0:30:28) Al: quite often think that’s not the final title. So I suspect it was like we haven’t thought up a name, (0:30:30) Kelly: Yeah. (0:30:32) Kelly: Yeah. (0:30:35) Al: it’s about dragons, call it project dragon. But anyway, now they’ve got given an actual name, (0:30:43) Al: and they’ve said it’s coming out spring next year, and we have a trailer. So the interesting, (0:30:50) Al: Have you ever have you played (0:30:51) Al: any Renfactory games? (0:30:52) Kelly: No. I never got onto that bandwagon. I don’t know how I missed it. I think I was (0:30:53) Al: Okay, so (0:30:58) Kelly: just too dedicated to The Sims at that point in my life. (0:31:02) Al: fair enough. I mean, we’ve all been through our Sims phase. Again, interestingly, spent (0:31:09) Al: a lot of time playing Sims and Sims 2 specifically, and then not really since then. Probably for (0:31:14) Kelly: That’s fair. (0:31:15) Al: the same reason that they don’t really work very well with controllers. (0:31:17) Kelly: Oh no, they’re awful. Those games are the games that made me realize that not all games can be played the same way. (0:31:24) Al: Yeah, yeah. Like, I think it’s good that they add support for it because some people (0:31:29) Al: will have no other option and they would rather go through the pain and do it anyway. But (0:31:36) Al: anyway, so the interesting thing about this game is it says that it is a boldly reimagined (0:31:44) Al: gameplay. And the interesting thing is I watch this trailer and I’m not sure what the (0:31:49) Al: boldly reimagined gameplay is because previous Rune Factories are at a (0:31:54) Al: level. It’s basically Harvest Moon, but also combat. And this is Harvest Moon, but also combat. (0:32:04) Al: So, you know, you still have all the exact same farming stuff and then you go off and you fight (0:32:13) Al: creatures. Now granted, it does seem to be that some of the combat is dance-based rather than (0:32:21) Al: with a sword, but I… (0:32:22) Kelly: Interesting. So it’s like a rhythm? (0:32:24) Al: I don’t think it is rhythm-based, so this is the thing. I think it is just you press a button (0:32:31) Al: and you do a dance move, which isn’t fundamentally different than you press a button and you hit (0:32:37) Al: something with a sword. So… I don’t know. I don’t know the specifics of that. Well, this is the thing, (0:32:38) Kelly: So it’s still tur- like, it’s still… (0:32:43) Kelly: Are you gonna, like, start breakdancing at enemies? (0:32:47) Al: because the dancing… this is the weird bit. The dancing just seems to give you weapons that you (0:32:51) Al: you hit the enemies with. (0:32:54) Kelly: Are you dancing to the gods to, like, ask for a weapon? (0:32:54) Al: I just, Kelly, I have no idea. (0:33:00) Al: They’ve not shown any real gameplay. (0:33:03) Al: I guess my point is, I don’t know what the new part of this is. (0:33:07) Al: It just looks to me like the next Rune Factory. (0:33:10) Al: And there are some changes to it, and it’s a different story. (0:33:13) Al: And that’s all great, and people will love that. (0:33:15) Al: But like, why are you pretending that it’s something fundamentally different when it’s clearly not? (0:33:21) Kelly: Have there there’s been like a quite a few ruin factories, right? (0:33:24) Al: We’ve had five so far. (0:33:25) Kelly: And maybe they’re just lying to forget it I don’t know (0:33:31) Al: I mean, one person’s boldly reimagined is another one’s iterative change, right? (0:33:36) Kelly: Yeah, this seems like a pretty far reach though based on what you’ve said (0:33:42) Al: It does. (0:33:43) Al: This just, it feels like Rune Factory 5, but with some advances, which is fine. (0:33:48) Kelly: Maybe they’re… maybe they’re hiding it. (0:33:49) Al: I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but why would you do that? (0:33:50) Kelly: Maybe they’re hiding the… (0:33:54) Al: It even says, “Restore your lost memories.” (0:33:56) Al: You still have Amnesia, like in every single Rune Factory game. (0:33:59) Kelly: Oh it’s one of those games, okay I see. (0:34:05) Al: This game. (0:34:06) Al: I don’t know if I can, I don’t know if I can go through playing another Rune Factory game. (0:34:06) Kelly: I don’t know. (0:34:10) Kelly: Have you played all of them? (0:34:11) Al: No, I have not. (0:34:12) Al: I have played just four and five, but I feel like that’s enough for me. (0:34:20) Al: I’m not a fan of the combat in these games. (0:34:23) Kelly: Okay, is it turn-based or is it like? (0:34:24) Al: No, it’s action based. (0:34:27) Al: Like real-time, whatever you want to call it, real-time combat. (0:34:31) Al: It’s just, I never feel like it’s responsive enough for me to feel like it’s enjoyable. (0:34:34) Kelly: Okay. (0:34:38) Al: It feels more like hack and slash rather than something like, I don’t know, Breath of the Wild, (0:34:45) Al: where you can have like precise combat with dodging and what’s the other one where you (0:34:52) Al: hit at the right parry, that’s the right one. (0:34:54) Al: So, I don’t know. I say that I don’t want to play it, but I’ll probably play it. We’ll (0:35:00) Al: see. We now have a trailer for it, so if you’re interested, go watch it. We’ve not heard anything (0:35:08) Al: else about Rune Factory 6, which fun fact Kelly, they announced at the exact same time (0:35:12) Al: they announced this game. No, this isn’t 6. This is… Yeah, but this is the thing. It’s (0:35:13) Kelly: Oh, this isn’t six. This is a side project. (0:35:20) Al: It’s not though. (0:35:21) Al: It’s not. (0:35:22) Al: It’s just the next. (0:35:24) Al: It will be interesting to see how long our Silkkox song is, and we can (0:35:26) Kelly: So, when does six come out? (0:35:30) Kelly: That’s… that’s… (0:35:35) Kelly: But this one seems to be coming out pretty quick. (0:35:40) Kelly: That’s… that’s not too bad when your other ones take five years. (0:35:46) Kelly: Yeah, that’s my… that’s my gauge for everything. (0:35:55) Al: to this is half a Silkkox song or whatever. (0:35:58) Kelly: » Well, I think the psychos have run out of other games, or (0:36:02) Kelly: they’re starting to run out of other games to compare it to. (0:36:06) Al: Yeah, I think GTA6 is the only other one that feels like that has been longer. (0:36:08) Kelly: Yeah, [LAUGH] yeah, and that’s just a meme in itself. (0:36:12) Al: Yeah. Yeah. Yes, GTA6 is not coming out next year, no matter how much they say it is, it’s (0:36:13) Kelly: So the two meme games, we’re just [BLANK_AUDIO] (0:36:21) Al: not coming out next year. It is a, like, because I don’t know if they actually announced that (0:36:26) Al: it was coming out in 2025 or something, but be- (0:36:29) Kelly: No, ‘cause there was that whole meme just going around of like, “We got this before (0:36:34) Kelly: GTA VI.” (0:36:35) Kelly: Oh, so end of next year. (0:36:35) Al: Yeah, so the announcement it was going to come out in Q4 2025, which late 20… Yeah, (0:36:42) Kelly: That’s never gonna happen. (0:36:43) Al: that means it’s coming out 2026. It was hilarious because they announced it in December last (0:36:44) Kelly: Yeah. (0:36:50) Al: year. So it was like, “Oh, they’re going to announce the new game. Great.” And then it (0:36:53) Al: came out and it was like, “Oh, wow, that’s exciting.” And then at the end it was like, (0:36:56) Al: late 2025. You’re like, “Really? You’re announcing it two years before you’re currently planning (0:37:02) Al: on it coming out. (0:37:04) Kelly: It’s just I went into a little bit of a spiral recently because of GTA 6 and that whole timeline (0:37:11) Kelly: because I was like, wow, it has been, I lived at my parents house when GTA 5 came out. (0:37:12) Al: Yeah. It’s, it’s basically my entire career. So I, so (0:37:19) Kelly: I was in college. (0:37:24) Kelly: Literally I was so excited because the weekend it dropped, my parents were away and I set (0:37:29) Kelly: up the big screen TV in the living room, and moved like the comfy (0:37:32) Al: Yeah. (0:37:32) Al: Thank you so much for watching. (0:37:34) Kelly: you know armchair to the center of the living room and sat there, and played GTA 5 on the big screen TV and (0:37:34) Al: If you enjoyed this video, please like and subscribe. (0:37:36) Al: If you want to see more videos like this, please like and subscribe. (0:37:42) Kelly: That’s how long it’s been (0:37:44) Al: It’s funny, so it came out on the 17th of September 2013, I got my first job outside (0:37:48) Kelly: No literally like so literally this is (0:37:53) Al: of uni on the 8th of August 2013. So just over a month before GTA 5 came out, I started (0:38:01) Al: my career. Since then, I’ve changed job like five times. I have had two children, I have (0:38:07) Al: bought two different houses, not at the same time, I’m not a crazy person. (0:38:14) Al: I was technically married before that, but only by two months. So like my entire career. (0:38:21) Al: I remember explicitly that it came out around that time because my first job, their office (0:38:28) Al: was right next to the Rockstar offices in Edinburgh. And so they had this massive, four-storey (0:38:30) Kelly: Uh, okay. (0:38:35) Al: poster on the office building that I walked past every single day for like a month before (0:38:42) Kelly: it’s it’s crazy it’s it’s it’s so funny like it’s yeah like you said like my whole life (0:38:50) Kelly: like I was still in college still living at my parents still working you know some like college (0:38:56) Kelly: level job (0:38:58) Al: I have a nine-year-old who was born a year and a half after it came out. (0:39:04) Kelly: you know I gotta say they really um milked gta live for all it’s worth (0:39:11) Kelly: because the fact that that kept (0:39:11) Al: - Yeah, they really did. (0:39:12) Kelly: that game so relevant is absolutely insane. (0:39:16) Al: Yeah, I mean, I’m never, I’m not really a GTA person, (0:39:21) Al: so I never played GTA Live. (0:39:22) Kelly: Well, I was. I was, you know, for literally most of my childhood (0:39:28) Kelly: and then they didn’t release a new game for half my life. (0:39:34) Kelly: Like, that’s crazy. One of my first- I used to rent (0:39:37) Kelly: GTA Miami Vice and GTA 3 from Blockbuster. (0:39:42) Al: I think it’s a very good example of how modern games have become too big. So from 1997, when (0:39:53) Al: the first GTA came out, there were 16 years between that and GTA 5. 16 years. It depends (0:40:00) Kelly: And what did they put out like 12 games? (0:40:03) Al: which one you’re counting, which ones you’re counting, because there’s like… so if you’re (0:40:05) Kelly: I’m counting the mini like the the side like the PSP games and stuff like that too. Yeah (0:40:12) Kelly: I could hear I could hear the little tapping (0:40:12) Al: going to be 15. 15 games. So an average of one a year. And since GTA 5… or let’s just (0:40:16) Kelly: Okay, so I wasn’t too far off (0:40:21) Al: shoot… so between GTA 5 and GTA 6 releasing, and this is just GTA games by the way, it’s (0:40:26) Al: not all Rockstar games. I’m just talking GTA stuff. So between GTA 5 and GTA 6 releasing, (0:40:31) Al: there will be at least 12 years. So 12 years between… and in that time, what have they (0:40:33) Kelly: That’s absurd. (0:40:38) Al: they had GTA Live and well, ignoring (0:40:38) Kelly: Red Dead Redemption? (0:40:42) Al: the other so GTA stuff specifically GTA Live or online or whatever you call it and their remastered (0:40:42) Kelly: Yeah, yeah. (0:40:48) Al: trilogy. No, exactly. And I was counting for the record like I wasn’t I wasn’t even counting like (0:40:49) Kelly: Oh, right, okay. Which, that doesn’t count. (0:40:56) Al: they had a double pack and a trilogy re-release. I wasn’t counting those before so literally and (0:41:04) Al: GTA online came out at the same time as 5 came in 2013 was like two weeks after 5. So (0:41:08) Kelly: Yeah, yeah. (0:41:12) Al: yeah Rockstar have done other games of course since then but it just… (0:41:16) Kelly: But they literally had such a, like they are who they are because of GTA. (0:41:22) Al: yeah, uh-huh. Also well also also also Lemmings but yeah. (0:41:24) Kelly: Like again, that was my childhood. I could tell you the craziest cheats for those games. (0:41:30) Al: We can’t forget Lemmings come on. (0:41:32) Kelly: What is, is that a Rockstar game? (0:41:35) Al: Did you never? So okay right this is where we get into the history of Rockstar North. (0:41:40) Al: Not Rockstar, Rockstar North. (0:41:41) Kelly: Is that the Scotland office? (0:41:42) Al: So, well, let me get to that. Let me get to that. So, GTA was originally developed (0:41:50) Al: by a company called DMA Design. This was a company based in Dundee, in Scotland, which (0:41:52) Kelly: Mm-hm. (0:42:00) Al: it’s actually the heart of games design in Scotland. The university there, people come (0:42:07) Al: from all over the world to study games design. It’s like well known for that. (0:42:13) Al: DMA Design, after GTA 3, were bought by Rockstar and renamed Rockstar North. But before that, (0:42:23) Al: they also released many games. GTA is the one that obviously most people know of, (0:42:29) Al: but they also released Lemmings, which was a big game. Did you never play Lemmings? (0:42:37) Al: So, this was a game, the game play for this was you have… (0:42:42) Al: Obviously, this is based on the false idea of Lemmings walking off cliffs, (0:42:46) Al: which is obviously nonsense, but it was a fun game. (0:42:50) Al: So, you know about the creatures Lemmings, right? (0:42:52) Kelly: Yes, yes. (0:42:53) Al: And you know about the Disney’s terrible thing where they pretended that Lemmings (0:42:58) Al: walked off cliffs, but actually they just basically pushed them off a cliff for a documentary. (0:43:02) Kelly: Yes, I do know about that. (0:43:03) Al: Yeah, OK, cool. (0:43:06) Al: So, DMA Design made a game called Lemmings that was based off this idea. (0:43:10) Al: Um, you have a lot of little (0:43:12) Al: lemmings and you have to guide them through a 2D world, get them from the start to the end using (0:43:20) Al: different things like you can, you know, you can tell a lemming to mine through this thing, (0:43:24) Al: you can tell one to build a stair, you can, you know, loads of things. It was a really fun game. (0:43:28) Kelly: They’re so cute looking, honestly. Like, I’m looking at it now, it looks adorable. (0:43:30) Al: Yeah. So I don’t think they made a single lemmings game after they became Rockstar North, (0:43:36) Al: which I’m very sad about, but it’d be amazing. They basically- (0:43:39) Kelly: Ugh, could you imagine? (0:43:42) Al: became the GTA place, even though they did so many other games before that. (0:43:47) Kelly: Yeah, that’s crazy. I never would have guessed that, to be honest. (0:43:50) Kelly: But yeah, GTA. What is life? (0:43:53) Al: Yes, there we go. So many tangents in this episode. (0:43:56) Kelly: Derailment 2. (0:43:57) Kelly: - What? (laughs) (0:43:59) Al: Um, but hey, I mean, GTA 6 probably come out before Elder Scrolls 6. (0:44:04) Kelly: I’ll probably get it before a silk song, you know, that’s (0:44:07) Al: Well, I don’t know… I don’t know… (0:44:10) Al: Bye. (0:44:10) Kelly: Al I have to say these things to jinx it so (0:44:12) Al: Yeah, okay, sorry, sorry. Right, I think we’re done with our tangents for now, (0:44:18) Kelly: Yes (0:44:19) Al: and that’s definitely the news finished. I think the news was finished 20 minutes ago. (0:44:25) Kelly: We had to have another history lesson, okay (0:44:25) Al: So now, yeah, yeah, we’ve got two Scottish history license, one about the language, (0:44:31) Al: and one about the only games company that has actually been successful. (0:44:38) Kelly: You have to say we’re consistently on theme, at least, somehow. (0:44:42) Al: I’m just getting you ready. I’m getting you ready for coming. You can have a look at the (0:44:47) Al: Rockstar North offices in Edinburgh when you’re there. I don’t know where their current offices (0:44:52) Al: are because I think they moved since I worked in Edinburgh. Anyway, we’re going to talk (0:44:57) Al: about Dave the Diver. Specifically, we’re going to talk about the story aspect of it, (0:45:02) Al: but there are two things we need to discuss beforehand. First of all, they have, for some (0:45:09) Al: reason I know it’s new DLCs since the last day of the day. (0:45:12) Al: So we need to talk about them. (0:45:14) Al: So the first one is Bilateral. (0:45:17) Al: This is the card game, the like ridiculous rogue-lite card game where you have to like (0:45:24) Al: build up a hand and make, like you’ve probably seen people with trying to break it by having (0:45:31) Al: numbers so large that the game crashes and stuff like that. (0:45:38) Al: I don’t think we know for certain what’s happening here, but it looks like they’re (0:45:41) Al: putting (0:45:42) Al: the game as a minigame inside, but I also noticed on the Nintendo Direct this week that (0:45:42) Kelly: It’s like a minigame, right? (0:45:50) Al: also Dave the Diver themed decks are going in bilateral as well. (0:45:56) Kelly: that’s cute I think that’s a nice like I feel like Dave does such a good job of (0:46:02) Kelly: these cute little like you know they’re they remind me like back in the day when (0:46:07) Kelly: you do like follow for follow or like photo like my photo and I’ll

Al and Kelly talk about Pumpkin panic Join Al and Kelly in a quick journey through the world of cottagecore gaming. They share their experiences with “Pumpkin Panic,” discuss recent news, and leave you feeling cozy and inspired. Timings 00:00:00: Theme Tune 00:00:30: Intro 00:03:00: What Have We Been Up To 00:13:42: News 00:55:48: Pumpkin Panic 01:24:30: Outro Links Disney Dreamlight Valley Leaves Early Access Spirittea Release Len’s Island Roadmap Updated Moonstone Island Updated and DLC Released Stardew Valley Horseradish Juice Echoes of the Plum Grove Steam Page Echoes of the Plum Grove Kickstarter Pumpkin Panic Contact Al on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheScotBot Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/ Transcript (0:00:30) Al: Hello farmers and welcome to another episode of the harvest season. (0:00:36) Al: My name is Al, and we’re here today to talk about cottagecore games. (0:00:37) Kelly: And my name is Kelly. (0:00:38) Kelly: Woo! (0:00:43) Al: Two weeks in a row Kelly, what’s happening here? (0:00:50) Kelly: I know. It’s even funny because Kevin brought it up. I did last year’s Halloween. (0:00:56) Kelly: Which I totally forgot. Because I totally forgot Cult of the Lamb came out last year. (0:00:56) Al: Yes. That was last year, my word, wild. Yes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, why not? But hey, I’m on, I think this is, is this my first Halloween ep? No, no, I was on one with Rochelle, the original Graveyard Keeper one, I think, I was on. But I hadn’t played the game, so Rochelle I was basically just telling me. (0:01:01) Kelly: Yeah. It’s just my season. I don’t know what to say. (0:01:18) Kelly: I was gonna say Kevin brought that up last time actually, yeah. (0:01:22) Kelly: Okay. (0:01:24) Kelly: Well, welcome to your own podcast Halloween episode. (0:01:26) Al: about it and I was asking questions, but I think I’ve not been on any of the other Halloween episodes. So I’m here. Yay. Awesome. Well, thank you for joining us, Kelly. It’s good to talk to you again, even if Kevin did steal you from me for the last week. This one has been organized for much longer. Much longer. Yeah. Yeah. We have had a bunch of different ideas for last week and none of them were really like enough. (0:01:43) Kelly: Of course, thank you. (0:01:45) Kelly: I will say we planned this one. Yes. Last week was very impromptu. This is very much so planned. (0:02:01) Al: And there was a point where Kevin was like, I can’t do the recording time we have. And I’m like, well, I’m traveling the rest of the time. So so he kicked me off. He kicked me off my own podcast and and brought you on instead. So thank you very much for that. (0:02:16) Kelly: Always a pleasure. I did have to do a little, like, briefing on it though, because I hadn’t played Graveyard Keeper in, like, a year, and I was like, “Oh, what is this game again?” (0:02:19) Al: Oh, yes. Fair enough. (0:02:26) Al: Well, we don’t have that problem with this week’s game because it’s incredibly quick to play some of it and get a very good idea of what this game is. So this episode, we’re going to talk about pumpkin panic. And we’ll have lots to say about that later on in the episode. But yes, we’re going to talk about that just to mention that transcripts are available for the podcast in the show notes and on the website. So if you need that, that’s (0:02:57) Al: OK. Before we talk about pumpkin panic, we’re going to talk about the news. But first of all, Kelly, what have you been up to? (0:03:02) Kelly: I have been playing, I actually just finished this morning, I started playing the cosmic wheel of sisterhood. (0:03:16) Kelly: So this is an interactive story game where you play as a witch who has been banished from her coven, and you are kind of trying to make your way back. (0:03:32) Kelly: You play into your coven and you create tarot cards and you read the tarot cards to kind of create the gameplay in the world. (0:03:45) Kelly: And you have visitors. (0:03:48) Kelly: So I am not always great at story games because as much as I love reading, I also get very frustrated at a lot of stories in games. (0:03:53) Al: Yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:03:58) Kelly: And I thought this, they did this so good. (0:04:01) Kelly: I thought it was so much fun. (0:04:02) Kelly: Because you’re so hands-on with it. (0:04:03) Al: This seems a little bit more involved than a standard visual novel. (0:04:12) Al: Is it just mainly the one minigame that I’m seeing on this Steam page? (0:04:16) Kelly: Um, what is… what is… (0:04:18) Kelly: Um, kind of. So that’s like… (0:04:18) Al: with making the cards. (0:04:22) Kelly: You have that, you can do like there’s interactive stories within the story. (0:04:27) Kelly: Um, so there’s like different… I wouldn’t call them mini-games, but like the interactions are the rest of it. (0:04:33) Al: Right, OK. (0:04:33) Kelly: Um, and… (0:04:34) Al: But it’s not it’s not just like click a button and see the next. (0:04:36) Kelly: You kind of… like obviously… (0:04:40) Kelly: No, no, no, no. Yeah, there’s definitely… (0:04:42) Al: Here’s one choice sort of thing, right? (0:04:46) Kelly: You make the choices as to what you’re gonna do, who you would mite over to your little house. (0:04:50) Kelly: Um, and then… (0:04:53) Kelly: Even when you pull a tarot card, you have the choice as to how to explain the card. (0:04:57) Kelly: So, there is a lot of, um, leeway into how the interactions go and how the story itself is gonna go. (0:05:05) Kelly: So like I did a run, and I can do a totally different run next time. (0:05:06) Al: Okay. All right. (0:05:11) Kelly: So you do have you really do like you kind of write the story yourself as much as you can for you know (0:05:19) Al: It has very positive reviews on Steam, it has over a thousand. (0:05:23) Kelly: demo. There’s a demo which I would highly suggest playing because that’s definitely what I did and once I finished the demo I immediately bought the game and all of your stuff transfers over which is so nice because I hate when you start a demo especially for a game like this and you got to start it over. But yeah I thought it was like a very nice little like casual gameplay but like still very interesting. And like kind of emotional. (0:05:53) Al: Shocking when they make you feel things. How dare they? (0:05:53) Kelly: Right? What have you been up to, Al? (0:05:56) Al: Well, speaking of making you feeling things, before I get into games, I have watched the new film “Killers of the Flower Moon”. Have you seen… I presume you haven’t seen… (0:06:08) Kelly: I have not seen it yet, however I have owned that book for like a decade or so. (0:06:14) Al: Yeah, mm-hmm (0:06:15) Kelly: My dad bought it years ago. My dad’s a very big like historical novel kind of person and then we actually read it in my book club about two years ago or a year ago. I really enjoyed it. I thought the book was very good. I have not watched the movie yet, but I’ve heard very positive reviews. (0:06:28) Al: » Okay. Yeah. (0:06:38) Kelly: Even from the Native American community about the movie, of course there’s some things that probably could have been done differently, (0:06:45) Kelly: but I think that’s anytime it happens when you’re telling somebody else’s story. (0:06:46) Al: Hmm. I think, yeah, yeah, definitely. I think there’s a lot about the film that is obviously, (0:06:54) Al: you know, there’s some, you know, some racist stuff in the film, right? Obviously. But that’s the sort of thing where it’s like, well, yeah, but you’re talking about a, you know, a racist crime, (0:06:57) Kelly: Mm-hmm Yeah, yeah, you’re telling a story from 1930 or 20 or whatever (0:07:04) Al: right? Like, yeah, yeah, exactly. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s not, don’t go into expecting a good time. (0:07:15) Kelly: Yeah, and unfortunately I don’t think the story would be accurate if those things are kind of left out because they do play a big role in what’s going on with the story itself. (0:07:16) Al: No, of course. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I enjoyed that. It’s very long. It’s very long. So that’s why I was up really late on Thursday night because of that. (0:07:26) Kelly: But crazy. Yes. (0:07:37) Al: Because I saw the showing started at half seven and like I wasn’t home until quarter past midnight. (0:07:44) Kelly: Wow. Wow. (0:07:44) Al: So. (laughs) (0:07:46) Al: I don’t regret going to see it, it was very good. (0:07:49) Kelly: Which I feel like is such a… it’s such a hard thing to achieve with some of this… (0:07:49) Al: And I don’t think it was… (0:07:51) Al: Like, it doesn’t feel like it was unnecessarily long, right? (0:07:54) Al: Like, I feel like he was doing something with every minute that you had. (0:07:58) Al: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. (0:08:03) Kelly: these stories. Like, I mean, I feel like I didn’t see Oppenheimer, but I feel like that a lot of people talked about that. (0:08:09) Kelly: Feeling kind of like dragged out in a lot of spots. (0:08:12) Al: Interesting. Yeah, I suspect a lot of these things depends on how you feel about quiet moments that make you contemplate. Right. Absolutely. You can’t be talking about a massacre or about, (0:08:21) Kelly: Which I think these stories need those moments. (0:08:24) Kelly: So I don’t see anything wrong with that. (0:08:27) Kelly: Yeah, just on to the next scene. (0:08:30) Al: you know, wiping out of a city without having some moments to make you think, “Wow, that’s bad!” (0:08:40) Al: Exactly, exactly. So it’s quite great. (0:08:42) Al: So I enjoyed it. It was good. I don’t think I’m going to watch it a second time. It’s not like I’m going to watch this film again. But yeah. (0:08:54) Kelly: I will say on that note, the book is also extremely good. I know, Allie, you said you’re probably not going to read it, but if anybody out there is interested, very interesting. (0:09:05) Al: Yeah, people don’t really. Yeah. (0:09:10) Kelly: I think some historical novels can be kind of boring and dragged out because I do read a lot of history. This was very good. This was written in a way that like really you You just, you had to keep going. (0:09:24) Kelly: No matter what. It wasn’t, it wasn’t… (0:09:26) Kelly: Umm, oh my god, what’s his name? (0:09:28) Kelly: The Devil in White City guy, Eric Larson. (0:09:30) Kelly: I like some of his works. They can also be a bit cumbersome. (0:09:31) Al: Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. I mean, just to make a point of it, like people don’t like when I talk about the fact that I don’t really read books, but I don’t really read books. (0:09:34) Kelly: So I don’t think it was like that. (0:09:47) Al: And it’s not like I read books as a child. And the problem is that I just I struggle because I don’t have like the visual aspect in my brain. Like I’m not I’m not able to see the things that are described. So so much of a book I just kind of skim over. (0:09:53) Kelly: Yes, yeah. (0:10:01) Al: Because it’s like descriptive stuff that doesn’t really mean anything because I can’t see it. (0:10:04) Kelly: Whereas I’m the complete opposite and I see everything in my head and then I get really mad when the movie comes out and skews my perspective on how I envisioned everything. (0:10:05) Al: Um… (0:10:12) Al: Yeah. I always found that hilarious when people were like, “Oh, it’s nothing like what it is in the book. It’s not like what I imagined it.” And I’m like, “What do you mean it’s nothing like what you imagined it?” I don’t understand what you mean by this. And now that I understand that people now make up images in their head, suddenly I understand what they mean now. They’re like, (0:10:22) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:10:32) Kelly: Yep Yep, it’s it’s so funny cuz like my roommate is like you she can’t see anything in her head and I’m like, well What do you what do you mean? What do you how are you living? I don’t understand Well, I am That is the that is the issue Thank you. (0:10:33) Al: “Oh, this isn’t exactly what I had imagined in my head.” (0:10:46) Al: Oh, I’m just like, how do you ever get anything done? Are you not constantly distracted by the things in your head? (0:11:00) Al: So I’ve also played a bunch of games, because I apparently haven’t been on the podcast for multiple episodes. So I have played and finished Sonic Superstars and Mario Wonder, and I have been playing through the new Spider-Man game. That is taking me longer, because just like It’s on my PS5, you have to kind of sit down and deliver. (0:11:16) Al: All those games are great, Sonic Super Star is good, Mario Wonder is fantastic, Spider-Man is fantastic. (0:11:28) Al: Both of those two games did things that I couldn’t, I just wouldn’t have expected what they did. (0:11:36) Al: It’s not just like, oh there are another version of this game, right? (0:11:41) Al: They both do things that are like, this is brand new stuff, really interesting. (0:11:41) Kelly: I think that’s so exciting, especially for the Mario games because I feel like, you know, (0:11:46) Al: That I really, really like. (0:11:48) Al: Yeah. (0:11:50) Al: Yeah. (0:11:52) Kelly: how long has it been? (0:11:52) Al: Yeah. (0:11:53) Kelly: How many games have come out? (0:11:54) Al: Yeah. (0:11:55) Kelly: Like, how do you keep reinventing the wheel? (0:11:56) Al: Yeah, definitely. (0:11:58) Kelly: But it’s still exciting to find out that they can. (0:11:58) Al: Yeah, and I think, I mean I don’t think they need to do that for every single game. (0:12:02) Kelly: No! (0:12:02) Al: Like I enjoyed every game in the new series. (0:12:07) Al: Like they’re all fun, they don’t have to be completely different, they all have new challenges in their different levels. (0:12:13) Al: levels but it is also fun to occasionally get like this is just. (0:12:16) Al: Just a completely different way of thinking and the the Wonderflowers just do just crazy things in the levels that make it just so different. (0:12:26) Al: You know it’s not just like oh here’s a different power-up and the new power-ups are fun as well but it’s not just like oh this one’s a bubble instead of a fire right and that’s that’s fun but it’s not like a radical idea whereas like the Wonderflowers are like what if this was a top-down game instead of a side-scroller and you’re like. (0:12:46) Al: Like what if apparently now we’re doing that you know like I think it’s the weird stuff that they did with that game and it’s like what if the Piranha plant sang you know. (0:12:57) Kelly: Oh my god, I saw the clips of that, they’re so cute! (0:13:02) Al: It’s just like I love the idea of that it’s just brainstorm a hundred and the weird thing is every single level has one right it’s not like this is the sort of thing that you wouldn’t you if if they told you but you’re like oh that’d be fun so like you know it’d be like all the boss battles. (0:13:16) Al: Have them or what like this. (0:13:16) Kelly: That’s cool. That’s very cool. (0:13:18) Al: A couple of levels in every world. (0:13:20) Al: Every single world has one. (0:13:25) Al: So yeah, good fun. (0:13:26) Al: I’ve also been playing Harvest Moon Winds of Anthos because I need to play that. (0:13:32) Al: So I’ll talk about that next week. (0:13:35) Al: I don’t think we need to talk about that just now. (0:13:39) Al: It is what it is. (0:13:40) Al: Cool. (0:13:41) Al: News. Should we talk about some news? (0:13:47) Al: Let’s start with the controversial stuff. (0:13:50) Al: Disney Dreamlight Valley. (0:13:51) Al: Have you played this yet? (0:13:52) Kelly: No, I have not. I think when it first like when they first announced it I was like oh this looks really cute If I’m not playing anything, I’ll probably play it Yes So I don’t think I will be playing Because like free to play You know, I know there’s gonna be some payment stuff, but you can kind of avoid it sometimes (0:14:00) Al: Yeah, were you waiting for it to go free to play? That’s the question. (0:14:04) Al: Yeah, well wait no longer! It is no longer going to be free to play! (0:14:08) Al: I think this is fast, so this is okay, so full context. (0:14:16) Al: Yes, yeah definitely. (0:14:23) Kelly: Or at least you can get an idea of what the game is before you decide to put money into it Yes, sorry jumping ahead (0:14:27) Al: so yeah so let’s okay well let’s put that let’s put the (0:14:30) Al: the discussion of that bit aside let’s let’s get into the actual news of it so the game is leaving early access on the 5th of december so that will be the first full version of the game whatever that means they have announced that it’s not going to be free to play anymore so you will have to to buy it they have also announced that there is going to be a paid dlc coming which they’re going to detail you’ll know more about this when you listen to this episode because they’re going to be saying more about it on the day this episode comes out (0:15:00) Al: that next week as well but they have also said that they are still going to continue to have free content updates so it’s not all going to be paid dlc I think that there are so many different ways to buy this game now it’s weird have you looked at the so in the main link on there they’ve got a list of the new ways to buy the game which is like you can just buy the game for $40 or you you can buy the physical cozy edition. (0:15:26) Kelly: Oh, I saw this. (0:15:30) Al: Which also gives you some stuff and that’s $50 or you can buy the gold edition, which also has more exclusive items and gives you the DLC or you can buy the DLC separately and these purchase options are on top of what the current purchase options are for early access, which you can still do until the 4th of December. (0:15:52) Al: I know it’s so bizarre. (0:15:53) Kelly: I think I got a headache just looking at this earlier. (0:15:58) Kelly: I was like, what is this, a streaming service? (0:16:00) Kelly: What the hell is this? (0:16:00) Al: I think I just it feels like so I think you can you can frame not being free to play as positive and negative right negative obviously a bunch of people who were like yeah I get to play the game without paying for it now don’t get to do that they either have to pay or they don’t get to play the game and that’s really frustrating I get why people would be frustrated by that. (0:16:22) Al: On the other hand obviously we know that free to play games are very manipulative and are very good at sucking. (0:16:26) Kelly: Oh, absolutely, yes. (0:16:28) Kelly: Well, so that’s what I was gonna ask, right? Like they’re not removing microtransactions from the game. (0:16:30) Al: But it’s not like there aren’t going to be ways to pay for things inside the game after you’ve bought it. (0:16:37) Al: No so I it feels like they’re just doing a bit of both worlds which. (0:16:42) Kelly: Yes, they want their cake and they’re gonna have their cake and eat it too kind of thing. (0:16:46) Al: Yeah yeah it’s not not great. (0:16:49) Kelly: And then the the $40 base price is kind of wild. (0:16:52) Al: It does seem let me so let me double check. (0:16:56) Kelly: To go from free-to-play to $40? (0:16:59) Kelly: Oh wait, so if you paid for early access, does that come out of the base? (0:17:00) Al: The early access prices. (0:17:02) Al: Because. (0:17:04) Al: So if you paid for access you have the game now so you don’t have to buy the game again and they’ve also said as a thank you to our early access players all unique cosmetic items included in the upcoming gold edition will be given free of charge to any player who purchases and claims of founders pack in game or on on or before December the 4th no matter the tier. (0:17:30) Kelly: Okay, that’s nice because I think… (0:17:30) Al: And not only that but all founders will also receive 2500 min stones to celebrate this that’s. (0:17:32) Kelly: Okay, that’s nice. (0:17:39) Kelly: Nice. (0:17:41) Al: So let me just double check the prices for… (0:17:47) Al: Yes, so here we are. So there’s three different versions you can buy in Early Access. (0:17:50) Al: Well, this is the thing. This is where it’s wild. So there’s the standard Founders Edition, (0:17:51) Kelly: Oh my god. But how many tears? (0:18:01) Al: which is the Early Access to Dreamland Valley plus 8,000 Moonstones plus a bunch of exclusive stuff, (0:18:08) Al: and that is $30. So $10. (0:18:11) Al: cheaper than the final price. And then there’s the deluxe founders rewards which gives you 14,500 moonstones. I don’t know why they insist on always like it’s not 15, why not 15? Weird. And a bunch of more exclusive items and that one I don’t have a price for but I think it might have been, it was either 50 or 60. (0:18:34) Kelly: Well, that’s 50 on here, on the regular one. (0:18:36) Al: Yeah. I think, I think… (0:18:42) Al: Yeah, it’s 50, 50. And then there’s the ultimate founders edition which gives you 20,000 moonstones and a bunch of extra cosmetic things. And that one was $6, $70? (0:18:58) Kelly: Okay, I think that makes sense because the gold edition for the standard game is (0:19:03) Al: So there are like seven different ways to buy this game. All with different things. (0:19:08) Kelly: Oh my god. (0:19:10) Kelly: And then the DLC is $30. (0:19:11) Al: So it’s like if you… Yes, which is only included in the Gold Edition, not as far as I can tell, (0:19:19) Al: any of the Early Access editions. So if you have Early Access, you still have to pay for the (0:19:25) Kelly: I have some things I’d like to say, and I’m gonna maybe keep them to myself. (0:19:31) Al: So I will say you do get a capybara companion if you buy the gold edition. (0:19:31) Kelly: It is very cute. It’s very cute. It has a flower crown. (0:19:40) Al: A flowery capybara companion. (0:19:41) Kelly: I mean, you can’t go wrong with the capybara. (0:19:46) Al: True that. (0:19:48) Kelly: Listen, the game looks so cute. I think that’s why this is kind of so disappointing. (0:19:52) Al: Yes, yeah, yeah, it is. (0:19:59) Al: So I think it is a good game and if you said to me this game… (0:20:01) Al: Why did they say that? Why did they even say that? (0:20:04) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:20:20) Kelly: Exactly. They made the promise. Yeah. (0:20:23) Kelly: And that’s so frustrating because that’s what they’ve been writing on since they announced this. Like why, why, why? And then to announce the changes a month before. (0:20:37) Al: Just why? (0:20:39) Al: I know, I know, I know it’s so… (0:20:40) Kelly: And then also, so if you buy the cozy edition, besides the flowery capybara and the expansion (0:20:50) Kelly: is there anything else you’re missing? Like are you limited from gameplay? Okay. (0:20:52) Al: No, no you’re not, you’re not. So the only gameplay, so everything that’s exclusive outside of the expansion pass, everything that’s exclusive is just cosmetics. If you buy, if you… it is, isn’t it? It’s not quite that bad yet, but it definitely feels like that’s where they’re going yes the funny thing is (0:21:07) Kelly: Okay, that’s a little bit better, but you know what? It’s giving me sims. (0:21:14) Kelly: No, but it’s getting there. Yeah. (0:21:22) Al: right see if you buy the base game and you buy the expansion pass that’s one cent cheaper than buying the gold edition which gives you the base game and the expansion pass I mean it also gives you the it does give you the capacity is the capybara worth one cent that’s the it just seems like why is the gold edition the same price as it seems weird (0:21:33) Kelly: Yeah, but no capybara. (0:21:47) Kelly: It does, like also, like okay so if you if you do really want to play this game, (0:21:51) Kelly: why would you buy the base edition and the expansion pack instead of just buying the gold edition? (0:21:55) Kelly: Again, this is just such a headache to look at. (0:21:55) Al: Yeah, yeah, well, that’s that yeah, so yeah seven different seven different ways to buy this game You either buy it in one of the three early access ways of buying it or you buy it in one of the three Non-early access ways to buy it if you wait till the 5th of December and then you either buy the expansion mass or not We don’t know what’s in the expansion pass exactly they’ll be telling us that on Wednesday today if you’re listening on the day this comes out (0:22:24) Al: There are some hints. (0:22:25) Al: There we’ve seen Gaston and… oh is that Rapunzel? I think it’s Rapunzel. (0:22:33) Kelly: Oh, yes, that’s Rapunzel in the back. And then, uh, Eva. Eve, Eve. (0:22:34) Al: Who’s the little robot? Oh was that from Wally? (0:22:38) Kelly: Eeeve. (0:22:40) Kelly: Yeah, from Wally. (0:22:41) Al: Okay I still haven’t seen Wally. I know, I know. So I went through a period of time of just not watching Disney Pixar stuff. (0:22:42) Kelly: What? (0:22:44) Kelly: Ugh. (0:22:47) Kelly: I mean, I’ve never seen Tangled, so whatever, but Wally’s so good. (0:22:52) Al: I have seen (0:22:55) Al: a few of them since, but I haven’t caught up on all of them. I just watched, what’s it called, Elemental today. (0:23:10) Kelly: How was it? I get clips on TikTok and it seems pretty cute. (0:23:14) Kelly: I feel like the trailer kind of made it seem like it was going to be like a knock-off uh… (0:23:14) Al: I enjoyed it, yeah. It’s better than the trailer that made me think it was going to be. (0:23:22) Kelly: How am I… I’m blanking on it. (0:23:24) Kelly: No, um… I can’t think right now. I don’t know. (0:23:25) Al: Anything can roll me on Juliet. (0:23:30) Kelly: It just felt very familiar, I guess, if that… (0:23:34) Al: Yeah, it is. There’s nothing particular about it that’s interesting on you, but I think it does a good job of being a fun and enjoyable and emotional way of exploring immigration and an immigrant’s family’s journey and some of those struggles. I think it does a good job. (0:23:50) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:23:52) Kelly: That’s uh, that’s like kind of like again, I watched a lot of clips on tiktok. I get so sucked into the movie clips on tiktok But I think that that’s exactly the vibe I got to I was like very surprised I feel like With the difference between the trailer and how the actual movie seemed to be See ya later. (0:24:03) Al: fair. (0:24:16) Al: Yeah. I don’t know what that trailer was about, because like the trailer came out and everyone went “this looks terrible, what are you doing?” and then the phone came out and people were like “yes, yes, sorry, it’s good, it’s good, it’s enjoyable”. Yeah. Yeah. I’m not going to say it’s the best Pixar film, but it’s certainly not the worst. It’s good. I enjoyed it. Yeah, so that’s, we don’t, we’ve seen Gaston and Rapunzel and would you say Eve? (0:24:19) Kelly: Bye. (0:24:27) Kelly: Yeah, I feel like every review I’ve seen of it, people really liked it, like they enjoyed it, so… (0:24:46) Kelly: Eve, yeah. I think that Eve, Eevee, something like that? Not Eevee, but it’s like that, yeah. (0:24:46) Al: And there’s a snake and a pig. So we don’t know a huge amount, we’ll see, but it’s, I don’t think so. (0:24:57) Kelly: Is that the jungle book? (0:24:58) Kelly: No, that’s not the snake from the jungle book. (0:25:03) Kelly: Oh, there’s a creature in the tree too. (0:25:05) Kelly: That is the jungle book. (0:25:07) Kelly: Look at the monkey in the tree. (0:25:09) Kelly: I’m pretty sure that’s the jungle book. (0:25:11) Al: Anyway, well, no more. It’s interesting that this is their first paid DLC, so they are locking content behind another paywall, which is what it is. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing. I’m just saying it is what it is. So don’t expect to pay the base price of the game and get all of the updates for free forever. That’s not going to happen. (0:25:22) Kelly: Which I think is just… (0:25:24) Kelly: Yes. (0:25:34) Kelly: I just think it’s a little wild to go from free to play to the base game is free and then the DLC is also the same price as like a game. (0:25:36) Al: It’s not Stardew Valley. (0:25:41) Al: Well, that’s the thing. If you want to now play everything that will be available on the 5th of December, it’s gone from zero to $70. Yes, you say there’s going to be more free content updates, but you know there’s going to be more paid DLC as well. (0:26:01) Kelly: Oh, and like you said, there’s transactions in the game probably too, right? (0:26:04) Al: Yep, yep, yep. So I never outright bought it. (0:26:06) Kelly: Do you have early access or no? (0:26:11) Al: Although I will now be buying it because I was waiting for it to be free before I got it on Switch. But I did have it on Game Pass for a while, and I was playing it on that. (0:26:14) Kelly: Well… (0:26:16) Kelly: Oh, uh, okay. (0:26:25) Al: The thing that I’m frustrated with free to play is not that I have to pay for the game. (0:26:28) Al: I’m fine with paying for the game. What I’m frustrated is I now have to decide what I’m playing it on. When it’s free to play, it would mean I could have it on everything and choose depending on how I’m feeling on the day or how they play on different platforms. (0:26:29) Kelly: - Yeah. (0:26:41) Al: Whereas now I need to go, or no, I need to decide do I want to on Switch or do I want to on Steam Deck. (0:26:45) Kelly: Mm-hmm That’s fair I just I think it’s just I’m mostly annoyed about being told the whole time that it’s gonna be free to play and then Getting the rug pulled out from under you a month before (0:26:46) Al: I think I’m going to do it. (0:26:54) Al: It’s bizarre. Never make these decisions upfront. Yeah. Wild. Never say, “Oh, next year when release is good.” Just don’t do it. It’s pointless. It is. I mean, it doesn’t feel like it should be that big a promise for, you know, one of the biggest companies in the world. (0:27:05) Kelly: It’s a big promise to make. (0:27:07) Kelly: No, no, no, no, it shouldn’t. (0:27:12) Kelly: I think that’s another point that I was trying not to bring up is like, come on, like of all people Do you really need to be charging this much? (0:27:21) Al: Yeah, I suspect. What I suspect is they didn’t expect it to be as popular as it has been and people to like it as much. Like, this is a good game, right? This isn’t one of these, like, “Oh, they’ve just thrown some money at someone and got a really rubbish game based on a film,” right? This is a really good game, and if you like Disney characters, (0:27:42) Al: this is a great game to play because there’s so much lore and you get to, like, be friends with the characters that you like in the games. It’s really good fun. (0:27:51) Al: And the farming is good. It’s not their best, but it’s good. It’s a good game. That’s part of the problem is I think they were probably expecting it to be a standard free to play game. The people who made those decisions, right? We’re expecting it to be like, Oh, (0:28:05) Al: this isn’t a game we’re going to manage to convince people to pay for. Oh wait, no people like the game. Oh, well, we’re gonna, we’re gonna charge people in, you know. (0:28:12) Kelly: And I think back to your point, like, I’m not… I mean, obviously I grew up on Disney, whatever. (0:28:19) Kelly: I’m not the biggest Disney person. I still wanted to play the game. Like, it looked like a good game. (0:28:24) Al: It is. It is a good farming game. It is a good cottagecore game. (0:28:26) Kelly: But I think now, like, someone like me, I’m not gonna play this game, to be quite honest. (0:28:31) Al: Yeah. (0:28:34) Kelly: Because I’m not gonna pay, whatever, 40 bucks at the minimum. (0:28:38) Kelly: I mean, to be honest, I’m mostly playing indie games, so like… (0:28:42) Kelly: He paying $40 is like, I really wanted to play this game. (0:28:42) Al: Yes, it’s cheap compared to some games, but… (0:28:45) Kelly: Yes. But by my standards, that’s a triple-A game. (0:28:52) Kelly: Literally. (0:28:53) Al: You could buy Stardew four times for that price. (0:28:55) Kelly: Literally. (0:28:59) Al: You could buy Stardew on all your consoles if you wanted, and you probably already have. (0:29:06) Al: Last couple of things, the Cozy Edition, as we mentioned, that’s the… (0:29:12) Al: physical edition. (0:29:13) Al: I do not know why they’re calling it this, it is a stupid name, but whatever. (0:29:17) Al: It has been delayed until the 10th of November, except the Switch version in North America. (0:29:25) Al: All the other versions have been delayed. (0:29:26) Kelly: How lucky. (0:29:29) Al: It’s such a weird… (0:29:30) Al: I mean, first of all, who’s buying this game physically? (0:29:33) Al: That is a weird decision to make. (0:29:35) Al: I don’t… (0:29:35) Kelly: I could see if it was released closer to Christmas or something. (0:29:36) Al: Why are you… yeah, okay, I guess that’s a good point. (0:29:39) Kelly: Like, does anything come with it? (0:29:41) Kelly: No, no, I mean like physical. (0:29:42) Al: Yeah, you do get a few cosmetics extra with it, but that’s all. (0:29:47) Al: Oh, no. (0:29:47) Kelly: No, then no. (0:29:49) Al: No, no, it’s just a case with the game and a code that gives you some extra cosmetics, (0:29:49) Kelly: Oh, not even… yeah, no, no, no. (0:29:58) Al: that’s it. (0:30:00) Al: I think, yeah, you’re probably right though, that’s exactly it. (0:30:03) Al: It’s because people will buy a game for people physically, right? (0:30:06) Kelly: Yeah. (0:30:06) Kelly: I was about to say, “Your grandma can buy a friend.” (0:30:07) Al: That’s why they always do that, because then your grandmother can walk into a shop and buy a game for you. (0:30:12) Al: Oh, they like Disney. (0:30:14) Al: Yeah, that’s exactly what it is, isn’t it? (0:30:14) Kelly: Exactly. (0:30:16) Kelly: Oh, Disney characters? (0:30:17) Kelly: This is perfect. (0:30:20) Al: Don’t buy this game physically. (0:30:23) Al: It’s weird decision to make. (0:30:24) Al: I mean, do what you want. (0:30:26) Al: I’m not. Anyway, and I guess the final point to say is that Micah has finally been vindicated because he bought the game not knowing it was going to be free to play. (0:30:35) Al: And turns out it’s not going to be free to play. (0:30:36) Kelly: Oh, really? (0:30:40) Al: So he gets the last laugh. (0:30:43) Al: I think. Yeah, he didn’t. (0:30:45) Al: It was really funny because we were I can’t remember when it was. (0:30:47) Al: But the first episode that I had him on after the game came out, (0:30:52) Al: we were talking about how he was playing it and then how he bought it. (0:30:54) Al: And then I’d mentioned that it was going to be free to play. (0:30:57) Al: And he was like, wait, what? (0:30:58) Al: It was very funny. (0:31:01) Al: I think he bought the Ultimate Founders Edition as well. (0:31:02) Kelly: Well, it seems like he was gonna pay the money no matter what, so… (0:31:03) Al: So that’s like he paid the seventy dollars. (0:31:06) Al: Well, yeah, that’s true. (0:31:08) Kelly: You know, I feel like in that instance, it doesn’t matter if it was free to play or not. (0:31:13) Al: That’s true, that’s true. (0:31:14) Al: I think that’s everything about that. Wow, we just spent 15 minutes talking about that. (0:31:21) Al: Cool, so there you go. 5th of December, that’s the important thing. If you want any of the special stuff that comes with only early access, go get that as soon as you can. If you don’t, (0:31:34) Al: then don’t. If you’re not going to buy this game, I’m sorry. There we go. (0:31:39) Al: Speaking of games coming out with less controversy. (0:31:42) Al: Spirit tea. So this is the farming game slash Spirited away type game where you are running a tea Once ago tea. Yeah. Yes And Yeah, I kick started it when I came out because I’m I thought I I actually have access to the game already I know right (0:31:55) Kelly: It’s like a tea house, bath shop. (0:31:58) Kelly: It looks so cute. (0:31:59) Kelly: I wanna get this. (0:32:01) Kelly: This is, I’m definitely getting. (0:32:08) Kelly: Oh my god. (0:32:12) Al: So, yeah, I kick started the game looking forward to playing it it is the is finally releasing on the 13th of November So if you have been looking forward to running your own little tea house tea shop wherever you want to call it with a bath house and Play with some spirits. I don’t I don’t know the right words to use with this game yet. Go go get it It’s mostly one guy who’s been developing it for a bunch of years. He’s working with a publisher But yeah, if you like game– (0:32:42) Al: games that are as indie as they come, go get it. (0:32:47) Al: Yeah, yeah, it’s not just your standard. (0:32:47) Kelly: It looks like a nice little spin on the farming game. (0:32:55) Al: Go plant some turnips and then you get better crops. (0:32:58) Kelly: Yeah. (0:32:59) Al: Lens Island have updated their roadmap, (0:33:04) Al: so they have said that their 1.0 is coming out in July 2024. (0:33:09) Al: I think this is the first official date we got from them. (0:33:12) Al: We had got some– they’d originally wanted to release it this year, (0:33:16) Al: and then at some point they’d said it would be next year. (0:33:20) Kelly: That’s nice to get a solid time actually. It always is. You’re talking to the person waiting for Silksong here, I know. (0:33:23) Al: It’s dangerous, but yeah, nice. So I look forward to Lens Island coming out in November of next year. (0:33:36) Al: They’ve also said there are going to be two more updates this year. One in November, (0:33:47) Al: which, oh look, it’s November now, and one in December, and then there’ll be a final. (0:33:53) Al: Major update before the final release in March of next year, and then the final release in July of next year. So if you are waiting for that one point of release of Lens Island, (0:34:06) Al: that’s when you’re going for it. I actually own this game as well, and I haven’t played it. (0:34:11) Al: It’s quite combat focused this game, and when I first got it when it first entered Early Access, (0:34:22) Al: because I kickstarted that. (0:34:23) Al: I need to stop kickstarting things. (0:34:26) Al: I kickstart all the farming games. (0:34:28) Kelly: You just want to be hip and say, “I was here first.” [laughs] (0:34:29) Al: It’s a sickness, Kelly. (0:34:32) Al: Yeah, I know, right? (0:34:38) Al: They didn’t have controller support at that point. (0:34:41) Al: And of course, I was playing it on my Steam Deck, so it was not fun to play with. (0:34:46) Al: So I spent like five minutes and went, nope, not doing this. (0:34:48) Al: I’m waiting for controller support. (0:34:48) Kelly: Wait, if it didn’t have– (0:34:51) Kelly: how does that work, then? (0:34:53) Al: I think you can map any button or any touchpad or anything to any standard PC controls. (0:35:03) Al: So you can say, if I press this button, (0:35:06) Al: I press this keyboard button or I press this mouse button or I do this gesture or there’s loads of clever things you can do, and it works really well for a lot of things, but it wasn’t working for this. (0:35:17) Kelly: That’s very fair. (0:35:18) Al: I was like, I need to wait for official controller support for this one. (0:35:19) Kelly: I do think it’s funny that the release date on Steam is November 26, 2021. (0:35:22) Al: So that’s what I did. (0:35:28) Kelly: ‘Cause it’s 2023? (0:35:28) Al: Why is that date funny? (0:35:31) Al: OK, well, that was the early access release date. (0:35:32) Kelly: I know, I know, but I’m just saying it’s funny to like sit here and look at the news about, you know, it getting released next year. (0:35:35) Al: OK. (0:35:37) Al: Yes, yes. (0:35:42) Al: Moonstone Island are I think I think you and Kevin talked about the DLC for that last week, they’ve announced that there is a free update coming with the DLC as well, which should be out now. (0:35:57) Al: So it includes an expansion to the green. (0:35:58) Al: House closing old mine holes. (0:36:01) Al: I don’t know what that means. (0:36:03) Al: Who knows? (0:36:03) Kelly: Umm, okay. (0:36:06) Kelly: I’m assuming monsters come out of the mine holes, maybe? (0:36:10) Al: I think it’s a creature collection game. (0:36:10) Kelly: I don’t know. (0:36:12) Kelly: Stop the children from falling down the mines. (0:36:13) Al: It’s a creature. (0:36:15) Al: Yeah, we do. We don’t want that. (0:36:18) Al: Inventory manage improvements and adjustable day length are the big things that they were highlighting. There’s I mean, the patch notes are much more detailed. I’m not going through them. (0:36:28) Al: There’s a lot of stuff. I’ll link it in the show notes. (0:36:31) Al: Go look at that if you care about it. (0:36:32) Al: Yeah. Yeah. (0:36:32) Kelly: Yeah, this is the one it had a ton of updates last week too or two weeks ago Okay, that makes sense, but it seems like they’re really working to you know update any of these little issues (0:36:37) Al: I think most of it was like bug fixing and stuff. (0:36:39) Al: This is the first kind of like content update, I think. (0:36:42) Al: Content and feature update. (0:36:43) Al: So this is. Yeah, it’s. (0:36:45) Al: Yes. Yes, they are. (0:36:51) Al: This is one of those ones that I probably do want to play at some point, but. (0:36:55) Kelly: It looks really cute, too. It really does. I would like to play this. (0:36:55) Al: It does. It does. (0:36:58) Kelly: I mean, me too. I’m a sucker for collection in general. (0:36:58) Al: It’s also creature collection, and I’m a sucker for creature collection. (0:37:01) Al: Well, yes, that too. That too. (0:37:07) Al: That too. (0:37:08) Al: Yeah. Stardew Valley. (0:37:12) Al: Concerned Ape is continuing to just trickle things out. (0:37:15) Kelly: He’s been just dropping things. Yeah, like he it’s like it’s making me so annoyed because I’m like I don’t want to play stardew. I like I always do I do I’m actively spending my life fighting the urge to play stardew valley [laugh] (0:37:17) Al: I know. (0:37:18) Al: No, you do. You do, though. You do. (0:37:25) Al: You don’t lie. You want to play. (0:37:28) Al: What I love is like some of them are like, “here’s the most tiny little thing like this one, which is just a screenshot of wild horseradish juice.” (0:37:42) Kelly: Yeah. (0:37:42) Al: And my reaction was, “Oh, is that not already in the game? Okay!” (0:37:43) Kelly: I literally when I looked at it I was like oh yeah you can’t do anything with horseradish can you? (0:37:51) Al: So some of them are like this tiny thing where it’s just like, “Oh yeah, the update’s gonna have horseradish juice!” (0:37:58) Al: And then there was the one a few weeks ago which was like, “Here’s just like detailed ten bullet points of what’s coming in the update.” (0:38:04) Al: And you’re like, “Oh, okay!” (0:38:05) Kelly: Yep, listen, I would take every single one of these, I’m like, cool, awesome, great. (0:38:12) Kelly: But yeah, no, I saw this one and I was like, oh, another thing for me to micromanage. (0:38:18) Al: ALICE (KEEPER) Kelly, did you ever play any of the 1.5 update stuff? So that’s Ginger Island and stuff like that. (0:38:24) Kelly: Yes, so I started with actually my first Switch game. (0:38:26) Al: ALICE (KEEPER) I mean, I think it was for a lot of people. (0:38:28) Kelly: Yes, um… (0:38:32) Kelly: But I got my Switch a year later, so I was a year behind everybody. (0:38:33) Al: ALICE It came out nice and early in 2017 and yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. That’s all right, (0:38:39) Kelly: But I played it then, yes, and then I played it two years ago. (0:38:41) Al: so were the updates. (0:38:45) Al: Yeah. (0:38:45) Kelly: Yes, so Ginger Island had come out, which was fun because that wasn’t in my initial playthrough. (0:38:47) Al: Yeah. (0:38:49) Al: Yeah. (0:38:50) Al: I’m not sure. (0:38:51) Kelly: So that was really fun to go out. (0:38:54) Kelly: I feel like that really opened up a whole new part of the game and like extended it nicely. (0:38:57) Al: Yeah, yeah. (0:39:06) Al: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, that’s what he’s doing, right? Like, just keep playing this game, please. (0:39:09) Kelly: Yeah. But I mean, he does it in such a good way. Like people would play this game even if he didn’t go out there and release, you know, updates to it. People would be replaying it it constantly anyway yep (0:39:12) Al: Here’s more stuff. I know. (0:39:21) Al: and people would pay for the updates and he just gives them out for free. (0:39:24) Kelly: yep what a good guy yes yes but I mean we might have talked about a game a few minutes ago that might have been doing a different thing no but I fully agree with your point you know it’s like (0:39:26) Al: I mean, he is a millionaire, so you know, like it’s easier to be a good guy when you’re a millionaire. But yes, it is. (0:39:38) Al: Absolutely. No, I don’t. Yep, I don’t. I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m not not trying to take it away from him. You’re absolutely right. (0:39:51) Al: I haven’t played the 1.5 stuff with Ginger Island and stuff like that. So I need to, (0:39:54) Kelly: Oh really? Okay. (0:39:56) Kelly: That might be the best, because especially it seems like he is adding quite a few things, so why not wait? (0:39:57) Al: it’s on my list of like, I really need to do this. So I’m trying to decide maybe I just wait for 1.6 to come out and do it all at the same time. (0:40:06) Al: Yeah, yeah, and I’m going to have to cover that. (0:40:11) Kelly: I will say there is one thing in Ginger Island, there’s like one thing that you really have to like hope for the luck of finding. (0:40:20) Kelly: So that can be a little frustrating, but I think if you kind of… (0:40:24) Kelly: I think the issue is more so when you don’t leave enough stuff to do at home to. (0:40:29) Kelly: And you kind of save Ginger Island for the very end and then you’re like, “Ugh, where is this thing? Come on, show me your…” (0:40:36) Kelly: Like, because it’s like one of those things where you can only collect a few things a day of it. (0:40:39) Kelly: Oh, I always do a new save. (0:40:39) Al: And then I need to make the decision of do I do a new save or do I continue my existing save. (0:40:45) Kelly: I know I should probably go back, but I love a restart. (0:40:49) Kelly: Like, I’ve got like five different room worlds because I just like… (0:40:52) Al: So mostly I have like one that I have done most of the things in, and then I have like a bunch of others that are like random challenges and a random multiplayer one. (0:40:52) Kelly: Could I go back and keep– (0:40:54) Kelly: I’m playing them sure. (0:41:12) Al: See I’m the opposite, I’m like I really should do a new one and see how it changes things because obviously it’s not. You don’t expedite. I need to do both realistically, right? Because it changes things. Exactly. Yeah. (0:41:16) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:41:18) Kelly: It’s like you get to see how you strategize and how you handle things differently and like, you know Going back in with like new knowledge and like all that stuff Like like this this the one I did two years ago, I have notes I take notes when I play this game So I have like field guides I’m like, you know the best things to do with this and each season and what you should pickle and what you should Kagan like blah blah blah like what Fisher what’s Oh Yeah Oh, no, I I love a (0:41:32) Al: Yeah, yeah. (0:41:46) Al: Yeah, yeah. Oh, see, I don’t pickle and keg because I just can’t be bothered. I just go, (0:41:54) Al: what is the most expensive crop? Like the most for selling. And I just go with that. (0:41:59) Al: Like, I’m just like, I do like mayo and cheese and stuff like that. But I’m like, I don’t, (0:42:04) Al: I can’t be bothered with like putting my crops and these other things and waiting. No, I just sell. Like, I know you can make more money, but I don’t, I don’t want to do that. (0:42:12) Kelly: I love a good micromanage. It’s not even about the money because I’m a third point I don’t need more money. It’s literally just about me having tasks to do. But yeah, no, I’m like, I… At certain points I was like, okay, so if I place this many kegs in the basement, can I still access them if I walk around this way? (0:42:31) Al: Yes, what’s the optimum strategy? I think the problem is that they figured it out. There is a right answer to that in everything. (0:42:43) Kelly: Yes, which I don’t, I don’t want to sound like I’m one of those people who are doing things to the T perfect, like gotta have every second count. (0:42:54) Kelly: Like I definitely do things in my own little stupid way. (0:42:58) Al: Yeah. Yeah. I also quite like trying different things. So there was one quite early on with the podcast where me and Rachelle were trying to see how much money we could make just from mining. It was good fun. It was good fun. Yeah. Yeah. (0:42:59) Kelly: But there are certain things that I try to make sure I’m doing them correctly, I quote unquote correctly. (0:43:07) Kelly: So that I can get money and stuff from them, especially early game. (0:43:10) Kelly: Once you get to a certain point, it’s like, oh my God, do I need money? (0:43:20) Kelly: that’s a that’s a fun challenge I think those are like fun ways to like how can I do this how can I do this differently oh yeah like I’m a I’m I do this in every like game essentially but I love fishing for So I’m always like a sucker for that, but I feel like (0:43:28) Al: Yeah, exactly. And it’s like, you can actually make a lot of money that way. (0:43:32) Al: And it’s just fun to try the different ways of doing that because (0:43:50) Kelly: My last one I tried to like avoid that more so but It’s always fun to just try different ways do different things (0:43:54) Al: Fair enough. (0:43:56) Al: I also saw someone do a challenge which was like you can’t leave the farm and that was quite interesting. (0:44:06) Al: So they didn’t get a lot of seeds is part of the point, right? (0:44:11) Al: So obviously you get them from foraging, you can get seeds just from foraging. (0:44:15) Al: But yeah, a lot of it was just having to like sell the things you find around the farm. (0:44:21) Al: They used the four carner’s farm. (0:44:22) Kelly: No chickens? (0:44:25) Al: They used the four carner’s farm, so you get a little bit of everything. (0:44:29) Kelly: uh okay okay but like no interactions with people unless they like literally come to visit you that’s crazy but I feel like you know that’s like the it’s like nose locking yourself into stardew it’s fun yeah but stardew yay (0:44:35) Al: Yep. Yeah. (0:44:38) Al: Exactly, exactly, exactly. Lots of different ways to do it. (0:44:47) Al: So yeah, wild horseradish juice. (0:44:49) Al: I will probably never make it. (0:44:52) Kelly: I i will say who is drinking this I love horseradish I love spiciness I love (0:44:53) Al: Yeah. But just pure horseradish juice. (0:44:59) Kelly: bloody marys I love burning my sinuses I would never listen there’s been times in my life where my sinuses have been really bad and somebody was like hey if you put apple cider vinegar up your nose it’ll help and i’ve done that this sounds wild I would never do this I have never heard of horseradish as being described as sweet (0:45:05) Al: No! (0:45:10) Al: It’s description is a sweet nutritious beverage. (0:45:23) Al: I think there’s lots of sugar in that. (0:45:25) Kelly: Yeah, it has to be like really pickled or whatever. (0:45:29) Kelly: That’s crazy. (0:45:33) Al: The final news is we have a new game announced. We don’t have a lot about it. It’s called Echoes of the Plum Grove and it is coming to Kickstarter soon and its little tagline is “Build a thriving community across generations in this cosy historical farm simulation”. (0:45:51) Kelly: I think that’s pretty cute, like that’s a different idea because I feel like you know in a lot of these you can have a kid or something or a family but it doesn’t really go anywhere. (0:45:58) Kelly: Like I feel like this is very much so not how I play The Sims but how a lot of people play The Sims where they’ll make generational things and like the generations start to interact with each other and it’s like really interesting, it’s a very long-term way of doing it. (0:46:08) Al: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. A few games have kind of done a little bit of this, like, I think the new Harvest Moon does it where you can grow. You still stay as your same character, though. (0:46:29) Al: But there was… Oh, what was the… A Wonderful Life did this as well, didn’t it? You can play as your child at a certain point, I think. (0:46:39) Al: So yeah, there is apparently a lot more information on Steam that I didn’t notice until now. (0:46:43) Kelly: I did have to go open the Steam page because the Kickstarter basically had nothing on it. (0:46:44) Al: I will link that in the show notes. (0:46:47) Al: Yes, well, that’s the thing, that’s why I didn’t think we had a huge amount, but it is apparently on Steam. (0:46:53) Al: Well, the page is up on Steam, and it says it’s coming out in 2024, but I suspect (0:46:59) Kelly: I would also. I like his little cute like

Kev and Kelly do a second harvest of Graveyard Keeper Timings 00:00:00: Theme Tune 00:00:30: Intro 00:02:17: What Have We Been Up To 00:06:11: News 00:34:56: Graveyard Keeper 01:14:29: Outro Links Coral Island 1.0 Moonlight in Garland Early Access Sun Haven 1.3 Update Fabledom Fairytales & Community Update Moonstone Island Eerie Items DLC Lonesome Village Physical Edition Garden Story Translation Update Fantastic Haven Graveyard Keeper Contact Al on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheScotBot Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/ Transcript (0:00:32) Kevin: this is kelly ween this is kelly ween kelly ween kelly ween and in this show uh we talk about games that are filled with cottage gore yeah hi everyone welcome to the harvest season um with me today is kelly i’m kevin she’s actually gonna be here for well spoilers but then she’s gonna be on next week too she were on last week I bring it up because last year you were on for Halloween we did Cult of the Land. (0:00:47) Kelly: Hey. (0:00:57) Kelly: Oh, I forgot about that. (0:01:02) Kevin: And so, yeah, so, well, that’s exactly right. (0:01:03) Kelly: Is this just like my thing? (0:01:07) Kevin: Um, yeah, you’re Kelly our pumpkin queen. (0:01:10) Kevin: So here we are. (0:01:11) Kevin: Um, she’s all about this stuff. (0:01:14) Kevin: And so we are here today to talk about graveyard keeper, another, um, cottage gore game, um, technically this is a second harvest episode. (0:01:25) Kevin: Uh, Raschelle covered it way back. (0:01:28) Kevin: Like the first Halloween episode. (0:01:32) Kevin: And so I knew about it for years, but I didn’t get a chance to play it until recently. (0:01:37) Kevin: Um, and Kelly has played it significantly. (0:01:40) Kevin: Um, yeah. (0:01:40) Kelly: I only got out of it though last year. I was very new to it, so… (0:01:44) Kevin: Well, still more than I have. (0:01:49) Kevin: I’ve only played, uh, just a handful, relatively speaking. (0:01:51) Kevin: Um, but yeah, that’s, uh, we will get to that soon enough. (0:01:58) Kevin: Um, but before that, as always. (0:02:02) Kevin: Show notes and links and the transcripts are all available on the website for people to see and look at and on. (0:02:09) Kevin: Ooh, and whatnot. (0:02:11) Kevin: Um, and, uh, before the graveyard keeper will do news as always. (0:02:17) Kevin: And more importantly, what have you been up to Kelly? (0:02:19) Kevin: What have you been playing, watching, doing, yada, yada. (0:02:21) Kelly: Um, playing? I’ve really been slacking. I’ve been playing solitaire in Pokemon Go, which is not… It is, but I just… I get stuck playing it, and like, it’s fun, but I’m also like, I could be playing something better. (0:02:37) Kevin: Yeah, I mean it’s like comfort food sometimes it just it’s simple and I get it Exactly sometimes you just need a mindless game Okay, okay madman okay, I have not watched it. I’m familiar with it. That’s the one with That’s the one like 50s (0:02:37) Kelly: Um… [laughs] (0:02:39) Kelly: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It’s like, thoughtless. Um… (0:02:50) Kelly: But I just… (0:02:51) Kelly: I rewatched Mad Men, so that I think is more exciting. (0:03:05) Kelly: yeah like 60s advertising, yeah. (0:03:05) Kevin: add agency right (0:03:07) Kevin: 60s okay all right how how mm-hmm how long is it like the whole thing oh wow that’s longer than expected well that’s cool yeah sure (0:03:07) Kelly: uh I was a big fan when it came out. (0:03:12) Kelly: uh it’s like seven seasons I think? yeah seven seasons. (0:03:18) Kelly: yeah when I first ran I jumped ship like I think after season five. (0:03:25) Kelly: uh I mean it’s not the worst last two seasons but they’re not as good. (0:03:32) Kelly: Good. (0:03:34) Kevin: Um, let’s see, uh, well, I’ve last week we covered paleo pines actually kept up with it a good bit after There was a patch that dropped It’s been a big dinosaur for a week for me. I watched Jurassic Park this week again - (0:03:35) Kelly: What about you? What have you been up to? (0:03:52) Kevin: Boy, that movie’s real good good other than that Yesterday I cried that Super Mario wonder it just came out yesterday (0:04:04) Kevin: the newest one for this switch and It’s a good one Um, I’ll plug the rainbow road radio the other show I do with our mutual friend Alex We did our first look at it on that show. We just recorded and that’ll be dropping soon It’s fantastic it’s There’s I’m only a little bit in like on the second world but like every (0:04:23) Kelly: What do you think of it? (0:04:34) Kevin: level feels like it is introducing something new and different and I mean classic Mario is good you know 2d it’s your standard 2d Mario and whatnot so the gameplay is good and it’s just filled with all sorts of fun surprises and delights I’m going to spoil people on probably the best part that I’ve experienced so far there’s this level it’s like the second or third level you can do. (0:05:04) Kevin: There’s a bunch of piranha plants popping out of the pipes and you run and jump past them and whatnot. (0:05:09) Kevin: And then there’s the Wonder Flower which changes the level in different ways or whatnot. (0:05:15) Kevin: So when you touch the Wonder Flower, it starts this musical production and all the piranha plants just start singing. (0:05:23) Kevin: And it’s incredible, you entice everyone to at least look it up. (0:05:29) Kelly: I actually, I saw it on TikTok this morning and I was like, hmm, okay. (0:05:30) Kevin: It’s just so much fun. (0:05:34) Kevin: It’s so, because it just, right? (0:05:37) Kelly: Very much unexpected. (0:05:38) Kelly: I thought it was like somebody made it at first, like, you know, somebody edited it. (0:05:41) Kevin: Yep, it’s so out of the blue. (0:05:42) Kelly: But no, it was real. (0:05:45) Kevin: Yeah, no, it’s good. (0:05:48) Kevin: It’s really funny and yeah, the game just brings smiles to me every level with all sorts of unexpected twists and turns like that. (0:05:56) Kevin: So yeah, Mario Wonder, two thumbs up for me for sure. (0:05:59) Kevin: Like I said, people can go to Rainbow World Radio to hear more in-depth thoughts. (0:06:04) Kevin: But, yeah, that’s mostly what I’ve been up to. (0:06:08) Kevin: And now, with that, let’s hop on over to the news. (0:06:15) Kevin: We have, as always, a handful of, mostly game updates. (0:06:19) Kevin: Yeah, there’s a lot of game updates for some reason right now. (0:06:24) Kevin: So we’re going to start off talking about Coral Island. (0:06:30) Kevin: Okay, the one, okay, this is a big one. (0:06:34) Kevin: For people who may not remember, Coral Island is your standard Stardew-esque, well, I say standard. (0:06:40) Kevin: It’s got all your fixings, your farming, and it’s on an island, hence the name, right? (0:06:46) Kevin: So it has the tropical aesthetic and whatnot. (0:06:51) Kevin: But the big news is the 1.0 version is launching on November 14th, which is exciting. (0:06:58) Kevin: They have a trailer, and it looks expansive. (0:07:05) Kevin: There’s a lot going on. You have your farm, you can go underwater, you can meet mermaids, you can do your romancing, (0:07:12) Kevin: you can do, I think there’s even a race in there somewhere. All that good stuff. (0:07:18) Kevin: It looks very polished and like a 1.0 game. You can also… (0:07:22) Kelly: Yeah, I was going to say, it definitely looks like there’s, it looks a lot different than like the first, you know, clips I saw of it. (0:07:30) Kevin: Yep, absolutely. Yeah, it’s definitely a game now, for a better way of putting it. (0:07:36) Kelly: Yeah. (0:07:37) Kevin: And you can also dress up as a panda or dinosaur, so you know, there’s a lot going on there. You also get your little animal crossing, you can redecorate your house wherever you want. (0:07:49) Kevin: Oh, you can even have a baby in this, that’s wild. Yeah, that is dropping on November 14th, (0:07:58) Kevin: just a couple of weeks and it will be dropping on Steam, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5 they’re hoping for a 2024 release for a Switch version. Do you think you’ll try Coral Island or look in its general (0:08:12) Kelly: I think I might. I think it definitely looks really cute. I think it depends on if I’m playing anything, you know, when it comes out. I’m trying so hard not to, like, backlog myself. (0:08:22) Kevin: Yeah, yeah, that’s the hard part right too many games Yeah, no, that’s that’s a good idea I definitely have bought back So I respect that I think you can romance a mermaid so, you know, I’m not that going free I wonder how that’s gonna work. How are they gonna move up the land or vice versa? (0:08:43) Kevin: It’s a two-story floor but the bottom floor is underwater [laugh] (0:08:44) Kelly: just uh living in a two separate homes kind of situation there you go (0:08:52) Kevin: I’m down for that, um, yeah, right now it’s only 25 bucks, oh that’s not bad for this, that’s, that looks like a lot of content for 25 bucks, so, um, get excited. (0:09:06) Kevin: Um, oh, oh yeah, okay, sure, yep, that makes sense, that’s fair. (0:09:07) Kelly: Oh, it does say it’s going to release, I think, at $30, though. (0:09:11) Kelly: There’s a note about the price adjustment. (0:09:14) Kelly: But the diving looks really cool. (0:09:16) Kelly: I played a lot of Dave the Diver over the summer, (0:09:19) Kelly: so I feel like I’m still looking for games where I can go exploring like that. (0:09:19) Kevin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s good. (0:09:23) Kevin: Yeah, it does look good for like the animation stuff. (0:09:29) Kevin: I’m also a big fan of underwater type games and it looks very expansive down there. (0:09:35) Kevin: So yeah, there’s a post on Steam page with all the updates and everything. You guys can check it out. (0:09:44) Kevin: If you do have early access, it looks like there will be a save reset. (0:09:53) Kevin: So there is that. But, either way, November 14th, I look forward to it. I might actually check it out now. It looks pretty… (0:10:00) Kevin: So, next up we have Moonlight and Garland. (0:10:06) Kevin: I don’t know if this is a game announced, but it’s… (0:10:09) Kevin: Yeah, I guess it is, because they’re announcing their early access October 24th, which will probably already be out by the time people are listening to this. (0:10:18) Kevin: This is… here, let me read their, uh… (0:10:22) Kevin: The elevator pitch, where is it? (0:10:24) Kevin: A cozy open-ended life sim about finding your feet in the big city, decorate your apartment, make new friends, grow too many houseplants, and love your city life. (0:10:33) Kevin: Um, so it… yeah, it’s… it’s city-based, right? So you’re in an apartment, you’re not running a whole farm, but you can grow plants, you can have pets, um, make relationships and whatnot. (0:10:46) Kevin: The art style is… (0:10:48) Kelly: That’s the most realistic farming sim. (0:10:52) Kevin: » [LAUGH] (0:10:54) Kevin: » No, you’re right. (0:10:59) Kevin: » Yeah, yeah, Kelly can. (0:11:00) Kevin: Well, no, you’re in the house now, you’re not in an apartment anymore. (0:11:03) Kelly: No, but definitely, you know, went through that also, like, how do I keep my plans alive in my apartment when there’s no sun? (0:11:04) Kevin: But yeah, you know the feeling. (0:11:12) Kevin: Man, gosh, you’re super right. (0:11:16) Kevin: Boy, there’s a person showing an apartment with a lot of bunnies in their apartment, that seems difficult. (0:11:23) Kevin: You’re gonna have that many bunnies in an apartment. (0:11:26) Kevin: The art style is, it’s 2D pixelated, but it’s not Stardew-esque. (0:11:31) Kevin: It’s a little more cutesy than that, and I don’t know how to best describe it. (0:11:35) Kevin: And all the NPCs are kind of bobbing their head at the same time to some unknown beat, it is cute looking. (0:11:43) Kevin: And it’s only the early access, so I’m sure it’ll grow considerably more. (0:11:51) Kevin: That is, you know. (0:11:52) Kevin: October 23rd? 24th? I’m seeing two different days. (0:11:58) Kelly: I definitely want to follow up on it because just looking at the coming soon photo, it’s like why is there an iguana on the sidewalk? (0:12:06) Kevin: Hahaha! (0:12:06) Kelly: Can I have an iguana? (0:12:07) Kevin: Wait, you havin’ a guana? (0:12:08) Kelly: And then there’s also the bear man. (0:12:10) Kevin: Wait, wait, wait, wait, let me see, which one are you talkin’ about? (0:12:10) Kelly: I’m on the steam page, the early access release. (0:12:14) Kevin: What? (0:12:15) Kevin: Okay, okay, let me see… (0:12:17) Kelly: So in the coming soon photo that says steam early access, October 24th, whatever, wishlist now. (0:12:27) Kevin: Okay, okay. Oh, I’m looking at the wrong page. I would explain it wouldn’t it? Yup. There it is. Okay Yeah, I was looking the wrong page. There is a bear man. Why is there a bear man? (0:12:28) Kelly: There’s a bear man in the iguana, like do I get a pet iguana, do I get pet pigeons? (0:12:37) Kevin: Okay, I Okay, I want to mine a department full of pet iguanas that that I can do they’re pretty low-key There are pigeons. So, you know, definitely, you know, they’re hitting Oh, are they gonna have the the trash bags out on the sidewalk? (0:12:55) Kevin: Are they gonna go all in on the city? (0:12:57) Kevin: I don’t know if garland is a city name. It’s a city in texas. I know that much. (0:13:11) Kelly: Yeah. (laughs) (0:13:28) Kevin: But yeah, coming soon, early access. (0:13:31) Kevin: Next up, the clip side of early access, we got DLC patches, whatever you want to call it, for Sunhaven. (0:13:39) Kevin: This is the magical-esque farm where you do magic, there’s monsters, dragons, etc. (0:13:51) Kevin: It is patch 1.3, which includes new buildings. (0:13:58) Kevin: There are several that don’t look human, one is an angel, just straight up an angel. (0:14:04) Kevin: One guy is blue, he’s a moon attendant, whatever that means. (0:14:11) Kevin: You have to, they will be unlockable at some point, but that’s fascinating, dating non-humans like that. (0:14:20) Kevin: Oh, they will have a couple of other romancibles coming later this year. (0:14:28) Kevin: They will also have new farm structures and buildings. (0:14:32) Kevin: Greenhouses, silos, chicken coops, butterfly gardens, I like that. You don’t see that in farming games. (0:14:38) Kelly: That’s very unique, yeah. (0:14:40) Kevin: That’s cute, I love a butterfly garden. (0:14:44) Kevin: Monocyphoners, glorite siphoners, I don’t know what they are, workshops, and ticket counterfeiters. (0:14:54) Kevin: I don’t know what that means, but you’re counterfeiting. (0:14:57) Kevin: They’re up to crimes. I like that. (0:14:59) Kevin: I want to know why you can do crimes. (0:15:01) Kevin: Tickets for what? (0:15:03) Kevin: I don’t think they’re concert tickets. (0:15:05) Kevin: That’s fascinating. (0:15:07) Kevin: But yeah, there’s a whole bunch of other stuff. (0:15:10) Kelly: A lot of stuff. There’s like a ghost shed kit? I want a ghost shed. (0:15:11) Kevin: What does that mean? (0:15:18) Kevin: Do you keep ghosts in there? (0:15:19) Kelly: You grow them in there, maybe? (0:15:21) Kevin: I don’t… (0:15:23) Kevin: Oh wait, there are variations. (0:15:25) Kevin: variations because there’s pumpkin and mushroom. (0:15:27) Kevin: It looks like a ghost, oh I see it. (0:15:29) Kevin: Yeah, it has the eyes, the windows look like eyes and the glow, okay. (0:15:29) Kelly: Oh! (0:15:31) Kelly: That makes so much more sense because I was like oh mushroom shed. That’s just a shed where you grow mushrooms, you know That’s and then I just took the rest of them like that [laughs] (0:15:33) Kevin: Um, sh*t skins, yeah it does. (0:15:36) Kevin: Yeah, yeah, okay. (0:15:44) Kevin: Um, oh that’s the butterfly, wow those are big butterflies. (0:15:47) Kevin: Um, oh those are fascinating buildings. (0:15:49) Kevin: Um, let’s see, player birthdays. (0:15:53) Kevin: There is the birthday, birthday celebration. (0:15:57) Kevin: There is a huge pinata that you can hit, so I’m already down for this. (0:16:01) Kevin: Um, geez that’s like a full sized lion looking pinata, that’s great. (0:16:06) Kevin: Um, that’s uh, so all that’s included in the patch. (0:16:10) Kevin: Aside from that there will be DLC available. (0:16:13) Kevin: Um, all six different packs, trick or treat, spirit battle, rock and roll, cyber pop, monkey monkey, and dreamy ram. (0:16:22) Kevin: They’re all, they contain different items, packs, outfits, items, whatever. (0:16:27) Kevin: You guys can check the Steam page for details. (0:16:30) Kevin: Uh, for, yeah, there’s more details out there than we talked about, but, uh, yeah, that seems like a hefty patch. That seems like fun. (0:16:38) Kelly: Yeah, there’s a lot in this. This page goes on. (0:16:38) Kevin: Um, uh, yeah, it does. Um… (0:16:41) Kelly: And there’s even a coming soon, so… (0:16:43) Kevin: Yeah, yeah, they’re talking about future. (0:16:47) Kevin: Um, wow, new season of weather. Wow. (0:16:50) Kevin: Gloomy, what’s the difference between rainy and gloomy rain? I don’t know. (0:16:55) Kelly: Um, I think there’s I could I could understand that one (0:16:55) Kevin: But there you go All right, yeah, I guess. Okay, uh See like out here in Georgia. It’s a little more like rain. Not gloomy rain. Gloomy rains like hurricane force rain That’s what I think Wait no, yeah, okay. I get it (0:17:10) Kelly: No, I think gloomy rain is like when it’s kind of cold and like the sky is just dark and grey all day and it’s like just kind of constant. Like you could have nice rain, like you could have sunny rain, you could have like… (0:17:24) Kevin: Yeah, I do enjoy sun showers. (0:17:25) Kelly: It doesn’t have to be gloomy. (0:17:26) Kelly: Just like a normal rain shower isn’t always gloomy. (0:17:27) Kevin: You’re right. (0:17:28) Kevin: Yeah, no, you’re right, okay, um Yeah, so there’s all the whole bunch of stuff you guys can check that out Is that sorry? Yeah, when’s the release? I didn’t it’s it’s Oct they posted it October 20th It is oh, yeah, it’s already out on Steam. Yeah, so Now time this recording which means by the times you guys are listening. It is definitely available. That is again Sun haven (0:17:58) Kevin: Huh? Oh man, I’m just looking at the picture like a big tree man monster. I might have to check this out I like tree monsters. I I haven’t played a magic game in a minute. Well, I mean, well, maybe our keeper gentle notwithstanding Um, but it’s high, you know fantasy magic II I’m down for that. I could use that Yeah, uh, okay speaking of well, I don’t know more updates (0:18:04) Kelly: right? like i’m kind of like- i’m intrigued. i’m definitely very (0:18:17) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:18:18) Kelly: I feel like this is pretty different, yeah. (0:18:28) Kevin: We have so this is The what I refer to as not a city builder but a village builder because it’s medieval villagey themed But you’re helping build the whole village and run everything it is currently in early access and they are dropping a update for it I’m excited for this game myself. I’m gonna wait for the 1.0, but I love the art style. It’s cutesy and goofy (0:18:59) Kevin: and they are dropping all sorts of things in this update including a An encounter with a misunderstood Cyclops who’s very cute. His eye is just a dot His name is Eric one eye you can there will be a witch’s hut a red hooded girl Who’s looking for her grandma’s house? That that’s a speech. I don’t trust that at all. Oh, no, I don’t like that Hemisary gnomes (0:19:26) Kevin: It was seriously rare! (0:19:28) Kevin: And then a fawn with a really big nose and mustache. Oh, I like this guy. (0:19:33) Kevin: There’s a… and a few more. (0:19:36) Kevin: Well, those are fun characters that they’re adding. I love the art style and it looks really fun on these mythical, magical, whatever you want to call them. (0:19:46) Kevin: Cyclops and fawns. Gnomes. They’re fun looking characters. (0:19:48) Kelly: No, yeah, they look they look so cute. It looks very adorable (0:19:49) Kevin: Yeah. (0:19:51) Kevin: Yep. (0:19:53) Kevin: There are, oh gosh, 50 new world events and 30 new objectives. (0:19:58) Kevin: I don’t know what that means, but those are big numbers. (0:20:00) Kevin: Oh, there’s a magic bean. (0:20:03) Kevin: There’s monthly and yearly objectives. (0:20:06) Kevin: Hot weight. Positive and negative events. Oh, oh, they’re, they’re, they’re wild. Okay, I’m down for that. (0:20:15) Kevin: They have, let’s see, new buildings, a laborer guild. Oh, so you can hire better laborers. That’s fun. A bank. (0:20:24) Kevin: Oh, you can tax your villagers at different rates? (0:20:28) Kevin: Oh, that’s awesome. Grand theater? Oh, that’s a nice looking theater. (0:20:34) Kevin: Fisherman’s hut? Fish up stuff? All sorts of quality of life stuff? (0:20:40) Kevin: Well, there’s a lot of graphs in this game and things like that. I’m down for that. (0:20:45) Kevin: Yeah, that’s a lot of stuff coming. Like I said, I’m probably going to wait for 1.0 myself, but I’m glad that it’s coming along nicely. Yeah, that is again fabled. (0:20:57) Kelly: Is there any, is there any real estate or? (0:20:59) Kevin: Go. Oh, it is live. That update is already live as of this recording. (0:21:05) Kevin: So, yay. If anyone is playing the one point or the early access, first of all, (0:21:10) Kevin: somebody tell me if they are because I want to know about it. And it is out already. (0:21:15) Kevin: Um, yeah. All right. Good. Oh man. I’m just trying to fable them. It’s so goofy looking and the. (0:21:23) Kelly: Is there like an overall release date or no? (0:21:33) Kevin: uh not that i’m saying now um I have left here a quick glance um yeah so probably still a hot minute probably sometime in 2024 i’d hope but uh it’s not dead yet so i’ll take that let’s see next up we have uh moonstone island we have dlc for that this is which one’s this one okay all right we so we have dlc come (0:22:11) Kevin: Well, let me get to the details. Yeah, it’s the Halloween update right? That’s the key thing here. Um, (0:22:16) Kelly: I think so, ‘cause it’s for Halloween. (0:22:17) Kevin: We’ve got just a whole bunch of Spooky decors per their website gravestones skeletons a big old pumpkin house um Web’s five types of cobwebs. Oh Oh a rug. That’s just the tongue. That’s clever. I like that. Um, (0:22:38) Kevin: uh So yeah, there. (0:22:41) Kevin: Okay. (0:22:43) Kevin: Okay. (0:22:45) Kelly: I’m sorry, it’s actually not out yet. (0:22:45) Kevin: Okay. (0:22:47) Kelly: It’s not out, which I’m kinda… (0:22:47) Kevin: Um, there are n- some- the- so some of this stuff is DLC, which I’m assuming means purchasable separately, but there will be stuff included for free in the updates on the skeletons and things like that. (0:22:58) Kevin: Um, spirits are free- I don’t know what spirits are in the context of this game, but um, but they’re coming some out. (0:23:05) Kevin: Um, oh wow, I didn’t check- it’s got some good reviews. (0:23:09) Kevin: Um, I’ll have to check that out. (0:23:11) Kevin: Oh wow, what? Oh gosh, I forgot about- I’m remembering the game. (0:23:15) Kevin: There’s- you can fight like robots with a card battling system. (0:23:19) Kevin: They are… (0:23:21) Kevin: Yeah, oh man, oh gosh. (0:23:23) Kelly: These are really cute looking things, these creatures. (0:23:26) Kelly: I, yeah, like, I really like the style of it, yeah. (0:23:26) Kevin: This whole episode’s just me getting excited about games I forgot to get excited about. (0:23:31) Kevin: Um, as if I didn’t have enough already. (0:23:33) Kevin: There are really cute characters- there’s a fishbowl with legs. (0:23:36) Kevin: Um, I like that. (0:23:39) Kevin: that. And then at the end they just. (0:23:41) Kevin: Have a picture of a cat with like a sun hood. I don’t know but um, it’s very cute cat. (0:23:47) Kevin: That is Moonstone Island. That is already out, I believe. Why do we have a date for that? (0:23:52) Kelly: It is a very cute cat. (0:23:54) Kelly: The game is out, it says “NA” for them. (0:23:56) Kevin: Okay, thank you. But it says, while says it’s October 27th. I (0:24:06) Kevin: Couldn’t find that myself. Oh wait. Yeah, there it is. Yeah, October 27th. It’s only $4. (0:24:11) Kevin: Okay, that’s actually not bad at all and 10% off the first week. So there’s 46. (0:24:18) Kevin: Yeah, okay. Oh, it’s a new spirits must be a little monster buddies. That’s what it means. I’m excited. One looks like an apple with a worm through it. They’re just showing silhouettes. I’m just guessing. (0:24:23) Kelly: There you go. (0:24:29) Kevin: And yeah, I don’t know all that. Oh, I might check this out now. It’s a very cute game. (0:24:34) Kevin: Moonstone Island. Um Let’s see Next up we have oh, this isn’t an interesting (0:24:41) Kevin: one because boy, I never thought we’d see this this is Lonesome Village game that I notoriously advocate because the developers are from Mexico. It’s got the cute coyote as you saw puzzles in a tower. They’re coming out the fiscal edition. Pre-orders are live. You can check the show notes for the link. It is not from limited run games actually. A game a site called premium edition games. (0:25:11) Kevin: physical edition which includes all sorts of goodies including oh wow a full-color manual oh that’s exciting Wow a dog tag yeah they do um oh man a manual that’s exciting um yeah it’s great um yeah I I cover this game with Johnny, it was last year or year before, I don’t remember. (0:25:22) Kelly: Dude, the indie games always put so much into like what you get from… (0:25:32) Kelly: I love a manual. (0:25:33) Kelly: A full color manual too, that’s so nice. (0:25:41) Kevin: It’s a fun little game with lots of puzzles, and just very very cute little animal-closing-esque villagers. (0:25:47) Kelly: It looks really cute. The art style kind of reminds me of like Cult of the Lamb, but without the like paper feel. (0:25:47) Kevin: It’s actually funny because in the “story” of the game, so it’s called Lonesome Village because there’s a village and everyone’s kind of been turned to stone or disappeared. (0:26:03) Kevin: And the villains, they’re the people who did it very much look like Cult of the Lamb. (0:26:06) Kelly: Okay. (0:26:07) Kelly: Oh! Oh! It’s a cult! It’s a cult! What is happening here? (0:26:09) Kevin: Yeah. (0:26:12) Kevin: It came out around the time Cult of the Loom. (0:26:14) Kelly: I’m watching the trailer! Oh my god! (0:26:15) Kevin: It looks a lot like Cult of the Loom. (0:26:18) Kevin: The cult from Cult of the Loom. (0:26:20) Kevin: I think we made the joke in the episode. (0:26:22) Kevin: It came out around the same time too. (0:26:25) Kevin: Yep, yep, exactly. Yep. (0:26:26) Kelly: That’s so funny, ‘cause I was thinking it kinda like reminds me of the way they do the animals, like the style of the animals. (0:26:32) Kelly: But now that I’m watching this trailer, it’s like literally… (0:26:32) Kevin: It’s cult, it’s a lot like Cult of the Loom, Cult. (0:26:36) Kelly: That’s so funny. Oh, I gotta play this. (0:26:41) Kevin: Yeah, I have to check it out again. I still have it. (0:26:45) Kevin: It’s been a while. I’m sure they patched it up and done some stuff. (0:26:48) Kevin: ‘Cause I had a few rough edges back then, but I’m curious. (0:26:51) Kevin: I might do another look at it at some point. (0:26:54) Kevin: Because, yeah, props to–but, again, Mexican dev team, so I gotta shout them out. (0:26:59) Kevin: Ogre Pixel, that’s the name. (0:27:02) Kevin: But, yeah, that is a cute little logo of an Ogre–Pixillator Ogre. (0:27:07) Kevin: And again, this is the physical edition release. (0:27:11) Kevin: $40 for the premium edition, which seems to be their only version but includes all sorts of goodies. Um, I When do pre-orders end? I don’t know if I see that but the pre-orders are available now So you can check out the site and get it. Um Alright next up we have Not Garden Galaxy is perfect. We’re heading on the notes. That’s a different game that I was going to cover almost (0:27:42) Kevin: Garden story. That’s the one with the playable grape. That looks a lot like Stardew Valley a lot like It has It’s very cute though the grape that’s playable It is an update that has 11 new languages. Wow, that is a lot of languages I don’t know which ones they are. I just see the It’s out on Steam and switch already this update (0:28:09) Kevin: Very cool. Yeah, I actually don’t know what language is. I don’t know. (0:28:11) Kevin: Let’s see the details. But wow, that’s a big number. Good for them. (0:28:16) Kevin: Always props for making it more available for more people and whatnot. (0:28:19) Kevin: Yep. It is. The grape is very cute. (0:28:20) Kelly: Yeah, that’s always awesome. It really does look like stardew though. It’s cute though (0:28:25) Kevin: Next up, a new game announcement for as far as I can tell. (0:28:31) Kevin: This is called Fantastic Haven, which actually I find really intriguing. (0:28:36) Kevin: It’s the prime… (0:28:40) Kevin: Let me read the– (0:28:41) Kevin: The elevator pitch. (0:28:43) Kevin: So, this is a… (0:28:57) Kevin: Yeah, a Zook cheaper-esque type game, but they’re all magical creatures. (0:29:03) Kevin: Um, so you’re building big pens that look like circular homes more? (0:29:09) Kevin: Um, you alter the land and… (0:29:11) Kevin: It’s full 3D graphics, um, the… I think the actual designs of the creatures are actually quite nice, um… (0:29:18) Kevin: I like animals and critters and… (0:29:21) Kevin: …cheaping them and whatnot, so I’m already pretty interested, um, especially with the spin of… (0:29:26) Kevin: …like, they’re all magical creatures, I don’t see any other animals in here, I see like a griffin, uh… (0:29:31) Kelly: No, I’ve only seen, like, yeah, griffins and some weird frog with, like, horns and stuff. (0:29:31) Kevin: Yup, it’s a bullfrog, you get it? (0:29:36) Kelly: Ah, yes, yes, yes. (0:29:41) Kevin: The color shows a lot more, uh, it looks like you’re even busting some out of, like, cages and, like, carny… (0:29:46) Kevin: …you know, those carnival cages with the wheels, the cars, um… (0:29:51) Kevin: So that’s… that looks very fun, yeah, like I said, a lot of menus, probably, um… (0:29:57) Kevin: …very zookeeper tycoon-esque, um, but with the heavy, uh, magical fantasy paint over it, um… (0:30:06) Kevin: So that is right now the only release date planned is for Q2 of 2024 so it’ll probably be a minute but look forward to it I certainly am those are some fun designs yeah it’s it’s it’s charming enough for me I’m definitely interested um and then lastly okay this one I want to talk about in depth a little more because this one’s affecting me personally uh well actually there’s two me and my neck was night market once again got another patch that one. (0:30:41) Kevin: one point two point one oh whatever the it’s out on switch so you know it’s out on the steam version or whatever um so uh there’s a lot of quality of life stuff you can do with it. (0:30:48) Kevin: I’m not gonna go into the details because I don’t remember them but the other one I want to talk about because we just talked about last week is paleo pines. (0:30:53) Kevin: We just got yup okay so uh one point two point one oh whatever the it’s out on switch so you know it’s out on the steam version or whatever um so uh there’s a lot of quality of life stuff you can do with it. (0:30:54) Kelly: Which I still have to play, but I have not yet. (0:31:11) Kevin: We can change how quickly time passes in the game um oh gosh so one of the after I recorded last week with Spencer and we talked and played I was getting a lot of crashes. (0:31:23) Kevin: They had released a patch previously to fix some of that they said it was like a memory issue um but they were still experiencing it. (0:31:26) Kelly: Mmm. Okay. (0:31:31) Kevin: I felt like the more farther I got in the game the more I was crashed getting crashes uh they addressed some of that. (0:31:37) Kevin: that the game is still not free of crashes because (0:31:41) Kevin: we’ve been probably within an hour after downloading the update the game crashed on me again But it is better in general So they’re definitely aware and working on it at probably top of their list There is Also, there’s a whole list and you can check the show notes for them. I’m trying to look at which ones that are Stand out to me. Oh, there’s a cooking pot (0:31:46) Kelly: Oh, God. (0:32:07) Kevin: But it was weird because it was at some other guy’s house you have to go all the way to this other (0:32:12) Kevin: cook stuff but now you can buy one for your own ranch so that’s great oh here’s a fun one um so you can ride your dinosaurs because of course you can but the thing was whenever you got off of them they would just run away from you at max speed it was whole it was wild you could like try to stop them but um clearly not intended they have addressed that and and this definitely was an update needed and and it works um they will no longer run away from you when you get off of them (0:32:42) Kevin: um yes well luckily I think it was only in the ranch like your home base when it happened they wouldn’t leave you when you’re out in the wild oh my god that would be the worst yes but it’s still a pain because your character is a lot slower than the dinosaur so yeah yeah it’s just a pain having to go across the ranch to find them I mean it’s a pretty big ranch too um (0:32:44) Kelly: feeling it’s like okay nice I can I can get to the place I’m going to but once you’re there you’re stuck there now (0:32:56) Kelly: Oh, okay, okay, I was picturing like you, yeah, like you in the middle of like some field or something. (0:33:12) Kevin: uh there’s all sorts oh horse lock so there was a uh resource called forestwood that was needed for a lot of things it was pretty rare they increased the respawn on that that’s great um they did some ui improvements which were nice uh um lots of other things some oh there was a storage glitch spencer talked about think they fixed that um yeah just sort lots of little things (0:33:42) Kevin: because there were lots of little things that needed fixing um like I said still not 100 percent yeah yeah there is um where is it do they not have it um so there there is I read there is one glitch that they haven’t addressed yet um they know it’s an issue but for some reason at some point and it’s happened to me your game will reset to the first day of the game because there’s you know calendar like most farm. (0:34:12) Kevin: games and whatnot like you’ll keep all your stuff but somehow the calendar will just have reset to the very first game or very first day of the year which is wild um luckily I was able to get around that if you encounter it you can just reload an old save and it’s fine but um that was the wild glitch to see um but yeah that was I’m glad that came out because that addressed a lot of the little nitpicks Spencer and I had with the game and I’m sure (0:34:42) Kevin: they’re still working hard on that so good for you paleopines that update again is out already for switch and probably the other versions whatever versions it’s on all right so that was uh yeah the hearty helping of news and things but that’s now we’re doing that let’s talk about grave graveyard keeper yeah what’s what’s the tagline the most inaccurate medieval simulator isn’t that (0:35:09) Kelly: Something like that. I know inaccurate is involved of [laugh] (0:35:14) Kevin: Hold on let me look at it. Um the most inaccurate cemetery simulation game. Okay. Yeah, I think that’s what it is Okay Well Yeah, so again, um It and this game’s been up for years at this point. Um, I’ll covered it years ago Yeah. Yeah, there you go. That’s cute (0:35:24) Kelly: Oh, the most inaccurate medieval, yeah, cemetery sim of the year. (0:35:36) Kelly: Uh, they had their five year anniversary actually in August. (0:35:42) Kevin: There’s a bunch of DLC I bought the (0:35:44) Kevin: version with all the DLC I don’t know what the base game hazard does not have. (0:35:48) Kevin: I’ve only played it for an afternoon or two. I don’t think I’ve reached any of the DLC portions yet probably. (0:35:49) Kelly: Oh, did you? Okay. (0:35:57) Kevin: They’re all parody names there’s a stranger sins there’s breaking something (0:35:57) Kelly: Um, I’m trying to remember. I know the DLC… (0:35:59) Kelly: Yes, because there’s better save soul. (0:36:04) Kelly: Um, I did look into getting them, but I didn’t- I didn’t, because I think it was like- (0:36:11) Kelly: I feel like there’s- there’s so much going on in this game already. (0:36:14) Kevin: Even if it is, there’s a lot going on. (0:36:14) Kelly: Uh, that I was very happy to not have the added, um, things that like go along with the better save soul one. I heard that gets a lot of pretty tedious. (0:36:24) Kevin: Yeah, heh heh heh. (0:36:25) Kevin: Better save solo, that’s good. (0:36:29) Kevin: I don’t think that one’s out on Switch. (0:36:31) Kevin: That’s it? I don’t know if that one’s out on Switch. (0:36:32) Kelly: Oh, are you playing on Switch? I am not gonna lie. I have not. (0:36:36) Kelly: I’ve been so bad at playing my Switch this year. (0:36:44) Kevin: But, I mean, that’s fine, like, I know that the Switch port gets black for a good reason. (0:36:55) Kevin: There’s a Switch tax for sure, so I don’t blame you. (0:36:57) Kevin: But hey, at least we can compare notes on that. (0:37:00) Kevin: If you played on Steam, I would guess? (0:37:10) Kevin: Um, but okay, so let’s okay, let’s the elevator pitch Okay, first of all, I didn’t expect that this game’s an isekai That I didn’t expect at all so for people unfamiliar with isekai that is a genre of anime primarily where a character wakes up in a simulated often fantasy type world (0:37:38) Kevin: Sword Art Online and just… (0:37:40) Kevin: …other ones. It’s a whole trope now. (0:37:42) Kevin: Umm… (0:37:43) Kelly: I was gonna say it breaks the, you know, inherited your grandpa’s farm trope though. (0:37:44) Kevin: … (0:37:46) Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. (0:37:48) Kevin: You’re just a guy who gets hit by a car cause he’s looking at his phone. (0:37:52) Kevin: Don’t look at your phone when crossing the streets. (0:37:54) Kevin: It’s dark in the rain, people. (0:37:56) Kevin: It’s not recommended. (0:37:58) Kevin: And he wakes… (0:37:59) Kelly: Poor dude’s just trying to give back to his girlfriend or whatever. (0:38:00) Kevin: …yeah, his love, as he says, and… (0:38:03) Kevin: …he wakes up in a graveyard area and… (0:38:08) Kevin: There’s a talking skull that talks to you. (0:38:10) Kevin: And he says, “Hey, welcome. You’re the graveyard keeper, I guess.” (0:38:13) Kevin: Um, more or less, and sure enough, you’re put in charge of this graveyard in this little medieval village area. (0:38:23) Kevin: And you’re trying to figure out how to get back home while managing the graveyard and all the stuff people are asking you. (0:38:32) Kevin: Because, of course, people are going to ask you to do everything around here. (0:38:35) Kevin: Uh… (0:38:36) Kelly: I mean, what would a game be without everybody asking you to do all these things? (0:38:40) Kevin: Right, right. (0:38:42) Kevin: Um, so, okay, hell, you beat the game, correct? What are your overall impressions? (0:38:50) Kelly: I really liked the game. I thought it was a lot of fun. I think there’s a lot of stuff to do, (0:38:57) Kelly: like it can get a bit overwhelming, but I think, you know, it definitely involves, you know, (0:38:59) Kevin: Boy does it. (0:39:01) Kevin: Oh. Yep. (0:39:04) Kelly: looking things up online. But I will say there is an issue with how intuitive it is. (0:39:08) Kevin: Yep. (0:39:10) Kevin: Yep. (0:39:12) Kelly: I think I could have been further along in my gameplay if I understood some of the (0:39:20) Kelly: panics. A lot better. And I will say on that note, it was not always easy to find the answers on the internet. So that made it even worse. And sometimes if you did find an answer, (0:39:21) Kevin: Yep. Okay, so yeah, so. Mm-hmm. (0:39:31) Kevin: Oh yeah, the double whammy, oh yeah. (0:39:35) Kevin: Yup, it’s wild. (0:39:38) Kelly: it was from like 2018, so something got patched or didn’t work like that anymore. (0:39:46) Kelly: So, that was my biggest issue. (0:39:48) Kelly: Did it stop me from putting in, you know, (0:39:50) Kelly: 90 hours, I think, or whatever into the game? (0:39:55) Kelly: No, but there were definitely moments where I was frustrated. (0:39:59) Kelly: Or, like, again, just like, I was playing the game, I was enjoying myself, (0:40:03) Kelly: but I could have been further along than what I was. (0:40:07) Kevin: Yeah, um, okay. Mm-hmm Okay, yeah for sure they’re just Yeah, absolutely. Um, so for comparison I got the game Thursday I think today’s like Saturday. So two days ago So I’ve only played for and Mario wonder so I didn’t play as much yesterday So I played the game for an afternoon and then some um, I like the game a lot. Um, (0:40:07) Kelly: And not even in, like, a micromanagy, like, you know, whatever kind of way. (0:40:13) Kelly: Like, in, like, a… (0:40:15) Kelly: It would have made more sense. (0:40:26) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:40:37) Kevin: I think it is Almost minecrafty and how open it is and crafting and everything But I fully agree like that’s my biggest criticism there’s a lot that is not intuitive Or explained well Yep, yep, yep, I’m sure (0:40:50) Kelly: you haven’t even gotten or opened a lot of the, you know, different aspects of the game yet at this point, I’m sure, because it really expands. It expands a lot. There is a lot to do. There is so (0:41:03) Kevin: But I can imagine… I mean I see the skill tree. (0:41:07) Kevin: So… I can… I can… she’s… I can… (0:41:12) Kevin: So there’s a skill tree in this game, right? You have to get points to unlock your skills. (0:41:18) Kevin: And you can see how far it goes. And yes, I can see there’s a lot to unlock and do and whatnot. (0:41:24) Kevin: But… I think the skill tree is probably where I can direct my first criticism. (0:41:32) Kevin: Because there’s three types of points, whatever you want to call them. (0:41:37) Kevin: Red, green, and blue, and you need different amounts of each for unlocking each new skill, which lets you craft new things or do new things, whatnot. (0:41:46) Kevin: Um, the red and green work hard to get, but the blue, the blue is killing me because I hit a point where I had like one blue point overall and couldn’t figure out how to get more. (0:41:56) Kelly: You run out of them. (0:41:58) Kevin: Yeah. (0:41:59) Kelly: There’s a certain point where the game just stops you from getting more for a bit. (0:42:02) Kevin: Really? Wow. (0:42:04) Kelly: Not like stops you. (0:42:06) Kelly: There’s definitely a roadblock, I would say. (0:42:11) Kevin: - Yeah, okay. (0:42:14) Kelly: I struggled with that for so long. (0:42:17) Kelly: And then, of course, at a certain point, it’s like, oh. (0:42:20) Kelly: Now, actually, you’re out of red. (0:42:23) Kelly: Or now you’re out of green or whatever. (0:42:25) Kelly: And it’s like, oh, something that I– (0:42:26) Kelly: so I think one of them is done from manual labor, red, I think. (0:42:27) Kevin: yep yep your manufacturing and things yeah red okay oh you don’t get read from them (0:42:34) Kelly: Yeah, so at a certain point, you get helper zombies that you can assign to do things. (0:42:42) Kelly: So you’re no longer getting the red from those things that you would be getting red from. (0:42:47) Kelly: So it definitely makes you have to stop and think and watch everything. (0:42:56) Kevin: Yup, absolutely, um, it’s a very resource-manage-y heavy game and that includes your skill points or whatever you want to call them. (0:43:07) Kevin: That’s fascinating. (0:43:09) Kevin: Like I can see the blue are going to be very scarce. (0:43:11) Kelly: But I think it’s interesting because it does… (0:43:13) Kelly: Sorry, I was gonna say it just it does impact, I feel like, (0:43:18) Kelly: what you’re trying to do in that day. Because if you’re trying to get blue points… (0:43:19) Kevin: Right. Yeah, exactly. (0:43:22) Kevin: The nice thing, one of the nicest things about the game, (0:43:26) Kevin: there’s no real pressure. (0:43:28) Kevin: There’s no seasons or years or whatever. (0:43:31) Kevin: There’s a week. (0:43:32) Kevin: So like in six, seven, I don’t remember how long, how many days, (0:43:36) Kevin: but that’s the worst that you have to wait. (0:43:37) Kelly: It’s seven days Which and I liked I like I really like the fact that there was no pressure on the seasons or When you finished the game even or anything like that. I also liked the Each day is a different person You have to make sure that you’re getting the things you need to have done before that day so you can go and deal with that person (0:43:38) Kevin: Yep. Which go by quickly. (0:43:42) Kevin: Yep. (0:43:57) Kevin: Yep. (0:43:57) Kevin: Yep. (0:44:03) Kevin: Yep, he just gotta wait until… (0:44:03) Kelly: Because there’s definitely some weeks where if you miss that person you’re screwed (0:44:07) Kelly: Yup. And there is something later on in the game, you know, when things have slowed down in certain areas and you’re just like waiting for that one day where you can fast forward. (0:44:10) Kevin: Until that point. (0:44:21) Kelly: Yes, but I do actually want to say on that point, I think this is very interesting because there is no pause button. There’s no space yet. (0:44:21) Kevin: Yeah, sure that makes sense. Yeah, you can fast-forward at any point you should go to sleep and (0:44:32) Kevin: Yeah, yeah, even if you’re in your menus, time goes on. (0:44:37) Kelly: Yeah, you have to literally like go to the exit screen or whatever. Like the main menu page. (0:44:41) Kevin: Yeah Yep Yep, so if you’re looking through your notes here You know hemming and hawing at a menu thinking about where you want to spend your points that happened to me just just today When I was playing I cuz I finally got some blue points today. And so I was just like agonizing over I wanted where I wanted to spend them and before when I got out of the menu Oh, it’s evening already. Cool. The whole day’s [laughter] (0:44:43) Kelly: There’s a certain page that stops time, but the rest of them don’t. (0:44:48) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:45:09) Kelly: Yep. (0:45:11) Kelly: Yep. (0:45:12) Kevin: But they’re the kind of I mean, I don’t know if it was their intent or not But the way to combat that it’s very easy to reroll your did your save like you own there’s no autosave It just saves when you go when you wake up So most of the time you can say you’re pretty much have a safe at the start of the date or start of the day, excuse me, and You can just reload to that and have a plan or save yourself (0:45:23) Kelly: Oh, yes. (0:45:25) Kelly: Yes. (0:45:29) Kelly: I would just quit the game. (0:45:32) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:45:40) Kelly: Oh yeah, no, there was many times where I would either just, you would see like the NPC walking away from their post, and I would have to go and reset the game and then do the day over and make sure I got there early enough. (0:45:47) Kevin: Oh my gosh. (0:45:50) Kevin: Yep. (0:45:52) Kevin: Oh my gosh. (0:45:54) Kevin: That happened to me twice already when I go down and Snake is running away and like, “No, I need to talk to you, Snake.” (0:46:02) Kelly: oh god he’s so annoying he’s so annoying for the skill points though I think it’s like kind of fun like there’s some weird ones you can choose from uh-huh (0:46:05) Kevin: He is. (0:46:08) Kevin: He is. (0:46:11) Kevin: Yeah. (0:46:13) Kevin: Overall, I’m a big fan of the Skilled Trees, umm… (0:46:17) Kevin: Because you can very much pick and choose if you want to focus on certain areas and whatnot. (0:46:23) Kevin: Umm, obviously like… (0:46:25) Kevin: To get green points, that’s the farming stuff, so you do want to invest in some of that stuff. (0:46:30) Kevin: Umm, but like, early on you can really get through a lot of the wood and metalworking stuff. (0:46:37) Kevin: Umm, and again, with almost no pressure on when to do it, umm, it’s… (0:46:42) Kevin: It’s very open and you’re very free to pick and choose as you want. (0:46:46) Kevin: You know, (0:46:47) Kevin: the limitations of how many skill points you actually have notwithstanding. (0:46:52) Kevin: I think it is a clever system. (0:46:54) Kevin: And because you get to see what’s coming ahead, that helps you plan that too. (0:47:00) Kevin: I really like that. (0:47:01) Kelly: Yes, definitely. (0:47:01) Kevin: Um… (0:47:02) Kelly: There was definitely some areas in the skill tree though where I did not understand what, (0:47:09) Kelly: like if you unlocked something, (0:47:12) Kelly: I didn’t understand how to access it afterwards, (0:47:15) Kelly: which then led to me diving down a rabbit hole, (0:47:18) Kelly: trying to figure it out. (0:47:18) Kevin: Yeah, sometimes that’s a little unclear most of the time When you look at the skill tree thing it says okay, you can craft at this bench or that bench or whatever But some are not very clear. Yeah Some aren’t super clear. Yeah But I do agree (0:47:27) Kelly: Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, it definitely is pretty good. (0:47:30) Kelly: It’s pretty good. (0:47:34) Kelly: Can we talk about the main premise of the game, which I think is the most weird and fun part is, you know, collecting your corpses? (0:47:41) Kevin: Yeah, the it’s definitely yeah the differentiator the the the graveyard itself. Yeah, let’s talk about that (0:47:43) Kelly: Because you are, you are quite literally the graveyard keeper. So you get a (0:47:54) Kelly: Annoyed little donkey that delivers corpses to you. (0:47:56) Kevin: I’m red donkey from a leftist stable [laughter] (0:47:57) Kelly: And oh my god, there was so many times where I would hear that bell and just be so far away from home. (0:48:06) Kelly: And just go running because it’s like the second you hear that bell that corpse starts, you know, deteriorating. (0:48:12) Kevin: Yep Yeah, that’s that’s an interesting aspect that the forps is deteriorate and it affects a lot of things And yeah, they’re kind of deliver just at random times. It feels like I didn’t detect any pattern Umm… (0:48:22) Kelly: Yeah. (0:48:23) Kelly: Yes. (0:48:27) Kelly: No, they can definitely be whenever. (0:48:31) Kelly: And they can pile up too. (0:48:34) Kevin: Oh my gosh, I don’t think I’ve had that happen yet, but I could see that happening. (0:48:35) Kelly: Yeah, no, they can definitely pile up. (0:48:43) Kelly: I mean, this game goes in depth. (0:48:48) Kelly: I have freezers for bodies. (0:48:53) Kelly: So, you know, it’s like you are literally treating it like a morgue, like… (0:48:57) Kelly: But I think one of the most fun parts is removing the organs, (0:49:03) Kelly: but also the most hard to understand initially. (0:49:06) Kevin: Right, so yeah, let’s talk about that because as very early on you’re introduced that you have options to do the corpse One you can bury them in your graveyard. It has a prettiness rating you how you decorate it Well, you bury them and whatnot You can even just throw it in the river or cremate them or You can take them into your morgan Do a little bisection, you know see what you can poke around and find in there pull out a skull some blood What? (0:49:36) Kevin: A bit of flesh. (0:49:38) Kevin: It’s fascinating that they gave you this option. (0:49:43) Kevin: There’s… (0:49:44) Kevin: I haven’t gotten too in-depth with the body parts. (0:49:47) Kelly: So, I’ll explain it. It’s a lot. (0:49:51) Kelly: Basically, your corpse, so when you bury a corpse, you want it to be as high rated as possible because it impacts your cemeteries overall like beauty rating, (0:50:05) Kelly: which is a whole different aspect. (0:50:07) Kelly: And that’s a big part of the game because it kind of roadblocks you if you don’t keep up with it. (0:50:11) Kelly: But so you want to make sure you’re removing. (0:50:14) Kelly: If you remove certain organs, it makes your corpses… (0:50:17) Kelly: …that’s how you can remove them. (0:50:19) Kelly: If you remove other organs, it decreases it, and they don’t really tell you at first. (0:50:23) Kelly: You have to unlock skills on the skill tree… (0:50:25) Kelly: …that tell you. (0:50:25) Kevin: Yeah, I mean they tell you like there’s bad organs, but you don’t you can’t tell which ones until you go get that later (0:50:29) Kelly: Yes. Yes. (0:50:34) Kelly: And so you can remove organs, and you can also try to put the organ back. (0:50:38) K

Today's episode is another installment of Ron's "Favorite Series" where Matt, Mikey, and Ron discuss their favorite Kelly's! Do you have a favorite Kelly? Did they make our list of favorite Kelly's? Let us know on the Twitter! Twitter: @PopCultureFed Mikey: @MiketheBorg9 Matt: @Mattybecks Pop Culture Federation is a podcast by friends for friends. Come hang out and discuss different things related to pop culture with us. Movies, tv, comics, major events, music, Thanksgiving sides, random shenanigans and more

RHONY 304  Alex wants to confront Jill about the kid climbing up the leg comment Bethenny and Jill had a confrontation at fashion week, it did not go well.  ACT ONE JASON AND BETHENNY TALK Jason comes home. This is the same day as the Jill Stuart show allegedly. Bethenny tells him that this fight with Jill which wasnt a big deal apparently was. Bethenny can’t believe Jill played the message for people. Jason: You can’t let it bother you. WORST advice ever.  Jason wants to talk about figuring out the living situation. Jason basically says he will be proposing soon.  LUANN AND KELLY AT PAMELA ROWLAND SHOW Kelly and luann walk up to the tent and pose for cameras. There’s a really funny moment in the future when Luann poses for the paparazzi and the guy tells her to mix up her poses. KELLY asks Luann want to call her; countess? Luann says just call her luann. Kelly insists on calling her countess; Kelly is such a kissass.  Bethenny shows up. Luann amkes what Bethenny considers a dig about how normally Bethenny doesn’t come to many shows. Bethenny walks away.  Luann poses with Rinna! Bethenny greets Rinna as well. Luann tells Bethenny while they’re posing that that wasn’t a dig, she really thinks Bethenny looks great. Bethenny said I told you I would be up front. Luann doesn’t want to do this here; Bethenny does. Luann says that Bethenny really hurt Jill’s feelings; Bethenny says how is she your good friend when Jill has been talking about how you sleep around with everyone for the past year? BURNNN!  Bethenny calls Luann a snake. Luann calls Bethenny nasty. I mean if these two had ANY idea what was to come down the line. Kelly sits between Luann and Bethenny. Bethenny over Kelly goes “You’re talking about me and I’m right here!” a photographer approaches and they immediately smile for it. ITS SO GOOD.  Luann says: I didn’t call you a skank darling. Bethenny says I didn’t use that word, I said snake. ...but oh just wait, because in a few years, Bethenny will call you a slut!  Kelly leaves Bethenny and Luann to go sit with her friend Lisa who I assume is Lisa Rinna. So now Bethenny and Kelly have to switch places so Bethenny sits next to Luann so Kelly can sit next to Rinna.  Bethenny has regrets for everything she yelled at Luann, specifically that she told Luan that Jill wasn’t her friend.  ACT TWO RAMONA AND AVERY AT A FASHION SHOW More fashion shows! I wish they would go back to fashion week.  Avery still hates Ramona.  Kelly sits down next to Ramona. I don’t believe they’ve seen each other (or maybe they haven’t had a chance to chat) since Kelly wasn’t invited to Ramona’s house for labor day episode 2.  Kelly: You didn’t invite me to your party, that’s not very nice! Ramona: Oh I’m so sorry! (but not meaning it) Ramona makes up some bullshit about how she didn’t want to have an altercation between Kelly and Bethenny. KEEP THIS PARTY CONVO IN MIND!!  Kelly doesn’t buy any of it.  After the show, Kelly says she has to go to something else after this. Kelly says she’s taking Jill to Perez Hilton’s party after this downtown. Ramona goes oh, and you didnt invite me after you just gave me crap for not inviting you?! That’s not how that works Ramona!! Kelly shouldn’t invite you BECAUSE you didn’t invite her!  Ramona: this is my chance to bust her ass. WHATEVER she just wants to go to the party! Rmana: I said that just to tease her, and I didn’t expect her just to invite me and she did, so I thought that’s nice of her, so I should be nice and go. LIARRR you just want to go to perez hilton’s party.  THENNNN ramona puts avery in a cab for the first time ever in her life and sends her away. Avery: I’m going by myself…! Like she can’t believe it. Avery screeches away into the night. Kelly in bite is bothered that Avery left in a cab alone. That may be the first empathetic normal thing Kelly has ever said.  PEREZ HILTON’S PARTY  Ew. Perez is so so gross. Perez peeks into Jill’s dress to see her boobs.  Kelly fills in Ramona about the pamela roland show about Bethenny and Luann’s argument. Jill butts in and tells the story as if she was there.  Jill goes on about her confrontation with Bethenny. Ramona is determined not to take sides and she wants to get better about it.  ACT THREE ROBERT VERDI LOUNGE Bethenny is serving skinnygirl cocktails at the lounge. Alex can tell Bethenny needs to talk. Alex and Bethenny have this very confidante relationship but nothing beyond that. It helps to open up to a people pleaser because they’ll give you the nurturing that you need at that moment.  Alex brings up the thing at Ungaro about Jill saying did the boys crawl up your leg? Alex is going to take Jill out and talk to her about it. Bethenny thinks Jill made that dig because Alex seems like she’s bonding with Bethenny.  Kelly shows up. Bethenny has her try a skinnygirl. Kelly is so weird about trying it, like she is about trying on clothes.  Bethenny makes a joke about taking prozac and valium, and kelly says why would you do that?! Bethenny says she’s kidding. In bite, bethenny says: I don’t think Kelly is a moron… I don’t think she’s quick.  Kelly tells Bethenny she feels bad about their drama and wants to clear the air. Bethenny thinks its genuine, refreshing, and nice. You would really believe listening to this that they would be good now. But scary island is just around the corner.  Kelly says she will be nice to bethenny because there’s no reason not to, but she will never ever trust her. I don’t know that I could be nice to someone I couldn’t trust.  SECRETS OF A JEWISH MOTHER COVER SHOOT Jill’s mother looks like someone playing Judy Garland. They’re posing on the couch. Gloria is smiling and through the smile says, “Not happy, i’m not happy!!” The photographer says, “It’s just for options, we’re just getting options!” Gloria: that’s not a good option.  It’s a lot of eye rolling and complaining. Jill is sprawled out on the couch and posing. Gloria says of the three of them Jill is too sexy. Jill’s sister tells the stylist, we should all be going to the same place. The stylist looks like she wants to murder her  This scene annoys me so much but also I can’t look away because everyone is hamming it up SO much for the camera. It’s all performance.  RAMONA AND BETHENNY AT DINNER Ramona asks Bethenny for the situation with Bethenny and Jill. Bethenny says Luann interfered and that Bethenny was like, who are you? And ramona says, “Right, the empire.” She meant umpire. Ramona still refuses to take a side.  Ramona asks Bethenny if she’s coming to the Saks event tomorrow, but Bethenny had no idea about it. I love when they say ‘a lot of people we know will be there’ but what ramona really wanted to say what, oh well its a cast event.  Ramona says she alluded to the fact that she was goign to see Bethenny to Jill today, and Ramona says Jill will want information and will be on her like ‘white rice.’  ACT FOUR JILL HOSTING SAKS EVENT Jill is getting her HMU done for the saks event she’s hosting. Luann enters and demands a double kiss from the makeup man. Luann and Gloria talk. Luann tells her the divorce is finalized today.  Luann: I have this sadness and finALITTTY about it. Why does she say that?  Jill comes out and says: I don’t care if you married a count, you were born a countess. Luann: THATS THE NICEST THING YOU’VE EVER SAID TO ME!!!  SAKS PARTY Jill is so obnoxious in this. Ramona is shocked this event is happening, because she heard that Jill was blackballed for returning so many outfits. Ramona says that Jill’s outfit was too metallic and she could’ve looked more chic.  Jill yells at people: This is Sak’s private club for only the best of the best clients, of course I have my own private gold key.  Alex and Simon arrive. Luann thinks that Simon loves fashion. Simon is talking to Luann and references Mario’s countless joke. Ramona interrupts and this is when she goes BANANAS. She tells Simon that when she and Luann were planning some sort of get together, Luann didn’t want to do it because she didn’t want simon and alex to be there.  Luann claims Ramona is lying. Alex: “You said you didnt want to invite us over?” Luann (fakely) Never… Luann is SO caught red handed. Ramona walks away and is just on her own playing with her hair and staring, her eyes are popping out of her head. It’s INSANE how out of it she is.  Alex pulls Ramona aside and said she has to talk to Jill, about the kid thing. Alex to Ramona: You know what you can do? You can get me a drink. Ramona leaves, Alex asks Jill about the kid comment. Jill immediately says it was Luann’s story. Alex starts crying.  Alex says sometimes Jill really pisses her off, and she makes digs are her. Here’s the thing… I truly don’t know what else Jill did to really piss her off that much. Simon and Alex always refer to confrontations as whatever event it was. Alex: “I’ve been holding it in since Ungaro!”  Luann approaches. Alex: Who saw francois crawling up someones leg? Luann: without missing a beat… me. Luann: Well that was simple. I like you so much better than Ramona. Alex is STILL upset and says that both Jill and Luann are bugging her at this point. WHY?! I think Alex just wants prolonged drama and wants to be mad.  Everyone sits down…  Ramona screams I love youuu I love youuu to Jill. Jill tells Ramona that Kelly has to leave early. Ramona gets on Kelly, why do you always leave early? Why bother coming at all? Ramona and Kelly end up on the other side of the table. Luann tells Ramona that her divorce is finalized. Ramona is very sympathetic. Luann is surprised because Ramona just came at her 5 minutes ago about the simon and alex thing. Ramona apologizes for coming at Luann. Ramona: I’d still say it all over again…  Ramona then turns to Kelly: “Did you get your breasts redone again?” Kelly is SHOCKED. Isn’t this what everyone talks about all the time? Is it just the year this is in?  ACT FIVE Ramona leaves the table. Kelly says she’s so jealous. I hate when people say other people are jealous. It’s so childish.  Kelly calls Ramona out for being inappropriate. Ramona: WHO CARES?! Alex marches over to be a part of the conversation and just watch. Kelly is pissed and storms off.  NEXT EPISODE…  Alli Zarin does a photoshoot.  Jill picks up a reporter.  The women audition designers for Brooklyn fashion week.  Jill released an article trashing bethenny in the paper. Kelly and Bethenny fight over it.  The awful phone call where Bethenny calls Jill in the street and Jill hangs up on her. 

In #28 Jessica and Kelly were joined by their pal Miranda King watched a Halloween beloved throwback The Craft. Miranda, arguably one of the best guests yet because not only did she bring her bong but also some wine and her pup Ivy Winters! Was it as good as when they originally saw it? (Mehhh) Who got the most stoned? (Kelly) Did they all get too stoned to take a picture? (Done) So many questions that are answered in this pod. Fun times, super stoned times. Listen and enjoy! Invoke this pod! Follow Miranda King on twitter: @mirpropaganda Follow Jessica on twitter: @jessandrosky Follow Kelly on twitter: @hollyweirdo Follow IMDweed on twitter: @imdweed See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sun Tzu and Woody Harrleson Help Banks with Revenue Creation Narrator: He learned strategy by playing chess with his older brother. Narrator: Kelly Coughlin is a CPA and CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping bank C Level Officers navigate risk and discover reward. He is the host of the syndicated audio podcast, BankBosun.com. Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyds Bank, and Merrill Lynch. On the podcast, Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C suite officers, risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discover reward. And now your host, Kelly Coughlin. Kelly: Greetings, this is Kelly Coughlin, CEO of BankBosun, helping community banks navigate risk and discover reward in a sea of risk, regulation, and revenue creation threats. Today we are going to talk about marketing strategy, tactics, and revenue creation. BankBosun has a program for banks called Tactical Ecosystem Marketing. It is the results of three years of research and discussions with marketing experts and community bank executives. It’s a program guaranteed to generate new revenues from all bank business lines. And get all the banks’ centers of influence – that is those people and companies who influence and recommend banks and bankers – get them fully on board and engaged to help you get new customers. Guaranteed. How you might ask? Spoiler Alert: By primarily promoting them – your clients, prospects and influencers – and their businesses and services -  and then secondarily promoting your services and yourself. In 2014, I started researching ways that complex financial technology or financial services companies could be more efficiently and effectively marketed and closed. I use the terms efficiency and effectiveness carefully and intentionally, because they imply a reduction in time, as in shortening the sales cycle; reduction in expenses, travel, entertainment, and other direct business development costs; and reduction in effort, as in reducing the days, months or years it takes to close a deal. This was the challenge and, believe it or not, I actually figured it out.  But first it requires some attention to strategy and tactics and then a discussion on marketing and revenue creation. I have invited my friend Chris Carlson to join us in a few minutes. You see, Chris is one of my favorite people on the planet. He is a lawyer and an actor. Not one of those Hollywood elite actors though – he lives in South Minneapolis. But I think he has a small part in a movie coming out this summer. Chris has been very helpful to me in helping me craft my message and public speaking skills and style to conform not to dull and boring business standards, but to the stage and theater standards. Not that you need to be an entertainer. I certainly am not. Rather, you need to be your true and authentic self. Chris is terrific with this. So I asked him to help me with my messaging on this. And I thought, let’s do it as an interview and a podcast. I know you have heard plenty of people talk about strategy…and some business people use strategy and tactics interchangeably. In war, if you do that, it can be life threatening. In business you can sometimes get away with blurring the two with the result ranging from financial and operational inefficiencies to the ultimate penalty in business…death through bankruptcy. I don’t like to blur them. Because I think it is critical to achieving success to define your strategy and constantly be revising your tactics to implement that strategy. In short, strategy describes the destination and tactics describe the specific actions you will have to take along the way. Generally speaking, strategy doesn’t change that much, but tactics will constantly be adjusted and modified. When I lived in Seattle, I used to have a sailboat. I loved participating in sailing races. There was one race in the winter of 1985. I think they called it the Frostbite Series. This taught me at the age of 25, the real difference between mission, strategy and tactics. There was some heavy weather on the Puget Sound…probably around 25 knot winds. The mission was to have no more or no less a crew suitable to lead, navigate and operate the boat in that competitive situation and in that weather condition. Round each buoy and finish the race in the shortest time; and win the race. Before the race we developed our strategy on buoy placements and how we would round them; wind direction and speed and what sails we would need; and the number of boats, competition and the starting line placement and how we would approach the start. In a sailboat race, if you have a lousy start, you will have a very difficult time making up that time lost. Taking too much risk to cross the finish line ahead of the gun and have to circle back and re-cross could cost you five minutes. In a sailboat this can be painful. Our tactical decisions went something like this. We added one more crew to the boat. We used a starting tactic where we went to the finish line two minutes before the gun, and sailed perpendicular away from the line for one minute. And then we tacked and turned around and started sailing back to the start line. The tactical theory here is that if you sail away from the start for one minute, it should take you more or less one minute to return to the start. If it takes you more, you are late, if it takes you less, you are early. I liked that starting tactic. We decided to not fly the spinnaker because it was so windy. The cost of that decision was a loss in boat speed. But the gain was that we expected others would be more aggressive and fly their spinnaker and either struggle with that during sail changes or perhaps experience a knock down. We adopted a more conservative tactic and hoped our competitors would be more aggressive and get hurt by that. The end result was while we were winning the race, but because one of the buoys had blown free during the gale storm, the race was canceled. We actually chase that windward buoy for about 90 minutes past the original placement of it until they finally notified us by radio the race had been canceled. This one race taught me so much about the relationship between mission, strategy and tactics. In this race our mission never changed. Win the race. Our strategy was defined at the beginning based on conditions and competitive landscape. But our tactics were constantly being modified and adjusted and corrected to deal with the ever-changing conditions and our competitors’ reactions to those conditions. It taught me to not get caught into myopic thinking about how we win a sailboat race. The concept of not flying our spinnaker seemed so very foreign to me at the age of 25. Now, at 59, it makes total sense. In 1980 a Harvard business school professor, Michael Porter wrote a seminal article, “Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors". Commonly referred to as Porter's Five Forces. Porter maintains there are five undeniable forces that play a part in shaping every market and industry in the world. If you haven’t created your own, Five Force Analysis, you need to do so. I love doing these things.  This will help you determine how to modify your strategy and tactics based on your competitive landscape. And always update it at least annually, if not quarterly. So in summary, strategy and tactics work together as means to an end. There are a number of good quotes on strategy and tactics. More on strategy than tactics actually, because frequently the same principles in strategy apply to many, many areas including war, sports and certainly business. I just finished reading the book, POWER by Robert Greene. He even claims that there is strategy and tactic in romance. He quotes the 17th century French poet, Francois La Roche Foe Cou. I bet I butchered that name. Sounds a little like….Well anyway…“A reasonable man in love may act like a madman but he should not and cannot act like an idiot.” I love that quote. Many of the concepts in strategy, apply to many if not all human endeavors. But tactics are more specific to a particular business and industry. There are hundreds of great quotes on strategy and tactics ranging from Caesar in the war versus the Gauls to Norman Shwarzkopf in the first Iraq war. I certainly have a couple favorite quotes on strategy and tactics including this one by Sun Tzu: Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. But my favorite quote on strategy and tactics especially for smaller banks with limited capital and budgets competing against big banks and big brokers with much bigger capital and seemingly unlimited budgets. It’s a quote by Napoleon, one of the most brilliant military strategists and tacticians, ever. Napoleon said, “The amateurs discuss tactics. The professionals discuss logistics.” I’m going to repeat that. “The amateurs discuss tactics. The professionals discuss logistics.” To me this plays exactly in to my core message in this podcast of revenue creation strategies and tactics that are both effective and efficient. Napoleon is saying, I don’t want to talk about tactical ideas that can’t be implemented, because of logistical constraints…only those we can actually implement. For community banks, this means, let’s not talk about big picture ideas that we cannot afford. Rather, if you have ideas that fit in our budget, then terrific. If not, let’s not waste each other time. Well, rest assured, if you keep listening to this podcast and other video and audio content we have produced on BankBosun.com you will see or hear that these meet the Napoleon standard referenced above. It is a discussion on tactics that are logistically feasible and reasonable for all community banks. So with that in mind, I think I have my friend Chris Carlson on the line. I’m gonna start with a quote from a director who actually despised actors…recall Chris is an actor. Let’s see if Chris can identify the source: “I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.” So with that said, Chris time to come to the slaughtering pen…can I hear your best moo cow imitation? Chris: I’ll try to give you my best moo cow imitation. But I’m first need a motivation. What is my cow trying to communicate? Kelly: First of all, can you identify the source of the quote? What is the source of that quote? Chris: I don’t know. It would have to be some sort of director. It can’t be Woody Allen, because he likes actors. Kelly: Alfred Hitchcock Chris: Alfred Hitchcock, that would make sense. What is my cow trying to communicate? I mean, because it could be Moo (uplifting). He’s trying to solicit an answer from the other cows. Or it could be Moo (forcefully). Like, move out of the way rancher, because he’s trying to cattle prod me into a slaughtering pen. Or it could be maybe a seductive Moo, that wants to get something going with one of the other cows. Kelly: Let me hear that seductive one, again. Chris: Moo, Kelly, Moo. Is that good? I mean. It’s not as good as a pugilist. You can do a good impression of, can’t you? Kelly: What I thought you would do is just like a Mooooooo! Chris: Oh wow! See, that’s why I’m in a nationwide movie opens tomorrow and you’re not. Kelly: Why, ‘cause mine was just too kind of stereotypical? Chris: Well I don't think they'd put your picture on the poster with Woody Harrelson peeing in a urinal. But they did for me. Kelly: Did they? What's the name of the movie? Chris: Wilson. I haven't seen it yet so I can't speak to the quality. But Woody Harrelson is pretty good. Kelly: Alright that is terrific. Chris: And I will not be mooing in it. Kelly: So let's get down to business. Chris you heard my introductory statements, or as you actors call it, a soliloquy. What questions do you have about what I'm doing or how do you want to start? Chris: As an actor you know I want to know how to make money. But you’ve got these kind of inventive ideas with generating revenue as you call it. So why don’t you fill me in and let me know if I can get in on it. Kelly: As I mentioned earlier in 2014, I started researching ways that complex financial technology or financial services companies could be more efficiently and effectively marketed. Technology, the Internet, and mobile devices have enabled many businesses to operate more efficiently and effective in my mind…I think of Uber and many other kind of virtual companies. Many of these companies don’t even have a human being available to sell, support or service. They pride their business models on the ability to open up a sales funnel and close a deal without ever having to talk to or “touch” the customer. Those are “air quotes” under touch. Build a technology platform. Offer it to consumers. Make it easy for the consumer to pay for the services. And collect the money and deposit it. And spend more to capture more consumers and more money. No human interaction at all. If any of you have had to deal with Uber for ride sharing or Facebook or LinkedIn for advertising, you know exactly how challenging it is to talk to somebody there. In their minds, they are the perfectly fine-tuned efficient and effective revenue generators. I use the terms efficiency and effectiveness carefully and intentionally, because they imply a reduction in time, as in shortening the sales cycle; reduction in expenses, as in travel, entertainment, and other direct business development costs; and a reduction in effort, as in reducing the days, months or years it might take to close a deal. This was the challenge and, believe it or not, I actually figured it out. Chris: Well wait a minute though. I mean hasn’t digital marketing and especially social media don't they help with efficiency and effectiveness. That has to have been a good thing, isn’t it. Kelly: Well, yes. In part, it has. Here’s how I see it. There really are two ways we develop business relationships: directly to the buyer and indirectly to the influencers of or to the buyer. The combination of customers, prospective customers, and influencers of customers plus the other businesses and individuals that also sell services to members in that ecosystem, comprise the total ecosystem. All require an investment in time, expense, and effort. Social media like LinkedIn has helped us stay easier connected to buyers and influencers. And this ease has certainly helped with efficiency, as it doesn’t cost much to connect on LinkedIn or Facebook. But in terms of effectiveness, it doesn’t quite get it done in that it really just the beginning of the relationships. It’s more like an advancement of the old days of giving somebody a business card and they stick it in their rolodex. And hope they remember you some time. Do you even remember what a rolodex is?? Chris: Yes, I do remember what a Rolodex is. It's a thing you wear on your wrist, right? Kelly: That would be a Rolex. Chris: Rolodexes are no longer. How do you parse that problem? What's your way to phrase the big dilemma? Kelly: The reality is the method by which we initiate business relationship has changed a bit with social media and email. But developing the relationship, hasn’t really changed that much. We make contact. We connect. We get them in the funnel. Then we do some mix of pounding them with emails, and sending them articles about our products and services or information that we think they would find interesting and useful. We might call them on the phone. Maybe get a face to face. There is always a challenge to deliver sufficiently good and interesting content to get the buyer motivated to accelerate their sales cycle with you. And there is always a struggle to keep your product and your company top of mind to the influencers of the prospect. This all takes time, expense, and effort. And also a patient CEO, board and shareholders. Chris: Well wait, wait, wait. What did you figure out? What did you figure out in terms of efficiency and effectiveness that you were talking about earlier? Kelly: It was my experience as a sales and marketing professional and as a CEO and manager of sales people and responsible for revenue creation, that sales cycles were dreadfully long; sales messaging was painfully repetitive and uninteresting; and there were constant and continual struggles to come up with a new excuse to call a prospect to see where they were in the sales cycle – hot, warm, or cold; and to make sure the center of influence still remembered you as the go-to company for a client referral or recommendation. We’ve been exploring this and we’ve developed a revenue creation strategy that solves the problem of efficiency and effectiveness. We call it Tactical Ecosystem Marketing. It utilizes the cost efficiencies of digital marketing, especially audio content that is produced and syndicated on iTunes, google play and YouTube; coupled with connecting with the client on social media and promoting THEM…not you. At its core, Tactical Ecosystem Marketing is a marketing strategy whose primary focus is not to promote your company and your products, rather to promote your CUSTOMERS’ and PROSPECTS’s company and products. The secondary focus is to promote YOUR business and YOUR products. And the same applies to the Centers of Influence.  You focus on promoting THEIR business and THEIR products and a secondary focus on YOUR business and your products. How do you promote them? Through your own audio podcast program. It delivers high quality content for your sales people to distribute and discuss with your clients and prospects. High quality content for your ecosystem members to distribute and discuss with their clients and prospects. It’s one big fat happy symbiotic ecosystem. Everybody wins. It’s highly effective. It’s very efficient. It’s very Sun Tzu. You attack your enemies’ weakness and avoid their strengths. This strategy and tactic does just that. Chris: So, Tactical Ecosystem Marketing is a revenue creation strategy. And the tactics are designed to help community banks create, publish and syndicate on websites, YouTube, iTunes and GooglePlay and all those other things. And they promote all the products and services of the bank’s ecosystem, as well as its members. Kelly: Yes, Chris. It’s kind of like Tactical Ecosystem Marketing is a way a community bank can pay it forward and in return good things will happen. Well, we're up to the twenty-minute mark. Is there anything you want to add about what you're doing with Narrative Pros these days with you, Chris.   Chris: We're just trying to help people like you Kelly make their point and connect with their audiences. Some people don’t have the gift of gab like you. So, what we do is we try to help them come up with a clear way of conveying their message and do it in an authentic and genuine way. Unfortunately, you do not have need of our services. You're a master and we respect that. Kelly: Hmmmmm, I don't know. I think I have paid you a few dollars over the years to help me Master those skills though. Chris: That's true. You're one of our star pupils, so I will accept that. Kelly: Chris, I appreciate your time. Take care of yourself. Chris: You too! .Narrator: We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com The audio content is produced and syndicated by Seth Greene, Market Domination with the help of Kevin Boyle. Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. The voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin. If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. Now, some disclaimers. Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant. The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor or supplier.