070 - Cris Tales, Fruitbus, & OneShot: World Machine Edition - Underplayed

Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
Thank you for pressing start on episode 70 of Underplayed KZUMS
indie video game podcasts. Today we have two secret games,
followed by a review of our featured game, One Shot World
Machine Edition. Here on Underplayed, we review

(00:29):
indie games of all kinds, the games with small budgets but big
hearts, the lesser known experiences with imaginative
ideas. I'm Bo Po, but it's not only me.
There's a guy with a flow who's on a journey.
So won't you put your hands together, please?
For the Zeo Drifter, the indie game Sifter, the Curse, Kraken,

(00:50):
Mr. Disco Cola, What is going on?
You know, things seem pretty dark, gloomy, but I've been
trying to look on the bright side.
How are you today? Oh my gosh, Disco Cola, is that
you? You, you can hear me.
I wish I had my mom's pancakes, but I'm doing just fine.

(01:12):
Those are references to our featured game, One Shot World
Machine Edition. This is a game that is sort of a
new iteration of a game that came out in 2016, which itself
is an expansion or something, another iteration of a freeware
game that came out in 2014. Oh, is that right?

(01:33):
Yeah, so where we are today withthis 2022 game has been quite
the journey on their end. And now we're reviewing this
basically like the console version.
You can also play on the. PC What?
What did they call it? TV edition for Kentucky 0.
Yeah, or like Doki Doki Literature Club had, you know?
Probably a console version analog there.

(01:54):
Yeah, that'll be our featured game later in the episode.
Here at the top, we want to talkabout a couple of collaborations
that we've been fortunate enoughto do with other content
creators. It feels like there's this
really cool connected web of content creators when it.
Comes to indie games, yeah. And we're we're getting more of

(02:16):
those. We're getting deeper into the
center of the web. So it's it's feeling pretty
good. It's been a pleasure to get to
know more and more people the past several months, and we want
to talk about some appearances that we have elsewhere on other
shows. Do you want to talk about side
quests? Yeah, sure.
So Side Quests is part of the Fun and Games podcast and it's a

(02:39):
cool little podcast where other creators or other fans, maybe
developers even I'd, I haven't looked at the whole catalog, but
at least creators will go on andthey'll just talk about a game
that they love for like 10 to 20minutes.
And both of us were were featured on our own individual

(03:00):
side quest. So I did an episode on Hyper
Light Drifter and Bopo you did yours on.
Animal. Well, that's right.
Yeah. Two games that we love and by
the time this episode is out, both of ours should be out.
And my episode is Side quest #353 Discos is Side quest #355.

(03:25):
Yeah, pretty close together. Yeah, there's a buffer in there.
I think it was 9 souls, 9 souls,the buffer.
I haven't listened to that one yet.
I'm really. Excited for that game.
Yeah, very strong chance we playthat.
I'm I'm looking forward to that possibility.
I so I have a list of games from2024 I still need to play and a
while ago I actually ranked it by excitement level.

(03:49):
Oh cool. And I've slowly like, not in
order, but I've slowly like picked apart the list.
I've I've Sometimes you just have to game here and there.
You have to pick a 12, but it's a 12 because it's only, you
know, two hours and that's why you're.
Exactly. I pick them sometimes out of
order because of length or convenience, but right now 9
Souls is my number one spot. And I've seen a lot of people

(04:10):
this last year saying like 9 Souls is the game everybody
should be playing and not everybody is playing it.
And I'm mad about it. That's the sentiment that I'm
seeing. It's, it's hard for me because I
know, I know for a fact that it's getting a physical.
And so it's just like. OK, it's it was announced.
How long do I wait? Yeah, from fan.
It's coming from Fan Gamer and right now I don't think it's up

(04:32):
for order yet but. It's got to be in the next six
months it. Says coming in 2025 so.
So hopefully it arrives in time for Season 8, and then maybe
that will influence us to pick it.
Yeah, looking forward to that. So yeah, again, check out side
quests from the Fun and Games crew.
And we want to thank Matt. They invited us to record an

(04:53):
episode a piece and we're reallyappreciative for that.
Next, I just want to talk about Indie impressions.
This is a special podcast feature that you can catch
sometimes on the pre-order bonusfeed.
The pre-order bonus podcast is hosted by Cameron and Jake, and

(05:13):
our friend Jake has asked me to appear on Indie Impressions,
where Jake has a guest on sometimes and he and the guest
pick an indie game to talk about.
And the game that he and I choseis actually Grun, which I
reviewed earlier this season. I was really passionate about
Grun when I reviewed it on Underplayed the few episodes

(05:35):
back. But when you sit down with
someone else who's played the game and they've played it very
fresh and they have a new perspective on it from you, it
allows you to talk about new things.
Then maybe when you're doing a solo review on Underplayed.
So we ended up talking about this game for almost 2 hours.
Oh my God. Including the spoiler section

(05:58):
where we talked about solutions to puzzles and things.
But there's a good, I don't know, over hour we're we're just
talking about what's magical about Grunn and we break it down
into the story, the gameplay design and other categories of
the conversation. So please listen to that.
You can look that up by looking up the pre-order bonus podcast.

(06:20):
It should be on that feed. You can also look up the words
Indie Impressions, Grunn GRUNN and it should come up.
Oh man. And actually, I think we'll put
links to these things in the show notes.
Cool, Yeah. So I bet that sounds great.
I listen to the Indie Impressions episode with a
specific egg and the one with Cater Blossom and I think, I
think he does a great job over there.

(06:41):
So I'm really excited to hear what he sounds like when he's
talking to my best friend, so. It's going to be super awesome
and he told me he wants to do anepisode with you eventually.
So look forward to that in the future.
You know, by the time this episode is out, we'll be even
closer to that future. So I don't know what game y'all
will end up talking about, but Ithink he's down to pretty much

(07:01):
play any indie game. So it might be your pick.
It might just be your free pick to play whatever.
So yeah, Jake's awesome. Thank you, Jake for that as
well. We also want to announce that on
the next episode of our podcast,we will have a special guest,
another developer guest like we had with Noah Loan earlier this

(07:23):
season. We will have Oscar Lozada Suarez
from Tri Bands, the developer ofgames like What the Golf and
What the Car, and Oscar is goingto help us review Untitled Goose
Game. That's the game that he picked
from our list. You know, recently, maybe a
month ago now, I turned on a gameplay video of what the car

(07:46):
'cause I wanted to listen to thesong and my kids loved it.
Nice. So like for a week straight,
every day when I come home from work, they're like, let's watch
the car. Amazing.
That's what we did. Amazing.
I think that's a testament to how ingrained that song is in
the game where you don't look upthe song, you look up a gameplay
video to listen to the soundtrack of the game 'cause

(08:09):
it's in like every level pretty much.
I think that's funny. So yeah, it's going to be
another special guest episode and just different in that we
get to to interview a game developer about where they are
now and what got them there, andhis expertise in comedic games I
think will add a lot to the Untitled Goose Game.

(08:31):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
So please look out for that if you're listening to our episodes
as they're coming out. That will be two weeks from when
this episode is out, so very close now before we move on to
Secret Games. You might be listening to
Underplayed right now and you might be really digging it.
And we really thank you for listening.
If you haven't already, please consider giving us a follow and

(08:54):
a five star rating on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
You might be listening on Spotify and it might just be a
click away. And we would really appreciate
that because it shows how we're growing.
It shows that we're reaching more people.
And if you have a friend who likes indie games, we'd love if
you'd maybe consider sharing ourpodcast with them as well.
It is time now for our next segment, Secret Games.

(09:32):
In Secret Games, we each review a game we've been playing in
secrets since our last episode. We don't talk about what we're
picking in advance, so our reactions to each other's picks
are going to be completely authentic.
Disco Cola momentarily will say what game he's been playing.
I have no idea what he's going to say.

(09:52):
It's very exciting for me in this moment.
We can choose to play any game as long as it's an indie game we
haven't reviewed before. So starting with you Disco Cola,
let the mystery be no more. Reveal your secret game for
Episode 70 of Underplayed. My secret game this episode

(10:13):
comes from Dreams Uncorporated and I'm going to say sick, but
it's SYCK and I know you know this game.
My secret game is Chris Tails. If you saw what was, what is and
what would be, if you knew how it ends, would you change it?

(10:44):
Chris Tales I do know this game.What?
There was a moment when this wasin our featured game list.
Yeah. Holy moly.
And then we eventually removed it because the more I think, at
least I thought about it, the more I was feeling like, I don't
know if this is featured game material because I just don't

(11:07):
know if it has that status. But that opened it up for secret
game eligibility. Yes, and it's a long game, so
it. Isn't it like dozens of hours?
Yeah. Oh my God.
Dozens. But is this the longest secret
game you've ever played? I.
Don't know if that's true, I'd have to look, but it's a secret
games, but yeah. I remember looking into Chris

(11:30):
Tails and I remember this being an RPGI, remember it being long
and I remember it having a very strong time element story wise
and setting wise. Right, But that's really all I
know about it. OK, perfect.
Well, I'm going to I'm going to school you a bit on Chris Tails
and tell you whether I liked it or not.

(11:53):
School me. I'm going to school you school.
Me on Chris Tails. Chris Tails follows a young
orphan from Nareem named Chris Bell and one day Chris Bell has
to visit the cathedral in Nareemand when she arrives she sees
the stained glass mural that sort of resembles Chris Bell in
the past, present and future andthen it awakens something in her

(12:14):
and then suddenly she meets thissmall frog like creature named
Matthias and Chris Bell can suddenly see a past, present and
future simultaneously. So it's seeing this image that
causes this. Yeah, yes, there's some sort of
magical property with this muralin the cathedral, and it awakens
something in her. Shortly after that, Nareem is

(12:35):
attacked by goblins led by two of the Empress's minions, the
sisters Galley and Volcano. And during this combat, you also
run into the first of your many new party members, a young boy
named Chris, from the neighboring Kingdom or town or
whatever they're called. And from there, you learn how to
use Chris Bell's time magic in aturn based RPG that will

(12:57):
ultimately lead you across the world to fight the Empress's
influence and protect the world from total annihilation.
But yeah, as mentioned, this is a turn based RPG, so I should
note here that it uses the random encounter system.
So it's not like Sea of Stars where you can see your your
enemy combat. So you're walking through the
world and sometimes you'll just get thrown into a combat.

(13:19):
Situation fighting somebody all of a sudden, and then you will
also gain access to several different party members with
different fighting styles. So I'm going to run through them
as fast as I can. Chris Bell has a lot of support
magic as well as her time magic,and the time magic will allow
you to move the right side of the fight forward in time or the

(13:43):
left side of the fight backward in time, and this sort of allows
you to manipulate the age of your enemies to potentially make
the fight easier. You can make them.
Olds, you can make them olds or you can make them babes.
And yeah, so it's it's, you know, making them babes isn't
necessarily always better than like the present day, you know,
the middle age self, like sometimes the young ones are

(14:06):
much more full of vitality. I imagine some enemies might
have different lifespans depending on the species maybe?
Yeah, you never. You never outright kill anybody
just by moving them forward in time.
Got it. OK.
But time does work together withother systems to change the
fight too. So Chris, as we mentioned

(14:28):
earlier, he has elemental magic,which is super beneficial as
most enemies have an elemental weakness.
And then you can use this in conjunction with time magic.
So if you're enemy has a lot of armor on and you use the water
magic on them, if you move that side of the fight forward in

(14:49):
time, their armor is rusted now so you can manipulate elemental
magic with time magic. Another character is Wilhelm.
He is an elder time mage stuck in the body of a young boy who
uses quote natural magic. And natural magic takes the form
of these little sprout guys called Ucondra, and they're kind

(15:12):
of treated like grenades or timebombs.
So when you pair the time bomb function of the Ukandra with
Chris spells time magic, you canyield some great results.
So like if you plant a Ukandra next to your enemies, if you
don't manipulate time, it takes a couple turns before it like
explodes or whatever. But if you move time forward,

(15:34):
next turn instant. Quick question, the second
character you mentioned, what was their name?
Chris. OK, I just wanted to make.
Sure, there is Chris Bell and Chris, that's yeah, I got it.
Yep, there is one passing line about that in the whole game,
really. Yeah.
So it does acknowledge. It it does acknowledge, yeah.
Another character is JKR 721. He's kind of an Android of

(15:56):
sorts. He doesn't use any magic, but
instead he has highly offensive moves that will cause him to
overheat. And if you're overheat gauge
gets full, you will cause splashdamage to yourself and the
characters around you. So that includes your own party
if you happen to be next to yourown party when you overheat.
Yeah. And then the last non spoiler

(16:18):
character is a young woman namedZaz.
She kind of just shows up randomly out of nowhere kind of.
And her move pool is equally quirky and random.
Most of her thing is based off of roulette wheels, so she has
access to elemental magic and healing magic and other kinds of
attacks, but it's kind of randomand it's pretty hard to get

(16:39):
exactly what you need using her in battle.
And then of course along the wayyou meet several NPCS of varying
significance. Many will play some role in the
main quest or certain side quests, and these are usually
fetch quests that will demand you use your time magic in the
overworld to maybe manipulate environments or to hear

(17:00):
conversations from a different period of time.
And your ending can change depending on how many of these
side quests you decide to do. Oh cool.
And that covers pretty much everything apart from the
obvious like equipment and itemsthat every RPG has.
So we've known about this game for a while, and how does it
shake out? Can I make a guess?

(17:22):
Yeah, Now I can't prove this, but my guess would be that in
the end, if we were to both playthis game, you would like it
more than me. That is a good take, yes.
OK. Yeah, after now playing this
game for dozens of hours, you have that belief.
Yes. OK.
Yep. All right.

(17:42):
But I'm going to tell you what Ilike and what I don't so that
you can be the judge for yourself.
OK, First and foremost, and I think this is very obvious and
probably the draw for everybody,the art style in this game is
Immaculate. I think these hand drawn
characters are beautiful. I think they have incredible
color choice. I think all the character and

(18:03):
enemy designs are really solid all throughout and even just
like the stylized foregrounds and backgrounds are really cool.
Sometimes it kind of looks like a piece of a quilt with patches
on it, but it's actually a forest floor.
I think that's really fun. I really love the art direction

(18:23):
in this game. And you see mixtures of the
different time periods in this trailer.
So I'm seeing like the past and the future or you know, the
presents in the past. And it just it's very clear
about what's being shown to you.There's no question about what's
what's after a certain point, I imagine.
Yeah, so it's very just solid art direction all the way
through. Another thing is that this game

(18:45):
is almost fully voice acted and all of the main characters at
least really nail it. This game features Kyra Buckland
as Chris Bell. She's an actress that we
mentioned back in the River CityGirls episode.
This game also has two of the main actors from the amazing
Digital circus. Lizzie Freeman and Michael Kovac

(19:06):
both appear in this game, so. Nice jacked cast.
Yeah, just name dropping some some really popular stuff to
entice potential players out there.
But I really, I just, I really loved having the voice acting
because I just, I'm a much better listener than I am a
reader and the voice acting was really good all the way through
so. That's a relief when you're
playing at RPG for potentially dozens of hours.

(19:29):
Not that it's necessary, but it can really help cancer.
Oh super, it helps a ton. I definitely would not have been
able to keep track of all the moving pieces like if see if
Stars would have had voice acting, which I'm glad it didn't
because it wouldn't have matchedthe 16 bit style, but I would
have kept track of a lot more things.
I think in that game. I think the battle system in

(19:51):
Chris Tails is mostly pretty streamlined.
The time mechanics can sound kind of complicated and it can
kind of get that way. But I think the game does a
pretty good job of balancing hand holding and then good UI
design to more quickly get you to grips with like elemental
magic, time magic and how all the other mechanics sort of work

(20:12):
off each other as well as. Using the different physical
attacks and magic attacks. So I think it does a good job of
helping you understand the battle system as soon as it can
with the complicated, you know, systems at its core.
Does that make sense? Yeah, I'm curious about how
often you're wondering whether acombination of powers works and

(20:34):
how often you're experimenting. So most of the experimentation
is front loaded because that's when it's teaching you about
elemental magic and the Ucondra.But like once you understand how
those systems work, when you encounter elemental magic in a
different character, the principle is the same.
So that experimentation happens pretty early on.

(20:56):
Gotcha. So it's not like you're the I
love the example you gave of therusting because that seems like
something that could either be really quickly taught or very
easily inferred based on two different powers that the game
throws at you. There's.
I think the last thing that really allows for
experimentation is JKR's overheating.

(21:16):
But that's a pretty simple like sometimes I can use, I can, I
can sort of suicide bomb and just do some splash damage to
everybody. Yeah, sometimes you need to do
that. It's.
It's pretty, it's a pretty straightforward kind of a thing.
It's not much experimentation toit.
There is one spoiler character that has a new mechanic.
I won't go into it because I don't want to spoil that

(21:38):
character is, but OK. Generally, I really like all of
the characters and the team as awhole, collective team.
The only character I'm not really in love with his Wilhelm,
who is kind of just a little toocrotchety or maybe kind of rude.
He's just sometimes he's kind ofa bully, specifically to Chris.
And so I don't. I don't always love him at all

(22:00):
times. I like the way the story unfolds
and it builds into something bigger.
All the smaller conflicts look alittle bit different from
Kingdom to Kingdom, but they're all a piece of the same big
puzzle and it makes the whole world feel that much more
connected. Additionally, I love seeing how
our actions in the side quests affect the present and the

(22:20):
future. It's a little simple in
practice, like when our actions change the future, the animation
for it can be like sudden and jarring.
But I like seeing someone's lifechange because we were able to
support their music career in a small way in the present.
So seeing how that actually changes the future and maybe
even the characters design, that's really cool.

(22:42):
That's great that it's all feelsconnected.
Yeah, I think the music's all really good.
It can get a little repetitive. This is a long game with a lot
of starting and stopping, but none of the songs were bad and
like any RPG, the battle music really needs to nail it and I
think they nailed it here. So very solid battle music.
It's going to be the most important thing in a game like

(23:04):
this. Exactly exactly.
They I don't I don't know if it gets quite doesn't hit quite
that hard, but it's very good cool.
However, no RPG is perfect, especially for Disco Cola, so I
do have complaints. Obvious one game length.
That being said, I really didn'tfeel the time dragging until

(23:26):
maybe the last fifth of the game.
OK. Like how many hours did you
play? Probably like 42.
Oh wow. Yeah, and some of that's like
completion stuff too. But yeah, probably about 42.
And it wasn't until like the last fifth of the game where I
was like, let's just kind of getthis going.
But I did. I had a really solid time for

(23:48):
most of the game and I even played this instead of starting
one shot a few times. So this is kind of an
underhanded like, you know, praise for the game here.
But obviously if I have my choice, I don't play games
longer than 20 hours. Yeah, totally.
I think you're definitely not alone.
And I'm in that boat too. I love a short game and even if

(24:09):
I know I'm going to love a game,it really takes me a lot of
motivation and a lot of like preparation mentally.
Yes, so much an emotional like prep, like OK, I have to make
sure none of the other games that I have to play coming up
conflict with this. I just have to buckle down.
And I feel that way about starting TV series.
I feel that way about reading longer books and graphic novels

(24:34):
and things. Yeah, totally.
Same deal there. Another complaint I have is that
I think the game construction itself is a little shaky.
I had multiple instances of elements not loading certain
quest based dialogues which showthe icon that that dialogue is
ready, but it wouldn't actually activate the add the dialogue

(24:55):
itself. Usually I could fix that by
leaving the area and coming back.
In one case I had to shut off the game and turn it back on,
but that happened a few times, and other things will just
occasionally not load correctly.This game has the action input
for attacks and for defense, just like Sea of Stars and Bug
Fables and Paper Mario games. So this is just a mild dislike

(25:19):
because overall that system's actually pretty good in this
game. But there were a few moves, both
of my own and a few enemies moves that I could never really
master no matter how much I tried.
So there's just there's some attacks here and I don't really
know when the game is expecting me to to time my button press on

(25:39):
those ones. I I feel like I tried, you know,
every single half second that I could.
I just couldn't master it. But it's overall very good
action input. It's somewhere between Sea of
Stars and Bug Fables, and it's closer to the Sea of Stars side
of things, which was really good.
I would say even in Sea of Starsthere were some attacks that I

(26:00):
just never got, never nailed thefeeling of, and I think that's
just because there are so many maneuvers that you can't
adequately practice them all. Sometimes that's true.
Yep. So still occasionally
frustrating, but overall very positive on that still.
But then the worst thing in my opinion about Chris Tails is the
loading screens. There are a lot of them and

(26:20):
they're pretty long, and if theyweren't there I think the
overall game time might have been close to an hour shorter,
maybe more. That adds.
Up that's yeah, it's they're, they're pretty long load times.
So it's every time you leave andenter an area.
Yeah, every time you enter a random encounter, yeah, it takes

(26:41):
up a lot of time. OK.
So much like Owl Boy and Fez in the last episode.
Chris Tales game I was excited about at the genesis of
underplayed but became less excited about over time.
Mostly because of the game length.
But the game surprised me and ended up being something that I
really liked in the end. Every aspect of the game kept me

(27:02):
engaged. The characters, the art, the
story, and even the turn based combat.
I do wish it was shorter, but I don't regret my time with Chris
Tails. It even invaded my dreams a time
or two and I even managed to getall of the trophies at this
point except for one. I have read some of the more
negative reviews online and generally reception of this game

(27:24):
is mixed. I do get where those reviews are
coming from, but apart from the long loading screens, the issues
in those reviews don't matter tome so much.
One of my surprises for the season will likely be how much I
ended up enjoying this game. I give Chris Dales an 8.5 out of
10. Oh amazing.
Wow. I honestly this is a surprise in

(27:46):
multiple ways. I wasn't expecting you to pick
this game anytime soon. I had a feeling you would pick
it someday, and I'm really glad you did.
And I'm glad that it ended up hitting mostly for you.
One thing that I like hearing about is you know your
passionate words for this game. I thought you explained what's
going on here beautifully. Another way we can get an idea

(28:07):
for someone's experience with the game is hearing about their
journey with the game and what the experience was like just
starting the game on a timeline level.
So when did you start playing this?
42 ish or whatever it was our experience.
What like about when in the yeardid you begin playing this and
then what were the lengths of some of these play sessions?

(28:30):
Well, let me tell you, I, I guess I started this pretty
early in this timeline. I started I had the exact date
is December 20th, OK. And so I've, I've been chipping
away at it for a month, I would say, but we've been lucky in our
in the way our recordings have lined up that I've kind of had

(28:52):
that that time to work on it. The only thing I think I tabbed
in here in between is some Casey's mod, but otherwise it's
been pretty much all Chris Dalesuntil I got to one shot.
Wow. So you, you were dedicated to
it. You were loyal to this.

(29:12):
Yeah, I guess I did play some hashtag blood because that's
what I've been streaming lately,but.
I've caught a few moments of that and that's been very fun
too. But otherwise, yeah, all Chris
Dales. Amazing, I didn't know this was
coming. I this is not my Raider.
That's really cool. You mentioned all those
different party members. I imagine it's like another RPG

(29:33):
like Sea of Stars where you can swap them out.
You can, I'm glad you mentioned this because this is something
there is something that some RPGs do and I hate it, but I
also understand why, at least inthis case, they do it.
Some RPGs have won the main character quotes so sure.
Chris Bell cannot be swapped out.

(29:55):
Yeah. Oh, got it.
She she is always in the party. That makes sense.
A Digimon game that does that. The Digimon game doesn't need to
do that, but it makes sense in Chris Tails.
Otherwise you can swap them out.You can't do it during battle.
Oh, OK. So you have to do it in between.
Battles, That makes sense. Yeah.
Yeah, that makes sense. Sea of Stars in retrospect was

(30:16):
very interesting in that our twomain characters like the
Solstice Warriors, you. Didn't have to play with them if
you. Didn't you could at a certain
point you could just leave them out of the party mix for most of
the game. That's I didn't even ever really
think about that, but OK. And so how often were you doing
that switching? And how often were you kind of
looking at the team and going, you know what, I need to try

(30:38):
this new thing or this person isn't really working for me?
So for the most part, I kept Chris and Chris Bell together
for the whole game because Chrishas access to not all of the
different elemental magic, but most of the different elements.
And that was in my opinion the most useful tool to use was
elemental magic. Early on.

(31:00):
Wilhelm has the ability to scan enemies, which will tell you
their elemental weakness. And if you scan them at their
different ages, you understand like what their stats are at
different ages and what their HPis at different ages.
So I was trying to store as muchof that data as I could.
Eventually characters that you get later also have access to

(31:21):
that, and I would switch Wilhelmout because his attack power is
incredibly low and apart from scanning and poisoning enemies,
I didn't find him to be especially useful.
Got it. So eventually, yeah, it was
Chris Bell. Chris and then someone else.
OK. Cool.
Yeah, that pairing does make sense the more you talk about

(31:41):
that. That's great, dude.
Well, thank you for playing sucha long game for your secret game
slot, and I'm again, I love thatyou loved it.
Yeah, that's such a relief, honestly.
To, to, to. To play a 40 plus hour game and
then to like really not drive with it would be a bummer.
But let's go 8.5 score and very positive comments.

(32:05):
Where can you play Chris Tails? Chris Tails can be played on
PlayStation Five, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X&S.
It looks like Windows, Xbox One and I played the physical copy
for PS4. Oh.
Yeah, it is on PS4 too. OK.
And if I may, you'd mentioned that you don't think you would

(32:26):
probably like this as much as I do.
I think that's true. And I'll tell you a couple
reasons why I really liked the story, but I think you may end
up finding it a little bit shallow.
I think it is a little bit shallow.
And I know that story is a much bigger driver for you than it is
for me. I still found this enjoyable
even with time mechanics, which as you know is something that I

(32:47):
don't usually like. Sometimes you can get the vibe
of a world and the vibe of a story through what you see and
you can sort of imagine stories for these people and places.
And I'm not as good with that. But I could see that being a
potential here where you you live with these characters.
You might not get a lot of depth, but spending that time is

(33:08):
special. Yeah, I think the characters
have depth, but the story itselfis pretty like it doesn't go too
far in any direction. OK, and it does sound like the
stakes are similar to many othergames that we've played, so it's
probably treading some familiar ground.
Yep. So I think it would not be worth
the time investment for you. Well.

(33:29):
I'm glad you played it then, andI I think you're right based on
what you've now further explained to me.
That does make sense, and I agree.
Cool. Well, it is time for my secret
game. My Secret Game is one that I
thought would be the longest game talked about on today's
episode, but it's not. Gotcha.

(33:50):
I guess so 'cause I spent about 17 hours.
That is a pretty long. One this game which is one of
one of my longer secret games, not 42 hours long but 17 hours
is quite a long time. My secret game is called Fruit
Bus. I to be the owner of your very
own fruit bus, exploring the world with the wind in your

(34:12):
whiskers, discovering new ingredients and flavors to make
the. Best.
Dishes. Ever.

(34:39):
Oh, I've heard of this. Yes, you have.
Yes, you have. I've talked about it previously
on the show and I I even. Streamed this, I watched a
couple of streams. Did a cheeky little stream of
this game too. So Fruit Buzz is a 2024 cooking
simulation adventure game. It was developed and published

(35:00):
by Krillbite Studio. The game synopsis from the Steam
storefront reads quote. A journey of flavors and
friendships awaits you in your cozy, customizable food truck.
Forage for fresh ingredients to create your own menu, then feed
tummies and souls with home cooked meals.
Change the world 1 apple at a time.

(35:22):
End Quote. Fruit Bus is a first person
adventure and when you start thegame you are a young bear
hanging out with your grandma inyour special spot that overlooks
the ocean. And grandma has a fruit bus,
which is a bus with a serving window and a bunch of kitchen
appliances where she prepares dishes for the animal residence

(35:45):
in the area and she sort of takes you under her wing.
You have a very special bond with grandma, and the game
really focuses on this in the opening moments because your
relationship with your grandma is sort of the beating hearts of
of the game of the story and what you are tasked with doing.
And the opening scene acts as a prologue where you learn how to

(36:08):
chop up ingredients and make a fruit salad.
Once you do that, a 10 years later title card shows up and
you're now an adult and you are in a scrap yard rescuing the
fruit bus. Oh no, you need to rescue it.
Yeah, it's like, ready to be demolished.
And inside the fruit bus, Grandma has left a note to you

(36:31):
saying that if you're reading this, it means that she has
cooked her last meal and she wants you to gather all her old
friends for a final celebration.And so you take the fruit bus
and you head to a ferry so you can go to the first location of
the game. And that's where you see your
mom, who had a complicated relationship with grandma, and

(36:54):
she wants to sell her childhood cabin that belongs to Grandma
instead of going to the feast. So right away, there's kind of a
light conflict going on with her.
And your goal is to take this fruit bus and drive it around
the three regions of the game. There's now, I don't know
exactly how to say this. It's like it's like Bahamas but

(37:17):
with banana in it. Or maybe it's like Panama but
with banana in it. It's banamas or bananas.
I don't know how to say it exactly, but bananas, there's
breezy Bay and frosty Pines and they act like islands.
Basically 33 regions of this world, and in each one, you're

(37:39):
doing tasks and errands for people to convince them to come
to the final celebration of lifefor your grandma.
And now as I was gathering my thoughts for this episode,
something struck me that I didn't quite realize as I was
playing. And it's that it's kind of odd
that this game is setting up this transactional thing for

(38:01):
getting people to attend your grandma's celebration of life.
I didn't even realize it in the moment, but you really get the
sense that these people you're interacting with have busy lives
or they maybe have a lot on their minds.
You know, there's a there's a hotel manager who seems like
he's really stressed out. There's a DJ fixing up all the

(38:21):
radio towers in the region. There's the ferry Admiral, He
runs the ferry. He's got a busy job.
And then there's your mom, who at the beginning of the game
tells you that your grandma really only cared about the
fruit bus. And so your mom felt maybe a
little bit more alone as a child.
So you figure out that the greatconnecting piece in all these

(38:44):
situations is food. Everybody needs it.
It's what brings people together.
And so that's what's guiding a lot of your decisions and
guiding a lot of the quests in here.
And time and time again, you're preparing meals in the fruit
bus. When you go to a spot and you
park the bus and open up your window, everyone within the
vicinity will approach and they'll ask for different

(39:07):
dishes. There are 20 or so different
ingredients in the game. There are 6 different categories
of dishes. You can make salads, smoothies,
sandwiches, bread, soups, and stir fries, and every time you
make a dish successfully and serve it, you make money from
the customer, which you can use to buy new appliances and tools

(39:28):
and cosmetics for your fruit bus.
You get to the point where you have an oven, a smoothie maker,
you get a bread maker. But all of this progress is very
gradual. You have to save up to buy a lot
of these things, and you collectall manner of ingredients in
this game in the world by exploring.
You walk around, you drive around, you get tools like a

(39:51):
shovel and a sickle and a suction gun that allow you to
forage for ingredients. And this game is quite large.
It sort of feels like bug snacksmeets slime rancher meets Galaxy
Burger is what I would. Say, those are all I was trying
to remember. Like there's a game I played
where we follow like someone else's notes, like we're we're

(40:15):
being guided by someone that's not there.
It was slime rancher. That's.
Slime Rancher OK. And bug snacks was like, is this
bug snacks? And you kind of a little bit,
but. Yeah, and you kind of noticed
some of these things when you saw me stream it that one time.
And then Galaxy Burger, we get arecipe book that has
instructions on how to make certain kinds of burgers.
But then sometimes someone just has a custom order that's

(40:36):
happening all over the place in,in fruit busts, someone will
have a very cursed idea for a smoothie.
They'll want like a carrot and and blueberry and banana
smoothie. And so you, you know, combine
all those things. That's pretty cursed.
There's that happens all the time.
And so you make different amounts of money depending on
what you're making. And the game has a journal where

(40:59):
you can follow some recipes. The journal is also where you
track the guests. There are special guests that
your grandma especially wants tomake sure are at the
celebration. But then there are optional
guests. And that's sort of where we get
into side quests. We run into all these people
throughout all three regions. And sometimes people will hop
between regions. They'll have a chain of quests.

(41:22):
And like the radio DJ, for instance, has a radio tower in
all three regions, and we need to help them collect pieces to
the control boxes to repair the radio towers.
So you're helping a lot of people, you're driving around a
lot. You're doing this loop of making
food, exploring, gathering ingredients, completing quests.

(41:44):
And here's what I liked about Fruit Bus.
I absolutely love the world of this game.
It is a sunshiny, happy, wholesome place that makes me
feel very good. There's great diversity in
locales. You know, you start in Bananas
and you go to Breezy Bay and after being in sort of the
tropical vacationy spot of bananas, Breezy Bay feels

(42:08):
touristy in its own way. You see more autumnal
landscapes, you see European style ruins and villas.
The characters that you meet arefull of emotion.
When you talk to characters in this game and when you make them
food, they animate in such a funlike stop motion style.
Yeah. There are less frames to their

(42:30):
movement, but it adds a cuteness, it adds a a joyous
charm to their personalities, I think, And I think this game is
an explorer's dream. You have so much to see and do,
and I think this kind of feels like three games in one in a
way. You know, I spent around 17

(42:50):
hours total to find everyone, doall the quests.
And it's almost like Bananas is the base game and then Breezy
Bay is like DLC number one, and then Frosty Pines is the second
DLC. But it's all just part of the
base game. And I could see them expanding
this game too. I could see them adding more
regions or more ingredients, more quests, things like that.

(43:12):
There's this constant progression that you have of
money making and quest completion and exploration as
well. And that's what kept me wanting
to play this game. When I sat down to play this
game, I would just sit there andplay it for hours and hours and
hours because I felt that constant progress.
I love the loop of this game. I love upgrading my bus after

(43:34):
making money, after I figured out how to make that meal, after
I found the place where I find the ingredients for that meal.
It's it's a great, it's great sort of learning experience all
the way through you. You are never in a dull spot
because you're making salads allday long.
You know, you make salads a lot at first, but then you have to
make smoothies. That's different.
You need to find cups. Where do I get cups?

(43:56):
So it feels like there's always something fresh to work on.
And this game lets you feel likeyou're a hoarder too.
You can keep. Our favorite?
I bet you love if they're is an ingredient to collect to make a
recipe, I bet you like just farming that ingredient over and
over so that you're just sort ofalways prepared.
I was trying to be as prepared as possible.

(44:18):
I would go into the Grove that it's the only place in the game
that offers pineapples, for instance, and I would get all
the pineapples and then maybe doa quest so that I elapsed time.
After a few in game days, those pineapples grow back and I go
back and I make sure I stock up on those.
So I was doing that a lot in this game.
And I got to the point where my bus inside was full of these

(44:41):
baskets that I bought from the store.
And in each basket there's an ingredient.
And I had everything super organized so that I knew at a
glance how many cucumbers I had,how many potatoes I had, how
many apples I have. And my bus just kept getting
fuller and fuller with. More and more cramped too.
Cramped, yeah. So it might sound like things
get disorganized, but I really took my time to figure out the

(45:05):
the right layout for things so Inever felt like things were
chaotic, which is good. Never got as bad as Wilmot's
warehouse or anything. This is not a Wilmot.
Like, yeah, it it was actually really manageable.
Now, you'll see lots of decorations and things, and you
might not be able to put all of them in and on your bus, but

(45:28):
that made the items that I was choosing a little bit more
special for me. And then along this point, I'm
hoarding lots of ingredients. I'm always prepared to make
almost anything in this game. And you can freely place items
anywhere in the bus. When you collect things in this
game, you can place them in baskets and they will just stay

(45:50):
there. And I had at times, dozens,
hundreds of ingredients just in these baskets.
And I was driving around, going up and down hills, speeding,
sometimes getting my bus stuck, and I had to use the unstuck
feature to reset it. And those ingredients never
clipped through a wall. They never disappeared.

(46:13):
They might jostle around a little bit, but they never
rolled around and got all jumbled.
I have no idea how they made this work to make it work.
It feels like they're constantlydoing a magic trick to make it
work. And I have no idea how you how
you would do this. But there's also a contraption
that you can set up on your wallto if you have extra stuff

(46:35):
laying around, you can put it inand it's like a digital storage
for your stuff and then you can retrieve that stuff.
And I was doing this for decorations.
You get decorations as rewards for quests sometimes and I just
wouldn't have room. And so I'd be like, well, I
can't really sell this. I I don't want to just drop it
on the ground and leave it. I'll put it in my storage.
And so that's cool too, that this game has that.

(46:57):
Yeah. It just has a lot of magic going
on to make all of this stuff work.
And I think it's pretty seamless.
And then I had some really strong emotional attachments to
the characters, particularly Grandma.
The story of Grandma is predictably heartfelt, but there
are these flashback scenes and there's narration.

(47:17):
I think Grandma's the only voiced character, but the voice
over is really good. I love listening to Grandma.
I just. You come to love Grandma.
And the end is beautiful. The finale of this game is one
of my favorite finales of recentmemory.
It made me cry. Oh.

(47:38):
I love that for you. I don't want to describe it in
depth because it is a special moment that I think people
should see for themselves. I urge anyone who plays this
game to do everything before theend of the game.
It is absolutely beautiful and it's worth your time.
I'll just say there are a coupledozen people you can help out

(48:00):
and I think you should help everybody.
You should take that time. OK.
So that's all I'll say about it and then the music and the sound
effects in this game are lovely.They're, you know, quirky and
fun and humorous and lighthearted and just the sound
design of this game is great now, and I'm sorry, I have so
much to say about fruit bus because there's a lot going on

(48:22):
in here, but there are quite a few things I list in my dislikes
section. So First off, it's this is
almost like a couple of items that each have like sub lists or
something, you know, like a general category of dislike and
then a bunch of examples of thatdislike.
So my first category of dislikesis there are several flavors of

(48:46):
clunkiness, I'll say. A fruit bust full of clunkiness.
Yeah, Now I I mentioned that there's a lot going on here to
make things really cool and seamless, and I don't know how
it works, but then just because there's so much going on,
sometimes there's clunkiness. One example is that driving
around in the first person feelsa little chaotic.

(49:09):
Everything is first person in this game.
When you're walking around, whenyou're buying stuff, when you're
decorating, when you're making meals, and also when you're
driving. And we've talked about this in
like Sayonara, Wildhearts. Like I don't like driving in the
first person perspective. It's just not something I'll
ever be comfortable with. So it's not necessarily this
game's fault. It's kind of a me thing, but
sometimes the bus can get caughton things you can't see.

(49:32):
There are things that you'll just run into, especially if
you're backing up and you might have to get your bus unstuck
somehow. There's an unstuck feature which
is helpful, and I was doing thata couple times because I didn't
see a thing and then I got caught on it.
Also, the journal is complicated.
There's a lot of collapsible submenus in the mission tab.

(49:52):
I was doing a lot of digging to try to figure out like which
quest thread I'm supposed to be looking at.
It's a lot of button presses. It's at a certain point, and
sometimes it's not very clear about how to view some things.
There's a shovel in this game, and there are points where you
dig up an old time capsule buried by you and your grandma
when you were a kid. And you have to view these

(50:13):
memories. And you view the memories by
making a certain dish. And once you see that memory, it
gives you a clue to a dig spot. But I wasn't sure how to review
the memories. There's a way to do it, but you
just have to go to the journal. It's buried in there.
And the game doesn't tell you like, you know, you can review
this. And then installing decorations

(50:34):
and appliances requires you to juggle a couple of different
tools. You get a hammer and you get a
wrench. And I don't understand why we
need a hammer and a wrench in this game.
I kind of wish they just did thesame thing.
So I'd pull out the hammer, not remembering if that's for
exterior decorations or interiorappliances, and I pulled out the

(50:55):
wrong thing and I'm switching between the wrench and the
hammer sometimes. So I think some of this stuff
could just get cleaned up and there could be better
explanations for things in this game.
I also think the journal could just give us these entries on
mechanics of the game. Creating bread was not explained
super well. I had to use water and flour

(51:19):
with a dough mixer and then bakethat in the oven, which all
sounds logical, it all sounds ofour world and how we would make
bread. But the game doesn't explain
where or how to do a lot of things like that, you know?
It's like, am I supposed to get an oven from someone or do I
have to buy it? How much flour do I need?

(51:42):
How much water do I need to makeit?
When you're saying this, it's kind of reminding me of Spirit
Fair where it's like you need todo all the ingredients, but it's
like I haven't heard of 3/4 of these dishes in my entire life.
I wouldn't even begin to know which ingredients to use to
create this dish that I've nevereven heard of because I don't
know what it. Is, yeah.

(52:03):
And even if I can recognize thatsomeone wants a sandwich, I know
what a sandwich is, obviously, but I haven't understood how to
make bread yet. I haven't even found wheat yet.
And I so you. Don't even know that bread is a
concept. In this game, I don't I
actually, that was a surprise. I get to Breezy Bay and
someone's like, I want a sandwich and I'm like, I've been
making salads and smoothies thiswhole time.

(52:23):
But you're. At the You're at the wrong food
truck, my friend. Yeah, and you make you get a
quest centered around bread, butit doesn't always totally
explain how to do stuff like make bread.
And so you have to, you get like60% of the instruction and then
you sort of have to experiment and guess and infer until you

(52:45):
figured out. And some things I looked up to
to figure them out in this game.So I was having trouble
understanding some concepts. There's another thing I I
complain about in this realm, and it's when customers start
asking for ingredients to be chopped a certain way.
You can chop things finely or you can do the first level of
chopping. Customers eventually ask for

(53:06):
different levels of chopping. And I didn't understand that
it's communicated with a symbol,like an icon, but the game, I
feel, didn't explain this to me.And I didn't even know what that
icon meant. So it's just kind of frustrating
here and there when these new mechanics are introduced but not
explained. Yeah.
That's needy customers, man. I guess so, yeah.

(53:29):
I'm. I'm just a little guy in his
grandma's food truck. I didn't train for this.
No, grandma didn't talk about this stuff.
She talked about just like loving people and loving food
but not how to make all these complicated dishes.
Also, some quests and orders were buggy.
Some things didn't trigger rightaway.

(53:49):
There would be requests that would reset halfway through
making a dish. Someone would say, I want this
dish with these three ingredients.
I'd turn around, start chopping,turn back around, and their
request is completely reset. It's a different smoothie, or
sometimes like a different. Type of dish.
It only happened a few times, but I will say that krill bites
are working on bug fixes all thetime.

(54:12):
They actually just rolled out a patch like days after I finished
the game. So I think they're always is
fixing this game and by the timeyou know, more and more people
play this, it might be even smoother.
So it's early, early spoilers. Like I am interested in playing
this and I'm kind of glad that the console versions aren't out
yet because I'm I'm excited for those bug fixes to to be.

(54:33):
So I think it'll get better and better.
And at certain times there are ingredients exclusive to one
islands that were requested on adifferent islands.
And there were one or two times where I had the island hawk to
get what I wanted. I'm not surprised, but that is
annoying. Yeah.
And so this is maybe predictable, but I don't always
know how much I should stockpilean ingredient to prepare for

(54:58):
future possible requests for that ingredient.
So it's just sort of an unfortunate side effects of this
idea of different ingredients existing on different islands.
So I know that was a lot to say about fruit bust.
Thank you for humoring me. So overall, the loop of Fruit
Bus keeps getting more interesting the longer I play.
I am in love with this world. I was taken with the themes of

(55:20):
this game. This is a game that reminds us
that like how any good meal musteventually come to an end, so
too must the time that we have with each other and it adds up
to a beautiful finale. I did find that the game was a
little long for my taste and I encountered clunkiness that I
explained. So I wouldn't call this game
perfect, but I do recommend Fruit Bus to everybody.

(55:42):
I'm going to give this an 8.5 out of 10.
Peckers. And it's playable on PC, which
is the version I played. And like Disco Cola just
mentioned, it seems to be announced for consoles in 2025
and no date on that at time of recording, but I think it'll
come to Switch, PS4PS5, Xbox Oneand Xbox Series X&S.

(56:04):
That's all of them. That's all the boys.
All the boys. I should have just said that.
All the all the console boys, yeah.
Cool, one of the questions I hadwhile you were streaming it just
because I'm always curious aboutthis.
In any game where you drive, canyou run over pedestrians?
You know I tested this. I hope so.

(56:26):
You know I tested this. I can't remember if I tested it
on stream. You can sort of run into people
and budget them but they don't fall down OK as far as I can
tell. I.
I mean, it's a wholesome game. I imagine it wouldn't be
violent, but I I wonder. You're not like running over
people I. Wonder what it would do is what
I'm curious I think. There's maybe even like a bonk
sound and you're just sort of moving them, but they don't get

(56:47):
visibly upset. I think you're just sort of,
yeah. It's as if it's like a collision
with a building or something. Yeah, a building or an object
that can move. I think your your bus doesn't
just stop dead. It does, you know, move that
person so a person won't get youstuck necessarily.
OK. And then I guess one of the
questions I always have with games that are sort of like free

(57:11):
3D exploration, is it possible realistically to see every inch
of this island? Like, do you think there are
like Groves and pockets that youmight not really explore because
they're not on the main quest line?
Sometimes games tout the fact that you can go everywhere you

(57:35):
can see. I think for the most part that's
kind of accurate here. Not that the game is touting
that, but there are maybe like mountain tops you can't get to.
There's just high elevation thatyou can't climb on top of.
You can't like Skyrim, your way up mountains and get to the top

(57:55):
of every single thing. I mentioned that the regions are
pretty big. There's not like an overwhelming
amount of things to see. At the same time, it's a really
interesting open world because everything feels like there's a
great amount of distance. You can definitely explore much
of that distance, but in total, there's not an overwhelming

(58:17):
amount of places. And I think it's a really
interesting balance that they'vestruck.
But to answer your question, I think you can go most places I'd
never found myself going. Like, gosh, I wish I could go
there. Or the fact that I can't go
there breaks the immersion. The fact that all of these are
islands too, doesn't mean that like the boundaries of the world

(58:39):
don't make sense. Like I can't go into the ocean.
You know, that's a boundary and that's a boundary that makes
sense. So I think that they kind of
gave themselves an advantage. They're making this game when
Crow Bite decided to make these islands like, hey, that's a way
we can sort of very logically create boundary lines.
OK. So it kind of sounds a little

(58:59):
bit to me like how much there might be in something like a
short hike where you can go pretty much everywhere you see.
There is still like a lot of it because you're in a very
vertical world. As opposed to something like
Slime Rancher where there's liketons of places that you could

(59:20):
get up to and you have the like jetpack and the mobility to try,
but there's invisible walls sometimes and you aren't allowed
to get everywhere. But I.
Don't remember a ton of like invisible walls or thinking like
I want to go to this whole region and then hitting an
invisible wall bonk. And now it's like, oh, I guess
that's just for show. That doesn't really happen
because you're surrounded by ocean, pretty much so.

(59:42):
Sometimes, to be honest, sometimes I prefer the invisible
wall because it's just like the less I have to explore sometimes
the better. It's like a relief, like OK, my
completionist brain is happier. Now, yeah, a little.
Bit that makes sense. Yeah.
Cool. OK, so those are our secret
games, Chris Tales and Fruit Bus.
Let's move on to our review of One Shot World Machine Edition.
It is our featured game. So One Shot World Machine

(01:00:18):
Edition is a story rich puzzle adventure game released in 2022,
but it's a reworked version of One Shot which was released in
2016, which itself is based on aprior free version released in
2014. It was developed by Future Cat
LLC and published by Komodo. Now I'm going to read the game

(01:00:39):
synopsis from the Switch storefront because the Steam
storefront while it does offer one shot World Machine Edition,
it's not a very helpful synopsis.
However, the Switch storefront synopsis is kind of long, so
hang in there. Quote.

(01:01:00):
You only have one shot. The World Knows You exists.
Experience an adventure game with puzzles that go beyond its
own window and establish a unique bond with the main
character. In One Shot World Machine
Edition, you discover a strange computer operating system with a
self-contained world installed. Explore this world to unravel

(01:01:21):
its mysteries and help guide a child on their mission to
restore the long dead sun. You hear that saving the world
may no longer be possible, but it's worth a shot, you think.
Now with collectible content andfeatures exclusive to the World
Machine Edition. So One Shot World Machine

(01:02:09):
Edition is a top down adventure game.
When you start the game, there'sa chat box that introduces you
to a computer screen interface. You're being talked to with
text, and there are options likesetting up your wallpaper and
changing the theme color and going into configuration

(01:02:30):
settings. And there's an executable called
One Shot on this computer screenwithin this game you're playing.
And you can launch that. And now you are seemingly
playing a game within a computerwithin the game.
OK, so pretty easy to track so far.

(01:02:52):
And then you are controlling Nico, who is a cat person.
And Nico wakes up in a strange house in an unfamiliar world
that is falling apart. And Nico can pretty soon access
a computer in the house. And this is where I'd like to
play a little sound bite from when I streamed this game.

(01:03:16):
OK? And this was my reaction at this
precise moment. OK, access.
Granted, I'm in a wait. I'm using a computer in a game
on a computer in a game already.That's what's happening.
That's what's happening in this game.
OK, so I feel like that slightlyconfused summary sums it up

(01:03:42):
really well. Being inside green.
Yes, yes, it's a call back to Cocoon very soon in the game
too. And this computer starts talking
to you, the player. It's breaking the 4th wall and
it tells you that you need to guide Nico and that you only

(01:04:03):
have one shot. And Nico finds this light bulb,
which also happens to be the world's son.
So Nikko steps outside this darkhouse into a land called the
Barons, and meets Prophet Bot, who foresaw Nikko's arrival.
And Prophet Bot tells Nikko thatthey will be the one to save the
world from eternal darkness. Nikko's mission then becomes to

(01:04:27):
carry the sun through the three areas of the world, the Barons,
the Glen, and the Refuge, to reach a tower where they must
restore the light bulb and save the world.
And if the light bulb shatters, the world will end.
Nikko is also aware of the messages being sent to the
player back in the house on the computer.

(01:04:48):
And Prophet Bot is aware of the player as well and calls you the
God of the world, whereas Nico is the Messiah.
So then Nico can focus and make contacts with you the player and
break the 4th wall in another way where throughout the game

(01:05:09):
Nico will contact and have conversations with you where
they ask you about your experiences.
And your goal is to use this oneshot to get to the tower with
the sun and guide Nico along theway.
So that's what I would say to set up the story and setting of
it. It's kind of a lot of layers

(01:05:31):
folding into each other at a certain point.
It's definitely different narratively than other games
we've played, but how about whatwe do gameplay wise?
Disco colon, so one shots. Controls are pretty minimal.
You walk around and interact with objects and characters.
So mostly you're looking for allof the right items though.

(01:05:52):
So when you find a key item, it will be added to your inventory,
and from there you may be able to combine items in your
inventory. Or you may be able to equip an
item and then having that item equipped during the right
interaction will trigger a storymoment or a special dialogue.
At certain times you'll be able to interact with a bed.

(01:06:13):
This will allow Nico to take a nap.
But this is only an option afterachieving certain amounts of
progress and are effectively story moments.
So they will close the game and trigger a cutscene.
I don't know if we want to cut that if that's the spoiler.
I think that's fine because thisgame introduces this idea of the

(01:06:33):
computer interface very early. So it's assumed that you will
not only control one shot the game within this computer
interface, but you will also be leaving this one shot game to
interact with other parts of thecomputer interface from time to
time. I think that's fair.
So I I would consider that something that we do in

(01:06:54):
gameplay. Additionally, there are some
desktop computers that you mentioned already, and Nico can
interact with those, and these can trigger story moments, but
at times they'll also guide you to your next step if you're
stuck. But really, that's just of it.
Most of it really is talking to the inhabitants and finding all

(01:07:16):
of the right items for all the right characters at the specific
times, and this will ultimately allow you to reach the tower and
restore the sun. Yeah, I would say there are
quite a lot of characters in this game.
A lot of them are side characters and minor characters.
There's sort of an ensemble of characters that you meet, and

(01:07:37):
they are each particular to one of the three.
Areas that you're going through and certain certain ones have
carry quite a bit of weight. I'd say there's like one
character or one group of characters in each zone that is
like the person. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
And then they sort of have a supporting cast around them or
just, you know, tertiary characters lightly connected to

(01:08:02):
things. Yeah, on to some history and
significance points. This game was originally
released in 2014 as freeware. It was made by two people, Eliza
Velazquez and Knight Margin. And then the publisher Dejica
approached them to publish the 2016 version called One Shots.

(01:08:25):
And that's the version that I think a vast majority of players
have played. I think that's the one.
But then the World Machine Edition is the 2022 console
version and it's also available on Steam.
You might wonder like why is OneShot and One Shot World Machine
Edition? Why are those both on Steam?

(01:08:46):
And I think one reason is that previously you couldn't play One
Shot on the Steam Deck. OK.
One Shot World Machine Edition allows you to play the game on
Steam Deck. So that makes sense.
And on the One Shot World Machine Edition Steam page,
they're like now you can play iton the Steam Deck.

(01:09:07):
So I think that's like really how they want to create that
that differentiation for people who are maybe looking into
getting this game. So if you want to play this
purely on PC, you might want to just play one shot.
There are differences between the console version and the
original one shot version from 2016 and we'll talk about a few

(01:09:28):
of those that we know about. But just for listener awareness,
we chose to play the World Machine Edition because it is
the newest version and it's on console, which is an easier
method for us to both play. So know that going in.
And also the original game was made in RPG Maker, but World

(01:09:50):
Machine Edition was rebuilt witha new engine from scratch, which
is interesting. So Disco Cola, what are your
thoughts on One Shot World Machine Edition?
All right well, overall it's a bit hard for me to pick out
specific likes this game's kind of like that saying greater than

(01:10:10):
the sum of its parts. You know there aren't too many
individual things that like really, really stand out for me,
but the total package overall isspoilers really, really good.
I I did love one shot. I think if I were to pick out a
few things though, I think the pixel art for the large gallery
images is really beautiful. Whereas on the flip side I don't

(01:10:34):
super love the smaller top down overworld sprites, but more on
that later. But I think like the cutscene
art is really attractive. Oh yeah, there's a lot of that.
And it it reminds me of the wallpaper art to that you get to
interact with. Yeah.
So I think in general, like the art direction is really solid.
I like the variety in character designs.
We've got a cat child in Nico, we've got some bird friends,

(01:10:58):
we've got robots and we've got different kinds of robots.
You have children just like normal human age children.
We've got characters with objects for heads, yes.
We do. Oh yeah.
It's just it's sort of like thisrandom wild variety of character
design tropes, but they all somehow sort of appropriately
fit together in this world. Yeah, it's like someone's

(01:11:21):
sketchbook of doodles all comingtogether.
Yeah, no one seems like too crazy out of place.
I think the stakes in this game are high, but the pressure is
low. So you can approach this game at
your own pace without consequence, but it never really
feels like the stakes are low, like.
Explain that I. It's hard to explain, but I

(01:11:42):
think it's, I think it's becauseeach area has this slow
approaching calamity. Like you have the toxic gas
fields and you have the vines blocking the doorways and the
squares near the apartments and the refuge.
So there's always like visually some urgency, but the game
itself, like there's no time limits, there's no bosses,

(01:12:05):
there's no high action input section.
There's not an evil entity threatening to destroy the
planet, right? The planet is threatened, but
they've been in this state for along time, and so what's another
day or another week? That's kind of the vibe I get.
And even, you know, even when you're not, those calamities
aren't insight like you do always have the sun in your

(01:12:27):
hand. So you never forget that.
Like we're here. We're here for a purpose, to
save this this world. Yeah, there's that constant
reminder that is kind of unique in that you are holding the the
very important thing at all times.
Yeah, and it's. Visible even when it's like not
the active selected you. Know inventory.

(01:12:47):
You're always holding it. It is part of the visual
identity of this game. I like the creative thought
behind some of the item combinations.
It sort of opens up my mind and sets the tone for how to think
about things and even helps me recognize some symbols that
might be hints to other things later on.

(01:13:08):
It's just a fun, fun combinations in the inventory
system. I very specifically love a
singular RAM in this game that'sspinning around and when you
interact with it, it goes brah. Was there more to that?
I don't think so, it was just a weird random RAM.
Yeah, I actually have a theory that there is something more.

(01:13:31):
Than there might be something more to it.
And Speaking of that, there's this little Penguin that we
find. Yeah, in the apartments.
And that's actually a reference to Hello Penguin Team, which
worked on a previous secret gameand underplayed Vernal Edge.
No way. Yeah.
Whoa. So I did not expect to see that,

(01:13:53):
but it was really nice and. So you knew immediately because
you had played Vernal Edge? Well, it took me a minute.
I was like, that kind of looks like I've seen that before
because you can find that same Penguin in Vernal Edge.
Not the same, it looks a little bit different, but.
Because of the art style, maybe,Yeah.
It's it's got that little screwy, like very sharp triangle
beak and it's the same. And then when I beat the game,

(01:14:16):
there was part in the credits for Hello Penguin Team.
So that was a legit reference tothat.
We haven't had a good reference in a while.
Yeah, the last one I remember was like Jack.
Move. Yeah, I remember that.
I'm sure there's been some that I'm forgetting, but.
We popped off for the Jack move one.
Yeah. There have been other ones,

(01:14:36):
yeah. So just wanted to point that out
there. I saw you and I knew what the
reference. Was it does feel like a game
where even though there's relatively simple things going
on, it's easy to understand whatyou're seeing.
There could be secrets in plain sight just or references to
things. Yeah, you never know.

(01:14:56):
But I would say apart from all that, I do have two very large
overarching gloves in one shot and those are the characters in
the story. I think every single supporting
character in one shot has a level of vulnerability that
allow us to connect with them, even the robots that aren't
quote tamed. And some of the non supporting

(01:15:18):
characters I'm thinking of like that author in the library
that's redacting their own workslike that, just that action and
that small conversation we have with them.
They have no impact on the story.
But we learned so much about them in that moment.
And I just, I love them all. I'm invested in everyone.
And then when something happens and we need to meet everyone a

(01:15:39):
second time, the stakes of the world are way higher.
And so when one of those characters seems lost to me or I
can no longer see them or I can't go back and help them
anymore, I'm, I'm genuinely upset that I can't go back and
help this person because they'retrapped or something.
Not to give away too much about how the game ends up.

(01:16:04):
And then the story is just, it'ssupported by all that explores
themes that I've seen a bunch oftimes at this point.
So usually I can see what the writer is planning a mile away.
But the dialogue in a few pivotal moments of choice really
like subverted my expectations in a surprising way and had me
reconsidering what I thought wasa sure choice.

(01:16:25):
Like when they explained to me the actual stakes and they
subvert my expectations of what the consequences are, I
reconsider. And yeah, I just, I wasn't
expecting that it, it wasn't as shallow as I thought the game
was going to be. As for dislikes, I really don't
have too many. Like I said at the top, the the

(01:16:45):
whole thing is greater than the sum of its parts.
But I would say that getting started was actually a bit of a
struggle. I don't really get a good grasp
of what to do in the 1st 2:00 rooms like I had.
To in the house. Yeah, I had to look these up
honestly. And then when I played through
it again, I even had to look up the very first puzzle again.

(01:17:06):
So I I didn't really grasp what was going on in the first few
moments. And since I wasn't actually
looking forward to playing one shot that much, that ended up
being a bit of a rough. Start.
We were playing Christy. Yeah, I I turned it on.
I was like, I don't really want to play this that bad.
And then when it I couldn't figure out the first puzzle, I

(01:17:28):
was like, oh God, where is this is what we're going to be
dealing with? Yeah, but it I don't know it.
Gets better. Yeah, it does get better.
And you know, once you understand like some of the
things that it it's asking from you in those first rooms, like
you start to formulate what you need to do.
Some of the meta elements weren't necessarily fun for me
to figure out. I can tell from some Steam posts

(01:17:50):
that it's probably more excitingon an actual PC, but regardless,
some of them really didn't work for me in this small complaint,
but a few too many things are missable as far as collectibles.
Yeah. Collectibles are not the point
of the game at all, but if you miss something.
It's really it's time to move. On Yeah, Yeah.
You're losing a lot of time if you need to go back through to

(01:18:12):
do like trophy cleanup or if youwant to just see everything in
the game. Yep, and I had to do that and I
even messed up a second time. So I have to go through it a
third time. You are going to go through
again? Yeah.
Yeah, once you know what you're doing, it's pretty quick.
Like you can get through it pretty fast.
Yeah, it's like not that long ofa game all told.
And I think How Long to Beat only has this at several hours.

(01:18:33):
I'd say it took me like 5 or 6 hours to get.
Credits and a lot of that was exploring the first time now
that I know exactly. Where I knew it, maybe a few
hours or an hour, yeah. I think I did it in two.
But when I was streaming this, Ionly streamed it for like the
three or four hours. I didn't finish it on stream.
I decided to finish this game off stream because I was feeling
like stream wasn't the place forthis game.
Yeah, when I was streaming it, there is this person in my chat

(01:18:58):
who's kind of new and they were kind of back seeding because
they knew the game. And I, I tried to shut that
down. I was like, let me play the
game, let me enjoy it for the first time.
But there was then a moment where I was reading chat as I
was moving Nikko out of a room. And apparently while I was
moving Nikko, I was kind of multitasking.
Sometimes I do that when I'm streaming as I'm moving Nikko

(01:19:20):
toward the exit of this room. One of the character BIOS was
above the exit of the room. It's the vine girl.
If you know who I'm talking about, Vine girls bio isn't next
to vine girl. It's like over the door that's
on the other side of the room for some reason.
And I just missed that bio. And then like moments later, the
guy was like, oh, you missed a bio, by the way.

(01:19:43):
But I was at the point of no return after when you get to the
refuge. So it's like, whatever.
I bet I missed tons of things anyway.
So if I wanted that, I'd have toreplay the game not only for
that bio, but for a ton of otherthings.
And I turned out to be right. There are a lot of things that I
missed in the Glen and in the Barons.

(01:20:03):
I I didn't miss a ton, but I didmiss one like key thing and you
don't get it until like the end of the game.
So that that sucks. And I think just having a
chapter select after reaching the final conclusion would help.
There is very little in this game that is not required from
section to section. So it's not like if you went to

(01:20:25):
a chapter select and you needed to go to the Glen, there's
nothing in the Barons that you missed because you have to get
all that stuff in the Barons. It's quite for the most part
it's quite similar, at least between all the playthroughs.
So that would have helped, but at least the game's not too
long. And then lastly, truly my

(01:20:45):
biggest complaint, which again is not a huge 1, is that I don't
like the overworld sprites. I think it's just some of the
character sprites look strange in the overworld setting.
Maybe mostly Nico. I think I just maybe his eyes
are just too big or something, just something doesn't look
right. So in the end, One shot is one

(01:21:05):
of those games that it was kind of like an obligation, you know,
like when you have someone that really, really, really wants you
to play a game, like really badly sometimes that can that
that awakens my contrarian nature.
And I'm just like, I'm not, I'm going to actively not like this
game. Yeah.
Oh, I see when that happens. I just like I don't know if I

(01:21:26):
want to play this game anymore, but just like with grant of
coffee fame Grant and his strongrecommendations of limbo, portal
and hollow knight, all games that I love this obligatory
playthrough worked out. I loved one shot.
I was invested in everyone and even I disco was involved in the
game and I really I really felt like Nico and I actually were

(01:21:49):
working together at a certain point to save this place.
And I'm I'm so surprised that that game pulled that off.
I rarely get immersed. I rarely feel immersion in a
game, but I just I really cared about this world.
So I want to give one shot a nine point O.
Wow, I am surprised. Me too.
I wow, I heading into today I, Idon't know, I wasn't sure if I

(01:22:15):
could make a guess on how you would feel about the game.
But as I go into my thoughts, I have something to say and it's
something I didn't expect to saybefore the recording, but I
don't think I properly finished this game.
Oh, interesting. OK.
I I think you need to take my review with, you know, the

(01:22:37):
tiniest grain of salt in some respects.
OK. But I think there are undeniable
issues I have here. This ultimately was not a game I
hated. And I get why this game is
interesting and why it resonateswith people, but it's a game
that just didn't totally work for me.
And I will get into things I liked, things I disliked.

(01:23:01):
But just so you know, getting into a discussion topic a little
early, there's this thing calledthe Solstice Path.
I don't know if you know it by this name, but I feel like you
did this thing that I had no awareness of.
OK. But I could be wrong.
I'm like squinting at you because I'm like, not sure.
I entered, I interacted with theword solstice, but I don't know

(01:23:26):
what impact that had on the story.
I thought it was like required. OK, we might talk about this a
little later then I'll just get into my likes and dislikes.
So what I likes, I like the ideaof all these characters of
different shapes, sizes and walks of life.
Like you said, it throws them all together.

(01:23:47):
And I think that is really fascinating and it all feels
like it works. I didn't never felt like any of
these wild ideas were out of place.
And I think part of that is because we have some really
great locales to go to. I liked the feeling of all these
places. If it's a world that feels dark,
you know it's a world that feelsdevastated and that can be a

(01:24:10):
little harder to communicate in this art style.
We don't have as many dimensionsto play with in a top down 2D
game and honestly there's not a ton of just surface area to walk
on sometimes. Yeah.
Did you you know you probably thought about this too.
And like just to just to bounce off of that too, like saying
that it's not easy to portray that.
I think in the top down realm specifically because you can

(01:24:33):
portray a lot of devastation in a skyline.
We don't have a skyline here. We're just looking at some some
dirt. There's a skyline definitely
like later in the game, but I don't think it.
It's tells us a lot, yeah. It's different.
It's like a city. It's a skyline because we're
way, way, way up in the air, yeah.
Yeah. But a lot of the time we're
looking at just a bunch of ground.

(01:24:54):
We're walking on the ground. And so there's not a lot there
to work with on paper, but in practice, I think this does feel
like a world that's showing me what it's also telling me.
And I think that's super impressive.
You get tons of vignettes through the characters you meet
in this world. And I liked reading the
biographies. I thought the biographies were

(01:25:14):
super well written. As soon as I'm collecting one of
those, except for Vine Girls apparently, I'm going in there
and I'm reading about these characters and I love getting
that additional little tidbit about who they are.
Nikko themself is adorable and ahero I want to assist throughout
the journey. Just a really cool character.

(01:25:36):
I also really like the final moments and the sequence that
leads up to the credits. These are some of the strongest
parts of the game for me narratively.
And while some parts are foretold and kind of
predictable, we kind of know theend game and the the pieces on
the board. We don't know how those pieces

(01:25:57):
will move. We don't know how they'll
emotionally hit us. And then when it actually
happens, I I didn't actually know how it would play out
particularly. And so I thought the last
sequence and the the last few moments were really cool and
some of my favorite moments of this game.
And so I'm really relieved that,you know, it ended on a quote UN

(01:26:19):
quote, good notes. You know, for me now when I get
to things that I didn't like so much, I kind of disliked things
that you liked. Interesting.
OK. At virtually no point did I feel
a sense of meaningful purpose inwhat I was doing.
Interesting. And I feel like this game places

(01:26:39):
you into the role of a God, but I feel more like an audience
member on the other side of a broken 4th wall.
I don't feel this gravity to my role.
Nico asks about us. There are some touching
interactions, but I, I didn't, Ididn't feel emotionally attached
to much of it and I really wish I did.

(01:27:01):
I there's something about this game that I can't connect with,
and I'm not sure I'm entirely sure why, but the dialogue is
also kind of lacking something for me to really draw me in.
You do talk to a wide variety ofpeople, and that's cool, but you
start in a barren wasteland which is filled with darkness
and robots, and the ensuing dialogue feels largely cold and

(01:27:27):
impersonal. And sometimes it's because we're
talking to a bunch of robots, and that's not always my
favorite thing to do because they don't have that much
personality. So I maybe it's just that it's
lacking flavor or something thatmakes me not connect with it.
And then I thought the puzzle solving wasn't very clever or

(01:27:49):
harmonious with the world. And what I mean by this is a lot
of the puzzles feel like I'm doing these scavenger hunts, but
they're scavenger hunts inventedby my 7 year old cousin.
We're at a family gathering and they're like, we should make a
button for an elevator. Go go use tape and a bunch of

(01:28:14):
items and combine them together to make a button for an
elevator. It's like I just end up asking
myself like, why am I doing this?
Why is this the puzzle? It feels like anything could be
the puzzle, and it just so happens that it's making a
button for an elevator. See, I think I like that because
logically just making a button out of some crap shouldn't work.

(01:28:40):
But it does. And you got to combine stuff
from a coffee can with fridge magnets.
And it's it's silly and it shouldn't work, but in this
world it did. You get to do things.
You get to use imagination. I do commend the game for that.
I did actually like looking at my inventory and I tried to

(01:29:03):
think of smart ways to combine items.
And there were a few times whereI thought, oh, what if I combine
this with this? That would make sense.
And that was the answer. And that was really rewarding.
But the actual activities we're doing, like I'm controlling the
Messiah of this world. I am acknowledged as the
Messiah, but I can't go to the refuge because I need to sign a

(01:29:23):
guest book and I don't have a pen.
Like to me, that's not narratively interesting.
It's not. It feels sort of belittling and
silly and like sort of a mismatch with The Dark World
that's going on. So that's why I don't really
jive with the puzzles in this game.
This game reminds me of a Flash game I used to play in my

(01:29:46):
browser when I was a kid. It was a Cartoon Network Flash
game called Summer Resort. Did you ever play any like Flash
games like this? I wish I could have, but I
couldn't. So Summer Resort, this was where
you played as a bunch of different Cartoon Network
characters. It was very like a very
rudimentary Flash game where you're walking around a summer

(01:30:08):
resort and you're just doing thescavenger hunt, finding items,
key items to unlock doors and make progress.
And a lot of it, in hindsight doesn't make a lot of sense.
And that this game kind of feelslike a slightly more advanced
version of that to me. There's there's an old Bionicle
game that was online that was asfar as I could play.
It seemed pretty similar, but also my I couldn't play it for

(01:30:32):
very long. It's an idea that I think was
explored a long time ago and that I had fun with, but it was
when I was a kid and I just don't have as much fun with it
now. I also think the computer
interface and the experience of using it is a mixed bag.
It's a great concept. It's presented really clearly.
I love the Wallpapers, I love the themes, I love reading the

(01:30:53):
character biographies. But I didn't enjoy using the
cursor on the GamePad. I I didn't enjoy managing the
windows. I didn't like when I used the
windowed mode of the one shot application that it was so
small. I wish I could resize things.
There are things that I wish I could do and then there are
parts of the sound design that were off putting to me,

(01:31:15):
unfortunately. I get that.
I get. That there are some shrill sound
effects in this game and you listen to them hundreds of
times. When you combine items, there's
a really like shrill piano. Sound, it's like very plinky.
Yeah, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
And so I don't always love listening to this game,
unfortunately. So overall, the world of One

(01:31:35):
Shot is nothing without its characters.
I just didn't always find myselfcompelled by this world.
The puzzles can feel like aimless errands to me.
I think the game ends quite strong, but I'm not entirely
sure I properly saw everything that's going on in this game.
And that kind of breaks my heartbecause I feel like the game

(01:31:56):
also didn't communicate how to see the rest of it to me.
And so maybe we can talk about that in a moment.
So I am going to give this game A5 out of 10.
I still rolled credits on it so I thought I finished it but I
feel like I didn't. I rolled credits two different
times. Yeah, I'd only rolled it once,

(01:32:17):
so if you don't mind, I'd like to go to the ending sequence and
talk about that a little earlierthan we planned.
There is a note that appears in the Documents folder apparently,
and that's the one you clicked on.
Maybe I don't remember the orderof operations here.
You got credits though. You made a choice at the end of
the game. We're not saying what it is yet

(01:32:39):
or at all maybe. And when I got to that part, I
rolled credits and then I was able to close one shot the game
within the computer interface. And then I'm staring at the the
screen and I just think the game's done and I closed it and
that's all I did. Is that valid?

(01:33:02):
I don't know, I feel like the game taught me to explore people
and interactions multiple times until you can see everything.
And that includes opening one shot after you're done, because
something that they tell you in the ending sort of suggests that

(01:33:24):
there there's kind of an after. Yeah.
To A to a degree. So then I opened one shot again.
I did do that, yeah. And it seemed like it was just
restarting the game to me. I didn't like, there might have
been like a new cutscene at the beginning, and I think Nico
acknowledged that they were in afamiliar place or something.

(01:33:47):
But I was like, I got credits and I don't want to replay this
game, and I think that's all that's going on here.
So I closed the game. Yeah, I didn't know that.
Apparently there's a note that appears in documents that allows
you to restart the game and pursue an alternate ending.
Yeah. I what?

(01:34:09):
I didn't. I just, I didn't trust that the
game was done. So you replayed the entire game.
It's it's shortened, it's abbreviated.
It is. OK, yes, that makes sense.
But nothing in the house not going into the documents folder
because I wasn't trained to go there.
In my opinion. Nothing told me that that's

(01:34:30):
heavily where the game was going.
And maybe I just wasn't perceptive enough or something.
And I, I put a lot of this on mefor not being curious enough,
but I just got the sense that it's asking me to replay the
game. It's giving me an Ave. to replay
the game if I wish, and it's sort of lightly playing with the
narrative in that way. I did not know that there was

(01:34:52):
this alternate ending. I wish it was more obvious and
I'm kind of upset. I hope that you play it because
it that's damn some of the strongest part of the whole
experience for me, yeah. So if you had not gotten credits
twice, let's say you stopped where I stopped, yeah.
How would your feelings about the game change?

(01:35:14):
They I don't think they would bequite on the same level as you,
but it would have been a much more stale overall experience.
My God, this has never happened before.
I think this is fascinating, youknow, foremost.
But I'm kind of disappointed, like, partly in myself and
partly in the game. Yeah.

(01:35:35):
Does is that fair in your opinion?
I mean, I guess so I I feel likeI could have expected it.
I just some of the strongest moments in the original game for
me in the, let's call it the original game, Yeah, before you
run credit score. Or first run or something.
Yeah. So like I'm going to use the
very first that person, for example silver the Android in

(01:35:59):
the first zone. Something different happens.
We talked to her and we get our our Amber, right.
But then if I go back and talk to her again, we get an extra
moment with her. And it's better than any moment
that we'd experienced up to thatpoint because it's this
heartfelt conversation between the two of them.
And we get to do an activity together that's really touching.

(01:36:21):
And you kind of get that with a lot of characters throughout the
game if you choose to explore all possible dialogue.
Options. OK.
I'll try to go back and do that.But here's my thing.
Going back through, I get how that could enrich the
experience, give us something new, make us feel a different

(01:36:44):
way, etcetera. But at the end of the day, that
doesn't change the fact that I experienced what I experienced.
That doesn't change the fact that I felt the way I felt about
the first run. And so I don't know that those
feelings would completely be erased.
So maybe taking a look at my thoughts at a glance with my

(01:37:06):
score, maybe my score would improve.
But I don't see this going up toA9 for me.
I just don't see how that's possible.
That's just where I'm feeling about it right now.
Wow. Well, thank you for explaining
that and filling me in a little bit about it without telling me
too much, because I did learn about the Solstice path when I
looked into the game a little bit.

(01:37:27):
But when I started reading details, I like, you know,
clicked away. I didn't want to spoil anymore.
I was like Rut Row. I didn't do everything, but I
got credits. So that's why I thought I was
done. So I get that.
OK, well, let's now talk about the World Machine Edition versus

(01:37:49):
the original. Again, we haven't played the
original, but what we imagine would be different, if you don't
mind. Well, I know for a fact that
instead of having the the computer interface that some of
these clues that the game gives you do drop in your actual real
documents folder. Wow.
So just sort of like a Doki DokiLiterature Club, but actually

(01:38:12):
manipulating folders that are separate from the game program
folder. That's maybe more immersive at
the end of the day. I yeah, I think so.
And. We talked about which version do
we play. I think we did consider the pros
and cons of this and I could seemyself kind of getting a little
bit maybe sucked into that, but also distracted too, a little

(01:38:37):
too distracted. I think like some of the Steam
questions I saw, I would not have thought to look in the
Documents folder for something. I would have been looking at all
of the subfolders in the one shot, you know, program folder
for stuff because that's kind ofdoki Doki.
Literature Club was pretty disciplined in that sense.

(01:38:58):
I'm sure there's other games I'm.
Thinking of I'm thinking of inscription.
There's a part where this might also have like a console version
versus PC version thing. I played the console version,
but within the console version it actually makes a nice balance
of like intricate folder structure but also manageable
folder structure where you can easily explore everything, but

(01:39:20):
it's not your actual computer where you potentially have many
thousands of files and a lot of scrolling to do.
So I appreciated that and I don't know, I think maybe this
game would work better for me just in the World Machine
Edition. Yeah, I think just overall, any
of these games that do folder manipulation, file manipulation,
ask you to search for stuff, which at this point I am kind of

(01:39:42):
over, you know, I don't. Do you think the wells been
mined? I don't think the wells been
mined, but it's just like. Or tapped.
There are like 3 games that havedone it and they were all like
huge hits and so like, it's not a surprising thing.
It's not a novel thing. It's, yeah, it's it's not the
discovery of a new land. So I'm not, I'm not totally I'm,

(01:40:03):
I'm kind of over it now. But anytime a game does that,
it's always going to be better on APC versus shoehorning it
into a console edition. Again, I love the PC interface
in this game. I think it is presented really
clearly. I have no question about where
things are, and it even gives you a nice tutorial at the

(01:40:24):
beginning. It tells you how to delete
files, and I didn't mess around with deleting files and things
like that. Did you get wild in the computer
UI? I wouldn't say I got wild.
I explored everything and then Idid eventually delete one file
because it's kind of asked of you if you progressed beyond

(01:40:45):
where you progressed. But beyond that I didn't try to
delete like the help folder or something.
Yeah, I was afraid. Like can I, can I do something
irreversible in this game? Once I get all my trophies I
might experiment a little. Bit that would be fun.
It'd be easy to get back to having a completed save file.
And that feels like the kind of thing where there might not be

(01:41:06):
every answer for every possibility online.
You might just have to play around yourself to figure it
out, right? I have because I explored that
additional content. I have very memorable characters
and moments. But let's go with you first.
Like what are what are some of your more memorable characters?
Definitely the vine girl who wants to be with the sun.

(01:41:29):
So there's this heartbreaking moment that forces you to be
without the sun. And I had no problems with that,
with the idea of that. And I found myself checking back
in with her several times. Sometimes it was just a
curiosity. Sometimes it was kind of there
was some trepidation because I wasn't necessarily ready to see

(01:41:52):
where she was at. And I thought that was one of
the most emotionally impactful moments for me.
Yeah, I have an anecdote about that.
I happened to catch someone streaming one shot at one point,
and that was the part they were at, and they left the sun.
And I was like, should we do that?
That do we trust this? I, you know, I left the stream

(01:42:15):
shortly after that because I didn't want to see any spoilers,
but I was like, is this one of those situations where this is
like the main villains? Yeah.
I didn't even think about. That I was worried about that.
And so when I got to that moment, I'm like, I'm finally
going to find out, but. And you did it.
I did it, yeah. For me, that's a good pick.
I think maybe because I'm a father of two children, A Lula

(01:42:37):
and Calamus are very memorable to me, kind of, especially after
the second time we meet them. So that's the one for me.
But really, the big one in each zone like stands out a lot.
Yeah, totally. You got lamplighter, you've got
silver, I think they're all. I wanted to hear more from

(01:43:01):
Silver and so that I guess that is a good reason to go back and
keep seeing what the game has tooffer.
You even get a little bit more about silver later in the game
too, which is I wasn't expectingso.
Now for puzzles in this game or just the things we do that are
are memorable. You mentioned the goat spinning

(01:43:22):
and I think of that whole area of goats, there's tons of goats
and there's like a little village too with a bunch of
huts. And I was looking at every
little trying to find anything that could help me assemble a
pen to sign my signature to get into the place.
But then South of the rotating goat, there's a little puzzle

(01:43:44):
with goats. It's like a sliding block
puzzle. It's like a soccer bond game for
a moment. And I, I had AI had a decent
amount of fun there. I had to reset it so I missed
out on that trophy, but what a fun idea in my opinion.
Yeah, I agree with you. For me, as far as like
interesting puzzles, it really was pretty front loaded just

(01:44:06):
trying to get all the different pieces for the battery in the
Barons. That really expanded my mind
with what we could do with our items because I wasn't expecting
to be able to remove this item from this object, but I have to
use this tool to do it, you know, and just how we combine

(01:44:28):
all the different things and then ultimately charging up that
battery and what we need to do to, that's cool.
To charge that up, it made me wonder if we would have to do
that again. Yeah.
And so that was really exciting because this item served an
additional purpose that I wasn'tanticipating.
That is a puzzle where it made sense in the world.
I was definitely all in on getting that battery to work.

(01:44:51):
That's a puzzle that I love. It's the needing to find a pen
to sign a guest book to get intoa thing.
I I'll I don't like the pen puzzle, and one of the
components of it seemed way too significant to end up being part
of a pen. You know, and I thought there
was something that I thought wasan ingredient to the pen and it

(01:45:11):
was like a red herring, I felt. OK.
I don't even remember what it was, but I I was attached to
this idea and I was totally wrong about that.
That merchant that's in the Glen, that's near that village
with the goats, there's a lot ofoptional stuff with that
merchant, and I didn't do close to everything.
Apparently that's one of the things I had to replay the game.

(01:45:33):
For OK, so did you do all that? Stuff I did, Yep.
Yep, at this point I'm only missing 2 of the trophies and
one of them I technically like did but I didn't.
You can pick one ending versus another and I picked the one
that it won't activate if you pick that ending.
So gotcha. Yeah, I reading a quick list on

(01:45:54):
that merchant, it opened my eyesto how much is hiding in the
game still that I just. I thought I found everything.
And like we said before about references to things, there are
secrets, there are little combinations of things you can
do. There's a door I couldn't figure
out how to open in the refuge. I think you need something from
that Merchants OK to open it. So you haven't opened this door

(01:46:17):
I presume? I don't know, maybe.
It's a door with a symbol on it.That's all I'll say.
It's this crack in a wall and you can tell it's a door shape,
but you can't. Open it.
Oh, I know what you're talking about.
I did open that door. OK.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, got it.
Yeah, I didn't open it yet, so Idon't know what's in there.
Don't get your, it's not worth it.
OK, it's more of a I. Mean, I think there might be a

(01:46:38):
collectible in there, but it is,yeah, mostly it's it's
inconsequential. I was relieved when I was in the
refuge trying to plant that seedand give it soil and water and I
needed something to mix with thewater, but I had used my water
up. I was relieved to find out you

(01:46:58):
can refill your water, so that was something.
I didn't. Know Oh, you didn't know that?
OK, so I found a sink and I was like, oh, what if the sink lets
us fill it up and it does? So the game does look out for
your ass sometimes. Sometimes, but.
You just have to know how to getthere.
Yeah. Any other moments or puzzles

(01:47:19):
that you came away thinking, wow, that was interesting?
Not so much puzzles, but there were there were tons of moments
that I just, I really loved and I I hope you get to see some of
them. OK, so a lot of them are still
unseen. Yeah, Dude, I feel like I have
to apologize. I I should have been more
curious. I just, I didn't know to look in

(01:47:40):
that spot and I wish I had. So yeah.
But I will, I'll be sure to go back and finish that up and
maybe I'll do a follow up on theshow.
I'll maybe at the top of one of our upcoming episodes.
This might be this might be yourouter Wilds.
To this day, I would change the heck out of my Outer Wild score

(01:48:02):
because I played more and more of that and just it totally
changed my whole world on it. And maybe it won't.
Maybe it won't be your Outer Wilds.
But. I'm I'm sitting here embarrassed
and frustrated, confused, questioning myself, questioning
my decisions. So just know that listener if

(01:48:23):
you're yelling at me through whatever device you're listening
to this with. I'm sorry, you got it.
You got it covered. I'm doing it myself, you know.
You're screaming at. Me.
No, no, you're screaming at yourself.
Oh, got it, got it. Yes, OK, so that's really all I
have to share about the game. I think, gosh, I know there are
other moments with other characters that we could just

(01:48:46):
keep talking about, but I think we'll end it there.
Any parting words? It's always nice when there's a
game that I'm not looking forward to playing and then I
play it and I'm just like, wow. I sometimes I'm kind of glad
that I was just like being so grumpy about it because then my
expectations are lower and I love it that much more.

(01:49:08):
This Both of today's games, you know, fit the bill.
They're both now on my top 100 indie games.
I got let's see Chris Tails at 50 and One Shot World Machine
Edition at 32, which also puts one shot in my top 100 games of
all time. Nice at 75.

(01:49:29):
Oh wow OK and Fruit Bus is in mytop 100 indie games list now and
again. I think we should do a look back
at our our top 100 indie games list at the end of the season
and just call out which games from the season ended up making
it. It is at 73 in my top 100 indie
games list. Cool, I already I do already
have some games from this seasonthat made the list and already

(01:49:51):
were knocked off so. Same.
Yeah, I. I'm trying to keep them on the
like, tail end, yeah. I think the ton of 0 was that
way for me. I think it is either really
close or it did get knocked off.Well, we will call it there.
That is our review of One Shot World Machine Edition.
You can play it on PC, Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

(01:50:12):
Disco Cola rated it a nine. I rated it A5.
That's the end of this episode of Underplayed.
You can find more of our episodes at kzom.org/underplayed
and on common podcast platforms like Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Our music was composed by Jack Rodenberg.
Our arts comes from Oni Mochi. Check out our show notes where
you can find and follow us across social media.

(01:50:33):
Underplayed is at places like Blue Sky, Instagram, and
Threads. You can find me in those places
too and I stream on Twitch. And I am in all those places as
well. And you can find Underplayed on
Twitch where we premiere our episodes early on Monday night.
And you can also catch us playing our Co-op game when we
finally get around to doing that.

(01:50:54):
Hackers Next time we'll have twomore secret games to review, a
developer interview with Oscar Lasada Suarez from Tri Band, and
our featured game will be Untitled Goose Game, a puzzle
stealth adventure game developedby House House.
Until then, everyone keep on playing.

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070 - Cris Tales, Fruitbus, & OneShot: World Machine Edition

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}070 - Cris Tales, Fruitbus, & OneShot: World Machine Edition