Episode 7: Logic Bombs

As an intermezzo game, Seth chose Logic Bombs, Matthew Motosis' new popcorn puzzler.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This last week we played Logic Bombs, which is a game that just
came out last week to the day. In fact, it was released by
Matthew Mitosis. It's his first game and it is
just for kind of bog standard popcorn puzzler Tick Ross clone,
but with its own set of rules. Obviously some interesting stuff

(00:24):
about it that I think Sesh mentioned.
I think this game was made with entire cross compatibility for
the Game Boy, which is kind of cool.
Game Boy dance I think. It's Game Boy.
Just just. Game Boy, Yeah.
Oh. That's sick.
Did it make like did he release like actual cartridges for it?
I don't think. So but if you bought the game in
the directory there should be a Game Boy ROM.

(00:48):
Yeah, that's very cool. You could just flash the ROM
onto a cartridge and play it on a Game Boy.
Anyway, kind of cool, but it's not a little bit gimmicky.
I don't mind just jumping straight into gameplay, the meat
and potatoes as it were. I want to hear your guys's
opinions first. What worked and what did I?

(01:14):
Don't think I really want to. Go I was I was trying not to hog
the conversation because I feel like I do that a lot.
So I just. Like you feel like you might
because I mean, I didn't. I only, I guess Full disclosure
is that I only got to level 6 and that was with Thomas helping
me. So no, I did.
I don't, I don't feel like it got very far to like to have

(01:38):
like a legitimate opinion on allof this, you know what I mean?
And I'm mostly just out like a puzzle game player.
I mean, I think that's still a legitimate opinion.
I guess so talk. About your talk about your
experience up to the point that you quit.
What made you quit? What did you like up to that
point? Why did you quit in spite of
whatever you liked? That touches on stuff I wrote

(01:59):
for the questions. Is that OK?
I, I, I will say like part of mylike, I guess discussion points
in this because I'm kind of likeyou where I don't feel like I
have much to say even though I played it more.
But I was more curious about just kind of like 5000 foot
overview design stuff is kind ofwhat I was thinking about

(02:22):
talking about. So if that is like a part of
your like analysis here, I'd sayjust go ahead and say it.
Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out how to like properly dissect
this because like I'm not like alike I'm such not, I'm so not a

(02:43):
puzzle guy that like I don't actually know what procross is.
I've seen the word, but like, I don't know anything about it at
all. Like if if he showed me a
procross game and said it was Sudoku, I'd be like, yeah, sure,
you know what I mean? Like that's that's how little
I'm like locked into the puzzle scene as it were.

(03:06):
Even that being said and what I'm about to say, I feel like
might be irrelevant in respect to like the intent of like the
game and what it's supposed to be.
But like I probably could have done with more brain to
tutorials, like tutorials, you know what I mean?

(03:27):
Like, yeah, personally, but like, I don't know if that would
make it a better game 'cause I feel like, and this, I guess
this does touch into like what Iwrote for the questions.
I feel like that may be like theintent of like these types of
games because like you guys and also other people that like I
googled, we're getting through the game just fine and like

(03:48):
learning all the rules. So I feel like making it more
like handholding would. I feel like it would, although
maybe it's putting too much too many words into other people's
mouths, but maybe it would like upset them.
You know what I mean? If it was a high.
Gator ring like that. IA 100% agree with you and it

(04:09):
does kind of get into my answer to the question later on if you
guys want to keep going down this path or not, but I I agree
completely. Let's skip a little bit just so
we don't tiptoe too early into it, Sasha, unless you have
something you wanted to say. I can, I have like a specific
thing that we can talk about, I think.
No, here you go. I don't want to.

(04:29):
Yeah. I don't want to pose too much on
the questions, so that's fine. Maybe less specific than I
thought, but I think I much morethan you guys, if I had to
guess, am a big fan of a term that I don't know if I invented
or not. But like I said, I call this
game a popcorn puzzler. Other games that might fall into
that are your, you know, your standard games like sudoku, Ken

(04:52):
Ken's crossword puzzles, that kind of thing.
But in terms of other video games, there's like islands of
insight, Isles of sea and Sky kind of falls under that.
The Witness kind of falls under that.
It's a much broader category than like those specific puzzle
games, obviously, but I considerall of these games popcorn
puzzlers. I fucking love popcorn puzzlers.

(05:13):
There is like something very, very satisfying to me about just
sitting down and like, especially if I'm at work or I'm
like waiting in an airport or something, just sitting down
solving a couple puzzles maybe. I like fail the first couple
times I try it. I jump back into it later.
It's something I enjoyed. It's something I've been always
enjoyed. Now in that category, there's

(05:36):
obviously a very wide breadth ofgames 'cause like I said, I
mentioned Witness, but this gameand Picross are in there.
When you have a game like this that or, or like even Picross
that is distilling everything down to a single thing of like
these logic puzzles. Do you guys like that or is it

(05:59):
fundamentally worse just becauseit doesn't have those like
broader world situations? So my answer to this is it's
really just a matter of how it'sset up because I, I feel like a

(06:20):
way that I'm kind of reframing your question in my head right
now is like, how do I derive satisfaction from a game like
this? And to me, that is just entirely
dependent on how the game is, isset up in order to have me solve
it. Because the thing that I like
about these games and this game is that feeling of like getting

(06:44):
into that 100% like focused flowstate, meditative thinking
aspect of my brain that I can just like tap into.
Like when I'm sitting there fucking coding Tommy body from
midnight till 3:00 AM and all I'm doing is just feeling like
I'm staring into the matrix as Itype away.
I, it's like the exact same feeling I get playing a game

(07:07):
like this. And if a game is capable of
keeping me engaged enough that it can do that, it, it doesn't
matter what the mechanics surrounding it are, that that is
like the one thing that I want to get out of these games.
And this game, I, I won't say itdid it, but it wasn't far away

(07:28):
either. It was.
It was very close, close to no cigar.
Yeah, I feel like my experience with it is every now and then I
would get that. And because there are like quite
a few different. Rules.
That, that feeling that flow state pretty regularly feels
different and kind of off putting in a way because you

(07:52):
want to be in the flow state, but there's always like a new
thing that you're tracking that is disrupting your flow state
even though you're still in it. It's quite strange.
Yeah, and that's kind of what I was I was poking at earlier, I
think in the Discord channel is that you say you feel like this
game is stripped down. I feel like there's like maybe

(08:13):
one layer too much to where likethe mental stack necessary to
like keep track of some of thesepuzzles is just like really
hard. Because like, I don't know about
you, but when I was doing some of the Row 2 ones, if, if I felt
like I was like if I had one or two walls misclicked, it was
like, I'm not even bothered. I'm just going to restart.

(08:34):
Like there's no reason to comb over this whole thing.
Like it is literally easier to just restart the entire level
than it would be to like try andgo over all of the rules
presented to me to find like theone or two incorrect things that
I might have. And that, I think, is the thing
that kind of gets in the way of me being able to get into that

(08:55):
like flow state playing this game.
It's so weird because like, I can't even imagine the flow
state you're describing, you know what I mean?
But that I feel like that's moreabout me than anything else.
Well, so like like imagine. You're.
I mean like imagine you're solving a puzzle and you have

(09:15):
like 9, 9 rows that all are a nine.
Like there's nine walls, one empty.
And if you find one empty then you get 9 walls instantaneously
because you know, all the rest are walls.
That's the kind of flow state where you solve one thing and
then like a like a Jenga tower falling it all just, yeah, it
falls into place. That that, that's a pick cross.

(09:37):
That's that's probably why I've never experienced.
It yeah, I, I don't think it's, I, I don't think it's specific
to pick cross. I'd say it's true.
Most Pokémon puzzlers like. It's definitely like Sudoku's
island. I actually, I actually feel like
I have like a decent insight into why it is like difficult to

(09:59):
find that like waterfall thing. But let's let's wrap up Seth's
like question here 1st and then I could talk about that because
it's kind of a separate thing. So I'm curious.
Yeah, Yeah. Go ahead.
It was basically is this game compared to other kind of

(10:20):
popcorn puzzlers like the Witness for example, as like a
high end, is this game fundamentally worse because it
doesn't have broader ideas that it's shooting?
For. Yes, I can answer that question.
So I'll try to answer it directly without going into like
UIUX too much because I think that's the main issue with this
game. So I think the main problem with
this game and that why it's way worse than those is because they

(10:41):
there's too much. There's two things.
There's too much reductive reasoning that shows up
immediately and it's reductive reasoning that's like advanced
Sudoku shit and it's beginning this game shit because like
Sudoku, you don't need to know how to do like X wings or XY
wings, if you guys even know what I'm talking about to be
able to solve like easy to medium Sudoku's.
Whereas this game you're alreadyinto insane reductive is like
insane reductive. Like you need to try a path and

(11:04):
then go down that path one or two steps before you go back,
which is like advanced pit crossshit.
Like super hyper advanced end game pit cross.
And this game does it in like fucking puzzle 8.
It's crazy. Yeah, this game, definitely, it
starts off at way too high a level.
Yeah, and like without, like without getting into the
questions really at all. I think the I did not have this

(11:28):
feeling with pit cross, maybe because it's simpler, but I
might get into it later. There's some fucking hard pit
crosses out there, but in any case, oh shit, I lost what I was
saying. Have you guys ever played the
Monograms so very similar to Pick Ross?
I thought that this was what Pick Ross was.

(11:48):
It's very similar unless other pick cross games have this where
like where pick cross just givesyou like the total number of
like things in a column or a row.
Monograms will tell you if they're broken up like it'll
have two. Numbers.
OK, pick cross. Is that 2?
Jesus I haven't played Pic Ross in forever so I was just basing
it off of this game. This.

(12:09):
Game, I mean keep in mind, keep in mind there's like 15 or 16 or
fucking 20 different pic Ross games and many of them have
additional mechanics more than just creating walls.
Also go ahead, Jordan. I was gonna say, usually there's
Pic Ross and then they have likemega pic Ross, super pic Ross
and that's kind of the additional mechanics that Seth

(12:29):
said. Because like color pick cross
where in addition exactly you have to do colors in the squares
and all kinds of stuff. Yeah.
So like a huge thing that was missing for me in this game is
that like the what I would describe is maybe like the core
part of pick Ross, which is thatyou're drawing a picture, right?
So like that can help you, that can help you like direct some of

(12:51):
your choices if you can like spatially reason it out really
well. But this game does not have that
at all. Well, I can, I can tell you
being a big pick crosser, I think almost any time that you
started to try to actually Draw Something with your pick cross,
that's when you're going to makea mistake in reasoning and fuck

(13:12):
up. But I I have an issue with that
for a different reason that'll probably bring up in the next
next category. I mean, you definitely don't
want to try and draw like pixel art when you're playing pick
cross, but it can definitely help you like form patterns and
make like slightly more informeddecisions in a way that's just
totally absent in this game. I think it's like just a cool

(13:34):
gamification of the puzzle for Big Cross, where like as you're
making it you're like, oh shit, it's a snail, and then you just
finished making the snail. Yeah.
It's, if nothing else, at least it's like kind of a satisfying
ending to the puzzle. Yeah.
Oh for sure. I mean this game felt like it
should have like when you finisha level it felt like it should
have been something more grand. But like I feel like it just
kind of happens too quickly and like it's not cool enough to

(13:55):
give a shit about. Yep.
Also, I just remembered what I was going to say.
Really responsible stuff that I felt like this game had an
inverted learning curve. It's like, I guess you could
just say it's yeah, I like, I guess you could say it's steep,
but it's really just like a mountain, like like a front
loaded mountain where it's ludicrously difficult at the
start and then I won't say it gets.

(14:17):
Like amazing. Easy.
But. Yeah.
Yeah, I actually agree. I I actually agree, I was having
an easier time with the row two puzzles than I was in like the
middle part of row 1 I think. Yeah, 'cause I'm trying to avoid
my question, but that's like oneof my issues with the game where
like the first couple puzzles you that that's true for

(14:39):
basically every row. You're gonna really struggle
when it introduces the new mechanic because it's not
teaching you any heuristics. You just kind of figure it out.
And then once you figure it out,the puzzles from that point are
going to be a lot easier. So one thing I was going to
bring up is I was like kind of, I was trying to like think about

(15:03):
puzzle games again from like A5 thousandth of view.
And I was thinking about those different ways that they can
apply, like cognitive styles, like cognitive thinking methods.
And I was wondering what it was about certain games like

(15:23):
Zaktronics, games that I absolutely fucking love, versus
other puzzle games that I bounceoff of, like Tal's Principle.
I didn't bounce off that becauseI didn't like it, but I did
bounce off it nonetheless. And I was thinking that I feel

(15:44):
like a lot of puzzle games operate on some kind of like
slider between spatial reasoningand linear reasoning.
And so one thing that I struggled with in this game is I
feel like as I got older, I got way better at linear reasoning

(16:04):
and way worse at spatial reasoning.
Like I was so good at fucking chess and shit when I was a kid.
And then as an adult, I was likestruggling with organic
chemistry because of all the spatial thinking you have to do.
And but I got so much better at linear reasoning by programming
and shit like that. So like flip-flopped.
And one thing I found in this game was that I really, really

(16:26):
struggled with finding the firstmove because I felt like the
first move in this game, it's like it's very like spatially
oriented where you kind of have to look at it and make sense of
it and kind of process it in your head in a more visual way.
And then once you find that first like given move, then it's

(16:46):
just kind of like a, a, the, thefucking floodgates open and you
can just go from there because it it like it, it morphs into
something more linear, linearly reasoned out from there.
So I was just, I was just curious what you guys feel like.
Like do you prefer things that are more like spatial or linear?
And I mean, there's like way other, there's way more shit

(17:06):
than that. Like you can get into like
linguistic reasoning and shit, but I was just thinking about
those two earlier. I mean, this game, I didn't
really feel like I needed much spatial reasoning, but I think
the worst thing about this game is how bad the UI is because
like you should be able to make checkpoints and shit like that
and be able to load the checkpoint, which I think, which

(17:29):
is basically I don't, I don't think it would solve the problem
as you described it, but I thinkit would solve a spatial
reasoning problem. When you say checkpoint, are you
talking about like practical Nexus saves?
Basically, so like you'd be at apoint in the puzzle and then you
click save and then you you do your line of reasoning and go,
oh, that was wrong. And then you just click load
instead of having to redo the whole puzzle because you don't
know where you were at that point in time.

(17:51):
That would be such a better option than the the quote UN
quote hint system that they provided.
Yeah, yeah. And.
I was just going to say like this, that's like a big thing
that like actually pissed me offabout the game.
And it's why I was saying like if I knew I had made a mistake
deep into a puzzle, it was easier for me to just fucking

(18:11):
restart the whole goddamn. Exactly.
Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest follies of this game,
besides it being like the difficulty being like dog shit,
is to like think of all UI related issues.
But when a puzzle game is basically just like UI and
logic, you kind of have to have a good UI or else it's going to
be fucking trash. And I feel like a lot of that

(18:33):
stuff is really not difficult toimplement.
So like for example, in Sudoku's, if you ever play a
Sudoku game on your phone, everysingle one of them that isn't
like some weird Chinese fucking scam or whatever is going to
have an option where you can write small numbers in the
corners. And like, what do you do in

(18:53):
Sudoku? You have two boxes that could
either be 5 or 7, and you write them there and you know those
two boxes are covered. Why doesn't this game let you do
that for that exact scenario that comes up repeatedly with
empties and walls? They have that in fucking
crossword puzzles even. Yep, yeah, it's penciling it in.
I mean, that's a fucking that's,that's something like shit
that's older than computers, basically.

(19:16):
Yeah, something like that reallybugs me when yeah, I just feel
like it would not have been hardto implement even with the
limitations of trying to make itGBA compatible.
Or yeah. Yeah, I was thinking that I
without like knowing too much about like the technological
side of having to like want to port this game to the Game Boy,

(19:37):
which which is definitely an exercise in Rule of Cool, but
also like very masturbatory and probably held this game back in
some aspects, in a lot of ways. Yeah, so I could I could speak.
There's another game that's not like this game at all, but I
think it's called Void Genesis. It's something like that.
It's a like it's kind of like Smash TV and that like you do a

(19:59):
single screen and then you move to the next thing.
And that game was kind of the same in this game.
And that that game they also released on Sega Genesis at the
same time. But the Sega Genesis version was
like a reduced version with likethat had to abide by like pallet
limitations and stuff like that.And the PC version was like a
more fleshed out, better controls because it wasn't
limited to a three button game kind of shit like that.
So like just because you're going to do a dual release
doesn't mean you need to have them be parody across both.

(20:22):
Like you can be like, OK, the PCplayers want these features,
give them that. And if you want to play it on
Game Boy, you're going to expectthese to not have the same
quality of life because it's thefucking Game Boy.
So to make the PC version like reductive because of that is
like just asin. And I mean, to be fair, they
they did include stuff that wasn't in the Game Boy, right?
Like they had that like the modern shader thing that you
could use that quite frankly looked like fucking AI

(20:46):
interpolated dog shit. It was really bad.
But it, I mean, like there was obviously a consideration made
for Steam release versus Game Boy release.
Yeah. And I, I, I don't give anybody.
I don't give them a pass for that.
Like I think that that's just full docking for me.
No, I, I mean, I, I think that'sfair.

(21:07):
But like, I guess my point of even bringing that up is like,
if you were going to, if you knew that you were going to have
discrete releases where you've got like one that's obviously
for the Game Boy and one that's obviously for Steam, Like why
didn't you include more Qol shitin the Steam release?
Like because you've already added something.

(21:27):
So you're obviously not seeking to have like 100% parity between
the two versions. So.
Agreed. Why not let it fly?
Agreed, I can understand trying to keep the features at parity
for both versions because like if you make them two different
it's basically like making two different games.

(21:48):
Which I guess technically he already was, but even more so.
Yeah, but again, like let's how many people are playing this
game on a fucking game? Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. So I mean, I don't disagree with
you. One of the original points,
which is the Game Boy version held the game back and it
probably would have been a better outcome.
Like more like you guys probablywould have had a better

(22:11):
experience with the game. It sounds like if it was just
concentrated on a desktop. Oh yeah.
Like not desktop but like a modern release I guess.
No, I. Agree, I mean can can someone
also tell me if if this game is not available in cartridges,
what's the point of making it Game Boy compatible?

(22:31):
You can slash it onto a cartridge.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can.You can absolutely do that.
I have a blank Super Nintendo cartridge that Jeff from Tappers
put something on. I don't have a Super Nintendo
anymore and I don't remember what the fuck was on there, but
it's it's you just need like a very cheap piece of hardware and

(22:52):
you can flash ROMs on the cartridges pretty easily.
You could do a boot like one or you could just do like one of
like the flash carts that just has like all the games in the
world on it and then just load it onto that.
OK, sure. Yeah.
I don't know, it just feels likenostalgic to me.
No, it is. And yeah, again, it was, it's
100% just like it was just, and I respect this because I like

(23:13):
when people do this shit. The guy just thought, I wonder
if I could port this to the GameBoy.
And then he made it happen. And do I think it's extremely
cool? Yes.
Did it result in what is probably a worse product?
Also yes. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I mean, one of the reasonswhy I was interested in the game
because he also released it alongside Game Boy.
So if it would have been a good game too, it would have been
fucking sick. I shouldn't say good game.

(23:34):
If it would have been a game that I enjoyed, it would have
been fucking sick. This feels like a good enough
pivot into art audio. You got UI if if sesh you want
to bring up some of your stand out bits.
I mean I thought that nothing was good about this game in this
section. Like literally nothing.
I thought the the pixel art was shit that like we could make
easily. There is no music which is a

(23:55):
fucking sin. I'd rather have you have shitty
fucking music that the guy made with his mouth then have no
music. I think that's just like
unforgivable and it's sound effects or whatever.
I will give it a little bit of credit.
I think you've been a little tooharsh on the visual.
At least I think as far as program art goes, it's pretty
good. I.

(24:15):
Actually disagree, I actually think the game looks fucking
horrendous. I'm a Jordan.
Yeah, I mean. I'm not saying like the fidelity
of the game is great. I just mean like I've seen so
much program art in so many different projects and like, I
personally think that logic bombs is like leaps and bounds
ahead of like some of the shit that I've seen somewhat the

(24:36):
amalgamations of like different art styles and like clip art and
like, I don't know, like I've seen it's just I can't call it
bad. I.
Mean I so yes, like I'm not going to hold it up to the same
like shitty substandard of like the worst of the worst scraping
the bottom of the barrel shit. But I mean, is a 2 out of 10

(25:00):
really that much better than a one out of 10, you know?
I mean there is, there's barely even any art he made like 4
sprites. Yeah, but I feel like that's all
you need for a game like this. Like I like, I feel like it.
I don't know. I just I've I've, well, I
hesitate to call it bad, I guessis what I'm.
Saying here's here's my thing, here's my thing is that in a

(25:20):
puzzle game that is so like stripped down of anything other
than just the puzzles, like the thing that makes some of these
games really good, like games like Baba is you is like you
allow some degree of like charm to bleed through through the
art, through the music, through just like the overall like

(25:42):
presentation and. Baba's you is not a beautiful.
Game like it's it's programmer art, it's OK, it's a little
better than that, but like just that tiny extra degree of like
effort that could have gone intoit to just have a little extra
presentation to give me a littleextra charm when this game has

(26:02):
00 absolutely. I mean, I don't disagree with
any of that. It's just, it's, I just, I don't
know, it's just consistent and not like offensively bad, at
least to me. Yeah, no, I mean he he did a
great job at making the literal minimal amount of visual work
that he needed to have a non cluttered screen that is very

(26:25):
visually clear to the player. Nothing about this game is ever
going to sell merch or anything like that though.
It is so forgettable. No, yeah, and.
I'll. Say I have 3 little comments.
Number one, you know, if I'm looking at this through the lens
of a game that was released on the Game Boy and came out when
the Game Boy came out, I think it would have been fine.

(26:46):
Like I probably would have played that absolute fuck shit
load out of this game if it cameout when I was a kid on the Game
Boy #2 although there aren't a lot of assets.
Like I kind of agree with Ben individually.
Like for example, I have the game pulled up and I'm just
looking at how each Sprite fits into the box and how it changes
when like you create a path fromthe bomb to the cat, for

(27:10):
example. Like I think the way all of it
fits individually and doesn't disrupt the puzzly natures is
good. And that's a very soft good,
very soft good. Like I hesitate to go above like
6 out of 10 in that quality. I guess here's my here's here's
like my final take on it is thatI'm still with Jordan here in
the sense that the like pixel art and stuff in this game is

(27:35):
the absolute bare fucking minimum to not be dreadful like
it is. It is pure function.
It is absolutely pure function and no charm.
Yeah, I yeah, I agree. It is a bare minimum to the
point where I would not like reduce my rating on account for
our assets, it is like exactly A5 or A5 and a half million.

(27:56):
See, but The thing is like, I feel like like the if something
doesn't look good like this, like you have to rely on things
being greater than the sum of their parts, right?
So like if there if there was music, if there was like some
scrolling text telling me that like I was a fucking knight

(28:17):
rescuing a Princess and I had todo fucking puzzles to do it or
whatever. Like just that tiny extra push
to make it more than just like some guys.
It's just the most low, most loweffort shit ever.
It's like the guy spent an afternoon doing it, slammed it
down on its desk, was like, all right, that's good enough.
I'm going to design the puzzles now and then just never thought

(28:39):
about it again. And I I can't praise something
for being like bare minimum effort.
I mean I I I understand I don't disagree, but like even then I
still can't call it like specifically the word bad.
Yeah, like for example, if you look at some of the sprites in
life lessons, for example, some of those things look fucking

(28:59):
terrible. They are.
So much more memorable and charming than anything that this
game even tried to do actually. I love.
Hindsight. Hindsight is not.
Isn't that memorable because they're bad though?
Doesn't matter. It's still memorable, that's the
thing. Well, yeah, but it's still, it's
still bad. It's still like a tactical
Nexus. Has pretty bad.
Art and pretty bad music but I fucking love it because it's

(29:19):
like cheesy MIDI bad. Maybe it's just like me being
semantic, but like I'd personally describe this game as
bland as opposed to. Bad, I think yeah, I yeah, in my
to me, that's basically the samething.
I think bland is worse than bad.Yeah, I actually, I actually
tend to agree with that. Like and again, like if it was

(29:40):
just, if it was bland, but like it was like a whole package of
bland, that would be one thing. But without like, anything
beyond the bland pixel art, no music, no like even attempted a
story or whatever. Yeah, well, like, I don't know.
Like, although I think this gameshould have music, like
objectively I think it should have music.

(30:01):
I think for me, something that pushes something into bad
territory over bland territory, where bland does not equal bad
to me is when you put an asset in and I actively don't want to
listen to it. So like, for example, in this
game, even though I think some of the tactile sounds that play
when you like place a wall or whatever, I think it's like

(30:23):
they're not horribly designed, but I still don't like to hear
them. Like in a sense I should like
have a good feeling when I put awall down, but that's not the
feeling that I get when I place the wall because I don't like
the sound. Sure.
I mean, go ahead, Ben. So I mean, if you're going to
continue off this point, you should because I was about to go
on an engine. Yeah, I was just going to say,

(30:46):
if you have something like that that's bad, make it good.
Don't erase it. Like I think, I think if you
erase it, that's the worst thingthat you can do, the absolute
worst thing. Because I'd rather have people
do bad things that I need to work around rather than be like,
there's nothing here you didn't even try.
What the fuck? So here's here's also how I'm
going to think about it. Right is, to me high effort, but

(31:11):
bad is often times more commendable in my mind than no
effort in bland. And I'm gonna draw upon a very
specific example here, which is playing, oh, what's that fucking
game called? The Bananagrams thing that we

(31:31):
play online? The drawing, the fucking
drawing. What's that?
Called. Garlic phone.
Garlic phone. Garlic phone.
Yeah, so in guardic phone, right, like it is fucking
hilarious when someone like put some amount of effort to draw
their prompt, even though it looks dog shit.

(31:53):
And then you get to waters and he drew like a circle and four
lines with like a huge Dick and didn't even try at the prompt.
So like that's it's, that is as bland and low effort as it can
possibly get. And it's not anything that your
brain is ever going to register and it's not commendable.
So that's kind of that's kind ofwhere my head is at is.

(32:16):
To me it feels like it feels like the better example is you
tell someone to draw an apple and they draw a banana like
that. It might be like a perfectly
fine drawing of a banana, but that's not what you ask them to
draw. Yeah, but that's that's
different from the example I putforth too, because I mean, I'm
saying someone, someone, someoneactually put effort into drawing

(32:39):
the prompt. They can't draw for shit.
It looks fucking terrible versussome guy who just drew a stick
figure with a Dick on it, even if the prompt had nothing to do
with that. Yeah.
So I guess when I'm talking about this part specifically, I
might be putting like too much context that might be
unwarranted because like the context that like I think about

(32:59):
when I'm talking about this is like I think about Matthew
Batosa specifically and like a kind of good kind of like the
journey he went through to like make this game.
So from I understand he's like afull time YouTube and he just
really loved the Daktronics games and he just decided to
pick up programming and I don't know, like how long it took him.

(33:20):
I imagine it took him probably apretty long time to like learn
all the skills to make this game.
And then when I think about thatand they're like, how much of
that time could he spare to learn how to like make art?
That that's the reason why I feel like I'm pretty forgiving
of what he came up with is because like all that context

(33:41):
that might be unwarranted in terms of like a, an analysis,
but it's just I can't really separate it in my mind.
I that's totally fine for like your perspective, you know, like
I just, I, I'll never forgive not trying.
I would much rather him have shitty music and like shitty
side border art or something that he drew and iterated on
once or twice and then be like, Oh, it sucks.

(34:02):
Like the life lessons music, like it's, it was fun to be
there, even though like it was, it was like fucking like ear
bleeding like because it's just,it's just fun to be around.
If it was just silence, it wouldbe weird and you'd be like, you
didn't even try. I don't know, at least for me.
I guess for me, like I I think it's really hard to say that it
like it's like no effort art because like I've been to like
so many game jams, also so many like game development classes

(34:23):
where I've I've seen like true, like sloth and like true, like
what the fuck, Why are you here?And like this game is like so
far above that. Like that's just I don't know
what kind of like colors. It kind of like defines like the
the minimum quote UN quote score.
I could like rate. I mean, I would, I don't know, I

(34:48):
just, I mean if there's only going to be a grand total of
like like how many assets are inthis game, like less than 15,
less than 20 probably total. Why not put that extra effort
into like make them look good? Either that or just like make

(35:08):
some more fucking assets that just look equally shit.
Like, I don't know, I I just can't, I can't get over the
feeling that like I would, I would rather I would rather read
a fucking term paper from someone who can barely from
Chris Smith. I love you, Chris.

(35:29):
I would rather read a term paperfrom Chris Smith than some dude
who just typed a prompt in the ChatGPT and copy and pasted that
because I I appreciate like the effort that goes into it.
And there's just there's there'sno amount of effort that felt
like it oozes from the art assets in this game.
And I don't know, I just like I can't get over.
That well, I feel like there waseffort at least to make it

(35:50):
consistent in style, which I do,which is the part I appreciate
about it cuz obviously the fidelity is 0, but like it was
just, I don't know. I just felt like it just, it
looked exactly how I think he wanted it to look.
Sure. It all looks.
It all looks consistent because there's like, again, less than
15 assets. It's not hard to keep things

(36:10):
consistent when you only have like a few things to keep
consistent. Yeah, but I feel like just the
decision of being minimal is like to its benefit, it's and it
plays into the strengths of the developer specifically.
Like, I'm making a lot of assumptions if I say that, but
I'm willing to bet that he's nota good artist.
Sure. Yeah.

(36:31):
And I mean, I guess I do have tolike once again remind myself
that he did want to put this game on a Gameboy, so.
But Gameboy can do more than this game did so.
Yeah, for sure. And then also he had that extra
filter mode which I. Don't.
I don't know what he was thinking with that, but.
It looked even worse. Yeah, like it.

(36:52):
Like I said, it just looked likefucking AI art interpolation on
his fucking. 6 pixel art. I only bring that up to give
credit to like your argumentation because like that
is an area where he could have done more flourish and it still
would have fit like just as longas like just don't like animate
anything but like having like better graphics in that extra

(37:15):
filter mode would appreciate it.I think that's what it is that
he needed fucking like single frame animation switching to
make the whole boards feel alivebecause that's what tactical.
Next has where it's just. Like that single frame, like
it's just a single frame of likeleft foot, right foot, left
foot, right foot, like that's but it makes it feel like so
much more alive, Yeah. Yeah, I think.
You're right, yeah. I think like anything along

(37:38):
those lines in the vein of trying to make it feel a little
bit more alive would definitely help because I think 1 area
where it definitely loses pointsfor me.
I don't quite know if this could, maybe this would count as
narrative, but to me, and maybe this is a bit silly, but I've
played a lot of pic Ross. The best part of pic Ross is
when you finish it and you finally realize what you were

(38:00):
drawing the entire time, like, oh, I made a flower.
Oh, I made a house. How cool.
And when I like when this game first got sent in the channel, I
was like Bomberman. I like Bomberman.
And I would expect some of that to play through a little bit.
And you have the, the only thingyou get is at the very end when
everything explodes and goes like you're hitting a high

(38:24):
score. There's no, there's no score.
You're not earning anything. I, I feel no sense of
satisfaction when the bombs go off, when the game is called
logic bombs, something should happen.
It should. There should be anything.
Anything. So I 100% agree and I'll even
take it a step further and say that when I solved the puzzle, I
was actively mad because one thing, and this is AUI thing

(38:48):
that I that for the life of me Icould not figure out or stand
because I feel like if you gave me this guy's code, I could have
written this button for him in like literally 5 minutes.
So in the screenshot that I posted there, that's I think
it's, it's either a later row one puzzle or somewhere in row

(39:08):
2. I saw the solution like almost
as soon as I opened the puzzle, I was like OK, and the word
inclined being there kind of again gave it away.
So I knew exactly what I needed to do.
So I went click, click, click, click, click.
And then I had to spend fucking like 45 seconds just drawing all
of the fucking X's and getting annoyed when it would transition

(39:29):
to removing the X's even though I was holding it down.
Why is there not a fucking like just add X to all empty button
again I. Don't know why you need to
define. Empty.
OK, so this actually there's a button in the lower right which
is in my I don't know if you guys ever clicked on it, but

(39:49):
it's in my opinion, this is the most useless button of all time.
Yeah, that button, that button could have been used as like a
fill, like, I don't know, something, something could have
been done other than having the button that he actually.
I think that's a Game Boy thing.Oh, is it?
Because you know how like sometimes you want to swap jump
between B&A or something like that.
I think if someone's like, why does be cancelled and you press

(40:11):
that button? So I think it's only, I think
that's a Game Boy feature like first and foremost.
I I honestly. No, I agree.
No, I. Agree.
Like why? Why does it need to be on the
gameplay screen? Why isn't there like a separate
settings menu for like global settings like that?
Kind of like where where the filters are, like the where you
can change the way the game looks.
I don't have anything. Oh the filters are good answer.

(40:34):
Oh, is it on the ice cream too? Oh is it?
Fuck, I think. You're right, you open like a
hamburger menu and then that opens that up if I remember
correctly. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it has a
hamburger menu. Oh, you're saying you could
change that filter? No, you can.
You don't even change the filterin a hamburger menu, you just
change it in the the four options on the corners.

(40:54):
Oh, I think I did it in the hamburger menu, but yeah, now
you said yeah, click it on the slime.
Guy Well, I do, yeah. So there is an alternate
settings menu, right? Or like, did I have management
of that? Yeah.
So that's what I'm saying. Like these, that button could
have just been moved to that settings panel permanently and
then that frees up a spot for something that could.

(41:16):
Actually be useful. Like this is the number this
goes into like part of my answerto the question, but it's also
part of the UI, so I should bring it up here.
I wish that button was replaced with a button that would just
bring up a list. Like it would just cover the
screen That and you could dismiss it when you could toggle
it on, dismiss it whenever you want.
It would just bring up an overlay that just shows all of
the rules that you've learned upto this point and show what all

(41:39):
the icons mean. Because like, I remember when I
was asking for help, I didn't it, it occurred to me when you
guys were explaining the answer to me that I didn't really know
like what a bomb was or what a slime was or like a cat or
whatever the fuck it was. Like I didn't really know what
they were like at all. And I still don't honestly.
I just never bothered to like, learn what they are.

(42:03):
I mean I to go back to the art, I didn't even realize the bombs
were fucking bombs for a while. Yes, same.
Yeah. Oh, yeah, that was another one
thing. Like, wouldn't you?
Wouldn't I? When I was asking for a
solution, you were like, make sure like the bomb is like this.
Like that's a bomb. Yeah, exactly.
Which is fucked up. OK, I.
Actually know that's the. Title of the game.

(42:24):
So here's the thing, like I was,I was writing all that defense
for the visuals, but now that I see the screenshot in front of
me like I do like I just wish there was like a legend like.
Jerk. Then there's a bunch of the
screen again. Fuck the Game Boy people, let
them fucking deal with it. But we have a bunch of the
fucking screen that you could douse.
Use it. Yeah, I'd be, I'd be.

(42:48):
I'd be interested to know how many people who bought this
game, flashed it onto a Game Boycart and actually played.
It there's no way more digits isthat.
I would not be surprised if it was just actual 0.
Zero. Yeah, that's what I thought to
say. I was going to say single digit,
and that includes 0, yeah. There's no, I mean I no way.
I will say I will say like with a lot of this UI stuff, I feel

(43:10):
like the Game Boy wasn't even a a huge part of the issue with
some of it because like. Oh, no controls.
For example, I don't even think it uses the left and right
bumpers at all. Oh wait, Game Boy didn't.
Have that Game Boy didn't have. It Oh God, you know what the
thought that just entered into my head that I don't want to let
flee is it is it is. So you said the fact that

(43:33):
there's no music in this game isa sin because it's a puzzle
game. I'm saying the fact that there's
no music in this game is a sin because he put it into the
fucking Game Boy. The Game Boy sound trip is so
fucking sick. And he was just like, I don't
need music. Like what the fuck?
Dude, yeah. I mean, I've heard the sound,
the songs, the fucking vert madewith the Game Boy.
It's like inexcusable. Oh yeah.
I mean, especially like, like I don't know when I exactly want

(43:56):
to talk about this, but like when the game is actively trying
to tell you to sit back and relax and just solve puzzles,
like I want some fucking music playing when I'm relaxing.
Kick Cross has every fucking game like this has.
Yep, Zach Tronics game says fucking awesome has music.
Oh yeah dude, fucking codecs andall chemical engineering.
The song in that game is fucking.
It's every game. Like I don't think they've made

(44:17):
bad music at least. Like you can always vibe out to
it, but like that's why it's so like cardinally shitty for me.
And that's for any game. Like, I don't know, I feel like
music is integral to. Gaming, yeah.
So like I'm making a lot of assumptions but I'm just
assuming the fact that there's no music unless he stated like
explicitly himself is probably because he just doesn't know how

(44:39):
to make music. I mean that's fine that he could
have used this as a project to learn, or he could have paid
someone on fiver to make shooting music, or he could have
used royalty free music. I've played fucking those golf
games with royalty free music in.
I mean, yeah, but like, and I'm also going to make the
assumption with like the art as well as that like it probably
was like a sticking point to himto like for this product to be

(45:00):
100% like his his labour. That's totally fine.
I sure, but also, I don't know. He's a content creator.
He could have partnered with someone and it would have been
cool. I mean I don't know the guys
history but if he had to learn every aspect of game dev from
the ground up in order to produce this game, including

(45:21):
literally following a hello world tutorial for unity or
whatever, why not spend a month learning how scales and
harmonies work? Because it's it's actually not
that hard to make music that sounds like palatable to the
ears. Oh no, I tried learning music

(45:41):
theory for one month in high school and to be fair I was
super dumb and lazy when it cameto stuff like that but like I
couldn't. I couldn't understand even like
1% of it. Yeah, I completely understand if
he's like, this is my project, Iwant to do everything and I
don't value music, so I'm not going to do that.
And that's totally fine, and he's totally within his right.

(46:02):
But I'm going to talk hell of shit about it the whole time.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
I didn't mean to like devalue your judgments like no, no.
And definitely a flaw. And in the same like I want like
it's something to be celebrated that he released the product on
Steam, like completely by himself.
It's just I don't give extra leniency, especially not if you

(46:22):
didn't try. That's the worst thing to me.
I'd rather it be awful than you not try.
Yeah, but yeah, but I guess like.
So. Also, the possibility that he
did try it, it was really fucking bad.
That's OK, dude, because like, here's I honed in on why this is
like a sticking point for me. Like me personally, I'm not
gonna like project this onto anyone else.

(46:43):
But like, think about the fucking movies I like to watch,
right? Like all these fucking, like
terrible Joe Bob Briggs, like movies from hell that like, no
sane person should watch and enjoy.
But I fucking love watching terrible, shitty movies because
there's there, there was passion, there was effort.
It just went in a very wrong direction.

(47:04):
And I like seeing the fruits of that ill advised labor because
like these people, they gave it their God's honest effort, even
if the end product was somethingto to to belittle.
Yeah. No, no, I think the game would
have been better for sure with like literally any music, but
like and and I don't know if this is warranted.

(47:26):
I'm, I'm just being empathetic, I guess to him and like as a
creator, like if I made something that did not beat my
standards, I wouldn't want it out there in the world, like
period. Yeah, I mean that that that is
true. That is absolutely true.
But. I, I think it's unforgivable
because like I rather him just like literally take a song that

(47:47):
he likes from a puzzle game thathe likes and then switch the
fucking scales and change the tempo a little bit and then
boom, you have a song. Like there's so many ways that
you can cheat code it to at least try.
What like like again, what really bothers me is that it's
it's a combination of what you guys are saying where like,
yeah, try, but if you're not going to try or if like whatever

(48:08):
your attempt was failed in your eyes, then just get like partner
with someone like something likeI I get it.
Like if you want that to be yourgoal, that's great and you want
to be proud of this thing that you made fine, but make your
game good. Partner with someone.
Go on, Fiver. Yeah, and like something like

(48:28):
Adventures of Lolo, I just looked it up, it has like 6
minutes of music in the whole game.
The game's like not short. And it like, I don't know it, I
can't imagine it would take thatlong to make like literally just
one track that's a 3 minute loopand that's what it plays on
every puzzle. And then when you win the level,
it plays a little fucking 4 second Jingle.
Yeah, like this game probably, at least in this aspect,

(48:51):
probably would have ascended forme if each row had its own song
and. That would be crazy if and and
then like let's say the enemies change and the slime changes to
like a Princess or something. You know, like literally just
every tier just changes like theevery asset.
It just flips the asset to a different asset and it's
functionally the same thing. Yeah, I mean like kind of
bringing narrative along into this like that.

(49:12):
That was one of my issues again,where like I want that pay off
at the end where I blow up all the bombs and shit.
And if I'm to take it to like the far end of what can be good,
if any of you have played Tara Nil, that game is a good example
of a game where you're kind of just doing like piece wise
things and developing a thing. And then at the very end you

(49:33):
just get to see the fruits of your labor and like you see this
landscape that you've built growand become lush and vibrant.
Like I don't need anything crazylike that from a game like this,
But like, I don't know, just make the fucking cats fly off
the screen some. I don't know if you can do that
with Game Boy, but like, just like, you know, add the time, a

(49:54):
little bit of narrative at the start where it's like, oh, we're
blowing up all these invasive cats so that we can grow a field
and then all the squares turn green at the end, like.
Yeah, no, just something some agreed, agreed.
Like there's there's just way too much of like a like hyper
autistic focus on the puzzles and just literally nothing else.

(50:14):
And for me, like I, I, I just seriously like, I would love to
know what the impetus was for wanting to port this game to the
Game Boy without music. Like again, the Game Boy sound
chip is like fucking legendary. There's like go, go, go fucking
listen to Sunsoft games from thefucking Game Boy, Like they are

(50:36):
so goddamn sick and like how howdid he go from I want to put
this game on the Game Boy. It's just kind of like this is
cool thing, but also I'm not going to make any music that
that the the through line there doesn't make any sense to me.
Now. The one, the one place I will
grant grace on that thought is Ihave no fucking idea what it

(51:00):
would take to make music that you could both release on a
Steam game and that would play inside of a Game Boy.
Like I don't know if he would have to like interface with the
actual like sound chip hardware to make that work.
I mean that's the hard part for sure.
Like he made it 80 times harder on himself by not by making it
need to be on the Game Boy because like on PC it'd be
fucking easy. But there's there's so many

(51:22):
fucking trackers for Game Boy that I guarantee you could like
translate that into something that the Game Boy can read very
simply. I mean I watch fucking Vert
literally make music like on a Game Boy.
So it's possible, yeah. I love watching those dudes
fucking like DJ on Game Boy. Just like so much shit poking
out of them. Yeah.
And I think it is a little bit unfair to kind of project

(51:46):
masterpiece ideals onto a game like this because I don't think
it's supposed to be anywhere near like a complete package
like something like Stardew Valley or like Void stranger or
any of those like games that like feel like complete games.
I think this is more meant to bewhat Seth said of like popcorn
puzzler. So I think I'm being a slightly
too harsh on them. But I also think in the same
sense, especially what Seth said, like level completion

(52:07):
should feel good. And that's that's the best time
for fanfare. That's the best time for, like,
I don't know, have some dudes come in and light the bombs
before they blow up. Like, have them be more of a
spectacle. Like, it's very, like Tom said,
just very, like fucking autisticabout like, everything needs to
be centered around logic, which,yeah, wasn't clever at all.
It was just dry. Yeah, and, and let me clarify,

(52:28):
like, I didn't want this dude tofigure out how to make like
songs that would compete with vert or like pixel art that
would compete with fucking like shop menus and Undertale or
whatever. I just wanted something like,
even if, even if it was just like when the Saints go marching
in and the Game Boy sound chip on fucking loop, I would have
been OK with that. That's actually a great point.

(52:49):
That's literally what you do like that's fucking if you don't
have a composer, you take classical music and then you put
it in in any VST in fucking fruit loops and then ta da you
did it. Yeah, literally anything.
The end of The End is Nigh, which is like a like a Meat Boy
sequel, was literally it was alljust classical music remixes.
I just thought of something kindof tangentially off of what Seth

(53:12):
brought up with, like a not having satisfying feedback, like
just not having the bombs go offever until you succeed
basically. I don't know what it would take
to code this because I didn't. I literally only thought about
this for like the past 15 seconds.
But like what if one of those buttons was replaced with a
button that says like execute puzzle like that says?

(53:34):
What it should have done that? Yeah, so instead of having that
cheat button, what the button that you guys hate, have that
button and then you just have you click that button and then
the bombs go off from left to right.
And the first time a rule is broken, it the simulation stops
and it lets the player know likewhat rule is fucked up.
So then that way, that's like another way for the player to

(53:55):
know how to fix their mistake asopposed to needing to like do
the trial of an error with that cheat button.
Absolutely. Yep, you just like flash red
whatever is wrong. Like it doesn't have to be
anything more complicated than flashing red whatever is
breaking the. Rule.
So I think I read somewhere thismight have been one of your
guys's post on the Discord channel that like the reason

(54:17):
that the, the developer, the thefucking Matthew whatever didn't
include like numbers inside likelike how many walls you have
inside of a column, right? So like, rather than having to
sit there and like arduously count everything, just literally
have a number that tells you howmany you have in the row or

(54:38):
column is because he didn't wantthe game to just become a matter
of trial and error. And I fucking laugh in the face
of that when I think about pressing fucking H in this game.
So. Man.
When the H button was introducedI had to step away from the game
for like a day because of how disgusting it was by its

(54:59):
intention. The the H the H key is like
literally what? Like convinced me I was never
going to put serious time into this game.
I think it's fine to have a hintsystem, but the way they the way
he introduces it is like the worst thing I've ever seen in
puzzle games. And I don't think of being
hyperbolic, like I think it's literally the worst level in a
puzzle game I've ever played. I was going to bring this up as

(55:22):
an example of a game that is of similar level of quality.
It's only $4.00 on Steam and might have brought it up before,
but the game mimic Logic which is literally just an entire game
of parlor puzzles from blueprints.
I enjoyed it I I played a couplehours of it and it was pretty
fun. But I thought the hint system in

(55:44):
that game was one of the best I've ever seen.
And it's not complicated, but itdoesn't tell you a whole lot.
It's not going to directly give you the answer almost ever, but
what it is going to give you is a heuristic in order to solve
the puzzle that you're looking at.
So like if if X + y = 2, then Z must equal 3, it'll give you

(56:07):
some kind of heuristic like thatin order to help guide you to
the conclusion. Not just for this puzzle, but
kind of teach you how to think for future puzzles too.
Because if you're not understanding what you need to
do on this puzzle, then you're probably not going to understand
what you need to do on future puzzles.
And that's why the hint system in this game is so goddamn bad.
It's not teaching you anything. There's not a single thing that
it's teaching you other than youfucked up somewhere.

(56:29):
Good luck. Agreed.
And. It literally like tells you,
like if you could figure out howto fucking use it, then you
could figure out how to solve the puzzle.
And it's like. Yeah, and there's there's just
no point to it. And introducing something like
that and outright stating like you can cheat if you want to,
it's up to you. The choice is yours.
Like there, there's no point to that.
Just make it a menu option and say I don't get the little like

(56:53):
like make it so that the block, the square and the level select
doesn't fill if you use it like just yeah disgusts.
Me, I agree. It's actually funny because the
impetus for me suggesting those changes with that button that
would execute the puzzle, like the whole reason why I suggested

(57:17):
is because I just wanted a way to trigger the explosion
animation. Of the box, yeah.
Oh yeah. I mean the game that Seth talked
about, Mimic Logic is like RPG Maker fucking default Sprite
shit and I like it a million billion times better than this
game. Yeah, I was just looking it up.
Just that one Steam, all you guys are talking about it and I
was like I was, I don't know. I don't know if I would buy it,

(57:42):
maybe $4.00 too much. But like if it was on sale even
from $4.00 I would consider buying it.
It's definitely not a Ben game, especially if this wasn't a Ben
game and. Yeah, yeah.
And that and that's exactly why I say that like I would buy it
if it was on sale from its $4.00price.
Point, but I I think it's a goodcomparison for this game because

(58:04):
like you know the similar level quality of course, but also it
the game is called mimic logic. It has logic in the title, just
like logic bombs, but it isn't like ridiculously egregious in.
This is a game about logic. I am a logician and this is a
realm of. Pure.

(58:24):
Logic like. I was trying to not bring that
up because. I think that's narrative, Yeah,
I was, I was, I was avoiding it.Transitioning there.
I was avoiding it because it's cringe and it doesn't make me
feel nice to think about the thoughts.
Oh, I was. Going to bring it up a narrative
without a fucking doubt. Wait, there was a narrative?
In the sense of kind of in the sense of I think the narrator,

(58:48):
AKA the words that you see kind of contribute to what anything
could be described as a narrative in this game because
it kind of gives it a tone. But we'll, we'll wait till we
get. There I guess.
There's. Definitely.
I didn't get far enough. I didn't get far enough.
I kind of wanted to just jump upfrom the narrative.
I feel like for are an audio UI and as much as needed.

(59:10):
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, the narrative is like,
it's the douchiest, worst feeling thing I've like ever
seen in a game. And not like, and it's 2 ticks
away from being like a Hal AI kind of thing where it would be
fucking awesome. Instead it just feels like it's
this douchebag talking to me from his bedroom and it drove
me. I I think if you just lean like

(59:32):
going into narrative, if you just lean into it being like a
Glados style thing and it's justa thing talking shit to you and
while explaining to you the rules, it's suddenly very cool.
Yeah. Or it's just like kind of like
Elohim from Tallow's Principle, where it's just like a like a
God figure. Like if you characterize the

(59:52):
voice in the tone, like the character of a tone that you're
trying to take, then yeah, it itbecomes completely approachable.
Yeah. I mean, yeah, I feel like I've
pretty much talked this point todeath already that like just the
game just needed something and this is this is an Ave. of the

(01:00:14):
game where there could have beenthat extra something and it's
just not there. Yeah, you bring up a good point
because like, I didn't get far enough to like really get the
vibes of the quote UN quote narrator.
But if they're actually I'm justrehashing Sasha's point, like
you, you brought up the hell thing.

(01:00:35):
That's really all that was needed and it would have been
fine. Yeah.
It would have been so good. Like it would have been great
because I just talk shit to you.And, and it's, it is kind of
like, it's an amplified problem because he is like a popular
content creator because there isn't a standing villain to
represent the, the words that are being said in those levels.

(01:00:57):
You you kind of just think that it's been being a Dick to you.
Exactly. Yeah, No, it's like a double.
It's like a negative way, because if you make it a
character, then the character's a Dick.
But if you don't and it's just the guy who made the game and
he's a Dick like so yeah, even if he is a Dick, just put it
behind a character. Yeah, I don't know the guy from
Adam, but this game painted a picture of him that I don't
like. Then I guess I, I think as a

(01:01:22):
result of our critiques, there'snot a whole lot else to talk
about in narrative. So do you guys jump over to the
questions? Yeah.
Yeah, all. Right question #1 was this
game's method of teaching you rules sufficient to meet its
complexity? Should it have offered heuristic

(01:01:43):
pads for solutions? I already kind of spoiled some
of this given how I was talking about mimic logic earlier, but I
think that the best way to teachin games like this is to offer
heuristics or more creative solutions rather than just
saying X wall is wrong or. Whatever.
What are you guys like? I will start with Thomas.

(01:02:07):
I actually think that this game offered too many heuristic
paths, but the problem is that when you want to teach via
heuristic, you have to start small and gain momentum from
there. Like it's, I, I mean, it's, it's
the way that every, really everypuzzle game kind of does it

(01:02:28):
where like you get something brain dead and then you get
something slightly less brain dead and it just kind of ramps
up from there. And I think that that is a way
of like avoiding too many heuristics where cuz like when
you get in, when you're trying to teach via heuristics too
much, it can be frustrating. But this game, I think just had

(01:02:50):
way too many. Cuz I imagine someone who's
never played pic Cross in their entire life installing and
launching this game and just looking at this grid and being
like, well, what the fuck do I do?
And if that's the case, then allthey have is just sitting there
clicking until something kind ofmakes sense through trial and
error. So like, yeah, like I said, like

(01:03:11):
too, too many heuristics, too many heuristics starting at a
level that is too high. I don't agree that there's too
many heuristics. So so two games to easily
compare 2. I think we all know them as pick
Ross. Well, we know enough about it.
Pick Ross and Sudoku. Pick Ross is so easy that the

(01:03:33):
game doesn't need to tell you how to solve it.
It's basically just like it's sointuitive for basically how the
rules are that you don't need toreally give the heuristics
outside of literally just like change the color of the fucking
number if you fucked it up. So like it solved that problem
via simplicity of the game and understanding it.

(01:03:55):
Sudoku is a game that I think usually are too easy for you to
need to know, like the heuristics required for Sudoku.
But then once you get past that,if you don't know them, it's an
impossible game. But there's so many to them.
Like there's so many different methods of like even knowing
like the hidden pairs and like naked pairs.
And then when you get further down, it's like the X wing

(01:04:16):
stuff, an XY wing and all that shit.
Like there's so much in there that if you know what they are,
the game is so much fucking better because then you start to
be able to find where it is and then you solve it.
But if not, you basically can't intuit that.
Like it's just too fucking hard.This game is more like Sudoku in
that it would really benefit if it told the player certain
patterns to look for or like came up if the game came up with

(01:04:37):
a strategy to solve levels and then tried to explain it to you
somehow. Because instead it just kind of
feels like that you're just supposed to go down these
fucking random paths of try thiswithout a checkpoint system and
then just restart the level because you fucked up.
And oh, what did I try? I don't remember what it was.
And it's like it, there's not enough there for me.
And it just felt like it was alllike the trial and error aspect
of Sudoku, which is literally just like you stop, you try

(01:05:00):
this, and then you run the logicpath down until it doesn't work
anymore. So when I say that I think
there's too many like heuristic paths, like, what I mean by that
is, is not that like, not that the game presents you too many
like discrete, individualized like heuristics, but rather that
the one heuristic that they introduce kind of in the

(01:05:23):
tutorial levels, like the, the possibilities are too broad.
If you like, have no idea how these games work or even how, if
this game works like, cuz there's, there's so many like
possible inferences that you cantry, right?
But there's only a few like clear given like must be true

(01:05:46):
starting points. And I think the the proper way
to build like heuristic learningis to provide very obvious must
be true starting points. And I don't think that this game
does a good job of that. Yeah, I think going farther than
that, it isn't good at teaching you that.

(01:06:06):
So for example, if you have a column and has two bombs in it
that are like separated by some amount of distance, and that
column is a is A1, there's only one wall there, then that wall
has to be between the two bombs.That might be obvious, but the
game never teaches you that because, you know, then the
thing that follows logically is that everything else that is not

(01:06:29):
between the bombs in that scenario must be empty.
So if you have a column where it's bomb, blank, bomb, and then
blank for the rest, you know that blank, everything that is
not between the bombs is blank, not wall.
But the game never teaches you anything like that, even though
it, I, I feel like it has plentyof opportunities to do so.

(01:06:49):
And it just assumes that you're going to be intuiting a lot of
this. And I, I felt that that became
much more of a problem the more mechanics that were introduced.
Once you had question marks on your columns in your rows, once
you had X&Y bombs, that's where it just got to be way too
fucking much for me. And again, I think there could

(01:07:09):
have just been something in the game like like this dude made
the puzzles, he he has these heuristics.
Just write them down and put them in a hint document
somewhere. Yep, agreed.
Yeah. Yeah, just more, a more targeted
like hint system would be so much better.
Like so, so, so, so so much better.
Literally like you click the hint button and it would just be
like 5 statements of like you click it once and then you lose

(01:07:31):
a point, right? And then every puzzle gives you
5 points and then yeah or whatever.
And like, like, to be clear withthat too, it's not even about
the difficulty for me, because Ican appreciate the difficulty in
games like this for sure. The problem is the learning
curve and how the game is teaching you these things.
And if you want to just rely what you put in the Tubby levels

(01:07:53):
to teach you those things, fine.But if you're not going to like
lay it out and you're just goingto let the difficulty be what it
is, there's no reason not to putlike that information in there.
I don't. Know yeah, and I agree like I
think I I really appreciate whenlike puzzle games fucking crank
the difficulty up to 10, but I don't appreciate this game at
all. And I think that really just
comes down to like it was never satisfying to get past the like

(01:08:15):
when you when I solved the puzzle I wasn't like fuck yeah.
It was always just like, what's the next fucking horseshit
that's about to be here? Yeah, yeah, it's almost like a
lot of times the puzzle solving dopamine was front loaded when
you get the first, the first. Exactly.
Mark, like Thomas was saying, yeah.
Yeah, I feel like they do. They do a very bad job of

(01:08:35):
basically what you guys are saying.
They do a very bad job of onboarding because like, I think
it's important in games like this to start you off with
puzzles that just don't require all that much, like flexible or
intuitive thinking. Like give me, give me something
obvious so that when I see it again, I'll be like, aha, rather

(01:08:57):
than just skipping straight to like having to figure it out
because there's like, I need precedence to be set, you know?
Yeah. Yeah.
And like, especially in a game like this, if you want people to
play your game, you're fundamentally telling people
that don't understand the heuristic that you've created

(01:09:18):
that they can't play the game. Yeah, no, I mean I think you
came up with the system that I would adore if he added, which
is just like a a catered hint system of here's 5 sentences
that would help you solve this puzzle.
Yeah, like fucking like patternsthat you would see on like a
wiki for go, right? Like just show me like some very
basic oh sure, that too. Things that I could like

(01:09:40):
integrate into like my pattern recognition software in my brain
as I'm playing this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that would also be, I think that's a lot more effort to to
design that. I was more just saying like
literally if you get stuck, you click the hint button and it
says like the first hint would be like, remember bombs can blow
each other up and then like there's five hints and then the
5th hint would literally just belike, put it in the first square

(01:10:02):
you idiot or something. Like that, Yeah, yeah, yeah as
misunderstand what you guys are saying, but yeah, that that's.
That's what I'm saying. We're like, that's definitely
important. Because because I think he went
with a pit cross style hint system, but with a game that's
like complicated, like fucking any pick the hardest puzzle game
you know, which is like a bad mix.
And where it's kind of outright calling you a cheater if you

(01:10:23):
decide. Yeah, but the choice is yours.
That's another. That's a whole other piano
worms. Ben, did you have anything you
wanted to say for this? It's, I don't think I can have,
this is what I was kind of implying before earlier when I
said like, I don't think I can have a legitimate opinion on
this particular subject because like, like if the game was made

(01:10:46):
more for me, like there were like the first, you know, like
how I didn't actually finish them all.
But you like how you beat the first like 7 levels and like it
like the game like opens up. It's like, yeah, you're playing
Fallout and you're stepping out the actual like outside world
for the first time. I didn't even get that far.

(01:11:07):
So like, like for someone like me, like Matthew Matosa straight
up would have needed to like yellow paint the 1st 7 levels.
You know what I mean? Like, like that's how I would
have needed to be taught as a non puzzle game enjoyer.
Yeah. Like I would need those levels
to be like put this here. Yeah, I mean, that's that's,

(01:11:31):
that's what we've been saying though.
That's the that's what this gamelacks.
Yeah, but like I don't and the fact that you guys like brought
that up as like a viable solution makes me think that
maybe like my hesitation is unwarranted, but I but I felt
like making the game like that would make the game worse for
people that like these games not.

(01:11:52):
No, not at. All no shot.
Yeah, there's not that. Every puzzle game does.
Yeah, every puzzle game does what?
We're talking about that. I think OK, like.
It's very rare for a puzzle gameto start at the level that this
game does, I feel like. And to definitely not have a way
to help you in a way that doesn't feel terrible.
Yeah, cuz like you could, this might literally the first game

(01:12:15):
I've ever played that's like this like literally ever, you
know what I mean? So I don't know like what the
standard like conventions are. Yeah, I'd say the the only game
I can think of that starts off harder than this is Tactical
Nexus. Oh no, I start to.
Create issues levity. OK, yeah, that game was fucking
crazy too. But that game is like very

(01:12:36):
outwardly like, hey, don't play this as like even like your 15th
puzzle game you've ever played. Like hey, only play this if you
really really really love toughsOkemos.
There's one other game I can think of that's about this
difficult but I forget the name.It's like Block Wizard or
something. Like that.
And also I don't think tactical Nexus is difficult necessarily.
I think it's overwhelming Which?Is completely.

(01:12:58):
That's. True.
Like I think it's very simple inhow you can approach it, but it
gets overwhelming fucking fast when you start to think of all
the paths. Yeah, I agree with that.
And that game also fundamentallyasks you to be min maxing at all
points. Yeah exactly both.
Both because of the requirement to actually beat a level, but
also because of the scaling amount of rewards or whatever

(01:13:18):
you get from the tower I. Mean I I can talk about that
game in this whole episode, so so I don't want to focus on that
too. Much.
But yeah, to be fair to logic bombs and to denigrate Tactical
Nexus a little bit, if you guys didn't explain to me how
Tactical Nexus worked, I would have never figured it out from
the actual tutorials. Yeah, this game actually

(01:13:39):
provides. It would have been impossible.
Well, to to to I guess to find amiddle ground there.
I'm pretty sure the guys that make that game don't speak a
lick of English. Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I didn't.
Yeah. Well, it's unfair to me to not
bring that up, but yeah, that isthe main reason why.
But to be fair, the Brits don't speak a lick of English.

(01:13:59):
Too. So that is true.
America is so much better. If I say America, I mean the
language of America. Yeah, I think even then, I think
tactical Nexus still has like a more intuitive feel to it than
this game does. Cuz if this game didn't tell you
anything, you'd be fucked. You'd never be able to figure it
out. Nexus, you could still be able
to try to feel like walk around and be like, what the fuck's

(01:14:19):
going on? Like if you actually had to try.
Yeah, and I'm trying to like, think, I'm trying to think of
like more games where they startoff at a difficulty level like
this. Cuz like there's like one thing
that I think a lot of Zektronicsgames do, like, like Space Cam
does this to some degree is likeyou have like the first level

(01:14:40):
that's pretty easy. A second level where you're like
the third level where you're like wiping sweat off your brow.
And then the 4th levels, like, Oh my fucking God.
Like, like there's a very like sharp, like degree, like a very
sharp incline in how difficult the puzzles get with each level.
But they always start at that like bottom, like dum dum level,

(01:15:04):
yeah. Like Zektronics games are the
perfect example of how to do a difficulty curve.
Like I I'm thinking of Kodaks ofalchemical Engineering like
perfectly linearly, where Kodaksof alchemical engineering first
level is like make a lever and switch it 180° and drop it and

(01:15:26):
repeat and you're done. And then the next one is now use
two levers and do the same thing.
And then the one after that is OK, now combine them.
It's just adding a new layer each time and building upon the
previous. I mean, the version of this game
that is like close to master class is made by Zaktronics and
it's called Dungeons of Diagrams.
And that game is it's inside of Last Call BBS.

(01:15:47):
That game is fucking amazing. And it never really gets
overwhelmingly hard. Like this game's fifth puzzle is
probably as hard as that game's like 23rd like and it just, that
game feels so fucking good to solve.
It's crazy. I also just want to bring up one
last time because I don't think we're going to get into it, but
if you're going to tell me to relax and enjoy this game for

(01:16:09):
relaxation, please don't make figuristics as complex as as
this game. Drop one of those two qualities,
please. Also, give me some relaxing
music. Yeah.
Sit back and relax was the most ridiculous thing ever.
Like because they're like cuz meta puzzles are really the
fucking hard part about puzzle games.
Shut the fuck up. The hard part about Void
Stranger was the fucking Socal blind part.

(01:16:30):
Well, with that as a pivot, withmeta puzzles as my pivot to the
next question, did this game differentiate itself
substantially enough from the source inspiration pick Ross to
be a value? If not, what should it have done
to stand out? And my answer is meta puzzles.
Why did you explicitly say thereare no meta puzzles in this
game? I would have enjoyed this game
more if you just didn't say thatthere weren't meta puzzles and

(01:16:51):
then didn't include meta puzzles.
And I was just thinking, oh, maybe these all these levels,
like combine like a grid with the parts that extend past the
grid and you have to connect them like, oh, that'd be cool.
I'll like like snip some of the images and save them, you know?
He just told me. That I shouldn't engage with the
qualities of your game, OK. Oh, counterpoint to that I guess

(01:17:13):
would be sometimes I find it frustrating when I feel like I'm
threading together some kind of like overarching like meta
narrative puzzle and it just turns out that I was huffing my
own farts and there's nothing there.
So I can understand like wantingto say, hey by the way, don't
huff your own farts. I, I I I get what you're saying

(01:17:34):
too though. Yeah, I I just feel like it's
disincentivizing you from engaging with the game, I guess.
I don't know. But what about you guys, Sash?
Why don't you say this one? Sorry, I was thinking about the
menopausal stuff too much. I got to read the question
again. Yes, I think this game
differentiated itself enough from Pick Cross in all the wrong

(01:17:57):
ways. I think every other game that
tries to be like this teaches the player how to play it
better, is a more enjoyable experience to solve, has better,
has music and has better like rewards for solving the things.
And yeah, there's nothing like dungeons.
And if I played this game beforedungeons and diagrams, I would
think that maybe. But after playing, I played

(01:18:18):
dungeons and diagrams first and then this game.
And I think this game is like it.
It doesn't even. You wouldn't even know the
lights on in the hallway for this game if you played that
game first. How much would this game ascend
for you if you were just listening to the Void Stranger
soundtrack? It would be so much better.
It would be so if it was Void stranger soundtrack and dungeons
and diagrams visuals. It would probably jump up like
literally like 6 points because like Doctor Kabushi's

(01:18:42):
labyrinthine laboratory is kind of like that where it has
fucking sick ass music, made my fear dark and like pretty sick
visuals. But it's just so fucking hard
from like basically level 2 where it's like fuck.
But in a way that's doesn't feellike this because this, this
game just felt like trial and error to me.
Like it didn't feel good like Pit Cross or any of the other
games. It just felt like I was resolved
to fucking trial and error in a lot of spots and it was trash.

(01:19:06):
That delta +6. I'm confident I guessed your
score correctly. I was actually saying I was
actually sitting here thinking like damn, I wonder if I guess
too too high. I think I did too.
But plus plus 6 still keeps me in range.
But I mean, I value stuff like that as shit boat too.

(01:19:29):
Like I don't really like games. If you're perfectly designed
though, then that also I value that a lot too.
But if you do nothing else and Ithink the design sucks, it's
not, it's not going well. Yeah, a lot via visuals and
audio for me. Yeah, you and I definitely see
eye to eye on that, I think. Also, if he added like
metapuzzles, like if it would have been like some crazy

(01:19:50):
metapuzzle shit, I think this game would be like that probably
would be like 2 points higher because I don't think I would
have got to him because I think that the core gameplay is so
fucking garbage. But I thought it would have been
cool. Or just like like maybe not even
a meta puzzle, but something like like you get to the end of
a row, but like. Let me draw an example.

(01:20:12):
We haven't played understand forthis, but understand think of it
as divided into rows like this game is.
And it kind of is like that. And at the end of each row, the
level is a meta puzzle. So like, for example, you'll get
to the meta puzzle for the firstset and you can quickly intuit
some of the basic rules you needto do like OK, draw a line from

(01:20:33):
point A to point B. OK, draw a line from point A to
point B and go through all the stars it introduces early.
But you can't go around everything you need to go
around. So you actually have to go.
You have to draw your line outside the box.
Like think you're playing fitness and you have to draw
outside your panel. And then on the very last level,
because you have to draw throughall the stars in order to finish

(01:20:55):
the level, like all the star icons that show on the map, on
the last level, there's no star,but the last level on every
level of that game has a star onthe right to show that you
finished the set. So you actually have to draw
outside and then go through the star on the outside of the
thing. And this game could have done
something along those lines where you just introduce a new

(01:21:15):
rule at the end of the row that changes how you were meant to
interpret that rule. And now there's a second set of
solutions for each, like, level on that row.
Is that a lot? Yeah, but it would have made us
sit out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, that's
that's the thing, right? Like I, I can have a lot of
ideas like that too, like literally the end of the row as
a boss and that's like some crazy mechanical shit or
something. But like, and that would be a

(01:21:36):
lot more and obviously not what this guy's going for, so I don't
hold him to that that much. But you are right in that
something like that would be fucking awesome.
Thomas So I have not played dungeons in diagrams, so I don't
have that frame of reference. But that leads me to saying that

(01:21:58):
do I think, do I think that thisgame meaningfully like
differentiates itself from something like pick cross?
Yes, But is it for all the rightreasons?
Not necessarily. But I think, I think I actually,
so as much as I've been like absolutely like dumping on this

(01:22:21):
game, I actually do enjoy like the the general puzzle loop.
My problem is just mostly in regards to like presentation and
like difficulty curve. So I do actually, cuz I
actually, I actually think that the, the rule for like
separating the, the slimes and the cats and the bombs into

(01:22:43):
their own like group, I thought was actually like an interesting
idea that did separate itself from pic cross.
Like that's the rule I think of specifically when I think of how
it differentiates itself. And I actually like that rule.
My problem is just purely in howthe game initialized all of that
shit and just made it frustrating out too frustrating

(01:23:04):
out of the gates. Yeah, and I just want to kind of
mentioned why I asked this question.
It was kind of just a call back to when we talked about Estrella
ages ago and Seth said somethingalong these lines where if
you're going to carbon copy a game, you better do it really
goddamn well. Otherwise I'm going to give you
a negative rating immediately orI'm not sure how you worked with

(01:23:28):
it exactly, but that is how I feel about this game.
The more I played it, where at first I was like, OK, this is
just complex pick cross. This is just a hard pick cross,
but the more I played the less Ifelt that way because I I
remembered pick cross is actually really complicated.
Like this game is only on a 10 by 10 grid.
Pick cross goes up like 15 by 20and it introduces more mechanics

(01:23:50):
just like this game does with the colors and the mega pick
cross. So I it, it literally just felt
like an off brand kick cross to me and that's why it didn't
stand out. Quick translator's note, I do
believe that this game actually does go up to a 15 by 15 grid
later. What the?
OK well guarantee he doesn't separate it like Picross does so

(01:24:12):
it's hard to look at visually. Sorry, let's just be talking
shit about the UII. Don't know how that would work
on this UI. That's interesting.
Ben, did you have anything you wanted to comment on?
Here, the only thing I have to comment is that I know way more
about logic bombs than I do Picross.
That's because I don't know anything about Pick Ross.
I think if I have to pick an inter mezzo game I'll probably

(01:24:34):
pick Super Mario. Pick Cross for the SNES so you
can kind of see it. It's.
A good one. Just to play like a couple
levels or whatever. It's like it's, it's so much
more approachable than this game.
It's fucking laughable. Yeah, pick Ross.
I hope. So because like I've felt a
little embarrassed honestly whenI was playing for this game and
I wanted to uninstall on the first level which I couldn't

(01:24:57):
beat. No, you really shouldn't.
Like this game is. It's completely on the game too.
Like but like it it embarrasses me to say that because I really
did want to be fair to the game,but like if it wasn't chosen for
this it wouldn't 100% would havebeen steam refunded before it
beat the first level. I think it's totally reasonable
and I I don't think that's your fault or anything.

(01:25:19):
I think the game is so bad at onboarding new players,
especially if you're not familiar with the genre at all.
Like it sounds like a miserable experience so I can only imagine
what you went through. You know, I'm really curious
like as this guy was developing this game and like shortly
before he released it, like whatwas his like target demographic?

(01:25:41):
Was it like like mid 30s extremely like well versed
puzzle gamers who also own Game Boys?
Like who's this game for? That's why I still don't
understand the Game Boy thing. Like, why?
Why is that what you're trying to target here is, is this guy's

(01:26:02):
like, are all of his fans just huge retro fans?
Is that what's going on? Don't.
Get it? Yeah, I guess there's the
content creator angle that I don't know, Maybe he just like,
fucking loves the Game Boy as a meme or something.
I don't know. I.
I don't think so. I think, I mean, I have
literally no evidence at all. I think it's just he really,

(01:26:22):
really wanted to do it. And that's literally it's just
not that deep. Maybe.
OK, let's go ahead and knock outthis third question of the
awards and wrap up. Does this game have any more
level of depth than a complicated set of if then
statements? Why or why not?
And is that that a bad or a goodthing?
I'll just answer first because we'll be really quick.

(01:26:45):
I don't know enough to even again formulated an answer to
this question and that's where Istand and I pass it on.
I I think that's fair. Yeah.
I mean, I get to say no. I literally think that's all it
is. It's funny because when I
answered, when I wrote my answerto the second question, I wrote

(01:27:05):
like, there's too much if this, then this too early.
And then I I read this question and was like, oh shit, that's
funny. So, you know, it's like to me,
that's literally all it felt like.
It literally just felt like reductive reasoning and it was
just like borderline trial and error and some levels of of
just, yeah, not good puzzle design in my opinion.

(01:27:27):
I thought it was just terrible. Yeah.
And I, I largely agree. And I, I quit when I got to the
quadratic equation levels because those literally just
felt like a, like A, to the power of whatever additional if
then statements that I had to run through for each level.

(01:27:47):
And it, it just felt like so much.
That being said, there was one rule, I guess that's a spoiler
for my award leader. I guess that I did like that did
not feel like an if then statement.
And it's the one that Thomas wasdescribing earlier, like tracing
the pads and segmenting the guys.
I like that one a lot. And the levels that focused on

(01:28:08):
that were the best levels. You know, I think you're
definitely right in that there was some like that level in
particular felt very intuitive. And I think if you found a way
to make more intuitive patterns and then you can recognize like
the numbers would result in likeactually making like square
rooms and would feel good for a few that kind of made like cool

(01:28:31):
pattern shit. But instead of just felt like he
was trying to like trick you of like where the fucking rooms
actually were. It didn't feel like he was
working with you. He was working against you.
At least that's that was my experience.
I'm not sure there there was somewhere.
It just felt like I had exhausted all of my potential if
then statements that you would typically run through, but then

(01:28:51):
you would realize, oh, I have like 5 balls here because these
two paths can't connect. Yeah, yeah, because of that blue
guy rule. And it just felt like a nice
reprieve every time that happened.
How about you, Thomas? Like Thomas.
Oh, OK. Yeah.
So I guess my answer is to be like, yes, it has way too many.

(01:29:18):
Like if this, then that kind of situations, like I was saying
before, like I feel like like the like I use my spatial
reasoning in the very beginning of this puzzle, trying to like
Mull over what my first move is by visualizing the grid in my
head. And then after I figure out that
like this must be true move, then after that it is literally

(01:29:39):
just a process of like rigorously running down like if
statements in my head. Yeah.
And that that can be fun. Like that is the thing that is
very, very like endemic to getting you into that flow

(01:29:59):
state. We were talking about kind of at
the top of this thing. But the problem with this game,
like I said before, was that I think there's maybe one too many
rules in the mental stack that kind of take you out of that If
this, then that flow and just kind of unnecessarily
complicated in a way that breaksit up in a way that isn't really

(01:30:22):
fun or enjoyable, I guess is a better word, yeah.
I, I agree with that. And to kind of add on top to it,
I feel like what really makes the if then qualities bad is
because or, or it's when the difficulty begins ramping up and

(01:30:43):
there are fewer and fewer and fewer if thens that you can
answer for each row column. So for example, on the 1 you
linked, like you could probably solve some of those pretty
quickly, like row by row if you really wanted to.
But it quickly becomes the case that you can't do that.
And especially without a way to notate, it just becomes a time

(01:31:05):
consuming process to eventually find the one row where you can
actually do something. Yep.
No, you're I mean, you're completely right and you nailed
it. And I think that's just
something I want to highlight. That's like sick about sudoku,
like cuz sudoku you can just like look and be like, Oh,
there's a bunch of sixes. Where'd the other sixes go?
Like you can quickly identify pick cross is the same thing,
right? Like, Oh, there's a 10 Bam or

(01:31:26):
all this. There's 5 ones in a in a 10 by
10 or whatever the fuck where he's like, you just go like
101010 or things like that. And you can like quickly make
assessments in this game. It wasn't that in this game
you'd look at a bomb and be like, OK, that bomb bombs with a
bunch of things like and you would just have to like go
through all of these like annoying ass mental check
bullshit. Things that weren't like quick
to assess at all. Yeah, I actually started
skipping levels in row 2 becauselike, like I said, I'd be maybe

(01:31:49):
like 60% of the of the levels inrow two.
And the what would happen is I would finish a level and then I
would click on to the next one. And if I just saw like a like
big lattice matrix of bombs and cats, I just skipped to the next
one because I was like, I don't want to have to sit here, count
the bombs, count how many targets there are for each bomb,

(01:32:10):
count how many fucking cats can be exploded by the bombs, figure
out where I need to break thingsup.
Like I just, I just don't want to do it.
Yeah. No, I completely agree.
That's that's basically what mine was too.
Like it and never like I said, it never felt good.
Like there were only like slightpatterns that felt good and it
was like in the earlier levels where the game was basically
just pit cross. I like this one from row 2 and I

(01:32:33):
have a feeling that's what you. Had in mind that is one that I
absolutely skipped 100% and the crazy, the crazy thing is it
gives you like really obvious Givens too, right?
But even with that, it was stilllike Nah.
It's just, yeah, it's just a lotto look at and process, which

(01:32:53):
again, it's the total opposite from the source material to pick
cross where it it you just have a blank slate and you're going
to find your starting points, your fifteens or thirteens,
whatever, do those, and then you're off to the races.
But this game just throws all ofthat difficulty at the start.
It it presents all the problems at the start and you just

(01:33:13):
deescalate from there. Yeah, you know, completely
agreed. Like they did the difficulty,
like backwards completely, like you need to be able to give me
something even if it means just make the grid bigger and then I
have the design better. You guys want to just jump over
to a ward? Yeah.

(01:33:35):
So I wrote down I, I just kind of wrote these from my
experience because I couldn't think of much that as we'll be
able to get too much input on. But did you guys have any rules
that stood out to you that you really liked or that stood out
as bad? For me, by by default it would
have to be wall limitations because it was the only rule
that I actually learned. That's is that best or worse

(01:33:59):
then? I guess worse is everything else
because I didn't really learn them per SE.
Yeah, I think, I think the overall rule set and idea is
nice. I think the zone rule set is dog
shit and just if dungeons and diagrams wasn't made he wouldn't

(01:34:19):
have came up with that and I think the game would have been
better off without having that. Like I said, having not played
that game, I actually liked the zone rule because I feel like it
did provide like a more spicy twist on Pic Ross that I I at
least enjoyed. No idea what's that just

(01:34:41):
supposed to. Yeah, I wanted to bring this one
up. It's it's actually my favorite
role, even though this is, this is the tutorial one that I
linked with Thomas. Yeah.
I actually liked this one too, because you asked, like, how do
you guys think this works? And I just stare at it for a
couple of minutes. But it did actually end up
making a lot of sense. Like yeah, after it kind of

(01:35:03):
clicked. Yeah, I I thought that the way
it's trying to teach you is pretty dog water in my opinion.
But the rule itself is quite cool.
What it's saying such is that the number of walls in the rows
and the number of walls in the columns have to add up to the
same number. So if you only have question
marks in the columns, if you only have question marks in the

(01:35:26):
columns, you can kind of figure out how many walls are supposed
to be based on the difference between the rows and the
columns. So in this in the case of the
one I linked, it would have to be 0 because they already add up
to 39 individually. So like you said, words.
And like, I've understand the words that you said, but I have
no fucking idea what that has todo with 39 and what the fuck

(01:35:48):
anything else? How?
Anything in that? So that's why I hate Powers
thought, yeah. I mean, I, I'm gonna disagree
here. And that's purely just on my
gayness because I was able to just stare at it for a couple of
minutes and I figured out how itworks.
But like you have Sigma 39 Sigma, AKA the mathematical sign
for summation. So the the numbers like 223588,

(01:36:14):
blah, blah, blah. It all adds up to 39.
So I was like, OK, that makes sense.
And then I added up the, the toprow and that adds up to 39.
So my brain went, oh, OK, so then the question marks must be
0, which I think is the exact conversation I had with you
about it, Seth. Why are there pluses in the
fucking arrows? So that's actually what I

(01:36:34):
should, that's actually what I was going to ask like later on,
do they have like minus and multiplication to try and get to
the fucking question marks? Because that would be annoying.
Not on this row, no. Does it ever have that?
No, this is the only level wherethose pluses and question marks
or pluses and arrows came in. Every level from that.

(01:36:58):
Most of the levels on that row from that point on just had the
Sigma with the number showing. What it added to is like a
quality of life. This row adds to this much, and
most of the puzzles were just figuring out how many walls the
question marks were supposed to have.
I can kind of like appreciate this to some degree because
like, if this guy really wanted to go whole hog and start

(01:37:20):
introducing like system of polynomial equations, like we're
back in fucking like Algebra 2 or whatever, like there's some
merit to that. But again, who is this game for?
Yeah, dude, I, yeah, the more I'm sitting here and thinking
it, I'm just getting angry because I'm just thinking like
how douchey this fucking thing is.
It's so fucking douchey. Because again, individually,

(01:37:42):
this was my favorite rule out ofall of them.
I I think, however, if you're going to put the the Sigma
notation in the game where you're trying to tell me to
relax, I don't know about that. Yeah, so fucking douchey.
It's to me it reads like, hey, Iknow what Sigma means.
Like what the why the pluses there?

(01:38:04):
You know the real douchey thing would be if he got into the game
later on and started talking about like, bicubic
interpolation matrices or some shit.
Yeah, that would be funny. Flexing math Fucking shit.
Yeah, 'cause I mean, these gamesare basically the words that I
said, like distilled down. But yeah, it is.

(01:38:24):
It is douchey. Did you guys have any levels
that stood out to you in bad or good ways?
Awful. Is the level where they tell you
about the cheat button that almost single handedly made me
never play the game again. But I did come back to it and I
actually did enjoy the level that I posted a couple

(01:38:47):
screenshots up of the incline. Because that's like the one
instance where they they, they introduced like the linguistic
reasoning side of it where I read the word incline and then I
looked at it and I could just kind of like picture in my head
what it was supposed to look like.
And I was like, oh, that's kind of cool.

(01:39:08):
So I like that one. That's the only level that does
that to my knowledge though. I mean, worst is what Tom said
for me, and then best is like probably the first or the second
level where it played more like pick Cross than it did the game.
They're all they didn't like any.

(01:39:28):
Of the games. Yeah, worst was definitely that
one. I feel the same about it as you
guys did. I think the best generally were
any that leaned into the like path slash zone segmenting
mechanic. I thought that was pretty fun.
And then this one also oddly enough, even though this one was

(01:39:49):
with the XS and the YS, this onedid not require me to do
quadratic formulas and so this one actually stood out to me as
a good use of that mechanic. You.
Understand what the XS and the YS are.
All of the same letter bombs arethe same number.
So basically in this one, since there's only 6 cats, one of them

(01:40:10):
has to be one, one of them has to be 0.
You just have to I. Didn't realize bombs could.
Be zero. I never got to that.
There's a couple levels like that, but in any case, I think
we're just about done. So for next week, we are.

(01:40:33):
You didn't do ratings bro. Oh yeah, we got to do ratings.
Ratings. Thomas, why don't you start?
All right, so I guess we have like a new system for doing this
now, since we're, you know, FYI to our dedicated fan base, we're
all gonna start guessing each other's scores prior to when we

(01:40:56):
meet. Like prior to when we actually
start recording this thing and seeing who can tally up the most
like correct guesses just based on vibes or whatever.
I don't know what the hell we'regoing to do with that info, but
we should figure something out. But regardless, So after I give
my fucking rating, then you can just do exclamation mark Tom and

(01:41:20):
it'll give the guesses that you guys put in.
You'll need the ID though. So I think, do I forget?
Do I forget how I did this? Actually I remember.
I already put in my. I already put in my guesses.
Do I need to do anything else? No, no, just hold on, hold on to
your head. I'll, I'll try and remember how

(01:41:42):
the fuck I did this. But in any case, as far as my
final rating here goes, yeah, like I said, I I didn't overall
hate the just kind of general puzzle loop.
I thought that there were some good ideas, but they were all
presented in an extremely obtuseand like, maybe overly

(01:42:08):
aggressive way. And then everything else in the
game, like, I'm just going to put as much effort into this
final rating as he did into everything that wasn't a puzzle
in this game and just say 5 out of 10.
Jordan, you guessed 2. Yeah.
Ben nailed it with five. Nice wow.

(01:42:30):
And Seth? Seth was close with four.
Damn. Damn, I can't believe you're out
of. Fucking 5 That's crazy.
Good shit, Ben. I can't believe you put fucking.
Your comment was fucking bullshit then.
I mean like I said, I think so with some small tweaks and like

(01:42:53):
a MIDI file of Vivaldi's Winter I would have played this game a
lot more. I'm really curious about Ben's
rating next. Good, Ben.
You want me to go? There we go.
Yeah. Yeah.
So like given my limited like knowledge and experience with
this game, basically I got frontseat gaming experience with this

(01:43:18):
one by Thomas. Without Thomas, I would have not
got past the first level. So I really can only like rate
and comment on like the craftsmanship, which I think we
literally mentioned in literallyjust like the last Test.
How silly it is to like do traditional like 2 for graphics
out of like, you know, like how two of the points are for

(01:43:39):
graphics, two of the points for like fun factor 2 of the points
for sound. But like I, I feel like I just
have to give give the game a sixout of 10 because like it was a
game that functions. I give a lot of like there's
like the context doing some of the heavy lifting of like how I
know about like the content creator that made this game.

(01:44:02):
And like, I kind of just have toimagine like, like what he went
through and making this game andeverything he learned and how
long it took. So I kind of just give it, I
don't know, it's just, it's, it's the six out of 10.
I do want to reiterate kind of like I did in the last half
where I use like the Asian dad grading system.

(01:44:23):
So like if, if you imagine, justimagine you were in middle
school and you got a 60 out of 100 on a test, like how would
your dad react to that? And depending on your dad, you
might have to pretend that my dad is your dad.
I've met your dad before so I can see it.

(01:44:44):
Yeah. So that's it's my six out of 10.
All right, well. I was wrong by a mile again.
I fucking nailed it, Seth fucking nailed it, and Jordan
didn't meta game Ben's rating system enough to know that twos.
He doesn't give a 2. Yeah, twos.
Twos would be reserved for I designed Cybermancy maybe.

(01:45:08):
So I don't. So here's the thing, 2 is not
actually wrong. If if if I did not play this
game for Tash, this game would have gone to 0 exactly.
Trade up a 0 out of 10 Steam refund within.
Yeah, 4 minutes. That's where I fucked up because
I, I, I thought that's how you would rate it of like you
wouldn't have got by the game inlike 2 minutes.

(01:45:29):
So you would be like non applicable would be your rating.
So I was like, maybe he'll say 2because he liked something about
it. You better games.
Yourself. I know, it's crazy.
That's. Funny, that's good stuff, right?
He's up next. Yeah, I fucking hate this game a
lot and I'm surprised you guys didn't think that I would hate

(01:45:50):
this game a lot. I think it does like basically
nothing that I like other than the fact of like it exists.
So for me it's a 1.5. Damn.
You got I put it up to A2 just so I can be right, you mother.
You would have been right beforethis conversation, but then
after we during Tash I was like Oh my God, I really hate this
game. Like I don't appreciate what

(01:46:11):
this guy did like in any aspect.So I went down to 1.5.
Yeah, knowing that. 1. Myself, I actually guess I
actually guessed the highest with four.
That's crazy. That's the kind of music and
shit, It might be a four. Yeah, I guess for Ben guest 2
and Seth guest 3. Ben's right.

(01:46:32):
Oh, I thought I guess too. Shit.
Wait, yeah, Ben, you get half a point in either.
Direction or we're not doing. Oh, I didn't code that in.
I'm gonna have to do. That I mean, it's fine.
I figured you probably didn't touch any of that and we're.
All. So basically I'm completely
right. I feel like whoever is closest
if nothing else. Right, no price is right rules,
although you can go over this. In any case, As for me, I think

(01:46:58):
we, we talked about this a bit with Astrea.
Again, I think when we're talking about carbon copy games
like this is I'm going to start at A5 and depending on what
impresses me or what detracts from my experience, I'm going to
bring it down or up. I think that the hint system by
itself probably brought it down all the way to a one right off

(01:47:19):
the bat. That was just so disgusting to
me, coupled with the methods by which it taught its rules and
you know, there's nothing reallystanding out to me.
Is that impressive? As I played it more and more, I
kind of got into that flow statewe described.
I kind of enjoyed myself in a pick crossy way, even if at

(01:47:39):
times it was very mentally taxing.
But I I can't get over the fact that I had to try as hard as I
could. To.
Forget that the hint system in this game existed because it was
so abhorrent to me, so I'm giving this game A3.
God damn it, I suck. Wow, dude, I was way off.

(01:48:01):
Yeah. Me too.
You played it so much, I was like, he can't give it less than
a six and. You did you guys not see, did
you guys not see that comment? I know you saw it set.
I mean, yeah, like, I'm, I'm only playing this game to see if
I hate it because of this reasonor that reason.
Like, yeah, that's fair. Mad at this game?
That's fair, I just you have like you have good tolerance for

(01:48:23):
garbage. Yes seriously like you played
this game so much for someone who rated it a fucking 3.
Yeah, I I respect that though. That's badass.
I I do. You guys know me.
I fucking love my popcorn puzzlegames.
And when I can play this shit atwork, it's perfect.
Yeah, that's great. It'll pass more.
I nailed that. So yeah.

(01:48:44):
More than he likes Edith Finch. Jordan, Jordan and Ben, you guys
both guessed 6 and I was even further off by guessing 7.5.
When he started talking right now I was I should have went to
fucking 8. Oh shit, that's mad funny.

(01:49:05):
That's. Really funny.
I I feel like I I hid it well. That's going to be the new
layer. Of the cash.
Meta. It's either that or I just
didn't because I remember reading that message from you,
but I guess I just didn't get that vibe because like I, I
just, I just assumed from the fact that you were, you were the
only person that just kept playing this game, but I just
assumed you liked it. You guys, guys, you don't you

(01:49:26):
don't understand. I played League of Legends for
like 10 years. Like I put up with shit games.
It's crazy all. Right, well I have an
announcement to make, which is we have the new lowest rated
game. Oh.
Shit, it is crazy. It is logic bombs at 3.88.
What did what did life lessons get?

(01:49:47):
Life lessons 5.25. How was life lessons of 5.25?
That's crazy. I guess I I kind.
Of, I mean relatively to this game, the tracks.
I mean, we were that's. The right proportion we.
Were all kind of like around thesame delta where two of us voted
six and one of us rated at 5.5, and then Jordan came in with his

(01:50:07):
like always 2.5 rating and I guessed Ben correctly and Ben
guessed me correctly because we're fucking symbiotes.
I didn't Ben get them all right.If we're doing the half point
neither. Oh, I guess.
They're all fucked. Up, Seth.
Yeah. Oh yeah, I.
Got me. And you?
Yeah. Now you guys are going to have
to. Really.

(01:50:27):
Double think every time the I think it's my rating.
I mean, that's why I pitched this, because I think it just
kind of gamifies it and makes it.
Fun. I'm also I don't think you guys
would have put me off a 10 out of 10 for Clarence gear too.
That's 9 1/2 for that. I mean, what the hell?
Yeah, that's. Actually surprising.
Yeah, that's true. But yeah, we need to figure out
a system or something. We'll figure out something.

(01:50:49):
But yeah, this is mostly just for fun.
I think even just having like toguess that something is fun.
Yeah, like literally just that by itself was Yeah, I thought
was value added. There doesn't need to be
anymore. Like there needs to be no
further elaboration. It was just fun to fucking
guess. Just say God damn it every time

(01:51:10):
you guys said the number I. Just I just need to, I just need
to fix the buck command and I'm going.
To start doing some, I'm going to start doing some bait and
switching in the channel. Like I really enjoyed this.
I know I didn't pitch. Yeah, I'm curious what you guys
are going to guess for my 1000X resist score given I fucking
simmed for that game big time while in that Channel.

(01:51:31):
Over, over like a over like a few messages and I was like, I'm
a stop. Speaking of Thousand X Resist,
that's a quick closeout. We have completed logic bombs
for this week, for the followingweek.
As we mentioned last week, we'regoing to be playing on Thousand
X Resist for next week and then discussing.

(01:51:53):
I can't wait to talk to you guysabout that game because it's a
good one.