Oh nothing. You step into a dark cabin. A bearded but mysterious figure sits across the table from you. His eyes spin furiously as he says, sit down. He deals you a stack of cards. You turn them over one by one and they spell out, welcome to one Hubsmanship. I'm one of your hosts. Adam Gancer, the bearded maniac, can say, with me seated auspiciously, maybe maybe in like a tankful of Google is my co host? Now I'm a stout. I'm clearly a stout. You see my name is you gotta save me? Use the same kid, use the safe. That's right. And most of you are probably like, what the hell are you talking about? YouTube maniacs? And the answer is a wonderful indie game called Inscription, Uh, spooky indie game. Actually that's sort of a card game, uh, but also a video game but also on art piece. And we're gonna talk about all three elements of that. So let's jump right into it, shall we. Mike, do you want to pass that first checkpoint and tell me, like I'm it, bit what the hell is going on with Inscription? I'll tell you like you're it, bit, Like you're it a little bit just a little pile of bank eight bit, all right, you ittie bitty eight bit inscriptions. A tiny little game, which it really truly is. Um. It's small and it's big. It's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. I would say, because it is a deck building card game. UM. That is deceptively a multimedia project. That's sort of a bit more than that. UM. It begins as a card game that could theoretically in on its own. It's a roguelike deck builder if you're familiar with the If you're not familiar with those two genres, I'll try and describe them in a nutshell. You collect, you know, you learn a set of rules by which you can defeat your opponent, who's this bearded dude sitting across the table from you in a creepy cabin. And you collect cards and decide which cards will pair well together and sort of design your deck as you go. And you do a series of card games, and if you win the card game, you get to go on. And then by go on, I mean you progress through a map that is procedurally generated and randomized every time you die and start over. So that's what makes it a roguelike and a card builder. A deck builder. Now it's also something a little more than that because one of the first major twists in this game, and I'm gonna spoil it now and say, uh, spoiled just my the emotional Uh, I'm keeping this. It's one of my favorite games of all time, so I do highly recommend that. And it's all about the surprise. So pause this now and go play it if you have a played it and you trust my or you vibe with my sensibilities. Um, but now I'm about to spoil it. One of the first big twist is the moment that the guy sitting across from you at the table says, can you stand up and get me something? And you go, what the funk? What? You can stand up? And you stand up and can move around the cabin and interact with stuff in the cabin, and this leads to additional puzzles, and then you finally threw these puzzles and the unlocking of better and better cards and grinding enough beat this guy and you go, great, that was worth What a fun game. Then, like crazily, you start seeing this real full motion video footage of this guy named Luke Carter who is a YouTube streamer who is doing an unpacking video of a set of inscription cards that he found as if Inscription were a real game in our world and existed as a like cursed card game in the seventies or eighties or whatever. And we start piecing together this bizarre story of essentially a haunted video game. That's really what it boils down to, like some Nazi tech became a cursed video game that now curses whoever plays it. Um it's not that complex, but the execution is done in this way where you end up facing not only Leshy, but three other notable characters called scribes who exist in the world of Inscription, and every time you face off against one of them in it's on their terms, meaning one of them you face off against is called p O three and he's a robot and it's a new card game that's focused on robot type abilities and robot cards. And your map is now navigable in a different way than Leshi's was, and you're navigating a robot land called Robotopia. And then you play against uh I forget her name, but the Death Lady and her different and then you play you finally play against magnificence and his thing is different, and yet at the same time the game is starting to unwind, so you're barely in his universe for much time at all before it all falls apart into this I'll admit it like fairly obtuse or like abstract ending. That's just like a creepy A good way to wrap up any creepy story, right is I don't know the main character gets spook lely killed the end um so that they basically go that way, But what a ride in my mind the execution along the So for me, the big thing about it is it's a roguelike rogue light deck builder that also unfolds to become a three dimensional puzzle game and gives you so much more bang for your buck than you ever could have expected. Uh. That that's why I love it. And that's my rant, at least half your rant. Uh. That's that is a true description of it, though everything you said about it is absolutely true. Uh. And this game, of any game that I've ever played, and I think you would agree, defies clear description. It's very difficult to describe everything that's going on in this game in a discinct way without just doing it you know. One good thing to say that I should have included is is it's intentionally highly self aware and meta textual. It expects you to understand a lot about video games. It's making references about the way video games work, and it's innovating and undermining video game things. Yes, it's more about that than anything else. I would say. Yeah, the plot is just some like spooky, creepy pasta window dressing frankly at the end of the day. Yeah, um, okay, well, thank you. Uh, let's pass our next checkpoint and get right into the rant. Um, since you've already I know, we normally don't do this, but since you've already kind of alluded to what your position is going to be, you want to go first? Sure, I do keep my so player one plugging in. Here comes my rant. I normally keep my I'm still open minded, meaning I genuinely mean this. It's very frequent on this show that I don't know what my answer will be, or it changes from one to the other. By talking with Adam, Adam, you've changed my mind multiple times, um, which I think is a testament to uh, you know, you're ability to connect with the art. So thank you and I'm I'm happy to be exposed to your wisdom, but I would be shocked if anyone somehow convinced me that I don't love inscription, because boy, I don't love deck building games. I this this reminded me of watching Unbreakable, which is a movie that I really like, and I like it despite its flaws and think it's fun as hell. And I think one of the reasons I have a soft spot for Unbreakable is that I went to the theater not knowing much about it except that I thought that it was about a guy who survived a train crash, and then it was going to be some spooky, m Niceyamalan stuff. And the first thing that happens is a chiron on screen says the average American owns between four and eight comic books. And I was like, what the hell is this going to be? And there was this unfolding that was very satisfying of getting more than I expected, weirder than I expected in a way that I didn't expect. And all I'll say is those neurons are connected for me with inscription, Like I had that same experience of something unfolding in a way that I was wary of. Immediately, I was like, oh, it's a card game, because I had several friends who are hardcore gamers tell me, Oh, this new indie ship it's a swammy game. You would fucking love it, inscription. So I looked it up, downloaded it, not knowing anything, and it starts and the guy goes, let's play a card game. And I'm so sick of Monster Train and all these I'm really sick of them. Like griff Lands, I don't know. I I Slay the Spire. Slay the Spire is good. It's compulsively addictive, but I don't I don't sit down and think I want to simulate playing a complicated card game. But Inscription does something that is almost a miracle to me, and yet I've studied it enough that I understand how they did it, but it's still so so awesome and invigorating to me, which is to take something like that and make it uniquely suited to the medium in a way that you couldn't do it in real life, by which I mean the best movies to me are movies that could only be movies, or the best things about comic books, the things that excite me the most are a thing that could only work in that medium. An example that comes to mind from Understanding Comics Great Book by Scott McLoud is a joke where a guy in a panel at the top of the page passes something to himself in the future by reaching down the page and passing it to himself. If you follow that, couldn't I mean, you could do it in a film by panning across the page of a comic book, but you'd still just be aping comics. That bit is uniquely suited to comics. And in the same way, if you follow me, you could play Magic the Gathering online. Most people do. Now you can also play it in the real world. These deck building games, and it's actually four games in one, like they have different rule sets each world that you venture into. They couldn't really be played easily in real life. Yes, you could applicated with a bunch of counters and pieces and tokens. But the fact that you generate death cards that then get shuffled into the deck at the end of every round. The map is auto regenerated every time. The fact that there's a strategic level that is like and and it changes every time. So for example, unless she's cabin. One level of strategy you have to keep in your mind is I have a pack with these super items, but it can only hold three. But if I'm right close on the map to a branch where I can reach the pack rat and it's gonna fill my items, then I should use them all now. So like you're balancing many, many different strategic levels in a way that just tickles my brain to no end. And I could cannot express enough my delight and surprise when it turned into a retro RPG. Sat in the robot Land and I was like, Oh, We're gonna do three more of these like we get to do. In fact, I was bitterly disappointed that the Death World and the Magnificus Wizard World are so short, because I just cannot get enough of this game. It is so weird. It's so beetlejuice, it's so nineties Saturday Morning cartoon, and like it's very freakazoite and residents and and and Burton, and I'm I'm super into it. And I'm it because it tickles me in both directions. It tickles me in that direction, it tickles me in the strategy direction. I find that the deck as like they're some of the most fun card games I've ever played. Uh, and they keep reinventing themselves in a way that truly captures my strategic interests. Then, on the story level, I'm not interested in the content of the story, which is essentially that there's a haunted it's the Ring. There's a haunted video game and if you play at the CIA comes and murders you. Um. But uh, and I know before people at me online, I know that this connects to his other games, and it's woven in and a really cool Donnie dark O way with extended lore about Nazi o cult stuff. I understand all that. I'm just saying. Still the story is just a basic creepy pasta story to me. But what really gets my goat, and I know I'm a minority, is I love brecty and met a textual, structural, formalist things like because I like things that highlight how stuff has done. So I'll get into it in game on because I'm going on too long. But um, there are repeated times in this game where it blew my mind literally not with what it was about, but what it did, how it worked, Like suddenly, we're doing this now, that's wild. How did you think of that pivot? What a crisp, surprising turn of events that makes me completely re energized and reinvigorated and ready to dive back in. I love everything about this game. It's gonna be hard to get me off of that soapbox end of rant. Wow. Well, uh, player two Adam Ganzer plugging in. Uh, none of that is surprising to me. You loved this game, like I haven't heard a game other than Psychonauts where Mike was so captured with it. Um So this rant? Uh in this game? So, I know there's gonna be fans out there who are major inscription heads. You love this game, you think it's brilliant. Anybody who disagrees you don't let that frustrates you. I'm sorry. I know you're gonna be disappointed by my take on this. I don't like this game. I did not find it fun. Um I did not find it an intelligent meta commentary. It is a meta commentary. I'm not disputing that. Um it is wildly imaginative. I could never dispute that the card games themselves are really cool card games. I agree with that. That's all true. Um So, some of this is taste. Here are the things that for my taste, I don't actually like. Uh in my taste, I'm not a card games guy. I just they don't they don't interest me. Um. I've tried playing Magic, the Gathering and many other things with friends, including Mike actually, and they just they just don't do it for me. Sorry, I just always want to talk at this. Does this include like poker and blackjack? No know, because those are competitive like poker. Like poker, I don't like black chack. Poker is a game I could sit down with friends and enjoy, uh, But I do get bored after a while. So like, I just am not a card game guy. It's just not my thing. Um, So this is always going to be a bit of a climb on that level. That said, this is probably the best card game I ever played. Every version of the Cards is probably the best card game I've ever played, uh, except for like personal connections to poker games I've had, you know, but that not because Broker is more interesting. So there's that this game is has incongruous art styles and breaks, which for me frustrates me. I like things to feel like they're tied together, and they have a sort of unifying vibe or theme or message, and I think this game is very fractured and doesn't have those things other than the meta commentary, but the internal weaving together of the art piece seems very disorganized to me. Um. Some people are gonna really disagree with that. That's okay, That's how I feel about it, and I admit that's a little subjective. Um. In general, I'm not a fan of roguelikes that gait you, uh so, like you basically have to get a great role to get out. And that's what I found was true of at least one or two moments of this game, specifically the first third where you really had to get a great role on how the squirrel cards work, for instance, to get past the first three bosses or the first four bosses. I think it is um so, you know, you just play the game a bunch of times until the role finally comes, and I just that's not my favorite thing. It's one of the reasons why people like Haities so much, because Hades is a little bit more flexible, like all the builds work a little better, and returnal works a little better because the the different builds are not as distinct so like it. It just doesn't feel as gayy as this game felt to me. Um I in general skeptical toward mystery bucks stuff. Which that's the whole hook of this game is the it's a card game of the mystery box element to it. And I think mystery boxes in general are overused and uninteresting, with occasional and occasionally great ones that sort of defy the rule, but in general, mystery mystery box storytelling doesn't appeal to me and it doesn't always work. Uh and yeah, so there's that, and to me, this game sort of it's sort of artificially deepening things by having a lot of disjointed mechanics that it doesn't explain, Like I think this game if it wasn't obtuse, and if it didn't refuse to explain anything to you, and if it wasn't uh so like like sort of snarky in the way that it does stuff, it wouldn't feel as deep. Like it's actually the obtuseness that makes it feel like there's a lot more going on than there actually is, because what's actually going on really is that there's four card games, and that there's a mix and match card game, and you just kind of need to clear all the checkpoints. That's really what it is. But the sort of obtuse switching in art styles and these like bizarre metaphysical entities that you're maybe clearing out from. I don't know, is this a game on a hard drive? Like how does it work? You know? That stuff makes it feel like there's more going on than there really is. And Mike already said this, and I'm not attacking what you're saying. I'm just sort of I'm noting it. The story here is not significant. Um, it's not a significant story. It's only significant as a form. And for me, I that's boring. I want story. If I'm gonna do meta commentary, I want the meta commentary to mean something significant, to say something emotionally significant, not just to point out isn't this how video games work? Or isn't this a clever tie together? Which is what I think we're doing here. And some people they don't care, and who am I'm not going to take away your good time for that. Man. If that's a thing you like, great, I don't. I don't find that satisfying. That's a particular commentary. I would love to talk about what makes meta commentary interesting versus not and what makes mystery box stuff interesting versus not? Um, I would love to talk about that. UM. I can't say enough. Every card game here was good. Um, every single one of them was good. It took me a while to figure most of them out, but when I did, I was like, Okay, this is really cool. Like I like how the decks are built. I like that their strategy in every card game it's it's fun. Um and uh I enjoyed every art style eventually, I enjoyed them. I just didn't like how incongruous they were. Um. And I think that's enough for us to talk about. So that's my rent Ramore is her name I love, which is a great name. Uh. And it totally fits what they're doing here. Um. So how about Well, for the record, I just want to say I didn't. I completely agree. I didn't. I didn't think it was deep. I thought it was clever. That's an important distinction. It's extremely clever, and I'm fine with something just being endlessly clever. That's enough for me. That's right. And I think, and we've talked about that many times on this podcast, so that that won't actually be a bone of contention. I don't think, um, but I think those of you who are out there deciding do you want to play this or not, you should know. I think that that is a totally accurate take. Like, it's very clever. If you like that stuff, you're gonna love this game. Um. But before we get too far down the line, let's take a quick break, pay some bills, and come back a little creepier with a totally different arts style. How about that moment when the narrator says, the narrator outside of the game, So this is also edo textual. It's game on. By the way, welcome back, we passed a checkpoint bleekly um when he says, how is this game not over yet? That's so self aware. This game is also very funny. Yeah, like I like I, we didn't know. Neither of us said that it's it's really funny, And if I wasn't so frustrated by how obtuse it is, I would have really had a good time with a sense of humor of it it, you know, Like, like I, I think it's pretty pretty funny. It's the thing I really wanted to bring up first, if I may, because we had a conversation and I won't say the game because we're going to do something special with this game, but we had a conversation recently about um the origins of diagetic storytelling, meaning you know, organic storytelling through things you're overhearing on a p a while you're all doing other stuff and you see a prop and you understand, right, these are old hat tricks by now, but this is very core to video games that want to have a story. And uh, I think this does operate on the on that level, meaning even though they don't build up to anything deep, and I completely agree with that. It's just like saying it's like Avatar the Last Bender or Airbender, but like with even less characterization. I just mean, like once there were four things and these were their domains, and they fought, and there was a cycle and you could break the second you know it's it's no deeper and blink or whatever. But or I shouldn't have said that because that's a trigger word. I just mean it's not deep. But um, I did think in the terms of storytelling, and I mean that in the moment to moment execution way. The techniques, there's tons of technique to the right like when you finally are able to look around in the death room where you're always where you always die, when unless she beats you and you see a whole pile of bodies that look exactly like you, and you're like, oh, that's all the previous people who have been me um. Like time and again, there's these storytelling moments where they very organically or like the first time you win the camera doesn't have film in it and it's a fake out. Like there are very cool storytelling moments that do have impact in the moment, but they don't mean anything larger. It's a little clever flourish that is like, yeah, that tells me something about right, like the to me something that's really rewarding, but justin sheer everness, it doesn't mean anything. Per se is that there's these four Scribes and we get to know them all and we get to see what they think each other are in their own worlds. Does that make sense because subscribe each scribe has four bosses, and in each Scribes card game there are four cards that are like animated that are characters. So in other words, I guess what I'm saying is like I know who the thing that's just a goo face and a jar. I know his story, I know his deal, and like I understand that p O three from Lesci's point of view is the stoke card, Like that's PO three. Um. So there is this intense symbolism that reminded me more than anything else of when I when my high school English teacher taught me how to understand the symbolical levels of Lord of the Flies, where you're like Simon and Pinky can be the way to go in the super ego, or they could be Jesus and Judas and Joseph, or they can be and it worked on several levels intentionally. So I think this has that where I'm dizzied by the and people who listen to all our small Beans podcasts. No, I'm just a sucker for that. So like I love Senecta Key, New York, another movie that people famously accused of just being clever, and I'm like, it kind of is, but Dan, it's real clever. I actually think SENECTI Senecta Key has more to say than absolutely but this is a more extreme example. This is just riffs on like playing with video game tropes is the easiest way I can say it like this is a this is a work of art made by a person who's obsessed with the art form, and uh wants to talk about that like it's on It's on the level of uh like, in my mind actually not a bad comparison. It's on the level of Once upon a Time in Hollywood by Tarantino, where I didn't want to say it because I don't like Tarantino, but it is Tarantino asked it is. I don't well, and I don't like that particular Tarantino movie because I think that movie is a little bit more about sort of soaking up all the things that aren't story and not necessarily the things that our story, you know, uh, And so like I guess this is this is in some ways your elden Ring, right, And by that I mean, uh, I grant elden Rings so much license to be full of horseshit because of how fun it is, Like it just meets me on the fun factor and on a gameplay factor at such a high level that I don't care that the ultimately what are we even doing here? And who gives a ship? And I think for you it's what I mean by that is it's doing so much fun, textual commentary and like interweeding connecting points that you don't super care about, doesn't matter. It's a connecting dots page that has thousands of dots. It's a mental game and at the end of the day, it doesn't draw an image. I'm just having fun connected dots. It's it's actually intellectual game. It's a it's another game for you, like connecting the Dust is another is another game for you, like like that game. One of the things that made me or like a little moment of joy that I got from this was the realization that Leshi is using stuff from around the cabin as the props to make the game work. Like if you know what I mean, the altar when you level up your card is a paper weight from his desk. The crown that he wears at the end is the for trappers for trapp but laid on his head. The the you know, the cow skull that eats cards is cow skull that is on the wall across the table from you. So like just the idea that everything's connected and the stowed is p O three and p O three is this guy from this point of view, Yeah, it's just everything everything's connected for and we keep saying for no reason. That's a slight exaggeration, because there is there is a there is a story, there is a Carter is haunted. Luke Carter goes to a yard sail he shouldn't have and buys a haunted game he shouldn't have, and the government comes and kills him to cover it up. But that's it. That's it. That's all there is. Yeah, So like and like, this is where I can't say I can't make objective claims about this, you know. But if I was, like, if I was going to have to teach this subject or something, I would probably put it in slightly more objective terms. I think that meta commentary is only really interesting in two cases. One when you're really from intimately familiar with the subject matter, like so intimately familiar with it that you want to examine the structure themselves. Like That's that's when meta commentary gets really interesting. I'll give you an example, the movie Scream. One of the reasons why Scream is so great is if if you're a horror movie fan, it's a movie that points out the horror movie tropes and comments on them and iterates on them, and that was such a fun revolutionary idea at that time, right um Or sometimes meta commentary is interesting when the the nature of or medium itself has a deeper truth that can only be illuminated that way. And I'll give an example of that. Stranger than Fiction. That's a movie that's about storytelling, but it's not up its own Asset's very much like examining the relationship of a character and the writer and what does it mean and sort of humanizing both pieces of that and the meta piece of it really adds something. So in my mind, meta commentary when it's just sort of just a game, a game of sort of connecting cool dots, that feels meaningless to me, and that that actually makes me frustrated because I feel like the game doesn't go anywhere, Like I kind of want something meaningful to be at the bottom of it. Now. I wouldn't care if I was having a blast with the with the game experience itself. If I was having like a great time, then I wouldn't I would think, oh, that was that's also cool, right, Like that would be an also cool thing the way that lower can be an also cool thing. If I'm loving the world I'm in. But if it's the selling point, I'm already out on that game. I'm not a lower guy. Um does that seem fair to you? Is that a totally unfair critique? Yeah? The I there is a not a M. It makes me wonder. I so I I really don't want to bring this up because it feels like I'm just back like poking in old wounds. But so oh, I guess your answer would be because it's so much more fun to you. So that's fine. I'm trying to compare it to Link because I really feel like it does have a similar level of story as Link does. It's like a fable of a cycle. It even has a golden triangle. All of the tri force, a golden triangle that made so there's this old code the Nazis discovered and a golden triangle that can be inscribed on a floppy or I'm getting some of the details wrong, but this is the gist. That's what description is that makes video games sentient. So so the actual story is that Luke puts the thing in his computer and they're taken out of stasis and they're all they're really alive, and like Gromora, there is the plot beats are there. Gramore sacrifices herself at the end in order to delete the old code, which is why the game starts to unravel. There's like as much plot as Zelda has, soot that is more fun to you, right, It's that's my first response and really the only one that super matters. But my second response is that I think that this pass the point where piecing all the pieces together was enjoyable, Like see you didn't for you, for you who's like, no, no piecing altogether, I did like it, and I did once I got it all, I was like, oh wow. For me, it had been five six hours of one ob two turn after another. So I didn't want to piece it together anymore like I had to because I know we were doing this podcast, but I didn't want to. And then I was annoyed with it. Was like, come on, man, just fucking tell the story, you know, stop with stop of this horseship. But again that's that's because I'm already not excited about what it is. So if you if you already, if you're a person who's going to play this game and likes it, and you're already excited about what it is you might think this is brilliant and absolutely love it, and I don't think you're wrong. I don't think you're wrong. But all entertainment functions on the idea that you have to be hooked into it, hooked in. If you don't do that, nothing I can do will make you feel more enjoying, like, enjoy it more. It will not work. And that's what happened to me here well, because this is my only chance to shout from the mountaintops about inscription and convince people to play it. Can I like shine a light on some of the dots that are connected that just are great things and ask like, so, how that hit you? I expect most of your answers to be, yeah, that was great. I recognize that that was cool. I don't want to beat up on this game. By the way, Yeah, I'm trying to be fair because I realized the buying was so low for me, so it was hard for me to get on board with it. But do yeah, man, go through your lists. A huge moment for me that felt truly mind blowing in a to a degree that is on par with any gaming experience I've had, where in in thinking I didn't know it could do. That is when you have the Archivist boss fight in PO three's world and it says I want access to your hard drive, and you go, I assume it means in the game or whatever, right, like this is just a game play thing, and like okay, and it goes, now I really have access to your hard drive and if you lose this match, or it says, point me to the file, the bigger the better, and you really see the files on your real hard drive duplicated and you have to pick one, and it gives you stats based on the age of the file or the size of the file. And then after it does it's done all this, it tells you here's the hook. If you lose this game, I'm deleting all the ship you just flagged, and so you can legitimately lose that and it really doesn't. Now you can just go to your recycling ben and your stuff is there, right, so it's not that happened. Oasally does move your files to the recycling on your computer. And I just think, what's so fucking cool, Like the game could do that, And of course it can, because it's just interacting with the operating system. But like I didn't know we were allowed to use that as a dimension of gameplay. So briefly, I also think it's a perfect metaphor for how this game feels to play, which is to say, like, it definitely shocks you. Like it shocks you many times. It's like whoa, It like takes you by surprise, and then it works with you and like it like it And if you like that, you're gonna think it's great. But there's gonna be a percentage of you out there who are like, bro, don't touch my hard drive. Stop changing. Yeah, like it just keeps changing the rules on you. Yes, it does. Yes, it's a little bit mean spirited in a fun way, in a fun way for like. A great example of that to me is when the PO three UH says, so you have this side deck in several of the games, uh, and in in robot Land, in Robotopia, your side deck are vessels, and you spend all this time learning what vessels are and how they work and how to use vessels right, and then there's a point in the middle of that world where p O three just says, your vessels are conduits. Now, don't worry about it, and it doesn't explain what that means, or you have to use through trial and error figure out what conduits are. And uh, it's like when you beat Leshy, you don't even get access to the rest of the game unless you start a new game, which is there's almost a Finnigan's wake quality because actually, when you load this game for the first time, new game is great out. You cannot select new game. You can only select continue, as if to say, this story is a cycle that repeats forever, and by beating Leshy you gain the card new game. Then you can pay play a new game and it starts unlocking all this ship about Luke Carter and the other uh scribes um, which is just man's just all shockingly clever. Uh. It is like it is though, you know, like and I'm not I don't like it's worthy of celebrating. Yeah, it really is. It really is. Like I think, like this game is almost like the Museum of Durassic Technology. It's in Los Angeles. So like, hey guys, real quick spoiler for the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Maybe skip ahead thirty seconds from here. So the thing of that museum is that it's about museums, and so there's this large meta commentary going on in it, and the experience of it is extremely frustrating, but when you get it, it's actually quite funny and fun And I think that there's a bigger percentage of people who will experience that then there are a percentage of people who already love these kinds of games. So I would a take a risk if it sounds even mildly interesting to you, you know what I mean, like, because you might find it interesting on that amused by what it is level Um, honestly, you really might. I didn't, but you might. I never thought of it as trolling you, but that is true. It's kind of anti audience in a playful way though, Like I love when in Gramore's world in the overplot, the world is starting to be deleted as you fight Gromora and if uh so, in every world there's bosses, and the scribe you're playing against portrays the bosses, so like unless she puts on wooden masks, um, But in Gramore's World, I love that right at the end, she goes, oh, boss time and she puts on a bunch of pirate bullshit like an eye patch, and then she gets deleted. So you're like Oh, what was that pirate boss gonna be? I wanted to fight that pirate Yeah, it's just continuously aware of the fact that you've played other video games before and you know how they work, and what if did the opposite of that, and it's that's super cool. Uh, it really is, like if once you get past being annoyed, you will appreciate that. Um. Can I sing some praises of the games themselves? With the card games? So again, the fundamental thing you're doing here is playing card games, right, uh. And each of the card games has a unique like theme slash mechanic to it. Um. So for instance, the one that you play probably the most is the first act of the game where you're kind of trying to get your bearings and yeah, right, and so like the mechanic to it is you have to kill something to you have to kill a card to play another card, and each card has a value of how many cards must be killed to play it. Um. So like once you figure that out, which is not doesn't take that long, you start realizing there's a lot of strategy to how and where things get played. Um. And also it's just fun and creepy, you know, I mean like like the feeling of I gotta kill these creatures to like play this other thing is like kind of like a little lik of a wink anyway. Plus some of the cards that you're playing with our characters in the large narrative, so you're literally killing them, you know, and then they talk for you. And I just want to point out how deceptively well done the quote unquote tutorial is because this game wants to be obtuse and throw you in the deep end immediately, and it does. But yet at the same time, the way that it generates very explicit instructions like I one I once like every rule has been thought of. If you try to do anything illegal, unless you will say something very very explanatory like you lack sufficient sacrifices. Grand furs cannot be sacrificed. They're not animals. And I'm like, oh, okay, now I understand a whole aspect of rules of the game. So like, there is no tutorial, there is no thing where text tells you do this, then do this, but lest she is so good at organically responding to what you're just clicking around. All you have to do is fumble around for like twenty minutes and you can totally understand the game. Yeah, I think. Like, so, another mistake I made when I played this game is that I played it on stream. Um this, I think this is not a great game to stream, at least it wasn't for me. Because if if having people watch you have to figure stuff like this out stresses you out, which it does for me, then you're not going to enjoy it. So like, because you need to be a little patient with it, like this is a game that kind of makes you sit down, Like, no, no, You're gonna have to be patient to figure it. I'm not going to give you all the clues at once. So that's who you did find the at least in the leshy portion the game breaking min max because I agree sooner, which is funny to say. But oh, my squirrels are bee hives. Now I'm set, Like and there's a few of them, right, Like, there's a few that, Like, my squirrels are ants. If my squirrels summon ants, then I'm set. Or if your squirrels, uh, if your squirrels do upplicate, like if they give you the ability to pick a card as soon as do they die. That's another thing. Squirrel is good good affecting your squirrels. There's a few builds that get you out of it that that are not game breaking, but they don't always show up, so there's times where you're just probably not gonna win without it. So this is another spoiler that like might ruin the game if you don't skip ahead, So skip thirty seconds ahead. It also lets you cheat the game. Lets you cheat by getting a card called the euro Burrows, which you can max out to just devastate uh, like every other card of the game. And it's built in so that you can like get through some of these encounters. So if you're frustrated with like trying to win strategically, get that card and build it up. Uh, it'll take the frustration down. Which for me it was like, oh once I figured that out, I was like, great, now I'm having a good time. I never really is the Borrows. That's funny. I think. I think there's a few that are game breaking or like that one get you through pretty easily. Like if you do some of the puzzles in the room, like the drawer puzzles or the picture puzzles, you can get the Mantis God is super good Um, yeah, there's a few that it's like you just replicate those in fact, so I don't know if this happened to you. Um. And that's another thing I love about games is optional ship that they didn't have to do like uh in my because I played it before I was really owning Leshi hard, like I was gonna defeat him on my first run essentially, And so he took a picture of the moon and played the moon as a giant card that blocked off all four lanes. You got that too, That's that is always the last phase of Leshi. Oh okay, I thought he only summoned the moon if you were like beating him by a certain leg time. Then I guess I just forgot that from the first play through. But I do feel like there's little stuff you can easily make. It's like, you know, puzzles that you by no means need to complete to get to the next portion, um, but yield you these great war rewards to help hum in max and finally beat it. But also has this built in valve, which is that every time you die, you create a death card, and unless you're unless you're dumb, you can easily max out those death cards to be really o p and then the more you play, the more death cards you pick up, and therefore you know your deck. It organically wants you to get to the next part. They're so excited for you to see the twist. They want you to get there. It's not it's not in a cruel It's not like in an old school n s Way gating it where it's like, hey, fuck you man, you gotta pass this. That's how it is. It wants you to get past it. Um. But I do think it's not intuitive if this is not your genre. Like if you're walking in never having played a card game that's adam, like an online card game or whatever video game card game, there's a learning curve and you're gonna be frustrated with that. Um. But if you're like, this is my jam, you're gonna love this game. Honestly, if you're already have that buy in, you're gonna love it. And Uh, I envy you. I wish I had that experience of it, because I can see how it would be really fun for you j have more you wanted to elucidate, sir, Do you wanna well? I mean, it's just an extrapolation on like the boss named Gali uses actually connects to the web and uses stuff on the web to alter game rules. Um. Part way through the robot level they introduced bounty hunters who come after you over and over again. Um, they just never stopped slightly changing the rules on you every like yeah, you know, one to two hours and if so, like that's a really that's a really unique experience in video games because like almost every video game there is is trying so hard to train you on what the rules are so that you are not encumbered by that thought process and it can and can react, automatic lead to whatever they've prepared for you. Right, That's why they have like training modes and why they have like first levels where they explain everything in tutorials. You know, like every other game in the world wants to take away the thought process about the rules. This game is like no, no no, no, that's all we want you to think about, you know, like the rules are the whole thing. Man. All you have to and all you're supposed to be thinking is what is going on? What am I supposed to do? The whole time though that you think that all the whole game time through, You're never on solid footing, uh, and I Yeah. The last two things that I really like or wanted your take on is, um, did you think in a low res way? Because I know it's not. I don't know, it's no alien isolation or whatever in terms of the budget behind it. But I actually thought Leshy was creeping genuinely, like just for a few for like an hour and a half, I was creeped out by him. It had to wear off, um, But I thought, that's that's quite an accomplishment with very limited graphics. Just the crazy eyes and the droning like sound of his abstracted voice and the darkness. I thought, actually, and see like this is one of my critiques of it. I thought the first third of the game was way more fun than any of the rest of the game, even though I enjoyed the other card games. I thought Leshie in the Cabin was just more fun. It's almost done to say about a card game, but amazing camera Like the camera moves were so crunchy, and when you move cards it's so sticky and satisfying sitting like everything's really quick, Like it's really really feeling quick and crunchy. Yeah, it feels good, like you notice it you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, this game doesn't waste my time with stuff like that, and I love that. The only other thing I really liked that I highlighted was I love that in PO Three's Room you solve a series of complex or not complex. You saw a series of puzzles that raised these bridges and they all sort of seemed like capture puzzles, like the kind of condane, busy work you would do. And they are and that's of course that's what a robot. That would be a puzzle for a rob because he says, I can't get through this, and it culminates with the hardest puzzle of all at the end is just a checkbox that says I am not a robot, and you check it and it goes you win. Um, that's really funny in a way that you have to be extremely online to understand what that is. A joke about just great touches like that. It's it's in some ways it's almost like the arrested development of of video games, right, meaning like meaning it understands how sitcoms work, and so it's making jokes about how sitcoms are. Like that's part of what makes it so great. It's it's like that, you know, like I didn't don't like it as much as I as I liked the arrest of development as a sitcom watcher. But it's like that, you know, and I respect that you have to I think, yeah, shall we? Shall we pay some bills? What do you think? Sure? Because I want to download Casey's mod and I can't afford it. Let's let's collect some cash and come back to what will undoubtedly be an entirely different world, maybe made of rainbows and fairies this time. Who knows, No, it's ship, it's shipped with a candle in it. It's just a pile of ship on a plate with a candle unless she's shoving it at us. Yeah, that's how he does. What a dick? Hey, So shall we pass our final checkpoint to keep her delete? What do you think now? Wonderful? Great? Wonderful? Uh So it's something for me to say, right, are you see you're you're still convinced, you remain convinced of that you want to lieu of in lieu of my time. I'll mention another funny bit, which is in the Fourth World, you basically play with like a Ugio style arm piece that holds all your pieces, and it's kind of the most graphically advanced. The game has tried to be, or like the most bells and whistles, because when you play cards, they actually turn into three D models and fight each other. Um. And then as the game starts to break down, the camera widens out slightly and you realize you're just an arm floating in space like there's no player, and the models just become blocks, bumping against each other and dealing damage as a bar goes down. I'm keeping okay, um, God, this is a really hard one for me. Honestly. Uh, it's hard because the art of it is undeniable, like the artistry and the cleverness of it are undeniable. But I remain I remade very like passionate about I need to have at least had fun to keep a game, I have to have had fun. Um, And I didn't have fun playing this game. I'm sorry, I just didn't. Um. I know those of you who are card game people, I think this is a hypocrisy or an apostasy or something, And I'm sorry, but I have to I have to be honest about my own thank you. I have to be honest about my own experience here. I didn't have fun doing this um At any point, I do appreciate a little bit more in reflection, and it's possible maybe one day down the line I'll play it again and enjoy it more. But for now, I'm sorry. I just can't keep it. I have to delete. Well to quote the great magnificence? Do you not feel guilt at him? An entire world destroyed? Do nothing beautiful can last? I do? I do feel guilty because I acknowledge how great the thing that it's good at it is, like it's it's quite good at it, um, but it's still a game, you know what I mean? Like, I like, I don't know how how into Marcel de Schump's urinal thing are you? But you know, but you didn't but you said so to get us all the way to an hour, and because I actually want to know. But you said that it was fun, right or you said these the best card games I've played, and they are actually like yes, but I don't like card games, you know what I mean. It's like, yeah, it's sort of like and I know, yeah, that's the best FPS ever, I still am like whatever about FPS? So it's got to be something really exceptional and I have to actually enjoyed it, you know. Yeah, it's as simple as it would be like asking you to keep one John Madden football game, you know what I mean. It's like, I'm sure I could find a really good one, but will you ever keep a John manful? And I'm sure I could find someone who would passionately advocate for why it deserves to be on there, But it's just not my thing. Yeah, I mean, we haven't covered a sports game for a reason, you know. Uh, And people play them, you know, and maybe we will one day, maybe we'll cover one, But keeping one it's like, I don't know, you know, you have to like it. You have to have had fun. Yeah, and if you don't, it is what if you've been a long time ship head, you know, this was one of my games of the year one. Uh, so it stands to reason I will probably make a passionate argument on behalf of this. It's some future episode when visit the hard drive. I think this is one of the ones that stands out for me. I'll play it again later and see if it wears off. But maybe maybe i'll you know, I'll catch it again, maybe not on stream and see if I really really dig it. I don't know, it's interesting what because like I think in the Tiny Teena's episode, nothing major, but we both granted, actually did get emotionally engaged or like, get my hackles up. Um. I don't know why. I'm just wondering. I'm like, humans are weird. Why don't I care that you deleted as I'm I'm equally passionate about inscription, but I'm like, that's okay. It's a matter of taste. This one was going to be more of a leap forward, and I would argue in that case, you had somebody agreeing with you on the podcast, you know what I mean, which is why you didn't want Dave Bell on exactly right, Dave, I love you and all of you listeners. Dave really wanted to be on this, but I did not want him on this because I did not want to have to deal with the bullying thing of two people really loving this game and me being like, look, I don't like, I don't tell you him, you know, like, because that's a that's just not a fun podcast experience for you or for me. Uh So, I'm sorry to those of you who love this game, and I'm sorry to Dave who I love. The door Adam goes to answer it. It's a conspicuously under costumed young woman with a gun. Looks like Dave. End of podcast. Yeah it's Dave. Dave as a game foon er, rep um. If you want to follow us, follow us, I don't know, listen to jibber jabber about a bunch of other stuff. You can do that by searching for small Beans wherever you access podcasts, and or heading over to patreon dot com slash small Beans, where you can get episodes of our pods early and special access to exclusive shows like Star Trek, The Next Future on uh bonus episodes of I'll Show you Mine if you show me yours, Spiel Boys Director piece that's outside the paywall. I think that's all the behind the paywall anyway. Escape from the Multi Curse as well. Escape from the Multi Curse. Yeah, there's too many. That's the point is, we do a lot of podcasts. If you only care about video games, make sure you're subscribed to One Upsmanship and we'll see you next time. Cards were completely