Episode 9: Mimic Logic

Our first of two intermezzo games for Baldur's Gate 3: Mimic Logic!

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
OK OK, for this previous week asour first inter mezzo game for
Baldur's Skate 3, we played Mimic Logic, which is a game
made by NI Hohe Soft. Hopefully that doesn't sound too
terrible, but we were racist enough last week.
The Asian So what's a little more game was made by them,

(00:23):
released in February of 2024. This is their debut game.
They have another game coming out, I think it was next year,
but when I found this game it was just some random game that I
found on seam under the puzzle section.
I think it was on sale and part of the reason that I chose it as
if I think it's one of the few games in my library that Sesh

(00:45):
had not played, didn't have it on his wish list or anything if
I'm correct. Am I correct about that Sesh?
I was on my wish list because I remember you being like what the
fuck you have this on your wish list Like you commented on that
to me at some point. Yeah, God damn it.
I thought that was one of the ones that I didn't have any wish
list, but Oh well. Anyway, I really liked it the
first time I played. I was curious to go back to it,
especially after we had played Logic Bombs.

(01:07):
So what were your guys's feelings on it?
I will say right off the bat, myfeelings on this game were a lot
stronger than I remember. Or rather, I think my feelings
on this game improved compared to the last time I played it,
and I didn't expect you guys to like it as much as you did.

(01:28):
So does anyone have some strong feelings they want to start?
With I greatly enjoyed the game.Why?
We will get to that in the next hour or so.
I. Think we're trying to get to it
right now, Ben. Ben the Murderer.

(01:49):
The Segway murderer High level. What what?
What did you like? Of the gameplay.
I liked that it was very accessible.
When I say accessible, I don't mean like difficulty, because
this game was pretty difficult in that I only beat the first
difficulty standard one. But how do I describe?

(02:15):
It's just like every system thatI interacted with is complex on
like a strategic level. Like there's a lot, there's a
lot of numbers and they're all very important, but the
developer made like shortcuts for everything.
So things that would require some amount of brain power now

(02:36):
requires 0 and it lets you cut. And I think that's an OK balance
to have because it's contrastingagainst like it's, I don't know
if this is difficulty, but like it's kind of very harsh.
Like basically you have one life.
You know what I mean? With the mimics.

(02:57):
I'm, I'm not talking about combat.
I'm talking about specifically just a mimic part where you get
a rider, you die and start over.So I think that having your
mental stack be cleared out of everything else that can be
complicated so you can concentrate on just that one
part. I it let me enjoy a game like
this that I think I'd normally never would.

(03:24):
Yeah, I think at times, both as I was playing this time and when
I played the first time, the thing that rubbed me the worst
was the, you know, you're on floor 29 and you accidentally
logic wrong and now you're sent all the way back when you're
about to finish the level. Like that feeling did rub me the
wrong way a couple times and I'msure I'll bring it up again with

(03:44):
our first question. But I mean, that is definitely
on the money with a lot of this like they they have quite a few
systems in this game that are like on the verge of feeling
superfluous at times, like gut and stuff like that.
But at the same time, it all comes together in a nice little

(04:05):
bow. I'm actually fine with the the
one hit kill because like, or I guess another way to put it is I
didn't really feel salty when I lost because you still got
those, those upgrade points, which felt good, at least to me.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that's what I mean. Like, like I said, it just
rubbed me the wrong way. But I think it all works

(04:26):
together because like yeah it ithas met a progression and it
would be way worse without it for sure.
Yeah, I think one of the interesting things that Ben
touched on is just kind of the the the way that the mental
stack works in this game is is really cool in my opinion
because there's simultaneously alot going on, but it's all like

(04:49):
very discreet. So like you're never being
bombarded with too much at one time.
It kind of puts everything in it's own like tidy little
compartment and you can just focus on like one thing at a
time. Like barring gut.
But I mean for me, like gut almost never came up personally.
But I mean it is there. So you got to mention it.

(05:09):
But I think in a game that has like multiple layers of
complexity, the way that they kind of discreetly put them in
front of you is was pretty fucking smart.
I really like this game. I thought it was one of the
better puzzle games I've played in a while.
Like it's not like Blueprints level, obviously, but like it's

(05:32):
a tier below that. I actually really, really did
like this game. Without spoiling my rating, I
will say that Mimic Logic is thebest puzzle game I've ever
played. Feel like a more than tactical
Nexus? Is that a puzzle game?
Oh. Yeah.
Oh yeah, that's. Fuck.
That's like the big puzzle game.I do think I like the mic logic

(05:55):
better that. Makes sense.
I mean Tactical Nexus, I think for you to really like it a lot,
you need to like kind of get deep into like redoing runs and
shit and then really understand like all the design and
everything. So I this game at that face
value is like a much better gamethan Tactical Nexus.
You can just like pick it up andplay it and just have like good
feedback basically from jump. Yeah, even though.
It but also even though they feel so like tightly related in

(06:19):
so many different ways, they're also just like very, very
different specifically because of the procedural generation
versus the pre made levels. I think the main thing they have
in common is that they're both like weird Japanese janky games.
I agree with that. I think like there's Tactical

(06:39):
Nexus is like 1000 hour game. This is like a like 20 hour
game, but like Tactical Nexus has such a deliberate like
premeditated design aspect to itwhere you're supposed to like
iterate and play through the same thing 1000 times.
Whereas this is like the total opposite of that.

(07:00):
Also Tactical Nexus is way more than 1000 hours.
It's like 20 hours. So when I when I like advertise
this game to you guys, I described it as a game that's
basically nothing but parlor puzzles from blueprints.
Do you guys feel like it was that underselling the game?

(07:23):
It's a good synopsis. I don't, I don't think.
I think it's probably bang on. Yeah, I mean, it's a good
elevator pitch because I mean, at A at a glance, that's what it
is. But I mean, there's, there's
significantly more going on thanjust that.
I think one thing that impressedme a lot about this game now

(07:45):
that I was like, looking at it holistically is just the sheer
amount of shit that's in this game.
It's actually really impressive for like, how much did you guys
get this for? Like, yeah, it's on.
It's in the Steam library for $4.00.
Yeah. And there is a lot in this game
on ironically. I think it's probably the right
price. If anything maybe like $7.00

(08:07):
would be like the right price. Yeah, I think if it was.
Like $20.00 I wouldn't be happy.Oh hell no.
I would have paid upwards of $10and been happy.
But any more than that, probablynot.
But one aspect of the gameplay, like before we get into kind of
the nitty grittier parts, is I really liked the way that the

(08:28):
game like helped you build up confidence because at first this
game made me feel like I was a fucking moron because I was like
super struggling with like the easiest things.
Like in standard one, like the four puzzles, I'd be sitting
there like, OK, the right most column has a mimic.
All right, I think I got it. And then but like by the 15th

(08:52):
hour of playing this game, it's like you're just fucking blazing
through even like the Super harddifficulties to try and get like
the 7000 points achievement by just like going fucking
supersonic speed. So this game has like a really
cool like skill curve that builds momentum the longer you
play and like the, the, the morethe the interesting thing about

(09:14):
this game is that the longer I played, the more I saw the
matrix. But then when I would take a
break and come back to it the next day, I had to like pick up
the telephone and try to understand it again.
SFO state baby. Yeah, for sure.
I had a lot of moments when trying to do standard, in
particular to get the 7000 of like, it was just intuition of
like, I didn't even have a logic.

(09:34):
I was just like, I don't think these are mimics.
And then it was every time and it was crazy.
Yeah, and there's like sometimeswhere you'll get to like a like
an A7 Chester or whatever and you'll be like, wait, this, this
doesn't make any fucking sense. How am I supposed to get
anywhere? And then somehow, like, I don't
know about you guys, but I felt like on some levels my eyes

(09:55):
would go fish eyed. I would see all of the chests at
the same time and I would just solve done, move on.
It happens so many times it's funny.
Yeah, it does. And I do want to bring this up
before we continue that like something like blueprints, the
controller supporting this game is Oh yeah, they they did it

(10:15):
perfectly. Like that should made me
uninstall blueprints and this game like just embarrasses them.
Like, I mean, I get and I guess the scope of what they're trying
to do is different, but I think that the the smaller scope, at
least from I mean, look, I don'tknow if I'm even allowed to like

(10:38):
speak on puzzle games and what like puzzle games should be and
what puzzle fans like. But for me, give me mimic logic
any day over whatever the fuck. Yeah, it's still surprising to
me had such a negative experience because of just how
many people play that game on PS-5.
It's like that blows my mind. Yeah, I didn't, I haven't.

(10:59):
I didn't play either game on controller.
So I played this game on keyboard, felt really good on
well, no, I take that back. Yeah, We could elaborate on that
when we get to like the UI ship at least I think controls are
UIS. Do you guys think controls UI?
Do you think that's gameplay? That's where I that's where I
put my notes about Thunderstorm.I mean honestly, like I sorry I

(11:21):
was. Just going to say to build on
kind of like what we were saying, only counting for
standard expert in random, not counting the four fucking psycho
dungeons. The game is the puzzles need to
be easy because the way you needto interface with things quickly
is what makes it hard like to try to really like push score
runs. At least that was the
interesting part to me. And I think they found a really

(11:42):
nice balance of the game is not trivial, but it's easy enough to
where you can go fucking fast. And it's punishing if you do
fuck up. Exactly, and I didn't mind that
at all. Like the only time I'd mind the
punishing when you fuck up is I had a standard level 4 run when
I was trying to do the score where I literally opened every
chest in the entire dungeon. Not even like lost to 50 fifties
or anything. And I couldn't beat the guy at

(12:03):
the bottom which I thought was weird.
Like I just had terrible RNG foritems.
I was wondering how like often that might happen.
It's kind of disappointing that yeah, it only.
Happened to me once on standard expert was a was a joke to get
7000 on but standard it took me a couple tries and yeah the one
time I got down there I just could not win and I wasn't even

(12:24):
close. I was like 4 attacks away.
Yeah, it's like one of the interesting things about like,
like Slay the Spire is that thatgame has very, very, very, very
few unwinnable seeds. Like they do exist, but like
people have to search them out like they do really.

(12:44):
Yep, They're they they do. There's I know that there's one
where you have to fight like a, a, a super Lagovulin and it's
just like not possible to get enough damage before you die to
the Lagovulin. There's definitely at least one,
but the fact that that game has so many potential like
permutations but finding unwinnable seeds is like fucking

(13:07):
nearly impossible is like a realtestament to how well they
designed that game. So I was I had been wondering if
there were unwinnable seeds in this game too.
It might not have been unwinnable but just with my
general Strat that's worked every time by like a mile like
and there was like no healing items like at all, which I think

(13:27):
is the main problem. Like if you don't have healing
items you're just kind of like fucked.
Yeah, that's what I was telling.That's what I was telling Ben in
the channel earlier today. Is it like my flow chart when I
got to shops was I always boughtcures no matter.
Oh. Yeah, it's not, it's not an
option. First thing I bought every
single time. Yep.
Did any of you guys venture intothe Super psycho dungeons or

(13:48):
anything like that? My favorite difficulty is
confused. I was.
Gonna say confused, yeah. Confused was awesome.
The other the other ones were a little too crazy.
Outside of Robbers, Robbers justrobbers was actually just kind
of frustrating in my opinion. I was.
Gonna say it just looked annoying.
Like I didn't play any of them. I just looked at the
descriptions and then made like extreme judgments on them and I
was like confused looks cool. Robbers looks like it should

(14:10):
just be a fucking annoying. It's like the same game but just
a little more annoying. Yeah, like robbers.
Robbers. It was just frustrating.
I forget the name of the other two but they were honestly just
like they were. They were too obtuse in some
ways, but confused. Confused felt like random but
with like an extra spicy layer to it.

(14:33):
I feel like when I looked at most of them, but I think I'm
kind of a search on that, Like most of them just felt like like
95% of the time I would just endup not opening chests either
because I'm too dumb to figure out figure it out or because
like it would actually just be impossible to figure out like
with the 50 fifties a lot of times.
Yeah, confuses basically just like 50 fifties the game mode to

(14:54):
be honest. Did you guys like fill them all
out before opening or did you like sometimes like selectively
open like one or two? The only times that I would
selectively open one or two is when you had a hint that relied
on gold, and even then sometimesI wouldn't because the UI for
opening with the circles is pretty good.

(15:18):
Yep. What's that said?
Well, even then, like when I saythat, like I would set two of
them, the two circle and then open them, I guess you know what
I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like every now and then I guess
like, Oh, I, I, I really want tofeel special opening this one
that I figured out and maybe it'll give me a hint for the
next one and that'll make me feel good if I open it like with

(15:40):
my character instead of the UI, but I don't even.
Know you can do that using the UI.
Same. It also like sucks kind of super
ass when you do that. It's a mimic, but that just
probably usually happens to me. What do you guys think of the
skill upgrades? Like the XP stuff or well.

(16:02):
I'll start progress the worst part of the whole game.
Yeah, me too. It's so bad a progression.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The upgrades the I.
Was really glad that they when you unlock the next layer or
next set of difficulties it justgives you an option to disable
them 'cause I was like Yep. And they give you negative
points too, but it's it's trivial negative points.
Yeah, I didn't know that. Oh, I didn't know that at all.

(16:23):
I just liked making the number go up.
To me, like it almost felt like it didn't do anything.
Like the only, the only time I ever felt like I really noticed
it was the the gut timer. Like once you get a couple
levels in that you never have tothink about gut ever again.
But everything else, it was justkind of like what is, What is
this doing? Yeah.

(16:43):
I feel like they just put it in there to have it for the feeling
that Ben and I mentioned earlier.
Yeah, exactly. They definitely didn't go whole
hog enough as it could have. Like they could have just tossed
like you could have had like a upgrade.
Like at certain tiers of this meta progression you get
different items added to your inventory at the start.
The end one is the mimic bell orwhatever.

(17:05):
Or blue. Charm, I mean it's called.
Yeah. My charm is basically don't die.
Yeah, my suspicion is they probably just didn't want to
code anything more complicated using whatever the RPG Maker
like a program language is called.
Like I forget what it's called. I mean, for me it's just like,
it's not even that the, the options they give you are bad or

(17:28):
anything, it's just that they're, they're not really like
a huge value add in my opinion. Because like sometimes in games
like this, I think it's kind of cool if they have this like
crazy scaling meta progression because it like tips the scales
in the player's favor if they'renot that good at the puzzles.
So it can like give you a degreeof inevitability to like

(17:49):
complete a much, much, much higher percentage of runs.
Or was this one, it didn't really feel like it did that.
It was just kind of just kind ofthere and it didn't really do
much. Yeah, and there this is like a
conflicted Director Ben Cut. But like, and it's really
specifically only for me. I don't think that they would or

(18:11):
should ever make a change like this.
But instead of having the mimic instantly kill you, if the mimic
just made you lose a large amount of HP, it would matter a
little bit more I think. It'd be cool if we'd be open to
mimic. You had to fight it.
Oh yeah, that'd. Be cool.

(18:31):
Yeah, that can be spicy. I feel like that's effectively
the problem with that, though, is that it's it's kind of just
it's kind of just killing you just slower.
And one thing I really liked about this game is how quick the
runs were. Like it was really fast to just
die and then get into a new game.
Is this true? I mean, if you do something like
that, I think you probably need to have like a lot more design
into it where this game is kind of like intentionally very

(18:54):
simplistic. But I just think the upgrade
system it it gives you a good feeling and the gut 1 is only
like the only one that's impactful like at all.
But it it again, I think it's more there for like the
mentality of like, oh, just because I died, I still get
something rather than actually be impactful in the game.
Yeah. And I will say that the guys or

(19:16):
girls or whoever the fuck made this game really, really had a
good sense of like satisfactory puzzle gaming in mind when they
were doing this. Oh, it's like the best.
I I mean, I'll just even go a little bit farther in that I
think that the team of people that worked on this game just

(19:38):
fundamentally had a really good sense of game design principles.
Because even some of these things that were criticizing
like the meta progression, like could be better, for example, Or
you could have done all these other things with like fighting
mimics, for example. Like all of those things are in
the game more or less like they did include them.
It's just a matter of how good are they, right?

(20:00):
And I think like a lot of worst games that we would rate lower
wouldn't have the meta progression.
It wouldn't have some of the UI elements that we're going to
talk about for sure. Yeah.
I just think that for what this game is.
They had a really good eye for what should have been in it.
Yeah. No IA 100% agree because like

(20:20):
even with the upgrades, it's it's it's not even that the
system itself is bad. It's just that it's like kind of
limp and underwhelming. But like when I was talking
about how good they were at generating satisfaction while

(20:41):
playing this game, like to me, one of the like super more
interesting ways that this game messes with your head is that
they have this like really interesting form of a constraint
economy where not all of the clues are created equally,
right? Like some are going to move the
puzzle forward and some are justgoing to feel like they do.

(21:03):
And so like the ones that do like you can, you can call them
like state moving clues, right? So like they're leverage points
where you can apply them to a possible number of like valid
boards and that number shrinks and you've eliminated like a
number of outcomes. So if you know like, for
example, exactly when mimics in the right column and you've

(21:24):
already found it, then suddenly like every other tile in that
column is guaranteed safe. So like there's satisfaction in
that deduction when it unlocks like a big chunk of the board.
But like on the other hand, you've got like these comfort
clues that don't shrink the actual solution space, but they
feel really nice to apply because they make you look at

(21:47):
the board in a like a different sort of way.
Like they might be restating information that you already
know, or they might only become meaningful after you have
figured something else out. But, and sometimes they may even
like create a false sense of progress by confirming your
intuitions without like changinganything logically or moving the

(22:09):
board state forward. But like let's say if you know
that there's exactly 2 mimics onthe board and you've already
marked 2 mimics and now you've got the clue, the top row has at
least one mimic. Like it might feel like the new
information or it might feel like new information, but since
you already know both mimics areaccounted for, it doesn't change
the legal solution space. So I guess my point is that this

(22:32):
game like plays with that space constantly.
And as you get deeper in, you'regoing to hit moments where a
clue looks like it's a breakthrough, but it's a it's
just a complete dead end until something else falls into place.
And the game forces you through these like crazy mental maze
loops where you have to keep computing each iteration until
you find like the right logical through line or the logical dead

(22:55):
end and the like. Comfort clues provide dopamine
hits along the way because the game just doesn't dump all of
the state moving clues at the start.
So you're constantly like going through these iterations and
trying to piece together, OK, what's going to move the board
state forward? And what can I use as like
intuition after I've moved it forward?
And like the faster and faster and faster that you get at that

(23:18):
is why I think this game became so fucking addicting for me
because you're just getting thatconstant like little mini
dopamine rush that becomes a bigdopamine rush.
Yeah, that's satisfaction. The satisfaction that the game
gives is also scalable because like I mentioned this in the
channel like earlier this week, but like I legitimately could

(23:39):
just open the game, play one floor, close the game and I
feel, I feel pretty good about myself right after that, You
know what I mean? Yeah, no, I think the game's
great for that. Yeah, like when you just want
those. Like, this is what I'm saying
about those popcorn puzzlers. This is why I love them so much.
And that's part of why I have, like, a pretty positive view of
this game. Like, compared to so many other

(24:02):
games of this ilk. This game does just let you get
in there and do a puzzle, and then you're out.
Or you can continue and, you know, do whatever you want to
do. It's great.
Yeah. And also going back to what
Thomas said about like, like those comfort clues for me, I
didn't get past in one, but there was like this one comfort,
I guess I would call like a comfort pattern where it was

(24:25):
like if I saw one of these things say that like it's like
usually a combination of two types of things.
Usually it's like this one is a mimic and then it's another one
is like the one right and down for me, it's not a mimic and if
those like conflict, then I got fucked.
But if those agreed, that was like the comfort pattern that I

(24:48):
would use to like kind of quickly identify the right
answers. The game is is probably the best
game I've ever seen at ReductiveReasoning.
But the only other game that's really kind of like that is like
Sudoku, but Sudoku has a little Sudoku is really complicated
once you get to the reductive reasoning part.
And then also like really tough Sudoku's that aren't good are

(25:08):
just trial and error, which I think is bad.
And I don't know if we want to segue to the question or not,
but that's why like logic bomb sucks because it it just does
reductive reasoning in an unfun way where this game does
reductive reasoning and like thebest way possible.
You guys just want to jump into UI and art assets next time?
Sure. I was actually pretty goddamn

(25:34):
impressed the more I was watching how many actual arts
art assets there are in this game and that they're all like
pretty good. The specific things I'm thinking
of is like #1 the pixel art, like the big ones, like they
have on the store page or the credits scene and in the
dialogue boxes. I think those all look really

(25:56):
solid, but also the animations for when you attack in the
combat, like there's one that just does this like flash of
light explosion thing and it looks really cool and like the
way your screen turns red when the mimics hit you.
I thought all those assets were just great and not the kind of
things that I would expect from a simple RPG Maker game like

(26:17):
this. Yeah, I would.
I would agree. I think in terms of the actual
art, like even even like the thefew times that you see like your
sister's player portrait or whatever, like in dialogue, like
even shit like that looks reallygood.
And yeah, I actually did also really like the combat

(26:40):
animations, like specifically the one that was fucking goaded
was the flare gun. God damn that thing had some
fucking meat behind it. There is also.
I'm not sure if this counts as UI.
It might be partially UX, but there's like a queuing system
they coded for like how everything like turns out like
from the mimic selection, like the order that they open to,

(27:03):
like the order of operations in combat.
And then there's like they put like this little like micro
pause in between each thing and then like, it builds up like
this, like little mini burst of excitement for me, you know what
I mean? Oh yeah, you're waiting to see
the damage. You're waiting to see if your
sister does her attack. That's like the best part.

(27:25):
Yeah, no, they did great with anticipation.
Yeah, like I think Jordan, you described it in the channel the
best. When it's like that feeling when
you're opening the chests and you're like not 100% sure about
the puzzle and then the fucking mimic hits, it does legitimately
feel like a fucking jump scare 'cause you're just like please
please please and then it just fucking owns you.

(27:47):
Yeah, and it's the same thing with wait, I might be wrong
about this. When you have everything marked
and you open all, does it still open them in order or does it
just jump to the mimic if there's?
It's always order top left to bottom right.
OK. Yeah, that's another example
then that's sick. Where you're just hoping that
it's not gonna be a mimic when it gets to the last one.

(28:08):
Yep. I didn't even think about that,
but if they all opened at the same time, this game would be
significantly worse. Exactly.
And another thing is that, like,obviously the graphics aren't
like amazing in terms of fidelity, but like, if if you
took like the exact same game and they give it like AAA
graphics, I don't think that it would make it.

(28:29):
It wouldn't make me like the game more.
And I actually would like maybe like the game lesson.
So that's why I think like the graphics are kind of perfect for
it, even if they're they're likeRPG Maker.
Fair. Yeah.
It's a $4.00 RPG Maker game, Like how much can you really ask
for? And I think, I think it goes
above its price tag, let's say. Yeah, for sure.

(28:52):
Yeah, I think the only issue is that they look so generic to
RBRPG Maker asset packs that I don't know if they made anything
or if everything is literally just pulled from asset packs.
I'm fine with that generally as long as it looks consistent
because like, I think that like,I opened Thomas's eyes to this
like a couple months ago. But Thomas, do you remember when

(29:12):
I showed you like those acid packs that you can buy from the
Unity store of like all those characters and environments?
Oh, yeah, Yeah. And then you realize, like all
those. Oh, that's.
Where every game is from. Yeah, yeah, they all use the
same exact assets from Cinti Studios.
Shout out to them actually own alot of their shit.
That's. Funny.

(29:33):
Yeah. No, that's definitely true
though. Like when I make maps for DNDI
use Incarnate and that's all just like custom assets or or
not custom assets, but like assets that the site provides to
you and like the artistic quality of that is just how are
you going to apply the assets and make it fit?

(29:53):
And then like for a game, how are you going to make it work in
the game? Yeah, yeah, I think it did it
pretty well. I.
Think the only thing visually about the game that bugged me is
the RBG maker menu borders and and like default.
Text. Yeah, that's always kind of
shitty, but for some reason I didn't mind.
It's much no. The game was so good, yeah.

(30:14):
Yeah, exactly because it was like, but it.
But it is definitely a flaw thatI would levy against many an RPG
Maker game. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean like Japanese RPG Maker games and shitty English
fonts just kind of go hand in hand with each other for like
probably obvious reasons, but I did feel like.

(30:39):
Like where that may have been a sacrifice of fidelity over
style. Because what I appreciated about
this game is that, like when you're on a floor, you can see
everything that is important to you right then and there.
Like how your attack defense arelike right there in that menu.
And it also has the great quality to say whether or not
you're strong enough to fight the boss, has your durability

(31:00):
under that. Like the only things you can't
see are just the stuff that you have to pull into the item menu,
for example. Everything is like super readily
available and I appreciated thata lot.
Oh yeah, I mean, they did a great job with the UII just
don't like the style of the UI, particularly because I don't
think they did anything. I think it's literally just the
RPG Maker UI. Yeah, it's just the stock shoot.

(31:20):
Yeah, this, this might be a oh man, I'm coming to some
realizations about myself because I'm a World of Warcraft
player. But I'm realizing like how I
maybe one of my hotter takes is that I fucking hate the UI and
Persona 5. I just think it's like way too
it, it is over stylized to the Max to me to the point that it
just hurts my eyes to look at. And I'm realizing as a result of

(31:43):
being World of Warcraft player, I only care about fidelity over
style because when I play World of Warcraft, I I just need my
buff monitor. I don't know the fuck how it
looks. I just need to be able to see
it. Something I only just notice
right now that bugs me is that the Exp is a completely
different pixel font than the rest of the font in the game.
I don't mind that too much actually, but I I see what

(32:04):
you're saying I. Don't know why they wouldn't
just use that font, I think it looks way better and if even if
it doesn't look better, it's notthe default shit and that drives
me crazy. Yeah, because it it is a little
annoying that they did put in that extra work just to make it
a little bit more discordant, yeah.
I thought it was strange I didn't notice, so I.
Think they literally just like hand drew that and that's a

(32:24):
Sprite that's not actually like text rendered I.
Think it's there? Yeah, they they place the pixels
and it's just one like continuous JPEG.
Yep. It strikes me as if they like
because it's in the top left of the screen, right?
They're like, OK, let's go top to bottom.
They made that and they're like,that was way too much, too much
worse. Oh, there is one thing that

(32:47):
bugged me, but I don't know if what I want to propose is the
proper fix. So and this is this is skill
issue. I'm just it's 100% skill issue
in cope. But I wish that the mimics you
know where when it says like thechest like right or and below me

(33:08):
is a mimic or is not a mimic andthey would color the is or is
not as like that dark blue. Oh, sure.
I wish that when it says is not,they color it like a dark red.
I mean, they do a lot of weird shit like that.
Like, I don't know if you guys noticed, but they don't call
anything a column. Everything's a row.
Oh. That's really weird.

(33:32):
I. Think that might be due because
like I was thinking about like how how do how would you go
about programming a game like this and that I feel like that
might be a part of it where theyjust only consider the road just
to simplify the the coding for them.
But I think, I think it's just alanguage translation thing
because it's like the rows are correct when they're obviously
rows, but when they're columns, they I forget how there's like

(33:54):
different words they use, but they still call it a row so that
you know that it's oh, it's top row and left most row, right
most row, which is like all theyneed to do is call it left most
column, right most columns. So it's like a translation thing
more than a Procten thing, yeah.Yeah, yeah.
OK. I see what you're saying.
So you're saying that there's weird.
I'm justly defending them. Oh wait, doesn't it?
Doesn't it change depending on the layout of the puzzle though?

(34:15):
Like if they have. A They don't use columns if it's
uneven. Yeah, they'll never say
leftmost. They never say leftmost row if
it's like 232. They only do it if it's a square
pattern. Oh, are you saying they
restricted the different types of hints depending on the
pattern or the? Yes, that is true.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can never get left most

(34:35):
column right most column if they're if the columns don't
line up, you know there could bea 232, you'll never get left
most column right most column inthat because.
There is. That makes sense, right?
Most column. I mean, I think that's it's not
just a good thing because wouldn't it be super unclear?
Like if you have a 232 which oneis the left most I'm?
Just talking shit about the translation.
That's not up and down, is not arow, that's a column.

(34:55):
OK. So they call it left most row
which that's a column. I didn't even notice this,
that's crazy. Well, Tom says it says column,
but I swear to God some of mine said row.
I thought I I thought I had both.
I thought it was like I thought it was a column when it was a
column and the two by threes andthen if it was a 232 they use

(35:19):
rows for the like top and bottomand middle ones.
I need to look because it might be the three by three where they
call them rows. Yeah, I can read.
I was confused because I swear Ithought like as you're going
through that, I was like, I thought I'd read the word column
like 1000 times in this game. Yeah, I don't know that's.

(35:42):
Both and I'm go. Back, I'll just assume it's that
I was wrong. I'm gonna go back to an earlier
thing though, and say that like with the UI elements, like for
me, like the UI doesn't have to look pretty, It just has to

(36:02):
present its information well. And then a game that is designed
to be played very quickly. The fact that every screen
contains every piece of information that you could ever
really need, barring like maybe the items in your inventory, I
think is like, I, I mean, I justthink that the UI in this game

(36:23):
is kind of perfect honestly, even if it's just a bunch of
like default RPG Maker panels orwhatever.
I think it's close to perfect and function.
I agree with that. I just don't like the default I.
I literally just don't like thatit's the default stuff because I
I like to build off the logic bombs.
Like just put any effort into anything.
I don't care if it looks like shit, just don't use the stock
shit. I don't know, I'll try to
justify this as UX, but one of the most like exciting things

(36:48):
that happened to this game is when you damage an enemy and
then you press that optimize weapons button and then you
equip your weapon. And this is the first game where
I get happy when I take the weapon off.
To attack and I'll say I I thinkthis game would have been a 0

(37:09):
out of 10 without the optimize gear button.
Oh, for sure. Easily, I don't think.
It would have been that bad, butI think it would have been more
tedious. This game isn't tedious like at
all. But go ahead, Tom.
I was just going to say that theoptimize gear button actually
started annoying the shit out ofme because when you're playing
fast, you're almost incentivizedto just press that button like

(37:30):
constantly. So it's like attack C, attack C,
attack C, and sitting through that like text box all the time.
And like the small little delay that there is is actually kind
of annoying, but the game is much better off for having it.
I mean, yeah, they could just solve that by not having the
text box, right? You press it and then you just
hear the click and then it goes.So like that is a that that is a

(37:50):
miss for sure. There is one more thing that I
want to praise this game for in this section.
Maybe it was supposed to be gameplay, but I want to praise
it for it because I felt smart when I realized it.
I think the design of the the town floors in this game is
actually really fucking good andit's really subtle and I only

(38:13):
noticed it coming back to this game.
Did you guys notice that on the town floors you always start on
the right? The exit is always on the left,
the inn is always closest to you, like the middle right
building, and then the shop is always the middle left.
That's because you're going to dump all of your money at the
shop. But if they have the shop on the

(38:34):
right and you went that went into there first and you dumped
all your money, you might not have enough money for the inn.
So they always have that closer to you when you enter those
floors. Yeah, I didn't think.
About that. But yeah, that makes sense.
But I had really bad luck with the lottery guy.

(38:54):
Like, did anyone ever win that? Like, I'm just curious.
Oh yeah. Yeah, I think, I think I, I
didn't use it very often, but I think I did it four times and I
won three. OK, I've won zero times, just
straight up 0. I didn't get a single star.
Oh I've seen the most I've seen is 2 stars but.
I've never seen 30. OK, I've done at least.

(39:15):
Thirty of those and I haven't seen, never saw three.
OK. I consider it a win if you made
more money than you put in. Yeah.
Oh yeah, in that case. In that case, I don't hate the
Lotto. I think it's cool, I think.
And again, it's the same thing. It's the same thing.
It goes one scratch, one scratch, one scratch.

(39:36):
It's the same. Instead of it just being like
fully wiping, it's like that same anticipation that they do.
Yeah, yeah. I didn't mean to say that it's
bad. I fucking love the log.
I love gambling in all games. I just met my luck was asked.
That made me hate it. No, I don't even know if that is
a a a first place honestly. I never saw it.
I did. I got 2 a couple of times, yeah.
Yeah I got 2A chunk game out of times but never 1st and I assume

(40:00):
it's only going to be 500. It's probably nothing even like
to write home about, but I have no idea.
So I will take this opportunity to chastise the controls a
little bit because this is probably for me like the biggest
negative part of the game. Again, I didn't play on

(40:20):
controller but like it was really annoying how like the
same key did the same or it was like bound to multiple actions
and sometimes the same action would be on a different key like
So it's like sometimes it's X toclose a menu, sometimes it's X
to open a menu, sometimes it's Cto close a menu, sometimes it's

(40:41):
C to open a menu, sometimes it'sC to open a menu, sometimes it's
C to re equip items like etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Like it actually took like a nontrivial amount of time for me to
like continue to press the rightbuttons when I needed to.
The big offender of this probably being just in the mimic
floor where like again I I kept trying to press X to close the

(41:04):
mimic menu like where you selectchess all the fucking time.
It's not like a big deal, but itwas really annoying how
unintuitive it was sometimes. I.
Mean the part that sucks the most is you can't rebind
anything as far as I know. Yeah, I didn't even, I didn't
even think to look at. I don't know if I even glanced

(41:25):
at the settings for this game one time.
I'd be flabbergasted if they hada control remapping option if.
It if they do, it's hidden because all you can do is switch
it between mouse, controller andkeyboard.
And I think all that does is change the glyphs because all
the three still work at the sametime.
But yeah, to piggyback on the controls, I thought that that
was like annoying that all threewere active because there was

(41:47):
more than one time where I wouldtab out to like post a
screenshot or something and thenclick back in.
But I clicked near the stairs and I just walked through the
stairs while I had them do the puzzle yet.
Yeah, so I was always paranoid of that.
So anytime that I ever alt tabbed ever I made sure to open
the menu and like go to like Relic or something like that.

(42:08):
Yep, I just, I just think it's weird that they could.
You can pick your controls but then all three control schemes
are active. But also I will say the fact
that you could use the D pad andthe joystick to move like as the
same function was sick but it's I.
Appreciate that. That's a low bar, but I mean,
it's still a bar that they passed.

(42:29):
No, life lessons didn't. I mean, you guys have, Oh,
Sasha, do you want to talk aboutthe music at all?
And compared to Logic one, I mean, I think that it's fucking
like a perfect like comparison of like the music's not good.
It's like worse than like Moonscape, Midis and all that

(42:50):
stuff. But the fact that it's there,
it's like there's probably what,2 minutes of music in this game
if you don't count the loops. Maybe if there's like 6 tracks,
like it feels different. It was kind of cool.
And like one of them's goofy andlike, I don't know, just kind of
like adds like a nice little bitof like that Japanese jank charm
that I love. And it doesn't even need to be
good. I just, I don't know, it's
great. Yeah, I didn't get the sense

(43:11):
where like it's the most insane soundtrack ever.
But what I can say as a compliment is the I mean, I I
literally just felt like I was playing or, or like when I was
on the town floors that I was just in like a Final Fantasy 1
town. Like the music just was very
apartment. Is there a special song for the
boss floors? I feel like the most because
when I get to those floors, I know that like I've like,

(43:35):
there's like a tingle for me. Yeah.
It's like the bang, bang, bang, bang.
And that's all. Yeah.
No, no. No, no, no.
Yeah. Like, I'm not gonna say it's
like a masterful song, but the fact that it's there and it's so
different, Yeah, like the other floors.
I like that a lot. I mean Seth nailed it perfectly.
The songs are not like great compositions.

(43:55):
They're super simple. There's like maybe 2 instruments
in every song, but they fit exactly like where you want to
be and they're like good puzzle vibes and there's a good town
vibe. And like there's variance in
there's like four or five different like mimic floor ones
that kind of make you feel like you're in different violence or
some shit. Like they did a great job of
making it fit. Yeah.
And that's just another example of what I was saying earlier
where I feel like they just had,they just had an eye for all of

(44:16):
these little things that add up to a much greater whole.
That Japanese jank shit like they all, they understand it.
Yeah, my 100% agree with you guys with the music, like to me
it's it's like the same thing with like the the graphics and
the narrative, funny enough, where it's like it's so simple,

(44:40):
but it doesn't get in its own way.
So it just like kind of it's, it's like seasoning for the main
game loop, you know? Yeah, it's.
Easy to accept. It's it's not necessary, but
it's nice that it's there. Exactly.
Yeah, just a whole bunch. Of little things that pretty
much add up to probably like a full point value for me.

(45:06):
You guys want to move over to narrative?
Sure. Yeah, sounds good to me.
I just want to lead by saying this game, we made a lot of our
previous episodes feel validatedin a sense.
Like I think we said this with leap year.
I think we said this with logic bombs where they they just need

(45:30):
that little bit. They just need like you are a
Prince and you're out to save the Princess.
You just need that one tiny little thing in order to get it
going. And this game fucking does that
immaculately. And I love it.
And it's also self aware that that's what it's doing because
it's literally at the start of the game with the power, with,
with your strength and my ability to speak to mimics, we

(45:51):
can conquer this dungeon. Like, OK, let's go.
Done. Yeah, it's like fucking perfect,
honestly, because like, yeah, IA100% agree with you.
Like a a lot of well, I guess like a couple of times, like one
of my major complaints about thegames we've played is when they
just put actual factual, literal0 effort into the narrative.
Just like nothing, no story, no characters, no central theming,

(46:15):
like nothing that like connects you to the levels or the
gameplay loop or whatever, just like beyond a menu.
And yeah, like the the the two games that I put in my nose
shutting that out were definitely logic bombs.
The biggest offender by far. And, and yeah, Leap Year, which
didn't suffer as much from it, but was still there.
And so, yeah, like the thing about Mimic Logic is that even

(46:38):
though the story is super duper fucking paper thin, that like,
that tiny scrap of narrative gives the game a like a spinal
frame of reference. Like, it's not that the plot
itself is doing a lot of heavy lifting, it's just that having
any sort of framing at all makesthe puzzles feel like a part of
a world rather than just like a series of abstracted grids that

(47:00):
you're just like looking at. And so like, like, there's a
reason that you're doing this. There's a place that you're at.
And there's like kind of this vague sense of progression
through a story that helps to break up like the mechanical
brain churn of the fucking game.And it helps to ground you in
like something rather than nothing, which gives you a
little more personality than just feeling like I'm like doing

(47:22):
a fucking crossword in a newspaper.
And so like, you could absolutely strip it away and
maintain the same game mechanically and the whole
thing. But like, I feel like if you do
that, the game ends up feeling alot more sterile and lifeless.
So like even with it and in the skeletal form that it exists in,
you still have something to latch onto.

(47:42):
And that makes the game like thewhole grind of solving feel a
lot more like inviting and less isolated and more like you're
like moving through some kind ofspace.
And I think that that is like the big thing when we complain
about these games just having absolute 0 narrative is that it
just doesn't feel like you're moving through anything.

(48:03):
Yeah, and also it just lets you easily accept like the
environments and the fact that there's monsters, it just
automatically makes sense. You easily accept it because
you're a knight, you have a sword, you kill the monster, and
yeah, and there's treasure chests, so.
Yeah, like even though it presents this narrative, like

(48:25):
you're saying, then it presents this narrative, but you never
ask yourself like, wait, why arethere monsters in this dungeon?
Why, why are some of these chessmimics?
They, they just up front, that'swhat we're doing and that's what
we do. And it is 10,000% serviceable
because of that. I feel like they didn't really

(48:48):
do enough, especially because after you do all three dungeons,
there's like you summon some mysterious dude and he gives the
main character the voice back. But I didn't know I didn't have
my voice. Like I feel like it would have
benefited from like a 22nd like opening cutscene more than just
like the let's go in the dungeon.
But it's it's better than nothing.

(49:09):
But I still hold like ambidextroto the king of that of give you
like 30 seconds of setting literally everything up in a
very simple way and then go. Yeah, I guess like to be clear
for like my point of view at least, like this isn't like a
nine out of 10 out of 10 narrative situation.

(49:29):
This is a six out of 10 narrative.
Like it would have brought the score down if it did not present
that at all. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
And I mean, I think we, I forgetwhat game it was where we were
talking about this, but like a game like logic bombs where
there's just no narratives. Like, I mean, that's a 0 out of

(49:51):
10, right? But even a six out of 10 is
better than a 0 out of 10. Yeah, granted, I don't think
this is a six out of 10. I think it's like a 2 1/2, but a
2 1/2 is better than a 0. I just think that the reason,
like, I don't give a shit about the story, like there's a guy
and his sister and his sister iscursed and they got to open
mimics and she's wearing like a tiara or something.

(50:12):
I don't know, I barely gave a shit.
Yeah, but the thing that helps is having like an actual like
environmental theming where likeyou're going through a dungeon
and there's all these treasure chests and then there's a boss
at the end and you stop to take a break at the end and you can
talk to the farmer and PC guy orwhatever.

(50:33):
And so like a lot of that stuff,even if like the story itself is
like throw away, who gives a shit?
Just having that like plot and world around it, even if it's
like kind of nothing in totalityis still like an important frame
of reference Versus again, like the basis of comparison for me
here is just going to be logic bombs where it's just like open

(50:56):
the game, go to the puzzle, you're done.
Go back to the go back to the level select screen, all right,
you're done. Where there's just like
absolutely nothing to like, put you in a like emotional state to
like, ground yourself or center yourself inside of a game's
world because there just is no world.

(51:17):
Yeah, it's just very, I mean, I,I feel like we're going to dug
on that game for a long time. Oh, for sure.
It's just the, Oh no, if it justfeels so unimaginative just to
say that there's like bombs and that's it.
Like bombs in above itself. And that's, I guess, the

(51:37):
narrative. Well, I mean, I, I do want to
like give this game some credit in terms of what it actually
created because it's not going for this like, you know, broad
character driven, the world building narrative.
The entire narrative of this game is it it's a punchline,
It's a joke. Like all it's doing is it says

(52:00):
this stuff at the start. That's like your exposition.
She can talk to mimics, he's strong.
They go through the dungeon, that's your plot.
And you have the climax where the three gems are on the table
and there's like the floaty thing, the thing talks to you.
But then there's the punchline in like the the epilogue of this
story structure of thank God, now we did that.

(52:22):
Now we can go through the dungeons and get this tiara off
my head. It's all just set up for that
punchline. And that's why I actually am
positive on it. I've been spoiled, but that all
sounds awesome. Yeah, I mean, it could do more,
but it doesn't need to do more. And I think, I think what Tom

(52:43):
said is kind of what it is. It it kind of builds the
narrative is kind of like through the gameplay more than
anything, just like the world that they build that you're
traversing through. Because like none of the
characters have names like in the town or anything where they
could easily be like Auntie Nettle or whatever the fuck.
Sure. All right.

(53:05):
You guys have anything else you want to mention here or Are you
ready to get down and dirty withthe questions?
Yeah, I got puzzled. Nope, I'm very.
Good questioning. All right, question numero Uno.
How, if at all, does this game differentiate its level of
tedium from other puzzlers like blueprints or logic bots?

(53:27):
And a couple of notes on there that I mentioned in the channel.
Ben, since you don't play a lot of puzzlers, you can sorry,
Burped. Then you can talk about games
that aren't puzzlers and you, Thomas and sesh, you guys don't
need to keep it to logic bombs or blueprints.
You can bring up whatever you want and answer this question,
but why don't we start Thomas? So yeah, I think it's pertinent

(53:56):
to define the way that I think about TDM first and foremost.
So the way that I would define TDM, like to me is anything that
is some kind of like soupy combination of the following,
like adjectives, repetitive, uninteractable, boring, slow, or

(54:18):
something that extraneously takes me out of the game loop.
Like if I'm constantly having togo into like a settings menu to
adjust things. So like, not all of those things
have to be present in the soup, but it's like the combinatorics
of tedium that like is how it's described in my eyes.
So with that in mind, I think that this game differentiates

(54:42):
itself like from the ones that you listed in there in the sense
that there's like a super duper thin layer of TDM, if there is
any TDM at all. So like in Blueprints for
example, I tapped out because ofthe room RNG.
Like like the RNG necessitating precise roles for things and
getting frustrated when those roles didn't pan out.

(55:03):
And then it takes forever to getinto a new game and I have to
watch the fucking opening cutscene.
And like all of this shit to me was just like really annoying.
And then another game like EdithFinch, I get frustrated by the
deliberately slow pace that the game puts me through.
And then in like in like the vast majority of open world
games, I find the exploration A generally pointless exercise

(55:25):
that only serves to like pad thegame length.
So so TDM can come in a variety of factors, but I can't really
think of a way that this game induces tedium.
Like when you die, it's fast. You're like back into a new game
almost instantly if you want to be when you want to solve
puzzles quickly to get the Chivos, it's fast.

(55:46):
Like the only minor layer of tedium that I can even think of
is what I said earlier where you're in combat.
And like, if you want to optimize it, the best way to do
it is to attack, proceed, attack, proceed, attack,
proceed. Now, do you have to do that?
No, but you do have to stay cognizant of pressing C very
often when you are in those combat like situations to just

(56:09):
make sure that like not only areyou taking weapons off when you
can just punch something to death, but also like optimizing
for durability. And that that's like the worst
that it gets is pressing C and then having to press Z after a
text box comes up. So again, like I can't think of
that. If that's the worst that the TDM
gets, the game is absolutely crushing it, which it is.

(56:34):
Yeah, it's like they they perfectly engineered the TDM out
of the game because like I was kind of thinking about it
comparing it to leap Year specifically, which is a Metroid
brainia and not technically a puzzler, but I think it's like
puzzler adjacent and the way that that game.
Well, I guess before I even get into that, the way that I'm

(56:54):
going to define TDM in this specific case is kind of like
what you guys were discussing inthe Discord channel earlier when
you're talking about kind of like quality of life.
And that's not not like necessarily all that I'm talking
about with TDM, but it's just like taking things that you
would have to do repeatedly or might take a little bit of

(57:15):
effort to think about and it just automating it because it's
the foundations of all the systems are logical.
So if you take a game like Leap Year and the way that I think
it's it manages its tedium is that the game is just extremely
simple to interact with. You move and you jump and that's
it. And everything that is difficult

(57:36):
with the game has nothing to do with the way that the player
plays the game. It's the way you think about it.
And it's it's a contrasted with mimic logic.
There are so many systems in this game that it's like
actually kind of ridiculous for like a game of like this scale
where they're just like a lot ofdifferent systems and a lot of

(57:58):
different ways that the player can interact with them.
A lot of different buttons that have multiple functions on
different screens, but those same buttons are engineered in
such a way that you take all thedifferent like stack
calculations that you'd have to do and you just reduce it to
like 1 button and you just pressthe button and that's it.

(58:20):
So basically what they do is they take a very complex, like
the very complex system of like,well, it's actually multiple
systems and they simplify it allthe way down to just like how
leap year is moving and jumping you.
The way you play this game is assimple as moving and jumping
really. You just move and press a

(58:41):
button. So you're telling me that it's
button? Awesome.
Yes, they did it. They fucking did it.
They. Finally figured it out.
So. Yeah, I think Tom kind of like
nailed everything with like the Blueprints comparisons just
because, yeah, like Blueprints is a little up its own ass.

(59:04):
Was it showing you things that the guy made, like the opening
cutscene? And everything in this game
basically cuts all of that out outside of yeah, like the
optimize spam. Yeah, this game is really like,
not tedious at all because they realize that TDM isn't fun.
Like, I don't know, adding like when you have a puzzle game, you
don't really want things to be like tedious.

(59:26):
You don't want like super long run backs to the puzzle or
anything. You just want to fucking do the
fucking puzzle. So they figured that out and
they did it really well. OK, this is like a meta question
for you puzzle fanatics. But if because you just said
like they like puzzle games shouldn't be tedious.
Like is that the goal of like most puzzle game developers?

(59:48):
Because I don't know, I feel like this is the only one I've
ever played that isn't tedious. I don't think Baba is used
tedious. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess for
full context for anyone listening, I've only played like
3 puzzle games in my entire lifeand that's mimic logic, logic
bombs and four minutes of blueprints before I uninstalled

(01:00:09):
it. Yeah, I mean, I think it's like
accurate to say that the goal ofany game should be to remove TDM
because in the sessions words, and let's say this loudly and
proudly from the rooftops, TDM is not fun.
We play games a lot. We play them for long periods of
time. We don't want to feel like we're
like writing paperwork at our jobs when we're playing these

(01:00:32):
games. TDM is not fun.
And when I wrote this question, honestly, I like I experienced a
little bit of TDM in this game. Like to me, hitting the optimize
button is tedious, you know, even if it's like a small
amount. So like, there's like some small
things here and there that I won't even get into.

(01:00:53):
There's like the vague feeling of TDM, like when I lose a run
on floor 29 and I feel like I just have to grind all the way
back. Maybe TDM is not the right word
for that. But really the reason I asked
this question is because this game removes it so deftly.
And I wanted to get some. Like we've, we've criticized a

(01:01:13):
lot of games for its TDMS in thepast, and I just want to call a
spade a spade when it's not tedious and give this game some
praise where it's due and make sure we're being fair in that
sense. Yeah.
So you guys basically nailed thehead on everything I was going
to say anyway. An important thing with TDM and
games is that it's when it's done well, It's supposed to be

(01:01:36):
an Ave. of friction for when thefun parts and it makes it even
more fun. So like with Dark Souls, that
game is tedious in a lot of ways.
But one way that I think is great is like those kind of
short to medium run backs to theboss.
Because if that like that's kindof like your punishment in and
of itself for like losing to theboss.
And it makes fighting the boss kind of a little less monotonous

(01:01:57):
than just like if you spawned right outside the door.
So that's like a positive argument for it.
Yeah, And like to go along with that, I'll draw 2 comparisons
for the exact comparison that you post, which is Dark Souls
games. I my very first Dark or my very
first Soulsborne game rather, itwas Bloodborne and I played Dark

(01:02:18):
Souls 1 immediately afterwards. This was shortly after
Bloodborne had released. And when I played Dark Souls 1,
I literally spent, I, I'm not exaggerating, 2 weeks trying to
kill Orenstein and Smo. And I was doing the long run
back to that because like the really long one from like the
very first bonfire in on Orlando, you have to run across

(01:02:41):
Raptors. Yeah, it was, it was bad.
It was bad, it was bad. That's funny.
But that is an entirely different level of tedium from
Bloodborne, which I love it. That's like a go to game.
However, on release, that game'sload times after you died were

(01:03:03):
literally like 10 to 15 minutes depending on the.
Zoom, you were in. That is a very different level
of tedium from, like, having to run back from the first bonfire
in on Orlando. And like, I think the important
distinction there is actually being able to engage with the
game if it's something that you are invoking as tedious, like,

(01:03:28):
yeah, something I like. Some of these systems might be
tedious and mimic logic. And that would have been much
worse if the solutions to them weren't there, like the optimize
gear button. But they played the game.
They realize, oh shit, we need to optimize gear button and they
put it in and the game is so much better off for it.
But you're still engaging with the game because like, these

(01:03:49):
aren't things that that you guyswouldn't have come up with on
your own if you were playing thegame and you were trying to like
sweaty no life it and get all the achievements and everything.
Eventually you would have figured out, Oh yeah, I should
unequip all of my gear when the target has one HP.
But the developers realized thatand they added the optimized

(01:04:09):
gear button to compensate for it.
They recognized there was this flaw in their game and they they
fixed it as best they could. And it's a pretty good fix.
So I think if we want to talk about like the way that a game
can do TDM, well, I think it's a, it's a combination of three
things. First, it has to be deliberate,

(01:04:33):
like if if someone is inducing TDM, they have to be doing it on
purpose and for a reason. And 2nd, it needs to be like
tied to a theme of some way where like, and this is what
Dark Souls does, where the TDM and Dark Souls is designed to
match like the tone and emotion that the game wants you to feel.

(01:04:57):
Where like that those games weaponize struggle.
And the way that the game is like very punitive on you for
like a bunch of different things, like when you die or
whatever is like indicative of just the core theme of struggle
in that game. And so that is like why it works
so well, because it's so like perfectly matched to just the

(01:05:19):
core of what that game is. And then #3 it should be
transformative. So not all of these things have
to be present, but like in some way, shape or form, you probably
need like 2, I would say. I'd say it's a pick two
situation. And so like transformative,
right? So like I would describe this as

(01:05:41):
like doing Mephisto runs in Diablo 2, right?
We're like the tedium of runningMephisto 800 times cannot be
understated. But on that 800 and first time
that motherfucker drops a Shaco and your entire like effort has
now that effort in tedium has now been justified.

(01:06:01):
It like transforms the entire experience by just like
massively, massively rewarding you for performing the same
action over and over again. So again, it needs to either be
deliberate, tied to a theme, or transformative to the experience
in some way, shape or form. If you don't have one of those
three things, then it's just teething.

(01:06:24):
And satisfied with these answers.
Well said everyone. If we would like to move on to
the next question. However, before we do, I would
like to state that when I playedBloodborne on release, the load
screens in those game, like I said they were like 10 to 15
minutes every time you died. And this was before they this

(01:06:45):
was before they put tool tips for the items that you could
read and the load screens that would change periodically.
It was just the Bloodborne logo during that 10 to 15 minutes and
my friend whose PS Five I was using to play it had a plasma
screen TV. I burned that motherfucking logo
into the screen because of how much I was playing.

(01:07:06):
That's crazy. That's very fun I.
Remember reading about that, I thought.
I think that was actually a pretty common problem back with
that game. Like, yeah, it was easy to
happen, especially if you got a lot of it anyway.
Yeah, something to point out about this game.
Stadium too is like there's a durability system in this game
and it fucking sucks but becauseof optimized gear like you
barely worry about it. Yeah, that's actually a good

(01:07:27):
point. This is maybe the first game
where I felt like I did not hatethe durability system because it
was just baked into like how thegame is supposed to function.
You have to do one or the other.Either have the durability
system and let me optimize gear or don't have the durability
system, which I think I prefer. No durability system, but they
still like worked within their bounds really well.
Yeah, that's part of what I was getting at, where like they made

(01:07:48):
this, like, you can tell that the optimized gear button was
made like at the end of the game's development cycle or
whatever, and they realized, like, yeah, this is kind of
annoying, we should fix this. And they did.
So here's why the durability system works.
It's because the runs are so fast.
So like if you don't look at it like it's a durability system

(01:08:08):
like Tears of the Kingdom and you just instead read the
instead of instead of reading the word durability, you read
the word uses. Then I think it works perfectly
fine again because you know thatlike in 10 minutes you're just
going to be in a new run and youdon't have to worry about it.
Versus Tears of the Kingdom where like maybe you get this
bad ass thing that you want to use for the next 30 hours, but

(01:08:31):
you know you can't. Yeah, in this game I don't like,
I think the durability is random.
I think when you attack it, it takes like a random number from
like 1 to 15 or something insane.
But I can't. I'm not sure.
There are modifiers for some weapons or just maybe oh.
Right, that's what it is, some weapons.
Because there's the sturdy ones,the non sturdy ones.

(01:08:52):
Yeah, yeah. I think that's a bad thing of
the game's design though. Like I would much rather it just
be uses versus like, should I use this whetstone?
I have 12. How much is this gonna use?
And then your ship breaks and you're like, should I use the
whetstone? Like that aspect of it, you're
saying you'd prefer if it was just completely deterministic.
If it just said like you want, like if you're attack, if it
like how you're gonna die when you hit something and it's like

(01:09:13):
you're gonna die. Do you still want to do this?
Be like your weapon's about to break?
Do you still want to do this? Like, I don't know.
That yeah, that would have been good.
Yeah. Oh, I'm glad you mentioned that
because that was one of those things that came up and I was
like, wow, I'm really surprised that they added this.
And I love it when, yeah, like an attack will kill you.
I think that's such a good addition.
Oh. For sure, yeah.
I saved my ass more than once. Yeah, wait.

(01:09:35):
Oh. I just realized I thought you
were describing a feature that you'd like added, but I realized
I've never seen that because I've never been in that
situation. They have that feature of you're
going to die. I wish they had the feature of
your weapons going to break whenit's about oh.
OK, gotcha. That's so they have.
One, not the other. Yeah, because that's the one I
didn't recognize, so I was half right at least.

(01:09:56):
But the other one, yeah, it's funny.
I didn't. I never knew about that, but I
love that. Yeah, that's.
Cool. It's very cool.
I think we can all at least acknowledge that if you had had
to choose between one of those two that you will die. 1 is a
much important 10. Yeah, yeah.
You're not going to show the info ahead of time like Tactical
Nexus, right? Here's the exact amount of
damage you're going to take whenyou fight this guy.

(01:10:16):
Like if it's just going to be like you don't know, then you
definitely need a system like that or else it's not fun.
This might be like way too much and removing skill issue, but
since since that button is done like completely logically like
every time you attack, what if they could like update that if

(01:10:36):
statement and check it again. And if there's a new optimal
setting show like an asterisk orsomething on this like next to
it exit button that shows that there's like a better choice.
Yeah, I mean, I think this game could definitely benefit from
like crazy stats, stuff like that.
And like another thing that I would like to see added is like
real time score basically, whichwould look really fucked up for

(01:10:58):
a player that doesn't know what's going on.
So it should be like an option in the settings because it just
constantly goes down like prettyquick.
But I still think that that's like the one like quality of
life thing the game's missing isyou don't know what your score
is, so you can't like benchmark,like am I going too fast?
Am I going too slow during a run?
Just give the option to put it on your screen after you finish
the first 3 stages or the 1st 3 levels.

(01:11:19):
Yeah, I don't think you should just just display it to newbie
players, but it should be eitherbe an option or yeah, like you
said, gated behind the objective.
Yeah, that would be, that would actually be so fucking nice.
I hated, I hated getting to the end and seeing my score was like
65168 hundred some shit. All right.

(01:11:39):
You guys ready to go to the nextquestion?
Yes, Sir. Was the combat aspect of this
game necessary? What did it add?
Why don't we start with betting this time?
So taking the question at face value, I think the answer is
technically no, the combat is not necessary.

(01:12:01):
I liked the combat though, but realistically it could have been
anything else. But I do think that something
should be there. Like I don't think I would like
this game as much if it was onlythe chess and the mimics.
So I'm glad the combat is there,but it it didn't have to be
combat, it could have been another mini game, you know what

(01:12:22):
I mean? Yeah, Fishing, Thomas.
Yeah, I, I, I didn't think aboutit in the way that Ben did.
I guess I'll just say that like,I think after Ben gave his
answer, I'm going to say I actually agree with the like, I

(01:12:43):
guess the core of what he said, which is was a combat necessary?
No, but I do think that the the combat is what made the game go
from like pretty good to really good.
Because even if it wasn't combat, it has to be something
that makes you think about a second order layer of
complication that just goes beyond the mimic puzzles because

(01:13:07):
that is what forces you to thinkmore in the abstract of like,
can I skip this room? Do I have enough gold for the
upcoming shop? Do I have the right weapons to
beat the next combat floor? Like et cetera, et cetera, et
cetera, et cetera. And so I think all of those
things work in the presence of the combat because realistically
the logic puzzles are just a means to an end.

(01:13:29):
And that end is the combat. Like you, you are just doing
these puzzles so that you can win the combat at the end of the
stage or whatever. So I think having that extra
layer of complexity that like it's what I described like at
the top of this whole thing where there's like a lot of
discrete systems in place and you're only really having,

(01:13:51):
you're only really forced to think about one of them at a
time. But I think this game does that
really, really well. And yeah, like Ben said, if it
was just the mimic puzzles, I think this game, this game would
not be as nearly as good as it ended up being if it was just
them. The cool thing about the combat
is that it automatically transforms the mimic mini game

(01:14:13):
into a resource management. Yeah, that's what we're going
to. Yeah.
So I think that is pretty cool and that I guess kind of to
clarify on my answer, if it wasn't combat, whatever they do
replace it with like if they didreplace with something, it would
have to interact with some way with the mimic mini game where

(01:14:37):
like you're intense vice who open as many as possible, right?
So like that makes you stronger,that gives you more resources
for the resource management. So whatever, whatever the combat
is, or if it's replaced by something else, it just needs
that connection with the the mimics in some way.
And that's obviously just very simple and easy to do.

(01:14:58):
So it's all like it's asking a lot.
Yeah, no doubt. Like I guess the way that I was
interpreting what you were saying was that like it didn't
need to be like literally swordssmacking in the skeletons.
Like it could have been like mimic puzzles that were just
treasure chests full of fucking monster truck parts and you're
gonna fucking like do a monster truck race at the end of the

(01:15:20):
fucking level or whatever. Like, as long as there's
something that. 'D be so much better.
Thomas just, you know, spitballing the next burnout.
Also, sorry, I need to add another addendum to my answer.
All all that argumentation I made for like possibly replacing

(01:15:41):
the combat with something else. I think that combat was the best
choice because it makes the gameTactical Nexus A.
Tactical Nexus like like basically like definitely feels
very similar to it in that vein.I definitely have something to
say about, but sesh, go ahead. Yeah.
I was just going to say like it's obviously not necessary

(01:16:03):
because like nothing is necessary when it comes to a
program, but it's like it's I think it's part of the game's
identity. And without it, it wouldn't have
nearly the same level of like like addictive nature to it.
It would just be like you would play a couple runs, be like, oh,
this game's cool and they did cool shit.
I like this, this challenges my brain.
But you wouldn't, it wouldn't belike, holy fuck, this is fun

(01:16:26):
because it like really gamifies what is otherwise just kind of
like what would be like an annoyance.
Like if you had to like open your fridge and you need to
solve a mimic puzzle before opening your fridge, you would
just be pissed. So like it's it kind of took
that that whole like game gamifying it makes it just like
so much more fun. Yeah, like if the elevator pitch
of this game was it's just blueprints parlor puzzles, that

(01:16:48):
sounds dog shit. Yes, exactly.
If it's this is blueprints, parlor puzzles with like a rogue
light, a rogue like combat element to it, that makes it
sound 20 times better, Yeah. Exactly.
Rather than just one of those interface games you actually
have like a world. Yeah, I guess it's just

(01:17:08):
interesting to me because like Ifeel like with the vast majority
of the puzzle games that all of us like, it does have that an
alternative gameplay component that's more than just the
puzzles. Games like Blueprints or Void
Stranger where it's, you know, it's got kind of the metal
puzzle aspect. Games like like Outer Wilds kind

(01:17:33):
of has it too. That's kind of a more complex
example, but it like has more than just the puzzles for sure.
I, I think because of that, I, Iguess what I, maybe I asked this
question incorrectly, but I moreso was asking it in the sense of
like, how much worse would this game have been off if it did not

(01:17:53):
have the combat component to it?And the reason I really asked it
in the first place is because it's just half baked is a strong
word for it. That means more negative
connotation than I intend, but it's perfectly functional.
It's like a perfectly functional5 out of 10 component to pull

(01:18:13):
all of the aspects of the game together kind of in the way
where Ben was describing where it, you know, it connects all of
these mimic puzzles into a like a broader gameplay loop of what
you're doing. And I think a lot of those
puzzle games just don't work if they don't have that component,
like Blueprints, for example. It has a whole rogue like room
building aspect that towards theend I was starting to appreciate

(01:18:36):
more than the actual puzzles personally.
But yeah, I I just truly don't think this game really functions
without the the combat or something to replace it.
Like it really just needs something to tie it all
together. Yeah, so like, here's here's how

(01:18:59):
I think about the combat. Like the system of the systems
of the combat are so fucking simple.
It's like Ben said earlier, likeit distills everything down into
a single button press, right? And but what it's really doing
is it's testing you on multiple axes where it's saying, did you

(01:19:23):
open enough chests to get past this combat floor?
OK, good. Did you open enough chests to
get past it efficiently? OK, good.
Did you not open enough chests? And now you're going to take a
bunch of damage, which is going to make beating the level
significantly harder. Uh oh.
And so I think it, it I'm going to get into some of more of this
elements in the next question, Ithink.

(01:19:43):
But I think it, it really just functions as a way of like
gatekeeping your progress and making sure that you are playing
the game efficiently in the way that it was designed to do,
which is to which is to go fast.It's it's to go, it's to go fast
and open as many chests as you can while you're going fast.

(01:20:06):
Yeah, and I guess like this willpartly tie into the next
question for me as well. But imagine a game where it's
the same structure, where it's like 30 floors, but it has none
of the combat. And at the 30th floor where all
thirty of those floors are just mimic puzzles, there's just like

(01:20:26):
a a pass fail gate. Like you need to have opened 100
chests on floor 30 in order to win this level.
Like, imagine that game for a minute.
And because you already know you're going to lose, yeah.
It would be, it would be terrible.
And I think one of the things that makes this game so strong
to me was the thing that I had to let Thomas know about, which

(01:20:47):
is that you don't have to solve all of the puzzles.
You can just move on to the nextfloor.
If you can't figure it out or ifthe procedural generation has
given you a 5050 or something else that's unsolvable or you
just don't feel smart enough to do it, like you have these
options to move on. And if it was what I described
where you had to have a set number of chests to do it, the

(01:21:10):
game would feel terrible. Because it it's like this
delayed gratification or not even delayed gratification, like
delayed failure, where you know that this run is just going to
fail and this is going to be frustrating.
But like, you can take these things into account in those
first like 10 floors where it's like, yeah, I mean, this one,
it's too risky. I don't want to do the 5050.

(01:21:31):
I've gotten some good gear, so I'm going to move on.
Like you can take all this stuffinto account.
And I think that's part of why the gameplay is so much more
than like what the like what thebuttons you're pressing actually
are. Yeah, because like, that is like
a huge part of it. Because I think one thing that

(01:21:56):
has kind of gone unsaid, which is that like a lot of what makes
the combat fun is you're literally opening fucking
treasure chests. Like, you, you are looting every
room. You're getting random loot in
every single room. And who the fuck doesn't like
doing that? Who doesn't like playing a video
game where you're opening treasure chests?

(01:22:17):
And that's all that this game is, is just random loot after
random loot so that you can get past all the different combat
floors. That's true, they didn't need
anything for this game to work. It's open chess.
Yeah, I think, I think also likecalling it combat, is it like
the right way to think of it? It's kind of like what Ben said.
It's like a resource management game at the end because like

(01:22:37):
obviously it's not really combat.
Like if you put this game in anygame that said it had good
combat, it would have become theworst game of all time.
So. Yeah, it's just, it's just a way
of gatekeeping your efficiency into the game.
Guys ready to move on to the next one.
Sure. Yep.
All right, this game uses procedural generation for its

(01:22:59):
puzzles. This is one of the few puzzle
games I've played that does this.
Did it make for a worse or better experience than other
puzzle games for you? Why?
We'll start with Session this time.
Yeah, I don't, I don't think theproc Gen. really matters because
it could also just be like how Blueprints does it, where
everything's handmade and then they could just do it like
randomly. That would obviously be a little

(01:23:21):
worse if you get puzzles twice. So I think that's kind of like
the only advantage of it. But like you would also get
cooler puzzles if everything's handmade like in blueprints
where you could just do like crazy shit with the wording and
everything. So like I think the proc Gen. is
like it's fine that it's there, it's cool.
I think the coolest thing is like the the 5050 part of the
game. I think that's like easily like
the most interesting part of theentire game where you don't need

(01:23:42):
to open every chest or a lot of puzzle games like this would
make you open every chest. I think the kind of like the
game just has like 4 or five puzzle pieces like that in place
that if you take any one of themaway, the game's just like
absolutely terrible, but it justkind of like works in itself
really well in that regard. I I just want to coke something

(01:24:03):
out of you a little bit because you're kind of answering it, but
do you think it's a good or a bad thing that the procedural
generation can cause unsolvable puzzles without random chance?
I think that's like, yeah, that's that's a good, good part
of the game. Like if everything like could be
solved, I think it would be a lot less interesting because
then you don't need to make the decision of am I going too slow?

(01:24:24):
Do I need to go down? Like you can just go like, oh, I
don't know, I'll go or like, yeah, it kind of adds like the
whole vibe of like, it's not about difficulty, It's about
speed, law, balancing difficulty.
Done so. I thought about it in a complete
different way and this might be a perspective unique for me, but
the proc Gen. made the game for me.

(01:24:46):
Like if it was not project and this game would be uninstalled
and I'll tell you why. It has to do with skill issue
and cope. Because so the way that it works
is that like, if I was stuck notbeing able to play standard one
this entire time and everyone else beat the fucking game and
it was deterministic, I'd feel justifiably like a retard

(01:25:07):
because it's like I failed to test that everyone else has
passed, you know what I mean? Counter this one.
Whereas if it's yeah exactly. And then fuck, I just lost my
train of thought. But like basically hold on, I
have notes written for this. OK so basically because there is
proc Gen. I can justify my struggle as bad

(01:25:31):
RNG and that's why the proc Gen.is very important for me in this
game. It gives you a dummy to put all
of your struggle onto. Yes, yeah, that is, I think
that's a very uniquely bend perspective on it.
It's like people. Like pure copium.
Pure. Yeah, it's like, it's like

(01:25:52):
people that only play team gamesin StarCraft so that they have
someone that they can blame whenthey lose.
Exactly. That's very funny though.
I think it's very valid. No, I think it's.
I think it's, yeah, it's very honest.
That's a good answer. Yeah, I think it's an
interesting addition to like, you know, the psychology of
gaming. Like, yeah, sometimes you just

(01:26:12):
need that fifth person in your four man queue for A5 player
game. You put all the blame on it, you
can have more fun. Thomas All right, I don't
remember how I answered this question in my notes, but
looking at my notes, I see the word pedagogical.
So I apologize if this gets a little bit abstract, but I'm

(01:26:37):
just going to read straight frommy notes.
So the project of this game leads to an interesting
pedagogical methodology behind the game's intent.
So most handcrafted logic puzzlegames like this are going to be
like closed proofs where the designer's going to pre solve
the puzzle to ensure that it hasa unique guest free solution and
that you can only win once you've reached that airtight

(01:27:00):
proof. So pedagogically, this trains
you to believe that every puzzleis perfectly solvable without
guessing, and if you're stuck, you've missed something.
So this ties back to what Seth was talking about like 15
minutes ago or whatever. Like when I first started
playing this game, I found myself trying to play it in that
way where I felt like I had to solve every puzzle 100% before

(01:27:23):
moving on, even if that requiredtaking unnecessary 5050 guesses
due due to the proc Gen. But this game does not guarantee
a perfect logical solve because it allows you to move on with
without 100% completion. Like you can move on with 0%
completion. You could literally just walk
down to the last floor if you wanted to.
Well, almost until you get gatedby the combat or whatever.

(01:27:47):
But because of the nature of thegame is really solving puzzles
for resource gathering. At some point you can turn that
valve off and mose it to the endof the stage because you've
gathered enough. Or alternatively you can take
that 5050 to avoid your run ending because of a lack of
resource generation. So it's interesting because in
tandem with the pressure mechanic that it has in the form

(01:28:10):
of in gut, it shifts the focus from finding that perfect closed
proof to making you efficiently gather information on more than
one different axis. So your brain eventually stops
going, how do I reach the uniqueanswer and starts thinking,
what's the fastest way to reach enough certainty that I can

(01:28:31):
cross the finish line of this stage?
And so it's teaching you this form of risk assessment based
logic where you're prioritizing these high leverage deductions
and you learn to cut your lossesif something is unsolvable or
it's too complex, so that that uncertainty becomes a part of
the skill set rather than a failure state.

(01:28:54):
So it I think that that could only work in a game that was
procedurally generated like this.
So I think honestly, I thought it was pretty fucking awesome
that in a game with logic in thetitle, that it kind of foregoes
logic in a in a lot of differentways by basically saying you've
reached the logical conclusion of this and now you're at a

(01:29:16):
guess. So you can either move on, or if
you feel like you have gained enough from this floor, you can
you can move on. Or if you don't feel like you've
gained enough from this floor, then you can take a guess.
So I think in that sense, it's fucking awesome.
Yeah. I think First off, I just want

(01:29:37):
to say that the mimic of logic in the title is funny because
of, you know, realm of realm of pure logic.
As with logic bombs, this game takes that idea and uses it much
more depthly and, you know, selfreferentially.
And I think it's quite funny because of that.

(01:29:57):
Yeah, I I agree with what you guys are saying for sure.
And part of the reason I ask this question is because I kind
of consider it, it somewhat of an answer to the previous
question of, of the combat aspect of the game being
necessary. Because I, I feel like so many
systems of this game just fall fall apart if you don't have the
procedural generation and vice versa with the combat.

(01:30:20):
Like the 50 fifties would only be frustrating if it was just a
pure puzzle game like islands ofinsight or, you know, you're
more classic puzzle or pseudo use whatever.
Procedural generation is usuallysomething I, I, I don't really
love in games, mostly because like, I think of games like Left

(01:30:40):
4 Dead and you can kind of just see through what it's doing and
it doesn't feel random anymore. Or like KDS, for example, where
it like, yeah, it's it's like kind of procedurally generated,
but you know, you can see through and into the structure
of what the game is trying to show you.
I don't feel like this game cares about any of that.

(01:31:01):
And it just wants to like shamelessly do what they wanted
the game to be. And I appreciate that.
I just feel like there's a lot of honesty in this game and the
procedural generation it's. Part of that.
And while it's not something that I think I would like in a
lot of puzzle games, there is like this degree of randomness

(01:31:24):
that adds a lot of excitement topuzzle games because of that,
like unique story that you can have like mimic logic.
You know, obviously each floor is isolated.
You're not going to have like a huge story about like how you
came to your conclusion for eachof these.
But I'm thinking of a game like Outer Wilds where everything is

(01:31:45):
quote UN quote predetermined andthe world is predetermined.
But because of the nature of howtime passes in that game,
everything is going to be different every time you go to a
different place unless you're literally just like holding W at
the start of every run. And it makes me realize that
like the randomness and procedural generation like this

(01:32:08):
do have a place in puzzle games,even though it like if you were
to just walk up to me on the street and ask me if I wanted
this in the game, I would probably say no.
But I don't know, this is one ofthose games where I feel like it
might change my opinion on that if enough other good games have
it. It's kind of tough.

(01:32:30):
I think it's just tough for a puzzle game because you need to
kind of find a formula where it works because like pick cross
can't really be proc Gen. in theway that this game is like that
would be really tough to make work.
Like you just have to find kind of like those bite sized puzzles
in a way that you can introduce proc Gen.
And then basically have everything built around it so
that it also like it works, if not just the handcraft

(01:32:50):
everything because it'll just bea better experience.
Yeah, it's weird, like the handcrafted aspect I guess is
what I'm thinking of when I think of all this.
Because you want this like idealized world of like The
Witness, for example, where all the puzzles are so good and
they've been plate tested, then it's proven they're good.
But you know, procedural generation is almost like a a

(01:33:14):
bad word sometimes. But I can't.
I just can't help that it workedthat well in this game.
Yeah, I feel like with the mechanics they had, it had to
have proxim because like if you mentioned the 50 fifties, I feel
like if you had like bespoke puzzles with the 50 fifties, I
feel like that's just bad design, right?
Yeah, I agree. I think you could craft, if you

(01:33:35):
crafted like 2500 puzzles from scratch, I think you would have
a more interesting thing and then you just pull from a random
pool basically. You say like gears, tier 0
puzzles, here's Tier 1 puzzles 2345.
I think it's a lot tougher to dothan to just prompt you and
everything, but I think that youcould still do something like
that. It just takes a lot of design.
Yeah, that makes sense. You could say it's logical.

(01:33:58):
Yeah, and I just, I think in a, in a game like this where so
much of it is predicated on likethe roguelike aspects of it,
like trying to handcraft them would just be a fucking Titanic
task. Because like, imagine if imagine
if like fucking what's her name?I forget the name of the studio

(01:34:18):
that made Slight Aspire, but like if they handcrafted every
fucking seed so that you could have like a more like emergent
and deliberate experience like it, it just can't be done.
I mean they can't, but you need like infinite monkeys typing on
typewriters or some shit. Yeah, I think this is a easier

(01:34:41):
to do and benefits from it more than say the Spire would because
I mean, yeah, yeah, the. Scheme.
The scheme is more tightly controlled, yeah, but I just
think like the the randomness isalready part of the fun with
this game to an extent so. I think it could work either
way. Yeah, I agree with that.

(01:35:02):
And I think before playing blueprints, I would say that the
handcrafted way wouldn't work. But after playing blueprints,
it's like there's a really good progression in all those and
they're handcrafted and everything.
So yeah. Yeah, honestly, like I think
that the more I think about it, the more I think if they had

(01:35:23):
just handcrafted every single puzzle and I had no idea it was
Proctor and it wouldn't have changed my opinion on this game
in like a single bit. Yeah.
If any, like the thing would be it's harder to design like you
said. Like it would be much fucking
harder to do that. But then you would also be able
to do things way fucking cooler.Like the box that says you're
going to fucking die in in 2 minutes.
That's like the coolest box in the fucking game.

(01:35:44):
They'll be able to do shit like that everywhere if they
handcrafted. It yeah, that's true yeah, I
guess basically I don't think itsuffers from being proc genned,
but I don't know if it necessarily gains either other
than there's probably a lot morelike possibility for like some
real fucked up emergent experiences from it if you

(01:36:05):
played the game for like a bajillion million hours I.
Mean I feel like the like just having procedural generation as
an option from a game design perspective lives and put a lot
more in the game. Like I wouldn't expect them to
put in the four bonus difficulties at the end of the
game without it. Exactly but it would be a more
like crafted experience like that's the sacrifice cuz they

(01:36:27):
would put more time into design and like less time into like the
systems. Yeah.
And then it does become like a 10 or $15 game and not a four
dollar, Yeah. Yeah, like this game is not even
trying to compete with a game like Tactical Nexus or
Blueprints, which is like kind of self aware that it's
potentially like the best puzzlegame ever made.
This game is kind of more of like a popcorn puzzler like Seth
said. Like this game is not trying to

(01:36:48):
be like I'm the best, it's just trying to be like, have a good
time. Yeah, agreed.
I think it's very good at that. Yeah, having a goal that you are
aware of what kind of game that you want to make.
Oh yeah. And like everything following
through to that point, I think does earn bonus points for me

(01:37:09):
more than just like the isolatedgame experience that I had for
me personally. I mean, yeah, you can't.
You can't expect every game thatyou make or play to be like a
masterpiece. So like the games like this know
their scope and they exist in their scope really well.
Yeah, to me, it's always a matter of like the the intent of

(01:37:32):
the creator. I'm thinking of the game like
Darkest Dungeon, which I fuckinglove, but like, they literally
crafted that game to be the mostfrustrating, egregiously
irritating game ever, and they did a damn fucking good job at
that. I mean that game is is peak TV.

(01:37:52):
Exactly. But like, that's the point,
right? Yeah.
I mean it's the same thing as like Darkov.
Darkov was the same as like whatTom was saying.
Like the entire game's built like Dark Souls is built around
TDM, like Escape from Darkov. It's the same thing, like if you
removed all the friction in thatgame it would suck.
Yeah, I just, I just like it when the developers know what

(01:38:14):
kind of game they're making and they don't change their vision.
I like when they they stick to ascope and they have just a
really tightly designed game andit's not some like super
massive, everyone's going to play it and love it kind of
game. But like they did their thing
and they did it in like a great way.
Yep, agreed. Do you guys want to move on to
awards? Nope.

(01:38:35):
Sesh. What was your favorite
difficulty? I'm obviously including the
bonus difficulties at the end ofthe game.
Yeah, I didn't play the bonus difficulties enough to be able
to say like I can pick one of those favorites.
I think experts, my favorite random, I don't I don't like
like the random amount of mimics.
It just felt like a little more annoying to interface with and
standard was too tough to get 7000 like expert.

(01:38:56):
I felt like it was just like really fun to play and like the
puzzles were interesting and everything the whole time.
I think my favorite was actuallyprobably random actually for
some of the reasons that we're bringing up in procedural
generation. I feel like the random ones
would like, I don't even know how you would begin to craft

(01:39:17):
those if you weren't using proc Gen., But I just really liked
that the random puzzles, I, I feel like they've, they've
really emphasized the resource management because they required
a lot more guessing because there's that extra component of
randomness. Yeah, I mean, if you if if this
game isn't Procter, you don't dothe difficulties in the same way

(01:39:37):
to to like be clear, like this game needs to change a lot.
Yeah, but the way you would design it as a design thing, you
would just be like, I'm going tomake a one with two, two mimics
and then you don't tell the player like it's the same thing.
Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah.
My favorite was either random orconfused because I think that
they're actually very similar. And actually for the pretty much

(01:40:02):
the same reason as what SUS said, because I think that they
like really hammer home the riskassessment, risk assessment
that's work shit risk managementaspect of this game by like
peeling back an extra layer of like cold raw logic.
And it makes things feel a little bit dynamic and like I

(01:40:22):
think confused maybe edges out random just a little bit.
And I actually think the reason for that is you can pretty much
deduce a lot of the time how many like random chests or
random mimics there are on the random difficulty.
Like it's not super duper commonwhere you've got no idea if

(01:40:44):
there's 1234, whatever it does happen.
But I do think that the times where it does happen is what
makes it really interesting. And then confuse piles that even
further by just like really fucking throwing the wrench in
the whole thing. So those two are definitely my
favorite and I can't really pickbetween them because I like them

(01:41:05):
for the same reasons basically. Then I think you only played
standard, right? This is correct.
Standard is my favorite difficult.
Yeah, I wrote it down standard because it's the only one I
attempted and completed and I liked it a lot.
Can you play tutorial? Which one do you like more?

(01:41:25):
Oh, I guess, does that really count?
I guess it does count because you can't.
Pick it again. Yeah, that's true.
And I did lose in the tutorial technically.
So yeah, I mean, I guess it still, it's still, it's
standard. How about you guys favorite NPC?

(01:41:46):
Mine was definitely the massage guy.
Oh for sure. Was it a guy or that was a girl?
I have no idea, I assume but it was a guy, but maybe it was a?
Girl, I thought it was a guy. I didn't thought it was a girl.
I thought it was a girl because there's a heart emoji and I
thought. It was the heart emoji and yeah,
like the long hair and like literally a feminine looking
Sprite but. I thought bro was.
Just gay as fuck. Yeah, me too.

(01:42:08):
I thought he was even better. I thought he was just a JRPG.
Flamboyant that. Would be so good.
The ambiguity is great. Is that what all three of you
said? For sure.
No, I actually, I actually said NESA because I think that's her
name, right? The sister.
Yeah, H. SA Yeah.
And mostly because when she landed her like extra attack

(01:42:32):
that don't mean it elevated her for me where I was.
Very happy to see her. Do her attack.
That's funny, that's actually a good answer.
I put the fucking doctor that uses you as a medical
experiment. That guy's fun too.
Did you guys know, did you guys know that that that guy can't
actually kill you by the way, like if, if you would take
damage like he usually like if he damages you, he does like 30

(01:42:55):
or whatever, right? But if you're like 29 it'll just
put you to 1. Nice.
Just an FYI. You know, I gotta say, Ben's
answer might just be objectivelycorrect because Nezza does have
all of the hints that she gives you.
She's definitely the the most helpful by far.
Oh yeah. I I like the massage guy because

(01:43:15):
it might be a fucking puff puff or whatever from Dragon Quest.
The only thing about massage guyis that he's fucking useless.
Like 5 extra HP Fucking whoop Dee Doo.
Yeah, but I mean the the question is that who's the most
useful? OK, I know.
All right. I like how.
I successfully convinced all of you that he's a male.

(01:43:36):
I think it's funnier that way. I like it better if he's a male
stall man. That's all I had for words.
Did you guys have anything you wanted to agree?
No, yeah, I'm. Ready for judgement?
Let's do judgement. Scores.
Why don't we start with Ben? As someone that has played three

(01:44:00):
puzzle games ever I've started, I've only started to like
Solidify. I guess my taste in puzzle games
and what I really wanted puzzlers for a game developer to
not over engineer and over complicate the way that I
interact with the game. I also don't really want them to
weave in some like grand meta narrative with exceptions.

(01:44:20):
Like if if you have the chops for the riding in the world
building then go ahead. But otherwise I'd prefer if you
just keep it simple. But what I think what I, what I
really wanted from this game is that I kinda just wanted the
developer just to fucking like put the puzzle game in the bag

(01:44:42):
and that's it. Cuz that's what I ordered and
that's what I got. So 10 out of 10.
Everything about this game was delightful.
Shit, my God. God.
Damn it, I think I went high andI'm still not high enough.
All of us, dude. I even thought about 9.5 but I
was like there's no way he puts this around the same score as

(01:45:02):
fucking Clare Obscure. He rated out bigger than Clare
Obscure. This.
Game is better than Clare. Obscure because it didn't fumble
the fucking ending, Oh my. God, oh Jesus Christ.
Damn it. That's so funny.
That's just the fucking the The binary bin ratings are so hard

(01:45:23):
to figure out, I just gotta. Think of it like a test, like
everyone in the class can get 100, but that doesn't mean
they're all equally as smart kind of thing.
I I should have just? Listened to what he said.
He said this game might be better than Slave the Spire.
I should. Have just put it in the 10.
That's a, that's a. That's a really good point.
I just have to listen to what hesaid.
Bah. Yeah, like this game is not

(01:45:45):
uninstalled and like if I'm going to go send my massager,
I'm my just fucking bust out some mimic quadrant.
No, it's a good point. Yeah, no doubt.
I agree. Like this.
This is a game I will play againfor sure.
Well, Thomas. Go ahead then.
So so overall, I think that thisis actually one of the better

(01:46:05):
puzzle games I've played in the last couple of years.
And that statement, like carriesa pretty good amount of weight
because it's been a pretty fucking solid go for
contemporary puzzle games. Like I really like.
I'm just pretty much just gonna restate all the things I said I
liked about the game. Like I really liked how the game

(01:46:26):
like hones your skills over time, like to a fine fucking
edge where the first few go rounds I felt like the dumbest
man in the universe. And then by the end I was flying
through the game and like solving a lot of the more
complex puzzles with just like afucking glance.
And the game does a really good job of both teaching you and

(01:46:50):
like, improving your skill at like a very like satisfying
linear rate. Let's say the combat was like a
little bit of extra like Judge that really carries this game in
a way that adds a lot of dynamism.
And like, it's just got a very satisfying methodology for

(01:47:11):
trying to play the game quickly to maximize your score Because
like optimizing in this game is not fucking trivial.
Like I was actually really wishing that there were like
some content creators who were playing this game at a high
level. Like I really, really wanted to
go on YouTube and just find people who are fucking God like
at this game just just to see what it looked like.

(01:47:32):
Because I was really curious what super strong players for
this game. Like, I think it would be really
fun to watch. It'd be like watching people who
are like, obnoxiously good at like, fucking text twist or
chess or whatever, like just seeing how fast their brain goes
for just this like random littlelike test of logic.
So let's see. I wanted to close this with like

(01:47:57):
some kind of funny reference to free run, but I couldn't think
of anything. So instead I'm just going to say
that I'm glad that at least one game we've played so far with
logic in the title was not bootybutt sweat.
God damn it. So this gets an 8 out of 10.
Nice. Yes, I did.
It's funny that you say that because that was going to kind
of be in like the comment I was going to leave on the game, so I

(01:48:17):
got to fucking think of something again.
That's my name. You.
Did the same thing two years in a row.
What did you say? 8 out of 10 all means that.
Nailed it. Hell yeah.
Hell yeah. Good work and.
Honestly Sesh and Thomas's scores were intertwined for me
so hopefully that means I get sessions right too so.

(01:48:39):
And so I think, yeah, I just want to qualify something really
quick. So I, I know that like I blazed
this game like super hard prettymuch the entire time.
And I I said that like the only negative for me was having to
press C from time to time. So it may be like, why 8 out of
10? But I think that this kind of

(01:48:59):
goes back to some of the narrative stuff we were talking
about that like if this game didhave an actual like super good
narrative rather than like the six out of 10 or if it had like
a super nice like crispy, why? That's the kind of shit that
makes a game 10 out of 10, right?
So like this, this game had a ceiling.
And for me, I felt like that ceiling was right there at 8:00.

(01:49:23):
Yeah, I'll just segue because that's that's basically like
what I was going to say. Like I think this game could
only have one possible rating and it can't go lower and it
can't go higher for that like exact reason of like it's not
trying to be the best game ever.So it doesn't get a best game
ever rating. And it's not a bad game by any
stretch. So it doesn't get like a bad
game rating. So yeah, for me it's also an 8.

(01:49:43):
Fuck. I guess I look at it differently
where I think it accidentally became the best game ever.
Hey, all three of us got that shit.
I mean, cuz so for me, I need tobe able to say like if it's
something's A10, I need to be able to compare it to A10 and if
Tactical Nexus is A10, this gameis not even close to that game.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, but yeah.
Impress that I think this game is better than Tactical Nexus

(01:50:05):
Sure that's just me yeah I. Don't know.
For me, I feel like like it all has to come together and hit
really powerfully to be a 10 outof 10.
Like the only reason Outer Wild does a 10 out of 10 for me is
because of the ending sequence. Is is so goddamn powerful for
me. I mean.
It's not like it, like I don't think Ben's 10 is less valid

(01:50:28):
because I don't think it's a 10 or anything.
Like I think it hits people differently.
So it's like I'm oh. Yeah, for sure.
Yeah. I I expect zero people to share
my radio this game. I mean, I, I think it's super
valid in terms of like a like, if the, if the question is like,
what is the fun factor of this game on a scale of 1 to 10?
I think it's like a 10, right? Cuz I think this game like
nailed that. So like perfectly well, just

(01:50:48):
thinking the whole package. And so I like, I think it can't
be worse or it can't be better than like it's literally the
most game of all time. Yeah, for sure, cuz like for me,
I sat here trying to think of what I think a 10 out of 10
puzzle game is, and Outer Wilds is 1 and Ober Din is probably
another. And yeah, to say that mimic
logic can be held to the same standard as those two games,

(01:51:10):
it's kind of crazy to me. Yeah, if we count La Malana,
then I would say it's like La Malana Classic and two for me.
And then I think Blueprints is really close.
We're probably just shy of it. And then Void Stranger and Outer
Wilds. Yeah, OK, I have played Void
Stranger, so I've played four puzzle games.

(01:51:32):
Played in quotation moments. Yeah.
Yeah, I think, I think you guys took a lot of words out of my
mouth in terms of this game is fucking incredible.
But the developers also knew thekind of game they were making,
and it can't really go past thatfor the kind of game that they
were making. All I can do is praise them for

(01:51:57):
having that vision, sticking to it and executing it perfectly.
And for that reason, I'm absolutely looking forward to
their next game. I hope that they, it's probably
unlikely, but I hope that they made a good amount of money off
of this game that they can put alittle bit more resources into
their next game because that might be like a day one pick up
for me. But yeah, for very similar

(01:52:19):
reasons to everything you guys said.
Wait, hold on, I'm not going to get my score just yet.
Little spiel. When I recommended this game, my
memory of it was like a 5 out of10.
I guess it just like didn't linger in my memory that much
for what it was. And I also didn't remember that
I'd actually beaten this game the first time that I played it.

(01:52:40):
As I started playing, I was like, OK, yeah, this is pretty
fun. This is like a six out of 10.
And then when I sent you guys the message about like, oh, wow,
I wish that there was AUI for marking the chest, and there it
is. Then it was a 7 out of 10.
And then I started like paying alittle bit more closely
attention, kind of comparing it to some of the other games that
we've rated and how many more assets that it was giving, all

(01:53:01):
the little things that it did. And I was like, yeah, OK, this
game's an 8 out for sure. I forgot what I gave it, what I
said you were going to say. OK, good.
Tom's got that. Nailed it.
I nailed 2. Oh yeah.
But yeah, that is it for mimic logic.

(01:53:22):
Do you guys have any closing? Thoughts.
Not so much on Mimic logic, but I don't know if you had a game
that you wanted to play for Intermezzo but the their next
game they just released the demofor it in case you wanted to do
that. Next week fuck yeah cuz.
That game looked sweet, or what is it called?
Lethal Dungeon. So yeah, I don't know if you had

(01:53:48):
something in mind, but I figuredI would just throw that out
there just in case you didn't. How close are you?
Hello, Charlotte. Or something like that.
Well. We're going to do.
Hello, Charlotte. Yeah, never mind, I don't know
if I want to do a demo for Intermezzo game anyway, I
forgot. We already have Hello Charlotte
too, so yeah. Never mind.
Real quick, Jordan. How, how much time have you put

(01:54:11):
in the Ballers gate 3? Like do you think you're almost
done with act one? I know that that's almost.
Certainly not, I think I have like 6 or 7 hours but like I'm
fucking with redskin bitcher's name.
I can't remember because they all look the same.
They being their names. What's her name?
Carlike. Yes, thank you.
Yeah, I've been, I like did all of her like as much like back

(01:54:33):
story for her as I could have been everything.
So yeah, I don't think I'm even close to done with Act One.
OK. Yeah, because I know the three
of us are basically done with it.
So I just wanted to to ping that.
I've, I've got a decent bit to go, but I'm also not worried at
all about, you know, not hittingthe deadline.
Yeah. So that's.
Also that's also not a reason torush for sure like we.

(01:54:55):
Yeah, yeah, I think. We all agreed on three weeks for
Act One for a reason. We're just kind of like, at
least in my case, I've done Act One a million fucking times.
So I just wasn't taking my time at all.
Yeah, and Bulger's Game 3 is a game you will get a lot more
enjoyment out if you do. Yeah, just stop and smell the
flowers. So.
Yeah, this is actually, oh, sorry, no good.

(01:55:16):
This is actually the first time I've played this game where I
didn't just fucking like, poop socket.
And it's actually very refreshing.
Yeah. You know, it feels nice to kind
of like play it in like chunks and stuff and kind of like do
things that are interesting and not do things that aren't
interesting just because you know what the scope of the game
is. Because like, I know I can't do

(01:55:36):
everything. So it's like, if it doesn't
sound interesting, I'm just like, Nope, not doing that.
Yeah, I think that's a really good way to approach your your
first playthrough for sure. That that definitely led my
first playthrough experience to being fucking wild compared to
everyone else that I knew. I mean, everyone obviously is
going to have a crazy first playthrough by comparison, but

(01:56:00):
let's just say by the end of thegame, I only had, I think I only
had two companions in my first playthrough because I just kept
pushing everyone out. I just kept fucking up, but I
was just rolling with it. That's what the hell.
I'm a monster. I mean, I pushed Astarian out
immediately. I don't want to spoil anything,
but at the at the obvious bit, Ipushed him right the fuck out

(01:56:22):
and I'm like, no, I'm not fucking with you.
Get the fuck out. I mean I don't know what you're
talking about but it definitely makes sense because when he held
a knife to my throat I was like fuck this guy.
Yeah, pretty much. I like, I knew Baldur's Game 3
was a game of consequences and Iwas like, this guy's got all the
red flags, get the fuck out. That's funny.

(01:56:44):
OK. So yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll
stick to the schedule then. I just wanted to see if if you
guys would want to move it up a week, but by the sounds of it,
absolutely not. So then next week do you guys
want to do Hello Charlotte episode 1 then?
So it's like 2 hours, right? Yeah, each of the games, I think

(01:57:06):
the, the first one's about two hours and then the second and
third ones are a little bit longer, but none of them are
longer than 4. Yeah, I'm kind of thinking, I
mean, this probably isn't even like the right way to think of
it, but I was thinking this is like Lisa the first, which I
think that one's right, but thenI think Lisa the second is not
like, Hello, Charlotte episode 2.

(01:57:27):
What do you mean because? Like Lisa the 1st is like 60
minutes long and then Lisa the Painful is like fucking 16 hours
long. OK, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I know all of these games are pretty like compact and pretty
short. Like if, if it wasn't an inner
Mezzo game. I was just going to say we play
it all every week. Yeah.
Which one is the first game? Is it?

(01:57:49):
You go to, you go to the Episode2 Steam page and then you
download the demo. Yeah, the demo's the one.
Oh, OK. I got you.
I, I, I didn't realize that. So I just played the game on
like there's a download on itch I think.
But if the Steam release is the same as the itch one, in fact
I'm just gonna say download the Steam release because the the

(01:58:11):
itch release was like really fucking annoying with like it
had some like resolution based fuckery that made it really
annoying to play. That's hopefully not present in
the Steam version. So I would say just play that
one. Yeah, I mean, I think it's
already insane to to put episodeone in that demo.
I've never seen a game do that, and I didn't even know you could
do that. Didn't want to pay 100 bucks to

(01:58:33):
put the game on its own. That's so funny.
So just to be clear, for playingthis game, I select Hello
Charlotte Episode 1, Hello Charlotte demo, and that is what
we're playing, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You have to download Hello Charlotte demo.
And then it says Hello Charlotteepisode one in the download
button, which again, I don't know.
I didn't know they could do that.

(01:58:55):
That's wild. Well anyway, that's definitely
what we're playing this week. I played through it already and
then I played about 20 to 30 minutes of episode 2 and I
thought Nah this is a Tash game so enjoy games of mind fuck and
you're going to like it. So just to wrap up the episode

(01:59:15):
that was Mimic Logic, we are still continuing with our
intermeszo games as we as we play through Ball through Skate
3. Next week we will have played
Hello Charlotte Episode 1. Bye.