Day 0 Update #542 - Lost Contraband

In this episode of the Day 0 Update: We talk about the new addition to the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection, a major figure leaving Blizzard, and the Nintendo Indie World Showcase. All this and more, up next!

Full show notes can be found ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Episode Transcript

(00:16):
Welcome to Dazer Update for August 10th, 2025.
I'm your host, Chris Emoji. I'm Brandon Parkins.
And I'm Jenna Vic. And yeah, we've got a busy week
of news. We had another Nintendo Direct
showcase, this time focusing on indie games.
And a lot of really good indie games at that.

(00:37):
Yeah, We have a number of dates getting announced, a number of
industry news bits, some new companies, some layoffs, some
union news and some other stuff.We'll get to all that before we
do any of that, we'll talk aboutwe've been playing and I'll kick

(00:58):
it off here. I have been playing a couple of
PC games. The first one here is a game
called Machina. This is a game from the same
studio that did Judero, if you've heard of that, which was
sort of AI believe that was moreof a kind of claymation

(01:21):
adventure game of sorts. I forget what exactly that game
was. I did not play it, but the, the
devs sort of made all the environments and characters and
such out of real like clay and other objects and sort of
scanned it into the environment.Yeah.

(01:42):
Action adventure game set on setin Scottish folk history.
So. But this one, Mashina, is sort
of their follow up. It is a game featuring a little
robot named Mashina, who is sortof in this little camp of, of

(02:03):
other robots that are sort of inthe business of dealing with,
you know, mining and all this running shops and all this other
stuff and supporting you. And so you're kind of going
around completing Quest. Initially you kind of run
through some tutorial stuff to show you how all that works.

(02:26):
But as you start completing quest, you get better
equipments, it starts unlocking more of the things that let you
kind of get around more easily. So I have these like lifts that
I can warp between. You just have to make sure that
they are in range of another lift and you sort of warp
between them. And along the way, you're kind

(02:48):
of digging through this underground environments looking
for, you know, potentially otherbuddies who gets elaborate intro
videos kind of showing off theircharacter model.
All the stories seems to be fully voiced with a bunch of fun

(03:10):
voices in here as you mine around.
You find little bits of materials that you can collect
and sell once you get back to your base.
The way you kind of collect themis you put them in your
inventory and sort of an RE4 kind of way.
So they kind of are these piecesof rock or whatever it is that

(03:34):
you arrange in side the square that you can eventually spend
your currency to open it up. So at a certain point you'll get
experience for doing all this. And as you level up, you get
skill points and you can expand the bounds of that space that
you can put all your stuff in. You also start unlocking more

(04:00):
tools and such. So I have essentially dynamites,
I think they call it Boomi bombsare bommy boys, I think, as well
as something that called a discoball that kind of makes you mind
real fast for like 10 seconds. I can help you kind of get

(04:21):
around. But those things can cause
currency that you might want to just spend on more substantive
upgrades. You have a blacksmith that makes
your better tools, that lets youmine more efficiently and all
that. And yeah, you're kind of just
building out this area, then going back up to the Overground

(04:47):
area where you're all your buddies are.
And that's kind of the underground is in a like a 2D
space. And then the Overground is kind
of 3D. That's A and has a bit more
platforming to it partially because there's, you know, some
collectibles up there, some secrets and other characters
that you can meet with. But it's like the ultimate goal,

(05:10):
at least initially that I'm working on is finishing up quest
for a bunch of characters. And then we're going to build a
path to one of the other islandsthat's around here.
And the sea kind of weirdly enough, looks like Mountain Dew,
very bright green kind of thing.So I don't know what the the

(05:32):
nature of that's like some a nuclear material or something.
They haven't really explained any of that.
But otherwise kind of just a fairly straightforward digging
game that I'm looking forward toput some more time into.
I've been just enjoying that a lot.
And the neat thing is in the themain menu, they have a little

(05:55):
documentary for how the game wasmade.
So you can sit there and watch and learn about all the, the way
they make all the characters andenvironments and such and scan
them to turn them into models inthe game, which is pretty cool.
And like the the main menu screen mostly just has shots of

(06:17):
the the room that they worked onthese character models and such.
So that's a that's a really cooladditional bonus thing in there.
So yeah, that's been a lot of fun to play.
Like it's available only on Steam right now for 18 bucks.
The other game I've been playingis Ritual of Raven.

(06:38):
This came from a code from Team 17.
It is to be as reductive as possible.
It's sort of starting Valley forWitches.
So I would say that is definitely really reductive
because it has less of a focus on the kind of open-ended nature

(07:00):
of those games and more of a focus on story.
So you're less trying to romancecharacters and build big farms
and all that kind of stuff. Though you do do some farming,
you don't do any of it directly because the way they frame it,

(07:24):
if you harvest, you know, plantsby hand, it loses all the the
magic to it. So you use a construct and
almost in a little bit of like aa visual programming language to
it where you get these cards to tell the the constructs what to

(07:46):
do. So you might have some point,
you get these signs that are like, oh, this is a three by
three spots of, you know, tilledland and have it check each of
the spots. And if there's no seed, plant a
seed, water it. And you have a card for like a

(08:11):
time shift thing where you just essentially, if it's going to
take ultimately like 5 days to get to the flower part of the
seed, you can send, you know, simply have it do that And it'll
Fast forward one day where I'm at, I have a loop card that I
can have it essentially loop anddo that and kind of

(08:33):
progressively make these seeds into the seedlings or whatever
they're called their second stage and then to their flower
form and then get harvested. But you also have cards that can
be like, well, if this is not, you know, a flower yet, then,
you know, water and do the I'm good thing.

(08:58):
Otherwise, if it is in flower form, harvest it and I just let
it loose and have a loop up to 10 times.
And so you kind of just are ableto let the the setup work its
way through for whatever your request may require.
That's kind of a cool aspect. Now I've got a an area that is

(09:20):
all crystals and you can kind ofdo the same thing there, but you
have, you know, different cards just for that for harvesting the
OR extracting crystals. But you can also have it check
if there's even crystal in that ground and be able to skip the
time it takes for that stuff to check.

(09:44):
Yeah, there's a, there's a lot of ways to fine tune the way the
these things work and kind of itlets you save setup.
So if you know, like, oh, this is my ideal set up for mining
crystals, you know, I'll it'll keep pulling this back up.
Same for different kinds of plants and whatnot.

(10:06):
And they kind of really do a good job of making that sort of
an interesting thing to mess around with.
And so, yeah, the the story hereis that you are human from the
non magical earth who's somehow been pulled into this world
through a portal that's is a magic land.

(10:28):
You run into this mage or, or witch named Sage, who is sort of
like, well, my familiar has disappeared through a portal
until I can, you know, find a way to get back to them.
I'll train you as a witch essentially.

(10:49):
And you can create your own character with a a variety of
looks and all that. And you can change it at any
point the the place that you go to sleep and has a mirror that
you can change that at any points has pronouns and
different voice options. There's no real voice here.

(11:09):
You'll get little, you know, noises that you make as you're
doing some talking. And so you're going to get
trained by her and a lot of the basics up to the point of you
have the ability to change the moon, the phase of the moon,

(11:29):
because some plants will change into, you'll harvest different
things if they're in different phases of the moon.
You have berries that might be different colors in different
phases of the moon, all that kind of stuff.
So that's a neat thing. You work with her to set that up

(11:53):
and then the last thing you end up doing is going through the
ritual for summoning a familiar,which you get a little Raven,
hence the title. It was a little Uber of a Raven
that acts like they know everything but often just making

(12:14):
it up as they go along. But the the familiars in this
world are kind of the source of the magic for witches.
And so that's why the sage beingaway from hers is kind of
weakened her magic ability. So at the end of this, when you
get your familiar ends up disappearing through a portal

(12:36):
that's opened that she believes will take her to her familiar.
So you're kind of in charge of this place for the time that
she's gone. And so from there, you kind of
go into the town that's called Never NEVAR Never.
I kind of meet up with the different villagers there.

(12:57):
You find out like a lot of thesepeople have been stranded here
from portals because the the portals here have broken in such
a way. They just randomly open and
people come get sucked through and get stranded here.
And you start meeting up a a bunch of them.
So you're trying to figure out like, OK, wait, what happened

(13:18):
with these portals that caused this?
And you're led to find out aboutthe the portal keepers and the
nature of what they were trying to do.
What happens? They fail.
And at a certain point they split up.
And this seems like a fairly recent thing, like it's within
probably the last few months before you arrived.

(13:42):
And so in the process, you're working with some of these
villagers to, you know, start working your way to solving the
problems that happened, particularly with one, one of
the villagers whose little sister was one of the portal
keepers. You're sort of working through

(14:03):
that. She has sort of left the village
and pulled herself up somewhere else.
And you kind of learned that sheis she was kind of really
ashamed of herself as a result of Sage being her mentor.

(14:27):
And Sage kind of did not take through the the failure of this
whole project well and so yelledat a lot of people.
I guess you being sort of one ofthe only people doesn't have
that experience from her and dealing with, you know, a lot of
personal baggage of a kid who was led to believe she was going

(14:48):
to be, you know, a great mage one day and sort of failing and
feeling the imposter syndrome and all that kind of stuff going
on. And all that's is a nice sweet
story to this with her and her brother and all that's and where
I'm at, basically, I've gotten her back into those sort of

(15:11):
confident form and help get her back up and go on.
We're trying to get to the second person of the group and
so that requires me to get certain ingredients and such to
be able to get over there. But while I'm in the process of
that, I am doing doing odd jobs for various other people around

(15:34):
the village. This is where it's starting to
open up more and more now. One of the people that popped
into the out of a portal shortlyafter I showed up was a sloth
for this planets that he's running a library now.
And so I'm finding like pieces of these spell books.

(15:57):
And so I'm collecting those and taking them to the library that
gives me these like spells or whatever they are that require,
you know, ingredients to do themonce the once I get all the
pieces to them. That's a nice thing I've been
working on. An alien comes through from some

(16:19):
planet that's it was highly evolved or highly technically
evolved. It's like, Oh no, nobody here
believes in science. They all believe in this magic
rap and you kind of get them a little bit off of their high and
mighty, you know, place there and realize that's the that

(16:45):
they're kind of stuck there for a while.
If not, maybe we're good. And you kind of end up helping
them set up a a Museum of sorts of these like lost objects that
have come through these portals,which is where the the fishing
is. You're going to fish in these
portals in a very kind of claw game kind of fashion.

(17:07):
So you're kind of moving this this like hook across the screen
and then you move it down and try to collect these items that
are hanging around there. And every unique item you get,
you want to take it to that little museum area and plop it
down on one of the the spots. And every like 5 items you put
in there, you get a piece of furniture out of it that you can

(17:30):
take back to your, your little home area, your cottage area,
and you can pop it in some of the expansion areas you can
build out with the currency thatyou get.
I've already expanded once. I think I need a significant
more amount of currency to get to the second expansion.

(17:50):
But right now I've got a decent place to put some, some nice
little furniture items. And yeah, mainly been working
around you have gifts you can give to people, but they're not
for romantic reasons. They're more like a series of
quests essentially that you can complete for these characters.

(18:11):
And you find like this, this couple that are both people that
were stranded here ended up falling in love with each other.
One is sort of a herbologist of sorts who sells you seeds.
The other one will sell you the cards that you use for the the
construct programming. But they both run like their

(18:33):
version of DND. It's called TNT and there's like
the their little quests involve kind of both like making tea and
also having little parties to dosome D&D stuff with them, with
your Raven familiar and your character in with them to do

(18:56):
some stuff, which is fun. So yeah, it's it's a lot of good
dill story. I've not gotten into the the big
overarching stuff. I mentioned there will be some
conflict, but as far as I've seen there's no combats.
I don't expect there to be basedon what I've seen here so far.
And yeah, there's a good bit to like hear a lot of and the story

(19:19):
has been good enough. That's it's kind of keeping me
going here as I've put almost 10hours into the game so far.
Now I'm basically at the point where I'm trying to complete
some of these side things where it needs specific flowers or
leaves or whatever it needs, andI'm trying to farm that stuff

(19:42):
before I really start making more more the the main line
progress. But yeah, been enjoying that a
lot. And that's on Switch and PC
right now. Definitely worth checking out if
you kind of like that style of game, but maybe not the
open-ended nature of a lot of them.
I was just kind of like you go figure it out.

(20:02):
This kind of guide you along a lot more.
The nice thing is you have a book that is like your spell
book of sorts, but also keeps track of all your encyclopedia
kind of stuff to it, keeping track of the all the characters,
all the plants and all the things you can collect.
And we'll tell you like, hey, this under this moon phase, this

(20:25):
will happen. These will turn into these
things, that kind of stuff. So if you're very much wanting
to know, like, OK, I need, you know, these blueberries, where
the fuck do I get those? And it's like, oh, under this
phase of the moon, this Berry turns blue.
It's like, oh, OK, The only realkind of thing about that is you.

(20:50):
When you change the the phase ofthe moon, it only happens once
you go to bed. So much like a lot of these do,
you don't save until you go to bed.
So you can't you can't just kindof keep playing as much as you
want. You kind of need to finish a day
before you end your session, which you kind of wish these

(21:10):
games would move on from that just let you save whenever
because you can let them. You can't get have a lot of
things going on. There's no stamina system to
this. So I think at 2:00 AM you
basically just instantly go to sleep.
You don't get like a penalty like in Stardew Valley when

(21:32):
you're out too late or anything like that.
It's like, I know you're done doing whatever.
You wake up at 8:00 AM and kind of have to do whatever the next
day. So yeah, that's that's also been
fun and that's been pretty much what I've been doing.
So how about you, Brandon? Well.
As for me, I briefly went back to Astrobot for a couple days

(21:54):
because I remember that, you know, since the end of last
year, they had added a few new things to it, including a whole
new sort of Galaxy of difficult trial stages that I wanted to do
because they all of course have new bots to collect and all that
stuff. And I decided I'm going to go

(22:16):
ahead and go back and see if I can get through them.
And if you remember like how thebutton challenge stages were,
where they were like the specifically designed to piss
you off, that's basically all ofthese stages.
All of them are based around like a specific power up that

(22:36):
you'll get. So like, you know, the frog
gloves or the. You know the thing.
That lets you roll up into a ball and roll around all that
stuff, and you're essentially trying to get from point A to
point B, and in between is a bunch of really challenging
obstacles that really do requiresome serious timing and

(22:59):
coordination. Otherwise you will just keep
dying over and over again. The good news is, unlike the.
The time. Trials you do not have to like
you're not running against the clock here.
It does like keep track of what how what your speed is, but like
you're not held back from getting a bot or whatever at the

(23:22):
end of the stage. As long as you finish the stage,
you get the bot and and then after you do.
All of the. Challenge stages.
There is a final hidden challenge stage that shows up
that basically throws a bunch ofthose power ups, not all of
them, thank goodness, but a lot of them, into one single stage.
And once again, there is no checkpoint.

(23:44):
So if you end up dying towards the end, sorry, you got to go
all the way back to the beginning and try again.
It took me a. Couple dozen tries before I
finally finished it. But yeah, just remembering how
good that game is and why it wasgame of the year in 2004.
It was just that damn good. But the other game I've been

(24:07):
playing and I've been making some significant progress on is
Void Stranger. And I finished my first run
through the void earlier this week.
And what happens after that it happens is you're essentially

(24:27):
told that, you know, there's something you got to do, and
then you're sent back to the beginning to start all over
again. And 1.
And so essentially that when a game does that, it's like, OK, I
need to like be paying attentionto like all these surroundings
and stuff around me. And one of the things I figured
out. Is.
Every time you go into like a new series of floors after you

(24:52):
awaken from like the save rooms,there are these these like
murals that are like generally at the top of the room and
they'll have these these sort oflike pictograms on them.
And these pictograms are called brands.
And essentially, once you're going back through the series of
these floors, you will eventually come across a room

(25:15):
that is like a perfect square. And essentially what you have to
do is you have to rearrange all the tiles on that room to match
the brand. And when that happens, you'll
get these, we'll just call it, for lack of a better term, a
pairing show up on either side of the screen and then fall off

(25:36):
into the pit, basically where you'll end up in a secret floor
where a lot of times you'll end up getting a an item that you'll
be able to use from then on, called burdens.
And these, the ones I've gotten so far are a thing called the
void memory, which is a basically a thing that lets you

(26:00):
speak to like the statues and the boulders that you see all
over the place. And they'll like tell you stuff,
they'll give you hints or they'll talk about lore stuff
like that. Another one is a pair of what
are called what's called void wings, which are these pair like
fairy wings that will actually let you like.

(26:20):
Skip over. A pit, you know, as long as it's
like, you know, one tile long. If it's any longer than that,
then you know it'll. You know.
You'll you'll you'll fall, but this is a huge game changer
because it means you can basically move around a lot

(26:42):
easier, not constantly having torefill like all of the pitch you
come across. You can actually just skip over
some of them. And then the last one I got is
the void sword, which is exactlywhat it sounds like.
You can actually now kill enemies with this thing, which
most of the time is fine. Not all the time, because some

(27:03):
of the time you're going to needsomething to stand on a switch
to open doors. But yeah, that's where I am.
I'm just about finished with my third run because I, I finished
a whole run a couple days ago and I'm finishing up my third
run probably tonight. And yeah, I'm just amazed at

(27:25):
like the layers that this game has and how it's sort of just
slowly, you know, unveils its story to the player in ways that
are not, you know, it's it's very kind of kind of From
Software as in that there is a story, but you have to like,

(27:46):
actively go out to look for it and it just kind of peels it
back slowly. But yeah, that's what I've
played, been playing. So, Dan Rib, what about you?
Yeah, it's been a while. Since I've been on the show, I
was at Stereo Comic Con a coupleweeks ago and then I was at Evo
last week. So a bunch of content is up on
the site there for stuff that I did play.

(28:07):
And yeah, I also brought my PS5TO EVO just because like I
was really enjoying the game. That game was Ninja Gaiden Rage
Bound. Phil has a has a review on the
site and yeah, I'm really lovingthat one.
I, I don't have as many hours asI want to put into it, but like,
I'm just really, really having fun with it.

(28:28):
It's published by Dodi MU. You know, that, that that's,
that's pretty much their thing. And yeah, like this game is
difficult, but it's also really fair with it.
And I'm really enjoying the pacing.
I've played through the 1st 3 levels and have just had a lot
of fun. And basically they're, they're
all self-contained levels. They're, they're, they're, it's,
it's not a Metroidvania. I'm loving traversal.

(28:51):
You know, you can, you can jump,you can go ahead and parry
things with your sword. And a lot of the the hits that
you put on enemies are pretty much one hitters if they're, if
they're like easy to fight. And then there's some that are a
little bit more difficult. The bosses are pretty rough, but
at the same time, a lot of the save points happened right
before the boss. So even if you're if you get

(29:13):
killed, which will happen you, you pretty much appear, you
know, just a few frames before it.
And that's that's been pretty awesome.
So yeah, I'm really enjoying theguide and range of bound.
It's pretty much the year of theninja.
We have that we have Shinobi coming up at the end of the
month. We have Ninja Gaiden 4 as well
coming. And yeah, I'm really enjoying
all that, especially since I have a lot of ninja games on my
fantasy critic. Speaking of fantasy, I'm playing

(29:35):
Madden NFL 26. This game is not out yet, but
the embargo lifted last Monday, so I can go ahead and talk about
it. And yeah, like if you're someone
that also plays college footballand you enjoyed the gameplay
changes they made to it, pretty much the same stuff happened to
Madden 26. And I thought college football

(29:56):
26 was my favorite football gamelike up until now.
And I think Madden might be thrown it just because like I've
always been more of an NFL guy and a lot of those changes did
make its way there. I'm currently playing through a
little bit of franchise mode. I'm not that deep into it, but
I'm, I, I am liking a lot of thechanges that we see.
Franchise mode now is a full on RPG.

(30:17):
So you, you can go ahead and, you know, hire and fire
offensive defensive coordinators.
You can decide to use the coach that's currently on the team, or
you can just make a new one. And you can decide whether you
want to be an offensive guru, you know, a defensive genius or,
or whatever it may be. And you can go ahead and build
there based on a lot of the stuff that you have.
And you're going to have a wholebunch of archetypes that are

(30:39):
only going to be available afteryou've surpassed a certain
level. So yeah, I'm really enjoying a
lot of the same nature of Madden.
There are a few issues. The biggest one that I've come
across so far is that with the halftime show, the halftime show
is being led by Scott Hanson. And it's actually fantastic in
franchise mode because you're actually seeing scores and

(31:00):
highlights from other games. That's never happened before.
Like, normally you just have thescores and a lot of the stats
would be listed incorrectly. But now it's like, OK, I can go
ahead and see this game between Denver and Tennessee happening.
And I can see a touch touchdown pass drawn by Cam Ward, you
know, quarterback of the Titans.And, you know, it's not a game
that I have absolutely control in because I'm I'm I'm using the

(31:21):
Packers. So it's cool to see those
highlights. The problem is after all those
highlights, the game freezes andyou can tell that because you
can't press the home button on any controller.
So you have to actually just reset the whole thing and it's
that's pretty annoying. Obviously you don't want to go
through that. And because of that, I don't
want to risk seeing the halftimeshow again.
That being said, it sucks because like I said, it's it's a

(31:43):
really, really good one. You also have the option of what
commentators you want on the game.
They currently have the same 3 from last year.
You know, they have Brandon gone, Charles Davis, Brock
Heward and I forget the one, theone's name, but she does a
really good job there. And then you have Mike Tirico
and Greg Olsen, all of them solid.

(32:06):
Main thing, though, is that, youknow, a lot of the stuff is
recycled from last year. And you know, Brandon and Gaud
and Charles Davis have been doing this for years now.
And I I want to hear someone else.
And that's pretty much always been my thing with Madden.
But yeah, the the presentation has also been changed up a
little bit. The prime time games, as opposed
to the regular games, have different graphics in the
bottom. So like when you're playing a

(32:28):
regular game, you have the scorein the bottom stretched out with
the entire screen. But if you're playing Thursday
or Sunday Night Football, it's kind of condensed in the middle
and it's all really, really clean.
So like, if you're somebody who really enjoys watching football
and all the different networks, you're seeing all of that really
represented at the same time, you know, you aren't getting a
Fox, you aren't getting Amazon, CBSESPN.

(32:50):
But at the same time, EA Sports has done a solid job of like
really mixing that up to really give it it's it's feel.
There's also celebrations specific to the teams that you
use. I'm a Green Bay Packers fan, so
the big celebration for Packers touchdowns would be the Lambo
leap. So you know, you go ahead and
press up on the right stick and all of a sudden your player can

(33:10):
go ahead and jump into the Lamboleap.
All of those are pretty cool andI'm definitely enjoying that as
well. I'm also really enjoying the new
skills trainer. Madden did have a whole bunch of
different kinds of changes. The one that I don't like that
seems to be sort of a permanent fixture now is the kicking game.
It's been the same the last couple years, but I've always
wanted to use the older one. And like now you really have to,

(33:32):
you know, choose the the power and accuracy to your kicks.
And if you're used to the old way, you know, your your trigger
happy thumbs. I just going to do it wrong and
all of a sudden end up with a penalty that way.
They've also added the penalty for making sure that you're
kicking off into the target zonebecause if you don't, the other
team gets the ball at the 40 yard line, which will put you at

(33:54):
a rather big disadvantage because defenses from what I'm
playing, it's it's hard to play so far.
Part of that is because they've adapted what college football
did, where if you want to football to pick it off, you
have to actually see the ball. So that's that's that's that's
fun on the offensive side because it allows you to take
more chances. But if you're playing defense
and you're used to picking it off, it's not going to be as
easy. So there's that.

(34:16):
But yeah, Madden's definitely pretty solid so far.
I've actually joined a joined anonline franchise with a whole
bunch of other journalists and content creators.
So we're going to start doing that at the end of the month and
we'll go from there. It'll be a while, maybe at least
a week or maybe 2 weeks before Ipost this review on this one.
But yeah, really enjoying it so far and it's quite solid.

(34:37):
I'm also playing Wheel World. This game is one that I've had
for a few weeks. I just haven't had much time to,
you know, really dive in to playit.
This game is basically an open world, you know, fixer upper
bike game. You pretty much you use this
character who finds a bike and has to help this bike spirit

(34:58):
find these legendary parts. And you know, I'm not a bike
guy, so I'm not going to be ableto name all those parts.
But you know, you want to find wheels, you want to find the
bike frame, you want to find theseat, and every time you find a
new item, you can upgrade your bike.
But the cool thing about this game is it sort of has that
burnout paradise feel where you just go around and you know, and

(35:18):
enjoy the landscape, go on racesagainst other policies, if you
will. And the main thing you want to
get here is like street cred. That way you can go ahead and
gain access to various other places today that you can go
ahead and bike at. And yeah, it's really solid.
The controls feel nice. The main thing that I'm not
liking is that there is a lot ofdraw space.

(35:39):
You know, when you're able to zoom in, all of a sudden things
appear. I'm not big on big on visuals,
but that that is something that really annoys me, especially
when you're playing on PS-5 and things like that.
But it also is an an apparent published game.
So you know, it's obviously an indie, but I'm, I'm, I'm
enjoying it so far. The open world here is better
than Mario karts, which isn't saying a whole lot, but
considering people talked about Mario Kart's open world being a

(36:01):
game changer, we'll world does awhole a whole lot better.
I'm not saying it's Mario Kart fun, but it's definitely pretty
fun in it in its own regard. And then also, I'm still, I'm
still playing Dog Kong Bonanza, really enjoying that game.
This might be my game of the year so far, just being able to
do all these new challenges. It's a little bit of a spoiler,

(36:23):
but after, after you beat the game, there's there's there's
more to do, harder levels, different kinds of abilities
that are different kinds of obstacles that require the
usability that you didn't know you had, things like that.
And yeah, I'm really enjoying it, but I haven't been playing
as much. I'm I'm, I'm, I'm sort of
starting to teeter back on that one.
So I'm looking forward to the new stuff that's coming out on

(36:45):
Switch to. I actually just downloaded the
demos for Media the Hollower as well as The Adventures of
Elliot. I haven't played either yet, but
I'm definitely looking forward to diving into those demos,
especially since it's going to be a while since we get until we
get either of those. But yeah, that's about it.
All right, all right, so, yeah, let's get to some news first up

(37:05):
here, we've got some new additions to Game Pass.
Let me see here. Yeah, available now.
There's Rain World for Game PassUltimate, PC Game Pass and Game
Pass Standard. Yep, that's one of those really

(37:26):
neat looking games. Hard to describe what the the
gameplay is like on that. It is.
Very artsy. You're basically you're playing
like a small little prey animal who's like basically navigating
through this enormous like. Sort of.
Like sort of like post apocalyptic world where like,

(37:50):
you know, like tech and nano machines have basically taken
everything over. So you're basically just nothing
but dead machinery everywhere, and you're basically climbing
around and you're trying to avoid predators.
Yeah, that's a game. Basically, but it's really damn
good. Yeah, so there's that.

(38:12):
Let's see. Also available now.
Yeah, they got a few additions to Game Pass standard here.
The Citizen Sleeper 2 Starward Vector for Xbox, so you can
check that one out. Lonely Mountain Snow Riders,
also for Xbox. Mech Warrior 5 at Clans and Orcs

(38:33):
Must Die and Death Trap that have all been added to Game Pass
standard. Let's see for August 7th.
Yeah that just was a few days ago.
Assassin's Creed Mirage for GamePass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.
So if you do not check that one out, that's a solid game.
Then we got yeah two that have not come out yet for Game Pass

(38:57):
Ultimate, PC Game Pass and Game Pass Standard.
Aliens, Fireteam Elite, this is returning.
This is the yeah, this is the the Co-op third person survival
shooter, I guess going up alongside alien Earth that is
starting to air for FX and Hulu.There's that.

(39:23):
Then on the 14th, which will be Thursday, Game Pass, ultimate
piece of Game Pass 9 Kings will be going into early access.
They call us the fast-paced roguelike Kingdom Builder.
I'm not sure if this is in the the vein of the the Kingdom

(39:49):
games now. This is more kind of a
traditional RTS kind of thing. Grid based RTS.
OK. You're kind of building up.
Essentially like a big base of aKingdom, yeah, and taking on
enemies as they come along and big battle kind of stuff.

(40:10):
OK yeah, there's that. That'll be on just PCI believe
so there's that. And that seems to be it yeah.
Seems like an alright list. Yeah, stuff here.
Especially Citizen Sleeper too. If the original game is great,

(40:31):
the sequel is even better. Yeah, So, yeah.
There you go. All right, Yeah.
Let's see, we got some dates here or we got one here that's
available now during Quake Con. We knew that Night Dive was
going to have something new coming out, and they announced

(40:55):
it. It's Heretic Plus Hexen.
Yep. Which was this sort of duo of
games that are, you know, in thevein of like the the Doom stuff,
but instead of having guns, yeah, you're going to have more
magic Staffs that it was actually.
It was made by Raven. Yeah, made by Raven.

(41:16):
Studios before they became the what they are now.
And yeah, they basically had a John Romero help produce it and
produce them. And yeah, they're both like
really good quality fantasy FPS games.
Yeah. So yeah, those are out on pretty

(41:37):
much everything, I believe PlayStation, Xbox, Switch and PC
for 1499. They're also on Game Pass.
Yeah, it looks like it includes some of the see Heretic, Shadow
of the Serpent Riders, Hexon Beyond a Heretic Hexan Death,

(41:57):
Kings of the Dark Citadel 2 new episodes, Heretic Faith renewed
Hexan Vestiges of Grandeur. Yeah, does some extra mode or
mod type stuff there along with a bunch of quality of life

(42:19):
features as well added to the game, So that's neat.
You want to check those out? Yeah.
If you if you want to play like a bit of a old PC gaming
history, Air Tick and hex and are both like.
Primo. Examples of mid 90s gaming.

(42:42):
Yeah, so there's that. Let's see, we got a demo coming
out this week for Hell Is Us. Yeah, the action game, action
RPG that's coming out later thisyear.
Yeah, this will be a PS-5 Xbox demo, so Yep, you're on

(43:03):
consoles. You can check that one out.
The game itself will be out September 4th, so not too far
away. Yep, this is one I've been
keeping my eye on so I'm definitely going to be
downloading this Tuesday. Yeah, well there you got that to
look forward to this week. Also happening later this week,

(43:26):
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tactical Takedown.
We'll be coming to Xbox Series X&S and Switch on August 14th so
people can check those outs. I've played a bunch of the PC
version and it is a fantastic game.
Yeah, it seems like they will becoming out alongside an update

(43:49):
that adds Remix mode, which adds.
Yeah, they save more content, more enemies, and increased
difficulty. So yeah, that looks like it'll
add some more stuff to do, so that's cool.
This is a very good strategy game.
Definitely worth checking out ifyou like your team NT or your

(44:10):
strategy games, this does some really neat stuff with that, So
that's worth checking out. Yeah, prior to this
announcement. It's only on PC, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
OK. So it's not.
It's not. On PS-5 as of as of right now,
no. That's interesting.
Cool. Yeah, for what I've seen

(44:32):
Zlavier, the head of strange scaffolds basically saying they
don't have plans for PS-5, so maybe that'll change, you know,
but so far that's just what they're working on.
So Yep, OK, I've. Only played the demo so I don't
know what type of this game yet.Yeah, Speaking of demos, this

(44:53):
one's been featured on demos andshowcases a number of times.
Demon School finally has a a newlaunch date September 3rd.
In a couple of weeks here peoplewill be able to check it out.
The game that kind of apes some of the style, especially battle
style of games like the originalPersona games, which if you do

(45:17):
not know the the series from Persona 3 onward had a much
different battle system than theone that's preceded it.
It was more. Of a grid.
Based kind of tactical strategy kind of battle system, which had
its neat bonuses to it. But also, you know, if you've

(45:40):
played like the PSP versions of those games, I could definitely
feel a very old school approach because if you have characters
die, they're just kind of stuck behind XP wise for the rest of
the game. No real easy way to get them
caught up again. But this, I assume is a bit more

(46:03):
modern in its take on that stuff.
But it is a very cool looking game, so I'm looking forward to
seeing more of this in the near future.
Oh yeah, there you go. Yeah, I played demon school a
couple years ago at PAX West andI don't know, it just wasn't for
me. I don't know if it's been
polished a little better, but yeah, this one's coming out soon

(46:25):
and looking forward to seeing ifit's changed.
But it's not a day one for me asof right now it looks.
Interesting to me, but I want tosee what other people think
first. Yeah.
So yeah, there's that. We got another game coming out
in September, Formula Legends, that'll be out September 18th.
This is a racing game. Like it's supposed to be a

(46:51):
little more simulation, but I think it's still supposed to be
mostly an arcade racing game. But it's about the sort of
history of racing competitions featuring a number of vehicles
in the the vein of like the way that's, you know, Formula One

(47:11):
has looked over the years and some of those kind of vehicles,
yeah. Especially like the historical
ones because like what like old Formula One cars, when auto
racing first started to be a thing to what we call Formula
One now look very different fromeach other.

(47:31):
Like you're, you know, when you think Formula One, it's like,
oh, the cars with like the there's like the wingspan in the
front and there's like the the spoiler on the back and
everything. That's not what they used to
look like. Yeah, they used to look a lot
more primitive than that. Yeah, so yeah, this this game
has a lot of interesting vibes to it.

(47:53):
There's demos out now for PlayStation, Xbox and PCI guess
supposed to have a Switch demo coming out on the 14th here
later this week. But yeah, this one, I've seen
some footage of it and it's looked pretty neat and I've
downloaded the demo, just have not had a chance to start it up
yet. But it looks really neat for the

(48:16):
race and genre that is does not have a ton of variety to it at
the moment. So yeah, that's one to keep an
eye on. Then we have one more here for
September. Lego Party.
Yep, the very Mario Party esque kind of game, but featuring a
bunch of Lego characters and such.

(48:37):
It's going to be on everything. It'll be out September 30th.
So yeah, that's I've heard good things about as far as the the
Mario Party stuff, we're probably not going to be one
that's adds a lot of unique things to it.

(48:59):
But yeah, that'll be outside just before the holidays.
Yeah, this was a game I played during SGF and I had a whole lot
of fun and fun with it. It is unapologetically Mario
Party. The map that we played on it was
based on Lego Pirates. And you know, every few turns
some crazy things would happen on the map.
And the the map was pretty much also Mario Party to where, you

(49:22):
know, you land on it, you gain anumber of coins or whatever it
may be. And yeah, it's it's it's pretty
awesome. The main difference is that the
mini games take place at the beginning of the turn versus the
end of the turn. But aside from that, it is
pretty much the same. Another thing that I really like
is during the last turn as well as the last five turns, the

(49:44):
board sort of changes, but in the last turn they actually
change things up so that no space is useless.
Because in Mario Party if you land on like the bank space or
the store space at on the last turn, you know you and nothing
happens because you can't buy anything to use the next turn.
Whereas with Lego Party, it makes like every turn do
something and bullshit does happen.

(50:06):
That's exactly what happened to me when I played.
And yeah, it was funny because we were playing with a, with a
actual gold brick on the line. But yeah, I'm looking forward to
this one. The best thing about it is that
it's also not a full price game.I believe it's going to be 40
bucks when it comes to that. So it's a pretty solid budget
title. Together before the holidays.
Yeah. Oh yeah, there you go.
That'll be a a neat looking game.

(50:30):
And that's it for the dates thatI have here for this year.
We got one more here. That inching impact for the PS4
is going to be shutting down on April 8th, 2026.
As I mentioned here, it is due to limitations related to
hardware performance and platform application size, which

(50:53):
is not really a huge surprise because that that original
release on the PS4 just did not run very well.
Wasn't until I got to the PS5I was like, Oh yeah, this is how
it should run. Yep.
So yeah, not really too surprising here.

(51:14):
Yeah, their their timeline for this on a September 10th they're
going to remove gitch an impact from the PlayStation Store
February 25th of next year they're going to end all in game
purchases for PS4 only players and then end of all update
support for Genshin Impact or PS4.
So stop functioning there. So yeah, that's unfortunate but

(51:42):
makes a lot of sense for the waythat that game is on a bunch
more available systems. So if you have a PS-5, PC, Xbox,
any of that, I should probably check it out there.
So, yeah, there you go. Yeah, Let's see.

(52:06):
Yeah. No, nothing.
I was. Just saying like, yeah, I
originally played the engine on PS4 and yeah, I've played a
little bit of it on PS-5 and it's like night and day.
Yeah, it just, it just. Does not run well on APS 4.
Like really? It does not.
Yeah, very much was not really capable of running that game,

(52:31):
and I'm sure it's gotten worse as they've continued to evolve
it. But yeah, let's get to another
story here. Mortal Kombat trilogy has been
confirmed to be a part of the upcoming Mortal Kombat Legacy
Collection, which is nice to see.
That was the Yeah, the version of the game released in 1996.

(52:53):
That was the final version of Mortal Kombat 3 that basically
added every character and stage from the previous games up to
that point. Yep.
And this introduced Brutalities,a combo focused alternative to
fatalities. Yep.
That has only. Come back in the the more recent
games, yeah. And short lived aggressor bar

(53:15):
which grants fighters. Increased speed and damage when
filled, I believe was also kind of a every of this the one
that's kind of broken or not might be depending on the
platform it was on Yeah it. Depends on like, what you're
playing it on, yeah. Because I think that that game

(53:35):
was kind of too big for like thethe tech at the.
Time the consoles to be able to handle.
The ports, yeah, they. Had to like they had to like cut
the a lot of the character animations like in half in order
to like fit a lot of them. And it's pretty noticeable if
you've play like, you know, say like you're playing ultimate

(53:56):
Mortal Kombat 3 and then playingthis next to it.
You can definitely see like where there's a definite
downgrade in parts. But the flip side of that is
that the reason this this particular game is so heavily
cherished is because it's the one that ended up becoming a big
deal on the fighting game scene.So it's a, you know, a

(54:19):
competitive fight E sports. So yeah, people have been
looking forward to this one to find you out that this one is
here. And honestly, just all the other
stuff that's got to be on this thing.
Yeah, from what it's saying here, Bang Sung was kind of the
broken character for the PS1 version.
Yep, because it's had extra loading delays to switch to

(54:42):
characters. So there are options.
Completely turn off morph. So let the system load two
additional characters in a memory when playing Shang Sung.
That's eliminating the long loading delays when morphing.
The only time the CPU ever controls him is during the
attract mode. They doesn't show up in any like
the tower stuff or anything likethat.

(55:06):
And yeah, the N64 version has three on three simultaneous
battles as an exclusive feature.Yeah, so that kind of has some
better things. But the music is pretty bad, it
seems like, and there's only 30 characters included instead of

(55:27):
the 37 featured in the PS1 version.
Yep, it lacks Quarrel and Kintaro, the classic versions of
Jax, Hung Loud, Kano and Raiden,as well as the unmasked Sub
Zero, though the mass Sub Zero can perform both of their
special moves. Yep, Chameleon is replaced with

(55:47):
Chameleon. That's C Chameleon is replaced
with K Chameleon. Female ninja that randomly
switches between Cortana, Elena,and Jade?
Yep. And yeah, there's an ultimate
combat code screen. After the single player game is
over, a six digit code can be entered to unlock human smoke
and and Chameleon for normal play.

(56:09):
Yep, that's a. Holdover from MK3.
Yeah. And then there's the Saturn
version that has its own issues.So yeah, that's a that's an
interesting like game that's seems like it was far more
intensive than any of the other games really were for those
consoles. So that'll be interesting to

(56:32):
have. I assume it's just going to be
the arcade version, but they really should put those other
versions just be like, hey, hereyou go.
These are broken, but enjoy. So yeah, that's going to be a
that's going to be very cool collection then as physical
versions as well as a standard edition for, let's see, 60 bucks
for Switch 250 for every other platform, Deluxe edition 80 on

(56:58):
Switch, 270 on PS-5. And Switch has a steelbook case,
magnet poster, particular card, arcade Flyers, many marquees and
arcade cabinet cards and the collector's edition that
includes A Goro controller holder statue, commemorative

(57:20):
arcade token, hardcover art and lore book.
The scorpion slash sub 0 pin setthat's on every version.
No shipping date for that, but the other physical editions will
ship on December 12th, although I don't think they have a date
for the game itself yet. I assume it'll at least be

(57:43):
before December 12th. So there you go that's a going
to be one of the more exciting retro things coming out the rest
of this year. So there you go.
Yep. Let's see you get some developer
news. We had a a new studio formed Red
Octane Games, sort of a a new version of the old Red Octane,

(58:10):
which was one of the two companies that made the original
Guitar Hero games with harmonics.
And once they finished Guitar Hero 2 and I think the the 80s
game, they end up splitting up with harmonics, making Rock Band
and Red Actine sticking to work on the other Guitar Hero games

(58:35):
until Activision Blizzard shut them down in like 2010.
Yeah, like that. And I think Eversoft and some
other studios end up working on the future Guitar Hero games.
So this is a new rhythm studio. It's under the Embracer free

(58:56):
mode branch of Embracer, with a bunch of veteran rhythm game
developers working here. Yeah, there's currently working
on their debut rhythm game that's going to be announced
later this year. That might be something that
shows up on The Game Awards or something like that.

(59:21):
So yeah, the studios led by Simon Bashir, former production
director on a bunch of the Guitar Hero games that
Neversoft. Yeah, they include a bunch of
creators and developers who worked on Guitar Hero and DJ
Hero games. So yeah, that seems neat.

(59:42):
Though being under Embracer is alittle bit of a bummer because
we know if they don't do well, then Embracer will shut them
down. So better get it right, whatever
they're working on. Yep.
So yeah, it seems like this willbe hardware based based on the
trailer they put out has a section here says a new era in

(01:00:06):
rhythm gaming hardware. Imagine some maybe guitar,
guitar controller or something. I don't know, We'll see.
But yeah, there you go. Let's get you some bad news,
some more bad news from Microsoft.
Yep. As they announced that the game
by Avalanche Studios Contraband that got announced like 4 years

(01:00:29):
ago. We even literally never heard
anything. Since then, Nope has been
cancelled. Not really a huge surprise Nope
for any of that's 'cause you know you don't hear about a
game, any new footage or screenshots or really the
developers saying anything aboutit.
You can probably assume that's things have gone poorly and it's

(01:00:53):
not going to end up releasing and that end up being the case
here unfortunately. Kind of wasting the time of a
talented studio like Avalanche though they probably won't ever
work any on any more Just Cause games.
I would like them to work on something cool.

(01:01:13):
I'm sure they still have it because they were definitely top
of their game like 10 to 12 years ago and they haven't
really made much of notes since then unfortunately.
Hopefully they can survive this and make some cool stuff and not

(01:01:34):
have Xbox essentially be the reason they get shut down.
So yeah, hopefully get some better news from them at some
point in the near future. But yeah, there you go.
Yeah, it sucks, but that's it's,it's just one of the one of the
symptoms of sort of the contraction of this AAA gaming

(01:01:57):
space, or at least that part of the industry.
And Microsoft just signing a bunch of deals for games,
whether they were going to actually follow through with
them or not. And that one ended up being one
of the ones that didn't follow through, like Ever Wild and
Perfect Dark and bunch of those games that also got shut down.

(01:02:20):
So yeah, here you go. We'll go to some more positive
news. The Tony announced some figures
for the PS-5 that has reached 80.3 million units shipped,
which is a big number for a system that supposedly has not

(01:02:42):
done well. Yeah, it's only like 2 million,
like two or three million behindthe PS4 at this point,
considering what the the PS-5 launched in during a pandemic
and some of the worst shortage of parts we've seen for the
gaming industry in a long time, kind of an incredible feat that

(01:03:04):
they've reached at this point. It seems like they are doing
just as well as they've ever done on the money fronts.
I believe at this point the PS4's life cycle like they were
doing, they had like $200 units and $300 PS4 units.

(01:03:28):
And as we know the PS-5 right now is like 455 hundred for the
the main systems and 700 for thethe Pro.
So yeah, they're making plenty of money selling very well.
So Yep, that seems to be good for them.

(01:03:51):
So yeah, yeah, it's all. Especially since, you know,
we're seeing companies like Nintendo, you know, raise their
prices on old, on old hardware. And you know.
Yeah, doing that and obviously Sony has done the same thing
overseas, but at the same time, you know, going back to the
pandemic and it's launch, you know, PS Fives were so hard to

(01:04:13):
get for longer than any platformthat I am that I believe I
remember like I think I think I've bought bought like 10 in my
life just trying to help other people anyway, like especially
now with for some reason people are already talking about the
PS6. Like, it's funny seeing that
people are just, you know, getting on their PS Fives.
And we're seeing, you know, we talked about Genshin Impact

(01:04:37):
shutting down their PS4 stuff. Like, I don't know how much
people are still playing on PS4.I would imagine that it's still
a popular platform. But yeah, like, it's time to get
on. And then and then it looks like
Sony is finally seeing some success there with the right,
the right way to do it. Yeah.
So yeah, there you go for that. Yep.
Now we'll go back to some bad news.

(01:04:59):
Penthol Games has announced thatthey have laid off 11 of their
full time employees, which Mike Bethel has said here is
constitutes the majority of our full time staff.
I don't know necessarily what their part time staff might be
or anything like that, but yeah,they posted a statement thing.

(01:05:22):
Sad news today. Bethel Games having been unable
to secure a new larger scale project is reducing in size.
That means that 11 jobs are being made redundant.
This constitutes the majority ofour full time staff.
Became clear leading up to the release of our most recent game
that we were not immune to the challenges faced by many game
development teams seeking funding partners in 2024 and

(01:05:43):
2025. We've unfortunately been able to
communicate these challenges ahead of time.
We've been fortunate, been able to communicate challenges ahead
of time and work with affected staff these departures as much
as possible via severance packages.
So yeah, they seem like they've suffered from the the continued

(01:06:07):
trouble of finding new partners to fund projects that many
independent studios have been dealing with.
So they're kind of having to layoff a bunch of their people,
most of their full time staff totry to keep the company going.
Hopefully they can survive that.But yeah, just continued to see,

(01:06:32):
you know, a studio like this is just kind of kept going with its
titles, making a lot of small games every, you know, couple
years are also having troubles much like every up everybody
else. So yeah, I really haven't any
like huge sellers has finally kind of been the the big issue

(01:06:55):
for them. I think all their games sell
pretty well, but not like anything that sets them up to be
funded for the for where the next project is.
So they've had to sort of try tofind partners to help fund the
next things they're working on. And that unfortunately has

(01:07:16):
stopped happening. So yeah, hopefully wish, wish
the team the best and those thatare leaving hope they can find
new jobs, but that is also increasingly hard just as
finding funding. So, yeah, had a great time,
yeah. It just goes to show how

(01:07:36):
difficult it is in the industry right now.
You know, obviously we're talking about layoff after
layoff. And here's another one.
But at the same time, it's like people are saying, Oh yeah, we
got to go in deep. That doesn't mean anything.
If you can't find funding, you can't find funding.
And that's exactly what happenedhere.
And it's, it's, it's tough to see, you know, especially like,
you know, a week, two weeks after we find out, you know,
John Wick Hex has been delisted doing that, you know, closes

(01:07:59):
down another source of revenue you guys could have made.
And it's, it's, it's tough. I don't know how big their team
is overall, but you know, him saying that the majority is now
gone. That's, that's rough.
But at least there are some measures being taken to make it
a little bit easier. And you know, we we definitely
need that. Yeah.
So yeah, there's that. Then we get to our next story

(01:08:23):
here. Rod Ferguson is leaving Blizzard
after being there for five years.
He's a guy that has done a lot of big games for mostly
Microsoft properties. So yeah, he's, yeah, his big
stuff has been working at Epic Games on the Gears franchise,

(01:08:45):
then continue to work on the Gears franchise at the
Coalition, and then worked at Blizzard helping them get to
working on Diablo 4 and all that.
I always jumped around bits hereand there between those.
Yeah, he jumped. He joined Irrational Games in

(01:09:05):
2012 to help them, gets BioShockInfinite finished.
Who knows what his next project is, but certainly got a heck of
a legacy in games. So it'll be interesting to see
where he ends up next. But yeah, there you go.

(01:09:27):
Yeah, yeah, I'm. I'm I'm not much of a Blizzard
fan, so just doesn't really likehit home for me.
But I do know there are a lot ofpeople who know this guy is
like, hopefully whatever is nextis awesome.
But yeah, it's just another hit for right vision.
Microsoft, Blizzard, whoever youhope it can continue to use his
creativity for good stuff. Yeah.

(01:09:49):
So yeah, more Blizzard news. The Raven QA union has finally
secured a contract with Microsoft after three years of
bargaining, which is a great feat considering that's a hell
of a long time to be bargaining a new contract for this.
And I'm sure Microsoft did not make it easy on them.

(01:10:13):
But yeah, that's great to see. They formed in January 2022 with
assistance from the Communications Workers of
America and I have finally gotten a deal 3 1/2 years later.
So that's great to see for them.Hopefully they will be able to

(01:10:35):
keep those jobs for the foreseeable future.
But knowing Microsoft, that'll always be a a threat that looms
over the over the company. So, yeah, there you go.
There's some good news. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Last story here, also a good one.

(01:10:57):
Digital Foundry has gone independent.
Oh, thank. Goodness bought back.
Its outstanding shares from their parent company Zip Davis.
Yeah, I do find it always interesting when people talk
about the Zip Davis company because essentially they have
formed a company called IG and Entertainment that owns all the

(01:11:20):
gaming properties that they own.So whenever the stuff gets
reported, just reported as IGN and it's like, no, IG didn't
didn't really have any say in all this stuff.
It's always if Davis is pulling the strings on this stuff,
continuing laying off people at IGN despite them doing better
than ever. So Digital Foundry has managed

(01:11:43):
to by the way out and are going to be going independence and
focused on their Patreon for people to support that if you
want to keep them going. So yeah, that's good news for
them and their fans. So always good to see.

(01:12:04):
Yeah, yeah. I mean, digital on Digital
Foundry does not do what everyone else does.
So, you know, that automaticallymakes them special when they
were acquired by, you know, ZD and IGN.
And I was like, this is this is weird.
It's just, it's just weird condensing of the industry.
But yeah, at the same time, I want to go ahead and credit
those, those organizations for alittle letting this buyout

(01:12:26):
actually happen because it's, it's better for them, it's
better for the fans, it's betterfor the staff.
So I'm I'm I'm hopeful that theyhave enough Patreons, but I'm
pretty sure they will. Yeah, so there you go.
Yeah, we got the last part here,the Nintendo Indie World
Showcase of games, and we'll kind of move through this pretty

(01:12:49):
quickly. Let's see, we have been on the
Hollow where open it up. Nothing really new here other
than there's a demo out now on the Switch.
Switch to and if you have. Not played that demo yet?
You really should because that game if, if they can keep that
energy up through the entire game, it's going to end up being

(01:13:10):
game of the year material for sure.
And. Yeah, that demo, our demo's out
now. The game will be out October
31st. Yep, that we already know.
That's let's see, then we got well dweller that got announced.
This is from Top Hat Studios. Yeah, the same developers of

(01:13:31):
Crypto Custodian and Islets, CalThompson.
It's a what they call a dark fairy tale Metroid mania.
They'll be out on switching PC next year, so that's one to keep
an eye on. Yeah, yeah.
Then they showed off Never way for the like 5th showcase.

(01:13:53):
It's been in since Summer Game Fest.
So if you did not know that was a game that is it's Butch and PC
right now it'll be out sometime next year.
Let's see hurdling it's coming out August 21st on APS 5, Xbox,
switch and PC. So that's one that's looking

(01:14:16):
pretty cool. And we got is this seat taken a
little social puzzle game about arranging people on a variety of
places where you would have seats to find the the perfect
places where these different personalities should be sitting
and you know, finding the optimal set up there.

(01:14:39):
That's out now 10 bucks on switch, PC and mobile, though
that one's worth checking out. Let's see, Little Kitty Big City
has a new update called the Picture Perfect Update coming
out August 27th that I believe adds a new yeah customization

(01:15:02):
tool for your Kitty to change their look and all that.
There are new parts of the neighborhood to explore, new
characters, and some new mischief to get into.
That'll be out August 27th on any of the additions that are
out there. Let's see, we got content

(01:15:24):
warning. That was a big PC game that came
out either late last year or earlier this year, but one of
those kind of Co-op games where you're essentially a content
team making YouTube videos essentially to where you go

(01:15:46):
underground and deal with these monsters and such that are down
there. You try and survive that as
you're making these videos, and once you get back up, you can
submit those videos to your YouTube and kind of watch the
end of product and see how many hits you get and all that to

(01:16:06):
make some money and try to keep the numbers going up to stay
alive. So yeah, one of those kind of
surprise hit games that is finally coming to consoles,
PS-5, Xbox and the Switch and Switch to, yeah, sometime next
year. All right, then we got ball

(01:16:29):
pits. This was the main Evolver
digital game that they showed off at Summer Game Fest in their
showcase. It is a weird mix of like
Arcanoid, Vampire Survivors and like base building stuff, Robo
light stuff to it. This is coming to PS-5 Xbox,

(01:16:53):
Switch in PC October 15th and Switch to will be sometime later
in the fall. So yeah, it'll also be on Game
Pass I guess. And as the the developer of Mr.
Sun's Hatbox and sort of his next game is a very different
game. So yeah, we had Ultimate sheep

(01:17:14):
Raccoon get shown off for Switch, Switch to and PC.
It'll be out sometime this winter, so follow up to of
whatever the previous game was called.
But it was like a platform competitive platforming game
where you kind of building obstacles and platforms and such

(01:17:35):
to get across this level. But here it's it's more of a
racing game, maybe their versionof like trials where you can put
up obstacles and such to either hinder your opponents or help
them, whatever. It works the same way.
You basically want to at least ensure that one person will not

(01:17:56):
make it to the end. Otherwise nobody gets points if
everybody's safe, but if somebody dies, then everybody
gets points that survives. So, so that one of those
competitive games, then we got to see Glacered, which is game
sets on a planet's yeah, Earth 65,000,000 years in the future

(01:18:21):
where the ever winter is transferred transforms the the
planet's surface into a giganticsheet of ice.
And so life has continued to survive under the the ice in the
seas below. You're controlling this like
avian creature as going around and fighting other creatures and

(01:18:41):
such. There's a bit of RPG elements to
this kind of thing. And yeah, it's coming to switch
to and PC and it's a time console exclusive on the Switch
to we'll be out sometime this holiday.
There's that. We got to see Winterboro has
come to Xbox, switching PC sometime this winter.

(01:19:05):
Undusted Letters from the Past, which is a neat little game
about basically cleaning up these kind of dirty objects.
And that adds to the the story what's going on here.
You learn the backstories behindthese objects and every chapter.
Yeah, I guess the main characters mother's past.

(01:19:28):
So you're going through like their effects and seeing like
what stuff they had and learn more about your mother and all
that kind of stuff. So looks neat.
That'll be out switching PC thisOctober.
Then we got Tiny Bookshop, whereyou kind of create a little
bookshop that hangs out I think at the beach.

(01:19:49):
So it seems like it's a trailer.So you might take it to
different locations to sell books to people as like a cozy
management kind of game that's out now for 20 bucks on
switching PC. Then they announced that Caves
of Cud is coming to Switch this winter, which is one of those
classic rogue lights kind of games or rogue like kind of

(01:20:11):
games that has been around for awhile.
Came out formally on Steam. A couple years ago.
So you have can we come to Switch at some point later this
year? I don't know how it's going to
work so much, but could be neat.Let's see.
Strange Antiquities, I believe is the sequel to Strange
Horticulture, which is a fairly popular game that's coming to

(01:20:37):
Switch in PC on September 17th. So there's that.
So then Opus Prism Peak is coming to the switch, switch to
in PC this fall. It's another one of those like
adventure games, multi like story branching, multi ending
story adventure games. So Yep, there's that.

(01:21:01):
There's a game called Gogo Town coming to everything.
PlayStation Xbox switching PC spring of 2026, sort of like a
town building simulation game. So there's that and then they
ended on the announcement that UFOs 50 is out now on the
switch. So that's one you can go check

(01:21:24):
out. That was my #2 game last year.
All worth checking out is an. Incredible.
Collection of games made to mimic an era of like the 80s.
The kind of games you would see their games influenced by that
stuff that's is just a huge variety of games.

(01:21:47):
It's 50 games and if you play them in like the order of
release, you kind of notice how they evolved their ideas and
sequels and future games and allthat kind of stuff.
That is just a really well made collection.
Oh yeah, that's one do check out.
And yeah, that was the the showcase.

(01:22:10):
I would say for me this was not really a great showcase because
I know about most of these gamesbeforehand.
Luckily some of them got dates. A lot of them are still like us
coming out later. Yeah, next year, who knows.
A lot of winters, a lot of fallsout of 2020 sixes and it's like

(01:22:34):
this didn't really seem to change a lot as well as its
still highlighting the lack of dev kits because a lot of these
are just for the switch, not theswitch to and it's like all
right. I don't know why you think Derek
you'd is not deserving of a switch to dev kits considering
the success of spelunky and all that and this this game's

(01:22:55):
reputation. But you know, Nintendo doesn't
have a ton of those to send outs, and probably less so for
indie devs as we've seen not many Indies on the Switch to
yet. So yeah.
But yeah. What year did you did you enjoy
seeing Brandon? Well.

(01:23:16):
Obviously MENA, the Hollowers, the really big one that is their
Yacht Club coming out, finally making their follow up to the
huge unprecedented success that Shovel Knight was going in
basically a completely differentdirection.
And if the Nimmo is any indication, they've basically

(01:23:36):
nailed it. So yeah, I am absolutely excited
to play that. Neverweigh that is another game
that ever since I laid eyes on it, I'm like, yeah, that this is
this is right up my alley. I got to play this.
It's got all the farm SIM stuff with the slice of life stuff.
And Oh yeah, there's a bunch of cosmic horror shit happening

(01:23:57):
too. I'm like, Yep, that's exactly
the type of game I want to play.So you know Phil?
Hint. Hint.
I might not feel. But Dan, read Hint hint in case
you're listening. Yeah, let's see.
Glacier looks pretty neat. Tiny Bookshop also looks cool.

(01:24:21):
It's kind of up my alley. Good, good, quiet, comfy game.
Opus Prism Peak definitely looksreally awesome and I'm
definitely going to take a look at that and UFO 52, being able
to just play that on a console, it just sounds great.

(01:24:42):
So yeah, there's a, but they hada bunch of really great
announcements here. Yeah.
How about you dinner? I enjoyed this.
One a little bit more than the partner direct just because
like, you know, a lot of the Indies just speak to me.
Of course, I'm going to go aheadand echo what Brandon said about
meaning the hollower. This is something that I've been
hyping for the last few years now I've befriended a bunch of

(01:25:05):
people at Yacht Club games. So like, if I can't get a code
the official way, I'm going to just, you know, use the friend
card and see how that goes. Neverwe is a game that impresses
me every time I see it. I'm not big on horror games at
all, but this one looks like it just goes the extra mile to
really make you feel something on top of just the way it's
visual style is. It looks really, really nice.

(01:25:26):
And I yeah, it's got. The gorgeous pixel art like like
the. Way it uses the purples and the
Grays and the dark colors, it just works.
So that's something I'm really excited for.
Hurdling is a game I played at GDC.
If we get a code, I'm definitelygoing to throw it Chris's way.
But it's it's, it's a game that I really, really enjoyed.
But it also had a bit of a learning curve.
Like when you see the kid, like,you know, all of a sudden like

(01:25:50):
moving the beast in front of them.
That actually took some getting used to because it's really hard
to like really move them around.Main reason being like when
you're playing the game, think of like a pool cue, right?
You have to, you know, hit the back of it.
So you know, like hit somewhere else, you have to have that same
mentality. Otherwise like you'll just
struggle moving things around. But yeah, that one definitely

(01:26:10):
looks like a whole lot of fun. I am a huge fan of the games
that Panic publishes and then that one looks great as well.
Little Kitty, big city. I don't know what this is, but I
really enjoyed that game. If it's if it's story DLC, I'll
jump in, but it looks like it's more like customization stuff.
So I don't know if I really care.
And then ball pit also looks really cool.

(01:26:31):
I did not watch any of the stuffduring STF because I didn't have
any time. So I didn't know what what this
exactly was. But now that I've seen it in
action and it looks like something I don't want to try.
Tiny bookshop is something that probably should have had more to
it just because it's it was it was a it was a shadow drop.
But yeah, looking forward to looking at that as well.

(01:26:51):
Opus Prison Peak also looks amazing.
I don't know how it'll play on Switch one.
I hope there is a Switch to update, but that one looks cool.
And then UFO 50 was a game that I didn't pay much attention to
last year, so I'm happy that's not on Switch so I can get that
shot and it's available now. So that one looks pretty cool.
But yeah, if anything, I wish this had a one more thing in

(01:27:12):
here, even if it was me the hollow way to talk about the
demo. But yeah, at at the same time,
like Nintendo is the company that decided to make this
format, so I guess I can't really complain about that.
And Oh yeah, yeah. Is this seat taken like that's
available on Switch and PC? If you're somebody who only has
like 5 minutes to play a game, this is definitely something

(01:27:32):
you'll you'll want to take a look at as well.
But yeah, that's about it for me.
Yeah. So yeah, that was a decent
enough showcase, but still not the one that people want to
know. Like what else is happening for
the Switch to this late later this year?
Like what this and the the partner direct kind of showed is

(01:27:54):
that the deficit situation is still kind of bleak at this
point. How many companies have them?
And so you're going to stuck with a lot of these being just
on the Switch in ways that's like some of them will take
advantage of the extra power of the Switch to.
But you really would like to seeupdates for these games and

(01:28:15):
upgrades to better take advantage of that.
But yeah, they're still kind of dealing with a lot of that.
And Indies seem to be at the brunt of lacking on that, which
is a shame considering I feel like the the switch to has a lot
of expensive and big games on it's now.

(01:28:38):
But at the that's the small stuff that is kind of the place
where it's lacking. I was just looking at Dapix
Legend was in the last the partner direct.
That game is like 78 gigs. It's like a third effectively
1/3 of your your hard drive space, maybe even more of that.

(01:29:00):
So they are at that point where you can fill up your hard drive
with probably like 3 games if you like your big budget, big
sized games. So yeah, that's kind of the
unfortunate thing with the way the switch to library is right
now. Oh yeah, as your Nintendo

(01:29:24):
showcase for now. We'll see if we get any sort of
Nintendo Direct in the the next month or two so we can get dates
on Metroid Prime for this. Still supposed to be out this
year. And like, I think they got one
or two other games they may haveout by the end of the year
besides Pokémon. But yeah, that's going to end up

(01:29:46):
doing it for the show this week.So thank you to Brandon and
Daniel for joining. We'll be back next week with a
new slate of news and things to talk about as the summer trudges
on. Madam will be out this week.
I'm trying to see what else we got coming out.
Yeah, there's Rah Rah Boom and the Senio Saga Hell Blade 2 for

(01:30:07):
the PS-5, as well as that remaster of the first game for
PS-5 on the 12th. The 14th has Dragon Drive.
I played a little bit of that demo and it's like I don't have
the desk space for it. So I was just using the I like
shorts here, the joy cons on my shorts, and I felt like I had

(01:30:30):
perpetually greasy hands I was trying to wipe off.
I could not really get great hold on the controls a ton
there. But yeah, it seems all right
otherwise. Let's see, Madden's out this
week. Midnight Murder Club is out in
one point. O for PS-5 and PC.

(01:30:52):
Bendy, Lone Wolf and off for theswitching PC.
That's the Undertale style game that's coming out after being
sort of out in freeware mode fora good 15 years or so.
So some interesting stuff comingout this week.
But yeah, if you in enjoy the show, if you let friends and

(01:31:15):
family know, they should check it out and select strangers that
are also interested in a a variety of games that are coming
out. But yeah, thank you all for
tuning in. I hope you have a good week
ahead. We will see you all next time.
Have a good one.