073 - #BLUD, MainFrames, & Another Crab's Treasure - Underplayed

Episode Transcript
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(00:04):
Thank you for pressing start on episode 73 of Underplayed KZUMS
indie video game podcasts. Today we have two secret games,
followed by a review of our featured game, Another Crab's
Treasure. 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,
Mestar, Disco Cola. What is going on?

(00:53):
Bobo you know, I had some time off recently, so I've been
living like a hermit a little bit, but today I'm coming out of
my shell. How are you?
I'm doing just fine. My laser eyed rocket launching
spider crab. Those are references to our
featured game. Horrifying reference.
One of them is more accurate than the other.

(01:13):
We'll let the audience decide, which is that those are
references to our featured game,Another Krabs Treasure.
This is a game that I feel like both of us have been looking
forward to playing for a long time.
Yeah, I wanted to play it on release.
It just yes couldn't was busy. I I wonder like has it been
about a year since it came out? Oh, that sounds right.
Treasure. I feel like it was spring of

(01:34):
last year. I was really banking on a
physical copy too, so that was part of why I held off.
Yes, and you'd think by now maybe there would be 1.
April 25th, 2024 is when it came.
Out very close, yeah. Close to the year anniversary of
this game and we we have now played it and we will be
reviewing that later. And this is a souls like game.
This is a longer game. Every season tends to have at

(01:56):
least one or two longer games. So this is one of those longer
games this season. Rarely have them quite this
long. Even our longest games are
rarely quite this long. But even still, yeah, yeah, we
each probably have dozens of hours of playtime to draw from
for the review, so that'll be interesting here at the top.
I wanted to talk briefly about Steam Nextfest, February slash

(02:20):
March 2025 edition. Usually it lands in February,
but it's a little bit later in the month this time.
So by the time this episode's out, Nextfest will be pretty far
in the rearview mirror. But I'm still thinking about
these demos that I played now. I played dozens of demos.
You played a lot. You had like a list of almost
50, right? It may have been a few dozen

(02:43):
more than 50 holy buckets. After the next fest week, I
continued playing more. What the krill?
What the krill? And as we sit down, I actually
still have 3 demos I'd like to play.
So I I haven't technically played everything that's in my
list, but I've played a vast majority of everything.

(03:04):
So I played the most I've ever played from any next fests.
I didn't think I would do that. I didn't want to do that.
And then I did that. You got.
A lot of stuff to play right now.
Yes, and I have responsibilitiesand but also this next fest was
really alluring. This was an amazing next fest in

(03:24):
my opinion. I thought it blew some of the
others out of the water. I think it was way better than
October's, for instance. OK, yeah, you saw me play a
couple of these on stream. I did, yeah.
And I'm going to talk about themin the order that I played them.
These are 5 highlights for me from Steam Nextfest.
The first one is Tempopo and theSteam page says a psychedelic

(03:46):
soundscape in the sky. Puzzle through the seasons by
conducting chaotic temp popo to rescue musical flowers.
Design and populate your melodicgarden.
Then let the music play. Baby.
I added baby. That's not part of it.
This is developed by Witchbeam, the creators of Unpacking.
Yes. And quite a different game.
I know it. I think just in two games they

(04:08):
can show their range here. And I'm excited about Temp Popo
because it has awesome music. The the graphics are just
beautiful. It's set in the sky.
You place down these blocks, youtry to arrange the level so that
musically and rhythmically things play out in the right way
so that your tempo PO pick up the things they need to without
getting harmed. And it's very like isometric.

(04:31):
You can move the camera around alot.
The music is really fun and lively.
You build a garden using flowersyou find, so I just think this
game's beautiful. One of the games I wanted to
mention, it kind of reminds me of like Captain Toad.
It kind of reminds me of GardensBetween and it kind of reminds
me of your box game Bonfire. Bonfire Peaks, yes, yes, take

(04:53):
all those things. And if they had a baby together,
it would maybe be Tempo PO. Yeah, really great game.
And I think, you know, even though this is the first one I'm
talking about, I think this is maybe my game of the fast.
I think it's my favorite. Cool.
I think it edges out the others just a little bit in a lot of
so. Yeah.
And I don't think I even played everything that was in it.

(05:14):
My next one is, is this seat taken?
The Steam page says is this seattaken as a logic puzzle game
where you play matchmaker for groups of hilariously particular
people. Each character has pet peeves
that make seating them a delightful challenge.
Find the perfect spot for each person to unlock new levels in
this cozy, silly, and relatable experience.

(05:36):
This is developed by Pote Pote Studio, and I think it's their
first game. This is a game you know about.
I think you said that this one looked alluring to you.
Yeah, I really want to play it. I just sitting there watching
you play and I'm like, Oh no, wait, put this one there.
I that would be better. And I, you know, I just, I
wanted to play it. It's a game where you like
organize things, so it was calling to your Wilmot brain,

(05:59):
you know what or whatever. But this is a game about little
guys with cute little faces and legs, and they have preferences
about where they want to sit. And you arrange them so that
their preferences are all satisfied.
And it starts out really simply.You know, you just have a few of
them. You place them on, on buses, you
place them in movie theater seats.

(06:20):
And they'll say things like, I want to sit next to this person
with this name, or I want a window seat, or I don't want to
sit next to somebody who's stinky.
And then there are people who haven't showered.
And so you don't place those people next to each other.
And the complexity ramps up, butat a really comfortable pace.
I feel like it it doesn't get overwhelming, it really steadily

(06:43):
steps you forward on the difficulty so I cannot wait for
this. I love the the color palette
too. It's like.
Yeah. Really gentle colors, pastel
kind of, you know, muted colors.I just love the style of this
one. Yeah, I so where I work now, I
recently had a position where I did a lot more creative work.

(07:03):
I now do more like day-to-day clerical stuff, but I, you know,
create the program schedule and I have to keep in mind people's
availability versus, you know, where is it most appropriate for
that to go in the schedule? It's a lot like it's the same
part of my brain. This is a game for stage
managers and wedding planners. That's a great I think those

(07:27):
people would love. I am neither of those things, by
the way, since I'm being vague, but I am neither of those
things. But program directors, wedding
planners and stage managers willlove is this seat taken.
My next one is Asgard's Fall. You also watched me play this.
Is this the the vampire survivors like?
It is OK, yeah, the Steam page says embark on an epic saga in

(07:50):
Asgard's Fall, a Norse survivorslike rogue lights.
Fight your way through hordes ofcreatures and let the gods feel
your relentless wrath. How will your saga unfold?
This is developed by Soul Potion, which is a great dev
name. That is a really cool name.
I easily played this for a couple hours without feeling the
time pass. And you were like good at, you

(08:11):
nailed it. You were so good at it.
Well, I think what it does really well is it is easy to
understand if you've played other survivors likes and it
took me a run to understand a unique mechanic going on in it.
But once I understood the web ofweird, which is a main mechanic
here, that makes it stand out. That is what I was obsessed with

(08:33):
and the more you pay attention to that, the better you can do.
I think this is a place where you slot in.
I don't know the proper terminology, but maybe like
runes, little upgrades that can synergize really well and you
can place them in close proximity in a specific way to
really change the outcome of your attacks.

(08:57):
And so I was doing my best to make a build of sorts, but you
also do the traditional things in a survivor's like, like you
choose which weapons are going to fire on their own as you're
walking around this top down map.
But then that extra layer of theweb of weird allows you to
really find cool synergies and finds like just awesome

(09:19):
upgrades. So I, I loved it.
Dodging, I think is really important.
That's how I how I got through and I was getting extra dodges
on my web of weird. So that's how I was able to
survive so long. So it's just one of those games
I can keep playing and playing. The next one is Arctic
Awakening. The Steam page says the a first
person narrative adventure set in the unforgiving Arctic.

(09:42):
Your plane crashed in a storm, leaving only your court mandated
therapy bot for company as you journey to find your copilot and
uncover the mysteries buried beneath the ice.
This is developed by Gold Fire Studios.
This game is basically a very cinematic first person Firewatch

(10:04):
like game, but it's set in a very cold Arctic place and it's
a very sort of slow burn where your plane crashes.
You have a friend that you need to get to, but you also have a
sidekick in the form of this bot.
And I thought this was just super immersive and I don't
really want to say a whole lot else about it.

(10:25):
I think there's a lot of sci-fi stuff maybe going on with this
later in the game that I can't wait to uncover to.
So one of those mystery games that has a lot hiding for us.
And then lastly, in a very similar vein, there's Radio
Lights. This is also a first person
atmospheric game. And the Steam page says Ashwood

(10:46):
Creek 1985. A child disappears without a
trace. A local policeman is drawn into
a National Park seeking the truth.
Mysterious radio signals beckon him further and further.
Investigate, survive and face the unknown in Radio Lights, an
80s thriller by solo dev Christoph Nessel.
So this was just so well done. Atmospherically, this is another

(11:10):
slow burn of sorts. You are walking through the
woods at night. You've got a flashlight and
you're tracking these missing people down and kind of like
Firewatch, you're talking to this guy on your radio and very
supernatural things start happening, but it's a very slow
ramp up. You'll notice things out of

(11:32):
place, out of sorts. You'll notice lights on in
places that they shouldn't be on.
You'll notice like blood on a rock, and you'll wonder what
that's about. And you find a cabin eventually.
So just the tension ramps up super well in this game and I
had chills down my spine playingthis.
So sort of my horror pick of thelists this.

(11:53):
Time. Yeah, I'm all about those creepy
radio signals, dude. I think you will really dig
this. I think you will really dig
this. So those were my picks from
Nextfest. There were many more I liked.
There's something else we want to talk about here at the top.
Yeah, we were recently involved in a collaboration by the time
this episode officially releases.

(12:14):
You can check that out. We can't say much more than
that. It's a bit of a surprise.
But because we reveal our episodes a day early on Twitch,
we have to be a little vague because the Twitch premiere is
before the the collaboration drops.
So just just keep an eye peeled to your your podcast services

(12:38):
for a special little bonus collaboration.
Yeah, we'll talk about it more. It's kind of confusing because
of the order we're recording things, but we'll talk about it
more maybe next episode before we move on.
If you're listening to Underplayed right now, thank you
so much. We love you.
If you haven't already, please give us a follow and a five star
rating on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

(13:00):
That would only take a few seconds and we'd really
appreciate it. And if you have a friend who
likes indie games, share our podcast with them too.
We would also appreciate gettingthe word out about Underlayed.
It is time for our secret games.In Secret Games, we each review

(13:30):
an indie game we've been playingrecently.
We don't discuss what we're going to review in advance.
We keep it a surprise for this very moment we're recording.
This moment you're in right now.Yes, it's I have no idea what
you're going to talk about. I don't know which game you
chose to review today. You don't know what I chose.
Even less of a clue. Even less of a clue.

(13:53):
Interesting. I don't know how you would know
that. I'm confused you.
Just play so much stuff it couldbe almost.
Dangerous Gotcha. Well, we'll start with you this
with Cola. Let the mystery be no more.
Reveal your secret game for Episode 73 of Underplayed.
Well, my secret game also has crabs.

(14:13):
Kind of. They might be more spiders and
it also has a significant blood sucking parasite that you
encounter in the game like today's featured game.
A crazy billionaire A. Crazy billionaire, really.
That was that was the joke. That was the joke.
Got it. And there's also vampires.
My secret game is #blood. Adventure awaits in Carpenter's

(14:52):
Hill, so grab a controller, don't miss class, get on that
bus and kick some vampire hashtag blood.
Oh amazing, amazing. Yes.
It took me a second for me to process the name, but yes, I've
watched you play this on Twitch.Awesome, yes, love this.

(15:12):
So if you look online for a trailer for Hashtag Bug, it
really covers everything, even more than I will here.
But for those that aren't getting the full trailer
experience, you play as Becky Brewster after she transfers to
Carpentersville and while unpacking, Becky wants to find
her mom's old cookbook. But Long story short, one thing
leads to another and before you know it the cookbook is actually

(15:35):
a grimoire and Becky is falling deep into a generations long
fight against vampire kind. That's such a cool setup.
I love that, Yeah. Becky will also be assisted by a
vast cast of supporting characters including Corey, who
is Becky's knowledgeable and tech savvy neighbor, Becky's
father who's an employee at the social media platform Perch.

(15:59):
You'll also meet Christopherson eventually, who knew your mother
and trains you in the art of fighting vampires, and there are
also several other classmates that become quick friends at
Carpentersville High. Becky will use her field hockey
stick in terms of gameplay to beat up vampires and other
enemies. You'll be able to upgrade your

(16:21):
hockey stick to include things like an umbrella shield or a
grappling hook, and many more. You'll also gain access to
projectiles like #2 pencils and cherry bombs, and then you also
have access to a dodge roll. And then lastly, a massive part
of this game is played with yourphone.

(16:42):
Not, not your phone that you have in your pocket, but Becky's
phone. In this game, Becky has a
smartphone and you can use this phone to take selfies with any
NPC or nearly any enemy in the game.
And you will then post those on social media with unique posts
for each newly encountered character.
And this is how you discover more information about them.

(17:04):
This is how you get their weaknesses and things from.
What weaknesses from enemies or just like make snide remarks
about some person you met in theTaco bar and and have all your
friends or the owner of perch comment on them?
Nice. And with all these skills at
your disposal, you will explore Carpentersville in this mostly

(17:25):
linear beat em up exploration game to uncover the secrets of
the vampires and their associates in Carpentersville
and bring them all down. That's the set up, that's the
gameplay. Do you have any questions about
anything? I've actually seen this game
streamed by several friends, including you.
I've, I've watched you play thisfor, you know, a couple hours.

(17:47):
I've seen, you know, different areas of the game.
So I've seen the social media stuff, I've seen the combat,
I've seen some bosses and things.
So I, I just don't know how it all connects necessarily.
I don't know like the full storyand all the characters but I
have been fortunate enough to see a decent amount.
I guess I could mention some of the locales you'll visit.
You'll find yourself visiting a campground, you can visit a

(18:12):
mall. You'll obviously be visiting
Carpentersville High as well as your own local neighborhood.
And then there's also downtown Carpentersville Hospital.
There's a couple more, but that's that's most of them.
And then you'll find secrets hidden around.
You can upgrade your health by finding heart fragments, and
there are special finisher movesthat you can find throughout

(18:34):
Carpentersville as well. Feels like a variety of
locations that you'd see in a sci-fi or fantasy show or movie
about it. Like ACW kind of a show, you
know, there's going to be an episode or two in the mall.
Yeah, yeah. And then the style here, I mean,
there's this has a very distinctsort of animated style that
reminds me of some cartoons I'veseen.

(18:55):
It's a great animated style. More on that in a minute,
obviously. But yeah, I hit all the bullet
points. I'm going to move on to stuff
that I like about Hashtag Blood.Shocking no one at all.
Art direction is at the top of my list here.
If you take just the quickest look at anything from Hashtag
Blood, it looks so beautiful. There are so many amazing and

(19:20):
detailed animations for enemies and NPCS and Becky especially.
And then there's animated cutscenes, and these are just
supremely impressive. There's even an interactive
QuickTime event cutscene, and it's all done so amazingly well.
But because it's a QuickTime cutscene, that means that you

(19:40):
have points where like the animation will change based on
how you perform. So they had to, you know,
animate for all those. Different possibilities and you
can't necessarily sit back and just enjoy it.
Put the controller down like you're still playing.
Yes, it's it's incredible how much work they put into this
game. I don't think I saw that part.
It's it's only one part and it'spretty quick.

(20:02):
Interesting. Yeah, it it looks like some of
the best of Cartoon Network and and tons of frames in every
animation. The characters, when you talk to
characters, you see the close-ups of them and they're so
expressive. In this game, absolutely.
It's beautiful gameplay all feels really great.
Dispatching most enemies after alittle 123 feels really good and

(20:26):
then when you pair that with their kind of like sort of slow
but full of frames death animation combats, just super
rewarding. They even change up what it
takes to defeat newer enemies asyou get further into the game so
you don't get stuck doing that same standard 123 throughout the
whole game. That is what defeats most
enemies, but it changes it up onyou so you get different

(20:49):
animations and you get to diversify your combat abilities
as well. Speaking of defeating enemies,
there is a massive enemy varietyhere.
The threat at large is vampires,yes, but there are a huge
variety just in vampires. There's the bouncy, gluttonous
vampires, there's the underground vampires, there's

(21:12):
these little stout vampires thatcan block your melee attacks,
there's day walkers, and there'sjust so many different kinds of
vampires. But there's also sirens and rats
and mutated insects and other kinds of creatures I've never
even heard of before, so there is just a huge variety of
enemies to encounter throughout Carpentersville and all of the

(21:34):
different dungeons and hidden sections of the game.
The variety is really impressiveto me as someone who can only
just think of like vampire has the long black cloak in the
pale. Skin and you even get that
vampire in the. Game, but then you get so many
other varieties. Yeah, go on.
It's incredible. Vampire types that I don't even

(21:56):
know if existed before Hashtag. So another thing I love is that
I I do like the humor in the game.
I do get the sense that like much humor I've encountered in
life, it might not age well, butat the time that it exists, I
think it's good for now. And I especially like all of the
swipes at social media and big tech similar to aggro crabs

(22:22):
games, so more synergy there. So I just I the for now, the
humor hits. I don't think it will age
gracefully, but it's it's prescient and and funny for now.
Speaking of social media, this is probably one of the very few
times I'll offer this praise, but I love the smartphone in
this game. It tracks our collection.

(22:44):
It has our map, but mostly the social media game in this game
is really fun. A little bit less so for the
NPCS, but I think it's such a cute and fun idea to slow down
in battle, pick your, you know, face that you're going to make
and strategically plan the safest moment to take a selfie

(23:05):
with the enemies. And that's also the way you
complete their bestiary entry. Just anytime I find a new enemy
I haven't fought before, I look forward to that moment because
I'm like, what's the opening? What silly face am I going to
make? How do I make this the funniest
it can be? But also I'm going to get a
newmark in my bestiary as well. I seem to remember when you were

(23:28):
streaming this and I was watching that one time, you were
almost collecting the selfies with the enemies and you were
walking around saying something like, oh, I need one more in
this area. Or, you know, you you were kind
of treating it as like almost like a creature collector.
Yes, it is a little bit like a creature collector and that's
it's so fun. I love it.
And you get to make all these you get to choose from like 15

(23:49):
or something silly faces that you can make.
So if there's like an especiallyrepulsive looking enemy, you can
make like a near vomiting kind of facial expression.
You just get to pick whatever you want and you can be funny.
You can play it straight, you can just snap the picture.
But it's it's a great time. Demon Turf had something kind of

(24:10):
similar. Not it, not with as many
features and not as integral to the gameplay, but you could also
do self. I do seem to remember that Biebs
had a phone. Yeah.
As for complaints, I do have a few.
Music is good, but it can be pretty repetitive.
But this, this goes especially for the song that plays inside
Becky's house. On its own it's a perfectly fine

(24:32):
song, but the loop is just, it'sa really short and it doesn't go
a lot of places musically. So you like after like the 4th
loop, you're like, I just want it to stop, you know?
But like I said, overall music is fine, just repetitive.

(24:53):
This is a small nitpick, but in games that have like movement
tech like this, my instinct is to use the dodge roll to get
around as fast as possible. So if you think like Hollow
Night, once you get the dash, you're not walking anymore,
you're dashing everywhere. So it's my instinct to do that
here. But the dodge roll has like a

(25:14):
long tail at the end of its animation and so in the end I
don't think it's actually any faster.
Possibly it's even slower to just dodge roll to get around.
I don't know, I didn't pull out a stopwatch or anything.
But as it stands the default movement speed feels like I
could have a faster option, but I did.

(25:34):
I did notice that it is dodge rolling and walking ultimately
is at least the same if not slower to dodge.
Probably to dissuade people from.
Probably to dissuade. People from doing it.
Yeah, from using the dodge rule outside of any scenario other
than fighting so. Yeah, I know that's the
intention, but I just, I do wanta faster option to get around.

(25:55):
But my my other complaint, this is sort of like a season wide
complaint and it's been kind of a breaking point for me after
finishing Hashtag Blood and it'sI'm getting really sick of
miscible trophies, especially ones that take like a lot of
work or a lot of set up. OK, Chris tails one shot little

(26:17):
Guardsman. Yeah, even Inscription had it
and so. What's with all these games?
I know it's it's and a lot of them are a lot of work to build
up. Did you look up this game's
trophy list? Before I I did, but I didn't
want any spoilers and even still, like I'll get to it, you
know, but it just for me, hashtag blood just kind of like

(26:38):
took me to my limit with this. Like in this game, you get
trophies for taking. You get a trophy for taking
pictures with each available NPC.
You get a trophy for each available enemy.
And then there's also like special selfie spots that aren't
tied to NPCS or enemies. And this game just has like
loads and loads of NPCS and loads and loads of enemies.

(27:01):
And I also mentioned earlier that this game is linear, which
means that characters will be indifferent spots or non existent
depending on the chapter. You'll also lose access to areas
depending on which chapter you're in, which effectively
locks you out of not only some of the selfie trophies but also
like exploration based trophies.And to top it all off, there's

(27:24):
no good or easy way to tell if you've taken a selfie with one
of the MPCS unless you pull out and look through your entire
social media feed, or if you just take the picture with them
and find at the end a generic caption on your post.
That's the only way to like knowfor sure you've already taken a.
Picture all these extra steps. To be thorough, yes.

(27:44):
On top of it, you know, I'm, I'm, it's super easy to fail and
miss somebody. So I'm wasting a lot of time
taking selfies with people I've already taken photos with.
So it's just it, it was really disappointing to try and be as
careful as I could, explore every corner of Carpentersville
and every chapter best I could Mutazione style, and still miss

(28:09):
stuff. Good comparison.
I've been there before and you know, you could say, oh, that's
such a minor thing, like not worthy of complaining, but if
they're going to put an achievement slash trophy in the
game, that's. That also intentionally make the
choice to lock some of those points off in the game.
That is adding some frustration.Yes, I understand that most

(28:34):
people are not playing 20 games a year with, you know, two young
children at home and a full timejob.
Like I understand that's not everyone's life.
If they have to play the great game that is Hashtag Blood
again, that's not going to be a big deal for a lot of people.
But I have to play this game again and I have to have a
checklist in hand and that's a bit of a bummer, even if I

(28:54):
enjoyed the game. So it's a complaint, a normal
sized complaint for Hashtag Blood, but it's just this whole
season is just kind of worn me down with that.
I think it's just been a coincidence, just an awful
coincidence. I'm sorry about that.
I've I've done pretty well with the other games, but it's just
like it's stressful to like go through a game to want to also

(29:15):
avoid spoilers, but also know that there's this stuff that's
just going to add time to your gameplay if you don't do it
right. I feel like if you and I worked
on a game, or maybe if we were consultants, this is what we
would specialize in. Yeah.
It's just how do you design the rewards, the achievement system
in a way that has thoughtfulness?
Yeah, we can't talk about it yet, but the there's a game that

(29:37):
we play in our upcoming but alsoalready done collaboration
actually did a great job at thatso.
That's great because as we sit down to record, I haven't
anyway. Anyway, yeah, that's kind of
good music. Keep.
Going. But anyways, in the end, this
game is pretty much a great delight from start to finish.

(29:57):
I like the humor, I love the characters, and I absolutely
love the jaw-dropping care that went into the animation of this
game. Everything feels good to play,
everything looks good. You're only really in for some
pain if you're a completionist. And even knowing how hard it is
to complete, it's still quite enjoyable to collect all the
selfies and all the tokens. I'm a little bit bummed that I

(30:19):
have to go through everything again, but the time I did have
with Hashtag Blood was really great and I, I really hope that
Hashtag Blood's best days are still ahead of it.
I think if you get the right influencer to play this, that
Hashtag Blood's going to explode.
I think a lot of people could play this and I hope it's best.

(30:39):
Days are ahead. And like it could even be a
franchise maybe, or influence. If if nothing else, like big
enough to have maybe someday been a featured game, because I
think this is a very high quality game through and
through. I'm actually surprised this game
didn't like blow up more. Yeah, not to say it wasn't
popular, it's just I I thought more people would be talking
about it at the end of 2024. For example, I I try to pay

(31:02):
attention to end of year lists and all kinds of gaming sites
and what they rank as their favorite games of the year and I
saw this pop up a couple times but not as much as I expected it
to. I, I really hope their best days
are ahead of them still. I think if you get the right
person to play it online, ton more people are going to play
this. It is a very high quality game.
It is a game that is just made with so much soul and I I do

(31:26):
really love it. So I will give hashtag blood
with the caveat that I haven't played the DLC yet.
Oh, I didn't even know that. There's there's something called
Werewolf DLC I didn't have time to play.
It's just called werewolf DLC. I love that.
Anyways, I give hashtag blood an8.5 out of 10.
Wonderful. Yeah, this is one of the most
recent games published by HumbleGames, which is the publishing

(31:49):
arm of of Humble Bundle. And they there's actually AI
mentioned tokens very briefly. It's a collectible in the game
and there are like 6 tokens in the game that are references to
other humble games. One of them's like a token for
unpacking. So that's really cool.
Yeah, I love references to othergames and games.
Well, I know that in this past year, Humble Games announced

(32:14):
that they were restructuring, and they laid off dozens of
staff. And people were wondering, oh,
my gosh, is Humble Games done? And apparently they're still
going to proceed with future projects.
And they've continued to slowly release games.
But this is this game was released around that time when
all of that was happening. So we hope everything just ends

(32:34):
up being OK for all those peopleinvolved.
I guess if I had to ask you about anything, I'd just be
curious about anecdotes, like a favorite boss fight or a
favorite sequence of the game. Like OK.
Well, all of the animated cutscenes were really cool.
The QuickTime event cutscene is like burned into my brain as

(32:55):
just being something one of the coolest moments of the season.
So Dregar Dregor is the the mainBatty vampire.
He's he, he is kind of like a mythical being.
He doesn't play a huge role in most of the game other than he's
like the big bat. He's like Doctor Wiley waiting

(33:16):
at the end, but he has these like 2 lieutenants or whatever
and one of the boss fights with the lieutenants uses this like
cool rock monster that he rides on.
That boss fight is really cool, but then both the lieutenants
come together in a boss fight and they like merge their bodies

(33:36):
together and then you're essentially fighting both of
their boss fights at the same time.
Oh, sick. It's so cool.
There's a lot of cool boss. You can use your knowledge from
those previous. Fights in this one.
Yeah, exactly. And so you know what to do, but
also you have to like, dodge both attack patterns at the same
time. And just like all of the bosses

(33:56):
are really cool, there's a goat that transforms into this weird.
Monster, I've seen that. One and it's so that.
One's so gory. Disgusting and it's awesome.
They they just. It's like on a soccer field or
something. Yeah, I've seen that one.
That's all really cool. Awesome, well, where can you
play #blood? Hashtag Blood, which I didn't
mention, is from developer Exit 73 Studios and can be played on

(34:21):
PC, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and I played it on PlayStation
4. Nice, it is time for my secret
game. My secret game is called
Mainframes. I've thought you might do this.

(35:03):
I was originally going to maybe replay something and have it in
this slot. I've been I had a plan Disco
Cola for every secret game slot this season and I've rearranged
over half of them. Wow or or change them out
entirely. I've only as we've gone.
Off I've only changed it. Last season I did that but this
season was only like 2. You, you, they've been locked in

(35:25):
place. Pretty much.
That's been my story up until the season, largely.
But yeah, so this is a recent game.
This is a 2025 platformer. This is developed by a Soupy I
think is how we say them, and then published by the Arcade
Crew. Another really cool name for a
group of people. Yeah, at the time of recording,

(35:46):
I think you what? Just played this for the first
time like 2 days ago. Or something.
I just played it recently so it's fresh on my mind, which is
good if I'm going to review it right.
So the game synopsis from the Steam storefront reads quote
mainframes invites you to meet floppy and to browse a clever
and charming platformer that plays out entirely within the

(36:07):
windows and desktop of of APC monitor.
You won't want to press the escape key on this cozy outing.
End quotes I talked about this game earlier this season when we
talked about games. We're looking forward to
remember that. So here we are we're already
tackling 1 and I want to thank our friend Emily, AKA a specific
egg who actually gifted me this game on steam hackers dude thank

(36:28):
you friends. I really appreciate that.
So in this game, this is a 2D platformer with pixel graphics
and a very specific setting, a computer screen.
This is very much like the pedestrian from several seasons
ago where that game took place almost entirely on St. signage.
You're the you're the little bathroom sign guy walking across

(36:51):
different signs. And similarly, in mainframes,
you play as a floppy disk character who can only move on
this computer screen. You play as floppy, a floppy
disk icon, and the view of the game is the computer screen.
And it's actually not just like what you would see on the
computer screen. You're actually almost someone

(37:11):
sitting in front of the computerscreen.
And because you can see the edges, the borders around the
screen. Yeah, there's a little bit of a
like room reflection too in the in the glass.
Sometimes you see smudges on thescreen, like you would leave a
thumbprints, so that's a that's very interesting.
But mostly it's just looking at this screen and you transition

(37:32):
between all of these different areas.
And the game opens with Floppy living a simple existence in
their home on this screen. But suddenly their home becomes
a window, and that window shrinks until they fall down
into the hidden, more backgroundareas of the computer system.
And down there, you meet severalcharacters.

(37:52):
You meet a Penguin who I think is supposed to be a play on the
mascot character for Linux. Tux is its name.
Have you ever seen the Linux Penguin?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that's what's going
on here. There's also Miss Key.
There's a bunch of little process dudes and mini Damons

(38:13):
who you can collect, and there are two daemons names Dean and
Dan, who tell you a little bit about what's going on between
all of the levels. And if you don't know, daemons
are background programs that perform tasks and run without
user interaction. Why do they have to call them
something so similar to demons? That's upsetting.

(38:33):
I'm not. Sure about the reason for that,
but they're commonly found in Linux operating systems, so I
found this game to be a little educational in that way.
I did some research afterwards and found this out because I
didn't know this term. I was like, is this actually a
thing? It's got to be a thing in
computing. And it is.
And my dad used to do a lot of stuff with Linux computers, but

(38:54):
I really only would see the systems and I would see the
Penguin and that's. I kind of thought he was more of
just like an electrical, took things apart mechanical kind of
stuff. He has a lot of experience with
that too. He has a a diverse range of like
technical and electronic backgrounds.
So I was familiar with the appearance of Linux, but not

(39:17):
really some of this nomenclaturefor things.
So I think this game is inspiredby that sort of computing.
And you find messaging notes from various members of a
development team that tell a human side to this story.
You'll run across these chat messages back and forth between
these people who have names, andit's like you're finding their

(39:39):
conversation long after it happens, so you're picking up on
something else going on. You have to move floppy through
screens, and you largely jump toand from windows on screen.
There are 8 chapters and in eachone you are using new
platforming ideas. You have bumpers that bounce you
in various directions and gears that rotate those bumpers you

(40:03):
have to avoid. Red glitchy blocks that hurt
you. There's a cursor that you can
use to select various windows within view, and you use your
shoulder buttons on your controller to move the cursor to
select windows, and sometimes windows can be moved to create
the layout of platforms you needto progress.

(40:24):
Very much like the pedestrian. Yes, yeah.
And so you're using your right stick sometimes to move windows
and your left stick to move floppy, sometimes almost
simultaneously, and orienting the windows and then moving
floppy along those windows becomes a huge part of this
game. And I would say that's how the
latforming in this game stands out from other latformers.

(40:47):
There are branching areas you can explore to do quick
challenges to help a mini process escape.
This is where you're just helping a little guy.
Just a little guy. Get to an elevator, for
instance, and then there are other little guys you can
collect just by spinning into them.
There's a spin move that allows you to sustain your jump, and

(41:07):
that's also how you can collect these little characters.
And this game kind of feels likeCeleste, but there isn't an
emotionally affecting story about anxiety, and it's on a
computer screen. You're not climbing a mountain.
But a lot of the ideas of the platforming and the kind of
music, the style of the game is really similar to Celeste, I

(41:27):
would say. So if you like Celeste, I think
you would benefit from looking into mainframes.
Here's what I liked about mainframes.
I don't usually start here, but kind of like where you started
with hashtag blood, the look andthe sound.
This game fully commits to the idea of computer screens and
windows. There are background Wallpapers

(41:50):
that are beautiful. They use parallax to great
effects. There are nice little touches
like smudges on the screen and glitchy particles as you move
throughout. The soundtrack is full of really
boppy and chill electronic music.
Some of it is kind of chiptuny. The soundscape is full of boopy

(42:12):
sounds. I don't know how else to
describe them. Beeps and boops, beeps and boops
and bops and retro style effectsare going on.
So there's this feeling of classic computer tech that's
fully committed to. I love that.
But not in the same way that like.
Hypno Space outlets. Yeah, Hypno Space Outlaw had,

(42:33):
you know, more of a degenerate feeling to it.
This this feels more this is. More like default operating
system icon settings. Like, what if the icons not just
Like, what would the degeneratesof the late 90s do on the open
Internet? That's Hypno Space Outlaw.

(42:54):
This is what if the innermost parts of your computer came
alive and we're just in a very creative space in a platformer?
That's what's going on here. I love the variety of cool ideas
with the gameplay. There's quantity and quality
with the platforming. We play with direction.
We select windows in really clever ways.

(43:16):
Almost every screen you're doingsomething different.
There is discipline in how much each idea is used to.
Nothing is ever overused. And I was actually afraid of
that, especially using your right stick on your game pad to
move windows. You'd think that would be
happening every chapter and it happens like a few times
throughout, but never too much. And I I thought, oh, this is

(43:40):
going to be like really distracting.
It's only like a few times here and there.
So it's paced really well. Nothing out stays its welcome.
There are fun little challenges and collectibles.
There are the process dudes thatchange how I play.
I'll enter a screen and I'll seethe little guys I can spin into
to collect them and I'll go, oh,I got to focus on getting those
little guys instead of just focusing on getting to the exit

(44:03):
of that screen. I'm changing how I'm playing
because I see these little guys that I want.
I also love those little platforming and puzzle
challenges to guide your friendsto the elevators.
There are some platforming challenges that are really
complex looking too. And the more you break them
down, the more you realize that sometimes you can cheat a little

(44:26):
bit or skip many parts on the screen.
And so you feel really smart when you figure that out.
And I would say that's a way this game is kind of a puzzle
game too. You'll see a, a, a screen full
of windows that change your direction and then you find out,
oh, I only need to use a couple of them to get through.
I think this game is the perfectlength.
I finished it in around 4 hours,and that's while I was streaming

(44:50):
it. So it could be, you know, it's
probably like four to five hoursfor most people.
Maybe it's on the lower end of that range.
And in that time I died 801 times.
But I don't feel like I died 801times.
Not not that the game is counting too much.
It just doesn't feel like I diedthat much because.

(45:11):
It doesn't feel exhausting, it doesn't feel like you're being
defeated. Exactly.
And like Celeste, it's throwing you right back into the action
when you die. It's immediate responding and
and you know, that's always a positive for me.
There's some things I dislike about mainframes, some things
that I think could have been pretty easily fixed, or just

(45:32):
design decisions that frustrate me from time to time.
And what I like about this game is that it pretty much always
shows and doesn't tell with new ideas.
But sometimes a side effect of that is that it leads to
confusion about how something works.
So there are calendar windows that can propel you upwards, but

(45:54):
I didn't know this right away. I just thought they were windows
I could toggle on and off to create platforms.
If you land inside of one and toggle it, it can actually shoot
you upward, and that's really useful.
But I felt like the game didn't teach me that where I discovered
the calendar windows. So there are moments where you
tinker a little too long to figure out what's going on.

(46:15):
Also, there are lots of side paths leading to fun things, but
I almost can never tell what themain path is and where the side
paths are, and I got too far on a main path before realizing
that was the main path, and thenI missed out on tons of side
stuff, so that was disappointing.
A little bit of synergy maybe with today's future game at

(46:36):
times. Oh really?
I I didn't find that happening as much with another crab's
treasure, but you did. OK, that might be a discussion
point later then. But yeah, that is definitely
what's going on. You you will enter a screen,
there might be two or three paths from that screen to
progress. And so you have to do the thing

(46:57):
where you just dip your toe in each, see what looks like the
main path. And sometimes I can't tell, or
sometimes there are multiple paths that have, you know, then
multiple screens branching off from those.
And there isn't a map in this game.
O You can't check where you've been easily.
You have to use your memory. O That was a little clunky and I

(47:17):
got confused and lost in some places.
There are some parts that are unnecessarily difficult as well.
I'm thinking of a platforming section at the end of chapter 4
I. It is brutally hard compared to
pretty much every other part of the game.
There are also sections of the game where you need to do speed

(47:37):
platforming because the the level is breaking apart and you
have to not die. And sometimes you do an
animation to climb up onto a ledge to get to the top of a
platform, which is nice, but that climbing animation really
slows you down, and if you have to do that once or twice, that
might slow you down enough that you fail so.
It's like if you're fast enough and you know the right timing,

(47:59):
maybe you can avoid the climb animation and just like jump
over and around kind of a thing,but the climb animation is
safer. Yes, and sometimes platforms are
so skinny that I'm trying to aimfor the top, but because the
window is so little to nail it, I might do the climbing
animation by accident. So some NIT pickier things

(48:20):
there. But another thing I would
mention here is that you can't backtrack with level selects to
clean up collectibles. Darn it.
I don't think there's a way to chapter select in this game and
I really wish there was because I'd love to go back and play a
chapter 1 and 2 again. I guess I could just start a new
save, but I want to do it on thesame save.
And it seemed like you were pretty close on getting all the

(48:42):
mini demons too. Yeah, I got like 93% completion
by the end of my playthrough andby the the time I got through
Chapter 1, I understood the rhythm of how the game worked
and so I knew how to progress better.
But I didn't have that information at the start, so my
completion at the beginning of the game was more incomplete.
So overall, I was constantly surprised and learning.

(49:06):
While I was playing mainframes Iwas getting lost and I was
failing sometimes in a way that didn't feel like my fault
because of unclear design. But this is a delightful and
fairly challenging platformer that feels like the perfect
length for me. Mainframes is an 8 out of 10.
That's what I guessed. And it's playable on PC, which

(49:27):
is the version I played in Switch.
OK. If it's available on switch, I
guess I don't really have any questions.
When I was watching you play it,there was this like click sound
effect and I assumed that that was you actively using a mouse.
So my question was going to be can this be played on a
controller? But clearly it can.
Yeah, I played the entire game on a game pad.

(49:49):
That clicking sound is when I'm using the bumper to move the
cursor to different windows. That sound effect just
accompanies that button press. OK.
And so. It's not that wasn't my actual
mouse being clicked, but I did test it and you can use your
mouse to change windows too. OK.
Does it move faster or are you still like?

(50:10):
Faster on a mouse. Cycling through so you're.
Still cycling through. You're still cycling through,
but I think you can do it fasteron a mouse just because you can
press it faster faster. OK, that that that's it.
That's the only question I had. Otherwise you saw I.
Saw a lot of it, it looks reallyfun.
I love the pixel art in this game.
And just by the very nature of like being a floppy disk, you're

(50:31):
also encouraging a lot of squares in the world and all of
the like. Weird, you know, dithering at
the edge of the screen is all squares.
And we know from the Hyper LightDrifter game is when we have
straight edges and like weird squares in our world.
I'm just like, we love weird squares falling in love.
So I I think this game looks beautiful.

(50:54):
It looks maybe a little bit too challenging for me to, like,
really fall in love with it. This is hard to recommend to
every platforming fan because I think this is pretty hard for
what it is. This is a pretty unassuming
game. It's cute, cute characters,
bright colors set on a computer screen.
How fun is that? And then it ends up being kind
of hard. It died 800 times, You know, 800

(51:17):
times in four hours is quite a lot to die.
But also in Celeste, I think if we go back to our save files in
Celeste, we rack up all those deaths.
I think you and I probably reached eight to 10,000 deaths
total. Way over like I think I was at
3400 at least. Yeah, so that's a lot of dying
we're doing too. And we still loved that game.

(51:38):
So I still recommend mainframes to people who really like
platformers. You've got, I think you've got a
really enjoy platforming and jumping and the occasional
puzzle in your platforming to enjoy this game.
And also for me this is a high 8on the score.
Like I almost rated it higher. I went down to an 8.

(51:58):
But this is not a low 8. This is not a mid 8.
This is a high. 8 we've got, we've got specified levels of
that coming up later too, so. I'll mention that.
When we get there. But yeah, it looks great.
I love the look of it. It reminds me of a game called
Zit which we also talked about in the same stream that you
played this. Oh, right.

(52:18):
And also a Lekhead. Yes, a Lekhead.
Yep. Visually reminds me of those
games as well. Yeah, it's really cool.
I I just love the style of both of our secret games today.
It's just a lot of personality, a lot of like really specific
direction, a lot of soul. A lot of.
Yeah, and I think that ties intoour featured game too.
Yeah, so those are our secret games, blood and mainframes.

(52:44):
Let's move on to our review of Another Crab's Treasure.
It is our featured game. Another Crab's Treasure is a
2024 action RPG Souls like developed and published by

(53:07):
Agrocrab. The game synopsis from the Steam
storefront reads quotes. In a vibrant undersea Kingdom on
the verge of collapse, a hermit crab embarks on a treasure hunt
to buy back his repossessed shell.
The second game from Agrocrab. Recently had my shell taken

(53:32):
away. If you can, go get that.
Treasure there, John, about. I'll gladly trade your shell for
it. I'm going to find that treasure.
Oh yeah. I also wanted to mention the
crazy murderous crabs outside trying little hermit.
I tire of you. Yes, ma'am.

(53:55):
Another Crab's treasure has a lot going on.
I have distilled the story and setting description down to I
think something that's pretty efficient here, but let me know
if I missed something that you feel is important.
OK, I think I've I've got the bigger.
You have a hard job too. I think it's going to be hard to
include every single thing as weset up the game, so no worries

(54:17):
if you forget anything or if I forget anything.
Big preach. Thank you.
So this is a third person actionadventure where you play as a
hermit crab named Krill. And Krill lives a very apathetic
existence in the tide pools until one day a loan shark
arrives and tells him that he owes a debt to the Duchess, the
new ruler of the area, and the loan shark takes his shell as

(54:41):
collateral. So Krill goes into the ocean to
look for the loan shark and the Duchess, and he encounters many
crabs who have become hostile because they're infected by a
pollution called the gunk. And through a series of
subsequent tasks and combat encounters, Krill finds a moon
snail that teaches him about umami, which is a magical force

(55:04):
that he can use in combat. And everyone at the Duchess's
palace becomes infected with thegunk, even the Duchess herself.
So Krill eventually makes his way to New Carcinia, looking for
the loan shark and his shell, and he meets many townsfolk
there. New Carcinia is the central town
of this game, if you will, and it rests under an island of

(55:26):
trash. And during Trash Day, a bunch of
garbage rains down on the city and a missing map on a box of
cereal is interpreted by everyone to mean that a treasure
hunt is on. This is a wild description.
And as part of this group, we'vegot Conch, a historian, Nema, a

(55:46):
restaurant owner, Firth, an entrepreneur, and Roland, a
capitalist billionaire. There's also this pawn shop
owner named Pronathan, who has Krill's shell, and he tells
Krill that he can get his shell back if he can find and give
Pronathan the treasure. So along his travels, Krill also
meets with Kaiten, a former guard of the Duchess who

(56:08):
believes that greed is at the source of everyone's hostility.
And Krill must adventure furtherto find all these mat pieces on
this cereal box so that everyonecan decode what's going on where
the treasure is. And Krill interacts with all the
characters who have an interest in obtaining this treasure.
So that's what I would say to set up the game a little bit

(56:30):
longer. A lot of characters, a lot of
locations there. But as far as gameplay, what do
we do in another crab's treasure?
All right, for controls, you area hermit crab.
So as you might guess, you can scuttle it is scuttle you.
You do have access to a jump andat the end of your jump you can
do a little bit of a a tiny little swim.
This is sort of think of it morelike a glide.

(56:51):
If you're playing a game that you play on land, same I same
principle applies. You also gain access to shells
being a hermit crab and these shells will add extra defence.
While in most shells you can also do a little bit of a roll
so you get a little bit of movement tech while you're
hiding in a shell. Almost all shells have a special

(57:14):
spell that you can cast using some of your umami charges.
As Bopo mentioned, you gain access to umami.
This is basically your magic andonce you gain umami you will
have access to three charges andcan gain more.
So different shell spells will cost more or less depending on
the spell. And then there's also something

(57:36):
called adaptations. If I compare this to Hollow
Night, which in my mind is starting to be more of a souls
like as I finished another crab's treasure.
I think in retrospect or in hindsight, like as time went on
people started calling Hollow Knight sort of a souls like more
and more. We might have even mentioned
that in the episode and I might have been like, no, it's not.

(57:58):
I don't. I wouldn't consider it, but if
another crab's treasure is. I I still.
Think. I kind of think maybe Hollow
Knight. Is I still think Hollow Knight
is more a metroidvania than a souls like but but it's got
elements for sure. Anyways, if I compare
adaptations to something I am familiar with from Hollow
Knight, these are your spells and your adaptations will also

(58:19):
use up umami charges. Again, different cost for
different spells, and perhaps your most important gameplay
mechanic is your fork. This is your main melee weapon.
You can unlock a lot of other special moves to perform with
your fork, including a massive airborne swing, a charged
attack, a lunge, and there's several more that I saw Bopo use

(58:42):
that I never used, so I just naming a few there.
You get a lot of tech with your fork.
There's also a bit of a grappling hook.
This will allow you to eventually grab enemies or
grapple to certain far away surfaces that you can't reach
with your jump. Krill can also equip something
called Stowaways. These will add passive buffs to

(59:05):
Krill and you can find these throughout the world or in some
cases they can be purchased. And then by using microplastics,
which is the game's currency, you can level up Krill by
specking into either attack vitality, Shell defense, which
is called resistance if I'm not mistaken, or Umami

(59:27):
effectiveness, which is called something else, I don't remember
it. MSG or something.
MSG is what they call it in the game.
And then there are also various upgrades Krill can collect
throughout the game. And you use all of these systems
and skills to defeat the variousbosses and eventually get your
shell back. Yeah, it's a souls like.

(59:47):
So think bosses that hit hard. Think enemies that can tend to
kill you if you don't know what you're doing or you're, you
know, not being careful enough. This is a difficult game.
A lot of people might look at this game and think, oh this is
a cute underwater adventure, andit is, but both with the
combats. And the themes of the story, I

(01:00:11):
would say that this is actually more of a mature game than it
lets on. Yeah, this is also if you follow
Agro Crab on social media, that might not come as a big
surprise. Yes, and we've followed them for
a long time. You've been a big fan of theirs.
I know what actually. Can you describe the social
media presence or just the personality of Agro Crab?

(01:00:33):
They're little pranksters, you know?
We talked in a previous episode about when the blue check mark
debacle happened on Twitter, howthey posed as the Cult of the
Lamb account. And that's right.
I think they were the first onesto say we'll add sex to the
game. And then when that, you know,
blew over, Cult of the Lamb eventually added sex to the game

(01:00:56):
essentially. Like that's just kind of.
I don't remember if that was theright order of events.
But it might have been massive monster started it but Agrocrab
did a yes and on it and they kept it going or something
they're. They're very silly.
Very silly there. And they actually recently won
the Indie Game Award for Community Management.

(01:01:17):
A lot of that has to do with what they did on social media
before and after this game came out.
They also won the Indie Game Award for accessibility for
another Crab's Treasure. So I'm a fan of theirs.
And you've played Going Under. You reviewed it previously on
the show, I think just as a quick review, you loved that
game and you've gone back to it many.

(01:01:39):
Times I actually think going under is harder than another
crabs treasure. OK, personally, but.
Yeah, it looked hard AF. It took me longer to finish at
least. Yeah, that's for sure.
Like dozens of hours, right? Yeah.
One of your longest secret games.
So going into another Crabs treasure you had going under
under your belt and you were excited.

(01:01:59):
And I was excited just because Ihad heard great things about
another Crabs. Treasure.
Just on its own, it looks amazing, yeah.
Yeah, one of those games early on in 2024 that really gave the
year momentum, I would say. And you know, 2024 was an
amazing year for indie games. So here was one of the early
ones of the year, Disco Cola. We've now both played it a part.
You've seen me stream it a little bit, but I haven't talked

(01:02:23):
to you about your thoughts yet. So what are your thoughts on
another Crab's Treasure? Another Crab's Treasure was an
incredible experience, but I'll break it down section by section
and tell you everything that I loved U first It's been a while
since I started with this topic,but the music in Another Crab's
Treasure is incredible. Dude, it's so good.

(01:02:46):
You get to like the open ocean and like maybe the the second
song after you're exploring through the game, you get this
song that starts like 1234 Da dada da, and that song is amazing.
It's like an amazing start to anamazing.
Game what a way to welcome you to this ocean.
It was so cool and every song like almost every song just

(01:03:10):
rules. Like Feasley did a great job
with the going under soundtrack.That one was good but this one
heck and slaps. It is amazing.
The music in another Crab's Treasure is so.
Awesome. I want to go find the soundtrack
and listen to it in my car as I drive around.
It's one of those, yeah. And just like the the like minor

(01:03:32):
boss theme, there's like this minor boss theme that plays for
multiple different bosses. It's like that one gets stuck in
my head for days at a time. I love that.
One dude, it's so. Good.
The music is so good. Love it.
The concept at play here is amazing.
I love the idea of litter in theocean.

(01:03:53):
Not as an idea, obviously, I hate litter in the ocean, but
what it does to the civilizationand then how they create
economic ideals around what is our trash.
And then they expand on that like way late in the game too,
in this really just hilarious, but also like pivotal scene like

(01:04:15):
so cool. I love I love what aggro crab
does when they talk about economics.
I just they're. Totally.
It talks about really relevant things, but it reframes them in
a staggering way too. Yeah, it's so cool.
I love what's at work here. I love all the characters and
their designs, Like, you're taking crabs, but some of them

(01:04:37):
are shaped different. But each of them has, like,
their own personality with what they decide.
What trash they decide is their clothing.
What trash they choose to wear is their hat.
And even in like, the enemy types, what trash is their shell
for combat. There's just so much different
personality. Like, I want to really shout out
Nema, is that her name, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(01:04:59):
What her dress is also what her hat is.
Yeah, the silica packet and the.Orange peel for her hat that
looks like hair and it just like.
And Conch has like what looks like a potato chip for a hat.
Or something. But it looks like one of those
like Outback, you know, explorerhats.
It's incredible. I have so many examples of this
that I wrote down too. Oh I'm glad, I'm looking forward

(01:05:21):
to you expanding on it because Ijust made it very generic.
But man, the way that they decided to use trash in all
these cool ways just in the character designs is awesome.
Boss designs and ideas are incredible.
You have like a boss that uses chopsticks and he's like, you
know, kind of designed after this, like Japanese, not quite

(01:05:45):
sumo 'cause he's like really buff, but just the a.
Martial artist. Yeah, it was so incredible and
that it goes to so many different bosses.
I like that the Dutchie has thislike Tea seeper or whatever and
that's her melee weapon. I know when I saw that I I
thought, oh, that's going to be.Yeah, and God, there's just so

(01:06:08):
much cool stuff going on with all of these signs.
And that goes to the areas, too.Like all of the different areas
use trash in these cool ways. Like you get to new Carcinia and
you've got like, bourbon bottlesand old milk cartoons as houses.
But then if you get down to the lower crust, it's like more
dilapidated, just straight, you know, cardboard boxes.

(01:06:32):
You've got the pharmacy receiptsas the.
Bridges the. Really long bridges, it's so.
Cool. And you have in the sands
between like the the life preservers or whatever as like
gateways. Oh yeah, love that idea.
There's just so much cool stuff going on here.
Enemy designs are creative. I'm thinking specifically of,

(01:06:53):
like, Archer crabs, like they'reusing rubber bands in their
claw, and then the arrows are just toothpicks.
Yeah, What? How?
How dope. It honestly feels like every
area and every character and every enemy is like when you
were a kid and you took all these pieces around your house,

(01:07:14):
all these everyday objects and you smash them together to make
your own imagination of like a new character.
Or like if if you were going to like build armor for yourself
and you just grab some garbage. Like, if these characters came
alive like this, in this cartoony way, this is what they
would do, Yeah. They would take a bike lock and
make a guillotine out of it, youknow?

(01:07:34):
It is so cool, yeah. And like the seahorses that have
the, like, little Tic Tac caches, but they're not Tic Tacs
inside. It's the like animal sponges
that. Experience, I know that was
incredible. Every time we find a new
character, a new enemy, a new boss, I take a second to just
decipher what's going on. Not because for any like
strategy in combat, I just am curious, what is your life like?

(01:07:56):
What? Trash do you love man like?
Or what did you just happen to find?
It's so cool. I think the platforming is fun.
Nearly all the time there are, there's a little bit of jank and
I'll add that to my complaints section.
But in general, like the platforming feels really good
for the most part. Everywhere that you need to

(01:08:17):
reach with your little swim you can get to.
And if not, there's like a a tech upgrade or maybe you're
just haven't found the grapplinghook yet.
And then once you do find those items, then those objects open
up to you. One of my favorite things about
the game is actually the upgradesystem and the rate at which you
get stuff. I think all that feels amazing.

(01:08:39):
At the beginning of the game, like the first third of the
game, I was like, oh man, I don't know if I like Soul's
likes this game is rough. And then like I get more and
more microplastics and I get to level up my adaptations and use
those more effectively. And by the end of the cane,
Krill is the beast he can, like,take down.

(01:09:01):
Yeah, I was finishing like the last five bosses on the first
try, like. I would say that even though the
the end of the game still remains hard, maybe it's
arguably harder than the beginning of the game.
You are so much better and just having that that experience
first hand of playing the game is huge too.
But then also just the power, your stats being so strong, it

(01:09:22):
means that your power scales differently than I think in
other Souls likes, Yeah, or, or at least maybe differently than
you might expect You you actually actually can do really
well at the end of the game. Yeah, it just, it felt amazing
by the end of the game, like I was struggling more with some of
the platforming than I was with some of them, like enemies.
And that was like awesome. I love the upgrade system.

(01:09:43):
I love the skill tree, I love upgrading my adaptations.
I love getting microplastics to level up.
I love just like buying all the cool different shells from
Shellfish Desires like it's. And like, you know, I'm going to
compare this to Death's Door where we had, I think it was 4
skills we could increase when weleveled up in that game, it was

(01:10:04):
hard to pick which one to level up because they were all so
good. I'd say that's the case here,
like. Pretty similar here.
I was leveling up attack mostly but I always wanted resistance
and I always wondered what if I increase my vitality or MSG you
know I was balancing a little. Bit I think we have the, the you
know what, we decided to go in as a topic later, but it was I

(01:10:25):
played a little bit different, differently than.
You so OK, I'm I'm curious to compare and contrast.
Yeah. And then I love finding all the
little references, not only to realize stuff, but to like,
especially to going under. I got a little bit more out of
this game than most people will get because I played going under
like so many more. People have played this than

(01:10:47):
going under, yeah. I found cubicle boxes.
I found a Joblin mug there, Joplin mentioned.
Shout out to Sando. Joplin mentions.
Take a shot. God, there's the and 64 looking
cart for going under 64. I found that.
There's the one of the costumes is a going under reference.

(01:11:09):
Love that. And there's there's more stuff,
but those are the ones. Oh obviously the first shell you
unlocked is a fizzle can that's from going under.
Fizzle is the. Yes, it's one of the.
Brands that's the one that Jackie works at.
So I love finding the going under references in addition to
like your CVS receipts and your if.

(01:11:29):
I swear to God, if this isn't butter, I'm going to lose it,
you know, so good. Just a bunch of different stuff.
And then the last thing I want to mention in the, like, section
is, as weird as it sounds, we kind of lose our way a bit as we
get further in the game. And I mean, as Krill.
And I kind of think this speaks well to how, like, even the most

(01:11:51):
well-intentioned or as you put it, apathetic people in the
system can still sometimes get caught up in this, like, winners
and losers system. And like, to me, it's sort of
like this artful portrayal of how studies have shown recently
that like, the lowest income people are like the greatest
participants and sometimes victims of like, our lottery

(01:12:13):
systems that we do. Yeah.
Wow. And so it, it made me think of
that as I've learned more about how that affects lower income
people even more. Yeah, it's, it's inescapable.
It does reflect our real world. This is an important game in
many ways and I did not expect that.
It's yeah. Anyways, I do have complaints.
I mentioned this a second ago, there is sometimes platform

(01:12:36):
Jenk. I found this a lot, specifically
in Flotsam Vale as we're climbing up the big tower.
The electricity towers. Yeah, there's like small holes
in the platform that are mostly decorative, but krill will fall
through those if you're not careful.
So I found myself struggling with some platform Jenk,
especially in Flotsam Vale, justlike falling through platforms

(01:12:59):
that I don't feel I really should have fallen through.
But that can happen. And then you can find yourself
with a long climb ahead a few. And then really my only other
complaint is that the game is a little too big.
I don't. I don't mean too long, I mean
too big. Like is where you can just

(01:13:20):
almost endlessly explore. Yes.
Like if I again compare this to Hollow Knight, the map in Hollow
Knight is probably bigger, but it's a 2D experience, so
anything that you're not seeing is stuff that's like hidden
behind breakable walls or something.
By the very nature of being a 3Dexperience in another Crab's
treasure, you could explore super thoroughly and still miss

(01:13:45):
so much just because you didn't turn your back at the right
second, you know? Especially in places like the
sands between. In the sands between Yep, that's
the big one. I there is just there's so much
stuff in this game that I missedbecause I know there's stuff
that I missed. I don't have all of my heart
kelp sprouts and I don't have, you know, all of my blood star

(01:14:06):
limbs. The Yeah, same and the
Shellapore feature tells you howmany crystals you're missing in
each area. Crystals are what you use to buy
upgrades to adaptations and other things.
And I'm really close on that. I'm only missing 15 in the whole
game. Oh wow.
But like in some areas I'm missing 2 and I don't know how
I'm ever going to find. That that's going to be 1

(01:14:27):
deposit somewhere or one enemy somewhere.
Luckily I have everything upgraded that needs that so
there are more crystals in the game than you need.
But that's just one symptom of the whole thing.
It's just like the Sands Betweenis too big, Flotsam Veil has too
many branching paths, the Bleached Palace is a nightmare
to get through. It's big, so some areas are just

(01:14:49):
too large. Another complaint, maybe the
game is too long, but I don't I don't feel as strongly about
this because I enjoyed pretty much every moment except for the
Unfathom and the Bleached palace.
Anytime. Of the final areas of the game.
Any time I was playing this though, I pretty much never
wanted to stop. Yeah, I was streaming this whole

(01:15:11):
game pretty much. I had one session where I did
side stuff off stream, but I never wanted to put the
controller down and stop stream like.
But you know, I only stopped because it was time for bed.
You were. Like racking up some really long
streams. I was, and I just really wanted
to keep playing this like you, yeah.
But yeah, Another Crab's Treasure was an absolute delight
from start to finish, with very few roadblocks along the way.

(01:15:33):
For me, fighting is fun, collecting is fun, exploring is
mostly fun, the game is funny and just aggro Crab's whole
catalog, including their social media.
Finding all the going under references is a massive fun time
bonus. And even though this game is
actually quite a time commitment, something we're not

(01:15:54):
always fond of here, I really, really want to play this game
again. It might just be on the lower
end of the score, and I don't want to devalue this score, but
I can't really think of any reason why this isn't a 10 out
of 10 for. Oh amazing, Nice.
I kind of expected that, honestly.
Did you really? Yeah.
I thought you would love the. Crap out of.

(01:16:15):
This and I could kind of tell the way you were chatting about
it too, just you seemed really passionate about it and I'm I'm
between 2 scores today for this.Oh boy.
And I think maybe. You're influencing.
Me to take one of the scores over the other, but I love this
game too. I I had an addicting shell of a

(01:16:36):
good time with another crab's treasure.
It is hard for me to summarize everything when I think about
things I love because dozens, literally dozens of aspects of
the game speak to me and work sowell together.
And I would say this is an example of a game where the
whole is greater than the sum ofits parts.
I think this all comes together into just like a really

(01:16:59):
fantastic package. The characters and the story
really stand out for me. They didn't for a while, and
they grew on me. They really did I at first it's
a really straightforward adventure, but it turns into
something much more. It reflects on the problems of
our own human society, but it does it through the lens of

(01:17:19):
ocean creatures, who in turn areactually affected by our real
human atrocities. So we see how what we do might
effects these creatures, and it imagines a whole story from
their perspective. So there are tons of layers to
what's going on here, but somehow the story also operates

(01:17:42):
so simply. And it has a message that I
love. And in fact, the wrap up of this
game, the very final cutscene has one of my favorite endings
of recent memory. And I think it just really sums
up what the game is about so beautifully.
I love the exploration of this game.
There is a diverse offering of areas.

(01:18:03):
There are huge open areas, like you said that convey the
enormity of the ocean. And I actually love how enormous
I love the the grand nature of what's going on.
I do appreciate that it is like the.
Like that we've only explored 10% of the ocean, you know,
which is an incredible thing to just try and fathom.
Maybe they could have made my point a little bit easier with

(01:18:25):
some more invisible walls, I guess.
Sure. But anyways, yeah, there's there
are two. Sides to that.
Coin where it can. Feel like there's a lot of stuff
you're missing? It can be easy to be lost in
some places. You can be unsure of where to
go. But at the same time, wow, this
is evoking the scale of like Solar Ash.
You know what I remembered from that game?

(01:18:47):
ABSU didn't feel this large, butABSU still kind of conveyed the
enormity of the ocean. And I'm just thinking back to
that too. Going off the beaten path is
always rewarding. Even if you know where to go, if
you decide to go in any other direction, you're going to find
something. You're going to find a Blood
Star limb, You're going to find a stainless relic that you can
use to upgrade your fork. So I loved taking the side paths

(01:19:11):
and just 100% in areas as best as I could as I went along.
The combat is engaging and offers many tactics.
I was changing my tactics between bosses.
Sometimes I did run with, you know, a general strategy, but I
was using charged attacks a lot.I was fast dodge rolling and
that strategy was useful throughout the whole game, but

(01:19:33):
when I needed to focus on back stepping and doing the follow up
attack on some bosses that worked super well.
You use that a lot, which is something I never used.
And that's completely valid. There are tons of.
Options to how you play this game?
I love exploring the adaptations.
There are some that didn't appeal to me and then I try
using them and I fall in love with them.

(01:19:54):
They're amazing stowaways made fighting more dynamic the
further I got too. Just tons of options of just
passive things you can carry on your shell that give you passive
abilities. Boss fights like you said, are
incredible. They're imaginative, they're
epic, they're intense, they're frantic.

(01:20:16):
They have very understandable tells too, that feel possible to
learn and react to. So you might get your stuff
tossed in the first couple of attempts, but you really pick up
on their patterns really well, and I think that's because they
designed these tells to be so expressive.
There's a nice balance of difficulty as a result.

(01:20:37):
And by the end I feel so powerful that late game bosses
feel dangerous, but so does Krill.
And so I can sort of steamroll to the end of the game, which is
what you want, especially in theUnfathom and the Bleached City.
You know it in old Carcinia, if you will.
You want to be able to just keepgoing and going.
I commend the music too, for allthe reasons you said.

(01:21:01):
There are shortcuts in this gametoo, so many that I love You
know I love a shortcut. I know you love a shortcut
thought of you every time we we.Create better traversal all.
Over the place you're rewarded for exploring every nook and
cranny by having these hooks that you can lower and then you
can grapple onto those and they'll ascend up and bring you

(01:21:21):
to a platform that took you so long to get to before.
I love the cleverness of this game the shells in the costumes.
This game's chock full of puns and word play everywhere.
Just too many instances to mention.
There are lovely little references and Easter eggs all
over there's the stuff with going under.

(01:21:42):
There are also references to Dark Souls with the helmet shell
and the Solaire outfit. Just amazing stuff.
Really fun things that make me smile every time I find them.
I suppose at this moment we could shout out that one of the
costumes is. Also from Rivals of Ether, which
is a game I haven't played but is on my potential secret game
list. Yeah, tons of stuff like that

(01:22:04):
that I might not have picked. Up on so everybody is going to
notice different things which isfun too.
So then you can compare notes and go like oh and subway
midnight. One of the costumes is from Sub
I. Wore that for most of the game.
Oh, and I know that game, but I didn't realize that there's also
a call to the. Lamb.
Yeah. Outfit.
Oh my gosh, that's incredible. Wow, that's such a deep cut.

(01:22:25):
It's super deep cut. What?
Shout out, bubby. Dark Star.
Interesting. They must be fans, so.
Then I get to dislikes. Just generally, I think this
game has jank and you get cheesed by enemies in combat
sometimes in a way that just feels unfair.
And I think that comes with the territory of souls likes.
This happens. I we will cover this in a

(01:22:48):
second, but I've played a coupleof souls likes before and this
just is something you got to deal with.
Sometimes things will not alwayswork in your favor and so it's
nonetheless frustrating and you just have to retry from the
nearest moon snail shell and youknow, hope that you have a
luckier situation. There is platforming that's

(01:23:10):
rough. I largely do love platforming
where it's just going from platform to platform and using
your your little float move. But when you use your grapple to
get to a platform, for instance,the camera loves to zoom in and
you lose track of where Krill is.
And then you're moving the camera to try to find him so

(01:23:33):
that you can catch the ledge. And I missed so many ledges
because that camera went wild. And just his trajectory of where
he went after grappling was odd.And then you talked about the
invisible walls. I actually thought the invisible
walls were a little disappointing in places like the
shallows because it looked like I could just keep going.

(01:23:55):
And it just felt arbitrary that there happened to be a wall
there. So I always prefer in games like
that where instead of showing methe the Vista, which can be
cool, I almost prefer just buildin a wall there like a Rockwall
build in a Rockwall. I I'm fine with that.
And it happens sometimes in bossfights too, where there was

(01:24:15):
actually an invisible wall for one of the end game bosses and I
was like rubbing up against it trying to avoid a projectile.
And I was like, Oh no, there's awall here.
And I didn't know that. So yeah, it's not a huge
complaint of mine, and honestly,it was hard to come up with a
long list of dislikes. So overall, Another Crab's

(01:24:35):
Treasure is a game I couldn't wait to play between sessions.
I just wanted to keep playing it.
It's one of the most inspired indie games I've ever played.
I think it wears its inspirations on its sleeve, but
it also fully commits to its ownworld and themes.
I think this is fantastic for me.
Another Crab's Treasure is a 9.5out of 10.

(01:25:05):
That's what I put down. Yeah, I it was between a.
Nine and a 9.5 I was crossing. My fingers, I was like, is this
the next one? Is this the next?
One where we do it. Oh yeah, 9 and 9.5 were the two
I was. Between I'm going with the
higher one though. Baby Yes.
Yeah. Loved it.
So. We got to talk about Souls likes
because I've played a few and I was noticing time and time again

(01:25:28):
how another Krab's Treasure doesthings similarly but also
differently. I thought you would find this
interesting. The one that I can really draw
on that because I've played it the most and I've played it
multiple times, is Blood borne. I have tried Dark Souls 3
different times. I get a little further each
time. I want to eventually play that.

(01:25:49):
I want to play the other Dark Souls games and then I've played
Demons souls as of last year andI really enjoyed that game too.
But I haven't played Sekoro, I haven't played Eldon Ring.
I want to play these games but here's what I know and what I
noticed. And this is not going to be an
exhaustive list too, but Bloodborne has this mechanic

(01:26:10):
called the rally mechanic, wherewhen you get hit, there's like 5
seconds where you can hit the enemy back and you can recover
most or all of your lost health.And it's this mechanic that
encourages aggression because Bloodborne is very fast and
there's more about just being aggressive and fast and trying

(01:26:31):
to be offensive. And so this rally mechanic is
something that you kind of learnto rely on so that you're not
always healing yourself in another crab's treasure.
There's a skill called self repair where if you sustain
shell damage, you can follow up with an attack soon after that
to recover that. But something I used a lot.

(01:26:52):
You used that a lot. I used that a lot.
Especially in like the fight against IKEA, I don't think I
would have won against him without it.
That's wild because I don't think I had that skill for that
fight. Dang, I kind of wish I did
though because I was losing my shell a lot in that fight.
Here's another thing Bloodborne does when it comes to lore and
the bosses. There are a lot of lore rich

(01:27:14):
bosses that have histories that stretch far before the timeline
of the game and this reminds me of.
I won't necessarily say their names here, but two of the late
game bosses remind me of this, where they have a place in the
world and their stories actuallyextend decades before the events
of the game. Bloodborne also has regular and

(01:27:37):
transformed trick weapons, so you get a weapon by default.
It has kind of this normal appearance, but then you can do
an alternate version of the weapon where maybe it's longer
but it's slower. This is kind of like changing
your fork into a hammer in another crab's treasure.
So I thought those were really clear.
Inspirations I. Was like, where are you going

(01:27:58):
with that? I couldn't remember but.
Capsizing in another crab's treasure is like.
Doing visceral and critical strikes and other souls likes.
But there are some differences that I really find interesting.
Unlike other souls likes, falling in pits doesn't instant
kill you, and I think that's important where so much of the
game has pits. Yeah, very pit.

(01:28:19):
Pit full, Yeah. It's full of pits.
And you, unlike other souls, likes armor isn't available in
multiple slots. You can't wear, you know,
Greaves and a chess piece and gloves and a helmet and choose
which ones you find. And you're always finding
different armor. You find outfits that are
cosmetic in another crab's treasure, and you find shells.

(01:28:42):
But you're not spending all thistime trying to find the right
outfit and comparing the weight of items versus your endurance,
which determines how fast you roll.
It's really just is your shell aheavy, medium or light shell?
And that's how fast you'll move when you dodge, and that's how

(01:29:02):
much defense you'll have Easy. And you can change it.
You often change it multiple times in a play session.
There's another difference whereunlike souls likes, there are a
variety of accessibility and approachability options in
another Krab's treasure. And this is incredible to me,
the amount of customization you can put into the game when it

(01:29:24):
comes to difficulty. I layed around with some of the
stuff, I finished the game and Idid some clean up afterwards
where I wanted to collect some things for trophies and I turned
on the gun, you know, so that I could just go into these areas,
not worry once you've done an easy decision.
Exactly, But I was. Wondering if you used?

(01:29:46):
Any of these features or if you were aware of them?
I was aware of them. I didn't read the exhaustive.
List For example, there was thisone ledge that I got to in the
Bleach Kingdom, Old Carcinia or whatever.
There is no way for you to safely land anywhere to get out

(01:30:07):
of this situation. So I had the same thing.
I wonder if it's in the? Exact same spot.
It's near a moon snail shell. Yeah, and it's like a piece of
Styrofoam and. It's near, I think a seahorse.
Oh OK. Mine is near the two lobsters.
Like close to the end when you fight Camp Chuck, I found a spot
where I got stuck. Yeah, but I didn't know that you

(01:30:30):
could. A turn off losing microplastics
and B turn on recovery or lost microplastics.
So I didn't read the list of options.
I knew about the gun, but I didn't know about most of them.
So I didn't I didn't use any of them.
And I waited until the last hit on the last boss in the game to

(01:30:50):
use the gun so that I could trigger like 3 trophies at the
same time, which is just sort oflike a mini challenge I do with
myself. Yeah, but what's great about
Agrocrab is. They want people to enjoy the
game no matter their their needsand their experience level with
these kinds of difficult games. So it's fine to turn this stuff
on. I kind of want to go back and

(01:31:12):
check out Going Under because I didn't explore.
To see if that was an option in there there.
There's a lot that I'm still missing in that game.
I really wanted to platinum thatbefore another Crab's Treasure,
but I'm still missing just so much.
So if there's a way to like to speed that up, speed that up, I
want to check that out. Yeah, so I used a mixture.
Of just none of that. Stuff and then some of it at the
end for collection purposes. I had someone in my chat wish

(01:31:37):
for more accessibility features like dyslexic fonts.
So you you could say that this is really impressive, but
there's always more that can be added to.
So I hope that's something they consider.
I hope that's something that allgames consider that have text.
I think it's young enough that that could still it could still
happen. Exactly.
It's, you know, only about a year.
Old. So let's talk about how.

(01:32:00):
We played differently, exploration upgrades go to
shells, adaptation, stowaways and all that.
I watched a lot of what you played, so I know that our
stowaway game was mostly the same.
Oh really? Yes, amazing.
But and this is. This is a.
Topic I wanted to talk about specifically is is just most

(01:32:20):
useful items in the game, so I'mgoing to sidetrack this topic
for a second. One of the most useful items in
the game that I found was the contact lens stowaway.
I had that on for almost the whole game.
It shows you the enemy's life bar, including their specific
HP, but the big bonus in that isthat any enemy that's hiding

(01:32:42):
underground is visible to you from like forever away.
So like a Bobbitt worm? A Bobbitt worm there.
Yeah, Crab those little. Anglerfish dudes that were
hiding in the on Fathom. Fathom any crabs that are
hiding. Under a shell that you think is
just a shell, all you can see the hermit crabs before you know

(01:33:03):
the hermit crabs. And that's that only costs like
one or two points. It's one to wear that Wow.
So I had that on for like the whole game, even boss.
Fights when I could have taken it off for boss fights, but I
just. I left it was so useful.
I left it on the whole time and I didn't even try it even useful
when. You're like just going through

(01:33:23):
the world. You can just see like this is a
side path and I can see how manyenemies are there.
And I'm just like, I know I can't handle that right now, so
I'll go somewhere else. So I got that contact lens I
might have tried to wear. It, but I didn't give it enough
of a chance to know all that stuff.
And I saw the description said reveals enemy HP and I'm like,

(01:33:45):
enemies already have an HP bar, so I unequipped it.
Yeah, and I never used it. No, it's super useful.
Amazing, I think. I think I left it on for so long
because. I only had.
Like 3 or 4 stoways at at that time and couldn't afford any
other build anyway so why would I take it off And then I just
left it on. Loved it, wow.

(01:34:06):
That would have been useful especially for Bobbitt worms in
my opinion. I wish there were more slots for
stowaways. Like yeah, you get plenty of.
Points that. You can use to equip them but I
mean like you only get 3 slots if you could just buy like two
more. Just two.
More, I think that would be if we could wear four or five

(01:34:28):
stowaways, that would be great and.
Then I'd be fine wearing less expensive ones to mix and match
even more. That would be so tight.
But other really. Useful stuff.
I. Ended up going really heavy in
adaptations and I was using the first claw adaptation like all
the time. But yeah, as far as like
exploration, obviously I'm trying like with any expiration

(01:34:50):
game, as long as I feel like I have the health and the ability
to do so. I'm taking side paths.
I'm thinking of like the Grove, the expired Grove.
When I was getting in there, I was like, there's a lot of
Archers. I'm not really strong right now,
so I was kind of like mainliningit for a lot of the Grove, but a

(01:35:12):
lot of dashing around, sidestepping and.
Taking diagonal route so that you miss the arrows.
But I am always trying to go on side paths in pretty.
Much any exploration game. As for upgrades, I went heaviest
in attack in MSG and MSG really served me well.
Nice, I was like using that sweeping claw is the reason I

(01:35:35):
defeated bosses so easily at theend of the game.
Wow, because it also builds the What is it?
Capsizing or. Whatever.
Yeah, the staggering yeah. Mechanic.
Yes, it builds. That too.
Sure, and triggers. It as well if they're like at
the the limit, so it's just is like A and then you can capsize
them. And then did you follow up with
like the downward? Plants once I once I did unlock

(01:35:56):
it. That's so cool, super useful.
What I love about MSG, the potential there.
I didn't really put any points in that.
I put maybe 2 in there in total,but this game allows you to
build a spellcaster like you could do in other souls like
games like you could and I was more of the melee person so but
just between our two playthroughs, we specked out

(01:36:18):
quite differently. Even though it looks really
basic when it comes to those stats, it's only four stats.
In other souls like games it's many more stats and they're
often vague and you have to research them.
You have to like figure out whatsynergies they have with
equipment you pick up and it just becomes almost like doing

(01:36:39):
spreadsheet work sometimes. But here I love that it's so
simplified and straightforward. You get it.
MSG is just spell casting, Attack is your melee stuff, and
vitality and resistance are straightforward too.
Let's go. Let's just keep going.
I think at the end of the game Iwas at.
Like 12 vitality, I put the lowest amount in resistance.

(01:37:00):
I think I was at like 9 or 10. I was at like 16 attack and like
16 or 17 MSG. So that's that's sort of how I
built mine. It was mostly balanced.
I barely any into vitality. I maybe put like 6 into vitality
to an MSG Quality was pretty lowbut I really went hard.
Into attack. And then resistance, resistance,

(01:37:22):
I wanted to get up super high because every time you add a
resistance, that's -1 damage to your shell health.
And I thought, is it possible toget to the point where most
enemies will not destroy my shell at all or won't damage it
at all? And I actually kind of got to
that point where a lot of basic enemies, a lot of non boss
enemies would hit me and I mightlose health, but I'm not going

(01:37:43):
to lose my shell. And that's huge.
That's just one less thing I have to worry about.
So that was great. And then for me it was like I
was claw sweeping. These mofos so fast, they
couldn't touch my shell. I was sweeping these mofos,
yeah. OK, so for like go to shells.
For a lot of the game it was theFizzle can just because I really

(01:38:05):
liked the spell and it was lightweight.
Then eventually it became, oh, Imean pretty.
Much. Just whatever I could pick.
Up for a little while, but then when I got to the end of the
game I found this like toy truck, like one that you would
have out in like a sand pit. I saw.
I found that too. It was a little heavier than I

(01:38:27):
like. But it still.
Rolls and had high enough defence.
I just I didn't even use the spell on it.
It was just like it's a it's a sturdy.
Yeah, it's a good one. And then eventually once I
realized. Oh, I should have been using the
disco ball this whole time because of obvious reasons.
That was one of the last ones I found when I was doing post game

(01:38:47):
cleanup. Yeah, I.
Didn't I hardly used it, but youknow.
At a certain point, like my shell health didn't matter.
So like once I got to that point, I was just like, all
right, disco ball, here we go. There you go.
Yeah, iconic. Very iconic.
How about? You.
When it comes to stowaways, I'm guessing you used Chum and
Frederick like I did. That's what you mean, Chum.

(01:39:08):
For most of the game I did my. My Frederick spot was taken by
the lens for most of the game and then I used the lamprey and
then the lamprey plus once I gotit OK for health regen.
Nice. So I chose Chum and Frederick.
Which are two fish that can accompany you and attack enemies
for very minor damage. And Frederick actually increases

(01:39:31):
the amount of microplastics you earn too.
As an added bonus, Chum you get from a boss.
Frederick you find in the sands between.
And I chose these guys. Initially I just had chum, and I
chose Chum because I thought, oh, extra damage, I'll take it,
you know? But the more the game went on,
the less it was about damage andthe more it was just about

(01:39:55):
companionship. Yeah, these guys were my butt
OS. They're friendlies.
They're friendlies. And they would.
Show up in. Cutscenes swimming around.
It was cracking me up because someone would be delivering a
monologue and then here's Frederick just swimming by,
here's Chum swimming by. These guys are just going
everywhere and there's I feel like they're so buggy.
They will attack enemies and then they'll just go and hang

(01:40:17):
out next to you not realizing you're in a combat encounter.
And I couldn't figure out how they worked.
Sometimes I would unequip and reequip them and then they'd
become hostile towards enemies again.
So that's one way the game is just kind of has some
unpredictable. I had.
I had one time. Where?
I, you know, I wasn't paying attention to.
Whether or not they were there most of the time, but I had one

(01:40:38):
time where I got out of a shellaport.
I'm like, where are my fish? They're both gone.
Yeah, they were just both gone. I had boss fights where it'd be
like I'd have the boss. 1/3 of the way down and I'd go, wait,
where are Frederick and Shum? I'm solo, where are they?
Where are they at? And then I went in and re
equipped them and they showed upagain.
So I don't know why that happens, but I did have a really

(01:41:00):
cool moment with Chum where Chumdelivered the final blow to the
intimidation crowd. Boss, that was really nice and
I. Was cheering.
Chum and Frederick on. I'd be like, come on, Chum, you
got this. So it was a fun little piece of
entertainment for me to have those guys around when it comes
to exploration and earning upgrades.

(01:41:21):
I also took some time to farm some Bobbitt worms in the sands
between. This is where having the the
contact lens would have been helpful, but there's a little
pocket in the corner of the map.There's like 27 of them or.
Something and you can get 10s ofthousands of microplastics.
So I had one session where I played this game off stream and

(01:41:42):
in that session I explored the sands between to look for
upgrades and hidden goodies and then I also fought the
consortium boss that was basically 4 hours worth of.
Game time. Was doing that exploring and
doing that boss and so farming was part of that.

(01:42:03):
That's where I discovered the Bobbitt worms and I was like oh
cool, I'll just earn some extra microplastics to get some level
UPS. But other than that I just kept
on the path. I would do side stuff when it
showed up and I never really farmed other than that time.
When it comes to adaptations, I loved the Mantis punch because

(01:42:24):
at Level 3 you can teleport to enemies, they won't see you
coming if you're far away enough, and you can just deliver
a blow that gives them tons of capsized damage.
And then I would capsize them and do the downward plunge near
the end of the game. I used the tactical tentacle a
lot and leveled up to Level 3 and this was so useful.

(01:42:45):
This heals you. It swipes in a super wide
radius. I just I don't know if I would
have been able to beat the the last like two or three bosses as
as quickly without it. I use that big time with the.
Lamprey equipped in the like bleached Kingdom trying to get
around there because you have the crabs that also like shed

(01:43:05):
their their shell to and they hit hard.
So if you're like getting hit a lot and I you know I am a lot of
the time I can heal most of thatback.
It's so nice. It's so nice.
And I I've. Saved myself when I was out of
heart Kelp. I've had zero left since I was
able to recover my health from almost dead to full.

(01:43:29):
That happened to me too. And a boss.
Yeah, it's amazing. And then go to shells.
I would say just light shells because in these games I like to
roll fast. And you were you were using
rolling in your shell. Like quite a lot more than I
was. I would hide in my shell
anticipating attacks. But I would decide to dodge at

(01:43:50):
the last second and in souls likes, I always like having the
access to speeds. That is very important to me.
I get the defense is super greattoo, but I would wear stuff like
the Tonka truck and I I'd be like this is nice to have all
this shell health and to have all this defense for sure, But I
like just being able to quickly dash away.

(01:44:13):
So that's kind of how I played. I discovered some tactics too,
like you can steal a hermit crabshell from it if it's hiding.
I didn't even know that like I tried to.
Take one of the shells one time,like crawl in.
But I didn't know that you couldlike hook it and pull the shell
off of it. I discovered that by accident.
That was so cool. That was a revelation.

(01:44:34):
To me, I was already done. So there was nothing I could do
with it, but I did try to get comfortable with in the middle
of a boss fight if. My shell broke using my hook to
grab a shell nearby and it auto equips it in one animation.
That felt so cool because it waslike I was saving time.
You I saw you save yourself likeat least two times in.

(01:44:55):
That there were times to where? I like speed, not only with
dodging but also attacking. And when you use your hammer,
your attack speed is really slow.
You hit hard, super hard, but you're slow.
And so sometimes I. Don't like the?
Hammer. Yeah, I didn't like to use the
hammer too much. Myself, but I mean, I did use it

(01:45:16):
on a couple of bosses and admittedly I just like they did
work really well, obliterated them.
Yeah, so I know our friend. Grant.
Played another Crabs treasure and.
He used the stowaways that increased hammer damage.
Yep, and he tacked 100% into attack.
He like maxed out attack before doing anything.
He's going for just big slow attacks.
That if they connects, they're going to do massive D yeah.

(01:45:40):
And so these are just a few examples of all of the different
strategies you can use. But when I'm when I have the
hammer in a boss fight, sometimes I have to do the thing
where I swap the shell, swap theshell, ditch my.
Shell. Then wear my shell from my
hammer. And I managed to do that in a

(01:46:02):
boss fight where they almost hitme and I, you know, I'm
scrambling with all these buttonpresses because sometimes you
equip the hammer accidentally. So that was kind of a bummer
sometimes. Now, we've touched on a couple
of these topics, but when it comes to the story and the
themes in the world building of the game, I think there's a lot
of interesting stuff going on. Krill's character goes through

(01:46:24):
quite the transformation. He goes from indifferent to
realizing his usefulness in the world by by the end.
And you mentioned some stuff there about our society and
lower income classes and how this game reflects the harsh
realities of that and just the inescapable qualities of a

(01:46:45):
capitalist society for certain groups.
Is there anything else in this area you want to touch on?
I mean you got the whole. Spectrum of of losers
represented. You've got the people that
believe in the system, like Firth.
You've got Nema, who lives in the system and, you know, is

(01:47:07):
struggling harder to survive because she has young ones at
home. Yeah.
And so she's kind of tied down. Yeah, she has to.
Participate, yeah, but. She also like the sunk cost, you
know, fallacy works differently for her because ultimately can't
support for your children if you're dead, you know, and then
you've got Krill who learns about the system and kind of

(01:47:30):
embraces it at a point. And then you've got Kosh, who
doesn't care about the system. He just cares about the mission.
And you've got, you know, those are like your nonprofit workers,
like, yeah, you've got everybodyhere cares about knowledge and
the, the history. Of the place, right?
And yeah, there's the person Tortellini, who is the town

(01:47:51):
greeter or something. And he just wants to make like a
touristy place. He wants to create a welcoming
place for more people too. And so some of them you, you
kind of side with some of them you definitely don't side with
Gee, who? And I think it goes to show that
there's. Not one true enemy.
In In the World, you know, there's the the horrors of what

(01:48:11):
past people have done. There's the selfish tech bro,
there's Roland, the evil billionaire.
You know, it's like, I think it's interesting that this game
has several antagonists and it'salmost hard to pick which one is
the main one, right? You know, I can't think of like
you, you do have a final boss, but you didn't.
Yeah, it doesn't. You almost don't see it coming.
It's. Really fascinating, I and I

(01:48:33):
think that's the point. I think the point is, no, this
isn't a traditional story where there's one villain who wants to
destroy the world. There is something awful,
there's something evil and it creates more evilness in
different shapes and sizes and how you react to each one.
What your reaction is, is I guess it's important that you do

(01:48:57):
react. You know, you don't become
complacent. A great way to put it.
Complacency is failure is is thepoint.
And that's the idea that I get at the end of this game so
beautifully wrapped up in the final cutscene.
And I think it's just so well done.
It's so simple. It does all sound complex, but
at the end of the day it is really simple.
So that's what I wanted to say about the the story in world

(01:49:17):
building. But then when it comes to some
of those fun aspects of how the world imagines everyday objects
in new ways. For instance, you know there are
things like the scuttling sludgesteamroller, this is a boss in
Flotsam Vale, wears a broom headto look like a Roman helmet or
stuff like this. There's you mentioned the

(01:49:39):
Duchess uses the T infuser as a weapon and also has a tiara with
a 30 on it. You can imagine that that was a
tiara worn by someone for their 30th birthday, you know, and it
fell to the bottom of the ocean and she picked it up and now
it's hers. The bike lock used as a
guillotine, like all these fun things, I think just add a

(01:50:02):
lighter layer to that. I really appreciate.
Another thing we can look at is areas of the game.
I think I have a favorite area, but it's kind of hard to pick a
favorite. I really liked the curdled
village. This is the.
Cardboard. City, you know, it is stressful,
yes, but wow, it's so memorable.It's I think that is the most

(01:50:26):
memorable part of the game. So yeah, I guess I like it for
what you're doing there, at least in your first visit or
whatever, first several visits because you're probably going to
die a bunch. But for sure, just as far as
like how it looks for me, I likethe expired Grove quite a lot.
I like the concept of flotsam Vale.
Just like all of what is connected and what it's all

(01:50:49):
doing exploring, it's maybe a different story.
But yeah, easy to miss things there.
Yeah, well, moving on from favorite areas, let's.
Talk about the big one. What's our favorite bosses I
really liked? Is that everyone's favorite?
Is that everyone's? Yeah, just a nice amount.

(01:51:11):
Of challenge. And cool attacks and design,
epic fast. You feel like that one is where
the game really ramps up in difficulty significantly for the
first time. It's like, OK, we are playing a
Soul's life here and I died quite a bit to this one.
How about you? Hi Kia as well I.

(01:51:32):
Also there, I mean there are several, I really loved Tapoda.
And real quick, shout out Tapoda.
He's voiced by is Olivier Nelson, Junior from Strange
Scaffold. Yes, Yeah, really incredible
voice. I thought maybe.
It was the same voice as someonefrom Little Guardsman, which is
why I looked it up. Apparently not, but.

(01:51:54):
Awesome fight there. Apparently optional.
I didn't know that, but it's like it's like right after IKEA.
So I was like fighting IKEA and then I fought Topoda just like
back-to-back and I'm like unlocks the ability to upgrade
your adaptation. So it's super.
Important And those bosses were just like super cool, I think.
The lycanthrope is weirdly cool.He's not super memorable with

(01:52:18):
like anything that he does, but the disease lycanthrope just
like stood out to me. And then I think the Consortium
is one of the most creative bosses.
Totally. I have this one down as being.
One of the biggest discrepanciesbetween like cool boss design
but absolutely frustrating boss encounter when it comes to

(01:52:39):
combat. I died to this one the most far
and away above any other box. Yes I got I got him in like 3
which like. At the point when I fought him,
I fought him way late because I missed him.
I beat him in like 3, but that was still like a lot for that
point in the game to die three times because I've I was

(01:53:01):
beating, I beat like the accumulator right away.
I beat Roland right away. So even just getting 3 deaths on
that and that's that's a boss fight where the lens is actually
super useful. Oh, I bet, yeah.
And so you. Understood what was going on
immediately, whereas I had to sort of figure it out, but I
still died to tons of sudden attacks.

(01:53:21):
It smashes you, it rolls over you, it has a tentacle that hits
you very quickly without much ofA warning.
I don't know. It has the flare gun which is
like one of the strongest boss. Attacks in the game, yes.
You get on top, you have to destroy 6.
Knots on this cage that's housing all these demented
crabs, which is a really cool idea they're they're all working

(01:53:42):
together as this big boss it's it's all these crabs as one unit
and an octopus and an octopus and.
You have to climb on top. At one point, and that can be
just kind of strange, I got one hit away from beating it three
times and it I just got killed before I could get that last hit
in. And the way I beat it is
actually because I was using a fizzle can and I popped the

(01:54:05):
bubbles and the bubbles glitchedand actually attacked the boss's
health directly rather than the knots.
So I she's the boss accidentally.
That's how I beat it. So and that was still after
probably 30 or 40 attempts, honestly, this boss killed the
crap out of me. I didn't fight him as late as
you did. So you know who actually took me

(01:54:26):
a long time? That you.
Beat really quickly was actuallythe Duchess.
I struggled hard against the Duchess.
Like I was playing, I was playing it for like an hour one
night and then I would was home with the kids and I was like,
they can, they can see this game.
This isn't going to scar them. And so the only time they saw me
playing crab game, which they thought was cute, I was fighting

(01:54:48):
the Duchess like the whole time.And I finally did it after like
30 minutes down there with my kids on my lap.
Yeah, fighting the Duchess. Can't you see how worthless this
all? Is does that seared into your
brain? I did forget about it actually,
but now it's. Back.
Now it's back. So yeah, that one took me long.
IKEA did take me a long time, but it it was a super cool

(01:55:10):
fight. I felt that was the most
rewarding victory for me. Totally.
Yeah, I had a couple of first try.
Bosses, The polluted Platoon Pathfinder, one of the early
ones. I barely remember it because it
was over so fast. That's when I actually got
cheese on. We can talk about that when we
get to that section. But yeah, first try for me too

(01:55:32):
nice. And then the the false moon one.
That's one where you kind of getsurprised with a boss fight.
And I was like, no. And I actually suspected that
this was happening. And then I was like, OK, maybe
we're safe. And then it happens.
Yeah. And that was really satisfying
to get on the, on the first try.Yeah, I I had a lot of first
tries, especially at the end. False wound was not one of them,

(01:55:55):
but pretty much everyone else after that was one other note on
the end game bosses I. Think it's really cool how at
the end of the game we start getting all these bosses that
have two phases, but the game previews this.
By having. Us fight tons of the small crabs
that get reborn after they die. Really cool way to set that up

(01:56:17):
to ease us into that idea. And then that that's actually a
souls like thing too is, you know, a lot of bosses have two
sometimes 3 phases and it's coolthat they found a way to do that
without it feeling cheap, I think.
And actually the first time it happens, it's like, oh, I should
have seen that coming. I didn't see it coming.
It's not like that was cool. Doctor Wiley's capsule pops out

(01:56:39):
of the bigger. Spaceship and it's like, OK,
this is just arbitrary. OK, yeah, but yeah, let's talk
about cheese. How how did it's a two way St.
of cheese in another crabs treasure?
How did the game cheese you? How did you cheese the game?
So a lot of the time? The cheese is happening to me
when I'm falling through the platforms like I mentioned in

(01:57:00):
Flotsam Vale in the big stupid electric tower.
Other times the the crabs that have the umbrella and also the
crabs that have the like olive on a stick poker, those guys are
cheesing me the most. The seahorses too.
So like all of those guys are all in the same section of the

(01:57:23):
game and they're all cheesing mejust like knocking me out before
I can even like get inside my shell basically.
But in general, Archers once they're like in close combat can
kind of mess me up. I get kind of cheesed by them
sometimes as far as like cheese that I did, I got the polluted

(01:57:46):
platoon Pathfinder. I got her stuck up on a ledge
where she couldn't reach below to hit me, but I was able to
swing up at her. Oh love that.
That's why it was a first try for me actually.
The Captain. Of the guard I forgot.
About this but he got stuck behind like a sandcastle wall
for a little while and couldn't figure out how to like get

(01:58:08):
around it. So as long as I like stood back
while he was doing his lunge attacks, I could just run
forward and like hit him a few times and like Fizzle can him.
And so that's how I was eventually able to defeat him.
Pagrius Pagarus has like a secret weakness.

(01:58:29):
Obviously I took advantage of that.
I found out about that long after.
I beat him the traditional way. Yeah, there's a there's a
character you can run into who tells you about it, right?
And that's how you found out. I knew about it before I ran
into that character. But then I ran into that
character and I didn't use it until I actually found it.
So to make it feel like you earned it a bit, OK, Yep, cool.

(01:58:50):
And then, oh, there was. Another 10 during Tapoda and
this happened to you too, you just didn't live long enough to
to realize how bad it was. He like flings you way up in the
air sometimes and you can land behind the kelp wall and then
you're just stuck back. You're stuck.
I tried to move in there and I'mlike, where am I?
It's. It's like hard to see, but it is

(01:59:12):
also a. Wall that you just can't get
past, but he can still get to you and attack you.
Yeah, that's so unfair. That's in my list too.
That was it, mostly. I got stuck on a ledge, I
mentioned that already. Yeah, I have tons of similar
ones I. I think of the curdled village.
There are cliffs above the curdled village that you can

(01:59:32):
climb to, and there's a section with two Archers on platforms
and you need to grapple to some netting and they can snipe you
out of the air. Which is fine because that could
be my fault because I didn't wait for the proper timing.
But when I respawn on the ledge,their next arrow is already

(01:59:53):
coming at me. Oh, I did see that and this this
also happened to me. In the unfathom.
In a similar way where I fell off a ledge because I got shot,
and then I'm just thinking because I had that experience
above the Colonel Village, I think when I respond that
thing's going to be shooting me already and I respawn and I'm
getting shot and I die and that I can't react to that.

(02:00:15):
It's so frustrating. So I wish the game knew to just
wait to attack you until after you respawn on a ledge.
Super specific scenario, but it happened more than once.
If I had a nickel for every timethis happened, I'd have two
nickels. Which isn't a lot of nickels,
but still weird that it happenedtwice.
Also, there was a time where I fell in a pit during a

(02:00:37):
platforming section where you'redoing a lot of grappling and I
respawned in the middle of the air.
So that did happen to me one time.
When you do that, you then. Have to like swivel your camera?
Around to find the next grapple point or else you're falling in
the pit again. And that I died, that I didn't
have a grapple point, I was justfalling.
Oh, that sucks. I had the gravekeeper.

(02:00:58):
Topida moment too. So those were like the big ways
the game cheesed me, how I cheesed the game.
I mentioned the thing with the Consortium, which was an
accident. I didn't mean for the soda can
bubbles to defeat it directly like that, but it just happened.
I had lots of instances of guiding enemies to the ledge and
just letting them fall off, and sometimes I'd use barbed hooks

(02:01:20):
to pull them to the edge of a ledge that I was standing at,
and then they would just fall. That was nice.
There's another one I just thought of that isn't cheese I I
think. That strategy, and this one is
strategy the the cuttlefish that's in the unfathom, the guy
that shoots you with the glow sticks around his body or
whatever, if you lure him to an open pit because he can float

(02:01:43):
like he can fly. Basically, if you lure him to an
open pit and shoot him with the bullet adaptation, he just falls
and dies. That's nice.
Yeah. I wish I'd used the bullet more.
I think that sounded. Really useful and then similar
to Nephro. Is that his name the the royal

(02:02:03):
guard guy? I had an instance in the.
Shallows where? The Royal Shell Splitter This is
the first optional boss of the game who tosses your stuff if
you try to fight him. I ran into him after doing the
first two bosses again and I waslike, maybe I can take this guy
on. And he was kind of tough.
So I started running away and hefollowed me and I went over a

(02:02:26):
small Cliff, over a sandcastle. It's like a circle with a wall
around it. And the Royal Shell splitter
went into that sandcastle and got stuck in the sandcastle.
And I turn around and I go, oh, you're stuck.
And so I would sneak in and get a hit.
In every now and. Then and it took like, you know,

(02:02:46):
several minutes to whittle him down, but then when he had one
hit left, he climbed out of the sandcastle.
I was like, Oh no, Oh no. And this is on stream.
So it's I have one hit left. He has 1 little sliver of health
left. I'm like, OK, I have to prove
I'm a real gamer now. And I did dodge a few of his

(02:03:10):
attacks and managed to get the last hit in.
But if he had hit me after all that work of keeping that cheese
up, that would have been the most embarrassing moment of my
life, probably. So I'm so.
Yeah. That was probably my most
memorable moment from the shallows in the game.

(02:03:30):
Wow. There's a lot to talk about here
with another Crab's treasure, but I'm so glad we both loved
it. One of the best games of the
season so far. Incredible.
I'm so glad it was as good as itwas.
I love it. It's it's on both my lists.
I don't. We're going to follow up on the
list later this season, so I'm just going to leave those alone
for now. But yeah, I love this game a

(02:03:51):
lot. Nicely done with exploring it.
Completely and thoroughly. And so it was great to talk
about this one. So that is our review of Another
Crab's Treasure. You can play it on PC, Switch,
PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X&S Disco Cola rated it A10I
rated it a 9.5. That's the end of this episode

(02:04:12):
of Underplayed. You can find more of our
episodes at kzum.org/underplayedand on common podcast platforms
like Spotify or Apple Podcast. Our music was composed by Jack
Rodenberg. Our art comes from Oni Mochi.
Check out our show notes where you can find and follow us
across social media. Underplay.
It is on Blue Sky, Instagram andThreads.

(02:04:32):
You can find my links down below.
And I stream a variety of indie games on Twitch and I am also on
Twitch at Disco Cola. And all of those other places
where I played my secret game today.
Hashtag Blood and where you can also find Underplayed podcast on
Twitch where we'll be playing Octodad Dadliest catch.

(02:04:54):
Yes, very soon. Next time we will.
Have two more secret games to review in Our featured game will
be Her Story, an interactive investigation film developed by
Sam Barlow. Until then, everyone keep on
playing.

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073 - #BLUD, MainFrames, & Another Crab's Treasure

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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;}073 - #BLUD, MainFrames, & Another Crab's Treasure